Author Topic: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?  (Read 108234 times)

JoshuaD

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Title says it all. I'd be happy to see Senator Sanders win the Democratic Nomination, but I don't have an opinion on who I want to win on the right, mostly from lack of exposure and research. I've been waiting patiently for Trump to fade away and a serious candidate to take the lead on the right, but it hasn't happened yet. Anyone have a favorite?

AI Wessex

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #1 on: January 21, 2016, 01:37:28 AM »
It's a trick question for some of us.  If I hated vegetables and you asked me which was my favorite, I'd have a hard time.  When I was a kid I would gag on lima beans.  Most of the current crop make me feel that way.  The least horrific choice for me would be Bush.  He's not good, just less puke-worthy than any of the others, but I don't think he really wants the job, my next least horrible choice would be...nope, can't get there.

AI Wessex

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #2 on: January 21, 2016, 01:53:54 AM »
More seriously (slightly, since it *is* a clown car, after all), I think Cruz is going to tank.  The reason I am thinking that might happen is that other "establishment" Republicans are ganging up on him very openly.  Besides the Governor of Iowa, John McCain and Bob Dole (remember him?  Iowans do and they *love* him) are pretty free with their disapproval.  As ardently as he asserts his "Christian values", even Christian ministers are beginning to say he is more like a TV evangelist than a principled believer. 

If he indeed sinks, the history of the GOP in recent elections is that you never bob back up to the surface.  Carson is done, and several others died before they had hardly been born.  I can't quite figure which of the remaining clowns takes the baton, but my hunch is that it will be Rubio soon, but that the cooler heads will indeed come around to Bush.  The only way he can get the nomination is if there is a brokered convention.  With all the splintering, back biting and sameness, I don't think anyone -- even Trump -- will have enough delegates to win on the first ballot.  The way these things work is that if Trump falls just one delegate short, all of his delegates are released after that ballot to vote for whoever they individually wish to.

Watch for popcorn stocks to rise in August...

Fenring

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #3 on: January 21, 2016, 02:37:53 AM »
Al, your prediction is a grotesque horror show. Hoping for Bush to win? Bite your tongue.

Pete at Home

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #4 on: January 21, 2016, 07:55:16 AM »
More seriously (slightly, since it *is* a clown car, after all), I think Cruz is going to tank.  The reason I am thinking that might happen is that other "establishment" Republicans are ganging up on him very openly.  Besides the Governor of Iowa, John McCain and Bob Dole (remember him?  Iowans do and they *love* him) are pretty free with their disapproval.  As ardently as he asserts his "Christian values", even Christian ministers are beginning to say he is more like a TV evangelist than a principled believer. 

If he indeed sinks, the history of the GOP in recent elections is that you never bob back up to the surface.  Carson is done, and several others died before they had hardly been born.  I can't quite figure which of the remaining clowns takes the baton, but my hunch is that it will be Rubio soon, but that the cooler heads will indeed come around to Bush.  The only way he can get the nomination is if there is a brokered convention.  With all the splintering, back biting and sameness, I don't think anyone -- even Trump -- will have enough delegates to win on the first ballot.  The way these things work is that if Trump falls just one delegate short, all of his delegates are released after that ballot to vote for whoever they individually wish to.

Watch for popcorn stocks to rise in August...

That was fun to read. :)  getting your groove back

I haven't followed republicans since debates last summer, but my favorite was Florina. Is she still running?
« Last Edit: January 21, 2016, 07:57:58 AM by Pete at Home »

ScottF

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #5 on: January 21, 2016, 09:53:46 AM »
Fiorina would be my pick as well, with Rubio being the 2nd choice. That said, watching Trump on the stump has been the most fun I've ever had watching politics, he's gold.

NobleHunter

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #6 on: January 21, 2016, 11:10:33 AM »
Slate (I know, I know) had an article that Kasich might on his way up to second place in one or both of the two early states. If true, it will boost the entertainment value of the primaries immensely.

AI Wessex

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #7 on: January 21, 2016, 11:14:25 AM »
Fiorina would be my pick as well, with Rubio being the 2nd choice. That said, watching Trump on the stump has been the most fun I've ever had watching politics, he's gold.
Fiorina is still running for Churchill's office, but I would speculate that with all of her military experience she thinks "carpet bomb" means getting rid of fleas on the living room rug.  Advice to Carly (and Cruz), don't do that, innocent pets will be killed.  I have to agree about Trump, that in an Andrew Dice Clay sort of way he's excruciatingly funny to watch.  Now that he's got Sarah as a sidekick the merriment threatens to be non-stop.

JoshuaD

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #8 on: January 21, 2016, 01:16:33 PM »
Al, your prediction is a grotesque horror show. Hoping for Bush to win? Bite your tongue.

We could do a lot worse than Bush vs. Sanders.

JoshuaD

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #9 on: January 21, 2016, 01:18:50 PM »
Ugh. I was reading over Governor Bush's wikipedia entry, and whatever, I don't love him but I could hold my nose. Then I got to this:

Quote
Bush opposes net neutrality


 :(

Fenring

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #10 on: January 21, 2016, 02:30:50 PM »
Al, your prediction is a grotesque horror show. Hoping for Bush to win? Bite your tongue.

We could do a lot worse than Bush vs. Sanders.

It's funny, because Bush comes off in the debates as being one of the more composed, sane candidates. And yet I know for a fact he's just as extreme if not more than most of them. And the difference between him and them is that while they bluster to try to show off, he instead remains more quiet and would actually do the scary things without making a fuss. Half of them are bags of hot air, while he's a wolf in sheep's clothing. I can only thank the stars that he's a crap debater, but we should never forget that the debates only give us a small slice of what the candidate would be like in office. It's not Bush the geeky debater that worries me - it's the real man and what I believe he would do in office.

I can't guess whether Bush would fare better against Sanders than someone like Trump or Rubio would, but on the chance Sanders would eventually lose to the GOP candidate I'd prefer to hedge my bet in advance and not have Bush win the candidacy in the first place. While I do think a couple of the candidates might actually be crazy and therefore worse than Bush (Christie, Fiorina), I would prefer literally any of the other candidates to him.

JoshuaD

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #11 on: January 21, 2016, 04:01:02 PM »
You would prefer Trump to Bush?  ???

Fenring

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #12 on: January 21, 2016, 04:23:27 PM »
You would prefer Trump to Bush?  ???

Yeah. Trump is a wildcard whose acts in office I couldn't predict. I might like them or hate them. But I can predict what Bush would do and I would not like it.

AI Wessex

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #13 on: January 21, 2016, 05:02:25 PM »
He's already said some of what he'll do.  Do you agree with that?  He's going to force Mexico to build a wall stretching across our entire border, deny Muslims entry into this country, wipe out ISIS, impose harsh business rules against China, and after lunch....

Fenring

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #14 on: January 21, 2016, 05:18:58 PM »
He's already said some of what he'll do.  Do you agree with that?  He's going to force Mexico to build a wall stretching across our entire border, deny Muslims entry into this country, wipe out ISIS, impose harsh business rules against China, and after lunch....

You do know that a President can't actually do most of these things by fiat, right? The majority of what all the GOP and Democrat candidates say they want to do as President are not actually things for which they have executive authority, but rather are positions they'll push in whatever way they can. Topics like foreign policy and military strategy, along with domestic law enforcement, are under the President's direct domain and so statements about this by the candidates should be taken seriously because they can do it. So far Sanders is the only candidate in either party honest enough to say that he can't actually just *do* all the things he wants to get done, but will require support from the people in order to pressure the Congress to get it done.

So when Trump says he'll build a wall what he really means is he'll push the Congress to work on it and allocate funds for it. If they don't do it then it's over. The same goes for most of the things you mention other than wiping out ISIS, which I guess he could try to do if he wanted to.

So there's a big difference between knowing what a President would like to see happen, ideally, and what he will actually do while in office. The two are seldom the same and people tend to be amazed when a President actually gets something big done that he said he wanted to. The things that concern me most are foreign policy and military matters, since that's one area where a bad President really could mess things up and cost America a lot of problems.

I get the feeling that your fear of what Trump would do in office bespeaks your view of the Presidency in general, which is that of having far more powers than the President actually has. I don't know if this distortion is a Democrat/GOP thing, since Democrats apparently want the President and the government empowered whereas the GOP at least claims they want the opposite (although I don't believe them much of the time). Maybe you're projecting what could happen if a President with the powers you'd like him to have came to power and was a nutjob? That's a good argument for the Presidency not having those powers, then!
« Last Edit: January 21, 2016, 05:21:59 PM by Fenring »

D.W.

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #15 on: January 21, 2016, 05:54:40 PM »
There's also the possibility Trump would just resign immediately after being sworn in and tell America he just "punked" us all and we should be ashamed.  See how easy it was for a wealthy media personality to steal an election?

Greg Davidson

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #16 on: January 23, 2016, 05:20:47 PM »
D.W., the line I heard about Trump is that we shouldn't worry if he wins, because he would just leave us for a younger, prettier country in a few years

AI Wessex

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #17 on: January 24, 2016, 10:33:58 AM »
Does anyone here like Cruz?  I won't waste the effort to comment on him unless somebody cares.

Fenring

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #18 on: January 24, 2016, 11:29:45 AM »
Does anyone here like Cruz?  I won't waste the effort to comment on him unless somebody cares.

He's remarkably lucid on some points - more so even than the others. But on other topics he goes bonkers. In a sense he has a very uneven approach to topics, and in terms of comportment I'd call him 'sleazy.'

JoshuaD

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #19 on: January 25, 2016, 04:34:38 PM »
Does anyone here like Cruz?  I won't waste the effort to comment on him unless somebody cares.

I don't, but I can pretend to, if that'll get you to post your thoughts. :)  A few friends like him, I haven't thought about him very much yet. All I know is that he has said a handful of things which turn me off. (That an atheist wouldn't be fit to be president, and that we ought to bomb isis until we find out if the desert glows.)

AI Wessex

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #20 on: January 25, 2016, 08:14:15 PM »
Well, here are a couple from the past few days to chew on (remember to spit):

Cruz's family health insurance
Quote

Last week Republican presidential candidate Ted "T-Bone" Cruz complained in New Hampshire that he was uninsured because of Barack Hussein Obama's sinister Affordable Care Act.

    "I’ll tell you, you know who one of those millions of Americans is who’s lost their health care because of Obamacare? That would be me," Cruz told a Manchester, New Hampshire, audience. "I don’t have health care right now."

    Cruz explained that he had purchased an individual policy and that Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas had canceled all of its individual policies in Texas, effective Dec. 31.

This seemed at the time like a pretty bogus grievance given that Cruz had five months' warning that his policy was expiring, has access to other convenient coverage options, and is so wealthy that he could probably pay almost any health care cost out of pocket anyway. But it turns out that even those critiques of his comments gave Cruz too much credit for honesty: He actually had health insurance coverage the whole time.
He may not have realized it because he stored the policy papers with his Canadian passport.

Cruz is a great guy, the kind of guy you want to smother with a pillow
Quote
With the bromance between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump over, the mogul turned GOP front-runner has begun trash talking the senator from Texas. "He's a nasty guy," Trump recently huffed. "Nobody likes him. Nobody in Congress likes him. Nobody likes him anywhere once they get to know him." For members of the politerati, this was no revelation. As Cruz has quickly climbed the political ladder, he has left a long line of associates who complain, without much prompting, that he is an insufferable schmuck.
That's the first paragraph, but it gets better...

Then there is this quiz.  Which of the following are true:
Quote
    Did one of Ted's former pastors say that "he pretty much memorized the Bible, but I think he did it mostly so that he could humiliate kids who got quotes wrong"?
    Did a former veteran of the 2000 George Bush campaign says that "the quickest way for a meeting to end would be for Ted to come in"?
    Did Ted's wife once admit that Ted "can be a bit of a jackass sometimes, but at least you know where he's coming from"?
    Did Bob Dole say that Ted "doesn't have any friends in Congress"?
    Did Mitch McConnell respond that "I'm pretty sure Dole is wrong, but I can't figure out who his one friend is"?
    Did a John McCain advisor say that his boss "*censored*ing hates Cruz"?
    Did President Obama once get overheard asking Joe Biden "what in God's name is that *censored*'s problem, anyway"?
    Did Rep. Peter King say say about a possible Ted Cruz nomination, "I hope that day never comes; I will jump off that bridge when we come to it"?
    Did John Boehner quip that Ted was "a great American resource; when we threatened to deport him back to Canada, they suddenly agreed to drop their softwood lumber subsidies"?
    Did Lindsey Graham say the choice between Trump and Cruz was like having to choose between "death by being shot or poisoning"?
    Did a former high school teacher just shake his head and close his door when a reporter knocked and asked what he thought about Ted?
    Did a former law school acquaintance say that when she agreed to carpool with Cruz, "We hadn't left Manhattan before he asked my IQ"?
    Did Ted's torts professor remark that "I don't think there was a single question I asked the entire year where Ted didn't instantly raise his hand and practically wet his pants pleading to be called on"?
    Did his Princeton freshman roommate call Ted "a nightmare of a human being" and claim he would get invited to parties hosted by seniors because the upperclassmen pitied him?
    Did a college girlfriend of Ted's say "he was pretty smart, but sex with him once was enough—if you can call it sex"?
    Is it true that in interviews with four of Ted's college acquaintances, "four independently offered the word 'creepy'"?
Answers here.

I liked Lindsay Graham's answer when asked which of Trump or Cruz he preferred.  He answered, "It's all like being shot or poisoned. I think you get the same result, whether it's quick or it takes a long time..."

Pete at Home

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #21 on: January 25, 2016, 08:40:28 PM »
Sounds like a survey written by a creepy dick.  Critiques of a presidential candidate's sex technique? Stalk much?

AI Wessex

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #22 on: January 26, 2016, 05:48:08 AM »
Sounds like a survey written by a creepy dick.  Critiques of a presidential candidate's sex technique? Stalk much?
Is that the only thing that catches your eye in all of that post (including the link content)?

D.W.

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #23 on: January 26, 2016, 09:39:13 AM »
With a nickname like "T-bone" he can't be all bad. 

Gaoics79

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #24 on: January 26, 2016, 09:44:52 AM »
This is the first election campaign where I am leaning toward a candidate for entertainment value. A Trump versus Sanders match would be a CNN producer's wet dream I'll wager.

Regarding Cruz, it strikes me as a bad sign when your colleagues are universal in their abject hatred of you. Cruz tries to spin this as being an establishment versus outislder thing, but it seems clear that he's just plain reviled and it is personal. Not a good sign!

As for the rest, Graham seemed the most cogent to me, even though he had no chance and I disagreed with him fundamentally on his war stance. Christy comes across as a liveable doofus. As for Trump, he has been a clown thus far, but a shockingly effective one. His skill at trolling the media has been remarkable. I have no idea what his real policies would be but I wouldn't count him out or assume he can't win in a general election. The guy has been immensely successful thus far laying waste to every opponent and defying all conventional logic as to how campaigns are supposed to be run.

Pete at Home

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #25 on: January 26, 2016, 09:49:28 AM »
Sounds like a survey written by a creepy dick.  Critiques of a presidential candidate's sex technique? Stalk much?
Is that the only thing that catches your eye in all of that post (including the link content)?

Didn't follow the link content. Most of the 16 questions were more Dickish than the man described and a few like the one I cited were stalking. I strongly disliked Cruz in the debates but if he has become the rough beast of losers that write columns like that, maybe I should give him another look.

DJQuag

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #26 on: January 26, 2016, 09:56:09 AM »
Pretty much everything that has been uncovered and evertone who has been talked to have agreed on one thing - Ted Cruz is an *censored*, and not just in your normal politician way.

AI Wessex

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #27 on: January 26, 2016, 10:29:34 AM »
This is the first election campaign where I am leaning toward a candidate for entertainment value. A Trump versus Sanders match would be a CNN producer's wet dream I'll wager.

Regarding Cruz, it strikes me as a bad sign when your colleagues are universal in their abject hatred of you. Cruz tries to spin this as being an establishment versus outislder thing, but it seems clear that he's just plain reviled and it is personal. Not a good sign!

As for the rest, Graham seemed the most cogent to me, even though he had no chance and I disagreed with him fundamentally on his war stance. Christy comes across as a liveable doofus. As for Trump, he has been a clown thus far, but a shockingly effective one. His skill at trolling the media has been remarkable. I have no idea what his real policies would be but I wouldn't count him out or assume he can't win in a general election. The guy has been immensely successful thus far laying waste to every opponent and defying all conventional logic as to how campaigns are supposed to be run.
You may be as surprised by this as much as I am, but for once I totally agree with you! :)

Pete at Home

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #28 on: January 26, 2016, 11:23:59 AM »
Sounds like a survey written by a creepy dick.  Critiques of a presidential candidate's sex technique? Stalk much?
Is that the only thing that catches your eye in all of that post (including the link content)?

No: I think this is all pretty shallow crap, and if I had posted it as cogent political argument I would feel embarrassed:

Quote
Did Ted's torts professor remark that "I don't think there was a single question I asked the entire year where Ted didn't instantly raise his hand and practically wet his pants pleading to be called on"?
    Did his Princeton freshman roommate call Ted "a nightmare of a human being" and claim he would get invited to parties hosted by seniors because the upperclassmen pitied him?
    Did a college girlfriend of Ted's say "he was pretty smart, but sex with him once was enough—if you can call it sex"?
    Is it true that in interviews with four of Ted's college acquaintances, "four independently offered the word 'creepy'"?

The other parts are cogent as authority worship, which I know you dig, but I don't.  I prefer to hear specific facts (as opposed to opinions) and make up my own mind.

The fact that this sort of tripe persuades the masses has caused me to lose enthusiasm for campaign finance reform.  If the masses are brainwashed into their opinions, armwrestling over who gets to do the brainwashing is not a fight I will hitch my horse to.  I'lol just plant my garden, do what I can to see the next generation taught to reject brainwashing question authority and think for themselves, and hope that democracy will one day become what it pretends to be.

And vote for Sanders.


AI Wessex

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #29 on: January 26, 2016, 07:49:51 PM »
Quote
Donald Trump said Tuesday that he "most likely" will not participate in Thursday night's FOX News-Google debate, citing the participation of "lightweight" Megyn Kelly as well as FOX's "wise-guy" press release poking fun at Trump's rhetoric.

"Let's see how much money FOX is going to make on the debate without me," he told reporters in Marshalltown, Iowa.

After the press conference, Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandoski told reporters that the real estate mogul "will not be participating in the Fox debate" and that it is "not under negotiation."
So, my question is if Trump's not there who gets to honk the horn in the clown car?

D.W.

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #30 on: January 26, 2016, 08:06:44 PM »
I think the car would have less passengers.   I got to believe dignity prevents some from conceding while Trump is still in the running.

Gaoics79

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #31 on: January 26, 2016, 09:10:27 PM »
Quote
I think the car would have less passengers.

Fewer passengers.

D.W.

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #32 on: January 26, 2016, 09:32:42 PM »
Thanks?

Yet I get a pass on "got to"?

AI Wessex

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #33 on: January 27, 2016, 04:12:56 AM »
Gotta.

D.W.

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #34 on: January 29, 2016, 10:39:54 AM »
Anyone's opinions shift after last night?  The reporting seemed to indicate there was more substance to the debate once a certain someone was absent.  However, most of the reporting was commenting on that absence or how the other candidates addressed it.   ::)

Wayward Son

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #35 on: January 29, 2016, 11:07:30 AM »
I actually found the debate more tolerable than the previous ones (in that I was able to watch it for more than 5 minutes without wanting to throw something at the screen :)).  The questions (for the 20 minutes I watched) seemed important, and about half the answers actually were about the question.  My view of the candidates actually went up a notch.

Of course, the Unintentional Irony Award goes to Chris Christie, who, in response to a question, spent his 3 minutes talking about how Hillary refused to answer questions, while not answering the one asked him. :D

AI Wessex

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #36 on: January 30, 2016, 08:44:52 AM »
Semi-seriously, I think it highlights the general attitude of several of the candidates that they don't have to answer no stinking question they don't want to.  After all, it's the press who's asking and they are even lower in the public's perception than the candidates. Fer chrissakes, they put a bimbo up there to ask questions!

Wayward Son

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #37 on: January 30, 2016, 10:53:23 AM »
It may go deeper than that.  It could be a sign of alpha-male dominance, of showing that Trump can and will dominate his opponents, even the press.  He is the invincible hero, the unbeatable winner.  Josh Marshall called it (somewhat rudely), his "bitch slap theory of politics."

Quote
When I first wrote about this a dozen years ago I called it the "bitch slap theory of politics." I'm no longer comfortable using that phrase. But I do think the heavily gendered, violent nature of that phrase is one of the only ways to really capture the nature of what's happening in these dramas.

Take Trump's evisceration of Jeb Bush.

Trump's comment about Jeb's being "weak", "low energy", "pitiful" ... these are demeaning and denigrating phrases. They seem frankly gross, with an emotional tenor we'd expect from street toughs or frat boys trash talking each other. It's raw and primal and all about dominating by denigrating. But what has really hurt Bush is not so much that Trump is calling him names. It's that Trump has used these attacks to demonstrate that Jeb is unable or unwilling to defend himself. Trump hits him and Jeb takes it. His responses are hapless and weak and generally meaningless. You probably barely remember them. The impact of this is not tied to Trump calling Bush "weak." Trump is engineering encounters that show that Bush is weak.

In an election dominated by national security, this kind of demonstration of power and dominance has a profound impact. That is why the 'Swift Boat' attacks in the 2004 presidential election were so devastating. Whether anybody really believed all these slurs and claims about John Kerry wasn't really the point. What was deadly was his seeming inability to defend himself...

Trump doesn't apologize. He hurts people and they go away. He says things that would kill a political mortal (ban members of an entire religion from entering the country) and yet he doesn't get hurt. Virtually everything Trump has done over the last six months, whether it's a policy proposal or personal attack, has driven home this basic point: Trump is strong. He does things other people can't.

This is why Trump has so shaken up and so dominated the GOP primary cycle, at least thus far. As I've said, this kind of dominance symbolism is pervasive in GOP politics. It's not new with Trump at all. Most successful Republican politicians speak this language. And yet somehow for most it is nonetheless a second language. But it's Trump's native language. I still believe it's rooted in the mix of the hyper-aggressive New York real estate world, his decades of immersion in the city's febrile tabloid culture and just being, at the most basic level, a bully. Wherever it comes from, he seems to intuitively get that for this constituency and at this moment just demonstrating that he gets his way, always, is all that really matters. Policy details, protecting the candidate through careful press releases and structured media opportunities ... none of that matters. Trump doesn't kiss babies. Babies kiss him. He doesn't have a billionaire backer; he is a billionaire. Trump doesn't ask for support. He just tells you that you need to stop being a loser and get on board.

After about an hour or so, I understand the debate moved past Trump and got down to actual policy questions.  But I think this is part of Trump's attraction to his supporters.  He's the Man.  He dominates everyone around him, even Fox News.  He has the power, and power attracts.
« Last Edit: January 30, 2016, 10:57:39 AM by Wayward Son »

AI Wessex

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #38 on: January 30, 2016, 12:47:30 PM »
Yes, he's the Man, and you're just a girly man.  Bullies do that until they get bitch-slapped enough themselves.  I wonder if his ego is big enough to survive the nuclear attacks that will be launched against him going forward. 

FWIW, I heard an interview with a reporter who has covered Iowa caucuses for many election cycles.  He pointed out that there is a huge difference in outcome if you measure voters, people who show up at campaign stops, likely voters and actual voters.  His opinion is that Trump wins hands down for the first three categories, but will lose to Cruz among actual voters.  For the campaign stop popularity, he's a spectacle, a celebrity, more a circus act than someone you might even think of to ask to lead you.

AI Wessex

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #39 on: January 31, 2016, 08:00:25 AM »
Ted Cruz is a good man.  His father thinks he is like Jesus, but if you live in Iowa and you're a Republican he wants you to know you are in VIOLATION of the law if you don't vote (for him, of course)!

Gaoics79

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #40 on: January 31, 2016, 08:17:28 PM »
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I wonder if his ego is big enough to survive the nuclear attacks that will be launched against him going forward. 

I'm amused that you are so confident that the same types of attacks that have utterly failed thus far are somehow going to work in the general election.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's very unlikely that he will prevail if he's the nominee due to demographic realities. But then again, it was also unlikely that he'd prevail in the first place and get as far as he's gotten. The definition of stupid is to keep making the same predictions based on the same assumptions that have proven wrong over and over.

I see things in the reverse of the article. Trump doesn't beat people by attacking or bullying them. He wins by provoking them into attacking him, whether it's the media or another candidate. He's a fantastic troll. He looks strong by taking their attacks and being unaffected. They just keep coming after him and declaring his demise and they keep breaking their teeth on him, over and over and over.

Part of this is due to the general anti establishment zeitgeist that he's tapping into, part of it is the way he skillfully manipulates the traditional media into ganging up on him in just the way he wants to antagonize his electorate, and part of it is his ability to sniff out the real wants of his target constituency, even what they're unlikely to say out loud or can't express because traditional media outlets won't give them a venue.

In terms of the general election, I'd agree that certain demographic realities will be a significant challenge for Trump. The Democrats are going to have an inherent edge in this contest, due to the degree the Republicans as a group (and Trump in particular) have antagonized on the non white population (Latinos!). But if there's a terrorist attack between now and the election, watch out - this is a shot in the arm to a guy like Trump. Against an amorphous weasel like a Hillary Clinton, Trump is going to take the advantage. I happen to think that Hillary is way weaker than she's getting credit for.

The more interesting contest for me would be a Bernie versus Trump. I actually think that in terms of personality, Bernie might be an anti Trump. I don't think he can be provoked into making the kind of self-destructive attacks that have helped Trump so far. Bernie also is a type of truthteller with a direct unpretentious style that will be very hard for Trump to undermine. Bernie's only weakness in such a contest would be his socialist political background, which is further left than the natural orientation of the core American electorate.

AI Wessex

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #41 on: January 31, 2016, 09:25:42 PM »
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I'm amused that you are so confident that the same types of attacks that have utterly failed thus far are somehow going to work in the general election.
I'm not, I'm wondering.  He leads with his chin but others are not trying nearly hard enough to faze him.  That will undoubtedly increase, especially if he wins the Iowa caucus.
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Trump doesn't beat people by attacking or bullying them. He wins by provoking them into attacking him, whether it's the media or another candidate.
I'm amused you don't see his insults and demeaning of others as attacks ;).  It's like saying if I steal your lunch it's just a provocation for you to punch me.
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Against an amorphous weasel like a Hillary Clinton, Trump is going to take the advantage. I happen to think that Hillary is way weaker than she's getting credit for.
He'll accuse her of bleeding out of her whatever, but Trump has said and done things that are astonishingly crass and sexist.  In the general election his excesses will be used against him, I wager devastatingly.  I'd start with him not being able to take on someone he calls a bimbo.  I wonder if he things Merkel is a bimbo, and "not a quality person" if she disagrees with him on policy in the Mideast.
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Bernie also is a type of truthteller with a direct unpretentious style that will be very hard for Trump to undermine. Bernie's only weakness in such a contest would be his socialist political background, which is further left than the natural orientation of the core American electorate.
IMO, Bernie is a lambkin.  Trump would savage him and Bernie would insist that they shouldn't be talking about his paunch or crummy haircut.  He's just a girly grampa, grist for getting Trumped on and spit out.

Fenring

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #42 on: January 31, 2016, 11:51:54 PM »
He's just a girly grampa

Lol. Oh, as if your disingenuous questions about Sanders before weren't already transparent. I like how you denied it when I called you on it then. I'm sure 'research' you've done since then has led you to this erudite conclusion.

While it could be predicted that Trump might go this route if it came down to him versus Sanders, I actually suspect he might avoid that and instead play to his own strengths. In the primaries it's one thing to shoot down the competition with insults; an Iowa caucus might shift from one GOP candidate to another, but they will only caucus for the GOP in a Republican primary. When it comes to a general election, though, the swing voters may not look kindly on someone being utterly disrespectful to the only other person in the room since they might well shift from GOP to Democrat one election to the next. Trump is shrewd and does what he does now because it works. He'll have no problem shifting tactics if he doesn't think it will work later on.
« Last Edit: January 31, 2016, 11:57:25 PM by Fenring »

AI Wessex

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #43 on: February 01, 2016, 06:59:57 AM »
Blather on...
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Lol. Oh, as if your disingenuous questions about Sanders before weren't already transparent. I like how you denied it when I called you on it then. I'm sure 'research' you've done since then has led you to this erudite conclusion.
I guess you know me better than I do.  My "research" (double quotes are more correct here) is watching GG often and listening to him talk.  He's right about most of the ills he names and his solutions are generally pretty good, too. But Clinton's a grindy grandma, the kind that rules the roost; her personal flaws are detractions rather than disqualifiers.  She's right about most of her solutions, too, so it's GG vs GG.  The "debates" are far too mild a competition; if this campaign were a cooking contest, she'd take the cake and bake it, too.

Sometimes how someone is mocked also reveals telling notes or notes their tells.  Larry David nails Bernie's utterly sincere jittery dithery better than he does himself, as Kate McKinnon and Amy Poehler do with Hillary's ambitions.  James Adomian gets Bernie, too:
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I believe that my position on guns is wrong. And I’ve always believed that.

When the time comes I'll vote for either of them, because even though neither would get nearly as good first season's TV ratings as Trump, their final approval ratings would far exceed his....Blather off

Gaoics79

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #44 on: February 01, 2016, 07:40:48 AM »
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I'm amused you don't see his insults and demeaning of others as attacks ;).  It's like saying if I steal your lunch it's just a provocation

I never claimed Trump doesn't attack or insult people. I simply said his insults aren't designed to damage his opponent (primarily), although they may sometimes have that effect. They are designed to provoke a counterattack that will hurt his opponents. He is trolling the media hoping they will gang up on him because he knows that his target constituency detests the media and will tend to favor someone perceived as under attack by them. He has trolled Jeb Bush and the more ferocious Jeb's counter attacks the weaker Jeb has become. His opponents just keep breaking their teeth on him.

Cruz is the only one who figured out this game early on and wisely refused to come after him. Even now Cruz has been very careful with how he responds to Trump's provocations and Trump has not been nearly as effective at neutralizing him. The birther issue was yet another trap Trump laid for him that he has been very careful about avoiding. Even Hillary kind of stumbled a bit into this trap recently when someone on her side made a comment about Trump's sexism and he used it as an opening to start talking about her husband's escapades and her complicity in that (a preview of things to come if Clinton and Trump are the nominees)

Trump's tactic thus far is a type of Akido. It's fascinating to watch. I do agree with Fenring though that his tactics and his style will change if it goes to a general election. Hillary is not nearly as strong as some people are giving her credit for and I wonder if he will be able to provoke her into foolishly attacking him. Sanders I think may be the tougher nut to crack, assuming he isn't done in by his socialist credentials, which would be peachy say in Canada but might be too left for the USA.

NobleHunter

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #45 on: February 01, 2016, 09:38:04 AM »
Given Clinton's reaction to Sander's campaign, I suspect she'll do exactly what Trump wants her to do. I get the impression that her campaign believes in superior firepower. The first thing, at least, they'll try is to go after Trump hard and fast, which seems unlikely to work.

On the other hand, maybe Iowa will sort this out for us. Though people have been forecasting Trump's defeat at every potential setback. Who knows if even a major defeat will slow him down?

Pete at Home

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #46 on: February 01, 2016, 10:43:00 AM »
Americans are not used to folks that have the guts to call themselves socialists in public. Bernie's a new creature, and has worked with Republicans and got things done.  And the term "progressive" sounds so cancerous.

AI Wessex

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #47 on: February 01, 2016, 10:45:20 AM »
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Trump's tactic thus far is a type of Akido.
More like Animal House.
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On the other hand, maybe Iowa will sort this out for us.
Someone on the radio this morning said that Iowa doesn't choose the candidate so much as winnow the field.  It's an odd way of going about it.  Less than 10% of the population take part in the caucuses, so they tend to be activist and a bit ruthless.  That's not an altogether bad thing.

Pete at Home

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #48 on: February 01, 2016, 12:09:33 PM »
Given Clinton's reaction to Sander's campaign, I suspect she'll do exactly what Trump wants her to do. I get the impression that her campaign believes in superior firepower. The first thing, at least, they'll try is to go after Trump hard and fast, which seems unlikely to work.

If I am wrong, and Trump's campaign isn't a straw man to set up Hillary, then yes, I would e pet Hillary to act as you describe.

D.W.

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Re: Who is your favorite Candidate for the Republican Nomination?
« Reply #49 on: February 01, 2016, 12:37:55 PM »
If he WAS a straw man, would that change things?  Would they both just play out the bit?  With him occasionally giving her an opening?

I'm not sure if that's what you mean by straw man or not.  I could see him dropping the whole race and claiming it was his plan the whole time and he didn't really want the job.  But allowing someone to turn him into "a looser"?  I just don't see it in him.