Found here. Turns out that Donald Trump decided to bite the bullet… we think. Smart money is that he ends up trying to get back into the debate anyway, if ‘smart money’ even means anything anymore in this context.
Moe Lane
PS: If you follow me on Twitter then you know that I’ve gotten more and more tired of the man’s shtick lately. The Flowchart was never meant to be tested to destruction… well. A resolution of my problems should not be the end-all and be-all of human society, either.
I have to commend you, Moe, for following the flowchart as closely as you have. I’ve wondered over the past half year or so if I was going to get to post a link to it in your comment section, and I think I’ve only been tempted to do so once. But as far as I’m concerned, I’ve always considered Reagan’s eleventh commandment to have an unstated condition – “Thou shalt not speak ill of any Republican (who’s willing to follow this commandment)*’. In other words, Reagan’s eleventh is not a suicide pact. You might consider your flowchart similarly modified.
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* – I originally signed up at Redstate in, I think, 2005 to bitch about John McCain, with a lot of fellow conservatives. I think I stopped commenting much at Redstate when the site suddenly went from McCain-critical to pro-McCain overnight. I don’t require purity in my candidates, heck, since 1988 was the first election I got to vote in, I’ve never once gotten to vote for an actual conservative in the general election. But I drew the line at voting for someone who loathed me, and all conservatives like me, and made no bones about it. The fact that I ended up drawn in to vote for him in the end still disgusts me, and I hope that the crew that pushed him through enjoys voting this year as much as I did then. I’m still hoping it will be Cruz, but if not, I’ll happily vote for any Republican Karl Rove detests.
…good luck with that.
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I shall write in Moe Lane before I vote for Jeb, Christie, Kasich, or Rubio.
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Mew
For fun:
Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass; Acapulco 1922.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpI7EjUOkvg
Because I am a giver.
That’s from the “record albums my parents used to own” series. I may drop more of those in here just because.
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(It took me decades to appreciate this stuff.)
Now topic:
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Donald Trump is used to getting attention, and he sure does. Anything he does is calculated to drive maximum attention onto him. “Donald Trump goes for a Slurpee” would be arranged to be breaking news. Oh wait it is.
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Someone on the Sinister side of the aisle could raise this as worthy of mockery if their own god had not indulged in the same thing – dragging Biden along to fill out the souvenir plate. “Oh Look! The President and the Vice-President have gone for hamburgers!”
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“Oh look! The POTUS and the VP have gone for ice cream!”
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Etc.
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You know, I’m not really a Trump supporter but I feel myself being pushed that way because Trump’s detractors keep trying to make me one. Everything they complain about Trump is everything every politician I have experienced does. My take-away from the complaints, distilled down, is this:
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(1) He flip-flops.
(2) He has donated to…them.
(3) He is so much a nouveau riche character – as if Archie Bunker won the Power Ball lottery.
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And from where I sit I think a lot of opposition comes from (3). Donald Trump is brash. He is loud. He is garish. He does not have the correct accent, nor has he sought to acquire it. He does not defer to those with the proper taste and breeding.
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To sum this up: Mr. Trump’s pants crease may be perfect, but he had to buy that; having perfect tailoring and respecting it is not in his blood.
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Donald Trump is Thornton Mellon. And Professor Phillip Barbay will never forget that.
I’ll admit, part of what I like about Cruz over Trump is manner.
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I like that Cruz is careful and precise with his words*. Despite that this is probably tied to his lawyer background, and that I think that increasing lawyer influence is harmful.
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The records I have seen of Trump’s statements are not consistent with such habit.
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Perhaps my speculation that the Clintons first recruited Perot and now recruited Trump** is wrong. I may owe him an apology.
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We shall see.
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*P.S. Dave Drake, John Wright, and Tom Kratman are among my favorite writers. Part of why I like them is how they choose their words.
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**P.P.S. I have heard the counterargument that Trump had mentioned presidential ambitions well before the current circumstances applied. I dunno. Maybe we will have conclusive evidence in a week, a month, or a year.
Obligatory:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlVDGmjz7eM
(I’m sorry.) (I’ll try to be good.)
Eh, it’s a great flick.
Fox came up with a great response:
(Source: IJReview)
We’ve already established what kind of girl the RNC is.
Now, we’re just negotiating a price.
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He walked away from the table.
Next, we’ll likely hear rumors about him doing a show opposite the debate. (I’m pretty sure the other news channels wouldn’t mind pissing in FOX’s cornflakes.)
In the end, he’ll get what he wants because the RNC and FOX are in no position to resist. (Or he’ll make them grovel, and then screw them over anyway. Because he can. And because it’s a useful precedent to establish.)
In the meantime, he sucks all the oxygen out of the room for at least the next several days and makes it difficult for any other candidates to get their stories out.
Trump is unprincipled, a loudmouth boor, and many other things. One of those things being “the man who literally wrote the book on hardball negotiation”.
Disregard him as a clown at your peril. He’s a Machiavellian SOB.
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It’s pathetic how eager have been to play into the Trump vs. Megan Kelly shtick.
They just couldn’t help themselves. They froze it, personalized it, and polarized it. Willingly. Even though they know it’s a game they never win. They raced to the microphones to denounce Trump’s boorishness, but the effect was to undermine Kelly.
She took a cheap “war on women” shot at him, he took a cheap shot right back at her. Then there was much pointing, shrieking, and clutching of petticoats the he would be so uncouth. How dare he (verbally) hit a girl! (Who is no stranger to verbal combat, and who was actively picking a fight. I sure wouldn’t want to go toe-to-toe with her in that arena!)
If Romney had done something similar to Candy Crowley a couple years back, we wouldn’t be having this discussion now. (And we’d have stood up and cheered!)
Yep.
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Ace of Spades had a piece up a couple days ago about how Trump’s appeal to conservatives isn’t based on conservatism..:
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Mew
I’m pretty much on the same page as all of the above comments. While Ted Cruz is my first choice, the Donald doesn’t offend me near as much as the Establishment GOP and armchair conservatives have.
I had backed off watching FOXNews but had tuned into that 1st debate with enthusiasm and hope. Needless to say, the behavior of the moderators, Megyn Kelly in particular was appalling. The whole debate was a debacle. Have not watched one FOXNews show since.
Obviously through news on the net, it’s well-known that Kelly has continued to go after Trump – even to the point of having Michael Moore on her show the other night to bash Trump and pontificate about conservatism to us…It’s just not going to fly. Not anymore. In that, many of us are grateful to wrench the control and abuse we’ve been subjected to for decades – not only by the Democrats, but our own side who has no problem perceiving us as “yahoos” and “wackobirds.”
I’m with acat: “I shall write in Moe Lane before I vote for Jeb, Christie, Kasich, or Rubio.”
Moe at least gets it. 🙂
Eh, he’s too much of an immigration squish. 😀
If newly arrived immigrants were given a union card, a scut job, and a sports team to root for, as happened up to the 1960s, I wouldn’t have a problem either.
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Mew