Trump

[Darkflame]

Weird.
I had heard this was brewing earlier and I assumed Trumps "smart people" have told him Cruz in fact has every right to be president, so it was more some attempt to cast dought in the (delusional) half of the american public - much like he did with Obama.
That would make sense (as much as anything does here).

But if he actually thinks he can sue this is getting a lot more crazy.

[gumboot]

But if he actually thinks he can sue this is getting a lot more crazy.

I'm not sure he thinks anything at all. He just speaks.

I'm not sure his vacuous bluster is going to go down well in a genuine political setting should one ever come up.

[funkstar]

Beautiful - the birthers come full circle. Incidentally, that is another completely bogus piece of law. There's no good reason for the "only natural born U.S. citizens can be president" anymore - it's only insane ancestor worship that keeps this antiquated shit alive.

As to Trump thinking and speaking: The thing about running as a conservative candidate is that you very rarely have to come up with any arguments for your program - the core tenet is after all that things shouldn't change (or that they should go back to what they were). Somebody else already did the hard work of arguing for why things should be as they are currently, so your primary job is always going to be scaremongering and mudslinging (when faced with any candidate, reformist or conservative).

Also, is it just me, or has the Tea Party been laying particularly low for the last couple of months? (Sure, Sarah Palin showed up to deliver a bag of crazy at a Trump rally, but does she count anymore?)

[pogo]

Also, is it just me, or has the Tea Party been laying particularly low for the last couple of months? (Sure, Sarah Palin showed up to deliver a bag of crazy at a Trump rally, but does she count anymore?)

I think it’s just that a real election is going on, and energy and money is being channeled into that. In particular money: the Tea Party is is not so much a grassroots movement as an astroturf one, funded not by small donations but by large dollops of anonymous billionaire cash. This happens a lot outside of elections; billionaires decide they want to spend money on politics so set up an organisation to launder their money through. But they don‘t call it something obvious such as “billionaires for lower taxes” but instead “Americans for Prosperity”, and pretend it’s a grassroots organisation. It might attract a few gullible pensioners, unaware the billionaires want to slash their benefits to pay for their tax cuts, but it’s all corporate money at heart.

But now there are elections to buy. There are candidates to bankroll, attack ads to run, robo-calls to organise, dirt to dig up and distort. They still involve ordinary people but in a much more superficial way, when they need crowds to cheer their candidate. They still accept money from small donors but it is much too small for their purposes, so instead millions are channelled through shadowy PACs.

[Darkflame]

Thing is, didn't Mitt demonstrate nicely that elections themselves cant be bought? Some people wasted stupid amounts on him.

Goes for the dems too; Hillary getting millions in individual pac donations, and Sanders seems to be competing with her with just, well, I think his biggest donnor group is still Google at about 90k.

At some point arnt the big corps going to realize they are just chucking their money away?
I get they want to buy influence, but it seems just not to work on the election level.

[pogo]

The problem is demographic as much as anything. Republicans have constructed a coalition of mainly unhappy white people. Unhappy with globalisation, or with immigration, or with declining moral standards, or with their own falling standards of living. But that is not a coalition they can win the election with, it’s too small and getting smaller. It excludes fast growing groups such as Blacks, Hispanics who tend to vote overwhelmingly democratic. Hence their struggle to find a candidate who can finesse the immigration issue and appeal to Hispanics.

But more importantly it’s a coalition shot through with contradictions. At the same time as being for less government (interference in traditional marriage/abortion rights/the Oregon standoff) they are for protecting government programmes such as Social Security and Medicare, spending more on foreign wars. While many Tea Party types are against immigration this horrifies some of their business backers who are for globalisation, for immigration of skilled workers.

That makes it hard to find good candidates. Those with legislative records get punished for the contradictions that being a Republican legislator requires. They end up favouring outsiders with little or no experience, like Trump. But he has only succeeded by running on part of the Republican platform, getting away with it because he only needs 30% of the vote to win in such a divided field. He is already flailing whenever challenged on whatever he has said or really believes, and looks unlikely to be in the lead much longer. Problem as always is the rest of the field is no better and have been so damaged by the process so far that probably none of them can move into a convincing lead.

[pogo]

The other 'Oh God what now?' Is he is threatening to run as a third party candidate again. All candidates are supposed to have pledged that they would support the eventual nominee whoever he is, but Trump claims he had an agreement with the RNC, which they have already voided.

The RNC better get its act together because, you know, I signed a pledge. The pledge isn’t being honored by the RNC, I signed a pledge, but it’s a double-edged pledge. As far as I’m concerned, they’re in default on their pledge.

What have they done? Supposedly pack the debate with 'donors' but this is just false. There were just a lot of supporters of other candidates. And they let Ted Cruz run attack ads but they are part of the normal process of American politics, the RNC has nothing to do with them.

[gumboot]

If Trump ran independent, we could get a measure of how many Americans are true shitheads rather than shitheads by default because they always vote Republican.

[Little stoned kiwi]

Is he is threatening to run as a third party candidate again.

[Little stoned kiwi]

"No good dirty goddamn hippies!"

[pogo]

[pogo]

A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not of building bridges, is not Christian. This is not the gospel.

That’s going to be hard for Trump to dismiss, unless he wants to offend millions of American Catholics. As for why the Pope has stepped into American politics, he is in Mexico, the target of Trump’s worst statements. And the Pope is from Latin America, the first such, so may feel he has a particular obligation to stand up for people South of the US-Mexico border.

[gumboot]

Maybe he'll build a bridge. Over his wall. A one-way toll bridge, where Mexicans have to pay to come into the US. That's how they'll pay for the wall.

Don't know who's going to pay for the bridge, though.

[KlaxonCow]

Don't know who's going to pay for the bridge, though.

Well, you could just repeal the Church's tax exemption status and raise the money that way. It would be the Christian thing to do, right?

They came and said to Him, "Teacher, we know that You are truthful and defer to no one; for You are not partial to any, but teach the way of God in truth. Is it lawful to pay a poll-tax to Caesar, or not? Shall we pay or shall we not pay?"

But He, knowing their hypocrisy, said to them, "Why are you testing Me? Bring Me a denarius to look at." They brought one. And He said to them, "Whose likeness and inscription is this?" And they said to Him, "Caesar's."

And Jesus said to them, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." And they were amazed at Him.

What would Jesus do? He'd pay his taxes!!

[Barney]

A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not of building bridges, is not Christian. This is not the gospel.

That’s going to be hard for Trump to dismiss

He can't dismiss it - the Pope is after all (as I understand it) God's voice on earth and as such if the Pope says that Trump isn't a Christian, then that's pretty much God's opinion too, no?

A non-Christian president? Oh my.