Let's be 100% serious here for a moment:

[Fuzzy Bear]

The great part was where Sneed criticized Trump for that and said he sounded like a Democrat.

Yes, I'm proud to say the Donald sounded like a Democrat there.  We believe in investing this country.  We believe you have to spend money to make money and we know there is a crumbling infrastructure that needs to be built back up.  America has had these generations where infrastructure took leaps, the building of the transcontinental railroad, the great dams and the TVA in the New Deal, the highway system, etc.  It's time for another. 

And, it's so illustrative that Republicans hate that idea.  They represent these vulture capitalists and old, angry Fox News watchers who will be dead in 20 or less years, so no real investment in the future.  Their vulture capitalist class sees America as a distressed asset, a takeover target for their Republican corporation.  Cut the "labor costs" IE jobs and quality of life for the people, rack up the debt, reward the CEOs and people at the top, use creative accounting, propaganda and lies to win over the media, and then get your golden parachute out when it all goes to hell.  Sneed did that with HP, Romney did that like 50 times at Bain, and Republicans want to do it to America, again.

The worst tactics of corporate America's worst, Enron, Bain Capital, Goldman Sachs, Phillip Morris, those are the tactics of this GOP.  They want short term rewards for the rich people and they believe in creative accounting and fraud, because that's quicker than building it honestly.  It's easier to use creative accounting to make your Q3 earnings look good, than it is to take the hit and deal with your problems.  It's easier to pretend climate change doesn't exist and sweep it under the rug, than it is to deal with it honestly. 

Or, if you don't like the leveraged buy-out and Wall Street metaphor, how about this.  Republicans want to treat the government like a pinata, break it and give all the candy inside to their friends.  Screw Republicans, they're garbage.

Trump's core supporters are the Perot/Buchanan Republicans, most of whom can be classified as "paleoconservatives".  These are the Republicans who have called out the party for their corporate sell-outs on behalf of the "Cash Out America" program.  That's essentially what Bushism (as opposed to Reaganism) was; policies that allowed the investor classes to take their money and run from America without penalties.

BTW, Fiorina's comment on Trump's analysis shows that she's a complete and dangerous moron on domestic policy as well as foreign policy.

[Fuzzy Bear]

I laughed when Fiorina got all incredulous when Trump delivered this line. She said something to the extent of "I can't believe a Republican would say that!"...and not a single Republican in the room backed her up on it.

I laughed because she's either (A) an idiot, or (B) a lousy politician who thought she'd get brownie points for the remark.

The GOP has TRADITIONALLY been the party of the middle class, and, particularly, the WHITE COLLAR middle class.  This group of folks has always been partial to the infrastructure needed to create a middle class society.  This is especially true because the great middle class society created in the post-WWII era was a COMMUTER society, relying on highways and mass transit to get them to work, and on modern sources of power and water.  This is a group that valued social institutions such as those Robert Moses built in New York (e. g. Jones Beach State Park).  

That we would not fund ROUTINE maintenance and upgrading of our infrastructure because it would add to the deficit or would increase taxes is the silliest idea politicians have today.  The Fiorinas of world need to stop lambasting the left for wanting "free healthcare".  These folks want "free infrastructure" and they think that it comes from the infrastructure fairy.

[Fuzzy Bear]

The great part was where Sneed criticized Trump for that and said he sounded like a Democrat.

Yes, I'm proud to say the Donald sounded like a Democrat there.  We believe in investing this country.  We believe you have to spend money to make money and we know there is a crumbling infrastructure that needs to be built back up.  America has had these generations where infrastructure took leaps, the building of the transcontinental railroad, the great dams and the TVA in the New Deal, the highway system, etc.  It's time for another.  

And, it's so illustrative that Republicans hate that idea.  They represent these vulture capitalists and old, angry Fox News watchers who will be dead in 20 or less years, so no real investment in the future.  Their vulture capitalist class sees America as a distressed asset, a takeover target for their Republican corporation.  Cut the "labor costs" IE jobs and quality of life for the people, rack up the debt, reward the CEOs and people at the top, use creative accounting, propaganda and lies to win over the media, and then get your golden parachute out when it all goes to hell.  Sneed did that with HP, Romney did that like 50 times at Bain, and Republicans want to do it to America, again.

The worst tactics of corporate America's worst, Enron, Bain Capital, Goldman Sachs, Phillip Morris, those are the tactics of this GOP.  They want short term rewards for the rich people and they believe in creative accounting and fraud, because that's quicker than building it honestly.  It's easier to use creative accounting to make your Q3 earnings look good, than it is to take the hit and deal with your problems.  It's easier to pretend climate change doesn't exist and sweep it under the rug, than it is to deal with it honestly.  

Or, if you don't like the leveraged buy-out and Wall Street metaphor, how about this.  Republicans want to treat the government like a pinata, break it and give all the candy inside to their friends. Screw Republicans, they're garbage.

Trump's core supporters are the Perot/Buchanan Republicans, most of whom can be classified as "paleoconservatives".  These are the Republicans who have called out the party for their corporate sell-outs on behalf of the "Cash Out America" program.  That's essentially what Bushism (as opposed to Reaganism) was; policies that allowed the investor classes to take their money and run from America without penalties.

BTW, Fiorina's comment on Trump's analysis shows that she's a complete and dangerous moron on domestic policy as well as foreign policy.

Oh, what a bunch of BS.

Face it: these guys have always went along with whatever idea coming out of conservative America that is conveyed in the strongest and loudest terms possible. They're not "paleoconservatives" or "populists": they're know-nothings and low-info voters. When Reagan was the strong man, they went along with him. When Buchanan was, they went along with him. When Bush II was, they went along with him. Now, they're going along with Trump. Perot was never a strong man - he merely had the support of know-nothings and disengaged, low-information voters because neither candidate was appealing to their cretinous tendencies in the general election (however, for that reason, it is a very apt comparison). It has nothing to do with the ideas so much as it has to do with blind partisan hatred and whoever can present the most concentrated form of messaging that taps into their raw emotions.

Trump is the best at doing such in a very long time (maybe ever), whereas low-energy losers like Buchanan never got anywhere in the end. Buchanan never had a near-majority of GOP voters in his corner.

There is arguably nobody who better embodies the vulture-capitalist, government bribing, outsource-loving elements of the Republican Party in the race today than Trump, based on who he actually is and what he has actually done - not what his chose du jour happens to be in terms of talk. Hell, he may be the best embodiment of that ever; even Romney didn't make billions off of moving capital to and fro around the world and artificially generating value in arbitrary ways back home, conflating it with wealth...only to lose it all and make billions right back again because the people to whom he owed money didn't want their own fortunes to be harmed by his utter failures spilling over into even more into their own finances (and into the collective psyche of the public, further showing the people that they're all nothing more than vultures).

Donald Trump was the original bailout.

Well, maybe.  But tell me why "low information" voters should vote for folks who have such contempt for them?  Why should "low information" voters listen to, and take to heart, the ideas of someone who has nothing but contempt for them?

There is an incongruent aspect of Trump between his personal life and the beliefs of his supporters.  In this case, is he really more incongruent than any other Republican running?  Trump may put his message out in "low information" terms, but he makes more foreign policy sense than the jerks on stage that want to use a No Fly Zone to start WWIII with Russia and Iran.  The folks who end up voting for Trump will likely be satisfied with the results if he's elected, just like they were satisfied with Reagan.  To say these folks have been bamboozled by Reagan, Bush 43, et al is to say that they're stupid.  Are you willing to tell THEM that they're stupid?  If you are, ponder how deep their complaints are regarding elitists on both the right and left.

[Fuzzy Bear]

You're pro-gay marriage and pro-choice though?  Right?

If you were to ask me if I support gay marriage, I would say yes. I'll leave it at that.


But no, I am not "pro-choice". I am very much anti-abortion. Very much so. While I've never been sufficiently bothered to go to the March for Life, I'm very firm on this-- and my opinion has little to do with religion. The only exception I can confidently say I recognize is for the life of the mother. I probably could stomach incest, but the case of rape is very hard for me to rationalize, coming from a position of there being a life involved. Rape is terrible, yes... but does that mean the child has to die? What did the child do to deserve death? Of course I never talk about abortion in real life-- I've literally only ever talked about it with two, maybe three people outside certain political circles, and one of them was my father-- but I genuinely despise the way pro-choice people frame it about "women's bodies" and "women's rights", which completely ignores why actual people oppose abortion-- the woman is not the only one involved!

I'll stop here, but I am certainly not "pro-choice". I definitely fail that litmus test, as I said before, in that wall of text. However, I (usually) don't vote for candidates based on their position on abortion; if there was no Roe v. Wade and there could be real change, that might be different, since there's relatively little that can be done it usually takes a backseat, despite how strongly I feel.

Simfan is a "High Tory", he has no place in the Democratic Party.

That said, he's mistaken to believe that bedstuy is "on the right" of the Democratic Party; he really isn't. His positions are reflective of The New Republic or Center For American Progress or any "mainstream" liberal think-tank or publication.

I've read a lot of what he says about crime, policing, cultural issues with black people, gentrification, "urban" issues and such; I usually agree with him on these, and I don't really feel like my positions mirror those of the Center for American Progress as much as they do the Manhattan Institute.

Also you're probably spot on about me, though I'm probably less skeptical of the market economy than the term suggests, even if I'm big on communitarianism.

Simfan34 strikes me very much as a Republican in the Rep. Christopher Smith (R-NJ) mold.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Smith_(New_Jersey_politician)

[Fuzzy Bear]

Regardless of how much money we spent waging war in Iraq, the questions raised by Mr. Trump are very good ones: (1) what do we have to show today for our outlay of blood and treasure? and (2) could that money have been better spent here at home, on infrastructure projects and the like?

The reason Mr. Trump is doing so well is that his thoughts on things like this are right in line with those of the American electorate.

Very true.  And his TONE is also in line with the electorate.  The electorate is as contemptuous toward the targets of Trump's insults as Trump is.

Why is this so hard to understand.  On what issue is Trump out of sync with the majority of Americans and the majority of Republican voters?