Comments to Steve Sailer:
* He is not a flake. All you have to do is look at his wife, or wives, and his kids. The kids seem well adjusted. The wives have been pretty sharp and attractive ladies. Just because one has money doesn’t mean he gets the nicest girl. Just look at Jeb!
Trump is also a successful businessman who has the support of guys like Icahn. He wouldn’t get that support if he were a flake.
The reason you think he is a flake is because he has been under the microscope for 9 months. Not only that, but he has been under a hostile microscope. Think about how your perception of Trump would be if he were treated like the media treated Obama. Every hour of every day, every time he speaks, the media is out for that gotcha moment on Trump. That is a lot of pressure that I don’t t think many of us could handle.
The fact that Trump has not had a nervous breakdown is quite telling. He travels non-stop, sleeps 4 hours per night and almost never gives guarded answers. If anything that is his problem. He doesn’t know when to pipe down. But I suppose he is learning. From his Hannity interview last night I think he realizes the last couple of weeks were tough and that he contributed to it.
So no I don’t think he is a flake. He is just a guy who has undergone more attacks than any other politician in recent memory. From his own party, the democrats, the president, the loons in the British parliament and even the pope, who hasn’t attacked him? And he is still in first place and hasn’t lost his mind yet!
* BW: And why did Lincoln succeed? Thought about that at all?
DT: Well, I think Lincoln succeeded for numerous reasons. He was a man who was of great intelligence, which most presidents would be. But he was a man of great intelligence, but he was also a man that did something that was a very vital thing to do at that time. Ten years before or 20 years before, what he was doing would never have even been thought possible. So he did something that was a very important thing to do, and especially at that time. And Nixon failed, I think to a certain extent, because of his personality. You know? It was just that personality. Very severe, very exclusive. In other words, people couldn’t come in. And people didn’t like him. I mean, people didn’t like him.
* Trump is his own worst enemy but I’m not seeing any other option for change.
The Republicans are intent on Hispanic outreach but how, exactly, do they achieve this without going the racial bribes route? If Trump loses the powers that be will treat that as a voter repudiation of his agenda and they’ll feel empowered to go full steam ahead with amnesty and other racial bribes which they think will work to bring in Hispanics.
Also repudiated is white identity as a basis for a political movement. What follows is the racial bribes business comes at the expense of whites, in a who, whom contest.
Everyday I wish there was a candidate other than Trump who was positioned with his popularity, independence and positions, but there isn’t and because Trump’s candidacy is such a black swan event, I can’t see a path forward for a more typical politician who will have to depend on funding in order to get air time, so institutional interests are always going to be favored.
It’s Trump or bust. There is no upside to any other candidate and society is going to have to be more destabilized before institutional interests can be brought around to some of Trump’s policies. I saw a report today that 70% of voters supported the Muslim ban. Trump is the only one who is independent enough to actually dare put something like that in place.
Trump may well flake if he gets into office, but that’s a better outcome than not getting into office, for his defeat repudiates his policies, while his reneging on the policies doesn’t undermine their validity and appeal, the reneging simply becomes a reflection of Trump, the man, not the policy agenda he ran on.
* Never underestimate the stupidity of the average Republican. They voted for Ford over Reagan in ’76. 40% voted for Bush over Reagan in 1980. And they nominated:
– Bush in ’88
-Dole in ’96
-McCain in ’08
-Romney in ’12
And about 40% wanted McCain in 2000 ’cause Bush II was too ‘radical’ for them. Seriously, about 40% of Republicans are status quo, don’t rock the boat, everything’s fine, let’s just cut the capital gains tax and pray to Jesus dimwits.
Take away Reagan and you’re looking at the party of Nixon and 50 years of failure. And loving it.
* This is the first time I can remember a political party trying to damage their own leading candidate. It is not that they are backing someone else, that has happened before, but they are trying to damage Trump. They want him to lose, if he wins the nomination. Their criticism is relentless and is having an effect. I hear people questionong Trump’s conservatism. These were Bush voters. Well I would not vote for Cruz in the general. He reminds me of a tent preacher and he is just as phony. He is a complete fraud on immigration and his recent paean to NATO, an utter waste of money designed to give generals a good tour of duty in Europe, was the kind of robotic thinking that has walked America to the edge of a cliff. Trump was right, although it might have been better to simply ask why are we paying money to defend a wealthy Europe from …a Soviet tank attack?
* Trump’s bravado; his showiness, vindictiveness, self-aggrandizement, etc doesn’t play very well in the upper Midwest or Mormon territories.
* If the Establishment plays the long game, they challenge Trump brutally during the primaries, but avoid stealing his nomination outright. Disaffected Establishment Republicans, Neocons and 4 months of media onslaught from the New York Times to Fox News, The National Review and The Wall Street Journal would defeat Trump without destroying the system. Then the Republican Establishment can say that they gave the new realignment a chance and it failed miserably.
If the Establishment tries to run Paul Ryan at the convention, it seems like a high risk strategy with little potential pay-off and a high degree of downside if Trump voters abandon the Republican Party. If you view the political parties first and foremost as businesses, the Republican Party will have to assume low revenues in 2016 in order to reap the benefits after the Trump campaign. A Hillary Presidency would likely be great for fundraising, but have little downside in terms of policy for the Republican Establishment. Of course, it is quite possible that the Republican Party cannot think that far ahead and will spite its future prospects just to maintain the gravy train in 2016.
* If you can, watch a rerun of last night’s (4Apr16) Hannity show on Fox. Trump was on the full hour. He acknowledged he should not have tweeted out that stuff that caused the big distraction over the past two weeks. His wife was on as well and she said Donald’s problem is he tweets too much and she wants to keep him off twitter.
I took this to mean that Trump and his wife know that he hosed things up with his impulsiveness. Hopefully he learns and focuses in on NY. Trump thrives off winning. It juices him up. And NY is the next battle and he stands to win big. Hopefully he will regain his mojo.
* Everyone else has a personality like drying paint, so they’re not going to get coverage. Trump is newsworthy in his own right and so gets coverage one way or the other, the problem is that Trump is shooting himself in the foot so damn often that the coverage he was going to get anyway gets diverted onto his cock-ups.
It’s these screw-ups which are playing a large part in alienating people who could/should vote for him. There are, essentially, two groups of opponents, those who disagree with what he’s saying and those who think he’s unfit for office. He could address the concerns of the latter group by showing that he can, indeed, master the nuance of policy. I was cutting him a lot of slack, I figured that he was bombastic in the beginning in order to clear the field, that this way buying him time to go deep on policy, to build up the campaign staff, and that we’d see a more in-depth Trump, but my patience is running thin.
People ragged on Palin but I defended her because I had actually seen her demonstrate mastery on Alaska’s energy politics, so I knew she could go deep on policy and perform her job and once schooled on other topics could do the same. I’m not seeing even unschooled Palin, winging it, kind of policy mastery from Trump. In the tread on Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos someone posted a video of her giving a presentation and the buzzwords were flying and that’s what I’m seeing from Trump. I’d bet that there are hundreds of us in the Steve-o-sphere who could take his issues and clean the clocks of opponents who challenged his positions but Trump isn’t doing that.
Trump is going to get covered because he has a big personality and he’s engaging. He’d be doing us all a favor if that coverage was focused on substance rather than tweeting pictures of Cruz’s wife or alienating the pro-life crowd. Talk more about disbanding NATO. Show us that there is some damn thought behind the idea. Let’s talk about what a post-NATO world would look like. That’ll get lots of coverage. Talk about SCOTUS precedent for the Executive banning people from entering/immigrating to the US due to ideological positions and then make the case that Islam, religion of any kind, is simply a subset of a larger category we call ideology. Explain why the freedoms we extend to religion within the US do not have to be extended to people outside of our borders. I guarantee you that Trump talking about any of that is going to stir up controversy and will get lots of coverage but it will recast him to be a more substantive man instead of a boor.
* His failure to fund a serious ground game in the fly over states hurt him badly – all because he’s a cheap ass, his failure to address certain issues in some degree of specificity in public in a non flip flop manner like H1-B visa workers. In one debate he said he supported bringing in more H1-B workers then said the opposite afterwards.
I suspect he doesn’t listen to his advisers much or even read his position papers.
His rallies are all the same, he gives a generic rah, rah speech with next to zero specifics. It’s not bad, but with no ground game and ad campaign to follow it up, it fails to bring him the wins he needs.
His interviews aren’t much better, broad generalities and no specifics on much of anything. It’s not a confidence builder at all.
And what the hell was he doing even talking to Chris Matthews anyways. Was Trump taking his stupid pills or something? Mr. Tingly hates Trump and ambushed him good. And abortion is a serious hot button issue and he blew it. Even Roger Stone said as much in a polite manner.
And yeah on delegate selection he’s totally blown it. He let Cruz carve him up on this. I guess he couldn’t be bothered to hire the talent and invest the resource to make sure delegate flipping didn’t happen.
He’s so desperate for free PR he goes on every two bit radio or tv talk show he can find. All it does it bite him.
All these little wounds add up.
One other thing, He needs to show a more presidential persona in his rallies and selected interviews, he needs to tone down the rah, rah stuff and start talking like a statesmen. It really does impress a lot of people when it’s done right.
* The women in my family find Cruz repulsive and reptilian. These are GOP voters. I see what they mean. He looks in-bred to me. Every time he speaks I expect him to take a banjo out and begin playing the theme from Deliverance.
* I think it’s pretty obvious that, because Cruz is running against The Demon Trump, he is profiting from a premature Strange New Respect. Should he ever become the favorite, the powers-that-be will savage him every bit as much as Trump, and, I expect, he will crash and burn twice as fast.
* In the GOP civil war Cruz just had his Chickamauga, his last hurrah before a long, grueling and exhausting campaign that will end in what in hindsight will have been seen an inevitable defeat(just like the real Civil War). There are simply no states coming that are favorable to him, save New Mexico perhaps, and in recent polls in some of them he is trailing 20-30 points.
The worst part for Cruz is, that unlike the Civil War for the South, this campaign was actually winnable for him. Right from the begining it was obvious to everyone except GOPe (not for nothing is it known as “The Stupid Party”) that this is going to be a Trump vs. Cruz race. It wasn’t just the numbers, it was the fact that only Cruz understood what it takes to beat Trump: co-opt his message and present himself as a more credible messenger. GOPe in it’s arrogance and aloofness, however, insisted on their traditional platform of amnesty, open borders, free trade, tax cuts for the rich and perpetual war that was immensely unpopular as well as morally and ideologically bankrupt. They wen all-in with their boy Rubio who, on top of it all, was not the wonderful candidate he was made out to be. The decisive tactical mistake by GOPe was their desperate attempt to resuscitate the Rubio campaign between New Hampshire and First Super Tuesday. They tried to do it at the expense of Cruz and it only resulted in the latter being derailed just long enough (and in states that had favorable demographics for Cruz) to make the Trump Train unstoppable. Had a fraction of energy of what was spent to prop-up a dead end candidate like Rubio been used on helping Cruz, we propably would have been looking at a neck-and-neck race now where all bets would be off.
Cruz will lose and his supporters are deluding themselves if they think otherwise. He is a very capable politician in many ways, however. Unlike Rubio, I can actually see him rebounding from this loss however this race turns out.
Hawley investigates in depth an in-house discussion about the paleoconservatism that had emerged in the 1980s and 1990s held between long-time Chronicles Editor Tom Fleming and myself. Fleming “argued that paleoconservatism is a continuation of the interwar old right, whereas Paul Gottfried viewed paleoconservatism as the true heir of the 1950s conservative movement before it was hijacked by neoconservatism.”