The overlap between People Condemned by SPLC and People Supporting Trump continues http://t.co/8EToQVzsRO
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) August 25, 2015
Evan Osnos, at the New Yorker, on how “Donald Trump’s nationalist coalition takes shape—for now“:
On July 23rd, Donald Trump’s red-white-and-navy-blue Boeing 757 touched down in Laredo, Texas, where the temperature was climbing to a hundred and four degrees. In 1976, the Times introduced Trump, then a little-known builder, to readers as a “publicity shy” wunderkind who “looks ever so much like Robert Redford,” and quoted an admiring observation from the architect Der Scutt: “That Donald, he could sell sand to the Arabs.” Over the years, Trump honed a performer’s ear for the needs of his audience. He starred in “The Apprentice” for fourteen seasons, cultivating a lordly persona and a squint that combined Clint Eastwood on the high plains and Derek Zoolander on the runway. Once he emerged as the early front-runner for the Republican Presidential nomination, this summer, his airport comings and goings posed a delicate staging issue: a rogue wind off the tarmac could render his comb-over fully erect in front of the campaign paparazzi. So, in Laredo, Trump débuted a protective innovation: a baseball hat adorned with a campaign slogan that he recycled from Ronald Reagan’s 1980 run for the White House—“Make America Great Again!” The headwear, which had the rigid façade and the braided rope of a cruise-ship giveaway, added an expeditionary element to the day’s outfit, of blazer, pale slacks, golf shoes—well suited for a mission that he was describing as one of great personal risk. “I may never see you again, but we’re going to do it,” he told Fox News on the eve of the Texas visit…
Trump’s fans project onto him a vast range of imaginings—about toughness, business acumen, honesty—from a continuum that ranges from economic and libertarian conservatives to the far-right fringe. In partisan terms, his ideas are riven by contradiction—he calls for mass deportations but opposes cuts to Medicare and Social Security; he vows to expand the military but criticizes free trade—and yet that is a reflection of voters’ often incoherent sets of convictions. The biggest surprise in Trump’s following? He “made an incredible surge among the Tea Party supporters,” according to Patrick Murray, who runs polling for Monmouth University. Before Trump announced his candidacy, only twenty per cent of Tea Partiers had a favorable view of him; a month later, that figure had risen to fifty-six per cent. Trump became the top choice among Tea Party voters, supplanting (and opening a large lead over) Senator Ted Cruz, of Texas, and Governor Scott Walker, of Wisconsin, both Tea Party stalwarts. According to a Washington Post /ABC News poll conducted last month, the “broad majority” of Trump’s supporters hailed from two groups: voters with no college degree, and voters who say that immigrants weaken America. By mid-August, Trump was even closing in on Hillary Clinton. CNN reported that, when voters were asked to choose between the two, Clinton was leading fifty-one per cent to forty-five…
When the Trump storm broke this summer, it touched off smaller tempests that stirred up American politics in ways that were easy to miss from afar. At the time, I happened to be reporting on extremist white-rights groups, and observed at first hand their reactions to his candidacy. Trump was advancing a dire portrait of immigration that partly overlapped with their own. On June 28th, twelve days after Trump’s announcement, the Daily Stormer, America’s most popular neo-Nazi news site, endorsed him for President: “Trump is willing to say what most Americans think: it’s time to deport these people.” The Daily Stormer urged white men to “vote for the first time in our lives for the one man who actually represents our interests.”
Ever since the Tea Party’s peak, in 2010, and its fade, citizens on the American far right—Patriot militias, border vigilantes, white supremacists—have searched for a standard-bearer, and now they’d found him. In the past, “white nationalists,” as they call themselves, had described Trump as a “Jew-lover,” but the new tone of his campaign was a revelation. Richard Spencer is a self-described “identitarian” who lives in Whitefish, Montana, and promotes “white racial consciousness.” At thirty-six, Spencer is trim and preppy, with degrees from the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago. He is the president and director of the National Policy Institute, a think tank, co-founded by William Regnery, a member of the conservative publishing family, that is “dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of European people in the United States and around the world.” The Southern Poverty Law Center calls Spencer “a suit-and-tie version of the white supremacists of old.” Spencer told me that he had expected the Presidential campaign to be an “amusing freak show,” but that Trump was “refreshing.” He went on, “Trump, on a gut level, kind of senses that this is about demographics, ultimately. We’re moving into a new America.” He said, “I don’t think Trump is a white nationalist,” but he did believe that Trump reflected “an unconscious vision that white people have—that their grandchildren might be a hated minority in their own country. I think that scares us. They probably aren’t able to articulate it. I think it’s there. I think that, to a great degree, explains the Trump phenomenon. I think he is the one person who can tap into it.”…
Ordinarily, the white-nationalist Web sites mock Republicans as Zionist stooges and corporate puppets who have opened the borders in order to keep wages low. But, on July 9th, VDARE, an opinion site founded to “push back the plans of pro-Amnesty/Immigration Surge politicians, ethnic activists and corrupt Big Business,” hailed Trump as “the first figure with the financial, cultural, and economic resources to openly defy elite consensus. If he can mobilize Republicans behind him and make a credible run for the Presidency, he can create a whole new media environment for patriots to openly speak their mind without fear of losing their jobs.” The piece was headlined “WE ARE ALL DONALD TRUMP NOW.”…
If you can stomach it, do read the whole thing. “We” — i.e., the mainstream media, the Conventional Wisdom leaders — don’t want to look too closely at the far-right White Nationalists and their fellows, because it feels like giving them attention is what they want. But turning our faces away in disgust doesn’t make them disappear…
… Trump’s candidacy has already left a durable mark, expanding the discourse of hate such that, in the midst of his feuds and provocations, we barely even registered that Senator Ted Cruz had called the sitting President “the world’s leading financier of radical Islamic terrorism,” or that Senator Marco Rubio had redoubled his opposition to abortion in cases of rape, incest, or a mortal threat to the mother. Trump has bequeathed a concoction of celebrity, wealth, and alienation that is more potent than any we’ve seen before. If, as the Republican establishment hopes, the stargazers eventually defect, Trump will be left with the hardest core—the portion of the electorate that is drifting deeper into unreality, with no reconciliation in sight.
David Duke On Trump: He’s “Certainly The Best Of The Lot” Running For President http://t.co/jhbxTLhUPl
— Katherine Miller (@katherinemiller) August 25, 2015
Donald Trump: I Don't Want David Duke's Endorsement http://t.co/nMwg0iGF8I
— Andrew Kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) August 27, 2015
redshirt
Trump should buy Uber then sell it Ailes.
kindness
Trump is Palin, but a smarter grifter who really doesn’t need the money.
NotMax
All Trumped out for now. Enough is too much.
Over to you, Obi-wan..
Doug R
Wow. A Republican that doesn’t want the David Duke endorsement.
NotMax
Bad link fix.
All Trumped out for now. Enough is too much.
Over to you, Obi-wan.
jl
I see in the news that Jeb? was whining and complaining in his unappealing pissy resentful way, that no on was holding Trump accountable for not having real plans. Jeb? said it was no fair that he was asked for real plans!
Sad. What are the main stream GOP plans for health care reform (other than repealing Obamacare), dealing with Iran nuclear program, or immigration reform? Oh, there aren’t any, are there? Because they are all running the same con, Trump just uses a different marketing and PR approach.
The Trump candidacy will be a scary fun ride, since he will not get any effective opposition to what he says unless he makes it to the general election. Most of his GOP opponents are unable or unwilling to oppose him because doing so will destroy their own con game. Those who will may not have a large audience in the GOP primary base, which the GOP itself has carefully trained to swallow the garbage nonsense Trump spouts, though the GOP presents more of it by dog whistle and insinuendo.
So, if Trump goes down in the GOP primary it will be without much a a real debate, just saner GOP primary voters in large more moderate GOP states will vote against him, though who knows how many of those are left. Maybe most of them are independents now.
NotMax
@Doug R
One might label it as acknowledgment of the Hazards of Duke.
OJ Duggar
@redshirt:
Quick read that as
LIttle Storm Front will do ya.
Bobby Thomson
@NotMax: I’m old enough to remember when the Republican Party actively campaigned against David Duke after he got their nomination – not just denying him support, but running ads asking people not to vote for him. I doubt they’d do the same today.
Mike in NC
Trump’s a bombastic bully. He just needs to figure out how to appeal to the Cruz and Huckabilly snake handlers to get the nomination.
NotMax
@Bobby Thomson
Nah, they’d instead brand him as a RINO and too moderate.
greennotGreen
Richard Spencer was quoted as saying that, “he did believe that Trump reflected “an unconscious vision that white people have—that their grandchildren might be a hated minority in their own country.”
It’s always about projection with conservatives, isn’t it? Because they know that they’d never treat a minority with common human decency, they automatically assume that minorities, should they become the majority, wouldn’t treat them with common human decency. Personally, I’ve found that what you put out there pretty much returns to you in kind, and a smile and a nod will smooth many waters.
And God help us if Trump should ever get near the oval office. Actually, if he were to be elected, there’s one campaign promise he couldn’t help but fulfill. The wall between us and Mexico would certainly be built; in fact, the whole world would pitch in to build a wall around the entire U.S.A.
Felonius Monk
The only thought that comes to mind reading about these neo-nazis and white supremacists is that soon we will hear: Sieg heil mein “furrer” or perhaps, Heil Hairpiece.
Geeno
Dear God, we’re all living in a bad novel.
jl
@greennotGreen: I think there is some truth to that, from what I’ve seen of my more conservative kin from whiter areas of Rockies and South come and visit California. I’ve gotten comments about the mix of peoples here and questions if am I not concerned or afeared, or comments that ‘You folks can keep them in California if you like them so much.’
My response has been ‘Been this way all my life. I like it just fine’.
So, my standard response to sincere concerns about the horrific state of a the future ‘white’ minority status is “Can’t wait!!”.
Since a lot of Hispanics are ‘white’ by any reasonable conventional BS white bigot standard of racial identify (what is first glance impression at 50 feet), the ‘white’ minority status soon to be upon is BS anyway. But ignorant bigots and racists and xenophobes are scared, and mouthing off, pissing their pants, and hurting random people whenever they can get away with it. Disgusting.
redshirt
I wonder what Trump’s gonna come up with for a Trump salute. Two hands up, Hail Hydra style?
Something classy, no doubt.
Ruckus
I am now officially ashamed to be a white person. Not that being one was all that before now, but with T Rumpmemtum bringing out the white, haters of all things not them and their fucked up world view in, if not droves, in excited stupidity, it really seems to be fucked up to be melanin deficient. IOW what can I do to not be mistaken for white supremacist?
And how do we defeat T Rump and these assholes?
gene108
@jl:
The con job all GOP candidates want to push as policy is one of the major reasons I do not think Trump will flame.
Nobody else has anything more serious or practical to offer, so it comes down to who can manage their public persona the best.
jl
@Geeno: If Trump were a lefty, this could be one of Newt’s alternative history novels.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@NotMax: No, that’s burnsie.
lamh36
Zoë hanging with her Teedy LAMH yesterday! Finally a sorta smile..lol!
https://twitter.com/psddluva4evah/status/636727862737956864
jl
@gene108: I had to laugh when Jeb? complained it was unfair he was asked about his ‘real plans’. I mean, if you had real plans, would you phrase it that way? HRC or Sanders or O’Malley would just use Trump as an excuse to shout out what their real plans were.one more time, ans specifically and savagely criticize Trump’s BS. GOPers have to tread much more carefully.
What are Jeb?’s ‘real plans’? Hilarious. Learning some basic facts that I think even a lot of low info voters know would be great plan, Jeb?, Getting to work on that would be great idea, IMHO.
Ruckus
@gene108:
This.
He may flame out grandly in an open election but in crazy primaries? Whose going to call him out with any voice that will carry above his? And how can they do it?
As you stated, they really can’t.
ThresherK
“The Daily Stormer, America’s most popular neo-Nazi news site”
Show of hands: Who else here thought that this was a Charlie Pierce or such sliiiiiightly edited slogan about one of the usual suspect RW sites?
And given Trump’s current status, when is The Daily Stormer going to start complaining about the Johnny-come-latelies getting on the self-described Neo-Nazi bandwagon?
jl
@Ruckus: I think that is why the other GOPers criticism of Trump rings so empty, and may be counterproductive with anyone except the GOP crazy base.
Trump is rude, says ugly things, loud, vulgar, uncivil. But then a poor GOper has to talk about abolition of birthright citizenship as if it were not a horrible toxic awful policy proposal. and Mexican and Asian ‘anchor babies’ as if it were a serious issue. Every time some grifer GOper has to do that is a good day for Democrats in the general election. Even the GOP criticism of Trump is a con, but they have to be so calculated and careful about how they run that one, that they give the game away.
srv
Projection is ok only if you support Obama.
Trump does appeal to the baser instincts now, but that’s really what even liberals are about today. Admit it, you want to blugeon others for their support for that pesky 2nd Ammendment, not being PC enough and not wanting to subsidize your latest welfare schemes.
Righteousness is a two-way street. Even Chris Rock and Seinfeld see that.
If you want to moderate Trump, then you should join the movement and make this the bipartisan movement it can be. As Matt Welch showed today, even Billary was shrieking about illegals back in 96.
Felonius Monk
Is it now kosher to refer to them as the Nazi-wing of the Republican Party?
Any time now I expect to see the banner: Trump for Chancellor — Party like it’s 1933!
Geeno
@Felonius Monk: Kosher to refer to Nazis?!?!?!?
ugh
MobiusKlein
@srv: Derp’er gonna derp.
different-church-lady
Maybe Trump should ask himself what he’s doing to invite all this David Duke into his life right now.
Omnes Omnibus
@different-church-lady: Sadly, he knows what he doing.
Ruckus
@efgoldman:
This is why I’ve been pressing that T Rump may actually get the nomination. He has the ugly of the repub side in his pocket. He might just piss them off by things like rejecting David Duke’s support but then maybe it won’t. What percentage of the rest of the repubs will vote for him as their candidate? Ask the same question of a dem and the answer is yes we will support whomever is nominated, first because they will be a million miles better than any of the repubs but also because they are our candidate. I’d bet all his money repubs will all do the same.
So, maybe we don’t take back the house, we have to work now to get back as much as we can and get the senate and to win the presidency. Pick your person and work like hell for them, otherwise this is going to get very, very fucking ugly in a year and a half.
Peale
@different-church-lady: yep. Was it something he said?
I’m trying hard not to be concerned about this. The idea that you can’t win a national election targeting the same electorate with the same issues that have been driving mid-terms. If we took away the immigration issue for a moment, and the Mideast policy promises (and the threat of Bolton as Sec. Of State), I think he’s got a lot of issues that are unusual for a republican standard bearer. Increasing taxes on the wealthy. Taxing hedge funds. He’s more likely to pledge to exit the WTO and NAFTA and put tariffs on imports than anyone in either party. I doubt he could do any of that, but is he lying when he says that?
seaboogie
@redshirt: it’ll be big. Very big.
Can’t help myself – his narcissistic verbal tics crack me up. And that announcement entrance on the escalator was hilarious!
lamh36
Did something I hadn’t done in years tonight…I CHANGED A DIAPER!
Afterwards, Zoe looked at me like…“THAT.WAS.INTENSE”…lol!
Punchy
Trumps not going away. Altho I did read that state Legys are working overtime to keep him off the ballot. So theres that for the Jebster♤
kdaug
Fascinating.
Omnes Omnibus
@lamh36: I have never done that. My s-i-l kept offering me the chance when the niece and nephew used the things; I declined the offers. If I do have a child, I will do it. Until then, not if I can help it.
Ruckus
@Peale:
Remember those ideas that don’t sound all that republican only aren’t all that republican for the top of their party. Many not crazy or overtly racist repubs out of the top few % like a lot of the policies that we like and like the policies that he is talking about especially or even only if they come from a republican. That is another reason he has a chance. He has to distance himself from all the Dukes of the right. He still may not have much of a chance in hell of winning an election but he has a chance.
jl
@Ruckus: If it poses any significant problems in terms of support, I think Trump is too good a PR person to boxed into something as simple minded as accepting for rejecting support from Duke. He will find some finesse that smooths things over.
@Punchy: Desperate, transparent, and I hope truly cheesy GOP machinations to keep Trump out of state primaries would be great. Not as much entertainment value as a chaotic convention, but great for depressing conservative turnout.
lamh36
@Omnes Omnibus: My youngest two sisters (Zoe’s mother and the other one who got married 2 weeks ago) were both born when I was teenagers My mother being a single mother meant that I helped with the babies from time to time.
Funny enough, I don’t even think I ever changed Maddie’s diaper…lol. But unlike Zoe, Maddie never lived with me, since my sister and Zoe are both here now, it was either change her or wait for my sister to get out of the shower but that lil crumbsnatcher was “ripe”, so that diaper had to come off…lol
srv
Trump bad. Obama good.
Ruckus
@efgoldman:
I think you are correct about the Duke story. But like all things T Rump one just never knows.
Peale
@jl: yep. I’m not gonna cheer on republican attempts to keep people off ballots. I think I’ll join srv in mocking RtR when that fails.
Omnes Omnibus
@lamh36: One brother, born when I was six. And with the niece and nephew, there was always someone who wanted to do it. So I let them.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: We don’t actually know. but we have a reasonable hypothesis.
Peale
@Ruckus: I do find it funny that he’s a little like A very belligerent Buddy Roemer. If he had more extreme left wing positions to match his right wing ones, he could go out and claim the No Labels nomination.
Ruckus
@efgoldman:
I certainly think a third party run will happen if TPTB manage to get him out of the running, but I don’t think that will happen because the only way for them to do that is to shit on their own policies or to play games with the primary process, which of course some are trying to do. And if he’s out and goes third party, that’s game over for the repubs. Which is why I’m rooting for them and him to do exactly that.
PIGL
@srv: you’re one sad, sick troll-baby. Time out.
CONGRATULATIONS!
fuck, you gotta be shitting me, never would have seen that coming in a million years
GregB
Hillary was endorsed by Patty Duke.
Both sides do it.
Fair Economist
@Punchy: I don’t think the state Republican parties (legislatures generally don’t get involved with party ballot lists) will have the nerve to actually force Trump off the ballot. Trump will excoriate them mercilessly and get a lot of good publicity for them “violating his first amendment rights”. (Yes, I know, not really, but he’ll say it and they will look very bad.) And if Trump gets denied the nomination because of those kind of shenanigans, it’s going to be a nightmare for the Republican Party because he’s going to go rogue on them and take a lot of his voters with him.
Ruckus
@lamh36:
I’m the youngest in my family but all of my cousins are younger than I am. So when the aunts and uncles wanted to have get the hell away from the kids time, we all got to do sleep overs. I know that many of my cousins would be mortified to find out I changed their diapers. Fortunately for them I ain’t giving out more details. To anyone.
Omnes Omnibus
@Fair Economist: Oh well.
kdaug
@greennotGreen: I’m not locked in here with you, you’re locked in here with ME!
Mr Stagger Lee
@Geeno: Idiocracy meets the Handmaiden’s Tale.
ms_canadada
#Trumpertisonemeanhumanbeing
Omnes Omnibus
@ms_canadada: That is probably a fake hashtag.
Petorado
@Fair Economist:
Well Colorado’s Republican Party cancelled their caucus’ ability to select a candidate, and will instead select free-range delegates to the Repub convention who are not bound to any candidate. The fix is in from the establishment types. It’s now a question of whether the rancorous rank and file will notice that the hated establishment has it in for them.
Chris T.
@jl: Well, one of them might give detailed plans. Unfortunately they’ll all be in unreadable Jebberish.
Frankensteinbeck
But it’s not about racism. Oh, no.
I don’t think that’s why they avoid the topic. It’s half that they don’t care enough about minority oppression to cover who’s oppressing them, and half that if they do look, it’s uncomfortably like looking in a mirror.
@efgoldman:
Always keep in mind that that isn’t one group. Still, I don’t think any of the money factions like Trump. He’s not conspiracy theorist enough for the Kochs, the aristocrats hate that he says out loud what they think about race, and the Chamber of Commerce is offended that he doesn’t automatically reject everything liberals want, ever, period.
Amir Khalid
@Chris T.:
The Republican candidates are all afraid to give out any detailed policy plans. Were even a single detail to fail the right-wing purity test, the candidate would get hammered for it. As I think we’ve seen with the immigration issue.
mdblanche
Trump is the latest incarnation of a populist style in American politics that goes back at least as far as Andrew Jackson, or maybe Nathaniel Bacon, and has been largely dormant since George Wallace. Egalitarian towards white people (activist government to help them, laws to keep economic elites in check), oppressive towards everybody else, and a populist brand of social conservatism, i.e. “it’s those elites who think they’re better than you trying to force you to take the ‘no girls allowed’ sign off your treehouse.” They were part of the Democratic coalition from the party’s founding until the Civil Rights Movement. They were called Dixiecrats by the end, but you could always find them nationwide and they existed before they had a name. The Southern Strategy flipped them into allying with Wall Street to keep the benefits of the New Deal from being spread too widely for their tastes by the Civil Rights Movement and its sequels. They were willing to give those benefits up if that’s what it took. But that was more than four decades ago now, and political coalitions in this country typically only last for three and a half…
The Southern Strategy is done. It was always doomed by changing demographics. In 2008 and 2012 the Obama coalition outvoted the backlash (unfortunately the Obama coalition is also tailor-made to struggle in mid-terms…). But it wasn’t populism that dismantled it. All those future Trump fans responded to the biggest recession in decades and their loss to the Obama coalition happening almost at the same time by reminding the rest of us how they’re not okay sharing with everyone else. What’s driving them into Trump’s arms is Wall Street’s failure to keep up its end of the deal. Progress continues. The gays next door have gotten married; Mexicans have moved in on the other side; the slut across the street had to spend the weekend out of state, but she got her abortion anyways; and there is a black man in the White House. Not only will Trump stand up to all this, but he’ll get the government working for the right sort of people, and only the right sort of people. What’s not to like? They’re not going back again. There’s no way the GOP establishment can outbid Trump.
There’s no way the Democrats can either. Even if Trump blows up the Republican coalition, it won’t be the populist wing of the Democrats who benefit. Time and again since the Civil Rights Movement the racist populists have made it clear the racism takes precedence. The stumbling blocks that keeps Democrats from exploiting paper majorities for progressive populist economics are still there. The next step is for the racist populists to fully take over the GOP. What happens after that probably depends upon how Wall Street reacts to being dethroned.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@lamh36:
Awwww — Zoe looks so content snuggled up to her auntie. She knew you could get the job done! ;-)
SatanicPanic
Read the whole New Yorker article- man that was a bummer. Trump is a terrible man. I never thought I’d see another politician who could compete with Cheney for sheer awfulness, but Trump is giving it his best.
Tracy Ratcliff
@mdblanche: thanks for that analysis, I may end up stealing that.
Chris T.
@Amir Khalid: I was just being punny (“Jebberish” => gibberish = “meaningless or unintelligible talk or writing”)…
Amir Khalid
@Chris T.:
“Jebberish”. Oh, I geddit now. That’s quite a clever pun. (He said appreciatively.)
Seriously, the Republican party doesn’t do policy, as jl points out. Its only idea is partisan posturing. (You can’t even call it ideological; there is no coherent ideology or policy approach in place with the Rs, only Cleek’s Law opposition to whatever Democrats want.)
AxelFoley
@srv:
Good. You’re finally learning.
Thoughtful David
@jl:
I laughed at the same statement but for that reason and another one: Exactly when was it that someone from our Failed Media Experiment actually ask Jeb? about his plans? They never do. See, for example, Ryan, Paul, “Budget Plan for 2013”. Sure Ryan put out a “budget”, but with no details except “cut taxes and then we’ll all have unicorns and rainbows.” And not one of the fucking MSM ever asked him to fill in the details of his “plan”. Not a fucking one.
lol
@jl:
I’ve noticed a lot of white conservatives roll “White Hispanics-Latinos” in with “Whites” overall (instead of just “White Non-Hispanic-Latinos”) for statistics purposes to make it feel like they’ve still got a commanding majority even though they would never consider them “White White” personally.
lol
@Frankensteinbeck:
They don’t like him because they have no leverage over him. He doesn’t need them and that’s scary.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I’m really starting to wonder if this will be the Republicans’ 1968. I mean, Trump may show up, potentially, with a plurality of delegates to the convention. The “also-ran” candidates’ delegates may be strong armed by the party establishment into supporting the not-Trump runner up – giving said candidate more delegates even though he did worse in the primary. Do you think the Trump supporters are just going to take having the nomination handed to someone else lying down? I don’t see that happening.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
On top of that consider how many gun fetishists are likely to be at that convention and then think about the rage they might be feeling. Not a healthy mix.
Matt McIrvin
@GregB: And that’s really TWO endorsements for the price of one.
The Thin Black Duke
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: However, as the IT guys might say, “It’s a self-correcting problem.”
Matt McIrvin
@lol: Well, that’d follow the historical pattern of past immigrant groups eventually joining the white cohort and getting coopted into white racist politics. It could definitely happen: the only permanent feature of whiteness in America is not being black. But they’re not going to get there by Trumpmentum.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@kindness:
Trump is Palin and Mittins fused into one candidate. I think people are underestimating him. If Trump shows he can get the base moving the money conservatives won’t find much to object to in him.
the Conster
@mdblanche:
LBJ sure knew this, and predicted exactly what would happen, which happened. Reagan didn’t announce his candidacy in Philadelphia, MS randomly. You’re right – the real danger for everyone, both Dems and especially the GOPers, is that Trump goes after Wall Street as hard as he is on immigration/”the blacks”, while vowing to protect and expand SS and Medicare. That’s something that none of the other candidates will or can do, including Bernie Sanders. There’s definitely a niche there to drive a big wedge in. I just don’t think Trump is the one to do it effectively. A charismatic savvy ex-general could demagogue well enough to do it though, and that’s what scares me.
JoeShabadoo
The thing that strikes me the most is that the article acts like these ideas contradict each other simply because they all don’t fit the Republican agenda. There is nothing contradictory about supporting medicare, deporting illegal immigrants, expanding the military, and criticizing free trade.
What is really shows is how Republicans have policies that their voters don’t care about or like. They like Social Security, they don’t like blue collar jobs going overseas, they like the military and they don’t like immigrants. Trump is giving the base not just red meat but is actually more in line with them on other issues as well. Trump isn’t using the hot button immigration issue to push through other agendas his audience doesn’t like. Why would Republican voters not vote for him?
Matt McIrvin
@greennotGreen:
There could be a smidgen of white guilt in there: the idea that we’re past the moral event horizon and have already treated minorities so badly, there’s no way they could ever respond with anything but angry revanchism, so we might as well keep them down to save ourselves.
Shana
@Geeno: Reminds me of Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America where anti-semite Lindburg becomes President.
swkellogg
@redshirt: Rimshot. Cymbal crash.
El Caganer
@Felonius Monk: The Murmeltiersangel?
john fremont
@mdblanche: As blogger Chauncey DeVega says, White Privilege is one hell of a drug!