Posted on 10/05/2015 3:41:06 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
When he’s right, he’s right.
And it’s … interesting that he’s contemplating his own political mortality this way.
“There’d be a major collapse of the race, and there’d be a major collapse of television ratings,” he said from his office in Trump Tower. “It would become a depression in television.”
Mr. Trump said that a presidential campaign without him would become so “boring” that he would struggle to pay any attention to it.
“I wouldn’t even be watching it probably, and neither would anybody else,” he said.
Debate ratings would indeed collapse. I’m not sure what he means by a “collapse of the race,” but it’s true that the hole left by Trump once he’s out wouldn’t easily be filled by anyone else, and I don’t just mean in terms of personality. Read this description of “middle American radicals,” whom John Judis identifies as the stereotypical Trump voter, and ask yourself who else on the GOP side fits this particular bill:
[Sociologist Donald] Warren called these voters Middle American Radicals, or MARS. “MARS are distinct in the depth of their feeling that the middle class has been seriously neglected,” Warren wrote. They saw “government as favoring both the rich and the poor simultaneously.” Like many on the left, MARS were deeply suspicious of big business: Compared with the other groups he surveyed—lower-income whites, middle-income whites who went to college, and what Warren called “affluents”—MARS were the most likely to believe that corporations had “too much power,” “don’t pay attention,” and were “too big.” MARS also backed many liberal programs: By a large percentage, they favored government guaranteeing jobs to everyone; and they supported price controls, Medicare, some kind of national health insurance, federal aid to education, and Social Security.
On the other hand, they held very conservative positions on poverty and race. They were the least likely to agree that whites had any responsibility “to make up for wrongs done to blacks in the past,” they were the most critical of welfare agencies, they rejected racial busing, and they wanted to grant police a “heavier hand” to “control crime.” They were also the group most distrustful of the national government. And in a stand that wasn’t really liberal or conservative (and that appeared, at least on the surface, to be in tension with their dislike of the national government), MARS were more likely than any other group to favor strong leadership in Washington—to advocate for a situation “when one person is in charge.”
Are those Ted Cruz voters in the making? Not really. Cruz hits some of the same notes about cronyism in D.C. that Trump does, but Cruz’s message is less about class and blue-collar economic anxieties than about individual liberty and anti-government “conservatarian” ideology. Entitlements, price controls, and guaranteed government jobs are not, shall we say, core planks of the Ted Cruz worldview. So if Cruz isn’t inheriting these voters, who is? Maybe they’ll go to another “outsider,” but Fiorina seems too traditionally big-business to hold onto Trump fans over the long haul and Carson’s running a campaign that’s more about “healing” and “ending political correctness” than it is about expanding the middle class’s slice of the pie. Frankly, the guys who seem best-suited to picking off these populist voters are Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, who aren’t as allergic as Cruz is to expanding government to help middle-class families, but both of them are seen as such niche social-conservative candidates, I think, that they’re not going to pull voters from outside that band of the electorate this time around. Which means Trump is right — for many of his voters, his departure from the race really would cause a sort of “collapse.”
Again, though, why is he even talking about the idea of a race without him in it? Hmmmm:
Ben Carson and Donald Trump are tied among GOP voters in Pennsylvania, a new poll finds.
Carson and Trump each receive 18 percent support from registered Republicans in the Keystone State, according to the Mercyhurst University Center for Applied Politics poll on Monday…
Mercyhurst’s poll also found that Carson is the best-liked GOP presidential candidate among Pennsylvania Republicans.
Hey, it’s just one poll, right? Not exactly: If you missed it over the weekend, IBD found Trump seven points behind Carson in a new national poll, the first time he’s trailed anyone since Trumpmania erupted this summer. Of the eight national polls taken since the second Republican debate, Trump has reached 26 percent just once. His average is down to 22.8 points, less than six percent ahead of Carson. He’s down in the early states as well. He told one of the morning shows last week that he wouldn’t hang around the race if his numbers disintegrated and he ended up polling at one or two percent, but no one’s wondering about that scenario because we all understand that it’ll never happen. Trump’s base of “middle American radicals” should guarantee some sort of floor well north of one percent — 10 percent, maybe. Maybe a bit more. The question is, though, what happens if the non-MARS segment of his base starts peeling off and he’s left with only that floor of voters? Will he hang in there even if he’s stuck at, say, 15 percent in poll after poll, or will he decide at some point that he’s gone as high as he can and now it’s time to find a reason to bow out before he starts taking actual losses as people go to vote? We’re not going to know that until we have a week or two where someone besides Trump is steadily leading in multiple polls. How eager will he be at that point to do three or four interviews with cable news each day knowing that every one will open with questions about him trailing? This is why he’s starting to think about the race without him in it — at some point, when the questions shift from “Why are you winning?” to “Why are you losing?”, this will cease to be fun. And once it’s no longer fun, that’s when I think he pulls the plug. Maybe we’re closer to that point than we realize.
Do blacks have any responsibility for wrongs done to whites?
No, of course not (except for individual wrongdoers, judged and punished in the normal way).
Same goes for whites.
Notice that Trump and Cruz don’t attack each other?
Cruz wants to just quietly survive while others drop out.
Then if Trump wins, he can be the VP.
Well Donny, drop out and let’s find out.
But the fact is, there is only one guy out there who has even the remotest chance to turn the country around and it is Trump. No one else has the media savvy, the willingness to buck the political system, and the money, to do what he can do. Certainly not Cruz, who will make a great AG or USSC justice.
“I don’t think the GOPe cares if they win the presidency.”
You know— that is a great point!! They would rather sell the country down the tubes than give up power !
Where is NOW? Where are the feminists? No women is more FEMININE than Melania Trump !!
Where is NOW? Where are the feminists? No women is more FEMININE than Melania Trump !!
Rush calls them the Nags, I call them the Hags, and their all jealous of such a Hottie. Comparing Melania to Moochelle the Wookie is just plain hilarious, their not even from the same species.
Trump is playing this election by his own play book and we, those of us, that support him are behind him all the way...we don't see anything bad that he does, others tell us, but we don't listen....we are so darn proud to have someone who isn't lying to us, doing one thing one day and then doing something else the next day....
If people can't see how bad our Country is right now, they either are that stupid, or they have blinders on...will Trump shake up America? OH HECK YEAH he will and we want him to!!!
OH COME ON
Mind your language, please; there are ladies present.
WINO’s
Women In Name Only
Social Security is almost 100 years old. Everyone is invested in it, so to speak. Of course most are in favor of it.
:)
He’s right. Who would watch a dozen snoozer “debates” moderated by the Democrat media talking heads? Every network that has Trump on charges quadruple their ad rate and makes a ton of money off his sky high ratings. Life is not fair.
Cruz wants to just quietly survive while others drop out.Not exactly an admirable quality.Then if Trump wins, he can be the VP.
I don't think Trump would have Cruz as VP. Trump doesn't like people who make bad choices and Cruz made a really bad one when he voted for Iran and Obama and against Israel when he vote for the Corker bill.
Cruz supports TPP which Trump just pointed out what a bad deal that is too...Being a crybaby going on the senate floor whining about being lied to doesn't help either.
I’m still of the belief that GOPe are going to push Rubio- Kasich since their main go to guy, JEB! collapsed.
“OK say it does happen. What one(or two, three) candidates becomes the NEW populist Trump?”
NONE THEM, AND HERE’S WHY;
++++++++++
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With all credit for writing this going to Freeper M1911A1, here is your answer:
At this point, I’d hardly care if in 2014 Trump had come out in support of almost any liberal cause.
The republic is dying. The libs are killing it, but guess who helps them? That’s right, the “conservatives” of the GOP!
You want to despise Trump for a former stance on abortion, when, as a private citizen, he could do little about it except write checks to politicians. I’m wagering it wasn’t a hot button donor issue for a guy focused on his empire.
Well how ‘bout that “conservative” Mitch McConnell, a man who could actually do something about it...it’s his job to do something about it, he was given power to do something about it. He did something today, he declared it was “futility” to defund Planned Parenthood, and this is only the latest in a long, long, and shameful list of outrages that have been either condoned or conducted by him and the other GOPe oligarchs.
You may dislike Trump, but remember that Mitch hates you if you are conservative, as do his masters, the big donors to Super Pacs. They only care about staying in power and growing government, and they trot out a conservative dog and pony show every once in a while to keep us yokels in line.
They have been busy changing the rules to make sure they are there forever, and if they lose to a Democrat, it’s no big deal, because they ultimately don’t differ all that much on the big issues.
Trump may strike you as too liberal, a braggart, a phony, or refreshing. It doesn’t matter. Supporting anybody else at this point is asking for the entrenched uniparty to keep abusing you. Trump is the only way out of this abusive relationship that is going to put your freedom in the grave.
After he upsets that applecart, we can start looking for someone better, but if we say no thanks to Trump the GOPe will figure out ways to make sure that no more challenges like his are ever mounted.
There are no guarantees that Trump is the real deal, or that even if he is that he can fix the crooked system, but if he doesn’t get that chance it is guaranteed that the crooked system will fix it so us annoying voters are even more irrelevant than we are now.
Trump has awoken them to the fact that even us dullards will only take so much, and once Trump exposes them, if they defeat Trump they won’t even have to put on the dog and pony show anymore.
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