Super Trump: Brought to You by Democrats!

 

Before he was elected, Donald Trump was never an ideological conservative or even a reliable Republican. But his instinctively thin-skinned nature led him to become a conservative. The Democrats attacked him, probably the single biggest error in the history of the party back to at least the 1960s.

Why is Trump speaking at the March of Life? Impeachment. Democrats pushed him there! And there are countless similar examples (from anti-regulation to policy on Israel to all the fantastic justices).

Thank G-d for Donald Trump, who is turning out in so many ways, to be the most conservative (and constructively so!) President of our age. The next time you see a Democrat who hates Trump, thank them. If it was not for Democrats, we would not have such a great President!

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  1. Jon1979 Inactive
    Jon1979
    @Jon1979

    Like I’ve said before, my fear with Trump was that, based on his history of taking sides on an issue based on where they moderate swing voters were at the moment, but coming across as more angry than they were about whatever they were angry about, Trump was simply running at a Republican in 2016 because the swing voters were irked at Obama’s policies in the 2013-15 period. But if the moderates ever shifted back towards the left, Trump would simply follow them there, because where the swing voters go is where the majority of voters are on an issue.

    It hasn’t happened. The swing voters moved left in the 2018 midterms, but Trump has followed the Reagan post-1982 “Stay the Course” model, and, if anything, has moved more to the right over the past 14 months. Why he did that can be open to question, and certainly it’s possible that Trump realized with the Dems wanting to draw and quarter him, after they’d boiled him in oil and then tarred and feathered him, there was virtually nothing to be gained by moving closer to the Dems in 2019, even if the moderates seemed to have done that.

    So he’s stayed faithful to what he campaigned on, which has been a pleasant surprise for me and a lot of other 2016 Trump skeptics. And it stands a good chance of paying off, if the swing voters have been unnerved by some of the people they may have voted for in 2018, and what most of the 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls have been saying. The moderates may not like Trump’s persona or style, but he gets to run on his overall record this fall versus the image Democrats are projecting to those swing votes.

    • #1
  2. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    iWe: The Democrats attacked him, probably the single biggest error in the history of the party back to at least the 1960s.

    I’ve thought that too. It was the White House Correspondents’ Dinner at which Obama made fun of him. :-) Thank you, President Obama. :-)

    • #2
  3. ctlaw Coolidge
    ctlaw
    @ctlaw

    Ann Coulter once referred to him as a sofa. He bears the imprint of the last ass to sit on him. He is quite amenable to being sweet talked. The Dems could have gotten a lot from him by throwing a smiling celebrity at him. Just look at what he did for Kim K.

    • #3
  4. Rodin Member
    Rodin
    @Rodin

    You forge strength into steel by applying heat, banging and folding. Seems like the Democrats (and MSM, to be redundant) have strengthened the steel in Trump in a similar fashion.

    • #4
  5. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    iWe: The next time you see a Democrat who hates Trump, thank them.

    This I shall do with gusto.

    • #5
  6. Rodin Member
    Rodin
    @Rodin

    Arahant (View Comment):

    iWe: The next time you see a Democrat who hates Trump, thank them.

    This I shall do with gusto.

    Oooh. Just thought of a good lawn sign: “Hate Trump? Thank You — It made him a better President”

    • #6
  7. Jon1979 Inactive
    Jon1979
    @Jon1979

    ctlaw (View Comment):

    Ann Coulter once referred to him as a sofa. He bears the imprint of the last ass to sit on him. He is quite amenable to being sweet talked. The Dems could have gotten a lot from him by throwing a smiling celebrity at him. Just look at what he did for Kim K.

    Chuck Schumer really seemed to be planning to do that at first — compared to the other Democrats, he said almost nothing in the run-up to the 2016 election and immediately afterwards directly attacking Trump, and since he and Trump had been working with each other for two decades on stuff Trump needed done in NYC (in exchange for campaign $$$ to Schumer), he knew how to schmooze the president.

    But the anti-Trump anger, even before he was inaugurated was already so white-hot, any strategy to play nice with Trump to get him to do liberal things threatened to cost Schumer his Senate Minority Leader position. It’s another example of how the angry left side of the Democrats’ base, including some of their own elected officials, drove them away from possibly co-opting Trump in the early going.

    • #7
  8. Kozak Member
    Kozak
    @Kozak

    iWe:

    Why is Trump speaking at the March of Life? Impeachment. Democrats pushed him there! And there are countless similar examples (from anti-regulations to policy on Israel to all the fantastic justices).

    Thank G-d for Donald Trump, who is turning out in so many ways, to be the most conservative (and constructively so!) President of our age. The next time you see a Democrat who hates Trump, thank them. If it was not for Democrats, we would not have such a great President!

    Democratic Hubris?

    Let me introduce you to Nemesis….

     

    • #8
  9. Ed G. Member
    Ed G.
    @EdG

    Rodin (View Comment):

    You forge strength into steel by applying heat, banging and folding. Seems like the Democrats (and MSM, to be redundant) have strengthened the steel in Trump in a similar fashion.

    Oddly enough that’s the same formula Stormy Daniels employs in her art.

    • #9
  10. Ed G. Member
    Ed G.
    @EdG

    Jon1979 (View Comment):

    ctlaw (View Comment):

    Ann Coulter once referred to him as a sofa. He bears the imprint of the last ass to sit on him. He is quite amenable to being sweet talked. The Dems could have gotten a lot from him by throwing a smiling celebrity at him. Just look at what he did for Kim K.

    Chuck Schumer really seemed to be planning to do that at first — compared to the other Democrats, he said almost nothing in the run-up to the 2016 election and immediately afterwards directly attacking Trump, and since he and Trump had been working with each other for two decades on stuff Trump needed done in NYC (in exchange for campaign $$$ to Schumer), he knew how to schmooze the president.

    But the anti-Trump anger, even before he was inaugurated was already so white-hot, any strategy to play nice with Trump to get him to do liberal things threatened to cost Schumer his Senate Minority Leader position. It’s another example of how the angry left side of the Democrats’ base, including some of their own elected officials, drove them away from possibly co-opting Trump in the early going.

    And Trump was signaling that he was willing to deal with the other side. I would have preferred that to our country coming apart at the seams. I think we still would have come out ahead on substance. Keep in mind, we started with Republicans in majority of both houses – so we really could have made some big conservative gainzzz had our Republicans majorities been conservative in the slightest.

    • #10
  11. Ed G. Member
    Ed G.
    @EdG

    Shorter story: we worried (me only slightly and very early on until I wised up) about Trump not being conservative, when we already knew that no Republican was actually interested in advancing conservatism. If they had been interested, then they would have actually done so with gusto once Trump was elected (and before, really). That much of Trump’s agenda had already been ostracized as “Paleo” by much of the establishment was already a rift certainly by 2012.

    • #11
  12. Hartmann von Aue Member
    Hartmann von Aue
    @HartmannvonAue

    This was another point in the lunchtime conversation in the von Aue household.  Back in 2016, when I was inviting the pro-Trump crowd in not at all cordial terms to leave the Republican Party, I did so  precisely because I thought he was  a not-very-well-cloaked Democrat. It seemed to me entirely likely that once elected, he would revert to the political instincts of the New York Democrat he had been all of his adult life. Then the left went freaking berserk and stayed that way for years, spewing out ever more psychotic accusations about Trump, ever more hateful things about his voters.  And Trump decided to “dance with the one that brung him” as we say at Sadie Hawkins time in Indiana (not far from that little red barn…). And as a consequence,  last three years have proven me decisively, gloriously wrong. What a relief! Thanks Democrats!

     

    • #12
  13. Manny Coolidge
    Manny
    @Manny

    You might be right iWe about making Trump more conservative than he really wanted to be.  It’s always hard to know any politician’s true beliefs.  Ultimately for most of them it’s what works.  And this has worked for Trump.  

    • #13
  14. Manny Coolidge
    Manny
    @Manny

    Hartmann von Aue (View Comment):
    It seemed to me entirely likely that once elected, he would revert to the political instincts of the New York Democrat he had been all of his adult life.

    You pretty much have to be a Dem in NYC or you get nothing, and he had a business to run who needed political connections.  But he was a Nixon fan from a young man.

    • #14
  15. GrannyDude Member
    GrannyDude
    @GrannyDude

    I may be projecting not just my own experience but that of what are now many other former liberals…but I think Trump was an automatic Democrat when it came to a lot of issues that he never had cause to think much about, especially since so many of his celebrity-pol pals were Dems. Then he got a glimpse of their snottiness, intolerance and mendacity when it came to a single issue (himself) and suddenly everything he’d ever heard from the mouth of a progressive was open to question. 

    Oops. 

    For instance, I think his conversion on abortion is genuine. I don’t think he knew how often abortions happen after twelve weeks, or how these are performed. His description on the debate stage, of an abortionist “ripping a baby from the womb in the ninth month” sounded to me like the authentic disgust of a man with eyes newly opened. 

    Again, I may be projecting. For all I know, it’s a wholly political, cynical turn-around…but I doubt it.

    • #15
  16. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    iWe: The next time you see a Democrat who hates Trump, thank them. If it was not for Democrats, we would not have such a great President!

    I’m not sure that just run-of-the-mill Democrat irrational babble would have done it.  The Nevers deserve much of the credit…and a good pat on the head too.

    I will just repeat what I said last week:

    Absent the irrational, hyperbolic, persistent opposition we have witnessed, I can imagine a first term President Trump checking off several important agenda boxes (while being shepherded into mediocrity by the Republican caucuses) then declaring victory after one term and easing into a retirement of bragging about how much more he could have done if he had chosen to run again. Instead, the irrational, hyperbolic, persistent opposition has not only energized the man and his base but made him largely politically anti-fragile. That will be a useful and interesting superpower at his disposal during the second term. The results just may be what you propose.

    • #16
  17. Sweezle Inactive
    Sweezle
    @Sweezle

    Ann Coulter may be right about being a sofa. Personally I think it oversimplifies what drives him. But that’s fine with me as long as we get more Conservative Judges. 

    • #17
  18. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    Right on, iWe.

    iWe:

    Thank G-d for Donald Trump, who is turning out in so many ways, to be the most conservative (and constructively so!) President of our age. The next time you see a Democrat who hates Trump, thank them. If it was not for Democrats, we would not have such a great President!

    Thank G-d, thank the Democrats, and try not to mix those two things up.

    • #18
  19. Steven Seward Member
    Steven Seward
    @StevenSeward

    iWe:

    Before he was elected, Donald Trump was never an ideological conservative or even a reliable Republican. But his instinctively thin-skinned nature led him to become a conservative. The Democrats attacked him, probably the single biggest error in the history of the party back to at least the 1960s.

    Really interesting observation!  Trump is hard to figure out because his behavior does not fit neatly into any of the common psychological stereotypes we are used to.  I certainly did not envision him governing as a conservative.  Maybe you are onto something!

    • #19
  20. Sisyphus Member
    Sisyphus
    @Sisyphus

    Kozak (View Comment):

    Democratic Hubris?

    Let me introduce you to Nemesis….

    They make such a cute couple.

    • #20
  21. Sisyphus Member
    Sisyphus
    @Sisyphus

    And beware, the minute one understands the magic, the magic ceases.

    • #21
  22. Brian Clendinen Inactive
    Brian Clendinen
    @BrianClendinen

    Me voting for Trump was like playing Russian roulette verses putting a shotgun to in my mouth with Hillary (Victor David Hanson Analogy).

    I just never expected the Democrat in their raw anger to take the gun and keep pulling the trigger at a Trump cutout. Therefore insuring Republicans  had no ammunition to blow their brains out with.

    So Democrats hatred turned a moderate president into a conservative but unprincipled  one. I put a lot of his conservatism at his cabinets feet. However the hatred at him drove him to his picks.

     

    The biggest problem is almost none of that conservatism is translating into law. So other than Judicial picks and a good tax reform law,  its all just short term possible pyrrhic  victories (history will tell) no long term changes or wins for Conservatism.  However the Judicial is a big win. If he could of gotten rid of Obama Care and roll back Obama school debt/loan laws. He basically could of completely wiped out all of Obamas long-term curses. That would be a solid win in my book. So we are not their yet.

    • #22
  23. MichaelKennedy Inactive
    MichaelKennedy
    @MichaelKennedy

    Manny (View Comment):

    Hartmann von Aue (View Comment):
    It seemed to me entirely likely that once elected, he would revert to the political instincts of the New York Democrat he had been all of his adult life.

    You pretty much have to be a Dem in NYC or you get nothing, and he had a business to run who needed political connections. But he was a Nixon fan from a young man.

    Many seem to not realize that he considered running in 2000. This is not some new quirk or marketing ploy. Yes, he has a huge ego but he has also been very successful, including recovering from near financial disaster.  Glenn Reynolds has been saying for at least ten years that we have the worst ruling class in our history. After 2008, who could disagree?

    • #23
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