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Trump, in My Opinion
I think it would help everybody if, we just acknowledged a few things.
1. Trump is an [redacted]. It’s fine, we have a proud American tradition of [redacted] presidents including LBJ and Harry Truman. Sometimes it also allows people to be necessary change agents. Just say it. “Trump is an [redacted].” It’s not a problem.
2. Trump isn’t a conservative. He is a center-left moderate who cut a deal. He gets to try some new foreign policy stuff and we get judges. There isn’t a single thing he ran on, outside of judges, that wasn’t the bipartisan consensus position before the left exited the American political spectrum, and the right collapsed into a grifter-led minarchist purity spiral. We have to honest with ourselves to be honest with others.
Thank you. That is all.
Published in General
You spend less time worrying about supposedly bad tweets and feeling the need to defend e-drama. It just becomes a non thing and then you can laugh at the people who can’t separate themselves from the inconsequential.
I think at least half of our national inability to understand each other goes back to our probably lets call it over-enthusiastic rally around Bush. Over-enthusiastic rally around trump is likewise unhelpful. But then I have been a long time member of Orange-man-meh.
Media swooning over Clinton playing the sax on Arsenio, let alone the Obama deity worship, wasn’t a big plus either in terms of creating conditions that eventually made Trump possible (though I suppose if you want to take it all the way back in the TV era, you’d go to the media’s orgasm over JFK in 1960, which produced the first blowback on the right from the Goldwater people against press bias, at the ’64 RNC Convention at the Cow Palace in San Francisco)
Refusal to do this is why Republicans always lose.
If there is no cost for people who attack you they will attack you frequently.
Punching back is the original Second Amendment.
I disagree with the post. Trump is not an ideological conservative. And his instincts are clearly in favor of power.
But.
His governance has been superbly conservative. With almost no exceptions, Trump has governed much more conservatively than Reagan.
This is wrong, which both Bill Barr (I his federalist society remarks) and John Yoo (in this recent book) have pointed out.
Adams appointed John Marshall after he had lost the election to Thomas Jefferson (so he actually one up’ed Trump). Madison used – arguably abused – his power as Secretary of State to refused to issue Marbury’s commission as judge even though he was validly appointed (another one of Adam’s eleventh hour appointments). Marbury v. Madison is literal about that, holding that Marbury’s appointment was valid but the Court had no authority to compel the issuance of the commission.
It would help if Never Trumper’s views of past presidents was based on history rather than hagiography.
Here’s a video of how the founders actually saw each other:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_zTN4BXvYI
I was against Bush, so I resent the “our”.
But I’m not sure why we would want to understand each other. There’s enough hostility and rancor as it as.
So, you think Trump is a center left moderate. Can you name even one [other] anti-abortion center-left moderate?
They were led by Bart Stupak and effectively purged from the Democratic Party when they were bludgeoned into accepting a transparently bad faith promise by Obama in connection with the passage of ObamaCare. The polarization and purges of the parties has left a wide variety of policy intersections unrepresented.
Ask Bibi Netanyahu about Trump’s support for our allies, or ask Boris Johnson. Trump is more pro-Israel than either Bush or any elected democrat.
Trump wanted to try and triangulate with Putin against China (reverse Nixon), but Putin was not interested. Please consider that Putin is being kept afloat by gas money. If Trump was actually working for Putin, he’d have worked to reduce US gas production. We also killed several hundred Russian mercenaries. What action has Trump taken (action, not words) that serves Putin’s interest? I honestly have not seen it.
Do you think Xi wanted a trade war? Stop focusing on Trump’s tweets for a moment and consider what he actually did. Same with Kim – he wanted to cut a deal that got Kim separated from Nukes, not preach a lecture.
Trump seems quite cordial with people who did not turn around and trash him. I don’t recall attacks on Spicer or Sarah Sanders. Nikki Haley kept her disagreement professional and he has remained on good terms with her to the best of my knowledge. Trump generally is nice to people who have not actively moved against him.
Don’t forget that Trump has leaned on Germany to get out of Nord Stream 2, and has transferred troops from Germany to Poland. Anyone who says Trump is serving Putin’s interests is fake.
I disagree. It’s hard to read people’s minds, but it is just as hard to see a lust for power in Trump or his choices.
And Trump is on good terms with Cruz and even Christie.
Trump is in the tank for the US. And not in a Mike Dukakis kind of way.
A rabbit trail, sure, but why do people want to make Jefferson sound British? Even the Brits didn’t talk that way in 1800.
What was Haley’s disagreement with Trump? She’s currently appearing around the country on behalf of Republican candidates….which is what you do when you’re gearing up to run for President at the next opportunity.
It was Trump’s tweet last year, mocking Rep. Elijah Cummings after his Baltimore home was burglarized. Nothing all that bad, and I don’t know if Haley knew Cummings was dying (apparently some people did) when she sent out the reply:
Just like most people.
Insight into why the term conservative isn’t right to describe what we used to call liberal, and sometimes now call neoclassical liberal. The only term that has come back into correct use is progressive. The progressives are where they were in the 20’s when that wing of the Democrats abandoned the term because its first cousins, fascism and communism, attacked the mother country.
Trump is Andrew Jackson 2.o.
On the foreign policy front, I suspect I may be the only one here who has served in Embassies, including during the Trump era. This is what I will say about that.
Bottom line, this administration has served as a necessary corrective to some badly flawed policy. Disruption was absolutely necessary, but at some point should give way to stability and focused team-building. My humble opinion only.
You are easily mystified if you still buy the Putin hoax.
After they have attacked him. I would appreciate an example of someone Trump attacked without provocation.
Pretty small potatoes, in the scheme of things. I doubt either of them stayed mad about it.
Trump was new to Washington and was willing to trust people who stabbed him in the back or whose motives were obscure. It is very tempting to consider a number of generals who opposed withdrawal from Afghanistan as Career limitation of favorite underlings. It took him a while to find people who would not stab him in the back.
Yes, and a lot of the experienced GOP people were Bush family loyalists who had worked in the administrations of Bush 41, Bush 43, or both. They refused to work for Trump. He had to select from a lot of second and third tier people, at least initially.
W was weak on insisting on loyalty, so there were many bad apples in that barrel in any event.
Loyalty is to the nation and the constitution.
Except that Jackson was re-elected, and Trump is headed to the most devastating defeat of an incumbent president in 100 years.
I was attracted to the Republican Party due to its emphasis on character, the Rule of Law, the Constitution, limited government, reduced government spending, national defense and free trade. I saw that in Reagan. I don’t see any of that in Trump.