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Are You Noticing a Pattern Here?
It’s dismaying to me, to watch Republicans turn on Donald Trump when the left attacks him: “Yeah, well, I’m Republican, but I’m not a Trump supporter. He’s mean and racist and stuff. I saw it on the news.” Leftist propaganda is so ubiquitous that you don’t even notice it after a while.
News media, the educational establishment, the FBI, the CDC, every other government organization, social media, Hollywood, and so on and so forth — when all those people say that Trump is a unique threat to democracy and human rights, it almost starts to sound real, after a while. Until you recall that they said the same thing about fire-breathing radicals like Mitt Romney, George W. Bush, and every other successful Republican for as long as anyone can remember.
T. Becket Adams has an outstanding article up today (Right on Schedule, the Media Decide DeSantis is ‘Worse’ than Trump) on National Review, which illustrates — again — this obvious truth:
Amusingly enough, the shared animosity for Florida’s Republican governor has become increasingly deranged in proportion to DeSantis’s growing popularity with the conservative base. Curious! Another especially amusing aspect of the press’s growing anti-DeSantis chorus is this simple fact: They are trying in earnest — in the Year of Our Lord 2023 — to convince the public that the Florida executive poses a greater threat to our core democracy than even Trump does. Yes, the same people who spent four years trying to convince you that Trump posed a unique, once-in-a-lifetime threat to the republic are trying now to convince you that an even greater threat to the republic is now upon us. Just ignore the part where they do this bit every four years. Remember, it wasn’t so long ago that Mitt Romney, the sweetest, most wholesome presidential candidate you ever saw, was out there being accused of manslaughtering a woman diagnosed with cancer.
Believe It: A DeSantis Presidency Could Be Even Worse Than Trump,” warns the New Republic. “DeSantis fully intends to remake America the way he believes God would want it to be, and his knowledge of law and governmental structure allows him to do it on a scale, and with a precision, that Trump could only dream about.”
Elsewhere, Vanity Fair warns that DeSantis should not be “covered like just another Republican.”
They did it to Ronald Reagan, then George W. Bush, then Mitt Romney, then Donald Trump. If DeSantis wins the Republican nomination, they’ll do it to him next. When Vanity Fair warns that DeSantis should not be “covered like just another Republican,” what they mean is that DeSantis should be covered like just another Republican.
That’s my point. It really doesn’t matter who it is. All that matters is that that person is a Republican, so he is by definition evil.
Are you a Republican?
Are you paying attention here?
Who do you think Democrats really consider to be evil?
Think hard about that. It’s an important point. Take your time…
Published in General
Trump’s arrest apparently has been put on hold, so it is unlikely he will be arrested Tuesday. Perhaps someone in the New York DA’s office has had a change of heart, after seeing the angry reaction of millions to their proposed indictment?
The bigger problem is nominating someone some republicans won’t say is unfit. I, for one, will not use the fit/unfit scale used by those who thought Biden was a better choice than Trump.
The delusions of these people.
Someone who wouldn’t compromise in any case. And honestly, that’s what a lot of us want too – though exactly which things they should be uncompromising about are not universally agreed upon within our bulging, leaky tent.
Very true. It is possible to be opposed to a Trump candidacy because he is to the left or right of some position(s) that is (are) important to one’s conception of the best type of conservatism (especially prior to him having any record of governing). It is possible to have a negative opinion of him because of his behavior, character or personality (although this shades into snobbery at the margins). It is, barely, possible to think another Republican would have governed better as President (although I think one would have to have been ‘brainwashed’ quite substantially to get there). It is possible to believe that a future Trump candidacy would be bad for the Republican Party or even (a quite separate thing) conservatism, although this judgement seems to be about what (other) people might think of Trump, not about what or who Trump actually is.
However (and this isn’t aimed at Randy), it is not possible in the absence of media brainwashing and/or some base motive to believe Trump is a threat to democracy, the Republic or the proper conception of the good sufficient to justify a vote for a Democratic opponent, let alone support or the other dangerous nonsense being thrown his way.
Good comments there. The real threats to Democracy were aiding the election of and voting for Biden.
And far too many “conservatives.”
Ding Dong!
I was loudly, annoyingly pro-Trump in the run-up not because I thought he was perfect, but because he was the right tool for the job.
I did not offer defenses of his policies, personality, and all the rest. Didn’t care. Right tool for the job.
And yet the Trump/Biden difference is the only thing that mattered in Novermber 2020.
We can all roll our lists of our likes and dislikes and stick them individually where the sun don’t shine.
Any vote for a Dem for President is at best narcissism, regardless of the justification.
Perhaps you have confused me with someone else? I have never endorsed Joe Biden — or any other Democrat — for president. I actually voted for Trump in 2020. I am just protesting the characterization that if you are a Republican who is highly critical of Donald Trump, it must be that you have been tricked by the media.
Not directed at you — just responding in context.
Exactly. And “fit” is rapidly fading in importance. The radical left is doing just fine with their manifestly unfit President. It’s part of the plan.
Our Constitution spells out very clearly what makes a person fit for the presidency. Any additional claims of fitness/unfitness are matters of taste and nothing more.
btw, the news media will often dig up a non-third grade level word and toss it into their echo chamber such that every head is talking about, for example, the GRAVITAS of a candidate.
‘Fit for office’ is like this, a buzz-phrase with little meaning used by people with little…gravitas, for lack of a word that springs to mind more quickly.
There are trying to ‘Hitlerize’ Trump by declaring him uniquely evil and beyond the pale so they can then track down and destroy any of his supporters for decades with a charge of Trumpism but they never say exactly what it is that he did that was this unique level of evil. They just declare it to be so.
I don’t think so. As long as Trump is president or running for president, he will be painted as the worst person alive. But if he flames out and we have a different Republican president, that person will assume the crown for most nefarious president of all time among the left wing pundits. They will then be declaring how they were harsh on old Donny, but really he wasn’t so bad in retrospect. Not compared to the monster who is office now. It happened with Reagan and Bush and Bush. I think some of them even said that while they really hated Nixon while he was in office, they now have a more nuanced view of him seeing how much worse Reagan is. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them said that Gerald Ford was a tyrant, not like good old Tricky Dick. But that was a little before my time, I should ask @garymcvey if this was the case.
I think that used to be true. I don’t think it is anymore.
I’ve seen too many beliefs that were planted by press coverage of a current event that go on to last for decades. The accusations the Democrats and Never Trumpers have made against Trump are so dramatic that they will stick in people’s heads for the rest of their lives. The Democratic Party Platform, for example, accused Trump of being responsible for thousands of covid deaths. That’s not going away.
And Democrats held Ronald Reagan to be almost solely responsible for AIDS. They said Reagan was going to kill all of humanity in a nuclear war with the Russians. George Bush callously allowed American citizens to drown to death in Hurricane Katrina. I do not deny that the press has been over the top in their criticism of Donald Trump, but they have been for every Republican president of my adult life and I highly expect they will for every future Republican president, regardless of who it is.
The favorite Republican Senator for the press was John McCain, because he so frequently went against Republican orthodoxy. But as soon as he was the presidential nominee, he was a war criminal or something. After he lost and became a thorn in President Trump’s side, McCain was a hero again. I don’t think the game has changed at all, Marci. New players, the same old game.
It doesn’t change, but it escalates.
The kinds of things said now would not have been said three, four decades ago.
I believe you can safely make that assertion without too much fear of disagreement…
Find me the Democrat who no longer says these.
Right. Between “Death of a President” and Kathy somebody’s decapitation porn, at a minimum, the baseline has moved.
The entitled victocrat mentality is driving an increase in “acceptable” political violence, as intended.
They are Hitlering us for the consumption of their own brownshirts!
In my lifetime it began with LBJ’s most effective campaign against Goldwater. He called him out as a racist war monger, words Democrats have used ad nauseam when referring to every Republican candidate since then. The television ad against Goldwater, the “Daisy” ad, showing an innocent little girl counting the petals on a flower and ending with a nuclear explosion, was particularly egregious. Since that time the Dem accusations against the GOP continue down the same rotten road designed to appeal to the poorly educated.
Travel back in time to 1804 where political venom even resulted in the murder of Alexander Hamilton, and you realize politics has always been a nasty business in this country and elsewhere. Go even further back to 44BC, when Rome’s dictator, Julius Caesar, was stabbed to death by senators who feared his power grabs.
I usually like to say that until a Senator is beaten half to death with a hickory cane on the floor of the Senate, we aren’t at an all-time low in political discourse.
Gutta-percha.
(Who was that masked pedant?)
Yup. It annoys me no end to listen to the talking heads on TV show their ignorance when they refer to today’s political climate as the worst in history. What would they make of the discourse in the English parliament as they decided the fate of Charles I?
Gesundheit.
Goldwater was one of the most decent pro-blacks conservatives there ever was. If you want to disagree with his policies with regard to federalism go right ahead. Even many conservatives think that he made too many allowances for states to discriminate on the basis of race. So be it. But the guy hired blacks, treated blacks fairly and he desegregated Arizona’s educational system.
A racist he was not.
I assume that her “called him out as a ~” could better have been phrased “called him a ~,” as I suspect that you are reading that the way I did at first.
Yes of course, yet…
… those who claim a divine right by blood can only be politically finished by being killed, sometimes to the extermination of the bloodline.
We have no such requirement in a Republic, and what is being killed is not a bloodline, but the legitimacy of an idea; that the government should not rule over us against our wishes.
Trump may be no Jefferson, but his defenestration is the undoing of our Revolution. The same deep state which protected all the Democrats is persecuting the only Republican to get Americans genuinely enthusiastic in decades.
Forget it, Jake — it’s just Trump.
I totally agree. My words, if you came away with the impression that I agreed with his Dem or GOP detractors, were poorly chosen. Campus Republicans at the University of Arizona, of which I was a member, were invited to a luncheon at his home by Senator Goldwater many long years ago. We all came away completely charmed by him and dedicated to being a Republican for the rest of our lives.