Yes, another piece on Trump.
He continues to draw my interest; better said, I am drawn to how he has tapped into an anger, resentment, and deep concern over the state of the nation that others have either ignored, e.g., Jeb Bush, or have not been able to exploit as well, e.g., Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio. I have noted before that the sneering class of critics might compare Trump to Father Coughlin or Huey Long, but that won't slow him down. What might slow him down is that over the course of our absurdly long presidential campaign people tire of his routine, of his jokes, of his one-line rebuttals, of constantly having to defend some outlandish statement or stunt. That can get old after a time, and he could find his support drifting, and find himself pulled into a disastrous third party run. Disaster, why? Simple. It would guarantee the Dems the White House. You can say what you want about RINOs (Republicans in Name Only), but--OMG as the kids would say--look at what the Dems are proposing! Could this nation survive as a recognizable entity with four or eight more years of the Dems CIABN (Communism in All but Name)? Would not Romney or even, gulp, McCain have been better for this country and the West than the current calamity in chief?
Soon, maybe not right now, but soon, Trump has to reach out to the establishment and its policy wonks. He doesn't have to kiss their behinds or become beholden to them. He, however, in my humble opinion, needs to establish--as did Reagan--that he is a serious thinker, and that he has a vision of how the world should be and how to get there. He needs to make a couple of serious well-structured speeches laying out that vision: at least one major social-economic address, and one major foreign policy speech. How will he turn this economy around? How will he work to give the disappearing middle class and small business owner a break? How will he deal with the unprecedented growth of government in size and reach? How will he bring us back to the principles that made America a great nation? How will he deal with Russia, China, Iran, ISIS, immigration, drugs, and other transnational issues? As I said, it has to be a serious effort, it does not have to be one that the MSM or other purveyors of conventional faux-wisom will like or approve. It has to be a real effort to establish Trump as, to quote the Coen brothers, a Serious Man.
If he doesn't do that, the sniping and snearing and derision will eventually take a toll. Mark my words. And, again, I do not want to live my remaining years in a country run by and into the ground by the likes of the Three Stooges of the Apocalypse, Hillary, Joe, and Bernie--with Elizabeth Warren as Shemp.
Hey, this is free, so don't feel ripped off . . .
How bad could another 8 years really be?
ReplyDeleteoh
crap
Why is the US still the best place to live? And for how long at this pace?
- reader #1482
How bad? Iran will have nuclear weapons and ICBMs. We could lose cities.
DeleteBecause it takes a LOT to totally destroy a nation. Take Periclean Greece. Ten golden years that reverberated around the world for thousands of years.
DeleteIt took the Spartans...
Two Rival empires.
Only one could win..and Athens had to be destroyed by plague, famine, death in full measure...to stop it.
Hillary and all them...are not a pockmark on America YET.
Empires of the MIND (tap tap)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0T78tNS9u8
leaperman
"To everything there is a season."
ReplyDeleteI see Trump playing for attention right now. Hopefully he has a long game strategy and I suspect he is smart enough to have developed that before he announced. Your advice is sound and lets hope that Trump does something serious along these lines.
My concern so far is how he'll play with Congress. If he sticks with the GOP and wins, he'll have coat tails who owe him, especially if he is shows up for a candidate, especially at a fund-raiser. When I hear his speeches, I hear him definitely building a new coalition.
Hello again, Mr. Hall.
DeleteHe inherited 27,000 units of New York real estate and had four business bankruptcies and nearly went personally bankrupt.
I wouldn't want to bet anything big that he has a long game strategy.
HIs first money was breaking up businesses...and his ten percent for doing so. Yes....
DeleteHe has so many FLAWS that it's a joke...but, BUT...
Hillary? Biden? etc...oh HELL NO!
leaperman
As usual, Mr. A6Z is quick to change the subject. He should either respond to the original commenter's topic or start his own thread.
DeleteTrump seems to have bought into the president-as-dictator playbook that Obama has perfected. "I'll send all those immigrants back home" or "I'll punish the companies that send jobs overseas" or "I'll raise tariffs on foreign goods to protect American jobs." Maybe he could do that on his own as president, but it would require a measure of executive overreach so massive that Obama's own illegal and extralegal actions would disappear in comparison to Trump's.
ReplyDeleteI'd be less apprehensive of the Donald if he'd preface at least some of his wild promises with, "I'll work with Congress to [fill in the blank] -- and trust me, I know how to get people to see things my way." But in the meantime, every time he speaks he should be setting off alarm bells for conservatives who believe in the separation of powers and who further believe that the kind of executive tyranny we've seen for the past seven years needs to be opposed on every front, not just when the president happens to be a left-wing Democrat. Principles matter. They should be objective and not, as Democrats believe, situational.
" if he'd preface at least some of his wild promises with, "I'll work with Congress to..."
DeleteCongress? Oh, you mean THIS congress?
http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2015/09/02/mitch-mcconnell-gives-fiscal-conservatives-the-big-middle-finger-announces-plans-to-work-with-obama-on-budget/
Actually, it would be the NEXT Congress. That's how it works. If you don't like the current Congress, get busy on changing it in 2016. A new president alone isn't going to do the trick.
DeleteDoubts that Trump could prevail over Mitch McConnell and John Boehner lead to this question: How would he do against figures of an even tougher persuasion? Think Xi Jinxing, or Supreme Leader Khamenei, or the Castro brothers, or Vladimir Putin. Even Angela Merkel is tougher than Mitch or John.
(Communism in All but Name)? Yes! I never believed the Cold War was over. Just over over there. It was always going to play its final act right here in America. Only this time, Democrats are Soviet proxies.
ReplyDelete"This time"? When have they *not* been?
DeleteI disagree with this idea that we have no choice but to support RINOs, if that, in the end, is the choice we are faced in the voting booth.
ReplyDeleteNot for me. Not again.
The "lesser evil" vote is the reason that RINOs know they can repeatedly betray their voters and repeatedly get away with it. Why would we expect things to change if we keep doing what we've been doing over and over again? It is the very definition of insanity (whether Einstein actually said that or not).
The only way forward is to break the current, entrenched GOP leadership. If it manages to put in place another RINO candidate for president (or any other office), we should abstain (and do it loudly).
The GOP leadership must be defeated and humiliated and driven to the hills. Only when it becomes clear that they can't deliver for Wall Street and Chamber of Commerce, will that happen. That is the only constituency that matters to them, so that constituency needs to understand that the GOP establishment doesn't have the juice they claim.
In the meantime, I have not a single thread of doubt that America generally, and conservatives/libertarians specifically, would be far better off with a serious, determined, prepared-to-fight-to-the-last-man minority ("a real opposition") than a single minute more of a GOP establishment in majority.
If we want a true choice, a true two-party system, we are going to have to destroy the GOP as currently constituted. The longer we wait, the steeper the climb will be.
Time is not on our side.
You try to just destroy the RINOs, but you wind up enabling the Democrats. You can't will it away, or wish it away, or make it go away by saying "Not for me. Not again." Words have no magic power over reality.
DeleteBased on your reply, you either didn't read my note or you have extraordinarily poor reading comprehension.
DeleteThe RINOs are not doing battle with the Democrats -- they are the ones enabling them and that is exactly why I've had enough. I voted for these RINOs and now I'm getting enablement of Democrats. How much different could not voting for RINOs be? I doubt I'll notice any real difference at all.
I'd rather have a smaller number of committed conservatives who will fight to the last man, rather than throwing again in with RINOs who excel only at devising new and creative ways to implement unilateral surrender before the battle even begins.
The GOP leadership told us repeatedly they can't oppose Obama because they don't control Congress. So, the base rises to the occasion and gives them House in 2010. But that wasn't enough. The GOP said it really needed to control the Senate before they could effectively oppose Obama. So, the base turns out yet again in 2014 and it's still not enough. They tell us they need the White House before they can mount effective opposition.
Well, guess what? Even if the useless GOP stopped stepping on its own d*ck for the next 15 months and won the presidency, it still wouldn't be enough -- they'd likely claim there's nothing to be done until the party controls every seat on the UN Security Council.
One of the nice side benefits in following the non-RINO path is that I'll have less reason to listen to half-witted lectures from denialists and apologists.
I can see some of your point. The GOP was elected to control both houses, yet Obama seems to get whatever budget he dreams up.
DeleteCongress is supposed to determine the purse strings. Congress changed hands, and there was no difference in fiscal policy.
There are certainly a lot of other things involved here, but fiscal policy stands out because it is declared to be the purview of congress. GOP-E failed in accounting for themselves on this after many campaign promises.
It seems reasonable to me that it's more difficult to root out competent liars (GOP-E) than incompetent fools (Democrats), which is why handing GOP-E a resounding defeat may wind up making more sense in the long term.
I'm still not down with that logic though, as I believe incremental progress can be made. And though a lot of GOP leadership has bent over backwards to woo the liberal media, a lot of the fresher faces are less enamored of that 'odd kind of respect'.... to paraphrase.. umm.. somebody...
- reader #1482
I get tired of the "you have bad reading comprehension " line. It seems extremely childish and doesn't factor in the possibility that the author's point is muddled.
DeleteI think the country is in a pre-Revolutionary situation where a significant minority will support a "man on horseback" and that is dangerous.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what the alternative is, though,
http://www.sultanknish.blogspot.com/2015/07/5-ways-to-fight-left-and-make-your-life.html
DeleteA man on horseback is higher than a woman who is lower than a snake's belly.
DeleteI've made this point on other forums also: We've had 8 years of a Left wing Imperial Presidency. Now many are hoping for a Right Wing Imperial Presidency. So we have a bunch of candidates claiming that "on Day 1 I'll do this..." or whatever.
ReplyDeleteEnough of these Wing candidates. Left or Right.
Graham
I think the monicker "Commies All But In Name" acronymizes better as 'CABIN'.
ReplyDeleteie, CABIN democrats versus the RHINOs
This is just what we get. I guess on the positive side, Trump isn't scrounging around trying to "burnish his Christian credentials".
There are few things more sad than watching candidates pal around with celebrity Christians in hopes of appealing to the faith.
*Do* your work your whole life and people will have no choice but to *see* it.
But no... it's an afterthought.... because pretty much everybody actually genuine stays out of the media and politics.
- reader #1482
I share your frustration!
ReplyDeleteAnd I am one frustrated and angry American, too--but I moan at Trump's ascendancy.
But the thing that scares me all the more is that after a little bit of travel, both in and out of government, I've reached the unhappy conclusion that all governments represent their peoples, whether they intend to do so or not. If we have an immature, childish people who feel that their every whim should be indulged and that no consequence should fall because of their bad behaviors, then we'll have a man with four bankruptcies to his name pretending to be a "can do" leader, a corrupt and sleazy woman riding her two X chromosones, a horror who sees a viable late term fetus as a choice while decrying choice in toothpaste, and Fauxahontas speaking for America.
Unhappily, Trump's one-liners and shallow quips resonate with the unhappy majority simply because we're all accustomed to a sound-bit culture. We have lost our ability to reason through things (which is why so many believe WTOP when it says there's no smoking gun in Hildabeast's e-mails, which have already been scrubbed) or pay attention for any amount of time. It's why nobody wonders what Ambassador Stevens really was doing in Benghazi; or why the US should involve itself in the Syrian mess at all.
If it comes to Trump v. Shrillary Shrooooo or Fauxahontas or Bernie Trotsky-wannabe Sanders, I'll hold my nose and vote for The Donald. But I dread such a choice.
Any genuine person wouldn't last a minute in today's politics. Maybe some day that will change, but there will have to be something bad happening first.
Delete- reader #1482
No one inside the system can break the system, too many favors are owed, too many skeletons hidden, too many friends who'd be brought down as well. If the corruption of the ruling party is to be broken, a powerful outsider MUST be the one to do it. The outsider need not be a kind hearted or noble man, all that is required of him is that he upsets the status quo. What comes after that is accomplished is up to the rest of us. He can only make the void, if we fill it with the same corrupt, professional political class again, who can say we didn't deserve it?
ReplyDeleteThe Donald has said that we should accept SSM because the Supreme Court has made it the law of the land. With the persecution of florists, caterers, and now county clerks unable to see SSM as "marriage" in good conscience (and hence a frontal attack on the Free Exercise Clause), we need someone ready to support the impeachment of a number of Federal Judges--including some Supremes--not a cave-in.
ReplyDeleteThe Donald could flip flop on that like he did on planned parenthood.
Delete"and find himself pulled into a disastrous third party run. Disaster, why? Simple. It would guarantee the Dems the White House. "
ReplyDeleteI would like to submit that thus conventional wisdom is wrong. I offer no insight into Trumps intentions, but I do believe that the Perot model that everyone seems to base this prediction on is not valid today. There are many disaffected Democrats who want an out but would never vote Republican. Biden over Trump? Not for many blue collar Dems, black and white.