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Why I Can’t Learn to Love Donald Trump (Ross Douthat)
New York Times ^ | February 12, 2016 | Ross Douthat

Posted on 02/13/2016 3:59:44 AM PST by reaganaut1

[A] Trumpian four years would almost certainly involve a significant degradation of the unwritten restraints on presidential conduct, an acceleration of royalist tendencies that may be built into our system but still deserve to be slowed down, and a blurring of reality-TV and political culture that takes us several leagues further along the road to President Camacho. I don’t think that the nebulous possibility of dealmaking should tempt liberals to welcome this kind of experiment; I don’t think the hope of a more working-class-friendly G.O.P. should tempt conservative reformers to learn to love it either. And the fact that recent presidents have already pushed the envelope in all kinds of troubling ways is not a “what’s the big deal” case for accepting Trumpism: Noting that George W. Bush approved waterboarding (while insisting that we don’t torture) or that Barack Obama launched wars without congressional approval (while denying they were real wars) is not a case for electing a candidate who’s gleeful in his promises to torture with abandon and rob other countries of their oil; rather, it’s a warning of what the office does to men who are restrained by norms and rules and the tribute that executive vice still has to pay to constitutional virtue.

(Excerpt) Read more at douthat.blogs.nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: bully; camacho; idiocracy; trump; trump2016; trumpvalues; vulgar; vulgarbully
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Trump is an unrestrained bully unfit to be President.
1 posted on 02/13/2016 3:59:44 AM PST by reaganaut1
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To: reaganaut1

Learn html, fool.


2 posted on 02/13/2016 4:02:17 AM PST by samtheman (Elect Trump, Build Wall. End Censorship.)
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To: reaganaut1
Trumpian four years would almost certainly involve a significant degradation of the unwritten restraints on presidential conduct,...

Typical leftist double standard. Says nothing about the bastard in the white house.

3 posted on 02/13/2016 4:12:31 AM PST by VRW Conspirator (American Jobs for American Workers.)
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To: reaganaut1
Low-T beta male NY Times writer is mad at Trump? Really?


4 posted on 02/13/2016 4:13:07 AM PST by jimbo123
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To: reaganaut1

Trump will tackle the issues that the GOP won’t.


5 posted on 02/13/2016 4:13:30 AM PST by reasoningMan
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To: reaganaut1

President Camacho: who is he?
He’s the US President in the satirical science fiction comedy film Idiocracy (the 2006 movie)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy


6 posted on 02/13/2016 4:16:23 AM PST by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now it is your turn ...)
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To: PIF

another endorsement


7 posted on 02/13/2016 4:17:02 AM PST by scooby321
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To: scooby321

??another endorsement??

I merely clarified an otherwise obscure reference ...


8 posted on 02/13/2016 4:18:11 AM PST by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now it is your turn ...)
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To: reaganaut1

Ross Douchehat of the Old Gay Lady.

What, you couldn’t find sufficient slime at Puffington Host?

You really don’t seem to have your heart in it today. Pathetic.

You need to spend a few hours at DU to get your game face on.


9 posted on 02/13/2016 4:22:26 AM PST by glock rocks (TTTT !)
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To: reasoningMan
Trump will tackle the issues that the GOP won't.

Quite possibly... but he might not be fighting for the result that you want... and having 16 consecutive years of Presidents ignoring the Constitution will leave an entire generation believing that it in't important. (Aren't the Millennials stupid enough as it is, voting for Socialism over Capitalism by wide margins already?).

It will likely be fun to watch, and he would likely get more done faster than anyone else could do it... but there are obvious costs and almost surely many unintended consequences that Trump fans just seem to be utterly ignorant of.

10 posted on 02/13/2016 4:25:16 AM PST by Teacher317 (We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men)
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To: reaganaut1

NYT writer not liking Trump is a really great thing. What surprises me is that even Cruz supporters here think the standards for a President could go any lower than Obama has taken them. I have never heard Trump express shame and hatred for our nation as the current occupant does. A little honesty?


11 posted on 02/13/2016 4:33:19 AM PST by nclaurel
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To: reaganaut1

“Trump is an unrestrained bully”

Yep. Just like Andrew Jackson or Teddy Roosevelt or even Ronald Reagan.

BTW, “bully” is what the weaker whiners call the tougher ones out there...


12 posted on 02/13/2016 4:38:06 AM PST by Chainmail (A simple rule of life: if you can be blamed, you're responsible.)
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To: reaganaut1

Maybe he needs to discuss his problem with his analyst.


13 posted on 02/13/2016 4:39:42 AM PST by FrankR (You're only enslaved to the extent of the charity that you receive!)
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To: reaganaut1

Why I can’t learn to love Ross Douchehat.


14 posted on 02/13/2016 4:41:16 AM PST by euram
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To: reaganaut1

what you have described is Barack Obama


15 posted on 02/13/2016 4:41:29 AM PST by bert ((K.E.; N.P.; GOPc;+12, 73, ....carson is the kinder gentler trump.)
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To: reaganaut1
Trumpian four years would almost certainly involve a significant degradation of the unwritten restraints on presidential conduct

Degradation? President William Jefferson Clinton got multiple BJs from a White House intern WHILE executing his official obligations to this country. In one case he got one from under his desk while he was on the phone talking to a US Congressman about troop deployments in Europe

That woman, Hillary Clinton, led a strike team to vilify the intern and any other of the near-dozen women that had been accosted by this "President". She, Clinton and the media went on to try and convince the majority of the people here that a BJ was 'not' sex. He lied to a grand jury! 400 so-called Constitutional Scholars took out a full page ad in the NYT in 1998 effectively attesting that his actions "did not rise to the level of high crime or misdemeanor." And on and on and on and on.

Yet this quisling NYT ghoul says "significant degradation?" Not even hardly. That train already got to the station. To assert as fact conduct not even executed is duplicitous and the article is patently absurd.

16 posted on 02/13/2016 4:44:43 AM PST by Gaffer
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To: Teacher317

What concerns me is the fact that many Trump supporters seem to exercise any critical thinking at all. I started off liking his approach to his candidacy, but became troubled in his lack of explaining just how he was going to carry out his ideas. So I started digging into his past associations and his business practices. The deeper I looked, the more that I developed a distrust for the man.

As things currently stand, he is not somebody who I want to see as POTUS and Commander-In-Chief.


17 posted on 02/13/2016 4:53:02 AM PST by Howie66 ("Tone down the tagline please." - Admin Moderator)
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To: VRW Conspirator
-- Typical leftist double standard. --

IIRC, Douthat is a token conservative on the NYT staff. Not disagreeing that he is a leftist, by the way, just noting that he is held out as some sort of opposition to leftists.

18 posted on 02/13/2016 4:55:42 AM PST by Cboldt
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To: reaganaut1

Learn to love Trump. You CAN do that, Douthat!

CC


19 posted on 02/13/2016 4:56:56 AM PST by Celtic Conservative (CC: purveyor of cryptic, snarky posts since December, 2000..)
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Comment #20 Removed by Moderator


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