Trump said he would reimpose tariffs on imports, kick out illegals that drive down blue collar wages, and lower corporate taxes to the point where its not financially beneficial to do corporate inversions. You might not like those things but hes pretty populist for a "republican".

None of those things are new for a Republican.

His massive tax cuts for everyone (but mainly for himself and his rich friends) would cost Trillions...his only plan for this shortfall is that the economy will magically expand to make up the difference.

They kind of are, all the rest of the field is kissing ass for Latino votes. He is also transparently not religious or pro life, deciding to change his opinion like the minute he ran. Also self funding his campaign with no special interest money. The only really snooty thing I can think of is eliminating the estate tax. He's more populist than Hillary, unless you're a mexican.

I like how casually theSnake conflates "populist" with "mind-bogglingly racist".

I mean, all Trump is saying is that we should literally deport tens of millions of people and build a Great Wall to keep the Mexicans out. Who doesn't think that's a fantastic idea?

All of Trump can be summed up in knowing that he's in on the joke. His contempt for his own base oozes from every pore. He knows very well that no matter what he says, it is impossible to sink low enough for them. He could walk out tomorrow, say "I hate you all, and everything you stand for," and they'd applaud.

The Republican party is millions of people in the depths of deepest, darkest Stockholm Syndrome. The rapist is heroic, every time, in every way. It's not enough to simply say you're one of them... this is why Walker and to a lesser extant Fiorina are already counted out. They don't want a peer. They want a ruthless Howard Roark to fuck them bloody. Carson is doomed unless he can start bullying them as well. The problem is, he has difficulty simultaneously being bullied and running the risk of being "uppity nigger". This is a risk that Trump simply doesn't have to run.

It would be fascinating if it wasn't the likelihood of a man whose catchphrase is "You're Fired" being about 49% of the way from The Button.

I'm starting to worry about Trump.

Sure his spiel about kicking out illegal immigrants is racist and hateful, but it's depressingly popular with young inner-city Blacks and Hispanics who emigrated to the US legally.

Trump may be a huge asshole, but he's cunning.

The Democrats are really dropping the ball on this. They just criticize him for being a racist asshole when what they should be doing is pointing out how much of his fortune came from exploiting illegal immigrant labor.

Donald Trump is the best thing that could ever happen to the Democratic party and anyone who says otherwise does not understand basic electoral math.

Time travel awkward collar grab for so much in this thread.

What about Sanders, besides the whole "socialist" thing?

Carson is crazy and will fuck up worse than this, Trump can never win the candidacy, Fiorina has way too many skeletons in the closet, and none of the others have made any kind of mark yet and won't, leaving Rubio and Jeb Bush

Bush has been a bad candidate and keeps making mistakes, and Rubio is pretty strange and extreme, which will hurt him in a general

if you thought Romney was a bad choice, the Republicans can't possibly field a better candidate than that at this point

The "socialist" smear is a powerful one, even if everything you're saying makes sense. The accusation alone powerfully rallied the GOP during Obama's tenure, and a full-blown socialist would play right into their hands. Also, he's not exactly the most savvy political operative; he has a reputation in Washington for being overly rigid, dour, humorless, and kind of an asshole. That's gonna make it difficult for him to snag crucial endorsements, which, coupled with a gun-shy Democratic party not wanting to look like a bunch of freedom-hatin' commies, significantly lowers the ceiling on his campaign infrastructure. Money doesn't buy elections; organization does.

I like Hillary because, despite being a shitty campaigner, she's the ultimate political insider. In this country, there's a strange stigma against politicians being good at politics. We tend to venerate the Heroic Outsider over the Scheming Operative, even though the latter is almost always going to get more shit accomplished. Just consider Obama's presidency. The reason we didn't see stronger measures in the ACA (besides Kennedy's death) was that Obama was generally acknowledged as bad at the horse-trading needed to secure votes and had severely underestimate the level of inertia he would face.

"The reason we didn't see stronger measures in the ACA (besides Kennedy's death) was that Obama was generally acknowledged as bad at the horse-trading needed to secure votes and had severely underestimate the level of inertia he would face."

??? Multiple points:

1) Kennedy's interim successor, Paul Kirk, was able to vote for the ACA in Kennedy's place, so Kennedy's death wasn't a factor.

2) From whom exactly was Obama going to secure votes for, say, the public option? The choices were Lieberman (I-CT) or one of the Republicans, all of whom were dead-set against it. All the Democrats in the Senate were either for it or probably persuadable, but there were only 58 of them (and Sanders (I-VT) made 59).

3) People overestimate the president's ability to use the bully pulpit or persuade legislators to vote for things they're dead-set against. LBJ, the most bestest bully pulpitingest president ever, still couldn't get more than 8% of Southern Democrats to back the Civil Rights Act. People want to believe that a president can get any bill passed if only he tries hard enough, but no, that's not really the case.

For many of them, it's a Conway Twitty concert.

Most of them think its more like a Dirty Harry film. The shooter comes out, and they just calmly pull out their open carry weapon, and kill the shooter with one shot. You feel lucky punk?

Yep. For Stanley.

The first thing my "Everyone should have a gun and will use it correctly 100% of the time fantasy world" guy said that if he had a gun, he would of easily taken care of this cowardly miscreant.

Because, you know, that's how having a gun works.