The South Dakota Republican Party has a Trump problem. They have Neal Tapio, a rich outsider, trying to take the Trump route to fame and power. Tapio is saying radical things, playing to the bigoted, racist, Trumpist base, and trying to upset two happy and reasonably effective GOP establishment candidates in the U.S. House primary. Tapio is pushing his fellow Republicans to take his extreme Trumpist positions and calling those who don’t “enemies of the state.”
The SDGOP knows Tapio’s message loses half its value after the primary and offers Democrat Tim Bjorkman the most likely path to victory. But crushing Tapio inevitably means putting dents in his pro-Trump rhetoric, and the South Dakota Republican Party doesn’t dare criticize Trump.
Enter Troy Jones to test this mindbending line: Trump is awesome, and Tapio is undermining his successful fight against terrorism:
…our President knows what he is doing and has marshaled the resources of the United States toward his goals.
But, the South Dakota Senate has 16 members who doubt President Trump, don’t think his Cabinet is competent, and supported a resolution usurping President Trump’s authority. The operative final words of Senate Concurrent Resolution 13 is: “Now, therefore, be it resolved, by the Senate of the Ninety-Third Legislature of the State of South Dakota, the House of Representatives concurring therein, that South Dakota petitions the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Department of Justice to identify the root cause of global war on terrorism in order to keep our cities and citizens safe.”
President Trump has enough No-Trumpers, liberals, and mainstream media spreading innuendo about President Trump’s capabilities and leadership. It is embarrassing to have so many South Dakota elected Republicans piling on.
Here is the list of Trump-haters who are second-guessing President Trump’s Departments of Homeland Security and Justice and question President Trump’s leadership and efforts to keep us safe.
R. Blake Curd, Majority Leader, Brock Greenfield, President Pro Tempore, Jim Bolin, Gary Cammack, Phil Jensen, Josh Klumb, Ryan Maher, Jeff Monroe, Stace Nelson, Jenna Netherton, Al Novstrup, Lance Russell, Jim Stalzer, Neal Tapio, John Wiik, Jordan Youngberg [Troy Jones, guest column, South Dakota War College, 2018.02.08].
Troy Jones says Neal Tapio, Al Novstrup, and their fellow-traveling Trumpists, are really Trump-haters. Wrap your head around that.
And read the paraphrase of Cicero with which Jones heads this Newspeakian attack on a Newspeaker: “A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within.” Treason!!! Jones uses Trump’s own Stalinist rhetoric to bash the South Dakota Republican who is trying to manufacture the appearance that Trump himself has endorsed his campaign.
Jones is making a lot of effort to spin one meager, feckless concurrent resolution. But given the centrality of that measly resolution to Tapio’s campaign (he has no record of enacted legislation on which to run), Jones may be knocking out the only leg on which Tapio’s campaign can stand. He may also be offering the SDGOP a chance to have its Donald Trump and eat his worst coattailers, too.
Come back ol’ Troy, we miss you. We’ll be on our best behavior. :)
— I am a “libbie” that enjoys invading the Powers blog…. I have never been censored by Mr. Powers until now… and I suspect it is Jones refusing to post my comments to his column… He responded to one comment by me , but refuses to post a challenge to his claims or answer questions—- That is the country him and his would have if given the power…. no dissenting views, no facts allowed, no questions asked…..Mr. Jones is afraid to post comments that show his willful ignorance and blatant lies….Mr. Jones is a shallow coward.
“…Our president knows what he is doing and has marshaled the resources of the United States toward those goals” Troy Jones.
As I type this the Trump administration has given orders for a second government shutdown for tonight at midnight. The Dow Jones is down more than a 1,000 points today and Troy Jones says the president knows what he is doing.
I will agree with Troy that Trump knows what he is doing as far as the Russian scandal is going. There are indications that Trump won’t agree to an interview with Robert Mueller because his lawyers know Trump can’t help but lie.
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within”. Cicero
I’m curious why Troy would choose this quote from Cicero when his dear leader is being accused of treason nearly everyday.
Troy Jones must believe more in Cicero than he does in the U.S. Constitution. Of course Cicero wasn’t alive when that impressive document was used to build this country.
This country has survived so much during its brief history and Cicero is right, we can survive fools and ambitious people, and it can and will survive a treasonous Donald Trump.
A simple test of the strength of the Constitution is to recall how it dealt with Richard Nixon.
Trump is head of the Dementia Nation. Jones is a devoted acolyte. Among the resources Trump has marshaled are his swindling of contractors, his four bankruptcies, his 1,500 documented lies his 13 months in office, his fraud as in Trump University, and his coherent, inspiring tweets which express the highest aspirations of humankind. Jones lists Trump’s foreign policy as major achievements, but people at the Washington Post who deal with facts and have the mental capacity to understand them arrive at quite a different conclusion. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/trump-shifting-alliances/?utm_term=.3cb59759665a
But if you enter Tapio’s world for a moment, regardless of how scary that may be, could not Tapio dismiss Troy’s allegations by merely saying the resolution does not indict Trump and his efforts, rather it complements them? And that it’s the “enemies of the state,” that are in the way and or “treasonous.”
Troy’s logic suggests that Trump’s acts are already the solvency and finality, and thus the standard, but in Tapio’s world the fight goes on, does it not?
(“Et tu, Troy?”)
Roger, I agree that the statement you quote from Troy—”Our president knows what he is doing”—indicts Troy’s argument from the start. Donald Trump does not know what he is doing. We don’t know what he’s doing, because Trump has not explained anything he is doing in clear terms to the American people since taking office. One has to be demented (as David says) or in denial to maintain that the Trump Administration is carrying out any sort of thoughtful, principled, intelligently intentional policy.
It is weird how, in Jones v. Tapio, we witness the clash of two illogical worldviews driven by emotion and politics rather than fact. They are both calling each other traitors to Trump and to the state (and let’s see how long it takes for Trump to learn French and quote Louis XIV) when in fact both of their positions represent a gross misrepresentation of fact.
But therein lies another bit of brilliance in Jones’s argument (and remember, Troy isn’t stupid, and I don’t think he’s as malicious or Machiavellian as the rest of his Trump party): perhaps he recognizes that the base base [deliberate: adjective + noun] to whom Tapio appeals won’t be swayed by facts; they are all id. The only way to peel those folks away from Tapio and put them back in the mainstream GOP column is to access them on their own Trump terms. Jones thus shouts “Trump!” and “treason!” to muddy Tapio’s waters.
Jones’s logic sucks. The tactic, beating Tapio at his own game, may work.
It seems that Troy Jones intentionally omitted the most crucial part of Cicero’s quote. I’ll complete it for him.
“For the traitor appears not a traitor –
he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the heart of all men.
He rots the soul of a nation –
He works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city –
He infects the body politic so that it no longer can exist
A murderer is less to be feared. – Cicero
Cicero must have known Trump was coming to America to destroy it.
Why was Tapioca involved with Jeff Gannon? How did that all work?
“Why should we care about Jeff Gannon?
A potential male prostitute gets White House credentials using a fake name, provides McClellan a welcome ideological lifeline during press conferences, and somehow gets access to classified CIA documents that outs an undercover CIA operative.
White House-credentialed fake news reporter “Jeff Gannon” from fake news agency “Talon News” was cited by the Washington Post as having the only access to an internal CIA memo that named Joseph Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, as a covert CIA agent. Gannon, in a question posed to Wilson in an October 2003 interview, referred to the memo (to which no other news outlet had access, according to the Post). Gannon subsequently has been subpoenaed by the federal grand jury looking into the Plame outing.”
Very smart context, Roger. Trump is the traitor, and both wings of the SDGOP fawn over him.