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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I was leading up to that, but I was just marveling at whatever though processes led her down this path.
edited 8th Nov '17 3:41:01 PM by ViperMagnum357
John Kasich sent an email that, for once, wasn't a request for donations. It was him quoting one of his speeches from last year in response to the Virginia election which in context is basically him bashing on Trumpism and a not so subtle 'told you so.' He all but said he was happy Northam won.
Seems par for course-Kasich would have driven this country straight into the ground, albeit along a different path than Trump. He is just pissed it is not him behind the wheel. At this point, I will take every bit of fractious backbiting I can get from the GOP.
Student of Story
My takeaway: Their lives are not getting better, and they know it. But that was never their goal. A larger culture war is. Their lives getting better would have been a victory in that war. And since that is not happening (and will never happen, as far as they're concerned), they have look for winning other fights, which Trump is more than happy to provide.
I know this has been talked almost to death since the original post, but it's always worth a reminder that there is a subset among conservatives, which is not all conservatives but certainly a decent subset, that are essentially locked into a kamikaze run at the rest of the country. They're miserable and they don't want any answer that requires them to change, to look at things differently, or do something different from what had been done in their region generations before.
What they really want is liberal tears
President Trump’s base has come into focus after the retirement of Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake. In a stunning speech on the Senate floor, Flake announced he wasn’t going to run for re-election.
One reason for the decision: In the age of Trump, he could not win as a never-Trumper.
"Here's the bottom line: The path that I would have to travel to get the Republican nomination is a path I'm not willing to take, and that I can't in good conscience take," Flake told the Arizona Republic. "It would require me to believe in positions I don't hold on such issues as trade and immigration, and it would require me to condone behavior that I cannot condone."
On Point with Tom Ashbrook tackled the issue Wednesday, the morning after Flake’s retirement, with Sykes, Surabian, Washington Post political reporter Aaron Blake and The Atlantic writer Mc Kay Coppins.
You can listen to the full episode here.
Sykes, an author and [conservative] former radio show host who has emerged as a top Trump critic, said Flake’s decision reflected a realization that "there really is not much of a constituency right now for the politics of decency and civility.” Mainstream conservatives knew they were going to be in the wilderness, Sykes said, but they didn’t expect it to be so lonely.
“As long as they get their Supreme Court justices, as long as you can cause some liberal tears, they’re … not going to object to the tweetstorms or the feuds with Gold Star parents,” Sykes told host Tom Ashbrook of Trump’s base.
And to get those tears, they will seek out the craziest guy in the room and get behind him/her/them
Firesign Theatre Firesign Theatre "I went to Iowa twice and came back with [Ron Paul]. I was with him at every event for the last three days in Iowa," Massie said. "From what I observed, not just in Iowa but also in Kentucky, up close with individuals, was that the people that voted for me in Kentucky, and the people who had voted for [Ron] Paul in Iowa several years before, were now voting for Trump. In fact, the people that voted for Rand in a primary in Kentucky were preferring Trump."
"All this time," Massie explained, "I thought they were voting for libertarian Republicans. But after some soul searching I realized when they voted for Rand and Ron and me in these primaries, they weren't voting for libertarian ideas—they were voting for the craziest son of a bitch in the race. And Donald Trump won best in class, as we had up until he came along."
Thus it doesn't really matter what Trump does or doesn't do. If their condition stays the same, it's been worth it for things like the schadenfreude of watching liberals cry when Hillary wasn't elected. If their living situation improves, bonus. If it gets worse... well, how much worse things have to get before they think Trump is no good is naturally individual to each person.
These folks can't really be reached because they usually don't have a lot besides their anger and resentment, (which has been stoked for decades by the right wing media until they have become totally consumed by it) and so they don't have a lot to lose by adopting a "my way or the highway" approach.
The important thing is to remember to keep your own side mobilized for positive change, and when possible separate out the people who aren't setting themselves on a collision course with the rest of the country and get them thinking about what they see when they look around.
edited 8th Nov '17 5:05:13 PM by TheWanderer
| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |
Flynn is worried about his son being putting under legal pressure thanks to the Russia investigation.
Like I said, you go for the kids/the spouse to get the main target to flip. Ruthless and effective.
Ultimately the only use hardcore Republicans are to the Democrats is serving as another motivator to get their own base to turnout. These people cannot be reasoned with.
edited 8th Nov '17 4:41:38 PM by Rationalinsanity
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
Oh, bother.
Yeah, those people are pretty much a lost cause. Or at least, the time, money, and effort that would be needed to reach them is probably better spent elsewhere.
Shouldn't that tell people something?
Good, Flynn's kid is a nasty little shit.
edited 8th Nov '17 4:52:42 PM by JBC31187
I know what it's telling me about the Republicans' voters.
edited 8th Nov '17 4:53:11 PM by Reflextion
![[lol]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lol2v12_4863.png "[lol]"){kind=small}
"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems"
-Hylarn
In other news:
Make no mistake. This is to screw over Trump's critics. It may be Trump and Session's most blatant abuse of power yet: Attempting to silence the press overtly.
@Reflextion
Republican voter here would strongly disagree with that generalization, and I definitely didn't vote for Trump.
edited 8th Nov '17 5:14:55 PM by firewriter
CNN may be sensationalist garbage peddlers a lot of the time, but they're still a valid source of news damnit. This is in actual violation of the First Amendment, but I bet a lot of so-called freeze peach advocates won't say shit about it.
edited 8th Nov '17 5:17:39 PM by AlleyOop
Student of Story
A look at how the State Department is being devastated in the current administration
This is the reality of the US State Department under Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, according to new data from the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), the professional organization for America’s diplomatic corps. The numbers reveal that American diplomacy, the backbone of US global influence, is in a state of near collapse.
And it’s basically all the Trump administration’s fault.
The new AFSA data focuses on the top-ranking career officials — meaning people who have spent their lives in the State Department. This includes minister counselors (the equivalent of two-star generals), career ministers (the three-star equivalent), and career ambassadors (the four-star equivalent).
The number of people in each of those posts has declined dramatically since President Trump took office in January. The number of minister counselors in the State Department has gone down by 15 percent, career ministers by 42 percent, and career ambassadors by a whopping 60 percent.
“Like the military, the Foreign Service recruits officers at entry level and grows them into seasoned leaders over decades,” explains Barbara Stephenson, the head of AFSA, in a letter Tuesday announcing the new findings. “The talent being shown the door now is not only our top talent, but also talent that cannot be replicated overnight.”
It’s not even clear that this can be fixed over a number of years, because the State Department isn’t hiring at the entry level either. The number of entry-level foreign service officer hires has declined from 366 in 2016 to a scant 100 in 2017, owing to a hiring freeze Tillerson imposed after his Senate confirmation. The number of people who took the Foreign Service exam, the main requirement to become a foreign service officer, dropped by more than half between 2016 and 2017.
To understand the consequences of this understaffing, it’s useful again to go back to the company analogy. A company that has lost much of its senior staff, isn’t promoting people to replace them, and isn’t hiring many new people wouldn’t be able to perform its basic functions — selling products, coming up with new business strategies, etc. — particularly well.
In this case, the “products” are little things like negotiating a solution to the North Korea crisis and helping manage US alliances, while the new business strategy is coming up with strategies for the world over. The US military can do many things when it comes to foreign policy, but it can’t fill in for diplomats. Without a functioning State Department, foreign diplomats have no one to talk to at the world’s most powerful address — and that scares them.
Elizabeth Saunders, a professor at George Washington University who studies US foreign policy, compares the US under Tillerson’s emaciated State Department to a person who doesn’t have health insurance. “Your life is probably fine — up until the point you get sick,” she told me. And given crises in places as diverse as Ukraine, Syria, and Venezuela, the world is at least starting to develop a cough.
Some of the blame for the dismal state of affairs at State accrues to the president’s seeming disinterest in maintaining a conventional foreign policy. But Tillerson, personally, is the bigger problem. Through hiring freezes, caps on the number of promotions, shuttering of whole sections of the State Department, and support for budget cuts, he has convinced the staff that he is basically out to destroy the department — leading many to simply quit.
“Secretary Tillerson’s term has led to widespread demoralization in the foreign service, the dismissal or resignation of people with expertise that individually may not be irreplaceable but as a cohort certainly becomes so,” Paul Musgrave, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told me earlier this year. “That hinders the State Department’s ability to enhance US interests through diplomacy.”
Feature, not a bug. In Trump's mind, diplomacy isn't necessary because the rest of the world should fear the U.S., not work together with it.
[begins foaming at the mouth and screaming obscenities to the high heavens]
edited 8th Nov '17 6:43:17 PM by GamesandTropes
Would that it were so simple.
The art of the deal, ladies and gents.
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
That shit is so stupid, more direct forms of imperialism won't work due to our culture and how interconnected the world is. So the world fearing us instead of working with us is so unrealistic and counter-productive.
edited 8th Nov '17 6:48:48 PM by Fourthspartan56
"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn
The issue with getting a consistent democratic turnout as I see it is the old maxim: republicans fall in line, democrats fall in love.
Republicans will always rally, even if it's a mediocre (George W Bush) or horrible (Trump) leader. This also plays into things like midterms; they hate the democrats so much they will turn out, to perform what they see as their duty to the Party.
Meanwhile the democrats have a more diverse voterbase and everyone wants their guy to win, and many don't feel the need to rally behind a person they don't fully like. In some ways it's good to have standards (if republicans were as principled as they often claim to be then many of them would have thrown Trump under the bus), but sometimes you have to put your qualms aside to avoid a bigger problem and actually accomplish meaningful change. There is also, of course, the matter of voter suppression laws: since the democrats are among other things a party championing the civil rights of the disenfranchised, laws are created by the opposition to prevent those citizens from exercising their fundamental civil rights, which means people who would have voted are prevented from doing so.
This is obviously me oversimplifying to an extent since since presidential elections are complex events, but there were two very big reasons why Bill and Obama were able to win:
The first was the antipathy towards the previous Republican administration, under which people suffered recessions where their economic opportunities were severely limited, and in Dubya's case, a fabricated war which cost thousands of people their lives.
The second was their skill at being cat herders: Bill was (perceived as) so easygoing and personable that the sex scandals people tried to attach to his person didn't matter. Obama was a gifted orator with a great campaign and who was able to come off as nonthreatening so that a significant number of white people were able to overlook his blackness. Or in other words, people felt that they could trust them, and that mattered more than actual policy, as it always has.
The problem is that you can't fabricate that type of charismatic politician in a lab. And if we want a continuous democratic dominance in the presidency, the senate, and the house of representatives you're not going to have an unpopular, disastrous republican predecessor to take advantage of. It's unrealistic to expect a perfect candidate to be ready every eight years. I don't know how, but we need to create a much better culture of civil engagement if this is ever going to change.
Lets not forget that incumbent party+historically unpopular President means likely losses in the midterms for the GOP. In 2018 the Democrats taking the house is not at-all unlikely and taking the senate is implausible.
edited 8th Nov '17 6:55:18 PM by Fourthspartan56
"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn
Oh, bother.
The Power of Hate is pretty potent, after all.
Very much so, personally I'm angry and I simply can't wait for 2018 so I can vote. And I highly doubt I'm the only one.
Oh, bother.
I'm registered in California so my vote won't mean quite as much in 2018 but I'm going to vote anyway.
edited 8th Nov '17 6:59:46 PM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprised
Evil Is Easy applied to politics, sigh. I've said it before, parties the world over, of every political stripe, would kill for a voter base as dedicated as the Republicans'.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
She always seemed reasonable on TV, now she'll do anything to sell her damn book...
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.