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I agree with the diagnosis, I just don't respect the participants.
They had a choice between a leader who was personally conservative and a leader who would drag their name through the mud while not actually accomplishing any of their goals while wasting 20 years of organizing, fundraising, and a unique cultural moment.
It would be one thing if it was a Machiavellian type who carefully hid his true nature but it was in fact the opposite of that, and everyone else was screaming about it at the top of their lungs. Unfortunately, noticing is woke and half the point of electing trump is to cut off your nose to spite someone elses face, so it is what it is.
Basically: "I'm easily fooled and refuse to learn from things that just happened to me" isn't a reasonable defense.
Reversing Roe v. Wade is a real win. Rooting out gender theory and DEI is a real win. Gutting much of the permanent bureaucracy, which drags society left regardless of the president, is costly but also a real win.
The folks who called even Mitt Romney a Nazi were going to throw mud at anyone who vaguely looked like he might try these things. Some of the criticism (not all) is genuinely deserved in Trump's case – but, deserved or not, it was already priced in.
He didn't do any of those things, and also they are impossible to do!
Roe V Wade is gone, and abortion rights are +- 90% as available as before, and the issue is more popular than ever.
Gender theory is not rooted out even a little, the rightists landed a plane on the Lincoln and declared victory without checking if they actually won anything.
The permanent bureaucracy is still there! It is reduced in some places, strengthened in others, and still present throughout all the areas where it is actually providing motion: every private company.
DEI is the biggest joke. DEI as it pertains to race is a fake and gay sop thrown out to the poor browns of the US as a symbolic gesture, it is a free way to get buy in from that part of the population, a little tiny minstrel dance the huhwiaghts can do to win some easy points. They place where it actually makes a difference is with White Women, who are exactly as likely to benefit from it now is they were 10 years ago.
He accomplished not a god damn thing, he is going to run the movement into the ground and his lickspitles will deserve the humilation that they will never feel "Because the deep state stopped him bro, it was the deep state, the demons and the ghosts did it, imaterial spirits make my retarded ideas fail to work bro!"
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What good is a leader that's personally conservative, if he'll let your kids get transed, and import 7 zillion immigrants?
For all is faults, Trump did do more than any "conservative" leader I watched over my lifetime. The 180 on the war with Iran is a disaster, but that idea seems to be coming from the faction of the conservative movement you're actually praising, so I have no idea what your issue is.
I didn't mean to mislead: I think conservatives are all wrong or gritting. There are no conservative politicians or intellectuals that are worth a damn anymore, they all became centrists or libertarians when Trump became the golden calf that at which the popular right offers sacrifice.
I just think it's funny that they blew their shot so hard; this was possibly the best time in US history to get everything they want, and instead they are going to get less than nothing.
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