the founder of the racist ‘birther movement’ didn’t have the balls to denounce his supporters’ ‘ Muslim attack’ against the President. He should either apologize — highly unlikely since he never makes a mistake — or be forced to withdraw from the race now.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
Please share widely!
Did you see this video from last night?
Here is a link to the video of Trump supporters denying people their 1st amendment rights!
Lindsay Graham and Chris Christie have also indicated they would have handled it differently.
He will do neither. The real question is how the GOP begins to respond. They are in a bind, piss him and his supporters off too much, and he runs as a 3rd party draining their support. Keep allowing him to set the tone of the debate, the issue of the race, and the lurch to the far right-and risk continuing to alienate Latinos, women, and minorities.
George W. Bush was the last Republican to win an electoral majority, and he did so with 44% of the Hispanic vote. A feat unlikely to be repeated by any member of the clown car, particularly Jeb! who is looking wimpier than Dukakis by the day.
http://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/cnns-michaela-pereira-accidentally-calls-obama-president-muhammad/272181
Trump screwed up, but you’ll never hear him say it. Of course the real problem is that he has courted the vote of people who harbor incredibly ignorant and ugly sentiments. This is what they sound like when you hand them a microphone. So should he apologize for not correcting the guy on the spot or for running a campaign that caters to that guy in the first place.
Got a feeling Trump may be starting to realize that adulation for knuckle draggers isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
On a separate note, Carly Fiorina unequivocally lied about the abortion videos during the last debate. She invented scenes that weren’t on film (forget about acknowledging that they selectively edited to paint an untrue picture) and she refuses to budge on it.
Fiorina’s making up stories about film she never saw is positively Reaganesque.
Trump is doing a great job screwing the GOP and himself. None of the front runners are ready for prime time or the general election. Congress looks like its getting ready to shut down the government, and the Planned Parenthood “issue” has been around long enough that the MSM is ready to report the truth along with the lies. This is a “There you go again” moment.
Planned Parenthood, like the NRA, is a non-issue for most Americans.
Let the sideshow continue!
Bernie Sanders was endorsed by, and introduced at a rally by, a guy who called President Obama “house negro.”
Should all candidates be responsible for what their supporters say?
I hear what you’re saying, and agree.
My impression of Donald Trump is that he happily encourages such rubbish. I’d have to see a video of the alleged Bernie Sanders introduction — and the response (including body language) of Mr. Sanders — before getting too worked up over it.
I might add that referring to Mr. Obama as a “house negro” is not nearly as offensive as the utterly false assertion made by the Donald Trump supporter.
Harry Belafonte created a stir a few years ago when he used the same phrase to describe Colin Powell. In fact, it wasn’t that offensive then, and the criticism is not so offensive now.
A number of Democrats, including yours truly, have felt betrayed by Barack Obama specifically because he has seemed to be overly eager to accommodate the GOP opposition. A number of observers have opined that a factor is Mr. Obama’s desire to avoid being pigeon-holed as an “angry black man”.
While I wouldn’t choose “house nigger” as a concise way to summarize that record, it is not that far off the mark.
The assertion that Mr. Obama is publicly or privately Muslim is a completely different, baseless, and offensive claim.
Third time man, it’s old news. I haven’t encountered anyone offended by Dr. West’s remark-nearly everyone was offended by Trump.
If the former it would be appropriate to say something; if the latter then I agree a candidate isn’t responsible for everything a supporter might have said in the past. In Trump’s case a questioner directly addressed him with this nonsense. Of course Trump should have pushed back calling it false, and at least on the religion element could have gone further by saying so what if he were.
This is somewhat akin to how Trump himself plans to negotiate with the Russians and the Chinese: tell them what to do, tell them sternly enough, and, of course, they’ll do it.
I’m glad you’re pursuing this course — with caps lock for added manly firmness and emphasis. I’m sure it’ll work.
…not because some random blogger tells him to in all caps.
There shouldn’t be candidates who are climate deniers, or ones who rely on doctored videos of Planned Parenthood, or who claim that, contra evidence, tax cuts for the wealthy aid the economy, or who argue that abstinence education accomplishes anything useful at all, or who give room for infectious diseases to spread by encouraging people to skip vaccinations for their kids.
Should! Should! Should!
because, my friends, it’s the right thing to do.
I’m not sure why you’re making a big deal about this. We opine on what should happen all the time and rightfully so.
should’s. Politics is about is about creating the circumstances to realize them. Politics is at times dull, ugly, and hypocritical. Politics is where theory is turned into practice. Without politics, ideology is the sound of one hand clapping.
Due to our society, ideology has taken a back seat to politics.
There’s nothing Trump has said that’s any more disqualifying than things said by R. Paul or J. Bush. To endow Trump’s outrages with a special spin is to miss all the other outrages.
And maybe those other outrages are a bigger deal anyway. A helpful antidote is provided by Wonkette in typically profane style:
I don’t care too much whether there are candidates who are climate change deniers. I find it very disturbing that our media, and therefore the public, and therefore at least one of our parties, takes such rubbish seriously.
The media should have been covering AGW, from the beginning, as the settled science that it is. Public statements from officials (who should know better) to the contrary should be characterized by the media as the ignorant rubbish that such statements are.
In my view, a similar argument (though not so extreme, except for the Obama-is-a-Muslim meme) applies to the other issues you enumerate.
The mainstream media story about Carly Fiorina’s lies about the Planned Parenthood videos should be “Carly Fiorina lies about video”. Instead, according to sources like mediamatters.org, mainstream media celebrates her lies as a high point of the evening (occasionally but not always mentioning, deep in the story, that her assertions are false and her description invented).
In my view, the rise of the cynicism implicit in your comment is a significant contributor to the toxic political environment we have today. I reject that cynicism, just as I reject the dysfunctional society it produces.
I prefer to live in a society where candidates of either party who utter such rubbish are immediately dismissed as crackpots by both the media and the public — whether or not any instances of “should” appear in our dialog.
“media, and therefore the public, and therefore at least one of our parties, takes such rubbish seriously.” I think you’re missing KBusch’s point, which is, colloquially speaking, “No Shit!” It goes without saying that Trump SHOULD have told the guy he was f’ed in the head. Who here needs that pointed out? People shouldn’t torture animals. Do we need that pointed out?
I would too plus a free pony for everyone who wants one. The fact is, we don’t. That’s not cynicism. That’s realism.
I am very aware of the current reality.
I read her comment, perhaps incorrectly, as both a shrug and as a suggestion that it’s a waste of time to even observe how broken that reality is. I agree that we the society we live in is different from the society we want to live in.
I think the question is what we do about that. I read kbusch’s comment as responding “nothing much”.
I want to do more.
Though I agree the “sensible Republicans” up in arms about Trump have been living in willful denial regarding the trajectory of their party since Nixon deployed the Southern Strategy to win over disaffected whites.
Trumps is certainly worse and more overt, but it’s nothing new. Since the media decided long ago to abandon its job of speaking truth to power, it’s up to us to call him out on his bigotry. We know tomorrow mornings talking heads are just gonna say he’s “still up” rather than pointing out how far down he really has sunk.