1. I thought that some Republican once told Senator McCarthy, “Joe, you’re a real S.O.B. But you’re our S.O.B.” But apparently no one ever said exactly that, although Senator Bricker said something close.
2. When President Obama uses high-handed means to achieve his ends, I think of Progressives murmuring that he is “our S.O.B.”
3. Interpreting voter opinion is a fool’s game, on the order of interpreting short-term movements in the stock market. Still, I am going to be a fool, and offer an interpretation of the Trump boom as a desire on the part of some voters for “our S.O.B.”
Why would a Republican voter be in the mood for an S.O.B.? I think it is perhaps a reaction against John, John, and Mitch.
President Obama has used a “words mean whatever I say they mean” approach to implementing the Affordable Care Act. Instead of slapping him down, as an S.O.B. might have done, John Roberts effectively said, “I’ve got your back.”
When Republican voters delivered a landslide in November of 2014, the Republican leaders acted as if it never happened. Instead of acting like S.O.B.’s, Boehner and McConnell have compromised with and caved into Obama like they were John Kerry at a meeting with the Iranian nuclear delegation.
Hence, the longing for “our S.O.B.”
In any casey, if you were one of those libertarians who sensed a yearning for someone who wants to return America to its roots of limited government and aversion to foreign intervention, it appears you might have over-estimated the American voter just a tad. Sorry, Nick, Matt, David, …
Maybe it’s time to give Seasteading another look.
It says a lot about America’s foreign policy that googling “our S.O.B”–the insult not abbreviated– leads to Somoza’s photo (the thought is popularly attributed
to either Roosevelt or his Secretary of State to justify supporting Somoza’s tyrannical regime– Se non è vero, è ben trovato).
There is a class war in the Republican party between the donors and the voters. The donors want open immigration, a decrease in the top marginal tax rate, and cuts to social security. The voters want the immigration laws enforced, middle class taxes decreased, and no changes in soc. sec. Pretty much all the Republican candidates represent the donors except Donald Trump.
Yes, Trump is the populist, listening to the constituents and offering what they want instead of the same tired catch phrases and lame policies of wealthy donors that brought us to where we are now. Voters may not be the brightest, but it would take real idiots to believe that even a majority in congress could dictate policy, but that is what most insiders want us to believe.
I agree on immigration. Many Republican voters are fine with SS cuts or not opposed to top marginal tax rate cuts.
More wealthy donor positions. I suggest looking at some actual polls. Most support SS although some support cutting it for others and cutting other spending to preserve their own. Even most Republican rank and file believe the rich should pay more but you would never know this from their bought and paid for leaders. Instead we get fix the deficit through tax cuts.
Possibly, but what fraction of Trump supporters could pick Boehner et al out of a lineup? Not a large one, I would guess. My pet theory is that while the swaggering alpha male always has some level of appeal, Trump’s success in recent months represents a reaction of sorts to the increasingly stringent enforcement of progressive orthodoxy. In the age of micro-aggressions and internet mobs trying to shut down random Indiana pizza parlors owned by people with suddenly unfashionable views, there’s demand for a public figure who will unashamedly say what he thinks and continue to say it, consequences be damned. No surprise then, that the one issue which he really seems to resonate with voters on is immigration, where of course all right-thinking people know that immigration, legal or not, is good because it increases diversity, which also is good, and any disagreement is clearly motivated by racism.
Naturally, then, Trump represents a populist Galileo figure, attacking the obviously silly doctrine of geocentrism and heroically taking a stand against those bullying inquisitors in Rome.
I think this is correct. A lot of people have silently become frustrated with progressive political correctness, where every societal outcome can be explained by some sort of class/gender warfare, and every critical opinion levied against it is lumped together as “racist/sexist.”
Similar to Nixon’s “silent majority” that he appealed to to win his elections.
For those people it’s refreshing/endearing to see a guy up there saying the opposite in plain language, even if the content of his remarks is ridiculous.
There is our SOB and there is OUR sob. I think Republicans see Trump as our SOB.
Speaking of Internet mobs is there any concrete evidence that Ahmed was called out on his clock because he was Muslim or is that just a narrative which obscures the simple explanation… just an example of zero-tolerance policies…
See the blog DiploMad: “Another Progressive Fairy Tale: Ahmed, The Clock Maker”.
There is a backstory. The clock is not an investigation into digital electronics, and the kid and family are activists.
http://www.thediplomad.com/2015/09/another-progressive-fairy-tale-ahmed.html
True. “Narrative Collapse”. It’s not even plausibly deniable.
It’s obvious that the kid built a Hollywood briefcase-bomb mockup. Motives unclear, but it’s fishy, and the presented ‘reports’ are confirmation bias, and “we’re better than those bigoted dummies” illustrated all the way down. And up, all the way to the White House. Don’t they have people to make sure they avoid this kind of embarrassment? I guess they’re not worried about it.
Just take a look and see for yourself.
A quick look at the pictures of the kid’s prank by someone who’s actually ever played around with electronic projects will inform them that the circuit was factory-made, and all he did was remove the plastic shell from a large-display home digital alarm clock, and affix it to a flashy case, so that it would look like a dramatic countdown sequence, just like you see in the movies as a device to add thrilling tension to the scene.
I mean, does anyone remember Die Hard 3? Try googling, “Top 10 Bomb Defusing Movie Scenes”. Well well, there’s the ‘clock’ trope, over and over again. They all look the same. And since everybody knows what Hollywood images are already planted in the minds of everybody else, that determines the style and look of all these hoaxes, precisely because the person knows the image will get a rise out of his audience.
We are becoming a nation where you can’t be either respectable or cool if you leave your baloney sandwich filters turned on. You have to eagerly swallow and parrot this stuff, or else you’re outing yourself as one of the bad people.
I think I’ll sit this one out.
In reality that is just my pretend agency. I can’t even keep up anymore.
It is interesting why it is easier to get swept up in the false narratives. Nobody has rallies for all the white women being oppressed at the airport.
When will Republicans learn it is all about immigration?