Because no rational person could think this without party-blinders.
LOTS of rational people thought that and still think that. This declaration would seem proof of party-blinders on you, wouldn’t it?
Perhaps. I’ll let history be the judge.
How do you imagine history is going to judge this? Your claim was that “no rational person could think [Hillary would have been bad for America and bad for the world] without party-blinders.” How is “history” going to shed any light on that? If Trump ends up being unpopular, do you think that would be ‘history’ proving your claim?
When the history of this era is chronicled, I think the consensus opinion will be that Trump supporters were misguided, deplorable, and blindly partisan. Of course, I could be wrong.
How common do you think it is for chronicled eras to have a “consensus opinion”?
After about 100 years, I don’t think it’s uncommon. In this case, 10 years should be sufficient.
I don’t know about the OP, but I can direct you to at least one very obvious and unambiguous example: the Republican threat to default on our foreign loans, some years back. Now, I suspect that your idea of “unambiguous” is decidedly partisan, so I expect you to claim that this was a choice that the Republicans made based on a real belief that stopping the rise of the deficits was more important than paying the debts, but you will have to ignore some basic logic, if you do so.
Specifically, it is either true that the Republicans DID know that their move would cause the US credit rating to fall, and thereby drive the cost of borrowing up, damaging the country in multiple ways… or they DID NOT know that this would happen.
If they did NOT know this was the natural and logical result, that means that they have zero understanding of basic capitalism, of international finance, and a number of other pertinent subject areas which bear on the matter.
Add to that, that after their decision blew up in their faces and contributed to them LOSING elections, they vowed never to do it again, thus proving that they did NOT think it was actually a good idea, even as they did it.
Now. Overall, I completely agree that the GOP in particular, has purposely made it a central part of their governing concept, that they should always choose Party over Country. That has been clear since at least 1968. It is why so many of them lie to their own supporters again and again (the pretenses of caring about race and feminism and abortion and so on).
It is true as well, that they as a group (not all of them as individuals obviously) think that if they can just gain 100% control of the entire government, and insure that they wont ever be turned out of control again, that they will then be able to drop all the lies, drive home their simple-minded financial ideas (mostly based on a fantasy version of a free market economy causing everyone to find God), and that this will ultimately be so GOOD for America, that all of our people will fall to their knees shouting grateful hosannas to them for having lied and cheated for all those decades.
As to the opening post question itself: you need to define your terms, to get a real answer. It’s perfectly “logical” to do all manner of things, depending on what your goals are, and what your illusions about how the world works are. Serial killers and rapists are all behaving LOGICALLY, within the framework of their idea about what life is all about.
There is nothing inherently “holy,” or positive or otherwise laudable about being “practical.” Nor does being “logical” or “practical” change whatever it is you do, from being horribly destructive, vile, reprehensible, and damaging to everyone else around you.
With that in mind, the answer to the opening question is absolutely yes. That doesn’t mean that such behavior is to be lauded or even tolerated by anyone else.
Not to mention strangling the nascent economic recovery for 6 years by not passing a budget (which would have had spending to juice things) after they regained the House. It fell to the Fed to keep things moving.
They were willing to keep their own supporters disproportionately in misery with the expectation that they could point to the usual boogeymen as the reason and eventually win. And they were correct.
Actually, this is your flaw. And the flaw of the Democrats in the last election.
A whole lot of people, especially the independents, vote for the candidate they believe will be the least worst. Clinton had tons baggage but would probably be effective in getting her agenda passed. Trump is an ass but it was easy to believe that he wouldn’t be effective in getting anything done. So if you believe both candidates agendas suck, Trump is the rational choice.
Of course, it is more fun and much easier to believe you are just smarter and more moral than everyone who didn’t vote the way you did. Keep up the insults and you will keep losing. But I am sure the warm fuzzies you feel when you toss out the insults more than make up for losing.
Ftr, I voted third party.
Slee