Posted on 07/25/2015 2:09:21 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Perot insisted on being an indy, which is different from Trump’s approach which appears to be to try to take the GOP by storm. Trump is more practical here. He could win this way although a lot of career Republican politicians would have their toes trampled on.
‘Radical middle’ is a comical phrase if you ask me. These are people mostly fed up with political double-talk and an executive form of government being mostly a lobbyist/special interest operating agency. You can find a quarter of all Democrats saying the same thing. Forty years ago....the news media could kill off the talk and just keep a minor topic. Now with the internet....there’s clarity to the discussion and open frustration with the way the system works.
I’m not saying that Trump is the guy for the job....but frankly, we’d probably like to fire half the senators (from both parties), and abolish IRS completely. We’d also like to establish some type of rule for a President to act Presidential and not be a regular on a weekly comedy show. The question would be....who fits the role
.......[BIG SNIP]........ before [Trump's] recent conversion, the views he expressed over the years would make him a mainstream Democrat. This is the great irony of the current moment in American political life: The man leading the primary of a party whose recent success owes largely to a shift rightward has never really been a Republican.
Trump described himself as very liberal on health care and was an advocate of a single-payer health insurance system, a view that puts him to the left of Barack Obama. He long considered himself very pro-choice and was in favor of drug legalization. Trump once called Mitt Romneys self-deportation proposal crazy and maniacal. Trump said Obamas $787 billion stimulus was what we need and added, It looks like we have somebody that knows what he is doing finally in office.
As those comments suggest, Trump didnt think George W. Bush did a very good job in office. But he didnt stop there. Trump said Bush was evil. Trumps financial support for Democrats over the years has been well documented, with checks to Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, and others. Thats no surprise, since he said in 2004, I identify more as a Democrat. He praised Nancy Pelosi as the best when she became speaker of the House in 2007. That same year, he said of a prospective Hillary Clinton in the White House: I think Hillary would do a good job.
To put it mildly, Trump is an uncomfortable fit in the Republican party. And thats why he is unlikely to be there at the end of this process.
.....Trumps political activism has its roots in the Reform party movement of the late 1990s. He flirted with a presidential bid in 1999 on the Reform party ticket. He has in recent days repeatedly declared his openness to running as an independent candidate in 2016....."
*****************
POLITICAL PARTY
Republican (Before 1999; 200911; 2012present)
Reform Party (19992001)
Democratic (200109)
Independent (201112)
The rats have gone willingly to the socialist commie side and have over the years created a facist communist system within Americas capitolist system. It’s only survival depends on its host “us”. They have compromised the GOP side by subversion, entisement, threat and many have gone willingly hoping for some crumbs to be dropped thier way. The first order of business is the GOP the second is to push the protected minority who is making us believe they are the majority to the GOP position of crumb eaters.
The writer gets it wrong here. I would say the main constituency of "The Economist" and "The Wall Street Journal" are dependent on the ideology of the New Deal and Great Society.
That isn't enough to dismiss his entire idea--no one can be right 100% of the time. A lot of what he says is true. I do think Trump is playing the role Perot played 20+ years ago.
I am not on the Trump bandwagon, but I do think he is highlighting an important issue.
<rant>
Project much, Mr. Continetti?
More wishful thinking.
Are these people (Establishment insiders, the lamestream media, professional pundits) really so detached from reality that they can't see that the Trump phenomenon is real?
Their knee-jerk dismissive attitudes betray a profound anxiety. You can smell the fear and trepidation.
This is going to be a very entertaining election cycle, as more and more naysayers come to the realization that this anti-establishment furor is not going to wane. Indeed, as they continue to deride this national trend, they will only fuel the fire as the sentiment waxes stronger and stronger.
Hopefully, and regardless of who exactly will carry its banner, this movement will become a tsunami of epic proportions, with the potential to sweep away decades of overreaching and intrusive government, destructive domestic policy, balkanization of the population, and in general just a total disregard for the will of We the People.
I feel like there's something very special brewing, and Donald Trump's rise is just the tip of the iceberg, and merely a symptom of what lies beneath the surface of the electorate.
Nobody is perfect, but, hopefully, we will invoke a new era, where true statesmen fill the void left when the criminals, corporate cronies, demagogues, collectivist authoritarians and their ilk are swept away in a wave of patriotic, empowering, unifying national passion.
What a potential sea change is represented here at this time in history!
Yet it all stands on the edge of a knife. If not done sincerely and properly, there is an equal potential that a long age of unprecedented Tyranny will begin, an age under which our Republic will become an unrecognizable collectivist abomination.
Which will it be?
Let's all pray for the correct outcome.
Right now, I'm feeling very encouraged, but a few setbacks could neutralize what is building and destroy morale to the point that this trend fails.
I pray to God that the men and women who are taking their places on the stage of history at this moment will be wise, and play their roles as best they can, and not deviate from the script which is being written in the hearts of We the People, as we all become a captive audience to a phenomenon that is beyond the ken of any lone individual.
</rant>
You sound very much like you’re part of that ‘radical middle’.
He’s not talking about the “constituency” of The Economist or the WSJ, but the ownership and editorial leads of those publications.
Continetti is very much acknowledging the phenomenon as real.
The idea that the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is anything but right wing is 100 percent wrong.
You obviously haven’t been reading it. I have for over forty years and Vermont Royster, Robert Bartley and Paul Gigot are not New Dealers.
From Wikipedia:
The Journal describes the history of its editorials:
They are united by the mantra “free markets and free people”, the principles, if you will, marked in the watershed year of 1776 by Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence and Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. So over the past century and into the next, the Journal stands for free trade and sound money; against confiscatory taxation and the ukases of kings and other collectivists; and for individual autonomy against dictators, bullies and even the tempers of momentary majorities. If these principles sound unexceptionable in theory, applying them to current issues is often unfashionable and controversial.[citation needed]
Its historical position was much the same. As former editor William H. Grimes wrote in 1951:
On our editorial page we make no pretense of walking down the middle of the road. Our comments and interpretations are made from a definite point of view. We believe in the individual, in his wisdom and his decency. We oppose all infringements on individual rights, whether they stem from attempts at private monopoly, labor union monopoly or from an overgrowing government. People will say we are conservative or even reactionary. We are not much interested in labels but if we were to choose one, we would say we are radical. Just as radical as the Christian doctrine.
That’s not a bad thing.
Yes he is. But what he thinks is “phenomenon” just might be more than that. WE gave them back the House in 2012 and in 2014 we gave them the Senate. They, GOPe, took this as a mandate to keep doing the quisling job they’ve been doing for decades. They were and are never more wrong.
We have so-called candidates on the GOP side now castigating Trump like he dropped a turd in their soup over an issue that ought to scare the living daylights of Americans that value their country’s sovereignty.
Kooks, crazies, showman, show boater, Democrat/Indy/Republican donated to all of them - bad, bad man...virtually every name in the book. Even [ooga booga] Tea Party! when in their minds, they’re thinking “tea baggers.”
McCain, Perry, Graham, Huckabee, BUSH, and the other establishment also-runs calling him and his supporters all the words they daren’t say about Hillary, or worse about Obama.
They sow the wind - they shall reap the whirlwind.
What the radical middle has seen in recent years has not given them reason to be confident in our government, our political system, our legion of politicians clambering up the professional ladder office to office. Two inconclusive wars, a financial crisis, recession, and weak recovery, government failure from Katrina to the TSA to the launch of ObamaCare to the federal background check system, an unelected and unaccountable managerial bureaucracy that targets grassroots organizations and makes law through diktat, race riots and Ebola and judicial overreach. And through it all, as constant as the northern star, a myopic drive on the part of leaders in both parties to enact a comprehensive immigration reform that would incentivize illegal immigration and increase legal immigration despite public opposition.
I see a lot of truth to the article as to the description of the disenchantment of the demographic, but I'm not sure that they are dumb enough ultimately to follow The Donald over the cliff. There are similarities to Perot, but Perot IIRC didn't just bluster with shifting incoherent bumper sticker pronouncements, he had charts. However, like Perot, he doesn't look like someone who could work with anyone. His pronouncements are like those of a would-be benevolent despot. "I'm going to be the best (fill in the blank) president and if you don't agree, you're fired!" Tyranny is still tyranny, whether by Obama or Trump.
The article's conclusion is that Trump, like Perot, will siphon off all the disenchanted conservative independent Tea Party types from voting GOP and hand Hillary the election. Could happen. Hope not. I don't care what he says he is. His record sure looks more like a self-absorbed Democrat of convenience.
Trump is an imperfect vessel even on his signature issue. This week he came out for amnesty for the 30 million illegals here presently who aren’t otherwise clear criminals. He, like Cruz, may not favor citizenship for them, but citizenship is sure to follow legalization.
My thinking is that with all these other candidates who have declared for the presidency — http://www.fec.gov/press/resources/2016presidential_form2nm.shtml — there must be one Republican who isn’t for amnesty.
Maybe we could find him (or her) and give his race a boost?
Even as an imperfect vessel as you say, bringing the issue of “illegals” to the stage as a group, those people always obfuscated under “undocumented or immigrant” is still a good thing.
I actually don’t intend to vote for him, but I won’t condemn him like supporters of the others, officially declared or not. If they have a better position, then they can precisely articulate it and stop hiding behind the twisted meanings of words like Amnesty, Pathway, etc.
The potential for citizenship-from-legalization is a very real possibility, especially when that legalization isn’t defined in terms of existing laws and actions of precedent, e.g, temporary worker visas, guest-worker programs, etc.
“.... However, like Perot, he doesn’t look like someone who could work with anyone. His pronouncements are like those of a would-be benevolent despot. “I’m going to be the best (fill in the blank) president and if you don’t agree, you’re fired!” Tyranny is still tyranny, whether by Obama or Trump...”
That’s it in a nutshell.
There cannot be government of The Donald.
I see what you both are saying....perhaps I did confuse the Wall Street Journal readers with the ideological writers on its board.
Thanks.
I’m not surprised that this scribbler can’t see the big, smelly Frankenstein monster in the room, mainly the establishment of an illegal, crony capitalist, fascist rule by the executive branch and its tacit approval by a bunch of scared rabbits in the legislature.
The executive is writing laws via the unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy, which is a primary tenet of any dictatorship. That’s illegal and needs to be stopped now.
Perhaps this idiot scribbler should read our Declaration of Independence to understand what is happening and see the storm that is gathering.
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