Of course he told Donald to run. The dots connect too much. She would be losing against Rubio or Kasich right now.
I am number 5. I think the number 1's felt or feel the Tea Party failed in its objectives, and now it's time to take the gloves off with the Alt Right.
No matter how you wrap it, the TEA party folks were spot-on. That doesn't mean they were not fooled by a wide assortment of candidates who forgot all about the TEA party once elected and got 'Beltway Fever' in record time. The TEA party people did not so much fail as they were betrayed, with rare exception.
Now, I'd like to think those in the non-lickspittle Democrat segment of the voting public learned something from that. I would like to think they would be a little more careful when it came to selecting a candidate in the future, look at past records, past positions on issues, study the behaviour of a candidate, his personal actions, whether those be in business, in politics, or both, and examine apparent anomalies to find out whether they were as presented (shallowly) by the press, or something else misrepresented by a media even more hostile to the TEA party than the GOP. That examination generally indicated that media coverage to be incomplete at best, misleading at worst.
At the end of that process, I had my list of candidates.
I was amused by Mr. Trump bearding all the 'right people' at all the right times, and by his energetic bomb throwing and attack on political correctness. Keep in mind we can be politically incorrect without being crude or rude, by just stating politically incorrect facts.
That did not blind me to the business dealings of Mr. Trump, from property acquisitions, to unfulfilled promises (both in the real estate and university sector), nor to the serial replacement of the last wife with a newer trophy. I also noticed that among the much touted successes in business, there were also some unmentioned, well, defeats. I noticed character flaws which included the assignation of a prefix pejorative to the names of those he was in disagreement with, something which appeared juvenile at best, slanderous at worst.
Then I looked for substance in what he said, and found broad brush bumpersticker slogans backed with little in the way of how these great projects were going to be achieved. I saw backing for an organization, even praise, which I thought should be under indictment, not receiving Federal (taxpayer) funding and a history of making political contributions which seemed more aimed at cronyistic access than driven by any political ideology.
None of this added up to someone I wanted to be the leader of the free world, nor did it invoke confidence that the numerous blanks left in the how-to end of policy would be filled in as people seemed to assume. The more I learned about Mr. Trump, the less I liked him as a candidate for POTUS.
On the other hand, there was a fellow, oft accused of being ambitious (Who, who runs for public office isn't?), who is a first term Senator who had pretty much fulfilled those promises made as he campaigned. He was not well liked by the GOP(e) because he would not just join in the good ol' boy games and play nice with McConnel and Boehner and others who were the reason for the TEA party movement in the first place, the same people a crop of freshman Congressmen had been sent to neutralize and hopefully do things like repeal Obamacare...
This person was far more consistent in doing what he said he was going to do, but had a track record of upholding Constitutional principles even before that. He was my first choice.
Second place went to a fellow who had endured a recall, among other things, but he folded fast.
I still thought he might make a good VP candidate.
Third place was vacated by a doctor who started making some odd statements about gun control (deal breaker).
Oh, and that bomb thrower? The guy who promised to make America Great Again? Well, he blew it in Iowa. Coming on the heels of one candidate saying he would do away with the renewable fuels mandate and invoking the extreme ire of the Governor of Iowa who said 'he must be defeated, whatever it takes' (The Governor's son is an Ethanol Lobbyist), the bomb thrower said he'd seek to increase that mandate, and use the EPA to the fullest extent of the law to enforce it.
For those of us who know the damage that rogue agency had done to American industry with arbitrary and capricious mandates, standards, and rule makings, there was an instant cognitive disconnect between keeping that agency, much less reinforcing it and "Making America Great Again".
I knew then I could not support Mr. Trump as a candidate for POTUS, and everything I have found out since has only reinforced that position.
