Why does Donald Trump hold such power over the Republican Party?

[wellwisher]

Let us no longer beat about the bush -- Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. In terms of popular vote, he lost it by just over 7 million popular votes. (He lost the 2016 popular vote by nearly 3 million). In 2020, the Electoral college was 306 Biden, 232 Trump. (The reverse of 2016.)

I have spoken here before about my notions about what humans "believe," and it seems clear to me that there are two sorts of belief -- the stuff we're "supposed" to believe, and the things that we really do believe, in our very heart of hearts. One example I've used: I believe that when my stove burner is glowing red, it would be a very, very bad idea for me to put my hand on it -- and trust me, short of physical violence, nothing will get me to do it! I also believe that it's a stupid waste of money to buy lottery tickets, but then, I think, there's always a slim chance, and it's only a couple of bucks, and so I go ahead and buy them. (And, of course, always lose, or one in a while win a free ticket or $2, whoopee!)

I think it is true of both religions and politics (when humans divide themselves up into sects or parties), that there's a lot of stuff in there we're supposed to believe, but really don't, not down deep, not like the stove burner. Every Christian knows it's wrong to kill, yet a huge number of them favour the death penalty. It took until 2022 for the US, a presumably "Christian" nation, to pass a law against lynching!

I think that Donald Trump's real (and only) skill is an ability to read the hypocrisys of others (easy enough, when you're a garden-full of them yourself), and realized that most of what Republicans say they believe and defend -- well, they really don't! They're mostly "marketing slogans." The "party of life?" Nope, they favour the death penalty. The party of "small government?" Nope, they want government to interfere in people's private lives, including who they can marry.

Trump has learned what the rest of us should have by now -- the majority of Republicans (and I grant this may be true of Democrats, too!) are really only about retaining for themselves the power to direct how everybody else lives. And getting huge donations from the plutocrats who will scorch our earth for their own profit, the future of the planet be damned.

Trump is the most competent in terms of the needs of the tax payers. They are the one who provide for all. The Democrats are about their own power, at the expense of the tax prayers. For example, Obama and Biden both increased the number of people on food stamps; lowered the standard of living for the middle class. This justified bigger government via more dependency needing more borrowing of the future.

Democrats do not know how to make a strong economy that benefited those who have to pay the tab. Former President Clinton did well with the economy but this was because it followed the lead of the Republican Congress. Trump decreased the number of people in poverty and raised the standard for the middle class. The tax payers needs to come first since they are the providers.

The interest on the national debt is approaching $1trillion per year, and Democrats are not slowing down spending. If the boneheads had gotten their way and wasted those $7 trillion on green nonsense, we would be over the tipping point. Interests rate would higher. What are boneheads thinking? The new speaker of the House, who was approved by Trump, may help change this. The goal is to freeze spending at pre-pandemic levels and not just pretend a new green pandemic to justify more borrowing.

The Democrats are the party of dependency, and their base may not grasp how eating all the seed potato is leading to chaos. They are desperate and think their handout is the most important thing. I get that. They will need tough love to become part of the solution and not just an unwitting parasite to justify Bigger and Bigger Government and debt.

Biden asked for money to bail out the pension fund of Ukraine Government workers. They are at war and tapped into the fund for both corruption and need, setting up a Democrat skim scam for more US tax dollars. I would prefer a tax break here at home. Why let the boneheads waste the money? I also have uses for money I earned.

The Democrats were the ones who muscled social media to censor anyone who did not go along with their bonehead ideas. They run an injustice system, that have dual standards for cheating. Before Hillary Clinton ran against Trump, Bernie Sanders was head to head, but in typical Democrat fashion, the DNC rigged the game; election interference, with super delegates to assure Hillary would win. The rig was in and then denied, with their base not sharp enough to see. That is what dependency does.

Hillary destroyed evidence about her private e-mail server and her influence peddling, and was pardoned. Trump would never get the same benefit of the doubt. Trump is needed since he was a victim of this lawless clan; dual injustice system of thieves and thugs. He has learned to stay above the water, and mount an offensive, so justice can be restored.

The Democrat fear his revenge, with them making it worse by election interference with frivolous Democrats run state law suits. What goes around will come around. After Trump and purges the crooks from government maybe DeSantis can tie them up in court and bleed their fortunes. The religious people support Trump since they know the devil, and they need someone who once knew the devil, to defeat him and his followers.

Republicans can see the sinking ship and the ripoff by those who are ready to bail out with their ill gotten booty. This is about survival of the country and putting on the brakes to self destruction; the end of Democracy in favor of a Socialist takeover.

 

[Maninthemiddle]

I stated nothing of the sort. This thread is about Trump, not Biden.

OK, that's your claim, back it up. Let's see your analysis so we can all see it.

False, senile is a condition where a person stuggles to do basic tasks. Biden just travelled to Isreal and conducted talks to help Release hostages and provide aid. Not exactly senile level activity where a guy can't find his remote which happens to be in his hand. I suggest you look up what senility actually is and what the signs are.

Well it's expected that if a person makes a controversial claim that they actually provide evidence and an explanation. You, like many otehrs, just make the claim and get upset when it isn't accepted. Lazy.

If I claim the sky is Blue would you require an explanation.
You look at the sky, you see.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

If I claim the sky is Blue would you require an explanation.
You look at the sky, you see.

 

[Ella S.]

Isn't politics, in general, fundamentally about arguing which general policies should be put into practice that govern what we can and cannot do?

Aren't most political activists invested in telling other people what to do, in some sense? Isn't even telling someone to leave you alone still telling them what to do?

Don't we often describe politics as a conflict between various political leaders and groups, each fighting for power?

How are you supposed to have politics without trying to tell other people what you think they should and should not be able to do?

Even Libertarian capitalists have the Non-Aggression Principle. Even anarchists have Proudhon's social contract theory or Camus's existential humanism.

 

[F1fan]

If I claim the sky is Blue would you require an explanation.
You look at the sky, you see.

Look at the sky? Nice attempt to distract. No. Look at this response, I asked for evidence that your claim and judgment is true and valid, and you ignored the request for evidence that your belief is true. If your views are so obvious why didn't you bother to explain how obvious it is? You claim Biden is senile, and don't explain how you are correct. So, since you don't have a problem making claims, but can't seem to back them up, your views are irrelevant.

 

[Revoltingest]

Trump is the most competent in terms of the needs of the tax payers.

Are you talking about the Prez who presided over the
biggest taxpayer giveaway in history during the Covid
fiasco? Paying people to not work...devastating our
economy?

The Democrats are about their own power, at the expense of the tax prayers.

Talk about being power hungry....
There is only one President in our history who
staged a coup to remain in office after losing
re-election. Guess who.

Trump is a traitor & a danger to the country.

 

[Sargonski]

What a mess.

I agree that this Blue Woke joke is a big mess .. but, it is not so funny when the joke is on the citizens - these collectives clowns taking us down the path of authoritarianism. So awful has the blue side become that the reality TV Star looks good by comparison .. a mess indeed !

 

[Yazata]

Donald Trump doesn't exactly hold power over the Republican party.

What's actually happening is that the majority of Republican voters agree with him and his agenda. His 2016 run exposed the fact that most Republicans favored his moderate social conservatism and his America first policies. They liked that he spoke to middle class voters' concerns rather than the concerns of the rich globalist Wall street banker class that used to rule the Republican party during the Bush years, the lobbyist class for whom lowering taxes on the rich was supposedly the country's biggest priority.

To the extent that the Republican party organization reflects Trump's agenda and other Republican candidates increasingly sound like him on the issues isn't that he exercises some kind of control over anyone. (That's just a democratic party fantasy.) It's because they recognize that's where the voters are moving and that they have to move too if they want to have any hope of winning elections. We will see that playing out in the Republican presidential primaries, and in the polling leading up to them. It's why old-style Republicans ("rinos") are failing to gain traction.

Sadly, the British "Conservative" party has never undergone that Trumpian transformation and remains the party of the London banking class, very Oxbridge elitist and socially "woke". We saw that with BoJo who ran as a populist man of the people, then reverted to his establishment Oxford roots as soon as he was PM. The Conservatives in their expensive suits blew their chance and Britain will continue its seemingly inexorable decline into irrelevance. (Does anyone care any longer what London thinks? Tragic to see in a country that was once a great power a century ago.) Americans don't want to see the US follow that same course, with the vacuum filled by communist China presumably.

Voters liked Trump's opposition to endless foreign wars and agreed that the US should only go to war when vital US interests are threatened. (And then fight to win.) They liked his slapping our foreign "allies" alongside the head when they failed to pull their weight in alliances and simply outsourced their defense to the US at our expense. They liked his opposition to economic globalization that placed the interests of multinational corporations ahead of the interests of the American people. They liked his opposition to deindustrialization that left the Midwest a decaying rust-belt while China ended up with all of the manufacturing industries. They liked his asking why we should be more concerned with defending other nations' borders than with defending America's own southern border. They liked his opposition to "defund the police" and the criminal-friendly prosecutors that are turning America's cities into crime ridden drug infested hell-holes full of vacant office towers and boarded up storefronts. They liked his vocal opposition to the BLM riots. They liked his placing speed-bumps in the way of the left's incessant social-change agendas (normalizing transvestites most recently) and they liked his obvious fondness for the America that voters actually identify with, not rejecting it in favor of some morally-cleansed utopian vision supposedly to come, after the Revolution. They liked his promises to drain the ruling "uniparty" deep state swamp that actually controls the United States.

Today they see him as the one standing between the American people and a burgeoning 1984-style one-party dictatorship that strives mightily to control "the narrative" and dictate what people are allowed to say and think, already controlling the federal civil service, the media, academia and increasingly the executive suites of the largest corporations. (That' why the US and European establishments hate Elon Musk's takeover of twitter so passionately. Because he won't let them control him.)

Ironically, much of that Trumpian "populist" agenda isn't so different than that of Bernie Sanders. To a large extent it's coopted the anti-establishment 'rage against the machine' persona of the 60's counterculture democrats. (US politics has flipped 180 degrees in the 21'st century, it's an historic change that historians will eventually have to recognize, as much as they don't want to.) The Republicans are now the party of the working-class, the party of the little people, in contrast to the party of the celebrities, the government offices, the corporate board rooms, the big city newsrooms and the rumpled faculty club Marxists.

It's why Trump won in 2016, because his agenda attracted many socially conservative working class democrats in the swing states. I expect that Biden's obvious personal difficulties (growing frailness and dementia) and the country's obvious decline during his presidency will play out much the same way in 2024.

 

[SkepticThinker]

I was not referring to transparency in terms of finances, I was talking about the cover up of Bidens mental state.
He is totally incapable of doing the job and if it was not kept from people he would not be President.

Conspiracy nonsense.

 

[SkepticThinker]

The man is clearly Senile, one half of the world pity him the other half see him to be a joke and are laughing at the USA as a result.
What is bizarre is that you would defend his term despite the fact he cannot finish a sentence.
The USA as never been in worse shape and the rest of the world does not listen to Biden.

Mmm hmmm

Despite setbacks, Biden reaches aid breakthrough on Israel trip

The president announced the U.S. will be providing $100 million in humanitarian assistance for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to support the more than a million displaced people in need of water, food, medical care and other needs.

www.pbs.org

The Biden economy: Waning inflation, record jobs, lingering uncertainty

Joe Biden speaks to the nation tonight at a time of record low unemployment, rising wages, and diminishing fears of recession - facts the president is likely to trumpet as a sign his plans are working.

www.reuters.com

I've heard Biden form many sentences. And ones that make sense and everything. Unlike Trump who blasts gibberish almost 24/7. Trump claims that he and a brutal dictator fell in love and wrote love letters to each other for goodness' sake and his supporters don't even bat an eye. I mean, talk about a laughing stock - dude got taken in by a dictator.

As someone living in another country I can almost promise you that we respect Biden a heck of a lot more we ever respected Trump.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/12/04/brief-history-world-leaders-laughing-trump/

 

[SkepticThinker]

If I claim the sky is Blue would you require an explanation.
You look at the sky, you see.

So, nothing.
You can't back up your claims. You can't respond to counter claims that demonstrate the inaccuracy of your claims.

 

[England my lionheart]

I agree that this Blue Woke joke is a big mess .. but, it is not so funny when the joke is on the citizens - these collectives clowns taking us down the path of authoritarianism. So awful has the blue side become that the reality TV Star looks good by comparison .. a mess indeed !

Mmm,I think Trump and co like MTG Boebart Gaetz and that weird guy holding up the military promotions are defo authoritarian,even remind me of the lunatic Hitler,MTG especially,she is full of conspiracy theories,it kind of surreal.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

Instead of old opinion pieces (which are, by their very nature, opinions rather than verified facts), why don't you give us, in your own words, a little list of ways in which the Democratic party "patronizes and exploits minorities for their own gain."

I thought that that is what all Americans are taught to do to everyone.

 

[Little Dragon]

This is about survival of the country and putting on the brakes to self destruction; the end of Democracy in favor of a Socialist takeover.

Tin foil hat gibberish. There is nothing socialist about the Democratic party of the United States, they are center right wing on the political spectrum. Clearly you have not the slightest idea what socialism actually is. It's also crystal clear that you are parroting the deranged Maga mating calls that in actual fact call for the destruction of the US republic and to tear down the US constitution. I am British and an outsider looking in. We in the UK are mostly agreed that Trump is a revolting piece of ****, and anyone who supports him, is a disgrace and a potential traitor.

All I/we can see are Trump cultists trying to desperately to demonize anyone who isn't a total fascist.

 

[Little Dragon]

Today they see him as the one standing between the American people and a burgeoning 1984-style one-party dictatorship that strives mightily to control "the narrative" and dictate what people are allowed to say and think, already controlling the federal civil service, the media, academia and increasingly the executive suites of the largest corporations.

We westerners in Europe, see him as a mindlessly stupid criminal about to face, finally, the consequences of his lengthy criminal career as a thief a traitor and attempted coup leader.

 

[Little Dragon]

Mmm,I think Trump and co like MTG Boebart Gaetz and that weird guy holding up the military promotions are defo authoritarian,even remind me of the lunatic Hitler,MTG especially,she is full of conspiracy theories,it kind of surreal.

They are a bunch of feckless vile puke inducing trash, and to be fair, they are politicians. These ones though are basically far right traitors, a cohort including Trump that are trying to damage or even destroy the United States, from within. That could be no clearer.

 

[Little Dragon]

Sadly, the British "Conservative" party has never undergone that Trumpian transformation and remains the party of the London banking class, very Oxbridge elitist and socially "woke". We saw that with BoJo who ran as a populist man of the people, then reverted to his establishment Oxford roots as soon as he was PM. The Conservatives in their expensive suits blew their chance and Britain will continue its seemingly inexorable decline into irrelevance. (

Don't worry, the Conservative party of the United Kingdom, faces almost complete wipeout in the next general election. According to polling data which puts Labour ahead with a consistent historic lead.

The Conservative scum, have had their chance, and they blew it, and blew it good.

As for Britain, we've been around for about a 1000 years now, as a continuous civilization. We will weather these tumultuous times as we have in the past. We will rejoin the EU, we will fix our broken nation. We will do this only by, removing far right and elitist dog ****, from our parliament. Which is going to happen.

Worry about your own ****ty nation...

 

[England my lionheart]

They are a bunch of feckless vile puke inducing trash, and to be fair, they are politicians. These ones though are basically far right traitors, a cohort including Trump that are trying to damage or even destroy the United States, from within. That could be no clearer.

From accross the pond it certainly seems so,even the speaker is an election denier,Marjorie Taylor green is on another level.

 

[Little Dragon]

From accross the pond it certainly seems so,even the speaker is an election denier,Marjorie Taylor green is on another level.

Yeah, it doesn't look at all healthy from here, and that's saying something given the mess we're in. If not caused by Conservative incompetence and corruption, then certainly a major contributory factor. Personally, aside from international issues effecting us, leaving the EU as we did, without any real realistic long term plans for how it would be managed, was utterly asinine, in my opinion. Whether you are brexit voter or remain voter, we can both agree that the separation process was ill conceived and very damaging to our living standards, our economy and our reputation and standing, internationally.

We deserve ridicule.

 

[Revoltingest]

Instead of old opinion pieces (which are, by their very nature, opinions rather than verified facts), why don't you give us, in your own words, a little list of ways in which the Democratic party "patronizes and exploits minorities for their own gain."

In short....
Democrats talk the talk, but don't walk the walk.
I'll give you one example of many.
Biden & Democrats designed the civil forfeiture system.
Cops can take anyone's property without even suspecting
them of a crime. Ill gotten gain need only be possible.
But to get one's property returned requires a lawyer, &
typically at least $10,000. Guess which racial group is
disproportionately most affected by this?

How a Young Joe Biden Became the Architect of the Government's Asset Forfeiture Program

Did you know The Comprehensive Forfeiture Act was introduced by Senator Joe Biden in 1983? With this law, federal agents had nearly unlimited powers to seize assets from private citizens.

fee.org

Democrats have some good points at times, but
they are far from saints, & they often wage war
on civil liberties....of everyone.
Always remember that you lean somewhat libertarian,
& you needn't defend liberals when being illiberal.