The blogosphere and Trump commenters
Commenter “brdavis9,” who’s been around on this blog off and on for a long time, has this to say after remarking on how many blogs’ comments sections have gone to Facebook comments or had other problems with commenters lately:
Congrat’s neo: you’re now Eldest, and ”“ so far, at least ”“ the last remaining bastion of rational discourse and generally “polite disagreements” comportment. Kudos. Pray continue. Live long. Prosper.
””””””
”¦this season is simply not like others.50 years I’ve been politically aware, and active for 45 years ”¦and actively commenting since way before the world wide web (anyone else still recall the Prodigy community in the dial-up days ”¦and there were trolls and flame-wars then, too: it’s not exactly a recent phenomena) and this is ”¦simply madness.
Thank you, brdavis9, for the kind words. I’m not 100% sure I feel secure in being the Eldest or the Last One Standing, with my finger in the dike against the threatening flood, but I’ll try my best to keep it firmly planted there.
I have to put out a word for my fellow bloggers, though. This season really is the worst I’ve seen in the eleven years I’ve been a blogger. It seems to be worst in both volume of the troll/flamer influx, dogged persistence of same, and extremity of the attacks (ad hominems, obscenities, goalpost moving, insults of all kinds, gleeful gloating, etc.). I don’t know why this is, but I suspect that some of the trolls are paid political operatives—although that has always been the case (and some, as has also always been the case, have IP numbers from abroad, by the way).
It’s enough to drive a blogger nuts, and some of us weren’t so stable to begin with. What you see is the tip of the iceberg in terms of what is necessary to keep comments functioning and relatively civil.
Now, I realize we’re not running a tea party (small “t” small “p”) here, and of course there’s going to be disagreement, some of it quite bitter. But I try to enforce both the general rules of commenting on the blog and also the more specific ones on inter-commenter insults as best I can. Most of this is done behind-the-scenes, and there’s been a lot of it this campaign season.
The other thing that’s hard, and might account for some blogger burnout, is the disappointment this campaign season has brought for conservative bloggers. Most of them do not support Donald Trump, and “do not support” is putting it mildly. But just a short while ago it looked like it was going to be a wonderful campaign year with lots of excellent candidates and a very good chance of beating Hillary Clinton, the conservatives’ arch-nemesis. Most of us see Trump’s candidacy not only as the death knell of conservatism but as the surest possible way to elect Hillary Clinton. It’s understandable that a person who sees it that way would be less than patient with Trump trolls—as opposed to bona fide Trump-supporting commenters interested in polite and rational argument, who are welcome here and elsewhere.
When I tell people about this site, I always make a point of how respectful and insightful the posts and comments are. I admit, from time-to-time I peruse the Ace of Spades comments, looking for a good laugh and I often find one and do indeed laugh out loud. But in general the intelligence, decent language and avoidance of ad hominem make this a place where both the posts and comments are worthwhile. I sure hope those standards can be upheld in these very trying times.
I said similar in a post the other day…
Kudo’s to Neo for having superior morals and respect for people!!!
what we are seeing, from moonbattery, aceofspades, and such are people who dislike trump so much that they are acting exactly like the liberal base in tactics and smears and such in their effort to change the election.
people who have spent years PRETENDING to defend the constitution, who want a person to defend it, are invariably turning their sites into no free speech zones, and so on.
after 10 years moonbattery banned me
i have been a major contributor of articles for that long and barely rarely post. but i posted some facts and lists that Dave Blount didnt like as they dont match the other stuff in bombast but rather fact, and so he banned me. the post that got me banned was to his claim that the reason the dems are wanting trump is so that hillary can beat him. to which i said, hillary has 22 scandals, listed them, and said, no poll is going to capture the outcome of trumps big mouth using those scandals against her, all the polls are absent listing that stuff he will bring up. if you dont think so, look at what is going on between trump and cruz pac over trumps wife.
i also pointed out that right before the election of reagans landslide the polls had him UNDER by 25 points…
the rest of the people insulting each other remain as posters to show the world how bad trump people are.
so in essence, this is why i have been saying that one major good thing that comes out of this is that its sortign those on the not left who are really on the left in their behavior, and just want different things, but arent different.
some of these divisions are AMAZING and i would never have guessed.. Glenn Beck is now a fruitbat… Bobby Jindal came out in support… the stuff about neil bush is hitting the press.
AND this, camile paglia the left liberal feminist/socialist/communist says in SALON:
as time moves forwards some are finding out, that cruz is the establishments front man playing the anti-establishment card for cred and belief etc.
but camile paglia? salon?
i must have chased some rabbit with a pocket watch, smoked some great crap with a caterpillar, and saw a jaberwocky with hillaries head on it..
the link to the paglia piece
http://www.salon.com/2016/03/24/camille_paglia_this_is_why_trumps_winning_and_why_i_wont_vote_for_hillary/
sorry.. my bad.. mia culpa
Instapundit mentioned that his site has been the subject of coordinated DDoS attacks since yesterday.
I suspect more than just a few paid trolls. I suspect foreign governmental involvement. Hell, maybe domestic governmental involvement!
Neoneocon. Come for the politics. Stay for the dance.
Culture keeps us sane. And polite.
I appreciate the open dialogue here. I have really not seen any truly mean attacks on commenters that would send me running away.
I never comment using Facebook commenting…who wants that showing up in their Facebook feed to family and friends? I don’t.
The reason I want to comment in this way is to avoid personal attacks on my opinions. Had it happen once to me on a news site where only a few bare details were available about my identity. I said something someone didn’t like and they tracked down my home address, my resume, etc. It was SCARY.
So some amount of comment-controlled anonymity is very nice. It is not about hiding the source of the comments so much as protecting someone against a full-out personal attack and destructive, scary actions by those who don’t like what you post.
Art–I thought that was one of Paglia’s most worthless pieces. An awful waste of my precious time.
I have wondered whether the huge slowdown on this blog about a week ago was some sort of attack. I really have no idea, though, and my host was unable to shed any light on the matter.
@K-E …I self-monitor everything I write these days. Facebook? O!Mi!Gawd! no. Trust privacy at FB??? That’s nuts! I have clients! And family!
I dunno what AP and company were thinking at HA. So buh-bye me …apparently along with +/- 30K (?) of some of their best commenters …and coincidentally their best content. And they couldn’t foresee that? Very poor business decision-ing for a [once?] commercially successful site. Still can’t quite wrap my head around it.
You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve deleted my reaching-artfldgr-length-comments (not even remotely a criticism artfl’: keep ’em long, and keep ’em coming …they’re always appreciated and worth reading) prior to my simply “not-commenting” (it’s one reason my comment count is so low these days: I write, I just don’t hit Submit anywhere near as often anymore …even with anonymous posting, that moments reflection before I hit the go button results in “not gonna do it, not prudent” …I call it the Snowden Effect …and yeah, y’all ‘uv missed some real gems, forever gone LOL).
This whole season though …seems so “past the nines” acrimonious and heated …it’s looking like the end of an era.
Sad.
brdavis9, I do that too — that is, write comments and then think better of the headaches that might result — or just the silliness of arguing with anybody on the Internet! — and then delete them. But I do it more often at other blogs than here, where the commenting community is most often civil, respectful and reasonable even in disagreement.
Thanks, Neo, for your ongoing efforts to keep it that way.
Althouse’s comments are reasonably civil. But, yeah, the comments here are pretty much the only ones I read anymore.
Something about self-policing comments may speak to an urge to self-governance among those who do. Others’ perhaps, otherwise.
I know well who I am but can’t vouch for how anyone else sees me — bona fide Trump supporter or troll. But here goes.
Trump’s candidacy had not a thing to do with the death knell of conservatism.
An institutionally feckless GOP/Cons Party does not preclude an institutionally corrupt GOP/Cons Party. In fact they coexist as conjoined Siamese twins — the Stupid Party and the Cuttlefish Party (NeoCons). It was they who’d done in conservatism, it was.
And the Liberals dance in the streets offering advice on how to save “conservatism”? The Wa Po editorial board snivels: “To defend our democracy against Trump, the GOP must aim for a brokered convention.”
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/to-defend-our-democracy-against-trump-the-gop-must-aim-for-a-brokered-convention/2016/03/16/074399d4-eb9c-11e5-bc08-3e03a5b41910_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_opinions)
Where have I heard that concept before? In order to defend democracy, it must be circumvented. In order to… yes… save the village we must destroy the village.
Blame Trump for what you will. Blame Obama on him. Blame the real estate bubble on him. Blame him for bird flu and ebola. But don’t blame him for the death of Conservatism. That sick puppy was croaking a death rattle long before Trump came along. As a matter of fact Trump wouldn’t have come along with such strength if he hadn’t spotted the vultures circling the Party.
Matt_SE Says:
March 24th, 2016 at 2:20 pm
Instapundit mentioned that his site has been the subject of coordinated DDoS attacks since yesterday.
I suspect more than just a few paid trolls. I suspect foreign governmental involvement. Hell, maybe domestic governmental involvement!
&&&&&&&
You must mean Organizing for America and its sister organ Google.
It’s tied in with so many alphabet organs of the Federal government that it changed its corporate name to Alphabet.
Those boys are always on the inside looking out.
Bookworm has an occasional infestation of trolls, but more often the comments are reasoned and reasonably courteous. Her site, like yours, has occasionally fallen into some pretty adolescent (male) humor, in which I might have also participated, but I deny everything!
Been there and experienced that. And you soon conclude that even if you are bigger and stronger – as my conceit convinced me that I was – brooming some raging crackpot off your front porch and into eternal oblivion, promises more subsequent trouble than the joy of battle, and even victory, is worth under normal circumstances.
And the potential for having to kill a violent and threatening crank aside, who really wants to spend a good portion of their finite lives living a parody of C.S. Lewis’s vision of the society of Hell?
So, I think that the people commenting here tend to have a developed interest in ideas, and the geometry, it might be called, of those ideas and their implications.
Writers make remarks here with an expectation, and even assurance, that virtually everyone even glancing at them will have sufficient cultural and philosophical literacy to enable them to actually evaluate the argument being mooted, and to take issue with that, rather than the character or humanity of the person making it.
This literacy, which is quite different from Internet access to Wikipedia and a taste for delivering abuse, enables commenters here to do what commenters elsewhere have trouble doing: taking the logical or historical argument deeper than an initial clash of ideas for show, followed immediately by the apparently more emotionally satisfying descent into invective.
I cannot think of anyone here who lacks a talent or ability for sustained reasoning; or the intellectual and cultural resources that must accompany it, if there is to be light as well as spark.
My guess is that the site is probably judged as too boring to bother with, by those looking for nothing more than a fight.
But then, I don’t have that behind-the-scenes perspective. So …
The Narrative contest for the zeitgeist of the activist game looks like HS debate club, but it’s a maneuver contest. If war is politics by other means, then activism is war by political means.
Neo:
“Most of us see Trump’s candidacy not only as the death knell of conservatism but as the surest possible way to elect Hillary Clinton.”
The latter outcome may come to pass. But based on the pathetic, seemingly characteristic inability by the GOP campaigns to compete versus the mere “jayvee” Left-mimicking activism driving the Trump campaign, I’m hard pressed to see how you reasonably expected any of the not-Trump GOP candidates to compete versus varsity-level Democrat-front Left activists in the general election.
Even today, confronted by the last 2 presidential elections and the Trump phenomenon on their home turf, most conservatives and Republicans yet still stubbornly cling to a traditional electoral frame despite the clearly activist character of current events.
As such, the former outcome is the choice of conservatives, collectively. No real social activist movement is ever dead. In fact, insurgency is the natural role for activists. The power of the people is as available to conservatives as it for anyone else.
Trump’s candidacy should be a clarion wake-up call to conservatives of the political survival necessity for conservatives to collectively adapt with zealous Marxist-method activism.
The Trump phenomenon demonstrates, if the proof was needed, that Marxist-method activism is a basic competitive method, not to be mistaken for an ideology. Activism works for anyone for any cause. And against anyone for any cause.
Culture and the general will of We The People are competitive functions of activism. Right now, rather than compete for real, conservatives mostly concede the Narrative contest for the zeitgeist.
The only way the Trump phenomenon becomes a “death knell of conservatism” is if conservatives choose to accept obsolescence rather than evolve competitively by adapting with the necessary activism.
The activist prescription is not radical. It’s original. It’s pre-Declaration and pre-Constitution. For conservatives to adapt with activism would be reconnecting with the American essence of the Founding Fathers. They understood what was needed for “A republic, if you can keep it”, because they competed with the King and wrested the American nation that they preferred by any means necessary – ie, activism – in the first place. Not with electoral politics.
The Constitution and its governing principles were an effect and not even the 1st effect. The Declaration and the Constitution did not cause the American nation. For conservatives to survive and thrive, they need to restore to themselves America’s first political principle: activism.
Ok. Give Cruz three specific actions or tactics to ramp up his game …
@DNW
LOL. That’s exactly what I’ve thought.
…this site is a refuge.
And bonus! – I learn New Big Words all the time, heh.
@eric:
Excellent analysis (it must be, as I thoroughly agree lol).
I added additional thoughts somewhat relevant to what you’re saying about the GOPe – tho’ dealing with the primary and the likely outcome of the general in particular – in a later thread, here.
This site and one other are the last ones left where I comment. Most of the comments here reflect the class of the owner, and is a reason I often self-censor. This is probably going to be one of the last civil discussion conservative sites to survive. After the election it isn’t going to matter much what we say.
Three times I’ve started this comment, then stopped. 3. Hell with it…here goes.
I am not as bright, or as eloquent, as most of you. Still…
Most of us see Trump’s candidacy not only as the death knell of conservatism but as the surest possible way to elect Hillary Clinton.
Inasmuch as the idea of an elected Shrillary may be horrifying, I am not 100% sure it guarantees the death of conservatism. Critical damage, absolutely. But, that road has so many unintended consequences along its course (black swans waiting in the weeds alongside it), that I think there’s a non-negligible chance she would be her own worst enemy, despite the immense water-carrying defenses she’s certain to enjoy.
I’m not a Trumpkin by any stretch of the imagination. But the one single good I do see arising out of his presence is this: The GOPe can no longer continue to make promises they have no intention of keeping without consequence. That’s the only good message in any of this. It’s just so tragically unfortunate that this extreme is what was required to actually get their attention.
The thinking me says that it’s too late for our republic. But, even then, I do think there’s some slim hope for conservatism…somehow.
There, I said it…
“Most of us see Trump’s candidacy not only as the death knell of conservatism but as the surest possible way to elect Hillary Clinton.”
That’s a quotable quote, right there.
Trump’s a 19:1 underdog — if not worse.
That’s why the MSM, the Left, is running every imaginable agitprop to make the Donald look electable.
Whereas, his polling negatives get no MSM traction whatsoever.
Even Scott Adams has run away from Trump… part way.
Folks just don’t drop a fulsome loathing in the voting booth.
&&&&&&&
Cruz needs to STOP going after — seeking — the Trump voter.
He needs to take down Kasich.
You’ll note that Trump is NOT targetting Kasich, the boob who’s de facto Trump’s favorite splitist.
Kasich’s policy planks are 180 degrees against the instincts of the GOP public.
&&&&&&&&
BTW, Trump is working at the second level in most of his antics.
The purpose behind going after Heidi was to induce Ted into emotion laden reactive commentary.
That’s not a strong point for Ted.
Donald owns that style.
Look what happened to Marco Rubio.
Cruz needs to minimize cross barbs with Donald — and stay zoned on Kasich.
He needs to start campaigning as if HE were going into the Convention with the delegate lead.
Yeah, usually sane blogs are getting weird, and it feels like a reflection of how wacky everything is getting nowadays. Have to wonder how much of this is being egged on by paid trolls.
Thanks for providing a hangout (dare we call it a safe space?) for interesting & thoughtful discussion, Neo!
@steve c – thanks for saying it.
“I am not 100% sure it guarantees the death of conservatism. Critical damage, absolutely”
Agree, it is not the death of conservatism, as that will never end.
Maybe the death of the GOP party, but still, that may be too early to call.
The window for having anything close to a united party is narrowing quickly. If nobody gets a majority before the convention, then the party will be split, no matter what, IMHO.
Maybe even too late to win 2016 given the damage done so far.
“The GOPe can no longer continue to make promises they have no intention of keeping without consequence”
On the narrow issue of immigration, maybe, but much of what Trump otherwise represents/offers is Dem policy, and Trump supporters are good with that.
It seems a large segment of the GOP constituency don’t really want what the GOP’s been promising.
How does one square that round peg?
Or, perhaps, they don’t know what they should be asking for to get what they want.
“Most of us see Trump’s candidacy not only as the death knell of conservatism but as the surest possible way to elect Hillary Clinton.”
People seem to enjoy this quote, but it’s wrong.
Trump and his followers don’t have the power to destroy the GOPe, nor the Democrats. At most, they can only disrupt the general GOP until their supporters realize that they’ve created a vacuum for the Democrats to exploit over, and over again.
Assuming the Dems haven’t imported a new population by then, the Trumpkins will relent and start moderating their views.
Trump has no power beyond his base because he cannot command any other group to simply lay down and give up. Trumpism will also only last as long as Trump, unless you are referring to it as a more general example of cult-of-personality politics. That will probably endure.
Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, 2024!
It seems a large segment of the GOP constituency don’t really want what the GOP’s been promising.
How does one square that round peg?
To be fair, I don’t have any good answer for this. We tend to think of the voters intentions as a rational set of actions, when, I think, the reality is that it’s a irrational position, based on chronic and recurring disappointment turned over into abject anger.
If I were to take a step back and try to characterize the broadest base of Trump’s support, it would be in this statement, directed at the McConnell-type wing:
“Bet you idiots can hear me now!”
That’s not a rational statement, based in any kind of political reasoning. It’s just an angry smack up the side of the head, based on 25 years of disappointment, punctuated by 2010, 2012, and especially 2014, and using the only blunt instrument that they could manage to make work.
Stated differently, it’s a square peg in a round hole which really requires a wrench, yet all a plurality of voters have is the effective backside of an axe. It’s likely to bounce back and cut them, but they’ve resigned themselves to that risk.
The problem is not with the commenters.
We’re not trolls and we’re not flamers. We’re simply saying things that you (“you” generally speaking, the people who happen to have high-traffic sites, as well as you in particular since you wrote this piece) disagree with and desperately don’t want to admit. There certainly is an interesting discussion to be had about why this is happening, but it won’t happen so long as basic facts get rejected, which is what _all_ the “everything going on is crazy” people are doing.
There’s nothing crazy about any of it once you admit certain basic facts. But of course denial of reality produces incoherence.
“But just a short while ago it looked like it was going to be a wonderful campaign year with lots of excellent candidates”
This is just one example. It is a most astounding lie. There was not a single person in the field aside from Trump who was remotely acceptable; not a single one of whom it could be said there was the slightest chance that they weren’t a dedicated liar and guaranteed to betray every single principle on which they’d be elected. (Before anybody brings up Cruz, he’s bought and paid for by Goldman Sachs, who also brought us the 200 billion dollar housing bailout – and the real cost is still going up.) This statement can be made simply from observing their past behavior – which the voters have been doing, in between American Idol and football, and are indeed picking up on the pattern. Whether one approves of Trump’s principles and intentions- stated or apparent – or not, there is at least the chance (slim, but nonzero) with him that he will turn out to not be a treasonous liar. That can only be said of any of the other candidates if one deliberately ignores facts.
(I _already_ knew what to think of you specifically, after seeing the incredibly shabby manner with which you treated the Gates of Vienna people some years back. It’s nice to see others catching up on that.)
Mr. Maq, sir:
“It seems a large segment of the GOP constituency don’t really want what the GOP’s been promising.”
You, too, are lying. To yourself or to your audience, it doesn’t matter; it’s a blatantly false statement and nobody who’s been paying the slightest attention to events of the past 10 years has any excuse for making it. The constituency absolutely wants what has been promised, the problem is that it never, ever gets delivered. It most particularly doesn’t get delivered when the elected officials absolutely have the power to do so but doing so might make the left unhappy with them – which is to say, all the time, for every issue.
The voters have repeatedly given Congress to the Republicans. These Congressmen have repeatedly failed to act on any of the causes for which they were elected. One really must be insane to then be surprised at what is happening now.
One must be even more insane to be surprised at what will happen next time around, should this election not produce a result that at least begins to address the underlying issues. But sure, blame your commenters. That’ll fix it.
Whether one approves of Trump’s principles and intentions-…
Principles? PRINCIPLES?? The man has absolutely NO principles. Read his book. It is about how to con, maneuver, roll, fool, lie, deceive, and outwit whatever mark he is after. All of us, and especially you, are his latest victims. I feel extremely sorry for you, Mr. Rollory, because when you realize what has happened you will have no one but yourself to blame for being so stubbornly blinded by a two-bit reality show grifter. Until that time, please do yourself and the rest of us a favor, and keep your delusions and mania to yourself.
Rollory’s anger is a perfect expression of Trump supporters motivations — no evidence as to the depravity of the other candidates, no understanding of the effect of a three-branch government, or of the effect of the MSM, the educational system, or the bureaucracy, just a feeling of betrayal (which is, to a large extent, well-justified). but which for some reason he directs toward the GOP. (Just to be clear, Rollery, I, too, would have liked to see a Republican Congress send bill after bill to the President to be vetoed — but that’s just theatrics. They would have been vetoed with or without the theatrics.)
With all the brainpower on this blog, you’d think we’d be able to come up with a way to channel all that anger into supporting an electable, conservative, non-asshole candidate.
As anger is to the betrayed so too are fantasies to the Rollory responders.
no evidence as to the depravity of the other candidates, no understanding of the effect of a three-branch government, or of the effect of the MSM, the educational system, or the bureaucracy… … come up with a way to channel all that anger into supporting an electable, conservative, non-asshole candidate.
No understanding of a three branch government! What three- branch government? The Executive – which does what it pleases as a “conservative” Congress appeases and speechifies (Paul Ryan call your writers), as SCOTUS legislates in lieu of judging Constitutionality (Roe v Wade and ACA most dramatically). No understanding – what utter nonsense.
Supporting and electable, conservative, non-asshole candidate. Who for instance? Let us count the “conservative” non-assholes. There was Romney (not conservative), McCain (asshole), Bush (conservative only when compared to Obama who’d smashed all of Bush’s non-conservative records — spending and war), Dole. And there isn’t a conservative in the entire 2015-16 GOP field. There are only degrees of cuckservatives.
Bludgeon the Tea Party* — get Trump. Bludgeon Trump = get ? Cause and effect can’t possibly be lost on “conservative” minds… …can it? All this time I believed the inability to connect the dots was symptomatic of the Liberal/Progressive/Leftist mindset. How does one not conclude cuckservatives, i.e., NeoCons, are not fifth columnists who’ve hijacked the Party and had their way with the canons, platforms, and planks. Reactionaries unite. Counter-Revolution!
*Of all people, Democrat Pat Cadell came to the defense of the Tea Party as it was being assaulted by Cuckservatives and NeoCons or whatever name they go by – I prefer sons-a-bitches.
To be honest, I’m sick of the GOPe. Shortly after 9/11, when the brief time where D&R actually figured out that the enemy was NOT the other political party, they’ve been rolling over at every D criticism. When Bush needed party support, they looked the other way for the most part.
When the D’s got control of the House and Senate in 2006 and instituted policies that were going to cause problems, they didn’t fight them. All the D’s had to do was go “This is going to be good for the disadvantaged”, and they just rolled.
When McCain chose Palin, I thought… “Hey, maybe they’re getting a clue, that they’ve got to engage the people outside the Beltway.” But when she proved more popular than he was with the folks in flyover country, and the media started ripping her for being ‘Not our kind’ (since she was from outside the Beltway and not ashamed of it) – they caved fast and sidelined her. If they’d given her the same sort of support and shielding that the Democrats gave Obama, we’d be in the 4th year of the McCain presidency. But it seemed like they were playing to lose – putting out enough effort to look like they were trying, but not enough to actually win.
After that, they didn’t dare object to what Obama wanted to do because they feared the media’s smear of ‘Racism’. I’m honestly surprised they stood solid against Obamacare.
Then Romney came along in 2012. You’d have thought they’d have learned from 2008 – but in the end we were left with a candidate the media did their utter best to tear down, and the GOP’s defense (again, from flyover country) was half-hearted at best. Seriously, didn’t they WANT to win?
In 2014 the Republicans FINALLY got a majority in the House and Senate. How have they used that majority? Have they pruned anything about Obamacare? Have they increased security on our borders? Not visibly – they seem to still be thinking “We’re powerless, and have to be liked inside the Beltway.” As Richard Saunders said, sending bill after bill to the President to be vetoed would have been theatrics – but it would have been evidence they were TRYING to do something.
What’s the phrase from the ’90s? “Silence=Consent’? They’ve been silent. Yes, playing to the cheap seats is important also.
Now they seem to be trying to… hamstring the candidates who have actually gotten traction in flyover country. This tells me – someone outside the Beltway or the Coasts – that they’re not particularly interested in actually fielding an effective President. They want a figurehead that can lose gracefully, absolving them of responsibility for governance. Because actually doing something, making decisions that affect the country and the world is scary, and brings the risk of Democrat and media dislike.
And they’d cut off their own electorate rather than risk that.
I’m no Trumpkin, Trumper, or whatever the day’s fashionable slur is for a Trump supporter. I’d much prefer Cruz – but I’ll vote for Trump.
Why?
Because in my opinion DC’s rapidly turning into the Capital City from the Hunger Games – a self-absorbed community filled with posturing and preening ‘elite’ who have little to no regard for the people outside the Beltway circle of politicians and high-rolling donors, and even less regard for how the lofty pronouncements which are supposed to ‘benefit’ them actually affect them. They’re oblivious to how the country sees them, and there’s no realistic way to get through their egos. If the dismal poll numbers on how people see Congress isn’t sufficient, what would be?
Getting someone in who doesn’t care about the media, who doesn’t visibly care about being liked by the Democrats and the whole DC elite crowd is a start. But keeping the same attitudes and thought processes that our current ‘elite’ show isn’t going to change things for the better.
Your mileage, of course, may vary. But there’s something badly, badly wrong with the system when someone like Hillary and Bernie are seen as the best one of our political parties has to offer as a Presidential candidate.
And I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer to see the Hunger Games dystopia locked away in fiction – not played out in reality.
I am a Trump supporter simply because I want the GOPe to burn. And because it seems to make the rest of you crazy. I have been called so many things on so many blogs by people that don’t know me, that I really don’t care what happens anymore. I will never vote for Hill and had originally started out a Cruz supporter, but Trump seems to bring out the crazy in everyone. I like it that he doesn’t care one bit what anyone says about him and will tear Hill to shreds without batting an eye. We need Attila the Hun, not Bambi to run this country.
SillyConWrecks:
“And there isn’t a conservative in the entire 2015-16 GOP field. There are only degrees of cuckservatives.”
Readers Digest version – “I hate them all. I even hate Donald.” The field started at 17 but to SCW they are all the same and all defective, not pure enough for a Paleocon. Burn your own house down first.
“Cuckservatives” is one of those words that’s a “tell” that the person is using the activist lexicon of the day.