Maxine Waters is 1/536th as obnoxious as Donald Trump, Republicans admit
Well, they would if they had any honor, which of course they don’t. Yes, Maxine has an affection for conspiracy theories, and, furthermore, she is a black chick who doesn’t act white, which in conservative circles is an unforgivable sin. Yo, Maxine! Get a Ph.D. and play Bach, and don’t eat fried chicken! Yeah, Maxine can be a bore. But she doesn’t tear weeping children from their weeping parents’ arms, which makes her one up on our Caudillo in Chief.
Ramesh Ponnuru, last seen whistling past his own grave
Ramesh Ponnuru “explains” that the Republican Party really isn’t a Trump cult. Why, Republicans give Trump more sass than they gave George Bush! And since the party dumped “Bushism” almost as soon as Bush left office, that “proves” that the party can/will dump Trumpism even more quickly!
Here’s the thing, Ramesh: comparing George Bush to Donald Trump is like comparing a golden retriever to a rabid baboon. It’s like, well, like comparing George Bush to Donald Trump. Donald Trump is a vicious, unprincipled oaf, a man entirely unworthy of the public trust. The leaders of the Republican Party—Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan in particular—betrayed America by supporting Trump. Today, “Conscience Republicans” like yourself are like battered wives denying a dysfunctional marriage—“It’s not like he hits me all the time!” Or, perhaps, rather like MacBeth:
“For mine own good,
All causes shall give way. I am in blood
Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”
Sorry, dude. You made a pact with the Devil, and the Devil never leaves.
UPDATE
The latest primary results don’t do much for Ramesh’s “thesis” either.
The trouble with Donald Trump is he’s too much like Fred Hiatt
Yes, that is an exaggeration, but consider: Daniel Larison, in one of his depressingly accurate descriptions of Donald Trump’s foreign policy “views”, remarks the following:
“The Trump administration’s approach to this conflict is typical of the president’s warped view of diplomacy. He thinks that diplomacy amounts to issuing ultimatums and making threats, and he expects that the other side can be forced into yielding everything if enough pressure is applied. The president has no capacity for empathy with the other side’s position, and it probably wouldn’t matter if he did. Because he doesn’t think it is possible to have a mutually beneficial agreement between two or more parties, he assumes that others have to lose in order for him to get a “good” deal.”
The thing is, as I’ve moaned about in the past, folks like Hillary Clinton1 and Washington Post editorial page honcho Fred Hiatt have almost exactly the same belief in the power of “firmness”. The only difference is the motivations. Trump is driven by his simple conviction that winning is everything and being a winner means being a bully. For Hillary, it’s the thrill of “militant virtue”, kicking ass in the name of compassion. For Fred, it’s keeping America on its toes so that it can protect Israel.
- In an extended discussion of Hillary’s 2003 speech regarding Iraq, I said ‘Her repeated pronouncements on Libya, Ukraine, and Syria demonstrate her continued belief in “firmness” as the key to success. Tell people what you want, refuse to compromise, and eventually they will give in—this, despite the fact that the careers of Saddam, Gaddafi, and other “strong men” demonstrate that often they won’t “give in”—they prefer death to dishonor, reasoning, perhaps correctly, that in their line of work, if you show weakness, you’re dead meat. Clinton may have thought her inspection proposals were “reasonable”—why object if you have nothing to hide?—and Saddam had, in fact, nothing to hide—but he preferred a war he would undoubtedly lose to complying with U.S. requests.’ ↩︎
