NY Times: How Republicans Erased Trumpism

February 3, 2019 Hunter Wallace MAGA, Politics 29

I’ve been drawing attention to this since the transition.

The GOP has skillfully used Trump to rubber stamp its own agenda while icing everything he ran on in the primary that made him different and won him the nomination. The refusal of the GOP Congress for two years to make any effort to fund the border wall is only the most obvious example:

“Donald Trump has a Congress problem. He can’t get Republicans to promote his policies. And when he forces the issue — as with his border wall — he can’t win their support.

But most Americans don’t know that. After all, Republican legislators voted with the president well over 90 percent of the time during the 115th Congress. Record numbers of appellate judges were confirmed, and the president signed major tax legislation. Many observers have concluded that Mr. Trump dominates the Republican Party, and his loyal base holds congressional Republicans tautly in line.

But discerning legislative influence is more difficult than it appears. Throughout the first two years of the Trump presidency, Republican leaders in Congress skillfully used a variety of tactics to minimize the president’s influence and maximize their own control over public policy. …

Nevertheless, congressional Republicans have found a solution to this challenge: agenda-setting. Political power is not simply the ability to influence the positions citizens or lawmakers take on issues, but also the ability to control what issues are discussed and voted on.

Throughout the last Congress, Republican leaders simply declined to take up legislation that reflected the priority of the president but not their own. There were no votes on immigration restrictions or funding for a border wall, protectionist trade legislation or infrastructure. …

Such “negative” agenda-setting leaves little trace; without a vote, it becomes difficult for opponents or voters to identify or understand what happened. President Trump’s priorities weren’t voted down in the House or the Senate; they were just never considered.

Agenda-setting also provides congressional leaders “positive” power to set legislative priorities. Mr. Trump has famously shown little interest in the details of policy, and Republican leaders in Washington easily convinced him to accept as his priorities the party’s orthodox issues of Affordable Care Act repeal and tax cuts during his first year in office.

By setting the agenda and having the president sign on, Republican legislators controlled policy while sharing the position of the president. When Republicans held a White House celebration after passing tax legislation, Mr. Trump claimed credit, and legislators publicly praised the “Trump” tax bill, and the president himself. …”

How should we respond to this?

It is obvious they have used Trump to get their tax cuts and huge military budgets. They immediately went to work to transform renegotiating NAFTA into reviving TPP. They used to him to get criminal justice reform and now to overthrow the government of Venezuela.

The Trump administration has been and continues to be nothing but the same old mainstream conservatism that John McCain and Mitt Romney ran on in 2008 and 2012 and the other candidates ran on in 2016. The only difference is that Trump rhetorically ran on a different agenda. The Trump presidency has been everything that Jeb! or Marco Rubio supported:

Marco Rubio’s Twitter feed is nothing but advocating intervention in Venezuela:

Ted Cruz’s Twitter feed is just virtue signaling about “racism”:

The 2016 election was supposed to be a “change” election, but policywise nothing has changed:

Trump is a weak, marginalized president whose unique policy agenda was utterly stymied by the GOP Congress. He has given them victory after victory though. That’s going to be the question of the 2020 election. Will the populist nationalist coalition that elected Trump in 2016 turn out to reelect him on the basis of the conservative policy agenda that it rejected?

About Hunter Wallace 12390 Articles
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29 Comments

  1. The GOPe has allied itself with the Deep State and stripped Trump of any power over the DoD, DoSt, and intelligence agencies. He is totally irrelevant. The best service he could do for the American people is to strip them of their illusions by fleeing the country and seeking political asylum in a country that wouldn’t extradict him. His whole family would have to flee, too,

  2. I think people are waking up. Breitbart and the Daily Mail comment sections look more like The Daily Stormer every day. I forgot said this last century but it was more or less “When the Jews start passing laws making it illegal to criticize them you know it is all about to come down”. I think we are there.

    • The kikes better hope I never have any authority over them, because if I do I will make Reinhard Heydrich look like Fred Rogers by comparison.

      • @Spahn

        One thing I’d like to do in my lifetime before I die is inflict some pain on a yid…..even if its only just one yid.
        After I die I’d like to come back Jewish. I’d go visit Denise and allow her to punish me!

    • I got banned on BB for criticizing trump and jews too much, seemingly. A lot of my old ‘buddies’ there apparently got the axe, too. Here are some interesting quotes out of the mouths of jews themselves:

      Jewish Scholar Oscar Levy says; ‘There is scarcely an event in modern Europe that cannot be traced back to the Jews. We Jews are today nothing else but the World’s seducers, its destroyers, its incendiaries, its executioners.’

      “Jewish history has been tragic to the Jews and no less tragic to the neighboring nations who have suffered them. Our major vice of old as of today is parasitism. We are a people of vultures living on the labor and good fortune of the rest of the world.” Samuel Roth, Jews Must Live, page 18.

      We are intruders. We are subverters. We have taken your natural world, your ideals, your destiny, and played havoc with them. We have been at the bottom not merely of the latest great war [WWI] but of nearly all your wars and revolutions in your history.
      We have brought discord and confusion and frustration into your personal life. We are still doing it. No one can tell how long we shall go on doing it. Who knows what great and glorious destiny might have been yours if we had left you alone.” by the Jew, Marcus Eli Ravage, Century Magazine, Vol. 115, No.3, Jan. 1928, pp.347,348.

    • Donald Cuck is a world class magician. He made everyone of his campaign promises disappear before our eyes.

  5. I’m voting for Bernie Sanders next election. We gotta get these lazy good for nothing fat murkans off their couches somehow. Maybe the government knocking their doors down and seizing their……food pantries will get them to freaking wake up.

    • Can’t do it…won’t do it. I’m done voting for Rebublicucks, but I will simply write some names in, rather than voting for communism and cultural marxism. The destruction is going to happen with or without my vote, anyway.

      • Agreed, there’s no way I can vote for this enemy vermin.

        Either not voting, or writing in Salvini next time.

  6. Hunter Wallace asks

    “How should we respond to this?”

    Thanks for asking,

    I’m not sure response is the right approach – we should never have been reacting to Trump at all. All he was was a purchase of time to push the real agenda which is a nation of our own. They are literally lowering the casket into the ground and people are still hoping to Take America Back.

    A new nation allows us to take the best lessons of history and add to them some needful features for the modern time:

    1) limits to anti-man technology

    2) limits to anti-freedom technology

    3) proportional representation

    4) respect for nations

    Market ourselves as “The nation you wish America was, but without the people that hate us and want us dead.”

    Are we really waiting 2 weeks for a super secret plan?

  7. The pied piper strategy was not, as Clinton believed, to get her elected, but to quell White opposition while the Zionist subversion project progressed toward completion. Trump is not in on it. Kushner might be.

  9. Maybe if he’d started his term by putting a bullet into the head of John McCain …

  10. I seriously doubt that there ever was any “Trumpism” to erase. A Jew friendly, non White ass kissing billionaire from NY running as a populist?
    IMHO we were had.

  11. I think this highlights the limits of populism. You can’t just elect a populist president and expect him to do everything. A lot of the people who enthusiastically responded to Trump’s message don’t have the patience or commitment to spend years slowly changing the GOP.

    • You needed to start “slowly changing the GOP” decades ago. Given the demographic situation, not to mention the deeply entrenched Uniparty power, it’s like shutting the barn door not only after the horse has escaped, but after two generations of wild horses have been born to it.

  12. Trump – and the GOP – need to be punished. Kamasutra Harris is clearly the anointed one for the Dems in 2020 (Person of Color to rake in the vibrant vote, while completely corporate- and donor-owned. Perfect!). I like Gabbard (although she is a Hindu nationalist) but in office she would probably change little, and if she shows any chance of campaign success the attacks on her will be ferocious. Vote protest candidate, or nationalist (if there are any). No more votes for the GOP.

  13. If President Obama was merely a puppet… what made us think a President Trump would be different? The real power over the United States does not even lie within the borders of the United States. And, no, I am not referring to Israel.

  14. Trump is not in control of his presidency. Obama was not because he was politically superior but because his agenda was aligned with the ruling elite. I can concur with what Afterthought said! In reality Trump has been good for us in this way: he has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to those who have eyes to see and ears to heart that it is impossible to reform the system from within. Now we are undeceived!! Voting is not only wasted energy and an exercise in futility but is the true opiate of the people by allowing them to think they have a role in the system. We are fools if we go back to politics as usual after this! We need to think in terms of heartland secession-and I mean all of red state America not just the South-and the formation of a Heartland Republic. I have long since graduated from Southern Nationalism to Heartland Separatism and you should to. It is the only sane alternative now left to us as a people.The Heartland already exists as a proto-nation and a nation in exile as is evidenced from any presidential election map going back decades after decades! The Solid South? Nay! That is yesterdays reality! The Solid Heartland is today’s reality! Let us acknowledge what is and bring it forth in the light of day!

    • The key states are Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma. They control the U.S. energy supply. Those three can more than go it alone – and if they did, many more would join them. Including places like rural California.

    • McConnell’s Celtic ancestry is Scots-Irish, from County Down (Northern Ireland). McCain’s, too, is Scottish, from Scotland itself.

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