Squeese it, and it whines:
Posted on 04/19/2016 6:48:39 AM PDT by norwaypinesavage
Squeese it, and it whines:
But their lack of resistance shouldn't be overstated either -- they still refused to pass Obama's immigration bill, still refused to pass his environmental legislation, and not only refused to pass his Obamacare amendments, but actually added an amendment that barred the federal government from making subsidy payments from general revenues to insurance companies. That is crippling the bill. It's gone unremarked upon, but it was a really smart, unerappreciated move by Congress. A real hit below the waterline, Mr. napscoordinator.
By refusing to pass all those things, they've forced Obama to use executive orders instead. Some of those have been halted or delayed by courts, and all of them are easily reversed by the next President. We would be in much worse shape with a Democrat Congress, because they would have enabled him to enact all those things as legislation, not just impermanent executive orders that are easily reversed by the next President.
The Republican Party needs to be reformed, that much is clear. The primary process in some states stinks. But overall reform needs to be done how Reagan did it -- by advancing a consistent message, and inspiring new candidates to get involved at the grass roots level, election to local/state offices, etc.. There is no real shortcut, and we have to keep up at least some of our defenses while retooling.
Go Navy.
Beat Army.
Class of 1984.
Well, winning the nomination is nothing. If he wins the nomination in July but loses the general election, he's Mr. Irrelevant, squared. Nobody will do anything until after he wins the general election.
the RNC members that haven’t fled to the nearest exit will fall in behind the new leader or they will become irrelevant.
How so? The responsibilities of the RNC include a hell of a lot more than just the Presidency. They include all the GOP members of both houses of Congress, and state and local elected officials. All those people will still be in office, and the RNC wouldn't be the least bit "irrelevant". They'll just keep doing what they're going everywhere else.
I think what you guys are overlooking is that the antipathy of Trump and some many of his supporters to the party actually diminishes yours (and his) influence within the party. By deliberately disdaining local GOP politics, you're electing very few pro-Trump delegates/committeemen at the state and local level. The people running for and winning those offices are overwhelmingly anti-Trump. They have absolutely zero incentive to walk away just because Trump doesn't like them.
If you want to change the party, you actually have to take the time and effort to get involved with it, which is the one thing you guys (and Trump himself) seemed to be disdaining on principle.
I love that you are class of 84 at the best school in the country!!! I retired YNC but was stationed in Annapolis in admissions and went back as a civilian.....LOVED every moment of my time there.
I think after reading your post that perhaps the republicans have a messaging problem. One problem is not having the presidency and the bully pulpit. Mcconnell and Boehner at the time these issues were stopped really didn’t speak directly to the American people about them so most are not aware of these important steps they did. Heck not even sure everyone here truly realized this. However, you have given me a lot to digest and perhaps hive a second look at things and for that I thank you!
Honestly, you actually nailed the problem right here. I do think McConnell and Boehner gave in on too many things, but they were also terrible at messaging. And I really think it is because both of them are pretty condescending a-holes. They didn't really think it was worth their time and effort to tailor a message to voters that wasn't in "Congress-speak". So it was their own fault to a large extent.
Also, the entire GOP leadership let us all down on the issue of immigration. It has been an issue bubbling around for the last decade-plus, and they tried to convince themselves it was just a lunatic fringe that cared about it. As they are finding out to their dismay, they were very wrong about that. That was the core issue that got Trump's campaign off the ground, and they have nobody to blame for that but themselves.
My point is that while destroying the party is counterproductive, it does need to be slapped around a bit both for a failure of messaging (more on the elected leadership than the RNC), and for making a poor strategic decision on immigration.
If Trump were more politically astute, he'd go after Priebus very specifically for his misguided 2013 "Growth and Opportunity Project", which essentially was a plan to pander to Hispanic voters. Trump could go after that in substance by saying that while it may have been well-intention, it was misguided and bad policy that he intends to correct.
Statements like that are not personally insulting, but are in fact far more devastating because they focus on facts where the RNC position is unpopular. But Trump seems to react too emotionally to criticism, and probably isn't well-versed enough on policy to give the kind of policy-based zingers that Reagan used so effectively.
As of now Romney is the de facto leader of the GOP and he lost in 2012. He is the leader because he is the money wrangler.
All the rest of your word string carries an anti-Trump undertone that is not insightful, not informative and not contributing anything of substance.
My contribution is rooted in history. The GOP nominee becomes the de facto leader of the party. As leader of the party, he or she will unite the party at the same time messaging to those they disdain that their days are numbered. Hence, as Trump wins the nomination there will be members leaving early. It always happens this way. Those that exit early will at the same time issue political statements such as “Time For The Party To Unify” lying just as all politicians lie in hopes of minimizing their prospects going forward. This is not new.
I'll plead guilty to the anti-Trump overtone -- I think the tone he uses against the party itself is destructive of the goals of any conservative. It basically hands ammunition to Democrats, and implicitly encourages people not to support GOP candidates other than himself. That is a recipe for giving the left complete control of all three branches of government.
If he changes that tone, my "undertone" would disappear as well.
My contribution is rooted in history. The GOP nominee becomes the de facto leader of the party.
I cannot recall any prior GOP Presidential nominee running against the party itself, so history is not predictive of what happens in that case. Best historical example would be Teddy Roosevelt running under the Bull Moose Party, and even that didn't destroy the GOP.
As leader of the party, he or she will unite the party....
You assert that as if it is self-evidently true, which it most certainly is not. Plenty of Republicans openly oppose him. I'm a lifelong Republican who may vote for him in the general election, but there's no way I would consider him the leader of the party, or support this views of it.
Hence, as Trump wins the nomination there will be members leaving early. It always happens this way.
Such as when?
As everyone keeps saying, this election breaks all the rules of past elections... Never have we had a front runner so despised by a majority of the party he wants to represent. And never have we had a candidate trash his own party so openly and repeatedly. So I think we can safely say that the tradition of the nominee becoming the de facto head of the party will not be the case if Trump is the nominee. The leaders of the party have no intention of allowing Trump to take over the RNC and destroy the party.
And since so many of his supporters are people that have had little involvement with the party for a long time, they have no way to force any of these people at the RNC out - those decisions are made by the party "establishment" at the state level, and the Trump supporters have no foothold there, as is being demonstrated over and over again by Trump supporters getting shut out of the delegate selection process.
> “I cannot recall any prior GOP Presidential nominee running against the party itself, so history is not predictive of what happens in that case.”
Your sentence reveals you blur the distinction between the party establishment and the party.
It is not Trump that is running against the party establishment, it is the American people. They have been doing such since 2010 and the GOPe has still not gotten the message because they are locked in an echo chamber inside the NY Fed funded Beltway region. They have refused to take the American people seriously and especially their leader Donald Trump. They are going to pay a price. If I was one of them, and I could have been quite easily, I would already have my home listed for sale in Falls Church or Bethesda, and be scouting out the next place to live and the next business I would be joining.
It is so cute when the Trump supporters understand well beyond the meaning of what Trump says...
Yes, and never have we had a candidate whose supporters, like some around here, proclaim almost hourly their fervent desire to destroy that very same party.
Sorta ironic, doncha think?
Well, I guess the question in my mind comes down to this:
Would and should any party welcome or even allow into its ranks those activists whose avowed aim is to destroy the party? Methinks not.
No, Trump is running for office, and he's supported by some of the American people. But those people aren't the ones actually running -- that's just nonsense.
They have refused to take the American people seriously and especially their leader Donald Trump.
this is one of those odd statements I've never seen made except by supporters of Trump. "The American people" do not support Trump -- only some of them do. Likewise, Trump is not "the leader" of the American people. He is the leader only of that segment of the American people who support him.
And still, none of that even comes close to explaining how people who are not active in the party, and openly despise it, are somehow going make local, state, and national party officials quit. There is absolutely zero reason for them to do so.
Take your argument and go find some wall to practice it on.
Or you can try facing reality, Cruz is not going to be President nor is he going to be the nominee.
He'll end up being nothing more than a historical footnote.
>> the collection of nutbags that will gravitate towards the populist Trumpist party will share the fate of the “Reform” party. . . . So it will end up dying out, but not before giving the Democrats the edge they need to grab complete, permanent control <<
Good analysis. If Mr. Trump’s supporters bolt from the GOP and form a third party, I think you’re precisely correct that their “movement” will die out, whether or not the Dhimmis really do grab complete control.
The fundamental reason they must fade, in my opinion, is that they have no consistent ideology, no coherent program, no clear purpose — only a charismatic charlatan of a leader who successfully persuades them that they are victims, oppressed and made poor by the Chinese and Mexicans, by Wall Street, by the GOP establishment.
Therefore, once that leader retires from the scene, his followers will fade temporarily back into the woodwork, maybe for a decade or two, perhaps to await the eventual emergence of another Pied Piper like Huey Long, Ross Perot or Jesse Ventura.
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