Jonah Goldberg has—if my memory is correct—responded at length to my writings six times, in his National Review columns and in the Corner. And only once in direct reply to something I wrote about him (which was only to respond to something he wrote about me, when I hadn’t mentioned him). Now he’s back for the seventh, in which he talks about how irrelevant and not worth refuting I am.
A point of housekeeping before the main event. Goldberg, once again, calls me a coward for using a pseudonym. This is not a new charge—not for him, and not for legions of critics, many of whom are now clucking about it anew, thanks to Goldberg’s dredging it up again. I addressed this in my first, and still longest and most comprehensive, response to criticisms of the “Flight 93” essay. To my knowledge, no one has even noted what I said, much less tried to refute it. Rather than repeating it, let me just say that—whether you really think I’m a coward or whether it just makes you feel better to say so—my conscience is clear on this point.
I actually agree with Goldberg’s larger point: I’m irrelevant—to him, to all of Conservatism, Inc., and to the Republican Party, insofar as the party remains in the hands of those who now control it. I am under absolutely no illusion that I can persuade any of them of anything. My audience—to the extent that I have one—is the people whom I believe conservatism has led in unproductive directions and who now realize that the movement no longer speaks to or for them. I think I understand the truth of our situation better than conservatism does (obviously, or else I wouldn’t be writing at all). If I can use that understanding to improve others’ understanding and persuade them to move in productive directions, then I feel I ought to try. I may fail. Given the corruptness of the times, the difficulty of the task, and my own limitations, it’s quite likely that I will fail. Yet still I feel I ought to try.
Comprehensive Conservative Failure
If I may address professional conservatives directly: It seems to me undeniable that you have already failed. Don’t take it personally. I can rephrase that as “we” if you like, even though I was never much of an operative within Conservatism, Inc. But I was a fellow traveler and supporter, so if you want to lay part of the blame on me, fine.
We failed. We didn’t do what we set out to do. We lost the political and culture wars decisively. Our economic victory turned out to be fruitless: all the gains have accrued to those we nominally “defeated,” as evidenced by the fact that the Democrats are now the party of the super-rich. Our victory in the Cold War also turned to ashes, as we lost our heads pursuing unrealizable foreign ambitions while fighting in ways that preclude the possibility of victory. Not that we know what victory entails or have any idea what to do with it if we achieve it—but that doesn’t matter, because since 1991, we never have. Worse, we were crushed in the war of ideas:
It would not be the first time that a nation, defeated on the battlefield and, as it were, annihilated as a political being, has deprived the conquerors of the most sublime fruit of victory by imposing on them the yoke of its own thought.
You don’t have to be alt-right to see that this is a perfect description of the USSR’s posthumous intellectual victory in the form of “Cultural Marxism.” Climb down from the egghead mountaintops and the defeat becomes even clearer. A principal Soviet export was crude anti-Americanism—grounded in high theory, to be sure, but simplified to be understandable by even the meanest capacities. We “won” the Cold War, but that export nonetheless spread like a virus—so much so that anti-Americanism is now and has been for at least 20 years the civil religion not just of all Third World populations, not just of Western allies, but of American elites and their foot soldiers.
We failed to preserve a true understanding the principles of the Declaration of Independence. We failed to preserve the proper working order of the Constitution. We failed to protect and nurture that virtue in the people necessary to sustain the Constitution. We failed to defend the family from relentless assault. We failed to maintain any semblance of a shared public morality. We allowed—through a combination of active cheering and ineffective opposition—demographic and cultural replacement. We lent a great deal of our talent to serve rapacious interests in the name of “economic freedom.” All the things we were supposed to conserve—the nation, its people, its way of life, its governing structure—we have not conserved.
Alliances Coming Apart
This all seems irrefutably clear to me. Yet official conservatism says I am insane for saying so. So I ask: what do we have in common anymore?
I add “anymore” in frank acknowledgment that we used to have much. I’ve been reading Jonah Goldberg for almost 20 years. For most of that time, I thought we were on the same side, broadly speaking. And we still are, on many secondary things: most policy issues, the badness of the left, the greatness of “Star Trek” and “The Simpsons.” But on the really big things—the existential regime questions—we now appear to be light-years apart. Which, if true, makes all those subsidiary agreements kind of irrelevant. Perhaps that explains why, despite all that vast agreement, Goldberg attacks me so vociferously: because he suspects, as I do, that our fundamental differences are now greater than our similarities. That doesn’t fully explain why he bothers to come after me—there are plenty with whom he disagrees even more who might as well not exist in Goldberg’s world. But it does partly explain it.
I’ll mention one other big-name conservative intellectual, because he recently took after me, too. I’ve been reading Charles Murray longer than I’ve been reading Goldberg. I consider him the world’s greatest living social scientist—a title he assumed, in my view, on the passing of James Q. Wilson. For a nobody like me, it’s immensely gratifying to be on the receiving end of a snark-tweet from the author of Losing Ground, The Bell Curve, and Coming Apart. Why is someone of his stature even deigning to insult me? I think Murray’s response to the present political circumstance is imprudent. Nonetheless, I still read him because wisdom is rare and one must grab it where and when it appears. I have no expectation whatever that Murray’s research will be negatively colored by what I consider his political errors. I’m certain I can still learn from him. He’s quite certain he has nothing to learn from me. He should therefore not waste any more time on me, but instead to keep on with studies from which I and thousands of others will profit.
Goldberg’s Mischaracterizations
Now I’m going to turn to Goldberg in greater detail. He explicitly disclaims any attempt to “rebut [my] points case by case.” I forswear his example—not, again, to persuade him (I know that’s impossible) but in an attempt to clarify certain points to those, like me, who used to be persuaded by him but these days feel they need another guide.
Goldberg’s mischaracterizations begin, as it were, at the beginning. He accuses those at the Claremont Institute and Hillsdale College of living in bubbles. He doesn’t offer an argument. That doesn’t mean he’s wrong. But if he’s right, at the very least, he would have to acknowledge that those are very different bubbles than the “Beltway Bubble” (not a term I have used) Goldberg admits he inhabits. Perhaps the latter bubble has something to learn from the former? It’s not like the three have equal say. Conservatism, Inc. is overwhelmingly located within the Beltway, where—by dint of its wealth, personnel, and access to big media and powerful politicians—it simply drowns out conservative voices from elsewhere. Calling a little college in rural Michigan, and a little think tank in the inland reaches of the Southern California megalopolis, “bubbles” may be true (though I think it isn’t) but hardly exonerates the big Beltway Bubble for its manifest failures.
Goldberg proceeds, once again, to mischaracterize my argument. According to Goldberg, I said that “this election poses an existential threat to America’s survival. Either we charge the cockpit and vote for Trump, or the figurative terrorists of the Clinton cabal kill us all.”
What I actually said was that this election poses an existential threat to America’s survival as a constitutional republic. I didn’t say that Clinton will “kill us all.” Though, for the record, I do think she and her administration will be a lot more punitive and vindictive against those she perceives as her enemies (e.g., all of us) than most conservatives suppose. But here’s exactly what I said:
If Hillary wins, there will still be a country, in the sense of a geographic territory with a people, a government, and various institutions. Things will mostly look the same, just as—outwardly—Rome changed little on the ascension of Augustus. It will not be tyranny or Caesarism—not yet. But it will represent, in my view, an irreversible triumph for the administrative state. Consider that no president has been denied reelection since 1992. If we can’t beat the Democrats now, what makes anyone think we could in 2020, when they will have all the advantages of incumbency plus four more years of demographic change in their favor? And if we can’t win in 2016 or 2020, what reason is there to hope for 2024? Will the electorate be more Republican? More conservative? Will constitutional norms be stronger?
Many anti-Trump conservatives dispute this argument with vague generalities about a coming conservative resurgence. But none has even attempted to refute the specifics. Goldberg certainly doesn’t—as noted, he says my arguments are unworthy of response. Not unworthy of writing about seven times. Just unworthy of responding to in detail.
I may have made the argument first (though I’m not claiming I did), but others have made versions of it since—including current and former National Review writers Victor Davis Hanson, John O’Sullivan, Conrad Black, and Mark Steyn. Even the eminently respectable Yuval Levin and Ramesh Ponnuru wrote in detail about the grave dangers of a Hillary presidency—admittedly, without concluding that Trump is superior. But their case is rather more in support of my thesis than against it. Yet Goldberg singles out only me for opprobrium.
At any rate, I’m on the record with a prediction. It will come true or it won’t. If it doesn’t, Goldberg and (many) others will doubtless cackle that they told me so. And I promise to take it in more than good humor—considering that, first of all, I will have been wrong and thus will have it coming. Second, and much more important: I will be overjoyed at having been wrong, relieved that what I most feared did not come to pass.
We’ll see.
Conservatives for Bourbonism (Not the Kentucky Variety)
Goldberg continues by expressing outrage at my musings on motive. There’s no question in my mind that America is ruled by a bipartisan elite that agrees on the sanctity of open borders, free trade and carried interest. Goldberg doesn’t dispute that here—or anywhere, so far as I have noticed. He’s more incensed over what he thinks I said about Conservatism, Inc. But he gets this wrong too. It’s true that I think the donor class, the top pols, and the think-tank elite are motivated at least in part by money and status. I don’t think, and didn’t say, that rank-and-file Hill staffers, research assistants, talking-point-drafters, op-ed writers, and bloggers are so motivated.
The truth is much sadder. Because of their lack of education (despite, in many cases, elite diplomas), they believe checklist conservatism to be the last word on political wisdom. They know nothing of prudence, higher ends, the good, or the necessity of tacking and trimming. They just see deviations as heresy. They are encouraged to do so by an elite which manipulates them for its own ends. What can be more useful to an oligarchy than to send the talented but uneducated and un- or underpaid youth against the barricades on its behalf? Take on six-figure student debt, get an internship somewhere on Massachusetts Ave., and get out there to defend the carried interest loophole. While the billionaires who benefit from that loophole pay you either nothing or minimum wage. But your stance is principled! Low taxes! You’re a warrior for truth!
Conservative opposition to Communism and socialism degenerated into a defense of Bourbonism. Is it a coincidence that the street address of AEI’s new office is 1789? It is surely not a coincidence that the building was the most lavish apartment house ever erected in Washington. Now it houses, among others, James Pethokoukis, a premier “conservative” apologist for liberal, Davoisie capital and wealth concentration. Goldberg is angry that I recently attacked Pethokoukis, but the best he musters in rebuttal is to point out a discrepancy between “a” and “the.” OK, I acknowledge the distinction and apologize for my carelessness. But what earthly difference does it make? My point was that so-called “conservative cases” for liberal things—whether preceded by definite or indefinite articles—always constitute accommodations to the Left. As it did in the case of Pethokoukis’s article, which appeared on the left-leaning “explainer” site, Vox.com. Goldberg, needless to say, does not address that point at all.
More Mischaracterizations
Goldberg then puts the following words in my mouth: “if you disagree with [me] about Trump, you’re a sell-out in favor of destroying America.” No. What I said was that we face a binary choice. To be a conservative or a Republican and to sit it out, or to criticize Trump, is in this circumstance to favor Hillary. That’s just a fact. Trump is the underdog and needs all the help he can get. Every defection or abandonment hurts him and makes it more likely that she will win. If she wins, she will be a disaster for the right and for the country—on precisely the terms that Goldberg and so many others have always said she would. I therefore find it mind boggling that they could do anything, however slight, that might help her win.
But they are. Would that the consequences would fall only on them. But they will fall on all of us—and the flyover rubes first, and hardest. Indeed, if a third Clinton administration differentiates among its enemies at all, it will wait to eat last all those “conservatives” who helped Hillary by damaging Trump. I’m not saying that was a conscious motivation for their opposition. But it may prove to be a perk.
Goldberg objects to my “apocalyptic despair,” despite—and without mentioning—my repeated (admittedly, perhaps delusional) assertion that secure borders, economic nationalism, tight labor markets, trans-ethnic cohesion, and a reassertion of the consent of the governed might turn our dire situation around. The only candidate in this race—who was ever in this race—who supports that agenda in toto is Trump.
‘Weaponized Leftism’ on the Right
Goldberg especially objects to my saying that I am now an enemy of established conservatism. He declines to mention what prompted me to say that. Pethokoukis called me a racist not once, not twice, but three times in one article. As I argued then—and as Goldberg surely understands—this is, and is meant to be, the cruelest, most damning, most devastating thing one can say about anyone else in the current year. It is weaponized Leftism, now used all too casually, and eagerly, by the right against the right. If that’s what Pethokoukis thinks—if it’s what Goldberg thinks; and he implicitly defends Pethokoukis on this point—then what could I be but their enemy? Could they be friends or colleagues with Goebbels? Should I be expected to be intellectual or political compatriots with people who compare me to Nazis?
It’s been clear to me for some time that a plurality (at least) of conservatives would much rather call nominal allies “racist” for saying America needs to get serious about the border than actually see anyone get serious about the border. Pethokoukis is an open-borders homo economicus, so this makes sense in his case. But Goldberg—like many at NR—claims to be for restrictionist reform. And yet when the first presidential candidate in, basically, forever successfully raised the prospect of regaining control of the immigration debate and the border, Goldberg and NR came out against him. And not just in the primaries, but in the general. What’s more, they attack those of us who write in support of him.
Still more, when we supporters are called “racist” for advocating a position they themselves claim to hold, they amplify that smear and defend those making it. If one is willing to grant that Goldberg and his colleagues genuinely believe their stated position, one must then conclude that they don’t think it’s that important. Not more important, at any rate, than calling those to their right “racist” or defending those who do.
I think the border, citizenship, social cohesion, and policies that put Americans first are really, really important. To the extent that I am politically and/or intellectually engaged, it makes sense for me to arrange things so that my allies are people who agree with me. It certainly doesn’t make sense to be allied with people who disagree, or who claim to agree but countenance others’ slurs about a position we supposedly share.
But that is just to circle back to the beginning. It would appear that we just don’t agree on fundamentals any more. Doesn’t it? I’m open to a case that we do. I expect I’d have things to say in reply and rebuttal. But maybe we can find common ground after all.
Enough to be allies again? I don’t know. The only way to find out is to have a really big argument. Which will make a lot of people mad. The debate is actually already underway, and tempers are already high. I get the sense that Goldberg and most of his side just want people like me to go away. But even if I personally went away, the argument will continue. The Right will either reconcile on terms favorable to Trump’s issues or it will split. There will be no going back to the status quo ante. That’s another prediction.
Goldberg thinks Decius is irrelevant but Decius is living rent free in Goldberg’s head. He sound like Andrew Sullivan obsessing over Sarah Palin.
You’re right, he probably shouldn’t elevate Decius by acknowledging him. By the way, by the same measure HRC has been dwelling comfortably in the RW psyche for decades and lately she’s been joined by Saul Alinsky, who even barefoot Trump rallygoers know to be a thing.
Goldberg is small potatoes in this argument; a pawn on the chess board. I want to hear more from Decius about Charles Murray. THAT’S why Goldberg is out there bloviating about this constantly. He’s following the good Doctor’s orders.
If I may be so presumptuous, let me shorten this up for those who like to use the big fancy words. Maybe they will understand this. They won’t like it, but maybe they’ll understand it. We played by your rules. We followed your marching orders like the good soldiers we are, ever since 1988. You gave us “No new taxes”, “Compassionate Conservatism”, Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney. We gave you Newt and the republican revolution of 1994, 2010, and 2014. What did that bring us? Not much. In 2016, Donald J. Trump, who is not who I voted for, nor whom I wanted in this position, whipped sixteen other republicans. Fair and square. Every single one that you (the establishment) wanted dropped out early. Jeb, Perry, Christie, et al,. Cruz hung in until the bitter end, another one the GOPe couldn’t stand, yet you all have the temerity, and gall to tell us to shut up and let you take care of this “problem”. Screw you. At this point, I don’t care if the (your) whole apparatus burns to the ground. We heard from Boehner when we only had the House that they were ½ of ⅓ of the gov’t. and “what can they do”. Ryan is up there getting ready for a large obamacare induced chiropractor bill from getting whipsawed every other day. Mr. Sam must be laughing his ass off at you rank amateurs. I am not an “alt-right” wacko, nut-job. I have a college degree, live and work in a major metropolitan area, wear a suit and tie to work every day. with others just like me, who while we didn’t go the the fancy-pants east coast schools like y’all did, are being asked to “trust you” one more time. You guys are the ones who’ve screwed this whole thing up by begging us for our help and sticking the shiv in our backs. Bite me.
Fine. Get out – Now!
HB
Get out of what? If you mean the party – you’re the minority, go form your own.
I agree, besides if this turns into the debacle it appears, the GOP is dead. Maybe Hillary’s henchmen and co-religionists of the Leftist Death Cult will manage to shut down the think tanks and journals that employ hacks like Jonah and Kristol.
We don’t need Hillary to shut down the think tanks and journals that feed people like Goldberg & Kristol. WE are the ones that hold the keys. I cancelled an almost 30 year National Review subscription and a 10 year Weekly Standard one as well. These fools go on to Twitter to snark and insult their customers like the Left so I voted with my feet. The few writers that I still wish to hear from are all available online anyway. I was paying them out of loyalty and tradition. No more.
The GOP will be just fine. When you see that, it’s really gonna make you mad.
Will the GOP be fine when the old bag opens the borders and amnesties several million new Dem voters by executive action
She won’t do that, most likely. If Obama (who is far more popular than Hillary) couldn’t do it, neither will she.
Most likely…a little caveat there, Matt? The clintons are vindictive swine. If the old bag wins she’ll stand down the Border Patrol out of spite.If the Dems win this election, they’re coming hard after guns, the churches, the border, private pension funds, single payer insurance, Supreme Court packing, you name it. Who’s going to oppose them? Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Jeff Sessions and nobody, that’s who. And you stooges will be sitting in the corner pointing your fingers elsewhere.
I’m not a fortune teller. If you want certainty about the future, go talk to a con man.
Ryan’s out no matter if Trump wins or loses.
Trump attacked Ryan while he still had enough time to make a difference, and it didn’t make a dent in his support. What was his win? 70% or something greater?
Whether Ryan survives depends on the next two years, not on what Trump says about him.
“Get out” really means only one thing……join the ranks of the uninformed (who do not know they are uniformed) and let them plow this great experiment into the ground. That’s what the famous quip “liberty or death” really meant….fight on to preserve civility or live a broke, violent, serf style life….a serf, you know what that is, Mr. Historybuff…..get comfortable, be a serf….be vigilant, be free…..that’s a sane world view, just look at government in an historical perspective and it’s cumulative relationship with their people; nothing but violence and destruction, Mr. Historybuff………that is exactly where our ruling class is headed….LOL….and you said “get out”…..amazing, just absolutely amazing……….. :-)
Get Out… means go start your own party.
HB
These people can’t be reasoned with, HB. They actually believe that a white nationalist party can thrive once again. Like Lost Causers, they can’t see what’s right before their very eyes.
Donald Trump attempted to do what George Wallace couldn’t — resurrect John Calhoun and Stephen Douglas. But all he’s done is bury them, once and for all. For that every American should be eternally grateful.
Mr “Party of Lincoln”, you are reducing American politics to racial and assumed crypto-racial issues, like the quackademic Left.
Observe:
The Whigs died in the early 1850s and were briefly replaced by the American Party (Know-Nothings) who campaigned on opposition to immigration and free trade – basically militant Whigs. The GOP was founded in 1854 on a similar platform with added emphasis on opposition to slavery. Whereas the AP could garner around 40% of the vote in both North and South, the GOP was a sectional party. Nonetheless, its platform was nationalist.
Although by corruption, its immigration plank was weakened on occasion (and restrengthened at other times), it maintained a protectionist worldview until about the 1960s.
Calhoun was about little if not free trade. The Democratic Party was a free trading party right up until the New Deal, and even then still formally so. Wallace was a politician very much in the Jacksonian populist, perhaps even Bryanite agrarian populist, wing of the Southern Democrats, but by the late 20th century much of American industry had relocated to the South which permitted ex-Southern populists-turned-Republicans to become more perfect nationalists. In this sense, of course Trump took the Wallace vote, but it has little to do with Bourbon Democrats or extreme Jeffersonians like Calhoun.
As for the Stephen Douglas legacy, it’s probably right here on NRO, if not voting for Gary Johnson.
Neoconservatives always claim Lincoln, but they, as largely New Yorkers and especially atheistic Jews, only like his militant anti-South stance and use of militaristic imperialism. They don’t approve of the GOP’s wider policies and would have certainly been Democrats in 1858 just like they were right up through the 1970s.
And as for us Lost Causers, I have several Confederate flags lying around. It’s part of my history and I won’t disavow it or make empty apologies for slavery. At the same time, I don’t believe in extreme states rights confederalist political theory and that’s obviously not Trump’s beliefs, either.
“…and I won’t disavow it (the Confederate glad) or make empty apologies for slavery. ”
That pretty much says it all.
Conservatives have much work to do now that Trump has nearly destroyed the Republican Party. Neoconfederates like you are welcome to stay or to leave — and if you leave don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
But you and Decius are living in a fantasy world if you really believe that a Republican Party built on the foundation of Calhoun and Douglas has any chance of being relevant in the United States outside of obscure blogs like this.
Those of us of a certain persuasion, that the founders and Lincoln were right, have a legacy to honor. We’ll vote for Trump as he is undeniably the lesser of the two evils on the November 2016 ballot, but we’re not going to dishonor Jefferson, Madison and Lincoln by honoring or elevating Trump as some kind of Lincoln reincarnation. Trump is a disgrace of a human being and a poison that has been injected into the Republican Party, ushering in the election of Hillary Clinton. Any attempt to honor Trump, as Decius has, only dishonors the founding principles of republic and its salvation by Lincoln and the Republicans of the 1860s.
You are a specious fool – exactly what Decius (and this is the first time I ever read him) – describes above. Sure, go ahead and appropriate leftist hate-mongering to beggar your would-be brethren. If you are what remains of the GOP – then you will be the Whigs of the 21st century. Good riddance to you.
The fool is the one who argued that Trump was the one true path to salvation for the republic. Trumpism is a disgrace to the republic and the extent of the humiliation of the Republican by Donald J. Trump will be written into the histories for a very long time.
It now looks like Trump will lose Arizona, Georgia and Utah. He probably hangs onto Texas but at the rate he’s losing votes to Hillary she make just take it from him. Bill and Hillary couldn’t have picked a better candidate to run against than the moron from Manhattan.
PT Barnum was right about suckers being born every minute, but what he didn’t know was that Baghdad Bobs are also born every minute.
No no no…..you don’t get it!!!!!! A “no vote” because your too stinking ignorant and scared counts as a vote to continue the charade….think outside the box, Mr. Historybuff, because Mr. Goldberg can not!!!!!!!
What you afraid of?
HB
….the fruit of my labor AND MY FREEDOM!!!!!!!!!
I think you evidently are a coward… that needs an adult to hold your hand in practice of being an American.
You ever walked a neighborhood to support a candidate?
HB
Go F_kc yourself!
Spoken very nasty & insulting…
Just like a trump supporter would emulate trump.
HB
Now now, I agree, no call for all of this……but remember the relationship between the Tories and “rebels” in 1774…..they were english subjects, all of them…..and the original clarion call was to be treated fairly and AS BRITISH SUBJECTS!!!!!!!…..but the ruling class refused……and the rest, as they say, is history…………. :-)
Spot on!
Good distinctions… and the rest is History.
HB
Leave it t Texan to be a master of brevity!
Does that mean you disagree with Texan59, or is that sarcasm?
I thought it was a compliment.
It is. Brevity is the soul of wit, as has been noted elsewhere.
“We” vs “You” – that’s really what it all comes down to, right? I don’t know you and you don’t know me. The notion of this great divide is the illusion of our age. Almost every faction in America sees it like you do and says it like you do. That’s the pathetic irony of all this. Decius is as mired in his sense of his perfect beleaguered victimhood and sense of betrayal as was that entitled college kid at Yale screaming in rage at the House master, for the audacity of being called a “master” or whatever it was about Halloween that justified her perfect beleaguered sense of betrayal. We are all walking around holding up in front of ourselves, not cell phones, but mirrors. Go look in yours, man. You say, “I don’t care if your whole apparatus burns to the ground.” About fifty years ago, H. Rapp Brown said the same thing. “Burn, baby, burn.” Another man walking around with a mirror in his face.
Yeah, because deciding to vote in a particular way is EXACTLY like being a terrorist.
We are not “mired in victimhood.” We are burning with suppressed rage at the utter betrayal of our values and efforts by people we trusted.
The Progressives must always fight and sow division. The constitution, however, is a contract for unity. That is why they fight.
Well said, Mr. Deplorable….well said….. :-)
you don’t get “it”…..this is our system. They are our representatives. They failed us. No crying. Just outrage. True, honest to G#d, OUTRAGE!!!!! And to add insult to injury, “we” judge by results and the results are BAD. Any more questions????….”We” didn’t think so…… :-)
jburack, I’ve made this challenge before in various forums, and make it to you now:
Can you name a SINGLE thing that Bush II + a Republican-controlled Congress did to reign in the growth of government?
If so, please tell us what it is.
I’ll tell ya!!!! NOTHING!!!!! It is not about a political party…..WE ARE WAY BEYOND THAT!!!!!! The whole ruling class is circling the wagons on this election…….and along with the fourth estate YOU BETTER NOT GET ON THEIR BAD SIDE!!!!!! ……or you, too, will have a bimbo eruption……GET IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :-)
And I say AMEN!!!
Wow. Just wow. You have described my feelings more concisely and eloquently than I ever could. If only you wrote for National Review instead of Goldberg, George Will and the other #NeverTrumpers, I would not have cancelled my subscription.
In fact, the entire comment (being from Texas, strongly supporting Cruz/Walker, being weary beyond words of our GOP ‘leaders’, never even knowing of alt-right until reading of them on NRO) could be autobiographical, except that I don’t wear a suit to work and I DID earn a B.A. from a “fancy-pants East Coast school.” (I am proud to say I later corrected that by earning a doctorate in geology from a Southwestern university which at the time was actually conservative.
Cheers! I shall drink a wee dram in your honor. Maybe two or three, if Trump wins, for the race seems to be getting closer.
“You have described my feelings more concisely…”
Were you planning on writing a novel about them?
“In fact, the entire comment (being from Texas, strongly supporting Cruz/Walker…”
It’s an odd thing: I can’t find a single person who admits to voting for Trump in the primaries, and yet he got the most votes by far!
You would think such a thing is mathematically impossible, yet here we are.
It is actually quite likely, with 17 candidates, that almost everybody voted for somebody else, or would have, if they’d lasted that long. It is also likely that the people who didn’t vote for Mr. Trump favored Sen. Cruz, because he got the next highest cohort of supporters. Also, you have to watch the wording: Mr. Trump was my tied-for-5th choice, but by the time of the California primary he’d made it to number one. So I think, if you worked it out on your spreadsheet, the whole narrowing process would make sense.
Fortunately, at this point, whether you vote for the best candidate, or the second worst, you’ll be casting your ballot for Mr. Trump. It has come down to arithmetic, and if you subtract Hillary Clinton, you’ll get the right answer.
You’re completely right, Trump loses and establishment conservatism will burn to the ground and I’ll gladly light the first match. I stopped reading and listening to these fools 6 months ago, they just don’t get that they’re the ones in the bubble.
Could not agree more!
Yep.
Trump isn’t my first choice. He11, he’s my FOURTH choice behind Cruz, Fiorina and Carson in that order. My vote in the Missouri primary was for Cruz. My dream ticket was Cruz/Fiorina.
I didn’t get them.
But I still recognize that Trump has the only qualification that really matters.
He. is. not. Monica. Lewinsky’s. Boyfriend’s. Wife.
Thank you for this comment. I’m happy to know I’m not alone. Couldn’t have said it better.
It is conservatives and not Establishmentarians that are most opposed to Trump. It was Boehner and not Cruz who bragged about being Trump’s golfing/texting buddy. You Trumpkins are such fools (and tools, I might add) for facilitating the election of Hillary Clinton with your ridiculous candidate.
I became a Cruz guy after Paul dropped out and agree with your sentiment. But if you don’t think both the media and backstabbing establishment wouldn’t have destroyed him prior to the convention and put a stake in him by now your are delusional.
We don’t live in an America of rational or common sense and while Cruz’s personality and tough stances are what we need, they would have been his downfall. Don’t get me wrong I wish he was the nominee. I just don’t buy the idea they wouldn’t have destroyed him too. I mean Trump sure did.
I don’t listen to the GOPe or the media. Why do you?
I don’t but the public sure as hell is influenced by idiocy and current social trends. They are in the pocket of the progressive Washington establishment and butt kissed by the conservative one. All I am saying is that Trumps an idiot but probably will perform about like Cruz.
IMO, Cruz would be doing better because he would’ve absolutely annihilated Hillary in the debates. Trump missed dozens of chances. Cruz wouldn’t have.
IMO, Matt_SE is actively working to elect Hillary Clinton and been doing so all year long.
Nate, thanks for your reply. Let me say that I believe that Trump was able to destroy his opposition with a huge lift from the media. Dems honestly wanted Trump as Hillary’s opponent, and worked with Trump to destroy the credibility of all other candidates. Podesta’s and other Dem emails tend to support this. Let me share my thinking and see what you think.
First off, in terms of his campaign, it is conceivable that Cruz could have floundered. He could have been pigeonholed into social issues; however, I think he would have been smart to pivot to economics and freedom in the general season, where conservatism’s libertarian “live-and-let-live” message is strongest. Additionally, I believe we can all admit he would have performed admirably against Hillary in the debates. And this is one of the factors in which the media was complicit in helping Trump–the fact that there were no debates post-March 15 (though they had been scheduled). It is understandable from Trump’s perspective that he would want to avoid debates after the carnival atmosphere had gone away and he would be forced to give answers longer than 30 seconds. The media allowed Trump to get away with cancelling the remaining debates.
Also, I tend to think that the media followed Trump’s negative “Lyin’ Ted” narrative too closely, focusing on Ted’s moderate negatives while ignoring or downplaying Trump’s sky-high negatives. I remember journalists breathlessly asking if Cruz was likable enough to win, but I never heard that of Trump, despite the fact that Cruz’s positive/negative numbers were positive, and Trump’s were negative.
So to say that Trump destroyed Cruz is to ignore the fact that had the media not incessantly echoed his narrative it would never have been firmly established. And yet now, having ensured he was the Republican candidate, the media turns on him, much to the surprise of Trump supporters. Trump supporters originally thought that Trump was the master of the media, when in the end it used him as justification for ensuring the demise of his more general-election qualified opponents.
The fact that the media would do their best to throw mud at any Republican candidate is not a good reason to pick a candidate who covers *himself* in mud and excrement.
Even if every single NeverTrumper was to swear eternal loyalty and fall to their knees singing praises to Trump, it won’t make a difference, because Trump is 99% responsible for the state of his campaign.
And yet, somehow, Jonah gets 100000 times more beef for Hillary’s position in the polls than Trump.
WTF?
It is conservatives and not Establishmentarians that are most opposed to Trump.
That’s a straight up lie. Phyllis Schlafy and Jeff Sessions = conservatives. Bill Kristol and Jonah Goldberg conservatives.
First off, you don’t convince me by citing what aren’t even very good examples. Kristol is an Establishmentarian, I will grant you that. However, Goldberg is not (I have no interest in debating this point–just go read Liberal Fascism and The Tyranny of Cliches). Phyllis Schlafy was old and perhaps senile; let us remember that she tried to kick her daughter and five others conservatives off the Eagle Forum (I think she had lost it by then) because they didn’t agree with her decision to back Trump. Poor Sesssions… he should have gone with Cruz instead; he thought he could use the populist support of Trump to further his own immigration goals; instead, it backfired and now his ideas are discredited and he looks like a fool. For example, before Trump, there was bipartisan support for a wall; now, post-Trump that support has dwindled. Yet another thing turned to shite in Trump’s hands. Boehner isn’t the only Establishmentarian buddy of Trump. I can name several off the top of my head. Hannity and Limbaugh, famous Establishmentarian water carriers for Delay and Bush, are in the pro-Trump camp. More conservative Beck and Levin are not. It wasn’t conservatives who ensured an RNC nomination, but the Establishmentarians who closed ranks around Trump and blocked all conservative (Lee, Cruz, etc.) dissent and attempts for an honest floor vote. I could go on and on.
Anyways, I wouldn’t use such terms as “lie” to describe another person’s opinion, especially when you are pretty much dead wrong in your assertions.
Secondly, and more importantly, you can argue about pundits and politicians (a rather small class of people), but in terms of actual voters, Trump has consistently polled behind in the “very conservative” demo and ahead in the “somewhat conservative” demo. Trump and his supporters are populists, which real conservatives don’t trust since popular passions often get inflamed in idiotic ways (i.e. protectionism). Additionally, Trump has a long progressive record which he currently disavows but we conservatives are very skeptical of late-life, politically convenient conversions. Hence, “very conservative” people tend to oppose him while more politically pragmatic “somewhat conservative” people are duped by, er I mean, tend to support him.
Additionally, though anecdotally, Trumpkins routinely criticize conservatism asking dumb-as-dogshite questions like “What has conservatism conserved?” as if that is some kind of rhetorical Trump card, as they wax poetic in alt-Right, identitarian language. I get tired of this kind of thing; it shows that Trumpkins have no concept about what conservatism actually is, and they somehow conflate the conservatism with the GOP, its erstwhile vehicle.
As I said, I could go on and on showing how conservatives tend to oppose and Establishmentarians tend to support Trump, but you’ll either be convinced by what I have written or remain in your mental ditch. If you support Trump, you are either a) not a conservative or b) you have been blinded by your understandable rage and can’t see what is going on. Either way, whatever.
I love this post with all my heart.
Allow me to ride your coattails on this one texan59.
Because above and beyond getting back to self-governance and other desired positions stated on this blog, we need folks to run. My GOP Congresscritter is a life-long servant of the Federal Government. So is Ted Cruz. Nothing wrong with either person when measured against the various flavors of leftism and their positions but they simply have had too much “get-along” tendencies to break the hold that the administrative state has on our body politic.
No matter what the outcome of the Trump candidacy, let us hope that the mere example will get more “self-governors” out of the shadows running for office.
Sadly, texan59, what Trump and Trumpism offers is no possibility of a sustainable governing coalition. It’s pure fantasy to think that a majority of the people have anything but contempt for Trump and Trumpism. He’s bleeding red states to Hillary now and it appears even Texas — even Texas! — may be within her grasp.
I know Texans who have NEVER voted for a Democrat in their lives who will not vote for Donald Trump and despise everything he represents.
So the ball is your court. Either pout in your little corner or honestly acknowledge the catastrophic candidacy of Donald Trump and get on with a dialogue with conservatives on how to responsible deal with economic opportunity, trade, immigration, social decay and weakness abroad. Whatever the answers on all those difficult issues, the path to finding those answers do not go through Donald and Decius.
Like P Decius Mus, Trump was not my first choice. If anything, he was closer to the bottom. But the voters have spoken in the primaries, and Trump prevailed.
There’s plenty I don’t like about him, still. I think he is undisciplined and has run an ineffective campaign. Even so, there’s no denying he calls BS on a lot of the PC nonsense. He has forced the MSM to out themselves as shills for the Democrat party. And he fights, at least for himself, which is something Repubs just don’t do. They seem to be satisfied as losers, so long as they keep their seats.
Whenever there’s a conflict between Dems and Repubs (e.g. over budgets issues, immigration, and government shutdowns), the Repubs almost always put their tails between their legs and run away, and then make excuses about it. And if they won’t fight for themselves, they sure as hell won’t fight for the people who elected them.
They talk a good game at election time. But government keeps getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger.
If you repeatedly fail to do what you say you’re going to do, don’t expect people to be happy about it.
the ball is your court.
Either oppose Hillary and support her opponent, or admit you are a pro-choice, wealth re-distributionist. Either way, if Trump loses, it’s all over. There will be no point in my voting anymore, and I will use my time more wisely every 2nd November.
If Texas is in play, it is only because it has been the dumping ground for so many Democrat voters from outside the US. It has been the prime target for such action since California became irreversible.
Trump is the only one out of the 17candidates for the Nomination with the brass balls to take the fight to the Democrats. That is a fact.
Who else would so much as entertain the idea of spending the Al Smith Dinner bashing Hillary Clinton? Who else would point out that Hillary hates Catholics at a Catholic charity event? Everybody else would have made lame jokes about themselves, just like Romney and McCain and Bush before.
Then you enable presidente hrc , PERIOD
Trump is like U.S. Grant. He fights. You really should channel Lincoln, Party of Lincoln.
Hillary “fights” too, but that’s hardly a sufficient reason to support her. Lincoln would be appalled by Trump. Anyone who believes himself to be a conservative should be appalled by a crony capitalist who had to be bailed out by the banks after he shoveled a billion dollars into the furnace into the Atlantic City casino market and who praised Hillary Clinton for the “great work” she did as Secretary of State.
Trump was the only Republican who Hillary could beat, but like lemmings we nominated this ignorant moron who might as well be a paid staffer on the Clinton campaign.
I preferred Cruz/Fiorina. I got outvoted. And I am a NeverHillary person. My choice is obvious.
Thanks! Your smackdown of the
conservative elites was delicious!
Exceptional!
Actually they’ve given us a lot. A 20 trillion dollar debt, Medicare Part D, massive government expansion (haven’t cut funding for a single program since 1994 let alone cut a program.), two boondoggle wars draining blood, treasury, and international confidence and respect. The maintenance of an entitlement system that will give our kids 100 trillion more to pay back.
Meanwhile their nominees to the SC (and the Clinton and Obama choices they rolled on), have destroyed any constitutional barriers to both federal and federal executive limits, and taken marriage, and kept abortion from the sacred prerogative of the Several States.
They gave us Chief Justice Roberts who made a deal with the devil twice on Obamacare. They gave us the Iran deal in the most cowardly move of 240 years of congressional actions (i.e. Trading their Treaty Powers for a super-majority veto so they could vote against it and hope we didn’t notice.)
For the big government evangelicals that have mindlessly supporting them for being pro life, they have given planned parenthood whatever it asks for to go about its grisly business.
They gave us regulation of the air we breathe out (That was Bushy initiative shamefully graced by the sanction of our so called conservative Court).
They gave us the nightmarish mortgage and financial system in which the banks and their Wall Street and K street buddies win every transaction after they bailed them out simply because they were the big and rich (i.e. too big to fail). They have by failure to use the power of the purse, allowed Obamacare to function thus giving us a program that cost 3 times (not to even really fix the problem) than the alleged problem was costing us, and has destablized our medical system to make single payer inevitable.
Best of all they have funded and exponentially increased funding for an education system that shamelessly churns out millions of hateful little brown shirt snowflakes that are unhirable in the private sector if not for the federal gun that is directed at big employers.
They have done OK with the 2nd amendment. A prospect that they probably regret given their relationship with the people, but in exchange they have given us secret courts and secret warrantless NSA access to our e-mails and texts. They have given us that Soviet sounding benemuth we call Homeland Security.
Id say they’ve done a damn good job delivering…lol
Boehner was correct in what he claimed concerning what would get done. Conservatives lost patience when patience was critical.
Yes, he was right.
The problem was that they ran on the promise that getting that control WOULD make a difference.
I didn’t have any delusions about how much they could actually accomplish with only “1/2 of 1/3”, but I was (and still am) insulted about the blatant two-faced-ness (word?) of their politicking, and their continued use of it despite being called out.
We have been patient, and we keep being played for fools to help them entrench their power, much to our demise…
I don’t think so. Consider the Bush tax cuts and Merrick Garland. A Republican House alone could not keep the tax cut on the books, but did get the threshold for increases raised to $400K/year. Very skillful, actually. Is Garland a justice? Again, delivering on the possible. The needed to hold the Senate and win the Presidency. Republicans should vote for Trump, but how could he have been nominated? Only by a party unconcerned with winning. Neither party has any excuse for whatever happens.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for saying so well just how I feel.
“Fair and square.”
According to Wikileaks, the Dems told the press to give Trump $1 billion in free advertising. Is that what you call “fair?” Trump was right: the election was rigged. In his favor.
Conservatives mentioned this at the time (e.g. on Media Research Center), but Trumpkins preferred to believe that Trump had magical media kung-fu powers, because that flattered their egos.
According to Wikileaks, the Dems told the press to give Trump $1 billion in free advertising.
Needless to say you just made that up. Wikileaks said noth9ing of the sort. The Dems did not tell the press to give Trump $1 billion in free advertising, and the press did not give Trump $1 billion in free advertising. What the press did was spend hundreds of millions of dollars attacking Trump.
“…Bob Dole…”
Hey, didn’t Bob Dole enthusiastically endorse Trump over Cruz? Yes, I believe he did.
It was mentioned at the time that this was because the GOPe thought Trump was far more corruptible and willing to “cut deals,” which turned out to be true.
What texan59 said. 1000%
The GOP has been fund-raising and getting votes for as long as I can remember by calling us on the phone at election time and saying stuff like, “Send us your money or the Democrats will be in power.”
Technically, Republicans presently have control of the House and Senate. But we have a Democrat president who hasn’t merely assumed office, he’s assumed power. So the Democrats are in power anyway.
To the Repubs- what good are ya?
Bravoooo!! Concur.
I wish I had written that! Thanks for sharing your thoughts and speaking for so many!
Precisely.
Whenever I, a self-identified conservative, am accused of being a Republican I shout “NO!”
I am completely aware that, prior to the Boy King stumbling drunkenly onto the scene out of his Chicago crib, the greatest increase in the national debt and in the overreach of a run-amok federal government had come under his predecessor under the rubric of “compassionate conservatism.” Sorry, but I cannot slip the blade of a sharp knife, the only kind I keep around, between that and liberalism.
Trump/Pence 2016
One Last Chance
Best point is that the other candidates DROPPED OUT! Many after almost no effort. How weak is that? I liked several of them, but by the time the primaries rolled around to my state they were out!
Well said. The last time I spent more than five minutes on an election was in the recount phase of 2000. Every new story about hanging chads and confusing ballots was hotly debated online, and I probably typed a book’s worth of text in arguing it all — in service of what? So we could get a “compassionate conservative” who ushered in Ted Kennedy’s education takeover, expanded government in pretty much every way, catered to the globalists, and appointed the moderate Roberts who surprised everyone by approving Obamacare — after trying to nominate the likely liberal Harriet Miers.
What a waste of effort. This is the first election since that has piqued my interest at all, because it’s the first one that wasn’t a sporting event between the faster and slower versions of the globalist left. My state isn’t even in play, but I’ll be voting because I simply want to be involved in the revolution if it happens. It’s the first fun election of my life, despite all the scolds, and that seems like a good thing.
Spoken as a true Jacksonian….these people beat you up, and I don’t blame them…..your a fool…..you think that being American means that you owe all that you are blessed with to a political party….you Jackass, your the very reason we have this mess…..you worship a political entity and basically said a big “F you ” to your country….George Washington, in his farewell address, warned us about people like you!!!!!! Read it, get your nose out of the NYT and the WaPo and educate yourself!!!! He warned us of people and groups who put political aspirations ahead of the good of our sovereign nation….look at the damage, you insufferable bore…..look at what you have done……nothing but war and identity politics, poverty, crony-capitalism, pay to play….and do things get better, HELL NO….YOU MAKE THEM WORSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!….at what point do you, or anyone else, wake up…..do you want to know something? That guy next to you is an American, too…..but you don’t care….because just like the extreme, meaning the National Socialist and the Communist, the party comes before the PEOPLE!!!!!……I’m a Texan and I’m ashamed to be associated with you…… :-)
Someone is rather angry here. Apparently I didn’t use small enough words for you to understand, because your response in no way reflects my opinion. Everything I said is pretty much the opposite of what you have written. Just so you know, I don’t spend much time reading the rags you mentioned, as in never, but you are a caring compassionate person, and for some ill-conceived reason, you seem to think I hate everyone. I for one, do not put any stock in what any politician tells me. If you put your faith in their hands, you deserve what you get. While I am a Texan, I’m not ashamed to be associated with you, because I DO care about what happens to this Country, and I don’t like what has happened. At all. Have a nice day my friend. BTW, it’s spelled you’re. Not your.
Bravo Zulu, texan59. I second your sentiments. And I am doubly proud to call Texas home, knowing I have neighbors like you.
Perfect. Spot on.
The Conservative Professionals who make up the He-Man Trump Haters Club are willfully obtuse regarding so many things in this election that it’s hard to keep track. Firstly, as Decius pointed out in his Flight 93 essay, should Clinton win in 2016 and 2020, they will be living on borrowed time professionally. They are useful now as a Potemkin Opposition and as apologists for the strident ad hominems directed at Trump and his supporters. But there will come a time (and soon) in which their particular jig will be up. The left will collectively decide that they have constructed a durable electoral majority for decades to come and they will no longer feel the need to countenance even token disagreement.
The uneasy alliance that existed on the right since Reagan is nearing it’s denouement. The only thing that papered over our differences heretofore was political victory. Consistently being bloodied by the left on the issues that matter have exposed the fault lines in our “movement.”
The coming conservative crack-up will be horrible for the country to be sure. It will hand the Democrats unfettered power. With Republicans, libertarians, and nationalists splitting the right-wing, Democrats will clean up in every election. America will essentially be a one-party state. And, historically, that has never worked out too well. It seems that the #NeverTrump cabal are completely oblivious to the fact that those they’ve so giddily stabbed in the back now will be loathe to support them in the future. After all, turnabout is fair play.
Oh and one more indictment of the #NeverTrump movement is this: It has given cover to and emboldened the Media to be more outrageously biased and partisan than ever before. “Why, of course we’re trying to bury Trump! Even other Republicans think he’s Hitler!” It is inconceivable that the Media would have taken their machinations in 2016 as far as they have without the quiet acquiescence of #NeverTrump.
Bunk.
You lord trump never beat either clinton or sanders. Trump was a ‘no-win’ from the beginning – but you trump cultists shoved the sleazeball down our throats anyway… KNOWING that supporting trump was to give the election to clinton.
Well, likely sleazy clinton will win. Nice job – YOU gave the election to the democrats. So, lets get on with your ‘crackup’… YOU need to get out – go form your own party.
Get Out – Now!
HB
Why yes..a RECORD number of voters picked Trump…almost 50% of the primary votes cast. Are you really that stupid to think that if you’d managed to shove one of the usual GOP establishment packages on us as nominee, they would have won? That trick can
only work so many times.
Do you really think none of them wouldn’t have been demonized the sam eway Trump is? The difference here is that people like you helped.
Good luck reorganizing your party.Do you think that after the way people like you have behaved, and of Trumps supporters are going to come back? And that Hillary isn’t going to make sure you never have any presence or real power ever again, especially after she stacks the Court?
If you survive at all, you’re going to end up as a comic villain joke, Wiley Coyote to the Dems Roadrunner.
LOL, what bunk.
YOU… and your lord trump… are democratic supports pretending to be Republicans. Indeed, your lord trump’s record is supportive of democrats, and clinton specifically.
“The last time Trump considered a White House run in 2011, reporters seized upon the fact that he has given most of his money to Democrats and Democratic causes, according to records.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/donald-trump-donations-democrats-hillary-clinton-119071
How do you explain that, big guy? And there is more… and YOU know it.
Get Out. Go start your own party.
HB
Your lack of intelligence is astounding! Trump supporters are the true heart of the Republican Party. That is a simple mathematical fact.
Yes… in your world… hehehe… Republicans support democrats like trump.
LOL !
HB
Not after November 8. If Trump loses bigly (heh), you’re gonna look awfully foolish. And you will have deserved it.
Why is it that you can’t resist providing more proof of the failure of the Republican Party?
The Democrat Party has the power. They receive the bribes – ahem, I mean, “donations”. Especially in New York, despite the fact that the only Republican mayor was wildly successful in reforming it and solving most of the problems. You’d think that would be enough to overcome the natural political bent of New York, but looks like the Republican Party failed to capitalize. But in any case, if you want donations, you need power.
If the Republican Party can only succeed by emulating demorcratic party ethics…
Then, the republican party should go away quietly.
HB
“if the American army can only succeed by emulating Japanese tactics…
then we should quietly go away and let them continue to attack us”
do you see how stupid you sound?
the left owns the culture, they make the rules. The only way to take it back and remake the rules, is to play their game and take back control of the culture and demolish the bureaucracy. Trump gets that, the Republican Party doesn’t. And that’s why control of both houses of Congress just leads to more Democrat government spending, the one issue they should at least pretend to be solid on.
Nonsense.
America always stood for Freedom and democracy. The Japanese did not.
America was right, America won… because America was good. When the Republicans are no longer good… Republicans will no longer win.
HB
If America stands for freedom and democracy as you say, then Trump is the legitimate nominee..yet you support the candidate of rigging elections and voter fraud. And don’t even try to BS your way out of it by saying you’re voting third party. If you’re a Republican and don’t vote for Trump, you support Hillary and all she stands for.
.Ignorant hypocrite
Awe… poor baby… people catching on to your lies?
Hehehe, your lord trump… wouldn’t even carry a rifle for ‘freedom and democracy’… cause he had a ‘bone spur’ on an ankle… that he couldn’t even remember which ankle.
Trump cares nothing for Freedom and Democracy – trump cares only about his tender ego. He loves your worshiping him.
HB
“because America was good”
—Hillary talking point!!!
No, guess again – WW2 history.
HB
The war the Soviets largely won?
Not against the Japanese.
HB
In that case, I propose that Trump stands for Freedom and democracy, so he’ll be all right even if he emulates the tactics of the Democrats.
Seriously, you argue like a 5-year-old. Either the enemies’ tactics can be used against them or they can’t. And are you saying McCain and Romney weren’t good?
Sorry… its not something you ‘propose’… its something that you are.
And trump ain’t got it!
HB
Sorry for you, but it’s clear that he does, just like it’s clear that you have no coherent moral principles except “people I like get to do bad stuff, and people I don’t like don’t”.
So they were good under the criminal Bush family, but bad under Dole, McCain, and Romney?
Republican Party.
HB
“When the Republicans are no longer good… Republicans will no longer win.”
—W. won in 2000 with Republican Congress. McCain lost in 2008 with huge Democrat majorities. So does that mean the Republicans won in 2000 because with Bush and gay pædo Hastert they were “good” while McCain and Congressional Republicans in 2008 were “no longer good”?
Sigh…
The Republican Party has done quite well.
HB
You can’t control the culture. The culture is, more or less beyond the control of politics, except for extreme cases (i.e. North Korea) and perhaps long range social engineering. And even there, very difficult.
and yet they’ve managed it
You emulate their ethics and policies.
Pretty lame. Can’t you come up with anything better than that?
HB
Trump also gave a lot of money to Romney and endorsed him in 2012. And according to NY state records, he’s been a registered Republican for over a decade.
That said, make no mistake that a lot of us are going to take your advice no matter how things turn out. If Trump wins and he’s smart, he will either purge your ilk and/or form a new party of patriots from those members of the GOP and those Democrats disgusted by what their party has become(Jim Webb is an example) and who are prepared to place country over their perks and their wallets.
People with your views are beneath contempt, because you’re willing to sell your freedom out for the status quo. if you can’t lend a hand then get out of the way, as a certain Nobel Prize winner once said.
LOL !
If your sleazy trump wins… what makes you think traditional Conservatives will want to align with a wife-beating liar that lies, is secretive about his ‘success’ finances, cheats his business partners, scams older people, and bullies he weak?
By all means, please take your sleazy trump ethics… and start your own party – and be sure take all those that agree with your sleaze and ethics.
HB
I see you’ve swallowed the ReadyForHillary bogus talking points whole and are now regurgitating them like the good little Tory puppet you are. Anyone who knows anything about Donald Trump could refute this, but you aren’t worth the time, frankly.
Go vote for Queen Hillary and be damned. You fool NO ONE.
Ah… you trump cultists… can’t handle the truth… so you lie about anyone that won’t fit into YOUR narrow minded way of thinking.
And… You do realize, Trump is the ONLY republican candidate that has consistently lost to clinton or sanders… all the rest of the republican candidates consistently BEAT clinton – therefore, if you vote trump… You are supporting hillery clinton.
Think about it, bub.
HB
You’re not a traditional conservative, you’re a neocon.
Most the #NeverTrumpists who claim he’s not a “true conservative” voted for the socially liberal Mormon who rapes small businesses and keeps his money in the Caymans; a bats*** insane senator who was a rich playboy and bottom of his class at Naval Academy, who sings songs about bombing people and who left his dying wife to screw, then marry, a beauty queen; and a certified idiot and former playboy and cokehead who couldn’t run a business gifted to him.
But Trump – he’s beyond the pale, so low class, ewwwwwww.
Are Trumpkins claiming they’re conservatives now? It’s hard to tell, because sometimes Decius says one thing, sometimes he says the opposite.
Trump represents a more true conservatism, not the construct of classical liberalism + neoconservative foreign policy + a feigned abstract “Judeo-Christianity” perhaps better known as recycled Whiggery from 19th century English politics.
Trump is in no way conservative. All conservatives (the ones without prefixes) believe in limited government, and with the tax collections/spending at historic highs, there’s no position to take but that government must be cut.
If Trump has ever suggested reduction in government, it would be a by-product of some other program, not directly. Any such incidental cuts would also be negated by his big-spending programs like whatever socialized medicine he thinks will replace Obamacare.
Well, you last line got it right – trump is penthouse trash.
HB
Ted Cruz said this 85000 times in debates and lost, get over it.
Nobody cares that Trump was not a Republican since he was 6 months old or whatever. If you want to belong to a club, go join a country club or yacht club, and leave the GOP alone.
Then why is his support among Republicans so low?
It’s not.
That will be put to the test soon enough. If Trump loses by a greater margin than Romney (4%) or McCain (7%), it must’ve been due to poor support in the GOP.
Actually, sleazy trump is a democrat – here is who he admires…
“Yet as recently as last year, Trump called Bill Clinton the best of the past four U.S. presidents. In 2008, Trump called him a “great president” and said the Clintons are “fine people.”
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/05/17/donald-trump-bill-clinton-economy/84500518/
Hehehe, imagine that – YOUR trump… admires billy clinton.
Amazing, whoe rich, elite, establishment ‘penthouse trash’ type folks find for friends.
HB
I am supposed to be offended by the idea that Bill Clinton was the best of the last four presidents? Here’s the original video – http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/trump-weighs-in-on-best-president-466103363535 .
What’s wrong with that?
Your lord trump is opposed to billy clinton. Billy clinton is a bad guy.
So, what changed? Is trump lying?
HB
Four bad choices.
And question is not about character but presidency … not that the Bushes or Obama are stellar human beings.
Is trump lying?
HB
Since there are very few substantive policy differences between the Bushes, Clintons, and Obama, I don’t care whom one chooses of those four as the best president.
The argument for Billy is obviously that the economy was better (even manufacturing briefly increased) and the budget balanced. However, any of those presidents could have probably presided over the same had they served in that time period.
OK
Trump lied. You just can’t admit it.
HB
CORRECTION : Trump received the most primary votes in Republican history.
CORRECTION: Trump still received 45% of the popular vote in a field where only 4 people got over 100 delegates and the 5th place person got 7. In other words, a 5-person race.
Which is pretty frickin’ awesome!
It’s not even as good as McCain.
OK, let’s look at this, taking your five-candidate assertion:
Trump 45%
Cruz 25%
Kasić 14%
Rubio 11%
Carson 3%
That looks pretty overwhelming to me. Let’s think of this some other ways – Trump only lost a handful of actual primaries – Cruz’s and Kasić’s home states, OK (borders TX), WI (concerted effort by GOPe/Ryan), and ID (Mormons). He won 33 and lost five.
Now, if we want to be fair and subtract the contests that were not properly contested, then he won 24 and lost five and the vote was something more like this:
Trump 42%
Cruz 27%
Kasić 14%
Rubio 12%
Carson 3%
If we look at McCain or Romney and how they did in *contested* primaries, their showing was worse than Trump’s. Simply, since they were establishment candidates their opposition was under pressure to drop out earlier in primary season.
Romney won all primaries together 52%-20% Sant – 14% Ging – 11% Paul. However, if we just take primaries before Santorum dropped out:
Romney 11 primaries – 4.5 mln 40%
Santorum 6 primaries – 3.1 mln 27%
Gingrich 2 primaries – 2.26 mln 20%
Paul 0 primaries – 1.2 mln 11%
McCain overall won 47% vs. 22% Rom 20% Huck 6% Paul 3% Giul 1% Thomp. However, if we only count through when Huckabee dropped out, the totals are:
McCain 20 primaries – 7.34 mln – 42%
Romney 3 primaries – 4.53 mln – 27%
Huckster 5 primaries – 3.91 mln – 22%
Paul 0 primaries – 790k – 4%
Giuliani – 590k – 3%
Thompson – 290k – 2%
This is almost identical to Trump’s showing except that McCain won a smaller proportion of primaries (71% vs. 83%).
There you go. Trump’s win *was* impressive.
40% against three opponents and only winning 53% of primaries? That’s worse
So stop whining.
The race was over before the halfway point, because after that came the Northeast. That means Trump won half the states with no opposition (he was always going to win the Northeast).
Less than a majority of votes in the primary = fractured support in the general. That’s why the GOP has the requirement of a majority for an outright win: it gives legitimacy.
Then how come Trump is leading in at least two polls and tied in others?
Personally, I don’t think Trump is really ahead but yes, he’s competitive and these Beltway dickheads want to declare him the loser already because all their friends aren’t voting for him.
Look at the polls. One admits it’s a joke, the otheris a joke, and one has a large pool of undecideds because it’s mythology counts soft support as undecided. Trump is cooked.
Let’s get two things straight about polls as I write on October 23:
First, each and every poll is meaningless if it takes place before November 8.
Second, each and every poll is designed to influence that one, and we know in which direction that influence leans. If you are so sure because of a poll, then you are being led around by the nose, willfully or otherwise.
He loses in the rest… and there are a LOT more of those. Why do you trump cultists always forget the TRUTH? Why do you lie?
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton-5491.html
HB
Trump may or may not win, but I’m fairly confident he will run better than Mitt or McCain did.
I’m not certain of that at all.
Turns out Trump did in fact do better than McCain and Romney, and by a fairly substantial margin.
How about that?
Winning Upper Midwest “Blue Wall” states will do that. It turns out that white blue-collar resentment of their lot was greater than their antipathy towards the GOP. Dems really shouldn’t have taken them for granted.
LA Times: the paper that’s sitting on the Khalidi tapes.
Rassmussen: the company that changed its favorability polls of Obama after Holder threatened to investigate them (and never went back).
IBD: conservative editorials in a left-leaning publication (as far as I’ve heard).
You’re being Todd Akin’ed.
Actually it was Gallup who changed Obama’s rating after being threatened, not Rasmussen. And IBD was the most accurate poll in 2012. The Times SC poll is interesting because they’re using a different methodology than the others and have consistently shown Trump ahead in spite of the Times’ ultra leftist stance.
Again, I don’t think that the polls are telling the whole story here…see my comment up thread.
You know what? You’re right…it was Gallup.
IBD’s one success isn’t a pattern. If IBD were highly predictive, Nate Silver would give them better than an A-minus rating:
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/
Perhaps, but remember, by his own admission Silver and his crew (all Hillary dems BTW) totally missed Trump’s winning the primaries. His weighting,IMO is rather partisan. I also still maintain that a lot of what’s going on now is a tactic to disillusion trump supporters, convince them he’s already lost and effect turnout. Plus, alot of people who publicly diss Trump because it keeps them from beimng harassed are likely to vote for him inthe privacy of the voting booth. Remember what I wrote earlier:
The real question that will decide the election is how many of Trump’s voters, a significant number who have avoided voting for years an dare not ‘likely voters’ will show up as opposed to the illegal migrants, dead people and out right fraud the Democrats can muster in those urban fortresses of theirs.
And how many blacks and Latinos will finally vote their self interest instead of remaining on the democrat plantation. If Trump can get 20-25% of the black vote, he might just end up winning. And a lot of Latinos i know support him, because they deal with the fall out fr4om illegal migrants every day..
So we’ll see.
Caveat: DO NOT PAY ANY ATTENTION TO THE EXIT POLLS. They’re part of the same media tactic to drive down Trump’s turnout. That also applies to ‘calling’ of states based on the exit polls. . If you remember, they’ve been seriously wrong before.
The thing is, I’ve been here before with the “polls are skewed against Romney” thing. After the election was over, conservatives online had to listen to “skewed polls” jibes for a year.
And the thing was, it stung so badly because the progs were right: we believed in a fantasy because we wanted it to be true.
If Trump loses by a large margin (like, 2 times the margin of error of 3%), you’re going to get that same treatment, from all sides.
In my experience, polls are usually not rigged.
Oh, I hear you. But I can tell you that a lot of the polls WERE skewed in 2012 because I examined their mechanics and did the math.
A big part of Romney losing, BTW, was the fact that over 3 million self -declared Republicans sat home. No one figured on that, although they should have given his abysmal campaign. . If they’d have shown up, he would have won.
Remember also that there was a great amount of voter fraud.In Philly, for instance, there were precincts with over 120% turnout without a single Romney vote.
When skewed publicly released polls are released as a tactic to drive down GOP turnout, they can become a self -fulfilling prophecy.
All I’m saying at this point is to get out and vote and ignore this tactic. Trump may lose (given that his own party is doing their best to sabotage him as well as the media AND the Dems, it would be a major upset if he won) but let’s wait until the votes are counted and see how it goes without relying on polls.
if the publicly released polls were that accurate, would the candidates spend big money to hire their own, private pollsters? it ain’t over until it’s over.
Uh, there’s a lot you said about the 2012 race I don’t believe, but I’m not going to rehash the race now.
That’s fine. But if you do your own research, I believe you’ll find out I’m right.
I don’t think they’re usually rigged en masse, but some are rigged a few % for the Dems. For years Gallup leaned Democrat. In 2008, their last poll had Obama up 11%, 4% off. They readjusted methodology to be more pro-GOP, then ended up 4-5% in the other direction, predicting a small Romney win.
You have to admit some polls are rigged – take the CNN-ORC debate poll. CNN-ORC regular polls are not particularly biased against the GOP, but the debate polls were “volunteers” from regular polls who just happened to be about 3:2 for Hillary going into the poll. Then they take the results, don’t readjust them for demographics, and claim “Americans who watched the debate” believe Hillary won the debate by 35%/23%/13%. That’s obvious manipulation.
I stopped following individual polls in 2012. It’s averages or nothing now.
You should read the crosstabs and demographics of the polls you wish to average.
That’s the point of averages: so I don’t have to do that.
That’s uninformed. You could get an average full of crap or old polls.
If they were systemically biased, it would be detected at the end of the cycle and adjusted. I don’t believe in intentionally-biased polls (i.e. conspiracy) because it would be bad for polling companies in the long run.
Groups like Nate Silver’s rate polling companies on their track record and adjust the polls accordingly. That’s why people trust them, mostly.
The CNN debate poll is already an example. Here’s another:
Polls for the Brexit referendum consistently showed Remain ahead … until 2-3 weeks out and Leave took a lead. Politically correct MP Jo Cox was shot and this was blamed on the far right and Remain took a lead. The final poll released had 55 Remain 45 Leave. The final result was 52 Leave, so a 14 point difference! If you read the crosstabs for the 55% Remain poll, however, you saw they deliberately overweighted young people (a very pro-Remain group) and underweighted working class people (very pro-Leave). I readjusted these averages to the norm and saw that the sample should have legitimately yielded a 51-49 narrow Remain lead, which, though also incorrect, was closer to the real result than the adjusted projection.
Yes, polls are intentionally jacked. So it’s a “conspiracy”, yeah, ok, and…? Don’t you read the Wikileaks, conspiracies are common in politics. I agree your standard polling firm wants an accurate result for its reputation … but you are only judged on your final prediction. The goal of creating misleading polls such as the 12% lead in ABC-WP today is to change perceptions ahead of the vote.
“The final poll released had 55 Remain 45 Leave.”
You’ve taken an entire series of polls, and thrown them all away except this last one.
In other words, you have one poll.
Don’t give me this crap, give me the averages. The averages would’ve diluted this bias down to almost nothing.
That was illustrating how polls are jacked. The average for final Brexit polls was around 52 Remain, so about 8% off the result (+4 vs. -4).
Then I assume their methods will be corrected if the polling companies want to stay in business. That’s what happened in the US after the wild mis-reading of the 2014 polls. Even Nate Silver admitted they were systemically biased.
Silver was accurate enough in 2012 but blew the primaries (not just with Trump; gave Hillary a 99% chance to win MI). He’s readjusting pro-Democrat polls in a generally pro-Clinton direction (twice, at the national level and state level and then readjusting the already adjusted state averages based on the adjusted national polls).
As I’ve said, it makes sense to give Hillary some points for IBD-TPP, Rasmussen, and LAT-USC, but you should subtract points from Hillary for polls that sample 10% more Ds than Rs (or oversample young voters).
The nice thing is that we don’t have to speculate much longer.
So being “Akin’ed” refers to an assumed conspiracy that the liberal media rig polls to favour the Republican just to troll GOP voters?
Or what the hell are you trying to say?
Yes, a reference to Todd Akin from 2012.
He made a stupid remark about abortion that hurt him horribly in the polls. There was still time for him to withdraw and probably for a replacement to win (it was viewed as a favorable race for the GOP), but Dems fed him bogus “polls” that convinced him he was still viable. I think they got money to him too, somehow, IIRC.
He believed it because he wanted to, and went on to get massacred.
Missouri has Senator Claire McCaskill because of it.
It was later confirmed that’s exactly what happened, so it’s not an alleged conspiracy. Everyone could see it coming from a mile away except Akin.
I know about Akin but I had never heard the allegation that he was fed bogus polls.
The GOPe wanted Trump out from well before primary votes were cast. Nobody gives a damn if he said p**sy 85 years ago.
I think some people care, and others pretend to care. But that’s my unprovable opinion.
Looking up the MO 2012 election. The polls that had Akin up after the comment were Gravis (GOP-leaning, works with Breitbart now) and Wenzel (worked for Rand Paul). There were a couple Democrat firms that had it close (We Ask America and PPP). Maybe we have evidence some Dem operative had this idea about how to troll Akin but I doubt it was that decisive.
Post-1990’s Conservatism will pretty much never go anywhere. The modern Conservative elite are the permanent “loyal opposition” to our Leftist masters. Goldberg himself wrote that the fight between Conservatives and Liberals is a kind of internal battle between believers in Liberal Democracy and the Enlightenment. First man that tells me that I am part of a movement promoting Liberal democracy and the Enlightenment will get a knuckle sandwich. Before the Neo-con takeover in 1989-90, Conservatism had many weaknesses. After the takeover it became entirely useless as a serious form of opposition to Liberalism.Goldberg and his kind are a blight on Conservatism. The rot set in a long time ago.
That’s funny…
Republicans dominate the House, the Senate, the Governorships, the State Legislatures, and even the County Commissions.
Now tell me what the Conservatives are doing wrong? Granted, sleazy trump has now sabotaged Republican presidential chances for 2016, but in the larger scheme of things, that is a singular failure of judgement.
As far as ‘Conservatism’… I cannot conceive of ANY Conservative movement that is not founded on fundamental personal & organizational INTEGRITY.
You lose.
HB
Yes, conservatives, or at least Republicans, control the House, Senate, most governorships, most state legislatures, and most country commissions, but so what? What have they done with all that? The left continues to win all the important policy battles.
Republican states have done quite well – look at Texas. THAT is what they have done.
Dow, go back and review your “US Constitution 101″… and refresh yourself on what it takes to effect change – a HOUSE… a SENATE… and a PRESIDENT. All three.
HB
And yet the left seems to effect change, radical change, at that, without controlling Congress. And even when the Republicans did control both houses and the presidency, what did we get to show for it?
A growing economy.
Low (truly) unemployment.
A fairly stable Middle East (no matter what you thought of our going in there).
Good SCOTUS appointments.
A “massive” deficit of $162 Billion (oh, those were the days).
Big down-ticket political gains.
Not much, I guess…
What color is the sky on your planet? A growing economy? From 2003 to 2005, when the GOP controlled the White House and both houses of Congress, GDP grew at a rate above three percent for only two years: at 3.8% in 2004 and then 3.3% in 2005, before falling to 2.7% in 2006 and then 1.8% in 2007. What an impressive economic record.
It is true that unemployment was low during that period, but then it shot up to record highs immediately thereafter, so that’s hardly a ringing endorsement of GOP economic management either.
A “fairly stable Middle East”? I don’t know what you’ve been smoking, but I want some. This was the period when we were fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in which thousands of Americans died, and for what? Was America really better off for having invaded Iraq?
Good SCOTUS appointments? One good one, and we had to fight Bush to get that. If he had had his way, we would have gotten Harriet Myers instead of Alito. As for Roberts, calling him a good appointment is crazy. Or have you forgotten any of his ACA decisions?
As for the deficit, was it lower than under Obama? Yes, but the national debt still grew by almost five trillion dollars during Bush’s tenure. So, yay?
As for “[b]ig down-ticket political gains”, what planet are you on? Thanks to the incompetence of the Bush administration, we got Obama and huge Democratic majorities in Congress, which is how we got Obamacare. Bush led the Republicans straight into the political wilderness.
And what was the point of any of this? Did anything happen during that time to prevent, say, same-sex marriage? When we might have successfully pushed for a Defense of Marriage Amendment to preempt Obergefell? No, in fact Bush and the GOP congressional leadership, including McCain, who was the Republican nominee in 2008, opposed that, killing any chance of it.
Did we get school choice, which Bush campaigned on in 2000 and which might have helped break the leftist stranglehold on the schools, which allows them to indoctrinate the young? No, instead Bush let Ted Kennedy write his education bill; Bush couldn’t wait to jettison any meaningful choice provisions from that law. Instead, we got pointless new spending and federal interference in the public schools.
Did we get any meaningful opposition to affirmative action in higher education, when there was momentum in favor of real equality? No, instead, the Bush administration wrote an amicus brief for racial preferences when the matter was before the Supreme Court and the case came down to a single vote.
Did we get any serious attempt to appoint conservatives to the lower federal courts? No, instead, the Dems filibustered Bush’s nominees, the Republicans made some idle threats about abolishing the filibuster–the so-called “nuclear option”–and then caved. Note that when the Democrats controlled the White House and the Senate, they went nuclear right away, allowing Obama to fill lower-court vacancies with radical leftists who will be pushing jurisprudence to the left for generations to come.
Any attempt to alter the ongoing demographic shift of the electorate owing to mass immigration? The same mass immigration that is turning Republicans and conservatives into a permanent minority? No, of course not.
So we got anemic economic performance, a foreign-policy catastrophe, and no meaningful effort on any of the cultural issues that are transforming American society out from under us. And you wonder why people have lost patience with the Republican and conservative establishments.
You asked what we got to show for control of both houses and the presidency, and I gave you a list. And while I agree with much of what you state here, your methods are quite Progressive – resorting to insult, moving the goal posts, and lots of hyperbole.
Most of your “rebuttals” required you to venture into 2007 and beyond to “prove” your point. The economy was quite good until the Dems took over in 2006, unemployment was quite low as well. But to make your point, you diminish any real achievements, and turn several molehills into mountains.
I am not here to defend Bush, or even the Republican establishment, but to lump them in with the Dems and what Obama has done the last eight years is ridiculous – the difference between a smoldering pile of rags and a four-alarm fire.
Bush inherited a recession from the dot-com bubble and then 9-11. Yet he was able to accomplish meaningful tax rate reductions that again spurred the economy. Could he and the Republicans have done more? Absolutely, but it was far better than the incompetency of the last ten years.
The Middle East was stable in 2006. I didn’t say it was a good thing we went in, or that there weren’t major problems along the way, but it was stable in 2006. You harp on the negatives, but the world would be far better if the ME had remained that way instead of what happened after the Dems took over.
I don’t care why or how, but we got Alito, and, other than the ACA (which I agree was an appalling decision), Roberts has been a good judge. I know this weakens your argument to acknowledge, and puts you off of your absolutist rant, but facts is facts.
Republicans held the majority of governorships during this period, but did lose the majority in 2007. They more than recovered in 2010.
Yes, I wish they had done more, and your list is quite comprehensive, but again, to say they did nothing, or we would be just as fine if the Dems had been in instead is absurd.
So save your insults and snark for the Progressives – it’s their style, and they’ll appreciate it more. Me, I just find it silly…
First of all, the economy was not “quite good” in 2006; it was already sliding into recession, as declining growth numbers for the previous two years reveal. The economy did not change direction when the Democrats took over Congress, it just kept going in the same direction. The recession officially started in 2007; saying that that was the responsibility of the Democrats who took control of Congress in that same year, while exculpating Bush for having inherited economic problems, is clear special pleading.
Second of all, your list of “accomplishments” were not real accomplishments. Do you know how I know? Because when the Democrats held the Presidency and both houses of Congress, they did not bother to repeal a single thing that had happened when the Republicans had controlled the Presidency and both houses. What better indictment of GOP uselessness do you need?
Third, you say that Roberts “only” failed us on ACA, but that was one of the two most important decisions to come before the Court during his tenure, and it was a decision that came down to one vote. Meaning that his vote was the decisive one. He went with us on Obergefell, when it did not matter, when his vote would not change anything.
The Middle East was not stable in 2006. The conflagration had abated temporarily, but if all it took was American inaction over the next few years to bring it to a cataclysm, then it was not stable. The word “stable” means that if something is left alone, it will remain in the same state or situation. If something will undergo cataclysmic change in a short time in the absence of outside intervention, then it is by definition unstable.
You say you do not care about how we got Alito, but if we have to fight the Republican establishment to get a good judicial appointment, and we did, then something is very wrong with that establishment, and it needs to be changed.
Finally, sorry about the snark and insults.
The left did their big changes while they controlled the House, the Senate, and the presidency. After that, things went bad because they did not do things – like honor the Syria Red Line commitment.
And for the umpteenth time… the House… the Senate… have zero, no, nada. Operational Responsibility for Government.
Do YOU expect the House or Senate… to violate the Constitution?
HB
Really? Obergefell happened in 2015, when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. Pull the other one.
I’ll bite.
What’s Obergefell ?
HB
Are you joking? Obergefell? The Supreme Court decision that made same-sex marriage legal throughout the country? Ring any bells? I’d call that a pretty big change in a left-ward direction, and it happened when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress.
Why do YOU think a Republican controlled House & Senate… can tell the Supreme Court of the United States how to determine their cases?
Are you even American?
HB
Let’s recap: I point out that control of Congress doesn’t matter, because the left wins major policy victories without it, and the right does not win significant policy victories with it. You claim that the left only won their significant victories when they controlled Congress. I give an example to falsify that claim. You acknowledge your ignorance of recent, well-publicized history. You then concede the original point that control of Congress does not matter, because all the real power is in the courts and the executive branch, without acknowledging that you are conceding it, by asking whether Congress is supposed to stop the Court from doing whatever it wants. The answer is of course that they have no power to do so, in fact, no real power at all, and thus controlling them does not matter. You then asked a ridiculous non sequitur of a question about whether I am an American. I am, but what earthly difference would it make if I were not? I guess when you have lost the argument, the only thing left is to launch baseless ad hominems against your opponent.
Nonsense. You said…
“You claim that the left only won their significant victories when they controlled Congress.”
And President.
Are YOU sure you are even of American nationality… Do YOU understand American Government as laid out in the US constitution?
HB
And they do nothing with this “dominance”. Ryan owns congress and passes a spending bill like we’ve never seen before. Obamacare still exists, and can even be used to force people to violate their own religious beliefs, unless a court case bails them out. The borders remain unsecured, the laws around illegal immigration and deportation remain nutso, and the agencies tasked with enforcing these laws are MIA by design. I guess…taxes are low?
Our debt balloons.
The government of North Carolina, by the way, is quite Republican, and passed a nice bill – “businesses don’t have to have trans bathrooms if they don’t want”. But because the culture war has shifted, many big businesses immediately disavowed the state. Despite the low taxes secured for them by the Republican Party (or perhaps because of their failure to secure sufficiently low taxes), these businesses are all too willing to signal their virtue at the expense of North Carolina’s Republican-dominated government.
Need I go on?
Yep, you bet we got problems. But WHY do you think a failed man that won’t divulge his tax returns… dodged the draft… beat his wife… engages in impulsive & bizarre conduct… cheats his business partners… stiffs his vendors on the average of 3 times weekly… lies routinely…
Why do you think such a decadent person is going to fix anything?
HB
Let’s go into the worst-case situation: he’s not. What’s…the problem, here?
We know that Hillary will only act to further push America down the slope. The one thing you can count on Trump to do is not push forward an amnesty of 11 million illegal immigrants with more to follow. By the time whatever impotent conservative savior you’re dreaming of has taken office, Texas will be the newly minted blue state (call it Tex-Mex lol) and he will have no chance.
If you believe in the power of the Republican party, then all you need is for the president to not veto their legislation, right? Trump will be quite amenable to that I’m sure. If your lot can hold onto congress and the states, then you really just need the president to be not a leftist and you can do whatever you want – assuming the Republican Party isn’t still a freaking joke. Which it is. But you seem to think otherwise, which means you should be wildly enthusiastic for Trump.
Nonsense.
Trump is a “my way or the highway” petty would-be dictator – he will not get along with Congress. His lies and threats are not forgotten
Consider: Trump going after Kasich & Cruz…
Donald Trump plans to create and fund super-PACs specifically aimed at ending the political careers of Ted Cruz and John Kasich should either run for office again, after both snubbed the Republican nominee during his party’s convention this week, a person familiar with Trump’s thinking told Bloomberg Politics on Friday.
The plan would involve Trump investing millions of his own money –perhaps $20 million or more — in one or two outside groups about six months before their respective election days if Texas Senator Cruz or Ohio Governor Kasich stand for office again. The person said Trump is willing to set up two separate super-PACs – one for Cruz and one for Kasich – and put millions into each.
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-07-22/trump-would-fund-super-pacs-aimed-at-taking-down-cruz-kasich-iqybu9m1
Consider: Trump going after Ryan…
Republican front-runner Donald Trump threatened House Speaker Paul Ryan during his Super Tuesday press conference, saying the Wisconsin Republican would pay a “big price” if he refused to get along with him as president.
“Paul Ryan, I don’t know him well, but I’m sure I’m going to get along great with him,” Trump said. “And if I don’t? He’s gonna have to pay a big price, OK?”
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/03/02/trump-threatens-paul-ryan-says-speaker-will-pay-big-price-if-he-gets-in-his-way/
So… YOU think threatening & backstabbing necessary allies… is going to obtain their support?
HB
I would be glad to see Cruz and Kasić gone (can the latter even run again, though?), but Ryan most of all. You’re accusing *Trump* of backstabbing *Ryan*? Only the hardest core of #NeverTrumpists are going to see it that way.
Ryan is acting like a powerbroker, showered by attention from the liberal media, but Speakers of the House really aren’t that important. Let us not forget that the longest serving GOP Speaker in recent times is a pædophile, clearly blackmailed his whole political career. In this time, the GOPe in Congress covered up a gay page molestation scandal.
Now your neocon buddies constantly put Lindsey Gay-ræyuhm on TV constantly to call for war with the rest of the world. Do you not see what a farce your faction of the party is?
LOL !
Ryan is the 3rd in line to the Presidency. YOU may not like that, but that is law. That is very substantial.
As for what my ‘party’ is… Trump is not a Republican – he is a fake. The Real Republican Party is still fine – just suffering a bad case of contamination from the trump sleaze.
HB
He won’t be Speaker after January. You may not like that, but that is a fact.
The GOP has changed. It nominated a candidate who actually appeals to the base and not the donors. Get over it.
Hehehe. sure.
You lord trump leads the historical record for being disliked. Even hillery clinton… beats your lord trump. That’s pretty low.
Keep huffing & puffing, junior. You are a hoot!
HB
You’re repeatedly writing “you” for “your”. And it’s “Hillary”.
I know old blowhards can’t spell, but c’mon…
Don’t let the little things bother ya, junior. Like I don’t let YOU bother me – you are just entertainment.
HB
You think Trump won’t get along with Congress? What, like that SOB in the White House does now? Like Clinton?
I suggest to you that if Trump takes the White House with a GOP-led Congress, their opposition to him will be orders of magnitude greater than it has been for the last 8 years or would be toward Clinton. They would find their voice in a way not seen since Reconstruction.
But you’re probably too busy looking out for boogey-men, so this won’t make sense to you.
Maybe… next time… your lord trump ought to try running without insulting people… running without lying about & to people….running without being too lazy to learn the issues… running without ignoring the advice of experienced people.
eh?
HB
That’s weak even for you. “Let’s just leave it to the pros.” The ones who created all this? Nothing to say in actual rebuttal to that comment, instead of just blowing steam? I thought not.
And you… have no excuse for your failure… other than your sleazy lord trump.
HB
You’re getting into “IknowyouarebutwhatamI” territory with your idiotic repetition and juvenile assholia. We’re done here.
Bye, junior!
HB
Unfortunately for your narrative, you’ve only managed to prove that Trump would obstruct certain members of a GOP congress at certain times, whereas Hillary would shut down the entire congress 8 years running with the media spinning a narrative of her as the golden queen and the Republicans as evil and terrible sexists.
Here’s a thought: toss Trump a few bones on, say, immigration, national security, corporate taxes, you know, all those issues the GOP is supposed to be rock solid on, maybe replace Paul Ryan with another speaker, and just like that the GOP congress is good to go.
Here’s a better thought:
Boycott both Clinton &Trump. Instead, write-in a presidential vote for Gov. Mike Pence… or vote the 3rd party candidate of your choice. And DO vote for Conservative Senators & House Members.
Then we can more easily impeach either sleazy trump or sleazy clinton.
HB
Trump for PRES, third party for HOUSE.
Lol
No, here’s the best idea: if you trust the GOP Congress so much, vote for the guy who won’t veto restrictions on abortion, regulations, bureaucracy, and immigration, nor act to raise taxes and let terrorists and gangs run wild. Simple, right?
What the Conservatives are doing wrong is knuckling under to the Mau-mau in the White House. They hold all sorts of offices but don’t do anything with the power they have, even by the standards of their own unsatisfactory ideology. Anyhow most of the elected public officials calling themselves conservatives are nothing of the kind, just chamber of commerce lame-o’s. What did Republicans do when they controlled both houses of Congress for years? Nothing. The alleged conservative Speaker of the House does everything in his power to keep the borders open. If that’s conservatism, then I would rather have a social disease.
And as for morals, the big conservative hero Reagan dumped his first wife for a cute little piece of “you know what” called Nancy Davis. I didn’t see conservatives condemning Reagan for this. Most folks on the right side of the spectrum are Christians, not necessarily members of some wacky holiness sect that permanently shuns people for moral breaches like unscriptural divorces.
You expect the House and the Senate to violate he US Constitution? Pleas tell us… how they can act unilaterally?
I await your answer.
HB
Trump is maybe 3-4% behind. You’re the one declaring him the loser because you want him to lose because you are no longer a Republican.
You lost the party already, leave and form your own and stop sniping.
6-7. Which is electoral landslide territory.
Trump is *not* 6-7% behind. But if you want him to be …
Reagan went from 8% down around this time in 1980 in a Gallup poll to 10% up. I agree that an 18% turnaround won’t happen these days, but frankly he can win the electoral college at a 1.5% deficit, so he only needs to move popular opinion a few points.
No, it’s not 6-7%, then you’re claiming IBD/Rasmussen/LAT polls are 8% off but Bloomberg or Quinnipiac is absolutely accurate.
Based upon the 2012 election turnout.
Nonsense – trump has been losing from the beginning. RCP averages of polls.
And trump is NOT favored by a majority of Republicans.
HB
Get out of what, fool? America or the weak sister party of Mitch and Paulie Peanuts?
Hey cupcake, I don’t think you quite understand the situation. You are the one that is out. Good luck getting back in.
I don’t like Trump. I never voted for him, and he was 17th of my 17 choices.
However, I would vote for him if I wan’t in a deep blue state.
Every person who isn’t in a deep blue state and runs off in a huff (as you are doing) are helping Hitlery. Hope you can live with that. DC won’t be coming after me. I’m already in conquered territory. Its your state they will accelerate the attacks on, and the muslim dumping to dilute your vote. I will say that for leftists, Hispanics are fine people, and I have no problem with them. I hope you find your new Islamic immigrant friends to be thus, but I doubt it.
And those that choose to support a habitual liar, draft dodger, wife beater, that is absent on the issues is asking for the same kind of government.
HB
Hitlery is a also a liar, has worked to destroy people’s lives (unlike Trump), physically abused Bill (including hurting him with a thrown lamp) (oh yes, where is your proof Trump beat his wives?), and is regretfully ready to supercharge government.
But that’s who you prefer.
At least with Trump, if he does something stupid, he’ll be impeached. They would do it in a heartbeat. Not so with Hitlery.
So embrace your new goddess. She’ll enjoy having her way with the red states.
Please do your homework.
I prefer neither:
I recommend Boycotting both Clinton &Trump. Instead, write-in a presidential vote for Gov. Mike Pence… or vote the 3rd party candidate of your choice. DO vote for Conservative Senators & House Members.
HB
What homework? I know what a Hitlery supreme court nominee will do. I know that continued immigration will destroy American jobs (my company just pre-laid off 50 employees and are having them train their Indian replacements). I know continued immigration will create a more leftist state (I live in California and have seen it happen).
The Presidency will use the permanent bureaucrat class to impose regulations on YOU. We already live under those in California. They have resulted in massive poverty, jobs moving out of state, water shortages, past and future electricity shortages, farms going bankrupt, small businesses crushed. Hitlery will expand the California model to the red states, and then there will be no where to run.
You suggest writing in a candidate (Pence, whom I like and who I will support in 2020 – if we get there) or a 3rd party candidate (both useless).
You reject Trump. You reject the COS. Your solution is more of the same ineffective GOPe collecting large bribes in DC. Your logic is that of a five year old. Too bad you will pay the price.
FWIW, I have a great job in a blue state, and as long as I keep my head down, will do fantastically. But I have several higher degrees and the blue state model works for me – at least in the short term. I however support my fellow Americans who are PO’d at what the GOPe bubble has created. Trump is a dumpster fire, but he’s a million times better than Hitlery, who IS a crook, a liar, and has destroyed the lives of everyone who has stood in her way for decades. I became politically active because of her persecution of Billy Dale, who she hounded and had prosecuted, and had to spend his life’s savings to defend himself. He wasn’t the first, and when she has power, he will be among the least.
OK, big guy, if you were hiring staff for a new division/team/wing…
Would you hire a known liar, that fails in details knowledge, and routinely insults people?
HB
Straw man. If I was examining these two, I would throw both their files in the wastebasket and start over.
But you only have these two. And looking at one has done over the other, I would have to choose Trump. If he was on my team, I would tell the women not to go in a room with him alone, but I know I could trust him to get something done, and he would be loyal to my company – not there to destroy it and anyone who would get in their way.
Here, I did some homework like you asked.
http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/22/unreleased-impeachment-era-evidence-against-bill-clinton-still-sealed-by-congress/
Schippers, who is legally gagged from revealing what he learned about Hillary Clinton from the evidence in the room but can talk about his own investigation, said that she was “all over” her husband’s scandals.
“From our investigation, she was all over it. She was the one who was orchestrating all the attacks on the people that she called ‘the bimbos.’ ‘There was another bimbo eruption so let’s go and destroy them.’ I talked to every one of those ‘bimbos,’” Schippers said.
“And they were decent honorable good women. All of them were in some way threatened or attacked directly and I’ll tell you something. At one point someone said to me, ‘My God, how evil is that guy?’ and I said, ‘No, no he’s kind of a…boob. He just can’t control himself.” He added, “’But if you want to talk about real evil, it’s her.’ It was a terrible time. She was the one that did everything to destroy the women.”
Again, BOTH clinton are trump are unacceptable. Once you come to grips with that reality… What you gonna do?
I anticipate a time in the next 4 years of a failed Presidency – by either clinton or trump. Potential for Impeachment is high. Congress and tump/clinton will be at extreme loggerheads. Emergencys will be happening in America we never thought we’d see – at least, the kiddies. I see it as almost immaterial which sleazeball gets elected, as long as Republicans retain the House & Senate. Then we just wait…
But if we continue to embrace sleaze, corruption, lies, and greed in a president… that will continue the decadence & decline.
HB
Yet, one will be elected.
You have decided for one that will place destruction on supreme court.
And that ‘one’ will be no better than the other.
And YOU will have degraded yourself, and added to the corruption that is consuming America.
HB
Hmmmm. Speaking of corruption.
http://www.weaselzippers.us/303060-group-linked-to-terry-mcauliffe-donated-nearly-half-million-in-cash-to-senate-campaign-of-fbi-directors-wife/
It seems to me that its the left who are disintegrating the trust in our institutions. But Trump is a blowhard and obscene, so yes, its your moral duty to oppose him!
Replacing one corrupt candidate/party… with another corrupt candidate/party… does nothing to fix the problem.
YOU just perpetuate bad & corrupt government.
HB
One candidate perpetuates, one candidate cements.
And, I may say, you are the one who rejects the only possible reasonable solution out of the impasse. The COS.
Hehehe, you ‘may say’ what you wish. But that does not change the fact that both hillery & trump are corrupt… and unfit to be president.
You just can’t admit such… and act accordingly. so… You will perpetuate the sleaze & corruption.
No change with you.
HB
Your logic is that of a wishful five year old.
A: Hillary is elected, corruption is institutionalized (it almost is).
B: Trump is elected, corruption is somewhat mitigated, since he has some good people working for him, Congress will impeach him at the drop of a hat, and the press will be looking for any way to take him down.
If Hillary is elected, she will smash any attempt to develop a COS. Trump won’t care, since he is merely here for his own aggrandizement.
Sleaze there may be. But Trump won’t be actively trying to destroy America.
Like I said, you just… can’t… admit… that hillery and trump are equally bad. You just can’t admit, that trump has lost from the beginning. You just can’t admit that trump’s history shows he is very unstable… and very much likely to go off and start a war just to show he is ‘in control’… and to use the IRS, FBI, EPA, DoJ to persecute his enemies.
Face it, you have a loser as your candidate. If trump were to become ‘president’… he would be above the law… unrestrained… unstoppable… unaccountable for 4 years.
Sorry, America can not take this risk.
HB
See, I don’t think they are equivalent. So I don’t need to admit anything. I don’t think a clown and lecher is worse than someone who will actively destroy the constitution. Not even close.
A small minority (of which you are one) does, and you and they will help ensure that the more evil and hateful of the two takes power.
A piece of advice for you… learned over long years of experience: You can best judge a would-be politician by watching what they do when they think no one is looking…
Mr trump, if elected president, is above the law… mr trump could do anything he wishes to do… including starting a nuclear war… mr trump can maintain complete secrecy in his actions… mr. trump can use the FBI, the IRS, the DoJ, the EPA… along with the national enquirer… to persecute his ‘enemies’ that he rants about every day.
Trump is a dangerous man. I would think twice if I were you.
HB
Since I’m in California, my vote is useless anyway. The left imported a leftist population (who are otherwise great folks, but stuck in the ways of their home countries) and now California has become a fascist state. The one – two punch of having Trump give some breathing room while the very strong R legislatures get out the COS agenda is the only hope I see.
Nixon wanted to use the FBI and IRS. They laughed at him, because at their base, almost all govt employees are creatures of the left. The alphabet soup groups you named are all very left now (the EPA? I worked with the EPA! they would laugh at Trump!) and would sneer and refuse to do his bidding.
Trump only need make one mistake, and the R’s will gladly impeach (and the left would join in, because they hate him too). The press will hound him.
And no, I’m not afraid of him nuking Russia. I am afraid of Hiltery though…
https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/09/07/the-kremlin-really-believes-that-hillary-clinton-will-start-a-war-with-russia-donald-trump-vladimir-putin/
And if she doesn’t she’s more likely to use the alphabet soup agencies as her minions, and they will gladly join in to obliterate any resistance to their rule.
Really, your logic isn’t just poor, but twisted as well.
PS, I should mention that there will be a President whatever way I vote. But one is hopelessly evil and corrupt and the other is a schmaltz. It doesn’t disturb my honor at all to vote for one, since I know the other person will hopelessly destroy the union.
Not only is your point of view fatally flawed, you don’t even respect your own time or vote. Sad!
There are conservatives in the Senate and House? I guess there are a few … and they back Trump!
Let’s replace McConnell with Sessions.
Absent on the issues? Immigration, regulation, and the security of our nation – those are three mammoth issues that he’s here on 100%. And he seems to have had a legitimate medical condition, so he’s not a draft dodger; I can’t find any reports of him beating his wife, so he’s not a wife beater, and all politicians lie.
Draft dodger:
“Asked why he didn’t serve, Trump said, “I had student deferments and ultimately had a medical deferment because of my feet. I had a bone spur.” But Trump said he did not recall which foot was injured and instructed reporters to look up his records.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/donald-trump-ignores-draft-deferment-questions-after-criticizing-mccain-vietnam/
Wife beating:
Actually, there is only one candidate in 2016 who has faced credible charges of sexual assault: Donald Trump, whose first wife Ivana swore in a divorce deposition that he ripped out her hair and raped her (an accusation she recently withdrew). Perhaps Trump should disclose those divorce papers…
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/joe-conason-truth-donald-trump-old-mud-article-1.2652509
And there is more…
Obviously, if you don’t like lying politicians, don’t vote for them – unless…
HB
Draft dodger:
“Asked why he didn’t serve, Trump said: I had student deferment and medical deferment”.
Listen kiddo, the military doesn’t want people that can’t run and will need expensive medical treatment before they even finish boot camp. I can’t believe I have to explain that to you.
Wife Beating: Trump was given a bad medical recommendation which messed up his hair by his wife and ripped some of hers out; she retracted the claim of rape. None of that, of course, is “beating”, especially the hair part.
No – I just don’t mind some lying by politicians as long as I think they’re being honest on the issues I care about. Of course there’s a slight possibility that Trump will simply turn around and not implement any of his policies. But if he doesn’t, then he will be universally hated by all of America, and he will lose any political power he had left, not to mention damage his business even more. Trump has pushed all-in on the positions of immigration, national security, and “making America great again”. Hillary, on the other hand, will continue to receive support from about 40% of the electorate no matter what, because the media, who will support her to their dying breaths, will convince them that she is fighting for minorities and women and all that nonsense. And of course, she openly admits to having a private and a public position. So I don’t trust her at all.
Funny… trump played on a basketball team during this ‘time’…
http://www.tagthebird.com/us/tweet/9138894
So, trump could run up & down the court… but not carry a rifle… like the ‘little people’ did… eh?
And you imply… that trump’s wife lied under oath… is that right?
Please tell us.
HB
“However, I would vote for him if I wasn’t in a deep blue state.”
This can only mean one of two things: Either (1) you plan to sit out this election altogether (and to hell with the Senate and House), or (2) You will fill out your ballot and (for reasons I can’t imagine, given what you’ve said) leave the section on presidential candidates unchecked.
Uh, electoral college? Trump is a dumpster fire. I would choke down a vote for him if it made a difference, but I will be voting for the moron Crazy Gary, so that the libertarians can get more money next time and maybe act more like adults. But I spend my time telling those who are better positioned to vote for Trump. Because as smoldering and stinky as he is, he is a billion times better than Hitlery.
I’m in so blue a state that I haven’t seen a R win in my area in decades. Still I continue to vote.
I understand Nick’s dilemma. In my home state I have a choice of democrat a or democrat B for Senate, the same for state assembly, and a well entrenched safe district Obama bot for Congress vs. a poorly funded joke Republican who has no chance because of the way the district was gerrymandered.
Also, the amount of illegal migrants being automatically registered to vote as they get their drivers’ licenses rigs the game even more. I’ll vote but my vote really doesn’t count except on the various propositions, which is why I even bother.
BTW, this is what the whole country’s got coming if Hillary wins.
Gladly. I have voted for every Republican on the ballot in every election since I could vote, but if Trump loses, I will never vote for another Republican. Good luck ever winning an election again without people like me.
That’s fine – if you willingly support a draft-dodging, wife beating, liar like a ‘donald trump’, the democrats deserve you.
HB
We shouldn’t be so acrimonious with these people. Give them room to save face. They were conned, and surely that has to be a very unpleasant thing to experience and very difficult to face up to.
They were first conned by people they thought most on their side: The radio screamers who got rich breaking Reagan’s 11th commandment by convincing them that the vast majority of Americans think like they do so the only reason we weren’t getting our way is because, for some miraculous reason that never needs explaining, all the representatives we sent there (most of them after Obama was elected and many teapartiers) all turn out to be weak or easily corrupted. They screamers prepared the ground for the con and were swept up in the whirlwind.
So, they were impatient, Trump knew how to play them, and he did. This will be a passing phase if we can just let these poor hard working conned people save face. Part of this will, unfortunately, be allowing the right wing screamers (the real villains on our side here) to save face in exchange for them starting to put their country before their pocketbooks.
Well, that’s not entirely fair. I think they weren’t liars. I think they were delusional.
They actually believed Trump could win, but they were wrong.
In all fairness. you are probably right for some…
But I well remember debating with some trump supporters and they knew exactly what they were looking to do. If their man could not win… scorched earth everywhere.
HB
That’s just sour grapes and the Trumpkin moving of goalposts. Like the man himself, their goals change based on their current fortunes. Because there’s no point in burning down a party you’re about to take over.
It’s just self-serving convenience and rationalization.
You sound as though you didn’t read this or any previous essays in this thread going back to “The Flight 93 Election.”
Meanwhile, though, the time when you could escape blame is over. You don’t get to trash the GOP nominee two weeks before the election and not own a Clinton presidency and all that goes with it, if that’s how it shakes out. Uniting behind the idea of opposing such a thing ought to be so brainlessly obvious that at this point, right now, with 16 days left, there is no other choice.
So, I hope you and your principles will be very happy together, but frankly, you can go to heII. And if those of us who support Trump — and those of us, like me, who didn’t — leave the GOP as you suggest, there won’t be anything left but a husk after three weeks.
LOL !
Your lord trump… is whining all over the place about how ‘the system is rigged’. Evidently, trump thinks anything that does not bow & scrape to him… is rigged. Trump must think his chances are pretty bad if he is mega-whining at this stage of the game. Hehehe…
And YOU… Hehehe, you are already looking to find someone to blame for your own foolishness. Face it, bub – Trump lost to clinton or sanders from the beginning. We could have won 2016… if it hadn’t been for you trump people.
All your whining isn’t going to change the facts.
HB
First of all, your writing sucks.
Second, not “my lord.” No man is my “lord,” and furthermore, I just said that I didn’t vote for him in the primaries, d umbass. This isn’t a question of bowing and scraping. It’s a question of uniting against the single most destructive force in the USA today by choosing the alternative. Even a child can do it. Apparently, you’re not up to it though.
Third, those “facts” are pure nonsense until the one taken on November 8. Every poll taken until then is designed to influence that one, and in one way and one way only. Doc Brown told Marty that the future isn’t written. But we can erase that fax if you “never Trumpers” pull your heads out of your asses.
Fourth, as far as “rigging” goes, this is what I said at NRO a while ago:
Sure… hehehe.
Keep whining. But it does nothing to atone for your embracing lies, immorality, incompetence, cheating, and hate/
HB
“Hate” is talk for children. So is “hehehe.” But then again, if Trump is so much worse in your mind than a Clinton — especially where lies, immorality, incompetence, cheating, hatred, and criminality are concerned — then obviously a child is what I’m dealing with here. Go away.
hehehe, you’re the one writing, junior.
HB
No one has done a more thorough and comprehensive job of trashing himself and sabotaging a campaign more than the nominee.
It was not the “GOPe”, NRO or even #NeverTrump that made Trump delay his fundraising, refuse to prepare for debates, refuse to mount up data operations, refuse to open campaign offices in battleground states, start stupid Twitter wars in the middle of the night, etc.
Why can’t you see that?
I don’t know what your problem with me is. I didn’t vote for the man by the time the circus came to my town, he was not my first choice, he’s run a lousy campaign, and I understand that my first objective — observance of the Constitution — isn’t a priority for him, and indeed wasn’t really anywhere on the ballot. I also didn’t say “GOPe.”
But, on the other hand, I believe Ann Coulter is right — if the debate over immigration/invasion is lost, or if amnesty is shoved through in the dark of the night, everything else we hold worthwhile will be off the table, forever. As such, it shouldn’t be hard to understand what put Trump out in front, since he was the only person on the ballot coming close to acknowledging such realities.
Every time a primary election came around, Trump would say something, and everyone would swoon and shriek and clutch their pearls, and shout that, “this’ll finish him off for good!” And then he’d win, in (nearly? I dunno) all cases. This, to me, is proof that Coulter is right, and the invasion is the defining issue of our time, and the one upon which all else depends.
In the meanwhile, though, two things remain undeniable: one, that every poll taken before the official one on November 8 is designed to affect that one by dispiriting all Clinton opponents. be they Trump supporters or Trump opponents, and by dividing the two camps. Two, anyone reading this site ought to have as his primary objective keeping Hillary Clinton as far away from any power as possible, since any person doing what she has done would be down the hall from Robert Hanssen in a stainless steel cell at the Supermax in Florence, CO.
At this very, very late date, it ought to be absolutely vital that we ignore polls designed to divide and depress us for the sake of that Prime Directive. It is Join, Or Die time. All I want to see is unity behind the candidate, since there’s no other rational choice at this point. And as for that “Historybuff,” he’s a troll.
So what’s the &$%ing problem here?!
NT-ers’ ignorance as to who is driving the Trump campaign is utterly shocking; with damned few exceptions, they think Trump’s backing is from neo-Nazis, rednecks who have never voted before and a mass of Republicans who just hate Hillary more than Trump. The majority of them honestly seem to think after a Trump defeat, the alt-righters will go to ground, the Bubbas back to their heroin and this mass of Hillary hating Republicans will come back into the fold (after purity tests and re-education).
From my real life observations, this is delusional. Almost the NeverTrumpkins I know are profoundly unreliable voters ready to bolt for the Libertarians or even Democrats because of some perceived failing of the chosen candidate or plank of the platform. Trump supporters I engage with in real life are stalwarts who come to the polls every election cycle irregardless of disagreements. They’re much more likely to have in the past donated (smallish) sums of money to the party/candidates and actually helped out with campaigns. That is until now; a lot of Trump supporters I know are REALLY pizzed off at GOPe.
It seems to me GOPe is going to have a rough time of it in the future if Trump loses. They’ll see their backing dwindle and their base mostly populated by high maintenance types. Doesn’t bode well, but I just can’t get myself to care about that much…
We just need to overcome the illegal vote.
As a Californian, I can tell you where that leads. It won’t be done.
Bush could have pushed for vote reform after the 2000 elections, but we didn’t suspect that he didn’t care, because in the end it served the Bush agenda of creating a Bush dynasty (Jeb said in an interview once exactly that, but regretfully I have never been able to refind the quote…)
Irregardless is not a word.
anyhow….
Don’t care.
There is no ‘unfettered power’ in a country with 350 million firearms in private hands, and no way to remove those firearms without actually precipitating the civil war the Left fears.
“With center-rights, libertarians, neo-conservatives, and nationalists
dividing the right-wing, Democrats will clean up in every election.”
Doubtful. Our system abhors extreme imbalance at the national level. If the GOP cracks up, I would expect some new “roughly” 50/50 division to form. Maybe the GOP sheds the Trump crowd, moves left, and peels off enough moderate Democrats that a rough equilibrium is once again achieved. Notably, with both parties moving to the left. We’ll become the UK, with the Trump crowd taking the place of UKIP. That is, win positions at the state and local level, but only a handful in Congress.
So the Dems become Bernie Sanders, the GOP becomes Hillary Clinton crossed with John Kasić, and the Trumpists becomes a rump third party movement?
1) I agree that the electoral system produces 50-50 equilibria, but in transition this takes a couple decades.
2) The quote is still correct, if the right-wing is divided the (current) Democrats clean up at every election. Your alternative is that the GOP morphs into the nearly-forgotten New Democrats.
3) Claiming the Trump faction will be left out is ignoring that Trump just won the primaries and there is little social base for liberal Republicanism. Likewise, there is little indication that the Sandersite socialists are going to seize the apparatus of the DNC anytime soon.
Re: #2, I think that if the Democrats start getting landslide wins every four years then the party will morph its platform as necessary in order to compete. Not sure this takes a couple decades to happen. Of course, this assumes its actually possible for the GOP to morph its platform in some way that allows it to compete (at the national level). It might not be.
Re: #3, Trump won the primaries, yes, but in a fashion considerably less convincing than previous nominees. Trump was the favorite of somewhere between 25% (Iowa) and 45% (Nevada) of Republican voters. However, unlike in past years, those not voting for trump tended to really dislike him. So, I’d say that what I referred to as the “Trump Crowd” is at most 45% of the GOP, but most likely considerably less. My hunch is maybe…30%? 25%? Recall that at the beginning of the primaries none of the most (allegedly) damning stuff about Trump had yet to drop. I suspect that at least some of his supporters in the early primaries would now prefer to see someone else on the ticket, even if they’re still going to vote for Trump.
Right now, about 45% of the country identifies as Republican, 45% as Democrat, and 10% as “Independent”. However, most “Independents” are actually fairly partisan and strongly favor one party over the other. There are very few voters who flip-flop from one party to the other from election to election. For expediency, let’s say the independents are split 50/50. So each party has 50% of the voting public.
If the Trump contingent makes up 25% of the GOP, then that’s 12.5% of the voting public. To achieve equilibrium the remnants of the GOP would need to peel off the most moderate 12.5% of Democrats and/or Democratic partisans. The question is whether there’s some avenue for it to “moderate” its platform (read: move it to the left) that would appeal to those Democrats without alienating even more of its remaining non-Trump Republicans. Remember, this “remnant” we’re talking about includes the Ted Cruz Republicans. They won’t take kindly to any leftward shift.
What remains of the Democratic party (minus the most moderate 12.5%) wouldn’t necessarily be run by Sandersite socialists. Though, that camp would clearly have its importance amplified.
(2) Trump is already an adaptation. His positions on major issues are much more popular than Romney’s.
(3) No, no, no, no, no, Trump did not win in a less convincing manner than usual. I debunked this statistically elsewhere in these comments. Do I need to copy-and-paste it?
(4?) No, the country is far more than 10% Independent. That’s an approximation of independents who regularly vote and won’t be pinned down as leaning to one party or the other.
(5?=3) No, no, no, no, no, how the Hell does Trump represent 25% of the party when he got 45% of the primary vote?
You’re ridiculous.
“2) Trump is already an adaptation. His positions on major issues are much more popular than Romney’s.”
He’s about to do considerably worse than Romney did, running against an opponent that is considerably less well-liked than Romney’s opponent. Now, you can say, “His polices are popular but Trump the candidate is a major screw-up; that’s why he’s about to under-perform”. I’m skeptical, but maybe.
“I debunked this statistically elsewhere in these comments. Do I
need to copy-and-paste it?”
Please. It’s a long set of comments. Trump’s favorability among the set of Republican voters is uniquely low. Possibly historically low. It is, however, astronomically high among the set of Trump faithful. Hence the huge rally turnouts. He’s polarizing. Instead of a candidate that’s vaguely acceptable to the majority of the party, he’s despised by a big chunk and loved by another chunk.
“the country is far more than 10% Independent. That’s an approximation of independents who regularly vote and won’t be pinned down as leaning to one party or the other.”
I was talking about the voting public. That’s all that matters when talking about two-party equilibrium. If you don’t vote you might as well not exist. About 10% of voters refuse to identify with the Republicans or Democrats. Actual voting records, though, show this group to be largely partisan one way or the other. They’re just averse to the labels.
“how the Hell does Trump represent 25% of the party when he got 45% of the primary vote?”
Easy to get 100% of the vote when nobody else is really on the ballot and/or campaigning against you, as was the case late in the primary season. Trump won 33% of the popular vote in the February contests and 34% on Super Tuesday. And, again, that’s before all the AH stuff came out, which I suspect cost him some support.
In all honesty: If you polled a representative sample of Republican voters right now and asked them, “Is Trump still your first choice from among the candidates who were on the ballot in February, or would you rather have someone else at the top of the ticket?” How many do you think would prefer Trump?
2) I cannot account for what BS the Clintonite media have in store for the last days of the campaign, but I don’t otherwise foresee a worse result than Romney. I did an estimate last week and came up with a 3.9% Clinton lead – same as Obama beat Romney in 2012, but only a 298-240 electoral vote where Trump could win if every state changed by about 2.3% (so he has a favourable electoral field, unlike Romney).
3) I had copied-and-pasted the primary results comparison of 2008-12-16 above while you were typing this comment.
5) Trump got 33% in two contests in February (not incl. NV) – one against seven opponents, and the other against five. McCain scored in the 30s in both primary wins (SC-NH). Romney got 39% in NH and lost with 28% in SC. Both faced less serious competition.
34% on Super Tuesday was a decent result (against four opponents) given that the mass plurality of votes were cast in Cruz’s TX (I remind you he only lost OK and TX that day). Deduct that, and he was at 38-39%. This is totally normal and in line with other nominees facing real, multi-candidate competition.
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—If you phrase it as Trump vs. unnamed ideal choice then about 45% would choose Trump (in fact, there is polling data on this). If you phrase as Trump vs. concrete alternatives, 60-70% would choose Trump.
“I don’t otherwise foresee a worse result than Romney.”
I’d say the odds of Trump exceeding Romney’s 2012 EV total is roughly 50/50. The odds of Trump exceeding Romney’s popular vote total are lower. Also note that Trump is running against a much weaker opponent. So, to simply match Romney’s 2012 total is to do worse than Romney when the strength of competition is taken into account.
The odds of Trump exceeding Romney in EV is 1:2, I think he will. The odds of besting him in popular vote in absolute per centages (47.1%) is low, maybe 1 in 4, but that’s due to higher third party totals. If you meant the odds of besting Romney’s defeat margin (3.9%) are 50/50, I’d generally agree. A couple days ago I’d say 40/60, now maybe 60/40, but we’ll see.
“So, to simply match Romney’s 2012 total is to do worse than Romney when the strength of competition is taken into account.”
Absolutely not. When you look at the sabotage of his campaign by the Republican establishment and Congressional leadership (it is easy to survive the defection of neocon media and probably also the sniping of Bushes and Romney, but the press runs with the constant criticism from Congress), total lack of financial support from the RNC, and the extreme media hit campaign, then consider that Romney had no such disadvantages and Obama went into the 2012 campaign with over 50% disapproval, then it is obvious Romney was a weaker candidate. Yes, Hillary is unpopular, but the media do not cover her corruption and her entourage plays rather more cut-throat than Obama’s.
It’s not very honourable to sabotage someone in order to claim at the end you are more successful.
Also, if you think the oppo research on Rubio/Cruz/Bush would have been insignificant, better think again.
2016 primaries:
Trump 45%
Cruz 25%
Kasić 14%
Rubio 11%
Carson 3%
That looks pretty overwhelming to me. Trump only lost a handful of actual primaries – Cruz’s and Kasić’s home states, OK (borders TX), WI (concerted effort by GOPe/Ryan), and ID (Mormons). He won 33 and lost five.
Now, if we want to be fair and subtract the contests that were not properly contested, then he won 24 and lost five and the vote was something more like this:
Trump 42%
Cruz 27%
Kasić 14%
Rubio 12%
Carson 3%
If we look at McCain or Romney and how they did in *contested* primaries,
their showing was worse than Trump’s. Simply, since they were
establishment candidates their opposition was under pressure to drop out
earlier in primary season.
Romney won all primaries together 52%-20% Sant – 14% Ging – 11% Paul. However, if we just take primaries before Santorum dropped out:
Romney 11 primaries – 4.5 mln 40%
Santorum 6 primaries – 3.1 mln 27%
Gingrich 2 primaries – 2.26 mln 20%
Paul 0 primaries – 1.2 mln 11%
So, Romney did objectively worse than Trump, winning just 58% of primaries and 5% less of the vote against slightly less competition.
McCain overall won 47% vs. 22% Rom 20% Huck 6% Paul 3% Giul 1% Thomp.
However, if we only count through when Huckabee dropped out, the totals
are:
McCain 20 primaries – 7.34 mln – 42%
Romney 3 primaries – 4.53 mln – 27%
Huckster 5 primaries – 3.91 mln – 22%
Paul 0 primaries – 790k – 4%
Giuliani – 590k – 3%
Thompson – 290k – 2%
This is almost identical to Trump’s showing except that McCain won a smaller proportion of primaries (71% vs. 83%).
There you go. Trump’s win *was* impressive.
Looking at % of popular vote, McCain took 46.7% in 2008, Romney took 52.1% in 2012 and Trump took 44.9% in 2016. This obscures the fact that “the set of candidates more or less completely unacceptable to Trump voters” took a much higher percentage in all of these primaries. In 2008 it was McCain, Huckabee, Romney, Paul. Paul is the only guy I can see being seen as acceptable by the Trump wing of the party. He took 5.6% of the vote. In 2012 it was Romney, Santorum, Paul then Gingrich. Paul and Gingrich are likely to be acceptable to the Trump wing; their total % of the popular vote was 25.1%.
Even if I grant that Trump won the primary in a fashion roughly equivalent to past nominees, that ignores the fact that he is disliked by a uniquely high % of the party. Can’t produce numbers for you, but I suspect that in 2016 the % of Republicans who are “holding their nose” and voting for the Republican is higher than it has been in quite a while.
45%, i.e. the % of the popular vote Trump won in the primary, is the absolute cap of his hard-core support. That is, the portion of the GOP that might “defect” and become its own separate political entity. And, like I said earlier, that’s probably too high, given I suspect the AH tapes (and other criticism he’s received) has likely eroded some of that support. So maybe 40% on the absolute high end.
If I re-do my analysis using 40% as the % of Republicans that defect instead of 25% then the neo-GOP would need to peel off 20% of Democrats. The result would be 20% of the country in the Trump party, 40% to the neo-GOP and 40% to the neo-Democrats. Obviously stealing 20% of Democratic voters is harder than stealing 12.5%.
“In 2008 it was McCain, Huckabee, Romney, Paul. Paul is the only guy I
can see being seen as acceptable by the Trump wing of the party. He
took 5.6% of the vote.”
—I am unclear as to what your statistical point is here. The hard-core Paulians don’t like Trump even if there is an overlap in the more ideological alt-right corner of Trumpists. Perhaps, ex-Paulians disproportionately chose Trump over Cruz, Rubio, and Kasić. That’s quite possible – but it doesn’t prove there was no basis for Trumpist policies in 2008.
Note turnout was much lower in 2008 and 2012, frankly, fairly low by primary standards generally. McCain is unacceptable to ideological Trumpists, but I am sure many Trump primary supporters voted for him in ’08 since McCain assumed the relative position of the populist disliked by the establishment, the Bushies, and especially Conservatism, Inc. The candidate of the latter factions was clearly Romney and I doubt many Trumpists backed him in the ’08 primaries. Huckabee ran a campaign in 2008 somewhat in between Trump’s and Cruz’s so I don’t know how or why he would have been so unacceptable.
” In 2012 it was Romney, Santorum, Paul then Gingrich. Paul and Gingrich are likely to be acceptable to the Trump wing;”
—Why not Santorum who deliberately veered toward economic populism (even if opportunistically)?
“but I suspect that in 2016 the % of Republicans who are “holding their
nose” and voting for the Republican is higher than it has been in quite a
while”
—I don’t dispute that. I expect about 12% of Republicans will defect to Clinton or Johnson and another 10% will vote for him but not approve of him. This is an effect of the intra-party sniping he has faced. However, I expect he will do better among Independents.
“45%, i.e. the % of the popular vote Trump won in the primary, is the absolute cap of his hard-core support.”
—As an intra-party faction, perhaps, but that doesn’t permit the following conclusions:
“If I re-do my analysis using 40% as the % of Republicans that defect
instead of 25% then the neo-GOP would need to peel off 20% of Democrats.
The result would be 20% of the country in the Trump party, 40% to the
neo-GOP and 40% to the neo-Democrats.”
—No, no, no, no, no. If you had some Rubio-Kasić-Bush neoconservative/neoliberal, open borders, ultra-free trade GOP with the Trumpians outside, probably most of the Cruz base would stick with Trump, or at least a large minority.
45Trump = 40T 5R
28Cruz-Carson = 13T 15R
27Rub-Kas-Bush = 1T 26R
Total = 54Trump 46rump GOP
So even if the neocons take the dwindling New Democrat vote or make inroads among the more fiscally conservative identity politics weirdos, you’re looking at something like 42 Dem – 31 GOP – 27 Trump, with the Deep South’s preference for Trump giving him an electoral college advantage.
Democrats can count on roughly 40% of the electorate to be lock-step voters, voters for whom the appellation “Republican” is as distasteful as the descriptor “pedophile.”
Another 40% of the electorate is what could loosely be described as “right-leaning.” But these folks are nowhere near as attached to the Republican label as the 40% mentioned in my first paragraph are attached to the Democrat label. Some will follow Trump to whatever nascent party he endorses, some will stick with the Republican Establishment, still another faction might be uncomfortable with both and form a new Constitution Party. The point is the 40% that is right-leaning will be split at least two, possibly three ways. Even if what is left of the Republican Party grabs a lion’s share of independents it still won’t be enough to overcome the Democrats’ 40% plurality.
National Review has been marching briskly to the left for the last twenty years or so and is now indistinguishable from the Progressive movement in both tone and substance. Once upon a time that magazine saw it as its role to sell conservatism to the GOP, especially the GOP leadership. Today it sees it as its role to sell the Chamber of Commerce viewpoint to conservatives.
The Managerial class, whether Republican of Democratic, has much more in common with the members of its own class than with people outside its class. Both NR style “conservatism” and ThinkProgress style “liberalism” share the belief that the country is best run by a technocratic “elite”. On the biggest of all political questions – “Who decides?” – Conservatism Inc and Progressivism Inc are in agreement with one another in their contempt for the American people and in their profound self-regard.
I subscribed for over 20 years. I stopped when some jr. editor threw a hissy fit about a rat pack joke and they lost Mark Steyn. Watching their hysteria about Trump just put a period at the end of the idea that NR is a conservative journal of opinion.
I subscribed for most of 40 years. I was too young to understand the whole Bircher thing, too young to understand Lew Rockwell, shrugged uncomfortably at what the sainted WFB did to Buchanan. Then l’affaire Derbyshire: Should have been a clue, but I stupidly hung on until Steyn got kicked to the curb, and then the pleas to renew went straight into the trash. And then when NR went rabidly anti-Trump and anti-working class (looking at you, Kevin D. Williamson), I deleted the bookmark on my browser. And Goldberg thinks I’m coming back? No subscription, no page views, no sugar daddy – no NR.
What did they force Steyn to resign for? I recall it was for quoting a classic joke, which used a slang term for homosexuals, in a piece defending Phil Robertson in December of 2013. Speaking of Social liberalism. A NRO editor Jason Lee Steorts wrote a “Conservative case for gay marriage”. Also NR ran an article by reporter/writer Katharine Timpf attacking Mike Huckabee and Phil Robertson for using ‘controversial’ figures of speech. BTW Check this website to track NR’s traffic http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/nationalreview.com Terrible metrics. Tanking in every way. I visited the website shortly, and saw that they were again offering a free 9 month digital subscription. Last November I signed up for a free 9 month subscription. It was a 60th Anniversary offer. They’ve been giving everything away for almost a year. Sad!
I dropped NR when they started pushing pot and treated people who were hesitant about legalization like heretics.
I actually agree with NR on this subject.
Oh yes. Jason Lee Steorts. Rich Lowery’s secret gay lover. The “man” has written 10 articles (by the count of NR’s own search engine) yet was allowed to verbally attack a man whose shoes he was unworthy of shining. I’m with you – that’s when I realized that NR was lost. I still liked McCarthy, VDH, and even Goldberg, but Jonah has now dropped out of that (his NeverTrump nastiness is the result of Trump insulting him at the beginning of the campaign).
He attacked Larry Arn in a debate recently as well. Goldberg truly is nasty – Larry Arn understands things in ways that Goldberg never could, and he also isn’t worthy of shining his shoes.
Jonah is just like his mother with the nastiness, only without the old barmaid cigarette voice.
LOL!
I got banned for typing lyin’ Ted.
For those who missed “Radio Derb” from the NR of past, he is now to be found on vdare.com
Thankfully, for every journal I no longer miss to support, there are many popping up that I do. This one, being another excellent example.
How right wing does one have to be to view the national review as progressive. Good god!
i have a friend who would agree with that statement. but where is NR headed?
Nor very right wing at all. One only has to have a memory of where National Review once was and the ability to notice where it is today. I was a regular NR reader back in the 1980’s, and todays NR is not only way to the left of where NR used to be, it’s to the left of where The New Republic used to be.
It’s a nice gig if you can get it, sitting in Washington bloviating.
Very nicely said, Severn. I feel like I’m in some Kafkaesque alternative universe. How could those I’ve trusted and agreed with for so many years become my enemies almost overnight. I think you answered my question with your technocratic “elite” assertion. From the very beginning NR has always been dubious of the hoi palloi; it took Trump to finally reveal their true colors. I’ve always been a huge fan of Goldberg. Got to meet him several times, and have some adult beverages with him. He’s brilliant! He’s also proved to be an absolute moron. It only goes to show that genius doesn’t necessarily lead to perspicacity.
One more thing. The tens of millions of us who have embraced Trump, even if he was not our first choice, will NEVER go back to the way things were. Those days are over, forever. This is true whether Trump wins or loses, but if he loses it could get very ugly.
We all should have known, anyone arrogant enough to think his readers need a weekly update on the travails of his family pet emailed to us in a newsletter might be suspect.
Yeah, my wife, who can probably read people better than me, always thought he was arrogant. She was right!
National Review is slowly ridding itself of older, better paid writers that can’t be relied upon to tow the company line. It’s using the US academia/silicon valley model: replacing with cheaper, more malleable labor. There is not one NR writer 30 or under that has a decent word to say about Trump. Those kind of odds are not possible.
Twitter for all it’s negatives, shines a light on the character of it’s users. I aligned with the right for many reasons, but one was I couldn’t stand the snarky elitism of the “Pajama Boy” class. What a surprise I had when I realized there were so many among the National Review/Weekly Standard crew.
Mr. Trump has pointed the way: Term limits. The 1st Convention of the States should term limit everyone in the federal gov’t employ. And also take any increase in the debt limit away from DC to 3/4 of State legislatures. Grab power through Article V. Do a CoS > keep it simple stupid< with these 2 amendments Nov. 9, 2016
That my well be the only thing that can save this once great nation. Bloodlessly, anyway.
But you are,of course, reserving the bloody path if necessary. Second Amendment solution and such.
Term limits.
Sure – we SURE don’t want any elected Government person to serve long enough to learn what the bureaucracy is doing… We want the Lois Lerners and Koskinens to run roughshod over America… with NO elected oversight that understands what is going on.
HB
What is conservative about keeping Chuck Schumer in office forever?
Well, there is the fact that the people of New York keep voting for him.
Schumer has an amazing coalition of the richest, best educated of his own clan and the poorest, least educated of the clan his clan marches around by their ears. He’ll die with his Senate seat. That doesn’t mean others haven’t created barriers to entry that are un-American or even illegal. Term limits would be great.
If his voters like him, they should be able to keep him.
I know that runs against trump dogma… but that is Freedom.
HB
Do you think Obama should run for a third term?
Ah, the sign of the GOPe. You can’t even support the one thing that could save this country. I find it fascinating the number of anti-trumpets that coincide with disparaging the COS movement.
You can’t be taken seriously, because you offer only more of the same.
I’m trying to gut the administrative state by term limiting them too.
If you mean ‘the Legislative’… you are going about it the right way.
HB
For a very long time, I reflexively supported the Republican candidates with the idea that they were defenders of the right, the Constitution, the very principals that have made this Country great. But over the years it has steadily dawned on me that the people I was supporting, were not supporting me. Paul Ryan is a case in point. I voted for his Vice Presidency, but in the last four years I have come to realize that Ryan’s position is more akin to Hillary’s position than to mine. If Trump wins, I’ll stay a Republican. If he loses, I will at the least become an independent, but I would hope some smart people will organize another party which will support my positions. We’ll see come November 8th.
You have a good point there. Two things can happen after Nov 8. Trump wins (most likely) and the Republican Party of today will be transformed from within and a lot of RINOs will be kicked out. If Trump loses then the Republican Party will disintegrate and split into two entities, or most likely into two parties. One, an “America First” type party that will include true Republicans (as opposite to RINOs) as well as former Democrats and Independents who share that same vision of America and want a government that represents the people as the Constitution intended. It will become a major force in American politics. The other, I like to call it the “Leftovers Party” will be a smaller party with a mixture of RINOs, CINOs (c for conservative), the NeverTrupmers, and frustrated “political-gender-unknown” such as Ryan and McCain. These two and their likes will stay in that leftover party and accept the fact that they will play no significant role in future American politics. Alternatively some will switch and become Democrats (which is what they are anyway) in the hope that they can be elected to some office someday. I am willing to bet that Ryan will no longer be the Speaker of the House whichever way the Nov 8 election goes.
Ryan is the biggest disappointment in my voting life. more so then the vote i cast for clintons first term when i was a ute…
The more Independents out there, the better. It’s the best way to keep the Republican party honest. I’m a member of the NYS Conservative Party and even they have been completely uninspired in their support of Trump. Sad days indeed.
Jonah Goldberg is an anachronism who should simply be ignored. If he poofed up his hair a bit and slid on some shiny purple pants he’d look like he was right out of the Hunger Games. We were deceived. Time to move on.
a male megyn kelly who has come out as a corporate intellectual schill
I’m so down on Goldberg right now, but it’s not fair to compare him to Megyn Kelly. She is an inexhaustible corporate climber with absolutely no core convictions, outside of which country clubs she wants to be a member of. Jonah hasn’t sunk that far yet…
Trump is no Conservative… trump is no Republican.
Hey, decius… You need to get out – go form your own party.
Of course… you could have already done that rather than sabotaging the 2016 Republican year… but your sleazy trump would have gone NO Where… right? No excuse after Nov 8, 2016 – Get Out.
Start your own party of sleaze… corruption… lies… populism… patronage – You are NOT wanted by honorable people.
HB
The party belongs to those of us who wish to conserve a Republic that derives it’s just powers from the consent of the governed.
“…consent of the governed”
So, with trump’s 59% Disapproval… He loses.
Get you boss outta here!
HB
The consent of the governed cannot be obtain where fraud and deception have taken place.
The voters are every bit as much defrauded by our propaganda media, as a customer on a used car lot that is sold a clunker.
When you do not have access to free and fair information, you cannot make an informed choice.
May I ask you. truly, because you used to be someone I agreed with quite often, what happened to you? I can understand disagreeing with Trump, you are obviously free to do so, but you seem to spend an inordinate amount of time and energy denouncing him in response to every comment.
Frankly, your comment pattern looks much like the leftists.
Further, being a history buff, one would think you could discern the source of Democrat ideology, and the ends to which it leads.
Yes, your new ‘trump theme’ is that the elections are rigged and that is why trump loses.
Don’t you think… that Conservatism starts with Integrity? That Conservatives should always tell the truth? That Conservatives live a life of personal integrity? Think about that… and those are just basic prerequisites…
I think the Big Picture will tell us that what trump has done will be a major disaster for America. 2016 should have been a year when Republicans end up with control of the House, the Senate, and the Presidency… and effectively the last 8 years of obama could be erased Instead, we ended up with a candidate that ALL indicators showed could not beat the democrats… and is a candidate that is fundamentally unfit to begin with.
So, yes – I expect to hold trump accountable for this pending disaster. And if he wins, I will not tolerate a lying ‘republican’ president any more than I will accept a lying democrat president. Trum’s problems… are himself.
HB
A) You are grossly mistaken if you think there was a chance in hell of Cruz winning this election. It means that you fundamentally misunderstand the electorate. You also misunderstand that Cruz would have been every bit as savaged as Trump has been. How could you not see that after what they did to Romney?
B) You didn’t address my last point, which was the most important of all. How can you, as a history buff, fail to recognize the dangerous strain of leftism which has taken over the Democrat Party?
If it wins, in the form of Hillary – it will be partly because people like you failed to correctly diagnose the problem, and direct your barbs at the proper enemy.
Until the “leaders” of the GOP, identify Democrats as the hard left – and determine to fight them with every bit as much vigor as Reagan fought the Communists in the Cold War, this country will continue to fall. We are almost out of time to ever recover.
You may wish to reinvent polling about Cruz/Rubio/Kasich/trump… but I am sure that is a matter of record if one wishes to research. I will rely on my memory of the RCP poll averages.
Leftism in the democrat party? Trump as the ONLY answer to such?
Have you ever read Shirer’s “Rise and Fall of the 3rd Reich”? Do you realize… Hitler rose in political power precisely because of the fear of Leftism (Communism) in Germany? The german people were more than ready to accept Hitler’s sleaze in exchange for ‘protection’ from Communism. Need I say more?
And you fail to explain… why you so readily accept trump’s lies… corruption… cheating…. incompetence… lack of specificity…
Why?
HB
Yes, in the primaries – you don’t think the media would have savaged Cruz they way they have Trump?
Trump may have been a Democrat at one time (so was Reagan by the way) but he has never been a leftist.
“We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions.” – Hitler
Hitler was the leader of the National Socialist party. Hitler was a leftist.
lies – meh, all politicians tell lies, that makes them all equal. What specifically has he lied about?
corruption – he openly tells the people that he had to pay to play. He exposed the machine. One of the reason they are so dead set against him.
cheating – ?
incompetence – snort
lack of specificity – that is a lie
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions
Sigh… more trump trollism.
Suit yourself.
HB
One thing more – have you read Trump’s plan for the first hundred days? Everything needed to start this country back on a path to prosperity and strength.
I am judging this race based on policy – Trump’s policy of a border wall alone gives America a chance at a future. Open borders means the end.
Yes, I have read trump’s ‘Gettysburg address’. As usual, he steals the greatness of others.
You believe mr. trump – I do not believe sleazy trump.
HB
This is an honest question – I cannot put my finger on why the NeverTrumpers have so much ire for Trump – and so little for Hillary, who is, without question, the most corrupt and venal person ever to run for office.
She has no redeeming value whatsoever. She will complete the dismantling of the Constitution. And yet all your fire collectively (NTs) is turned at Trump and Not at Hillary.
Can you at least concede that that is perhaps an inappropriate use of your time and energy?
OK.
I am not a member of any organized ‘NeverTrump’ effort – my reasons for opposing trump have been stated… but nicely summarized by saying trump sabotaged what should have the best Republican Election year in decades.
As for hillery? As I have stated for years… Hillery is despicable, a criminal, incompetent, and arguably anti-American.
What you don’t understand… or perhaps accept… is that hillery clinton is a known politically corrupt politician that is running in her own party as what she is – a democrat.
Donald trump is just as bad as hillery clinton, just has never had the courage to run for public office. But this year, trump chose to run as a Republican in a year that should have been a ‘given’ for Republicans… thereby sabotaging Republicans.
Can’t say it any better than that – if trump had run as a 3rd party, I would be far less focused on his sleaze… knowing that a true Republican is running.
HB
I don’t think you can justify your claim that Trump is as bad as Clinton. Trump is no choir boy, but his policy prescriptions are well designed to aid what ails the country.
Hillary literally means to destroy this country to whatever extent she’s able.
And if you think that any race against a Clinton would be a given or wouldn’t be covered in sleaze , I respectfully submit that you are being terribly naive. Were you around for the Clinton’s the first time? Have you heard about Clinton’s temper in private? Have you any questions about the mysterious deaths that seem to surround them? Aware of Hillary’s behavior toward the women that her husband victimized?
I go back to my original point. I don’t think you really grasp the manner of adversary we are dealing with here.
When I say the Democrats are leftists, I MEAN they are leftist, with all that that entails.
Supporting any element of this leftism spells disaster.
Here’s a one hour video on you tube from a defected KGB officer in the 80’s, that lays out how subversion works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZnkULuWFDg
You’ll see step by step what the Democrats have done to our country.
I’ve also read many other books on the subject, that I’d be happy to recommend.
With all due respect, you keep making the same mistakes… you continue ot believe that anyone that does embrace trump… is automatically for clinton. That is wrong, and you need to get over it.
I have been watching the clintons… up close… since the early 1980’s. The clintons are nasty – as I have said many times… and hillery should be in jail… as I have said many times.
As for Communism, I am sure I know a great deal more about such than you do.
Trump has never held public office, or held the public trust. If he ever does… he will fail due to his secretive ways, disrespect for the law, and lack of maturity to think things through before shooting from the lip.
HB
The actions of you and others like you will result in the end of the United States.
Meanwhile Trump just broke the GOP’s individual donor record.
No problem – trump still needs to get out.
Sleaze, corruption, abuse, incompetence is NOT what the Republican Party is all about.
HB
If you think Hillary would be a better president and like things as they are, then just say so.
Why are you on here? Oh, I know – you’re a paid Clinton troll.
HB, Trump disciples have a choice to make and judging by their participation here it looks like they’re going to form a new political party if they can’t have Trump control the Republican Party after he goes down in what now looks like a landslide.
Let them go. Their hero handed Hillary the White House and it will be up to us to take it back from her, with or without them.
Not really. I could see a great majority of the people now supporting Trump getting behind Trey Gowdy in 2020 in a big way. Don’t underestimate the resilience of the American people. Especially Conservatives.
“… the greatness of ‘Star Trek’ and ‘The Simpsons.'”
Whoa, look out, a real intellectual here. Camus and Sartre, eat your hears out.
Yes, let’s undermine him for liking things that are great and funny.
I found this article just stunning and appalling. Charles Murray is the greatest social scientist living? We got rid of welfare, and what exactly transpired? Has Hr. Mus read Thomas Sowell, say, anytime? (Mus is Scandinavian for mouse.) He leaves people like Murrray in the dust. Talk about culture, he wrote a long trilogy on it, looking at the whole world. In Coming Apart, thanks be for small blessings, Murray finally admitted that culture matters. But here Hr. Mus is all about culture. What, more than fifty years after the fact, when Cultural Marxism landed on the beach with the legalization of abortion, divorce on demand, pornography and male homosexuality? Back to Thomas Sowell. He (and Walter Williams) are dismissive of the logic of Brown vs. Board of Ed on the ground that it implied that blacks cannot learn on their own. Indeed. If this is true, then Africa or China or for that matter America or Europe back in the day could never have become literate. Today, we had woman number 11, who said that Trump committed some kind of sexual transgression. He is thrice divorced. Again, it’s AFDC that is the root of all evil, per Charles Murray? This is psychotic crap. Hr. Mus may have a beef with the Cato Institute. And yes, the WSJournal has long been arguing for the importation of people, who will vote the kinds of policies, see Cultural Marxism above, because they are poor and want redistribution and Marxism has ALWAYS been about sexual license and redistribution, but then just say it. I don’t like the Cato Institute. I don’t like the WSJ editorial page. But don’t say that a racist, fascist, disgusting creep, who rips people off over and over again, is somehow God’s gift to humanity. Sorry. Goldberg and Kristol and French and Will come out of this as the winners. Everyone else will have a huge blot on their reputation until the day they die. And then afterwards. And since that day is coming let’s name some names. Hr. Mus, when his name becomes public. Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham. Sean Hannity. Bill O’Reilly. Rush Limbaugh. Some lesser lights. Byron York. Michael Goodwin has disgraced himself here. Roger Simon. David Goldman. A lot of people at the WSJ played hot and cold, even Bret Stephens, who is the personification of what people don’t like about this idiot libertarianism. If the Bible condemns homosexuality, and that amounts to hate speech, well, then, why isn’t Israel an enemy of human rights? Huh? Look. Fox News performed an abortion here. Or maybe several. The disgusting Roger Ailes helped sink lots of legitimate Republican candidates, Notably Cruz, who was the last man standing. And so they gave us this cretin,. Payback as they say.
We are on the precipice of a very long lasting Progressive era. The electoral and political battles will be between the center-left of Paul Ryan, the “progressive left” of someone like Bill Clinton, and the extreme left of George Soros and Black Lives Matter. What remains of the true center and center-right, the libertarians, and conservatives will be mired in the narcissism of small differences and rendered impotent for many upcoming election cycles.
It is a puzzle to understand how someone like Jonah Goldberg, who so well understands the intrinsic fascism of the progressives, would fear what I see as a “third party candidate running under the Republican banner” more than he does Hillary.
It is from the “Flight 93” article that I understood that after the deluge to come we will still be the United States, but we will no longer be America.
I don’t care about the “noble” arguments of the Never Trump conservatives. IF YOU DON’T VOTE FOR TRUMP YOU’RE VOTING FOR CLINTON. No bullshit, no tortured arguments or weasel words. Just the obvious, NOT VOTING FOR TRUMP IS VOTING FOR CLINTON. Take responsibility for your actions.
Bunk.
YOU forced the only candidate that could NOT beat clinton on us. FORGET the trump sleaze, trump lies, trump ignorance, trump immorality, trump incompetence – Trump could NOT beat sanders or clinton.
And YOU trump cultists forced trump on us…. the 2016 loss is on YOUR shoulders.
HB
I didn’t vote for Trump. I voted for Cruz. But I will never help to elect Hillary Clinton by sitting out the election or supporting a third party. That’s political suicide and a vote for HC.
You haven’t refuted HistoryBuff’s point. Nevertrumpers will not cost the election. Trump is losing because of people who are neither conservative nor liberal.
First, if you look at the polls, you’ll see that Trump is not losing. Second, Historybuff (who knows nothing about history) has no point.
Trump is losing in your dreams :) If you just go by the polls up to a couple of days ago, take a minute a look at their sampling. They are clearly biased Democrats.
Quinnipiac and MonMouth, so that they can hide their bias, stopped indicating the percentage of R versus D in their polls, just say “1007 likely voters” or “random sample of 805 registered voters”, wherever these are from.
The ones that do give breakdowns:
Reuters/IPSOS: 1,190 likely voters, 723 Dem, 643 Rep, 210 Ind.
CBS: 1,189 registered voters, 401 Dem, 381 Rep, 407 Ind.
NBC: 24,804 likely voters, 8,711 Dem, 6,961 Rep, 9,132 others (?)
Now that we are nearing election day, polls started shifting to Trump simply because they can’t afford to show their bias any longer and remain credible.
IBD/TIPP Trump +2, LA Times/USC Trump +1 or Tie, Rasmussen Trump +2, etc
You have to be a real crackpot to think that all 50 polling firms across the US are all faking the polls.
These public polls are COMMISSIONED by the media. In other words, they’re hired to produce a certain result. Why would they use such small samples and vastly oversample Dems? And why else do you think politicians hire their own pollsters instead of relying on the publlic stuff?
Here’s the real questions that will decide the election.
Will Trump’s voters a significant amount of who haven’t voted in some time and who the pollsters AREN’T talking to outvote the illegal migrants, dead people and outright fraud in their urban fortresses the Dems are counting on?
How many black voters are fed up with the Dem plantation and want actual change? If Trump gets 20-25% he might just end up as President. Remember, a lot of blacks and Latinos (a pretty varied group anyway) may say one thing publicly because it can be physically dangerous not to…but they might just end up voting their real self interest in the privacy of the voting booth.
How many women, Jews and gays are both stupid and suicidal? Do they like the idea of being gay bashed, gang raped and scared to walk around or go to synagogue in public as they are in Europe thanks to Hillary’s pledge to bring in boatloads of ‘refugees’ from the most Jew hating, misogynist and gay hating countries int he world?
And finally, how many idiot #nevertrumpers, when it comes to voting in private are going to use some common sense?
We’ll know election day.
“Skewed polls” is so-o-o-o 2012. You’d think that variety of self-delusion would get old, but no.
I pray your right, but my skepticism is large.
I don’t think any poll can be relied upon. If you live in a Red state, you need to bring two to five non-voting friends to the polls and have them vote for Trump. If every Trump supporter did this, there would be no problem.
I live in a blue state, don’t like Trump, but would vote for him if it would make a difference.
Every vote counts. Yours is worth as much as every other one.
That isn’t true. In California, the dems have been rocking the illegal vote now for 15-20 years. That’s why I really encourage red and purple staters to vote for Tump. So they don’t get the system we have here.
If Cruz had won the nomination, we’d be seeing a big legal fight about his eligibility to be president. I live in Texas and know all about Cruz and his father. I applaud Rafael for becoming a Christian but before he did, he was a bigtime Castro supporter and Ted glossed it over. Ted has yet to release his citizenship documents. Even though he was born to an American mother, all foreign births must be documented. He hasn’t shown them because they’d show that he didn’t become “a citizen at birth.” He became a citizen BECAUSE of his birth when his mother filed the paper. “At” and “because” are not the same.
The only reason Cruz looks acceptable was that he hid in Trump’s shadow of crazy. He could not fare well in a general election.
You’re attacking Cruz for his father?? You do know of Trump’s fathet’s arest at a Klan rally, no?
Bill Clinton’s mentor, William Fulbright was a racist who voted against the Civil Rights Act
A challenge to Cruz’s eligibility would go no where fast in the courts. To seriously entertain the notion that Cruz was ineligible would also throw Obama’s eligibility into question. No court in this land will do that.
Agreed. Historybuff’s logic is that of a five year old.
I’m not sure what planet you’re on but you obviously don’t understand that Trump is the nominee BECAUSE HE WON THE PRIMARY VOTE!
absolutely Sam. Trump not only won but won big and if all these GOP clones showed half the energy supporting Trump rather then attacking him we , the whole party , would be up 25 points.
The reason Trump is down is because of Trump.
This desperate attempt to shield him from all responsibility is pathetic.
Hehehe…
Your sleazy trump, and cultist followers, used lies like “Carson is a pedophile”, and “Cruz’s dad killed JFK” type silly stuff… and took advantage fo the OPEN primaries where non-republicans could vote. ow much of trump’s support… NOT Republican?
And you NEVER, NEVER argued the issues… just slogans.
So, get OUT. Take your LIES with you.
HB
Forget the polls. Look at the rallies.
Peggy Noonan, 2012: Forget the polls. Look at the rallies. And the yard signs.
And tally up those numbers… compare to likely democrat votes in November.
HB
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2FxwTSQGgw
Sounds like most of the people here had another first, second or third choice in the primary. I know my husband and I did. Matter of fact we donated money to 3 other republicans. Now I’m voting for Trump. What is cultist about that?
Keep in mind both Obama and Hillery have spent millions on internet trolls.
Frankly, since trump entered the primary, I have seen a lot more trump trolls. About as bad as back in 2008, obama trolls.
People I talk to… will not vote for trump. My demographic is retired boomers for the most part.
HB
You seem like a typical self-absorbed Boomer. Go watch The Big Chill again and let us enjoy this comment board without you for a while.
BINGO. From a Rubio supporter that was actually bombarded by crazy Trump supporters at the time, but didn’t go on a cry baby tour of leftist cable stations like David French, I listened and decided to supported the better binary choice. These folks making such large emotional investments in what is a basic hiring decision confuse me.
That’s kind of no nonsense comment I look for in a foxhole mate. All the best!
Responsibility, eh?
Newsflash: Trump is 99% responsible for the current state of his campaign.
No one has trashed himself or sabotaged his chances more thoroughly than Donald Trump.
Jonah Goldberg is not responsible for Trump’s failure to set up offices in battleground states. Goldberg is not responsible for Trump’s late night Tweets. Goldberg is not responsible for Trump not preparing for the debates. Goldberg did not tell Trump to eschew any big data operation. Goldberg did not force Trump to stop Conway and Co. from doing oppo research on him so this Access Hollywood wouldn’t have caught him by surprise.
When are you going to hold Trump responsible?
If Trump loses, no one else is to blame except Trump and the people who voted for him in the Primaries.
If Trump loses……BWAHAHAHAHA!! He’ll be the best president since TR.
Governors Abbot and Walker could throw the “System” a loop by proposing an Art. V CoS on November 9, 2016. Just saying…..
They won’t do it.
Abbott already has…
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2016/01/08/gov-greg-abbott-calls-for-constitutional-convention-to-take-back-states-rights
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2016/01/08/gov-greg-abbott-calls-for-constitutional-convention-to-take-back-states-rights
Vote for Trump in huge numbers ,in every state, in every county and in every city. It will not matter if there are ineligible voters voting with a huge win for Trump. Get out the vote for Trump!!
That doesn’t fully explain why he bothers to come after me—there are plenty with whom he disagrees even more who might as well not exist in Goldberg’s world. But it does partly explain it.
I suspect the explanation is rather simple. If you are correct and obviously many of us think you are, then Goldberg and Conservatism, Inc., are irrelevant to contemporary political discourse. To acknowledge this is the Flight 93 election is to admit their irrelevance. I’m not as optimistic as you that even a Trump win can do much more than buy time to reorder and modernize our governing documents and the arrangement among the states, but I’ll take it. Conservatism, Inc. failed to storm the cockpit so many times it finally caught up to them. The National Review and Buckleyite conservatism are relics of the past and the thoughts expressed here and a few other places are the present and the future if there is to be one. It must be a bitter pill to swallow.
You are a brilliant guy but responding to Goldberg and Murray (I don’t get him, either) wastes your time and lends legitimacy to opinion leaders of a “movement” that simply no longer matters.
thats the facts jack….
I don’t agree that Clinton is the end of the Republic, but I am certain that Jonah Goldberg sucks.
Let’s face it, most conservatives will vote Trump. Goldberg is in a small minority. So are his friends Krauthammer and George Will. Most of the rest, some like me who wanted someone other than Trump to win the nomination (I wanted Cruz, or even Rubio), have decided Trump is the better of two options. Voting for someone other than Clinton or Trump is an abdication, it is utter stupidity, it is deciding to throw away one’s vote, to throw away one’s own small influence on the direction of the country. Heck, we know the other side registers illegals to vote, dead people, you name it. But a conservative intellectuals like Goldberg is too “principled” to make his vote count. That is not principled, that is stupid.
I don’t think any of the other candidates would have the support Trump does. Rick Perry might but he was knocked out by left-wingers with their fraudulent charges against him. Cruz is simply not eligible to be president and if he’d won, we’d really be seeing a donnybrook. I voted for Jeb Bush in the primary but then he withdrew before the election – and has since made an ass of himself.
To criticize someone for employing a pseudonym is an ad hominem attack, which is a logical fallacy in which an argument is rebutted by attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself. The argument must stand by itself. It is either substantially correct or substantially incorrect. The character or motive of the proponent has nothing to do with the substance of the argument. People who employ ad hominem attacks are either fools or dishonest.
Jonah Goldberg, Bill Kristol et. al. do not own the conservative movement. As we must so often remind our liberal friends, words have meaning. If you are supporting the “fundamental transformation” instead of conserving, you don’t get to call yourself a conservative. Conservative = those of us who seek to preserve individual liberty, Republicanism, and our national identity. This movement belongs to we, the people, and not to the self-styled “”elite.” They have lost all influence at any rate. Their magazines are failing, they sit around pontificating to themselves only.
Well, Publius, congrats first on an interesting essay. It’s fascinating because you get the causes of our current dilemma pretty much right but seem to perhaps misunderstand the remedy. And you’re far too kind. to these swine. They aren’t respectable’ in the least. Conservatism has accomplished nothing in almost 30 years and no longer means anything.
I’ve always understood the #nevertrump position. They despise what they see as those ignorant peasants, the GOP voters. They despise anyone who isn’t part of their self-appointed elite establishment. And they (and in many cases, their donors) love the status quo of open borders, globalization and cronyism, and they know that with Hillary, it will be business as usual.
It’s really that simple. The likes of Jonah Goldberg were never your allies. They just talked a good game.
Now, when push comes to shove, is it any mystery how they’re acting? They despise us, just as they despise Trump because he represents an end to the con game. Does anyone doubt that if trump wins, his harshest opponents are going to be these same ‘conservatives’ in Congress/? They will attack him with a frenzy they never remotely exhibited towards Barack Husein Obama..
What they are is our modern version of the Tories our Forefathers had to deal with. There’s not going to be any reconciliation. Because we’re going to remember.
Poor boo-boo! “This time it’s PERSONAL!”
Great comment. I’ll add to it that Goldberg, et al have a special animus towards Trump because they feel he “skipped the line”. That he didn’t pay his dues to Conservative, Inc. Like the schlubs standing in front of the hot nightclub waiting to get the attention of the doorman kvetching when someone like Trump walks right in. This is High School, borderline Mean Girls type behavior.
Avid new reader here, appreciative of Decius’ bold proclamation of the nudity of the Conservative Inc. emperors. But it’s sad that D needs to spend time refuting the likes of the idiot Goldberg. Some of us remember that Jonah owes his entire career, such as it is, to a cumstain. “Literally”, as people say.
It’s very simple – Jonah Goldberg is a product of Manhattan and an education at a left-wing formerly all women’s school sponsored by the Methodist Church, which went left decades ago. He’s completely out of touch with those on whose votes “conservatives” depend. Yes, his mother was conservative but Goldberg is right wing progressive like most younger “conservatives” actually are.
You forget to mention that he’s a…,.
Wow. Another great argument. Imply anti-semitism. Here, since you can’t bring yourself to say it, let me help you….
He’s a joooooWWWWW!!!!! See, doesn’t that make you feel better?
Yeah, Trump must be an anti-Semite. He allowed his daughter, the apple of his eye, to marry and convert to Orthodox Judaism. What malarkey! Ivanka forgot more about being a Jew than Jonah will ever know,
You have to remember, Goldberg probably can’t pay his mortgage or car payment unless he is anti-Trump; unless he leaves AEI which is financially supported by global corporations. Same with the vaunted Charles Murray who has been shut up by his benefactors. The reason Claremont Institute is pro-Trump is that they have no globalist financiers (thanks mainly to Ahmanson Jr.). Start crowd funding an endowment to move both of them to Claremont and see what happens.
BINGO. Murray & AEI are the ones making Goldberg get out there and argue. People will do a lot to eat.
Let’s forget about Goldberg and focus on the heart of what Decius himself proclaims the heart of his thesis to be. I quote in full without edits:
<<>>
I will reduce this statement down to its essential meaning with emphasis, in bold, added for clarity:
IF Hillary wins, her victory will represent an IRREVERSIBLE triumph of the administrative state.
It’s hard to imagine what newspapers Decius has been reading lately, but the administrative state that Decius rightly laments has been “irreversible” for decades, going back either 50 or 80 years.
The election of Donald J. Trump would do absolutely nothing to “reverse” or even put in a dent in the administrative state. He has affirmed his commitment to regulatory and entitlement programs that have become an inextricable and indispensable part of American life for decades. What Decius and his disciples are guilty of is assigning to Trump beliefs he does not share, no doubt in the hope that they may have his ear should he be elected. That’s fine, but if he’s elected no one here should have any expectation that he will take on Social Security and Medicare or any regulatory agencies of any real consequence. I’m sure he’d be able to find a few small agencies that he could safely abolish, but the big ticket regulatory agencies such as the FTC and the EPA are here to stay and Trump wouldn’t dream of laying a glove on either.
But even if Decius did secure Trump’s ear, that he could somehow be talked into “reversing” the administrative state, try to imagine how Trump’s press conference announcing his intention to abolish the Federal Trade Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, Social Security and Medicare would go. to put it mildly, it wouldn’t go down very well with the American people. For better or worse, the American people have come to rely on the purposes these agencies and these programs serve. The bill or bills to accomplish these goals would never, ever make it out of committee, if a single member of Congress could be found to sponsor the bill.
The truth is, the American people have come to rely on these and dozens if not hundreds of other state and federal programs that are intended to provide some measure of relief from the tragic risks that we all face in a truly unfettered free market. Whether it’s workers’ compensation in the event of injury at work, disability payments, payments in old age, health insurance in old, health insurance in the event of poverty or even such mundane things as approval of pharmaceutical drugs, we expect federal and state governments to perform a wide range of services that the founders would never have dreamed of. These programs might horrify them but they’re here to stay, with or without Donald J. Trump.
To put it in Decian terminology, Flight 93 has already crashed. It crashed many decades ago.
I almost agree – but not quite. Trump buys time. He buys us an opportunity. While it may be true that the administrative state has heretofore been irreversible, the possibility has at least been open. If Trump wins, the possibility remains open a while longer.
If Hillary wins, that possibility will be forever closed. Period.
I’m fascinated why you believe that a win by Trump opens up the possibility of “reversing” the administrative state.
Let’s assume for the moment that Trump is actually serious about abolishing the Environmental Protection Agency. It would take an Act of Congress to repeal the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act (among others) that require the Environmental Protection Agency to perform its function in setting water and air quality standards. These water and air standards have, indisputably, brought substantial environmental and health benefits to the American people. Their abolition would not go down well even with most Republicans, people who enjoy the benefits of cleaner water and air than existed in the 1950s and 1960s, when contamination and pollution were serious public health problems. Anyone who grew up in Southern California in the 1960s or watched the Cuyahoga River catch fire in 1952 and again in 1969 and who’s still around today will acknowledge that the LA Basin’s air and the Cuyahoga River’s water is cleaner now than then, and that that’s a good thing. I would like to meet the person who laments the fact that our water and air are substantially cleaner now than 50 years ago. Certainly Trump has never been known to wish for the more polluted water and air of the 1960s.
The obvious Trumpian response, naturally, isn’t that Trump isn’t serious about actually abolishing the EPA but proposing its abolition is a brilliant opening gambit to “negotiate” a deal to make the environmental regulations less onerous on business. While making environmental regulations less onerous on business can be a noble goal, it’s hardly one that would fill Decius with glee that the administrative state is finally being set on fire.
There is no returning to the days before the Clear Water and Clean Air Acts, before Medicare, before Social Security, before the Federal Reserve and the Food and Drug Administrative. The entire architecture of the administrative state is here to stay. We may change the window dressing from time to time, but the structure itself is here to stay.
False. It would only be here to stay if it actually worked, but things that don’t work get slowly weeded out by nature over time. Social Security and Medicare are broke and growing broker every day, they are unsustainable and if something can’t go on forever it won’t. Socialist government is killing the economy and an economy that isn’t growing with a population that is growing means everyone will slowly get poorer, which by definition is unsustainable over the long term, The communists discovered that last century, and maybe one day western intellectuals will as well. Places like California are so environmentally over regulated that they are constantly having water shortages and astronomical overinflated housing prices, which can not go on forever.
If the modern illiberal monster state is here to stay then it must work more than it fails and so conservatives must be wrong in opposing it. If however it is more bad than good we are right to oppose it because defending it over the long run must be a waste of time as it will fail anyway in the end because it doesn’t really work the way it claims to. The fact that you have accepted it in total means you have already declared the conservative cause lost, so quit writing or talking about it and go sign up for some kind of government check. The fact that everyone can’t follow that advice shows why trying to get everyone to rely on the welfare state won’t work, and conservatism is right.
I agree that the administrative and entitlement states are broken, but the point at hand is not that Decius is wrong in his diagnosis of what ails us (well, at least not entirely wrong), but he’s wrong to assume that there’s still time to abolish them. They are here to stay, regardless of the economics of both.
The conservative cause is not about perfection, but about what is achievable. It is not achievable to return our society to a pre-New Deal and pre-Great Society economy. What is achievable is to make them sustainable economically, but not to abolish them.
It’s a shame I can’t take Decius and the rest of you here on a tour of what the US was like prior to the New Deal and the Great Society. It wasn’t always “great”. I doubt I could count on two hands the number of Americans who would actually want to live in the squalor that most Americans lived in during the 1890s, the last days of the old republic that Wilson and his progressive friends transformed.
When you buy a pharmaceutical drug today, you have a reasonably high expectation that it will do what it is advertised to do. You can thank the FDA for that. The FDA aint perfect (no agency or private business is) but the purpose of its existence is beyond any reasonable debate today. I don’t see anyone, not even the “Freedom Caucus” members of even Trump himself, proposing the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration.
When you buy a car, you can think government regulators for certain safety features associated with that car. When you get old you can expect a Social Security check and health care. Think what you want, but the American people are never going to give up any of that.
The crazy thing about the long-running debate we’re having here on “American Greatness” is that Trump proposes nothing of the sort that Decius demands. Trump is as much a creature, beneficiary and protector of the administrative state as Hillary. The only real difference between the two is temperament.
It’s true that the people don’t want to give up the government goodies, but they also don’t want to really pay the cost of them in terms of taxes and loss of freedom that is required to make them work, hence our current unsustainable predicament. How many more trillions do you think we can borrow? Never enough to pay for all the things the dems promise them, thus all the promises can’t be fulfilled. It’s like saying someone refuses to give up on their broken car. You can refuse to fix it or get a new one all you want but the broken car will not be driven on politics by convincing people that fixing or buying a car isn’t necessary to get you moving on the road. At most you can convince them that having a broken car isn’t so bad, which is the dems current electoral strategy.
I am forced to agree with your analysis. My hope is that Trump, or more properly the movement associated with him, will be able to arrest if not reverse the slide. On the big point you are undoubtedly correct: we are already looking up from the smoking hole.
“I may have made the argument first [presumably, the argument that if Hillary wins, it will represent an irreversible Democrat triumph that cannot be beaten in 2020, 2024 or thereafter, because the electorate will be irreversibly less Republican and less conservative].”
By your own admission Decius, you have been on the same side, broadly speaking, as Jonah Goldberg for almost 20 years. Yet for most of those same 20 years, some writers of the dissident Right who have decidely not been on Jonah Goldberg’s side, who were in fact purged by Goldberg and company, have been making exactly this point in general terms about the elite electing a new people and, since before the Trump announcement in June 2015, have specifically been zeroing in on 2016 as the last likely chance.
And none of these dissidents were named Hanson, Black, Levin or Ponnuru. (Of course, none of those four are dissidents, though John O’Sullivan and Mark Steyn do come close.)
How about giving credit where credit is due? You are standing on the unacknowledged shoulders of more courageous men, Decius.
From where I sit the civil war among conservatives is completely crazy–unwarranted
and something we can ill afford.
I didn’t vote for Trump in the primaries. In fact I made a point of voting against him
even after he had clearly sewn it up. He was maybe 15th or 16th on my list of
17 Republicans running. I said a year ago and I say again, he is very likely to
lose to Clinton –in a year when almost anyone else half decent could have beaten
her. Even if he does win, I have no confidence in his ability to get anything he
says done. He agitates, irritates and inflames, without any indication that he
knows how to lead the nation.
But all that said, I was never a NeverTrumper. I have advocated not attacking him
or doing anything to help Hillary. She and her party are the real threat to the Republic
and so I will hold my nose and vote for Trump. Don’t blame me if he loses, or
turns out to be another narcissist hope and change merchant and wolf in sheep
clothing. And for crying out loud, stop ripping people on our side. The Democrats
are completely gleeful and what will your reward be? Complete Democrat control
of the government and Courts from which the Republic can probably never recover.
Your indentation indicates that your post is eithe cut-and-paste or poetry. Which is it?
What do you care if he cut and pasted an earlier comment?
Great argument by the way! I like the way you undermined his points.
In the debate for the Democratic nomination the candidates were asked about their enemies. Jim Webb said his was the Vietcong that tried to kill him. Hillary said it was Republicans.
It doesn’t get much clearer than that, no?
I’m astounded at the respect and goodwill Goldberg and people like Kristol and Will are getting from conservatives. Hillary Clinton is the alternative to Trump. This isn’t an election between “lesser evils” its an election between “really big evil” and “he’s not perfect”. Hillary stands for everything conservatism supposedly stands against. Yet, Goldberg, Will and their ilk just can’t get upset about President Hillary, because Trump doesn’t like bad trade deals, or doesn’t raise his pinky when drinking tea or something.
This election has been good for one thing. Its exposed Conservatism Inc. for the frauds they are. They aren’t interested in conserving anything except their own soft jobs and their spots on Meet the Press.
The great divide between Conservatism Inc. and the dissident right/Alt Right/Conservatives for Trump amounts to one of primary factors. Conservatism Inc. still pretends on some level that the current racial/ethnic/cultural electorate is conducive to conservative policies if you merely engage in enough “outreach to x” no matter how often this outreach fails miserably.
The dissident view argues we have to have things in common first(primary factor). As the great state builder of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew says “In multiracial societies, you don’t vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion”
Some in Conservatism Inc acknowledge this point but won’t dare to go beyond this for the obvious conclusions it implies.
This is why Con Inc can’t get serious about the issue because to do so would acknowledge how important the ethno-cultural make up of a country actually is.This is simply won’t do for a “colorblind conservatism”.
The Dissident view:
First a nation and then conservatism
Con Inc. view:
Assume a nation and then conservatism
Time to move to Singapore. No darkies there.
An admittedly, flawed diamond (Trump) versus a chunk of coal, that doesn’t have the capacity to be compressed into any type of gem (Hillary) only strengthens the argument of a :”binary” choice in this election. It is so sad that, as a former Marine from the Viet Nam era, I see Conservative, Inc. has chosen to think in their ivory bubble our Nation can survive the machinations of a continuation and acceleration
of the corruption in the federal “dark state”. Plausible deniability will not work to protect “their” next cycle.
Most all of the stalwart class of perching, Republican politicians, hiding in their thiefdoms, will likely be swept out in 2018. That is especially true with the wave of new, “accented” voters on the near horizon.
Our still Great Nation has a chance, but a limited one. We are culturally, economically, and demographically so brittle, that we stand to fracture into such strife that it might not be repairable.
God might truly be the only one to save our Republic!
Blessing to you and thank you for your service.
I posted this on another article, but I wanted to post the video here as well for anyone who might be interested.
I’ve been reading and really enjoying your essays. I recently quit Ricochet for all of the reasons that you describe. I lived in China for four years, and while in China, I visited a handful of countries including Russia. After my time and experiences abroad, our decline couldn’t be more apparent, and I’m actually afraid for the future in America. On Ricochet, I explained my view of America’s condition after living abroad, of our cultural dissolution and decline, and tried to make a rational case for Trump as being the right choice despite my personal distaste for some of his tastes and style, but I was basically shouted down at Ricochet. People on the site seem to smugly love the prospect of Trump losing to Clinton; they’re living to say “I told you so” to anyone who votes for Trump over Clinton or Johnson and questioning the virtue of anyone who thinks that Clinton is the obvious danger to America. I wouldn’t have argued with them except that they seemed to be doing more than announcing their unwillingness to vote for Trump. Whenever a member tried to make the case to support Trump, a regular chorus of people jumped onto the post to shame anyone who might encourage people to vote for Trump, and the site’s editors seemed to encourage the behavior. There was a time when people generally understood progress to be closely associated with prosperity—abroad, you can still hear the association in the way that for example, Chinese might talk admiringly about America—but now, progress is a value completely divorced from reality. Ricochet conservatives seem as unconcerned with prosperity, with measuring the material success of our direction and adjusting positions and raising issues to respond to the consequences of programs, as any progressive. For me, the conservative establishment’s lack of attention to results and making a fetish of principles makes them indistinguishable from progressive ideologues who care nothing about the results of their social engineering.
Anyway, after this election, I quit. I’m not going to rally behind some milquetoast like I did when I was in China and voted for Romney. If the Republican party and conservatives can’t offer reformers, I’m not going to waste my time or money to aid the party’s candidates. What’s the point? I’d prefer to try to arrange a move abroad to someplace where progress still requires prosperity.
I’d recommend watching a video by a YouTube personality, Sargon of Akkad. He’s a British leftist, and he has made several videos in support of Trump. When a British leftist can be honest about Trump but conservative Americans cannot be honest about Trump, we may be finished as a country.
https://youtu.be/dtRj6x1jHuU
I wonder what Goldberg thinks Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, the pseudonymous writers of the Federalist papers? Pseudonyms are a long and hallowed tradition. The GOPe takes their orders from the Davoisie, instead of their constituents. Many of the policies that the administrative state is imposing on us are in direct opposition to the “everyday American”. The arrogant GOPe believe only they can call the shots, even though they’re the rump of the repub party. I find it hard to fathom why they would support Hillary over Trump when they know it means the end of our Country and party. The congress has become a virtual rubber stamp for the Executive branch and the Supremes will be packed with SJW’s if Hillary is elected. We have seen this situation before. back in the 1850’s, the dems controlled all three branches of government. Today, the GOPe are becoming the Whig party who believed it was more convenient and profitable to collaborate with the dems.
I wonder if the author has noticed that Goldberg, Kristol and the leadership of the never Trumpers belong to a particular ethnicity. This is the same ethnicity that underwrites 50% of the Democrat party, and makes up about half of the nation’s billionaires. The author seems to not be aware of the writings of Dr. Kevin MacDonald on the subject, and seems to have a certain gentle naivete.
I didn’t realize those guys were Vietnamese!
Canadian
See thult above.
“gentle” is not a word anyone in their right mind would ever apply to you, Archibald. Again, as I said to thult, look here, Decius, under another rock.
Thank you!! At last: there it is!!!!
JEW JEW JEW JEW JEW JEW JEW JEW JEW JEW JEW JEW JEW JEW JEW JEW.
Your reluctance to utter the word is very refined and genteel.
It’s the AEI vs. Claremont and Hillsdale. Murray, Goldberg and Pethokoukis are all AEI “scholars.” Decius attacked the argument of Pethokoukis. Murray snarks back in a Tweet. Goldberg rides to the rescue of his fellow AEI fellow. The thinnest skin in this game apparently resides at 1789 Mass Ave NW, Washington, DC.
Parturiunt Montes, Nascetur Ridiculus Mus. Here we have it. The solution to conservative failure is putting our faith in a heroic gasbag who discharges improbable promises is great gusts. A leader evoking hairy-chested nationalism—when has that ever failed? Let it be noted that none of these words are all that BIG.
I re-read Decius’s explanation of his anonymity and I still don’t get it. He says he has something to lose? We all have something to lose when we identify ourselves with our ideas. David French has an absolutely chilling description of what he has had to lose in daring to oppose Trump. Decius ought to consider the depraved nature of those whom Trump has summoned from under all kinds of rocks and see how FAR he is from those who really do have things to lose by taking part in public debates. What is so ironic is that in asserting anonymity, Decius relentlessly places his own ego at the heart of his complaint. His own ego, and his own well-watered and well-cherished sense of victimhood. In that, he is a man (or women) of this era, for sure. Spending more time with a mirror than anyone rushing that cockpit every did.
French should join his wife at the Washington Post, or better yet Salon. Saw his interview with Joy Reid on MSNBC. It was revolting.
Jonah Goldberg IS NOT a Conservative, NOR has he EVER been one; Jonah Goldberg is, and ALWAYS has been, a FLAMINGLY Liberal Left, Radical Egalitarian, Godless Relativist who, for the sake of receiving an MSM presence from his equally Democrat/Socialist/Progressive/Marxist compatriots, dutifully “FAKED IT” for the sake of MSM notoriety! Jonah Goldberg is an integral part of the American Jewish “cabal” that overwhelmingly supports the Democrat/Socialist/Progressive/Marxist agenda!
Ben Shapiro: Why Jews HATE Israel/are Progressives: https://youtu.be/M5IqH7oJ9h4
thult. I really wish Decius would see who it is exactly that he’s charging some cockpit of his mind with. You do us all a favor showing us who that might be. Advice. Lay off the capital letters a bit. They are cluttering up your otherwise crystal clear thought processes. As the Beatles said (or where they Jewish, too), “if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain’t gonna make it with anyone any how.”
These idiots are still trying to figure out how they “lost”??? It’s really, really simple. Because the conservative movement got their way, implemented their ideas, and the ideas were failures. They didn’t deliver. Their policies had the exact opposite effects that their promoters promised.
I graduated high school in 1980, 36 years ago. Of the last 36 years, the Republican Party has controlled the House of Representatives for 18 of them, the White House for 20 of them, and the Senate for 22 of them. In other words, during my adult life, the Republican Party has controlled not the entire government more than the Democratic Party has.
This is not a debatable point. It’s math.
They’ve used this power to create a special tax bracket for wealthy insiders that bears no relationship to the “high” headline rate that they criticize and point to whenever they are seeking to craft a new special exception or exemption for some wealthy campaign donor.
They’ve used this power to change the Department of Defense from a military organization into the largest Keynesian make-work program in the history of the planet.
They’ve used this power to create an entire wing of modern media that has completely eschewed the idea that facts matter and instead do nothing but serve up childish, tabloid nonsense posing as important political news. The fact that more than half of the Republican Party still believes that Barack Obama was born in Kenya ought to give an idea of how insidious this nonsense is and how detrimental it has been to the idea of an informed electorate.
To the extent that the modern conservative movement has put forward any ideas at all that don’t involve people’s sex lives or the false birthplaces of their political opponents, they could basically be summed up as follows: cutting taxes on upper incomes, de-regulating corporations, especially the financial services sector, free trade, and aggressive military interventions.
There’s a reason that there is virtually zero popular support for these policies today among American voters. it’s not because of “the left,” and it’s not because of the “the media bias,” and it’s not because various low-readership right-wing pundits haven’t been ideological pure enough. No, there’s a very simple, very obvious reason for the complete rejection of the conservative movement’s ideas.
We tried them, and they complete, unmitigated disasters. It’s really that simple.
I will do anything that me and my 3000-person EMail AddressBook can do to put Goldberg, Kristol, NR, WeeklyStandard, ANY person/publication that is #NeverTrump OUT OF BUSINESS come rain or come shine.
These bastards must GO, and GO for good. OUT OF BUSINESS
More CAPS, please.
GFY
LOL
Die, friend.
;)
That was a long read for “they are out of touch”.
Or, they are “Benedict Arnold”.
I used to respect Jonah Goldberg…. those days are gone.
The proof of the bankruptcy of Jonah and the gang, e.g., Bill “Renegade Jew” Kristol, is they have disabled disqus.com on their sites, because they can’t take the heat
Really…….That fellow is a J-j-j-jew??
Well that settles it.
That was the exact description given of him by another Jew, David Horowitz, at Breitbart. Jews are so sensitive. Breitbart and Horowitz – Jews – good ppl. Bill “Renegade Jew” Kristol – morals of death camp Judas goat.
The sensitivity you describe is actually a weapon to shut people up.
I enjoyed reading that. And I enjoyed reading Goldberg yesterday. I enjoy reading differing opinions. And that single fact has lead me to swallow hard and vote for Trump. I’ve concluded that I hate the corrupt federal government more than I dislike Trump. It that simple. Leftists like Hillary really seriously believe that speech that she disagrees with can and should be shut down. And no doubt she believes that the federal government is a tool to punish her ememies. I view the corrupt government as the number one issue in this election. We all have to use the same restaurant and pick from the same menu. Clinton is a sh.t sandwich and Trump is a sh.t sandwich. The difference is Hillary loves the government and Trump doesn’t.
No the difference is Trump will lower Taxes, reduce regulations, appoint conservative judges, protect the 1st and 2nd ammendments from progressive depredations and put a stake in the heart of the PC culture.
The obvious weaponizing of the Administrative Armies available to the POTUS has been starkly revealed with the IRS, Justice and the EPA for only three of all the available Divisions that the Progressive/Socialists have deployed on the battlefield to this point.
I’ve often believed Obama got away with these obscene transgressions because of his race and the cowardice of his opposition to go after the “first mulatto” President. We shall soon see if I was correct.
1
Jonah and his compatriot Lowry have run National Review into the ground, They are equal parts vacuous and cowardly being quite content with their sinecures and the GOP’s status as political doormats in DC
Whether he wins or loses, I think we all owe Trump a debt of gratitude for seeing what is going on and just saying no. A person can only slay so many dragons.
If only this fine, principled man hadn’t been such a pussygrabber.
Say what you will, we have him to thank for stopping Walker and the sorts of BS which has been blowing up budgets wherever it lands.
Him and Benjamin Franklin.
Trump is a blowhard and a charlatan however the movement that has coalesced around him transcends him. If he has done anything worthy at all, he has served as the wheel that GOPe has been broken on. Goldberg, French, Lowry and Williamson are dead to me although I still read VDH. Why bother to be a conservative if there is nothing of value left to conserve?
This is a struggle that cannot be resolved with compromise or accommodation and which in the short term requires revolution. Trump is an unfortunate figurehead but at this point it is either him or an unimpeded death march toward Marxism. I wish I could vote for Pat Buchanan in this cycle but it will give me considerably more pleasure voting for Trump than it did for Dole, McCain, Romney or W.
It is worth noting that when reader pushback got hot this election cycle, National Review Online suddenly switched from Disqus to Fakebook. Their comments section now is about 1/10th of what it was and far less interesting, with many or most of the commenters now identifying themselves as university students or faculty.
I for one cannot continue as a supporter of a magazine which daily insults its readers, while basically neutering their response comments.
And of course it was right after Facebook was outed, to no one’s suprise, as standard media liars for the left.
Yep. The Facebook switch was the absolute end. I canceled my subscription a couple years ago in the wake of the Derbyshire and Steyn incidents and my having my *paid* account blocked because trolls complained about me for posting entirely calm, reasonable comments with which they disagreed.
I do not have a Facebook account. Facebook is a tool of the enemy,
A decades-long member of the dissident Right, I’m proud to have played my part in destroying NRO’s comments section during the primaries. We even openly changed some old guard minds in the process. But I’m even prouder to note that most of the destruction was accomplished by inventive millennials thirty years younger than me.
Goldberg was always one of my favorite writers on the right. I loved his self-deprecating, pithy, long form style that gently ridiculed the left without coming across as angry or deranged (ala Glenn Beck). I read Liberal Facism cover-to-cover and thought it was a masterpiece. The problem is (for him), that you’ve bested him at his own game and gotten the better of the argument in process! Of course, the facts are on your side, so you do have the advantage there. Plus, I’m sure its hard to hear that your life’s work amounts to being the “Washington Generals” of politics and culture. In his heart, he knows its true, but still.
I’ve always liked Jonah’s writing and wit, but it has become clear to me that he has either lost his way, or he was never what I thought him to be. I never realized until recently what contempt he had for me and other “fly over country rubes”. This election season has shown that what he and his cohorts see as America’s best interest may benefit him and his like, but has no benefit for the likes of myself, my family and my friends. I have never understood Jonah and the “principled conservatives” strategy of strategic retreat in an attempt to regain the White House in 2020 with a candidate more agreeable to them. I shouldn’t be surprised though, because the principled conservatives have been conducting strategic retreats for decades so it is probably the only play in their playbook. The author of this article is correct in that there is no going back to the way things were. I for one will not be fooled again.
Please write a book after the election.
You remind me a lot of the, uh, estimable Mr. Trump in the gobs of verbiage you spend getting even with people who have dissed you. Just saying.
I read the explanation you’ve provided for your pseudonym, and if your conscience is clear, that’s great, I guess. But forgive me if I find it unconvincing and a little laughable. All you do is reduce this to the false choice of writing under a pseudonym or not writing at all. If that’s how you see it, all it shows is that you’re a lot less courageous than such writers as David French, Ben Shapiro, and yes, Jonah Goldberg who put their own names on their writing (what ho – a third option?!) and take heaps of abuse for it. You seem smug enough to say, again like Mr. Trump, “That makes me smart. I’ve expressed my ideas WITHOUT taking the abuse!”
Well, ideas are great. I’m a big fan of ideas. But ideas are incomplete without the human elements of character and integrity to stand behind them. That’s why we don’t usually vote for ideas in our elections. We vote for PEOPLE who tell us, honestly or otherwise, that they’ll stand up for those ideas. But you won’t stand up for yours.
I think the reason you continue to hear about this is that it’s so at-odds with the boldness you pretend to. You invoked Flight 93, the epitome of heroism in our time. You assumed the name of a Roman warrior. You could’ve left that stuff out of it and not looked like such a fool. But you didn’t, and that’s why so many think there’s a special irony to some pompous dweeb flying the flag of freedom from behind a pseudonym.
Maybe Bill Kristol can convince Mr. French to run in 2020. That should rally the unwashed masses.
Whatever happens, Goldberg’s got
Powerful allies; Decius not.
Muh first amendment. How hard is it to see that the pseudonym issue is about raw power?
Oh let me guess: because Jonah and the other elites are all part of an exclusive cabal that will always pull together to help their own at the expense of the Little Guys Who Are Fed Up And Not Going To Take It Anymore. Okay then. A little Kool-Aid does sound refreshing right now.
In fairness, I’m sure Jonah does know some powerful people at least in passing. But I’m not sure knowing some politicians and media bigwigs is much protection if someone wants to hack, harass or (God forbid) physically attack you. After all, the politicians and media bigwigs can’t stop THEMSELVES from being hacked.
As to whether Decius has powerful allies, you must have some inside information that I don’t. To make that determination, you’d have to know who Decius is.
Donald Trump gave a magnificent speech to the American nation in West Palm Beach.
I was drawn here a while ago by Decius’s Flight 93 metaphor, which I think is helpful in making the case to ordinary people who don’t usually vote for Democrats, but don’t like Donald Trump, and so don’t know what to do. I probably heard about it from Rush. I am not a ‘movement’ anything, and find internecine squabbles between conservative ‘intellectuals’ boring. We just have to stop the Clinton Crime Family (in collusion with the Obama Crime Family) from taking over the country.
The suggestion that The Trump is some kind of white knight who will bring the Administrative State to its knees and take us back to the infant Republic the Founders bequeathed us is a pipedream. I do like it that conservatives are apparently writing his policy speeches, so there is some hope that he might actually roll back the Leviathan a little. But it is just as likely that President Trump will charge off to win back the Middle East that Obama lost, and return to garlands and the title of Emperor.
I thought, and still do, that The Trump is maybe 75% boob and 25% entertainer, but he’s still a damn sight better than the cold-eyed Queen and her redneck husband. If anyone cares, I documented my reluctant conversion in my tiny blog:
“What Donald Trump’s 2005 Senate testimony tells us about the man and his potential to serve as President.”
https://walkingcreekworld.wordpress.com/2016/08/25/trumped-by-the-trump/
* I’d like to see Decius emerge from the ramparts of this site and make the Flight 93 case in public forums (talk radio, local TV) that people actually encounter. It’s persuasive, but first people have to hear it. There’s not much time. *
/Mr Lynn
The party lost this lifelong conservative when a donor base debate audience booed Trump for (i) promising to do all he could to save jobs at Carrier, and (ii) stating he would not allow Americans to die in the streets for lack of health care.
Who does this? The same people who think they can cobble together a winning plurality by promising a capital gains tax cut. Again.
There is a term for these enablers of the Clinton state: Useful Idiots. Or, perhaps, Goldbergs.
Ideology is not leaership. It’s a slick way of making money though.
First of all, the republican base did not choose Trump It’s now known that massive democrat crossovers allowed the democrats to select the republican nominee. That’s why Hugh Hewitt is calling for closed primaries http://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2016/08/13/hugh-hewitt-no-more-open-primaries-n2204619 .
Second, the democrat primaries were rigged as well, as wikileaks clearly show that Hillary stole them on the democrat side. Thus, the democrat base knew that Bernie had no chance and therefor they were completely free to pick their desired opponent. They did, The only one that Shrillary could beat.
There are numerous articles that show this was happening, here’s a few:
Listen to the first couple of minutes of this http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/crossover-vote-shocks-officials-in-ohio-645195331835 . 7% of voters in the precinct the reporter is in are registered republicans , yet 44% of the votes are being cast for republicans and the Ohio secretary of state has never seen anything like this.
This isn’t new, this is what demonrats do. Here’s Claire McCaskill boasting about how she helped Todd Aiken http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/todd-akin-missouri-claire-mccaskill-2012-121262 . You think the base didn’t get the message?
There you have it – both primaries were completely rigged. The general will be too. You think that its just too big to be rigged? It’s not, only 7 http://hotair.com/archives/2015/05/06/depressing-reminder-the-2016-election-will-be-decided-by-seven-states-and-florida-is-an-absolute-must-win/ or 8 http://www.businessinsider.com/swing-state-counties-florida-ohio-wisconsin-virginia-2012-9 counties will decide the election.
Atlas Shrugged was supposed to be a warning, Not A Newspaper!
You’re quite comical. Ronald Reagan won with cross-over Democrats – the “Reagan Democrats” – and nobody hated him for it. In any case even if Trump f% of Dems in Indiana to vote for him that’s hardly “massive democrat crossovers”. Trump trounced all his primary opponents in the closed Republican primaries. If the GOPe wants to rig the game to stop future Trumps closing the primaries isn’t the answer – they’ll have to scrap primaries completely and replace them with the caucus system where the party insiders have all the power.
Hugh Hewitt has even had to admit that the crossovers selected Trump. When Youngstown and Steubenville have 25% democrats participating in the republican primary, you have a serious problem. When you have Claire McCaskill boasting about how she rigged the republican primary, you have a serious problem. When the primary system ended up selected the least liked candidate in history you have a serious problem.
The democrat primary failed as well, selecting their least-liked candidate.
Given the tremendous difference in results between presidential and off-year elections, simply closing the primaries may be enough. I do like our system in Colorado, where we send all our delegates to the convention unbound.
You do bring up a point that needs further investigation. Since the majority of this country are now moochers and looters it is time to ask the question – Why were the founders able to build a country like this? It is now obvious that most people don’t really want freedom, but a government that takes care of them. The little zero’s “Life of Julia” http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304743704577382170789179442 worked.
Therefor, wouldn’t it have required the invention of the New Libertarian Man to create this country? Not quite, but close. There have always been people who want to live free. There just aren’t that many of them. So, what the founders needed were what the Atlantic Ocean, Wooden Ships and Iron Men provided – a filter.
This filter allowed only those people who desired to be free more than anything through. Now, though we have reverted to the norm – more moochers and looters than producers. More people who want to be taken care of than who want to take care of themselves.
The only way to fix this is to limit the franchise to exclude those who are net takers. Our armed forces, of course, have given far more than they’re received. Social Security recipients have as well. Civil Servants are a difficult question. One could certainly say that they shouldn’t vote while they’re working for the government. The conflict of interest is obvious! Once they retire? I’m uncertain…
This is a very large subject, worthy of a book. One has been written – “Starship Troopers” by Robert Heinlein, but more is needed.
The only other thing to do is to follow Albert J. Nock’s advice https://mises.org/library/isaiahs-job and abandon politics.
Atlas Shrugged was supposed to be a warning, Not A Newspaper!
Goldberg keeps claiming that Decius is a coward, and that anyone who wants to know who he is can easily find out. I tried – and couldn’t. But I just used google.
I suppose all the elite know, but I suspect that Goldberg doesn’t know, only suspects. And is himself to cowardly to let fly.
I’m glad Decius mentioned the issue of bubbles. I found that reference in Goldberg’s rant hilarious, considering he and I had a twitter discussion about this, and he ended up stating that NR had not spent enough time discussing California and the existential threat it represents.
I remember a recent tweet by Jonah Goldberg chastising a critic by informing them that he has been fighting Hillary Clinton “long before any of us were”, and that he’s been in the trenches fighting this battle for decades.
All I could think was, “So what?” What have you accomplished, Jonah? Here we are, at the end of a decades long journey of “fighting Clinton corruption”, with a viable chance of actually ousting her from public office once and for all, and Jonah’s not on the battlefield. Here’s his big chance for all his hard work to pay off, and he chokes.
It’s all BS. If Jonah, and his ilk, do not take this opportunity to beat Clinton, they have zero credibility in this fight going forward. None.
PS. I think “Liberal Fascism” is a brilliant book.
What credibility do you suppose you have to ask any of us to take your word for it?
Take my word for what?
Goldberg uses his real name because it’s his brand, not because he’s brave.
As for the “conservative resurgence”, that’s laughable. I hope nobody’s suggesting the GOP would lead it. They’d probably fight against it and report back to their allies in the dem establishment.
They resorted to scorched earth tactics when it became apparent that Jeb and Marco were not appealing to people who opposed the democrat agenda.
I was a huge Goldberg fan. I think his book Liberal Fascism is indispensible reading. I have it in hardcover on the shelf next to Steyn’s America Alone, Sowell’s Basic Economics and de Soto’s The Mystery of Capital. I was, thus, as dismayed and disappointed as Publius to see the mask ripped off this election season. Goldberg, NR and so many other voices that I thought were “on my side” but who I now realize are simply part of “the beltway,” are all dead to me.
Peter Brimelow and many of the writers he sponsored saw beneath the mask twenty years ago. Yet the tone here is still to consider itself superior to the dissident Right, even to the point of being ‘first’ to rip off the mask.
Ripping off “masks,” “Dead to Me.” All those here living in the world of “masks” and betrayers. Even the comics I read as a kid acknowledged the humanity of the bad guys more than any of you do the people whose differences with you are actually marginal. You kid yourselves that you are in some battle on the ramparts of all civilization. Between you all and Hillary is a school yard whining contest. It is a joke. Most Americans disagree with you, as you are soon to see. Your arguments are not sound enough to win majority support. Stop blaming your troubles on everyone but yourselves. Both Reagan and FDR shared a lot – including a sunny warmth toward all and an optimism about what is, even now, the most prosperous and successful society on earth. When you get a mood measuring up to “Happy Days are Here Again,” or “Morning in America,” wake me. Until then, forget about it.
You’re in denial. You don’t want to admit you’ve been conned. I know this because you read good books that take some intelligence to read, and yet you just posted something so silly that only a very emotional person in throes of denial could post it. You know you f*cked up and your impatience and emotions let you get seduced by someone who was obviously a baffoonish orangutan to more careful thinkers. Just admit it to yourself, stop posting, take a walk outside, and you’ll feel better.
Trench warfare – Calling people racist who disagree with you in debate is the weapon of last resort. It is Saddamist. It is the only tactic left to the dead-ender. Mustard gas.
The Straussians found it useful against the paleo-conservatives to call them anti-Semites when labeled neoconservitive, or old State Department socialist war mongers. The radio guys picked it up and hit their callers with it during the Iraq invasion. Why, you are nothing but Joooooo-haters. They have since backed off now that they have been smacked up side the head with the more advanced racist/misogynist/homophobe/nativist MIRV technology. It is how Buchanan was effectively put into the meatgrinder.
What you are the recipient of is neoconservatism uncloaked. Which makes sense. Militarily, it takes three attackers to defeat one entrenched defender. It is the final assault and it is a frontal one. The Beltway is firing its most potent grapeshot by the uncloaked neos. They are up on that hill with the New Left Radicals, and they always were.
“uncloaked neos” Ooooh. Now I really know pure evil on the march. Quick, call 911. An uncloaked Straussian neocon is lurking in the back yard. The Beltway grapeshot is scaring the Hew Haw scarecrows of the Trumpkin brigades. It’s the battle of Bull(s**t) Run for sure.
Yes. Like your love.
The movement that dare not speak its name . . .
One nitpick. “Cultural Marxism” is the right word for the tactics, but not the strategy. The strategy has never been to replace capitalism with socialism. The strategy has been to replace all traditional ways of life — both at home and abroad — with consumerism. The banks split the part of the GOP that was OK with total consumerism (the GOPe) away from the part that opposed it (the religious right and the nationalist right). Likewise they split the Hillary wing of the Dems away from the Bernie wing.
A borderless world filled with consumers has always been a goal of the financial powers, but now it is the only goal. They talk about a “slow-growth” world in which the only way to profit is by selling the same old stuff to more and more people. Now they put ten times the effort into lobbying for trade deals as they do into inventing new products. They aim to replace all religions and cultures with a new culture in which people seek salvation through buying things. They want men in the ladies’ room not because they care about transsexuals, but because they want to destroy and humiliate all beliefs that do not involve buying things.
This is what is driving the realignment of the two parties. They used to be distinguished by whether they wanted the state to be more or less powerful. From now on the two sides will be those who want total consumerism and those who still think religion and citizenship should count for something.
Globalism immunizes their sectional interest from the general interest. This is pretty important when constructing an Elysian Field, or series of Green Zones, in a third-world sea.
Amazingly interest point. Thanks for that.
This is pure New Leftism recycled to have a conservative/nationalist cast. It was the New Left, with its various slogans about corporate liberalism and one dimensional society that gave the intellectuals of the left a thrill of cynical alienated pride. Now the right has incorporated all of it. It helped to push me out of the New Left in the late 1970s and ’80s, and it has helped push me away for the alt-right and other conservatives now all of whom feel a need for this smug, satisfied and completely riskless and false avant-guarde edginess. Cynicism and alienation corrupted the left and it is now corrupting the right. To the degree that people on the right can revile a decent, low-key, pragmatic conservative like Paul Ryan, who was admired by all on the right until a few years ago, while debasing themselves in support of a brainless, crude authoritarian like Trump.
Vote for who you want; choose yourself whether pragmatism or cynicism is the right course. I’m just offering an explanation for why we’re getting globalism and progressivism at the same time and often from the same actors. If you have a better one, let’s hear it.
These recriminations are getting out of hand. Decius is obviously right that conservatism as a political force has failed but that question is not getting any discussion. This is completely due to the candidacy of Trump which has consumed all intercine debate. Jonah, podhoretz etc freely admit conservatism as a vehicle for electoral success has failed at the national level. They even agree that at a national level, conservatism has not helped the country as promised. There is disagreement as to why surely but Decius and his enemies (nr?) can hash that out. The problem is Trump and what level of support is required from the right. Reasonable people can disagree about the requisite level. I think Decius is fine to support him. V Hanson makes an equally strong case. Jonah is similarly justified in his opposition. The problem is the personal attacks against those for choosing some point on the trump support spectrum. Here I think Decius reveals how personal he takes disagreement. He should get over it. There are some like D French who are insufferable in their trump bashing so fine write him off. But most in the anti crowd respect the choice to support trump. This blood feud needs to end soon since the country will need conservative voices to rebuild an opposition party to the second Clinton administration. Hopefully the real debate can begin after trumps loss and we can start talking about how to fix the conservative movement.
If Trump loses ”how to fix the conservative movement” will not involve the GOPe or the ”inside the beltway pundits”. After they abet the Witch giving it to us good and hard for not listening to them we will not ”turn to them”. We will completely turn on them. This process is already well underway and will only intensify as Clinton’s presidency unfolds. They’ve done nothing for us since 88 and we’ve had enough.
It won’t though. The people you dislike have an advantage in that they foretold trump would lose good and hard to hrc. You can argue that was a self-fulfilling prophesy but they certainly have a valid point. In any event, for the antis to revel in their predictions will be a waste of time. The better question is why did trump win the primary and how does that affect conservatism
It wont help them that they predicted it and the good and hard I speak of will occur after she’s elected and will happen with their help. The GOPe will help her do this and and the beltway pundits sagely tell us it’s for our own good because we must atone for nominating the ”wrong sort”. Trump is no statesmen and is an extremely flawed individual in many ways but he is running on the right side of many issues. The top of the list is immigration. I’m not surprised the GOPe is on the whole aligned with the left on many of these issues but the so called ”conservative movement” is only marginally better. Neither has accomplished anything in the last 20 years. The rise of Trump is the fault of both because they haven’t offered any viable alternatives to status quo and this country’s current trajectory.
I agree whole heartedly. And you make my point. Debating who should support trump, and how deeply is unhelpful. Examining why he won the republican primary is what matters. That’s my beef with Jonah and Decius.
I think it’s more complicated than just immigration but I think it’s a large part. If you haven’t yet read Steve haywards article in the standard on this you ought to.
Can’t we all go back to playing friends? Can’t we all just get along?
Attacking each other on the floor and laughing about it over a G&T afterward works most of the time in functioning republics and parliamentary democracies. But at certain inflection points, all that camaraderie becomes false, and the widespread recognition that the komrades from both sides have been ganging up for years to fleece the country is such an inflection.
That is the true meaning of the 2016 Al Smith dinner.
And tut tuting around the Waldorf in white tied penguin suits celebrating a man that grew up poor and stayed true to his working class roots all his life. What a bunch of neutered phonies.
Yeah that’s not my point. I care not at all about friendships. I care about opposing a leftist regime and to that end, debating what that opposition looks like is relevant and 2k words a week about why so and so is mean is not.
” . . . recriminations are getting out of hand . . . Reasonable people can disagree
. . . Decius is fine to support [Trump] . . . V Hanson makes an equally strong case. Jonah is similarly justified in his opposition. The problem is the personal attacks
. . . I think Decius reveals how personal he takes disagreement. He should get over it . . . This blood feud needs to end soon . . . Hopefully the real debate can begin after trumps loss [nice second sight – you must be rich] . . . ”
It seems to be your point.
I see that’s all you took from it. Again the only point I make is debating the requisite level of support for trump is vanity. I’m sorry I added in anything superfluous. Do you have a point?
Oh, I’m not rich, and I guess I should have added the qualifier ‘likely’ in front of loss. But you help me make my point (heh). We all need to move past the man trump and his electoral prospects or lack thereof and debate why he won the primary. A simple answer to that question is likely incorrect. Besides, the introspection is probably good in and of itself.
Here’s why Trump won the primary:
Politics is fundamentally about the friend vs enemy distinction.
We sleep soundly in our beds at night because rough men stand ready to harm to our enemies on our behalf.
The population from which these rough men are drawn constitutes a distinct minority of a state’s population.
If that population is consistently abused over time, it endangers the state, since the rough men it provides are the fundamental key to maintaining the friend vs enemy distinction.
America has been prominently abusing that population at least since 1965.
That’s an interesting assessment. I don’t agree however, or perhaps I’m misunderstanding your point. There are two problems with your premise. First is numerical. The military population is small as you note. Even adding in close family members gets you a tiny fraction of the electorate. Even adding in other security jobs like ICE leaves you with a numerical problem. That’s even if you assume this group is a homogenous voting block which of course it isn’t.
Your second problem is messaging. Trump has many themes but his main point is border security and trade. How these ‘rough men’ are treated is of secondary concern. Besides, all candidates support our troops and all that. I don’t see how a focus on border security and China’s currency devaluation resonates uniquely to military families even if they were a critical voting block which I don’t think they are. If your theory were true, all a politician need do is promise Roman style pensions and benefits to military men and women to win office. That’s unlikely to be effective as an electoral strategy and its also not what Trump has done.
I wrote of the population from which soldiers and law enforcement officers are drawn, not simply of the men themselves. Families in these populations have some common features: they’re mostly rural and suburban. If urban, they’re mostly from specific ethnic groups – Irish-Americans come to mind. They’re working class and middle class, not welfare class/criminal class. They value masculinity and specific sex roles – they would not be proud to have a family member join as part of the latest woman-gay-trannie-whatever soldier fad the US Army is pushing. To the extent that there may be growing numbers of exceptions to these generalizations, that is a bad thing foisted on us by the last five decades of cultural Marxims, aided and abbetted by Conservatism Inc.
Whites who fit this picture now vote GOP at rates high enough that if they were the whole population, all 50 states would be red – 90% or more. Even Blacks who fit this picture probably vote GOP at about 50%. Non-Black/non-Whites would be somewhere in between. Overall, such military/LEO capable families now vote GOP probably at about 80%, given the preponderance of Whites among such families. There is no such thing as a homogenous voting block, but that’s close enough.
As for whether they are a critical block right now, that’s a tactical issue. I’m writing about political morality, not tactics. In a degenerate polity, those people eventually become critical, whether as voters, soliders or deserters, because without them, you lose your polity.
The Dems and the GOPe represent a degenerate polity.
Okay I thought that might be what you were driving at. I still think that population is too small for a few reasons. First, the most generous numbers would be somewhere below 10 million. That’s a bit less than five times the total LEO and military population. I think you are correct that this population has importance other than electoral but I’ll get to that. However, I think you are romanticizing this group which is my second point. This population is more diverse and definitely younger than the total us pop. Furthermore, we actually know (to a decent degree) their political affiliations. LEOs are split 50 50. The military is more conservative but not overwhelmingly so. Its probably not helpful to get too deep into polling here but from what I see, at most 70% could be described as you did. I think the biggest problem in your assessment is their relative youth. Attitudes towards gays in the military is not controversial with a vast majority of the very people you describe. That’s a function of youth who just don’t see it as an issue. Maybe this is different with trans but probably not with women, though I grant you women in combat units is more controversial. As the youth change their ideological views, your sheep dogs will be part of that change.
Speaking of sheep dogs, I’m not certain they are critical to a polity. I think this is a reversal of causation. Many people naturally fall into the category of sheep dog and serve their fellow citizens. A healthy polity (however defined though I think a good economy, upward mobility and strong institutions is a good start) creates a space for these men and women to serve. That is it the system that creates the sheep dogs and not the other way around. I think that distinction is important because it places the emphasis not on any single group and on the people as a whole.
Jonah demolished in one article. Not since Boom Boom Mancini took down Duk KOO Kim have I seen a harder beat down.
Of course this is old apparatchik Jonah, certainly not the thinker or comic he was 10 years ago.
Boring!
We have learned that Podesta and company despised the third world electorate they were replacing Americans with, and acted in full knowledge of what they really wanted. It is long past time to recognize that Goldberg, Kristol and the rest of the neocons have been acting the exact same way with respect to the GOP base for decades. This happened by design.
And this is why you are the perfect spokeman for Trump; you both know how to shamelessly manipulate the media. Everyone KNOWS that RealClearPolitics will link to ANYTHING, no matter how trivial or stupid (and nothing could be more trivial than a pissing match with Jonah Freakin’ Goldberg) that makes them “look” like they are nonpartisan. So well done on promoting a click bait spat between two “conservatives” whose egos are as fragile as the bubbles they write about.
“Still more, when we supporters are called “racist” for advocating a position they themselves claim to hold, they amplify that smear and defend those making it.”
One thing I’ve noticed about “conservative” pundits in this election cycle, is their full-on whining about being victims (of Trump supporters, the alt-right, etc) and ending the argument by calling their opponents racists. Sounds to me very much like liberal leftist argumentation rather than that of conservatives. Why should we entrust our nation and society to the intellectual punditry who’ve been co-opted by leftist culture and values?
Publius, this is a masterpiece. Those that help Hillary are traitors to a constitutional republic.
Culture matters. It has always mattered. We can’t embrace multiculturalism – the theory that all cultures are equally valid – without saying that human sacrifice, cannibalism, Naziism, the actions of Imperial Japanese soldiers in Nanking and Pol Pots minions in the killing fields are valid. That is not to say that there are not cultures whose values are sufficiently similar that they can live in harmony, for there are, but because I reject certain cultures does not make me a racist. Their DNA is every bit as good as mine, but that does not mean their culture or government is my friend.
To pretend otherwise is insanity.
Well said. I have posted links in a couple of places.
“[Conservatives] allowed—through a combination of active cheering and ineffective opposition—demographic and cultural replacement. We lent a great deal of our talent to serve rapacious
interests in the name of “economic freedom.” All the things we were supposed to conserve—the nation, its people, its way of life, its governing structure—we have not conserved.”
Exactly, the ‘conservatism’ that conserves nothing.
It’s pathetic to see a post-game fight in the loser’s dugout. Although really, we’re still in the 9th inning.
All of this squabbling means little. “Publius” recognizes that America is like the Titanic, already holed below the waterline and going down by the minute while the lights are on and drinks are being served in the first class salons on the upper decks. Goldberg and his crowd are enjoying the illusion of normalcy while repeating the canard that the ship is unsinkable. The arguments make no difference, as there is no way to save the ship – it is going down with everyone in it. All countries in history rise, then fall. It’s a hard realization that ours is now falling, and there is little we can do about it other than look for lifeboats.
goldberg has a regular gig on NPR…hes got a good life, a nice house in a neighborhood he could never afford to live in otherwise.
Who are you to judge?;-)
Decius > Goldberg
JEB! Really?
I held my nose and voted for Romney. He was an inept candidate with absolutely no fire in the belly, but I voted for him anyway because the alternative was worse.
McCain? Really?
My company once sent me to an “executive development” seminar, aka learn how to schmooze inside the beltway, and it was held in little Johnny’s nursery, a stones throw from the Capitol. Maverick? Hell, the man EMBODIED the inside-the-beltway culture. But I voted for the idiot. Despite the fact he broke off his campaign to go back to DC and vote THE WRONG WAY on the bailout, because the alternative was worse.
So I’m going to stop voting for these establishment bozos. They aren’t going to win anyhow, and if they did nothing would change anyway. I’m going to vote only for outsiders. I’d rather lose voting my true feelings than win voting for the kind of guys that Goldman supports.
I, for one, have left the GOP for good, never to return. I will help for, look for and join into a voter group that values the constitution, the bill of rights, limited government, less taxes, a mighty but restrained military, controlled borders, removal of the govt money-piles driving up college and medical care costs, supports law enforcement, and generally, leaves me alone. Wait….Trump?
These are the tenet’s of what was once called the American Creed and most exemplified by the now nearly extinct Tea Party who have been destroyed by both left and right. I think the philosophy of classical Liberalism is closest to what the vast majority of Americans embrace.
Go back and take another look:
Star Trek IS Cultural Marxism
This is why I’m an Objectivist that leans libertarian and not a conservative:
Errors as large as Mr. Buckley’s usually have catastrophic consequences.
Atlas Shrugged was supposed to be a warning, Not A Newspaper!
“The Right will either reconcile on terms favorable to Trump’s issues or it will split. There will be no going back to the status quo ante.”
First, let me say that I very nearly revere Decius. However, anyone who has been paying even minimal attention to this growing conservative intellectual divide can see that members of what he calls “the Right” are constitutionally incapable of compromise. They will either dance around a Trump loss campfire with maniacal glee (and have no need at all for impossible-anyway self-reflection) or, in their fury at a Trump win, will join forces with the left to take down the country. If you see this inability to meet anyone half-way as a form of mental illness (as I do) you know that this will not end well.
Constitutionally incapable of compromise, says the Trumpkin
Come back when you’ve improved your comment to upvote ratio.
Nice deflection from my observation. Popular doesn’t mean right, genius.
I will condense Goldberg’s issue with unnamed author. For clarification relabel the US, Germany in 1932, Clinton is Communism and Trump is Hitler. Unnamed author states that conservatives must endorse Hitler because electing Communism would be the end of traditional German society. Aka Communism has stated her agenda is the destruction of traditional German society. Goldberg’s issue is that Hitler also is a Communist. He has spent decades promoting Communist ideals. However, he has realized that if he just spouts traditional ideals, the conservatives in their panic will believe him.
Thus there are three outcomes. If the Communists win Conservatives can still oppose their agenda. If Hitler wins and Conservatives oppose him, Conservatives can still oppose Communism. If Conservatives endorse Hitler than Conservatism is Communism. There is no to oppose Communism other than the other Communists.
This is the crux of Goldberg’s critique of unnamed. Trump is not a conservative and has no interest in the conservative agenda other than his need for conservatives votes. The comparison with Hitler breaks down because Hitler had a coherent agenda and the best I can make of Trump is his agenda is to win and little else. The problem is if Trump is endorsed than regardless of the qualifiers by various Conservatives that have endorsed him, Trump’s policy is the policy of the Republican Party. Thus when he diverges from Conservatism their will be little recourse as the Communist will welcome his agenda.
More specifically I cannot see how unnamed author can insist that Clinton will be more vindictive. Trump has made it clear that he will go after all those who oppose him.
This is an almost perfect example of the mental illness I posted about below.
To D&D how can I compromise when the individual you insist I must compromise with does not have any coherent policies to compromise on? Trump’s positions are either populism or positions taken in the absence of dogma. The mental illness is anyone insisting Trump has an agenda other than winning.
Take your meds, then start over again.
Dems attack conservatism from the left, Establishmentarians attack it from the middle and Trumpkins attack it out of retardation… what is a conservative supposed to do?
For those of you who wonder what I mean by conservatism, I mean the following political and social positions:
Classical liberalism – free markets, individual liberty, property rights
Low taxes
Strong national defense
Balanced budgets
Pro-life
Reforming or eliminating entitlements – especially Social Security, which should be personalized/privatized at the very least
Free trade – yes, protectionism is dumb
Reasonable levels of legal immigration
Complete enforcement of immigration law (wall is ok, but e-verify and cutting off illegal immigrants from public benefits much, much better)
Moral character of public officials
What do Dems (party of death, taxes, modern liberalism, etc.), Establishmentarians (compassionate conservativism, Chamber of Commerce loving, create new entitlements, etc.) or Trumpkins (PP is great, don’t reform entitlements, grab em by the p*ssy, single payer, etc.) have to offer me?
Somewhere Barry Obama laughs as he rubs his fingers together. Fundamental Transformation.
I can imagine circumstances in which I WOULD sit out an election and fail to vote. For example, if my party used a “super-delegate” system and colluded with, say, the Cruz campaign (incidentally, he was my first choice) to rig the outcome, I would not ever bleat my way to the polls, regardless of whom I might be thereby “electing” (as it sadly appears so many Bernie “supporters” will do). However, this situation has not obtained, Trump won fair and square, and Publius continues to nail it. I am ever more disgusted with “conservatives” who pipe us along with songs of “small government” and “Federalism” while leading us over the cliff; after all, liberals are SUPPOSED to lie (or nitwit) us into tyranny – we are supposed to know better. No, I will lash myself to the mast of Madison/Hamilton/Jefferson (quibbles aside) and, when the time comes, take whatever action I must take to preserve our great nation.
Our pseudonym author continues the rightwing “woe unto me” martyrdom that is a fallacy of his own (and this readership’s) creation.
“We failed. We didn’t do what we set out to do. We lost the political and culture wars decisively.”
It says a lot that you never bother to outline what you actually “set out to do,” probably because you only set out to keep things from changing too much. No one lost the culture wars, but people who don’t embrace equality for all feel like they did! People only GAINED as a result of the culture wars, but you and people like you are too tight-assed to ever recognize that. Black people getting similar rights to us and more respect, gay people getting similar rights to us and more respect, etc–none of our rights changed at all. White people just had to share their rights with more people who hadn’t enjoyed those same rights up until recently. White people who are fair-minded see this as a win for all of us. White people who are bigots and not fair-minded see this as a loss. Our author isn’t so fair-minded.
“Our economic victory turned out to be fruitless: all the gains have accrued to those we nominally “defeated,” as evidenced by the fact that the Democrats are now the party of the super-rich.”
Only an idiot would call the Democrats the part of the super-rich. Of the billionaires pledging money to candidates, 2/3 tend to be for GOP candidates and conservative issue causes–and that’s just for the open source funding that is required to be disclosed. Conservatives tend to fund more in the dark undisclosed manners than liberals tend to do…so liberal billionaires are more apparent than most of the conservative billionaires are. Just look at the Kochs. Source: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2014/jun/23/do-many-billionaires-support-democratic-party/
And when you consider the millionaire class, the GOP wins hands-down…even though most millionaires live in blue states! This election will be an anomaly for that! Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/23/business/rich-vote-republican-not-this-election-maybe.html?_r=0
“Our victory in the Cold War also turned to ashes, as we lost our heads pursuing unrealizable foreign ambitions while fighting in ways that preclude the possibility of victory. Not that we know what victory entails or have any idea what to do with it if we achieve it—but that doesn’t matter, because since 1991, we never have. Worse, we were crushed in the war of ideas.”
What victory in the Cold War? The break-up of the Soviet Union was just one piece of a bigger puzzle. It turns out that wasn’t the whole puzzle. So the GOP claimed victory long before the war was actually over…as evidenced by Russia’s territorial expansion interests today, and China’s continued territorial and economic expansion plans today. Let’s not even count the continued nightmare that is the Middle East, and the quaqmire left by the GOP’s war with Iraq that gave us ISIS today and an even further destabilized Middle East than before the Iraq invasion. Only the party of wrong can pretend that the Cold War was a victory for the USA…when you assume history ends at 2000. If you continue to evaluate history, it doesn’t look like the USA quite “won” the Cold War after all.
Our author is a blowhard. And if you consider that most of what he pronounces as fact might make you feel better about your conservative superiority, consider that most of those pronouncements are actually false or misleading at best. That’s why conservatives continue to lose…because they aren’t living in reality.
Black people don’t have rights “similar” to white people, the have the same rights as whites do, always have, always will. As do homosexuals, as do Chinese, and Muslims, ect. Rights are God given, not socially given. Many groups of course have had their rights violated over history, that doesn’t mean they didn’t have them at all, only that others were in error in not recognizing them and respecting them. No part of anything Trump is proposing violates any of any rights of the people. There is no right to immigrate where ever you want, whenever you want. Everyone in the world doesn’t have a “right” to live in America. Securing the border and increasing screening of immigrants from countries where the majority of people hate us certainly doesn’t violate any person’s rights, and had been sound government policy throughout history.
The dems are the party of the poor and the super rich, check the stats, The rich are trending Hillary this year as well.
How is winning the cold war not a victory for America? Because the world isn’t perfect afterward? It’s certainly a lot better then before when all the poor countries were trying communism and starving to death. Global poverty has been cut in over half over the last quarter century, mostly do to the capitalism around the world that our victory unleashed. It’s true that libs like you still haven’t gotten the message, but how many years of %1 growth under our new quasi socialist system will you tolerate before you start having second thoughts about high tax rates and living under so many regulations that almost everything you do in a day is some kind of crime?
Conservatives are right that the welfare state is unsustainable. Conservatives are right that a childish and immoral people can’t really be free. Conservatives are right that a nation has to have a secure border and an orderly, safe and slow immigration process. Conservatives are right that the dems are cheating their asses off every election. Conservatives are right that the schools and infotainment companies are censoring and distorting the flow of information, if not outright lying most of the time, which is always a sign that what they are asserting isn’t as true as they claim and they know it.
Obama promised massive economic growth, we got %1 growth. Obama promised us a peaceful Middle East, we got ISIS. Obama promised us government transparency, we got nothing but graft, IRS abuse, and democratic election fixers visiting the White House more than Joe Biden. Obama promised cheaper health care for all, we got price increases and a loss of freedom and personal choice, as you always do under socialism. If we are the one’s living in a dream, how come all of Obama’s predictions failed to materialize?
Wow, that reply reminded me of John Stark’s left hand dunk on Michael Jordan. Bravo.
I don’t know who in the “conservative movement” ever made the conscious decision to leave normal middle class American citizens to their own devices and to the mercies of perverted (in every sense) politicians, media and academia, but this happened all the same. Did they ever imagine that talking only to each other would give the really bad guys a lock on society? If not, how exactly are they advanced thinkers? What would bother them most—radical Democrats freezing out the Constitution or the elite network failing to deliver their own personal goodies?
I lost all respect for Goldberg and the National Review, and given that they had to shut off their comments section, apparently so have a lot of other people. The simple fact is that what they lable as conservatism has lost every single policy debate of the 21st century. Not on the merits, but because the Left now controls all the levers of anti-democratic power: the media, the social media, the courts and the entertainment industry. And people like Goldberg have resigned themselves to this without any outrage all while the Left consolidates its hold on power. Major electoral victories that gave the GOP control of both houses of Congress have been illegally ignored, and the NR still embraces defeatism. What exactly are they conserving other than a delusional country club/debating society ideology? The Left’s goal is not to win the debate but to silence it while changing the conditions on the ground by any means necessary to make their policies harder to undo. The idea that Trump is a worse alternative than HRC is as delusional as claiming, as many so-called conservatives did proclaim, that Obama was a moderate or tempermentally fit to be president. Eight years into Obamaism and they still do not know what they are up against.
Odd, because you can comment there both on Facebook and Disqus. I did just this morning.
H’m.
Don’t forget to Recommend the article. The heart above on the left.
Why would I recommend another specious piece of crap article like flight 93?
That you Goldberg?
nah, bro. Goldberg’s older, smarter brother.
It’s back to the ‘bubble’ thing. Trumpsters, those ‘uneducated that he loves”, (wink, wink-to his liberal friends) ‘the one’s who’d still support him if he stood on 5th avenue and murdered someone” (wink, wink), “those crazy second amendment supporters who might assassinate HRC” (wink, wink), are so enamored of this feces hurling orangutan, con man, and phony, that they think this election is “ABOUT THE ISSUES”, they want to keep talking about the ISSUES when they’ve put up a person so atrocious that it makes the issues completely irrelevant.
And this is important, because the dems don’t win on the issues. They win on PR, in misrepresenting the issues by impugning the right as racists haters etc, , they distract with caricature and ridicule. It’s affective, as proven by their wins. And the Trumpsters give them their best weapon yet, this con man playing the evil clown caricature of the right that the left perpetuates. This never had a chance of doing anything but hurting the right, and anyone with any intelligence and no money to lose knew this from the very beginning.
Allons enfants de la Patrie, la jour de glorie, est arrivee’.
Yes indeed, the peasants ARE revolting, in both senses of the word, and the inside-the-beltway republicans realize that the guillotines the peasants are dragging out of the basements of the Smithsonian and setting up on the Mall will be used on them as well….
Actually all there is to fear is leftist hegemony. The ‘peasants’, in this case, are all affectation. They live in their own little bubble. Like WWE fans. They are little replicas of their champion. And Losers.
Molon labe.
So you see my attitude as resembling that of Leonidus the Spartan in the face of the Persian horde. Interesting, but you give me and the ‘peasants’ too much credit.
Oh please. The GOP is a failed political party. Tell me again the last time the GOP whose honor you want to protect has won anything. Let’s see. The press managed to demonize Romney. And Bush. So Trump is the distraction? Right. Maybe if the GOP had acted like an effective opposition party instead of a deer in the headlights for eight years of “fundamental transformation” we would be watching Cruz or Rubio or Jeb Bush (LOL) go down to another elegant defeat.
Obama is your typical lefty. No worse the any of the others ( and not as bad as some). All but right wing Americans were going to cut him some slack since he inherited the worse recession since the great depression. This is evidenced by history. Rarely are presidents turned out after one term. Romney probably did as good as could be expected.
Of course, I know you knew this because you are able to communicate on the internet–so you can’t be retarded. So you’re all bluster. You’ve got nothing. You’re an empty sack of emotion. Look inward and ask yourself why, out of all the candidates available, you’d support the con man who thinks you’re a joke. Why are you a mark?
Tell me why Kasich was even on the stage. He your man?
Kasich is a popular governor of a swing state. He’s an infinitely better human being, candidate, and conservative then the Orange Poser. Since all the candidates in the primary were proven conservatives (except for the orange lifelong liberal con man posing as a feces throwing orangutan) my first criteria was electability. Kasich certainly fit that bill as much as any. As did Rubio. Bush had his name against him but would be beating Hillary right now.
If I was stupid as the Trump supporters who actually said repeatedly in surveys that electability was their least concern, I’d have been a Cruz guy. I agree most with him on the issues.
How do you expect to win anything if you turn your back on, if not the majority, then a sizable minority of the most active party members? (If there was a more effective coalition of conservatives, Trump wouldn’t have won the primaries.) The Dems win because they ALWAYS support their candidate, in Hillary’s case, even in the face of outright corruption. Not so with the GOP; no, when the people who make up the GOP say the establishment is taking us in the wrong direction, the GOPe throws a temper tantrum. They and their stooges would rather sabotage their own candidate and make sure one of, if not the, most corrupt candidates wins than to listen to what their supporters want. If Trump loses, the GOP loses. Every 4 years they come back to us and tell us their at least their candidate shares most of our views. We have to vote for them because the opposition is so much worse. It’s the lesser of evils and we have to support them, but no way will they do it. If trump doesn’t make it, I’m done with the GOP. I won’t vote for the GOPe ever again, and I’m sure I’m not alone.
Trump won the primaries because he saw an yuuge opportunity to con people. The ground for the con was prepared by these conditions–read carefully:
1. Years of right wing radio screamers who had nothing lose and lots of money to gain by deluding their listeners into the belief that most Americans think just like they do and the only reason for any opposition at all was that, miraculously, every representative elected by the right turn out to corrupt or weak. They got rich off breaking Reagan’s 11th commandment.
2. Hillary was the worse candidate in the history of dem candidates, it was the end of a two term presidency and historically the ruling party gets turned out; people are ready for change. It was almost a sure thing for Republicans. SO, there were going to be lot of guys in there fighting each other for this easy opportunity in the general election.
3. There are plenty of chumps buying into the right wing screamers bubble–Trump saw them as the mark. He knew all had to do was get that 30% long enough for the other candidates to kill each other off for this easy opportunity in the general.
4. Once Trump began his con–he was so atrocious that normal people (who dont live in bubble) honestly never believed such a con was possible..and kept fighting each other..until it was too late.
see how simple that is?
“Trump is a con man, you need to listen to the politicians”. Do you realize how incredibly moronic that sounds to those of use who don’t live in the establishment bubble???
You’ve ignored the main point of my post in favor of attacking fellow GOP members. It must be a character flaw of establishment stooges. So once again, how do you expect to win anything if you turn your back on, if not the majority, then a sizable minority of the most active party members?
I’m just posting in the comments section. if I was a columnist like Jonah Goldberg, or this guy, I wouldn’t so vociferously attack the morons that fell for Trumps con. I would probably acknowledge that they should be listened to, although like any other thinking person I’d realize that they actually have nothing to say. They’re just people who fell for a con artist.
The proof that their love for Trump is not based on anything substantial is that there is nothing Trump said about policy that he didn’t contradict somewhere else, and of those things he did say that people liked, they were pretty much Ted Cruz’s agenda. I was never a Cruz guy either, but at least he’s coherent and an actual conservative with conservative history. But Trumpsters chose the con artist clown over him. They all bluster and affectation..no substance at all. Just like Trump. Again, I wouldn’t say this if I thought I actually had a large audience..because calling dummies out as the dummies they are doesn’t make them likely to support the cause.
…and none of them had a chance. If they couldn’t even consolidate the base, there’s no way they would have won the general. Trump was the only one who had appeal to more than just the GOP. He had record numbers of people reregistering just so they could vote for him in the primaries.
Ok, so this cycle record number of people who generally wait to vote Republican in the General election registered to vote in the primaries. I think Trump can get credit for a lot of this, although not all of it. Republicans who have seen Trump for the repulsive human being he is were as ready for a change as the Trump Chumps were. It’s likely that as many of those registered to vote against him as did to vote for him.
But this is irrelevant and doesn’t change the dynamics of the general election at all. Just like Trumps large crowds at rallies don’t matter. Any intelligent person knows this. WWF has huge crowds too–and probably most of them look around and think “Wow, everyone loves the WWF”
That doesn’t make sense. “People who generally wait to vote Republican in the General election” are already registered. There is no need for them to reregister. These were Democrats who changed their registration to Republican. Why would they switch registrations to vote for a typical Republican candidate? And again, if they were reregistering to vote for someone other than Trump, Trump wouldn’t have won the primaries.
There may have been a few Dems who changed their registration to Republican. And I think a not insignificant number of them did so just so they could say they helped sabotage the GOP by nominating this clown. I work with a lot of Dems (I’m a union member) and it was a running joke during the primaries that they would do this and I know some of them who actually did. I don’t know one of them who did it because they were an actual Trump supporter.
But the vast majority of the new turnout in the primaries were people who usually don’t vote in primaries but vote in the general..and these were Republicans voters already. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/donald-trump-2016-polling-turnout-early-voting-data-213897
So, please explain Trump’s end game. He wants to tank the election so Clot can win? Is that it?
He never had an ‘end’ game. He had everything he wanted the moment he came down the stairs and announced that illegal Mexicans are rapists. He quoted right out of Anne Coulters book. He wants a piece of that market and he got the biggest piece ever.
The rest of it has been going around giving that market what they want at his silly rallies. He doesn’t care what happens in the election, and I suspect that sometimes he gets really afraid he might actually win, he pops awake in a cold sweat, and runs over to twitter to type precisely what his campaign advisors has told him NOT to type. Or says it in a rally.
That’s a lot of work just to get Clot elected, if that’s what you think Trump is doing. I just don’t buy that conspiracy theory, lol. It’s less than half baked.
You are most definitely not alone. Paul Ryan and his traitorous cohort of NeverTrumpers are done.
The only “growth industry” the GOPe had was the Tea Party and the GOPe was nearly as contemptuous of them as the liberals were.
I don’t give National Review or Weekly Standard another five years…
Wait until all the bands that play AEG concerts and the professional sports teams that inhabit Staples Center find out Anschutz bankrolls the Weekly Standard. This is the information age; it’s bound to get out sooner or later. That’ll be the end of that rag.
PDM is absolutely correct. We will not return to status quo ante. I think we are in an historic rotation of American politics, in which the Republican party will represent a new coalition of the common people against the elite. The elite have successfully used minorities as foot soldiers in their political project, in spite of the complete failure of the elite’s policies to benefit these communities. Just as Republicans in the mid 19th century worked to free the slaves, Republicans today need to liberate the minorities from the stranglehold of the Democrats so that a new political order can evolve. Trump’s Gettysburg contract is almost a perfect plan for the new political order.
As a liberal I can only take delight in the circular firing quad here.
You’re a fool to do so. Liberalism too is in utter decay and completely identified with elites. If you don’t see that, you’re truly blind.
Ah. the delight of conservative discourse. Never heard more elitists call people “elitists” “elites”, like Donald Trump and both Bushes before him” before.
Thankfully, the curtain is coming down in your phony “ideology” of greed and selfishness built on a foundation of sheer bigotry. Good riddance.
16 more days till The Reckoning. And counting!
Hillary will enter office as the most unpopular president, maybe ever. She will be hamstrung from both the right and the left, and will spend most of her time putting out the flaming bags of dog poo Obama left for her.
That of course, assumes that she’s not busy with the major recession most economists think is coming.
Enjoy.
Perhaps we need to start a third party – The Tea Party.
.
Conservatives will NEVER again win the presidency unless the media influence can be diluted in some way.
Start by nominating a good candidate. If you still lose, then you should start panicking.
IMO, Trump is a clown and the results of this cycle are entirely predictable.
Sorry, but if the media is all against your party, you cannot ever win.
LOL
You talking about the same media who are at historic lows in popularity?
So, you are trying to deny that the overwhelmingly bias media does NOT affect the vote? REALLY!?!?
I think the media is so loathed that they can be turned against themselves by someone who knows what they’re doing.
Trump will lose because he’s an immoral loon. All chances at reform will be lost because his voters wanted revenge more than fixing the problem. Just look at the vitriolic bile they spew in the top-rated comments here on this forum. It’s a call for revenge.
Trump supporters couldn’t control their emotions, got played by Democrats into nominating a clown, and now will get nothing. Next time, they should calm down and concentrate on issues and character.
…or he’ll lose because the establishment cares more about holding on to their power than compromising on the things the base disagrees with, like open borders and so-called free trade.
The establishment didn’t make Trump attack the gold star parents, Alicia Machado (whatever you think about her case), or not set up a ground game in many states.
Did you know Trump has ONE OFFICE in Florida?!? Hillary has 51!
If the establishment was supporting him and helping him win instead of sabotaging his campaign, he probably could have come up with a good ground game.
Um, no. Ground game is the responsibility of the candidate, and only shows that Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing. Also, he didn’t have ground game even back in the primaries. Remember Colorado?
All the talking, yammering back and forth can be easily resolved in a simple observation.
Every single one of the other “GOP candidates would have higher favorability ratings with the public right now than Trump does. Most of them would be leading Hillary by 5 or 6 points.
The nomination of Trump is a disaster. Even people who support him and say he’s better than hillary so no one should say anything bad about him, know this. After the election is over, many of these will be ready to say what they think of him, which is that he is indeed a con man, a clown, a bafoon…..and only the true Trumpsters will be left defending him. Millions for sure, but a small enough percentage that we’ll be ok. Trump will get what he’s wanted all along, a cult following like Anne Coulter has that he can make reliable money off of.
But they lost. Actually, they got their fannies handed to them.
Yes. The other candidates lost because they knew, just like all thinking people knew, that Hillary was the worse candidate in history and so it would be easy to beat her.
They also failed to realize that so many of the GOP voters (30% at the time of the primaries) were so vulnerable to a con man like Trump. So they kept dividing up the other 65-75% of the more intelligent voters until no one was left standing but the con man. Who had already thought this through (probably with the help of his good friend Bill Clinton)
Why don’t you work on improving your comment to upvote ratio and then get back to us?
I’m very proud of my low upvote ratio. This means I’m talking to people who disagree with me. Which great improves my chances of learning something. You should try it.
A high up-vote ratio is a sign of someone who only hangs out in echo-chambers.
You’ve unwittingly just outed yourself.
Care to comment on the Wikileaks emails about Dems giving Trump $1 billion in free coverage?
All negative coverage…
That can’t possibly be true, because that would’ve HURT Trump’s chances and would’ve been counterproductive for Democrat plans. You know, the exact opposite of what the emails revealed.
No they wouldn’t, not after the media got through with them. The media turned McCain into a warmonger and of course a racist fear monger. They turned Romney into an uncaring CEO who didn’t even care about his own pets. They would have done the same to ANY GOP candidate that went against Hillary. How can you be so blind as to not see this??? Is this the first presidential race you’ve paid attention to?
I applaud your efforts to think here. Sincerely. But you can do so much better. Bush had a 25 percent approval rating after the Iraq disaster. Then the economy collapsed. No Republican was going to win that year.
Obama inherited this disaster in Iraq and the economy, like it or not. Most Americans are not right wingers and those in the middle don’t hate Obama like we righties do. It’s delusional to think this. Historically it has always been very difficult to turn out a sitting president unless he is clearly at fault in some disaster. Nothing Obama did rose to this level among anyone but us right wingers. Romney did as good as anyone could have done in those circumstances.
See, here is the problem. You’ve somehow been deluded into thinking most Americans are right wingers. I suspect talk radio did this to you. Right wingers can win, but they have to be smart and patient. Like left wingers are smart and patient. Unfortunately the talk radio screamers are killing us and turning the less intelligent among us into fools. There are as many low information voters on the left–but they don’t have people daily deluding them, for fun and profit, about where most Americans are in their worldview.
I don’t see how we win anything by turning into left wingers. And of course they don’t have people daily deluding them, for fun and profit, about where most Americans are in their worldview, that’s all the mainstream media does.
No need to turn into left wingers. Just turn into smart, patient, people who realize we live in a democracy where most people aren’t avid right wingers. We can win if we’re patient because most Americans aren’t avid left wingers either.
We don’t win when we act as if we can have it all if only the new people we elect were not always weak and easily corrupted — because if they weren’t we’d have everything we wanted. Why can’t you see how infantile that is?
Echo chambers make you stupid. Yes the MSM is a huge echo chamber-and it makes most americans stupid. But realizing this means we have to MORE patient and smart..not less so.
Patience won’t matter if you legalize thirty million additional D voters. Sorry, you’re incorrect.
You more than doubled the number of illegals. Its more like 12 million. Which is itself a vastly lesser number then the number of hispanic citizen voters we’ve lost from the 45% who voted for W to the 15% who will vote for Trump. All because screamers on the right insist that Hispanics couldn’t possibly have conservative American values. How foolish.
So your strategy is for us to surrender our way to victory, initiative comes to those who wait. Hmm, that doesn’t sound like it will work very well, and looking at the results thus far that’s being generous. The only way to do anything is to hand the MSM and the establishment a loss. A Trump win will do both. The race is hardly over yet.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2016/white_house_watch_oct21
We’ve been winning like crazy at every level of government from governorships to congress.
Only in deluded right wing screamer echo chambers does it make any kind of sense that after two losses to Obama it’s time to throw up our hands and throw a hail mary with a complete baffoon, life long liberal reality show celebrity who plays a mean clown on tv as part of a con job—aided and abetted by a liberal MSM who gives him 2 billion dollars worth of free media precisely because they know he’s the only way Hillary wins.
I’ll never stop being amazed and astonished at how stupid people like you were in this cycle. It can’t be real. I must be dreaming.
We may have been winning elections and making a few gains in some states, but the only GOPers who have won anything nationally are the establishment an their stooges. Whether Trump wins or loses, it won’t have any lasting effects on states.
Obamacare was sufficient to make Obama a one-term wonder. Legislation the GOP still refuses to fight with any sincerity.
I just realized that the arguments pro/con Trump mirror contemporary arguments regarding Syria in this way; that what SHOULD be done first requires a time machine to go back and undo previous bad decisions.
Barring an 11th hour Act-of-God, Donald Trump remains the Republican nominee. We are left with the question: With two-weeks-and-change before Election 2016, where can we go from here?
The election is already over, you just don’t know it yet.
I think the NRO team can’t get past the Bannon/Alt Right problem. NRO writers such as French, Shapiro and maybe Goldberg himself (and their families) have been personally hounded and threatened in truly sadistic terms by the fringe right. It’s in their faces every day. IMHO, I think they have a hard time separating the decent law-and-order-at-the-border conservatives from the nut-job whacko crazy (not to mention truly evil) racists that inhabit the Breitbart ether. So the NRO NeverTrumpers lump everyone together as not wanting “brown people” here. If Trump had half a brain, he would have shut down the fringe right and categorically told them to find another party (as Noonan suggested in her column this weekend). Because he hasn’t, he has contributed to smearing the rest of us and making it impossible for certain NeverTrumpers to even grudgingly support him. It has been a major mistake and perhaps fatal for team Trump. We’ll see…
I don’t think it’s been a mistake on Trump’s part. I think he’s been coyly playing footsie with these people.
Yes, maybe so. Most of the time I can’t tell when Trump is being naive/ignorant versus when he’s being manipulative. There’s a lot of both. Cheers:)
There will come a day soon when Jonah won’t be able to afford a new pair of pants.
Hey, Decius:
When are you gonna NAME the conservatives in Congress who have betrayed the base? If all you’ve got is McConnell, then you’re a sophist and a hack.
Decius earned his permanent hero status by originating JAG and fearlessly making contrarian arguments to this day. It has been the most intellectually riveting political debate of my lifetime and has forced conservatives to reexamine and/or justify their policy prescriptions and priorities. That’s why conservative luminaries are paying attention. They’re trying to be sneering and snarky, but it just comes off as insecurity. Whatever happens in the election, I hope Decius carries on.
Decius makes inflammatory, specious attacks on others who differ in opinion. The flight 93 article was one of the worst, most intellectually dishonest pieces of rubbish I’ve read in years.
P.S. I’m still waiting for that list of conservative traitors.
To each his own sir?
Ryan, though I don’t know if he could be considered a Conservative. Rubio is another.
Rubio’s support of Gang of Eight disqualifies him as a conservative. Conservatives believe in the rules of law and don’t reward lawbreaking.
At best, he’s some kind of moderate.
Neither he nor Ryan have proposed cutting the government, AFAIK.
RYAN!
Not a conservative; doesn’t want to downsize government.
He claims to be. I don’t think he’s a conservative either, because he doesn’t care for conserving the culture. He’s a Randian turned corrupt politician.
But it’s not a terribly fair question to ask “When are you gonna NAME the conservatives in Congress who have betrayed the base?” if they have to be people *you* consider conservatives.
I claim to be a billionaire. Do you believe me?
The naming thing is meant to cut the bullshit:
Trumpkins too often lump all these people together, and blame conservatism for what is really the responsibility of LIARS.
By my estimation, there are no more than 10 actual conservative GOP Senators, and none of them are in leadership positions where they can push policy.
If that’s true, it means they’re being blamed for something they had no power to influence.
I’m tired of Decius’ nebulous accusations. If he has a beef with someone in particular WHO HAD THE POWER TO AFFECT IT, he should name them.
P.S. It’s not too hard to come up with a list:
Take all the GOP Senators who voted against Gang of Eight. Cross-reference with all GOP Senators who voted against re-authorizing the Ex-Im Bank. That’s 26 Senators…but it include some who I KNOW aren’t conservative, like McConnell. Those are obviously strategic voters.
Cross-reference that remaining list against the Heritage Action rating, and you get only 10 with scores over 60% (or near).
The list was supposed to be conservatives who have betrayed the base … and so you make a list of Senators who voted against amnesty for illegal aliens.
Did you misspeak or are you on crack?
This list was a list of GOP conservatives in congress. It is useful because if you don’t see any among the 10 who betrayed you, then you weren’t betrayed by conservatives.
It’s very simple. You want Clinton or you want Trump. You can convince yourself that you’re playing some long game (protecting the integrity of the GOP or conservative movement or whatever) but that’s just a way of wanting Clinton (as some admit–it will be better to oppose her than be stuck with Trump, etc.). Once Trump won the nomination, the thing for those opposed to him (Jonah Goldberg, Glenn Beck et al) to do was to support him while trying to influence and thereby hedge him in. Some Republicans, mostly half-heartedly, did this. And above all, they should have constantly swatted away all media anti-Trump BS, like the stuff regarding the “sexual assaults.” They could feel free to say that this or that comment of Trump’s was “stupid” or “uncalled for,” but always in the same breath as insisting on his clear superiority to Clinton. This was not so hard to do. Who knows, perhaps a later Wikileaks dump will let us see exactly what the nevertrumpers thought was at stake in all this, but we can tell now that it was something very big indeed, and something they would be unwilling to admit, maybe even to themselves. Part of it, for sure, is the inkling that if Trump wins they become irrelevant, once and for all. If he loses, they can at least fantasize about “rebuilding conservatism,” etc. For someone whose entire existence is predicated on one’s niche and sinecure within Conservatism, Inc., facing one’s irrelevance is pretty close to accepting imminent death.
The truth is, and what PDM has been pointing out, is that to everyone (but each other) Johnah et al; are already irrelevant. They hate Trump because he exposes their irrelevance.
Conservative Inc., as PDM calls them, have failed spectacularly to permeate culture from which most voters form their opinions. Trump came from that culture, cesspool that it is, and brought with him millions of voters who never heard of Jonah. Rather than welcome the expansion of voters, Conservatism inc. chose to support Hillary instead, virtually assuring defeat.
Oddly, the current polls span from Trump+2 to Hillary+12 for an average of about Hillary+5. Or about the same as Romney. There are likely to be a few surprises left in this election. If the GOP weren’t actively supporting Hillary, Trump would be no less than even money to win.
Unfortunately, losing has becomes a defining value for the GOP
On November 9, you will be irrelevant.
Great, can’t wait to see Jeb Bush take on Hillary in 2020. Good luck.
Sorry, it won’t be Bush. It’ll be someone who cares about secure borders.
If that was the case, why did the GOP decide to not run them this time?
You give the party too much credit. The candidates selected themselves. I would bet there are more candidates for securing the borders next time, now that they’ve seen the support they can get from it.
Cruz did not waffle on border security. He was far more consistent (after November 2015) than Trump was. Cruz did not say he’d put a “big, beautiful door” in the wall.
Next time it won’t matter. Because none of the GOP are putting up a serious fight against the constant push to register illegals to vote. There are enough illegals in Texas alone to turn it purple, if not slightly blue.
I don’t share your pessimistic view.
We’re understandably not too impressed about a Senator who was consistent after November 2015.
Trump was inconsistent long after that.
Also, as far as track record goes, Cruz killed the Gang of Eight while Trump was still donating to them.
Hey, Decius:
Here’s my refutation of just the first few paragraphs of “the flight 93 election:”
“2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die.”
False. If Hillary is elected, nobody is going to die. The country will be worse off, but probably less than a third Obama term since Hillary is loathsome to even her own party.
“Except one: if you don’t try, death is certain.”
Childish hyperbole.
“a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto. With Trump, at least you can spin the cylinder and take your chances.”
Hack. This article is where Trump memes come from.
“if eight years of Obama can be followed by eight more of Hillary”
Hillary may not even win this election. You think she’ll just run away with two of them?
“The truth is that Trump articulated, if incompletely and inconsistently, the right stances on the right issues—immigration, trade, and war—right from the beginning.”
Incompletely? Inconsistently? Those are weasel words to hide the fact that Trump has taken every side of every issue at some point.
“One of the paradoxes—there are so many—of conservative thought over the last decade at least is the unwillingness even to entertain the possibility that America and the West are on a trajectory toward something very bad.”
Yeah, it’s been nothing but good times since 2010 (and some before). Hence, the Tea Party. Moron.
“Conservatives spend…”
This is like accepting the conservative worldview as translated by a progressive. You’ll note the author’s unmistakable self-distancing from conservatives as a group. He’s an outsider.
“But it’s quite obvious that conservatives don’t believe any such thing, that they feel no such sense of urgency, of an immediate necessity to change course and avoid the cliff. A recent article by Matthew Continetti…”
I didn’t realize we’d elected Matthew Continetti as the Savior of the Nation. One might think that the author has set him up as a straw man instead.
“Decentralization and federalism are all well and good, and as a conservative, I endorse them both without reservation.”
Yeah, the author sounds like a real pillar of the community. And BTW, didn’t he distance himself from conservatives a few paragraphs ago? Which is it, Decius? WHAT HAVE YOU CONSERVED, DECIUS?
“That sounds a lot like Trumpism.”
The author, like every single Trump supporter has no idea what Trump will actually do. Only what he’s promised to do. And even then, you have to cherry-pick which promise you want to believe.
“…like Continetti, are vociferously—one might even say fanatically—anti-Trump.”
The author is vociferously – one might even say fanatically – anti-Never-Trump.
“That is, the stance that Things-Are-Really-Bad—But-Not-So-Bad-that-We-Have-to-Consider-Anything-Really-Different! “
Another straw man. I’m just gonna say SM from now on. Shorter.
“Pecuniary reasons also suggest themselves,”
Yep, there’s the “Trump’s critics are paid shills” meme we’ve come to expect.
“…is logically impossible.”
I don’t think these words mean what he thinks they mean.
“Let’s be very blunt here”
Would you, please?
“if you genuinely think things can go on with no fundamental change needed, then you have implicitly admitted that conservatism is wrong.”
SM.
No conservative believes this.
“If your answer—Continetti’s, Douthat’s, Salam’s, and so many others’—is for conservatism to keep doing what it’s been doing—another policy journal, another article about welfare reform, another half-day seminar on limited government, another tax credit proposal…”
Continetti, Douthat, and Salam are writers. They aren’t politicians and they have no power. Like the accusations against actual conservatives, Trump supporters blame people who had no power to change America’s course. Personally, I blame Trump.
“They will say, in words reminiscent of dorm-room Marxism—but our proposals have not been tried!”
Name the ACTUAL conservatives in charge, big man, and name how they betrayed you. If all you can name is McConnell, then you’re full of crap.
“More to the point, what has conservatism achieved lately?”
Once again, NAME the conservatives in charge. I’ll bet you can’t.
“Conservatism, Inc.”
Another Trumpkin buzz phrase. These guys sound like dorm-room Marxists with all their code words.
Etc.
Why did the GOP front so many amnesty fans? That is a core issue with the GOP base, and the arrogant bastards simply join in with the Democrats in calling people concerned about immigration, “ignorant and uneducated”.
“We can’t deport thirty million people! Trump and his fans are insane, impractical nitwits!”
Who let them in? Who will they vote for? Have they ever had a course in civics?
Keep playing into the Democrats’ hands. I agree. It has to stop now, or Republicans are through inside the Executive Branch.
Both Cruz and Rubio said they’d explicitly secure the borders. Trumpkins refused to believe either of them.
In Rubio’s case, there was a bit more justification since he’d been a member of the Gang of Eight. He said he’d recanted, but that wasn’t good enough.
In Cruz’ case, his position was both tougher and more consistent than Trump’s, so Trumpkins disqualified him with a series of smears and exaggerations like TPP/TPA, Goldman Sachs, and the ridiculous bullshit about having 5 affairs.
Core Trumpkins had made up their minds long in advance of the primaries, and went about justifying their choices after the fact. They wanted a loud, angry weapon to enact their REVENGE, and didn’t give a crap if the actual policies were reformed.
They wanted to punish their enemies, just like a bunch of adolescents.
Because they couldn’t control their emotions, now they’ll get nothing.
Rubio and Cruz are both ineligible for POTUS. So who cares what their positions were.
Two federal judges disagree with you.
The case for Cruz being ineligible is fairly strong, not quite so for Rubio.
No, it is not. The two judges ruled on the merits, and half a dozen other judges threw the case out of court.
Not one of them came close to disqualifying Cruz.
There is no clear legal means for a judge to disqualify Cruz from simply running in Republican primaries.
They didn’t rule on him “running in primaries.” They ruled on his being eligible for POTUS.
I voted for Cruz, lol. Plenty of Trump supporters did. Not every Cruz fan went away a bitter, NeverTrump a-hole. But, he didn’t win, so now we make the choice. I’m firmly in the #NeverClinton camp.
There was plenty of reason to dislike Runio. He caved quickly once getting to DC. Unreliable.
Yes, EVERYBODY voted for Cruz. Yet somehow, Trump won. That’s odd.
Cruz was not more consistent than Trump and his wife *was* involved in Bush’s North American Union scheme.
He has a globalist-capitalist background so he was rejected.
Trump’s wife is Eastern European. I guess that means Trump is a sleeper agent of the KGB.
Melania is Slovenian, which is an anti-Russian country, and Yugoslavia was not in the Warsaw Pact (you probably didn’t know that, did you?). So if that was a sarcastic comeback, it failed for that reason and also the fact that Mrs Cruz isn’t simply guilty by association but was directly involved in the pre-sketches of a North American Union for the Bush admin.
What you have are guilt by association and conspiracy theories.
When given the chance to vote for the New World Order, Cruz voted against it. You are repeating the smear propaganda started by the Trump camp to de-legitimize and disquality Cruz.
Yeah, Cruz is an opportunist.
If you insist on politicians doing the right thing AND for the right reasons, you’re going to be disappointed. No politician is an angel, so I only insist that they do the right thing.
Look, I suspected at very first (summer last year) that Trump was opportunistically filling a vacuum on the immigration issue. In time, I think this is less likely. It is true that political opportunists do not necessarily fail to deliver. Trump is absolutely not an opportunist on trade as that’s probably the issue he has sniped most at sitting presidents about (from Reagan to Clinton to Obama).
Cruz and his wife both built their career in the Bush circles and she worked on open borders trade and immigration plans for North America. He had a major post for the Federal Trade Commission. He voted for TPA fast-track and praised the TPP in the negotiation phase before saying he was against it later in the campaign. He was very much an advocate for increasing H1Bs and was open to some form of amnesty plan. He could not be trusted on these issues as president although he might be shamed into supporting a President Trump in the next two years if he wishes to remain a Senator.
Ever heard of an analogy?
If Clot is elected, the Republicans die (just so you’ll understand, that’s not literal)…
After two years of limp-wristed opposition to Hillary, Democrats will once again successfully paint the GOP as “obstructionists” and will lose Congress. Nobody will be motivated to vote R in the mid terms because the GOP keeps flipping the base the bird.
After that, if the GOP doesn’t cave before, we will legalize thirty million people who’ve never taken a civics class and understand next to nothing about the Constitution.
Then its game over. Permanent demographic change is already underway. We become Venezuela.
Where we sucked it up and voted for McLame and Mittens, you want to see a Clot Presidency.
Thanks for nothing.
If he’d meant something less serious, he’d have used a less serious analogy. Also, the way Trumpkins have been freaking out, I’m pretty sure they think something like Venezuela is going to happen if Hillary wins, so I don’t believe your explanation.
I don’t believe Hillary will be able to legalize 30 million illegals if Obama wasn’t able to. If there’s a recession, many of them will self-deport just like in 2008.
…ah yes. Farther down you post, I see you also think Venezuela.
Decius has used overheated rhetoric because he and most Trumpkins are in a state of hysteria. The mass delusion is now feeding itself.
“If he’d meant something serious, he’d have used a less serious analogy.”
I didn’t write that, so I can’t say. You didn’t write it, either. Again, it’s an analogy.
If Hillary wins, then yes, the slide toward a Venezuelan-type catastrophe will continue. It’s basic economic law. You can no more have a corrupt government with massive entitlements and defy economic law than you can wear lead boots, flap your arms, and suddenly fly.
To repudiate this cataract of specious thought would take too long.
Here are just two instances. You write at the beginning of your riposte ‘If Hillary is elected, nobody is going to die.’ What about millions of babies, many of them in their 8th and 9th month of development in the womb? What about the victims of all the Islamic terrorists who will come in, via general welcome of Muslims?
‘Hillary is loathsome to even her own party’. Is that what we saw when it made sure the Bernie Sanders COULD NOT win the nomination, owing to the special super-delegates created for her?
If Trump is elected, how would babies stop being killed by Democrats? It’s especially difficult to believe since he praised PP himself.
Hillary: Yes, that’s exactly what you saw. You don’t have to rig nominations for popular candidates.
Goldberg isn’t the only one refusing to see the depth and complexity of the wave Trump is surfing. There are tons of examples, but I experienced this first hand last week with Jay Cost on Twitter.
I generally like Jay Cost’s writing, and I am a subscriber to “The Weekly Standard,” but I can only take so much smug preening and faux intellectualism. Jay had just tweeted out a “lecture” on populism:
Because I believe there is a third option, I said so:
Richard Mouw explored the theme of Consulting the Faithful with regards to the interplay of the elite (theologians and pastors) and the flock within Christian faith communities, and I genuinely believe it is a model that is adaptable to the political realm, a healthy, balanced an fruitful populism.
So, I told Jay in Twitterspeak he needed to expand his horizons, by saying he needed to get out of his bubble.
He muted me, a subscriber, and ironically put himself even more into a bubble:
In doing so he also showed his hypocrisy because just a little while prior he had told another person:
There are more like that in his timeline, but it goes to show how arrogant, condescending, and petty they are becoming in protecting their sovereign cartel.
No actual conservative should waste time reading ANYBODY who would write for Weekly Standard.
Some think the author of this piece (Publius Decius Mus) is Michael Anton, who has wriiten a lot for The Weekly Standard. True or not, I am not a fan of Kristol and Co’s neo-con militarism, but I don’t have an ideological filter limiting what I will read. I subscribe to and read a lot of what I don’t agree with.
TWS was bad from the beginning, don’t waste your time.
I heartily agree with you and have spent much of this day explaining why on the Krauthammer Fans Page on Facebook…
Krauthammer has fans?
This is exactly right and the reason the establishment Republicans have failed us. They offered no fight.
There is a daily, almost hourly push by the left to get illegals to vote. They cheat, and register them on public service and entitlement programs. Then along come the amnesty champions who have no intention of fighting the fight.
They have their house or senate seat and aren’t going to lose that gravy train.
Yet, as Ann Coulter points out in her (perfect, absolutely true) new book, ‘they ran the numbers and realized the electoral implications won’t be felt for a few years, and by then they’ll be retired. “Après moi, le deluge.”
Like all selfish greed, it is delusional thinking.
Once the USA has become a Latin-American style-Third World country (as to its culture) – also
rankly flavoured throughout by Islamic terrorism – there will be nowhere on Earth for them to retreat to with their ill-gotten gains; for the whole world will be griped by various nasty tyrannies in which no-one can feel smugly safe and comfortable. The USA will be an amalgam of Guatemala and Afghanistan, then there will be the Chinese dictatorship and the Russian one. Who will come to their rescue?
It is like the behaviour of the biggest business bosses in Weimar Germany 1932. They supposed that on the one hand this Hitler character was part-maverick, part-clown, but they could employ him as a very useful puppet. He would (as they supposed) crush the Unions, being fiercely anti-Bolshevik, and – once actually in government – stop his large private armies from roaming round the streets causing mayhem.
So they talked President Hindenburg into making him Minister of Security in a coalition cabinet.
Oops!
Within a very short time it availed you little to be a Thyssen or a Krup, owning half of German industry and an income of billions a year. You were just as likely to have a nasty visit from the Gestapo as anybody else.
The puzzlement of the author is odd. He clearly isn’t that sophisticated if he has trouble processing the fact that neocons are not conservatives and have been at war with actual conservatives from their first appearance. (That’s why they called themselves “neo” — originally they didn’t want any association with actual conservatives. When, later, they discovered that, in conjunction with some free-market libertarians, they could take over Conservatism, Inc., they tried to drop the “neo” from their names.) I suspect that the author is semi-neocon himself and so has trouble accepting this reality.
No matter the outcome of the election, we’re going to need a new conservative movement. As much as we’d like to ignore Washington, this new movement will have to be full time anti-federal government. Who will lead this movement and how will it operate?
I was hoping a Trump presidency would be the launching pad to simply take over the republican party….create a new party out of it……Just like Lincoln became the first new leader of the new republican party which replaced the Whigs.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3777610a227bbf433cba764594b1366525bbfa508039350100ab2eca03b58f00.jpg
========================
This is the 2nd American Revolution…..
Be a Patriot Volunteer…there is only 14 days left!
The Memes you will find at my Flickr Site [scroll], and the Videos linked, are meant to convey a startlingly true, BIG PICTURE message at a glance.
Most of the Memes have well written comments below the memes.
So many people are simply not aware of the Big Picture, and what is at stake in this election, and so many are on the fence.
You know who some of these people are….or you can find out by making calls to you friends, family, and acquaintances.
This is the LAST CHANCE you will have to save your nation, America.
Why?….Because, if Hillary Clinton is elected, the Left will FLOOD the leftist democrat voting rolls with 10-30 million amnestied illegal aliens, and will suck in 1 to 2 million or more poor from the 3rd world annually. By 2020, it will be impossible to defeat the Left in a presidential election, and ALL elections will be hard won for Congress and the Senate.
Donald Trump will be the LAST traditional American you will have had the chance to vote for, if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency. Your children and grandchildren will never have the chance to vote for a traditional American president. The TRANSFORMATION of America will steam roll ahead, and the America you knew will be gone.
Beginning now, you can decide to call ALL the people you know, and engage them in a series of conversations to persuade them of what is at stake, and that they must vote for Donald Trump to save America from totalitarian rule by the Leftist Elites, like Hillary Clinton.
This is NOT a time to be a wall flower! You will need to swallow your pride, or any sense of embarrassment, and get these people you know on the phone, and devise a way to engage them in conversation.
You will need to be honest and bold. You can’t hide and hope to just nudge them over to the Trump Movement. You will need make strong arguments with no vacillation…because there is NO REASON to vacillate….you will be speaking the truth.
I made these Memes as tools to help people to do this task. So use them, and whatever other materials you have gathered…..but, prepare your message, use what tools you have, and make the calls…..
……and then call these same people back to see what impact you are having. Question them like a sales person. What are they not convinced about?…Find out, and put them at ease….by convincing them with more honed arguments to their areas of discomfort.
If you could find five to ten people who are on the fence, this would magnify your impact on this election as much as ten fold.
===========
Here is how you can access the memes and video links you find in my Flickr account:
1) You can direct someone to my Memes by having them google…
DanKWarren Flickr
The top result takes you to my Flickr site.
2) Or, on any page where one of my memes are located, you can click the crooked arrow in the bottom left hand corner of the page, and you have options on how to share the meme on Twitter or Facebook, or to email the meme to yourself or someone else.
3) You can go to my Twitter Account and follow me……
@DanWarren1000
I will Tweet All the New Memes I make in the days ahead. And, if we do WIN this election, there will be a lot of work to do to save America from the Leftist Totalitarians of the Democrat party……
=============
This is the 2nd American Revolution….!
Remember, We have less than 16 days to Save Our Nation…You will NEVER have this chance again.
We are like the Volunteers with Washington, crossing the Delaware River to surprise the Hessian soldiers of the King!
Are you IN the Boat with General Washington?!
Let’s Roll !!!!
=================
I would like to hear how you are using these memes……thank you.
⤵ and, do you like this?
“If they can fight somebody like me with unlimited resources to fight
back, just look at what they can do to you — your jobs, your security,
your education, your healthcare, the violation of religious liberty, the
theft of your Second Amendment, the loss of your factories, your homes
and much more,”
This is the election right here. Trump is portrayed as the one that is a threat to American democracy, But Trump will be checked by Congress (including and maybe especially by Republicans) Trump will also be checked by the courts and the media
However, Hillary (like Obama) WILL NOT have any checks against her. We have found from from bitter past experience that because of the bias in the media – the Republicans are TOO AFRAID to take on a democrat. Remember in 2013 when the media polled Americans and the voters said that we should not blow through the debt ceiling they said NO. Now protecting America requires ENDLESS increases to the national debt
Bottom line: A democrat president with a compliant press and bureaucracy will concentrate power in Washington – The result will be AT THE EXPENSE OF OUR INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM.
This is a superb article. I wish I could up-vote it directly, as this needs to be read by the GOP establishment pronto.
Well, I’ve been writing that a HiLIARy presidency means that We the American People will never have the chance to elect another traditional American to the presidency again in our lifetime, nor will our children or their children…..I write this on every post…..
…………………..
****NEW!****
The BIG SMEAR Campaign….
….to Shut Down the Only One….
One Picture Equals 1000 Words…..
https://www.flickr.com/photos/141620822@N02/30350458641/in/dateposted-public/
The Memes you will find at my Flickr Site [scroll], and the Videos linked, are meant to convey a startlingly true, BIG PICTURE message at a glance.
Most of the Memes have well written comments below the memes.
So many people are simply not aware of the Big Picture, and what is at stake in this election, and so many are on the fence.
You know who some of these people are….or you can find out by making calls to you friends, family, and acquaintances.
This is the LAST CHANCE you will have to save your nation, America.
Why?….Because, if Hillary Clinton is elected, the Left will FLOOD the leftist democrat voting rolls with 10-30 million amnestied illegal aliens, and will suck in 1 to 2 million or more poor from the 3rd world annually. By 2020, it will be impossible to defeat the Left in a presidential election, and ALL elections will be hard won for Congress and the Senate.
Donald Trump will be the LAST traditional American you will have had the chance to vote for, if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency. Your children and grandchildren will never have the chance to vote for a traditional American president. The TRANSFORMATION of America will steam roll ahead, and the America you knew will be gone.
Beginning now, you can decide to call ALL the people you know, and engage them in a series of conversations to persuade them of what is at stake, and that they must vote for Donald Trump to save America from totalitarian rule by the Leftist Elites, like Hillary Clinton.
This is NOT a time to be a wall flower! You will need to swallow your pride, or any sense of embarrassment, and get these people you know on the phone, and devise a way to engage them in conversation.
You will need to be honest and bold. You can’t hide and hope to just nudge them over to the Trump Movement. You will need make strong arguments with no vacillation…because there is NO REASON to vacillate….you will be speaking the truth.
I made these Memes as tools to help people to do this task. So use them, and whatever other materials you have gathered…..but, prepare your message, use what tools you have, and make the calls…..
……and then call these same people back to see what impact you are having. Question them like a sales person. What are they not convinced about?…Find out, and put them at ease….by convincing them with more honed arguments to their areas of discomfort.
If you could find five to ten people who are on the fence, this would magnify your impact on this election as much as ten fold.
===========
Here is how you can access the memes and video links you find in my Flickr account:
1) You can direct someone to my Memes by having them google…
DanKWarren Flickr
The top result takes you to my Flickr site.
2) Or, on any page where one of my memes are located, you can click the crooked arrow in the bottom left hand corner of the page, and you have options on how to share the meme on Twitter or Facebook, or to email the meme to yourself or someone else.
3) You can go to my Twitter Account and follow me……
@DanWarren1000
I will Tweet All the New Memes I make in the days ahead. And, if we do WIN this election, there will be a lot of work to do to save America from the Leftist Totalitarians of the Democrat party……
=============
This is the 2nd American Revolution….!
Remember, We have less than 16 days to Save Our Nation…You will NEVER have this chance again.
We are like the Volunteers with Washington, crossing the Delaware River to surprise the Hessian soldiers of the King!
Are you IN the Boat with General Washington?!
Let’s Roll !!!!
=================
I would like to hear how you are using these memes……thank you.
⤵ and, do you like this?
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6fd73bf1360464070e3ff7a035e0e6353b2f47165f1865f40ee3efdec8653c98.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3c0cdf7a4048f99197e269adb59bc4a069fd93d696a4a9d1c9553eeeb27cca67.gif
Trump is a ‘traditional American”? That is an insult to all Americans. YOU should retract that slander.
Most Americans don’t beat their wives… most Americans don’t commit adultery… most Americans don’t cheat their friends & partners… most Americans didn’t dodge the draft… most Americans don’t scam older Americans… most Americans pay their bills.
Your lord trump is no ‘traditional American’ – trump is nothing but penthouse trash.
HB
They’re importing violent muslim welfare cases to permanently out-vote us, and Trump is the only powerful person trying to preserve traditional Americans.
Bunk. Such stupidity in statement does not deserve any more attention.
HB
Right, all those violent third worlders will clamor for tax cuts and personal responsibility once you explain Milton Friedman to them.
Decius, thank you, thank you.
Please, by all means let’s allow the conservative culture wars to flourish. The onanism of various factions reveals the isolation that they all now suffer from the mainstream thought that has taken over the nation. USA is on the verge of joining the community of first-world countries in aligning its priorities with those of its respective citizenries. The current presidential election has only exposed the conservatives as what they are: one-percenters in all economic and social dimensions.
The life of the Republican Party (Conservativism, Inc., I guess) has been drastically shortened by Mr. Trump’s disastrous campaign–Sec. Clinton will be president; the Ds will probably take over the Senate; the R majority in the House will be drastically reduced, ready to be flipped in 2018. That sterling bench of R presidential wannabes turned out to be a clown car full of great pretenders–there is no R reserve of capable candidates.
O frabjous day! Calloo callay!
The formerly richest and most powerful society in history is finally joining the first world by importing violent, low-IQ muslim rapists to out-vote the native population.
The current presidential election has only exposed the conservatives as what they are: one-percenters in all economic and social dimensions.
Dear God, you people are stupid. The current election has shown the Democratic party to be the puppet of wealthy oligarchs. Lynn de Rothschild (yes, one of THOSE de Rothschild’s) described herself to Hillary as “your adoring pal”. Clinton has spent the last year sucking up several hundred millions dollars in donations from the top 0.001%, while explicitly promising them that she’ll be in their corner if she is elected.
Jonah Goldberg is an anti-Trumper and there is no convincing him otherwise, so I will not even bother. I will not tell him to go to Trump’s site to check out his positions, which are Conservative, because he would not believe them. He apparently does not realize the damage a Killary Clinton presidency would do to this country. She is for open borders and an expansion of the Muslim invasion. She is for higher taxes, more regulation and violating the people’s rights. She would appoint leftist judges. Killary Clinton jeopardized national security for how she handled classified material with her use of her private email server and should lose her security clearance. Without having a security clearance would make her ineligible to be president. So, why is she still running? None of that concerns Goldberg because he writes, “Conservatives know how to oppose Clinton, who will come into office the most damaged and unpopular president in American history, having fulfilled her mandate to not be Trump on Day One.” It is obvious Goldberg has not been paying attention as to the last eight years under Hussein Obama’s Regime where the Republicans did nothing to stop him. So wise up Goldberg, Killary would be a disaster for this country. It’s time to get on the Trump train or just STFU!
Exactly.
Goldberg’s “Conservatives know how to oppose Clinton” may be the most laughable political statement anybody has made in the whole of the world this calendar year. Anybody who could write that is living in a dream-world at the other end of the galaxy.
Does Goldberg mean – just as they evicted Bill Clinton from office during his tenure, on the grounds of his disgusting misdemeanours; as they defeated Obama on big issue after big issue in the Congress; as they held Mrs Clinton to account in the Senate hearing over Benghazi and forced her to lose her security clearance?
It puts me in mind of Dr Johnson on the Stoic philosophers. – “Such inconsistencies are to be expected from the greatest understandings, when they endeavour to grow eminent by singularity, and employ their strength in establishing positions opposite to nature.”
Conservatives know how to oppose Clinton
Writes the moronic Goldberg, whose idea of “opposing Clinton” is to support her bid for the White House! With opposition like Goldbergs there is no limit to what Hillary can accomplish.
Here’s why Trump won the primary:
Politics is fundamentally about the friend vs enemy distinction.
We rely on relatively small numbers of rough men to defend us from our enemies, both internal and external .
The population from which these rough men are drawn constitutes a distinct minority of a state’s population.
If that population is consistently abused over time, it endangers the state, since the rough men it provides are the fundamental key to maintaining the friend vs enemy distinction.
America has been abusing that population at least since 1965.
I think Goldberg’s position – and that of the other NeverTrump members of what Ann Coulter calls ‘the Republican Brain Trust’ – can be explained fairly simply. In ascending order of motivation,
1] He wants to maintain his (minor-)celebrity as a pundit, with a job as a commentating journalist, and appearance in the broadcast media. These are threatened by a Trump victory, which would further highlight the irrelevance of Conservatism Inc.’s views to most genuinely conservative-minded persons.
2] Trump’s candidature and chief themes have discredited and disgraced him. As Decius points out, Jonah and his ilk have done nothing at all significant to fight, let alone win, the culture war – and that is upstream of the political battles.
Over the decades they have not called on all conservative-minded persons in the country to fund, collectively, an alternative and conservative movie industry, television and radio channels and press. They have not fought tooth and nail against the 1965 Immigration Act, Political Correctness (which has been fashioned as a weapon by the Left to shut down debate of topics the Left does not want discussed), Multiculturalism and Mass Immigration. They have not spent the past 27 hears howling at the Republican Party for its failures in these crucial, existential, regards.
That they are CAPABLE of fighting red in tooth and claw they have demonstrated vigorously these past 16 months. ‘National Review’ has had at least four new denunciations of Donald Trump in its online edition every single day: some brief (‘The Corner’), most very full-length. These attempt to take him apart piece-by-piece (as if they were anatomizing a watch or distributing all the parts of an automobile across a mechanic’s workshop) time and again. Why did they not do this so thorough, unrelenting, 24/7 kind of job with Obama 2007 and 2011? Why have they not done it with Mass Immigration from Third World countries? Why did they not denounce the Republican Party (between elections) for its enormous failure to defend genuine conserving of the country in like fashion? Had they kept up such a barrage it is very difficult to believe that Republicans in Congress and the White House 1989-2016 could have managed to be QUITE so Democrat-lite on major counts as they have proved.
Along comes a crude rough diamond who talks about the Elephants in the Room which Goldberg and Co have dealt with either very gingerly or not at all – and they are suddenly arc-lamped for what they are: an utterly mediocre ‘élite’ which lacks courage, is possessed by its own Groupthink, supremely desires to sit at the right dinner-tables rubbing shoulders with the powerful and deeming themselves to be king-makers; and who probably in most cases obtain more money and privilege being wittering commentators than they would on their own merits in the world outside politics.
In my dreams Trump wins with a very decisive margin; and both the Mainstream Media and Conservatism Inc. drops off the precipice of credibility, where they currently perch and tremble, into an abyss of perpetual irrelevance and disdain. Thenceforth they would be viewed with more contempt than the Pacifists, Appeasers and Disarmers of the 1930s; for at least the latter, albeit wrong-headedly and partly out of cravenness, were frantically trying to avoid a repeat of the First World War.
This isn’t thought – this is nonsense emoting on stilts.
Face it; you picked a low character, immature, vulgar man and he has run a low character, immature and vulgar campaign and because of that, he is losing to the worst candidate the Democrats have put up since McGovern and Mondale.
All these weird theories of some top secret “Establishment” conspiracy is nothing more than a desperate last ditch measure to absolve Trump of any responsibility.
The main reason for Trump’s success is his stance on border control and illegal immigration. Cruz saw an uptick in the polls when he started talking about illegal immigration. The rest of the candidates were on record as being favorable to “comprehensive immigration reform”. None of the other candidates focused on this issue. Trump did and won the right to run for president.
It doesn’t matter how we got here anyway. The question is what to do now that we’re here.
And you really suppose that any of the other 16 candidates would have won against the Clinton Crime Syndicate (which long since has taken entire possession of the Democratic Party, as that party has of the Mainstream Media)? Did you not notice how Bernie Sanders was not even given a CHANCE by the Democrats? They created an internally rigged system – a wall of super-delegates neither he nor any other non-Clinton could surmount.
You really suppose that anyone else would have had the fame-factor (voter-recognition) or the sheer toughness of character to have survived the kind of assault they would have made on him/her?
Romney and McCain folded like napkins at the first blast of the breath of the Leftwing Dragon the past two times around. And consider the VILE (and untruthful) allegations the Beast made against THEM.
Respectable, and allegedly respectworthy candidates, have been TRIED against the Clinton Machine – consider what happened to Bob Dole in 1996 – and have failed.
A little realism is in order.
It’s an indisputable reality that this country is run by a single Uniparty which scarcely bothers to maintain the fiction that the Republicans and Democrats are competing with one another. The so-called “conservative movement” along with the Republican party “leadership” has campaigned far more vigorously for Clinton in 2016 than they did for Romney in 2012 or McCain in 2008.
If you want a smoking gun, just look at the GOP’s (and “conservative movements” ) reaction to the recent revelations of massive vote fraud by the Democrats. If they were what they claim to be then you’d expect them to screaming absolute murder about this — and yet, all you hear is crickets. They don’t have a problem with Dem fraud, as long as it’s done in the service of the Uniparty’s overarching goals.
And the solution to this is Trump?
Wow.
Wow! It ain’t about boiling frogs anymore.
Almost everything you say is true, particularly the ways in which Conservatism Inc. has not been serving the interest of American working people.
But none of that changes the fact the Trump is an ignorant, infantile, ego-maniac with no impulse control. And how can you possibly endorse such a freak-show for president of the United States?
So we can save it. Did you even read the article?
So an ignorant, infantile ego-maniac with no impulse control can save us? Is there a grown-up there I can talk to?
Trump’s website policy-positions absolutely make sense.
So do his excellent “Contract with the American Voter” policies announced two days ago.
His choice of running mate is extremely sober; and that running mate has been ideally loyal and articulate from Day One of his selection. These facts rather tell us something about the quality of Trump’s judgement; while all of Hillary’s calls, at home and abroad, have been disastrous.
Trump looks the kind of blowhard businessman who talks all sorts of kaleidoscopic opinions/stuff in the railroad restaurant car (‘gorgeous women can’t resist me, I back 5 winners out of every six at the races, I know exactly how to make this railroad profitable again’ – you take it with five pinches of salt per utterance) BUT at work with his sleeves rolled up has an uncanny knack for picking experts who really know their domain and get things done.
If this were not so, he would – yes – have inherited one million dollars from his father, gone up into the stratosphere like a Roman candle, and long since have been on food stamps. ‘A fool and his money are quickly parted.’
Yes, he came back from absolute bankruptcy – as many a wheeler-dealer businessman has done. But the point is, he talked his way back and stayed back.
I truly believe he would make a good president. Not perfect (any more than Ronald Reagan was); but, like Mr Reagan, GOOD.
The alternative means the end of the Constitution, rule of law, the United States’ best traditions, the lot.
Under Hillary the USA inexorably turns into Brazil, if everyone is terrifically lucky; or more likely an amalgam of Guatemala and Afghanistan.
“this election poses an existential threat to America’s survival as a constitutional republic”
Republics, allegedly “constitutional” or not, are the main existential threat to republics. They never work – they are their own worst enemy. This was known, it was universal wisdom, but a faction of radicals thought they’d try creating paradise on earth anyway – what the heck, give it a try. It’s not Hillary or the Democratic Party who doomed the American republic – it’s the men who created it in the first place, destroying in the process the only truly lasting and reliable order. If, as Decius predicts, this is the end of the republic, then Juan Linz will be proven right, and so will Samuel Seabury. Ut incepit fidelis sic permanet.
Excellent article and actually too kind to Goldberg. Essentially, Goldberg is a dick who is so blinded by unintentional bias (the fact that he stands to lose his source of income and the defeat of the point of his life’s work) or he realizes this and has made the cynical choice to place his well being ahead of the country’s.
The most eye-opening part of this war with Goldberg is seeing his willingness and glee at misquoting and taking out of context those on the right that he disagrees with. It makes one consider if the left’s dislike of him was corrrect and justified all along.
It is so clear that the right has lost in every way its possible to lose. There is no better summary of the extent of that defeat than the author outlines under the paragraph titled “Comprehensive Conservative Failure”. If you are unable to admit that defeat, then the “idea” of a Trump presidency probably seems absurd. For those of us who see that comprehensive defeat of the right for what it is, Trump is the grasp of a drowning man for a life preserver. When you are about to take your last breath before going under, whether the only person who can save you has made some crude prior comments is immaterial. It is clear that the judicial branch of our government has been compromised, that federal law enforcement has been compromised, that the rule of law as applied to left-leaning politicians no longer exists and that if Hillary is elected and the border and refugee war is lost, it really is over. There will be no saving America at the ballot box again. And Goldberg is doing his part to make this happen.
Spot on!
The Flight 93 Election essay remains the most on the money, and dare I say, prescient article I’ve read this year. Evidence of that is the establishment is still peeing their pants over it 2 months later.
Lots of back & forth between Decius & Jonah Goldberg. I will offer an economical distillation:
– Decius thinks it’s a swell idea to hand over nuclear weapons to an unstable reality show star
– Jonah does not
But Hillary is ok? At least Donald seems like he’ll listen to Generals and not murder a country’s President and then gloat, ‘we came, we saw, he died”. That’s what Jonah, and you, are supporting.
1) I never said Hillary is “ok”, nor has Goldberg.
2) We didn’t murder Qaddafi. The dictator was killed by people he had oppressed for decades. Go figure.
3) You’re actually saying that an argument for giving the Donald nucs is that he would listen to advice. Wow. Just Wow.
1. “I’m not pro communist, just anti anti communist!” Similar crap, different shovel.
2. US lead bombing campaign may have had something to do with it.
3. (a) N-U-K-E-S
(b) Hillary gave away our response time on National F-ing Television! Did you not see that?!
1) effing bizarre
2) So what? Look you can make a great case against the intervention, but we didn’t murder the Qaddafi, so why say we did?
3b You’re arguing for a guy who can’t act on advice from his campaign advisers when it’s in his interest to do so, but think somehow he can be entrusted with the most important matters of war and peace. You’re arguing for a guy who only attaches importance to information that reaffirms his overriding belief in his own greatness – nothing else matters to him.
Donald Trump is a child, and you’re a pathetic little man who is ready to follow him around.
1. Perfectly logical. The choice is either A or B. You don’t want to be seen as pro A, so you spend all of your time trashing B.
2. U.S. led bombing was a significant factor in destabilizing the whole area. With Qaddafi’s death, Lybia is now an ISIS colony and the resulting Rapefugee Crisis has severely damaged Western Europe. All thanks to Clinton. The person you support.
3. See No. 2 as to why that argument is full of shit. Exactly how many Ambassadors has Trump murdered through his incompetence as Secretary of State? How many failed states has he created? How many millions has he raked in from ISIS financing oil sheiks? Answer: ZERO.
A guy who spent the last ten years huffing paint fumes while domiciled under a bridge also hasn’t done anything that could be tied to events in Libya. Sadly, such an individual would probably be more likely to express himself in a coherent manner than the current GOP nominee.
You’re either for Trump, or you’re for importing Syrian rape gangs to live off our welfare system.
To Lenny’s caregiver: You forgot his meds
Qaddafi was killed by Al Qaeda militias armed and given air cover by Obama and Hillary. Mental midgets like you and Goldberg always have to retreat into semantics to make a point.
1) Disqualifying Trump over nucs is saying Hillary is better (Hillary is ok)
2) if you think Hillary didn’t play a pivotal role in Qadaffi’s death you are delusional. Even Hillary disagrees with you, which is obvious based on her gloating “we came…he died” comment.
3) And yes, a President who would listen to the advice of his military leaders in making a decision seems like a good thing, but apparently you don’t agree so I’ll match all your silly “wows” and raise you another.
I detest Hillary (not “ok”). However, Hillary is an adult; Trump, age 70, is not. He behaves in a manner I would not have accepted from my kids, past age 4. Next, I never disputed that we played a role in the events that led to Qadaffi’s death. I said that we didn’t murder him – we did not. Finally, after this campaign, if you think that Trump will listen to anyone giving him unwelcome advice, then you are a very foolish person. Also, there is no Easter bunny.
Goldberg would rather they be entrusted to a criminal who gave away our nuclear response times on national television.
Goldberg “would rather” be supporting a sane Republican against Hillary.
Then he should hop into his time machine and go back and do so during the Primaries.
Then why did he not over (what by now amounts to) long years FLAIL the Republican Party in general and the RNC in particular for failing to produce candidates – at all levels, including the presidential – who actually would defend conservative positions; such as the very existence of the American nation, the Constitution, the genuine rule of law; and would prevent the immense corruption of the system?
Goldberg has been tireless in going for Donald Trump for 16 months on practically a daily basis (like his Conservatism Inc. colleagues). Where was his vigour over the past two decades in belabouring the Republicans for doing so little in conservatism’s cause?
Please kindly see Mark Steyn’s dreadful truthful account of how much the Clintons have corrupted government to date. It is pretty comprehensive.>
http://www.steynonline.com/7564/laws-are-for-the-little-people
Would that be the same Mark Steyn that worked for NR for years and years?
Yes. Yet he has moved on; as numbers of others among us have had to do.
I read NR for a long time (and on one occasion responded to one of their appeals by making a donation) and only discovered this year that they are in fact not interested in actually CONSERVING anything which matters: e.g. [1] the American nation (which under Hillary will disappear and be transformed into another Latin American Republic with a strong infusion of Islamic terrorism – an amalgam of Guatemala and Afghanistan); [2] the actual working of the Constitution as written and intended; [3] the Rule of Law, rather than the occupants of high office abetted by their lackeys in the media stirring up as much interracial strife as gratuitously as possible.
My disappointment is probably outclassed by Ann Coulter’s. She spent her life to date toiling for the Republicans under the impression that, unlike the wealth-obsessed lifestyle party the Democrats, they actually cared about what happens to America’s working class and middle class.
This year the scales have been dragged from her eyes by the behaviour of the Republican Party Establishment and Conservatism Inc: e.g. Charles Murray, after a long distinguished career charting and animadverting upon the woes of the working class, now given a chance to do something FOR them, turns his back in disgust on Trump; which means he does what he can for a Hillary Clinton victory, ignoring all of Trump’s very much PRO WORKING CLASS POLICY; and ignores the Democrats’ treatment of working class people, black and white alike, which is there for all to see across the land – horrible.
Maybe you and Goldberg should start a new party where the two of you can decide on everything without interference from us deplorables.
Or we hand them over to a congenital liar who might mistake the nuclear launch button for her life alert button during another one of her undisclosed illnesses.
-Jonah thinks it’s a swell idea to start WWIII with Russia to protect ISIS
-Decius does not
FTFY
The definition of “carried interest” at Investopedia is misleading. (” Carried interest is classified under the tax code as capital gains, which are taxed at the more favorable capital gains tax rate.”) The argument/assertion about a carried interest “loophole” is silly (and wrong).
First of all, carried interest is an informal term of art, and not found in the tax code or regulations. (It is likely not found in the partnership agreement, either, for the same reason.) Second, gains from the disposition of assets held longer than one year are ‘long-term’ and therefore taxed at the more favorable long-term capital gains rate. Gains from the disposition of assets held less than one year are ‘short-term’ and taxed at the rate for ordinary income. The allocation of gains by the partnership doesn’t change the character or taxable treatment of the gains–irrespective of the description found on Investopedia’s website.
So-called hedge funds that invest and trade liquid securities only rarely generate long-term capital gains, as they rarely hold securities longer than 12 months. Private equity and real estate funds do regularly generate long-term capital gains, as their investment strategy involves illiquid assets held longer than 12 months.
The so-called loophole is the preferential treatment of long-term gains versus short-term gains.
IMO, the better argument is that the tax rate should be indifferent as between labor and capital–as between income gains and capital gains.
Yep. I have a masters of taxation and never has the term “carried interest” appeared in the tax code, lol.
It’s infuriating to see tax-ignorant politicians talk about supposed “loopholes”.
The better solution? Reduce all federal income taxes to brackets which top out at 15% and call it a day.
Most mainstream “conservatives” are right-liberals. They believe that they hold the true principled liberalism and that left-liberalism is a perversion of true liberalism. We conservatives must completely reject the axioms of liberalism. It is for this reason that I fear common ground between tradionalist and mainstream “conservatives” is all but lost.
((smiles))
I enjoy Jonah’s prose. He, along with Kevin Williamson, sends me to google more than any others and I like having my mind expanded. I enjoy the way he plays with language.
But on this one Decius is absolutely right.
This is a BINARY election. The next President of the United States will be named Trump or Klinton (okay, my biases are clear).
The best description I have seen of this election so far goes like this – –
A vote for Klinton is like playing Russian roulette with a semi-automatic pistol. At least with Trump you get to give the cylinder a spin.
If I could recall where I saw that first I would cite it.
Goldberg is an intellectual midget who relies on stream of consciousness, lame pop culture references, and corny jokes to avoid grappling with arguments directly, because he’d just get btfod if he did.
Goldberg looks like a cross between Rachel Maddow and Chuck Todd. What do you expect from him?
You must understand, that while you yearn for a good republic, Jonah yearns for an empire. Jonah is a believer in Harry Potterism. He just seems to miss the fact that his ‘special powers’ come from a world class military not a magic wand minted at some Ivy League Hogsworth. Why would American men (let’s forget the ladies here) willingly fight for other nation’s borders while their own borders are left open? Why defend the liberties of others while their own liberties shrink. Why fight for other peoples, while their own are hated by their masters? It is really quite hard to defend Jonah’s world view. And yet, he defends the indefensible daily.
“always constitute accommodations to the Left”
That’s the tactic, the general principle, the socially prescribed “right thing” that gets me piqued the most. I use a pickpocket parable to make the point that when we are all so good that we don’t lord our success over others, and we give to the poor who will work for food, and — especially — when we compromise with vandals, such as acquiescing to half — only half! — the demands of an attacker, an aggressor and the thief, and when we compromise and give him back half the money he stole, you only have to do this a few times before he might as well have the wallet, too — to hold all the money in that he got through compromise. You call this accommodation. I can it naïve stupidity.
How does he still have a job?