Charlie Copeland still “fully supports” Donald Trump for President
57% of DL readers think that his support is based on a searing hatred for Hillary Clinton. I don’t happen to buy that. While there are a great many Republicans who are viscerally impulsive slaves to their lizard brain. Copeland doesn’t strike me as that type of Republican. There is something else at work keeping Charlie bound to the White Nationalist GOP that Trump is in the process of birthing.
It is tempting to think that it is a pure numbers game for Copeland. That he knows that X% of the DEGOP faithful are White Nationalists, so he is simply a spineless trailing indicator, rather than a leading indicator. But Bonini’s absolute trouncing of Lafferty puts the lie to that theory.
Lafferty is as close to a pure Trump White Nationalist candidate as we have seen in Delaware. I had thought that she might give Bonini a bit of a tussle in the GOP primary for Governor, but she had her ass flat out handed to her. So the Trumpian White Nationalist percentage of the DEGOP must not be that large after all. I mean, it wasn’t Bonini’s charism which carried the day.
So what is it? I’m seriously asking. With everything we now know, how and why can Charlie Copeland still “fully support” Donald Trump for President?
Copeland will support whoever promises to repeal inheritance tax.
That is probably on the list of Copeland’s requirements, but Trump is a different type of Republican altogether. What good is inheritance tax repeal when a Trump Presidency seems dedicated to economic nihilism?
60% of Republicans in delaware voted for Trump….
Well, you can’t get any closer to a pure Trump White Nationalist candidate than Trump himself. So maybe a plurality of DEGOP primary voters would be inclined to break for an avowed White Nationalist version of the GOP if Copeland got out of line?
That’s the Occam’s razor solution to the puzzle. It is a pure numbers game for Copeland. Some number greater than 50%… (60% ?) of the DEGOP faithful are essentially White Nationalists. Copeland is simply a trailing indicator, and he is in a tighter spot than the Bonini showing indicated.
“Some number greater than 50%… (60% ?) of the DEGOP faithful are essentially White Nationalists. ”
Is this any surprise? We know these people. They are our neighbors and co-workers.
Yes. The racism has never been very well disguised. I suppose Copeland it just trying to keep his head down and get through to election day so he can go back to defending the fiction that the party is “inclusive” with a semblance of a straight face.
I know Charlie well enough to say he is not a Trumpian bigot, and I believe the only reason he remains supportive of Trump is because he’s the party’s nominee, and Charlie believes in supporting the party’s choice, even if he’s not his first preference.
When Charlie talks about the GOP being “inclusive,” he might well mean that the GOP is willing to include white racists inside the carnival’s big tent.
As to Trump getting 60 percent in the Delaware primary, remember that it was among the last, and most everyone else had fallen by the wayside. Trump’s numbers in DE would have been far lower in March or April.
I know Charlie, not real well but on a first-name basis, and I second MW’s assessment.
On the inheritance tax front, most rich people don’t pay it anyway. They put their money in trust — hence the term “trustafarians” for their liberal-leaning kids. That’s the real absurdity of Republican claims about the tax — it’s so easily avoided that an entire “estate planning” industry has sprung up around it for that express purpose. This is why, when journalists looked for the poor souls whose family farms and businesses were lost to the tax, they couldn’t find any.
Most people who care enough about money to acquire a lot of it take these steps as a matter of course, and rich Republicans know it. The poor and stupid Republicans — the Trump-loving base — don’t, so they’re easily suckered by the stories of people losing farms and businesses to the evil gubmint.
“..the only reason he remains supportive of Trump is because he’s the party’s nominee”
Under normal circumstances, during a normal election, that might not be such a bad thing. That stance might not reveal a character defect.
But this isn’t a normal election. Charlie is still fully supporting a candidate who has threatened to undermine the results if they don’t go his way. He is supporting a candidate who has said he would jail his opponent if the election does go his way.
Hiding behind partisanship in this election, and putting his party above the country reveals Copeland to be a coward. A coward or a nazi. Probably a coward.
Actually anonymous, we do know at least something about at least one of the Copeland trusts. This is the fabulous Lammot Copeland trust, the income of which is so significant it allowed Lammot Copeland Jr. to emerge from his 1970 bankruptcy and quickly rebuild his wealth. When this trust terminates it will be distributed among the grandchildren and presumably subject to inheritance tax. And that’s just the Copeland side; we don’t know much about the du Pont side, but one can assume the terms of distribution are similar.
During our last presidential primary, Trump picked up 16,384 in NC County, 8,294 in Kent. 17,794 in Sussex, for a total of 42,472 statewide….
In comparison, Hillary picked up 38,584 in NCC, 7,338 in Kent, 10,032 in Sussex for a statewide total of 55,954.
For the record, in Sussex County 7238 voted against Trump … Interestingly if one adds Bernie’s 5941 Sussex total to Hillary’s 10,032, at that county level the Dem’s combined came within 2121 of meeting Trump’s total…
Disclaimer: This is a primary contest with separate ballots so any comparisons are risky. That said, those following Delaware elections for a long time, may see something rather interesting here… 🙂