R_P wrote: 
Exactly. He has no plans, no policies. All he has is "We're gonna win so much you're gonna get sick of winning and we're gonna make Mexico pay for a wall after we deport all those wetbacks and we're gonna knock the hell outta ISIL and we're gonna treat women like shit and we're gonna beat the hell out of anyone who opposes us  and we're gonna make America hate again... blah, blah, blah..."

He's a carnival barker, nothing more. The scary part is that there are so many racist, misogynistic xenophobes who support him.

 Red_Dragon wrote: 
The more the Trumpster opens his big mouth about specifics in response to simple questions, the crazier he gets...

An Establishment Conservative’s Guide To The Alt-Right by @LibertarianBlue & @Nero http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/03/29/an-establishment-conservatives-guide-to-the-alt-right/ …

Trump: Punish Women For Illegal Abortions

 VV wrote: 
Well-said. Somehow "speaking your mind" makes someone appear Presidential. If that's the case, I have some family members that should have been President long ago. 

Trump supporters first pepper spray, then yell “n****r lover” to 15-year-old protester in Paul Ryan’s hometown

 Steely_D wrote: 
Depends who everyone is.  This is the repub inhouse stop Trump movement at work who came up with the idea of the pledge to trip up Trump in the beginning and now are themselves abandoning the pledge cuz its working against them with Trump winning.

Being aware of the circumstances myself, it won't hurt me in regards to Trump.  He is not equivocating about it like Cruz, Kasich, et al are.  With repubs, the establishment stands the most to lose in what little cred it has left with the rank and file.

Independents and dems ?  Who knows.  As illustrated by my response to the linked article, those not knowing the real circumstances will not investigate and assume as our friend here has that Trump's word is meaningless across the board, while it is far more complex than that.  In reality Trump is being most honest about this whole matter, re: the pledge.

 
Edit:  I'll wade even deeper cuz I got the time right now.  The repub establishment is so in denial about the discontent facing it.  It ignores the fact that the anti establishment vote is nearly 75% when you combine Trump and Cruz.  They are now screwing Cruz and themselves (without knowing it) by trying to hook up with Cruz to obstruct Trump and force an open convention.  Cruz will soon be seen as the other establishment candidate because he is accepting help from it.  Kasich is plain nutz with his staying and needing more delegates than are left even if he got them all.

What all these pundits and articles are getting wrong is that the Media did not create Trump and bring him to the fore.  The establishment of both parties created the need for Trump by their willful abuse and abandonment of the rank and file.  Trump did what any successful entrepreneur does.  Find a need and fill it.  And exploit it.

 Red_Dragon wrote: 
Not only is that condescending, but shows a shocking ignorance of the Libertarian party and all they stand for to think that would even be a consideration.  Wow.  And they wonder why there are so many voters fed up with the arrogant establishment.

So Trump has withdrawn his pledge not to run as a third-party candidate.

But there's more to this.

One of his top aides quit the campaign, very disillusioned, and wrote a long rant, reprinted elsewhere on Facebook, about Trump's incompetency.

What she said was very revealing — that Trump never expected to do better than 10% or 12%. He was in it for the publicity.

At the beginning, he didn't to be president, he just wanted to play in the big game for awhile. That he has done so well ... now, he's playing for the gold ring.

And now that the republican leadership is openly plotting to keep him from the nomination, either he gets enough voters to win the nomination on the first ballot — or he'll walk away as soon as it becomes obvious that he won't have the 1237. He'll do it before the convention, before he suffers the humiliation of losing the nomination.

Will he set up a third party candidacy? It's hard to get on the ballot that late — but if the Libertarians or some other perennial group of also-rans wants to adopt him, he can be their candidate.

However this plays out, Trump has very effectively broken the republican nominating process. Even without his participation, the process would have been a circus of horrors — but Trump turned it into a reality-show train wreck.

The reason why Trump has done so well in the primaries is precisely because he's Pennywise the Clown. You know how you slow down when you drive past an auto accident, looking to see if there's blood on the highway...? Yeah, it's that kind of morbid fascination.

Trump's singular skill, no matter what arena he's in, is to suck the air out of the room with his boorishness — he pulls the attention away from everyone else by his antics. So the media gave him all this insane attention and ... there's a thing you learn in first year Film School. Whoever gets the most camera time, that's the hero of the picture.

Trump effectively stole the spotlight. A year ago, the pundits were saying it was Jeb's to lose — ignoring the fact that the Bush name is poison. It was always obvious that Cruz and Christie and Jindal and Rubio were going to make a run — but when the clown car loaded up with Carson and Fiorina, Santorum and Kasich as well, and then Walker and Perry and Pataki and Graham, it became impossible for anyone to get traction because no one except Trump was getting any serious air time.

Trump is a product of the irresponsible behavior of the media. Where once he would have been dismissed as an irrelevant sideshow, he's now a reality show superstar — and when the news media started pursuing ratings instead of actual news, this clusterfuck was inevitable. There's a saying in TV news. "If it bleeds, it leads." Well, the republicans have been bleeding for a year — thanks to the orange oompa-loompa — and the result has been a near-total destruction of the nominating process. Even without Trump, it would have been a disastrous year for the party, but with Trump bullying everyone who got in his way, steamrolling through the primaries like an elephant in musk, we have all been made witness to what happens to a political system when it has been deliberately subverted.

The subversion of the GOP began with the John Birch Society, funded by the Koch brothers' sire. What is happening this year has been inevitable — but there's a certain schadenfreude in seeing Trump steal their whole ball game.

The Tea Party has given birth to the Trump Party and whatever happens this year, the Trump movement is not going to evaporate. Trump might try again in four years. Or the Trump movement will evolve into its next horrific iteration. It's impossible to predict.

But one thing is certain, Trump will do whatever feeds Trump's ego. And that means that no matter what happens, we will not see the end of him until he finally relocates to Trump Graveyard.

~ David Gerrold

 Red_Dragon wrote: 
If you paid close attention to repub politics you would know that this does not mean what you are trying to make it mean with the way you worded your link.

Are you aware of the pledge that all 17 of the original repub candidates signed way back when and why ?

 

His word means nothing.

Trump: No One Has Ever Been 'Slandered' More Than Me!

(...) Trump said that he has several plans to go after ISIS but won’t reveal them in order to protect “the element of surprise.” However, he did reveal that under a Trump presidency the U.S. would “take the oil” in Libya and “make the rules” in the Geneva Convention “a lot tougher,” alleging that ISIS terrorists “are laughing at us” because the U.S. won’t torture.

He went on to hail the NYPD’s since-abandoned Muslim spying program as “the best in the world,” despite the fact that the program, according to the Associated Press, “never generated a lead or triggered a terrorism investigation.”

Talking points

 Steely_D wrote: 
Oh I don't know I bet he has brought his handicap way down since being President, he has continued the Bush legacy quite well. Practice makes perfect.