Is Trump about to pull Perot II, in two acts?

The thing about Trump and Perot is that most people making the comparison miss an important point. And that is the two distinct acts of Ross Perot in 1992. The primary season tease and withdrawal, and then the summer and fall reentry.

It is obvious that Trump gives no serious consideration to any pledge not to run as an independent he made to a political party that nakedly extorted it out of him.  But Trump is all about leveraging his brand advantage, and making a business play out of this fake presidential run that enhances it, so how would imitating Perot next year fit into that mindset?

Trump has been running casually as a "Republican" so far in order to take out JEB! Bush. He appears to have succeeded in that, as Bush's negatives are way up, his poll number are in the toilet, and his plutocrat string pullers and money men are telling him to shape up and start getting really nasty (like his father and brother), or the money will dry up. 

Trump may soon drop out and hope JEB! stays taken out, and if JEB! manages to come back and buy the Republican nomination, Trump may jump back in next year as an independent. That would seem the logical choice for him, and his brand. 

Trump cannot win the GOP nomination, and dropping out while he still leads in polls using some phony excuse (business emergencies, etc.) prevents him from being embarrassed by not winning any (or many) primaries or caucuses.  No brand damage. Then if the general election winds up being Bush and Clinton, he can get back in, buy ballot access with his money, and get probably at least 20-25 percent of the vote in a low interest dynastic contest. Then he can claim he is a "winner" by pointing out he did better than Perot, better in fact than any independent since Teddy Roosevelt in 1912, and he might be able to make JEB! Bush the worst performing Republican nominee (by popular vote) since Taft in 1912: worse than Hoover in 1932 and worse than Goldwater in 1964. By Trump brand standards, he would be a big "winner."

Plutocracy Alert: JEB! Bush funded by George Soro's Chinese business partner

See that flag behind me?  Made in China! Where your job will soon be headed.
So GET IN LINE, and vote JEB!... I love Jesus, and IT'S MY TURN!!!!

(Breitbart News) - Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush’s oil shipping business is partly financed by progressive billionaire George Soros’s Chinese business partner and protégé.

Bush’s ties to the left-wing Democratic donor could cast further suspicion on his personal business dealings during the Republican primary season.

Bush is the chairman of BH Logistics, a $26 million private equity fund that was incorporated in April 2014. Who invested in BH Logistics?

Bush’s firm received a major investment from HNA Group, a Chinese private equity firm. Bush took the money from HNA Group and spent it to invest in the gas shipping company Dorian LPG, which is incorporated in the Republic of The Marshall Islands.

What is HNA Group? And more importantly, who funds it?

Look no further than George Soros. Read more.

The dangerous precedents of a JEB! Bush presidency

(The Hill) - ...Bush was born with a presidential spoon in his mouth. The establishment choice. The name you know. He's doing well enough in the polls to pull out a victory, and he certainly won't run into any cash-flow problems.

Every current living Republican to serve as president is a Bush. Is that how it should remain in perpetuity? Why not? The infrastructure is there. The donors are there. The Bush name seems to be a powerful path to the White House. But should it be? Every election we hear Republican after Republican compare themselves to President Reagan. If a Republican makes a mistake or holds a view considered too liberal by the base, the only escape hatch is that Reagan did it too or Reagan believed the same thing.

If one of Reagan's sons were running for president, he wouldn't have to go around assuring everyone that he was his own man. Nobody would want him to be his own man! They’d all want him to be Dutch II. Nothing would befit our current culture more than a sequel or reboot of a White House classic.

No Republican candidate compares themselves to a Bush — they try to separate themselves from Bushes. When someone tosses a Bush comparison at them, they do their best impression of the Heisman trophy and give it the stiff arm. If the first two are underwhelming, why do we need a trilogy?

Great men in American history set precedents that didn't benefit them personally but helped create American exceptionalism.

George Washington could have served as president for the rest of his life. There were no term limits back then. Instead, he served two terms and walked away, allowing power to peacefully transfer from one leader to another...

Adams was defeated in a nasty election after one term as president. The electors voted to replace Adams the Federalist with Thomas Jefferson the Democratic-Republican. As partisanship goes, Adams believed the ideology of the Democratic-Republicans was a danger to the union. Even in that belief, Adams, commander in chief of the Army, allowed for the peaceful transition of power from one political party to another.

Bush has the opportunity to be like those Founding Fathers and set an important precedent. He could say, "I have all the resources to keep the presidency in the Bush family again, but that goes against the ethos of the American Revolution. It goes against the spirit of American democracy. The presidency is not meant to be passed monarchy-style from father to son to brother."

Bush can serve his country best by stepping aside. He knows that. His own mother, Barbara Bush, said in 2013 when all the 2016 speculation started, "We've had enough Bushes."

Jeb Bush should listen to his mother and bow out. If not, primary voters should listen to her and cast their vote against the informal monarchy a political dynasty imposes on us. Read more.

Jeb Bush is erasing history: Why his comments about Black Americans are even worse than you thought

(Salon) - Ronald Reagan, the scourge of Black America and the hero of the Republican Party, holds great sway over today’s conservatives. Reagan famously talked about black “welfare queens” and strapping young “bucks” as a way of mining white racial resentment to win over white voters. Decades later, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney would echo Reagan’s politics of white racial resentment and grievance mongering when he was recorded warning donors about the “47 percent” of Americans who “believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing.”

Last week, Jeb Bush joined that company when he said the following during a campaign stop in South Carolina:

Think about it this way, Republicans get 4 to 7 percent of the African-American vote… If you double that, you win elections in Ohio, Virginia. And we should make that case, because our message is one of hope and aspiration. It isn’t one of division, “Get in line, we’ll take care of you with free stuff.” Our message is uplifting, that says, “You can achieve earned success. We’re on your side.”

These statements are not gaffes: They are choices made by Republicans in the post-civil rights era (along with, yes, some “New Democrats”) to use centuries-old stereotypes about lazy black people to win over white voters. Racist stereotypes about “productive” white people (who are “good citizens”) and “lazy” and “unproductive” black and brown people (deemed “unfit” for democracy) are one of the pillars for a society that is built upon institutional white supremacy. Read more.

JEB! Bush Got $100,000 From Washington ‘Redskins’ Owner, Says Team Name Not Offensive

(thinkprogress.com) - Former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) said on a Sirius XM interview this week that, despite numerous calls from Native American groups to do so, he does not believe the Washington NFL team needs to change its name.

“I don’t think it should change it,” the Republican presidential hopeful said on the The Arena. “But again, I don’t think politicians ought to be having any say about that, to be honest with you. I don’t find it offensive. Native American tribes generally don’t find it offensive.”

The Washington Redskin’s owner, Daniel Snyder, has vowed that the team willnever change its name, even as Native American activists have objected to the dictionary-defined racial slur...

Snyder also happens to be helping bankroll Bush’s presidential campaign. In April, he contributed $100,000 to the Right to Rise Super PAC, a legally unaffiliated pro-Bush committee for which Bush himself actively raised money. Read more.

JEB! Bush family values: meth and dirty tricks

(whowhatwhy.org) - Yes, I know that Jeb Bush is doing poorly in the Republican primary polls at the moment. But the public is fickle and unpredictable. Plus, it is generally unwise to count out someone with the kind of money, organization, and family that he has.

I’ll have more to say on that subject in the near future, but for now, On with the Bush Show….

I have long been fascinated with how that clan has been able to ride the wave of public indignation over “abandoning traditional values” while shilling for some of the most values-deficient practices imaginable. So I was intrigued to learn that Jeb Bush’s campaign manager has a track record of making money from some pretty questionable clients. Read more.

Trump's tax plan clearly lays out his real goal: He is a Manchurian Candidate out to destroy the Party of Bush

There has been a lot of speculation about why Donald Trump is running a fake campaign for president. Now Trump himself revealed the actual reason when he unveiled his tax plan yesterday. He is running, rather overtly now, to destroy the Republican Party that the Bush family has built over the last thirty years.

Everything Trump has done has been carefully crafted to expose, by hyperbole, the toxin coalitions that have put and kept the First Family of Plutocracy in power, either running and ruining the country, or just running and ruining a political party.

Consider his overt nativism.  It is an ironic exaggeration of the wedge politics of race and religion used by Lee Atwater and Karl Rove in the service of the last two Bush presidents.  And now Trump's tax plan serves as an absurdist exaggeration of the crony capitalism enhancing, and plutocracy building reactionary tax policies every Bush presidential candidate has always championed, and ironically, it is only a slightly satiric version of JEB! Bush's actual 2016 tax proposal.  Both propose rather explicitly to completely eliminate the estate tax in order to create a hereditary plutocracy of wealth as aristocracy. Another little detail is more telling: both plans' centerpiece for "growth" are built around a policy of windfall "repatriation" of the corporate profits made by American companies who outsourced production over the last thirty years, and parked the profits offshore. Under both Bush and Trump's plan, companies get to bring this money back into the US at minimal tax rates, 8 percent and 10 percent respectively.

What would these two tax plans do to encourage such companies to invest this money in the US in ways that create jobs and expand domestic industrial production?  Nothing.  They can do whatever they want with the money.  Turn right around and use it to build more factories in other countries. Use it for leveraged buyouts of competitors. Use it for any speculative purpose they want.

The beauty of what Trump has done is just now being revealed.  He is getting his Republican rivals to condemn this quintessentially Bush Republican tax plan, while right wing radio embraces it. He is getting the media to point out how many trillions of dollars it would add to US national debt.  And all the while, as will be apparent very soon, he is exposing to the rest of the country outside the circus tent exactly what the Republican Party really promotes, and how it will boomerang right back at JEB!, and his central reason for existence as a politician.

Thanks Mr. Trump.  If you succeed in destroying this overripe scheme of regressive upward wealth and income redistribution, and its primary generational and familial proponents, you may actually play some little part in helping make America great again one day.

Business Insider: Jeb Bush to Donald Trump: I'm 'flattered' that you stole my tax plan

Slate: Donald Trump Steals Jeb Bush’s Tax Plan, Makes It Classier, More Luxurious