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@jimgeraghty has thoughts, and there's a significant chunk with which I agree. However, here's where I deviate from it, a thread...
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The Trump Era Ends in Disaster in Georgia https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/the-trump-era-ends-in-disaster-in-georgia/
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The Trump Era Ends in Disaster in Georgia https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/the-trump-era-ends-in-disaster-in-georgia/
So on one hand, I think Lin Wood and Sidney Powell REALLY didn't do us any favors. I thought they sounded thoroughly unhinged and detached from this plane of reality. Predictably, they attacked the establishment GOP, but I'm not sure what that was supposed to accomplish.
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They convinced a lot of Trump-specific voters that their votes didn't count, and that depressed turnout. In addition, they turned off a lot of nominally conservative voters elsewhere (I'm not in GA, but forgive my extrapolation here).
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On the other hand, you had the "establishment types" who were no fans of Trump to begin with, & I saw a TON of condescension to blue-collar Trump voters by the establishment. That REALLY didn't help matters at all.
That hasn't worked in forty years, why would it work now?
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That hasn't worked in forty years, why would it work now?
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Trump himself was in an unenviable position- he's going to reward loyalists (partially because that's who he is, and also partially because he had to for his own survival over the last 4 years), but he's also aware that a double loss hurts his legacy.
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So the Trump playbook was already out the window, and two sides who had been subtly fighting with each other for the last four years now turned into a bar brawl. Lots of sane folks just plain stayed home, and I suspect that will turn out to be the margin of victory.
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So where we are today, you have a populist wing that really CAN'T be ignored or sidelined any longer in order to win. I don't care about style; I care about winning. Undeniably, you had a president for the last four years who stayed on offense, and it netted results for me.
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Conversely, you have an establishment wing that wants to go back to "the way things were", and that promptly reared its head when they started pretending to care about fiscal responsibility in the last couple of weeks.
My principled friends- & you are my friends- that way...
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My principled friends- & you are my friends- that way...
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...is going to require some adjustment and coming to the table to create ANY future for Constitutional conservatism going forward. This is something that Ace- perhaps inartfully- has been trying to point out for a couple of decades now.
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Populism and conservatism CAN work together and be effective. Whether you agree with the messenger's style or not, the last four years showed that it can be VERY effective. The unwillingness of both sides to embrace that fact is why we are where we are today.
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No one person is to blame. Ultimately, going forward, voting reform is going to have to be aggressively pursued AT THE STATE AND LOCAL LEVEL before it can work its way up the ladder, and that has to become a priority for the nation. Do you trust the integrity of elections?
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On the right- and please miss me with your "well-intentioned advice" from the left; I don't have enough middle fingers for your pretend reconciliation- y'all, there are decisions to be made. The GOP post-Reagan is not- as constituted- a viable political party.
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What has made Bernie Sanders such a formidable force going forward is his willingness to speak to blue-collar voters and embrace the populist left. What made Donald Trump work- IMHO- was his willingness to do the same with the right, and I benefitted from his presidency.
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The two sides of the GOP are going to have to learn to live and work with one another in order to survive. It's bad enough that we are where we are, but if we're not going to work with each other to win in the future, then we can give up now.
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I, for one, am sick of the conspiracy-mongering (and DJT really didn't help matters there since Election Day), and I'm equally disgusted by the condescension of much of the pundit class (looking at most of the TV types plus Williamson/French).
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I pray that we dump the grifters and start pushing some true believers. @jimgeraghty is DEAD RIGHT when he points out that you still need the reliable suburban voter who does their civic duty in order to win convincingly, and I would add to that that a motivated...
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...blue collar voting populace, combined with the reliable suburban vote, has been shown to be a winning strategy since at least 2008.
That's all I've got for the moment. Can we please try to figure out how to work together? I don't want to keep repeating these results.
/fin
That's all I've got for the moment. Can we please try to figure out how to work together? I don't want to keep repeating these results.
/fin
