Tag: The Trump Effect

Republican Speechwriter May Vote for Clinton

Buck Banks

In that speech, I concluded with the following line: ‘If Hillary Clinton can’t give us the truth, why should we give her the presidency?’ But weeks after the end of the 2016 GOP convention, I am confronted by an inconvenient fact: Despite what I wrote in that nationally televised speech about Hillary Clinton, I may yet have to vote for her because of the epic deficiencies of my own party’s nominee.

— GOP speechwriter Richard Cross, writing in the Baltimore Sun.

Looks Like the Trump Effect Is Permanent

Buck Banks

The Trump effect is now probably long-term, meaning that even if he falls by the wayside in the nomination contest, he will continue to be a factor. Maybe he will run as an independent. Maybe he will make life difficult for the eventual GOP nominee from his permanent headquarters on Twitter. Or maybe it’s simply the accumulation of his offensive statements on videotape that will be used by Democrats to taint the fall Republican ticket.

— Larry Sabato, Center for Politics

GOP Suffering Trump Paralysis

Buck Banks

Some of the highest-ranking Republicans in Congress and some of the party’s wealthiest and most generous donors have balked at trying to take down Mr. Trump because they fear a public feud with the insult-spewing media figure. Others warn that doing so might backfire at a time of soaring anger toward political insiders. … That has led to a standoff of sorts: Almost everyone in the party’s upper echelons agrees something must be done, and almost no one is willing to do it.

— New York Times

Trump’s Insults Mark New Low in U.S. Political Discourse

Buck Banks

Donald Trump is turning the schoolyard taunt into a political art form. … These aren’t gaffes or off-script asides. They are part of a strategy, people close to Mr. Trump say, of knocking his Republican presidential rivals off their game. That, at least for now, is getting him the attention and poll ratings he wants among voters looking for an antidote to the artifice of U.S. politics. … But the intensely personal nature of Mr. Trump’s insults, sometimes mocking his rivals by mimicking them, is startling even to those who have grown accustomed to the sometimes low levels of civility in politics today.

— The Wall Street Journal