Jeff Flake Wrote:8. If by 2017 the conservative bargain was to go along for the very bumpy ride because with congressional hegemony and the White House we had the numbers to achieve some long-held policy goals—even as we put at risk our institutions and our values—then it was a very real question whether any such policy victories wouldn't be Pyrrhic ones.
Trump was perfectly willing to sign any healthcare legislation Congressional Republicans sent to him. Republicans had already passed legislation to repeal Obamacare, which Obama had vetoed. All they had to do was pass this exact same bill. It would have taken a week. They didn't do it because they knew if they did it would cost them their majority. That Obamacare could be repealed and replaced in a way that would have good outcomes for Republicans was a LIE.
Quote:1. Who could blame the people who felt abandoned and ignored by the major parties for reaching in despair for a candidate who offered oversimplified answers to infinitely complex questions and managed to entertain them in the process?
Besides the repeal Obamacare lie, there is the Iraq bundle of lies. Republican fiscal irresponsibility is legion yet they claim to be fiscal conservatives--another lie. Republicans SAY they are opposed to stimulus because it does not work, yet Bush enacted TWO stimulus programs and the TARP, so they lied about that too. And in each case, they were lying to their base, not the opposition. Can you blame GOP base voters for being very angry with their party?
When in office what do they do? Pass tax cuts for high earners. What don’t they even try to do? Come up with conservative policies that work for base voters. None of this is Trump’s fault. Trump presented himself as a corrective, someone who would push policies (trade and immigration restrictions) Republican elites loathe, but otherwise act as a giant wrecking ball in Washington. He is making some progress on one of policy, and is doing a dandy job of wrecking the place.
Quote:2. "It was we conservatives who, upon Obama's election, stated that our No. 1 priority was not advancing a conservative policy agenda but making Obama a one-term president—the corollary to this binary thinking being that his failure would be our success...
I would point out that Obama's (perceived) failure WAS a Republican political success. Flake's conservatives were RIGHT.
Quote:3. "To carry on in the spring of 2017 as if what was happening was anything approaching normalcy required a determined suspension of critical faculties. And tremendous powers of denial."
What choice did they have? Suppose they replaced Trump with Pence, who is one of their own. Who can they blame when they fuck up horribly? At least with Trump they can blame Bannon, possibly forcing their base to support more Bush clones.
Quote:4-7. I've been sympathetic to this impulse to denial, as one doesn't ever want to believe that the government of the United States has been made dysfunctional at the highest levels, especially by the actions of one's own party... (but) It would be like Noah saying, 'If I spent all my time obsessing about the coming flood, there would be little time for anything else.'
Quote:Too often, we observe the unfolding drama along with the rest of the country, passively, all but saying, 'Someone should do something!' without seeming to realize that that someone is us.
Quote:Meanwhile, the strange specter of an American president's seeming affection for strongmen and authoritarians created such a cognitive dissonance among my generation of conservatives—who had come of age under existential threat from the Soviet Union—that it was almost impossible to believe.
Well after lying to them for decades, telling them up is down and black is white, how can you blame them for cognitive dissonance?
Quote:7. "There was a time when the leadership of the Congress from both parties felt an institutional loyalty that would frequently create bonds across party lines in defense of congressional prerogatives in a unified front against the White House, regardless of the president's party.
That was when most members of Congress had first been elected during the Democratic heyday of 1933-ca. 1974. By the early nineties this was no longer the case, and this loyalty dwindled as the old guard retired or died.