Trump cheats at golf - the ONE and ONLY politics thread

Shocked. Next you're going to be revealing that some of our past political heroes actually owned Negroes.

 

The thing is, guys like McCain, Kennedy, Dodd, and so forth have years and even decades of experience as elected officials. We may not like their actions or words, but they get some benefit of the doubt, for the most part, because at least we know they can do the job. (Yes, there are disqualifying incidents. Ask Anthony Weiner and Larry Craig.)

Trump is boorish and doesn't have any experience to tout. That's a tough 1-2 punch to overcome.

 

Christianity Today editorial (Speak Truth to Trump):

"Since his nomination, Donald Trump has been able to count on “the evangelicals” (in his words) for a great deal of support.

This past week, the latest (though surely not last) revelations from Trump’s past have caused many evangelical leaders to reconsider. This is heartening, but it comes awfully late. What Trump is, everyone has known and has been able to see for decades, let alone the last few months. The revelations of the past week of his vile and crude boasting about sexual conquest—indeed, sexual assault—might have been shocking, but they should have surprised no one.

Indeed, there is hardly any public person in America today who has more exemplified the “earthly nature” (“flesh” in the King James and the literal Greek) that Paul urges the Colossians to shed: “sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry” (3:5). This is an incredibly apt summary of Trump’s life to date. Idolatry, greed, and sexual immorality are intertwined in individual lives and whole societies. Sexuality is designed to be properly ordered within marriage, a relationship marked by covenant faithfulness and profound self-giving and sacrifice. To indulge in sexual immorality is to make oneself and one’s desires an idol. That Trump has been, his whole adult life, an idolater of this sort, and a singularly unrepentant one, should have been clear to everyone.

And therefore it is completely consistent that Trump is an idolater in many other ways. He has given no evidence of humility or dependence on others, let alone on God his Maker and Judge. He wantonly celebrates strongmen and takes every opportunity to humiliate and demean the vulnerable. He shows no curiosity or capacity to learn. He is, in short, the very embodiment of what the Bible calls a fool."

 

The point is that John McCain could stand, and did, stand by hid buddies, like John Tower and Teddy Kennedy, because their was no political price to pay for him doing so.

If he thought is was politically advantageous to stand by Donald Trump, as he did, even after the Khan family insults, when he was still facing a primary challenge, he would do so.

McCain isn't outraged. McCain is weighing the political consequences, in a general election campaign, of standing by Donald Trump.

There are few honorable people in elected politics. Neither nominee is, nor is John McCain.

 

The reason few people act honorably and tell the unvarnished truth is because they would not be elected.

 

This, I agree with.

 

It reminds me a bit of the abortion gambit YF and I have debated. I say that it doesn't make intellectual sense that conservatives support the rape and incest exception. YF explains that the ends justify the means, politically.

Same here. Is it honorable to calibrate your support and your statements to stay in office, even if you have to be dishonest doing so? Perhaps, if you think it's vital that you stay in office to battle for positions important to you.

 

It's a gray area. I think if you say you will fight for something you know has no chance in hell of passing, you are OK, if you actually keep pushing for it.

If you say you support something and change your mind because of new information, that's OK.

If you say you support something to get elected and never supported it, that's bad.

 

You've convinced me. John McCain sucks. I hope he loses his next election.

 

I recall in Woodward/Bernstein's The Final Days there was a passage in which David Eisenhower was mulling over Nixon's state of mind during the resignation end-game. Nixon apparently was convinced that the country absolutely would be weaker without him as President. I've always been struck by that: How can you get to the point where you see yourself as indispensable?

 

Funny you should mention that.

Dems are rapidly dropping the Jefferson-Jackson name from their big state party fundraising dinners.

In New Hampshire, they're so offended by sexual harassment, that they've renamed the dinner the Kennedy-Clinton dinner. LOL.

What's the over/under on the year they have to rename it again.

WMUR.com first: NHDP renames traditional Jefferson-Jackson Dinner for JFK, Bill Clinton

 

I definitely would not know.