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Politics : The Trump Presidency -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (142753)	11/7/2019 3:38:27 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 356112

I do want to respond but not item-by-item necessarily. I looked back at where I thought you said you voted for Romney -- and I think (but am not sure) you were responding to a post from Brumar who had said he had voted for Romney. It looked like you quoted it in italics and all this time I have thought that was YOU saying you voted for Romney. "The R's are bad on liberty and the D's are bad on free lunch." I find this interesting. To me, Rs are far better on liberty -- in particular, since Trump took office -- than D's are. Free speech is seriously under assault by the Ds today, and I'm sure you'll agree that free speech is foundational for all other liberties. Just in the last few days Jeff Sessions (I think) was drive off of a college campus where he was speaking. There are polls ranging from 40 to 50 percent of some age groups who now want to ban what someone proclaims to be "hate speech" in the US. D's also wan't to kill the 2nd Amendment -- some of them, want it killed entirely. This, of course, is a very fundamental freedom in the US. On the other side of the freedom coin, many Ds want to make "health care" a "right", and even provide it on the taxpayer's nickel to anyone standing on US territory. This, of course, means taking away the most fundamental of liberal rights -- the right to buy health care at the time and place of his choosing, and to keep that money he or she earns, and eliminating economic freedom in many ways (which, of course, imposes limits on political freedom that some people simply do not recognize). So, at best, it would be a mixed bag as to who is the "freedom party". I voted for Romney and felt and still feel he is a good man and would have made a good president. But he could never have done the things Trump has undertaken -- which require tremendous spine and stamina. As a result, I don't think the economic explosion we've seen would have happened under Romney since 2017 -- but have no doubt Romney could have done better for us economically than Obama did. I believe Romney could have come to terms with Iran that would have been better than Obama got but also better than the "nothing" we now have. At any rate, Romney was a no-brainer vote in 2012 for me at least.

To: Lane3 who wrote (142753)	11/7/2019 5:03:36 PM
From: Katelew	2 Recommendations Recommended By i-node robert a belfer Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 356112

<<I posted the other day about taking into consideration how much of their platform a candidate might actually accomplish rather than just what he's running on. At the time my comments were in the context of Warren and MfA. If MfA scares you, you can still vote for Warren to get rid of Trump because MfA ain't gonna happen so it's safe to vote for her. In the case of Reagan, I thought it safe to vote for him on women's rights because, while the party platform was scary on that, Reagan, himself, gave no indication of being into that. Since there was no negative action during his first term, he seemed safe for a second term and he was.>> If Warren wins and Dems take back the Senate, what's to stop MfA from getting going? I just started reading Kimberley Strassel's new book titled Resistance (At All Costs). She's no fan of Trump and probably fits more with the classical NE Republican. She expounds on the deep, visceral hatred of Trump and how it's driving substantial success in Dems efforts to register new voters and get out the vote. The numbers were impressive. I'm now starting to think in terms of Dems making a clean sweep and how I want to position myself financially. If they do, demographics will likely secure a Democrat hold on the country for a long time. Strassel shreds your notion that Trump has shaken the foundations of Democracy and backs it up with numbers and instances. She compares Trump's use of EO with those of Obama at the same stage of the presidency as well as other things and declares that Trump has actually thus far been one of the most lawful presidents in history in terms of the legislative process. I'm not even halfway through the book so her arguments may become tempered as I read on, but she is claiming that it is the Resistance movement itself that will permanently damage democracy--not Trump. Trump, no matter what his worst impulses may or may not have been, has and will always be reined in by our system of checks and balances. As Dracin pointed out, the Trump bark was always worse than his bite. The Resistance started forming itself before Trump was even elected. The result has been a breakdown in trust that could, in her opinion, be permanent. One half of the country has been led to genuinely believe that Trump as well as his supporters stand for fascism, racism, corruption, etc. We are literally the embodiment of these evils and even though nothing has occurred to support this belief, our collective evil will eventually reveal itself. The Resistance is blind fear followed by blind rage. Millions of everyday Democrats could be asked to point to how life for them has negatively changed and they will still believe that if it hasn't it will. These Democrats no longer trust the evidence right in front of them The other side, the half of the country that voted for Trump, are also dangerously close to losing all trust in the media, the entrenched bureaucracy in government, and our intelligence agencies. Losing trust in these institutions is destructive to capital D democracy because Democracy can't be achieved without that kind of trust. I'm eager to see if Strassel has any ideas that might make me optimistic.