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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
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On July 02 2018 15:54 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2018 13:48 [Phantom] wrote:
While this is technically not US politics (yet!). Expect US-Mexico relationship to go to shit even further with this new elected president. Basically he is a Populists, socialist, Trump. He is the same as Trump, in the bad, oposite way, Should be interesting.. Can you substantiate that? To me he seems to be in the mold of someone like Lula in Brazil. Let’s also note that historically leftwing movements in Latin America have been reasonably successful in reducing poverty while rightwing movements haven’t at all. Even Chavez, who everyone thinks was awful reduced poverty by half and extreme poverty by two-thirds. I only read like two articles on Obrador though, I’m not an expert.
Let's be real here. Lula was a populist, socialist Trump. So yeah, Amlo looks to be on that track.
That's not to say, Brazil, and now Mexico, we're not long overdue for a political course correction (and, some would say, the US too). It's just amazing how it's always ignorant buffoons put in charge for this transition.
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On July 02 2018 17:33 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2018 15:54 Grumbels wrote:On July 02 2018 13:48 [Phantom] wrote:
While this is technically not US politics (yet!). Expect US-Mexico relationship to go to shit even further with this new elected president. Basically he is a Populists, socialist, Trump. He is the same as Trump, in the bad, oposite way, Should be interesting.. Can you substantiate that? To me he seems to be in the mold of someone like Lula in Brazil. Let’s also note that historically leftwing movements in Latin America have been reasonably successful in reducing poverty while rightwing movements haven’t at all. Even Chavez, who everyone thinks was awful reduced poverty by half and extreme poverty by two-thirds. I only read like two articles on Obrador though, I’m not an expert. Let's be real here. Lula was a populist, socialist Trump. So yeah, Amlo looks to be on that track. That's not to say, Brazil, and now Mexico, we're not long overdue for a political course correction (and, some would say, the US too). It's just amazing how it's always ignorant buffoons put in charge for this transition.
If someone isn't known to lie habitually, sexually harass women, struggle to put together coherent sentences, a long history of racism/bigotry, exploit workers, rip off customers, run multiple businesses into the ground, and you know all the other stuff that makes Trump Trump, people really shouldn't try to equate anyone who is popular with Trump.
I mean Bernie is basically the left Hitler because he's Jewish but not really and is a populist.
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All this discussion about how incredible Trump is for Conservatives seems to be slightly undercut by him having lost the popular vote by the largest margin in history... doesn't it?
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On July 02 2018 17:18 Jockmcplop wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2018 15:54 Grumbels wrote:On July 02 2018 13:48 [Phantom] wrote:
While this is technically not US politics (yet!). Expect US-Mexico relationship to go to shit even further with this new elected president. Basically he is a Populists, socialist, Trump. He is the same as Trump, in the bad, oposite way, Should be interesting.. Can you substantiate that? To me he seems to be in the mold of someone like Lula in Brazil. Let’s also note that historically leftwing movements in Latin America have been reasonably successful in reducing poverty while rightwing movements haven’t at all. Even Chavez, who everyone thinks was awful reduced poverty by half and extreme poverty by two-thirds.I only read like two articles on Obrador though, I’m not an expert. Sorry to start this up again but where did you get this from? A few pages back people were saying the opposite.
Eh, good question. I just repeated a claim I heard on a podcast yesterday. Checking google, it seems to refer to this: http://cepr.net/documents/publications/venezuela-2009-02.pdf
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On July 02 2018 18:32 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2018 17:18 Jockmcplop wrote:On July 02 2018 15:54 Grumbels wrote:On July 02 2018 13:48 [Phantom] wrote:
While this is technically not US politics (yet!). Expect US-Mexico relationship to go to shit even further with this new elected president. Basically he is a Populists, socialist, Trump. He is the same as Trump, in the bad, oposite way, Should be interesting.. Can you substantiate that? To me he seems to be in the mold of someone like Lula in Brazil. Let’s also note that historically leftwing movements in Latin America have been reasonably successful in reducing poverty while rightwing movements haven’t at all. Even Chavez, who everyone thinks was awful reduced poverty by half and extreme poverty by two-thirds.I only read like two articles on Obrador though, I’m not an expert. Sorry to start this up again but where did you get this from? A few pages back people were saying the opposite. Eh, good question. I just repeated a claim I heard on a podcast yesterday. Checking google, it seems to refer to this: http://cepr.net/documents/publications/venezuela-2009-02.pdf
This looks legit and is actually what I've been looking for all weekend, thanks. It plays right into my confirmation bias 
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Oh, as to the new Socialist in Mekkico...
Isn't he going to have his hands just as full with the massive unstoppable drug war as his predecessor? Not sure he'll be able to do anything to annoy Trump.
And if he does the US can always assassinate him or cause a coup. It's not like they haven't done it with South American leaders before.
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From reading up last night, and in terms of the drug war, he’s looking for an armistice, just like Columbia gave to FARC.
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On July 02 2018 20:24 ShoCkeyy wrote:
From reading up last night, and in terms of the drug war, he’s looking for an armistice, just like Columbia gave to FARC.
Seems to make a lot more sense to just turn it into an official industry and treat it as such.
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On July 02 2018 14:49 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2018 14:44 Velr wrote:
As it looks atm he will change the supreme court for years to come. How is this nothing? Every president has changed the supreme court for years to come. Thats a basic D vs R voteing reward. Obama decided he didn't want to appoint one at the end of his presidency so trump gets a free one. If roe vs wade gets overturned it'll spark a public backlash like few things in this country. Do you really think Trump has the ability to get a nominee through that will overturn it?
why would you make the false claim that Obama decided he didn't want to appoint one?
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Yeah, people need to not make that claim. It’s an insult to the threads intelligent.
And the concept that Trumps candidate won’t over turn Roe v Wade is laughable. All of his nominees were vetted and approved by conservatives. Trumps last nominee just overturned a 40 year old ruling last week. They will do it and frame it as “returning power to the states.”
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Obama did, not "didn't want to appoint one". Did you completely ignore how Obama was blocked by McConnell to even review his candidate for idk, 260 days?
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If Roe doesn't get overturned in the next year or so it will be because Roberts knows what that sort of ruling will do to the Court's legitimacy, not because Trump will fail to nominate someone who won't try to overturn it.
At the least we are going to have a host of new abortion restrictions which ban abortion in all but name in red states.
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President Donald Trump’s longtime personal attorney and a former executive vice president at the Trump Organization -- has always insisted he would remain loyal to the president.
He was the fix-it guy, the pit bull so fiercely protective of his boss that he’d once described himself as "the guy who would take a bullet" for the president.
But in his first in-depth interview since the FBI raided his office and homes in April, Cohen strongly signaled his willingness to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller and federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York -- even if that puts President Trump in jeopardy.
“My wife, my daughter and my son have my first loyalty and always will,” Cohen told me. “I put family and country first.”
We spoke for 45 minutes Saturday evening at a Manhattan hotel, where Cohen has been staying for the past several months. And during that time, the question of whether Cohen might flip on the president has been the subject of intense speculation.
“I don’t agree with those who demonize or vilify the FBI. I respect the FBI as an institution, as well as their agents,” Cohen told me. “When they searched my hotel room and my home, it was obviously upsetting to me and my family. Nonetheless, the agents were respectful, courteous and professional. I thanked them for their service and as they left, we shook hands.”
Cohen also refused to criticize the Mueller investigation.
"I don’t like the term witch hunt,” he said, adding that he condemned Russia for interfering in the 2016 election.
“As an American, I repudiate Russia’s or any other foreign government’s attempt to interfere or meddle in our democratic process, and I would call on all Americans to do the same,” he said.
Source
Lost in the onslaught of news was this interview with Cohen. It is easy to read into this interview as some sort of message to Trump or something along those lines. But I find the language Cohen is using to interesting since it seems targeted to directly undercut what the president is saying. Likely not great news for Trump.
Some folks on NPR also pointed out that Trump seems to get very upset when Cohen gets back into the news cycle. So we will have to see if that theory holds true.
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United States42691 Posts
On July 02 2018 12:36 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +"Colourblind" is the PC way for racists too cowardly to say they're racists to identify themselves to others. That may be true for some. But it seems to me, on the whole, what many people who identify themselves as 'colorblind' are trying to say (perhaps inelegantly) is that they see people as individuals rather than classes. That they see Ben as 'my friend Ben', or 'Ben the next door neighbour' first and foremost. Not Ben, one of the Blacks. Not that they are literally blind, but the claim to colorblindess is (for many) signalling that their judgement is on content of character, not colour of skin. Whether you believe them is another thing, but from the people that I've heard using 'colourblind' unironically, I'm very confident that is what they intend it to mean.
Can’t be racist against Ben if you don’t acknowledge Ben has a race. That means you’re just being an asshole to Ben, and people who look like Ben, just a coincidence, nothing to infer there.
They’re racists, plain and simple.
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On July 02 2018 22:00 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +President Donald Trump’s longtime personal attorney and a former executive vice president at the Trump Organization -- has always insisted he would remain loyal to the president.
He was the fix-it guy, the pit bull so fiercely protective of his boss that he’d once described himself as "the guy who would take a bullet" for the president.
But in his first in-depth interview since the FBI raided his office and homes in April, Cohen strongly signaled his willingness to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller and federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York -- even if that puts President Trump in jeopardy.
“My wife, my daughter and my son have my first loyalty and always will,” Cohen told me. “I put family and country first.”
We spoke for 45 minutes Saturday evening at a Manhattan hotel, where Cohen has been staying for the past several months. And during that time, the question of whether Cohen might flip on the president has been the subject of intense speculation. Show nested quote +“I don’t agree with those who demonize or vilify the FBI. I respect the FBI as an institution, as well as their agents,” Cohen told me. “When they searched my hotel room and my home, it was obviously upsetting to me and my family. Nonetheless, the agents were respectful, courteous and professional. I thanked them for their service and as they left, we shook hands.”
Cohen also refused to criticize the Mueller investigation.
"I don’t like the term witch hunt,” he said, adding that he condemned Russia for interfering in the 2016 election.
“As an American, I repudiate Russia’s or any other foreign government’s attempt to interfere or meddle in our democratic process, and I would call on all Americans to do the same,” he said. SourceLost in the onslaught of news was this interview with Cohen. It is easy to read into this interview as some sort of message to Trump or something along those lines. But I find the language Cohen is using to interesting since it seems targeted to directly undercut what the president is saying. Likely not great news for Trump. Some folks on NPR also pointed out that Trump seems to get very upset when Cohen gets back into the news cycle. So we will have to see if that theory holds true.
i’ll admit a bit of a guilty feeling that this is the case, but as i read that excerpt, i just don’t believe him. i think he, Cohen, would happily say anything he thought the person he’s talking to wanted to hear.
i’m not sure though what he would say that i would believe.
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The Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy of criminally charging people who cross the border illegally led to thousands of children being separated from their parents.
But the practice of separating families appears to have begun accelerating last year, long before zero tolerance was announced in the spring. Among these cases, according to records and interviews, are many that happened at ports of entry.
Administration officials have said repeatedly that asylum seekers who don’t want to be separated from their children should present themselves at a port of entry. Doing so is the legal way to ask for asylum, they said.
But court filings describe numerous cases in recent months in which families were separated after presenting themselves at a port of entry to ask for asylum.
This happened even when asylum seekers carried records, such as birth certificates or hospital documents, listing them as the parents of their children, according to interviews and court records.
While border officials have long had a policy of separating children when their safety might be in question, lawyers and advocates say they began seeing a significant increase last year in officials separating children from their parents who asked for asylum at ports of entry, without clear reasons.
In a ruling Tuesday ordering the reunification of families in a case brought by the ACLU, San Diego federal court Judge Dana M. Sabraw wrote that there had been a “casual, if not deliberate, separation of families that lawfully present at the port of entry, not just those who cross into the country illegally.”
Nicole Ramos, an attorney who provides legal help to asylum seekers in Tijuana, said she started to see an increase in family separations at ports of entry in May 2017.
Ramos has filed eight complaints related to this issue in recent months with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which investigates civil rights violations.
Source
It appears the Trump administration has been separating families who enter the country legally, through ports of entry. They are seeking asylum through the methods provided by the administration and are still having their children taken away for no specific reason.
The excuse the administration is using is that the border officials are taking the children away to protect them from potential abuse. Basically they ignore the evidence provided by parent and take the child away as punishment for seeking asylum in the US.
They will never stop lying to our faces about this nightmare.
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On July 02 2018 22:00 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +President Donald Trump’s longtime personal attorney and a former executive vice president at the Trump Organization -- has always insisted he would remain loyal to the president.
He was the fix-it guy, the pit bull so fiercely protective of his boss that he’d once described himself as "the guy who would take a bullet" for the president.
But in his first in-depth interview since the FBI raided his office and homes in April, Cohen strongly signaled his willingness to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller and federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York -- even if that puts President Trump in jeopardy.
“My wife, my daughter and my son have my first loyalty and always will,” Cohen told me. “I put family and country first.”
We spoke for 45 minutes Saturday evening at a Manhattan hotel, where Cohen has been staying for the past several months. And during that time, the question of whether Cohen might flip on the president has been the subject of intense speculation. Show nested quote +“I don’t agree with those who demonize or vilify the FBI. I respect the FBI as an institution, as well as their agents,” Cohen told me. “When they searched my hotel room and my home, it was obviously upsetting to me and my family. Nonetheless, the agents were respectful, courteous and professional. I thanked them for their service and as they left, we shook hands.”
Cohen also refused to criticize the Mueller investigation.
"I don’t like the term witch hunt,” he said, adding that he condemned Russia for interfering in the 2016 election.
“As an American, I repudiate Russia’s or any other foreign government’s attempt to interfere or meddle in our democratic process, and I would call on all Americans to do the same,” he said. SourceLost in the onslaught of news was this interview with Cohen. It is easy to read into this interview as some sort of message to Trump or something along those lines. But I find the language Cohen is using to interesting since it seems targeted to directly undercut what the president is saying. Likely not great news for Trump. Some folks on NPR also pointed out that Trump seems to get very upset when Cohen gets back into the news cycle. So we will have to see if that theory holds true.
Iirc, Flynn used the same language of "country and family first" when he flipped. Interesting coincidence if nothing else.
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On July 02 2018 17:33 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2018 15:54 Grumbels wrote:On July 02 2018 13:48 [Phantom] wrote:
While this is technically not US politics (yet!). Expect US-Mexico relationship to go to shit even further with this new elected president. Basically he is a Populists, socialist, Trump. He is the same as Trump, in the bad, oposite way, Should be interesting.. Can you substantiate that? To me he seems to be in the mold of someone like Lula in Brazil. Let’s also note that historically leftwing movements in Latin America have been reasonably successful in reducing poverty while rightwing movements haven’t at all. Even Chavez, who everyone thinks was awful reduced poverty by half and extreme poverty by two-thirds. I only read like two articles on Obrador though, I’m not an expert. Let's be real here. Lula was a populist, socialist Trump. So yeah, Amlo looks to be on that track. That's not to say, Brazil, and now Mexico, we're not long overdue for a political course correction (and, some would say, the US too). It's just amazing how it's always ignorant buffoons put in charge for this transition.
Trump is a populist, so there's no point in listing that as a qualification when comparing Lula to him.
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On July 02 2018 13:47 xDaunt wrote:Given that we're somewhat back on the topic of the motivation for Republicans to support Trump, let's put a bow on the conversation that we had a couple days ago about the Never Trumpers. This article from the American Spectator has been making the rounds over the past few days and is on point. Here it is with a little commentary: Show nested quote +With the installation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, and a yet-to-be-named reliable replacement for the unreliable Anthony Kennedy, Donald Trump will have confirmed himself as the most consequential conservative president of the modern era (or a close second to Reagan if you’re nostalgic). This will be complete vindication for Trump supporters, which means it’s really the end for the so-called Never Trump conservatives. Of course, there have been so many humiliating defeats for that crowd that we are spoiled for choice. What was your favorite blunder, or blown prediction, which marked their ignominious end? This first line deserves some emphasis. Trump has been a more conservative president than either of the Bush's that preceded him. It's not just about the Supreme Court nominations, either. Trump has been thoroughly conservative across the board with the exception of his trade policy, depending upon how you want to look at it. This track record alone makes the Never Trumpers look hilariously foolish in retrospect, to the extent that they deserved any respect at all. Show nested quote +For some, it must have been in March when Bill Kristol, longtime editor of the conservative magazine the Weekly Standard, showed up in New Hampshire telling people he would run against President Trump in 2020. Or in April when the conservative website RedState was taken over and purged of writers who were “insufficiently supportive” of the president. Some go back to October 2017 when a Twitter spat broke out between Stephen Hayes and Brit Hume of Fox News over the Weekly Standard’s anti-Trump editorials. With the death last week of Charles Krauthammer, the revered neocon commentator and prominent Trump skeptic, the eclipse of the neocon intellectuals is complete.
One thing’s for sure: it wasn’t really a war so much as a rout. The Never Trump intellectual crowd has no momentum and no popular following these days. Consider the trajectory of their would-be leader Kristol, who appears to be indulging in a personal fantasy by putting himself forward as a candidate, as his rapport with GOP voters includes trying to run Evan McMullin in Utah to throw the 2016 election to Hillary Clinton. When that stunt failed, Kristol personally insulted the pro-Trump writer Michael Anton for his influential essay “The Flight 93 election.” Then Kristol’s commentator gig with Fox was not renewed, and he was soon accusing Tucker Carlson of “ethno-nationalism” and “racism.” Overshadowing all of these breaks was Kristol’s personal history of being the conservative’s answer to Bob Shrum, a political “pro” who was always very wrong about politics.
Of course, Kristol was not alone in his contempt for Trump — he was only the most vocal and unhinged. Alongside him were other conservatives like Jennifer Rubin and George Will and Michael Gerson at the Washington Post; Bret Stephens at the Wall Street Journal; David Brooks and Ross Douthat at the New York Times; Jonah Goldberg and David French at National Review; Ramesh Ponnuru at Bloomberg; and Erick Erickson at RedState. A number of others, people like David Frum and Ana Navarro, committed political seppuku early and endorsed Hillary Clinton. Needless to say, the careers of most of these people have been curtailed dramatically. Anyone who despised the Bush-era neocons should be absolutely thrilled with Trump's arrival on the scene. Show nested quote +What happened? If these intellectuals were so influential in the conservative movement, then why has their apostasy garnered so little attention? A Ramesh Ponnuru editorial in Bloomberg blurted out this truth: “In 2016 we found out that conservative elites didn’t speak for Republican voters.” This split between the party’s base and its donor class (as well as the donor-funded intellectuals) was years in the making, but it became obvious once Trump became the nominee. Then the truth became obvious and damning: the Never Trumpers represented no one but themselves.
Looking back, it now seems self-evident that conservative pundits were preposterously out of touch. (Who isn’t amused by the poindexter pretentiousness of George Will’s bow-ties or the pseudo-scholarly piffle of Jonah Goldberg’s byline as “the inaugural holder of the Asness Chair in Applied Liberty?”). These intellectuals barely noticed the opioid crisis running through small town America; or the base’s anger regarding illegal immigration; and they were adamantly opposed to any restriction of free trade while working class frustrations mounted over NAFTA and its ilk. (This explains why J. D. Vance and his book Hillbilly Elegy was Washington’s must-read book of 2017: it provided a portrait of rural America that the political class could digest without condescending to visit such places or talk to such voters.) It turns out that conservative intellectuals, living inside the “Acela Corridor” and funded exclusively by think tanks and foundations, are poor barometers of Republican voter concerns. The big tell here has always been the illegal immigration debate. No issue more clearly laid bare the disagreements between the establishment and the base of the GOP. The major rift dates back to the W administration, and it has only gotten worse as the establishment, fueled by big donor money, has continued to push it upon an unwilling base. Show nested quote +This myopia has several causes. The first is a kind of cultural “capture” that occurs when conservatives live in blue districts and big cities too long. They become, in other words, clueless (RINOS). The second reason is more obvious: many of these people are paid to be openly hostile to Trump’s agenda. The free trade absolutists at AEI and Cato are on salary to oppose any protectionist trade policies. Likewise, hawkish interventionists such as Max Boot knew they had no professional future once Trump’s isolationist instincts became policy. Speak of the devil. This is exactly what the Flight 93 article was attacking conservative intellectuals for. Show nested quote +There is also a low-testosterone, dilettantish strain of conservatism that has overdeveloped in the “mainstream” media to create such sterile hybrids as Michael Gerson and George Will and David Brooks. Nothing sunk these so-called wise men lower in the estimation of their fellow conservatives than their blithe indifference to the Clintons’ gangsterism. While Trump threw wild verbal haymakers at Hillary at campaign rallies, these intellectuals were basically on TV announcing they would be accommodationists for the Clinton Machine’s inevitable victory. Trump’s base was fighting a war; these guys were sipping tea. The contrast in styles of conservatism was stark: it was the pugnacious billionaire against the stuffy wimps. I can't stress the importance of these comments enough. Conservatives rallied to Trump because, unlike the rest of the GOP, Trump fights. Most of you probably are too young to remember the Bush years, but little in politics made conservatives angrier than Bush's refusal to fight back and respond to the relentless barrage of unfair criticism that was thrown his way. W just took it on the chin. Repeatedly. Romney following W's class act, and it didn't get him anywhere. Though I don't like to use the term, conservatives felt somewhat collectively bullied and instinctively yearned for a champion. We got one with orange hair. Show nested quote +The greatest disconnect is religious and cultural: the Republican Party is overwhelmingly Caucasian and Christian and traditional on social issues, while its pundits skew Jewish and agnostic and libertarian. Krauthammer wanted to have it both ways, which is not unlike the hedging that Brooks and Goldberg have displayed. George Will went so far as to say: “I’m an atheist. An agnostic is someone who is not sure. I’m pretty sure. I see no evidence of God.” Meanwhile, Gerson is a liberal Episcopalian who took to the pages of the Atlantic to attack evangelicals for supporting Trump. In sum, the conservative intellectuals didn’t understand the base’s concerns about religious liberty because they hardly cared for religion — which should have disqualified them long ago. Pay careful attention to this paragraph. This is where we see conservative identity politics rear its ugly head. Show nested quote +The curious uniformity of the Never Trump crowd extends beyond them being heretics who claim to be spokesmen for the Christian base. On every important issue of the election, it was hard to find one of them who could even articulate Trump’s position, let alone support it. Tucker Carlson was one of the few to see this stupidity early and he registered his dissent well in a break-out essay: Conservative voters are being scolded for supporting a candidate they consider conservative because it would be bad for conservatism? And by the way, the people doing the scolding? They’re the ones who’ve been advocating for open borders, and nation-building in countries whose populations hate us, and trade deals that eliminated jobs while enriching their donors, all while implicitly mocking the base for its worries about abortion and gay marriage and the pace of demographic change. Now they’re telling their voters to shut up and obey, and if they don’t, they’re liberal. The sad truth was that the Never Trumpers were not safeguarding the ideas of conservatism so much as themselves. Carlson nailed the heart of the matter: “If Trump is leading a populist movement, many of his Republican critics have joined an elitist one. Deriding Trump is an act of class solidarity, visible evidence of refinement and proof that you live nowhere near a Wal-Mart.” That is why the continuing success of the Trump Presidency has been met with escalating anger and vituperation from the Never Trumpers — the news cycle is a daily reminder that they were wrong about everything. Can you be wrong about everything and still be part of the elite? Yeah, Tucker nailed it. The Never Trumpers -- so called champions of conservatism -- aren't even really all that conservative. Perhaps now you have a better understanding of why I used previously used the word "charlatans" to describe them. Oh, and notice how Tucker's career has exploded while most of the Never Trumpers' careers have gone down the toilet. The people know what the score is. Show nested quote +That is a question being asked in front of many mirrors inside many Washington mansions today. Many people mistook their policy positions for principles, and Trump has made them look foolish. What do they stand for now? What does it mean to be conservative if you’re not clear about what you’re conserving? Credit David Brooks, of all people, with waving the white flag first this April, and with some humility when he admitted that “Part of the problem is that anti-Trumpism has a tendency to be insufferably condescending.” Brooks then basically summarized the great failure of the Never Trumpers as “an epic attempt to offend 40 percent of our fellow citizens by reducing them to psychological inferiors.”
Meanwhile his former comrade, George Will, was not for surrender or appeasement. He had finally found an enemy to relish: his fellow conservatives. One measure of Will’s self-exile was the indifference his most recent column elicited, though it urged Republicans to vote against the GOP at the midterms “for their own good.” Was anyone still listening? It was Will who sagely warned the world mere days before the election: “Until the Republican Party gets right with minorities in this country, it’s never going to win another presidential election.” Not content with that spectacular blunder, Will had doubled down with attacks on Billy Graham and Vice President Mike Pence. The symbolism of such stunts, at least, was clear. As a model conservative, Will stands alone in his own estimation. And what could be more conservative than voting for liberal Democrats?
In that sense, Will’s latest column was merely the fitting coda to a long career of effete snobbery — one that had led him to “leave the party” before it won the White House and march off into the wilderness. (Someday, his columns from the Trump years will be collected and they should be titled: “An Apotheosis of Narcissism.”) He would take his tea and his bow-tie elsewhere. The headmaster of the stuffy wimps would not take part in the victory of the counter-punchers. At last, like so many of his fellow Never Trumpers, he was a pundit without a party and, ultimately, without an audience. I hadn't previously seen that David Brooks piece before, but it is quite delightful. Here's how Brooks concludes the piece: Show nested quote +The main reason Trump won the presidency is that tens of millions of Americans rightly feel that their local economies are under attack, their communities are dissolving and their religious liberties are under threat. Trump understood the problems of large parts of America better than anyone else. He has been able to strengthen his grip on power over the past year because he has governed as he campaigned.
Until somebody comes up with a better defense strategy, Trump and Trumpism will dominate. Voters are willing to put up with a lot of nonsense for a president they think is basically on their side.
Just after the election, Luigi Zingales wrote a Times op-ed on how not to fight Trump, based on the Italian experience fighting Silvio Berlusconi. Don’t focus on personality or the man, Zingales advised. That will just make Trump the people’s hero against the Washington caste. Focus instead on the social problems that gave rise to Trumpism.
That is the advice we anti-Trumpers still need to learn. As for George Will, good riddance to him. He should go back to hosting dinner parties for Obama.
The article is correct on a great number of points. People like Bill Kristol and George Will have been absolutely trash since the last 2015 and you can see it in their articles and on Twitter. They became too detached from the experiences of their purported base reader and missed things like immigration, culture wars, religious liberties. Then Flight 93s sentiment that if conservatives are correct in the predicted/evidenced/growing maladies, you’ve got to bring it all to a screeching halt sooner rather than later.
It’s right about Supreme Court picks, although somebody like Cruz or Walker would’ve probably done the same. Even now he’s probably in for a fight unless he can flip the same Dems for Gorsuch, so there’s another chance to abandon the list for a “deal” so we’ll see. I think he knows how important the picks are to his electorate, so my guess is continued vigilance on the list.
I have no problem for the Never Trumpers in the primary. He couldn’t articulate much beyond immigration. He was a big New York liberal. He has a poor moral compass. Many voted for Trump in the general. The only never trumpers that raise my ire are the intellectuals and people that reflexively swung over to the big government statism. The article is right to say the current crop that can’t look at Trump’s actual accomplishments don’t have momentum and have no real audience. It’s just a natural consequence of not having a will to fight when faced with the other side that will not yield ground after elections but fights tooth and nail.
But this is all just how history played out and not super important to focus on today. For better or worse Trump fights and sometimes his instincts lean in the right direction. Moving forward, it’s all about the gradual implosion of Obamacare regs, the immigration fight, trade wars, and a hopefully short sideshow of a second Supreme Court appointee.
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EPT
