Paul Krugman: Democrats Don’t Create Cults of Personality Around Politicians
Well, at least not undeserving ones.
John Sexton’s post is classic John Sexton: hard-hitting, fair, and well-reasoned. I can’t do it justice with an excerpt. Go read it all.
UPDATE: Maybe they just come dangerously close?
Can't believe I missed this one. Krugman 2008: https://t.co/rCAZkm8ScA
— John Sexton (@verumserum) September 2, 2015
Krugman makes no sense. Trump is popular despite the efforts of the Republican Party. And let’s face it, the rest of the field have little or no personality to lead a cult. No, cult of personality is not a Republican thing.
AZ Bob (34bb80) — 9/1/2015 @ 11:15 pmteam r seems to have a lot of trouble these days recognizing inexperienced lightweights
it started with that dippy palin woman
now we’ve got that ridiculous neurosurgeon weirdo and harvard trash ted and the california carly bratz doll plus reality tv freakshow “the donald” all pretty much attesting to a very unconservative impulse, if not lust, for to elect no account personalities what aren’t fundamentally different than 08 obama in stature or experience
obama has carved his legacy deep in the hearts of republicans
happyfeet (831175) — 9/2/2015 @ 3:09 amPresident Barack Obama stared down a melting glacier in Alaska on Tuesday in a dramatic use of his presidential pulpit to sound the alarm on climate change.
happyfeet (831175) — 9/2/2015 @ 3:18 amAssociated Press propaganda slut “Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar” says Hillary wants to run against obamacare
and does it sound like the associated press wants to help? yes yes it does
happyfeet (831175) — 9/2/2015 @ 4:02 amI guess JFK wasn’t a Democrat either.
Dan S (94f399) — 9/2/2015 @ 4:38 amKrugman; “Waaah! OUR candidate’s Cult of Personality haas gone rancid!”
C. S. P. Schofield (ab2cdc) — 9/2/2015 @ 5:11 amCult of personality. It depends on what the meaning of “of” is? Democrats with hats? Slightly gross.
nk (dbc370) — 9/2/2015 @ 5:28 amKrugman is actually right that Trump’s candidacy is built on a cult of personality. Since it’s such a rarity I give Krugman credit for being right. His claim that Republican candidacies generally are based on a cult of personality is BS.
Trump is like Obama in his reliance on a cult of personality, and in other ways.
Gerald A (e1ec12) — 9/2/2015 @ 6:00 amthe columns in Denver, should have been the clue,
http://www.weaselzippers.us/233193-ny-times-now-doing-straight-up-white-house-propaganda/
narciso (ee1f88) — 9/2/2015 @ 6:50 amDo you want to know why Trump is popular? This.
http://blogs.rollcall.com/wgdb/government-shutdown-mitch-mcconnell-barack-obama/
It isn’t that Republicans can’t recognize inexperienced lightweights.
Rank and file Republicans just are sick and tired of the experienced lightweights in the party of Why We Are Helpless to Do Anything.
Thomas Sowell gets it.
All the GOP candidates except Trump, and Carly Fiorina, strike people like characters in some Mad Maxx-type movie. A gang of bikers roars into town and starts intimidating everyone. A bunch of them burst into an ice cream shop where the GOP candidates are having a malted with their girlfriends. Three of the bikers go to each booth and throw each of the GOP candidates out of their seats and sit down to molest their girlfriend. Each GOP candidate meekly protests, and the bikers get up to threaten them.
All the other candidates except Trump respond by saying, “OK, ok, just don’t hit me. Umm, I’ll help you hold her legs down.”
The GOP is the only identifiable group of people in the world who are intimidated by the Nancy Boy we have in the WH. Everybody else points, laughs, mocks him. Putin takes out an and in the NYT to mock him. The Iranians publish his embarrassing, pleading, “secret” diplomatic notes in their newspapers to make fun of him.
Meanwhile in Washington, when Obama makes threats the GOP is cowering in the corner like a scared rabbit.
This is something that only happens in the US, and only with this one crowd. I don’t know about you but I thought if we elected a GOP majority in both houses that would mean Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid wouldn’t be the leaders in their respective chambers anymore. No, thanks to Boehner and McConnel, Pelosi and Reid are still calling the shots.
The LHMFM is asking every GOP candidate what they think is a gotcha question. Would they deport illegal immigrant adults and their families if they have had American citizen anchor babies (no, they don’t use those words)?” Only Trump answers the question. “Yes, we have to.” Even Cruz, I’m disappointed to say, dodges the question by saying something like “I’m not going to play that game.”
Saying that you’ll deport illegal aliens is a popular answer with the majority of Americans across the spectrum. It’s not a popular answer on college campuses and and other leftist enclaves like “newsrooms” but that’s not where you find most Americans. Trump understands this, and he answers the question. All the others are afraid to.
I don’t like Trump, but there are a couple of pages of his play book someone should rip out of his playbook and use. You could sum it up with the phrase “act like you’ve got a pair of balls.”
Only Trump does. And I’ve been saying from the start I think he’s a buffoon. But he’s a buffoon who doesn’t take any crap and doesn’t fold at the first sign of confrontation. That will take you far, and it has taken Trump into the lead.
P.S. Apparently the RNC is in talks with the #BlackLivesMatter crowd. The only proper response to the #BlackLivesMatter crowd about anything is “F*** off!” Reince Preibus (whatever) could never say it. It’s just not in his blood. That’s why he enjoys setting up debates where the GOP candidates can play Charlie Brown and hands the football to the LHMFM’s Lucy.
Trump could say it.
Steve57 (3b2e7d) — 9/2/2015 @ 7:11 amNo, Krugman isn’t right. And until the rest of the GOP crowd understands that Trump’s popularity has more to do with popular revulsion with them than Trump will continue to lead in the polls.
Trump is only popular because compared to everyone else in this supposed
“deep bench” of GOP candidates anybody else looks good.
Take Scott Walker, for instance. I really wanted to like the guy. And he’s done a lot of things I can really appreciate, and by his resume he still looks good. But now that he’s being coached by the consultant class, as one observer noted, he’s been debate-prepped and focus-grouped into wallpaper.
Yes, Trump may sell out conservatives if he wins. He may not actually be a conservative himself. But then we know for a fact that nearly all the rest will definitely sell out conservatives, and aren’t at all conservatives themselves.
Kasich is a prime example of this type. He eagerly grabbed all those those “free” Obamacare Medicaid expansion dollars as soon as he could. When his own legislature tried to stop him, Kasich played some dirty political games with his insurance commission to do an end run around his legislature. And when people call him on it, he spouts off with line about how you can’t really be a Christian if you care more about small government than the poor. And St. Peter isn’t going to be happy with you when you get to the Pearly Gates.
All in all he disgusts me, and he sounds more like Obama than a conservative. Those “free” federal dollars aren’t free, as they don’t pay for the massive expansion of state government Kasich saddled his own Ohio taxpayers with, Medicaid doesn’t help the poor it just helps unionized workers get taxpayer funded government jobs in the bureaucracy which causes a whole new set of problems for the taxpayer but not pols like Kasich, so quit spouting off about a book called the Bible you haven’t read John Kasich, and if I wanted somebody who’s going to act like a dictator and cut the legislature out of the loop I’d be voting Democrat in the first place.
Carson is by some polling tied with Trump, and Fiorina is in a solid third place. Are those cults of personality, too?
There’s no mystery here, and no cults involved. The others are a known quantity, and it counts against them. So in this case people would just rather go with the devil they don’t know instead of the one they do.
Steve57 (3b2e7d) — 9/2/2015 @ 7:39 amyes, he’s more Nixonian then Reagan in styling, his former majordomo, Roger Stone goes back to the plumbers, and he rallied people in part on law and order, and the general chaos of the age,
narciso (ee1f88) — 9/2/2015 @ 7:43 am#11
No, Krugman isn’t right.
Yes, Trump may sell out conservatives if he wins. He may not actually be a conservative himself. But then we know for a fact that nearly all the rest will definitely sell out conservatives, and aren’t at all conservatives themselves.
So what you’re saying is people like Trump even though he’ll be just like the other non-conservatives should he be elected. And why is that? Based on what you’re saying, it’s his personality.
So in this case people would just rather go with the devil they don’t know instead of the one they do.
But we DO know a lot about Trump. And when you point it out to people, they don’t what to hear it. A sure sign of a cult of personality. The same thing was operating with Obama in 2008.
Gerald A (e1ec12) — 9/2/2015 @ 8:07 amNewsweek editor Evan Thomas, June 2009
Barbara Walters, speaking about Obama, Dec 2013
Jesse Jackson Jr., June 2008
Charles Wrangel, June 2014
http://www.amazon.com/The-Gospel-According-Apostle-Barack/dp/1468587021
http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/dnc-artwork-likens-obama-to-jesus.html
Barack Obama doing what he does best, talking about Barack Obama, nomination victory speech, 2 June 2008:
Krugman and the rest of you are kidding me, right? This is what a cult of personality looks like. Worshiping at the altar of the cult of Tiger Beat is what the Democrats are doing right now. They don’t care if the Iranian nuclear deal is horrible, that it will lead to nuclear war, and they don’t care if it will destroy their party. Their Messiah has spoken, and they will sacrifice everything for their god.
Somewhere I have wrapped in plastic that issue of Newsweek with the cover shot of Obama and his gay halo. Just so I can show my grandchildren what a cult of personality looks like.
Meanwhile the only reason Trump, Carson, and Fiorina are way out in front of the rest of the GOP pack is because nature abhors a vacuum.
Steve57 (3b2e7d) — 9/2/2015 @ 8:37 amthis is DSM casebook, these people shouldnt have been allowed near cissors, much less any amount of responsibility,
narciso (ee1f88) — 9/2/2015 @ 8:48 amNo, Gerald, don’t twist my words. They like him for the same reason they
like Carson and Fiorina. He just may not be like all the others.
Quit speaking about Trump as if he’s unique. You can’t talk about the Trump phenomenon without talking about the fact that none of the professional pols have broken out of the pack. Only the three non-professionals have. And there is a reason for this. Talking about a cult of personality simplymeans you and the rest of the GOP don’t want to do any serious self-examination. The GOP would rather wish this away by pretending there’s nothing serious behind this, it’s just that the voters are idiots. Which is why GOP voters are disgusted with the GOP.
GOP voters are sick and tired of being treated like idiots who keep voting for these @$$holes who promise all sorts of stuff during campaigns, then not only fail to deliver but actively collaborate with the enemy.
Like when they passed a budget just as soon as they had gotten a commanding majority in both houses, but before that majority would be seated in January. They gave away all their leverage, and they didn’t want some unwashed GOP majority interfering with their mad drive to compromise with Obama.
I could give you example after example of this kind of BS, and people are fed up. Whatever you or I think about Trump, he understands this. Which is why he summed it up when he said people are tired of being treated like patsies. Which is exactly how the GOP establishment has treated its base for the last two or three election cycles, and what they’re doing now when they dismiss Trumps popularity with the voters as a some sort of mindless personality cult.
Because the GOP establishment really does think conservatives are a bunch of brain dead, easily led patsies. And people are sick of it.
The first serious candidate who figures this out wins.
Steve57 (3b2e7d) — 9/2/2015 @ 8:53 amYes, Trump may sell out conservatives if he wins. He may not actually be a conservative himself. But then we know for a fact that nearly all the rest will definitely sell out conservatives, and aren’t at all conservatives themselves.
Bugg (137ba5) — 9/2/2015 @ 9:03 amYup
This is why Trump, Carson, and Fiorina have broken away from the pack.
http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=358800
So, the only possible reason anybody would rather vote for Trump, Carson, or Fiorina over THIS is that they’ve been brainwashed into a cult?
Basically the GOP voters have learned that not only is there no point in voting for a GOP Senate candidate, there may just be no point in voting for a GOP pol at all. Maybe voting for a mercenary like Trump would be a step up.
All the GOP establishment types who are only good at one thing, explaining why this isn’t the hill to die on, think that’s just crazy talk. They think there must be something wrong the voters, just like there must be something wrong with us when we don’t understand when they whine about how delivering on a single promise is just too hard. What’s wrong with the voters, they ask themselves, when we don’t give up on what we want?
In a way, this would be funny if this weren’t so serious. Apparently Corker is hopping mad that Obama didn’t give him his up or down vote like he promised. Obama’s M.O. since he was in the Illinois Senate is that in exchange for your political concession now, he will give you an I.O.U. for a political concession later that he never makes good on. And that’s how he’s been playing these fools ever since he got to D.C.
Remember Rubio of the Gang of Eight Amnesty Bill? One of the four GOP Senators Schumer used to refer to as “Our Republicans?” After several months of lying about his amnesty bill not being an amnesty bill he finally gave up on it and used as his excuse that he didn’t believe he could trust Obama to enforce the security measures.
That was in 2013. And I’m staring in amazement, wondering how a theoretically intelligent person could just be figuring out after five years of Obama that he can’t be trusted.
So, Gerald, it’s a real head scratcher, huh? I guess the only possible explanation that Trump is popular is because GOP voters have been taken over by the body snatchers and have joined his personality cult.
There couldn’t be any other explanation, could there?
Steve57 (3b2e7d) — 9/2/2015 @ 9:24 amTrump has said he supports Planned Parenthood funding. I haven’t heard Trump say he’s against funding EX/IM and I seriously doubt he is. So if you’re upset about those things and therefore support Trump because of that, there is indeed something off with your brain. Although I said nothing about brainwashing.
Your argument for Trump seems to be “He’ll do the same things as McConnell, but at least he’s not the same as them! What?
I don’t know why you keep lumping Carson and Fiorina in with Trump. I didn’t say anything about them and a cult of personality.
Each of your posts is getting longer and more illogical than the last one.
Gerald A (e1ec12) — 9/2/2015 @ 9:39 amYou know, there are things McConnell could do. Instead of trying to pass “resolution of disapproval” he could just whip out the JCPOA itself and make Senators vote on that.
Would the Dems actually filibuster the Iran deal itself? Would the Dems actually vote yes on that?
But McConnell won’t do that, just like he won’t choose the nuclear option. Why? Because he never wanted to make good on all that conservative BS he promised to deliver on. Neither did Boehner, or so many other GOP establishment pols.
They will keep upping the ante. Give the GOP the House, they can’t do anything without the Senate. Give the GOP the Senate, they can’t do anything without a veto proof majority. If they had a veto proof majority, they still wouldn’t be able to do anything because as Ace notes there would still be turncoats who’d join the Democrats against their own party to stop it.
So you’d need a veto proof majority of solid, rock ribbed conservatives.
Basically, to hear Mitch McConnell put it, unless the GOP holds the House, has a veto proof majority of solid, rock ribbed conservatives in the Senate, the WH, and five conservative justices on the SCOTUS the situation is just hopeless.
Clearly it’s the voters have gone off their nut over Trump.
Steve57 (3b2e7d) — 9/2/2015 @ 9:41 amGerald, I am not arguing for Trump. I do not like Trump.
Perhaps the reason you think my comments are illogical is because you need to work on your reading comprehension skills.
Steve57 (3b2e7d) — 9/2/2015 @ 9:44 amthis began before Ferguson, imo,
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2015/09/02/exposing-black-lives-matter-for-what-it-is-promotion-of-cop-jilling
narciso (ee1f88) — 9/2/2015 @ 9:51 am#21
Okay you’re not arguing for Trump, but I still don’t understand why so many conservatives are supporting him, other than a cult of personality, for the reasons I already mentioned. So my point stands.
I’m as frustrated as anyone with the failures of the GOP leadership. They could learn a thing or two from Trump, like not letting consultants craft his message for one thing.
Gerald A (e1ec12) — 9/2/2015 @ 9:52 amyet they listen to their deep pocketed supporters in the chamber of commerce, who seem unaware of the destruction going on around them,
narciso (ee1f88) — 9/2/2015 @ 9:56 amYup, I called it. You need to work on your reading skills.
I think everyone else gets it. The reason my comments keep getting longer is that you do not understand why voters like.
They like Trump for the same reason they like Carson and Fiorina. All three just may not do the same thing as McConnell.
You are whistling past the graveyard if you pass Trump’s high poll numbers off to some mindless cult.
There is a reason for it, and to note that there is a reason for it is not at all the same thing as be in favor of Trump.
Is this comment short enough for you to understand my point. I also used short words.
Steve57 (3b2e7d) — 9/2/2015 @ 9:57 amNow we’re getting somewhere.
If conservatives are supporting Trump, it’s probably because they’re so fed up they’d vote for Judas Iscariot reincarnated before they would vote for what the consultant class would like to give them again.
And, yes, the other candidates need to learn something from Trump. One thing is that he’s a salesman. So he can see a market for a new product than the one the consultants keep cooking up.
Which is always a big, juicy, steaming, but “electable,” s*** sandwich that conservatives are just going to have to take a bite out of and like it.
He understands that the GOP base is tired of being treated like patsies by the people. So he’s saying some of the right things. I think one of the things that people find attractive about him is that maybe he’s just enough of a business man to deliver that product. Not that he believes what he’s saying. But he’s a businessman, not a politician. Which, again, is why you have to understand his popularity as of a piece with Carson’s and Fiorina’s.
Anyone who has been in business knows, my products don’t have to make me happy. My products have to make my customer happy.
The other thing is that Trump just doesn’t go supine at the first left-wing criticism. Other Republicans roll on their backs like whipped dogs and beg for their leftist critics to rub their bellies.
Steve57 (3b2e7d) — 9/2/2015 @ 10:11 am* the GOP base is tired of being treated like patsies by these people.
Also, one more time for emphasis. From my comment @10. If anyone is having trouble understanding why Trump is getting any conservative support at all, I’ll let Prof. Sowell explain why that is.
I bolded the first part because I do not like Trump (I hope everyone understands that; I am not for Trump). But equally I can’t stand Jeb Bush, John Kasich, and unfortunately I don’t care for Marco Rubio, either.
I like Cruz, I am still trying to like Walker, I like Perry, and I like Jindal. Unfortunately nobody I like has gained any traction yet. If I were to choose one of the top three I’d go with Carly Fiorina because he’s just as much a tiger as Trump but without the clown-show atmosphere.
Carson would make a great Surgeon General.
Steve57 (3b2e7d) — 9/2/2015 @ 10:22 amsome lives count more than others,
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/freddie-gray/bs-md-ci-freddie-gray-hearing-20150902-story.html
narciso (ee1f88) — 9/2/2015 @ 10:25 amI am going to have to revise my earlier statements, which weren’t entirely correct.
And I am happy about that.
According to some individual polls Trump, Carson, and Fiorina lead the GOP pack in Iowa, which is what I’ve been concentrating on since it’s the wolf closest to the sled. Such individual pols as the Monmouth poll. And on that basis I’ve been talking about the non-pols breaking out from the pols.
But for the first time in a long time I was just checking out the Real Clear Politics poll averages, and Cruz and Walker are definitely in the hunt. In fact in Iowa they both edge out Fiorina.
If you look at my comment @27 you’ll see why I’m happy to be wrong about that, because my top pick would be Cruz. I am happy that he and Walker still do have some traction. I still wouldn’t be unhappy with Fiorina, who is definitely an impressive woman and a top tier candidate.
Steve57 (3b2e7d) — 9/2/2015 @ 11:02 amOf course Democrats don’t see the worship of Obama as a “cult of personality”. They think the Lightbringer is actually the Messiah.
malclave (4ddf38) — 9/2/2015 @ 5:17 pm