Tag Archives: donald trump

Paul Walter

Could the Republican party save the world from Trump, but split apart?

By Paul Walter | Sun 10th April 2016 - 11:55 am

Things have changed since my last post on this. Last time, I thought it was relatively certain that Trump would be the Republican US Presidential nominee. I am not so sure now. First, we had Mitt Romney’s extraordinary, unprecedented excoriation of Trump. Then we had that unheard of event: the Trump gaffe machine gun finally fired a round which rebounded on him – I refer to his rapidly recounted suggestion that women who have abortions should be punished (which, lest we forget, was followed by a casual grunt to confirm that he thought it inconceivable that the men involved should even be considered for equal treatment).

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Posted in LDVUSA | Also tagged and | 14 Comments
Simon Foster

Postcard from Orlando: Hillary sweeps the board with big wins in Florida and Ohio

By Simon Foster | Wed 16th March 2016 - 9:08 am
Hillary Florida GOTVWhat do Florida, North Carolina and Ohio have in common? They’re AWS, which means All Winning States on this side of the pond.  As I write (0515!GMT) Hillary appears to have won Illinois and Missouri by a margin that would have any agent worth their salt screaming “Recount,” at the top of their lungs.
Whilst Florida was always polling strongly for Hillary, the big prize tonight was Ohio for her campaign.  After the shock loss of Michigan last week, Hillary’s campaign needed a big win in the rust belt.  In Ohio, she got it.
The two states are significant. Ohio is the ultimate swing state, crucial to Obama’s victories in 2008 and 2012.  Florida has even more of a history since George W Bush’s controversial “win” in 2000.  At a rally for his wife on Monday, former President Bill Clinton said “You don’t need to explain to Floridians the importance of voting.”
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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , and | 28 Comments
Paul Walter

A 30 second video which sums up why Hillary Clinton will be the next President of the United States of America

By Paul Walter | Sat 30th January 2016 - 12:15 pm


This post carries the normal proviso that I don’t know what the heck I’m talking about so anything I predict is likely to be pure nonsense.

I’ve just done something which I very occasionally do. I last did it in February 2007. I put a modest little wager on who will be the next President of the USA. I put money on Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton.

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Posted in LDVUSA | Also tagged and | 28 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Farron’s response to principle of banning Trump is right in principle but…

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 17th January 2016 - 3:55 pm

Tomorrow, Parliament debates whether Donald Trump should be excluded from the UK. MPs are doing this because getting on for 600,000 people signed an official e-petition calling for him to be banned from the UK after his appalling anti-Muslim comments. We’ve talked about this on LDV before. In December, I said that he should be allowed to come here:

Much as I understand that people are repelled by his views, there is a certain irony in them responding to his ignorant call to ban a group of people with a call to ban him.

I have less than no time for the man. Hell, he called a friend of mine who had the temerity to question his plans for his golf course a “national disgrace, scoundrel and extremist”. However, I was never comfortable with the idea of “no platform” because I think that sweeping prejudice under the carpet doesn’t get rid of it. It finds oxygen from somewhere and lurks there, waiting or an opportunity to re-emerge and spread even more intensified hate. When people express views like Trump’s, they need to be challenged, satirised and shown up for the nonsense that they are.

I’d love to see the likes of Lynne Featherstone, Shirley Williams, Jo Brand, Tim Farron or his new mate Russell Howard take him down with carefully chosen words. In that way, they can also challenge similar views held by those who aren’t quite as rich and powerful as The Donald.

I didn’t, therefore, sign the petition, but Millicent Ragnhild Scott did, not because she wanted to see him banned, but because she wanted Parliament to debate what he’d said to show that we reject his poisonous ideas:

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Posted in Parliament | Also tagged and | 29 Comments
Millicent Ragnhild Scott

Let’s ban what we don’t like. Simples.

By Millicent Ragnhild Scott | Tue 22nd December 2015 - 4:29 pm

or Dealing liberally with the provocative polemic of Donald J Trump

Can you imagine watching the parliamentary debate about whether or not to ban Donald Trump from the UK?

The question is whether we should we be so intolerant as to bar the person (who could be the next American President) from entering our country on the grounds of him being intolerant. The irony reduces me to the sort of unvoiced wry smile that only British politics can achieve. Yes Minister, eat your heart out!

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 20 Comments
Paul Walter

The painful dilemma at the heart of the US Republican party

By Paul Walter | Fri 11th December 2015 - 3:00 pm

To win the Republican nomination you need to be a very right wing. The Republican base who vote in primaries tend to be very right wing. The influence of the Tea Party has exacerbated this situation. So Donald Trump is doing very well in the GOP (“Grand Ol’ Party” = Republican party) polls for the 2016 Presidential nomination. The more he says that Muslims need to be tracked on a database, the border needs to be closed to them and a border wall needs to be built by Mexico, the more the Republican core adore him.

I’ve lost count of the number of times commentators have expected a “Howard Dean moment” to befall Trump. It’s not going to happen. He’s like Boris Johnson. The more he makes embarrassing comments, the more a certain constituency of people love him. He can talk himself out of any corner. – Even if he uses the verbal equivalent of a 12 bore shotgun.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 11 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Lunchtime Debate: Actually, let Donald Trump come here

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 9th December 2015 - 1:09 pm

There’s a petition doing the rounds at the moment which, at the time of writing, has some 120,000 signatures, close to the threshold at which it will be considered to be debated in Parliament, calling on the Government to ban Donald Trump from entering the UK.

Trump has disgraced himself with his recent call for Muslims to be refused entry to the United States.

I get that people find his views repugnant. So do I. This, however, isn’t the first time Trump has said something outrageously prejudiced. It’s his stock-in-trade. Earlier this year, the Huffington Post compiled a list of the most offensive things he had said about women – you know, how we’re all gold digging, how breastfeeding is disgusting and, basically, just there for decoration.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 29 Comments
Mark Pack

Tavish Scott on devolution, Donald Trump, liberalism and more

By Mark Pack | Mon 23rd November 2009 - 8:08 pm

At the weekend, the Scottish Liberal Democrats leader Tavish Scott gave an interview to a group of Lib Dem bloggers meeting at the party HQ in Clifton Terrace for an ‘unconference’.

Devolution and independence referendum

I kicked off with one of the main issues in the news at the moment: should there be  a referendum on Scottish independence, and hence should the Liberal Democrats be supporting one?

Tavish was scathing about the idea of a referendum, calling it an SNP trick which the party shouldn’t go along with. His argument was that there is one pro-independence party and there is a vote coming …

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Posted in Blogger Interviews and Scotland | Also tagged , and | 8 Comments
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