How ‘ghost corporations’ are funding the 2016 election
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
I once heard a trump supporter interviewed say "good or bad were using trump to destroy the established Republican Party". it looks like it's working quite nicely to me. Let's get another one for the other side of the political aisle.
Dick Brisket @EmpireOfJeff
You "conservative" "pundits" still don't get it: Trump isn't our candidate. He's our murder weapon. And the GOP is our victim.
We good, now?
He's also a body blow to the Republican consultant class which for many years has been paid handsomely for less than stellar results, this election's prime example being Mike "Set all our donor money on fire." Murphy (http://hotair.com/archives/2016/01/07/the-saddest-political-...), who showed a $100+ million warchest is nothing without voters.
On the other side, Sanders isn't what you'd call a Democratic Party establishment type, seeing as how he joined the party only a few months ago (was an independent who caucused with the Democrats for decades), and nonetheless gave Hillary fits despite how even more thoroughly the nomination was wired for her than ¡Jeb!.
But that whole situation isn't hardly as existential for the party's establishment as the Republican one is, where Trump is showing that the "rules of the game" aren't what the whole US political establishment has been insisting, and we don't expect "business as usual" to follow, whatever the specific outcomes of this election.
It is very hard to imagine the legislative process would change much even if Trump is the president. Probably he would be muss less beholden to the typical political power brokers (mainly bought lobbyists for all sorts of interests).
But for any legislation I would expect things to be very much the same.
He would likely use the executive branch much more aggressively than even Nixon or Bush and Obama in the ongoing spying nation state efforts they both aggressively promoted.
In a Trump administration we would be likely be even more reliant on government employees standing up to unlawful orders but given the recent history with spying and all the very questionable government actions undermining constitutional protections, current (access to spying apparatus for personal gain, prurient interests etc.) and past abuses of police power (Hoover etc.), past history with Nixon, past history with McCarthy, etc. that is a very dangerous hope to rely on. But it also is more a matter of degree given that all the examples given are under the traditional/establishment Democrat and Republican party rule in the last 60 years.
I don't find it hard to imagine at all; for example:
Trump to the American public in 2018: "Please elect this slate of high energy candidates and turn out of office these traitors to the American people."
With of course his preceding dealings with the Congress based upon such threats; what are they and the rest of the establishment going to do, call him Hitler again?
Do you remember how Reagan managed to get his programs passed by a House lead by a Communist sympathizer who said he was "the most ignorant man who had ever occupied the White House", "Herbert Hoover with a smile", and "a cheerleader for selfishness," and who's "policies meant that his presidency was 'one big Christmas party for the rich.'" (All quotes from Wikipedia's article on Tip O'Neil, and there's worse out there.)
The rest of your posting is on issues of importance but that don't even hit the top 5, probably top 10 of what the people who are supporting Trump care about ... especially if the government is "fundamentally transformed" in to one that isn't trying to destroy them.
As for those government employees you base some hopes on, anyone who genuinely wants to change things will abolish the current "civil 'servant'" system and return us to an updated spoils system where they're actually held accountable for their actions. Given how many Baby Boomers in it are retiring right now, it wouldn't even be all that messy.
Now, I'm not saying this is what Trump will do, but it's just the barest of what he could do if he's not accepting "business as usual" with its inevitable fatal end for the country.
And while we're talking about the branches of the Federal government, clipping the judiciary's wings with the end of the last sentence of paragraph 2 of section 2 of article III shows our Founders had a clue about its dangers.
Bernie Sanders
Unfortunately, congressional voters are still low information and apathetic so money is much more powerful there.