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It seems like Trump is getting his twitter back. The weird thing is I think red tribe doesn’t want him to get twitter back. I don’t. Blue tribe will put up a big fight over it but actually be very happy if he got twitter back. Then they get his tweets to rally against. For now Musks says he’s thinking about it. From a free speech absolutist view he does have to approve it. But I still want him to say no.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1593673844996288512?s=46&t=o4yJPOOQnQoAxYXvJuPdlQ
Man, I have such mixed feelings about this.
I really want Trump to get out of the fucking way. He had his shot at being the hero of the populist right, he failed comprehensively. Somehow his enemies were stronger than ever after his tenure, with an even tighter grip on the culture, the levers of power, and the minds of our youth than ever before. His entire presidency was the perfect examples of one step forward, two steps back. He simply was not the guy.
Is Desantis the guy? 70% chance he's not in my estimation. But I'm willing to give him a shot.
I'd heard some talk that after so many Trump backed candidates ate dirt in the midterms, and Desantis fucking cleaned house, that meant America was "over" Trump. But that doesn't necessarily mean he'd lose a Republican Primary. Especially not with a crowded field, and a 30% cut of the base that's ride or die for him. Republicans will have to pull the same shit the DNC pulled on Bernie, and keep some Trump adjacent candidate in the race to try to split his base, while every other nominee falls in line and endorses someone else chosen behind closed doors.
With my luck, Desantis will be the Trump adjacent candidate they use to split the base, and fucking Jeb Bush will be the anointed insider candidate.
Anyways, Trump getting back on twitter is step 1 to growing his reach again. Right now he's so marginalized only that ride or die portion really gets his messages anymore. He doesn't go viral. Barely anybody even knows what he's saying anymore, beyond second hand accounts of his "melt downs" on Truth Social. My only hope is that he has too much pride to come slinking back to Twitter without Elon issuing a personal apology for the terrible way Twitter treated him, and begging him on his hands and knees to please grace Twitter with his genius and insight again. I guess I have to further hope Elon doesn't then go and do just that.
As much as I'm a free speech guy, and thought his banning was patently ridiculous, now that he's gone, I wish he'd just stay gone. But it's looking like he's going to take the RNC down with him every bit as much as Clinton took the DNC down with her in 2016.
He appointed an unprecedented three SCOTUS judges in a single term and others. I would not call that a failure. Did other stuff too. Did he make the left worse? Possible, but correlation not causation. Of course, this was not contingent on Trump per say.
He seems even more of an 'establishment guy' than Trump.
Why would he ask or expect an apology when both he and Elon know it was the old management who banned him.
That's congress's doing, not Trump's. All he did was sit in the chair. Any old stooge could have done that, and for less!
No it is not, The president nominates the Senate approves or disapproves, and whatever else, Trump's efforts on behalf of the cause go a bit deeper than just 3 SCOTUS Justices.
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hence I wrote, "Of course, this was not contingent on Trump per say."
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What do you mean? The president does nominate the person.
Right but any conservative president would have done the same. It's congress that made sure he got to nominate three instead of two.
any other "conservative president" would have lost in 2016 making this whole point moot anyway
"if only Trump didn't have X, Y, Z, and was A, B,C, he would be great" or "he just did stuff another GOP person would have done" counterfactuals as reasons to discount things he did or put space between things you like and things you don't like aren't strong arguments because other "conservative" president or GOP nominee would have lost in 2016 and the US would have been in the 2nd term
you would prefer a nicer, polished Trump? you think another guy in his place woulda done something he did you like anyway? okay, well that guy would have lost and it would be the 2nd term of Hillary Clinton right now
I disagree. If Trump hadn't run, we could have ended up with a boring normal republican who would have almost certainly won against doomed candidate Hillary Clinton. Of course no candidate in 2016's primary was equipped to deal with his shenanigans or frankly live in the meme economy at all.
There are things I wish he'd done differently, even adjusting for our obvious political differences. I wish he'd kept turnover lower and cultivated effective leaders he could delegate to. I wish he'd handled Covid differently rather than deferring to states and letting the CDC go off on adventures. I wish he'd had a more pragmatic plan to deal with China. I wish he'd thought more carefully about his responsibility as a leader to set the stage for future leaders who aren't him.
A boring normal Republican would have been railroaded and lost because he wouldn't fight, just like Mitt Romney did in 2012 and John McCain did in 2008. And just like Mitt Romney was so mediocre the GOP couldn't take the Senate despite maybe the best metrics and seats to do so in decades, a normal Republican would not have won healthy majorities in Congress either.
If you look at the other likely Candidates in the absence of Trump, they would have lost the midwest. If they lost the midwest, they lose the election. Which one do you think would have turned unlikely voters who voted Obama in 2008 and 2012 into GOP voters? Certainly not Ted Cruz or Jeb Bush.
Trump was being impeached at the start of covid. He was regularly being threatened by his own party with removal if he changed the leadership at the CDC. Because of that, what he did was create a parallel group which oversaw stats reporting to stop the CDC from lying about it.
You may wish he did X, Y, or Z, and I certainly do, but we must remember what really happened during the COVID hysteria.
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Trump's polling and performance in the midwest, something which was necessary for the GOP candidate to win, and something with which every other candidate in the heavily contested primary did far worse in
Trump captured just enough Obama voters in the midwest to win. Which of the other likely candidates was going to do that? Not Cruz, not Rubio, not Jeb, not Kasich outside of Ohio. And that's assuming they would have performed as good as Trump did in other states outside of their "native" regions. Trump, alone, was the person pushing polices which most Americans cared about but which the other candidates were doing their best to ignore (immigration and trade being the main ones).
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Disagree, other establishment conservative presidents have made worse (especially in retrospect) selections. Remember Harriet Miers?
Isn't that shift a result of the work of the Federalist Society, which basically picked every conservative SC justice after Miers?
Partly, but no they do not pick them. Trump picked them from their recommendations. So far he is the only Republican president to commit to doing so and follow through. It's just too tempting to play patron with them.
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And yet Trump managed to not fuck it up where other establishment Republicans have, by wanting to nominate friends of friends or reward political favors.
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Nobody is saying that the Senate wasn't involved. They obviously are. @pusher_robot was pointing out that it's untrue to say that Trump wasn't involved, and that it was all Congress' doing.
Trump was given a curated list to pull names from.
Mitch held a seat and Trump did what he was told. The one, huge, unequivocally great thing he did wasn't him, because you have to be delusional at this point to think Trump is good at doing anything but trolling the hell out of the libs.
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We're evaluating Trump as a potential "leader of the populist right", and Supreme Court nominations are entirely unrelated to one's competency in that role, as Evinceo notes.
Except to the degree that you can get yourself elected as President, in which case just say that, instead of how he "appointed an unprecedented three SCOTUS judges in a single term and others".
I disagree.
The alternate explanation is that Trump (and more broadly the Tea Party) accurately identified one of the most significant in terms of attack surfaces in terms of actual damage dealt and flipped it, which is why so0 many blue/grey tribers are now desperate to paint it as a nothing-burger.
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This is why I can’t take the phrase “most important election of our lifetimes” seriously anymore. 2016 was the most important election of our lifetimes, and it’s not even close.
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I remember being quite concerned that after 8 years of the administrative state Turbulent Priest-ing Obama's enemies, that another 4 years of Hillary actively cultivating that behavior might spell the end of the republic. Of course, any Republican would probably have been enough to ward off that.
no other republican would have won
Almost any other Republican would have won. Most other Republicans would also have won the popular vote, instead of squeaking through by the skin of their teeth.
just like mitt romney
Mitt Romney didn't run in 2016, so...
and neither did any other Republican
lol
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That was McConnell's victory, not Trump's. Trump wanted people who would be "loyal" to him (he was obsessed about "loyalty" for more than he was concerned with any coherent political philosophy), but his advisors pushed him to trust McConnell. Any Republican president with a heartbeat could have done the same thing.
I wouldn't call Trump "establishment" in any sense, so I agree that Desantis is definitely more establishment than Trump. That said, Trump is a proven failure while Desantis at least has potential.
DeSantis wasn’t very establishment but going against covid. He wasn’t establishment going after LGBT stuff in school. He wasn’t establishment going after Disney.
There exists a Republican Party establishment that still firmly controls about a third of the states in the union. That is what Desantis represents. Everything he does aligns with their agenda.
That is just claiming X without proving X. DeSantis went way out on a limb re covid. He held the line for freedom when many Republicans didn’t. How is that establishment?
except Desantis did lockdown, did enforce mask mandates, did close schools, and a bunch of other covid hysteria
Noem, Abbot, Kemp, and others have similar performance
was Desantis better than your average GOP derp? yeah, but that's not saying much
in order for Desantis to "go way out on a limb re covid" compared to the establishment GOP, the establishment GOP would have to have a stark covid response position
what was that establishment position during the covid hysteria?
Okay Charlie Crist. Florida was the first state of significant population to buck the covid lockdowns. They also did a lot to prevent local municipalities from backdooring the lunacy. If you compare Abbot with DeSantis Florida was faster and more complete in return to normal.
Part of the reason the GOP became more freedom aligned re Covid was because of DeSantis.
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Can you be more specific? What are the policies where you see yourself and Trump in opposition to the GOP establishment and DeSantis?
Are you talking about Paul Ryan style fiscal conservatism, where he'll try to cut social security and medicare so he can cut taxes?
Or do you think he's faking it with his anti-illegal-immigration stance?
desantis is a neocon, his china/trade policy, his removal of confederate statues and history, having more charisma than a wet blanket, being able to win a national election to name a few
desantis doesn't have strong "stances," he makes political plays
which is why desantis was a nameless neocon dork during his 6 years in Congress (which is why the GOP essentially handed him a R+9 district), he saw how popular trump was with Republicans, and then has been going with the diet trump act since
if someone was going to attempt to supplant populist trumpism, you would go with a softer, diet trumpism while still maintaining much of the status quo nonsense
this was true when the GOP infiltrated and destroyed the tea party and it is true now
I will take Diet Trumpism with the chance of actually accomplishing anything over current Trumpism that did nothing but tweet for 4 years any day. How hard you might desire to hit doesn't mean anything if you never throw a punch.
Trump needs to go away. He had his chance. As impotent, disorganized, and completely non-insurrection-like in character as it was, he even had a kind of semi-coup (or at least semi-coup energy) available for him to work with in J6 (even if it had failed and he had simply died for it, that would have been a far more noble use of his life than anything he's ever done before or since).
(He also planned the whole thing and knew the date so he could have easily made some better coup preparations.) He chose to be lazy and incompetent, having no real plan other than tweeting as usual, and a coward, telling his followers to go home instead of rocking the system, instead (also as usual).
That's all he's ever been, a lazy coward with a big mouth, and there's no proof he's changed. At least DeSantis, despite his regrettable philosemitism, does things sometimes.
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Trump was willing to appoint conservative culture warriors and give them free reign so long as they were sufficiently loyal to him, personally.
Now sometimes those were clowns, corrupt do-nothings, or both. And a lot of the time he fired competent people for not being loyal enough. But "Mad Dog" Mattis defeated IS, Bill Barr brought back the federal death penalty, Scott Pruitt actually cut environmental regulations, and I doubt any of them would have been allowed to do so by Jeb!, even if they'd been appointed in the first place.
I do agree that had Mitt been elected in 2012, the supreme court would've overturned Roe just the same.
You're giving an awful lot of credit re ISIL to one guy, esp since the timeline is wrong: Wikipedia tells me, "Since 2015, ISIL lost territory in Iraq and Syria, including Tikrit in March and April 2015,[109] Baiji in October,[110] Sinjar in November 2015,[111][112] Ramadi in December 2015,[113] Fallujah in June 2016[114] and Palmyra in March 2017." So, they were on the way to defeat long before Mattis came along.
That's probably true.
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