Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Gorsameth]

They don't stand against Trump, because Trump stands for everything the GOP has stood for since forever. The racism, the self enrichment, even attempting to remain in power by nefarious means.

What they stand against is Trump being so open about it so they can't feint ignorance while appealing to independents.

[Lanrefni]

I would not be surprised if his career as a politician was over entirely after this debacle. The past year and a half has been a trainwreck for the piece of shit (basically ever since he decided to poke Disney), and all his campaign did was expose him as a useless loser for the entire country to see. His only hope is that the Democratic party in Florida continues to be as ineffectual and stupid as they have been. But even then, some other Republican could probably easily unseat him, since no one cares about covid anymore (his only claim to fame) and once all the recent sabotage to the education system of the state starts to tank those stats as well (as that was the only other thing he could brag about).



Because their only beef with Trump is how he destroyed their optics game. They support every policy he's enacted, because none of that came from his mind in the first place. They're just upset that Trump made it obvious for everyone else to see how fascistic and toxic the party is...rather than being able to hide it behind the veneer of respectability that they've maintained for decades.

Desantis is truly fucked politically,he's on his second term and cannot run for a third consecutive term,he has to sit out the next election for governor due to Florida's very very clear constitutional restrictions,after 4 years out of office he will be less relevant than New Coke to Republicans.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

The proof is whether they end up voting for Trump or not.

There are numerous Republicans who don't like Trump. But the reason they end up with someone like Trump is that they're still willing to hold their nose and vote for him. The system doesn't care that they technically don't like him, a vote is a vote, done in protest or not.

Well, it would seem that a lot of them didn't vote for Trump last time around.

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One has to wonder why they are/vote Republican, then.

All the party's stood for, for decades, is inflicting harm and suffering on non-whites, non-cishets, and non-Christians. They've been the white supremacist Christian nationalist party since at least Nixon, and unapologetically increasingly fascistic since Bush Jr.

If you're consistently willing to sit down with fascistic white supremacists and Christian nationalists and work together with them on their policy goals and call them colleagues if not friends, how are you really meaningfully different?

Because it's not just Trump. Trump's just a stupid avatar who told them to stop being ashamed of being monsters. So they ripped off the masks and showed us who they've literally always been. The primary change in the Republicans over the last 25 years or so is that they're more open about their goals, and less willing to accept compromise. They haven't actually fallen into an ethical or moral hole. They were always in that hole. They dug themselves that hole, and have raised their families in that hole. That hole is Republicanism.

I've never said "these are good people"... I said "they don't support Trump"

[s_bushido]

Desantis is truly fucked politically,he's on his second term and cannot run for a third consecutive term,he has to sit out the next election for governor due to Florida's very very clear constitutional restrictions,after 4 years out of office he will be less relevant than New Coke to Republicans.

I'd forgotten about term limits, not gonna lie.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

Desantis is truly fucked politically,he's on his second term and cannot run for a third consecutive term,he has to sit out the next election for governor due to Florida's very very clear constitutional restrictions,after 4 years out of office he will be less relevant than New Coke to Republicans.

Well, the thing of that is his term is until Jan 2027...so he won't have 4 years out of office...if he decides to try again in a Trump free environment in 2028. I'm not saying his chances would be much better though.

[Redwyrm]

The scary thing is, who does Trump listen to for policy advice if he is re-elected. Last time he had McConnell siting on his shoulder steering things. I am afraid it's going to be Qanon bottom of the barrel critters.

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I'd forgotten about term limits, not gonna lie.

Don't be surprised if they don't try to re-write the Florida constitution to allow him to run for a third term. They ignored the provision that he can't hold the governor's office and run for president this time around.

[Malkiah]

The Lincoln Project along with Chris Christie would seem to be proof otherwise. There are Republicans that are not on "Team Trump".

none of those people are against a single policy, they just don't like that trump has the republican mask off about it.
that doesn't counter my point at all, in fact it pretty much confirms it.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

none of those people are against a single policy, they just don't like that trump has the republican mask off about it.
that doesn't counter my point at all, in fact it pretty much confirms it.

I wasn't talking about policy though. I was strictly refering to them not being on "Team Trump"

This is not me saying "some Republicans are actually really great guys"

[Nymrohd]

Holding abhorrent views is not inherently fascist though. This is not just about taking the mask off, it is about openly admitting you want to destroy democracy. Sure the GOP was OK with eroding it, but Trump and MAGA want it gone

[Jastall]

Holding abhorrent views is not inherently fascist though. This is not just about taking the mask off, it is about openly admitting you want to destroy democracy. Sure the GOP was OK with eroding it, but Trump and MAGA want it gone

Slight addendum; they're totally OK with democracy when it goes their way. It only becomes bad when the results don't suit them. Those MAGA people are as unprincipled as any I've ever seen; feeling victorious is the only thing that ever seems to motivate them. What said "victory" actually means, what is its cost, what it's over, doesn't matter. It's all about "winning", so elections are cool and fair when you win them and bad and fake when you lose them. It's the mentality of a six years old, but it's still that simple.

[Sorshen]

"DeSanctimonious" as spineless as they get.

[Gigantique]

Well, it amounts to the same thing. It might even be a chicken/egg situation. Are they not strong enough because they aren't brave enough...or are they not brave enough because they aren't strong enough?

They've cultivated a voterbase gullible and emotionally loaded enough to believe any nonsense thrown their way and now that voterbase has become a runaway train since Trump supercharged those traits and made said voterbase openly exhibit all the worst traits the Republican Party has spent decades balancing around on a knife's edge.

There's no candidate that wins on the more abstract "keep our borders safe" as long as there's a Trump that straight up says "All Mexicans are murderapists build a giant wall that they'll pay for bigly MAGA!" as the frankly low IQ voters will just go for the explicit guy instead.

They lay their bed and deliberately laid it using shitstained bedding and now they get to sleep in it. Just hope it doesn't drag their damn country down with it as they make worse and worse compromises to try and ride this runaway train voterbase.

[Breccia]

Well, the DeSantis campaign is officially over, but at least he went out on a really classy note.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts

-- Winston Churchill

That's nice. So I suppose--

"Churchill never said that."

You again!

"This quote, and the similiar 'Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts', are not attributed to Churchill. The International Churchill Society themselves handled this back in 2013. Even if DeSantis was following the conventional opinion that Churchill did say that, the fact that the authority on the subject had specifically refuted it a decade ago should have been enough to either use a different quote, reword it to sound new, or just not attribute it at all. There are speechwriters on his team, they are paid to know better. It is more reasonable to believe this quote came from an American basketball coach than Winston Churchill, because at least John Wooden's family hasn't specifically and directly denied the quote was his."

We base this on careful research in the canon of fifty million words by and about Churchill, including all of his books, articles, speeches and papers.

How well-regarded is this International Churchill Society?

"The NYTimes also cited them."

Ah.

"And PolitiFact."

Fair enough.

"And Forbes."

Okay, I get it!

"At the end of the day, getting the author of a quote wrong is not really that big of a deal. Not when compared to DeSantis' other demonstrable issues that caused his aspirations to end in the first place, getting humiliated by Trump and then endorsing him anyhow. This failure to do a few seconds' worth of research is just the door hitting him on the ass on the way out."

[Malkiah]

Holding abhorrent views is not inherently fascist though. This is not just about taking the mask off, it is about openly admitting you want to destroy democracy. Sure the GOP was OK with eroding it, but Trump and MAGA want it gone

i disagree, because everything that trump is now is everything US conservatism has been for *at least* the last 160 years, if not longer.
there is not one single aspect of trump, his supporters, or those in orbit around him that is any way new to US politics, it's simply the same culture-war "blame the other" distract the lower class so they don't notice they're being robbed by the upper class predatory capitalistic Manifest Destiny bullshit the US has been peddling since the end of WWII.

conservatives of any stripe in any country and any culture hate democracy, that's why you rarely see fascist dictators go "oops oh well i lost the election guess i better relinquish my iron grip of the populace".
being anti-democracy and pro-authoritarian is the sine qua non of social and political conservatism, no matter what era or region of the world you're in.
it's as baked into the process as the notion of there being a god is baked into the notion of religion.

the ONLY thing that has changed in the last 10 years in the US is that prior to this the republican party put on a business suit and a mask made out of human flesh and said shit like "it's morning in america again" to get the idiot proles to go along with their own subjugation.
this is a trick that US conservatives figured out about 200 years ago, that the populace is profoundly stupid and you can get them to actively participate in their own oppression if you toss some catchy slogans at them and tell them their woes are the fault of somebody brown.
but, the trick they were using was to get the masses to go along with effectively proto-fascism, excepting that instead of the fascism glorifying a single leader it was glorifying "infinite and never ending growth" vulture capitalism.

conservatives view 'democracy' the same way they view their abrahamic-christian interpretation of 'free will' - it's a system where everyone is free and unencumbered to make their own choices, so long as those people only make the choice that the ones in charge like, and if they don't make that choice they'll be horribly punished and brutalized for it... but hey man it's totally your free choice.

[Nymrohd]

i disagree, because everything that trump is now is everything US conservatism has been for *at least* the last 160 years, if not longer.
there is not one single aspect of trump, his supporters, or those in orbit around him that is any way new to US politics, it's simply the same culture-war "blame the other" distract the lower class so they don't notice they're being robbed by the upper class predatory capitalistic Manifest Destiny bullshit the US has been peddling since the end of WWII.

conservatives of any stripe in any country and any culture hate democracy, that's why you rarely see fascist dictators go "oops oh well i lost the election guess i better relinquish my iron grip of the populace".
being anti-democracy and pro-authoritarian is the sine qua non of social and political conservatism, no matter what era or region of the world you're in.
it's as baked into the process as the notion of there being a god is baked into the notion of religion.

the ONLY thing that has changed in the last 10 years in the US is that prior to this the republican party put on a business suit and a mask made out of human flesh and said shit like "it's morning in america again" to get the idiot proles to go along with their own subjugation.
this is a trick that US conservatives figured out about 200 years ago, that the populace is profoundly stupid and you can get them to actively participate in their own oppression if you toss some catchy slogans at them and tell them their woes are the fault of somebody brown.
but, the trick they were using was to get the masses to go along with effectively proto-fascism, excepting that instead of the fascism glorifying a single leader it was glorifying "infinite and never ending growth" vulture capitalism.

conservatives view 'democracy' the same way they view their abrahamic-christian interpretation of 'free will' - it's a system where everyone is free and unencumbered to make their own choices, so long as those people only make the choice that the ones in charge like, and if they don't make that choice they'll be horribly punished and brutalized for it... but hey man it's totally your free choice.

The ideas where there for quite a long while I agree and if they had a chance to enact them they would. But I don't think before Trump they would be willing to take down democracy itself.

As for the idea that the US conservatives figured any of that out . . . all of this was present in Athenian democracy or really ANY other democracy ever.

[Gorsameth]

The ideas where there for quite a long while I agree and if they had a chance to enact them they would. But I don't think before Trump they would be willing to take down democracy itself.

As for the idea that the US conservatives figured any of that out . . . all of this was present in Athenian democracy or really ANY other democracy ever.

I think they were willing to take down democracy, and one could argue the various forms of gerrymandering and voter suppression are exactly that.

But I don't think they thought they could get away with simply declaring someone else won the election. Until Trump almost did.

[Nymrohd]

Until Trump almost did.

Almost? Trump absolutely said he won. Multiple times, never retracted.

[Edge-]

Well, the DeSantis campaign is officially over, but at least he went out on a really classy note.


-- Winston Churchill

That's nice. So I suppose--

"Churchill never said that."

He'll be keeping Herman Cain company in the afterlife, what with the misattribution of quotes.

Didn't he have a staff? Don't those staff have phones with access to the internet?

Donald sleepwalks his way to the nomination.

[Redwyrm]

He'll be keeping Herman Cain company in the afterlife, what with the misattribution of quotes.

Didn't he have a staff? Don't those staff have phones with access to the internet?

Donald sleepwalks his way to the nomination.

Hopefully more states begin removing Trump from the ballots. And not just blue states. We will need purple states to throw him off as well.

[Benggaul]

Almost? Trump absolutely said he won. Multiple times, never retracted.

I believe they meant that Trump almost got away with it, not that he almost said it.

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Hopefully more states begin removing Trump from the ballots. And not just blue states. We will need purple states to throw him off as well.

Don't count on it unless and until he's convicted. And even then he won't be held off in GOP states (and probably swing states).