Robert Campbell
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Posts posted by Robert Campbell
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21 hours ago, Mark said:
Why should any participant on this list take Fred Reed seriously?
Robert
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3 hours ago, Selene said:
As to the Raphael matter, William had posted a link to a nice campaign website and I was stunned to see that his actual name as it appears on the ballot is Raphael.
That set off a lot of alarms to me and it is a purely personal pique when folks "hide" their ethnicity, or, I would like to understand why he does it.
Adam,
Thank you for your frank answer.
But where you got the notion that spelling his first name "Raphael" instead of "Rafael" is hiding his ethnicity, I haven't a clue.
His last name is Cruz. Not Cross, not Croix, not Kreuz, not Croce.
And he doesn't exactly go around pretending not to be of Cuban descent.
I figured your constant repetition of "Rafael" was intended to tie Ted to his father, so as to brand him as a dangerous religious fanatic.
Robert
PS. If you're so concerned about candidates hiding their ethnicity, why haven't you taken points away from Donald Trump for not restoring the ancestral surname?
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The man nobody wants to talk about.
None of the Trumpians hereabouts have shown much interest in Paul Manafort.
Not even when he appears to contradict his boss:
He worked for Ronald Reagan once. He will insure Donald's triumph now. Leave it at that.
The guy actually has a much more interesting résumé:
The author is a Leftist, formerly with the New Republic. So there are occasional obligatory shots (for instance, at Ronald Reagen's 1980 campaign, insinuating racist appeals without evidence).
They don't matter, because he's done his homework.
Paul Manafort didn't just work for Bob Dole (or for Jerry Ford against Ronald Reagan, before he worked for Reagan). He worked for Mobutu Sese Seko, Ferdinand Marcos, at least one dictator out of the dynasty that's ruled Equatorial Guinea, and Mohammad Siad Barré (the last dictator of Somalia).
He worked for Viktor Yanukovych. Visited him many times, at the gilded palace mentioned upthread.
Whenever I've brought up Yanukovych, he's been the client nobody wants to talk about.
Forget about Donald Trump's alleged integrity here. Just focus on the expedient for a minute.
Why would a guy who expects to be the nominee, running against Hillary Clinton, employ the services of a man who has accepted large sums from foreign dictators and Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs? The Clinton
Slush FundFoundation has accepted large sums from foreign dictators and Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs.Robert
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Sycophancy, thy name is...
I have never been an admirer of Ann Coulter. I have never bought one of her books. I often change channels when she is the next talking head.
Her entire career has been built on cheap shots and mean-spirited remarks. Even with her training as a lawyer, I figure she has to practice them each morning in front of a mirror to stay in form.
And, really, she should stick with the barbs. Enough people like them to bring her fame and money.
She is embarrassingly bad at praise. Whenever she attempts it, she goes all sycophantic.
She was all sycophantic for Mittens, four years ago.
She's all sycophantic for Donald, now.
Robert
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I see that Jon is not interested in netting out the principles expressed in Donald Trump's magnificent foreign policy speech.
So let's try a simpler exercise.
Here are two small portions:
QuoteSecondly, our allies are not paying their fair share.
Our allies must contribute toward the financial, political and human costs of our tremendous security burden. But many of them are simply not doing so. They look at the United States as weak and forgiving and feel no obligation to honor their agreements with us.
In NATO, for instance, only 4 of 28 other member countries, besides America, are spending the minimum required 2% of GDP on defense.
We have spent trillions of dollars over time – on planes, missiles, ships, equipment – building up our military to provide a strong defense for Europe and Asia. The countries we are defending must pay for the cost of this defense – and, if not, the U.S. must be prepared to let these countries defend themselves.
The whole world will be safer if our allies do their part to support our common defense and security.
A Trump Administration will lead a free world that is properly armed and funded.
Thirdly, our friends are beginning to think they can’t depend on us.
We’ve had a president who dislikes our friends and bows to our enemies.
He negotiated a disastrous deal with Iran, and then we watched them ignore its terms, even before the ink was dry.
Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon and, under a Trump Administration, will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.
All of this without even mentioning the humiliation of the United States with Iran’s treatment of our ten captured sailors.
In negotiation, you must be willing to walk. The Iran deal, like so many of our worst agreements, is the result of not being willing to leave the table. When the other side knows you’re not going to walk, it becomes absolutely impossible to win.
At the same time, your friends need to know that you will stick by the agreements that you have with them.
President Obama gutted our missile defense program, then abandoned our missile defense plans with Poland and the Czech Republic.
He supported the ouster of a friendly regime in Egypt that had a longstanding peace treaty with Israel – and then helped bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power in its place.
Israel, our great friend and the one true Democracy in the Middle East, has been snubbed and criticized by an Administration that lacks moral clarity. Just a few days ago, Vice President Biden again criticized Israel – a force for justice and peace – for acting as an impediment to peace in the region.
President Obama has not been a friend to Israel. He has treated Iran with tender love and care and made it a great power in the Middle East – all at the expense of Israel, our other allies in the region and, critically, the United States.
We’ve picked fights with our oldest friends, and now they’re starting to look elsewhere for help.
By the way, accepting the option to reformat the material gets rid of all the extra blank lines that Brant complained of. Of course, it also kills italics and bold (I restored them to the headers).
Now, if France and Germany and Slovenia aren't putting sufficient resources into their respective militaries, what does President Trump do to make sure they commit their fair share? And how does he do it without further convincing them that they can't depend on the United States?
This is just one stretch of the speech for which I cannot find a meaning that is noncontradictory.
But I don't like Donald Trump. Surely those who admire him, and understand him far better than I, can find the noncontradictory meaning.
Bonus item 1: Trump rips Obama for pulling the plug on missile defense systems for Poland and the Czech Republic. But wouldn't going ahead on those systems have contributed mightily to the very "cycle of hostility" with the Putinian empire that Trump deplores elsewhere in the speech?
Bonus Item 2: Trump says, "Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon and... will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon."
Do you think that anyone, even the author of The Art of the Deal, can employ diplomatic means to get the Ruling Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his lieutenants to give up on getting nuclear weapons?
If so, how?
If not, are we to read this statement as a promise that a Trump administration will send American troops into war against Iran?
Robert
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13 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:
I remember him talking about this in interviews in the terms I said (unless my memory is wrong and I don't think it is). There have been so many interviews, finding where he talked about this would be a hassle, but if anyone wishes to look, the videos are out there. I recall it from last year.
Michael,
You say that you've kept on pointing to the sources that refute my arguments.
In many cases, you haven't. You've either dropped the discussion, or just proclaimed that you see something with your own two eyes.
If Donald Trump has in fact said any of the things about Social Security that you attribute to him, beyond it MUST BE PRESERVED and it WILL BE FULLY FUNDED, and he has done so during NTE 1, you should be able to find at least one interview (video, audio, text) and link to it. You are, after all, by far the greater expert on Donald Trump.
Otherwise, the reasonable inference is that you're talking about your position on the matter, not his.
Robert
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2 hours ago, Selene said:
A whine that does not age well...
Geez, Rafael is getting tedious...
Adam,
When I've asked Michael whether he really believes everything he says about Ted Cruz (which, taken seriously, would imply that Cruz should be run out of politics, no later than the end of his present term in the US Senate) he's insisted that he wants Cruz to stay in the Senate, where he can act as the faithful servant of President Donald Trump.
How about you? Your rhetoric about Cruz routinely has a nastier tone, even, than Michael's. You seem to regard him with utter loathing.
Do you think Ted Cruz should be run out of political office? If he has anything at all going for him, what is it?
Another way to put it: If you had to choose between a US Senate with Mitch McConnell and without Ted Cruz, or with Ted Cruz and without Mitch McConnell, which would you prefer?
Robert
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1 minute ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:
If you had bothered to ask rather than pontificate
, you would know that I am "all for phone interviews from the non-Trumps of the world."
Michael,
Isn't one of the selling points of interviewing politicians on TV precisely that viewers can see their faces as they talk?
You know, because otherwise radio or podcasts would suffice?
Robert
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7 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:
Meanwhile, Trump is still winning.
Michael,
First you said that you and I don't understand the political establishment the same way.
The reason apparently being that I can't grasp what it is and you can.
So I suggested that, if this is so, you must not be able to define the establishment, give clear examples of it, or explain it. Not, at any rate, to persons with my cognitive limitations (or my insidious and, to me, imperceptible ties to that establishment).
You then turn around and give me instances of the establishment that, while kinda short on specifics, are in broad terms what I, too, consider instances thereof.
Which doesn't exactly attest to my inability to grasp what it is.
And you still haven't answered my questions about particular political actors.
Establishment or anti-establishment? How do we know which they are?
Is it possible for anyone, already on the political scene or in the media or in the commentariat, to be establishment one day and anti-establishment the next? If so, what are the indicia of this deep transformation?
If the validity of your arguments really depends on whether Donald Trump wins recent and upcoming primaries; comes out on top in the contention for pledged and unplugged delegates; gets nominated at the Republican Convention; and wins in November...
You could claim a lot of really wild stuff—much wilder than anything you've said about political establishments, their relation to Donald Trump, and the relative ability of Trump supporters and Trump opponents to understand and discern who belongs to one—and, given its pure dependence on Donald Trump winning or losing...
then if Donald Trump is inaugurated on January 20, 2017, these claims will all be true.
But this does lead me to wonder what will happen, if at any point in this sequence, Donald Trump loses.
If he loses, will it suddenly then be the case that Mitch McConnell is part of the establishment, and Donald Trump sucked up to him?
Whereas if Trump wins all the way to the White House, then McConnell was never part of the establishment—or, if he was, Donald Trump never sucked up to him?
Robert
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7 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:
Robert,
Heh.
They let him?
Double heh.
I have seen several TV personalities say on the air--during their shows--that they have a standing invitation for Trump to do that anytime he wishes.
News shows don't let Trump call in. They beg him to do it.
This gives them standing and ratings.
Ironically, the one exception is Trump's most friendly outlet, Fox and Friends. They don't beg Trump because they developed this call-in thing with him as a schtick over years. In this case it was mutual.
Michael
Michael,
You're not denying that this is a privilege.
Nor do you seem to be claiming that it's a good idea, in general, to let candidates for high political office to give phone interviews to TV shows.
For if that were the case, you'd be all for phone interviews from the non-Trumps of the world.
I guess it's Le Droit du Donald.
Robert
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On April 29, 2016 at 10:57 AM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:
On the issue of Social Security, Trump said he is not going to mess with it.
Well, it's easy to claim he's a Democrat based on this, until you dig a little deeper. If Social Security did not exist, I don't think Trump would ever enact it. Why? Because at root, I'm almost sure he believes that retirement accounts is something the government should not be managing.
So why will he not mess with it, then? For the simple reason that the government made a deal with its citizens and Trump wants to make sure the government honors its end. It's that simple.
I expect him to plant the seeds of phasing out Social Security by making parts of it, then probably all of it, optional for younger people. But for older people who have paid all their lives, he will make sure they get their due consideration (in the legal sense).
That is not a Democrat. That is a man who does not want to welch on a deal the organization he will come to command made in the past. I believe he finds it repugnant to take people's money for years, then when they get near retirement, say the rules of the deal have changed, which many constitutionalists are even saying right now.
I don't think Trump minds getting the USA out of a deal it made with the bad guys (like the Iran deal), but not with the good guys (like the American citizens--who had that imposed on them, anyway).
This is how I grok Trump and I imagine many, many others do, too.
Michael,
You might want to ask Donald Trump what he actually plans to do.
All he has said is that Social Security MUST BE PRESERVED and he will work an economic miracle that will insure it's all paid for (along with Medicare and what have you).
The second portion of the claim is pure vaporware, but we have to admit it's unique to Trump. Neither Hillary nor Bernie is proclaiming an imminent economic miracle. Trump's Republican opponents are talking about promoting increased economic growth, but not at levels exceeding those claimed in official Chinese statistics.
The first portion is exactly what every Democrat says (unless they're like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, and they add that Social Security MUST BE EXPANDED).
If Trump wants to start phasing Social Security out for the young, while keeping current benefit levels for those who have reached a certain age, he could run on that proposition. Some Republicans have called for similar measures, and taken their lumps politically. Some are still in office.
Since we are never to think that Trump adopts any position out of raw political expediency, we should conclude that if he intends to do as you say, he'll announce it.
'Cause otherwise, all you are doing is projecting your values, your factual assumptions, and your policy preferences onto your guy, without any evidence that he shares them.
Robert
PS. The Supreme Court has ruled that there is no right to receive "entitlement" benefits from the Federal government. Congress has ordained them, and Congress can modify them, or take them away, by passing a new law. Screwing over those who have seen money taken from them over many years that they could have saved or invested for themselves is politically imprudent as well as unfair to those affected. But the fact is that politicians lied to everyone when they created the system, and have persistently lied to everyone ever since (pretending it's "insurance," that there's a "Trust Fund," that there are individual accounts, that anything has ever been going on except taking this year's tax revenue from those who are in the workforce and transferring it to those who are retired this year). The Donald once realized, or claimed he realized, that politicians lied and have kept lying about Social Security; he even called it a Ponzi Scheme. But that was 15 or so years BNTE, and we're never supposed to construe any of his political stands then as having any bearing on his political stands as we approach NTE 2.
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On April 30, 2016 at 3:38 PM, Peter said:
Some edited for brevity items from Robert Tracinski: . . . . They can try borrowing their way out of this, but by the time Social Security breaks down for good, 19 years from now, they might find it a bit difficult. Why? Because borrowing endless sums of money is how we're already papering over the fiscal unsustainability of the middle-class welfare state . . . . It's middle-class welfare that drives the budget. That's my answer to people who tell me we can deal with the problem by cutting "corporate welfare" or foreign aid or NASA space missions. Look at the federal budget. Aside from national defense--the only really big federal expenditure that's actually mandated in the Constitution--federal spending is absolutely dominated by Social Security and Medicare. Even welfare to the poor--like food stamps or Social Security Disability, which has become de facto welfare for the long-term unemployed--is secondary. Everything else is loose change.
Except for one other big expenditure: interest on the national debt, which is becoming bigger and bigger. By the time the next president completes two terms--based on the choice we're about to make--interest on the national debt will be the third largest item in the federal budget. Shortly before Social Security uses up all of its nominal reserves in 2035, interest on the debt will be the second largest expenditure. A few years after that, it becomes the single largest expenditure. We will be taking the lion's share of government revenues and using them just to keep up the minimum payments on all the money we've borrowed for decades in the past. So don't think we'll just be able to go back to that well and borrow even more to save another failing government program.
. . . . What we learned in 2016 is that it is also true of a lot of Republicans who claimed they were four-square in favor of small government and free markets and the Constitution and totally against debt and taxes and crony capitalism. And who are now voting for a front-runner who doesn't care about any of those issues. You know how politicians like to tell you a nice story about the principles they stand for, but when it comes time for action, they take the easy way out, kick the can down the road, and vote for the crudest conception of their short-term interests? Well, the lesson of 2016 is that the voters do that, too.
Peter,
Tracinski has run two good pieces in the last week, one on Social Security and one on the debt.
In both cases, he rather pessimistically concludes that there is so little political will to deal with either that Social Security will have to run out of money (in 2035 or whenever) and benefits will be "automatically" cut 21% (or whatever the law says by then) to stay within current revenues. And the US government will eventually stop borrowing the way India stopped in 1991, because no one will lend it anything any more.
We know that Donald Trump has declared that Social Security MUST BE PRESERVED and that the economic miracles he will work will enable it to be paid for. Nothing else. Any further interpretation (such as the one that Michael has presented on this site) appears to be the work of others seeing what they want to see in him.
Trump has also claimed that the national debt will be totally retired in 8 years, without giving the slightest clue how he envisions accomplishing that.
So maybe he will just be President Kick-the-Can-Down-the-Road.
Only the size and weight of the can will be colossal, the driving distance unprecedented, the noise upon impact like nothing previously recorded.
No one will kick that can better than he.
Robert
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Michael,
No, what Ted Cruz gave is not an answer.
One reasonable answer would have been, "I have serious reservations about Trump, but I won't be in a position to decide, or announce a decision, till we get to the convention."
I would have much preferred it. Cruz has standard responses (or nonresponses, depending on the occasion) that he trots out too often.
Now it so happens I just happened to see a few minutes of Chris Wallace talking to Donald Trump today.
I'll paraphrase.
Wallace: How about your high negatives with women? (Poll numbers shown on screen: 24% favorable, 75% unfavorable). Can you win with these?
Trump goes into a rapid-fire spiel about how he's knocked off all but 2 of 17 Republican opponents, being sure to name the two he may hate the most, Scott Walker and Jeb Bush, and how he has to finish knocking off Ted Cruz and John Kasich. Then, after having made no reference to women at all up to this point, not even to Carly Fiorina as one of the vanquished, he jumps to how he just did great with female Republican primary voters in New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, etc. He says "landslide" and "60%" but gives no breakdowns on male vs. female support.
Wallace: With all due respect...I was asking you about female voters in the general election.
Trump continues his highly caffeinated filibuster, finally getting to how he will take down Hillary, how awful she is, etc. Somehow this will make his negatives come down.
Never actually answered the question.
Have you ever called your guy out for employing a "political bullshit evasion tactic"?
Once?
Robert
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1 hour ago, william.scherk said:
WSS,
Is this clip unedited?
Robert
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On April 30, 2016 at 0:21 AM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:
It makes me sad when I see Cruz do that, too, because I don't want to lose my respect for him.
Michael,
Donald Trump wants you to lose your respect for Ted Cruz.
So why shouldn't you?
Robert
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On April 30, 2016 at 11:19 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:
Where do you get this crap?
I don't see that at all.
Michael,
I take this to mean that what you see with your own two eyes has no implications regarding anything else (whether the other thing can be seen with two eyes or not).
All of these experiences are "loose and separate," as David Hume used to say.
Robert
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On April 30, 2016 at 11:00 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:
Of course he isn't [sucking up]. He's going to have to work with McConnell, so it's better to get an early start on sizing each other up.
Michael,
How perfectly Establishmentarian of you!
Why, Mitch McConnell is a permanent fixture in Washington, in Kentucky, in the Republican Party, in the United States of America, in the Milky Way, in the entire cosmos.
So even the most courageous, the most brilliant, the most audacious, the most outspoken, the most generous, the most principled anti-Establishmentarian of all time, Donald J. Trump, is going to have to work with Mitch McConnell!
(One is tempted to ask whether Trump ought to refrain from slamming any other Establishment Republican in either House of Congress—and every Establishment Democrat—because if he is elected, and they are not defeated for re-election, he will have to work with each of them. Maybe he's really thrilled to have gotten Bill Shuster's endorsement. Maybe he's fishing for Hal Rogers', as we speak. He must be dying for validation from Paul Ryan.)
Sorry, but now the reductio is all the way to the absurdum.
If you can justify Donald Trump sucking up to Mitch McConnell, you can justify his sucking up to any Establishment figure you or I would care to name.
It's not like McConnell is, well, strong. (In fact, he needed money from Donald Trump to shore him up in 2014). The dude is unpopular in Washington. He's unpopular at home. He backed Trey Grayson, and Rand Paul won the primary. He beat Allison Lundergan Grimes because she was pro-Obama in a state that is now strongly anti-Obama, and she is a twit. Meanwhile, the guy he beat in the primary with Trump's help, Matt Bevin, is now the Governor. McConnell is unpopular nationwide. He's unpopular with Republicans. (The only constraint on his national unpopularity: lack of name recognition.) I find it plausible that his staunchest allies (say, Lindsey Graham or John McCain or Bob Corker or Orrin Hatch) privately despise him. Whereas Chucky Schumer and Dick Durbin unquestionably despise him, but if he were gone they'd miss him terribly, because he's been so easy to roll.
It's not like McConnell is, well, effective. Unless you count Cromnibus spending bills and debt ceiling increases and the Gang of Eight legislation and restoring the Export-Import Bank and caving on the Iran deal ... fill in the blank, there's so much more... as proof of effectiveness. Since every Republican Senator opposed Obamacare, there hasn't been much either you or I would want to point to.
If Donald Trump wanted to enhance his support with anyone not currently in his camp, Mitch McConnell is a target-rich environment unto himself. The Donald could attain new heights of creativity with his insults, and every one would be an applause line.
If Donald Trump wanted to enhance views of his effectiveness, should he win the election and have to deal with Congress, he should already be at work now to push McConnell out, because a random selection among the remaining Republican Senators would give him somebody with more backbone and a greater prospect of getting his legislation through Congrees.
Nope, Trump's too busy sucking up to him.
Robert
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On April 30, 2016 at 2:35 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:
Trump shows up to the press. The other candidates do not most of the time.
Michael,
You might be leaving a couple of things out.
(1) Trump can't live without publicity—he must have a Minimum Daily Requirement—has long known how to get it, and has long known how to hire people who know how to get it for him. This was already the case 40 years BNTE (Before New Trump Era).
(2) Media outlets are willing to extend privileges to Trump that they wouldn't dream of extending to any other candidate. The most blatant manifestation is TV shows letting him do interviews over the phone.
Robert
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On April 30, 2016 at 10:57 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:
You kinda left out the Bushes, the donor class, and so on. Just turn on the TV news almost any day and you will see one. And the Democrat establishment, for that matter. They are all pretty visible. And there are rituals to get among them and be accepted to share power with them.
Michael,
You're actually supposing that I don't know who any of these people are, and can't identify them as part of an establishment. (By the way, I'm still seeing you not referring to any of them by name, unless it's Bush.)
Your whole point seemed to be that you, along with all other Trump supporters, possess this special ability to discern who is a member of the Establishment, and I, in my duped, or befuddled, state, do not.
If your special powers of discernment pick out Chuck Todd as part of an establishment, or Anderson Cooper, or Bill O'Reilly, or Nicholas Kristof, or anybody who works for Politico, or Tom Steyer, or anyone who gave chunks of money to Jeb! this past cycle... well, my grossly inferior, if not completely absent, powers of discernment managed to pick them out, too.
So how about the cases where your special powers succeed, and my inferior powers fail?
As my powers are so inferior, these must be abundant.
If one Bush on Ted Cruz's team makes him part of the establishment, did one Barbour on Chris McDaniel's team make him part of the establishment?
If Ann Coulter was part of the establishment when she was a sycophant of Mitt Romney, did she stop being part it of the day she became a sycophant of Donald Trump?
If Paul Manafort was pure establishment when he worked for, say, Bob Dole, did he become pure anti-esabllishment the first day he received a paycheck from Trump?
As one who knows the establishment far better than I ever could, you should have an easy time bringing clarity to these matters.
That is, unless along with my inability to see the establishment, I have a further inability to see anyone else's ability to see the establishment.
Robert
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On April 30, 2016 at 10:57 PM, Jon Letendre said:
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/donald-j.-trump-foreign-policy-speech
Let me know if you can't find any.
Jon,
I'll give my opinion of this speech soon enough.
In the meantime, the question is not whether I can find any principles in it.
It's what you think the principles are.
You've been writing as though you know what they are, so you should be able to net them out.
Robert
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Adam,
Cogent data are always worth reviewing...
My point was that the legacy media desperately want her in power and most of their people are, in effect, asserting that she will win.
If they thought she was in serious danger from him, they would already be handling Trump in a sharply different fashion. Cutting down on their coverage of him, slanting it as heavily as possible against him, instead of cheering his impending nomination.
Robert
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16 hours ago, Selene said:
Ratings...ratings...and ratings.
He increases their viewers and that means money.
It is that simple.
Adam,
There is the additional perceived benefit that he will guarantee the election of Hillary.
They may be misperceiving, but there it is.
Robert
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49 minutes ago, Peter said:
Madam Secretary? Saying President Clinton could cause confusion. Should we say Madam President when you are elected, to not confuse the issue?
It will be Your Royal Highness on the first occasion, and Ma'am thereafter.
Royalty does have its leaders.
Robert
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On April 29, 2016 at 1:30 AM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:
You talk of Messiah and revenge and so on, comparing me to Diana Brickell (formerly Hsieh), saying I am going to denounce my friends later and God knows what else.
[...]
Trump is going to dismantle the neocon Endless War machine and put peaceful trade in its place. But he is not going to persecute neocons or people who opposed him. I have no idea where you get this kind of notion. He may mouth off back, but persecute and exact revenge through state force? I just don't see it.
[...]
You may find this hard to swallow, but I believe Donald Trump is one of the most principled men ever to run for high office. Not a Messiah. A principled producer. He does not express his principles in the standard jargon accepted in O-Land and he has street smarts, but by God he lives by his principles. He builds beautiful stuff that he sells to others on a free and open market and is proud of it. And he does not make his money with war. He makes it by producing stuff.
[...]
I can't help but notice that pro-Trump people are welcoming, orderly, behaved people who are immune to learning hatred like that you express. You are not the only anti-Trump person I know who lives in such hatred, either. There are several I know personally. But I know of no Trump supporter who does likewise. Maybe a fringe wacko here and there, but you get hateful wackos with supporters of almost anything and anyone. Anyway, you guys (the people I know) are not fringe wackos.
[...]
In general, if you talk to a Trump supporter in this election, he talks back in a friendly manner. Anti-Trump people, on the other hand, have behaved more like angry cultists who feel attacked. Sorry, but this is true.
I, myself, have been called all kinds of names by people I like when I have expressed my support of Trumpo. I have been barred from talking to certain people. I have been told I am unprincipled, that I only think with my emotions, that I worship a Trump Messiah (you yourself say that), and on and on and on.
Now Trump is winning and it seems like this is the worst sin in the world. Freedom as we know it is going to become Nazism. The American experiment is over. The sky is falling...
Sorry, but I'm happy Trump is winning. I meant it when I supported him and I still mean it. But it's an election and nothing more.
I was deeply disappointed when Obama won the election--twice. But I took it like a man. This is the way America works. I don't recall ever behaving like I have been treated by anti-Trump people, nor do I recall anti-Trump people ever treating Obama supporters the way they treat Trump supporters. Why is their passionate hatred reserved for Trump and not for Hillary or Obama, or even worse, actual dictators out there in the world? I always see them talk against these enemies of freedom, but I rarely see in them the same passion as when they get on their anti-Trump harrangues.
It makes you wonder why such people want to eat their own...
Michael,
One trivial thing: Diana Mertz Brickell Hsieh is still Dr. Diana Hsieh. (You didn't know her when she was Ms. Brickell.) I was twisting her name around the way Roger (who did know her when she was Ms. Brickell) sometimes does.
I can't help comparing you to a Christian missionary, or some other sort who believes in a Messiah and spreads the Good News on His account, because you and I don't seem to be operating by the same standards of evidence.
In our exchanges over the past few weeks, your response to any point that is critical of Donald Trump in any respect has been to treat it as though it contained no evidence—or as though any evidence or argument that might be in it deserve no consideration. It's all "gotchas," or something only a member of the Establishment would even think mattered, or it's ruled out because it pre-dates Donald Trump's announcement of June 16, 2015 (any political history that pre-dates The Annunciation has been cleansed from the record, unless it pertains to the perfidies of the Bush clan, or of neocons).
Or it just can't be right, because of the evidence available to your own two eyes. Even when the truth or falsity of what is being claimed is something I can't just see, and I reckon you can't either.
Or it's proof that the person who would say such things can't see you, and can't see anyone else who supports the Trump campaign.
Now what would a devout Christian, of any sort, particularly the kind not gifted in dialectic and suspicious of those who are, be likely to say in response to criticisms of Jesus?
Contrast all of these reactions with my responses to criticisms of Ted Cruz, or of anyone else outside the Trump camp.
Have any of them been like your reactions to criticisms of Donald Trump?
(Even when I think Trump and crew are taking an Establishment line against someone, as in his curiously favorable remarks about Mitch McConnell, I go to some trouble to explain why I think so.)
As for the moral standing of the man, Donald Trump appears to have attained perfection in your eyes, or to be so close a scrape from it that the difference hardly matters. He can't simply be a man of unusual courage, or great outspokenness, or unusual organizational skill, or extreme chutzpah, or off-the-charts ability to sell nearly anything, he has to be the entire antidote, packaged up into one human being, to everything ailing or rotten in our political system. In particular. he must, lest he fail to qualify for his saving mission, be entirely free of the vices customarily associated with politicians.
And since Donald Trump has a long record of public statements on nearly every subject, many of which contradict the statements he is making now, he even gets his own era, beginning when he was called to his present mission, at the age of 68 (nothing he did of a political nature counts, if he did it before that date). If he is elected President, will there be a movement to replace 2015 in the old reckoning with NTE (New Trump Era) 1?
Not being inclined to attribute moral perfection to anyone running to be President of the United States, including anyone I might consider voting for, I find your continued assertions about him bizarre—not to mention contrary to readily available evidence, in the form of some of the man's past deeds, many of his past and present sayings, and quite a few of his associations.
A guy who hires Roger Stone and Paul Manafort is not free of any vice customarily associated with politicians. You don't keep one around you for years, or feel an urgent need for the services of the other, if your attention is entirely taken up with building magnificent things and offering them on the free market, leaving no headroom for the low machinations of the political class.
I really have to wonder whether the jibes at Ted Cruz in particular—Rafael! the wannabe Savior!—aren't projection at work.
For I can prefer Cruz without illusions, either about his moral perfection or his role as an agent of salvation. Can you prefer Trump in the same way?
I don't know how many other Trump supporters you actually know. They vary, like everyone else, but from my own experience I can say that they are not all as you describe.
Many of them don't want discussions of issues, as the Trump supporters here at OL generally don't.
They tend to be incurious about Trump's actual views, actual plans, actual stands on, well, nearly anything. He will take care of it. He will clean it up. Whatever it is. We don't need to know now how he intends to do any of it, so why do you ask?
Others are instantly actively hostile toward anyone who questions their guy, whether the hostility is expressed in peremptory putdowns, or in inane triumphalism.
Your assertion that only those critical of Trump (could?) behave in these ways I see as part of a worshipful attitude.
I surely don't think you should be barred from discussions with anyone, or that you are given over to thinking with your emotions, or whatever. I am saying that adopting special epistemological and moral standards, meant to apply uniquely to one and only one human being, is not merely unfair, but tends to get in the way of objective appraisal—in this case, of candidates for President. (The analogy to Dr. Hsieh is not about the institutional specifics of ARI, but about the worshipful attitude and special pleading that all there must adopt regarding Ayn Rand, plus occasionally one of her lieutenants.)
As for anger, Donald Trump is, among other things, an actor. So the anger in his speeches and public performances could be simulated, and my assumption has to be that it usually is. The anger expressed by his followers, often directed at questionably identified targets, gives no impression of being simulated.
And eating your own... how else could anyone describe what Donald Trump does, in pretty much every speech he's given since June 16 of last year? Stomping and re-stomping every Republican who opposes him, or endorses anyone who opposes him, with no sign of letting up. Would he take the high road for a couple of weeks after big wins in five states? Hell no, there are still Republicans to stomp. Anyone who defends such behavior is practicing the exact thing you claim to deplore.
I've been rough on Obama and on Hillary Clinton, and so have other contributors here. Maybe because Obami don't hang out much at OL, and I haven't seen a Hillary supporter posting since I returned, you've gotten the impression that Trump is a unique target of mine?
Trump's election will not herald the death of freedom in America. It's much harder than normal to say what it does herald, because cone of uncertainty around his actions is so much wider than usual. (You talk of peaceful trade, but Trump's shtick is all about how bad most trade is for us.)
Hillary Clinton lies to us constantly. Yet she has a track record in the White House and in office that enables reasonably good predictions of what she will actually do. Donald Trump has been all over the place rhetorically, even in NTE1 and NTE 2, pretends to be all kinds of things to all kinds of people, has no track record in political office, and may not even believe key elements of his campaign speeches.
He might be for everything you wish he's for, he might not be for any of it at all; he might be 100 places in between. But, no, he is not another Hitler or Stalin. A better model, I've suggested before, is Berlusconi, abroad, or Jesse and Ahhnold, at home.
Most likely, in my estimate, he will be a very loud, fairly awful President, constantly bloviating about the changes he's making, and not really changing much of anything. He will have been elected after we suffered under a bad President and a truly terrible one, and when there was some small chance of getting someone better.
Are you really sure that Donald Trump will be the President you want him to be?
If you really are, perhaps the inestimable benefits of a Trump Presidency just outweigh any losses of friends or allies to aggressively proselytizing.
Robert
, you would know that I am "all for phone interviews from the non-Trumps of the world."
Donald Trump
in Stumping in the Backyard
Posted
Michael,
I won't ask you what sort of hate is driving you.
But I am morbidly fascinated by your own account of your guy's tactics.
Perhaps you can explain what he got—cheaply, of course—by giving Mitch McConnell $60,000 to deliver a punch in the nose to Matt Bevin and other Tea Party opponents of sitting Republican Senators.
As for the Club for Growth story, what is your evidence for the Club for Growth people telling him he would never win without them?
The chairman of the Club sent Corey Lewandowski a letter asking for $1 million, apparently after having met with Trump at Trump Tower.
I believe the letter, because Trump produced it.
What leads you to suppose that the rest of the story is any more credible than Donald's "perfect statistics" (20% unemployment in Wisconsin!) or his claim to have invented the tired slogan, "Common-sense conservatism"?
Though it has occurred to me that you may not care whether it's true or not, as long as it helps Trump win.
And he is winning in Indiana, which probably makes him the Republican nominee.
Robert