What's new
Fantasy Football - Footballguys Forums

Welcome to Our Forums. Once you've registered and logged in, you're primed to talk football, among other topics, with the sharpest and most experienced fantasy players on the internet.

Agree or Disagree? Donald Trump Controls The Republican Party And Republicans Must Yield To Him (2 Viewers)

I identify mostly Independent: Agree or Disagree? Donald Trump Controls The Republican Party And Rep


  • Total voters
    166
Not to call out @Joe Bryant because its his poll and he can word it however he wants, but the wording -  "Donald Trump Controls The Republican Party And Republicans Must Yield To Him" - made it difficult for me to vote in the poll. That language is too strong and not what I believe.  But I think I posted in this thread topic and elsewhere long ago that Republican candidates are going to have to disclaim the election results and support Trump in order to have a chance in most primary elections this Spring. I think that was born out over the past several months and again last night. I also said if Trump runs, he wins the GOP primary in 2024 easily unless something extraordinary happens between now and then and still believe that. I think many on the right are more afraid of Trump than those on the left. A moderate Republican knows they will have to vote for Trump if he's the nominee and I think that is a huge concern that is causing some cognitive dissonance on the right these days. For example, if Trump runs and DeSantis doesn't back down, it will get ugly because The Donald will pull no punches.
Agreed...which is why I made the comments earlier in the thread and why I voted the way I did.

 
Lol. It's fine. If "it's clear he's absolutely the tail wagging the dog" doesn't equate to "republicans must yield to him" then...........whatever.
There's a rather elementarily obvious distinction between "is" and "must".  Does that really need to be gone over or were you merely over zealous in attempting to play "gotcha"?

 
There were very, very few people who voted Disagree in the original poll. And the reason I think liberals are so invested in the idea that Trump controls the party through empirical evidence endlessly arguing with them in this very thread that Trump had even a smidgeon less than complete control.

All good. I've said my piece. Carry on.
I very rarely vote in Joe's polls. They're generally binary in nature when the answer is almost always something in between. I don't think it's wrong of Joe to present polls in that manner though. Binary is just representative of our values and they're engaging on a large scale. They don't represent my own so my data point and others of similar ilk are not accounted for, but I accepted long ago that pragmatic and reasonable are not the target market no matter the politics.

 
Yeah, right now DeSantis seems to be the go to guy for Republican voters tired of being tarred with the embarrassment of Trump. But until he gets within hailing distance of Donald in the polls, he's just wishful thinking for a few who have a shred of dignity.

Last I saw, The Don had him about doubled up.
Between the vindictive assault at Disney which would cripple the economies of several counties in Florida and the labelling of critics of his don't say gay policies as groomers, DeSantis is nothing more than a more polished version of Trump.

 
Between the vindictive assault at Disney which would cripple the economies of several counties in Florida and the labelling of critics of his don't say gay policies as groomers, DeSantis is nothing more than a more polished version of Trump.


I mean, you couldn't have owned yourself this good if you tried.

You LITERALLY criticize Desantis for mis-labeling his critics as "groomers" as you go on to mislabel his policies.  :doh:

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Between the vindictive assault at Disney which would cripple the economies of several counties in Florida and the labelling of critics of his parental rights in education laws as groomers, DeSantis is nothing more than a more polished version of Trump
Fixed....willing to bet it will be simply ignored since the only thing to really respond to at this point is the substance of the comment.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
I dont know many counties that could simply absorb a billion dollars in bond debt and it not severely impact the residents. 
Your right about that and that's why it's not going to happen.

I was thinking more of the economy , jobs tourism and such. I don't think cripple fits the description of what would happen if there suddenly were no more Disney. It would hurt some sure but Orlando and the surrounding areas aren't a one horse pony soldier anymore. 

 
Your right about that and that's why it's not going to happen.

I was thinking more of the economy , jobs tourism and such. I don't think cripple fits the description of what would happen if there suddenly were no more Disney. It would hurt some sure but Orlando and the surrounding areas aren't a one horse pony soldier anymore. 
They'd recover no question.  It would be a huge shock to the industry in the area initially though.  It would be ugly for a while.  Last I had read on this, that machine was responsible for about $75B in revenue (if you count all the impacts they have on outside restaurants, hotels, etc).  They pay like $6B in taxes to the state in taxes directly.  That's not a small amount of money.  

A larger signal to me that it isn't going to happen is that Disney is continuing with it's plans to bring more of their employees to Orlando and that particular deal hasn't been touched AT ALL by either side.  Lots of people falling for some pretty stupid 3rd grade rhetoric IMO.

 
Yes everything will go back to business as usual. Disney will be Disney and The Florida Government will be whatever it is at the time. 

 
Lots of people falling for some pretty stupid 3rd grade rhetoric IMO.
Agreed.  What's disturbing however is the warm embrace by MAGA types of spreading toxic rhetoric to inflame and consolidate its base.  With a powerful enough base you can occupy three pillars of government and implement a fascist state unencumbered by the principles of a democratic republic.  All built upon rhetoric, i.e. lies.

 
Great piece from conservative Pulitzer Prize winner Peggy Noonan of the WSJ. Posted in its entirety due to paywall.

Just more proof that brother @BladeRunnerhas been way ahead of the curve on this topic. And even more evidence that the 89% of libs who "Agreed" with the OP (plus others who believe "it's absolutely clear Trump is the tail wagging the dog") really need to have their GOP-related opinions discounted significantly.

Something is shifting. Many who backed Trump don’t follow his lead or want him to run in 2024.

The most heartening thing for Republicans in the past few weeks’ primaries, what carries the most long-term significance, was pointed out by the political scientist Yascha Mounk : A clear majority of GOP primary voters in Pennsylvania supported either a Muslim (Mehmet Oz, who has 31%) or a black woman (Kathy Barnette, 25%). The Republican Party “is surprisingly good at building a multi-faith and multi-racial coalition,” Mr. Mounk tweeted. Democrats had best take note.

I’m not sure it’s the party that’s building the coalitions and I’m not sure they’re coalitions exactly, but something new is being built, and it involves the widening of the Republican Party in terms of who wants to join and whom its voters will support. This shift began in 2016 and appears to be accelerating.

A second encouraging aspect is turnout. Henry Olsen in the Washington Post reports that in the 10 states that have held primaries, GOP turnout was substantially up from the last comparable year, while Democratic turnout was down in five and up only slightly in most others.

Donald Trump’s endorsements yielded, famously, mixed success. Nebraska gubernatorial candidate Charles Herbster, for whom Mr. Trump rallied, lost. Idaho Gov. Brad Little trounced his Trumpian challenger. But J.D. Vance broke through and won in Ohio because of Mr. Trump’s endorsement. If Mr. Trump had picked David McCormick in Pennsylvania, we wouldn’t be in recount territory; he would have won comfortably. Yet Mr. Trump’s backing couldn’t save the strange and hapless Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina.

Mr. Trump has real influence but it is not determinative.

I think the real headlines are elsewhere. Last August I argued that Mr. Trump is actually afraid of his base, the only entity in American politics he fears. That dynamic could be seen throughout this primary season. When you look at his endorsements you realize he was just trying to figure out where the base was going and get there first. Oz? He’s a TV celebrity—they love him! He was following, not leading, and they could tell. There were exceptions. Mr. Trump targeted Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp for reasons of personal spleen. Mr. Kemp refused to bend to the then-president’s pressure to falsify state results of the 2020 election, so he had to be squished. Mr. Kemp, ahead 32 points in a new Fox News poll, is expected to emerge fully unsquished next week.

Maggie Haberman and Michael Bender in the New York Times have it right: “Mr. Trump increasingly appears to be chasing his supporters as much as marshaling them.” They quote Ken Spain, a GOP strategist formerly of the Republican National Committee. “The so-called MAGA movement is a bottom-up movement,” he told them, “not one to be dictated from the top down.”

But there’s another, larger mood shift going on, and to me it’s the real headline. Something is changing among Trump supporters. It’s a kind of psychological moving forward that is not quite a break, not an abandonment but an acknowledgment of a new era. In Florida recently, talking with Trump supporters, what I picked up is a new distance. They won’t tell pollsters, they may not even tell neighbors, but there was a real sense of: We need Trump’s policies, but we don’t need him. They expressed affection for him, and when not defensive about him they were protective. But as a major backer and donor told me, it’s time to think of the future. Mr. Trump brings “chaos.”

They don’t want him to run again. If he does, they’ll vote for him against a Democrat. But as one said, wouldn’t it be good to have someone like Ron DeSantis ?

I stress: These are passionate Trump supporters.

Here’s a sign of the evolution, the most important words spoken in the 2022 election cycle. When Ms. Barnette was asked in debate why, if she’s so Trumpy, Mr. Trump endorsed one of her competitors, she said, “MAGA does not belong to President Trump. . . . Our values never, never shifted to President Trump’s values. It was President Trump who shifted and aligned with our values.”

That was more than a clever response, it was a declaration of autonomy.

Ms. Haberman and Mr. Bender quote Diante Johnson, founder and president of the Black Conservative Federation, at Ms. Barnette’s election-night party: “The knife came to her and she didn’t back up,” she said. “Every Trump establishment individual that came after her, she stood there and fought.”

Trump establishment? That’s the sound of something shifting.

In the Washington Post, Marianna Sotomayor and Cory Vaillancourt quoted an elderly North Carolina Trump voter: “I think Trump is very busy, and I think he relies too much on his handlers to give him the scoop. . . . They didn’t give him the scoop on Madison Cawthorn.” The voter let Mr. Trump off the hook but with an excuse that dinged him. One hears that kind of thing a lot.

Endorsements aside, Mr. Trump has obviously changed the party’s culture, its understanding and presentation of itself. An unanswered question is what this means for policy. Mr. Trump never talks about it. For him, once, it came down to slogans (“America first”) and now it’s all grievance (“stop the steal”) Beyond that it’s—what?

It seems to me at least two-thirds of the base is in agreement on traditional Republican policy—taxes should be lower rather than higher, regulation too. Spending? The general view is “Hold where we are or cut but don’t go crazy.” They are for cultural normality and stability as opposed to lability and extremism. They want these things advanced through the party. They are serious about policy.

But the third or so of the base that is Trumpist, they’re a mix. Some don’t care about policy or party. They’re about attitude—politics is a blood sport and this era is the most fun they ever had.

Regular Republicans know they can’t win general elections without Trump supporters. Some not-insignificant number of Trump supporters don’t care if they lose without non-Trumpers. Because winning isn’t the point, because policy isn’t the point. Attitude is all.

What will be interesting as this evolves is what proportion of Trump supporters really do want to win for serious reasons and will make the compromises victory entails.

One Florida Republican hypothesized something my imagination hadn’t gotten to. It is that Mr. Trump will announce after November that he is running in ’24 and then do nothing. He’ll give some interviews, hold a few rallies, but not mount a full campaign. He’ll just talk. And freeze the field, keeping all other aspirants for the presidency pawing the ground and out of the show.

Week after week as rumors build that this is just another Trumpian stunt, past supporters will have to figure out what to do.

He will cause maximum chaos for as long as he can. At that point his biggest supporters would have to decide: move against him or jump on the golf cart and go along for the ride?

The unserious will go for the ride. The serious will start to push back. How? In what way? Backing whom? That would get really interesting.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Great piece from conservative Pulitzer Prize winner Peggy Noonan of the WSJ. Posted in its entirety due to paywall.

Just more proof that brother @BladeRunnerhas been way ahead of the curve on this topic. And even more evidence that the 89% of libs who "Agreed" with the OP (plus others who believe "it's absolutely clear Trump is the tail wagging the dog") really need to have their GOP-related opinions discounted significantly.

Something is shifting. Many who backed Trump don’t follow his lead or want him to run in 2024.

The most heartening thing for Republicans in the past few weeks’ primaries, what carries the most long-term significance, was pointed out by the political scientist Yascha Mounk : A clear majority of GOP primary voters in Pennsylvania supported either a Muslim (Mehmet Oz, who has 31%) or a black woman (Kathy Barnette, 25%). The Republican Party “is surprisingly good at building a multi-faith and multi-racial coalition,” Mr. Mounk tweeted. Democrats had best take note.

I’m not sure it’s the party that’s building the coalitions and I’m not sure they’re coalitions exactly, but something new is being built, and it involves the widening of the Republican Party in terms of who wants to join and whom its voters will support. This shift began in 2016 and appears to be accelerating.

A second encouraging aspect is turnout.


Henry


Olsen in the


Washington


Post reports that in the 10 states that have held primaries, GOP turnout was substantially up from the last comparable year, while Democratic turnout was down in five and up only slightly in most others.

Donald Trump’s endorsements yielded, famously, mixed success. Nebraska gubernatorial candidate Charles Herbster, for whom Mr. Trump rallied, lost. Idaho Gov. Brad Little trounced his Trumpian challenger. But J.D. Vance broke through and won in Ohio because of Mr. Trump’s endorsement. If Mr. Trump had picked David


McCormick


in Pennsylvania, we wouldn’t be in recount territory; he would have won comfortably. Yet Mr. Trump’s backing couldn’t save the strange and hapless Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina.

Mr. Trump has real influence but it is not determinative.

I think the real headlines are elsewhere. Last August I argued that Mr. Trump is actually afraid of his base, the only entity in American politics he fears. That dynamic could be seen throughout this primary season. When you look at his endorsements you realize he was just trying to figure out where the base was going and get there first. Oz? He’s a TV celebrity—they love him! He was following, not leading, and they could tell. There were exceptions. Mr. Trump targeted Georgia Gov. Brian


Kemp


for reasons of personal spleen. Mr.


Kemp


refused to bend to the then-president’s pressure to falsify state results of the 2020 election, so he had to be squished. Mr.


Kemp


, ahead 32 points in a new Fox News poll, is expected to emerge fully unsquished next week.

Maggie Haberman and Michael Bender in the New


York


Times have it right: “ Mr. Trump increasingly appears to be chasing his supporters as much as marshaling them.” They quote Ken Spain, a GOP strategist formerly of the Republican National Committee. “The so-called MAGA movement is a bottom-up movement,” he told them, “not one to be dictated from the top down.”

But there’s another, larger mood shift going on, and to me it’s the real headline. Something is changing among Trump supporters. It’s a kind of psychological moving forward that is not quite a break, not an abandonment but an acknowledgment of a new era. In Florida recently, talking with Trump supporters, what I picked up is a new distance. They won’t tell pollsters, they may not even tell neighbors, but there was a real sense of: We need Trump’s policies, but we don’t need him. They expressed affection for him, and when not defensive about him they were protective. But as a major backer and donor told me, it’s time to think of the future. Mr. Trump brings “chaos.”

They don’t want him to run again. If he does, they’ll vote for him against a Democrat. But as one said, wouldn’t it be good to have someone like Ron DeSantis ?

I stress: These are passionate Trump supporters.

Here’s a sign of the evolution, the most important words spoken in the 2022 election cycle. When Ms. Barnette was asked in debate why, if she’s so Trumpy, Mr. Trump endorsed one of her competitors, she said, “MAGA does not belong to President Trump. . . . Our values never, never shifted to President Trump’s values. It was President Trump who shifted and aligned with our values.”

That was more than a clever response, it was a declaration of autonomy.

Ms. Haberman and Mr. Bender quote Diante


Johnson


, founder and president of the


Black


Conservative Federation, at Ms. Barnette’s election-night party: “The knife came to her and she didn’t back up,” she said. “Every Trump establishment individual that came after her, she stood there and fought.”

Trump establishment? That’s the sound of something shifting.

In the


Washington


Post, Marianna Sotomayor and Cory Vaillancourt quoted an elderly North Carolina Trump voter: “I think Trump is very busy, and I think he relies too much on his handlers to give him the scoop. . . . They didn’t give him the scoop on Madison Cawthorn.” The voter let Mr. Trump off the hook but with an excuse that dinged him. One hears that kind of thing a lot.

Endorsements aside, Mr. Trump has obviously changed the party’s culture, its understanding and presentation of itself. An unanswered question is what this means for policy. Mr. Trump never talks about it. For him, once, it came down to slogans (“America first”) and now it’s all grievance (“stop the steal”) Beyond that it’s—what?

It seems to me at least two-thirds of the base is in agreement on traditional Republican policy—taxes should be lower rather than higher, regulation too. Spending? The general view is “Hold where we are or cut but don’t go crazy.” They are for cultural normality and stability as opposed to lability and extremism. They want these things advanced through the party. They are serious about policy.

But the third or so of the base that is Trumpist, they’re a mix. Some don’t care about policy or party. They’re about attitude—politics is a blood sport and this era is the most fun they ever had.

Regular Republicans know they can’t win general elections without Trump supporters. Some not-insignificant number of Trump supporters don’t care if they lose without non-Trumpers. Because winning isn’t the point, because policy isn’t the point. Attitude is all.

What will be interesting as this evolves is what proportion of Trump supporters really do want to win for serious reasons and will make the compromises victory entails.

One Florida Republican hypothesized something my imagination hadn’t gotten to. It is that Mr. Trump will announce after November that he is running in ’24 and then do nothing. He’ll give some interviews, hold a few rallies, but not mount a full campaign. He’ll just talk. And freeze the field, keeping all other aspirants for the presidency pawing the ground and out of the show.

Week after week as rumors build that this is just another Trumpian stunt, past supporters will have to figure out what to do.

He will cause maximum chaos for as long as he can. At that point his biggest supporters would have to decide: move against him or jump on the golf cart and go along for the ride?

The unserious will go for the ride. The serious will start to push back. How? In what way? Backing whom? That would get really interesting.


It's pretty simple, really. 

If you compare the support of Trump since he's left office until now the trend is downward.  No matter how much they want to cherry-pick or point to a single race, there is no denying that Trump support is dying.  By 2024, it will be an afterthought.

Of course, I understand the reason they need to keep it amped up on "OMG!! TRUMP RULES THE GOP!!!":  It's about winning elections and they need Trump front and center in order to have a chance so despite what reality says, they have to craft a new one and try to convince people of this new, yet fake, reality.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
It's pretty simple, really. 

If you compare the support of Trump since he's left office until now the trend is downward.  No matter how much they want to cherry-pick or point to a single race, there is no denying that Trump support is dying.  By 2024, it will be an afterthought.

Of course, I understand the reason they need to keep it amped up on "OMG!! TRUMP RULES THE GOP!!!":  It's about winning elections and they need Trump front and center in order to have a chance so despite what reality says, they have to craft a new one and try to convince people of this new, yet fake, reality.
IMO there's validity to the hypothesis posed in the article that he'll run in 2024 as a sideshow. I can totally see that. Holding rallies for the ego boost and free rein to trash the field.

Challengers would still need to prove they can hold their bearing in a potential debate amidst a Trumpian flurry of insults. A Rubio-Trump rematch could be epic.

 
It's pretty simple, really. 

If you compare the support of Trump since he's left office until now the trend is downward.  No matter how much they want to cherry-pick or point to a single race, there is no denying that Trump support is dying.  By 2024, it will be an afterthought.

Of course, I understand the reason they need to keep it amped up on "OMG!! TRUMP RULES THE GOP!!!":  It's about winning elections and they need Trump front and center in order to have a chance so despite what reality says, they have to craft a new one and try to convince people of this new, yet fake, reality.
As I’ve said all along, I don’t think you’re right (article a side I still don’t) but man am I hoping yours are.  

 
It's pretty simple, really. 

If you compare the support of Trump since he's left office until now the trend is downward.  No matter how much they want to cherry-pick or point to a single race, there is no denying that Trump support is dying.  By 2024, it will be an afterthought.

Of course, I understand the reason they need to keep it amped up on "OMG!! TRUMP RULES THE GOP!!!":  It's about winning elections and they need Trump front and center in order to have a chance so despite what reality says, they have to craft a new one and try to convince people of this new, yet fake, reality.
What percentage of Republicans in congress would you say are willing to come out and publicly state the last election was legitimate?  I'm gonna go with <50%. THAT's the reason --

 
It's pretty simple, really. 

If you compare the support of Trump since he's left office until now the trend is downward.  No matter how much they want to cherry-pick or point to a single race, there is no denying that Trump support is dying.  By 2024, it will be an afterthought.

Of course, I understand the reason they need to keep it amped up on "OMG!! TRUMP RULES THE GOP!!!":  It's about winning elections and they need Trump front and center in order to have a chance so despite what reality says, they have to craft a new one and try to convince people of this new, yet fake, reality.
I'm not going to keep going back and forth on something that is unquantifiable and, at this point, unknowable. (Reminds me of the partisans who spend the weeks before the election citing analyses that "prove" their candidate is ahead.) But IMO the only ones projecting their desired outcome here are people like you and Stoneworker.

Maybe you're right that Trump will ultimately be a "sideshow" and and "afterthought". (Like I said, I hope you are. There would be no sweeter ending to Trump's political career than for him to have his ego crushed by an ignominious fifth place finish in Iowa or whatever.) But one thing that seems really clear to me is that you and SW desperately want this to be true. I don't know if that's because you now realize how much of a cancer on the republic he is, or because you know if he does win the nomination again you'll feel compelled to vote for him and you don't want to be in that position, or what. But the fact that you're trying to cite ambiguous primary results as irrefutable proof that you're right tells me far more about you guys than it does about Trump.

Anyway, I do hope that, since this is something you feel strongly about, you'll spend the next couple years getting active in politics, supporting candidates who reflect your values, and trying to push the GOP in the direction you think it should go. One of the things that bothers me the most about modern politics is how it encourages all of us to passively cheer our teams on like we were sports fans. I hope as we get closer to the election, everyone here logs off the site for awhile and actively gets involved in a campaign, whether it's for president, senate or the local schoolboard

 
What percentage of Republicans in congress would you say are willing to come out and publicly state the last election was legitimate?  I'm gonna go with <50%. THAT's the reason --
You're being a distraction.

If you want to make up some reason as to why you feel that way that's fine. You do you. But let's not pretend it's based in any facts.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
I'm not going to keep going back and forth on something that is unquantifiable and, at this point, unknowable. (Reminds me of the partisans who spend the weeks before the election citing analyses that "prove" their candidate is ahead.) But IMO the only ones projecting their desired outcome here are people like you and Stoneworker.

Maybe you're right that Trump will ultimately be a "sideshow" and and "afterthought". (Like I said, I hope you are. There would be no sweeter ending to Trump's political career than for him to have his ego crushed by an ignominious fifth place finish in Iowa or whatever.) But one thing that seems really clear to me is that you and SW desperately want this to be true. I don't know if that's because you now realize how much of a cancer on the republic he is, or because you know if he does win the nomination again you'll feel compelled to vote for him and you don't want to be in that position, or what. But the fact that you're trying to cite ambiguous primary results as irrefutable proof that you're right tells me far more about you guys than it does about Trump.

Anyway, I do hope that, since this is something you feel strongly about, you'll spend the next couple years getting active in politics, supporting candidates who reflect your values, and trying to push the GOP in the direction you think it should go. One of the things that bothers me the most about modern politics is how it encourages all of us to passively cheer our teams on like we were sports fans. I hope as we get closer to the election, everyone here logs off the site for awhile and actively gets involved in a campaign, whether it's for president, senate or the local schoolboard
If there's anything it's clear that you guys desperately need Trump front-and-center so you're willing to go to any ends to make it appear that way

Post like yours don't change the fact that his support has been trending downward since he left office.   

You must keep him front and center so you're either cherry picking or making things up at this point. The trend has been downward.  That is a fact.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
If there's anything it's clear that you guys desperately need Trump front-and-center so you're willing to go to any ends to make it appear that way

Post like yours don't change the fact that his support has been trending downward since he left office.   

You must keep him front and center so you're either cherry picking or making things up at this point. The trend has been downward.  That is a fact.
You're free to keep saying that liberals want Trump front and center, despite the fact that I and others have said repeatedly throughout this thread that we want nothing more than for him to disappear.

You're also free to cite unspecified "downward trends", though if anything the RCP average shows an uptick in Trump's support since he left office (not that I put a lot of stock in that; most presidents see their approval ratings go up once they're out of the public eye).

And I'm equally free to chalk all of this up to projection on your part, and to think that you're so invested in this narrative of a fading Trump that you automatically assume your political opponents must want the opposite of that.

Ultimately, none of what we say today matters. Two years from now, chances are we'll have a pretty good idea of Trump's relative power within the GOP. Anything we say before then will just be guesswork.

 
If there's anything it's clear that you guys desperately need Trump front-and-center so you're willing to go to any ends to make it appear that way

Post like yours don't change the fact that his support has been trending downward since he left office.   

You must keep him front and center so you're either cherry picking or making things up at this point. The trend has been downward.  That is a fact.
Where I see it differently then you is both things can be true.  The Dems clearly still need to make Trump the boogie man as a centerpiece of their campaigns (though I will say abortion rights is rapidly climbing the ladder).  All one needs to do is watch 10 mins of TV here in Cali and the anti-gop ads for the upcoming election prove this.   But Trump can also still be the main power source for the GOP too.  This isn’t binary.  All of us here are smart enough to know that polling and support fluctuates over the course of 2 years.  His support softening currently doesn’t mean much.  Could it be a trend? Maybe, maybe not, time will tell.  But his grip on the party is still undeniable at the moment. He is still the face of the GOP.  

 
I just want to give a shoutout to @BladeRunner and @Stoneworker on your restraint. I was sure you guys would be in here this morning taking a victory lap over the Georgia primary results.  :hifive:

In all seriousness, I'm sticking by my position that we can't answer this question definitively until the 2024 primaries, but there's no denying last night was a pretty significant setback for Trump's efforts to impose his will on the party. Even though Kemp's victory will probably get the most press, it shouldn't have been all that surprising. It's hard to defeat an incumbent governor in a primary, especially with a lame candidate like Perdue. I actually think the two bigger losses for Trump were the Georgia Secretary of State race and the Alabama Senate primary. Raffensperger went much farther than Kemp in terms of standing up to Trump, including recording him on a call and potentially exposing him to criminal prosecution. Plus a SoS primary is the kind of thing that most people don't pay attention to, so you might have thought that a Trump endorsement would rouse enough MAGA die-hards to overwhelm the incumbent. But that didn't happen. Meanwhile, in Alabama, Mo Brooks actually did better after Trump un-endorsed him.

I'm also sticking by my position that if Trump's power is waning, that's a good thing. I'm particularly happy that Raffensperger won, since I believe candidates who display integrity should be rewarded. And there's a non-zero possibility of a snowball effect, where if Trump starts to get a reputation as a "loser" that weakens his influence further.

All that said, if I had to put money down today on the '24 GOP nominee, I'm still putting it on Trump (not literally; there's no way I would ever want to make money on such a horrific outcome).

 
Great piece from conservative Pulitzer Prize winner Peggy Noonan of the WSJ. Posted in its entirety due to paywall.

The most heartening thing for Republicans in the past few weeks’ primaries, what carries the most long-term significance, was pointed out by the political scientist Yascha Mounk : A clear majority of GOP primary voters in Pennsylvania supported either a Muslim (Mehmet Oz, who has 31%) or a black woman (Kathy Barnette, 25%). The Republican Party “is surprisingly good at building a multi-faith and multi-racial coalition,” Mr. Mounk tweeted. Democrats had best take note.


Great job here Stoneworker. High information posting like yours always brings immense value.

Something for everyone to consider is while the PA GOP vote split in three directions, what Democrats don't want you to see is the overall turnout. When that turnout focuses for ONE CANDIDATE in the Mid Terms, then Team Blue is going to have some real problems on their hands.

The activist complicit MSM wants everyone to believe it will be Team Blue against the perception of one third of the GOP groundswell shown so far.

That's just not political reality. This is still very much a raw numbers game. For better or worse, no matter how much people want to criticize Republicans, they lock in and show up to the voting booth.

There is tremendous political value in what amounts to Team Red's cost certainty.

 
Maybe you're right that Trump will ultimately be a "sideshow" and and "afterthought".
I don't know about anywhere else but the ads running for the PA GOP primaries were all showing the prospective candidates beside Trump and calling out those that didn't stand behind the former president.  The odd thing was that even candidates that were not endorsed by Trump were doing it.

Perhaps his star is waning and this was just a thing to woo Trump supporters in the party so they could win the primary.  We'll know more when the ads for the general erection start running (which I am dreading).

 
I just want to give a shoutout to @BladeRunner and @Stoneworker on your restraint. I was sure you guys would be in here this morning taking a victory lap over the Georgia primary results.  :hifive:

In all seriousness, I'm sticking by my position that we can't answer this question definitively until the 2024 primaries, but there's no denying last night was a pretty significant setback for Trump's efforts to impose his will on the party. Even though


Kemp


's victory will probably get the most press, it shouldn't have been all that surprising. It's hard to defeat an incumbent governor in a primary, especially with a lame candidate like Perdue. I actually think the two bigger losses for Trump were the Georgia Secretary of State race and the Alabama Senate primary. Raffensperger went much farther than


Kemp


in terms of standing up to Trump, including recording him on a call and potentially exposing him to criminal prosecution. Plus a SoS primary is the kind of thing that most people don't pay attention to, so you might have thought that a Trump endorsement would rouse enough MAGA die-hards to overwhelm the incumbent. But that didn't happen. Meanwhile, in Alabama, Mo


Brooks


actually did better  after Trump un-endorsed him.

I'm also sticking by my position that if Trump's power is waning, that's a good thing. I'm particularly happy that Raffensperger won, since I believe candidates who display integrity should be rewarded. And there's a non-zero possibility of a snowball effect, where if Trump starts to get a reputation as a "loser" that weakens his influence further.

All that said, if I had to put money down today on the '24 GOP nominee, I'm still putting it on Trump (not literally; there's no way I would ever want to make money on such a horrific outcome).


To be honest, I was at a client all day so I couldn't spend the time bragging like I wanted to.  ;)

Seriously, thanks for the quality post.  :thumbup:

 
While I am disgusted with my former party's( GOP) allegiance to Donald Trump I am happy to see that Georgia's  Secretary of States Brad Raffensberger was easily selected by that Red state's GOP voters by a considerable amount. Despite secretly recording his conversation with Trump where he asked Raffensberger to find 11,780 votes. This was a major goal by Trump to see him defeated.

https://www.npr.org/2022/05/25/1100947607/georgia-secretary-of-state-raffensperger-beats-trump-backed-primary-challenge-ap

 
Last edited by a moderator:
To be honest, I was at a client all day so I couldn't spend the time bragging like I wanted to.  ;)

Seriously, thanks for the quality post.  :thumbup:
So you're saying you were too busy working at your day job to spend time bragging online?

Wow, I guess we really are in a post-Trump America!  :lmao:

 
While I am disgusted with my former party's( GOP) allegiance to Donald Trump I am happy to see that Georgia's  Secretary of States Brad Raffensberger was easily selected by that Red state's GOP voters by a considerable amount. Despite secretly recording his conversation with Trump where he asked Raffensberger to find 11,780 votes. This was a major goal by Trump to see him defeated.

https://www.npr.org/2022/05/25/1100947607/georgia-secretary-of-state-raffensperger-beats-trump-backed-primary-challenge-ap
One caveat: There are some indications that Raffensperger was helped by Democratic voters who skipped their party's uncompetitive primaries to vote in the GOP's. But he won by a pretty significant margin, so it's unlikely those voters played a decisive role. At best, they may have boosted him above 50% and helped him avoid the runoff.

 
I don't know about anywhere else but the ads running for the PA GOP primaries were all showing the prospective candidates beside Trump and calling out those that didn't stand behind the former president.  The odd thing was that even candidates that were not endorsed by Trump were doing it.

Perhaps his star is waning and this was just a thing to woo Trump supporters in the party so they could win the primary.  We'll know more when the ads for the general erection start running (which I am dreading).
Exact same thing happened in Ohio where the candidate who was actually endorsed by Trump came from way behind and won rather easily.

 
So you're saying you were too busy working at your day job to spend time bragging online?

Wow, I guess we really are in a post-Trump America!  :lmao:


Hah!  :)

Bragging isn't my thing anyways.   The only time I would say anything is if someone kept insisting that "OMG! TRUMP CONTROLS THE GOP" despite the results showing otherwise.  Having an opinion and repeating talking points are two different things to me.  You have an honest opinion, but some others want to gaslight (for lack of a better term).

The trends, IMO, are all indicating that he's losing control/influence.  Individual elections don't necessarily matter to me more than the trend.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Looks like Trump backed sycophant Katie Arrington loses to Nancy Mace here in SC District 1 -- Haley backed Mace -- I don't like either ----- What will be most interesting this fall is Dem Joe Cunningham (who used to have the House District 1 seat) now challenging McMaster for SC Gov.

 

Users who are viewing this thread

Top