Tag Archives: Donald Trump

‘Transformational’ takes on new meaning

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There once was a time in politics when those who practice the craft sought to become “transformational” figures.

Barack Obama saw himself in that light in 2008. Ronald Reagan, too, was considered a “transformational” candidate. The Gipper reshaped the political landscape with his landslide victory in 1980. The jury is still out on Obama’s impact.

Thus, the term was thought to constitute high praise.

These days, “transformational” seems to have taken on a new meaning.

And it’s not flattering in the least.

Donald J. Trump and Rafael Edward Cruz have “transformed” the political craft into something cheap, tawdry, childish, petulant and utterly without substance.

They’ve been bickering over social media about their wives.

And as the accompanying New York Times essay seeks to explain, they seem to treat women — even the women in their lives — as objects.

They’ve lowered the bar to new depths.

Yes, the candidates have quarreled over the Internet about insults, innuendo, threats and retribution against their wives.

It has been a disgraceful exhibition that in normal election cycles would have no place anywhere near two leading major-party candidates for the presidency of the United States.

I am quite certain the rest of the world is laughing hysterically at what has become of the formerly great political party known as the Republican Party.

The Party of Lincoln has become the Party of Chuckleheads.

Please, spare me the bleating by “true Republicans” that Trump isn’t one of them. He’s chosen to line up on the Republican side of the gate in this race for the White House, so the GOP must accept that he’s now one of their own.

And Cruz? His response to the Brussels terrorist attack was the Mother of All Doozys. He wants to beef up police patrols in “Muslim neighborhoods.” Yeah, boy. That’ll show them Muslims what we’re all about here.

Is there a greater Islamic State recruitment tool — other than Trump’s stated desire to ban all non-American Muslims from entering the United States — than this?

But instead of debating the idiocy of such a policy pronouncement, we’re left to wonder what in the name of political sanity has become of a party that features two men quarreling out loud about the nasty things being said about their wives?

This is the new definition of “transformational” politics.

We’ve transformed what the late Robert F. Kennedy used to describe as a “noble profession” into something not worthy of a middle-school food fight.

 

Still waiting for answers from Bernie

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Some of us might recall a quip made famous by former Vice President Walter Mondale as he competed for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984.

His chief foe that year was U.S. Sen. Gary Hart of Colorado. The two of them squared off in a debate and Mondale turned to Hart and asked him: Where’s the beef?

The question has become something of a punch line.

I think it’s fair ask another challenger for the Democratic nomination essentially the same question. It ought to go to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Where is the beef, Bernie? Where are your constructive solutions to what you say ails the country?

I’m not hearing them.

Sanders captured two Democratic caucuses today, in Washington and Alaska. The frontrunner for the party’s nomination remains Hillary Clinton.

I listened last night to quite a bit of Sanders’s rally in Seattle. He stood at a lecturn in the middle of Safeco Field and kept saying what he’s been saying all along.

The campaign system is corrupt and he wants to bring public financing to presidential elections; the top 1 percent are getting richer while the rest of America is suffering; he wants to provide free college education for every student in America; he says every American is entitled to “universal health care.”

OK. Fair enough. I get the message.

The question: How are you going to make any — let alone all of it — a reality?

It occurred to me this afternoon while visiting with a friend: Sanders sounds a little like Donald J. Trump. Yes, he’s tapping into voters’ anxiety, anger, fear and frustration, just like Trump.

The difference, though, lies in the tone and tenor of his remarks … not to mention the tone and tenor of his response to criticism.

As I listen to Sanders, though, I keep hearing the same refrain.

Wall Street is bad. The political system is corrupt. Wages are unequal.

What is the candidate going to do — precisely, I must ask — to fix it?

Where, Sen. Sanders, is the beef?

 

Who’s to know who gets our vote?

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Someone must have asked U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo a direct question, such as: Do you plan to vote for Donald J. Trump if he’s the Republican nominee for president of the United States?

Curbelo, a GOP congressman from Florida, then must have felt compelled to answer, which is that he cannot rule out possibly voting for presumed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton this fall.

It begs this question, in my mind at least: Who cares how he votes?

Here’s another question: Is it anyone’s business how one votes, given that we vote in secret?

Rep. Curbelo has placed himself on the hot seat.

By my reckoning, he didn’t need to answer the question at all.

They cast secret ballots in Florida, just as we do in Texas and — I am going to presume — they do all the other 48 states and the U.S. territories.

How we vote is the individual’s business exclusively.

The Trump factor, though, has thrown Republicans officeholders and candidates into a tailspin as they talk to the public — and among themselves — about whether they would support Trump if he becomes the party’s presidential nominee.

Do they need to say how they would vote? No. I guess, though, it becomes a matter of “public interest,” given that members of Congress, governors and elected officials at all levels of government take an oath to represent our interests.

Who gets his vote?

So the question of how they vote in the privacy of their voting booth becomes the public’s business. Is that correct?

I tend to think not.

Sure, I’ve declared in my blog that I’ve voted for Democratic presidential candidates in every election dating back to 1972. I guess, therefore, I’ve made one element of my voting record other people’s business.

But I’ve never divulged that information publicly in advance by declaring right up front who is getting my vote.  Readers of this blog are free to draw whatever conclusions they wish.

As for members of Congress, such as Rep. Curbelo, for whom you vote in private is no one’s concern. Heck, they can even fib about it if they want … and no one will be the wiser.

 

Cruz affairs? Probably not, but then again …

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Oh, brother. Here we go.

The National Enquirer reports that U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz has had at least five extramarital affairs.

Bombshell news, right? Maybe. Or, maybe not.

The fiery Texas Republican is in the middle of a heated fight with fellow GOP presidential candidate Donald J. Trump. Cruz says Trump’s allies have planted that rumor at the Enquirer.

I need to stipulate something. I do not read the National Enquirer, which I do not consider to be a legitimate news-gathering organization.

However …

Before we dismiss the National Enquirer reporting as hogwash — which it usually is — we need to remember something.

The National Enquirer broke the story of 2004 Democratic vice-presidential nominee John Edwards’ affair with Rielle Hunter while his late wife, Elizabeth, was battling cancer. The affair produced a child. The former senator, meanwhile, was proclaiming publicly his love for his wife and holding himself up as a courageous and dedicated family man.

Remember how Edwards called the story trash? Untrue? Full of lies?

Uh, the story turned out to be quite true.

 

Ryan: We’re heading for ‘divisiveness’ as a nation

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Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Paul Ryan is partially correct when he says the nation “is becoming divisive.”

I believe we’re already there, Mr. Speaker.

It’s not a condition that has just developed overnight, or certainly during the current election cycle.

It seems to my reckoning to have its roots in the 2000 election season, when a candidate for president was elected by the narrowest margin imaginable — and under circumstances that to this day hasn’t been accepted by many millions of Americans.

George W. Bush won the presidency after the Supreme Court stopped the recounting of ballots in Florida. The Texas governor had 537 more votes than Al Gore in that state. He won that state’s electoral votes, giving him the election — even though Gore had amassed more popular votes nationally than Bush.

For the record, I’ve never doubted the legitimacy of Bush’s election as president. The constitutional system worked.

But …

The spillover through the next several elections has seen a palpable division among Americans.

The current campaign has delivered an intense ratcheting up of the division that’s been there for some time now.

I’m not a fan of the speaker, but I do applaud him for speaking to our national idealism. He clearly was taking dead aim at the tone being delivered on the campaign trail by Donald J. Trump, who he didn’t mention by name. Everyone in the congressional conference room who heard Ryan knew of whom he was speaking.

As Politico described Ryan’s remarks: “He decried identity politics, criticizing those who pit groups of Americans against each other. He said the nation’s political system doesn’t need to be this bad. He accused both parties of staying comfortably in their corners, only talking to those who agree with them.”

Ain’t that the truth?

There once was a time when members of Congress — from both parties — talked openly with each other about how to legislate for the good of their states or the country. The Texas congressional delegation was known to have bipartisan breakfasts weekly, with House members breaking bread with each other and talking about issues that needed attention.

It doesn’t happen these days.

Instead, we’re seeing and hearing candidates and their rhetoric demonizing “the other side.” The No. 1 instigator of this campaign-trail anger is the GOP’s leading presidential candidate — Trump.

Ryan’s message will not resonate with the segment of the population that has bought into the Us vs. Them mantra that Trump and others are promoting. Ryan is now seen as a member of the hated “establishment.”

Ryan said: “What really bothers me the most about politics these days is this notion of identity politics. That we’re going to win election by dividing people. That we’re going to win by talking to people in ways that divide them and separate them from other people. Rather than inspiring people on our common humanity, on our common ideals, on our common culture, on things that should unify us.”

Is his message too sunny, too optimistic, too idealistic?

For the sake of our political future, I hope not.

Social media have become a campaign curse

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I think I’ve discovered an undeniable truth.

Social media are to blame for the ghastly decline of intelligent political discourse in this great country of ours.

It’s not a big-time flash. Others likely have drawn similar conclusions and written about it.

I am now going to refer to the Twitter War that’s going on between Donald J. Trump and Rafael Edward Cruz. Donald vs. Ted. It’s getting childish in the extreme and it’s lending nothing whatsoever to any kind of intelligent discussion among Republicans over which of these men should be their party’s nominee for president of the United States.

The crux of the Twitter fight centers on their wives. Melania Trump and Heidi Cruz are now being kicked around like the proverbial footballs that they are not.

It’s sickening me.

A pro-Trump super-PAC put something out there about Mrs. Trump appearing in the nude. Trump tweeted some threats to Cruz about it, threatening to say something mean about Mrs. Cruz.

Ted Cruz denied having anything to do with the ad. Trump ain’t buying it. Now it’s Cruz calling Trump a “coward.”

Back and forth they go.

And voters are supposed to make intelligent decisions — based on this petulant patter — on which of them should carry the GOP banner forward against the Democratic nominee this fall?

Give me a break!

Maybe the mainstream media — and I don’t mean as the conservative epithet the term has come to mean — is responsible. By “mainstream,” I refer to the major broadcast and cable news networks and the print media who keep reporting this stuff.

Heck, bloggers all along the political spectrum have weighed in on it — as this blog is doing at this moment.

So … I’ll accept my share of the blame for this social media craze and its alleged “contribution” to the quality of our national political debate.

I’m not proud of myself.

My only recourse is to ignore this social media sniping.

Therefore, I will.

 

Now the spouses have become targets

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When did Melania Trump and  Heidi Cruz become candidates for president of the United States?

Oh, wait! They merely are married to men who are running for the office. Now, though, they’ve become subjects of social media messages fired by one of the Republican presidential candidates.

Let’s hold on for a wild ride, shall we?

A super PAC not associated with U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign apparently posted an ad that contained a picture of Melania in the nude. Donald J. Trump responded that “Lyin’ Ted” needs to be careful or else Trump would reveal something about Cruz’s wife.

These attacks are getting tiresome, not to mention way, way off topic.

Trump took down the tweet he put out there about Mrs. Cruz. However, as we know, social media’s impact is immediate, as in instantaneous. It’s like trying to unhonk a horn; it cannot be done.

As for the British GQ article and the picture about Mrs. Trump, well, that’s apparently been out there a good while, having been published in 2000.

I’m just one individual living out here in Flyover Country.

I’d like to offer a suggestion to these two men — neither of whom ever would get my vote for president.

How about avoid talking about your wives? You guys — not the women you married — are running for the presidency. It is your views on the issues that interest me and, I presume, millions of other Americans who are paying attention to this campaign.

The rest of this baloney is tawdry and unbecoming of the office you are seeking.

Then again, so are some of the things the actual candidates for president have said about each other.

 

Negative campaigning: It still works

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Political operatives have a name for it.

Opposition research.

Every major political campaign dating back to, oh, most of the previous century has featured it. The organization hires teams of researchers to do one thing: look up negative aspects of an opponent’s record to use against them.

Why embark on this mission? Because it works. Every single time. Voters eat this stuff up, no matter how much they complain how they dislike negative campaigning. They respond to it.

The potential Hillary Clinton-Donald Trump presidential campaign that looms not too far into the future is going to provide “oppo research” teams a veritable trove of negatives.

If I were willing to wager my recreational vehicle, I’d say that Clinton’s team is facing what one could call a “target rich environment.”

Remember the time her husband ran for president in 1992? His campaign famously developed what came to be called The War Room. It developed a quick-hit strategy to answer every negative attack leveled at Gov. Bill Clinton by President Bush’s re-election team. The Bill Clinton team learned the lessons taught by the 1988 campaign of Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis, which allowed the Bush team to “peel the bark” off of Dukakis, as the late campaign strategist Lee Atwater said famously.

I’m willing to presume that Mrs. Clinton’s team has resurrected that notion for her campaign this fall.

More to the point, though, will be the opportunities that the presumed Republican nominee, Trump, will present to the newest Clinton version of The War Room.

Trump has littered his GOP primary campaign with countless public utterances worthy of outright ridicule, not to mention condemnation.

It makes me recall the era not long after the 9/11 attacks. Those of us in daily opinion journalism were handed so many opportunities and topics on which to comment that we faced the editor’s prized dilemma: What can I set aside for tomorrow or another day even later on which to offer an opinion or perspective. Take it from me: It is far more preferable to have too much from which to choose than not enough.

Team Clinton is going to have that kind of “problem” staring it in the face once the GOP nominee’s identity becomes clear.

Yes, I know that Trump’s team will have its chances as well. Which one of the campaigns, though, will have the resources available to them to do the kind of research they’ll need to skewer their opponent? My hunch: the edge goes to Clinton.

Donald Trump already has demonstrated his ability to “go negative” when the other candidates have fired broadsides at him. He does so in amazingly crude ways. He’s criticized opponents’ physical appearance; he has denigrated a journalist’s physical handicap; he has chided an opponent for the manner in which he perspires. All of this, though, has endeared him to the Trumpsters who have glommed on to his message — whatever the hell it is.

And those examples comprise a tiny fraction of Trump’s much-touted business, personal and political history.

And it’s that crudeness that, by itself, is going to present the Clinton team with much of the opposition research material it figures to use against their expected foe.

You want negative campaigning? We’re about to get it.

It won’t be pretty. We’ll bitch about it.

Bring it on!

 

Remember when The Gipper was a pushover, too?

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Let’s play this election season out, theoretically, to the end.

The Democrats will nominate Hillary Rodham Clinton as their presidential candidate; the Republicans will select Donald J. Trump as their standard bearer.

Clinton is the one with the experience: a policy-wonk first lady; a twice-elected U.S. senator from New York; a secretary of state. She’s well-schooled on the nuance of foreign and domestic policy. She’s articulate and is a cool customer under fire.

Trump is none of that. He’s a hot-headed reality TV celebrity. He made a fortune in real estate development. He’s married to his third wife. He has boasted about his sexual exploits with women who were married to other men. His campaign has featured little substance and virtually zero political philosophy — but a whole lot of insults and outrageous proclamations.

Clinton’s the favorite. The prohibitive favorite. She’ll win in a landslide while making history as the nation’s first female president.

Hold on a second.

Thirty-six years ago, the Democrats nominated a former one-term Georgia governor. He was a U.S. Naval Academy grad. He was a policy wonk. He was a smart guy, although perhaps a tad self-righteous. Republicans nominated a former movie actor who starred in those films with Bonzo the chimp; and oh yes, he made that film in which he portrayed Notre Dame football player George Gipp. Sure, he was a two-term California governor.

The Democrat was supposed to win, right?

It didn’t turn out that way. The Republican, Ronald Wilson Reagan, carried 44 states and blew President Jimmy Carter out of the White House.

It’s that history that should tell Democrats to take this upcoming election very seriously if it plays out the way it’s projected to play out.

By any normal measure, Donald Trump should be an easy mark for Democrats. This campaign, however, hasn’t gone according to the form sheet in almost any measure.

Clinton wasn’t supposed to be challenged so seriously from within her party. As for Trump, no one took him seriously when he announced his intention to seek the GOP nomination; his “fellow Republicans” are taking him seriously enough now — so much so that they’re staying up at night trying to concoct ways to derail his political juggernaut.

Both candidates are going to carry a large amount of baggage into a fall campaign, if they are the nominees. They both are packing a lot of negative feeling from within their respective parties.

Of the two, Trump’s negatives — from my perspective — far outweigh Clinton’s.

That doesn’t give the Democratic opposition any reason to fall asleep at the wheel.

The Gipper was supposed to lose big, too.

Wondering if Trump will bolt the party

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Peter Wehner doesn’t strike me as a wacked-out Republican loon.

He writes pretty well, if the essay in today’s New York Times is an indication.

The man is frightened at the prospect of Donald J. Trump becoming his party’s next presidential nominee. And he expresses that fear — right along with a lot of other Republican wise men and women — with profound eloquence.

Check out his essay here.

He says the Founders were afraid of people such as Trump. They feared strongmen rising to the top of the political heap. As he says in his NYT essay:

“The founders, knowing history and human nature, took great care to devise a system that would prevent demagogues and those with authoritarian tendencies from rising up in America. That system has been extraordinarily successful. We have never before faced the prospect of a political strongman becoming president.

“Until now.”

I’ve been reading and listening to a lot of commentary in recent weeks about the Republican strategies being devised to deny Trump the party nomination. And as I take it all in I remind myself of things Trump said earlier in this campaign about how he would respond if he’s treated badly at the GOP convention this summer.

He’s suggested, then recanted, and then suggested again that he might launch an independent bid for president if Republicans aren’t nice to him. He wants to be treated “fairly,” he has said.

If I were advising Trump, I’d be examining all these efforts to wrest the nomination from my guy and I would conclude: Hey, these guys flat-out don’t like Trump; they aren’t being nice, fair, even-handed … none of it.

If Trump is true to his word, that he wants fair treatment and would resort to other means to win the White House if he’s mistreated by his party moguls, then my strong hunch is that he might be cooking some plans to strike back at those Republican honchos.

After all, he’s already exhibited a serious mean streak all along the campaign trail so far.

Does anyone really think this fellow is incapable of creating maximum chaos?

And if you do believe he never in a million years would do anything to stick it in the GOP’s eye, check this out.

Then … get back to me.