There are many people who claim to support candidates for principled reasons, but who will reliably vote with their ‘tribe’, and the reasons for it are just rationalizations for doing what they were going to do anyway. Perhaps the majority.
Then there are people who are willing to give a ton of slack to ‘their’ guy no matter how many of their principles he violates. How many strong feminists supported Bill Clinton? A hell of a lot. How many people who honestly claimed that we should ‘believe all women’ were happy to abandon that principle when the person the women were accusing was ‘their’ president?
How many people who hated Bush for getting involved in a middle eastern war or were against ‘foreign interventionism’ were totally okay with Obama and Hillary’s adventures in Libya and Syria? How many absolutists on press freedom and supporters of leakers like Edward Snowden were willing to look the other way when the Obama administration went after more reporters than any other?
Many people talk a good game about principles and facts and all the rest, but in the end reliably fall in line no matter what their own side does. Especially partisans.
Bone, You have me seriously confused. in post 107, I quoted octopus who mentioned both faith and ends justify the means… How was I not responding to that?
Well… this is a slight tangent… but the 3rd party has yet to be an actual contender to win, but possibly played a part in deciding the winner of of the last election.
Not that you could ever validate this, but I think the thought is everyone who voted 3rd party would have voted for Hillary if they didn’t have a 3rd party choice and she would have won the election.
But it’s a big assumption that has no data behind it, methinks…
I said earlier that had the republicans put up anybody else, I would have voted republican for the first time (Because I don’t like Hillary). In retrospect, I might have gone third party vs Hillary vs “ANY republican but Trump” since at that moment whoever won did not matter to me too much. But once Trump was the guy, I felt a vote for a third party would ultimately be a a gain for trump, and I would have voted for a potted plant before voting for Trump, so I just couldn’t do it and never even looked at the 3rd party candidates.
So I could see where rabid Hillary people would blame someone for that… but I think they’re wrong.
To my mind, Trump has 3 main things going against him from a Republican point of view.
He’s a terrible person. He’s crass, petty, and narcissistic. He’s brought political discourse down to a completely childish level. He’s a serial philanderer. His charity was a complete sham. He’s instructed people to lie on his behalf, even under oath. He’s surrounded himself with criminals.
He’s a terrible dealmaker. He couldn’t navigate his own party through immigration reform, or healthcare reform, despite having a “political mandate” to do so and majorities in both houses. His only legislative “accomplishment” is a tax bill that has skyrocketed the deficit with no major benefit to the economy. Now that Republicans have lost the house, it’s 100% guaranteed that they won’t be able to get any of their legislative wish-list passed because Trump has shown a complete inability to understand congressional politics.
He’s a terrible executive. His closest advisers are friends, family, and cronies. He seems incapable of hiring people based on experience or effectiveness, instead favoring loyalty, name recognition, and the approval Sean Hannity. He’s left major vacancies all across the executive branch, which can no doubt be hampering the effectiveness and efficiency of the US government, thereby wasting taxpayer dollars. He’s spearheaded many efforts which have (predictably) been blocked by courts, limiting the effectiveness of his own policies and, again, wasting taxpayer dollars.
I’m sure true believers will disagree with my assessment, but honestly I don’t think any of those should be controversial positions for anyone who’s been paying attention. And this should be true from a conservative point of view – that is, if I wanted Trump’s policies to be enacted in a competent and effective manner, I would be upset by his ineptitude in all 3 of those areas.
What Trump has taught me is that Republicans value “not being a Democrat” much higher than having a president who is a good person, a good dealmaker, and a good executive. Maybe that’s just the state of partisan politics, and maybe that’s not unique to Republicans, but it’s depressing as hell. It means there’s basically nothing that can overcome the tribe mentality – it doesn’t matter how bad someone is at being a human, or a leader, as long as the other team doesn’t win. That signifies that something is broken in our political system.
The last sentences should have read: It’s not so much that the ends justify the means, it’s more like ‘my ends justify the means’. A worldview, held consciously or not.
This is how i rationalize the behavior of good friends who support Trump. Honestly, how different is it from supporting some of thefolks in the Liberal side of things just to swing the pendulum back toward our view of sanity? I cannot claim much moral high ground if i plan to vote for any imbecile the democrats nominate just to be rid of Trump.
At some level we have all become opportunists forour causes.
Ok, let’s say we collectively decide that Trump voters aren’t “true” Dopers. Are we gonna go after religious non Trump voters next? After all, plenty of people believe religion is full of lies too. Seems counter productive and divisive: the same thing Trump gets assused of.
IMO, (and polls somewhere bear it out, I think) the large majority of presidential voters just vote for the candidate of their chosen party, either D or R, regardless of who that candidate is. Does the average Doper think a little deeper about their vote? Most likely they do. But there are a good number of reasonable, intelligent people who simply could not vote for a pro-choice or severely anti-gun candidate. These days that means a Democrat.
Furthermore, voting with your ‘tribe’ may be the rational thing for average people to do.
Most people who aren’t hardcore partisans do nor have the time or inclination to dissect every issue and build a coherent intellectual political philosophy. And the influence of their one vote is so small that it is not a rational use of their time. Therefore, they instinctively use proxies - they know the kind of people they trust and don’t trust, like or don’t like, and they simply vote they way the people who are like them vote. Eventually they realize that they are Republican or Democrat, and they vote that way.
This is similar to how people lock into car brands and the like. The average person doesn’t know squat about the mechanics of cars. So they pick a brand, and if they like it they stick with it next time, even if another automaker comes out with a better product. You’ll have a real hard time getting a hardcore Chevy guy to ever buy a Ford.
It is also why advertisers tend to focus on the young, who haven’t yet sorted out their own set of loyalties. Older people tend to lock into the brands they prefer and it is very hard to get them to change.
Not really. If I want to see Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, who do I vote for? If I want to control immigration and stop millions of illegal aliens coming across the southern border, who is my best option? What about repealing Obamacare? Cutting taxes?
We really only have two choices for president. Voting for Trump is not a middle finger to the Dems. I have no chance of getting my preferred policies enacted into law by voting for Clinton.
Dealmaking? What’s that? This isn’t 1981 when Reagan and Tip talk on the phone in the evening. Partisanship is the rule. What other Republican (all who pledged to repeal Obamacare) would have won? You need 60 votes in the Senate and we had 51. Add Collins, Murkowski, Flake and others, we had a minority.
I agree that Trump is not the best for many of the reasons you said, but which other Republican would have been a better “dealmaker” and accomplished anything? Remember the only reason Obamacare passed in the first place was that the Dems had 60 votes in the Senate.
It ends up that you had no chance of getting your preferred policies enacted by voting for Trump, either. You think he’s doing a good job of controlling the border? It’s such a clusterfuck of incompetence down there that I wouldn’t be surprised if the border is more porous now than it was under Obama. Obamacare not only still exists but the parts that were repealed have arguably created a more inefficient clusterfuck of a government program. You did get taxes cut but our kids are just going to have pay for that because the incompetent GOP can’t figure out that deficits are caused by spending more than you bring in.
If I were you I’d be furious at what your vote got you.
And yet a bipartisan immigration deal, giving you a lot of the stuff you claim to want, was a done deal until Trump single-handedly torpedoed it through gross incompetence at dealmaking. Were you not paying attention to that whole debacle?
If you want to go to Reno and I want to go to Vegas, I’m not going to vote for the bus driver who promises to take me to Vegas if he’s also drank half a quarter of rum. I’ll let your bus driver take us to Reno because we’re going to get there in one piece, and it’s better than ending up in Tuscon with a flat tire.
Trump is bad at his job, and you’re already not getting what you want. But the GOP is content to let Trump keep failing as long as Democrats aren’t getting anything either. There couldn’t be a more clear example of party over country than what’s going on in Washington right now.
It’s nonsense to pretend conservatives aren’t generally getting at least some of what they want from the Trump administration. He’s nominated two conservatives for SCOTUS, cut taxes, repealed regulation, etc. Sure, he’s got plenty of flaws and areas where he’s fallen short, but generally he’s delivered on conservative priorities.
Women having control over their bodies and gays being able to marry each other. Oh, what a horrible thing to contemplate! So much worse than the current state of affairs. :dubious: :dubious: :dubious:
Those are Libertarian positions, yet, again, we’re persecuted for voting for those positions, because it’s obvious our candidates won’t win. I’d get less flack saying I didn’t bother to vote (a position I advocate, by the way).
I reject the notion that people who post here are significantly more intelligent or fact-based in their reasoning than the public at large. The moderation keeps some of the more extreme demagogues at bay but there are definitely some here who are impervious to facts. So a “true Straight Doper” doesn’t mean a lot to me, the group is too diverse to label like that.
I give the Donald voters a pass for their 2016 vote, maybe some just cast a protest vote against the inevitable Hillary, or they got sucked in by his supposed business acumen, or they just like Republicans in general. I can forgive people for being suckers- once. Now we see the full extent of his evil nature, his incompetence, his racism, his hate. It is now impossible to support him and still be a good person, whether you frequent this board or not. You certainly cannot be a good Christian and support him and you cannot be patriotic and support him.