Posted on 12/19/2018 9:19:53 PM PST by Signalman
Remember the old saw about the salesman who loses money on every sale but thinks he can make up the shortfall by selling in volume?
That's what comes to mind every time I hear people say that President Trump is being shrewd by pandering to his base.
Consider last week's remarkable Oval Office meeting between Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Trump. (There is photo evidence, but no audio, to suggest that Vice President Mike Pence was also in the room.) What was supposed to be a brief photo-op turned into a dramatic confrontation when the president invited television cameras to stay for the conversation.
As always happens after one of these political reality-show spectacles, the chattering classes set out to score the bout. According to conventional rules, Pelosi and Schumer came out the winners. They got Trump to admit that if there's a government shutdown over border wall funding, it will be all his doing. (Just before the meeting, congressional Republicans were pre-spinning a "Schumer shutdown.") Pelosi solidified her claim to the House leadership while Trump made future bipartisan deals with the Democrats -- something he reportedly wants -- less likely.
According to The Los Angeles Times' Eli Stokols, even Trump realized he was taken when it was over: He "stormed out" of the meeting and threw a folder of briefing papers across the room.
Yet there was a loud contrarian analysis that said Trump came out a winner. Why? Because his base loves this stuff.
"If you are a supporter of the president's policies," wrote the Daily Beast's Matt Lewis (no Trump booster himself), "this was an especially welcome display -- a rare example of a president publicly fighting for his policy goal: a border wall."
Across Fox News opinion shows and right-wing talk radio, the view that Trump won was nearly unanimous.
Even Yahoo News' Matt Bai, a decidedly left-leaning observer, excoriated liberals for not understanding that "Trump knows that every time he flouts the staid convention of the office, every time he does the thing that seems inappropriate among the political set, he's winning with the chunk of the electorate he still has."
Sure. The problem is that chunk is not a majority.
Bai's larger observation -- that Trump is so embattled he can't afford to lose his hard-core supporters -- is a good one in the context of gaming out how Trump can survive impeachment. When looking at what advances this administration's agenda or is good for the Republican Party, however, "his base loves it" doesn't score any points.
Worse, it's self-fulfilling prophecy. As he sheds the mostly suburban voters who gave him his margin of victory in 2016, of course he clings more tightly to those who celebrate the behaviors that are bleeding the GOP of support. They're the only ones left. Proclaiming that "his base loves it" may be an explanation, but it's no excuse. And it misses the point if you care about the GOP's long-term viability or even Trump's re-election prospects. He's going to need more voters than his amen chorus
I can hardly wait to see what Vox Day has to say about this column of Jonah’s...
Keeping his promises in not ‘pandering to his base’.
If Trump stops on the wall, it will be the equal of gramps Bush breaking his Read my lips line.
It is not TRUMP who will stop the wall. It will be disloyal GOP Senators and Representatives. He will come out on top. They will go down in flames.
Jonah Goldberg is a never Trump idiot in the mold of Bill Krystol and George Will. He is too stupid to realize that what elitist twits like him call “pandering to his base” is what normal people call keeping his promises. He is also too insulated to realize how many people he thinks are on his side despise him and his buddies.
He hasnt been pandering to me for a while now. Wheres the wall?
And here I thought that Trump was caving to the left and the RINOs at every turn; our cadre of screaming Never-Trumpers keep telling me so.
WHICH IS IT?!
I remember Michael Medved and Hugh Hewitt spewing Out how if that terrible Ted a Cruz caused a government shutdown, surely the Reoublicans were doomed in the ‘14 mid term.
What happened? Republicans won both houses big time.
He hasnt been pandering to me for a while now. Wheres the wall?
***
Hard to do when his so-called supporters evaporate whenever push comes to shove.
Those of you who don’t outright stab him in the back that is.
As soon as I saw it was Jonah Goldberg, I didnt bother reading it.
# of 9/11 hijackers from Saudi Arabia 15 United Arab Emirates 2 Egypt 1 Lebanon 1 Iraq 0
“If we had known then what we know now, we would never have gone to war with Iraq in 2003.” — Jonah Goldberg
Goldberg is an anti-Trumper and not only mischaracterizes meeting but also repeats fake news.
Let me let you in on a little secret Jonah. The GOP no longer has a base. It’s now Trump’s base. If those who voted for Trump have to choose between supporting a president who delivers what he promises or an elite GOP establishment that has lied to them all these years, they’ll choose Trump. If this GOP thing you speak of wants a future, it needs to dump people like you and embrace the MAGA movement.
They fear that the disaffected who don’t vote will change their minds and vote for Trump. And they’re right to fear that.
Exactly! Get with Trump or “get lost”.
It’s really that simple.
Set aside the idiocy that townhall gave him a byline, Jonah is basically saying Trump needs to make appeals to Democrats like him since we’re on the way out thanks to a set in stone open borders policy. Sort of like Republican Jeff Flake’s new global warming tax bill. That’s how you connect with the suburbs.
According to the LA Times. That’s when I stopped reading. I thought somebody said there were TV cameras there.
Well ok...DC swamp scum knows best...
Never-Trumpers want Trump to listen to their problematic political philosophy and policy goals because then they win. That’s the basic problem of the Never-Trumpers, they are not about the policy goals of the voters. They are about coming up with the barest minimum of what Americans can stomach that will still fly, maybe.
Trump very well may abandon the voters if he feels like he is getting no support because the swamp is still undrained. Heck, he will also be subject to all sorts of unholy alliances to get what he needs because he is a man who makes deals with whoever is at the table.
The swamp has to get drained because it has become an entrenched bubble that is increasingly ideological and thus untethered from reality.
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