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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Fri Jan 25, 2019 2:49 am 
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The Senate finally appears to be feeling enough heat to look at ending the shutdown, but that's far from dumping Trump. Until the base no longer threatens the career of any Republican who expresses misgivings about Trump, they will not stick their necks out. Even the ones representing more moderate districts don't want to draw negative attention from Fox News.

At this point it's still difficult to see what could demoralize or shrink the base down to the point where they no longer frighten Mitch McTurtle. Actual natural disasters didn't do it. Perhaps another major recession.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Fri Jan 25, 2019 4:34 pm 
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Trump folded on his wall, claims he never asked for it. The right wing lie machine mocked him for it. Number of folks with at least half a working brain who are surprised: 0.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2019 12:17 am 
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I'm interested to see if this capitulation loses him any of his core base on the extreme right. If he loses even a fraction of those, it might make him weak enough for the GOP to make a break for it.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2019 11:21 am 
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Do they expect him to win, or just try as hard as he can?

Back when in Greece Tsripas (who is a leftwing populist, no idea if populism or leftwingism played a role there) made an anti-EU-budgetrestrictions plebiscite and then folded, he did way better then his former compatriots, who objected to him folding. Presumably because his supporters wanted someone who negotiates hard, tries to get everything, but still lives in the real world and then settles for what can be reached realistically.

As a poker player i can appreciate, that first raising like you want to go all in, and then folding can be a good strategy sometimes, and i think establishment politicans sometimes get less then they could, because they only ask for stuff, that is actually realistic, so they don't look like loosers afterwards.

The big question is, if Trumps base sees things that way.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2019 9:02 pm 
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I think they expect him to win. His popularity with his core base surrounds the mythos of him being a strong man, who always wins, and never backs down, and comes out on top in every negotiation.

For him to go head-to-head with Nancy Pelosi, the most hated person among his base, and lose, is arguably pretty big.

I don't know if he'll actually lose them or not, but it's at least plausible. If he loses even a fraction of his core, it makes him much weaker.

arcosh wrote:
but still lives in the real world


That's DEFINITELY not what they want...

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2019 10:49 pm 
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The best way I heard it described is that the right is now divided between the border absolutists and the Trump loyalists. They have to choose between xenophobia and sycophancy, so half of the Fox pundits are blasting him for caving and the other half are spinning his defeat as 11 dimensional chess. Eventually the base will pick a side and the pundits will fall into line but the chaos is entertaining in the meantime.

But as for the GOP, that old joke about being chased by a bear might hold - you don't have to run faster than the bear, you just have to run faster than the other guy. If the base is mad at Trump, they still like him better than the GOP. Unless Pence starts looking like a viable alternative with mass appeal, they probably won't do anything...

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2019 3:13 pm 
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Apparently the folks who surmised that Roger Stone is utterly unimportant, and the Feds were after his devices, may well have been right. The only office in Washington that isn't leaking acknowledged that they got so much material from Stone's offices that they need more time to work through it all. This doesn't bode well for old Roger staying out of prison; if no one wants to buy, it doesn't much matter what you've got to sell.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Thu Feb 07, 2019 4:47 am 
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So, Virginia just imploded, with two top leaders admitting to cartoonish levels of racial insensitivity when they were younger, and one apparently arrogant enough to believe that mashing a crying woman's head into his crotch counts as consensual sex. We always trust the Democrats to step on their own d****.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2019 4:51 am 
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I don't know anything about that second one, but I'm not sure wearing a costume at a party 35 years ago matters more than drinking at a party did for the Republican guy who's now a Justice.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2019 11:36 pm 
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And the Republican pretender to the throne apparently not only was involved in such activities, but published them. Gotta lover Virginia, really you do.

Though I suppose full marks should be given to the traitors for hire that organized the hit on all three men sitting between a Republican and the governorship of Virginia. Kudos, fellow.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Sat Feb 09, 2019 6:01 am 
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Silly Green Monkey wrote:
I don't know anything about that second one, but I'm not sure wearing a costume at a party 35 years ago matters more than drinking at a party did for the Republican guy who's now a Justice.

It wouldn't have been that damaging of a scandal in the past but the Democrats have taken a hard line against racism so they would look like hypocrites for not punishing said officials; it's their version of a Family Values Republican having a gay affair.

And yes, Virginia is now a bipartisan dumpster fire. It might be quicker to ask which politicians haven't dressed up in blackface.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2019 10:21 pm 
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A state of emergency. From what I've heard, the 37th currently in force. It's going to be amusing watching the Republicans weasel and squirm over this one. They can't pander to the fools in Trump's base and avoid a lethal precedent at the same time, but boy will they try...

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2019 12:50 am 
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I'm not entirely sure what the big deal is about this State of Emergency since presidents seem to have been in the habit of declaring them for everything from hurricanes to severe flu seasons. Is this really the first time any president has declared one for politically expedient nonsense? A few weeks ago, most of the Republicans and quite a few Democrats were eager to have Trump declare a State of Emergency because this would give them a out of the shutdown by punting the wall to the courts. Most of them seemed to believe that Trump would get slapped down by lawsuits, which would allow him to shift the blame and save face. What changed?

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2019 8:23 pm 
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Since then he got crushed in the shutdown fight; there's no need to worry about that now.

What's new, indeed a complete precedent setter, is that he started his declaration by admitting that there is no emergency. This is nothing but a power grab and a political stunt by someone desperately flailing around to keep from getting impeached and convicted, which will happen within hours of his base turning on him (which he figures, probably rightly, they'll do if he concedes he's lost on the wall).

What makes the Republicans in Congress (especially the Senate) scared, aside from having no choice but to go on record as voting for or against this declaration in the next few days, is that the sex offender on the Supreme Court and his buddies might uphold Trump in this if they chicken out and don't vote against him. If that happens things get numerous kinds of interesting.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2019 3:59 am 
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If they were willing to let Trump grab power to get out of a self-inflicted political bind, they can hardly clutch their pearls when he does it merely to save his poor ego. It's also rich, these Republicans suddenly becoming afraid of what the justices they appointed might do.

If the Supreme Court really is reckless enough to hobble checks and balances for the sake of a presidential vanity project, then we can expect the Republicans to double down on their efforts to lock in their structural electoral advantage.

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