Look at the political activity of Donald Trump over the course of his life.
The most "economical" explanation is that it is best explained by a) a firm commitment to and confidence in the promotion of Donald Trump as a brand accompanied by a generous helping of "moral flexibility" as the anti-hero protagonist of "Thank You For Smoking" puts it.
The more "expensive" explanation is that Donald Trump is a close friend of the Clintons who has supported both Democrats and Republicans with large contributions who wants to ensure that Hillary Clinton is elected president because of him and that she damn well remembers that while she's in office.
And, when you think about it, why can't both be true?
Consider this.
POINT ONE
There are restrictions (less since Citizen's United) on the use of one's money to influence a presidential election.
But there are NO restrictions on how much money one may spend on RUNNING for president.
"The money for campaigns for federal office comes from four broad categories of sources: (1) small individual contributors (individuals who contribute $200 or less), (2) large individual contributors (individuals who contribute more than $200), (3) political action committees, and (4) self-financing (the candidate's own money). "
"Campaign finance in the United States" (Wikipedia)
POINT TWO
The heart and soul, the BASE, of the modern Republican Party is that line of Republicans that came from Lee Atwater's pursuit of the Southern Strategy in 1968 in which angry, white, largely Southern, racist, Democrats / "Dixiecrats" were courted following following the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts. Lee Atwater, late Republican political strategist, explained how that worked.
"Atwater
("Lee Atwater," Wikipedia Article)
POINT THREE
There are two broad strategies for winning the presidency. The more traditional one involves giving your strongly partisan base much of what they want while still gaining enough moderates and independents to win the center. The newer, more radical approach engineered by Karl Rove as the guiding force for George W. Bush's presidential campaign involves energizing the base with red meat and to hell with the center and the moderates.
THE THESIS
Donald Trump is making a bold investment. HE'S INVESTING HIS RESOURCES TO ACQUIRE THE REPUBLICAN BASE.
It's going to cost a lot, as he keeps saying. His inflammatory remarks are costing him major business relationships (and pretty much a total loss of good will fromMexico
But, as of mid-July 2015, he is tied with Republican establishment front-runner Jeb Bush and will certainly qualify to be in the top ten tier of Republican candidates in the FOX News debates.
Beyond that, while the other candidates have to work furiously to gain funding accountable to campaign funding requirements, Trump is BURYING their commercials by playing the media for free, omnipresent visibility by playing the media news cycle like it's a grand piano.
And Trump's strategy - if it IS a strategy - is brilliant: HE IS DROPPING THE RACIST, CODED LANGUAGE REGARDING "STATES RIGHTS," "FORCED BUSING," "VOTER FRAUD," ETC. AND COMMUNICATING THIS RACISM TO THE REPUBLICAN BASE PURE, FULL STRENGTH, EN CLAIR.
And what can the Republican Party and other Republican candidates do?
They CAN'T outright condemn him without offending the base of the contemporary Republican Party.
They must resort to euphemisms about the tone of his message or his choice of language or his hyperbole or his flair for showmanship or some other nonsense that explicitly puts some distance between them and Trump while implicitly concurring with his message: the Good Cop, Bad Cop approach.
And if the party manages to get him dropped from the debates and get one of their own, electable candidates nominated?
That's no problem for Donald Trump, who has already hinted that a third party run is not out of the question.
In 2004, Karl Rove "swiftboated" John Kerry by turning his greatest strength, his integrity and status as a war hero into a liability.
And so "swiftboating" has become a buzzword for the political judo of taking an adversaries greatest strength and turning it against them.
And that's what Donald Trump has done to the Republican Party: taken the strength of their racist base, carefully cultivated over almost half a century of being fed red meat racism by FOX News, social conservative preachers, call-in radio shows, and the coded language needed to make this stuff sound reasonable and acceptable (with some TRUE conservative libertarian or conservative think tanks thrown in) AND MADE THAT BASE A LIABILITY.
It's a liability on the one hand as it exposes the racism BEHIND the code and, on the other, that it shows that the party no longer owns the base but rather THE BASE NOW OWNS THE PARTY.
AND TRUMP IS MAKING A PLAY TO OWN THE BASE THAT OWNS THE PARTY.
Sounds a bit like the One Ring in Tolkien's Middle Earth fantasy, doesn't it? :-)
AND WHAT DOES TRUMP GET OUT OF THIS?
If nothing else, I would think he gets aClinton
The most "economical" explanation is that it is best explained by a) a firm commitment to and confidence in the promotion of Donald Trump as a brand accompanied by a generous helping of "moral flexibility" as the anti-hero protagonist of "Thank You For Smoking" puts it.
The more "expensive" explanation is that Donald Trump is a close friend of the Clintons who has supported both Democrats and Republicans with large contributions who wants to ensure that Hillary Clinton is elected president because of him and that she damn well remembers that while she's in office.
And, when you think about it, why can't both be true?
Consider this.
POINT ONE
There are restrictions (less since Citizen's United) on the use of one's money to influence a presidential election.
But there are NO restrictions on how much money one may spend on RUNNING for president.
"The money for campaigns for federal office comes from four broad categories of sources: (1) small individual contributors (individuals who contribute $200 or less), (2) large individual contributors (individuals who contribute more than $200), (3) political action committees, and (4) self-financing (the candidate's own money). "
"Campaign finance in the United States" (Wikipedia)
POINT TWO
The heart and soul, the BASE, of the modern Republican Party is that line of Republicans that came from Lee Atwater's pursuit of the Southern Strategy in 1968 in which angry, white, largely Southern, racist, Democrats / "Dixiecrats" were courted following following the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts. Lee Atwater, late Republican political strategist, explained how that worked.
"
("Lee Atwater," Wikipedia Article)
POINT THREE
There are two broad strategies for winning the presidency. The more traditional one involves giving your strongly partisan base much of what they want while still gaining enough moderates and independents to win the center. The newer, more radical approach engineered by Karl Rove as the guiding force for George W. Bush's presidential campaign involves energizing the base with red meat and to hell with the center and the moderates.
THE THESIS
Donald Trump is making a bold investment. HE'S INVESTING HIS RESOURCES TO ACQUIRE THE REPUBLICAN BASE.
It's going to cost a lot, as he keeps saying. His inflammatory remarks are costing him major business relationships (and pretty much a total loss of good will from
But, as of mid-July 2015, he is tied with Republican establishment front-runner Jeb Bush and will certainly qualify to be in the top ten tier of Republican candidates in the FOX News debates.
Beyond that, while the other candidates have to work furiously to gain funding accountable to campaign funding requirements, Trump is BURYING their commercials by playing the media for free, omnipresent visibility by playing the media news cycle like it's a grand piano.
And Trump's strategy - if it IS a strategy - is brilliant: HE IS DROPPING THE RACIST, CODED LANGUAGE REGARDING "STATES RIGHTS," "FORCED BUSING," "VOTER FRAUD," ETC. AND COMMUNICATING THIS RACISM TO THE REPUBLICAN BASE PURE, FULL STRENGTH, EN CLAIR.
And what can the Republican Party and other Republican candidates do?
They CAN'T outright condemn him without offending the base of the contemporary Republican Party.
They must resort to euphemisms about the tone of his message or his choice of language or his hyperbole or his flair for showmanship or some other nonsense that explicitly puts some distance between them and Trump while implicitly concurring with his message: the Good Cop, Bad Cop approach.
And if the party manages to get him dropped from the debates and get one of their own, electable candidates nominated?
That's no problem for Donald Trump, who has already hinted that a third party run is not out of the question.
In 2004, Karl Rove "swiftboated" John Kerry by turning his greatest strength, his integrity and status as a war hero into a liability.
And so "swiftboating" has become a buzzword for the political judo of taking an adversaries greatest strength and turning it against them.
And that's what Donald Trump has done to the Republican Party: taken the strength of their racist base, carefully cultivated over almost half a century of being fed red meat racism by FOX News, social conservative preachers, call-in radio shows, and the coded language needed to make this stuff sound reasonable and acceptable (with some TRUE conservative libertarian or conservative think tanks thrown in) AND MADE THAT BASE A LIABILITY.
It's a liability on the one hand as it exposes the racism BEHIND the code and, on the other, that it shows that the party no longer owns the base but rather THE BASE NOW OWNS THE PARTY.
AND TRUMP IS MAKING A PLAY TO OWN THE BASE THAT OWNS THE PARTY.
Sounds a bit like the One Ring in Tolkien's Middle Earth fantasy, doesn't it? :-)
AND WHAT DOES TRUMP GET OUT OF THIS?
If nothing else, I would think he gets a
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