Posted on 08/26/2015 5:40:12 AM PDT by LS
Last night I posted some of this on the thread about Trump's IA speech. I got so many requests to make this its own thread, that I enhanced and developed it a little, but I've said about the same thing for months.
If you look at the latest New Hampshire poll, for example, you find that Trump is leading big---but is leading in almost every single category and subgroup: women, men, younger, older, conservative, liberal, moderate. That is truly Amazing. He's preferred by almost 40% of HISPANICS in the latest Nevada poll. In national polls, he's up 3:1 over his nearest competitor---and that competitor changes from poll to poll. How do you explain this?
First, he is the only non-establishment candidate. Even Cruz, when pressed, reverts to "I introduced this bill or that bill . . ." But nothing ever gets DONE. There's always an excuse. Leaders find a way to lead. I love Cruz, and I love his attempted shutdown. But he got ONE GUY to follow (Lee). He hasn't even managed to put together a coalition with Paul, Ernst, Sessions, and other conservatives.
Please this isn't Cruz bashing---he is far and above the best we have. But it isn't 1996, when he would have been perfect. Times have changed. Today, like it or not, you do need a celebrity, just as in 1828 you needed someone who appealed to the "common man" (Jackson) and in 1904 you needed someone not controlled by Mark Hannah (TR).
Reagan owed some, perhaps much, of his success to the fact that he was an actor and was known by many people who never would have heard of Gerald Ford if he had not been veep for Nixon.
Second, Trump has mastered the 21st century social media as an election tool. Nobody else has. SamAdams76 has done extensive work on Trump's use of Twitter, which just buries all the other GOP candidates put together, and really exceeds Hillary's. He is running an incredibly expensive campaign and has barely spent a dime (Ok, some gas for that big jet). He gets millions of constant, unrelenting, free advertising. No one else comes close. This is truly revolutionary, as different as Van Buren and Jackson appealing to the "common man" in the 1830s and ignoring the "smoke filled rooms" of the caucuses. "King Caucus is dead," Jackson reportedly said. Pretty much. Well, "Traditional campaigning is dead."
Third, I believe we have gone way beyond ideology. This is NOT an ideological election. I think fieldmarshaldj, one of our brightest election historians, might agree with me on this. 2010 and 2014 WERE ideological elections---and it got us nothing. Mark Steyn has been on a great two-day rant about how we impose all these conservative litmus tests on candidates like Trump, but the guys who "pass" don't do a damned thing. They have one excuse after another. They couldn't even eliminate the crappy Import-Export Bank or get a defunding of Planned Murderhood. Really? With a majority in BOTH houses???
We keep hearing about how we need a guy who will "get things done." "I introduced legislation . . ." is NOT getting something done. I have to admit Walker probably has gotten more, of significance, done in the government sector than anyone, but he's sinking like a stone because he hasn't yet grabbed the flag and said "FOLLOW ME! I will reverse illegal immigration, I will get us trade policies that work in our favor, and I will smash ISIS." While Trump is on a different playing field, he negotiates all over the world, and just . . . wins. Like the old Oakland Raiders, the motto here is "Just win, baby." On everything.
This election pure and simple is about one principle, that "We the People" still get to choose our leaders, even when they aren't William F. Buckley, or Ronald Reagan, or 100% ideologically consistent ... because we can. We get to tell the elites, once a generation to piss off. We get to elect "our" guy for no other reason than he's "our guy" and we can tell the other side, "After all, we won the election" and have it MEAN something.
I'll end with this: if Trump only agrees with 5 of my 10 top issues, whatever they are, but once he gets into office THOSE FIVE are the ones he actually acts upon, then I've won 100% of my agenda and moved the ball a helluva long way down the field.
Right now, as Mark Steyn said, we're on our own one yard line squabbling over a "pathetic piece of grass."
If he keeps talking abt jobs going overseas, he will pull a good number of union folks too
Trump doesn’t agree with 1 of your top ten issues, let alone 5.
He want’s to boot illegals, then invite all but a few back in through that “big beautiful door” that he will build into the Wall he likes to talk about. In other words, he’s for amnesty.
He want to fund Planned Parenthood, because he’s so big on “woman’s health.”
He’s for “wealth tax,” and “taxing the rich” in general.
He’s an advocate of socialized medicine; single-payer in particular.
He’s is a crony capitalist who loves allying with the State to steal others’ property; he’s tried to do so repeatedly himself, and advocates for this kind of activity as a matter of general policy. Loves the Kelo decision.
He’s also emotionally retarded - having reached about the same level of personality development as Obama - and mans the Twitter machine at 2:30AM when a woman damages his extremely delicate ego. Foreign governments will note how fragile the guy is, and will manipulate him accordingly, to the detriment of American interests.
Those on the right who like Trump are operating on pure emotion, and have difficulty with cognition.
You won't vote for Cruz because he isn't perfectly Simon Pure, but you'll support a freaking liberal because he makes a couple of noises? I'll retire to Bedlam.
That's really funny, because all I've heard around this place for the past four years is how nobody will ever, ever again vote for the lesser of two evils.
It is astounding how many at FR that describes!
Well I think many of us are learning our lesson because we have been ending up with presidents that we agree with zero percent of the time.
Dude, that is just such nonsense on so many levels.
Good job!
My, how the GOP has fallen!Time was, when I thought the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal was the cat’s pajamas. I still read it, but even when they’re right, they no longer have the music to go with the words. Because the words - inspiring as they can be, have always been, just don’t speak to the present moment. Here we are, with a POTUS who can get reelected
despitebecause he disses the First Amendment. Who systematically lies about policy. Who won’t negotiate in good faith. Who abuses the IRS. Elected and reelected.Philosophically “important” stuff just doesn’t matter in such a context. It will be an accomplishment if we even can get someone elected at all on the Republican ticket, even for the sake of continuing the tradition of elected government.
Someone can quote Thomas Sowell, and I know that what he says is absolutely right:
At one time, it was believed that importing more than was exported impoverished a nation because the difference between import and exports had to be paid in gold, and the loss of gold was seen as a loss of national wealth. However, as early as 1776, Adam Smith’s classic The Wealth of Nations argued that the real wealth of a nation consists of its goods and services, not its gold supply.Economically speaking, Trump is selling Mercantilist snake oil which is the direct opposite of Adam Smith. And yet the Constitution and the republic is under such pressure that “We can’t spare the man; he fights."Too many people have yet to grasp the full implications of that, even in the twenty-first century. If the goods and services available to the American people are greater as a result of international trade, then Americans are wealthier, not poorer, regardless of whether there is a “deficit or a “surplus” in the international balance of trade. - Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics
You accuse the Trump supporters of your own psychological issue. They have the cognition to see the opportunity present in the natural force that is Donald, and the emotion of every troll in response is pure hate. I'm surprised Trump supporters haven't been called "deniers" of something or other yet...
Sorry about you and your candidate's bad luck, must be because of them dang GOPe deniers ;)
All true, Dude.
I listened to Cruz TWICE defend his votes to allow
ObamaTRADE (and then vote against it, when it was too late).
And his wife will get millions for the ObamaTRADE passage.
Apples vs. Road Apples.
The GOPe is about 2% better than the Democrats. If Trump is 50% better, than is more than an order of magnitude, and that changes the character of the argument.
“And we have Ted Cruz running, who is the entire conservative package.”
Did you see him last night with Kelly? He sounded like just another politician to me.
You go ahead and rationalize it any way you like, but in the final analysis, Trump doesn’t even come up to GOPe standards in terms of conservatism and conservative values. You sound like a German about to vote Nazi because they’re not Communists, they know how to get things done, and they want to keep Germany German.
Trump has distinguished himself on three key issues that resonate with the average American:
For Americans who are fed up with the uniparty vision for American decline that's sufficient, and is exactly what's needed at this juncture of the American story.
I see that Trump campaign moving towards more general election direction.
So that Trump could expand his appeal to more of the working class (not only WHITE working class) voters across the board, regardless of Republican or Democrat leaning, for those who are genuinely afraid that we are losing our own country (as evident by his event last night in Dubuque, IA).
GOP establishment have better watch out that they don’t purposely ‘push’ him out. They sneer at a Populist Revolt, conveniently ignore they themselves are the cause of it.
Under normal circumstances---Britain vs. Europe in mid 1800s, US vs world 1945-2000, regulations are not needed. The problem with China is that we will run out of wealth before they are forced onto a free market playing field. Reagan understood that with the Chrysler bailout, because it was key to national security (tanks).
We forget that the journey to free markets was extremely long for the GOP, only coming in the mid-1960s (and even then without Nixon).
For all Trump's other strengths---"he fights," as you note---some things must be tolerated, or even allowed to work their own course. I think he is the only one we have who has a hope of changing anything.
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