Originally Posted By Mr X Another one bites the dust. Quite a stunner for the man who was easily the GOP establishment pick even up to a few weeks ago. Seems like Trump may just be unstoppable. Can he beat Clinton, I wonder?
Originally Posted By RoadTrip It is kind of sad... I've had more than enough Bush's, but he and Kasich were the most experienced and classiest Republican candidates. Unfortunately, the voters just weren't looking for that this year. I'm afraid he could. I think a fair number of Bernie supporters would vote for Trump before they would vote for Clinton.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip The only hope we have for a sane Republican candidate is if everyone except Rubio joined Bush in dropping out SOON. That might be possible with Kasich and Carson, but I don't think that azzhole Cruz ever would. He cares about no one other than himself.
Originally Posted By ecdc And maybe it's because he's tacking hard right to win the primary, but Rubio is looking a lot less sane to me. The longer this goes on, the more the candidates show themselves, and Rubio, who I used to think "I sure hope doesn't win but he won't be a disaster," now kinda seems like he'd be a disaster. Tonight might've been the first night I let myself think, if only for a bit, "What if Donald Trump is the 45th President of the United States?" The nomination is now his to lose. What kind of guarantee can we have he won't beat Clinton (who seems more likely than ever to be the Dem nominee)? Could we really end up with a President who gets into Twitter feuds with Cher and Rosie O'Donnell? I mean...holy crap!
Originally Posted By SuperDry << Could we really end up with a President who ... ? I mean...holy crap! >> This could be a fun game. I have one: "... who has his finger on the button, but doesn't know what the 'nuclear triad' is?"
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <Could we really end up with a President who gets into Twitter feuds with Cher and Rosie O'Donnell?> Lordy, that's a good way to put it. Is there anyone here good at creating graphics? I'd love to see a simple graphic with that question (perhaps superimposed over a particularly unflattering pic of Trump) go viral and be shared and reposted zillions of times.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>Is there anyone here good at creating graphics?<< I'll work on something. In the meantime...ladies and gentlemen, your next President of the United States! <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://i.imgur.com/8r6g52n.jpg">http://i.imgur.com/8r6g52n.jpg</a>
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>Tonight might've been the first night I let myself think, if only for a bit, "What if Donald Trump is the 45th President of the United States?" The nomination is now his to lose.<< I sure never saw this coming. But now I'm starting to wonder if him becoming president is sort of inevitable in an era when Kardashians are multi million dollar attractions? There are a lot of angry, dumb people out there, angrier and dumber than I believed, and they seem to have all taken on a whiskey tango foxtrot attitude about the future of this country. That said, I still think that Trump, ultimately, is using everyone. He's pandering and he knows it, and he has held any number of political views across the spectrum through the years. Who can say what he really truly believes, and what he would really and truly do if elected. He doesn't strike me as a fellow that is particularly worried about keeping the outlandish promises he's floated during the campaign. He knows that most of his supporters are going to keep on supporting him regardless. I have to say that I am honestly far more frightened of a Ted Cruz presidency, and Marco Rubio simply isn't ready for prime time. BOTH their religious extremism is chilling, whereas Trump (I'm grasping for anything to feel hopeful about) isn't tethered to the tea baggers or the evangelicals with some devout belief in the apocalypse. And by and large the money he's spent, which is very little thanks to the media coverage, is pretty much his own. I don't want Trump to be president. I really, really don't. But I think I'd rather have him over Cruz or Rubio, if forced to choose.
Originally Posted By iamsally >>>I sure never saw this coming. But now I'm starting to wonder if him becoming president is sort of inevitable in an era when Kardashians are multi million dollar attractions?<<< That pretty much says it all. I am glad I am old but kind of wishing I was even older. Like nearer to death.
Originally Posted By EighthDwarf Trump has tapped into a latent anger on the right. What anger? Anger that a black man is president. Anger that there are a lot of Mexicans in this country and that Spanish is an option when you call a customer service line. Anger that Muslims, well, exist. Anger that it is not PC to say that you're uncomfortable with the acceptance of all of these brown people. That's why his numbers increase when he says offensive things about these people. Trump is the embodiment of the middle finger that conservatives have had to keep in their pocket for the last seven years. But while it might feel good to whip it out, the people that are being flipped off hold the key to the presidency. Trump may win the nomination, but he can't win the presidency. And if he is the nominee, the Republicans are in trouble for a long time to come.
Originally Posted By Goofyernmost Let's assume that he does get elected, I have to wonder what becomes of his business holdings. Doesn't he have to turn it all over to a blind trust to eliminate any chance of conflict of interest? If that is true, can you even start to imagine how unable he will be to hand it all over and probably break a law going in by refusing to do so. He is the ultimate in "control freak". Even if he is forced to do it, the chances are that he will be in a padded room after the first month.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 "I don't want Trump to be president. I really, really don't. But I think I'd rather have him over Cruz or Rubio, if forced to choose." Me too. Trump doesn't really have any sort of coherent ideology . Really, his only ideology is Trump. The inherent greatness of Trump. This is the only thing he seems to truly believe and for any length of time whatsoever. I do, however, think he would be dangerous as president. Not as dangerous as Cruz for sure, but still dangerous. If only because the man can simply never admit to error. He simply can't – if he's wrong, and called on it, rather than reverse course, he simply doubles down. That's a downright dangerous quality to have in an actual president. I sure hope ED's analysis in number 10 is correct. I tend to think it is; there are some analyses that say that any Republican who can't get more of the Hispanic vote than Romney did is doomed just from that factor alone. And I don't think Trump would get even as many as Romney did. Could he come to fool enough white independents to make up the difference? I sure hope not. Trump is the living, breathing embodiment of Lincoln's adage that you can fool some of the people all the time. Maybe I'm too optimistic, but I don't think he can fool the majority. Yet in this closely divided country where either of the major party candidates has about a 40% floor just to start with, one has to be worried .
Originally Posted By Mr X ***And I don't think Trump would get even as many as Romney did*** If the Democrats play their cards right (always a risky bet with those dunces!), I don't see why Trump shouldn't get the lowest percentage of Hispanic vote in GOP history. I mean, come on. Just look at the soundbites he's been laying down and tell me that wouldn't make for a series of Spanish language commercials that would send any sane Latino running for the hills (or running to the "Hil" as the case may be lol).
Originally Posted By DDMAN26 <<<< Looks over all the candidates. Voted for Gary Johnson last time, will vote for him again.
Originally Posted By EighthDwarf "I do, however, think he would be dangerous as president. Not as dangerous as Cruz for sure, but still dangerous." Really? Don't get me wrong, Cruz is a creep, a liar, and everybody in Washington hates him. But Trump is already hated by Europe, the Muslim world and Latin America - and he's calling for a trade war with China (something, as president, he'd be able to accomplish without Congress' help). He scares me far more than Cruz does at the moment.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 Cruz belongs to a sect that believes a). That the End Times are coming, and b) that this is not a bad thing. They believe that it will be a glorious day when the forces of Christendom face the non-Christians and defeat them, ushering in Armageddon and the Second Coming- which includes the literal end of this world. In other words they're spoiling for the same thing Islamic extremists are spoiling for - an actual clash of civilizations/world war. We have nukes. At the very least Pakistan has nukes. Now do you get why he scares me more?
Originally Posted By SuperDry << Voted for Gary Johnson last time, will vote for him again. >> Me too, on both counts.
Originally Posted By skinnerbox From November 2015: <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelangelo-signorile/post_10496_b_8544540.html">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...540.html</a> <> Last weekend Senator Ted Cruz, along with fellow GOP presidential candidates Mike Huckabee and Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, spoke at a conference in Des Moines headed up by a man who advocates the execution of gay people -- per his interpretation of the bible -- and who made his call for mass extermination once again, onstage at the event, the National Religious Liberties Conference. Pastor Kevin Swanson has said in the past that Christians should attend gay weddings and hold up signs telling the newly married gay and lesbian couples that they "should be put to death." He was an advocate of Uganda's infamous "Kill the Gays" bill, which he saw as a model. At the confab over the weekend, where he introduced Huckabee, Jindal and Cruz to the audience -- and where Ted Cruz's father, Rafael Cruz, an anti-gay Tea Party crusader, was a star speaker -- he reiterated his death penalty call, adding that homosexuals should first be given some time to repent before the executions begin. There's nothing subtle about what he said, and you can watch it for yourself, including his statements about what he would do if he were one of those parents of a gay person: There are families, we're talking Christian families, pastors' families, elders' families from good, godly churches," Swanson said, "whose sons are rebelling, hanging out with homosexuals and getting married and the parents are invited. What would you do if that was the case? Here is what I would do: sackcloth and ashes at the entrance to the church and I'd sit in cow manure and I'd spread it all over my body. That is what I would do and I'm not kidding, I'm not laughing." On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, using extensive clips of video of the speech that had been posted by the indispensable Right Wing Watch, covered the conference in depth, and was rightly horrified that it even took place and that presidential candidates were there. "This is a political event. This is a Republican presidential candidates' event," Maddow said. "It really was a 'kill-the-gays' call to arms. This was a conference about the necessity of the death penalty as a punishment for homosexuality." But except for scattered online media coverage and blog posts, that was it. CNN's Jake Tapper asked Cruz if it was appropriate to speak at the conference before the event -- and Cruz dodged the question, claiming to know nothing of the pastor's views, and spinning back to religious people supposedly being under attack -- but there was no coverage I could find on CNN after the conference and focused on this evangelical leader who called for a future genocide after introducing presidential candidates who lauded him. As far as I can tell, no broadcast networks or major American newspaper covered the blood-curdling speech in which several times Swanson said the punishment for homosexuality is the death penalty. Where is The New York Times? The Washington Post covered the conference and the candidates' comments, but didn't mention the "kill the gays" speech. Not news to them apparently. Several online sources that did focus on the conference placed more attention on Cruz telling Swanson that an atheist shouldn't be president, or on the unhinged Swanson's advice to parents that they should drown their children rather than let them read Harry Potter, than on Swanson calling for the extermination of an entire group of people at an event at which presidential candidates spoke. It's 2015 and much of the media seem to accept, still, that LGBT people can be talked about this way at an event attended by presidential candidates and that it's not news. They view it as par for the course, religious conservatives doing what they do. It's as if they have blinders on. Indeed, if Ted Cruz -- or Huckabee or Jindal -- attended an event at which the host hinted at mass murder of Jews, African-Americans or any other group it would be a massive media story. He'd be forced to answer questions about it, at debates (and it didn't come up at the last debate), in press conferences and in interviews non-stop. He'd be pressured to condemn both the comments and the pastor -- as when John McCain had to dump Pastor John Hagee in 2008 because of his ugly comments about Catholics -- or he'd face the consequences. Instead, the current Republican candidates are on the offensive against the media, claiming they're being unfairly targeted with "gotcha" questions, and the media is running for cover. After the CNBC debate and the outrage from the candidates and the Republican National Committee, the Fox Business Network debate moderators were perfectly accommodating (not that a Fox network wouldn't have been so anyway), throwing mostly softball questions or -- when they did ask a tougher one -- letting the candidate off the hook with their non-answers. The GOP candidates have whined about how Hillary Clinton apparently doesn't get the same kind of scrutiny they get -- a laughable assertion. Ben Carson, in the midst of battling against the media for reporting on discrepancies in his biography, had the gall to claim the media didn't focus on President Obama's controversial former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, during the 2008 campaign. Obama, as we all remember, was in fact under such intense media scrutiny over it that he felt compelled to give an entire speech in which he distanced himself from Wright and then ran as far away as he could. That was based on comments Wright made that pale in comparison to a pastor calling for genocide of an entire people. Swanson may not be Huckabee's, Jindal's or Cruz's own pastor, but they attended a hate conference organized by Swanson, who introduced them onstage, in the middle of a presidential primary race. The fact that it seems to be viewed as just another ho-hum campaign stop suggests we've not come as far on LGBT right as we all like to tell ourselves. <> Trump is an idiot. But I don't see him advocating concentration camps for gays. Cruz is a religious nutjob. He needs to go away.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 Yes,there's that too. Armageddon for the whole planet is even a little scarier, but I saw that clip of Swanson ranting, knowing that Cruz was in attendance at that very event. Here's a guy calling for flat out extermination of gay people, and three presidential candidates saying nothing. How do you imagine that made me feel? It didn't make me feel great.
Originally Posted By EighthDwarf Wow, I get it now. I know there is a significant section of the population that believes that evangelical garbage and that does scare me more than anything. But I guess I didn't realize Ted Cruz was so involved with it (he strikes me as an evangelical wannabe, to tell you the truth). Lesson learned....
