Posted on 02/08/2017 11:53:10 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Which GOP do you belong to? That's a question every Republican has been pondering since Donald Trump commandeered the party and won the White House.
There is, first, the old Grand Old Party — the party of Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and an array of conservative movement activists, think tank staffers, journalists, and lobbyists. This party favors lower taxes (especially on the wealthy), less regulation, and smaller government, except when it comes to military spending, which it aims to increase to maintain America's position of global dominance and role as "leader of the free world."
Then there are the Trumpists — populist and nationalist Republicans (like White House senior counselor Stephen Bannon) who blend a mania for cutting taxes and government programs with an enthusiasm for trade tariffs, border walls, and immigration bans from majority-Muslim countries. This GOP also promises to increase defense spending, but not to contribute to the leadership of anything. It advocates putting "America first," by which it means that the United States should do whatever it wants anywhere it wants, including, perhaps, "taking the oil" from Iraq, backing away from our commitments to NATO, and turning a blind eye to Vladimir Putin's aggression in Eastern Europe....
(Excerpt) Read more at theweek.com ...
Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan,
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One of these is not like the others......
Can’t. Once Reagan was lumped in w those other guys it was over.
Because of weak-kneed, lily-livered Republicans who are all talk and not action?
Perhaps???
Smug righteousness for 25 years, and no results but rich commentators and pundits.
Then there was a third camp: constitutionalists who despise the Establishment RINOs but also distrusted Trumpian populism.
an array of conservative movement activists, think tank staffers, journalists, and lobbyists.
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I read the whole thing. The above mentioned group has mostly acted as propagandists for the Cheap Labor Express.
They have spent most of the time since Reagan undermining what he stood for.
Globalist aims such as TPP and amnesty that undermine American sovereignty are not conservative.
There might’ve been some basis for debate during the primaries, but if you weren’t on the Trump train by the summer of 2016, then you were just an idiot. If the thought of President Hillary Clinton was not enough, then the SCOTUS alone should’ve sealed the deal. But there were 100 other reasons better than those.
I was going to correct you on your initial sentence, then I saw all of the early posters on the thread had quite logically done so already.
Good job Freepers!
Much of this comes down to priorities, as we all have stands in common--and probably all have differences. But Trump understands the fundamental American purpose, in the creation of our Federal Union. However one slices or dices it, it is all about putting the generation by generation interests of a specific people--the new Ethnic Americans--who rallied into a distinct ethnic persona in the era launched in the turmoil of 1775-1791;--about putting their interests and those of those whom they legally adopted, first!
If the George W. Bushes & McCains do not get it, they and their followers are hardly correctly designated "intellectuals" or "Conservatives"--nor, frankly, are the "pundit" poseurs who try to justify their intellectual confusion.
Or consider
See "Who We Are"!
No one should feel the need to look for a complicated explanation of why many of us who have been fighting for traditional American values for a half century or more, now embrace Trump. He may sometimes talk with a crude New York accent, but he is both brighter and far, far truer to our heritage than his "Republican" detractors.
One is a Conservative Republican, the others are “Republicans” who openly pursue and promote Democrat policies and candidates.
Of course, Reagan was philosophically and intellectually far, far closer to Trump than the others listed. (There is no way that George W. Bush or McCain can be correctly described as either Conservative or intellectual, except in satire.)
Smug idiocy--or at best just plain stupidity--among the poseurs and false "pundits." Trump is not only head & shoulders more genuinely conservative. He is vastly more intelligent than those poseurs--many too stupid to realize why their efforts in the Primaries came to naught.
You nailed the dichotomy with far fewer words than I.
bump
With “Republicans” like Shrub, McQueeg and Willard, Zero could never have been elected. As for Ryan, he was Zero’s Cabana Boy.
This writer hasn't the foggiest notion about what is a "Trumpist". No other comment necessary.
The most intellectually formidable member of this last group is arguably Michael Anton
In the months leading up to the 2016 election, Anton wrote a series of essays under the pseudonym Publius Decius Mus in which he made a breathtakingly radical case for supporting Trump's campaign. He did so not in a Bannonite idiom of right-wing tabloid populism but instead in the high-minded, morally insistent style favored by those decisively influenced by Harry Jaffa,
Michael Anton so believed in Trump that he deemed to prove it by writing about it using a pseudonym. High-minded morally insistent style, my ass, he's just another GOP Establishment elite who was afraid to burn his bridges with access to political power should Trump inexplicably win the election.
Uhm ... he's not the only one using a pseudonym.
What makes him any worse than me or you or anybody else on the Internet?
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