Posted on 04/20/2016 5:54:03 AM PDT by markomalley
A candidate like Donald Trump should be impossible. A loud, unscripted, hard-edged reality show-style candidate with exceedingly flexible positions on many hot-button issues would be laughed out of contention for the Republican nomination in other years. A man whose serial gaffes and willingness to stick his thumb in the eye of the gatekeepers of good taste would be cooked before he stepped onto the debate stage. An utterly inexperienced politician, who describes our rights and privileges as particular to us as Americans rather than universal moral mandates, would be rejected by both parties at any other time in the modern era.
But in Trump’s case, these supposedly disqualifying positions and attributes have proven to be the basis for unexpected success. Why? In part, it is because he corrects massive ideological failures by the Right, which have enabled unmitigated cultural overreach by the Left, eliminating the social and cultural basis that permits a Western liberal order to exist.
For decades, the institutional Right has ceded American culture to the Left, in spite of many voices who pointed out ample areas where the Right could carve out a countercultural movement against leftist domination, or even co-opt some of modern culture for itself.
The cause of this is partially a denial of how swiftly the culture has moved Left, leaving the institutional Right under the false impression it is still fighting the culture war of the 90’s and early 2000s. The Right’s obsession with 90’s-era battles over sex, drugs, and rock and roll is more than just an anachronism: it represents a self-inflicted wound that ignored how the Left used the culture to repeatedly make the case for their vision of an ideal society. We now know the Left won that war, and in this context, Trump represents...
(Excerpt) Read more at thefederalist.com ...
What does that have to do with him grabbing onto the Establishment's support? Wasn't your whole point that somehow grabbing onto support from the Establishment disqualifying?
So which is it? Does accepting establishment support disqualify you or not?
Cause, you know.... Reagan did it.
But...I did ask you in my initial post for the factual basis for your comment:
And that's based on ....what, exactly?
And your only response was that you lived in New York. But so do more than 20 million other people, all with their own opinion as to who would win that matchup. I've pointed to hard facts -- actual numbers of votes cast, as well as exit polls.
If you've got any evidence that half of Bernie's support will got to Trump, I'd love to hear it.
What I meant was that Cruz has claimed to be an “outsider” he has said he was anti establishment all along...He showed that he wasn’t by coming out of the closet to bed with the “establishment elites” when he saw he could not beat Trump...
In my opinion, that makes him a two-faced fraud...
GO TRUMP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I missed the memo. Where did Trump say he was part of the Republican party? And the bunch of drunken frat boys that call themselves a party oppose Trump at their own peril. There is a moral lesson from Colorado. It isn't about rules. It is about identity. The GOP is supposed to be a political party, which means that it is supposed to represent the interests of a sizeable block of voters. Otherwise it is, as some have tried to assert, a private club, but as such needs to be bereft of all political power, legal favoritism and access to or control over public money.
Originally, but I think the term "Arkansas Hillary" is probably something of which the public is more aware.
I remember when Giuliani was running for President, at one point Hillary went to New York to give a speech, and Giuliani (being Mayor at the time) Ran up the Arkansas flag at City Hall.
It was a brilliant masterstroke. It reminded people of where she came to national prominence, and subtly hinted that she wasn't up to New York social or intelligence standards.
Giuliani knew how to play the political game.
Yes, we should constantly keep mentioning that Hillary is from Arkansas. (And ignore the fact that she's actually from Chicago.)
Do you have any objective facts to support the opinion that Trump can win the nomination in a state where Democrat registrants outnumber Republicans by 2-1, and where the RCP average shows that Hillary would beat Trump by 20 points?
Cruz is still anti-establishment. The establishment has simply thrown in with him in an pathetic effort to maintain some semblance of influence. This is exactly the same thing they did with Reagan.
When they saw Reagan was going to win anyways, they decided to throw their support behind him.
Sounds good to me...
Giuliani is a very smart man...I think Trump will remember him when he appoints cabinet members...
Excellent post, lormand!
He may still act anti but by him accepting them, he is now OWNED by the establishment. in my opinion....
Trump scares the left because he absolutely will not be silenced. The usually Leftist attacks of ‘racist, sexist, unevolved, ignorant’ leave no mark.
The tool of political correctness is brushed off. Protests are yawn-inducing, and 24/7 media attacks ignored.
He has not yet used a bully pulpit to push his agenda. This is all on defense, and he continues to be strong.
Sitting in the White House, selecting his Supreme Court Justice Ted Cruz, and what will the Left do that they haven’t already done without success? Nothing. They have nothing.
Trump is the only person strong against all of these other forces. Nobody else can do it or wants to do it.
This business of politics is not precision engineering. You can't really produce "proof" that something will happen a certain way. Not even the polls get it correct much of the time.
I'm basing my prediction on the fact that i've kept tabs on the doings of Hillary since 1992, and know that once her opponents unloads on her with all the corruption and scandals that are inextricably linked to her, it will turn off the vast bulk of normal people.
Also, Trump has been a Democrat most of his life, and I see most New York Democrats as thinking he really still is, but is just running as a Republican because it gives him a better chance of winning.
I think most New Yorkers will look at the two, and conclude that Trump better represents their idea of what a President should look and behave like than does Obnoxious screeching scandal plagued Hillary.
Certainly Trump enjoys a much greater level of support from Blacks than have previous Republican candidates, and the estimates i've seen place him at around 25% of the Black vote. That alone will win him the election nationwide, and it will go along ways to winning the election just in New York.
I am a Cruz supporter, and I would rather have Cruz as the nominee, but my objective opinion is that if Trump gets the nomination, he will win the election in a massive landslide. Possibly the biggest ever landslide in US History.
I think Cruz would also win the nationwide election, but not by as much of a margin as would Trump.
Trump is going to win, and the GOPe will either join him or risk being ostracized and left out of government. My guess is that the DC GOPe is so compromised, most will end up ‘retiring’ because they will not be able to deliver the goods in the budget any more.
Days of blanket spending end with Trump.
I don't think so. I think the establishment is grasping at straws, and I think they are only embracing Cruz to save what little face they have left.
I think he will be less owned by the establishment than was Reagan, who ended up making far too many deals with the Democrat opposition.
Meh, that’s not an honest inquiry when it’s buried in a bunch of poorly-founded assertions.
There’s a whole host of reasons why Trump could very well beat Hillary in NY, and I’ll rattle off a few:
- NY does vote for Republicans of the non-social-crusader type, of which Trump is. See Pataki and D’Amato, both of whom were elected more than once.
- NY’s perverse election laws made it so any Dems who wanted to vote Trump had to switch parties way back in October, as did any independents who wanted to vote for either Trump or Sanders.
- Trump is a cultural institution in NY, which Clinton is an obvious carpetbagger.
- Trump’s less anti-American foreign and trade policies have a lot of appeal to Democrat anti-Hillary voters
- The GOP primary was known well ahead of time to be completely non-competitive, which dramatically depresses turnout, while the opposite was true on the Dem side.
- Trump spent almost no money in the state, less than any other candidate on the ballot, and still not only pulled out a landslide victory, he exceeded expectations in the process.
- Independents get to vote in a general election.
- Clinton’s favorability numbers are at historic lows, and with 100% name recognition and a long public record she has little chance to improve them. People really don’t like her, and the longer they are exposed to her, the more they don’t like her.
- The FBI is likely to recommend prosecution of Clinton.
I could add more but this is plenty enough to form a solid basis for considering NY to be a battleground state come November.
I’m hoping this is a moot discussion because of a Trump win....
First, when you exclude the vast majority of minorities who will vote for a bucket of warm spit as long as it has a "D" after it's name, then add in the public sector employees (other than cops/fire), and all the lefty college students and Manhatten-ites, the number of "normal people" shrinks dramatically.
But second, people have been saying that about her since 1992, and it hasn't worked. They've tried it in the Senate race, they've tried it since she's been Secretary of State, and none of it has stuck enough to wipe her out.
Certainly Trump enjoys a much greater level of support from Blacks than have previous Republican candidates, and the estimates i've seen place him at around 25% of the Black vote.
Where have you seen those estimates, and on what are those estimates based? Because if you're going off poll numbers, then you've got to take the good with the bad, and the RCP average has Trump losing by 20 to Hillary.
I'm not saying he can't win. I'm just saying that him winning "easily" is a pretty damn bold statement that doesn't seem to have a lot of evidence behind it.
The winning easily comes from running a very successful and pragmatic businessman in an election year where the economy is tanking hard. Hillery tied herself to Obama’s policies while Trump is running on destroying the entire globalist system that's gutting our country.
A good read! Trump can do it in ways that other GOP people can not. We need a person who can shake things up—someone to bring down the house of corruption and challenge the people to build a new America. Caan he do this? I hope so, I pray so-—the old ways are not working. The liberal fantasy land exists only in the minds of the left. The liberals need to be challenged, exposed, and reformed. I believe Trump is up to the task.
For Trump to have a decent shot at winning, three things must happen:
1) Someone has to keep a muzzle on him so he doesn't say more dumb things;
2) He is going to have to try to woo/appease the concerns of the party as a whole, including picking a ticket-balancing VP (like Martinez) to help him with that.
3) Hillary, or at least one or more of her top aides, must get indicted.
If he can unite the party and present himself as a less-scary than expected alternative to Hillary (which was Reagan's big trick), and the emails end up having a sting, we might pull it off.
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