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Rep Amash “R” Congressman from Michigan is bashed by a voter
Below I’ve posted a clip from Fox News of Trump supporter Anna Timmer lecturing Michigan Rep. Justin Amash at a Grand Rapids town hall after he called for impeachment proceedings against the president. The run time is about five minutes and I’m hoping people here who live in Michigan see this and comment, although all members are encouraged to do so.
Published in General
You make some good points. However, in all fairness to the President, he tried to switch things up. But those who would have made the biggest change in policies were the first ones that the Mueller Inquisition tied to the auto-da-fe. I am thinking of Gen Mike Flynn as I write this.
Just who in their right mind would attempt to go and work for Trump after what happened to Flynn? It is not surprising that after the Inquisition destroyed so many lives, that only well protected ghouls like John Bolton and Giuliani clamored to get aboard the Trump Administration.
Every candidate ever elected has a coalition of varying groups of voters that gets them elected. For example when people think of the Democratic Party one faction in its coalition is the black community, in general. Elections bare it out that Democrats often win with super majorities of the black population votes.
For Republicans an example would be evangelicals, who in elections tend to vote for Republicans. For every Presidential candidate their platform tends to signal which factions in their party they are aiming for. Scarcity is real though so certain factions’ goals are prioritized higher than others in what a candidate gets accomplished in office. That results in some factions feeling rewarded and others feeling betrayed or disappointed, which depresses their turnout in the next election.
There is also the fact that voters die too, and Trump’s victory relied heavily on older white males (who out of all demographics are most likely to die). This coalition erosion is incredibly common in presidential elections and has been observed in the vast majority of them, Barack Obama lost 5 million votes between 2008 and 2012. Trump’s margin of error in winning in 2016 was 77,000 votes in 3 states so he cannot afford any loss.
This is not true. The Republican Party lost, the Democrats remained roughly the same and the Independents grew during 2016 in party identification—which doesn’t reflect well on the current President. Republicans haven’t led Democrats since the early 2000s in party identification.
This again is untrue. Independents always indicate a lean which means that a majority of them side with either party fairly regularly. So while they may claim to be independent they tend to vote like a party regular at the presidential level. That is not to discount that a significant portion do switch between elections but they tend to be quite fickle.
Do you have any data that supports this assertion? Because again the facts on the ground, in both polling and other elected officials, tells a complete different story. This is another example of people projecting what they want onto Trump.
California hasn’t decided an election in decades so I doubt any votes are being shaved in any general election. Perhaps you should point to actual fraud or corruption in swing states if you wish to substantiate that claim.
Where and how? At most one could argue in areas of trade he has, albeit not much, but that was not the entirety of his agenda. His immigration policy has been beaten with the exception of the recent Mexico trade deal, that could collapse or not change much, he has failed to repeal Obamacare, he hasn’t pulled the US out of world affairs, he hasn’t balanced the budget, and the list goes and on.
Flynn was supposed to be a policy advisor, not a policy implementer. Who in Trump’s original White House staff were actual populists that were able to dictate policy? I can’t think of one.
Given that Trump did not give any policy making positions to party outsiders, at max he gave advising roles to a few, I find it hard to believe that any were deterred since none were getting anyways. And besides what organizations with expertise was he going to recruit from outside of the GOP and military?
Trump was subsumed by the establishment. If he wasn’t then you would never hear of him golfing or tweeting because he would be neck deep in working on getting his campaign rhetoric enacted.
The “populists” (working class) won’t go back to the DNC, they will go to the streets or just drop out. The GWB coalition will never come together again.
We’ll the opposite is clearly true. If Trump flip-flops on immigration and capitulates to China, he will turn off his base and not get re-elected.
I am working to bring back Reagan’s Republican Party. The Bushes (and Trump) spend too much money. Deficits still matter to me.
Amash, of Middle Eastern Arab parentage, is not a friend of Israel.
From Wikipedia:
“In 2011 Amash was one of six members of Congress who voted against House Resolution 268 reaffirming U.S. commitment to a negotiated settlement of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict through direct Israeli–Palestinian negotiation, which passed with 407 members in support. In 2014 he was one of eight members of Congress who voted against a $225 million package to restock Israel‘s Iron Dome missile defenses, which passed with 398 members in support.”
This might be an underlying explanation for Amash’s animus towards Trump, the most pro-Israel president in history.
That presumes that such are the main (as in objectives 1 and 2) goals of his base, perhaps yet another of many projections on this thread.
Just because candidate A runs on B and C against candidate D and wins does not mean that the voters who favored him were focusing on B and C. You would need polling data that shows a majority of the voters who favored him prioritized those goals. It could be they are low on the list or that their definitions of said terms varies significantly, which renders that assertion incorrect.
But let’s look at how much “energy” his “base” has had in the last 3 years. It hasn’t primaried any of the old guard of GOP congressmen and it got shellacked in November of last year, even the closest candidates that ran to him like Kris Kobach were beaten in conservative states like Kansas. Hardly an energetic base with much pull. Perhaps his base isn’t powerful enough to even win in 2020 if every living member of it in 2016 voted in 2020, which goes back to that very thin victory by 77,000 votes in 3 states.
In order for Trump to avoid that issue he would have to expand his base of support, but if such was happening then we would expect to see the GOP gaining seats in either House of Congress since the people want his agenda enacted. After all who has to approve the wall funding or tax reform or judicial appointments. But we haven’t seen that happen. And that would mean at the least that his base has not increased, and if one wanted to extrapolate from House races it would mean that his base has decreased.
This is why one should not not project their hopes onto politicians. It rarely reflects reality.
Reagan wasn’t any better.
This has been going on since Reagan or Nixon.
That tweet I posted in #1 was criticism of self identified centrist Matt K. Lewis’s endorsement of Amash.
When he made that endorsement I told him he ought to interview David Stockman. Stockman has good analysis oh what the Reagan administration was really like and why people are voting for Trump now. He was completely dismissive, without providing one reason. That’s because he hasn’t looked into it.
The Republican Party isn’t what people think it is. Same thing with the Reagan era. I’m not even criticizing Reagan. I think his hands were tied in many ways. The rest of them, forget it.
The Republican party never dealt directly with all of the changes from Wilson, FDR, and LBJ. That’s the problem.
Trump’s voters were older than Hillary’s. Trump voters have literally been dying off. In other words, of the 62.9 million who voted for Trump, less than 60 million are still alive. Meanwhile, in 2018, we were slaughtered with (1) the young, (2) women, (3) the educated, and (4) the suburbs, all of whom are living older than (1) the old, (2) men, (3) the less educated, and (4) rural areas.
The news tonight is that Biden is leading Trump nationally by an amazing 13 points, 53-40% according to the Quinnipiac University Poll. Even more astonishing, Sanders, Harris, Warren, Buttigieg and Booker all clock in with 47-51%, and Trump does no better than 41-42%! Trump squeaked by in the Electoral College when he lost by 2.1%. But all of the above Democrats are beating Trump by at least 5 points, and some are beating Trump by 7, 8 and 9%. This is an unmitigated disaster for the Republican Party, and will likely cause us to lose the Senate if Trump remains on the ticket, as well as quite a few legislatures and Governorships.
The legislatures elected in 2020 will be tasked with the redistricting of the House for the next ten years. The cost of Trump could be that we will lose the House of Representatives for the next decade. (After Obamacare was enacted in 2010, we won hundreds of legislators, who helped us hold the House until the 2018 disaster.) I respectfully submit that nominating Trump is not worth losing the House and Senate for the next decade. The voters sent us a strong message in 2018 that we are ignoring. The Republican Party may not survive the 2020 message that the voters are so far sending us.
I edited #39
What would Gary’s preferred candidate’s platform be? What would this candidate do about the media?
I’m asking seriously.
Any Republican would do better than Trump.
Nikki Haley would be my favorite.
Senators Rubio, Sasse, Romney, Portman or Toomey would be great, as would be Governors Hogan, Ducey or Sandoval.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis would likewise be exceptional.
I think that Pence or Secretary Pompeo would be disqualified by their close association with Trump.
***You aren’t answering my question***.
Sasse would be absolutely horrible policy wise, and as a candidate. All he wants is people to shut up and take it in a bad system. Literally look at him for what not to do. Philip A. Klein wrote a brutal column about Sasse. He needs to stop babbling about his books and how people ought to behave and get some policies changed. I can’t stand him.
I don’t really think Romney has any principles or solutions. I think he just cares about himself. Some people can get elected that way.
Hillary beat Trump handily in November 2016, according to most TV pundits and right up until about 5 minutes before it was obvious she lost. For that reason alone, hearing that Biden is pummelling Trump in terms of polling #’s is just not much of a concern.
I was obviously hyperventilating when I spoke of “worshipping Trump”. More appropriately they “admire and approve” of Trump. Other than copying and pasting 4000 words of innuendo and unchallenged accusation, claiming among other things that Trump actually could have obstructed justice by firing a man who, previously to being fired, was regarded contemptuously by most Democrats, as well as Republicans, and who worked at the pleasure of the President. Yes that would be Comey. But I’m not going to litigate the entire summary. I will just say my point once more. The summary never stated, that I saw, that the reason they didn’t indict the President for obstruction was not a DOJ rule about a sitting President. It was because they didn’t have a case.
I have hyperventilated many, many times. No worries.
Did you read that 6 page summary?
I disagree.
Why was this crap published again? Prosecutors never do this.
Don’t miss The Death Of Stalin, by the way. Fantastic movie.
What conclusions a commentator comes to does not disqualify the data he used. If I made a miscalculation on the speed of ball that does not disqualify the physics formulas I used.
The polling average in 2016 was only off by 2 points. That is within the standard margin of error at 3 points for 95 percent confidence interval. Polling in America is a business that requires accuracy or the firm goes out of existence. Parties and politicians need those numbers to be accurate or they lose elections so the incentives are towards accuracy.
Quinnipiac, which is one of the most historically accurate polling groups in the field, held the poll Gary is referring to. Their poll on June 5th found Biden leading Trump by 4 points, beyond the margin of error. That could mean the GOP spending scarce resources on a state it can usually rely on. In their national poll yesterday Joe Biden was beating Trump by 13 points. That is landslide territory, Biden has 58% of the independent vote.
Now it is still a long time till election day, and things can change, but such polling signals Trump’s policies, character, demeanor, or some combination of them has not won over voters—and may even been repulsive to some. Biden is no John F Kennedy, but he doesn’t have to be one in order to beat Trump. Trump needs to alter course if he wants to win in 2020.
As Amash stated in the video linked by Gary the phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” had a distinct meaning at the founding that related to public officials abusing their positions and acting in a manner that circumvented justice, along with other elements. A rather wide range of possible actions could be counted in it.
Now I can’t speak to Mueller’s intent as to why he did but so long as it was related to Trump’s actions during the investigation it had relevance to possible obstruction, and hence was put in. It should also be mentioned that Mueller was not prosecuting the President. He was just performing an investigation. Investigators to my knowledge present all their information in order to be transparent.
According to Amash that behavior in Mueller’s Report falls into said “high crimes and misdemeanors” behavior and so he should be impeached. That is drastically different compared to the show trials of the Soviet Union, which reduces the suffering they endured in that hellish regime.
I know, but I am talking about the steps involved. Muller never should have produced any report for one. Why is there a report? The second thing is the Steele dossier is bogus. The investigation never should have been initiated. Third, there is no crime.
It’s just a made up political investigation. Banana republic stuff. I can’t understand why anyone is happy with this.
Hell, Hillary Clinton paid for the Steele dossier. Why not go after her?
1) He was tasked with investigating Russian interference and possible collusion. You have to compile a report regardless of conclusion because that is what a transparent, accountable, government does. What if he had delivered his conclusion with no evidence laid out or method of his work? It would appear capricious and ill informed. Only tyrannical governments have no need to show how they work.
2) The Steele Dossier was indeed apart of the initial FISA warrant but FISA investigations have to produce further compelling evidence upon renewal or the warrant is revoked. If I remember correctly the warrant was renewed 4 times so there was more evidence found than just the dossier.
3) There has been no federal crime to which Mueller recommended Trump be found guilty for. But that is not the Amash argument. The argument is that Trump’s behavior before, during and after the event amounted to high crimes. Trump has behaved in a manner that seeks to obstruct justice and abuse his office is what Amash argues. And the constitution grants congress to impeach him for such so it should.
4) It’s hardly a made up political investigation. Trump was having himself investigated. Political investigations require the opposition to be investigating, and they never fail to find charges upon which to try. That didn’t happen with Trump now did it.
I really misunderstood the intent of the fine people at the FBI, DOJ, and the Special Council. For some reason, silly me, I thought the entire predicate was that we just had to find out if the Russians (who 18…or maybe 50 of our intelligence agencies absolutely knew with WMD certainty) had infiltrated and warped our precious election process, had conspired with any Americans in the process. But it wasn’t just any Americans, it was only the newly and quite legally elected President, Donald Trump, that was of concern. So any “friend of Trump” was scrutinized up to and including their armpits and between their legs. And yet, I keep wondering why the FBI never took possession of the DNC server that was proven to be hacked by Russia. Of course it was some company that worked solely for the DNC that told us this “fact”. And then their was this short paper written with the sophistication of a high school sophomore that became known as The Steele Dossier. We did find out with the help of the ,then, Republican Congress that this was not written by Dostoevsky. What a shock! It was paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC. Not sure who actually did write it, but the information supposedly came from the Russians. I just assumed it was nothing bad to pay Russians for dirty unverifiable oppo research on an American Presidential candidate because, heck, Mueller never investigated that. But now I find out the real truth in life. No matter how innocent I know I am. No matter how much personal information I give to investigators, or how many of my close associates I ask to cooperate, nor that I even have my personal attorney waive privilege and answer all the questions, for hours on end, that the investigators wish to ask. No matter all of those things. If I get mad, if I criticize those investigators, if I shout out in public or whisper to my closest friends that I am innocent and they are wrong…well, I HAVE OBSTRUCTED.
I think its pretty simple. Some people hate Trump.
You should ask the President that question. Although perhaps it too was akin in the manner that there were some but not all elements of the crime.
I just noticed this.
This whole thing was done under the wrong statute. It should have been done under a bipartisan congressional committee or as a normal FBI counter intelligence investigation. Not as a special prosecutor.
The FBI knew it was genuine the whole time and they found more evidence. We’ll see.
I don’t understand this.
Well the investigation was not about if but how much. Trump’s behavior in telling his subordinates to withhold information and not cooperate (which said subordinates disobeyed) was what caused the suspicion of obstructing justice, not his pedantic tweets. Mueller states as much in his report to what little I know.
It is quite interesting that instead of taking what was said in the report you instead speculate an alternative motive onto him. Perhaps you should read through the report. I bet is boring and dry but it would at least tell you what their actual reasoning was.
Every crime has several elements. Imagine each element being the ingredients for a cake. If you lack some ingredients the cake doesn’t bake. In the case of Trump and obstruction of justice the report found that they could find no intent (an element they would have to prove if he was prosecuted) behind Trump’s obstructive actions so he would not be indicted.
Likewise whatever crime with Clinton and the Steele Dossier could be lacking elements needed for prosecution and hence no prosecution.