The Case for Trump...By Victor Davis Hanson

[Jazzhead]

Well, Guthrie was a self-described communist. He wasn't against fascism but a different brand of fascism.

Well, I'm an old Reagan-Kemp conservative who won't kiss the arse of a fascist.  And you?   

[endicom]

It depends on whether Ohio's expansion of Medicaid, financed with federal dollars, has on balance better served the Ohio citizenry,  as compared with the old system where the working poor,  without health insurance,  clogged hospital emergency rooms and saddled Ohio hospitals and taxpayers with the costs of uncompensated care. 

What say you, RAT?   Look at the costs of inaction, too.   Have you ever needed real emergency room care and had to wait your turn for hours and hours as uninsured folks use the emergency room for routine matters they now can go to a family doctor for?

Oops! We get a look behind the curtain.

[aligncare]

So is that how you defend crazy?

In nearly 40-years in the public eye Donald Trump has had hundreds, perhaps thousands of social interactions with friends, business associates, employees and representatives of media; hundreds of dinners, business meetings, golf dates, production meetings, face-to-face contacts. His name has been mentioned – as a example of business success – in scores of television shows, newspaper and magazine articles over the decades.

Yet, interestingly, not until Mr. Trump entered politics has anyone ever said this business tycoon was crazy. Not one. No one in Trump world has ever even hinted of any improper behavior by Mr. Trump, sexually or otherwise, that is until he ran for president. Notice a pattern here?

I guess what I'm saying is, I completely disagree with your characterization of Donald Trump as "crazy" and would even venture a guess that millions of others agree with me and not you.

*Just a side note. Melania Trump speaks with an Eastern European accent: She's fluent in 5 languages, including English, French, Serbian and German, in addition to her native Slovenian.

Yeah, Donald Trump is crazy. I should be so crazy.

[Longmire]

Says who has the Woody Guthrie avatar.

Kasick loving liberals are just one of the various brands of social justice warriors running around on this forum in various guises. 

[r9etb]

Yet, interestingly, not until Mr. Trump entered politics has anyone ever said this business tycoon was crazy. Not one. No one in Trump world has ever even hinted of any improper behavior by Mr. Trump, sexually or otherwise, that is until he ran for president. Notice a pattern here?

I can't say either way about whether he's been called "crazy" in the past, although his narcissism has been obvious all along.

On the other hand, Trump's improper behavior (gleefully acknowledged by Trump himself) has kept him in the public eye, Kardashian-like, for over 20 years.

My impressions of Trump were settled long before he entered this race.  It took no new effort at all for me to reject him.

[Jazzhead]

"We're from the government and we're here to help" is not the answer.

Thank you, Jazzhead, for your nice and substantive reply.  I do appreciate it.  I have no chance of agreeing with you about Kasich for all the reasons in the articles linked to in my previous post.  YOU, however, I enjoy.   

Thanks,  RAT, and right back atcha.   

Putting aside John Kasich,  what's your solution to the problem of the working poor without health insurance descending on emergency rooms?    It's long been assumed that getting folks care in the proper setting (e.g., on a proactive basis from a family doctor rather than on a reactive basis in an emergency room) will not only improve health outcomes but also save taxpayers money.   

[musiclady]

If they have to stoop to avatar wars, they've conceded the argument.

Or never had one in the first place......

If they only knew how much harm they do to the guy they're trolling for.

The idiocy of the "arguments" coming out of them makes rational people run even farther from Trump. 

[r9etb]

Putting aside John Kasich,  what's your solution to the problem of the working poor without health insurance descending on emergency rooms?    It's long been assumed that getting folks care in the proper setting (e.g., on a proactive basis from a family doctor rather than on a reactive basis in an emergency room) will not only improve health outcomes but also save taxpayers money.

I'd expand the question a bit, since I think there's a definite moral component to the issue.  To what extent are we, as a society, duty-bound to help those who don't have access to proper medical care?  I don't see that basic question as being discussed in terms of government programs, for or against.

[Jazzhead]

In nearly 40-years in the public eye Donald Trump has had hundreds, perhaps thousands of social interactions with friends, business associates, employees and representatives of media; hundreds of dinners, business meetings, golf dates, production meetings, face-to-face contacts. His name has been mentioned – as a example of business success – in scores of television shows, newspaper and magazine articles over the decades.

Yet, interestingly, not until Mr. Trump entered politics has anyone ever said this business tycoon was crazy. Not one. No one in Trump world has ever even hinted of any improper behavior by Mr. Trump, sexually or otherwise, that is until he ran for president. Notice a pattern here?

I guess what I'm saying is, I completely disagree with your characterization of Donald Trump as "crazy" and would even venture a guess that millions of others agree with me and not you.

Thanks for the response, AC.   I hope when this is all over fellow conservatives can mend fences and get on with the task of rebuilding the GOP and the conservative movement as viable alternative to liberalism.

I can see you sincerely believe that Trump is a good man; and that he may well be to his family and his employees.    But I've seen the evidence of his unfitness for the office of President (and, especially, Commander in Chief) with my own eyes and ears.    I don't judge Trump by what he did 11 years ago, or by what he said in jest on the Howard Stern show.    I judge him by how he's acted since he decided to run for President,  and it's his combination of paranoia, vindictiveness and megalomania that mark him as dangerous to trust his hand on the ship of state,  even as I concede everything you say about his career as a businessman.   

This election is winding down, thank the stars,  and soon we will both be left with picking up the pieces of Trump's landslide, perhaps historic, defeat.   Trump himself will do fine - like the businessman he's always been, he's prepared to monetize his political adventure.   But the rest of us will need to figure out how to unify to oppose the Democratic hegemony that Trump's erratic populism will impose on this nation.   

[catfish1957]

Two wrongs don't make a right.

[endicom]

Kasick loving liberals are just one of the various brands of social justice warriors running around on this forum in various guises.

How to explain someone like Jazzhead? Guthrie was a communist. Guthrie wasn't anti-fascist but against competing brands of fascism.

Communist regimes are proven to be racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic and the rest of the 'fascist' unpleasantries. So communists are what, alt-right?

Jazzhead, like Kasich, is for social welfare programs. Jazzhead claims to be a Reagan-Kemp conservative. So Jazzhead wants to rebuild the GOP. Rebuild it as what? A Reagan-Kemp social welfare party?

@Jazzhead

[HonestJohn]

Just a reminder: you're arguing with a guy who's arguing about your choice of avatar.

There are some real nutcases that come out over avatars.

Case in point:

http://www.gopbriefingroom.com/index.php/topic,228576.msg1087235.html#msg1087235

[Idaho_Cowboy]

That fits. My first thought was and and if wishes were horses...

[guitar4jesus]

There are some real nutcases that come out over avatars.

Case in point:

http://www.gopbriefingroom.com/index.php/topic,228576.msg1087235.html#msg1087235

[HonestJohn]

I can taste the rainbow!

[Jazzhead]

How to explain someone like Jazzhead? Guthrie was a communist. Guthrie wasn't anti-fascist but against competing brands of fascism.

Communist regimes are proven to be racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic and the rest of the 'fascist' unpleasantries. So communists are what, alt-right?

Jazzhead, like Kasich, is for social welfare programs. Jazzhead claims to be a Reagan-Kemp conservative. So Jazzhead wants to rebuild the GOP. Rebuild it as what? A Reagan-Kemp social welfare party?

@Jazzhead

I'm proud of the legacy of Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp.   That was a time before the selfishness of the TEA party and the nihilism of the alt-right Trumpsters, when conservative Republicans sought to utilize free-market principles to (horror of horrors!)  uplift the working poor and help folks help themselves.   Call me a commie-lover if you insist,  but my forty years of experience in the field of employee benefits convinces me of both the need to strengthen Social Security and to do something about the millions of uninsured Americans who must now depend on charity and emergency rooms to address their health care.   Yes,  ObamaCare is fundamentally flawed, but that doesn't mean I want to go back to the busted system we had before.

Do you know who has made out the best under ObamaCare?   Middle aged males, not yet eligible for Social Security,  who were laid off during the recent recession and have struggled to find work since.  That is,  the core Trump constituency -  quite willing to take advantage of government programs that benefit them even as they want "commie welfare" denied to anyone else. 

I am sick and tired of conservatism being associated with selfishness and arbitrary cruelty.   The solution isn't to eliminate welfare programs in favor of your vision of social Darwinism,  but rather to make them work better and more efficiently,  and to encourage socially responsible behavior.    For example,  block grant programs for the states to encourage innovation, not top-down micromanagement from Washington. 

Check out Paul Ryan's ideas for the next Congress.  THAT's the sort of conservative leadership I admire.    A Better Way    

[roamer_1]

VDH - "Nor is the election a choice even between four more years of liberalism and a return of conservatism; it’s an effort to halt the fundamental transformation of the country. A likely two-term Clinton presidency would complete a 16-year institutionalization of serial progressive abuse of the Constitution, outdoing even the twelve years of the imperial Roosevelt administration."

Yup.

NOPE.  It is no 'return to Conservatism'. Trump is a liberal, and always has been.
As a liberal, he will not halt a damn thing - He's FOR most of it.
AS for abuse of the Constitution, Trump happily and ignorantly ignores the Constitution all the time.

The entire argument is based upon hot air.

[roamer_1]

I can taste the rainbow!

 

[endicom]

That was a time before the selfishness of the TEA party...

Taxed Enough Already. That to you is selfishness?

...when conservative Republicans sought to utilize free-market principles to (horror of horrors!)  uplift the working poor and help folks help themselves.

This is bizarre. Free market principles are not 'utilized' but allowed to work.

Call me a commie-lover if you insist...

I call you confused.

...but my forty years of experience in the field of employee benefits convinces me of both the need to strengthen Social Security and to do something about the millions of uninsured Americans who must now depend on charity and emergency rooms to address their health care.   Yes,  ObamaCare is fundamentally flawed, but that doesn't mean I want to go back to the busted system we had before.

The health care system was busted by government programs. Those programs drove up the cost of health care which caused expansion of the programs which further drove up the cost of health care...

Do you know who has made out the best under ObamaCare?   Middle aged males, not yet eligible for Social Security,  who were laid off during the recent recession and have struggled to find work since.  That is,  the core Trump constituency -  quite willing to take advantage of government programs that benefit them even as they want "commie welfare" denied to anyone else.

The recession is not recent but ongoing. Government programs prevent the economy from rebounding.   

I am sick and tired of conservatism being associated with selfishness and arbitrary cruelty.   The solution isn't to eliminate welfare programs in favor of your vision of social Darwinism,  but rather to make them work better and more efficiently,  and to encourage socially responsible behavior.    For example,  block grant programs for the states to encourage innovation, not top-down micromanagement from Washington.

Social Darwinism? Selfishness and arbitrary cruelty? You're not conservative but a Social Democrat. 

Check out Paul Ryan's ideas for the next Congress.  THAT's the sort of conservative leadership I admire.    A Better Way

[Longmire]

How to explain someone like Jazzhead?

I grew up around lefties like this...they have a deep hatred for white America, and I learned to hate them right back.

[Major Confusion]

Two wrongs don't make a right.

But three lefts do!

 

[Jazzhead]

I grew up around lefties like this...they have a deep hatred for white America, and I learned to hate them right back.

So the racist underbelly of Trump's constituency is exposed for all to see. 

Sir,  you're no different than Al Sharpton, obsessed with tribalism and race-based grievance.

To me, the promise of America is that good character trumps skin color and tribal affiliation.       

[Longmire]

Sir,  you're no different than Al Sharpton, obsessed with tribalism and race-based grievance.
 

Sharpton has been an effective tool for the Democrat party, used to stir up antagonism for whitey in the streets and shaking down businesses scared of being tarred with the same "racist" brush you're wielding. You actually have more in common with Sharpton when it comes down to it, similar tactics and rhetoric. 

Fortunately for this country, Trump knows both the players and the game.

[r9etb]

Sharpton has been an effective tool for the Democrat party, used to stir up antagonism for whitey in the streets and shaking down businesses scared of being tarred with the same "racist" brush you're wielding. You actually have more in common with Sharpton when it comes down to it, similar tactics and rhetoric. 

Fortunately for this country, Trump knows both the players and the game.

What I get from that picture is that both Sharpton and Trump have had the same stupid hair for a very long time.

[Jazzhead]

And Trump's been an effective tool for white racists.   It used to be that the GOP purged such assholes.

Crawl back under your rock.