Posted on 12/14/2015 12:12:20 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Imagine for a moment if Donald Trump made the decision to run for president as a Democrat instead of as a Republican.
As Trump-mania continues to dominate the Republican presidential primary, it's not hard to envision an alternate reality - one where the real estate billionaire is taking the country by storm as a Democrat.
In many ways, it would have been easier for Trump to enter the Democratic primary than the Republican primary. Trump was registered as a Democrat from 2001 to 2009 and donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid over the years. (In fairness, he has donated a lot of money to Republican candidates as well.)
As a native of liberal New York City, it's not surprising that Trump has a much longer record of being pro-choice than he does of being pro-life.
"I support a woman's right to choose," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press" in 2000.
Trump was never a staunch opponent of gay marriage either until recently. In fact, Rick Santorum says that Trump chided him in 2011 for being "too hard-core" on gay marriage and abortion.
"I don't know anyone that shares that opinion with you," Santorum said Trump told him.
So it's not too hard to envision Trump running as a socially liberal Democrat. Indeed, it would seemingly be a far easier act for the thrice-married New Yorker to pull off than convincing evangelicals that he is staunchly pro-life and against gay marriage.
On foreign policy, Trump isn't all that different from Barack Obama. To the extent his foreign policy worldview is comprehensible, he comes across as the least hawkish candidate in the GOP field, with the possible exception of Rand Paul, even though rhetoric sometimes masks this. While he says he wants to increase military spending and "bomb the shit" out of ISIS, he regularly makes the case for reducing America's leadership role in world affairs and focusing on nation building at home.
"I'll tell you what, there is going to be nation building. You know what the nation's going to be? The United States, that's what the nation's going to be," Trump told me in September, speaking of his foreign policy outlook.
As Trump also repeatedly highlights, he opposed the Iraq war (though the first evidence of this comes from 2004, over a year after the war began). Such a position is far more endearing to the Democratic base than Hillary Clinton's support for the military action that removed Saddam from power.
Trump wouldn't be out of place on economic issues in a Democratic primary either. At this anti-Wall Street moment, Trump could paint himself as the insider who is ready to turn enemy of his class for the good of the country.
What's more, Trump has a record of favoring proposals that would be far more vexing to the one percent than anything Bernie Sanders has proposed. In 1999, Trump proposed a one-time 14.25 percent tax on wealthy Americans and trusts over $10 million. Even now he doesn't back away from that proposal philosophically, even though he says he doesn't intend to pursue it in the White House.
"At that time we could have paid off the entire national debt and we could have started the game all even," Trump told Sean Hannity in August, noting that the proposal was actually "very conservative."
Trump is also a supporter of universal health care, if not Obamacare.
"I am going to take care of everybody," Trump said on "60 Minutes" in September. "I don't care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody's going to be taken care of much better than they're taken care of now."
Trump even praised the single payer health care programs of Canada and Scotland during the first Republican presidential debate in August.
"As far as single payer, it works in Canada, it works incredibly well in Scotland, it could have worked in a different age, which is the age you are talking about here," Trump said when asked by the moderators about his past support for single payer health care.
Of course Trump would have had to made the strategic decision to position himself to run in 2016 as a Democrat way back in 2010, before he went on his birther kick. You probably can't win a Democratic primary as one of the leading birthers in the country.
His rhetoric on immigration also wouldn't fly in a Democratic primary. But if he made the decision to position himself as a Democrat contender back in 2010, he would never have called for the deportation of all the illegal immigrants in the country. In fact, after Mitt Romney lost in 2012, Trump criticized the Republican contender's rhetoric on immigration as "mean-spirited," which suggests Trump's instincts on illegal immigration may be less harsh than what we are seeing today
"The Democrats didn't have a policy for dealing with illegal immigrants, but what they did have going for them is they weren't mean-spirited about it," Trump told Newsmax. "They didn't know what the policy was, but what they were is they were kind."
But if Trump made the decision to run as a Democrat in 2010, he may be even better positioned to win the Democratic presidential nomination today than he is to win the Republican nomination. The Democratic field is far smaller and with Joe Biden's decision to not enter the race, there is no candidate opposing Hillary Clinton who people can actually imagine winning the nomination, even if Sanders could potentially threaten her in a few states.
Trump may have been that guy. He could have successfully branded Clinton as untrustworthy and even criminal over her email scandal and shady Clinton Foundation dealings, just like he negatively branded so many of his GOP foes. And it very well may have worked, just like it seems to have worked with "low-energy" Jeb Bush.
So it doesn't take too much of an imagination to envision a world where Donald Trump is on the verge of winning the Democratic nomination. In fact, it may even be far easier to get your head around than our current reality.
No. I don’t. However, I volunteer for those I select.
I’ve never voted for a Democrat, much less donated to 23 of them like Donald Trump has.
I still say Trumps Liberal Rockefeller Republican now, using a Conservative campaign for a “Win”......
Can he be trusted?...I don’t believe so. But then there are many here who are more than willing to bet their vote on that very risk... over Cruz.....a tried and proven Conservative.
All of Trump’s past support is for Reid, Pelosi, Shummer, the Clintons, Rangel, Rham Emmanuel, even Rahm’s brother who is the author of obamacare’s “death panels”, but he is the one being touted as the “true conservative”.
Unfortunately, as with Obama’s run, Trump supporters aren’t interested in anything more than then what Trump proclaims now....quick to excuse him and cover for anything that sounds or looks unfavorable. He’s the “Tough Guy” they want and willing to let his past ride.
Now picture working with that voice for YEARS.
Something glitched and I can’t finish her quest. I am stuck at “Talk to Piper” but I can’t. Either with her as a companion or not...And I only had her as a companion to see if that made a difference...Then restarted from the last save ;)
The studded Dog collar didn’t work either.
Studded dog collars only work on a very few. Never a companion, and only the occasional settler. Keep trying. I still got that one hot chick flaunting her stuff in Covenant. :)
As far as the glitch, that aint cool. You recover from that?
Vera Coking, that is the name to search for.
Mr. Trump’s position papers on taxes, illegal immigration, the Second Amendment, etc. certainly are conservative.
I think it’s gonna require a restarted game. Which is fine as I never really intended to do the full playthrough the first go. I did the same with the other games. I play most of the way, learn the system, then restart with knowledge of how the system works. Then finish it on the 2n’d trip.
I mean, realistically I’ll be playing this game for several years with mods so I’m not in a rush to finish it ASAP.
I spent the night with RealVisioned Skyrim. Needed a break. It is really like a new game. The rain, the clouds, the godrayed sun animated through the trees....Amazing.
Only if you assume that he is telling you what he really believes. I think that an errant assumption. I think he is a massive liar, exactly the same sort of demagogue as Obama.
Somewhere along the way he appears to have rejected the Elitism side of politics. I suppose once you get F.U. Money, you are freed from some of the shackles of the establishment -- and he most definitely has F.U. Money.
Appearances can be deceiving. Take a close and skeptical look at what you wrote there Laz. Such suppositions could be deemed fantasies, as you have little in the way of substantive evidence for his support of those positions that have nominally changed. He has never talked about WHY he "changed" those positions. But even if he had, to me they are a matter of convenience.
I think the rationale is simpler: The Donald believes whatever is good for The Donald. After all, he does know how to make a sale.
It is now Elitist vs. Populist. That is why you see so many Republicans acting so inexplicably oddly.
Well one explanation for that is that some people (myself included) have made a life of explaining how the neo-mercantilist game works and that it was embedded in the Constitution to be instituted via international law.
The Elitists have very VERY bad plans for us.
Yes, I laid them out here fifteen years ago. Some want to off five-sixths of the world's population. Some have eschatological fantasies to feed. Your problem is that Donald Trump is made his fortune among gambling interests that include exactly such people, and some very dirty players to boot. Moreover, those investments are not just in America. How is he going to play straight with Erdogan when he owns a major hotel in Istanbul? How is he going to squeeze the sultanates into fighting ISIS when he has investments in Dubai?
You see, his supporters actually know very little about him beyond the public persona. He takes advantage of that. He always has:
Much of what he says shows his ignorance of (or possibly contempt for) Constitutional process. As an executive in business, he gets to simply issue orders. That's not how it works with limited government. Are we so desperate we really want a despot? A guy who has screwed his creditors with bankruptcies while he had funds to pay them in other companies? A guy who claims massive assets much of which are actually built on the "value" of brand names and "goodwill"? Really? I don't.
Now you may think I am engaging in the same speculations as you, but if you look back through the post, I am working off what he has said or done just like I analyze what he wrote in his immigration plan as opposed to what he promises that it will do. As a dealmaker, sometimes, he broadcasts his true intentions in the full light of day, when you least expect them. Oh he says he'll deport illegals (how he'll get past the courts he doesn't say), but then he drops that their return will be an expedited process. He'll tell you later that you were told. With a guy like him, I want it in writing.
I read an article awhile back that explained how it is that hockey fans hate the other teams' bad-boy with a passion. But when a similar bad-boy is wearing their colors, they think he's the best thing since sliced bagels (and cream cheese).
Donald Trump is their teams' bad-boy.
I think Trumps concerns as an American are far more in line with my concerns than a bunch of folks who have a record of selling this country down the toilet for decades.
The GOP and DEM candidates are so owned by people who could care less about this country not a damned one of them can be honest about the threat Islam is to the west and that the systems that are aupposed to protect this nation from them are so flawed and broken that they have no way of knowing if someone coming in will willingly shoot up a Christmas party for fun, that the only sane action would be to morotorium on any more being allowed in until it is fixed.
The GOP and the Dems are owned by people who don’t give a damn about this nation at all.
All you have to go on is faith - in your belief that Trump is honest.
He has proven to be somewhat lacking in the area of honesty.
Trump is a noncon. I don’t trust him to think or act as a social and constitutional conservative.
I liked Trump better when he WAS a Democrat
It just doesn’t matter.
He’s dead right on the single most important issue of the last 50 years- immigration. No one else can fix it. There’s too much money and power to be accumulated on both sides of the political spectrum.
"As I argue with Trump supporters - or at least watch as they stamp around like Rumpelstiltskins when the real identity of their hero is revealed - something about the Donald's following is beginning to make sense to me. Despite all the talk about "Making America Great Again" and defeating his foes, foreign and domestic, Trump is selling a rather different product to many disaffected Americans: an opportunity for a glorious, thrilling defeat.
As a native Southerner, I am familiar with the appeal of this product. It's what Lost Cause literature is about. Your cause is just, and not the cause that your enemies claim you are fighting for. But you are outnumbered. You are outgunned. The establishment is against you. You are better, you are more noble. But you will probably lose just because of sheer force of numbers. So you might as well go down fighting for what you believe in, defiantly and gloriously. In Trump's case, I think the tell is all the talk about him being "politically incorrect." That's a relevant criterion for hiring a reality TV star or a talk-show host. But whether a potential president's comments are provocative or transgressive seems to me to be much less important than what the president is actually proposing to do, and whether such programs will work as advertised.
Trumpkins often prove to be either blissfully unaware or manifestly uninterested in the details of Trump's agenda. Liberals and commentators hold this up as evidence that large swaths of the GOP electorate are dumb. But I think many remain unaware of or uninterested in the details of the Trump program for a rational reason: they have no real expectation that their man will actually be president. They'll say he's a winner in public. It's part of the braggadocio he purveys and they are getting to share in at the moment. In their heart of hearts, however, they know Trump won't win. Don't underestimate the attraction of the Lost Cause. It makes defeatism glamorous." [end]
You believe he is because how you have interpreted what he has said fits your desires. That's what he wants. It gives him latitude to hide or change the real deal. He has however let slip some of the details, and I don't think you'll like them one bit. So go back and READ the links I posted for your benefit.
I have knowledge that Trump answers to Trump, not to big check writers who most folks will never know and have conflicting agendas that are the masters of all the other Puppets...
Given all the rest are proven to be puppets, what do you have but faith that your puppet will stand up to his masters when what is best for you or this nation is in conflict with their master’s desires?
The rest have proven repeatedly they answer to their masters, not the voters, so what is your foundation for supporting them?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.