Republicans Conspire to Deny Trump the Party's Nomination

[joepistole]

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.

Well, the economy is growing and has been since 2010. So why do you want to turn around a growing economy? We don't need an economy shrinking at a 10% annualized rate as it was when Obama inherited the economy from a Republican POTUS. This economy that you want to turnaround has been steadily adding between 100k to 300k jobs every month. Now why do you Republicans want to turn that around also?

There is a problem with your "robust economy" it's called inflation - just ask China. Moderate growth is preferable to "robust" growth. The problems we face isn't economic growth, we have had that for the last 7+ years. The problem is who benefits from that economic growth. Because of fiscal policies, fiscal policies advanced by and supported by Republicans, the wealthy have benefited at the expense of middle class Americans.

 

[Bells]

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.

I wonder if that is because of her stance on gun control?

Consider the alternative? As one conservative journalist noted:

If Republican voters had nominated a typical candidate, a governor or former governor who had won office in a big state by straddling the center and the right, that man would be ahead of Hillary Clinton right now. But instead the voters went for Trump, who has never run for nor held office, dodged the draft, and spent the last year insulting Mexicans, P.O.W.s, women, the disabled, Muslims, you name it, while saying George W. Bush lied us into war with Iraq and implying Ted Cruz’s dad had a hand in the Kennedy assassination. Then there was the part where he bragged about his genitals before ranting that he would order soldiers to commit war crimes and “if I say do it, they’re going to do it.” This week he cast the troops in Iraq as thieves, threw his support behind an unconstitutional proposal to deny Second Amendment rights to citizens on the no-fly list, invited Kim Jong Un to Washington, hinted that President Obama supported ISIS, denied press credentials to the Washington Post after the paper reported this insinuation, and then turned around and tweeted that a Breitbart article proved he was right about Obama all along.

This is not a good man. This is not a stable man. It is in the self-interest of no rational person to have him near the situation room. ​

For whatever reason she might scare you, you need to consider the alternative. The alternative is someone who is currently advocating racial profiling, who embraces white supremacist ideology, bigotry, misogyny and racism. Who openly incites violence against minorities. And he is doing this openly. Not to mention his attempt to silence the press, his racist attack on a member of the judiciary. I could go on and on. And I haven't even started on his embracing conspiracies and his using conspiracy websites and citing them as news sites. There is also the general fear of someone like him having access to the nuclear launch codes and not even understanding terms in regards to his Presidency and its deep connection to the nuclear arsenal he would have at his finger tips.

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.

There is nothing in her candidacy which would indicate her ruining the country, and there is certainly nothing in her candidacy that would lead one to believe that she is certifiably insane and pose a risk to general health and safety of Americans and others as Trump does. There is everything to indicate that she has the propensity for greatness. There is every indication that under Trump, free press would be a thing of the past for one, not to mention the risk to the health and safety of everyone and severe economic instability. His courting of the far far right, his comments about abortion, his birther stance and conspiracy addled beliefs pose a direct risk to the health and safety of Americans. His belief and advocating 'the wall, his support for and calls for racial profiling and even internment camps for Muslims, for example, is a clear indication that he poses a direct threat to millions of people. And it is a direct threat.

In short, there is no competition between her and Trump when it comes to being a competent President. Clinton has the capacity for greatness. Trump has the capacity of scaring, not to mention destroying the world and launching control measures in the States that would render the very notion of freedom as a thing of the past.

You might think she is creepy for reasons known only to you, but the alternative is fear and terror and the very real risk of a global catastrophe.

 

[joepistole]

Trump has advocated bringing back torture and expanding its usage. You don't think that is scary?

 

[PhysBang]

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.

I believe that much of that money was loaned to the campaign, not given.

 

[PhysBang]

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

Why would his string of failed businesses lead you to this conclusion? One cannot run a state such that it becomes someone elses's problem. Defaulting on the USA's debt would not help its economic future.

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.

WHy are you arguing against the economic theory of almost every economist?

The war against poverty has been going on for 50 years, yet the percent of poor has not changed.

This is so clearly false, only you could claim it. First, the amount of poor has changed dramatically over the last 50 years. Second, the war on poverty stopped in 1980. It became the war for poverty.

 

[joepistole]

I believe that much of that money was loaned to the campaign, not given.

You are correct, it was loaned. But if he wants to get paid back, he will need others to donate 43+million else it is a loss for him. The last I heard, his campaign has only a few million dollars in cash on hand.

 

[joepistole]

WHy are you arguing against the economic theory of almost every economist?

Because she is a Republican. Republicans don't need any stinking scientists or academics. They just know stuff.

 

[PhysBang]

You are correct, it was loaned. But if he wants to get paid back, he will need others to donate 43+million else it is a loss for him. The last I heard, his campaign has only a few million dollars in cash on hand.

I couldn't find an update after this report: http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/201...mpaign-donations-pay-himself-back-36m-n578036

 

[joepistole]

I couldn't find an update after this report: http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/201...mpaign-donations-pay-himself-back-36m-n578036

It's really a very smart move on his part. If he donates the money to his campaign he gets no tax benefit. If he writes off the loans as bad debt, he can deduct the loan as an investment loss., or if he has sufficient contributions, he can pay himself back.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Trump has won the Republican primary race, but that's not good enough for a large chunk of Republicans who are even now conspiring to change the party rules and deny Trump the Party's nomination. The party convention is one month away, so the time is drawing near. Conspiring Republicans don't have much time. So the question is, will these Republicans be able to deny Trump the Party's nomination?

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/donald-trump-2016-mob-organized-crime-213910

If this group of conspirators are successful in denying the party's nomination to the winner of the party's primary, then why have primaries at all? Why not go back to the days of smoke filled backrooms? Well, maybe we can get rid of the smoke, as most people no longer smoke. But if the will of voters can be so easily suppressed in the Republican Party, then the Republican primary is a farce.

That's why we have conventions and not just a vote. One role of the delegates is to prevent a nut from getting elected. We have protections against mass insanity. This is one of them.

 

[joepistole]

That's why we have conventions and not just a vote. One role of the delegates is to prevent a nut from getting elected. We have protections against mass insanity. This is one of them.

Well it's kind of late to be worrying about mass insanity. Republicans should have thought of that decades ago when they destroyed the Fairness Doctrine. Taking the nomination from Trump won't stop the right wing insanity. To the contrary, it will feed the flames of that insanity.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Well it's kind of late to be worrying about mass insanity. Republicans should have thought of that decades ago when they destroyed the Fairness Doctrine. Taking the nomination from Trump won't stop the right wing insanity. To the contrary, it will feed the flames of that insanity.

They can move the party back towards the middle and dump the Trumpers. Better than being labeled the Trump Party!

He only got 14 million votes. There are over 10 times as many voters.

 

[joepistole]

They can move the party back towards the middle and dump the Trumpers. Better than being labeled the Trump Party!

Do you think the Trump folks will go away if the Republican establishment denies Trump the nomination? Trump nor his supporters are going away. Trump could well form a third party which will plague Republicans, not just this year, but for many years to come. Trump has the resources to pull that off. I don't think Republican insiders want to see that happen.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Do you think the Trump folks will go away if the Republican establishment denies Trump the nomination? Trump nor his supporters are going away. Trump could well form a third party which will plague Republicans, not just this year, but for many years to come. Trump has the resources to pull that off.

So let them form another nutty party. So what. The Republicans need to shed the nuts anyway. The largest party in the US is not even a party. They are the independents which tend to be moderate. Target that and lose the extremists. I think they [Republican Party] have more to gain than to lose. Given the trajectory of demographics, they are dead anyway.

As things are, the party has been reduced to a dangerous joke.

 

[iceaura]

It really does look like the real problem is that Hillary Clinton is really, really good at American politics.

Wishful thinking. Koolaid level.

One hopes you are somehow, despite her record, reality based in that respect, but the real problem is that Hilary has never been and is not now very good at campaigning, or legislating, or negotiating (look at the way her campaign kicked the Sanders supporters in the teeth, which was a piece of apparently oblivious stupidity as gratuitous as it was bizarre), or anything else except paving the road for the Republican agenda circa 1970.

But she is the best presidential candidate in America

The fact that anyone in the Democratic Party - let alone a large number of Clinton supporters - actually believes that is scary as hell. That's how we're going to get a Trump presidency, if we do - if you guys don't recognize the need for a full court press to shore up this candidate, get some kind of a clue as to how difficult it is going to be to win the general campaign with this kind of nominee, this is going to get a lot uglier than it already is.

Imagine losing to Donald Trump. More to the point, imagine if Trump takes a buyout - he's currently using his campaign contributions to hire his own businesses and otherwise line his pockets, so it won't be cheap, but the Kochs have the money - and all of a sudden all those people currently holding their nose because they can't abide Trump's vulgarity have someone with the Republican agenda and a reasonable mouth to vote for. You want landslide? You might get one.

Trump has advocated bringing back torture and expanding its usage. You don't think that is scary?

Clinton's record there, as with the NSA domestic spying and other "Homeland Security" measures, is ambivalent at best.

There is nothing in her candidacy which would indicate her ruining the country, and there is certainly nothing in her candidacy that would lead one to believe that she is certifiably insane and pose a risk to general health and safety of Americans and others as Trump does. There is everything to indicate that she has the propensity for greatness.

She has no record of even competence at getting anything good done.

Granted selling exactly what isn't there is a proven marketing ploy - but this is marketing a known thing, over months of close examination.

I can understand supporting Clinton, against any Republican let alone Trump, but this puffery around her is dangerous as well as baffling. I'm definitely going to schlep my ass to the polls and vote for her if the race is at all in question in my State, but not with a head full of fruit loops - and likewise many others: her record is lousy, ok? She has done nothing good well, and this is not hidden or surprising. She has betrayed her Party and her constituency, cast not just bad but cowardly votes, and screwed up in areas she had no reason to even act in. From a liberal or libertarian left pov she's a menace - the (significantly) lesser of two evils, is the best you can say. And from a Stop Trump pov she's a genuine, serious, watch your back risk - look at the manipulations and screwups, after all the experience she's had in campaigns. Her hardcore support fraction is smaller, not larger, than Trump's. She can easily lose this thing - and that's not something you can say about just anyone running against Trump. You could probably get better odds against disaster by flipping coins among the Democratic governors, or experienced House members - too late for that.

And what if Trump takes the buyout? A lot of folks generally agree with a lot of what Trump says, in part because a lot of what he says is the plain truth, but will not vote for him because he has the Presidential demeanor of a baboon - present them with a plain spoken Republican with more dignity, and the sigh of relief (and cavalcade to the polls) will be audible all over the country.

 

[iceaura]

The Republicans need to shed the nuts anyway. The largest party in the US is not even a party. They are the independents which tend to be moderate. Target that and lose the extremists.

There is no such large body of independents. The people you are describing tend to be Democrats. The people who describe themselves as "independents" in that fashion - available to become Republicans - are mostly consistently Republican voters in denial of what they've been voting for for thirty years now.

There is no other Republican Party, than the nuts. Trump probably would have been the second choice of most of those who voted for Rubio, Jeb, or Cruz - and not because they don't know what he's been saying etc.

The idea of a Republican Party built around independents who tend to be sensible and moderate and rational conservatives is a myth. The Republican Party is full of Republicans, and as Matt Taibbi pointed out years ago (to Brian Williams, who was trying to defend the ugly embarrassment his news operation had become) from his experience actually interviewing them and doing real journalism, they are completely full of shit. They have been getting their worldview, their history and information and analysis and everything, from the likes of Fox and Limbaugh and Coulter and Beck and their local Protestant evangelical ministers for their entire adult life, lately with CNN and the rest (even MSNBC) signing on, most of them;

and - this is the key - nowhere else. They haven't attended to a source of reality based "news" and analysis since the mid 1980s.

 

[joepistole]

There is no such large body of independents. The people you are describing tend to be Democrats. The people who describe themselves as "independents" in that fashion - available to become Republicans - are mostly consistently Republican voters in denial of what they've been voting for for thirty years now.

Except that, as with your many other assertions, is simply incorrect. Unfortunately for you Iceaura, facts do matter.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx

There is no other Republican Party, than the nuts. Trump probably would have been the second choice of most of those who voted for Rubio, Jeb, or Cruz - and not because they don't know what he's been saying etc.

The idea of a Republican Party built around independents who tend to be sensible and moderate and rational conservatives is a myth. The Republican Party is full of Republicans, and as Matt Taibbi pointed out years ago (to Brian Williams, who was trying to defend the ugly embarrassment his news operation had become) from his experience actually interviewing them and doing real journalism, they are completely full of shit. They have been getting their worldview, their history and information and analysis and everything, from the likes of Fox and Limbaugh and Coulter and Beck and their local Protestant evangelical ministers for their entire adult life, lately with CNN and the rest (even MSNBC) signing on, most of them;

and - this is the key - nowhere else. They haven't attended to a source of reality based "news" and analysis since the mid 1980s.

Who said the Republican Party is build around "independents" who tend to be "sensible and moderate", and how is that relevant? If people are independent, they are independent, not Republican or Democratic.

The Republican Party enable by Republican entertainers has radicalized the party to the point of dysfunction, and that's very unfortunate. The Republican Party's woes don't begin with nor do they end with The Donald. The problems which vex the Republican Party run much deeper than The Donald and their runner up was worse than Trump.

 

[iceaura]

Except that, as with your many other assertions, is simply incorrect. Unfortunately for you Iceaura, facts do matter.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx

There's nothing in your linked polling except self-identifications. How does that contradict anything I posted?

Who said the Republican Party is build around "independents" who tend to be "sensible and moderate", and how is that relevant?

I'm pretty sure the guy I quoted and responded to will not have your difficulties. Relax.

Meanwhile, the possibility that Trump will take a buyout, or somehow otherwise lose the Republican nomination, is no comfort for the Dems with their uniquely vulnerable candidate. If the problem faced by the Republican Party is that it has a primary voting constituency of Republicans, meaning bigots, Christopaths, and imbeciles, just as it intended when it realized that Nixon was correct and set out to put it together, this has also created a unique opportunity to bypass them: if they can get Trump to leave willingly in this situation as a good deed (a major buyout - a billion? might do it), they can choose for the general election. And they are not stupid men, really.

 

[joepistole]

There's nothing in your linked polling except self-identifications. How does that contradict anything I posted?
I'm pretty sure the guy I quoted and responded to will not have your difficulties. Relax.

And what's wrong with self identifications? How else do you know what people think if you don't ask them, or do you just "know" if people are Democrats, Republicans or independents?

Meanwhile, the possibility that Trump will take a buyout, or somehow otherwise lose the Republican nomination, is no comfort for the Dems with their uniquely vulnerable candidate. If the problem faced by the Republican Party is that it has a primary voting constituency of Republicans, meaning bigots, Christopaths, and imbeciles, just as it intended when it realized that Nixon was correct and set out to put it together, this has become a unique opportunity to bypass them: all they have to do is get Trump to leave willingly, and they can choose for the general election. And they are not stupid men.

Hillary is a flawed candidate, but she beat your candidate. You are going to have to live with that. As bad as Hillary is as a candidate, she beat your beloved Bernie. She was better than your Bernie. That's a fact. And it just so happens she is running against an even more flawed candidate on the Republican side and more than that, she is running against a deeply fractured Republican Party. Republicans could toss out Trump with rules change as some are attempting to do. But if it did that, it would further fracture the Republican Party. Trump could even go, and probably would go, 3rd party. If Republicans replace Trump, whomever they replace him with wouldn't be in much better shape.

 

[iceaura]

And what's wrong with self identifications?

In the case of self-proclaimed "independents" in the US, they aren't accurate, and that was exactly my point, or part of it. There are a whole lot of people calling themselves "independent" because they don't want to face the implications of the fact they voted for W twice, a ticket with Palin on it once, and Mitt "40%" Romney to cherry the float. They're no more sensible and reasonable than the honest base - the notion of kicking the nutcases out and filling one's Party with them is not a hopeful prospect.

Hillary is a flawed candidate, but she beat your candidate. You are going to have to live with that. As bad as Hillary is as a candidate, she beat your beloved Bernie. She was better than your Bernie. That's a fact.

You better hope that's what happened, instead of the name recognition and vote manipulation and media coverage issues that appear to have been her major advantages.

Because they almost failed against Sanders - an elderly, unknown, unkempt, shouting and ranting Jewish socialist and conscientious objector went from single digits to even up with Clinton in about six months - and they probably won't work at all against Trump. Tossing tens of thousands of people off the voter roles in California and New York, for example, would work to Trump's advantage. Avoiding or hiding debates will not hide him. The voting machine/exit poll discrepancies have never yet broken in favor of the Democratic candidate overall in a national election. And Trump has excellent name recognition, coupled with easy control of the media - his rallies will make the screen, his speeches will be broadcast, his assertions and so forth given extensive publicity in themselves, and not just the critiques and paraphrases of them.

And he's starting even - not down 50/1. If he is replaced, and endorses the replacement (bought, say), they will start even and with a bump from the fastidious, the lace curtain Republicans.