Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Skuj
Maybe this is a turning point? (How many times have I wondered that?!!) I'm actually surprised at the level of outrage across the spectrum on this. What I'm trying to understand is how do Kelly/Bolton etc let Trump go out and say that shit in front of the world when standing beside Putin?
|
From the most recent Fareed Zakaria column in The Washington Post:
Quote:
Jonathan Chait writes in New York magazine that “Trump is training his base to hate NATO and like Putin.” Indeed, Trump has been remarkably successful: Fifty-one percent of Republicans now believe the United States shouldn’t defend NATO allies unless they increase defense spending. Even more astonishingly, Trump seems to have reversed Republican attitudes toward Russia and its dictator, Vladimir Putin. At a recent rally, Trump said, “You know what? Putin’s fine. He’s fine. We’re all fine. We’re people.” Republicans are now twice as likely as Democrats to express a favorable opinion of Putin, and 56 percent of Republicans want to cooperate and engage more with Russia.
The Republican Party has proved remarkably malleable ideologically. The party of law and order now has deep distrust of the FBI. The party of free trade is now far more solidly behind protectionism than the Democrats. The party that celebrated President Ronald Reagan’s optimism about immigrants now contains a majority that supports separating families at the border and criminally prosecuting undocumented immigrants.
Trump’s political genius continues to be that he recognizes that the base of the party is ripe for this ideological revolution — that while the old Reaganite formula may still be subscribed to by Republican elites in Washington and New York, it’s not embraced out there in the grass roots.
Five years ago, one establishment Republican wrote that “the specter of isolationism is stalking the Republican Party. . . . It is hardly certain that isolationist sentiment will prevail. But it is critical . . . that national-security Republicans can answer the questions being raised, restore a coherent party platform and thereby thwart the new isolationism.”
|
(This is the part when you think, Oh, that must have been John McCain. Try a different John...)
Quote:
|
Those words were written by John Bolton, now Trump’s national security adviser. It seems even the most stalwart national-security Republicans have accommodated themselves to the Trump revolution.
|
https://fareedzakaria.com/columns/20...out-donalds-in