If Trump were to hit 'birther jackpot' would he get elected?

@jlelandg, you said, ”...the question is if Obama proves the ‘birther’ movement to be true would it get him elected.” Do you mean, if Trump proves the ‘birther’ movement to be true, would it get him elected?”

I think it will be interesting to see the outcome of the Trump thing, since he seems persistent about it.

@bkcunningham Yes…but Obama would be proving them true as well (and I can’t edit the question anymore). I personally am not of the same conclusion Donald is wanting to espouse., but if he proves it, it would be major stuff.

Sure it would prove to be major stuff, but if that would get The Donald elected I would really feel sorry for the USofA. Anywho, wait to see what stuff will be found on Trump (who claims his life is an open book). Can you say mafioso~

No, I don’t think Trump would get elected under such a scenario. Obama would forestall further legal actions by declining to run for reelection. While the birthers would try to get everything he signed into law nullified, courts would refuse to hear the cases. This would outrage some, but most would consider any continued lawsuits to be an unnecessary distraction.

While Trump would be a hero to the birthers, they are merely a vocal minority. The Republicans would want to take advantage of the scandal and the lack of an incumbent to run a real candidate who had an actual chance to win a plurality of voters. They would most likely succeed, but it wouldn’t be Trump who they put forward. He’s not popular enough now, and “exposing” Obama would win him a lot of new enemies.

That said, Trump will eventually run for president, and I guarantee you he will win.

There is pretty much no chance of Trump getting elected. Most people don’t want to vote for him, they just want to enjoy the spectacle of him running. Plus, I really doubt he wants to be president – you aren’t as free to do what you want as president, you make no money (compared to what he’s used to making), and you have to shake hands with other people all the time.

No, but I am sure it would get him on the platform committee.

Since we have hard evidence to prove Obama was born in the US, the question should be asking whether Trumps insistance that Obama is foreign born will sink his candidacy.
Really, we have hard evidence.
We have a newspaper from Hawaii with a birth announcement. You can’t fake that.
But, since you have opened this up to an alternate universe scenerio, no. No victory by Trump there would change most peoples minds about him. He is a greedy, womanizing scalliwag.

Oh, good grief.

Obama’s now-deceased birth mother was an American citizen, ergo, he’s an American. Case closed.

I’d like to see ANYBODY focus on real issues if they want to run. I’m sick of these sideshows.

How are we going to get people working again when manufacturing is pretty much dead?

How can we make sure our people have adequate health care, have a roof over their heads and aren’t starving?

How can we rebuild our crumbling infrastructure?

How are we to keep our air and water clean?

How do we reduce our dependence on fossil fuels before everything runs out and people freak?

How do we make farm work attractive, then, so we don’t use illegal immigrants, if they’re so awful?

How do we shore up our schools so that people actually graduate high school with basic skills? I can’t believe there are people going into college, 4-year college, who can’t construct a goddamn sentence in their native language and don’t know basic algebra and geometry.

How do we close up loopholes so that corporations pay their fair share of taxes and don’t offshore their profits to escape those taxes? It’s bad enough that they’d probably pass those onto us via higher prices for goods and services, but they use the infrastructure as much as the rest of us and need to be responsible citizens.

How does any candidate propose to work with Congress and the states to help solve these problems? Going on TV and shrieking about where the dude who’s already serving was born is not helping.

You have to give it to the HAIR. He knows the best way to get attention is to do something delusional. He understands how the game in America is played. The crazier and dumber you are the more popular you will be. And if you are not being talked about then you hardly exist. Personally, If he thinks he has a real chance to be elected he is wrong. But he is his own person and this is America so he has a right to be wrong.

Here is the letter that Trump wrote to the NYT, which they cleverly published today (without a single refutation or comment).

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/opinion/lweb08trump.html?_r=2#

He is attempting to rebut the issues raised in a recent op-ed column by the redoubtable Gail Collins.

Trump is clueless; he doesn’t see that this epistle reinforces his grand-standing, bloviating, narcissism and delusional behavior. Rich he may be; presidential material never.

There is the nightmarish thought of Palin and Trump as a pair to be reckoned with.

@gailcalled It’s really hard to tell the difference between Trump and an internet troll based on that letter.

I know, but the good gray lady only publishes verifiable information. Have you heard of or read any of Trump “best sellers”? Does Trump leap to mind when you think about American fiction?

@gailcalled No, he comes to mind when I think of that crazy guy on the street corner yelling about end times and how the dollar scoop Chinese place ripped him off…

And, happily, here is Gail Collin’s rebuttal to The Donald’s rebuttal about her column that criticized him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/09/opinion/09collins.html

Compare her writing, reporting, and fact-checking skills to his.

I was ready for a laugh this morning.

This was a tactical error on Trump’s part, proving what I believed: He is not electable. Bad judgment.

My question: Would Trump fund his own campaign?

@Nullo my serious answer is yes since I doubt if he could raise enough money to run a very expensive campaign. My silly answer is no since he has no money set aside because his hair maintenance daily expenditure is enormous!

Although Donald trump is a narcissist, obnoxious, media-whore, he’s not dumb. Unless he’s making a giant political mistake, there’s some reason he’s pursuing this. I don’t know if he actually thinks Obama isn’t a U.S. citizen, if this is all a stunt to draw attention to his campaign, or something clever we don’t know yet (or may never know).

I’m just assuming he has an intelligent plan, but that could be a bad assumption. Usually these guys have a team of advisers discussing and calculating their public moves, so they pick and choose how to make their moves based on some consensus of the team for some rationale.

Personally, I really don’t care if Obama is a US citizen, and think the law that insists a president be a US citizen is irrelevant at this point. Being born here or not doesn’t guarantee or preclude certain positive or negative feelings about the US.

Hmm, well after reading the Gail Collins article @gailcalled linked, maybe I’m giving Trump’s intelligence too much credit.

@cockswain: I don’t think the law requiring Presidents to be born here has to do with their perceived positive or negative opinions regarding the US. I think it has more to do with how their strategy and loyalty might be different in case of a war. For example, if someone were Austrian he might do something irrational to avoid war with Austria, or might have a different strategy if we were at war with Austria, if it came down to it (just an example). Especially if that person still had family in the other country.

That’s a good point, and one I hadn’t considered when I wrote that. But in general, with the flattening of the planet due to global communication, I think it’s an archaic rule penned in a different time. The scenario you mention (and I know you don’t mean only Austria), is highly unlikely to occur, and I’d just prefer to have the best possible leader of all people on the planet.

@jca Austria? Schwarzenegger for President! Not.

Add me to the list of the people who think that there’s no way Trump would be elected. I don’t think he’s socially or fiscally conservative enough to appeal to much of the Republican party.

I agree Trump would suck too. I think he would try to run the nation like an efficient business, cutting what wasn’t making money. Businesses don’t have a lower class and retired people, and I don’t think he’d care for them as needed.

There is a rumor floating around (it came up on Bill Maher last night) that it says “Muslim” on The President’s birth certificate.
For the record, I think it’s all a bunch of horseshit.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but having ‘Muslim’ on a birth certificate does not designate the origin of birth. Even if one’s parents’ religion were included on a birth certificate, which I doubt is, it does not mean that the child will grow up with the same beliefs.

US birth certificates vary greatly by state. My birth certificate lists my mother by her maiden name and not her married name. It does not mean that they were not married.

We can start a rumor that it also says Nazi too.

1. Religions aren’t placed on birth certificates, and the Hawaii Department of Health has already confirmed that religion was not on the birth certificates in 1961.

2. Babies don’t have religions, so anything on the certificate would reflect choices made by the parents rather than the child.

3. The original birth certificate has been released. Photos of it can be seen here. Just because it hasn’t been passed around from American to American doesn’t mean it hasn’t been released.

@cockswain A competent political scientist could no doubt point out the places where he looks like one.

@all. I guess my “horseshit” comment didn’t make my point clear.

I’m actually hoping that it does say Muslim somewhere on it. (I know it doesn’t…) Then the real issue can be addressed, which is racism (what does one call racism of religion?). Force ignorance and bigotry out into the light, I say.

@Nullo I’m not getting you on this one. At the moment I think you’re asserting that there are reasonable ways to compare Obama to a Nazi. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt that you aren’t a corn-fed moron, so maybe you’re saying that a competent political scientist could compare any president to anything? Like Calvin Coolidge could be compared to a Marxist, or Garfield like a Viking? Sort of the way a statistician can manipulate the data to persuade people to believe an intellectually dishonest conclusion?

Maybe you’re making a joke? I don’t know.

These days, a lot of people seem think that the Constitution is bullshit.
What would it matter if Trump hit the birther jackpot?
I suspect it would be ignored, because people who wanted to make an issue of it would be called racist.
And then life would go on.

@cockswain I’ve worked for businesses, and me with a college education, that had lower classes and retired people. LOL, just saying.

Sure. But you get what I’m saying. The goal of a nation and a business are not the same.

I know what you were saying. Just being silly and razing you some for calling me British Knights. It dates you (and me for knowing what you meant). I agree with you on the goal of a nation and a business not being the same. But I, like you I bet, want my money spent wisely. If that is having a business sense, I’m for that much.

It appears few took the hypothetical route on this. Thanks I guess?

How many times have you ever asked a question and gotten strictly the sorts of responses you were hoping for? That’s how it has gone as long as I’ve been here, and likely will stay that way.