Republicans Conspire to Deny Trump the Party's Nomination

The Orange Roughy has Republicans who want a future, not wanting to be part of his campaign. Is the cat out of the carpetbag?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

The Donald has donated 43+ million dollars of his own money to his campaign thus far, so if he accepted 25 million dollars, he would be in the hole. I don't think he is that desperate to get out of the race.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

(ouch)

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

Click to wonder.​

"I have been wondering when you will come around, when you will speak aloud; I know you're hiding. I have been wondering how I can push this thing, what falling night will bring; I know you're hiding. Because you wish you were tougher than you are; you don't want the pain but you want the scars. Are you ever going to take it as far as you're afraid to go?"

―Floater↱​

How 'bout this: Okay, so in the past I've muttered about the phantom candidate bit, wondered about the market potential of fleecing tinfoilers, and so on. What if Trump's point is to force the GOP to stand off, thus capturing the tinfoil and potsherd crowd? Perhaps he aims to seal his place in history by becoming either president or a figurehead in the pantheon of a New Revolution?

Because as much as it needs to happen, actually refusing Trump the nomination will light riots all over the place, starting in Cleveland. The two things Trump has managed to do are thoroughly denigrate the Republican Party and build a really, really dangerous circumstance.

And of course that's not it, but what the hell is the RNC going to do? The thing is that they can write pretty much any rule they want. I don't know why they're opening with a conscience clause, for heaven's sake.

I stand by my assessment of the insurrectionist crowd during Jade Helm: These people want a revolution. They're itching for any reason under the sun. They started calling for revolution in response to Obama's election and inauguration. They appear to be mobilized, right now. And we've already had one insurrection attempt so maddeningly laden with irony for the fact that the one thing in the Universe we can't call it this time is moronic. What the hell is the RNC going to do? They pretty much have to take this one on the chin.

But it's so goddamn brutal. It really is an atrocity↱.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

If he accepted it he woud be in the hole $ 25 million less than hes gonna be... i just thank hes that big of a money grubber to take the cash an blame/shame the corrupt GOP for his decision.!!!

 

That maybe so, but this isn't about money. This is about ego and brand. Trump is doing what he has always done. He is building his brand. Now it's an awful brand, but it's a brand that sells to a large number of Republicans. That's what it is about with Trump. That's how Trump has made and continues to make his money.

 

Yeah, they to have to take this one on the chin. There is no way this ends well for Republicans no matter what they do. They did this to themselves. It's interesting to note, Ryan has appointed a Cruz backer to run the rules committee. They have less than a month before the convention. They don't have much time. A coup d'état is still possible, but it would rip the party apart. The insurrectionist crowd does indeed want a revolution. They have been carefully fed and nurtured by Republican entertainers for decades now.

Republican entertainers have been misleading Republicans for decades and they explain away their many failures by blaming everyone else, including fellow Republicans. They purged the party of RINOs (Republican in Name Only), Republicans who were deemed by Republican entertainers as not ideologically pure enough, and now it's time to purge the party leadership. The party could well purge itself into oblivion. The party is feeding on itself. It's a terrible thing. What happens when Republicans have no one else to blame for their follies?

They have one month before their party convention. They have one month to stop Trump. It will be an interesting month. Can Trump hold it together for another month? Will the Republican leadership overrule the will of Republican primary voters and replace Trump? If so, who will they chose to replace him with? Ryan has appointed a Cruz supporter to run the rules committee. I don't expect Trump will go quietly into the night regardless of what happens.

I think their best option is to keep Trump and take this one on the chin rather risk a permanent fracture of the party. Because has you have noted, this is a revolution, a revolution borne of Republican entertainment, and unfortunately, Republican entertainment isn't going away anytime soon, nor is Trump. The Republican Party has been riding the wave of Republican entertainment for decades, now they have been run-over by it.

 

I don't disagree, but the notion of Hillary as President scares the fuck out of me. I'd rather have an "entertainer" than a monster.

 

An about half of the country can relate to the "monster" part... but whats a specific thang about Hillary that you fear.???

 

I don't look into the abyss that long. Sorry, nothing specific except that she's seriously freakin' creepy. Like sangfroid killery sans jackboots. Der Tag ist Jetzt.

Maybe it's just me.

 

Nope... my sister feels perty much the same way... but she fears Trump even more.!!!

 

It certainly is starting to look like Trump is uncomfortable outside of his, comfort zone.

Which is standing behind the dais in front of a large crowd of cheering saluting supporters. He will want to bask more often in that kind of glory rather than face the media (the sleazy, dishonest media!) and the debates, because he just can't handle criticism, at all.

He, I think, will burn out nicely all by himself (but, the poor Republican Party!).

He will remain who and what he is, people will start to ignore him. It will become like buying a comic book, and finding the stories are all the same short (one page!) disappointing tale drawn by different artists, about some guy who had nothing all that interesting to say, about anything. A rip off comic book, published of course, by Trump Comics (inc).

 

Trumps biggest problem is he is not being politically correct, which means he is not lying in the proper way. The Republicans say they are for a smaller government yet voted for huge deficits, while Obama says he is against the evil rich, yet in his economy the rich did better than everyone else. Trump is being honest, which is not proper behavior among politicians. This making the status worried, less the people get used to hearing the truth. They must be made to fear the truth.

Trump is being smart. He knows that the attention span for news cycles is anywhere from a few days to about a week and then everyone moves on. What was the biggest news story two weeks ago and is it news today? Trump is staying on mind, hopping from attention cycle to attention cycle, without having to go into debt with special interests. If Hillary wins, her special interest investors will have their hands out, and she will pull an Obama, and make the richer even richer. Trump has to go, because he will break the cycle of corruption

 

I can tell you don't manage to discern a whole lot very often, or at all.

Oh they do, they do.

Believe me.

 

In my opinion, a strong and robust economy solves a lot of social problems. If there are a lot of jobs and wages go up, people have more money to spend. This makes people feel more secure, it makes them willing to spend, which further grows the economy and it makes people generous with each other. When there are lot of jobs and wages go up, people who are out of the work force, return to work, reducing the amount of welfare spending. If college graduates come out of school with good jobs, their college debt becomes a wise investment. With a poor performing economy, like today, college debt is a national problem.

The question is, who is the most competent in terms of being able to turn the economy around? Trump.

Hillary has skills but economic skills are not among these. Her approach is to tax the rich, who then pass on the cost to the middle class, and then spend money of growing government with make shift programs that never solve the problem. The war against poverty has been going on for 50 years, yet the percent of poor has not changed.

 

If you had everyone around you, hating you and knit picking you, from all sides, could you create the optics of the great statesman, while being sucker punched? Even if Trump tries to be positive, the critics will see what they want to see, and focus all their energy on the statement that is out of place. This is why Obama is never allowed to speak without a teleprompter. Trump speaks off the cuff, which is taboo in politics, since you can't structure the con. Instead you risk saying what is in your mind and heart; be real. This is taboo about the scam artists who pretend only with a teleprompter.

Trump's strategy may also be connected to looking like he is on the ropes, so the competition punches itself out. The late boxer, Mohammad Ali called this strategy the rope-a-dope. In boxing, if one boxer takes a good shot and looks hurt, the other boxer will exert himself to the max, hoping to end the fight.

With rope-a-dope, you take a shot and pretend to be hurt to make the other guy punch himself out; fatigue. It is better for Trump if all the trash talk against Trump, come out now, instead of in October. People will forget and this will be old news. Trump is taking their heavy hits, now . In the late rounds he will complete the rope-a-dope, with a KO.

 

On the Democratic Nominee Apparent, and Other Notes

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

Click for Girl Power.​

Oh, yeah. It's you.

(Work with me, here.)

The silver lining there is that you're not really doing anything extraordinary.

Okay, let's start with the obvious: Most people in my position would say it's about the fact of Hillary Clinton's sex; most in yours would respond with some manner of rebuke and resentment. But here's the problem about that moment: It's really hard to explain what else is actually going on. What we're supposed to believe is that Hillary Clinton, doing what other politicians we might support do, is just that much more offensive and unacceptable than anyone else, it has nothing to do with her sex, and that's that. Okay, so what is it? And as we go 'round and 'round the circle, the one thing the discourse doesn't provide is that alternative.

It really does look like the real problem is that Hillary Clinton is really, really good at American politics. And it's not that people are wrong about the appearance of ugliness and futility in American politics; it's a pretty clear signal. But there are a couple odd rhetorical scraps worth considering here:

(1) If it is time to address a certain issue, then it is time to address a certain issue; we should not, however, pretend it is new.

(2) A schoolyard analogy about cliques; when I was young, social mobility was possible but unlikely for most of the lower castes in the schoolyard hierarchy. For some, though, it was simply out of the question, and it was possible to watch a small population change its standards in order to continue exclusion. That is to say, there was a lower caste of students who, if they ever somehow met the unenumerated criteria of being cool, saw those rules change in order to continue to exclude and bully them.​

It doesn't have to be a specific intention, but the duck test suggests these effects are, indeed, waddling and quacking along their merrily oblivious way. To wit, the reliable social science result that audiences judge female speakers, instructors, and public figures more harshly than their male counterparts goes so far that it doesn't matter what the assessed individual's sex actually is―it has to do with what the person assessing the other thinks. That is, if that person simply believes the object of assessment is female, assessment scores plummet.

There's a bit of it in all of us; it clings in the warp and woof of American culture. One need not like Hillary Clinton; it's just that she's not the goddamn Devil.

When we look at history, there are times and circumstances in which it seems pretty clear what was going on; rarely have we the luxury of such perspective within the time and circumstance. Even twenty years down the line, it's going to be pretty obvious. The backlash against feminism in the seventies and eighties was perfectly apparent, for instance, by the late nineties; the Summer of Mercy didn't even make it out of the nineties before it was perfectly apparent to anyone who actually looked.

Even after four years of putting up with sexist dissing of Madam President we should be able to discern some of the obvious points. If societal discourse allowed for the same disrespect of Judaism we permit for womanhood, it would be brain-blisteringly obvious the moment anyone started in on Bernie Sanders in any comparable way.

We're not even all the way through President Obama's term, and it has become undeniably obvious that supremacism in these United States is far more prevalent↗ than Establishment society and discourse has been willing to acknowledge during my lifetime. I can only wonder what the context of this election will look and sound like in the historical discourse after eight years of President Hillary Clinton. As a society in general, we're going to be pretty embarrassed.

And to that extent, yeah, it's you. Just like it's me. We all carry our stones. It's easy enough to shed the boulders and cobbles. But every last gravel and grain? Just how clean can we wash our pockets? At what point are colloid residuals significant or not?

Our society needs to get through this, get over it, and get on with the rest. And it looks like it's going to happen. And it's true, one need not like Hillary Clinton any more than I found Dubya loathsome, could easily tolerate his father but never genuinely like the man, instinctively despised Ronald Reagan, and, you know, these days I cannot badmouth Texas enough for Ted Cruz, who really does seem a genuinely awful human being. It's something to remember whenever we hear those occasional mutterings about secession; electing Ted Cruz to the U.S. Senate was an act of belligerence against the rest of the nation.

But unlike Ted Cruz of George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton will be a competent president. And let us be clear, she will be better than merely competent. Hillary Clinton will be a fine president; depending on Congress, she actually has potential for greatness. And in the tradition of twice as good for half the credit, if Republicans hold the House throughout, we will hold it against her as long as she does not find some way to convince or compel their good faith participation in American governance.

No, really, it's ridiculous how the schmooze thesis, the Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency, persists during the Obama administration. Is there really enough schmoozing, begging, arm-twisting, or, in the tinfoil outlook, skullcracking and suppression, President Obama could have undertaken at any point in his presidency that would have convinced Republicans to do anything but stonewall and pitch fits?

We will never have opportunity for direct comparison to everything Hillary Clinton represents in this political mythopoesis, but, you know, imagine a husband of a female politician coming up over the course of nearly a quarter-century in the political limelight, who really was that good at American politics, and tell me we would be treating him the same way, with the same skepticism and what historical prejudice, and just why the hell would we care if he wasn't ladylike?

Because that's what it comes down to. Hillary Clinton is really good at this, and part of the reason it looks so ugly is because she is a woman; this defies our traditional cultural expectations for women:

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

​

The problems with inherent sexism about journalistic presentation reflect the underlying traditional cultural expectations. Even then it is nearly recursive. To wit, I consider Hillary Clinton a Machiavellian political machine; I also hold this as one of her qualities. That is to say, it's one of the things I want and need from my president right now and exactly in her context. As I noted↗ some months ago, I may not like the Machiavellian attitudes of American success, but you damn well better bet in a time like this, with the master Machiavellian herself on my side, I'm going to need a reason to not send her.

Hillary Clinton is not the Savior. She is not a Messiah. But she is the best presidential candidate in America; the only other on her par is not allowed to run again, as he is finishing his second term. You know. After having defeated her. We're getting a good president out of this election.

There is a lot about Hillary Clinton that people don't like which, in the end, comes back to what we might or ought to disdain about our prevailing culture. To a certain degree, American Machiavellianism is ugly, full stop. It stands out more to people when it's Hillary Clinton because, in the first place, she's really, really good at it, and, even more importantly, she is a woman. The more these behaviors are accustomed and expected, the less ugly they look. Maybe the real question here is what our traditional cultural expectations actually say about men.

No, really, what about the men?

If this is so ugly, why are men more suitable to play the role? What does this say about our traditional cultural expectations of men?

And if it sounds like we're setting ourselves up for it, well, setting ourselves up for it is what Americans do.

 

You always post well-reasoned stuff. I need to re-read this tomorrow, sans beer before I attempt a cogent answer, but either way, she's still creepy. MHO.

 

The bottom line is thus, Hillary is a very competent leader and she has a track record to prove it. The leading contenders on the Republican side aren't competent leaders. It's a very simple and clear choice.

 

We haven't had a competent leader for a very long time, and it looks like we won't this time around either.

 

Well, we will have to agree to disagree on that one. Even the most competent physicians cannot cure every ill. Every leader makes mistakes, I can't think of one who didn't make mistakes. Our best presidents have made mistakes. Lincoln, Washington, they all made mistakes. But that doesn't mean they were incompetent. I think your standards might be too high.

Obama did a very good job as POTUS. He was able to what many presidents before him were unable to do. He was able to get nearly universal healthcare passed. That's very significant and he did it with the kind of congressional resistance we haven't seen since the Civil War. He, together with others, saved the economy with stiff Republican resistance. That's no small thing.