I would think his stance on free trade would have been a much bigger deal as far as ‘going against republican principles’.
I guess it’s because this is something so vulgar even parts of his core demographic are grossed out by it.
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Couldn’t have said it better myself. The response to “I am concerned about the expansion of executive power and creeping authirtarians” is not, And cannot be: “it wouldn’t be too bad to elect this extreme authoritarian”.
Want to push back on that? Work to defeat this Trump and the next Trump as roundly as possible. Convince the political class this approach is electoral death.
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That goes against Republican policy, but not the Republican principles they talk about. The GOP backs free trade since their most valued constituents are the oligarchs (as with the Dems), but it’s not something they use to motivate the base. If anything, they stay fairly quiet on that topic since supporting free trade alienates most of their base besides the handful of oligarchs. Republicans love to curse NAFTA despite Bush senior being more responsible for it than anyone.
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They already knew that during the primary season; they were hogtied by the electorate.
No amount of votes for Hillary Clinton is going to make Trump’s supporters any less angry and desperate.
And who in the republican party is left untainted by Trump? Mitt and Jeb, pretty much. I don’t see those guys having the sway to turn this thing around.
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But a crushing defeat could prompt party leadership to change the rules in such a way that a candidate like Trump would be unlikely to come out on top in the primaries.
A lot of voters were angry about the idea of superdelegates this time around because they contributed to Bernie Sanders’ defeat, but the reason those rules were enacted in the first place was to give party leadership some veto power over selecting a charismatic but unelectable (or unstable) populist.
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Is that really a good thing though? Is that what you want?
I mean, Trump got a huge majority of the votes in the primary. You’d have to add in an awful lot of superdelegates to counterbalance that; might as well just scrap primary voting altogether at that point.
Not to mention that a slick enough fascist candidate could slide through anyway just by schmoozing a few party goons.
Truly? I actually don’t see a big problem with that. It seems reasonable that a person who has dedicated a substantial portion of their life working to build their political party should have more say over the direction and representation of that party then some random uninformed voter on the street.
It’s only been for the last century or so that ordinary voters even had a direct say in who the political parties nominated. They simply elected delegates to attend the party convention and trusted them to choose a nominee.
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Timing. Trump was rapidly approaching a new all time low in the polls a month before the election. After a very bad week something even worse surfaced and people seized on that as their excuse to bail out.
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Romney Tweeted his upset that Trump hit on married women, disrespected wives and daughters, and made America look bad. So, offense to his property rights and property value.
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They weren’t hog tied by the electorate less than 50% of GOP primary voters voted for Trump during the primary. Only about 45 percent. And before the other major players began to drop out he sat at around 1/3rd. Trump won because a majority of GOP electorate was split between everyone else. Most GOP primary votes were against the guy. If the party had put forward fewer knuckleheads, allowed fewer candidates, or done anything to counter him. Or any of the more plausible candidates had taken him seriously enough to stop circle jerking each other. Trump doesn’t manage to skate through. Likewise if the media had treated him as anything but a ratings driving gag.
The more disasterous his general election performance the less likely anyone is to stand by and watch it happen again. The less likely those who bowed to it, pushed, or supported it are to win anyone over anyone. Or appear to know what the hell their talking about. Purely for self serving reasons of course.
Those 1/3 of 50% of Americans who generally prefer the guy to all other options remain. But the better Trump does the more they become a viable pathway to office instead of a liability.
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Sometimes people need something personally vulgar for it to really hit home. Look at Romney; he had truly ridiculous policies and vague disdain for the non-wealthy, but what did people latch on to? His proposed car elevator, and the fact that he once strapped his dog to his car roof in an open crate. They were visual and immediate symbols of the kind of person he was. Same with Trump. Folks knew he was racist and greedy and corrupt and xenophobic and misogynist in a sort of abstract way, but hearing his actual voice say gross, awful things about molesting women wasn’t abstract, it was personally disgusting.
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Oh wow! I didn’t know those were a thing, although I should have figured. These guys were what inspired me to get my nipple pierced over twenty-five years ago (when it was far from a common thing) and sure enough, red caps!
(ETA: Mage was chock full of British and Irish fae. The main character turns out to be an incarnation of King Arthur, with his baseball bat as Excalibur.)
(EATA: I seriously doubt the Trumpstapo knows the reference either.)
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Also a playable race in the Changeling: the Dreaming RPG, though they’re more brutish in that game.
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I think this is it, more than any kind of actual ‘principle’. They sensed an opportunity for a srmi-graceful exit.
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I think this piece made it clearer to me why a lot of poor white people are supporting Trump. It really changed how I viewed what was happening in America.
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If that is really locker room talk, one would wonder where he learned it since he admits not being an exerciser.
Golf club locker rooms?
I dunno. I’ve only really heard that sort of “boastful, bragging manly man” boys-in-private bullshit from Hollyweird ‘bad boys’ who can, in fact, get away with almost anything.
If they get slapped, hey, they’re bad boys! If they get sued, well, they’re wealthy and well-lawyered.
And often enough, it’s actually a successful strategy
Many Hollyweird starlets and models have come to tolerate a good deal of frat-boy crudeness and crap, and some few might decide that sexing up the billionaire bad-boy star who grabs them by the crotch might not be the worst thing that’s ever happened to them, and who knows, might even be rewarding in the longer term.
So, ‘charmingly’ crude sexual assault may be a bit of a gamble, but the odds aren’t all that bad if you’re a wealthy bad boy star.
(Which, to be clear, in NO WAY excuses such behavior, and does NOT shift blame to the women. Working girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, and you can’t really blame 'em for going for the big payday. Well, at least I can’t - if they’re gonna treat you like that anyway, by all means take their money.)
I haven’t spent a whole lot of time in athletic locker rooms, but as I recall, the general consensus in most of the ones I have been in was that anyone who talks like that in the locker room is trying desperately to ‘pass’ as a successful heterosexual — either because they’re actually gay guys worried about being ‘outed’ in a locker room, or else they’re virgin or otherwise… umm… clueless or unsuccessful straight men, since none of them really understand how a successful straight relationship actually works.
The Donald has never really had to learn. His money buys him more pussy than he can handle (however much that might be).
Seriously, current (third) wife Melania did a nude glamour-mag photo-shoot draped in furs and jewels and briefcases full of expensive sparklies aboard the Donald’s private plane, trumpeted as “Sex at 40,000 feet” on the magazine cover, while he was still married to wife number two. (Yeah, yeah, I know, they were “separated.” Woohoo.)
So none of this really surprises me, but I’m glad as hell it that it shocks some of the apparently-oblivious who still somehow imagined that the man was presidential material.
(Personally, I think it’s more important that he’s an actual fascist demagogue who’s already organizing his brownshirts supporters to contest his coming electoral debacle, but hey, whatever floats the boat upward is good by me.)
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Trump is being true to his statement about talking about Bill Clinton later, he has just held a press conference wih the women who are Clinton’s accusers.
How petty and vindictive can he be? How deep can he dig his own grave?
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I have a feeling that the lesson Republican primary candidates will learn is that pushing the envelope on racism, xenophobia, and belligerence works, but when the general comes it’s time to pivot and cool down the rhetoric.
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I agree with your point about the party having significant sway in who is nominated; the problem I have with it is those parties have expended a great deal of effort to make sure they are the only ones who get to put forward candidates.
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