rotekz wrote: 
How do you think evangelicals can justify voting for Trump?  It would just seem to me that they would be voting squarely against their principles to vote for a socially progressive, pro choice non religious candidate or am I missing something here?

Trump breaks 40% in CNN national poll of Republicans.
 

 RichardPrins wrote: 
And this is different than what we have already been doing in what way exactly?

 kurtster wrote: 
This is great but has only been possible because of the parlous state of the media who freak out over the slightest PC infraction. He has played them and used it for endless free coverage. At the next election when he is POTUS things will be very different.

 Alpine wrote: 
Yep only 360 days left. 

Nice to see you !

Stick around.  Its calmed down some.

 Alpine wrote: 
Well it looks like you survived. Congratulations on navigating the recovery. 

So nice to return to these Radio Paradise forum pages and find this thread about Trump.  
There is hope for this country yet.
Our eight year experiment is almost over. 

Excellent post.   


kurtster wrote: 

The Know Nothing "movement" 2.0.1 seems rather apt.
 
Donald Trump said he'd kill terrorists' families at a rally. His crowd went wild.

 kcar wrote: 
fixed your link.   Hard to argue with 538.  

I do have a couple of degrees and one is a 4 year business degree and I support Trump.  

 I am angry for a lot of reasons, but mostly about illegal immigration.  I believe that the core of Trump's support stems from this one issue, more than anything else.  Its the first box to check on my list for any candidate.  No different from those who look at abortion rights as their first box on their list.

In case its not been noticed, Trump is basically agnostic when it comes to religion.  While he was raised in Norman Vincent Peale's church, I think he got more out the positive thinking part than the religious part.  He's the only candidate on both sides who isn't talking much about social issues.  How refreshing.  No deceit there.  He's sticking to economic and security issues, which includes securing the border.  I've read his immigration paper and his tax plan.  They are both of substance.

He is not a part of the global banking and industrial oligarchy.  He owes them nothing and cannot be controlled by them.  He understands how they get out of paying their fair share by merger's that take corporate headquarters overseas to avoid taxes which is called inversion and wants to stop it for openers.  Currency manipulation is another.  I don't think any other candidate can talk knowledgeably about inversion or currency off of the top of their head.  He lives and breathes this stuff, knows it inside and out.  That is his wheel house.  He is also firmly opposed to the TPP, another important issue for me.

It is estimated that US corporations are sitting on at least $2 Trillion in cash overseas.  He has a real tax plan to bring it back home.  He is the only candidate talking about this as well.  Just think about what that would do for our economy.  That money would be pumped into our economy and create one hell of a business boom that would benefit all of us.  Remember that a rising tide lifts all boats.

I've looked at many of the nuts and bolts of his plans and rhetoric and do not see deceit.  What do you see about Trump that is deceitful / cunning ?

 kurtster wrote: 
Never thought I would root for Jeb Bush! 

Kurtster, don't mistake cunning for intelligence. Trump is pandering to the anger of the Republican working class:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-key-to-the-gop-race-the-diploma-divide/

He has their attention but if this race ever comes down to articulating any sort of intelligent plans or policies, The Donald is screwed.  As a Democrat, I alternate between amusement at the GOP klown kar primary season and fear that one of these dolts will actually become president and make Dubya look like a genius. 

Regardless of how one thinks about Donald Trump, he has accomplished two great things.

He has knocked Jeb Bush out of the race.

And he has achieved running an effective campaign for POTUS for next to nothing.  

It should be inspiring to all those (which includes myself) who think that we need to take the money of running for higher office in this country.  The richest candidate has spent the least amount of money and is on top of nearly every poll.  Might be proof that he is the smartest candidate.

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote: 
we need somebody to pin this on

who can we blame?

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote:
In my best Trump impersonation: "Critical thinking skillz are for losers."

 RichardPrins wrote: 
ha. The frightening thing is how true to the cliche he can be and still get away with it.

The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. ~ H.L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy, 1926

Andrea Tantaros writes for Fox News - "Attacking Trump will no longer work".
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/01/22/national-review-disses-donald-trump-why-magazines-plan-wont-work.html

Trump's appeal stretches far beyond disgruntled, outside the country club conservatives. His potential for crossover support, especially with blue collar and working class voters, is huge. Most establishment Republicans have never met a blue collar worker (unless they were fixing their Jacuzzi).

I can see Trump winning coal miners, unionized construction workers, auto workers, steel workers, Teamsters, etc.

Trump may even score a larger share of black votes with his immigration stand. His appeal to working class voters is a very under reported story, but it's evident because even President Barack Obama himself mentioned Trump by name during an interview with NPR in which he said that Trump is tapping into the "anger of the blue collar white male."

This showcases just how scared the left is when it comes to Trump's potential to tear into demographics that Democrats have largely considered theirs.

The bed wetters at the RNC are dreaming of a GOP that grows because it attracts Latinos, pro-abortion millennial women and other hopelessly Democratic voters. Trump's coalition of adding working class voters (who actually work) makes more sense. 

I have respect for National Review as an institution, but the cover and series of articles designed to hurt Trump only hurts the elitest, Beltway crowd they represent because it exposes why he is the seemingly solid and unstoppable frontrunner: it's because of them.

They have failed us, not Trump. Donald Trump is merely capitalizing on a moment in a pursuit to make America Great Again, in spite of the failures of the conservative movement.

Just like they were too dense to see Trump's rise, they don't understand why it occurred.

 

 RichardPrins wrote: 
Great post but I believe Cruz is the one with the most support amongst evangelicals.

Americans, especially poorer and less educated ones, feel absolutely screwed by the economy right now. The bigotry and intolerance (masquerading as impatience with "political correctness) is mostly due to economic fear of competing with immigrants for jobs, a sense that those on welfare have it better than the working poor and a backlash against rapidly changing mores about gay marriage, transgender people, police treatment of minorities, etc. 

But you're right about the con job that the GOP establishment has pulled on the religious right. Kevin Phillips' "American Theocracy" touches on that.  

Nope. Definitely nothing to do with Palin
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/333628-2/

 The Palin Factor=> Trump Jumps 6 Points – Cruz Drops 6 Points Since Palin Endorsement

While the big story is the National Review article, it appears that (according to the Reuters 5 day rolling poll) over a third of Cruz’s followers have abandoned him for Trump in the last 3 days since Palin announced for Trump. That’s a pretty big story. Cruz has gone from 16.3% down to 10.5% while Trump has (in the same 3 days) gone from 33.4% to 40.6%.

Here is how the Reuters poll looked on January 19 – the day Sarah Palin endorsed Donald Trump.

And here is how the Reuters poll looked on Friday January 22.

Trump went up 6 points while Ted Cruz dropped six points.

Can America's political discourse get any cruder?

(...) In fact, Palin's speech reminded me of another one I attended, years ago, in Tehran during my time as CBC's Middle East correspondent.

Mohammed Khatami, the reformer, had been elected president of Iran, and you could taste the craving for change in the city's mountain air.

On a whim, I decided to attend a Friday sermon by Ayatollah Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, probably the most hardline cleric in the theocracy.

He scorned the reformers and called down divine judgment on them, and exhorted the crowd to go and impose the will of the people.

It was a speech filled with hatred and religious bigotry and nativism, and the crowd absorbed it with the same sort of ecstasy U.S. conservatives evidently experience at Republican rallies nowadays.

I spoke to several people as they exited the sermon; most were rural, uneducated, and were bused in for the event. In cosmopolitan Tehran, Yazdi wouldn't likely have been able to fill a big classroom, let alone pack in thousands of panting zealots.

(...)

But facts are irrelevant. The GOP campaign runs on the octane of emotion: resentment, anger, nativism and religious righteousness.

(Trump) is a man whose campaign has mostly consisted of slinging around coarse invectives at women, Latinos and Muslims, among others, in the name of battling "political correctness," which is some sort of obsession of the American right.

He is revered by the party base as a truth-teller. And he leads Republican polls.

Watching Palin and Trump, it was impossible not to wonder, once again, how America, a country that has achieved such excellence, and has so often shown the world a better way, descended into a political discourse that demonizes enlightened thought and glamorizes mean-spirited, lowbrow crudeness.

And something else occurred, a notion I've always shied away from because I find jingoism distasteful: None of this stuff would go anywhere in Canada. It would draw snickers and derision, not cheers.

The only reason I can cite for this difference in national attitudes is religion. Not the quiet, old-line religiosity whose adherents believe worship is a private matter, best practised in church.

I'm referring to the messianic, aggressive religion of certain evangelical Christian sects, which believe that even other streams of Christianity, never mind other faiths, are false, and that their job is not just to spread the word of God but to impose it, and that the best way to do that is to run the government.

That sort of religion happily ignores inconvenient facts and contradictions, and has always been ripe for the con job pulled by the Republican elite: promise to end atheistic permissiveness, then get into office and implement an economic agenda most friendly to Manhattan billionaires like Trump and multi-millionaires like Palin. (She recently put her 8,000 square-foot Arizona compound up for sale for $2.5 million.)

To be fair, this loopy form of religio-political fantasy is particular to the Republicans, and lots of religious Americans find it offensive to rational thought.

But it should not be dismissed, as clownish as its heroes can seem.

Think about Iran: Yazdi and his fellow hardliners triumphed. The reformers were shut down and jailed. The urban elites were cowed. It can happen.