* The “¡Jeb!” campaign is running out of cash and is canceling TV spots.
Get that fat tub of lard Karl Rove off his ass and actually earn some of the tens of millions “¡Jeb!” and Dubya have thrown his way.
Will the last of the loyal Bushies be able to lift themselves away from the feed trough at DC’s best steakhouses and spend January knocking on doors in Iowa?
I doubt it.
Though Culver’s does serve dam good butter burgers and custard. Hey, but only us wacist stale pale males in flyover country would know about that.
* The insistence on preparing every American teenager for college has been a disaster, and has created the “necessity” for immigration.
54 percent of industrial jobs has a middle skill level that is ignored by school administrators. These are all jobs that pay an adult, living wage with health care and pension plans right out of high school.
Another Obama/Clinton plan to make sure that the oligarchs who support them get their way in the immigration debate.
Baby boomers who do these jobs are retiring, but apparently these jobs that spotted a generation of Americans are inferior. It demonstrates the intellectuals and their superiority complex.
* After 6 months of denial, the establishment republicans must be in an absolute rage. (I hear that there’s threats of “hell to pay” for those working for Trump, administered by Mike Murphy’s minions).
Trump just undid their 25 year grip on the GOP, showing them to be treasonous to the base and worthless in electioneering. Pat Buchanan must be relishing it; best schadenfreude since Clinton beat Bush in 92.
* The Current Year. Well, Last Year at this point.
Google’s Year End encapsulating advert was ubiquitous on television over the past 72 hours. Basically, Transgender celebrity millionaire residing in a Malibu gated communities embraces Islamic migrants moving to Europe or something…something.
They touch upon the Charlie Hebdo shootings, but conveniently ignore the Paris massacres because I guess they were problematic .
Strangely, I was completely on board with the 2012 Google Year End message which demonstrates how much the “dialogue” has shifted in just three years.
* The NYT claims ¿Jeb? has a six-point plan to win the nomination:
1. Stay on the attack
2. Avoid embarrassment in Iowa
3. Do well in New Hampshire
4. Woo Lindsey Graham
5. Use the family network
6. Continue the ad blitz
It seems to me the only creative element of this brilliant six-point plan is to woo Lindsey Graham. It never would have occurred to me to waste one of my six points on Lindsey Graham.
* Romantic dinners. Long walks on the beach. Cuban cabana boys.
* Immigration, stupid.
Partly yes.
Like… it’s the economy, stupid.
Again, partly yes.
But not enough.
Clinton was a consummate politician, sleazy but slick and very likable as a New Democrat. Had it been another Democrat, the magic not have worked.
It’s possible someone like Clinton might have beaten Bush in 88. But Bush was against Dukakis who was bland and colorless. Strange for a Greek. Zorba he wasn’t. I don’t think Dukakis would have won in 92.
Same in 2015. We can’t discount personality. Trump’s personality is simply bigger than Jeb’s. Yes, Trump hit some right notes that appealed to the people. But it was the style and manner. Like they say in boxing, style makes the fight, and Trump has the style. He was born with it and honed it on the Apprentice.
He knows how to play. He said a bunch of things that could have hurt other candidates. But Trump has a tough chin. He can take the blows without staggering and looking hurt. His expression is ‘Is that the best you got?’ Also, he’s good with counterpunching. Jeb either cowers in the corner or flails wildly, failing to connect with a solid blow. And when he goes off and calls Trump a ‘jerk’, he sounds like a poor loser saying, ‘he hurt me real bad, boo hoo.’
Now, imagine a Jeb vs Trump where Jeb is the nationalist and Trump is the globalist.
Trump might still be ahead because his personality is just more fun and larger.
Politics is showbiz. The only reason Hillary lost to Obama in 2008 was because Obama was media savvy in ways Hillary wasn’t. Hillary breathes air like a sour fish and comes across like Nurse Ratched.
Some say Obama won cuz he’s black, but could Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton have pulled it off? His race did matter, but it was the way he was able to pitch it and play it.
Most blacks lacked that touch.
Now, Trump supporters like his positions, but it’s also true that Trump knows how to make anything fun, popular, cool, and appealing. He’s a born salesman. It’s like Roma in GLENGARRY GLENROSS could make shi* look like gold. He has the Midas Touch.
Jeb has the Manure Touch. He could touch gold and make it look like shi*.
Trump has it. Jeb doesn’t. Trump knows how to sell pens.
Trump asks Jeb to sell him a pen:
The Donald, along with the other Donald(King), sold the Tyson-Spinks fight as an event bigger than Ali-Foreman. He is a promoter. Someone who can promote something as phony as Tyson-Spinks and make millions can surely promote himself.
* Jeb’s keeping secret his plans to woo George Pataki and Jim Gilmour.
“Many were recently appalled by Hungarian PM Victor Orban’s well-publicized remarks that the Syrian refugees represent a radical different culture and, purely because they’re mainly Muslims, constitute a threat to European Christianity. Few are aware, however, just how routine such rhetoric are in Israel, among cabinet ministers, lawmakers, academics, rabbis and commentators,” Ben white said.
* Well if I were the Republican establishment I would consider doing a cordon sanitaire around Trump, even to the extent of calling on the non-Trump Republicans to vote for Hillary. Like what happened in France against the FN.
* That would be the end of the Republican Party. Remember, Senor Priebus got support pledges from all the candidates for the eventual nominee.
* I’m not that crazy about Trump’s personality, in fact I don’t think he has the presidential temperament. The problem for me is that I agree with almost everything he says.
* You don’t get it. Trump’s personality and (professed) beliefs go hand-in-glove. A guy with Yeb’s personality would probably never be for border control. He’s the butt boy for the establishment. It’s baked into his personality. A guy with Trump’s personality would probably never run as an open borders candidate.
Bill Clinton’s pollster (Stan Greenberg, iirc) once quasi-famously claimed that he could predict a whole lot about a voter based on his answers to five questions, most of which weren’t explicitly political (e.g., whether the person had watched porn, etc. (this was before the internet was in widespread use and pretty much everyone had seen some porn)). The same could probably be said about politicians and where they stand. Given someone’s position on 4-5 issues a well-studied person could predict, with a high degree of accuracy, their stand on pretty much everything else.
* Trump’s cutting off Bush’s head and garishly displaying it as a trophy might help him in the general elections when he comes up against the other legacy candidate. By being the candidate that is not afraid to get into a pissing contest, he might get Hillary to either pull her punches or avoid exploiting some his perceived weak spots for fear of retaliation. Trump will be painted as inexperienced but Hillary’s experience is not really the kind people are necessarily looking for.
* Clinton in ’92 had Ross Perot helping him. Perot gained 19% of the popular vote which largely took votes away from Bush. In ’96 Perot gained 7% of the popular vote, which largely benefitted Clinton (though admittedly Dole was a horrible campaigner and would’ve lost no matter what). But each time what was seen then has parallels to Obama’s two GOP counterparts in the general election. While voters didn’t prefer the Democrats by a landslide, the GOP candidate was seen as largely bland, boring, a horrible campaigner and lacked anything that resembled a common touch with ordinary voters.
It truly must be the immigration issue, because of the GOP donors had any sense, they could easily unite behind Trump without any major problems. He isn’t considered a conservative a la “family values” and is known as a dealmaker. Based solely on the issues, and for those who are moderate to slightly liberal, what’s not to like about his candidacy? Except for the immigration issue. Which tends to have shown that for the GOP donors as a whole, immigration is a major issue if not the main issue of this campaign.
In one sense, Trump isn’t any different than Bill Clinton who really dumbed down the style or the way in which modern presidential candidates campaign for office. If some don’t like his bombastic style, well, how come it was just fine for Obama? If some don’t like his personal life, well, how come it was just fine for Bill Clinton?
In the end if it comes down to pure style, Hillary’s campaign should be very, very worried that Trump could be the eventual nominee. He’s the legitimate New Yorker and she’s the phony in every single way possible. She comes across as a reincarnation of Richard Nixon; unlikable, slightly paranoid, and with lots of things to hide. What can she possibly offer the majority of white males without a college degree that Trump can’t? If Joe the Plumber actually shows up to vote this November, it won’t be for Hillary.
* And it was as recently as 2010 that Google, in its first Superbowl ad, featured a touching sequence showing – through Google search queries – a guy and a girl meeting, falling in love, getting married (in a church!), and starting a family, with traditional gender roles all the way. It’s only been in the last few years that the SJWs have completely taken over within Google.
* In good times—say, the 1950s—every single candidate on both sides of the isle would be saying what Trump is saying about immigration. From hardcore socialists to free-market naifes, all would think it plainly obvious that illegal immigrants had to be en masse kicked out and the borders secured. Only Stalinist-type commie-idealogues or anarchist-libertarians (way more libertarian than Goldwater) would be clamoring for more immigration, more open borders, and amnesty. And neither of those would get a foothold in the primaries.
So a guy like Trump wouldn’t get much traction, because we’d have much more serious and sober leaders repeating what he was saying. But today, with both parties have unofficially but loudly soled out their own citizens, Trump is the only one making sense and showing loyalty.
Scary.
As Derbyshire said, immigration was the $100 bill lying on the floor that no one was picking up. Trump picked it up.
The question is why the other candidates on all sides ignored it—and continue to ignore it.
