That's semi-reassuring.

If it's true, he really is entertainment.

Trump is doing the best job of making republicans look moderate of any person I've ever seen. Whereas the normal nutjobs like papa bear Bill and Rush are only media agents, so their comments rarely make it to interviews with actual politicians. A "fellow candidate" is guaranteed to have his comments brought up in interviews with the real candidates. At which time they can be slapped down.

Thing is they only look moderate to republicans to everybody else it's still a seventeen ring circus the spotlight is just on the Golden Boy for his Act, pretty soon the light will shift and that wacky black car will pull up and

"How many clo... Republicans can they fit in the same car?"

For the 83260923469th time: it's not staged.

The RNC has been apoplectic for a month. They're trying to convince several of the campaigns to nuke Trump to try to force him from the race. They're behind the kooky strategy to threaten Walker/Bush/Rubio skipping the first debate on account of Trump refusing to rule out an Independent run, with the hope that the bottomfeeder campaigns join in to form a full protest. They see Trump on the stage as a mortal wound to the Republican brand.

He is performing an important function for the GOP right now.

Making the other candidates look sane?

Trump and the crowding of the party are both incredible distractions from their candidates having to answer core issues, furthermore if 50% of each interview is the candidates lazily swatting away Trump quotes the core issues go unanswered even longer. During this entire time Bernie and Hillary are laying the foundation for their platform, openly for all to see. So the republicans can prepare for the debates without even showing their hands, and there is less chance for a candidate to stumble over their own words.

If you don't think this is directly making the non-Trump candidates seem more moderate i dont know what to tell you. It certainly is. Of course that doesnt account for people like Walker claiming that war with Iran on innaguration day is a possibility, or out of context quotes by Bush. But the Trump to candidates relationship IMO surely pushes the candidates to the middle, in everyone's eyes not just reps. How can standing next to someone with that much negative attention not?

The Republicans are never going to be able to get away with hilariously-extreme positions just because this gasbag is sucking up most of the attention in the room. Not only did Bush himself use the term "phasing out" when it came to his ideas on what needed to happen to Medicare, but in his sloppy defense of himself he left no room for doubt on what his true position is. In reality, "Trump as de facto head Republican" only serves to hurt their party because everyone correctly understands that it becomes that much easier for Democrats, media professionals, and low-information voters to just paint the party with a broad brush.

The party doesn't want him around. The RNC is maneuvering, other campaigns are trying to collaborate, and all of their opinion-makers are reading from the same script that calls for pretending that he's peaked and that his antics will tire at the conclusion of this message. Only a few people who have offered up even a half-hearted claim that he's in any way a positive, and they're just saying that because they've been wired to spam praises for the GOP regardless of how ridiculous they look doing so. The Mary Matalin caucus, if you will.

This post was edited by Pollster on Jul 26 2015 12:19am

So Jay the real question is who will the match up be let's say if killary goes to prison and trump eventually talks to much....who do you see as the possible new front runners and who would be their vp

The racist/sexist white voter is becoming more and more alienated by the mainstream GOP and people like McCain and Bush, who are called cuckservatives from the far right, belying their underlying racist and sexist fears of being lowered on the social and sexual hierarchy. Cuckservative, it is a thing they're saying now, lol. Anyway, the more mainstream and sane the GOP gets the more the racist/sexist bloc feels alienated. There are more or less two groups in the GOP, the Bush/McCain/Rubio and to a lesser degree Paul group who believe that the GOP needs to spread its appeal to some minorities while trying to retain as much white male vote as possible, and on the other side you have Ted Cruz and Scott Walker who believe that you only need a solid white male vote to win and appeal to that. Both Cruz and Walker are irreparably damaged goods at this point and don't have the macho, psychosexual appeal necessary to get out the racist misogyny vote.

Enter Donald Trump. He comes on television. Calls Lindsey Graham a sniveling pussy and reads his telephone number live, makes denigrating statements about Mexican immigrants and uses other racially charged language, and really turns his swag meter up to far over the Vegeta level of 9000 like he is going to fight the other guys. Typical alpha male bullshit that all wanna-be alphas who fear losing their social and sexual status for whatever reason, who feel like that make concessions to the Left only makes us Lefties have more contempt for them (we don't), have created the neologism Cuckservative as a kind of in-house shaming word for Republicans who are friendly to minorities and women, because apparently if you aren't legislative assholes to women and minorities, they'll start having sex and exclude you? Now sure how cuckolding comes into it, but surely you've seen the word used liberally and un-niggardly by many of our conservatives, especially Plasmasnake and Kilgore, to describe me at least and some other users here.



If Hillary went to prison the Democratic primary would explode with contenders and it would look like the GOPs field.

This post was edited by Skinned on Jul 26 2015 11:14am