When Donald J. Trump set his sights on the presidency in the 2000 election, he pursued the nomination of the Reform Party, a home for disenchanted independents. “The Republican Party has just moved too far to the extreme right,” he explained. “The Democrats are too far to the left.”
In the end, he dropped the campaign and the Reform Party, the leftover construct from Ross Perot’s two independent presidential candidacies during the 1990s. It was one of at least five times that Mr. Trump would switch party affiliations over the years. “I’m the Lone Ranger,” he once said in another context.
Now in the White House, President Trump demonstrated this past week that he still imagines himself a solitary cowboy as he abandoned Republican congressional leaders to forge a short-term fiscal deal with Democrats. Although elected as a Republican last year, Mr. Trump has shown in the nearly eight months in office that he is, in many ways, the first independent to hold the presidency since the advent of the current two-party system around the time of the Civil War.
In recent weeks, he has quarreled more with fellow Republicans than with the opposition, blasting congressional leaders on Twitter, ousting former party officials in his White House, embracing primary challenges to incumbent lawmakers who defied him and blaming Republican figures for not advancing his policy agenda. On Friday, he addressed discontent about his approach with a Twitter post that started, “Republicans, sorry,” as if he were not one of them, and said party leaders had a “death wish.”
While some conservatives complained about the apostasy of cutting deals with Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, others applauded his assault on establishment Republican leaders like Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. By the week’s end, pundits speculated about whether Mr. Trump might seek re-election in 2020 as an independent.
“The truth is that he is a political independent, and he obviously won the nomination and the presidency by disrupting a lot of norms that Republicans had assumed about their own party and their own voters,” said Ben Domenech, publisher of The Federalist, a conservative website. “This week was the first time he struck out and did something completely at odds with what the Republican leadership and establishment would want him to do in this position.”
None of which means that Mr. Trump has suddenly transformed himself into a center-hugging moderate. More situational than ideological — critics would say opportunist — Mr. Trump adjusts to the moment, and his temporary alignment with Democrats could easily unravel tomorrow. The deal he cut, after all, merely postponed a fight over spending and debt for three months. It did not resolve any substantive disagreements.
But it showed that Mr. Trump does not feel beholden to his party. “I never viewed Trump as a strict adherent to Republicanism,” said Ned Ryun, a Trump supporter and founder of American Majority, which trains political activists. “He gave Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell almost nine months to get something accomplished, and all they accomplished was to really remove all doubts about their legislative incompetence.”
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“There’s still a big question about whether he has a political strategy that matches his willingness to bash his own party,” said William J. Antholis, director of the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, which sponsored the conference. “There’s clearly a genius about Donald Trump. The question is whether it translates into political wins. If he continues to do this, would he get the Republican nomination? Would he run as an independent?”
The more immediate question is whether he will continue to seek agreements with Democrats. “President Trump campaigned as a conservative with an independent streak,” said Greg Mueller, a conservative consultant. “This disposition helped him build a winning coalition, but I think it’s too early to make a determination that he will now adhere to a strongly independent path and steer from his more conservative base.”
The Democrats’ liberal base finds Mr. Trump so anathema that party leaders will be pressured not to make concessions in the interest of finding consensus.
“The profound problem for him is this would have been a smart way to do things eight months ago, but post-Charlottesville, it’s really hard,” said Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning research organization. “He can do deals where Democrats win, but it’s really hard to get progressives to stretch for Trump.”
As for Republicans, Mr. Domenech said they should not think of Mr. Trump as their party leader. “They need to approach him the way they would have approached a Ross Perot presidency,” he said. “They’re dealing with a guy who technically has an R next to his name, but only technically. We have to convince him that our way is better, not just assume he’ll think so.”
"The demographic most opposed to President Trump is not a racial minority, but a cultural elite." Daniel Greenberg
"Failure to adequately denounce Islamic extremism, not only denies the existence of an absolute moral wrong but inherently diminishes our chances of defeating it." Tulsi Gabbard
"It’s a movement comprised of Americans from all races, religions, backgrounds and beliefs, who want and expect our government to serve the people, and serve the people it will." Donald Trump's Victory Speech 11/9/16
INSIDE EVERY LIBERAL IS A TOTALITARIAN SCREAMING TO GET OUT -- Frontpage mag
Ain't that the truth?: He gave Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell almost nine months to get something accomplished, and all they accomplished was to really remove all doubts about their legislative incompetence.”
Quote: Cincinnatus wrote in post #2Ain't that the truth?: He gave Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell almost nine months to get something accomplished, and all they accomplished was to really remove all doubts about their legislative incompetence.”
Yup
While Jim Jordan stated Trump did not make a good deal on the debt ceiling:
GOP Rep Jordan: Trump Did Not Make a ‘Good Deal’ on Debt Ceiling by Pam Key10 Sep 2017630
On this weekend’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday,” the House Freedom Caucus’ Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said he did not think President Donald Trump’s debt ceiling deal with Democratic was not a “good deal for the American taxpayer.”
Jordan said, “No I don’t think this was a good deal for the American taxpayer. We didn’t do anything to address the underlying 20 trillion debt problem.”
He continued, “I don’t think it’s good for the American taxpayer. I don’t think it’s good for the American people.”He added, “When you
He added, “When you just raise the debt ceiling and don’t anything to address the underlying problem — I mean this is like your kid in college who has your credit card and he spending more than he takes in and he’s already piled up a lot of debt and he gets to say for the next three months I’ve got unlimited borrowing authority — I think if that was your son or my son we would have a problem with that.”‘ http://www.breitbart.com/video/2017/09/1...l-debt-ceiling/
He blamed: Rep. Jim Jordan blames lack of Republican planning for Trump's deal with Democrats by Todd Shepherd Sep 10, 2017, 10:39 AM
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said part of the reason President Trump cut a deal with congressional Democrats on the debt ceiling and on the hurricane relief package was because Republicans failed to plan ahead early enough.
"The first time the Republican conference talked about the debt ceiling was Wednesday morning," Jordan told "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace.
"The Freedom Caucus, we had called for nine and a half weeks ago, Chris, we did a press conference and we said don't leave town until you actually have a plan on the debt ceiling and outlines for the tax reform plan that we are going to do and until we deal with healthcare. And Instead we went home for the longest August recess in a nonelection year, longest break in the nonelection year for more than the last decade."
While critical of the deal, Jordan also expressed his hope that the Republicans could exert leverage over the next round of talks on the debt ceiling, which will come up in December, because the extension deal between Trump, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was only a three-month extension.
"From the Republican side as well, we have a chance now to put together a plan, take that case to the American people early, not wait until the last minute like we did before and sell that plan to the American people and pass that," he said.
When pressed on the political fractures that emerged from the deal between Trump and the Democrats, Jordan predicted a reunion of the Republican powers in Washington.
"I think this is a unique situation, not what's going to happen in the future," Jordan said. "What's going to happen in the future I think with this president and certainly with us conservatives in the house, we are solely and totally focused on what the the American people elected us to do."
Jordan further dismisses reports that some Republicans were thinking of replacing Paul Ryan as speaker of the House, saying, "No one is talking about changing the leadership." http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/rep-ji...article/2633947
Illegitimi non Carborundum
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.- Orwell