It's gotta suck for Republicans to be basically held hostage by their own voters.

I'm beginning to think it doesn't really matter what he does, it only matters what his supporters think about what he does, and if they think whining about the media every chance he gets is a sign of him being a badass then that's what's important.

I don't think fact-checking would convince that many people.

That's what I was getting at: his supporters already agreed with him, the media didn't create that situation.

I'm sure he loves the attention, but I think most campaigns would've been killed by a fraction of the bad publicity he had.

If people didn't see what a threat he was already, I don't see what the media could've done to convince them.

Trump was more entertaining to watch.

I don't think people believe the media that indiscriminately, especially since there are so many media sources now that people can pick and choose the ones they agree with.

What about all the campaigns that have been killed by bad publicity?

Are you assuming all publicity is good?

What could they have done to stop him?

I don't think it's really fair to compare Avatar to Star Wars in terms of cultural impact because 8 years after Star Wars was released it had already had 2 sequels and a pretty big expanded universe. I wonder how much it would've stayed in the popular consciousness if not for that. Hell, even with the sequels and…

I wonder if Republicans will act like supporting Trump was just a bout of temporary insanity.

I read a conservative pundit once claim that it's easier for liberals to get away with bad personal behavior because supposedly liberals don't care so much about how bad your behavior is if you have liberal views, whereas conservatives, being so strongly for Personal Responsibility and Family Values(TM), wouldn't…

"What may be most eye-opening to modern audiences is how openly critical the mainstream media was at the time, as anchors and commentators—many of whom would later frame Reagan as the kind of strong, wildly popular leader that the country needs—spent part of their airtime questioning the president’s stamina, and…

I think the fact that he was inspired by something less shows that you can't predict what'll set people off. I think that we should judge political rhetoric based on whether it's offensive in its own right, not based on whether a crazy person might misinterpret it.

Even if crosshairs is taking it further than usual, it's still just a metaphor. If someone is crazy enough to take that literally, then you can't predict what they'll do anyway. Besides, it turned out the Giffords shooter wasn't even inspired by that.

Did she actually urge her followers to murder congresspeople in those crosshairs? I can't stand her either, but you can't necessarily hold people responsible for what crazy people do.

I heard John Paul Jones benefits from relative anonymity in the same way.

Therefore, by the transitive property, it was named after the plane.