Are Burnett and the Cult willing to walk away, willing to close the door?
Burnett doesn't even raise the prospect and elsewhere these Cult members only speak of things like, "I won't campaign as vocally, but he'll still have my vote" or "I won't donate as freely . . . but he'll still get my vote!"
Do the jack asses understand tough love?
We're not supporting the practice or endorsing it.
But if you're going to put it in play, you can't be codependent or an enabler.
Tough love is setting limits. It is saying, "If you do this, you've gone too far."
But as far as Burnett and other Cult members are concerned, that's it.
No, it isn't.
"Tough love" says actions have consequences -- hence the "tough."
When it became popular, at the end of the eighties and the start of the nineties, tough love was something some parents were encouraged to do with adolescent children with substance abuse problems.
For example, if the teenager was doing cocaine, the response wasn't, "You do cocaine and you've gone too far and we will be talking about it in the morning!" The response was, "You do cocaine and you're out of the house. Don't bother coming back."
The child may beg and may plead for forgiveness and may have no where else to go. Your child. Out on the street. Put out on the street by you. That's what made it "tough" love.
But in the minds of the Cult of St. Barack, just saying "Barry don't!" becomes enough because they've spent nearly three years enabling everything that to suddenly pipe up with an objection is a major strain for them.
They can pretend all they want, but they are not setting limits and they are not practicing tough love. Until they're ready to set down some consequences and, most importantly, to follow implement those consequences if behaviors don't change, they're just codependents enabling their own abuse.