Thursday, July 19, 2018

What has happened to the Republican Party?


It wasn't that many years ago that the "Republican Party" and "Ronald Reagan" were synonymous.  Conservatives were proud to say they were "Reagan Republicans".  He would bend and compromise if necessary, but NEVER when it came to the Soviet Union.  He stood firm, gave them no quarter, worked with and within NATO, and eventually backed them down.  Ronald Reagan was tough!

The USSR officially collapsed on December 26, 1991, on GHW Bush's watch, but it was all due to Reagan's perseverance.  Reagan very famously said, when talking about our arms control treaty with the Soviets, "Trust, but verify."  He did not say, "Well, they said they were abiding by the treaty, and that's good enough for me."

Early in his Presidential term a very naive George Dubya Bush once met with Vladimir Putin and said, "I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy....I was able to get a sense of his soul."  Later, a much more experienced and worldly Sec Defense Robert Gates said after he met V Putin, "I....looked into Putin’s eyes and I saw a stone cold killer."

It's now said the GOP has become Donald Trump's party as [brilliantly] designed by former advisor Steve Bannon.  Rank and file Republicans rarely say anything negative about Trump.  His brag, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and not lose any voters" has been proven essentially true.  President Trump met with Putin in Helsinki recently and fawned all over him.  He had just been briefed on the 12 Russian intelligence officers who were indicted for meddling in our 2016 election with Vladimir Putin's express approval, but said he believed Putin's denial instead.  

Republicans began to stir uncomfortably, Trump backpedaled his sweetness weakly, and his faithful seem to have gone compliant again.  Their stock, canned comeback to any criticism is "well, Hillary did a lot worse."  For the record, Hillary's emails, Watergate, Teapot Dome, etc, were all criminal scandals, no doubt, but none of that has anything to do with the way Donald Trump is behaving today.  A bank robber can't use as his defense, "well, I only got $500....Hillary got $1,000."

I have many very intelligent, good friends who resemble the description of the Trump Republican I just described.  I encourage them to continue to present their positions on health care, immigration, tax reform, etc.  Those are all things we can reasonably debate.  Kowtowing to Russia and the thug-killer Vladimir Putin should be beyond debate.

I suggest you refresh yourself with the Steele Dossier (here) that was in the news last year.  The jest of it was that the Russians/Putin had some incriminating evidence on Donald Trump that they could someday use to blackmail the new President.  Given the recent strangely cozy US/Russian relations, I expect you'll see this topic soon re-enter the news.

S


13 comments:

  1. If the defense is, "My family has voted Republican forever" and that eliminates the need to think, I can offer one rice sized flit of hope. My bil, a Vietnam vet who will die with his guns on his body, and who does vote the straight ticket year in and year out, because "Pappy was a Republican," waivered long moments at the registration desk at our May primary, then asked for a non-partisan ballot. One sea change down, 86 million to go.

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    Replies
    1. Excellent! People are beginning to wonder what's really going on, and not just believe whatever one network or the other tells them to believe.

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  2. Hillary's emails were investigated and nothing came of it. Watergate, Teapot Dome, Iran-Contra...all Republicans. Coincidence?

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  3. He has not started WWIII yet and the country is doing fine despite him. so why care?

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    Replies
    1. Love your dry humor Zippy. Trump hasn't started WWIII because, among other reasons, Putin is stringing him along. NATO is weak and fracturing, same for the EU, China and the US are toying with a trade war, N Korea is taking much of our attention...Putin couldn't have written a better script. We are at each other's throats here at home, and the economy will eventually enter a serious recession...it always goes in cycles, regardless of who's in the White House. It's doubtful we're in control of our own destiny right now. We're adrift.

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  4. The thing that scares me about WWIII is that it really will be called The Last World War. Or maybe it won't be called anything, because nobody will be around to write, tweet, post, or talk about it.

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