Andrew Puzder likely to withdraw nomination

[Flagg]

See, the problem is, if the guy who is a dick, and was just an insufferable asshole like Donnie Douchebag, without the whole pedophile rapist and serial liar shitshow, it's an easy decision. Since a capable asshole who doesn't stand for everything I despise is 1000x better than "nice guy who will wipe his ass with 7/10 of the Bill of Rights", I'm going with giant dickburger every time.

This is how Trump got his votes: by not being Hillary Clinton, standing up for things the Republican coalition believes in, and pandering to those who feel ignored by the current system. The fact that he's an enormous ass is just the thing they had to live with, or else turn the country over to the communists and baby-killers and the degenerates (as they see it).

Yeah, but they picked him. They had plenty of just as crazy, just as racist conservative whackadoodle policy to choose from. They went with crazy, racist, pedophile, rapist, misogynistic, and utterly clueless shit-throwing maniac. And they love him!

[Simon_Jester]

The big caveat to this is that, from that same ideological viewpoint...

If Trump turns out to be a hideous failure, Trump's supporters won't admit it, and everyone else will blame the problems on Trump's (literally) raging personal defects. A reduced share of the blame will land on the Republican policies that would in many cases be toxic no matter who was backing them.

If Pence gave running the government his best shot for four years and we're worse off in 2020 than we were in 2015 (as seems likely), Trump's supporters still wouldn't admit it... but everyone else would have nothing to blame except the policies themselves.

As it stands, the 2020 presidential election is probably going to be a referendum on Trump- even if he gets impeached. Had the Republicans nominated a normal human being to win in Trump's place, then the 2020 presidential election would most likely be a referendum on Republican policy, as modified by Tea.

The latter would arguably be better than the former, even from an ideological point of view.

The problem is that the GlOP (in whatever form or shape it is in) never takes responsibility or admits that their policies were bad, they (just like in 2008) say that their policies didn't go far enough. So Trump, Pence, or White Jesus losing in 2020 just weren't conservative enough.

As I've said before/elsewhere, it's all about percentages. About 5% or 10% of the people who thought XYZ was a good idea deciding XYZ isn't a good idea. Or just saying "fuckit" and not fighting for XYZ anymore even if they spend the rest of their lives grumbling about how much nicer the world would be if only XYZ were done, only they don't really mean it.

When you say "they" never take responsibility or admit their policies were bad, it depends on who "they" are and even small incremental changes can have large consequences.