The President does tend to
the insult as a form of rhetoric, doesn't he? Once in a while I really wish he wouldn't; but a lot of the time, I think that justice is served by the insulting of many of his targets. Most of these folks are politicians from a particularly bad crop. We could do with fewer of them, and instead they're showered with honors and treated as if they merit high dignity.
As I watched Trump, a marketer as much as a builder, from the beginning of his campaign and watched his message delivery evolve in those early days and months, it sounded to me like nothing other than a marketing campaign. He introduced his product to his audience, touted his product, compared it to his competitors', and adjusted his delivery over time as his audience changed and grew more familiar with his product.
ReplyDeleteNow, it seems to me, his commentary, especially via Twitter, serves a number of purposes. Sometimes he announces a policy idea, sometimes he's trying out an idea to see if it might sell. Often, he's just trolling the NLMSM or a politician. His insults, though, strike me more as head game. He's at least irritating, if not outright angering, his target and taking them completely off their message and their messaging. See, for instance, the present kerfuffle with Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Pressley, and Tlaib. What's being talked about? Not what Pelosi and her Progressive-Democrat caucus are trying to get done in the House, just her conflict with those four and then her forced embrace of them. What's being talked about on the campaign trail? Not the Progressive-Democrat candidates' programs or policies or natter, and not the upcoming debates, except as filler around the present kerfuffle with Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Pressley, and Tlaib.
And what are those four doing? Responding to Trump, and not doing their own thing.
And Jerry Nadler was so beside himself on Chris Wallace's show today that he just sounded irrational to the point of hysteria. Biden, in his interviews, sounds like an old man who's no longer altogether present. Asked how he would respond to a Trumpian debate on substance, he said he'd challenge Trump to a push-up contest.
And it all serves to distract the NLMSM and the Progressive-Democrats from what he's doing substantively, so he can get more of it done than he might were their attention more focused.
Like you, I think he sometimes overdoes it, or takes a shot at an inopportune time, but for the most part, he's being pretty effective, if wholly unorthodox--and that unorthodoxy is its own irritant and distraction for those used to being treated with suitable gravity.
Eric Hines
Per Powerline the other day: Trump's tweets are a laser pointer, and the Democrats are all cats.
ReplyDeletefor those used to being treated with un-earned gravity.
ReplyDeleteFixed it for ya.
Trum is just using my rahu/sun strategy. It's not anything new, even before he was born.
ReplyDelete