Nice party you have:
“If you would go to my county Republican clubs right now, they are all about Trump,” said Representative Tom Rooney, Republican of Florida. “He is the party.”
In my opinion, the GOP can no longer be salvaged and must be scrapped. The Whigs broke up over slavery, so it’s not like parties can’t die because they’re overrun by indecency.
Almost like someone finally started giving him my columns to read.
What am I missing here? That column was written by a Mike Allen.
Martin is saying that based on this reporting by Axios, Trump is seeing things the way in which someone who has been reading his columns or someone along his thinking — whether it’s Kelly, Jared, or someone else it doesn’t matter.
Thank you.
I don’t think the Republicans will break over indecency.
But continuously delusional thinking that has them believing that somehow they are on a mission from the Republican god of money and hate rather than just crooked politicians malpracticing in a system they have rigged and corrupted might do it.
Like immense personal popularity (34%) supporting an immensely popular policy proposal (17% support) is not holding all the cards.
As a general rule if your preferred strategies include risking global recession and/or fucking over 99% of the population you aren’t holding all the cards unless you’ve gained power thru a coup or burned down the Reichstag.
On the other hand, who has ever lost a meaningful election by overestimating the racism, misogyny, stupidity, and greed of the American electorate?
In reality, the only way the Republican Party disintegrates is if it’s base (35% of the population) becomes more enlightened people. It’s been 152 years since the end of the Civil War, so at the current of progress (remember the majority of the country was in the Union) I’d say they dip down to under 25% and lose critical mass sometime around 2175. The pace might increase as the Southeast succumbs to rising oceans and wrath of God weather events. In that case, as they exit the South their power might be diluted sooner.
Otherwise, the Democrats need to get smarter and tougher a lot faster than Republicans will become decent people. I’m cautiously optimistic on the former, I have absolutely no expectations of latter ever happening.
Or as they disperse throughout the rest of the country they infect their neighbors with the contagion of their diseased thinking.
Nah, the northern suburbs have always been racist, see Long Island counties – Nassau/Suffolk. Macomb county in Michigan, Orange County in California, etc.
Dispersing more racists into northern/western suburbs won’t tip power.
. . . basest!
RE:
And indeed it is base. Very base. Really, really base. About as base as they come. So I guess the GOP’s history. (Isn’t it pretty to think so?)
Just because the GOP should be scrapped, that does not mean it will be. We can’t really call them failures if they keep winning. If the symptom of their imminent collapse is Trump, because what could be worse, I say that’s a failure of imagination. Reagan as president was a joke . W. was an idiot, Trump is crazy and an idiot. Who will the American people vote in next? David Duke, perhaps? The clown from the IT movie maybe?
The GOP won’t be finished as a party until they start consistently losing, and maybe not even then. The American brain has been poisoned by fox, rush, breitbart et al. for far too long to give up its delusions just because a loony tune is occupying the Oval Office.
Correct.
Evil doesn’t disappear because it makes no sense, or it loses (see the Civil War), or because there are better alternatives.
These people wallow in their hate, their resentments, and revel in other people’s misery. They aren’t going to accept anything else.
Plus they dominate st the state and Congressional levels.
There are no incentives for them to change in the current environment.
If America had a Parliamentary system they would have broken up a long time ago, and so would the Dems.
The problem is that there’s only room for two political parties in the U.S. so, no matter how dysfunctional they are they are put in power.
In a parliamentary system we’d say the GOP simply “isn’t ready to run the government” like Britain’s Labour party, or some minor parties in Italy. They don’t have a party program that can sustain majority support.
The U.S. System is so dysfunctional that extremists can force their way into power with effectively minority support and then govern completely against the will of the majority, and without taking their views into account.
But, it’s a long road with no turning and Trump is the breaking point for the GOP! He’s already decided that McConnell and Ryan are worthless to him, because they can’t deliver any WINS! And Trump is about “WINNING!(tm)”. Schumer and Pelosi can deliver the votes – if they want to.
And Trump cares NOTHING about the GOP as a party. He will totally destroy them if it suites his purposes. And he may very well decide that he loves the feel of victory. It smells like napalm in the morning! That smell is the sweetly sour scent of Congressional Republicans roasting on a spit! Their party is dividing and doomed.
They have mortgaged their future to ride the beast of a bitter, angry hateful base, but it is better to remember “better not to cast your pearls before swine lest they turn and rend you.” They cast their lot in with the biggest swine of all, and now he’s turned on them and is rending them with savage glee.
They adopted a failed strategy for getting anything done, and now they are helpless to bridge the divide between themselves. Now they need the Democrats but the House Freedumb Caucus is already in revolt and preparing to try and replace Ryan. Now comes the point when the dam cracks and the flood breaks through.
Trump is going to love watching the chaos. He thrives in chaos and cares nothing about his nominal party. If he thinks he can rule effectively by working with Pelosi and Schumer he will do just that.
There would be lots of infrastructure things he could actually get done if he tried, and Trump loves building things. He gets to stand with a shovel and a hard-hat at a ground breaking ceremony. That’s a great feeling!
He’d have to give up his wall and no repeal of DACA, but I don’t think he really wants to bother with that. It’s giving him too much grief. All the bother and criticism is annoying. It leads to bad press. People say nasty things about him on TV. He hates that!
If he actually goes forward with mass expulsions of weeping families the horribly negative press he’ll get from that will dwarf anything he’s ever seen. He doesn’t want that. So, I think he wishes the whole thing would conveniently go away.
You know what incredible method people have found of making inconvenient things go away? Ignore it! Just ignore the problem and postpone making any decision about it, until finally, the problem just goes away. In this case, the Dreamers will not ultimately be deported, hence Trump won’t have to face the firestorm of outrage over evicting them. He doesn’t care about them of course. But, it’s annoying to get bad press over deporting them. So, why bother?
True, and boy are we in the throes of having that demonstrated the hard way. Well, except maybe for the “govern” part. So far, about the only governing against the will of the majority they’ve managed has been by executive order. So there’s that.
“Overrun by indecency” is the best characterization of what we’ve all endured since Donald Trump became a Presidential candidate, then the nominee, and then President.
[UPDATE] I got your “Democratic Party.” Right HERE!!!
And my newest comment beneath it. An update of sorts.
You quote:
Right.
And if you were privy to the gatherings of powerful Democrats, they would be “all about Trump” too.
He’s leading the dance, and your party is no more innocent than is the Republican Party.
Just better mannered and educated.
Mostly.
I quote from my original post:
Yup.
AG
If you compare the GOP of today to the party of say, even 40 years ago, you’d have to admit that what it is today is “republican” in name only. The process of scrapping what it once was and replacing it is in its end stages. One test of that is the conservative icon Reagan would not be welcome in today’s GOP. Nether would Nixon or Goldwater.
Trump is having success at furthering that process of political fracturing towards extremism along, powered by white racial resentment. The process is happening from within, leading to the planned retirement of some House moderates, and the likely forced retirement of others in the primaries, as they become not only irrelevant but increasingly seen as “establishment” enemies of the extremism.
Question is, can what is essentially this new party continue to function as a political party? Their supporters have no problem with it, so on a purely political level, they are succeeding in that respect.
And if you grant that the end game for them is obviously not governing but maintenance of power, then the answer is yes, as they are able to keep winning and maintain majorities in office. Part of that is due to some political malpractice on the part of the opposing party, but at the end of the day, for them it gets done.
Over the years politicians have manipulated things to where they can make huge profits from lobbyists on the Hill. This is just one of the changes that were made and it is a major change that has helped corrupt our government. We need to take away those changes and go back to the original laws that made it illegal for any lobbyist to be on the Hill for one.