Donald Trump: Come Kiss the Ring

Hmmmm ... so I guess Trump really is a garden-variety presidential candidate, huh?

 

It continues to amaze me that a guy who has a mouth that looks like an asshole when he speaks continually criticizes other people's looks.

 

The Fiorina jab will be his first undoing.

Fiorina may not even be a player in the nomination but Republican women and conservative women adore her. They see her as a pioneer who fought to get to the top of business, fought off health challenges. They like her but the conservative ones will probably vote for Ben Carson instead -- he doesn't yell and voting for him absolves them of white guilt for a while.

Trump may think his rendition of playing Phil Hartman in The Sinatra Gang is funny but this will harm him.

 

Looks more like a talking vagina. He's got real perty lips.

 

This is too strong. Trump's appeal isn't bombast alone. He doesn't "appeal" to me, per se - I wouldn't vote for him - but I do get a kick out of him. And I think a lot of voters do, too. They see a guy who who cuts through the usual bullshit.

Now, do I think think he's cutting through the usual bullshit with his own brand of even more absurd bullshit? Yes, I do.

But people are so tired of the other bullshit, so tired of each candidate acting as if they're cut from the cloth of wholesome American decency, that they see this slickster who's unabashedly arrogant and big-mouthed and think "Finally, a guy who openly admits he's half-devil instead of pretending he's full saint."

I think of Trump and juxtapose him to Paul Ryan, who's is an inverterate liar and fact twister, yet wraps all that in a "oh, this'll work out just fine" package. I wouldn't want to spend 15 minutes listening to Paul Ryan, because he thinks I and most other people must be stupid, the way he takes fragments of ideas and glues them onto to other ideas, insulting everyone in his wake.

I think Trump's ideas are laughable - let's get some hardball dudes to beat China! - but at least I recognize it as a sales pitch.

Hilary Clinton is the worst at this. Her best and worst trait is her stubbornnness, and when it's her worst, it manifests itself as somebody who absolutely can't admit she's as craven and power-hungry as she is. Trump freely admits it. Happily so. I don't like it and wouldn't vote for it - but I can't call it dishonest.

And we are a dishonest nation these days our of sheer fear. We are so afraid of judgment and conflict that we simply slink away from our impulses. Obama did, for many years of his tenure. He's not now. He's a better president because of it.

Do I agree with him all the time? No, I don't. But so what? He's being a leader. It's not his job to kiss my ass. For many years, I feel like he thought he could kiss some small portion of everyone's ass, and they'd appreciate the effort. They didn't. That's not how people are. I'm not sure why he thought they were.

Trump has no such illusions. You can kiss his ass.

 

Part of me wonders if anything will bring him down, at least among conservatives. I keep waiting for it all to come crumbling down, but it's like the absurd persona he's cultivated over the years has unwittingly made him a bulletproof candidate for the nomination. When he made the period crack about Megyn Kelly I thought it was the beginning of the end, but he either deflects with claims of media distortion or shrugs it off as distractions of political correctness. They just seem to lap it up. Hell, I find myself drawn to the guy (more for entertainment purposes), because where I once though he was a clown devoid of self-awareness I now think he just may be a brilliant performer. Or maybe the former feeds into the latter.

 

Alma's post just reminded me of a story I saw the other day in which Hillary's handlers said they're re-tooling her campaign. From now on, she's going to make a concerted effort to be more spontaneous and authentic.

You really can't make this stuff up.

 

I heard a talk show host explain it pretty well. People know what they're getting from Trump. They expect outrageous stuff, so when he says something ridiculous or nasty, well, that's just Trump, so they shrug it off. The other candidates are trying to be serious, smart, measured, etc., so when one of them says something outrageous, it's outside the character they're trying to present, which exposes them as a hypocrite/liar/phony/just-another-politician/whatever. That hurts their credibility and comes to back to hurt them in the polls.

 

That makes sense.

 

Shame people didn't demand that eight years ago...

 

A complete clown with an underlying xenophobic message is running for the top office of a country with a long history of enlightened leadership.

Sounds familiar.

 

[QUOTE="da man, post: 3942728, member: 5023" The other candidates are trying to be serious, smart, measured, etc.[/QUOTE]

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with that, but it has rarely worked in elections. It works in governance, IMO, but rarely in elections.

I'm convinced most people don't really know how election politics work. They should, but they don't. Like when you go to a campaign rally and you point out to a person "you see that guy over there? He's here just in case Candidate A says something stupid, which they'll recycle into a YouTube clip, and later an ad if it's really dumb." Often, that person would say "Really?" Yes, really. People will tell you that they know politics are dirty and weird, but when presented with the mechanics of how, they're surprised.