I know that I live in a progressive bubble and SDMB can be a bit of a liberal echo chamber. I didn’t really realize that until the US election when, against everything I’d read/heard about the eventual outcome of the results, The Great Cheeto won.
On this board and on Facebook and in various news story comments (even fox news) I hear a lot about how the right is starting to realize their mistake and that Republicans will eventually turn on trump and I have to assume that I’m still living in a liberal echo chamber and none of that is actually true.
Now I’m in Canada so our opinions of US politics have no sway but I just had an interesting conversation with my parents. Understand that my parents have always been staunch righties who love guns and the bible and hate gays and Muslims and women’s rights.
A year ago they both loved trump and thought he was the best thing ever and hated Justin Trudeau. Over the last few weeks I’ve noticed them saying the odd thing about trump and just now my dad quietly say “boy Justin sure made old trump look like a dope”. Shocked, I said “yep” and he replied “I’d sure rather have Justin over trump”.
My parents would fit in very well with white, christian Republicans from Texas so for them to say something like that is a profound change in their political leanings due to trump.
Is it possible that there is a change happening or am I still just living in my safe world, surrounded by people who agree with me?
You are making some false assumptions. Much of the far Right and moderate Right never liked Trump to begin with and still doesn’t. Paul Ryan (Speaker of the House), Mitch McConnell (Senate Majority Leader), Lindsey Graham and Mitt Romney are just a few of the famous Republican politicians who have publicly opposed him. You will find little support for him among the right wingers and Republicans on this board.
Make no mistake, Donald Trump is not a conventional Right Winger or even a Republican except in name because that was the slot that was up for grabs. He is a true populist President that is drawing support from a broad range of people some of whom you would never suspect.
I don’t know exactly what is driving Trump support but I do know his followers are seemingly unshakable. I have asked a bunch of them including well educated people in my own family why they voted for him and they all gave different reasons. They understand who he is and what he does but that is what they want.
It is a myth that white, blue-collar workers propelled him to victory. It wasn’t because that is impossible. There aren’t enough of those to elect anyone to be dog catcher. It is a huge mix of people that forming the “alt-right” for various reasons and they don’t fit into any particular group. Some of it was driven by Hillary hate, the overreach of political correctness and rage over the quickly rising premiums due to ObamaCare but a lot of it is just wanting Washington burned to the ground or even single issues like drilling rights.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a great explanation of why the “alt-right” popped up so suddenly but it wasn’t because of the mainstream Right or the Republican party. You will have to ask a whole bunch of Trump supporters themselves about why they did it. He was correct on one thing though. During his campaign, he bragged that ‘I could shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters’. That sounded ludicrous at the time but it turned out to be mostly accurate.
So what it sounds like you’re saying is that regular Republicans voted for him simply because his name was in the spot that they vote for and that they may or may not have even actually liked him. His base, the alt-right nut jobs, voted for him specifically because they love what he stands for and will never change their minds about him, no matter what he does?
I think a lot of people on the right are cringing hard right now, but they won’t admit asmuch out loud. Many only voted for Trump to spite Hillary…probably believing like that Trump didn’t have a chance in hell of winning. Others probably voted for the party, believing (foolishly) that the “grown-ups” in charge would reign in Trump’s excesses. A coworker who voted for Trump confessed her second thoughts to me right after the inauguration. I wanted to shout at her, “What do you want from me, bitch? A scooby snack for regaining a modicum of shame? Sorry, I ain’t got none for you.” Instead I shrugged and said “A lot of people were fooled, I guess.”
But Trump supporters will never have second thoughts. They could walk in on Trump ass-raping their first-born son, and they’d still put a favorable spin on it. (“At least he’ll take care of Junior and make sure he’s always well-fed and dressed. At any rate, it’s the damned gay ISIS Mexicans’ fault that Junior is now a slut whore. Not the president’s.”)
Unfortunately yes. However, that is no different from Democrats with regards to the established vote. It was the new alt-right that nobody quite understands yet that pushed him over the top.
ISTM many Republicans are glad Trump got them the White House but want him gone ASAP. The moment he won them the presidency, his usefulness to them vanished and he was nothing but a liability to them. They are just wishing inwardly for some way to make President Pence happen, in a way that won’t wreck the GOP.
There are at least three prominent Republicans who are absolutely appalled by Trump: David Brooks, David Frum, Ross Douthat. But they are not really having second thoughts because they were appalled from the beginning of his run.
But I think of the woman who wrote a letter to the NY Times earlier this week who claimed that Trump was going to bring back all those jobs and give her back her affordable health insurance. Yes he was going to give it back to her. Will they ever get disillusioned?
So it sounds like your parents’ opinion of Trump has changed, but their politics remains the same. They’re still “righties who love guns and the bible and hate gays and Muslims and women’s rights”, right? They sound like people who have misgivings about a particular religious leader, yet who remain steadfast in their loyalty to their Church.
While the Dope has made me aware of some, none of the Americans to whom I spoke before the election who were Trump voters were going to vote for him because he was Trump. Instead they listed things like the Supreme Court and not being Clinton as reasons.
I have a lot of righties on my Facebook. There doesn’t seem to be any dissenters among them. However, one of them posted a pro Trump meme that read something like this:
"I am STILL with Trump!
Like and share if you agree!"
I found it rather ironic that a meme like that would even be necessary. I mean, maybe for his 2020 campaing, but now?
There are definitely some people who regret voting for him, and wish he would change how he acted or what he’s doing. But there are also a lot of people who don’t trust the media, so they don’t trust what reports are saying that he’s doing. Like if you didn’t watch the press conference the other day, but just heard or read clips of what it was like, but you also don’t trust the media, you’d just think they were exaggerating and trying to make him sound bad.
Another thing is that he hasn’t really done anything legislatively yet. Here’s an article on Rolling Stone showing that he is out of line with what America and with what his voters actually want. So I think if he does sign off on repealing Obamacare and replacing it with something where a lot of people don’t get healthcare, or signs off on building a wall that would cost us $20 billion, or any other things that would affect his voters, then those voters might start to care and be less approving.
Frum, Douthat, and especially Brooks are tokens on left-leaning editorial staffs whose entire role is to be appalled by the Republican party. None of them have a constituency on the right. Anti-Trumpers in the GOP who do have some influence, such as Ed Morrissey and Erick Erickson, have been warming up to Trump quite a bit.
I don’t know what the left wing equivalent of Trump is because I don’t think there is one that has any degree of chance at the presidency. I mean, I’m sure there is a human being that is roughly equivalent, but that person has not risen into any position of power, no less winning the primary and then the general election. Because the Democratic party is not equivalent to the Republican party with regard to established vote at this moment of time.
Let’s see…they do love guns and the bible but I did ask my mom if she thinks it’s a good idea for teachers to have guns in schools and she said “well no, that’s a bad idea”. They are young-earthers so the bible is tops to them, well except for the kill misbehaving children and if you’re raped you get to marry your rapist bits which, like most Christians, they conveniently “forget”.
They’ve come around a bit about homosexuality and now are more of the “love the sinner, hate the sin” idiocy. But I do think that they maybe, kind of a teeny bit are realizing that we’re just born the way we’re born.
Muslims = bad.
Women’s rights = mostly bad, especially reproductive rights. However I was explaining to my mom that abortion rates are low specifically because organizations like Planned Parenthood provide education and birth control and when you defund them, more women get pregnant and have more abortions which made her go “hmmm”.
So, I’d say that they are still pretty right but maybe softening a bit. Which is why it was shocking to hear my dad say he prefers Trudeau over trump.
I think this is pretty accurate, right up until you say " I don’t have a great explanation of why the “alt-right” popped up so suddenly but it wasn’t because of the mainstream Right or the Republican party. " The Republican Party and the mainstream is very much to blame for the rise of the Alt Right.
Not because they directly WANTED people to go nuts, mind you. However, the GOP very clearly, consciously decided NOT to criticize any extremists who would vote for them, starting somewhere back in the 1970’s. They decided to pretend to support States Rights, specifically because they knew that the white racist right wing extremists, would take that as a signal that a Republican government would allow them free reign.
When Reagan was President, he actually declared that anti-war protesters who blocked traffic as a part of their protest, were TERRORISTS. But he never said a peep about the anti-abortionists who were bombing clinics, and shooting doctors in the street, being terrorists.
During Obama’s first run for the Presidency, the GOP and the mainstream right ENCOURAGED the obvious lie that Obama was born overseas, because they wanted the votes of the idiots who believed it.
The only political subgroup that the Republican Party has turned away since 1980, were the gay Republican alliances. They actually went to the trouble of publicly returning that groups financial donations, as a part of rejecting them. But they didn’t eject KKK members from the party, didn’t declare any right wing extremists unwelcome.
Instead, they actively worked to get everyone to believe that just being a Democrat was tantamount to treason, and that anyone who wanted to have clean water, was trying to destroy America.
It’s only natural, that if you refuse to criticize the nutcase fringe, and actively lie about their opposition, that you will encourage them to come out of hiding and loudly proclaim themselves, just as the newly-named “alt right” does.
Had the “Mainstream Right” and the Republican Party NOT played this dismal coy game of theirs, the alt right would still be pretending to be resentful moderates.
There are enough blue collar whites, as was pointed out at 538 before the election. Though I don’t know if they actually brought him over or not. Anyone have the breakdowns?
My interpretation has always been the that Alt Right is actually not all that large, just vocal. But, in a very divided electorate, they were enough–barely. The alt-right is indeed a mixture, and I would assume is fairly young, since they hang out at 4chan and spinoffs.
But I admit that I’ve been out of the loop since not long after the election. I intentionally unplugged for the holidays, and then I’ve focused on the here and now and not the past.