The GOP Sucks, But It’s Not As Bad As Everyone Thinks

[Geee]

The Federalist:

Voters have many rational reasons to be furious with the GOP. But numerous times in recent anti-Trump appearances—in real life and in the media—I’ve been confronted by a peculiar allegation. Republicans, people tell me, were elected by the People and yet they’ve done absolutely nothing. Lately, this indictment has started to mutate into “Republicans gave President Obama everything he wanted.” The GOP and Obama were basically colluding against the American voter this whole time.

 

Mostly the claim seems to be a way to rationalize abandonment of principles to support Donald Trump—who, need it be said, is far to the left of any of these supposed GOP apostates. But I’ve heard Ted Cruz fans make similar arguments. It’s a big myth.

 

Republicans have been dreadful on plenty of fronts—the quality of their advocacy, the spine they show making arguments, and the lack of innovation and malleability in the focus of their policies, to name a very few—but resistance to Obama’s legislative agenda was definitely not one of them. If Republicans had capitulated in the way the average angry populist claims, Obama would not have needed to enact some of the most consequential abuses of executive power since World War II.

Some of this anger is propelled by false expectations and wishful thinking about how government works—which is to say, when voters don’t get what they want they assume the system has failed. On one hand, voters are under the impression that presidents should be able to craft law and policy and make everything great again; and, on the other, they are angered about the ineffectiveness of the legislative branch. It all depends on which of these corresponds with their own political affiliation.

[Valin]

@Geee

 

 

As far expectations go, Republicans deserve blame for making promises they couldn’t possibly fulfill

 

 

Insert multiple Trump quotes here. So the question is, assuming (god forbid) DT wins the nomination and the general election. And he is not able to get anything done, what do the Trumpers say do?

 

There are those On The Right who want to destroy the Republican Party because (in their view) it is not Really Conservative, they see DT as the vehicle to do this, so they can rebuild it as a Real Conservative Party.