‘Complete, total surrender’: Trump waves white flag after sudden erosion of support from Senate
‘Complete, total surrender’: Why Trump waved the white flag
Politico, 25 Jan 2019:
The sudden erosion of support from Senate Republicans ultimately forced Trump’s hand. “President Donald Trump touted GOP unity for 33 days of a partial government shutdown. But by the 34th day, it was clearly gone — and so was the shutdown by the end of the 35th.
Senate Republicans had finally had it and were struggling to continue to defend the president’s position and heap blame on the Democrats. Perhaps no one illustrated that dynamic more than Sen. Rob Portman.
The Ohio Republican, along with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), had spent more than two weeks pushing to reopen the government and then negotiate on border security, only to face repeated rejection by the president and Vice President Mike Pence. So when two votes came before the Senate this week, one on Trump’s plan, the other on a stopgap with no new guaranteed wall money, Portman nearly made a rare break with his party.
“I considered it, yes,” he said on Friday after the president finally caved on his position that the government would only reopen with a down payment on his wall.
Portman and most Republicans ultimately stuck with Trump after Pence’s pleas for unity. A sustained rebellion against Trump on Thursday, Portman argued, would mean the government “would not be open right now,“ because Trump would simply veto a Democrat-backed bill. “It would have been a real problem.” …”
Occidental Observer’s Hunter Wallace laments:
So, the partial government shutdown is finally coming to an end.
Trump has been humiliated by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. Senate Republicans caved and that forced Trump to cave. He isn’t getting any funding for his wall. The whole episode was nothing but a waste of time to look like he was fighting for the wall funding after two years of avoiding the issue.
I increasingly think it is a waste of time to sit here, day after day, following the news cycle to document the ongoing failure of Trump and American conservatism. It just discourages me from writing. I’ve been doing it for two years now and have grown tired of it. I will probably end up pivoting to history for a while.
Posted by Colin on Fri, 08 Feb 2019 07:55 | #
In the context of reviewing Trump’s State of the Union Address, Colin Liddell renders some interesting remarks:
Trump’s “State of the Division” speech.
1. It’s a fair criticism that the state of the union address should address American problems, American interests and it shouldn’t keep hearkening back to the so-called ‘greatest generation’ and events that happened in the 1940s.
In fact, the only reason countries like America and Britain should harp on about the 1940s is to demand some kind of recompense for our efforts. For example, in the case of Britain, we are now trying to exit the European Union and we are facing lots of opposition from countries that we basically saved from the Nazis. In the case of America, they are paying billions and billions of dollars every year to Israel, when actually it should be the other way around. Israel should be so grateful for what America did in the 1940s that they should be paying America billions and billions of dollars every year.
2. It’s pretty obvious that Trump is mainly focused on getting some kind of wall. It’s an absolute necessity to his political survival.
Some have suggested he could declare emergency, but he is reluctant to use undemocratic means. ... his opposition may resort to unorthodox strategies to obstruct and take him down if he does that.
So, he’s trying to reach some sort of bi-partisan agreement.
However, in order to do that, he’s going against who he is as a politician.
Trump arose as a reflection of the deeply polarized state of America. Trump was a reflection of that. He campaigned in a very polarizing fashion and he kind of admitted the reality of American polarization - he talked about jailing his opponents, he projected this kind of uncompromising power, ‘we’re going to drain the swamp, we’re going to crush the sanctuary cities, we’re going to deport all the illegal migrants, we’re going to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it’; all these controversial positions that deeply triggered
the leftliberals. This is why people were enthusiastic about Trump and why they voted for him.Trump was an embodiment of America’s polarization. And now he’s doing a complete 180 degree turn. He’s trying to pretend that America is a great country that shares a lot of values; that American people are somehow deeply united. The state of the union was an attempt to move rhetorically to that position - it was quite carefully constructed - he introduced a lot of tropes that should have provided common ground; and we saw this with the people that he invited to the state of the union address - there was Buzz Aldrin, this heroic astronaut, this symbol of American greatness, this symbol from the past who is very non-partisan, very non-polarizing.
He also mentioned World War II, this is something that the boomer left and the boomer right can agree on - for the boomer right, it’s all about the heroism of Americans; for the boomer left its all about the evils of Nazism. This is what the war has become. This ideal piece of common ground that represents the diminishing hope of American unity…
He was trying to engineer some kind of consensus for this totemic wall…
The problem is that large sections of the right don’t recognize the reality that America is a deeply polarized society - they’re still hoping that this can be glossed over, that some kind of consensus can be re-established.
So the
leftliberals outplay them.3. The Alternative Right was very poor at the moral dimension of politics under its extremely bad leadership. But the moral dimension of politics is extremely important. If you can unite your own side, and you can divide the enemy, then you can unite parts of the enemy with your side and generally speaking you are going to win.
Conversely, if you unite the opposition, but you also divide your side, then obviously you are going to lose. So, this is how the moral dimension works. Essentially its a kind of strategic or tactical problem. Morality in politics, or even in war, is a case of assuring other parties that you’re not their enemy; thus allowing you to focus on your real enemy and/or to achieve your real goal.
The mistake that Trump is making is that he’s trying to appeal to specific Democratic politicians while he should appeal to and take some support from their broad base, as he did in the 2016 election….
Now, he’s tried to do that with regard to the Jews….moving the capital to Jerusalem…
..he’s tried to do that with blacks, going on about record unemployment…
4. But if he wants to win, he’s got to convince a lot of the White Democratic base to also come over to his side (he’s trying to do that by pandering to Jews and blacks, isn’t he?)
He’s got to be looking much more at the Bernie Bro’s, he’s got to be looking much more at the people who are worried about health-care costs, he’s got to be looking at working-class White people and their interests.
Another thing he should look at is this enormous student debt which is hanging over a whole generation, which is having a deeply dysgenic effect by discouraging people from having families.
He’s got to be looking at the opioid crisis
He’s got to be pushing these policies that don’t come naturally from the GOP side of politics…