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.
This is “getting along very well with the Clintons”???
Donald Trump: Hillary Clinton ‘killed hundreds of thousands of people with her stupidity’
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3372182/posts
"In a free market, there's a pretty simple process for dealing with the situation that arises when one person covets another's belongings: The coveter makes an offer to purchase them. If the offer is rebuffed, the coveter can make a new proposal, but he cannot simply take what he wants. It's an effective way of recognizing the impracticality of the Tenth Commandment while enforcing the Eighth.
Donald Trump's covetous nature is not in dispute, but what many may forget is that he's no great respecter of the admonition not to steal, either: The man has a track record of using the government as a hired thug to take other people's property.
................Perhaps the only upside to this story is that in neither case did Trump succeed. The Bridgeport plan fizzled. Coking fought in court, and - in part because these were the days before Kelo was decided, no doubt - she was lucky enough to win. In 1998, a judge threw out the case.
In 2005, however, Trump was delighted to find that the Supreme Court had okayed the brand of government-abetted theft that he'd twice attempted. "I happen to agree with it 100 percent," he told Fox News's Neil Cavuto of the Kelo decision.
Can Republicans support someone with so little regard for the property of others? Let's hope not.
I didn’t ask you. YOu don’t know the context of the question.
Trump is in campaign mode.
Well you were complaining about not getting an answer. The context looked clear enough. I stand by what I said. It is more of a statement than a question.
Why don’t you respond to post #9 big shot?
I respect the owner of this site.
That is his opinion.
His view seems to change day by day. He praised single payer systems in the first debate. He later backed off because it didn’t fit his audience.
The man is an egomaniac.
She was never a Republican though. To them that’s the unforgivable sin.
Small thinking.
The destruction of the two party system is the only thing that will save the country from big government. Only when there are robust minority parties will anything change. Too bad it is not the demorats that are splitting up, but they will do so after the GOP becomes two minority parties. After all, what is the point of a GOP if they are just the same as the rats?
Trump will make a half-hearted run as an independent after the GOP screws him out of the nomination and that will be the end of the GOP as a majority party. Forever.
Hillary Clinton was a Republican prior to 1968.
Looks like you favor a more European model.
That is not an aswer to the question and I think you know it.
Your original comment; “And yet he’s [Trump] stuck at 30% in the RCP average of GOP primary voters, which shows that 70% are not in his camp.”
So I asked; “Using that logic what is the percentage of GOP primary voters not in Cruz’s camp?”
You said “The rest of the field is divvied up and those “won’t wins” need to step down.”
In logic A=A so the same logic used with Trump must also be used with Cruz. Subtract whatever Cruz is polling at from 100% and you will find, using your logic, that Cruz has less primary voters “in his camp” than Trump. If you don’t like that result then the logic you used to conclude “70% are not in his camp [Trump]” has a fatal flaw.
Don’t be foolish.
I agree Trump’s bravado is beginning to wear thin and not a vote has been cast. Most Americans, not to mention GOP and crossover voters who will be casting primary votes in the spring, have given little real thought to the campaign. It is a sideshow in their daily lives.
After Christmas the voters will be thinking about preparing tax returns and trying to figure out what to cut from the family budget to pay for the higher healthcare premiums coming in January. Some will be smarting from receiving end of year pink slips or knowing a family member or friend who has lost a job. Most middle class grocery shoppers will be questioning the “deflation” rhetoric from the government and media when they go to the store and see $5.00 per pound hamburger. Seniors will be angry about the absence of a Social Security increase and more doctors refusing to see Medicare patients. Add to these concerns rising interest rates, and a possibly big stock market sell off after the Fed boosts rates, and you have a large block of primary voters with little hope but desiring significant change. One or two more large terrorist attacks could easily turn an unhappy voter pool into an outraged electorate.
Whoever Trump really is underneath the brash television personality, he has done the nation and the GOP a huge service. Without him in the race neither of the political parties were prepared to fight the 2016 election on the extremely important issues of immigration, Islamic terrorism at home, trade policy, Obamacare, the $20 trillion accumulated deficit, and political correctness. To his credit the Donald has put these issues on the table where they cannot be ignored by the media, the candidates, or the politicians in office. If it wasn’t for Trump, immigration reform and TPP would today be teed up to be passed by the GOP Congress in early 2016. Jeb would be the candidate to beat in a very boring GOP race since Cruz would have been neutralized and the rest of the GOP field would be playing their assigned roles as token opponents preparing for Jeb’s coronation.
By destroying Bush, and energizing the base, Trump has made it possible for Cruz to get the nomination. It is beginning to look like the establishment will have to get behind a Cruz/Rubio ticket to avoid having Trump as the nominee. A Cruz/Rubio ticket seems like the only answer to keep Trump from running third party unless he truly is a Democrat spoiler.
This article is part of the death by 1000 small knife wounds strategy now being employed by the establishment against Trump. Will it work? Time, and events yet to occur, will tell.
Answer the question I asked; “Where did Trump use emminant domain?”
I was stating a fact.
You’re welcome to play with it all you want.
The fact remains (however you want to apply the numbers to other candidates) that when polled (repeatedly) roughly 70% of the GOP primary voters don’t want Trump as their nominee.
In fact, Trump and Carson supporters overwhelmingly list Cruz as their 2nd choice.
Work that into your calculations.
There’s the context and a lesson in how to use logic correctly.
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