We're Doing Grant, Not Patton...

Town Hall ^ | 27 Mar 2017 | Kurt Schlichter

[Rummyfan]

Paul Ryan should walk around Congress for the next couple of weeks wearing a sign around his neck that reads, “I am a failure.” It’s not that everyone else doesn’t already know that he’s a failure – oh, that’s one message that he’s succeeded in getting out Lima Charlie – it’s that it doesn’t seem like he knows that he’s a failure. Perhaps some signage would remind him to wipe that smug, smarmy grin off his face, and inspire him to achieve something other than nothing.

Yet he’ll persist, with his unerring poor judgment, his undercurrent of condescension to anyone not in tune with his wonky nonsense, and his inability to master the most basic competencies of his job, in proving himself a worthy successor to John Boehner as the GOP’s biggest obstacle to victory. It’s certainly not the Democrats – those hacks spent the night of the healthcare retreat taking mass selfies celebrating Ryan’s hopelessness and convincing themselves that his running into the GOP’s own end zone was their score. It wasn’t – notwithstanding Paul’s unforced error, they are the Falcons at the Super Bowl with a halftime show featuring Nickelback.

[BlueDragon]

If we're doing Grant, until I came across mention of Boehner, I was going to say

send more whiskey

but had second thoughts...

---

Trudy
[Charlie Daniels]

[nathanbedford]

Wake-up conservatives!

The problem is not personal, the problem is not personnel, the problem is structural, political, ideological.

Yes the problem in part is Paul Ryan for his glaring ineptness and hopeless Rino-ism but removing Paul Ryan, while desirable, is not the solution because the next Republican Speaker of the House will be put in the same predicament Ryan found himself in. It will be the same predicament that John Boehner was in before he escaped.

The root of the problem is that the Republicans know that the bulk of the country does not support cutting entitlements, Obama care included. Yes, they want their premiums reduced, they want their copayments reduced, but at the same time they want to retain coverage for pre-existing illness, for their children until 26, premium subsidies and many other mandates which candidate Trump insisted be retained in any reform legislation but which inevitably doom reform.

So the Republicans and candidate Trump found they could win elections when out of power by criticizing the high premiums and high co-pays of Obama care but once in power they were afraid to cut the entitlement portions of the program.

This is but part of a larger problem. The country is hurtling toward a fiscal cliff because the federal budget out of control which is out of control because of runaway entitlements. Entitlements are runaway because every savvy politician has concluded that the third rail of politics is not just to touch the Social Security entitlement but to touch any entitlement. In fact, I can think of no entitlement that has been eliminated. Work for welfare has been the only successful modification of an entitlement, and that Obama has undone.

Now the inevitable is happening, Donald Trump is turning away from the base which elected him toward the Democrats to put together a governing majority of moderate Republicans and Democrats. Trump is not ideologically committed to the values which motivate conservatives in the House or in this Forum. His commitment is to cut deals. If the conundrum cannot be broken within the framework of conservative ideology, he will work within a new framework, an ideology cobbled together with Democrats and moderate Republicans, a framework which shares their values not ours.

We can crucify Paul Ryan on a cross of ideological purity-I think that would be a good thing-but the cross he is currently being nailed to is not ideologically pure. To throw Paul Ryan under the bus to save president Trump might be good politics but it is real world nonsense. Donald Trump has backed the Ryan Rino-plan because he fears the third rails of politics as much as do the pusillanimous Republicans in the house. Let us not deceive ourselves, the Rino plan is and was the Trump plan and for the same motivation. If you crucify Paul Ryan what must you do to the President who backed their common plan?

We must decide whether we are conservatives or simply supporters of Donald Trump, right or wrong. Stop the self-deception and turn to conservative solutions and ways to sell those solutions to the public. In the end the health care debacle is not personal or personnel, it is a metaphor for the state of our nation.

[Celtic Conservative]

If we’re doing Grant, then Trump has got some “Butlers” and “Burnsides” to get rid of.

CC

[RipSawyer]

“In the end the health care debacle is not personal or personnel, it is a metaphor for the state of our nation.”

Well said, very well said.

[Revolutionary]

The problem was that they brought in all the “key” special interests and tried to make them all happy. They ended up with a crap bill. They need to go bold. They need to do it right. They need to ram it down the dems throats. Just decide that the rules allow it or change the rules to allow it. If they get their crap together, the dems could be sent into obscurity, only to be a random terrorist organization that at some point gets put out of its misery.

[Vehmgericht]

“that smug, smarmy grin” I can’t even look at the man.

[Alberta's Child]

Trump's team developed a seven-point health care reform plan during the 2016 campaign that seemed good enough for conservatives. When 2017 rolled around he pushed for an AHCA that was a pathetic mockery of that plan and didn't contain a single provision that reflected it. Now the seven-point plan from 2016 has been removed from Trump's website.

I'll stick with my conservative principles and my ObamaCare exemption, and stop giving a f#%& about ObamaCare. Disingenuous politicians come and go. Principles don't change.

[sphinx]

Ditto. Well said.

[miss marmelstein]

Actually, what America is doing is Grant’s Administration not his Civil War.

[nathanbedford]

I would say that the Ulysses S Grant's campaigns against Robert E Lee were less than brilliant considering the casualties inflicted on him by Lee, Lee's ability to anticipate virtually every move and check it and the disparity and forces.

Grant was the great hero of the Civil War because he won and that because he had an army left at the end and Lee did not but Grant did not win brilliantly.

[Emergencyawesome]

How about you try Sherman not Grant

[bert]

: )

[DaveA37]

“.......the Republicans know that the bulk of the country does not support cutting entitlements.......”........

The demodummies have convinced the rino’s that “entitlements” are a good thing???????????? Time to start over.

[miss marmelstein]

My original comment stands.

[pierrem15]

Well, the South as defenders had a lot of advantages: knowledge of the terrain (there were no adequate maps of the US before the Civil War, let alone anything like the ordnance survey maps), shorter supply lines, and support of the local population.

Lee's essays outside the South (Antietam, Gettysburg) showed similar difficulties.

In addition, Grant understood the limitations of his own officers: bold and successful maneuver was not one of their strengths.

Above all, Grant understood that there were certain strategic locations Lee could not abandon, like Richmond, and if he fixed him there, then Lee would lose the advantage of his ability to maneuver, and Grant's superiority in numbers and materiel would show.

I'm not a Grant worshipper and I certainly admire the ability of Lee and his generals to fight well or even brilliantly given the disparity in numbers and materiel. But the fact of the matter was that the South had to win the war very quickly if it were to prevail, and having failed to find a successful strategy to do so, its defeat was almost inevitable as long as the population of the North and its generals had the will to fight.

[reed13k]

Agree, perhaps another way to put it, Grant was a pound it out General who believed in holding onto the enemy despite casualties. He knew strategically that he had the upper-hand in numbers and economics and if he could drive hard enough that Lee would not be able to sustain in the long run.

Much, much different from the prior generals.