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7 Trumpian Thoughts
1. In many important ways, Trump’s been a great president.
2. He’s also obnoxious, nasty, and a bully. A big part of a president’s job involves character and being a role model, and he is absolutely awful. This is hurting him and his party politically. It hurts the country.
3. The lines between news and entertainment have disappeared. Trump, CNN, and “The Bachelorette” are far too similar.
4. This awfulness did not start with Trump. This awfulness gave us Trump.
5. Hillary Clinton was right about one thing: refusing to accept the results of an election undercuts the democracy.
6. Hillary Clinton is wrong about everything else. We dodged a bullet.
7. The people trying to bring down Trump are far more dangerous than Trump. Especially McCabe, Comey, Brennan, Clapper, and Schiff. Also their allies in the government and media. It is imperative that they do not succeed.
Published in Politics
100%
1. In many important ways Trump’s been a great president.
To the degree that Trump is following conservative principles, he has been a good president.
2. He’s also obnoxious, nasty, and a bully. A big part of a president’s job involves character and being a role model, and he is absolutely awful. This is hurting him and his party politically. It hurts the country.
Totally agree. Trump’s character is destroying our party.
3. The lines between news and entertainment have disappeared. Trump, CNN and The Bachelorette are far too similar.
Agreed. Very sad. Any possible solutions?
4. This awfulness did not start with Trump. This awfulness gave us Trump.
Yes and no. Trump is the awfulness on steroids.
5. Hillary Clinton was right about one thing: Refusing to accept the results of an election undercuts the democracy.
Agreed. It is time for Hillary to retire from the public spotlight.
6. Hillary Clinton is wrong about everything else. We dodged a bullet.
We had two horrible choices. However, before the election, I saw the following quote that I agree with “Conservatism survives and thrives if it spends 4 years in opposition to Hillary Clinton. Conservatism dies if it spends 4 years in compliance with Donald Trump.”
7. The people trying to bring down Trump are far more dangerous than Trump. Especially McCabe, Comey, Brennan, Clapper, and Schiff. Also their allies in the government and media It is imperative that they do not succeed.
Disagree. Trump is toxic. He is destroying the Republican Party. We are losing women, suburban and young voters. The Alabama Senate and Pennsylvania 18 seats are only the beginning. If we do not get rid of Trump, we will be replaced by a new conservative party, just as the Whigs were replaced by the Republican Party.
Well, 85%. I can’t totally buy into number 7.
If by “bring down,” you mean “bring down by any means possible,” then I might agree. Some attempts can do real damage to our republic.
But how much long term damage is Pres. Trump doing to our country, not to mention the Republican party? He may not have created this “awfulness,” but almost every day he pushes the nasty envelop further.
Unless he changes significantly (which I doubt), the best way to bring him down is by a concerted primary challenge. I’m hoping for a strong challenger to emerge in a few years (and please, not 17 candidates, which is one reason for Pres. Trump’s victory).
The substance of Gary’s criticism is that Trump is, in fact, “destroying” conservatism and/or the Republican party. (That wasn’t the case Gil made in point #2, by the way: “hurting” is not the same as “destroying.”)
The assertion that Trump is destroying conservatism is about as well founded as the assertion that a Clinton presidency would have destroyed America — or, at least, functional democracy in America. Either is debatable, neither is likely true (in my opinion).
The amount of harm Trump’s unorthodox conduct will cause is debatable, despite Gary’s oft-repeated claims to the contrary. What we know is that we have seen some seriously positive (from a conservative perspective) results under this administration.
I remain as I was the day I voted for Trump: cautiously optimistic — but more pleased than I expected to be.
Interesting. We take different angles at this. Two points:
Trump does damage, but he also does a lot of good for conservatives, the country, and the world.
Even if what you were saying is true, Trump isn’t nearly as dangerous as those trying to destroy him. (I’m not talking about honest critics like you.) And getting rid of him would be catastrophic. The people chose him. We now need to work with him. He’s given us a lot of what we want. We have no good alternatives to making this work.
Great analysis. We differ in our conclusions, but I appreciate your assertions and am open to reconsidering my positions.
All things considered, do you prefer Obama to Trump? A simple “yes” or “no” without equivocation would be nice.
Thank you Gary.
Agree with Gil Reich on everything.
Sounds like a sound policy. :)
Haha!
Great question and a split decision: Personality, yes. Policies, no.
A moment’s consideration of clearly defined policy goals. This is how big government operates. There are several glaring examples of this:
NASA has the goal of manned Mars exploration – but without a timeline or budget. So they’ll spend decades in Low Earth Orbit developing technology to spend decades in Low Earth Orbit – without actually attempting a manned landing on any body in the solar system. The purpose of Mars program is to spend billions on space, without actually risking failures by going anywhere new or developing new technologies.
Affordable Care Act and the opiate crisis. Every state that accepted the expansion of medicare in the ACA now has an opiate crisis. Doctors seem to be encouraged to prescribe pills to quickly get their patient out of the office, rather than consider treatments of therapies to get patients the long term “cure” – rather to turn the patient in a chronic sufferer, aka repeat customer.
Personality is nice but bad policy is dangerous to our liberty. Would be nice to get both but it’s not hard to choose which is most important.
Well, thanks for the answer. I suspect policy is the “awfulness” to which Gil was referring.
I think that I have finally found an article that expresses my point of view about Trump and his effect on our party and country. Keeping in mind the admonition to not cut and paste entire articles into comments, I will include only the best points. The original article is titled “The Coming Shellacking” and is at https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/the-coming-shellacking/
The highlights of the article are as follows:
“Two years ago Donald Trump hijacked the Republican party. Now it’s time to think about what steps might have to be taken to regain control of it.
“The tocsin of doom that sounded this week in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District could hardly have been more clear in its meaning: This November the GOP is headed for a mega-shellacking with a side order of drubbing sauce. The fault for this lies almost solely with President Trump. Losing the House looks like a foregone conclusion. Losing the Senate, while unlikely, no longer appears unthinkable. After the Democrats take the House, they will be implacably opposed to making deals, and would we want those anyway? Legislatively, President Trump will be finished. Getting appointments through the Senate won’t be easy.
…
“The behavior of the president shouldn’t be all that salient to, say, the candidacies of Democrats who ran and won in the Virginia House of Delegates. But voters can’t be counted on to be rational. There’s essentially only one issue on their minds this year: It’s the personality, stupid. The Chernobyl cloud of noxious presidential behavior is poisoning the party from coast to coast. That Trump’s approval rating is hovering in the high 30s and (very) low 40s is gobsmacking enough considering the sunny economic news, but what’s really disturbing is that his supporters are so unenthused. PA-18 Trump voters simply didn’t show up on Tuesday, yet he’s supplying the Democrats with a turnout motivator like no other. …
“After the November debacle, it’ll be smoke-filled-room time for the senior lawmakers and other grandees of Abraham Lincoln’s party. Although Trump has made strong judicial appointments and signed a tax reform that is boosting the economy, his personality is interfering with his duties as a president, and the voters are right to notice this and take it seriously. How much longer can the GOP tolerate having a de facto party leader — much less a president — who recklessly taunts the North Koreans, brazenly makes up facts even when meeting with the leaders of other countries, picks silly fights with celebrities and television personalities and even his own cabinet members, is too impatient to read briefing books, and possesses the moral compass of a crocodile?
…
“A presidential candidate even marginally better at politics than Hillary Clinton would easily defeat Trump in 2020, which also aligns as an extremely auspicious year for the Democrats in the Senate, presenting a high degree of likelihood that the Democrats will enjoy unchecked power in Washington. The party needs to think about how denying Trump its nomination in 2020 might be a last-ditch tactic for heading off that catastrophic scenario, which could well lead to nationalized health care or some other debacle.
“Surely the most vigorous of Trump fans cannot help noticing that he is burning down everything around him. What good is a president who makes it impossible for the rest of his party? Even Tom Brady couldn’t win a game if he looked to his line and discovered there were only three teammates left. Trump has a proven inability to help other Republican candidates get elected, and most will ask him not to try. The president is a cement jumpsuit that is dragging us all to the bottom.”
I highly recommend the article.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/the-coming-shellacking/
The “tocsin of doom” in PA. Haha! That guy won by talking like a Republican. If he even really won. The National Review has turned into a cesspool.
I can read you saying the same thing on my go-to website. Why should we give NRO’s film critic (or one of them) clicks to spout the usual “wisdom” on the death of the party? If there’s something new there, I missed it.
I utterly and emphatically reject this and our unusually unique ability to completely ignore the majority of history to laser focus in on the handful that may have been genuinely worthy of role model status is romanticizing the past if I ever saw it.
Archetypes are for fiction, not real life, and the more technologically advanced we get and more saturated in information, the less likely we will succeed in fashioning public figures into archetypical heroes and role models.
He is not a moral man. I think it’s important to acknowledge this point.
Sometimes you do not get the choice you want, you get to choose between bad and worse. Trump may not be a moral man but another Clinton would be so much worse. Life does not always give you the choices you want.
I actually think that it’s possible to (mostly) agree with both of the above. That’s how unique I find Trump to be. If for no other reason than the prevalence of social media in our time and his use of it, he’s distinguishable from virtually everyone that’s come before.
Maybe it took a Trump to face bigger obnoxious, nasty bullies that have been stewing at top levels of our government for a long time, undermining our democracy, ignoring the rule of law and the will of the people. I don’t care at all about his goofy tweets and pet names for dictators. Yes, we dodged a bullet – Obama and company was a nightmare – Hillary and Co would have been far worse – all that aside, look what the world’s real bullies have been doing and still are. Sometimes it takes a Dirty Harry to clean up the place.
That morality thing does not seem to play well. Look at Romney, Pence, etc. these guys no longer get elected. They are the punch lines of jokes and the subject of open ridicule. I do not expect to see moral people get elected anymore. We do not live in a moral time and the politicians reflect it.
I think Bill Clinton threw that notion out, and it might never matter again.
That’s for sure. But I wonder if even George Washington lived today if they wouldn’t find something to dig up about him.
Thank goodness you didn’t put my picture in there!
No argument.
You are narrating the story on how we reached this point.
Why are you here Mr. Robbins?
Haha! You don’t look horrible enough.
I still remember the year I stopped watching SNL. In 2012, they spent every episode ridiculing Romney for having good manners and being a decent man, and not one minute on Obama even though the jokes practically wrote themselves. And ridicule of decent men is what seeped into the public consciousness.