Trump Alone at the Top

[Magox]

 

Ever heard of Mark Levin or Dana Lash? Go ahead and tell me how they're Trump supporters. Please - I'd be fascinated to hear it.

 

And with regard to Cruz - he's smarmy. He's self-righteous. He's annoying. He's also very solidly TEA party conservative. I was pleased to see that he at least managed to come in 2nd to Trump. BUT - he came in 2nd. Don't like it? Blame republicans, not Trump. The majority of the people who have always sided with you, think that the people you support are bullsh!t. They are correct. They suck, and they have a record that proves it. "We can't pass anything unless we have the house" - well, we gave them the house. "Oh, we can't do anything unless we gain the senate" - we give them the senate, and only ONE republican tries to stop Obamacare via a filibuster - Cruz. How does the party react? They do everything they can to marginalize him. That was enough for me - screw the republicans, and screw everyone who sympathizes with them.

 

I'll say it again - you're a republican and you don't like Trump? Well, you're not alone. The fact of the matter is that if you're one of those that's been supporting the republican establishment for the last 8 to 16 years, and want more of the same.....thank you very much for what you've done to the party, because there's a hell of a lot of folks out there that think you're as much a part of the problem as Hillary Clinton is.

 

I agree with them. I don't like Trump, but people like me aren't the ones that handed him the nomination. You are.

 

Mark Levin supported Trump on a host of issues and gave plenty of cover to him when it most mattered which was during the infancy of his campaign. Levin is the epitome of a talk radio huckster and the only reason why he began going after Trump was because Cruz and Trump began getting into it.

 

In regards to being GOP leadership's fault, we've already discussed this ad nauseum, anyone who has a lick of sense understands that the government shutdown was never ever ever going to work. Just about everyone who personally knows Ted Cruz understands that he did it only for himself and his ambitions to be the nominee.

 

Grover Norquist, the influential anti-tax activist, likened Cruz’s strategy to a plotline in the satirical animated show “South Park,” in which a group of gnomes comes up with a brilliant plan to become rich.

“Step 1 is: Steal all the underwear in South Park. Step 2 is:Mumumumbumbumbum,” Nor­quist said, making a nonsense sound. “And Step 3 is: Make a million dollars. And this [plan] reminded me of that episode.”

 

 

 

How about Tom Coburn?

 

Many suspect that he always knew his plan would fail but went ahead with it anyway — expecting that he would personally benefit from the exposure, even if his party lost a damaging fight.

“He knew that. He knew it. He knew it,” former senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said. “It wasn’t about the shutdown. It wasn’t about the Affordable Care Act. It was about launching Ted Cruz.”

 

There isn't a more sincere solid conservative than Tom Coburn. It was a farce.

 

How about Jeff Sessions:

 

As the internal GOP debates grew increasingly testy over the course September, more and more Senate conservatives began to lose their taste for an Obamacare confrontation on the spending legislation. Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions joined Cruz for part of his 21-hour stem-winder on the Senate floor September 24, but he tells Newsweek he didn’t think tying the defund effort to the government spending bill would work.

“I did not believe it was a great strategy and was not an enthusiastic proponent of the strategy,” says Sessions

 

 

Do you want me to bring up all the times Cruz has shown himself to be a political opportunist? I'm not talking about on a few occasions but a consistent clear pattern of political expediency. Sure, you can say "They all are". To a degree the vast majority of politicians who have ambitions for reaching higher office do, but Cruz's is on another level and for someone who sells himself as the real deal, it wreaks of anything but the real deal.

 

Azalin, he didn't do this for you, not for the American people but he did it to build up his cred among the media hucksters and the most conservative of voters who bought into this.

 

Think about it for a minute, we had 45 senators at the time which means we would have had to flip 15 democratic senators to break the filibuster. If you really believe there was an inkling of a chance of that happening then we really can't go further with this discussion.

 

Not to mention that we had a president who would never even come close to considering signing off on doing away with his Signature "accomplishment".

 

You have personal testimonials of people that know Cruz that state on the record that he knew this wasn't going to work and even if you don't want to accept that, all you have to do is use common sense.

 

People have unrealistic expectations and to be honest truly do not understand the basic concept of the separation of powers. Obama won, had the house and Senate and then passed Obamacare after the Scott Brown elections with some procedural chicanery using the reconciliation process which was legal. Do you want to dispute the legality of that? Fine, so let the courts hash it out, which they did.

 

This argument that "we elect the house the senate and nothing gets done to stop Obama" is simply not rooted in reality. What has Obama been able to pass through the house and senate since the GOP has taken the Senate or for that matter house? This is what happens in divided government, there is a check on each opposing parties agenda. The only things that Obama has been able to do is pass executive orders, which we know or at least we should know that there isn't much the opposing party can do other than somehow try to mount a legal challenge to some of those executive orders which is what is being done.

 

Some people say, "we have the power of the purse", well.....Not exactly. Yes, Congress can limit the total amount of money that is to be dispersed but there are many ways the executive branch can distribute those funds.

What the endgame look like? Step 1: Shutdown the government Step 2: ???? Step 3: Obama backs down?

 

That will never happen.

 

The House and Senate best hopes of being able to reverse Obama's Obamacare and executive actions is through the presidency and maintaining the Senate and House. That's how it needs to be done, not through self-aggrandizing attempts to sell die hards a bill of goods.

 

I have very little respect for Ted Cruz, I believe him to be a part of the problem.

 

However, I mostly blame the media hucksters for this debacle. They've proven themselves to be interested in mostly one thing and that is ratings and $$$$. All they have to do is capture a small segment of the Conservative movement and with that they make bank. In order to do that all they have to do is continuously perpetuate the myth that the "establishment" let them down by not being able to stop Obama by feeding them continuous gobs of misinformation. Ted Cruz recognized this and seized upon it and almost won the nomination because of it. Unfortunately for him, Trump was able to sell an even more repugnant yet effective bill of goods to GOP primary voters.

 

Also, LA Bills, you say that not much has been done because of these elections, I wholeheartedly disagree. Not just for the reasons that I had mentioned but look at all the successful reforms that Governors and local/state officials have been able to implement over the past few years. The reforms on taxations, reducing the stranglehold of unions and other measures have been very significant and you can thank that to those elections that were won.

Edited June 22, 2016 by Magox

[Observer]

 

Cruz is hated by nearly every member of Senate & House because he has zero personal skills. There are many brilliantly smart people out there who should be nowhere near running a lemonade stand, let alone the US. Cruz is not a leader of men, he cannot rally his subordinates or gain allies to accomplish his goals. He's missing that major trait that is critical to being an effective executive. The Senate hates him because everything he's done was for self serving reasons and had zero probability of getting accomplished. By its nature, Congress was designed to function as a web of alliances because it's impossible for Senators of the 57 states and representatives of the hundreds of individual districts to be aligned on any topic.

 

If Cruz is as smart as you give him credit for, he should have been well aware that his 1% voting power in the Senate is meaningless. If he truly cared about affecting change, he needed to do more to build support for his platforms. But instead, he grandstanded for publicity. He was also unable to make a broader case for his presidential bid, outside his core evangelical support and got trounced in the key swing states.

 

This is also where the talk radio guys had a hand, by setting up unreasonable expectations and propping up Cruz's one man stand as a plausible game plan as opposed to a publicity stunt. Cruz's actions are like Russ Brandon signing Terrell Owens. Grab a headline for a week, get attention on SportsCenter, and fluff over the fact that Dick Jauron is your coach and Trentative is your QB.

 

Cruz is a hardline idealist of his own idealogical mold, which garners a certain following but doesn't get anything done. Possessing zero personal and leadership skills makes him as Boehner said, "a miserable SOB."

Edited June 22, 2016 by Observer

[IDBillzFan]

and in that way, you won't waste your vote. hmmm....

 

And in that way, I'm my own person with my own choices.

 

There is no world where I would expect you to even remotely understand that.

 

Go Hillary! Fighting for Us! ( And by Us, she means the Clinton Foundation!)

[birdog1960]

 

And in that way, I'm my own person with my own choices.

 

There is no world where I would expect you to even remotely understand that.

 

Go Hillary! Fighting for Us! ( And by Us, she means the Clinton Foundation!)

no, I understand. I've seen the play:

 

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=don+quixote+youtube+to+dream&view=detail&mid=3F2ADDC628EE74D67AE93F2ADDC628EE74D67AE9&FORM=VIRE

[FireChan]

no, dummy. a vote for someone with zero chance of ever winning the presidency is a wasted vote.

What?

 

This is horrible, cynical take out of you.

[Azalin]

 

Mark Levin supported Trump on a host of issues and gave plenty of cover to him when it most mattered which was during the infancy of his campaign. Levin is the epitome of a talk radio huckster and the only reason why he began going after Trump was because Cruz and Trump began getting into it.

 

In regards to being GOP leadership's fault, we've already discussed this ad nauseum, anyone who has a lick of sense understands that the government shutdown was never ever ever going to work. Just about everyone who personally knows Ted Cruz understands that he did it only for himself and his ambitions to be the nominee.

 

 

 

How about Tom Coburn?

 

There isn't a more sincere solid conservative than Tom Coburn. It was a farce.

 

How about Jeff Sessions:

 

 

Do you want me to bring up all the times Cruz has shown himself to be a political opportunist? I'm not talking about on a few occasions but a consistent clear pattern of political expediency. Sure, you can say "They all are". To a degree the vast majority of politicians who have ambitions for reaching higher office do, but Cruz's is on another level and for someone who sells himself as the real deal, it wreaks of anything but the real deal.

 

Azalin, he didn't do this for you, not for the American people but he did it to build up his cred among the media hucksters and the most conservative of voters who bought into this.

 

Think about it for a minute, we had 45 senators at the time which means we would have had to flip 15 democratic senators to break the filibuster. If you really believe there was an inkling of a chance of that happening then we really can't go further with this discussion.

 

Not to mention that we had a president who would never even come close to considering signing off on doing away with his Signature "accomplishment".

 

You have personal testimonials of people that know Cruz that state on the record that he knew this wasn't going to work and even if you don't want to accept that, all you have to do is use common sense.

 

People have unrealistic expectations and to be honest truly do not understand the basic concept of the separation of powers. Obama won, had the house and Senate and then passed Obamacare after the Scott Brown elections with some procedural chicanery using the reconciliation process which was legal. Do you want to dispute the legality of that? Fine, so let the courts hash it out, which they did.

 

This argument that "we elect the house the senate and nothing gets done to stop Obama" is simply not rooted in reality. What has Obama been able to pass through the house and senate since the GOP has taken the Senate or for that matter house? This is what happens in divided government, there is a check on each opposing parties agenda. The only things that Obama has been able to do is pass executive orders, which we know or at least we should know that there isn't much the opposing party can do other than somehow try to mount a legal challenge to some of those executive orders which is what is being done.

 

Some people say, "we have the power of the purse", well.....Not exactly. Yes, Congress can limit the total amount of money that is to be dispersed but there are many ways the executive branch can distribute those funds.

What the endgame look like? Step 1: Shutdown the government Step 2: ???? Step 3: Obama backs down?

 

That will never happen.

 

The House and Senate best hopes of being able to reverse Obama's Obamacare and executive actions is through the presidency and maintaining the Senate and House. That's how it needs to be done, not through self-aggrandizing attempts to sell die hards a bill of goods.

 

I have very little respect for Ted Cruz, I believe him to be a part of the problem.

 

However, I mostly blame the media hucksters for this debacle. They've proven themselves to be interested in mostly one thing and that is ratings and $$$$. All they have to do is capture a small segment of the Conservative movement and with that they make bank. In order to do that all they have to do is continuously perpetuate the myth that the "establishment" let them down by not being able to stop Obama by feeding them continuous gobs of misinformation. Ted Cruz recognized this and seized upon it and almost won the nomination because of it. Unfortunately for him, Trump was able to sell an even more repugnant yet effective bill of goods to GOP primary voters.

 

Also, LA Bills, you say that not much has been done because of these elections, I wholeheartedly disagree. Not just for the reasons that I had mentioned but look at all the successful reforms that Governors and local/state officials have been able to implement over the past few years. The reforms on taxations, reducing the stranglehold of unions and other measures have been very significant and you can thank that to those elections that were won.

 

I've apparently given you the impression that I like Ted Cruz despite that I began my first paragraph with "And with regard to Cruz - he's smarmy. He's self-righteous. He's annoying." I don't like him, but I view Cruz as being preferential to many others in the party. Like Trump, for example.

 

We're just going to disagree with regard to "media hucksters" being responsible for Trump's ascendancy, except for the major news networks. They latched onto Trump and gave him lots of exposure because of his celebrity, not because they actually supported him. Conservative talk radio is a completely different critter though - they don't ever have to convince their listeners of anything. Listeners already agree with them, and they listen in order to have their beliefs reenforced. The only thing most of those listeners learn is talking point details that they can repeat later in conversation. People like you, LA, GG, Tom, etc are way smarter than that, and I know none of you have formed your beliefs from that segment of the media.

 

Trump's ascendancy is a result of the popular culture - a wealthy, powerful businessman whose name was already a household word before he became a reality television star. I believe that like so many others before him, his desire to seek high office is ego-driven, but I also believe that if he has the right cabinet and advisors - and he actually listens to them - that he'd be a lot better a president than Hillary Clinton would be.

[meazza]

 

And in that way, I'm my own person with my own choices.

 

There is no world where I would expect you to even remotely understand that.

 

Go Hillary! Fighting for Us! ( And by Us, she means the Clinton Foundation!)

 

And that's what people don't get. Not voting for what is available is a vote.

[birdog1960]

What?

 

This is horrible, cynical take out of you.

perhaps. still it's always nice to have an excuse to see Sophia loren in her prime.

[4merper4mer]

 

I've apparently given you the impression that I like Ted Cruz despite that I began my first paragraph with "And with regard to Cruz - he's smarmy. He's self-righteous. He's annoying." I don't like him,

 

 

If he ran for 2nd grade student council he would certainly lose. Adults are supposed to be the ones voting for POTUS. This year's election is another popularity contest not altogether different than Billy versus Emily in the 2nd grade. Emily is popular because she tells everyone she is while talking behind everyone's backs and doing far worse. Billy is cocky and likes to brag. This kind of stuff plays. George, who is 400 times more understanding of what made the 2nd grade the success it has become has a big nose so he can't even run.

[Deranged Rhino]

They gave him early legitimacy because it was self serving to do so. I keep hearing that if trump is elected, the press will wake up and keep him in check. Well, where have they been over the last year?

 

 

All these radio channels are owned by the same people. People who want Hillary. So, they've been doing what they're paid to do.

 

What?

 

This is horrible, cynical take out of you.

 

Of course it is. It's almost as shortsighted and silly as someone comparing spleen surgery to shoulder surgery.

 

A brilliant mind, Bird is not.

[Azalin]

 

 

If he ran for 2nd grade student council he would certainly lose. Adults are supposed to be the ones voting for POTUS. This year's election is another popularity contest not altogether different than Billy versus Emily in the 2nd grade. Emily is popular because she tells everyone she is while talking behind everyone's backs and doing far worse. Billy is cocky and likes to brag. This kind of stuff plays. George, who is 400 times more understanding of what made the 2nd grade the success it has become has a big nose so he can't even run.

 

And that pretty much sums up how Kennedy beat Nixon in 1960.

[FireChan]

perhaps. still it's always nice to have an excuse to see Sophia loren in her prime.

Perhaps?

 

You, without a shred of self-awareness, just said its no use voting with your conscience, morals or ideals if that candidate can't win. You, an admitted Bernie supporter because of his conscience, morals and ideals.

 

In short, you're a !@#$ing moron. Bernie would think you're the problem with America. Think about that.

Edited June 22, 2016 by FireChan

[B-Man]

[birdog1960]

Perhaps?

 

You, without a shred of self-awareness, just said its no use voting with your conscience, morals or ideals if that candidate can't win. You, an admitted Bernie supporter because of his conscience, morals and ideals.

 

In short, you're a !@#$ing moron. Bernie would think you're the problem with America. Think about that.

I didn't sat that at all. I said that voting for someone that will never have a chance to win the presidency is wasting your vote. Bernie had a chance. I voted for him. now he doesn't. I won't be voting for him.

 

I don't believe he would see any contradiction in any of this.

 

voting conscience, morals and ideas are fine if there is some possible benefit (other than self congratulation). in bernie's case, if he were 8 years younger he might have a chance after hillary's run. walker has absolutely no chance. ever. unless...far right wingers start having babies at an unprecedented rate. even then it would be a long shot and would be 20+ years down the road.

Edited June 22, 2016 by birdog1960

[FireChan]

I didn't sat that at all. I said that voting for someone that will never have a chance to win the presidency is wasting your vote. Bernie had a chance. I voted for him. now he doesn't. I won't be voting for him.

 

I don't believe he would see any contradiction in any of this.

 

voting conscience, morals and ideas are fine if there is some possible benefit (other than self congratulation). in bernie's case, if he were 8 years younger he might have a chance after hillary's run. walker has absolutely no chance. ever. unless...far right wingers start having babies at an unprecedented rate. even then it would be a long shot and would be 20+ years down the road.

Huh? Bernie's been portraying himself as the overlooked underdog his whole campaign. He was the one playing off of "the government thinks I don't have a shot."

 

Yeah, a man of principles like Bernie would support you voting for someone you find morally reprehensible because they are the only one "with a chance to win." That's how idealistc, conscientious and moral men behave. Sure thing birddog. That's why he's packed up the whole campaign right?

Edited June 22, 2016 by FireChan

[Deranged Rhino]

 

voting conscience, morals and ideas are fine if there is some possible benefit (other than self congratulation).

That's literally the opposite of being principled.

 

Not surprising you wouldn't comprehend the difference when you can't fathom the differences between a spleen surgery and a shoulder surgery. Which would be an alarming gaffe for most adults, but is down right idiotic for an alleged doctor to make.

[DC Tom]

 

It's not "entitlement." It's the "divine right of kings."

[birdog1960]

Huh? Bernie's been portraying himself as the overlooked underdog his whole campaign. He was the one playing off of "the government thinks I don't have a shot."

 

Yeah, a man of principles like Bernie would support you voting for someone you find morally reprehensible because they are the only one "with a chance to win." That's how idealistc, conscientious and moral men behave. Sure thing birddog. That's why he's packed up the whole campaign right?

yes, he really was an underdog. and he made a really good run. I think he'd have won California if the press didn't already anoint Hillary the winner the night before. but he has no realistic path to the prez now. if I were a superdelegate i'd give him my vote at the convention but i'm not and there won't be enough superdelegates willing to do that.

 

I think an argument can be made to vote for an outlier with no chance in the primaries just so he/she can get their message out; to be a gadfly. Bernie was certainly that and forced Hillary towards more liberal positions on many issues. in that way, it was a benefit to vote for him despite his losing. at this point, there is no more benefit to be had.

[Deranged Rhino]

 

It's not "entitlement." It's the "divine right of kings queens ."

yes, he really was an underdog. and he made a really good run. I think he'd have won California if the press didn't already anoint Hillary the winner the night before. but he has no realistic path to the prez now. if I were a superdelegate i'd give him my vote at the convention but i'm not and there won't be enough superdelegates willing to do that.

 

I think an argument can be made to vote for an outlier with no chance in the primaries just so he/she can get their message out; to be a gadfly. Bernie was certainly that and forced Hillary towards more liberal positions on many issues. in that way, it was a benefit to vote for him despite his losing. at this point, there is no more benefit to be had.

 

Got it. You only do things when there is a tangible benefit for yourself.

 

You should admit you're an unprincipled asshat and be done with it.

[birdog1960]

 

Got it. You only do things when there is a tangible benefit for yourself.

 

You should admit you're an unprincipled asshat and be done with it.

not to benefit me you fool. to benefit the country as a whole. if I were to vote based on who would most likely benefit me personally, i'd rarely if ever vote dem.