B) Neither I not the other 70 million who voted for Trump as an incumbent had foreknowledge of Jan 6 happening. It can’t be used as a reason why someone shouldn’t have voted for Trump in 2020. Find another reason.
C) Democrats did in fact do their level best to get Trump the nomination from a field of 16 Republicans, most of whom were perfectly acceptable. $5 billion of earned media isn’t just Fox News. We can’t pretend it didn’t happen or Republican voters were in a bubble.
D) In NH, registered Dems tripped over themselves to switch parties on primary day in 2016 JUST TO VOTE FOR TRUMP. Not because of some cynical plan, but because they saw nothing on the Dem side worth supporting.
E) Republicans are indeed responsible for their individual actions. But despite that, Trump won the nomination. My post on that day was “We’re Screwed.”
F) You’d think, knowing all of this, Dems would let Trump go into history instead of making him the news again and promoting Trumpists to run a against. But they don’t learn.
G) You can only blame the voters until they vote themselves into slavery. Then it stops working.
Just to speak to B: if you took Trump at his word in 2015/2016, then yes you did have forknowledge. He stated back then that he'd refuse to admit he lost.
And Mexico would pay for the wall. That’s the point with Trump: you could never take him at his word. I’m far from the only one who failed to predict Jan 6. It’s just that I have nothing to lose for admitting it. Those in office (as about to be seen by Liz Cheney) have much to lose.
In 2026, I did not. In 2020, I did, believing that his second term would destroy the GOP and we’d get a new party. I also believed that it would be more effective to restrain Trump from the inside (the government) than from the outside. I’ve yet to see that I’m wrong.
Really? I'd argue that towards the end of his first (and hopefully only) term that he was starting to replace those that would not immediately do as he wished with those that would. This undoubtedly would have been worse in a second term.
The GOP is a zombie: as long as there's an identity associated with being a Republican, and as long as there's an association between "conservative" and the GOP, there will continue to be a party that commands far too great an audience.
I'm not sure what's actually going to kill the GOP off and lead to a new party: it seems that populism has been embraced, and it's going to live on regardless. Look at DeSantis: he's embraced the populism angle wholeheartedly.
Not me. But there are tens of millions who are less persuadable by past events. And they aren’t as magnanimous regarding the intentions of bureaucrats and Democrat appointees.
But these tens of millions are going to nominate and vote for Trump regardless of what the Dems do. Trump is a Republican phenomenon, not a Democratic one.
He’s both. If Democrats had not given Trump billions in earned media and made him the singular object of coverage. If they had ignored him, I do not think he would have won the GOP nomination in 2016. Instead they reacted to his every provocation and fed his argument of how the left and the media are hypocrites. Yes, Trump played everyone, but Democrats knew what they were doing and did it on purpose, they put Trump up front to beat him and it backfired.
I love how in these takes, members of the Republican Party (elected members, party apparatchiks, fundraisers) and Republican voters have ZERO agency (and thus zero responsibility) for where we are today. Democrats share some of the blame - especially with their recent meddling elevating more "beatable" candidates in GOP primaries - but at the end of the day, it's Republicans green-lighting and pulling the levers for candidates like Trump, Walker, Oz, and Harriet Hageman (later today).
Complaining about Democrats online isn't going to change any of that. We need to be working harder at the local level to get more sane fellow party members to vote in primaries to deny wins to the quacks and probably to begin a reverse "Precinct Strategy"[1,2] and start pulling power back from the quacks at the local party level. (I recall when ColdWarrior introduced this idea on RedState about a decade ago, and how devastatingly effective it's been.)
Let me know if you'd like a post on this and I'd be happy to draft one.
Also, despite being an anti-Trumper since he came down from the elevator (2016 Kasich voter, and potential state party elector had he won Illinois), I share more of the blame for Trump winning in Illinois than any Democrat in the state. After my candidate lost, I did not get involved in the local party, under the expectation that it would straighten itself out on its own. It did not.
There was an opportunity for me to get involved earlier on that I passed on, which makes the next uphill climb all the steeper. Just wanted to get that out there, lest I be accused of being a person in a glass house throwing rocks (which I am in this case).
This isn't a Steve thing as much as it's a broader writing style among conservative writers where you'll find many more instances of them talking about being forced to do something, as opposed to choosing to do something. It typically accompanies something that they presumably wouldn't do in a vacuum, but their political opponents are forcing their hands.
You also see it pop up with discussions of "the Elite" and the unnamed "thems" and "theys". It's pretty interesting to take one of those articles and re-read them with an editor's eye and transform all the uses of the passive voice into the active voice and try in fill in the gaps. (Who forced you to do X?) Just like horror films, the longer you can avoid identifying, naming, and seeing the monster, the longer it remains frightening and concerning.
Thanks for the quick rebuttal to yet another in Steve's leap of logic Chris. No, he's not alone in spewing this crap, but over the years i've read enough to know Steve is way smarter than this tripe. I don't know if it's simply an exercise to feel good about the bad choices "republican's made or an effort to own the left.
In either case, he fails miserably. I was taught at a very early age to own my mistakes. Looking to blame others rather than accepting your own shortcomings is pathetic. It's also the new normal. Trump has insured there are no norms any more. Anything and everything is on the table, as long as the end game is to win.
Think not? Look at what the republican's have become. Look at what they believe in...nothing but Donald Trump. Blaming democrats for what and who they are may be salve on the souls of some, but for anyone with an ounce of integrity or honesty they know it is unfettered bullshit.
Suggesting, no outright admitting, 75 million voters are that gullible doesn't say much for the voters on the right does it. Honestly, those aren't the folks i worry about, it's the ones who keep getting elected on the right Those who keep embracing the big lie. They have no capacity for honesty. None.
If it makes you feel better Steve to blame others, knock yourself out. The reality is the republican party has become what it is because of who they cuddled/coddled up to. They own trump, no let me rephrase that, he owns them. And it's quite clear he will never let them go.
Trump doesn't get 70- or 80-million votes because he has sterling character and personality. As Steve said, most Trump voters know better. They simply do not like the options and the current administration and congress are not inspiring any confidence that there are better options.
And to be clear the uses of the unnamed shadowy party pulling strings isn't something the I see in Steve's or any of the Racket folks' writing, but it does pop up quite a bit elsewhere on the conservative web.
This is pathetic. I mean pathetic even by Steve's normal level of pathetic. Liz Cheney is going to lose because the right cannot abide someone who tells the truth. It's as simple as that. Which you proved yourself by this pathetic expose of perceived victimhood.
BTW, democrats owe people on the right absolutely nothing.
Liz lost because she called 80% of her potential voters idiots and horse's rear ends. There is no way all 80 million of the people she condemns are that bad. They simply want something else - politicians who pay attention to what the voters want and try to keep their promises.
They willingly swallow the lies the GOP elites feed them, and want to have power and control without actually convincing people for policies - for example, the complete lack of a party platform in 2020.
It's entirely a tribal "us vs them" populist movement at this point. There's no principles involved, no ideas being generated, and no care for what the voters actually want (otherwise marijuana would be legal already per polling).
This is just naked desire for power, and they'll say and do anything to get and keep it.
There is no uniform set of principles - just millions of variations on the way people think of good and bad. Bad results do not equal good principles. A politician is not a superior moral being when he makes 80 million citizens unhappy. The politician who makes the other 80 million voting citizens unhappy has just as much claim to moral superiority.
Considering there are important principles involved in what makes the USA the USA, and that the conservative movement was predicated on principles: it matters.
I get it: you don't give a shit. You don't think an individual should have their own principles, or that they should put their principles above the will of 80 million other people - even if those 80 million don't even agree on anything except how they identify themselves.
More importantly, the USA was founded on principles: approaching politics and policy without those principles in mind shows how bankrupt the GOP and you truly are.
You are considering the will of only one 80 million voting bloc while ignoring the will of another 80 million voting bloc. Tell us what principles were fundamental to founding the USA. I would say the Preamble to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
I'll put up with a lot of character defects to rid us of the bungling, useless and destructive administration and congress we have now. Steve is clearly disgusted with both parties as am I. The difference is that he overloads his narrative with Trump hate. The two parties are equally guilty and neither has a higher level of decency. Steve seems to want to sit it out. I chose to try to further the agenda I prefer.
Those who listened to Liz Cheney's speech tonight will notice that she didn't bother to blame democrats she rightfully pointed out that she went from getting over 70 percent of the vote to losing all because she wouldn't lie about the election.
Perfectly illustrating the actual issue with the GOP. It is made up of Steve Berman's and not Liz Cheneys.
I do not know how many election deniers there are, probably 5 million or so. That is not the principal driving force behind Liz and Pelosi's committee of the like-minded. What got their panties in a wad is that Trump and the people who would vote for him are willing to disrupt the establishment. That is what drives most Trump haters.
What drives the populists/Trumpists is hate for people. They're willing to disrupt the law and the Constitution, and the Constitution IS the regime/establishment: those calling for regime change are calling for the overthrow of the USA, full stop. They are willing to overthrow the USA in the interest of power and control, for dominance over their "enemies".
The idea that a legislature, or governor, or any other official can just state "We don't like the results, so we're throwing them out and doing what we want" isn't democracy: that's fascist authoritarianism. Nobody in the USA should be supporting this idea, and yet...here you and the GOP stand.
I just stopped by to say that was WAAAAAAAAAY too long, but what I skimmed was ridiculous or petty.
Trump was a disaster, and you oddly move between excusing it to saying he really was. And you voted for him, knowing all this.
I have little respect for that. You’re playing both sides, and that kind of fence play nearly cost us democracy itself on Jan 6.
Democrats are a mess. We’re a bigger one. Wanna talk short sighted? Virtually every GOP policy and talking point today.
And it’s destroyed the party, which may actually ruin America because there’s no truly free market party remaining.
A) There are at least 2 sides to everything.
B) Neither I not the other 70 million who voted for Trump as an incumbent had foreknowledge of Jan 6 happening. It can’t be used as a reason why someone shouldn’t have voted for Trump in 2020. Find another reason.
C) Democrats did in fact do their level best to get Trump the nomination from a field of 16 Republicans, most of whom were perfectly acceptable. $5 billion of earned media isn’t just Fox News. We can’t pretend it didn’t happen or Republican voters were in a bubble.
D) In NH, registered Dems tripped over themselves to switch parties on primary day in 2016 JUST TO VOTE FOR TRUMP. Not because of some cynical plan, but because they saw nothing on the Dem side worth supporting.
E) Republicans are indeed responsible for their individual actions. But despite that, Trump won the nomination. My post on that day was “We’re Screwed.”
F) You’d think, knowing all of this, Dems would let Trump go into history instead of making him the news again and promoting Trumpists to run a against. But they don’t learn.
G) You can only blame the voters until they vote themselves into slavery. Then it stops working.
Just to speak to B: if you took Trump at his word in 2015/2016, then yes you did have forknowledge. He stated back then that he'd refuse to admit he lost.
And Mexico would pay for the wall. That’s the point with Trump: you could never take him at his word. I’m far from the only one who failed to predict Jan 6. It’s just that I have nothing to lose for admitting it. Those in office (as about to be seen by Liz Cheney) have much to lose.
And if you can't take him for his word, e.g. can't trust him....
Why vote for him?
In 2026, I did not. In 2020, I did, believing that his second term would destroy the GOP and we’d get a new party. I also believed that it would be more effective to restrain Trump from the inside (the government) than from the outside. I’ve yet to see that I’m wrong.
I mean 2016
Really? I'd argue that towards the end of his first (and hopefully only) term that he was starting to replace those that would not immediately do as he wished with those that would. This undoubtedly would have been worse in a second term.
The GOP is a zombie: as long as there's an identity associated with being a Republican, and as long as there's an association between "conservative" and the GOP, there will continue to be a party that commands far too great an audience.
I'm not sure what's actually going to kill the GOP off and lead to a new party: it seems that populism has been embraced, and it's going to live on regardless. Look at DeSantis: he's embraced the populism angle wholeheartedly.
So we can expect you to vote for Trump again in 2024 because the Democrats are stupid enough to manipulate you in to nominating him.
Got it... I think.
Not me. But there are tens of millions who are less persuadable by past events. And they aren’t as magnanimous regarding the intentions of bureaucrats and Democrat appointees.
But these tens of millions are going to nominate and vote for Trump regardless of what the Dems do. Trump is a Republican phenomenon, not a Democratic one.
He’s both. If Democrats had not given Trump billions in earned media and made him the singular object of coverage. If they had ignored him, I do not think he would have won the GOP nomination in 2016. Instead they reacted to his every provocation and fed his argument of how the left and the media are hypocrites. Yes, Trump played everyone, but Democrats knew what they were doing and did it on purpose, they put Trump up front to beat him and it backfired.
I love how in these takes, members of the Republican Party (elected members, party apparatchiks, fundraisers) and Republican voters have ZERO agency (and thus zero responsibility) for where we are today. Democrats share some of the blame - especially with their recent meddling elevating more "beatable" candidates in GOP primaries - but at the end of the day, it's Republicans green-lighting and pulling the levers for candidates like Trump, Walker, Oz, and Harriet Hageman (later today).
Complaining about Democrats online isn't going to change any of that. We need to be working harder at the local level to get more sane fellow party members to vote in primaries to deny wins to the quacks and probably to begin a reverse "Precinct Strategy"[1,2] and start pulling power back from the quacks at the local party level. (I recall when ColdWarrior introduced this idea on RedState about a decade ago, and how devastatingly effective it's been.)
Let me know if you'd like a post on this and I'd be happy to draft one.
[1] https://precinctstrategy.com/
[2] https://redstate.com/diary/coldwarrior/2015/07/13/redstaters-can-unite-increase-chances-electing-conservatives-n230197
Also, despite being an anti-Trumper since he came down from the elevator (2016 Kasich voter, and potential state party elector had he won Illinois), I share more of the blame for Trump winning in Illinois than any Democrat in the state. After my candidate lost, I did not get involved in the local party, under the expectation that it would straighten itself out on its own. It did not.
There was an opportunity for me to get involved earlier on that I passed on, which makes the next uphill climb all the steeper. Just wanted to get that out there, lest I be accused of being a person in a glass house throwing rocks (which I am in this case).
You wrote this better than I can: that Steve makes Republicans to be victims instead of willing participants, with zero agency. It's infantilizing.
How many ways can you write “blame the voters”?
This isn't a Steve thing as much as it's a broader writing style among conservative writers where you'll find many more instances of them talking about being forced to do something, as opposed to choosing to do something. It typically accompanies something that they presumably wouldn't do in a vacuum, but their political opponents are forcing their hands.
You also see it pop up with discussions of "the Elite" and the unnamed "thems" and "theys". It's pretty interesting to take one of those articles and re-read them with an editor's eye and transform all the uses of the passive voice into the active voice and try in fill in the gaps. (Who forced you to do X?) Just like horror films, the longer you can avoid identifying, naming, and seeing the monster, the longer it remains frightening and concerning.
Thanks for the quick rebuttal to yet another in Steve's leap of logic Chris. No, he's not alone in spewing this crap, but over the years i've read enough to know Steve is way smarter than this tripe. I don't know if it's simply an exercise to feel good about the bad choices "republican's made or an effort to own the left.
In either case, he fails miserably. I was taught at a very early age to own my mistakes. Looking to blame others rather than accepting your own shortcomings is pathetic. It's also the new normal. Trump has insured there are no norms any more. Anything and everything is on the table, as long as the end game is to win.
Think not? Look at what the republican's have become. Look at what they believe in...nothing but Donald Trump. Blaming democrats for what and who they are may be salve on the souls of some, but for anyone with an ounce of integrity or honesty they know it is unfettered bullshit.
Suggesting, no outright admitting, 75 million voters are that gullible doesn't say much for the voters on the right does it. Honestly, those aren't the folks i worry about, it's the ones who keep getting elected on the right Those who keep embracing the big lie. They have no capacity for honesty. None.
If it makes you feel better Steve to blame others, knock yourself out. The reality is the republican party has become what it is because of who they cuddled/coddled up to. They own trump, no let me rephrase that, he owns them. And it's quite clear he will never let them go.
Trump doesn't get 70- or 80-million votes because he has sterling character and personality. As Steve said, most Trump voters know better. They simply do not like the options and the current administration and congress are not inspiring any confidence that there are better options.
And to be clear the uses of the unnamed shadowy party pulling strings isn't something the I see in Steve's or any of the Racket folks' writing, but it does pop up quite a bit elsewhere on the conservative web.
This is pathetic. I mean pathetic even by Steve's normal level of pathetic. Liz Cheney is going to lose because the right cannot abide someone who tells the truth. It's as simple as that. Which you proved yourself by this pathetic expose of perceived victimhood.
BTW, democrats owe people on the right absolutely nothing.
Liz lost because she called 80% of her potential voters idiots and horse's rear ends. There is no way all 80 million of the people she condemns are that bad. They simply want something else - politicians who pay attention to what the voters want and try to keep their promises.
They willingly swallow the lies the GOP elites feed them, and want to have power and control without actually convincing people for policies - for example, the complete lack of a party platform in 2020.
It's entirely a tribal "us vs them" populist movement at this point. There's no principles involved, no ideas being generated, and no care for what the voters actually want (otherwise marijuana would be legal already per polling).
This is just naked desire for power, and they'll say and do anything to get and keep it.
There is no uniform set of principles - just millions of variations on the way people think of good and bad. Bad results do not equal good principles. A politician is not a superior moral being when he makes 80 million citizens unhappy. The politician who makes the other 80 million voting citizens unhappy has just as much claim to moral superiority.
Considering there are important principles involved in what makes the USA the USA, and that the conservative movement was predicated on principles: it matters.
I get it: you don't give a shit. You don't think an individual should have their own principles, or that they should put their principles above the will of 80 million other people - even if those 80 million don't even agree on anything except how they identify themselves.
More importantly, the USA was founded on principles: approaching politics and policy without those principles in mind shows how bankrupt the GOP and you truly are.
Have a good day, old man.
You are considering the will of only one 80 million voting bloc while ignoring the will of another 80 million voting bloc. Tell us what principles were fundamental to founding the USA. I would say the Preamble to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
This statement makes no sense as a follow-up to my previous entry in the thread.
Yeah they want people to lie to them. That's what they want and that's what she wouldn't do.
And now she's out of the game with less influence.
I'll put up with a lot of character defects to rid us of the bungling, useless and destructive administration and congress we have now. Steve is clearly disgusted with both parties as am I. The difference is that he overloads his narrative with Trump hate. The two parties are equally guilty and neither has a higher level of decency. Steve seems to want to sit it out. I chose to try to further the agenda I prefer.
You'll give up every principle in the interest of power: we know.
I suppose, if power equates to good results.
Those who listened to Liz Cheney's speech tonight will notice that she didn't bother to blame democrats she rightfully pointed out that she went from getting over 70 percent of the vote to losing all because she wouldn't lie about the election.
Perfectly illustrating the actual issue with the GOP. It is made up of Steve Berman's and not Liz Cheneys.
I do not know how many election deniers there are, probably 5 million or so. That is not the principal driving force behind Liz and Pelosi's committee of the like-minded. What got their panties in a wad is that Trump and the people who would vote for him are willing to disrupt the establishment. That is what drives most Trump haters.
What drives the populists/Trumpists is hate for people. They're willing to disrupt the law and the Constitution, and the Constitution IS the regime/establishment: those calling for regime change are calling for the overthrow of the USA, full stop. They are willing to overthrow the USA in the interest of power and control, for dominance over their "enemies".
The idea that a legislature, or governor, or any other official can just state "We don't like the results, so we're throwing them out and doing what we want" isn't democracy: that's fascist authoritarianism. Nobody in the USA should be supporting this idea, and yet...here you and the GOP stand.
Don't believe I suggested any illegal actions in support of change.