Posted on 06/09/2011 2:03:56 PM PDT by Sub-Driver
Trump is currently repositioning himself now that he doesn't have to pretend to be a Republican. He is setting himself up to claim Obama is bad and the Republicans suck too - probably no matter who gets the GOP nomination. After all, he is making a huge point of attacking the very Medicare reforms a true conservative Republican nominee is going to support.
In a few months this jerk is going to start trying to drum up press coverage of his possible 3rd party bid in order to keep his brand in the news. He will no longer have to pretend to be a conservative, so he will blather on with a bunch of populist shtick, which sadly, will fool even some people here that think bashing China is going to create American jobs.
Trump is not a conservative and never was. He is a self promoting tool pushing his brand with whatever message he thinks will keep himself relevant. Actual conservatives should want absolutely nothing to do with this guy.
Let’s look at this logically.
If Trump were (it may very well be he was) merely taking positions he believed would generate support with the GOP base, that would imply he did not believe in those positions. Fair enough.
It also means, there is huge support for those positions he was adopting. What were those?
Way up on the list was trade. Way up.
Just saying. Perhaps we should spend less effort trying to determine whether his positions were sincere, and more recognizing how powerful those messages were to Americans.
If we don't mess with Medicare, we are toast. It represents an unfunded liability of $38 TRILLION.
The Path to Prosperity (Episode 2): Saving Medicare, Visualized
Maybe, maybe not, but it is sure doesn't help having Trump the Clown running around echoing the Democrat talking points does it?
Sorry, he seems to have been kind of quiet since Obama presented his fraudulent BC in late April.
Detesting Romney is OK, but Trump seems just as much of a RINO as Romney is, if he thinks that Medicare can just stay the same forever and bashes Ryan's efforts to alter it substantially.
Trump is positioning himself to be a third party spoiler, next year's incarnation of Ross Perot!
Perot was right.
He was the first to describe the subsequent “giant sucking sound”.
Pretty clear observation, that.
I can tell you that the 40 plus Tea Party organizations in the VA Tea Party Federation know full well that the entitlement programs must be reformed or we will be bankrupted by them. I have no idea what is wrong with the Tea Party folks in Texas if they believe otherwise.
People admired Trump because he said some things and got some national attention for common sense issues that grass roots conservatives had been pushing for years but that the establishment GOP wouldn’t touch. The Obama birth certificate was one where he made the point, got traction and forced Obama’s hand. He was starting to do the same thing with Obama’s grades and the myth that Obama was some intellectual. If Trump would have stayed in, he would have forced Obama’s hand on that too and proven that Obama is really an idiot. We should appreciate him for that.
But that’s ALL Trump ever had going for him. He had no coherent policy positions. This nonsense about solving Medicare problems through dealing with waste and fraud is ridiculous. And simply criticizing Ryan’s plan as a “death wish” shows intellectual vapidity. Engage Ryan’s plan. Propose your own. But no. He takes the path of a true Snowe / Collins / Scott Brown type “moderate” Republican and throws out vapid criticisms based on conventional wisdom without even having a clue about the magnitude of the problem or how to solve it. He was never presidential material.
Older people, of which I am one, understand that EVERYONE is going to have to rear back and suck it up when it comes to EVERYTHING, including entitlements. Not a one of us is too selfish to sacrifice a bit now to keep America from going down the old drain pipe. Revamping Medicare right now, tweaking it, beats the heck out of the gargantuan measures that will have to be taken when it does go bust, at a time when it may be too late.
His true colors have already been exposed.
If you supported Perot, you helped impose upon us eight years of Clinton. I hope you can live with that.
Medicare: Past, Present and Future
Medicare already spends more than it receives in dedicated taxes and premium payments. As baby boomer retirees begin to flood the system, the impact will be felt by every other federal program:
• Currently, Medicare claims about 11 percent of federal nonentitlement tax dollars.
• By 2020, Medicare deficits will claim one in every five federal tax dollars that are not already dedicated to Medicare and Social Security.
• This means that in just 13 years the federal government will have to stop doing one in every five things it does today if taxes are to remain at their current level and projected Medicare benefits are paid on behalf of the disabled and the elderly.
• By 2030, the deficits in Medicare will claim one in every three general revenue dollars; by 2050, they will claim one in every two.
Yes, and there is also huge support for cutting foreign aid because people have no idea that that is not what is bankrupting this country (we could end it all and it would make hardly a dent in our budget woes). There is also huge support for slashing "waste, fraud and abuse" because it sounds good and people think we can solve our budget problems that way (if it was so easy to find this waste, fraud and abuse we'd already done it). It is easy to prey on an ignorant population with the kind of populist nonsense Trump spews.
What there is not huge support for is doing what actually has to be done which is at minimum reforming entitlements and curtailing the social welfare state. Unfortunately, that is what must happen and it is going to be very hard, politically risky, and take a lot of time convincing the American people that there is no other option. It does not help having Trump the clown out aggressively attacking the conservative position in order to keep himself politically relevant.
Way up on the list was trade. Way up.
Yes, because people are ignorant and don't want to face up to our real problems which is an out of control social welfare state. Leftist/union rhetoric about imposing tariffs and bashing the Chinese is not going to create a single job and only serves to delude people into thinking there is an easy fix when there is not.
Trump is right on this issue. Cuts to Medicare disproportionately affect GOP voters. Why not cuts to Medicaid? What about cuts to welfare spending? Ryan is a false messiah who will lead the GOP to a drubbing in 2012. If a pretty face were all it took to win an election, Dan Quayle would have become President in 1996, after 2 terms of Bush I. And Palin would have become Vice President in 2008. I think the problem with GOP pols is that a lot of them understand budget arithmetic, but haven’t the foggiest about political calculation. They don’t call the GOP the Stupid Party for nothing.
Boehner intervened on Libya, there was a Kuchinch proposal that would of passed and ended Libyan war. Boehner helped Obama.
I didn’t say I voted for him.
I said he was right.
We are staring at the single most stirring campaign issue in a generation - and doing everything on God’s green earth to avoid in any way even discussing the possibility it will propel the GOP to victory.
And be good for American jobs, at the same time.
But no it would appear. Buying cheap imported stuff at Walmart is more important than our future.
I couldn’t have said it better.
Just remember, Trump is not out at all. He says he's considering a third party candidacy, depending upon whom the GOP nominee will be. In other words, he has no objection to helping Obama by splitting the anti-Obama vote in next year's election. Which side is he really on?
You can cut Medicaid and other welfare programs. That won’t fix Medicare, which will bankrupt us if not changed.
Yes, my father is like many senior conservatives who are furious with the GOP over Medicare. Medicare recipients paid taxes into Medicare their whole lives so it is not a welfare program. There are more people on Medicaid than Medicare and that is the welfare program. So for the seniors, Republicans are siding with freeloaders over working people by targeting Medicare instead of Medicaid.
I agree with Trump 100% on this one. If the GOP pursues Ryan’s Medicare plan there will be hell to pay. My father is talking about voting Democrat for the first time since 1960.
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