5 Thoughts for July 20, 2017

1. Too Many Ideas: A Senate Republican floated the idea the other day that the reason why the GOP hasn't been able to pass healthcare legislation is that they have too many ideas. That's not true. They have a very limited set of ideas -- their dogma -- whereas they have varying agendas in conflict with their dogma. The GOP has always stood for limited government, except when their state may greatly benefit from enlarged deficits. It's a question of whether you have fidelity to your ideas or to your constituency's welfare. For some -- particularly Tea Party members -- fidelity to ideas are more important than the welfare of their constituency.
2. Memorial for the 115th: The current congressional 2-year term is the 115th. Six months in, I'm here to memorialize it. They did nothing of serious consequence. They assumed they would do big things, but quickly realized that each member had a different agenda that was in conflict with their greater dogma. In spite of a loaded action list of to-do items, they mostly sat around and argued about party loyalty, hypocritically, as they remained loyal to the party by keeping their leader, Donald, in office as long as they could manage. We remember them not for their failures but for their success in unifying the nation against them.
3. Nudged: Yesterday, an establishment labeled "fake news" by Donald, published a lengthy interview with Donald -- funny how that works, that he knocks down the very establishment he seeks to use to spread his fake news, but that's a different issue altogether. As always, he offered up a laughable list of assertions, but this particular excerpt caught my eye:
   Asked if Mr. Mueller’s investigation would cross a red line if it expanded to look at his family’s finances beyond any relationship to Russia, Mr. Trump said, “I would say yes.” He would not say what he would do about it. “I think that’s a violation. Look, this is about Russia.”
   In essence, the NYT interviewers nudged Donald and he obliged by committing his simple mind to set a red line and firing Mueller in the near-future. That's just way too easy.
4. Don't Lie: You're not good enough at being a liar. A lie isn't just one false statement; it's a commitment to a false narrative requiring additional lies. For instance, in that NYT interview, Peter Baker asks Donald, "But did that email concern you, that the Russian government was trying something to compromise --", Donald responds, "You know, Peter, I didn’t look into it very closely, to be honest with you... I just heard there was an email requesting a meeting or something — yeah, requesting a meeting. That they have information on Hillary Clinton, and I said — I mean, this was standard political stuff." Now, Donald is caught between perpetuating his initial lie of not knowing anything about the meeting and knowing something about the meeting.
5. Bad Poll Numbers for Donald: For the sake of argument, let's assume that Rasmussen is the most accurate pollster out there. No matter how you spin it, Rasmussen's polling shows a steady decline in support for Donald. Alternatively, aggregated polls isolating Republicans show that their support for Donald has dramatically decreased, from a net +75 pp margin (approval - disapproval) to a net +61 pp margin. The week before the 2010 midterms, President Obama had a net +63 pp margin with Democrats. What I'm suggesting here, is that Donald is already on track to deliver an overwhelming tsunami of a wave election in 2018, and it'll only get worse the longer the GOP Congress remains firmly attached to Donald's hip.