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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
Is it suddenly a new standard that the President must also be a moral man? Is there any president that would be a ‘good’ moral leader?
Obama, was mostly good in his personal behavior, excusing a lot of drug use, but his political machine was defiantly a corrupting influence.
Bush, was also mostly good in his personal behavior, again excusing some drug use, and alcoholism.
Clinton – forget it!
Reagan, probably the best moral example of moral leadership in our lifetimes, but he was a divorcee. So still not perfect…
Bush Sr, also a good example of moral leadership.
My point is that presidential morality has at best a spotty record.
As far as we know. If the media were willing to bury that photo of him with Farrakhan until now, who knows what else might be out there?
Thats a fair point. They maybe covering more bimbo eruptions, than a rock band’s PR firm.
For a lot of these questions, that we have in day to day new cycles, you actually need historic perspective, which will evolve over the next few years.
I am a Reagan Republican. Ricochet is the home of civil center-right conversation. Ricochet is my natural home. And I posted Comment #2 here.
He is a good father and faithful husband. He is a good example of how a man should treat his wife and love his children. Obama has many policy failing. But he was a great personal role model.
Again, as far as we know.
I’m not starting a rumor here. I have no indication that anything took place. It is mere speculation, which I consider highly improbable, because we would’ve at least heard whispers about it.
I disagree. It’s not an easy decision for me, I can tell you. It’s hard to get past his denigration of POWs, his dodging of military service, his insults to the looks of his opponents or their wives, his comments about women. A few weeks ago, he had been relatively quiet and I had begun to entertain the idea that I could and would vote for him in 2020. Then he had his tirade against Jeff Sessions, his comments about siezing guns before due process, the stupid tariff stuff, and the tirades of this past week. There’s no way I’ll vote for him. I certainly won’t vote for any Democrat, but I’ll leave the presidential slot on the ballot vacant.
Not “The Coming Tsunami”?
I am disappointed.
Is Ricochet only for Trump fans?
So you will be electing a Democrat
I won’t vote for any Democrat, but yes, I’m sure that my non-vote for Trump will help Democrats. So be it. If the Republican party was interested in having my vote, they wouldn’t have nominated such a pig. I don’t think men care as much, but I can tell you that I’m not the only female conservative who longs for some kind of normalcy. No one’s perfect, of course, but Trump’s behavior doesn’t even reach the level of basic, normal decency. I’m sick of the constant drama, the stupid cowardly attacks on his own AG, the ignorance.
Gary, you keep doing this.
Party is not country. The party can go to blazes – It’s the country that matters. And Trump’s first 14 months have been better for the Country than the last 14 years of Republican governance.
Do you trust the media in making that assessment? I understand that the argument is that some of Trump’s wound’s are “self-inflicted,” but any assessment of Obama starts and ends with the slobbering media love affair. At what point do we get this?
We have heard whispers. The media just didn’t cover them they way they have Trump.
There’s no need for the media to trumpet Trump’s infidelities — he has done so himself! He is apparently quite proud of his affairs.
I have talked to a whole bunch of Republican and Conservative Women who agree with Painter Jean. If we want to hold the Presidency, we will need to nominate candidates who we can be proud of and who we can hold up to our children as role models. That starts with knocking Trump off in the primaries. This is a hard process, but has been done before.
How do you intend to get all those Rust Belt Trump voters to vote for the Republican candidate, then?
Or maybe your goal isn’t to win. Just to lose with something approximating “dignity”?
Gary’s an army of one.
You’ll forgive us if we have little faith in polls — formal or otherwise — given the events of the past two years?
I think that, as we consider the impact of Trump on the electorate, we should keep a couple of things in mind:
First, the awfulness of Trump has to be considered in light of the constant media and pop-cultural drumbeat that exaggerates that awfulness.
Secondly, we should keep in mind that the media and popular culture vilified the last Republican as well — though even that outrageous excess pales compared to what Trump receives (and appropriately so, given that Bush was a gracious man, and Trump is not). Given the treatment Romney received, I think we can assume that no Republican is going to be treated as other than a hateful misogynistic monster from now on.
The point of that is that replacing Trump with another Republican, while it will undoubtedly reduce the anti-Trump animus on the right, is unlikely to have much impact on a left and left-media and left-culture that feels cheated out of the presidency.
And those left people will have learned, as a result of Trump’s (hypothetical) removal in the primaries, that demonizing actually does work: the next Republican will be described as as much a monster as is Trump. Sure, it’ll be a little harder to make the charge stick, but the gloves are now off on the left, and they’ll hold nothing back.
So, sure, some of the electorate will be encouraged if Trump loses in the primary to another Republican challenger. But about 30% of the electorate that voted for Trump will be outraged, and we’ll lose their support.
It is not at all obvious to me that this makes sense, given that Trump (1) is doing a pretty good job, and (2) has only one more term in any case.
Sorry, RA, to do this on your comment.
I was a kid in the 90s. Middle school, early high school. I was a good kid.
It isn’t just presidential candidates that get ridiculed. Goody Two Shoes? It starts in grade school! For me, I watched as even adults tried to get me to screw up… by outright saying it or by throwing all support to students who were screwing up.
I get they needed the attention, but good kids need encouragement. Heaven knows they don’t get it from their peers. None of the kids I grew up with went to my wedding (I invited them all… their parents came).
If we wonder why good adults can’t make it, look at how their younger versions are treated. You all seem so shocked by this, but how many of you were the teens making fun of straight-laced kids? You helped create this culture.
Hi Drew,
If you have ever said a positive thing to me or about anything I have missed it. I wish you well my friend. My suggestion is that we can win over voters with a positive message, using sugar instead of vinegar. So far, it feels like Trump is wholly committed to fighting everyone, and deriding everyone else.
Gary
P.S.
Everything Trump touches dies. The Republican Party is dying. To live, the Republican Party will need to reject Trump.
I agree with the rest of your post 100%, but I’ll pick nits with this one item.
I agree with the first sentence. I disagree with the second one. At least, I wish it wasn’t as true as it has become.
We’re not a monarchy, where the king or queen is said to be the embodiment of the nation, or a theocracy, where the leader is by definition a moral leader. We’re supposed to be a federal republic, whose president is the chief of the executive branch of government and the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Granted, he’s also a figure head, but that is, to me, the least important of his duties.
I’ve always been more concerned with substance than appearance. I’d love to have both, but we haven’t had both in a president since Reagan, and too rarely before him, as well. If we demand that every Republican candidate be Reagan, we’ll be doomed to those that can come closest to faking a Reaganesque persona but without his substance.
Maybe Trump being such an obnoxious cad will take a bit of the shine off the presidency and result in fewer people looking to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for moral leadership. For a little while. Maybe. Something to hope for, anyway.
As for Trump’s behavior hurting the GOP, we had eight years of G. W. rolling over and showing his belly to the opposition seemingly every other week, but otherwise trying to be a good role model. That didn’t seem to help the GOP much in 2006 & 2008. He was Bushitler, simultaneously both an ignorant dunce and a brilliant Machiavellian that was going to usher in a theocratic fourth Reich in his second term.
As for Trump’s behavior hurting the country, it’s way too early to make that judgement. He’s at least giving D.C. a badly needed shake-up, not to mention that some conservative things are actually getting done (more so than the Bushes even wanted to do).
Trump’s personality is a negative, I agree. But the net result of his presidency may turn out to be positive.
As best I can remember high school, I was mostly a nerd who made fun of everyone else, although not to their faces…for the most part.
I don’t think so. What I notice is that most people are unwilling to stand up to the loud Trump promoters. But I notice on threads that there are significant others who have had their fill of Trump. We shall see.
Gary
You have been asked countless times over the last several months how you plan to win back Trump voters once you achieve your heart’s desire to have President Trump removed from office. You have never answered. You have always dodged that question. You just dodged it again.
If this is a place for “center-right discussion” you are invited to discuss.
Obama was the pig. He may have had image down, but deep inside, he was rotten and ugly. Compare Trump’s lies to Obama’s. Which ones were more insidious? Which ones are exaggerations? Which ones were self-serving? Which ones were supportive of voters? Which ones were manipulative? Which ones ended up being true?
Trump has got the image of boorish boar, but I don’t think his insides are nearly so disgusting. He is a weak man in some regards, but nowhere do I see a willing deceiver hellbent on destroying the cohesiveness of our country.
The ones being destructive of cohesiveness are white leftists, race activists, and Never Trump pundits.
I think you’re right – and I doubt Trump will actually face any kind of primary challenge, unless something is unearthed that so rattles him that he dumps on his fans and courts the Democrats in an attempt to be liked.
Next time, Gil, how about leaving some room for argument, okay?
Perfect distillation.
I can really relate to what you’re saying — in high school, I was a complete nobody because I was a good student, didn’t smoke pot, or party hearty. I was already in art shows, had a publisher, and had done illustrations for a magazine. Yup, in the eyes of pop culture, I was a loser!
Yes, the ridicule of decent men predates SNL’s sneering at Romney.
Considering the patience that’s been shown to you and this repetitive mantra, one would think that some substance might be forthcoming. Elections involving others are not substance. Future unsubstantiated predictions are not substance. Your speculation is not substance. Support your statement that everything Trump touches dies, or put it to rest. You were roundly and justifiably criticized early on for your Trump/dementia posts, and you appear to have gone to school on that. Time to take the next step.