(06-08-2021 10:55 AM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote: (06-08-2021 10:46 AM)Marc Mensa Wrote: And the irony in that statement is Donald Trump’s single most crowning achievement was passage of Paul Ryan’s tax plan.
Paul Ryan would have to actually have a tax plan to pass it. I'm unsure if Paul Ryan is even capable of original thought.
Ryan's tax plan was the best thing about him.
That's one thing Trump did: he took the best ideas of the Bush-Ryan-Romney version of conservativism (like being low-tax, pro-life, and anti-regulation) and married it to best of the populist policies (like being anti-foreign interventions and anti-China) that blue-collar Democrats liked.
But Trumpism's problem is Trump's leadership style. Take COVID, for example. Policy-wise, his response was 100% on-the-money. But rather than rise above governors who tried to score political points by disagreeing with those policies, Trump engaged in personal vendettas against them and turned basic scientific questions into tests of personal loyalty.
Compare that response to W's after 9/11 (and remember, the MSM hated W just as much as they hate Trump). W made it clear that he was listening to everyone, even if he would eventually ignore people who disagreed with him. And when people disagreed with him, Bush pretended that it as an honest difference-of-opinion (even if it wasn't). As a result, everyone followed him.
That difference in leadership style is why the outcome from 9-11 was a nation united, and the outcome from COVID was a nation divided.
* edit - poor leadership style also explains why Obama divided people. His approach to disagreements was to tell you why you're wrong, and then to imply that you're stupid if you still disagree with him after his explanation.