The Goldberg Rationalizations

 

“It may be that once Trump is no longer the commander in chief in the war against Blue America, the ardor of his troops will give way to a better understanding of the price the GOP paid on his watch.”

This is the last paragraph of Jonah Goldberg’s latest, edifying us with his crack understanding of history,  wholly out-of-context. You can read it here. Most of it is written to advance his rationale for why Republicans are supporting Trump.

He deftly (he is a professional) inserts the idea that Trump is a wartime President, only the enemy this time is Blue America. Why is his popularity so high he asks? It’s because he’s a wartime President! See? You have to read the whole thing to understand, but it makes sense – as long as you don’t think about it too much.

There’s not one mention of the media’s hostile obsessions, their disingenuous – often wholly false – reporting, which is unprecedented in modern history, or Obama/Bush embeds in our intelligence agencies and Department of Justice who have been proven to be liars, leakers, framers, and rank partisans without a smidgeon of professional ethics. Very likely some of these people may be traitors. Certainly, they have worked to undermine the will of the American people. I think that qualifies. All of which predated Trump even taking office. If there’s some kind of war happening, as Jonah asserts, it might be important to mention who started it. (Some FBI agents did something?)

Almost as noteworthy, Goldberg makes no mention of Trump’s accomplishments on behalf of his voting bloc as possible reasons for the strong support, nor is there any reference to likely alternatives which might be animating Trump’s support, all of whom are somewhere on the socialism spectrum.

He’s a wartime President. That’s it.

According to Mr. Goldberg’s account, Trump started this “war” he speaks of. And he never really explains how Trump is warring against “Blue America” or who or what this Blue America is.

Taking issue with Jonah’s conclusion, I would say that Trump is the price the GOP paid for being weak, for being fraudulent, for being the party of perpetual war and globalism, and for misunderstanding and/or taking advantage of their base.

Mr. Goldberg is fantasizing that someday the ardor of his “troops” will better understand how wrong they were. On the contrary. The game Jonah, et al., have been playing is over for good. There will be no going back. It may well get a lot worse for the Nevers after Trump is gone. They will have to take refuge with Democrats. Some already have.

Now, for some real genius, edification and a palate-cleanser, I offer this:

.

Published in General
This post was promoted to the Main Feed by a Ricochet Editor at the recommendation of Ricochet members. Like this post? Want to comment? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

There are 260 comments.

Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.
  1. Dr. Bastiat Member
    Dr. Bastiat
    @drbastiat

    Great title.

    I really don’t understand JS Bach.  Much of his music doesn’t even really sound like music, to me.  I’ve read a lot about it, and he’s a genius.  But even after studying, and trying, I’m embarrassed to admit that I just don’t hear it.  

    • #1
  2. Franco Member
    Franco
    @Franco

    Dr. Bastiat (View Comment):

    Great title.

    I really don’t understand JS Bach. Much of his music doesn’t even really sound like music, to me. I’ve read a lot about it, and he’s a genius. But even after studying, and trying, I’m embarrassed to admit that I just don’t hear it.

    Do you play an instrument?

    I do, but I’m nowhere near most classical players. I like Bach but can only take him in small doses. His genius amazes me. It’s very mathematical with a great mix of predictability and unpredictability. Ultimately for me it’s a lot of ‘work’ to listen. It’s astounding, so much so I have a hard time enjoying it. And then I just wonder how there can be such genius.

    However I enjoy jamming to classical music sometimes and I have a good intuitive ability for counterpoint ( if it’s not already there) and I come up with crude Bach-ian licks on my fiddle.

    Thank you for the compliment about the title. I included the video to make sure people made the connection. Probably unnecessary for many, but not all.

    • #2
  3. Jager Coolidge
    Jager
    @Jager

    Franco:

    He’s a wartime President. That’s it.

    According to Mr. Goldberg’s account, Trump started this “war” he speaks of. And he never really explains how Trump is warring against “Blue America”, or who or what this Blue America is.

    I will accept that Trump is a wartime President. 

    I think Goldberg has the cause and effect exactly backwards. Progressives and their media enablers have started a war on Republicans/Conservatives. Mitt Romeny was basically Hitler, Paul Ryan wanted to kill people with changes to medicaid. You may disagree with these guys on some policy or another but they are not pure evil. 

    A number of people on the Right (enough to win a bunch of Primaries) looked at the political landscape and decided that the left had already declared war. So they turned down the traditional Republican candidates and elected their wartime consigliere. 

    The Goldbergs of the world used to mock Trump voters with things like “but he fights”. Well yeah he does, sometimes he doesn’t do it well and sometimes he picks the wrong fights, but he does fight. 

    The lesson should not be how do we go back to the Pre-Trump status quo, but how do we learn from Trump so that the next guy can do it better. 

    • #3
  4. Freeven Member
    Freeven
    @Freeven

    I think many of your criticisms of Jonah hold up if applied to a larger body of his writings. Narrowed specifically to what he says in this column, however, I think the case is overstated.

    You write:

    There’s not one mention of the media’s hostile obsessions, their disingenuous – often wholly false – reporting, which is unprecedented in modern history, or Obama/Bush embeds in our intelligence agencies and Department of Justice who have been proven-out as liars, leakers, framers and rank partisans without a smidgeon of professional ethics. Very likely some of these people may be traitors. Certainly they have worked to undermine the will of the American people. I think that qualifies. All of which predated Trump even taking office. If there’s some kind of war happening, as Jonah asserts, it might be important to mention who started it. (Some FBI agents did something?) 

    There are a number of reasons why Jonah may not have gone into these things. Column length might be one. Or perhaps he thinks their relevance is somewhat tangential to his central point. (That’s my view, by the way.) Remember, Jonah is not addressing why Trump is popular among Republicans, but why he is so popular (94%, if you believe Trump) among Republicans.

    You continue:

    According to Mr. Goldberg’s account, Trump started this “war” he speaks of. And he never really explains how Trump is warring against “Blue America”, or who or what this Blue America is.

    While Jonah does say that Trump “established” this “war”, he also acknowledges your point, that much of this predates Trump:

    While Trump has made it worse, this dynamic is not new. He is more the beneficiary (and exacerbator) of the polarized landscape than the creator of it. Party identification has been declining for Democrats and Republicans alike, but for those who cling to the label, the label has more meaning than it used to.

    That seems a fair observation to me.

    And Jonah does touch on how Trump is exacerbating the polarization:

    Trump’s almost daily references to “treason” and enemies of the people may be driven by his own narcissism and persecution complex, but they resonate with a share of the electorate that believes the cultural war really is tantamount to a cold civil war.

    I think this is right, as I happen to be one of the people with whom those references resonate.

    Jonah’s main thrust:

    The wartime atmosphere Trump has established encourages partisans to overlook faults with their own side more than ever, because in the zero-sum logic of war, any dissent is seen as providing aid and comfort to enemies who would be worse if they gained power… Perhaps counterintuitively, Trump’s myriad and manifest flaws actually intensify the effect. The need to justify your support makes it impossible to acknowledge any shortcomings at all.

    And that also sounds about right.

    All in all, a pretty measured and accurate column compared to other offerings from Jonah.

    • #4
  5. Mendel Inactive
    Mendel
    @Mendel

    I tend to agree with Freeven’s comment above. Jonah is definitely not at his finest whenever he writes or talks about Trump (which is much too frequently). His obvious ongoing emotional involvement in the Trump phenomenon seems to preclude him from thinking soberly enough on the topic (or it might also be his constant and very public drinking that keeps him from thinking soberly).

    But in this case I don’t get the outrage. Yes, Goldberg is overstating the case (in a very short essay). But I think it’s patently obvious that there is a non-trivial bloc of Republican base (and even general election) voters who value fighting the left (including the political left, the media, the education establishment, etc.) over a politician’s other particular policy preferences. 

    As someone who generally leans slightly right but is not that invested in “the right” as a movement, the overwhelming impression I get when reading almost any online right-wing website (including Ricochet) is that Trump’s willingness to “take the fight to the left” is the trait his supporters most value in him. That doesn’t mean it’s the only trait they value or that all of his supporters find it the most important one. But it does seem to be the main criteria that differentiates him from all other Republicans in the eyes of his supporters.

    • #5
  6. Mendel Inactive
    Mendel
    @Mendel

    Franco: Mr. Goldberg is fantasizing that someday the ardor of his “troops” will better understand how wrong they were. On the contrary. The game Jonah et al have been playing is over for good. There will be no going back. It may well get a lot worse for the Nevers after Trump is gone. They will have to take refuge with Democrats. Some already have.

    I think both you and Jonah are deluding yourselves.

    Jonah’s is certainly deluding himself with his oft-repeated vision that Republican voters will somehow wake up a few years after Trump leaves office and, like a college student waking up from an all-night bender, will ask themselves “what the hell did we do here?”. The same goes for the other NeverTrumpers with masturbatory fantasies that Trump will do something completely discrediting (embrace Medicare-for-all, start a needless war, drop the “N” word on a hot mic) and that, once he is truly and finally exposed as a charlatan, his supporters will run back to the True Scotsmen begging for forgiveness.

    But the notion that the landscape on the political right will never bear any resemblance to its pre-2016 state is also folly. The reason is because the American right – the voters, not the “elites” – are much more ideologically disjointed than anyone is willing to admit. That’s the main reason the GOP had such dismal leadership in the first place, and nothing about Trump has changed those underlying divides. So while the current exiles might not be welcomed back in, the general sentiment they represent will almost certainly re-emerge in fairly short order.

    • #6
  7. Brian Wolf Inactive
    Brian Wolf
    @BrianWolf

    Franco:

    This is the last paragraph of Jonah Goldberg’s latest in Never Review, edifying us with his crack understanding of history, wholly out-of-context. You can read it here. Most of it is written to advance his rationale for why Republicans are supporting Trump.

    He deftly ( he is a professional) inserts the idea that Trump is a wartime President, only the enemy this time is Blue America. Why is his popularity so high he asks? It’s because he’s a wartime President! See? You have to read the whole thing to understand, but it makes sense – as long as you don’t think about it too much. 

    The entire OP seems to to be odds with itself.  Here you seem to deem Golderg and his opinion, claiming that his point falls apart if you think about it.  Then you move on and write:

    Franco: There’s not one mention of the media’s hostile obsessions, their disingenuous – often wholly false – reporting, which is unprecedented in modern history, or Obama/Bush embeds in our intelligence agencies and Department of Justice who have been proven-out as liars, leakers, framers and rank partisans without a smidgeon of professional ethics. Very likely some of these people may be traitors. Certainly they have worked to undermine the will of the American people. I think that qualifies. All of which predated Trump even taking office. If there’s some kind of war happening, as Jonah asserts, it might be important to mention who started it. (Some FBI agents did something?) 

    Fully and completely endorsing his main point.  Odd.  Is that you hate agreeing with Jonah Goldberg so much that you have to pretend to disagree with him?

     

    When I talk to Democrat friends or acquaintances I often ask them what they think now of the Obama Presidency.  They usually say something like…

    “He was great.  He was successful and did a lot of good.  I bet you even miss him a bit now don’t you?”

    Then I say, “Well he was very successful at electing Republicans.  If that was his goal, but besides getting Republicans elected in all 50 states what was he successful at?”

    They tend to struggle there.

    More insightful Democrats, who seem to be thin on the ground, point out his over failure and how he did not live up to the hype.

    Because Democrats struggle with seeing Obama clearly they have gone insane and pushing lunatics to run for President.  That is not good for them.

    • #7
  8. EODmom Coolidge
    EODmom
    @EODmom

    Jager (View Comment):

    Franco:

    He’s a wartime President. That’s it.

     

    The lesson should not be how do we go back to the Pre-Trump status quo, but how do we learn from Trump so that the next guy can do it better.

    I think there is no Not Wartime President.  I’ll submit that the war against totalitarians never stops – the totalitarians never go away. How they speak, dress and act changes, but the urge to power over others is inexhaustible. I think Marx just intellectualized the process. They have and will never quit. So hiring/electing a leader who will defend this country against those who would wreck it is an election by election thing. I think Trump has provoked this crop of totalitarians into being overt and explicit about their militant radicalism, but so many don’t believe they mean what they say.  O’Rourke ☘️ tells his supporters that “the rich” will have to welcome “the poor” into their neighborhoods (hello Westchester County under Obama’s HUD.) He may not have many supporters, but the rest of the Dem cadre agrees with him and would edict the same thing. But the “rich” supporters don’t believe it will happen to them.

    So – how many above average, successful, accomplished, self motivated and self directed statesmen-in-training are there who can capably and will take on the never ending fury? And what would doing it better look like?  VDHanson has a primary thesis that war is a fundamental condition of humanity. Isn’t this conflict of ideologies symptomatic? I’m looking for people who seem to see and accept the scale and scope of the battle. It’s a hard terrible job – and “the people” really don’t like it when you’re successful doing what must be done. Trump may not be Churchill, but the Brits really didn’t like Churchill  either until they needed him. Then they threw him out. 

    • #8
  9. ToryWarWriter Coolidge
    ToryWarWriter
    @ToryWarWriter

    I get tired of Jonah.  

    I cant listen to most of his podcasts anymore.  The last one that wasnt GLOP that I listened to was the one with Brad Thor which I turned off half way through.

    I get it you dont like Trump.  I got your argument the first FIVE HUNDRED TIMES you made it.

    Get over yourself already.  If Ted Cruz can move on, so can you.

    NO ONE CARES ANYMORE.

    Sorry I doubt he will read this, but I think he needs an intervention.

    • #9
  10. Freeven Member
    Freeven
    @Freeven

    Jager (View Comment):
    I think Goldberg has the cause and effect exactly backwards. Progressives and their media enablers have started a war on Republicans/Conservatives. Mitt Romeny was basically Hitler, Paul Ryan wanted to kill people with changes to medicaid. You may disagree with these guys on some policy or another but they are not pure evil. 

    I think this is right.

    I like and respect Jonah, but I think it’s more than fair to say that his animosity for Trump leads him to take on an unwarranted evenhandedness. There is plenty to criticize about Trump, but he doesn’t act in a vacuum. Just as there are lies of omission, there are criticisms of omission.

    The Left has grown increasingly vile, and failing to present Trump against that backdrop and in proportion to what the Left is doing is irresponsible.

    • #10
  11. EODmom Coolidge
    EODmom
    @EODmom

    Franco (View Comment):

    Dr. Bastiat (View Comment):

    Great title.

    I really don’t understand JS Bach. Much of his music doesn’t even really sound like music, to me. I’ve read a lot about it, and he’s a genius. But even after studying, and trying, I’m embarrassed to admit that I just don’t hear it.

    Do you play an instrument?

    I do, but I’m nowhere near most classical players. I like Bach but can only take him in small doses. His genius amazes me. It’s very mathematical with a great mix of predictability and unpredictability. Ultimately for me it’s a lot of ‘work’ to listen. It’s astounding, so much so I have a hard time enjoying it. And then I just wonder how there can be such genius.

    However I enjoy jamming to classical music sometimes and I have a good intuitive ability for counterpoint ( if it’s not already there) and I come up with crude Bach-ian licks on my fiddle.

    Thank you for the compliment about the title. I included the video to make sure people made the connection. Probably unnecessary for many, but not all.

    I have played instruments – not well but with pleasure. I agree about Bach – he’s hard work but so rich and lustrous. I love YoYo Ma doing the Suites, but I can’t listen to more than 2 at one sitting. Too many notes…… I can’t imagine how he keeps focus for the whole. You’re right – it’s like higher math. 

    • #11
  12. Brian Wolf Inactive
    Brian Wolf
    @BrianWolf

    Freeven (View Comment):
    I like and respect Jonah, but I think it’s more than fair to say that his animosity for Trump leads him to take on an unwarranted evenhandedness. There is plenty to criticize about Trump, but he doesn’t act in a vacuum. Just as there are lies of omission, there are criticisms of omission.

    I think Jonah put the blame in the right place….

    He wrote:

    Until around 2000, it was normal for self-identified Republicans and Democrats to criticize presidents of their own parties, because people didn’t cling to partisan identity nearly as fiercely. The Bill Clinton impeachment battle was a foretaste of where we are. But even during the polarized presidency of George W. Bush, partisan dissent and defections were fairly common. Existential partisanship intensified under Barack Obama’s presidency, on both the right and left.

    Clinton, then a return to something like normalcy with George W. Bush, though the activist left was intensely crazy, at least as crazy as today, the bulk of the public did not follow them.  Then a hardening of positions under Obama.  Trump playing by the rules and even leaning into the rules that Obama and the activist left set for us.

    • #12
  13. Dr. Bastiat Member
    Dr. Bastiat
    @drbastiat

    Brian Wolf (View Comment):
    Because Democrats struggle with seeing Obama clearly they have gone insane and pushing lunatics to run for President. That is not good for them.

    It’s not good for anyone else, either.

    • #13
  14. Franco Member
    Franco
    @Franco

    Thank you for your thoughtful comment.

    “There are a number of reasons why Jonah may not have gone into these things. Column length might be one. Or perhaps he thinks their relevance is somewhat tangential to his central point. (That’s my view, by the way.) Remember, Jonah is not addressing why Trump is popular among Republicans, but why he is so popular (94%, if you believe Trump) among Republicans.”

    “These things” being satisfying his base, keeping promises and the horrific attacks from the media conspiracy theories and subversion by rogues in our intelligence agencies. 

    What benchmark is Goldberg using? When has this happened before in politics?

    Now that it’s football season, we are being treated to endless analysis of teams prospects where commentators are separating-out key elements of a team in order to promote their pet theories. It’s deliberate blind men describing the elephant-in-the- room and expecting us to watch or click.

    Column length? Please.

    The New York Times might use that as a defense for “some planes took aim” because it’s too much to go into the whole radical Islam thing on Twitter. It would be a more reasonable defense since Twitter has character limitations ( maybe NR does too?) Jonah does touch on these elements very gingerly so as not to detract from his new construct. This makes it all the more obvious to me that he’s dissembling.

    Jonah doesn’t believe for a moment that his support is at 94%. If it’s not, then whence goes his theory? Whatever the level of support where is the baseline? Is there some combination of basic approval for his policies and accomplishments, legitimate fear of socialism, and this wartime atmosphere?

    But of course we are, and have been, in a fight to the metaphorical death with the left. Trump is somehow the political beneficiary of this? How convoluted can you get? 

    That Trump doesn’t shrug his shoulders and say “it’s just politics” reveals this cold civil war, it doesn’t exacerbate it. When you fight back your enemies will double-down. But in Jonah’s world, we’re supposed to take our lumps and lose like real men.

    The only thing I’ll give Jonah is his nascent understanding of the all-or-nothing defenses being similar to wartime. 

    But even that is somewhat off the mark. The attacks on everything Trumpian are so over-the-top, so manifestly unfair and erroneous that acknowledging partial truth becomes absurd and ultimately a fools game. They take every little admission as a victory, and then wonder how and why, those who admit the wholesale despicable nature of Trump can show their faces in public much less support him. Ultimately that results in the left advancing. 

    What he also doesn’t understand is how completely the Never Trump faction has revealed themselves as frauds, and how they’ve lost the confidence of tens of millions of right-leaning voters.

    • #14
  15. Jon1979 Inactive
    Jon1979
    @Jon1979

    Whether its his debate with Rich Lowery earlier this year, or his recent podcast about judges with fellow AEI fellow Adam White, you can see where Jonah gets uncomfortable with the idea of people who had been on the #NeverTrump side being willing to accommodate or even say nice things about him, without throwing in gratuitous slams. That’s sort of left him even more in no-man’s-land than before, because he seems to be still holding out hope either for some sort of last-minute primary alternative for Trump, or trying to convince himself by next fall that wacky-but-lovable Uncle Joe might not be such a bad alternative for the next four years.

    The war metaphor seems to jibe with an effort to rationalize why even some of 2015-16 Trump opponents have made peace with the idea he’s the only viable option for 2020, given what the Democrats are pushing, and I suppose if I were one of the first people candidate Trump went after (in the pants kerfuffle), I’d probably still be a little irked at the guy. But it’s going to be a binary choice next year between Trump and whoever the Democrats nominate, and aside from again calling for the SMOD to end the agony, he’s going to have to opine as part of his punditly duties on which candidate he thinks at least would do the least damage to the country between 2021 and 2024.

    If Jonah hasn’t gone over to the dark side with Bill Kristol and the others (like Darth Boot) yet, I don’t think he’s going to. But he’s better off starting work now on finding someone in 2024 he does want to run for president in the wake of Trump, than spending the next 14 months in passive/aggressive snark mode against him, while realizing that four years of Democratic control would be far worse.

    • #15
  16. Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo… Coolidge
    Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo…
    @GumbyMark

    Freeven (View Comment):

    Jager (View Comment):
    I think Goldberg has the cause and effect exactly backwards. Progressives and their media enablers have started a war on Republicans/Conservatives. Mitt Romeny was basically Hitler, Paul Ryan wanted to kill people with changes to medicaid. You may disagree with these guys on some policy or another but they are not pure evil.

    I think this is right.

    I like and respect Jonah, but I think it’s more than fair to say that his animosity for Trump leads him to take on an unwarranted evenhandedness. There is plenty to criticize about Trump, but he doesn’t act in a vacuum. Just as there are lies of omission, there are criticisms of omission.

    The Left has grown increasingly vile, and failing to present Trump against that backdrop and in proportion to what the Left is doing is irresponsible.

    I think this right. I don’t share @Franco enthusiasm for Trump but find Jonah irritatingly obtuse (is it deliberate?) when it comes to explaining support for the Orange Man, whom I will vote for next year.  

    • #16
  17. DonG Coolidge
    DonG
    @DonG

    Clearly, Trumpism is the reaction to Bushism and Obamaism.   Also, it was Bushism that killed Reaganism and Obamaism that killed Clintonism. 

    • #17
  18. James Gawron Inactive
    James Gawron
    @JamesGawron

    Franco,

    There is only one way to deal with Mr. Goldberg and that is to give him what he wants. Let’s say there had never been a Trump to force this war on Blue America (Jonah’s biggest hallucination yet). The first result would have been that Hillary Clinton would be President. The Supreme Court nominations, Gorsuch & Kavanaugh plus the inevitable Ginsberg spot, would all be filled with extreme left nominations. Let us imagine that this is the case. A left-wing President, a left-wing congress, the hyper left-wing media, and last but far from least an airtight extremist left-wing Supreme Court. With this political phalanx in place, the second term of HRC is guaranteed.

    I’m not sure this country or what’s left of Western Civilization could survive this. There is no war on Blue America. Blue America declared war on Red America, Western Civilization, and Sanity itself, a very long time ago.

    Jonah is dreaming. That is an extremely charitable evaluation of his piece.

    Regards,

    Jim

     

    • #18
  19. Gary Robbins Member
    Gary Robbins
    @GaryRobbins

    A great article by Jonah.

    The best part of the Post was the link to the article in the first paragraph.

    • #19
  20. SkipSul Inactive
    SkipSul
    @skipsul

    Brian Wolf (View Comment):

    When I talk to Democrat friends or acquaintances I often ask them what they think now of the Obama Presidency. They usually say something like…

    “He was great. He was successful and did a lot of good. I bet you even miss him a bit now don’t you?”

    Then I say, “Well he was very successful at electing Republicans. If that was his goal, but besides getting Republicans elected in all 50 states what was he successful at?”

    They tend to struggle there.

    More insightful Democrats, who seem to be thin on the ground, point out his over failure and how he did not live up to the hype.

    There’s a corollary to that: try discussing Obama’s flaws, abuses of power, and scandals, and you meet not merely struggle but out and out hostility.  Even the reasonable ones I know become apoplectic when I bring up the various financial scandals from his bailout, or Fast and Furious, his 9 (I think I have this number right) smackdowns by the Supreme Court when he went after churches and religious institutions, and his claims of racism everywhere.

    They cannot admit their idol possibly ever had any flaws.

    • #20
  21. DrewInWisconsin, Thought Leader Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Thought Leader
    @DrewInWisconsin

    Franco (View Comment):
    What he also doesn’t understand is how completely the Never Trump faction has revealed themselves as frauds, and how they’ve lost the confidence of tens of millions of right-leaning voters.

    The GOP is currently unprepared for 2024. They are going to be shocked when Trump voters respond with apathy to the next carefully curated candidate they put forth.

    • #21
  22. Mendel Inactive
    Mendel
    @Mendel

    SkipSul (View Comment):
    They cannot admit their idol possibly ever had any flaws.

    Yes they can.

    But the flaws they cite are usually things like: not going far enough on Obamacare, not going far enough on DACA, too many drone strikes, too many deportations….noticing a trend?

    Of course, many of those criticisms are blunted with statements like “…because he was too nice”, “…because he was trying to appeal to Republican voters too much”, etc.

    • #22
  23. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    I think the base of Trump’s popularity is his seeming accessibility to the public. I know it’s just an illusion, but it feels like Trump is living the same life I am–reading the same news stories, dealing with the same bureaucracies, and experiencing the same frustrations. He may make mistakes and I may see a situation differently and disagree with what he’s doing, but at least we’re on the same bus. :-)  

    • #23
  24. Mendel Inactive
    Mendel
    @Mendel

    DrewInWisconsin, Thought Leader (View Comment):

    Franco (View Comment):
    What he also doesn’t understand is how completely the Never Trump faction has revealed themselves as frauds, and how they’ve lost the confidence of tens of millions of right-leaning voters.

    The GOP is currently unprepared for 2024. They are going to be shocked when Trump voters respond with apathy to the next carefully curated candidate they put forth.

    I think this is a fascinating point.

    Whoever ends up being the 2024 GOP nominee will almost certainly be much different – and less charismatic – than Trump, because Trump is simply a very unique character.

    But whoever the Democrats put up in 2024 will almost certainly be as bad as Hillary.

    One of the strongest and loudest argument against NeverTrump in 2016 was: he may be flawed, but are you really willing to implicitly support a Hillary presidency?

    Won’t that argument be equally valid in 2024? Wouldn’t Trump supporters be complete hypocrites for not voting for Romney/Pence 2024?

    • #24
  25. Columbo Inactive
    Columbo
    @Columbo

    Love it @franco! Never Review … a return volley of Jonah’s own snark. Well played!

    Just today, crazy and incompetent Nadler is moving on impeachment proceedings against our President. Because he’s ‘mean’ or he did something to somebody … or something. Good luck with that dummies. His approval will go up because of this. See Clinton, William Jefferson. Thanks for the 2020 boost!

    Note to Jonah … “Blue America” (sic – there is nothing American about them) has been at war with us for decades. We just have not been at war with them … until now. Did you forget how your “pristine” (sic) candidates … Bush, McCain and Romney … were tarred with the same slanders as this so-called Blue America slams Trump with 24/7 … liar, murderer, dog-hater, tax-cheater … everything they throw at President Trump. Except your guys never hit back. Never.

    Guess what Jonah. Even though you’re squeamish, the rest of conservative America is ready to do battle in this war. And our war President, though not perfect and not as articulate as you’d like, is our leader. You go into battle with the  army you have, right? Hey, that was Bush II’s  guy, right?

    I think Don Rumsfeld has a lot in common with President Trump. And that’s a very good thing.

    MAGA Baby! And that includes fighting back at the Red Horde (aka ‘Blue America’).

    • #25
  26. Franco Member
    Franco
    @Franco

    SkipSul (View Comment):

    Brian Wolf (View Comment):

    When I talk to Democrat friends or acquaintances I often ask them what they think now of the Obama Presidency. They usually say something like…

    “He was great. He was successful and did a lot of good. I bet you even miss him a bit now don’t you?”

    Then I say, “Well he was very successful at electing Republicans. If that was his goal, but besides getting Republicans elected in all 50 states what was he successful at?”

    They tend to struggle there.

    More insightful Democrats, who seem to be thin on the ground, point out his over failure and how he did not live up to the hype.

    There’s a corollary to that: try discussing Obama’s flaws, abuses of power, and scandals, and you meet not merely struggle but out and out hostility. Even the reasonable ones I know become apoplectic when I bring up the various financial scandals from his bailout, or Fast and Furious, his 9 (I think I have this number right) smackdowns by the Supreme Court when he went after churches and religious institutions, and his claims of racism everywhere.

    They cannot admit their idol possibly ever had any flaws.

    I have a little more understanding of these people since they have had no exposure to these scandals and been protected and propagandized by the media. 

    But with Trump it’s quite different and quite the opposite.

    All we ever hear, 24/7, even when actively trying to avoid it, is some new scandal, some reworking of an old scandal, a breathless report that must be retracted ( O’Donnels claim that Russian oligarchs Co-signed his loans)  false claims (Charlottesville hoax), conspiracy theories (Russia, Russia hoax) endless mockery by comedians, virtual death threats, and physical attacks on people wearing political hats in public.

    So can anyone who actually supports Trump be forgiven for getting a little miffed at the casual dismissals by our elites? They are embarrassed, and not outraged? Yes, Trump’s a boor, and a this, and that but he’s not actually …blah blah.

    This is not as ordinary as Jonah and some others would have us believe.

    • #26
  27. Brian Wolf Inactive
    Brian Wolf
    @BrianWolf

    DonG (View Comment):

    Clearly, Trumpism is the reaction to Bushism and Obamaism. Also, it was Bushism that killed Reaganism and Obamaism that killed Clintonism.

    Fascinating.   You have no obligation to do so but how did Obamaism kill Clintonism?  I find their difference in tactics only more than philosophy.  Obama had a kind of awesome political charisma that allowed him to ignore normal rules of politics or perhaps more accurately power through those rules, while Clinton had charisma but was a super skilled politician wrong footing people with a better argument.  This led them to take different routes but it seems to me toward the same ends.  Both Obama Clinton benefited themselves primarily and hurt their party profoundly, increased partisanship for short term victories and while swinging for the fences on political liberalism while failing to enact lasting change.

    Obama attempted to break out of the Clinton mold and go for a more Reagan like impact on politics and failed utterly because he did not have the depth or knowledge to connect with the American people and deliver on policy goals competently like Reagan did.

    • #27
  28. Mendel Inactive
    Mendel
    @Mendel

    Columbo (View Comment):
    “Blue America” (sic – there is nothing American about them) has been at war with us for decades. We just have not been at war with them … until now.

    I disagree. While it’s true that the left started the current round of screaming and dirty tactics (back in the 70s and 80s), the right has been fighting back since at least the 90s with the rise of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich, followed then by Fox News in the late 90s/early 2000s.

    But regardless of who started it or who got involved when, there’s a real imbalance I see now: the left (at least its media outlets and operatives) seem to split their time and attention between “here’s what’s wrong about the right” and “here are some ideas we’d like to implement”. 

    The right used to have a similar split, but increasingly it strikes me that the right wing media is focusing almost exclusively on the war with the left to the near-exclusion of a positive agenda.

    That’s not a healthy long-term trend for the American right.

    • #28
  29. Sabrdance Member
    Sabrdance
    @Sabrdance

    Mendel (View Comment):

     

    But the notion that the landscape on the political right will never bear any resemblance to its pre-2016 state is also folly. The reason is because the American right – the voters, not the “elites” – are much more ideologically disjointed than anyone is willing to admit. That’s the main reason the GOP had such dismal leadership in the first place, and nothing about Trump has changed those underlying divides. So while the current exiles might not be welcomed back in, the general sentiment they represent will almost certainly re-emerge in fairly short order.

    I think this is overstating the issue.  To the extent this is true -that the GOP will in the future resemble its pre-2016 state -it is because the GOP continues to resemble its pre-2016 state.  All the disjoint that was present before is still present now.  Suburban white voters may be taking flyers on Democrats in the House elections, but Exurban Obama-Trump voters are replacing them, and minorities are either sitting out or switching sides in sufficient numbers to keep the elections competitive.

    This results in a shift in the relative power within the coalition.  SoCons in particular have long had to take what we could get from the GOP because we required votes from the more libertarianish and more elite portions of the coalition to win the House and the Presidency, and because of that we had to accept for years that defunding Planned Parenthood, or moving the embassy to Jerusalem were impossible.

    Trump proves that those claims were not true.  Now, the emergent coalition may not be strong enough to win the presidency and the House -it remains to be seen how votes shift.  But it means that going forward the Trumpish part of the coalition will have to be taken more seriously because they have now demonstrated that they can win on their own, and that in the current environment, they can tank a candidate they don’t like.

    All the disjoints will still be there, the general sentiments will still be there, but the power in the party will not soon return to its previous holders.

    • #29
  30. Columbo Inactive
    Columbo
    @Columbo

    Mendel (View Comment):

    Columbo (View Comment):
    “Blue America” (sic – there is nothing American about them) has been at war with us for decades. We just have not been at war with them … until now.

    I disagree. While it’s true that the left started the current round of screaming and dirty tactics (back in the 70s and 80s), the right has been fighting back since at least the 90s with the rise of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich, followed then by Fox News in the late 90s/early 2000s.

    But regardless of who started it or who got involved when, there’s a real imbalance I see now: the left (at least its media outlets and operatives) seem to split their time and attention between “here’s what’s wrong about the right” and “here are some ideas we’d like to implement”.

    The right used to have a similar split, but increasingly it strikes me that the right wing media is focusing almost exclusively on the war with the left to the near-exclusion of a positive agenda.

    That’s not a healthy long-term trend for the American right.

    I completely agree with the fighting back part with Rush and Newt Gingrich as terrific examples.

    Please note that the gOpE (the Nevers that Jonah loves) detest Rush and Newt, almost as much as they do Trump.

    • #30
Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.