It’s Friday, April 29th, 2016…but before we begin, let’s not forget who, at least until the election of either Hillary or The Donald, represents the most clear and present danger America has ever faced:
“I’m not joking; as a dutiful Islamofascist, this is my job!”
…as much as the rest of us!
Now, here’s The Gouge!
First up, our coverage of a candidacy we once thought could only be found…
…in the Science Fiction section continues with the latest from the great Thomas Sowell, who points out the the paradox inherent in the very concept of…
“…Haven’t we seen this movie before? Wasn’t Barack Obama going to heal the racial divide, end the partisan bickering in Washington, have the most transparent administration ever, lower the cost of health care and let you keep your own doctor?
Had he actually done all those things, walking on water as an encore would have been an anti-climax. But instead,he did the opposite of all those things.
There was absolutely nothing in Obama’s track record that should have led anyone to think that he would even try to do any of the things he declared he was going to do. But why spoil a great vision, and soaring rhetoric, by checking track records?
It was bad enough for the voters to make the colossal mistake of being taken in by appearances and ignoring realities. But to repeat that very same mistake with Trump, immediately after the Obama administration, is truly staggering. How many pied pipers are we going to follow off to parts unknown?
At this late date, there is no point itemizing the many things that demonstrate Trump’s gross inadequacies for being President of the United States. Trump himself has demonstrated those gross inadequacies repeatedly, at least weekly and sometimes daily. Those who do not believe their own eyes and ears are certainly not going to believe any words of mine, or of anyone else.
What William James called “the will to believe” is still as powerful today as it was when he coined the phrase more than a century ago.But what is there about Donald Trump that taps into that powerful current of credulity?…”
The same credulity that empowered the original Music Man!
Like Professor Harold Hill, The Donald’s ultimate destination is…
And also like the scams of his more sophisticated predecessor, Trump’s is “a refined operation” which he has “timed down to the last wave of the brakeman’s hand on the last train outta town.”
Meanwhile, as Guy Benson notes at Townhall.com, the supposedly implacable foe of everything and everyone even remotely connected to the GOP “Establishment” has suddenly experienced a Road to Damascus moment:
Team Trump’s Strange New Respect for Boehner, McConnell
Over the last 24 hours, Donald Trump and his allies have giddily quoted and cheered on two unlikely figures: Former House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Trump cited McConnell on the stump, attacking Cruz for antagonizing many of his colleagues in the US Senate. And Trumpworld is reveling in on-the-record comments from Boehner, who called Cruz “Lucifer in the flesh,” and a “miserable” SOB.
The Trump train is ostensibly fueled by anger at Washington’s various betrayals, and a rigged system that benefits insiders and elites at the expense of average Americans.But the billionaire’s bandwagon is more than happy to embrace card-carrying, central-casting members of The Establishment, so long as they’re saying or doing things that are deemed helpful to the ‘Trumpstablishment.’ Trump supporters angrily rail against Beltway fat cats who “go along to get along” in political fights, then prance from one lavish cocktail party to the next, toasting their own superiority. Then they’ll turn around and applaud bona fide establishment fixtures — from Rudy Giuliani, to Newt Gingrich, to Boehner and McConnell — while applying that now-meaningless term to conservatives who oppose Trump on policy and ideological grounds.
Suddenly “go along to get along” is a necessary and laudable dealmaking virtue, and policy arguments are for uppity, weak-kneed nerds. Perhaps nothing better encapsulates the anti-intellectual, emotive phenomenon at play than this exchange between Rush Limbaugh and a caller on yesterday’s show. Take it away, Sean in Philly:
Yo, Sean in Philly…along with the rest of the Trumpeteers; revenge is a dish best served cold. So come back and talk to me in about 4 years…when you’ve have time to chill out…and you’re talking sense! ‘Cuz right now you’re (a) claiming Ted Cruz isn’t a fighter; (b) overlooking the 80% of issues on which Donald and you disagree, while ignoring the 95% which Ted and you share; and, (c) willing to hand the White House over to Hillary so you can feel a meaningless measure of vengeance.
And Rush, it’s taken some time, but your thinly disguised, continuing support of Trump leads us to one inescapable conclusion: while Sean Hannity is stupid, you’re a self-serving boob.
And for those Donald devotees out there still willing to listen to facts rather than operating on feelings, your candidate just received the endorsement of a man who in the same interview said he got along well with Barry Obama, and admitted to finding Hillary Clinton very accomplished and smart.
Yeah…
Which brings up two points to ponder. First, why on earth should the selection of the Republican nominee, let alone the election of our next President, be dependent upon the fleeting feelings of…
…people who don’t, as our sainted mother used to say, don’t have the sense God gave a goose… not to mention residing in states only Ronaldus Maximus could bring into the Republican column?!?
Second, who will the Trumpeteers attempt to blame when The Donald inevitably suffers the worst defeat since Custer at the Little Bighorn? Whoever’s on the receiving end of their unrighteous, unreasoned wrath, it will make the myth of the infamous “stab-in-the-back” which somehow caused Germany’s defeat in WWI seem believable by comparison.
As if his supporters, whether common citizens, politicians or pundits, will ever admit either their candidate or judgment was so fatally flawed. So they’ll need a fall guy…actually LOT’S of fall guys!
Case in point, as detailed by NRO‘s Ian Tuttle, who accurately observes…
Trump’s Followers Aren’t Interested in ‘Winning’ — They Want Heads to Roll
“…Early in the day, Breitbart editor John Nolte, the Walter Duranty of pro-Trump propagandists, tweeted: “If Trump loses to Hillary . . . I will forever blame #NeverTrump,” referring to the movement of conservatives who have said they will not vote for Donald Trump in a general election under any circumstances. As a matter of psephology, he’s not wrong: Donald Trump will lose if people don’t vote for him. That’s how elections work. But as electoral strategy, Nolte is not exactly winning friends and influencing people.
Consider as evidence the rest of his Twitter timeline, which is a running tirade against Trump opponents, variously described as “saboteurs,” “supremacists,” and “vote-thieves” suffering an acute case of “prideful butthurt.” In typical conspiracy-mongering fashion, Nolte says #NeverTrump adherents have “allied with Dems and MSM [the mainstream media] to destroy Trump in General” “to keep their spot at the trough,” or, elsewhere, to “retain their $$$.”
It requires staggering self-deception to place the blame for a Trump general-election defeat anywhere except where it would belong: squarely on the shoulders of Donald Trump. It’s not on account of a Twitter hashtag that the average polling spread for the last month has Clinton winning by 8.5 points, or that only five head-to-head polls in the last year projected that Trump would run better than Clinton (and even then only modestly). It’s not because of a handful of vocal conservatives that Trump’s unfavorable ratings started, when he announced last June, at 68 percent — and that they are at nearly the same place now.
And so would be a loss in November. Trump has unprecedented name recognition. He’s garnered some $1.9 billion in free publicity during this presidential cycle — more than six times as much as his closest competitor (Cruz). He has “Ten Billion Dollars” at his disposal. Trump has everything he needs to be president. If he can’t do it because there is a group of conservatives who are not interested in rallying around an untrustworthy liberal who mocks the handicapped and calls women “pigs” — isn’t that his problem? Isn’t it Trump’s problem if a whole lot of conservatives think that women shouldn’t be punished for having abortions, that the president of the United states shouldn’t retweet white supremacists, and that American foreign policy shouldn’t be operated like a protection racket? If Donald Trump wants conservative votes, isn’t it his job to show that he represents conservatives? And if those conservatives won’t acquiesce, then Trump’s supporters can go out and find other people who will vote for him. That’s also how elections work.
But Trump’s partisans won’t do that — because winning this election is not actually what they’re about. They’re not about “making America great again.” They’re sure as hell not about party unity.They’re about vengeance…”
And ignorance of the issues; don’t forget ignorance of the issues. TLJ is a perfect case in point. She voted for Trump in the recent Maryland primary, but when queried as to which of Trump’s policies she supported…and which of Ted Cruz’s she opposed…she could name neither; no, not one! Guess FOX & Friends, Modern Family and Dancing With the Stars don’t really get into the meat, the nuts and bolts as it were, of presidential politics.
But TLJ is by no means stupid; she’s simply what we classify as “willingly and happily under-informed“. Roger Simon, on the other hand, like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Chris Christie and Newt Gangrene has no such excuse. His own bio as co-founder of PJ Media lists him as “a prize-winning novelist, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and co-founder of PJ Media”, whose “next book – I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Country, If It Hasn’t Already – will be published by Encounter Books in June 2016.”
Yet this otherwise sane Conservative just penned a desperate commentary describing how Trump can win over 25% of the Black vote…and thus, according to him, the election…by tempting U.S. corporations currently relocating factories overseas to come back and construct facilities in America’s inner cities…tax free!
“…What if Trump were to propose that those corporations could return to America tax free (for a certain amount of time), if they were to build those new factories not in foreign countries but in our own disadvantaged communities? (This is a variant on the old Jack Kemp opportunity-zone idea.) In the case of a Ford, Trump could go further, talking to the UAW and asking them to reduce their minimums in those communities as well (for a similar amount of time) until the local work forces were sufficiently trained and the factories humming. The man who invented, or at least wrote, The Art of the Deal should be able to get this done. It would be a win, win, win for everybody.
Republicans always claim capitalism is the true motor of society and that earning a decent wage for honest work is far better for the psyche than a welfare check. And they’re right, of course. But they don’t do anything to demonstrate it — all talk and no action. This is their opportunity.
Yeah…that’ll work. After all, Republicans lost the “Black vote” to The Left because they didn’t offer them employment opportunities.
Seriously; it’s as if Simon and his ilk are utterly unfamiliar with the undeniable statistics on the results of decades of Dimocratic urban political control:
Here’s the juice: anyone who considers him or herself a “Conservative” and is backing Trump is delusional…and it’s a delusion of their own making.
Still, there are rays of sunshine in an otherwise stormy forecast, as the WSJ‘s Kimberly Strassel details:
The Agony of a Trump Delegate
Rules may say they’re bound to The Donald, but many are thinking through their options.
The Donald: maybe he doesn’t understand the rules ‘cuz he’s never had to play by them!
“Donald Trump, fresh off his Northeast sweep, declared himself the “presumptive nominee.” He presumes too much.
For all the news of Mr. Trump’s victories and Ted Cruz’s veepmate, the essential action of this GOP contest continues to take place far from the media lights. It’s happening in towns like Harrisonburg, Va., where Republican voters will gather this weekend to pick a slate of delegates for the Cleveland convention. That’s the action that matters, and it’s not going Mr. Trump’s way.
With the media all but anointing the mogul, it’s worth a short primer on presidential nominations, why Mr. Trump is still far from claiming the title, and why (by the way) this is, in fact, democracy in action…”
And why do they continue to attempt to anoint him? Because he helps their ratings…and he’s dead meat in a head-to-head race with the most flawed candidate in history.
…The 5,000-word speech lacked specifics by normal political standards, if not his own. The central motif, like all of Mr. Trump’s political thought, is that the businessman has the brains and strength to solve a given problem, and everybody else is a pathetic loser, so trust his instincts and temperament. “I’m the only one—believe me, I know them all—I’m the only one who knows how to fix it,” he said.
…For prepared remarks, or for that matter even an after-dinner talk, Mr. Trump’s speech was especially rife with contradictions. He said the conduct of foreign policy must be “more unpredictable. We are totally predictable. We tell everything.”He also said the conduct of foreign policy must be “disciplined, deliberate and consistent.”
…Mr. Trump isn’t known for close readings of his briefing books, if such documents exist, and deep policy knowledge is obviously not the source of his political appeal. But Americans typically prefer Presidents who are conversant about the world’s biggest problems beyond a sound bite or two, and Hillary Clinton will aggressively litigate the businessman’s Commander in Chief credentials, to put it mildly…”
Though hers are certainly scant by any reasonable comparison.
On The Lighter Side…
Finally, we’ll call it a week with our Now THAT’S Gonna Leave a Mark! segment, courtesy of an unlucky bloke from the Land Down Undah:
“An Australian man has taken himself to hospital after a venomous redback spider bit him on the penis. The tradesman was using a portable toilet on a Sydney building site on Wednesday morning when he was bitten…”
Soooo…coulda been worse, right?!? No…no; pretty certain it doesn’t get any worse than that!
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