WaPo Opinion: Trump won’t lose in a long shutdown

[zimmer]

Trump isn’t likely to suffer politically because he’s not doing anything his supporters find objectionable. A Quinnipiac poll last month found that 43 percent of Americans, including 86 percent of Republicans and 45 percent of independents, support building the wall. Support for the wall is so high among Trump supporters that even Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said this week that he supports it while blasting the president’s character in a Post op-ed. When your most prominent internal critic supports your position, you know you’re dealing from strength.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...hutdown/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.69bb0deba838

Bazinga!!!

 

[Rexedgar]

Bazinga!!!

News Flash, Zimmer has linked a WAPO opinion piece! You’d tear me a new one if I were to link WAPO for anything..........Bazinga, indeed!

 

[Xelor]

WaPo Opinion: Trump won’t lose in a long shutdown

Let's get one thing right from the start: the piece the OP-er references is not a WaPo opinion. It's Henry Olsen's opinion that happens to have been published by the WaPO. (Why The Post published it is matter of any number of things. Most likely because Olsen offered it to The Post.)

Opinions of newspapers are published on the papers' editorial page, not on their op-ed page.

• Newspaper editorials represent the opinion of the paper's editorial board and publisher.
• Op-eds represent the opinions of their authors.

How can one tell the difference? A paper's own opinions will either have no byline or the byline will indicate the editorial board of the paper.

 

[Xelor]

Bazinga!!!

What a mature thing to say....

 

[Chomsky]

The author posits three scenarios:

1] Dems cave
2] Compromise
3] Trump caves

He then claims Trump wins with his base in all three.

However in my opinion:

#1, is an obvious win for Trump's base.

In #2, unless Trump gets all $5.6B without giving-up anything DACA, I'm not sure all his hardcore will buy it.

In #3 I don't see all of Trump's base supporting him, regardless of the case the author attempts to make.

 

[Risky Thicket]

Bazinga!!!

Hundreds and hundreds of workers are going without paychecks with no end in sight and all you feckin care about is playing gotcha. I do sincerely believe that the real issues are beyond your grasp.

 

[joko104]

Once again we read about ZERO integrity in Mitt Romney. The guy is a total scumbag.

 

[Rexedgar]

Once again we read about ZERO integrity in Mitt Romney. The guy is a total scumbag..

Compared to whom or what? What’s your yardstick here?

 

[justabubba]

Once again we read about ZERO integrity in Mitt Romney. The guy is a total scumbag.

isn't that substantially what romney had to say about tRump?

 

[Captain Adverse]

I support holding out.

He has nothing really to lose and everything to gain either way it goes.

If the Congress buckles first and gives him money for the wall, it's a win.

If the Congress manages to convince enough Republican Senators to override a veto, then he can blame both Dems and Republican "swamp members" for that. Still a win.

I would prefer changes to immigration law and clarifying birthright citizenship to exclude anchor babies, but absent that might as well support a wall. :coffeepap:

 

[Winston]

BREAKING: Those who have supported gassing children at the border continue to support the wall.

:lamo

 

[davidhume]

Bazinga!!!

Well, it's an opinion piece in the Washington Post. Not an editorial by the Washington Post. Not sure if you intended to obscure the difference.

 

[zimmer]

News Flash, Zimmer has linked a WAPO opinion piece! You’d tear me a new one if I were to link WAPO for anything..........Bazinga, indeed!

Yeah, it’s in the title of the OP. The opinion is right on.

Tell me, what is flawed with the reasoning?

You attack the poster, but not the thinking in the WaPo opinion piece. Is it because you cannot refute it?

 

[zimmer]

BREAKING: Those who have supported gassing children at the border continue to support the wall.

Is that what Obama’s caging children was about?

We know he executed Americans without due process. Do you have a link to Obama’s planned gassing?

 

[zimmer]

Well, it's an opinion piece in the Washington Post. Not an editorial by the Washington Post. Not sure if you intended to obscure the difference.

Obscure? Are you blind? It’s in the ****ing title!!! ROTFLOL...

 

[markjs]

News Flash, Zimmer has linked a WAPO opinion piece! You’d tear me a new one if I were to link WAPO for anything..........Bazinga, indeed!

43% is still more than half! :lamo

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

Hundreds and hundreds of workers are going without paychecks with no end in sight and all you feckin care about is playing gotcha. I do sincerely believe that the real issues are beyond your grasp.

That's all Zimmer ever cares about. That's all that 80 percent of the Republicans and conservatives care about.
Nose, face, meet scissors.

 

[jnug]

The author posits three scenarios:

1] Dems cave
2] Compromise
3] Trump caves

He then claims Trump wins with his base in all three.

However in my opinion:

#1, is an obvious win for Trump's base.

In #2, unless Trump gets all $5.6B without giving-up anything DACA, I'm not sure all his hardcore will buy it.

In #3 I don't see all of Trump's base supporting him, regardless of the case the author attempts to make.

Its not really a matter of whether Trump caves or not. Its a matter of whether GOP Senators cave. If they cave, then its all over for the Donald. His Presidency is over...his reelection is over. Its over now. We won't have to wait till 2020. He becomes a political lame duck, an acknowledged political liability that does not even have a two year clock attached to it. It would actually be better for Donald Duck if he caved before the GOP Senators do. At least Donald could claim some sort of come to Jesus, common sense enlightenment out of it. Gardener and Collins have already caved. Do we really think Mitt Romney won't? That leaves the Dems one vote short of passage of the House Bills in the Senate...two at most if Joe Manchin decides to vote be a No vote on the House Bills.

Once the GOP Senators cave the first time, it gets easier and easier to cave after that. McConnell has been put in a box, a room with no doors or windows. That is a very odd place for Mitchy-poo and he is not likely to fair well in it. He is surely not likely to be inclined to stay there for long.

In addition I am not convinced that Trump's loyal base will be anywhere near as punishing of the Donald as the Rush Limbaugh's and Ann Coulters would have him believe when it comes to this whole Wall mess.

The one thing that Donald has truly miscalculated in this is that Limbaugh and Coulter are no more principled than any other part of contemporary MSM with regard to ratings and trying to keep the who wins and who loses aspect of any political issue running. It is patently absurd to claim all the nasty things about MSM that the Right claims for them and then look at the Limbaugh's and the Coulters as some sort of saints somehow hovering above it all. They aren't.

Limbaugh and Coulter speak for themselves and nobody else, just as any other media personality with a microphone or a TV Camera speaks for themselves. They have constituencies of 1, themselves. Their goals and aspirations are entirely personal, their personal wealth and power. In that, they are much like Trump himself. Donald just does not see it for what it is.

His base is going to go where I ask you if he does not come through with this idiot Wall? Most are already saying nobody believed Mexico would ever pay for it or any part of it (ie. the things Donald's base are after are beyond this wall). His base turns to who if they abandon Donald? We have already established that there is only one Donald. The New Right only has one shot at this and it is fading fast.

No. While it is hard for Donald to believe in anybody, the bond between him and his base is much stronger than this one issue of the Wall. He can't see that either apparently. The more I think about it, the more laughable the whole notion that the base rises and falls on the fate of this Wall becomes.

 

[Chomsky]

Its not really a matter of whether Trump caves or not. Its a matter of whether GOP Senators cave. If they cave, then its all over for the Donald. His Presidency is over...his reelection is over. Its over now. We won't have to wait till 2020. He becomes a political lame duck, an acknowledged political liability that does not even have a two year clock attached to it. It would actually be better for Donald Duck if he caved before the GOP Senators do. At least Donald could claim some sort of come to Jesus, common sense enlightenment out of it. Gardener and Collins have already caved. Do we really think Mitt Romney won't? That leaves the Dems one vote short of passage of the House Bills in the Senate...two at most if Joe Manchin decides to vote be a No vote on the House Bills.

Once the GOP Senators cave the first time, it gets easier and easier to cave after that. McConnell has been put in a box, a room with no doors or windows. That is a very odd place for Mitchy-poo and he is not likely to fair well in it. He is surely not likely to be inclined to stay there for long.

In addition I am not convinced that Trump's loyal base will be anywhere near as punishing of the Donald as the Rush Limbaugh's and Ann Coulters would have him believe when it comes to this whole Wall mess.

The one thing that Donald has truly miscalculated in this is that Limbaugh and Coulter are no more principled than any other part of contemporary MSM with regard to ratings and trying to keep the who wins and who loses aspect of any political issue running. It is patently absurd to claim all the nasty things about MSM that the Right claims for them and then look at the Limbaugh's and the Coulters as some sort of saints somehow hovering above it all. They aren't.

Limbaugh and Coulter speak for themselves and nobody else, just as any other media personality with a microphone or a TV Camera speaks for themselves. They have constituencies of 1, themselves. Their goals and aspirations are entirely personal, their personal wealth and power. In that, they are much like Trump himself. Donald just does not see it for what it is.

His base is going to go where I ask you if he does not come through with this idiot Wall? Most are already saying nobody believed Mexico would ever pay for it or any part of it (ie. the things Donald's base are after are beyond this wall). His base turns to who if they abandon Donald? We have already established that there is only one Donald. The New Right only has one shot at this and it is fading fast.

No. While it is hard for Donald to believe in anybody, the bond between him and his base is much stronger than this one issue of the Wall. He can't see that either apparently. The more I think about it, the more laughable the whole notion that the base rises and falls on the fate of this Wall becomes.

Wow Jnug, this is an excellent post. It's better written & more cogent than many published op-eds in the major papers. Thanks for penning it.

I too see Mitch McConnell as being in the cross-hairs here, and also have some doubt as to how hard-line Trump's base is. I think many of the base take Trump's wall figuratively, and will be happy as long as they simply see him fighting for them. And I very much agree that Limbaugh, Coulter, Ingraham, etc., are driving Trump perhaps more than the realities of his base.

Interestingly, Hannity is not in the Limbaugh et al camp. He is a mouthpiece for Trump - essentially a Trump's PR agent - similar to Giuliani.

 

[MovingPictures]

Wow Jnug, this is an excellent post. It's better written & more cogent than many published op-eds in the major papers. Thanks for penning it.

I too see Mitch McConnell as being in the cross-hairs here, and also have some doubt as to how hard-line Trump's base is. I think many of the base take Trump's wall figuratively, and will be happy as long as they simply see him fighting for them. And I very much agree that Limbaugh, Coulter, Ingraham, etc., are driving Trump perhaps more than the realities of his base.

Interestingly, Hannity is not in the Limbaugh et al camp. He is a mouthpiece for Trump - essentially a Trump's PR agent - similar to Giuliani.

I think it's totally wrong.

Trump's base is actually the base of Coulter-Hannity-Limbaugh. I know that sounds over the top, but it's entirely true. Whenever he breaks with them his approval takes a nosedive, and even he's been able to see this. Remember back when he was open to gun control? I think his approval slipped to like 34%, and that was in large part because of the talking heads in right-wing media crucifying him for it. Same thing happened when he was opened to amnesty.

Like it or not (and I don't like it), Coulter, Limbaugh, and Hannity are the Republican party. Not McConnell, not Ryan, not Trump. What they say is gospel to Republican voters, what direction they want the Republican party to go is where it goes, and they always get what they want. They also have a major influence on how Republican voters see things, as well what kind policy initiatives are demanded from Republican politicians by conservative voters.

They are the real leaders of the RNC.

 

[markjs]

It still gets me that anyone sees 43% as a "mandate from the people". Some of the idiotic notions these guys post in defense of their phony billionaire TV hero....:roll:

Wouldn't be surprised if he isn't even a billionaire by now, if you figured in what he has to owe out.

 

[Mr Person]

Once again we read about ZERO integrity in Mitt Romney. The guy is a total scumbag.

Well, what of Romney's alleged integrity?

He was fine as an MA governor, even doing things conservatives hated like increasing revenue through things like raising fees, closing tax loopholes, and most unlike the usual Republicans managed to largely fix the state's then-existing budget problems. He passed Romneycare which, ut oh, had the exact kind of mandate Obamacare involved.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_health_care_reform



But that's not who ran in 2012. He was now, he claimed, a "severe conservative" opposed to all that kind of stuff. Where's the integrity in that?

 

[justabubba]

Well, what of Romney's alleged integrity?

He was fine as an MA governor, even doing things conservatives hated like increasing revenue through things like raising fees, closing tax loopholes, and most unlike the usual Republicans managed to largely fix the state's then-existing budget problems. He passed Romneycare which, ut oh, had the exact kind of mandate Obamacare involved.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_health_care_reform



But that's not who ran in 2012. He was now, he claimed, a "severe conservative" opposed to all that kind of stuff. Where's the integrity in that?

he devolved?

 

[Chomsky]

I think it's totally wrong.

Trump's base is actually the base of Coulter-Hannity-Limbaugh. I know that sounds over the top, but it's entirely true. Whenever he breaks with them his approval takes a nosedive, and even he's been able to see this. Remember back when he was open to gun control? I think his approval slipped to like 34%, and that was in large part because of the talking heads in right-wing media crucifying him for it. Same thing happened when he was opened to amnesty.

Like it or not (and I don't like it), Coulter, Limbaugh, and Hannity are the Republican party. Not McConnell, not Ryan, not Trump. What they say is gospel to Republican voters, what direction they want the Republican party to go is where it goes, and they always get what they want. They also have a major influence on how Republican voters see things, as well what kind policy initiatives are demanded from Republican politicians by conservative voters.

They are the real leaders of the RNC.

I (relatively) agree with your premise of Limbaugh et al being the new leadership of the Republican Party. At the least, they are highly influential.

But here's where I disagree:

Trump is polling 80-85% of the Republican Party, but there's no way all 85% are hardcore brick & mortar wall aficionados. Trump can fall way short in his "wall" demands, and most Trump Supporters will accept it. That's my point.