Again, there is almost no popular NeverTrump constituency. Whenever you have a Republican president, you have a crew of self-identified Republicans who are dissatisfied; you have an intersecting crew who will (in a given year) vote for the Democratic candidate when one is presented. Some of them are legacy Republicans who have disliked every Republican presidential candidate for the last 40 years and some have idiosyncratic objections. Their number is consistently around 10% of self-identified Republicans. The level of disaffection among Republicans is the same as it was during the three previous Republican administrations.
What you do have (beginning with the Obamacon phenomenon in 2008) is a crew of elected officials, lobbyists, office-seekers, and journalists who are easily suborned or who have no rapport with ordinary Republican voters (from all walks of life). They're shills or they're fool hobbyists, and our public life would not be the least bit injured if they were to disappear from it.
NB, recall that the East Bloc governments during the Cold War (in East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria) maintained a crew of phony non-Communist parties originally manufactured from the membership of the political parties which were extant in 1947 in those places. Who'd want to participate in such a pantomime? Well, look at Jen Rubin and you can see who.
As I keep saying, if you follow up John McCain by trying to pass Mitt Romney off as a Genuine Conservative, Donald Trump becomes the most inevitable thing in the world.
I think Romney's always been an opportunist. He's an ambitious man for whom issues are fungible. John McCain's voting record on balance was not that bad, but he defected on a menu of important issues and had a tendency to throw a spanner in the works at inopportune times and make an exhibit of his contempt for the base. Robert Stacy McCain, who has an informed opinion on the matter, takes the position that the default position of the Republican establishment toward Republican voters is one of disdain, seeing them as marks, i.e that McCain at his worse is actually how the Republican establishment thinks and feels.
Take a step away from the Capitol Hill nexus and look at some of these twerps. Prof. Stephen Calabresi fancies Trump should be impeached for floating the idea that Congress set a different election date. Congress has that power and it's right there in black letters. What kind of lunacy is this? Professor lunacy. Mona Charen, patronage recipient at the Ethics and Public Policy Center can go for weeks ignoring the ruin of major cities, economic data, and policy dilemmas about the pandemic. She does that because all she's interested in is making up jabs at the president. This 63 year old high school gossip has been collecting Conservatism Inc payola for 40 years.
I need to add Mitt Romney to my list of politicians who have lost as a consequence of denigrating American voters. His comment about the 47% was just as bad as "rum, Romanism & rebellion", or "basket of deplorables",
Point is, do not insult voters. Not sure how Obama managed to get away with "bitter clingers".
7 comments:
And that, my dear, is why elections are lost. Ask James G. Blaine. Ask Hillary Clinton.
Well there was a "Literally who?" moment. I had to look her up.
Again, there is almost no popular NeverTrump constituency. Whenever you have a Republican president, you have a crew of self-identified Republicans who are dissatisfied; you have an intersecting crew who will (in a given year) vote for the Democratic candidate when one is presented. Some of them are legacy Republicans who have disliked every Republican presidential candidate for the last 40 years and some have idiosyncratic objections. Their number is consistently around 10% of self-identified Republicans. The level of disaffection among Republicans is the same as it was during the three previous Republican administrations.
What you do have (beginning with the Obamacon phenomenon in 2008) is a crew of elected officials, lobbyists, office-seekers, and journalists who are easily suborned or who have no rapport with ordinary Republican voters (from all walks of life). They're shills or they're fool hobbyists, and our public life would not be the least bit injured if they were to disappear from it.
NB, recall that the East Bloc governments during the Cold War (in East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria) maintained a crew of phony non-Communist parties originally manufactured from the membership of the political parties which were extant in 1947 in those places. Who'd want to participate in such a pantomime? Well, look at Jen Rubin and you can see who.
As I keep saying, if you follow up John McCain by trying to pass Mitt Romney off as a Genuine Conservative, Donald Trump becomes the most inevitable thing in the world.
I think Romney's always been an opportunist. He's an ambitious man for whom issues are fungible. John McCain's voting record on balance was not that bad, but he defected on a menu of important issues and had a tendency to throw a spanner in the works at inopportune times and make an exhibit of his contempt for the base. Robert Stacy McCain, who has an informed opinion on the matter, takes the position that the default position of the Republican establishment toward Republican voters is one of disdain, seeing them as marks, i.e that McCain at his worse is actually how the Republican establishment thinks and feels.
Take a step away from the Capitol Hill nexus and look at some of these twerps. Prof. Stephen Calabresi fancies Trump should be impeached for floating the idea that Congress set a different election date. Congress has that power and it's right there in black letters. What kind of lunacy is this? Professor lunacy. Mona Charen, patronage recipient at the Ethics and Public Policy Center can go for weeks ignoring the ruin of major cities, economic data, and policy dilemmas about the pandemic. She does that because all she's interested in is making up jabs at the president. This 63 year old high school gossip has been collecting Conservatism Inc payola for 40 years.
I need to add Mitt Romney to my list of politicians who have lost as a consequence of denigrating American voters. His comment about the 47% was just as bad as "rum, Romanism & rebellion", or "basket of deplorables",
Point is, do not insult voters. Not sure how Obama managed to get away with "bitter clingers".
Point of fact; James G Blaine did not utter the poisonous words, it was a backer, but the damage was done.
Post a Comment