"The power elite speaks with one voice through two mouths: one establishment Democrat, the other establishment Republican....Those who have gotten rich inside the bloated machinery of the parties will never accept their era has ended. The dreams of private jets and millions of dollars in contributions die hard....The parties are nothing but wealth distribution machines that sluice millions from financial elites to various political elites....Neither party gives a hoot about the working class, small business or civil liberties....Is it any wonder that people are abandoning both parties and claiming Independent status?...The political elites and the financial elites are now one class. In our pay-to-play "democracy," only the votes of wealth and institutional power count....The returns on centralization are diminishing to less than zero. The initial returns on centralizing capital, production and social-political power were robust, but now the centralized cartel-state is eating its own tail, masking its financial bankruptcy by borrowing from the future, and cloaking its political bankruptcy behind the crumbling facades of the legacy parties."...
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7/6/17, "GOP Senator Explains Party’s Disarray: Nobody Expected Trump to Win," New York Magazine's Daily Intelligencer, Ed Kilgore
"Sen. Patrick J. Toomey offered a simple, remarkable explanation this week for why Republicans have struggled so mightily to find a way to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
“Look, I didn’t expect Donald Trump to win, I think most of my colleagues didn’t, so we didn’t expect to be in this situation,” the Pennsylvania Republican said Wednesday night during a meeting with voters hosted by four ABC affiliates across his state.
According to the Washington Post’s Paul Kane, this is almost certainly why congressional Republicans agreed upon a “repeal and delay” strategy for dealing with Obamacare soon after the election:
"They had no real clue
how to do anything else. But the lack of advance planning has also been
evident in the inability of Republicans in the Executive and Legislative
branches to reach any kind of agreement on how to proceed with other
very basic agenda items — also achievable without Democratic votes —
like “tax reform” and the federal budget. And the disarray extends
beyond the legislative process:
Perhaps nowhere did the surprise factor of Trump’s victory show its impact more than in the effort to fill top jobs inside the administration. Clinton’s campaign, fully expecting victory, was stocked with hundreds of volunteer advisers who were already angling for sub-Cabinet-level posts in key agencies including the departments of State, Justice and Defense. Many of them were current or former senior staff to congressional Democrats.
But with Republicans, those connections were rare because few believed them to be worth the effort."
It is hard to overstate the difference for Republicans between the “Trump wins” and “Clinton wins” scenarios. After all, the GOP had been rehearsing the politics of obstruction and enjoying the innocent pleasures of passing consequences-free legislation for six long years after Republicans retook the House in 2010 (and then the Senate in 2014). The transition from gesturing to governing was especially tough for the [supposedly] anti-government party, and it did not help that the new GOP president was so unorthodox, unpredictable, and inexperienced a figure. Republicans did not, as Toomey said, “expect to be in this situation,” so they did not go through the difficult process of airing their differences and putting together pre-vetted consensus plans. On issue after issue, they are doing that now, on the fly, using — as Toomey puts it— “live ammo.”
Perhaps nowhere did the surprise factor of Trump’s victory show its impact more than in the effort to fill top jobs inside the administration. Clinton’s campaign, fully expecting victory, was stocked with hundreds of volunteer advisers who were already angling for sub-Cabinet-level posts in key agencies including the departments of State, Justice and Defense. Many of them were current or former senior staff to congressional Democrats.
But with Republicans, those connections were rare because few believed them to be worth the effort."
It is hard to overstate the difference for Republicans between the “Trump wins” and “Clinton wins” scenarios. After all, the GOP had been rehearsing the politics of obstruction and enjoying the innocent pleasures of passing consequences-free legislation for six long years after Republicans retook the House in 2010 (and then the Senate in 2014). The transition from gesturing to governing was especially tough for the [supposedly] anti-government party, and it did not help that the new GOP president was so unorthodox, unpredictable, and inexperienced a figure. Republicans did not, as Toomey said, “expect to be in this situation,” so they did not go through the difficult process of airing their differences and putting together pre-vetted consensus plans. On issue after issue, they are doing that now, on the fly, using — as Toomey puts it— “live ammo.”
It’s not going very well."
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Among comments to this article at Free Republic:
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"They didn’t prepare for a Trump win because they themselves were actively obstructing it, too. Just as we’ve always suspected, these cretins actually prefer to be out of power so they can play conservative without consequence....
5 posted on 7/6/2017, 5:55:12 PM by RegulatorCountry"
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“Look, I didn’t expect Donald Trump to win, I think most of my colleagues didn’t, so we didn’t
4 posted on 7/6/2017, 5:55:06 PM by Jagdgewehr"
....................
"Anyone who didn’t think Trump would win in the primaries and in
November had to believe that Americans either didn’t notice that the
country was being dismantled and was being invaded by Mexicans and
Muslims—or that they were fine with it. (And Republicans finally caught
on that the dismantling of America was promoted by every President
starting with GHW Bush.)...
14
posted on 7/6/2017, 5:57:20 PM
by Arthur McGowan"
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"They were expecting Hillary! to win so that their personal gravy train would keep on truckin', and they wouldn't have to lift a finger to change things. Then they could go back to their constituents and say "just give us a Republican President and we'll be able to fix things - we promise!"...
"They were expecting Hillary! to win so that their personal gravy train would keep on truckin', and they wouldn't have to lift a finger to change things. Then they could go back to their constituents and say "just give us a Republican President and we'll be able to fix things - we promise!"...
10 posted on 7/6/2017, 5:56:04 PM by COBOL2Java"
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