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Another pathetic 'pivot' by Trump

By Georgia Logothetis
Friday Aug 19, 2016 · 6:24 AM CST



Another day, another promise of a Donald Trump “pivot”...this time, we’re to believe that his “regret” of unspecified comments on the campaign trail will mean something. It won’t. Donald Trump’s pivots have a blink-of-an-eye half-life, and his hiring of Breitbart’s Steve Bannon should snuff out any hope that Trump will aim to please more than his Alex Jones/build-the-wall share of the electorate.

As Eugene Robinson at The Washington Post explains:

Trump’s decision to throw in with the likes of Bannon can only increase the probability of a GOP debacle. Does it have to be spelled out for you in neon lights, Republicans? Trump could not care less about the party, and he would happily destroy it to feed his own ego.

Bannon, likewise, appears to view the party of Lincoln as merely a vehicle for his own ambition, which is to nurture and grow a nationalist-right movement. His website is as critical of the Republican establishment as it is of the Democrats. He has no interest in making Trump more palatable to the general electorate. Like all would-be revolutionaries, he first wants to heighten the contradictions within the system he ultimately seeks to destroy.

It was perhaps foolish of me to hope that very many Republican elected officials would reject Trump on principle. But now, perhaps, more will do so for reasons of self-preservation.

Here’s John Cassidy’s take at The New Yorker:

What better way to mark the news that the head of Breitbart.com, the alt-right news site, is now running Donald Trump’s campaign than with a conspiracy theory? And, unlike some of the conspiracy theories that appear on Breitbart, this one might actually be true.

The theory making the rounds is that Trump’s latest campaign reshuffle isn’t really about trying to win the election. In bringing in Steve Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News, and recruiting Roger Ailes, the disgraced former head of Fox News, as an adviser, Trump is making a business play: he’s laying the groundwork for a new conservative media empire to challenge Fox. [...]

The appointment of Bannon isn’t merely another affront to establishment Republicans, such as Paul Ryan, whom Breitbart News has lately been targeting. It is an acknowledgment by Trump that he no longer has any interest in modifying his strategy to appeal to college-educated voters in places like the suburbs of Philadelphia and Milwaukee, where he is running miles behind where Mitt Romney was in 2012. Instead, he has decided to retreat to his base, which is a surefire recipe for political failure. But not necessarily business failure.

Conservative Michael Brendan Dougherty at The Week:

Breitbart had been thriving as the volunteer press shop of the Trump campaign, singing his praises, running exclusive interviews with him, and running down his internal enemies in the Republican Party. But now, instead of letting itself be used by the Trump campaign, it will simply run the thing itself. Much more convenient that way. Trump is now the clickbait candidate: Check out this video of kids playing the knockout game. Pls fwd, then vote Trump/Pence.

This move should go over like a lead balloon with Paul Ryan and other Republicans who bit the bullet in the last few months and endorsed their party's nominee. Breitbart under Bannon's leadership openly disdained GOP orthodoxies and made no secret that it wished to destroy the near-enemy within the conservative camp before turning on Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. [...] at some point, elected Republicans let themselves be henpecked by media personalities who have no real interest in ever implementing these ideas in the long term.

At The New York Times, Thomas Kaplan analyzes Trump’s nonspecific statement of “regret”:

Mr. Trump’s statement of regret, in a prepared speech in which he spoke of a “New American Future,” seemed to be a step toward trying to recover from a number of public quarrels and other episodes that have damaged his campaign, including a dispute with the family of an American Muslim soldier who was killed in Iraq.

But in his speech, which he read off a teleprompter, he did not specify what he regretted, offer specific apologies or linger on the subject. In his campaign, Mr. Trump has at times sounded restrained and on-message, only to quickly revert to his more pugilistic nature.

And, on a final note, Steven Shepard at POLITICO surveys GOP insiders, and the reaction is about as bad as you would expect:

Donald Trump says this week’s dramatic campaign overhaul will put his presidential bid on the right path, but GOP leaders in key battleground states aren’t buying it.

Fewer than a third of Republican members of The POLITICO Caucus — a panel of activists, strategists and operatives in 11 key battleground states — believe Trump’s reshuffling will move the campaign in the right direction. Just as many, 31 percent, say the installation of Breitbart News executive Stephen Bannon as campaign CEO and pollster Kellyanne Conway as campaign manager, represent a turn for the worse.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/8/19/1561756/-Abbreviated-pundit-roundup-Another-pathetic-pivot-by-Trump


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