Not only a weird season.... but probably the last one we will ever see (fitting, somehow). Chaos and crass rules in Amerika now. As proven by Donald Trump.
Just saw a video on Fox of a montage of Donald’s appearances... where every one had to have words bleeped out where he used profanity. Real statesmen like Ronald Reagan are no doubt roiling in their graves at the thought of someone that crude even standing a chance at the presidency....much less winning it.
In fairness, we should be blaming the left, as Obama and his puppeteers are the ones who truly set the stage for this fiasco.
I’m finding the current over-boiling here on FR edifying, though. It seems a good cross-section of what’s happening in the Republican electorate at the moment, and is utterly unfiltered, and clearly from the heart. It’s also clear that almost everyone has been misunderstanding the base, and most likely, that’s been going on for years.
For a long time, political junkies (I’ll cop to that lable) on the right have been engaged in endless squabbling, and occasional progress on the conservative/libertarian spectrum, and evolving a broad based conservative consensus that fuses both a principled commitment to conservative principles (abortion, traditional morality, religious freedom), and an energized economic libertarianism (limited government, reduced regulation and taxes and opposition to trade protectionism etc.).
What we didn’t see coming was the populist center right, who are justifiably angry at the endless betrayals of the GOPe who campaign on the platform of fighting the left, and then immediately capitulate when we send them to Washington. Rubio’s betrayal with the gang of 8 bill is only the most prominent and easily understood example of this.
Ideologically, the problem is this newly vocal, and newly united cohort isn’t particularly conservative, at least if we can agree on how that term has come to be understood over the past couple of decades. Repeal Obamacare? Sure, I’m all in. But replace it with single-payer? No thankyouverymuch, that’s not what we had in mind at all.
Even worse, we’ve got a slick, self-serving demagogue giving voice to even the legitimate complaints, while trashing the standard bearing of traditional conservatism. This will not end well, and the opposition is laughing as we destroy ourselves.