I hear when the Berlin Wall fell Donald took a leave of absence, secretly stowed as supercargo on an innocuous tramp steamer carrying computer parts to Archangel, ordered a sealed train to Moscow, and in Red Square in front of Lenin’s Tomb watched by the politburo and the Red Army Choir in a closed ceremony swore eternal allegiance to Mother Russia and the memory of the Third International for the sake of oppressed struggling workers and peasants everywhere.
Trump himself has already proven there is no political consequences to promoting conspiracy theories. The Republican congress has demonstrated meaningless investigations don’t cost them votes.
Why do you think Democrats would suffer for following a Russian conspiracy theory that turns out to be nothing? Are you admitting Democratic voters have higher ethical standards than Republican voters?
- A senior aide to the president has already resigned due to this “non-scandal.”
- A majority of Americans support investigating possible collusion between the Putin regime and the Trump campaign. (http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/06/politics/trump-approval-rating-russia-poll/index.html According to this recent poll, two-thirds of Americans support appointing a special prosecutor.)
- From a perspective of pure politics, harping on Trump and Russia has been successful for the Democrats. Trump is already the most unpopular new president in history. While that can’t be attributed solely to his alleged links to Russia, much of it can, directly and indirectly. (Many of his rookie mistakes, such as lying about Obama wiretapping him, can be tangentially related to the scandal. According to leaks, he was angry that the media were reporting on Sessions lying to a congressional committee about meeting the Russian ambassador instead of praising his speech to congress and wanted to “change the narrative.”)
- It is a wedge issue. It appears that Russia-hating is the only issue that Democrats and Republicans (or, at least, McCain and Graham) can agree on.
- The Democrats are an opposition party. They can only do so much in that position. Like the Republicans in 2009-2017, they can call for and conduct endless investigations into the administration. Benghazi and private email servers, despite leading to nothing (legally) as the Russia scandal is alleged to be heading, served to undermine the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party more broadly.
- As others have said, this is a serious issue. Evidence is mounting that some collusion happened. While that collusion may not have involved men in trench coats exchanging coded messages in secluded parks, some connection existed between the campaign and the Kremlin. Putin, as he did in 2016, is now trying to manipulate voters in the upcoming elections in Europe as well, supporting far-right anti-EU parties in France, Germany, and the Netherlands.
Because it’s two different brands. When the carnival barker shouts a bunch of bullshit that’s one thing, when your doctor does it that’s another. If you’re ok with the Dems switching persona in order to get elected Trump style then there’s no problem I guess. They’ll have to give up on the “adults in the room” branding to do so.
Eta: there’s certainly no problem with a “too soft on Russia” angle of attack and hoping something more turns up but I worry about over reaching like the articles describe.
Trump and the MSM are pursuing the same strategy - never apologize, never explain, never admit you’re wrong, when something doesn’t pan out drop it and move on to the next thing.
Perhaps someday they will figure out that “you never wrestle a pig - you both get dirty and the pig likes it”. Perhaps not.
Regards,
Shodan
All we really have is an uncorroborated story from a former intelligence operative that Russia interfered with the election in exchange for several actions including altering the Republican platform stance on Russia.
Followed by denials from the Trump campaign that there were any contacts with Russians at all.
Followed by changes in the Republican platform stance on Russia.
Followed by denials from the Trump campaign that they were responsible for the changes in the Republican platform stance on Russia.
Followed by leaks about many contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia, later confirmed by the campaign.
Followed by leaks that the Trump campaign was indeed behind the changes in the Republican platform stance on Russia, later confirmed by the campaign with one of those involved saying it was directed by Trump himself.
Perhaps there was no quid pro quo at all, and Russia didn’t ask for those platform changes, and Trump just decided on his own to request them. Just in case nothing comes from any of this, we shouldn’t become invested in following the investigation?
The Gingrich-era shenanigans from 1993 on didn’t kill the Republicans’ “put the adults in charge now” positioning in 2000.
Democrats could easily carry this too far. It is a scandal, the behavior of some Americans has been reprehensible, but there’s no evidence so far that Trump himself has committed any crime or personally involved in any potential illegal activity by others. That said, an investigation is needed to find out exactly what did happen. The Democrats will obviously take political advantage of that but need to act like the adults in the room and insist on waiting for the results of the investigation before drawing conclusions. There’s is plenty of evidence of wrongdoing here, but scant evidence of the massive conspiracy the Dems want to exploit.
So far this appears to be Russia playing the Trump campaign in a no lose scenario for themselves. They helped Trump beat Hillary (they will tell themselves whether that’s a fact or not). They played the Trump coterie for fools, and they would either gain an ally in the White House or weaken the US as a result. The investigation has to expose the bad behavior of members of the American government and political campaigns whether illegal or not, but can’t appear to be a witch hunt that produces no results.
OTOH, the Democrats won’t lose in this fight if they play it smart. Like Bengazi it doesn’t need to produce results, and they shouldn’t back themselves into a corner where they need results, they just need to keep up the chant of ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ through the next 2 to 4 years to weaken the Republican party and highlight their inherent dishonesty, hypocrisy, and cowardice. All that while risking exposing those same qualities in their own party.
As others have said, we just saw the shortest tenure of a National Security Adviser in history because of his links to Russia. Are you denying that Flynn was fired?
So what were campaign aides talking about with the Russians? Did those conversations violate the Logan Act? Seems like we should know.
So Trump changed his party’s platform, as the candidate for president from that party. Later on a former MI6 agent claimed he was bribed to do so with a ridiculous quantity of stock in Rosneft, for which there is no evidence.
Later, Trump won the election and it was claimed Russian hackers helped with this, although there is no evidence for this. Wikileaks said they never got any information from Russian hackers, and there is no evidence to contradict them. The FBI report into Russian hacking spent most of its length talking about editorial stances taken by RT, and the rest talking about Russian hacking tools, which we now know are the tools of choice for the in-house hackers at the CIA, and Russian IP addresses which all turned out to be current or former Tor exit nodes. Tor being a system specifically designed to conceal your place of origin. Of course, the fact that the “hackers” were allegedly pretending to be Russian doesn’t prove they weren’t Russian, in the same way that someone wearing one of those rubber Nixon masks doesn’t prove that it isn’t really Nixon. But it doesn’t prove it is, either.
That is a fine line to walk.
They can’t appear to be producing no results, they can’t allow anyone to expect them to produce any results, they just need to keep repeating the charges that produce no results in order to show how hypocritical the GOP is. Because the GOP’s investigation of Bengazi produced no results - it was simply a witch hunt to weaken the Democrats.
The Democrats need to engage in dishonest, cowardly, hypocritical behavior in order to show how bad the Republicans are. Got it.
Regards,
Shodan
I think he’s talking about tactics, not morally judging whether those tactics would be “good” or not. Tactically, at least one of the lessons of Benghazi is that the truth of wrongdoing doesn’t matter nearly as much in terms of helping one’s party politically as does repeating an accusation over and over again for years on end.
Actually, thanks to Flynn falling on his face because of the Russia thing it is becoming more clear that the opinion of many on the Democratic side was a valid one: Trump is really an incompetent when selecting staff.
Something that he demonstrated already when he willfully ignored the gross abuses of power from the likes of Joe Arpaio. Now we find that Trump did ignore a lot of background checks and that leads one to realize that there are many more mines in the minefield Trump has set up.
I know you don’t think Bush ran as “the adult in the room” - he was “fun at your BBQ” guy. And the Republicans lost seats in the House and Senate. So what exactly do you mean?
The Repubs used to be the ones suspicious of ties to Russia vis-a-vis the USSR, and frequently called those who disagreed with their assertions pro-Ruskie commies. Now that the Democrats are forming the same opinion, they have to form party solidarity and eat crowski. While the Democrats aren’t overtly using the same buzz words, they have good reason to question the party that benefited from the efforts of (allegedly) Russian hackers. Trump’s not helping with his attempts to brush off the controversy.
Yes, flogging the issue does produce the possibility that voters will again reject the Democrats, but it depends on if they turn up any smoking guns. Besides, there will be plenty of other Trump mishaps to come in the next four years, so they can bide their time.
Here’s a long list of Trump-Russia connections with sources. The remarkable thing is how new info keeps coming out day to day. It’s hard to keep up.
At this point about the only two possibilities are that Trump is a corrupt Russian patsy or the CIA engineered a brilliant false flag operation. Either one is pretty exciting.
Indeed. The Republicans won (or at least didn’t lose) on the Bengazi issue, which their take on it has so far turned out to be entirely without merit.
They did to a point. The actual Benghazi issue is a loser for Pubs. That marathon 11 hour inquisition of Hillary did nothing but bolster her image and set aside concerns about her physical and mental health.
It was the fishing expedition that went along with the Benghazi investigation that yielded dividends. I suppose that a fishing expedition into Trump through a special prosecutor might yield dividends and beating the drums on the Russian angle might be enough to get them a few more votes, maybe enough to win the house or senate but this seems unlikely to happen and the Republicans seem unlikely to zealously pursue every lead in this case.
Benghazi investigation led to email investigation led to FBI investigation led to Comey’s statements which led, to some degree or another, to Clinton’s loss.
I bet you can’t find a single Republican anywhere who believes that the Benghazi investigations backfired when they found nothing.
I don’t think the concept of McCarthyism is one you fully understand, because this isn’t McCarthyism.