Amen!!

+1

He's a pragmatist that would betray your natural rights in a heartbeat if it meant making a "good deal".

Empty suit. Big mouth. Looter. Clown.
If there is to be any return to liberty, it won't be due to Trump.
The entire political system and the culture that it rewards must be killed by the sovereign people.

I suppose that is one interpretation. Another would be as I've described above.

Collective? Didn't you change the channel to the wrong station?

He's a gadfly. With his past record of having been a Democrat and giving money to the Clintons, I couldn't trust him any more than I trust Hillary. He's that "man on a white horse" we've been warned about. He'll say anything to gain attention and then reverse himself the next day. Sound like anyone else you know? I do like the fact that his politically incorrect approach is scaring the hell out of everyone.

Trump has little chance as a candidate, but raises issues voters care about and demand the other candidates address. Perhaps best of all, he doesn't hold back and he doesn't back down, refreshing in an environment where his opponents seem to have no back at all.

Be careful using the word "God" you might get pounced on and verbally excoriated, by some who get very "vocal" with any term that even in the remotest sense indicates what the word "God" implies.

Nicely played. :-)

Since we are all guessing, my guess is that Trump does not want the restrictions and knee bending that goes with the presidency, BUT, he is forcing the bland, un thinking electorate to discuss real points of contention and think...best of all he has no religious fervor to interfere with America...We do not need religion in our government. He could do no worse than the community organizer our 47% sent us.

Are you suggesting that the current temporary office holder is dignified????

Perhaps he has the maturity to accept his growth with respect to his ideas,,,called learning.

I like Trump's straight talk, saying what should be said. However, I do not trust him. He once was quite a supporter of Hillary in what he said at the time. How can you trust someone who was wiling to be bailed out of bankruptcy because the government said he was too big to fail? He made a flippant rmark that he might choose Oprah as a running mate early on, another big Obama supporter. However, Hillary is a definite disaster and Bush is more one world march to the end of the US as we know it.

Trump & West!! From your lips to GOD's ears!!

I would want to see more policy proposals from Trump before evaluating his candidacy. However, I do very much like the fact that he is in the race, because he is forcing the other Republican candidates to abandon their tell-the-people-what-they-want-to-hear strategies and to directly confront issues, such as immigration, that they would prefer to avoid taking a firm stand on at this point in their campaigns.

I stand with Rand, but I love the hell Trump has whipped up in the establishment Big Government Party. My understanding of Trump is he is a crony-capitalist and made his money more from the aristocracy of pull than from being a good businessman. I have not checked this out, but it fits with his inconsistent, apparently unprincipled, statements.

BTW, Ron Paul’s new book is excellent.

I'll continue to stand with Rand

Ditto. Trump is saying what conservatives want to hear, and everything that liberals believe makes conservatives insensitive, mean, haters.
I believe he's a shill for the Crypt Keeper.

While I find his messages refreshing, I have a hard time supporting someone who does not seem to have a consistent set of core values.

My perception is that Trump is an opportunist, one who does what is convenient at the moment. If you look at his record over the past 10 years or so, he is now FOR things he railed AGAINST in the past, and vice versa.

Trump reminds me of Perot's campaign. Both attracted a lot of interest for the same reasons. Both have had accomplishments outside of politics which gave them some credibility as they baldly state that the emperor has no clothes, refusing to pander to the evasive "diplomacy" of the Washington establishment and appealing to many common sense objections. But that isn't enough for serious debate, let alone enough to be president. Perot turned out to be a kook and quickly fell out of favor, and Trump isn't much different.

Trump seems to understand almost nothing about most of the politically imposed problems we are suffering under, or the proper political principles of what American government is supposed to be to solve and reverse them. He has yet to affirm the rights and freedom of the individual as the central foundation of the country, urging instead and ability to "make deals".

With an anti-philosophical, unprincipled "pragmatism" he dramatically shoots from the hip, often on topics he hasn't bothered to investigate or think about, sometimes striking a nerve and sometimes off the deep end, as when he recently completely misrepresented and attacked Pamela Geller when she was threatened with terrorist murder for sponsoring a cartoon contest deemed blasphemy by the Islamo fascists. He has inconsistently previously been for amnesty of illegal aliens and is infamous for using eminent domain for removing people from their homes for parking lots for his business. Could that kind of mentality defend property rights against statism?

That kind of mind is no solution to the problems of the country no matter how well he handles politically correct reporters in a campaign of self-assurance that delights those who don't look any deeper than their own amusement.

On the basis of a much narrower success in business he speaks as if he can buy off every problem through the shear drama and loudness of his narcissist personality in the name of "common sense" formed by a hodge podge of the obvious mixed with destructive conventionalism. He arrogantly tells us he "knows all the smart people", and loudly obsesses over making "deals" as the alleged solution to everything -- with no regard for 'deals' for what end purpose and at what cost, or what principles, if any, are held by his "smart people".

Trump's populist appeal as he bashes Washington politicians brings negelcted topics to the front that ought to be discussed and debated, but he doesn't know how to do it himself. He didn't even know how to defend his own position calling the bluff of "McCain the War Hero" and its use for moral intimidation. In the face of establishment rejection and misrepresentation of many of his statements he is only leaving the best of them unanswered as he puts an albatross of public embarrassment around the neck of those who can and who would like to discuss them but who don''t have the public access he does. "A bad argument is worse than none."

He has no more insight and understanding than the pompous blowhard Chris Christy. Both of them are demagogues. This intellectual vacuum only adds to the danger of both the leftist ideologues and the establishment conservatives, who offer nothing but a desire to manage the progressively advancing statism under the mentality of "me too but slower" as their moral response to the collectivist left. Trump is one variety of the man on the white horse in an intellectual vacuum that Ayn Rand warned against.

Well said. Add Allan West and go for it.

I personally believe that Trump is a spoiler. As others have said he is breaking down the politically correct walls. All the other candidates being politicians are being loyal to the GOP leadership. Unfortunately, that leadership has failed it constituency a lot in recent years. This past election they ran on anti-immigration and dismantling the Affordable Healthcare Act (Obamacare). And as soon as they get the mandate from the electorate to do just that, quickly bowed down to the Washington status quo and dropped it all. So I believe Trump is tapping this group of people who feel let down by the people they thought would do what they wanted.
Now Trump, I believe, has a snowballs chance in hell of getting the presidency. He will, however, cause the GOP candidates to move towards him in their campaigning and hopefully it will stick, so whomever gets the nomination and perhaps the win, will actually walk into Washington and put the people's wishes before those of the powers that be currently.

I would hope that The Gulch, which supports the principles of Ann Rand (who stood against government corruption), would support a candidate like Donald Trump.

He's refreshing in at least one respect: He says what he thinks and he won't back down. This is the example he's setting for the rest of the field that they need to figure out. Americans are sick of hearing great-sounding things from Republicans during a campaign, then seeing them cave in when it comes time to realize those ideals. But I don't really trust him. He's a real-estate tycoon, which to me means he's been dealing with politicians for his entire career, lobbying for permissions to build his various projects. So is he really a capitalist, or a crony capitalist?

The candidate in the field that I think has done the best in translating thought to action is Scott Walker. He didn't back down when the teacher's union got all nasty in Wisconsin. FINALLY a Republican with a backbone!

I like Carly Fiorina in that she is the Official Republican Shrillary Clinton Criticizer. And she's the only candidate that I have heard saying that government needs to get smaller, and taxes need to go down.

Establishment types like Graham, Pataki, Christie, and Bush I don't think are the kind of leader the country needs now. Maintaining the status quo in Washington now just keeps the country on the path to economic disaster. They'll get in there and make a show of cutting back or reforming a few entitlement programs, but they'll really just be playing in the rickety house that Dimocrat policies have built.

I shy away of voting for Senators who have no record of pushing major pieces of (good) legislation into law, which is about the only yardstick there is for measuring the executive ability in the Senate. Junior Senators like Paul, Cruz, and Rubio make good points ideologically, but can they really get things done? I could see Rubio as VP candidate, and a strong presidential candidate in 2024.

Ultimately Mr. Trump can't be trusted as a contender (I think). But what he is doing is showing the mealy mouthed cowardly republicans the right way, and the right platform to do it.

I.E. Donald Trump has latched on to Illegal Immigration being the single biggest problem this country faces (and it is), while the rest of the field is caught in a circle jerk trying to be the first one to grant them amnesty thinking that this will "un-liberal" the liberal illegal aliens and make them vote for us. America wants the illegal immigrants kicked out. They don't want amnesty. They don't want reform. They want every single piece of third world scum kicked out, and Trump is showing the Republican party that this is what the people want.

Secondly, Trump is showing the Republican party that the people are tired of pussy Republicans abasing themselves before the Democrats, thinking that politeness will somehow show the lying Democrat con artists as lying con artists. Americans are responding with enthusiasm when someone finally calls a Spade a Spade... Kicks out liberal News-papers from his event who think that they can lie about him, and then demand to participate as "journalists..." Points out a "journalist's" lies to his face... Americans are loving it that someone is finally standing up and saying "A is A". Now whether he believes it or not is a separate issue. But the fact is that Trump has been walking the walk (in this race), talking the talk, and is so far out ahead of everyone that the Republicans should be kissing his ass, and, more importantly, sitting down to take notes.