Good comment. Sorry someone down voted. I voted you back up. I am referring to blackswan's comment.
Edit: clarity

"in fact brags about all of the politicians he's bought, including Hillary Clinton"
This is very powerful to me. It's hard for politicians to criticize money in politics when they need to participate in it to get elected. Trump comes right out and says that he contributes to politicians and they do what he wants. He brings the problem out in the open in way everyone can understand.

The difference is in the fact that Trump denies nothing he's justly criticized for, while our current "Dear Leader" hides his records and denies he's said things that are on the record. The difference is between being unashamed, and having no shame.

There's a certain brand of American populism, going all the way back to Andrew Jackson, but the brand was more characterized by William Jennings Bryan, where the well being of the nation's citizenry as a whole is the focus. Long's message was almost entirely focused on economic well-being. The fact he was very much a socialist is a disconnect in comparing him to Trump, but he had a similar flair for controversial statements.

For Hitler, the appeal was almost entirely to race, more like Louis Farrakhan. Hitler didn't think of Jews as a religion or social element, but as a poison racial element.

Trump's statements about Muslims aren't focused on race (Muslims come in all racial flavors), but on a concern followers of that religion have an undue percentage of violence-prone participants. Nothing in the Constitution demands that America has to accept all who want to come here, and Presidents in the past have restricted entry for a variety of reasons.

Don't vote for evil.
Anyone who is selected by the statist party (R|D) is evil, corrupted, co-opted. It either wins, we lose, so don't consent. Check your premises. A=A.
If she was alive, Rand would be writing scathing editorials in the Objectivist against all these pretender puppets.

I didn't know about Binswanger's immigration views.
early on, I thought that Jindal might be a great pres,
but the list got so long and he entered so late that I
lost hope. . and there are people here in the gulch who
think that Carly is a bad choice. . but maybe she has
changed? -- j
.

you mentioned "one of our insiders" like you had someone
in mind -- Our Insiders might be a short list starting with
Yaron Brook except that I read that he's Israeli ... so, who
else? . Harry Binswanger? . where's Galt when we need him? -- j
.

But the old money will keep pushing for Bush III

I know you're saying it's not what it looks like to Democrats: "the overwhelming bulk of non-Democrat American voters is a pack of "Idiocracy"-caliber simpletons" But what is it? Could the polls be biased? Could Trump and Democrats be using their connections to somehow tinker with the polls?

What I remember was. "it's 3 am (showing a child sleeping)... When 3 am actually came around, not only was she not around, but she let 4 Americans die, and then lied about it. That was worse than Johnson and McNamara putting us in harm's way for no good purpose. She's done, as far as I'm concerned. As for Trump, if he wins, he's much more likely to be there at 3 am than any, or at least most, of the others, just because that's the way he is. He's not going to let someone else outstage him; his ego won't take that. I also think he'll get rid of more of Obama's abominations than any of the others. Why? If he wasn't there, virtually ALL of the issues that are currently being discussed wouldn't have been discussed at all. He's highlighting many of the problems that we face; notice that none of the others are being proactive enough to bring up any issues other than the ones he brings up. Where are their platforms?!? They're all reacting to him. A platform can't be made of just tax reform. Obama has done so much damage in so many places, that you could virtually shoot in any direction and hit something that needs fixing. No one is doing that. THAT's why Trump has a good shot a winning, bombast and all. Anyone who is going to let Hillary win, because he doesn't like the alternative, because it isn't "pure" enough, will rue the day. THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE, and until there is, you play the hand you're dealt. Just as you steer an aircraft carrier around a little at a time, so you must steer this country around, a little at a time. That's what the "progressives" did. It took them over 100 years to get here. They did it a little at a time. If you think that some "pure" objectivist is going to jump out of a cake and turn everything around, then you're the problem.

After espousing center-Left views and bankrolling hard-Left candidates his entire life (and for someone who's made his fortune via the careful management of money, the people to whom he donates that money has to be a reflection of his deepest values,) the world may never know whether Trump just had a comprehensive change of ideology, or whether he's a Democrat saboteur, charged with the task of making a circus of the first Republican primary with a decent lineup of actual Republicans since election year 1984.

What's clear is that one of two things is true. Either a.) the overwhelming bulk of non-Democrat American voters is a pack of "Idiocracy"-caliber simpletons, or b.) the Republican rank-and-file voters have utterly lost control of the primary process of their own party. Neither of which is a particularly appealing scenario.

Like a lot of people here, I was a Day One Tea Partier - actually a lifelong Tea Partier, when you consider that the Tea Party is just a synonym for "core Republican." The two animating issues that gave rise to the Tea Party phenomenon were a.) backlash against the spectacle that was the Dodd / Frank mortgage corporatism and the Bush / Paulson / Bernanke bailout of same, and b.) the shocked realization that the Republican Party had become infiltrated with a veritable cancer - metastasizing and malignant - of RINOism. It's demand was simple: Eradicate both problems.

Trump is a perfect poster-boy for corporatism (he's openly boasted about it at every one of the debates thus far,) and for RINOism (see: his political record, up to the point where he decided to start calling himself a Republican.)

Yet here we are in December of 2015, and "the polls" tell us that this anti-Republican juggernaut is "the frontrunner."

True, even a single week is an eternity within a campaign, and nobody can predict what will happen between now and the convention - but we've got saturation-media promotion of Trump and a near-total Spike of Cruz, of Fiorina, of Paul, of Rubio - to say nothing of the "second-tier" candidates like Jindal.

I don't know whether to believe the polls - if they're accurate then the Tea Party influence on Republicanism is deceased, along with Republicanism itself - or whether to think this whole Trump circus is an elaborate "monkeywrenching" of the most promising Republican primary in thirty years.

The entire spectacle is profoundly disheartening. Trump would almost certainly be less catastrophic for the country as President than Clinton or Sanders - in the short term. But his unfocused hash of generally noxious beliefs, his shocking shallowness on foreign policy issues (have a look at Robert Tracinski's quote of the second debate transcript, in his article "Has the Real Republican Frontrunner Just Stood Up?") and his utter obliviousness to the Constitution mean that he would accomplish little or nothing of what must be accomplished (the rollback of entire swaths of big government,) and is precisely not what the country needs in a President at this point in history.

I can only hope that worthy candidates like Cruz and Fiorina can step up their game and blow through that monolithic media blackout, and that this imposter Trump will fade deservedly. Paul disqualifies himself every time he opens his mouth on national defense, so I'm thinking he's of far greater value in Congress (where voting wrong on one issue is vastly outweighed by voting right on dozens of others.) Rubio, like Fiorina, would be a longshot - and he's too much of a "nice guy" personality for the hard-nosed decisions the 2017 President will need to be making on a daily basis. Jindal is an also-ran with zero chance of getting anywhere.

If the situation ca. 12-10-15 is any indication of what will happen in Cleveland next July, then I will be throwing my vote on a write-in, and thereafter giving up on politics. If we've descended to the level where Donald Trump is the only option in opposition to the national socialism of a Clinton or Sanders, then there is no hope for this country. The situation reminds me of the dire assessment Peikoff did in "Ominous Parallels" in his discussion of American education: American kids' heads are being filled with pure poison, and "we are arguably at the point of no return" as a consequence. (He wrote this in 1982, before the rise of "PC," multiculturacism and "speech codes.")

So...if Trump gets the nomination, what then? Vote for Clinton, or abstain. Or Bernie Sanders? It's Sophie's choice.
Rand Paul has as much chance to get the nomination as my beagle. So, do we settle for someone who espouses at least partially, rationality. Who do you recommend? Cruz? Rubio?

I fear you're right. I think we'd all love to see a smart, principled, businessman take over the political reins. Trump is not that guy. Plus, once he got his hands on those reins, he will conveniently forget about we the people and become me the Trump. not once have I heard him relate seriously to the Constitution.

but one of our insiders doesn't have a snowball's chance
to win, and a "no confidence" vote isn't available here
like it is in other countries. . ergo, Hillary. -- j
.