trump is serious!!!!!

[Big RR]

I'm beginning to think that Trump can get elected in this climate; Trump/Cruz could even have a shot at running this country, I fear. And what a mess will come of that! Especially since he's playing straight to fear and anger.

BSG--while I still don't think he would be elected; I also don't think that his election would being that much doom and gloom. When even seasoned politicians who know and understand the system don't stand a chance in breaking the deadlock and getting things done, a jerk like Trump would stand no chance of doing anything. Sure, things will get worse because of this inaction, but not as bad as I think you're indicating. If he were running for dictator I'd agree with you, but a president really can't do all that much with a obstinate congress.

[rubato]

In a general sense Trump could have got the nomination but I don't think that is true with the 'pragmatist GOP' pulling the strings er halyards on the moneybags.

To them, all of the ideological lying, fearmongering and hysterical bullshit is just a way to get power and the reason to have power is to be rich. They won't back Trump because Trump is only successful with the hardshell-right and is unelectable to the general population. People who think Sarah Palin is insightful and interesting.


yrs,
rubato

[oldr_n_wsr]

the GOP has created Trump

Oh, I think both parties and the main stream media have created Trump.

[wesw]

[BoSoxGal]

I'm beginning to think that Trump can get elected in this climate; Trump/Cruz could even have a shot at running this country, I fear. And what a mess will come of that! Especially since he's playing straight to fear and anger.

BSG--while I still don't think he would be elected; I also don't think that his election would being that much doom and gloom. When even seasoned politicians who know and understand the system don't stand a chance in breaking the deadlock and getting things done, a jerk like Trump would stand no chance of doing anything. Sure, things will get worse because of this inaction, but not as bad as I think you're indicating. If he were running for dictator I'd agree with you, but a president really can't do all that much with a obstinate congress.

Hopefully the call to ban all Muslims will be the end of him; he might not be able to do much damage from legislating, but he could certainly divide the country in terrible ways with his rhetoric.

[wesw]

[MajGenl.Meade]

If you're an AOL email person like me, when you open email you get to see the first item on the AOL news feed. They always abbreviate the news feed info so that, if you are curious, you have to open the new window to find out what it really says.

So they have these abbreviated headlines. Here's a current one that I don't think really needs any expansion at all:

TRUMP: 'I AM THE LEAST...

[BoSoxGal]

[Sue U]

I am convinced that Trump is cranking up the crazy as an exit strategy from the GOP primaries, before he has to face a real contest. If he can provoke the party into "firing" him in some way, he can paint himself as the victim and leave without ever having to demonstrate whether he could actually win an election. He would then have the option of shouting "Look at me" from the sidelines by threatening to run as an independent, keeping himself in the limelight and still not risking an actual electoral loss. It's a play that would continue his self-promotion and let him play the role of a power broker with offers of support to the "real" candidate of his choosing. If he decides to go into the general as a third party, he may very well cripple the Republicans beyond hope of recovery for a decade or more.

Run, Donnie, run!!!!!!!!

[BoSoxGal]

Bernie!!

[Lord Jim]

If he decides to go into the general as a third party, he may very well cripple the Republicans beyond hope of recovery for a decade or more.

I disagree...

He would have a much longer crippling effect on my party as the nominee then as a third party candidate...

Chuck Todd advanced a Machiavellian argument about Trump running "third party" this morning on Morning Joe...


Yes we'd lose the Presidency, but his candidacy would bring out a lot of GOP leaning voters who would vote Republican down ballot to help us hold the Senate and the House...

Plus history teaches us, that this whole concept of "the crippling effect" is way over rated...

After the Goldwater Debacle in '64, the GOP was supposed to be finished...

Eight years later, Richard Nixon won re-election with the greatest popular vote majority in US history (61%) and an Electoral College vote of 520 to 17...( Libertarian Roger MacBride, though pledged as a Nixon delegate, voted for the Libertarian candidate, John Hospers...)

After that, Watergate was supposed to "cripple" the party for at least a generation...

After the post-Watergate midterm election in '74, the Dems won 290 House seats, (a gain of 43 on top of their already big majority) and held 61 seats in the Senate...and a 37-13 edge in Governorships...

Six years later, in the election of 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected in an electoral landslide, 489-44, over an incumbent President, and the GOP re-took the Senate for the first time since 1952...53-47...

Four years later he won re-election 525-13 in the Electoral College, with nearly 59% of the popular vote...

And then four years after that, George HW Bush won election with 426 Electoral votes...

And then two years after losing the the White House in 1992, we took back control of The House of Representatives for the first time since 1948...

And except for the four years between 2006 and 2010, we've held it ever since...

Today we have the largest GOP Majority in the House since the 1920's, a 54-46 Majority in the Senate, and a 32-18 margin in Governorships...

Gee, we ought to be celebrating...

No party is "crippled" unless they allow themselves to be...

What we can learn from this, is that the "crippling" effects of yesteryear, are swiftly over taken by contemporaneous events...

[Guinevere]

I agree with Jim, it will be easier to marginalize him if he ends up as a third party/independent candidate. He does far more damage, and is far scarier, as the Republican candidate.

And while I'm not 100% invested in the destruction of that party, I think it may be time for a split, and to kick the fundamentalist right wingers out of the party and let them form their own party. Of course, the Republicans have only themselves to blame, kowtowing to those folks in the first place as a "strategy" to win national elections.

Finally, I cannot see the good folks of NH actually voting for Trump (or those in Iowa either). But I am an eternal optimist, so we will see what happens.

[BoSoxGal]

[Lord Jim]

If Trump is the GOP nominee, you will see the greatest schism within the Republican Party since 1912...

If he loses the nomination, and runs third party, we lose one election, fall back and re-group...

ETA:

You'll like this one Meade...

Roger Lea MacBride, the Nixon Electoral College delegate who voted for the Libertarian candidate in 1972, was co-creator and co-producer of what well known television series?

As always no Googling, and no help from the studio audience...

[Guinevere]

Ha. I know the answer. He helped write the books too and was a friend of Rose.....

[Guinevere]

Polls schmolls. It's still early, and at this point in the cycle there is a huge difference between poll responses and what happens in the privacy of the voting booth.

Isn't that what the Bernie people are saying about HRC? Works both ways......

[BoSoxGal]

I know the answer!

Are we waiting for Meade to guess?

[Lord Jim]

Here's what I would really like Reince Priebus to say to Donald Trump:

Dear Mr. Trump,

We are full up with you Mr. Trump; it is time for you to go...

We have many mechanisms within the nominating process available to us to assure that you will not be our standard bearer in the next election, and we will use each and everyone of them to assure that does not come to pass...

You will no longer be welcome at GOP debates; Yes, maybe CNN and the other news channels will want you there, but we have party delegate rules that say that anyone who participates in a non-party sanctioned debate forfeits their delegates....(btw, the DNC has the same rule)

So I suspect everyone else will be there...

You have continuously attempted to blackmail The Party by saying, "I wont run third party, so long as I am treated fairly"....

Well let me be blunt, Mr. Trump...

You are no longer going to be "treated fairly"...

You are going to treated as the narcissistic blowhard you are...

Please announce that you are "not being treated fairly" and launch your third party bid, and spend the billion dollars you've been claiming you're ready to spend..(though thus far you haven't spent one penny of it)

On a losing bid that will put Hillary Clinton into the Presidency...

If that's what you want, bring it on...we're done kowtowing to you...

Respectfully,

Reince Priebus
Chairman
Republican National Committee

[Guinevere]

So far, no one in the Republican Party, even the other candidates, has the balls to do that.

So to quote Sue, "sack up."

[wesw]

I think that both parties are in horrible shape, and I like that.

the American people don t like to be told who is qualified or disqualified from being president,
that is the people s job to decide.

they will perhaps cut off their nose to spite their face, just to make that point.

the dems all out assault on 2nd amend and barack Obama s 2nd term, has not endeared them with the people either

if you guys don t think that blue collar dems will vote for trump, in droves, you are deluding yourselves. I d be interested to see dems polled about supporting trump, but I think that people are squared to even ask...

trump could win 3rd party

trump reminds me of hugo Chavez

but sometimes what seems to be evil is good and versa vice