The Partisan Divide on Issues

[Classic-Xer]

(07-09-2020, 09:04 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(07-08-2020, 12:33 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(07-08-2020, 12:13 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: If the liberals take over that's what they'll do, they'd either roll over or attempt to appease by turning a blind eye or reluctantly going along like they did with Hitler. Today, we have the benefit of hindsight. We can decide whether America needs Churchill (Trump) or Chamberlain (Bumbling Lovable Biden) right now. Right now, we have a bunch of liberal wimps and wimpy professional people pleasers in power and what you are seeing here is the result.

I would line up Trump with Hoover and Buchanan, stickers to the old values and making it clear how they fail in newer times.  We won’t know for sure until we are into the high, but things are heading that way again.

People are disappointed in advance with Biden.  If I gave Trump a year or so before I started giving him a hard time, I would do the same to Biden.

I know FDR was not viewed overly well in his early days.  He was a lawyer and governor from New York who hadn’t impressed yet.  He had yet to take his place next to Lincoln and Churchill.  You have to solve your crisis before being given political sainthood.  Even Churchill got the Order of the Boot.

Churchill was a highly-respected figure by the 1930's. All that kept him from being Foreign Minister was the legitimate fear that he would offend Hitler. Churchill had nothing good to say about Hitler, whom he saw as evil and intellectually shallow. 

Churchill had had a spectacular failure at Gallipoli. He obviously learned from it. Oh, how did the Turks win there? The best-made plans of mice and men...Churchill was ready to do what the Turks did at Gallipoli... impose a stalemate more costly to the attacker than to the defender that causes the attacker to either run out of resources or give up for something more promising.  Quick, decisive victories entice everyone, but Gallipoli proved otherwise. So did the Blitz. 

Wise leaders may make mistakes, but they can certainly learn from them. They also learn from their losses... which explains why the British were able to exploit the decisive battle of the Middle East, the second battle of el Alamein as its own Blitzkrieg all the way to Tunis (where the Americans got to finish off the Afrika Korps. 

Neither Lincoln nor FDR wanted to be wartime leaders, but that is exactly what they became. One need not like war to wage it well. War on the fronts of land, sea, and (beginning about a century ago) air are won -- or at least one avoids losing -- by brute force. The grand strategy of exploiting the economic and political weaknesses of the Enemy is far more cerebral. 

Trump may have learned from some entrepreneurial mistakes to stick to what one does best and not make half-hearted efforts to exploit a name... so he focused his efforts on being a real-estate developer and landlord. What relevance that has to American politics is beyond my imagination.

Trump was a pure political outsider with no skin in the political game. Personally, I didn't think he had a chance after he bashed Bush II and then bashed McCain and then bashed and blew off Romney and then bashed pretty Megyn Kelly during a debate on Fox too. Unlike the liberals who talk about change and pin their hopes on change, the Republican base decided it wanted a change and made a change by electing Trump. Personally, I viewed Trump as the best candidate to face Hilary. As it turned out, I was right about that one. I've been pretty much right all along as well. To be fair, I was wrong about Obama because I didn't think he had a chance to beat Hilary back in 08'.