What They Voted For: They Are, After All, Conservatives

#trumpswindle | #WhatTheyVotedFor

Steve Benen notes an obvious question:

The point isn’t that the arrangement is somehow untoward. Rather, what’s amazing about this is that our self-professed billionaire president has a re-election campaign operation in place, housed in a building the president still owns and profits from, and despite the fact that the operation has millions of dollars in the bank, it’s the Republican National Committee that’s using donor money to help Trump’s campaign with the rent.

This comes on the heels of Washington Post reporting from last summer, which said the RNC and other Republican political committees spent nearly $1.3 million at Trump-owned properties in 2017—and that was long before the year was even over.

Whether party donors actually mind any of this is unclear.

The actual answer is not so complicated: First, the upward redistribution of wealth and assets is the Republican Party’s raison d’être; and then there is the point that this is precisely #WhatTheyVotedFor.^α

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^α At some point, we must accept that conservative populism means cronyism with an ameliorating dose of supremacism.

Image note: The Trump International Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Alex Brandon/AP Photo)

Benen, Steve. “The many bills the RNC is willing to pay for Trump”. msnbc. 26 February 2018.

Clowntastic

“The truth is that Republicans are at a crossroads. What we are seeing is a surrogate battle to determine whether the GOP will be a sort of populist/protectionist party, or a more cosmopolitan and compassionate one. And if those are the two world views that will eventually clash, Cruz and Rubio are much better representatives than, say, Trump and Bush.”

―Matt Lewis

Conservative stalwart Matt Lewis offers an intriguing commentary considering the real potential of a marquee showdown between Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. The junior U.S. Senators from Florida and Texas respectively enjoy competitive positions in the polls, and thus stand out as leading candidates to ascend as Dr. Ben Carson tumbles and pretty much everyone else wonders when Trump will follow. The Roll Call op-ed opens:

“The two people to watch are Cruz and Rubio,” Charles Krauthammer declared on Tuesday’s episode of Fox News’ “Special Report.” Call it wishful thinking or conventional wisdom (or both), but there is an assumption that this clash of titans might eventually occur—and I, for one, am rooting for it.

And we can skip ahead to the ending, a pretense of obvious afterthought―that both Cruz and Rubio can win the general against Hillary Clinton―long enough to remember that Lewis is, after all, a conservative pitch man. Cruz can’t win; Rubio has a chance if he can overcome the deer and headlight air of youthful inexperience^α he often demonstrates so aptly when rattling through talking points that thoroughly defy his comprehension. That is to say, we can attend the pretense of afterthought long enough to dismiss it.

Nonetheless, Mr. Lewis offers an insightful analysis that includes the benefit of also sounding reasonable:

Most people I know think a Trump candidacy would be disastrous, but there is division regarding just how freaked out we should be. Some, like statistician Nate Silver, argue that we are putting too much stock in these early polls showing Trump ahead for a variety of reasons, including the fact that “the vast majority of eventual Republican voters haven’t made up their minds yet.”

Others argue that this is fantasy. All the previous predictions about a Trump collapse were premature, and besides, he’s a paradigm-shifting candidate; the old rules no longer apply.

Having said all that, it’s not absurd to believe that voters will finally come to their senses, and that Cruz and Rubio might eventually emerge as representatives of their various “lanes” to face off in a sort of championship battle to determine who will represent the GOP in the general election.

Your Republican Party: Raison d’Être Edition

Via Steve Benen:

Americans first learned back on June 24, more than four months ago, about the House Republican plan to file a lawsuit against President Obama. Two weeks later, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) announced the basis for the case: the GOP would sue to implement an obscure provision of the Affordable Care Act, which Republicans don’t actually want to see implemented.

There is a punch line; the actual complaint still has yet to be filed.

It is simple enough to explain what is going on here.

• Congressional Republicans decided their best strategy was to (A) stonewall President Obama on pretty much everything they could, and (B) combine this effort with an attempt to create a delegitimizing narrative in history—e.g., Birtherism, feet on the desk, what jacket the president is wearing, &c., in addition to the usual politics of working very hard to accomplish an outcome specifically so that one can then complain about that outcome.

• House Republicans might contend this is their only recourse, but that would be a lie. The simple fact is that the House can draft and adopt articles of impeachment at any time, but GOP leadership knows they have nothing.

• Hence, a lawsuit that will go exactly nowhere if it is ever filed; House GOP leadership already knows this.

• What is left, then, is a fundraising device. GOTO delegitimizing narrative. It’s not even a FOR/NEXT loop, but, rather, infinite spinning down the rabbit hole.

• When a Republican or one of those fake-independent conservative libertarians tells you government doesn’t work, remember that is not actually a policy assessment, but, rather, a policy goal—the GOP’s raison d’être.

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Benen, Steve. “The House GOP’s crumbling anti-Obama lawsuit”. msnbc. 27 October 2014.