Odd question: is the image of Trump actually the personification of the United States that many foreign nations popularly hold? Extremely wealthy, exceedingly arrogant, acting like an idiot, etc… If that’s the case, I wonder if Trump’s appeal is more than just anti-establishment. Perhaps it also includes some anti-elitist elements (because “foreign snobbery” is a thing for some people). Of course, that’s quite silly because Trump is about as “elite” as they come, but we’ve never been a totally rational people.
Timex
1683
But Carson isn’t actually insane. He’s not totally irrational. He just has very strong religious beliefs. However, I think he’s able to successfully compartmentalize them to some large extent, as evident by his success in medicine and at John Hopkins.
Pyperkub
1684
CNN takes a look at Carson’s rise:
Carson’s gains are especially notable considering he’s one of the few Republican presidential contenders who hasn’t engaged in a war of words with Trump. In fact, Trump, who has battled with Republican rivals including Jeb Bush and Rick Perry, has gone out of his way to praise Carson…
…Carson seized on momentum from the first debate, flooding the airwaves in Iowa and New Hampshire for two weeks with radio and television ads with Carson speaking directly to the camera.
“Our children face a very harsh future, unsustainable debt. Future generations will suffer,” Carson said in the ad. “Washington is broken. The political class broke it. Please join me.”
In Iowa, he has hosted a series of “family festivals” in three cities, featuring pony rides, popcorn and entertainment. Some 6,000 people showed up to the small scale fairs that doubled as political events.
“That was really, really smart because most candidates aren’t doing events where the candidate isn’t the highlight but a side detail,” said Kedron Bardwell, a political science professor at Simpson College. "It burnishes his credentials as unconventional and focuses on value issues and family and he did it in a way that is nonthreatening. …
…as a campaigner, Carson is more like the antithesis of Trump.
Carson announced his run in Detroit, a rollout that included a stop at a school named for him where students asked him for advice on how to study. Trump announced at Trump Tower in New York with a fiery speech that slammed illegal immigrants. Trump brags about his billions while Carson talks about delicate surgical procedures and how his mother’s emphasis on reading helped him overcome poverty. And days after Trump packed thousands into an Alabama football arena, Carson held a small luncheon and fundraiser in Montgomery. …
…Carson has proven himself to be one of the most unique fundraisers in the 2016 field, and his unconventional way of raising presidential money could give him a financial base that no candidate can rival.
Carson raises money for both his campaign and super PAC in the same way: by spending big to steadily raise just a little more. While most candidates prioritize the bundlers who collect $2,700 checks from their networks or the megadonors who can write seven-digit donations with ease, Carson’s fundraising operation is almost entirely focused on low-dollar donors who have powered a surprisingly effective money shop.
It definitely sounds like he has a good campaign strategy team.
Timex
1685
I think that what Carson has going for him is that he’s very intelligent, and he seems by all accounts to be a genuinely good person, who does in fact care about his fellow man.
Now, there will be major disagreements between him and many others regarding how we should go about helping people, but I think that Carson clearly does care about people.
My major problem with him is that some of his religious views seem extreme to the degree that I have a hard time understanding how they could be effectively compartmentalized by a rational person. However, he DOES seem to be able to do that somehow. Again, I don’t know how.
Yeah, that’s always the catch for me when voting for someone based largely on their personality. How does that translate to legislation, executive orders, and dealing with whatever Congress will be doing while the candidate would be in office? It’s largely a crapshoot, and especially when the candidate doesn’t have any political track record to review (although even those are of very limited value - being a governor or congresscritter is obviously waaaaay different than being POTUS, and therefore requires a different approach).
Watching the polls and everything, it seems like a horse race. One will pull ahead, then another, then another, it goes to the wire, and whoever has enough “kick” at the end winds. Curious to see who that will be.
538 takes a look at the Carson rise too:
Carson has also been gaining ground in national polls and is in second place behind Trump, according to Huffington Post Pollster’s averaging method.
Carson’s gains in the polls have come organically — in fact, he’s been receiving remarkably little media attention. From June 28 through Aug. 20, Carson received only 0.9 percent of the news coverage of the top 161 Republican candidates, based on the number of Google News “hits” he received. That puts him at 14th in the field. Trump has received about 60 times more media coverage than Carson…
…While it can be foolish to predict what happens to the polls in the short run, there’s a pretty obvious case to be made that Carson is on an upswing as part of a “discovery, scrutiny and decline” polling cycle of the sort that Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain (among others) experienced in 2011. If Carson’s doing this well with so little media attention, imagine what happens when he gets some. Polls will trigger more coverage of Carson’s campaign, which will in turn improve his standing in the polls, which will produce yet more coverage, and so forth.
Carson also has outstanding favorability ratings among Republicans, which could give him more room to grow. …
…The question is what happens to Trump’s numbers when Carson surges. (Or if Carson doesn’t, when another candidate like Ted Cruz inevitably does some weeks or months from now.) If Trump is more like the Gingriches and Cains of the world, his support may erode pretty quickly once there’s another GOP “flavor of the month” who appeals to voters seeking an outsider to mainstream politics. An alternative possibility, however, is that Trump is more like a Pat Buchanan or Ron Paul — a factional candidate who is relatively immune from shifts of opinion elsewhere in the Republican field, but also has a low ceiling on his support. Either way, Trump is not very likely to win the Republican nomination — and neither is Carson — but we’ll learn something about the nature of his support.
Of course, the longer it goes on, the worse things get for the other GOP Contenders - as evidenced by the early destruction of Rick Perry’s campaign and the rumours of Jeb’s financial backers getting cold feet.
PPP Poll: http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2015/PPP_Release_National_90115.pdf
Q28 (Republicans) Do you think Barack Obama was born in the United States?
Yes …29%
No… 44%
Not sure …26%
Q29 (Republicans) Do you think Ted Cruz was born in the United States?
Yes …40%
No …22%
Not sure… 39%
Q30 (Republicans) Do you think Barack Obama is a Christian or a Muslim, or are you not sure?
Christian …14%
Muslim …54%
Not sure …32%
May father thinks Obama is Muslim. He also roots for Trump.
I am embarrassed.
And people wonder why I don’t take conservatives seriously.
My wife’s mother’s boyfriend of 30 years (they’ve never married, but they might as well have) speaks with 100% seriousness about “Obama’s diabolical secret Muslim agenda.” It’s terrifying how common this is, and nothing can move its believers from their stance.
Timex
1693
I am in the same boat. I feel your pain.
And the man is not a stupid man. Highly educated, very successful throughout his entire life.
But as he got older, it’s like fox news started rotting his brain and eroding his ability to look at any of this stuff rationally. that piece by Sanchez regarding the conservative media echo chamber effect, where they construct this narrative that all contradictory information is a masterfully constructed lie designed to deceive, makes rational discussion almost impossible. It’s impossible to simply present contradictory evidence to anything.
I have to say, it’s troubling. It’s probably the single thing which really turned my opinion against far right-wing media sources. I always recognized the logical inconsistencies presented, but never really cared much because, whatever, i could just fact check it and ignore the wrong stuff. But seeing folks who just swallow it so completely is somewhat disturbing. And when you watch fox news (which honestly, is something everyone should do periodically) it’s almost garish how obvious their targeting of a specific audience is, and how overtly their message focuses on a few simple messages (Muslims are bad, Obama is literally worse than space Hitler, you should be afraid of <insert thing here>).
A friend’s wife read the Left Behind series in 08 and came away believing Obama to be the anti-Christ once he was elected. A guy in my building at work is buying extra bottled water and stored/canned food in prep for Obama’s 3rd term (no, his name isn’t Cleve).
What I want to know, given Obama’s diabolical secret Muslim agenda, is why he’s taking so much sweet time over it. I’d have expected to be rooting for my local madrassa’s Hurryin’ Camels by now.
Menzo
1696
Shhhhh, that’s what his third term is for. Duh.
And you won’t be able to stop it because Obama done took your guns!
…checks cabinet…nope, still there.
Next to your Bible, right Dave? Cling to them while you still can!!!
Here’s the blow-my-mind bit: He was an Equal Opportunity NCO in the Army. His job for about a decade was to investigate and uphold EO. He did it with gusto. Then he retired, started hanging out with other retired vets, and it’s like all that EO education was washed away. Now he’s all about Fox News, Trump, how the illegal Mexicans are ruining America, and how Obamacare and Muslims are the scourge of freedom.
The only bit that I agree with him on his views about gay marriage and gays in general. He’s oddly progressive about that.
KevinC
1701
Man, this just struck way too close to home. You could nearly be describing my own father, and I agree that it is troubling. This is a very intelligent man who I have learned a lot from throughout my life, and there we were in 2008/9 (right after Obama was elected and dealing with the financial crisis) and he was urging me to empty out my savings, my 401k, everything, because rampant inflation was going to strike and everything saved was going to be monopoly money. “Something simple like a candy bar will be over $18 by the end of the year!”.
Sigh. My only consolation is that he didn’t end up doing something stupid with his own retirement funds before he came to his senses.
