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The Trump Spectrum
Inspired by this comment from @jameslileks.
- Never Trump: They truly believe he is so awful that even the chaos that would ensue after removing him from office does not outweigh the benefits of said removal. Examples: Bill Kristol.
- Anti-Trump: They too believe he is awful, but recognize that we are stuck with him. They may occasionally admit that he has done some good things, but usually only grudgingly. Examples: Mona Charen, John Podhoretz.
- Trump Skeptics: They don’t like him, they don’t trust him, but they are trying to keep an open mind. They criticize him frequently but try to keep it constructive. They probably didn’t vote for him but are trying to be gracious losers. Some of them may even concede that the good outweighs the bad but insist that the bad still needs to be addressed. Examples: Ben Shapiro, Most of NRO, I place myself here as well.
- Reluctant Trump: They don’t particularly like him, but they think we should give him the benefit of a doubt. They will generally cite Hillary Clinton as their primary (if not their only) motivation for voting for him. Examples: Andrew Klavan, Peter Robinson(?).
- Trump Defenders: They admit he’s made mistakes but either think the good outweighs the bad to such a degree as to make the mistakes not worth discussing, or they believe the forces aligned against him are so great that spending too much time on the mistakes is “piling on.” Examples: Victor Davis Hanson, Dennis Prager.
- Trump Apologists: The only thing he’s done wrong is not play by The Rules. Everything wrong with the administration is entirely the fault of his enemies. All critics are either pearl-clutching elitists and/or open borders globalists. Example: Sean Hannity.
Resolved: Groups 4-6 have a vested interest in believing that Group 1 is far larger than it really is and that Group 6 is a strawman. Groups 1-3 have a vested interest in the reverse, and I myself am far from innocent in this. As with many questions of this nature, reality is far closer to a bell curve. For both sides to accept this is the first step towards reconciliation.
Published in General
Among Ricochet members since the primary, both pro and anti Trump sides have complained the other side was overrepresented. That demonstrates to me that neither side is.
Be glad you don’t have to moderate between the two.
The giant group hug is coming. I promise you that.
If Ricochet splits anywhere near 50/50 then anti-Trump people are overrepresented on the site. The center-right’s Trump support is reflected in last year’s election results; he won.
I think I’m ready?
I have a feeling the reverse of the picture looks substantially the same.
I have no formal education beyond high school, and certainly not in the classics. But I live in Ithaca, (NY, not Greece), so I remain sensitive to all things Odyssey. (Not really, but I needed a good opening sentence.)
I noted that the Roy Scheider character in The Marathon Man took the name Scylla as his assassin handle. Also that Sting was able to perform the impossible and incorporate “Scylla and Charybdis” seamlessly into a pop song.
Economic prosperity and a conservative SCOTUS majority will bring us all together. No need for the long knives.
I hope you’re right.
6 all the way. MAGA baby.
OK, 4 some days , mostly 5 though, Mostly.
He won the primary with only 45% of the vote. I’d consider that pretty close to 50/50.
I have said before that I am a superfan of Isaac Asimov. His Foundation and Robot series of books are some of the best Science Fiction in existence. One of the coolest things he did was, near the end of his life, he took both series and joined them together and tied them off in a fascinating and surprising way. I still marvel at how he accomplished it.
(hang in there, I have a point)
In one of his later Robot books, as Asimov was working to join them all together, he surprised me to my core by taking the unbreakable Three Laws Of Robotics, which he first expressed 75 years ago, and adding a fourth law. The First, Second, and Third Laws were overridden by a Law thought up by a robot named Giskard when presented with a situation that he could not solve. I won’t be a Spoiler and tell you what it is, or even what book introduced it, but Giskard decided to call it The “Zeroth” Law, since it had higher priority than the First Law.
And with that introduction, I introduce Rule Zero of “The Trump Spectrum”.
0. Hate Trump: They go far beyond politics and make it personal. They stoop to any level to prove that personally, Trump is worse than Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao, and Stalin combined. For them, Hillary was a much better choice for President; an angel from Heaven, in fact, compared to Trump. You can tell them all the horrible things she has said and done, all the crimes she has committed, and they will still say Hillary is better than Trump. Examples: Everyone who voted for Hillary and everyone who voted for Jill Stein. Probably John McCain; verification needed.
If we had proportionate voting like the Democrats, Trump would not have won. Trump never got a majority in any state until late in the process. He won pluralities not majorities. Trump engaged in a hostile take-over of my party, and we have the right to dislodge him.
Love it, thanks!
But like Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics” – which contained a hidden “0th Law” – there should be a “0” on this spectrum:
0. Trump Psychotics: People who will break laws, leak classified materials, destroy property, ruin reputations, embarrass themselves, use foul language in public, and otherwise raise risks to the Republic and its citizens in order to destroy Trump. Examples: A third of Facebook and Twitter users, Resist, Linda Sarsour, Maxine Waters, David Frum (haha)
I’m a 3-4. I want him to succeed but he makes it really hard to stick up for him. Other than Chris Christie, he was the only one of the 17 GOP candidates I just couldn’t accept. “Flight 93 election”, “Not the hero we deserved”, and all that.
I love this closing scene from The Dark Knight and thought it applied better to George Bush than to Trump, but, hey…Hillary ain’t president.
He’s a hero for that.
While his intent may have been “hostile,” he won the Republican primary process by the rules in place at the time.
Trying to change the rules retroactively because you don’t like the outcome is a very Leftist thing to do.
Proportional representation (oft called perpetual representation) is the method of choice of protomarxists and leftists in general. Exhibit A: Democrats use it. Exhibit B: Cambridge, MA uses it. There’s a reason for this: exercise left to the reader.
You may think you want proportional representation now because you didn’t like one election result. Be careful what you wish for. You might just get it.
One day we’ll come to our senses and let a particularly intelligent octopus choose our president, like they do with world cup outcomes. It’s what the founders would have wanted.
Do you have reasons why proportional representation doesn’t work or is it jury guilt by association?
I’m trying to figure this one out as well. I know that where it’s used in Europe it tends to lead to really unstable coalition governments, but that can’t happen in a presidential primary…
Is there some part of the phrase “exercise left to the reader” that is unclear to you?
Many of us voted for someone else in the primaries and support him now. Very few on ricochet were early Trump supporters.
If Republican primaries were run like Democrat ones we’d have gotten Jeb! , since the fix would have been in before the first vote in the first state was cast. No thanks.
And I’m pretty sure that’s really what has a lot of NTs crying like babies with diaper rash.
(Gary: I am speaking generally. I have no idea who you would have preferred and and am not trying to imply anything about you personally.)
I don’t think that was the big difference, anyway. The democrat primaries gave more control to party leadership instead of voters when compared to republican primaries. They had more caucuses that rewarded organization within the party as well as more superdelegates to offset votes for Bernie. They had that system in place to prevent another McGovern. A system like that would have made it more difficult for Trump.
All of it.
I don’t think Trump ever polled above 6% on Ricochet during the primaries and don’t think Jeb! ever got above 2%.
I was wrong about Trump’s electability and may be wrong about the coming political massacres, but I imagine whispering “Gorsuch” to ourselves late at night will be little comfort when weighed against President Kamala Harris’ 2-3 appointments.
My preference was Rubio, followed by Kasich and Walker. Jeb! was way down the list. Cruz was my final choice of 16.
Only Trump was disqualified in my mind due to his birtherism at first, followed by his authoritarianism, bullying, lying and con-man qualities.
My point is that only with a stupid front-loaded “winner take all” could Trump with pluralities keep taking all of the delegates in a state. If we had had an open convention, Trump would not have gotten a majority, and we would have gotten a ticket that Republicans and conservatives could all live with.
I can’t and won’t live with Trump, and pray that he is defeated by Flake, Sasse, or Pence in 2020.
I fluctuate between #3 and #4 because so far “Drain the Swamp” and “War on the Deep State” have been only words. When I see actions that will eliminate federal public sector unions and members of the intelligence community who have leaked confidential documents actually being indited I’ll move to a solid #4.
A great post @umbrafractus. Your categorization is useful and sufficiently nuanced to intelligently describe how one feels about President Trump.
Rather than proportional voting, I prefer going back to smoke filled rooms and no primaries.