Few do.
Short version:
You’re right, in my opinion, about what the Republicans have done and are doing.
But I think you’re wrong about the best strategy to tackle it. I think if she were to tackle the whole party, or at least a large segment of it, in that way, the Republicans would use that as evidence that it’s just partisanship. That argument, again in my opinion, is less effective when her attacks are very targeted.
Even if it means some guilty people skate by, I think it’s good to promote a fracture in a party between the “holy fuck, that’s racist and we like it that way!” people and the rest of the party. Yes, the rest of the party has too many supporters and enablers of racism in general and Donald Trump in particular, but if you can just drive a bit of a wedge in there, getting people to reject someone for being too racist, some cognitive dissonance may work to get them to reject their own ideas when they are too racist, too.
The rest of us should still point out the often racist backdrop for the party, though, and how Trump is a creation of that toxicity.
If Trump ever does anything favorable, I’m sure they will cover it.
FWIW I believe that you are exactly right.
Trump is the living breathing caricature of the modern Republican party. Just what the party has been all about writ a wee bit bigger, large enough that the what of what it is no longer has plausible deniability, including the the denial of some that has been self-delusional.
And the future of the country is best served by Democratic leadership if some of those who have been either self-delusional, or who perhaps thought that they could pander and enable and yet not get dirtied themselves, are allowed a face-saving exit from that course.
I want as much of the GOP leaning voting population and as many of the GOP elected politicians as possible sold on the idea of repudiating and rejecting the politics of exclusion and demonization, sold on the idea of working with Democrats some, as possible. A sale is always best made if the “customer” thinks it was their idea all along … no matter how much it of course was not.
Retribution is immaterial in comparison to rehabilitiation.
Yep and as Clinton so ably pointed out in her “alt-right” speech, W, Dole and McCain all explicitly denounced racism at appropriate times when it came up during their election campaigns or times in office. And Romney has explicitly condemned Racism and Trump this election cycle. That makes it unanimous for the GOP until Trump. They may have dog whistled but they didn’t want open racists associated with them.
Bubba stood up when he faced his Sister Souljah moment. I can’t name any Republican presidential candidate since who has done likewise other than McCain regarding Muslims.
As much as you might wish away reality, this isn’t par for the course. This is not merely a case of racists agreeing with Trump (although that alone raises questions). The bigger problem is that Trump is embracing the racists. He’s not denouncing their views. He’s even hiring some of them to work on his campaign.
Heck, it’ll be headline news.
It depends, i suppose, on what your “best strategy” is aiming at. If the main aim is to get elected, then there’s a good chance she’s adopted the best strategy.
I’m talking, however, about bigger issues of principle and the broader direction of the Republican Party. I don’t think it should be just about racism and xenophobia and all of Trump’s other obvious disqualifications; it should be about governance, and i think that one area where the Democratic Party has done a truly awful job over the past eight years is really hammering home the blind and partisan obstructionism of the Republican Party as a whole. Democrats have been oversensitive to accusations about their own partisanship, and in too many cases have modified or moderated their strongly-held convictions as a result. And yet they often let Republicans get away with far, far worse stuff.
My broader point here, i guess, is that even if Hillary defeats Trump in November (something i’m pretty confident about), and even if Trump and his alt-right supporters were to magically fall back and recede from the political sphere (very unlikely), we’ll still be left with the broken, obstructed politics of Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan and Ted Cruz and the rest of the Republicans in Congress, and we’ll still be left with millions of bigoted assholes who, instead of sending out emails and social media posts making sly observations and dog whistles about Obama’s race, will be doing it about Hillary’s gender.
DSeid talks about a “face-saving exit,” but i’m not sure that the current Republican leadership deserves that, not just for their support of Trump, but for their broader blind obstructionism, of which the Merrick Garland case is only the most recent example. And this is not really about retribution; it IS about rehabilitation, but of the Republican Party as a whole.
Hillary’s whole strategy seems to be based on the assumption that, if we can carve off Trump and the alt-right, then we will gain a more normal political landscape, but i’m not sure that this is enough. Because if Hillary’s current strategy is successful, my sense is that we are just left with the status quo ante Trump. Do you think that the Republicans are going to be any more reasonable once that happens? Do you think that folks like McConnell and Ryan are going to change their ways? If the blind and wilful obstructionism of the pre-Trump period is now our goal and our idea of a solution, then the Republicans have actually won.
True, but there’s a reason Trump appeals to these guys and they believe he’s ‘one of them.’ Racists are like pot smokers (in only one way). When they meet, they have subtle ways of checking each other out to find out and let each other know if they’re ‘cool.’
Urbanredneck already raised that point and I answered it back in post #18. I’ll quote it here for your convenience:
Donald Trump makes a habit of retweeting stuff he finds while surfing white supremacist sites. He (and you) are going to have to work a little harder to explain why we should give him the benefit of the doubt.
I agree with you about what’s going on, and I agree that it’s not enough. But I also don’t think there’s anything Clinton can do to change the landscape other than force a rejection of Trump. I’m talking about Hillary Clinton herself, not everyone else. She’s the right wing’s demon in a pantsuit.
Her strategy isn’t based on what the landscape will look like after the election, except marginally to the extent she and Dems running for Congress think she can help them.
No, there’s no reason to expect Repubs to change, they won’t, their goal is obstruct or regress, their stated ideology is as little government as possible.
Clinton’s goal is to win and take what she can get, knowing she’s not going to have the House unless there’s some sort of miracle. And to obstruct. Obstruct regression.
Stasis is preferable to regression.
There’s only one way that the Republican Party will ever be ‘rehabilitated:’ when they become a small enough minority that they can’t get away with their tactics. Hillary hate notwithstanding, any Democrat is anathema to the newish conservative. They just have to die off; our mission is to try to maintain some reasonable approximation of a nation until that happens.
Speaking of Trump and Twitter, I looked at his Twitter feed this morning for the first time. He was up tweeting at 6 this morning and sounds like he’s on crack or something. He just keeps getting worse every day.
I’d like to see a few more state polls, especially CO, but I think Clinton has 273 locked down and won’t need either of OH or FL.
I still have the final result being the same map as 2012.
“Few” meaning not a single one to date.
He really does give every appearance of someone who’s been popping too many uppers for too long. I keep wondering what his doctor may be prescribing for him. Seriously, I’m not saying that out of meanness.
Send his doctor the prescription lists for Elvis, MJ and Prince, stat!
Did I say that?
I think the view of “Repubs” as some static singular cohesive entity with some unified goal is dangerously simplistic.
No, they won’t “die off” and they will very likely still control the House and if not the Senate be within good position of retaking it at midterms.
I also do not believe that it will even be possible for them to return to status quo ante Trump. There will, I think, be even more clearly demarcated camps claiming to be the true GOP.
No question there will be many GOP members of the House who will continue to represent White resentment and many of them will be responding to their base that will blame Trump’s loss on the GOP establishment having sold them out in pursuit of maintaining their own power and perks. These are the ones who will not repudiate Trump now and who are the one in four Trump supporters who are actually voting for him rather than against the demon in a pantsuit or reluctantly out of misguided party loyalty. Not quite a complete overlap with Tea Party Representatives but a significant overlap.
And a few like Roger Marshall in Kansas, who defeated Tea Party leader Tim Huelskamp, and is more interested in pragmatically getting things done that matter for his state, than in obstruction.
And Paul Ryan who is anxious to begin a rebranding and rebuilding process that makes their brand less anathema to many college educated Whites, to women, let alone to non-Whites, who recognize that longer term they cannot cede such overwhelming margins of the non-White vote to the Democrats.
More Senators in more purplish circumstances who can no longer rely on loyal older Whites to put them over and need to broaden their appeal.
Presidential wannabees who see what pandering hath wrought.
How will they behave moving forward?
I am not sure. But I suspect that demonizing them all minimizes the chances of an outcome I’d like to see.
You know what I find fascinating about this endorsement? If you did a find-and-replace in it to change every instance of Trump’s name with that of some other politician, any other politician, it would be impossible to tell which was the original. There’s absolutely nothing in it distinctive to Trump. Here, for instance: