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The Republican Party’s Problem
The Liz Cheney brouhaha brought to sharp relief the problems the Republican Party faces with regard to Trump and Trump-supporters. Liz and her crowd firmly believe that the way to deal with Trump is to rebuke and circumscribe him for his attempt to steal a second term through a campaign of lies about the election.
The problem with this is this: There are big chunk of the Republican electorate that doesn’t trust the elite mainstream Republicans that Cheney typifies. This chunk includes not only populist white working-class people but also the black and brown people who defected to Trump. They trust Trump.
Why should they trust the Republican mainstream, who has never given a rat’s rear about their plight vis-a-vis jobs, wages, and social issues? Who has never spoken to them or reached out to them and still doesn’t? Even worse, who condemn them as insurrectionists, just like the Democrats do!
Why should they not trust Trump, who recognized and acknowledged their concerns, and then when elected actually did something about them or tried to.
By their lights, the Big Lie is no lie. The election really was stolen just like everything else has been stolen from them, and they were out to right that injustice by standing up on Jan. 6th. They don’t think Trump was lying, either. Trump was speaking the truth for them.
Most Republican politicians know what Cheney and her supporters don’t. To go against Trump is to brand oneself as one of the Republicans who don’t care about them, the people. And this isn’t about a cult of personality, it’s about a specific set of policy priorities. Most Republican pols obviously know this, but they apparently couldn’t get Cheney to understand it.
Yes, the party will eventually move on from Trump, but it will take time. And it will take someone capable of replacing Trump as the champion of people like his supporters. It will take someone who can fight for the people and yet … uh … tweet nicely.
Published in Politics
This country has done every single thing wrong in the face of wage deflation and job destruction from automation and globalized labor. He has done better than the GOPe and the GOPe definitely doesn’t care about saying anything intelligent about it.
We are at least 20 years past the point when GOP boiler plate about economics made sense.
Everything Moves Towards Communism All Of The Time™
Over a decade ago, my brother-in-law was making fun of Republicans saying that the Democrat party was socialist. He literally had Bernie signs in his yard in the last election.
I think there are some important dynamics here.
From what I can tell, this is a very big problem in the GOP.
Nobody ever does this, but watch the long interview of David Stockman on real vision. It will cost you a dollar. The other one I always post is the Jeff Deesit speech the greatest myth on YouTube.
The ACA.
If the government and the financial system require inflation while we import deflation from other countries, what should we do? We have done every single thing wrong in the face of wage deflation and job destruction from automation and globalized labor. Trump wasn’t perfect, but the fact is it’s better than the GOPe.
Not so sure about that. Not bigly. Not even sure he lost.
I’d say the biggest problem with the GOP is the base that can’t understand why Trump lost. This disconnect will doom the party, unless the Democrats’ base and their collective break from reality dooms their party first. Are we in for seesawing between the fringes of left and right for the next few elections? It’s possible.
What I heard when The Orange One was talking was not “bigly”, but rather New York speed-talk for “big league”.
A clear and honest assessment of Trump’s loss by the entire party can not be couched in “he didn’t have broad appeal.” The numbers belie that, even as a loss.
You need to contend honestly with numbers that don’t make sense and a white population that is overwhelmingly more afraid of feeling bad for their stupid choices than they are about big government.
If we dealt honestly about Trump’s loss while taking the numbers seriously, bottom line is this country deserves Biden good and hard and judging by our military recruitment advertising, China and Russia wouldn’t need to try very hard to get a giant continent of very rich resources into their control. And we would deserve it.
Much of what Trump tried to do was muted by opposition. What he managed to do was OK as far as it went, but I would not like to se us going too far down the road to protectionism and trade restrictionist policies. We need more good jobs for the working class, but I wouldn’t want to pay $5,000 for a smart phone or $500 for an ordinary pair of sneakers.
It’s hard to know what to do about that.
Best advice I’ve seen this year.
I’m trying to understand your terminology. If we call Trump supporters the base, who is the fringe of the right? Are they the NT-ers who have sided with the Ds? Or?
For that matter, who is the fringe on the Left? Aren’t they the one running things now? If so, maybe they aren’t so fringy.
All the people who misread and misunderstand Trump have a few things in common. One is they don’t know Trump is using the expression “Big League” as in baseball… “the big leagues”. So they say ‘bigly’ and think they are the smart ones mocking bad English.
It’s astounding how much they get wrong.
They also seem fixated on mocking his accent where the ‘H’ is silent in the word “huge”.
Just pathetically juvenile and petty.
But I really don’t think he lost. I really don’t believe Biden got 81 million legitimate votes.
It just doesn’t track with previous elections.
In that sense it’s a very good thing that Trump got as big a turnout as he did, because that forced the Dims to cheat so much as to be obvious.
I assume they’ve been cheating in elections for decades. But they had to steal so big this time, they couldn’t hide it.
Which is why they repressed and are continuing to repress any attempt at examining the voting. And why they are severely punishing anyone who dares question the results.
They’re not acting like people who won legitimately.
They didn’t get this wrong; they just pretended to. Trump’s been using the expression “Big League” regularly for many years, and still does. In addition, when you watch the video, it’s as clear as day that he said “Big League.” These people hang on Trump’s every action and word. There’s no way they didn’t know. But even if they insist that he said “bigly,” it’s a proper word and was used properly (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/bigly).
They did the same thing with Bush-43 when he wrote, “Let Freedom Reign” — insisting that he wasn’t smart enough to know the actual expression instead 0f noticing that he had an actual vocabulary and used the word properly.
Another example: Sarah Palin, who addressed a Tea Party crowd by saying “We’re gonna party like it’s 1773”. They said she was ignorant for not knowing we won independence in 1776. In reality, they were ignorant for not knowing the Boston Tea Party was in 1773.
What a bunch of maroons!
Maroons?
Are you actually attempting to enlighten those who only wish to slumber? That’s very polite of you @django, but there are many who do not deserve such consideration.
True, but Hope springs eternal … and other songs from the same album ;-)
I agree @rhfabian. Trump was attempting to put a balance back in our relations as a country. Part of that was to balance our trade relations. What we had before Trump was great for our consumers. Unfortunately, it was also killing our middle class, which in turn was hurting our consumers. Weren’t you concerned that we were/are losing our ability to make any of our own “things” here in the USA? Our military gets some of its critical microchips from China. We were concerned during the pandemic that many of our medications had a sole source in China. How does our country continue to grow and thrive based on being mainly a service economy? Trump was making great strides. We don’t even mention the USMCA much at all. It gets bi-partisan praise. It’s too bad he lost and couldn’t finish what he started.
This really is true, and it should have been dealt with 30 years ago. We have a huge mess on our hands. Republicans that aren’t sensitive to this, really need to shut up.
I consider the base of both parties to be at the fringe of the political spectrum.
They know why Trump lost. Wholesale corruption of the political system. That the GOP Party does not care is why the GOP base is an issue for it.
Interesting.
Indeed: