cashto wrote:QUOTE (cashto @ Mar 14 2019, 04:46 PM) Oh @#(!, should I turn myself in to the Fallacy Police now, or should I wait until they break down my door?
Oh come on cash
I'm not coming after you as a person I'm just pointing out that there was a logical disconnect to your counterargument.
QUOTE In my defense, though, I think you've got a little bit of motte-and-bailey going on. The motte being "blackmail could explain Lindsey Graham" -- which, sure, it totally COULD, among many other possible explanations. The bailey being "blackmail is the only reasonable explanation for Lindsey Graham", in which case it's very valid to ask about other similar cases where blackmail is not a reasonable explanation at all.[/quote]
It's not the only reasonable explanation, it's just the one that I find most likely. Mostly because I find it difficult to believe anyone who's even slightly intelligent would ever buy in on DJT.
QUOTE You're right that Romney certainly remains critical of Trump at times, and though he now accepts Trump's endorsement, he doesn't exactly endorse Trump either. Rubio also. Still, they've both stopped calling Trump an outright fraud, a phony, a cancer on conservatism. Maybe because they don't believe it any more. Maybe because they never did. Maybe they still believe it but keep quiet because it loses them votes.[/quote]
Rubio and Romney both voted against Trump. They are one of a group of people who are conservative, share in some of Trump's outwardly-conservative beliefs, but will still publicly disagree with him. They don't call him a fraud, phony, cancer, etc., but my guess is that they avoid doing that to avoid negative press on Fox News. They don't care when Brietbart goes "omg what cucks" but they do care when Sean Hannity is like "boy that guy sounds like a Democrat don't he?" They don't generally sound like fluffers though. Graham sounds like a fluffer.
QUOTE Or maybe because they're just being gay blackmailed.[/quote]
Maybe. Maybe everyone's just being gay blackmailed! Now I see the light. You're right. Definitely Graham can't have someone dangling his sexuality over his head because then everyone has their sexuality dangling over their head.
QUOTE Cruz's trajectory OTOH is pretty much identical to Graham's, I don't think you can deny that.[/quote]
Cruz has... other problems. The biggest one being, as Lindsey Graham once said before saying "oh dear god please nominate Cruz over Trump," "if you murdered Ted Cruz on the senate floor, and the jury was composed of senators, not a one would vote to convict." It's not surprising that he buddies up to the guy who commands a significant portion of his party's vote. Cruz' problem is that he's weak enough that he can lose to Beto O'rourke if things don't quiiiite work out. Graham's a consistent 55% senator, Ted Cruz was 50.9 vs O'Rourke.
QUOTE I don't really get what your point is about the Republican establishment. I mean, yes, the Republican establishment used to hate to Trump, and now they've become his lackeys. Again, I don't see how that supports your point. Is the whole Republican establishment being blackmailed by team Trump? Or is it really due to some of these other explanations I've offered? At best, Graham's transformation is different only in degree, and not in kind.[/quote]
So I think I get what the problem is. You think that I'm trying to offer an explanation that every single Republican is being blackmailed by Team Trump. I have no idea why you think that's a necessary extension of "I think Graham is being blackmailed." By the way, there is a significant difference between the Republican establishment and Graham, one of visibility. And Graham's transformation being different in degree is important! The distance between Graham's positions in Nov, 2018 and Jan, 2019 is *wider* than the difference between, say, Cruz' positions in Nov, 2018 and Jan, 2019. That... certainly matters.
QUOTE I know of a few conservatives myself -- some of them on this board -- who were initially skeptical of Trump but changed their tune over time with seeing that Trump is governing pretty much the way that he campaigned, the choices he's made in the judicial branch, the tax bill, and the support he gets on Fox News. Did Trump change? No. Did they change? Yes.[/quote]
All conservatives who support Trump are virulent racists, or at the very, very minimum think that virulent racism is fine. Which makes them at least some kind of racist.
QUOTE I get that Trump threatens and coerces, but since when does he ever do it SECRETLY?[/quote]
All the $#@!ing time. What do you think an NDA is?!
QUOTE And now we're saying that this is team Trump, how many people are in on the secret?[/quote]
"and now we're saying this is Team Trump" jesus dude really? His entire $#@!ing career arc has been literally that of the public face of an organized crime family. Everyone on his campaign staff keeps getting indicted and
sent to prison for years. And you're sitting here like "wow this idea that somehow there's a group of people of which Trump is just a figure head is soooo unbelievably farcical."
Stop just seeing what's there. Start seeing what has to be where in order for that thing there to behave the way it does. It's almost directly analogous to dark matter: we know *something* is there because we can see that *something* is having an effect. *Something* caused Graham to flip. Something caused everyone who flipped to flip.
QUOTE Does blackmail
really explain why Graham is so effusive in his praise? I would think he would want to do everything to stay off Trump's radar -- stay quiet and keep his criticisms to himself.[/quote]
Except that Graham is a powerful senator with many deep connections. Why would Trump (Team Trump whatever you want to $#@!ing call the political coalition we currently call the "Trump Administration" I don't care, but you cannot possibly imagine that it's actually just Donald Trump making decisions by himself 100% of the time and that he's doing everything, it's just a convenient shorthand to point to Trump as a surrogate for the whole system that's going on there) throw that away? So instead you force him to be a vocal ally.
QUOTE Unless, of course, he became a true believer in time. Esp. with his BFF McCain out of the picture.[/quote]
McCain retires so Graham thinks "clearly the next step is to jump on the Trump hype train"? Yeah that rates a hard suspicious.
The only other explanation that I've seen offered that I would buy for Graham's swap is that Graham is a hardcore white nationalist who would prefer to see the US devolve into an autocracy than have a democratic society in which minorities get to vote. And yeah, ok, that's reasonable, but somehow I think "cheerfully urging in a new era of fascism" is less likely than "presenting support to avoid a particular backlash that would lead to ruin."
Especially considering that it is
already strongly suspected that Graham is a closeted homosexual.
So to sum up:
I think that the organizations which lead to Trump becoming president (through a series of clandestine efforts of blackmail and bribery and coercion with the assistance of at least one foreign power), the ones which are
actively being investigated by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, whose investigation has
already lead to several arrests and convictions for bribery and blackmail, might have bribed or blackmailed Senator Lindsey Graham based on Graham's remarkable positional change on the Trump administration.
You think that's absurd, and you offer the following reasons:
1) Trump is a loudmouth.
2) If that was true, then Trump has to be blackmailing all the other people who support him.
3) This explanation doesn't explain Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Mitt Romney, or why people hate pineapple on pizza so much.
In exchange you offer this explanation for Graham's switch:
In the three months between the election and inauguration, Graham had a divine inspiration that actually Donald J. Trump is just the greatest president since sliced bead.
