Posted on 07/12/2015 12:30:53 PM PDT by semimojo
Donald Trump is trolling the GOP.
The real-estate mogul vaulted into the top tier of Republican presidential candidates by becoming a megaphone for immigration hard-liners. That's revealed an ugly truth that party leaders have been trying to suppress in their pursuit of Latino voters: Anti-Hispanic bigotry plays well with a chunk of the Republican primary electorate.
Mexican immigrants are "bringing drugs and bringing crime, and they're rapists," he said last month. On Saturday, at a rally in Phoenix that had to be moved to the city's convention center to accommodate the crowd, Trump "tripled down," as Politico put it. "They’re taking our jobs. They’re taking our manufacturing jobs. They’re taking our money. They’re killing us," he said. He invited the father of a young man slain by an unauthorized immigrant to the podium to speak.
Trump's a natural showman — the man who turned "You're fired" into a TV catchphrase — but he's given no indication that he's anything but serious as he whips up nativist passions. The danger for the GOP is that Trump's pitch-perfect parroting of anti-immigration forces — and their support for him in polls — will suggest to Latino voters and others that the whole party is intolerant.
GOP leaders and candidates have no idea what to do about it. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus tried the nice-guy route, asking Trump in a private conversation to tone down his rhetoric. Instead, as he increasingly gets under the skins of his rivals and top GOP officials, Trump is pumping up the volume.
"The silent majority is back, and we’re going to take the country back," he said Saturday, casting himself as the voice for Republican primary voters who feel that their views are getting short shrift. He's also taken to attacking his Republican rivals harshly, by name and, at least in the case of Marco Rubio on immigration, for shifting stances.
It would be hard for Trump to find tacks more damaging to the GOP than the ones he's pursuing now, which is why his candidacy looks like an elaborate trolling of the Republican Party.
To assess whether Trump is trolling the GOP, it's necessary to have a working definition of the term.
The perfect troll involves taking a position and insisting on it in a way that enrages those who think — but can't prove — that you don't really believe it. The angrier they get, the more you dig in, perpetuating a cycle that leads them to escalating stages of anger. If you ever let on that you're just baiting them, you've failed. For more on trolling, Urban Dictionary provides some good context.
While it's impossible to know what he's thinking, the effects of Trump's candidacy track the definition of a troll pretty well.
He's infuriated Republican leaders by convincing a significant chunk of the primary electorate that he means what he says about immigration. The leaders are getting madder and madder because of the fix that puts them in: They can't afford to let Trump make a mockery of the party, but they can't openly rip their own voters for supporting him or try to tear him down publicly. If anything, that might trigger a pro-Trump backlash.
There's good reason for Republican leaders to doubt Trump's authenticity: He has flip-flopped on a variety of positions he's held on public policy in the past. Among them, he supported abortion rights, universal health care and raising taxes on the rich.
But Trump clearly isn't running to win an award for consistency or, for that matter, to win the presidency. If his candidacy is, in fact, a well-executed troll, Trump will never let on that it was all an act.
The Republican leadership's best hope is that he implodes — or that they can find a way to undermine him with the very voters to whom he's appealing.
That is, the best way to deal with The Donald is a counter-troll operation. Democrats couldn't be more giddy. Trump's even threatening to run a third-party candidacy, which could rob Republicans of needed votes in swing states in 2016.
If Hillary Clinton didn't put him up to that — if emails planning Trump's candidacy weren't on the server she wiped clean — she really missed out on a Machiavellian way to sabotage the GOP.
None of us can claim to know Trump's thinking, but we can judge his actions. Right now, The Donald looks a lot like a troll.
I feel better now, knowing that Vox worries about me.
Vox is worried about the Republican. Isn’t that sweet?
STOPPED READING RIGHT HERE:
“Mexican immigrants”.....
MSM trick - omit the word ILLEGAL!!!
Chief Political Correspondent at Vox? Talk about a classic concern troll.
He is trolling the republican party.....
GOD BLESS HIM...... ACTUALLY HE IS TROLLING THE TROLLS..
I think many in this country are fantasizing about seeing president elect Trump say to Obama, you’re fired, to Loretta Lynch - you’re Fired, to the EPA head - you’re Fired. He should have a litany in his next speech of who he is going to fire, name them all, point and say you’re fired after each name.
Jonathan Allen has been licking light sockets again.
Yin and Yang
Trump is not a conservative, he and the GOPE are working together like good cop-bad cop
Notice how Ted and the other candidates are being ignored by the press right now.
That was the plan.
The GOP as it is today richly deserves to be mercilessly mocked.
Border security has nothing whatsoever to do with bigotry.
I was never a big Trump fan. I live in New York, and his, I-may-run-for-governor act wore thin. To be fair, he wanted support from the state Republican party that they were unwilling to give. Nevertheless, the more the left (media) hate him, the more I LOVE him. What are our alternatives? Jeb? I like Cruz and Walker, but Trump as, how you say? - balls. I like balls.
They speak out of the only mindset available to them. It is inconceivable to these ignoramuses that anyone in this country could actually care about evaluating immigrants and ending illegal border crossing.
He has taken residence inside their heads and they can’t get him to leave!!
In their case I guess its just once more voice inside their pea brains.
“I like balls.”
LOL!!!
It’s true that he’s taking all the oxygen out of the room and Ted is not getting traction.
The flaw in your theory is that Trump is using the one issue that they do not want anyone talking about.
The last thing they wanted was the illegal alien issue front and center.
The more the MSM tries to spin this as anti-Latino instead of anti-criminal, the more they wind up equating Latinos and criminality. eventually the MSM is going to have to decide: are illegal immigrants who rape, murder and commit other violent crimes a subset of “Latino” or a subset of “criminal”.
Fundamentally, the issue of illegal immigration is understood my most Americans to be an issue of law enforcement and national sovereignty, not anti- Latino bias. When this whole discussion has shaken out, the conservative/Tea Party wing of the Republicans will have gained substantially by it.
There’s nothing that gains points more effectively than by being right on an issue.
MSM trick- omit the word ILLEGAL.
Or, leave the word in and add more to the point,
Foreign illegal alien invader as more accurate.
STOPPED READING RIGHT HERE:
“Mexican immigrants”.....
MSM trick - omit the word ILLEGAL!!!
I caught that too!!!
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