The Conservative Cave
Current Events => Politics => Topic started by: txradioguy on February 17, 2016, 07:18:32 AM
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In 2016, there are 14 Republican presidential candidates for whom Ronald Reagan is both the benchmark for conservative values and the lodestar of conservative ideas. There’s also one who wrote, in the second to last year of Reagan’s presidency, that he had been “so smooth, so effective a performer†that “only now, seven years later, are people beginning to question whether there’s anything beneath that smile.â€
The gadfly was Donald Trump, writing in his book The Art of the Deal. But it wasn’t just a glancing blow; to promote the book, Trump launched a political campaign that tore into Reagan’s record, including his willingness to stand up to the Soviet Union. Advised by the notorious Roger Stone, a Nixon-era GOP trickster, in 1987 Trump took out full-page ads in the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Washington Post blasting Reagan and his team.
In the text, which was addressed “To the American people,†Trump declared, “There’s nothing wrong with America’s Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone can’t cure.†The problem was America’s leading role in defending democracy, which had been fulfilled by Republicans and Democrats all the way back to FDR. Foreshadowing his 2015 argument that would have Mexico pay for an American-built border wall, Trump then said that the United States should present its allies with a bill for defense services rendered.
The ads, which cost more than $90,000, came after Trump had visited the Soviet Union and met with Mikhail Gorbachev. (A few years earlier, Trump had offered himself as a replacement for Reagan’s nuclear arms control negotiators, whom he considered too soft.) Trump followed his letter to America with a trip to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where voters were eyeing the candidates in the 1988 primary. There he spoke to the Rotary Club, which met at Yoken’s restaurant, where the sign out front featured a spouting whale and the slogan, “Thar she blows!†In his talk, Trump sounded some of the same themes he offers today, except for the fact that the bad guys who were laughing at the United States were the Japanese and not the Mexicans or Chinese.
“We’re being ripped off and decimated by many foreign nations who are supposedly our allies,†said Trump. “Why can’t we have a share of their money? I don’t mean you demand it. But I tell you what, folks, we can ask in such a way that they’re going to give it to us—if the right person’s asking. … The Japanese, when they negotiate with us, they have long faces. But when the negotiations are over, it is my belief—I’ve never seen this—they laugh like hell.â€
Trump’s 1987 pseudo-campaign generated invaluable amounts of free publicity and contributed greatly to the sales of The Art of the Deal, which appeared on shelves a few weeks after Trump spoke in Portsmouth. The experience reinforced what Trump already knew about manipulating the press corps, which then, as now, found him irresistible. (Audiences loved him too. One woman in New Hampshire told a reporter that Trump reeked of the “aphrodisiac†of power.) In the pages of the book, he defended his practice of hype, calling it “truthful hyperbole,†and he hinted at his future practice of outrageous rhetoric, noting that the press “love stories about extreme.â€
Although he barely touched on politics in The Art of the Deal, when he did, Trump was an equal opportunity critic. He criticized Reagan, but he also wrote that Democrat Jimmy Carter “couldn’t do the job†of president.
After The Art of the Deal went into paperback in 1988, Trump contemplated challenging Ed Koch in the race for mayor of New York City. Stone was again consulted, along with Republican National Committee chairman Lee Atwater. Atwater was as rough as they came. He once explained, with shocking candor, how political race-baiting had evolved since the 1950s. “By 1968 you can’t say ‘******’—that hurts you, backfires,†he said. “So you say stuff like, uh, ‘forced busing, states’ rights,’ and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites. … 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘******, ******.’â€
Trump, who had also considered running for governor of New York, decided not to try to become mayor.
Throughout the 1990s, Trump was occupied with rebuilding a fortune he had lost after his Trump Shuttle airline failed and two of his Atlantic City casinos went bankrupt. When this work was finished and he had another book to sell, he left the GOP in 1999 in order to flirt with the Reform Party. Catnip for the media, he appeared on Meet the Press, Fox News Sunday and Face the Nation. His outrageousness then was comparable to his outrageousness now. He said of opponent Pat Buchanan, “He’s a Hitler lover; I guess he’s an anti-Semite. He doesn’t like the blacks, he doesn’t like the gays.†He said that his ideal running mate would be Oprah Winfrey because “she’s popular, she’s brilliant, she’s a wonderful woman.â€
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/donald-trump-ronald-reagan-213288
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The only think I find appealing about Trump is that he scares the hell out of libs. Unfortunately that is not enough to convince me to vote for him because he scares the hell out of me too.
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I don't often ( actually never in the last 30 years ) contribute to political campaigns or party, BUT after watching Trump acting like the biggest jackass ever, I contributed to Cruz.
At first it was fun watching Trump thumbing his nose at the media and some politicians, then he started sounding a little weird then a lot weird and then he sounded like maybe he needed to be in a straight jacket or in a "Jackass" movie.
The early critics said he was trying to help Hillary. I didn't buy that until Trump started using left wing talking points. Even Code Pink Code Pink Gives Trump “Pink Badge of Courage†for Bush-bashing
http://legalinsurrection.com/2016/02/code-pink-gives-trump-a-pink-badge-of-courage-for-his-bush-bashing/
agrees with Trump.
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Trump=Bush lied people died.