Itās no surprise that scum attracts scum. Whats depressing is that with carefully placed propaganda thereās a right winger to lap it up.
A silk purse from this GOP sowās ear? Never happen!
I was impressed with the research on the piece, but spiffing up a foreign dictatorās image is one thing. Remaking Trump into pretty much the opposite of everything heās ever been may be something else. Manafort may be a good image doctor but he doesnāt have the worldās most compliant patient there.
A sociopath willing to do anything, say anything, for money - seems like a perfect match.
The only difference is that Manafort prefers to work behind the scenes and stay out of sight whereas Trumpās narcissism demands he always be front and center.
I posted the Slate article on The Hive earlier under the heading āReinventing Trumpā along with this older article which I think is relevant to the discussion:
I know the GOP has been an endless source of giggles and the polling is encouraging but, make no mistake, Democrats are going to be up against world-class thugs in the general election. Theyāre going to pull out all the stops to fracture unity and suppress turn-out. Weāre going to have to be strong and united.
āWag the Dogā indeedā¦THIS is scaryā¦not one of these ratfkers care about āAmerica Firstā or āMake America Greatāā¦they donāt care what they do to tear it down for their own self aggrandizement. Pigs.
āOver months of tweets and taunts, Donald Trump has terrified most of the Republican establishment, who view him as a brand-shattering electoral debacle in the making,ā
if the Repubilican establishement really sees Trump as ābrand-shatteringā they are in really really really deep denial. Trump is the triumphant human manifestation of the ābrandā they have been cultivating for many many decades now.
This isnāt surprising. Trump is the American fascist movement ā fully formed, after decades of Republican dress rehearsals.
Once lesser demagogues like Ted āErnst Rommā Cruz and former party stalwarts like the Mitch āvon Hindenburgā McConnell are brought to heel, the jackbooted thugs will begin their march toward the White House. The good news: Hillary aināt no Neville Chamberlain.
So, Manafort is Uncle Duke. Is that about right?
OMG. Favreau is spot on. No wonder he is such a great speech writer
The eye-opener in this article, for me, is the idea that right-wing propaganda is not aimed at the masses. It is aimed only at other right-wingers. Manafort has learned that he only needs to convince a few GOP āthinkersā that black is white, evil is good, etc., and they will spread the idea from there.
Tweety got some corker sound from campaign racist and political opportunist Bob Corker last evening on Trumpās Foreign Policy speech. When Tweety wanted a comment on a particular Trumpian outrage, Corker claimed he hadnāt been booked to discuss politics and, more unbelievable, that he didnāt hear Trumpās political sentences but only certain parts that he claimed were āfull of substanceā. Yea, substanceā¦
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Yeah but think of the money he could make if he pulls it off. He could take Trump Jr. under his wing and show him how to turn access into riches.
This morning Tierney drilled down on the polling, and it certainly suggests that Trump is in some serious trouble. Nevertheless it would be very dangerous to underestimate him in the general election, and Iām comfortably confident that Hillary will take him very seriously and has the ability to dominate him utterly in a debate on any substantive issue.
That said, I think thereās a huge (dare I say yuuuuge?) difference between rehabilitating Jonas Savimbi, who very few American officials knew personally, and probably not many could pick out of a crowd of African men of his age and sartorial style, to the AEI crowd in a Republican administration ā a well-defined target group with small variances of opinion and perspective, and a demonstrated willingness to get in bed with heinous fiends so long as theyāre anticommunist heinous fiends ā and rehabilitating someone whom everyone in the country has been watching and listening to on TV for eight months and has formed very deeply held opinions.
Thereās a big difference between filling in a lot of blanks and recontextualizing some rough spots in a relatively low-information setting, and getting a hundred million voters to forget everything theyāve seen and heard over and over again every day since last summer.
Iām definitely not suggesting that we not take Trump and Manafort seriously. That would be very foolish. I am suggesting that Manafort has an orders-of-magnitude tougher job ahead of him. And for an amount of money that will be well within reach for the Hillary campaign, and equally effective image consultant could be hired to counter the Manafort strategy point for point.
So Iām not worrying yet.
Oh man, heād be crazy to have turned this down, of course. But I do think he has his work cut out for him, Trumpās a bit of a handful by all accounts, and Iām pretty sure heās got an exit strategy ready to go if it all starts falling in on him and beclowning his own rep.
And I thought Trump was evil. Manafort is Lucifer to Trumpās Dr. Faustus.
Yes, but note that in spite of their constant protestations that they are the street savvy ones in the political arena, conservatives have extreme gullibility in the face anyone claiming to share their philosophy. Look at Sarah Palin, fer chrissake! Just spout their nonsense and they can be fleeced of their last penny.