In your case, I call you a RINO because you're obsessed with the game of politics, and your team winning it, while ignoring the reality that the opposition isn't playing by the same rules you are anymore.
I see. Well, as I said, I had a suspicion your definition of RINO was quite different from the commonly understood one (i.e., someone who presents as a Republican but consistently votes like a Democrat). But apparently your definition is “Anyone who continues to play by the rules and the Constitution because their fidelity to it is stronger than to any one person.”
I’m fully aware that the Democrats are playing fast and loose with the rules. But I also know that the majority of the American public is opposed to that, and that going completely outside the rules only leads to even more harm. If a RINO is “someone who doesn’t believe in shitting all over the Constitution”, well, then yeah I guess I’m guilty.
So much for a fair and impartial judge to make a ruling. Someone that biased should have recused himself.
**Blows whistle and throws yellow flag** Ad hominem attack, five-yard penalty, replay first down.
Anyway, you may be interested to know that the judge was a Trump appointee, and that he only got irked when he asked the Trump team where they disagreed with the facts of the case as argued by the Democrats’ team, (i.e., what is the basis of your case against them). Naturally the judge was quite surprised (and displeased) when the Trump team said “Actually, we don’t dispute the facts they argue, we want to argue over a couple of technicalities that are a sideshow.”
So I don’t know about you, but judges
really don’t like it when someone wastes their time given their workload. And yes, that can occasionally come out in their opinions as delivered.
Not really, so I’ll ask again. What specific issues are there in U.S. elections boards’ procedures compared to other developed nations, and how do you propose they be rectified? Again, the U.S. isn’t a third world nation (hand-wringing aside). And it certainly has a more robust tradition than Gabon.
Nah. I don't buy that for a second.
Why not? Your complaints about Big Tech, Big Media, etc, coupled with a
very charged-up Democratic base, as well as the Chamber of Commerce turning against the GOP, along with a big shift in independent voters would indicate to most people that, yeah, that would do the job. Please explain why it wouldn’t.
As I said, we'll see what happens when the next vote cycle starts appearing.
Indeed we will. Though I would still point out that weakening your own side only helps the Democrats, so I still think it’s a terrible idea.
A good indicator of who'll vote for for in good amounts. Biden's rallies were anaemic if I want to be generous.
Actually, they’re not. They’re made-for-TV spectacles where the crowds are pre-screened to make sure only the highest-energy supporters are admitted while keeping out those who are less so, not to mention political opponents trying to sneak in and disrupt the proceedings. Not that it’s inherently wrong to do that; every politician has done it over the years and it’s been part of campaigning for who knows how long. But to use it as a measurement for voter turnout is completely useless, because rallies are a propaganda tool.
The WSJ? Seriously? I'd trust them to speak impartially on Trump as I would a Stormfront writer to speak about the Jews impartially. The second link? Oh no, that means absolutely nothing. Again, rinos exist and selective edits from a media that has near universally derided Trump for five years are not compelling sources.
“I can’t refute these statements so I’m going to attack the sources” is not a winning argument in the eyes of the average human.
Someone who claims to be a republican but sides with the democrats. Mitt Romney would be a good case in point.
Other than the impeachment votes (which were about Trump and his behavior specifically rather than broader political issues), Romney’s been pretty consistently conservative in voting. About the only significant difference between him and Trump besides personal issues is that Romney tended to oppose Trump’s big spending plans, but that’s because big spending is generally recognized as a Democratic thing.
Someone like John McCain on the other hand, yes you could make an argument he was a RINO since he bucked the party on a number of issues. Romney…not so much.
Or, let’s look at a comparison between Liz Cheney and Elise Stefanik (and for the record, I have no issues with both and think Stefanik is a critical part of the GOP going forward). Cheney got labeled as a RINO despite the fact that she voted in line with Trump’s wishes 93% of the time, vs only 77% for Stefanik. Now, I wouldn’t consider either one a RINO unless the definition is “Anyone who refuses to kiss Trump’s ass and stroke his ego.”
Are you legitimately trying to argue that people who like Trump are a cult? Trump's biggest strength is that he can make people like him. Do you recall when he made a state of the union and he had AOC and the rest of the moral busy bodies cheering "USA! USA! USA!" Do you have the same opinion on the democrats who do the same for Fauci, Biden, Obama and Clinton?
I wouldn’t really say Trump can make people like him, given how his favorability ratings were generally super-low among independents. As for the cheering, I didn’t know “Trump” was spelled “U-S-A”. Though USA is spelled “U-S-A” so perhaps they were cheering for the country as a whole as opposed to one man? I take it that possibility didn’t cross your mind?
As for the messianic views of others:
Biden: I haven’t seen
anyone who is actually a fan of the man himself, and that includes Delaware Democrats. He got the job as basically a compromise candidate because the candidate who
did charge up the crowds was Bernie, and the average American is rightly worried that Bernie would fuck up beyond belief.
Fauci and Obama: Oh hell yes I mock the Democrats. I just don’t do it here because this isn’t a thread about that, it’s a thread about Trump specifically.
Clinton: Not sure whether you mean Bill or Hillary but if the former, I don’t see anyone who’s done that in the past 15 years, and if the latter, it’s less Clinton herself who was popular vs the idea of The First Woman President. I never saw any support I could describe as “cult like” other than rallies, which, as I said about Trump’s earlier, are specifically designed as propaganda tools.
Unfortunately for you, that leader looks to be Trump for the foreseeable future. He energised the republican base and did a far better job than Biden has done and Biden, the guy who can barely speak coherently, is humiliating the US on the world stage has single-handedly undone almost all of the good Trump did. Those jobs he brought back from car manufacturing? Already looking to go back to Mexico and other countries. Keystone pipeline, an environmentally friendly means of transporting oil across the country (and the tens of thousands of jobs it would have created) gone. Oil prices, food prices etc, gone. Illegal immigration, after promising them that if he won, he'd let them in, one of his campaign points, nah. Now they're asking them not to try crossing the boarder after the migration housing facilities were overloaded and new ones are having to be built to cope. But it's okay, mean tweets man is gone.
This is probably going to shock you, so I hope you don’t have a heart attack reading this. But I agree with this part of your post. I have commented a couple of times on Biden’s various idiocies, and I am equally frustrated. I just don’t comment on this much because when four people have already said what I’m thinking in a thread, why should I comment as opposed to giving those four posters likes?
And this is why I roll my eyes whenever I get attacked for criticizing Trump, because there is such a thing as agreeing with someone while disliking them personally. Trump himself never seems to understand this, and it seems you and Terthna don’t understand that, either.
I don't think you quite understand the appeal of Trump, that he was willing to "settle scores" and go after the left was one of the reasons he was so well liked. The left have been engaging a culture war for decades and he seemed to be only republican willing to stand up to them and tell them to fuck off. Also, Trump was incredibly successful, people were earning more money, American companies were being forced to operate out of the US via sanctions. He tried closing ports to China near two days after the China Virus was announced as being serious. He brokered peace deals in the Middle East, Serbia/Kosovo, N. Korea and S. Korea. He tried lessening American involvement in the Middle East and get soldiers out of there. He made NATO countries actually pay their fair share. He was right about the anti-Malaria drug, he was (potentially and likely) to be correct that the China Virus was engineered in a lab. There were no Russian bounties on US soldiers. Multiple, deep probes into his history turning out to be an absolute nothingburger except for the prodigious waste of money. Him having to declare a human emergency to get proper funding for the boarder. He got Mexico to have their army defend the border. Hell, them trying to impeach him for his call to the president of the Ukraine was exactly what Biden did and nothing happened from that. The peace deals alone are monumental enough things to have happened and the latter show that he was either miraculously lucky or far more canny than people give him credit for.
Oh, I understand Trump’s appeal, and it may shock you to know I actually was initially quite pleased with the approach he took in taking the Left head-on, as well as his efforts at outreach to minorities, and I hope other GOP candidates will follow his lead in that.
Likewise, I was (still am, actually) quite supportive of the positions on the issues you list (except the two Koreas, since nothing actually came of that. Still, points for effort). And yes, the whole impeachment stunt was just that, a stunt. But a wiser man would have known that it's a bad idea to give your opponents ammunition by just shooting your mouth off thoughtlessly, depriving them of even the ability to vote for such proceedings.
Having said all that, while one can't expect a president to do everything, a president is required to keep an eye in general on what's going on rather than just binging on cable news. This isn't the Trump Organization, where the guy at the top days "Do this" and the subordinates do it no questions asked. The federal government consists of three separate and co-equal branches, so Trump can't just say "Do this" and expect it to be done. It requires negotiating with Congress, having it vetted by lawyers to make sure it's constitutional, and if it's a controversial issue, then making such a case to the American public since he ultimately works FOR US. It's a cliche to say "public servant" but Trump is ultimately accountable to us, and that includes having to work on an equal footing.
Remember, this is a guy who complained that the job was a lot harder than he thought and got mocked (and rightly so) for it...yeah, it IS difficult because you have all these competing interests and different things you have to do, and it requires you to be actively involved. It's why Obama, the Bushes, Clinton, etc, all looked like hell when they finish their terms in office...the work required to be successful is so stressful that it visibly ages one. And while I'm sure that every president from Washington on has privately griped about it being a pain in the ass, as one of Trump's predecessors said "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen." Trump apparently didn't believe any hard work was required (he was noted for having commented about the TVs in the Oval Office and saying all Obama did was watch college basketball all day), when it's pretty fucking clear from photos over the course of the latter's presidency that he was doing anything BUT lounging around (as an addendum, I will say I always rolled my eyes at ESPN's coverage of Obama's bracket picks for March Madness because I thought that was incredibly stupid).
Then you have the time where Trudeau made fun of Trump while they were waiting for him at a NATO-related reception for the way he did press conferences...and Trump's response was to throw a tantrum and leave the series of meetings. That's not considered acceptable behavior by normal human beings, and in political leaders it's even more unacceptable. Rather, it's the sort of immaturity one normally only sees in small children.
And in a fortuitous coincidence, National Review's Jim Geraghty's Morning Jolt today discusses this in a broader piece on media insanity/misbehavior
When government is boring, it is easier to avoid scrutiny.
www.nationalreview.com
So, yeah, I don't discount that Trump did some good things, and if you were to look around other threads on here, you'd see that I credit him where credit is due. But that doesn't mean I give him a free pass on the things I don't like, and foremost among them is his way of running things, which has consistently backfired because he's not very good. And I don't mean just his presidency: if you look at the various business ventures he's tried that have cratered, you see a pattern. Or his ongoing obsessions over minor things because of a perceived slight against him, as opposed to bigger issues like checking the political opposition.
Trump's pronouncements are generally treated on this thread as the gospel truth, when in reality, as with any other source, there are inherent biases on the part of the author. And as with any good analysis of a subject, one has to take those biases into account and compare and contrast them with other sources (taking their biases into account as well) to get a clear picture.
Otherwise this thread turns into a mirror universe of threads on other sites.