2016 Presidential Horse Race

[GoIrish41]

Did I miss something?

Think he may have responded to the wrong post.

 

[woolybug25]

Did I miss something?

I was elaborating on your Ottoman Empire reference. People have a short memory of history. Everyone thought Hitler wouldn't actually do the batshit crazy stuff he said either. I'm not saying that Trump will do that kind of stuff, but hell... He did just say that killing millions of people with a nuke "wasn't off the table".

It wasn't disagreement with your point, but rather an anology on Trump vs the Ottoman Empire.

 

[NorthDakota]

That is quite the stretch. There is no way that the Ottomans could occupy Western Europe. Maybe they take Vienna, Po Valley, all of Italy even...there is no way they could occupy France or Spain. Or cross the English Channel and get to England. Or find it worthwhile to occupy Russia. Or cross the oceans and occupy their various nascent colonies.

They got to north central France before being driven back pretty in like the 700's. It's not that big a stretch to think they could have done it. Heck, they even occupied Spain there for awhile. Didn't get completely driven out until the late 15th Century.

I'm no expert of Dark-Middle-Renaissance Age Europe, seems tough to hold all that I agree.

 

[phgreek]

Man, you give this guy a lot of credit. And I hope you are right. But I find him to be a dolt, so I'm not buying his media genius. I think he is the real Archie Bunker and that there is nothing sophisticated about him.

I think Donald is conditioned to operate in the Media, to manipulate it...I believe in his earlier days he was probably who you think he is now (but much more intelligent than you give him credit for)...for years all he's done is say something, and watch....say something and watch. He knows exactly what he is doing.

The Archie Bunker thing is a routine...a character he puts on...something he learned to do with his apprentice schtick. He's going to try and moderate and pull it back...he's alluded to such already. That one I want to see...

Trump appears, for all intents and purposes, to be a recovering Democrat...which means he is not a Republican either. This nebulous political identity is not an accident, and it allows him to say things devoid of platform limitations, and it actually helps his outsider cred. He has placed himself BETTER than anyone for this cycle.

If it isn't him, I'd love to know who is doing this for him, because he seriously has no business being anywhere near the REPUBLICAN nomination...but yet...here we are.

And I think everyone would be wise not to dismiss what he is doing simply by re-branding the tired old Tea Party dismissals...this is Tea Party with professional intent/execution, but a whole lot more.

 

[irishfan]

I think Donald is conditioned to operate in the Media, to manipulate it...I believe in his earlier days he was probably who you think he is now (but much more intelligent than you give him credit for)...for years all he's done is say something, and watch....say something and watch. He knows exactly what he is doing.

The Archie Bunker thing is a routine...a character he puts on...something he learned to do with his apprentice schtick. He's going to try and moderate and pull it back...he's alluded to such already. That one I want to see...

Trump appears, for all intents and purposes, to be a recovering Democrat...which means he is not a Republican either. This nebulous political identity is not an accident, and it allows him to say things devoid of platform limitations, and it actually helps his outsider cred. He has placed himself BETTER than anyone for this cycle.

If it isn't him, I'd love to know who is doing this for him, because he seriously has no business being anywhere near the REPUBLICAN nomination...but yet...here we are.

And I think everyone would be wise not to dismiss what he is doing simply by re-branding the tired old Tea Party dismissals...this is Tea Party with professional intent/execution, but a whole lot more.

I agree. I think he's quite smart (doesn't mean he can't be an idiot about certain things), and that he dumbs down his message for the audience. At the very least, he has mastered ways of fooling the media into giving him way too much coverage:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I honestly think this Trump sums him up better than anyone could.<a href="https://t.co/kn4rQc46Kj">https://t.co/kn4rQc46Kj</a> <a href="https://t.co/TkNMmEFXi4">pic.twitter.com/TkNMmEFXi4</a></p>— andrew kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) <a href="https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/status/712080909470736385">March 22, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SEPs17_AkTI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

^He's been saying the same things in regards to trade deals for 30 years now. And this is probably similar sounding to the message he will sell if he secures the nomination and moves on to the general election. It's actually why I think he will beat Hillary head to head if it comes to it. He has a message and an image to portray. It might not be accurate, but he's going to sell that: He's in-your-face pro-America. He's the alpha dog who has built businesses and is going to "fix" the country's problems and "make deals" to boost the economy. He's anti-PC. I don't know what Hillary's message is. She doesn't seem to know if the voters want her to say she'll be like 8 more years of Obama or not. She's going to run as the anti-Trump and "safe" choice but I don't know if that will be enough. That sounds oversimplified, but Obama ran on hope and change and not much else to most voters.

 

[Legacy]

Outrage at the injustice

Outrage at the injustice

Constitutional Remedies to a Lawless Supreme Court Op-Ed by Ted Cruz

This week, we have twice seen Supreme Court justices violating their judicial oaths. Yesterday, the justices rewrote Obamacare, yet again, in order to force this failed law on the American people. Today, the Court doubled down with a 5–4 opinion that undermines not just the definition of marriage, but the very foundations of our representative form of government. Both decisions were judicial activism, plain and simple. Both were lawless.

The Court’s brazen action undermines its very legitimacy...This must stop. Liberty is in the balance. Not only are the Court’s opinions untethered to reason and logic, they are also alien to our constitutional system of limited and divided government. By redefining the meaning of common words, and redesigning the most basic human institutions, this Court has crossed from the realm of activism into the arena of oligarchy....

This week’s opinions are but the latest in a long line of judicial assaults on our Constitution and the common-sense values that have made America great....

The Framers of our Constitution, despite their foresight and wisdom, did not anticipate judicial tyranny on this scale. The Constitution explicitly provides that justices “shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour,” and this is a standard they are not remotely meeting. The Framers thought Congress’s “power of instituting impeachments,” as Alexander Hamilton argued in the Federalist Papers, would be an “important constitutional check” on the judicial branch and would provide “a complete security” against the justices’ “deliberate usurpations of the authority of the legislature.”...

But the Framers underestimated the justices’ craving for legislative power, and they overestimated the Congress’s backbone to curb it. It was clear even before the end of the founding era that the threat of impeachment was, in Thomas Jefferson’s words, “not even a scarecrow” to the justices. Today, the remedy of impeachment — the only one provided under our Constitution to cure judicial tyranny — is still no remedy at all. A Senate that cannot muster 51 votes to block an attorney-general nominee openly committed to continue an unprecedented course of executive-branch lawlessness can hardly be expected to muster the 67 votes needed to impeach an Anthony Kennedy....

The time has come, therefore, to recognize that the problem lies not with the lawless rulings of individual lawless justices, but with the lawlessness of the Court itself The decisions that have deformed our constitutional order and have debased our culture are but symptoms of the disease of liberal judicial activism that has infected our judiciary. A remedy is needed that will restore health to the sick man in our constitutional system.

The Remedy is to change the Constitution.

Rendering the justices directly accountable to the people would provide such a remedy.

 

[Buster Bluth]

They got to north central France before being driven back pretty in like the 700's. It's not that big a stretch to think they could have done it. Heck, they even occupied Spain there for awhile. Didn't get completely driven out until the late 15th Century.

I'm no expert of Dark-Middle-Renaissance Age Europe, seems tough to hold all that I agree.

If "they" means the Ottomans, then no they didn't. The Ottomans came into being in like the 1300s or so, and took Constantinople in 1453 as their coming onto the scene moment. The Ottomans never threatened to take France, in fact they were allies for centuries.

The Moors, as part of the Umayyad Caliphate, took what is today Spain. But even those guys never became an existential threat. Interestingly it wasn't Spain then, but rather the friggin' Visigoth remnants. Eventually Castile and Aragon would push the Moors out and then form Spain, and then turn around and use their spare capital for other projects, like funding Christopher Columbus! #historyisfun.

I do think it's interesting how we view Islam in the 700s, or even 1500s, compared to today. The problem with Islam today is largely Wahhabism/Salafism, and that started in like the 1700s. I mean the founder of that batshit crazy stuff, al-Wahhab, lived more recently than Benjamin Franklin. Simply saying, religions and their sects change and we have no way of knowing what today's Islam would be if history were different. When it comes to religion, peoples tend to believe what they want to believe, and choose what empowers them. If Islamic peoples would have taken a larger extent of Europe, would the Europeans have reciprocated a change onto Islam? I think that's a safe bet.

In Islam's defense, we like to point to the Catholic Church as the caretakers of science, education and such during the "Dark Ages," when I think the Islamic/Arab/Persian world has a legitimate claim to that throne too. Things like al-jabr (algebra), algorithms, arabic numerals, advances in astronomy, etc were all happening in the Middle East at that time. They also valued ancient Greek texts, and their enlightened ideas. In fact when the armies of Castile were slowly pushing the Moors out of the Iberian Peninsula, they would occasionally capture and translate Arabic books that they would then realize were ancient Greek texts that were lost to European civilization or new math/science knowledge that then dispersed into European minds. Considering this was before the printing press, finding new books and knowledge is sorta huge.

 

[Buster Bluth]

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SEPs17_AkTI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

^He's been saying the same things in regards to trade deals for 30 years now. And this is probably similar sounding to the message he will sell if he secures the nomination and moves on to the general election. It's actually why I think he will beat Hillary head to head if it comes to it. He has a message and an image to portray. It might not be accurate, but he's going to sell that: He's in-your-face pro-America. He's the alpha dog who has built businesses and is going to "fix" the country's problems and "make deals" to boost the economy. He's anti-PC. I don't know what Hillary's message is. She doesn't seem to know if the voters want her to say she'll be like 8 more years of Obama or not. She's going to run as the anti-Trump and "safe" choice but I don't know if that will be enough. That sounds oversimplified, but Obama ran on hope and change and not much else to most voters.

It's not the positions mentioned in that clip that are turning people off. It's his willingness to tap into the xenophobia/racist sentiments that are unfortunately alive and well in America. It's also his complete lack of nuance in foreign policy, like suggesting we commit war crimes (murder families, torture) or not ruling out the use of nuclear weapons...or even broad stupid shit like "they need to fear us."

Basically he's the candidate someone would create in a lab if they were aiming to form the embodiment of ignorant positions held by low info voters of the lower middle class. So naturally, he loves the poorly educated.

The problem is he does say some good stuff, like demanding that Europe commit to more military spending, or admitting that globalization eviscerated the Rustbelt, or calling out the complete corporate control of Washington, etc. But seriously, it's not the stuff in that video that has people shaking their heads.

On a side note, he mentions Japan creaming us in trade. How is that working out for them? Japan has been in an economic malaise for decades and the US continues to churn. That says something. Plus he mentions how unfair trade is, and yet something like TPP is designed to level that playing field...but isn't he anti-globalization? Seems to be caught in a bind on that one.

 

[connor_in]

#TBT


<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uw3yidwGchk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[wizards8507]

I thought about putting this in the political correctness thread, but it's a bit more serious than the sarcastic banter that's flying around over there. It plays into the conversation we were having about radical Islam. This is the opening paragraph of Patrick Henry's "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death" speech.

No man thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the House. But different men often see the same subject in different lights; and, therefore, I hope it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen if, entertaining as I do, opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely, and without reserve. This is no time for ceremony. The question before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offence, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the majesty of heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.

 

[irishfan]

It's not the positions mentioned in that clip that are turning people off. It's his willingness to tap into the xenophobia/racist sentiments that are unfortunately alive and well in America. It's also his complete lack of nuance in foreign policy, like suggesting we commit war crimes (murder families, torture) or not ruling out the use of nuclear weapons...or even broad stupid shit like "they need to fear us."

Basically he's the candidate someone would create in a lab if they were aiming to form the embodiment of ignorant positions held by low info voters of the lower middle class. So naturally, he loves the poorly educated.

The problem is he does say some good stuff, like demanding that Europe commit to more military spending, or admitting that globalization eviscerated the Rustbelt, or calling out the complete corporate control of Washington, etc. But seriously, it's not the stuff in that video that has people shaking their heads.

On a side note, he mentions Japan creaming us in trade. How is that working out for them? Japan has been in an economic malaise for decades and the US continues to churn. That says something. Plus he mentions how unfair trade is, and yet something like TPP is designed to level that playing field...but isn't he anti-globalization? Seems to be caught in a bind on that one.

Oh, I know that. I was just pointing out that he can actually talk about some issues without sounding like a 3rd grader. He's sounding like a buffoon now, but I don't think he's the blustering idiot that people make him out to be. I'm guessing he'll tone everything down soon enough. Maybe he won't. In which case I don't think he has any chance in a general election. But, I bet he knows what he's doing and he'll pivot center and continue to sound more "presidential" in speeches.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

The NYT's Ross Douthat just published an article titled "Trumpism After Trump":

There is now no possibility that the Republican Party will survive its rendezvous with Donald Trump unbroken.

If Trump is the party’s nominee, the best-case scenario — the best case! — for G.O.P. unity probably involves a host of Republican officials withholding their endorsements in the fall and millions of Republican-leaning voters simply staying home. The other scenario involves an independent candidate as a vehicle for #neverTrump conservatives, who might take anywhere from 5 percent to 30 percent of the general election vote depending on the candidate and how Trump fares outside his core constituency.

If Trump isn’t the nominee, if he enters the convention with a plurality of delegates and leaves without the nomination, then he becomes the spoiler — either as a third-party candidate or (more likely, I think) as a kind of permanent roadshow, attacking the Cruz-Kasich ticket at every opportunity and urging his supporters to never vote Republican again.

It’s been a while since we witnessed a split quite this naked. In the past, it has often portended some sort of realignment.

For Republicans, the Barry Goldwater-Nelson Rockefeller civil war of 1964, and its fading echo in John Anderson’s third party campaign in 1980, were milestones along Rockefeller Republicanism’s road to becoming just another variety of northeastern liberalism.

When Democrats split in 1968, with George Wallace running a Trumpesque third-party campaign, and again in 1972, when many party leaders barely supported George McGovern, the division hastened the transformation of Southern Democrats and blue-collar whites into reliable Nixon and Reagan voters.

Would a Trump-induced schism have a similarly transformative effect? In certain ways the ingredients are there. Trump has laid bare real divisions in the party, particularly the wide divide between many working class Republicans and the G.O.P.’s agenda-setting elite. If you squint a little, his movement looks ideologically coherent, and it could have staying power as a kind of American analogue to Europe’s further-right parties: ethno-nationalist, protectionist, anti-immigration and anti-Islam, but more statist and secular than the current G.O.P.

But when you try to imagine how this schism might play out in the long run, you run into two distinct realities.

First, there is no Trump movement as yet; there is only Trump himself, his brand and his cult of personality, plus a parade of opportunists and hangers-on. This makes the Trump phenomenon very different from the Goldwater and McGovern candidacies, which were boosted by pre-existing movements on the right and left. It also makes it different from more recent insurgencies, the anti-war left and the Tea Party, which were built more on grassroots mobilization and donor networks than on a single standard bearer.

Maybe a Trump movement is struggling toward self-consciousness, and in four to eight years it will be fully formed. But for now there aren’t Trump-like candidates challenging Republican politicians insufficiently committed to his cause (this has been a pretty easy year for incumbents, in fact), nor is there a Trumpish version of the netroots poised to be a player in Republican politics in 2018 or 2020. (The closest thing to a Trumpist activist cohort is the so-called “alt-right,” a mix of Jacobite enthusiasm and noxious racism that’s still mostly a Twitter and comment-thread phenomenon.)

A few prominent Trumpistas do make a neat ideological fit with Trumpism as it might exist going forward — border hawks like Jeff Sessions and Jan Brewer, resentful populists like Sarah Palin, media bomb-throwers like Ann Coulter and the remaining Breitbart crew. But mostly he’s surrounded by has-been politicians looking for a second life, media personalities looking for an audience, and grifters looking to cash in (but I repeat myself).

So when Trump is no longer a candidate for president, Sean Hannity will probably morph back into a partisan hatchet man, Ben Carson will go back to his speaking circuit, Newt Gingrich will find some new ideological coat to wear and Chris Christie will take a job chauffeuring Trump’s limo. Maybe they’ll all rally again if he runs again in 2020. But Trumpism will need new leaders and a real activist base if it’s going to be more than a tendency or a temptation going forward.

Then second, even if Trumpism finds the leadership and foot soldiers to fight a longer civil war, it’s very hard to see a classic realignment following. That’s because it’s hard to imagine either Republican faction — the Trumpist populist nationalists or the movement conservatives who currently oppose him — swinging into the Democratic coalition the way George Wallace’s voters eventually joined the G.O.P. and Rockefeller Republicans joined the Democrats.

Yes, if Trump is the nominee some Republican foreign policy hawks, Wall Street types and suburban women will likely vote for Hillary; if Trump isn’t the nominee, some modest chunk of his blue-collar base might pull the lever for the Democrat. But overall the Obama-Hillary Democrats don’t want, and more importantly don’t think they need, the votes of either Trump-supporting working class whites who oppose immigration and affirmative action or Trump-hating religious conservatives or libertarians or Jack Kemp disciples. Given present demographic trends, they could be right.

Nor would a not-Trump center-right party be obviously attractive to large constituencies on the center-left, unless it abandoned many of the very ideological principles currently inspiring resistance to Trump’s progress.

So a Trumpian schism probably wouldn’t lead to a full realignment, a real re-sorting of the parties. Instead it would likely just create a lasting civil war within American conservatism, forging two provisional mini-parties — one more nationalist and populist, concentrated in the Rust Belt and the South, the other more like the Goldwater-to-Reagan G.O.P, concentrated in the high plains and Mountain West — whose constant warfare would deliver the presidency to the Democrats time and time again.

Something somewhat like this happened in Canada in the 1990s, when the Conservative Party collapsed into two factional parties — the populist Reform Party in the west and a rump Progressive Conservative Party with the center-right leftovers. That schism produced thirteen unbroken years of Liberal Party rule, and it was only after a hard-won merger that it became possible for conservatives (led by Stephen Harper) to win the prime minister’s office once again.

The lesson here for conservatives and Republicans is sobering. A rift is upon their party, and it won’t be healed before November. But if the party can’t be united under Trump, both his fans and his foes will probably face a stark choice in the aftermath: Rejoin or die.

 

[RDU Irish]

What is the point of having nuclear weapons if they are completely off the table for use?

 

[NorthDakota]

What is the point of having nuclear weapons if they are completely off the table for use?

Yeah, I struggle to see the problem here.

 

[RDU Irish]

It's like Rack'em asking a girl out and promising he isn't going to PIIHB but we all know its totally on the table.

 

[GoIrish41]

What is the point of having nuclear weapons if they are completely off the table for use?

Really hope you are joking.

 

[kmoose]

Really hope you are joking.

It's been the official policy of the US Government for 70+ years. Why would you think that he is joking?

 

[phgreek]

Well, the dance with Nucs has changed. It was once a deterrent based on cold war thinking...mutually assured destruction and all. Now, they've slid into a primarily defensive weapon...a passive deterrent...last resort if DC is on fire kind of thing...even then, lets be honest, very few would have the will to pull that trigger. So in the end we pay to maintain them, but never really get a use or benefit from them...no big stick, no projection of power...and quite frankly the day to use nucs to project power is gone. Unfortunately, for that to have happened, we needed to be VERY strong on anti-proliferation...which we have failed so miserably at, it is our scarlet letter for the ages.

When we stopped believing we had the moral authority to do that job, we ceded the lead to international bodies, and doomed the world to chaos. You may not like to hear it, you may not believe it, but in reality, the worst thing that happened was the collapse of the soviet union coupled with our unwillingness to seize the lead by ourselves, and enforce non-proliferation in a serious manner according to our own terms.

So no, we can't threaten to use Nucs. We can only hope the knowledge that we have them protects us from attack from someone else who has them...some dim shadow of MAD

...but by the looks of things, North Korea will be able to reach us soon enough, and Iran...Iran will be responsible for the first detonation on American soil...and the international bodies will be Shocked and Dismayed.

 

[Buster Bluth]

Trump's nuke issue perfectly summarizes his recklessness and stupidity, in my opinion. There's a pretty good reason to not use nukes today: they're ineffective. We have extraordinarily accurate firepower, nukes are dinosaurs you would only ever even want to use tactically in a war against another super power.

Then there's the part in which ISIS would love for us to drop a nuclear weapon in the Middle East. You think you've seen radicalized Muslims now, this guy doesn't have a clue how these people are thinking.

 

[woolybug25]

What is the point of having nuclear weapons if they are completely off the table for use?

The sheer fact that we have nukes means they are on the table. That's just a fact.

That being said, that's not why Trump's comment is appalling. ISIS isn't a country. They are an ideology, they are a network with worldwide cells. You can't nuke them. It's appalling that Trump is so willing to say that he would kill millions of people with a nuke without any concept of whether t would even accomplish anything. Nuking say... Syria, wouldn't destroy ISIS. It would kill far more innocent people than ISIS members and give them a clear message to recruit more terrorist.

It's the same kind of idiotic hate mongering Trump has built his popularity on.

 

[IrishJayhawk]

The sheer fact that we have nukes means they are on the table. That's just a fact.

That being said, that's not why Trump's comment is appalling. ISIS isn't a country. They are an ideology, they are a network with worldwide cells. You can't nuke them. It's appalling that Trump is so willing to say that he would kill millions of people with a nuke without any concept of whether t would even accomplish anything. Nuking say... Syria, wouldn't destroy ISIS. It would kill far more innocent people than ISIS members and give them a clear message to recruit more terrorist.

It's the same kind of idiotic hate mongering Trump has built his popularity on.

Exactly. Where exactly would you drop the bomb?

 

[kmoose]

Exactly. Where exactly would you drop the bomb?

If there was any justice in the world?

https://www.google.com/maps/place/U.../data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0xaa905a5bb427a2c4?hl=en

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Exactly. Where exactly would you drop the bomb?

Riyadh.

 

[IrishJayhawk]

If there was any justice in the world?

https://www.google.com/maps/place/U.../data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0xaa905a5bb427a2c4?hl=en

Cold, man. Very cold.

 

[IrishJayhawk]

This was amazing.

Lindsey Graham’s assessment of the Republican Party on ‘The Daily Show’ is jaw-dropping | For The Win

 

[woolybug25]

This was amazing.

Lindsey Graham’s assessment of the Republican Party on ‘The Daily Show’ is jaw-dropping | For The Win

That is so funny.

And so true.

Which is why it is also so incredibly sad...

 

[Rack Em]

Here's how I see Lindsay Graham.

 

[woolybug25]

Here's how I see Lindsay Graham.

Here's Trump...

 

[GATTACA!]

Here's Trump...

Except Trump's numbers would go up.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Except Trump's numbers would go up.

That baby's clearly a low-energy loser.