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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 6, 2024

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How to square this with something like @gattsuru’s recent post (and follow-up)? He starts from the assumption that Republicans are, in fact, no longer interested in compromise

I agree, they're obviously not interested in compromise, and in some cases it's for good reasons. That said, even if this bill just added the text about amending asylum rules to the official US laws, this bill would have been worth it. Dealing with asylum stuff is something Trump struggled against for his entire presidency, and he kept failing due to the courts ruling that EO's couldn't override rules of Congress. Had this bill passed, then at least any EO's Trump would enact in his next potential administration would carry much more weight.

When you add in the rest of the bill and compare it to the paltry concessions given to Democrats, the choice to pass it should have been obvious even if the Democrats tried to stonewall it in some (or many) ways.

I suspect that relying on Trump’s branding is a strategic blunder. No, it’s relying on one man in general.

Couldn't agree more. Candidates should be avatars of the people to enact desired policies. Trump was plausibly this sort of person in 2016 which is why I voted for him then, but he's since proven that he's really not up to the task. The Republican base should have dumped him for Desantis or some other candidate in the 2020 primary. Sure, all candidates have problems, but if they didn't do what was wanted then they should have been dumped too, and the base should have kept dumping candidates until somebody actually enacted policies. Instead, the Republican party has effectively turned into a cult of personality since many Republicans' only barometer of candidate quality is "how much he makes leftists seethe".

Trump was plausibly this sort of person in 2016 which is why I voted for him then, but he's since proven that he's really not up to the task. The Republican base should have dumped him for Desantis or some other candidate in the 2020 primary.

Trump won in 2016 because he was a threatening outsider, and that is what the people wanted in an avatar. Desantis can't be that, because he isn't that. No more than Jeff Sessions could have been it, or McCain earlier. The credibility as an outsider is the key

Republicans' only barometer of candidate quality is "how much he makes leftists seethe".

Well, only because he whipped the rest of the centrist (uniparty) Republicans so thoroughly in the primaries. It was his ability to say the unsayable to other Republicans that attracted his wild popularity. Then he conquered the party as the avatar of the people's will, and now the unsayable is the unpleasant threat to our democracy, but being repeated day after day.