Sadly, I think a lot of the Trump supporters are playing the part of Goebbels on themselves. The lengths to which they'll explain his discrepancies, both with their ideologies and his frequent changes of position, is astounding.

Your Hitler/Stalin analogy is apt. I keep hearing people beating their breasts over how Trump's pettiness over media treatment will stack up against Putin. I have to imagine Putin is sitting back and smirking at the thought of what a Trump presidency means for international politics.

All we can expect from Trump is somewhat of a slowing of the progression to socialism. Worst case would be Sanders, followed by Hillary. Probably Rand Paul would represent the best of the lot this time around, but he isnt going to nominated, let alone elected.

If you don't vote on principle then evil will triumph again.
If the founders had listened to the torries who made this same argument there would be no America and the world would still have 19th century technology and monarchy would still be the government of most countries.
You continue with the same brainwashed argument that the GOP has been using to screw you for decades. W A K E U P !

What's more disturbing than that is a total lack of evidence that Trump accepts there are limitations to his power. He's said his issue with Obama's use of executive power is that they're "bad" and he would make "good deals." That's alarmingly subjective. And the Constitution is not. If that's his central view of presidential behavior, why would his attitude to deal-brokering in Congress be any more coherent?

While I'd love to see a Republican President actually stand on principle, I've been waiting since 1989 to see it happen. I also think it will largely depend on the issue. I can see him quite readily agreeing with Democrats on raising taxes (he's already said he's in favor). I can also see him taking a firm stand on illegal immigration.

Well we all have our opinions on politicians. And you know what they say about opinions... I'm no Trump supporter, FWIW. I do think that Bush led us astray. I'll never forget when he signed the first $850B bailout. I remember it like it was yesterday. I went home, leaned over my son in his crib and said, "I'm sorry, son."

Trump's stand on free trade is one that I dont really understand or go along with. If China wants to sell us stuff cheaply and take printed dollars in exchange- I say thats THEIR problem. They have cheap labor and our labor force has become lazy and entitled- and THAT needs to change. Fact of the matter, building things here is a losing proposition- if we stopped all trade with China now, prices would rise pretty dramatically, volume of business done here would fall, and they call that a depression.

The first rule of negotiating is to know your strengths and weaknesses, and use your strengths to get what you want.

Before even that point, you work to increase your strengths (and therefore power over adversaries).

Negotiating is a battleground to get what you want without having to give up anything important. Trump knows this. He gives away ice in winter

I keep hearing in a contest between Trump and the Gropingfuehrer's wife, Frau Hillary the Self, people would vote for Klinton because Trump is so Evil... ???

Personally, I refuse to vote for either Evil or a Dynasty-seeker. I can't tell you at this juncture who I will vote for yet... but I can, with absolute certainty, tell you who I am NOT going to vote for.

And if it's a contest between the pedantically putrefying pant-suited pestilence and the crèche mate of the welterweight not so great reprobate head of state, I think I'll vote to abdicate!

Oh , Trump will negotiate with Pelosi. He will tell her just where she can go if he has the senate and house on his side. You can count on that. Trump doesnt give an inch when he doesnt have to, and he always comes out on top.

Voting libertarian this time will only help Hillary or Sanders. So, unless you want to accelerate the demise of the country, Libertarian isnt going to cut it. There just arent enough Libertarian -leaning people out there to make a difference even if they ALL voted. At least Rand Paul made it farther than any libertarian did

The democrats wont continue that winning streak with Trump in there. He will strike much harder bargains than we have seen in the past.

Cruz is a religious zealot. God only knows how HE would vote on things. He is part of the establishment, so god will probably tell him to vote for more taxes and government control to keep the establishment going strong.

My guess is that his deals would only be considered if he DIDNT have both the house and senate. Otherwise, Pelosi has nothing to offer, and the Donald doesnt deal with people who have nothing to offer.

William Shipley...My feelings exactly...the system was designed for balanced power where HONEST people listen talk and compromise to do what is right for the country..not to dominate and dictate. That's the problem..the socialists and the objectivists are so far apart on their goals that each sees the others as existential dangers...maybe they are right... It is difficult to imagine living under communist rule but maybe we are too far over the edge to avoid it... The voters certainly don't encourage optimism...look at what the greater number want from the producers.

It will be interesting, since the Komrade Ludnanciya Peloskaya keeps falling afoul of her Demolooter comrades - maybe she's too far out there, er, gone, er, yeah, for even her fellow self-entitled imperialist looters... what would Trump allegedly be "dealing with her about"? Then again, Trump is a businessman, so his stock in trade is "making deals". Maybe he could make a deal to deal them out...

Sorry but I beg to differ. Bush II was led astray, (his own fault) but IMHO Trump will lead us astray. And sadly I believe he will attempt to destroy anyone who gets in his way, very similar to our current POTUS. As POTUS it is very necessary to have people that will disagree and I do not see Trump tolerating that for a second.

Was Obama at all concerned when the Democrats had majorities in the House and Senate? No. I seem to recall words along the line of "bringing a knife to a gunfight" as he laughed about them.

If the Republicans take the White House and maintain the House and Senate, they should stand tall and tell the Progressives that it's time for them to drink their own medicine. Now I don't believe for a second that's going to happen, partially because I don't think there are that many principled Republicans but also because they care more about what the Media has to say than their own constituents.

Absolutely true. And they gloss over the fact that government "shutdowns" used to happen every year at budget time up until Clinton. It was a method that forced the two parties to compromise. Also, the vast majority of the government continued to function and even those who were temporarily told not to come into the office got back pay as soon as the budget was done. In the end, none of them really put anyone out of a job at all. That's what's so dishonest about the MSM reporting lately.

The trend to avoiding shutdowns started with Bush I after his "no new taxes" pledge got him in deep trouble. The media had a heyday with it and bludgeoned him (justifiably) into a one-term presidency. When Clinton took office, he had a fairly pliant Congress, but Clinton didn't go overboard with the social spending either (at first). Then after a couple of years of profligate spending, the Republicans took back Congress - including the House for the first time in decades - and Gingrich enforced the contract with America. With Clinton reeling due to his sexual scandals, he had no position to try to force Congress into budget fights so he basically just signed it off.

Enter GW Bush and the Iraq War. He negotiated for massive increases in defense spending, but faced with even a small amount of Democratic demands for more welfare spending, he caved and gave in to Medicare part D and others. Obama merely has taken advantage of that and persuaded the media to buy into his rhetoric.

Depends on what the deal is, start with something small on each side that neither really holds of high value to get something they really want - I doubt a flat tax would be the first deal Pelosi would cut, but nonetheless it doesn't really matter. He won't need the democrat voting bloc for anything, they can't really put up much resistance beyond maybe a filibuster in the senate.

There are always a few ideologically aligned representatives that may be against something for their own district's purposes, and at most you have to cut a small deal here or there to get someone from the other side of the aisle to vote accordingly.

An example would be Trump isn't a big fan of 'free' trade deals because we are usually on the losing side out of 'American Guilt' when we agree to them. I would imagine Pelosi & her union buddies might be pretty happy to go along with scrapping a bad trade deal - which gets Trump what he wants - an economic boost to the US while unions can tell their members they brought more jobs home. The Repubs won't necessarily like that because they have a lot of large business donors - but that stuff doesn't benefit the American worker/consumer usually.

Another example - he's very much in favor of taking 'options' away from client countries like South Korea... we spend billions on their defense and station 30,000 troops in the DMZ... why do that for free? and why have a trade deal where we are losing $500B a year in negative trade? If they want us to buy Hyundai's and we're giving a free national defense to them... why the hell should Boeing have to compete with Airbus for for an Air Korea deal? It wouldn't be ethical for Boeing to just gouge them, but there should be an 'American Preference' requirement in there, much like we have a Veteran's Preference in most public service hiring practices (as an example) - not a guaranteed job, but a 10% bonus on evaluation or something like that.

As as rule of thumb, I side more ideologically and fiscally with Republicans, but not all Republican ideas (like free trade) have been a great thing for the country... sure we get cheap shit from China to sell in Walmart, but people pretty much have enough of that junk as evidenced by Walmart now closing stores... if you never had the stuff on the shelf to crave, or only 'friendly trade' alternatives where there for a few bucks more, you wouldn't even miss it and at the same time your income wouldn't be stagnant and going up.

yes.

Still better than another Bush.

Ironic seeing this because the next book in my Kindle is Trump's "The Art of the Deal". If President he'll have no choice but to interface with Pelosi and her ilk. Make no mistake, every interface will be a negotiation.