You know what I was talking about, don't you? So why try to change the subject?
Because I think it's relevant. If you feel otherwise, then you can ignore my post.
Furthermore, I'd like to point out that how political parties choose their candidates is their own affair.
Who is "they"? The party insiders? Or the party as a whole? Because last time I checked, the party as a whole hadn't agreed to rig the primary process in favor of Hillary.
That's not true. In fact, there was even a thread on this forum complaining about his tax proposal.
When did he ever engage in a conversation about his policies?
How would you know? Your only understanding of him is from the press, and what does the press focus on? Exactly what you're complaining about. And yet he gets all the blame, and you don't even notice what the press is doing.
Just because you vote Republican doesn't mean you have to defend every single thing any of them does, you know?
And I haven't. Did you not notice me calling Trump a dumpster fire in this very thread? Yes, actually you did, because you
just quoted me saying that.
Oh, and I haven't voted straight ticket since college, and I voted Democrat then.
Now, that's genuinely interesting. Could you expand on that?
Trump is the symptom, not the disease. Our political class is inbred and incestuous with the press, and increasingly disconnected from the average voter. We are being condescended to by our inferiors. There's a hell of a lot of completely justified public anger at the political establishment. Republicans don't trust the party leadership because the party leadership has sold them out, repeatedly. They don't trust the press because the press regularly lies and is incredibly biased.
So along comes a man who actually has some credibility as an outsider, and when he promises to address topics that voters want addressed (like immigration), they pay attention. And all the press howls of outrage fall on deaf ears, because that boy has cried wolf far too often. Look at how they treated Romney. Regardless of what you think of his policies, as an individual he's one of the most decent candidates to run in our lifetime. And he got treated like he's a monster. Do you really think the press can keep doing that to every Republican candidate and it won't have any effect? Hell, look at Tony, right here in this thread. He basically brags about his black-and-white partisanship. Well, if all Republicans are monsters, even the decent ones, then why not vote for the one that scares people like Tony the most?
The press has spent years trying, and to a significant degree succeeding in, demonizing conservative positions. If you wanted to stop illegal immigration, that meant you were a racist. If you're worried about Islamic terrorism, you're an Islamophobe, which really just means you're a racist. If you think that the collapse of marriage in the black community is a major factor in inner city crime, then you're a racist. But making a position illegitimate doesn't actually make the problem it's responding to go away. If people can't find respectable candidates who openly address these topics, then they will turn to unsavory candidates who will do so.
Hillary wanted Trump as her opponent. She
wanted to pull a Todd Akin. And the press played along (you can find plenty of stories from the primaries about how other candidates like Cruz were supposedly worse than Trump). They don't get to be horrified by the deliberate result of their own strategy.