Black Friday Open Thread [11.27.15]

NATIONAL—Reuters: Trump 33, Cruz 21, Carson 12, Rubio 11, Bush 8.

Timothy Egan at The New York Times writes about Donald Trump’s rhetoric in the race for the Republican nomination:

Take him at his word — albeit, a worthless thing given his propensity for telling outright lies and not backing down when called on them — Donald Trump’s reign would be a police state. He has now outlined a series of measures that would make the United States an authoritarian nightmare. Trump is no longer entertaining, or diversionary. He’s a billionaire brute, his bluster getting more ominous by the day.

Gov. John Kasich’s campaign put out an ad basically calling Trump a Nazi. That’s good, because he is.

The spot features retired Air Force Col. Tom Moe speaking at an event in Ohio, the same day Trump held a rally in Columbus. Moe, who the Kasich campaign identifies as a former Vietnam POW, paraphrases a quote from Protestant pastor Martin Niemöller, taken from his lectures after World War II.

Now we have Donald’s own words on a campaign speech that sounds awfully close to what the Gestapo was doing.

Trump: Report your neighbors for suspicious activities.

Eugene Robinson says the GOP brought this primary on itself:

As the leading Republican presidential candidates rant and rave about deporting 11 million immigrants, fighting some kind of world war against Islam, implementing gimmicky tax plans that would bankrupt the nation and other such madness, keep one thing in mind: The party establishment brought this plague upon itself.

The self-harming was unintentional but inevitable — and should have been foreseeable. Donald Trump and Ben Carson didn’t come out of nowhere. Fully half of the party’s voters didn’t wake up one morning and decide for no particular reason that experience as a Republican elected official was the last thing they wanted in a presidential candidate.

A brutal truth about political messaging from NY Times frequent commenter Mathew Carnicelli: “I think the Democrats are hideous at shaping message,” he said. “They try something for about 10 minutes and when it doesn’t poll well immediately, they drop it. With Republicans, they keep repeating the same message until people believe them.”