Trump's nomination is the first time US politics has left me truly afraid

[anvi]

muon2; yes, Trump did read the speech off the prompter, taking his advisors' direction.  But the very next afternoon, he was at the podium with Pence going after Ted Cruz' father on the JFK assassination.  His capacity for self-discipline is still striving to hit the twenty-four consecutive hours mark.

[Devout Centrist]

The doctor analogy is completely inappropriate. The main job of the chief executive of the country is to act as an executive. The President doesn't create laws, and the President doesn't interpret laws. The President will sign or veto legislation sent to him, will put together a cabinet that will handle the nitty gritty of governance, will appoint federal judges, and will provide direction via the bully pulpit. That's it.

The President also has broad executive authority to act autonomously, is commander-in-chief of the military, and conducts foreign relations (along with the Secretary of State, who in the "unitary theory" of the Executive, serves at the pleasure of the President).

And if Trump, who shows little regard or even understanding of our system of government and Constitution, oversteps his legal authority, who is going to stop him?  Do you think, what, Congress or the DoJ or the Supreme Court is going to send federal marshals to seize him in some kind of coup?  No.  His actions will have to be legally challenged by a damaged party and go through the entire judicial system - a process that could take months - or he would need to be impeached and convicted - a process which could take months - all while Trump continues to hold the reins of power.

There is a difference between authority and power.  There are a lot of things the President doesn't have the legal authority to do, but has the power to do nonetheless.

President Obama has been acting with too much autonomy, taking advantage of way too many executive actions. This is not in line with the Constitution, and to my thinking, represents an overstepping of his legal authority. And the Supreme Court has ruled 12 times that President Obama has gone out-of-bounds with regard to his executive actions.

So yes, his actions had to be legally challenged and go through the entire judicial system - a process that took several months, and all while Obama continued to hold the reins of power. That's the way the system has been designed to work. Once elected, if either Trump or Clinton oversteps their authority, someone must bring a court case or begin impeachment proceedings. That's exactly how things are supposed to work, and it doesn't matter who is in office. Your comments indicate that you believe Trump would act inappropriately, but again, Obama has been ruled against a dozen times by the high court. So you tell me: who is it that doesn't understand his role within our system of government? 'Cuz from where I'm sitting, the name causing the most grief is not Donald Trump, it's Barack Obama. And guess what? He continues to hold the reins of power...

http://www.factcheck.org/2014/07/obama-and-executive-overreach/

Quite a strong claim in the absence of any concrete evidence, don't you think?

Absence of concrete evidence? I don't think so. Then again, I don't think the President can avoid dealing with Congress, which is the whole point...

http://www.factcheck.org/2012/09/obamas-executive-orders/

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Artful sidestep, but I referring to your claim that the Supreme Court has ruled, "12 times," in opposition to Obama's use of executive action.

The issue remains legally contentious and there's little to point to a consensus from the Supreme Court, as conservative legal pundits have claimed.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Interestingly, I left the convention less fearful of a Trump presidency than I did going in. There were two major factors in that. First was Paul Ryan's speech, which laid out a far more traditional Pub approach to governance, and left me feeling that Congress would be calling the policy shots, not the White House. The second was the acceptance speech, where Trump clearly started paying attention to his campaign staff. He avoided any name calling and very closely followed the script given to him. He even went so far as to quell the "Lock her up" chant, which was certainly instilled by Manafort, et al. That doesn't suggest to me that he isn't going to launch on opponents as he thinks fits the tenor of a speech, but it does suggest that his staff now actually has influence in Trump's decisions.

These are comforting thoughts. However, there is something even more important that should motivate Pubs to vote Trump.

Pubs have not been able to pass a single piece of Pub friendly legislation due to obstruction by the Dems in the Senate and in the White House. The only way for Pubs to actually legislate is for them to put a Pub president in the White House. And Trump is the best such president, because he is only interested in the direction the country is heading in and not policy details, which will be left to Ryan and McConnell.

This is very much neglected (to their cost) by Democrats. I think the idea that Trump would be a puppet to the GoP elite and plans on governing that way would be far more destructive to him than anything else.

[hopper]

You're all a bunch of loons. You're no better than the idiots on the far right who called Obama a Muslim socialist.

You mean idiots on the far right like Donald Trump, leader of the Birther movement and who recently suggested Obama is in cahoots with ISIS?

I think Trump thinks Obama is empathetic to ISIS not that he supports ISIS.

[hopper]

The great irony is that if Trump succeeds, the GOP will be far more moderate afterwards then it was before Trump.

However, it will also be far less neoconservative, neo-liberal and globalist and if you fit in any of those categories, chances are you going to be just as disenchanted as if the party had kept going further and further right in the movement conservative tradition.

Yeah more populist on economic issues(not nessecarily really more moderate) and less interventionst on foreign policy.

[hopper]

The doctor analogy is completely inappropriate. The main job of the chief executive of the country is to act as an executive. The President doesn't create laws, and the President doesn't interpret laws. The President will sign or veto legislation sent to him, will put together a cabinet that will handle the nitty gritty of governance, will appoint federal judges, and will provide direction via the bully pulpit. That's it.

The President also has broad executive authority to act autonomously, is commander-in-chief of the military, and conducts foreign relations (along with the Secretary of State, who in the "unitary theory" of the Executive, serves at the pleasure of the President).

And if Trump, who shows little regard or even understanding of our system of government and Constitution, oversteps his legal authority, who is going to stop him?  Do you think, what, Congress or the DoJ or the Supreme Court is going to send federal marshals to seize him in some kind of coup?  No.  His actions will have to be legally challenged by a damaged party and go through the entire judicial system - a process that could take months - or he would need to be impeached and convicted - a process which could take months - all while Trump continues to hold the reins of power.

There is a difference between authority and power.  There are a lot of things the President doesn't have the legal authority to do, but has the power to do nonetheless.

Well damaged at te Presidential Level for now anyway.

[SillyAmerican]

The doctor analogy is completely inappropriate. The main job of the chief executive of the country is to act as an executive. The President doesn't create laws, and the President doesn't interpret laws. The President will sign or veto legislation sent to him, will put together a cabinet that will handle the nitty gritty of governance, will appoint federal judges, and will provide direction via the bully pulpit. That's it.

The President also has broad executive authority to act autonomously, is commander-in-chief of the military, and conducts foreign relations (along with the Secretary of State, who in the "unitary theory" of the Executive, serves at the pleasure of the President).

And if Trump, who shows little regard or even understanding of our system of government and Constitution, oversteps his legal authority, who is going to stop him?  Do you think, what, Congress or the DoJ or the Supreme Court is going to send federal marshals to seize him in some kind of coup?  No.  His actions will have to be legally challenged by a damaged party and go through the entire judicial system - a process that could take months - or he would need to be impeached and convicted - a process which could take months - all while Trump continues to hold the reins of power.

There is a difference between authority and power.  There are a lot of things the President doesn't have the legal authority to do, but has the power to do nonetheless.

President Obama has been acting with too much autonomy, taking advantage of way too many executive actions. This is not in line with the Constitution, and to my thinking, represents an overstepping of his legal authority. And the Supreme Court has ruled 12 times that President Obama has gone out-of-bounds with regard to his executive actions.

So yes, his actions had to be legally challenged and go through the entire judicial system - a process that took several months, and all while Obama continued to hold the reins of power. That's the way the system has been designed to work. Once elected, if either Trump or Clinton oversteps their authority, someone must bring a court case or begin impeachment proceedings. That's exactly how things are supposed to work, and it doesn't matter who is in office. Your comments indicate that you believe Trump would act inappropriately, but again, Obama has been ruled against a dozen times by the high court. So you tell me: who is it that doesn't understand his role within our system of government? 'Cuz from where I'm sitting, the name causing the most grief is not Donald Trump, it's Barack Obama. And guess what? He continues to hold the reins of power...

http://www.factcheck.org/2014/07/obama-and-executive-overreach/

Quite a strong claim in the absence of any concrete evidence, don't you think?

Absence of concrete evidence? I don't think so. Then again, I don't think the President can avoid dealing with Congress, which is the whole point...

http://www.factcheck.org/2012/09/obamas-executive-orders/

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Artful sidestep, but I referring to your claim that the Supreme Court has ruled, "12 times," in opposition to Obama's use of executive action.

The issue remains legally contentious and there's little to point to a consensus from the Supreme Court, as conservative legal pundits have claimed.

Ah, sorry, any sidestep was unintentional. My claim regarding the "12 times" is taken directly from this article by Elizabeth Slattery, a legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.

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The full article is definitely worth a read...

[Averroës Nix]

Trump is uniquely scary, but anyone who has never been made to feel "truly afraid" by our politics is either extremely ignorant or obscenely privileged.

[SillyAmerican]

Trump is uniquely scary, but anyone who has never been made to feel "truly afraid" by our politics is either extremely ignorant or obscenely privileged.

Or extremely/obscenely privileged and ignorant. (Be afraid, be very afraid...). 

[DINGO Joe]

Interestingly, I left the convention less fearful of a Trump presidency than I did going in. There were two major factors in that. First was Paul Ryan's speech, which laid out a far more traditional Pub approach to governance, and left me feeling that Congress would be calling the policy shots, not the White House. The second was the acceptance speech, where Trump clearly started paying attention to his campaign staff. He avoided any name calling and very closely followed the script given to him. He even went so far as to quell the "Lock her up" chant, which was certainly instilled by Manafort, et al. That doesn't suggest to me that he isn't going to launch on opponents as he thinks fits the tenor of a speech, but it does suggest that his staff now actually has influence in Trump's decisions.

And yet the next morning he goes right back to wacko internet theories in going off on Cruz, and goes on MTP and talks about quitting WTO, etc... Unstable man is unstable