• Welcome to the new Internet Infidels Discussion Board, formerly Talk Freethought.

Trump Dominating the Republican Party

lpetrich

Contributor
Joined
Jul 27, 2000
Messages
26,334
Location
Eugene, OR
Gender
Male
Basic Beliefs
Atheist
Trump asserts his power over Republicans | TheHill
Trump flexed his muscle on Capitol Hill last week by scuttling bipartisan legislation to extend the intelligence surveillance powers that had passed the Senate easily and was expected to pass the House.

Once Trump threatened on Wednesday to veto the measure, Republican support in the lower chamber fell away quickly, forcing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to pull the bill from the schedule.
Then his attacking Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from an investigation into Trump's Russia connections. He is running for US Senate in Alabama, where he was once a Senator, and Trump has endorsed a rival, Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville (Auburn U is in Auburn, AL).
“It’s not a Washington phenomenon, it’s a grass-roots phenomenon,” Weber said. “His support is out in the countryside, in the Republican Party, and I think if not for that there would be at least some brake on the president’s actions in Washington. But there’s not because [lawmakers] go back home and find the party wants to back the president almost without restraint."

“I think that’s going to be become more the case, not less the case, as we go forward,” he added.

...
Despite many signs that Trump is strengthening his grip on the party, there’s evidence that a sizable minority of Republicans continue to have doubts about his leadership style.

...
Yet Trump has received little to no criticism from Republicans in Congress as he has moved to oust watchdogs within his administration who have pointed out or threatened to point out mistakes.
 
Why are republican pols so afraid of him?

Because Clownstick only cares about himself, not the Repug Party. If a Repug politico crosses him, FFvC will do his best to burn the person (if he thinks he can), regardless if it hurts the larger Repug Party. I don't think we have seen such a phenomenon in modern US political history. Clownstick has enough of a cult following that he can leverage it to damage most any Repug. Someone like Mitt Romney is in somewhat of an unique situation, and Fuck Face would have a hard time hurting him (besides Romney not being up for re-election until 2022). But Romney is oddly enough in a pretty rare boat.
 
Why are republican pols so afraid of him?

Because Clownstick only cares about himself, not the Repug Party. If a Repug politico crosses him, FFvC will do his best to burn the person (if he thinks he can), regardless if it hurts the larger Repug Party. I don't think we have seen such a phenomenon in modern US political history. Clownstick has enough of a cult following that he can leverage it to damage most any Repug. Someone like Mitt Romney is in somewhat of an unique situation, and Fuck Face would have a hard time hurting him (besides Romney not being up for re-election until 2022). But Romney is oddly enough in a pretty rare boat.

That would only affect a republican more concerned about re-election than integrity.

Oh, who the fuck am I kidding. There's no such thing.
 
Social media, conservative media, and even mainstream media love the idea of Trump. While conservative media may brand him as a good guy, some of the liberal media like CNN also gives him constant coverage because he knows how to make noise. He takes advantage of a capitalist system of press focused on noise and sensationalism. He also, of course, has cronies like owners of gossip magazines and breitbart who add to the spin machine and Rupert Murdoch who benefit from his policies. So, he has a loud megaphone and no one can stand up to the megaphone on the conservative side of the media spectrum where he is the good guy. Anyone who stands up to him will be crushed. He even does it to allies which makes him feared by his people and he can keep order. This is the largest part of what makes him Twitler.
 
Almost all Republicans who are household names are part of his cabal, too. Going against Trump is going against the Moscow Mitch, and by extension the entire Senate. It's going against most of the entertainers from whom conservatives get their news. And though they are only honorary Republicans, it's going against Vladimir Puitin, and Kim Jong-Un, and the hallowed ghosts of Andrew Jackson and John Chivington as well.
 
Fun quote from Lindsey Graham on CNN (2015) after Trump called for the Muslim ban:
" I want to talk to the Trump supporters for a minute. I don't know who you are, and I don't know why you like this guy...He's a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot. He doesn't represent my party. He doesn't represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for...What Mr. Trump is doing is undercutting everything we stand for....You know how you can make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell."
What's more fun than reading that? Why, googling it and hearing the whole sound bite as he spoke it. It runs about three minutes. He talks about his own military service, although, by the evidence, Lindsey's spine is composed of Jello cubes. "...doesn't represent my party..." Rrrright.
 
George Will: There is no such thing as rock bottom for Trump. Assume the worst is yet to come. - The Washington Post
This unraveling presidency began with the Crybaby-in-Chief banging his spoon on his highchair tray to protest a photograph — a photograph — showing that his inauguration crowd the day before had been smaller than the one four years previous. Since then, this weak person’s idea of a strong person, this chest-pounding advertisement of his own gnawing insecurities, this low-rent Lear raging on his Twitter-heath has proven that the phrase malignant buffoon is not an oxymoron.

...
The nation’s downward spiral into acrimony and sporadic anarchy has had many causes much larger than the small man who is the great exacerbator of them. Most of the causes predate his presidency, and most will survive its January terminus. The measures necessary for restoration of national equilibrium are many and will be protracted far beyond his removal. One such measure must be the removal of those in Congress who, unlike the sycophantic mediocrities who cosset him in the White House, will not disappear “magically,” as Eric Trump said the coronavirus would. Voters must dispatch his congressional enablers, especially the senators who still gambol around his ankles with a canine hunger for petting.
One of America's most prominent conservative columnists wants Republicans to lose in 2020 - CNNPolitics
As if to prove Will's point, Senate Republicans raced to defend Trump's "law and order" speech on Monday night and his decision to clear out protesters from in front of the White House so that he could stroll across H Street to hold up a Bible in front of St. John's Church.

"You can characterize it the way you want, but obviously the President is free to go where he wants and to hold up a Bible if he wants," Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the second-ranking Republican in the chamber, told CNN's Manu Raju Tuesday morning.
 
Fun quote from Lindsey Graham on CNN (2015) after Trump called for the Muslim ban:
" I want to talk to the Trump supporters for a minute. I don't know who you are, and I don't know why you like this guy...He's a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot. He doesn't represent my party. He doesn't represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for...What Mr. Trump is doing is undercutting everything we stand for....You know how you can make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell."
What's more fun than reading that? Why, googling it and hearing the whole sound bite as he spoke it. It runs about three minutes. He talks about his own military service, although, by the evidence, Lindsey's spine is composed of Jello cubes. "...doesn't represent my party..." Rrrright.

I mean the calculus at the time that this was a contingent of the party, and that there was also a contingent that was squeamish about this stuff, so there had to be a nudge and a wink. Their thinking was that Trump could cost them the second contingent, but what they found during the Trump era is they underestimated the people who are in the first camp, but severely overestimated the second. There's just no need for the pretense anymore. Anyone who opposes Trump will lose all political power within the party, and they have no path to political power outside of the party.
 
Okay. What matters to me is the rich vein of comedy in all this. I mean, Lindsey was saying what the Morning Joe crowd says!!! The utter, strutting pomposity of the GOP.
 
Latest RCP polls show Biden leading Trump by 6%. It will likely only get worse for Trump as election day gets near. Trump is most likely going to lose. now the question is, what next for the GOP? Will there be a reaction and an attempt to de-Trumpanize the GOP? Or look for a new Trump to take up the crusade Trump started to drive the GOP moderates out of the GOP? Who will dominate the GOP post Trump? If the GOP loses the presidency and the Senate in November, and sits there in the dirt, defeated, dazed and confused, things in GOP politics are going to get interesting. And what will the Faux Nooz morons do next? Get even more crazy? Or begin to wise up, if only for survival of the GOP at all?
 
Will there be a reaction and an attempt to de-Trumpanize the GOP?

Not even an option for them. Trump himself isn't going to fuck quietly off to Texas like GW did, he'll still be calling into Fox & Friends every day to determine who's on the Nazi shit list that day and who isn't. They may not be able to get elected without the support of Democrats and moderates, but they definitely can't get elected without Republican support. And right now, that means kowtowing to the race nationalist crowd no matter how opprobrious their demands become. These are hard times during which to be a Republican politician, and I've got no sympathy for them at all.
 
Latest RCP polls show Biden leading Trump by 6%. It will likely only get worse for Trump as election day gets near. Trump is most likely going to lose. now the question is, what next for the GOP? Will there be a reaction and an attempt to de-Trumpanize the GOP? Or look for a new Trump to take up the crusade Trump started to drive the GOP moderates out of the GOP? Who will dominate the GOP post Trump? If the GOP loses the presidency and the Senate in November, and sits there in the dirt, defeated, dazed and confused, things in GOP politics are going to get interesting. And what will the Faux Nooz morons do next? Get even more crazy? Or begin to wise up, if only for survival of the GOP at all?

In 2013 the GOP did a post-mortum on their election failures. The report indicated that they needed big changes on how they treat women and minorities among other things. The party reaction to it was like a fat guy being told they have to loose weight or they will die, tried to do a situp, then out of breath said 'fuck it' and grabbed a bag of chips.

The party is at the crossroads. They can try to reform, distancing themselves from the bigots and extremists, but that is a large part of their base now. It will take many years to build themselves up again. Or they can keep going the way they have been, which will be a slow painful death for the party as minority groups become the majority of the population. The party could also split in two, a group following each of those paths, but with the tendency of republicans to fall in line I'm not sure how likely that is.

The big question is what will the big money donors do? I think corporations will not be donating as much money to politicians that can't win, so which way will the money be flowing?
 
Latest RCP polls show Biden leading Trump by 6%. It will likely only get worse for Trump as election day gets near. Trump is most likely going to lose.
Yep...

now the question is, what next for the GOP? Will there be a reaction and an attempt to de-Trumpanize the GOP? Or look for a new Trump to take up the crusade Trump started to drive the GOP moderates out of the GOP? Who will dominate the GOP post Trump? If the GOP loses the presidency and the Senate in November, and sits there in the dirt, defeated, dazed and confused, things in GOP politics are going to get interesting. And what will the Faux Nooz morons do next? Get even more crazy? Or begin to wise up, if only for survival of the GOP at all?
(Another version of what marc just said)I suspect that the GOP will careen about for the next 4 years wont for a new Clownstick leader. By 2024, I think the demographics are going to start hitting them like a brick wall. Their racism, xenophobia, et.al. will make even Texas and Arizona competitive for Dems running for the Presidency. Clownstick has largely bankrupted any pretensions the Repugs had regarding a group of principles that they pretended to have. And it will be very hard for them to try and reclaim them. There is a decent chance that the party might eventually rupture into 2 parties, with the racists and batshit crazy ones eventually falling into obscurity...the big question will be just how long that will take; and the minor question of which part of the party will get to keep the GOP label. I think denial will keep the stupidity going sufficiently thru the fall of 2024...
 
Not even an option for them. Trump himself isn't going to fuck quietly off to Texas like GW did, he'll still be calling into Fox & Friends every day to determine who's on the Nazi shit list that day and who isn't.

Hmmm... then, to be consistent, do ya spose McTurtle or whoever leads the Senate Republicans will say that Trump is being unseemly and should "keep his mouth shut" (as Moscowmitchsky did upon the news of Obama's conference call)? I wait in suspense.
 
Not even an option for them. Trump himself isn't going to fuck quietly off to Texas like GW did, he'll still be calling into Fox & Friends every day to determine who's on the Nazi shit list that day and who isn't.

Hmmm... then, to be consistent, do ya spose McTurtle or whoever leads the Senate Republicans will say that Trump is being unseemly and should "keep his mouth shut" (as Moscowmitchsky did upon the news of Obama's conference call)? I wait in suspense.

:pigsfly:
 
Back
Top Bottom