Tag: politics

Can Trump win?

The professionals aren’t necessarily taking him seriously, but they are starting to take him into consideration:

I talked with Republican wise men last week — sober establishment strategists who have seen many presidential campaigns come and go — to ask them how long the improbable popularity of Donald Trump can last. Reassure me, I said: He can’t actually win, right?

Their answers surprised me.

“It’s not inconceivable,” Vin Weber, a former congressman (and Jeb Bush supporter) told me. “It doesn’t look as if he’s going to implode any time soon…. It’s hard for me to say this, but he actually seems to be getting better as a candidate.”

“Trump has put himself on the short list of five or six names who could win the nomination,” said another GOP operative who insisted on anonymity because he’s working for one of those other candidates. “It’s not impossible that he could win.”

Until a few weeks ago, the conventional wisdom held that Trump was merely a summer fling for angry voters, a protest candidate whose insults and braggadocio would soon impose a ceiling on his support. But recent polls suggest that Trump has raised that ceiling.

He’s leading almost every horse race poll — although at this stage, those numbers are utterly unreliable as predictors of real voter behavior. (At this point in 2011, the polls were led by Texas Gov. Rick Perry; in 2007, by former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.)

More telling are polls that measure whether Trump has made himself acceptable to Republicans.

A Quinnipiac University poll last month found that 30% of GOP voters had an unfavorable view of Trump — worse than most other candidates but a big improvement from the 52% that Trump scored in May.

In Iowa, where the first GOP contest is held, the percentage of likely Republican caucus-goers who say they could never vote for Trump has fallen from 58% in May to 29%, according to a Des Moines Register-Bloomberg News poll.

It’s still unlikely; the early polls are meaningless. But that being said, none of the other Republican candidates look very impressive, and the images of the European invasion crisis are only going to magnify his advantage on the immigration issue.

And on the Democratic side, the picture is looking even more chaotic and unsettled. I wouldn’t be surprised if Hillary suddenly develops health issues that force her to end her campaign. Obama has clearly indicated that he’s not going to cover for her; he’s not going to sink her either, as he could, but he doesn’t appear to have any intention of helping her out.

The trademark family incompetence

There are two ways to look at this column by the entire NYT editorial board. Either the New York Times really fears the Democratic Party candidate running against Jeb Bush, or he was simply so horrendous at his staged appearance at a Mexican restaurant that they actually had to address the facts for once:

Jeb Bush went to the border town of McAllen, Tex., on Monday to raise money and to talk about immigration, in English and fluent Spanish. Because the Republican presidential campaign has been so fixated on border security and the immigrant peril — thank you, Donald Trump — it was a chance to see how the supposed expert on this fraught subject handled it.

Short version: He was awful.

In less than 15 minutes, Mr. Bush managed to step on his message, to give Mr. Trump a boost and to offend Asian-Americans, a growing population that is every bit as important as Latinos in winning presidential elections. And he failed to give Latino voters any persuasive evidence that he had anything better to offer them than his opponents in a revoltingly xenophobic Republican campaign.

It may be time to offer this forlorn candidate some free advice. Although if he really is the smarter Bush, he knows these things already:

1. He should never let himself say the words “anchor babies” ever again. He got in trouble for using that derogatory reference to the children of unauthorized immigrants in passing, in an interview, then dug himself a hole by defending his use of it. On Monday, he dug deeper. He tried to explain that he had been talking about “Asian people” who arrive on tourist visas through organized schemes to give birth to American babies on American soil.

Though the phenomenon is real, Mr. Bush was blasted by Asian-American groups for repeating the slur. And, astoundingly, he handed Mr. Trump the opportunity to send out tweets like this: “In a clumsy move to get out of his ‘anchor babies’ dilemma, where he signed that he would not use the term and now uses it, he blamed ASIANS.”

Speaking as a great-grandson of a Mexican revolutionary, Jeb Bush’s positions on immigration aren’t merely wrong, they are obscenely stupid. Trump is going to crucify him on this issue; the imbalance here could actually win Trump the nomination despite all of Bush’s structural advantages.

Immigration hard line is a winner

Donald Trump increases his lead in the polls after releasing his anti-invasion plan:

Republican Donald Trump is pulling away from the pack in the race for the party’s U.S. presidential nomination, widening his lead over his closest rivals in the past week, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Friday.

Republican voters show no signs they are growing weary of the brash real estate mogul, who has dominated political headlines and the 17-strong Republican presidential field with his tough talk about immigration and insults directed at his political rivals. The candidates are vying to be nominated to represent their party in the November 2016 general election.

Nearly 32 percent of Republicans surveyed online said they backed Trump, up from 24 percent a week earlier, the opinion poll found. Trump had nearly double the support of his closest competitor, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who got 16 percent. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson was third at 8 percent.

Some have theorized that Trump is a Clinton stalking horse. But in light of what appears to be happening to both Trump and Clinton in the polls, is it possible that they have it backwards?

Scott Adams predicts President Trump

And also Vice-President Cuban, which would be nearly as amusing:

If you’re keeping score, in the past month Trump has bitch-slapped the entire Republican Party, redefined our expectations of politics, focused the national discussion on immigration, proposed the only new idea for handling ISIS, and taken functional control of FOX News. And I don’t think he put much effort into it. Imagine what he could do if he gave up golf.

As far as I can tell, Trump’s “crazy talk” is always in the correct direction for a skilled persuader. When Trump sets an “anchor” in your mind, it is never random. And it seems to work every time.

Now that Trump owns FOX, and I see how well his anchor trick works with the public, I’m going to predict he will be our next president. I think he will move to the center on social issues (already happening) and win against Clinton in a tight election.

I also saw some Internet chatter about the idea of picking Mark Cuban as Vice Presidential running mate. If that happens, Republicans win. And I think they like to win. There is no way Trump picks some desiccated Governor from an important state as his running mate. I think Cuban is a realistic possibility.

He’s certainly demonstrated himself to be a master of rhetoric. Whether that is sufficient to bring the Republican Party establishment to heel, I do not know. Regardless, one can certainly learn a lot from the man; he is like a walking, talking exemplar of Aristotle’s Rhetoric brought to life.

The War for the West

As with most wars, winning this one will be a matter of will, not strength or numbers:

The six-page policy paper, to secure America’s border and send back aliens here illegally, released by Trump last weekend, is the toughest, most comprehensive, stunning immigration proposal of the election cycle.

The Trump folks were aided by people around Sen. Jeff Sessions, who says Trump’s plan “re-establishes the principle that America’s immigration laws should serve the interests of its own citizens.”

The issue is joined, the battle lines are drawn, and the GOP will debate and may decide which way America shall go. And the basic issues – how to secure our borders, whether to repatriate the millions here illegally, whether to declare a moratorium on immigration into the USA – are part of a greater question.

Will the West endure or disappear by the century’s end as another lost civilization? Mass immigration, if it continues, will be more decisive in deciding the fate of the West than Islamist terrorism. For the world is invading the West.

Ignore all the shrieking cuckservatives and Corporate Republicans. If the immigration issue is not addressed, if the mass movement of people is not stopped, if the tens of millions of invaders, legal and illegal, are not repatriated, none of the other policy issues matter.

It’s a start

Donald Trump continues to move the Republicans right on immigration:

Donald Trump would reverse President Obama’s executive orders on immigration and deport all undocumented immigrants from the U.S. as president, he said in an exclusive interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd.

“We’re going to keep the families together, but they have to go,” he said in the interview, which will air in full on NBC’s “Meet the Press” this Sunday. Pressed on what he’d do if the immigrants in question had nowhere to return to, Trump reiterated: “They have to go. We will work with them. They have to go. Chuck, we either have a country, or we don’t have a country,” he said.

The ironic thing is that based on his immigration policies alone, Trump is less of a joke candidate than the so-called “serious” candidates. The only reason he has become such a story is because all of the other Republican candidates are so absurdly terrible on the issue of the 40-year invasion of the country.

Trump’s actual announced policies:


Real immigration reform puts the needs of working people first – not wealthy globetrotting donors. We are the only country in the world whose immigration system puts the needs of other nations ahead of our own. That must change. Here are the three core principles of real immigration reform:


1. A nation without borders is not a nation. There must be a wall across the southern border.


2. A nation without laws is not a nation. Laws passed in accordance with our Constitutional system of government must be enforced.


3. A nation that does not serve its own citizens is not a nation. Any immigration plan must improve jobs, wages and security for all Americans.


And the big one: “End birthright citizenship.” 

It’s going to be interesting to see what happens if his support grows following this announcement, especially in light of his plan to require higher wages for H1B visa holders. But regardless, it is obvious that the romantic view of America as “the Melting Pot” is now dead. And notice that everything he is talking about could have been brought up by any of the other candidates, but wasn’t.

And they said it would never catch on

Isn’t it fascinating how “cuckservative” bothers both the spineless GOP supporters of the post-1965 invasion as well as The New York Times? I wonder why that might be? But regardless, we have it straight from the Gray Lady: “the term has caught on”.

Cuckservative is an amalgamation of the word cuckold — the husband of an adulterous woman — and conservative. The implication is that mainstream Republicans, like jilted husbands, are facing humiliation and have lost sight of their futures.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups, called the term the “ultimate insult” that the white nationalist movement can deliver to politicians who they feel have veered too far to the left. “The term, at its core, may be racist,” the group said.

Many who use the #cuckservative hashtag on Twitter espouse the view that the United States is shifting from a white-dominated country to one that caters too much to minority groups.

The radical nature of those ideas along with the pornographic connotations associated with “cuckold” have made the word a subject of hand-wringing among some conservative commentators.

“There is a community of conservatives who think Republicans should be racists,” said Jim Harper, a scholar at the Cato Institute. “I think there is probably a relatively sizable number of people out there who see the term ‘cuckservative’ as a valid criticism of conservatives.”

Erick Erickson, the conservative media personality, condemned those who throw around the word as a handful of racist Internet trolls who hate Christians and support an agenda of white supremacism.

 So, who are you going to trust? Those “conservatives” whose opinions are in line with the NYT and the SPLC and don’t wish to conserve the literal nation per se, or those who actually wish to conserve the nation proper, as in the “us and our posterity” for whom the Constitution was written?

After all, there is another, more accurate term for those the cuckservatives like to describe as “New Americans”. And that is “Not Americans”. Unlike a sports team, a nation is not laundry.

Presidential predictions

I am entirely out of the business of predicting American election results, but the International Lord of Hate is entirely willing to stalk where the Supreme Dark Lord is disinclined to tread:

My prediction is that the republican nominee will be Ted Cruz. The democrat nominee will be Hillary Clinton.  At this early point in the campaigns I got Dole, Bush, and Romney right. McCain surprised me, but I think I was just blinded by my dislike for him. I predicted Obama as soon as he got done with that first original DNC speech, and sadly got that one right. Though I was surprised how fast he usurped the Clinton machine.

Here is my reasoning. First, the democrat side is really easy to predict. You’ve got one batty old socialist and a slightly battier old socialist. Though I’ve been told that Hillary Clinton isn’t actually a socialist because the way she loves taking bribes is very capitalistic. Good point.

Bernie is nuts, but he’s honest. He skips right over all the typical democrat feel good, heart string tugging reasons why they think the government should control everything, and gets right to the government controlling everything. He is economically illiterate. Those Occupy Democrat memes going around Facebook where they are quoting Bernie fucking up some basic economic principle are literally painful. Every time you share one of those, an accountant dies.

The only reason Bernie is actually polling surprisingly decently is because many democrats sense just how lackluster Hillary is. However, Hillary is still going to get the nomination. Because as much as democrats like to think that they’re all about tolerance, there is something incredibly emasculating about watching your candidate get chased off the podium of his own rally. There’s a reason the Black Lives Matter protestors haven’t invaded Hillary’s space, because we all suspect she’d shriek “GUARDS! SEIZE THEM!” super villain style, and then have them devoured by her nanotech enhanced attack weasels.

Hillary may be a liar and a cheat, and she’d sell your children’s organs to Russian mobsters to make five bucks, but at least she’s not a total chicken shit. So, barring the highly unlikely event that Hillary gets arrested by the FBI for one of her multitude of scandals between now and the primaries, Hillary is it.

On the GOP side it gets really hard to predict just because there are a slew of candidates. Right now I see it going Cruz, with an outside chance of Rubio or Walker. Yes, I know that isn’t what the polls say right now, but this is how I see it playing out.

Trump is a stunt candidate. He’s sitting around twenty percent, lots of people are flipping out about it, and the media is loving that. But the rest of the GOP can’t stand him. As we head into the primaries we always do this thing, where somebody will pop up, the voters will say Oooooh New and Shiny, they’ll surge, and then once people have a chance to actually look at what they’ve really done, they come back down.

I can neither pretend to know nor care. But for those who do, that’s what the Correiakin prognosticates. Discuss amongst yourselves.

Hit me baby one more time

Mytheos Holt points out that SJWs have overused the words from the Codex Maladictorum to such an extent that they have lost their potency:

Donald Trump Is What Happens When You Cry Wolf

However, to speak seriously for a moment, Trump’s candidacy should also serve as a cautionary tale about just what happens when you try to brand even the smallest indiscretions as evidence that someone is of the Devil’s party. To illustrate this, ask yourself this question: what label can the Left (or the Right, for that matter) apply to Trump that hasn’t already been so devalued by overuse?
What label can the Left (or the Right, for that matter) apply to Trump that hasn’t already been so devalued by overuse?

That he’s a racist? So is anyone who criticizes President Obama’s golf swing these days.

That he’s a sexist? So is anyone who defends due-process rights.

That he’s a phony? What politician isn’t?

That he’s a fascist? So were the last two presidents, depending on which books you read.

That he’s a crypto-Nazi? Yeah, because Lyndon Larouche hasn’t beaten that one to death at all.

See the problem? Even if all of these labels were true of Trump, they’ve all been used to cry “wolf” so many times that now no one thinks they mean anything anymore. Short of openly waving a Nazi flag, eating black babies, or sexually assaulting someone on live television, there’s little Trump could do to actually give these labels the power to scare people.

Exactly. It’s very amusing when SJWs like John “I am a rapist” Scalzi keep desperately flinging DISQUALIFY DISQUALIFY DISQUALIFY over and over and over again, as if it will finally work on the 500th time after failing the first 499 times. The idiot SJWs simply don’t realize that once an individual is inoculated to their disqualification attempts, it’s never going to work again.

That’s why their current and future outrage over national publications – yes, plural – talking to me is so funny. It would never have happened if they hadn’t planted those stories with the Guardian, with Entertainment Weekly, and with the New Zealand Herald. Just as Rabid Puppies would never have existed if they had simply refrained from accusing me of gaming the 2014 Hugo Awards.

SJWs never leave well enough alone and they never learn. And if they’re going to go to all the trouble of portraying one as a monster, well, one almost has an artistic duty to ensure that one fulfills all their worst nightmares and then some.

Perhaps the Republicans are smarter than SJWs and they’ll stop doubling down on trying to disqualify Donald Trump. But I tend to doubt it.

My ideal 2016 presidential candidate

At first, I thought Carly Fiorina’s campaign for the presidency was a joke. I mean, here is a woman who is one of corporate America’s most epic failures, a laughingstock and byword for disaster throughout the entire tech sector. But then I realized, what if she can do for the federal payroll what she did for the payrolls of Compaq and Hewlett Packard? And considering the way in which the federal government is increasingly targeting Americans, don’t we want a woman whose ineptitude is legendary to be running things?

Let’s face it, the Obama administration has delivered, and then some, in the comedy department. The way in which Jewish Democrats are going berserk is only the most recent amusement it has provided. Since my primary interest in a U.S. president is the comedic value of his administration (none of the candidates are even talking about addressing the three relevant issues, Repatriation, Repudiating debt, and Restoring national sovereignty, so we might as well look for some entertainment out of them), my preferences are as follows:

  1. Carly Fiorina: She’s clearly the candidate most likely to accidentally declare war on Japan and Belgium, then downsize Health and Human Services.
  2. Joe Biden: He’s like the Prince Philip of America, always good for a totally inappropriate comment.
  3. Hilary Clinton: Between the financial corruption and the lesbianism, I think the comedy value would make her boring, flat-toned speeches bearable. Let’s not forget the potential that First Lady Bill would offer.
  4. Donald Trump: My concern is that as a successful businessman, he might actually take the job seriously and end up selling off New Mexico, California, and Nevada to a Chinese-Mexican consortium to get rid of the federal deficit.
  5. Chris Christie. President Fat Bastard would be briefly hilarious, but too reliant on the visual aspects of comedy to remain funny for long. 

Seriously, there isn’t a single declared candidate who is going to delay the collapse for so much as a month, so don’t be looking to any of them for salvation. It just isn’t in the cards, at least not through the U.S. electoral system. At this point, there is nothing more to do than wait to see if it will be the American Caesar or the Hispanic Alaric.