Trump Does Not Fight Liberals. Here is Proof.

Red State ^ | January 21st, 2016 | Leon H. Wolf

[Isara]

One of the more bizarre things I hear about Trump, from people who support Trump, is that he attacks liberals with more gusto than anyone else in the field. It’s bizarre because every time I turn around, I hear Trump attacking a conservative Republican. On the infrequent occasions that he attacks liberals, he does so offhandedly and with little conviction. “I would love to run against Hillary because her policies are so bad” is basically all he ever says about Hillary, when he does mention her.

I decided, however, that maybe I was just being fed his attacks on Republicans by the media, and that maybe he really does attack liberals on the stump, and I am just not seeing it because the media won’t report it. So I decided to do an analysis of Trump’s stump speech, as compared to the stump speeches of Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, who are the only other two candidates who matter at this point. I used as a reference the most recent full stump speech of each candidate that I could find online.

My reference speeches were: this Rubio speech in Iowa on January 18th, this Ted Cruz speech earlier this week in Fort Worth, and Trump’s speech in Myrtle Beach on Saturday. All were between 30-40 minutes long, and all occurred after the race has gotten contentious, sparked by Trump’s stirring of the Cruz birther issue.

Every stump speech during a primary contains four basic elements: 1) Self-promotion (this is not intended to be derogatory, all candidates must explain why they are the best choice and people should vote for them); 2) the policy laundry list (this doesn’t have to be detailed and in fact is generally very broad); 3) attacks against primary opponents; and 4) attacks against the other party. For each speech, I divided the speech into the four categories and noted the amount of time each candidate spent on each. Some other percent was spent on stuff that can’t be quantified (rhetorical fluff), and that’s why the percentages won’t add up to 100% in any case.

However, in order to fairly capture the extent to which the candidates attacked each other and/or the Democrats, I also kept a separate tally of the amount of times they leveled an attack against each other and/or the Democrats during the course of one of their other segments. For instance, one of Rubio’s favorite rhetorical devices is, when he is explaining his own policy to say “unlike Hillary Clinton, who has instead done [X],” where [X] is something very stupid. So I kept that tally as well, and I kept tally of every time the Republicans mentioned their primary opponents (instead of other Republicans in general). In order to count as a reference to primary opponents, they had to reference either the candidate’s name or a well known position they hold or thing they’ve said.

Here’s how the breakdown came out:

Cruz

Total speech length: 30:18

Total time spent attacking his primary opponents: 0:00 (0%)

Total time spent attacking Democrats: 3:52 (13%)

Total time spent on self-promotion: 13:11 (43%)

Total time spent on policy: (38%)

Additional notes: In the course of either the self-promotion and/or policy sections of his speech, Cruz attacked Hillary and/or Obama an additional 8 times, in addition to the 3:52 he spent on his uninterrupted attacks. Cruz made, by my count, one attack against his Republican rivals, which was very mild, essentially saying “The only thing I will say about the fine men I shared the debate stage with is that you know that when I say I will do something, I’m going to do it.” That’s not verbatim, but it’s close. Otherwise the other Republican contenders were not mentioned.

Rubio

Total speech length: 37:11

Total time spent attacking his primary opponents: 0:00 (0%)

Total time spent attacking Democrats: 3:53 (10%)

Total time spent on self-promotion: 11:34 (31%)

Total time spent on policy: 17:17 (46%)

Additional notes: In the course of either self-promotion and/or policy sections of his speech, Rubio made 15 attacks on either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, making his speech nearly as aggressive against Democrats as Cruz’s. Rubio did not mention any of his primary opponents even once, even obliquely. Given that Rubio has been the target of the overwhelming proportion of attack ads thus far this cycle, I found this to be surprising. Rubio’s policy section was also by far the most specific (and lengthiest) of the three candidates.

Trump

Total speech length: 43:43

Total time spent attacking his primary opponents: 4:43 (11%)

Total time spent attacking Democrats: 0 (0%)

Total time spent on self-promotion: 24:59 (57%)

Total time spent on policy: 13:32 (31%)

Additional notes: The sum total of Trump’s attacks on Democrats came in the opening seconds of his speech when he made an offhanded reference to “can you imagine if we had to have another 4 years of Obama? And Hillary might be even worse.” Later in the speech, he said “Obama is the worst negotiator I’ve ever seen, except when he’s negotiating with Republicans, and then he’s the best negotiator I’ve ever seen.” Those were the only negative comments Trump made about a Democrat during the course of his speech. He also is the only one of the three candidates who mentioned any of his primary opponents by name, engaging in a relatively lengthy diatribe about Jeb Bush (for some reason) and another about Ted Cruz.

Conclusion:

It’s pretty obvious that the media is actually capturing Trump’s schtick pretty accurately, which is that he spends most of the time talking about himself, some smaller portion of the time talking about “policy” in vague ways, and the remainder of the time attacking his fellow Republicans. I have been watching Republican stump speeches my entire life and it was jarring to see one that included so little material about Democrats at all.

It’s especially bizarre since Trump is the unquestioned frontrunner. Any other candidate at this point in the race would be pretending that his Republican rivals did not exist, and gearing up his general election attack against Hillary and/or Bernie. This not only would help for the general election, but also would cement an air of inevitability about Trump as the nominee.

I don’t know what Trump’s motives are for engaging in this tactic (although I have my theories) but it’s just patently false that he’s out there leveling the most effective attacks against liberals you’ve ever seen. Not only is he not leveling effective attacks, he’s not leveling attacks at all. The only people Trump is interested in attacking right now is other Republicans.

[Isara]

"I don’t know what Trump’s motives are for engaging in this tactic ... but it’s just patently false that he’s out there leveling the most effective attacks against liberals you’ve ever seen. Not only is he not leveling effective attacks, he’s not leveling attacks at all. The only people Trump is interested in attacking right now is other Republicans."

[Isara]

Presidential Candidates Comparison (Cruz vs. Rubio vs. Trump)

Please click on the pictures at the top of the columns for more details on the ratings of the candidates.

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More at Conservative Review: https://www.conservativereview.com/2016-presidential-candidates

[sparklite2]

It’s the primary season, and attacking Republican rivals is how it works. Get back to me when Trump’s the nominee and tell me who he’s attacking then.

[EnigmaticAnomaly]

Yay! Isara's TWISTER board graphic makes an appearance again! Oh joy...

Such settled "science".../s

[GodGunsGuts]

Trump is a political music man, and he is blindly followed by panicked conservatives and populists who have lost their heads and who have lost their nerve.

[RoosterRedux]

The only people Trump is interested in attacking right now is other Republicans

Why would Trump fight the Rats in the Primary season?

[true believer forever]

"I don't know what Trump's motives are for engaging in this tactic ... but it's just patently false that he's out there leveling the most effective attacks against liberals you've ever seen. Not only is he not leveling effective attacks, he's not leveling attacks at all. The only people Trump is interested in attacking right now is other Republicans."

Trump has been asked this question several times by the media and hostile republicans. He has consistently given the same answer that right now he is focused on this battle between him and the other candidates and he will go full bore Clinton once he is the nominee. When trump says full bore he means full bore.

[FreeReign]

Why would Trump fight the Rats in the Primary season?

Was that sarcasm?

[Calpublican]

He’s vulgar loud and angry and a great salesman.

[dware]

Is he running against the dummycrats already? I thought he was in a good, heated contest within the GOP at the moment.

[Sybeck1]

This Leon Wolf cat is gonna need a straight jacket. Trump is living in his brain rent free

[vette6387]

“The only people Trump is interested in attacking right now is other Republicans.”

Well Isara, you've finally “hit on” Trump's strategy. Even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while. Now, back to your boring “fake charts” to take up FR bandwidth!

[jobim]

Doctor, there's spots before my eyes.

Here - try these glasses.

Oh yes! The spots are much clearer now!

The continuing lecture series from Conservative Review, exclusively made for the inhabitants of the CruZone.

[stratboy]

More tripe from Wretched State. No thanks. I will not give Erick Erickson any hits.

[SubMareener]

Oh Noes! Trump is done!

[stratboy]

Try listening to his daily drive home show if you can stomach it. I stopped after he became an advocate for increasing taxes.

[tanknetter]

So this is only looking at stump speeches, not things like press conferences and media interviews?

That kind of selective methodology omits the attacks that Trump IS making on Hillary, the most important one being his broadside against her for enabling Bill’s misogyny.

[gg188]

Dude, stop spamming us with that. You've been spamming us with that for months. It's disrespectful and childish.

Everyone knows that CR=GOPe, Washington Cartel Establishment.

[alloysteel]

76 Trombones, from “the Music Man”

Seventy-six trombones led the big parade
With a hundred and ten cornets close at hand.
They were followed by rows and rows of the finest virtuo-
Sos, the cream of ev’ry famous band.

Seventy-six trombones played the counter part.
while one hundred and ten cornets played the year.
they modestly took my place as the one and only bass as I ompa ompa up and down the square

There were copper bottom tympani in horse platoons
Thundering, thundering louder than before.
Double bell euphoniums and big bassoons,
Each bassoon having it’s big, fat say!

There were fifty mounted cannon in the battery
Thundering, thundering louder than before
Clarinets of ev’ry size
And trumpeters who’d improvise
A full octave higher than the score!

[DannyTN]

To the contrary. I distinctly remember Trump attacking Linda Graham, Rand Paul (Kook not liberal), Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, Rubio, and the GOPe for the trade deal and budget deal.