Paul Krugman is Correct About Trump and the Rest of the GOP Field. The Know-Nothings Have Made a Comeback

Update, Aug. 11th: Those who thought Trump would implode after bullying everyone at the GOP debate and blowing lots of noisy hot air out of his.. orifices, new polls indicate the opposite, because, heck, the conservative base likes what Trump represents. The GOP leadership want to hide this ugly reality from the rest of America.

In the first contest state, Iowa, according to the latest poll, Trump leads the field at 19%, followed by Ben (who?) Carson at 12%.  In the second state contest and first primary, in New Hampshire, Trump jumped up by 7% to 32% [New Hampshire poll] after the debate. The second choice, Jeb Bush, dropped to 11%.

I think it's time for this blog to endorse Donald Trump for the Republican Party's nomination in 2016. I think Sarah Palin would be a great VP on the ticket with him. What? She's not running? OK, let's keep our eyes & ears open on this.....

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Another excellent editorial by Paul K; it's worth reading it in its entirety. (see below)

The GOP strategists and party leaders aren't happy with the Donald because he's damaging and already damaged party with the mainstream (centrists and independents) voters. But, what Trump represents is the basis of the activist part of the Republican party. He's expressing views that, although deeply-held in GOP's heart, are not usually expressed when Republicans are seeking mainstream votes.  Don't believe me? Just read the national and state Republican parties' platforms. There, you find many abhorrent views that fly well with the conservative base but are sunk in the waters of where the rest of the country lives!

I often wonder how it's possible two people to see something in front of their eyes and form totally different conclusions. If it's about factual findings, then, I had believed, it'd be a simple matter of using logic and evidence to ascertain the facts. But, in reality this rarely happens, especially when something is deemed important by the individual!  People are greatly influenced by culture (including religion), ideology, and a personal sense of a comfort zone. The ideological part can numb the mind and make someone lazy to chew up and digest information. Conformity was rewarded. Venturing outside the comfort zone--into the discomfort of realizing you've made a mistake--wasn't/isn't desired either.

But, I think it may be a personality trait on how to approach life. Being a conservative is natural, or at least it's how the vast majority of humans lived and experienced their lives. Captured by culture and in time. Very few ventured outside the norm. It can be argued that such approach made sense too. At the very least, blaze makers were not rewarded but they were rather persecuted, tortured, and killed. Group think was the norm. Of course there were divisions and big conflicts. Recently, I've been pouring over the religious conflicts after the Protestant Reformation. Yes, Martin Luther, Kalvin, and others brought about tremendous change, but much of it--and it took many generations to be evident--was unintended. The bloody religious wars pitted one religious faction against another, but in essence all sides hadn't been that radical--as they all held different versions of the same flawed illusion of a divine creator who insisted upon how we dress, what we eat, how we screw, how we kill our enemies, etc.

Now, how is it that most of us think Trump is someone who uses empty (though appealing) rhetoric. He said he didn't prepare for the first GOP debate last week. I believe him, because he doesn't have to be specific as long as he appears to know and uses generalities specifically addressing the concerns of the conservative base. Instead of responding to Megyn Kelly's question about his paleolithic views on women, he responds by personally attacking her and ..Rosie O'Donnell. That debate broke all viewership records for such debates other than presidential ones. Trump was tramp. The GOP leadership may not want him but if the activist base--those who show up during the Republican primary selection process--this is exciting.

The 2016 election, was supposed to be a showcase of the "new" Republican party. There's no incumbent running this time, so both parties have a chance to re-define themselves by showcasing their candidates. They're indeed doing so....

 Paul Krugman's editorial [link] in its entirety

This was, according to many commentators, going to be the election cycle Republicans got to show off their “deep bench.” The race for the nomination would include experienced governors like Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, fresh thinkers like Rand Paul, and attractive new players like Marco Rubio. Instead, however, Donald Trump leads the field by a wide margin. What happened?

The answer, according to many of those who didn’t see it coming, is gullibility: People can’t tell the difference between someone who sounds as if he knows what he’s talking about and someone who is actually serious about the issues. And for sure there’s a lot of gullibility out there. But if you ask me, the pundits have been at least as gullible as the public, and still are.

For while it’s true that Mr. Trump is, fundamentally, an absurd figure, so are his rivals. If you pay attention to what any one of them is actually saying, as opposed to how he says it, you discover incoherence and extremism every bit as bad as anything Mr. Trump has to offer. And that’s not an accident: Talking nonsense is what you have to do to get anywhere in today’s Republican Party.

For example, Mr. Trump’s economic views, a sort of mishmash of standard conservative talking points and protectionism, are definitely confused. But is that any worse than Jeb Bush’s deep voodoo, his claim that he could double the underlying growth rate of the American economy? And Mr. Bush’s credibility isn’t helped by his evidence for that claim: the relatively rapid growth Florida experienced during the immense housing bubble that coincided with his time as governor.

Mr. Trump, famously, is a “birther” — someone who has questioned whether President Obama was born in the United States. But is that any worse than Scott Walker’s declaration that he isn’t sure whether the president is a Christian?

Mr. Trump’s declared intention to deport all illegal immigrants is definitely extreme, and would require deep violations of civil liberties. But are there any defenders of civil liberties in the modern G.O.P.? Notice how eagerly Rand Paul, self-described libertarian, has joined in the witch hunt against Planned Parenthood.

And while Mr. Trump is definitely appealing to know-nothingism, Marco Rubio, climate change denier, has made “I’m not a scientist” his signature line. (Memo to Mr. Rubio: Presidents don’t have to be experts on everything, but they do need to listen to experts, and decide which ones to believe.)

The point is that while media puff pieces have portrayed Mr. Trump’s rivals as serious men — Jeb the moderate, Rand the original thinker, Marco the face of a new generation — their supposed seriousness is all surface. Judge them by positions as opposed to image, and what you have is a lineup of cranks. And as I said, this is no accident.

It has long been obvious that the conventions of political reporting and political commentary make it almost impossible to say the obvious — namely, that one of our two major parties has gone off the deep end. Or as the political analysts Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein put it in their book “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,” the G.O.P. has become an “insurgent outlier … un-persuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science.” It’s a party that has no room for rational positions on many major issues.

Or to put it another way, modern Republican politicians can’t be serious — not if they want to win primaries and have any future within the party. Crank economics, crank science, crank foreign policy are all necessary parts of a candidate’s resume.

Until now, however, leading Republicans have generally tried to preserve a façade of respectability, helping the news media to maintain the pretense that it was dealing with a normal political party. What distinguishes Mr. Trump is not so much his positions as it is his lack of interest in maintaining appearances. And it turns out that the party’s base, which demands extremist positions, also prefers those positions delivered straight. Why is anyone surprised?

Remember how Mr. Trump was supposed to implode after his attack on John McCain? Mr. McCain epitomizes the strategy of sounding moderate while taking extreme positions, and is much loved by the press corps, which puts him on TV all the time. But Republican voters, it turns out, couldn’t care less about him.

Can Mr. Trump actually win the nomination? I have no idea. But even if he is eventually pushed aside, pay no attention to all the analyses you will read declaring a return to normal politics. That’s not going to happen; normal politics left the G.O.P. a long time ago. At most, we’ll see a return to normal hypocrisy, the kind that cloaks radical policies and contempt for evidence in conventional-sounding rhetoric. And that won’t be an improvement.

Summer Politics Worth of Staycation Laze

Let's talk politics before this summer is over and the dynamic changes after Labor Day and the two parties' nominating conventions. So, here are a few things: the nominating show, the economy, the problem with the base of the GOP, and looking into the magic bowl while chewing coca leaves... (or, something like that).

Invite or not Sarah Palin to speak at the GOP convention?

The Repubs are having their show in a couple weeks and Romney has vowed to pick his VP before then. The first rule is do-no-harm. The VP choice rarely adds anything to the ticket but it can be a drag as Sarah Palin demonstrated. At best, in an evenly matched prez field the VP can add a slight margin in his state (if it's competitive; Alaska wasn't in 2008, which was another mistake by McCain), and may add a very few more votes in a couple other states.


Here's the problem with Romney and the GOP: They are out of the mainstream. Most of their main policy proposals--as articulated on the state level, in Congress, and their affiliated tea parties--are not in line with the vast majority of Americans. Worse, if these policies and social issues stands are further explained to the public, their approval drops even lower. Worst, is that the country is moving away from them.

Romney was/is (?) a moderate, or someone who's a businessman and cares little about the social issues that don't affect his wealthy class. Yet, he wants to be president but unfortunately for him (and many other centrist Repubs) he has to go through a very conservative activist base. So, he flips-flops. He was for gun control, same-sex rights, choice, mandated health coverage, etc. He now had to denounce those views to be viable in today's GOP. 

The Chick-fil-A gay bashing issue is indicative of Romney's impossible conundrum. He avoided taking a position (as he has on many other social issues), because he can't have it both ways--he can't alienate the American public nor he can afford to turn away his activist but very conservative base. However, that inane leader of the Catholic League Donohue--who reflects the views of may social conservatives regardless of their particular denomination--has said that they're pondering sitting this election out, because they fear is confirmed they cannot trust Romney to be a social conservative!

Elections are decided on turnout to a great extend and it doesn't look good for Romney right now. Even as a known quality, even after having a Dem prez in office, Mittens was receiving fewer votes in the competitive primaries earlier this year than 4 years ago when he was losing to Mac! One might have expected a higher mobilization wave against the "Muslim Kenyan" in the Oval Office, but it's either because Anti-Christ's hold of the executive doesn't seem as too threatening or that Obama's centrist style is acceptable to most voters. Barry Hussein seems to have a much higher "likeability" index than Mittens!

As for the economy, people are pessimistic--they've been hurting since 2008--but not quite blaming Obama for the entirety of the misery. They don't see a good alternative in Mittens either. So, I suppose O's positives will hover around 50%, good enough for reelection, barring any major disaster before November.

It's often said that Americans don't really pay attention to politics in the summer. Maybe the don't follow the details {do they other times?} but impressions still are being formed about the major candidates. Two issues that aren't going away is how R made money at Bain Capital and his tax returns. The latter creates the impression that he's out of touch, that he's hiding something by not releasing older tax records. I think this is a case of double damnation--releasing the records or not.   

Even if Harry Reid--who claimed that a former Mitt associate said R didn't pay any taxes for 10 years--is wrong, I assume that most Americans wouldn't like it that a multi-millionaire pays half the rate most of us do. Yes, it's an issue with me as well. I'm in the so-called middle class and my tax rates are twice as Romney's 12.99% of his last tax return! I don't care how he gets his income. Well, actually I work hard while he collects dividends and interest from his vast fortunes. There's something seriously wrong with this picture.

And, the Repubs want to keep the Bush tax cuts for the very wealthy, which is another point the Dems must keep reminding everyone. Even billionaire Warren Buffet [clearly a ..traitor to his class] said that the rich always ask for more money so they can spend more and thus create more jobs! Obviously a ridiculous claim but one adopted by the GOP that wants to convince us the trickle down effect is rain and not the wealthy pissing on us.