The raise of Trump and fall of GOP. Why?

I had originally started this as a way to sell the domain name richboytrump.com listed here goo.gl/y4HEV0 if you are interested please check it out.  Now I think I should hang on to it.  We, as intelligent Americans, really need to fight this nut case.

Now I know this topic has been covered by others ad nauseum.  So this may seem repetitive but I hope I might have a different view on things that might be interesting to others.  First, a little background on me.  I am a gun owner, a service connected disabled vet(non combat), father of two Afghan vets and former member of the Republican party.

I guess the first thing I should clarify is why I am a former member of the Republican party.  In short, Iraq and Afghanistan, the lies and mismanagement that have lead us to those disastrous wars.  It wasn't the only reason, but that was the push toward the cliff.  I joined the Republican party because I believed in Ronald Reagan and what he stood for.  America as the "Shining City" on the hill.

Where did the GOP go wrong from there? To try and keep this succinct I will quickly go through the reasons I bailed on the party I used believed in.

First: George W. Bush, either through gross negligence or incompetence he started the war in Iraq on false pretenses.  I used to defend the president saying "they are going to find the WMD's any day now".  We all know how that turned out.

Second: Blatant hypocrisy.  Trying to pass laws discriminating against homosexuals, as well as trying to pass defense of marriage acts when you are having affairs with staff and picking up men in bus station bathrooms.

Third: The vitriol that targeted President Obama.  When Mitch Mcconnell stated "Our No. 1 priority is to make this president a one-term president”.  Great, so you now block or stop any progress. You shut down the government, actually costing the taxpayer several hundred million dollars.  The GOP then set the the "middle" so far to the right that there could be no reasonable compromise.  The job of congress is to facilitate the running of the government.  Passing laws, budgets and investigate wrongdoing of government entities, not to push a religious Tea Party agenda.  So much for working together to do what is best for the country.

The GOP has refused to work with the President on repairing the nation's infrastructure.  They have wasted time and energy trying to shut down Planned Parenthood, an organization that has helped millions of men, women and children (Including myself and my children) who do not have health care coverage.  The continuous attempts to repeal the ACA, a law that allowed me to keep my adult children on my health care until they finished college and were able to get on their feet.
Newt Gingrich, hypocrite extraordinaire, was the beginning of the end.  His vitriolic attacks on President Clinton and the Democratic party not only shaped the political discussion for the future it kick started it on the downhill slide.  Was some of the vitriol directed at President Clinton deserved? Maybe, I still feel bad boy Bill should have resigned for disgracing the office of the President like he did, but Newt could have handled it with more class and dignity.

Fourth: The refusal of the GOP to completely stamp out and marginalize the "Birther Movement". Whose chief idiot was Donald Trump.  Instead of publicly and clearly stating to the Faux News crowd and the Tea Party dupes, "We know President Obama is an American citizen".  They let this fantasy flourish, giving it more life by saying things like Mitt Romney, "No one asked to see my birth certificate".

The list goes on to include lack of common sense on gun control regulations, the almost frenzied need to control a woman's and homosexual's bodies.  Last and most importantly, the absolute adherence to this notion that tax breaks for the rich are in anyone's best interest but the rich.  Trickle down economics was a pipe dream of an economic advisor of Reagan's, David Stockman.  As we can see it doesn't work, but the insistence of the GOP that it does work while they slurp up millions in contributions from billionaires smacks of bribery.

I could go on here for a while but I am a bit short on time.  On to the the post.

Now I happen to be an educated engineer type, with critical thinking skills.  So I would never support Trump as anything other than the con artist he is.  I would support seeing him with an orange jumpsuit on someday.  What I do seem to see is why millions of Americans would support him, I get it.  Trump knows how to pick the scapegoats, bringing up some hidden underlying racism in people that would not normally be vocal about what they feel.  Trumps popular TV show gives him some perceived credibility with people.  So combine this perceived credibility, perception of vast wealth and "dog whistle" message, he ends up with great appeal to people with less education and lower economic status.

We also have culture of personality, hence the phrase "Please don't make stupid people celebrities".  Trump is basically the grandfather of the particularly vile form of entertainment, known as reality television.  Again his celebrity recognition gives him the perception of special status and intellect.  So you have to wonder how many people vote for him for the entertainment factor alone.  Will these same people vote for Trump when it really matters?  When will the Trump hangover start?  Soon hopefully.

The rise of Trump is a clear indication that the education system in America is failing, badly.  It is failing to turn out a majority of people that can do critical thinking or do research of topics on their own.  I blame the GOP for vilifying teachers and making it really unpalatable for people that would be really good teachers to want to deal with being political punching bags.  When you consider the low pay compared to private sector jobs it is a wonder we have any teachers at all.  This lack of education leaves us with a higher percentage of younger people that are basically imbeciles.  They are so jacked up on Mountain Dew and video games they can barely spend more than 30 seconds focusing on any one thing.  These imbeciles are the ones that are seen screaming racial obscenities and holding up confederate flags.  While vocal they are not really a threat in the general election.

The real threat and probably the major reason Trump is doing so well is America worships rich people.  Trump is rich, not nearly as rich as he portrays, but he is rich.  Problem is he started out that way, so his estimated net worth is not all that impressive, nor is his "business acumen".  It also doesn't speak to his business intellect, many of his best ideas are failed ventures.  His main sources of income are really not that different from what his father had done and he doesn't manage those every day.  In fact he had to give up control of many of his ventures because of his many bankruptcies.

His celebrity status has given him a rather unique source of income, branding.  People pay him to put his name on their ventures.  Trump has little or no actual management or control, which is probably a good thing.  Trump has also been accused on many occasions of vastly inflating his net-worth.  So when you have relatively uneducated people, earning less than $50k annually, working 40 hours a week, looking at this brash self proclaimed billionaire saying things they have been afraid to say, it attracts them.  They are thinking "Wow, this guy is rich, successful, maybe he will be better than the professional politicians".  This is where Trump picks up most of his support according to exit polls.  Are they going to be shocked when Anonymous releases his actual tax returns and net worth.  Which is probably less than a billion, certainly not anywhere near 10 billion.

So you have a disenfranchised group of people, hearing someone "speaking their language".  They get excited, almost giddy.  These people have median or lower median relatively dead end jobs.  They haven't kept up with education to increase the value of their skills.  So they see their jobs sent overseas or to Mexico, hence the appeal of the comments that Trump makes about our brethren south of the border.   These people are Faux News watchers, they have been getting feed a steady diet of hate towards anyone brown for 15 years.  Trump is playing on that hate, he played on it with the "Birther" dimwits.  I remember Trump touting on Faux News how his investigators found some "very interesting things" he was going to release "very soon".  Well this carnival barker never released anything, it was all bs.

This "Birther" campaign gave Trump credibility with the dim bulbs that watch Faux News, 66% of them still think President Obama was born in Kenya.  So here comes Trump, claiming that President Obama is a failure, talking about all of the "Better Deals" he can get.  So you have the perfect storm, the GOP has dog whistled its way into this hard right, white power platform.  Fully blaming brown people, including President Obama for all of the ills of the country.

Originally I am guessing Trump started his presidential run in order to "up his brand".  I am sure he didn't think he could get very far.  Once he started with the vitriolic rhetoric and didn't lose support, he ramped it up.  The Faux News dim bulbs feeding on it, becoming more emboldened to express views publicly that would make enlightened people cringe.  Mainstream candidates like Jeb Bush were completely taken off guard, amazed that someone like Trump could garner any support at all.  The old guard of the GOP have been completely taken off guard.  Their base has gone bonkers.  They have no clue what to do.

We as a country need to regain some self respect.  Political correctness is a good thing as long as it's not taken to ridiculous levels.  Trump is dangerous, he is not qualified to lead relatively small companies, much less the largest most powerful military in the world.  It is time to push back against him.  His rise is the direct result of the combination of a poor education system, vitriolic messages and deeds from the GOP and it's minions and the cult of personality fed by reality TV.  Trumps fall will be the result of media and opponents calling him out on his lies and delusions.  Not by getting in the mud with him, but by saying, you said something different 5 minutes ago.

Our real hope is the Attorney General of New York and California handing down indictments for his fraudulent Trump University.  Once Trump is seen on national TV doing the "Perp Walk" in handcuffs, then the majority of his zombies will see the truth.

So how does this bring down the GOP?  The down ballots.  If Trump gets the nomination, gets on the national ballots, then gets indicted.  It will crush the GOP candidates on the same ballot.  Hopefully this is what happens, then we can get the GOP representatives that keep trying to repeal the ACA out of Washington.

Hopefully someone actually reads this post.
Thank you for your time and attention.

Can reason and fact change a #TrumpZombies mind?

I had an interesting twitter chat with a gentleman on today who stated he was a Trump supporter and a veteran.  I am always interested in why a veteran would support a draft dodger, the kind of slime that would use money and influence to skate on his civic duty. Not because of a philosophical or moral opposition to war, which I can respect, but because he was "to Rich" to go to Vietnam.  I pointed out several rather damning facts about Mr. Trump and was finally told, I guess we will support who we chose to support.  So far no one I have chatted or talked to can tell me honestly, with truthful information that they support Trump.  Everything they use to support their cause can be refuted as a lie by Mr. Trump.

This is what I don't get, have we trashed the trust of the media and reason so much that irrefutable facts can be brushed off?  How can reasonable people, especially the far right religious evangelicals follow such a vain and hollow human being.  He said he would be dating Ivanka if she wasn't his daughter. On TV, if that doesn't just make you want to puke on your remote nothing will.

So what is this group insanity?  Are we 1930's Germany?  I don't see how, our economy is coming back in a healthy way from the worst recession since the 1930's.  Job growth for most has been steady.  So what is it really?  I have no flipping clue.  But my theory is, the GOP, the Tea Party dupes and the not so closeted racist (Ann Coulter) are so pissed off they lost the election to an articulate and intelligent non-white man that they have lost it.  So they bring down the country with their rhetoric about one man.  Now they whine about losing control of the electoral process.  Guess what Ann, Rush, Karl, David and all of the other rich, racist dingbats that went to the gutter to trash President Obama.  You have been out trashed by a guy who cut someone's hair at a WWE show.  That is just what Mr. Trump has turned running for the most powerful job in the world into, World Wide Wrestling.

Trump and the "Branding" scam

Does Trump actually own and manage all of the businesses with his name on them?  If what we have seen about the vineyard, Trump Steaks and other ventures, he has little actual management in these ventures.  So why would people consider him to be such a great businessman?  That is the big con job Trump is pulling on the country.  He gets paid for his name, his "Stature" is upped or more valuable by being a former presidential candidate.  That is his scam.  He doesn't care about this country, if he did he would have served instead of dodging the draft.  He would care about the other citizens of this country, even the ones that don't agree with him.

Hopefully his scams will get him indicted before the fall elections.  Most important of those is the Trump University scam.  Which has had one plaintiff drop out because of threats of physical violence by the #TrumpZombies.  Will he bully or buy his way out of this like he did his rape charges and other misdeeds?