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 ...
Hillery's girl friend Huma will probably be thrown to the wolves as a parting insult by Obama to get the FBI to leave Hillery alone.
One of the things that perhaps might lend credence to Trump possibly winning some of those states is the number of ‘normal’ dems that think he might be able to do it. I was surprised when I listened to NPR and a lot of callers were scared of Trump actually beating Hillary because of that. Of course there are also many on the dem side that hope it is Trump because they actually think he is so beatable. So who knows, but it’s not like they have consensus about it.
Freegards
Well, it sounds pretty clear to me that one or more aides knowingly, and repeatedly, lifted language from highly classified documents, pasted it into unclassifed emails, and sent that to Hillary over an unclassified, personal email system. I think the whoever did that gets nailed. But they probably won’t indict Hillary as the recipient.
Ah, yes. Donald Trump - the pro-Planned Parenthood, pro-LGBT, TWO Corinthians “Cultural” Warrior.
I had hopes for Cruz until I learned of his origins, he is NOT a natural born citizen, he KNOWS he is NOT a natural born citizen but pretends to believe he is so I have no confidence in him at all.
Reagan's biggest hurdle to overcome was that people thought of him as too "scary/extreme". So even though Carter was not popular, they were hesitant to support him. But Reagan ran a very smart general election campaign intended to show voters that he really wasn't all that freaky, and would be responsible. His optimism and non-insulting humor really helped that, as exemplified by his somewhat understated, chuckling "there you go again" line to Carter in the debate.
But I just haven't seen any evidence that Trump is capable of doing the same "ratcheting back/calming" thing that Reagan did so well. So as I said, someone's got to keep him and his Twittering fingers under control if he's going to have a shot.
Everything you had said I find plausible.
But I also kind of find it plausible that his complete twitter weirdness and crudeness is actually a benefit, depending on how mad everyone who is going to bother to vote in the general actually is. I can see a lot of folks maybe thinking ‘hey he has pulled back, I like when he was outraging everyone and making them clutch their pearls, so maybe he is just like everyone else, I’ll just not vote again.’ Do you think the average voter cares enough about that crudeness stuff as much as they did in 1980? Maybe, especially the women thing. But the ones that never got involved before, and are only in now to vote Trump? I don’t know.
Freegards
I'm hoping that we can put aside all the hurt feelings engendered by the primary, and consolidate around the candidate that wins it.
I think that even if Cruz loses this primary, he will have a significant role to play in the future of the party anyway.
We will need a candidate 8 years from now, and I dare say he may be very well situated at that point.
That would be true if NY had an open primary permitting crossover voting. They don’t.
Why should we? Gary Forbes doesn’t work for or represent the Trump campaign.
It would be like blaming Cruz for what some of his crackpot supporters post here.
Nationally, if you drain 10% of the black vote from Democrats, you win. If Trump takes 25% of the black vote, he wins outright. As for the Unions of New York, their leadership may urge them to vote for Hillary, but i'm pretty sure a significant chunk of them will ignore that and vote for Trump.
Trump resonates among the former Reagan Democrats in a manner that Hillary simply cannot. I see Trump picking up a huge swath of the New York and Police unions despite the Union Leadership's best efforts to the contrary.
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.
But nobody ever before had the ability to put a media focus on it in the manner that Trump can. That makes all the difference.
Where have you seen those estimates, and on what are those estimates based?
Too much water under the bridge for me to go find that now, but I can give you a proxy example of it.
Those two represent an enthusiasm from Black voters that I don't see Hillary acquiring. I've seen other prominent black voters supporting Trump, and among Republican candidates that is almost unprecedented.
After what i've seen over the last six months, I take it as a given that Trump will get a far greater percentage of the Black vote than a Republican candidate normally acquires. The Democrats simply cannot win without their Usual 90-95% of the black vote. They just cannot.
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.
It has evidence behind it, I just don't have the ability to show you all the evidence I have seen in forming my opinion on this. It consists of many things, and not all of which can be condensed into easily demonstrable numbers.
Part of my evidence is my own personal knowledge of demographic tendencies. Both Blacks and Latinos tend to prefer strong male leadership figures to female leaders. Whites do too, but whites tend to be more willing to indulge in egalitarian impulses when it comes to females, so it is harder to predict, but I think a male candidate will have an automatic advantage even among white voters.
I think the left would have to do a massive sales job to overcome this natural tendency.
Giuliani was a Republican and he won in New York. Trump is a Native Son, and he knows how to fight Brooklyn style. Hillary is an incompetent hateful screech bag who is a demonstrably dishonest liar. Trump is going to stomp her into the mud in a New York contest.
If Trump is the nominee, He will take New York. If Cruz is the nominee, Hillary will take New York, but Cruz will still win nationally.
Painfully honest markomalley... you're right on one important level - "These are the times that try men's souls." And victory might be in defeat...
I don't think that's likely. I think the people who have been so enthusiastic about the guy aren't going to not vote just because they see him toning it down a bit for the general election.
Do you think the average voter cares enough about that crudeness stuff as much as they did in 1980?Maybe, especially the women thing. But the ones that never got involved before, and are only in now to vote Trump? I don’t know.
I know a lot of "mainstream" Republican voters who are really turned off by that stuff, and may well sit out. Male and female.
My view is a bit different. I really don't mind occasional crudeness. I spent a bunch of years in the Marines and have heard -- and said -- all of it before. What really bothers me with him are two things. The first is his open condemnation of the GOP, which I think really helps the Democrats down-ticket. And the second is what I see as the deliberate, extreme dumbing down of the campaign. Conservative values (limited government, self-reliance, etc.) really only have a chance of catching on if people actually think about them. On a purely emotional level, the "soak the rich" and class warfare, "us against them" attitudes will win every time. And I see Trump as stoking some of those fires that may burn things he and his supporters did not expect.
So personally, I really need to see him put a sock in it for a bit, or I won't vote for him.
You are telling me that these gib me dat Sanders voters to the left of Hillary are going to swing over to Trump?
Lay off the crack pipe.
An excellent article that based on the comments here seems to have fallen on deaf ears. The right has no chance if it doesn’t defeat PC; eventually conservatism itself will be deemed hate speech and banned from the public square. Trump is only GOP candidate who’s even battling within this arena.
I don't think it has fallen on deaf ears, and I think it's pretty clear that PC must be fought. It's just that fighting PC isn't enough on its own. If you combat PC but end up strengthening the underlying class warfare rhetoric of the left, have you really gained anything at all?
Or to put it differently, there’s a case that he’s nothing more than a Rockefeller Republican with a foul mouth.
As a Cruz guy, I really hope you are right.
This is long, and great and worth the time.
Read it all, you’ll be glad you did.
Thanks
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