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July 22, 2015

26 posts · Wednesday

Just dropped · Trial Balloon · Ep. 190

Trump Is Everywhere

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Trial Balloon · Ep. 190: Trump Is Everywhere

Trump Will Lose But He May Help Clinton Win

· 55 Comments

Rick Wilson: “Donald Trump is not running a real campaign. He is working the phones, stirring the pot and using the media ecosystem to its fullest. Soon, the bolder members of the field will follow Rick Perry, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush in making harder and more decisive strokes against him. Unlike Trump, they’ll use real oppo, tested and targeted messages—ads built not just to cut, but to kill. They’ll break his operational tempo, get inside his OODA loop and turn his circus into a crispy ruin. It’s what real campaigns do.”

“Trump will lose, and Trump supporters will wake up with a combination I call ‘herpes and a hangover.’ They may have had fun the night before, but they’ll regret the hangover for a day. However, if Trump’s games in this campaign lead to the election of Hillary Clinton, they’ll regret the herpes a lot longer.”

GOP Candidates Struggle to Deal with Trump

· 30 Comments

New York Times: “Mr. Trump’s role as principal bomb-thrower, initially an annoyance for his Republican rivals, is now presenting them with their first real challenge in the primary campaign as they seek to develop a strategy for dealing with the bombastic real estate mogul who stands at the top of recent polls.”

“Some of the candidates have bluntly criticized Mr. Trump, which could endear them to donors who find his language destructive and help them break into the news cycle… Others have resorted to different tactics to remind voters that they are running.”

“Mr. Trump’s wrath tends to be directed toward those who take the hardest swing at him. But some of the candidates have done the work over the last two years to stay in the developer’s good graces.”

Trump Continues to Lead GOP Pack Nationally

· 20 Comments

A new Public Policy Polling survey finds Donald Trump leading the GOP presidential field with 19%, followed by Scott Walker at 17%, Jeb Bush at 12%, Ben Carson at 10%, Marco Rubio at 10% and Mike Huckabee at 8%. Everyone else draws under 5% support.

“Trump’s lead comes despite the fact that only 22% of Republicans agree with the comments he made about John McCain over the weekend compared to 50% who disagree. Despite his overall lead there are some signs that Trump’s comments may have hurt him. For one thing his favorability rating is back down in the 40s, at 48/39.”

Perry Calls Trump a ‘Cancer’ and a ‘Barking Carnival Act’

· 80 Comments

Rick Perry “is taking the gloves off in his assault on Donald Trump,” Time reports.

Said Perry: “He offers a barking carnival act that can be best described as Trumpism: a toxic mix of demagoguery, mean-spiritedness and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition if pursued. Let no one be mistaken – Donald Trump’s candidacy is a cancer on conservatism, and it must be clearly diagnosed, excised and discarded.”

GOP Has Only Itself to Blame for Donald Trump

· 24 Comments

Frank Rich: “The GOP can blame the media all it wants, but the party has no one to blame but itself for weaponizing Trump. It subsidized and encouraged the market for what Trump is now selling. Now the Republicans’ only really hope is that Trump will blow himself up, Herman Cain style. Maybe he will, and he certainly has no chance of getting the nomination no matter what he does. But in the meantime he can keep wreaking havoc. Nine other GOP candidates were onstage at the Ames, Iowa, forum last weekend where he trashed McCain, and no one remembers anything anyone else there said unless it was in response to Trump. The same may well happen at the first national debate on Fox News on August 6, which is likely (because of Trump, and much to his delight) to be the highest rated primary debate in history.”

“Even over the short term, the Republicans are clueless about how to deal with him; they keep playing into his hands.”

Trump Disclosure Shows Vast Network of Holdings

· 10 Comments

Donald Trump’s financial disclosure filed as part of his presidential bid shows he holds stakes “in a sprawling network of real estate and entertainment companies from India to Turkey,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The filing was the first time the real-estate developer and television star had ever publicly tallied his holdings. While the 92-page filing didn’t precisely quantify Mr. Trump’s wealth, it suggests he has assets worth at least $1.5 billion. Mr. Trump has said he is worth more than $10 billion.”

Bloomberg: “It’s nearly impossible from the federal forms to determine whether Trump — as he has claimed — is worth more than $10 billion. Trump’s claims about the size of his wealth have fluctuated over the years and sometimes have been based on little other than his own estimation of the value of his own brand.”

Bonus Quote of the Day

· 46 Comments

“To conduct the presidency, it has to be done in a dignified way, with a level of class. I don’t think the way (Donald Trump has) behaved over the last few weeks is either dignified or worthy of the office he seeks.”

— Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), in an interview on Fox News.

Conservatives Lose Faith in Pope Francis

· 106 Comments

Gallup: “Pope Francis’ drop in favorability is even starker among Americans who identify as conservative — 45% of whom view him favorably, down sharply from 72% last year. This decline may be attributable to the pope’s denouncing of ‘the idolatry of money’ and linking climate change partially to human activity, along with his passionate focus on income inequality — all issues that are at odds with many conservatives’ beliefs.”

Texas Lawmaker Wants to Allow Guns in Hospitals

· 70 Comments

Texas state Rep. Drew Springer (R) is pushing legislation that would allow staff and visitors to bring firearms into hospitals for self-defense, KERA-TV reports.

A few years ago, when Springer went to visit a Deputy Sheriff at a Fort Worth hospital, he had to leave his gun in the car.

Said Springer: “I go up and see the deputy and then I come back. I spend the next 10 minutes walking in a dark parking lot to get to my car in downtown Fort Worth and I absolutely did not feel safe.”

Remember What We Learned 4 Years Ago

· 27 Comments

First Read: “As the political world tries to make sense of Donald Trump and his rise in the polls, it’s worth taking a stroll down memory lane. Four years ago, in the April 2011 NBC/WSJ poll, your early leaders in the national GOP presidential horserace were Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and, yes, Donald Trump (!!!). In the July 2011 NBC/WSJ poll, the leaders were Romney and Michele Bachmann. In August, it was Rick Perry and Romney. In October, it was Herman Cain and Romney. A month later, it was Romney and Cain again. And in Dec. 2011, it was Newt Gingrich and Romney.”

“So what does that tell us? For starters, the GOP race was incredibly volatile, always featuring Romney vs. an anti-Romney alternative flavor the month. But maybe more importantly, it was about an anti-Romney constituency in search of a candidate.”

“These were voters who weren’t wild about Romney, who weren’t wild about the Republican establishment as a whole, but who wanted someone else. And eventually, they settled on Rick Santorum (the last anti-Romney standing). So if that lesson from 2011-2012 taught us anything, it’s that Trump’s rise isn’t about Donald Trump; folks, he isn’t going to be the GOP’s nominee. Rather, it’s about where his supporters/voters go. Trump’s constituency is very real and perhaps durable — even if they end up candidate shopping again.”

Wonk Wire: Why is Trump so popular?

Kasich Says Democrats Secretly Fear Him

· 64 Comments

Gov. John Kasich (R) told ABC News that Democrats are scared of facing him in the general election.

Said Kasich: “I’ve been hearing from these Democrat operatives that John Kasich, me — I don’t want to sound like I’m Bob Dole, you know? But John Kasich, you know – me — that I’m their greatest fear. I mean, we hear it all the time.”

He added: “I actually ran into one of their big campaign managers. And he said, ‘You know, we do worry about you.’ I said, ‘Why don’t you say it publicly?’ He said, ‘Are you crazy? We’re not going give you any publicity.'”

Trump Has No Regrets Giving Out Graham’s Number

· 14 Comments

Donald Trump said he gave out Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) private cell phone number “for fun,” Politico reports.

Said Trump: “He’s got zero in the polls. I did it for fun, and everybody had a good time, and we had a packed house. We had a beyond-packed house. We had auditoriums next door that were packed. The place was amazing.”

He added: “It seems to have gotten a lot of press. He calls me names, you have to fight back.”

Taegan Goddard

Taegan Goddard

Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.

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