As an independent, I'm disappointed at the lockstep occurring. However, there was a convention last week for the disenchanted Republicans, if only attracting about 1,200 attendees. Although no real game plan of action was formulated, I found the convention encouraging.
Trump publicly made the cabinet subservient to Musk on Wednesday, by asking any cabinet member with an issue to speak up then and there, in front of the media. Musk is now established as the ramrod or foreman of Trump's Team. Loyalty remains the absolute requirement for the new Grand Old Party.
Wow, if you dislike lockstep you must really be upset with the Congressional democrats, who have been voting as such for easily over a decade.
ReplyDeleteMost recently, they even managed to stay in lockstep behind a mentally impaired president for four whole years, keeping the charade going up until January of this year to shield the American public from knowing who was actually making the decisions. Remember, even when they dumped that president as their representative for the NEXT four years, none of them suggested removing him for the rest of his first term, and to this day don’t seem the slightest bit interested in investigating who was really running the country in the last administration.
Funny though, I don’t remember reading the articles here about THAT lockstep though. Maybe next week we’ll be treated to a week’s worth of articles about the DEMOCRAT lockstep problem.
Such balance would be what I’d expect to come from a true independent, especially a conservative one.
I'm old enough to remember a time when people gave an incoming president a 100-day "honeymoon" as far as criticism while he implemented the agenda that the people had just voted on. By my count, Trump is about at Day 38.
ReplyDeleteI also remember that it took Ronald Reagan, who was elected after the disastrous four-year term of Jimmy Carter, 18 months for the country to start seeing the positive effects of Reagan's policies. Reagan had to turn a much smaller government into the right direction than Trump does.
Now I realize that Trump is going right after the government funding that was meant to undermine his agenda and fund democrat front groups, but why don't we all take a breath and give Trump a little bit of time to fix the multiple disasters left behind by Joe Biden and whoever was actually running the country for the democrats over the last four years?
People voted for Trump to change things, not to maintain the status quo and then hand it off to the next guy in four years. This is what it looks like when you try to change something that's grown to almost $7 TRILLION DOLLARS, like federal spending has.
I say Trump is off to a good start delivering on what he promised. Others might disagree. But none of us has enough information to pass definitive judgment on what the outcome will be. Let's all take a breath.
You’ve made it clear you did not vote for Trump. No problem there. You also seem to see Musk as some sort of usurper of the presidency. That’s a bit of a stretch.
ReplyDeleteAs for loyalty to Trump, I prefer to think of this as loyalty to a CAUSE. If I were President, I would expect nothing less from the team I chose to be closest to me.
With all due respect to you and the blog (and with a bit of humor) I can assure you, neither I, nor any of his Cabinet will be voting for Trump in 2028!
anon@2:58: As the D's and R's have their petition signing parties this week, I remember gathering all the petitions to run, twice, by myself....that and 18 years of this blog make me a true independent conservative.
ReplyDeleteanon@6:19: As for a honeymoon, Trump's been in office and running for office since 2016...he promised this and that on day 1
anon@6:20: Let's hope Trump doesn't try and run in 2028! As for the cabinet, that one of problems. Kennedy dismissed the unvaccinated child's measles death as "normal", while in reality it was the first death in over a decade. Vaccinations rates are going down in Lehigh Valley. Kennedy being appointed head of Health is ridiculous, his approval by the Senate was ridiculous. Partisanship at its worse.
anons@anon: This blog will be moving away from anonymous comments.
6:20 here. I can assure you, if anonymous posting is removed I will no longer contribute here. There are many worthy reasons why ‘somewhat known’ individuals with expertise in a variety of areas chose to avoid publicity in this jungle that now surrounds us. Besides, it’s the message provided that deserves attention, not the generous contributor of the thought.
DeleteJust begin unjustified censorship like that other local blog, and persons like me will slowly remove ourselves from this space.
The google handle need not be your actual name, it can be a pseudonym, but it would provide you more ownership than 6:20 here. BTW, when registering for the google handle, your actual identity remains unknown to the blogger(s).
DeleteWell the MAGA republican have had a good teacher, Pelosi and other democrats have destroyed internal opposition, by withholding funding or even scandal, it was very dangerous to jump the ship, Joe Manchin is a good example.
ReplyDeleteI suspect that the mentioned republicans are hopeful that they can save the gravy train. A train that is about to go off the track, due to the uniparty corruption.
It is amazing that we see some who see corruption in folks like Brown, Palosky and others, but still believe that Washington is almost saintly.
Washington may be the most corrupt place in the history, it will indeed take unity to have any hope of reform.
Mike, no one is forcing Republicans to do anything. As a Republican activist for over three decades I will attest to the fact that Republican cannot be coerced to do anything they are unwilling to do. Try circulating Republican petitions, it often takes ten to twenty minutes to explain to registered Republicans who each candidate is, what they stand for, I why I believe the candidates deserve to be on the ballot. If you get 5 signatures an hour you're doing great! Republican elected officials are famous for their fierce independence and willingness to go their own way. Presently, the vast majority of Republicans are very pleased with party leadership and the direction the party is taking. This explains the new unity. It is no more complicated than that. By the way, when I ran for the school board in order to cross file I needed to Democrat signatures. A Democrat friend helped me with this. I was astounded by the difference, Dem voters would sign anything, no questions asked. If it was a Democrat petition, bingo, that, was all that mattered. I can also tell you that it was the Democratic Party that told its voters to vote Straight Party and many did. If we had tried that, the office phone would have lit up with irate R's telling us to never tell them what to do again. Trust me, I know!
ReplyDeleteWell its the Democrats own fault. They went totally off the rails after their designated successor to Obama, Hillary Clinton, proved herself to be the most unlikeable woman in politics. That is why Trump won a narrow election victory in 2018.
ReplyDeleteAfter that, with all of their manufactured scandals to try and undermine the first Trump administration, and not really having a viable alternative to Trump in 2020, they managed to get a very deficient Biden into office in a highly questionable election. Then the Democrats proceded to shoot themselves by promoting ajendas so radical only about 20% of the voters could support it.
Now we have Trump II, the MAGA canidate, who procedes to bring in Elon Musk, who only surfaced late in the election cycle and he begins to put a chainsaw into most federal Agencies.
The media is watching the cabinet where Musk is standing up like he is co-president and talking how he is going to save America a Trillion Dollars; how he is going to send out another e-mail that people are going to answer to about the 5 things they did this week, and then Trump goes around the table and says, "Does everybody like Elon", and all the cabinet secretaries ohhh and ahhh.
There is that type of ludicrous performance the press loves, not reporting that some of the cabinet secrataries are Trump ideolouges, or totally unqulified for their jobs like Hegseth, who has to pay off women to keep his scandals out of the press, and a vice-president, Vance, who hates Europe and NATO and othe secrataries who are serving under the threat of being fired if they don't agree 100% with Trump and the media really doesn't cover that because it is not as interesting as the circus we saw performing.
As an American, this is petrifying. I think that we are entering a new era in the United States and I would very much like to keep the NATO alliance and our friends around the world who we trade with and have friendly relations with, not being based on the premise of what they can do for us economically, which is what Trump's foreign policy seems to be based upon.
MAGA