This guy is not on our side. The press loves him because he makes the rest of us look as nutty as he appears to be. He has the potential to do as much damage to Republicans in 1 year as McCain has done in the past 10 years.

Trump is really what the republican party needs. One thing we don't have enough of is someone who has flip-flopped on all his positions to tell us what we want to hear without any track record to show for it. On top of that, he has a pulse. WINNING!

I have a terrible feeling that

"stopping what’s going on in the world"

might be a very appealing slogan to a lot of people.

"Donald Trump said that he believes the right to privacy exists in the Constitution"

The right to privacy is implicit to several of the explicitly stated rights in the Bill of Rights.

As to a general right to privacy, it doesn't need to be in the Bill of Rights. See the Ninth Amendment.

The test of the authenticity of a right is whether or not it is a just claim of the individual with respect to others and the state. A zone of personal privacy is certainly a just claim. That doesn't mean that privacy includes a right to kill your children, born or unborn. But there is no conceivable way that you can tell the American people that they have no right to privacy, or that there is no implicit protection of that right in the Constitution (again, there doesn't need to be an explicit protection of it).

Hamilton's very argument against adding a Bill of Rights was that it would imply that only those rights included were protected. The Ninth Amendment addresses that concern, yet those who insist there is no right to privacy ignore that amendment. What is more important is an explicit analysis of what a right is (a just claim of the individual). Contrast: a general claim to privacy is a just claim; a general claim on the goods of others is not a just claim. You have a right to the privacy of your home (e.g., it cannot be entered and searched without a warrant), but you have no right to the milk in your neighbor's refrigerator or the cash in his bank account.

If Donald Trump believes that a 25% tariff on anything imported from China will do anything other than cause hyper-inflation and a trade war, I guess he's as conservative as Smoot and Hawley were in 1928.

And if he fails to see how the U.S. government, over a 30 year period, caused the ballooning and bursting of the sub-prime housing market, then I guess he's as conservative as Chris Dodd and Barney Frank.

And if he thinks he'll be “stopping what’s going on in the world”, he's a bit over-confident, to say the least.

This man DEFINES "country club Republican". And from 2001-2009, we had a president with considerable business acumen in the White House, the one whom Trump naively blames for "the entire mess".

I guess it's a "hit job" to go back and quote the man, lest certain templates be challenged that people have in their own minds. That's the exact opposite of what goes on at HUFFPO, where they specialize in peddling false templates. Mostly, of conservatives.

McPhillips: So, if the 9th Amendment reserves to the people and the states rights not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, where do judges look to discern which of those we've actually retained, and what they are in the first place?

"The right to privacy is implicit to several of the explicitly stated rights in the Bill of Rights ..."

What an absolute laugh.

Like in the 3rd Amendment, wherein troops can be quartered in our homes during war time?

Or, like in the 4th Amendment, where LAWFUL searches and seizures are warranted?

Or, like in the Fifth Amendment, where a procedural protection (indictment by grand jury) is laid out for the government to kill us?

Which specific amendment "implicitly" lays out a right to privacy that does not also lay out an avenue for the government to usurp that privacy if certain procedures are followed or if certain conditions exist?

Apparently, McPhillips rejects the "original meaning" of our Constitution's language (as separate and distinct from the "intent" of the drafters and ratifiers).

So, has McPhillips rejected the entire corpus of "substantive due process" jurisprudence, which holds that the mention of the word "liberty" within the context of a clause that outlines a procedural protection before certain rights can be completely denied (14th Amendment, Section 1, clause 3), makes a certain invisible list of "liberties" absolute rights?

"What an absolute laugh."

Your irritations don't add up to a coherent argument, sorry to say.

You might have parts of five arguments there, laying about, but they don't together even make it to wrong.

Whoopsie, Trump..you're tipping your hand here. “tinker too much with Medicare” and harm senior citizens" sounds suspiciously Democrat to me. You wouldn't be trying to unseat Obama AND keep conservatives out of the White House at the same time, would you? If Hilary declares, will you step aside? I bet you will.

Actually, you seem to be answering arguments that you've been having with yourself, for a very long time, not the one I made.

But the first value of any discussion, with anyone, is that there might be some profit of understanding that comes from it. With your horns stirring broken glass, I'm afraid a discussion isn't possible, much less desirable.

Trump's a boor, a demagogue and (as Krauthammer said) a shameless vulgarian, who would be destroyed by Obama in a general election; but he won't get that far because the fact that he is not remotely conservative on the issue of our time (big government) will become sufficiently clear.

I've listened to Trump on the Stump and he mostly talks about economic populism, with a little Birtherism thrown in to stir the pot. Couple that with his new-found assertion that he's "pro-life" and you have a candidate Pat Buchanan could endorse. And I suspect he will be drawing his support form Pat's diehards.