To be clear, Trump should have answered, especially the second time around, with a resounding “no, no Muslim registration.” But actually, he answered that we should have a database of the refugees. Well, doesn’t ICE have that anyway?
No. I don’t understand what your point is.
Trump’s entire strategy seems to be capturing maximal media attention with minimal content originating from him. He has been spouting vague, racist, xenophobic nonsense since he arrived on the political scene, and this is no different. Someone else suggests a terrible idea to him, and rather than embracing or condemning it, he is just vague enough that his supporters can embrace his thinly coded racism, and his opponent can praise themselves for talking about how vile he is. He seems to be embracing “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” as a marketing strategy.
The man is vile, but I think his vileness is his willingness to support (and foment) Americans’ xenophobia, not that he actually proposes or stands for much of anything. He is clearly not someone who believes in the fundamental equality of human beings, or even American human beings, and I think American civil liberties are in danger just by the fact that >10% of our voting electorate seems to be taking him seriously.
I guarantee you Trump did not hurt his standing in the GOP electorate by his latest stunt, endorsing the “roughing up” of a BLM protester. There is a huge swath of the GOP electorate that is going to eat that up like catnip.
(Cross posted to the SRIOTD thread)
Donald Trump has “the world’s greatest memory. It’s one thing everyone agrees on.”
Cite: Donald Trump. ( Amid Latest Controversy, Trump Claims 'World's Greatest Memory')
He said this in defense of his (ahem) disputed claim that thousands of Muslims in New Jersey celebrated on 9/11.
He also said that he would reintroduce waterboarding “and more” against ISIS because “only a stupid person would say it doesn’t work” and “even if it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway for what they’re doing.”
Ladies and gentlemen, the next Republican nominee for President of the United fucking States.
BTW, that article also quotes some Trump supporters who were asked about Trump’s habit of making shit up on the fly. His supporters do not care. They. Do. Not. Care. They even find it amusing that he likes to “bend the truth”. Its OK because he will make America great again and because the real liars are the politicians in Washington.
As Nate Silver points out, please do not freak out yet about Donald Trump’s polls.
I believe Trump has no chance of becoming president. But of becoming the nominee? Yes, I think he does. Early on, I bought the notion that he had a pretty hard and pretty low ceiling. But I have seen polling since then on the question of “which candidates would you absolutely not be willing to support?” and Trump does quite well in those. His ceiling is a lot higher among the GOP electorate than many people think. (BTW, the candidates who have the highest numbers of “absolutely will not support” are IIRC Bush, Pataki, and Graham, with Jeb’s the very highest–which is just such a devastating number for the guy so many people thought was the frontrunner.)
I don’t understand your concern. I agree that the strong support for Trump says something bad about a large portion of Americans, but Trump isn’t the cause of these bad attitudes. I view the success of the Trump candidacy as a good thing because it puts the spirit underlying much of America’s right-wing strongly on display for all to see and be disgusted.
I don’t understand what you mean about “treating his candidacy as a farce is dangerous.” Do you think the media should take him seriously, and pretend that his “ideas” are serious? I might agree with you, but probably not for the same reason.
Next November, the nation will be faced with a choice between Hillary and probably one of {Rubio, Cruz, Romney}. The choice will be between
(a) someone who will continue to sell out the American people to Wall St., but asking for a little bit in return – better healthcare, higher minimum wages; and
(b) someone who will let Wall St. steal as much as they can, trying to continue America’s transformation into a society with a stark divide between Haves and Have Nots.
I think (a) is the better option; and believe that the coming election is VERY important. It’s the GOP’s last big chance to take the White House. If they succeed, they will seek to entrench their power permanently. If they fail, the U.S. may begin a crawl back toward sanity and humane values.
I hope that continued Trump success will weaken the eventual GOP nominee; therefore I regard Trump’s popularity as a very good thing.
Romney? How do you see that playing out? Even in a brokered convention, I can’t see the delegates agreeing on him.
Perhaps he meant Bush, not Romney.
I’d feel a lot more comfortable about this if Carson wasn’t in the number two slot. Both feed off the same whack-a-doodle outsider constituency and together they make up around 50% of the vote. So Its not clear that Trump won’t pick enough of the votes freed up by the winnowing to keep his lead
I wish that “Dey tooker jabbs.” was the worst that Trump was saying. That would just be garden variety Republican boilerplate complaiing about lazy immigrants stuffing 15 people into a two bedroom apartment and feeding off welfare. Trump is going beyond that by saying suggesting that immigrants are evil people who are actively setting out to do us harm. The next step is to claim “They are coming after your daughters”. Trumps rhetoric has gone beyond the sort that I can just roll my eyes at and into an area where I am seriously concerned that someone is going to get lynched.
I doubt he’ll even need to do that. At this point Trump is beyond the reach of fact checkers. Who are you going to believe a wildly successful businessman who tells it like it is or the lying Liberal Media?
You can count Romney out. He’s said so multiple times now. I think 2012 just wiped him out.
I think Trump has a better chance of failing if the media takes him seriously. Treating him and his campaign like a circus has only given cause to defend him, even by those who probably don’t want to be defending Donald Trump. I still don’t believe he has nearly as many true supporters as the polling would lead us to believe.
Romney would only take the nomination if it was offered at a brokered convention. For what it’s worth, I think most major Republicans would accept such a draft. A 3-4 month sprint to a general election is not much of a hardship.
Positive boon, actually. Less time to get stale, unexciting, less time for the candidate to step on his dick.
It could get very entertaining if there is a yuge gap between his poll numbers and his standings in the first round or two of actual voting. I wouldn’t put it past him to accuse the GOP party bosses of putting the fix in, at which point there won’t be enough popcorn on earth to accompany the resulting fireworks.
Almost every single one of the 17 clowns on-stage are unacceptable to those with a modicum of sanity. Jeb! has demonstrated, despite the exclamation mark, total lack of charisma. Cruz is in 3rd place of likelihood now, but I find the notion of his Presidency too frightening to countenace. Kasich is the best of the lot, but is ruled out by his failure to catch fire.
That leaves the callow Marco Rubio. I’m sure he’s most likely by far, especially since he’s a darling of the Koch Brothers, but there’s always a chance he’ll flame-out.
By process of elimination, the GOP may give up on all 17 of the clowns and draft an old warhorse for the run. Enter Mitt Romney. (I’m no Romney fan, but if it has to be a GOP President he’s more stomachable than any of the 17 Clowns.)
This is all you need to say. In the case of a brokered convention the delegates will go where the money leads them.
If it comes down to a brokered convention with Trump among the top contenders then I think Trump will go ahead and run as an independent, taking his supporters with him, and letting Clinton cruise to victory at a walk.
The right’s political calculus gives very little weight to the left’s approval.