“Many Democrats rolled out of the election acknowledging the urgent need for a change in direction—for moderation, an end to cultural radicalism, a reconnect with working-class Americans. They immediately crashed into the left-wing base, threatening political death to heretics. Even if the party had the spine to push back, who exactly on the Democratic bench even remembers how to be a moderate?”
Writes Kimberley Strassel, in the Wall Street Journal ($). She beats up on the Donkey Party, and with good reason:
What looks like a rapid collapse was years in the making. The left’s takeover of the Democratic Party began with the rise of Barack Obama and it steadily eradicated dissenting voices. Nancy Pelosi’s “majority makers”—the Blue Dogs and moderates who won her the speakership in 2006—were made to support unpopular legislation and paid for it in lost elections. Progressives targeted and polarized other holdouts, picked them off in primaries, or drove them to resignation. It was Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals.”
The Squad’s wild proposals for the Green New Deal, open borders, Medicare for all—a program of socialism that traditional Democrats initially rejected—is now mainstream thinking, the policy litmus test for party entry.
But…
This could be the MAGA future. The GOP is a party of many factions, and their policy disagreements frequently produce stalemates and governing heartache. Influential Trump supporters are honing their own methods for stamping out even mild disagreement with the president’s approach: rally online supporters to pile on, label the target a member of the “uniparty” or the “establishment,” threaten a primary. This exact playbook was exercised numerous times over the past few weeks of nomination votes. “Rules for Radicals.”
It’s a recipe for intellectual stagnation. It’s a departure from the modern conservative movement, which has been defined by its innovative ideas, from school choice to civil-service reform. It sits unnaturally in a movement that has long prized individualism and entrepreneurship and condemned the left’s collectivism. It mistakes the goal of party unity (the act of members compromising on strongly held positions for a legislative victory) with the tyranny of party conformity (think like we do, or get the boot).
And look how it worked out for Democrats.
Take the win, Mr. Pearce.
The excerpts from Ms. Strassel’s article sound like fine thoughts, things any intellectual could admire for their logical structure.
Trump et al are up against something requiring the thoughts of a street fighter.
Unity is required as this 100 day push (let’s hope it’s 12 years!) continues. Momentum is everything as the dimwits of the Left slowly pull together a strategy that has some effectiveness, even if that strategy is just raw power applied where they can. So, maybe “…stamping out even mild disagreement with the president’s approach: rally online supporters to pile on, label the target a member of the “uniparty” or the “establishment,” threaten a primary.” is needed in the short run.
But then, with an eye to the future, it’s worth worrying about how to return to a more civil governance from the Right. But let’s keep the ship afloat before worrying about kindness and generosity in the distribution of the rations!
Trump et al are up against something requiring the thoughts of a street fighter.
That’s an argument that only works so far. If you “move fast and break things” but also break things that should not be broken, and replace one “swamp” with a different type of cronyism – which could happen – then there is a problem.
Take the win, Mr. Pearce.
I am British; I am looking at this as an outsider, and thinking, okay, certain things are going in the right way (DOGE, hopefully), some not (tariffs), and wonder how things will look in a year or two’s time.
As a relative matter, in two years things will almost certainly look better than they would have looked had Harris or Biden won.
Whether the disagreement is “mild” or not, is of little relevance. What is really important is whether the disagreement is sensible or silly. (See also Monty Python’s Election Night Special.) The only sensible disagreement that i remember reading is about Ukraine: you can agree or disagree with it (and i am inclined to agree with it, provisionally and in parts); but it is not silly.
As for the “uniparty”: some people, including Glenn Reynolds, started complaining about it when Trump had not yet show any political ambitions. And I only understood what they meant when i observed the rise of the NeverTrumpers.
As for the establishment: I am not sure that the US has one, anymore. It seems to me that there is now a precarious balance of power between the Trump party and the Deep State. I think that the best, if not the only, chance for freedom to be restored in the West, is if the tension resolves in Trump’s favor.
President Trump himself is, sadly, very pragmatic – as we can see by such things as going along with the (utterly dreadful) Chagos Islands deal – to please the British government and the international elite generally.
But some other Republicans are not pragmatic – for example J.D. Vance started off in politics as pragmatic (praised by the Economist magazine and-so-on – only a few years go), but has become less pragmatic as time has gone on and he has seen up-close just how despicable the international establishment are – and how their claims to support “democracy” and “freedom” are LIES. Whatever it is they support in Europe (east and west) and elsewhere, it is NOT democracy and it is NOT freedom.
As for the Wall Street Journal article – it appears to not be condemning President Trump for being too pragmatic, but, on the contrary, being too strict – and not allowing dissent from-the-left in the Republican Party.
Once such an article would have struck me as bizarre – but since such things as the denial of obvious election fraud in Arizona, and the article (written by an academic – no surprise there) that Karl Marx (yes Karl Marx) was not so bad really (would-not-have-wanted-what-Stalin-and-others-did – oh yes he would have) it is the sort of article I expect to be in the WSJ.
In reality President Trump’s pragmatism may prove fatal for the United States – it may be unavoidable, given the number of utter filth are “Republican” Senators and members of the House of Representatives (people who never really cut government spending – or do anything that really needs doing), but it is still grim.
Still President Trump is what he is – highly pragmatic and far too tolerant of dissent from leftist “Republicans” (and with a nasty habit of trying to get on with people who share none of the principles of the Bill of Rights – for example the British government which hates everything in the Bill of Rights – watching Sir Keir claiming that Britain has Freedom of Speech and that Freedom of Speech is “precious” to him, was sickening), and that is not going to change.
We just have to hope for the best.
As for the general point about a political party – in his defense of the concept of a political party, Edmund Burke was very clear that it had to be united around principles – otherwise it was just a “faction” out for the profit and prestige of its members, and utterly useless (indeed harmful) to the public.
The Rockingham Whigs (the party that Edmund Burke was part of) broke up because many of them, led by Mr Fox, did not fully believe in principles of private property based limited government – this was clear even BEFORE the French Revolution.
What happens if a political party becomes pragmatic – does not have clear principles and stick to them? 2010 to 2024 in the United Kingdom is what happens.
I would hope even the Wall Street Journal is AGAINST that.
In the end either United States Federal Government spending will be dramatically reduced – or it will not be dramatically reduced.
If it is – then the United States may (may) survive, if it is not – then the United States will horribly decline and the Democrats will come roaring back in 2026 and 2028 with “Hate Speech” laws (and new Justices for the Supreme Court to destroy the 1st Amendment, the 2nd Amendment and so on), “Trans Rights”, sexual mutilation, for children, fertility collapse, mass immigration, and-so-on.
In short the United States, whilst it will still exist in a geographical sense – will, in reality, no longer exist.
The odds are not good – as the last President to manage to dramatically reduce government spending from a peacetime total, was Warren Harding (that, not “corruption”, is the real reason he is hated by the establishment) more than a century ago.
Snorri: As for the establishment: I am not sure that the US has one, anymore.
Establishments are funny things. It seems that just at the point when people get the most upset about an “establishment”, usually seen as some sort of elite that creates a sort of “moat” to protect various privileges and controls on power, that such an establishment goes into retreat. But then, newer establishments, if you will, rise to prominence. At the moment, everything is in flux. The old Ivy League establishment has, in my view, been badly damaged by the collapse of academic meritocracy, its tilt into far-Left insanity, and the antisemitism on campus that led to the farcical Senate appearances of Claudine Gay and others last year.
The old establishments of Wall Street, parts of Big Business, including Hollywood, are also in retreat. Hollywood movies aren’t the big cultural events and fun experiences of, say, 20 or 30 years ago. The 2008 financial crash dealt a blow to the Wall St banks and they have never full recovered their mojo. The old government establishments are in retreat.
But it would be a mistake to think there will not be new clubs, networks and groups that become more significant, and start to build their own hierarchies and ability to confer a sense of status. Man is a status-seeking animal. Virtue-signalling is how some try to attain status today, but I see that changing.
All societies, as far as I can see, have had establishments of some kind, from the relatively open to the sinister.
This may all be for the good. As the Democrat radicals hound the moderates out, and the Republican radicals do the same to their moderates, maybe the outcome is the reconstitution of a sane Democrat-Republican centre party.
The hounding of the Republicans who won’t fall into line with Trump won’t have the same long-term issues for the Republicans because their next presidential candidate won’t be Trump. Or anyone even like Trump.
The Democrat problem is not that they have taken to increasing purity of the left, but that they continue to run candidates with no moral position. Their candidates then cannot force through contrary policies by force of will and the moral position of President. They cannot hold back the crazies.
If the Democrats had run Bernie Sanders, who is not uniparty, then the boot might well be on the other foot.
Abortion is also being taken out of play at federal level for Republicans. That means the Republicans can run moderates in the more Democrat areas, but the reverse is not true. They no longer have to tear themselves apart about it.
It all comes down to who the Republicans select to run next time. Vance and Gabbard being contenders would suggest that the eventual winner will at least be someone not grey and uniparty.
First of all — someone forget a close em tag and so we are all leaning a bit to the right on this page. Was that deliberate? 😊
I think that the changes to the civil service, if he can stay the course and make it happen, will be one of the greatest, least visible of his accomplishments. I saw this tweet today. This small change, were it implemented and enforced would have a quite dramatic effect on what the world thinks:
https://x.com/lsanger/status/1894929960860549120
Imagine a CIA-less wikipedia.
is it just me or are all the comments look like they are in italics now?
Johnathan: what you call ‘the establishment’, i call ‘the ruling class’. With this change, i agree with pretty much everything you wrote.
Why do i insist on this change? Because, in context, ‘the establishment’ was meant as equivalent to ‘the uniparty’. What i see now in the US is not a uniparty: it is a deeply divided ruling class.
Too divided, in fact: at least one side is willing to use all means, fair or foul, to regain unchecked power.
But as long as both sides play fair, and are not too silly, then divisions within the ruling class are good, in my opinion.
Hooray! no more italics!
“This exact playbook was exercised numerous times over the past few weeks of nomination votes. “Rules for Radicals.””
And it worked.
Doing what conservatives have been doing from William Buckley up through Thatcher/Reagan and through the Tea Party has been a pretty abysmal failure.
The New Right is intelligently adopting the tactics and strategy of the Left and finally getting some results. RFK at HHS, Tulsi at DNI, and Kash Patel at FBI is movement in the right direction.
I would expect the likes of Kimberley Strassel to bemoan our success because she is not a supporter of America First or the broader New Right in any meaningful sense. She is a Thatcherite/Reaganite and as such she is more interested in being accepted at elite cocktail parties and fashionable socials than obtaining results for the American People.
“It mistakes the goal of party unity (the act of members compromising on strongly held positions for a legislative victory) with the tyranny of party conformity (think like we do, or get the boot).”
This is more evidence that Kimberley Strassel is openly carrying water for the uniparty and, by extension, the globalists and deep state.
Notice how Kimberley Strassel had no objection to “the tyranny of party conformity” when that was used to get congressmen to support the Patriot Act and 2003 Iraq War – policies she strongly supported. Where was Kimberley Strassel’s objection to “the tyranny of party conformity” during the crimes of COVID?
She only calls it “the tyranny of party conformity” when she doesn’t like the policy results. I don’t mind a policy disagreement but lets not continue to gaslight WSJ readers into thinking her objection is about process and not results. That kind of gaslighting worked years ago but not anymore.
Is it any wonder why so few people take mainstream media like WSJ seriously? I haven’t read that rag in years
Any party that suffers a devastating electoral repudiation must re-invent itself in order to survive. This cannot happen without a period of bitter infighting over who is to blame for the defeat and who gets to set the new direction. In the Democratic Party, that means a fight between the Gentry, Ideology and Ambition factions.
The Gentry faction is the old party grandees who just want to hold on to their wealth and power until they die. The Ideology faction is the woke true believers, and the Ambition faction is all those desperately ambitious young politicians who just want to get into power and who don’t really care about ideological purity.
The Ambition faction will win. Firstly, because the party’s donors and supporters will recognise that the other factions are incapable of reconnecting with the mainstream public. Secondly, because it’s personal for them. They’re the kind of people who have spent years obsessively pursuing their careers to the exclusion of all else, and now they see all their future prospects being flushed down the drain by cranks and has-beens. They will fight tooth and nail to stop that.
This process will take several years, so President Trump has a clear run for the rest of his term and will very likely be followed by another Republican. By the time of the 2032 election, the re-invented Democrats will have new leaders who are ruthlessly focussed on winning and the Republicans will have become complacent.
But to actually win, that new version of the Democratic Party will have to accept whatever political settlement has been created by Trump and his immediate successor. The Overton Window is moving and they will have to move with it. Therefore, the election of the next Democrat as President will mark the end of the current period of political upheaval in America and the beginning of a new period of broad consensus on key political and social issues.
Until that consensus eventually breaks down, and the cycle begins again…
Shlomo, do you think Reagan and Thatcher were “abysmal failures”? Restraining inflation and unions, slashing taxes, deregulating certain sectors, standing up to the Soviets, Argentina, and the rest? The achievements were considerable.
Now of course it’s absolutely true that on other topics, such as on the far Left’s capture of higher education, such conservatives didn’t do enough, although Mrs T, for example, minded furiously about education reform, and devoted a lot of her energy on it, especially in the later 80s.
Talking about “uni parties” or dismissing the WSJ, doesn’t really respond to Strassel’s excellent article. The job of a far-sighted journalist is not to parrot today’s standard view ( which on the Right these days seems to mean whatever Trump thinks) but to look ahead at future challenges. I see the MAGA movement ( often filled with ex-Democrats) hardening into an echo-chamber. You see certain curse words used vs any dissenters, such as”globalist”.
On my social media feed I see MAGA people rationalising Trump’s verbal bullying of Zelensky in the WH. Mercifully, few conservatives are staring to speak out, like Mark Levin and Ben Shapiro. Maybe cracks are starting to show in the MAGA edifice.
MAGA isn’t quite a cult, but it’s close.
This made me laugh, as its pretty obvious that pre-Trump American ‘conservatism’ was intellectually dead and had just devolved into a racket. It’s one of the reasons Trump just blasted his way through 16 other candidate contenders in 2016, and perhaps why the democrats were complacent enough to run Hillary Clinton, as the standard Republicanism was an insipid and useless.
The evocations of Reagan and Thatcher were perhaps guilty admissions that American/British conservatism had achieved very little of value, since the 1980s.
In the build up and around the time of the beginning of the Iraq war in 2003, the ‘conservative movement’ in America demonised anyone on the right critical of the venture as ‘unpatriotic conservatives‘(the author of that is now a furious never-trumper and democrat) and indulged in silly virtue signalling, so let’s not pretend Trump buried something that was intellectually vibrant or honest, because it wasn’t.
I see no valid criticisms of MAGA or Trump from the quotes from Kimberley’s article that you provide.
There exist important criticisms of MAGA and Trump. I myself am highly critical of Trump for the following failures and the MAGA influencers on social media who hardly ever criticize Trump for these failures of Trump’s term thus far:
1. Extremely weak and pathetic per-day mass deportations of illegal aliens, far below the numbers achieved by Biden or Obama. Frankly this is shameful and causes me to question Trump’s motivations.
2. The lack of mass prosecutions and the lack of mass imprisonments for the crimes of the January 6 Fedsurrection, 2020 election theft, crimes against humanity committed during COVID, Russia Collusion Hoax, the fake seditious impeachments, the illegal raid on Mar-a-Lago, the Hunter Biden laptop coverup, and so many more unconstitutional, illegal, and unconscionable crimes committed by the deep state, globalists, federal bureaucracy, and progressive left.
3. The dearth of mass layoffs of federal government workers. There were roughly 2.3 million non-military federal government workers as of Jan 20 2025. By the end of Trump’s term that number should be reduced to 1.3 million. There should be hundreds of thousands of mass firings with one month severance, with the positions permanently eliminated, and the functions of those jobs deemed not only unconstitutional but also harmful to economic growth, personal liberties, and small government principles. Trump has made some movement in this direction, but the progress has been terribly slow and weak and he is not on track to reach 1 million permanent full-time equivalent firings during his term. Where is the war on the deep state?
Kimberley is a typical “journalist”. She is definitely not brave or interesting or strong. She is fashionable – and that is what she cares about. Good for her.
The real meaning of elite journalists in the WSJ bemoaning the “intellectual stagnation” of MAGA is as a not-so-subtle smear of the White rural working class Americans who have repeatedly turned out en masse to elect Trump instead of one of the Wall Street Establishment puppets (Jeb or Rubio in 2016 or DeSantis or Haley in 2024) controlled by the Country Club RINOs preferred by “journalists” like Kimberley.
Such journalists’ hatred for the White Working Class is palpable. And increasingly mutual.
I actually do think that MAGA is now something of a Trump cult. One major flaw in Kimberley’s article is that her criticisms of Trump and MAGA are directionally flawed. Trump is far too moderate, too compromising, and too weak. MAGA supporters seem incapable of criticizing Trump for failing to deliver results on many key parts of the MAGA agenda, including but not limited to the items I noted above in a previous comment.
The problem with the phenomenon Kimberley is identifying here is that such efforts have been too meager, too weak, and not nearly aggressive enough. Trump is up against the Swamp, which includes about half of the Republican Senators and Republican Congressmen. These Republicans must be removed from office as quickly as possible because they are opposed to the MAGA agenda and in most cases are controlled by Special Interests, Lobbyists, and Donors. Republicans like Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins (and many many others) are *NOT* better than the Democrats in any meaningful sense. They should be replaced with MAGA loyalists who share MAGA values and policies and will serve as tailwinds for Trump instead of headwinds.
This is literally democracy, by the way. Kimberley is condemning MAGA Americans (mostly White Working Class) for exercising their democratic rights. “Journalists” often condemn White Working Class Americans for exercising their democratic rights and for trying to get elected politicians (who are mostly controlled by Lobbyists and Special Interests) to represent their opinions and values.
These condemnations are often from the same exact “journalists” who think Americans should send hundreds of billions of dollars to Ukraine to defend “democracy” from Vladimir Putler.
I hope the irony is not lost on anyone here.
I’d agree with this. I’d also say it’s curious that many criticisms of MAGA as a personality cult are effectively appeals to another personality cult (Reaganism, Thatcherism, Churchill, etc.). Hearing a lot of pious rhetoric recently about how Churchill would supposedly not appease Putin, and I’m just immediately thinking of all those times Churchill appeased Stalin.
Martin and SM.
Yes – for example President Trump gave in on Covid.
It is true that he did not personally “lock down” the various States – but he did not really try and stop many State Governors from doing that, and President Trump did nothing to get rid of Tony Fauci and other Federal bureaucrats who gave the green light for the insanity.
Then there was “Operation Warp Speed” – Tony Fauci and others played President Trump like a fiddle, getting him to approve the emergency development of Covid “vaccines” that were not vaccines at all. In computer models they have “saved millions of lives”, as President Trump says, but outside the computer models they have injured and killed people.
If the Democrats had any common sense they would rip President Trump apart over the Covid “vaccines” – but they have been bought off by the pharma corporations, so they stick their heads in the sand.
Winston Churchill….
Both Churchill and Austin Chamberlain seemed to suggest alliance with Stalin in the late 1930s (I say “seemed” – as their language was not clear) this was at a time when Stalin had been responsible for the deaths of millions of people – a fact that Churchill was well aware of.
Churchill did suggest action against Stalin after he, Stalin, invaded Poland (we declared war on Germany for invading Poland in September 1939 – the Soviet Union also invaded Poland in September 1939, but there was no British or French Declaration of War on the Soviet Union), Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, grabbed land from Romania and then invaded Finland – but no action was taken.
After the German invasion of the Soviet Union the British government (it is unclear whether Churchill really knew this) rushed aid to the Soviets at-the-expense-of British forces, for example in the Far East (Singapore and so on) – but not just the Far East.
However, Winston Churchill was far less weak on the Marxist Soviet Union than Franklin Roosevelt was.
People who condemn President Trump for being weak on Mr Putin without condemning Franklin Roosevelt (“FDR”) for being pro (actively pro) Stalin, right from 1933 onwards, are rather hypocritical.
The Economist magazine this week suggests that President Trump’s weakness towards Mr Putin is “not like Nixon going to China”.
They are correct – but not in the way they think.
Mao was the largest scale mass murderer in human history – going to see him, and making friends with him, in the early 1970s was like going to see, and making friends with, Adolf Hitler – not in the 1930s, but in the early 1940s – whilst the Holocaust was underway.
There was no advantage to what President Nixon did (and was applauded for doing – applauded by the same people who destroyed President Nixon a couple of years later) – for example Chinese aid to the people killing Americans (and others) in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos continued. As for the long term – the “opening to China” has been an utter disaster for the United States and for the West in general, leading to People’s Republic of China industrial dominance.
People who refuse to denounce President Roosevelt for his relationship with Stalin (again the attitude did not start in 1941 – it was there even in 1933) and refuse to denounce President Nixon for his relationship with Mao (both Stalin and Mao were responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of human beings) undermine any criticism they may have of President Trump’s weakness as regards Mr Putin.
This is why I don’t take Shlomo seriously.
My animus is less with the real life Churchill and more with lazy politicians and journalists who evoke lazy and simplistic notions about World War Two as an authority.
Same kind of applies to using a mythologised Reagan as some sort of model hawk as an authority to bash Trump or anyone else. In real life, Reagan was often accused of appeasement regarding Lebanon, USSR, etc.
AndrewZ: In the Democratic Party, that means a fight between the Gentry, Ideology and Ambition factions.
That’s an interesting way to describe how that party is structured. It applies to many others, I suspect.
Martin, I don’t think Reagan was into appeasement; he thought Star Wars (SDI) which Mrs T. was very worried about, would render the Soviet missile threat far less of one, and that it was worth the cost. That’s not really appeasement. He certainly had his dovish side as well as more severe one – talking about the “evil empire”.
As for Churchill, he was indeed not a cliched warmonger, as his detractors at the time sometimes claimed. He was more complicated. He made lots of mistakes in his younger political career. His great virtue was that he learned from them and listened to advice from people he admired, even if it was not always kindly expressed, such as from Alanbrooke.
Shlomo: I would add that the US is a constitutional republic first and foremost, not a simple majoritarian democracy where everyone has to go along with a party line. The Founders were very clear about this and the curse of “factions”, as the Federalist Papers, etc, make very clear.
I can recommend this from Prof. Randy Barnett if you are interested in a classical liberal scholar who is not a utopian.
Look, I can agree that Reagan and Thatcher did *some* good things, mostly in terms of cutting taxes and regulations. So I suppose they are not abysmal failures.
Reagan’s actions on immigration, international trade, cutting federal spending, eliminating federal government departments, mass layoffs of federal government workers, reigning in the deep state, rolling back LBJ’s Great Society programs, dismantling FDR’s Alphabet Soup of government agencies, gutting the federal bureaucracy and *many* other areas left *a lot* to be desired. I am less familiar with Thatcher but my impression is that she was roughly similar.
I am talking about their actions. As usual with post WWII conservative leaders, their words were significantly more impressive than their mostly meager actions.
I think overall both Reagan and Thatcher are very much overrated. And they have been mythologized far beyond their real worth.
Many of the Founders did not think women or blacks should have the right to vote. Are you for repealing the 19th amendment? Or how do you determine when the Founders were wrong about certain things and right about other things?
Was Obama worried about “the curse of factions” when he crammed Obamacare down our throats?
Was Bush concerned about “the curse of factions” when he demonized anyone against the Patriot Act to cripple and humiliate most principled Congressional opposition to that horrific, illegal, and immoral piece of legislation?
Was FDR worried about “the curse of factions” when he packed the Supreme Court, overturned decades of jurisprudence, revolutionized the federal bureaucracy, and implemented a raft of socialist government agencies in contravention of the spirit of the Federalist Papers and in violation of the Constitution?
What do you think the goal is? What is the prize?
https://www.federalregister.gov/agencies
There are 441 agencies listed there. In my book, Trump has 1420 more days to find ways to abolish at least 60 of those agencies. 60 MINIMUM. That is one key metric I have for measuring the success of Trump’s current term. If he is going to achieve that, then we need to remove from office the likes of Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins and replace them with people like Justin Amash, Ted Cruz, and Ron Paul as quickly as possible.
Other key metrics of success I have are mass layoffs of government agencies (many of those that that are not entirely abolished should be significantly downsized in size).
I have the distinct impression that your ultimate goal is to engage in polite discussion with the Left, get along with them very nicely, and present classical liberalism or soft libertarianism to the masses in a positive and persuasive manner. And that is fine. Good for you.
My ultimate goal is to roll back the New Deal of FDR, dismantle the federal bureaucracy, and do irreparable harm to the deep state bureaucrats who have destroyed my country.
We are not the same.
You either believe in state rights or you don’t. Trump is pretty consistent on making health issues a state matter.
Shlomo: the prize is life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There’s a document about that.
I’m not for repealing those amendments.
I meant by reference to factions the concern that party divisions and the stifling of dissent within them would cause problems. As per the original post.
You can suppose what you like about what I really think. Much good it will do you.
Ok well the founders were wrong about faction.
The political leaders of nascent America split into the factions of Federalists and Democratic Republicans only a few years into the country’s existence. And the country has been ruled by factions ever since. Faction is how politics works. Whether in a Constitutional Republic or a Simple Majoritarian Democracy – either way, faction is how you get things done in politics.
There is no problem with faction.
The problem is the Republican Senators and Republican Congressmen who oppose the MAGA agenda because they are controlled by Special Interests and Lobbyists. These vipers must be removed from political office as quickly as possible because they are preventing us from our prize.
And I do confess that the prize we are after is a bit more concrete and specific than “life liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. Maybe defining the prize in such a manner is why the conservative movement, despite a handful of small bright spots, has overall such an abysmal track record of achievement from 1950 through 2016? Just a thought.
We meaning the hard right edge of MAGA, the American New Right.
Shlomo, who is “we”? A royal use of that word? Because I’m certainly not on board with that blood-and soil agenda.
If you want an example of this kind of rubbish, here’s exhibit A.
Someone really should tell airheads like her about Churchill and Stalin’s Percentage agreement and the Yalta conference.
Someone really should tell airheads like her about Churchill and Stalin’s Percentage agreement and the Yalta conference.
If there is a rather major difference, it is that Churchill made no bones, then or immediately afterwards, about the kind of vile regime that Stalin was in charge of, whereas with Trump, everything suggests that he refuses to make any moral assessment of Putin, and his brand of politics, at all. And it was only a few years after that Churchill gave his Iron Curtain speech in Fulton. I cannot envisage Trump doing anything such as that. Also, by the time of Yalta, the US held the whip hand. UK leverage was in decline; the Russians had lost millions of men fighting the Nazis. Context matters.
This is the problem with trying to imagine too cleverly as to “what would X have done?” about this or that, and assume that if you find a specific example of someone doing something different from their image, that you can triumphantly use that to smack down somebody in an argument.
I don’t know what Churchill would specifically would have done today. I can guess that he’d have been rather more assertive more than 10 years ago when Putin’s expansionist aims were in plain sight. But I can only guess, and that’s the same with you.