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What of 2016? or, Who Sets the Bar for Lousiness?
Many Conservatives here seem surprisingly indifferent about the next presidency. They say that we’ve had lots of lousy presidents… what’s one more lousy president? Granted, there’s not much we can do about it. All roads lead to “lousy.” But what surprises me is that some of us grade lousiness on a pass/fail basis, and others don’t seem — at least to me — to bother to assess lousiness at all. For this latter cohort, my hope is that they’ll eventually get around to it. After all, it’s only natural that we humans prefer assessing positive alternatives (e.g., choosing which dessert to order), or assessing easy choices (bacon vs. left-over oatmeal) while deferring the more difficult or nerve-wracking choices as long as possible.
As for the former cohort, I am truly puzzled. But rather than trying to convince you, I’m inviting you to convince me. First, I’m going to set my bar for lousiness — that is, lousiness of what we can expected from the next presidency. I say presidency because the next president’s actions are far more important than who s/he is. I’m going to lay out, in brief, my view of the lousiness of candidate Hillary Clinton’s potential presidency. If you can convince me that Donald Trump’s presidency would either meet or exceed my lousiness standard I will admit my error, adopt your viewpoint, and join forces with you by either voting for Clinton or throwing away my vote (Libertarian or Green Party candidate).
When I am told that conservatives should concede the 2016 election and then re-group for future elections, and that our history is full of lousy presidents, and that we’ll bounce back again this time too, it makes me want to politely suggest that we should also give significant weight to our recent history. A few days before he was elected eight years ago, then-Senator Obama announced his determination to transform America. As president, he diligently proceeded to politicize many of the agencies under his executive control. The EPA was crafted to extend its power into boardrooms and homes through expanded regulations. The IRS was deployed to suppress political speech by refusing tax-exempt status to conservative non-profits. Meanwhile, Eric Holder’s DOJ and its agencies …well, where to start?
Hillary Clinton’s election would be tantamount to a “not guilty” verdict in the court of public opinion, and would bestow political legitimacy on all of her crimes and corruption. It would validate President Obama’s approach to governing. His successor would follow his precedent of trampling on the separation of powers free from any fear of repercussion. Executive overreach in the cause of the progressive vision for America would be mandated as well. Conservative dissent after that verdict would only serve to isolate us from a public that will have decided to move on. The media will remind everyone of that. Of course, we conservatives wouldn’t be wrong, just irrelevant.
As a beneficiary of Obama’s radicalized federal bureaucracy — and armed with the people’s mandate and the infamous Clinton, Inc. mastery of corruption for political influence — President Clinton would seamlessly press on with her party’s social justice agenda and its first target will be the First Amendment. The Left, in anticipation, is increasingly open about its disdain for free speech. This past week has provided a sampling of journalism’s new role under post-First Amendment principles (here and here). Can conservatives rely on Clinton’s integrity to defend the Constitution and deprive progressives of such useful tools?
No, she would not be “just another lousy presidency.”
Has any president-elect ever walked into office with all of these components in place? Political power is cumulative. A Obama/Clinton dynasty would potentially exceed that of FDR in both years and scope, and would almost certainly inflict equal or greater damage to conservativism in America than did FDR.
Clinton is clearly determined to champion every radical progressive initiative that BHO has envisioned, as well as a few that Senator Bernie Sanders has brought to the table. Republican opposition has slowed Obama’s agenda slightly, but has not prevented him from stocking his agencies and the courts with committed Leftists. We don’t need eight more years of that. Equally important, Republican opposition has not dampened the influence of the presidential podium in shaping the direction of public policy, and creating legitimacy of the progressive worldview among the citizenry. Like the proverbial frog in the pot, we easily forget the impact of Obama’s teleprompter over the years, but it has relentlessly scrolled the Left’s agenda into our faces and into our lives. Many of the issues in today’s public opinion lexicon barely existed eight years ago. Progressives have moved the country a long way since then. Can conservatism afford to become further isolated from mainstream thought?
Progressives are licking their chops right now in anticipation of the opportunities laid out before them. The past eight years of transformation have been a methodical march toward the next eight years, which are likely to be a Leftist feeding frenzy. Guess who’s on the menu?
That’s where I set the bar for lousiness. I’d like to see conservatives unite in working to prevent such an outcome. Some of us believe that electing the other candidate would be just as bad or worse. Please convince me in the comments.
Published in General
It’s a pet peeve of mine when people refer to Obama as being a failed president. The simple truth is that he’s been the most consequential president since FDR. No one else, including Reagan, even comes close.
We don’t need eight more years of solidification.
Right now I am thinking that if some conservatives can vote for HRC with the dream that it will just make the Democrat Party more unpopular and provide even more opportunity for conservatism in the future, then why can’t I vote for Mike Pence with the dream that we might actually get him as president before the first term is over?
I find this post disingenuous. I can’t make an argument that Trump will be more lousy than HRC. The argument that I make is that at least HRC will be the Democrat’s lousy president, while all of Trump’s lousiness will be ascribed to Republicans (and conservatives).
But none of this matters because Trump is going to lose bigly, like less than 200 electoral votes.
What bothers me the most about both candidates is that they have surrounded themselves with lawyers for their entire careers. Those lawyers have protected them from public scrutiny. Who knows for sure what either one of them has done? Or had someone else do? They both have sufficient money to pay people to do their dirty work for them.
That’s the grisly nature of power.
Normally, I say, with great reverence to our Constitution, a person is innocent until proven guilty (which is part of our jury instructions, not something in the actual Constitution, but people think it’s there because it is there in spirit!).
But with these two, I have to confront the inadequacy of our justice system. I find it hard to believe that neither has committed a pretty terrible crime or two.
I’m voting for Trump to support the Republican Party’s return to Washington, D.C. But I don’t blame anyone for not trusting either one of these two candidates.
Judge, an example of what you are saying is the country went from the influence of the Tea Party to Black Lives Matters in a illegal or semi- illegal manner. That juxtaposition just floors me and saddens me for my kids and grandkids.
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Reading your whole post, it seems that you’re a Trump supporter or at least you’re going to vote for him, and are inviting us to talk you out of it. You could have explicitly stated that. I will explicitly say that I plan on voting for Trump based on who is less lousy.
But the last sentence quoted above says it all. There’s not much we can do about stopping lousy in this election. As for your post title, the answer in this context is we the voters set the bar for lousiness.
So why are we conservatives surprisingly indifferent? Because the rest of the country isn’t listening to us, and we’re a smaller group than many of us thought.
Nice summary. Allowing a Hillary presidency by explicit action or explicit inaction is a move I cannot fathom unless you personally stand to profit. To do it for no personal gain is vanity run wild.
But that’s just me, a cranky old geezer who has delusions that America can come back to a semblance of a republic.
For those who already believe the election is over, I have played against longer odds and won.
Disingenuous? No.
1> I want to make the best choice possible. If I think it’s “A” and then someone convinces me that it’s “B” then I switch to “B.” Wouldn’t most rational people do the same?
2> I’m also open to the argument that a Trump presidency would be equally as lousy as a Hillary presidency. Is that not the most common argument of Conservatives who won’t vote for either?
3> I’ll take into consideration your argument that shielding Republicans/Conservatives from blame for Trump outweighs the destruction HRC would inflict on the country. Please tell me whose blame we would be sparing ourselves from, and why that would matter.
I think you are confusing resignation for indifference. And again think you make the poor assumption that most of us are voting for Hillary. We aren’t. We aren’t voting for either. They are both going to be lousy. And we don’t need to argue you into our position. You’re a big boy, you have the same information available to you, you’re conclusion is yours. There is only one side in this Trump/NotTrump debate obsessed with changing the minds of the other side.
Actually, I’m talking about indifference, as in “I can’t vote for the Republican because he’d be just as bad, so I’m not voting” which is a common reply to the question “why not vote against the Democrat?”
Voting third party is another example of indifference to the electoral outcome.
Resignation is a separate issue.
You’re free to imagine that, but that’s not my assumption, nor did I suggest such a thing.
I’m fine with that. You’re welcome to turn down my invitation.
Examples:
Hoover was a progressive Republican that royally messed up the response to the 1929 stock market crash and subsequent recession. Republicans lost the presidency and congress for decades and the country was fundamentally transformed.
Carter is inept in foreign policy leading to Reagan and 25 years of real wins for the conservatives.
Either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton is going to be this generation’s Hoover or Carter. I would rather be FDR’s or Reagan’s party.
Okay, I get that this is what you really wanted to say. I assure you that I am not under any illusion that you would change your mind based on something I wrote. I’m just searching for some kind of sensible argument in favor of forfeiting the election to our common enemy. Maybe someone else can provide one.
I think you have a pretty good argument that poorly performing presidents can bring bad times for their party. But it’s also true that an entrenched party is hard to defeat. That’s what we face today. The voters didn’t punish Obama in 2012, and they’re not punishing his party in 2016. Why should we assume that they’ll punish Clinton in 2020? Even if they do, why would Conservatives be in any position to benefit from that?
A third consecutive Democrat term would be devastating, particularly given the fact that they’ve decided to go lawless.
You’re building in a lot of assumptions. Hillary will not be challenged by her own administration. She gets of scot-free. Obama wasn’t punished for the worst recovery of a lifetime. Many people think we’re in a recession now. And betting on the economy cuts both ways. I don’t think the Dems will put their domestic agenda at risk by starting a war without strong public backing. Certainly, the GOP can come up with a better candidate, but there’s no reason that sledding will be any easier four years from now against an incumbent president.
I just prefer taking the Dems on today and halting the progressive transformation rather than hoping that voters recognize what a mess this country is in four years from now and decide that conservatism is the solution.
Thanks for the input.
Trump wins the presidency: He does this because Hillary’s health fails, or people truly perceive her for the criminal that she is or some catastrophic event happens that unique discredits Hillary. I don’t see Trump, who is a terrible candidate running an incompetent campaign, wins any other way.
Coming into the Presidency Trump runs down the checklist of conservative promises he makes and tries to fulfill them. A few things happen but Trump’s gaffes clog up the process and give the Democrats filibustering in the Senate political cover. Trumps Supreme Court nominee is stalled in the Senate. The media start painting Trump as a loser who has a failed presidency just three months into his term. Trump wants to change the narrative he starts to triangulate with the help of six blue State Republican senators. Making compromises with the Democrats on their terms. Twenty or more Republican senators join in to make the compromises on policy slightly more conservative. We get a standard Kennedy like conservative to replace Scalia, Obamacare is “fixed” but not repealed, we get Gang of eight style immigration reform with bipartisan support. Corporate taxes go down with some slight regulation reform since that is the only bones the Democrats throw Trump’s way and they are the only bones that Trump really fights for.
In the media Trump is hailed as being surprisingly bi-partisan with Trump and his children waging a war against ultra-right wing advisors in the administration. Social legislation is passed on “equal pay” and mandatory leave requirements that undue any benefit from the mild regulatory reform, planned parenthood funding is increased.
Riding high on the media coverage Trump begins to campaign against more conservative Republicans in the Senate and openly recruits people to run against them.
Meanwhile the foreign policy time bombs left by the Obama administration starts going off. Trump has no consistent response to any of these serious crisis as they come. Trump zooms around from super tough to very conciliatory always trying to gauge the reaction of the American public before he commits. With an unsteady foreign policy North Korea and China start pressing hard against Japan and South Korea, while Russia pushes strongly on the borders of NATO and in Georgia and Azerbaijan. The Muslim powers then start applying more pressure to Israel while Trump is distracted and a serious war breaks out with Iran performing its first nuclear test.
Trump doesn’t make the wrong decision in every case but every decision is unnecessarily delayed or to hasty in turns. Instead of dealing with all the problems at once Trump decides to focus on those he thinks he has the best chance of resolving and lets other problems fester.
By the end of his first term the Republican party is all but destroyed by internal fighting, Trump’s left of center domestic agenda is popular but overwhelmed by his foreign policy disasters. Republican wipe out in 2020.
I think rico poses the problem fairly.
My main concern about Trump is I don’t know how serious his connection with Putin is. I have a high school friend who loves Putin. He defends everything Putin is doing in Eastern Europe. He thinks the US is illegitimately interfering in Russia’s affairs. Bizarrely, he thinks the Obama administration is too aggressive towards Russia. My friend doesn’t like Obama or Obamacare, but he believes in Medicare for all. So, he supports government-run health care. He just doesn’t like the Democrat’s version of it. And he loves Donald Trump.
Thus, I sense that if I sign on with Trump, I’m signing up for much more than I want to. I don’t understand this whole Infowars/Alex Jones/anti-globalist/nationalist/conspiracy theorist thing, but it exists, and it’s as far away from what I believe as the progressives are. This movement was on the fringes, and now it seems poised to take over one of the two major political parties (the good one). Hillary in office for four years is scary, but the crazy nationalists taking the Republican Party from conservatives (if they haven’t already) is scarier. I don’t know that this is what would happen, but the possibility is terrifying. It’s not enough to make me vote for Hillary, but it’s enough to make me neutral in a two way Hillary/Trump race.
Sadly, this is an excellent summary of what likely lays in store for us, and my hat’s off to Rico for the fair challenge on the point. If elected — as seems likely — Hillary Clinton will be an awful president and we all will have much to fear.
That said, I disagree that one should support Trump simply on the grounds that his likely to be better (or, at least, less awful) than Clinton on straight comparison. If I believe Donald Trump is morally, temperamentally, and philosophically unacceptable to be president, then it that is true even if Hillary Clinton is marginally worse.
As Z and Mister D point out, we can be assured that we’ll be forced to own all of Trump’s legion mistakes and the damage from that will be enormous. Sure, Clinton will skate-free from all sorts of things that would sink anyone else, but that’s just par for the course.
As @thekingprawn has said elsewhere, only conservatism can save the United States and I’m convinced that Donald Trump’s election — for reasons @brianwolf describes well — would be the a mortal, self-inflicted wound committed by conservatism against itself. I am not about to cut-off my sword arm as a condition of doing battle.
Here is an idea. You vote based on your political views and I will vote based on mine.
You are not going to change my vote and I am not going to change your vote.
November will tell us if nominating Trump was a good idea or not. Everything else between now and then is a waste of breath or Internet bandwidth.
I agree with this with one slight change: only a commitment to liberty can save the United States.
Rico, I have no interest in persuading you to change your vote, for several reasons. First, if you have to ask what’s wrong with Trump, then you and I have no common language in which to communicate. Second, there are already 30 or 40 thousand comments on this site that answer your question, and I can’t see how another one is going to help. Third, having read dozens of your comments, I don’t believe for a moment that your mind is open to being changed. Fourth, it doesn’t matter in the least who you vote for, because Trump is going down in a landslide. So I’m not going to waste my virtual breath.
But I will say this: Historically, the two parties each win the Presidency about half the time. Usually trading off after 8 year terms. 2016 would have been our year, if we hadn’t nominated a total buffoon as our candidate. Any other Republican could have beat Hillary. And in 2020, one of them will. Meanwhile, you need to get used to the idea that the Republic will not end if the Democrats win a Presidential election. Because they will. They’ll win about half of them.
If I had the power to convince you of something, then I would wish it to be that you support the GOP, focus on holding the Senate, or at least the House, and get behind a serious candidate for 2020.
I’m not really sure you understand how apathy works. I don’t really care which one of them wins and I don’t really care how you vote. I’m not interested in stopping Trump, I just refuse to shill for him just because he is a Republican, or sip the Trump Kool Aid that apparently leads people to believe he is something other than a TV show illusion. I guess if placing your hope for America in Trump makes you feel better than go ahead and do it.
At the risk of being castigated by hypocrites (who claim to only deal in facts) for offering predictions and opinions, since you asked for predictions and opinions here are a couple.
Trump will try to make good on his promise to defeat ISIS “fast.” He will quickly realize that this would require a large contingent of ground troops, and since he won’t commit them, ISIS will continue to terrorize the western world through his term.
Putin, who Trump admires, will first tell Trump how brilliant he is and then will invade Ukraine and Trump will not know what to do. A significant European war could be the result. What does history tell us about what our role in such a war might be?
Trump will start to renegotiate all of our trade deals, starting with NAFTA. Because he doesn’t seem to have a clue about trade (he has said that a trade deficit means they are stealing our money) he will end up making us a lot poorer for no good reason.
Once elected the newly minted “Good Trump” will disappear to be replaced by the more genuine “Bad Trump” that we saw for the first year of the campaign. Full of bluster, braggadocio, insults, and mugging for the camera Trump will disgrace the presidency.
Trump will have the most adversarial relationship with the press of any president (largely their fault) and as a result he will try to shut them down in any way he can.
One important point to address @tomdmeyer and @rico is the nature of political gravity.
Maybe I misunderstand your positions but I think especially rico seems to claim that Democrats are immune to political gravity. I define political gravity as being held accountable to mistakes that a politician and to some effect a political party make. If Democrats truly are immune to political gravity then there is no point in rallying to any Republican presidential candidate since we will always lose very election in all circumstances as long as the Democrat base is larger than the Republican one.
The consequences of political gravity can be delayed but they can’t be delayed forever. Obama payed a price for his mistakes and were held accountable for them. He was creamed in both mid-term elections, he lost over 4 million votes in his re-election in 2012 and his popularity had dropped to the low forties until his successor was going to be Trump or Clinton which made people think that Obama was better than they thought.
Obama has benefited greatly from three things in his escape from completely crashing and burning. First Obama came in as a messiah and many, many people were taken in by that rhetoric and are extremely reluctant to admit that they voted for someone that was not ready for the Presidency. The second is similar in that as an African-American Obama is protected from much criticism since people believe that being too harsh in criticizing Obama brushes up against racism. In addition people are invested in the idea that the first African-American President must not be a failure on the level of a Jimmy Carter even if he is actually such a failure.
Combining the first two things with the massive media bias that Obama and even generic democrats enjoy gives Obama enormous advantages in spinning stories and limiting damage. Even when the media turned on Obama the reporting effort was not sustained over time and lines were drawn under ever Obama scandal.
Hillary Clinton will first not take the Presidency from the Republicans but from a Democrat. As the foreign policy landmines blow up Clinton will have to take the blame herself or she will have to blame Obama, what do you think Hillary will do?
People think that Hillary is a crook and dishonest and women do not identify with her they way that African-Americans identified with Obama. Attacking Hillary does not “feel” to many people like they are attacking women in general. So the only advantage that Hillary has is the massive media bias but every democrat since 1960 has had that advantage and it has not been enough by itself to defy political gravity.
So Hillary, if elected, will reap a harvest of woe from Obama that she will have a hard time spinning or scape goating. If Trump is elected it will be easy for Obama to blame Trump for all the problems he caused.
One thing to keep in mind is that if the Republican’s had put up a candidate that wasn’t a dumpster fire then the electorate would most likely have punished the Democrats for 8 years of mismanagement. Its not that the Democrats don’t get punished for being terrible – its that this time we let them get away with it.