JimBowie1958
Old Fogey
- Sep 25, 2011
- 63,590
- 16,756
- 2,220
The one reason Donald Trump was the clear winner of the first GOP debate - The Washington Post
"Trump made it through the first Republican debate by avoiding the one mistake that could have seriously damaged his insurgent campaign: sounding like a professional politician. For that reason alone, he seemed to me the clear winner.
I watched the debate at the House of Blues in downtown Cleveland with a crowd of true-believer conservatives at a viewing party sponsored by the American Conservative Union. It might not have been a representative sample of Republican primary voters, and I should note that there was an open bar. So my observations should not be confused with actual political science.
That said, it was fascinating that Trump got the loudest cheers, by far, from the beginning of the debate until about three-fourths of the way through, when either exhaustion or the bar began to take a toll and the crowd’s attention seemed to wander....
One particularly telling moment, I thought, came when Trump was asked about his previous support of Democrats, including likely nominee Hillary Clinton. The gist of Trump’s answer was this: Hey, I gave lots of money to politicians of both parties because that’s what rich and powerful people do, and in exchange they get access and influence. It’s a rotten system but that’s the way it works, and let’s not pretend otherwise.
I think that exchange might help befuddled politicians and pundits understand the Trump insurrection. That is how the system works. For voters who feel powerless and marginalized, I believe it is refreshing and perhaps liberating to hear an insider talk honestly about the role big money plays in politics.
Will Trump’s poll numbers continue to rise? I have no idea. But I think the GOP establishment is whistling past the graveyard if it thinks the Trump bubble has burst."
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/07/magazine/falling-all-over-trump.html?_r=0
"Spin rooms are stupid, crowded and almost never worth showing up to as a journalist except out of some collective sense of obligation, inertia, fatigue and self-loathing — all of which are in ample supply at the political-media nexus. Candidates themselves rarely show up in spin rooms, unless they really need the attention or have a particular mess to clean up — as Rick Perry did after his infamous “oops” debate in 2012, when he tried, with little success, to self-deprecate away the self-defecation he had just performed on stage.
Yet the institution has persisted at debates well beyond its usefulness, if the spin room was ever useful to begin with (debatable). Little of consequence ever happens. Last night seemed no different until some commotion started erupting in a corner. The rumble seemed to be approaching a stampede for a few seconds: A crush of people was moving to a not-immediately-visible focal point. Imagine a version of Pamplona where the frantic mass is actually pursuing the bull rather than fleeing it.
The bull was Trump, of course. In the flesh and hair, himself, in the spin room: It was as if being deprived of media attention in the brief interlude between the end of the debate and his morning interviews would suffocate him, as if he could not survive without this fix of TV lights before a few airless hours.
People kept shoving, yelling at each other (“Back off, back off, give him space”). A few fell down; a photographer was hurled into a boom mike.
From across the room, where I was standing, there was a brief sense that, whoa, maybe the normal order would not hold. Could we actually see multiple injuries in a spin-room stampede? This had never happened before, to my knowledge.
But Trump had never happened before, at least in this great democracy pageant of ours."
A long interview on CNN where Trump describes his disappointment with FOX and discusses other candidates a bit.
Trump slams Fox News praises Drudge TheHill
Fox News Couldn t Kill Trump s Momentum and May Have Only Made It Stronger - Bloomberg Politics
"Kelly, the whip-smart queen of Fox News’ blonde stunners, went straight for the jugular. “You've called women you don't like fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals,” she admonished Trump. “Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president?”
But Trump saw her coming a mile away and cut her off. “Only Rosie O’Donnell,” he barked, drawing cheers from the crowd. When Kelly tried to point out that he had insulted more women than O’Donnell, Trump, as he would all night, steamrolled right past her. “The big problem this country has is being politically correct,” Trump practically shouted, invoking conservatives’ favorite term of disdain. “I’ve been challenged by so many people and I don't frankly have time for total political correctness and to be honest with you this country doesn't have time either.” The crowd went wild.
Maybe they were cheering because the question was apropos of something Rachel Maddow would ask, and they were, after all, Republicans. But I think they were cheering because it was clear, at that moment, that Trump was going to be Trump, and wasn’t going to heed the pundits and phonies to tone down his act. According to a report in New York magazine, even his own daughter, Ivanka, was making that case."
The Professional Political Class does not understand the Trump phenomena and their growing frustration with it all is increasingly apparent.
"Trump made it through the first Republican debate by avoiding the one mistake that could have seriously damaged his insurgent campaign: sounding like a professional politician. For that reason alone, he seemed to me the clear winner.
I watched the debate at the House of Blues in downtown Cleveland with a crowd of true-believer conservatives at a viewing party sponsored by the American Conservative Union. It might not have been a representative sample of Republican primary voters, and I should note that there was an open bar. So my observations should not be confused with actual political science.
That said, it was fascinating that Trump got the loudest cheers, by far, from the beginning of the debate until about three-fourths of the way through, when either exhaustion or the bar began to take a toll and the crowd’s attention seemed to wander....
One particularly telling moment, I thought, came when Trump was asked about his previous support of Democrats, including likely nominee Hillary Clinton. The gist of Trump’s answer was this: Hey, I gave lots of money to politicians of both parties because that’s what rich and powerful people do, and in exchange they get access and influence. It’s a rotten system but that’s the way it works, and let’s not pretend otherwise.
I think that exchange might help befuddled politicians and pundits understand the Trump insurrection. That is how the system works. For voters who feel powerless and marginalized, I believe it is refreshing and perhaps liberating to hear an insider talk honestly about the role big money plays in politics.
Will Trump’s poll numbers continue to rise? I have no idea. But I think the GOP establishment is whistling past the graveyard if it thinks the Trump bubble has burst."
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/07/magazine/falling-all-over-trump.html?_r=0
"Spin rooms are stupid, crowded and almost never worth showing up to as a journalist except out of some collective sense of obligation, inertia, fatigue and self-loathing — all of which are in ample supply at the political-media nexus. Candidates themselves rarely show up in spin rooms, unless they really need the attention or have a particular mess to clean up — as Rick Perry did after his infamous “oops” debate in 2012, when he tried, with little success, to self-deprecate away the self-defecation he had just performed on stage.
Yet the institution has persisted at debates well beyond its usefulness, if the spin room was ever useful to begin with (debatable). Little of consequence ever happens. Last night seemed no different until some commotion started erupting in a corner. The rumble seemed to be approaching a stampede for a few seconds: A crush of people was moving to a not-immediately-visible focal point. Imagine a version of Pamplona where the frantic mass is actually pursuing the bull rather than fleeing it.
The bull was Trump, of course. In the flesh and hair, himself, in the spin room: It was as if being deprived of media attention in the brief interlude between the end of the debate and his morning interviews would suffocate him, as if he could not survive without this fix of TV lights before a few airless hours.
People kept shoving, yelling at each other (“Back off, back off, give him space”). A few fell down; a photographer was hurled into a boom mike.
From across the room, where I was standing, there was a brief sense that, whoa, maybe the normal order would not hold. Could we actually see multiple injuries in a spin-room stampede? This had never happened before, to my knowledge.
But Trump had never happened before, at least in this great democracy pageant of ours."
A long interview on CNN where Trump describes his disappointment with FOX and discusses other candidates a bit.
Trump slams Fox News praises Drudge TheHill
Fox News Couldn t Kill Trump s Momentum and May Have Only Made It Stronger - Bloomberg Politics
"Kelly, the whip-smart queen of Fox News’ blonde stunners, went straight for the jugular. “You've called women you don't like fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals,” she admonished Trump. “Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president?”
But Trump saw her coming a mile away and cut her off. “Only Rosie O’Donnell,” he barked, drawing cheers from the crowd. When Kelly tried to point out that he had insulted more women than O’Donnell, Trump, as he would all night, steamrolled right past her. “The big problem this country has is being politically correct,” Trump practically shouted, invoking conservatives’ favorite term of disdain. “I’ve been challenged by so many people and I don't frankly have time for total political correctness and to be honest with you this country doesn't have time either.” The crowd went wild.
Maybe they were cheering because the question was apropos of something Rachel Maddow would ask, and they were, after all, Republicans. But I think they were cheering because it was clear, at that moment, that Trump was going to be Trump, and wasn’t going to heed the pundits and phonies to tone down his act. According to a report in New York magazine, even his own daughter, Ivanka, was making that case."
The Professional Political Class does not understand the Trump phenomena and their growing frustration with it all is increasingly apparent.
