Saturday, January 30, 2016

Republican Candidate Analysis for my vote

DONALD TRUMP - 100% correct on border, 100% correct on trade.

Extremely wrong on banning by religion, EVEN on a temporary basis. He could have and should have accomplished the same purpose by other VASTLY more intelligent and pragmatic means.
As an American who happens to be Jewish, this triggers every warning bell in the SINGLED OUT FOR ANY REASON alarm system.

Glad he knows WHO is responsible for terror, but get smarter.

Alarmed that his attitude about Putin as someone he can DEAL with is almost PRECISELY the attitude LBJ had about Ho Chi Minh in 1965. It’s not all business. Sometimes it’s about the naked result of what all the business generates, and the means of its achievement become lost.

Gets the Chinese economic issue, and how that relates to military and other hard power 100%
Understand how to handle control of issues, leadership, and while he is a poll watcher it seems to be as justification that what he says and how he says it IS EFFECTIVE
But it may turn out to be impossible to vote for him based on his singling out a religion.

MAY


TED CRUZ - the conservative bona fides are attractive, without any doubt. However, during the govt shut down he euchred the House Repubs into voting that way based on him telling them he had senatorial support for the same thing and it just was not correct (to put it politely).

He also voted AGAINST BOTH the TAA, and then the TPP. This shows he understands the economic issues, at the same level, if not the same expertise as Trump. It’s on this issue I have a problem with conservative orthodoxy candidate tests.

My judgement therefore is that Cruz is conservative and PRAGMATIC.

Free Trade (the ideological position for orthodoxy) has TURNED OUT to be a system whereby modest gains in price, VERY MODEST GAINS in terms of reduced price increases have been paid for by the shipping of jobs and careers overseas to the lowest production costs, where working conditions are horrific because the poorest will tolerate them. The gain in production costs have gone to the boards, upper management, financial instruments, and LARGE stockholders. Arguments that this has benefited millions of 401k’s fall short because the people investing in those are the people hurt as those careers dwindle.

We have now reached the state where R&D, product design and engineering is going overseas along with advanced degree education in Asian nations replacing American.

The TPP could only be advanced be cause the TAA represented a one year security blanket of payments and retraining for the jobs ALL ACKNOWLEDGED would have disappeared to some Kuala Lumpur or Sri Lanka, and was supported by the Democrats as a sop to the unions, but in fact represented another payoff of SOME KIND to the political class …. i.e. Wall Street  Democrats and and Corporate Republicans - which is why I have a very hard time with -


MARCO RUBIO - who supported the TAA and the TPP.

I agree with him on NEARLY every foreign policy issue. But his hard stances on this might turn the United States into a modern version of 18th century Spain, with a huge set of self imposed foreign responsibilities, and an economy no longer able to support them because the disposable income and profits (and therefore govt revenue) have migrated JUST ENOUGH to Asia.

While I have opinions on everyone else, unless something happens, THAT’s not going to happen.
I have NO IDEA who I’m going to vote for in the primary right now, and I might not until I stand in the voting booth.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

These are the sorts of issues and positions that should be brought to light by skillful debate moderators. Shows the extent to which the current debate formats utterly fail.

Anonymous said...

Banning shariah would begin to address EPA's concern about banning Muslims.

Anonymous said...

Ignorance plus stupidity are the two reasons the entire non-Muslim American population cannot see the dangers of shariah and support its banning.

A few years ago I was wearing a T shirt saying something to the effect of no shariah in the US, stand for our Constitution, when to my daughter's horror and shame, one of her friends walked in. I WAS IN MY HOUSE, and my daughter later told me her friend had asked her: "Why is your mother so intolerant?"

These girls were two highschoolers at the time, and the friend is the product of a rich, highly educated, deeply religious Protestant family.

More than anything else I was shocked by my own daughter's response. We cannot talk about jihad to this day. The damage inflicted on our children by the public educational system is beyond anything we can grasp or accept.

Always On Watch said...

Anonymous,
The damage inflicted on our children by the public educational system is beyond anything we can grasp or accept.

No kidding!

Nicoenarg said...

Among all the Western politicians in the world (including Wilders) Trump has come closest to actually addressing the problem.

Kinda like banning Germans during WWII. Not all Germans were Nazis but they all got piled into the same group "until the leaders figured out what was going on" (Trump) or as it happened, until the end of the war.

Sure its not a fool proof plan but it is a step in the right direction.

And the comparison with the Jews in WWII, I don't see it that way (and obviously I can understand that I'm looking at it as an outsider) because the Jews, as far as I can remember, were targeted because they were Jews, not because they were busy blowing innocent people up all over the world.

If you'd much rather the government tried to ONLY root out "Radical Islam" then good luck dealing with the problem altogether because no one even knows WTF that means.

Nicoenarg said...

Also it sounds like Cruz's people are pulling some dirty and possibly illegal stunts:

Iowa Secretary of State Identifies Cruz Campaign Voter Shaming Letter as Fraudulent – Misrepresents Iowa election law…

I don't know if any of this is true by the way, just something I read.

Lately I do find Cruz as less trustworthy, possibly because of how he's carried himself with things such as "I will not personally attack Donald" and then going "#DuckingDonald" on Twitter, "Trump is Voldemort" with Giggly-Kelly and "Trump is scared of Megyn Kelly" on FOX. Strange coming from a man who I thought was better than that.

Epaminondas said...

Yes, voter shaming letter is DISGUSTING, and would probably have caused me to publicly go to my neighbors to explain why it's impossible to vote for Cruz, if that is his real persona.

We had something similar here over a town council member (total population 2015) when a letter without signature to all voters was sent accusing the councilor of corruption (local style) 2 days before a recall vote.

EVERYONE went the other way over that.

Later I wondered if, knowing her voters, the councilor had sent it herself.

;)

But that's the way this election season is going. I lean one way and then-BAN MUSLIMS, I start thinking about another way, and then something like this letter, and I remember Cruz blandly misleading house republicans

Pastorius said...

Epa,
Why do you dislike Trump over his "Ban Muslims" comment, when the totality of the comment was to call for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

That's not a "Ban Muslims" statement.

It's a "how are we going to prevent Jihadist Sharia-loving Muslims from infiltrating and causing us harm.

It seems to me that your previous statement saying, "This bothers me as a Jew" is fighting an old battle.

Unless you have reason to believe Donald Trump really hates Muslims and will establish a ban, only to never lift it, I think it would help if you'd actually explain your irritation to yourself as much as to us.