February 17, 2019
Time is not on Trump's Side
Timothy Birdnow
Andrew Klavan argues that Trump is playing a long game in the border wall fiasco.
From the Daily Wire:
Maybe, but I still must ask to what point? Yes, this is great optics for a Presidential run, but what is actually being accomplished by this?
The Republicans are almost assured to lose the Senate in the next election; they have too many seats to defend. Without a concrete victory here there is no chance of holding it. Time is not on Trump's side. He has to get a big win, and now. Only a major success can turn the tide.
It's much like Washington's crossing the Delaware and attacking the Hessians at Trenton; had Washington been content to keep sitting all would have been lost. His victory was one of nerve first and foremost. Trump is in the same position at this moment.
My personal opinion is Trump is out of ideas at this point. Nobody backed him on any of his agenda - not any Democrats and not even his Republican "allies" despite having a lot to lose. I would argue had the House GOP funded a wall they would have held the lower chamber. It was their willful refusal to give Trump any sort of victory that led to Speaker Pelosi. I don't think Trump expected that, and I think Trump has been surprised all along with the lack of support from the political class. I think when he failed with the shutdown (and was talked into surrender by McConnell, in all likelihood) he shot his last arrow. I suspect now Trump is just going through the motions, hoping and praying something turns up to allow him to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
If he really cared enough, he would have shut the government down again AND declared a state of emergency to start the building. He knows the courts are going to shut him down. He should have had a backup plan.
Oh, and about "the long game" it was the name of Mitch McConnell's bio, and it was what McConnell played ON TRUMP. McConnell has never moved the ball forward in any appreciable way for our side. He sees ONLY political enemies, not people who are actually warring against the America we knew and loved. McConnell has been fierce where Conservatives are concerned, not so much where Democrats tread. Why? He cut his teeth on the old order, where the Dems ran things, and that is his idea of "conservative", to maintain the status quo. As Chesterton pointed out when he said the business of Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes of the past from being corrected. That's McConnell.
And he ran the long con on Trump. I am fairly sure of that.
Andrew Klavan argues that Trump is playing a long game in the border wall fiasco.
From the Daily Wire:
I compare Trump to a great running back, a man who knows where political daylight is without even thinking about it. He’s a gut guy. Brain guys despise gut guys, but an awful lot of brain guys end up working for gut guys because the gut guys sense things what the brain guys are too smart to observe. That’s Trump.
In keeping with this theory, I notice that Trump does something important that a lot of the people observing him never do. He changes. He adapts. He finds new ways to daylight. Because the people who observe him don’t do this — because they have their ideas and they stick to them and crunch the facts to fit them — this tactic is invisible to them. They think he’s always acting the same way, and he’s just not.
So I wonder: is Trump losing the battle over border security as badly as it seems he is? Or is he playing the sort of long game no one ever expects of him? Not three-dimensional chess exactly. Let’s call it Patience.
[...]
On the flip side of this, I can’t help noticing that since the mid-terms, Trump has been different. He’s been less, well, Trumpy. Less visible. More restrained. His border security speech from the Oval Office was solid. His offers to negotiate have been fair. His State of the Union was excellent. Even his recent rally in El Paso was less belligerent than the norm. The insults (Beto has nothing going for him but a great first name) were smarter, less childish, less cruel. He remains his essentially pugilistic self, but he’s also been — forgive the cliché — more presidential.
Meanwhile, the Democrats have unleashed a Green New Deal that is a blueprint for ending American freedom and prosperity. They have allowed the bubble-headed Alexandria Occasio-Cortez and the vicious Ilhan Omar to seize the headlines with their ignorance and racism. Virginia is an intersectional clown show that even the news media can’t bury. And new revelations out of the Justice Department give credence to Trump’s repeated charges that he is the victim of an unconstitutional Deep State witch hunt.
I cannot believe I’m saying this, but right this minute, Donald Trump is coming across like the grown-up in the room, the all-American man of practical sense beleaguered by raving ideological incompetents.
Is that just luck, or is it part of a new strategy: the long game?
In keeping with this theory, I notice that Trump does something important that a lot of the people observing him never do. He changes. He adapts. He finds new ways to daylight. Because the people who observe him don’t do this — because they have their ideas and they stick to them and crunch the facts to fit them — this tactic is invisible to them. They think he’s always acting the same way, and he’s just not.
So I wonder: is Trump losing the battle over border security as badly as it seems he is? Or is he playing the sort of long game no one ever expects of him? Not three-dimensional chess exactly. Let’s call it Patience.
[...]
On the flip side of this, I can’t help noticing that since the mid-terms, Trump has been different. He’s been less, well, Trumpy. Less visible. More restrained. His border security speech from the Oval Office was solid. His offers to negotiate have been fair. His State of the Union was excellent. Even his recent rally in El Paso was less belligerent than the norm. The insults (Beto has nothing going for him but a great first name) were smarter, less childish, less cruel. He remains his essentially pugilistic self, but he’s also been — forgive the cliché — more presidential.
Meanwhile, the Democrats have unleashed a Green New Deal that is a blueprint for ending American freedom and prosperity. They have allowed the bubble-headed Alexandria Occasio-Cortez and the vicious Ilhan Omar to seize the headlines with their ignorance and racism. Virginia is an intersectional clown show that even the news media can’t bury. And new revelations out of the Justice Department give credence to Trump’s repeated charges that he is the victim of an unconstitutional Deep State witch hunt.
I cannot believe I’m saying this, but right this minute, Donald Trump is coming across like the grown-up in the room, the all-American man of practical sense beleaguered by raving ideological incompetents.
Is that just luck, or is it part of a new strategy: the long game?
Maybe, but I still must ask to what point? Yes, this is great optics for a Presidential run, but what is actually being accomplished by this?
The Republicans are almost assured to lose the Senate in the next election; they have too many seats to defend. Without a concrete victory here there is no chance of holding it. Time is not on Trump's side. He has to get a big win, and now. Only a major success can turn the tide.
It's much like Washington's crossing the Delaware and attacking the Hessians at Trenton; had Washington been content to keep sitting all would have been lost. His victory was one of nerve first and foremost. Trump is in the same position at this moment.
My personal opinion is Trump is out of ideas at this point. Nobody backed him on any of his agenda - not any Democrats and not even his Republican "allies" despite having a lot to lose. I would argue had the House GOP funded a wall they would have held the lower chamber. It was their willful refusal to give Trump any sort of victory that led to Speaker Pelosi. I don't think Trump expected that, and I think Trump has been surprised all along with the lack of support from the political class. I think when he failed with the shutdown (and was talked into surrender by McConnell, in all likelihood) he shot his last arrow. I suspect now Trump is just going through the motions, hoping and praying something turns up to allow him to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
If he really cared enough, he would have shut the government down again AND declared a state of emergency to start the building. He knows the courts are going to shut him down. He should have had a backup plan.
Oh, and about "the long game" it was the name of Mitch McConnell's bio, and it was what McConnell played ON TRUMP. McConnell has never moved the ball forward in any appreciable way for our side. He sees ONLY political enemies, not people who are actually warring against the America we knew and loved. McConnell has been fierce where Conservatives are concerned, not so much where Democrats tread. Why? He cut his teeth on the old order, where the Dems ran things, and that is his idea of "conservative", to maintain the status quo. As Chesterton pointed out when he said the business of Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes of the past from being corrected. That's McConnell.
And he ran the long con on Trump. I am fairly sure of that.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
01:11 PM
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