Leading off the first edition of May, the editors at NRO detail the dimwitted vindictiveness of…
John Boehner’s Grudge
“That bad man made people not like me!”
We get it. John Boehner doesn’t like Ted Cruz.(Though not nearly as much as the rest of us dislike John Boehner!) In a witless cheap shot, Boehner called him “Lucifer in the flesh” at an event at Stanford University. Boehner’s attitude is widespread among Republican insiders who are foolishly allowing personal ill will to cloud their reasoned judgment about who, among the candidates left in the GOP race, is the best representative of conservative principles and policies, and about who would be the best candidate in the upcoming general election.
On both counts, Cruz is the obvious choice. Ted Cruz is a constitutional conservative dedicated to reducing the outsized federal government to its proper size and functions, and to restoring to the states and the people as much freedom as possible. This has been the core of his message throughout his career, and throughout this campaign. Cruz is an outspoken opponent of abortion, a dedicated defender of the constitutional right to religious liberty, and a staunch advocate of the right to keep and bear arms — positions that he has considered carefully and that he can defend articulately. He has assembled a thoughtful, capable team of advisers to guide him. If he were president, we would have a good shot at getting a stronger economy, a Supreme Court with a less grandiose conception of its role, a less centralized health-care system, and a more sensible foreign policy.
And he is a disciplined candidate who has built an impressive campaign operation. Head-to-head polling shows him running within the margin of error against Hillary Clinton. By comparison, the same polls suggest that Trump would run worse than his two Republican rivals: He is currently trailing Clinton by 8.5 points, on average, and currently has a toxic image among key groups in the broader public.
Or a brain for that matter!
As for the substance, Trump is no constitutionalist, having suggested that as president he would “open up” libel laws to prosecute journalists and order American soldiers to commit war crimes. He has taken liberal stances on a variety of issues — abortion, transgenderism, Israel, &c. — then reversed himself, and he has polluted sound positions, like immigration hawkishness, with his boob-bait-for-Bubba demagoguery. On foreign policy, he has been largely incoherent, and occasionally appalling (e.g., his high regard for Vladimir Putin).
All of this is why prominent conservatives who might not be counted among Cruz’s friends — Lindsey Graham and Jeb Bush come to mind — have urged the party to rally around Cruz as the only reliable conservative left in the race.
They’re right to do so, and not to give in to the petty grudge-holding of John Boehner. In 2013, when Cruz was engineering his ill-fated government shutdown, his Republican critics, including us, warned against interpreting tactical disagreements as evidence of disagreements about objectives. We encouraged conservatives not to indulge in knee-jerk responses that, though cathartic, would ultimately set back our common goals. That argument works in both directions. Whatever his personal feelings, Boehner agrees with Cruz on most questions of principle and policy, and it’s a shame he can’t act accordingly.
With a critical contest in Indiana just days away, Ted Cruz needs the support of any and all conservatives committed to a smaller state and greater individual liberty.
We’re with Senator Mike Lee on this one:
“I am appalled that John Boehner would do this…I held my tongue for years on John Boehner, even when I disagreed with him. Because I respected him as a person, and I respected his office enough to not call him out on this personally. I expressed disagreement with his policy, but I never ridiculed him personally. The fact that he has done this is appalling, and he should be ashamed of himself…”
Which is about the strongest admonition our sainted mother would ever utter, putting Boehner on a level just below whale sh*t.
Unfettered by the rules of congressional decorum which once bound Senator Lee, we can admit to never respecting Boehner, either as a person or as an extension of his office. We found him the penultimate party hack; a horribly ineffective oral communicator, leader and legislator, who, along with his Senate counterpart Mitch “Yertle” McConnell, was primarily responsible for the public perception (right or wrong) congressional Republicans, having been rescued from political obscurity by Tea Partiers such as ourself, failed to fulfill their promises to oppose The Obamao.
Again, the perception of a do-nothing Republican Congress may have been wildly off-base; but Boehner made no effort whatsoever to correct the record or inform GOP constituents as to reality. Furthermore, the puerile, punitive punishments he meted out against Conservative congressmen their voters placed in power specifically to strenuously oppose this President’s Islamofascist agenda not only ignored the national mood of his party’s own base, but helped give rise to The Donald.
And given his observations on Hillary, Barry and Bernie, he’s an incredibly poor judge of character as well. We’re certain Adolf, Uncle Joe and Chairman Mao could be terribly engaging in person…provided they needed to use you for their own ends.
Boehner reminds us of an old boss who was socially awkward; in fact, painfully so. The company had occasion to host a number of dinners we organized in conjunction with a national industry convention, and after one such soiree, he observed the customers present must really like him because they all spoke with him at some point during the evening.
Like Boehner, he couldn’t differentiate between personal magnetism and/or real friendship and the deference extended a host by guests as a matter of simple manners…or who’d like to be invited back for yet another evening of unlimited high-end alcohol and expensive food.
Either way, here’s a picture worth more than John Boehner’s thoughts on anything or everything:
Next up, also courtesy of NRO, David French relates why…
“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. — Matthew 5:13
“The GOP establishment is on the verge of falling in line behind Donald Trump, perhaps the most comprehensively reprehensible person ever to seek national office.(Other than Hillary and Bill!)The pressure for conservative leaders and activists to follow suit will be overwhelming. There are, it seems, no good options. Oppose Trump and you’ll be blamed if he loses, as the bitter shell of the GOP snarls at those who facilitated its electoral collapse. If by some miracle he wins, you’ll be shut out from Trump’s administration, unable to influence him toward conservative policies.
…Trump is not the “best of bad options”; he is a cataclysm.If he defeats Hillary Clinton, his presidency will fail, and Republicans will suffer for a generation. If he loses, there’s a good chance he’ll turn the GOP into a shadow of its former self, a party reduced to holding only its safest seats and maintaining whatever political influence it still has through identity politics and clever gerrymandering.
No matter what happens, bitter lessons abound. The cult of celebrity deeply harmed the conservative movement, rendering its base vulnerable to Trump’s demagoguery. Venomous rhetoric between various factions of the party made unity impossible. A phalanx of Republican politicians made promises they knew they couldn’t keep. The dysfunction is comprehensive, and it is difficult indeed to find a person with clean hands.
But we can start cleaning them now — with humility and resolve. The first step is to back Ted Cruz to the bitter end. Of course he’s not a perfect vehicle for the conservative movement; in many ways his own rhetoric has contributed to the present crisis.But there is a quantum difference between an informed, committed, and passionate conservative — whatever his faults — and a deceitful, Machiavellian liberal. Cruz is down to his Hail Mary pass, and conservatives should do all they can to help him succeed.“
To build on the brilliance of the late, great Winston Churchill, whose bust The Dear Misleader returned to Great Britain in an early, disgusting display of Islamofascist ill-intent,…
…we’ll fight the madness which is Trump until the convention in Cleveland. And if The Donald garners the 1,237 delegates necessary to be named the Republican nominee for President, then, come November, we’ll hold our nose, swallow our gorge and pull the lever for the man who marks the nadir of the GOP…then relish the opportunity to rub the nose of every single fool who backed him in the stench of his inevitable failure and their abject folly.
In a related item, writing at his Goldberg File, the great Jonah Goldberg, a life-long Conservative possessed of more intellect and common sense than the Trumpeteers in their entirety lends his insight to the inexplicable insanity infecting America: the problem of…
What About Donald?!?
It’s evident why Rudy and John came to their choice!
First, Jonah defines…
Is vs. Ought
But this gloat-a-thon does raise a larger point. Trump’s candidacy has ignited a riot of question-begging and non sequiturs across the land. Every day I hear from scores of people who insist that, because I was wrong about Trump’s chances to win the nomination, I must be wrong not only about his chances in the general election, but also about his qualifications to be president at all.
I should say, it is entirely fair to doubt my prognostication skills on how Trump will perform in the general given how wrong I was in the primaries. Of course, failure to predict black swans — or in this case, Creamsicle-orange ones — is not necessarily as damning as some think. It was utterly reasonable to predict that Trump wouldn’t do this well, just as it’s entirely reasonable to say, “There will be no zombie apocalypse.” But, if the dead do rise from their graves, such assurances will look pretty stupid. And while the zombie-preppers in our midst will surely have the last laugh, I’m not sure I have to concede they’re all geniuses, even when a reanimated Abe Vigoda is munching on my larynx.
I honestly believe that Trump would crash in the general election like so much blue ice from an Aeroflot jetliner. I don’t think he can flip any of the states in the Democratic “blue wall,” and I think there’s a strong likelihood he’d fail to hold on to some of the states in the Republican “red wall.” Talk to political handicappers in Arizona and Utah, for instance, and they will tell you he’s very likely to lose there and take other Republican candidates down with him. For example, Trump boosters point to his blow-out win in New York as evidence he can flip the state.I agree with Ross Douthat: This is delusional. Bush got more votes than Trump in the New York primary in 2000 — when that primary didn’t even matter — and still lost the state in the general by 15 points. Both Sandersand Clinton got a lot more votes than Trump.
Trump loves to cite how he “won” with Hispanics in Nevada, leaving out that he was talking about a statistical handful of self-identified Republican Hispanics in a caucus. Among Hispanics generally,Trump polls only slightly better than ass cancer. His numbers are somewhat better with women, but stillwithin sight of ass-cancer margins.Yes, Trump does well with white men, but he’d have to do roughly ten points better than Reagan in his 1984 landslide (the high water mark for white-male turnout) to even be competitive. His boosters point to Hillary’s undeniable vulnerabilities, while leaving out that Trump’s negatives are much worse.
Still, I could be wrong about all of this. There’s no disputing Trump is a disrupter, that he overturns many of the rules that we mistakenly thought were binding. Good for him. So maybe he’ll keep defying expectations. Reasonable people can debate that point.
Less reasonable is the claim that because I was wrong about Trump’s chances, I must therefore be wrong about Trump’s qualifications and character.If you predicted in 2006 that Obama would be the Democratic nominee, congrats! That, however, is not an argument for why he should have been the nominee or the president. It’s a confusion of “is” and “ought” and I see it everywhere.
While my opposition to Trump is not primarily an argument about electability, I’ve been focusing on that angle lately because the establishment opportunists, quislings, sell-outs, pragmatists, and harlots are more persuadable on these grounds than arguments over principle. People open to principled arguments against Trump have already been persuaded. The John Boehner and K Street caucus on the other hand has made peace with Trump because they understand he’s a guy they can “cut deals” with. They hate Ted Cruz because they know or fear he isn’t. I’m not saying that everyone who supports Trump isn’t a conservative or isn’t principled. I am saying I think they’re wrong.
Next, in a follow-up to our earlier item predicting the inevitable “stab-in-the-back” pro-Trump conspiracy theories…
Let the Precriminations Begin!
I’ll make one last point on all this. I think it’s fascinating how so many people are already pre-blaming a Trump loss on the #NeverTrumpers.My old friend John Nolte seems blinded with rage at all of us, tweeting, “If Trump loses to Hillary . . . I will forever blame #NeverTrump.” Herman Cain is on Fox every five minutes ranting and bullying Trump opponents as fools and de facto Hillary supporters. I am beset by Lilliputian trolls on Twitter insisting I am pro-Hillary (a strange case to make if you read my chapter on her in Liberal Fascism — or quite literally anything I’ve ever written about her).
To the extent this stuff isn’t simply stupid, it amounts to coercion. Get on the bandwagon! Or else. Indeed, every day I get a half dozen threats along these lines:
Now, I get it.I don’t want Hillary to be president either. And in politics sometimes people feel like they have to crack the whip to get the stragglers back in the herd. Also, it’s clear to me that as Ian Tuttle wrote this week, a major motivation of Trumpsters isn’t winning, it’s vengeance. John Noltesaysthat the “GOP’s needed an enema for a long time.”In this case, I actually agreewith John’sapt comparison of his dashboard saint to an anal douche.
But let’s go back to the claim that Trump will win in the general election by flipping blue states in a populist tsunami. If that analysis is even remotely plausible, why should #NeverTrumpers matter? Indeed, if you take Trumpian rhetoric from his talk-radio and other cheerleaders seriously, the anti-Trump forces are a negligible bunch of eggheads, pinheads, and finger-sniffing shut-ins completely disconnected from the authentic and volcanically powerful volksgemeinschaft. If Trump has any chance of flipping New York, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, we shouldn’t matter at all. And yet, according to the increasingly shrill and whining bleats from his supporters, we will be to blame if he doesn’t win. Well which is it? Is this a revolutionary populist movement that will sweep aside ink knights like me or not?
I think several things are going on here. I think some pro-Trump forces actually realize that their guy will lose no matter what.Rather than face the fact that blame for Trump’s likely inevitable loss will rest entirely with Trump and his followers, they want to preserve the claim that Trump was “stabbed in the back.”(Great minds truly think alike!) Tactically, this isn’t dumb. The consolation prize for the Trump movement is to complete the hostile takeover of the GOP the way conservatives did after Goldwater’s loss in 1964. Psychologically, it also makes sense. No one ever wants to look squarely into the abyss of their own failure.But empirically, this argument is inane.If or when Trump loses it will be because of Trump’s own myriad and manifest shortcomings. Blaming us for honestly pointing out that those shortcomings are as short as the digits of Trump’s puppy-fur gloves may be cathartic, but it won’t be honest or accurate.
Here’s the juice:
Lastly, Goldberg opines on the…
Pundits of Babylon
Speaking of honesty, my column today was nominally about Ed Schultz, who has become a willing mouthpiece for Vladimir Putin’s propaganda ministry. Schultz used to mock Putin, demonize Trump, and lionize Hillary Clinton. He’s reversed all three positions because he works for Russia Today.
I actually don’t care about Ed Schultz, because I’m a fairly normal and level-headed person (“De gustibus non est disputandum!” — The Couch).But I focused on him for two reasons. First, I think that the connections between Russia and Trump have been outrageously underreported. (How funny would it be if after all the fevered intimations that Obama was some kind of Manchurian candidate, it turned out the title better fit Donald Trump?) But more importantly, I was trying to highlight Schultz as a case study for a much wider phenomenon.
Look, if you’re a plumber or a dentist, you probably have no professional political track record or other obligation to remain politically consistent. If you like Donald Trump, there’s no immediate reason to question your sincerity. I can’t yell at the dentist, “But you used to do root canals! How dare you support Trump!?”
It’s different for opinion journalists, intellectuals, academics, and the like. They’re still allowed to change their minds of course. But when they do, they should feel obliged to explain their course corrections with facts and logic. A lot of people who fit this job category have suddenly discovered that they’re okay with a grandiloquently dishonest and narcissistic thrice-married adulterer and Christian of convenience who has little to no regard for the Constitution and limited government.
Yeah…while still married to his third wife!
No doubt some of these people are sincere. We are all prone to errors in judgment, confirmation bias, and magical thinking. But for some of these people, this is clearly not the case. Power-worship is coursing through the veins of the Right these days. I’ll put it this way: If Donald Trump were in John Kasich’s position, I sincerely doubt many of the prominent people praising Donald Trump’s foreign-policy speech this week would be offering the same analysis. Some would, I’m sure. I think Laura Ingraham would. Ann Coulter, too. They’ve been banging these drums for a long time now. But I can’t think of too many others now singing hosannas to Trump’s foreign-policy acumen and insight who wouldn’t be castigating him for embracing the term “America First” and all that it implies if Trump stood little chance of winning the nomination.
Again, if you’ve been railing about the importance of conservative principles — on economic, constitutional or social issues — for years or decades, and now you’re swooning for Trump, you owe people an explanation that doesn’t rely on North Korean–style celebrations of Trump’s magical powers.And if you don’t offer such explanations, a fair observer can be forgiven for not only doubting your sudden change of heart, but also any claim that you were sincere in the past.
Punditry has a bad name these days, but in my book at least, the job description is an honorable one. It boils down to telling the truth as you see it. Dick Morris was rightly fired from Fox because he admitted he lied to viewers. Ed Schultz, as far as I’ve been able to discover, has offered no explanation whatsoever.And by my lights if you knowingly say things you don’t believe for personal gain or glory while pretending to be an honest, albeit opinionated, broker, you don’t deserve the title pundit. But you are in the running for the label “whore.”
I’m open to the charge of cowardice in singling out a left-wing meathead like Ed Schultz instead of training fire on my friends and colleagues on the right by name. And maybe that’s part of it. But I also hope that I can persuade some people, and calling them out by name is more likely to make them harden their positions than move off them.
Unfortunately, the first step to any cure is admitting you have a problem in the first place. And you’re about as likely to get Chris Matthews to honestly assess Barack Hussein Obama’s Islamofascist incompetence as persuade a die-hard drinker of “The Donald”-flavored Kool-Aid they’re poisoning themselves…along with the country!
Which brings us toThe Lighter Side…
Then there’s this, courtesy of our old friend Dawg:
Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with Hope n’ Change‘s satiric look at The Obamao’s last and lamest attempt at humor in the face of all the destruction he’s visited upon the country:
Loading ...
You must be logged in to post a comment.