Posted on 08/08/2015 8:30:31 PM PDT by Steelfish
Reflections on the Trump Circus
by ANDREW C. MCCARTHY August 8, 2015
I’ve paid very little attention to the Donald Trump boomlet. I confess to enjoying Kevin and Jonah’s columns on the subject, but I’d enjoy their columns if they were writing about toothpicks. When asked about it, I’ve told people, “Ignore it and it will flame out on its own.” I’ve never met Donald Trump that I can recall. He’s a big New York personality and I’m Bronx born and bred, so of course I’m familiar with him. But I’ve never seen his TV shows, his news interviews are vapid, and I haven’t taken his presidential campaign any more seriously than I took his high-profile handwringing about running for this or that in the past. What about all this psychoanalysis of the conservative base? We’ve heard the trope: Trump’s poll numbers can’t be ignored because they are not so much about him as about the anger he is tapping into – anger at the bipartisan Beltway political establishment.
Well, as anyone who cares to read my columns knows, I am not exactly a stranger to that anger. I don’t need Donald Trump to draw my attention to it, and I don’t see him as a viable vehicle for representing it since he has a history of supporting positions and politicians responsible for a lot of that anger. Besides, at this stage, 15 months before the 2016 election, the 20 percent mark at which Trump hovers is not very impressive for someone as well known as he is (a relatively unknown Carly Fiorina, for example, has a much higher ceiling than a Trump with negatives in the 60s). So I haven’t been able to work up much interest.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Mark Steyn says Trump is the incompetent suicide bomber of the GOP and the GOPERS are trying to help him set it off.
lol
“I’ve paid very little attention to the Donald Trump boomlet. I confess to enjoying Kevin and Jonah’s columns on the subject, but I’d enjoy their columns if they were writing about toothpicks.”
Seriously?
Trump should apologize? If he’s one of our greatest minds, we are in trouble.
Trump learned triangulation from Bill Clinton, his golfing buddy and favorite President
Okay, seriously, it’s fine if you are a Trump supporter. I am not, but I would vote for him if he won the nomination.
However, if think Cruz is GOPe you are not paying attention. He gets a 96% rating from CR. He has taken strong, principled, extreme conservative stands and is a Tea Party favorite.
Clearly you have not taken the time to listen to his interviews, speeches further: THE ESTABLISHMENT REPUBLICANS HATE HATE HATE HIM!!!!!
He just called GOPe Mitch McConnell a liar on the floor of the Senate. What more do you want????
Trump should be running as a Dem if he really wants to be President, I think he is definitely running interference
“McCarthy is the guy who put the blind sheikh behind bars for the WTC 1 bombing.”
And, Mark Kelly is an astronaut.
Franklin Graham kind of did too. People are entitled to their opinions. I support Geller's "Showing the flag" activity to protect free speech. But I understand a lot of people see it as unnecessarily provocative.
Seriously, this is just Political correctness in the opposite direction.
attacked the Confederate Flag too, I believe
Hardly an attack. Someone asked him if he agreed with South Carolina's governor's decision to take the flag down. And Trump said he would take it down and put it in a Museum.
Again, he answered a question. So now we can't vote for him because he didn't match your conservatively correct answer. BS.
I won’t vote for the clown under any circumstances because he is NOT a conservative by any stretch of the imagination.
Bill Clinton’s golfing buddy just running interference for his team (Democrats)
Did you see my post #2 in this thread detailing some of the reasons why Trump is indeed conservative?
Trump is as conservative as any of them.
The handful of legitimate criticisms and the slanders you throw at Trump don’t compare to Cruz’s bad decision on trade and trusting Obama on trade. And I don’t think I need to tear down the rest. They all have their “faults”.
Trump changes opinions like socks.
Very convenient changes of heart just in time to run.
No dice.
Trump seem to be a “populist bubba effect” thing going on.
The Trumpbots are hard to reason with. I wouldn’t try. They apparently started attacking Andrew McCarthy even without reading his full article. McCarthy is essentially saying that Trump is crashing what Ted Cruz is trying to achieve and is sucking all the oxygen out.Didn’t Trump get that call from Bill Clinton to run!
I have trouble trusting Trump. Have you ever considered he did all the RIGHT things ahead of time to set himself up in case he wanted to run for POTUS?
The main reason I support Trump is that of all the candidates he understands the role that trade policy has on our economy. No other candidate gets it. Cruz certainly doesn’t.
So I don’t care who convinced him to run. He gets it, and the other’s don’t. But their is a youtube of him in 2014 saying that he would only run if the right candidate didn’t emerge. He said he loves what he does, and didn’t really want to stop what he does to run for office. But that he loves America more and if the right candidate didn’t appear he would run. So no, I don’t buy that he’s running because of Clinton, and wouldn’t care if he did.
By the way, if he’s running to give Clinton the election, he’s doing a heck of a job. He keeps pointing out Clinton’s legal troubles and how unfair it is that Petraeus was destroyed for doing much less than her. And then he said the money he donated to her foundation was supposed to be used for good but instead was used to jet around the world. If he is a Clinton operative, his cover is in tact. No rational person would suspect it.
So if you look at his positions, many of which I posted in post 2 in this thread. Many of those have been held for a long time. Yeah, he’s a late arrival on abortions, but he was for limiting them some back in 2000.
The things that matter he has conservative positions on.
Have you considered that if Trump can suck all the Oxygen out of Cruz’s campaign that Cruz wasn’t that strong of a candidate in the first place.
I kept an open mind about Cruz until two things happened. Trump entered the race, and Cruz tried to give Obama fast track authority for job killing so-called free trade agreements.
Trump had spoken out about the trade agreements back in 2011 or earlier. And Cruz proved he didn’t understand it.
I’m hoping Trump will take Cruz under his wing and teach him about the economy and groom him to be a good president over the next 4 to 8 years. But I don’t see Trump being presidential material right now.
Correction, I don’t see Cruz being presidential material right now. I think Trump has all the right stuff and will make a very effective President.
Rick Santorum (and maybe some others) is STRONGLY against H1B Visas, and that’s a big deal. Santorum is the ONLY one that received an “A” rating from Numbers USA, and Scott Walker received a “B” rating, also excellent! They get it.
Trump, on the other hand, wants amnesty, when he says the good illegals can stay here. This takes away jobs from Americans and encourages further ILLEGAL immigration.
Romney also changed his positions before running the GOP primaries, but I didn’t trust him either.
Trump is telling us what we want to hear, but does he mean it?
Trade is a bigger driver of the unemployment than the illegals. Trump is right on both. The illegal problem has gone on too long. They’ve married Americans, had babies, etc. No candidate is going to deport them all. And if one tells you they will, you probably should steer clear of them.
Trump seems pretty legit. Why would he have made the comments he made and taken the heat he has taken if he didn’t care about stopping illegals. And he didn’t change his position on illegals.
In 2000 he said this in his book The America we deserve, “America is experiencing serious social and economic difficulty with illegal immigrants who are flooding across our borders. We simply can’t absorb them. It is a scandal when America cannot control its own borders. A liberal policy of immigration may seem to reflect confidence and generosity. But our current laxness toward illegal immigration shows a recklessness and disregard for those who live here legally.”
Trump has been conservative on immigration for a long time.
Trade is a bigger driver of the unemployment than the illegals. Trump is right on both. The illegal problem has gone on too long. They’ve married Americans, had babies, etc. No candidate is going to deport them all. And if one tells you they will, you probably should steer clear of them.
Trump seems pretty legit. Why would he have made the comments he made and taken the heat he has taken if he didn’t care about stopping illegals. And he didn’t change his position on illegals.
In 2000 he said this in his book The America we deserve, “America is experiencing serious social and economic difficulty with illegal immigrants who are flooding across our borders. We simply can’t absorb them. It is a scandal when America cannot control its own borders. A liberal policy of immigration may seem to reflect confidence and generosity. But our current laxness toward illegal immigration shows a recklessness and disregard for those who live here legally.”
Trump has been conservative on immigration for a long time.
That was wild, I like it! Thanks for sharing. Wayne has it down pat.
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