We’ll see how far trump and the GOP Congress will go down the path of adopting the dems’ old arguments and behaviors.

1) Cruz would be FAR more disciplined
2) Cruz would have been FAR more strategic and organized
3) Cruz would have FAR less tangible to aim an attack on

Look, there are legitimate concerns that trump may be up to no good. It is NOT just about ideology.

Good article by Megan McArdle that outlines some of the real concerns and the consequences of turning a red team blind eye to it all.

It “normalizes” what shouldn’t be, creating a permission structure as prelude to potential gross abuse of power
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-10/we-are-already-struggling-to-keep-outrage-alive-in-the-age-of-trump.

Free to conclude that, but it is rather questionable conclusion when trump had one of the lowest turnouts as a percentage of eligible voters of any GOP candidate since WWII, and skated by with the slimmest of majorities in a few swing states.

IOW a significant percentage of GOP voters stayed home or voted third party, and a last minute unfavorable turn in the news cycle would have sunk him, it was that thin a win.

clinton was such a bad candidate, also with an historically low turnout of eligible voters, and the country was so predisposed to a change, that I’m convinced that most of the other GOP candidates would have won anyway.

They’d have brought home those expected GOP voters and maybe made inroads on the dems who were dead set against trump for a variety of reasons.

This is further reinforced by the lack of “coattails” trump had for down ticket races, where most of the key ones outperformed trump as a percentage of the votes cast.

To believe that only trump could win, one would have to ignore the above facts, and think turnout would be even lower with another candidate.

Please look up my several other comments on this if you’d like to dig further into the data links.
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To say it would definitely be one way or the other is pure speculation now, as there would be a completely different scenario that would have unfolded.

For instance, the controversies from the left would have been far more contrived (e.g. “binders full of women”) vs real and far more politically harmful (e.g. “grab her p*ssy”), the latter probably playing a large role in why folks stayed home or voted third party.

There’s plenty more, but if all the above is not sufficient to put some doubt in the proposition that only trump could have won, adding more won’t help make the case.
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trump’s “platform” was a Rorschach test for the most part, in a campaign filled with mutable statements from himself.

Yes, he came out in October with a “contract” (strangely, he asked voters to sign it), rather late in the campaign. However, a great deal rides on the “how”.

So far, mixed bag – good cabinet picks, colossal EO eff up.

What matters much more is what trump will do when the going gets tough, say, under a crisis, and, overall, how he is going to govern on the things NOT articulated, given his newly acquired powers.

The jury is out.

The remainder of his 1st 100 days should give us a pattern of sorts.

We have many hopes tied up in this speculation.

I am indeed the author of the blogpost.

The entire piece was a cautionary tale.

Bear in mind, exactly such conflict, whether unilateral on their part, or bilateral, is exactly what the Left has been and is actively agitating for, out loud, in public, 24/7/365, and shamelessly, ever since the election results upset their applecart, and they found out the media had been lying to them.

Escalating violence isn’t a prospect, it’s a reality.
Day before yesterday they beat a staffer (in her 70s, IIRC) at Rep. Rohrbacher’s office.

The only thing prospective is whether this triggers a crackdown by the authorities, or failing any such thing, unleashes a widespread backlash, and/or which happens first.

The fact that once it gets going, the toothpaste can no longer be squeezed back into the tube, is precisely the problem once the argument goes from free speech to a punch in the mouth to a gun.

Then it’s Sarajevo.

(And please, spare the nonsense that the Berkeley riot was “subverted” by “outside agitators”. It was accomplished by the exact same mob from start to finish, and did exactly what it set out to do, by the admissions of the leadership all around. They have been anything but shy about confirming all of that since it happened, and spent not a second lamenting what happened nor disassociating themselves from it. In fact, just the opposite, they’ve doubled down, on national broadcasts readily located on YouTube.)

Who is this “we,” kimosabe?

The vast vast majority of those on the right “talk so much about the evils of terrorism.” A tiny tiny minority advocate performing “heinous acts of terrorism against crowds of protestors as a warning.”

Is the author of that excerpt Vanderleun posted in his comment above describing something—a possible citizen backlash against the sort of orchestrated leftist mob violence that happened recently at Berkeley, with the police refusing to arrest people? Or is the author advocating that backlash, meeting violence with vigilante violence?

I have read the excerpt Vanderleun posted and in it the author (“A” or I guess “Aesop,” since that seems to be the person commenting above under that name) seems to mostly be presenting his work of fiction as something that could happen if the protestors don’t cease and desist. So it’s a sort of threatening warning.

I agree that such violence could happen. Of course it could happen. It has already happened in small ways (right wing terrorism does exist, too, and has for a long long time). People get frustrated and angry, particularly if the authorities tasked with keeping order and protecting property fail to keep it. In Berkeley, the protestors were peaceful, but then another group of organized leftist and/or anarchist “protestors” came to stir up trouble and destroy property as well as to commit some violent acts against persons.

I don’t advocate vigilante violence in retaliation. For many reasons, including the threat to innocent people that it represents, and the spiraling out of control that Vanderleun alluded to at the end of his comment. Vigilante justice should be a last last last resort only when all else has failed, and presently we do not have a situation even remotely like that. IMHO it is hyperbole to think we do, and dangerous hyperbole at that. But there is no shortage of dangerous hyperbole all over the place these days.

In addition, most communities are not Berkeley. Berkeley is a leftist stronghold where just about everyone is on the left, and the police are functioning in that environment. I don’t think such a thing would be happening in most places in the US excerpt for leftist communities, or riots in the ghettos of enormously liberal cities (for example, what happened in Baltimore recently after Freddie Gray’s death). In most communities, it would be harder to marshal the rioting forces, and the police would not be as delicate in their response.

So who is this “we” of which you speak? I have been blogging a long, long time, and reading blogs even longer. Nor only that, I also read the comments sections quite often (or at least skim them). And although I have no doubt there are some people on the right—and/or the neo-Nazi “right” (which I don’t really see as the right)—who would advocate gunning down protestors, it is a tiny percentage of the whole.

So the “we” you’re referring to is something very fringe. That does not mean they will not act, and it does not mean they couldn’t do a lot of damage if they do. And of course, if the police everywhere become more like the police in Berkeley, and riots start destroying people’s homes and livelihood around the country, you will see a more violent reaction to it. I have little doubt about that.

However, I did not see Vanderleun’s comment as advocating firing on protestors such as in Berkeley. He was quoting A. at the raconteur site), and then Vanderleun wrote his own addition, which was: “But once it starts where it goes?
Nobody knows.
Nobody knows.”

I took Vanderleun’s addition there to be a cautionary note, saying that there are people out there who are willing to commit violence on the protesters (or who at least fantasize it), and that it is a dangerous possibility.

So I repeat: who is this “we”?

Aesop suggests that people upset about all of this should “unclutch your pearls, put down your smelling salts.” I, for one, will continue to clutch those pearls I don’t wear, and cling to those smelling salts I’ve never used, because I think it is an extremely proper and valid response to be tremendously concerned about the prospect of escalating violence and even civil war.

If you would call the riot at Berkeley where hooligans, with the tacit consent of the police present – committed serial arson and vandalism against public and private property, aggravated assaults and batteries, and carried out a rehearsed conspiracy to deprive a person (in this case Milo Yiannopoulos) of his constitutional rights to free speech and an actual peaceable assembly at a public institution – that last still both a CA state and federal felony, BTW – a “peaceful” protest, you’re quite simply either delusional, or willfully stupid. There is no third option.

I wish I could say being delusional or willfully stupid was immoral and un-American, but alas, the news daily confirms it’s a vast host.

And if you think average folks will continue to sit back and depend on the clearly worthless authorities to make examples of such rampant acts of brigandry and public terrorism, without themselves taking exactly the sort of action I imagined in that short piece of fiction, you need to get out more.

The left-wing organizers of the Berkeley riot, both there and afterwards, have unapologetically called for far worse to be done, on a wide scale, and tried to cloak their justification in a vacuous appeal to non-existent imperatives, continuing to exhort their followers to attack similarly or even more harshly pretty much everyone in this country to the political right of Mao Zedong. And one of the most outspoken leaders headlines their philosophy as “By Any Means Necessary.”

So maybe unclutch your pearls, put down your smelling salts, and open your eyes. Currently, our government drops missiles on terrorists, and they are not coincidentally named “Hellfire”. If you can’t see the proportionality involved between that and the tale I spun, you’re really going to be surprised when push actually comes to shove in this country. I hope you have a deep hole in a distant land to hide your eyes from what’s already been unleashed unilaterally on the organizers and attendees of a truly non-violent speaking engagement, as well as the innocent bystanders and shopkeepers in the adjoining town, and what will inevitably be returned with gusto by the former targets of same.

When similar rioters burn your downtown in a fit of pique, and real people have to bear the burden afterwards of lost savings, lost wages, lost jobs, lost businesses, personal injuries or worse, and being terrorized in their own town, come and lecture me on morality and un-American activities in response.

We just finished eight years of a president famously not raised here, who spent the bulk of his time either apologizing for us, or lecturing us “that’s not who we are.”

Find me one person on the left, from Obama or Hillary Clinton down to the dogcatcher in Detroit, who has stepped forward since Berkeley and publicly scolded the rioters that “that’s not who we are”.
Even. Just. One.

I won’t hold my breath waiting for you to find one.

If you can’t grasp the current situation any other way, you might wish to acquaint yourself with Newton’s Third Law of Physics.

The pendulum of political action is always in motion, and if the thugs at Berkeley, and their cheerleaders on all quarters, think they’ll be the only ones to push it where they will, nature will have a harsh lesson in due course, coming with the predictability of planetary rotation.

What’s sauce for the goose is good for the gander.

That was BT.

Before Trump.

I’m all for meeting violence with violence when there’s no other choice, and for advising the other side that force will be met force, but I’m just not OK with initiating violence.