Using Donald Trump’s appearance at a rally in Mobile, Alabama on Friday as his launching point, Politico’s Ben Schreckinger draws an equivalence between Trump’s lead in polls of certain southern states and the 1968 third-party candidacy of former Alabama Governor George Wallace.
In 1968, this third-party candidacy robbed the Democratic nominee, Hubert Humphrey, of support from the “Solid South,” where Wallace won 5 states. Schreckinger says Trump’s trajectory could do the same thing next year:
Wallace, an avowed segregationist, was the last presidential candidate to win electoral votes as a third-party candidate. The threat of Trump doing so, propelled by a hardline immigration stance that many have condemned as racist, looms over the Republican Party now as it did over the Democratic Party then…
The author offers zero factual support for this stunning display of moral incoherence, beyond pointing out that Trump has touted his leads in southern polls (never mind that he leads virtually everywhere else, too) and that “many” have condemned his immigration stances as “racist.”
Is this article unfair? You bet it is. But get used to it.
If you’re Trump, it’s all good. For him, it’s not what they’re saying about him (or whether it’s good or bad for him, the Republican Party, or the country). The important thing is just that they’re talking ABOUT HIM. That’s all that really matters to the GOP’s own P.T. Barnum.
For the rest of us? Not so much. The longer Trump remains on top, the more the media will use him and his simplistic bombast as a wedge in just this way. And if actual conservatives are too cowed by the PC police to even have a real conversation about immigration—the primary engine of Trump’s campaign—Trump is going to remain on top for some time to come.
Folks, Trump’s rise is a direct consequence of leaders in both parties having failed to act reasonably and in the country’s interests on immigration, for decades. Reasonable debate is always silenced with the shrill intonation of “racism!” When reasonable debate is stifled, only unreasonable people remain to carry it on. That’s the void Trump is filling, and for as long as Trump is the flag bearer for stricter border controls, that cause will actually suffer. He may lead the currently highly-fractured field, but he does not lead the Republican Party (how could he when he’s been on the liberal side of virtually every issue, and coordinated with the Clintons before he decided to run?). And, more importantly, he has engendered very strong feelings from the rest of the electorate, a stunning 59% of which regards him unfavorably.
I’ve eaten my words on Trump before. I thought he was a flash in the pan, like Herman Cain four years ago. I see now that I underestimated him, and the frustration of much of the Republican electorate toward what Carly Fiorina calls, “the professional political class” and what Ted Cruz dubs the “Washington cartel.” Let’s hope that they, or Walker, Paul, Rubio, or one of the other conservatives can actually be the vehicle for stopping him.
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American Jobs Defending
the American Dream
Trump in 2016
What’s the difference between this picture?
http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/shared/npr/styles/x_large/nprshared/201307/198912283.jpg
And this picture?
http://www.redstate.com/uploads/2014/06/the-beast.jpg
True, mezurak. So very true. For 500 years white Latinos, in other words, Spaniards residing in the New World have treated the indigenous like garbage. Not that White Gringos did any better. But, it is in the interest of White Latinos, who have no interest in spending their pesos to improve the lives of the peasant class in Mexico, to encourage this northward migration into Gringoland. Not only are the white Latinos pushing their poor northward, but it just so happens that Mexico’s second largest source of income is the remittance money Mexican immigrants send back to Mexico. Pesos which ultimately end up in the wallets of the Whites who run just about all of the businesses in Mexico. So, the rich White Latinos have a sweet deal, along with the rich White Gringos who get the cheap labor. Now, on the other hand, it is the poor middle class in America which gets stuck with the bill, through higher medical insurance premiums and higher real estate taxes to pay for the medical and education costs of anchor babies and illegal immigrant children. No one addresses this reality….except Trump.
I hope Democrats continue to do so. The morons on the Left seem to think they can ignore the fact that they are alienating white voters in perpetuity. Republicans have been crushing Democrats for the past 5 years and I see no reason for that wave to abate.
President Trump is coming. A former boss told me a CEO is “50% hood ornament.” Same goes for President. The average American will like having a celebrity President (and a celebrity billionaire at that). Trump has all the concomitants of a 21st century President: fame, money, and never-ending panache.
Trump may be the embodiment of Jefferson’s notion that “…a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.”
May we cut the gibberish?
I have predicted this since May: Donald Trump will be the 2016 GOP Presidential nominee.
Those in denial of this movement are perhaps blinded by their bias for another candidate. The Trump enthusiasm is real, its building across the country and its genuine. Trump is a dealer in hope.
Politico is a Left wing funded rag weed that ran 47 consecutive negative articles on Herman Cain in 20111 to get him out of the race. Their tried and true methodology: spook donors, funds dry up, candidate withdraws. This is simply not the case with Donald Trump. Silly pieces like the one you referenced by discredited hacks like Ben Schreckinger only backfire, as Trump supporters dig in. How many Trump supporters troll the Internet all day on their IPads reading Politico? Rather, they are working – or looking for work — and trying to figure out how to get through August and maybe take their kids to a movie on Saturday night.
Trump’s surge is driven by passion for a great America, opposition to immigration policies that favor people from other countries over US citizens, Trade deals that harm the American worker, frustration with the political class, and a rejection of the elite media, the globalists, the slave traders, the Tarpists, The Chamber Puppets and the bankseters who have robbed and fleeced the middle class.
The Trump movement has no similarity to George C. Wallace in 1968. Wallace wanted to “send a message.” Trump wants to “Make America Great Again.” Wallace had no chance to win. Trump is within 6 points of Hillary Clinton.
The Trump campaign of ’16 more resembles Reagan of ’76: 40 years later. Everyone has a right to an opinion. But you can’t make up stuff and pass it off as facts if you want to be credible.
The Grandest of Ironies: Team Trump is using the very nominating rule changes Mitt Romney’s gutless lawyers jammed through over the objections of the grass roots in Tampa at the RNC convention to make it virtually impossible for an insurgent challenger to beat the establishment. Early primaries, controlled debates, condensed nominating process, etc. Trump is beating them over the head at their own feckless game. It’s a beautiful thing.
Great overview.
This is the problem. The media makes this out like the only person to stop him is Jeb Bush and that is false. Every time Jeb attacks Trump is just continues his rise … Trump feeds off of Jeb because Jeb represents everything Republicans are so mad about in their own party. To stop Trump it has to be another conservative that steps in and says “I am for the same things but I can actually be elected.” Unfortunately, outside of maybe Ted Cruz none of these conservative candidates are getting that.
Why would you want to stop him, Steve? He has awaken more people in just a couple months than we have in the past 5/6 years!
Agree, Lynne. I’ve credited him for being the one to put immigration front and center. But he can’t win next November, and if he’s our nominee I think it would have disastrous consequences for our Party and all of the down-ballot races. Plus, HE IS NOT A CONSERVATIVE. Even if I agreed with him 100% on immigration (which I don’t), I couldn’t trust him on anything else.
Steve, I love you man but you have another candidate in the race. So lets just be honest and we’ll get a lot further. And I predict will Trump will win in November if he’s the nominee. John
John I was a hater of yours for this Trump stuff but your right. He’s tapping into something that is really exposing both political parties as entrenched, institutionalized unofficial branches of the federal government and people are tired of it. I was listening to Mark Steyn on my lunch break today and he talked about how incredible it is that since the Civil War there has only been these two parties and right now they are just suffocating the public. Trump can spend $2 mil dollars and every Democratic running is in their 70s and boring.
Thanks Chris – I call it like I see it. If you look at this movement for Trump honestly, its the best thing that ever happened to the GOP. Not one of my listeners can name one single thing that would have been DIFFERENT since November 4 2014 if the Democrats won and Harry Reid was still in charge. NOT ONE THING! In fact, I can make the argument we would have been BETTER OFF with Reid as Senate Leader because he would have stopped this slave trade TTP disaster in its tracks. Instead, the Republicans and their Chamber Puppet bought and sold allies passed TPP Fast Track. This is the reality of today’s Republican Party. And someone is worried about their “brand?” Seriously?
Hmmmm.. Steve, just whom can we trust? We could not trust Ronald Reagan on immigration. Everything promise that he and his congressional accomplices made to the American public in 1986 in the aftermath of the First Great Amnesty was broken. Every single one. Remember Bush the Elderf and Wiser? Could we trust him? What about Bush the Younger and Dumber? Was he trustworthy? I have disliked Trump for 35 years – a brash, blundering, bloviating, blunderbluss, but he is the only game in town right now. And just what makes you think he cannot win in 2016 against a Hillary, a Bernie, an Uncle Joe, or an O’Malley? You don’t understand that Trump has thrown away the rulebook and he is not to be judged by conventional standards. And I believe if anyone can make inroads into the black voting bloc, Trump can, because no one more than black males have suffered due to Democratic welfare and immigration policies.
You could be right, Mark. I’ve misjudged him before and concede I could be doing it again. We’ll see.
There is truth out there, Steve, which both parties have kept under wraps for far too long, and Trump is the one who may lift the cover. For example, I have long contended that Social Security is IN PART a de facto transfer of wealth from black males who live on average to be 66 and white women, who live until 82. In effect, black men work all their lives, put in their money to SS, and do not live to collect it. When I – rabble rousing rogue renegade Republican – say such things to a small audience of black men (in the gym or locker room, for example) you should see the LIGHT GO ON in their minds. “Yeah, I never thought of it that way.” A few will murmur. No conventional Republican would say what I just uttered, but as I said Democratic policies have hurt black males more than any other group – and Trump is the bold and audacious rascal who will likely utter such ground breaking lines. Furthermore, black males know that Mexican and Central American immigrants are taking jobs that should have been theirs. So, we can kill two birds with one stone. Speak out against this tidal wave of immigration and make inroads with a voting bloc we have written off unjustly for far too long.
Just fyi Walker has changed his opinion on birthright citizenship three times in the last week. He is not his own man. Fiorina is 100% in alignment with Jeb Bush when she is not 100% in alignment with conservatives. Both candidates are owned by establishment. And going nowhere.