[American Thinker] The Shootings Are An Excellent Example Being Sacrificed For Our Cause

[Tom Jr.]

Those cocksuckers are going to wish that they were never born!

He's gonna send flabby, smelly and unshaven Steve Bannon to get
them. Bannon's so ugly that they keep letting a homeless guy
into the inner circle, thinking it's Stevo!


Steve has no bones, he's 500 lbs of Bile.


The Daily 202: How Trump’s threats against the Freedom Caucus
may backfire


THE BIG IDEA: If Mark Sanford’s “hiking trip” on the
Appalachian Trail with his Argentine mistress couldn’t stop him
from getting elected to Congress, it is hard to imagine how
mean tweets from Donald Trump will.

Trump dispatched Mick Mulvaney to threaten the South Carolina
congressman last week. “The president asked me to look you
square in the eyes and to say that he hoped that you voted
‘no’ on this [health-care] bill so he could run [a primary
challenger] against you in 2018,” Sanford said the OMB director
told him, according to the Charleston Post and Courier.

“I’ve never had anyone, over my time in politics, put it to me
as directly as that,” the former two-term governor told his
local paper. "To state the obvious, I’m not a guy who responds
to threats well.... It’s contrary to all that I believe in in
politics." He said it also contradicts the South Carolina
Republican Creed, which reads: “I will never cower before any
master, save my God.”

Sanford won reelection with 59 percent in his coastal district
last year. Trump got 53 percent. “I mentioned this to a couple
of colleagues, and they said it sounds very Godfather-ish,”
Sanford added. “Their point was that this approach might work
in New Jersey, but it probably doesn’t work so well in South
Carolina.”

-- Trump tried carrots, offering pizza parties and invitations
to the White House bowling alley. Since that hasn’t worked,
he’s using the stick. Niccolo Machiavelli wrote that one should
try to be loved and feared. “But, because it is difficult to
unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than
loved,” the Italian diplomat explained in “The Prince.”

This approach makes much less sense in America circa 2017 than
it did in the Italy of 1532.

In practice, throughout the history of our republic, this has
almost never been an effective way to govern. Franklin
Roosevelt, vastly more popular than the current occupant of the
Oval Office, went all-in during the 1938 midterms against
Southern Democrats who weren’t consistently voting for New Deal
programs. The ensuing debacle, in which all but one primary
challenger FDR supported lost, is a cautionary tale that Trump
may want to consider before he follows through on his threats
to knock off members of the House Freedom Caucus if they don’t
quickly fall in line.

The defiance we saw from several members of the Freedom Caucus
yesterday, including Sanford, strongly suggests that Trump’s
gambit will fail. Rather than cower, principled movement
conservatives wore the attacks as badges of honor. They saw the
threats as testaments to their courage. And they pledged to
never back down. The fact that Sanford went to the Charleston
paper to say Trump had threatened him reflects the degree to
which these guys are not scared.

“I have zero worries about it,” Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) told
the Heritage Foundation-backed Daily Signal. “Trump’s tweets
reaffirm that the Freedom Caucus is having a major impact on
public policy in Congress — that the Freedom Caucus is not a
force to be ignored. … If you want me to vote for a piece of
legislation, either persuade me it is good for America or
change it so that it is good for America.”

Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.), one of Trump’s earliest
endorsers, said the Freedom Caucus won’t change no matter what
the president does. “We’re elected as Republicans to put forth
good conservative policy, and I’m on board as soon as we start
doing that,” he told Roll Call. “In my district, we’re very
conservative, so if he gets me out office, he’s going to get
someone more conservative than me.”

“If somebody can get to the right of me in the primary, God
bless him,” added Freedom Caucus member Trent Franks (R-Ariz.).

-- A host of other dynamics, from redistricting to Citizens
United, also make what Trump is doing much riskier than it
might have been in the past.

The president cannot cut off funding to intransigents. The Koch
political network has pledged to give air cover to people whom
Trump attacks because they opposed last week’s bill. Groups
like the Club for Growth also promise to mobilize for
conservatives facing primary challenges. In the past, major
donors might be afraid to cut checks to someone targeted by the
president. Now, some will give because of it. The National
Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP’s campaign
arm, also has a long-standing policy of supporting incumbents
and could not back a primary challenger. “As long as they pay
their dues, we’re gonna be there for them,” said NRCC chairman
Steve Stivers.

“Trump’s own romp through the Republican primaries last year —
vanquishing a raft of contenders more favored by the GOP
establishment — was testament to how little control party
leaders now have in channeling the passions and enthusiasm of
the rank and file,” Karen Tumulty notes. “Now at the head of
the party himself, and struggling to rack up some legislative
achievements, Trump is fighting against some of the same forces
that helped get him elected."

The president is also not coming into this from a position of
strength. His approval rating is in the mid-30s, and he is
belatedly going to the mat for a bill that fewer than one in
five Americans support. Meanwhile, the cloud of scandal
continues to hang over the White House, and continuing
revelations related to Russia threaten to imperil his very hold
on power. The botched attempt at damage control, spearheaded so
ham-handedly by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), has only made
Trump’s life worse. Now his former national security adviser is
seeking immunity to testify. All of this makes the bully pulpit
less impressive.

The bottom line is that Trump needs the members of the Freedom
Caucus more than they need him. Democrats are not going to work
with the president. He has poisoned the well too much. Nancy
Pelosi is an effective leader who will hold her caucus together
to extract maximum concessions. If we wind up at a point when
impeachment is seriously on the table, especially after
expected Democratic gains in the midterms, how hard do you
think the Freedom Caucus members will fight to protect a guy
who went to war against them? Especially when an authentic
movement conservative, Mike Pence, could replace Trump.

-- After attacking the Freedom Caucus generally yesterday
morning, Trump singled out three leaders of the group last
night: Reps. Mark Meadows (N.C.), Jim Jordan (Ohio) and Raúl R.
Labrador (Idaho).

Each of these guys won reelection with a higher percentage of
the vote than Trump received in his district. Jordan won with
68 percent in his northwestern Ohio district. Trump got 64
percent. Trump pulled 63 percent in both Labrador’s and
Meadows’s districts. The Idaho congressman got 68.2 percent,
and the North Carolinian got 64.1 percent.

Ironically, the roughly three dozen members in the Freedom
Caucus were, overall, much more loyal to Trump during the
general election than the squishy moderates he’s now trying to
make his bed with. Meadows stumped with him. Labrador
interviewed to be interior secretary. When the “Access
Hollywood” video came out last October, in which Trump boasted
about being able to get away with groping women because he’s a
celebrity, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman withdrew his endorsement. But
Jordan went to a Toledo-area tea party meeting to explain why
conservatives should stand by the GOP nominee.

Meadows said last night that the president is “not being well
served” by his advisers. “The narrative is not surprising in
the White House because I think some of his advisers are
suggesting that it was consensus that we pulled the rug out
from underneath the president's agenda and nothing could be
further from the truth," he told the Washington Examiner.

“I don't accept the premise. My guess is the American people
won't accept it either,” Jordan said during the same interview.
“I don't know how keeping your promise to the American people,
doing what you told them you're going to do, doing what they
sent you to do — how is that overplaying your hand?"