Posted on 02/15/2016 5:12:56 PM PST by icwhatudo
Here we are in a Republican primary, and Donald Trump, out of the blue, starts blaming the Bush family for 9/11, for knowing that the intelligence was made up, that there never were any weapons of mass destruction, and they knew it, Trump said.
Michael Moore doesn’t even say that…
On the stage at a Republican debate, Donald Trump defended Planned Parenthood. Not the abortion stuff, he said, but the fact that they do great things for women’s health. Folks, there were a number of occasions where Donald Trump sounded like the Daily Kos blog, where Donald Trump sounded like the Democrat Underground, sounded like any average host on MSNBC.
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
“Trump needs to go back to what made him popular: Borders, Islam, and trade.”
I agree. Those are establishment policies that have only benefited the establishment.
“He’s thinking several moves ahead in terms of strategy, and positioning later on in the campaign: which most other candidates are not doing...”
I have to agree with you here. Trump sees something I did not. The “conservative base” has a lot of soft underbelly that can be easily rented with cheap talk and repetitive sounds bites. If he can win the Republican nomination with 35-45 percent of the primary voters he will immediately move left to pick up some moderate vote, and grab some share of the New York City values crowd which probably understands Trump-the-entertainer better than any other voting block.
Trump is not as dumb as he sounds.
We all knew about his wife working for Goldman Sucks; about how he forgot to record the personal loan to his campaign from his 401(k); about his not knowing whether he was natural born.
We also learned that he was being funded by a hedge fund billionaire, Mercer, who is taking a page from the Obama campaign and using intensely focused data analytics to craft Cruz's message.
All above board, or at least, not much more or less sleazy in magnitude, or less excusable, than any politician at this level participates in.
But...but...with his hiring of the Lee Atwater-wannabe, Roe, and the focus on dirty tricks and skirting the edge of the truth, ...
what has he done?
Well, Cruz's original tactic, focus, strategy, has been to go for the Tea Party crowd: the *true* faithful; and of those, to concentrate on the Christian Evangelicals: the die-hards who remain faithful no matter *what* the press says or does about their candidate.
In most years, that might've been enough get him to the nomination, or close to it.
But two things happened.
First, Trump: stealing the oxygen from the room, and forcing Cruz to fight for what amount to scraps of the pie, with Carson, and Rubio, and the GOP-e cannon fodder. Without ALL of the religious vote going his way, plus what amounts to a plurality from non-religious disaffected conservative, Cruz's strategy doesn't work.
Enter the hiring of Roe : and the tinge of nastiness, the shove-and-"who, me?" whistling immediately afterward; the accusation with a bit of viciousness, the brushback pitch with some "English" on the ball...
Those might be OK, after Trump did it.
But ...that nastiness, is the opposite of his chosen and implied role, of the super-intellect, the sage, or the gentle long-suffering Christian *gentleman* he had cultivated up to this point.
So when his marketing brochure and his in-person persona contradict each other, people's scam radar goes off: and after being sold out by everyone from George H.W. Bush "read my lips" and "compassionate conservatism" to the GOP-e attacking Sharon Angle, Todd Aikin, and championing Murkowski in Alaska and Thad Cochran in Mississippi, after promising to cut the deficit then rolling over for Obama, after not fighting Obama's prior Supreme Court justices NOR Obamacare (where *another*! turncoat, John Roberts, allowed it despite black and white slam-dunk language to overturn it)...
People are sick of being lied to.
And with today's GOP-rank-and-file, you don't get *ANY strikes, you're not allowed "just one LITTLE lie".
But Cruz for his vaunted intelligence, doesn't seem to have cottoned to that fact yet: or else he overestimates his Harvard pedigree: just as arrogant and "I'm better than you" as the Dems are. I'm not sure which.
One you want in a politician to get elected, one you want for debating or possibly the minutia of steering bills through committees or arguing before a court.
The one is better for President, the other for legislature, attorney general, or Supreme Court.
Cruz should go somewhere where his talents are a better fit for the actual job.
| Commentators like Rush and Sowell should not be shielded from criticism on the right. It comes with the territory. A couple months back I criticized Sowell here on FR when he tried to compare Trump to Hitler, Mao, Mussolini and Jonestown Jones. On the whole, I believe Rush is trying to unite conservatives -- and Rush includes Trump among the conservative ranks. He's in a difficult position because to remain neutral he has to say good things about each and every conservative candidate. |
Where is the lie? He said he didn't tithe. He said ten years ago, the period started ten years ago. He'd been married just 5 years and his kids were born during that time period.
South Carolina television stations pull [Cruz] anti-Rubio ad amid legal concerns
..."a group supporting Ted Cruz"...
You do understand the difference between a PAC and a campaign, right?
I agree.....immigration and trade are USA killers as we know it, and they are populist issues that the left-right establishment are most fearful of because there is Party overlap especially with independents. Trump needs to focus.
Protection of the Second Amendment is up there too in importance with conservatives and Independents. The elites want that 2A right taken from us too because psychologically it would undermine voter independence and make the citizenry more docile.
Limbaugh also said he believes it was part of Trump’s strategy.
Thank you for you support of Rush even though you support Trump. Some of the bashing that has gone on this thread against Rush and tossing his problem in the past with Oxy Cotton in his face is despicable Talk about low class.
I too am a Rush supporter. I happen to be a Ted Cruz supporter.
Just want to say I appreciated your demeanor and kind words for Rush even though you and he may disagree on Presidential choices.
| More excellent analysis. You really have a flair for explaining this insider stuff. Great read. Thanks. |
“Hope if that happens we can all survive a Bernie administration, because sticking with the failed Bush Doctrine is how we ended up with 8 years of Obama.”
First, and again, welcome to Free Republic. Glad you can join us in the fight against diabolical liberalism, even if you found your speaking voice a little late in the game (6 months ago, joining up here).
You are WRONG, WRONG, WRONG on what got us Obama. Milquetoast, middle-of-the-road moderates of the GOPe type is what got us Obama.
That is why the not-so-moderate outsiders — Trump and Cruz are performing so well. No one wants another McCain or Dole or Romney. In other words, no Yeb Bush.
Trump’s mistake on this was to attack W for lying. W did not lie about WMDs. He believed they were there. If he did not, he would have planted them to cover for his lie. We had bad intel, and Bush is responsible for his decision and for which advisors he followed.
Bush had two main arguments for going into Iraq. WMDs. And Sadam being a state sponsor of terrorism. Sadam may have had WMDs which were smuggled to Gaddafi who then surrendered them to us in hopes of staying in power. Even if he did not have them, he did want us to think he had them in order to deter us. He definitely had them at some point, because we know he used them on Iraqi’s.
Sadam definitely spent lots of money (much of his money was also counterfeited US dollars) funding terrorism, though this was primarily directed toward Israel.
We had some good reasons to remove Sadam. Only in retrospect it has been a poor decision. And who could have guessed just how badly Obama would execute the war on terrorism.
When Bush was still in office, the evening news helpfully posted photos of fallen soldiers for hours and hours. They reported daily on how many more of our soldiers had died. When Obama entered office they quit doing this. And that helped Obama hide the fact that there were far more fatalities under him.
Trump would have been wise to simply say the war was a bad decision, and one he had sense enough to oppose from the start. Calling out Bush as a liar does not help him, even for those of us who are very disappointed with or even despise the Bush presidency. Trump should have also focussed on how much worse Obama has done than Bush. Hillary and Bernie want to continue Obama’s legacy.
| Maybe he is not the pure conservative. Maybe he recognizes that he needs to stake out some moderate positions to win the general election considering that 40% of the electorate are in the Kardashian Obamaphone Alliance will vote Democrat no matter what because they are the takers and cheaters of our society. Then again, maybe Trump is an old style Democrat from the 1960s like JFK who favored a strong military and lowered corporate taxes. Maybe Trump is the "American" candidate as Rush says. But if conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin like Trump, that's good enough for me. |
Ted Cruz actually said: "And Donald Trump, right now as a candidate, is advocating full-on expanding Obamacare to make it socialized medicine."
And here is Trump in his own words: Donal Trump Wants Universal Healthcare = Obamacare on Steroids
Telling voters they had a "violation" for not voting.
You are grasping at straws by calling that a "lie". I agree it's an unseemly political marketing technique. I really don't care for ANY political marketing, but again, not a lie.
The Carson thing was an honest misinterpretation of in incredibly incompentent statement by Carson's own campaign. Not a lie.
The rest of these issues have been debated endlessly here on FR and have been shown not to be lies.
I know I'm not going to overpower the Trump koolaid.
Yes it is, you misquoted him.
Once again Rush is correct.
I agree completely. I don’t know why I even read these types of threads anymore; they certainly do nothing to unite our party against the Dems, who are supposedly our common foe. Quite the opposite. I can’t imagine I’ll have much enthusiasm for the other guy if mine loses the nomination...not after all this ugliness.
Bizarre times at FR, that’s for sure.
Only those supporting Trump, without question, are still conservative. What a mess.
Trump looks like he is on an independent quest for truth. And is not shy about that.
It will take a conscientious detail maven to best Trump... and most unfortunately, Cruz is NOT that at the present time. He too, gets into the conservative mantra du jour routine.
meh, I’m tired of Rush being little more than a mouthpiece for the same GOPe that’s lost the last 2 elections to the Kenyan terrorist lover. His hatred of Trump is both obvious and asinine IMO. Trump’s the only candidate worth a damn and capable of beating the Beast.
if you want more of the same, keep listening to Rush and vote for that idiot Rubio, another shill for the liberal GOPe.
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