Yet another worthless Trump prediction from another "expert!"
I remind:
Donald Trump’s Six Stages Of Doom
"If you want absurd specificity, I recently estimated Trump’s chance of becoming the GOP nominee at 2 percent." Nate Silver, Aug 5, 2015
MESO-Rx
Anabolic Steroids
Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse
- Thread starter CdnGuy
- Start date
Yet another worthless Trump prediction from another "expert!"
I remind:
Donald Trump’s Six Stages Of Doom
"If you want absurd specificity, I recently estimated Trump’s chance of becoming the GOP nominee at 2 percent." Nate Silver, Aug 5, 2015
How Trump stole the South from Cruz
How Trump stole the South from Cruz
ATLANTA — He tapped voter anger to emerge from a primary field full of experienced Republican officeholders. A political outsider, he had a name most voters recognized, a business background fused to a populist message and, given that he was funding his own campaign, a self-avowed freedom from lobbyists and special interests.
Looking back now, it’s no wonder David Perdue was someone Donald Trump wanted to meet.
…
How Trump stole the South from Cruz
ATLANTA — He tapped voter anger to emerge from a primary field full of experienced Republican officeholders. A political outsider, he had a name most voters recognized, a business background fused to a populist message and, given that he was funding his own campaign, a self-avowed freedom from lobbyists and special interests.
Looking back now, it’s no wonder David Perdue was someone Donald Trump wanted to meet.
…
Going Head-to-Head With Trump: Can Rubio or Cruz Win?
Going Head-to-Head With Trump: Can Rubio or Cruz Win?
...
Our results suggest that unless something changes, Trump would emerge victorious in a head-to-head match-up with either Cruz or Rubio. When given only two candidates to choose between, Republicans preferred Trump over Rubio by an 8 percent margin, and they preferred Trump over Cruz by an even larger 13 percent margin. These results suggest that, at present, Trump's standing would not be diminished even if the race were reduced to a two-person contest.
...
Going Head-to-Head With Trump: Can Rubio or Cruz Win?
...
Our results suggest that unless something changes, Trump would emerge victorious in a head-to-head match-up with either Cruz or Rubio. When given only two candidates to choose between, Republicans preferred Trump over Rubio by an 8 percent margin, and they preferred Trump over Cruz by an even larger 13 percent margin. These results suggest that, at present, Trump's standing would not be diminished even if the race were reduced to a two-person contest.
...
Larry Summers: Donald Trump is a serious threat to American democracy
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/01/larry-summers-donald-trump-is-a-serious-threat-to-american-democracy/ (Larry Summers: Donald Trump is a serious threat to American democracy)
While comparisons between Donald Trump and Mussolini or Hitler are overwrought, Trump’s rise does illustrate how democratic processes can lose their way and turn dangerously toxic when there is intense economic frustration and widespread apprehension about the future. This is especially the case when some previously respected leaders scurry to make peace in a new order -- yes Chris Christie, I mean you.
The possible election of Donald Trump as president is the greatest present threat to the prosperity and security of the United States. I have had a strong point of view on each of the last ten presidential elections, but never before had I feared that what I regarded as the wrong outcome would in the long sweep of history risk grave damage to the American project.
The problem is not with Trump’s policies, though they are wacky in the few areas where they are not indecipherable. It is that he is running as modern day man on a horseback—demagogically offering the power of his personality as a magic solution to all problems—and making clear that he is prepared to run roughshod over anything or anyone who stands in his way.
...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/01/larry-summers-donald-trump-is-a-serious-threat-to-american-democracy/ (Larry Summers: Donald Trump is a serious threat to American democracy)
While comparisons between Donald Trump and Mussolini or Hitler are overwrought, Trump’s rise does illustrate how democratic processes can lose their way and turn dangerously toxic when there is intense economic frustration and widespread apprehension about the future. This is especially the case when some previously respected leaders scurry to make peace in a new order -- yes Chris Christie, I mean you.
The possible election of Donald Trump as president is the greatest present threat to the prosperity and security of the United States. I have had a strong point of view on each of the last ten presidential elections, but never before had I feared that what I regarded as the wrong outcome would in the long sweep of history risk grave damage to the American project.
The problem is not with Trump’s policies, though they are wacky in the few areas where they are not indecipherable. It is that he is running as modern day man on a horseback—demagogically offering the power of his personality as a magic solution to all problems—and making clear that he is prepared to run roughshod over anything or anyone who stands in his way.
...
On Memorial Day 1927, brawls erupted in New York led by sympathizers of the Italian fascist movement and the Ku Klux Klan. In the fascist brawl, which took place in the Bronx, two Italian men were killed by anti-fascists. In Queens, 1,000 white-robed Klansmen marched through the Jamaica neighborhood, eventually spurring an all-out brawl in which seven men were arrested.
One of those arrested was Fred Trump of 175-24 Devonshire Rd. in Jamaica.
This is Donald Trump's father.
...
It's not clear from the context what role Fred Trump played in the brawl. The news article simply notes that seven men were arrested in the "near-riot of the parade," all of whom were represented by the same lawyers. Update: A contemporaneous article from the Daily Star notes that Trump was detained "on a charge of refusing to disperse from a parade when ordered to do so."
When news of the old report surfaced last year, Donald Trump vehemently denied his father's arrest. "He was never arrested. He has nothing to do with this. This never happened. This is nonsense and it never happened," he said to the Daily Mail. "This never happened. Never took place. He was never arrested, never convicted, never even charged. It's a completely false, ridiculous story. He was never there! It never happened. Never took place."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/28/in-1927-donald-trumps-father-was-arrested-after-a-klan-riot-in-queens/ (In 1927, Donald Trump’s father was arrested after a Klan riot in Queens)
One of those arrested was Fred Trump of 175-24 Devonshire Rd. in Jamaica.
This is Donald Trump's father.
...
It's not clear from the context what role Fred Trump played in the brawl. The news article simply notes that seven men were arrested in the "near-riot of the parade," all of whom were represented by the same lawyers. Update: A contemporaneous article from the Daily Star notes that Trump was detained "on a charge of refusing to disperse from a parade when ordered to do so."
When news of the old report surfaced last year, Donald Trump vehemently denied his father's arrest. "He was never arrested. He has nothing to do with this. This never happened. This is nonsense and it never happened," he said to the Daily Mail. "This never happened. Never took place. He was never arrested, never convicted, never even charged. It's a completely false, ridiculous story. He was never there! It never happened. Never took place."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/28/in-1927-donald-trumps-father-was-arrested-after-a-klan-riot-in-queens/ (In 1927, Donald Trump’s father was arrested after a Klan riot in Queens)
You can vote for Cruz, Trump or Rubio in a south London pub's 'piss poll'
Vote for Cruz, Trump or Rubio in a south London pub's 'piss poll'
Vote for Cruz, Trump or Rubio in a south London pub's 'piss poll'
We are no sans-culottes — but we’re thinking of voting for The Donald
We are no sans-culottes — but we’re thinking of voting for The Donald - FT.com
Sir, My wife and I are affluent Americans with postgraduate degrees. We are socially liberal and fiscally mildly conservative. We are not the sans-culottes you see as the prototypical Trump voter. We are well aware of his vulgarity and nous deficiency yet we contemplate voting for him. Why?
Electing the standard-bearer of the Democratic Party seems purposeless. The neanderthal Republicans barely respected the legitimacy of Bill Clinton’s or Barack Obama’s election, let alone that of Hillary who would arrive tainted with scandal and the email lapses hanging over her head. We would get four years of gridlock and “hearings”. The Republican tribunes, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, are backward, foolish and inexperienced. John Kasich, a moderate with extensive governmental experience and a willingness to compromise, is an also-ran. That leaves The Donald, really a moderate in wolf’s garb, who would owe nothing to either party and might strike deals, for instance on tax reform.
Yes, we could be like the good citizens who voted for a “tameable” Hitler in 1933 to get things back on track. But the alternatives look worse.
Jon and Elsa Sands
Indianapolis, IN, US
We are no sans-culottes — but we’re thinking of voting for The Donald - FT.com
Sir, My wife and I are affluent Americans with postgraduate degrees. We are socially liberal and fiscally mildly conservative. We are not the sans-culottes you see as the prototypical Trump voter. We are well aware of his vulgarity and nous deficiency yet we contemplate voting for him. Why?
Electing the standard-bearer of the Democratic Party seems purposeless. The neanderthal Republicans barely respected the legitimacy of Bill Clinton’s or Barack Obama’s election, let alone that of Hillary who would arrive tainted with scandal and the email lapses hanging over her head. We would get four years of gridlock and “hearings”. The Republican tribunes, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, are backward, foolish and inexperienced. John Kasich, a moderate with extensive governmental experience and a willingness to compromise, is an also-ran. That leaves The Donald, really a moderate in wolf’s garb, who would owe nothing to either party and might strike deals, for instance on tax reform.
Yes, we could be like the good citizens who voted for a “tameable” Hitler in 1933 to get things back on track. But the alternatives look worse.
Jon and Elsa Sands
Indianapolis, IN, US
Trump's Il Duce Routine
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/01/opinion/donald-trumps-il-duce-routine.html
LONDON — Europe, the soil on which Fascism took root, is watching the rise of Donald Trump with dismay. Contempt for the excesses of America is a European reflex, but when the United States seems tempted by a latter-day Mussolini, smugness in London, Paris and Berlin gives way to alarm. Europe knows that democracies can collapse.
It’s not just that Trump retweets to his six million followers a quote attributed to Mussolini: “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” It’s not just that Trump refuses to condemn David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, who has expressed support for him. It’s not just that violence is woven into Trump’s language as indelibly as the snarl woven into his features — the talk of shooting somebody or punching a protester in the face, the insulting of the disabled, the macho mockery of women, the anti-Muslim and anti-Mexican tirades. It’s not just that he could become Silvio Berlusconi with nukes.
It’s the echoes, now unmistakable, of times when the skies darkened. Europe knows how democracies collapse, after lost wars, in times of fear and anger and economic hardship, when the pouting demagogue appears with his pageantry and promises. America’s Weimar-lite democratic dysfunction is plain to see. A corrupted polity tends toward collapse.
Trump is telling people something is rotten in the state of America. The message resonates because the rot is there.
He has emerged from a political system corrupted by money, locked in an echo chamber of insults, reduced to the show business of an endless campaign, blocked by a kind of partisanship run amok that leads Republican members of Congress to declare they will not meet with President Obama’s eventual nominee for the Supreme Court, let alone listen to him or her. This is an outrage! The public interest has become less than an afterthought.
Enter the smart, savvy, scowling showman. He is self-financed and promises restored greatness. He has a bully’s instinct for the jugular and a sense of how sick an angry America is of politics as usual and political correctness. He hijacks a Republican Party that has paved the way for him with years of ranting, bigotry, bellicosity and what Robert Kagan, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-the-gops-frankenstein-monster-now-hes-strong-enough-to-destroy-the-party/2016/02/25/3e443f28-dbc1-11e5-925f-1d10062cc82d_story.html (in The Washington Post), has rightly called “racially tinged derangement syndrome” with respect to President Obama.
Trump is a man repeatedly underestimated by the very elites who made Trumpism possible. He’s smarter than most of his belittlers, and quicker on his feet, which makes him only more dangerous.
He’s the anti-Obama, all theater where the president is all prudence, the mouth-that-spews to the presidential teleprompter, rage against reason, the backslapper against the maestro of aloofness, the rabble-rouser to the cerebral law professor, the deal maker to the diligent observer. If Obama in another life could have been a successful European social democrat, Trump is only and absolutely of America.
Part of the Trump danger is that he’s captured an American irredentism, a desire to reclaim something — power, confidence, rising incomes — that many people feel is lost. Trump is a late harvest of 9/11 and the fears that took hold that day. He’s the focus of vague hopes and dim resentments that have turned him into a savior in waiting. As with Ronald Reagan, it’s not the specifics with Trump, it’s a feeling, a vibration — and no matter how much he dissembles, reveals himself as a thug, traffics in contradictions, the raptness persists.
Europe is transfixed. The German newsweekly “Der Spiegel” has called Trump “the world’s most dangerous man” and even waxed nostalgic for President George W. Bush, which for a European publication is like suddenly discovering a soft spot for Dracula.
The French prime minister, Manuel Valls, has tweeted that Trump “fuels hatred.” In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron has attacked Trump’s proposed ban on non-American Muslims entering the United States, and more than half a million people have signed a petition urging that he be kept out of Britain. This weekend Britain's Sunday Times ran a page-size photo of Trump in Lord Kitchener pose with a blaring headline: “http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/newsreview/features/article1672152.ece.”
So do a few Europeans, among them the French rightist Jean-Marie Le Pen. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, is a fan, as are some Russian oligarchs. Judge a man by the company he keeps.
This disoriented America just might want Trump — and that possibility should be taken very seriously, before it is too late, by every believer in American government of the people, by the people, for the people. The power of the Oval Office and the temperament of a bully make for an explosive combination, especially when he has shown contempt for the press, a taste for violence, a consistent inhumanity, a devouring ego and an above-the-law swagger.
As Europe knows, democracies do die. Often, they are the midwives of their own demise. Once lost, the cost of recovery is high.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/01/opinion/donald-trumps-il-duce-routine.html
LONDON — Europe, the soil on which Fascism took root, is watching the rise of Donald Trump with dismay. Contempt for the excesses of America is a European reflex, but when the United States seems tempted by a latter-day Mussolini, smugness in London, Paris and Berlin gives way to alarm. Europe knows that democracies can collapse.
It’s not just that Trump retweets to his six million followers a quote attributed to Mussolini: “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” It’s not just that Trump refuses to condemn David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, who has expressed support for him. It’s not just that violence is woven into Trump’s language as indelibly as the snarl woven into his features — the talk of shooting somebody or punching a protester in the face, the insulting of the disabled, the macho mockery of women, the anti-Muslim and anti-Mexican tirades. It’s not just that he could become Silvio Berlusconi with nukes.
It’s the echoes, now unmistakable, of times when the skies darkened. Europe knows how democracies collapse, after lost wars, in times of fear and anger and economic hardship, when the pouting demagogue appears with his pageantry and promises. America’s Weimar-lite democratic dysfunction is plain to see. A corrupted polity tends toward collapse.
Trump is telling people something is rotten in the state of America. The message resonates because the rot is there.
He has emerged from a political system corrupted by money, locked in an echo chamber of insults, reduced to the show business of an endless campaign, blocked by a kind of partisanship run amok that leads Republican members of Congress to declare they will not meet with President Obama’s eventual nominee for the Supreme Court, let alone listen to him or her. This is an outrage! The public interest has become less than an afterthought.
Enter the smart, savvy, scowling showman. He is self-financed and promises restored greatness. He has a bully’s instinct for the jugular and a sense of how sick an angry America is of politics as usual and political correctness. He hijacks a Republican Party that has paved the way for him with years of ranting, bigotry, bellicosity and what Robert Kagan, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-the-gops-frankenstein-monster-now-hes-strong-enough-to-destroy-the-party/2016/02/25/3e443f28-dbc1-11e5-925f-1d10062cc82d_story.html (in The Washington Post), has rightly called “racially tinged derangement syndrome” with respect to President Obama.
Trump is a man repeatedly underestimated by the very elites who made Trumpism possible. He’s smarter than most of his belittlers, and quicker on his feet, which makes him only more dangerous.
He’s the anti-Obama, all theater where the president is all prudence, the mouth-that-spews to the presidential teleprompter, rage against reason, the backslapper against the maestro of aloofness, the rabble-rouser to the cerebral law professor, the deal maker to the diligent observer. If Obama in another life could have been a successful European social democrat, Trump is only and absolutely of America.
Part of the Trump danger is that he’s captured an American irredentism, a desire to reclaim something — power, confidence, rising incomes — that many people feel is lost. Trump is a late harvest of 9/11 and the fears that took hold that day. He’s the focus of vague hopes and dim resentments that have turned him into a savior in waiting. As with Ronald Reagan, it’s not the specifics with Trump, it’s a feeling, a vibration — and no matter how much he dissembles, reveals himself as a thug, traffics in contradictions, the raptness persists.
Europe is transfixed. The German newsweekly “Der Spiegel” has called Trump “the world’s most dangerous man” and even waxed nostalgic for President George W. Bush, which for a European publication is like suddenly discovering a soft spot for Dracula.
The French prime minister, Manuel Valls, has tweeted that Trump “fuels hatred.” In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron has attacked Trump’s proposed ban on non-American Muslims entering the United States, and more than half a million people have signed a petition urging that he be kept out of Britain. This weekend Britain's Sunday Times ran a page-size photo of Trump in Lord Kitchener pose with a blaring headline: “http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/newsreview/features/article1672152.ece.”
So do a few Europeans, among them the French rightist Jean-Marie Le Pen. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, is a fan, as are some Russian oligarchs. Judge a man by the company he keeps.
This disoriented America just might want Trump — and that possibility should be taken very seriously, before it is too late, by every believer in American government of the people, by the people, for the people. The power of the Oval Office and the temperament of a bully make for an explosive combination, especially when he has shown contempt for the press, a taste for violence, a consistent inhumanity, a devouring ego and an above-the-law swagger.
As Europe knows, democracies do die. Often, they are the midwives of their own demise. Once lost, the cost of recovery is high.
Staring at the Conservative Gutter
Staring at the Conservative Gutter
… The candidacy of Donald Trump is the open sewer of American conservatism. This Super Tuesday, polls show a plurality of GOP voters intend to dive right into it, like the boy in the “Slumdog Millionaire” toilet scene. And they’re not even holding their noses.
In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has endorsed the Code Pink view of the Iraq War (Bush lied; people died). He has cited and embraced an aphorism of Benito Mussolini. (“It’s a very good quote,” Mr. Trump told NBC’s Chuck Todd.) He has refused to release his “very beautiful” tax returns. And he has taken his time disavowing the endorsement of onetime Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke—offering, by way of a transparently dishonest excuse, that “I know nothing about David Duke.” Mr. Trump left the Reform Party in 2000 after Mr. Duke joined it.
None of this seems to have made the slightest dent in Mr. Trump’s popularity. If anything it has enhanced it. In the species of political pornography in which Mr. Trump trafficks, the naughtier the better. The more respectable opinion is scandalized by whatever pops out of the Donald’s mouth, the more his supporters cheer him for sticking it to the snobs and the scolds. The more Mr. Trump traduces the old established lines of decency, the more he affirms his supporters’ most shameless ideological instincts.
Those instincts have moved beyond the usual fare of a wall with Mexico, a trade war with China, Mr. Trump’s proposed Muslim Exclusion Act, or his scurrilous insinuations about the constitutionality of Ted Cruz’s or Marco Rubio’s presidential bids.
What too many of Mr. Trump’s supporters want is an American strongman, a president who will make the proverbial trains run on time. This is a refrain I hear over and over again from Trump supporters, who want to bring a businessman’s efficiency to the federal government. If that means breaking with a few democratic niceties, so be it.
…
Staring at the Conservative Gutter
… The candidacy of Donald Trump is the open sewer of American conservatism. This Super Tuesday, polls show a plurality of GOP voters intend to dive right into it, like the boy in the “Slumdog Millionaire” toilet scene. And they’re not even holding their noses.
In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has endorsed the Code Pink view of the Iraq War (Bush lied; people died). He has cited and embraced an aphorism of Benito Mussolini. (“It’s a very good quote,” Mr. Trump told NBC’s Chuck Todd.) He has refused to release his “very beautiful” tax returns. And he has taken his time disavowing the endorsement of onetime Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke—offering, by way of a transparently dishonest excuse, that “I know nothing about David Duke.” Mr. Trump left the Reform Party in 2000 after Mr. Duke joined it.
None of this seems to have made the slightest dent in Mr. Trump’s popularity. If anything it has enhanced it. In the species of political pornography in which Mr. Trump trafficks, the naughtier the better. The more respectable opinion is scandalized by whatever pops out of the Donald’s mouth, the more his supporters cheer him for sticking it to the snobs and the scolds. The more Mr. Trump traduces the old established lines of decency, the more he affirms his supporters’ most shameless ideological instincts.
Those instincts have moved beyond the usual fare of a wall with Mexico, a trade war with China, Mr. Trump’s proposed Muslim Exclusion Act, or his scurrilous insinuations about the constitutionality of Ted Cruz’s or Marco Rubio’s presidential bids.
What too many of Mr. Trump’s supporters want is an American strongman, a president who will make the proverbial trains run on time. This is a refrain I hear over and over again from Trump supporters, who want to bring a businessman’s efficiency to the federal government. If that means breaking with a few democratic niceties, so be it.
…
The Republican Party's Implosion Has Been a Long Time Coming. Today Is the Day.
The Republican Party's Implosion Has Been a Long Time Coming. Today Is the Day.
CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE—The Republican Party was born of panic. It was a child of the regular economic panics that afflicted the American economy. It was a child of the blind panic produced by the general perception that the country was reeling toward destruction. It was a child of the panic afflicting the Whigs, who had been for decades the other party in a two-party system, but which disintegrated almost overnight in the aftermath of the presidential election of 1850, left in smithereens by the acceleration with which the country was hurtling toward disunion. The Republican Party was born of panic, and the Whig Party died of panic. And, somewhere in what admittedly must be a very boring corner of Valhalla, the old Whigs must be chortling at the panic now afflicting the Republican Party, which has fallen for the most pretentious disorganizer of them all. What goes around comes around, even if it takes 156 years to do so. Somebody pour old Zach Taylor another flagon of mead.
On Tuesday night, Donald J. Trump is odds-on to win at least seven of the 11 contested Republican presidential primaries. If he does so, he is better than odds-on to be the Republican presidential nominee. The facts are as stark as the slopes of Lookout Mountain in the early morning light. It is a consummation devoutly to be wished, especially by those of us who see the Republicans as having been cruising for this particular bruising ever since it so greedily ate the monkeybrains in the 1980s. But, from the people who make their living at being Republicans, we are seeing the kind of existential panic that you only see once or twice in a century. It's Watership Down, with Super PACs and Mitch McConnell.
…
The Republican Party's Implosion Has Been a Long Time Coming. Today Is the Day.
CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE—The Republican Party was born of panic. It was a child of the regular economic panics that afflicted the American economy. It was a child of the blind panic produced by the general perception that the country was reeling toward destruction. It was a child of the panic afflicting the Whigs, who had been for decades the other party in a two-party system, but which disintegrated almost overnight in the aftermath of the presidential election of 1850, left in smithereens by the acceleration with which the country was hurtling toward disunion. The Republican Party was born of panic, and the Whig Party died of panic. And, somewhere in what admittedly must be a very boring corner of Valhalla, the old Whigs must be chortling at the panic now afflicting the Republican Party, which has fallen for the most pretentious disorganizer of them all. What goes around comes around, even if it takes 156 years to do so. Somebody pour old Zach Taylor another flagon of mead.
On Tuesday night, Donald J. Trump is odds-on to win at least seven of the 11 contested Republican presidential primaries. If he does so, he is better than odds-on to be the Republican presidential nominee. The facts are as stark as the slopes of Lookout Mountain in the early morning light. It is a consummation devoutly to be wished, especially by those of us who see the Republicans as having been cruising for this particular bruising ever since it so greedily ate the monkeybrains in the 1980s. But, from the people who make their living at being Republicans, we are seeing the kind of existential panic that you only see once or twice in a century. It's Watership Down, with Super PACs and Mitch McConnell.
…
If you're the descendant of a Jewish refugee who fled Europe or Russia for America, you were warned about Trump your whole life. holly wood on Twitter
Donald Trump embodies how great republics meet their end
Donald Trump embodies how great republics meet their end - FT.com
What is one to make of the rise of Donald Trump? It is natural to think of comparisons with populist demagogues past and present. It is natural, too, to ask why the Republican party might choose a narcissistic bully as its candidate for president. But this is not just about a party, but about a great country. The US is the greatest republic since Rome, the bastion of democracy, the guarantor of the liberal global order. It would be a global disaster if Mr Trump were to become president. Even if he fails, he has rendered the unthinkable sayable.
Mr Trump is a promoter of paranoid fantasies, a xenophobe and an ignoramus. His business consists of the erection of ugly monuments to his own vanity. He has no experience of political office. Some compare him to Latin American populists. He might also be considered an American Silvio Berlusconi, albeit without the charm or business acumen. But Mr Berlusconi, unlike Mr Trump, never threatened to round up and expel millions of people. Mr Trump is grossly unqualified for the world’s most important political office.
Yet, as https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-the-gops-frankenstein-monster-now-hes-strong-enough-to-destroy-the-party/2016/02/25/3e443f28-dbc1-11e5-925f-1d10062cc82d_story.html (Robert Kagan), a neoconservative intellectual, argues in a powerful column in The Washington Post, Mr Trump is also “the GOP’s Frankenstein monster”. He is, says Mr Kagan, the monstrous result of the party’s “wild obstructionism”, its demonisation of political institutions, its flirtation with bigotry and its “racially tinged derangement syndrome” over President Barack Obama. He continues: “We are supposed to believe that Trump’s legion of ‘angry’ people are angry about wage stagnation. No, they are angry about all the things Republicans have told them to be angry about these past seven-and-a-half years”.
Mr Kagan is right, but does not go far enough. This is not about the last seven-and-a-half years. These attitudes were to be seen in the 1990s, with the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. Indeed, they go back all the way to the party’s opportunistic response to the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Alas, they have become worse, not better, with time.
Why has this happened? The answer is that this is how a wealthy donor class, dedicated to the aims of slashing taxes and shrinking the state, obtained the footsoldiers and voters it required. This, then, is “pluto-populism”: the marriage of plutocracy with rightwing populism. Mr Trump embodies this union. But he has done so by partially dumping the free-market, low tax, shrunken government aims of the party establishment, to which his financially dependent rivals remain wedded. That gives him an apparently insuperable advantage. Mr Trump is no conservative, elite conservatives complain. Precisely. That is also true of the party’s base.
Mr Trump is egregious. Yet in some respects the policies of his two leading rivals, Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, are as bad. Both propose highly regressive tax cuts, just like Mr Trump. Mr Cruz even wishes to return to a gold standard. Mr Trump says that the sick should not die on the streets. Mr Cruz and Mr Rubio seem to be not quite so sure.
Yet the Trump phenomenon is not the story of just one party. It is about the country and so, inevitably, the world. In creating the American republic, the founding fathers were aware of the example of Rome. Alexander Hamilton argued in the http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa70.htm that the new republic would need an “energetic executive”. He noted that Rome itself, with its careful duplication of magistracies, depended in its hours of need on the grant of absolute, albeit temporary, power to one man, called a “dictator”.
The US would have no such office. Instead, it would have a unitary executive: the president as elected monarch. The president has limited, but great, authority. For Hamilton, the danger of overweening power would be contained by “first, a due dependence on the people, secondly, a due responsibility”.
During the first century BC, the wealth of empire destabilised the Roman republic. In the end, Augustus, heir of the popular party, terminated the republic and installed himself as emperor. He did so by preserving all the forms of the republic, while he dispensed with their meaning.
It is rash to assume constitutional constraints would survive the presidency of someone elected because he neither understands nor believes in them. Rounding up and deporting 11m people is an immense coercive enterprise. Would a president elected to achieve this be prevented and, if so, by whom? What are we to make of Mr Trump’s enthusiasm for the barbarities of torture? Would he find people willing to carry out his desires or not?
It is not difficult for a determined leader to do the previously unthinkable by appealing to conditions of emergency. Both Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt did some extraordinary things in wartime. But these men knew limits. Would Mr Trump also know limits? Hamilton’s “energetic” executive is dangerous.
It was the ultra-conservative president Paul von Hindenburg who made Hitler chancellor of Germany in 1933. What made the new ruler so destructive was not only that he was a paranoid lunatic, but that he ruled a great power. Trump may be no Hitler. But the US is also no Weimar Germany. It is a vastly more important country even than that.
Mr Trump may still fail to win the Republican nomination. But, should he do so the Republican elite will have to ask themselves hard questions — not only how this happened, but how they should properly respond. Beyond that, the American people will have to decide what sort of human being they want to put in the White House. The implications for them and for the world of this choice will be profound. Above all, Mr Trump may not prove unique. An American “Caesarism” has now become flesh. It seems a worryingly real danger today. It could return again in future.
Donald Trump embodies how great republics meet their end - FT.com
What is one to make of the rise of Donald Trump? It is natural to think of comparisons with populist demagogues past and present. It is natural, too, to ask why the Republican party might choose a narcissistic bully as its candidate for president. But this is not just about a party, but about a great country. The US is the greatest republic since Rome, the bastion of democracy, the guarantor of the liberal global order. It would be a global disaster if Mr Trump were to become president. Even if he fails, he has rendered the unthinkable sayable.
Mr Trump is a promoter of paranoid fantasies, a xenophobe and an ignoramus. His business consists of the erection of ugly monuments to his own vanity. He has no experience of political office. Some compare him to Latin American populists. He might also be considered an American Silvio Berlusconi, albeit without the charm or business acumen. But Mr Berlusconi, unlike Mr Trump, never threatened to round up and expel millions of people. Mr Trump is grossly unqualified for the world’s most important political office.
Yet, as https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-the-gops-frankenstein-monster-now-hes-strong-enough-to-destroy-the-party/2016/02/25/3e443f28-dbc1-11e5-925f-1d10062cc82d_story.html (Robert Kagan), a neoconservative intellectual, argues in a powerful column in The Washington Post, Mr Trump is also “the GOP’s Frankenstein monster”. He is, says Mr Kagan, the monstrous result of the party’s “wild obstructionism”, its demonisation of political institutions, its flirtation with bigotry and its “racially tinged derangement syndrome” over President Barack Obama. He continues: “We are supposed to believe that Trump’s legion of ‘angry’ people are angry about wage stagnation. No, they are angry about all the things Republicans have told them to be angry about these past seven-and-a-half years”.
Mr Kagan is right, but does not go far enough. This is not about the last seven-and-a-half years. These attitudes were to be seen in the 1990s, with the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. Indeed, they go back all the way to the party’s opportunistic response to the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Alas, they have become worse, not better, with time.
Why has this happened? The answer is that this is how a wealthy donor class, dedicated to the aims of slashing taxes and shrinking the state, obtained the footsoldiers and voters it required. This, then, is “pluto-populism”: the marriage of plutocracy with rightwing populism. Mr Trump embodies this union. But he has done so by partially dumping the free-market, low tax, shrunken government aims of the party establishment, to which his financially dependent rivals remain wedded. That gives him an apparently insuperable advantage. Mr Trump is no conservative, elite conservatives complain. Precisely. That is also true of the party’s base.
Mr Trump is egregious. Yet in some respects the policies of his two leading rivals, Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, are as bad. Both propose highly regressive tax cuts, just like Mr Trump. Mr Cruz even wishes to return to a gold standard. Mr Trump says that the sick should not die on the streets. Mr Cruz and Mr Rubio seem to be not quite so sure.
Yet the Trump phenomenon is not the story of just one party. It is about the country and so, inevitably, the world. In creating the American republic, the founding fathers were aware of the example of Rome. Alexander Hamilton argued in the http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa70.htm that the new republic would need an “energetic executive”. He noted that Rome itself, with its careful duplication of magistracies, depended in its hours of need on the grant of absolute, albeit temporary, power to one man, called a “dictator”.
The US would have no such office. Instead, it would have a unitary executive: the president as elected monarch. The president has limited, but great, authority. For Hamilton, the danger of overweening power would be contained by “first, a due dependence on the people, secondly, a due responsibility”.
During the first century BC, the wealth of empire destabilised the Roman republic. In the end, Augustus, heir of the popular party, terminated the republic and installed himself as emperor. He did so by preserving all the forms of the republic, while he dispensed with their meaning.
It is rash to assume constitutional constraints would survive the presidency of someone elected because he neither understands nor believes in them. Rounding up and deporting 11m people is an immense coercive enterprise. Would a president elected to achieve this be prevented and, if so, by whom? What are we to make of Mr Trump’s enthusiasm for the barbarities of torture? Would he find people willing to carry out his desires or not?
It is not difficult for a determined leader to do the previously unthinkable by appealing to conditions of emergency. Both Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt did some extraordinary things in wartime. But these men knew limits. Would Mr Trump also know limits? Hamilton’s “energetic” executive is dangerous.
It was the ultra-conservative president Paul von Hindenburg who made Hitler chancellor of Germany in 1933. What made the new ruler so destructive was not only that he was a paranoid lunatic, but that he ruled a great power. Trump may be no Hitler. But the US is also no Weimar Germany. It is a vastly more important country even than that.
Mr Trump may still fail to win the Republican nomination. But, should he do so the Republican elite will have to ask themselves hard questions — not only how this happened, but how they should properly respond. Beyond that, the American people will have to decide what sort of human being they want to put in the White House. The implications for them and for the world of this choice will be profound. Above all, Mr Trump may not prove unique. An American “Caesarism” has now become flesh. It seems a worryingly real danger today. It could return again in future.
The pretense of GOP elites that Trump is so anathema to their precious Party is laughable: he *is* their Party: Preliminary exit polls: At least 6 in 10 GOP voters today support banning Muslims who are not citizens from entering country. ABC News Politics on Twitter
CdnGuy
New Member
Google search trending "how to move to Canada" spikes after Trump wins Super Tuesday. Guess we might have to build that wall after all!!!! Lol jk Come on up brothers 
naturalkon
New Member
I used to live up there. I couldn't go back. It's too damn cold.Google search trending "how to move to Canada" spikes after Trump wins Super Tuesday. Guess we might have to build that wall after all!!!! Lol jk Come on up brothers
GOP Statisticians Develop New Branch Of Math To Formulate Scenarios In Which Trump Doesn’t Win Nomination
GOP Statisticians Develop New Branch Of Math To Formulate Scenarios In Which Trump Doesn’t Win Nomination
WASHINGTON—In an effort to counter the real estate magnate’s rapidly growing lead in the delegate count, GOP statisticians announced Wednesday they had successfully developed an entirely new branch of mathematics for formulating scenarios in which Donald Trump does not win the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.
“By expanding on pioneering work in the fields of applied statistics, higher-order logic, and number theory, we’ve arrived at a new branch of mathematics that provides for a multitude of feasible outcomes in which Donald Trump is not the 2016 GOP nominee,” said Dr. Jeffrey Larson, who has led a team of more than 30 statisticians who have been working around the clock at RNC headquarters to establish new mathematical properties since the wealthy businessman won the New Hampshire primary by a 20-point margin.
“The new field required several breakthroughs on the manipulation of Boole’s inequality principle, and some of our models are still only predictive within certain artificial stochastic conditions. However, this new discipline of Nonlinear Computational Probability finally establishes a practicable methodology by which there exist possible paths to the nomination for Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz.”
At press time, Larson announced the team had devised a new method of abstraction and mathematical induction in which lower numbers have a greater numerical value than their higher counterparts.
GOP Statisticians Develop New Branch Of Math To Formulate Scenarios In Which Trump Doesn’t Win Nomination
WASHINGTON—In an effort to counter the real estate magnate’s rapidly growing lead in the delegate count, GOP statisticians announced Wednesday they had successfully developed an entirely new branch of mathematics for formulating scenarios in which Donald Trump does not win the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.
“By expanding on pioneering work in the fields of applied statistics, higher-order logic, and number theory, we’ve arrived at a new branch of mathematics that provides for a multitude of feasible outcomes in which Donald Trump is not the 2016 GOP nominee,” said Dr. Jeffrey Larson, who has led a team of more than 30 statisticians who have been working around the clock at RNC headquarters to establish new mathematical properties since the wealthy businessman won the New Hampshire primary by a 20-point margin.
“The new field required several breakthroughs on the manipulation of Boole’s inequality principle, and some of our models are still only predictive within certain artificial stochastic conditions. However, this new discipline of Nonlinear Computational Probability finally establishes a practicable methodology by which there exist possible paths to the nomination for Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz.”
At press time, Larson announced the team had devised a new method of abstraction and mathematical induction in which lower numbers have a greater numerical value than their higher counterparts.
CdnGuy
New Member
You must have been east coast then? West coast winter's are a piece of piss 
