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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2017 6:34 pm 
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It's not quite as simple as that. Granted that roughly 90% of state level Republican professionals refused to denounce Trump's openly racist white base and his blatant appeals to them when asked, but we saw the big name national level GOP politicians do it (not that this was much of a profile in courage; even David Dukes said they didn't mean it). They had to . Trump's entire base is neither a ruling nor an electing coalition. For the Republicans to survive as a national party they need to keep the soft racists and selfish middle class voters in the tent, and those folks hate to identify with the Klan and it's fellow travelers. Basically, to the extent that Trump succeeds in forcing the Republicans to openly cater to the racist right, he's going to split the party's electorate and reduce the GOP to the Dixiecrats.

What makes this interesting is that he has no choice. If Trump loses the spiteful and/or openly racist white voters then he's finished. Which might make what happened in Phoenix bode ill for him if it's not a purely local effect.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Tue Aug 29, 2017 1:35 am 
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That's why even Bannon is smart enough to distance himself from the blatant white supremacists. But the regular GOP voters will enthusiastically support every bigoted policy of Trump and Jeff Sessions as long as it has an ostensibly non-bigoted rationale.

Muslim ban => National security
Voter ID laws => Preventing widespread voter fraud
Militarization of the police => Tough on crime
Transgender ban in military => Military readiness
Revoking DACA => Rule of law
Restricting coverage of contraceptives => Religious freedom

Bannon just wants to graft this package onto a mercantilist agenda of protectionism, isolationism and economic populism (excluding immigrants) instead of free-market orthodoxy. The soft bigots will still cheer when the red meat gets thrown their way as long as it comes with pro-forma denunciations of burning crosses and Nazi salutes, because we're not racist, we just think that it's people's own fault if they're too poor and lazy to register to vote correctly.

The self-interested middle class voters may be more likely to waver because they never too keen on Trump to begin with, they convinced themselves that Hillary was worse. Bannon's not interested in them though. I don't think he really cares about assembling a ruling coalition anymore, he's interested in profiting by dragging US politics in a European right-wing direction.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Wed Sep 06, 2017 9:36 pm 
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Trump was so desperate for a win that he did a deal with the Democrats. That's impressive. What I'm waiting to see is if the Republicans (or enough Republicans) in Congress go along with it. Whether or not, it promises to be quite a show.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Wed Sep 06, 2017 11:31 pm 
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What, jerking the DACA kids around wasn't a big enough win for him?

Trump will probably renege on his deal with the Dems as soon as he figures out that Fox News is yelling at him.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2017 4:46 am 
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So it appears that Trump's deal with the Democrats was motivated in large part by his pique at Mitch and Paul for failing to pass health care. The far-right Congresscritters are apoplectic. Breitbart is having a fit. Not sure where rank and file Trump voters are at, there's probably some hoping it's all some kind of Jedi mind trick and a bunch more who aren't paying attention.

Wonder how long this will last? I'll believe it's real when I see the Dream Act on the floor.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2017 3:05 pm 
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45 was desperate for any "win" he could get.

Remember, he's not a politician. He's a reality TV Star. He wanted a 'ratings boost' and got it with the win about the debt ceiling. now he sees the first GOOD press about him in almost 9 months and he wants more.

he doesn't know/care that the GOP will eat him alive if he goes further to the left.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2017 10:33 am 
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Is he really getting a lot of positive coverage from this? The right wing media is flipping out and the left wing media is mostly sceptical, that I've seen. I don't have American cable or network TV though.

He's also strongly motivated by spite. Right now Trump is angry at Ryan, McConnell and Sessions, but Dems are gonna piss him off sooner or later and he'll turn on them. I just don't know when.

I also can't see how the Democrats are going to get an immigration bill passed while in the minority. Can they get enough moderate Republicans to sign on? If the drafted a bill, can they get Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell to bring it up for a vote? I thought those two will only put something up for a vote if the majority of Republicans support it.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Mon Sep 25, 2017 1:27 am 
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Republicans, give up on the health care repeal already. It's obvious you guys have no idea what you're doing. Turning Medicaid into a slush fund for states? That's the best you've got? Paul Ryan and John McCain are out, so it looks like it's down to whether Lisa Murkowski or Susan Collins jumps first. The attempts to bribe Alaska are so obvious they may as well have blinking lights on.

Although it might be moot if Trump manages to start a nuclear war with North Korea while everybody's busy watching him feud with football players.

We long ago passed the point where all TV comedians have to do is state the facts.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Mon Sep 25, 2017 7:35 pm 
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I really wonder what they thought would happen.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Mon Sep 25, 2017 8:14 pm 
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Perhaps the more surprising thing is that they got within 1 or 2 votes of passage with this series of absurd bills. Naked partisanship has gotten them pretty far. In this bizarro world, they had a not unreasonable expectation of it working.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2017 4:18 am 
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Some of it could be "I don't really want that bill to pass, but others are going to bring it down anyway, so i let them do it and look loyal".

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2017 5:35 am 
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arcosh wrote:
Some of it could be "I don't really want that bill to pass, but others are going to bring it down anyway, so i let them do it and look loyal".

That's what it seems like. A game of chicken at the highest levels of government.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2017 10:00 am 
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Yes that's what it looks like, if elephants play chicken.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2017 8:20 pm 
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Hey, the donors are starting to turn on the corporate wing of the party. They've got to flail around pointlessly to generate the appearance of trying to do something or they'll lose serious money.

That aside, there's a U.S. law which says only U.S. flagged shipping can carry cargo point to point between American ports. This law was waived by Trump for hurricane relief in (Republican white folk inhabited) Florida and Texas. Trump has refused to waive it for relief supplies to (Democratic non-white folk inhabited) Puerto Rico; though he has stated that he will get around to asking Congress for aid to the island, which has no electricity and scarce potable water, in a week or two. Presumably the Republican majority in both houses will get right on it.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2017 9:27 pm 
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What exactly does Puerto Rico get to vote for anyway? They don't have Senate representatives. They can't vote for the President. They get some representation in Congress but apparently they're pretty powerless? Puerto Rico's getting shafted because it's basically a colony. Nobody ever gives a crap about those. Most Americans, from both parties, don't know a thing about it. Out of sight, out of mind.

I vaguely remember that when I started college, they sent the Puerto Rican students to international orientation with furriners like me. This was a liberal college in deep blue state. I didn't find out until years later that Puerto Rico was not actually a different country.

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