To Trump voters, can you just come out and admit that you fucked up badly last November? Will your pride not let you do that?
Robert Reich posted this conversation he had today with a “former Republican member of Congress”:
Me: What’s going on? Seems like the White House is imploding, and Republicans are going down with the ship.
Him (chuckling): We’re officially a banana republic.
Me: Seriously, what are you hearing from your former colleagues on the Hill?
Him: They’re convinced Trump is out of his gourd.
Me: So what are they going to do about it?
Him: Remember what I told you at the start of this circus? They planned to use Trump’s antics for cover, to get done what they most wanted – big tax cuts, rollbacks of regulations, especially financial. They’d work with Pence behind the scenes and forget the crazy uncle in the attic.
Me: Yeah.
Him: Well, I’m hearing a different story now. Stuff with Sessions is pissing them off. And now Trump’s hired that horse’s ass Scaramucci – a communications director who talks dirty on CNN! Plus Trump’s numbers are in freefall. They think he’s gonna hurt them in ’18 and ’20.
Me: So what’s the plan?
Him: They want him outa there.
Me: Really? Impeachment?
Him: Doubt it, unless Mueller comes up with a smoking gun.
Me: Or if he fires Mueller.
Him: Not gonna happen.
Me: So how do they get him out?
Him: Put someone else up in ’20. Lots of maneuvering already. Pence, obviously. Cruz thinks he has a shot.
Me: But that won’t help them in the midterms. What’s the plan before then?
Him: Lots think he’s fritzing out.
Me: Fritzing out?
Him: Going totally bananas. Paranoia. You want to know why he fired Priebus, wants Sessions out, and is now gunning for Tillerson?
Me: He wants to shake things up?
Him (chuckling): No. The way I hear it, he thinks they’ve been plotting against him.
Me: What do you mean?
Him: Twenty-fifth amendment! Read it! A Cabinet can get rid of a president who’s nuts. Trump thinks they’ve been preparing a palace coup. So one by one, he’s firing them.
Me: I find it hard to believe they’re plotting against him.
Him: Of course not! It’s ludicrous. Sessions is a loyal lapdog. Tillerson doesn’t know where the bathroom is. That’s my point. Trump is fritzing out. Having manic delusions. He’s actually going nuts.
Me: And?
Him: Well, it’s downright dangerous.
Me: Yeah, but that still doesn’t tell me what Republicans are planning to do about it.
Him: Look. How long do you think it will be before everyone in Washington knows he’s flipping out? I don’t mean just weird. I mean really off his rocker.
Me: I don’t know.
Him: No all that long.
Me: So what are you telling me?
Him: They don’t have to plot against him. It will be obvious to everyone that he’s got to go. That’s where the twenty-fifth amendment really does comes in.
Me: So you think…
Him: Who knows? But he’s losing it fast. My betting is he’s out of office before the midterms. And Pence is president.
To paraphrase from Colbert, doesn’t that mean 61% of the people approve of the favorability he doesn’t have?
And the RCP average of pollshas him today at a record setting 56.1 “disapprove”. This ecliipses Trump’s former disapproval record of 56% on June 12.
Hmmmm. Let’s look at approval ratings of the last two Presidents on this date in their first year of their first term:
Obama: Approve 54.1, Disapprove 38.6
Bush: Approve 53.4, Disapprove 37.0
Sorry, not a chance. The narrative for this occasion has been set from the beginning. Trump has been constantly saying that Obamacare is on the verge of collapse. When he sabotages the program and everyone loses their healthcare, his supporters will see it a a demonstration of predictive ability and lay all blame at the feet of Obama, the Democrats, and that traitorous surrender monkey McCaine. IF only they had been allowed to fix everything with Trumpcare none of this would have happened.
Elizabeth Warren talks like this. But the Democrats have written off female candidates (I believe), and so she won’t get the platform to really put across what could be a winning message: the concept that Democrats have plans and policies that are far more pro-business than is the case with the GOP–who care only about pleasing the already massively-wealthy.
I agree this is true for the truly delusional devotees. But I’m thinking more of the supporters who didn’t really care for him but wanted something different. Those who felt their lives might change for the better with someone who would “shake up” Washington and were willing to take a chance. I think they might draw the distinction.
Sounds like it is a moot issue, now. Orrin Hatch says lawmakers will need to “appropriate” the cost-sharing subsidy payments that the administration has been making. I wonder if that means that they, Congress, would take this function away from Trump. I do hope so. This move alone would go toward stabilizing the markets for the time being.
Maybe I and Happy Lendervedder could get some sleep. 
We’ll all realize how competent Trump is by year’s end says Scott Adams.
[Or just any minute after that]
By year’s end we’ll recognize that this hasn’t been a colossal clusterfuck.
We’ll realize that Trump actually is competent.
But we won’t like it.
I’ve been waiting to hear when we would reach the stage where we recognize Trump’s competence.
I wonder if Adams’ll start pushing the recognition of Trump’s competence start date out in six month increments like back when we were waiting for stability in Iraq?
Probably. But surely what Adams is breathlessly anticipating, what with that “but we won’t like it,” is a full-blown dictatorship.
What else could he have meant?
He’ll fire Kelly first, rather than give up his Tweets.
Nope, will never happen. Unpossible!
So this is saying that they have been deliberately, knowingly, intentionally supporting a MAD MAN.
Exactly.
I’m wondering why I should give a shit about the opinion of a guy who draws cartoons.
I’m guessing the average Trump voter would ask “Why? Did something happen?”
My belief is that the majority of people who voted for Trump are the same people that don’t pay attention to the news or politics or what’s going on in the world.
Is the GOP finally starting to get it? Jeff Flake has had enough. Who is next?
“If by 2017 the conservative bargain was to go along for the very bumpy ride because with congressional hegemony and the White House we had the numbers to achieve some long-held policy goals—even as we put at risk our institutions and our values—then it was a very real question whether any such policy victories wouldn’t be Pyrrhic ones. If this was our Faustian bargain, then it was not worth it. If ultimately our principles were so malleable as to no longer be principles, then what was the point of political victories in the first place?”
They pay attention; they just don’t have the humility to admit that they might not know something, and that liberals, their avowed enemy, were actually right. I saw this same shit when George W Bush was president. People were questioning liberals’ patriotism when the questioned whether invading Iraq was a good idea and even though it was soon obvious what a disaster it was, I heard very few conservatives admit that they got it wrong. And the same with the financial crisis, which they blamed (incorrectly I might add) on a minority Democratic party for “forcing” banks to lend more money to minority first-time home owners under FHA, when it had nothing to do with the financial crisis at all.
So, is he upset that he and his pals are lying hypocrites, or is he upset that being lying hypocrites didn’t work as well as he hoped. It reads like he is admitting they are all a bunch of cynical manipulative bastards who lie to get what they want and who have NO real values or principles except for show to get what they want.
Hmmmmmm.
Or worse, only pay attention to what Fox News & talk radio tell them. Which is why Trump still has a 36% approval rate. That’s more than one third of Americans!
Also keep in mind that only 26% of registered voters voted for Trump. (Most of the rest didn’t bother to vote.)
Oh no, they’ll just hold more pray-ins and talk more and more about how SATAN and the LIBERALS are destroying a good and honest man who is their President. :rolleyes: