NYT "As Critics Assail Trump, His Supporters Dig In Deeper"

[NRaleighLiberal]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/us/politics/republican-voters-trump.html?WT.nav=top-news&action=click&clickSource=story-heading&hp&module=first-column-region&pgtype=Homepage&region=top-news

LEESBURG, Va. — Gina Anders knows the feeling well by now. President Trump says or does something that triggers a spasm of outrage. She doesn’t necessarily agree with how he handled the situation. She gets why people are upset.

But Ms. Anders, 46, a Republican from suburban Loudoun County, Va., with a law degree, a business career, and not a stitch of “Make America Great Again” gear in her wardrobe, is moved to defend him anyway.

“All nuance and all complexity — and these are complex issues — are completely lost,” she said, describing “overblown” reactions from the president’s critics, some of whom equated the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant children and parents to history’s greatest atrocities.

“It makes me angry at them, which causes me to want to defend him to them more,” Ms. Anders said.


snip - worth reading, behind the NYT paywall but worth reading. And Sad.

[John Fante]

1. "Gina Anders

isn't just a "Republican voter." She's a longtime conservative activist. What's the point of running to deeply entrenched Trump voters for a new "Trump Country" article every single time he has a bad week?"https://t.co/ROpFCNdLI7

Answer: concern trolling.

[NRaleighLiberal]

2. agreed.

[thucythucy]

3. How about an article about how, as Trump wrecks the country,

Hillary voters are more and more convinced they were right, and cite all the reasons why?

Better yet, a SERIES of such articles every time Trump does something to undermine our tottering democracy.

All these millions of words on the inner life of the Trump voter, but hardly anything at all about Hillary voters. Why no attempts to "understand" them (that is, us)?

[lame54]

5. You mean the majority?

[ecstatic]

10. I know! It's infuriating! All this analysis of them

is normalizing and empowering them. They are sick, evil people. They should be completely and thoroughly ashamed to admit they support dump. I'm so sick of this sh!t!

[lame54]

4. What a load of shit...

NOBODY is ruder than Trump

[Trek4Truth]

6. We are dealing with irrational people. I can't even get into it now about all the fucking

LUNACY I had to endure tonight.

[ProudLib72]

7. They dig in deeper, like blood sucking, disease carrying ticks

Not to give ticks a bad name or anything by association.

[0rganism]

8. this is a signal of how far the Overton Window has shifted

> Ms. Anders, 46, a Republican from suburban Loudoun County, Va., with a law degree, a business career, and not a stitch of “Make America Great Again” gear in her wardrobe

this person probably was, at least until recently, one of the so-called "moderates", or at least part of the "mainstream" Republican party. female, successful businesswoman, suburban, educated, not one to pick up swag at a Trump rally. 3 years younger than me, she is at the tail end of Gen X, hardly some aging boomer not long for this earth. she is one of our canaries in this coal mine of fascism we've wandered into. she reacts not to the messages themselves, but to the disloyalty shown to the leader by the messengers. she will fall in line with her party and the leader. she won't be goosestepping down the street, but she'll gladly stand on the sidewalk cheering and waving a flag for those who do.

we are in deep shit. it's happening faster than i thought possible.

[Swagman]

11. well said and correct

My grandfather packed up his family and fled Lithuania in the mid 1930s because he 'read the wind' long before others. I listened forever to his tales of the incremental creep of Fascist ideology and especially the targeting of special groups for hate and blame.

He figured it did not need the majority to think or act like this, just a determined minority. In fact he said the well meaning majority would grow tired of fighting the insanity and often did not know how to and would choose a quiet life while the minority took over.

But these Fascist and supporters never stop as it's a certain style of madness where new enemies must be found to keep the majority under control.

I've never seen such a blatant Fascist sociopath like Trump (he's a natural) who from Day One has set out to marginalize such huge groups of Americans and indeed..the majority seeing Clinton got the popular vote. And his cult like supporters dig in and applaud every single thing he does and triumphantly revel in the "the Librul's tears"..in other words they buy into Trump's sheer hatred towards anyone who dares to disagree with him.

No matter how many proven lies he tells they dismiss it ..I reckon they believe it's OK to lie because they are all fighting some bizarre battle against...snowflakes?

[ecstatic]

9. Did Anders get her law degree from the same place Orly Taitz

got hers?

[Awsi Dooger]

12. Day to day story lines don't mean squat to Republicans

That's the aspect conveniently ignored around here. This site and CNN/MSNBC will be all over some new development hour after hour and over several days like it's the most significant and damning thing ever. Certainly this will be it, the torpedo that sinks Trump back toward 30ish approval.

But when I venture away from the obsession here and on the cable news programming and have contact with right wing friends from Las Vegas or a couple of relatives I know, it's a completely different world. They don't know or care. You could multiply by 10 and they still wouldn't know or care. It's a big picture focus, even if the priorities are grotesque. Big picture viewpoints are not subject to fragile fluctuation.

The only people changing minds are a small block of independents. They are incredibly difficult to predict or rely on. That's why I'll continue to insist college campus registration drives are light years our best prospect right now. That is not difficult to predict. It is a small reliable gain that won't fully take hold for another decade or two. At that point the Silent Generation is basically gone and the math works more in our favor.

Currently I am seeing a laughable theme in one thread after another: Yes, Trump owns 90% of Republicans but it is a diminishing block. That sounds like the moronic counter stories that right wingers get from their base in the morning and then plaster all over every political and social media site. It is Happy Adjuster mode to the max, although it does make for some good laughs. Apparently some progressive host or writer pushed that idea and now it is spreading, a comfy rationalization.

Meanwhile, we are dealing with fractional shifts, ones that are not tipping points in the short term. As always, ideology is massively more significant than party affiliation. The percentage of people who self identify as conservatives is not dipping dramatically right now but the gap is closing between self identified conservatives and liberals.

Here is a great related article from Gallup early this year, regarding the gap between conservatives and liberals dropping to single digits for the first time in the 2016 election, 35% to 26%. I did not write it but I will tout myself since I believe I was the first person to point out this trend, in the days following the 2016 election. I posted the specifics on multiple sites including this one. In fact, I posted it when Democratic Underground was down and we were allowed to submit messages to the administrators for view on the temporary main page. I focused almost exclusively on that 35-26 aspect...that there was indeed an ideological shift in the 2016 election, just not the one the media was touting or that was obvious based on the electoral result.

I have continued to post the 35-26 on various forums since November 2016. This was the first time I saw anyone else pick up on it. If the writer stole it from me, no problem. It was easily the most underrated development from that cycle:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/225074/conservative-lead-ideology-down-single-digits.aspx