Popularity-wise Trump crushes Mitch McConnell. Trump’s net approval overall is 42 pts higher & is 99 pts higher with the GOP.
— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) February 16, 2025
McConnell was the least liked GOP leader in 40+ years & has the rare trifecta of a negative net approval with Dems (-58), GOP (-17) & overall (-39). pic.twitter.com/MdMqbLdj1a
I enjoyed this.
I encourage our lurkers to thumb through our archives.
It would be an understatement to say that I hated the first Trump administration.
The reason why I hated it is because I had supported Trump in 2015/2016 because I saw him as a blunt instrument for getting rid of the “True Cons” who used run the GOP. This did not happen in his first term. Mike Pence and Reince Preibus staffed the administration with their own people.
In Trump’s first term, Donald Trump was like an island in his own administration and didn’t know what he was doing. Congress was controlled by Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan. The executive branch was full of “True Con” resistance fighters like Miles Taylor who were trying to sabotage Trump’s agenda. Trump spent his political capital pushing their unpopular agenda and endorsing people like Mitt Romney.
Looking back on it, I remember it as a time of countless own goals – there was, for example, John McCain torpedoing the reconciliation bill that would have ended Obamacare, Rod Rosenstein hobbling the administration with the Mueller probe, the refusal of the Republican Congress to even fund the border wall, Trump walking back his plan to withdraw troops from Syria in deference to Senate Republicans, the Doug Jones fiasco and finally when they voted to impeach him after January 6.
Trump 1.0 was essentially a coalition government. He shared power with the Mike Pences of the world. They spent their political capital on tax cuts. They passed Tim Scott’s stupid First Step Act. Trump deferred to people like General Mark Milley who refused to put down the George Floyd riots. Trump tore up NAFTA only to replace it with USMCA. The Platinum Plan in the 2020 campaign was another signature conservative consultant mistake. As a result, Trump spent his entire first term politically underwater. He bled political support as his base deflated. Republicans lost the midterms. Trump lost the 2020 election. This whole space blackpilled on L after L and some activists never recovered from it.
Gradually though, I watched the course correction as it unfolded, which led to the second coming of Trump. I watched people like Jeff Flake and Ben Sasse leave office. I watched Mitch McConnell’s allies like Pat Toomey, Richard Burr and Rob Portman retire one by one. I watched Liz Cheney get humiliated and lose her seat in Congress in Wyoming. Adam Kinzinger left Congress to appear on CNN panels. Trump began to systematically destroy the people who had voted for impeachment.
Elon’s radicalization and money changed the social media landscape and Trump’s reliance on the Republican donor class. It changed the willingness of Republican senators and congressmen to stand up to him. The base of the party radicalized after COVID and the George Floyd riots. Finally, Trump surrounded himself with a team of loyalists who spent four years preparing for their return to power.
Ezra Klein is lamenting the fact that all of these people – the Liz Cheneys, the Miles Taylors, the John McCains – aren’t around this time to f*** up and derail Trump’s momentum. Politically, the Republican Congress has fallen in line behind the president. This is a terrible development for people like Ezra Klein who want Trump to take his shot, “thermostatic politics” to kick in and his popularity to collapse like Biden in six months which is the seesaw cycle we have been living through for twenty years and which would restore Democrats to power in 2026 and 2028. Democrats don’t have their usual allies to bail them out. All they have left to work with is Mitch McConnell in his wheelchair voting against RFK Jr.
Where is Mike Pence and his band of losers when you need them?
I’m surprised you of all people haven’t categorized Trump correctly as Huey resurrected. He is governing exactly how the Kingfish would have if elected in 2024.
The key is the Trump team spent his time in the wilderness studying the totality of sources of executive branch power-statutory, constitutional,administrative , and case law developed. The fact is the American President now has all the tools to literally Dictate public policy in America because the Congress and Supreme Court give the President almost unlimited discretion to act inside his delegated power portfolio.
We can spend time guessing Trump’s ultimate motivations, but the simple fact is he is now playing to win, and the wins he seeks will genuinely make life better for all Americans. Not perfect, but better, which is all we can ask for in our lives. So it is indeed a historic time. Enjoy the ride, fellow dissidents.
It may go without saying, but in terms of his Means, Trump is like Huey, but in terms of his Ends, Huey was a socialist, Trump a crony capitalist, which is why his fellow oligarchs have tolerated him, even if some of them find his brash and crass style off putting.
If he threatened their money somehow he’d be sleeping with the Kingfish.
Trump is wrestling the reigns of power away from the liberal class which dominated both parties Culturally for decades, but it’s not the liberal class he really has to worry about, it’s the corporate class and the Mossad he’d have to worry about if he wasn’t one of them.
Of course he is one of them, so he has nothing to fear.
FDR’s ‘socialism’ was measured, just enough to pacify and placate the proles who were rapidly turning against their government in favor of organized, militarized labor (syndicalism).
FDR’s taxes targeted the upper middleclass and the lower tier of the upper class, but real socialists like Huey wouldn’t stand a chance, they’d be taken out one way or another early.
The US like all modern democracies is a corporate democracy, not a liberal democracy.
The liberal part is incidental, contingent.
It’s all about the bottom line ultimately, culture a distant 2nd.
In some ways, yes.
The way he has buck broken Congress.
The Trump-Elon partnership is hard to see as something Huey would have done though. He also didn’t get DeSantis to replace Rubio with Lara Trump.
McCain undermining Trump on healthcare is the one good thing John McCain actually did (Unless you count speaking out against patriotard swift boat ads back in the day). He was horrible on foreign policy, but got it right on health care.
Medicare for all > Obamacare > Nothing
It was Tea Party era stuff.
I didn’t support it. It was a big momentum killer though
The problem is that I agree with Sanders on 50% of the issues and Trump on 50% of the issues, and due to partisan divide, it’s impossible to have a candidate who agrees with me on 100% of the issues.
Trump is right on Ukraine, tariffs, affirmative action, and immigration.
Sanders is right on economics, healthcare, supporting workers, and the middle east.
I would want a candidate who combines both. But due to partisanship that’s impossible.
I’m forced to choose between my somewhat conservative social positions and my leftist economics, and choose between different aspects of imperialism, with Democrats being worse on Ukraine and Republicans being worse on the Middle East.
Trump was responsible for everything that happened in his first term. He chose, entirely of his own free will, to give his supporters in the 2016 campaign the finger and bring their enemies in to run his administration. He chose Ivanka and Jared to run the White House for him. What is Trump doing differently this time? Well, it’s too early to say in terms of actual achievements. However, whoever is running his administration (it may well be the big shot Jews themselves running his administration with professionals who are trying hard to make a simulacrum of what they imagine a MAGA 100 days would be – channeling things people like us say) is far more professional this time around. It’s a hard sell. Trump is doing the hard sell because he’s got a huge load of goods for us.
Too bad your site’s comment section is practically reduced to Kane and Ezerell Tonge II.