Yay! Dictionary fight! [starts waving Merriam-Webster flag]
For what little it’s worth, I enjoy it when Bricker bumps or brings up old topics like this. It’s entertaining. It reminds me of sports forums when people bump old prediction posts about who the champion will or won’t be and everyone has a good laugh.
OED!! OED!!
word
An odd suggestion when mocking clearly works. It is just that Trump did more mocking and at higher volumes than his opponents.
The context of the proclamation is relevant.
This proclamation came in response to the thread asking what kinds of qualities an ideal Republican would have – not a prediction about a specific person but a question about what kind of person could gain support.
And his answer was that no set of qualities could possibly win.
That’s an argument.
Yes, I am forced to concede that mocking seemed to work well for Trump.
I’m suggesting that Trump was sui generis in this regard.
No. As I mentioned above, while lots of people were wrong about Trump, no other poster has said that any future Republican was essentially impossible - a “paradox,” a claim he has now withdrawn.
I’d be happy to, but I try to moderate my own predictions unless I’m very confident myself. I’ve offered quite a few bets over the years here, but only when I was very confident… and although I have a winning record, it’s not 1.000, so I don’t claim to be perfect.
Just accountable.
That said, I am happy to speculate.
You’re joking, but I’m a librarian, and sometimes it’s hard to turn it off even when I’m not at work. Not only did I check the OED, I even started to include quotes from the OED in my post when I realized that most people would probably rather I didn’t.
He took a real risk when he mocked that Gold Star family, though. Had they been white… hmm…
Of course, the whole point is that they were loyal Americans who weren’t white, but I kinda wish there’d been more blowback from that moment, and not just about how Trump’s remarks were rude and offensive (his supporters loved that he was rude and offensive), but how he lacked the qualities to be sure that when he put American soldiers in harm’s way, as all presidents must, it would be for good reasons.
I am sure there were ways to render that moment down to easily-repeatable slogans that could have stuck to Trump the way little else had. Reasoned discourse didn’t carry the day, and that’s an unfortunate thing to learn about America.
The proclamation came in many threads, not only in one about what kind of qualities an ideal Republican would have. He popped into many Elections threads, reiterated his commandment and left. Now, you’re redefining a proclamation as an argument.
I’m baffled as to why you’re calling out KD99 out, but not the people who really did make arguments about Republicans having no chance due to the EC or demographics or what-have-you. Those posters really did make arguments and were proven utterly wrong.
You and I are going around in circles. Feel free to redefine words however you’d like.
There is also the fact that Trump is not a republican. And before you argue about scottsmen and truth, let me explain.
Those prognosticating upon the future without republican executives did so because they believed that the majority of the electorate was rejecting republican ideas. The didn’t want small government, they wanted government that would give them jobs. They didn’t want healthcare gutted, they wanted it fixed to work better for them. They didn’t vote to reverse marriage equality, they didn’t vote to remove a woman’s choice. To them, Trump did not represent these things.
So, just because Trump had an R next to his name, does not mean that a republican was elected president, and definitley does not mean that republican values won over progressive ideas. It was Trump’s message of bringing back jobs and security was better than Clinton’s message of working together for incremental improvement.
If a Bush or Rubio or Kasich had won, that would prove that the voters are looking towards these conservative principles. The fact that Trump won the electoral college, while losing the popular, does not, in my mind, bode all that well for the future of republicans running on conservative agendas.
So, if you are going to nit-pick on what “unacceptable” and “paradox” means, then I will nitpick on what “Republican” means.
Now, I will not in any way prognosticate on what letter the next president is going to have next to their name, but I would actually be willing to bet you a small sum that no president gets elected on conservative principles in the future.
This is not an assurance. I admit that I may be wrong about it. I fear I may be wrong about it. But if you are looking for someone to back up their prediction, I am willing to do so.
Interesting.
There is no nit-picking on my part: kaylasdad99 flatly said that a future Republican president was paradoxical, and concedes in this very thread:
That’s not a nitpick.
The problem with your claim is that admittedly I have no real idea WHAT Trump’s actual principles are. But I can point to plenty of things he said while campaigning that are consistent with Republican platform positions and stand opposed to the Democrats’ platform. He was reasonably pro-life and pro-Second Amendment, for example. Certainly his list of Supreme Court picks are consistent with GOP thought on judicial philosophy. The GOP platform says, “Any honest agenda for improving healthcare must start with repeal of the dishonestly named Affordable Care Act of 2010: Obamacare,” and Trump certainly was consistent in his campaign rhetoric on that point.
He promised to move the American embassy to Jerusalem, dismantle the Iran deal, and promised that when he becomes president the days of treating Israel like a second-class citizen will end on day one; he would meet with Netanyahu immediately. This is certainly consistent with the Republican platform plank, “Therefore, support for Israel is an expression of Americanism, and it is the responsibility of our government to advance policies that reflect Americans’ strong desire for a relationship with no daylight between America and Israel. We recognize Jerusalem as the eternal and indivisible capital of the Jewish state and call for the American embassy to be moved there in fulfillment of U.S. law.”
And an aside, isn’t it awful how all those Trump voters would just fail to concede they were wrong about factual claims about Hillary Clinton? You’d show them facts and they’d just not admit they were wrong!
Why does someone do that, do you think?