4146

This is where we’re headed unless we either pack the Court at the next opportunity, find a way to convict Kavanaugh of something and have him do his job from a prison cell, or tell the Court to pound sand when they issue a bullshit 5-4 ruling that overturns precedent.

4147

What a shitshow this country is. Trump and Kavanaugh suck each other off while we also learn that he has been “proven innocent” of those awful accusations by the evil Dr. Ford.

4148

Unfortunately Tom, there is no reason you would consider good to support Trump, and/or what the GOP has become, and/or the US talk-radio/Fox right in the US.

There are a variety of what I consider valid reasons to be a non-liberal, as discussed in that thread. (These reasons are not persuasive to me but I nonetheless acknowledge them as valid.) Even though I am a liberal, I am able to see true fiscal / small government conservatism as a respectable political philosophy. Likewise caution/prudence based social conservatism. I disagree with these views but they do represent a coherent philosophy that is not IMO inherently problematic (the devil is always in the details.)

But the modern US right is none of those things. The reasons to support Trump are either false, fanciful, or outright offensive to most QT3ers.

Many of the reasons to support Trump are based on falsehoods and incorrect understandings of the facts. For example, believing that Trump’s trade policy will be good for most Americans is just not supported by the facts.

Likewise, believing that the US is a heavily taxed nation as a whole is false. And to the extent the middle and working class are feeling a tax bite, that is more on the GOP than the Dems. (For example the GOP celebrates Reagan for his tax cuts on high earners and I bet a lot of the GOP base has no idea that Reagan tripled the social security tax on the working and middle class.)

Likewise believing Trump is a great leader b/c he was a successful business man. I’ll concede he was a very successful self-promoter, but if you think he’s displaying great leadership qualities, well…

Many of the reasons cited by folks to support Trump are false. Of the few reasons that are factually true, most of those are offensive or problematic to most of us.

One reason to support Trump is a desire to criminalize abortion. That goes beyond mere political disagreement or policy preferences to taking away a very important freedom from women, and imposing religion on people. For most of us here, choosing to focus on that one issue and ignoring all the other problems with Trump is not a respectable position. Taking responsibility to defend the lives of fetuses while saying the children once born “are not my responsibility” is not an intellectually respectable, morally respectable, logically respectable or ethically respectable position.

Likewise, all the frenzy about Hispanic immigration, or the infinite griping about “welfare queens”, or the xenophobic view of all Muslims, etc., etc. For a lot of Trump supporters, their belief that he is going to “keep the Mexicans out” is a huge reason to support him. Most of us here would not consider that a reason worthy of respect.

And here’s the thing. Tom, you’ve been asking this question for a while. I challenged gman with it. I’m sure others did. IIRC a number of folks challenged Malathor with that question. Not a one of them has had a good answer. I think that tells the story.

4149

Honestly, Justice Roberts is the best hope now for a swing Justice. I know he’s rarely been that way so far in 5-4 cases, but I’m hoping he is more malleable to having his mind changed now that all the other Conservative justices are now to the right of him.

4150

I wouldn’t count on that. Yes, Roberts seems to be an institutionalist, sensitive to the public’s perception of the Court, but he’s also one of the guys who argued that the Arbitration Act of 1925 was intended by Congress to allow for forced binding arbitration to apply to ordinary consumer contracts for everything under the sun, which is patent corporate-pandering anti-consumer bullshit.

4151

Right, and every time there’s something really ugly under the rock. That doesn’t mean you won’t learn anything by turning over more rocks. :)

But, honestly, I think the question can be valuable because it lays bare the deceit you’re talking about. Sometimes, the answer to the question is stuff like “he’s a buffoon, but I want a certain kind of Supreme Court*” or “he’s crass, but I want tax cuts” or “okay, he says some things that bother me, but I want a stronger military”. Those sort of make sense, but they’re short sighted to the point of being immoral. The price those people are paying for their one issue can’t be worth the cost of destroying so many American institutions and compromising so many of our values.

But when you hear people say they support Trump because of immigration, crime, Clinton, “entitlement reform”, draining the swamp, etc., you can see how intellectually bankrupt the arguments are.

But it all comes back to the assertion I’ve been making since before the election. Decent people do not support Donald Trump.

-Tom

* This was gman’s claim when I talked to him. I believed him. And in our in-person conversations, he seemed to sometimes doubt whether the trade-off was worth it. Unfortunately, I don’t think he has those doubts anymore. The Kavanaugh appointment will vindicate a lot of “I don’t like Trump, but I want uber-conservative justices in the Supreme Court” people.

4152

Sometimes, it helps to make people say out loud what’s driving their actions, because sometimes hearing it frightens even them.

4153

Lack of fandom, for Hillary Clinton, is that what you are referring to? I’m not being sarcastic, honest. I have not been a fan of any politician since Reagan and he was an actor, to be fair, as well as a devout conservative, so the actor element probably accounts for a big part of that. I would have been a Kennedy supporter, but I was a young boy when he was in office. As far as Hillary, I can see through her act, as many can, and if I am “brainwashed” to hate her, then it’s fair to assume her supporters are brainwashed to love her. She was the poster child for insincere politician, as far as I am concerned. When she decided to run for office, she started at the top as a US Senator, cashing in her husband’s political capital right away. And not Senator from Arkansas, no, Arkansas was to rural for her, she had to be a Sen from New York. Clinton is a preening “govt will fix everything” Democrat, she would excel in spending my tax dollars for votes. I would have voted for Bloomberg in a minute if he had had the guts to take her on.

Again, I did not vote for Trump :) Please believe me, I woke up every day for six months after he took office and would laugh, “ha! President Donald Trump.I cannot believe it! Is this for real?” I expected Hillary to win. Now that I see Trump is not as stupid as I thought and seems to really be a supporter of the US and American workers, I’m relieved she didn’t.

4154

I wonder what the bias and personal animus version of this looks like?

4155

I don’t think this goes far enough. There are no decent Republicans. The Republican Party is the party of the bosses. It has been so for decades.

4156

Assumes facts not in evidence. What makes you believe this? Tariffs don’t protect workers (Ford is planning on layoffs due to tariffs, for example.)

Edit: Removed the statement about Clinton, misread your post.

4157

I’m confused you’d think so. Haven’t we seen his trade war already impact American workers negatively, and that the tax plan is predominantly for the rich + corporations, not the average worker? Beyond lip service, the average worker has not benefitted beyond high employment rates, which were already the case when Obama left office.

4158

The NAFTA revamp is actually good for American workers in the aggregate, as far as I can tell. That’s about the only thing I can think of unless you subscribe to a pretty extreme form of trickle-down economics.

4159

Still no answer. Not even a sidelong answer.

Maybe “I know, I know, women’s rights, etc.” says it all.

4160

Speaking as a passionate free trader I’m not sure that a trade war with China is necessarily the worst idea (although 5-10 year too late maybe). It’s going to hurt, but the benefits of free trade are intimately connected to having a degree of interdependence, and China as it is currently is not a nation you want to be dependent on in any sense. Having said that American workers should be a lot more concerned about the effects of Trump’s domestic policies.

4161

Kind of depends what the outcome is.

4162

South Park is taking on the Kavanaugh hearings:

4163

Indeed, the basic problem with this trade war is that no one can say what it is intended to accomplish. That alone makes it clear that it has no purpose other than to convince the rubes that Trump is on the side of American workers.

4164

Hillary Clinton is not flawless, goodness knows, but she has a 40+ year history of supporting women and supporting children. Republicans love to ignore that.

And the Clinton administration was certainly not a “government can fix everything” administration. Hell, they pushed through work requirements for government aid! And time limits as well! In 1960 Bill Clinton would have been considered a conservative, and only the fact that the right-wing has moved further and further to the right left him in the middle. Hillary might be slightly more liberal than Bill is, but she sure as hell isn’t an extreme liberal by any comparison to most of her peers.

4165

Well, you have to remember that to Republicans, supporting women and children is actually a BAD thing.