2016 elections - because it's never too early

[Savonarola]

Most candidates seek to acknowledge those frustrations and fears while trying to quickly pivot toward a more optimistic message along the lines of "We can do this. We always have." Trump represents a break with that approach. His strategy is to not only acknowledge the negative feelings coursing through the public but to stoke them. Trump's message, boiled down, is "You're angry. You should be angry. I am angry too. We shouldn't get less angry. What we should do is use that anger to take back the country we love."

It's a message that is uniquely well suited to our troubled times. When you don't believe or trust almost anyone or anything, a man willing to say exactly what he thinks at all times and damn the torpedoes is very very appealing

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

[Malthus]

Most candidates seek to acknowledge those frustrations and fears while trying to quickly pivot toward a more optimistic message along the lines of "We can do this. We always have." Trump represents a break with that approach. His strategy is to not only acknowledge the negative feelings coursing through the public but to stoke them. Trump's message, boiled down, is "You're angry. You should be angry. I am angry too. We shouldn't get less angry. What we should do is use that anger to take back the country we love."

It's a message that is uniquely well suited to our troubled times. When you don't believe or trust almost anyone or anything, a man willing to say exactly what he thinks at all times and damn the torpedoes is very very appealing

Yeah, I think that this pretty much nails it.  It's not so much that potential Republican primary voters agree with Trump's policy positions, it's that they think he emphasizes with their frustrations and anxieties.  Not really that different than Bill Clinton riding "He feels your pain" to the White House.

I liked the Onion's take on that: "Clinton feels your pain, breasts". 

[Syt]

http://www.theroot.com/articles/news/2015/11/trump_advisor_maybe_black_lives_matter_protester_deserved_to_be_roughed.html

Trump Adviser: Maybe Black Lives Matter Protester 'Deserved' to Be Roughed Up

Michael Cohen, adviser to the GOP presidential candidate, defended his boss's comments, calling the protester a "professional agitator" who was there to "start a fight."

Donald Trump's adviser went on CNN's New Day to defend his boss's comments about a Black Lives Matter protester deserving to be roughed up at a recent Trump rally, Mediaite reports.

"The guy's a professional agitator. Supposedly, rumors are out there on the Internet and social media, the guy has been tased, what, 30 times? He goes to these various different rallies and he creates all sorts of problems," Michael Cohen, executive vice president of the Trump Foundation, told CNN's Chris Cuomo.

"You know what? It happened. Obviously nobody wants to see anybody get injured," Cohen said.

Cuomo pointed out that Trump actually insinuated that the man deserved it.

"Well, maybe he did. Maybe he did. He went there to cause a problem. He went there to start a fight. This is nothing to do with Black Lives Matter; this is a guy that's looking for media attention," Cohen countered.

"White, black, green, yellow, a guy comes to your event and gets beat up, [Trump] should be against the people that beat him up," Cuomo fired back.

"I agree, nobody wants to see anybody get beaten up. But if the guy goes there for the purpose of creating an issue, he wants to be an agitator at what was a great event for Mr. Trump, 14,000-plus people. You know what? That's between the individual who wants to be an agitator and the people who are there to listen to Mr. Trump," Cohen insisted.

[Syt]

http://www.vulture.com/2015/11/twisted-sister-and-trump-are-apparently-bffs.html?mid=facebook_nymag

Twisted Sister Will Let Donald Trump Use 'We're Not Gonna Take It' As a Rally Closer to Help Him 'Fight the System'

Donald Trump has notoriously had some trouble finding rock bands that will let him use their music at his rallies. Alt-rock icons R.E.M. and Blur's Damon Albarn scorned the GOP frontrunner for using their music (R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe said, "Go fuck yourselves, the lot of you — you sad, attention-grabbing, power-hungry little men. Do not use our music or my voice for your moronic charade of a campaign."), but Trump may have found an unlikely ally: Twisted Sister.

Trump will be using the band's famous anthem "We're Not Gonna Take It" as the closing song to his rallies. The song previously had a huge reprise after 9/11, when classic rock radio stations around the country put the track back in heavy rotation. ('Merica.) The band's frontman Dee Snider told Canadian Business, "[Trump] called and he asked, which I appreciated. I said, 'Look, we don't see eye to eye on everything — there are definitely issues that we're far apart on.' But thinking back to when I wrote the song and what the song is about, it's about rebellion, speaking your mind and fighting the system. If anybody's doing that, he sure is."

Snider, who was fired from Celebrity Apprentice in 2013, went on:

"Trump and Bernie Sanders are the two extremes. They're raising holy hell and shaking everything up. That's what 'We're Not Gonna Take It' is about. And we're friends. I have spent time with Donald and his family. I don't think either of us expected that we would like each other, but you know, Donald Trump is a pretty chill guy ... He's a frontman. When that camera goes on, he furls his brow, he does his thing. Off-camera he's very self-deprecating. He makes jokes about being too orange and about his hair."

Snider's interpretation of his own song as "shaking everything up" is interesting, since Genius's annotations on the lyrics don't say anything about cataloging Muslims or building walls along the border or any of the ways in which Trump is "fighting the system."

[Savonarola]

I have found Siege's candidate for 2016:

"I had been working for National Geographic, travelling, doing all these fun things and then all of a sudden, I nearly stood on a land mine in Vietnam," Zoltan Istvan tells me, as we sit in the lobby of a hotel just a few minutes walk from the White House. "My guide tackles me, throws me down, and saves my life. It was then that I decided that it was time to really dedicate myself to stopping death – stopping death for me, and stopping death for my loved ones."

So goes the dramatic origin story of one of the most unusual candidates in the 2016 race to be president of the United States.

Amid the rolling election coverage, the social media jabs between Donald Trump and Jeb Bush, and the debate sparring of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, Istvan has been staging a rather unusual campaign as a third party candidate. This writer, philosopher and futurist is running for the Transhumanist Party, a movement that believes technology has the power to transform the human mind and body.

Transhumanists dream of achieving immortality and physical perfection through futuristic technologies like mind uploading, cyborg body augmentation, and genetic manipulation; they want us to evolve into a race of post-human super-beings. While the other presidential candidates are claiming they know best how to deal with Iran, the economy, and immigration, Istvan is trying to appeal to the US electorate with more ambitious goals. He wants to eradicate death, and for everyone in America to live forever.

Istvan is currently touring the US in what he calls the "Immortality Bus": an old school bus converted to look like a huge coffin on wheels and paid for by an online crowdfunding campaign. He's doing this to spread his vision of transhumanism, and so far it seems to be paying off – he openly admits the bus is a stunt, but it has been winning him the news coverage he seeks. But back in early August before the tour had kicked off, and the bus was still on the drawing board, I spent a day in Washington DC with Istvan to try to find out what he really believes in, how serious he is about it all, and what he sees in America's future.

The plan is to join Istvan at his hotel at 9:30 in the morning, but I've come to DC on an early flight from New York, and I arrive an hour ahead of our meeting. I grab a coffee and sit in the lobby, when I notice Istvan is already here. At first I'm not sure it's him – we've never met before but I've seen photos of him online, and he's a striking figure: white, tall, muscular, healthy, with blond hair and blue eyes. There's little denying that he looks stereotypically 'all-American', like the physical embodiment of the Californian, libertarian, start-up culture tech-utopian dream. In his publicity photos he looks like the transhumanist movement's ideals made flesh.

But, arriving early and unannounced, that's not the Zoltan Istvan I spot in the hotel lobby. Instead he looks a little disheveled and tired, like he's just woken up, wearing a scruffy t-shirt and faded jeans. His hair is a bit of a mess. As he anxiously fidgets with his smartphone the air of confidence projected by his publicity shots is gone, replaced instead with a sense of stress and nervous energy, something that will emerge repeatedly throughout the day. It is, to be frank, far more relatable than his presidential persona. The transhuman is, for now at least, very clearly still human.

I don't approach him, suddenly feeling like I'd be intruding on his personal space. Instead I keep my distance and wait, and soon enough he disappears back to his room and reappears before me as his more expected public persona. He's friendly and enthusiastic, and before long he's telling me about his background, and how he got involved in the transhumanist movement.

The son of Hungarian immigrants to the US, Istvan was working as a journalist when he nearly stood on that land mine in Vietnam. "I'd been involved in environmental stuff. I'd been doing good humanitarian work. I felt good about my life, but I was not dedicated to the field that I really was interested in. It had a lot to do with also being through with being a journalist. Not completely through, but just through with covering other stories and not the real story I wanted, which was, 'What kind of science can make people live longer?'

"After that, I felt like a philosophical bomb went off in my head and I thought, 'Hey, I should use whatever skills I have to contribute to this movement. I almost just died. This movement's about not dying basically, in many ways. Maybe I should do something for it.'"
Istvan quit journalism, and instead threw himself in to writing a novel, The Transhumanist Wager. "That took about four, five full years. I worked on my novel eight hours a day for four years straight. I didn't have a day job. I just did the novel."

The Transhumanist Wager tells the story of Jethro Knights, a philosopher who rails against democratic politics and becomes a revolutionary that seizes control of the world in order to enforce a global authoritarian transhuman regime. It sounds a little like the neoreactionary movement, I suggest, the far-right philosophical movement that believes democracy has failed, and that nations should once again be run by hereditary monarchies. Isn't that perhaps a worrying storyline from someone running as president?

"I'm distancing myself, I have been, from the book now for a whole year," he says. "I know the neoreactionary movement really well. I really dislike some of their policies, especially on women... But that said, I do subscribe to some of their strong monarchy ideas where if you actually have a benevolent dictator that could be great for the country."

I'm a little surprised to hear a presidential candidate openly suggesting this. But that, as it turns out, is very typical for Istvan; he's not finished. There's always another angle, some other philosophical surprise up his sleeve.

"In fact it's one of the reasons why I've advocated for an artificial intelligence to become president one day. If we had a truly altruistic entity that was after the best interests of society maybe giving up at least some freedoms would be beneficial if that was truly in our best interests. What's happened in the past is we've had dictators who are selfish, and they've done an absolutely terrible job of running countries. But what if you actually had somebody who really was after your best interests, wouldn't you want him on your team?"

I want to talk to him in more detail about this – it seems that every time Istvan gives me an answer it prompts a dozen more questions – but we have to be at his first appointment of the day. It's breakfast with the Washington DC arm of the Transhumanist Party, which turns out to be six nerdy middle-aged men, five of whom are white. It's an odd, often slightly awkward hour, which reveals that – like all political movements – there are a lot of internal schisms, different factions, and that perhaps not everyone is convinced Istvan is the best person to be leader.

He's not fazed by it though, he tells me afterwards. He's far more interested in making the party appeal to a larger, wider audience. "The real goal is to get millions and millions [of people] to consider longevity issues, transhumanism, cyborgism and how they'll affect the future and whether they want to support it and tell their government, 'Hey, this is something important to me'. My goal, my main goal for the Transhumanist Party, is to change the culture of America."

It's a noble aim, I say to him, but with technologies like those he's advocating isn't there always an issue of access? They're expensive – how do you ensure that they're not only available to those who can afford them?

"I'm trying to get the party as centrist as possible with an emphasis on 'There is no way in hell we're going to let the rich keep these technologies for themselves.' That no matter what happens, if it's designer babies or augmenting intelligence, we must have government plans in the works to [ensure] that it's completely open and free to all of society."

That sounds almost like socialism, I suggest.

"I'm not a fan of socialism. I come from a libertarian background, but I know the right thing to do. The right thing is not to separate society further from itself and create greater inequality. The right thing is to make sure that everyone has access to these technologies at once. They're so revolutionary and they give such advantages to those who have them.

"One of the big ideas we support is the universal basic income. Robots are going to start taking people's jobs. There's really no question about it over the next 10 or 20 years. Even someone with 20 years of training is going to eventually lose out. We need a universal basic income to make sure everyone has a roof over their heads, food to eat. The basics are provided. We also want to emphasise a totally free education system. One of our strangest and most aggressive policies is that we support mandatory preschool and mandatory college. Everyone has to go to a four‑year college. The reason we do so is because anyone born today is going to live to 150 or to 200. Yet the amount of education we receive is not changing."

I want to ask him how he's so sure about these predictions and life expectancy figures, but right now I have a more pressing question: as president, how would he pay for all this?

"In America, we spend about four times the amount of money on prison systems than we do on education. We also spend approximately 10 times on bombs, war, and defence than we do on education," he says. "We need to make the prison industry – I don't even call it 'the prison system', it's an industry – we need to make it go away. I can think of nothing better than instead of keeping a bunch of people jailed, to spend a bunch of money on educating people. It may seem a little utopian, but it's a pretty good argument when you look at it from a fiscal point [of view]. In fact, if we just even implement our system by about 20%, let's just say 20% less prisoners, we'd be able to pay for all the colleges in the nation."

These words could be coming from a mainstream politician – so where does the transhumanism part come in? But of course he's not finished yet.
"If we use robots, drones and all sorts of types of technologies, we should be able to eliminate incarceration altogether at some point in the future. Meaning it would be much cheaper to have a drone follow somebody that is a criminal, especially if it's the kind of low-level criminal which is filling our prisons. As opposed to feeding them and paying for a bunch of guards to watch them, have a drone follow them to work and make them work."

As I continue to talk to Istvan it's clear that there's this repeating pattern to his views, an often unconventional mix of the liberal and conservative, the pragmatic and the frankly science fictional, the utopian and the slightly sinister. We've been discussing this on the way to the World Bank, where he's giving a talk and appearing on the panel at Athgothon 2015, which calls itself an 'innovation forum' where attendees will learn to "build a start-up in three days" and "be guided by industry leaders on how to turn an innovative idea, a skill, or a passion into a commercially viable and socially impactful business". It seems to be mainly students and recent graduates here, but it's a very exclusive event – tickets cost in excess of $500. I'm only there for a few hours, but it mainly consists of networking opportunities and motivational speeches about how to be successful – there's a lot of talk about how to be the next Uber or Facebook. It's very much a platform for extolling that libertarian, Silicon Valley entrepreneurship philosophy that transhumanism is associated with, and as such I find myself feeling very cynical and more than a little uncomfortable. Istvan, on the other hand, seems to fit right in, and the attendees lap up what he has to say about the future of automation, robotics, and how they could all live forever in his technological utopia. Afterwards he asks me how I feel he did, if it went alright, and once again reveals that more endearing, slightly vulnerable side of himself.

The afternoon is taken up mainly by a photoshoot, with a photographer from the Transhumanist Party getting new publicity shots of him in front of the capital's most famous monuments: the Lincoln Memorial, The Washington Monument, and of course the White House itself. Again, Istvan looks the part. It's very patriotic, and it makes me think: in Istvan's post-human future utopia – where we all live forever and upload our minds into computer networks – will there even be nation states? Will there even be a United States of America? His answer is, once again, a strange mix of the liberal and the slightly sinister.

"I think America's great because I'm from an immigrant family and was brought up that way. But I totally support a giant world government. We have to get over our countries. This is the same thing with immigration. I just completely support total immigration anywhere. No questions asked. There should not be borders. There should be identification, sure, and tracking using [implanted] chips and whatnot. I'm all about the tracking."
With the photoshoot over, we've got a couple of hours before Istvan has to catch his flight back to California. Just enough time for a coffee, and a few more questions. Just enough time to get down to the nitty gritty.

It turns out Istvan and I are the same age, 42. For as long as I can remember we've been promised that the same technological breakthroughs – advanced robotics, the rise of artificial intelligence, the end of work – are just 20 years away, but so far they've never materialised. What makes him so sure of his predictions now? What if he's wrong about the science?

"To begin with, that is a bit of my speaking in platitudes, being the techno-optimist, 'Hey it's all going to be great.'" he admits. "Instead of Trump saying, 'America's great.' I'm saying, 'Technology is great.' I'm guilty. My timelines may be off. I've been known to be off. That said, every 10 years, you do gain an exponential growth and there is something like that happening. Certain technologies come much quicker than others. We actually didn't even really know about 3D printing five, six years ago. It's happening. It's a new type of technology that could, like the internet, jumpstart a lot of huge industries. At the same time, where's my jetpack? We've been talking about it forever.

"It's the same thing with artificial intelligence. We may not knock out artificial intelligence for another 50 years. We might find the human brain is so much more complex than we ever thought. But we might all have 3D‑printed organs so that we're able to easily live that much longer. Some technologies are right on time and others are way too optimistic. Frankly, this is where the politician comes out, in that I do play this game to try to convince people. I'm a believer in the stuff I say and the timelines. But I do understand that people like me have been wrong in the past."
While I've got him being frank, I ask him about his real political aspirations. Does he really think he'll win, and if not does he really see a future for the Transhumanist Party?

"There's no real chance of winning this time at all, unless something turned. My people are constantly emailing other candidates saying, 'Do you want Zoltan as your VP?' Maybe there is something like that that could happen. Who knows how that would work? What I was hoping and what I have done myself is I've actually emailed the Hillary Clinton team and said, 'Look, are you looking for a technology advisor? Are you looking for somebody later to fill a role in the White House, like a technology person or a science person in a Cabinet position, or even a deputy position?' That would be a really good way to get a foot in the door."

It's not the first time he's mentioned Hillary Clinton to me. Does he consider himself a Democrat?

"Honestly, if I had a chance, I would vote for Obama again. I know many people may disagree with that, but I like the way the country is going right now. I don't like what I saw in the Republican debates. I don't really see anyone else. I like Bernie Sanders and what he fights for, but I'm also afraid that China's gaining ground on America so we need someone in the middle who can continue to push science forward... You've got to be careful, we're entering a very dangerous age."

Yet again, I'm slightly surprised at this.

He laughs. "Yeah, I think a lot of people are surprised given my crazy book that I would embrace the Democratic Party or vote for it. I don't mind if you mention this, but I do have ambitions for 2024, and I do have ambitions for 2020. I'm not sure I would run under the Transhumanist Party again. It's a great thing to establish, it's a great thing to do for the movement, but I actually want to win. I actually have the family life, some of the credentials. I would like to be in charge. I can't help but look at the White House and think, 'God, if I was there I would implement so many science and technology policies. I would stop wars.' I would be like, 'Wow, we're not doing this crap anymore. We're actually going to cut down the prison system literally by 80% and put that money into education. Everyone's going to get the education they always wanted.'"

And then his cab arrives and it's time for him to go. We shake hands and I tell him how much I've enjoyed our day together. I might not agree with all his ideas, but it's hard not to like him. He's very frank and he's very honest, I tell him.

"I hope that's good," he laughs, "or is it going to get me in trouble?"

If he was a traditional politician, then I suppose it would probably would – but Zoltan Istvan is anything but.

His website

Actually I think Ide might vote for him too; so he's got a broad base if nothing else...

It did remind me a bit of the Shaw cycle of plays "Back to Methuselah"; except their using AI rather than the elan vital as their hand-wavium.

[Razgovory]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/11/24/this-chart-explains-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-state-of-politics-today/

This chart explains everything you need to know about the dismal state of politics today

Chris Cillizza November 24 at 1:23 PM    


The Pew Research Center released a massive poll Monday detailing how Americans view their government. The short answer? Not well.

One chart in the reams of awesome data stood out as a terrific lens through which to understand the current state of our politics — particularly the Republican presidential race. Here it is:


Less than one in five people (19 percent) say they trust the government to do what is right "always" or "most of the time." That number has been in steady decline almost since the question was first asked in 1958; at the time, three quarters of the public (73 percent) thought they could trust the government to do the right thing most or all of the time. With occasional surges in the mid-1980s and then again in the early 2000s — almost entirely attributable to the rally-around-the-flag effect in the wake of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — the trajectory on trust has been almost exclusively downward over the past five and a half decades.

If 80 percent (or so) of the American people have little or no faith in their government and their elected officials to make the right choices most of the time, it's clear that the system isn't working. And it's not hard to understand why voters — on the left and the right — would be drawn to candidates who put blowing up that system at the heart of their campaigns.

Dig deeper into the Pew poll and you understand why Bernie Sanders appears to have reached a ceiling of sorts in the Democratic primary contest while Donald Trump continues to confound his critics by leading the GOP race. Here's that same chart above but broken down by party:

Two things: 1) Republicans' trust in government yo-yo's depending on whose in office far more than Democrats. Republicans trust government more when a Republican president is in the White House; Democrats, generally, trust government roughly equally no matter which party controls the White House and 2) Republican trust in government is at an all-time low with just 13 percent currently saying they think the government makes the right decisions always or most of the time. Compare that to 25 percent of Republicans who said the same during the eight years Bill Clinton was in office and you begin to grasp the depth and the historic nature of Republican discontent.

Looking at that chart, you also begin to grasp why Trump has found such fertile ground for his message that everything and everyone in Washington is corrupt and terrible and needs to be gotten rid of.  And, distrust in government is only a piece of the broader puzzle that Trump appears to have solved.

Virtually every institution -- from government to banks to the church to media -- is at or near a historic low point in terms of the trust Americans have in them. Why? The collapse of the economy amid the bank collapse of the last decade. September 11.  The Catholic church sex scandal. A government shutdown.

Add it all up and the sense that the institutions we have always depended on are no longer so dependable becomes pervasive. The safety net is gone. The old ways of doing things no longer work but no new way of doing things has emerged.

People react differently to that new normal but usually it's some combination of fear, anxiety and anger. That can be a very toxic mixture in the context of a political campaign in which candidates are doing their best to convince people to vote for them based on a demonstrated ability to empathize/channel how they are feeling.

Most candidates seek to acknowledge those frustrations and fears while trying to quickly pivot toward a more optimistic message along the lines of "We can do this. We always have." Trump represents a break with that approach. His strategy is to not only acknowledge the negative feelings coursing through the public but to stoke them. Trump's message, boiled down, is "You're angry. You should be angry. I am angry too. We shouldn't get less angry. What we should do is use that anger to take back the country we love."

It's a message that is uniquely well suited to our troubled times. When you don't believe or trust almost anyone or anything, a man willing to say exactly what he thinks at all times and damn the torpedoes is very very appealing.

Simply put: Donald Trump is the living breathing manifestation of where much of the country is right now. He is a mirror held up to all of us.

Wow, Civil rights did an enormous amount of damage to trust in government.

[Valmy]

Wow, Civil rights did an enormous amount of damage to trust in government.

Hey if the government refuses to protect you from the evils of miscegenation what good is it?

[jimmy olsen]

New Qunnipiac poll!

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/2016_republican_presidential_nomination-3823.html
   
        Trump 27   
        Carson 16
        Rubio 17   
        Cruz 16   
        Bush 5

[jimmy olsen]

If they're that scared of him, they deserve to lose.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/02/us/politics/wary-of-donald-trump-gop-leaders-are-caught-in-a-standoff.html?smid=tw-nytpolitics&smtyp=cur&_r=0

Wary of Donald Trump, G.O.P. Leaders Are Caught in a Standoff

By JONATHAN MARTINDEC. 1, 2015


WASHINGTON — For months, much of the Republican Party's establishment has been uneasy about the rise of Donald J. Trump, concerned that he was overwhelming the presidential primary contest and encouraging other candidates to mimic his incendiary speech. Now, though, irritation is giving way to panic as it becomes increasingly plausible that Mr. Trump could be the party's standard-bearer and imperil the careers of other Republicans.

Many leading Republican officials, strategists and donors now say they fear that Mr. Trump's nomination would lead to an electoral wipeout, a sweeping defeat that could undo some of the gains Republicans have made in recent congressional, state and local elections. But in a party that lacks a true leader or anything in the way of consensus — and with the combative Mr. Trump certain to scorch anyone who takes him on — a fierce dispute has arisen about what can be done to stop his candidacy and whether anyone should even try.

Some of the highest-ranking Republicans in Congress and some of the party's wealthiest and most generous donors have balked at trying to take down Mr. Trump because they fear a public feud with the insult-spewing media figure. Others warn that doing so might backfire at a time of soaring anger toward political insiders.

That has led to a standoff of sorts: Almost everyone in the party's upper echelons agrees something must be done, and almost no one is willing to do it.

With his knack for offending the very constituencies Republicans have struggled with in recent elections, women and minorities, Mr. Trump could be a millstone on his party if he won the nomination. He is viewed unfavorably by 64 percent of women and 74 percent of nonwhite voters, according to a November ABC News/Washington Post poll. Such unpopularity could not only doom his candidacy in November but also threaten the party's tenuous majority in the Senate, hand House seats to the Democrats and imperil Republicans in a handful of governor's races.

In states with some of the most competitive Senate contests, the concern is palpable, especially after weeks in which Mr. Trump has made a new series of inflammatory statements.

"If he carries this message into the general election in Ohio, we'll hand this election to Hillary Clinton — and then try to salvage the rest of the ticket," said Matt Borges, chairman of the Republican Party there, where Senator Rob Portman is facing a competitive re-election.

Pat Brady, the former state Republican chairman in Illinois, where Senator Mark S. Kirk is also locked in a difficult campaign, was even more direct. "If he's our nominee, the repercussions of that in this state would be devastating," Mr. Brady said.

Another Republican strategist in Ohio replied to an email asking about Mr. Trump's effect in the state by sending a link to a Wikipedia page on the 1964 congressional elections, when Barry Goldwater's presence atop the Republican ticket led the party to lose 36 House seats.

In Washington, many of the party's top operatives believe that there is no way even the strongest Senate candidates could overcome the tide if Mr. Trump were leading the ticket.

"Senator Portman is a great example I like to use when talking about this," said Brian Walsh, a Senate campaign veteran. "He's very well prepared, has tons of cash in the bank, and he got his campaign organized and up and running early. But if we nominate a bad presidential candidate like Trump, senators like Portman or Kelly Ayotte aren't going to be able to outrun Hillary by that much. And there goes the Senate."

Asked about concerns over Mr. Trump's potential influence on other contests, his spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, said, "I think the facts indicate the exact opposite is true," and emailed a link to a consumer marketing firm's assertion that Mr. Trump would ensure the highest general election turnout from Republicans, Democrats and independents alike.

Yet the clamor for a "Stop Trump" effort has become pervasive at the Senate's highest levels, where members up for re-election are realizing that they can no longer dismiss as strictly theoretical the possibility of his capturing the nomination. Mr. Trump's persistent ranking at or near the top of the polls is prompting urgent calls for an advertising assault to try to sink his campaign.

"It would be an utter, complete and total disaster," Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, himself a presidential candidate who has tangled with Mr. Trump, said of his rival's effect on lower-tier Republican candidates. "If you're a xenophobic, race-baiting, religious bigot, you're going to have a hard time being president of the United States, and you're going to do irreparable damage to the party."

Mr. Graham recounted separate phone calls with two of the party's most sought-after donors last week, people who he insisted not be named but who give tens of millions of dollars to Republicans every election year. He said they had expressed alarm at Mr. Trump's durability and asked what could be done.

"I said, 'If you care about the future of the Republican Party, and you want to have a viable Republican Party, you better start moving,'" Mr. Graham said. "If they don't push back, they'll have nobody to blame but themselves."

"There is not a bit of confusion among our members that if Donald Trump is the nominee, we're going to get wiped out," a prominent Republican senator said about Mr. Trump's effect on Senate races in states such as New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Pleading for an outside group to run ads highlighting, for example, people who lost their jobs because of some of Mr. Trump's business deals, the senator warned, "Until somebody with A, the money, and B, the incentive to step up comes along, I worry he kind of glides along unmolested."

But the same reason the senator insisted on anonymity explains why, just two months before the Iowa caucuses, there has been no such ad campaign: To step up in that way would be to invite the wrath of Mr. Trump, who relishes belittling his critics.

Two of the most potent financial networks in Republican politics, that of the hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer and another led by the industrialists Charles G. and David H. Koch, have each had preliminary conversations about beginning an anti-Trump campaign, according to strategists involved. But Mr. Trump has already mocked Mr. Singer and the Kochs, and officials linked to them said they were reluctant to incur more ferocious counterattacks.

"You have to deal with Trump berating you every day of the week," explained a strategist briefed on the thinking of both groups.

The sidelines are crowded. The Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson; the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; American Crossroads, the group led by Karl Rove; and Right to Rise, the "super PAC" supporting Jeb Bush, have no immediate plans to go after Mr. Trump, officials said.

The exceptions so far: The super PAC supporting the presidential bid of Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio has attacked Mr. Trump, but partly to gain attention and raise money. The Club for Growth, a conservative group, ran a short-lived and unsuccessful ad campaign against Mr. Trump in Iowa this fall but has limited resources.

Slowly, some members of the party's establishment are reckoning with the idea of a Trump ticket. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has cautioned its incumbents in blunt terms not to let themselves be linked to him.

But beyond sheer intimidation, some members of Congress worry that if the party's establishment went after Mr. Trump, it would only fuel his anti-Washington appeal.

"I think it would play into his hands and only validate him," said Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee. "A 'Stop Trump' effort wouldn't work, and it might help him."

And some Republicans repelled by Mr. Trump feel little urgency to attack him because, they say, he is preventing what they see as an even less desirable standard-bearer — Senator Ted Cruz of Texas — from consolidating the votes of hard-line conservatives.

"He's keeping Cruz where he is," Scott Reed, a veteran Republican strategist, said of Mr. Trump.

In the House, where the Republican majority is safer, there is less worry about Mr. Trump. While the most competitive Senate races are in swing states, many House districts tilt toward the right, and the populist fervor that is lifting Mr. Trump may also aid Republican candidates for those seats.

But there are also some Republicans who, while uneasy about Mr. Trump, believe that he could attract new voters to the party. "He may bring out people who don't usually vote, which could be helpful to some of my colleagues," said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine.

Yet Ms. Collins conceded that she had not fully thought through that notion. "I'm not up next year," she said, "so I don't have that dilemma."

[Syt]

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/12/trump-on-isis-we-have-to-kill-their-families.html?mid=facebook_nymag

Donald Trump: To Defeat ISIS Terrorists, We Need to Kill Their Families

On Wednesday morning, Republican front-runner Donald Trump revealed his big new idea for winning the war on terrorism: kill more women and children in the Middle East.

In an interview with Fox and Friends, Trump laid out his plans for defeating ISIS, beginning, as always, with his vow to "hit them like they've never been hit before." But when co-host Brian Kilmeade asked Trump about the risk of civilian casualties, the candidate's policy thinking became decidedly more innovative. At first, Trump pledged to do "his absolute best" to minimize civilian casualties. But then he seemed to have second thoughts.

"We're fighting a very politically correct war," Trump observed. "And the other thing with the terrorists — you have to take out their families. When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families! They care about their lives, don't kid yourselves. They say they don't care about their lives. But you have to take out their families."

The Fox News morning crew appeared slightly jarred by Trump's prescription, and co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck abruptly shifted the discussion to immigration — a topic on which the candidate's chief proposal is also, essentially, collective punishment.

A Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday morning shows that Trump remains Republican voters' top choice for commander-in-chief. At 27 percent support, the former reality star boasts a ten-point lead over his closest competitor, Florida senator Marco Rubio.

[Habbaku]

Sigh.

[DGuller]

Sigh.

Are you a terrorist family sympathizer?

[Valmy]

'Murica

[The Brain]

To a nice restaurant?

[Jacob]

Trump is on the record of being in favour of killing children?

Charming.