On Liberty. (And Ohio.)
“We are Liberty students who are disappointed with President Falwell’s endorsement and are tired of being associated with one of the worst presidential candidates in American history,” the statement said. “Donald Trump does not represent our values and we want nothing to do with him. … He has made his name by maligning others and bragging about his sins. Not only is Donald Trump a bad candidate for president, he is actively promoting the very things that we as Christians ought to oppose.”
The Liberty University student manifesto against Trump comes as college Republican groups across the country reconsider support for the candidate. On Tuesday the University of Virginia College Republicans announced that the group voted to rescind its endorsement of his candidacy for president. The chairman of the College Republicans at Hampden-Sydney College, Tanner Beck, posted a statement on Facebook noting that Trump “has gone from simply being an embarrassment to our party, to a potentially permanent stain on our brand and our country.”
— Liberty University students protest association with Trump, T. Rees Shapiro and Sarah Pulliam Bailey, Washington Post
I think the most significant part of this is that while it took the sexual-assault and voyeurism revelations of the last week to decide to break with their leaders, they had, apparently in large numbers, concluded long ago that Trump should not become president. They’d been deeply offended by his maligning of groups and individuals.
There is, in other words, the same chasm in certain respects between millennial evangelicals and other evangelicals as there has been between millennials generally and older people generally.
Even more significant is the dramatic swing in Ohio in the last two weeks among blue-collar traditional Democrats (and also apparently some blue-collar Republicans), away from Trump and toward Clinton. It has escalated since the disclosure of the Access Hollywood video and continues to gain as more revelations come out.
But the tide there turned with the publication of those three pages from his 1995 federal income tax return, as its dual meaning became clear: Trump suffered yuge business losses because of a series of awful business decisions, and he parlayed those losses into no federal income tax liability under the Tax Code for 18 years. The revelations which led to actual news media focus on his massive-gifts-to-multimillionaires tax proposal.
Trump is left with his base. And not much more. But for some supporters, at Ieast the Rust Belt, the break came with the tax revelation, before the before the videotape was published. This matters for what happens in Washington after the election. At least is certainly should.
I renew this suggestion to the Clinton campaign, and suggest it now also to Dem Senate and House candidates.
“[He] parlayed those losses into no federal income tax liability under the Tax Code for 18 years.”
Really? How did YOU get hold of his tax returns?
I didn’t. He admitted to it at both debates. Something about it making him smart, at the first debate. I can’t remember the line from the second one, but it was there.
He’s not disputing it, Warren.
Oh. Now I remember the line from the second debate: “Of course I did. Of course I did.” And there was his claim that Warren Buffett and George Soros took the same provision in the tax code that he did, and did so for losses even larger–much larger, he said–than his.
I’m tempted to say that I got a copy of Trump’s tax returns from the same source that gave him copies of Buffett’s and Soros’s. But I won’t.
Two lines for Clinton:
1. “You claimed to be so smart for not paying Federal income taxes for 18 years or so. Was it ‘smart’ to run a business into the ground and lose almost a billion diollars?”
2. “You say you can’t release your tax returns because your’re under audit and no lawyer worth is salt would let you do it. Besides the many other reasons that’s a bogus explanation — [Buffet, other opinions on why it’s phony, it’s your decision, not your lawyer’s] — think about it: You’re saying that maintaining your legal position against the IRS is more important than the right of the American people to see your tax returns and consider this information to decide whether they should vote for you as President of the United States.”
[Every Presidential candidate since Richard Nixon has made his or her tax returns public. Bill and I have released our returns for [40?] years. Since Bill left public office, we have made very good money — not remotely as much as you claim — but we have also paid millions in Federal income and other taxes, and we have made millions of dollars in contributions. What have you done with your alleged billions?]
538 analysis on the bifurcation between Clinton for president and Democratic senate control chances in their model.
Maybe these young’n should reconsider their conservatism. This idea that it’s only Trump is just further delusion.
“[We] have made millions of dollars in contributions.”
Shouldn’t big-government liberals be giving that money to the government, not to charities (which do not spend the money as wisely, of course) and then deducting it from their taxes so the Big Government they want to tax us for gets even less of their money?
Warren,
Do you really believe that, or is it campaign sarcasm?
The Warren Buffet as guest idea is a great one. How about Bernie and Elizabeth Warren also show up squarely in her corner? Think how many millions more wavering millenials would see that instead of the few thousand at a speech somewhere.
Buffet there would give Hillary the opening for hitting her support for the “Buffet Rule” heavily — with the point being made that it would make it harder for Donald to avoid (“do all your usual contortions that aren’t available to most Americans to get around”) paying a fair share of taxes.