Quote (bogie160 @ Jul 24 2021 09:25am)

I don't believe that Gallup is looking at registration numbers, they're asking what party individuals identify with at a point in time, so I'm not sure this explanation makes a whole lot of sense.

The death of the Republican party has been greatly exaggerated. Trump was a disaster, and the Republican party is still in a much stronger position today than it was in 2006.

Quote (thundercock @ Jul 24 2021 01:37pm)

If Gallup is asking people about alignment, then it's an acceptable metric up until we have elections again.

I'd argue that the GOP isn't dead at all. Even after everything that's happened, the fact that the GOP is competitive nationwide and dominant in select states shows how much work we have to do as a country. When people say the GOP is dead, perhaps they are mean that the party of Reagan is dead and that's probably the case. But as an opposition party to Democrats? That's not going away until the electoral college, gerrymandering, etc. go away (which isn't happening any time soon).

Quote (thundercock @ Jul 24 2021 01:37pm)

But as an opposition party to Democrats? That's not going away until the electoral college, gerrymandering, etc. go away (which isn't happening any time soon).

Quote (thundercock @ Jul 24 2021 12:37pm)

If Gallup is asking people about alignment, then it's an acceptable metric up until we have elections again.

I'd argue that the GOP isn't dead at all. Even after everything that's happened, the fact that the GOP is competitive nationwide and dominant in select states shows how much work we have to do as a country. When people say the GOP is dead, perhaps they are mean that the party of Reagan is dead and that's probably the case. But as an opposition party to Democrats? That's not going away until the electoral college, gerrymandering, etc. go away (which isn't happening any time soon).

Quote (thundercock @ 24 Jul 2021 19:37)

If Gallup is asking people about alignment, then it's an acceptable metric up until we have elections again.

I'd argue that the GOP isn't dead at all. Even after everything that's happened, the fact that the GOP is competitive nationwide and dominant in select states shows how much work we have to do as a country. When people say the GOP is dead, perhaps they are mean that the party of Reagan is dead and that's probably the case. But as an opposition party to Democrats? That's not going away until the electoral college, gerrymandering, etc. go away (which isn't happening any time soon).

Quote (NetflixAdaptationWidow @ 24 Jul 2021 22:44)

The GOP under election laws in like 2004 would get annihilated at the federal level. They've done so much work (as Bogie said) on the state and local level to turn the rules to their favor, including restricting voting access to select groups. We're going to see the GOP go kicking and screaming for the next 30 years until they finally lose their stranglehold, and even then I imagine we're going to still see them prominent in local politics and state level politics for a long time to come assuming they don't do a big turn around on policy that makes them more appealing to the masses.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Jul 24 2021 12:43pm)

I have to return the favor of "laughing at the bolded part".

And no, Trump did not empower the foreign policy hawks, there are a myriad of op-eds in the tyimes, wapo, atlantic etc. in which these hawks voice their displeasure at Trump's unwillingness to start new wars or play according to their rules and logic. There are legions of neocon political figures from the GWB era who broke with the GOP during the Trump years, or the party broke with them.

Appointing Bolton was a puzzling move and very much out of character for Trump, pretty much everyone said as much at the time, myself included. It was a huge misunderstanding which presumably came from a shared disdain for multilateral instiutions, but it became clear very quick that Bolton and Trump didnt agree on much else. Crucially, Bolton never really had all that much power, Trump was the one calling the shots and Bolton had very little sway over his FP decisions.


At the end of the day, Trump was dovish on North Korea, Russia, Syria and Myanmar. He spent a lot of time and effort invoking a general rethinking of America's relationship with China, recognizing them as the dangerous and clear-cut hostile force that they are, but did not actually start any overly aggressive measures against them. Redefining China is one of his greatest successes imho, under a president Hillary, it might well have taken 3-4 more years before this "awakening" on China.
He used some nasty rhetoric on Venezuela, but did very little against them, much less than he would have had support for among his party.

So the main pieces of evidence in support of Trump not being a FP dove are his actions on Iran and Cuba. Revoking the Iran nuclear deal was the correct move after the deal had proven a failure, funding Iran's proxy wars and geostrategic encroachment in the ME rather than spurring economic growth and liberaization in Iran. This leaves us with Cuba, on which Trump's stance probably came from a "fuck everything Obama did"-mindset rather than genuine hawkishness.

Quote (IceMage @ 24 Jul 2021 23:52)

I think appointing hawks to all your key national security positions qualifies as "empowering hawks". Just because he didn't follow their advice all the time does not mean they weren't "empowered". And pointing to Beltway insiders who criticize him is not great evidence for anything. (the beltway is a highway that circles Washington DC, btw, in case you didn't know that from Germany)

I don't really care about debating the merits of Trump's hawkishness, I'd just like to point out the obvious. He was a serious hawk on Iran, consistent with the W Bush administration. He was a rhetorical dove on Russia but policy wise he was not. He punished them seriously for the Skripal poisoning, he provided lethal arms to Ukraine(something Obama refused to do), he devoted more money to the defense department, etc. You can be a hawk without bombing people... economic leverage against China could very easily lead to military confrontation.

Quote

Also, it's disingenuous to describe their criticism as based on "Trump's unwillingness to start new wars". Most of the major criticisms were legitimate, whether it be kissing the bungholes of Putin or KJU, or withdrawing from Syria at a moments notice because Erdogan pressured him, etc. Trump was a bad, incompetent leader, whether you agree with his end game or not.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Jul 24 2021 05:57pm)

Perhaps we must distinguish more between the "hawk/dove" and the "isolationist/interventionist" dichotomies. Trump was a clear-cut isolationist while his positioning on the hawk-dove scale is not as unambiguous. He was neither a consistent dove nor the dangerous uber-hawk that the media painted him to be.


edit:
There was massive frustration in these circles over Trump's unwillingness to get involved with the Syrian war, particularly after this one supposed gas attack in 2017 to which he "only" responded with cruise missles, but not boots on the ground. There were also forces trying to push the idea of invading Iran. And the frustration over his sudden withdrawal from the Kurdish regions was not exclusively fueled by not wanting to let an ally down or bow to Erdogan's pressure - it was also about the fact that Trump's troop withdrawal from Syria in 2019 amounted to ceding the battlefield to Turkey and Russia.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Jul 24 2021 02:20pm)

The big mistake you two are making is that you disregard the shittiness of the contemporary Democratic party. Their agenda is really toxic in a lot of regards too, it's not just the GOP that sucks. If the Republicans from 2021 had to run against the Democrats from 2004, they'd get fucking annihilated (even under 2021 election rules).

Essentially, the error of the Democrats is that they constantly position themselves with the sociodemographic makeup of the US from 10 years into the future in mind. They drank too much of their own "emerging Democratic majority" kool-aid, thinking that structural majorities for which they dont even have to fight anymore are right around the corner.

More broadly speaking, in a two-party system, there are no permanent structural majorities. After a few cycles of losing in a row, the opposition party will adjust its platform to become competitive again. It happened with Republicans during the era of the New Deal coalition, when they ditched the market radicalism and turned into a fairly moderate and modern party (by the standards of the 50s-early 70s...). Similarly, after 3 consecutive landslides at the hands of Reagan and HW Bush, Democrats pivoted drastically to the right during the Clinton years, giving us hits such as NAFTA, (further) Wall Street deregulation and tough on crime bills.