It's not just abortion, which the Republican party now no longer pledges to see banned nationwide; it's also gun rights, which are now mentioned only once in passing. There's no national agenda to expand them, or to nominate judges who will defend them, or to have nationwide concealed carry reciprocity nor Constitutional carry. With my carry license from North Carolina, I can carry freely in 38 states; in a few of the remaining states, it's a felony for me to do so. Trump doesn't care about that, and isn't planning to devote time or energy to it.
He's also expressed public derision for the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, which has sourced some fifty-thousand plus loyalists who are ready and vetted to go to work for him. (I've heard good things about this from Jim Hanson, who has discussed the program with Heritage; I haven't personally done so.) Trump's first term was bedeviled by personnel problems of exactly the sort they are trying to help him avoid, but for now he just seems to want to avoid anything that scares the normals.
He may also possibly fear assassination, which is a live possibility if people consider him the tyrannical threat he's painted as in the media. However, Democrats know that's not really true, as we saw Joe Biden admitting yesterday, and as a new article says many Democrats admit privately. Trump was himself a New York Democrat most of his life, and his positions -- soft on abortion, soft on guns, focused on improving the economy and bringing in prosperity -- are something like the consensus positions of the 80s and 90s that were his real heyday.
On the 'history repeats itself, the second time as farce' model, Trump can be seen as the farcical version of Reagan. Reagan was soft on guns too: the main check on people buying automatic weapons isn't the 1930s NFA, which allows it with extra background checks and permits, but a Reagan-era law that requires that all such weapons for sale privately be manufactured before 1986. As time goes on, that means that practically there are fewer and fewer available for purchase, and they are more and more expensive. Reagan was rhetorically strong on abortion but appointed the justice who wrote Casey, and he himself had signed legislation as governor of California that allowed abortion to 20 weeks.
So New York or California values, married to occasionally strong rhetoric but lacking in conviction practically. Trump may share Reagan's suspicion of the Federal Government now that he's been subjected to its harassment, but he isn't philosophically opposed to a strong central government exercising power in the same way; my only hope there is that he will end up dismantling a lot of the parts that need it out of personal animus.
Not exactly the 'Hitler in waiting' we are daily promised in the media. Of course, the media treated Reagan much the same way; you'd have thought he was going to destroy the world any second now if you listened to them.
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I've never trusted him much, for the reasons you give, and because he gave the impression of wanting deals that he could brag about above all--that if the Democrats hadn't gotten TDS he'd have cheerfully bargained away things he swore he'd keep safe. Perhaps that isn't fair--he did seem to manage things well with Abraham Accords.
OTOH, the opposition, though in one sense trustworthy (they'd do what they said) was in another sense utterly un-trustworthy (wanting bad ends or bad means).
In terms of history repeating, and to james point about deals, Trump's term was the farcical version of how the Democrats could have treated Nixon after he won in 1968. Instead he should be their favorite Republican President.
On the other hand, his accomplishments in office were far from farcical: a humming economy, job growth, border security, energy independence, a credible foreign policy, tax cuts, and a curbing of runaway regulation. I voted for and respect George W. Bush, but his legacy is not as impressive.
I contrast Trump's record with the clownish Biden administration failure to accomplish anything but to dismantle these successes--either because it genuinely hates the underlying policies, or from a knee-jerk need to erase traces of the hated Trump. What's more, I'm at a loss to explain the Democratic party's program to turn blue cities into deadly crime-ridden hellholes, one of its few initiatives that can't be explained by TDS.
I think Trump has an intuitive mind and is good at seeing what others don't see, or don't yet see. What he's not good at, though is translating those insights into more structured form so that they can be better grasped by those with more structured (or plodding) mental processes.
"With my carry license from North Carolina, I can carry freely in 38 states; in a few of the remaining states, it's a felony for me to do so. Trump doesn't care about that, and isn't planning to devote time or energy to it."
I think that's fine so long as he appoints judges more likely than not to rule in favor of the 2nd Amendment. So far, I think he has mostly.
Trump finally created a platform THAT PEOPLE WILL READ, and which appeals to ordinary citizens. Other than his stupid 'bump-stock' reg, though, he's never been UN-favorable to guns; that's not likely to change, and even if it does, he put people on SCOTUS (and the Appellates) who will read the 2A as it is written.
Abortion is no longer a national issue per SCOTUS. For some reason, one of the four sins crying to Heaven for vengeance is popular with Americans. Trump is in the business of getting votes, not pushing them away; thus his silence on the matter.
Will Project 2025 play in a Trump Administration? If all Trump does is take the advice on appointments, it is a MAJOR victory. But he'll do more than just that and not call it "2025."
First thing: get elected for the third time. Then do what you want.
NB: the Abraham accords united KSA with Israel against Iran. The KSA feared that Iran--with enormous petroleum/natgas resources--would be able to dump them on the world market, so Trump's voiding of the Obama agreement pushed KSA into the Abraham boat. Israel's concerns about Iran are obvious.
For some reason, one of the four sins crying to Heaven for vengeance is popular with Americans.
Wildly. If unborn Americans count as Americans, abortion is the leading cause of death among Americans. It kills more Americans than heart disease or cancer; some years, more than both.
What are the other three?
Oh, you probably don’t mean “four American sins,” but the theological four (of which infanticide is a subset of one, rather than itself one of four).
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