The Nixonian idea that “if the president does it then it isn’t illegal” has had hold of the intellectual leadership of the conservative movement for a couple of generations - you see evidence of this throughout the Regan and both Bush presidencies. Trump 2016 was very much an outsider though and found himself surrounded by people intent on trying to enforce guardrails around someone they knew to be clueless and unfit. If Trump has smarts in anything it is his velociraptor like ability to “test the fences” and so by the end of his term he started realizing the way to get rid of those obstacles, and we saw the Jan 6th events was a reflection of that. But since that failed, the Heritage society, the home of that unitary executive theory of conservative governance, have got fully on board with the idea of Trump the dictator and have spent the last 3+ years drawing up plans to run a presidency with all obstacles to dictatorship removed.
I get this sounds conspiratorial, but the Heritage society (they might be hacks, but they serious people) has openly published the ideas and Trump freely talks about them. It’s not even a hysterical liberal reading of their plans, as HW Bush’s deputy AG has described project 2025 as
Project 2025 seems to be full of a whole array of ideas that are designed to let Donald Trump function as a dictator, by completely eviscerating many of the restraints built into our system. He really wants to destroy any notion of a rule of law in this country … The reports about Donald Trump’s Project 2025 suggest that he is now preparing to do a bunch of things totally contrary to the basic values we have always lived by. If Trump were to be elected and implement some of the ideas he is apparently considering, no one in this country would be safe.
Its utterly ridiculous that this is not front and center in all of the campaign coverage…one of the two major party candidates is running on a platform that a former DAG of his own party says is anti-American and will end the rule of law.
I think with Trump a lot of what he does is so absurd, so outside the normal bounds, that most people struggle to get their heads around the criticism. Its easier to believe it is “politics as usual” and liberal hysteria. I think we have to ask questions of the press for how they choose to frame coverage, what they allow to be a long running narrative vs a one day story, how to frame new stories in the context of what we already know. But ultimately people have to be responsible for just knowing stuff.
That’s probably a factor why they are steadily devolving into a banana republic, with possibly worse to come if the lunatics take over the asylum again. Is it the same at states level?
Not quite as bad at a State level, but it’s getting there. It is the primary election on Tuesday, where multiple candidates are vying to be on the ballot in November for various positions that are up, including Indiana representatives for Congress and the State Governor.
When it is the Presidential election there will be multiple other things on the ballot that apply to the individual State you are voting in.
The quantity of adverts for the primaries is quite nauseating, and it feels as though everyone is in a constant state of trying to get elected, or maintaining their power, instead of actually doing some useful work to govern and serve the people.
In these parts at least, a fair amount of the candidates are highlighting their credentials by talking about how in tune they are with Trump. Whenever people come to the door, canvassing, I always ask them about January 6th. It is uncomfortable for Republican candidates to be told by a member of the public, when they downplay January 6th, that they don’t seem like a party of law and order to me. I always get them to talk about the level of their alignment with Trump too, before telling them that I cannot vote for them, as they are taking the country in the wrong direction. When they talk about losing control at the border I do my own little speech about being an immigrant here, and telling them to stop demonizing people who are trying to get to safety.
Anyway, long answer, my bad!
At the State level it is somewhat personality driven, but not as bad as a national level.
I would suspect that for much of Indiana, primary day is more important than Election Day. I recall that Obama was the first Democratic presidential candidate to take Indiana since the 60s, the Senators are always GOP, and the House delegation skews heavily Republican too.
Yep, and the way they are trying to distinguish between themselves is to smear other Republicans for being RINOs, and not being extreme enough, or authoritarian enough. It feels like I’m in a bad dystopian film sometimes.
In the course of some work I did a while ago, I had to meet with, and deal with, Congress woman Victoria Spartz. She is from Ukraine and is very driven and bossy, and as Republican as they come. In looks she reminds me of Mudryk, the Chelsea winger. Her poor husband seemed like a dope who couldn’t wait to get on his tractor.
I dont have any issue with that. The tropes that the GOP are good for national security and for the economy are so strong that even when you have a GOP candidate facing charges for willfully retaining classified documents and promoting pro-inflationary polices the security and economy voters are still likely to vote Republican.
My issue is and always has been interpreting this to tell you things about the reality of how the economy actually is.
I am not qualified to say that this could have anything to do with his QAnon-like conspiracy theories that he keeps embracing left and right without critical sense, but it’s an odd story at least and the man is not mentally well in any case, dead worm having gorged itself on brain tissue and died there in his brain, or not.
Kind of a sad story. I think Kennedy means well and probably is a nice enough man, he is just high on himself like many other from the US elite, but he is bat shit insane, so…
humans are known to have parasites, this is not that revolutionary, its just an incident that happened to someone…not sure why the reporters are making out like its insane…slow news day maybe?
the offer to eat five more …is that just lame humour?
So the third party candidate, in a year where both mainstream candidates are having their mental acumen credibly questioned, decides to go public with a story about worms eating his brain.
Personally, I think what is absolutely spectacular about it, is it being a well known conspiracy theorists who push all sorts of extremely strange conspiracies and has a very, very absurd world view. Then if you add that with him being a presidential candidate (so called spoiler candidate) and one of the main topics in the US political discourse being about the mental state of Biden and Trump; that combines to something absolutely spectacular when the third “insane” candidate" then informs the world that he recently had a worm that had gorged himself and eaten some of his brain tissue before dying. The combination of those factors makes it spectacular, I think.
And yes, the offer to eat 5 more is lame humour, clearly
The scope and spending in the IRA was incredible, but passing the bill counts for nothing without the follow through on implementation. While a lot of this will be done at the local level, it needs oversight of the respective federal government agencies to make it work, and in lots of places requiring modernization of the respective regulations to facilitate the work being done. The way our government works means that if Trump gets in he will shift those Federal agencies in a direction that ensures all progress stops. Not only will this kill a one time opportunity to shift towards a green energy economy, it will poison the perspective of the electorate to the value of passing big meaningful legislation.
Last 3 Republican primaries - Indiana, Maryland and Nebraska - Haley has continued get around 20% of the vote. This is both consistently bigger than the biggest protest vote against Biden (2x more) and from a group who report being far more committed to not voting for the party’s nominee in the general.
Nebraska last night was particularly interesting as you saw pretty similar numbers in typical Trump counties as you saw in the Urban centers where Biden competed/won in 2020. This suggests this is not a niche GOP voter but a perspective of a reasonable broad coalition.
And this from the man who promised he would be the unifier in chief. We have never been so divided and this is why I will reluctantly be forced to vote for Trump (for a third time).
