I mention this briefly, to illustrate my point that Donald Trump will keep testing the limits of human tolerance, even that of stupid, crude, bigoted, hateful and ignorant humans, until he exceeds it. This is a certainty.
Someone had thrown a tomato at Trump at a previous event, so at his Monday rally in Cedar Rapids, Trump told the crowd,
“So if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them. I will pay for the legal fees. I promise.”
So we have now escalated from Trump kicking out protesters while directing that his thugs keep their coats, so they freeze, and thowing out reporters he doesn’t like, to directing the crowd to beat people up. This last would be enough for most decent, fair, civilized people, none of whom attend Trump rallies. What will make these people say, “Oh-oh! I don’t want to be associated with this guy!,” I wonder?
When he has the protester brought up the podium, says, “Stand him up!’ and breaks his jaw, like Captain McCluskey does to Michael Corleone? No? Not bad enough?
How about setting a protester on fire? How’s that?
It is certain, certain, that eventually Trump will go too far, because he has no ethics alarms.
Just wait.
You’ll see.
________________________
Pointer: Fred
Ethics Alarms 
So far the threshold for his boorish behavior seems to be unnaturally high among those who support him. I’ve really never seen anything quite like it. I can only imagine what the moment will contain if it ever comes. I’m definitely waiting.
Trump is dragging the GOP into the abyss.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; every time Trump opens his trap he is providing the Democratic Party LOADS of sound bites to plaster on TV screens across the nation smearing the integrity, values, and morals of the entire GOP and any GOP ticket is going to be on the defense from day one in the general election campaign doing everything they can to prove that they are not like Trump. Talking about policy won’t even come close to the amount of money and rhetoric that will have to be “spent” trying to defeat the smear that Trump is the GOP, the GOP is Trump. This election was an easy knockout until Trump put his “hair” in the ring.
Get ready for at least 4 more years of Obama’s policies pushed even further by Hillary Clinton. If you think Obama was bad with Presidential actions, just wait until Hillary gets a hold of the Presidential pen and Bill and his cohorts work out new “legal” ways to circumvent Congress and ram through policies with Presidential actions and zero input from that annoying Congress. The royal Clinton family will rule the roost.
I was listening to an interview where a reporter was saying how Trump stops just short of exhorting violence against them – part of the semi-scripted call and response of Trump’s rallies involves him calling out and insulting the penned-in reporters at the rally, calling them things like “scum” and “Sleazebags”, and working the crowd up to boo and jeer at them. It’s gotten to the point where some reporters are starting to openly (within their organizations) discuss whether they need to hire security to protect them from the crowd and Trump’s thugs.
So many ethical fouls in this sort of behavior – first of all, he’s just shy of inciting the crowd to riot. Second, these journalists are guests at his event, who HE invited there, and he is insulting them and endangering them. Third, he is helping to create the very culture that causes his supporters to respond to his incitements. I’m starting to think the thugs at his rallies are only a few steps removed from Hitler’s brownshirts.
As my astute colleague and best friend and I discussed, though not a super likelihood, we wouldn’t put it too many percentage points away from just the right conditions for Trump followers to form brown shirt type organizations.
Chase,
Watch THE WAVE.
“A man becomes preeminent, he’s expected to have enthusiasms. Enthusiasms, enthusiasms… What are mine? What draws my admiration? What is that which gives me joy? Baseball! A man stands alone at the plate. This is the time for what? For individual achievement. There he stands alone. But in the field, what? Part of a team. Teamwork… Looks, throws, catches, hustles. Part of one big team. Bats himself the live-long day, Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and so on. If his team don’t field… what is he? You follow me? No one. Sunny day, the stands are full of fans. What does he have to say? I’m goin’ out there for myself. But… I get nowhere unless the team wins…”
BAM!!!
Great scene but pretty foreseeable to anybody who had followed De Niro’s career to that point. The only question was who was going to be on the receiving end of that bat.
True but Capone actually did this but in real life it was two guys he did it to not one.
“This last would be enough for most decent, fair, civilized people, none of whom attend Trump rallies.”
Decent and fair people are desperately hoping for someone with a credible chance to beat him (and them), and silently cursing those that have produced the campaign leaders we’ve got.
I think his Waterloo, in retrospect, will have been his refusal to join the last debate.
That explains the drop-off between the date of the Des Moines Register poll, which showed him leading, and his terrible actual results. In between the poll and the caucus was his hissy fit – and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
We’ll see, but I think the momentum is downhill from here on.
Do you think on some level he’s terrified of actually winning and is therefore acting out, outrageously?
I think he’s an inherently unstable personality, insecure and immature, and without any core principles or character to fall back on. Politics is a tough job: I don’t admire or trust Hillary, but she’s tough in ways Trump isn’t. All high level national leaders have to have amazing resources of determination and dedication, self-sacrifice and perseverance under stress. I don’t think Trump can handle the dips in the roller coaster.
That analysis rings very true to my ears.
Attention span.
I’d begun to despair The Donald’s would be exceeded, but I’m beginning to have hope again. He thought he could run a campaign by just producing and starring in a reality TV show. But I guess campaigns don’t work that way. The Neilsens came in in Iowa and they were terrible. I really think at some point he will throw up his hands and walk away saying he has bigger deals to do, or some such other nonsense.
But I don’t think outrageous behavior on his part will be the cause. I just think not that many voters are buying what he’s selling and as that becomes apparent in primary results, he and everyone else will see it.
Maybe this article supports my view:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3431090/Photos-record-breaking-audience-Trump-rally-fell-far-short-man-Donald-claimed-fire-marshal-actually-manages-state-fair.html
Lets say he gets elected. I give him a year maybe two before he resigns because he cant handle the job.
I like Jack’s scenario (or projection) better, where he gets impeached. But you might be right that he would resign like Nixon did, before enduring much of that process. I am banking on him doing like Mick Jagger sings, to “…just ffffffffffade away” (at the polls ONLY – never, in the media).
I donno.
I think as a President he wouldn’t have too many issues in his role as Chief Executive.
I think as a managing people point of view, he’d probably do swimmingly as the leader of the Executive Branch. I think he’d put qualified people as branch heads and lean heavily on them to handle everything to keep him from being burdened.
From a managing money point of view, I can’t say anything other than he probably would be somewhat better than the waster in chief we have now…not that he would be much better…though he COULD.
His real downfall as President will come from his Legislative Role and his Role in the Checks and Balances…
He’ll have no clue how to work with Congress (much like the President we have now), and he’ll be more like a bull in a china cabinet trying to get done what he wants done from a legislative angle…(much like what the President we have now would LIKE to be). With those flaws, he’ll either engage in egregious anti-Constitutional behavior enough for impeachment or we’ll just have an embarrassing fiasco laying to rest the Office of the Presidency that Bill Clinton started destroying and Barack Obama worked on finishing off.
He’ll also be a nightmare in his role in international affairs.
Or gets bored.
Tipping point? Doubt it. Maybe to come in the future. Maybe.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/03/donald-trump-ted-cruz-stole-iowa-caucuses-new-election
So Trump DID make an issue out of Cruz’s fraud that Jack posted about! That will be interesting, to see how far Trump’s whining pays – but probably only until the NH primaries – because there are so many other candidates doing “worse things” that are “not the best choices.” And the wheels of justice grind so…wheels? What wheels?
Kiddy wheels?
My senility must be overcoming my proofreading. I believe I meant to say “plays” instead of “pays,” in reference to Trump’s whining, in my Feb 4 comment at 8:20 a.m. But I must not have been fully awake…or, still am not fully awake…or, back to first speculation, I must be just getting too senile to trust myself with making any comment worth reading, because I still, at this hour, after re-reading what I said at 8:20, am not sure WHAT I meant to say about Trump’s whining. And besides, wheels, even wheels of justice, don’t grind as slowly as some brains do. It’s past time again, for me to shut up.
I wasn’t commenting on that. Just a joke about wheels and presidential campaigns run by people who have no clue and no ethics.
I apologize for any misunderstanding, wyogranny. I understand better now what you meant about wheels – thanks. Out of cynicism and distrust for the justice system, I was trying to use the “Jumbo,” elephant-what-elephant routine, in a sarcastic stream-of-consciousness reference to seemingly (sometimes) nonexistent “wheels of justice.” I am redoubling my effort to make sure I avoid making cryptic and sarcastic comments.
Yes, Trump is crying over a mistake and a separate unethical act, both of which, combined, have very questionable impact on the percentages as it regards Trump possibly winning.
I don’t think it would have changed the outcome but by a small amount.
I think you’re right. Trump ducking the debate probably hurt him more than a couple of Carson votes going to Cruz. Look at the polls, support went from him to Rubio. Cruz benefited, sure… But if it was all that evil Cruz doing it, you ‘d figure he would have benefited more directly.
Though in Cedar Rapids Trump actually invoked violence against his detractors, he still came in second in the caucuses. I despair. It seems there are enough incipient brownshirts out there — even in Iowa — to keep Trump going (for now). Only hope is that we still have a long way to go.
Just stumbled upon an old comment by Liberal Dan. What happened to him? He even had me on his radio show.
Ah, yes—now I see. He quit almost a year ago when I told him that I would not allow any more posts from him insisting that it was obvious that George Zimmerman shot Trayvon out of racial animus, since that position has no evidence to back it up, other than the fact that George was a “white Hispanic,’ and to a SJW drone like Dan, that was sufficient.
I kind of miss his passion, but not arguments like that.