Trump’s been running for president for a long long time
I’d like to take up the following comment from “junior”:
Obama’s rise to power was already predicted in at least some circles well before he announced his candidacy. Supposedly, even as early as his assumption of his US Senate seat, some people were already introducing him as a future president of the US…
Trump, for all we know, might very well have flipped a coin when he decided to run (it’s doubtful, but possible). There was little to indicate that he was planning on running. No one expected him to run prior to the start of the primary season. And the result was that he almost overnight went from “uninvolved” to “party front-runner”.
It occurs to me that a lot of people may be unaware that Trump’s been circling and circling around a presidential run for a very long time. In fact, in that regard he’s practically a second Harold Stassen, and with about as much success as Stassen—till this year’s race, that is. His success at the moment is rather easy to explain, I think: he is the person who this year expresses perfectly the rage of a large percentage of GOP voters who feel angry at the party and at Obama, and he also happens to be the beneficiary of one of the largest and deepest fields in recent GOP history. If that last part sounds paradoxical, so be it. But just imagine if Trump had only had one strong opponent from the start. We’ll never know, but he might not have done this well—or rather, his 30-40 or so percent could have been matched by that other person’s 60-70 percent in such a case. But with the field divided into many small segments it helped him to capture the lion’s share of the anti-GOP protest vote compared to the others.
Trump’s success also rests to a huge extent on his being able to seize on a single issue—illegal immigration—and speak about it in a way that an angry electorate felt was channeling their own outrage and concern (I have discussed the evolution of how this came to seem to be his biggest issue). And the previous success of his reality show had made him more of a celebrity than ever, a person people are used to seeing in the role of the take-charge boss.
So it’s not hard to explain his success. But what about this statement by junior?: “There was little to indicate that [Trump] was planning on running. No one expected him to run prior to the start of the primary season.”
In fact, there was everything to indicate it, and everyone should have expected it. What they didn’t expect was that he’d do so well. But run? He’s been doing that for decades, or at least talking about it. The timeline begins in the late 80s with serious talk by Trump of a presidential run, then an actual albeit short-lived run in the year 2000 as a third-party candidate, and a discussion about a possible run in 2004, and another attempt in 2011 for the 2012 election.
If you’re interested in learning more about Trump’s 2000 run—where he was allied with party of Jesse Ventura and Ross Perot, see this:
Trump’s entrance into the Reform Party race coincided with that of paleoconservative commentator Pat Buchanan, whom Trump attacked throughout the campaign as a “Hitler-lover.”
Trump focused his campaign on the issues of fair trade, eliminating the national debt, and achieving universal healthcare as outlined in the campaign companion piece The America We Deserve, released in January 2000. He named media proprietor Oprah Winfrey as his ideal running mate and said he would instantly marry his girlfriend Melania Knauss to make her First Lady.
In 2011 Trump’s talk of running for president became serious again:
March 2011: A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows Trump leading all presidential contenders, including Mitt Romney.
April 2011: Amid more research polls indicating that he would be the preferred Republican presidential candidate among voters, Trump repeatedly calls for President Obama to release his long-form birth certificate, questioning whether Obama was actually born in the United States. (Obama eventually complies and releases the birth certificate.)
May 2011: Trump officially announces that he will not run for president.
In addition to all of that history, Trump had also been talking about running in the 2016 presidential election for quite some time:
2013: Trump forms a presidential exploratory committee and, despite a strong backing from Republican voters, announces that he has no interest in running for governor of New York in 2014.
February 2015: Trump decides not to renew his Apprentice contract, fueling speculation that he’s mulling a run for president.
His formal announcement came in June.
It may have seemed as though this came out of the blue, but it most assuredly did not.
Whether Trump or what Trump was mulling is really of no concern. The question that begs an answer is why had Trump not been the ogre he is presently? Why had he become, all of a sudden, beyond the pale. Not speaking here of lacking this or that, or too full of that or the other but how had he become a bad stink, a Hitler/Mussolini/fascisti?
Well first he dispatched the Establishment’s favorite son — Bush. And then the Establishment’s second choice — Rubio. If he delivers Cruz back to the Establishment I fully expect him to become Satan himself and the GOP to go full evangelical.
However much the story revolves around Trump — so far — I believe the story will have made its way about the roundabout and end up where this all had started – an egregiously, corrupt Party such as had not been evident in any of the political machines that smudged the political landscape over two American centuries. The worst thing about a Trump victory is that little could be done to save the Party from becoming America’s greatest problem — after the migrant invasion.
JurassiCon Rex,
Those paying attention to Trump weren’t paying attention in previous election cycles because he was considered a clown and of no importance because he wouldn’t be getting hardly any support.
In his 2011-12 contemplation of a run, however, he got lots of negative attention and was considered awful when he focused on all the Obama-birther stuff. You may not have been paying attention, but lots of people were and they considered him dreadful. But that faded because he faded.
However, for example, Mark Levin focused on him a great deal in 2011, and thought he was abominable. You can read my post about it here.
What’s more, Trump’s more authoritarian and tyranny-friendly statements have escalated greatly during the present campaign, as he begins to taste more power and possibilities.
I remember him popping in several times. Even in 2012. I am pretty sure that is why he published his policy-filled book in 2011.
As Limbaugh said on his program quite a few weeks ago, Trump has been planning this for a long time. Thus, no reason to believe he is going to be a president that would fly off the handle and make crazy decisions. Okay. Can we all back away from that nonsense, please?
I am so curious why everyone seems to think Trump is ‘power hungry’ when he is a billionaire with the world at his feet. What about Cruz being ‘power hungry’ or Rubio or any of the others who ran for President?
Have you seen lately the vigor with which his opponents are going after him? Anonymous supposedly spilling his social security number and phone numbers online. The threatening letter sent to his son, Eric. He is putting up with a LOT of heat and pressure from all sides…even his own party. This is exactly the kind of toughness you want to see in a president, isn’t it???
Of course he was considered dreadful. So in some precincts is Obama considered dreadful, and Hilary. Hilary is herself clownish, a caricature of one if there ever was one. But no-one had stooped to dig out of the bottom of the pit of epithets the names that have attached themselves to Trump. He had never been so reviled because he had never been taken seriously. As he is presently winning he is being taken so seriously as to make the repudiation of him more embarrassing than he has ever been.
K-E:
Trump’s power-hunger is not about money, although it took the form of money in the past.
I wrote a post or comment about it earlier; don’t have time to locate it now. But I recall Trump himself has said in a much earlier interview that money for him was just a way to power.
However, if it isn’t clear to you how much Trump loves power and feeds on it, I certainly can’t make you notice or understand at this point.
I knew about the 2000 thing (I’ve mentioned it previously). And I remember his comments in 2012 (iirc, he stated that he’d run if he thought there wasn’t a good Republican candidate).
I didn’t know about the others, though. And I hadn’t heard anything about the prep work since 2012. I’m guessing that because he’d been talking about it for so long, people who ought to have known ignored the signs this election cycle.
In any event, some of the info about the 2000 run is would be enlightening for his fans if they’d pay any attention to it. Universal healthcare? Oprah as his ideal running mate? Talk about alarm bells.
Jurassic –
Trump did NOT dispatch Jeb Bush. Bush dispatched himself. He was doing poorly even before Trump entered the race because of his arrogance and attitude toward those who disagree with him (particularly on the topic of illegal immigration). I remember noting that Jeb had none of the tact and grace that his brother George did. You might disagree with George, but you never got the sense that he looked down on you for doing so. Jeb made it pretty clear that if you didn’t agree with him, then he thought you were an idiot.
Trump found other things to attack Jeb on (“low energy”), but Jeb had already fatally wounded himself.
Neo:
“His success at the moment is rather easy to explain, I think: he is the person who …”
What kind of activist support did Trump have in his previous presidential explorations?
Like with Obama’s rise, more so given that Trump’s campaign is characterized by leftist-style activism, it’s a mistake to look only at the man or even to look first at the man.
Look at the activist movement driving the Trump campaign. That’s the center of gravity. The general will of We The People is a function of activism. Like with competing versus Obama, targeting Trump without defeating the Trump-front activist movement is insufficient.
Even should Trump fall short of the GOP nomination, the Trump-front activist movement will continue their march. And only an activist movement can defeat another activist movement.
junior,
If Jeb had been so deficient in your eyes and others’ (mine included) – he should not have been the choice of the Establishment and their donor cabal. If Rubio had been so weighed down with immigration baggage he should not have been the Establishment’s second choice. The GOP seems intent on making the least effective kakistocrat their primary choice for the office of President and then whine bloody hell when someone ten ways mediocre runs over them. Which brings me back to my point. Trump is about a tenth the problem the GOP/Cons are. Up with Trump; down with the Party.
There is no Trump movement or party just people who would vote for him. Like Jesse Ventura or Ross Perot there are no coat tails. Trump supporters are not activists which explains how few are tea party supporters. Trumpism passes when Donald leaves the scene.
Jurassic,
Ironically, you’re making the exact same mistake that the establishment made. Specifically, you’re operating under the assumption that what the establishment wanted was what was going to happen (short of Trump).
Jeb was DOA with the voters, and that was evident long before Trump’s attacks at the debates. Sure, the establishment was backing him and providing him with ridiculous amounts of money. But there was never a period of time when he was doing more than essentially throwing that money away. There was never any real voter interest in him.
junior:
“Bush dispatched himself.”
Jeb Bush’s candidacy was a long shot from the start.
In order to make his presidential campaign viable, the one switch Jeb Bush needed to engineer was to apply his vaunted reputation as a wonk to vigorously re-litigate the Iraq controversy in order to set the record straight on the why of OIF. Re-lay the foundation in the political discourse that knowing what we now know, the President’s decision for Operation Iraqi Freedom was correct on the law and justified on the policy – and not a moment too soon.
By the same token, turning over the prevailing narrative on the why of OIF at the premise level of the public discourse would have re-imaged the entire GOP field.
Instead, when Jeb Bush was gifted the opportunity with the Megyn Kelly hypothetical last May to correct the prevailing yet demonstrably false narrative of OIF – despite being armed with a straightforward set of law and policy and facts for the task – he attempted to triangulate and skirt the Iraq controversy rather than engineer the critical turn on the Iraq issue at the premise level of the public discourse.
Jeb Bush’s gross strategic miscalculation resulted in the grotesque tripping over himself until he settled on conceding OIF was a “mistake”, which he repeated for the duration of his campaign.
Jeb Bush was gifted the opportunity to re-litigate the Iraq controversy and, instead, turned it into a cringing series of pratfalls that cornered the rest of the GOP candidate field into following suit, thus effectively stipulating the demonstrably false narrative of OIF and scarlet-lettering the GOP and all its not-Trump presidential candidates.
Unlike in past elections, in 2016, while still high on the list, the Iraq intervention isn’t at the top of the list of policy issues.
However, the significance of the Iraq issue in the Narrative contest for the zeitgeist is greater and deeper than the Iraq intervention itself. It’s about more than American foreign policy. It’s more than an episode or even a series. The Iraq issue is an essential theme. The prevailing narrative of OIF is a judgement on modern American leadership in the world in general and American leadership under Republican presidency in particular at the premise level of the public discourse.
For Jeb Bush, and Republicans and conservatives over-all, to concede the judgement of the demonstrably false narrative of the Iraq intervention has been crippling for the GOP at the national level.
Once he declared, Jeb Bush had one necessary task to perform for the sake of own candidacy, the GOP, and every not-Trump Republican candidate. Instead, when gifted the opportunity to set the record straight on the why of OIF at the premise level of the public discourse, Jeb Bush screwed up his response to the Megyn Kelly hypothetical as badly as it could have been misbegotten. The Trump phenomenon is a ripple effect of Jeb Bush’s failure.
Dirtyjobsguy:
“Trumpism passes when Donald leaves the scene.”
If that’s the belief you’re holding onto, you’re going to lose big in the activist game – the only social cultural/political game there is.
The Left-mimicking Trump-front alt-Right activists that are the creative engine of the Trump phenomenon are not Trump followers. Their relationship is symbiotic for now, but if Trump goes away, they’ll adjust, just like the Democrat-front Left activists they’re modeled on.
They’re applying an adapted version of the Left-activist social movement model to undertake their own Gramscian long march, first and foremost to displace the mainstream conservatives of the Right in the same way that the Left displaced mainstream liberals.
Junior,
It’s not an assumption. From the outset the Establishment got what they wanted. That voters wouldn’t have it does not preclude the GOP/Cons getting precisely what they wanted — they wanted Bush as their standard bearer. This is what indeed had happened. The money and expectation of a coronation followed. When Jeb was dismissed as easily as he was by Trump, they took to lusting after the exotically foreign Rubio. When Rubio lost his his own State — Florida — by a Trump trouncing they vented their spleens on Donald. No man had ever gone from clown to tyrant in so short a time — ever.
It seems to me it is you who misses the point. If Jeb was DOA with the voters preTrump then why had he been foisted on the voters in the first place. Because, I suspect, the GOPCons assumed there was no end to their ability to pull the wool over the voters’ eyes. Delenda est GOP/Cons.
“His success at the moment is rather easy to explain, I think: he is the person who this year expresses perfectly the rage of a large percentage of GOP voters who feel angry at the party and at Obama” and see them trashing the most profound heritage ever bequeathed to a society.
All the hate by the establishment toward Trump centers upon his pointing his finger at the foremost threats to America. Finally, someone prominent and thus able to garner media attention is telling the plain, unvarnished truth.
Next to that, Trump’s narcissistic bombast, crudity, appalling knee-jerk attack dog persona, etc. etc. pale into insignificance. That he won’t or can’t say how he’ll accomplish his promises is less important than forthrightly stating what must be done. Because a problem that we refuse to accurately identify cannot be addressed. And when problems are mortal threats, denial has no higher finality.
Eric Says:
March 18th, 2016 at 5:47 pm
Absolutely right.
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The GOP’s number one enemy right now is Kasich.
He has no path to the nomination — he is pure spoiler — and can’t be so stupid as to not know that.
Near as I can tell, he is the refuge of the so-called “Bush vote.”
That is the Republicans that want to nominate Bush III.
You have to be totally out of touch to head off that cliff.
Trump is such a mature, responsible, dignified candidate that Fox News had to issue a statement about his stupid tweets directed against Megyn Kelly. He also backed out of a debate for a second time because he’s cowardly and unprepared. I’m sure it will all work out well.
JurassiCon Rex:
Jeb was toast before he began. The GOP establishment supported him and gave him money, but they couldn’t make the voters like him. I wrote about this fact two years ago.
TV presenter Selina Scott tells Kirsty Wark about her experience with Donald Trump. She did a documentary about Donald Trump 20 yers ago she tells he had his interest to be US president
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdCZEFueoy8
Jeb was toast before he even declared, for 2 reasons. 1) He was the 3rd Bush after 2 other Bush presidents. 2) His support for illegal immigration and amnesty. The fact that he was tone-deaf and low energy were just minor factors.
With Donald Trump all what been said he is looks the only one speaks without hiding things in his chase.
Most Politicians they say some things but hiding real goals, interests.
For Trump although some uncertainty, lies , changes mind, flip-flop but he is straight to the point.
Btw, fred is not me “Fred” looks someone trying to confuse readers here
Trump hasn’t just been running for President, he’s been running for something most of his life. One big ego trip. See me, how great I am, I’m the best, most stupendous, me, me, me. Like a spoiled little boy always wanting to be the center of attention, the one who runs up to a stranger and stomps on their foot and then runs away laughing, infantile and mean.
Didn’t someone write a novel about an Upper East Side kid who didn’t like exclusive prep schools and spent his time having fun at various hotels and ice skating rinks? Trump has been living Holden Caulfield’s adolescence his entire adult life.
Neo-neocon,
Indeed, he was toast before the sprint. My point precisely. Further, then, why had he been doused with money and corporate (GOP) organization? Because the GOP was running an agenda — not candidates. Three things transpired, Trump dismissed Jeb with his brother’s record; Trump swamped the second Cubano/Floridian establishment choice without any serious effort; the reality of Trump, as he presently stands, is entirely the making of the GOP establishment — presently raging against what they themselves had wrought. Had the GOP ditched their stupid Hispano baiting immigration reform, had they listened to their constituency instead of deep pocket donors, they would have proposed a candidate and not an agenda. Today, under that scenario, the talk would revolve around Cruz, or Fiorina, or… whoever’s ability to cave Ms. Clinton’s political skull and mercenary heart in the election. Instead they, the GOP, has to deal with the monster they, in effect, had created.
It’s not called the Stupid Party for melodramatic effect. They are just that stupid.
Jurassi from the 1st post above:
…little could be done to save the Party from becoming America’s greatest problem — after the migrant invasion.
To believe what you say one has to think that had the Republican Party establishment, meaning members of congress, used extra-judicial and illegal tactics like the Obama administration, fight fire with fire in other words, and somehow stopped or stifled the left’s agenda, everything would be hunky dory. Because they didn’t, and in some cases appeared to be complicit, they must now be destroyed. THEY are America’s biggest problem because they adhered to the rule of law and constitutional principles.