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There is finally a wide consensus among Repubs:
1.5
After being a true 1.0 on the Trump Affinty Scale (1.0 is Pure NeverTrump and 5.0 is Pure EverTrump from the beginning), I find myself shifting from a 1.0 to 1.5. Trump has been good on Judges, taxes and regulations. It seems like every day he doesn’t tweet, he improves by .1, and every day he tweets, he falls by .1 in my estimation.
If Trump has his own Saturday Night Massacre, I will go back to 1.0, and will likely stay there.
On the other hand, I am open to continue to shift up to a 2.0 if he can continue to behave himself, and avoid horrendous comments like the ones after Charlottesville. (A 2.0 score would mean that while I will likely not be voting for Trump in the 2020 primaries, I would not be sending money to Kasich, Sasse and Flake and imploring them to challenge Trump in 2020.)
The GOP likes being the party of the loyal opposition. It wants to be the party of the loyal opposition so much that it will oppose itself in order to return to the minority. I am not sure it mattered what GOP was elected. I suspect the Left would have responded as it has and the GOP also. Not that it matters. In 2018 and 2020 the GOP will gets its wish. Then the Democrat governments of the country will get its rightful Democrat leaders.
I liked his Charlottesville comments, though they were probably a political mistake.
From what I’ve seen the Resistance exists to get trolled anyway, so he might as well continue. I think in the past two weeks alone I’ve already died three times, for example. No reason not to drive them into even greater frothing fits.
that would probably make me a 4.9
I was for Cruz and still wish…
but when he crashed and burned I became a Trump zealot.
I will go down with the ship (USS Trump).
I agree with much of your statement, but I think one good thing about the MAGA wing is that they like winning. They may save the principled losers from themselves.
Maybe.
On a political level, maybe this chicken little stuff plays itself out and by the midterms most voters see them as irresponsible and unhinged.
On a moral level, maybe we need to flush them out and stop surrendering the culture war.
On the other hand, we can win a normal election. And Virginia & Alabama may have taught us that we’re losing the 24/7 Trump vs Resistance War. If we can all just calm down, and normalize Trump & the Repubs, I think we win big.
But you got better?
I finally belong to a group! lol
This group has been solidified by they media constantly beclowning themselves because of their obvious anti-Trump hysteria.
Disagree strongly. Most of his tweets are fantastic and necessary. It’s like if I tell you to not ever do anything stupid. What exactly do you do? Stop everything because you can’t take a chance?
Or keep on tweeting because it got you elected and it has a huge benefit for you. Demanding perfection is a foolish thing to do. You and everyone on the conservative side needs to do a cost-benefit analysis instead of this constant media-based drumbeat to stop doing what he is most effective at doing. Cost. Benefit. Tell me about the benefits. Analyze how much good Trump could lose if he does what you are asking.
Unfortunately, none of us have a choice at this point…
Translation: It’s not enough that @gilreich write a post celebrating the president’s policy victories; he must celebrate all of Trump’s behavior at least as much as @larrykoler, or he’s a virtue-signaling perfectionist who probably wants Hillary to be president.
The tweets are important to me as I see them doing something I never dreamed of: going directly after the media and other political enemies. Many people on the conservative side read too much and believe too much of what the media spews. Don’t get your ideas about Trump’s tweets only from the media or the regurgitators. As my good friend JctPatriot showed: most of Trump’s tweets aren’t covered by the sources most of you read. He got me to follow Trump and see for myself what he does by communicating directly with us regular Americans.
Tom, you’re being suckered.
Cost. Benefit.
I am doing a cost-benefit analysis.
The cost of his divisiveness is that it looks like what got him here won’t keep him here. Polling for Trump and the GOP is catastrophic and recent elections show their electoral situation is likely even worse than the polls show. The demographics that turn out best for midterms are not currently voting GOP. And if the GOP loses Congress, Trump will spend the following 2 years fending off impeachment hearings, constant Congressional investigations, and a credible primary challenge from people credibly claiming he destroyed the GOP.
And on the other side, his policy achievements position him and the GOP for some 2018 Senate pickups and 2020 reelection.
He should still Tweet, he should still be fun, but he should stop feeding the trolls. I think most of his recent Tweets are good, which leads me to believe that what I’m suggesting is a conclusion that he’s already reached.
Moderator Note:
putting words in someone's mouthAgain: Anyone who disagrees with Larry [redacted] who doesn’t understand what’s really going on.
Enjoy, folks.
But you’re coming to a different conclusion than Larry Koler.
That means you’re either: 1) Lying about our commander-in-chief; 2) A too-precious snowflake trying to remain pure and unsoiled in a fallen world; 3) Trying to support Hillary Clinton; or 4) Some combination of the above.
Those are the only options, Gil. Get with it!
I can’t speak for all Trump skeptics, but there’s a clear correlation here on my end. (Note: I reversed the two paragraphs from the OP.)
@tommeyer,
Stop bringing past arguments with @larrykoler to this conversation.
Yes. And no.
‘That’s if Trump can pocket his victories….’ – yes
‘…and stop trolling the Resistance.’ – no. We all have to understand that we must win what the vile opprobrium of the leninist progressives with stalinist will for power and disregard of humanity called the ‘cultural war’. They called it so before conservatives understood it whilst looking up from the work to feed their miscreant, unsophistocated, obese, adolescent offspring (whereas I tend to believe that as part of the cocktail of decent medicine a general draft into national guard for each state for all male adolescents has a major contribution in changing that). We must rise up and speak. We must name the opponent. We are called to decry evil in public in order for more of us to fight it with vigour, will and passion. The 45th President unorthodoxly, willfully, at time spitefully and with bile but no less effectively than seriously mean (and in many ways wrong) political operators as F.D.R. calls out, pursues, soups up and takes down cultural and political figures as pars pro toto. He must, because beforehand we all failed. So, let’s rise up and fight with words every day, have them shake, squeal, quiver and then run. We finally must speak, argue, fight every single day. Yes, as conservatives, we really like to focus on regular life, but when that is in danger, at risk, on the verge of being regaled to a ward, it is enough. Call them what they are, call their follies, use their weaknesses, and win.
Ticketyboo.
I think if there is one conclusion we can draw from this last year. It is that Trump can not and will not be “presidential”. He can manage some small burst, but it is not long before he quickly reverts back to form. The Question is can that ultimately be worked around? Legislatively this might be true assuming you have something that more or less 100% of Republicans want to pass like a Tax Cut bill. But when there are serious divisions in the ranks it seems to fall apart, like with Obamacare Reform. Maybe they have figured it out now… but I’m still not putting my money on it just yet.
Will 2018 see normal budget process? Doubtful, will it see any other major legislation extremely doubtful as there is nothing left people agree on. In January we will have another continuing resolution to fight over, in March DACA comes due. Iranian Decertification is still up in the air because it isn’t clear to me what that did other than throw it to congress who will now have to throw it back to Trump.
What foreign policy will bring is unclear, and in many ways out of anybodies direct control. Trump’s biggest accomplishment in that field is beating back ISIS, but that was really just following through on what Obama set up. North Korea is clearly not being deterred by anything and so who knows where that will go.
I don’t foresee 2018 really being that great electorally for Republicans, Virginia and Alabama show that the Dems can mobilize their base if they have to in off years. And the driver of that motivation is sticking it to Trump. Trump isn’t going anywhere, and he won’t be come less offensive to them. In fact as the elections pick up, if he starts campaigning on behalf of R’s he will constantly be enraging them. Then there will also be the awkwardness of blue district Republicans trying to distance themselves from Trump, what happens when Trump takes offense and picks a fight with them?
Then of course there are all the wild cards of primary challengers that Bannon will throw out there.
And of course we don’t actually know what Muller could deal out.
Everyone is happy now, but in two weeks we won’t be, because tax cuts can’t paper over the real divides and dislikes at play here.
@zinmt, I responded to comments in this thread.
Okay so having now read through all the comments too. I feel I need to remind people of the Trump New Cycle. Which goes like this.
Trump does something normal/positive, then Republicans start saying he is turning it around “We have a pivot”, then Trump tweets something or says something off the cuff that is stupid/wrong, Media jumps on it, Trump then doubles down, Media then over reacts, both Trump and Media grow bored, Trump then does something normal….
We just passed a tax cut. That was normal. Now we are in the phase where we talk about pivots and unicorns, hopefully it lasts through Christmas. Then come New Year we will have a Trump Tweet, and the cycle will begin anew again.
This is the pattern. Depending on your partisanship you may view this as a cycle of repeated triumphs, or travesties. But, it fuels the opposition and loyalist, and it wears away at everyone else.
Does it really? I don’t pay that much attention to it.
Most wonderful time in 8 years!
It’s rather like the “Buying a Bed” skit – you end up having to keep track of who needs dividing by ten, who needs multiplying by three, and who you shouldn’t say “mattress” to, if you’re not up for a big, off-key song and dance:
Larry is right. Let Trump be Trump. The tweets begat the tax cuts and everything else. The MSM is so focused on gossip and scandal, and Trump has been flying under the radar, ignoring them, and throwing chaff at them. They keep taking the bait. Meanwhile we win the day. It’s like what happened at the UN today. So what? We ignore them. Go ahead crazy wife. Break the vase. There are no more threats that can move us. We know you hate us. Oh look, now she threw her wedding ring in the garbage disposal. Interesting.
These are all tantrums. They have ceased to have any meaning, at least for us to care about the outcome. The outcome will be the same no matter what. They will always feel they are superior and more enlightened. They will always find something. Binders full of women! “Mission Accomplished” and dozens of other lies and mischaracterizations. Trump is flooding the zone and that’s working beautifully. So have at it, lefties! Call us more names. Tell all your friends they are going to die. Again.
It’s the same phenomenon writ large as “be careful, you’ll make the terrorists angry!” We can’t have a civilization on those terms.
Let me add some evidence to the point I previously made:
If I were Trump, I’d never stop using two hands to drink now.
Gil, I think there’s still a fatal flaw in all of your analysis and I don’t think there is agreement at all on the points you list. I don’t find his tweets nasty or divisive. I don’t think all of this policy is a respite from the Trumpiness but is a result of it. He had a largely conservative platform even during the campaign and he hasn’t deviated. For all our lamenting that we’re losing the culture, he’sactually engaging on that level too in a way we haven’t seen. His ratings are bad? Oh geez let’s not get skittish. Those bad ratings are hardly surprising considering that the entire media has been out to get him for more than a year including much of the right; he’s sexist, racist, dumb, insane, and openly admitted sexual assault to Billy Bush dontcha know.
I also don’t think Bannon wanted to burn it down. The phrase you’re looking for is drain the swamp. There’s a difference but admittedly perhaps not much of one. If the swamp won’t allow itself to be drained then perhaps burning is the only recourse. Going back to the way it was is not happening, at least not for me.
I think the Republicans win big under Trump or die big backing away from him. Us backing away is the lifeline the Democrats need to to prevent their own implosion and make their own comeback.