Discussion: Five Points:How GOP Got To A Place Where Iowa Is Between Cruz, Trump

Those three pictures are frightening. The one at the bottom much more so than the other two.

Empty minds.

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Yep. Not only does it help for ratings (read:profit). it helps elect republicans (thanks also to false equivalency), who then further help the corporate ownership of the media via deregulation.

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Facts!

Donald Trump WILL NEVER BE OUR PRESIDENTā€¦EVER!

And Iā€™M NEVER WRONG.

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My personal view is its a bit deeper than that. On paper, they should have a very talented field to work withā€¦4 sitting governors, 2 ex governors, 4 Senators, 1 with a great deal of experience and sitting on every important committee.

But the reality is far short of the paper because, in my view, modern conservatism has become a hollow movement. Its all about repeating empty linesā€¦more military, cut taxes, Christianity uber Allesā€¦the three legs of the stool. There is no actual debate, no change, going on within those three areas anymore. So it stagnants. And as it stagnated, it became invested with crazyā€¦still the same old lines, but just taken to ridiculous and crazy extremes.

So the people holding office in the conservative movement have either embraced the crazy or become empty.jaded shells themselves.

Letā€™s face it, the republican debates have become increasingly, not only fact free, but filled with flights of nightmare fancy, fear being the motivator they chose over hope long ago. People tune in to watch them insult and denigrate each other, not to educate themselves on conservatismā€¦because there, nothing has changedā€¦there is nothing new to learn. Its like watching Lord of the Flies happen real time to a political party.

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ā€œOff topic but is it weird that Cruz has his hand in his suitcoat for the pledge? Does he think heā€™s Napoleon?ā€

You got it. ā€œWorld dominationā€ā€¦ He said it himself here:

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OCCUPY should have had at least a sustained and more publicized mention of the Corporate MSM.

ā€œI saw it on the newsā€

The latter sentence can mean a modicum of information or cartoons and fluff. The suits want cartoons and fluff.

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Steve Almond at Salon has a great op-ed on Trump and the GOP, which Iā€™ve excerpted below. Itā€™s very much worth reading in its entirety.

ā€œThe crowning irony here is that both the GOP and Fox News have spent the past four decades laying the groundwork for Trumpā€™s rise. They have sought to create an electorate that is ill informed and disenfranchised, angry and impotent, susceptible to propaganda, and disengaged from the practical effects and moral necessity of governance.ā€

ā€œThey have reaped remarkable political and monetary rewards for the wealthiest Americans by urging the poor and middle class to vote based on indignation rather than their own interests. Trump is the logical byproduct of this sustained campaign: an isotopic nihilist who could care less about conservatism, who feeds off the adulation of the enraged, self-victimizing masses bred by the conservative movement. If the Tea Party was the beginning of this revolution ā€” the ascent of overt and angry know-nothingism in the guise of conservatismā€” then Trump marks its apotheosis. He is the unyielding authoritarian redeemer that conservative dittoheads have been awaiting for years.ā€

ā€œIn this sense, Trump is the politics of resentment come back to roost. He delivers the same intoxicating drug as Fox News, or Rush Limbaugh, only at a much higher dosage, one undiluted by ideological pieties. He makes the uneducated feel smart. He makes the unemployed feel destined for riches. He makes those betrayed by our economy feel empowered. He makes those mired in despair feel hope.ā€

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I canā€™t disagree with anything you say other than to say that the very nature of the movement is one that breeds a remarkably thin bench for national office.

The insanity of the movement has mastered local control, and the gerrymander, because what it takes to win locally is an intensely ginned up phobia.

But at the national level, demographics trumps phobia. There just arenā€™t enough middle-aged white people out there anymore who can become afraid of being raped and plundered by dark people, compared to all the pleasant dark people going about their lives wondering, ā€œwtf??!! is wrong with all these white people???!ā€

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Outstanding Post.

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The last paragraph of Almondā€™s piece explains the crazed, lunatic expression of ecstasy on the face of that young mother offering her baby up for Trumpā€™s blessing (if not consumption). Iā€™ve seen enough photos taken in a certain European country in the mid-to-late 1930s to know that the crazed lunatic expression of ecstasy was quite common on the faces of those people lining the parade routes back then.

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I thought Rubio did pretty well on the vile mean spirited nasty little man lying and reviling Obama front. Iā€™m guessing that Clinton recently wrapping herself in Obamaness lately has helped propel this to some degree.

inlabsitrust: Feed raw meat to rats, and youā€™re going to get more rats.

you get bigger rats too.

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I think this is at the heart of much of what has led to the modern version of the Republican party. Conservatism in general has wrought one failure after another for those who adhere to it, and in general it just doesnā€™t work as theyā€™d explain it. Trickle-down is pure strain bullshit thatā€™s only accelerated the death of our middle class and lined the pockets of billionaires (some say by design), yet itā€™s still the crux of their economic policy. Weā€™ve had 8 years under Bush W. to see how their interventionist, war-hawk approach to foreign policy plays out in the real world (oh hey, look, a bunch of American soldiers are dead and ISIS controls Iraq). And regarding social issues: the world evolves, culturally and scientifically and that isnā€™t something you can simply stop by legislating peopleā€™s rights away or denying established science. When your political party produces nothing of value to your society, you tend to lose talent and the support of smart people. Eventually youā€™re left with exactly what the GOP has now - Trump supporters.

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boisdevache: ā€œHow could the people weā€™ve fed anti-intellectualism to for years be so stupid?!ā€

thanks fox, rush, beck, hannity for warping the brains of a third of our country.

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I hate like hell to defend the MSM, but really, what else are they going to cover? Itā€™s not like thereā€™s anything else substantial going on.

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That is a great example of what I was trying to get at. When Reagan first came out with the supply side tricke down theoryā€¦it was, even if we disagreed with itā€¦relatively new in the larger conservative circles. H.W. famoulsy decried it as voo-doo economics. But it was something new.

Here we are almost 40 years laterā€¦and it still the only economic theory anyone runs on in the GOPā€¦despite it being shown not to work. Its a complete stagnation. Indeed,its been taken to crazy extremesā€¦no matter what the economic problem is, the answer for the last 30 years since Reagan left office has beenā€¦cut taxes. They killed H.W. for daring to stray from that idea. Its even offered up for non economic issues. Get attacked by a terrorist group and gear up for war? Cut taxes in response.

On another slightly different front, but as continued proof, how did Reagan get out of the late 70s recession? Deficit spending to beef up the military. And what is every single GOP candidate clamoring for now? Deficit spending to beef up the militaryā€¦despite the fact that we are actually in a recovery that is slowly strengthening every month.

There simply are no new ideasā€¦even new conservative ideasā€¦emerging from the conservative movement. And the only thing this cycle has seemed to do is to push them entirely out of the idea market into the fact free crazy market.

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Not Trump per se, but the Second Coming almighty advertising dollars the Trump circus brings. The media follows Trump because Trump brings the ratings they fight over.

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bluestatedon: I was about to endorse Cruz, but now that I know heā€™s a lightening rod, new questions come to mind. What things is his rod lightening?

crudzā€™s lightening rod is half-truths, misinformation, disinformation, and outright fucking lies.

1 / The Party Pretended Like Donald Trump Was A Bad Dream, Not A Reality.

Yet when it was easy, cheap, and convenient, the GOP/Rightwing Noise Machine effectively supported and enjoyed Trumpā€™s Obama Birth Certificate Canard. (Because it was anti-Obama it was good.) They proved that propaganda equals politics, and the ends justifies the means. Trump learned how easy it was to play both the media and the GOP for attention. Clearly this has emboldened him to the current level of inanities. ā€œGod punishes us by giving us what we ask for.ā€ ā€”Yiddish proverb

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