I do hope Barry is right about this, that the GOP will break its fever after Trump falls. But the one topic where I most criticize my dear president is his understanding of and dealings with the GOP.
I don’t see it. When Trump loses, those who voted for him in the primaries will blame the Republican establishment for not backing him, and the whole cycle will begin again in four years’ time. I just don’t know how they can ignore those voters, and they’re not going away anytime soon.
Koch Boys pulling support for TeaPub, Renee Ellmers .
BHO: “The issue here has never been both sides stuck in a corner, unwilling to meet in the middle. The challenge has been a Republican Party that has become increasingly ideological and extreme.”
Amen!
False equivalence is the last refuge of scoundrels.
And Very Serious People.
But I repeat myself.
Hope springs eternal.
While I have always admired the president’s optimism, I have often found it to be somewhat misplaced when it has come to predicting the better angels of the GOP nature to finally emerge. At this point continuing to predict it looks more like self-delusion than optimism.
I think this wound, that is going to be so hard for the GOP to cure, is largely self inflicted and, even more largely, an unintended consequence of two things: their extreme gerrymandering success and the Citizen’s United Court decision.
The first goal of pretty much any politician is to get reelected. I can’t really blame them for that. My first goal at work is always not to get fired afterall. Why should I hold that against anyone else? Gerrymandering, among other things, creates more extremely partisan districts. So right off the bat you’ve created an incentive for GOP members to tack to the right.
But the Citizens United decision multiplies that problem. With no restrictions on money in politics and no transparency on where the money is coming from, most GOP members are going to still be more concerned with losing primaries after 2016 than with losing reelection. All the incentives are still going to be to tack hard to the right.
Put in more blunt terms, as frightening as it may be, I don’t think we’ve yet reached Peak Wingnut. I think that will have to wait until at least 2020 when nominee Ted Cruz or, frighteningly, someone more extreme than him, goes down in a truly magnificent blaze of glory. Until then, the GOP base voters who the politicians are incented to cater to, will self-delude yet again that they lost because they nominated a candidate, Trump, that was INSUFFICIENTLY CONSERVATIVE.
The 2016 elections will see the GOP complete its evolution from a party nominally endorsing “conservative” policies to America’s first “identity” party :crying:
It’s not the Party. It’s the Electorate.
Haven’t we heard this a bunch of times for years now?
Obama has heavily criticized presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump throughout the 2016 election cycle for his rhetoric and policy proposals.
I believe that Trump has pivoted to the General and now they are known as policy suggestions.
agreed, but he, like Jackie Robinson, needed to be very conscoius of avoiding the angry or pessimistic black man meme.
to this end Obama has really come through. Those that follow in his footsteps in years going forward have been well served by his restraint. Obama will be more free after January. I expect that while he’ll continue to throw rhetorical punches and perhaps a bit harder, but the gloves will remain on.
I do think, in this case he is more correct than usual that the fever will break some as the next occupant of the white house will not be a black man. (however if HRC, perhaps not)
Prez better be careful or Trump’s gonna give him a nickname…
Aside from the tragedy, it’s kind of environmentally sound and beautiful watching as lemmings discover they can’t help themselves…
Either that or become nakedly fascist. They are certainly more than part way there already.
What after all is the appeal of Trump to them: that he’s a “winner,” of course in their eyes, but also that he is a big fat aggressive bully who will mow their “enemies” down for them. That’s the germ of the fascist idea and he truly sums it all up.
The MSM was different years ago…EISENHOWER would have been to the left of Obama…and still have been a Republican in good standing.
I gave an impassioned apology to my Millennial son ruing the fact that my generation was in our 20s, 30s and 40s as commercialized tripe known as “cable news” came in and then proceeded to sink us. My son and daughter both know this and both feel they have a leg up on the portrayal of reality=$$$$$ that the MSM sells.
I believe that if the U.S. were the size of the U.K. the MSM could not have hoodwinked us the way it has. If that were the case, this country would have been a llttle smaller than Colorado. Whatever would pass for “reality” would not be so much at the mercy of the illusion-machine, pundits, false-equivalence, info-tainment and “outrage”-manufactoring. Personal contact between and among people would be more direct, personal and less subject to having jerk-offs like Tweety getting rich saying what any sixth-grader in Britain could easily write a paragraph to.
I think Bernie is now being a royal jerk whose actions may be hurting Hillary as she gears up for Trump…but one of the things I liked about him was his mentioning the idea that the U.S. could borrow some ideas and practices from other lands.
I think he’s right. But for it to happen the not un-hinged Republicans must leave their party and become Democrats. Because the wingnuts will never go away.
I really wish I could agree wight he President on this one, but they already have their excuses ready. Trump was a clown and not a “real” conservative.
I am beginning to substitute the term “not-unhinged Republican” for Atlantis.
Not just lost, but SUNK.
“My sense is that there will be a corrective at some point, perhaps after this next presidential election.”
I disagree, BO. If the GOP/Teatrolls lose, they will get worse. If they ever win again, we’re eventually headed for guillotines and an uprising against the plutocrats. People will die and it will be necessary and I have no qualms saying so.
I don’t believe so either. Much of the GOPs current situation has a lot to do with their own media’s control of their narrative. Wait until the Limbaugh’s, Coulters, the D’Souza’s and every other con-man rage peddler see dollar signs with a Hillary win in the general. She’s an even bigger boogeyman than Obama ever was, and look at the shit they’ve helped produce since he got elected.