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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
I would have voted for Hillary as she was the less bad alternative compared to Trump. That would have been my first vote for a Democrat for President since I was in college in the 1970’s.
I was relieved when Evan McMullin stepped forward and ran, and was the county contact person for him. (He won almost a full per cent as a write-in, which was historically high for a write-in.
I love my country so I am working for Trump’s lawful removal.
Not at all what my original comment meant. What it meant was perfectly (re)substantiated by your follow-up comment, however.
Put me in for a 3.5. I don’t like or trust him (to put it mildly), but he’s better than any electable Democrat* (or Democrat pressure group), and the death of Scalia made any ‘long-game’ calculations moot; as soon as Cruz forced him to make an explicit commitment on the Supreme Court nomination, there wasn’t any way I was voting against him if victory over Hillary was within the realm of reasonable possibility.
*electable in the primary, I mean.
Wait, let me get this straight. As much as you’ve been on and on about how immoral Trump is, are you actually suggesting that Hillary was a more moral candidate? Sorry, I’m still trying to pick my jaw up off my desk.
Just imagine how many more votes McMullin would have gotten if so many ballots didn’t have to be rejected because the name that someone wrote in was “Egg McMuffin.” I think he could have won, if those votes would have counted for him.
The damage Obama did while he had Pelosi and Read was … Obamacare.
So, not single payer. Nothing close to single payer. This a big medicaid expansion and a huge unworkable insurance scheme.
But, once again: not single payer. Nothing close to single payer. Single payer, even with Democrats running Congress, and the biggest Democratic presidential win in a generation, was not ever on the table.
And you can fret about another Ginsburg or Sotomayor, but McConnell successfully strongarmed Obama into nominating a moderate in his 60s, and McConnell never even brought him up for a vote.
This idea that “Omg the uber-progressive Hillary Clinton was going to nominate multiple uber-progressive SCotUS judges and they’ll sail through congress-and then the country is lost forever” is a fantasy that Trump ppl use to rationalize voting for a sleazy conman.
So… don’t support Trump, who we can’t trust to govern conservatively, instead support Clinton, who we can’t trust to govern progressively? Do you really think Trump is a sleazier con than Clinton? You may not like it, you may rage against the very thought, but there was without a doubt a lesser of two evils in 2016. I can appreciate people that voted third party or did not vote at all, but you lose me as soon as you start comparing Clinton favorably to Trump.
If you limit yourself to domestic legislation that actually passed, that might be accurate. I would argue you could define the damage to be quite a bit larger that when you consider the executive malfeasance that Obama engaged in that was enabled by a lack of appropriate Congressional oversight.
The big Medicaid expansion that was the largest in history, that changed the entire point of the Medicaid program. And an insurance scheme that is destroying a sector of the US Economy. Whose whole point was to pave the way for single payer, because they knew they couldn’t get it in one move.
It is now!
A moderate what? And what would McConnell have done if Hillary won?
While I didn’t vote for the sleazy conman, to pretend like this wasn’t at least a slightly legitimate reason for preferring Trump over Clinton is a bit… deluded.
Get your head out of your alimentary canal.
DC v. Heller was 5-4. We almost had a majority of the Supreme Court uphold a complete ban on firearms as meeting constitutional muster, Second Amendment be (CoC)-ed. Carhart II, in which we banned bringing a baby out of the womb in the breech position, and then, when its head gets lodged in the cervix, stabbing its skull with scissors and suctioning its brain out, also 5-4. Citizens United? 5-4.
We are/were one Supreme Court vote away from tyranny, one Supreme Court vote away from losing the pro-life movement for a generation, and one Supreme Court vote away from government making it ever harder for us “normal people” to have political power.
I am not going to stand before our Lord on Judgement Day and tell him that America killed another fifty million unborn children because I was too (CoC)-ing pure to vote for that icky Donald Trump. Nor am I going to say that the shining city, a beacon of hope and freedom for a world full of monarchies and dictators, sunk into an abyss because Never Trump meant more to me than the First Amendment.
I’m not going to wade through 191 comments at this point but great post @umbrafractus. I’d rate myself about a 2.75 and your resolutions are spot on.
Right. It’s one of those lines that gets trotted out every four years by Republican politicians. And I know that’s what Republicans and conservatives tell themselves to rationalize always pulling the lever for the guy with the “R” next to the name, but I’m telling you that it’s untrue. It is a self-serving wild over simplification of both our politics and our political system.
There’s no denying that some good came out of Trump’s victory. The question is whether or not that outweighs the bad that is coming out of it as well. Let’s break it down:
Good: Hillary lost. The executive branch leadership now has several principled conservatives in place and and many of the damaging regulations of the past eight years are being reconsidered or rolled back. Neil Gorsuch is on the Supreme Court, which is very, very good.
Bad: The aforementioned executive branch is constantly undermined by the actions of the executive. Trump is fortunate that he got so many good conservatives on his team right after the election, because I doubt as many would be willing to serve in his administration now. The constant chaos also undermines any serious legislative efforts. Replacing the ACA with any conservative plan was never going to be easy, but without leadership from the White House and the ability to sell the changes to the people the legislation tanked. Trump is doing to the GOP brand what Carter did to the Democrats back in the late 1970s.
We can be glad that Hillary isn’t spending the next four years putting one or two liberals on the Supreme Court, but the price for that may well be that 2020 sees the beginning of multiple Democrat terms each putting one or two liberals on the Court instead.
Hey, Fred. @bridget listed three Supreme Court cases above that went 5-4. I notice you were afraid to tackle those directly. Why don’t you share your nuanced and complex understanding of how these don’t matter? (You can skip the abortion one, as we know that 2/3* of libertarians don’t give a crap for inconvenient unborn children.)
In any case, here’s another “self-serving wild over simplification” for you: It’s better to win 5-4 than it is to lose 4-5.
*Edited as a nod to @Jamie Lockett who pointed out my hyperbole.
This isn’t true. There are quite a number of libertarians on this very site who are pro-life, including myself.
Based on polling of self-identified libertarians about 30-40% are pro-life. Ron and Rand Paul are both pro-life. Here is an article from Reason: http://reason.com/blog/2015/08/14/sorry-rand-paul-haters-pro-life-libertar
Strawmen are unhelpful to discussion.
And Trump Apologists like to pretend that Hillary Clinton still matters, and that invoking her name is sufficient to defend anything Trump does.
However, based upon your statistics above, if said more precisely, @profdlp ‘s statement would have been accurate … ‘as we know that a majority of libertarians don’t give a crap for inconvenient unborn children’.
Not exactly a strawman.
I guess, but 34% of Republicans think abortion should be legal in all or most cases, do they not give a crap for inconventient unborn children? The statement “don’t give a crap for inconvenient unborn children” is rank sophistry that brings more heat than light. He didn’t want to have a serious discussion about the politics of abortion as it pertains to libertarians, or anyone for that matter, he wanted to virtue signal.
Since I am the one who brought up Carhart and the pro-life movement:
One would hope that libertarian or conservative, those of us on the Right would all prefer that abortion laws be made at the state level, not embedded in the Constitution via Supreme Court edict. If you’re a libertarian who believes that partial-birth abortion should be legal, one hopes that you would still frown on the idea that five robed Justices, rather than the legislative branch, be the ones to make that call.
To be quite literal, we could win every state legislative house, every state governorship, Congress, the Senate, and the Presidency, and still be unable to advance many conservative or libertarian ideals if the Court is 5-4 against us.
I think I’m in love. Carry on.
Believe this or not, but IMHO the main problems Trump has are the Never Trump Republicans in Congress and behind the scenes whose determination to do him in comes before doing what is right for this country. At the first sign of trouble the Democrats circle the wagons in their never-ending march toward socialism and ending this presidency while we weakly agree with his critics. There is every possibility he’ll be able to appoint at least two more Supreme Court justices, and that is worth fighting for. I like his tweeting and love his cabinet appointments. All the griping about his style is insignificant.
I’m taken. @sabrdance stole my heart.
I skipped most of the detritus following the post, but am glad that a link led me to your comments, @bridget. You carry the torch well.
Ditto both Trinity and Columbo. I can’t see anyone in their right mind doubting your Conservative bona fides. Great words.
Exactly, led by none other than John McCain. He is the demon behind stopping domestic legislation (repeal Obamacare) and foiling any progress on better relations with Russia (sanctions). Now he’s trying to form a new Gang of Eight or however many Democrats he can get to mess with immigration.
He’s a dirty R.A.T. who I feel like is just going to keep doing this to America until he dies.
Duly noted and amended. My personal experience indicates that even the 30% range would be greatly stretching it, but will acknowledge the small sample size involved.
I should never be used an an example of any group’s opinion on anything, but I am a small l libertarian and I favor abortion restrictions. My view is that government intervention is generally permissible when necessary to prevent the use of force on others, and abortion is nothing if not the use of force on a group that cannot defend itself (the unborn).
(The difficulty is deciding what qualifies as “force,” but abortion is not a difficult case in my opinion, so we can leave that more difficult discussion for another day.)
I didn’t say they don’t matter. They do matter, they’re just not apocalyptic. The Supreme Court isn’t some super-legislature where you get your policies passed if your team has the right number of seats. It’s an appellate court.
Citizens United was a great decision, to be sure. But it could’ve easily gone the other way. (I think if Roberts had it to do over, considering the blow back from the decision, if he had it to do over with, he might have voted the other way.) But if it had, then you deal with it and move on. It’s not the end of the Republic.
Look at Roe. The Supreme Court made their ruling, legal abortion is the law of the land. Did everyone accept it and move on? No, of course not. The decision wasn’t the final word, instead it’s been a running fire-fight for four decades.
Again, I’m not saying the Supreme Court isn’t important, it’s just not apocalyptic.
Now, I realize that OMG-if-we-loose-the-Supreme-Court-it’s-all-over and If-we-just-elect-a-Republican-President-he’ll-appoint-judges-and-fix-everything and Nothing-else-matters-because-judges are tropes that people on the right propagate among themselves.
But I think it’s akin to If-we-just-elect-more-Republicans-to-Congress-they-can-finally-do-conservative-things. It’s a sales technique Republican politicians trot out to get people to vote for terrible candidates. And you should know, you’re being lied to.
Look how it worked: Republican Senate, Republican House, nominally Republican President and we still have Obamacare.