*** Official Republican CIVIL WAR Thread ***

[big dick]

The conservative playbook never included historic deficits. You need to check the title of your book.

Trump didn't cause historic deficits. I know you hate the guy and feel vindicated today, but don't rewrite history.

2.2 trillion tax cut didn't help

[Walter Sobchak]

The conservative playbook never included historic deficits. You need to check the title of your book.

Trump didn't cause historic deficits. I know you hate the guy and feel vindicated today, but don't rewrite history.

Orly? The numbers disagree with you.

[Sanlmar]

The conservative playbook never included historic deficits. You need to check the title of your book.

Trump didn't cause historic deficits. I know you hate the guy and feel vindicated today, but don't rewrite history.

It’s late. But this is a layup.

Oct. 25, 2019 at 3:28 p.m. EDT
The U.S. government’s budget deficit ballooned to nearly $1 trillion in 2019, the Treasury Department announced Friday, as the United States’ fiscal imbalance widened for a fourth consecutive year despite a sustained run of economic growth. The deficit grew $205 billion, or 26 percent, in the past year.

This was despite his nonsense about balancing the budget

[Dan Druff]

Trump didn't cause historic deficits. I know you hate the guy and feel vindicated today, but don't rewrite history.

It’s late. But this is a layup.

Oct. 25, 2019 at 3:28 p.m. EDT
The U.S. government’s budget deficit ballooned to nearly $1 trillion in 2019, the Treasury Department announced Friday, as the United States’ fiscal imbalance widened for a fourth consecutive year despite a sustained run of economic growth. The deficit grew $205 billion, or 26 percent, in the past year.

This was despite his nonsense about balancing the budget

Was on track to be lower than Obama's previous term, until COVID.

Trump's policies didn't cause increased deficits.

Nice try.

[gimmick]

It’s late. But this is a layup.

Oct. 25, 2019 at 3:28 p.m. EDT
The U.S. government’s budget deficit ballooned to nearly $1 trillion in 2019, the Treasury Department announced Friday, as the United States’ fiscal imbalance widened for a fourth consecutive year despite a sustained run of economic growth. The deficit grew $205 billion, or 26 percent, in the past year.

This was despite his nonsense about balancing the budget

Was on track to be lower than Obama's previous term, until COVID.

Trump's policies didn't cause increased deficits.

Nice try.

Sure if you go out of your way to cherry pick the stat that supports you alternative history. Or just look at the last 4 Obama years that Trump inherited and compare it to his 4 years without covid...

2013 4.1% Sequester
2014 2.8% Debt ceiling crisis
2015 2.4% TPP, Iran deal
2016 3.1% Presidential race
2017 3.4% Trump Tax Act
2018 3.8% Deficit spending
2019 4.6% Government shutdown
2020 4.8% Budget before COVID-19

...deficit as percentage of GDP.

Actually that's not even the right cherry picked stat. You wanna go with comparing the first Obama term with Trumps.

[Sanlmar]

You posted an interesting essay from the Spectator “From Cool to Cringe”. This had to have been written by a boomer who viewed the world post 50’s and 60’s in decline. What was declining was the middle class.

The great problem in post war America has always revolves around income distribution.

During the 90’s it got particularly bad. One way to deal with that short of improving incomes was to democratize credit. People would “feel” wealthier. People who could not get credit before now could by easily leveraging the asset that was their home. That didn’t work out. It just spawned the subprime financial problem that we spent the last 15 years attempting and failing to recover from.

The underlying problem of the financial crisis was bad income distribution.

The income distribution problem remained, of course. Steve Bannon had a rap about how to apeal to the downtrodden. We didn’t jail any bankers and virtually wrote the script for him. It worked. Trump gets elected but absolutely nothing happened except a further acceleration of wealth redistribution to the few. Bannon was bounced as his usefulness expired. The Trump deficit spending didn’t end up in the pockets of the middle class.

Fast forward a few years and now the Democrats are going to appeal to the have nots in the fashion you would expect.

There is of course, no solution to the declining middle class in America. The 50’s and 60’s were an extraordinary & unique period.

Look at the way people lived in the 20’s & 30’s. Perhaps you would like to scroll back further. Life has always been unfair for most of history. Thus political paradigms come and go as do the promises.

Do I hate Trump? Do I feel vindicated? I’m a realist. I foretold his end, yes. He had low moral character. He was unintelligent. He did not surround himself with smart advisors to bolster his shortcomings. He was dangerous. He could not cope with a crisis. You could not risk him facing another perhaps more serious challenge.

Worst of all, he had no empathy as Brad Parscale pointed out. This, Parscale claimed, was the minimum required to win a landslide victory. I agree. You dismissively chimed in that Parscale was a “serial scammer”. Trump was not? Parscale was gifted in many regards and frankly is more responsible for Trump winning on the night of Nov 3rd 2016 than any other human.

Trump was proven to be a dope who developed coping mechanisms like narcissism and cared not for country or even his party.

[Sanlmar]

By the way, and to further illustrate my claim.... I just read that Albertsons in the great state of California shit-canned their union delivery people in favor of gig delivery.

Give them an $8 tip.

[Dan Druff]

It’s late. But this is a layup.



This was despite his nonsense about balancing the budget

Was on track to be lower than Obama's previous term, until COVID.

Trump's policies didn't cause increased deficits.

Nice try.

Sure if you go out of your way to cherry pick the stat that supports you alternative history. Or just look at the last 4 Obama years that Trump inherited and compare it to his 4 years without covid...

2013 4.1% Sequester
2014 2.8% Debt ceiling crisis
2015 2.4% TPP, Iran deal
2016 3.1% Presidential race
2017 3.4% Trump Tax Act
2018 3.8% Deficit spending
2019 4.6% Government shutdown
2020 4.8% Budget before COVID-19

...deficit as percentage of GDP.

Actually that's not even the right cherry picked stat. You wanna go with comparing the first Obama term with Trumps.

Why go with the first Obama term? The closest comparison is between the last 2 Presidential terms.

Ignoring the final year because of the unprecedented COVID situation is totally reasonable. That's not "cherry picking". This massive spending in 2020 would have occurred under any President.

[Dan Druff]

You posted an interesting essay from the Spectator “From Cool to Cringe”. This had to have been written by a boomer who viewed the world post 50’s and 60’s in decline. What was declining was the middle class.

The great problem in post war America has always revolves around income distribution.

During the 90’s it got particularly bad. One way to deal with that short of improving incomes was to democratize credit. People would “feel” wealthier. People who could not get credit before now could by easily leveraging the asset that was their home. That didn’t work out. It just spawned the subprime financial problem that we spent the last 15 years attempting and failing to recover from.

The underlying problem of the financial crisis was bad income distribution.

The income distribution problem remained, of course. Steve Bannon had a rap about how to apeal to the downtrodden. We didn’t jail any bankers and virtually wrote the script for him. It worked. Trump gets elected but absolutely nothing happened except a further acceleration of wealth redistribution to the few. Bannon was bounced as his usefulness expired. The Trump deficit spending didn’t end up in the pockets of the middle class.

Fast forward a few years and now the Democrats are going to appeal to the have nots in the fashion you would expect.

There is of course, no solution to the declining middle class in America. The 50’s and 60’s were an extraordinary & unique period.

Look at the way people lived in the 20’s & 30’s. Perhaps you would like to scroll back further. Life has always been unfair for most of history. Thus political paradigms come and go as do the promises.

Do I hate Trump? Do I feel vindicated? I’m a realist. I foretold his end, yes. He had low moral character. He was unintelligent. He did not surround himself with smart advisors to bolster his shortcomings. He was dangerous. He could not cope with a crisis. You could not risk him facing another perhaps more serious challenge.

Worst of all, he had no empathy as Brad Parscale pointed out. This, Parscale claimed, was the minimum required to win a landslide victory. I agree. You dismissively chimed in that Parscale was a “serial scammer”. Trump was not? Parscale was gifted in many regards and frankly is more responsible for Trump winning on the night of Nov 3rd 2016 than any other human.

Trump was proven to be a dope who developed coping mechanisms like narcissism and cared not for country or even his party.

Trump was a narcissist who only cared about himself. That's the only part of the above which is more than blather. I already stated that I didn't like Trump's behavior or his personality, aside from his willingness to stand up to the obnoxious and increasingly radical left. I've stated that for 5 years.

However, policy-wise, it was standard modern Republican fare. I can argue for 3 pages with gimmick about deficits, or we can simply agree upon the obvious fact that Trump basically governed the way most Republicans would have from 2017-2019 (we'll ignored COVID 2020). That's why, when there was quiet and internal grumbling about Trump within the GOP, it was never about policy. Almost every conservative was largely happy with Trump's policy. Many weren't happy with his behavior. Your nostalgic musings about the 1950s simply are not relevant.

Something that has irritated me about your political takes in the past few years is that you've either gone hard left, or are afraid to express criticism of Democrats. Go back and read your political posts. Almost all are critical of Trump and the GOP, and virtually nothing critical of the left, even the insane AOC wing of the modern left. This is from the guy who once mocked me for preferring light regulation over deregulation. How the mighty free marketers have fallen!

Look, if Trump emotionally wrecked you like he did rum dick, and suddenly you completely switched your political and life views because of Bad Orange Man, that's fine. Just admit it. Rum dick did, before he traveled to Tulsa to die of COVID.

But if you really are a sensible centrist who hates Trump but also thinks today's left is insane, it would be nice to see you piping up about that side, as well.

I do appreciate your sports takes, though, even the ones bashing the Dodgers.

[Walter Sobchak]

You posted an interesting essay from the Spectator “From Cool to Cringe”. This had to have been written by a boomer who viewed the world post 50’s and 60’s in decline. What was declining was the middle class.

The great problem in post war America has always revolves around income distribution.

During the 90’s it got particularly bad. One way to deal with that short of improving incomes was to democratize credit. People would “feel” wealthier. People who could not get credit before now could by easily leveraging the asset that was their home. That didn’t work out. It just spawned the subprime financial problem that we spent the last 15 years attempting and failing to recover from.

The underlying problem of the financial crisis was bad income distribution.

The income distribution problem remained, of course. Steve Bannon had a rap about how to apeal to the downtrodden. We didn’t jail any bankers and virtually wrote the script for him. It worked. Trump gets elected but absolutely nothing happened except a further acceleration of wealth redistribution to the few. Bannon was bounced as his usefulness expired. The Trump deficit spending didn’t end up in the pockets of the middle class.

Fast forward a few years and now the Democrats are going to appeal to the have nots in the fashion you would expect.

There is of course, no solution to the declining middle class in America. The 50’s and 60’s were an extraordinary & unique period.

Look at the way people lived in the 20’s & 30’s. Perhaps you would like to scroll back further. Life has always been unfair for most of history. Thus political paradigms come and go as do the promises.

Do I hate Trump? Do I feel vindicated? I’m a realist. I foretold his end, yes. He had low moral character. He was unintelligent. He did not surround himself with smart advisors to bolster his shortcomings. He was dangerous. He could not cope with a crisis. You could not risk him facing another perhaps more serious challenge.

Worst of all, he had no empathy as Brad Parscale pointed out. This, Parscale claimed, was the minimum required to win a landslide victory. I agree. You dismissively chimed in that Parscale was a “serial scammer”. Trump was not? Parscale was gifted in many regards and frankly is more responsible for Trump winning on the night of Nov 3rd 2016 than any other human.

Trump was proven to be a dope who developed coping mechanisms like narcissism and cared not for country or even his party.

But in most other wealthy democracies the income gap is not nearly as large, or growing, as it is in America. If they can prevent this then so can we.

[gimmick]

Was on track to be lower than Obama's previous term, until COVID.

Trump's policies didn't cause increased deficits.

Nice try.

Sure if you go out of your way to cherry pick the stat that supports you alternative history. Or just look at the last 4 Obama years that Trump inherited and compare it to his 4 years without covid...

2013 4.1% Sequester
2014 2.8% Debt ceiling crisis
2015 2.4% TPP, Iran deal
2016 3.1% Presidential race
2017 3.4% Trump Tax Act
2018 3.8% Deficit spending
2019 4.6% Government shutdown
2020 4.8% Budget before COVID-19

...deficit as percentage of GDP.

Actually that's not even the right cherry picked stat. You wanna go with comparing the first Obama term with Trumps.

Why go with the first Obama term? The closest comparison is between the last 2 Presidential terms.

Ignoring the final year because of the unprecedented COVID situation is totally reasonable. That's not "cherry picking". This massive spending in 2020 would have occurred under any President.

Going with Obama's first term is the only one that makes Trump look "good".

There's no reason to ignore the final year when we know what the projected budget was. That 4.8% figure is just that. Covid changed it to 17% or something in that ballpark.

The takeaway is Trump wasn't on track to lower deficit even without covid. If you want to erase 2020 because reasons the average deficit is still bigger for Trump's 3 years vs Obama's 4 years.

[Walter Sobchak]

Oh my sides..... Jesus Christ please tell me this is a level. You are better than this.

“Violence is OK when it’s my agenda.”


You either for law and order or not. That goes both ways.

There are different degrees of criminality.

Did Jesus Christ answer you?

Daly,

After further reflection, considering that it is not actually wartime, I agree with you that I can't support capital punishment for these insurrectionists. But they must serve long prison terms.

[Dan Druff]

Sure if you go out of your way to cherry pick the stat that supports you alternative history. Or just look at the last 4 Obama years that Trump inherited and compare it to his 4 years without covid...

2013 4.1% Sequester
2014 2.8% Debt ceiling crisis
2015 2.4% TPP, Iran deal
2016 3.1% Presidential race
2017 3.4% Trump Tax Act
2018 3.8% Deficit spending
2019 4.6% Government shutdown
2020 4.8% Budget before COVID-19

...deficit as percentage of GDP.

Actually that's not even the right cherry picked stat. You wanna go with comparing the first Obama term with Trumps.

Why go with the first Obama term? The closest comparison is between the last 2 Presidential terms.

Ignoring the final year because of the unprecedented COVID situation is totally reasonable. That's not "cherry picking". This massive spending in 2020 would have occurred under any President.

Going with Obama's first term is the only one that makes Trump look "good".

There's no reason to ignore the final year when we know what the projected budget was. That 4.8% figure is just that. Covid changed it to 17% or something in that ballpark.

The takeaway is Trump wasn't on track to lower deficit even without covid. If you want to erase 2020 because reasons the average deficit is still bigger for Trump's 3 years vs Obama's 4 years.

We are dealing with the same range here between him and Obama. Modern US government has been doing deficit spending. This isn't a feature of Trump.

Sure, Trump made some promises about it, but he didn't center his campaign around deficits, and honestly he kept or attempted to keep more promises than any modern President.

Even if you want to deny all of the above, you're getting way off the rails from my original claim to Sanlmar -- that Trump governed in a similar fashion (minus his personality issues) to the way other modern Republican Presidents would have.

Even today, with many Republicans unhappy with him (myself included), you're not seeing attacks on his policy -- only his behavior.

You may not agree with Trump's policy, but it was pretty standard 2010s GOP. At the same time, he was able to keep us out of any new wars, and his foreign policy decisions basically worked out.

It's easy to rewrite Trump's history as President because of the way it ended, and because of his troubled personality. It's similar to how people are rewriting Guiliani's glorious history in NYC, because of his embarrassing recent behavior as a senile Trump lackey.

Trump was a pleasant surprise to me regarding how he governed. Many of my quiet fears didn't come true, and many good things I didn't expect actually happened. Unfortunately, he did live up to my fears about his behavior, and in the past 2 months, he exceeded them.

[Dan Druff]

BTW, the above is why those grifters at The Lincoln Project had such a hard time attacking Trump on policy. They really couldn't come up with anything which fit the mold of, "We're conservatives who hate Trump for X and Y policy decisions", so instead they defaulted to left wing talking points. Which was hilarious given that such criticism were coming from "Republicans".

They had plenty of material about his behavior, but totally struck out from the policy perspective. So they shrugged their shoulders and said, "Okay, let's just attack his policy from the left. It'll get all the gullible libs donating to us because we're speaking their language."

And boy did that ever work.

EASY MARK SFO

[gimmick]

Why go with the first Obama term? The closest comparison is between the last 2 Presidential terms.

Ignoring the final year because of the unprecedented COVID situation is totally reasonable. That's not "cherry picking". This massive spending in 2020 would have occurred under any President.

Going with Obama's first term is the only one that makes Trump look "good".

There's no reason to ignore the final year when we know what the projected budget was. That 4.8% figure is just that. Covid changed it to 17% or something in that ballpark.

The takeaway is Trump wasn't on track to lower deficit even without covid. If you want to erase 2020 because reasons the average deficit is still bigger for Trump's 3 years vs Obama's 4 years.

We are dealing with the same range here between him and Obama. Modern US government has been doing deficit spending. This isn't a feature of Trump.

Sure, Trump made some promises about it, but he didn't center his campaign around deficits, and honestly he kept or attempted to keep more promises than any modern President.

Even if you want to deny all of the above, you're getting way off the rails from my original claim to Sanlmar -- that Trump governed in a similar fashion (minus his personality issues) to the way other modern Republican Presidents would have.

Even today, with many Republicans unhappy with him (myself included), you're not seeing attacks on his policy -- only his behavior.

You may not agree with Trump's policy, but it was pretty standard 2010s GOP. At the same time, he was able to keep us out of any new wars, and his foreign policy decisions basically worked out.

It's easy to rewrite Trump's history as President because of the way it ended, and because of his troubled personality. It's similar to how people are rewriting Guiliani's glorious history in NYC, because of his embarrassing recent behavior as a senile Trump lackey.

Trump was a pleasant surprise to me regarding how he governed. Many of my quiet fears didn't come true, and many good things I didn't expect actually happened. Unfortunately, he did live up to my fears about his behavior, and in the past 2 months, he exceeded them.

Yea i don't think saying Trump's deficit spending was historic is accurate. It just wasn't on track to be lower than Obama's. Covid had nothing to do with it.

[DonaldTrumpsHairPiece]

On a side note, I always liked Romney

Than you don't know Mitt Romney.

He uses his faith as a shield for what he really is, a heartless capitalist who has put more Americans out of work than AOC on steroids.

Bain and Co.

[Rick Sanchez]

Marco Rubio throwing Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and other fellow Republicans under the bus.

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/twt/status/1347189693310513153

Rubio is a spineless weasel, but he and Romney are correct that the way to honor your constituents is to tell them the truth. Playing along with the election fraud narrative is basically saying that you think that your followers are retards. Many of them are, but they're still going to wake up as Jan 20 approaches and realize that there is no path to victory. And some of them might recognize that you were stringing them along.

[Walter Sobchak]

Marco Rubio throwing Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and other fellow Republicans under the bus.

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/twt/status/1347189693310513153

Rubio is a spineless weasel, but he and Romney are correct that the way to honor your constituents is to tell them the truth. Playing along with the election fraud narrative is basically saying that you think that your followers are retards. Many of them are, but they're still going to wake up as Jan 20 approaches and realize that there is no path to victory. And some of them might recognize that you were stringing them along.

I thought it was an interesting contrast between the two Missouri senators, Hawley being the driving force behind objections from the Senate side, but Blunt being one of the tellers, which is a mostly ceremonial position that is considered an honor to participate. Hawley thinks virtue signalling to Trump cultists is the way to maintain his support, while Blunt thinks his best bet is go to the old school respectable Republican route. Or maybe both think they are bulletproof.

Probably Hawley is doing it to occupy the Trump lane in the 2024 Republican primaries. I predict that nobody who associated themselves with this insurrection will ever be elected to a higher office than they occupy right now. Yesterday was the day of reckoning.

[Daly]

There are different degrees of criminality.

Did Jesus Christ answer you?

Daly,

After further reflection, considering that it is not actually wartime, I agree with you that I can't support capital punishment for these insurrectionists. But they must serve long prison terms.

Sounds much more consistent, which was my point.

I think they should have open fire earlier yesterday, into the sky at first then if it kept going into the crowd. I’d apply that to all riots/insurrections once things get out of hand.

I respect either point of view just not inconsistency.

[blake]

BTW, the above is why those grifters at The Lincoln Project had such a hard time attacking Trump on policy. They really couldn't come up with anything which fit the mold of, "We're conservatives who hate Trump for X and Y policy decisions", so instead they defaulted to left wing talking points. Which was hilarious given that such criticism were coming from "Republicans".

They had plenty of material about his behavior, but totally struck out from the policy perspective. So they shrugged their shoulders and said, "Okay, let's just attack his policy from the left. It'll get all the gullible libs donating to us because we're speaking their language."

And boy did that ever work.

EASY MARK SFO

are you lying or do you not realize that most of their ads were purely based on his behavior?

for fuck's sake, they did an ad devoted to his inability to walk down a ramp.

for all of your weird hyper-focus tendencies, this fascination of yours with the lincoln project is by far the weirdest