I found your link important and disturbing enough to share with as many of my friends as I could think of, something I am not prone to doing. Thank you for bringing it to the board.
I am trying to do my part to share reality with the contrite Trumpians and will swallow a lot of what I want to say to them in order to do so. I do believe that vocal, peaceful, consistent opposition is our best hope. I’m not sure it will be enough, but we have to try.
I chose “other”. It’s going to end with my sister alienating every single last friend who has even one belief in agreement with Trump. Despite my attempts to help her let cooler heads prevail.
I disagree. Don’t you recall how they pulled out all the stops to prevent him winning the nomination? How they stepped forward and denounced him? Trump is a useful idiot to them. Once he stops being useful or starts being too idiotic, they’ll dump him. Remember that they can impeach for misdemeanours, not just high crimes. They own his arse. Of course, perhaps they don’t realise that? I doubt it will come to impeachment: someone will have a quiet word with him and he will resign.
Nah, there’s no good way to spin “The Republican president was so terrible at his job that he was impeached AND removed from office for the first time in US history”.
And then what? Pence will be forever shackled to a thousand photos of him standing behind Trump as Trump spat out these orders that led to his impeachment. That’s a great 2020 platform. Every other member of the GOP bench aside from Jeb! was fondling Trump’s balls by election day. Maybe Cruz can run on the “Remember when I objected to Trump for a half hour before falling in line behind him?” platform of independent thought.
Removing Trump from office via impeachment would be far more toxic than letting him run through to 2020 and hoping he declines a second run or trying to push him out.
No, I don’t. Because they didn’t. I do remember Ryan’s milquetoast mutterings about how he disagreed with this or that before going back to saying he supported Trump. Same for McConnell – before Trump set his wife up for a plum cabinet position. Or how Priebus went from limp objections to being Trump’s Chief of Staff. That’s some “pulled out all the stops” all right.
I fear the Trump administration will institutionalize corruption and incompetence on a truly heroic scale, to the point that the entire fabric of governance in the US will be irretrievably compromised. Every level of government will become dysfunctional and corrupt to a degree previously associated with third world dictatorships. Any dealings with government officials will require ‘expedition payments’ to get them to do their jobs. Government workers with honesty and integrity will either be purged or leave in disgust.
Trump won’t seek a second term, but the damage will be done for a generation.
Barring disabling health mishap, finishes term with a lot of bruises. Keeps GOP wondering if he’ll really run for reelection or leave an open seat or try to handpick a successor “Apprentice”-style until last possible instant. Abortive attempt at impeachment by alliance of Dems and pissed off GOPers ends badly so that either 2019 or 2021 whoever’s Speaker winds up with a “deplorables caucus” of Trumpetistas who primaried regular Republicans and Tea Partiers alike who failed to defend Combover Boy, rendering the House even more ungovernable due to the majority being broken into 3 to 4 parts and the minority being, well, Democrats and organically unable to avoid wasting an opportunity.
No, just spend more money, and not even that. If they can follow the rules without spending more, they’re perfectly free to do so. Besides, I wouldn’t characterize laws against bank robbery as reducing my potential profit margin.
The role of government is to protect the welfare of its citizenry. If that incidentally ends up costing some companies a measure of profit, then that’s just how it goes. The role of government is not to protect companies from regulations that make them sad.
A false-flag terrorist attack occurs shortly before Trump’s re-election causing him to declare martial law and abolish the election and declare himself President-For-Life. Everyone who opposes this is thrown into FEMA-built labor camps in the Southwest. Those who remain are immediately drafted into the armed services when a new military draft is quickly passed and those drafted find themselves fighting wars in Venezuela, Syria, Iran, and Russia. Halliburton quickly is given the rights for “rebuilding” and “resource-extraction” in all conquered lands while the Joint Chiefs of Staff mull plans for the usage of tactical nuclear weapons against stubborn resistance in all fighting areas.
Oh wait that’s what Bush II was suppose to do before he left office.
:smack:
No, that’s what some conservatives* said that liberals were saying. I’m not aware of any serious allegations to that effect about Bush the Lesser. I’ve seen a couple of right-wing pundits say that about Obama…
Now, Trump…he’s a fool, but he’s also a tool, a tool of Bannon. Bannon would like to see the whole system burn down, and if the administration’s actions of the past week and change have pointed to anything, it’s pointed to chaos and confusion.
So I dunno.
I don’t expect the Republican leadership to object materially any time soon; they’re willing to try to ride the tiger long enough to reap the cuts to regulations and taxes on the wealthy. So that pretty well cuts out both impeachment and the 25th Amendment solution. Maybe if there’s enough noise and pressure from the public, they might remember their jobs and impeach. More likely not.
So, that puts it up to 2018. Conventional wisdom has it that the Democrats don’t have much chance to pull ahead. Again, we’ll see.
I disagree. A week is a long time in politics, and it could be re-spun as “See how strong our democracy is that we can remove an errant leader.” If Trump’s successor - presumably Pence - were to put in a good performance, then all would swiftly be forgiven. For an example in a different field, look up Ross Kemp and deknobification.
Except they wouldn’t be removing him alone. They would be removing him with 100% of the Democratic vote saying “Look at how we have to clean up the mess the Republicans made”.
A day wouldn’t go by without the public being reminded of how deeply tied into Trump the GOP let themselves get. Every person up for election will be asked why they supported and voted for Trump’s policies when it was always obvious who Trump was. Unlike Gore, who obviously wasn’t party to Clinton getting blown in a closet, Pence is right in there with Trump and championing the moves that we’d supposedly be impeaching him for later. There’s no wiping that taint off by being the nominal ‘new’ guy. Not going to happen.
We can disagree on it, though. I just don’t believe it.
I wonder if we could bring back some traditional methods? I was thinking ‘hog tied, tarred and feathered then run out on a rail’, perhaps with some rotten tomatoes thrown in for good measure. Could we still do that? I figured ‘dipped in honey and buried neck deep in a fire ant hill’ would be a bit over the top…