New Republic: The Death of Paul Ryan, Policy Genius

https://newrepublic.com/article/1416...-policy-genius

Now it's a bit more obvious why Trump sent out that tweet encouraging his followers to watch judge Jeanine Pirro's Saturday night program on Fox where she opened by declaring that Paul Ryan should resign. (Apparently President Trump doesn't like being played for a fool by a con man.)

If the GOP views Trump as an adversary whose trying to purge them (which I think is Trump's goal), they could turn on him.

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Okay? If a pollster asks Trump voters whether they would pull there support if it was proven that he eats aborted fetus for dinner every evening, they're by and large going to say no. And it's not because they have seriously considered the fetal dining hypothetical and come down on the side of pro, it's because they recognize that the sole purpose of the question is to make liberals feel happy feelings and there was no option for "Go **** yourself."

Trump would most certainly resign "to go back to his businesses" or some other bull**** excuse before he would ever take the shaming of an impeachment. If the writing was on the wall, excuses would be flying and he would be gone. He could give two ****s about this country or his gullible snowflakes.

You were wrong before you got beyond the bolded.

Wrong again. You can always hang up on a pollster

The thoughts of Ann Coulter weigh heavily on me. I think I might wanna vote republican now

just 3.5 years left now

A wall is not going to be built. I would be amused to no end if that was the straw that broke the backs of his supporters.

They don't care. They're going to blame it on libtard obstructionism (despite being in full control of the government) plus all the stories of ICE going hard on undocumented immigrants who have been good, law abiding citizens here for years is even better than some ineffective wall. It's the thought that counts.

At least Ann Coulter realizes that the party voted for racism.

I do think Coulter is a valid sort of window into the fact Trump probably has to deliver on some things. The fact is Trump and the GOP aren't *that* popular to begin with. They control all three branches of government but they do not have overwhelming popular support and in fact remain relatively unpopular.

So Coulter's inchoate threats are obviously bluster but I do think Trump and the GOP can only buck political gravity for so long.

One solution may simply be to hammer voter ID and other voter suppression tactics hard to ensure a minority of voters enjoy permanent power.

If that fails, they probably do have to deliver some things or get outside events to help or something like that. They didn't have that much political capital to squander and simply doing nothing and being inept and not delivering anything is likely to result in some form of depressed turnout among the slightly wayward deplorables and others who actually bought into the promises Trump offered and upset Trump isn't meaningfully acting on them. At some point all of the midwestern suburban types are going to look around and realize they still live in a ****ty town with no business and Trump didn't do anything and all they've got is opiates and fast food jobs.

Obviously Coulter types will be won back by the old resentment campaigns where the standard liberal elite, immigrant and black boogeymen are trotted out but I do think the threat of the natural course of political gravity is real. Trump and the GOP will have to deliver something at some point, or really nail down their voter suppression schemes. I think it's a huge gamble to do nothing and assume Trump's coattails which could only muster like 46% of the electorate in 2016 anyway is going to carry the day in 2018 and 2020. They probably have to deliver more than simply ICE raids and executive orders that wind up in court almost the moment after they're signed.

Yeah I think I know which strategy they've chosen. They're tripling down on voter suppression, they realize even if they accomplish their big goals (like RepubliCare) their base will be lukewarm about the results at best.

Coulter's just desperate for attention. She can't really shock liberals any more, so maybe she can get the derposphere talking about her by taking potshots at Trump. It's not a bad strategy.

I doubt Coulter has any true conviction other than that the number in her bank account should be larger. She is just a well-paid troll.

True. But still, I think the point remains that 1) the GOP has a lot of power but relatively little popular support underlying it and 2) enough pliable people bought into Trump's #DrainTheSwamp rhetoric and hopes that he would upend the system and promises of jobs and goodies and tax cuts for everyone -- that even a small erosion of popular support is pretty bad for the GOP's electoral fortunes in 2018 and 2020. A larger erosion would be really disastrous.

I see three choices then for the GOP to maintain their hold on power in 2018 and 2020:

1) Keep lying/scamming/promising and find some scapegoats and patsies for why they haven't delivered yet, deliver some empty gestures and ineffective Executive Orders and the like and hope you can paper over the fact you're not doing anything: unlikely to work, but not impossible. Just unlikely.

2) Voter suppression schemes: could work, plus Democrats are kinda hapless

3) Deliver what was promised: GOP seems far too inept for this, but maybe they get their act together

I think Coulter, while largely full of ****, is toting around some credible threats that put you into this sort of path where the three choices above are the options available to the GOP. They can't simply do nothing and let the first 4 months of the Trump Admin be a model for the next 20. I think her mentality is probably accurate enough and close enough to some people's attitudes and demonstrative of the fact the GOP has to either deliver or ratchet up either the lies or voter suppression or both. What I think they can't do is rest on their laurels and assume the status quo will prevail. Coulter is a window into why. Some of the deplorables really want this stuff, some low-info voters really want this stuff, and if even a small percentage decide not to show up in 2018/2020 the GOP is likely to lose bigly. They didn't arrive with big popular support and can't afford to lose even small percentages of their coalition.

I actually think that similar to Richard Spencer, she takes a tone where it appears to many/most casual observers that she's trolling. This way, people like Charles Barkley roll their eyes and laugh it off. But these people are deadly serious. Acting like they are trolling/being sarcastic/going for shock value is a way of getting their point through to mainstream audiences. And TV channels LOVE that whole dog and pony show. They love to have people like Coulter or Spencer on so they can roll their eyes and act like it's such ridiculous over-the-top rhetoric. In reality, there's always a version of their rhetoric that is much more socially acceptable, and that's what you usually hear on Fox News. But it's essentially the same meaning--they want to kill off or deport all nonwhite people and create an essentially all-white country.

Just like in MLK's time, the biggest threat to equality is not the hardcore racists. It's the white moderates that are willing to do nothing or even vote for Trump and turn a blind eye to the systemic racism. They will determine the next few election cycles most likely.

The problem is that what a lot of Trumpers want are these empty tribal gestures. The wall is a good example, Trump flip-flopped right out the gate and admitted it wouldn't be a literal wall, maybe a fence or maybe a "virtual wall" patrolled by occasional drones, and hey Mexico is for sure gonna pay for it in the end but first we have to pony up the down payment and so on. The chiefsplanet guys didn't care at all. As long as Trump maybe deports a few families and nominates Sheriff Clarke for some cabinet position and flashes the correct tribal identifiers, they'll be fully satisfied. Basically Ann Coulter is the only one on the right holding Trump's feet to the fire on the wall and even then she's completely insincere about it.

Plus, there's the perennial excuse that obstructionist dems are stopping Trumpcare or the wall or whatever. Basically if you're hoping that the most gullible people on Earth will catch on to the ruse, I'm not optimistic about that. There's basically infinite ways Trump can keep spinning and bull****ting people. I mean, man, the zerohedge goldbug guys are still at work over in BFI telling everyone about the looming hyperinflation disaster, these guys are the ones who can be fooled all of the time.

What's more likely imho, is that over time people will sort of get bored with the novelty of President Trump and all the top kek memes and move on. All those first-time voters who jumped on the Trump Train for the lolz may not be reliable Republican voters in 2018-2020.

I'm with ya. Alot of people can live with Trump and the GOP doing basically nothing but trolling and nominating SCOTUS justices.

~90% of Trump voters, the frothy mix of utter deplorables, sorta deplorables, nihilists, morons, hardcore partisans, fervent anti-abortion people and others willing to for vote any shot at controlling SCOTUS so they overturn Roe v Wade -- they're unmovable. Many simply need any kind of signal or just the bare minimum like Gorsuch to show up and vote GOP again.

But the GOP margins aren't actually wide. There's a lot of uncertainty but the ~status quo level of GOP and Trump approval looks like the GOP could lose the House.

I think you and are saying much the same thing, but I'd simply say that the Republicans got by with some relatively thin margins and without a wide popular mandate. Even a small degradation relative to 2016 is going to erode their actual power in elected office even acknowledging they can hold together 9 out of every 10 of their voters by doing nothing but chanting LOCK HER UP. It's the relatively few wayward voters that are critical for them since that is effectively their margin of victory. And I do think that those wayward voters can be plied by meaningful action or bluster, but genuine action is far more likely to work than continued scams/lies/bait-and-switch/empty promises. Trump's business career is a good parallel in that he's almost surely blown through a lot of money and the good will of his creditors when his cons and empty promises ran out of steam. Maybe naive, but I still think there's a political gravity that can (not necessarily will) catch up with these guys someday.

Yeah it's got to be just absolute voter suppression, with a small chance of using control of government and Fox News to investigate competitive race Dems, whip up a panic in the fall of 2018, whatever they need.

A wag the dog war against Syria is more likely than the wall.

Also look for Trump's FBI as well as the Russians to actively intervene in 2018 as much as they can. They know they face absolutely no consequences for this kind of thing now.

Right. I think this could fall into the category of voter suppression. But this is a huge risk. Maybe more than voter ID scams and other actual, technical voter suppression schemes which have a high likelihood of winding up in protracted legal battles and can only be deployed in GOP-friendly states.

The big risk is that with the control of the executive branch/law enforcement, zero scruples, a pliable media that relies heavily on anonymous sources but deeply respects norms about confidentiality and classification even when they write about the pervasive over-classification and how government agents abuse their trust...

...add all of that together and there's just a huge risk of the reverse Louise Mench stuff, which is come circa October 2018 the Trump Admin is making up Kafkaesque crimes that the Democrats are deeply engaged in. I expect "the entire Democratic Party is about to face a RICO indictment!" and that kind of **** to become a non-ironic GOP talking point next fall, the combined forces of Respected Bipartisans Joe Lieberman and Kris Kobach and trusted field agent James O'Keefe discovering EMAILS and GRAINY VIDEOS which suggest RAMPANT Democratic voter registration fraud all across America because Zombie ACORN is busing illegals all across America voting millions of times, except this time they'll have the veneer of institutional cover with the FBI seal of approval.

The other side of "the GOP can't lose many of their voters and still win" is that the media is inept, Democrats might be worse, and Democrats also really have almost no margin to lose, so there's plenty of shameless activities on the margins that might not be technically voter suppression but ultimately sink the Democrats anyway.

Generally speaking if the Republicans can turn it into a chaotic ****-flinging contest of any kind, it's to their advantage since Democrats simply can't keep up. Best hope for Democrats is that the constant drumbeat of scandals turns Trump into low-energy whiny Trump of recent vintage, just whining about how everything is so unfair, the Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell GOP is hellbent on ****ing over poors and the middle class before the clock runs out, and people are focused on the bland Republican kleptocracy.

People have sort of forgotten this because now Bush is one of the Good War Criminals, but the whole US Attorney firing scandal was because the WH wanted them to investigate "voter fraud" more harshly, a.k.a. issue press releases that would justify eventual voter suppression and provide grist for good Fox News headlines.

Also forgotten was the related scandal where they were staffing up the civil service of the DOJ with Regent Law foot soldiers, who in turn gave Fox News the New Black Panther Party.

And that was ten years ago, under Bush and Rove. Imagine what it's like under Trump. We might have a new HUAC if the polls are still looking this bad.

Newt Gingrich and Sean Hannity, right now, are running around implying that the Democrats murdered Seth Rich.

I absolutely would not be surprised if we get a Clinton email investigation, and there's no statute of limitations on what really happened to Vince Foster.