This article got me thinking:
Republicans are enjoying their ride in the White House and basking in the glow of a divided Democratic presidential field, but a monumental identity crisis is looming for the GOP.
Whether you think President Donald Trump won’t be president in two months, two years or six years, Republicans are going to have a difficult time moving on to the next chapter.
I agree. It would be a mistake to try and find a Trump 2.0, because no such animal exists.
What the Stupid Party should do, starting immediately after Trump wins the 2020 election, is to start looking for a person who has bought 100% into Trumps’s agenda, and into his methodology of getting all that done (minus the cringe-making Twatter texts). In other words, find a younger man (or woman, but not both) who is, if you’ll excuse the expression, a quieter fire-breather.
As much as I like and respect VP Mike Pence (and I do, a lot), I don’t think he’s the guy for the job — just as GHW Bush wasn’t the right guy to follow Ronaldus Magnus in 1988 (which he soon proved by getting into an alliance with Swimmer Ted Kennedy, may his room temperature be set to BROIL right now). If Pence wants to be taken seriously as Trump’s successor, he needs to start getting out from under Trump’s massive shadow, and start establishing his credibility with the people who continue to support Trump. If not, then it’s time for new blood. Here’s what’s on the cards for Teh New Guy.
Certainly, a refusal to compromise with the Socialists would be a major plus, but in order to stop their bullshit, he needs to be either media-savvy or hire people who are.
And speaking of compromises: totally off the table is any thought of compromise on immigration. Whoever wants to get this POTUS gig should have to take The Pledge.
Ditto the rolling back of the tiresome raft of bureaucratic regulations (the “create one, delete five” Trump directive). Do not repeal this excellent Executive Order. Don’t even think of weakening it.
Keep walking away from the whole “climate change” religion. Let the Socialist luminaries (e.g. AOC) claim this nonsense for their idiotic Green New Deal platform, and live with the consequences.
Keep making new jobs instead by hauling manufacturing back to the U.S., and to hell with all the globalist bollocks.
Support the military, with more ships, more planes, more men, more (and better) technology. The Socialists won’t do any of this, so he needs to grab it with both hands.
Missing from all the above is who I think can do all this. That’s because I don’t know who fits this bill. (Most certainly, however, the list of prospective candidates should not include any of Trump’s kids — Trump, Kushner, whoever — or anyone named Bush, Rubio and the Usual Suspects, including Rand Paul, who is often the Republicans’ version of AOC.)
But whoever it is, the Stupid Party needs to get working on it soon, and should heed my advice on the above because:
At this stage, the Republican Party is primarily a collection of Trump followers. While a majority of GOP primary voters didn’t support candidate Trump early in the 2016 race — some Republicans were skeptical of his conservative bona fides, and others outright opposed him — the party has since largely coalesced behind the president.
Once again, a whole bunch of people (me included, quite often) don’t necessarily agree with Trump’s style of doing things, but we sure as hell support what he’s doing — and because most of that is anathema to the Stupid Party Establishment (GOPe, in old terms), they either need to get on board, or quit to allow others to take over.
Fat chance. They’ll fuck it up, just like they always do when presented with a great opportunity.
I got nuttin’ Leaders willing to pledge their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor are few and far between. Guys like Andy Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump come along once in a lifetime.
As they say about war…the enemy gets to vote.
The Dems won TWICE with a gay cocaine snorting muzzie foreign born commie. If they pick another wunderkind like him the public can be swayed. There is more of WWE in this politics thing than well…politics. The Romans had it right with “bread and circuses”.
Any R candidate in 2024 is going to face a nearly insurmountable obstacle, regardless of who the D challenger is, just based on a review of recent history.
I’ve done a lot of thinking about this over the past few presidential election cycles. Looking at presidential elections since the end of WWII and the ratification of the 22nd amendment (that prohibited a person from being elected president more than twice), we have had 17 presidential elections.
In the 8 elections where a sitting president ran for re-election, 6 of them won (only Carter in 80 and Bush Sr. in 92 failed to get re-elected) which shows the enormous advantage of incumbency. In short, a sitting president always gets reelected if he seeks re-election (famously Johnson did not in 1968) unless there is a confluence of bad news (Carter) and/or the candidate was weak in the first place (Carter and Bush Sr.) Otherwise, regardless of how divisive/hated he is (Clinton, Bush Jr, Obama), a sitting president is pretty much guaranteed a 2nd term.
However, the “Presidential Party Hat Trick”, that is, 3 successive administrations all going to the same party, has only happened ONCE in 68 years, and that was when Bush Sr. succeeded Reagan in 88. In other words, at the end of a sitting president’s 2nd term, the white house almost always goes to the other party.
I think there are a number of reasons for this. First of all, after a sitting president is term-limited, the default choice seems to be the sitting VP (Hillary was the exception in 2016.) A VP is inherently a weaker candidate because a VP candidate is often chosen specifically so as not to outshine the president, which makes them less appealing to the voters (as in Bush Sr. – a decent guy, to be sure, but not someone who inspires voters the way his boss Reagan did.) For that reason I don’t think Pence is really a good candidate.
But the other reason is that while one party has held the white house for 8 years, that has given the opposition party 8 years to stew, to nurse grievances and to make alliances with various disparate groups for the purpose of defeating the incumbent party while the incumbent party has been working to try and keep a fragile coalition together. That makes the challenger inherently stronger and the incumbent party candidate inherently weaker.
Put another way, once you subtract the advantage of incumbency (which is an enormous advantage), the “out” party is stronger because unlike the “in” party, all they have to do is make promises – they don’t have to actually DO anything because they’re not the ones in power.
Of course, anything can happen in an electorate that is as evenly divided as ours but the tides of history seem to indicate a likely re-election for Trump in 2020 and a Dem president elected in 2024.
For those predicting doom, gloom and apocalypse, I think you underestimate the inertia of the American system. I suspect we’ll muddle through the way we always do.
What do you think of Nikki Haley?
In foreign affairs, she’s a little too W-like (neocon) for me, although she has more spine than any Bush alive. (FWIW, the American Conservative Union hates her.)
I have no idea whether she could or would continue the Trumpian regs-killing ratio.
I think she’s okay on guns — i.e. unlikely to be bulldozed into that “sensible” gun law bullshit.
Ditto taxes. Can’t see her increasing them, or supporting same.
Her stance on illegal immigration? Don’t know about that, either.
If Trump doesn’t run this time around my money will be on her.
FWIW on next year’s D side, my money is on Buttigieg.
To the list of qualifications I would add:
Continue to treat the 2nd Amendment as the first among equals.
In 2016 as we got closer to the election I started thinking maybe we had a chance, maybe Trump could win this thing and I was pleased to vote for him because he was not Hillary and I knew if he did somehow win his choice for a member of the Supreme Court would be better than Hillary’s. I don’t know what will happen before the next election however unless there is a total screw up on Trump’s part I think he can win no matter what kind of crap the Democrats continue to pull because hating Trump is a narrow platform.
We saw last time how accurate polls are when it comes to asking conservatives who they will vote for because a lot of them are like me and I don’t talk to people I don’t know, if I don’t know them I probably won’t like them anyway so screw’em. My suggestion is to enjoy what we have now, each and every day and realize that we were fortunate to win the last one, have chance for the next one and then hang on because we will have a whole new batch of young poorly educated liberal, progressive, sorry-to-be-American, assholes voting for the good of the people and the world and all that shit.
It might not hurt to make plans for more difficult times because each year we are running up a larger bill, we have all sorts of governmental entities already on life support and the whole thing might come crashing down. The USA won’t go away but the rebuilding might take decades, I am old and might have 10 or 15 years left but our kids and grandkids will have huge challenges. I hate saying these things and the job of each generation should be improvement over the past and a lot of things have improved but we have some sorry, sad, unhappy people, maybe a majority, even in Texas so don’t count your chickens while they are still eggs.
Along that note my girls are married to active gun guys, my son is an active competition gun guy and grandsons and granddaughters have guns and know how to shoot. My kids and their spouses also know how to work hard, make money, save money and improve their lives every year so I need to stop worrying about them and enjoy what I have, which is enough. No idea where this was going when I started writing it.
Not exactly, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy!” but kind of.
I invested part of my afternoon in the ‘museum’ section at Cabela’s in Eugene Oregon.
In a couple hours, I saw at least a hundred folks of all ages fussing with weapons.
I think all the blather about ‘support the 2nd’ is unnecessary. Actions speak louder. In fact, persons of the jewish religion wrote about that very matter… their book of Acts.
Not the book of ‘Thinking Real Hard’ or the book of ‘Forming A Wednesday Evening Discussion Group’. Actions.
Allow me to be the skunk at the garden party – ye gods, where to begin. As an unrepentant never-Trumper, I had 3 concerns about him from the jump:
1. That he wouldn’t govern conservatively; he’s been an establishment big-government whore his entire adult life.
2. He’s the most repellent maggot to occupy the White House since Bill Clinton.
3. He’d put such a stink on the already rancid GOP so as to gift-wrap foreseeable electoral gains to the totalitarian socialist left.
On the first count I’ve been pleasantly surprised but not bowled over. Gorsuch was outta the park (his lower court appointments may be even more significant, in a good way); his unambiguous support of Israel deserves an enthusiastic ovation; the tax cuts were an anemic baby step in the right direction; and slashing regulatory bs was a cute gesture – albeit an empty one given that he did it via EO instead of the legislature; the latter of which would have made those cuts all but permanent. The next libtard we elect will erase those gestures with rapid strokes of the same pen.
And don’t even get me started on immigration, i.e. Teh Wall: 55 miles. Seriously, motherfucker?
Patient: What’s the verdict?
Dr. Trump: You have lung cancer. Here’s a throat lozenge. Have a nice day!
The second point is a wash. William Jefferson Suck My Willie set the bar so low that everyone who comes (pun intended) after, including Donnie Douchebag, will have to dig pretty deep to measure up. DD (as far as we know) isn’t (currently) cheating on his wife or coercing blowjobs in the oval. If he does go down that road, his slavering groupies will eagerly & hypocritically defend him, just as Bubba’s drooling sycophants did back in the day. Meet the new sheep, same as the old sheep.
Jury’s out on the 3rd concern. I’ll get back to you after 2020-22-24. November’s results were not encouraging. That said, if the economy keeps cooking it’s his to lose. If it tanks, he’s toast.
As far as the gutless & duplicitous GOP “looking for a person who has bought 100% into Trumps’s agenda, and into his methodology of getting all that done”, I couldn’t disagree more strongly. DD’s a liar, a punk, a bully, and a coward. Not to mention a whiny bitch (‘I’m gonna look into revoking NBC’s license ’cause SNL’s mean to me.’) Grow the fuck up already.
As I approach my dotage, I find myself valuing character and principles more and more. The steaming pile of dogshit that just barely oozed ahead of the worst candidate since Dukakis has none of either.
Other than that, I’m totally in love with him.
Really.
LOL Nevi.