I am not looking to start another attack thread. There are already enough of those. I want to know where Trump actually stands on issues like gay marriage, or infrastructure, or education, or anything else.
Other than his strong anti-immigration stance, he seems to make things up as he goes along, with no clear stance, or switching sides.
Mostly he doesn’t care. Serious answer (as serious as you can get in a thread about a Trump campaign for president).
Trump isn’t religious, his favorite book isn’t the Bible. He doesn’t care about gay marriage or tax rates, or infrastructure. He isn’t anti-abortion, and doesn’t want to “punish” women who have abortions. He probably doesn’t even care about immigration. If you want to know his “official” positions on these issues, his website probably has them listed.
So, I just looked. He has 6 issues he has taken positions on listed.
Pay for the Wall
Healthcare Reform
U.S.-China Trade Reform
Veterans Administration Reforms
Tax Reform
Second Amendment Rights
Immigration Reform
Honestly, his stance on the issues is irrelevant. No one’s voting for him because of his stance on the issues, and no one is turned off by him because of his stance on the issues.
Anything that just says “reform”, with no further details, isn’t actually a position.
As I’ve said before, there are really only three issues that Donald Trump holds firm beliefs about;
- Donald Trump is very rich
- Donald Trump is very smart
- Everybody loves Donald Trump
To be fair, each of those is linked to another page that fleshes out a little more detail.
I was just surprised that he only has six issues.
He has plenty of issues, we just haven’t dug them all up yet.
OnTheIssues may help.
Yes his stated positions have sometimes contradicted themselves and they are not quite coherent but there is a set of issues he currently endorses. Overall his current stated positions place him as a moderate conservative with strongly expressed anti-immigration and anti-trade positions and with a generous dollop of climate change denial.
Some strongly endorsed positions?
Cut Department of Education and Common Core
Green energy is just an expensive feel-good for tree-huggers
Cut the EPA; what they do is a disgrace
Cut defense budget, & entire EPA & Dept. of Education
Get rid of the regulations that are just destroying us
Replace Obamacare with Health Savings Accounts
No limits on guns; they save lives
Repeal estate tax
4 brackets; 1-5-10-15%
Those ones specially tell me that the ones that claim that Trump does not want to be president are wrong, many are ignoring the huuuuuuuuge conflict of interest here and why Trump and his family would like to make those proposals to become true, and with a Republican congress they are likely to be.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/12/upshot/donald-trumps-plan-to-raise-taxes-on-rich-just-kidding.html
Those don’t seem very “moderate” to me. They sound more like ever since Trump decided to become a Republican, he’s been taking his talking points from the latest and craziest Republican playbook, the one from the current insane era, the one that bashes all things environmental, denies climate change, and declares Obama to be a Kenyan-born Muslim. A moderate conservative wouldn’t be cutting the EPA – a moderate conservative created the EPA!
“Moderate conservative” should have included the quotes - that’s per the OnTheIssues bottom line assessment, their term. Being anti-trade pushes him away from the Right side some apparently.
YMMV but for today’s conservatives? Who should be a called a moderate conservative of today’s crowd?
He’s not really anti-trade. His clothing line (and other stuff) is made in China and Mexico.
And he’s been trying really, really hard to bring that back to the States.
Since 2011.
- Donald Trump is not a “short-fingered vulgarian”. His fingers are of absolutely normal size, see?. (Curiously, Trump does not seem to take an issue with being called a vulgarian, so he is presumably not in strong disagreement with the actual label, only the adjective attached to it.)
Stranger
This always bothered me…why is he worried about a few bucks’ manufacturing cost for making products in the US when he charges such ludicrous prices for them anyway?
As usual with things that he says, it doesn’t pass the sniff test.
His stuff on Amazon isn’t all that expensive.
Sort-of, but old Ronnie’s people weren’t that into saving the environment, so I dunno how ‘latest’ that is. I mean, that was 30 years ago.
‘Ronnie’s People’ sounds like a book/play/film set in West Texas about a free-wheeling cafe full of quirky deviants hugging each other a lot. And crying.
Anyway, apart from his lack of deep thought, he probably has a benevolent attitude to most ordinary people, and doesn’t want to punish them as do traditional conservatives; however, apart from bringing on the crazy to attract The People, which he will tone down a lot when in power, he has to move further to the Right to maintain the distance in parallel with Hillary as she, now unfettered by competition from the Left, moves back to the Right.
He proposes a Wall; she built one and worries about illegal immigration; he denounces Radical Islam, she just came out against Radical Islamism.
She is now courting Bush supporters to carry on his legacy, and wooing America’s religious evangelicals which is fair enough as one herself: certainly she will pander to anyone whatsoever — I’ve no doubt she no more believes in UFOs than does Donald, yet she has promised those people she will reveal government records of such stuff — but her appeal to the religious right is real, and this is something he cannot match, since they hate him.
However he will win, because America has a strange fetish over winners, and he is regarded as one; whereas she is mainly known as a loser, since she keeps on losing ever since her healthcare thing went down in flames.
His anti-vaccination beliefs appear to be genuine and not just pandering to the crowd. At least he’s been making public statements about his “theory” on vaccination since 2007.
Likewise his climate change denial tweets started in 2011 long before this campaign cycle:
http://www.fightclimatedenial.com/donald-trump---climate-denier.html
So yeah that’s two very dangerous things that he genuinely appears to believe.
Clinton supported Obamacare and the Democrats won on that one.
As for Trump being a winner, Trump is having a lot of trouble explaining away why he is not winning in the polls.
From the conservative National Review:
Elsewhere I have seen articles that make the point that getting bad publicity now and really not looking like a winner in the polls is what Trump will not be able to overcome, it will irk him so much that I do think it will make him fall further as being reminded of that will make him react more unhinged. Case in point: recently he tweeted one of the few more favorable polls for Trump showing him 3 points behind Hillary as a great success (never mind that many other polls show him 5 or more points behind Hillary).
His “winner” aura depended on being constantly ahead of his opponents, no such luck outside the Republican sandbox.
Yep, his strategy throughout the Primary was just say something outrageous whenever he needed attention to dominate the news cycle. That worked with his 30% or so of his diehard supporters base and kept him ahead of the other GOP candidates.
It’s not going to work in the general. How many americans really believe he’s a “winner” vs just a tacky reality star who inherited 100s of millions from his daddy?
On health care, he wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). He wants to eliminate laws that limit insurance companies selling health insurance out of state because he says this will foster greater competiveness. He wants to enact special tax-free savings accounts where individuals can deposit money for medical needs and to make health insurance payments tax deductible. He wants public reporting of health expenses so people can shop for the most affordable care. He wants block grants of federal money to the states for state-run health care programs. He wants to reduce regulations on the pharmaceutical industry so drugs that have been approved for use in other countries are available in America. And he wants to expand mental health care programs although he doesn’t go into details on that one.