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Trump's Curio Cabinet


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Weird coincidence of the day: DeVos's brother founded Blackwater of all things. Which... I'm sure there's a conspiracy theory to be found in there somewhere.

 

If Trump was at all serious about his education plans during the campaign, her job is basically going to be doing her best to drastically reduce the power of her own department.

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This dive-bombing of Romney fascinates me. First Huckabee and Gingrich go public in trying to tackle Trump away and Conway's spent the past several days warning Trump off. Add in essentially trying to humiliate him via leaking that they wanted an apology. I thought that Conway's indiscretion might have been Trump's way of letting throwing Romney to the wolves of his supporters, but he's going to meet him again tomorrow and there are reports about Trump being "furious" at Conway herself for taking the internal disagreements public and she played the woman card when the media reported it to boot!

 

What the heck is going on here? Gingrich and Huckabee I can understand. They're bottom-feeders that latched onto the strongman and want to be rewarded for being good toadies, plus they both hate Romney from when they ran against him. Gingrich's complaints about Romney being a phony are particularly amusing since Romney was one of the few Republicans who never buckled on Trump. If Romney's biography tells us anything, he's probably meeting with Trump because it's an opportunity to serve and Romney pretty much lives his life looking for ways in which to serve. It's just what he does.

 

Gingrich and Huckabee are like Christie and overestimate their own importance. Trump's loyalty to them lasts just about as long as their usefulness. Their attempts to bully Trump probably won't win them any favors.

 

But if Conway really did go off the reservation, that'd be almost shocking that she wasn't pulled back in before going all out on the Sunday morning shows. Like I said, I'd assumed she was sanctioned. To have her reprimanded in this way right before meeting with Romney would be to humiliate someone who was pretty much leading the inner circle just a few weeks ago. He's basically embarrassed someone that he was trying to hold an olive branch towards while at the same time embarrassing a loyalist who doesn't even seem to be angling for her own power base.

 

And above all, how did we suddenly get neck deep in court intrigue? Oh yeah, we chose a king with thin skin, wants to be liked and craves flattery, sabotages that desire regularly with ill-thought rants that a sub-segment lap up, and has no particular compass beyond his self-interest.

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Come on way I'm too tall for George south. Give me a yeti or a kurrgan of the truth commission or something awful like that.

Nah you're tall to do anything. We'll team up against the Midnights, I'll take the bumps and give you the comeback. Hell I'll even let Driver hit me with the tennis racket.

 

Anything for Eli Cottonmouth.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

Oh, I forgot that Petraeus showing up for the State or Defense posts after all the Clinton email stuff.

Yeah, I like the guy personally, but after what he did, he should be disqualified. Too bad, too, because I think he would be a pretty decent Sec Def.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

Patraeus owned up to it and pled guilty which says something about accepting responsibility for one's actions. Also the nature of the leak was quite a bit different.

 

Not saying he should necessarily be given the position (for one, it's bad optics), just saying its not quite the apples-to-apples comparison.

Well, they were both security breaches that either one is a firing offense, if not jail. Not defending Clinton, either, because really she did violate the law. But for her position and who she was, she probably would have gone to jail, and deservedly so.

 

The irony with Petraeus is his scandal resembled something we would expect from the other Clinton, but it also involved, in part, an email scandal including 30000 pages of messages of its own.

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Pence? Really? You think so? (not challenging, honestly curious of your thoughts on that). I suppose he's best positioned to take the reigns for that faction.. but I dunno. Feels like an awkward fit. Just doesn't seem to be a lot of overlap between Trumpism and Pence's positions. He could change them, of course, but would he feel comfortable doing that? Are the big trumpist issues the ones that Pence is really passionate about? I dunno.

 

Bush taking the mantle of Reagan was a much bigger stretch. If Trump were to back Pence, he'd probably hold on to a lot of the Trump die hards, assuming Trump is popular enough to have a say in the nominating contest.

 

As far as it goes, I expect Pence will internalize many of Trump's basic policies like skepticism on free trade and other nationalist/populist economic and international issues. But mainly, I think Trump represents feeling more than policy anyway. No one really knows how he's really going to govern anyway.

 

 

 

It wouldn't surprise me if Trump actually found himself getting along better with Romney than someone like Giuliani- after all, notwithstanding Giuliani's loyalty and cheerleading, Giuliani is a lifelong attorney. He's not a businessman at heart, and many businessmen I know see attorneys as annoyingly unhelpful, at best, and a complete impediment at worst.

 

Not to mention that Giuliani basically went with the neocons last decade. Not exactly a good mesh for Trump to implement his foreign policy. Might as well go with Bolton if that's the direction he wants to go. Same basic attitude, but with a whole lot more experience with the nuts and bolts.

 

For the sake of Trump not creating a daily media firestorm (which he lacks the discipline to ignore) & fears of some zealot triggering WW3, his choice is truly "anybody other than" Giuliani and Bolton. Romney--despite his accurately recognizing Russia as the biggest threat, and all that implies--is the model choice. If Trump has a spine at all, he will shut down the "loyalty" cries of short sighted sycophants like Conway & Gingrich.

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Well, the problem is Trump is in a bit of damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation. If he gives it to Romney, he's opening the door to a substantial amount of criticism, not unwarranted, since after all, Romney did commit himself to stopping Trump. It does look weak, and it also sends the wrong signal about how loyalty is valued. Many Trumpists think that Romney should not be rewarded, and in fact, should be punished by being ostracized from the GOP, and they have a point.

 

On the other hand, Trump is limited in his options. Trump's foreign policy is basically the Polk-esque, Jacksonian model (i.e., generally somewhat isolationist, while still engaging in necessary realpolitik, and avoiding conflicts unless it means we're going all-out, scorched earth style). Unfortunately, this model hasn't been in vogue for over 30 years, arguably since WWII or even earlier, so there isn't exactly a deep bench right now. It's basically either Romney, or "insert generic neo-conservative," and neo-conservatism is really at odds with the Jacksonian style model of Trump's. Trump probably figures that Romney, though he has some neo-con tendencies as well, is as good an option as he's gonna get, and at least he's competent.

 

The ideal match for Trump would be someone that has a mix of Rand Paul's reluctance to get involved with foreign entanglements, with Bolton's all-out aggression (when we absolutely have to get involved), but that person, sadly, does not exist.

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Well, I'll give Trump this: His cabinet seems serious about doing what he said he'd do during the campaign.

 

-Sessions and Kelly in charge of immigration.

-Price taking point on dismantling Obamacare.

-Pruitt getting ready to take a hatchet to Obama's environmental regulations (the left is going crazy on that one).

 

If Trump is getting ready to go back on his word and govern from the center-left, he's doing a hell of a job faking everyone out right about now. There are a few cabinet choices where that are sort of odd out of context. Chao only seems to be there to make McConnell happy and check off some diversity for a department he doesn't care much about. And Carson himself seems to think that he's a bad choice for HUD. Interior and Energy are probably the next big ones to come up that will give the left heartburn.

 

Still waiting for that Supreme Court pick to come through. I'm guessing that Sessions is putting so muscle behind Pryor. They want a slam dunk that would be pretty easy to confirm and might well be to the right of Pryor himself, Thomas Lee is a name that is getting a lot of play lately thanks to a "study" that rates him as the most Scalia-like of the people on Trump's list. Easy confirmation, will make judicial conservatives happy, will be an olive branch to the Mormon community. Don't laugh at that last, they make up about 10% of the Republican voters in both Nevada and Arizona. Wouldn't shock me if Mormon dislike for Trump cost him Nevada and had more to do with Trump's under-performance in Arizona than people realize.

 

Also, a nominee like Pryor or Cruz might keep Kennedy in his seat for awhile longer. So the first nominee need not be a fire-breather. I'd go with Lee anyway. If added to the court, his work in linguistics could prove very influential (making him particularly apt for replacing Scalia) and he'll be as solid a "vote" as you can ethically want. The difficult nominations can be saved for later when a fight with the Democrats would be a welcome distraction. Right now, Trump doesn't need that since his first 200 days are already set to be hard-fought.

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