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.
Trump and many in the GOP race is to splinter enough segments away from Cruz as to deny him the momentum he needs to get the nomination and hand over the nomination to Jeb and sure failure.Oh please. Most people outside of FR and DC or his interviews with dimwits nobody watches or listens to, including FAUX, never heard of Ted Cruz...And THAT is his fault.
I think legal immigrants ask to be accepted into our country. There was a time if someone had a communicable disease, ie, tuberculosis, they were not allowed to enter, if they had a police record they were not allowed to enter. With the politics of the ‘90 until today, the rules have been relaxed. Now we are being forced to accept illegal immigrants. Thanks to the president, he’s accepting illegal children. Mind boggling.
If they can somehow silence Trump, we’ll get another from the Bush dynasty.
Very clever Geron...
there is not even the slightest bit of pretense of impartiality from vox.com.
they are 100% a mouthpiece of the democRAT party. every single thing on that site is written to support their side and rundown the opposing side.
you might as well read the daily talking points put out by the DNC, as read the bilge they post on vox.com.
IIRC, even their mission statement admits that they are a leftist site using propaganda to sway the weak-minded millennial generation.
Some will fall for it. Most won’t.
could? maybe.
will they? nope.
the squishy center of the party would fight any attempt to rollback anything done by obammey. the Snow, McCain, Collins, Murkowski, Graham, and McConnell faction of the senate is perfectly happy with what obammey has done in the past 6.5 years.
Wrong.
Only about 80% of us.
You have no evidence to substantiate that ridiculous assertion.
Just some weird paranoia about an also-ran. Conjecture.
Though it's probable that you concocted a CERTAIN scenario to validate your delusion.
Trump is not a conservative. That much is a well-known fact.
They are a team and working together
Trump is as liberal as Jeb or more since he is a big supporter of the left
I think the AUTHOR of this article is a troll. And like you, just chock full of conspiracy theories. Baloney. The good news is few are listening to either of you among the base.
Good post. It follows Occham’s Razor. It means that this time around, at least it will be a fun primary cycle.
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”.
No, the MSM will not “have” to decide. They can’t decide. They’re stuck on stupid.
if it wasn’t the plan it was at least really bad luck for the non-GOPe candidates.
Yes, the legal Hispanic immigrants are all for a secure border for those very reasons. You may have just pointed out the genius of Trump’s strategy.
I think the AUTHOR of this article is a troll.
Yup. From Vox. A classic concern troll. What these guys don’t realize is that in the first few primaries, name recognition is the big game, and they just boosted Trump’s name recognition. He’s the one getting all the press.
And then when super Tuesday comes along, it’s all about money and advertising buys. Trump has that trumped. This guy might well have a Romney-level lead coming out of Super Tuesday.
Trump is not a conservative, he and the GOPE are working together like good cop-bad copI've suspected as much from the beginning. I do enjoy his rhetoric and verve, but remain suspicious of his true motivation. Hope he proves me wrong.
Yep, if VOX and Howard (Yeehaww) Dean both come out the same day attacking Trump, BJ Clinton has clearly released the Flying Monkeys.
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