A Voice of Reason

[BoSoxGal]

My Party Is in Denial About Donald Trump
We created him, and now we're rationalizing him. When will it stop?
By JEFF FLAKE July 31, 2017

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/ ... ump-215442


It's a must-read

[rubato]

And interesting read and the only time a GOP insider has had this kind of clarity and honesty.

Now if his words were accompanied by action he might be worth something. We'll see. He will have to break completely with Trump and with most of the GOP to accomplish anything. The question is; if he marks out a position in harmony with his comments will any GOP Senators or Congressmen and women follow him.

yrs,
rubato

[ex-khobar Andy]

He was on Charlie Rose tonight. I caught only the last 10 minutes or so. I wish I had seen this before. Absolutely a voice of reason.

[Lord Jim]

Meanwhile, the strange specter of an American president’s seeming affection for strongmen and authoritarians created such a cognitive dissonance among my generation of conservatives—who had come of age under existential threat from the Soviet Union—that it was almost impossible to believe.

Even as our own government was documenting a con­certed attack against our democratic processes by an enemy foreign power, our own White House was rejecting the authority of its own intelligence agencies, disclaiming their findings as a Democratic ruse and a hoax. Conduct that would have had conservatives up in arms had it been exhibited by our political opponents now had us dumbstruck.

Let the church say amen...(though it should be pointed out that this conduct has not had all conservatives dumbstruck...)

Flake is the guy I posted about recently who condemned the attacks on a Muslim woman attorney running to oppose him...

His political courage on this is all the more noteworthy, given the fact that he is facing a potentially tough re-election bid in 2018. Here's an excerpt of the NYT review of his book:

He also offers a shockingly astute insight into Trump’s modus operandi — and modus vivendi — during the presidential campaign. “Far from conservative,” Flake writes, “the president’s comportment was rather a study in the importance of conflict in reality television — that once you introduce conflict, you cannot de-escalate conflict. You must continually escalate.”

No wonder the senator wrote this book in secret. As a Republican member of Congress, he is declaring Trump a domestic and international menace. Other conservatives in the news media and strategist class have been saying just this for well over a year, of course, but they don’t depend on a radicalized base to keep their jobs. Flake is the first elected official to cross this particular rhetorical Rubicon, and he seems to be imploring his colleagues to follow. He offers a despairing, unsparing indictment of everyone in Congress who went along with Trump’s election.

“We pretended that the emperor wasn’t naked,” he writes. “Even worse: We checked our critical faculties at the door and pretended that the emperor was making sense.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/31/book ... trump.html

[Guinevere]

Oh please, what a manipulative crock of crap. He voted YES for 100% of the Trumpanzee's cabinet nominees, voted for YES Gorsuch, and voted YES for every version of the Senate health care abominations (and if you don't believe me, feel free to check the NYTimes on voting records). None of that makes him reasonable or level-headed or conscientious, and I tend to think it makes him a hypocrite.

Actions speak louder than words, especially in this political climate. Until he acts affirmatively to do something to limit or otherwise quelch the Trumpanzee's powers (you know, like acting as a true check and balance, and not a blank check), he is nothing more then hot air, cynically trying to make political hay out of yet another nothing burger.

[ex-khobar Andy]

I read it as a mea culpa; and rube's remark ('if his words were accompanied by action he might be worth something') is spot on. But I think it's the first time we have seen such words from a Trumpist fellow-traveler so I am encouraged.

[rubato]

Oh please, what a manipulative crock of crap. He voted YES for 100% of the Trumpanzee's cabinet nominees, voted for YES Gorsuch, and voted YES for every version of the Senate health care abominations (and if you don't believe me, feel free to check the NYTimes on voting records). None of that makes him reasonable or level-headed or conscientious, and I tend to think it makes him a hypocrite.

Actions speak louder than words, especially in this political climate. Until he acts affirmatively to do something to limit or otherwise quelch the Trumpanzee's powers (you know, like acting as a true check and balance, and not a blank check), he is nothing more then hot air, cynically trying to make political hay out of yet another nothing burger.

You're right, so far he has been as slavish as all but three Republican senators have been. But if he is having his conversion moment, or if he needed to have expressed his reasons before breaking ranks he can redeem himself with future actions. To be successful he will have to recruit enough Rs to have enough political weight to move the center of gravity of the GOP which will be difficult. Especially since they will have to admit they were wrong. And a party which lies about immigration, the effects of tax cuts, Obamacare, and global warming is not likely to be favorable endowed with much honest self-criticism.




yrs,
rubato