Glen Contrarian
DP Veteran
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2013
- Messages
- 17,688
- Reaction score
- 8,046
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Progressive
This morning I saw an article in Salon:
Bartlett, a former official in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, supports Trump’s presidential bid, but not because he thinks Trump will Make America Great Again. Instead, he sees Trump as “the surest path to complete and total destruction of the Republican Party as we know it.”
Bartlett identifies as a conservative, but is a harsh critic of the modern GOP, which he says panders to “morons and bigots and racists.” Bartlett predicts that Trump will get trounced in the general election, burning down the rotting structure of the Republican Party in the process and eventually presenting an opportunity for sane conservatives to clear the ashes and start over again. Bartlett lays out his full rationale for supporting Trump in a piece for Politico.
A lifelong Republican wants the "complete and total destruction of the Republican Party as we know it"? But this reminded me of a few things that the Right has said in the past. When the Great Recession was in full swing, I strongly remember how even as we were losing 500K+ jobs month after month after month, the GOP opposed the stimulus in lockstep, saying that "just let the market forces work" and "those businesses that are best-structured and -run will survive, and those who aren't should be going bankrupt anyway", that "after this process is done, America will naturally be even stronger." And then there's the auto bailouts that the Republicans also opposed in lockstep - they wanted to let GM and Chrysler go bankrupt, go into receivership, have their assets sold off, in the fantasy that "somebody" would come along and buy up everything and make it all better again.
Fortunately, a saner mind (Obama's) prevailed, and thanks to the stimulus and the bailout and a host of other measures (pretty much all of which were opposed by the Right), America's had the most robust recovery of any of the first-world democracies that were most hard-hit by the Great Recession, and our auto industry is back to kicking ass and taking names.
But the point is, why is it that time and time and time again, the conservatives "just want to let it all burn down"? Look at Obamacare - instead of tweaking it to make it better (as has been done with Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, and Social Security), they want to burn it all down, get rid of the entire thing, and start all over again. One can only imagine what they would have thought about a modern-day version of the Marshall Plan!
It's as if the Right, if they've got a tire that has a slow leak, instead of getting the tire patched up and continuing on their merry way, they've just GOT to take off that tire and burn it, and buy a whole doggone new tire at several times the price...and it makes no sense at all.
Bartlett, a former official in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, supports Trump’s presidential bid, but not because he thinks Trump will Make America Great Again. Instead, he sees Trump as “the surest path to complete and total destruction of the Republican Party as we know it.”
Bartlett identifies as a conservative, but is a harsh critic of the modern GOP, which he says panders to “morons and bigots and racists.” Bartlett predicts that Trump will get trounced in the general election, burning down the rotting structure of the Republican Party in the process and eventually presenting an opportunity for sane conservatives to clear the ashes and start over again. Bartlett lays out his full rationale for supporting Trump in a piece for Politico.
A lifelong Republican wants the "complete and total destruction of the Republican Party as we know it"? But this reminded me of a few things that the Right has said in the past. When the Great Recession was in full swing, I strongly remember how even as we were losing 500K+ jobs month after month after month, the GOP opposed the stimulus in lockstep, saying that "just let the market forces work" and "those businesses that are best-structured and -run will survive, and those who aren't should be going bankrupt anyway", that "after this process is done, America will naturally be even stronger." And then there's the auto bailouts that the Republicans also opposed in lockstep - they wanted to let GM and Chrysler go bankrupt, go into receivership, have their assets sold off, in the fantasy that "somebody" would come along and buy up everything and make it all better again.
Fortunately, a saner mind (Obama's) prevailed, and thanks to the stimulus and the bailout and a host of other measures (pretty much all of which were opposed by the Right), America's had the most robust recovery of any of the first-world democracies that were most hard-hit by the Great Recession, and our auto industry is back to kicking ass and taking names.
But the point is, why is it that time and time and time again, the conservatives "just want to let it all burn down"? Look at Obamacare - instead of tweaking it to make it better (as has been done with Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, and Social Security), they want to burn it all down, get rid of the entire thing, and start all over again. One can only imagine what they would have thought about a modern-day version of the Marshall Plan!
It's as if the Right, if they've got a tire that has a slow leak, instead of getting the tire patched up and continuing on their merry way, they've just GOT to take off that tire and burn it, and buy a whole doggone new tire at several times the price...and it makes no sense at all.