Transition Team/Cabinet Thread

[wolfsblood07]

To me, this intra-party war between the "GOPe" and the "alt-right" over people like Mitt Romney and Nikki Haley being considered for cabinet posts amounts to a lot yelling and screaming over nothing.  If Trump forgives them, what's the problem?  We all voted for Romney 4 years ago!  He's a conservative, so that should be enough.  Trump was never going to shut out half the party.

[GLPman]

To me, this intra-party war between the "GOPe" and the "alt-right" over people like Mitt Romney and Nikki Haley being considered for cabinet posts amounts to a lot yelling and screaming over nothing.  If Trump forgives them, what's the problem?  We all voted for Romney 4 years ago!  He's a conservative, so that should be enough.  Trump was never going to shut out half the party.

Unfortunately, at least half of Trump's supporters are too arrogant to realize this.

[ApatheticAustrian]

what the hell is a "conservative"?

i think this question is atm more necessary than at any point since goldwater.

[Classic Conservative]

KT McFarland to be Deputy National Security Adviser
https://mobile.twitter.com/jwpetersNYT/status/802185323639873536

[ApatheticAustrian]

there must be some kind of "golden rule" regarding the porportional distribution of top gigs to nut-jobs and serious conservatives in this administration.

[Fusionmunster]

Just give it to Romney, he's the only reasonable choice of the bunch.

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

So, how many of his 16 competitors (Jim Gilmore, George Pataki, Lindsey Graham, Rick Perry, Scott Walker, Piyush "Bobby" Jindal, Carly Fiorina, Chris Christie, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, John Kasich and Ted Cruz) are going to be involved in the Trump administration?

[Mr. Morden]

Christie in contention for Energy and Homeland Security:

http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/11/breaking_christie_in_strong_contention_for_both_se.html

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[ApatheticAustrian]

that can't be real.....or?

swamp the drain!

[ApatheticAustrian]

and his possible deputy was threatened a few months ago that team trump has dirt on them.... xD

[Mr. Morden]

https://twitter.com/ZekeJMiller/status/802174348756979712?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

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[Mr. Morden]

Terry Branstad in the mix for ambassador to China:

http://www.kcrg.com/content/news/Gov-Branstad-not-ruling-out-role-in-Trump-administration-402172376.html

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

We now have a new White House Counsel

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-appoints-donald-mcgahn-as-white-house-counsel/ar-AAkLnGy?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

He'll be the #1 guy vetting SCOTUS nominees.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

To answer my Austrian friend's question, the word "conservative" is basically an emotion. The Reagan/Bush/Gingrich/Romney people pushed the degeneration of conservatism of an ideology, and now all of them (well, aside from Newt) are scratching their heads as to how the GOP is becoming the party of Trump.

[Seneca]

To answer my Austrian friend's question, the word "conservative" is basically an emotion. The Reagan/Bush/Gingrich/Romney people pushed the degeneration of conservatism of an ideology, and now all of them (well, aside from Newt) are scratching their heads as to how the GOP is becoming the party of Trump.

That is surprisingly close to how I would define conservative. Do you consider yourself a conservative?

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

To answer my Austrian friend's question, the word "conservative" is basically an emotion. The Reagan/Bush/Gingrich/Romney people pushed the degeneration of conservatism of an ideology, and now all of them (well, aside from Newt) are scratching their heads as to how the GOP is becoming the party of Trump.

That is surprisingly close to how I would define conservative. Do you consider yourself a conservative?

Paleoconservative, yes. Movement conservatism, which the #NeverTrump movement holds as it's "ideology," is a hodge-podge of feel good quotes ("Morning in America!," etc) and lame concepts like "American exceptionalism" that skillfully dart around the criticisms from the more ideological corners of the GOP (such as the libertarians) to continue to perpetuate the Reagan cult of personality. Reagan is to the GOP what Kim Il Sung is to the Korean Workers Party.

Today I saw Ana Navarro on Twitter promoting an article in which she claims she'll "hide" her Muslim friends from Trump. When did the Bush era Republicans who are so anti-Trump ever care about the Muslim American community? Remember the Mosque surveillance? The Patriot Act? The color coded "terror threat levels?" The Israel-first foreign policy? The war based on a lie?

I won't pretend Trump is a bastion of ideological purity. I don't know what his ideology is, if he even has one. But as far as I'm concerned, the worst aspects of Trump (the Islamaphobia mainly) are a continuation of the pre-Trump GOP, while the best aspects of Trump (the kinda sorta non-interventionist foreign policy, the anti-globalism, the disdain for the outdated post-World War II order) are a reversal.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Crazy grapevine rumours that former VP Dick Cheney may be in the running for SoS all of a sudden. Mad if true

[kyc0705]

Crazy grapevine rumours that former VP Dick Cheney may be in the running for SoS all of a sudden. Mad if true

That's quite the source, too. This might really be happening. God help us all.

[Illiniwek]

Crazy grapevine rumours that former VP Dick Cheney may be in the running for SoS all of a sudden. Mad if true

That's quite the source, too. This might really be happening. God help us all.

Goodness what a disaster this might be...

[KingSweden]

Crazy grapevine rumours that former VP Dick Cheney may be in the running for SoS all of a sudden. Mad if true

That's quite the source, too. This might really be happening. God help us all.

Well, then. Can't question a source like that. They've got the best beat on the GOP out of anyone outside of Costa.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Christie in contention for Energy and Homeland Security:

http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/11/breaking_christie_in_strong_contention_for_both_se.html

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Christie would make a great Secretary of Homeland Security. He's already demonstrated how great he is at securing bridges.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-trump-advisers-divided-secretary-state-pick/story?id=43742340

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Giuliani is likely in trouble because, in addition to all his personal failings, the right-wingnuts who appear to dominate the upcoming Puggygrabber administration really dislike his stance on abortion.

I don't think that follows. The furthest out of these people don't give a sh**t about abortion except as a means of demographic manipulation (id est eugenics), and the relatively more reasonable ones don't give a sh**t about it at all.

There have been way too many conservative Christian fellow-travelers and useful idiots involved in all this for comfort but they aren't by and large the drivers of the Trump phenomenon.

Those "Christian fellow-travelers and useful idiots" are going to have at least half the cabinet and Trump's puppet strings.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Crazy grapevine rumours that former VP Dick Cheney may be in the running for SoS all of a sudden. Mad if true

That's quite the source, too. This might really be happening. God help us all.

Well, then. Can't question a source like that. They've got the best beat on the GOP out of anyone outside of Costa.

Fortunately, I have enough faith in the President-elect to know what the link was before I clicked it. But if it were true, that'd be enough for me to publicly apologize for voting for Trump after surrendering my voter registration card to Evergreen so it can be burned in front of me.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The NYT dives into the behind the scenes of the “Giuliani or Romney?” question for Secretary of State:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/24/us/politics/donald-trump-mitt-romney-rudy-giuliani-state.html

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The media, with its insatiable appetite for drama, focuses on the Salt Lake City speech and Trump's criticism to highlight the distance between Romney and Trump. But at the end of the day they forget that their differences deal very much with style and personality more so then anything else. Likewise, they ignore that both Trump and Romney have similar experiences (business) and both grabbed their party's nominations largely by taking hard line stances on immigration. Finally, aside from personality and style, the biggest difference between the two is the Trump took such approaches and jacked them up to 11 and managed to win by doing so.

Personality, style and success/jealousy mask the marked similarities that exist regarding both their backgrounds and campaign emphasis. It frankly doesn't surprise me that Trump would come to view a turnaround artist with vast experience closing tough sales (or as Trump would call it, "making the best deals") and arguably one with a vast history of morphing based on the needs of the time (another commonality), over Rudy or most of the rest of these options when it comes to taking a foreign policy (even one the SoS might disagree with) and selling it to an unconvinced ally.

Take the two of them, put them on The Apprentice and ask yourself which one would Trump go for when it comes to a project based on making tough sales pitches to skeptical customers?

The interest in Romney, which has baffled the mainstream media and Trump's loyalist brigades, makes perfect sense when viewed in this light.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Crazy grapevine rumours that former VP Dick Cheney may be in the running for SoS all of a sudden. Mad if true

That's quite the source, too. This might really be happening. God help us all.

Well, then. Can't question a source like that. They've got the best beat on the GOP out of anyone outside of Costa.

It's solid reporting like that which makes one stop and say A-ha!