Trump cheats at golf - the ONE and ONLY politics thread

All Trump's opponents have to quit playing whack-a-mole with his "policy positions" and adopt the Vinny Gambini approach.
"Everything that guy just said is bullshit. Thank you."

 

What is this based on? Looks like fantasy to me.

 

It takes some yeoman work to turn Alaska and Kansas blue.

 

Well, if you can get past some of the bombast, Trump has signaled some actual policy goals, including:

-- high tariffs on imports (which would be a disaster because it would essentially turn into a tax on American consumers)
-- deporting 11 million illegal immigrants (which would be a disaster)
-- tightening border security (not such disaster if correctly implemented)
-- lowering corporate taxes and repatriating offshore dollars (I'm in favor of this)
-- a populist sounding tax plan (that, according to the Tax Policy Center, would reduce federal revenue by $9.5 trillion over the next decade and provide an average $1.3 million tax cut for the top 0.1 percent of earners.
-- a more hawkish monetary policy (he's a Paul Volker fan) that would focus more on the "containing inflation" part rather than "full employment" part of the Fed's dual mandate.

 

All bullshit.

 

Sam Brownback's giving it a hell of a shot in Kansas the last few years.

 

Want to guess which of those have the best chance of passing and becoming law? I'll give you a hint: they are the ones that would also benefit him the most.

 

Trump is running to win. He's communicating a simple message, and he's altered the message to appeal to Republican primary voters, focusing on issues like immigration.

You would have to assume that were he running in a Democratic primary, his message would be somewhat different.

He would focus more on something like the influence of big banks.

And, given the competition, I imagine he would be doing well.

 

You give him more credit than I do. I think he's kind of stumbled into nativism, although I think it'd be interesting to go back and read some of his old stuff, like "The Art of the Deal," and see if there were any early signs that this guy would emerge.

That said, I think he would do OK, too, although, again, he wouldn't benefit from the large field of candidates like he has in the GOP.

There is no way to prove this, but I do think that a large part of his appeal is his celebrity, and not just for name recognition. He's been famous for 30 years. His name is everywhere - most importantly, recently, on network television. His candidacy gives people a fun opportunity to connect with a celebrity by voting for him.

Of course, a lot of Democrats are having a lot of fun laughing at the rubes voting for the celebrity, like they are impervious to it, forgetting that the elected Al Franken, and begged Ashley Judd to run.

 

Almost everything I have read about Franken as a senator is that he has been surprisingly sedate and effective.

 

I think he's smart enough to have hammered home the message that has resonated with republican primary voters, even if he did stumble on it.

He puts out so many messages, even conflicting messages, that he would have been just as likely to stumble on a winning message that would have worked in a democratic primary.

 

I don't disagree that he's proven to be a serious candidate and senator. But celebrity helped.