The more we get into Trump’s term, the more I realize how much those in the Senate and House don’t really pay attention to what Trump does. They are all just doing their own little things and DGAF about what Trump does. The reason they say things like “deeply concerned” or “very troubled” is because they are unaware of what’s going on until a reporter tells them that Trump wiped his ass w/ the Constitution. Their reaction is basically like “Hmm…really? I’ll have to take a look at that. It seems troubling,” and then they forget about it until a reporter tells them the next day that Trump wiped his ass with the Constitution.
Take Ted Cruz for example. Trump said his wife isn’t hot and his father killed JFK. Yet Cruz merrily defends Trump daily and DGAF. These people are not normal in the sense of what you and I perceive as normal. There is a lot of narcissism among people in politics. Cruz supports Trump because he’s using Trump for his own personal gains. Cruz (and really all the GOP Senators) will curb stomp Trump when it’s fit to do so. But it’s not gonna be over this. I mean Trump stole $2 million from a charity for Veterans and they didn’t give a crap.
Thinking these GOP Senators are going to develop a conscious or consider this to be crossing a red line is an error. Now when they eventually do turn on Trump, you will see a lot of them revisit this and say this was when the tide turned for them. But it won’t be because they are doing the right thing. It will be because they will use it to their advantage.
There’s a lot more marginal districts in the house than there are marginal states. And I think the narrative of lots of Republicans left the house because of Trump is overblown. 34 Republicans didn’t stand for re-election in 2018 and 18 Democrats didn’t. And in the Senate you had Flake, Corker and Hatch. Given that only 1/3 of the Senate stands for re-election, you had a higher fraction of senators not standing for re-election than congressmen.
You’re making a huge tactical error combining Cruz into this. He had just spent an entire campaign slamming Trump, and probably was delusional enough to think he could win the nomination (lol). After losing, and after Trump winning, he knew that he had to go back to Texas and somehow win in 2018, a state with a large Trump margin. He didn’t want to be another 1 term Tea Party senator famous for being an idiot. He did what he did out of expedience, and still barely won.
These guys have now got the expedience game completely backward, and don’t realize the expedient play is running as fast as they can away from Trump. Trump’s base is 40 percent of voters (always has been, always will be). He has lost a lot of voters since 2016. He lost by 3 million votes, and won the Electoral College by under 100k votes across several states. I don’t get the level of fear here at all. The only thing we have to fear is a lack of free and fair elections, and the margin is probably still enough for him to not get particularly close this time.
This poor political calculation and inability to govern by the GOP is why they went from a near lock of getting 60 senate seats, and a massive advantage in the House in 2018 right after the 2016 election to keeping a small majority in the Senate (taking out most of our worst Dem senators) and getting crushed in the House. They’re now drawing live to lose the Senate in 2020, when even the rosiest prognosticators prior to the 2018 election would have said the earliest the Dems could even get it to 50/50 again would be 2022. The people around here are about as good at political calculation as the GOP over the last a little under 3 years, so we’ll see who’s right.
Not a lot of Democratic Generals. But the Republicans don’t hesitate to Swift Boat or Gold Star Family any of these military heroes. Mueller becomes a Democratic Deep State Operative.
Where more of the posters around here are wrong is in thinking that outside of a very few people the Democrats are any less partisan and any more committed to anything other than maintaining whatever power they have.
But that 40% is 85% or more of Republican primary voters. Any Republican senator that votes to convict will face a primary challenge from angry Trump loyalists who will say that their senator betrayed their president. If you think Cruz had a tough time winning re-election in 2018 just wait until his primary battle in 2023 when he has to defend removing Trump from office.
I’m very irritated by this constant incorrect framing of my argument. If you’re talking about the impeachment process as a whole, for how it’s gone so far, sure this is an accurate assessment. I’m talking about Vindman’s role in the process and how that role will play to GOP senators if he is smeared. That’s it. So, I’ll frame your framing in those terms, and if you don’t get it you never will.
We’ll put it in terms of the Rodney King beating. In this case, a person captured Rodney King being beaten by a bunch of cops on video. If you can’t convict cops here, you can’t convict them anywhere is the idea (and this was the truth fyi). That’s impeachment of Trump based on where we’re at right now (the rough transcript is the videotape). Maybe there are more senators who are willing to convict, but not a single one of them is going to tell you what they’re really thinking (outside of losers like Linzie, who I believe is a pathological liar about what’s going on in his head right now) prior to that trial.
To frame this how I’m saying, right in the middle of the video, a cop comes in and starts dragging and beating other cops away from this to stop the beating. It turns out this guy is a highly decorated Sergeant known for community outreach who has been a career cop teaching that how we police matters more than who we police. That cop becomes the star witness, because he was there and can provide proper context. So, in order for your framing to be accurate, the cop brass would have to side with the people beating King over this guy who is actually trying to change the image of the police department, and also smear this guy as being against the badge. Do you now see the difference?
There’s a big difference between the GOP having a raging hate for Hillary Clinton over someone like Biden who just doesn’t excite. Most people in the Democratic Party will not have that big of a problem pulling the lever for Joe if necessary. A huge amount of the Democratic Party had a problem with pulling the lever for Hillary. There is no allegory in this field, sorry.
Need that WWE clip here. I’m all for GOP nominating wackos for primaries. It makes it easier to beat them in a new climate, which is exactly what’s been happening ever since the initial Tea Party surge.
The only people who have anything to fear about Trump of the GOP senators right now are the ones up in 2020. By 2022, the dolts in the GOP will have already long forgotten about Trump if he’s convicted. And I’m for any change that allows GOP voters to be even more self-destructive than they already are. I even said this before, who in the current Democratic presidential field could beat McConnell in Kentucky? There isn’t a single one despite a wide disparity in views among the candidates. That’s why you have to get behind who can win there, and just hope to fan the hate against him enough to squeak out a victory vs. him.
You don’t think that primary voters in 2022 will remember that their senator voted to remove the president from office in 2020? You’re delusional. The voters will remember in 2022 and they will remember in 2024. Particularly if a Democrat wins in 2020 – “you removed Our President, banned him from holding future office, and now we’re stuck with Sanders/Pete/Liz”.
Ironically the only ones who might not face serious primary challenges are the ones standing for election in 2020, since the vote to remove might be after their primary. They would still be very vulnerable to third party challenges though.
If you’re right, it would be completely by accident and not because of anything resembling ‘not doing the right thing because of expedience’. Not doing the right thing has been absolutely crushing the GOP over the last 2 years, when they should have been crushing if they even had a single clue.
ah yes, when nunhi is wrong it is because his critics who were right all along were just right totally by accident and his spot on analysis was, in fact, correct. Obviously. But circumstances to be named later changed things in ways to be specified at a later date.