“This Promises To Be Fun”: Christmas Comes Early This Year — The Gift Of A Trump-Fueled GOP Debate
I feel like a kid the week before Christmas. There’s just one present under the tree, but it’s all a columnist could ever hope for: the first Republican debate!
How could Thursday night in Cleveland fail to be one of the most entertaining political spectacles we’ve seen in a long time? There are, far as I can tell, 17 candidates for the GOP nomination. Nobody’s quite sure which 10 will qualify for the prime-time clash, with the rest relegated to an earlier also-rans debate. Fox News, which is organizing the festivities, says it will use an average of national polls to make the cut, but won’t say which polls.
One hopes the poor candidates at least hear the good or bad news before they arrive in Cleveland. Imagine the phone call Rick Perry’s campaign might get: “Um, has the governor’s plane landed yet? Because it turns out we need him on stage quite a bit earlier than we thought.”
That would be a shame because Perry gave arguably the most memorable debate performance of the 2012 campaign, though not in a good way. But if Fox News were to go by the RealClearPolitics polling averages, as of one week before the debate Perry would be bounced out of the main event. A late entrant, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, would take his place.
Mind you, Perry is at 2.2 percent in the polls, on average, while Kasich is at 3.2 percent. In a recent Post poll, Perry actually led Kasich by 4 percent to 2 percent; in other surveys, the difference is within the margin of error. On such small or perhaps nonexistent distinctions may hang political careers.
So for the candidates on the bubble, life must be fraught. But we already know who’s going to be the star of the evening. Are you ready for your close-up, Mr. Trump?
Every recent poll of Republicans has put Donald Trump in first place. The RealClearPolitics average has him at 19.8 percent, trailed by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker at 13.6 percent, establishment favorite Jeb Bush at 12.6 percent and everyone else in single digits.
When I look at the Trump phenomenon, I can’t help but recall something Gen. David Petraeus said to my Post colleague Rick Atkinson as they surveyed the battlefield during the early days of the Iraq invasion: “Tell me how this ends.”
A gaffe that might have ended a normal campaign — derisively questioning the war record of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who was shot down over Vietnam, held as a POW and tortured — seems only to have made Trump stronger (as, ahem, I had predicted). The lack of any relationship between his wildly slanderous allegations about Mexican immigrants and the factual record seems not to bother his fans one bit. The fact that he supports universal health care, when opposing any such thing is a Republican article of faith, seems a minor detail far outweighed by the loud and irrepressible Trumpness of his being.
Maybe Trump will somehow self-destruct in the debate. But who among his rivals is more skilled at projecting a persona on television? Trump knows how to filibuster and won’t hesitate to turn an inconvenient question back on the questioner. Even if he brings nothing to the lectern but bombast, he might emerge unscathed.
The question becomes whether the others go after him. Perry, if he makes it to the big dance, surely will. But what about the rest? Will they throw proper punches, legal under Marquess of Queensberry rules, against an opponent who kicks, bites and gouges?
And how will the non-Trump candidates seek to present themselves in the most positive light? Will Walker refute Trump’s allegation that Wisconsin is “doing terribly,” or will he just brag about his victories over organized labor? Will Bush break into Spanish? Will Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), drowned out of late, try to crank up the volume? Will retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson again compare the Affordable Care Act to slavery?
Can Mike Huckabee come up with an even more offensive Holocaust analogy for the Iran nuclear deal? Can Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) remind voters that, you know, he’s still in the race? Will Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) help Mr. Trump with his jacket and ask if he’d like a glass of water? Will Kasich make himself the flavor of the month? Will New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie punch somebody?
Going out on a limb here: This promises to be fun.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, July 30, 2015
“GOP’s Epic Trainwreck”: Jeb Bush Flails And Donald Trump Ascends As The Party Goes Further Off The Rails
The news keeps getting worse for the Republican Party. Despite its “deep bench” for 2016, Donald Trump continues to dominate in early polling. Yes, that word “early” is important, but this is getting to be humiliating for the GOP – and especially for Jeb Bush.
Not only has Trump led Bush in several national polls, he’s now leading in his home state of Florida, an electoral vote treasure trove that was crucial to Bush’s “story” – that he was the guy who could compete with Hillary Clinton nationally. Trump is also ahead of Bush in recent New Hampshire polls, and catching up to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in Iowa.
Maybe most alarmingly for the guy whose passionless and entitled candidacy rested solely on his perceived electability, Jeb! dropped into third place in the latest Quinnipiac poll released Thursday morning, behind Walker.
Republicans like to console themselves by pointing to 2012, when most of the mediocre GOP candidates took a turn running first in the polls. But Donald Trump isn’t Herman Cain.
I’ll admit Trump’s rise, and his persistent lead in the polls, surprises me a little. But it shouldn’t. All the things people think ought to damage him – his attacks on illegal Mexican immigrants and John McCain; his attorney’s claim that marital rape isn’t rape; ugly comments about a breastfeeding attorney – aren’t going to matter to the GOP base. They don’t like immigrants, McCain, feminist talk about “marital rape” or uppity breastfeeding career women.
I suggested Tuesday that Trump might be hurt by attorney Michael Cohen’s bizarre attack on the Daily Beast journalists who unearthed a 1989 Ivana Trump deposition accusing her husband of rape, as well as by his claim that there’s no such crime as marital rape. Indeed, Cohen quickly apologized and Trump moved to distance himself from his close associate and regular campaign surrogate. There was no such reaction to outrage over his comments about McCain or Mexican immigrants. So Trump recognized that he couldn’t brazen through a claim that marital rape doesn’t exist (the attack on journalists wasn’t as big a deal.)
Meanwhile Jeb, the man who was running to save his party from scary guys like Trump, is fading. But maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise, either. It took Bush two weeks to condemn Trump’s remarks about Mexicans who come to this country illegally. He quickly denounced his attacks on John McCain, but he’s been otherwise silent about the threat Trump’s right-wing populism poses to his party and the country. Jeb was supposed to be the guy who was willing “to lose the primary to win the general,” but he hasn’t had the courage, or even the apparent impulse, to go after Trump.
Trump aside, Bush’s campaign has struggled through one self-created mess after another. With attacks on the minimum wage, Social Security and Medicare, the Bush family scion is making Mitt Romney look like a working class hero.
Yes, as I’ve written before, Bush could still be the beneficiary of Trump’s current dominance, as other GOP candidates struggle to get attention. (Nobody but Trump, Walker and Bush topped 6 percent in this latest Q poll.) He’s got a ton of cash, and the support of GOP elites. But he’s being humiliated by Trump daily.
There are only so many ways to say the GOP made this mess. Party leaders have courted and advanced the Sarah Palins and Donald Trumps of the world. They’ve tolerated and even encouraged anti-Obama birtherism and the ugliest sorts of nativism. They’ve let the wingnuts hold the debt ceiling hostage and shut down the government. And they’ve accepted their status as a 90 percent white party without doing anything to begin to compete for the votes of African Americans, Latinos or Asians.
It shouldn’t be surprising that the guy who called illegal immigrants “rapists” and “criminals” is leading the field– two thirds of GOP voters in the latest CNN poll said they support the mass deportation of the 11 million immigrants who are here illegally.
The Republican Party is like an old, ramshackle house long neglected by its owners. A crazy squatter moved in, and now they can’t get him out. For now, anyway, it’s Trump’s house.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, July 30, 2015
“Change Is Upon Them, Whether They Like It Or Not”: For Aging GOP Voters, The Times They Are A-Changin’
Donald Trump will not be president of these United States, no matter the preferences of a substantial number of the Republican Party’s most loyal voters. Indeed, he will probably be a punchline by this time next year, even if he pursues the presidency as an independent.
For now, though, the real estate mogul and reality-TV darling is enjoying a moment aloft the polls as the GOP’s man to beat. A recent Washington Post survey showed him as the favorite of 24 percent of registered Republicans and GOP-leaning voters.
In that poll, Trump garnered nearly twice as much support as his nearest rival, Scott Walker, who was the top candidate of just 13 percent. Though Trump’s numbers could drop any day given his propensity for saying dumb things, his appeal so far seems to guarantee him a spot on the stage for the first primary debate, which will take place on Aug. 6.
Needless to say, GOP strategists are tearing their hair out, hardly believing their bad luck. After a grueling series of primary debates damaged their brand in the 2012 presidential cycle, they tried to rein them in, hoping to show voters a cast of serious and sober candidates.
But the superficial changes — including cutting the number of primary debates — don’t get to the much larger problem afflicting the Republican Party: Its strategists have spent decades appealing to the worst instincts of their constituents, and they are now reaping what they’ve sown. It’s the voters, after all, who are keeping Trump’s hopes alive.
Those voters have been treated to years of bombast and propaganda as Republican politicians pandered to their fears, their prejudices, their hatreds. The late Lee Atwater confessed that GOP pols perfected a strategy of playing to the bigotry of whites uncomfortable with the changes wrought by the civil rights movement. Too savvy to denigrate black Americans directly, they used a coded language, Atwater said in an interview: “… You’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites …”
That vile Southern strategy was never retired. It was simply given a 2.0 upgrade that denounces Islam, defames Mexicans and slanders gays and lesbians. Oh, and savages President Obama.
Having been fed that drivel for half a century, aging GOP voters are hardly going to suddenly surrender their gospel truths. Trump, a narcissistic opportunist, knows that, so he’s gone into overdrive coddling their prejudices, saying, among other things, that Mexico is sending to the United States “rapists” and drug smugglers. Guess what? His incendiary rhetoric has catapulted him to the top of the GOP primary heap.
No, Trump’s appeal won’t last. But the prejudices that are animating so many GOP primary voters are more enduring. And that’s where party leaders need to start their work.
They could begin with Roger Ailes, the former GOP strategist who heads Fox News, the premier right-wing communications network. His talking heads regularly pump out the most bigoted ideas, feeding an audience anxious to have its antediluvian views validated. (GOP bigwigs might also try talking to radio talkmeister Rush Limbaugh, but he’s likely a hopeless cause.) If Ailes cares about anything other than ratings, he’ll dial back the paranoia.
Then, the Republicans’ biggest names — Mitch McConnell, are you listening? — need to speak frankly to their constituents. Many of them are fearful of a country whose demographics are changing quickly. They can’t quite get their bearings with a black man in the Oval Office, a mosque under construction across town, and a lesbian couple across the street. As an aging (and angry) white Southern reader once said to me: “I’m being told that everything I was taught as a child is wrong!”
OK, I understand that change is difficult, challenging, disorienting. That’s especially true if the changes may make it harder for you to maintain your position at the top of the economic and social ladder.
But the nation, happily, has long been about the business of perfecting the union, coming closer to its creed of equality for all. So change is upon them, whether they like it or not. If they can’t learn to accept it, the GOP will remain shut out of the White House.
By:Cynthia Tucker, Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2007; The National Memo, July 25, 2015
“How Do You Solve A Problem Like Donald Trump?”: All Media Is Political, Without Exception; Best To Be Honest About It
As Donald Trump has implausibly moved into a tie for first place in the GOP primary, there has been much discussion in media circles about how to treat his candidacy. Most media organizations (including The Week!) have published an inordinate amount of stories about Trump. The Huffington Post, on the other hand, recently announced it would move all coverage of Trump’s campaign to the entertainment section.
This sparked a backlash from some reporters, such as The Daily Beast‘s Olivia Nuzzi, who argued that such a move is an improper delegitimization of the tens of thousands of Trump supporters out there. “[P]olling competitively and being a registered candidate makes him legitimate. End of story,” she wrote on Twitter.
It’s certainly true that The Huffington Post‘s action is a swipe against Trump’s many supporters. But it is also simply impossible for reporters — who are human beings, after all — to avoid some sort of judgment on the legitimacy of a presidential candidate.
As I’ve argued before, normative judgments are inherent to the practice of all but the very simplest journalism. To demand that Trump be covered like any other “legitimate” presidential candidate is to demand that journalists implicitly legitimize his ideas. On the contrary, it is right and proper for publications to decide how they view a candidate’s policy platform and overall persona; signaling that he will be treated like a trashy celebrity is one way of doing that.
I respect The Huffington Post‘s right to make coverage choices as it sees fit. I’m also not sure I agree with the decision to move Trump into the entertainment section. As Matt Yglesias argues, Trump’s highly unexpected success — especially given that it came immediately after he started up with bilious racist rants against Mexican immigrants — suggests there is a fairly wide constituency for gutter nativism. That is an important truth of our politics and our nation that should not just be shrugged off as some carnival sideshow.
Instead of banishing Trump to the land of Kardashians and superheroes, the media would probably be better off simply reporting on Trump with open contempt. His ideas are disgusting and he’s a vicious, racist bully. But it’s not wise to write him — or the ideas that he champions — off as a self-aggrandizing joke. There are a great many people who would eagerly sign on to an immigration-restriction agenda, and Trump would definitely not be the first colossal buffoon elected to the head of a major state.
And that brings me to Bernie Sanders, who has been the subject of multiple comparisons to Trump (including one from my colleague Damon Linker) as representing the two “extremes” of American politics. This, too, is a mistake by the media.
We’re all grasping for ways to deal with this brainless, hate-spewing hurricane who has somehow managed to attract the support of tens of thousands of Americans in spite of — actually, let’s be honest: because of — his hateful racism. Just as The Huffington Post‘s decision to write Trump off as “entertainment” is understandable, so too is the media’s search to find Trump’s polar opposite on the left in order to give some context to this flagrantly foolish carnival barker.
But to compare Sanders, a serious person with serious ideas, to a clown who rants about how Mexicans are mostly criminals and rapists, is inherently delegitimizing. Putting Trump in the entertainment section makes The Huffington Post‘s perspective clear. So does grafting Trump to Sanders — but in a backhanded and cheap way that’s unfair to the socialist senator from Vermont.
Trump’s racist views do have the support of a substantial minority. But Sanders’ agenda is far more popular. About three-quarters of Americans support raising the minimum wage to $10.10. Social Security is likely the most popular government program of all time — and 82 percent would raise the payroll tax across the board to keep it solvent. Sixty-eight percent support increasing taxes on the rich.
Now, that is not to rule out all positive coverage of Trump, or negative coverage of Sanders. Conservative publications will do both, no doubt, as is their right. The point is that coverage should be grounded in a clear normative view, not some faux-omniscient view from nowhere. All media is political, without exception. Best to be honest about it.
By: Ryan Cooper, The Week, July 20, 2015
“A Lot Like The Candidate Himself”: Inside The Mind Of A Trump Donor: ‘I Was Probably Drunk’
You learn a few things, calling the 63 individuals who donated more than $250 to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign—helping him pull in a total of $96,000 in the 29 days since his June 16 announcement, according to the financial disclosure he released Wednesday evening.
You learn, for instance, that President Obama, who is an African-born Muslim, wouldn’t help you if you were kidnapped in Iran, that not all undocumented Mexican immigrants are rapists but many of them may be, that it’s unfair to expect billionaires to use their own money to run for office when less wealthy candidates aren’t expected to, and that the willingness to file for bankruptcy multiple times is a sign of a great businessman. But what you learn, most of all, is that the characters propelling America’s greatest political curiosity upward in the polls are a lot like the man himself.
The day started with Francine Aton, 62, Michigan, retired.
“You work for The Daily Beast—which is a more left-wing web-magazine,” she began. “I don’t want something to come out that’s slanted.”
Aton, who said she has a degree in journalism, has little patience for reporters and detects liberal bias in the most innocuous of statements.
Asked why she supports Trump (to the tune of $250), she said, “Because he speaks the truth, he’s honest, and he can’t be bought.” So she likes him, I said, because he’s wealthy and that means—“Listen to how you just slanted that question!” she cut me off. “Is Hillary wealthy? Yes, she is!” Well, what I meant was—“Just say what you mean! You’re slanting your story.”
I explained that all I was trying to do was figure out why she supports Trump. “Why do you support him?” she asked. Uh, I don’t, I said. “Donald speaks the truth. Thank you, goodbye.”
She hung up.
Next was Timothy Doody, 51, Colorado, real estate appraiser.
“I don’t know,” he said when I asked why he donated $500 to Trump. “I don’t know why I do half the things I do. I was probably drunk.”
He laughed. “I’m just kidding. I just think it’s refreshing…I just wanted to make a statement, that’s all.”
Doody explained that he’s a “conservative-leaning person” but a registered Democrat. Mostly, he sighed, “I just am fed up with politicians. I do know [Trump’s] negatives and I do know what he’s done as far as supporting Democrats via his corporations and supporting both parties.” But at the end of the day, Doody said, he liked that Trump could “rabble-rouse” and “make waves.”
Trump’s position on immigration, Doody admitted, was the central reason he made the donation, but he also believes Trump is the best person to repair the economy and to change the course of American foreign policy for the better.
And speaking of immigration, “The other candidates totally took his words out of context,” Doody said, referring to Trump’s claim that undocumented immigrants coming into America from Mexico are “rapists.” Doody said he listened to Trump’s statement “probably 10 times” to see if he had missed it, but in the end came to the conclusion that “he didn’t call all Mexicans rapists.”
In Trump’s absence, Doody guessed he could find another candidate to support. “Probably Ted Cruz, Governor Walker, maybe, and Rand Paul…I don’t understand Jeb Bush.”
Then came Damien Drab, 41, New York City, CEO of Loughlin Management, a company that “delivers a broad range of operational and financial consulting services with a results-oriented approach,” as opposed to all those consulting firms who strive for no results at all.
I told Drab I wanted to talk about his $500 donation to the Trump campaign. He laughed. “Good, I hope that helps with my golf club membership.”
Is he a member of a Trump golf club? “Uh, I can’t comment on anything, really,” he said. “I have one statement and that’s: Why should anyone use their personal money for public affairs?”
Further, Drab went on, it is “unfair” and “ignorant” to tell Trump he needs to use his personal wealth for his race when “everybody else who runs gets contributions.” Because “there’s no inherent personal wealth risk for people who run,” Drab said, there shouldn’t be one for a billionaire, either. Whether he needs the money is irrelevant, Drab argued, because “if you believe in Trump, you should contribute.”
Next was Mike McNerney, 73, California, funeral service provider.
“He’s the greatest thing running,” McNerney said when I asked about his $500 donation to Trump, which he called “just a show of support.”
“I think he’s gonna win,” he told me. “I think he has a pretty good chance. I mean, people are outraged at the way Obama Hussein has run this country.”
McNerney said he likes Trump “because he’s nonpolitical. He tells it like it is. He’s truthful, and he has more experience than being a short-term senator before he became president.” What kind of experience does Trump have, I asked. “At life and management, and I’m sure he has more foreign experience, which Obama Hussein has ruined.”
McNerney agrees with Trump on immigration “absolutely, 1,000 percent,” and believes those expressing disapproval of his statements are “manipulating the press for the benefit of opposition against any sensible immigration policy that comes along.”
I asked McNerney, who repeatedly referred to the president as “Obama Hussein,” if he thought Obama was Muslim. He said, “I know he is.” I asked if he thought Obama was born in America. He replied, “No, I don’t. Probably Africa.” Where in Africa, I wondered. “Wherever his father and his white mother were living.” Kenya? “You got it,” he said.
And Dr. Dane Wallisch, 64, Pennsylvania, radiologist.
“Why did I do it?” Wallisch said when I asked about his $2,700 check to Trump’s campaign. “I think he would be a very strong leader, and I think that’s what we need now. I have very similar beliefs to Donald Trump. I agree with him on just about everything.”
Wallisch agreed with Doody that “the immigration thing, I think, the media took that way out of context.”
He explained that having lived in Mexico for a time, he knows that the government there is corrupt. “Of course there’s good Mexican people, but there’s bad with the good,” he said. And the unsecured border, he told me, is “an open door for terrorists, as well.”
“Trump just speaks what’s on his mind and I like that,” he said. “I think it’s refreshing. It’s time people say what they felt rather than just what people want to hear.” Wallisch apologized for “getting on my soapbox here,” but admitted it was hard to avoid when talking about Trump. “I like him and I hope he becomes president.”
Why donate to a billionaire, though, I wondered. It’s not like he needs it. “True, probably true,” Wallisch said. “But that was my way of saying, ‘I support you.’”
Without Trump, Wallisch said he was sure he could find another candidate to support. “I think there’s a lot of good people running this year. I like Ben Carson—you know who Ben Carson is, right? I like Rand Paul, but he won’t make it. Scott Walker. Bush is all right, but three Bushes? I don’t know. Makes me a little leery.”
By: Olivia Nuzzi, The Daily Beast, July 17, 2015
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