The whining is hard to take. It’s not so much that the president has forgotten that he needs conservatives as well as populists in order to govern as it’s that conservatives made a deal with the devil and the payment is coming due.
This is the most accurate section of the piece:
Coalition politics always requires sail-trimming by all coalition partners. Many Republicans who flocked to former President George W. Bush’s call to “restore honor and dignity to the White House” in the wake of the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal have swallowed hard and accepted Trump for the promise of conservative Supreme Court justices and the defeat of Democrats.
Now they wonder when Trump will trim his own sails for them.
The bargain has always been that he’d cut taxes and surround himself with traditional Republican foreign policy experts. The departure of Gen. Jim Mattis from the administration is not just a vacancy in the Cabinet. Coupled with United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley’s exit, this has Republicans, even those who have steadfastly stuck with the president, worried that there is a vacancy in the coalition bargain.
He provided two Supreme Court justices, a tax cut, and kept his promise to fill out his foreign policy team with adults, and now we have vacancies at Defense and the U.N., a conspiracy theorist at the State Department, a rental hack and fraudster at the Department of Justice, a Fox & Friends host at the U.N., and John Frickin’ Bolton as the National Security Adviser.
This is supposed to be okay, though, because at least the Bitch didn’t win.
Beating Hillary justified every other thing Trump has done or is plausibly accused of having done. And this is primarily because conservatives believed their own bullshit. When she served in the Senate, she got along fine with her colleagues who rightfully saw her as a serious person who came prepared, didn’t throw unnecessary bombs, and kept her promises. That was quite a contrast with the caricature of her that had been built up over the preceding decades.
The election of 2016 was not a choice between a Democrat and a Republican but a choice between sanity and safety or rage and recklessness. Any ideological choice was settled in the primaries of the respective parties.
Trump is conscienceless conman and a transparent fool, and this was overlooked by conservatives. With the midterms over, they have already paid the first installment on the price this will cost them. They will keep paying until they help us remove him from office.
If RBG leaves the court, every controversy, every humiliation will have been paid back with compound interest from their perspective.
And if Breyer departs the court, they will feel like they won the lottery.
One thing Republicans always know – what’s the game they are in, and they always have their head in the game and their eye on the ball.
If 2020 rolls around and they have a 7-2 majority on the Supreme Court, interest on the debt is out of control, and they’ve had four years of owning the libs with their nihilism, they’ll be fully satisfied, believe it.
“If 2020 rolls around and they have a 7-2 majority on the Supreme Court, interest on the debt is out of control, and they’ve had four years of owning the libs with their nihilism, they’ll be fully satisfied, believe it.”
No, you are incorrect. Nothing but total and complete capitulation will come close, but even then, it has to be enthusiastic capitulation, with a confession that all previous positions are in error.
Think why republicans love torture. Torture is not to get the truth…..it’s to get a confession. It’s to get the victim to say exactly what the torturers want to hear. Then they kill you anyways, based on your confession. If they got 7-2 on the SC, they would set the hounds on the 2.
Look at Clinton….she is gone from the stage, irrelevant in the over all picture. Yet the House just had hearings on whatever it was….because no loss is big enough, no humiliation satisfying enogh. What is needed is a confession, and then that confession will not quite be good enough.
They love Trump for this very reason…..no `win’ is enough, he HAS to grind the `losers’ into a pile of quivering at his feet.
.
. . . (via digby), explaining why the War to Defeat Treason in Defense of Slavery would turn out to be unavoidable (not exactly a comforting precedent!):
This line from the Cooper Union speech:
I had forgotten that line.
It never really meant much to me, since I hadn’t lived at that time and didn’t really understand the mindset. Yet.
Wow. You and your two friends there really nailed this one. That line encapsulates it all and shows us where our enemies are — all the time.
For the long term you are completely correct.
My post is from the perspective of 2020 looking back, not forward.
Like I said, if they have a 7-2 Supreme Court majority they will be very satisfied with Trump.
I agree, with you however, and with my prior postings-
“…They will keep paying until they help us remove him from office.”
But so will we and that is why they will bear the cost indefinitely.
My biggest fear is that one of these “installments” will not just come with a price for them but a huge price for the country. Trump has shown with his midnight Syria decision that he’s capable of making decisions that shows he has no awareness of their potential consequences.
It ain’t just the republicans; we’re all paying a price for Trump.
I think that part of the electorate just wants to burn everything down, and Trump’s the guy who they want to light the match. These are the people that have been totally deceived by the right wing propaganda machine, which has turned them into mindless zombies in service to the billionaires that fund the Republican party. It is the billionaires and their lackeys, who do, in fact, want to destroy much of our democracy so they can stuff even more loot into their pockets.
I guess it is understandable that voters in depopulating rural states that have been ravaged by the opioid epidemic and the changing economy are not happy with our government, but the kleptocracy they are voting for is unlikely to improve their lives. Democrats have become a bit better in pointing out the hypocrisy of the Republican party on economic issues, but when pressed, the Republican response has become overt racism and blatant lies that would have been unacceptable in the past and now is sadly routine and more effective than we would like to believe.
The irony is that, because of the Senate and the electoral college, these rural voters right now do have disproportional influence on our government and any rational re-organization of it would most likely give them less influence than they have now. And, of course, in the money rules everything Randian utopia that the right wing billionaires want to create, they would have absolutely no influence. But yet, here we are, living in a country that apparently around 40% of the citizens are voting to destroy, whether they know it or not.
In 1860, the election of a President, and a House majority, of the wrong party, was considered sufficient grounds to blow the whole thing up.
What we’re seeing is a grand American tradition being refreshed and revived.
[blockquote]”If the Left wants to change this country because it hates it, then the people will never listen to the Left – and the people will be right.” Michael Harrington[/blockquote]
But it’s ok if you are Republican!
Why didn’t you warn me I was clicking on a Selena Zito piece? Sob……
Yeah, look what good faith Salina uses in her analysis here:
“…In 2008, candidate Barack Obama ran and won on a coalition that was made up of New Deal Democrats and the ascending coalition of young people, minorities, single women, and others. In 2012, he decided to shed the New Deal coalition and focus primarily on the coalition of the ascendant. He won but with less votes than he did in 2008, and it should be noted that his party, the Democrats, suffered deeply up and down the ballot under his new coalition…”
Did President Obama and his 2012 campaign make such a calculation? Gee, I don’t remember that at all. Correlation is not causation. And conservative journalists are frequently careless with the facts.
OK, today we’re playing the game of distinguishing honest, patriotic “conservatives” from appalling National Trumpalists? I don’t much see the distinction, but a few points are in order.
Namely, who’s the one that’s refusing to play “coalition politics” here?
–“Conservatives” have received (via democratically-illegitimate means) an extremist “conservative”-controlled Court, which will rule against any and all progressive reforms for the next 30 years—absent complete reform of that now-rigged branch. As well as the weaponization of the first amendment to insulate “conservative” social prejudices and protect campaign bribery from progressive regulation. (This does not take into account the eventual “conservatization” of every federal appellate court by the time Der Trumper leaves office, assuming he ever does.)
–“Conservatives” have received their traditional ruinous tax cut, this time for both natural plutocrats AND their multinational corporations. As a bonus, the reckless tax cut included a complete revision of the WWII tax code to screw over Blue States in a variety of ways, something young Master Ryan could only have had wet dreams about, which he never imagined could be enacted!
–“Conservatives” have received the complete destruction of the last hope of combating climate change and obtained subsidization of fossil fuels, while wrecking any international attempt to save the planet’s 11,000 year old stable climate. As a bonus, the EPA as an agency has been destroyed and government climate research thrown to the winds.
–“Conservatives” have obtained the wreckage of the New Deal policy of having federal agencies regulate the excesses of capital and business by Der Trumper’s policy of non-enforcement, as well as our anti-New Deal Supreme Court, which will never permit a return to allowing regulatory enforcement in any future scenario.
–“Conservatives” have obtained a massive injection of useless corporate pork for the bloated “defense” industry. Militarism abounds, even if Der Trumper does bring a few thousand troops home from the Middle East to lounge about in more secure encampments instead.
—“Conservatives” have obtained the long-desired ruination of the fiscal position of the federal gub’mint, which is now hopelessly bleeding red ink to such a degree that it can never be turned around in a politically acceptable degree. Absent (impossible) massive cuts to defense and politically unpopular increases in taxation, the fiscal situation can never be restored.
–“Conservatives” have obtained open federal hostility to the right to vote, and any hope of democratic reform has been destroyed by the creation of a (democratically-illegitimate) 5 man “conservative” extremist majority on the Court, one which is absolutely unified in its desire to ensure minority (white) rule. This includes Uncle Clarence, who likely will be sensible enough to retire while a far right 45 year old replacement can be ensured.
One could go on, but nausea sets in. In any event, “conservatives” have obtained all these items on their wish list, yet are crying the blues(!) because they have had to be saddled with a (somewhat more open) sadism and racism, have had some of their beloved generals replaced with Trumpite stooges and will now have to endure a somewhat looser cannon Madmanderer-in-Chief’s foreign policy for the next few years? These seem like acceptable prices to pay for all they have obtained from Der Trumper, who has in so many respects governed as a model “conservative”. Hell, now they are grousing about a small-time gub’mint shutdown, a tactic THEY created and popularized, haha!
Oh, how sharper than a serpent’s tooth to have a thankless child!