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Resolved: The Party Split Has Nothing to Do With Trump
The Republican Party was split long before Trump came along. I recall talking with one Joe Hoffman about when the Republican Civil War would begin. I think I said 2006 if W was not reelected, and 2010 if he was. If that’s not exactly what I said, it’s mi-i-ighty close.
The Republican Party is still split. Trump may or may not be gone.
There were people here on Ricochet (no longer present) in the run-up to Trump’s (magnificent, stupendous, yuuge) election who practically screamed about how the world’s economy was guaranteed to collapse if Trump should be elected, that the wars would bring about unspeakable horror anew, that all of our allies would oppose and might possibly invade us to ensure law and order, and all sort of unhinged apocalyptic nonsense. We were all stupid or evil, with (for a time) regular denunciations of the Trump right as various forms of midcentury German and Italian political systems. Notice that now those people are strongly aligned with the left, with admittedly globalist causes, and at best subscribing only to twee niche, ghostly nametag conservatism.
There’s a reason for that. The divide is older than Trump, and in fact has nothing to do with him.
I’m not running from my Trumpism. I’ll stand on that ground anytime. At the same time, I hold that the (I guess we still have this term) “NeverTrump” sorts are so focused on Trump the man because that means they don’t have to engage on the actual split. [EDIT: To them, I am] not a limited government conservative who remembers the serial betrayals of 2008 spending levels, sequestration, the supercommittee, Obamacare, never-ending Gang of Eightism, about-face on nominee loyalty pledges, and all the more recent stuff. Nope. I can simply be dismissed as a Trumpkin. Pathologizing the opposition is easily half of what modern politics is about. It’s as old as any form of dehumanization prior to slaughter. Thankfully, all we spill here is ink — but the human reflex is nothing new. The other is unclean. My side does it too: “TDS.” [EDIT: And I certainly (famously!) used epithets about collaborationist French and Norwegians to drive my point home back in the day.]
(You won’t hurt my feelings calling me a Trumpkin. Certainly nobody has recently. I haven’t even seen the word here recently except in my own usage. I rather like the word, and I use it here simply as shorthand for a whole complex of dismissive name-calling.)
“Trump” is big-party GOP’s preferred pronoun for “issues.”
This is not a carp about Ricochet. To address that directly, the site no longer features contributors or editors who engage in “that sort of thing,” or another sort of more contentious problem — some other time, perhaps, for that one. Complain if you like, but the place is much better for a number of reasons. As Mark Camp points out, perhaps it was my absence that really helped. Seriously, you can tell that the place is simply better run than it was. I bring up the former crowd simply to point out it seems to have gravitated to a far less conservative crowd after assailing the conservatism of those who were fed up with the GOP for its lack of conservatism. Please don’t bring up old names of the departed. We all know the syndrome.
Any person (ahem!) who wishes may certainly run this post into the ground with anti-Trump comments and so forth. Those would be quite on-topic here, so no hurt feeling flags on comments in this thread, okay?
To recap: Resolved: The party was split long before Trump and will remain split if it survives, well past Trump. The split has very little to do with Trump.
I’m FOR the proposition. I’ll put two comments in for voting. Then let the food fight begin. Again, no flags unless somebody is just cruising for it — regardless of side.
Published in General
I am neither a NeverTrumper nor a Democrat and I disagree. I realize it’s easier to assume that I’m a democrat and a NeverTrumper. But that’s the sort of disingenuous nonsense that works best on Twitter and Facebook.
Didn’t I just read this on my 5th grade daughter’s Facebook page? I just can’t stand Mandy; she really didn’t do anything to me, and she’s like awesome at kickball and like wears the coolest clothes and even helps out old missus Crispin, but she never sits at the cool table. I just cant stand her.
For a man of your intellect and accomplishments, which you’ve filled us in on many times, this is embarrassingly infantile. I gave it the ole’ college try but I’m not sure there’s much hope…my sympathies Gary.
I don’t think this is a fair poll. Trump was a On The Nose Firebrand for a certain faction of the Democrat hating populous. And they deserve it.
But there are a lot of us who put in with him in hope. There is very little about Trump that is Conservative, except that he was a willing useful idiot in pushing our agenda.
Left to his own devices, he’s an uneducated boar amongst wolves.
So much this! For years it was “Conservatives think progressives are wrong; progressives think conservatives are evil”. Well, it turns out it is classic psychological projection – the progressives have been evil the entire time and the
liars,false prophets of GOPe drove the party to split.Trump was never meant to be the solution but a response/message to BIG 3:
Instead of waking-up to this reality, most in numbers 1 & 3 doubled-down; some are being red-pilled. Only the forward thinking in #2 realize it’s time to put up or shut up; the rest can go pound sand.
Why, you brave and loyal Red Dwarf who doesn’t believe in Aslan!!!!!
I believe this is called “poisoning the well.”
This is correct and Trump’s embrace of America as a nation, i.e. Trump’s Nationalism, is the antithesis of the internationalists’ globalism and that and the threat it posed is the reason Trump is so hated by the Leftists and their fellow-travelers, i.e. the NT’s and Trump hating Democrats who don’t yet identify as Leftists.
Well, he’s left to his own devices now. Is he still promoting conservatism? Signs point to YES.
It was clearly there before hand.
I remember being upset that Bush and the GOP could not get judges confirmed. That was part of it for me. It got worse from there.
I’ve been upset with the FBI and the intelligence community most of my adult life. That’s a long time. That is also a separate and very distinct problem compared to the loss of federalism being honored.
I like the thoughts expressed here.
I’ve said for a long time that if Hillary didn’t have things
sewncheated up in 2016, he would have run as a conservative Democrat. Not many of those around any more.EDIT: I BEG your pardon — I responded to the wrong comment trying to do this stuff while walking about, using my phone.
I disagree, but I’m not saying you’re necessarily wrong at the same time. I’m just saying we voted for him because of the split, and not the other way around. I never vouched for his quaities as a gentleman. He was willing to forward the agenda, which is why I would vote for a fellow. Would that our better-bred “Republicans” would do the same.
One would not conclude this through observing his acts through his 4 years as POTUS.
Exactly. The presidency isn’t about the person. He’s just some dude we let run the place for a few years. L’état, it ain’t him.
I don’t think that you’re correct about this.
Trump brought new voters into the Republican coalition, who didn’t really find a home in either party before. They are not fiscal conservatives, they’re not particularly favor of smaller government, and they’re not really pro-business folks.
They’re populists. They don’t like the high levels of immigration, they don’t like the multiculturalism, they don’t like facing Black and Brown Privilege while being falsely told that they have White Privilege. They didn’t like the endless wars. But they don’t much care about government spending, and don’t much care about taxes on the rich. They’re on the social conservative side, but not strongly so. At least, this is my impression.
Small government isn’t very popular, it turns out. I wish that it was. It isn’t.
So Trump adopted a platform that was generally middle-of-the-road on economic issues, and about halfway between the center and the far right on social issues, with two twists — he was strongly anti-immigration, and pretty isolationist. This shook things up, adding the populist folks to the Republican coalition, while alienating some traditional Republican voters. We’ll see if it works out in the long run.
I think that it will turn on the prosperous suburban types, because I think that the Republican party will generally stay where Trump took it for a few more cycles. If the suburban folks come around, then the Republicans will do well.
I actually think that our pal Gary may be an example of this, as his objection now seems limited to Trump personally.
Absolutely. Pepe too.
Naw, Gary still thinks it was Trump who tried to steal the election, but was blocked by a few brave lawyers.
They’re not populists. They are people. Populists are the politicians who chase people where they are.
SOLD.
Naah. V the K was right.
Wait, you mean that not everybody you meet on the internet means what the MSM says they mean?
I never understood what was the matter with Pepe. Maybe it’s because he looks like Putin.
I have shifted in my viewpoint, due in great part to the woke portion of the Democrat party which I hate equal to Donald John Trump. I can live with any Republican other than Donald John Trump, his son DJTJ, and David Duke. Otherwise, if someone has successfully run a state, I can support them.
The person to credit is Mitch McConnell. He forced Harry Reid to sweep away the filibuster for all but Supreme Court nominees, and then with Gorsuch, Cocaine Mitch wiped out the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. Mitch and “The Long Game.”
Yes, Trump tried to steal the election on January 4-6, 2021 and was stopped by four brave lawyers, Mike Lee, Lindsey Graham, Dan Quayle and Mike Pence. See: https://ricochet.com/1058960/mike-lee-lindsey-graham-dan-quayle-and-mike-pence-4-lawyers-who-helped-save-the-constitution-at-least-for-now/
You do realize he thought that it was being stolen by others, and that the Senate proceedings were his last chance to stop it?
I’m pretty sure he was wrong about that being his last chance–once the states had decided who their Electors were, Senators don’t have authority to stop them.
I’m not at all sure he was wrong about the election being stolen.
We can talk about this any time. Voting machines with internal modems were not secure (which does not resolve the question whether anything happened as a result). Illegally cast or counted votes probably exceeded Biden’s margins in PA, AZ, and NV. It’s confirmed that they did in GA–a fact which is a national disgrace in and of itself.
https://ricochet.com/1033553/g-k-chestertons-take-on-electronic-voting-systems/
https://ricochet.com/842740/some-evidence-that-illegal-actions-flipped-swing-states/
https://ricochet.com/822533/keeping-track-of-election-fraud/
He was also instinctually Federalist. Sometimes to a fault.
That is my brand of small government. A long term philosophy of federalism would eventually reduce the federal. We are just never going to get long term.
That one IS a Putin Pepe.