You’re rationalizing, and engaging in a heavy dose of whataboutism.

Oh dear, accusations I am engaging in logical fallacies. I’ve never had THAT targeted against me.

That is sarcasm, for the record.

It’s also ironic you are accusing me of whataboutism when not a few comments away you fully accept the Left will try and do similar to any Conservative. And again, I am a veteran of the Bush years, when Dubya so lacked audacity he was unwilling to go into the trenches to point out we had found dozens of thousands of WMD artillery shells in Iraq and plenty of documents about Saddam’s ties to the likes of AQ, with the result that he shot himself in the foot on a more profound level than Trump ever did, which is indeed why someone with Trump’s many personality traits and defects was able to come to the fore (and indeed why some of them were viewed as desirable).

This is a very real issue, and whataboutism charges do not work when the question of “What about x” is a very real issue.

And it is ironic you accuse me of “rationalization” while ignoring how

A: that is one of the major JOBS of partisan political outlets, whether the MSM or campaign trail outlets.

And

B: That you did not address the Very Basic Facts I brought up. That humor is a weapon and tool for politics, and one Reagan used to great effect and even Trump did too. That it is mundane to ask about corruption with foreign governments (and I worked with charity, so I got wind of more of this stuff than most).

You probably do not have a coherent explanation for how it was different when Trump did it from when Reagan or the Bushes or others did, at least on principle. Which is a very key point of rationalization.

Whataboutism is fine when the issue is whether criminal charges should be brought. (I.e., if they didn’t charge their own for the same thing, they shouldn’t charge yours either.)

No, it isn’t. That’s kind of a definition with why whataboutism is bad. It doesn’t work, and is very distinct from why asking questions of “What about X?” When they are valid is true.

But you’re arguing that we should run a candidate who has a slew of known vulnerabilities because you can cite Democrats who had similar vulnerabilies and weren’t prosecuted or otherwise penalized for them.

You want to accuse me of intellectual malfeasance, and then come forth with this balderdash showing you apparently didn’t bother reading my points. Great job.

For the record: I did not focus my points on citing DEMOCRATS doing so. The overwhelming majority of the cases I cited were about REPUBLICANS OTHER THAN TRUMP and how they did similar or even identical or arguably worse (again, Reagan causing a diplomatic incident with his “outlaw Russia forever” joke) than what Trump did. Because those issues point to a few crucial things.

Firstly: that you are incredibly quick to accept the delegitimization of what Trump did even when – as in the case of the Putin e-mails joke – it was quite normal or, as in the case of the Ukraine Questions – ENTIRELY LEGITIMATE AND WITHIN HIS DUTIES.

Secondly: it points to a very onerous and more apparently issue with this. The Overton Window dominated by the left isn’t just mock by but Shrinking. The scope of action for a Conservative politician to take is shrinking and has been remorselessly shrinking for years. You might be able to argue that Trump’s follies and personality made that worse (through I would disagree), but that is ultimately secondary – nay, Tertiary – to the more apparent threat posed by the process as a whole.

Thirdly: you don’t seem to realize the fact that the reasons I brought all of this up is the fact that there will come times when DeSantis has to act pointed questions about corruption regarding American leftist politicos to foreign leaders (indeed a President DeSantis will probably have to act about the exact same things Trump did to Zelenskyy or whoever is President of Ukraine), that they will need to use humor and irony to undermine the left and foreign opponents (as he has shown skill at doing), and that he will have to deal with the swamp and untrustworthy folk.

Because that is what Presidents do. Especially the asking about corruption issue. And if you are prepared to throw Trump under the bus because he was “uncouth” and are so prepared to do it you will uncritically accept so much of the left’s framing, you’ll leave DeSantis and yourself exposed without a coherent defense.

And I’m not even specifically arguing Trump should run again. I’d more than accept him if he did and won the nomination, but my personal instincts incline me towards Kate’s position. But I am able to point out that you haven’t thought this through to nearly the point you think you have.

And then you accuse me of rationalizing for pointing out perfectly cogent, valid, and true observations about American politics and the leaders of our own political party.

You know what, the system isn’t fair. The media and most of our institutions are ideologically captured by committed leftists. Democrats just aren’t going to be penalized, criminally or politically, for a lot of things that should be penalized.

It’s not just that. It’s that Republicans are penalized and prosecuted for doing things that former Democrat AND REPUBLICAN figures did. As I pointed out.

You do not get to dismiss this Fact by shouting about whataboutism.

You do not get to ignore this Fact by obsessing about Trump.

So how do we go about working to FIX the system and make it MORE fair?

Because if we can’t go about doing that then all we’re doing is bailing out water and buying more time before flooding capsizes us.

Trumpers respond to this situation by backing a candidate who needs a walk-in closet to store all his skeletons and then whining when their candidate is punished for his skeletons and Democrats are not.

Again, you miss the point. I suspect because you find the points I made quite difficult to GRASP.

The issue is much more systematic than Trump. It isn’t merely that he was persecuted for doing things Democrats get away with, but that he was persecuted for doing things the right still lauds Reagan for doing, if they remember he did them at all (because grilling the West Germans about what Teddy Kennedy was doing with Communist officialdom isn’t exactly one of the seminal moments of his Presidency).

That points to the fact that we are running low on time, and it isn’t just about Trump’s foibles. The atrocities against the Jan 6th political prisoners and other nonsense like Ruby Ridge should have told us that.

Obsessing about Trump’s skeletons is not only not going to fix that; but it is in fact playing into the left’s hands.

Oh, and regarding skeletons in the closet? Trump doesn’t have that many on the grand scale of national politics. Indeed the fact that even the Manhattan DA had to resort to this after Trump spent decades as a real estate mogul during the Indian Summer of Tammany Hall and the Five Families’ Heyday says a lot.

Which brings us back to the issue that if you aren’t prepared and do not focus on how you will shape the battlespace, this isn’t going to work even if you get rid of Trump.

And frankly, Trump’s skeletons matter.

They matter primarily because the left makes them matter and is steadily destroying what freedom there is for people to the right of Engels.

If Kavanaugh had Trump’s reputation as a womanizer, there’s no way he would have survived what they threw at him.

Except Trump survived several similar ploys. People don’t tend to remember the many other people that accused Trump of raping or molesting them only to implode due to a skilled defense. Indeed Daniels is devastating in part because unlike those they can demonstrate Trump made some payment to her.

This is why I mention why obsessing with Trump’s skeletons robs you of your ability to see the big picture even handedly and pushes me to defend Trump more than I otherwise would. Because it is classical “looking for the right person” syndrome without realizing that sometimes that isn’t the issue.

Or put it simply, it is special pleading turned negative.

Accusations of the kind hurled at Kavanagh are damaging but fairly simple – if difficult – to destroy, and indeed both Kavanagh and Trump and their legal teams broke many such accusations of Ford’s level over their leg. It was the fact that Trump IS a womanizer and did pay out to Daniels that has made this charge stick.

And even then look at how many people STILL believe Kavanagh was guilty or there was something to the charges.

It’s not a matter of waiting for the perfect candidate, as you suggest. Just run someone closer to Kavanaugh, who prevailed, and not like Trump, who hasn’t won anything since 2016.

Again, you say it isn’t a matter of waiting for the perfect candidate while engaging in willfully misguided, rose tinted memories of what Kavanagh went through, the taint he to some degree suffers, and Trump’s track record of similar victories over similar accusations. Handily underlining for me that this isn’t about the merits of the cases or the man, but specifically about Trump.

The irony is that I am the one underlining how this isn’t important because of Trump, but because of the systematic, pathological strategies the Left engages in and how if you cannot gauge then accurately and come up with ways to defeat them, switching Trump out won’t help.

Oh also, “hasn’t won anything since 2016”? Because I’m supposed to believe Maricopa, Millwaukee, and Baltimore?

tutler – I think you’re leaning way too much on the argument that Trump has been prevented from hiring who he wanted.

And I think you are ignoring why I mentioned it.

Look at his hires over time, Michael Cohen, Bill Barr, Jeff Sessions, Rex Tillerson, James Mattis, Anthony Scaramucci, Elaine Choi, John Bolton, Reince Priebus, John Kelly, Mick Mulvaney, Roy Cohn, etc., etc., etc.
Every single one is either somewhat questionable or cited by Trumpers as an excuse for some kind of failure by the Trump administration.

So again, either Trump has world-record-setting bad luck with his hires, or the problem lies with the person doing the hiring.

Or there is a simpler and more likely true answer. Both. That Trump had a deeply flawed grasp of hiring and managing personnel and was not good at taking responsibility on that level, but was also dealing with a toxic swamp with deep rosters and a willingness to subvert him. The former is a Him problem. The latter is an Anyone problem.

We are going to have to come up with strategies to help out Anyone survive this kind of nonsense.

DeSantis seems to be doing a very good job dealing with the left and dealing with President Trump’s x11 political approaches to other republican opponents.

Concerned Conservative™ may need another hobby besides OMB. Don’t start the praises of the Harry Logan (sic intentionally) types of candidates.

CC™ – “Lets go Brandon!”