21 thoughts on “Trump’s Base”

  1. It would help if she said what she thinks conservatives care about. There is an empty void that anything can be projected into.

    Remember when conservatives were against a proxy war against Russia in Syria? But now getting out of one and leaving Russia with what they had before all of this Syria stuff is the worst thing ever? Leaving Syria (without an intact ISIS caliphate) is the status quo. The only reason Syria matters is because of the Kurds.

    This is a tricky problem because it puts us against our NATO ally Turkey. So while we are supposed to think Tump hates NATO, we are also supposed to ignore how he is protecting it.

    We really need to know what “conservatives” want because if they always come down on being NeverTrump or getting snookered by the DNC media, Trump can’t do anything to appease them. It is also helpful to look at who is replacing Mattis and Haley. Why wouldn’t “conservatives” not be happy with them?

    1. Totally agree. I kept trying to figure out what Trump did to lose the “conservatives”, and all I got was the shutdown, which is for the wall that his base demanded so not doing that is really losing his base, and losing his staff, which conservatives didn’t really support either. So that leaves a void.

      I think that void is having our troops in endless wars. That’s definitely something that the former Weekly Standard conservatives seemed to prefer. Ahoy!

      1. I’m not a conservative, but I’d say his “I’m the Tariff Man” nonsense (worst superhero ever) is a big part of it. Another is his complete indifference to the Constitution (I’m sure he’s never even read it) and the rule of law. Unlike leftists, I’m as upset about that as I was when Obama did it. Plus his childish, petulant, unjustifiably arrogant behavior, his chaotic management style, and his clear, profound ignorance on many topics that conservatives think it important to be informed about.

        Trump is not, and never was, a conservative. He is completely unmoored from any ideology. He is a simplistic populist. That has had some beneficial effects, but it’s not hard to understand why conservatives largely find him appalling. I certainly do. Which is not to say that I’m unhappy that she lost.

        1. Rand, he never had you as a supporter. So he didn’t lose you, despite what the article suggests. Your diatribe is just why you never liked Trump. The article says he’s changed and lost supporters. You didn’t fill the article’s void. I’ll repeat Wodun here:

          We really need to know what “conservatives” want because if they always come down on being NeverTrump or getting snookered by the DNC media, Trump can’t do anything to appease them.

          Considering his approval rating is between 40% (Gallup) and 49% (Rasmussen daily); I’d say he hasn’t lost any supporters and the article is garbage.

          1. Maybe a new poll will come out soon with a breakdown of Republican approval. If the concern is Trump losing approval among Republicans, this is an important metric.

            On Twitter, there are a lot of “conservatives” with a voice larger than their audience and they get amplified because Twitter is an insular platform.

            I think a lot of people are in a Twitter bubble and it clouds their view of reality. Considering Democrats, Russians, and who knows who else are running influence bot campaigns, people should be suspicious of everything on Twitter.

          2. I think a lot of people are in a Twitter bubble

            And I’m the opposite, as I would hardly know Twitter exists without excessive media coverage of it. I’ve never had an account, and neither has any of my family members. We share direct SMS messages with friends and family.

        2. but I’d say his “I’m the Tariff Man” nonsense

          Are tariffs bad in general or only if they come from Trump? Trump didn’t start the tariffs, they were a response to other countries’ tariffs on us. Those countries never faced the scorn of “tariffs bad” from our media and our media doesn’t talk about the effects of our tariffs in other countries. Our media, and many of the people complaining about Trump’s tariffs, don’t care about the people who are impacted by other countries’ tariffs.

          It is always bad for us but never for anyone else, which paints a distorted view of what is taking place and serves to attack Trump rather to illuminate the audience about the economic environment or accomplish what the media and detractors claim they want, no tariffs. Getting Trump to drop tariffs wont get the other countries to drop theirs. All parties have to agree to drop them.

          The tariffs are a big gamble. Everyone would be better off without them. This is why Trump did the tariffs, so that other countries could feel the impact that we were. The people who hold themselves to be free marketers should know that we have to look at things not just how they exist but how they could be potentially better, like with letting people and businesses keeping more of their own money.

          There are other ways to convince countries to get rid of tariffs on our goods but they haven’t worked well in the recent past. Then again, our leaders in the recent past haven’t cared much about how other countries’ tariffs impacted certain groups of Americans, so maybe they never really tried all that hard.

          I haven’t seen anyone propose an alternative course of action from the intelligentsia to solve a problem. Rather, they don’t seem to think there ever was a problem.

          1. Here’s an op-ed from American Thinker posted Christmas day: “China cuts tariffs on 700 more items”

            I’ll admit that the trade stuff wasn’t big on my list of things to fix. Then most of you know I wasn’t a Trump supporter until it meant Hillary or him. Still, he hasn’t done anything to lose my vote for 2020 either in the primary or general.

          2. Trade stuff wasn’t much on anyone’s radar because it is a void the media doesn’t cover. It is only important to people in certain businesses and those people are largely unaware of what other businesses face. It is too complex for any one person to have detailed mastery over. NRO Goldberg doesn’t know anything about it.

            It is the same as the regulatory environment in the USA. No one knows the full extent of its impact because the scale is so large and the required knowledge to master is so detailed.

            This is a core part of conservative economic theory because just like letting people and businesses keep more of their own money leads to more spending, creation, and innovation the exact way that unfolds is unknowable. From a top down view, it is unknown how reducing regulations across the system will impact growth and the same is true with getting other countries to drop their tariffs and other protectionist policies.

            Trump took a tri-pronged approach of cutting regulations, cutting taxes, and opening markets. Whether or not Trump knows that the system is so large and complex that the government can’t manage it and decisions are best left to individuals and to individual companies is immaterial because his actions support this cornerstone of conservative economic theory.

            People say that Trump isn’t a conservative, and that may be true, but he demonstrates an understanding of conservative economic theory that our Twitter elite, TV bobble heads, and flagship column writers can’t grasp. Really though, they do grasp it and lecture on it in the abstract but for whatever reason fail to see what is going on. Probably because they rely on the DNC media to tell them.

            Opening a new market is an unknown. It could be like inventing an ipad or a new board game. Both will generate some growth but one more than the other. Since space nerds read this blog, you can include the unknown of establishing off-world economies.

            In any case, China is allowing US imports of rice for the first time ever. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/economy/china-allows-first-ever-us-rice-imports

  2. Trump’s base wasn’t “conservatives” in 2016, so I’m not sure what the fuss is about. I support him when he does something that I think either moves toward a conservative agenda, or (far more often) erodes the progressive inroads made during the Obama era. As has been the case since, well, since Coolidge did not choose to run in 1928, we take what we can get and hope for better next time.

    Neither “conservatives,” nor “nationalists,” nor pretty much any other political label is going to favor or oppose all overseas military action regardless of context. I’d lose respect for anyone who claimed to seriously believe it.

    1. Many of the “conservative” standard bearers have revealed that they never really were conservatives to begin with. Let’s not forget that the House Republicans had a deliberate strategy of running on repealing Obamacare but also deliberately did everything they could to keep it around. I can’t remember the guy’s name but he spilled the beans after he got voted out of office.

      1. Yes. One of Trump’s biggest successes has been to demonstrate how many of the establishment ‘conservatives’ were just controlled opposition. Many suspected that all along, but actually seeing it with your own eyes is another matter.

        Back on the shutdown, many of the (non-fake) conservatives I know are hoping the government stays shut down. Forever.

        The longer the Democrats keep it shut down, the more people are going to wonder why the government employs all those ‘non-essential employees’ in the first place, if no-one notices when they’re not working.

  3. Before getting all weepy about the Kurds, remember a couple of things.
    They are communists
    Read what Tom Kratman thinks of them. He has some experience.
    The smartest thing our former Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott ever said when being urged to get involved in the middle east in 2013 was “There are bad guys and bad guys. Whose side do we fight on?”

    1. Being a good ally in a difficult time should still be rewarded or at least not being thrown to the Turks.

      It is really a difficult situation with no easy answers but it is very easy for people to have many contradictory points of view that always turn on criticizing the President, myself included to some degree.

      1. “Being a good ally in a difficult time should still be rewarded”

        Because ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ has proven so successful in the past. The Kurds have good PR, but so did the Mujahideen… who went on to help bin Laden destroy the WTC.

        The only thing rewarding the Kurds would do is guarantee more conflict in the Middle East.

        Besides which, ISIS wouldn’t have existed without Obama and Clinton. So the Kurds were just helping Trump clean up their mess.

        1. Well, I think back on how our allies in Vietnam were treated after we left and how little we did for them. It’s not right. I am sure there is more going on that the media will tell us but still…

          1. I guess I’m not a Wilsonian conservative, but I don’t understand just why treating allies well is a good idea. Allies are things we don’t need to defend our country, but they create obligation for us to defend them. What the upside in that?

          2. I guess the issue is that if they’re allies for a good reason, you want to treat them well, so they remain allies. If they’re just allies for historical reasons, who don’t actually act like allies, then not so much.

  4. Shutdown good – we got into the Grand Canyon yesterday without having to pay the entry fee of $35. Apparently some services were not offered but we didn’t miss anything. What a beautiful place! Truly a wonder, especially with a light coat of snow on the high ground.

    Shutdown bad – nobody seems to be maintaining the pit toilets at Parker Dam. I won’t describe what you don’t want to hear about.

Comments are closed.