Donald Trump Showed Republicans 'Just How Far They Can Go'

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just-jim
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Re: Donald Trump Showed Republicans 'Just How Far They Can Go'

Post by just-jim »

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I wish I could remember the quote, because it seems apropos now….

It was in relation to the discussions about governing from the beginning of the last century up until the Reagan years. Through the first ¾ of the 1900s, there was always political disagreement, sometimes vehement, about exactly what to do, how much of it to do and how to pay for it. But the two political parties seemed to be able to get it done. It is that compromise - with the ultimate goal of actually GOVERNING - that the Constitution expects and demands a legislative body to do. Its what got us through the Second World War and put a human on the moon.

The quote I’m trying to remember is somebody describing the republican party after the Reagan years. He said… ‘republicans today don’t really care about governing, they have become the party of no. They have no real platform or agenda. They just want to tear stuff up and what what they can’t tear up - they sh** on.’

Case in point: Tommy Tuberville, the junior Senator from Alabama (who came from a background of a football coach – peerrrfect!). When asked, after he won the election in 2020, what he planned on doing in Washington DC, said, ‘I’m gonna read the rules, you know, so I can figure out how to stop stuff I don’t like’. During an interview, he also failed to correctly name the three branches of government.

People like that don’t belong in charge of anything, much less a country.
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Rideback
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Re: Donald Trump Showed Republicans 'Just How Far They Can Go'

Post by Rideback »

I'd agree to the larger observation. There's also the acknowledgment that even incrementally when they get a win for their side there's zero ability to answer 'now what'? For instance, the Dobbs case which was a classic example of the dog catching the car. The Rep's have used the abortion issue as a political cudgel for so long, put in place a SCOTUS majority to extinguish Roe, and yet they were caught flat footed in how and why to implement what was supposed to be a grand correction.

There's this bizarre belief that our country, our democracy is so strong that these crash & burn policies can never threaten the underlying strengths and freedoms. They can and they are.
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mister_coffee
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Re: Donald Trump Showed Republicans 'Just How Far They Can Go'

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Rideback wrote: Sun Oct 30, 2022 7:21 am Instead, the Republican party of today is focused solely on the destruction of the other Party...
I'd argue that the current Republican party wants to destroy everything. They seem to be so opposed to both modernity and reality itself that the only way their cancerous ideology can survive is by destroying it all.

The logical consequences of their "ideology" would be to reduce all of us to a paleolithic state of savagery and more likely oblivion.

I quote from a recent Medium article:
The GOP is the party of choice for sex offenders, involuntary celibates, racists, wealthfare queens, homophobes, religious fundamentalists, warmongers, science deniers, gun nuts, and social Darwinists. Not all Republicans are these demographics, of course, but all these demographics are Republican.
:arrow: David Bonn :idea:
Rideback
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Re: Donald Trump Showed Republicans 'Just How Far They Can Go'

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Editors in the piece need to pay more attention. Liz Cheney is not a Representative from Wisconsin, she has represented Wyoming.

This matters simply because the US needs leadership to compete in the modern world and provide an environment that nurtures her people. Instead, the Republican party of today is focused solely on the destruction of the other Party. One only has to ask any Rep leader what the policies are that they support, what policies would they implement to curb inflation for instance? And every single time their answer omits any policies but instead focuses on 'this is the Dems fault'.

The concept of the Unitary Executive, which we first heard of within the Bush era, is still a threat to this Republic and with each appeal to the Judicial branch that has been denied it becomes more clear that the reason this Country chose not to be ruled by a King is still valid.
just-jim
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Re: Donald Trump Showed Republicans 'Just How Far They Can Go'

Post by just-jim »

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How far will they go?

The far, far right side of the republican party has apparently abandoned all pretense of the things they have been shouting for the last few decades - ‘freedumb’, ‘get gubmint off our backs’, ‘cut regulations’, ‘lower taxes’, ‘small gubmint’, etc etc – and decided to pull a page straight from the fascist playbook of 1930s Europe. This, below, reads like something straight from a dictator of that era.

They now want to abandoned their conservative cloak, and instead shove all their self righteous religious bigotry and ‘moral majority’ evangelical horsesh*t down our throats. And make everyone behave according to their beliefs. It’s not about freedom, or ‘original constitutional intent’ at all….

From an opinion by John Daniel Davidson, writing in the Oct 20 edition of ‘The Federalist’, a far right wing rag;
https://thefederalist.com/2022/10/20/we ... ervatives/.

An excerpt:

“Put bluntly, if conservatives want to save the country they are going to have to rebuild and in a sense re-found it, and that means getting used to the idea of wielding power, not despising it. Why? Because accommodation or compromise with the left is impossible…….

The left will only stop when conservatives stop them, which means conservatives will have to discard outdated and irrelevant notions about “small government.” The government will have to become, in the hands of conservatives, an instrument of renewal in American life — and in some cases, a blunt instrument indeed.

To stop Big Tech, for example, will require using antitrust powers to break up the largest Silicon Valley firms. To stop universities from spreading poisonous ideologies will require state legislatures to starve them of public funds. To stop the disintegration of the family might require reversing the travesty of no-fault divorce, combined with generous subsidies for families with small children. Conservatives need not shy away from making these arguments because they betray some cherished libertarian fantasy about free markets and small government. It is time to clear our minds of cant.

In other contexts, wielding government power will mean a dramatic expansion of the criminal code. It will not be enough, for example, to reach an accommodation with the abortion regime, to agree on “reasonable limits” on when unborn human life can be snuffed out with impunity. As Abraham Lincoln once said of slavery, we must become all one thing or all the other. The Dobbs decision was in a sense the end of the beginning of the pro-life cause. Now comes the real fight, in state houses across the country, to outlaw completely the barbaric practice of killing the unborn.

Conservatives had better be ready for it, and Republican politicians, if they want to stay in office, had better have an answer ready when they are asked what reasonable limits to abortion restrictions they would support. The answer is: none, for the same reason they would not support reasonable limits to restrictions on premeditated murder.

On the transgender question, conservatives will have to repudiate utterly the cowardly position of people like David French, in whose malformed worldview Drag Queen Story Hour at a taxpayer-funded library is a “blessing of liberty.” Conservatives need to get comfortable saying in reply to people like French that Drag Queen Story Hour should be outlawed; that parents who take their kids to drag shows should be arrested and charged with child abuse; that doctors who perform so-called “gender-affirming” interventions should be thrown in prison and have their medical licenses revoked; and that teachers who expose their students to sexually explicit material should not just be fired but be criminally prosecuted.

If all that sounds radical, fine. It need not, at this late hour, dissuade conservatives in the least. Radicalism is precisely the approach needed now because the necessary task is nothing less than radical and revolutionary…….

For now, there are only two paths open to conservatives. Either they awake from decades of slumber to reclaim and re-found what has been lost, or they will watch our civilization die. There is no third road.”

This should chill you to the bone.
dorankj
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Re: Donald Trump Showed Republicans 'Just How Far They Can Go'

Post by dorankj »

This matters why? Can’t anyone who wants constant MSNBC etal drivel just go to those channels?
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pasayten
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Donald Trump Showed Republicans 'Just How Far They Can Go'

Post by pasayten »

Donald Trump Showed Republicans 'Just How Far They Can Go'—Mary Trump
Thomas Kika - 10h ago

Donald Trump's actions as president and beyond may have shown the modern Republican Party "just how far they can go," according to Mary Trump.

Mary Trump, the niece of the former president and outspoken critic of his actions, made the observation during a recent episode of her podcast, The Mary Trump Show. She was speaking with political analyst David Rothkopf, who was promoting his newest book, American Resistance.

In speaking with Rothkopf, Trump mused that a different Republican president elected in 2016, such as Texas Senator Ted Cruz, would have hewed much more closely to political tradition than her uncle. Now, with her uncle having shown how much the party can get away with, she claimed that any future GOP president would be "an autocrat."

"Another thing that Donald has done is show Republicans just how far they can go," Mary Trump said. "Which is to say, I think they can go as far as they are allowed to. And again, I think Donald is a symptom...this is decades in the making. But I think he finally crossed the line and gave permission.

"So I think President Ted Cruz in 2016 would have been sort of a middle-of-the-road [leader] in a lot of ways. He would've played within the system, generally speaking, the way most other Republicans would have. Now, I think any Republican who got into the Oval Office in 2024 would be an autocrat, because they know that they can be," she added.

She continued, stating that she believes that it would not matter which Republican might win the White House, be it more extreme figures like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis or Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, or slightly less severe figures like Cruz, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, or Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton.

In response, Rothkopf, founder of TRG Media and frequent columnist for The Daily Beast, agreed with Trump's sentiment, though expressed doubt about some of the examples she listed as more decent alternatives to the former president.

"You're right, Donald Trump has redefined the parameters of what is considered acceptable 'presidenting' within the Republican Party," Rothkopf said. "I think there are people within the Republican Party that I disagree with on virtually every issue... I don't think I agree with [Wisconsin Representative] Liz Cheney on any issue. Would she have behaved this way? No... Would [former Vice President] Mike Pence have behaved this way? No...He has a modicum of respect for the law, he has a modicum of decency, so he wouldn't have behaved that way. Some of the others you described, I don't think they have a modicum of decency."

Speaking further, Rothkopf expressed concern over some figures on the right advocating for a "unitary executive" theory, which suggests that a president should hold more sweeping power, and suggesting that presidents should be above the law.

Newsweek reached out to the office of Donald Trump for comment.

The daughter of Donald Trump's late older brother, Fred Trump Jr., and a clinical psychologist, Mary Trump rose to prominence in late 2020 with the release of the tell-all book about her family history, Too Much and Never Enough, which was followed in 2021 by another book, The Reckoning. A registered Democrat who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, she has become a notable critic of her uncle's actions and policies in recent years.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... f39138eab9
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