In case you thought I was kidding about yesterday's Al Czervik parallel. By the way, was Rand standing in the bunker and Trump on the green, or was Trump standing in the golf cart? That pic looks like an outtake from Honey I Shrunk The Kids.
At any rate, Senator Paul nailed it, and Trump, this morning:
Senator Rand Paul said Tuesday there's a good reason Donald Trump is surging in the polls: It's all that publicity.
"It could be the $3 billion worth of publicity he's gotten by being on every channel," the Republican senator and presidential candidate told Fox News' America's Newsroom host Bill Hemmer. "I think if I could get a billion dollars worth of free TV maybe we would get the same kind of surge."
Precisely. Stepping back from Tea Party gullibility for a moment, Trump started with more universal name recognition than even Hillary Clinton, so that three bil (or however much) worth of free media publicity (figure it out, people....) was 100% gravy, and funds Trump himself didn't have to expend. The question nobody's asking is whether a campaign based on bluster, caustic, sophomoric buffoonery, media connivance, and being an asshole that jibes with his target audience's unthinking prejudices is enough to become anything more than an early-in-the-race "flavor of the month" sideshow that eventually fades when voters start getting serious (assuming, after the last two presidential elections, that they're capable of it).
Speaking of the sophomoric, never let it be said that Trump doesn't have a taste for unwitting irony:
Donald Trump says that the Des Moines Register editorial, calling for the real estate mogul to end his campaign, is "sophomoric."
Well, he's the expert on sophmoricism, so I guess he would know.
"I am not at all surprised by the Des Moines Register's sophomoric editorial," Trump said in statement released Tuesday.
"It was issued immediately after the release of the ABC News/Washington Post poll showing me with 24% and an eleven-point lead over my nearest rival," Trump said.
In a national poll that has no bearing on or relevance to the State-by-State polls where he's still (nominally) trailing. Which, in any case, was not the Register's point.
"As one of the most liberal newspapers in the United States, the poll results were just too much for them to bear."
Since when is the Des Moines Register "the most liberal newspapers in the United States"? Sure, I have no doubt that they're left-of-center and have no love lost for conservatives and Republicans, but isn't this at least a bit of an exaggeration? And, once again, that wasn't the Register's point, either.
The Des Moines Register wrote Monday that Trump, in questioning Arizona Senator John McCain's status as a war hero, has "disqualified himself" to "sit in the White House" and should therefore "drop out of the race."
If you're going to criticize the Register, Hairboy, ridicule them for implying that you were ever qualified to sit in the White House in the first place other than as part of a tour, for calling for something - you dropping out of the race when you're momentarily and mythically leading it - that nobody with three brain cells to rub together could possibly believe you would do, and for not outing you as the Donk mole you really are.
But then that would blow your cover, wouldn't it?
Here's a question to ask yourselves: Would Trump be sitting next to Mrs. Clinton on the U.S. Capitol platform at her inauguration, or would she be sitting on his lap? A question that may never be answered now, because, as Allahpundit put it this morning, "only RINOs apologize," and that appears to be what Trump is veiledly doing today:
Presidential candidate Donald Trump said he respects Senator John McCain and insisted that he didn’t malign the Arizona Republican’s war record — but said that if there was a “misunderstanding” over his words, he would take them back.
The classic professional politician's "non-apology apology". "You're all too chowder-headed to understand what I was REALLY saying, I didn't say what you were dumb enough to THINK I was saying, but I'm sorry if your mental handicaps caused you to misinterpret that I was REALLY saying the opposite of what I ACTUALLY said". Because of course, any reasonable human being would have grasped that calling Senator McCain a "dummy" and "loser" and "not a war hero" was REALLY intended to be expressions of Trump's heartfelt and unparalleled affection and respect.
So Trump has, in essence (1) apologized and (2) in precisely the dishonest fashion of pols for whom TPers usually have dripping, abject contempt. This ought to be the part where his new-found followers recoil in betrayed outrage and hoot Trump off the national stage the way Martin O'Malley was almost lynched by the Nutrooters last Saturday.
Anybody think that's gonna happen? Yeah, that's what I thought.
And yet reality is reality, and the truth is the truth:
One of the things I hear from Trump supporters is that he tells it like it is. Whether it is promising to get Mexico to pay for a border fence, or saying that McCain was not a war hero for enduring torture rather than accepting special privileges, or later pretending that his McCain comments were about Trump’s deep interest in the welfare of underserved veterans, it is obvious that Trump doesn’t tell it like it is, and that some of his fans like that about him.
They want to be bullshat, because it catharsizes their prejudices.
Trump’s rhetoric is about wounding people that his fans despise. It doesn’t have to be true, and, on some level they can accept [the] collateral damage inflicted on others. Trump’s McCain comment was a collective insult against POWs who served honorably, but Trump’s fans also know it was intended to insult one politician and his media enablers. Nothing personal, all you other POWs. Likewise, his promise to get Mexico to pay for a border fence is the inverse of a bipartisan political establishment that pretends building a border fence is some kind of physical responsibility.
Nobody is freer, in short, than a "candidate" who knows he has zero chance of winning, and a free hand to be the proverbial bull in the Republican china shop. And his Tea Party fans will apparently never realize that it's their collective ox that he's goring.
But at least they'll get a lot of snarling and fist-pumping out of it. And that's all the crushing election defeat solace they evidently need.
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