Trump's genius doesn't lie in his ability to make himself look good in the eyes of his supporters. Rather, it's his genius to make his supporters feel good about themselves in his presence. -- Rick Shenkman

quote:

Originally posted by jimmy123x:
The one question I have is Trump wins. How does he run the country and all of his business enterprises at the same time? Are any of his decisions based on how his businesses would be effected by those decisions?

As I recall, he would have to put his businesses in a blind trust, and have no say in how they were operated.

That has been policy for a long time!

His answer to how he would run his business while in Office should be "Not anything like the Clinton Foundation".

quote:

Originally posted by cheni:

Para, Would like me to take the video down?

NO, please leave it up as a testament to your awesomeness.

A large part of existing contently on this board, cheni, relies on your critical thinking ability. Based upon my apparent displeasure with your post, what do you think you should do?

You're using someone else's account?

Why are you complicating my day? Log out and use your own account, and do not ever post, using someone elses account. I ain't kiddin'.

Do you even have an account here? You're about ten seconds away from getting this account disabled. Do you have an account here?

Donald Trump Is Shocking, Vulgar and Right - And, my dear fellow Republicans, he's all your fault.

Abbout 15 years ago, I said something nasty on CNN about Donald Trump’s hair. I can’t now remember the context, assuming there was one. In any case, Trump saw it and left a message the next day. “It’s true you have better hair than I do,” Trump said matter-of-factly. “But I get more pussy than you do.” Click.

At the time, I’d never met Trump and I remember feeling amused but also surprised he’d say something like that. Now the pattern seems entirely familiar. The message had all the hallmarks of a Trump attack: shocking, vulgar and indisputably true.

Not everyone finds it funny. On my street in Northwest Washington, D.C., there’s never been anyone as unpopular as Trump. The Democrats assume he’s a bigot, pandering to the morons out there in the great dark space between Georgetown and Brentwood. The Republicans (those relatively few who live here) fully agree with that assessment, and they hate him even more. They sense Trump is a threat to them personally, to their legitimacy and their livelihoods. Idi Amin would get a warmer reception in our dog park.

I understand it of course. And, except in those moments when the self-righteous silliness of rich people overwhelms me and I feel like moving to Maine, I can see their points, some of them anyway. Trump might not be my first choice for president. I’m not even convinced he really wants the job. He’s smart enough to know it would be tough for him to govern.

But just because Trump is an imperfect candidate doesn’t mean his candidacy can’t be instructive. Trump could teach Republicans in Washington a lot if only they stopped posturing long enough to watch carefully. Here’s some of what they might learn: He Exists Because You Failed

American presidential elections usually amount to a series of overcorrections: Clinton begat Bush, who produced Obama, whose lax border policies fueled the rise of Trump. In the case of Trump, though, the GOP shares the blame, and not just because his fellow Republicans misdirected their ad buys or waited so long to criticize him. Trump is in part a reaction to the intellectual corruption of the Republican Party. That ought to be obvious to his critics, yet somehow it isn’t.

Consider the conservative nonprofit establishment, which seems to employ most right-of-center adults in Washington. Over the past 40 years, how much donated money have all those think tanks and foundations consumed? Billions, certainly. (Someone better at math and less prone to melancholy should probably figure out the precise number.) Has America become more conservative over that same period? Come on. Most of that cash went to self-perpetuation: Salaries, bonuses, retirement funds, medical, dental, lunches, car services, leases on high-end office space, retreats in Mexico, more fundraising. Unless you were the direct beneficiary of any of that, you’d have to consider it wasted.
Pretty embarrassing. And yet they’re not embarrassed. Many of those same overpaid, underperforming tax-exempt sinecure-holders are now demanding that Trump be stopped. Why? Because, as his critics have noted in a rising chorus of hysteria, Trump represents “an existential threat to conservatism.”

Let that sink in. Conservative voters are being scolded for supporting a candidate they consider conservative because it would be bad for conservatism? And by the way, the people doing the scolding? They’re the ones who’ve been advocating for open borders, and nation-building in countries whose populations hate us, and trade deals that eliminated jobs while enriching their donors, all while implicitly mocking the base for its worries about abortion and gay marriage and the pace of demographic change. Now they’re telling their voters to shut up and obey, and if they don’t, they’re liberal.

It turns out the GOP wasn’t simply out of touch with its voters; the party had no idea who its voters were or what they believed. For decades, party leaders and intellectuals imagined that most Republicans were broadly libertarian on economics and basically neoconservative on foreign policy. That may sound absurd now, after Trump has attacked nearly the entire Republican catechism (he savaged the Iraq War and hedge fund managers in the same debate) and been greatly rewarded for it, but that was the assumption the GOP brain trust operated under. They had no way of knowing otherwise. The only Republicans they talked to read the Wall Street Journal too.

On immigration policy, party elders were caught completely by surprise. Even canny operators like Ted Cruz didn’t appreciate the depth of voter anger on the subject. And why would they? If you live in an affluent ZIP code, it’s hard to see a downside to mass low-wage immigration. Your kids don’t go to public school. You don’t take the bus or use the emergency room for health care. No immigrant is competing for your job. (The day Hondurans start getting hired as green energy lobbyists is the day my neighbors become nativists.) Plus, you get cheap servants, and get to feel welcoming and virtuous while paying them less per hour than your kids make at a summer job on Nantucket. It’s all good.
Apart from his line about Mexican rapists early in the campaign, Trump hasn’t said anything especially shocking about immigration. Control the border, deport lawbreakers, try not to admit violent criminals — these are the ravings of a Nazi? This is the “ghost of George Wallace” that a Politico piece described last August? A lot of Republican leaders think so. No wonder their voters are rebelling.

Truth Is Not Only A Defense, It’s Thrilling

When was the last time you stopped yourself from saying something you believed to be true for fear of being punished or criticized for saying it? If you live in America, it probably hasn’t been long. That’s not just a talking point about political correctness. It’s the central problem with our national conversation, the main reason our debates are so stilted and useless. You can’t fix a problem if you don’t have the words to describe it. You can’t even think about it clearly.

This depressing fact made Trump’s political career. In a country where almost everyone in public life lies reflexively, it’s thrilling to hear someone say what he really thinks, even if you believe he’s wrong. It’s especially exciting when you suspect he’s right.

A temporary ban on Muslim immigration? That sounds a little extreme (meaning nobody else has said it recently in public). But is it? Millions of Muslims have moved to Western Europe over the past 50 years, and a sizable number of them still haven’t assimilated. Instead, they remain hostile and sometimes dangerous to the cultures that welcomed them. By any measure, that experiment has failed. What’s our strategy for not repeating it here, especially after San Bernardino—attacks that seemed to come out of nowhere? Invoke American exceptionalism and hope for the best? Before Trump, that was the plan.

Republican primary voters should be forgiven for wondering who exactly is on the reckless side of this debate. At the very least, Trump seems like he wants to protect the country. Evangelicals understand this better than most. You read surveys that indicate the majority of Christian conservatives support Trump, and then you see the video: Trump on stage with pastors, looking pained as they pray over him, misidentifying key books in the New Testament, and in general doing a ludicrous imitation of a faithful Christian, the least holy roller ever. You wonder as you watch this: How could they be that dumb? He’s so obviously faking it.

They know that already. I doubt there are many Christian voters who think Trump could recite the Nicene Creed, or even identify it. Evangelicals have given up trying to elect one of their own. What they’re looking for is a bodyguard, someone to shield them from mounting (and real) threats to their freedom of speech and worship. Trump fits that role nicely, better in fact than many church-going Republicans. For eight years, there was a born-again in the White House. How’d that work out for Christians, here and in Iraq?


http://www.politico.com/magazi...213572#ixzz3yeKEywn8

quote:

I'd push her into a live volcano.

She has to be a virgin for that to work.

Has anyone published the ratings results from last nights debate? I'm curious to see the numbers.

quote:

Originally posted by Nickelsig229:
Has anyone published the ratings results from last nights debate? I'm curious to see the numbers.

Fox News pulled an 8.4 household rating, which means that 8.4% of U.S. homes with meters watched the debate. It was higher than the Fox Business debate at 7.4 (Fox Business is in far fewer homes); the other debates have had between 8.9 and 15.9.

Between CNN and MSNBC, total viewership of the Trump event was less than 1/4 of the Fox News debate, but far higher than their normal ratings.

Link

quote:

Originally posted by braillediver:
Bottom line- what were the ratings for this Debate?

TV Ratings: Fox News Debate Numbers Steady Without Donald Trump

The Republican front-runner was a no show, but competing cable news networks covered his event in Iowa.

Donald Trump may have been conspicuously absent, but Thursday night’s Republican debate on Fox News Channel nevertheless scored a 8.4 rating, according to preliminary numbers from Nielsen. That's higher than the preliminary rating for the last Republican debate, Jan. 14 on sister net Fox Business Network.

Meanwhile, all the other cable news networks were covering Trump's competing event in Iowa, during which Trump boasted he raised $5 million for veteran's charities. The final numbers will show how a Trump-less debate stacked up with Trump coverage on competing networks.

Fox News Channel still holds the record for debate ratings; 24 million tuned in to watch the first debate last August, after which Trump began targeting the network and anchor Megyn Kelly on social media and in myriad TV interviews. The last Republican debate on sister net Fox Business Network on Jan. 14, was watched by 11 million viewers.

Moderated by Kelly, Bret Baier and Chris Wallace, Kelly opened the debate from the Iowa Events Center by addressing “the elephant not in the room” and asking Cruz what kind of message Trump’s absence sends to Iowa voters.

Cruz did not take the opportunity to bash his rival instead opting for an attempt at humor: “I’m a maniac, and everyone on this stage is stupid fat and ugly and Ben you’re a terrible surgeon. Now that we’ve gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way…”

“I kind of miss Donald Trump,” Jeb Bush added. “I wish he were here.”

The seventh debate in a wildly unpredictable GOP contest was marked by days of headlines over Trump’s defection after a public dustup with Fox News when the Republican front-runner re-started his (one-sided) social media feud with Kelly days before the debate.

But many political insiders also surmised that Trump sought to avoid direct confrontations about his past statements, particularly his support of abortion. Super PACs have for days been running attack ads in which Trump declares in a 1999 interview that he is “very pro-choice in every respect.”

http://www.hollywoodreporter.c...x-news-debate-860284

quote:

Donald Trump Is Shocking, Vulgar and Right - And, my dear fellow Republicans, he's all your fault.
...
He Exists Because You Failed
...
In the case of Trump, though, the GOP shares the blame, and not just because his fellow Republicans misdirected their ad buys or waited so long to criticize him. Trump is in part a reaction to the intellectual corruption of the Republican Party. That ought to be obvious to his critics, yet somehow it isn’t.
...
Consider the conservative nonprofit establishment, which seems to employ most right-of-center adults in Washington. Over the past 40 years, how much donated money have all those think tanks and foundations consumed? Billions, certainly. (Someone better at math and less prone to melancholy should probably figure out the precise number.) Has America become more conservative over that same period? Come on. Most of that cash went to self-perpetuation: Salaries, bonuses, retirement funds, medical, dental, lunches, car services, leases on high-end office space, retreats in Mexico, more fundraising. Unless you were the direct beneficiary of any of that, you’d have to consider it wasted.
...
Let that sink in.
...
Conservative voters are being scolded for supporting a candidate they consider conservative because it would be bad for conservatism?
...
And by the way, the people doing the scolding? They’re the ones who’ve been advocating for open borders, and nation-building in countries whose populations hate us, and trade deals that eliminated jobs while enriching their donors, all while implicitly mocking the base for its worries about abortion and gay marriage and the pace of demographic change. Now they’re telling their voters to shut up and obey, and if they don’t, they’re liberal.
...
It turns out the GOP wasn’t simply out of touch with its voters; the party had no idea who its voters were or what they believed.
...
On immigration policy, party elders were caught completely by surprise. Even canny operators like Ted Cruz didn’t appreciate the depth of voter anger on the subject. And why would they? If you live in an affluent ZIP code, it’s hard to see a downside to mass low-wage immigration. Your kids don’t go to public school. You don’t take the bus or use the emergency room for health care. No immigrant is competing for your job. (The day Hondurans start getting hired as green energy lobbyists is the day my neighbors become nativists.) Plus, you get cheap servants, and get to feel welcoming and virtuous while paying them less per hour than your kids make at a summer job on Nantucket. It’s all good.
...
Control the border, deport lawbreakers, try not to admit violent criminals
...
In a country where almost everyone in public life lies reflexively, it’s thrilling to hear someone say what he really thinks, even if you believe he’s wrong. It’s especially exciting when you suspect he’s right.
...
A temporary ban on Muslim immigration? That sounds a little extreme (meaning nobody else has said it recently in public). But is it? Millions of Muslims have moved to Western Europe over the past 50 years, and a sizable number of them still haven’t assimilated.
...
Republican primary voters should be forgiven for wondering who exactly is on the reckless side of this debate. At the very least, Trump seems like he wants to protect the country.

This guy definitely gets it. ^^^

quote:

Originally posted by mikencP226:
Donald Trump Is Shocking, Vulgar and Right - And, my dear fellow Republicans, he's all your fault.


http://www.politico.com/magazi...213572#ixzz3yeKEywn8

Great article, thanks for posting, Mike.

You might find this interesting. A poll (yeah I know) hosted by Townhall.com was in my mailbox this morning asking me to vote on who I thought was the winner of last night's debate. I had to smile when looking at the polling results so far.



If you want to cast a vote, you can do so at Who Won The Debate?

quote:

Originally posted by bigdeal:
You might find this interesting. A poll (yeah I know) hosted by Townhall.com was in my mailbox this morning asking me to vote on who I thought was the winner of last night's debate. I had to smile when looking at the polling results so far.

Ya... it's like the Drudge poll.
The Trumpsters are big on-line. I guess we'll see Monday night if they caucus as well as they hit these polls.

Here's how it appears to be playing out:
Cruz and Rubio split the conservative vote, handing the nomination to Trump.

quote:

Cruz and Rubio split the conservative vote, handing the nomination to Trump.

A few places are floating the same strategy to get Rubio the nomination, so unless they share a brain (debatable) there may be something to it. Trump or Rubio win Iowa and basically knock Cruz out. Bush, Kasich, Carson, and Christie will drop after South Carolina. Cruz may stay in the race until Super Tuesday, but after that he'll probably drop out because they are heading into RINO country. If they can have Rubio hold on past Super Tuesday, the hope seems to be conservatives and establishment types rally around him to beat Trump.

With the ugliness between Trump and Cruz I could see some of his people going to Rubio. If the Bush, Kasich, and Christie voters follow I could possibly see it, but I think it all comes down to how ugly it stays between Trump and Cruz. To me Rubio always sounds like a neighbor pissed some kids threw a football over his fence, but I guess a lot of people like him.

I think Howie got it right...Although that comment about FOX's "journalistic standards" is laughable.

Muddled Night in Iowa: No Trump, no winners, Cruz and Rubio on defense

DES MOINES, Iowa – Two hours before Thursday night's Fox News debate, I was in constant conversations with GOP operatives, Fox anchors and other journalists, all asking the same question: Would Donald Trump show up after all?

He didn’t, of course, but that shows how crazy the environment has been in Des Moines.

Megyn Kelly, the target of Trump’s ire, kicked off the debate by asking Ted Cruz about The Donald’s absence. Cruz used some canned humor, describing himself as a maniac, saying everyone else on the stage was stupid and ugly and that Ben Carson was a bad surgeon—and “now that we’ve gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way.”

Marco Rubio also took a swipe, saying the election was not about Trump, even though he’s “the greatest show on earth.”

Jeb Bush said “everyone else was in the witness protection program when I went after Donald Trump.”

Trump was across town at a veterans’ event, but his spirit hung over the debate hall.

To add to the surreal atmosphere, Fox put out a statement about Trump's claims in the opening minutes of the debate. More on that later.

By far the most confrontational moment came when Kelly played Rubio a series of videos of past comments on immigration and asked whether he had changed his position. Rubio’s voice grew louder as he said there was no way to deport 12 million illegal immigrants but that first the country needed border enforcement.

Bush backed Rubio’s previous attempt at an immigration compromise, but then accused the senator of having cut and run.

Then Cruz got the video treatment as Fox aired a series of seemingly conflicting statements on immigration.

“Was that all an act? It was pretty convincing,” Kelly said.

Cruz insisted he was only trying to fix problems with the 2013 Gang of Eight bill. Moments later he said Rubio chose to stand with Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer.

“This is the lie that Ted’s campaign has [been] built on,” Rubio shot back before Chris Christie threw a jab at both men by saying a governor doesn’t engage in parliamentary doubletalk: “Stop the Washington bull.”

Earlier, Cruz strongly defended himself after a question about whether “carpet bombing” ISIS was unrealistic, saying the United States has done it before. Rubio countered with a passionate denunciation of ISIS and chided Cruz for supposedly being unwilling to vote for adequate defense spending.

Chris Wallace drew boos with a question to Bush about criticizing his brother’s invasion of Iraq. Cruz complained that the previous four questions had been invitations for other candidates to attack him. “It is a debate, sir,” Wallace said in response.

It was a substantive debate that ranged from terrorism and immigration and ObamaCare to home-state liabilities and scandals. Cruz and Rubio were, as usual, the best debaters on the stage, but spent their time counterpunching. Christie had his moments, and Bush was more forceful than in any previous faceoff—where has this guy been?

Except for the moderators prodding them into heated exchanges on immigration, the candidates mostly refrained from attacking each other. This may have reflected Trump’s absence, but also perhaps a sense that personal assaults could be counterproductive among Iowa voters just days before the caucuses.

Cruz seemed stronger when he and Trump used each other as foils. He didn’t find an antagonist on the stage to bring out his college debating skills.

I’m tempted to say Cruz was the winner by default, since he is neck and neck with Trump in the Iowa polls and wasn’t left bloodied by the debate, as his team feared he might be. But it was an off night for him. Rubio did slightly better, but he too was bruised by the intense back-and-forth on immigration. Christie seemed to overreach when he said as a former prosecutor he could put Hillary Clinton in jail. Perhaps there were no winners.

Or maybe the winner was Trump, by creating an alternative narrative.

Speaking of the Trump melodrama, in the minutes before the debate began, CNN aired an interview that Brianna Keilar conducted on the flight to Des Moines—and it was all about Fox.

In the course of defending his decision not to debate, Trump said a top person at Fox had just called him to apologize and “couldn’t have been nicer,” but “it was too late” for him to change his mind. He also said this wasn’t about Megyn Kelly, although he criticized her again to Keilar.

Fox took the unusual step of putting out a statement during its own debate, saying CEO Roger Ailes “had three brief conversations” with Trump on Thursday.

“We acknowledged his concerns about a satirical observation we made in order to quell the attacks on Megyn Kelly, and prevent her from being smeared any further,” the statement said.

“Furthermore, Trump offered to appear at the debate upon the condition that FOX News contribute $5 million to his charities. We explained that was not possible and we could not engage in a quid pro quo, nor could any money change hands for any reason. In the last 48 hours, we've kept two issues at the forefront — we would never compromise our journalistic standards and we would always stand by our journalist, Megyn Kelly. We have accomplished those two goals and we are pleased with the outcome.”

We got a glimpse here in Iowa of what the campaign would look like had Donald Trump stayed on the sidelines. But it was a brief glimpse, and it looks like no candidate on the stage improved his standing against the front-runner.

I'm still pissed why Trump all of a sudden started attacking Cruz. It would be nice to know why. I won't be voting for Rubio so this sucks. Trump/Cruz is really the only ticket I want to see at this point.

quote:

Originally posted by SIG4EVA:
I'm still pissed why Trump all of a sudden started attacking Cruz. It would be nice to know why. I won't be voting for Rubio so this sucks. Trump/Cruz is really the only ticket I want to see at this point.

Cruz was ahead of Trump in Iowa. That's when the attacks began... Trump has admitted as much.

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:
Ya... it's like the Drudge poll.
The Trumpsters are big on-line. I guess we'll see Monday night if they caucus as well as they hit these polls.

Here's how it appears to be playing out:
Cruz and Rubio split the conservative vote, handing the nomination to Trump.