Trump's 500-day coup of the GOP, conservatism

[DonViejo]

Jonathan Swan 39 mins ago

Donald Trump has been President Trump for 500 days as of noon today, and everything has changed, and nothing has changed.

Be smart: In 500 days, Trump’s hijacking of the formerly conservative GOP is complete — an astonishing accomplishment. The majority party in America is fully defined by his policies, his popularity with the base, his facts-be-damned mentality, his ability to control and quiet virtually all Republican elected officials.

Everything changed:

Trump has wiped out a large portion of Obama’s legacy. He’s exited the Paris climate deal; signed major tax cuts, especially for corporations; confirmed an ultra-conservative Supreme Court justice and record numbers of circuit court judges; deregulated like crazy; exited the Iran deal; exited the TPP trade deal; repealed the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate; and moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing it as Israel’s capital.

New hardline immigration enforcement is in place, including separating children from parents of illegal immigrants. An extraordinary percentage of Trump’s senior staff has quit or been fired.

Only one campaign original remains on Trump’s staff: social media director Dan Scavino.

A national security adviser who began with bombastic high hopes of enforcing a new hard line against radical Islam — Mike Flynn — is now at personal peril in the Mueller investigation.

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https://www.axios.com/trumps-500-day-coup-of-the-gop-conservatism-5f1f129d-22c3-4f53-b9f1-d957eb1ef05c.html

[njhoneybadger]

1. He has not hijacked the party. The party is using him to do their dirty work

[JHB]

2. Conservatives built what is now Trump's voter base...

They've been doing it for nearly 70 years, escalated after the Vietnam War, and escalated still more as Gingrich, Limbaugh, FOX, and a host of others (including now-NeverTrumpers) made Democrats in general and liberals in particular into The Enemy, encouraging their "side" to loathe them, to vigorously "resist" Democrats at all turns, and to endlessly attack them over lies, fantasy, and horseshit into the Standard Operating Procedure of the Republican Party.

It's been a quarter century since Newt Gingrich characterized Democrats as "the enemy of normal Americans." He was rewarded by being made speaker of the house.

Mitt Romney was perfectly at home characterizing people -- retirees, students, and working people who, after all allowable credits and deductions, have no income tax liability -- as layabout and moochers who take no responsibility for their lives. That wasn't just campaign talk: In his post-defeat whining he blamed it on "people who just want stuff."

Conservatives built a voter base the same way people who say they can speak to dead relatives build their customer base: by telling them that what they believe deep down is right. "You know it in your heart, you know it in your gut, that you're right no matter how many people nay-say it. In fact, how dare they nay-say it? How dare they treat you like like some kind of dope. What kind of vile people do that to kind, regular folks like yourself?"

Conservatives have fostered everything from foaming hatreds and overt bigotries to latent bigotries to wedge issues to conspiracy theories to simple pet peeves in order set themselves up as Team Righteous bravely defending civilization from the despicable Team Loathsome.

They've always been eliminationist about it, too, always treating opposition as illegitimate, an obstacle to be rolled over and wiped out. Anyone too willing to compromise was a backslider and quisling to be excoriated, even purged. They started off by destroying the Rockefeller Republicans within their own party. When G. H. W. Bush ignored his "Read my lips, no new taxes" campaign lime because the 1986 tax reform cut taxes to unsustainably low levels, they howled at him and incited conservatives against him for this "betrayal", in what time proved to be "training wheels" for how to treat Clinton.

They tried their level best to bring down Bill Clinton, hurling turdball after turdball at him and Hillary in the hopes of having a fleck stick. When nothing did, they pointed at the great fogbanks of steam rising from the pile of sloughed-off turdballs and said "Where there's smoke..."

They resolved to oppose Obama at every turn right out of the gate, lest an economic recovery happen on his watch and make him so popular that he could undo their own pet projects. And they embraced a "Tea Party", Republicans angry at the GOP leadership for always failing to deliver on what they promised and to go after Democratic "criminals" with sufficient vigor.

That is the party that hand-washers now like to claim Trump "highjacked".

[CrispyQ]

3. He didn't hijack the party if this is the case:

"...based on Gallup data, President Trump commands the second highest “own party” approval rating of any president at the 500 day mark since World War II, behind only President George W. Bush, after 9/11:"

They've been courting the racists, zealots, & loons for decades.