National Review: Against Trump (feature)

Donald Trump leads the polls nationally and in most states in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. There are understandable reasons for his eminence, and he has shown impressive gut-level skill as a campaigner. But he is not deserving of conservative support in the caucuses and primaries. Trump is a philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones.

Trump’s political opinions have wobbled all over the lot. The real-estate mogul and reality-TV star has supported abortion, gun control, single-payer health care à la Canada, and punitive taxes on the wealthy. (He and Bernie Sanders have shared more than funky outer-borough accents.) Since declaring his candidacy he has taken a more conservative line, yet there are great gaping holes in it. (...)

The free range Tea Party chickens are coming home to roost...

The Week: 'Donald Trump is poised for the strongest primary performance in modern history' http://theweek.com/articles/600335/donald-trump-poised-strongest-primary-performance-modern-history

For months, the press and the Republican establishment alike have been expecting the Trump bubble to implode. Now that it's clear Trump isn't going anywhere, we're seeing stories about a long slog of a campaign or even a brokered convention. But there's a very real possibility that, far from those kinds of days of reckoning, Donald Trump could actually "run the table." Ironically, Trump not only could win — he could win more decisively than any non-incumbent Republican contestant for the nomination since the dawn of the modern primary system.

Let's see how that might happen.

 islander wrote: 
Yes all 289,000 of them 

 rotekz wrote: 
Among voters named "Ivanka".

Drudge super-poll. Trump 47%, Cruz 29% & Clinton 1%. https://polldaddy.com/poll/9281321/

Henry Kissinger says @realDonaldTrump evokes something most people didn't know was there" #SNT https://t.co/yDu1fLrnEr

 

 rotekz wrote: 
That's somewhat silly and poorly considered. Obviously there are conservative forces at work: those who like the establishment and don't want to change.
But Obama was certainly someone who attempted to improve America with the few major things he was able to push through. Marriage equality, the start of national healthcare for all, and more.

It's a false equivalency to say that one side is as bad as the other, and a distraction from addressing the forces that would prevent progress by demanding stasis (or regression). Fight the real enemy. 

 rotekz wrote: 
Balance of what?

 RichardPrins wrote: 
Nope. Change the 'moniker' by two letters and you have an anagram of my real first name. If you need guidance listen to Vapour Rumours By Hallucinogen.

Correction is balance. 

And what do you mean by "correction"?

BTW, is your moniker/screen name German?

 rotekz wrote: 
I guess the text in bold above is what was implied and confirmed? Nothing in particular about what was mentioned in the quote of the article?

 RichardPrins wrote:

 
Just read your own quote. It's perfect. Everything you believe to be positive 'journalism' is actually rotten to the core.. Salon is beyond redemption and the more fools who promote it the better. We're on a fast-track to correction.

 rotekz wrote:
What do you think it implied?

Thanks for the link. It confirms everything that the tweet implied.

 rotekz wrote: 
Uhm, no link this time?

There’s something wrong with white America. A Sunday New York Times report further reveals what a Princeton study showed first in November: The death rate for white adults is rising at an alarming rate, with the increase resembling the historical patterns of an infectious disease like AIDS, experts say. The Times used almost 60 million death certificates from the last quarter century to evaluate the crisis affecting virtually all white adult age groups. By far the most shocking increases in death rates are occurring among working-class and poor whites without a college degree. And it’s not heart disease or the other medical culprits we might have suspected for the increase but suicide, overdoses and acute alcohol abuse: self-harm, in other words.

The skyrocketing trend of death due to self-harm cannot be considered as unrelated to the Trump phenomenon. It’s the same Americans at the center of each tragic contemporary puzzle. According to the Princeton and Times studies and any poll you care to consult–the consensus, in other words–the group of Americans who form the core of Trump’s support are also those most at risk of early death by their own hands. That less-educated, less-wealthy rural whites form the engine of Trump’s shocking success is well–documented, from the beginning of his campaign’s rise to the present. And now we know that this group is suffering from an almost unprecedented suicidal desperation. (...)

Trump’s attacks raise eyebrows on Wall Street
Republican frontrunner chides bankers but has relied heavily on them to build his business

(...) The frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination has also waged a vituperative campaign against Wall Street, accusing hedge funds of "getting away with murder" — somewhat to the entertainment of the bankers who helped finance the rise of his business empire.

"I have been highly amused about Trump's comments about us given he's almost one of us, at least in a business sense," said one Wall Street banker whose group has provided Mr Trump's properties with millions of dollars in financing. "He is totally comfortable around Wall Street and bankers."

Mr Trump characterises himself as not beholden to special interests, ridiculing hedge funds as "guys that shift paper around and . . . get lucky" and highlighting a contrast with his own record of building large construction projects.

Big banks and hedge funds, however, have played a pivotal role in the growth of his real estate empire, providing his companies with loans, acquiring stakes in Trump properties and restructuring debt terms in his times of trouble — as he has acknowledged happily in the past.

"Morgan Stanley is one of the finest investment banking names on Wall Street," Mr Trump said in a 2004 press release, when the bank helped during the 2004 bankruptcy of Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, a holding company for several properties.

"We are excited about the opportunity to work with (former Morgan Stanley managing director) Mitch Petrick and his team, given their proven track record."

Morgan Stanley became the joint lead arranger for $500m in financing as part of the reorganisation of the company, while UBS advised Trump Hotels and also helped arrange financing. (...)

Mr Trump has also sparred with Wall Street. In 2008, he sued Deutsche Bank and other lenders over a $640m construction loan for Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago.

Mr Trump argued the financial crisis prevented him from repaying the loan to Deutsche and Fortress Investment, a hedge fund, in the allotted time.

Deutsche countersued to obtain repayment. The two sides settled in 2010, with Deutsche extending the terms of the loan for five years.

Deutsche's private bank is providing a $170m loan for one of Mr Trump's latest projects, his new hotel in Washington DC. Construction on the Trump International Hotel is due to be completed next year.

Mr Trump's relations with high finance were more amicable in 2009, on the occasion of his last corporate bankruptcy. Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, having previously emerged from bankruptcy protection in 2005, fell into trouble again under the new name of Trump Entertainment Resorts.

Mr Trump teamed up with Avenue Capital, the hedge fund founded by Marc Lasry, to beat back a takeover attempt by Beal Bank and Carl Icahn the activist investor. The plan he and his hedge fund allies put forward was endorsed by a bankruptcy judge.

But Mr Icahn has held no grudge. He is backing Mr Trump for president — and even briefly accepted his offer to be Secretary of Treasury. (...)

15K in OK! Had to turn away 5k, but we are coming back soon to take care of them! So much love in the crowd! Thanks! pic.twitter.com/XsOeREiYuA

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2016

 rotekz wrote: 
And all of that led by a billionaire blowhard who has properties all over the world and sources some of his own products from China and other places, because profit.

Sounds a lot like the usual "do as I say, not as I do."

And yet another "war" as a bonus.

This vote is about taking the country back from a globalist elite supported by the establishment that doesn't care who you vote for as long as they are in their pockets. Left v. right is gone. The new war is globalism versus nationalism.