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We Are All Clintons Now
I have never blamed anyone for voting for Donald Trump. Given the choices — Hillary, Trump or “Are You People Freakin’ Crazy?” (I chose the latter) — every option stunk. The #NeverTrump anger and insults toward people who picked one of three lousy options is irrational and unhelpful.
But deciding “We’re stuck with Trump” is far different from crossing the line into Clintonism — a line that a distressing number of conservatives have chosen to cross.
In a depressing new YouGov.com poll (which we discussed in the podcast, btw):
–56 percent of Trump supporters said the phrase “moral leader” describes Trump “extremely well/very well.”
–Only 11 percent of Trump supporters admit that Stormy Daniels’ story is “credible.” 48 percent say it’s not–despite the deluge of legal documents pouring out of Trump World.
–And a pathetic 51 percent of Trump fans say that if Trump did cheat on Melania with the money-hungry porn star “it would be immoral.”
Trump fans also claim they don’t believe that Trump knew anything about the $130,000 payout to Stormy, and even if he did it, only 27 percent say it would be immoral, etc. etc.
Like I said: Clintonism.
For years, my conservative friends and I have mocked Clinton Democrats for their defenses of Bill and Hillary. We reminded them how they pretended they didn’t know what really happened, how they pretended Clinton was innocent. How these “truth to power” feminists empowered a guy who treated women — including his wife — like crap. “What shameless hypocrites!” we cried. “What partisan fools! What stupid-on-purpose stooges!”
Now, a whole lot of Republicans are doing the same thing.
What I don’t get is “why?” Why pretend that Trump is moral, why pretend to have no idea if he cheated on his wife. Why humiliate yourself when there’s a completely honest and rational position you could take:
“Yes, Trump is a cheating dirtbag, but given the awful choices in 2016, even a cheating dirtbag was better than Hillary. And he won the election, which tells you what the American people think of Hillary. Now we’re stuck with a president whose personal behavior is atrocious. The best we can do is get as many good policies out of him while he’s in office. And on X, Y, and Z that’s exactly what we have done. I have no problem denouncing Trump as a person while embracing the good things he’s getting done as president.”
What’s wrong with that answer? It’s honest. It’s accurate. And when the Trump presidency ends, these Republicans will still have a modicum of credibility when they return to their former “values matter!” position.
So why lie? Especially to yourself?
Published in General
That’s the answer I give. But I summarize it to “Yeah, so?”
I don’t know about anyone else, but I think it’s high time we all stopped referring to the President, regardless of who he or she is, as our leader.
He’s not.
At least, he’s not my leader.
Even when I was a tanker in the Army, and the President was the Commander in Chief, I didn’t think of him as my leader, not in any real sense.
Everyone knew who Trump was, and who Hillary was, and ( if they cared ) who the 3rd party candidates were before they voted for them. I would have voted for Walker, Perry, Fiorina, Rubio, Santorum or even Gingrich or Cruz before Donald Trump. None of them were on the November ballot. I am glad Hillary lost & the Trump presidency has gone much better than expected. Anyone who looks to Trump ( or Gingrich or Hillary or Bernie for that matter ) for moral, ethical or religious leadership is an idiot. I would like the President to lead the country toward a better culture, but I doubt it is going to happen again ( Reagan ) in my lifetime. Given that, I will settle for a stronger economy, a stronger military, a more prudent foreign policy (weakness isn’t prudent ), and a more federalist, more constitutional, less meddling administration.
I do have one question. — are the same people who go into fainting spells over Trump the same people who are appalled at Pence’s straight laced Christian moralism? Which do they want?
I would go for Pence over Trump, sure. I want the latter. But, whatevs. You can’t always get what you want.
Thomas Jefferson, Lyndon Johnson, JFK, Clinton…
Who can explain to me how affairs and crass behavior are unpresidential?
My blinders fell off somewhere… if you find them, feel free to return them. I may or may not put them back on.
Depends on my mood.
If you want blinders, I recommend scotch.
Tequila’s more my style. I love mexicans.
It’s not a matter of emotion. It’s a matter of effectiveness.
Not breaking the law and good policies is more sensible standard.
Stormy was not raped, neither was she in an employment position inferior to Trump. But here’s what really irritates me about your entire post: you calling us hypocrites. I did not hate Bill Clinton. I liked him! He was a sexy guy, and all America responded to that. I hated Ken Starr.
But I was appalled that Clinton was carrying on in the Oval Office. Sheesh,,you’re the leader of the Free World: can’t ya keep your pants up during business hours, at least?
Having an extramarital affair,
as a private citizen,
on your own time,
with another consenting adult,
is not comparable. And my question is , why does it bother you so effing much?
Aren’t you acquainted with any other adults who have done so? Seriously?
As far as not credulously believing every salacious story we hear about Trump, can you blame us? After the DNC paid millions to get Steele to fabricate that cute anecdote about him paying Russian whores to urinate on the very pillow where once the sacred heads of the Obamas lay?
You now seem to be admitting Trump is doing a great job. But you think that in addition to recognizing that, we should also constantly denounce him as a person., because he’s been outed as a hererosexual male.
Can you explain how, in your opinion, that will aid him in continuing to do the job we elected him to do?
Also, they always make it sound like it’s a known fact that Trump sexually assaulted someone.
The whole media and all of the left uses Alinsky tactics reflexively.
That’s exactly it, @rufusrjones.
Case in point, the OP’s “Plus–it’s Trump.” (So it must be true…)
Like the Left, this quisling is counting on blind prejudice.
Mr. GRaham, Get back to me when you can accuse Trump of wasting governmental resources, plotting to profit, while holding high office, by selling natural resources to,our enemies, turning the RNC into a tool to spy on political opponents, using money raised t help earthquake victims to line his own pockets…I’ll wait.
So when do we remove Martin Luther Kings birthday from the pantheon?
I reluctantly voted for Trump in what I thought was a “Flight 93” type of election because I thought 8 years of Hillary (and you were going to get 8 years of Hillary if for no other reason “historicalness”) would so far entrench other systems and rules for permanent Democrat majority
But my problem now is so many of those Hillary voters and some anti-Trump Republicans seek out my criticism but also won’t accept it without complete full throated condemnation. Particularly they want me to regret my vote based on certain things I don’t particularly care about (such as the revolving door of certain positions) without the second step of “as opposed to Hillary?” I get that’s not a be all end all for sober reflection or for every case. Hillary would have had a lot more entrenched veteran Democrats she could rely upon, and not have nearly the turmoil, mostly because no turmoil would ever be reported (see also Obama, “No Drama”). A deal would be struck with the Bernie wing for a ceremonial position to make up for stealing the nomination, etc. But telling me Trump paid off a pornstar in 2006. Okay it makes him more of a jerk than he was, tell me how its relevant to his job in office.
I have always found Trump expendable. You want to give me Pence, great. But I’m also not interested in actively undermining Trump getting caught up in minutiae. You’re telling me he’s a terrible person, that was baked into the cake. I didn’t want to worship him, I wanted to prevent worshiping Big Government as my savior. If he does something terrible WHILE IN OFFICE, feel free to impeach him. But it seems to me a lot of this handwringing is re-litigating November 2016, mostly fueled by the need by our media to continually tell us “everything is terrible” in hopes that it sticks. If you go beyond Twitter and the news, real life outside of politics, is pretty darn good and optimistic.
But as I often say in these kinds of threads, my problem with the Kristols and Podhoretz types wasn’t their former objection, it’s their apparent current cheerleading with negative thought pieces and that we politically get hurt by it so they can then be the leaders of a rebuilding instead of suggesting ways to possibly get around a midterm shellacking other than “Well, you shouldn’t have voted for him”
I think there are a bunch like this that have a belief system that doesn’t dovetail with the state of the economy, the political system, and the way geopolitics is breaking. It it was quite hard for me to adopt to David Horowitz view of this stuff, but I think he’s right.
More of a “theoretical” problem in a vacuum?
At this point I don’t care. The left is trying harder than ever to destroy this country, and I give a rat’s rear end of allegations, because at this point, I do not believe they are true. I didn’t believe the things about Clinton until the blue dress showed up.
Even if this Stormy D. babe can produce pictures, so what? We now know that video these days is almost impossible to distinguish from fakes, so anything goes.
I like what Trump is doing, and I’m long past the point where I want a “perfectly principled conservative” to be in office. I want conservative results, and Trump delivers . . .
So, just for the record, I have now been waiting
All day.
Trump has a hard time hanging onto cabinet members.
Daniels is litigating because she wants something from Trump…
How does Secretary of State Stormy grab ya?
If I’ve learned anything from Me Too (and I haven’t) it’s that grabbing isn’t allowed.
Discuss
This is what it’s really all about, isn’t it?
Well, yeah.