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

Lady Lindsey basically endorses Hillary: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/lindsey-graham-donald-trump-ted-cruz-shot-or-poisoned_us_56a11e33e4b0d8cc109905aa?ref=yfp

"So let’s just pick somebody out of the phone book if we have to," added Graham, who recently backed Jeb Bush.

"We can win this election unless we lose it."

Deep Thoughts, by Lindsey Graham

i think he means it in a Britney Spears - Till The World Ends kind of way

If Cruz wins the nomination, that extreme-right faction will dominate the Republican Party not just in the presidential run but for the foreseeable future—even if Cruz loses. Just as the followers of Barry Goldwater held key positions in the party long after 1964, Cruz’s followers will be lodged tight and will be in a stronger position to combat the RINOs.

...

Trump, on the other hand, is so anomalous a figure that the GOP establishment can console themselves with the knowledge that he leads no faction. Even if he wins the nomination, Trump can be safely relegated to the category of a one-off, a freak mutation, never to be repeated. Trump would be like the character The Mule, in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels. In the schema of Asimov’s far future science-fiction series, The Mule is a galactic conquerer who throws history off the course that it was expected to take, but the changes he introduces are ultimately minor because he has no successor.

From the point of view of the Republican elite, it’s easy to see Trump as The Mule: He’s unexpected, he disrupted their plans to coronate Jeb Bush, but he’s also someone who can’t leave a lasting legacy because the traits that made him who he is are not replicable. There are not that many billionaire reality-show stars who are interested in taking over a political party.

https://newrepublic.com/article/128107/classier-two-evils

i want to believe that Trump has no faction, but (and Josh Marshall argued a version of this a few days ago) isn't he essentially part of the Sarah Palin faction? there appears to be an enormous number of people who are willing to follow someone who is very loud and dumb, ad libs without a teleprompter and is terrible at it, and doesn't bother to make logical connections between problems and solutions.

Still want to know, from someone who was around then: was former crap actor Ronald Reagan running for office as crazy a thought as Trump running now? Something about him is just so gross, like he's not trying to elevate himself to a position he does not deserve but instead is lowering everybody else to the level he's at. Maybe it's because he was an actor but Reagan at least pretended to be a politician. Trump, he's just a dick. Though his campaign trash talk is historic:

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump
Wacko @glennbeck is a sad answer to the @SarahPalinUSA endorsement that Cruz so desperately wanted. Glenn is a failing, crying, lost soul!

Reagan was governor two terms, quite narrowly lost the nomination to Ford in '76 and for all that time between 1964 and 1980 was a constant TV and radio presence. No comparison.

When he ran in 1980, though, plenty of Dems assured themselves into thinking he was too crazy to win.

Reagan never sounded unhinged though. His geniality and way with a zinger didn't gibe with his policies.

Reagan's hair also impeccable at all times.

yeah i've always seen Trump as essentially a Tea Party candidate. is that wrong?

xposts

"Failing, Crying, Lost Soul" is my favourite Buddy Holly song.

lol the mule

I thought Palin and Beck were on the same team? I don't know what to believe anymore.

Beck is one of the only prominent radio idiots who doesn't support Trump, so when Palin endorsed Trump he found himself in a pickle

taken abeck

yeah i've always seen Trump as essentially a Tea Party candidate. is that wrong?

xposts

― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Thursday, January 21, 2016 5:13 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the tea party has always been this nebulous term to describe energized conservative hicks, and trump does have the support of a lot of tea partiers, primarily because they are so stupid, but i don't think he's a tea party candidate by the commonly understood definition of the term. he's too moderate -- cruz is more what people think about when they think "tea party"

Part of what upsets NRO and Red State types is how the embrace of Trump has made a mockery of conservatism.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjltrOH-7vKAhVD_mMKHUbsDgMQjRwIBw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cagle.com%2F2013%2F10%2Ftea-party-tantrum%2F&psig=AFQjCNGLqAtWzO7DgAnjMRSi3MtvZT5FUA&ust=1453501939585224/

sorry

http://media.cagle.com/53/2013/10/27/139352_600.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51VzG6eIc2L._SX311_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01AX111Q2

Brodie? Is that you?

as far as the trump faction goes, i thought this bit from digby the other day was a little ranty but mostly otm:

The white working class types who call themselves social conservatives and identify as evangelicals say this out tribal identity more than ideology. They are economically screwed every which way, with little hope of any improvement. But lets not kid ourselves, these economically despairing, non-ideological, casual evangelicals are mostly drawn to the GOP because it is the party that doesn't have blacks, mexicans, feminists, liberals, city slickers and hippies in it, none of whom they can stand and all of whom they blame for the country going to hell in handbasket and the death of their own prospects . It's not complicated. That's the fundamental complaint about "political correctness" --- the necessity to pretend that you don't hate all those people.

Trump is speaking to all that much more emphatically than Cruz or anyone else on the scene. He's giving these folks permission to let their freak flag fly and providing a way to connect with each other without all the trappings of religion and phony piety they are usually required to pretend to care about. They don't have to sit through arcane lectures about tax policy and "small government" or pretend to care about a bunch of abstractions about the gold standard or "tort reform!". Trump is about guns, race, law and order and American dominance, period. That's the stripped down "conservatism" these folks really care about. It's obvious to them that this is what is needed to make America --- and their own lives --- "great again."

The observable facts align well with that ^ pov.

i thought the Trump faction was pretty much the same as the GOP faction: rich jerks

http://i.imgur.com/sPgRMGS.png
http://i.imgur.com/Oyk969M.png

lol yes ok.

the whole "Trump is a wildcard, we don't really know what he's doing!" thing just rings as false to me as "Tea Party is a dangerous fringe element that the has GOP flabbergasted". it's sock puppet theater

Karl do u have a link for that? /lazy

oops, sorry about that, i usually try to include links but forgot that time. it's http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-evangelical-voter-split.html (the quoted passage is at the bottom)

thanks!

"Maybe it's just a matter of nomenclature, but when will this finally come to pass? Because the Republicans (or Tea Party) seem to be doing just fine. Sure, they may not get the White House any time soon, but they've been doing well everywhere else. State/local elections, congress, governors, etc. Right? Between that and the current composition of the Supreme Court, the Republicans have been at least as effective in halting, slowing or reversing progress as the democrats have been at passing progressive legislation. And yeah, I think the ACA and halting deportations and whatnot are positive developments, but their security sadly seems sort of tenuous."

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, January 21, 2016 9:49 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sure, they're doing fine if your endgame is to get elected to office as a sinecure, if power is an end to you and not a means. it's hard not to note that today's crop of elected representatives seem to largely lack the charm and vision of somebody like newt gingrich, however. the president runs the country more and more autocratically and most people are ok with that, because the republicans' goal, as portrayed through their actions, seems to largely be to smash capitalism. the people despise them all. what's to stop america's elected representatives from going the way of the roman senate?

xpost Read that as "Tea Party is a dangerous fringe element that the has GOP fingerblasted."

the president runs the country more and more autocratically and most people are ok with that

Isn't this a vicious cycle? Tea Party/Republicans obstruct president, frustrated president goes autocratic, Tea Party/Republicans run against supposedly vast presidential overreach etc.?

They don't have to sit through arcane lectures about tax policy and "small government" or pretend to care about a bunch of abstractions about the gold standard or "tort reform!". Trump is about guns, race, law and order and American dominance, period.

i think this is the essential point, though. and it's interesting because i think a similar dynamic exists on the left as well regarding policy proposals. left or right, i don't think the average person cares very much about that stuff (notwithstanding bubbles of legitimate interest,). instead, the more important thing is an allegiance to an almost gestalt-like shared essence of conservatism or liberalism. 2008's HOPE was something that captured a deeper desire to unite and appreciate diversity and engage with the rest of the world. i guess sanders is the clear underdog but imo he has a chance because he's able to tap into that vibe with some people, whereas hillary cannot.

i guess maybe all of that is obvious (or i'm waaay wrong) but hey, here i am typing on the internet wooooo

yeah that digby bit is totally otm imo

hello I just always like to point out my -i think- correct memory that the tea party originated around the disapproval of bailing out Wall Street and IMO became what it is today because of 1. people turning up their noses at the 'crazy idiots' and & 2. people who didn't mind being associated with 'crazy idiots' co-opting their frustration with those who trashed our economy thanks

Isn't this a vicious cycle? Tea Party/Republicans obstruct president, frustrated president goes autocratic, Tea Party/Republicans run against supposedly vast presidential overreach etc.?

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, January 21, 2016 5:56 PM (23 minutes ago)

bingo.

iab! otm i think

the tea party constantly gets misremembered as originating with rick santelli ranting on CNBC against the bailout -- i swear on my mother there were ur-TP rallies, using that early-republic lingo & iconograpy, strongly associated with the ron paul/goldbug/anti-Fed end of the right, long before that

Yeah, the trump crowd seems to be RW authoritarian followers, the kind that Hofstadter and John Dean and Dr Bob Altemeyer have written about. The kind that go in for "Christianity" more because it's the battle standard of the empire since Constantine moreso than anything some Yeshua dude said. Some have been victimized by late capitalism, and others by modernity. Lots of crossover with those who like Putin way more than the actual American guy in power, icky ex-commie-ness be damned.

2016 dispossessed America, maybe?

Supposedly lots of Republican senators and such coming forward today to say that Trump's far from ideal but better him than Cruz. Following their lead, I forget about Trump and take great satisfaction from this--couldn't happen to a creepier guy.

The way Clinton's scrambling around right now is so reminiscent of 2008. She's got the necessary experience she'll say, and then, when "change" and "outsider" comes up, point out how long Sanders has been a senator. When it's foreign policy, she throws out variations on the 2:00 a.m. phone call. She'll get the nomination, but it's painful to watch.

Bernie may well win both Iowa and New Hampshire.

It looks like he very probably will--big-and-growing leads in both. And expressing anything with certainty (which I don't normally do anyway) seems really dubious in light of Trump. She's much stronger after Iowa/NH, though, although who knows with her--whether you want to call it this bedrock of resistance or just Democrats-like-her-but-just-not-enough, this is the second time in a row that something that was supposed to be a walk is anything but.

the thought now is that bernie remains a longshot, but that winning iowa and new hampshire could conceivably bring him enough media attention -- and hilary enough bad press -- to give him enough momentum to give him an actual chance. but that's only if he takes both

[Trump]’s figured out that the most effective way to get the wage class to rally to his banner is to get himself attacked, with the usual sort of shrill mockery, by the salary class. The man’s worth several billion dollars—do you really think he can’t afford to get the kind of hairstyle that the salary class finds acceptable? Of course he can; he’s deliberately chosen otherwise, because he knows that every time some privileged buffoon in the media or on the internet trots out another round of insults directed at his failure to conform to salary class ideas of fashion, another hundred thousand wage class voters recall the endless sneering putdowns they’ve experienced from the salary class and think, “Trump’s one of us.”

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2016/01/donald-trump-and-politics-of-resentment.html

nope

This is an interesting arm of the Clinton campaign, something called "The Briefing" which has its own Youtube channel and its own Facebook page (with only 14,000 likes). I wonder who these videos are aimed at?

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRyE0W-DFgBlfd111fts6tQ

Sorry, meant to link specifically to this video:

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRyE0W-DFgBlfd111fts6tQ