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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Mon May 15, 2017 6:45 am 
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Within that 35%, I don't know what the breakdown is between hardcore Trump loyalists, indiscriminate "R" supporters, and people who are trolls. But I'm gonna guess that the balance leans towards Trump loyalists. No "standard" Republican has managed to inspire the enthusiasm among Republican voters that Donald Trump has. Standard pro-business Republican ideology is not actually very popular among self-identified Republicans. There is little support for tax cuts for the rich, dismantling Social Security and Medicare, or letting big banks do whatever they want. Before Trump and his xenophobia came along, standard Republicans were fairly open to immigration liberalisation because businesses need the cheap labour. So I think the people who got excited about Trump really freaking like Trump. Even pundits like Rush Limbaugh et al. openly acknowledge that Trump isn't conservative, they like him merely because he makes liberals angry. They're basically living out revenge wish-fulfillment. They chafed with resentment under Obama and now they are gleeful at the idea inflicting the same on Democrats. The moderate Republicans have edged away slowly from the party and are calling themselves Independents nowadays.

To ditch Trump, the Republicans have got to feel like the gains they'll make among the iffy Republicans and independents will outweigh the howling outrage they'll get from the pro-Trump base. But they don't have anybody who inspires that kind of support. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell's approval ratings are even lower than Trump's! (Trump's current approval rating is hovering around 40%). Mike Pence's approval rating is barely better than Trump's, although his unfavourable numbers are nowhere near as bad. Republicans haven't found anyone to dump Trump in favour of. It'd be one thing if Pence were so much more popular that their voters would cheer to get him as president. But it appears that people are kind of "meh" about him, and "meh" isn't good enough.

Edit: The howling outrage from the Trump loyalists, may, paradoxically rally the rest of the Republicans around Trump. Trump will be able to paint himself as the victim of liberal conspiracy and backstabbing Republican collaborators. Even Nixon enjoyed a conservative backlash during the Watergate scandal right up until he was proven obviously guilty and was forced to resign.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Mon May 15, 2017 8:29 pm 
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It's not the deep red country Republicans who have to worry about standing by him, it's the folks in seats where it won't take much of a swing to get rid of them. You can lose the primary and still get elected as an independent, but if you lose the general election you're out; so the Trump chumps are not quite the trump suit in their electoral calculus.

Btw; it seems that Trump blew away an intelligence asset to the Russians. Not one of ours, mind; but someone a foreign agency had been sharing product from under very restrictive conditions. Giving it to the Russians by way of bragging about our intelligence product was not among those conditions. Our human intelligence on the Islamic State is apparently about to dry up.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Mon May 15, 2017 10:08 pm 
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Trump's idiocy knows no bounds. David Brooks, who I did not know was capable of humour wrote this hilarious column about Trump a few weeks back, which contained the passage "One of the things I’ve learned about incompetence over the past few months is that it is radically nonlinear. Competent people go in one of a few directions. But incompetence is infinite."

I can't wait to see how the Republicans try to spin this one away. Probably by yelling "fake news!" (1)

Speaking of radically nonlinear, so's human psychology. Logically, you'd think that purple district Republicans would obviously break with Trump to save themselves, but if they do it under pressure from the left, it could backfire by triggering identity threat. That prompts people to protectively close ranks and turn on the doubters on their own side. If you were a politician in that situation, striking an independent stance or doubling down and playing tribal politics might seem like equally risky gambits. They're obviously nervous, but I figure some of them are going to zig when we expect them to zag.

(1) Edit: So far we have -
a) Fake news!
b) The deep state leaked classified information to undermine Trump! Hang the Washington Post!
c) The president is incapable of leaking classified information because as soon as he says it it's declassified. Nothing to see here, move along.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Tue May 16, 2017 8:06 am 
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Purple district Republicans have (and need) different views than their co-conspirators from deep red ones, but even if they were just as bad it wouldn't matter. Purple districts are the ones where the Republicans can't elect a dog catcher on their own; they need to attract people from outside the fold to put them over the top. If Trump puts them in a position where everyone but the most despicable of their base turns on them, then even if they keep the more lightly attached Republicans out of tribal loyalty they have no chance in the general election. What they need to fear isn't really their own, it's everyone else.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Tue May 16, 2017 10:32 am 
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Explicitly staking out an anti-Trump position would expose them to attacks from both sides - the base for betraying the party, and the Democrats for well, being Republican. They might just end up high and dry in the middle. They'll probably try to slide by making vaguely critical noises about Trump on the campaign trail while not doing anything concrete about him. They'll try to reassure the moderates and independents while sounding just insincere enough that the base won't go ballistic on them in the primaries.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Tue May 16, 2017 3:14 pm 
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I think this might be the time to push for impeachment. Although the consensus is that his act was not illegal, there are politically neutral legal experts on record as considering a possible breach of his oath of office, as well as "the most serious charge ever made against a sitting president."

https://www.lawfareblog.com/bombshell-i ... ging-story
http://theweek.com/speedreads/699120/al ... -president

Even those who are solidly in Trump's pocket must be wondering if he has even the minimum competence necessary to avoid national disaster --and in fact, it seems like that's exactly what is happening: http://theresurgent.com/i-know-one-of-the-sources/

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Tue May 16, 2017 6:32 pm 
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It wouldn't be illegal for him to tweet the nuclear launch codes; he has the legal authority to do that. Show of hands, who's absolutely certain he would never do that? Certainly not all his new enemies in the various intelligence and police agencies. As we speak they're ordering NoWH stamps for things classified above Trump's clearance (which will be almost everything sensitive).

Interestingly enough his base is actually turning on him (if not quickly); but it's not because of any honorable reason. They're slowly becoming convinced he's just another Republican. One man on the Supremes absent any effort on Trump's part and a few meaningless executive orders are not what they elected him to do; but it's painfully becoming clear that's all he can do. All his happy talk about how easy it is and how fast he'd get things done has led nowhere and is leading nowhere, and the chumps who voted for him because lip service is all they ever got from the GOP are grudgingly detecting the trend continuing.

edit: it seems the foreign intelligence service Trump betrayed was Israeli. Things are not very happy down Tel Aviv way right now. Zionist billionaires may be rethinking their political investment strategy.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Tue May 16, 2017 11:40 pm 
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It's bizarre, he lies all the time but he's not even any good at it. I've always thought he was a viciously ignorant narcissist, but it is now dawning on me that he is actually plain stupid. Incredibly, unfathomably, stupid. David Brooks, who seems to have found an unexpected gift for comedy, yesterday described Trump's thought processes as "six fireflies randomly beeping in a jar". Yeah. That sounds about right.

I do wonder how long the base will take to start wishing that they should've gone with Ted Cruz (ugh, Ted Cruz). The Democratic base did take years to go sour on Obama after he turned out to be just another centrist Democrat, but then, Obama was a normal president who did normal things and didn't act like a box of dildos falling down the stairs in the leaning tower of Pisa.

So now Comey's memos of Trump telling him to drop the investigation into Flynn have leaked. You explicitly tell the head of the friggin FBI to can an investigation and you don't think he's going to write it down? And then you think you can piss off the entire FBI by firing him? Yegads. That is how stupid he is. That said, I hope that there's even more obvious evidence of obstruction of justice to be found because only Nixon levels of smoking gun evidence are going to corner the Republicans into moving articles of impeachment. They're going to go "trust us, we're still looking into it" for as long as they can.

Wanna bet they're rushing to write a gigantic tax cut bill right now, screw the deficit?

Edit: About your last link, kitoba - Trump's own staff is using media leaks to manipulate him because he won't listen otherwise? They're also doing that with foreign leaders. White House staff called Justin Trudeau and Pena Nieto to advise them on how to talk Trump into keeping NAFTA when he was threatening to break it. (Call him up and tell him that you want to renegotiate a "deal". He loves anything with the word "deal" in it.) And then a few weeks later Trump marvelled to the media how amazing it was that the president of Mexico and the Prime Minister of Canada both called him within 10 minutes of each other to renegotiate NAFTA, aren't I a clever boy?


Last edited by Passiflora on Wed May 17, 2017 12:11 am, edited 2 times in total.
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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Tue May 16, 2017 11:56 pm 
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They've already admitted they're doing that, actually; the catch is that it can't get through the Senate (especially if the AHCA goes nowhere, because it was supposed to pay for more tax cuts with a massive tax cut). It's what Trump's getting in the way of, and they're bemoaning it pretty openly. All the damage they want to do to this country to earn their bribes, and they can't because the head of their party got there first. Poor dears.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Wed May 17, 2017 12:12 am 
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Do you think the Republicans might say "screw it" and blow up the filibuster so that they can get their tax cuts through the Senate before Trump goes down with his ship? I mean, they'll regret it after the midterms. But how desperate are they?

Edit: Trump is already using "deep state persecution" to fundraise for his 2020 reelection campaign. I'm not sure who exactly runs "Team Trump" right now, but they are doubling down.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Wed May 17, 2017 3:07 am 
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Kea wrote:
It's bizarre, he lies all the time but he's not even any good at it. I've always thought he was a viciously ignorant narcissist, but it is now dawning on me that he is actually plain stupid. Incredibly, unfathomably, stupid. David Brooks, who seems to have found an unexpected gift for comedy, yesterday described Trump's thought processes as "six fireflies randomly beeping in a jar". Yeah. That sounds about right.


You know, this is one part of American politics that doesn't make sense to me. How does one get to be President without being smart enough to out-think one's political rivals?

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Wed May 17, 2017 3:57 am 
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CCC wrote:
You know, this is one part of American politics that doesn't make sense to me. How does one get to be President without being smart enough to out-think one's political rivals?


By being more popular than them.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Wed May 17, 2017 6:24 am 
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More precisely, by being more popular in specific parts of the country important to the balance of the Electoral College.

Trump's particular set of deficiencies served him well as a celebrity and as a political candidate. Constantly suck up all the media attention with all your crazy antics. Any publicity is good publicity. I think he also stumbled on an exploit in human psychology - the more people hear a lie, even if in the context of a debunking, the more they're inclined to believe it. Running a country, however, requires the ability to plan ahead, remember your own lies, and keep your ego in check long enough to outmanoeuvre your opponents. Trump can't do this because he's a giant man-baby. He's survived for 70 years by being a giant man-baby with extremely good lawyers, but that's no use in the oval office.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Wed May 17, 2017 6:58 am 
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It looks like the Senate won't be ditching the filibuster to cut taxes; McConnell has announced it must be revenue neutral. That might be a simple admission that he doesn't have the votes to kill the filibuster over this; there are already too many risky elections coming up for his co-conspirators, and telling such of their base as now believe the budget lies to pound sand could be unwise. For now at least.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Wed May 17, 2017 9:28 am 
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I guess we can rule out that there is a coordinated group around Trump now. Otherwise i guess they would have convinced him by now to permanently reside in Maro Lago and have a team installed, that only gives him the "really presidental" stuff, and shields him from the boring day to day stuff.

He'd still be able to say crazy things, but then he would no longer have classified information to share.

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