It’s Friday, March 11th, 2016…but before we begin, three brief thoughts. First, Jeffrey Herf identifies what we perceive to be the problem with Trump’s contention his self-proclaimed “deal-making” skills will transfer well outside the world of his real estate bubble:
“For him, whose name hangs over casinos in New Jersey and Las Vegas, and who owns real estate across New York, buying politicians is just part of doing business. Trump apparently has never met a politician he could not buy, and thus he takes pleasure in expressing his contempt for the breed. He does not promise an end to the swindle but its ultimate completion. He is, in other words, selling cynicism, along with his supposed capacity to operate within and beyond it.“
Sure, Trump can pay Hillary and Bill $100K to attend his wedding; but in the real world, that’s not a questionable honorarium, it’s a bribe. And you can’t buy off Paul Ryan or Congressional Dimocrats, let alone Vladimir Putin, with cash, cases of Trump champagne or comped rooms at your resorts.
To borrow a phrase from Matthew Quigley…
…Washington ain’t New York; and Congress ain’t no concrete contractor. More importantly, and we cannot stress this enough, were Trump miraculously able to win the general election (a possibility which, given his exceedingly high unfavorable ratings and a MSM just dying to reveal every single skeleton in his spacious walk-in closet, we find HIGHLY dubious!), the press would simply be salivating at the thought of savaging his every move in the White House.
Good luck offering your pay-offs…er,…”honorariums”…from the Oval Office, Don!
Second, Rubio and Kasich need to wake up and smell what’s best for both the Republican Party, and more…make that most importantly, their country:
“As bad as last night was for Marco Rubio — and it was bad — there’s no logic to the idea that the guy who’s running a disappointing third should drop out so people can unite behind the distant fourth.” – Jim Geraghty on the MSM’s continuing “Kasich Surging” narrative.
To quote David French from our last edition after he rightly concluded the good of the many outweighed the political aspirations of the two:
“…There are nine contests between today and March 8. They include strong Cruz states and strong Rubio states. If we can’t reach unity before March 15 — before Trump can achieve a commanding delegate lead with a minority of Republican votes — we are lost. So I’ll ask you [Rubio and Kasich] again.Do you love this country more than you love yourself?
And if you’re wondering whether I’m questioning your patriotism, I think the answer is clear.You’re damn right I am.“
Third, if the following headline actually comes to fruition, like Kasich’s continued pursuit of purely personal profit under the guise of duty to country, Ben joins John as just yet another example of a self-serving wolf masquerading in Christian Conservative clothing:
“Dr. Ben Carson, who dropped out of the race last week, will endorse Donald Trump for president on Friday, according to CNN…Carson had earlier said that he was “open” to being Trump’s VP.“
And we will have lost all respect for Dr. Carson.
Now, here’s The Gouge!
Leading off the top of today’s order, courtesy of his Morning Jolt, Jim Geraghty weighs in on the mind-numbing political predilections exhibited by supporters of the party supposedly possessed of reason:
Going into Tuesday’s primaries, the last elections before the race enters its final and determinative phase when Ohio and Florida award 165 delegates on a winner-take-all basis next week, Trump’s enemies had hoped to stall his momentum. In particular, they hoped that Ted Cruz, whose campaign is based in large part on his appeal to Evangelical voters, could throw up a roadblock in Mississippi, and that John Kasich could arrest Trump’s momentum in Michigan.
Both Cruz and Kasich failed. And as they did, the slow death of the Republican party ground onward. Hope of preserving the conservative movement that has sustained it for nearly four decades diminished further. (If John Kasich represents the “hope” of the Conservative movement, let us off!)
This morning, Ben Domenech declares, “Republicans, you can have a Ted Cruz party or a Donald Trump party. Choose.”
But they have chosen. More than 12.4 million people have voted in the Republican presidential primary so far. Donald Trump has won 4.3 million votes, or nearly 35 percent. Cruz won 3.6 million votes, or 29 percent. The arguments have been made, and the largest chunk of the Republican party has chosen to send the country to Trump University.
Sure, in the eyes of most conservatives who actually care about policy, Ted Cruz would be a much better nominee and president than Donald Trump. But a time whenenormous numbers of Evangelical Christians and Catholicsare convincing themselves to see what they want to see in Trump, other factions of the Republican party — businessmen, veterans, federalists, judicial strict-constructionists, gun owners, school choice advocates — are likely to see what they want to see, too. (Which makes them all misguided muttonheads!)
It’s not just primary voters. As Jonah points out, some one-time conservative philosophical and policy leaders have come to embrace ideas that they rejected just a short while ago, reflecting either a sudden and complete reversal in thinking or Chris Christie levels of political opportunism:
Consider Larry Kudlow and Stephen Moore. In August, the two legendarily libertarian-minded economists attacked Trump, focusing on what they called Trump’s “Fortress America platform.”His trade policies threaten the global economic order, they warned. “We can’t help wondering whether the recent panic in world financial markets is in part a result of the Trump assault on free trade,” they mused. As for Trump’s immigration policies, they could “hardly be further from the Reagan vision of America as a ‘shining city on a hill.’”
Months later, as Trump rose in the polls, Kudlow and Moore joined the ranks of Trump’s biggest boosters — and not because Trump changed his views. On the contrary, Kudlow has moved markedly in Trump’s direction. He now argues that the borders must be sealed and all visas canceled. He also thinks we have to crack down on China.
Keep voting for the candidate you think is best, but recognize that the base of the party has been told that Trump lies all the time, and they’ve chosen to believe the lies. Building a wall will be easy. Trade tariffs will restore prosperity. He would never lie to me.I’m going to pick the right card in three-card monte.
We know there’s a sucker born every minute; we just never realized the statistic played out to equal 35% of Republican voters! Still, the numbers give us hope; Cruz ain’t out of it yet.
In a related item, courtesy of NRO, David French pens this plea to the Party of Lincoln in general…and Marco Rubio and John Kasich in particular:
“…Can we wake up yet? Can we do math? Can we do politics? Here’s what our actual political experience tells us: Donald Trump is not going to beat himself, he will win a four or even a three-man race, and he is entirely capable of winning the GOP nomination with roughly 35 percent of the vote — indeed, he’s doing it now.
Here’s what the math says: John Kasich and Marco Rubio, you have no hope of becoming the GOP nominee. Even if you win your home states, the only thing that will do is maintain the four-person dynamic under which Trump thrives.Even if you are fortunate enough to work cooperatively to deny Trump an absolute majority of delegates, do either of you — in your right mind — believe that a convention dominated by Trump and Cruz delegates is going to unite behind you? They’d sooner riot (and I’m only partially joking).
We’ve given the multi-candidate “blind ambition tour” exactly 23 states and one territory to work, and here’s the score: Trump 15, Cruz 7, Rubio 2, and Kasich . . . zero. I think that’s a sufficient sample size. Let’s try something else.Let’s try uniting around the person who’s beaten Trump more than anyone else — a person who happens to be a constitutional conservative, who would replace Justice Scalia with a judicial superstar,who is unquestionably pro-life, who is unyielding in his defense of religious liberty, and who actually understands the dynamics of the global economy, trade policy, and national security…”
Admittedly, Ted has some faults; sure, he did some grandstanding filibusters in the Senate. But from our perspective he’s INFINITELY preferable to the faux-Conservativism of Trump. Consider:
1. He’s not a narcissistic, hypocritical liar with delusions of grandeur.
2. He didn’t hug Obama for personal political gain in the immediate run-up to the 2012 election.
3. He didn’t run as a Tea Party Conservative, then, immediately upon his election, join the worst Dimocrats in the Senate by offering amnesty and citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants.
4. He’s not trying to parlay carrying his home state into a VP slot with the enemy of everything he purportedly holds dear.
Furthermore, as David French notes above, what’s beyond dispute are: Cruz’s credentials as a solid Conservative; his incredible command of every aspect of policy, foreign or domestic; and, his unequaled skills as a debater/interrogator who will mop the floor with Hillary in a debate rather than just ridicule her.
Just sayin’.
Next up, NRO‘s Ian Tuttle identifies another inconvenient truth about Trump:
“Donald Trump’s supporters are tired of excuses. Real leaders are accountable for their actions, they say. They like the Donald’s own counsel, from February 2013: “Take responsibility for yourself — it’s a very empowering attitude.”
Except Trump has never followed his own advice.Donald Trump’s professional life is a chronicle of excuse-making for his own misjudgment and malfeasance.
…And other cases abound: Trump excuses four bankruptcies, for example, by saying, as he did on the debate stage in August, that he has “used the laws of this country just like the greatest people that you read about every day in business have used the laws of this country, the chapter laws, to do a great job for my company, for myself, for my employees, for my family, et cetera.” Conveniently, he ignored the part where he managed those companies into bankruptcy in the first place.Presumably the 1,100 employees who lost their jobs when Trump Entertainment Resorts went under in 2009 do not feel that Trump’s use of Chapter 11 laws was “great” for them.
Predictably, this sort of “accountability” is now prevailing on the campaign trail, where Trump has blamed a “very bad earpiece” for his failure to denounce David Duke and white supremacists — despite having repeated Duke’s name and the words “white supremacists” back to CNN host Jake Tapper.And there is no question that similar excuses will prevail in the White House, if he were to end up there.
Conservatives have long bemoaned Barack Obama’s refusal to take responsibility for his mistakes and failures.If Donald Trump’s supporters wanted a real leader, they would demand accountability from Trump.But it seems they simply want their own Obama.“
Speaking of the greatest evil to befall the Republic since even James Earl Carter, we offer into evidence two sordid stories straight from the pages of The Crime Blotter which are a direct result of Barack Hussein’s utterly insane…
“A convicted crack dealer who left prison early as part of the Obama administration’s mass release of federal inmates has been indicted by a grand jury for fatally stabbing his ex-girlfriend and her two kids in Columbus, Ohio. The gory crime drew national attention because the children, ages 7 and 10, were murdered to eliminate them as witnesses in the brutal massacre of their 32-year-old mother.
…Callahan should have been in jail when the crimes occurred, but he was released four years early because federal sentencing guidelines for crack dealers got reduced. The change is part of President Obama’s effort to reform the nation’s justice system as a way of ending racial discrimination…”
Soooo…in order to right some mythical act of racial discrimination against a duly-convicted crack dealer, Wendall Callahan received early release; great deal for Wendall…
…not so great a deal for Erveena Hammonds and her two young daughters! Tell us again how The Great Divider’s on the side of Black Americans?!?
“A man suspected of killing five people across Kansas and Missouri was arrested early Wednesday morning after an extensive manhunt, the Missouri Highway Patrol said.
…Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said in a statement late Tuesday that Pablo Antonio Serrano-Vitorino was a Mexican national who was in the U.S. illegally.According to authorities, he was held at the Overland Park, Kan. Municipal Court on Sept. 14. The fingerprinting generated an ICE detainer, but the agency was “erroneously issued…to the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office, instead of the Overland Park Municipal Court.”
The Department of Homeland Security said that Serrano-Vitorino was released from custodywithout ICE being notified, though they did not elaborate on why. ICE also confirmed that Serrano-Vitorino had been deported back to Mexico in 2004, but had since returned illegally.
It was not clear when he returned to the U.S...”
Tell us again how a wall wouldn’t have helped?!?
Meanwhile, the greatest threat to Black Americans isn’tWHITE cops, WHITEracism, WHITEprivilege or even a WHITEChristmas:
“Five people were shot dead and three others hospitalized in an incident in Wilkinsburg late Wednesday. Allegheny County Police Lt. Andrew Schurman said the dead include four females and a male, all believed to be adults. They were among those who were at a backyard party. The incident occurred in the 1300 block of Franklin Avenue shortly before 11 p.m.
Police said they believe there were two shooters, neither who was believed to be at the party…”
To mangle a phrase from the Mayor of Munchkin City, it’s undeniably and reliably other Black Americans! Oh,…we’re gonna go out a limb here and assume, since the party was still going strong at 2300 on a weekday evening, no one in attendance was worried about getting to work the next morning. Which means gang or drug-related…likely both.
In either case, the only Whiteys at fault were the Progressives who designed, implemented and have perpetuated the Great Society-equivalent of indentured servitude.
Then there’s today’s installment of the Environmental Moment, and this indecipherable bit of politically-correct claptrap which passes for deep, theoretical thought in modern academia: submitted for your perusal, we present Glaciers, gender, and science: A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental change research, a paper by researchers at the University of Oregon, underwritten by the U.S. National Science Foundation and published in the January 10th edition of the journal Progress in Human Geography. We challenge you, in all seriousness, to provide us a sane synopsis…in understandable English…of the author’s point:
“…Ice is not just ice. The dominant way Western societies understand it through the science of glaciology is not a neutral representation of nature. The feminist glaciology framework draws attention to those who dominate and frame the production of glaciological knowledge, the gendered discourses of science and knowledge, and the ways in which colonial, military, and geopolitical domination co-constitute glaciological knowledge. Even in a globalized age where the place of women and indigenous people has improved markedly in some parts of the world, masculinist discourses continue to dominate, in subtle and determinative ways. Feminist glaciology advocates for a shift of preoccupations in research, policy, and public perceptions from the physical and seemingly natural, to a broader consideration of ‘cryoscapes’, the human, and the insights and potentials of alternative ice narratives and folk glaciologies.
The critique and framework outlined here illuminate experiences and narratives that emerged historically but remain potent today. Public discourse on the cryosphere continues to privilege, quite explicitly, manly endeavours and adventures in the field, and those who conduct their science in the manner of masculinist glaciologists and other field scientists of decades and centuries past…
The call for a feminist glaciology is not limited to ice and glaciers, but is a larger intervention into global environmental change (and especially climate change) research and policy…”
If there were ever a better reason to kill them all…all Liberals…and let God sort ’em out, we can’t recall it. Think of it: this is your tax dollars at work!
On The Lighter Side…
Finally, we’ll call it a week with the great Thomas Sowell’s latest…
“The presidential election prospects for the Democrats are so bad this year that only the Republicans can save them — as Republicans have saved them before.
Will a Supreme Court without a single Protestant justice rule that an “under-representation” of any group is evidence of discrimination?
Here is a trick question: What percentage of American households have incomes in the top 10 percent? Answer: 51 percent of American households are in the top 10 percent in income at some point in the course of a lifetime — usually in their older years. Those who want us to envy and resent the top 10 percent are urging half of us to envy and resent ourselves.
…According to the Washington Post, record numbers of college students say that they plan to engage in protests. Our educational system may not teach students much math or science, but students learn from gutless academic administrators that mob rule is the way to get what you want — and to silence those who disagree with you.
…Many Americans were not only saddened but angry that Iran publicized photographs of captured American sailors weeping. But do you think that Reverend Jeremiah Wright was saddened and angry? What about his 20-year disciple in the White House? Let us not forget that President Obama voluntarily humbled himself — and America — by bowing to foreign leaders.
People who are willing to consider virtually any conceivable excuse for criminals’ acts cut no slack at all for decisions that police have to make in a split second, at the risk of their lives. For some people, it is not enough that cops put themselves at risk to protect the rest of us. They want cops to risk their lives for the sake of handling criminals more gently.
What are the chances that the world’s greatest violinist would make a good quarterback? Or that the world’s greatest quarterback would make a good violinist? Why then would anyone think that a successful businessman would make a good president — especially when he is demonstrating almost daily why he would not?
If you listen carefully to what Senator Marco Rubio says, he is not for instant amnesty. He is for amnesty on the installment plan, though of course he would not call it that. Does anyone who knows anything about politics seriously believe that “legalization” of illegal immigrants will end that issue, without turning into citizenship over time?
At last we have reached the point where we can say, “Next year this time, Obama will not be president.” But the disasters he leaves behind will plague us for years to come. And some of those disasters may strike even before he is gone.
Some countries in Europe have sealed their borders against refugees from the Middle East, as the Soviet Union once sealed its borders against people getting in or getting out. But somehow it is said by some to be impossible to seal our border with Mexico.
When the Whigs could not get their act together on the crucial issue of their day — slavery — that led some Whigs to leave the party and form the Republican party, with Lincoln as its candidate for president. Today’s Republican party has repeatedly failed to get its act together on immigration. That has produced the current divisiveness that may threaten them with the fate of the Whigs.
Historians of the future, when they look back on our times, may be completely baffled when trying to understand how Western civilization welcomed vast numbers of people hostile to the fundamental values of Western civilization, people who had been taught that they have a right to kill those who do not share their beliefs.“
We fear for the country our generation bequeaths its children. Never in the course of human history have so many been taken in by so few, the sum of whose “accomplishments” recommended them for little more than community organizing…or manning a McDonald’s drive-thru.
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