What They Voted For: Conservative Fulfillment

#trumpswindle | #WhatTheyVotedFor

“I had an opportunity to speak with President Trump and he, I would say to all my colleagues, has indicated he’s prepared to sign the bill. He will also be issuing a national emergency declaration at the same time. And I’ve indicated to him I’m going to support the national emergency declaration.”

―Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)^α

The underlying theme of the #trumpswindle is that despite mutterings here and there among Beltway Republicans, the Trump Administration is hardly a departure from the GOP of recent decades; the sticky sensation of pining nostalgia for the ’80s is no mere coincidence. The Senate Majority Leader is hardly making a radical break with mainstream American conservatism in abdicating to a Republican president verging toward a national emergency against migrants.

Our American atrocity is afoot. Once upon a time, the joke was that we need another Vietnam^β. For Trump voters, apparently what we really need is another atrocity against nonwhites. For all the excuses Republican voters have offered over the years for bargaining with supremacism^γ, they just haven’t really gotten much in return. There is the economic wreck and fiscal nightmare inflicted against the country over the course of the last twelve years, and that atop the general failure of their trickle-down myth; the Bush Doctrine has laid their foreign policy ambition to the bone. All these voters ever got for their votes is the traditional supremacism, and having suffered a definitive loss in the Gay Fray^δ, have redoubled their efforts to assail the human rights of women. A national emergency in order to establish extraordinary authority to build border wall, at a time when a Republican administration runs internment camps for migrant children, is a happy day for American conservatives. This is #WhatTheyVotedFor.

____________________

^α Transcript corrected from linked article, per video source.

^β e.g., Bart Simpson, ca. 1996 (#3F16)—

Bart: What the hell is this?
Lisa: It’s one of those campy seventies throw-backs that appeal to Generation X-ers.
Bart: We need another Vietnam, to thin out their ranks a little.

—exploiting a roadworn American trope about youth. It is, however, worth noting that when Congress refused to support President Obama’s request for new authorization against Daa’ish, Democrats saw too much risk and entanglement, while Republicans complained that the administration was not intending a large enough war.

^γ Because, after all, those voters are not racist; but it’s just unfair to alienate supremacism like that, and it’s not like anyone is ever really going to let them be in charge. Right?

^δ Which, in turn, was always about women, anyway.

Image note: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY; left), walks with President-elect Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol for a meeting, 10 November 2016, in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Bolton, Alexander. “Trump to sign border deal, declare national emergency”. The Hill. 14 February 2019.

Dissent

#dissent | #WhatTheyVotedFor

“Policy dissent is in our culture. We even have awards for it.”

―Unnamed U.S. diplomat serving in Africa

Speaking of movements, what apparently started on home shores, a State Department dissent cable, has gathered some serious moss. Support. Serious support. To wit, the New York Times reports:

Within hours, a State Department dissent cable, asserting that President Trump’s executive order to temporarily bar citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries would not make the nation safer, traveled like a chain letter―or a viral video.

The cable wended its way through dozens of American embassies around the world, quickly emerging as one of the broadest protests by American officials against their president’s policies. And it is not over yet.

By 4 p.m. on Tuesday, the letter had attracted around 1,000 signatures, State Department officials said, far more than any dissent cable in recent years. It was being delivered to management, and department officials said more diplomats wanted to add their names to it.

The State Department has 7,600 Foreign Service officers and 11,000 civil servants.

The Donald Trump Show (Strangers in Cars)

There is plenty about this morning’s report from Niall Stanage of The Hill worth considering:

Republican insiders are reconciling themselves to the idea that Donald Trump won’t be exiting the stage anytime soon — and their main concern now is limiting his damage to their party.

The GOP establishment is almost universally hostile to Trump, who has soared in the 2016 polls on the back of his celebrity, his outspoken statements on immigration and trade deals, and media coverage of his antics.

Many party strategists believe Trump did himself serious damage with his recent remarks denigrating Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) experiences while a prisoner of war in Hanoi, Vietnam — but there is not yet conclusive polling evidence available.

Meanwhile, Trump has made clear that he has no serious intention of reining in his rhetoric — or curbing his propensity to tweak the nose of anyone who displeases him. On Tuesday, shortly after fellow White House contender Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) had referred to the businessman as a “jackass,” Trump read out Graham’s cellphone number on live television during a campaign event in the senator’s home state.

During that appearance, Trump also called Graham “a stiff” and an “idiot,” and took shots at another critic and 2016 hopeful, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, saying he’d begun wearing glasses to make himself look smarter.

Among Washington Republicans, the hope is that voters will tire of such comments and that Trump will have to push his boat out into ever-murkier waters to continue to command attention.

Well, okay, sort of. There really is nothing to compare to the reality television spectacle of Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy. Over at msnbc, last night, Steve Kornacki helmed TRMS, and pretty much made the point in the eighteen minute A-block by reminding us that Gov. John Kasich of Ohio also declared his presidential candidacy yesterday. And there certainly remains a question of whether Donald Trump’s spectacularly bizarre performance in South Carolina was specifically intended to obscure the arrival of the sixteenth major Republican presidential candidate.

The Jeb Bush Show (Seriously Inadequate)

Consider, please, that while Donald Trump managed to get into a stupid fight with Rick Perry and win, this is actually about Jeb Bush:

Almost immediately after Donald Trump’s controversial remarks about Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) military service, Republican officials denounced the criticism in a specific way. “There is no place in our party or our country for comments that disparage those who have served honorably,” the Republican National Committee said in an official statement.

The problem, of course, is that Republicans appear to apply that principle selectively. In 2004, John Kerry faced ridiculous lies about his heroic military service, and at the time, GOP leaders saw great political value in smearing a decorated war veteran.

Take Jeb Bush, for example. In January 2005, the day before his brother’s second inaugural, the Florida governor wrote a letter to the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” ringleader, expressing his appreciation for the smear campaign. Celebrating the “Swifties,” as Jeb Bush called them, the Republican wrote to retired Col. Bud Day, “Please let them know that I am personally appreciative of their service to our nation. As someone who truly understands the risk of standing up for something, I simply cannot express in words how much I value their willingness to stand up against John Kerry.”

In this case, “stand up to” was apparently a euphemism for “tell lies about.”

(Benen)

And while we might refer to the former Florida governor by his derisive title as the Serious Clown, the question remains as to why anybody thought Mr. Bush was a serious candidate. Maybe he needs another do-over.

The Art of Buying Cotton

Former generations might have looked upon filmreel of American servicemen dumping helicopters and other equipment overboard as our ships fled east Asia in the wake of our military debacle in Vietnam and been expected to believe that was what victory looked like. And that really is a note for middle age, because even my own generation seems to forget how we used to say, “America has never lost a war”. And over time that notion has been variously scaled, such that we’ve never fought a foreign war on our territory, and other such historical inaccuracies. No, really, there is even a way in which we argue that what happened in 1814 wasn’t a foreign invasion; after all, they were British. Fast forward to the twenty-first century when a guy from Mexico looking for work constitutes an invasion.

Never mind. Nostalgia, of a sort.

Let’s try a game show voice. Beauchamp says!

Wednesday night, Sen. Tom Cotton went on Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room to talk about Iraq and ISIS. He said something surprising.

Meta-irony. The headline is, “Tom Cotton says ISIS is winning in Iraq. That is false.”

It’s a nice headline, I suppose. Functional. Direct. Not really much of a gray area, you know?

The headline isn’t the problem, of course; it is merely the frame. Because the question does, in fact arise: Why is this surprising?

“We just haven’t rolled back the Islamic State at all over the last six or seven months since we began our air campaign,” he said. “They’ve continued to hold the ground they always have. They haven’t advanced, but we haven’t rolled them back, either. And that’s not going to be enough to defeat them.”

“The Islamic State seems to be winning now,” Cotton later added.

This is, in fact, the exact opposite of what is occurring. ISIS is losing substantial ground in Iraq, and it’s hard to imagine why Cotton is insisting otherwise.