Home » Cruz vs. Donald

Comments

Cruz vs. Donald — 39 Comments

  1. “TRUMP” is a brand name that Donald Trump has spent decades building. “TRUMP” is a giant word on a giant building. Donald Trump is running as “TRUMP”, not as Donald.

  2. Cornhead:

    Yes, extremely intentional.

    In fact, Cruz is almost always thinking when he speaks. I believe that’s one of the things some people who dislike him find fault with—he seems calculated and controlled. I happen to appreciate that in a candidate, but not everyone does, to say the least.

  3. neoneocon: that Cruz never refers to Trump as Trump (much less “Mr. Trump”) but always by his first name “Donald.”

    in a poli sci thing i was learning from they went through such games by looking at the big classics. ie. hitler and so forth and the films. why? the films are pretty much free given they are military, it was later that they were created by news agencies and others which want a payment to use or even look at them in detail.

    they looked at tapes of different underlings based on whether they were in favor and their physical behaviors… of course, most of us do this and dont even know we do this, which makes the leaders stuff ven more interesting.

    and even MORE interesting is how it paralleled formal behavior around the world for various cultures, especially asian business customs. ie. if your in japan and you and your team are waiting to enter an office of another, you line up outside in certain order.

    anyway, these are basically subtle games of neurolinguistics and other stuff that is mostly programmed into us, and if you know, sometimes you can catch them.

    in the example i learned from they were showing how being near the leader was important and how leaders will empower underlings by calling them close to them, and move others away and out of favor by how far they were and whether they allowed the person to tough their arm or not.

    it was subtle, and you would never pick up on it if you did not know it, but once it was shown, it was obvious.

    kind of like the circles in the upper corner of older movies. most never ever notice them at all. but they coincide with reel changes in the projection booth in the movies. near the end of the reel, a circle will flash twice, its a cue to get the other projector ready and cut it in when they blink again, and cut out the old one.

  4. I want someone who thinks before he speaks to speak for us in international affairs. Donald’s tone will alienate foreigners like nothing else.

    BTW, I saw the last bit of the family interview on CNN International this afternoon. What a bunch of mush. I wish someone would ask him about the families of construction company owners who got screwed out of their money when Donald declared bankruptcy in Atlantic City. And if drinking is so bad, why did he put his name on lousy vodka. If Donald has any values, he sheds them when he leaves his house.

  5. I am with you Cornhead, I want a President who always thinks before he speaks.

    Good point Nick. The Trump brand is about all he is offering.

    My memory may be faulty, but I would have said that the Donald started the practice of referring to rivals by their first names

  6. Yes! I don’t get how people can object to a candidate for president being calculated and controlled. These are the same people, ostensible conservatives, who call Cruz The One True Conservative, like that’s a problem.

  7. Cruz has every right to call Trump a con artist like Rubio did. But he won’t. I’m ambivalent about that.

  8. It’s been a few years since I’ve heard “my esteemed colleague, the honorable representative from the great state of Tennessee”.

  9. I have said many times, and even quoted Tsun Tsu as to knowing the opposition, and i have said, read their books and their methods and such. the average person has no idea of how much we know about the wacky ways brains process things, and the games you can play. i not only studied poli sci, but also neurolinguistics and worked for a short while designing new magic tricks for the stage magician that was a friend of the family.

    [a magician is an honest con man. he tells you he is going to take money from you, he tells you he will trick you and get that money, and that you will not only give it to him, be tricked but will walk away from him happy. which is why David Copperfield is worth $800 million]

    below is how extreme this information can get!

    Neurolinguistic Findings on the Language
    Lexicon: The Special Role of Proper Names
    https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/lili/personen/hmueller/pdf/Mueller-2010.pdf

    there are several reasons to do this…
    and there are several outcomes at play at once…

    one is that if the other person is winning, it puts him closer to the winner and in a way, steals some of that fire (just as being friends with a really bad person gets others to color you, or how a color next to another color changes).

    but it ALSO puts you above them… which is why the old rule was that you called a person mr or mrs, or ms, until they told you to use their first name… with that removed the culture forgets why that exists, but the reason biologically remains.

    remember, what you think and see is not real, its perception…
    its never real… illusions and other games would never work if we saw real and not saw perception.

    2 perplexing sentences that are the verbal equivalent of optical illusions

    Every man and woman has arrived.
    Why has? The phrase man and woman denotes a plural subject. Consider the following grammatically sound sentence: The happy man and woman have arrived. Every and happy both function as adjectives that modify man and woman in these almost identical sentences. But every is so powerfully singular that it forces us to say has, despite the plural subject.

    More than one person was involved.
    Why was? Doesn’t more mean at least two? Yet there is no English scholar we know of who would change the verb to “were involved,” even though we would say, “More were involved than one person.”

    Reference books do not offer much help with this conundrum, and the Internet is no help at all. But John B. Bremner’s Words on Words and Theodore M. Bernstein’s The Careful Writer both address the topic. Bremner claims that more than is an adverbial phrase modifying the adjective one, “which is singular and therefore qualifies a singular noun, which takes a singular verb.” That explanation might fly in the rarefied air of academia, but to accept it we must ignore the inconvenient fact that more than one person means “two or more persons,” and would seem to require the plural verb were involved.

    Bernstein doesn’t try to justify More than one person was involved as good grammar, just “good idiom.” He says “was involved” is an example of attraction, a linguistic term that accounts for certain incorrect word choices: “The verb is singular ‘by attraction’ to the one and to the subsequent noun [person].” Since “good idioms” often defy logic, we lean toward Bernstein’s interpretation.

  10. I once dated a woman with the best of intentions till I found out she a dog with the same name as my own. Needless to say, I broke it off. And, I will not run for president.

  11. The Cruz campaign is a juggernaut. I saw that first hand in IA and NV. I didn’t volunteer for neighboring WI for family reasons, and I am confident Cornhead can do his part in NB. So I feel I have done my part until after the convention. If you have not yet volunteered for Cruz state campaign near you, please do.

    If Cruz wins in November he will prove to be an incredible president in all the right ways. We could use a POTUS that values Western Civilization and the Constitution.

  12. neoneocon: I don’t know whether Trump ever uses “Cruz” or even “Mr. Cruz” to refer to Ted Cruz, but I doubt it happens often if it happens at all. In print, when he refers to “Ted,” it’s almost always “Lyin’ Ted.” But then, that’s Trump, right?

    no, thats trump knowing what cruz is doing and slamming him back even if YOU dont know the game.

    duh….

    its a form of dont piss on my leg and tell me its raining

    and

    if your going to do that, i am not going to reciprocate niceness for your bs
    [which is classic tit for tat]

    given all the propaganda on people we think the default from that if we had no reason to question it or remark on it to ourselves when we absorb it.

    i have read extensively on these games..
    and guess what? they are very prominant in high level business when iwas in the fortune 10 companies and among deal makers as these extra things are part of a deal

    i knew a manager who used to get buy in by talking really really low. he would never speak up. why? because you lean in when your interested, and he tricked people into leaning in to make it look to their biology that they were buying into what he was saying and so reinforce it and accept it rather than question all the others leaning in.

    there are so many of these things its literally not funny. they range from illusions of cup shape, to facial expressions, to domains, to language and optics.

    once the term optics became normed you guys should have picked up the clue that they were saying, what image do i ahve to give in order to get the door unlocked for what i want.

    this is a completely different game from what do i have to say to someone i respect thats valid and trutful to win my position and get what i want

    duh..

    from 18 Tricks to Convince Prospects to Buy

    1) Make the right amount of eye contact. [the more people look into your eyes the more they fall in love with you]

    2) Smile

    3) Use “power poses” to increase your confidence

    4) Nod at your prospect

    What to Say and How to Say It

    5) Use your prospect’s name
    Remember that a person’s name is, to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language. -Dale Carnegie

    6) Sequence your questions strategically [when i had to get people to give me their credit card number on the street by walking up to them as a stranger, i learned this part of the process. yes, we woudl collect on average 20 or more, and the best of us could get 50 credit card numbers in a day]

    7) Mirror your prospect [a biggie]

    8) Affirm your prospect’s concerns and questions

    9) Avoid putting prospects on the defensive with the Ransberger Pivot [i fail on this one all the time]

    Timeless Advice: How to Win Deals and Influence Prospects

    10) Appeal to the nobler motives

    11) Dramatize your ideas

    12) Arouse an eager want

    Psychological Hacks: Using Science to Your Advantage

    13) Scratch your prospects’ back [do a favor, give something. ever wonder why the hare krishnas and the bible people give you a flower or a bible, or the monks give a card?]

    14) Ramp up the urgency

    15) Establish yourself as an expert

    17) Make your prospects like you [Nobody likes helping people they dislike.]

    18) Use consensus to your advantage [ergo havlocks change agent guide and all that, which is even more manipulative than sales]

    of course for this and more there are whole pages of explanations and such, and even more, and the naturals do all this without knowing, and the learned do it by memorizing and making it a habit

    of course, my uncle made 8 million putting soap on the shelves at your local grocer as a seller for a big company we all know

    and http://www.dalecarnegie.com/ is a houshold name

    what makes you think a billionaire deal maker doesnt know the games politicians are copying from business people in selling crap to the public and closing deals?

    deal makers are the ones copied, not politicians.
    duh duh duh…

    🙂

  13. expat Says:
    April 13th, 2016 at 3:42 pm

    BTW, I saw the last bit of the family interview on CNN International this afternoon. What a bunch of mush. I wish someone would ask him about the families of construction company owners who got screwed out of their money when Donald declared bankruptcy in Atlantic City.

    &&&

    Plainly you don’t know the bankruptcy code.

    Contractors are protected by mechanics liens.

    These are pretty high in the the rank order of payment under Chapter 11.

    I’d be STUNNED if any of them lost significant monies.

    Donald’s Chapter 11 turned on his Wall Street — BOND financing.

    All of those immense monies were subordinate to all mechanics liens. ( think construction companies )

    The one hitch for those contractors is that payments are delayed until the process is resolved.

    They then get all of their money — plus interest. One should hope they didn’t go overboard on attorney’s fees. Their senior position scarcely requires any continuing legal representation. They can get away with sending their own secretary to the courthouse — merely to observe should any party try and attack their lien.

    In such big cases, there would never be such attacks.

    ALL the money is in the Wall Street bonds.

    That’s where the battle was fought.

    It’s extremely significant that Donald still ended up in operational control — as that could only happen with the assent of the most injured parties.

    His New Jersey bankruptcies are ENTIRELY irrelevant.

    Merv Griffen lost his tush their at the same time, too.

    EVERYBODY regrets investing in Atlantic City casinos.

    Get it ?

  14. if you look i helped create the MGTOW movement that now has chapters in the US and Canada, and all that.

    a bunch of us on mancoat forums did it by talking, making a symbol and more.. then i dropped out when i got married as it was fun to start and all that, but it was mens rights and i was busy

    now i am not even remembered unless you go back to the original period 15 years ago, and the other founders remember me.

    https://www.mgtow.com/

    Men Going Their Own Way
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Going_Their_Own_Way

    if you search mgtow you get 511,000 hits

    here is one person that was a follower

    Sexual Harassment Laws, by Artfldgr
    Guys,
    I finally found it! I found the essay I was looking for-yes! This is good stuff, stuff that needs to be shared with my readers. Enjoy…

    so i do know a bit about this game
    it was fun, but its boring..
    people are so easy and i would rather do something useful, like get my chip designs out, or other technology or my artwork, etc

    thats a bit of my CV…

  15. A chess master has to think many moves ahead.

    To call Trump a con artist is to massively insult every soul he has conned.

    Get it ?

    One must attack Donald’s candidacy WITHOUT attacking the brain functions of millions of American voters.

  16. blert your 110% right..

    If you read what happened they all got paid, and trump lost a lot of his own money and holdings, liquidating and releasing a lot of his position for the money to pay them.

    but its a case of ignorants (or knowing pretending ignorance), arguing to ignorant people who think their assumptions about things are right and who are too incurious not to look things up, understand them, and so on

    ergo ipso facto, a whole lot of arguing the dumber the general population gets and the more fractured and revisioned history gets as the newer camp with the crap knowlege think its as good as the past knowlege that was twisted and funked.

    your post was EXCELLENT!!!!!!!!!!

  17. Obama did the same thing with McCain in their debates back in 2008 — he referred to McCain mostly as “John,” while McCain always used “Senator Obama.” I was very struck by it at the time, but can’t remember if much was said or written about it.

    See the transcript for the first debate here.

  18. Blert,

    I read that some where and did not read up on the specifics. Sorry.
    I do think that Trump is totally unconcerned about people who run construction companies and their employees. For lots of the companies not getting paid on time is a real hardship. He will never convince me that he cares about average people.

  19. expat…

    The firms involved in such projects as Trump’s are HUGE outfits with DEEP POCKETS.

    They could easily afford to wait for the money. Trump’s projects were never so huge that they threatened their solvency.

    Sub-contractors — the small fish — are required to be paid ON TIME — by the general contractor, regardless of the bankruptcy of the principal.

    The ONLY contractors at the Chapter 11 would’ve been Primary Contractors — no ‘subs’ would have standing.

    This extends to building materials vendors.

    The real reason that GCs get the big bucks is that they are also INSURANCE companies — as they insure the timely payment of all subs and suppliers.

    If they should fail to do so, they are bankrupt.

    For major contractors, DEEP pockets and elite financing are the order of the day.

    It’s one of THE qualifications required to even bid on such projects.

  20. Artfldgr:

    You are incorrect.

    First of all, Trump’s use of insult WAY WAY predates anything Cruz has ever done, and Trump does this in politics and in many other areas of his life, and has done so for many decades. Nor does it require any pre-existing insult from anyone else, merely that the person Trump later insults has in some way bothered him, criticized him, disagreed with him, or bested him.

    Plus, it is absurd to equate Cruz’s calling Trump by his first name, which is subtle and not an insult in this day and age, with Trump’s calling Cruz “Lyin’ Ted.” It would be equivalent if Cruz had been calling Trump “Lyin’ Trump” or “Conman Trump” or “Orangehair Trump” or any other insult. Nothing of the sort ever happened.

    You also seem to assume that I am somehow unaware of the subtle psychological implications of calling a candidate by his or her first name. And yet the post discusses those implications.

  21. Artfldgr has found a cult to his liking. The donald has ensnared millions with his bluster, buffoonery, and YUGE! bullshit. Its a long line waiting to sip kool-aid. Lemon-Lime or perhaps grape or strawberry?

  22. Re the Christie segment.

    Chris Christie is the governor of New Jersey, not of New York.

    Some other miscreant is governor of New York.

  23. I just listened to the Glenn Beck audio. Very amusing. It reminded me of Penn and Teller, the way that Penn describes the trick he’s doing even as he does it. He starts on the word “loser”; he explains why he’s using it, stating factually that Trump is a loser, and explaining that Trump hates the word. Meanwhile he’s hitting the word “Donald”. Eventually he explains why he’s using that word, that Trump makes people call him “Mr. Trump”, and explains it in a way that must completely devalue Christie’s endorsement in the eyes of New Yorkers. Then there’s the sleight of hand: he’s using the word “weak”, and he doesn’t come out and say why, but he pulls the coin out from behind your ear and tells you that insulting women makes Trump feel strong. It’s a masterful performance. Everyone talks about how Rubio eventually went after Trump guns-blazing, but Cruz here does twice as much damage by calmly explaining that Trump is a weakling and a loser.

  24. Art:
    Respect is earned and lost. Donald is his given name. If it p.o. s Sir Donald to be called Donald I wager the problem is Sir Humpty-Trumpty’s ego and personality, ad probably projection. Occam’s razor, use it.

  25. Nick,

    My hillbilly father, uncles, and grandfathers taught me to never go in with guns blazing. As you describe, Cruz is a master of strategy. He is playing a yard by yard ground game. I am not very interested in the NY primary, but would be delighted if Trump receives less than 70% of the delegates.I am interested in PA and to a lesser extent MD.

  26. Cruz established the 70% threshold by invoking Utah… as a ‘hook’ to establish what really winning must look like for Donald in NY.

    He HAS TO KNOW that Donald has a very slim chance of attaining that level of support — even in his own state.

    Cruz — by such means — has taken the fizz out of the bottle.

    Ted has every reason to expect that Mr. K and himself can attain 30+% of the vote… maybe even 40+%…

    Donald can’t possibly deliver his home state in the Fall as either opponent ALSO hails from New York… One by birth and accent, the other by Federal office.

    Donald can’t even hang on to Utah or Texas… or the women’s vote.

    Ted called it correctly. Donald has gotten carried away with himself.

  27. IIRC, two presidential candidates this cycle have used their own first names as part of their campaign.

    The first of the two is Clinton. She frequently uses her first name, Hillary, as part of her campaign. Presumably this is to identify herself from her husband. Clinton already ran for the White House, and served two terms. There’s no sense in confusing people into wondering why he’s running again.

    The other was Fiorina. I seem to remember her first name being used in a lot of her promotional materials. And I know a lot of supporters referred to her as ‘Carly’, as well as ‘Fiorina’. In her case, it’s not really clear why her first name was commonly used. She didn’t have Hillary’s need to differentiate herself from someone else with the same last name. Though it is interesting to note that Fiorina and Clinton were the only two women running this cycle.

  28. Expat –

    Oops! You’re right.

    But once again, Jeb used his first name for the same reason that Hillary does. Use of his first name helps to avoid confusing him with his father and his brother.

    His brother, of course, couldn’t do that with his own first name. But the citizenry took care of that issue for him by referring to him by his middle initial, ‘W’.

  29. My bet is that Carly used her first name to humanize herself, to avoid coming off as a heartless corporate boss. I also wouldn’t be surprised if there’s still a little bit of anti-Italian out there.

  30. “The Cruz campaign is a juggernaut.”

    I am truly confused by this statement. Cruz, with all of his supposed great ground game, lost almost every state in the south that he thought he’d win. He has only won a handful of primaries.

    You can dislike Trump all you want, but Cruz is no ‘juggernaut.’ He is millions of votes behind and is about to come 3rd in a bunch of states.

    If Utah is what ‘winning’ must look like, then Cruz has done even worse. He didn’t even get 50% of his home state.

    Be honest. Cruz had underperformed based on his ground game and what he had built many months prior to the primary season. He will not get to 1237 and has no chance to do so by the end of April. His only chance is a brokered convention, which will be incredibly bad for the party and for the election in the fall. If you don’t like Kasich being a ‘spoiler’ than you will have to peg the same on Cruz in a few weeks.

  31. K-E, you conveniently leave out the fact that at the time of the primaries in the South there were a large number of candidates in the field. In NONE of the them did Trump ever win more than 50%. In many of them, like LA, Cruz was within a few points.

    In the recent elections when the field is 3, Cruz is beating Trump like a drum.

    The Cruz campaign is a juggernaut.

  32. Nick Says:
    April 14th, 2016 at 12:50 pm

    My bet is that Carly used her first name to humanize herself, to avoid coming off as a heartless corporate boss. I also wouldn’t be surprised if there’s still a little bit of anti-Italian out there.

    &&&&&

    How’s that ?

    Carly SNEED Fiorina.

    Is the public so dull that they think a gal changes her DNA when she marries?

    %%%%

    I think — as an executive — Carly is tip top.

    However, that face lift is brutal on her looks.

    Something that Donald was able to ‘lens’ upon.

    Obvious plastic surgery makes the general public view you as a hand crafted object.

    Ironically, the public does not want ‘pretty’ in a president.

    Kim Novak is another example of a gal that would’ve been much better off to succumb to the wages of ageing.

    %%%%

    A handsome man, a beautiful gal, get TOO far based upon their looks.

    I give you Barry Soetoro.

    Battle injuries are to be preferred.

    “You should see the other guy!”

  33. blert:

    I’ve seen Fiorina in person, very close up. She photographs very poorly, and looks much much better in person—warmer, more relaxed, prettier, and less “done.” Unfortunately most of America saw her on TV or in photographs, where a certain artificial and tight look seemed to predominate.

  34. K-E,

    See you at the convention, where the ground game will matter the most on the 2nd or 3rd round. You can buy me a beer and whine about how unfair, cheated, blah blah. I will buy you some cheese.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>