Jihadin wrote:
I'm not crazy. I just like good entertainment. How many here going to watch the Fox debate that's happening soon? Trumps the wild card with a "W". He's resonating with the general population with his bluntness to issues.

Ouze wrote:

 Jihadin wrote:
I'm not crazy. I just like good entertainment. How many here going to watch the Fox debate that's happening soon? Trumps the wild card with a "W". He's resonating with the general population with his bluntness to issues.

I personally wouldn't consider a 60% unfavorable rating among registered voters "resonating".

Still, as someone who doesn't want any of the current GOP contenders to win the election, I think he's doing a terrific job and I hope he never shuts up.

 Frazzled wrote:

Ouze wrote:

 Jihadin wrote:
I'm not crazy. I just like good entertainment. How many here going to watch the Fox debate that's happening soon? Trumps the wild card with a "W". He's resonating with the general population with his bluntness to issues.

I personally wouldn't consider a 60% unfavorable rating among registered voters "resonating".

Still, as someone who doesn't want any of the current GOP contenders to win the election, I think he's doing a terrific job and I hope he never shuts up.

Thats what Hillary is paying him for...
If he actually got the nomination, then the Republicans would deserve the Extinction Level Event they receive at the voting booth.

 Frazzled wrote:
If he actually got the nomination, then the Republicans would deserve the Extinction Level Event they receive at the voting booth.

Ouze wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
If he actually got the nomination, then the Republicans would deserve the Extinction Level Event they receive at the voting booth.

RCP is saying even Sanders would beat Trump by 10 points.

 Easy E wrote:
The fact that Trump is a front runner shows how delusional the base has become, and also how pandering to the base and forget the rest is the best way to win. That was Rove's visionary idea!

 Easy E wrote:
The fact that Trump is a front runner shows how delusional the base has become, and also how pandering to the base and forget the rest is the best way to win. That was Rove's visionary idea!

 Frazzled wrote:

Once a primary is actually held, I'd put Trump as being slaughtered. People think he's the best carnival barker around, but I can't see them actually voting for him. Plus, mark my words, if it looks like he has even a slight chance the oppo research dumped to the press will be tsunami like.

BeAfraid wrote:
I typically HATE The Huffington Post.

But this article was too funny, and made me think that Trump really could be playing a Nigerian 419 Scam:


Is Donald Trump Pulling a Nigerian 419 Scam?

MB

 Vaktathi wrote:
What I'm really puzzled over is how the Republicans have devolved in the last 15 years in terms of campaign management.

The Republican party of 2000 was a well oiled, disciplined, coherent, and highly structured machine. There was a line that was, for the most part, rigidly towed. Republicans did not speak ill of other Republicans (particularly in the ways they are now). Primaries were largely restricted to internally approved candidates where only two or three got any attention and resources. Ranks were closed and efforts were focused and elections were won seemingly in spite of the electoral demographics in many instances and ruthlessly shut down the Democrats for basically a decade between mid-late 90's and late 00's.

That remarkably smooth functioning machine that once characterized Republican campaigning, and that made such a mockery of the Democrats for years, has seemingly vanished and begun to cannibalize itself, hoist by its own petard in many ways.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

Just think about that, $15 million from two guys, basically just being pissed away on a candidate that won't win.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
They ALL get ridiculous amounts of money in the name of "campaign funding." Money that they can fritter away on things like campaign dinners and paying their "campaign managers" who just happen to be good friends and so on.

BeAfraid wrote:
I typically HATE The Huffington Post.

But this article was too funny, and made me think that Trump really could be playing a Nigerian 419 Scam:


Is Donald Trump Pulling a Nigerian 419 Scam?

MB

 Vaktathi wrote:
What I'm really puzzled over is how the Republicans have devolved in the last 15 years in terms of campaign management.

The Republican party of 2000 was a well oiled, disciplined, coherent, and highly structured machine. There was a line that was, for the most part, rigidly towed. Republicans did not speak ill of other Republicans (particularly in the ways they are now).

 Vaktathi wrote:
What I'm really puzzled over is how the Republicans have devolved in the last 15 years in terms of campaign management.

The Republican party of 2000 was a well oiled, disciplined, coherent, and highly structured machine. There was a line that was, for the most part, rigidly towed. Republicans did not speak ill of other Republicans (particularly in the ways they are now). Primaries were largely restricted to internally approved candidates where only two or three got any attention and resources. Ranks were closed and efforts were focused and elections were won seemingly in spite of the electoral demographics in many instances and ruthlessly shut down the Democrats for basically a decade between mid-late 90's and late 00's.

That remarkably smooth functioning machine that once characterized Republican campaigning, and that made such a mockery of the Democrats for years, has seemingly vanished and begun to cannibalize itself, hoist by its own petard in many ways.

BeAfraid wrote:
I think I have recounted a few times how this happened.

Their efforts, began in 1995, to rig a permanent GOP Majority backfired on them, as it gave control of the party to the most radical voters.

 sebster wrote:

BeAfraid wrote:
I think I have recounted a few times how this happened.

Their efforts, began in 1995, to rig a permanent GOP Majority backfired on them, as it gave control of the party to the most radical voters.

It starts a long time before 1995. The Southern Strategy is a major step towards the modern GOP, and after that the next two major steps were made in Reagan's 1980 election bid - he looked to counter Carter's religious appeal by targeting conservative Christians, and at the same time embraced a kind of populist economics that was, well, aggressively stupid.

Those three things, race baiting, ultra-conservative social policies, and small government fantasies, were all solid winners - in the short and medium term, and helped Republicans achieve a position of strength in US politics they'd rarely held before. But there's a kind of corruption in choosing to believe something that's very silly at its core - when you're willing to pretend the Laffer Curve is a real thing, well it isn't long before you are required to sign an oath to never raise taxes. So a process began where nutters starting rising up through the ranks of the party, and at the same time previously mainstream people became more nutty.

I think we're more or less describing the same process, I just think it started earlier than you.

As Kruse argues, the belief that America is fundamentally and formally a Christian nation originated in the 1930s when businessmen enlisted religious activists in their fight against FDR’s New Deal. Corporations from General Motors to Hilton Hotels bankrolled conservative clergymen, encouraging them to attack the New Deal as a program of “pagan statism” that perverted the central principle of Christianity: the sanctity and salvation of the individual. Their campaign for “freedom under God” culminated in the election of their close ally Dwight Eisenhower in 1952.

But this apparent triumph had an ironic twist. In Eisenhower’s hands, a religious movement born in opposition to the government was transformed into one that fused faith and the federal government as never before. During the 1950s, Eisenhower revolutionized the role of religion in American political culture, inventing new traditions from inaugural prayers to the National Prayer Breakfast. Meanwhile, Congress added the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance and made “In God We Trust” the country’s first official motto. With private groups joining in, church membership soared to an all-time high of 69%. For the first time, Americans began to think of their country as an officially Christian nation.

During this moment, virtually all Americans—across the religious and political spectrum—believed that their country was “one nation under God.” But as Americans moved from broad generalities to the details of issues such as school prayer, cracks began to appear. Religious leaders rejected this “lowest common denomination” public religion, leaving conservative political activists to champion it alone. In Richard Nixon’s hands, a politics that conflated piety and patriotism became sole property of the right.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
A problem I tend to see with a lot of politicians (on both sides) is the overuse of "bogeymen". They use a bogeyman of some sort to scare and distract the voters away from having to actually think about what their politicians are, or should be, doing. In the last election, the ACA was the bogeyman. Right now, Trump is setting up Mexican illegals as a bogeyman, while others are using the Iran deal. Other elections saw terrorists, the environment, etc. as bogeymen. All politicians use them to some extent in one way or another, but perhaps the GOP has relied on it too strongly in recent years so that they don't have much else in their playbook?

It's sad that, these days, it's easier for the parties to scare people into voting for them through playing on their fears and creative interpretations of facts, rather than using rational thought and clear and simple facts.

Contentions
Carly Fiorina: The Substantive Donald Trump Alternative
Noah Rothman | @noahcrothman
07.28.2015 - 5:00 PM
Political reporters are less vexed by the reasoning behind Donald Trump’s decision to mount a narcissistic campaign of self-aggrandizement disguised as a presidential bid than they are by the fact that it resonates with so many Republican primary voters. More than a few pieces have been penned amid the effort to understand the Trump surge and the primary voters that make up his base of support. The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel submitted one of the best dispatches on the subject after spending several days covering the Trump campaign on the ground. He discovered that Trump has staying power, and not merely because of what he represents but because of who he is and how he is running for the highest office in the land. But all those traits that make him attractive to GOP primary voters are present in another candidate: Carly Fiorina.

Weigel’s excellent report should be read by all who cover political campaigns, and particularly those in the pundit class who – myself included – believed all the laws of political physics should apply to Trump and have been shocked to learn that they do not. Despite all the historic forces arrayed against his steady rise in the polls, perhaps because of them, Trump remains buoyed by the support of nearly a quarter of the GOP electorate. Weigel points to a variety of elements of the conventional wisdom that have failed commentators. Trump’s rude antagonism toward Republicans is a net plus among his supporters. Voters see his tactlessness as honesty. His wealth leads voters to believe he is beholden to no donor. The fun he is having on the trail is infectious. Finally and most consequentially, he has assembled the rudimentary staffing scaffolds that could become the foundation of a real campaign team.

On paper, these qualities are equally attributable to the former Hewlett-Packard CEO running for the Republican nomination. Fiorina is quite wealthy; with an estimated net worth of $60 million, she doesn’t have Trump’s $2.9 billion on hand (a far cry from the $10 billion his campaign alleged the real estate magnate to possess), but she is certainly in no one’s pocket. Fiorina is blunt and antagonistic toward those who deserve her scorn, although she reserves her barbs primarily for Democrats – a substantial stylistic distinction from Trump, who attacks Republicans almost exclusively. She’s an outsider and a patrician who is not a member of the political class – a fortunate outcome of losing her 2010 U.S. Senate bid against California’s Barbara Boxer.

“Regularly, she says things that don’t normally come out of politicians’ mouths,” National Review’s Jay Nordlinger discerned while profiling the former CEO. “For instance, she describes wind power as the pet of ‘ideologues in the environmental movement.’ Those turbines are ‘slicing up hundreds of thousands of birds every year.’ True, but who says it, among politicians?”

One intangible aspect of Trump’s allure that Weigel doesn’t touch on is the likelihood that the celebrity’s supporters are so drawn to him, at least in part, because the rest of the political universe is repulsed by him. This is one stylistic element of Trump’s approach to running for the White House that Fiorina will not be able to duplicate. Perhaps no Republican running for the 2016 nomination outside Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker so excites both “establishment” Republicans and the outside-the-Beltway activist class as does Fiorina.

“Every stop never gets off message,” observed radio host Rush Limbaugh last week. “She handles the media with aplomb and skill and it’s obvious she enjoys doing it, and she’s schooling people. She’s showing how it’s done.”

“[S]he is someone who Republicans need to have in the race because she is a woman and she is a successful woman,” GOP campaign strategist Ford O’Connell told Politico last January. From conservative talkers to the consulting class and many in between, Fiorina has struck a chord.

And, yet, she polls especially poorly among Republican primary voters. In a CNN/ORC survey of the national GOP primary electorate released on Tuesday, Fiorina secured just 1 percent of the vote with 4 percent of GOP voters dubbing her their second choice candidate. That lackluster performance may change, however, when Republican voters get a chance to assess Fiorina vis-à-vis her Republican opponents on the debate stage.

The Republicans in attendance rose to their feet at the conclusion of Fiorina’s foreign policy address at the Reagan Library on Monday night. In the address, she identified the threats facing the United States – from a nuclearizing Iran to Chinese revanchism – and she laid out a compelling case for a robust American defense of its interests abroad and those of its allies.

Taking questions from the audience at the conclusion of her speech, Fiorina was asked by an honest and frustrated Republican voter how she would, as president, force Republican congressional leaders to heed the will of the GOP’s base voters. “I believe ours was intended to be a citizen government; of, by, and for the people,” Fiorina replied. “I don’t know when we got used to this idea that only a professional political class can hold public office. It used to be, for most of our nation’s history, that leaders would step forward out of private life, and serve for a time, and return to private life.”

Rather than, as Trump has suggested, wrestled a co-equal branch of government into submission through sheer force of personality and, if necessary, imperial overreach similar to that practiced by Barack Obama, she went on to define how her administration would mobilize public pressure by, for example, using mobile technology to bombard elected leaders with text message and telephone calls. Those Trump supporters who have not entirely succumbed to fatalistic nihilism and continue to see aspects of the republic worth preserving will see this as a feasible and preferable alternative to bombast.

“Margaret Thatcher, a woman I admire greatly, once said that she was not content to manage the decline of a great nation,” Fiorina said near the close of her address. “Neither am I. I am prepared to lead the resurgence of a great nation.” It was Trump’s “make America great again,” but with a touch more – well, the reality television star might call it “class.”

Don’t expect Trump’s supporters to bolt into Fiorina’s camp anytime soon. Stylistically, she is more a contrast to Trump than a compliment. His supporters want to make a statement and issue a vote of no confidence in the Republican Party. Fiorina will not satisfy that desire. On paper, however, she could serve as a capable and viable Trump alternative.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
George Washington will never be remembered as a great military tactician, but one of the things I admire about him is his epic leadership qualities and his refusal to throw in the towel when faced with disaster.

I'm reminded of a scene in David McCullough's biography of Washington during the New York campaign.

The Americans tried to capture New York from the British, but it was a disaster - the continental army was defeated left, right, and centre, and it was after the Battle of White Plains (another defeat) that the continental army faced a crisis. Morale was rock bottom. Desertions were high. nobody believed anymore. The British are too powerful, we'll never defeat them.

And yet, Washington, sitting in his tent, was probably the calmest man around. He still believed.

Fast forward 250 years to that clusterfeth of a congress committee!

What an embarrassment.

Who the hell votes for these people?

If Washington could have seen into the future that day, I honestly think he would have gave up there and then

 Frazzled wrote:
Why? We stride the world like a colossus.

 Ahtman wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Why? We stride the world like a colossus.

Of course!

 Frazzled wrote:

Exactly. Frankly time for some good old fashioned conquerin'. Canada, Mexico, Tahiti, Brazil, Argentina, Belgium, watch your backs Jack!