Why do we give "NeverTrumpers" deference?

zoogs

zoogs

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Why are people surprised that McCain revealed (among other things) his Trump-friendly inclinations in his questions to Comey?

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Trump is exactly what they want. They love this. Guys like Rand Paul, John McCain, Lindsey Graham -- even non-politicians such as Evan McMullinm (who to be fair has not undergone full scrutiny) -- they'll feed us some tough talk on Trump and we schlepp it up. Why?

Do not trust these guys. You have to mean what you say.

Full link to 538 tracker: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/congress-trump-score/?ex_cid=rrpromo

 
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That link is the smoking gun of what is wrong with our government.

Straight party line partisan BS.

No one side has all the right or wrong answers all the time but they sure vote like that is the case.

One question though, what have they actually voted on, for or against Trump.

It sure doesn't seem like much of anything has been happening in the new legislation arena.

With the exception of the AHCA fiasco, what that amounts to much of anything have those wastes of skin suits even been doing?

 
El Diaco said:
That link is the smoking gun of what is wrong with our government.

Straight party line partisan BS.

No one side has all the right or wrong answers all the time but they sure vote like that is the case.

One question though, what have they actually voted on, for or against Trump.

It sure doesn't seem like much of anything has been happening in the new legislation arena.

With the exception of the AHCA fiasco, what that amounts to much of anything have those wastes of skin suits even been doing?
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538 has a useful page tracking exactly that: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/congress-trump-score/votes/

 
I don't think there is something inherently wrong with party line voting. This is the entire point of parties: you organize politically in order to advance common agendas. So of course Republicans (by and large) are going to support the Republican agenda, and vice versa. That's the whole reason they are Republicans to begin with. So it's more interesting to me to evaluate what those platforms are.

(The caveat here is that in the US we have big tent parties with different wings, so there will be reasons for defections in different areas. But again, it's not a bad thing if a party is cohesive, either. It just means we need to understand that we are voting for their platform as assembled.)

The point I want to make is just that people who are basically aligned with Trump should NOT get to retain anti-Trump warrior credibility. No matter what they say.

 
I disagree. It is obviously a bad thing because...just look at how things have been working. In theory it may look okay but in practice it has been a failure for the people.

 
If your question is "why", I guess that my answer is: Because most voters are ignorant of voting records, and how to evaluate politicians.

The average American formulates their political stance based on internet-based advertising and "fake news". The average American is easily swayed by propaganda. This fact is well-known by the powerful special interest groups, who hire propaganda machines disguised as "think-tanks" (like the Heartland Institute) to dole out misleading and skewed "facts" that can be used by all kinds of sources to promote an agenda.

I honestly don't know what the solution is, short of forcing people to start caring and critically evaluate their information sources intelligently. Right now, its starting to look like an Idiocracy. Maybe education is the long-term solution? Military conscription? Forced service in the peace corps for 18-year-olds? Better political science education?

The baby-boomers can't recognize fake news due to a lack of internet-savvy. Gen X gets news from Facebook. Millenials get news from Twitter.

 
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Sadly, the older you get the more you start to realize that people say one thing and often times do another. We can all give many examples.

 
Another interesting thing about how representatives vote is when there is a strong majority of American voters who want legislation (like some level of gun control), and yet representatives vote based on how groups with a powerful lobby (NRA in this example) want them to. Attach this stance to the party-line (Republican, in this example) and people tend to "get in line" because of reinforcement by propaganda and "groupthink".

Obviously this goes both ways. Democratic representatives bow to different special interests.

 
This is not hard to understand. We (most people) want to believe what we are told, we think the best of people. When your friend gets cheated on but takes the girl/guy back you think "What the hell" but he/she thinks "They love me, they said they are sorry, they deserve another chance"

This is pretty much normal behavior. We want to believe what we want to believe.

So back with JFK...when he was smiling and cracking jokes...everyone loved him...even women...didn't matter that basically everyone knew him and his bro were doing an Eiffel tower on Marilyn. They wanted to believe in him and what he said.

 
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