Over the last 18 months or so, a certain strain of “conservative” has arisen: the dyed-in-the-wool Trumper. For this person, Donald Trump is to be praised at all times. Anything Donald Trump does is by definition a genius move. If he sticks it to the GOP establishment, so much the better!
And this is the end point of their logic:
"Support whatever Trump does to show how conservative you are" is at peak insanity when it means supporting making Schumer and Pelosi happy.
— Patterico (@Patterico) September 7, 2017
Joe Cunningham summed things up well with this headline: The Democrats Got What They Wanted, But It’s Cool Because Trump Really Stuck It To Paul Ryan. But let’s take it further than this particular debt-ceiling incident. Guess what would stick it to Paul Ryan even more? Doing what Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi want again! And again! Give them single-payer! Expand entitlements! Stick it to Ryan and McConnell good!
Where does it end? And what would Trump have to do — what concessions to Democrats would he have to make — before the unrelenting praise for Trump’s every action stops?
I have seen people defend this by saying: hey, Reagan made deals with Tip O’Neill. (Except Tip O’Neill’s Democrats controlled the House — and the greatest failure of Reagan’s presidency was his inability to control Congress’s runaway spending, beginning the deficit ballooning that still haunts us today.) I have seen people defend it by saying that debt ceiling negotiations are always phony and we never get anything, so why bother fighting it at all? (Not a terrible argument —
but in 2011 we got sequestration, which wasn’t great but also wasn’t nothing.)
The point isn’t that we were going to get an immediate cut in spending. Democrats were going to play politics when there was a must-pass relief bill for Harvey. But the way Trump went about this killed any chance of ever extracting spending concessions of the sort the GOP actually did get in 2011 in return for a debt-ceiling hike. No such deal will be possible again, ever, under Trump. Because he literally said the words: “We agreed to a three-month extension on debt ceiling, which they consider to be sacred — very important — always we’ll agree on debt ceiling automatically because of the importance of it.” I believe “Cave Immediately While Asking for Nothing in Return” is the title of the first chapter in The Art of the Deal, isn’t it?
Trumpers’ over-the-top praise for Trump now extends to praising his playing “hard ball” by giving Chuck and Nancy what they wanted:
https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/905570342613250052
Topping off the nuttiness was Lou Dobbs’s insane rant, linked last night by Caleb Howe:
So, uh, this happened pic.twitter.com/siVF5e2v7p
— Liam Donovan (@LPDonovan) September 7, 2017
Watch it all, to see what it looks like when someone loses their mind. Dobbs says Trump “took RINO Ryan to the woodshed” by . . . giving Schumer and Pelosi exactly what they asked for. Meanwhile, Dobbs ladled praise on Pelosi and Schumer, saying “they’ve calmed themselves” and have been “far more conciliatory in their rhetoric” in recent weeks.
Um.
.@POTUS ought to stop playing politics with people's lives & #health care, start leading & finally begin acting presidential.
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) July 29, 2017
“As millions of people in TX and LA are prepping for the Hurricane, the President is using the cover of the storm to pardon a man who violated a court’s order to stop discriminating against Latinos and Ban courageous transgender men and women from serving in our nation’s Armed Forces,” Schumer posted in a series of tweets.
“Then he ran to Camp David. The only reason to do these right now is to use the cover of Hurricane Harvey to avoid scrutiny. So sad, so weak.”
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Monday blasted President Trump’s expected decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, calling it a “cruel act of political cowardice.”
These are the people Dobbs says have “calmed themselves.” The people who have “far more conciliatory in their rhetoric” in recent weeks.
No, really. This is where we are: we must praise Trump even when he hands Democrat leaders everything they want over the objections of GOP leaders. We must vilify the GOP leadership even if it means praising Democrats for an alleged restraint and sobriety that they have never actually shown and never will.
As I said last night, this can only end with Trump becoming a Democrat and taking 1/3 of the Republican party with him.
Man. That would really stick to Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell!
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