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Chairman Rabbit (兔主席, a.k.a. Ren Yi, grandson of Ren Zhongyi, a CCP leader), writes a blog popular among youngish Chinese professionals. He’s a robust, Harvard-educated defender of CCP-led China and thinks a hypocritical West is trying to suppress China’s legitimate rise./1
He thinks Western democracy is flawed, perhaps even falling apart. The Economist had a chat with him a while back when he bravely defended Fang Fang (not)./2
As @niubi and @zichenwanghere have pointed out, Rabbit been taking some flak from his readers on his views on the China-Australia bust up, so methoughts it would be worth taking a look at what the wolf bunnies are saying./3
I’ll quickly lay-out Rabbit’s views & then review the most-popular comments. Here’s the post: https://t.co/3gQrtNrVVR. Rabbit looks ahead to President Biden prioritizing repairing US relations with the US allies. He thinks Biden does not want conflict with Beijing.../4
...but (wisely) points out that being nice to Beijing would be hemlock to the Democrats’ future electoral chances, given the rabid “populist right-wing”. (Not because of anything Beijing has done.) So don’t expect US-China relations to improve much at all./5
He thinks Western democracy is flawed, perhaps even falling apart. The Economist had a chat with him a while back when he bravely defended Fang Fang (not)./2
As @niubi and @zichenwanghere have pointed out, Rabbit been taking some flak from his readers on his views on the China-Australia bust up, so methoughts it would be worth taking a look at what the wolf bunnies are saying./3
I’ll quickly lay-out Rabbit’s views & then review the most-popular comments. Here’s the post: https://t.co/3gQrtNrVVR. Rabbit looks ahead to President Biden prioritizing repairing US relations with the US allies. He thinks Biden does not want conflict with Beijing.../4
...but (wisely) points out that being nice to Beijing would be hemlock to the Democrats’ future electoral chances, given the rabid “populist right-wing”. (Not because of anything Beijing has done.) So don’t expect US-China relations to improve much at all./5
Lamar Alexander is from my home town. There's a lot that's hard to understand about him - a relatively moderate guy who is nonetheless a staunch partisan. But that's actually how the East TN GOP has traditionally gone. Very much party loyalists though not militant ideologues.
I like to draw a line back from Lamar to Hugh Lawson White, the Knoxville Senator who effectively created the Tennessee Whig Party. His supporters were angry that Jackson passed him over for Martin Van Buren as successor. So they formed a militant party bloc of Whigs.
Tennessee politics from the mid-1830s right up to 1861 was remarkably stable and competitive. Whigs held strength through the 1850s even after they changed their name. Notice Tennessee as the rare Whig state in 1852. And the strong Whig counties around Knoxville.
Partisan competition was very strong in TN - much stronger than ideological competition. The three regional "Grand Divisions" (East, Middle, West) made it hard to develop a coherent statewide ideological position, so parties jealously guarded their regional strongholds.
This translated into Civil War loyalties to a large extent. East TN Whigs were the most militantly Unionist. Middle and West TN Dems were the most militantly Confederate. However, Middle/West TN Whigs mostly were Confederate and East TN Dems were mixed bc of Andrew Johnson.
End of an era
— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) December 4, 2020
via @burgessev https://t.co/qjga3g6UOT
I like to draw a line back from Lamar to Hugh Lawson White, the Knoxville Senator who effectively created the Tennessee Whig Party. His supporters were angry that Jackson passed him over for Martin Van Buren as successor. So they formed a militant party bloc of Whigs.
Tennessee politics from the mid-1830s right up to 1861 was remarkably stable and competitive. Whigs held strength through the 1850s even after they changed their name. Notice Tennessee as the rare Whig state in 1852. And the strong Whig counties around Knoxville.
Partisan competition was very strong in TN - much stronger than ideological competition. The three regional "Grand Divisions" (East, Middle, West) made it hard to develop a coherent statewide ideological position, so parties jealously guarded their regional strongholds.
This translated into Civil War loyalties to a large extent. East TN Whigs were the most militantly Unionist. Middle and West TN Dems were the most militantly Confederate. However, Middle/West TN Whigs mostly were Confederate and East TN Dems were mixed bc of Andrew Johnson.