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Republican/Trump Voters Reject McConnell-Haley Narrative
Senate Minority Leader (again) Mitch McConnell and Nikki Haley badly miscalculated the American electorate, unless they are willing servants of Xi and the Thirty American Tyrants, furthering what Time proudly celebrated as a grand and good conspiracy against real, legitimate voters in their several states producing the wrong result again. To the extent the McConnell-Haley contingent succeed in clinging to control of the Republican Party, while the left asserts full control over the Democratic Party and the instruments of national power, they will hasten the end of the Republican Party, like the Whigs before them. President Trump and the portion of the real electorate that does not want a socialist America is signaling clearly that they intend to transform the Republican Party, rather than creating a new party from scratch. We are living in very interesting times.
Trump 2020 voters speak clearly:
Suffolk University, in collaboration with USA TODAY, conducts regular polling at the state and national level, along with special topic surveys. The first special topic poll for 2021 has already generated a series of articles and bold headlines. It is well worth your while to read the seven page questionnaire with answers. This is not dense print. It is a few easily read short questions and polling worker instructions, combined with tabulated responses. The instructions indicate that the survey should take six minutes to answer over the phone.
The population being sampled was just those people who indicated last fall that they intended to vote for President Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Given that virtually everyone who actually voted chose Trump or Biden, this population will make or break any candidate running as a Republican in a primary or general election. The survey was conducted after the conclusion of the second Senate impeachment trial, February 15-20, with a sample size of 1,000.
Having already staked out positions in stark opposition to President Trump, the McConnell-Haley contingent, who will not be at this year’s CPAC, have a very hard row to hoe. They have likely terribly miscalculated from the Contract with America* and Tea Party** defeats by the party of big business. Connecting the dots of 1995-1998, 2011-2012, and 2016-2020, a creature of the establishment might conclude that their class always triumphs in the middle to long term, even without special fiddling of elections, as Lisa Murkowski’s gang has just done in Alaska.***
By this view, Reagan was the longest disruption, with the Tea Party and Gingrich Speakership each mere speed bumps. Trump’s influence, in this context, would seem to fit somewhere in the middle, but not a qualitatively or quantitatively more serious threat to the self-selected ruling elite. It ain’t necessarily so. Politicians and pundits would do well to listen carefully to what Trump 2020 voters are now saying.
The Suffolk University poll, after verifying demographic information, asks a standard right direction-wrong track question and a favorable-unfavorable question, before validating the self-identified Trump supporter actually voted for Trump in 2020. 90% were willing to say they voted for President Trump, with 3% saying they voted for Joe Biden and another 5% avoiding admitting they voted for any particular candidate. So, we can be highly confident that this sample accurately represents those who supported the reelection of President Trump.
In this context, consider the opinions expressed. The Republican Party is less favorably viewed than President Trump: 57% to 82% favorable. Flip to unfavorable and the GOP gets 28% to Trump’s 12%. 89% believe the country is on the wrong track. 90% view Joe Biden unfavorably and 87% disapprove of the job Joe Biden has done as president. Nor are they in any mood to join hands and sing kumbaya.
President Biden says he wants to pursue bipartisanship and reduce the nation’s polarization. Which comes closer to your view? {ROTATE} [This tells the poll taker to rotate which answer is offered first from one call to the next, to minimize any effect of the answer order.]
Congressional Republicans should do their best to work with Biden on major policies, even if it means making compromises —————————————- 262 / 26.20%
Congressional Republicans should do their best to stand up to Biden on major policies, even if it means little gets passed ———————————— 622/ 62.20%
Undecided——————————————————— 116/ 11.60%
After all the concerted efforts, what Time proudly styled a “conspiracy,” to stop us reelecting President Trump and then to enforce the preferred outcome in January, how have all the “conservative” editors, networks, and politicians done in beating their narrative into our brains? Very poorly.
Do you believe Joe Biden was legitimately elected president – yes or no?
Yes (17.30%) / No (73.10%)/ Undecided (9.60%)
Of the following words, which do you believe best describes the events at the Capitol on January 6th? Would you say it was … {RANDOMIZE .1-.5} [Randomize answer order from one call to the next, to minimize any effect of the answer order.]
There were two clearly negative choices: a riot (30.50%)/ an insurrection (5.40%). There were three positive or neutral choices, plus Undecided (9.60%): a protest (34.30%), a demonstration (14.30%), a gathering (5.90%). Notice that negative terms got 35.90% versus neutral or positive getting 54.50% from Trump 2020 supporters. This then suggests that the rest of the narrative was not selling so well, as responses to the next three questions quantified.
16. Which of the following best describes what happened at the U.S. Capitol on January 6?
An attempted coup inspired by President Trump: 35/ 3.50%
A rally of Trump supporters, some of whom attacked the Capitol: 278/ 27.80%
Mostly an Antifa-inspired attack that only involved a few Trump supporters: 581/ 58.10%
Undecided: 106/ 10.60%
17. Would the people who stormed the Capitol have done so without President Trump’s prompting – yes or no?
Yes ( 77.50%), No (13.20%), Undecided (9.30%).
18. Do you believe Donald Trump was guilty of inciting an insurrection, as the Article of Impeachment charged – yes or no?
Yes (5.10%), No (93.40%), Undecided (1.50%). Notice how small the undecided percentage is. The opinion here is overwhelmingly favorable to President Trump. Trump 2020 reelection supporters firmly rejected the narrative pushed on every major media platform, all of social media, and by the GOP old guard leadership.
After the Russia hoax and the Ukraine sham, we should hardly be surprised by these voters’ assessment of the January show trial.
As you may know, the Senate acquitted former President Trump in his second impeachment trial which just ended last week. Which of the following three statements comes closest to your view? {RANDOMIZE .1-.3}
Trump should never have been impeached by the House (88.90%)
The House did the right thing in impeaching Trump, and the Senate did the right thing in acquitting him (5.10%)
The House did the right thing in impeaching Trump, and the Senate should have voted to convict him (5.20%)
Undecided (0.80%)
There is no indecision here, no unwillingness to express a clear opinion. Overwhelmingly, the voters who every Republican office seeker must attract reject the entire proceedings, as well as strongly rejecting the supposed premises behind the impeachment. The question prompts respondents to consider that President Trump is twice impeached before they consider what should have been done. This did not have the desired effect. If anything, these voters were reminded of all the preceding wrongs done by the political class in Washington to their man, their choice, their President Trump.
Indeed, the Senate trial made 42% more supportive of Donald Trump, while 54% were unchanged in their support. At the same time, these voters had a very negative response to the Republican senators who voted for conviction. 80% said these senators did so out of political calculation, while only 11% credited the senators’ claims of being motivated by their consciences. 80% of Trump 2020 supporters are less likely to vote for a generic Republican candidate who supported Trump’s impeachment.
So what about the future? 59% want Donald Trump to run for president again in 2024, 76% would support him for the Republican nomination, and if Trump won the Republican nomination for president in 2024, 85% of those who supported him in 2020 now say they would vote for him in the next presidential election. The voters come to this from a view that his first term marks him as a great (45%) or good (25%) president. 13% consider the last four years to be a failed presidency, but this might well reflect an assessment that the Swamp defeated their hopes.
The Trump 2020 voters feel more loyalty to Donald J. Trump (54%) than to the Republican Party (34%). Indeed, 46% would support a “Trump Party” over the GOP (27%), while 27% are undecided on this possible development. Trump understands this and is clearly moving to push a much broader slate of MAGA candidates to tear control of the Republican Party out of the hands of McConnell and his fellow globalists. Only 14% think the GOP is headed in the right direction, while 50% believe the GOP “needs to become more loyal to Trump, even at the cost of losing more establishment Republicans. Only 19% believe the reverse, which seems to be the position staked out by McConnell and Haley.
Trump and the Future of the Republican Party:
Nikki Haley took the position, just before the sham impeachment, that President Trump and his son, Don Jr., were responsible for what happened and that what happened was as characterized by Pelosi and McConnell. She did so in a concluding interview in a series of post-election interviews with a Politico reporter/leftist propagandist, so she knew how her words would be used. I am sorry to see her fall in this way, as I had greatly admired her heretofore (see my three posts praising her over the past several years****).
She took a breath. “Fast forward, I’m watching the television the morning of the 6th and I see Don Junior get up there,” she said, reciting the president’s son’s calls to action against Republican leaders, closing her eyes as if reimagining the scene. “And then I hear the president get up there and go off on Pence. I literally was so triggered, I had to turn it off. I mean, Jon [Lerner] texted me something and I said, ‘I can’t. I can’t watch it. I can’t watch it,’ because I felt the same thing. Somebody is going to hear that, and bad things will happen.”
I asked Haley whether she has spoken to Trump since January 6. She shook her head.
“When I tell you I’m angry, it’s an understatement,” Haley hissed, leaning forward as she spoke. “Mike has been nothing but loyal to that man. He’s been nothing but a good friend of that man. … I am so disappointed in the fact that [despite] the loyalty and friendship he had with Mike Pence, that he would do that to him. Like, I’m disgusted by it.”
[ . . . ]
“I think he’s going to find himself further and further isolated,” Haley said. “I think his business is suffering at this point. I think he’s lost any sort of political viability he was going to have. I think he’s lost his social media, which meant the world to him. I mean, I think he’s lost the things that really could have kept him moving.”
I reminded her that Trump has been left for dead before; that the base always rallied behind him. I also reminded her that the argument for impeachment—and conviction—is that he would be barred from holding federal office again.
“He’s not going to run for federal office again,” Haley said.
But what if he does? Or at least, what if he spends the next four years threatening to? Can the Republican Party heal with Trump in the picture?
“I don’t think he’s going to be in the picture,” she said, matter-of-factly. “I don’t think he can. He’s fallen so far.”
This was the most certainty I’d heard from any Republican in the aftermath of January 6. And Haley wasn’t done.
“We need to acknowledge he let us down,” she said. “He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.”
The globalist mouthpiece Wall Street Journal was quite happy to publish Mitch McConnell’s screed, “Acquittal Vindicated the Constitution, Not Trump.”
Jan. 6 was a shameful day. A mob bloodied law enforcement and besieged the first branch of government. American citizens tried to use terrorism to stop a democratic proceeding they disliked.
There is no question former President Trump bears moral responsibility. His supporters stormed the Capitol because of the unhinged falsehoods he shouted into the world’s largest megaphone. His behavior during and after the chaos was also unconscionable, from attacking Vice President Mike Pence during the riot to praising the criminals after it ended.
It is not just that Republican voters still strongly support President Trump, it is also clear now that most Republican voters strongly reject McConnell and Haley’s assessment and characterization of the election aftermath, especially including January 6. No wonder, then that neither Haley nor McConnell will be at this year’s CPAC. Oh, Minority Leader McConnell was quite happy to appear back in 2013, when he peddled the self-serving lie that Congress would stop Obama if only the American electorate, which had already been conned into giving the Republicans the House without holding them strictly accountable to actually use the power of the purse, would also give him the valuable prize of the Senate majority. See his 2013 and 2014 CPAC appearances. Now, he apparently calculates his crowd does not need conservative activists and voters.
In light of the Suffolk University poll, it is worth watching who is and is not speaking at CPAC. Breitbart reports on some of the big names:
Other notable speakers at the conference include Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Trump’s former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), Trump’s former press secretary Sarah Sanders, and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R).
Vice President Mike Pence, who has distanced himself from Trump ever since the November election, will not be making an appearance at CPAC.
The CPAC 2021 Speakers page shows Senators Cruz, Lee, and Hawley will be there, but not Rubio or McConnell, in contrast to House Minority Leader McCarthy, who will appear because he recognizes on which side his political bread is buttered. Among those who will NOT be there: Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, Marco Rubio, and Mitch McConnell.
We are in a very tough time, with an electoral deck more stacked than at any time before in the history of our republic. And yet, we have people willing to contend for our constitutional republic, state-by-state and office-by-office. It ain’t over until it’s over. The left’s supposed arc of history is ultimately a fiction. We may yet have another political springtime in America.
* The Contract with America:
As one senior aide to an up-and-coming freshman lawmaker told me: “The contract is a political document for 1996. It was never meant to be a governing document. We don’t care if the Senate passes any of the items in the contract. It would be preferable, but it’s not necessary. If the freshmen do everything the contract says, they’ll be in excellent shape for 1996, and we can add to our majority in Congress. But if we compromise the contract in order to pass laws, we lose support.”
“Time for a New Contract with America”
But in the 62 years since 1932, the Republicans had controlled both houses of Congress for only two terms, 1947-49 and 1953-55. Ronald Reagan’s coattails had produced a Republican Senate in 1980, but that majority slipped away in the 1986 midterm. By 1994 the Democrats had controlled the House of Representatives for 40 straight years and many thought that would become a permanent condition.
Instead, the election that year was an epic slaughter of the majority party in Congress. The Democrats lost 54 House seats and nine Senate seats. And that was the least of it. The Speaker of the House, Tom Foley, was defeated for re-election, the first time a sitting speaker had lost his seat since 1862. Also defeated for re-election were the chairmen of the Intelligence, Judiciary, Ways and Means, and Appropriations committees, all of whom had served in the House for decades.
[ . . . ]
The main reason was surely the Contract with America, devised by House Minority Leader Newt Gingrich and Republican whip Dick Armey. Pooh-poohed by the Washington political establishment — overwhelmingly liberal and overwhelmingly intellectually insulated from the country at large — it turned out to be a brilliant political ploy. The contract tuned in to the American electorate’s deep yearning for reform in Washington, a yearning that had expressed itself in the elections of both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.
** Tea Party
https://www.newsmax.com/scottrasmussen/rick-santelli-tea-party-launch-cnbc/2019/02/19/id/903394/
https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/about_us/public_relations/press_room/press_releases/mad_as_hell_how_the_tea_party_movement_is_fundamentally_remaking_our_two_party_system
https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/01/11/conservative-groups-targeted-in-lois-lerners-irs-scandal-receive-settlement-checks/
*** Alaska now permanently rigged for Murkowski and the Democrats:
Murkowski no longer has to pass through a Republican primary election like the one she lost in 2010. (A nearly unprecedented write-in campaign saw her reelected in November that year.)
Some Republicans are suspicious of the measure and believe Murkowski was behind it, citing the involvement of former Murkowski campaign officials and staffers who were deeply involved in the pro-measure effort.
“Everyone I talk to on the Republican side thinks it’s idiomatic — meaning, you know, A follows B, it’s about as proven as it needs to be,” Faulkner said. “I think that if you’re reporting on it, her fingerprints are all over.”
Ballot Measure 2′s principal author, a former Murkowski campaigner, has denied that the measure was intended to benefit her.
https://ballotpedia.org/Alaska_Ballot_Measure_2,_Top-Four_Ranked-Choice_Voting_and_Campaign_Finance_Laws_Initiative_(2020)
**** My previous posts on Nikki Haley:
Published in Elections
I don’t even know what a “trump supporter” means any more. So I have no idea what to do with this.
Is a person who thinks the “capital assault” was bad and the perpetrators should be prosecuted but does not see this as an insurrection much less an armed insurrection a Trump supporter under your calculations?
How about people who did not really like his style, liked the policy and would even now vote for him?
The motivations of people who have supported Trump are wide and varied. Your comments in this post lump all sorts of people with all sorts of beliefs into one basket of “Trump Supporters” then declare these people OK with socialism and unconcerned with the rule of law.
The House managers had to use edited tapes to make it look like Trump was calling for some sort of violent action. The defense played tapes of the House managers making the same type of statements. So if I find the 2nd impeachment to be weak and unpersuasive, you can some how intuit that I approve of Socialism and am not making arguments based on the rule of law?
I wouldn’t treat voters with contempt. My point is that if I were a GOPe politician I would emphasize those issues we all agree on and avoid other topics. My comments were in response to Postmodern’s question about what the GOPe should do about the bad polls (for them.)
I’m not suggesting anyone should trust China. I’m not suggesting any corruption involving China be overlooked. I am suggesting that if someone proposes different strategies its not necessarily because they are in the pockets of the Chinese.
If the government is not putting its thumb on the scale then that is a free market at work. Outside of criminal conspiracies, people ought to be free to associate with whomever they wish, politically and otherwise. That applies to the owner of Facebook and it applies to groups on the political extremes as well.
I agree. I also think the teacher’s unions are infuriating many in the middle with their Covid stuff. The GOP should be hitting that issue hard before the issue goes away.
I agree with all of this.
This is a fair point. I was using the term perhaps too broadly in response to Aaron’s point that I had mistaken support for the rule of law with support for Trump. I was trying to illustrate that to support Trump in his post-election efforts was to subvert, rather than support, the rule of law. But I agree there all kinds of nuances and levels of support.
You’ve lost me here. I didn’t say anything about Trump supporters approving socialism. If my comments suggested that in some way, it was unintentional.
No, I am sorry I was wrongly attributing to you a comment made by another poster regarding Trump supporters being ok with socialism as long as they got what they wanted
Provide examples. There are plenty of counter-examples: regulation reductions, anti-globalism, champion for the entrepreneur, etc. I agree that Candidate Trump had all the earmarks of a relativist. Possibly his opposition forced him to be more anti-socialist than he would otherwise be inclined to be. But his presidential record is not socialist. Therefore if we are what we do, he was a conservative.
You appear to be drawing a sharp divide between “true conservatives” and Trump supporters.
A Venn Diagram would be much more accurate. I would hazard that the circle would significantly over lap. Only in fringes would you find people who support Trump but are ok with socialism, while on the other fringe you would find people willing to accept socialism as long as it meant Trump was gone.
The Republican base did not change it’s principles or policy preferences for Trump. Trump took up their policy ideas.
Look at immigration, Bush tried to push his version of immigration reform and the base rejected it, they rejected the 2012 autopsy report saying to drop enforcement pushed and they rejected Rubio and his gang of 8 work.
The base has not changed its position at all. They just found a guy who would listen to them. It is ridiculous to then say that this same base would now change there beliefs to support socialism.
That original position from above that the people own the government, means that Republicans should listen to there voters. Not try to force on them things they have clearly stated they oppose
Who knows for sure? However, I think we know enough to confidently piece together the rest without too much risk of error.
Does Lindsey Graham know at least as much about Russia Collusion Hoax as we do? My confident bet would be “almost certainly”.
What do we actually know? We know that, at best, the predicate for this intrusive and weaponized investigation into a major political candidate of the out party was paid for by the in party political candidate and purchased from the very sketchy Russian sources they pretended to be concerned about influencing the other guy; at worst there was no actual predicate and they just did it and lied about it so long because they knew they could.
Is this a foundation-shattering scandal far worse than Watergate ever was, or not? It’s the former for me. Is it that for Lindsey Graham too?
What has Lindsey Graham actually done about it? He held some hearings and got a little snippy on camera. Is that it? Such a powerful senator and that’s the extent of his responsibility for getting to the bottom of this gigantic scandal? Even if he’s functionally powerless (which I don’t actually believe), then at the very least he could have put the brakes on everything, stopped giving the system or the perpetrators or the enablers any legitimacy on any issue – because if this is allowed to stand then I suggest their legitimacy is fundamentally called into question. It’s not just Lindsey Graham either – I feel that way about just about every Republican in Washington, including Paul Ryan. We knew enough very early on to be calling foul and to take aggressive counter measures. Yet they drifted along, looked the other way, and “My good friend”-ed the hysterical enablers at just about every step.
Exactly Jim. Well said. The dissatisfaction that’s manifested most recently in Tea Party and Trump is a direct result of the failure of the GOPe to actually deliver even when they had their hands on all of the levers. I don’t believe them. Timid, incompetent, phony. That’s been the Republican party in some combination for many decades. I do not say that with some unrealistic expectation that we can do what we want without regard to opposition or to persuasion. It’s just that the R’s have been reticent to move when we had the chance, moved badly when they did decide to do so, or moved in ways out of line with what they profess at election time.
You indirectly bring up an important point, @edg. How much does any one Republican need to do to maintain credibility with Republican folk? Don’t misunderstand–I’m not a big Lindsey Graham fan. But over the last few years I’ve seen him speak out a number of times when others were silent. He’s not a Jim Jordan or a Matt Gaetz. And I understand the Republicans have pretty much lost credibilty with you, and I feel much the same way. But there seems to be no balance (not just for you, but for others, too): either you are a legislator who does a certain amount to demonstrate your allegiance to Trump, or you must be Never Trump. That seems exreme to me. How much would be enough?
A lot of this is happening at the state level. And will likely see those Trumplicans come to power in 2022, as they are elected to house and Senate. Much as we saw when the Tea Party came to power in 2010.
But both major parties are going through major shake ups in there coalitions, and it will likely not be figured out till 2028.
I understand that was your intent, but I don’t think you actually illustrated anything. You simply asserted it. Those of us who believe that there was extensive election irregularity wanted primarily for those to be investigated and remedied whether these irregularities were honest errors or the result of fraud. However, they weren’t investigated for the most part, and that alone is big part of the anger. Almost instantly this was all declared “without evidence” and declared dangerous and insurrectionist. I listened to quite a bit of the evidence presented at those mocked state hearings held at hotel conference rooms; there was significant evidence even if no “proof”. I add the collective GOPe response to this to the heap of “so egregious is must be on purpose” outrages. Starting with Russia Collusion and ending with Impeachment 2.
It has ZERO to do with Trump, and this is not a reaction I would have over some substantive disagreement on tax policy or something. I don’t care if Graham hates Trump or loves him. I view Russia Collusion Hoax as a super big deal. That it happened, was allowed to happen, intended (by some) to happen, and will not be punished calls the credibility of the whole system and those who run it into question. Seriously, that’s how I view it. If this can happen at the highest levels then it can happen (and has) at lower levels. Throw in the laundry list of other major scandals and attacks on our system and it’s a real crisis for ordered liberty. I don’t just want fiery language periodically. Have any of Graham’s senate colleagues lost credibility with him? Or more, caused him to suspect them of outright shenanigans? If not, why the hell not? If so, then what has he actually done about it? at the very least he can make it plain by his dealings with them and by proclaiming whenever there’s a camera and microphone in his face.
The issue is one of monopoly tactics. Twitter faced competition from Gab.ai and Parler. Both of them were kicked off the platform by other companies, in some cases going after payment processors. If a company can get its competition pulled down and smeared for political reasons, isn’t that company too powerful? Wasn’t Ma Bell broken up for less?
That’s not considering the Big Tech tendency to crack down on conservatives. Rather than a big government solution, I’d prefer to pull the safe harbor provided under section 230, and make them have to establish by evidence that they are platforms rather than publishers, rather than having it be assumed by the court.
By the way, Free Association does not exist in the US. If you do not want to associate with someone from a protected class, you can be sued into oblivion. If I ask you to bake a cake, you had better bake the cake, or else. It’s either free association for everyone, or no one – no double standards for florists vs. Facebook.
Actually you didn’t answer my question. I didn’t follow Graham closely enough to know if he called out other Republicans. And as you say, we don’t know if any of them have lost credibility with him. So the question still remains: how much would any person, Graham or others, need to speak out, to maintain some kind of credibility. It’s not a “I’ll know it when I see it” proposition. We really are on the same side, I think, Ed, but there’s a difference (to me) in calling out individual Republicans for not doing enough, or calling out the Republicans as a group.
I really can’t answer that with any kind of specificity. Although a followup question may clarify a little: What is Graham still doing that indicates he’s going along with business as usual? I view Russia Collusion Hoax as a major scandal warranting cessation of all business as usual until it’s dealt with. It’s that dangerous and we know more than enough to know that this isn’t some legitimate investigation that by golly came up empty.
It’s not just Lindsey Graham for me. He’s just a particularly powerful, relevant, and influential example.
We do have freedom of association in the US, as it is a necessary corollary of free speech, but it’s not absolute, as you mention. I’m not saying some response to true collusion to silence conservative voices wouldn’t be warranted. I’m just not yet up in arms about it (I know, I know, I must not be paying attention. But I see vast amounts of conservative content on Facebook, Twitter, and just about everywhere else, though, so I am not convinced it’s difficult for conservatives to get their message out. Seems to be a thriving industry. Plus, I believe I read somewhere recently that either Facebook or Twitter were cracking down on Antifa accounts. So, it’s not just conservatives.)
Well, this is getting difficult to answer because I’m not actually a candidate and wouldn’t ever be. I would not promise to deliver those issues to you on a plate. No one should ever have expected to sweep away the opposition and achieve a final victory. People who disagree with us have as much right to this country as we do, and they are going to have their say. Our system does not allow for a final victory on either side as long as each side can persuade people to agree with it. Again, check out what the far left says about our system, and how it has frustrated them, if you think they are happy with how things have gone.
I would promise only advocacy of those issues and wisdom and competence. If that’s not enough, I guess you’d have to go with the more bombastic Trump-style guy who promises to own the libs on t.v. at every opportunity.
The shame is how much of the debate is on tactics and style, the perceived urgency of the political situation, vs. substantive issues.
Here is the Washington Times story about facebook cracking down on Antifa.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/aug/20/facebook-removes-980-antifa-related-groups-impleme/
On the flip side, Youtube banned a pro-life group.
https://www.movieguide.org/news-articles/youtube-bans-pro-life-news-organization-removes-thousands-of-videos.html
While the left might like youtube for its action, and I might applaud Facebook for its, maybe neutral platforms should be just that, and not place a hand on the scale.
THIS.
Which reminds me of…
How can one not be suspicious of election fraud on a massive scale? After all, the perpetrators are the same people who claim that requiring an ID to prove you are the one to which the ballot belongs is somehow RACIST!! are the ones claiming that throwing away the matching signature envelopes and counting ballots postmarked after the election is perfectly fine. Nothing to see here. The incumbent gets a million more votes than he did when he won the previous election and loses. At the same time the challenger almost doesn’t leave his basement to run a campaign, and when he does about 10 people show up at an event. Nothing to see here. On election night most people went to sleep about midnight or 1:00 AM with the incumbent way ahead in almost every swing state by hundreds of thousands of votes and we wake up only to find that the counting had mysteriously stopped for 3 to 4 hours in these same swing states and miraculously when the voting resumed Trump was losing in every one. Nothing to see here.
That is the the problem though, substantive issues matter. The GOP yells about out of control spending, then when in power spends like drunken sailors. They proclaim that they will enforce immigration laws then push amnesty like proposals and an autopsy that says we need to drop immigration as an issue. They proclaim they want to push abortion towards the pro-life position but Trump was the first President willing to even attend the pro-life march.
The GOP promised the repeal of Obamacare. Yes this is a difficult and complex issue and yes the opposition gets a say, but the GOP knew all that when they were making the promise.
For most of the GOP base there is no real debate on substantive issues, we mostly agree, at least on the general direction things should go, if not all the specifics. The “debate” is between the voters and the party leaders. This can only continue for so long.
Evening D.A,,
If we are to learn as a party, we have to address the chronic failure to conserve anything. No one has imagined that there will be a “final victory”; however we have seen that in the past some leaders could succeed at achieving goals, Reagan broke the USSR, broke the back of inflation at the cost of 82 house losses, the “contract with America” showed how legislative efforts can be planned and organized to make head way, and lastly with Trump we had a reduction in regulation, honest efforts to control immigration (a contrasted with years of pretend efforts), and a sea change in the relationship with China, we were no longer sitting idly letting China take our jobs first through currency manipulation, then through ignoring patent laws and stealing intellectual property and counterfeiting products. The contrast between the leaders who followed through to get things done, even when they (Reagan) didn’t have both houses, or Newt even when repubs didn’t have the presidency, and Trump who had almost no allies in govt. and our GOP leaders who seem to have an agenda that is different from their constituencies.
I have presented you with a thumb nail list of liberal successes and you have not responded with your list of conservative successes. I suggest that you have not addressed the failure of the GOPe to succeed because our failures are so extensve. In “The Revolt Against the Masses”, Fred Siegel presents a history of liberal loathing of America and its population as described by Mencken as “boobus Americanus”. Angelo Codevilla has written for years about the “ruling class” which includes Republican leaders. He notes that the “ruling class” not only feels superior to the citizens they pretend to lead but that they feel more citizens of the “world” and view patriotic feeling as rather provincial. Roger Scruton has suggested that conservatism lost its way when it became more enamored with markets than communities. The most recent long form criticism of the elite was “The Thirty Tyrants” by Lee Smith https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-thirty-tyrants.
The has been no reflection on the failure of conservatism within the leadership of the Republican Party. Folks who are critical of the GOPe and are fans of Trump are characterized as a modern version of “boobus Americanus”. I would argue that they have seen how the Tea party was treated and noted that the Republican Party seemed only interested in the theater os IRS and FBI abuse of Tea Party organization. The distrust of the GOPe is not because they are not bombastic enough, it is more stark, it is because they have failed to deliver, and more accurately the leadership has shown itself to be indifferent to the life of the average Joe. We have serious threats, a media that is ashamed of America and many of its citizens, even Pravda was not ashamed of its own people, a bureaucracy that, like the teachers union, is out for itself, and an academic world perfecting Marcuse’s “Represive Tolerance” https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/publications/1960s/1965-repressive-tolerance-fulltext.html, and a left that has succeeded as degrading the family, driving religion to the side, and made patriotism questionable. It will take someone who sees that Trump was never a threat to the republic, and will address the failure of conservatism and then lead in a way which will take advantage of conservatism’s natural constituencies, the average men and women who make up the biggest slice of the population. We will not get out of this rut until we see how deep we have sunk.
D.A. why do you keep insisting that anyone here is demanding that we “sweep away the opposition” or “achieve final victory”? The comment you quoted literally refers to advances – not some final or total victory.
As for a Trump style guy – he didn’t “promise to own the libs on t.v.”. He promised advocacy on issues I care about, and that’s what he did. Only you think this is about style and not substance; seriously I can’t think of any other comment on this thread that would support your description.
EDIT: never mind, Jim Beck said it much better in #53.
Our city Police Department and City Government and County Sheriff publish important information on Twitter and Facebook. In the town where I live you need Twitter to keep up on breaking serious weather news, too. At what point does the use of those ‘private’ companies for (sometimes critical) government information cross over from ‘just a private little company’ to a quasi-utility?
Tell us how you really feel. And, yes, I am with you on the personnel is policy problem.
In fact he was instrumental, with his buddy John McCain, in perpetuating the Russian hoax, when they pretended to take the dirty dossier seriously, and so chose to peddle Putin’s agents’ disinformation to hurt their domestic political enemy.
Well put.
Exactly. What terrified Mitch and the gang was that President Trump was deadly serious about actually carrying out, keeping campaign promises. Those party platform planks were being nailed down, raising the question: why couldn’t the career politicians get these things done years, even decades ago?
Consider this sequence of decisions a bit further. If Trump voters were a “cult of personality,” you would expect a very strong desire for him to vindicate them by running again in 2024. Instead we see Trump 2020 voters at 59% desiring him to definitely run. Pushed to think about a generic field of primary candidates, we then see support rise to 76%, showing that no one has made a compelling case or created an equally attractive image. Finally, when pressed to think about the 2024 general election, we see support rise to 85%, possibly desiring a rematch.