I generally don’t share the productions of my conspiratorial mind, but I can come up with wild theories just as well as any drunk at the end of the bar. I had an idea floating around the ole noggin’ during the early stages of the primaries that Donald Trump was working for the Russians and his mission was simply to derail the nomination of Jeb Bush. His secondary mission would be to go after any other candidates of an especially neoconservative bent, particularly Marco Rubio. He wasn’t supposed to win. That idea was ridiculous, even for Trump. But if he could hurt the more anti-Russia wing of the GOP, that would be considered a big success.
I think my theory is probably too pat, and I’ve never advanced it seriously, but it doesn’t seem as outlandish today as it did before we knew the extent of the campaign’s connections to Moscow. What we know for sure is that Trump launched his campaign as basically a traveling insult comic. His opponents were low-energy losers who had failed at everything they’d ever attempted. The more he belittled and humiliated other Republicans, the more the Republican primary voters loved him. This isn’t to discount the other well known factor that helped him win loyal adherents. Obviously, his political incorrectness on race and gender attracted a deplorable set of born a**holes. But we risk forgetting how important his abuse of his Republican opponents was to his success if we focus solely on his racism and misogyny. When he called Ben Carson a brain-damaged sociopath and accused Ted Cruz’s father of killing JFK and gave out Lindsey Graham’s personal phone number, his fans’ heart swelled with adoration. Most famously, he had the gall to mock John McCain for getting captured, and it actually helped his cause. I suppose he got a two-fer when said there was something wrong with Carly Fiorina’s face.
I was reminded of all this while reading Greg Sargent’s piece in today’s Washington Post. Sargent explores the possible fallout from Trump’s recent moves on immigration and whether they have the potential to cause an erosion of support among Trump’s strongest supporters. And, I think, it’s quite possible that Trump won’t see much erosion at all for the simple reason that people underestimate how much of his appeal came out of the joy he created when he abused and humiliated the Republican establishment.
Republican voters haven’t been giving high approval numbers to their congressional leaders for quite some time now, and this certainly hasn’t improved with the failure to repeal Obamacare or move any other major legislation this year. Why would Trump voters show more loyalty to party orthodoxy or Paul Ryan than they showed to Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio?
For every Republican like Ann Coulter who loved Trump for his abuse of Mexicans, there were probably several who loved him for the way he said brutally nasty stuff about his opponents and got away with it. They actually liked it when Trump made seemingly insane comments, whether they were about Barack Obama’s birthplace or they were about Muslims celebrating 9/11 in New Jersey or about how Antonin Scalia really died. Hillary Clinton wasn’t just an opponent who should be defeated; she was an irredeemable criminal who needed to be “locked up.” For all I know, the Access Hollywood tape actually helped him grow the loyalty of his base.
There was no person, party, gender, race or religion (not even the Pope!) that Trump couldn’t insult and grow stronger for the effort. The Republican Party and its leaders were certainly not exempt. In this context, perhaps his “Wall” was more popular because he demanded the Mexicans pay for it than it was a believable way to stem immigration.
Perhaps the best way for Trump to maintain his support has little to do with him keeping his campaign promises and a lot to do with abusing people on Twitter.
I know Republican voters are supposed to care about policy, but I don’t think that many of them actually do. And then there are the folks who support Trump who never were Republicans. They certainly don’t care about Mitch McConnell’s feelings or whether or not the president adheres to GOP orthodoxy.
If I’m right, Trump has more to lose by being nice to Nancy Pelosi than he does from making a deal with her on the DREAM Act.
Yeah, I’m more concerned about losing health care coverage, and my local clinic closing because of the cliff funding.
Thanks Booman, this is a good observation that has largely been forgotten about in the wake of destructive policies, scandals, and ongoing investigations.
There’s also an overlap here with Trump outspokenly vocalized the fringe right wing media viewpoints that his base had been devouring for years, the racism is a part of that, but also obsession with Clintons, birth certificates, etc. Of course the Tea Party and the mainstream GOP have been dog whistling to them for years, but I think his base LOVES that he shouts it from the mountaintops. In a way he is just the living personification of right wing media.
Oh, it’s already difficult to remember any of Der Trumper’s policy proposals, other than The Wall, and that surely wasn’t very “specific” either. It seemed all pretty vague and insubstantial, and didn’t deviate much from the bog-standard “conservative” claptrap we’ve had hosed all over us for years–tax cuts raise revenues, NASA junk-scientists, etc. Clearly Russia-fear was toned down and China dislike stoked, while anti-immigration emotion was played way up.
So yes, it’s pretty much incontestable that the incompetent white electorate loved the insult comic shtick above all else. Indeed there was precious little else, the fact that Trumper was the most unqualified prez nominee in history carried little weight with them. The implicit message was destroy the gub’mint, and if the nation was collateral damage, so be it.
The hardest-core Trumper deplorables will be the most upset if no real progress is made in harming non-white people. They expect some actual pain to be inflicted–insults are cheap as they well know. So deadly police brutality against minorities (and lib’rul protesters) must increase with no accountability, and the DACA kids (and families) must be deported since JB Sessions III & Trumper have all their names and addresses. But the rest of the Trumpite boobs will indeed be completely satisfied as long as the breezy insults keeps coming—there’s no business like show bizness! According to polls, they hate Pelosi but approve of her policies–very coherent as usual.
What’s comical of course is that we have a “majority” party whose House and Senate chairmen apparently have/had not a single bill ready to deploy–this after being in the majority for 6 and 4 years running. Trumper should be their prisoner, not they his! The unqualified doofus was to be their “signing machine” remember? Instead, the Dems don’t even need the filibuster since Repubs can’t even run the “reconciliation” scam to cram through a (perfectly adequate) 10 year tax cut! No one here can play the game, despite the $8,000 suits…
The question is whether an army of neo-confederate CEO-friendly judges and uniform executive refusal to enforce any regulatory laws is enough payback for plutocrats, who (unlike the incompetent white electorate) are most certainly NOT satisfied simply with laughs from the insult comic routine. Most likely the answer is yes (one takes what one can get), but there certainly will be some curses amidst the clinking manhattans…
“the clinking manhattans”
Since you mentioned the drink, here is a video recipe.
Drink responsibly!
You’re definitely on to something Martin. I’ve been thinking the same thing for a while now. Clearly we have to reconcile different things:
1. The GOP base claims to be “conservative” and hate “liberals”, but on issue after issue, they can instantly pivot and support the opposite of the “conservative” position with no apparent dissonance or even awareness.
The one exception to this seems to be immigration where they REALLY care about deporting all the Latinos in the country as “illegal immigrants.”
2. They love a “tough guy” who struts like Mussolini and acts to crush his political enemies – especially the mainstream media. Targeted assassinations of people they hate would probably be wildly popular with them too, if Trump could get away with it. They are happy enough every time police gun down some black or brown person who turns out to have been innocent of any crime, except, sometimes, “disrespecting” the police – i.e. defying the white authority structure.
Combine these two features and it becomes clear that they love the combination of pugnacious and random Twitter bombs and violent attacks against everybody and everything they hate. It’s an extension of politics as WWE. And they don’t give a rip about “small government conservatism” as an ideology. Those Republicans who seriously proposed such things were curb stomped by Trump in the primaries.
That’s probably why they hate McConnell & Ryan so much, because they DON’T go on Twitter and call Nancy Pelosi “an ugly old bitch who should just shut up and make me a sandwich” or words to that effect.
It’s been commented on extensively already.
Why pro wrestling is the perfect metaphor for Donald Trump’s presidency.
Except that WWE is actually fake, the actors stage the bouts according to a set formula. But, the watching public, which includes most of Trump’s base of support, takes it all seriously.
That’s what makes it dangerous. The public is not in on the con. Trump’s base seriously wants Trump to imprison or kill hostile media members like Putin does in Russia. They think assassinating their political enemies is great.
Merely using violent rhetoric makes Trump more popular with his base, because they all agree! They want Trump to punch his enemies in the face, literally. If he went on a national tour in which he went up to political opponents and attacked them would make them love him even more.
They neither understand nor are sympathetic with actual Democracy, especially political compromise. They love violence and violent displays, as long as it’s all one-sided and directed against people they dislike. The Pope dares criticize Trump? Well, then Trump should punch the Pope in the face then!
What does all that mean for Trump? Probably he can do anything but cave on building his idiot wall and they’ll be fine with it. He shouldn’t say too many nice things about Nancy Pelosi because she’s an “uppity bitch who should be put in her place,” but unless he renounces the Wall, he’s probably OK with the base, even if not with the GOP elites, to make whatever deals he wants.
Your “tough guy” is filled with hate. It is what defines him. He has found a fountain of like minded people in the country. And it doesn’t really matter what the issue at hand is. Those people can oppose DACA one moment and accept it the next depending on what your tough guy says in his latest tweet. He can easily blame it on anyone he chooses, maybe even Schumer and Pelosi for not keeping up their end of the bargain. Think he can’t stick the dems with the problem? Nah that is the fun part, like “lock her up”. So this tough guy has very little accountability.
I think he would have loved to nuke NK but saner minds prevailed. In the end we are stuck with him until someone figures a way to control his impulses, maybe Mueller can do it.
Trump is a form of the “tough guy.” FDR was another and he was nothing like Trump. The “tough guy” appeal isn’t unique to the GOP.
Correct. The authoritarian impulse is stronger on the right, but it is hardly unique to it (see also: Chavez, Hugo).
Should also add that “tough guy” isn’t absolute but comparative and can also be by default if the opponent is, or can be made to appear, wimpy enough. A good example of that is GHWB ’88 vs. GHWB ’92.
A lot of PR effort in 2000 went into making GWB appear tough and Gore appear weak. Neither were true, but the PR was good enough for Rove’s team to get a draw.
See also Maduro, Nicolas – the veneer of democratic leadership (already thin w/Chavez) wore off that one in a hurry.
I think the point is that the GOP base has turned to reality TV and WWE wrestling. Most of them actually believe the wrestling matches are real, they don’t know or care that it’s all a play act. And they take the same approach to politics. It’s all “Two Minute Hate” every day on Fox News and talk radio.
Every attribute that normal people find repulsive: vulgar displays of boorish behaviour, open anger and violence, taunting and ridicule, basically everything you would see on old Jerry Springer shows – that what the cretins see as “normal” political style. It’s perfectly OK to them for their president to think and act like he’s one of the Karsashians, a lifestyle of total indulgence with absolutely zero impulse control.
I think this is brilliant, not because it hasn’t been said before, but because it’s the exact, necessary flipside of all the exhaustively, repeatedly precise legislative play-by-play you’ve been doing for so long now (to your own oft-mentioned frustration).
Once you separate the actual policy questions from these nebulous ideas of “Trump support” (and, I think, Trump’s own primitive, impulsive, unthinking approach to legislation, governance, or, really, anything), everything becomes clear. They are two totally separate, distinct entities, interrelated only by the crazy circumstance of this “insult comic” actually occupying the Oval Office.
In a Yastreblyansky thread last week I brought up an idea I’ve had for a while: that the best way to understand Naziism and Fascist Germany is to juxtapose Hitler’s “Table Talk” (especially as presented in Hugh Trevor-Roper’s book, amassed from Martin Bormann’s notes) with Taylor Telford’s definitive first-hand account of the Nuremberg Trials (and the text of the trials themselves). You see Hitler’s free-form extemporizing about race, nationalism, economics, religion, art, architecture, agriculture etc. on one side, and the exact crimes and barbaric inhumanities perpetrated by the Third Reich on the other — and the implied interpretive line between them is the Nazi phenomenon in its totality. The crucial difference between then and now is the presence of a functioning democratic superstructure, but that may be the only meaningful difference. Every time Trump is stopped by a “so-called judge” or a single vote by an ailing “brain-damaged” Senator I breathe a sigh of relief that nobody’s dissolved our Reichtag.
You’ve heard of cleek’s law?
This is a visceral motivation for conservative Republican Teabaggers.
Every election, every year, every day.
There’s excellent political forensics on how cleek’s law was the driving factor behind climate change denial (treehuggers get pissed) that also coincides with I don’t want to pay taxes for anything that does not directly benefit me today (not tomorrow) by more than I pay.
On even days, Obama was a weak-willed buffoon making apologies to the entire world.
On odd days, Obama was a iron-fisted tyrant taking away all our freedoms.
Cognitive Dissonance and Projection: The Twin Pillars of Modern US Conservatism.
“Cognitive Dissonance and Projection: The Twin Pillars of Modern US Conservatism.”
I second this emotion. Years ago, I wrote that Projection is the Right’s favorite defense mechanism.
No need to drive yourself mad in search of specifics about Trump and his base to answer this question. A simple meta-analysis of presidential elections tell us that a) voters don’t like wimpy candidates (a cultural preference for stereotypical masculine and not limited to the U.S.) b) if perceptually measurable (doesn’t have to be true), a candidate saddled with “wimpy” always loses and a candidate seen as tough, always does better than expected.
Campaign imperatives: don’t wilt when under attack and don’t do cheap stunts that can easily be characterized as silly.
SOP GOP go to places to nail down “tough guy” bonafides are: advocate for more war and/or more money for the Pentagon, tough on crime (love the LEOs and racist dog-whistles), and denigrate intellectual/academic/media wimps and snobs. The content of that speak is less important than the moxie demonstrated by the speak.
Trump did all of that, but Clinton had her own bonafides on the first two and the third had her back (more solidly than usual). More extreme attacks on the second two and not delegated. (Recall that Agnew and not Nixon carried out the attacks on the press.)
==WRT your fantasy that Putin/Russia put Trump in the race, odd that you would ignore the one VIP that encouraged Trump to run and did so after he had to have been fully informed of the “Pied Piper strategy.” No argument that Putin/Russia wasn’t looking forward to a Clinton presidency, but it’s a leap to conclude that they orchestrated a plan with effective means to interfere in the US election. But say they did, why would they have enlisted Trump as the means? (Sheesh, team Clinton and the DNC wanted him in the race a) to push the GOP candidate field to the nutty right which would be difficult for the eventual nominee to retreat from or b) Trump as the nominee would be a guaranteed loser.) Of all the GOP candidates, JEB would have been the most knowable and preferred over Clinton by Putin/Russia. Yet, your fantasy has Putin/Russia working with the erratic and unknowable, and sure loser, Trump to knock out JEB in the early going.
Trump brought Stone on board because the two sleazes go way back and at that time, the political operative swamp on the GOP side was dry. Officially, he didn’t even last two months, out 8 Aug 2015. Manafort (who goes way back with Stone but was never in the same sleaze factor zone as Stone) hired on in March 2016. While it surely must have happened in the past, I can’t recall when a political operative became such a lightening rod for his/her prior lobbying work and that resulted in being ousted from the campaign. (Not a bad criteria for public evaluation of acceptable people for a campaign operation, but it should be across the board.)
Agree that is usual playbook in FP for GOP candidates — except this time with Donald, which is what was so unusual and which helped him stand out and improve his position among the crowded field (RAND Paul held similar against-the-GOP-FP-grain positions but Donald, because louder and more colorful a personality, stole the thunder on this issue). He actually took an America First position in FP ventures — let’s cut it out. And recall how he went after the pro-war GOP Establishment and the Jebster through his knucklehead brother over the folly and costliness of the Iraq War. Rather startling thing to do. Also of course the unusual talk of détente w/Russia – very against SOP.
Concur w/most of your points that follow, but unclear on who the VIP is and a Pied Piper strategy. A few other points: Where is the recent history under Putin of interfering in foreign elections — I mean allegations backed by actual proof. In reality, given no evidence produced so far for this Russiagate conspiracy theory, it sounds more like our Deep Staters projecting onto Putin the very things they themselves have a long track record of doing.
Second, the risk factor: Putin by allegedly interfering and then doing so in a rather roundabout triple-bank-shot way that defies common sense, and using amateurish cyber thieves who left far too obvious signs behind of Russian origins, ran a major risk of being detected and then paying the price thereafter if the expected winner Hillary did get elected.
A few things seem key to me in analyzing Trump’s various moves. He’s a Republican for business reasons — low taxes and no governmental regulations for his own — but he’s not out of the DC GOP consensus. Beyond that, he’s not ideological. It’s all tactics to win and if slaying a GOP sacred cow scores points for him, he’ll go there.
Go back to when Trump got in the race. His playbook was from Perot 1992 and before entering the race, he’d endeared himself to the loyal organized GOP tea party faction. Problem was that the faction wasn’t whole when he threw his hat in the ring. Cruz had already scooped up a large portion of it. Lucky for Trump that the fundies were also split with most going to Carson and not Cruz. An early and direct appeal to those two factions would only further have carved up that portion of the GOP base. Plus he couldn’t afford to alienate Carson or Cruz supports and therefore, determined that he wouldn’t throw the first punch towards either. (While Trump operates mostly from an instinctive/gut level, conscious intent isn’t absent from all his moves.)
That left Jeb and his $100 million PAC free to work the remainder of the GOP base (ranging anywhere from 35-55%). Trump had no intention of dumping $100 million of his own money into the race. So, he had to get Jeb out early and for the least possible cost. The lowest hanging fruit was the Bush military folly. Second lowest was Jeb’s and the Bush family’s perceived softness on immigration. The first was a little too specific to Bush, whereas the second was naturally expansive for Trump and several other GOP contenders. By being more extreme, at least in speech, he quickly scooped up what he could get on the immigration issue that hadn’t already lined up for Cruz or one of the others. How to expand the a stupid wars issue (the DC GOP consensus) (without losing that nice chunk of supporters that had materialized practically overnight was the question.
Whether it was Trump just shooting off his mouth or calculated, what Democrats and most Republicans viewed as exit time for Trump, gave him the answer. Further cemented by not backing down which also added to his “tough guy” image. (Don’t know that any other politician that could have effectively pulled this off as it’s outside the boundaries of what a party will tolerate.) He still had to focus on picking off Bush first but that gun was good to keep firing at others.
(Paul was ineffective with his claimed opposition to the Iraq War because he didn’t own it in his own right, had voted for some military stuff, and was inconsistent by opposing the Iran deal. Trump didn’t have to concern himself with Paul because he wasn’t going to make it much past IA.)
America First, MAGA, Iraq War opposition (a winner since the mid-naughts), NAFTA/TPP opposition, and DC outsider status knit together into a whole. And as long as he honored the GOP immigration and tax cuts sacred cows, GOP primary voters (who were also still livid that there had been a black POTUS) were satisfied and could also overlook that he was bowing to the abortion sacred cow.
On your last point — interfering in foreign elections — there’s more potential for blowback than that for having interfered on behalf of the loser. Non-elite Bolivians hate our guts for the interference that led to the election of Lozada. Some Russian remain angry for US interference in re-election Yeltsin. Win or lose, foreign interference in elections is bad news.
McCain for his entire career has used is POW experience as demonstrating his “tough” bonafides.
Trump’s “he got captured” assertion of weakness was an attack directly on that strength.
And any GOoPer worth his media consultant can ‘more conservative than thou” any day of the week. None of them won against Trump because they were not willing to go full neo-Nazi Klansman in their behind-the-scene commitments (Bannon’s role was securing those networks to support).
How was Trump’s attack on McCain full “neo-Nazi Klansman?” Agree that DT attempted to turn McCain’s political strength into a weakness, but that’s right out of Karl Rove’s playbook. Doubt that DT gave much if any thought before making that remark, but it worked out well for him.
“More conservative than thou” is easy — there’s always at least one in the GOP POTUS pack. How many last beyond IA?
Doesn’t get more conservative (racist) on immigration than Steve King (IA), but checking on this I see that he endorsed Cruz a couple of months before the ’16 Iowa caucus.
Cuz what we need is for DT to use his bully pulpit to join the chorus of people dumping on Nancy Pelosi.
Presidents don’t succeed by dumping on the Minority Leader of the House. It diminishes the President. The only support Trump would get is from people who already support him. The bully pulpit as a formal power is overrated; it takes skill to use it.
That’s why LBJ built up Ev Dirksen and got some bills through because of it.
I see that a few commenters cited the Marx-Cleek observation (law?) “Whatever he’s for, I against it.” Surely that is what 27 years of “ditto-heads” has all been about.
But there only a fraction (one-third?) of the Republican base that is that reflexive and absent of interest in policy. That third wishes that government (and politics, except as entertainment) would just go away.
What we have seen over the 48, going on 49 years, of conservative control of the GOP is a dynamic in which the more extreme argues that the incumbents are soft on “socialism ( or Democrats, boogeyman of the day, whatever) and their primary run restores real conservatism. All of last year’s clown car but Trump tried to tie themselves as the saviors of post-Obama conservatism. And another third of them tied themselves to policies of spending cuts, tax cuts, fighting the culture war to win, and shutting down libruls and Democrats forever.
The remaining candidates ran to preserve the legacy of Ronald Reagan and purifying the Reaganism of the Republican Party. They were the business wing of the Republican Party trying to talk to itself. They in fact remain the base of the Republican Party that Trump depends on not to break with him as being beyond the pale. Their collapse would dramatically shift the mainstream media landscape. They are the functional equivalent at this point in history of the loyal lefties in the Democratic Party. Trump doesn’t need to motivate them, just not offend them too much.
The Marx-Cleek audience that the warm-up crowd like Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coulter play (and their academic and student acolytes) are the source of the marginal vote that won the electoral college (after any and all GOTV and STV institutional effects are discounted). Those are the voters that deserve and get Trumps 24/7 attention. They love and retweet the tweets; they attend the rallies; they buy the merchandise; they harass their non-Trump acquaintances; they are the targets for Bannon’s growth of the alt-right. They were the audience for most of the GOP high-jinks and race-branding during the Obama administration. They were the marketing targets for the National Rifle Association. They were the butts in the pews of the churches that lined up behind politicized punitive Christianity in the culture wars. And the Christian identity movement. They are not your run-of-the-mill Southern Baptists, your poor-mouthing farmers and small business owners, or you working white men or self-employed women. Those folks align with the other two factions and salient for Congressional and legislative elections. These Marx-Cleek folks are critical to gaining absolute majorities in legislatures and Congress through the application of the Weyrich rule: we don’t want people to turn out and vote. The Marx-Cleek crowd are the shock troops that keep an Obama from happening again (or that is the strategy, which proved out by not letting a Clinton happen again.)
The Bannon strategy was to play these Marx-Cleek folks again and again and again.
Any Russian tactical advantage of aiding Trump depended on these folks being the nationalists that were the counterpart of the folks who keep Putin in power. The culture and the rhetoric are wildly different, but the nationalism and the place in the coalition of voters serve the same function of clinching the win.
Both in Russia and in the US, the result is a fragmented base for policy, not a true coalition. And that serves the interests of an oligarchy that might not align with the established and defined political parties. Also now in both Russia and US is a self-defeating cynicism about self-government. The US version of this is “The country is stupid.” Some say it out of despair; others seeing the opportunity it provides.
The reasons and the results of the failure to repeal Obamacare shows that this is only true for the Marx-Cleek audience.
The other two groups must be bought out with a major tax cut or they will revert to more businesslike politicians.
Moreover there still is a pool of voters beyond the 2016 voter base, who Sanders is hoping will bring pressure on individual members of Congress to move Medicare-for-All forward enough to be clarifying about who is and who is not a captive of the health care lobby and the insurance lobby. And also clarifying as to whether the “What’s the matter with Kansas?” effect still applies as prosperity is denied to the same regions of the country.
My intuition at the moment is that the “deplorables” are not as geographically concentrated into specific regions as are progressives. There are sufficient numbers of the Marx-Cleek responsive bunch in every state to be the margin in any district that approaches 50%-50% and if Trump’s crazy tweets and rallies motivate turnout. That 50%-50% can be achieved through persuasion, but it also can be achieved through institutional suppression of proxy attributes for people of color. Or it can be achieved by unequal allocation of resources for elections. Or misinformation.
Trump has more to lose with his margin of victory by being nice to Nancy Pelosi on anything. Given that one of the big white supremacy and white voter anxiety issues is DREAMERS becoming solid citizens and outvoting them, he does have more to lose by dealing on the DREAM Act. Where is it that Hispanic Republicans have a lot to lose with respect to the DREAM Act? What is their number in the caucus? Could they be the alliance with Democrats?
There is a difference between Trump dealing with Nancy Pelosi and Trump being handed a bill that, if signed, flips several Republican districts to Democratic.
I don’t know if it’s Trump, but someone at the White House knows how to count Congressional votes.
The politically engaged (as sport — policy is either beyond them or they don’t care) passionate anti-Obama voters are Trump’s base (the ones that buy the hats, etc.) They’re political personality cultists. Their visibility and enthusiasm is mostly dependent on the degree to which a political candidate can capture their cultish predisposition. Not a large enough faction among self-identified conservatives to win an election, but it’s difficult to win without them.
Made the Happy Hour Round Up.
Always a pleasure.
Trump is a puppet of Robert and Rebekah Mercer of Renaissance Techonlogies and Cambridge Analytica. Corroborating your basic point that Trump did not enter the race expecting to win, is the fact that Mercer originally supported Cruz and only switched to Trump when Cruz’s campaign began to falter.
https:/vimeo.com/230220458
Mercer at the same time got behind Bannon and Breitbart, and still is. That’s why Bannon was hapy to be fired.
http://libn.com/2017/08/18/bannon-mercer-reportedly-eye-tv-launch/
Mercer, among other things, seems to have high-level ties to Putin. High enough to have made somebody like Manafort expendable.
https:
medium.com@q502/robert-mercer-money-launderer-for-vladimir-putin-8c596cd3d930
Yeah, this sounds pretty plausible to me. I seem to be out of sync with the consensus, especially from the Democrats. I don’t think Trump is a Russian agent and I don’t think the Russians affected our election. I think calling Trump a traitor is about as reasonable as saying Hillary is the most corrupt politician in the history of the world (yes, I’ve seen that confidently asserted by many people). I’ve given up arguing, I think the panic/delusion will eventually die down. Maybe I’m wrong, and one of the many, many investigations going on now will actually find evidence of something, but for now I’m very skeptical. I’m so old I was in high school during the McCarthy years and I’ve seen all the propaganda and lies during the Cold War. To me Russiagate has many characteristics in common with all the lies I’ve seen from government, advertising agencies, political consultants, and public relations firms for seventy years. Now I can easily be persuaded that Trump had some potential deals with people in Russia and would be happy to knock out neoconservatives to please them and give him more returns on his investment. Hillary, of course, was one of the neocons — after all she was endorsed by Robert Kagan himself. I think the idea that he did not expect or intend to win is also plausible, but the Republicans have acted as if they didn’t expect to win, either. How else to explain the lack of any kind of program to repeal Obamacare?