No, Not Trump, Not Ever

[Straw Man]

A Republican who actually gets it (and weird synchronicity, mentions the same thing I said in an earlier post today)

No, Not Trump, Not Ever
David Brooks MARCH 18, 2016


The voters have spoken.

In convincing fashion, Republican voters seem to be selecting Donald Trump as their nominee. And in a democracy, victory has legitimacy to it. Voters are rarely wise but are usually sensible. They understand their own problems. And so deference is generally paid to the candidate who wins.

And deference is being paid. Gov. Rick Scott of Florida is urging Republicans to coalesce around Trump. Pundits are coming out with their “What We Can Learn” commentaries. Those commentaries are built on a hidden respect for the outcome, that this is a rejection of a Republicanism that wasn’t working and it points in some better direction.

The question is: Should deference be paid to this victor? Should we bow down to the judgment of these voters?

Well, some respect is in order. Trump voters are a coalition of the dispossessed. They have suffered lost jobs, lost wages, lost dreams. The American system is not working for them, so naturally they are looking for something else.

Moreover, many in the media, especially me, did not understand how they would express their alienation. We expected Trump to fizzle because we were not socially intermingled with his supporters and did not listen carefully enough. For me, it’s a lesson that I have to change the way I do my job if I’m going to report accurately on this country.

And yet reality is reality.

Donald Trump is epically unprepared to be president. He has no realistic policies, no advisers, no capacity to learn. His vast narcissism makes him a closed fortress. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and he’s uninterested in finding out. He insults the office Abraham Lincoln once occupied by running for it with less preparation than most of us would undertake to buy a sofa.

Trump is perhaps the most dishonest person to run for high office in our lifetimes. All politicians stretch the truth, but Trump has a steady obliviousness to accuracy.

This week, the Politico reporters Daniel Lippman, Darren Samuelsohn and Isaac Arnsdorf fact-checked 4.6 hours of Trump speeches and press conferences. They found more than five dozen untrue statements, or one every five minutes.

“His remarks represent an extraordinary mix of inaccurate claims about domestic and foreign policy and personal and professional boasts that rarely measure up when checked against primary sources,” they wrote.

He is a childish man running for a job that requires maturity. He is an insecure boasting little boy whose desires were somehow arrested at age 12. He surrounds himself with sycophants. “You can always tell when the king is here,” Trump’s butler told Jason Horowitz in a recent Times profile. He brags incessantly about his alleged prowess, like how far he can hit a golf ball. “Do I hit it long? Is Trump strong?” he asks.

In some rare cases, political victors do not deserve our respect. George Wallace won elections, but to endorse those outcomes would be a moral failure.

And so it is with Trump.

History is a long record of men like him temporarily rising, stretching back to biblical times. Psalm 73 describes them: “Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence. … They scoff, and speak with malice; with arrogance they threaten oppression. Their mouths lay claim to heaven, and their tongues take possession of the earth. Therefore their people turn to them and drink up waters in abundance.”

And yet their success is fragile: “Surely you place them on slippery ground; you cast them down to ruin. How suddenly they are destroyed.”

The psalmist reminds us that the proper thing to do in the face of demagogy is to go the other way — to make an extra effort to put on decency, graciousness, patience and humility, to seek a purity of heart that is stable and everlasting.

The Republicans who coalesce around Trump are making a political error. They are selling their integrity for a candidate who will probably lose. About 60 percent of Americans disapprove of him, and that number has been steady since he began his campaign.

Worse, there are certain standards more important than one year’s election. There are certain codes that if you betray them, you suffer something much worse than a political defeat.

Donald Trump is an affront to basic standards of honesty, virtue and citizenship. He pollutes the atmosphere in which our children are raised. He has already shredded the unspoken rules of political civility that make conversation possible. In his savage regime, public life is just a dog-eat-dog war of all against all.

As the founders would have understood, he is a threat to the long and glorious experiment of American self-government. He is precisely the kind of scapegoating, promise-making, fear-driving and deceiving demagogue they feared.

Trump’s supporters deserve respect. They are left out of this economy. But Trump himself? No, not Trump, not ever.

http://nyti.ms/1XzyN39

[TheShape.]

You can tell an establishment cuck wrote that article. Our system is working really well right now isn't it?

[Straw Man]

You can tell an establishment cuck wrote that article. Our system is working really well right now isn't it?

Actually, an "establishment cuck" person would support Trump

Who cares about personal standards or values and who cares about the country

loyalty to the party above all else, even one's own integrity

right?

[SOMEPARTS]

GOP should have done something months ago. I don't see how you just get rid of your front runner that is bringing new voters into the party. Be smart enough to bargain and utilize that at least. Not doing so makes the active party line voting base even smaller, as has been happening since Bush. They want to claim the party makes the rules but the strongest voice in the party is a guy they are trying to get rid of. Weird times.

[AbrahamG]

Donald Trump says some very vile things.  I don't believe that he believes half of what he spews.  God forbid he becomes president, but I think he'd be a center or slightly center right politician.  Ted Cruz?  Flat out scary thought.  If that fuck had control of both houses, god only knows how many wars we'd be in (to instigate end times) not too mention the calamity that would be bestowed upon the poorest among us.

[Necrosis]

Donald Trump says some very vile things.  I don't believe that he believes half of what he spews.  God forbid he becomes president, but I think he'd be a center or slightly center right politician.  Ted Cruz?  Flat out scary thought.  If that fuck had control of both houses, god only knows how many wars we'd be in (to instigate end times) not too mention the calamity that would be bestowed upon the poorest among us.

But he is a moron, the things that come out of his mouth are dumb. The US is becoming a laughing stock.

[AbrahamG]

But he is a moron, the things that come out of his mouth are dumb. The US is becoming a laughing stock.

They all are.  That entire party is the laughing stock of the world.  Hopefully, the Donald will bring about the GOP demise.  They all act like they are appalled by what he says.  The truth is they pretty much
agree with all his retarded, nonsensical positions but do not have the balls/nerve to say it as openly as he does. 

[Primemuscle]

They all are.  That entire party is the laughing stock of the world.  Hopefully, the Donald will bring about the GOP demise.  They all act like they are appalled by what he says.  The truth is they pretty much
agree with all his retarded, nonsensical positions but do not have the balls/nerve to say it as openly as he does. 

I am a Democrat. I don't want the GOP destroyed. If Trump tarnishes the party a little, that is enough. In my opinion, this country needs at least two parties. I've everyone agreed....absolute corruption would result. There has to be challenges to keep things on an even flow.

[AbrahamG]

I am a Democrat. I don't want the GOP destroyed. If Trump tarnishes the party a little, that is enough. In my opinion, this country needs at least two parties. I've everyone agreed....absolute corruption would result. There has to be challenges to keep things on an even flow.

The GOP needs to be destroyed and something else needs to fill the void.  We have government for a reason.  To govern.  The GOP has zero interest in governing.  They are anti-government.  Maybe that will change after President Chocolate leaves office, but I kind of doubt it.  They will fuck with Hillary almost as much as they did Obama.  The party has been tarnished for decades.  It's just getting repressively worse.  I am aLiberal who has no choice but to vote democrat. 

[240 is Back]

there have been 2 republican parties since 2010.

the tea party and the RINOs. 

[Pray_4_War]

Can't wait to see liberal heads explode when this asshole wins the Presidency.

I'm not voting for him, but the chaos is going to be amusing.

A vote for Hitlery Cuntin is a vote for corruption.  Fuck her and anyone who supports her.