The GOP Needs a Better Base

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Do y’all remember William Bennett, the guy who made a good living as a public morality scold until it was discovered he had millions of dollars in gambling debts? He hasn’t entirely gone away, but he gets less attention than he used to.

You might remember that Bennett was so disappointed that the American people weren’t more outraged by the Clinton-Lewinsky that he wrote a whole book about it, The Death of Outrage. He saw President Clinton’s popularity as a sign that the American public was morally depraved. (Big Bill averaged a 61 percent approval in his second term, and his high point in December 1998 was 73 percent, according to Gallop.)

I thought of Bennett this morning when I saw this piece at National Review, whining about the Republican base. Kevin Williamson calls that part of the base that is putting Donald Trump at the top of the GOP polls the WHINOS, because they whine about the Republican establishment.

What’s generally misunderstood on the left is that the tea-party movement did not arise as an alternative to the Obama-Reid-Pelosi Democrats but as an alternative to the Bush-McConnell-Hastert Republicans, who were judged to have spent too much, warred too recklessly, and — most significant — to have been too ready to make themselves complicit in the bailouts. …

…You know the RINO — Republican In Name Only — but you may be less familiar with the WHINO. The WHINO is a captive of the populist Right’s master narrative, which is the tragic tale of the holy, holy base, the victory of which would be entirely assured if not for the machinations of the perfidious Establishment. Never mind the Democrats, economic realities, Putin, ISIS, the geographical facts of the U.S.-Mexico border — all would be well and all manner of things would be well if not for the behind-the-scenes plotting of Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, and their enablers, who apparently can be bribed with small numbers of cocktail weenies. The WHINO is a Republican conspiracy theorist, in whose fervid imaginings all the players — victims, villains — are Republicans. Barack Obama? Pshaw. The real enemy is Jeb Bush….

…Which is to say, the WHINO loves Trump not because Trump confounds the Democrats or because he constitutes a serious threat to a Democratic victory in 2016, but because he confounds the Republicans and constitutes a serious threat to a Republican victory in 2016.

Williamson manages to write this whole column without dealing honestly with the one issue that is earning Trump so much WHINO love, which is immigration. I well remember even during Dubya’s first term, when he was still coasting on the false impression that he actually knew what he was doing about terrorism, there was grumbling on rightie blogs that he was soft on immigration. The fact is, the Republican base is cemented together with a whole lot of nativism, along with racism and resentment of anyone comfortable with diversity. It was the Right, not liberals, who lashed out and killed Dubya’s immigration reform efforts.

The GOP establishment thought the baggers were grand when they could be mobilized to shut down town hall meetings about Obamacare. Then they ran Jeb up the flagpole, and the baggers failed to salute. Instead, they are flocking to Trump, who is speaking their language and throwing them red meat in quantity. Because, ultimately, that’s all baggers want. They aren’t interested in actual government policy. They want leaders and spokespeople who will validate their bigotries and give voice to the howling, ugly hate and demented envy that gnaws at their souls.

And now, having chased anyone who actually cared about governing, or even America, out of the party, the GOP is faced with a base that no longer understands, or cares, how the game is played. And the GOP establishment is beginning to realize they no longer control the Frankenstein’s monster they cultivated all these years.

Stuff to Read

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A couple of articles to read together — see “An Opportunity Gamed Away” by Chico Harlan and “The Dream World of the Southern Republicans” by Howell Raines. The first article in particular illustrates how deeply entrenched racial segregation and discrimination in the deep South is still impacting the region.

Paul Solotaroff asks “What’s Killing the Babies of Vernal, Utah?” A fracking boomtown in Utah is experiencing a spike in stillbirths and birth defects. Is the fracking to blame? Correlation ain’t necessarily causation, but the political powers that be are blocking a serious inquiry. And the midwife who raised the alarm is getting death threats.

Papa Francisco is mincing no words, calling out the excesses of global capitalism. He’d better hire more bodyguards and stay in the Popemobile, if they still have it.

The Smarter Brother Reveals Serious Family IQ Deficit

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Anyone who harbored the thought that Jeb might be a better man than Dubya by now should have evicted that thought and changed the locks. Raw Story:

In an interview with the Union Leader, aspiring 2016 Republican presidential nominee Jeb Bush took a slap at the foreign policies of President Barack Obama, stating that the leader of the  free world uses too many big words and wastes his time at conferences with world leaders instead of forging ahead.

In video captured by C-SPAN, Bush criticized the White House’s nuclear negotiations with Iran calling it, “the Clinton-Kerry-Obama foreign policy playing out.”

Bush then advocated for more blunt and simple type of statesmanship — reminiscent of the style of his brother, former President George W. Bush as well as Vice President Dick Cheney — in dealing with world.

“You don’t have to be the world’s policemen, but you have to be the world’s leader and there’s a huge difference,” Bush explained. “This guy — this president and Secretary Clinton and Secretary Kerry – when someone disagrees with their nuanced approach where it’s all kind of so sophisticated it makes no sense. You know what I’m saying?”

Bush continued, “Big syllable words and lots of fancy conferences and meetings and – We’re not leading. That creates chaos. It creates a more dangerous world. So restoring the alliances that have kept the world safer and our country safer – getting back to a position in the Middle East where there’s no light between Israel and the United States.”

One wonders whom the Bushies hire to help Jeb use a fork and tie his shoes.

NY Times Catches On to Rightie Book Scam (Updated)

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Righties are apoplectic because the New York Times is not putting Ted Cruz’s book A Time for Truth (cough) on the best-seller list.

The New York Times informed HarperCollins this week that it will not include Ted Cruz’s new biography on its forthcoming bestsellers list, despite the fact that the book has sold more copies in its first week than all but two of the Times’ bestselling titles, the On Media blog has learned.

Just going by number of copies sold, ATfT ought to be #3 or so this week.  The New York Times, however, says that it has standards that include analysis of sales patterns, not just units sold. In other words, the NYT is looking out for bulk sales. It’s going to be harder to cheat your way onto the best-seller list by having organizations buy up your book in bulk.

Or, as Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy explained,

“In the case of this book, the overwhelming preponderance of evidence was that sales were limited to strategic bulk purchases,” she wrote.

This is a scam that’s been going on for a long time, and I’m glad the Times is calling it out, finally. As you probably know already, here’s how it works: Somebody writes a book titled Liberals Are Awful and Will Eat Your Baby. Conservative “book clubs,” think tanks, and other organizations buy up tens of thousands of copies in bulk, making the book a “best seller.” Then they either re-sell copies at a steep discount or give them away at conferences or as part of a promotion for something else (sign up for our newsletter and get a free copy of … ). It’s a variation of “wingnut welfare,” in other words.

Eventually, most of the copies will end up in landfills, unread. But the book is on the  best-seller list, which earns the author a lot of publicity and interviews and television guest spots to promote right-wing nonsense.

Back in 2007, five Regnery authors realized they weren’t being paid royalties for all the tens of thousands of copies that allegedly were sold, and they sued. Regnery was selling the books at a steep discount to its own affiliates, giving books away as premiums to newsletter subscribers, and donating them in bulk to like-minded organizations. Obviously, the authors weren’t making any money on all these books. Regnery called this a marketing strategy.

Sarah Palin boosted sales of her own books with $64,000 in bulk purchases made by her own political action group, SarahPAC. The books were offered free to anyone who made a donation of $100 or more. Awhile back Mitt Romney cranked up sales of his book No Apology by asking institutions to buy thousands of copies in exchange for his speeches

The hosts ranged from Claremont McKenna College to the Restaurant Leadership Conference, many of whom are accustomed to paying for high-profile speakers like Romney. Asking that hosts buy books is also a standard feature of book tours. But Romney’s total price — $50,000 — was on the high end, and his publisher, according to the document from the book tour — provided on the condition it not be described in detail — asked institutions to pay at least $25,000, and up to the full $50,000 price, in bulk purchases of the book. With a discount of roughly 40 percent, that meant institutions could wind up with more than 3,000 copies of the book — and a person associated with one of his hosts said they still have quite a pile left over.

For a while, the Times was marking “bulk sales” books with an asterisk, but now they’ve gone the extra mile and simply are not listing them. If more “best seller” compilers do this, it could kill right-wing publishing.

Getting back to Ted Cruz’s book — HarperCollins is part of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, note. So far I haven’t been able to find out who the bulk purchasers were. Cruz does have his fans who no doubt bought his book legitimately. But do any of them read?

Update: Here’s another way to scam the system I didn’t even know about.

In essence, The Times accused Cruz’s publisher of trying to buy its way onto the bestseller list by having a firm like Result Source hire thousands of people across America to individually purchase a copy of “A Time For Truth,” in the hope that some of those retailers are on the secret list of booksellers who report their sales to the Times, or that the aggregate purchasers will simply be too high for the Times to ignore.

He’s Out of Control

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Yep, the Donald is out of control, ripping everyone who looks at him funny whether they are Republicans or Dems. And he has vaulted to the top of the latest GOP presidential poll. And such members of the rightie intelligentsia as Rush, Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter are cheering him on.

Here’s a news story explaining why Republicans shouldn’t worry about the Trump surge. Ooops, it’s dated July 2. Maybe they should worry.

The Donald is likely to flame out before formal debates begin, but if he doesn’t, we should be in for some fun. By the Republicans’ own rules they’d have to let him in the debates, and he’s likely to turn them into the best reality show ever.  Better than Bridezillas, even.

Some in media are questioning whether to take him seriously, or whether he’s just messing with our heads. Frankly, I think he takes himself seriously.  I think he absolutely believes he should be emperor of the world. And I think he absolutely ought to be on heavy medication. Otherwise, why would he be making such a fool of himself? What’s in it for him, really?

The GOP establishment must be frantic to find a way to muzzle him. Good luck with that, guys.

The Smarter Brother Actually Said This

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Jeb Bush:

“My aspiration for the country and I believe we can achieve it, is 4 percent growth as far as the eye can see. Which means we have to be a lot more productive, workforce participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows. It means that people need to work longer hours and, through their productivity, gain more income for their families. That’s the only way we’re going to get out of this rut that we’re in.”

Even better than Mittens’s “47 percent” remark, I’d say. This was from a live-streamed interview. Which means there’s video.

Jeb is toast.

See also “Overworked America: 12 Charts That Will Make Your Blood Boil.”

Update: Scott Walker and Republicans in the Wisconsin state legislature just eliminated workers’ rights to weekends off.

Greece: Don’t Back Down

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While most of the world is cluck-clucking about how Greece needs to play by the rules and do what it’s told, a whole lot of economists are saying something else entirely.

Thomas Piketty et al.:

The never-ending austerity that Europe is force-feeding the Greek people is simply not working. Now Greece has loudly said no more.

As most of the world knew it would, the financial demands made by Europe have crushed the Greek economy, led to mass unemployment, a collapse of the banking system, made the external debt crisis far worse, with the debt problem escalating to an unpayable 175 percent of GDP. The economy now lies broken with tax receipts nose-diving, output and employment depressed, and businesses starved of capital.

The humanitarian impact has been colossal—40 percent of children now live in poverty, infant mortality is sky-rocketing and youth unemployment is close to 50 percent. Corruption, tax evasion and bad accounting by previous Greek governments helped create the debt problem. The Greeks have complied with much of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s call for austerity—cut salaries, cut government spending, slashed pensions, privatized and deregulated, and raised taxes. But in recent years the series of so-called adjustment programs inflicted on the likes of Greece has served only to make a Great Depression the likes of which have been unseen in Europe since 1929-1933. The medicine prescribed by the German Finance Ministry and Brussels has bled the patient, not cured the disease.

Paul Krugman:

It’s now clear, or should be clear, that the Greek program was doomed to failure without major debt relief; no matter how hard the Greeks tried, austerity would shrink GDP faster than it reduced debt relative to the baseline, so that the debt situation was bound to worsen even as the attempt to balance the budget imposed vast suffering.

And there was no good, or even non-terrible, answer given Greece’s membership in the euro.

But there’s a broader lesson from Greece that is relevant to all of us — and it’s not the usual one about mending our free-spending ways lest we become Greece, Greece I tell you. What we learn, instead, is that fiscal austerity plus hard money is a deeply toxic mix. The fiscal austerity depresses the economy, and pushes it toward deflation; if it’s accompanied by hard money (in Greece’s case the euro, but a fixed exchange rate, a gold standard, or any kind of obsessive fear of inflation would do the trick), the result is not just a depression and deflation, but quite likely a failure even to reduce the debt ratio.

Joseph Stiglitz:

I don’t believe Europe’s leaders were seeking to punish Greece. They were just using bad models — evidenced by the enormous gap between what they thought would happen and what did happen. Europe and the International Monetary Fund predicted a fairly quick turnaround. The reality was deepening recession.

And it wasn’t because Greece didn’t do what it was supposed to; it was because it did. On the all-important macroeconomic front, Greece had the biggest and fastest fiscal consolidation among the advanced European economies in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, ruthlessly cutting back expenditures and raising new revenues. …

…The ball is now in the court of European leaders. The question is, will they stick with a policy that has proved a disaster? Or will they combine a desire to preserve the euro with good economic policies and a respect of democracy? Can they reform the reform package sufficiently?

This is the moment to stand up against unthinking austerity. Four years ago, as the first signs of the failure of this policy emerged, Europe’s leaders recognized that what was needed was a growth strategy. They promised Greece that. They didn’t deliver. There was just more of the same.

(Weirdly, but typically, the lesson Stephen Moore of Fox News draws from the Greece example is that socialism has failed. WTF?)

Exactly what’s to be done to turn the Greek economy around is hard to say, but Piketty et al. lay out a broad outline:

Right now, the Greek government is being asked to put a gun to its head and pull the trigger. Sadly, the bullet will not only kill off Greece’s future in Europe. The collateral damage will kill the Eurozone as a beacon of hope, democracy and prosperity, and could lead to far-reaching economic consequences across the world.

In the 1950s, Europe was founded on the forgiveness of past debts, notably Germany’s, which generated a massive contribution to post-war economic growth and peace. Today we need to restructure and reduce Greek debt, give the economy breathing room to recover, and allow Greece to pay off a reduced burden of debt over a long period of time. Now is the time for a humane rethink of the punitive and failed program of austerity of recent years and to agree to a major reduction of Greece’s debts in conjunction with much needed reforms in Greece.

To Chancellor Merkel our message is clear; we urge you to take this vital action of leadership for Greece and Germany, and also for the world. History will remember you for your actions this week. We expect and count on you to provide the bold and generous steps towards Greece that will serve Europe for generations to come.

We’ll see if they can put aside the Austerity Mystique and do what really needs to be done.

The Right Time

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I dimly remember, some eight or ten or so years ago, some progressive activists wanted LGTB activists to back off and wait for the “right time” to push their issues. We had the Iraq War and George W. Bush to focus on, after all. We don’t want to hand the Right more wedge issues. And the LGTB community said, bleep that, there’s no time but this one, and went on pushing.

And they were right.

We seem to be having a similar discussion today about how far to push the progressive agenda. The cautious side can be found in this Politico article about how Bernie Sanders is giving the Dem establishment the vapors:

“I applaud the people of Greece for saying ‘no’ to more austerity for the poor, the children, the sick and the elderly,” Sanders said in welcoming Sunday’s vote, even as it rattled world markets and provoked predictions of economic doom. The statement didn’t just align Sanders with left-wing Europeans; it aligned him with lefter-wing Greek socialists who are too radical for some of those left-wing Europeans.

Democratic primaries have always featured liberal insurgent candidates, but perhaps none quite so liberal or insurgent as the socialist senator from Vermont. Sanders’ comments are a reminder of just how far the second-place Democratic presidential candidate stands from the American mainstream on some issues, and the looming reckoning Democrats face with their party’s leftward drift. …

… It’s usually Democrats who play this game — as they did with Republican challengers to Mitt Romney in 2012, or with fringe characters like Todd Aiken. Now, it’s Republicans seeking to use the Sanders surge to portray Democrats as radical and out of touch.

And that’s making many Democrats nervous, said Joe Trippi, who ran Vermonter Howard Dean’s campaign in 2004.

“We can’t lose the presidency. We can’t take a risk by nominating somebody outside the comfort zone. That’s what’s driving the inevitable-ness” of Clinton, said Trippi, speaking about the party establishment’s thinking.

It’s not for nothing that Charles Pierce calls Politico “Tiger Beat on the Potomac.” (For those who don’t remember, Tiger Beat is a teen “fan” magazine about entertainment and fashion marketed to adolescent girls.)

Anyhoo, that’s the establishment thinking: We can’t take risks now. We have to stay in the comfort zone, or risk losing the election. Hillary Clinton is a known product; she is marketable.

So along comes Bernie Sanders, and no question Bernie has some obstacles. His age, his Jewishness, and his embrace of the word “socialist” are all huge factors against him in the general election. If he wins the nomination, could he win the White House? And I honestly don’t know. In some ways it does seem unlikely. But it’s not as if HRC doesn’t have negatives of her own, some self-inflicted.

And doesn’t this amount to letting the Right choose our candidates for us? We’re choosing the candidate we think we can slip past the Noise Machine, not the one we really want?

And going back to Tiger Beat — First, a whole lot of people, including some world-renowned economists (Krugman, Piketty, Stiglitz) agree that punishing the Greeks further with austerity measures serves no purpose whatsoever. Second, by many measures Sanders is the mainstream candidate; his stands on many issues align with the American majority. See Juan Cole, “How Mainstream Is Bernie Sanders?”

Sanders’s positions are quite mainstream from the point of view of the stances of the American public in general. Of course, the 1%, for whom and by whom most mainstream media report, are appalled and would like to depict him as an outlier.

Sanders is scathing on the increasing wealth gap, whereby the rich have scooped up most of the increase in our national wealth in the past twenty years. The average wage of the average worker in real terms is only a little better than in 1970; the poor are actually poorer; but the wealth of the top earners has increased several times over.

Some 63% of Americans agree that the current distribution of wealth is unfair. And in a Gallup poll done earlier this month, a majority, 52%, think that government taxation on the rich should be used to reduce the wealth gap. This percentage is historically high, having been only 45% in 1998. But there seems to be a shift going on, because Gallup got the 52% proportion in answer to the question on taxing the rich both in April and again in May of this year.

Bernie Sanders’ position is that of a majority of Americans in the most recent polling!

My question to Joe Trippi et al. is, when do we get to stop finessing the right by settling for the most “marketable” candidate, who may or may not fight for what we want? When do we get to articulate what we actually want?

Elizabeth Warren caught fire with progressives not because she had “new ideas,” but because she spoke out loud what we already were thinking. She beautifully articulated the progressive position, in a way that signaled she really got it. It wasn’t just words and talking points. And Bernie Sanders is doing the same thing now. But we’re being told we have to kick him to the curb because the Right is really, really scary.

And I say, bleep that. Let’s trust the process. Let’s let the candidates step forward and make a case for themselves. Let there be debates. Let’s allow the American people to get a good look at all the candidates, including Martin O’Malley, who might still move up if he could get some media attention. Let’s let the American people hear what they have to say.

And then, let’s see what happens. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work? What happens if America hears the progressive message directly from progressives? They might like it. Imagine!

I say we push for the policies we want and support candidates who pledge to work for those policies, and stop settling for the “safe” candidate. It’s likely Clinton will get the nomination anyway, but maybe the Sanders challenge will give her a clue that she has to actually deliver for progressives and not just make speeches at them.

It’s All Greek

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The Greek crisis seems to me something like the mortgage crisis, in which all kinds of people were encouraged to saddle themselves with junk mortgages. Then they lost everything when the economy took a dive and they fell behind on payments. Greece, I understand, has a humongous debt that even the International Monetary Fund has concluded can never be repaid. And this is partly because the Greek government of awhile back borrowed irresponsibly, but it has to be said the lenders were being irresponsible as well. That may not be what happened, but that’s how I understand it.

The Greeks have suffered terrible deprivation doing what the Eurozone nations told them to do, which was to reduce government spending and pay down the debt. But the austerity cuts, cuts, cuts had the effect of killing their economy, so the debt couldn’t be paid down. And then the Greeks voted in a government that said, bleep austerity. And yesterday they voted to reject Eurozone austerity demands. Without more money coming from the Eurozone partners, Greek banks may collapse.

There’s a lot of clucking about What It All Means, and What Should Greece Do, and What Should Europe Do. I think it’s all just wrong. There’s something basically wrong when people are impoverished not because of anything they did or because of natural calamity, but because of the way economies work.

I’ve never been to Greece, but everything I’ve heard about it says it is very beautiful, the climate is lovely, and there’s a large agricultural area. And of course it has a rich and ancient civilization. There’s no reason I can see that people in Greece can’t have everything they need to live perfectly satisfying lives. If they can’t, it’s not because there’s something wrong with the geological entity of Greece and its people. It’s the System that got them into this mess.

Professor Krugman has been largely sympathetic to the Greeks and thinks the only way out of the mess is for them to bail on the Euro and set up their own monetary system. He wrote,

And let’s be clear: if Greece ends up leaving the euro, it won’t mean that the Greeks are bad Europeans. Greece’s debt problem reflected irresponsible lending as well as irresponsible borrowing, and in any case the Greeks have paid for their government’s sins many times over. If they can’t make a go of Europe’s common currency, it’s because that common currency offers no respite for countries in trouble. The important thing now is to do whatever it takes to end the bleeding.

Professor Krugman also said,

Jared Bernstein weighs in on the big No, hopes that it leads to a change in Europe’s approach, but acknowledges the political difficulties:

To be fair, it’s not that simple. There are structural political factors in play, endemic to the fact that the currency union is not a political union, nor a fiscal union, nor a banking union. As one German economist put it to me, “How do you think the people of Manhattan would like bailing out Texas?” Fair point, and a non-trivial challenge, for sure.

Ahem. As it happens, the people of Manhattan did bail out Texas, big time. I wrote about it here. The savings and loan crisis, which was very costly to taxpayers, was mainly a Texas affair:

The cleanup from that crisis cost taxpayers about $125 billion (pdf), back when that was real money. As best I can tell, around 60 percent of the losses were in Texas (pdf). So that’s around $75 billion in aid — not loans, outright transfer.

Texas GDP was about $300 billion in 1987. So this was equivalent to giving — not lending, not even taking an equity stake — Spain 25 percent of its GDP to bail out its banks.

But of course Manhattan was never asked to bail out Texas; we had a national system of deposit insurance, and the big Lone Star bailout was automatic.

… and the people who brought on the crisis because they were recklessly playing the system to enrich themselves were given slaps on the wrist and told to never be naughty again. Neil Bush, for example, was fined $50,000; Republican supporters chipped in to pay it. Meanwhile, taxpayers shelled out $1.3 billion to clean up Bush’s Silverado mess..

In short, I don’t blame the Greeks for telling the Eurozone to go bleep itself.

Dumping the Donald

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I hope everybody had a lovely 4th of July and will enjoy some barbeque this weekend.

NASCAR has joined the Donald Trump pile-on and has announced it has changed an awards banquet venue because of his remarks about Mexicans. It appears The Donald is genuinely surprised by this. Yesterday he said he knew campaigning could be rough, but he didn’t think it would be this severe.

“I knew it was going to be bad because I was told this. All my life I have been told this: If you are successful, you don’t run for office,” Trump said in an interview onFox News, addressing the recent spate of businesses that have severed their relationships with his brand. “I didn’t know it was going to be quite this severe, but I really knew it was going to be bad.”

See, all these companies — NBC, Macy’s, Serta, etc. — are turning on The Donald because he is successful. And how did he get successful?

Trump was born in New York City in 1946, the son of real estate tycoon Fred Trump. Fred Trump’s business success not only provided Donald Trump with a posh youth of private schools and economic security but eventually blessed him with an inheritance worth an estimated $40 million to $200 million. It is critical to note, however, that his father’s success, which granted Donald Trump such a great advantage, was enabled and buffered by governmental financing programs. In 1934, while struggling during the Great Depression, financing from the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) allowed Fred Trump to revive his business and begin building a multitude of homes in Brooklyn, selling at $6,000 apiece. Furthermore, throughout World War II, Fred Trump constructed FHA-backed housing for US naval personnel near major shipyards along the East Coast.

In 1974 Donald Trump became president of his father’s organization. During the 15 years following his ascension, he expanded and innovated the corporation, buying and branding buildings, golf courses, hotels, casinos, and other recreational facilities. In 1980 he established The Trump Organization to oversee all of his real estate operations.

Trump eventually found himself in serious financial trouble. In 1990, due to excessive leveraging, The Trump Organization revealed that it was $5 billion in debt ($8.8 billion by some estimates), with $1 billion personally guaranteed by Trump himself. The survival of the company was made possible only by a bailout pact agreed upon in August of that same year by some 70 banks, allowing Trump to defer on nearly $1 billion in debt, as well as to take out second and third mortgages on almost all of his properties. If it were not for the collective effort of all banks and parties involved in that 1990 deal, Trump’s business would have gone bankrupt and failed.

In other words, it didn’t take exceptionally hard work or brilliance.

In our culture, to paraphrase a line from Michael Shaara, there’s nothing as close to a god on earth than a billionaire CEO. I’m sure The Donald has gotten away with saying anything he wanted to say and being the biggest asshole he could be, and nobody has dared correct him. And at this point he’s turned into a caricature of himself.

FYI, the Donald is currently at the top of the GOP presidential contender polls, at 13.6 percent. Jeb Bush is second, at 13.3 percent. The next three are Ben Carson, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul. Scott Walker has fallen to sixth place, at 8 percent. Republican voters relate to mean and stupid, apparently.