Salon - "Why Trump’s attack on Susana Martinez matters"

[TomCADem]

Trump once again proves that the only consistent thing about him is his megalomania in expecting the Governor of the State to drop everything and appear as one of his props.

http://www.salon.com/2016/05/26/why_trumps_attack_on_susana_martinez_matters_he_proves_again_that_unity_isnt_his_goal_only_dominance_over_everyone/

After the 2012 GOP “autopsy” which strongly recommended that the Republican party take immediate action to try to mend its bad reputation with Latinos and women lest it be shut out of the White House for decades, one of the people mentioned most often by GOP strategists as a natural choice for the national ticket was New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez. She was considered a rising star in Republican circles, a Latina who had been able to win in a blue state that went for Barack Obama twice. She had given a barn-burner of a speech at the 2012 convention and was widely assumed to be one of the new faces of the Republican party in an era of changing demographics.

That was then. Today, the GOP is the party of Donald Trump and we know he doesn’t listen to political experts and believes that whatever thoughts pass through his head are nuggets of sheer genius not to be questioned by mere mortals. He could not care less about that “autopsy” result because he thinks Mitt Romney lost because he’s a “choker” who could have won easily if he just had bigger cojones. (We all know Trump’s must be yuuuuge.) He’s sure that he will win the Hispanic community over to his side despite portraying them as criminals and promising a mass deportation of their relatives. There’s no need to even discuss what he thinks of women. The fact that 70% of them are repulsed by him speaks for itself.

If we didn’t know him better we might have assumed that he would be looking at a Latina Republican governor like Martinez as someone who could help him unify the party. He might even have tried to seduce her into joining him on the ticket to help him with women and Hispanics, the two demographics who are most hostile to him. It would take quite a demonstration of that Trump charm people keep insisting he has underneath his otherwise loathsome personality because Martinez is a Trump skeptic. This is unsurprising since she represents a border state full of Latinos and has logically questioned his daft proposal for a wall. When he came to Albuquerque this week for one of his rallies she said she was too busy to attend.

The Donald was not amused. In front of the ecstatic Republican crowd he said this about Martinez:

We have to get your governor to get going. She’s got to do a better job, ok? Your governor has got to do a better job. She’s not doing the job. Hey, maybe I’ll run for governor of New Mexico, I’ll get this place going. She’s not doing the job. We’ve got to get her moving. Come on, let’s go governor

.

[SheilaT]

1. I live in New Mexico,

and I'm not at all impressed with Susana Martinez's record as our Governor, but Trump is still a total pig and isn't even targeting her real faults.

She's secretive about many things, won't release records that are supposed to be public. She fired a bunch of mental health care providers a couple of years ago, brought in replacements from Arizona which have all (I think) since left the state, leaving many in need of services totally without them. The reason for the firing of the providers was that some outside audit supposedly showed fraudulent charges. Only they wouldn't let those providers know the details of what they were supposed to have done wrong. And recently a review of the audit shows the audit was itself totally wrong.

And she's come under fire for having state police provide "security" for her husband's hunting trips somewhere out of state. Maybe he goes to Texas, I can't recall and don't feel like researching.

A couple of years ago she was sort of on the short list for potential VP slot, but after a somewhat bizarre drunken incident last December at a Christmas party at the very finest hotel in Santa Fe, that sort of disappeared. Here's a link to the story, including 911 recordings. http://krqe.com/2015/12/18/governors-post-party-call-to-police-call-off-your-officers/

Oh, and she is herself originally from Texas, and is very derisively referred to as La Tejana.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

3. Even so, she set the record straigh for even right-wing Latinos, in NM

We should have built a "wall" in New Mexico, before Trump imported his goons to throw rocks and bottles at Albuquerque Police Department officers and locally appointed "Peace Keepers," before blaming local Native Americans and Latinos for violence.

[UTUSN]

2. She is a wingnut/Repuke, not representative of Latinos, not a magnet for Latinos

Last edited Fri May 27, 2016, 09:39 AM - Edit history (2)

Ever since Poppy BUSH or whoever pulled his strings hit on using "non-traditional" minorites (Clarence THOMAS), the Repukes have been using their tokens. That first time, with THOMAS, our poor dear Lib leaders were thrown for a loop about how to oppose nominations like that, how to attack a minority member. By the time Miguel ESTRADA came along, it became clear how to do it: Not go off on personal attacks that was a mess with THOMAS, but just be simple:

We oppose this nominee on policy and ideology pure and simple:: Nothing about race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, nothing. Just, this person is a WINGNUT, that is all.

But the Repukes were confused, too: Whassisname the Senator Orrin HATCH who purses lips like Shirly TEMPLE, who pronounced "Miguel ESTRADA" as "mee-gwell" pretend-pouted into the cameras and pretend-whined, "How can the Democrats oppose this MINORITY member while they claim to champion minorities?!1" In other words, he was saying ESTRADA should be voted to confirmation BECAUSE of his ethnicity, which is a RACIST rationale.

So back to MARTINEZ, she is not a minority bridge to her supposed home group. She is a wingnut, that is all, and is unpleasant and a martinet to boot. So DRUMPF's insulting her is her pay back for her traitorous "non traditional" self.

[Scientific]

4. + 1

Astute analysis.

[UTUSN]

5. Tyvm, and welcome!1 Just to put a point on it,

the way for us to attack somebody like MARTINEZ is not on her ethnicity, not even her being a "traitor" to her home minority group, but fair game on her unpleasantness, her corruption, her being a vindictive martinet.