# Trump's Republican primary campaign **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [September 3, 2015, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828 "2015-09-03T18:00:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 200
**Author:** ![truthSeeker2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7cd45c/32.png) [@truthSeeker2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/truthSeeker2)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2016, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3985 "2016-04-27T06:11:18Z")
I have conceded multiple times (at least thrice and you already know it and yet you bring it up) that I don’t agree with his thoughts on climate change (he thinks its long natural cycles rather than man made), on abortions and on (temporary) ban on Muslims. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2016, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3986 "2016-04-27T06:42:33Z")
> [@truthSeeker2](#): > > I have conceded multiple times (at least thrice and you already know it and yet you bring it up) that I don’t agree with his thoughts on climate change (he thinks its long natural cycles rather than man made), on abortions and on (temporary) ban on Muslims. And those should be deal breakers anyhow. You can ignore a lot, but even what you do notice are not small flaws. It is then really not reasonable to ignore those when one declares that “Donald Trump is by far the best leader that America has produced in the last 25 years”. One only has to look at that clip and realize that Trump is only willing to **mislead** the American people. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2016, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3987 "2016-04-27T13:09:10Z")
> [@truthSeeker2](#): > > 1. Trump would be unbelievably successful in foreign policy. Hillary cant even dream of what Trump will achieve. There would be no wars. Co-ordial, practical, balanced relations with everyone. This is the funniest thing I’ve ever read on this board. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2016, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3988 "2016-04-27T14:53:18Z")
> [@truthSeeker2](#): > > 1. Trump would be unbelievably successful in foreign policy. Hillary cant even dream of what Trump will achieve. There would be no wars. Co-ordial, practical, balanced relations with everyone. Trump is _incredibly_ thin skinned, and his behavior on the campaign trail indicates that, even if he decides he’s going to act “presidential”, it lasts 24 hours or less, before he goes off-script, and starts throwing insults. He has literally decades of history of taking offense at any perceived slight, and pursuing vendettas via lawsuits and insults. He’s already spent time on the campaign trail insulting various other countries. It’s the exact opposite of cordial, and I have an incredibly difficult time picturing a Trump presidency in which he doesn’t manage to burn bridges with other countries on a regular basis. > [@truthSeeker2](#): > > 1. Makes things simple. Others make you feel that it is complex, elitist job to manage things (foreign policy, economy) when its actually very simple and requires honesty. Govt. and central banks are the opposite of honest. The issue is that these things are **not** simple, despite the fact that his supporters would love for them to be. His portrayal of the issues as simple, and his promises that he (and **only** he) can provide simple and effective solutions, are flat-out lies to his supporters. > [@truthSeeker2](#): > > 1. Is not racist (And I am not white and not American). Even if he, personally, is not (arguable, but possible), he is very clearly and intentionally tailoring his messages to those who are. > [@truthSeeker2](#): > > 1. Is not sexist. This is simply incorrect. Again, there are decades of his own statements which clearly show otherwise. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2016, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3989 "2016-04-27T15:58:16Z")
[Heather Digby Parton nails it:](http://www.salon.com/2016/04/27/the_growing_shadow_of_donald_trump_the_scariest_thing_about_him_is_that_he_just_keeps_getting_more_popular/) “He is a proto-fascist demagogue who doesn’t even know what those words mean.” ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2016, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3990 "2016-04-27T16:55:33Z")
> [@truthSeeker2](#): > > 1. USA is sitting on a debt bubble. Public debt over $19 tn. Public Debt growing at 10 times faster rate than GDP. Massive trade deficit. Massive imbalances. Obviously unsustainable system. Trump is a hope to fix the system by disruptive means. No, Trump proposes cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy while ballooning the military. The disruptive changes that could address the debt involves raising revenues, not cutting them, and shrinking the military, not growing it. Hillary won’t cut it either on this issue. If it is “hope” for solving these problems you are after, Bernie is the only candidate in the race to consider. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2016, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3991 "2016-04-27T17:34:16Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Just read that Lena Dunham will move to Canada if Trump is elected. Miley Cyrus said the same. > > It’s getting harder and harder for me to not support Trump. > [@digs](#): > > I hereby state that I utterly agree with **Starving Artist**. What’s anyone got against Lena Dunham or Miley Cyrus? The worst thing one can honestly say about either is that Cyrus is a bit overrated. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2016, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3992 "2016-04-27T17:36:27Z")
> [@truthSeeker2](#): > > Others make you feel that it is complex, elitist job to manage things (foreign policy, economy) when its actually very simple and requires honesty. Yes, it is, and no, it isn’t. Government is no more a simple common-sense matter than science or technology is. ---
**Author:** ![Hampshire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hampshire/32/4887_2.png) [@Hampshire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hampshire)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2016, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3993 "2016-04-27T21:34:16Z")
Over the lunch hour today I was listening to Trump give a speech somewhere or other. I was interested in what he had to say and if he had any more details about his positions or how he would get things done. It pretty much amounted to: -Foreign relations: He’s going to get every country in the world to respect us. Our enemies and our allies. He’s going to accomplish this by being tough and strong. -Terrorism: He’s going to defeat ISIS and get rid of terrorism all together. This will be accomplished by being tough and strong. -Foreign trade: He’s going to make deals with other nations. Great deals. Deals that benefit the US. If other countries don’t like these deals he’s ready to be tough and strong and walk out on the deals. -Jobs: He’s going to create millions of new jobs. Again, all it takes is being tough and strong. -Immigration: Build the wall and have Mexico pay for it OR ELSE! Let the good immigrants in and keep the bad immigrants out. Take-a-ways: Vote for Trump because all the other candidates are very, very weak. And he is very, very strong. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2016, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3994 "2016-04-27T21:41:11Z")
> [@Hampshire](#): > > Take-a-ways: Vote for Trump because all the other candidates are very, very weak. And he is very, very strong. [Trump smash **everything!**](http://www.dailykos.com/blog/Tom%20Tomorrow) ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Kumquat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/4491bb/32.png) [@Gary\_Kumquat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Kumquat)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2016, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3995 "2016-04-27T21:55:47Z")
> [@truthSeeker2](#): > > Co-ordial, practical, balanced relations with everyone. Sorry but do you mean cordial? ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2016, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3996 "2016-04-27T21:57:30Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > What’s anyone got against Lena Dunham or Miley Cyrus? The worst thing one can honestly say about either is that Cyrus is a bit overrated. Not to mention, it’s not like either of them living in Canada means you’ll see a reduction in whatever your experience of them is. ---
**Author:** ![Uqbar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/a587f6/32.png) [@Uqbar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uqbar)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2016, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3997 "2016-04-28T01:58:24Z")
> [@Hampshire](#): > > Take-a-ways: Vote for Trump because all the other candidates are very, very weak. And he is very, very strong. ``` That's so core to his appeal, and a central element to the value system of his fan base--strength! Problem is, his brand of it can be flipped, becoming an exploitable weakness. For instance, anyone who wants to provoke a reaction from him can obviously do it with little to no effort (he gets punched he "punches back"--his words to that effect). So if such a reaction suits oh, say, a nation's political or diplomatic strategy, then a few well-aimed digs and Trump's cheap-seats-cheering form of "strength" becomes a huge deficit. Honestly, this guy's rise in the Republican Party and I can't get out of my head the vivid parallels to how primates establish dominance among themselves (and maintain it). I don't mean "he's an ape" in the casual sense, but that his whole act could come straight out of a primatalogist's field notes. As he advances through the nomination process he may "get wise" and throttle some of his monkey-brained tactics back (maybe already is), but what's to say he doesn't drag them out again at some horribly innoportune, crux-ish moment? ("Well, if it worked over here so well in the corporate jungle, or here with the cheap seats (they love me, after all), they why not...?" For example, I can just see him coming out of some failed negotiation with Chinese diplomats, and in front of the US press seeing fit to make a mocking "Chinese face" and shooting off a few words in pidgin. The fact that even seems plausible is nuts for a world leader.) ``` ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2016, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/3998 "2016-04-28T04:39:54Z")
I found this article on the [Jacksonian Tradition](http://denbeste.nu/external/Mead01.html) in America incredibly insightful. While geared mainly towards foreign policy, Mead does a superb job of describing the attitudes of “Jacksonian America” in general really well and as a result probably provides the best explanation of why TRUMP is so popular in this election cycle. Nor is this merely a theory being written to fit the evidence as the article was written in 1999. > [@](#): > > Suspicious of untrammeled federal power (Waco), skeptical about the prospects for domestic and foreign do-gooding (welfare at home, foreign aid abroad), opposed to federal taxes but obstinately fond of federal programs seen as primarily helping the middle class (Social Security and Medicare, mortgage interest subsidies), Jacksonians constitute a large political interest. > > In some ways Jacksonians resemble the Jeffersonians, with whom their political fortunes were linked for so many decades. Like Jeffersonians, Jacksonians are profoundly suspicious of elites. They generally prefer a loose federal structure with as much power as possible retained by states and local governments. But the differences between the two movements run very deep—so deep that during the Cold War they were on dead opposite sides of most important foreign policy questions. To use the language of the Vietnam era, a time when Jeffersonians and Jacksonians were fighting in the streets over foreign policy, the former were the most dovish current in mainstream political thought during the Cold War, while the latter were the most consistently hawkish. > > One way to grasp the difference between the two schools is to see that both Jeffersonians and Jacksonians are civil libertarians, passionately attached to the Constitution and especially to the Bill of Rights, and deeply concerned to preserve the liberties of ordinary Americans. But while the Jeffersonians are most profoundly devoted to the First Amendment, protecting the freedom of speech and prohibiting a federal establishment of religion, Jacksonians see the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, as the citadel of liberty. Jeffersonians join the American Civil Liberties Union; Jacksonians join the National Rifle Association. In so doing, both are convinced that they are standing at the barricades of freedom. > [@](#): > > A principal explanation of why Jacksonian politics are so poorly understood is that Jacksonianism is less an intellectual or political movement than an expression of the social, cultural and religious values of a large portion of the American public. And it is doubly obscure because it happens to be rooted in one of the portions of the public least represented in the media and the professoriat. Jacksonian America is a folk community with a strong sense of common values and common destiny; though periodically led by intellectually brilliant men—like Andrew Jackson himself—it is neither an ideology nor a self-conscious movement with a clear historical direction or political table of organization. Nevertheless, Jacksonian America has produced—and looks set to continue to produce—one political leader and movement after another, and it is likely to continue to enjoy major influence over both foreign and domestic policy in the United States for the foreseeable future. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2016, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/4000 "2016-04-28T14:04:49Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > Not to mention, it’s not like either of them living in Canada means you’ll see a reduction in whatever your experience of them is. [Les Nessman]Walls![/Les Nessman] ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2016, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/4001 "2016-04-28T20:17:03Z")
Broward County Florida GOP CEO: “[Hillary will go down like Monica Lewinsky](http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/florida-republican-clinton-down-like-lewinsky).” ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2016, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/4002 "2016-04-28T21:08:01Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > A principal explanation of why Jacksonian politics are so poorly understood is that Jacksonianism is less an intellectual or political movement than an expression of the social, cultural and religious values of a large portion of the American public. [Yeah.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=19163584&highlight=mars#post19163584) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2016, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/4003 "2016-04-28T21:59:19Z")
> [@Gary\_Kumquat](#): > > Sorry but do you mean cordial? Thanks, I’ll have a Drambuie. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2016, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/4004 "2016-04-28T22:02:26Z")
> [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > Broward County Florida GOP CEO: “[Hillary will go down like Monica Lewinsky](http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/florida-republican-clinton-down-like-lewinsky).” While debating Trump, he says? 1. Og will punish you for propagating that mental image, Mr. Sutton. 2. If Trump debates Clinton, he will go down like [Peter McNeely](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Tyson_vs._Peter_McNeeley). (Now **there’s** a mental image we can all appreciate!) ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2016, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828/4005 "2016-04-29T04:57:11Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > What’s anyone got against Lena Dunham or Miley Cyrus? The worst thing one can honestly say about either is that Cyrus is a bit overrated. I just find them annoying. And if they and maybe Bieber’ll move to Canada, that’s hyuuuuge in my book. Though I’ll admit I’m not being very co-ordial… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828.md?page=199) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trumps-republican-primary-campaign/729828.md?page=201)