“Donald’s Trump Card”: His Candidacy Is A Headache For The GOP, But A Third Party Run Would Be A Catastrophe
Donald Trump. For Democrats who care about this presidential election cycle, the infamous Republican candidate has been the gift that keeps on giving. And now, he’s threatening to give Democrats more than they could have possibly hoped for in the form of a third party run.
According to an interview with The Hill, Trump may consider a third party bid if he doesn’t feel the Republican Party has been fair to him during the primary process. When asked about the possibility of the independent run, Trump said, “I’ll have to see how I’m being treated by the Republicans. Absolutely, if they’re not fair, that would be a factor.”
Understandably, Trump’s run for the nomination has been a thorn in the side of the national GOP. He’s monopolizing the press coverage, leading the polls, and has been a menace on the campaign trail. His inflammatory comments – most recently disparaging Sen. John McCain’s, R-Ariz., status as a war hero – are garnering the wrong kind of attention for his party. He’s also really starting to annoy the other candidates – just ask Sen. Lindsey Graham.
However, as tough as his candidacy has been for the Republican party thus far, a third party run would make things 10 times worse.
Third party candidates are usually a spoiler in presidential contests. They rarely have the resources to win, but if they run well, they can draw enough support to thwart one of the major party candidates. Trump has been fashioning himself as a mostly conservative candidate who has appeal among conservative voters. According to the New York Times, he has “become the new starring attraction for the restless, conservative-minded voters who think the political process is in need of disruption.”
Due to this appeal, it’s fair to say that, in a three way race, the candidate most likely to be thwarted by Trump’s run would be the Republican nominee. An independent Trump candidacy would mean the Republican nominee would be battling on two fronts. He would be fighting the Democratic nominee for the all-important swing voters, and he would also be fighting Trump for votes among his conservative base. In a close race, the support lost to Trump could be enough to cost Republicans the entire race and put a Democrat in the White House.
However, Trump’s ability to be such a spoiler depends entirely on whether he makes it out of his primary run with any political juice left. Some of the other 15 candidates vying for the Republican nomination are starting to realize they can break through Trump’s hold on the press by attacking him. Rick Perry, in particular, has been taking this approach. Earlier this week, the former Texas governor called Trump’s candidacy a “cancer on conservatism,” and said that the billionaire presidential candidate could lead to the demise of the Republican Party. How long before the other candidates start following suit?
Harsh and persistent criticism from his own party could damage Trump’s credibility as a candidate and start to limit his appeal. Trump may also yet prove to be his own worst enemy. He appears to have faced few consequences for his recent attacks on McCain, but he’s proven to be a candidate with a penchant for speaking without thinking. Eventually, that could prove to be his undoing. The less popular Trump is when the primaries end, the less impact he will be able to have as a third party candidate.
And yet, even with limited potential for effectiveness, a third party run for Donald Trump would not be a good scenario for the national GOP. Trump would continue to dominate press coverage and would undoubtedly still be able to compete at some level with the Republican nominee for support and resources. It’s also likely that if he runs because he feels the national party has treated him unfairly, he would direct most of his ire at the Republican candidate. All of that adds up to a huge headache that will divert party attention away from the quest to win the election. For Democrats, it all adds up to a huge advantage.
By: Cary Gibson, Government Relations Consultant with Prime Policy Group; Thomas Jefferson Street Blog, U. S. News and World Report, July 24, 2015
“Being A Jerk Is A Feature Of His Candidacy”: The Media Created Donald Trump — And Now He Can’t Be Stopped
Time for some straight talk: We in the media love Donald Trump.
Even when we’re criticizing him — and boy, has he gotten plenty of criticism from people in the media over the last few days — we still love him. There’s just something magical about the guy. I think it resides in the contrast between his transcendent boorishness and his unflagging insistence that everything about him is the height of class and sophistication. And the details — the spectacular comb-over, the downscale New York accent, the wife regularly turned in for a younger model — all combine to make him a truly glorious character, so easy to mock and yet so unfazed by the mockery of millions.
It’s hard to think of too many people who have sustained the kind of celebrity Trump has for as long as he has. After all, he first started appearing in newspapers and magazines in the 1980s. Nothing takes him down, not bankrupcy, not the failure of his political endeavors (remember how he was going to prove that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States?), nothing. He just keeps coming.
So while the Republican Party is hoping desperately that somehow Trump will just go away, he’s not going anywhere until he’s good and ready. And as long as he can turn on the news and see his face, he’s a happy man.
After he seemed to belittle John McCain’s status as a war hero over the weekend (“He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured, I hate to tell you”), you could almost hear the collective whoops from GOP headquarters, not to mention from Trump’s primary opponents.
“There is no place in our party or our country for comments that disparage those who have served honorably,” said an RNC spokesman, which might be news to John Kerry, since disparaging his service was pretty much the centerpiece of the campaign against him in 2004. After weeks of trying not to say anything impolite about Trump lest they offend his supporters, the candidates finally mustered themselves to a round of condemnation.
It provided a perfect moment for the media, which is why this episode has gotten such enormous coverage. On one hand, it’s Trump, who’s always good for a story. And on the other hand, Trump could have been discovered to have a lab in his penthouse where puppies and kittens are tortured to make cologne from their tears, and it wouldn’t have offended journalists as much as an insult to John McCain.
There isn’t time to go into the details now, but suffice it to say that no politician in at least half a century has benefited from the kind of media adulation that John McCain has enjoyed, and his suffering as a POW is always presented as the justification for that worship. In striking contrast to the way they treat every other politician, McCain’s motives are assumed to be pure, his sins are excused, and his coverage focuses on his best moments rather than his flaws and mistakes. (Even his 2008 presidential campaign was reported with more gentle affection than most losing candidates get.) So even if the presidential candidates were not saying a word, McCain’s admirers in the media would be covering this story with all their might.
Which doesn’t make it much different from what’s been happening with Trump’s candidacy from the outset. As John Sides notes, Trump got much more coverage from his entry into the race than any other candidate, and the coverage sustained its high level even after that initial period. It’s interesting to contemplate whether Trump will still be news if and when he’s falling in the polls instead of rising, but chances are that before long he’ll say something else outrageous, which will lead to a new round of breathless coverage.
I suspect that Trump’s supporters aren’t going to desert him because he insulted John McCain — after all, McCain isn’t much liked among the Republican base, and this actually fits in with Trump’s political brand as the guy who tells it like it is. The fact that he’s getting universal condemnation could even convince the base that he’s exactly the kind of no-nonsense, shake-up-the-system candidate they’ve been hoping for. When he said Mexican immigrants were rapists and drug dealers, his support leaped among Republican primary voters, and they love the fact that he tosses around insults at anyone and everyone. And we in the media love it too.
Trump being a jerk is a feature of his candidacy, not a bug — and we just can’t get enough.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributing Writer, The Week, July 21, 2015
“Dishonest And Dishonorable”: Service Record; Trump, McCain, And Republican Contempt For Veterans
As soon as Donald Trump brayed that John McCain is “not a war hero” and went on to mock his suffering in North Vietnamese captivity, the righteous reaction of Republicans was entirely predictable. Nearly every would-be presidential candidate in the GOP, humiliated and worried by Trump’s sudden rise in the polls, immediately sought to wrap the loud-mouthed celebrity’s gaffe around his neck. No doubt some of them, like Senator Lindsey Graham, a close friend of his Arizona colleague, were truly incensed by Trump’s slur. But either way, the incident presented an irresistible opportunity to stoke public indignation against an opponent whose taunting has become unbearable, even as his rise appears inexorable.
Whether this episode will cost Trump the admiration of the Tea Party horde remains uncertain. Many of them already dislike McCain and may hear Trump’s insults as brutal candor. But in denigrating a war hero to advance himself, the casino mogul did nothing more or less than what other “conservatives” have done for political expediency in elections past. Nobody should be shocked to hear a right-wing chicken-hawk disparaging a worthy veteran at this late date. In the Republican Party, it is standard operating procedure — and for any Republican to pretend otherwise now is risibly hypocritical.
Need we recall every example of this profoundly distasteful and unpatriotic conduct? One of the most poisonous occurred in 2002, when a Georgia Republican named Saxby Chambliss ran ads suggesting that Senator Max Cleland, a Vietnam War hero who had lost both legs and one arm in an accidental grenade explosion, lacked the guts to face down Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Cleland, a Democrat who had served in the Veterans Administration under President Carter, had cast a vote protecting the rights of civil service workers in the new Department of Homeland Security, thus earning him a smear at the hands of Chambliss — one of those smooth favorite sons who had nimbly avoided the Vietnam draft.
When Cleland spoke up against President George W. Bush two years later, Ann Coulter sniped at him with an even nastier shot:
“Max Cleland should stop allowing Democrats to portray him as a war hero who lost his limbs taking enemy fire on the battlefields of Vietnam,” she wrote, describing his misfortune as “an accident during a routine non-combat mission where he was about to drink beer with friends. He saw a grenade on the ground and picked it up. He could have done that at Fort Dix. In fact, Cleland could have dropped a grenade on his foot as a National Guardsman …. Luckily for Cleland’s political career and current pomposity about Bush, he happened to do it while in Vietnam.” Ugly and appalling, even from her reliably foul mouth — and replete with lying insinuation. Although he lost his limbs in an accident — when a young infantryman dropped a live grenade that Cleland picked up — he is an authentic war hero who won a Silver Star for “exceptionally valorous action” at the Battle of Khe Sanh.
According to the official citation:
When the battalion command post came under a heavy enemy rocket and mortar attack, Capt. Cleland, disregarding his own safety, exposed himself to the rocket barrage as he left his covered position to administer first aid to his wounded comrades. He then assisted in moving the injured personnel to covered positions. Continuing to expose himself, Capt. Cleland organized his men into a work party to repair the battalion communications equipment which had been damaged by enemy fire. His gallant action is in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service, and reflects great credit upon himself, his unit, and the United States Army.
That action took place four days before the accident that maimed Cleland and sent him into years of depression from which he emerged, with great courage, to lead a life of service to his fellow veterans and his country. He possesses a kind of nobility and grace that the likes of Coulter and Chambliss could not even comprehend.
The Cleland episode served as a prelude to the infamous “Swift Boat Veterans For Truth” assault on John Kerry, another heroic veteran who returned home to testify and organize against the same terrible war in which he had served with such distinction. Kerry’s brave dissent brought him the lasting enmity of the Republican right — and, when he ran for president in 2004, a litany of outlandish claims about his own highly decorated service, for which he had earned a Silver Star and two Purple Hearts.
Those false charges were concocted and publicized, as I reported at the time, with money provided by Texas millionaires allied with the Bush family and their political boss Karl Rove. The Republicans led by Rove went so far as to mock Kerry’s Purple Hearts on the floor of their convention. Their aim was not only to ruin Kerry’s reputation, but to deflect attention from the highly questionable service record of George W. Bush — a subject about which he had lied shamelessly in his own 1999 campaign autobiography, A Charge To Keep.
Ultimately, Kerry and the Navy vets who had actually served with him refuted all of the bogus Swift Boat accusations. By then, however, the political damage was done. He had lost a close election to a man whose presidential candidacy was originally rejected by most voters, and whose presidency came to be seen as a tragic mistake by most Americans.
Among those who spoke up on Kerry’s behalf, unsurprisingly, was none other than his friend and fellow veteran McCain, who denounced the Swift Boat campaign as “dishonest and dishonorable.” Recalling how supporters of George W. Bush spread lies about his own service during the 2000 primaries, McCain told the Associated Press that the “independent” Swift Boat ads attacking Kerry were “the same kind of deal that was pulled on me,” and called on the Bush White House to repudiate them. Equally unsurprisingly, Bush rejected McCain’s plea for decency. The Bush family, including Jeb — who once considered posing as a conscientious objector to avoid the Vietnam draft — quietly let the dirty tricksters do their dirty work, as usual.
But that wasn’t quite the end, as blogger extraordinaire Oliver Willis reported over the weekend. On the day before his brother’s second inauguration in January 2005, Jeb Bush sent a groveling letter (on official Governor of Florida stationery) to George E. Day, one of the leaders of the Swift Boat campaign. “As someone who truly understands the risk of standing up for something.” he wrote pompously, “I simply cannot express in words how much I value the [Swift Boat Veterans’] willingness to stand up against John Kerry. Their efforts, like their service to their country, speak volumes about what matters most.”
On Saturday, Jeb quickly seized the chance to pose as a defender of those who have served, while bashing his rival Trump. “Enough with the slanderous attacks,” he tweeted. “@SenJohnMcCain and all our veterans – especially POWs – have earned our respect and admiration.”
For those who know the story behind Jeb’s feigned outrage, that tweet could evoke nausea, or laughter, or perhaps both. What it could not do is erase the stain on his character that this episode has revealed. Sure, Donald Trump is a demented, obnoxious character who lacks moral values. But somehow Jeb, a tough-talking weenie and sanctimonious fraud, seems even worse.
By; Joe Conason, Editor in Chief, Featured Post, Editors Blog, July 20, 2015
“The Company Elected Officials Keep”: Is There Any Group Too Extreme For A Member Of Congress To Meet With?
Even among right-wing groups, the Oath Keepers organization is a pretty alarming bunch. As recently as May, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes told a conservative gathering that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) should be tried for treason and “hung by the neck until dead” for going “along with the program of the destruction of this country.”
A month later, Rhodes was in New York, insisting that President Obama is “trying to” create “a race war.” He added, “[T]he leftists in this country hate this country, they hate it, and they will get in bed with radical Islamists because they have a common enemy, western civilization.”
With this in mind, it was of interest to see the New York Daily News report that Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) recently spoke to an Oath Keepers chapter.
A Zeldin spokeswoman acknowledges that last month he addressed the Long Island chapter of Oath Keepers, a group of retired military, police and fire department employees who say they are committed to fighting “the tyranny we experience in our local, state and federal governments.”
The organization has dabbled in what critics call “fringe conspiracy theories,” citing concern about concentration camps and martial law in the United States. The chapter’s website includes postings by a member embracing a film that claims the December 2012 Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax and calling President Obama a “Muslim/Extremist.”
The congressman’s office doesn’t deny Zeldin, an Iraq war veteran, attended the Oath Keepers event. Rather, the Republican lawmaker’s spokesperson said he’s met with a variety of groups “representing all sides of the ideological spectrum.”
“It is completely absurd to make it a litmus test for a member of Congress to agree with every individual or group 100% in order to meet with them,” Zeldin spokeswoman Jennifer DiSiena told the Daily News.
At first blush, that might seem vaguely compelling. Lawmakers often have diverse constituencies, so they’re bound to meet with a variety of organizations, some of which they’ll like, some of which they won’t.
That said, is there really no limit? Zeldin apparently doesn’t agree with “100%” of the Oath Keepers’ message, and I’m glad to hear it. But what percentage does he agree with?
Is there any group that Zeldin might consider too extreme for a member of Congress to meet with? And if so, why doesn’t Oath Keepers meet that standard?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 10, 2015
“Bernie Sanders Is Not The Left’s Ron Paul”: Representing A Wing Of The Democratic Party Whose Influence Is Increasing
Ever since Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, announced that he would seek the Democratic nomination for president, he has drawn comparisons to a similarly disheveled, longtime politician with a cult-like following and a strong independent streak: former Congressman Ron Paul, who ran for the Republican nomination in 2008 and 2012. It’s true that Sanders and Paul have a lot in common: They both have rabid fan bases, don’t hold their tongues, and embrace ideologies that are rejected by the establishment of their respective parties. And like Paul, Sanders could challenge his party’s frontrunner early on, but doesn’t stand much of a chance of winning the nomination. As Slate’s Jamelle Bouie wrote this week:
Sanders won’t be the Democratic nominee. But that doesn’t mean he won’t be important. Here, it’s useful to think of Ron Paul … He helped bridge the divide between libertarians and the Republican right, and he inspired a new group of conservative and libertarian activists who have made a mark in the GOP through Paul’s son, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul. If Sanders can sustain and capture the left-wing enthusiasm for his campaign, he could do the same for progressives.
I disagree; Sanders’s campaign isn’t simply one that will put “democratic socialist” ideas on stage against a more mainstream Democratic view, as Paul sought to do with his libertarian ideas. Rather, his candidacy represents a wing of the Democratic Party whose influence on the establishment is increasing with each election, as moderate Democrats (and their Republican counterparts) become extinct.
For a more apt Republican analog to Sanders’ campaign, one must go back to 2000. John McCain, like Sanders, was thought to have little chance to defeat George W. Bush, who, as the son of a former president and governor of a major electoral state, had more money and more party support. But McCain harnessed the anti-establishment sentiment of the time to build a strong online following, at a time when the internet’s infancy as a political tool. He fought a hard campaign against Bush, even winning the New Hampshire primary, before being knocked out of the race in early March.
Apart from the major issue of campaign finance reform, however, he had very little major policy or ideological differences with Bush and the Republican establishment. What set him apart was his press-appointed “maverick” status: He was willing to say things in public that no other candidate would—what David Foster Wallace, in his classic profile of the McCain campaign, called “obvious truths that everyone knows but no recent politician anywhere’s had the stones to say.” (His campaign bus was even called the “Straight Talk Express.”)
Likewise, Sanders refuses to hold his tongue. In June, he opened an interview with HBO’s Bill Maher by saying, “This campaign is about a radical idea: we’re going to tell the truth.” And that message seems to be working with liberals and even disaffected voters. As one New Hampshire resident, a self-described undecided independent voter, told The New Republic recently, “Do I think he can win? No. But I do like the somewhat fresh take of being a straight shooter.”
And much like Bush and McCain fifteen years ago, Clinton and Sanders are closer on the issues than a lot of progressives would like to admit. Sanders is championing reforms—a legislative or constitutional fix to Citizens United, universal healthcare, increased regulation of the financial system, income inequality—that most Democrats have supported for years, including Clinton; she was the face of the universal healthcare fight during Bill Clinton’s first term and has focused on income inequality and Citizens United in her 2016 campaign. Similarly, McCain’s biggest issues in that 2000 campaign—national defense and the Middle East—would define the Bush administration and the neoconservative movement as a whole for the next decade.
On the major issues that Sanders and Clinton disagree on—the extent to which the banking system should be reformed, surveillance, and free trade—Sanders’s position is just as popular within the party as Clinton’s, if not more so. These are the battles for the future of the Democratic Party, and where both Sanders and Clinton will seek to stake out a position independent of the other. And in those few instances where McCain and Bush disagreed, like the McCain-led campaign reform act, a McCain bill that expanded rights for terrorism detainees, and how much of a role social conservatism should play in the Republican Party, the disagreements were public.
McCain’s challenge to Bush was ultimately unsuccessful, but both were neoconservatives working toward the same goal. McCain campaigned for Bush, voted with the administration’s position 95 percent of the time, and was an ardent supporter of the war in Iraq. Although we can’t possibly know how often Sanders would vote with a hypothetical Clinton administration, we do know they voted together during their two years spent as Senate colleagues 93 percent of the time. And given Sanders’s endorsement of Obama in 2008 and 2012, it’s likely that, should he lose, he would throw his weight behind Clinton. John McCain may not have liked Bush much, but he supported him in both 2000 and 2004. In 2008, Ron Paul snubbed both McCain and the Libertarian Party candidate, instead endorsing the Constitution Party candidate, and refused to “fully support” Mitt Romney in 2012.
Similar to 2000, a dark-horse candidate running a candid campaign has emerged as the principal challenger to the frontrunner, one he’s a long shot to defeat. And like that first McCain bid for the presidency, Sanders’s loss would be because Clinton is a strong nominee who is more well-known and deemed an acceptable general election candidate to a majority of Democrats—not because his ideas are too fringe, as Paul’s were in his campaigns, for his party’s base.
By: Paul Blest, The New Republic, July 9, 2015
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