Curb Your Authoritarianism? The 2016 Conventional Wisdom Thread (Elections, Part 6)

extinction is coming for the T-rex!
we are disproving evolution!!!

jill stein: "The vote in Britain to exit the European Union (EU) is a victory for those who believe in the right of self-determination and who reject the pro-corporate, austerity policies of the political elites in EU. The vote says no to the EU’s vision of a world run by and for big business."

ha good one dr stein *votes for clinton now*

um, jill?

Pathetic: http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/06/25/betraying-progressives-dnc-platform-backs-fracking-tpp-and-israel-occupation

ah yes, a victory for the anti-corporate UKIP.

xpost

'That's how I roll'

guys george will has left the republican party ;_;

wasn't expecting him to be more principled than james dobson tbh

Back in May:

Conservative Washington Post columnist George Will is a “major loser,” Donald Trump said Wednesday.
Trump’s response follows Will’s April 29 column in the Post, headlined “If Trump is nominated, the GOP must keep him out of the White House.” Should Trump win the nomination, Will argued, conservatives should help him lose every state in the general election.
“Well, George is a major loser,” Trump told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” following a victory in Indiana that knocked out Ted Cruz, clearing the way for Trump to win the Republican nomination. “You know, he’s a dour guy. Nobody watches him. Very few people listen to him. It’s over for him, and I never want his support.”
Trump said Will has been writing anti-Trump columns since he announced his campaign last summer and suggested the political commentator is sour over his decision not to attend a speech he gave a decade ago in Mar-a-Lago, Trump's palatial Florida estate.
“You know, I had a run-in with him when I was in civilian life,” Trump said. “I didn’t wanna go to one of his speeches at Mar-a-Lago. He made a speech at Mar-a-Lago, and I find him to be a very boring person. You know, he’s boring and dull, and I didn’t go to the speech.”
Trump insisted he didn’t go because he had no reason to, adding that he wasn’t a politician at the time and didn’t think he’d become one.
“I said I just don’t wanna go, and he wanted me to go. And I just, you know, it was one of those things. I had something else to do,” Trump said. “He never forgot it, and he’s a nasty guy. He’s a very nasty guy. But I have to tell you this: Nobody reads him, he has no influence."
If Will had influence, Trump continued, he wouldn’t be phoning into “Morning Joe” right now as the leading Republican presidential candidate.
“Look, let’s face it, I mean, the guy writes a bad column every time he writes a column. I don’t know how often he writes them. I don’t really know.”

lol @ jill stein, wow
rly plsd we slipped out of the grip of austerity by squeezing out of the eu

You know...um...Trump..... otm?

until David Brooks came along George Will was the Smart Conservative that liberals adduced to show conservatism's intellectualism, so I'm glad both are being set on fire.

I am so shocked by the Dobson thing, I mean...I did not think james dobson did not actually believe in Christ, I just thought he has a very different sense of Christ than I do, which is fine. you know, it's a hard needle to thread sometimes but one you have to accept. I disagree very very strongly w/him on practically everything but I'd never have said "oh, he's just a charlatan bilking people for money and wanting political power, he has no actual beliefs." but for an ostensible religious leader to buy into trump's naked cynicism about being a Christian when he clearly, like glaringly obviously, does not believe, is just...mystifying and rage-inducing for me

political movement that got its start backing reagan over carter in lack of allegiance to christian principles shocker

Asked if he had been consulting with his foreign policy advisers over the British result, Mr. Trump seemed to dismiss advisers as a general class: “Honestly, most of them are no good,” he said. “Let’s go to the 14th!”

I thought he was going to put some great people on it, the best people.

JCLC otm. how anyone with a shred of self-respect can buy into this bald-faced horseshit will remain one of life's greatest mysteries to me. yeah i know i know tribalism and all that. but it has to be insulting to anyone with an IQ over room temp.

and no, it is NOT the same as HRC pretending to be more (or less) progressive than she actually is.

isn't it that, in some sense, the extremity of their evangelicism requires them to take converts at their word and try to help them along? plus all the cynicism and moronicism etc.

There's also a flavor of Envangelicalism that prioritizes the conversion experience, the repentance, so much that for the power of Jesus' name to win over a terrible sinner is more valued than an average person. Really a terrible loophole for just asking con men to come along and get saved. And yes, the community has to throw their doors open to such a person because to do anything else would mean doubting Jesus' power to redeem souls.

Ah sorry much what j said.

i can appreciate that (grew up Southern Baptist), but i'd love to see the response from these camps if Clinton were to claim "born again" status

Dobson types don't consider Methodism or other forms of Protestantism true Christianity or true capitalism.

just asking con men to come along and get saved

being "saved" is itself a con, so you know, like meets like...

really blowin minds there amateurist

Two polls:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-new-poll-support-for-trump-plunges-giving-clinton-a-double-digit-lead/2016/06/25/0565bef6-3a31-11e6-a254-2b336e293a3c_story.html

http://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-weathers-stormy-month-loses-only-2-points-versus-hillary-clinton-1466946000

The first comports with what many people think will happen, but it's early.

Latest Ipsos-Reuters poll has it 46.6 Clinton, 33.3 Trump, 20.1 neither.

can't read either due to article limits, good job old media

If past is prologue, then each candidate should improve their numbers after their respective conventions.

If Trump lags similarly badly by mid-September, not only will it indicate a big loss coming, but could easily create a reverse bandwagon with voters jumping off the Trump wagon so as not to be associated with a big loser. They may not jump onto HRC's wagon, but it wouldn't matter. One can hope this comes to pass. It could. He's awful in ways we've never seen in awful candidates before.

The poll, conducted in the immediate aftermath of a massacre in Orlando that was perpetrated by a man who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, showed Obama’s approval rating at 56 percent — its highest level in Post polling since May 2011, after the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Obama is more popular now than Republicans George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush in the waning months of their presidencies. Although Obama’s approval rating has not reached the level of former Democratic president Bill Clinton’s in 2000, his standing suggests that he could be a relatively effective surrogate for Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail.

http://adage.com/article/campaign-trail/trump-s-fundraising-email-a-60-spam-rate/304673/

I remember staying at a big motel in western North Dakota a couple years ago at the peak of the oil boom and there were easily100 brand new giant white pickups in the lot dwarfing our Honda Fit. I was wondering the other day how many of them have been repoed since then.

And wrong thread

“You got to cut him some slack,” Dr. Dobson said. “He didn’t grow up like we did.”

He didn't get beaten with a stick from an early age?

dobson on bill clinton in 1998:

https://thewayofimprovement.com/2016/06/25/james-dobson-on-the-character-of-the-president-of-the-united-states

includes words of praise for christian man/courageous public servant/disgraced former baylor president ken starr

see, you have to be Born Again AND be a Republican for it to count (cf Jimmy Carter)

or, you know, at least say out loud you are both things.

the born again stuff w/ trump seems so calculated and cynical that i feel like as a believer i would be offended to hear him say it and not relieved. but maybe born again puts more weight into the words + exterior manifestation than judaism does (which theologically often concerns itself w/ internal, or hidden processes, aka p'nimiyut. it's just too obviously bullshit.

two corinthians, twice as good as one corinthian

there's something deeply weird about this particular "born-again" announcement. it's true that evangelical christianity is about the conversion experience and not about the continuing journey, but it also expects sudden, dramatic, and immediate change. dobson asking for patience with trump because he is a "baby christian" is completely at odds with the entire structure of charismatic christianity, which is totally about the sudden heel-face turn. he's supposed to be filled with the spirit of the lord and, basically, be infallible. also to totally renounce his old life. bob dylan's born-again period is a pretty good example here.

...or Daniel Plainview's.

This is a beautiful gem from a CNN story about whether Trump is hurting himself (let's hope!):

Trump's free flowing style and unconventional political persona played a key role in his success in dispatching what had been billed as the most talented crop of Republican primary candidates in a generation.

can't read either due to article limits, good job old media

Try using private/incognito mode

I saw that spin many times during the early stages of the campaign, and I have to think even many GOP party faithful realized that was bullshit, and that part of Trump's appeal was his ability to bully and belittle them and show them up as UNtalented. (Of course many of them are now crawling back to him...) xp

Alternatively

https://i.imgur.com/j1F9yXZ.gif

xp

I thought it was generally accepted at this point that Trump clambered to the top of the republican heap because a) name recognition, b) no one took him seriously until it was too late, and c) this was arguably the least talented crop of Republican primary candidates in a generation (and certainly the most 'who's that?' crop as far as the general public is concerned). Oh and also d) super racist, you can't even believe how racist.

I got the impression that if you were following political news at all (even if you were ignoring horse-race stuff), you'd probably have heard of Cruz, Rubio, Bush, Carson, Fiorina, Perry, Santorum - though the last two from their time in the spotlight last time.

having a super-crowded field splitting the traditional conservative vote while you rake in 100% of the crazy racist shitbag vote definitely helped matters a bit

Carson was new to the political stage, Fiorina was a washed-up corporate type who'd lost a Senate race years ago, Perry was a major loser from last time - Bush, Rubio, and Walker were the people with the hype around them before Trump jumped in the ring. Maybe Santorum I guess. Cruz was radioactive to party types. Then there were the further "second-tier debate only" clown-car characters... the notion that these sixteen people were some murderer's row of all-star Republican talent is laughable. I'm not sure if they have great candidates waiting in the wings but if they did they'd probably have stayed home to avoid facing Hillary Clinton. The people who were supposed to be the front-runners turned out to have baggage they couldn't get around and/or really awful campaign/debate skills, with or without Trump.

If the year had started with some actually really popular, charismatic, good-campaigner Generic Republican with reasonable name recognition, a lot of the clowns would not have even been trying in the first place, and it certainly would not have gotten to where Trump could lead a 17-person field while polling at 20-25%. Like... some ex-general who'd written a best-seller and talked about low taxes and small businesses a lot, in a folksy but seasoned kinda voice, and was not the brother of George W. Bush... I really think half these goobers would have never gotten in, and Trump would have ended up a Pat Buchanan. I realize this is fanfic and that person did not, it seems, exist, but "the most talented crop" etc. is just lolsy.