On Romney, Cheney, Collins, The Lincoln Project, and the GOP.
Also Known As: How Far Can People Travel Up Their Own Ass?
From Yahoo News:
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday she was "appalled" to see her colleague Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) booed and nearly censured at the Utah Republican Party state convention a day earlier.
Why it matters: The effort to censure Romney for his vote to convict former President Donald Trump following the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol failed by a 711-798 vote. A number of Republicans have faced backlash in their home states for voting to convict Trump, as the former president continues to have significant sway over the party.
What they're saying: "Mitt Romney is an outstanding senator who serves his state and our country well," Collins said Sunday. "We Republicans need to remember that we are united by fundamental principles."
"We are not a party that is lead by just one person. There are many prominent upcoming younger men and women in our party who hold great promise for leading us."
"[T]he person who agrees with 70 or 80% of the time is your friend, not your enemy."
Perhaps we should all take a moment to bask in that. This episode has the usual suspects dialed in and focusing in on… you guessed it: Trump’s “Big Lie” that the election was stolen. And never missing an opportunity to make a Hitler reference, we get things like this from Nicholas Grossman (Who, as his Twitter Bio tells me, is an International Relations prof at U. Illinois. A Senior Editor @ArcDigi, and the author of “Drones and Terrorism.”):
I find this… odious. Dolchstosslegende was a conspiracy theory, but there were legitimate examples of Germans who actively worked against the regime. Shindler’s list is based on a True Story.
I waffle on Trump. He’s not a good person, and I feel less than no inclination to go to bat on his morality. He managed a very chaotic White House, with precious few exceptions he never hired the right people, he constantly put his foot in his mouth, and he was never afraid to go beneath the dignity of his office. That said… He actually did a lot of very conservative things. Petty and spiteful people will interpret that to mean that all the shitty things Trump did are conservative values…. Those people are stupid.
No, I’m talking about things like:
How Trump’s foreign policy, despite some gaffes, managed to repair relations with Israel, moved the embassy to Jerusalem, and negotiated real peace agreements in the middle east. During the election cycle in 2016, we were talking about WWIII, and North Korea’s belligerence, and Trump dealt with that… I’m not entirely sure how, but we hadn’t heard a thing out of NK for literally years before a missile test a couple of months into Biden’s administration (Don’t read too much into that, it’s not a referendum on Biden, NK would have tested the waters with any new president.)
Or Trump’s Tax plan, which reversed the tax inversion with Canada and staunched the flight of corporate offices overseas (And I can’t state this enough: They’re coming back if Biden actually passes his tax plan), brought a whole lot of capital home out of foreign banks, and managed to reduce the tax burden of the average American by four figures.
And Trump’s judicial nominees, which were excellent. There were obvious signals that Trump had, in fact, managed to hire the right people once or twice, and the people serving on his nomination and vetting committees were the right people.
Even the things that were negative press stories, the things that got me angry, like the “kids in cages” story arc, he handled relatively well. I was angry at the time, people that know me know that I raged against the way those kids were being treated. I didn’t blame Trump, because those facilities predated Trump, I didn’t think the sites should close, because they performed necessary functions, but for Christ’s sake, get those kids some god damned pillows. And when they did…. When the government contracted with Wayfair to get beds to the detention facilities, Democrats tried to boycott Wayfair on the auspices that they were collaborating with the regime. Fuck… I’m still angry, thinking about it. “We need to make those kids suffer as much as possible, because we don’t actually care about their comfort, we just want that border functionally open.” God-Damned moral molehills. Regardless, Trump bought the beds, deprived Democrats of their photo ops, and we didn’t hear about kids in cages outside of partisan Twitter sniping for years until a very recent, sudden rush at the Southern border overfilled the expanded capacities (And who could have predicted that, with all Joe’s really strong border language?).
Which is why Collin’s words rankle:
"[T]he person who agrees with 70 or 80% of the time is your friend, not your enemy."
Gag. Me. With. A. Spoon.
When Trump was elected, he was basically a New York liberal. There were real fears that not only was he culturally toxic, but there was the chance that we was going to govern like a Democrat with a red tie. In reality, in Trump’s first few months in office, he made real overtures to the Democrats, and to this day, I really believe that they don’t understand the magnitude of the opportunity they squandered in their rage over Hillary Clinton, First of Her Name, Supreme Majesty of California and New York, losing. They rejected the olive branches, probably because they couldn’t recognize them for what they were, and in pure Trumpian fashion, he wrote them off and leaned in to the people that supported him, and he leaned in hard. Despite the chaotic nature of his administration, the fact is that he governed truer to conservative values than any president since Reagan.
If 80% agreement should be enough to call someone a friend, Romney should have supported Trump. Collins should have supported Trump, Cheney should have supported Trump, and the Lincoln Project should not have existed.
Discussions could be had, books could be written, about whether turning into a single issue voter on the topic of Trump’s personality was legitimate. Really… I understand it, I resigned myself to a Biden win later in the election cycle, and didn’t actually think it’d be bad for America (Still don’t, really. Biden isn’t special, he’s not nation breaking. The losses in the Senate were orders of magnitude worse, and I think that corrects in ‘22.). But whether or not turning into a single issue voter on the issues of culture, or personality is legitimate, I refuse to be lectured to on the topic of Party Unity by people who didn’t give a hot damn about Party Unity in their crusade against Trump. Sure, Trump isn’t the personification of The Republican Party, but these clowns actively supported Democrats in districts that a Trump-supporting Republican was running in. I can’t possibly take these hypocrites seriously.
I’m not going to cry as they’re marginalized. The party needs to do some soul searching in the wake of the Cult of Trump, but they don’t need the moral compass or decision making abilities of Republicans who actively supported Democrats in 2021 to do it.
HT, I'm surprised by your apparently being so sanguine about Biden. He's simply a sock puppet for the far left of the Democratic party, but I repeat myself. Maybe he won't get Ron Klain's agenda through Congress, but he might. All those budget busting trillions could get through via reconciliation. They might be able to get the majority required to end the filibuster. They might be able to pack the Supreme Court. They might be able to screw up tax rates again. The Obama State Department reincarnate may enter into another catastrophic appeasement of Iran's mullahs. I think Ron Klain et al., er, Joe Biden, is an absolute nightmare.
You're more conversant with and savvy about the politics and policy of the country to your south than 99% of that country's inhabitants. What's up with that?