The GOP and the man-god Trump.

[oxmixmudd]

Conservatives have been critical of Romney before Trump ever arrived on the scene. And my dislike for Cheney predates anything going on in the news; she is a warmonger.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/...yoming-1506603

Which is irrelavent in that the current backlash against them from the GOP as a whole is specifically because they will not lie about Trump, the Jan 6 Resurrection, and the 2020 election.

Can you be precise? What is the "good of the country" exactly that you are concerned is being lost?

Two big ones are the nearly complete lost of trust in our elections engendered by trump Prior to the 2020 election and the continued acquiescence to Trump's big lie. The unwillingness to isolate and cut off from a man that encouraged and reveled in the Jan 6 insurrection as part of building the fantasy associated with the Big Lie. The level of corruption and lack of personal integrity required to make trips down to Mar-A-Largo to seek this person's blessing is in and of itself bad for the country that such people are leading us and that such an obvious and corrupt construct even exists.

The other element is the prevelance of QAnon not merly in GOP voters but GOP leaders. This is a full-on fantasy on the order of comic book villains and movies that is actually believed to some extent by a large number of people, and that has had an effect on our nations leadership. We have secondary and tertiary 'audits' being run by people subsumed by its insanity. GOP leaders are agreeing with allowing people tied into this having their hands on ballots from elections.

It's really quite the daunting situation. We are literally watching a kind of group insanity overtake a large part of the country, and Trump and the GOP are willing to let it become part of what they build their power base on.

[Ronson]

Which is irrelavent in that the current backlash against them from the GOP as a whole is specifically because they will not lie about Trump, the Jan 6 Resurrection, and the 2020 election.

But you tied that wrath in to people here. I am a Libertarian who has never liked Cheney. Romney is just a typical politician chasing the path of least resistance, but Cheney wants to sacrifice American kids for stupid regime building. She deserves all the vitriol she gets. AND - she is no friend of liberals and progressives.

Two big ones are the nearly complete lost of trust in our elections engendered by trump Prior to the 2020 election and the continued acquiescence to Trump's big lie.

I have faith in our elections - so long as there is proper oversight. I think that applies to most conservatives.

The unwillingness to isolate and cut off from a man that encouraged and reveled in the Jan 6 insurrection as part of building the fantasy associated with the Big Lie. The level of corruption and lack of personal integrity required to make trips down to Mar-A-Largo to seek this person's blessing is in and of itself bad for the country that such people are leading us and that such an obvious and corrupt construct even exists.

False premise.

The other element is the prevelance of QAnon not merly in GOP voters but GOP leaders. This is a full-on fantasy on the order of comic book villains and movies that is actually believed to some extent by a large number of people, and that has had an effect on our nations leadership.

I once worked with a black guy who was absolutely convinced that AIDS was engineered by some secretive white establishment to kill off blacks and gays. People believe all sorts of nonsense. The world survives them all.

We have secondary and tertiary 'audits' being run by people subsumed by its insanity. GOP leaders are agreeing with allowing people tied into this having their hands on ballots from elections.

It will have to be based on observable evidence or it is all a waste of time.

It's really quite the daunting situation. We are literally watching a kind of group insanity overtake a large part of the country, and Trump and the GOP are willing to let it become part of what they build their power base on.

I think you are worrying about nothing. I find Democrats the more dangerous mob, basically placing the well being of every other nation on earth ahead of our own. That's the nightmare that is happening now. Trump is out of office.

[rogue06]

Can you be precise? What is the "good of the country" exactly that you are concerned is being lost?

Maybe the "1/3" he referenced are the thirty percent that still believe in the collusion delusion. It fits the description of something we regularly see expressed around here.

[Mountain Man]

Says the man supporting audits done by believers in QAnon (the delusion that there is some sort of illuminati like pedophile ring gobbling up the world's children that Trump will save us from) in support of a delusional lie that Trump 'really' won the presidency in 2020!

What a HOOT!!!

Unfortunately, the facts are against you here. The audits are exposing significant "irregularities" in favor of the Democrats for which they are not readily able to explain, and so they are instead attempting to suppress and discredit the investigations, and so much the worse for our country if they succeed.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/n...a-county-audit

[Ronson]

Maybe the "1/3" he referenced are the thirty percent that still believe in the collusion delusion. It fits the description of something we regularly see expressed around here.

Absolutely. After four years of Democrats howling "foul" and that Trump was an illegitimate president, and Russians colluded to get him elected (despite Trump being much, much harder on Russia than Obama or Biden), and calls for the abolishment of the Electoral College in an attempt to circumvent our republic and our history of honest elections - I find this incredulity from Leftists to be more than absurd.

[NorrinRadd]

T rex and Megalodon provided by roguetech

Um... Excuse me for noting this, but I'm really not comfortable with the way he's... um... holding his bacon.

[NorrinRadd]

Maybe the "1/3" he referenced are the thirty percent that still believe in the collusion delusion. It fits the description of something we regularly see expressed around here.

I have to say, I'm disturbed that several of my friends seem to really be expecting, and even hoping for, the August "reinstatement" of Bad Orange Man. I'm kind of trying to suss out what those particular friends have in common that might explain it. I'm pretty sure I ruffled a few feathers when I said the idea was bat-___ crazy, and sketched out the legal and Constitutional difficulties.

And I'm saying this not just as a Trump "voter," but a Trump "supporter." He was definitely NOT my first choice during the primaries for 2016, and I only voted for him reluctantly and at the very last moment in the general election, but he won me over by the policies he put in place (or tried to).

[rogue06]

Absolutely. After four years of Democrats howling "foul" and that Trump was an illegitimate president, and Russians colluded to get him elected (despite Trump being much, much harder on Russia than Obama or Biden), and calls for the abolishment of the Electoral College in an attempt to circumvent our republic and our history of honest elections - I find this incredulity from Leftists to be more than absurd.

Once Trump was out of office even CNN suddenly discovered what they called a "dirty secret" -- namely that Trump had been very tough on the Rooskies and wasn't in their pocket.

[rogue06]

I have to say, I'm disturbed that several of my friends seem to really be expecting, and even hoping for, the August "reinstatement" of Bad Orange Man. I'm kind of trying to suss out what those particular friends have in common that might explain it. I'm pretty sure I ruffled a few feathers when I said the idea was bat-___ crazy, and sketched out the legal and Constitutional difficulties.

And I'm saying this not just as a Trump "voter," but a Trump "supporter." He was definitely NOT my first choice during the primaries for 2016, and I only voted for him reluctantly and at the very last moment in the general election, but he won me over by the policies he put in place (or tried to).

Even if they find major irregularities a snowball stands a far better chance of surviving in that hot place than there is that they'll throw out the election. They'll merely declare that while there were irregularities that they weren't sufficient to influence the outcome. To say anything else would result in chaos of a magnitude that the Republic might not survive it.

[Ronson]

Once Trump was out of office even CNN suddenly discovered what they called a "dirty secret" -- namely that Trump had been very tough on the Rooskies and wasn't in their pocket.

It was only a "secret" among MSM and Leftists. The rest of us could see Trump was punishing Russia much more than Obama ever did.

The difference is lip service. I like to say that Leftists are all about words and gestures, in that they like to verbally condemn things. Recall how they kept demanding Trump denounce or condemn Putin? Trump fortunately avoided that stupidity because all it does is make foreign leaders angry. It doesn't punish them, it angers them. Like if your child steals money out of your wallet, you can spank him or you can condemn and denounce him to the neighborhood. I think the former would be the better response (not that I condone spanking).

[rogue06]

It was only a "secret" among MSM and Leftists. The rest of us could see Trump was punishing Russia much more than Obama ever did.

The difference is lip service. I like to say that Leftists are all about words and gestures, in that they like to verbally condemn things. Recall how they kept demanding Trump denounce or condemn Putin? Trump fortunately avoided that stupidity because all it does is make foreign leaders angry. It doesn't punish them, it angers them. Like if your child steals money out of your wallet, you can spank him or you can condemn and denounce him to the neighborhood. I think the former would be the better response (not that I condone spanking).

CNN host Fareed Zakaria called it "the dirty little secret about the Trump Administration" saying that "the Trump Administration was pretty tough on the Russians. They armed Ukraine, they armed the Poles. They extended NATO operations and exercises in ways that even the Obama Administration had not done. They maintained the sanctions."

Of course, as you said, that was hardly a secret for anyone who actually bothered to check the record rather mindlessly regurgitating what the MSM spoon fed them.

Trump would say nice things in public about Putin and Russia while doing things that infuriated them^[1] For instance

• accused Russia of deploying land-based cruise missiles saying that they violated the "spirit and intent" of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty -- something Obama refused to do.
• bombed Syria's Shayrat Airbase (Russia's allies) when they use chemical weapons in 2017.
• again bombed Syrian forces in 2018 killing over 200 Russian "mercenaries".
• tried to get Merkel to stop importing natural gas from Russia which would deal a serious blow to the Russian economy.
• sent weapons, including a bunch of anti-tank missiles, and not just blankets and well-wishes to Ukraine so they can fight the Russians.
• facilitated the sale of more coal to energy-strapped Ukraine
• sent Patriot missiles to Poland which had begging for them for years.
• shifted a couple thousand U.S. troops from bases in Western Europe to Poland, which while largely symbolic, infuriated the Russians just like selling them the anti-missile defense systems did.
• like with Poland, Trump supplied the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania with arms and training along with money to help them prevent Russian cyber attacks, again pissing off the Russians who think of those countries as theirs.
• imposed stricter sanctions^[2] than those initially called for by Congress including imposing sanctions on Ramzan Kadyrov, a close Putin ally.
• ordered the expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats and closure of Russian consulate in Seattle in response to Russia's poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal (Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov declared that the expulsion of the total of 153 Russian diplomats by 28 countries was the result of the Trump Administration "blackmailing" other nations).
• sanctioned four Russian entities and seven individuals in response to their attempt to interfere in U.S. midterm elections, including Russian financier Yevgeniy Prigozhin, known as "Putin's chef" because he has his hands in so many pies
• approved sanctions placed on builders of the Nord Stream 2 Russia-to-Germany gas pipelines.

A Brookings Institute analysis of the Trump Administration's record with Russia published a year ago found it had taken 52 actions against the Russians, both severe and minor, but try and tell that to the cognitively challenged TDS crowd





1. Anyone familiar with his Art of the Deal would know that is how he has always operated

2. to be fair this has been a bit of a mixed bag in that earlier Trump expressed reluctance about enforcing some sanctions that he had signed into law. But in the end his placing harsher economic restrictions on Russian oligarchs (more than just Skripal) close to Putin hurt the latter enormously. Putin is thought to have illegally amassed tens of billions of dollars, but he can't hold all that wealth in his own name, so he appointed his oligarch cronies to be his trustees. Sanctioning his buddies was effectively putting sanctions on Putin himself

[Mountain Man]

(not that I condone spanking).

Right. As the Bible commands, we are to spare the rod and spoil the child.

[rogue06]

Right. As the Bible commands, we are to spare the rod and spoil the child.

I thought it said that if we spare the rod we end up spoiling the child.

[Mountain Man]

I thought it said that if we spare the rod we end up spoiling the child.

I thought the laughing smiley would have been sufficient to convey my humorous intent.

[Ronson]

CNN host Fareed Zakaria called it "the dirty little secret about the Trump Administration" saying that "the Trump Administration was pretty tough on the Russians. They armed Ukraine, they armed the Poles. They extended NATO operations and exercises in ways that even the Obama Administration had not done. They maintained the sanctions."

Of course, as you said, that was hardly a secret for anyone who actually bothered to check the record rather mindlessly regurgitating what the MSM spoon fed them.[/box]

This one is a real kicker ...

[box]tried to get Merkel to stop importing natural gas from Russia which would deal a serious blow to the Russian economy

I find this one extremely important - especially since Biden has removed sanctions on the Nordstream project that Trump had implemented. This is hare-brained idiocy for several reasons:
1) It strengthens the Russian economy
2) It makes Germany (and much of eastern Europe) more reliant on a potential enemy for their energy
3) It potentially weakens the US economy because we were positioned to sell Europe gas as a replacement (which would be energy from an ally)
4) It kowtows to Merkel's knee-jerk desires because Biden is all about appeasement and not about logic. "Whatever our allies want is fine with me."