I think you’re looking for the term populist, not extremist.

> I think you’re looking for the term populist, not extremist.

Actually, I meant extremist. The "Trump" party is full of people who want to roll back amendments to the 1940s or earlier.

These are extremist views, in my opinion, and don't represent the average American. Bannon and those who would raise white supremacist marches chanting against Jews can go suck a lemon.

Agreed. "extremist" implies some sort of ideology. If Trump has one of those, he hasn't articulated it yet.

> Agreed. "extremist" implies some sort of ideology. If Trump has one of those, he hasn't articulated it yet.

Are you serious? Every politician is an ideologue. It's why we elect one over another. We agree with one's idea about policies over another's.

The only people who we expect to divorce themselves from ideologies are judges, who are there to interpret the law, not make it.

I'm not sure the electorate sees elections the same way.

I think most of them are true Republicans in the sense that they want to elect people they think are trustworthy and then let them make decisions as their proxy. In that case, a candidate can have policies and platforms to convince people to let her be their proxy, but she doesn't need them. She could just have a "trust me, I'll make the right decision" pitch.

Besides, if Trump is an ideologue, what is that ideology? At best it's a new (or at least renewed) nativist spin on identity politics. That's not an ideology; that's a team.

> Besides, if Trump is an ideologue, what is that ideology?

Republicanism is an ideology. Trump's is clearly farther right than previously elected R presidents.

I'll respectfully disagree. Trump doesn't really care about limited government, balanced budgets, traditional values, federalism, reducing abortion, market-based solutions to societal problems, etc.

He does have a laundry list of issues he tweets about, a subset of which he picks at with executive orders (which, itself, is unconservative) but that seems more like raw appeasement of his political base than anything coherent (or even consistent!).

There are a few exceptions, I guess. He's, at least in rhetoric, for a strong military. Though we're nowhere near a "Trump doctrine" that proposes a coherent framework for that desire. It's, again, more of an id-driven move than anything rational.

> Time will tell whether electing an extremist candidate was a good idea or not.

And in the meantime, who cares if the country is lit on fire? That's the future elected officials' problem.

Sarcasm aside, I actually agree that we need to speak with our vote. I just wish we didn't have such large swings of the deregulation penis in the meantime, and instead we had cool-headed, logical people at the helms of these agencies and our Executive branch. I suppose it's too naive of me.