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Is Trump’s Influence Waning?
The title to the post is the question being asked on PowerLine in light of an upset victory in Texas by the candidate not endorsed by President Donald Trump:
Tuesday was election day in a special race to select a successor to Rep. Ron Wright in Texas’ Sixth Congressional District. Wright died from the Wuhan coronavirus.
The candidates were Wright’s widow, Susan Wright, and Texas state Rep. Jake Ellzey. Both are conservative Republicans.
Susan Wright was the favorite and the leader in polls. She won the most votes in the primary, in which Ellzey barely finished second, just 354 votes ahead of the leading Democrat. In addition, Wright had the endorsement of former president Trump.
But Ellzey won the race by a margin of 53-47.
And
Mark Davis, a conservative talk show host in Dallas said:
The Trump base in District 6 paid little attention to the fact that Susan got his endorsement. They know that Trump had no familiarity with her and no familiarity with this race.
When, for whatever reason, the Trump base pays little attention to a Trump endorsement, that’s evidence of a loss of influence.
The Sixth District includes suburbs of Dallas/Fort Worth. Trump’s endorsements probably carry greater value in more rural districts. But any sign of waning Trump influence among Republican voters has some significance and, from my perspective, is good news.
But I think Paul Mirengoff, the author of the PowerLine piece, gets it wrong. Davis hints at what I think is the real answer: Trump supporters in the main are neither stupid nor cult worshippers. They support Trumpism, and not Donald Trump per se. They internalize Trumpism as the issues and policy approaches that Donald Trump identified and adopted in 2016. They see Donald Trump as a champion and leader to promote solutions they value. If someone arises who can be as effective as President Trump in promoting these solutions without the baggage, most Trump supporters would happily shift allegiance. But Progressive and NT (and media and Deep State) antagonisms raise serious questions as to whether someone other than President Trump can take on the mantle of Trumpism. Trump supporters are not stupid — they want Trumpism to succeed (which they identify with a proper republican form of government that focuses on the needs and interests of American citizens) — and therefore will not abandon Trump until there is an acceptable alternative that can win. This also means that when Trump weighs into a local district contest if the voters see A as more appropriate than B they will appropriately understand that the Trump organization may not know as well as they do what is best for the district.
A key point in Mirengoff’s article that confirms my thesis is this:
Although Trump endorsed his opponent, Ellzey did not run as an anti-Trump candidate.
In other words, Ellzey did not reject Trumpism. His opponent’s deceased husband was a Trump supporter and it was natural that the Trump organization endorsed the widow who chose to run for the seat her husband held. In fact, it would have been a bad look had they not endorsed her. But it is hardly an upset that Ellzey won without attacking Trumpism. Had he done so and won — that would have been an upset.
Published in General
Texas dumped $8B into transmission lines for renewable energy. Now we get days without power.
I take issue with your characterization of Republicanism. Mistakes have been made over the last 30 years for sure, none of us are going to agree on everything. I don’t feel Afghanistan and Iraq were mistakes. Knowing what we know now I wouldn’t have gone into Iraq, but at the time based on the information it was the right decision. I take issue with the overall handling of the war, but frankly, in the grand scheme of things we didn’t lose very many people. The TSA was a reaction to 9/11 wasn’t it? I don’t regret the creation of it, though I do wish it would be scaled back. David Souter was a shame, but I don’t recall organizations on the right like the Heritage Foundation having influence in conservative thinking about jurisprudence to help guide court nominations. Maybe I’m wrong about that but I’m open to hearing about it. The Paul Ryan budget deals were fine- you had relatively lower government spending than what we had under Trump. Just 8 years after Bush, Trumps budgets were double W. I thought Trump was a great President, but he wasn’t flawless. He was a big government conservative when it came to budgets.
I agree No Child was a waste of time and money. Read My Lips was a political mistake but I think reality is more complicated than he simply broke a promise not to raise taxes.
I just don’t think all these disputes are fair, or at least they are partially unfair complaints. Maybe we can get a post devoted to the subject. By the way, I think Trump has had the most Conservative presidency of anyone of my lifetime- he had a great administration. BUT- he still had mistakes. Again, none of us will agree about everything. There will always be some disagreement. And that’s okay. As Reagan said, “The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally – not a 20 percent traitor.” I draw the bright line however at supporting the Democrat candidate. You can not vote, or vote 3rd party, and I’ll forgive it. If you vote for the D though you are just a traitor.
I think there is libertarian crossover with conservatism. And that’s okay. We all don’t have to agree about everything.
If you call 7.5 billion a little bit. See #40 above.
The best use of Trump, as a political tool, is for him to be an attack dog from the outside while a more competent candidate leads from the inside. Candidate/President DeSantis could triangulate, playing the “I’m the only sane guy in the room” game quite effectively.
Implying that Trump is insane would place DeSantis in the untrustworthy elite camp, destroying his appeal to 95% of Republicans. I hope that he won’t be that stupid. (And I think my hope won’t be dashed–DeSantis and Trump have a male bonding vibe, IMHO.)
Don’t forget: P O M P E O
There is the makings of a team out there. It will be interesting to see how it all comes together…or not,)
Trump has some smart people in his immediate family. Their own future successes may hinge on how influential they can be in making this process work successfully.
Helpfully, the Wall St. Journal has an editorial on the topic, calling it an “an epic binge of green subsidies and more handouts for states and localities.” More:
And:
And:
This may be more appropriate in its own thread, but the “infrastructure” bill has a broad definition of “infrastructure.”
Isn’t Pompeo as patriotic and honest as Barr?
I am not aware of any such similarities. If you have references to any, please inform me.
Barr is ex-CIA, right? He seemed like a good guy. He morally argued for, essentially, virtue, and he appeared to stand with Trump in principle, saying he was taking the heat of his second Attorney General position because we all have to die sometime (as if there was a higher morality and a coming judgement). And he has recently started again arguing for ethics and morality. But he was, as far as I can see, duplicitous as Attorney General. Pompeo has in the past laughed at the idea of telling the truth, saying it’s not what the CIA does. I suppose I question the higher loyalties of all “ex-“CIA fellows.
Ann Coulter has been complaining about this since day one and I think she’s right. Furthermore, I listen to Breitbart News on SiriusXM and they have had many smart callers explain this in great detail. Even if he was intellectually curious about government and civics, he would still have these types of issues.
The problem is, you have to be realistic in multiple ways about how much things have gone sideways. We have big social problems, a good and decent productive person is getting his agency stolen every minute, and the GOP never had any real idea of how to be more fiscally conservative. You have to be realistic about the assessment and what to do. The whole thing tipped over around 2004.
People smarter than me on this board have explicitly said the simple goal is to move things anti-communist. Similar smart people in Minnesota think the same way. Much of the idealism is destructive right now.
Here’s the other angle of it. If the risk-free rate, government treasuries and bonds, is a suppressed interest rate that is covered by printed money and is only going to be covered by printing money more and more in the future, those corporations have better balance sheets than the USA. Literally, the US government and the whole West goes broke if the five-year treasury goes up two percentage points. This is a terrible dynamic.
Perfect.
Every year it gets harder and harder for each party to keep the asset bubble intact to get past the next election. That is what’s going on.
Terrible. Each city needs an optimal level of busses, and that’s it. Trains are vortexes of crime and waste.
In 2024, Minnesota is cross subsidizing electric cars from other new car purchases. Pure waste.
These things might actually work, but I can’t say how much the government should be involved.
This is a real mess. If they don’t do it, every home and almost every single business in some of these areas is actually worth less because broadband is dependent on density. It’s a political nightmare to do it in Minnesota and I assume it’s the same everywhere else. It would be a lot better if 5G fixed it or something.
5G doesn’t fix “rural” internet because the “towers” have to be much closer together.