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Regarding President Trump, there are currently several divisions on the Right. While not including everybody, these probably cover most:
The Trump Haters’ day is coming. We’re in a GOSPLANed Truman Show, and the movie is about to end.
I think Jamie made that point quite well, but I’ll add that some of this is just their personality. I wouldn’t have guaranteed that Prager or Hewitt would become Trump supporters, but I wouldn’t have ruled it out. They’re principled guys, but they always recognized that reality is ugly and that we must sometimes yield to practical considerations. I would have bet that Will and Kristol would never support the President. They’re political academics of a sort, and for academics it’s more important to be right than to be practical.
That’s a pretty low bar.
We elected a boorish inflationist with zero experience, with no civic knowledge except government and real estate, and he’s more conservative. How did it come to this?
Our socialist destiny was sealed decades ago, that’s how.
I thought you were going to link to Marx. Guess I should get out more.
By the criteria I use, it is very true. You of course, can use different criteria to tally up all the amazing wins of the Right in the past 70+ years. I mean, who am I to say the movement of the nation has been towards socialism for that time period?
I highly recommend people read the following pieces:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/gop-generation-gap-young-conservatives-break-with-elders/
https://www.weeklystandard.com/kristen-soltis-anderson/how-conservatives-can-find-a-way-to-appeal-to-millennials
https://www.weeklystandard.com/shapiro-win-back-young-americans
That may give you insight into what many of us are worried about.
The first step is admitting you have a problem.
The second step is blaming @arahant.
I’m not entirely sure if your comment was intended as a refutation of my comment or a vigorous affirmation.
This makes it somewhat challenging to respond.
Given your avatar, how come you don’t call yourself A-Cubed?
Apparently you did not read my post “Any Republican Would Have Won In 2016.” In eight elections since the adoption of the 22nd Amendment, the American People have refused to allow any party three terms in a row, with the sole exception that in 1988, the American People elected H.W. to what was essentially the third term of the Greatest President of the Twentieth Century, Ronald Reagan.
Obama was no Reagan. The Democrats were a spent force, and the American people were primed to throw the bums out. Any Republican would have won in 2016, and Trump did so just barely.
And a history of the American People denying either party a third term 7 out of 8 times since the 22nd Amendment was passed in 1951.
I was disputing the idea that there are any long term benefits to the GOP strategy of the past 70 years. Soon(tm) seems to really mean “Never”.
You are missing the point. All of the rest of the 17 (with the possible exception of Jim Gilmore) would have beat Hillary. 7 out of the last 8 times, the American People refused to give either party three terms in the White House, the only exception being in 1988, when H.W. won Reagan’s Third Term.
Gary, The People almost elected Al Gore. It was close enough to be within the margin of error. It was a tie! So in reality, there was almost a third “Clinton” term. Do you not remember 2000?
There is no grand system here.
Unlikely.
Gary, you cling to your system like it is numerology.
The GOPe Smoke Filled Room Ruling Class has to go to a two-step national primary when there are too many candidates.
They would also be wise to understand why people are so fed up they want Trump. They won’t.
My name pre-dated my avatar. Back on Rico 1.0, my bio had a brief diatribe as to why that was my avatar and how it exemplified my politics, but it was lost in the great fire of Rico 2.0.
Huh. I was talking about conservatives, not the GOP.
What I find interesting is that everyone wants to talk about how phenomenally conservative Trump’s first year in office was without acknowledging the extent to which the Republican Party pulled Trump in a conservative direction.
Reagan was really good because he pulled the Republican Party in a conservative direction. Trump has been really good in his first year because the Republican Party pulled him a conservative direction (and yet many, if not most, Trump enthusiasts on here will attack any conservative GOP office holder who won’t step in line and follow Trump’s bidding to the letter.) Reagan was not immune criticism and neither is Trump. You saying he is does not make it so.
The only reason Trump outsourced his court appointments to the Federalist society is because he caught so much criticism from conservatives for talking about nominating his pro-abortion sister to the Supreme Court. And yet Trump supporters point to Gorsuch as a reason why we should not criticize Trump when he does something stupid. Which gets Gorsuch 180 degrees wrong.
If you want Trump to continue to be a good President, conservatives need to be willing to criticize when he does something stupid. If you are not willing to do so, at least stop telling conservatives to stop criticizing Trump when he does something stupid.
As I’ve said a couple of times, an unwillingness to criticize Trump is just as close-minded as unwillingness to praise Trump is.
Close doesn’t count. By the same argument, Nixon beat Kennedy in 1960.
So refute it.
There is a good refutation in Clifford A. Brown’s OP titled “Don’t bet your house…” filed today, on May 17, 2018.
Outsourcing judges to the Federalist Society was Trump’s wisest decision.
It is important to praise Trump when he is right.
Admittedly, I did not. For blood pressure reasons haha. I see what your thesis is, but I still think you’re living in some kind of fever dream you’ve made for yourself, where you try with all your might to explain things with known methods. I wish all of you would get it through your heads that Donald Trump was, in some ways, a black swan. The polling didn’t predict it, the media was taken by surprise, it was just not a normal event. You can no more say with a certainty that your formula would have worked than sprout wings and fly to Venus.
While neither of us can prove the negative, I can’t see any way a single other Republican could have pulled this off, because they were all just more of the same. This election required someone unique who could capture the imagination. Any of the others would have resulted in Republicans staying home.
Trump is the people’s thumb in the eye to the Establishment of both parties. They aren’t listening, though.
OK, so my comments were directed at the GOP.
I am not sure why you launched into a generalized attack on Trump supporters at Ricochet as part of your response. If that was not directed at me, then it would have been better in another post, I think. If it was directed at me, I reject your characterization.
Are all Trump supporters unwilling to criticize Trump? I wouldn’t say that.
Wow, you managed to reference three mythical, non-existent entities in just half a sentence. Of the three, I think smoke filled rooms are the least implausible, because even though they don’t exist it is at least theoretically possible to find a room and fill it with smoke (if you don’t mind going to jail).
How has the Republican Party pulled President Trump in any direction let alone a conservative one?
Mitch McConnell cleared the decks for judicial appointments, the Federalist Society promptly supplied them, Trump appointed them and then Mitch got them confirmed in record time.
Tax Reform
Those are just two examples.
Right, because you’re privy to that decision making process. So of course you just know that criticism over Trump’s throwaway line about his sister is the only reason he went the complete opposite direction on his actual pick.