If she had spent the last 5 years talking like this, she would have been one of the few GOP congressmen that I could have supported, or at least understood. Instead, she spent 5 years acting like a crazy lunatic begging for Trump's attention.
This is what has absolutely gotten me.
Take all of their flaws, but Nixon and Goldwater and Reagan and (to a lesser extent) Bush all had core values, basic principles, ideas of what they wanted to accomplish. As did Rockefeller, Ford, even McCain. I think Romney might - MIGHT - have been a decent President because of the time he'd have been in office.
The same can be said about any Democrat, centrist or liberal that ran and won, except (possibly) Hillary. I hedge on her because I'll be honest:
I think she DID have some core ideas, but I think even she knew they would have been unpopular with the body politic and thus hid them. I suspect - based on knowing her limo driver in Little Rock (one of them) - that Hillary is about as to the Left as AOC is, but she was smart and seasoned enough to know she could never say that BEFORE the election. So I'm willing to concede even Hillary had some core ideas, she just knew they were unpopular. BUT SHE HAD THEM!
That CANNOT be said about Donald Trump, not at all. He's little more than a loud mouthed New Yorker drawing attention to himself - kinda like AOC but AGAIN, she actually has some beliefs!! I think they're crazy, but she has them.
He has none of that - and what he has done is infect the entire Republican Party with the DJT virus. Newt Gingrich was (is?) a deeply flawed individual both politically and personally - but he did have (at one time) some professed and acted upon core values. But pretty much every member of the GOP who has held to any core beliefs - Liz Cheney, Kinzinger, Bacon, Massie (not yet), Corker, Flake, McCain, Graham - has either seen them compromise egregiously, reveal they were liars, or been chased out of office by the incited DJT mob.
The MTG people like now probably never could have won election in the first place.
I remember when Al Gore gave perhaps the greatest concession speech in modern political history. It HAD to be tough (my favorite story: President Bush 41, whose own son was the victor, was so moved by the fact Gore had lost and been a stand up guy, he called him after the speech because "I knew how he felt, and he came so close"), but if THAT Al Gore had been the one campaigning, I'm convinced he would have won.
I hated the guy, and I was impressed.
I can tolerate even basic views I find wrong or repugnant so long as they're clearly sincerely held. I cannot tolerate, "I'm just here so I can have some power."
