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The National Association of Hispanic Journalists condemned Trump for ejecting Jorge Ramos from his news conference. I am sure that both Norberto and Gustavo also disapprove of Trump’s action. This incident shines the light not on Donald Trump but on the dilemma that his views on immigrants poses for the GOP.
I tried to get a sense of the immigration dilemma in the OC GOP in my previous post about Jorge Ramos, but I was ignored, even by Vern, the OJB publisher. My last question in that thread was addressed to him, I asked whether his uber-contacts with the OC Republicans (I don’t exactly know what uber means but sounds hipster, like that he likes to rub elbows with insiders) gave him an idea of the position of then new chairman of the Orange County GOP, Fred Whitaker.
So this time I am going to ask the same question by presenting the opinion of Dr Alvaro Huerta:
Op Ed : Trump Exemplifies True Colors of GOP
” It’s not true that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump only represents the extreme wing or “crazies” of the GOP. As a leader in numerous polls, Trump exemplifies the true colors of the GOP: xenophobic, mean-spirited and pro one-percent.
Despite how the other GOP presidential candidates or Republican leadership view him or distance themselves from his vitriolic language, Trump’s boorish behavior and disdain towards Latino immigrants represents the Republican party’s political platform. While Republican leaders have acknowledged that it’s impossible or not feasible to deport over 11 million undocumented immigrants, they have rejected a pathway to citizenship for those who live and work in America’s shadows. In lieu of citizenship, key Republican leaders propose a form of legal status without the opportunity for citizenship. Essentially, Republican leaders argue for a legalized, second-class group available for exploitable cheap labor.
What does it matter for the millions of Latino immigrants, if Trump is calling them pejorative names, when more diplomatic Republican leaders, like former Florida Gov. Jed Bush, concur that citizenship is not an option for those who toil from sun-up to sun-down in our agricultural fields, kitchens, front yards, factories, hospitals and other key employment sectors. Shameful!…….
….. Apart from being mean-spirited and hypocritical, Republic leaders continue to advocate for policies that benefit the wealthiest one-percent of the nation. For instance, by providing tax-breaks for the rich and allowing for wealthy corporations to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, Republicans engage in class warfare against working-class Latinos. By following what then-President Ronald Reagan made famous with “trick-down economics” or “Reaganomics,” under the false assumption that tax breaks for the rich benefit the nation as a whole, the only thing that trickles down to working-class Latinos under this absurd premise is misery.
At the end of the day, as Trump continues to lead in state and national polls, like the recently conducted national CNN / ORC Poll and NBC / Marist Poll in New Hampshire, the GOP will gradually wither away. Instead of representing the “Grand Old Party,” for the benefit of Hilary Clinton in 2016 and Democrats in the long run, the GOP will morph into the “Grand Obsolete Party.”
You can read the entire text here. Let’s see if Vern takes a break from playing with Dan C and tell us what he is being told to say….what? This is what GSR is supposed to say….sorry Vern. You’re a good sport.
First things first:
Donald Trump is not running for president.
Donald Trump is not leading in any meaningful way
Donald Trump has virtually no chance of winning the Republican nomination.
Donald Trump is not really a Republican. Indeed, he’s been a nominal Democrat most of his life for obvious mercantile reasons. .
These ground facts make it tough to use your post as launch pad for discussion
So let’s try something different: What is Donald Trump up to, and why isn’t the formal GOP pushing back harder?
Trump is being Trump: Using his obvious talents as a reality TV star to generating TV ratings for Fox. He generally does this by inflating his ego to obscure his thoroughly mediocre business “achievements”. Currently, he is pandering, in a loud and entertaining way, to an ugly but undeniable piece of the Republican coalition.
This slice of the party is not small — about 20%, apparently — but isn’t big or coherent enough to move an agenda forward, even within the party. This group specializes in being LOUD, not in the give-and-take necessary to get anything done.
Which is the problem. There are enough of them, and they are loud enough, to destroy any particular candidate. So anyone who wants to eventually actually govern, has to NOT PISS THEM OFF.
It’s almost the exact reflection of Obama’s dilemma on Keystone XL pipeline. Obama has good economic and diplomatic advisors: approval is a no-brainer. But there is a significant and LOUD slice of the Democratic party that will destroy any particular candidate that endorses the pipeline.
So the Keystone “Debate” has largely remained frozen for most of the Obama presidency. Likewise the Immigration Debate has remained frozen within the Republican Party.
Eh. You know I’ll disagree with the last part on Keystone XL, but I also disagree with your “isn’t running, can’t win, 20%” take on Trump. Read those “is Trump a fascist?” links on the most recent Weekend Open Thread.
Disagree all you want. It’s a sound economic and environmental decision.
Run Canadian crude through old pipes and rail cars or run it through state-of-the-art pipes.
Real tough.
Oh, and Trump is running to be King of America, not President.
Or don’t run this filthy Canadian crude anywhere at all. It’s like discussing whether one should smoke opium or inject heroin — how about doing neither?
Yeeeeeah, not really an option given the world addiction.
I’m confused as to how you square support for development of Alberta’s tar sands with your belief in the reality, urgency, and catastrophic effects of climate change.
Even Gene Hackman in The French Connection 2 found an alternative to addiction, n’est ce pas? Granted, it wasn’t pretty.
I’m not a Canadian.
They’re going to develop that asset. They’re going to produce crude oil. They’re going to sell it.
Our question is how do we move that oil in the most responsible fashion?
Old pipes? Nope.
Rail cars? Nope.
New pipe going west to China? Nope.
New pipe going south to responsibly run American refineries employing Americans at liveable wages?
Yeah. That’s the best option.
No, they won’t necessarily develop that asset. Not if continued improvements in alternative energy keep oil prices low enough to make it unprofitable — since it is, among other things, hell on pipes.
If Canada wants to build a pipeline west through BC, they can do it. And they can also shut it down — as I believe they would do before long. I don’t trust our country to do so.
The crude price dip is recent. It’s also temporary. It has nothing to do with Obama’s decision.
Second, if Canada goes West instead of South, that increases carbon emissions.
So, you’re effectively settling for a worse global impact that benefits the Chinese.
I stand by my original comment. #endthreadhijack
disagree all you want, I provided those links for a reason.
It’s Silly Season, and Roger Ailes is puffing his ratings with The Donald Show. Donald Trump is the Shark Week of political journalism.
Trump has the highest net-negatives of any candidate in modern history — and he’s still in his “honeymoon” period. He is absolutely unelectable. not even close.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/why-donald-trump-isnt-a-real-candidate-in-one-chart/
As the Republican field consolidates across winter, the actual viable candidates will move to front and Trump will take his reality TV show somewhere else.
This is one of the easiest predictions in politics.
you’re not arguing with me about Trump’s electability, you’re arguing with Nate Silver. A dangerous place to be.
I argued with Nate Silver on Daily Kos back before he was THE Nate Silver. He his blind spots and the biggest one is overconfidence that discontinuities won’t appear. But they do.
This would make quite an interesting discussion, actually. Shall we meet in the field of honor in tomorrow’s Weekend Open Thread? I don’t want to hijack Ricardo’s comments section.
nope. I vanish in into the dust of Black Rock City starting.. about now.
But the The Donald Show has such strong ratings it will say on-air through the fall, so we’ll have plenty of opportunity to pick this up later 8)
Burning Man!
Enjoy your Woodstock! (Or is it more of a Lilith Fair?) Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do at least once.
The future of the GOP is grim. A plank-by-plank examination of the platform gives one a real sinking feeling.
I wonder if the the gun nuts, homo haters, eco-wasters, Bible beaters, global warming deniers, creationists, and die hard police state apparatchiks ever stop to ponder what glue binds them together. Now we can add the brainless who actually consider Trump to be viable in some sort of way. As Tyler notes it won’t last, but still.
I was listening to an older guy in a coffee shop in Lander, Wyoming declare his support for Trump. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, you know, like a punch line. But it didn’t. Unfortunately the guy seemed pretty normal.
I’d like to agree completely David, but don’t count out the Republican drive to corrupt the voting process and coerce election results. The blatant amount of spending by a cadre of millionaires/billionaires primarily on Republican candidates is telling
Then we have voter suppression. Also, remember this is the party that shamelessly stole the election in 200 and nothing happened. Nothing.
*Jorge, should have stuck his pencil up that guys nose!
*Trump needs to fight Ronda Rousey on pay for view…..that should really improve his
ratings….and maybe we can see him get crushed like a bug in the process.
^^^ nice!
ramos exemplifies his Hispanic constituency, he tried to jump the line to get benefits he did not deserve. furthermore, while he may have some self derived “right” to ask a question, trump does not have a corresponding obligation to either acknowledge it or answer it (sort of the same position Hillary takes). and finally, I will start to take you guys seriously when you make the same assumptions about the twenty percent that are supporting Bernie Sanders and identify them as holding the same sort of fascist totalitarian views that you ascribe to trumps followers
What what what? Sanders followers would make HORRIBLE totalitarians. We’re WAY to self-reflexive and ready to bolt at a sign that our hero has clay feet — or even dirty feet!
Sanders has a pathway to victory, but it’s not very wide.
are you serious, they want to completely redistribute the wealth in this country, dictate who gets what, impose their sense of morality (which admittedly would be more fun than the other side), impose political correctness on all and basically mandate and impose their vision of the future on society. I do not see that as any different that what the hard right wants to do other than for the fact that you agree with them
Uh, no. Not “completely” redistribute the wealth. Barbra Streisand and Ellen DeGeneres get to keep every penny they earn.
my two favorite performers
You socialist nutjob.
If you don’t see the difference, Mike, then what’s the point of talking about it? Your paranoia is showing.
So first let’s offer Ricardo the respect he deserves and address the Jorge Ramos issue. Tell me, has anyone examined his connections to the Clinton empire? he is not exactly the unbiased journalist he claims to be, so why should any candidate be forced to answer to someone who is for all purposes a shill for the other side’s campaign?
Please do not mistake that denouncement of Ramos for support of Trump. The guy is a freaking embarrassment. What I cannot figure out is this; Why is it that the average joe GOP citizen is horrified at the idea of Trump representing the party, and the reports of Trump being a “front runner” are coming from the liberal left media machine? Seriously, if I wanted to completely discredit the GOP and demoralize every thinking Republican in the nation, I could do no better than convincing them everyone else in the party is in love with this moron with an animal hide pasted to his head. Are those “polls” peer reviewed? Presented under oath? Brought to you by the “I was taking fire” folks who don’t exactly exude moral character.
No i don’t think Trump can win because I don’t think he is truly the sweetheart of the GOP. I think his popularity is exaggerated, probably on purpose, for the benefit of the left.
Enough with the fascination with this ass-hat and let’s discuss the truly important issues of the day. Talk Like a Pirate Day is coming up in just 3 weeks and I have nothing to wear.
I think that if Ramos and Univision are trying to help out a candidate here, it is not Hillary Clinton so much as Jeb Bush. Univision loses little and gains much by being associated, among Latino voters (and viewers), with supporting Jeb’s views on immigration over Trump’s in the Republican primary.
“Can Trump win?” will be a topic of this week’s Weekend Open Thread, if plans remain on course, so I may want to port some of your comments over there. I will say that I think that Democrats have some titillation over the prospect of being nominated, but that it is tempered by our fear that he really is and American version of a strong man like Putin, willing to ride roughshod over all of the rules just to get his way — and we really don’t like the idea of normalizing that sort of political view because it may hasten the day when we actually do elect someone who is, in essence, a fascist.
Some polling agencies, including PPP, which is generally considered to be “on the left” due to their polling for Daily Kos, do “show their work.” So if you have questions about the legitimacy of their poles, you really can check them out and come up with a reasonable answer as to their legitimacy.
Thanks Cynthia. My comment here is not necessarily addressed to you but to avoid posting several comments, I will use this one.
Ramos had disclosed in one of his Sunday’s shows that his daughter is involved in Hillary’s campaign. It may be a connection but overall he presents the facts, and responds to a strong sentiment in our community. If it wasn’t for the immigration issue, he may well come across as a fairly conservative guy on many issues.
The statement of the president of Hispanic Journalists is telling :
“Mr. Ramos was doing what journalists have done for decades – asking questions!,” said Mekahlo Medina, NAHJ President. “Ramos was simply trying to hold a candidate for president accountable for statements he made about a very important topic to the American people. Mr. Trump has avoided Mr. Ramos’ attempts for an interview to reasonably discuss Mr. Trump’s opinions and ideas about immigration and American children born to undocumented immigrants.”
Whether he may violated journalistic protocols or not, would be interesting if Norberto and Gustavo could contribute their interpretation either here or in their publications.
Ramos was on the attack, just like Megyn Kelly was with ALL the candidates in the so-called debate. Most people are turned off by the arrogance of the media and Ramos’ arrogance just oozes when he speaks. He comes across not as a reporter asking questions, but as an angry advocate attempting to gain a stage for his viewpoint to be heard at the expense of the person being questioned and others waiting their turn to ask questions Trump did the right thing, especially since Trump and Ramos’ employer are embroiled in a legal dispute.
The “involved in a legal dispute” point is important; it does detract from an argument that Ramos is motivation for his action was entirely pure. Yet I still think that he would want to do it even in the absence of the brouhaha over Univision’s cancelling it’s showing of the Miss America pageant due to Trump’s inflammatory anti-Mexican remarks. What may have changed is that now his bosses may have been OK with him taking this sort of unusual stand for a reporter.
Yes, Ramos did not act with the “deportment” that we expect of professional journalists. And yet, as the nation’s most prominent Spanish language journalist, he decided that trump should not be able to avoid comment and interrogation on his extreme views on immigration. That seems to me to be a valid move for a journalist, to be used only very occasionally in situations of extreme importance and significance. I think that there is a fair argument that this was just that sort of situation, and that the equivalent of civil disobedience was arguably justified, so long as – as usual – one is willing to pay the price.
Ramos did pay that price, although I don’t think that he hurt trump anywhere nearly as much as he might have liked. I expect that to many observers, he made Trump seem more sympathetic, and if I were to criticize him it would be on that basis. And yet, there does come a time when silence does equal complicity. He felt that that time has been reached, and I’m not going to second-guess him on that. I do think that Trump had every right to have him removed from the room, but also the Trump should have expected and should continue to expect to be pressed hard by journalists regarding his stand on immigration.
And, frankly, what Ramos stood is no worse than what I’ve seen David Gregory and other smug Sunday morning interview were to do with politicians who have been invited onto their shows. There seems to be a lot of and ringing here, and I doubt that the same hands would be wrung if this involved some conservative journalist deciding to take on Hillery rudely regarding the apparently empty “email scandal.”
at least trump acknowledged romas, hillary did not even acknowledge the guy from fox the other day. I think that what is missing from the trump discussion, at least here, is the similarity between trump and sanders. forgetting policy for the moment, both have tapped into a deep frustration and anger with the establishment. granted, sanders does it in a more polished, politically correct way but their message is the same: the government, managed by the political class, has failed us. and, either one, would impose some sort of totalitarian system on the country. trump would allow us to fall into a barbaric racist free for all capitalism while sanders would confiscate the wealth and redistribute it to those who he deems are needy and worthwhile. neither works.
How much of “the wealth” do you think that Sanders would “redistribute”? I’d be happy if he just undid the redistribution that has been going on since 1980. And he’s a realist, who knows that he probably can’t even attain THAT much, especially with a Republican Congress — but he can try! And he can go after what FDR called “malefactors of great wealth” with gusto. We need that.
There is no real threat to you from Trump: yes, your taxes and fees would go up to a realistic level, but so would others in your class, so your spending ability relative to them would be the same. Trump, by contrast, gets you armed vigilante hordes — and you don’t know where that Peronist streak of his ends up, if it does at all. Seriously, Sanders is a moderate compared to Trump. We’re talking, in French political terms, about a Francois Holland versus a Marie Le Pen. Wake up while you’re drivin!
I don’t drive, I have people for that
and remember, I prefaced my comment with the caveat, forget policy for the moment…
trump as peron is a good analogy but so is sanders as marx and while karl was somewhat more acceptable than the czar, at the end of the day, marx begat stalin.
they both, based upon different philosophies but for the same fundamental reasons, take us down a path better ignored.
as to your other point, you are absolutely right, it really makes no difference to me and the missus (we did very well simultaneously shorting the market while buying at the bottom, the holding companies are offshore and south orange county real estate always rebounds) but I do worry about the grandkids and what percentage of the capital will have to be spent on the armed guards surrounding the compound and, to your earlier point, money can only buy so much loyalty before even the well compensated turn on you
Ooo, a threat of insurgency from the upper class? Puts me in mind of 2000’s “Brooks Brothers Riot” (when you guys were terrified Gore might beat W.)
Ricardo, I don’t know Fred Whitaker. He’s a Cunningham-type Republican, not someone I would hang out with. You wanna know about Bruce Whitaker or Tim Whitacre, I’m your guy.
i know fred whitaker, and his cousins timmy and bruce (and yes, i drink alone). the whitaker family arrived in orange county in the early 1890’s and quickly spread out with fred moving to orange, bruce to brea and little timmy to the bean fields of anaheim. for a while they worked as carnival barkers for old man knotts before joining the fight and turning away communism at the banks of the santa ana river (vern, you must remember the great john birch battles of the early 1960’s when the surfers and krishnas of laguna were beaten back by john briggs and bob dornan as they tried to cross the santa ana river). but now the whitakers are back and order has been restored
And how did one become a Whitacre, and all of them claim to be unrelated?
tragic story, on his way to salt lake city to claim his legacy, whitacre got separated from the rest of the travelers and ended up being raised in a brothel in carson city. there he was befriended by a man named whit, who was a favorite with some of the girls. when whit died, he gave young whitaker and acre of land just south of tonapah. overcome by emotion at the first kind and generous thing that had ever happened, he changed his name to whitacre in celebration of the transformative figure in his life. when the land went fallow during the great bubonic plague of ’02 whitacre gave up the farm and moved back to orange county. disturbed and disgusted with his treason, the remaining whitakers cast whitacre out onto the mean streets of tustin. and the rest, well it is history
Well thank you, that does explain so much.
Nice try — but not Winships nice.
did not know that there was a competition
If there is, you win. The “Winships” are not funny. At least not intentionally.
I miss willie deville.
And yet….
*Lord knows we wanted to stay out of this conversation but Jorge Ramos ….unbiaseste journalista! Look, What if that had been Sean Hannity? You think that bullying Jackbooted Trump Security Creep would have punch him in the chest? How about Bill O’Reily……but then, these are not real news journalist so it is hard to compare. So, what about Chris Wallace? Megyn Kelly? Dan Rather? Laura Logan? Morely Safer? KIng? Bill Moyers? Trump thinks he is smart…..duh? He can’t even handle some poor Scotish Farmer. Trump is a recipe for revolution, chaos and civil unrest, the likes of which we have not seen in this country for many years. Whatever happens….he has used the race card in the most unambiguous ways. He has used the Sexual Bias card and he has used the Usurper card. He definitely needs to get into the ring with Ronda Rousey and have her apply the necessary punches and arm bar which should include and require some serious first aid. Maybe he can invite her on the stage of the Republican National Convention, when he accepts their nomination as their candidate in 2016. Sorry folks, let’s just drug test Donald and be done with his nonsense.
David,
Thank you.
I miss willie too but i do catch up with him on you tube once in a while
*We don’t think Dave is funny either…..nah-de-nah-nah….so there! Next time just give up your seat on the bus to nice old lady. Try to do something good for humanity…it will change your life! You can take that to the bank too! Oh, you already have…..well then, good for you……vote twice for Donald Trumpkavich!
“Commie – Pinko – Bed Wetting – Sympathizer! Isn’t what they used to say in the 60’s?
“Trumpkavich”? If you’re trying to go Soviet, surely you mean “Trumpkin”?