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politics and politicians Title: Let It Burn: The conservative choice I get that, because I'm frickin furious. I mean, I-better-not-have-a-drink-to-calm-down-because-I-might-never-stop-drinking livid. The damage done to our country in the past two decades but really in the past seven years is mind numbing. Not only has TFG thumbed his nose at the founding principles of this nation while doing an in-your-face touchdown dance at conservatives, but “our” party, the Grand Old Pussies, have continually rolled over before him while begging for scraps of his magnificence for their table. We've done our part as citizens. We gave the GOP a majority in the House in 2010 so they could stop him, and when that wasn't enough, we added the Senate in 2014. We've donated, politicked, canvassed and phone banked. We have made ourselves perfectly clear, chasing the dayglo Speaker of the House from his perch and electing patriots like Dave Brat in Virginia. And what has the response been? Disdain. Scorn. Anger. How dare we question our betters? From colluding with Democrats to prop up the brittle bones of the senile Thad Cochran in Mississippi, to passing the cromnibuss pork spending bill after Boo Hoo Boehner resigned to the repeated attempts, such as the Rubio/Schumer Gang of 8 bill, to shove nation-killing amnesty down our throats, we have been ignored, insulted and reviled. Even today the DC establishment is pulling out all the stops to get Rubio elected so that they can serve their Chamber of Commerce masters. Enough. If these people have forgotten that they work for us and are determined not to remember, then it is up to us to forcefully remind them. Let It Burn. That decision, it's easy. What's not so easy is, as Ghostbusters might put it, is choosing the form of the destructor. Let's survey the field. Kasich is a joke, a big government Republican pining for the days of Nelson Rockefeller. Ben Carson is a decent man who has been seduced into being a never ending, multimillion dollar bot compiling an email list for future fund-raising efforts. Jeb Bush is the last gasp of the Bush dynasty, running 10 years too late and Marco Rubio is the slickly packaged Madison Avenue pretty boy, America's last, best chance for amnesty. If Mexico is your vision of America's future, then Marco is your guy. That leaves Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Trump is sheer bravado, 1.21 jigawats of pure testosterone. If you want to stick your thumb in the eye of DC elites, well, Donald will stick his thumb, palm, wrist and forearm right into the skull of the Washington cartel. Balls to the wall, damn-the-torpedos, full speed ahead American arrogance, that's Donald Trump. Ted Cruz, on the other hand, is the slow knife, the knife that takes its time, the knife that waits years without forgetting, that slips quietly between the bones. That's the knife that cuts deepest. He’s the smartest guy in any room, and his great sin is that he’s a class traitor. He went to Princeton and Harvard, checked all of the right boxes on his way up. The DC elite look at Ted Cruz and they see someone who is one of them, except he won’t play ball. He has principles. He takes the promises he made to the electorate seriously He actually seems to believe in that rah rah America crap the rubes in flyover country revere. Those are the choices. Visceral brutality or the elegant intellectual. How to choose? None of us really knows how either man would act as POTUS. Campaign promises are cheap and subject to change. Words are worthless next to deeds. I would like to look at this question through a different lens, one that I haven’t heard talked about much. Brand. Every corporation, every organization, even every individual is always concerned with their brand. This is a fundamental human concept, we’re all concerned to some degree with how others perceive us. Politicians are ACUTELY aware of this, and will do anything to preserve their brand. With that in mind, lets look at how each of these might behave as president. First of all Trump. What is his brand? Bold? Outspoken? Crude? All of those, certainly, but Trump’s brand is TRUMP. He’ll promise the moon, stars and planets, but when it comes down to decision time, he is always going to err on the side of glorifying Donald John Trump, it’s what he has done all his life. Trump Towers, Trump casinos, Trump golf courses, the list goes on. I’ll bet his seamstress rips the Fruit of the Loom tags out of his underwear and sews in Trump tags. This tendency worries me in a president. It’s certainly likely that he could tear great gaping holes in the Washington machine, but what will he replace it with? We’ve had 8 years of an administration treating the rule of law as toilet paper for their own ends, is continuing to rip it asunder for different ends really an improvement? He says now that he’ll build a wall, but do you really think he’ll do it if the effect is to deprive Trump properties of cheap labor(and thus damage the Trump brand)? I find that unlikely. Do you think he’ll negotiate hard against China if China grants preferential land rights to Trump casinos? I doubt it. Equally likely IMO is that Democrats in DC will figure out how to manipulate him via his enormous ego. Suppose a bill to “repeal” Obamacare comes across his desk, a bill that replaces it with full single payer called “Trumpcare”. Does ANYONE doubt that he’s sign that puppy in a second? Trump may very well do a great deal of damage to the establishment Washington, but I have no confidence that it will do anything but destroy the last vestiges of constitutional governance in this nation. We’ll still have elections, but they’ll be contests between Democrats and Republicans simply to put their guy or gal in charge so they can manipulate the raw levers of power for the benefit their donor groups. We citizens will simply be beasts of burden to fund the lavish lifestyles of the well connected. IOW, America will revert to the human norm, a vast underclass laboring to fund the lavish lifestyle of a small elite. Fine. What about Cruz? Cruz has built his entire public and political persona on fealty to the Constitution. That’s his identity. You can believe that his filibuster was a publicity stunt or a principled stand, but the fact is that fact is that he sold it as a principled stand, and for him to go back on that would do incalculable damage to his brand. Washington DC today operates far removed from the Constitution. Cruz has to attack that, and he has to attack it from the angle of returning to Constitutional governance. He HAS to. To do otherwise would do tremendous harm to his brand. Does he mean it? I tend to believe that he does, but it doesn’t really matter. That’s the box he has locked himself into. Moving outside that box would finish him as surely as “read-my-lips” George H.W. Bush was finished by raising taxes. So that’s the choice if you’re in the let it burn crowd. Raw destruction for destruction's sake, or surgical destruction in the name of restoration. I know which I prefer. We’re angry because greedy, corrupt politicians have betrayed our birthright. We’re angry. What should we do with that anger? Use it for short sighted revenge, or channel it in the direction that might start to recreate at least some of what we’ve lost? Choose wisely. Poster Comment: I liked how this piece outlined the anger at the GOPe and how many conservatives feel about Trump vs. Cruz vs. GOPe candidates in the primary. The writer leans Cruz but would take Trump over any other GOPe candidates if push came to shove. 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#8. To: TooConservative (#0)
Ok: Trump/Cruz. Trump is Patton. He will tear great big gaping holes in the establishment. He will trash the enemy, and anybody who stands in his way IS an enemy. He'll rip, he'll expose, he'll belittle, he'll use power balls-to-the wall. And yes, he WILL build the wall. He didn't campaign on it and scream about it not to do it. Trump can be depended on to damn the torpedoes, fire more of his own, charge the lines, and grease the treads of his tanks with the enemy's guts. That's Trump. If you want a return to the Constitution, FIRST you have to rip down bodily the structures and weeds that have gotten in its way. Cruz is smart and cautious. Cruz won't aggressively abuse executive power to rip down the massive bastions of power that the enemy have built. He'll self limit. He'll be Eisenhower: cautious, calculating. But on offense, he'll be like Monty at Market Garden - some narrow front thing for a specific objective that will fail because the surrounding territory is still full of Germans. Trump will burn down the whole goddamned thing. There will be no "Germans" left in the woods or the underbrush, because Trump will leave broken sticks and bare ground - scorched earth. We all know it. And we NEED the Trump moment. We need the point where we don't just POLITICALLY defeat the adversary, but we actually HURT them, take their stuff, brake their things, make them feel FEAR, for what more they can lose. They need to be stood in front of a precipice and forced - to preserve what they have - to admit that the people DO have the power, and that the people DO matter, dammit, and that the people have the right to their country. And if they WON'T admit it, we need somebody who will (figuratively) put a bullet through their head, take their shit, throw them in the open grave, and haul the NEXT one up to demand the same thing. The current power structure needs to be BROKEN and stripped of the sources of its power, and made to beg, from a point of weakness. They need to be treated the way cops treat underlings, so they get it and are afraid. And that's Trump. Trump is a gorilla. We need the gorilla. Once the enemy has been wrecked, his structures broken, the ground cleared, THEN a Cruz can build something solid. You needed a Patton to wreck the Germans, but you needed an Eisenhower to administer them once they were beaten. The answer is Trump/Cruz. Harness the conservative wing. Reagan was the visceral force. Bush was the brainy insider. But Bush was a traitor. Cruz probably won't be. Cruz is not Poppy Bush. Cruz should be Trump's Veep. Unite the GOP, tear the working class who actually WORK, the Unions themselves (not government unions, workers unions) out of the Dems and have them vote Trump, to get jobs back. Make a new Trump coalition, with conservative chops because Cruz is there. Let Trump conquer and tear down - and also build that wall. Cruz doesn't want to, but he will be happy to have it. Likewise with the Muslim immigration. Cruz doesn't have the stones to do that, but if Trump makes it a fait accompli, Cruz won't cancel it. We need to win the war first, and that doesn't mean winning an election. It means unleashing a silverback gorilla to tear the shit out of the enemy and rip his head off. That's Trump. Trump/Cruz. Trump for 8, then Cruz for 8 more. That will get it done. It won't work if it's just Cruz. He's not a silverback gorilla. How long would it have taken Eisenhower to get to Berlin without Patton?
Nice analogy's with Patton & Eisenhower, and accurate. BTW, what do you think of Mark Levin's call for a states convention ?
I agree with Levin on the convention of the States. We need to reduce the power of the Supreme Court. And either an outright defiance of the Court (and the ensuing constitutional crisis), or an amendment will be required. But I don't think that the net result of the convention of the states will be to really address the key things that are wrong, because amendments that address abortion, gay marriage, and judicial excess won't end up being ratified by the states. The proposals may be made, but the result will probably be non-ratification and status quo. In the end, structural changes won't cut it. What is required is fierce leadership that simply tears holes in the weeds that have grown up and chooses like-minded people to keep going. We got here because the people currently running the show did that. The problem isn't that somebody is running the show - that's always true. The problem is that they believe the wrong things.
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