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US Politics: Passing Gas In Public is Abhorrent Behavior


Sivin

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19 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz will not seek reelection.

Apparently he got tired of angry town halls where people yell at him for not doing his job? 

Leading oversight of your party's President has got to be stressful; especially when that President is as ethically compromised as Trump. Its a constant battle to squash allegations while not doing anything illegal or spectacularly stupid (like Nunes did).

In other news, Bill O'Reilly is done at Fox News. Sounds like the last issues under discussion are whether he'll be allowed a sign-off (current indications say no) and how much severance pay he'll get. It seems that the turning point was that executives at other divisions within the 21st Century Fox empire have gotten very tired of Fox News getting special treatment.

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8 hours ago, WinterFox said:

I am curious, what is your no-bullshit assessment of your potential hero of the proletariat? I am not setting a feeble trap or looking to score a cheap shot. You suggested support of Trump over Clinton based on the vague potential of him advancing the interest of the citizens he was pledged to protect, what are your early appraisals if I may ask?

I'd give him about a 4 out of 10. The fundamental problem was always going to be that to do anything substantial, he would need to either fight or persuade more or less the entirety of the establishment (Congress Republicans, Senate Democrats and the supposedly non-partisan judicial branch and federal bureaucracy). He has not done this, but it was hardly reasonable to expect him to do it so quickly. The greater problem is that the ways in which they have clashed (e.g. the laughable ACA replacement or the first version of the executive order regarding immigration from 7 countries) do not inspire confidence. He might have lost those anyway, but the sheer sloppiness certainly didn't help.

On the other hand, he has succeeded in reestablishing a small measure of fear of the law for those who brazenly break it with regard to immigration and his Supreme Court choice successfully weakened the filibuster so the first 100 days haven't been entirely bad. Basically, this is far from the best case scenario (in which, for example, he goes back to his views on healthcare circa the year 2000), but it's also far from him wholly selling out to the neoliberals so it's somewhere near the middle.

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3 hours ago, Fez said:

Also worth noting.

And that's not counting the fact this district was already swinging Democratic; which may have put a ceiling on growth here.

So yeah, I'm disappointed in the result. But its not a bad result.

I wouldn't be disappointed at all. The runoff might actually serve as a good thing, win or loss. The base needs to stay hungry and motivated. Complacency has really hurt the party since Obama was first elected. 

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I wish I shared some of the optimism over Georgia's 6th.  The district is moving left but until millennials start voting in large numbers, I don't see it becoming reliably liberal or democrat for at least another 8-10 years.  To me, Handel is a done deal.  I'm almost glad I'm leaving the area because I really can't keep throwing my time and money into fighting against total shit scum.  

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Curious to see what the average fox news viewer will think about this.  He maintained a surprising level of support even though it was pretty well known that he harasses women.  The audience turns hard against people who stand up for women or the vulnerable.  

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10 minutes ago, Mexal said:

It's now official. O'Reilly is out. Good riddance.

 

Not only will Trump again defend him on Twitter, I bet he considers bring in O'Reilly in at some capacity. 

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15 minutes ago, Trebla said:

Not only will Trump again defend him on Twitter, I bet he considers bring in O'Reilly in at some capacity. 

Press Secretary.

O'Reilly in for Spicer, a whole new level of surreal. SNL will have field day.

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I would bet O'Reilly goes to Breitbart as well. Trump supported him last week, now I'm really interested in seeing if he will throw O'Reilly under the bus and say "Sad news but what he did was not right", or if he will attack Fox News for "Bad for not supporting the man that made Fox great!".

I hope even Trump isn't stupid enough to take a person with the allegations O'Reilly has against him into the WH.

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Something I've been wondering about:

Now that the alt-right has shown its face and gotten in the spotlight, and a populist has taken control of the Republican party, what are we going to see in the future when the time comes to pick a candidate? It seems clear to me that the Republicans can't realistically nominate a Romney / McCain-type politician anytime soon if they want to hold on to power. The alt-right / Breitbarters would rather stay at home than sacrifice their newfound sense of identity by voting for an establishment candidate. So that would be suicide.

Looking at Trump's defeated primary opponents - Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio - it seems unlikely that these types can be viable candidates again. So has the Republican party now taken a permanent turn where only a nationalist, isolationist agenda can realistically unite the party? I suppose there must still be some fiscal conservatives out there who are into international trade deals, interventionism and so forth, but they seem pretty hard to find all of a sudden.

I suppose the Republicans can try to compromise between the factions, find a candidate who is palatable to everyone and probably lose an election or two because their extremists don't like compromise. Or maybe go with the far-right flow from now on, embrace the notion of walling in the country and permanently reject the idea of US as the world's policeman? Or split into a center-right party that rejects the Trump era and a far-right party that builds on it?

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7 minutes ago, denstorebog said:

Now that the alt-right has shown its face and gotten in the spotlight, and a populist has taken control of the Republican party, what are we going to see in the future when the time comes to pick a candidate? It seems clear to me that the Republicans can't realistically nominate a Romney / McCain-type politician again in the future. The alt-right / Breitbarters would rather stay at home than sacrifice their newfound sense of identity by voting for an establishment candidate. So that would be suicide.

Looking at Trump's defeated primary opponents - Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio - will these types ever be viable candidates again? Or has the Republican party now taken a permanent turn where only a nationalist, isolationist agenda can realistically unite the party? I suppose there must still be some fiscal conservatives out there who are into international trade deals, interventionism and so forth, but they seem pretty hard to find all of a sudden.

So what exactly is the future of the Repubs once the Trump era is over? Will they try to compromise between the factions and lose several elections because their extremists don't like compromise? Or go with the far-right flow from now on, embrace the notion of walling in the country and permanently reject the idea of US as the world's policeman? Or split into a center-right party that rejects the Trump era and a far-right party that builds on it?

Consider the rest of American history. Trump is hardly the first populist either on the left or on the right. He is unique in some sense because he won (which is rare) and he did so without ever holding any other political office (which is unprecedented), but there have almost always been significant divisions within the major parties. In fact, the same argument can be made for the Democratic party: is it the party of Obama and Clinton or that of Bernie Sanders? Almost certainly the former, but supporters of the latter are only slightly short of a majority and they're not happy about it. In both cases, the groups which are at the periphery of the party will make a lot of noise, but in the end, they are unlikely to abandon the establishment of their party because the alternative is even worse.

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