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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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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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