General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsJust an idea: what if Trump, right before the Iowa Caucus drops
laughs and says: fooled you. Just wanted to show you that anyone can do it.
Nah, just a dream.
napi21
(45,806 posts)We should all be egging him on. He will guarantee no Pub candidate will win the WH in 2016, and most likely will also increase our chances of winning back the Senate and the House!
ErikJ
(6,335 posts)to shatter the GOP or split their vote as 3rd party candidate.
CaliforniaPeggy
(149,727 posts)question everything
(47,544 posts)A WSJ op-ed
(snip)
Mr. Trump has gotten extraordinarily far based on free media plus a degree of self-funding that might come from petty cash. But he hasnt shown even the willingness to spend the $44 million that Mitt Romney spent on his failed 2008 effort. Running for president is expensivea billion-dollars-plus expensive, even with a party behind you, and its not clear that even with the nomination Mr. Trump would have the GOP behind him in any meaningful sense, its foot soldiers, its donors, its super PACs.
Mr. Trump claimed when he launched his campaign in June, Im not using donors. I dont care. Im really rich. But not only has he not dipped into capital, lending his campaign a mere $1.8 million through the third quarter. His capital is not as deep ($10 billion) as he lets on. Forbes and Bloomberg News put his wealth at $2 billion to $4 billion. And assets that he could reasonably convert to cash are even less. Bloomberg puts the figure as low as $70 million, less than what several candidates in the race (Bush, Clinton, Cruz) and their super PACs already have raised.
And running is about to become a lot more expensive. When the campaign goes national after Iowa and New Hampshire, Mr. Trump would have to spend money on TV ads. To participate in widespread primaries and a convention fight he would have to hire staff. Mr. Trump, from day one, has likely never been down with any of that.
He wont want to liquidate major holdings. He wont want to sign his name to nine-figure mortgages. Theres a reason other candidates have been fundraising for years. Mr. Trumps $3.7 million in unsolicited donations (average: $50) in the third quarter were nice, but these arent the makings of a major fundraising network even in the unlikely event that Mr. Trump could find an army of like-minded affluent Americans who want to support his campaign.
(snip)
To say Muslim immigration should be suspended until were sure we can tell who is a terrorist might seem reasonable on first glance. But the idea becomes insupportable when you remember there are one billion Muslims in the world, and that many important U.S. business leaders and entrepreneurs and professionals are immigrants and can hardly be barred from departing and returning on a routine basis.
In any case, his comments have become an opening. Already Mr. Trumps Middle Eastern business interests are under assault. He lost a few U.S. deals early on due to his slurs on Mexican-Americans. Now a handful of Silicon Valley biggiesthe CEOs of Apple, Facebook and Googlehave ventured criticism without mustering quite the courage to mention him by name.
What happens when important business partners start letting Mr. Trump know, publicly and noisily, they think hes doing serious damage to the country? By Mr. Trumps own inflated reckoning, most of his net worth resides in the value of his name.
Our guess is that Mr. Trump has always planned on being satisfied with making a splash and ventilating his high opinion of himself. He will rightly be able to claim that he gave neglected voters a voice and transformed the debate. Notice that he manages to maintain his jolly equanimity even when being vilified. He is not grimly on a mission as so many candidates are whose self-image is wrapped up in electoral success.
We could be wrong but the Trump effort is probably self-liquidating. Expect a glorious, Ive got better things to do than hang around with you losers exit just about the time he would have to start spending real money to keep going.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-ceiling-is-his-wallet-1450481374
oberliner
(58,724 posts)Promotes them all day and airs them during prime time at no cost to the Trump campaign.