A lot of people, usually those of a more conservative or libertarian bent, claim that the Republican and Democrat parties are really the same. They’re both pretty big on State Control They’re both all “tax and spend.” They both talk about how they oppose things the “other side” has done (Republicans on Obamacare and gun control, Democrats on things like Immigration reform) but when they’re in power to the extent of having the Presidency and both houses of Congress, they don’t do anything about it.
Is there a lot of similarity between the two parties? Of course there is because, get this, they are trying to appeal to a lot of the same voters. Whichever party “loses”, if it wants to win, has to get the votes of people who voted for the other party last time. That’s going to create a lot of similarity. (Example: “coverage for pre-existing conditions”, doesn’t matter how much you explain how economically unviable that is, people want it. They don’t understand, or ignore, the economics, and any politician, “R” or “D” saying “you can’t have it” is going to lose a lot of votes, more than they can afford to lose, for doing so.)
But by focusing on the similarities one blithely ignores the differences. Would Hillary, would _any_ Democrat, have issued an executive order requiring two regulations to be repealed before any new one could be enacted? Would we have 300 new miles of border wall under a Democrat president? Would we have renegotiated NAFTA under a Democrat? Trump may have proposed the tax cuts which boosted the economy, but they had to pass Congress and who voted for them…and who voted against them? And Trump may have negotiated the new trade agreements, but it took “the advice and consent of the Senate” to ratify them. And again, who voted for them, and who voted against them?
At root, however, the problem isn’t the politicians or the parties. They are the symptom. They are doing what is politically profitable for them and most people…well there’s an “Aragorn” meme I created but don’t know how to post easily here. The text is “The day may come when low-information voters do not decide elections; but it is not this day.”
Yes, there are a lot of similarities between the major parties because they are trying to attract a lot of the same voters. But there are also differences because they are also appealing to different segments of the population.
But there’s more. We are winning the cultural war. Why do you think the Dems are full on “all vote fraud, all the time?” Fraud is the only hope they’ve got. What do you think is behind Pelosi’s “establish a commission for 25th Amendment removal of the President”? Seriously, even if she were able to get such a thing passed, by the time it went through both the House and Senate and Trump (for reasons of his own) signed it, or they overrode a veto (yeah, right), It would likely be close to inauguration day and a moot point…unless Trump won. The only reason it can possibly be an issue is that their internal polls are showing that, yeah, Trump’s probably going to win.
They’re losing, and they know it. The culture is shifting. Part of that is freedom-loving people realizing they are not alone. And part of it is that a lot more of us are willing to speak out and what we say (if I may claim some small influence there) is making sense to others. Remember, four million brand new people who have not settled on one position or another enter the arena every year. And we have more ability to reach and influence those people than ever before.
No longer is Walter Cronkite able to put on his fake-sincere “trust me” voice and lie to the American people with impunity, with no-one to call him on it.
We’re winning a battle we were barely in until recently.
A lot of the old guard politicians are still in that “we’re losing so make the best deal we can and hope to at least slow and soften the fall” mode but the key there is “old guard.” They’re being replaced by a generation of Ted Cruzes, Mike Lees and others. Sooner or later the remaining “old guard” will see the tide change or they’ll be swallowed up by it and replaced by folk who will.
On the flip side, the Democrats are going full socialist. Truth to tell, they’ve been that way most of my life, but now the masks are coming off. And they’re doing this because we’re winning. They’ve positioned themselves into a corner. They can’t come out for small government, for lower taxes, for the things that actually do help the economy grow (as opposed to their pseudo-Keynesian magical thinking) because they’re too committed to their “government will take care of you” message. To do so would shred any vestige of credibility among their base, the ones that aren’t the same pool of voters that both Democrats and Republicans have been fighting over for generations. And so they see those voters slipping away and their only response is to get even more extreme in appealing to their socialist base and to double down on enabling fraud.
Because we’re winning.
The Writer in Black 
I’ve heard that Pelosi is now saying that her plan is focused on Biden not Trump.
Personally, I think she’s “back tracking” because of the reaction from Anti-Democratic Party types. 😉
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Did she say that or did Trump?
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Trump said that she’s nuts.
While originally she mentioned Trump, now apparently she saying that she’s talking about future Presidents being too sick to do the job.
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No one seems to consider that whatever she wants, without a Constitutional amendment to remove the “…the Vice President AND…” from Section 4 of the 25th, it’s all just hot air. For Biden, it would doubtless happen in a HarrisHeartbeat (to coin a phrase). But Pence wouldn’t be a party to it WRT Trump.
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Well, it does say “or of such other body as Congress may by law provide” so that could at least bypass the rest of the Cabinet. Even so, if the President declared that he (or she) was not unfit then it goes to Congress and requires 2/3 of the House and 2/3 of the Senate to remove from office–a higher standard, in fact, than impeachment and removal from office which reqiures 2/3 of the Senate but only a simple majority in the House.
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Correct, but I think you’ve misinterpreted the requirements. The text says “…the Vice President AND a majority of either the either the principle officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide…”; it’s pretty clear that the VP is still in the rwquirement, and must concur (actually, must initiate the process, IMHO), and Congress can only specify others *after* the VP has signed on.
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That’s why I said “at least bypass the rest of the Cabinet”. And even if they could cut the VP out (“steel man” argument) using some tortured interpretation of the grammar (consider, after all, how they parse the 2nd), it would still end up thrown back to Congress when Trump sayd “no, I’m fine” and they’d still be left with the 2/3 of each House requirement to remove him over his disputing of the “unfit” claim.
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OK. I don’t see it that way, but it all comes down to what some judge says. Anyway, keep up the good work, and let’s hope it doesn’t come down to a shooting war.
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The wording does clearly say that “other body as Congress may by law provide” could be used in place of the Cabinet. I can imagine the argument made that the “or” applies to both the VP and the Cabinet. I disagree vehemently with any such interpretation but looking at what they’ve done with the second and that never to be sufficiently damned “militia clause” I can see it happening. The point is that even so it still is no easy end run around the requirements for impeachment. A steel-man argument is one that takes the strongest form of an opponent’s argument and refutes that, thereby also refuting all weaker forms. Even if we give them “other body as provided by law” to completely replace the VP and Cabinet, they still need 2/3 of the House and 2/3 of the Senate if the President disputes the finding of inability to serve.
Even if we give them every benefit of every doubt, including some pretty fanciful doubts, they still lose. If they can’t make an impeachment and removal stick, they certainly can’t make a 25th Amendment removal stick.
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Agreed on all points, specifically including their almost-certain failure to make it work for them. But I hope you won’t take it amiss if I prefer to *not* give them the benefit of any doubt whatsoever, and simply wish them a short, exciting and unproductive (for what they want) life… 😉
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I wish I could agree that “we are winning” but I don’t think so. The socialists and communists are in the lead. There is no democratic party anymore. We the people have not done our job by electing and re-electing village idiots to run the country. Trump truly is the last man standing if he loses we all lose and can kiss our butts goodby.
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That’s exactly what they want you to think. That’s the narrative of the Democrat party and their willing accomplices in the media. However, if they really were in the lead, there would be no need for the massive push to enable vote fraud. There would certainly be no need for the blatant fraud about it.
In the past they could spin the narrative however they wanted because they had a stranglehold on information. Those who believed differently, in looking at what the so-called “objective media” was telling them thought they were alone or nearly so, or maybe just wrong. It’s easy to convince people that they’re the ones who are wrong when you have control of their education, their entertainment, and their news. However, that stranglehold has cracked. Folk who disagree with the far-left socialist position are learning that they are not an isolated few. And attempts to demonize folk to further their narrative are starting to fall flat as alternate sources of information become available to challenge that narrative. Witness that even the New York Times had to admit that Kyle Rittenhouse’s shootings look very much like self defense. This challenge comes up not always, and not perfectly, but it would not have happened at all just a decade or two ago.
It’s certainly not over. It’s still a fight. And there will be lost battles along the way. But the tide has turned and the momentum is on our side. Bluntly, if Trump “loses” next month it will only be because of massive vote fraud. Not just massive but obvious vote fraud. That’s what all the push for “fraud by mail”, “early frauding”, and “same day register to fraud and frauding” is about. But they will have spent their bolt on that. I doubt they’d get enough in the Senate to pack the court as they hope to. And there’s only so far they can go on the fraud front before people start to, let’s just say object in ways that nobody wants. If I have a fear, it’s that they will push that far and we will end up with “ways that nobody wants.”
But that’s not because they’re winning. It’s because they’re losing. And they know it.
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Witness that even the New York Times had to admit that Kyle Rittenhouse’s shootings look very much like self defense.
You’re taking a single aberration as evidence of a trend? Nah, bro.
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And all of that is why I very much fear it *will* come down to “ways that nobody (sane) wants”. And even though I believe we’ll “win” (assuming the military remembers their oaths of office, which as a “Marine no longer on active duty” I take quite seriously), it would be far better to never get to that point., for reasons made quite clear here and on Sarah’s blog.
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because, get this, they are trying to appeal to a lot of the same voters
Sorry, but no. The reason they’re primarily the same is because they have almost all become part of an elite technocratic political class that thinks they should govern/rule by virtue of that class membership. And the electorate mostly agrees.
Would we have 300 new miles of border wall under a Democrat president?
Would we have it under a Republican? Ha! Not a chance. We got it only because we elected a Mule – an old-school Democrat running as a Republican, who ran on the one thing everyone used to agree on: America First. And he cares only a little more about the constitutional separation of powers than previous presidents.
Trump is mostly on “our” side because of that America First attitude, and people like him for not sticking his nose in the air and sniffing about “propriety” and such when others slander him or the American people. He certainly isn’t a conservative (nor governing like one).
We are winning the cultural war.
Your definition of winning is a bit different from mine. We might be close to turning the tide and beginning to win. But we’re not winning yet. The desperation of the Dems is because they felt they were close enough they could just out-and-out declare victory and walk off the field. But we’re still several touchdowns behind and it’s the fourth quarter and our players on the field still aren’t even sure if it’s fair to win.
Why do you think the Dems are full on “all vote fraud, all the time?”
Because they desire to WIN. They don’t care about “propriety” or the Constitution or “rule of law” or any of those other things we think are important. They care to rule. And they think there are just enough rubes in the country who vote Republican to keep them from that power. It doesn’t mean we are winning.
four million brand new people who have not settled on one position or another enter the arena every year.
You talking about newborns? Because vast numbers of the just-old-enough-to-vote cohort most certainly have already settled into the positions their caretakers have propagandized.
Sooner or later the remaining “old guard” will see the tide change or they’ll be swallowed up by it and replaced by folk who will.
On one condition: the electorate is actually turned back to a moral, wise, discerning standard that thinks the Constitution is really “all that and a bag of chips” and that freedom is as much about personal responsibility as it is about doing what you want. You’re right to say the problem is not the politicians. No, it’s an electorate that has been trained and mal-educated into believing we must have masters and that everything that built Western Civilization is fool’s gold that must be turned upside down.
the masks are coming off … because we’re winning
No. They came off at first because they thought they were winning. Then because they saw the total victory slipping from their grasp. They still have massive amounts of control. They still have massive amounts of power and money. They still control the gov’t (bureaucracy, courts), the education system, some large portion of the culture, and a lot of our tech*. Victory might be slipping from them, but it is only temporary if we don’t make the changes necessary in the hearts and minds of the electorate.
(* The control of tech is a great example of why they win. The control of tech is only there because a vast amount of our society thinks they are too stupid to do anything but use what someone else has given them, and so use Twatter and Farcebook ‘platforms’ instead of learning how to build a website of their own. The internet is still very open and free – mostly – but people are censored because they can’t see their way around the easy-enough-a-baboon-could-do-it tools. So, also, with the gov’t and the Constitution.)
They can’t come out for small government, for lower taxes, for the things that actually do help the economy grow
The WHAT?! No, they don’t come out for those things because they don’t want them. Oh sure, there’s a few Republicans nowadays that might want lower taxes but won’t say it. And all the Republicans want the economy to grow – as measured by K Street and the CoC. Not as measured by Ma and Pa Kettle in flyover country. For the most part, Republicans haven’t been actual conservatives in decades, and Democrats have been socialist (at least) for the same amount of time.
Winning? Hardly. But we could be turning the tide and able to win in the future, if we work at it and don’t let the electorate run madly down the path into the arms of serfdom.
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That last sentence is the key. “The electorate mostly agrees” which is the issue…in the end, they need the votes. This “elite technocratic political class” gets to be that by offering the electorate what they want.
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Most of your examples at the front are things that only happened because Trump forced everyone to take a stand.
You don’t need my help to think up examples of the Republican party actively sabotaging issues they used to win elections. Often, by not even letting them come up for a vote.
Republicans are not Democrats.
Granted.
But there’s a whole mess of those grifters who care a great deal more about power and money than any policy, oath, or promise.
The hallmark of Republican politicians has been to betray the people who elected them.
The “uniparty” meme isn’t true, but neither is it false. Illegal immigration is a great example. The public is strongly against it for any number of good reasons. Our representatives, though…
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But not enough to affect their voting decisions. They won’t vote out, or primary, those who refuse to deal with the issue.
And Trump may have “force issues” but, in the end, those things required Congressional votes. Strangely enough, the GOP was more willing to be “forced” than were the Democrats. That, right there, is a difference between the two parties. Hell, I’m more than a little convinced that Trump would have been perfectly willing to “make deals” and “reach across the aisle” except the Democrats went total TDS leaving him little choice but to double down. The GOP, however, has, to some extent anyway, been willing to work with him.
As I said, for various realpolitik reasons there is a lot of similarity between the two parties, but there are a lot of differences too. The “uniparty” folk focus on the similarities. Others note the differences. Both are part of the picture. The similarities are there because they’re what’s “politically profitable.” What needs to be changed is not the politicians, they’re the symptom. What needs to be changed is the public climate of opinion so that it’s politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things (as the late Milton Friedman was wont to say).
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IOW, the voters are the problem. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty and too many voters cast a vote once every four years hoping to outsource their responsibility as citizens of the republic to somebody else.
Nap time in America ends now or the next nap may well be a dirt nap for Americans’ liberty.
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Entirely too many people (Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Socialist, whatever) are entirely too worried about “electing the right people” and not enough about convincing people of the value of their positions. Politicians have two basic choices (well, three, but I’ll get to that third in a moment): either bend to popular will or be removed from office. Convince enough of the people of the value of Liberty (to pick my particular hobby horse) and politicians will fall in line–if they don’t, they’ll be replaced by someone who will. The politicians aren’t the problem. The politicians are the symptom. The problem (again, from a Liberty viewpoint) is that entirely too many people are infected with the twin diseases of “there ought to be a law” and “goodies that other people pay for.” That’s the problem that needs to be addressed. If you fail to do that even if you somehow overthrow the tyrants all you manage to do is establish a different tyranny.
Now there is that third option for politicians who don’t bend to popular will and that is to use “illegitimate” means to retain power, vote fraud, force of arms, what have you. That, I think, is where we are right now. The Democrats are pushing so hard to enable vote fraud because they know popular will is against them. This, however, opens up the possiblity of that fourth box actually helping. If, as I believe, we are winning the cultural war “in the trenches” as it were, and Democrats use illegitimate means to override that popular will, then their removal allows that popular will, that cultural victory, to express itself.
And that is why I focus so hard on the cultural war aspect. That’s where the key battles need to be fought and won.
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“The system started to go downhill once ‘politician’ became a career option.” -Unknown
That is, if not the core of the problem, close to it. We elect people who have no saleable commodity save jawbone to what are effectively sine cures – they campaign on the promise of fixing problems, then create more and get re-elected on the promise of fixing those.
The fact that most of these individuals are attorneys further complicated the system – they have a vested interest in keeping the system under which we labour as Byzantine as possible, which is a clear conflict of interests.
Potential fixes?
1) Term limits are a hard pass. Instead, strip elected office of its posh retirement benefit. Half credit toward Social Security, and you get Medicare while in office (should see those fixed in relatively short order.)
2) Laws are to be written in plain English. A laws degree should not be required to figure that mess out.
3) It’s often said that “ignorance of the law is no excuse” (don’t get me started on this QI drivel – that’s a whole ‘bother mess..) Fine. Then the ENTIRE body of law to which a common man is subject, total of ALL levels (city through Federal) is to be published in a single volume, made freely available at libraries & Post Offices. Such volume is not to exceed five hundred pages in length, is not to use type smaller than 12 points, and will include category of offense and standard penalties. Yes, this will require intergovernmental coordination and cutting some serious deadwoof from the system. That’s an intended result, not a side effect.
Discuss.
Doc
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So, pretty much before the ink was dry on the Constitution.
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There’s no system so perfect that people can’t ruin. [Me] 😉
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On the flip side, the Democrats are going full socialist. Truth to tell, they’ve been that way most of my life, but now the masks are coming off.
I was musing on this, and realized– a lot of the stuff I hear folks complaining about is stuff I grew up with as a rural/Ag kid. Abuse of environmental laws for things that not only don’t help but actively harm the animals and plants they’re protecting? We know folks kicked off their grazing allotment (you rent the right to have X cows eat in an area) because that’s where a rare flower was…turns out it needed to be churned by hooves, like a cow’s, in order to propagate.
Never did get the allotment back, “amazingly.”
Part of the problem is that they’re running out of a version of other people’s money in a less obvious form than Maggy Thatcher was talking about.
You’re right, it’s socialism, but they’ve got to get more resources somewhere after the low hanging fruit is gone.
They took over the feral horse herds, which had been unofficially maintained with culling and feeding in winter and basic if unofficial medical care…and now wild horses are, well, horrible. You’re not going to get the kind of gosh-gee-willicker quality that was possible, if not likely, in the early 80s.
The junk Obama pulled with that area in Utah, nationalizing it over the local group’s objections, is basically the same except that in that case Trump gave almost all of it back to the tribes and towns that had been taking care of it for decades.
Similar issues in the national forests where the roads that were maintained by loggers are if not actively destroyed, destroyed by time…..
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