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The 'Voice of the People' Fallacy
Townhall.com ^ | April 12, 2016 | Thomas Sowell

Posted on 04/12/2016 4:46:11 AM PDT by Kaslin

We hear many fallacies in election years. The fallacy that seems to be most popular this year is that, if Donald Trump comes close to getting the 1,237 delegates required to become the Republican nominee, and that nomination goes instead to someone else, then the convention will have ignored "the voice of the people."

Supposedly Republican voters would be outraged, many would stay home on election day, and some might even vote for the Democrats' nominee, whether Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.

Mr. Trump has more than once made the veiled threat that he would run as a third-party candidate if the Republicans failed to "respect" him. And of course Trump would himself decide what "respect" means.

In so far as the voting public believes the fallacy that choosing someone other than Trump is ignoring "the voice of the people," when Trump has the most delegates, his threat carries weight.

In reality, Trump has never gotten a majority of the votes in any state. In other words, "the voice of the people" has been consistently against nominating Trump.

In a poll of Republican voters in Wisconsin, 20 percent of them said that they would be "concerned" if Trump became President of the United States, and 35 percent said that they would be "scared."

If "the voice of the people" has spoken, whether in Wisconsin or nationally, what it has said repeatedly is "No" to Donald Trump. The illusion of Trump's overwhelming appeal to the Republican voters has been maintained by the fragmenting of Republican votes because so many candidates were running as conservatives that Trump won primaries without ever getting a majority of the votes.

This would not be the first time that the conservative majority votes in a Republican primary season have been split so many ways that someone who is not a conservative ends up with the nomination.

That is how the Republicans ended up with Mitt Romney in 2012 and lost the election. That is also how the Republicans can end up with Donald Trump and lose this year's election. Worse yet, from the standpoint of the country, that is how Donald Trump might end up in the White House.

The Republicans in Wisconsin who were scared of the possibility of Trump as President were on to something. We should all be scared.

Why? There is not room enough to list all the reasons. But Trump himself has demonstrated, over and over, how he lacks the depth of knowledge -- and sometimes any knowledge at all -- of complex life and death issues that are inescapable for any President of the United States.

Ignorance is dangerous enough in itself. But ignorance on the part of an egomaniac, who announces that he is his own best advisor, is incorrigible ignorance. He can surround himself with the best minds in the country and it will not do any good if they are just there for window dressing.

Barack Obama has already demonstrated what disasters a President can create when he ignores the warnings of the country's top military leaders, as he did when he pulled American troops out of Iraq, setting the stage for the emergence of ISIS.

Obama dealt with that problem, as he has dealt with other problems, by coming up with glib rhetoric -- in this case, dismissing ISIS as the junior varsity. The horrors that have followed -- especially for women and girls -- wherever ISIS has taken over in the Middle East make Obama's slick words grotesque.

So too do the terrorist slaughters in Europe that are virtually guaranteed to be repeated in America.

The unprecedented public criticisms of President Obama by four of his former Secretaries of Defense, not to mention retired four-star generals, demonstrate that having knowledgeable and experienced advisors cannot make up for headstrong ignorance on the part of a President.

A headline on Bret Stephens' column in the Wall Street Journal -- "Trump Is Obama Squared" -- hit the nail on the head. After seven long years of disaster after disaster, at home and abroad, under the Obama administration, have we learned nothing about the dangers of choosing an untested candidate for President of the United States on the basis of his saying things we want to hear?

Elections are not held to make us feel good at the time, but to select someone with the depth of knowledge and character to be entrusted with our lives and the future of the nation.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: idiottrumpcultists; rinosowell; sowell; sowellvsamerica; tedskeywordtroll; tedskeywordtrolls
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To: Stepan12

>The world’s greatest intellectual, Thomas Sowell, ph.D

Really?

>In Donald Trump, people are electing Barack Hussein Obama again with less experience and knowledge then the current idiot/phony in office.

In what way(s)? DT has/is running a successful biz, has hired, paid employees, etc.

Where’d we get this idea that the Presidency requires these ‘great/high’ expectations? In *my* copy of the Constitution, the position requires VERY little experience, let alone time (outside of CiC, IMO...and only if/when at war [the latter we’re currently in no mindset to win. My $.02]).

‘Bout damn time we got someone outside of an ivy-league lawyer/etc.


21 posted on 04/12/2016 5:41:54 AM PDT by i_robot73 ("A man chooses. A slave obeys." - Andrew Ryan)
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To: Kaslin

I have been an admirer of Thomas Sowell’s work ever since he came on the scene in the 1960s under the tutelage of Milton Friedman and William Buckley. I have followed him closely through the past fifty years, bought many of his books, read a lot of his newspaper columns, and listened to many TV and radio interviews. I generally agree with his economic and societal opinions. However, at this point in time, in both his old age and mine, I have found that I must part company with him on the matter of the election of Donald Trump. Further, it is puzzling to see him rant and rave about Trump in ways that are nonsensical, frivolous, and downright ridiculous. I attribute the same sort of intellectual stupidity to Limbaugh, Levin, and many others that I used to respect but no longer follow.

As I see things, the fraudulent elevation (I won’t say “election”) of Hussein Obama, the monster, to the presidency and the willingness of the RINOs to aid and abet this obvious fraud in support of his programs was a pivotal moment in American history. Similar to the “Sack of Rome”, it undermined and destroyed the last vestiges of what remained of the Constitutional Republic of old we all knew and loved and replaced it with a NWO, globalist, UniParty cabal. The Rule of Law is not going, it is already gone. The illegal and illegitimate actions of the US government operating under a lawless tyranny during the entire eight year “reign” of the thug, Hussein, and his Marxocrat minions with the RINOs in league with their corruption and criminality, has totally changed the political landscape.

This new reality is hard to accept for many people, including Sowell, Limbaugh, Levin, and their ilk. They have been shielded from the worst excesses of the collapse due to their financial and social positions. The rest of us, though, the struggling and declining middle class that suffers daily and has been cast aside for the benefit of welfare moochers, illegal aliens, and globalist corporatists, has watched this destruction happen year in and year out, all the while seeing that the blather and bull that the “conservative” punditocracy has shoveled for decades has resulted in nothing but a relentless advance of every leftist evil beyond the mind’s dimensions. I now cannot recognize this country anymore from the one I knew fifty years ago, when I first started reading Sowell. I now live in Sodom and Gomorrah.

We are at a revolutionary moment where the election of someone like Donald Trump to the presidency is the last hope if this country is ever to rise from the ashes. I’m not even sure such a thing is possible anymore. The people who have elected the Marxocrats and their RINO colleagues year after year have destroyed what was once the greatest nation ever conceived by man. We’ve all watched this happen, brick by brick, during the past fifty years. At this point, I will throw in with Trump and his people, giving the electoral process one last shot to try and save this country. If Trump is not elected, then I expect, like it or not, I’ll have to go to the front, shoulder a rifle, and man the barricades in the next Civil War that will surely happen as we descend into total chaos.


22 posted on 04/12/2016 5:44:08 AM PDT by DrPretorius
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To: i_robot73

Indeed. I would like a wrecking ball in DC and DT can be that wrecking ball. He is not establishment so whatever he does will not suit them I suspect, and just might rescue a Republic in severe decline. It is certainly worth the minimal risk, especially when compared to the possible worst yet to come in this fine example of an administration.


23 posted on 04/12/2016 5:56:13 AM PDT by wita
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To: Jack Hammer; Kaslin

>> They’re fat, rich, empowered and contented, and they don’t want anyone rocking their boat <<

Yep, I guess that seems like a perfect description of the 600,000 Colorado grass-roots folks who voted in the Colorado GOP caucuses.


24 posted on 04/12/2016 6:07:44 AM PDT by Hawthorn
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To: Hawthorn

No. Washington’s republicrats. They’ll see to it that neither Trump nor Cruz gets the nomination.

Bet the farm on it.


25 posted on 04/12/2016 6:14:44 AM PDT by Jack Hammer (uff said.)
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To: Kaslin

26 posted on 04/12/2016 6:57:47 AM PDT by CodeToad (Islam should be banned and treated as a criminal enterprise!)
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To: DrPretorius

I could have written that post...I agree 100%.


27 posted on 04/12/2016 8:24:35 AM PDT by gogeo (Donald Trump. Because it's finally come to that.)
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To: wita

> It is certainly worth the minimal risk, especially when compared to the possible worst yet to come in this fine example of an administration.

There’s a lot of clamoring of “What if...?”, where my reply is, “So what?!”.

IMO, they’d have a point IF the GOP/RNC had every a *SLIGHT* record of being on track.

Last time We gave ‘em all 3, they saddled us with TSA, NSA, DHS, NCLB, TARP, etc.

Hell, we have/had some in the running today who is/are/were foisting Common Core, TPP/TPA, 6x Visa increase, ‘dreamers’/amnesty....more govt, more govt MORE govt!

We haven’t a Republic for over 100yrs., yet (again), THIS election is the MOST IMPORTANT...*EVER*. Yet, DT would be *the* tipping-point to ‘the fall’? P-L-E-A-S-E. Govt of and by my @ss!

‘Bout time we had a (bit of a) shake-up. The current process obviously doesn’t work.


28 posted on 04/12/2016 8:27:19 AM PDT by i_robot73 ("A man chooses. A slave obeys." - Andrew Ryan)
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To: Kaslin

Isn’t it obvious, Dr. Sowell?

The elites are ignoring the voice of the people no matter WHO we vote for.


29 posted on 04/12/2016 8:37:18 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: Kaslin

The whole, entire process for selecting candidates and thus, indirectly choosing who will be President has become impossibly screwed up.

With regard to primaries, specifically: The electorate is undefined, and therefore of questionable importance. The idea that the NH Republican primary (in which registered Republicans and unenrolled people can vote, as well as Democrats who change their registration at the polling place) is representative of committed, loyal Republicans with an investment in the success of the Party is absurd.


30 posted on 04/12/2016 8:37:44 AM PDT by Jim Noble (Diseases desperate grown, are by desperate appliance relieved, or not at all)
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To: Axeslinger
It sure does.

Great tagline btw. :)

31 posted on 04/12/2016 1:11:21 PM PDT by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him. He got them and now we have to pay the consequences)
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To: i_robot73

Donald Trump is not a successful businessman, His Chapter 11 forays demonstrate that. Donald Trump is a good media personality — that’s all!


32 posted on 04/12/2016 4:15:30 PM PDT by Stepan12
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To: Stepan12; i_robot73
Donald Trump is not a successful businessman, His Chapter 11 forays demonstrate that.

Hahahahahaaaa!~ That has got to be one of the STUPIDEST claims I have heard yet. A $10Billion portfolio of properties and bank accounts seems to be in opposition to that claim. As a SUCCESSFUL BUSINESSMAN, Trump has navigated his corporations through whatever it takes to make them successful.TRUMP HAS NEVER FILED BANKRUPTCY.

Maybe you don't know much about business. Teddy Bares love their Lyin' Teddy. They tell lies just as much as he does, and make up stuff to deceive.

Poor Teddy Bares.

VOTE FOR THE WINNER. VOTE TRUMP!

VOTE FOR THE WINNER. VOTE TRUMP!

Here's a pic from a recent Teddy rally!


33 posted on 04/12/2016 4:28:13 PM PDT by WVKayaker (What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate -D.Trump)
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To: bert

“How would the votes stack up had there been only two to vote for?”

From the point of view of democracy, that is the question.

A national close-out Trump vs. Cruz vote would be definitive. I think only registered Republicans should vote. I hate the open primary system.


34 posted on 04/13/2016 8:01:10 AM PDT by ChessExpert (The unemployment rate was 4.5% when Democrats took Congress in 2006)
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