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No, We Are Not All Clintons Now
@michaelgraham wrote the following in a recent post titled We Are All Clintons Now:
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.
I think “we” are being awfully hard on ourselves. I’ve never seen complete purity in any political movement. Why start now?
Yes, we have a foul-mouthed philanderer in the White House. Not exactly a new thing.
Many of his supporters aren’t entirely objective. Again, not new.
So is Trump just as corrupt as Bill and Hillary?
The Clintons are in a class all by themselves. President Clinton got impeached, not because of his affair, but because of actual crimes committed while in office. Not just a one-time case of perjury, but suborning perjury and other types of obstruction. Clinton is also suspected of other crimes not included in the impeachment.
There are four broad categories of corruption: Personal (having affairs, etc.), Financial (crooked deals or politics for personal gain), Political (cheating in an election, retaliating against opponents) and Policy (knowingly doing things that are harmful to the country, lying about policies and their effects.) The Clintons are champions in all four categories. Obama holds his own in two of the categories, political and policy.
So, what about Trump?
He’s guilty in the personal category and has admitted (bragged about) it.
In the financial area we know Trump hasn’t been entirely pure (mob-connected cement contractors) but he has been so conspicuous for the past 40 years that he can’t have gotten away with much. To become a billionaire in the private sector, people have to trust you. Yes, people got burned during Trump’s bankruptcy, but so did Trump. Trump’s worse moments have been very public, and people have been willing to invest in him even after they happened. People who invest at that level aren’t stupid. Trump made his money building real buildings that people live and work in, and producing a television show that people watched.
In the political category, Trump is the victim of corruption — not the perpetrator.
In the policy area, Trump has been the most honest President since Ronald Reagan. I think his protectionism is harmful, but he sincerely believes in it — and campaigned on it.
Let’s look at what Trump has not done:
- Invade the home of a law-abiding family to send a child to Cuba.
- Give military secrets to China in exchange for campaign contributions.
- “Accidentally” acquire the FBI files of all House members of the opposing party.
- Launch a nationwide effort using his party, the media and the entire entertainment industry to destroy the reputations of his female accusers.
- Get involved in a land deal, where others went to jail to protect him.
- Ignore opportunities to capture or kill a dangerous terrorist leader.
- Leave an embassy exposed to attack, and refuse to defend it when the attack came.
- Lie to the families of people who lost their loved ones in military conflict.
- Use the IRS to attack his political opponents.
- Create a large “charitable” foundation whose donors coincidentally got favorable treatment from the State Department.
The list is getting long, so I’ll stop at 10.
The Clintons are unique. You’re not a hypocrite if you support Trump while opposing the Clintons.
Published in Politics
So it’s a good rule of thumb to prefer someone who doesn’t cheat on his wife, say, because it indicates he doesn’t keep fundamental promises. Except haven’t they all actually anyway?
And it’s not unheard of for men who had great reputations for personal morality to turn into political snakes when given the opportunity.
This is morality by proxy. We Americans don’t have to be especially moral, but our President is! Or many believe our new President will inspire more husbands to not cheat on their wives or something.
Democrats believe government can solve societal problems. (Some) Republicans seem to believe government leaders can inspire the nation to be a model moral family. The Democrats are actually less insane in this comparison.
And our children playing violent video games hyper violent and sexualized films and tv, with the most arcane and fringe porn a few clicks away on their phone pumped full of experimental drugs for failing to integrate into this insane society are supposed to have a Mitt Romney figure counteract all that, and we’ll be back on the right track.
Very well said @franco. You saved me a lot of typing.
Not all that different from the rest of us, then.
Welcome to the thread @michaelgraham. Ears burning a little?
I thought I was persuasive in outlining the large moral difference between Trump and the Clintons, and therefore their respective supporters. Guess you weren’t convinced.
The following two sentences are true about both The Donald and Slick Willie.
But one of them married Hillary.
Clinton supporters have a much bigger pile of things to defend. That’s a difference in degree. When you look at the categories of corruption, there’s a difference in kind, too.
I don’t have a problem with your proposed sentence, and it too acknowledges a difference between the two camps.
I may be wrong, but at least I’m not Hillary.
The trouble with the 58 percent is the wording of the poll question. It doesn’t allow for scaleability. Most of them probably wouldn’t trust Trump alone with their daughters, but they trust him in other areas.
On the other side of the fence you have the Lewinsky family. Remember Bernard Lewinsky’s reaction to the scandal?
Different worlds.
Trump lacks civic-government-foreign policy knowledge and civic experience. That is what worries me. So far so good. He’s an inflationist; no one cares because everyone is. The media and the cultural marxists are getting needed large dose of Trump. That is the state of things.
However, if Mitt Rmoney is allowed to run in 2020, the election will go to the Democrats. Which apparently is exactly what some N-T-ers here want.
2012 was more Romney’s era.
This thread appears to winding down but just in case anyone is still here, I was thinking about “Moral Leaders” and the Bushes. Now we know that Poppy Bush like to play grab-a**, so that leaves W.
If you were to poll the staff at National Review with the question, “Who is the better moral leader, George W. Bush or Donald Trump?”, Bush would probably win hands down.
But what if you put that same question to Scooter Libby and his family?
This thread appears to winding down but just in case anyone is still here, I was thinking about “Moral Leaders” and the Bushes. We know now that Poppy Bush like to play grab-a**, so that leaves W.
If you were to poll the staff at National Review with the question, “Who is the better moral leader, George W. Bush or Donald Trump?”, Bush would probably win hands down.
But what if you put that same question to Scooter Libby and his family?
Read the next comment.
Read next comment.
I missed this comment of yours and really love it. I don’t think I ever caught the Richard Pryor looking dude and now am wondering if Pryor was pulling the leg of some aspect of TV evangelicals? Would anyone put it past him?
“Allowed” by whom?
I want to make sure I understand you correctly. Are you saying that if Romney is the 2020 Republican nominee, Never Trumpers will want the Democrats to win? I’m not getting what you’re trying to communicate.
The reality happens to be that over the past ten years, there is a huge sea change, politically speaking. Pew survey and Gallup polls in 2016 indicated quite clearly that some 42 percent of the population now is firmly uncaring, disinterested and ready to rebel as far as the Two Main Arms of the One Big Money Party.
the Pew Survey people realized this way back in 2008. I read their Survey results the spring of that year. Some few months later I was talking to a neighbor, a very hard line old fashioned Republican. But being sick of the Bush endless war in Iraq and Afghanistan and above all else, he was sick of the idea that we were about to get drawn into endlessly Bailing out the Big Banking, Big Finance people. So with great passion, he declared he was not going to vote for McCain. He was livid that the very people who caused the economic collapse were to be bailed out. McCain and other Republican leaders were behind that notion. (Dem leadership like HRC promoted the idea out loud as well.)
He mentioned he’d be vote for Obama. I thought my head would explode. He was the staunchest “R” I knew but he had had it with the One Big Money party. Of course, after Obama got in, Pres O immediately choose his “good buddy” Tim Geithner, as Secretary of the Treasury, and many of us who voted for O realized we had been scammed.
This 42% of us is here to stay. Run a Big Money jerk like Rmoney – see what happens. Many Trump supporters will not support that guy. As I type this, it is clear to see how much the two parties are “One Big Money Party.”
People on the left are told that as far as the Nov elections, they need to compromise – be more like the “R”s if they want to win. (Dems, forget about gun control or keeping abortion legal.) Meanwhile people on the right are being admonished to S___ can the idea of populists like Trump – “we ain’t giving you candidates like that this time, as we can’t afford to lose.” (Republicans, forget about the Second Amendment and the need to tighten abortion laws.) This is why those on the middle class are fed up beyond anything comparable with any other time in history. Neither party is promoting anything but the idea of “Keep us in power – then maybe someday we will give you a few crumbs.”
Finish a war for once.
The supposed regulation of Big Finance is outlandish. Stop it.
Create disbursed prosperity.
Fix the health insurance system.
Stop Socialism.
Stop cultural marxism and the Frankfurt School.
Rob Long did a great rant on the flagship podcast some years back about wanting the people in charge of the banks during the collapse to be in jail, or at least relegated to selling pencils and apples on the street corner.
It’s outrageous. Big Finance = parasites enabled by the Fed.
There is no leadership anywhere.
There’s also the fact that by these days, some of those who are parents to kids now playing video games grew up in homes where mom and dad both lost jobs due to how Rmoney figured out ways around Glass Steagal. Late 1980’s, early 1990’s, he was one of the more rapacious people in the Big Finance world. Sure his machinations were legal, just barely, but a world of hurt was caused by Mitt and those who followed his example.