I think I have Trump's endgame figured out.

Not in elections since it has nothing to do with the election.

Trump’s cabinet is full of states’ rights advocates. Not only that, but these are people in authority that have seemed intent on destroying the agencies they are in charge of. Judge Gorsuch is about as much of a Federalist as you will find on the bench. This then is Trump’s plan: to return power to the states and do so in a manner that makes it difficult for future administrations to seize it back.

IF this is truly his plan then I fully support it considering I think that over the decades the Fed have seized too much power. So what say you dopers. Is the New Trump Order just a plan to give the Tenth Amendment teeth again and turn back the creeping power the Feds have claimed? If so, do you agree with the ends if not the means?

You’re making it out like he’s a commando on a secret mission that we just haven’t been able to figure out yet. In reality, he’s a monkey with a machine gun. There is no plan. Plus, there’s no ability to even make a plan.

That is Congress’s plan. Trump is too self-absorbed to have a plan beyond his own self-glorification.

“Return power to the states,” eh? <shakes head>

I think you have to take this a few steps further. Any Republican president is going to have a cabinet filled with so-called state’s rights advocates. You need to show that Trump’s cabinet, on this issue, is well outside the norm for a typical Republican president. Otherwise, you’re just telling us that “elect a Republican president” = “a presidential agenda tilted towards so-called state’s rights”.

Of course his cabinet folks are NOT all that big on “state’s rights” for legal pot or sanctuary cities either. When it comes down to it, both parties are “state’s rights” advocates when that position aligns with the overall party goals. It’s just that it tends to align that way more often for Republicans than for Democrats.

Trump’s plan is to prove to the world what a big dick he has. Beyond that, nothing. It’s a mistake to think there are any hidden depths to Trump.

Trump has no plan. He blustered his way into a job he is unqualified for because his narcissistic personality disorder/mental illness made him believe he could solve complex global problems.

Will some of the GOP support states rights? Yes, but as John Mace said, both parties support and oppose states rights depending on the situation.

Trump’s only true goal is to go wherever his pversized ego takes him, and the goal of the GOP is to let him go there so they can push plutocratic and libertarian laws with him as president.

Ironically, if you take a dozen so-called states rights proponents into a room and try to get out of them WHY they think more States Rights is a good idea, you’ll get a different answer from every one of them. At least, once you get past the vague generality/insult version, such as this thread started with.

For some people, they THINK they want more States Rights and less Federal power, is because they hope to have some specific kinds of personal liberty. Most of them know no history, so they are unaware that more personal liberty has come from OVERRULING state power, than by enhancing it.

For some, it’s about restoring racism in government. States Rights has been the cover story for racism since before the Civil War.

Some want to have the ability to ignore more of the consequences of land development and air and water pollution, in order to reduce their business costs by passing them down the river to the next state.

Many simply fantasize falsely that local people will let them run their lives MORE to their own liking, completely ignoring the plentiful evidence to the contrary. Bottom line, they think they are a member of a LOCAL majority, but not a national one.

As for Trump, one way that he is very much a modern Republican, is that he thinks entirely in the short term. Short term immediate profits are all he cares about, and that’s clear from most of his actions to date. Just as the GOP has done for decades now, he lies non-stop, more to his supporters than to his opponents. He pretends to support all sorts of things they do, in order to get their votes and praise, but actually doesn’t care about the issues themselves.

All you have to look at to recognize that in the Republican world, is to look back at their recent behavior about States Rights: they pretended to support them whenever they had to explain away support for racists who wanted to keep Civil War era flags of defiance of the United States itself, flying over state houses; but as soon as the idea of Gay Marriage came up, they changed 180 degrees, and declared that the Federal Government has to tell all of us who we can and can’t marry.

So much for anti-Federalism.

So you read the tea leaves to to try discern Donnie’s true motivation and it turns out that it aligns perfectly with your goals. This sounds a lot like wishful thinking.

There are some instances where the federal government has increased freedom by overruling state laws, most obviously with the overturning of segregation statues. However, there are far more instances where more federal power has meant less individual freedom. Some examples:

[ul]
[li]Strongarming the states into setting the drinking age at 21. [/li][li]Making marijuana and other drugs illegal, even as medicine, even in states that have specifically voted to make it legal.[/li][li]Speed limits. Used to be that the federal government set speed limits on Interstates at 55 or 65 everywhere. In the 90’s, Congress returned control of that to states.[/li][/ul]

I don’t understand why Congress wants to return power to the states. Doesn’t more power for the states mean less power for Congress? Why would they want to diminish their own power?

On “principle.”

Seriously, though.

I know politicians - the most important thing to them is their own personal power and prestige. Why would they ever do anything to make themselves less important?

Their personal power and prestige are served more by having the line “forced their political opponents to accept a transfer of X back to the states” than “kept X in the power of congress”. But as has been pointed out, that only applies when then they think X is bad and they can’t change it in congress, but could change it in some states.

My theory is that Trump’s ultimate goal is universal health care, better funding for education, and a serious effort to combat climate change, because (reasonsreasonsreasons) twelfth-dimensional chess!

We can all mock Trump for not having a plan, nor being able to form one, but that doesn’t mean SOMEONE in the White House doesn’t have a plan. Unfortunately it looks like that person would be Steve Bannon, and his stated plan is to blow up everything. I believe him, because he seems to be a twisted miserable diseased ogre who would rather see the world burn if it can’t be Trumpified (or perhaps even that isn’t sufficient redemption for him).

You are right about Bannon. And he’s off to a great start.

Trump doesn’t have any plan, any master strategy. If you think he does, you’re giving him far too much credit.

I quite agree. This is all part of why my greatest ire, is with anyone who does indulge in “all or nothing” nonsense about something as important as this, as the OP appears to be.

The history of THESE United States, by which I mean the United States as configured under the Constitution, has been packed with “adjustments” back and forth, about what the Federal government should be able to control, and what it should not be able to control. That will continue, hopefully, because a continuing struggle, means that neither extreme has won.

Trumps plan is to recreate another market crash not unlike the last. And all the same people will profit from it, just as they did last time. Of course, generating it means you get to profit the most, because you’re on the inside. This bunch will profit from everything they demolish. The ultimate insider trading, as it were.

And he’s not doing it covertly, either. Why are people acting surprised?

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