US Politics Thread |OT| SAD TRUMP

[benjipwns]

They can't have a climate change debate because the candidates won't have anything to talk about except for a handful. A GOP Tax Cut Debate is a good comparison. All the candidates will agree on the broad picture of tax cuts, but only a couple will have actual proposals and know them which raises three problems.

1. They're the only concrete thing, therefore they're the only thing that will be attacked. And they can be attacked "from all sides" without the attackers needing to take their own concrete positions.
B. All the other candidates will "cheat" off of them while not actually knowing the details which will give heart attacks to their advisers.
iii. Unless it's going to be six hours long, their answers will be limited to 60/90 seconds with shorter responses. That's no time for any debate that doesn't jump from topic to topic regularly to provide the illusion of being both comprehensive on "key issues" and a debate.

Rick Perry's gaffe where he forgot which department to eliminate is often (coincidentally) forgotten for how it came about. There's always a GOP proposal to eliminate some department and it came up again somewhere during that month, I forget about which department, Ron Paul went in and topped it by saying he wanted to eliminate five, Mitt Romney of course went tacking towards the center and said maybe Education but the important thing was making everything work better, Rick Perry tried to slide in between the two ends and went with three. Then forgot one of them. (A bonus part of that clip is Perry has Paul and Romney on either side of him, Paul's going "no! five! five!" while Romney halfheartedly offers "Education?" or something)

Biden is probably the least worrying candidate to the DNC in any kind of debate, even a climate change debate, he has 40 years of experience seeing all of the policy debates throughout the years. (Him falling back into "that mode" when not delivering prepared lines is almost the best case for a Biden performance.) Jay Inslee wants one because he's going all in on it to differentiate himself. But none of the other candidates have zeroed in on it and outside of Sanders (who like Paul can focus on his principles to create a "proposal" on the fly as well as having the years of experience) and Warren (who would cram for it), I'm not sure any other candidates could actually bring anything to the table both different AND what the party wants to hear as options in a climate change focused debate. Some mush mouthed cap-and-trade type proposal from a few candidates, others just repeating the words "solar and wind" until the time expires, and someone realizing they can top everybody by just saying things like promising a 95% cut in [y] by 2050 without anyone remembering or holding them accountable.

"Economy" debates are really just a way to have a domestic policy debate while avoiding tackling "social" issues. You can write almost anything in as being relevant to the "economy" if you want to.

[Tripon]

https://twitter.com/prageru/status/1136427322028855296

Prager U. More like Prager U Mad. 

[TakingBackSunday]

As a social democrat realist I would suggest what we all have to do is get behind the most electable candidate and policies favorable in polling that isn't rasmussen instead of appealing to people's material concerns. We also need to rely on our pillars of industry, even when they conflict wildly with our personal well being and even existential outcomes, hence no climate change debate. Vote Bernie Sanders for a modern day approximation of a 50's(?) GOP platform.

Thanks for the snark   

I’m serious though.  I don’t understand how we get towards the progressive ideals that we both want without at least winning elections in the near term?

[Tripon]

Fox News’s Tucker Carlson offered praise Wednesday night for Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s “economic patriotism” platform that would invest $2 trillion in green research and technology over the next decade.

“The truth is that Washington policies, not unstoppable market forces, are a key driver of the problems American workers face. From our trade agreements to our tax code, we have encouraged companies to invest abroad, ship jobs overseas and keep wages low,” Carlson said, continuing to read an extended monologue on the topic before revealing it was an excerpt from a policy proposal by Warren.

"Nobody you voted for said that or would ever say it," Carlson said, adding that "many of Warren’s policy prescriptions make obvious sense," such as the federal government buying U.S.-made products whenever possible and scaling up apprenticeship programs.

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/447217-tucker-carlson-touts-warrens-economic-patriotism-plan-says-ideas

[TakingBackSunday]

If you're looking for strategy in electoralism Mandark's the one not me. All I'm good for is snark and absurdity illustration

I know boo.  I love you and your goddamn handsome face.  I’m just so fucking tired of this country rn  :'(

[Great Rumbler]

Fox News’s Tucker Carlson offered praise Wednesday night for Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s “economic patriotism” platform that would invest $2 trillion in green research and technology over the next decade.

“The truth is that Washington policies, not unstoppable market forces, are a key driver of the problems American workers face. From our trade agreements to our tax code, we have encouraged companies to invest abroad, ship jobs overseas and keep wages low,” Carlson said, continuing to read an extended monologue on the topic before revealing it was an excerpt from a policy proposal by Warren.

"Nobody you voted for said that or would ever say it," Carlson said, adding that "many of Warren’s policy prescriptions make obvious sense," such as the federal government buying U.S.-made products whenever possible and scaling up apprenticeship programs.

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/447217-tucker-carlson-touts-warrens-economic-patriotism-plan-says-ideas

Trump's gonna be so mad on Twitter tomorrow.

[curly]

You guys are pretty out of touch if you think climate change policy is something that is going to win elections. It’s merely used as a wedge to get a portion of the base motivated and engaged.

 There is more leverage in keeping it a hot topic that is always being “held back” by the other side then there is of making some kind of Green Deal.

If change is going to come, it’s going to happen at the state level or through EPA mandates.

Yes Democratic pols just use climate change as a wedge issue to excite the base. This is why Obama didn't bother wasting political climate on trying to pass a climate bill that would have opened him and his congressional allies to significant electoral risk. As always your opinions on the issue are both intelligent and grounded in factual evidence.

[Mandark]

Even the DLC's own Triangulatin' Bill Clinton tried to get a BTU tax through Congress.

[Cauliflower Of Love]

https://twitter.com/jamalraad/status/1136383283846008832

lol we're so fucked

I eagerly await the town hall by bernie on cnbc about climate change.


You know they'd fucking do it too.

You guys are pretty out of touch if you think climate change policy is something that is going to win elections. It’s merely used as a wedge to get a portion of the base motivated and engaged.

 There is more leverage in keeping it a hot topic that is always being “held back” by the other side then there is of making some kind of Green Deal.

If change is going to come, it’s going to happen at the state level or through EPA mandates.

Much like Obama did, you can use climate change policy to wrangle up the people who otherwise wouldn't think of it. Bernie's climate/economic policy is gonna wreck shop when they formally announce it.

I've been saying this about biden for years, but he could sweep red states with his ARRA experience.

Too bad he's a fucking creep.

[benjipwns]

Jay Inslee, ironically, has not yet posted his "Climate Mission" plan beyond four broad statements:

Through Jay’s Climate Mission, America will build upon the leadership of states and local communities, and engage the full energy of our country in a 10-year mobilization to confront climate change, end our reliance on fossil fuels, and create a clean energy future. This mission must be led by the White House — starting with bold action on day one of the next administration. There is no time to lose.

Jay’s Climate Mission is based upon 4 key principles. His full plan will be released in the coming weeks.

Powering our economy with clean energy
We will accelerate the transition to 100% clean energy and net-zero greenhouse gas pollution through targeted strategies for all sectors of our economy, both urban and rural: electricity, transportation, buildings, clean and competitive industries and sustainable and thriving agriculture.

Investing in good jobs, infrastructure & innovation
We will create millions of good-paying jobs over the next 10 years, benefitting every community, through major new investments in American industries and manufacturing, modernized infrastructure, skilled labor and clean technology innovation.

Fighting for environmental justice & economic inclusion
Every American deserves the right to clean air and clean water — regardless of the color of their skin or their zip code. We will work with front-line, low-income, and indigenous communities and communities of color to build opportunity, resilience, energy democracy and ensure pollution-free communities. We will recover those regions impacted by climate disasters. And we will ensure a just transition.

Ending fossil fuel giveaways
We will end billions in fossil fuel subsidies and handouts, and hold polluters accountable for the health impacts and environmental harm in American communities. That means transitioning off fossil fuels, while protecting workers and diversifying the local economies that depend on them today.

He has posted a big ass "plan" for eight million new jobs however:
https://www.jayinslee.com/issues/evergreen-economy
https://www.jayinslee.com/issues/evergreen-economy/text/Inslee_EvergreenEconomyPlan_2.pdf

[Mandark]

The Bore needs a hard climate denial guy now that TA and benji have retreated to more wishy-washy positions.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Dutch posters don't count.

[close]

[benjipwns]

where Trump meets National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard and quizzes him about how much more copy he sells when “I’m on the cover instead of just a celebrity?”

Howard tells him, fifteen to twenty percent more. A few minutes later, Trump responds, “So I sell fifty percent more than any of the movie stars?”

It’s like I said, Howard replies: 15 to 20 percent.

“Let’s call it 40,” says Trump.

[agrajag]

Dutch posters don't count.

do they ever?

[Trent Dole]

https://twitter.com/prageru/status/1136427322028855296

Prager U. More like Prager U Mad. 

You're not even a real university, piss off.

Here, get debunked by a cat.

[agrajag]

https://twitter.com/JordanPeele/status/1136000417915998208

[benjipwns]

now that we're post-irony are you ready for the post-liberals?

And in a recent taxonomy of the contemporary right, Matthew Continetti described the Missourian as the chief political representative of the “post-liberals” exemplified by Ahmari:

The closest the post-liberals have to a spokesman in the Senate is freshman Josh Hawley, who attends an evangelical Presbyterian church. Not six months into his term, Hawley has already established himself as a social conservative unafraid of government power. He has picked fights with the conservative legal establishment by criticizing two of President Trump’s judicial appointments. He has identified Silicon Valley as a threat to traditional values and proposed legislation to begin to rein in the tech industry …

The post-liberals say that the distinction between state and society is illusory. They argue that, even as conservatives defended the independence of civil society from state power, the left took over Hollywood, the academy, the media, and the courts. What the post-liberals seem to call for is the use of government to recapture society from the left.

Government-sanctioned culture war against private entities like those which control Hollywood and Silicon Valley is indeed a departure from traditional American conservatism. But it’s entirely consonant with a European brand of right-wing authoritarianism that drew on precapitalist strains of religion-based hostility to liberalism in economics as in culture, and contemptuously rejected modern liberal democracy while utilizing its institutions to seize power whenever possible. What makes Hawley fascinating and scary is how systematically he embraces this illiberal world view. In a much-noted commencement address at The King’s College in New York last month, the young senator denounced any commitment to freedom as an end in itself as a vestige of the ancient heresy of Pelagianism, usually described as stipulating the perfectibility of human nature without divine grace:

Perhaps the most eloquent contemporary statement of Pelagian freedom appears in an opinion from the United States Supreme Court, in a passage written by former Justice Anthony Kennedy. In 1992, in a case called Casey v. Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania, he wrote this: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

It’s the Pelagian vision. Liberty is the right to choose your own meaning, define your own values, emancipate yourself from God by creating your own self. Indeed, this notion of freedom says you can emancipate yourself not just from God but from society, family, and tradition.

This is superficially startling coming from a man who made his bones in conservative circles as an attorney for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty — until you understand that, for him, “liberty” is reserved for the righteous, as an instrument of God’s plan for humankind. That’s how Hawley described government itself in a 2012 essay:

Scripture teaches that political government is mandated by God for his service and is one means by which the enthroned Christ carries out his rule….

These things together tell us something quite important about what government is for, and what Christians should be trying to do with it and with politics. Government serves Christ’s kingdom rule; this is its purpose. And Christians’ purpose in politics should be to advance the kingdom of God — to make it more real, more tangible, more present.

Excerpts of an audio tape have leaked of Hawley speaking to a conclave of Christian-right activists in December that’s more than a little out there, blaming the scourge of human trafficking on the sexual revolution of the 1960s and ’70s. Sexual freedom leads to sexual slavery, he explained.

“It ends in the slavery and exploitation of young women. It will destroy our families,” he said, per the Kansas City Star. “You know what I’m talking about, the 1960s, 1970s, it became commonplace in our culture among our cultural elites, Hollywood, and the media, to talk about, to denigrate the biblical truth about husband and wife, man and woman.”

[T]he venue for his pithy remarks [was] a “Pastors and Pews” event sponsored by the Missouri Renewal Project, the local branch of famed Christian nationalist activist Dave Lane’s American Renewal Project, itself financed by the virulently anti-gay American Family Association. If you’ve forgotten about the extremely influential Lane, he last made news in arguing that CNN had “forfeited its right to broadcast” by featuring Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen, “both homosexuals,” on its New Year’s Eve broadcast.

Hawley’s fellow headliners at the “Pastors and Pews” event were quite the rogues’ gallery of crazy people as well. There was the father of lies himself, pseudo-historian David Barton, the man responsible for propagating the myth that the Founders wanted an explicitly and exclusively Christian nation. There was another pseudo-historian, Bill Federer, who has argued that the “atheist homosexual gay agenda movement” is, incongruously, guiding America toward “Sharia law.” There was Laurence White, a Texas-based conservative Lutheran minister known for his blood-curdling jeremiads against any sort of compromise with “baby-killers,” i.e., supporters of legalized abortion, and his comparisons of abortion to the Holocaust. There was Bishop E.W. Jackson, veteran Virginia wing-nut politician and another Sharia law shouter, probably best known for his warnings that yoga can lead to Satanism.

Hawley, the youngest member of the Senate, is waging a similar battle against conservatives’ neglect of Big Tech. The generation of political Republicans already in office before the development of the smartphone still requires their grandchildren’s assistance to toggle between the satellite dish and the DVR, so it’s no wonder those old pachyderms have had no coherent policy approach to the rise of Silicon Valley’s abusive power.

Hawley, the only senator in his 30s, is wired differently and unafraid to confront the complexity of our societal addiction to technological masters. Reconciling the best interests of society with the ruthless realities of algorithmic crack peddlers will be long-haul work, but Hawley, unlike the septuagenarians in the Senate, has the time, and he has eagerly gotten started.

Last week while the press corps was fixated on whether Trump or Speaker Nancy Pelosi initiated the latest round of name-calling, Hawley was penning a national column suggesting our largest tech giants are “parasites” and might need to be broken up. As an even younger man, Hawley wrote a biography of another Republican trust-buster, Teddy Roosevelt. His notion of modern-day trust-busting in the vertical Valley might be a big long-term mission for a conservative movement that needs one.

If older conservatives are scared by what they don’t understand about Big Tech, and Democrats too indebted to the Valley’s chieftains on unrelated cultural matters like gay legal preferences, then it will be left to young populists like Hawley to drag Washington to the oversight role that consumers demand. It’s a niche he seems eager to fill, and one he began in his first days as Missouri’s attorney general before Washington knew anything about him.

If Locke is treated as an important and positive influence on the American founding, then you are dealing with just another American conservative. If Locke is identified as the font of the trans movement and same-sex marriage, then you may have encountered a post-liberal.

The post-liberals say that freedom has become a destructive end-in-itself. Economic freedom has brought about a global system of trade and finance that has outsourced jobs, shifted resources to the metropolitan coasts, and obscured its self-seeking under the veneer of social justice. Personal freedom has ended up in the mainstreaming of pornography, alcohol, drug, and gambling addiction, abortion, single-parent families, and the repression of orthodox religious practice and conscience.

[Cauliflower Of Love]

any one gonna read that?

[benjipwns]

it exposes how and why Mandark hates John Locke for his pro-trans agenda

[Crash Dummy]

https://twitter.com/SpiralSine6/status/1136389065274793985

https://twitter.com/philosophybites/status/1136564665667006465

[ToxicAdam]

You guys are pretty out of touch if you think climate change policy is something that is going to win elections. It’s merely used as a wedge to get a portion of the base motivated and engaged.

 There is more leverage in keeping it a hot topic that is always being “held back” by the other side then there is of making some kind of Green Deal.

If change is going to come, it’s going to happen at the state level or through EPA mandates.

Yes Democratic pols just use climate change as a wedge issue to excite the base. This is why Obama didn't bother wasting political climate on trying to pass a climate bill that would have opened him and his congressional allies to significant electoral risk. As always your opinions on the issue are both intelligent and grounded in factual evidence.

??

I'm assuming this was said as sarcasm. Obama's White House were the ones who let the Kerry bill die on the vine. They were also the ones who had the power and authority to use the EPA to mitigate Co2. They didn't.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/11/as-the-world-burns

[Cauliflower Of Love]

You guys are pretty out of touch if you think climate change policy is something that is going to win elections. It’s merely used as a wedge to get a portion of the base motivated and engaged.

 There is more leverage in keeping it a hot topic that is always being “held back” by the other side then there is of making some kind of Green Deal.

If change is going to come, it’s going to happen at the state level or through EPA mandates.

Yes Democratic pols just use climate change as a wedge issue to excite the base. This is why Obama didn't bother wasting political climate on trying to pass a climate bill that would have opened him and his congressional allies to significant electoral risk. As always your opinions on the issue are both intelligent and grounded in factual evidence.

??

I'm assuming this was said as sarcasm. Obama's White House were the ones who let the Kerry bill die on the vine. They were also the ones who had the power and authority to use the EPA to mitigate Co2. They didn't.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/11/as-the-world-burns

The Obama administration heralded in clean energy into the us like never before.

Laying the blame on the white house for shit congress didn't do, smh.

[ToxicAdam]

Handouts/incentives to green corporations (campaign donors, btw) != comprehensive energy bill or EPA mandates. That's what we're talking about here.

[Joe Molotov]

https://twitter.com/SpiralSine6/status/1136389065274793985

https://twitter.com/philosophybites/status/1136564665667006465

“Oh to be a fly on that wall at that meeting!” anchors kept saying, underscoring the comical lack of access as Trump met with Nigel Farage or whoever, while they went on about how long it took to lay the dinner table. Some meetings were more intriguing than others. Fair play to third-string Tories Owen Paterson and Iain Duncan Smith for driving into the ambassador’s residence like a couple of wedding crashers, having somehow managed to convince Trump they were relevant.

There was the usual obsession with hardware. “In a sense,” mused one pundit, “I’m out of my depth as to how motorcades work.” Some cars follow each other. Next? “These guns saw action in the first world war.” Well, that is now only the second most senseless waste in which they’ve been involved. Who could give one tenth of a toss about “The Beast”, the most annoyingly anthropomorphised vehicle since Duchess Fergie wrote her Budgie the Helicopter series?

British press

[james]

You guys are pretty out of touch if you think climate change policy is something that is going to win elections.

Im sorry, the person who thinks George W Bush was one of the best presidents is lecturing people on being out of touch?

[Cauliflower Of Love]

Handouts/incentives to green corporations (campaign donors, btw) != comprehensive energy bill or EPA mandates. That's what we're talking about here.

You're dumb.

We're talking about what can be done absent a functioning congress.

I swear to god, you're about to name drop solyndra.

[ToxicAdam]

Im sorry, the person who thinks George W Bush was one of the best presidents is lecturing people on being out of touch?

You must have me confused with someone else. I didn't vote for Bush or support him.

I was a Reagan republican that fell out in 1996-2000 when the South officially took over the party.

[shosta]

[james]

Im sorry, the person who thinks George W Bush was one of the best presidents is lecturing people on being out of touch?

You must have me confused with someone else. I didn't vote for Bush or support him.

I was a Reagan republican that fell out in 1996-2000 when the South officially took over the party.

Do you still think a miscarriage is homicide?

[ToxicAdam]

Reagan republican aka modern democrat

Mostly. Save for a few issues and the far-right pandering.

Do you still think a miscarriage is homicide?

What are these words? What is the context? Are you just flinging random shit to get a reaction? I'm perpuzzled.

[shosta]

ToxicAdam, when did you stop beating your wife? Are you still "Gitmo's Number One Fan"? Why do you have a vanity plate registered under G4YL0RD?

[shosta]

ToxicAdam, can you explain why, in college, you and an accomplice kidnapped a female acquaintance, took her to the river, forced her to smoke marijuana, and told her she wouldn't be allowed to go home until she prayed to "Aqua Buddha"?

[shosta]

Milton Friedman's wage subsidy

[Nintex]

Elizabeth Warren plans to give the gov't control of education, health care, & jobs.

She wants a functioning government. Boo this woman! 

Acting Secretary of Education
*rolls dice*
Kid Rock 

[james]

What are these words? What is the context? Are you just flinging random shit to get a reaction? I'm perpuzzled.

Am I genuinely confusing you for someone else or are you gaslighting me?

[ToxicAdam]

Yea, you're confusing me with someone else. I'm pro-choice and haven't voted for a (national) Republican since the 90's.

[benjipwns]

Are you still "Gitmo's Number One Fan"?

Adults who have annual passes to Gitmo are statistically and morally less dangerous than adults who have annual passes to Disney.

[TakingBackSunday]

you're probably thinking of jaydubya

also shut up

[james]

Fucking Democrats

“On Long Island, it is exceptionally unpopular. For whatever reason, I don’t know,” Jay Jacobs, the chairman of both the New York State Democratic Party and Nassau County Democratic Party, told Gothamist. “Do you really want to do it and lose the Senate majority and never be able to do anything ever again for another generation? Not me. I play the long game, not the short game.”

Jacobs, a close ally of Governor Andrew Cuomo, said he has called the six Democratic senators who represent Long Island to warn them about the potential political consequences of supporting the “Green Light” bill, as it’s known among advocates. Jacobs said he personally supports the legislation but believes it’s too polarizing to pursue in the current legislative session, which wraps up this month.

http://gothamist.com/2019/06/06/green_light_bill_jay_jacobs.php

Garbage party

[james]

Yea, you're confusing me with someone else. I'm pro-choice and haven't voted for a (national) Republican since the 90's.

Then I renounce my accusations

[Joe Molotov]

Yea, you're confusing me with someone else. I'm pro-choice and haven't voted for a (national) Republican since the 90's.

Then I renounce my accusations

Accusations are evidence. Hold your ground!

[ToxicAdam]

I am the zodiac killer.

[james]

Yea, you're confusing me with someone else. I'm pro-choice and haven't voted for a (national) Republican since the 90's.

Then I renounce my accusations

Accusations are evidence. Hold your ground!

There is indeed compelling evidence that in college, ToxicAdam and an accomplice kidnapped a female acquaintance, took her to the river, forced her to smoke marijuana, and told her she wouldn't be allowed to go home until she prayed to "Aqua Buddha".

But the evidence that ToxicAdam domated to the 2004 Bush reelection campaign is flimsy

[Mandark]

I was a Reagan republican that fell out in 1996-2000 when the South officially took over the party.

Dog.

You were completely in the tank for Newt Gingrich well into the 2000's. C'mon man, you can't expect to retcon shit like that if you're keeping the same username.

[team filler]

 

[team filler]

[james]

I was a Reagan republican that fell out in 1996-2000 when the South officially took over the party.

Dog.

You were completely in the tank for Newt Gingrich well into the 2000's. C'mon man, you can't expect to retcon shit like that if you're keeping the same username.

I fucking knew it

[ToxicAdam]

I was a Reagan republican that fell out in 1996-2000 when the South officially took over the party.

Dog.

You were completely in the tank for Newt Gingrich well into the 2000's. C'mon man, you can't expect to retcon shit like that if you're keeping the same username.

I was a 20 year old dude who liked watching Gingrich book tour events on C-Span in the mid 90's. That's a far cry from 'being in the tank" for him.

Those events were usually him talking about technology or self-empowerment. Not policy shit.

[Mandark]

[Mandark]

I was a 20 year old dude who liked watching Gingrich book tour events on C-Span in the mid 90's. That's a far cry from 'being in the tank" for him.

Those events were usually him talking about technology or self-empowerment. Not policy shit.

You literally posted a thread listing a bunch of Gingrich's policies while hiding his name to make the point that they were good ideas if only people could separate the idea from the source!

Then when people started shitting on the policies anyway you were all "it's cause you figured out that it was Newt, right?"

[Great Rumbler]

you're probably thinking of jaydubya

oh no you said his name

[Tasty]

I was a 20 year old dude who liked watching Gingrich book tour events on C-Span in the mid 90's. That's a far cry from 'being in the tank" for him.

You're right, that's much more embarrassing to admit.

[CatsCatsCats]

Y’all confusing TA with JD or something? Edit: beaten by the cute boi

[agrajag]

I am the zodiac killer.

it's Ted Cruz, get him!

[Mandark]

TA's steeze has basically been "Republican, but without the fundies and with a sheen of quasi-wonkery" as long as we've been posting in the same places.

So he's got some plausible deniability with Bush but he spent that time stanning for Newt, McCain, Rudy Giuliani, etc.

[ToxicAdam]

I was like a racist boxing fan in the 1980's. Instead of the next 'great white hope', I was waiting for the next quasi-moderate to become the next party bearer and steer the Republicans in a better direction.

So, all those dudes kind of fit that bill at one time during their careers.

But since the system is corrupted by money/party politics, they all end up sucking the same dicks to stay relevant and morph into whatever the reactionaries want them to be.

You're right, that's much more embarrassing to admit.

You're not wrong, but pre-internet, C-Span was about the only good way to engage in daily political talk. It was the best you had in 1990-1995'ish.

[Mandark]

Now there's some self-awareness.

Next step is gonna be realizing how trash almost all those dudes were from the beginning. Throw in Bill Buckley Jr. while we're here.

[Cauliflower Of Love]

Y’all confusing TA with JD or something? Edit: beaten by the cute boi

they arent that different.

[Nintex]

I was a Reagan republican that fell out in 1996-2000 when the South officially took over the party.

Dog.

You were completely in the tank for Newt Gingrich well into the 2000's. C'mon man, you can't expect to retcon shit like that if you're keeping the same username.

I was a 20 year old dude who liked watching Gingrich book tour events

[Nintex]

Newt would be the type of guy you'd have a beer with to discuss him fucking over Clinton, while at the same time cheating on his own wife.
Talking about his moonbase fantasies would be icing on the already delicious cake.

We can only wonder what history would've looked like if George W had not asked Cheney but Gingrich to be his 'experienced Washington man' VP to do all the hard work.

[agrajag]

https://twitter.com/cnni/status/1136764720004902912