If Trump wins, the Republican elites (and the non-Republican elites) lose. They’re exposed.
* “Do you realize that If Bernie Sanders wins, it will be the first time that a Jewish family moved into public housing that was left vacant by a black family?”
* There is genuine vitriol in this race.
In earlier races, there were some cons who supported McCain, some who supported Romney, some who supported Perry, some who supported etc, etc, etc.
But there was no conviction, no fire, thus no real animus. Just polite going through the motions.
Romney supporters didn’t hate McCain supporters and vice versa.
Santorum supporters didn’t hate Huckabee supporters and vice versa.
But there is genuine hatred among the various factions.
Trump supporters really hate the other camps and vice versa.
But I don’t think it’s really populism vs populism, e.g. masses who support Trump vs masses who support Rubio.
While there are masses who support Rubio or others, they do so without passion.
In contrast, there is mass passion for Trump.
The real passion is between masses for Trump and ELITES for Rubio(and others).
Masses for Trump really hate the GOP elites, the elites who support Rubio(and others) really hate Trump masses.
I think the GOP elites fear Trump for professional reasons(as for other ones).
If Trump ignores all their advice and still wins, it will mean that all the experts have been phony and useless quacks who’ve been raking it in and holding power for no good reason at all.
Imagine if you’re part of a coaching staff, but the athlete wins the championship by disobeying and disregarding all your advice.
You will lose your standing. You will be exposed as an Adviser with No Clothes. That’s what the GOP elites and experts fear. Trump wins, they lose jobs.
* LeBron James recently had his coach fired. In 1981, Magic Johnson had the Laker coach fired, and that put the Lakers on the road to 4 NBA titles.
* Steve, this whole nomination process, and possibly the general election, is providing a terrific, if imperfect, field test of the “Sailer Strategy” (or at least parts of it) versus the RNC’s post-2012 “Growth and Opportunity Project” (aka, “the autopsy”) strategy. We may have to wait until November, but I’m hoping we’ll get some comprehensive comparative analysis from you on this.
* Trump’s ongoing success so far despite numerous predictions both of what a Republican candidate had to do to be successful and of his eventual “#PeakTrump” collapse “any day now” has been contrary to the predictions and expectations of the vast majority of people who write or talk about US politics for a living. If he ultimately wins in the general, he’ll have exposed them as, at best, incompetent and ill-informed about the supposed subject of their professional and public lives; or, at worst, especially on the Republican side, as likely shills for the consultant and donor classes, who needlessly led the GOP into a quarter-century relative drought of electoral success in Presidential elections since Reagan. That will be a stain that will be hard, if not impossible, to ever wash off, given the Internet as well as how verbose most of these characters have been. These people will be fighting for their professional and public lives. Expect the venom come thick and fast.
A real puzzle to me though that is still waiting for an answer is why none of the big GOP donors or PACs have yet put forth a major effort to sink Trump with negative ads, or what will happen if and when they try to. After three decades of Republican spinmeisters mastering the art of negative campaigning, their relative reluctance in this cycle is strange.
* It’s OVER for Cruz. Not because of Trump but because of Cruz himself.
Cruz attacked ‘New York Values’ instead of ‘Manhattan Values.’ The latter would’ve been a home run but he WHIFFED.
Cruz could’ve left out the preacher talk in his Iowa victory speech as a gesture to the secular voters ahead. Nope! He went full Baptist and WHIFFED.
There are many more examples. How can you let your staff take the low road when your campaigning as a Super Christian? Another WHIFF.
Good bye to Cruz.
* I watched that interview with Melania, damn what a complete package, five languages, answered all the moronic questions while maintaining her composure, truly impressive.
Lew Rockwell linked to a WaPo editorial that was absolutely hysterical in it’s Trump hatred, all the right people are coming unhinged, go Trump!
* Romney was smarter, richer, better-looking, and morally superior to McCain. McCain could probably have tolerated some of these, but not all four together.
* Is anyone around here hip to The Fourth Turning by William Strauss and Neil Howe?
According to their theory, we’re experiencing a political realignment of the type that happens every eighty years or so. Ergo, right on schedule.
For better or worse, one Donald J. Trump appears to be emerging as the Grey Champion of our current Crisis. Following in the footsteps of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
* Nothing is more important than stopping mass immigration. Trump is the first candidate since Pat Buchanan to make immigration a central issue in his campaign.
Cruz took his position on immigration only after he saw Trump’s success in the polls.
Trump’s fearlessness is both admirable and necessary, but it’s not his personality that is winning us over. Those of us here who support him are out on a limb hoping that he’ll do what he says he’ll do.
* As Conservative Treehouse noted today – the question of building the border wall is now over but for the details and execution. The only remaining question is who will pay for it!
* After the singer finished the Star Spangled Banner, the crowd started yelling “USA – USA – USA.” Interesting, because I’ve never seen that before at a debate. Also interesting because that’s the crowds have started yelling at Trump rallies.
It seems like Trump really has people energized. He seems to be galvanizing people in a way I haven’t seen in years.
* Trump is galvanizing people to talk back to the powers that be who are culturally cleansing their country and destroying the job market. In return, I expect to see the “metaphors” of shooting Trump to become reality. I would not be surprised to see a serious attempt on his life.
* I live in Asia and when an Asian asks me about why Trump is popular, this is a way I use to explain it.
If you really want to understand Trump’s appeal, just look at the fact that 45% of US citizens don’t pay taxes because they don’t make enough due to jobs increasingly being low-level service work with many of the higher level jobs being taken by H1B.
Then combine it with this scenario – imagine the head of Japan announces:
1. Japan is opening its borders and plans to make the majority of the country Chinese and Muslims
2. Japanese privilege classes will begin in all schools to combat Japanese racism and the country will begin eliminating Japanese cultural events as non-inclusive
3. Japanese will pay more taxes to subsidize these workers who for the most part won’t be pay taxes
4. Crime and terrorism will go up but that is unavoidable and Xenophobic to mention
5. When any business employs a majority of Japanese ethnics, there will be a discussion of the “Japanese problem”
6. Preferences will be given in hiring to the newcomers
7. Any negative comments about what is going on will be clamped down on because if you don’t like this cultural cleansing you are Hitler.
Now, honestly ask yourself how the Japanese would react to this plan? Add those two together and it gives you an idea of why people are backing Trump.
After that, they all say they understand his appeal and would never let that type of scenario develop in their own country.
* Worrying about free trade and healthcare is ridiculous when white children are already a minority in the US. I care about blood and soil, and Trump is the only candidate that even understands the concept. Libertarian ideological straight jackets mean nothing to me. Every quasi religious concept about liberty and freedom has been used by a parasitic elite in the name of open borders, offshoring and outsourcing and against white males. Free trade with Mexico and China has been an obvious and unmitigated disaster. Slap on the tariffs.
Libertarianism is a coward’s ideology. It’s an attempt by white males to argue in their own interest by ideological means instead of arguing plainly for what’s in the interest of their own blood and culture like every other ethnic group does. Every libertarian ideal has been turned against them by their ideological opponents. To be a libertarian you have to believe in open borders and free trade (or make some Rube Goldberg argument about why it’s more libertarian to believe otherwise) despite the fact that this is dispossessing and impoverishing white males who make up 99.9999% of all the libertarians that ever were or ever will be. To be a libertarian means to choose liberty over survival because how can you be a libertarian if you let sanity trump laissez-faire? In the future, when the last libertarian is bludgeoned to death with the last copy of Atlas Shrugs by some black panther militia man, he’ll be bitching with his dying breath about violations of his property rights and voluntary agreements.
* I am a Pollack. If ending immigration means using disparaging terms to describe us, I will take it.
* Interesting that an unsolicited endorsement from David Duke, (did he ever ever try to physically harm anyone), will sink Trump. But Al Sharpton, who instigated the Freddie’s Fashion Mart killings, is sought out by Hillary and Bernie who deem his endorsement critical to their campaign.
As Don King would say, “only in America”.
* White working class voters are seeing Cruz and Rubio attacking Trump and thinking “these two nasty Mexicans are attacking our man Trump.”
Seriously. The pundits have no idea how this stuff plays out in flyover land. Every blow the “Mexicans” Cruz and Rubio land will only lead to more pushback from white voters. Somehow, the chatterers have lost sight of the fact that the elite establishment types represent well under 10% of the GOP voter base.
I don’t know who came up with the idea to make the GOP a Hispanic-issues party, but whoever did was either stupid or a very clever saboteur. Hell, even Mexican politicians are scared of Trump, because he got more votes from the people they shoved out of Mexico than their political equivalents Cruz and Rubio. Who would have thought that Mexicans who fled Mexico would prefer a guy who takes on the politicians who dispossessed them and forced them to leave their homeland?
In the meanwhile, an unhinged Ross Douthat makes fairly explicit tweets about the benefits of assassinating Trump and that great humanitarian Jeff Bezos orders WaPo to write an editorial every other day about the need to stop Trump.
* Trump said we’d be better off if Gadaffi and Saddam Hussein were still in power.
Funny to hear a Republican say that.
* A young Marco Rubio, full of hope, attending a Trump University seminar…carrying a copy of Art of the Deal…”Foam party tonight? I don’t know, Julio. I need to study this stuff!…..Oh.. ok!”
* I voted for W and all I got was this lousy obamacare.
* That everyone should go to college supports one of the Big Lies that underpins liberalism, that men and women are identical. Since men and women are identical, job categories which men are happy to do but women can’t stand (i.e., practical blue collar work) can’t really exist. Or they shouldn’t exist, which is the point of making everyone go to college.
The real problem are the trade agreements and immigration policies that have carved the middle right out of the American economy and have taken the heart right out of tens of millions of American men. Can Trump save us? I only hope it’s not too late, and that he can actually effect change.
* The White Death Issue comes up (by proxy):
Hispanic Moderator: Why not a border fence with Canada? Terrorists can get in that way.
Trump: Give me a break.
Hispanic Moderator: It’s true! ISIS said they would use Canada –
Trump: Excuse me. Excuse me.
Hispanic Moderator: — to bring terrorists into the USA.
Trump: No. We don’t have a big problem with Canada. We have a big problem with drugs, and it comes from Mexico. I won big in New Hampshire, a landslide. Do you know what the people said was their biggest problem up there? Beautiful state, I love the people. Do you know what they said? Heroin. Heroin is their biggest problem. Where does it come from? The Mexican cartels are shipping it in. We have to get serious.
* No small irony that some of Trump’s biggest GOPe nags are complaining about Trump being impolite, insulting people, yelling etc. are radio bigmouths like Levin and Beck who themselves do little but impolitely yell at and scream louder than their callers.
* But our nation does innovate and make great stuff. The carrier air conditioners were designed here. The company is moving to save on labor. But the only reason they can do so is that they are able to import the finished AC units back to the USA free of charge.
We have the world’s largest and most desirable market. Yet we give away access for nothing. That’s like having a great club and not charging a cover. Companies would be happy to pay a fee to get to our market. Or they would be happy to build assembly plants to avoid tariffs altogether. The Chinese know that.
Not all nations have this privilege. If tiny Jamaica told car makers that they had to manufacture in Jamaica or not sell to that market, then they wouldn’t sell. But the US, along with China and a few others have a large enough market to make it worthwhile for others to locate here to avoid tariffs.
But we give access away free of charge which is a terrible way to negotiate. I think Trump understands that he has those bargaining chips.
* It’s immigration. We don’t want to be *replaced*. We don’t want our culture to be replaced. We want to live in a white nation, with white traditions, values, mores. It’s not a question of outbreeding invaders–though that’s helpful when you’re invaded–we simply don’t want invaders, period.
Furthermore, while it would be great to change the culture and get smart women to concentrate on family life and have your six kids, in order to have eugenic fertility, in terms of absolute numbers we don’t really want more people. It was a pleasant nation when i was born with less than 200m people. If TPTB hadn’t forced open the flood gates, we’d have peaked at and still be at around 250 million now. (Maybe a touch more because opening the flood gates and the “affordable family formation” suppression it engenders, is one of the fertility suppressors.) That would be more pleasant number. One of the benefits of being an American has always been the relative availability to afford a patch of dirt or enjoy the wide open spaces. And 250 is way, way more pleasant than the half a billion we’re headed toward before century’s end if we don’t shut the damn door.
But the key point–we have the right and want to leave to the nation to *our* children and grandchildren.
And as iSteveFan points out, that is the *only* issue that matters. All the random political b.s.–ex. “health care”–is not just secondary, but tertiary or beyond and is reversible. You screw it up you can–if you still own your nation–unscrew it. But with continued mass immigration America will no longer be America and the other issues wouldn’t matter even if you could still win on them politically–which in fact you won’t.
Conservatives who aren’t single issue voters on immigration are just clueless fools. Long term nothing else matters in determining the sort of nation our children inherit.
* I was lifting weights tonight and three Hispanics and an African-American walked in. They turned on the debate. One Hispanic shouted to turn it off, that Trump was a racist etc. To my astonishment, a debate broke out among these guys. The black guy and the most mestizo looking Hispanic like Trump and continued to watch the debate while on the treadmill!
* Women and non-white people hate white men and want their influence to be over! This is the culmination of the early women’s movement and the anti-slavery movement that were inextricably linked together in the early 18th century.
Women and non-white people don’t think about what sustains the country – namely, white men who work and white men who start businesses and white men who have the vision to create great public works like great dams, highways, and yes even Medicare and Social Security. By getting rid of white men they are slitting their own throats and those of their children. But their hatred blinds them.
What do they think they will wind up with when they finish importing people from every third world pest hole into the US, and systematically frustrating white men and boys in their growth and ambitions? Ah, but they don’t think. And they’re fatally jealous of those who do.
Do we have a better hope than Trump?
* If Donald Trump’s opponents either inside or outside the GOP try to tar him with charge that he was endorsed by David Duke, that’s not going to make anybody lose respect for Trump. All it’s going to do is spark a lot more interest in David Duke among ordinary Americans who have barely heard of him, and they will start going to Youtube to watch his channel, and will find themselves nodding in agreement with many of the things he says, and finally they will think to themselves, “Why in the hell didn’t I know about this guy before?”
Then they will come to curse the whole liberal politician-media-academe establishment that relegated David Duke to the realms of forbidden discourse, and perhaps begin to see it fully for what it is. It will further cement their support for Trump and will redound to their looking more favorably upon Duke.
* Duke is a clown and publicity whore. He started out handing out leaflets to college students while wearing a swastika armband. He has nothing really in common with Richard Spencer. I don’t think anyone on the alt-right takes him (Duke) seriously.
“Secondly, I personally not like Duke, Spencer or any ethnic/racial nationalist as their views are a horror for domestic minorities.”
I don’t know of anyone on the alt-right who advocates ethnic cleansing or apartheid. What most of them want is simply an end to the bullshit. An end to the pretend public discourse where all races are the same and whites are to blame for all the problems of blacks and hispanics (when they are, in fact, to blame for none of them). They want the restoration of America as a fundmentally white country, which it historically was, in terms of its laws, its institutions, and its cultural mores. It doesn’t mean that blacks would be forced to live in ghettos. It would mean that loathsome, useless degenerates like Snoop-Dog and Kanye west wouldn’t be given a public forum and treated as some kind of culture heroes. Or that public spaces would be filled with SJW propaganda as they are now.
“I think we should gather under a non-racialized citizenship.”
And where has that ever proved effective or even realizable? I thought that conservatism is supposed to be rooted in reality. You’re just engaging in hopeful day-dreaming.
* Romney lost because after the first debate he decided to stop fighting. Two missed opportunities to deliver a body blow were when Obama went after him about self-deportation, which Romney could have easily defended, and when he let Candy Crowley inaccurately correct him, taking Obama’s side, in the middle of the debate. He could have shown fight, and he didn’t.
* Levin always sounds like a ranting, crazy homeless guy on a street corner. He ought to have an IV drip of thorazine running on him while he broadcasts.
* I’m glad Trump has been pointing out that the flood of cheap heroin is coming across our southern border. Hillary and Bernie talked about the heroin problem but neither would DARE mention where it comes from. I’ve talked to intelligent liberals who were under the impression that the heroin in this country comes from Afghanistan, because I suppose that would make it Bush’s fault. Afghani heroin goes to Europe and Russia.
* What Murray doesn’t get is that people understand perfectly well that Trump’s a sonuvabitch, but, to paraphrase FDR, he’s our sonuvabitch.
Murray, for all his perhaps-earnest empathizing with the white working class, is not our* sonuvabitch. He writes a big long essay in the WSJ explaining, perfectly reasonably in my book, the roots of the discontent that begat Trump.
And then concludes it by proposing more free trade and more mass immigration, because establishment Republicans and immigrants are both just a better class of people than everyone else.
* The morning after: GOP donors already floating a trial balloon to break their pledge to support and bolt for an independent run.
It would be a great idea to come up with some prospective names for a 3rd party representing these folks. The AEI party? The Cuba Libre party? The WSJ Editorial Page Party? The Vail Party? Likud-USA? The Act of Love Party? The 4 More Wars Party?
* I find the British attitude to Trump a little puzzling. British politicians have gone to far as to debate whether or not to ban Trump from visiting the UK, as if he’s some sort of terrorist, but overall, the BBC, Daily Mail etc are arguably less anti-Trump that much of the US media. The BBC for example, argues that Trump may be obnoxious and egotistic, but he’s an economic/religious moderate who can make deals and compromise, while Cruz is an economic and religious extremist with a crazy flat tax plan.
I suspect a lot of British elites aren’t really that bothered by much of Trump’s platform, but they feel to need to make a stand against him because of his negative comments about Muslims. Not upsetting Muslims seems to one of the cardinal rules of mainstream British politics. It will be interested to see how the Brits react if Trump if he actually gets elected.
* Chris Matthews has just reported that Rubio had plants in the audience too cheer wildly every time he said something, you can tell because on about 5 or 6 occasions the cheering comes in the middle of Rubio responding and he has stop talking because the squealing is so loud it is drowning out his voice, Brent Baier called it Rubio’s velociraptor.
* Despite the Cuckservative journalists shrieking to the contrary, I don’t think that Cruz or Rubio bested Trump last night, but perhaps that’s because I have an Altright perspective on things. However, I do think Trump passed up a few opportunities to deliver what could have been devastating one liners to Rubio and Cruz.
Some examples:
1) When Rubio gave his answer about securing the border first and then seeing what the American people will do re letting the illegals stay, Trump should have said, “So what you’re saying is that you want to promise the American people you’ll ‘secure the border’ and then see if you can sneak amnesty by them.”
2) When Rubio criticized him for repeating himself re opening up the competition between insurance companies across state lines, Trump should have said, “If I’m repeating myself it’s because I’m trying to explain econ 101 to an imbecile who’s never held a real private sector job in his life.”
3) When Cruz was asking him what he was doing and where he was when Cruz was ‘fighting ‘ for a slew of pet conservative issues, Trump could have said, “I was running a multi-billion dollar company. But now after seeing what a hash you professional politicians have made of things, I felt I had to get involved or else nothing will get fixed.
It wouldn’t be that hard to cut these guys off at the knees in a debate. They’re records are pretty indefensible.
* Trump is disciplined. You don’t stay as active in business as him just by flailing away at things. A baseball player has a job and a schedule. Trump has to make his own schedule and be there. Trump can’t stand to be thought of as a loser. If he gets the nomination I think he will play to win.
* Conservatives generally want to conserve. In the case of the USA this would most definitely include the population makeup of the nation. So it’s not that much of a stretch for conversations to start to center around immigration policy, especially if the policy in its current form is leading to the largest demographic change in history. That might strike some as white nationalism. But I think it is definitely conservative to wish to maintain one’s nation.
* When Rubio was bringing up the charge against Trump having to pay a fine for hiring illegal Poles 30+ years ago, Trump pointed out how long ago it was. Trump should have added, “I mean, at that time you were still be arrested in seedy parks at night in Miami.”
* Steve, you’ll love the irony/national self-loathing in this one – Australian progressives are starting a petition to ban Trump from visiting Australia.
Why is this ironic ? because Trump is the the most Australian-like presidential candidate in modern US history.
Brash, blond, economic moderate and nationalist, tough on illegal immigration, concerned with pensions for veterans and little time for PC. He would probably be more at home in Queensland than Queens.
* Matt Taibbi got it right with comparing Trump to Ric Flair. Flair has class, cajones and bling.
* Trump will be the most authentically black president that we’ve ever had.
* The Trump campaign is Caddy Shack and Back to School in reverse:
Brash nouveau riche W.A.S.P. causes consternation amongst stuffy uptight Jews.
* King of right-wing talk radio in NYC was the late Bob Grant. He regularly railed against Al Sharpton, but Sharpton appeared on his show a few times. Grant found him funny and charming, almost against his will.
* Donald is like a lot of obnoxious, pushy New Yorkers who Get Things Done. The bankers with anger management issues. The lawyers who got their law degrees from Fordham Law School and go home to Bensonhurst at night. The name partners at midtown law firms who get enraged and throw heavy glass ashtrays at their walnut-paneled office walls, scaring the crap out of their associates. Uber-alphas.
As the man said, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere … even the White House.
Alternatively, you can elect a pussy, cringing, third year associate like Rubio because he cleans up good and the church ladies like his manners. Or a smooth, Velveeta, junior partner like Cruz, who will never make the Management Committee.
* The thing with Trump is that the more you look into him the more impressed you get, my initial opinion has certainly radically changed. There is a lot of substance there.
* Undoubtedly, Caddyshack was a great movie with plenty of stars like Dangerfield, Chase and Murray who deserve abundant praise but, but, but nevertheless, no small amount of credit is due Ted Knight for playing the part so well of the stick-in-the-mud and allowing himself to suffer the degradation of being the goat–and not just allowing himself, but playing the role to the hilt–a role, without which, the movie would have had no foil and hence no plot. It is, and was, as Danindc says above, an anti-Gentile propaganda piece–troubling, upon reflection, but no less funny for that.
* Does Obama give a lot of speeches and constantly try to hog the public’s attention? Yes. Does he give a lot of speeches in which he refers to himself? Yes. He’s not a true introvert. He may be a bit more circumspect in private because you can’t be completely self-obsessed without other people walking out on you in disgust after awhile. Being a successful manipulator requires that you pay just enough attention to other people to figure out how to pull their strings, and Obama is good at that. His main goal in every social interaction is I, Me and Myself. He’s just more polite about it than the average black.
* That’s one of the interesting things about Trump – he had all the prerequisites to join the aristocracy, but he actually loves the nouveau riche aesthetic.
* Trump made his fortune through a series of projects, each of which had potential to collapse. Bloomberg and someone like Gates or Slim made their fortune by creating or exploiting what amounts to a natural monopoly – once you get such a project up and running it becomes a money machine largely immune from competition. Just think of all of the risk points in a building project, from land assembly through permitting through financing through building through leasing, such projects can go tits up anywhere along the line. Now repeat for hundreds of projects.
* Caddyshack was written largely by Brian Doyle-Murray (brother to Bill Murray) and was largely based on his experiences as a caddy at a country club in the Chicago suburbs. The Danny Noonan character was a stand in for the Irish-Catholic Murray family (eight kids in the family, father worked in a lumberyard, etc) and the original script was intended to focus on the caddies. The Jews weren’t the only ones with an antipathy towards the WASP aristocracy of yesteryear.