Cipollone should testify, if for no other reason than to atone for the grievous damage he did to the country in serving as a defense lawyer for Trump during his first Impeachment trial. The guy is kind of a dirtbag, but when it was no longer fun and games, he seemed to realize it was time to stop playing. As JVL said in yesterday's Nex…
Cipollone should testify, if for no other reason than to atone for the grievous damage he did to the country in serving as a defense lawyer for Trump during his first Impeachment trial. The guy is kind of a dirtbag, but when it was no longer fun and games, he seemed to realize it was time to stop playing. As JVL said in yesterday's Next Level, Cassidy Hutchinson wasn't John Dean, but Cipollone could be.
It's tough for Republicans, though I don't have any real sympathy for them. They realize internally, if they won't admit it publicly, that Democrats and Never-Trumpers had this guy pegged from the beginning, and were right all along. What makes it more obnoxious, though, is that most Republicans had this guy pegged from the beginning, too. What changed was that he beat Hillary Clinton in November of 2016. Rubio, Cruz, McConnell, Paul Ryan, JD Vance, Kellyanne Conway all of these guys knew Trump was an unfit bastard, and said it publicly and on the record, at least through the primaries, and for some even up to the election. I don't think any critics of Trump were more scathing and accurate than Vance. But then Trump became President, and the descent into the abyss, halting at first, became a full-on, enthusiastic embrace of the darkness, the acceptance of every lie, the defense of every outrage. Because the Republican voters demand fighters against the elites and the un-American libs, and a party that at least had some sort of vision became a party of amoral trolls, alternative facts, and nihilism.
In one of the final arguments I had with a fully Trumped family member in '17, I told her that Hillary had lost the election and she really needed to come to terms with that.
LOL. Kind of reminds me of something I read (or heard on a podcast) recently about Justice Alito being surprised and insulted by the current low public opinion of the Court. Some people never learn that respect must be earned and is not accorded to anyone simply due to their being in a position of power.
Republicans had been feeding this beast for decades. Tim's book talks about the notion of steak and vegetables, throwing red meat to the base along with some vegetables of actual information. But when you rile people up with inflammatory, fantastical bullshit (manufacturing bullshit about the Clintons as if there wasn't enough actual basic dirt on them to know that they were scumbags, the various Obama conspiracies, etc.) they don't want facts and reasoned debate. They want devastation to their enemies.
Responding to your comment, Josh, as well as the comments from Don Gates: yes, "Republicans have been feeding this beast for decades". I'm old enough to remember that Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh were huge players in the end of working across the aisle and the end of mutual respect despite disagreement between the Dems and the Rs. And the beginning of mutual animosity between the two parties. Remember, when Gingrich became Speaker of the House in 1995, that was actually a spoken and written out loud principle he held and directed his fellow R representatives to practice. It's now become so commonplace that the two groups don't work together and it makes news when a few members of the other party work together to sponsor a bill or more than a handful vote for a bill sponsored by the other side. This type of bipartisan collaboration used to be pretty common.
And Rush Limbaugh, whose show was on continuously from the late 80's to his death---his lies and propaganda "educated" a generation of his fans to believe that the Dems are immoral socialist/commies who must be stopped because they are out to ruin America.
So all those who talk about Trump being the logical outcome of decades of preparation by Republicans and right-wing nuts like Limbaugh, they are hitting the nail on the head.
"And it showed to me how much television — the perceptions of events, of television as entertainment, news as entertainment and treating it like a sport - had really damaged the capacity of Americans to be good citizens in a republic because they confused the TV show with the real thing."
Chris Stirewalt, former Fox News political editor, in a NPR interview on 6/14/22 after his congressional testimony.
Say whatever you want about the Clintons! Our country would not be in the mess we are in on the Supreme Court IF Hilary had been elected. Those trouble making three Trump justices would never be sitting on that Court! Abortion rights would have not changed!!
Oh I agree. Infinitely preferable to Trump on a variety of levels.
Still a couple of power hungry sleazes though, and while I'd prefer to be in Hillary's second term right now I also don't mind that she'll never be president.
I can’t help but wonder if the anti-Hillary attacks were extra edgy because she is a woman who dared to make a run at one of the last male bastions of power. She was every bit as qualified as other presidential candidates and as to being a successful operator and deal maker, she really wasn’t any worse than many other candidates/presidents and actually better than some. No one gets to run for the office of President of the United States without cutting a few dicey deals. She obviously was more qualified and more ethical than Trump but that is an admittedly low bar. That she lost is obviously a national catastrophe.
I agree with you, NLTownie, about Hillary. I never quite understood the vehemence of the hatred against her, and I looked pretty hard in the run-up to the 2016 election to see what I was missing. I wondered at the time if part of it was that she had what many people felt was a sleazy husband.
I think you're right, TC, Hillary was so hated that the Republicans would have done their darnedest, even more so than for Obama, to make sure she got nothing accomplished that she could get kudos for.
But even so, it would have been frustrating stagnation, not out-of-control insanity like with Trump.
My memory is not that Hillary edged Biden out of the race in 2016. Biden declined to run, even as he was pressured to, because his son had just died, and he didn’t have it in him.
Maybe Biden would have beaten trump and maybe not. I worked really hard in 2016 to convince people they needed to give Hillary a landslide to nip Trumpism in the bud and send all those rabid MAGAs back under their rocks. Regardless of the Electoral College nonsense, a 2% popular vote margin is a not a repudiation. Remember, Biden won the Electoral College with only 43,000 votes in three states, and only a 4% popular vote margin after four years of Trump chaos, corruption and incompetence. This is also not a repudiation. It was absolutely shocking that 74,000,000 of our fellow Americans wanted four more years of Trump.
Yeah they've been awful for decades, for sure. You could argue Trump didn't really change the party so much as he unmasked it. But it wasn't until Trump that they just overtly decided the national party would no longer have things like platforms, they would just own the libs on Twitter and deify a shameless conman. And now, when subgroups of the GOP like the Texas or Arizona Republicans do affirmatively state their platforms, it resembles something like Dante's circles of Hell.
Off topic… but I gotta say - The Bulwark has the news comments section with the *most* literary references I have ever experienced and as an English major, I find it really enhances the understanding of the analysis. Rich reading. Good information. Greatly appreciated.
It’s amazing to me how much of politics is completely divorced from policy, even though both words appear to have the same root. Maybe it has always been more about gamesmanship. Sad.
I think policy once was an important part of politics; why it may seem otherwise today is because back as far as the 1990s one party realized people didn't really like their policies, so they tried to win elections by other means. If you catch political ads on tv, you see ads for Democrats, those ads feature actual policies. You see ads for Republicans, they're nothing but attack ads. It's very sad, but voters seem to reward and incentivize the worst behavior in politicians.
Cipollone should testify, if for no other reason than to atone for the grievous damage he did to the country in serving as a defense lawyer for Trump during his first Impeachment trial. The guy is kind of a dirtbag, but when it was no longer fun and games, he seemed to realize it was time to stop playing. As JVL said in yesterday's Next Level, Cassidy Hutchinson wasn't John Dean, but Cipollone could be.
It's tough for Republicans, though I don't have any real sympathy for them. They realize internally, if they won't admit it publicly, that Democrats and Never-Trumpers had this guy pegged from the beginning, and were right all along. What makes it more obnoxious, though, is that most Republicans had this guy pegged from the beginning, too. What changed was that he beat Hillary Clinton in November of 2016. Rubio, Cruz, McConnell, Paul Ryan, JD Vance, Kellyanne Conway all of these guys knew Trump was an unfit bastard, and said it publicly and on the record, at least through the primaries, and for some even up to the election. I don't think any critics of Trump were more scathing and accurate than Vance. But then Trump became President, and the descent into the abyss, halting at first, became a full-on, enthusiastic embrace of the darkness, the acceptance of every lie, the defense of every outrage. Because the Republican voters demand fighters against the elites and the un-American libs, and a party that at least had some sort of vision became a party of amoral trolls, alternative facts, and nihilism.
Yes, they know now and knew then that it was a farce. Have never seen so many sore winners as in November 2016.
In one of the final arguments I had with a fully Trumped family member in '17, I told her that Hillary had lost the election and she really needed to come to terms with that.
LOL. Kind of reminds me of something I read (or heard on a podcast) recently about Justice Alito being surprised and insulted by the current low public opinion of the Court. Some people never learn that respect must be earned and is not accorded to anyone simply due to their being in a position of power.
Republicans had been feeding this beast for decades. Tim's book talks about the notion of steak and vegetables, throwing red meat to the base along with some vegetables of actual information. But when you rile people up with inflammatory, fantastical bullshit (manufacturing bullshit about the Clintons as if there wasn't enough actual basic dirt on them to know that they were scumbags, the various Obama conspiracies, etc.) they don't want facts and reasoned debate. They want devastation to their enemies.
Responding to your comment, Josh, as well as the comments from Don Gates: yes, "Republicans have been feeding this beast for decades". I'm old enough to remember that Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh were huge players in the end of working across the aisle and the end of mutual respect despite disagreement between the Dems and the Rs. And the beginning of mutual animosity between the two parties. Remember, when Gingrich became Speaker of the House in 1995, that was actually a spoken and written out loud principle he held and directed his fellow R representatives to practice. It's now become so commonplace that the two groups don't work together and it makes news when a few members of the other party work together to sponsor a bill or more than a handful vote for a bill sponsored by the other side. This type of bipartisan collaboration used to be pretty common.
And Rush Limbaugh, whose show was on continuously from the late 80's to his death---his lies and propaganda "educated" a generation of his fans to believe that the Dems are immoral socialist/commies who must be stopped because they are out to ruin America.
So all those who talk about Trump being the logical outcome of decades of preparation by Republicans and right-wing nuts like Limbaugh, they are hitting the nail on the head.
It’s so much easier to break things than to build things. Republicans break. Democrats (try to) build.
This sums it up quite nicely:
"And it showed to me how much television — the perceptions of events, of television as entertainment, news as entertainment and treating it like a sport - had really damaged the capacity of Americans to be good citizens in a republic because they confused the TV show with the real thing."
Chris Stirewalt, former Fox News political editor, in a NPR interview on 6/14/22 after his congressional testimony.
Say whatever you want about the Clintons! Our country would not be in the mess we are in on the Supreme Court IF Hilary had been elected. Those trouble making three Trump justices would never be sitting on that Court! Abortion rights would have not changed!!
Oh I agree. Infinitely preferable to Trump on a variety of levels.
Still a couple of power hungry sleazes though, and while I'd prefer to be in Hillary's second term right now I also don't mind that she'll never be president.
I can’t help but wonder if the anti-Hillary attacks were extra edgy because she is a woman who dared to make a run at one of the last male bastions of power. She was every bit as qualified as other presidential candidates and as to being a successful operator and deal maker, she really wasn’t any worse than many other candidates/presidents and actually better than some. No one gets to run for the office of President of the United States without cutting a few dicey deals. She obviously was more qualified and more ethical than Trump but that is an admittedly low bar. That she lost is obviously a national catastrophe.
I agree with you, NLTownie, about Hillary. I never quite understood the vehemence of the hatred against her, and I looked pretty hard in the run-up to the 2016 election to see what I was missing. I wondered at the time if part of it was that she had what many people felt was a sleazy husband.
AND her critics cannot really point to anything sleazy. She is the "most exonerated politician ever." https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/12/hillary-clinton-most-exonerated-politician-ever/
I think you're right, TC, Hillary was so hated that the Republicans would have done their darnedest, even more so than for Obama, to make sure she got nothing accomplished that she could get kudos for.
But even so, it would have been frustrating stagnation, not out-of-control insanity like with Trump.
My memory is not that Hillary edged Biden out of the race in 2016. Biden declined to run, even as he was pressured to, because his son had just died, and he didn’t have it in him.
Biden didn't feel he had it in him to run in 2016 because of the death of his son Beau.
Maybe Biden would have beaten trump and maybe not. I worked really hard in 2016 to convince people they needed to give Hillary a landslide to nip Trumpism in the bud and send all those rabid MAGAs back under their rocks. Regardless of the Electoral College nonsense, a 2% popular vote margin is a not a repudiation. Remember, Biden won the Electoral College with only 43,000 votes in three states, and only a 4% popular vote margin after four years of Trump chaos, corruption and incompetence. This is also not a repudiation. It was absolutely shocking that 74,000,000 of our fellow Americans wanted four more years of Trump.
About three or four of those votes came from Meadows so we can take them off the top. :P
Yeah they've been awful for decades, for sure. You could argue Trump didn't really change the party so much as he unmasked it. But it wasn't until Trump that they just overtly decided the national party would no longer have things like platforms, they would just own the libs on Twitter and deify a shameless conman. And now, when subgroups of the GOP like the Texas or Arizona Republicans do affirmatively state their platforms, it resembles something like Dante's circles of Hell.
Off topic… but I gotta say - The Bulwark has the news comments section with the *most* literary references I have ever experienced and as an English major, I find it really enhances the understanding of the analysis. Rich reading. Good information. Greatly appreciated.
It’s amazing to me how much of politics is completely divorced from policy, even though both words appear to have the same root. Maybe it has always been more about gamesmanship. Sad.
Isn't that what Cheney meant when she said that she wanted to go back to when she and her Democratic colleagues had policy disagreements.
I think policy once was an important part of politics; why it may seem otherwise today is because back as far as the 1990s one party realized people didn't really like their policies, so they tried to win elections by other means. If you catch political ads on tv, you see ads for Democrats, those ads feature actual policies. You see ads for Republicans, they're nothing but attack ads. It's very sad, but voters seem to reward and incentivize the worst behavior in politicians.