Think tank seeks to give "Trump his rightful third term in office" | Hacker News Reader

Think tank seeks to give "Trump his rightful third term in office"

thirdtermproject.com

29 pointskrunck34 comments

Not that the stock market is the end all be all of society but if a 4T tax cut isn't making the market giddy, I'm not sure anything will.

once the reel hurt hits the economy like the 1T that gets sucked out of small town healthcare, I have hard time seeing who's actually going to support the guy.

Easy, he blames the carnage on someone else. Immigrants, the "left", trans people, and so on. Rinse and repeat.

> I have hard time seeing who's actually going to support the guy.

The same people that voted for him the last two times even though it was against their own interests to do so.

The fact that this would require a constitutional amendment makes me think this is more about collecting names to later pester for money than anything else. I wouldn't even take it seriously.

"Make bank. Troll the libs." The people behind this see it as a win-win.

Deep breaths, people. Deep breaths.

> I wouldn't even take it seriously.

Things are where they are today because a lot of people didn’t take the extreme things politicians said seriously.

While I agree with a message of taking deep breaths and not freaking out, people should take this seriously.

Before the election: "Project 2025 isn't real".

Now: Oh you better believe it's real.

Lookup the constitutional ratification process. It ain’t happening

They have three other approaches that they're considering as well. (Check the About page on TFA.)

Yup. See Bannon's 'Build the Wall' scam. This sort of thing kind of selects for easy marks.

Why, do you think they wouldn’t pass it given the opportunity?

It's weird how many people seem to want a king

"...deep down inside, you secretly long for a cold-hearted Republican to lower taxes, brutalise criminals and rule you like a king!" - Sideshow Bob

“The strong man will solve everything.” Is a very tempting fantasy.

My politics are wingnut (left libertarian, and I don't expect any respect for that) but they offer me at least a different place from which to observe US politics.

From where I sit, where almost everyone wants someone "better informed" to "represent their interests". Which is to say, almost everyone in the US has a lot of faith in other folks making decisions for them.

If you don't feel that way, it doesn't seem like a big leap from a representational system (where we have little power over the specific policies, and often have no power over who other folks select to represent us) to a system where a single autocrat (soviet or king) makes those decisions.

Since I functionally have no input in any of those three systems, it's hard to see broad-strokes differences.

And, given that most of the folks who are now working under the neoliberal order were previously, only a couple of hundred years ago, working under absolute God-powered monarchs, it'd be not very surprising if they somehow returned to that position.

I understand that there are deep contradictions in my own views (which probably seem dumb when people can't see the contradictions in their own positions), but still, I am very much in agreement with the statement that a lot of folks I know want some authority to take care of them even if it doesn't seem super "weird" to me.

The big difference is that a representative system has a lot of checks and balances on the power of any individual in government, whereas an autocrat doesn't. So you're at the whim of that individual instead of many different people and agencies with competing interests.

Of course a direct democracy of several hundred million people isn't really going to give you that much more say as your vote will a tiny fraction, even if you do decide to participate in most of the decision making. Assuming you want to spend your day on all sorts of policy decisions and judicial rulings.

Everybody always says "communism is a great idea but doesn't work in practice". I am not a communist (in the normal Marxist/Leninist tradition), but my feeling has always been that what I've been presented with as Democracy doesn't really function as such.

At the same time, when I complain I keep getting told that "it's an imperfect system but it's what we have". I suspect that would be the same answer I'd get if we had a king.

And FWIW, it's really what we are seeing now that the executive branch of the US gov has unified around Trump/Musk. So it actually doesn't seem to be a big difference from where I am sitting.

Any time I have interacted with about anyone with any amount of power, I have very much felt like I was beholden to their whims- I get that I am not -supposed- to feel that way, so I don't expect validation for my feelings. I am just reporting an alternative view of the situation.

I do believe in democracy, but the kind of thing in Ursula Le Guin's fictional worlds. I believe that kind of consensus is what guides the better small groups I've interacted with, country dance bands, families, small programming companies, etc.

From what I understand, one of the reasons that Putin got so much authority, was because a significant number of folks were pining for the "good ol' days," of Joseph Stalin.

I'm trying to imagine a scenario where such an amendment could get 290 votes in the House, 67 in the Senate, and be ratified by 38 states. But that beggars my imagination. I suppose a super villain could kidnap the loved ones of all of those legislatures and force them to vote his way. Or rig hundreds of elections. But it would seem to be easier to just forcibly capture or dissolve the federal legislature and judiciary. I've got 99 problems and can't figure out how this one might compete for a slot.

If you have a good economy and popular president (often a byproduct of a good economy) and a highly-focused tech oligarchy that spends its ever-deepening pockets to map which races in each state elections need to be greased to get congress and two-thirds of the state legislatures in line, well then it may be possible.

Trump focusing on his base as well as his executive powergrab first instead of prioritizing the economy at the outset of his term I think is a strategic mistake with respect to his longterm goals (securing multi-term government domination). I don't quite get it, given all the high-risk associated with the consequences of losing the next election, unless of course, they somehow already found a foolproof way to hack all those elections.

> No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than three times, nor be elected to any additional term after being elected to two consecutive terms, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice. [O]

And it’s specially crafted to only apply up the current situation.

- [0] https://ogles.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-ogles-propo...

Does that mean Obama can run again?

I don't think he'd want to after everything that's happened since his term, assuming we even get more elections. America is a different place than when he was pres. Nowadays a message of "hope, prosperity and civility" would get laughed out of the voting booth just like it did with Kamala.

Eventually the pendulum will swing back.He would definitely sell the message much better than Kamala

The proposed amendment basically says that there has to be a gap between the first two terms, so Obama, Dubya, and Clinton would be ineligible.

Only applies to Trump, and Grover Cleveland's ghost.

If an amendment passed to allow any qualified candidate to run for a third term, yes.

The amendment as proposed would prevent a 3rd Obama term [0]. See the second paragraph.

- [0] https://ogles.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-ogles-propo...

Right, Obama would not be "qualified candidate", which is why I wrote what I did (but I hadn't read the text of the amendment carefully to see it was worded to exlude him).

I see roughly 0.01% chance this would make it through the amendment process written like that.

If this gets any attention from congress we need to hit the streets and make our voices heard: NO!

You mean attention like this?

https://ogles.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-ogles-propo...

> If this gets any attention from congress

It's a publicity stunt and nothing more.

This may be one of those trolls they do occasionally just to push liberals so they push back and they can then claim liberals are crazy/reactionary (hey, liberals... please stop falling for the trolls... thx). But whether they mean it or not, uh, no, not gonna happen. I'm sure it's a great way for Rep. Andy Ogles to increase his mailing list and funding, tho.

My favorite part of these doublethink trolls are sentences like this:

"They knew that there may come a time when a leader would rise with the steadfast will to restore the liberty of the people."

Because we all know the best way to restore liberty is to ban words, actions, things, destroy government services, deport people. I really do love how ballsy they are to not just lie, but say the exact opposite thing they're doing. Typical troll tactic, get them distracted and upset trying to explain why you're talking shit, and meanwhile you just do it more.

It's never just a troll, though. Republicans test the waters for changes they genuinely want to make, and whenever there's significant enough blow-back, it's always "we're just joking, why are you guys so upset?".

We saw that as recently as the last election - some of the project 2025 stuff was leaked, people got upset about it, and then suddenly, Trump's campaign was quick to disavow any connection to or even knowledge of project 2025. Once he got into office, he started running through the project 2025 playbook exactly as written.

Trump turns 80 this June. With declining physical health, and a known family history of alzheimers dementia, does anyone really think he will be in a position cognitively and biologically, at the age of 84 to run for a third term?

I think this is theatre.

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