Buttload of Faith: the 2016 Presidential Primary Thread (Pt 2)

I don't think other politicians could get away with donald trump's shtick. I think the machismo and refusal to apologize is probably a bigger aspect of his appeal than the anti-immigration stuff or anything else approximating a policy stance. like they love that he says-it-like-it-is but he probably could be saying-it-like-it-is on less nationalist issues and getting the same response. these people want a putin, and mike huckabee was never gonna be putin.

(also they have donors to answer to.)

in b4 someone makes mike huckabee shirtless on horse joke

a lot of the problem with reassurance is that we were all wrong about trump, we misunderestimated how far he would go, and as a result the natural response is to treat anybody who predicted his downfall- including, in some cases, ourselves- as inherently untrustworthy. if we were wrong about trump back in june, why should anybody believe us now?

and the answer is because we acknowledge our mistakes, we admit them, and we learn from them. saying trump cannot be president is not desperate hindbrain wishful thinking backed up by distortions of evidence, it's based on, well, basically everything. i don't even need to go over all the evidence against it, because you are well aware of the tremendous mountain of evidence against him. all anybody needs to do in order to be convinced that he can't be president is to choose to believe it.

that doesn't mean there aren't a tremendous number of things we don't know, that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of danger, uncertainty, and confusion, that doesn't mean that national and global fascism isn't a serious threat. we have a lot of things to worry about, and i'm not sure any of us are sure exactly about which things exactly those are, but we can say with a high degree of confidence that "donald trump might be president" is not one of those things.

one trap he's been setting for himself by being mr. #1 invincible look at these polls I'm a winner people love me...well, if he loses iowa and new hampshire, he's lost the whole campaign narrative. even losing iowa would probably be enough to turn on his sore loser side, which is so unpleasant that it might even turn off his own supporters.

Other politicians get away w Trump's shtick all the time, it's not as if he has a lockdown on political assholery. The thought that he is a laughable fringe element and not symbolizing the rotten mainstream core of the modern GOP is comforting. The evidence is that he is doing well in polls, better than anyone else.

re: Georgia - really really hard to say about it being an outlier poll or not since there's hardly any other data to compare it to. RCP only has eight georgia polls total for the cycle, going back to one with huckabee leading in may. the last couple they show were from november 11th and the period 10/15-10/26. out of their set, FWIW, the landmark polls have consistently shown a bigger margin for trump than the other ones. i don't doubt that he's winning but it's entirely possible that that walloping huge margin reflects a house effect or methodological choice. annoyingly, landmark provides the web with only a headline-grabbing Q1, nothing on method or any other questions (if there were any). would be interesting to know a "is there anybody you wouldn't vote for?" question for the same sample set.

a stat likely to be distorted: in this poll, african-americans broke more clearly for trump, with 56.1% support, than whites did, with 43.3% support. the catch: there were only 16 african americans in the sample of 800, because, well, georgia republican party.

Other politicians get away w Trump's shtick all the time, it's not as if he has a lockdown on political assholery.

They get away with it but I question how much they're doing so in a way that's really appealing to people in the same way as Trump's kicking ass formula. I agree with iatee. And I was saying yesterday that I could see Carson sticking around because he's so outside the box. The rest of them are a bunch of insiders. Rubio and Cruz might have gotten some recent upticks, but we'll see how far that goes.

xp lol

New poll with Cruz leading in Iowa:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/12/13/fox-news-poll-cruz-trump-ahead-in-iowa-clinton-holds-caucus-lead.html

Supposedly an "unprecedented" spike. I'm fine with Cruz winning the nomination. I dislike him the most by far, so good for staying engaged. And I don't think his chance of winning a general is significantly better than Trump's.

nothing wrong with that unretouched pic of Ivanka, she's very beautiful.

agreed also it seems wrong to mock her bc of dislike for her father. she's not responsible for his behavior.

the concept of a 'downfall' of an independently wealthy candidate when there's no voting going on is a curious one

i am guilty of bringing up ivanka's looks but i wasn't trying to mock her. i believe my intention at the time was to express an aesthetic difference with donald trump re: him finding her so beautiful he would like to marry her. i thought the introduction of her father set the table very well for his opening speech and impeding campaign

Lol @ impeding

this is funny to me, but i know it probably isn't to anyone else:

as a person that loves all things dark and evil; black metal, horror films, goth rock, etc. i really like newt gingrich and ted cruz. i like these guys because they just seem like untethered forces of pain and evil (i love evil things). not that i'd vote for them or anything, but hey, i like them, in an evil sense.

Some politicians seem "evil" in a sociopathic, power hungry, spiteful, venal sort of way. Cruz seems like someone who has jars full of little trophies that he casually cut off of his screaming victims while stroking their hair and gently shushing them.

not that i'd vote for them or anything, but hey, i like them, in an evil sense.

man there are far worse people within the GOP alone much less outside of politics that you could appreciate for their 'evil'

weren't you the guy who said nathan for you was bad for your soul

https://twitter.com/_FloridaMan/status/676432647493722114/photo/1

^^^let's do our part here guys

Sunday Times op section featured a piece on lying by the editor of Politifact, and this chart:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CWJGiPNVAAA2H8w.png

Martin O'Malley, King oh Half-Truths

grrr "of"

Are Bill, Biden, Cheney and Obama on there for ... scale?

that chart is incredibly telling, isn't it?

telling of the liberal lamestream media's bias against conservatives, yes

haha exactly

Breitbart's version of that chart is exactly the same with the numbers reversed

did politifart rate clinton on #BENGHAZI ?!?!

GOP base: "lie to me"

what about every time Sanders and Clinton have LIED about climate change being real?!?

I've read many a Politifact analysis of various political statements, where they lay out their cases for rating them one way or another, and I can't say I've been overly impressed at the reasoning behind their ratings. Sometimes they nitpick over very small errors and at other times they seem awfully lenient over large misstaements. However, when they say "Pants on Fire" it is always an accurate assessment.

Poltifact's both-sides-do-it equivalence is annoying as hell

it truly is. and that's why that chart is so damning (my smartass comments aside). i'm sure conservatives would just blow it off as liberal media bias without even realizing that if anything it's probably TOO forgiving

I have no exp with Politifact, but this particular NYT piece wasn't both-sides-do-it so much as all-pols-lie (which is true, that's their job).

which debate was it, maybe the CNBC one, where each of the GOP candidates referenced a single organization that assessed their budget plans? and of course, each candidate's budget was deemed to be an enormous driver of growth and neverending prosperity and DOUBLEFUCKINGDIGITS annual GDP increases? if memory serves, the organization they all referenced was part of the fucking Heritage foundation. and no one called them out on it, certainly not the debate moderators. god that was bullshit. i'm trying to imagine the reaction to sanders or clinton citing a positive evaluation of their budget plans from MoveOn.org

http://www.salon.com/2015/12/14/rahm_emmanuels_catastrophic_downfall_why_it_should_be_a_much_bigger_deal_for_hillary_clinton/

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/dec/13/politifact-partnering-nbc-news-2016-election/

x-post --Chuck Todd will now feel emboldened to continue with the both-sides-do-it equivalence in the same manner

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/14/can-you-justify-these-lies

Jeb is not excited about administering this proctology exam
http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/12/15/us/15bushattack-web/15bushattack-web-master675.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/q0dVtT7.jpg

lol Pataki

31.4 Trump 16.3 Cruz 13.3 Rubio 12.6 Carson

60% of the Republican party prefers one of Trump, Cruz or Carson.

cruz and rubio's gains have come at the expense of carson, while trump keeps flaming out

of course, to counter that you 538's usual "why are you reading an article on this website right now? none of this matters!" article

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/polls-suggest-trump-will-win-between-8-percent-and-64-percent-of-the-vote/

(which, to be fair, is probably right. it's just funny that all of their content has to come with the caveat that you shouldn't be reading their content)

31.4 Trump 16.3 Cruz 13.3 Rubio 12.6 Carson

60% of the Republican party prefers one of Trump, Cruz or Carson.

my go-to crazy crew is trump/cruz/carson/fiorina. i view all four of them as the cream of the bonkers crop. give me a second and i'll update my patented crazy crew aggregation chart, based off of RCP's data

come on angry republicans take a step back and look at that graph dr. morbius posted, you still have time to vote for a candidate that is 'mostly truthful' a whopping 51% of the time jeez ys wingnuts

maybe i'm misreading it but fiorina codes more as high-powered business woman to me than wingnut

like w/ no relevance to what her actual positions might be just what i imagine her supporters like about her

ok, this uses the underlying polls that RCP tracks, not the poll averages:

http://i.imgur.com/Do8dCvs.jpg