To: toefonos who wrote (325685 ) 3/9/2025 6:07:54 PM From: Lane3 Read Replies (2) | Respond to Funny, I just encountered a guy asking a question along the lines of mine on WaPo. He was asking a columnist who is critical of Trump, not a bunch of magas who supposedly would know where the hell they were headed. But, unlike our own magas, the columnist did respond: I don't necessarily think there is an end game. That really isn't how political parties work. They are not really organized around that kind of thinking. They are about what it takes to get elected and hold onto power. Individual leaders of these parties may have those kinds of grandiose ideas, but they come and go. I don't think rank-and-file party members think in those high-altitude and historic terms. They generally cast their votes on economic issues or to express their personal/social/religious values. However, I do think there was a real turning point about 15 years ago, when the Tea Party arrived on the scene. Even during the Gingrich era, Republicans had an agenda -- things they actually wanted to get done. Remember the Contract with America? And they were capable of negotiating, which is how they got a balanced budget deal and welfare reform in striking agreements with Clinton. What happened with the Tea Party was that an entire generation of lawmakers began arriving in Washington with the express agenda not of passing things, but of stopping them. They are also turning their backs on the traditional Republican values of internationalism and free trade. And now we have Trump, who is remaking the world order that has been built over the past three-quarters of a century by the United States itself. Where this all ends up? I wish I knew.
