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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   26475 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 15, 2024

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Yeah, it's just weird because he's accomplished almost nothing. His biggest win was SCOTUS, in my opinion, which any Republican could have done (just consult the federalist-society approved list, and pick at random/whoever strikes your fancy/makes political sense).

I think Hanania's roughly right, though. Trump's good enough at managing vibes to warp most of the Republican party, especially the rank-and-file around himself.

People think Trump failed in the 2022 midterms, because Republicans failed due to his endorsements. What he actually did was prove that you needed his endorsement to make it through the primaries, and get people to double down in their personal devotion to him, even though he lost in 2020.

his biggest win was SCOTUS, in my opinion, which any Republican could have done

But they didn't, is the thing. Promises and promises: "jam yesterday and jam tomorrow but never jam today".

I was astounded by the Roe vs Wade decision, because holy hannah the Trump judges really had done it! This was one of the campaign promises that Trump could have dropped in a heartbeat because nobody really expected anything to come of it, if past Republican administrations were any indication, and he did it. Wow.

"But they didn't, is the thing"

I really don't get your model of the government. The reason Trump got a bunch of justices is because three justices died. He got lucky. The reason other Republicans did not appoint three justices is because they did not have enough justices die. I don't get what you think any other Republican should have done, or how you think pre-Trump Republicans failed us.

Trump deserves no credit for Ginsburg, Scalia, and Kennedy dying. That was never about him, that was about them being old.

Trump's also fairly pro-choice for a Republican, so Dobbs is a weird thing to list as an achievement of his for that reason.

He got lucky.

Tell that to Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Sure, any guy with an R beside their name could just have their pick waved through, no bother! Trump was just lucky!

Previous Republican appointees defected on abortion a lot. It’s probably not trumps fault directly that he didn’t appoint a Sandra day O’Connor, but you can make a case that Roberts’s sudden turn to the right was trumps doing and that bush wouldn’t have appointed ACB.

Previous Republican appointees defected on abortion a lot. It’s probably not trumps fault directly that he didn’t appoint a Sandra day O’Connor, but you can make a case that Roberts’s sudden turn to the right was trumps doing and that bush wouldn’t have appointed ACB.

Reagan got three picks and two of them were O'Connor and Kennedy. Kennedy wasn't entirely his fault - if there had been a Republican Senate majority he would have got Bork - but I think a pro-lifer could reasonably say that there were plenty of candidates without Bork's Watergate baggage who would have been both confirmable and a more reliable pro-life vote than Kennedy.

Bush Sr put Souter on the Court. 'Nuff said. Admittedly he had to get his nominee through a Democrat-controlled Senate, but given he could get Thomas confirmed with he could presumably have managed better than Souter. (FWIW, I think the Senate still had a right-wing majority at the time given the existence of conservative Southern Democrats like Richard Shelby and Sam Nunn)

Bush Jr only got two picks, which is unlucky for a two-term President, and one of them was Roberts, who movement conservatives hate for good reasons and who was never going to be the fifth vote to overturn Roe, even if he was willing to be the sixth. Alito was a good conservative pick, but Bush had to be dragged kicking and screaming into nominating him - his first choice was Harriet Miers.

Trump was lucky to get three picks, but he managed to make all three count (at least on abortion). The Republican Senate majority helped a lot, but Bush Jr had that. If the filibuster was still in place for SCOTUS nominees his nominees would have been filibustered, but the reason why the filibuster lasted as long as it did was as part of an unwritten set of rules where candidates like Thomas and Alito didn't get filibustered - in other words the removal of the filibuster reversed the effect of increased partisanship in the Senate, rather than making life easier for Trump to get nominees through.

If you are the kind of movement conservative whose main issue is judges, Trump was a great President, and deserves re-election. If the next President is a Republican, Alito and Thomas will retire during his term. Given the record of establishment Republicans, Nicky Haley would appoint replacements who would move the Court to the left, and DeSantis can't be trusted not to do the sane.

Which any Republican could have done.

Could have done, but did not, being the critical difference. Trump Fights, and that's reason enough to vote for him.

Flashback to 2016: How David Brooks created Donald Trump.

In San Francisco, too, tea party protesters met pro-Obama activists and picked up their trash. "John," author of The City Square blog wrote: “As Obama supporters moved along in the line to get into the fundraiser, they left behind an impressive amount of trash ... Tea Partiers shouted ‘pick up your garbage’ and ‘this is San Francisco, what about recycling?’ There was no response. They chanted ‘Obama leaves a mess.’ Still no response. Eventually, a tea partier (wearing the black cowboy hat) crosses over and starts to pick up the trash on his own. Other tea partiers join him. Another manages to find a trash bag. Soon the trash is being collected.”

Yet the tea party movement was smeared as racist, denounced as fascist, harassed with impunity by the IRS and generally treated with contempt by the political establishment and by pundits like Brooks, who declared "I'm not a fan of this movement." After handing the GOP big legislative victories in 2010 and 2014, it was largely betrayed by the Republicans in Congress, who broke their promises to shrink government and block Obama’s initiatives.

So now we have Trump instead, who tells people to punch counter-protesters instead of picking up their trash.

When politeness and orderliness are met with contempt and betrayal, do not be surprised if the response is something less polite, and less orderly. Brooks closes his Trump column with Psalm 73, but a more appropriate verse is Hosea 8:7 "For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.” Trump’s ascendance is a symptom of a colossal failure among America’s political leaders, of which Brooks’ mean-spirited insularity is only a tiny part. God help us all.

What failure mode do you think non-Trump Republicans would have done?

Nominating judges like Roberts, Kennedy, Souter, and Miers? Yes, some of the credit goes to Mitch burning political capital to sit on a confirmation, but Trump's nominees have been standup votes on the cases Conservatives cared about.

Okay, fair enough. I assume that H.W.'s were when the conservative legal movement was still relatively weak? But Bush's are a lot less excusable.

I guess just my point was, it's really not hard.

Yup.

And now I share the first ever SSC article I ever read

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