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Tuesday, November 24, 2015

The Trump Effect

Greg Sargent is rightly skeptical that Trump's latest dustup-his claim that he saw 'thousands of Jersey City Muslims cheering the fall of the Twin Towers' is going to be his death knell.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/11/24/morning-plum-heres-why-donald-trumps-lies-dont-matter-hes-strong/

The idea that because he's been caught in an outrageous falsehood, his numbers are going to reflexively crater seems almost quaint assuming you've actually been watching the last six months.

I think Sargent is right-his followers aren't worried about this because they see him as strong. Indeed, I also agree that from their standpoint he's stronger by refusing to get mired in all the painstaking details that the fact checkers demand.

"Members of the media are wringing their hands so hard over this perplexing question that their skin is practically peeling: How is it possible for Donald Trump to tell so many blatant lies, shrug off our fact-checks, and continue rising in the polls?"

"Easy: Because in the minds of his supporters, Trump has converted even the simple act of dismissing pointy-headed media fact-checks into a sign of his “strength.” Trump’s big insight is not simply that the details don’t matter. It’s that getting mired in the details is itself a sign of weakness."

I mean in all seriousness doesn't it seem a little banal for Glenn Kessler to be wrapping his knuckles and giving him 4 Pinocchios?"

Sargent then goes on to note Trump's latest, latest outrage last night on what he said about waterboarding.

Here’s what Trump told a crowd last night about the need to bring back waterboarding:

“Would I approve waterboarding? You bet your ass I would — in a heartbeat…And I would approve more than that. Don’t kid yourself, folks. It works, okay? It works. Only a stupid person would say it doesn’t work….Believe me, it works. And you know what? If it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway, for what they’re doing. It works.”

When it comes to torture, Trump would approve “more” than waterboarding, never mind whether it actually works? As noted above, the details don’t matter in the least. Still, this one is worth following up on."

Yep, let's demand more details. LOL.

I have to say, what I've said before. I have argued in the past that I find Trump in a sense to be a breath of fresh air and I think this latest outrage about waterboarding underscores it.

In my previous post I looked at Rubio's craven triangulation strategy as in some ways crueler even than Trump's positions on Muslims and immigration.

"In purely affective terms, Rubio is positioning himself masterfully, courting, or at least refusing to offend, both the party’s nativist faction and its more ethnically inclusive donor class. The trouble for him is that the rhetorical middle between Trump’s xenophobic policies, and Bush’s reality-based rejection of them, is an incoherent substantive realm that is in many ways crueler and more reactionary than Trump’s outright rejectionism. By successfully adopting a more measured, less inciting form of rhetoric, but refusing to condemn Trump’s bigotry, Rubio has unintentionally outflanked Trump—on the right."

"It’s not about closing down mosques,” Rubio told Fox News’s Megyn Kelly last week. “It’s about closing down anyplace—whether it’s a cafe, a diner, an internet site—anyplace where radicals are being inspired. … Whatever facility is being used—it’s not just a mosque—any facility that’s being used to radicalize and inspire attacks against the United States, should be a place that we look at.”

"The purpose of this tack was to deemphasize the explicitly religious nature of Trumpian Islamophobia. But rather than shift frames from policing religion to policing crime—by perhaps arguing that no mosque (or church or synagogue or cafe or website) provides legal refuge to terrorists—Rubio instead simply promised to shutter more and different mainstays of Muslim communities than Trump did."

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/11/rubio-is-to-right-of-trump-on.html

I have mostly admitted that I've enjoyed the rise of Trump. I mean it really has been hilarious. Now, others have been arguing that there's a less humorous more worrisome side to his rise.

Could it be poisoning our public debate in ways that we'll never get back? For the most part I'v'e been dismissive of this, although the one thing that has given me pause is what we've seen post Paris where I was shocked by how quickly we seemed to revert to the early years after 9/11 on the media with even a third of House Democrats turning on Syrian refugees out of pure political expediency.
After all, these are the same Dems who were lecturing the President in September for taking in only 10,000 refugees-they wanted 100,000.
But I guess as far as Trump is concerned I look at it this way. The GOP debate has been awful for a long time but in previous cycles they were able to veil it a little in a kind of pious seriousness. 
You know Trump's comment about waterboarding recalls one man, of course-Dick Cheney. 
Now when Cheney even more recently defended waterboarding, there was nothing remotely funny about it. It was truly scary, full stop. But the reason for this is the Very Serious Pundits take Cheney as someone totally serious. 
But somehow with Trump hearing him, I will admit to having to laugh when he said-'It works but even if it doesn't they deserve it.'
Because that's honest. This has been the true Republican position on torture. It works but even if it doesn't they deserve it anyway. 
Except they could never say that last part. Trump by saying it, kind of makes it a more honest conversation that the GOP can't disguise or dissemble. 
It will be interesting to see if Cheney has anything to say about Trump's endorsement of his favored methods. Nothing gets Cheney so energized as defending waterboarding. 
Here was Cheney asked about Trump back on September 1. 
http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/01/politics/donald-trump-dick-cheney-liz-cheney-book/


13 comments:

  1. I just heard Karl Rove on OnPoint (with Tom Ashbrook)... he's thinking that the nominee could result from several rounds of votes at the convention. He thinks 70% of the GOP electorate will definitely NOT vote for Trump (we'll see), and that Trump has a high floor but a low ceiling. This is the position of Jennifer Rubin today too (also not a fan of Trump, ... like Karl): solid 25% to 30% of support, but that's it. The title of her piece is "Trump is NOT the GOP." Lol.

    Mike, I don't know the rules there in NY, but will you register Republican so you can vote for Trump in the primary?

    That was always my strategy here in CA... register in the party I most wanted to vote in the primary for. I think I last registered as Republican, but I don't think it matters anymore: the rules have changed here in the past few years and I think I can vote in either primary. I'm not sure though... I'm a little confused on how it works. It just seems like last time my party affiliation didn't matter.

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    1. If it truly doesn't matter, I guess I should re-register as a Democrat again... just for the shame of it. I don't want to be associated with the GOP if there's no advantage to it. I recall back in 2008 (?) one of my friends bought another friend Sarah Palin's book as a joke for Christmas. I remember thinking that it would be tough being seen in public purchasing a Sarah Palin book. Lol. Maybe they used Amazon.

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  2. Good question! When I was in Mass I was 'unenrolled' so I could vote in either primary if I wanted to.

    But I seem to remember this hitting a snag at some point-maybe when I came back to NY?-and I re-registered to the Dems.

    If I can vote for Trump you know I will. LOL

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  3. Yes, Tom, if you recall I've said for awhile that 1 scenario I evnision is Trump making it to a convention and the GOP cheating-the delegates from the states he won simply refusing to call his name.

    But it looks like the GOP dirty tricks are already afoot. Kaisch's group is trying to keep Trump off the NH ballot.

    http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/donald-trump-new-hampshire-ballot-216177

    See, even if they were successful I think this would be such a poisoning of the well that a third party really would be a possibility.

    Trump could certainly plausibly say 'They haven't treated my unfairly so I'm running third party' and no one could blame him.

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    1. The way Rove described it, by mid-Spring 2016 about 31 states (all but one of which I think) have to proportionally divide their delegates. The delegates are committed to vote for their candidate for the 1st or even 2nd or 3rd round of voting at the convention (should it come to multiple rounds)... unless they are released by their candidate to vote another way. So as the rounds of voting progress, the delegates could start to shift.

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    2. "a third party really would be a possibility." ... if we extrapolate from here, that party will be running around in brown uniforms, beating the fuck out of people in pitched street battles. I'll pray to Jesus for it to be so. ;^)

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  4. O'Reilly is "looking out for Trump" and all other "honest politicians" so he doesn't inadvertently give the enemy (Democrats presumably) ammunition for later to falsely claim Trump is a "racist":
    http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-oreilly-donald-trump-race-crime-tweet-2015-11
    I love how Trump says he's the "least racist person on Earth."

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  5. No, Dems aren't his enemy. Not for now, not for a long time. The enemy is Kaisch and friends who are trying to destroy him and keep him off the ballot.

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  6. Tom I just tweeted the Politico link about keeping him off of NH to Trump with the message' Doesn't sound to me like they're treating you fairly!'

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  7. I just tweeted the same to Ann Coulter

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  8. Now I tweeted the Politico piece to Howie Carr

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  9. Tweet: nice.

    enemy: I presume O'Reilly meant Democrats. But he could mean the GOP competitors as well.

    O/T: I just happened to watch this comic Bill Burr... and his description here of a crazy guy in a Target store... sounds like the Donald! Lol! (according to Burr, chloroform should be used in such situations)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_MUcYFL1_Y

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  10. Oh, O'Reilly ight have meant Democrats. I'm just saying he's not my enemy as long as he's leading GOP polls

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