Elections GOP 2016 Primary Thread V3: More God and Guns Edition

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Adamant said:
What about Paul?
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Possibly, but it wouldn't matter. He will never get elected. The libertarian schtick simply doesn't play with women: even Republican women.
 
Adamant said:
Did Hillary or Obama or anyone ever give a reason as to why fighter jets, or Apache gunships, or SpecOps wasn't scrambled the moment news reached the White House that shit was going down in Benghazi? I recall hearing about there being possible support within a relative short distance (could be there within the hour) but being told to stand down, or not even told. One or the other.
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The Benghazi report from the Republican lead Benghazi committee said there was no stand down order, no advance intelligence, and no effort to cover it up. I mean, you're free to believe what you want, but the only people who still think there's fire are people who get all their news from extreme conservative sources.
 
Adamant said:
I know people always go back to the bankruptcies like they're a stain on him, but it would appear he's had many many more successes than failures.
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Yes, he has filed bankruptcy four times: the first of which he resolved by leveraging personal capital, something he won't be able to to in office. Either way, the logistics of woefully over-leveraging a casino is far different than gambling with a first-world economy. The reason that bankruptcy was so necessary (for Trump and the lenders) was that he was so egregiously in debt to the banks (twice to the tune of 900 million) that they couldn't afford to let his operations go completely under. How would you, someone who laments deficit spending alone, suggest that sort of business approach work out in office? How would those losses be recouped? Possibly through big bad China: the country to which he has outsourced production in the past? The main takeaway from Trump's business failures is that, with failures in the private market (bankruptcy included), blame can be shifted away from the primary decision-makers in cases of failure (see: 2008 financial collapse), while gains reaped in cases of success. That concept is inherently nontransferable to running a country, in either economic, social, or foreign policy.

Also, on the topic of foreign policy, should we also revisit his laughably two-dimensional approach to foreign policy in the past? Here's an example I read in a Times article (and one I had not previously heard) below:

When recently discussing oil prices on air with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, Donald Trump blustered on about the scheming malfeasance of OPEC and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Trump insisted the U.S. could leverage its military supremacy to persuade OPEC to lower prices. In his words: "I'm going to look 'em in the eye and say, 'Fellas, you'd have your fun. Your fun is over.'" But this rather naive suggestion of bullying one of the U.S.'s most longstanding and essential allies in the Middle East — not to mention the recent customer in a megabillion-dollar U.S. weapons sale that would create tens of thousands of American jobs — was comparatively harmless when set against his next suggestion. Trump bemoaned U.S. costs sustained during its wars in the Middle East and floated the idea of "taking" Iraqi oil. Stephanopoulos countered incredulously, "So, we steal an oil field?" Trump responded, "Excuse me. You're not stealing anything. You're taking — we're reimbursing ourselves." Given how many U.S. leaders have had to stress to their Middle East interlocutors that they're not in it simply for the oil, Trump would be starting off regional relations on pretty slippery ground.
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Rubio on Iraq: 'Nation-building' vs. help 'building their nation'
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What's the difference between "nation-building" and helping Iraq "build their nation"?

Speaking on Fox News' "Outnumbered," Florida senator and Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio said the U.S. has a "responsibility to support Democracy" abroad, and that "the most "immediate responsibility we have is to help them build a functional government."

When pressed on the fact that "sounds like nation-building," a rationale given by George W. Bush and President Barack Obama for much of their policies with regards to Iraq, Rubio said "Well, it's not nation-building. We are assisting them in building their nation."
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Makani said:
Good to know. I mean, if you didn't already.
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If people don't know that guy is a hawk, they likely aren't voting in the primaries anyway.
 
Lead Salad said:
If people don't know that guy is a hawk, they likely aren't voting in the primaries anyway.
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Very true, I know he's done some bipartisan legislation, but it's still weird hearing him be so frank about climate change. Dealing with CO2 in a "business friendly" way certainly leaves some wiggle room though.
 
Makani said:
Very true, I know he's done some bipartisan legislation, but it's still weird hearing him be so frank about climate change. Dealing with CO2 in a "business friendly" way certainly leaves some wiggle room though.
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He seems like a populist to me which makes it odd he's a republican. South Carolina really has a weird makeup for what they turn out in politicians.
 
Lead Salad said:
He seems like a populist to me which makes it odd he's a republican. South Carolina really has a weird makeup for what they turn out in politicians.
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I hate him for his obtuse hawkishness, but I have to wonder where it comes from? Are there a bunch of Lockheed plants in South Carolina?
 
Makani said:
I hate him for his obtuse hawkishness, but I have to wonder where it comes from? Are there a bunch of Lockheed plants in South Carolina?
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His announcement speech was about his parents dying when he was young and him adopting his younger sister while he was still finishing college and then went into the military. He's probably had a very serious life from a young age and it's molded him into that mindset.
 
Lead Salad said:
His announcement speech was about his parents dying when he was young and him adopting his younger sister while he was still finishing college and then went into the military. He's probably had a very serious life from a young age and it's molded him into that mindset.
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Yeah, it's kind of funny, you'd think with a few changes he could have ended up a very left wing guy, but like you said, South Carolina makes 'em weird. I guess he's not going to change much now, we just have to hope he never grabs SecDef or something.
 
Makani said:
Yeah, it's kind of funny, you'd think with a few changes he could have ended up a very left wing guy, but like you said, South Carolina makes 'em weird. I guess he's not going to change much now, we just have to hope he never grabs SecDef or something.
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I think that's the second reason he might be running. Bush and Rubio both want South Carolina and I think Graham takes some of their votes away. He likely could offer to step down early for a chance at SoD
 
Lead Salad said:
I think that's the second reason he might be running. Bush and Rubio both want South Carolina and I think Graham takes some of their votes away. He likely could offer to step down early for a chance at SoD
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Always a few interesting power games going on with the also rans, as much as I am against a Republican victory, it would be interesting to see how the cabinet shook out.
 
Makani said:
The Benghazi report from the Republican lead Benghazi committee said there was no stand down order, no advance intelligence, and no effort to cover it up. I mean, you're free to believe what you want, but the only people who still think there's fire are people who get all their news from extreme conservative sources.
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No, I'm asking why nothing was scrambled the moment anyone (White House/Nearby Military bases/etc) knew something was up?
 
Adamant said:
No, I'm asking why nothing was scrambled the moment anyone (White House/Nearby Military bases/etc) knew something was up?
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As the Report indicated, the Department of Defense directed a Predator drone to Benghazi well before one security contractor said he requested it. The CIA security officers in Benghazi should have known that no close air support was available because that information was widely disseminated via cable traffic. The assertions by some contractors about the availability of air support are not representative of the totality of eyewitness testimony and indicate that some may not remember the read-outs of the Emergency Action Committee meetings or the official cable traffic from CIA on the security for the CIA Annex. Further, the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) exhaustively investigated the military posture during the attacks and their response to the attacks in Benghazi. The HASC accounted for all Spectre gunships in the U.S. inventory, and the HASC report speaks for itself.
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The totality of the evidence indicates that the CIA team departed for the State Department facility 21 minutes after first learning of the attack at 9:42 pm. While Mr. Paronto testified that he believed the call came earlier, the totality of evidence, which includes other eyewitness testimony, FBI reports from the initial eyewitness interviews, time-stamped video footage, and CIA emails and cables, shows that the notification came at 9:42 pm.
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It was a tactical decision of the leadership on the ground to attempt to gather more information about the attack at the TMF before authorizing the team’s departure. There is no evidence to suggest that, absent the delay, the team could have saved Ambassador Stevens and Sean Smith.
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http://intelligence.house.gov/press...ouse-intelligence-committee’s-benghazi-report
 
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