Countdown to Comey's Firing....

A friend of mine who is pretty conservative is disgusted with Trump because he consider the guy to be totally inept as president; someone who will hurt the conservative movement in the long run. Something some of the Trump defenders here should consider.
 
Oh we are so going to need a YUUUGE tub of popcorn for this one. It's going to be tremendous.
 
dudalb said:
A friend of mine who is pretty conservative is disgusted with Trump because he consider the guy to be totally inept as president; someone who will hurt the conservative movement in the long run. Something some of the Trump defenders here should consider.
Click to expand...

They didn't bother considering it when voting for him, why would they consider it now?

Modern American politics is not about debating ideas, or about strategy, it's just about "my side right, your side wrong."
 
Cleon said:
They didn't bother considering it when voting for him, why would they consider it now?

Modern American politics is not about debating ideas, or about strategy, it's just about "my side right, your side wrong."
Click to expand...

There's a depressing theory about this development, too: the national trend toward reduction in religious affiliation may be compensating with a growth in political affiliation.
 
dudalb said:
A friend of mine who is pretty conservative is disgusted with Trump because he consider the guy to be totally inept as president; someone who will hurt the conservative movement in the long run. Something some of the Trump defenders here should consider.
Click to expand...

The #NeverTrump caucus didn't give Trump fans pause during the election - now that he's won, I'm pretty sure it has even less traction than before.

At this point, Trump and his followers are the Conservative Movement... is your friend going to continue to identify as a Conservative or not, is the question.
 
blutoski said:
There's a depressing theory about this development, too: the national trend toward reduction in religious affiliation may be compensating with a growth in political affiliation.
Click to expand...

Depressing, but I can't discount it. :(
 
blutoski said:
The #NeverTrump caucus didn't give Trump fans pause during the election - now that he's won, I'm pretty sure it has even less traction than before.

At this point, Trump and his followers are the Conservative Movement... is your friend going to continue to identify as a Conservative or not, is the question.
Click to expand...

I'd label Trump and the current GOP more reactionary than conservative. They're not so much united in what they're for but by what they're against. It's why they can collectively reject things like multiculturalism, equal rights for all and most progressive politics but can't get enough buy in to be for something like AHCA.
 
blutoski said:
The #NeverTrump caucus didn't give Trump fans pause during the election - now that he's won, I'm pretty sure it has even less traction than before.

At this point, Trump and his followers are the Conservative Movement... is your friend going to continue to identify as a Conservative or not, is the question.
Click to expand...

he is seriously considering taking the "Libertarian" label.
 
Cleon said:
Depressing, but I can't discount it. :(
Click to expand...

I'll see if I can locate some recent articles on that. They're on my home computer history, but not available at work. Basically they attempt to explain what at first appear to be contradictory beliefs in the Alt Right (eg: Richard Spencer is an outspoken Atheist) as secularization fueling realignment of identity from religious to political communities.
 
dudalb said:
he is seriously considering taking the "Libertarian" label.
Click to expand...

Well, so is the Tea Party Caucus, and they're pretty front and center at [CPAC]. I think most Libertarians these days consider themselves to be a type of conservative. But all political labels are fuzzy, so there's lots of room to split hairs.

Trump did originally make a bid to be presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party back in 1999. Back when he was pro nationalized healthcare, pro weed, so your friend will not be solving his label problem by shifting his identity to a subset of Conservatives who are even more pro Trump than the core.
 
Last edited:
blutoski said:
Trump did originally make a bid to be presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party back in 1999. Back when he was pro nationalized healthcare, pro weed, so your friend will not be solving his label problem by shifting his identity to a subset of Conservatives who are even more pro Trump than the core.
Click to expand...

Reform Party actually.
 
blutoski said:
I'm sure he does care... what seems probable is that these claims are a test of loyalty.

Recall that rough experiment where subjects were asked to say whether the photos of the Trump or Obama inauguration showed more attendees. The Trump supporters who reported he had a better turnout didn't literally believe it. They were reverse engineering the experiment and interpreting it as a loyalty test.

By the same token, Bannon can get a quantitative and qualitative snapshot of who's loyal by monitoring supportive retweets.
Click to expand...

I am currently reading the "Annals" by the Roman historia Tacitus - his history books of the Emperors following Augustus. Before that, I had read Suetonius' "About the Life of the Caesars" (the first twelve Emperors). Several times now, the accounts of usurption, nepotism, megalomania, paranoia, incompetence, corruption remind of reports from today's USA. This too: Tacitus relates how Tiberius would hesitate to commit to siding with or opposing one or another critic/commander/pretender until certain senators/consuls/heirs had voiced a preference, so he would know whom to shove off. Tacitus' portrays the Emperor as a weak, paranoid princeps, afraid of leaders better and more popular than him.

This was when the Republic had died.
 
blutoski said:
I'll see if I can locate some recent articles on that. They're on my home computer history, but not available at work. Basically they attempt to explain what at first appear to be contradictory beliefs in the Alt Right (eg: Richard Spencer is an outspoken Atheist) as secularization fueling realignment of identity from religious to political communities.
Click to expand...

Here's a recent one:

[Breaking Faith: The culture war over religious morality has faded; in its place is something much worse.]
 
I am not very trusting of anyone here but still consider the conspiracy theory that many of the most conservative Republicans hate Trump as they no doubt should, but realize that at least for now he's opened the door to their agenda, and they will use him as long as he's useful. Ryan has seemingly flopped between hating Trump and declaring his poop to smell of roses. When he stops being useful or starts making them look as bad as they really are, they'll pull out the dirt (and it's easy to imagine there's plenty of dirt to pull out) and dump him, ending up with teabagger Pence, a conservative sweep of legislation, a loaded Supreme Court, a gutted civil service, and a nice hypocritical bit of credit for cleaning house all at once.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom