Thanks GOP Cowards: Now We Have Talk of Self-Pardon and Absolute Power

[ocfightfan]

Troll Level: God Emperor.

He is winding the left up and they are having freakouts on demand.

 

[Bullitt68]

What we need is a little solidarity.

That's the answer I was hoping for.

 

[OverCoronavirus Pressure]

I respectfully disagree. I'd like to be wrong on that, but from what we've seen there is no moral compass. They've shown since 2008 to be a "win at all cost" party.

They gleefully admitted that denying Obama a SC pick was their goal, only to cry and use the nuclear option first chance they got.

They have engaged in unconstitutional gerrymandering and fought hard to pass legislation that would keep peopke from voting against them.

There is literally no low the current GOP won't go to to stay in power.

I disagree with respect. Although it's possible I'm speaking from a sense of nostalgia and faith in humanity as well as the sensibilities of good people.

We shall see. I remain hopeful.

 

[AFCrookie]

But... we're the party of Lincoln!!!!

 

[Big Nasty Edison]

i sense of nostalgia and faith in humanity as well as the sensibilities of good people.
I remain hopeful.

NOOB

 

[OverCoronavirus Pressure]

NOOB

A noob who recalls being excited that Reagan won.

So, even noobier since I should know better

 

[Big Nasty Edison]

A noob who recalls being excited that Reagan won.

So, even noobier since I should know better

I'll let you bang. Eat some nice ass and live.

 

[Jack V Savage]

I am sympathetic to your basic premise.

That's what I am calling for. I am begging for conservatives and Republicans of good conscience to come around before it's too late.

Unfortunately, reality is kind of spitting in the face of our little bipartisan Shangi-La.

Among Republicans, Trump currently enjoys the second highest 500 day approval rating of any president EVER. Let that percolate for a while.

Bothsidesism isn't based on observation--it's dogma. If you grant the possibility that there is imbalance, you almost immediately see the reality of it.

 

[OverCoronavirus Pressure]

I'll let you bang. Eat some nice ass and live.

 

[Bullitt68]

Among Republicans, Trump currently enjoys the second highest 500 day approval rating of any president EVER. Let that percolate for a while.

Aren't you shifting to a new issue now, though? Haven't you just switched from asking in the OP "Is this comment from Trump valid?" to in this post "Is Trump doing a good job overall?"

I don't know enough about policy, economics, and all the real political shit to have an opinion on whether or not the country should approve or disapprove of what he's managed to do, for lack of a better distinction, in the White House, but that shouldn't matter because the thread topic is on a remark that he made out of the White House.

Now, I can already hear people screaming that, as the President, there is no fundamental in/out distinction: He is always in the White House because everything that he does he does as the President. Hopefully, though, the distinction at least serves the purpose of clarifying my point, viz. that the way that Trump conducts himself is idiotic and indefensible on general rational/moral grounds but saying that doesn't necessarily amount to the same thing as saying that nothing he's done in his position as President has been good or that everything he's done has been bad. I am happy to leave the latter determination to better informed people - though, for my uninformed opinion lest people think that my both-sideism is a terminal case of middle-of-the-road fence-riding pussyfooting bullshit, I'd be surprised if he's actually managing presently to do and/or ends up managing at the end of all of this to have done more good than bad.

Bothsidesism isn't based on observation--it's dogma. If you grant the possibility that there is imbalance, you almost immediately see the reality of it.

While I consider myself to be reasonably intelligent, I'm not always quick on the uptake, so I have to ask: What does this post mean? Since you were responding to luckyshot, who was responding to me, am I right to assume that the content of your post is at least indirectly referring to me? If so, where was I being dogmatic and how was I being dogmatic? And what imbalance are you referring to?

I feel like I have to say this, this being the War Room, but this isn't meant as an attack or a sneaky prep for an attack. I'm just genuinely curious as to what you're talking about here and if there's anything worth considering on my end that I'm missing.

 

[Ricky13]

I haven't even posted on the SMD for months Bull, because life, but you're my boy and I do lurk the War Room once in a while. Was curious since you were posting here.

Aren't you shifting to a new issue now, though? Haven't you just switched from asking in the OP "Is this comment from Trump valid?" to in this post "Is Trump doing a good job overall?"

I don't know enough about policy, economics, and all the real political shit to have an opinion on whether or not the country should approve or disapprove of what he's managed to do, for lack of a better distinction, in the White House, but that shouldn't matter because the thread topic is on a remark that he made out of the White House.

Now, I can already hear people screaming that, as the President, there is no fundamental in/out distinction: He is always in the White House because everything that he does he does as the President. Hopefully, though, the distinction at least serves the purpose of clarifying my point, viz. that the way that Trump conducts himself is idiotic and indefensible on general rational/moral grounds but saying that doesn't necessarily amount to the same thing as saying that nothing he's done in his position as President has been good or that everything he's done has been bad.

@luckyshot was employing an adversarial tone in his OP more as a call to action. Sometimes that's what it takes. You know me, and it's not how I would disagree on a forum, but keeping in mind what he's talking about, his anger is understandable. Note how towards the end of the post it's more a plea for common sense and decency in the face of what the GOP has become: a party that is now essentially intellectually dead. There are conservative ideas I still believe in: caution in tinkering with long-established policy, and belief in the importance of traditon/family (which I tend to think liberalism as a philosophy is currently struggling to incorporate).

But the GOP really doesn't comprise those conservatives now, and that's a gentle way of putting it. They're about party-over-country, and have been ever since Mitch McConnell established his plan of action for the Obama presidency. They're no longer either able to formulate policy, nor are they able to push their poor formulations through. Whatever Trump fights for at the minute has little to do with genuinely improving the quality of your life. It has to do with either avenging perceived or genuine slights, or pandering to a rabid base. To the extent that one can be successful at this, it can be argued that he has been more or less inept at the former but chillingly successful at the latter. And it's the latter that luckyshot is addressing, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest he is right.

It is one thing for a party to intentionally misguide its voters into thinking it's about tradition and cultural norms by appealing to identity (the other guy is stealing your job, and hey, he's black/Hispanic/what-have-you; coincidence?). This has been the case for the Republicans since Reagan. But what's happening now is a whole other phenomenon, and has, helpfully, I think, sprayed the bullshit off true voter sentiment. The GOP base is essentially admitting that it never cared that much about policy anyway, even if it was detrimental to its own people. Its stances on policy and leadership aren't rooted in ideas but allegiance. The party has always claimed to have a problem with debt, but just passed tax cuts that explode it. Trump ran on being someone who wouldn't intervene militarily, but appointed a veritable caricature of a warhawk, deployed more troops in Afghanistan, and his presidency has coincided with a massive increase in troop fatalities. And through all this, his support among Republicans is not simply steady, but getting stronger. Also note luckyshot's stats demonstrating that he has the second most support from Republicans, of any president, period, in the history of your country.

Hence the concern over the tweet. There are no indications that what Trump is saying about being pardoned is simply his mouthing off on Twitter (further, he is known to announce policy change on there as well). There's a 20-page memo from his own lawyers that establishes that he is serious about this. If it plays out to the point of his needing to pardon himself, given how they've responded to his policies, what confidence could anyone have that his base will be up in arms about it? There certainly can't be any confidence that the party itself will oppose him.

II am happy to leave the latter determination to better informed people - though, for my uninformed opinion lest people think that my both-sideism is a terminal case of middle-of-the-road fence-riding pussyfooting bullshit, I'd be surprised if he's actually managing presently to do and/or ends up managing at the end of all of this to have done more good than bad.

I'm not from the US but I hope someday to move there or at least complete a fellowship in a specialty of interest. So I follow this stuff closely, and all I can do is hope for the same thing as luckyshot. The idea that both sides are the same has never been more false, but the GOP and the right-wing media have ensured that it seems like that's the case. It's one of the main reasons that Hillary lost: the idea that she was no less corrupt than someone like Trump. Her qualifications and experience had no chance against the likes of such an idea. The truth of a situation matters far more than whether people are being fair on the surface, though I'd agree decorum is important to dialectic and discourse. The argument that the left needs to come around to the struggles of white middle-class America, for instance, is rooted in that kind of thinking. Yet, it is in fact liberal publications and writers that have earnestly tried to introspect. It's liberals that are doing the soul-searching, the think-pieces. There are some good rightie writers out there: Ross Douthat, David Frum and maybe David Brooks come to mind. But they're not what their party represents anymore.

And this is all just in reference to actual policy. There's a whole other aspect of hypocrisy as it pertains to the moral decay of the GOP: i.e. Stormy Daniels, Trump's affairs, and the shrugging of the shoulders at all of it by the evangelical right. What the OP is attempting is to hold Republican voters to the moral and ideological standards that would do them proud, rather than sink further and further into the filth of what they're still promoting.

 

[sickc0d3r]

FWIW, I think the OP is also calling out the gop because if Trump's hallucination of being an elected dictator ever materializes into anything more substantial than a tweet, it would be up to the republicans to do something about it, since they hold the majority.

 

[Jack V Savage]

While I consider myself to be reasonably intelligent, I'm not always quick on the uptake, so I have to ask: What does this post mean? Since you were responding to luckyshot, who was responding to me, am I right to assume that the content of your post is at least indirectly referring to me? If so, where was I being dogmatic and how was I being dogmatic? And what imbalance are you referring to?

I wasn't responding directly to you, and the comment was more general. It's basically the house religion in the MSM and something deeply believed by many here that the two "sides" are always basically equal--in terms of intellectual standards, morals, even political-spectrum-related issues like authoritarianism or support for, say, reducing poverty (you'll see people say that it's "biased" to claim that the GOP doesn't equally care about reducing poverty as opposed to just that they have a different idea about how to do it).

The imbalance is implied in the earlier answer, but something I've pointed out before is that there are many beliefs that are essentially part of entry into the mainstream right that are objectively false (for example that climate change is a hoax/heat-trapping emissions don't trap heat or that regressive tax cuts supercharge growth). That's not even getting into the ridiculous conspiracy theories (the Clinton Foundation was some kind of scam, Obama directed the IRS to shut down conservative groups, etc.). There's nothing comparable on the mainstream left.

FWIW, I think the OP is also calling out the gop because if Trump's hallucination of being an elected dictator ever materializes into anything more substantial than a tweet, it would be up to the republicans to do something about it, since they hold the majority.

This is a really important point. America has needed reasonable people on the right to stand up for the country's ideals here, and it either hasn't been happening or they've been pushed out of the movement.

 

[OverCoronavirus Pressure]

FWIW, I think the OP is also calling out the gop because if Trump's hallucination of being an elected dictator ever materializes into anything more substantial than a tweet, it would be up to the republicans to do something about it, since they hold the majority.

And they've given many indications that they lack the spine.

 

[GetTheseHands]

Then don't.

Take it straight from the tyrant's mouth:

The constitution states the president has the right to pardon EXCEPT in cases of impeachment. People who are OUTRAGED have never read it.

 

[Jack V Savage]

And they've given many indications that they lack the spine.

I think for most of them, the real issue is that they have no problem with it rather than that they have sensible views that they're afraid to express.

 

[OverCoronavirus Pressure]

I think for most of them, the real issue is that they have no problem with it rather than that they have sensible views that they're afraid to express.

On that,
https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/06/politics/paul-ryan-fbi-trey-gowdy/index.html

Gowdy, chairman of the House Oversight Committee who is retiring at the end of his congressional term, concluded last week after attending a classified briefing that the FBI acted appropriately in the probe.

I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got, and that it has nothing to do with Donald Trump," Gowdy said in an interview on Fox News.

 

[Jack V Savage]

On that,
https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/06/politics/paul-ryan-fbi-trey-gowdy/index.html

Gowdy, chairman of the House Oversight Committee who is retiring at the end of his congressional term, concluded last week after attending a classified briefing that the FBI acted appropriately in the probe.

I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got, and that it has nothing to do with Donald Trump," Gowdy said in an interview on Fox News.

Yes, Gowdy might be one who was more of a coward than an authoritarian, but on the other hand, he played a huge role in the politicization of law enforcement that Trump is running with. Maybe he regrets it or maybe even that was a case of his ambition getting in the way of his ethics.

 

[OverCoronavirus Pressure]

Yes, Gowdy might be one who was more of a coward than an authoritarian, but on the other hand, he played a huge role in the politicization of law enforcement that Trump is running with. Maybe he regrets it or maybe even that was a case of his ambition getting in the way of his ethics.

More likely the latter than the former, my guess.

 

[Gutter Chris]

Why the fuck does everyone on here call me a liberal? I'm about to vote for the Conservatives in like 3 days.

Are you aware that being conservative outside of america is a very different thing ?