Remedium peius morbo

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

So, yesterday my friend, Larry Correia gave his reasons not to like Trump.  I will quote it here in full.  However my worries about Trump go beyond his, because so to put it I’ve seen this movie before, and I can see the makings of the same situation in Trump’s candidacy.  Is it intentional?  Is the plan the same? I don’t know.  Even if there isn’t a similar plan, it will have the same effect.

But beyond that, as with journolist, I’ve seen international coordination of plans and details (for instance, not only did Portugal and Iran both use red carnations as a symbol of the revolution, but they also used many of the same slogans “the people, united, will never be defeated” for instance.  And I’m sure both of the revolutions were coordinated by Moscow, admittedly in different ways and with different purposes [And for the idiots reading this blog, as usual, looking for evidence that I’m a “fascist” note that not approving of the previous regime doesn’t mean you have to approve of the revolution.  They were both varieties of leftist.])

I’ve seen other such similarities in the left in many countries, including similar electoral strategies.  (And before you tell me Donald Trump isn’t a man of the left, yes, he is, as Larry points out.  And if you tell me so was Reagan, I’m going to bust a vein.  Reagan changed WELL before running for president as a Republican.  He had changed, very publicly years, not months, before and could articulate why he changed, and could say it in ways that made sense.)

So, here is what Larry Correia had to say, quoted with permission:

In the spirit of that National Review pile on, here is mine to the Trump supporters. It isn’t as polite as National Review.

When Trent Lott, Bob Dole, John McCain, and Orrin Hatch would all prefer Trump over Cruz, you guys might want to reexamine who is the “anti-establishment” candidate. Duh.

When the dude donates to the likes of Clinton, Rangle, Schumer, and Rahm Friggin’ Emmanuel, and the only right side donation that comes close in dollars is to Mitch “Turtle Face” McConnel’s Great White RINO Hunt against the Tea Party Fund, that might be a clue who is part of the establishment.

But the banks own Cruz! Because he got a low interest loan that was fully secured with assets as collateral? Holy shit. Have any of you ever actually met an accountant? Do you even business, Bro? Meanwhile junk bond crony capitalist eminent domain deal maker dude who was in favor of single payer healthcare, TARP, and the auto bailout is going to save you from intrusive government?

But Cruz tried to hide it! No. You low information idiot. He declared it on one form and forgot it on another. That’s as fucking stupid a crisis as binders full of women and dogs on car roofs. Quit falling for meaningless diversions.

You are supporting a life long democrat. Period.

Trump is a populist clown, an empty vessel for the wishful thinking low information types to ignore his history and behavior to put all their fondest wishes on. Make America great followed by mumble mumble bullshit is just Hope and Change all over again. Yeah, we elected an unskilled narcissist once before and how’d that work out? There were plenty of clues how Obama would operate, and the wishful thinking types ignored them all too.

Pull your head out of your ass. The Planned Parenthood supporting, assault weapon ban supporting. deal making, wealthy Manhattanite isn’t going to save you. He is a populist telling suckers what they want to hear.

Oh, he’s really going to secure the border? Bitch please. He thought squishy Romney was too harsh on the border, until he discovered it polled well this election.

He stands up against the media? Whoop de friggin’ do. And that’s coming from somebody who has been slammed as a racist/sexist/homophobic hatemongery wife beater in the national media for not being a liberal in a liberal dominated business. That doesn’t mean you should hire me for a job I’m unqualified for. Sure. Reporters hate me. I’ll operate on your brain tumor.

The liberal media has hung on Trump’s every word and given him tons of coverage, way out of proportion to every other candidate. You think that’s a coincidence? Or because they always pick the republican who they think their candidate can beat, and if they don’t they are liberal enough to live with.

Even if Trump is telling the truth (he ain’t, but bear with me) and he actually converted on this giant list of issues where he has been a flaming liberal his whole life, he is still a loud mouth moron unsuited for the job.

So you give the populist hair piece a pass on this giant list of liberal statist big government positions, but then you nitpick the dude who has been an actual conservative, who has a history of pissing off the Hatch/McCain group you supposedly hate?

You StormTrumpers are pissed at the establishment? Fucking A. Welcome to the party. You are pissed about big government cronies bailing out their friends? Wonderful. Then pull your head out of your ass. The system you are mad at exists because guys like Trump bribe people like Clinton.

Remember that Bible verse about straining at a gnat but swallowing a camel? That’s you jackasses comparing Cruz and Trump.

Is Cruz perfect? No. But he has been a happy warrior with principles. Cruz actually gets the Constitution, so the establishment fears him, and the media slanders him when they can’t ignore him. Trump is Mussolini in a hair piece. The establishment doesn’t like him, but they figure they can make deals with him.

Now, to add to Larry’s points and his concerns, here is my nightmare: I’ve seen this before.

I haven’t posted about it for two reasons: the first is because I can’t for the life of me remember the man’s name or the exact date he was elected as president of Portugal.  I’m fairly sure it was the eighties (early) because I THINK I voted for him, and I turned 18 in 1980 [Bless my alert readers.  I kept thinking the man’s name was Eanes (the problem is I moved shortly after and was completely divorced from Portuguese politics because there was no internet, so I had to drop it. ) The guy was Antonio Ramalho Eanes.  I thought it was Eanes but kept thinking Gile Eanes who was a navigator.  And apparently snow flake started his own party which only existed for him to run.  The “Democratic Renewal” party.  Yeah.]

The second is because mentioning Trump on a blog is not only worse than mentioning a certain blogger, in that your comments will be invaded by crazy people screaming incoherently, BUT there is a real chance of reprisal against even little bloggers who diss the Donald.  What I mean is, if Hilary or Bernie come after me it will be because I’m a libertarian and as such I’m obviously scary. because of my politics.  But I can — and you probably can too — visualize Trump going personally after everyone who ever publicly came out against him, even a nobody writer with a blog.  The fact that THAT fear is credible to me, btw, is fricking scary.  Yeah, maybe I’m paranoid, but the man is more of a megalomaniac than Obama and I find that terrifying.

This was Portugal around the eighties, with Reagan and Thatcher in power and the people actually having, in a set of massive demonstrations, brought down the communist government which was threatening even the socialists, there was a restless desire to try something not-socialism.

People were angry.  They were upset about their kids being indoctrinated in the schools.  they were pissed over mandated prices, mandated salaries and massive government interference AND the attendant financial crisis.  So–

People were ripe to pick a government that interfered less with private rights.  Now keep in mind that the furthest right Portugal would go (then or now) is social democrat.  But people were pissed and primed enough to give the social democrats a landslide victory.

Only none of the social democrat candidates were saying QUITE what people wanted to hear.  They certainly weren’t reflecting people’s anger at them, and weren’t calling out the press which was pulling things left.

Mind you, of course, if they’d come out and said something against the press, the press wouldn’t have reported it, and if they’d come out… oh, against rent controls, say, they would have been called insane and destroyed.

And then this man showed up, running for one of two Social democrat parties.  He was fearless.  He said all the things people wanted to say that no one dared say.  He said them, and he got away with it.  I remember one pivotal scene, in which his demonstration was invaded by extreme left hecklers and he called them out.  He asked who sent them, he yelled that they were clearly paid, look at how they’d all arrived in a bus.

People cheered.  There were some rumors that in his previous career, as an army officer, he’d been a left-socialist.  We didn’t believe it.  He said he’d had a change of heart.  He stood for the things people wanted someone to stand for.

So he won in a landslide.  And he got in power.  And the press switched immediately to fawning.  He governed as a left-socialist.  Decision after decision, was what a left socialist would make.  And the press fawned on him, his private life, his upright nature.

Now, us — and yes, I was one of those people even then — who lived and died by politics knew EVERYTHING he did, and knew he was no right winger, but the low information voters?  Nope, no way.  Not even my grandparents would believe a word against him.  He still said the “right things” they believed in.  My mom’s dad died believing the country was safe in the hands of a “conservative” president.

His policies were protectionist, equalitarian and (objectively) insane.  Like socialist policies but worse because no one was keeping him in check.  The economy bombed badly.  REALLY badly.

And people voted in socialists.  And voted in socialists again.  And again voted in socialists.  For the next twenty years.  Why?  Because they’d tried the right and it was even worse than the left.  So they were going to the safe left, i.e. the socialists.

Low information voters don’t breathe, think and eat politics.  They don’t spend their entire life looking at every decision the president makes.  They live their lives and tune in around elections.  The one question they ask themselves is: Am I better off now than I was 4 or 8 years ago?

People like Trump because he’s saying things, things they think they haven’t been allowed to speak aloud.  They’ve been forced to pretend they believed the government over their lying eyes.

Most Trump supporters, those who aren’t burn-it-all-downers are OBJECTIVELY low information voters.  They’re angry and he’s the only person reflecting their anger back at them.  This is because he’s the only one the press reports as doing so.

I’ve seen on this very blog someone saying he was the only one talking back to the press, DESPITE Cruz’ taking on the press in the debate, publicly.  Because the press only publicizes TRUMP.

And if Trump gets elected, they’ll talk about how right wing he is.  HE’ll talk about how right wing he is.  And he’ll govern left.  And it will be a continuation of Obama’s disaster.

So, the angry people?  They’ll just say the right is even worse than the left (because the economic disaster will continue) and they will vote the safe left.  The Clintons, or perhaps Michelle Obama.  For twenty years.  Or more.  A slow slide down.  To leftist paradise, i.e. hell.

If this is what you want, then your support of Trump is justified.

If this is NOT what you want, then don’t tell me that the others are just as bad.  No one is just as bad.  Granted, the other Republican candidates aren’t perfect.  They range from “pretty good” to “almost as bad as Hillary”.  BUT if my scenario is right — and even if it’s not a conspiracy I think this is how it will play out — even Hilary is not as bad as Trump. Oh, don’t get me wrong, as bad or worse in governance, because they’re both incredibly corrupt and both a little nuts.  BUT electing Trump as a Republican cuts off the avenue of future escape.

Because the American system is rigged to defeat the emergence of a third party (no, seriously.  Read on it if you don’t believe me.  Some states make it almost impossible to get on the ballot.  I used to be a Libertarian official) if you convince people the Republicans are worse and more socialist than the Democrats, you’ve cut the one relatively easy avenue of escape.  People won’t care enough to fight against the press and the dems.

Yeah, if you elect Cruz or even Rubio, he won’t be your dream president, that I guarantee.  Either or both of them are likely to be to the right of Bush.  And we can halt the slide and start turning it around incrementally.  Note the incrementally.  It won’t be overnight.  The choice is never between cake and death.  It’s between living a little longer and death.

But if you INSIST on your dream president, and insist on it to the point of believing what Trump and the press are feeding you, what you’ll get is 20 more years of the left.

And if you say “good, then the republic will reemerge” I want to repeat what my friend, Sam Anderson, said yesterday “this is a myth.”  Freedom doesn’t arise like a phoenix from the ashes.  This is a myth communists and Libertarians share.  Chaos/collapse — ??????__paradise.  It’s never worked.  The communists create that myth retroactively, and the Libertarians are wishful thinking.  Out of destruction, the “strong man” rises, not liberty.

I have now spoken.  Listen or not.  But to me, it’s like watching a movie I’ve seen before, and not being able to escape.

 

 

642 thoughts on “Remedium peius morbo”

  1. Yep, as I’ve said before, it isn’t that I don’t agree with what Trump is saying (most of it, anyways, I’ve never met a politician or political candidate that I completely agreed with) it is that I don’t BELIEVE anything Trump is saying.

    Nobody can point to his record and prove my disbelief is wrong, and no I can’t prove that he hasn’t had the change of heart he claims to have had on a multitude of issues. The only way to prove that is to elect him and see how he governs. That sounds curiously similar to, “We have to pass the bill in order to see what is in it.” Sorry, I’d rather not make that experiment, again.

    1. “(most of it, anyways, I’ve never met a politician or political candidate that I completely agreed with)”

      The only person you will ever agree with, politically, 100% is yourself. and even then expect the occasional disagreement.

      1. I did not agree with Ed Koch on very much, but I agreed with him on this: “If you agree with me on 9 out of 12 issues, vote for me. If you agree with me on 12 out of 12 issues, see a psychiatrist.”

            2. Even alive Koch was preferable to that lot. Not that I wouldn’t find libertarian or a true fiscal conservative, of course, but as compared to some of the so-called “front runners” Koch was an uber-conservative. Heck, compared to some of the so-called “front runners” FDR was a moderate. [sigh]

        2. Best Koch quote is from after he lost the 89 mayoral election : “The people have spoken … and they must be punished.” Just hoping those words won’t apply for the next election.

    3. Addendum: I do not think the Three Ghosts of Limited Government Christmas Past, Present and Future visited Trump on Christmas Eve and made him suddenly believe what he’s been saying the past few months.

        1. Referring to those who hold a different view than you do regarding Trump as “rubes” is not going to persuade any of them to reconsider.

          1. He’s referring to the type of messaging Trump appears to be engaging in. That is to say, he is claiming that Trump sees the public as Rubes, and that he will say anything to get the support of as many as possible.

    4. I carefully listened to an Obama speech prior to his election. I recall wishing he were being honest on most points and lying on three. I recall two of the three, and he was being honest about having insane policies on Iran and on energy.

      If he was being forthright about my general impression of the rest, his thinking is very different from my own.

          2. head’s cracked, suspension shot, and the muffler fell off some time ago.
            Then someone at the factory installed the wrong ECU so it misfires constantly and only runs on the left side of the engine

        2. *sigh* Yeah, but I’d love the one with the seating of a passenger van, the turn radius of a small motorcycle, and the MPG of a sub-compact. Low mileage, was owned by a little old lady who drove it across the road to church.

          1. sorry but what he says he’s selling and what he actually is selling is even worse than that difference. Plus when the bill comes due, it has associated costs that drive the price beyond Bugatti Veyron levels

            1. I’m pretty sure there isn’t even a car, metaphorically speaking, and the payments would be at least three times what is claimed.

              1. Sure there’s a car! It has wheels! Okay, so they’re solid. But they’re really great. It has lots of cargo room, too. You can load lots of stuff up and take it with you! Okay, so it doesn’t have an engine right now- it was subcontracted to China, but we’re going to build it, and we’re going to make Mexico pay for it.

                …The fact that it looks like a loading cart and has suspicious bloodstain-like smears, and smells of ashes, pay no attention comrade. These things are just your imagination, playing tricks on you.

    6. I may not believe Trump (I don’t believe any politician or wanna-be politician), but I shudder to think of Hilary or Bernie– running the country. If Cruz can get the “natural born” citizen thing settled, I think he’d be a good candidate. I just saw Rubio in one of those political shows and Nope… no way… no how.

      1. Uh, Cin, it never was unsettled. He’s a natural born citizen and always was. The only person throwing doubt on that is Trump, and it’s insane and unfounded.

        2. Actually there are quite a few people throwing around doubts about Cruz’s eligibility. Funny how many of those had no doubts about Obama’s. 😦

            1. Precisely.

              With Obama, it actually mattered where he was born, because his mother was 17 when he was born, and thus a minor. Therefore, by the citizenship law in force at the time, he would not have been a citizen at birth if he hadn’t been born on U.S. soil.

              With Cruz, it doesn’t matter. By the citizenship law in force at the time he was born, he was automatically a U.S. citizen at birth. (He was also automatically a Canadian citizen until he renounced it, but we have never had a law disqualifying you for having held dual citizenship in the past. I don’t even think the law would have disqualified him for having dual citizenship now, but he was right to renounce it. The President of the United States should have only one citizenship, and if the law doesn’t currently say so, it should.)

              You already knew that, Sarah, I’m just laying it out because I’ve seen too many people claim to misunderstand “natural-born citizen”.

              1. Unfortunately, that phrase has never been explicitly defined. One reason I’m not AS upset over it is I’m hoping this can be settled once and for all.

                However, one characteristic of Leftist influence over our politics is that since there’s no objective truth everything is subject to endless redefinition and re-argument.

                1. Actually, it was explicitly defined in 1790. Not completely defined, but the law stated: “The children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens: provided, That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States.”

                  That law was repealed and replaced in 1795, that law was then repealed and replaced in 1798, and then that one was repealed and replaced in 1802. But none of the successive laws ever defined natural born citizens. (Though neither did they say “children of U.S. citizens born overseas shall not be considered natural born citizens”.)

                  So we have one example of the clear intent of Congress, which is no longer binding. And there have been no other laws defining it, as far as I can tell. However, given the existence of the 1790 law, it would be a much harder sell to say “U.S. citizens born overseas aren’t natural-born citizens” than to say that they are.

                2. Everything is subject to redefinition and re-argument until it agrees with the leftists, then it’s set in stone. Much like how recounts will continue until the Democrat wins.

                  One of the functions of the law is to act as a sorting mechanism. The law tells me how to differentiate between US citizens and non-citizens. It tells me how to differentiate between naturalized US citizens and born citizens. What it does not tell me is how to differentiate between born US citizens and natural born citizens. While it is possible to have a distinction without a difference, it’s much harder to have a difference without a distinction. If I have no way to sort born citizens into natural born and not natural born, they all must be the same type. Since all US Presidents have been born citizens, all born citizens must be natural born citizens.

                3. It wasn’t defined because it was understood– there’s several guys out there who go back to English Common Law to trace it down.

                  Basically, it boils down to whose authority you are under at the time; illegals would inherently not be counted, and folks representing other countries in an official way (and their families) wouldn’t be counted.

            2. I think so, and he is my choice, but I have to admit that this question crossed my mind back when he first declared he was running, months before Trump brought it up. I think he is perfectly eligible, after all he has proven himself to be a smart guy and was a lawyer, I don’t believe he would be running if he didn’t have complete confidence in his eligibility.
              I must ask though, decreed by whom? I am unaware of any court or other body explicitly defining the term. McCain was declared natural born because he was born on a military base, which is considered US soil, the same as an embassy, regardless of the country it is in. Obama swears he was born in Hawaii (well, some days he does), and personally I believe that anyone that is a citizen by birth, is natural born. But again I am unaware of an official “decreed” definition of the term.

              1. Page 5.

                Click to access 86755.pdf

                Birth on U.S. Military Base Outside of the United States or Birth on U.S.
                Embassy or Consulate Premises Abroad:
                (1) Despite widespread popular belief, U.S. military installations abroad and
                U.S. diplomatic or consular facilities abroad are not part of the United
                States within the meaning of the 14th Amendment. A child born on the
                premises of such a facility is not born in the United States and does not
                acquire U.S. citizenship by reason of birth.
                (2) The status of diplomatic and consular premises arises from the rules of law
                relating to immunity from the prescriptive and enforcement jurisdiction of
                the receiving State; the premises are not part of the territory of the United
                States of America. (See Restatement (Third) of Foreign Relations Law, Vol.
                1, Sec. 466, Comment a and c (1987). See also, Persinger v. Iran, 729
                F.2d 835 (D.C. Cir. 1984)

    7. “Remember that Bible verse about straining at a gnat but swallowing a camel? That’s you jackasses comparing Cruz and Trump.”

      “People like Trump because he’s saying things, things they think they haven’t been allowed to speak aloud. They’ve been forced to pretend they believed the government over their lying eyes.”

      To me trump is scary it reminds me of 2 Timothy 4:3-4

      3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires; 4 and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.

      2. 2Ti 4:3-4 refers to religious leaders, but this could refer to political folks:

        Many false prophets will arise and mislead many; (Matthew 24:11)

        There are indeed many false prophet these days, telling people what they want to hear. Rush said that Obama said nothing better than anyone had ever done before. Now think about your current front runner in that context.

        1. It is a bit like prophesizing the sun rising in the east, though. I mean “tell the rubes what they want to hear” was old when the Gracchi cottoned onto it.

  2. Hope springs eternal, of course, particularly in the hearts of us cockeyed optimists, and I am clinging to the slim hope that Mark Steyn is right. http://www.steynonline.com/7408/notes-on-a-phenomenon But if YOU are – oy. I have suspected from the beginning of this Danse Macabre that Trump is the Obama of the Right, and get further confirmation every day. But oh! does anyone else remember feeling so pleased and confident about the strongest array of Republican candidates in years, and how the only problem was which of about half-a-dozen to choose from? It’s been forty years since I read Foundation and Empire, but damned if Donald Trump isn’t the Mule.

  3. egad, how things like this make me almost consider getting a FB account. This reminds me a lot of Ann Althouse’s support for 0bama. I stopped reading her and ignoring her links on Insty because she tried to justify her voting for him a an intelligent idea. So, go ahead and get Trump the nomination, and if we are . . . lucky, and he wins over Hillary or Bernie, do not come crying about how horrible he is and how Cruz, or even Rubio would be worse. Rubio will be worse than Cruz. Cruz will be worse than the Ideal. You will NEVER find the Ideal.

              2. ” Hey, wanna finish this book for me?”

                Sure.

                And then the meteor hit, so hard it cracked the Earth’s crust and magma boiled up, it extinguished all life on Earth, even the cockroaches.

                THE END

              3. And then the Mule fleet returned from space, and conquered everyone. Because unlike the Earthers, they hadn’t had their level of technology frozen.

    2. I just look for the best I can live with in good conscious. I ain’t looking for a hero, I just want someone that can do the job and not FSU too bad.

      1. lately, I’d settle for not FSU every day.
        one of the reasons I never really harped on 0bama’s golfing and numerous (very expensive) vacations because that was time he wasn’t actively FingSU intentionally though he had other to do the Fing for him

        1. He may not have been personally FSU, but his minions at State, Education and EPA were still busy toiling away at undermining the safety of our nation.

  4. No, I’m not wildly enthusiastic about The Donald. I’d support nearly any of the other GOP candidates for the nomination first. However, there is the question that if he is the nominee and is running against either Hillary or Bernie, could he possibly be worse than they? Yeah, it may mean choosing the lesser of two evils, but not voting for the lesser evil means the greater evil has a better chance to win.

    2. Yes he probably is better than either. But only marginally. Which means voting in the primaries for someone else and gettign all your friends, neighbors and relatives (alive or dead) to do so too.

    3. No. He will be worse, because he’ll make the “other than democrat” option non viable. I don’t think I can vote Hillary or Bernie — I don’t want that on my conscience — but SMOD might win a write in.

          1. That’d be awesome, and I’d change citizenship to vote for them. But I don’t think either of them would ever forgive us for siccing such a cruel and unusual punishment on them. *chuckle*

            If the low information voters would win, then yeah, Trump gets in (for the record, I think he’s bombastic, and hilarious, but I don’t trust him based on his history of Democrat siding.) But I have this feeling it’ll be Sanders or Hillary, more on Sanders though, because I have the horrifyingly cynical POV right now that, sure, you could vote, but it no longer matters. I wouldn’t mind not perfect candidates, except, it really feels like, just from occasionally poking my head up and glancing, there aren’t any candidates I’d go for, even imperfectly. Not that my opinion matters much, since I’m all the way down under, and I’m not voting over on that side of the lake.

            To be fair, I kinda feel that way about Australian politics too, to the point that my main stance is ‘ensure the freaking Greens don’t get into power, no matter how hard they are trying.’

            On this roadtrip, I’ve been joking with Rhys about how much money it’d take to buy up land about the size of Switzerland, maybe, and walling it off, building a fortress town where all our friends could live. Kinda looking at the world right now, and the urge to bunker up simply is just getting stronger and stronger.

            That said, I actually looked and it’s only a couple of million Australian dollars to get some good, well watered farmland it looks like. Be nice if some of that went to someone friendly, and not the Chinese.

            1. Hello Milady!
              There is an unwritten law that those most able to do the job of POTUS must, under no circumstances, be allowed to take the job. We might need to go with the Douglas Adams version as well … Anyone who can get themselves elected President should not be allowed to hold the job either.
              Not entirely happy with what is left of the Repubs in the race, but of those I’d far prefer Cruz to any of the others, with Rubio, Carly, Carson a far and close together tie second, all for various different reasons.

              I’d really love to have somewhere as a bolt hole (we could even call it Gault’s Gultch , though someone in Chile is trying something as well) and a simpler wording of the Bill of Rights and cleaned up US Constitution as well as a few additions (like anyone trying to change natural rights get tarred and feathered, then runs a gauntlet, then if particularly heinous gets a candle applied to said feathers and tar) for the governing of the place.

          2. I was joking on another forum – where one of the members posted a link to Larry’s awesome Trump rant – that Ted Cruz should seriously consider hiring Larry as a consultant.

            2. He could do worse.

              Larry for Treasury, Tom for War (f- “defense”). Hey Sarah, how about Education or HHS? You could probably clear them out in a day or so.

                1. I thought Reagan promised to abolish education as did Gingrich.

                  While we’re at it VA should be demoted from cabinet, Homeland Security abolished and redistributed (in a rational world ICE would be part of State, for example), HHS be told to all go work for private charities, Labor told to get real jobs (Mike Rowe is looking for people willing to do real labor), Commerce told to go engage it instead of skimming off it, Agriculture sent into the fields, and HUD told to go buy a duplex and run it for a while. Transportation and Energy could be flogged along with Education.

                2. Homeland Security needs to be totally scrapped. Put the Coast Guard, Customs, Immigration and Naturalization somewhere else.
                  TSA – gone – no reason this can’t be contracted out as it has been in some very few airports.

                  In HHS, we need to get rid of Housing and Urban Development, the creator of ghettos in cities all over the country. There is so much corruption, it just needs to be gone.

                  And then, the Fed.

                  And limit the EPA to serious stuff, not a puddle that the ducks can play in on my farm once a year!

                  1. Homeland Security needs to be finished.

                    The idea of “move all these related things into one unit” is great…but it stopped halfway, so now there’s TWO of the @#$# things.

                    4. Actually, the Coasties were never a part of the Department of War, Navy, or Defense It was originally part of Treasury, then Transportation, and finally Homeland Security.

                      Treasury or Interior is arguably its natural home in a right sized cabinet. Given the revenue aspect is mostly defunct I’d say Interior.

                    5. I’d figure Interior, too; they’re closer to park rangers than sailors.

                      (This is from someone who did NOT join the Coasties specifically because in the Navy, if you’re going to be shot at you’ve got a good chance of being able to shoot back.)

                4. Sounds like fun, but I still want Brad for State. He’d make the perfect Good Cop, with Tom as Bad Cop. Besides, we need you to head the Bureau of Sabotage! *evil grin*

              1. Lock ’em in and tell them that they can’t come out until they’ve fixed the government. And yes, diverting the Potomac would be acceptable.

              2. I remember a John Campbell editorial, many years ago, roughly to the point that government would be much improved if we only drafted people who did NOT want the position.

          4. I have a pickup and a tow strap. If you can disarm the big SOB I can try to get him to DC. But it will be hell on the tires if he digs his heels in.

            Torgersen all we gotta do is hit him with a bogus EEOC complaint and then spring him when they fly him back to the Pentagon for the show trial.

            Meanwhile, shame on you, Sarah, for trying to deny us our chance to “Make Portugal Great Again!” /sarc

            1. Oh ye of little faith. All you have to do with Torgersen is inform him that he has been promoted to CinC and tell him to get to his station and do his duty. He already volunteered. That would teach him about volunteering.

          5. Maybe they’d be a do nothing presidency. (Well, unless forced to do something.) And THAT would be a feature. Sometimes the answer really is “Do Nothing.”

                1. I misread that at first, and my immediate thought was “Larry’s explicitly said his won’t throw lead well enough for self-defense…”. 😀

            3. Would that make politicians more likely to get their business done and get home that the marshy fever-swamp where they put DC?

              If not, then there’s no reason to bother. (You’d definitely have to mandate no air conditoning….)

              1. Yes indeed, there aren’t enough bars for the lobbyists … oth, it could spark a revival of the moonshine industry …

                    1. Our Hostess said that she had coffee in SLC. I guess it’s like bacon in Israel, it’s there but if you use it you aren’t Orthodox.

                    8. I’m orthodox in my religious heterodoxy. I get a little confused about my religion now and then (like twice a week) but I’m serious as a heart attack about what I believe.

            5. You know, I just had a thought. What if the federal government moved every four or five years to one of the state capitals?

              1. Oy, Madison with an even bigger ego?

                How about a ‘yacht’ on a Great Lake? ‘Yacht’ with hole, size of deficit (alright, scaled). Balance budget, closes hole. Have surplus that pays down debt, THAT starts bilge pump. Fail? Is called “term limit” and we start over with “None of the (formerly) above.”

                Now, starting an engine will take some more work.

                1. Put it in San Francisco.

                  Bring the Pogo back into fashion for Californians. Import yet another football team, preferably one which employs “We will rock you” as their fight song.

                  Reinstate underground nuclear testing in Nevada.

                  Pray to Saint Andreas.

                2. It would only be for four years, and then you wouldn’t see them again for two centuries. And the constant moving – elected offices would have dormitories available but staffers, family, and lobbyists would have to buy housing – would siphon money away from the parasite class. Housing prices would spike in the destination market and plummet in the current market in the year or so leading up to the move.

                3. God it would make Austin majority liberal. Texas liberals aren’t so bad but the others…! What state is Trump registered in? Can you imagine if a candidate from HI won? Worse yet a candidate from AL won? Sec Def moved to Pearl Harbor?

                  If it was the losing candidate’s capitol that got the gov’t, I think you’d see some people run just to get increased revenue for their state.

              2. Imagine that the gov’t moved to the state capital of the winning candidate. It’d make for an interesting story.

              5. Like when English kings would take their retinue to visit whichever of their Dukes or Earls was acting uppity for a few weeks, to break them with the cost of the royal entertainment?

                2. Something like that, but backwards. FedGov would be pouring money from itself and its hangers-on into the local coffers.

            6. No, don’t move the capital to SLC. Instead, make it a constantly moving caravanserai, and be very careful not to give the federal bureaucrats the traveling schedule.

      2. This may be part of the thinking behind the National Review effort — establishing that Trump is not a conservative in order to protect the viability of the conservative brand.

      3. I cannot vote for Hillary. The classified data on here personal server is a felony and shows criminal disregard that should be prosecuted.

              2. I believe that is either hyperbole, or a call for due process, not an endorsement of illegal activity.

                Personally, I stick to my theory that trying to convict a presidential candidate them-self probably escalates too much the stakes of our political system.

                I also have an expansive view of the executive power. I’m tempted to try to mount a defense on that basis, but I cannot think of one that couldn’t be used to justify just about any illegal order.

                  1. Showa Tenno isn’t a perfect analogy, but I still think the risk can be adequately managed by capitally punishing the staff for the crimes committed by staff.

                    The staff are needed to win elections and to commit this sort of crime. Their justly merited executions will deter the staff of future sorts.

                    The sort of feminist that likes Bill Clinton doesn’t necessarily care about the Clinton family cronies.

                    People with that sort of influence and backing need a path to retreat, else they may pull the trigger on a civil war when they lose an election that would lead to their imprisonment or execution.

                    1. No she needs to go to jail for the same reason that the Royal Navy court martialled Admiral Byng – leading to the famous line by Voltaire:
                      “Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres ”

                      People who get appointed to high office in government have to understand that the basic rules of security apply as much to them as to any peon under them and not treat such rules/laws with contempt.

                2. So by running for President you are placed beyond the law? There’s a precedent we really want to set.

                  Although the fact that Obama was allowed to stay in the race despite 100 million plus of dollars in illegal campaign contributions in 2008 had effectively established it already.

                3. That’s how the Roman Republic became the Roman Empire. Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, became a candidate before he could be arrested, and (since they had that rule) was immune unless he lost office.

                  1. But the whole reason why he crossed the Rubicon with his legions in the first place was because his enemies in Rome were scheming to bring him down, which at the time was fatal. The politics of the late Republic were somewhat unhealthy.

                    2. True, if that law hadn’t been in place he probably would have set himself up in Gaul as an independent leader.

                  2. IIRC, at the time Gaius Julius Caesar III was born, Rome had already split into feuding factions that would eventually develop into the civil wars that officially ended the Republic. IIRC, GJC III was related by blood to both the factions of Marius and Sulla. GJC III’s father, GJC II, died when GJC III was sixteen. I somehow had the impression it could have been a political killing, but I may have been reading in an imaginative mood.

                    When GJC III married into the wrong faction (before the age of 20), Sulla (who was IIRC dictator at the time) pressured GJC III to divorce her. He refused, and left town, which led to the famous pirate incident.

                    In other words, while GJC III’s ambition and ability was probably unusual, I don’t think he had many options to avoid being pushed into deadly politics when he was growing up.

                    I think he’d already been abusing immunity rules for some time before the Rubicon. When was it that he bought his election to the head of the college of pontiffs? Didn’t that include some form of immunity?

                    I think Rome had changed so his class were to some extent forced into politics whose success or failure was the dividing line between treason and patriotism. So they ultimately became chaff concealing his behavior until it could become successful.

      4. I wish I could be sure that I could count on him to appoint good judges to the SCOTUS. But if his sister is his model, he’s got nothing even there.

        1. One of his “distinguishing features” is that he’ll put together a competent team of people he can delegate to. Well, look at this hoplophobic and racialist whackjob he picked as his “National Spokesperson”.

          https://pjmedia.com/trending/2016/01/24/trump-spox-has-history-of-bizarre-bigoted-tweets/

          And yeah, she worked for Cruz’s Senate campaign in 2012, but Cruz at least had the good sense not to keep her this time. What does that reveal about his ability to choose good people?

  5. Well, it looks like Bloomberg is thinking about running as a third party candidate and that will just add to the chaos and more big stateism. He has the money to make Trump look like a piker.

    1. his isn’t as liquid as Trump’s. Also, he draws more from Hillary or Bernie than from Trump or Cruz. Even most Low Info voters know he is not in any way a conservative, and I think he would end up running left of Trump’s rhetoric (though not much left of Trump in actuality … peas in a pod, that)

  7. There’s only one possible solution to avoid the trap – and even then there’s no guarantee of success.
    >Work hard for another candidate. Get involved in their campaign.
    >Speak out loudly and repeatedly FOR another candidate. DON’T speak out against Trump – all you are doing is putting his name out in front of people. And recognition means votes. In the voting booth, most people will not remember WHY they recognize that name, just that they do.
    .Tell people over and over and over why your candidate is preferred, what they’ll do positively, and why they’ll benefit.
    >Get people excited for your candidate. Sure, you aren’t going to be as effective as a mass media push for someone else. But even a little bit helps. Andrew Johnson missed being kicked out of the presidency by ONE VOTE. Be that vote for your candidate.
    >And drag someone else to the polls with you. It’s all about the numbers

    1. Pretty much my position – with one modification. Whenever I can, I let Trump speak against Trump. Like his little comment on the loyalty of his voters…

  8. I don’t get the appeal of trump and never have. I can not wrap my head around the twists and gyrations people make to dismiss his clearly far left political bent. He doesn’t tilt at wind mills, he IS the windmill! He changes positions every time the political winds change.He’s a

    I have to stop at this point, otherwise I’ll blow a gasket. Every time I start to comment on him …just arrrg… know wut I mean?

    1. I’m not a fan, and I don’t pretend to understand all of the reasons people support him, but I think that at least part of it is because he’s able to get past the media lapdogs and at least talk about the heretofore unmentionable subjects that J. Random Sixpack is concerned about.

      Whether he believes the things he says is questionable at best, but prior to his stepping onto the stage (so to speak) no one was really talking about issues that affect the middle class, who has been pretty consistently ignored in favor of either the poorest parts of society or the wealthiest parts. Not Democrats, not Republicans, and not the press that’s supposed to be informing the people but instead for the most part feeds them propaganda on behalf of the Democratic Party.

      (And don’t get me started on the various third parties, which are varying degrees of wishful thinkers and outright loons. 😛 )

      In short, if the parties want to see who’s responsible for Trump becoming A Thing(tm), they should start by looking in the mirror.

      1. This is wrong. People WERE talking. The media just twisted, called them insane and howled them off the stage. What you should ask yourself is why they let Trump get away with it.

        1. I meant no one in the Professional Politician class, though even then I suppose “no one heard anyone talking about it from their primary news sources” would be more accurate.

            1. It occurs to me that Trump is a delegator — no freakin’ WAY he’s doing all the little campaign arrangements* himself. It would be interesting, not to mention useful to know more about who is turning the crank on his campaign (by their followers shalt thou know them.)

              The MSM usually likes to do stories on such things — but probably the Trump phenomenon has caught them in the enchanted castle, too.

              Booking venues, arranging permits, scheduling transportation ad infinitum

              1. Speaking of which:

                Trump Spokeswoman Has History of Bizarre, Bigoted Tweets
                [SNIP]
                “What good does it do to have a good nuclear triad if you’re afraid to use it?”
                [SNIP]
                In 2009, she bragged about how smart she was by calling herself a “genious”
                [SNIP]
                Pierson points to Malcolm X as a large source of her ideological founding, much like the leaders of Black Lives Matter do. Pierson has called the radical figure a hero and is open about her literal idolization of him, explaining that “MLK was too moderate for me.”
                [SNIP]
                Like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and others on the left, Katrina Pierson used the 2012 trial of George Zimmerman over the death of Trayvon Martin to accuse conservatives of racism, lies, and “bigotry.”
                [SNIP]
                During the 2012 election, Pierson slammed Christians as the, “First to name call and First to judge.” She later criticized not just Christians but religious believers as a whole, dismissing the majority of “religious types” as unable to “handle the truth.” A month later she criticized “most religious people” as hypocrites who follow a practice of “Do as I say not as I do.”

                Read the whole deranged thing. PJM (and Mediaite) — doing the job professional journolists refuse to do.

                  1. For all the focus on The Great Man, Big-Footing His Way Into History, most presidencies are about staffing. So are most political campaigns. As are all successful businesses.

                    Nothing wrong with hiring the mentally handicapped, but putting such in place as your official voice is insane.

    2. Well, he appeals to stupid people who want bluster — that I get. I don’t understand why he appeals to some smart people — and I’ve seen it — unless they have given up and want it all to burn.

      1. I think it is a combination of factors, given the rationales I’ve seen people post elsewhere. I’m not getting the reasoning behind some of them, though – I think most of the reasoning going into there are bad for reasons you’ve covered above. Some examples:

        Trump will make it all burn.
        They dislike him but figure he’ll be ruthless against the left.
        Some figure he’s no worse than Hillary or Bernie, but will at least be more entertaining.
        Some are single-issue (immigration) voters and have bought Trump’s stance on immigration

        1. LIVs live in the perpetual now. What Trump says now is reality to them. Of course, that’s why reality perpetually smacks them upside the head.

      2. I’m coming to believe that it’s not just rage against the machine that is motivating a big chunk of Trump’s supporters. I think many of them believe that Trump will *harness* the machine and, for a change, turn it against the persecutors of the middle class and traditional-values Americans . . . and the establishment pols (including the so-called “conservative” ones) that have betrayed them.

        And they’re willing to settle for that.

        And, I hate to say this, part of me wouldn’t mind seeing that happen myself, if only to give both the angry Left and quisling RINOs alike a well-deserved taste of their own medicine . . . and perhaps teach them respect for the civilized norms and middle-class values they so despise.

        But any enjoyment I might feel at that hypothetical abuse of the SJW crowd is tempered by the fact that America would, under Trump, be sliding further and further into a post-Constitutional, post-rule of law quagmire. We already have too much banana-republic, might-makes-right governance going on right now. I don’t see how Trump would change that, even if he were so inclined.

        For me, mere payback isn’t enough: I want my *country* back, damnit!

        1. Trump Supporter: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

          Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

          Trump Supporter: Yes, I’d cut down every law in America to do that!

          Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!

              1. For one thing, it is biased History, hagiography for a bureaucratic gamesman by a hack polemicist. See Wolf Hall for a contrasting view.

                OTOH, you can divorce the arguments from the original purpose and observe the brilliance of the principles put forth.

            2. It is rarely given; it must be fought for and vigilantly defended. Put not your faith in princes.

      3. I think at the start it was mostly wanting anyone who would stand against Hillary. Some of us knew that would quickly turn ugly as the Democratic machine is known for doing whatever it takes to win no matter how vile or criminal the actions they must resort to. That’s the sort of battle Trump is quite good at. But then folks weren’t looking beyond election because if you lose the election anything else is moot.
        Ideally I want Cruz vs Hillary, and for Cruz to remain above the fray while the RNC drags HRC through the mud over her multitude of transgressions.
        But now the further she drops in public opinion the more likely that der Leader will give the DOJ permission to indite her on criminal misuse of sensitive government data, leaving Bernie, or Joe, or Bloomie, or some yet to be identified other waiting in the wings.
        What I absolutely don’t want is to watch the Republicans throw it all away with infighting and hand the Democratic candidate whomever that turns out to be the opportunity to perpetuate four more years just like the last eight.

        1. while the RNC drags HRC through the mud over her multitude of transgressions.

          Except the RNS as presently constituted WILL NOT fight for Ted Cruz. They are scared to death of him.

          1. Of course they are. He’s disturbing the Status Quo – and the people in flyover country are realizing that for a lot of the people in DC, the opinion of others inside the Beltway is MUCH more important than whether the constituency is happy.

            You gotta have priorities in DC, after all. Because if your lobbyist isn’t happy, the nice, nice gravy stops flowing…

          2. Notice they are all flocking to Trump as the Cruz killer (and believe their Jeb! replacement of Rubio or Kaisch will then take out Trump).

            In the end, though, Trump will keep the gravy train going and is preferable to Cruz if they can’t have their guy.

          3. No, while they may fear Trump, they absolutely HATE Cruz.
            The thinking at this point in the GOPe is that, “Hey, Trump may not be who we wanted, but he’s a business man; he makes deals. We can work with that.”
            Personally, I’m hoping that if gets to the point where he can make the deals, the first one will be to buy wood and rope and set up gallows on the white house lawn. That or maybe rent Mr. Guillotine from the French for a while.
            Got a rant about the security violations of Hillary, her staff, and others,but it’s a bit long.

              1. How do we deal with the fact that we have a “warm body” democracy and not a constitutional republic?

      5. Because Ron Paul isn’t running this year?

        (Please don’t let me be the only one who’s seen the similarities between the Ronulans and the Trump-itters.)

      6. Scott Adams and Mike Cernovich have done a good job of explaining that.

        It’s not just what he says – as you noted, Cruz has also spoken the same truths – it’s HOW he’s said them.

        Bluntly – too many republicans, even former “tea party” types like Rubio, have sold out the premises they were elected under. Between snakes like Lindsay Grahmnesty, and the repeated failures to hew to principle in the house and Senate.

        It’s like the scene from one of Weber’s books where the officer, in order to not appear a coward, takes a token shot and then runs away. “But I resisted.”

        1. And gets his command blown away because he’s fundamentally misunderstood the fight he’s in.

  10. Trump makes me sick. He says nothing of any substance at all. And, he has always been a supporter of the Democrats.

    I am hoping and praying that he will fail tremendously in the primaries. I know a lot of people who are coalescing behind Cruz, dropping their favorite candidates to hopefully keep Trump out. At least in my little, non-important State of Kansas.

    1. If it’s happening in Kansas, it’s probably happening in Iowa, and if Trump loses in Iowa it’s going to hurt him nationally. One of the things that has been keeping him up is the bandwagon effect, people tend to support the leader whoever he is. A Cruz win in Iowa would give those people “permission” to reevaluate their support of Trump.

      That’s the best-case scenario. If Trump does win in Iowa, it just means that corn subsidies still dominate conservative principles. And Iowa has had a poor track record of picking the winner (a fact that will be repeated endlessly by Trump if he doesn’t win).

    2. Here’s my Machiavellian D-convention prediction, based on one fact: “The Obama Camp Hates The Clinton Camp With A White Hot Passion.”

      Trump locks up the R nom, and going into the D convention either Hillary has the lead but is somehow still unindicted, or Bernie’s in the lead, so faced with either a “crazy Donald” / “soon-to-be-indicted Dowager Empress” or “crazy Donald” / “crazy Comrade Bernie” election, suddenly riding in to save the day comes… Joe Biden as the most unindicted and slightly less crazy candidate available.

      In the minds of the O-camp, Joe would continue the Obama policies for a third term, including the upcoming appointments to the Supremes, and keep the chair warm for Michelle’s run.

      The concept that D-strategists have concluded only this circumstance would make Crazy Uncle Joe the preferred choice is completely believable to me.

      An alternate would be for someone like Elizabeth Warren or Susan Rice to be the emergency backup candidate, but I don’t think either would go over nationwide.

      1. The problem with that is that Bernie has built himself a large populist movement – that’s why he’s posing a real challenge to the unindicted co-conspirator in chief. It would be one thing if Clinton manages to beat him fair and square, those supporters will shrug and vote for the D. But if the DNC pulls some shenanigans to keep Bernie off the ticket his supporters are going to feel cheated, and people who feel cheated don’t donate time or money. Without those hard-left supporters the Democrats lose – remember that nobody on the short list is black, so they aren’t going to get the unprecedented black vote that carried Obama over the top in 2012.

        1. But if the DNC pulls some shenanigans to keep Bernie off the ticket his supporters are going to feel cheated, and people who feel cheated don’t donate time or money.

          And eventually they flock to the Democrat incarnation of Trump (outsider who really isn’t a Democrat but let’s them stick it to the party establishment).

          1. So assuming he doesn’t go all the way, basically the Democratic Operatives who are watching the Comrade Bernie! phenomenon and taking copious notes will be scouting for a photogenic well-spoken non-septuagenarian Nationalist Socialist, maybe a veteran, who gives great speeches?

            That will turn out well…

            1. Yes, it will, but as Glenn Reynold has been saying if you force a group to shut up and don’t address its needs long enough you don’t get to pick its standard bearer.

  11. Of course, when the Usual Suspects find out that Sarah and Larry don’t like Trump because he’s not really a conservative, their tiny little micro-brains will interpret that as “Even Trump isn’t a right-wing fascist enough for those evil Puppies!”

    Wait and see.

      1. You’d have to make book on the date on which they started making such arguments.

        What’s the over/under on February 21st?

          1. I recall Paul Weimer’s panic attack when he learned that Sarah didn’t consider Jeb Bush to be conservative enough. He seems to think Bush III is somehow the rightest of the right-wingers.

            1. Only because the media painted Bush so, over stupid crap, like actually defending the country. All of Bush’s domestic policies were social-democrat. I.e. what democrats used to be.

  12. What little I’ve seen of the Trump rallies makes the hair on my neck stand up. I’ve spent too much time over the past year reading about the 1930s in Europe, and about the Soviet Union, to be comfortable with the song-n-dance, other people’s kids on stage, no, no, no. And that’s before we get to what he’s said vs. what he’s done.

    2. Thank you! I’m so glad to hear somebody else voice this, because what little coverage I’ve been willing to watch of his rallies was giving me the same vibe.

  14. “The second is because mentioning Trump on a blog is not only worse than mentioning a certain blogger, in that your comments will be invaded by crazy people screaming incoherently, BUT there is a real chance of reprisal against even little bloggers who diss the Donald.”

    You’re forgetting the Ronulans, but I guess they aren’t quite the force of cultish lunacy they once were.

            1. We’re organized, for very large values of “organize.” If you zoom the camera waaaaay out it almost looks like we’re not the cacophony of cats all heading in every direction possible (and some of them decidedly imp-possible), but a cohesive whole!

    2. So help me, someday I’m gonna ask (out of band) who the photon this is about. I might even know, but I do not know that I know, ya know? (fwiw, my centaur form has mail ala google).

      1. Ron Paul has a somewhat fanatical (in the way that water is “somewhat wet” 😛 ) fanbase that’s eager to jump in anywhere online that even mentions him in passing (hence some people using “luaP noR” to refer to him, to avoid people scanning teh intarwebz for mentions of his name), blathering about how he’ll be able to fix everything if only we all vote for him and the Libertarian Party (which tend to be as much “woo-woo science” about economics as New Agers are about health care and the environment) in general.

        1. Oh, *that* I got, but there’s also He Who Shan’t Be Named that is (largely?) orthogonal to the current political race(s) and I’ve No Idea who or what this critter/simulator is. $HOUSEMATE was even pestering me about who/what the photon it was.

        2. Oh, you meant the identity of the blogger, not the High Priest(tm) of the Ronulan cult. Wouldn’t know about that, and couldn’t say it even if I did.

          1. myself as well?

            I can think of 3 or 4 bloggers who might qualify, and I’d like to avoid unintentionally causing you problems

          1. Oh. I thought you were channeling The Gay Divorce: “Your wife is safe with Tonetti, He prefers spaghetti.”

  17. If Cruz (or Rubio) can’t pull this out, we’re gonna be stuck with a Communist or Socialist on one side and a Socialist on the other. Either way we’re screwed.

  18. Ox slow.
    Ox have 11 hour shift.
    Ox have potent (starts “2.5 oz bourbon”) cocktail.
    Ox tipsy snockered.
    Ox STILL not dumb enough vote Trump.
    You smarter than ox, right?

        3. And Mongo like Ox. How Mongo like Ox?

          “Wipe *ss, trot by grill to table.”

          Actually had one of my gaming acquaintances order a steak that way…. in the days before cellphone cameras, unfortunately. Stunned looks like that on the waitress’ face are few and far between. Finally, she quavered “D-Did y-you m-mean rare, sir?”

          The rest of us added a little something to the tip; dealing with Frank was An Experience.

  20. Trump’s awful. I like bombthrowers, so I’m enjoying his campaign, but yes, he’s awful. I wouldn’t be so sure he’s actually of the left; I’m not sure he has any real political philosophy indistinguishable from his own personal self-interest. (as opposed to Hillary, who I am sure has no political philosophy indistinguishable from her own self interest; she just likes leftism for the personal aggrandizement it gives those in power… i.e. herself) I’d expect a Trump presidency to be capricious and reactive, with no new big domestic initiatives (but unfortunately possibly a new war)

    But I don’t really see any hope. Cruz and Rubio probably can’t beat the Hillary juggernaut anyway. Bloomberg possibly entering is a major wildcard; if he runs as a Republican he could win and be a serious Republican leftist candidate. If he runs as a third party he’d probably mostly draw from Hillary. (if he tries as a Democrat, Hillary will have him eliminated, one way or another)

      1. Hillary is a politician who sells herself to the highest bidder.

        Trump is a businessman who buys politicians.

        Opposite sides of the same coin.

    2. Problem with Trump: Trump not Republican. Trump not Democrat, as such. Trump in business (if oddly) so Trump not Socialist. Trump have huge ego. Trump… Trumpist. (If Trump like B. Clinton, would collect “Trumpettes”… But Trump egomaniac, not sleazeball. Close.. but… uh…. no cigar.)

        1. Am I the only one who remembers what a huge fan of eminent domain Trump was in Atlantic City?

          2. No, and you should see the Trumpkins dance around that.

            He also sat down for an interview with Field and Stream while at the SHOT show, and stated that a) Federal owned land out west should stay Federal rather than revert to state control, and b) there should be much less resource development on those Federal lands, especially no oil or gas drilling, to keep the lands intact.

            I wonder if anyone has asked Sarah Palin her opinion on Trump’s interpretation of “Drill Baby Drill!”?

            1. And now Ace has gone over to Trump because “Sticking it to the establishment” — I’m starting to believe we’re watching a real life play of Puppet masters. Are any of these people curiously humped?

              1. Ace has been done with the GOP since McClellan earned his nickname last year. I can’t really blame him, he’s been fighting for them for over a decade just to see them surrender time and again without firing a shot. It’s more than enough to push someone into Benedict Arnold territory.

                But it’s also why I’m optimistic about Cruz’s chances. If he gets the nomination he’ll campaign as a conservative: laying out the principles; showing how Democrat policies hurt everyone, especially those they claim to help; explaining that it’s going to take a long time to turn things around, but the sooner we start the better for everyone. If he does that, Ace and those like him – and there are millions in America – will respond. The fact that Dole and McClellan hate him is an endorsement to Americans.

              3. I don’t know that Ace has gone over to Trump so much as he’s washed his hands of the GOP. He’s not saying anything supportive of Trump. He is sick to death of Republicans treating movement conservatives like… well, like they’ve been treating them.

              5. Sarah, this is the internet. I don’t think we want to initiate a discussion of people being humped, curiously or otherwise.

              6. I’ll admit I sometimes wonder if the government’s been infiltrated by Hydra.

                Or if someone’s built really big transmutation circles around our major population centers.

                (Okay, that last one is probably because I started watching Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood again. At least our country isn’t in a peculiar geographic shape…)

              7. I think it is simplier than that.

                In the wake of GOP performance after the 2014 election I think a lot of people who have worked a long time to move the US off its current course and do so via supporting the GOP have given into despair (I know I flirt with it). I think the surrender on executive amnesty after winning the Senate was just too much for a lot of people.

                Having “realized” they will never win because their ally merely took their votes, money, and time and then governing like Democrat mini-mes they’ve decide at least they’ll knife the allys who betrayed them on the way down.

                I expected this in the long run but I honestly thought it was 20 or so years out. However, like most things of this nature, they were unthinkable until the moment they become inevitable.

                1. “… do so via supporting the GOP have given into despair (I know I flirt with it).”

                  Dude, you flirt with despair the way Bill Clinton flirts with interns.

                  There be good reason so many of us compare straightening it out to cleaning King Augeas’ stables, but while we’re trying to divert the river there is still plenty of manure to shovel in the meantime. If you can’t tell the difference between getting screwed by Nancy Pelosi and by Paul Ryan then give up politics, you ain’t got the stones for it.

                  All voting for conservatives does is buy you seats at the table — that your marginal addition produced a majority does not make your views majoritarian; you’ve got to keep pushing in a constructive way..

                1. They seem vulnerable to Force Persuade.

                  *Trump waves hand* “I am the candidate you’re looking for…”

          3. Haven’t you heard how that’s actually a selling point, and the little old lady he tried to get the city to steal the land from is a big bad evil who deserved it because she didn’t sell for whatever he’s claiming he offered THIS week? (I swear, it seems to go up every time I hear it.)

      1. I think Cruz can, win not sure about Rubio. I think one reason why Trump is able to pull from the Dem side so much is that Hillary has so much baggage being brought up, and Sanders is so far left that a lot of Dems see Trump as a viable alternative to Hillary.

    4. Hillary I think is on thin ice. There is a civil war behind the scenes on whether to get her off the table with an indictment and they have the evidence to put her away if needs be. the war is whether it is in their best interest or not to do so (from their point of view, not ours)

      1. I don’t think the question is whether or not they should take her off the table, but can they survive NOT taking her off the table. What’s leaked out is pretty damning. The only way they can keep Clinton in play and not face a massive revolt from rank-and-file law enforcement (remember that Nixon was ultimately brought down by a disgruntled FBI insider) is to find some fairly high-level staffer and blame him for improperly stripping the classification markings.

          1. The Democrats, like the mob, reward loyalty in the same proportion that they punish betrayal.

        2. The problem with THAT, Jeff, is that they have at least one e-mail from her giving a direct order to strip the classification markings and send the info by an insecure channel. There’s no one else to take the fall: she ordered it and it was done.

          1. She could explain that away by saying she wanted them to create an unclassified version of the talking points and send that.

      2. I think that “they” may not have a choice. Little birdies tell me that the FBI and Intel Communities (and lots and lots of Infosec people) are displeased* with her cavalier attitude to national security/cyber-security. Right now we have the FBI gathering evidence. If the DoJ does not indict fairly soon then I expect there to be anonymous leaks of all sorts of stuff. In fact given her slacker attitude to cyber-security I wonder who might have copies of *ALL* emails on her server, apart that is from the governments/intelligence agencies of Russia, China and Israel….

        *Actually many rather stronger words in most cases

        1. With all that’s come out so far about Monica Lewinsky’s ex-boyfriend’s wife, the fact that she has any support at all speaks volumes about Democrats. For the average LIV, I suspect the support comes from having seen nothing on ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN about any of it, except for the occasional snippet which starts “Republicans accused her of…” AS Instapundit points out, the smoking gun is the SERVER. Everything else just adds to it.

        3. At this point the only person who DOESN’T have Hillary’s emails is probably the old lady in the ‘that’s not how this works’ commercials…

    6. Hillary juggernaut? Juggernauts don’t typically simultaneously explode, implode, catch on fire, fly apart, fall over, and fall into the swamp. Did Yugo start making juggernauts?

      Hillary is a terrible candidate, as evidenced by the fact that despite the DNC doing practically everything short of excommunicating heretics to put her over the top she’s still in trouble against an avowed socialist with all of the charisma of a public toilet.

      1. But–

        Oh, right. I spend too much time online and I keep forgetting there are Democrats for whom avowed socialist isn’t a selling point.

      2. I dunno–I hate Sanders’ politics, but compared to Clinton he’s reasonably down to earth and seems like an actual human being. There’s a certain “man of the people” vibe he’s got that a lot of folks like.
        He’s your lovably crotchety Stalinist grandpa, compared to Clinton’s “Should we have her take the Turing test?”

        1. Reports are that in person he’s a really horrible individual. It’s likely that someone talented at debates – not Hillary – could needle him into showing that. Trump couldn’t do it because he’d still look worse.

          2. Wouldn’t surprise me one way or another, honestly. However, that is his public persona, and that’s all most folk will see. (Well, that, and the free college.)

            1. Hence the importance of a skilled debater (first one of you that makes a “master” joke gets a carpapult full of post-spawn salmon) who can push Sanders into taking off his mask without looking nasty himself.

          3. Is he more horrible than Clinton? I’ve seen lots of reports of how she is so totally warm and thoughtful of those random people she meets in the course of life – NOT

            1. But Clinton has been on the public stage long enough for that side of her to become common knowledge. Sanders, at least as far as the general public is concerned, is just a nice guy who wants to help people (with your money).

          4. There’s well more then one story that Monica Lewinsky’s ex-boyfriend’s wife is a horrible individual. Hotel staff where she appears is instructed to look aside as she passes, and never make eye contact with her. Or so I’ve heard. From hotel staff. Where she’s appeared.

                2. It’s a public safety measure.

                  The eyes are windows onto the soul, and any(normal)body catching a glimpse of her soul would go stark raving mad.

            3. Have any disturbingly lifelike statues of hotel staff been found after she stays at a place?

            4. She really hasn’t made friends with the military; five years after they were gone, you could still tell who had actually been around them by the foaming at the mouth about how incredibly nasty she was to military folks.

              To her credit, she actually lives like she believes our guys are violent, stupid and crazy.

          5. And word is that Trump’s really one of the nicest folk you could meet, off the stage. See how someone treats those beneath him for an idea of who the person really is…

            1. I bet that Trump is a great guy. I doubt I would mind sitting down and having a beer with him – and not just because he’d be picking up the check. My problem with him is not in him, but in his policies.

            2. Trying to synthesize all the feedback I’ve heard about Trump, I’d say he’s decent, even generous, to those who are useful or neutral to him– and will go nuclear if someone opposes him, even if it’s only incidental.

              This is not a good thing; such people you want to have as an enemy, because as a friend you never know when you will become inconvenient in some small way, and be a fly smashed under a sledge, an anvil and possibly a bank vault.

              Contrast with, say, Mrs. Clinton– who seems to divide the world into “useful to me” and “f em,” but will only apply effort to destroy in proportion to the ROI, and seems to be pretty predictable in her likes and dislikes.

      3. I kind of wonder if the current dearth of political talent on the Democratic party bench is due to the Clintons spending the last few decades knocking down any potential challenger to Hillary.
        Obama’s surprise win in 2008 would have more imperative to cut off any other potential presidential candidates.

        1. I think it has more to do with the smart Democrats writing off 2016. Third terms are hard enough, trying to follow Barry the Simple is suicide.

          The Democrats really screwed up in picking Obama over Hillary in 2008. If they had run a Hillary/Obama ticket, they would have easily won 2008, Hillary would have run slightly left-of-center and likely not triggered the Tea Party, and they’d be running a young (looking, he’d still be dying his hair) charismatic black man as President. The chance to make History! would more than counteract the third-term malaise.

          1. I’m sure that idea was mooted during the pre-primary process. But, Ego tends to trump (heh) Strategic thinking, and the 2008 Obama was definitely not lacking in the ego department.

            1. I think that was the DNC’s plan going into 2008 – why else would some backbencher from Illinois give the keynote speech in 2004? But they underestimated how bad a candidate Hillary is. Once Obama saw that he had an actual shot, his ego forced him to take it.

    7. A small hint:

      Sometimes when one keeps seeing people proclaiming someone like Hillary to be a “juggernaut” or “inevitable” (as I see on blog/forum comments elsewhere) one might wonder if there was some effort being made in constantly repeating that claim so much that people believe it.

  21. Every jurisdiction has similar populists. BC had Bill Vanderzalm, who was the last of a political machine. Populist, not bad, softened the corporatist right wing (who is as bad as the left). Forced the left away from doctrinaire marxism, who then held power for two terms and were demolished as their doctrinaire tendencies came out.

    It is usual for politicians to resign over some minor corruption scandal; some backdoor deal to fix the roof on their house. There is no tolerance for deficit spending and corruption. We have it pretty good.

    One usually doesn’t win, one loses in politics. It isn’t Trump winning, it is everyone else playing pickup in an nba arena and getting pasted.

    I have been wondering who would show up since the WTO riots in the late 90’s. This demonstrated a deep unrest, which is still there and has flared up in many ways; Obama, Occupy, Tea Party, Trump. I’ll include Isis and the Arab Spring, as well as the massive migrations. Someone saying something will harness that unrest, and it will wipe the slate clean. Not better, the last time this happened was post ww1 with communism, all the isms that wracked the 20th century.

    Obama had a chance, but he has far more of the ugly machine politics desire for raw power than any interest in actually dealing with reality.

    An establishment politician from either side will be steamrolled by events; Clinton has no clue what she is asking for. Rubio already gets the deer in the headlights look as he is rolled. Bush is already going home to mommy.

    Something is going to burn. Mitch McConnell will be fine even if he is figuratively tarred and feathered. The Bushes will be fine. I love to see the Republican donor class $100 million poorer for nothing as Bush burns it up.

    I honestly think survival is the goal. There is no good news, nor a short term positive future. A four year bipartsan reckoning with reality is coming. Whoever is there will be dispensed of. Wish it upon your enemy.

  22. The only mistake that Trump has made, so far, is criticizing Cruz for not making deals. Perhaps even LIVs will blanch at making deals with Dems. The ability to make deals is a bug, not a feature.

  23. “And we can halt the slide and start turning it around incrementally. Note the incrementally. It won’t be overnight. ”

    Living at present in a portion of the East Coast just beginning to dig out from four or five inches of snow and sleet, I am reminded of the inadvisability of slamming the brakes. Slow, steady progress is the key, with maybe a controlled skid here and there. Remember: we’re America — if we go off into a ditch there will be few helpful strangers offering to tow us out, and far more scavengers eager to get a few bits and pieces off us before we freeze.

  24. Hey! Where’s the Jim Butcher quote? I was advised there would be a Jim Butcher quote!

    Apparently I was misinformed.

    1. “That next Dresden book will be coming out Real Soon Now.”
      (Disclaimer: May not be actual Jim Butcher quote)

    3. “Looks like I’m going to need a bigger wand!”
      May have been said by Harry Dresden at some point.

    4. No, only a Larry quote. Jim Butcher took Larry to task for comparing Trump to Mussolini, Mussolini, after all, being a gentleman of culture, learning and manners. He also pointed out that Trump is Putin with a bad hair piece.

    5. For those who don’t book face:

      Jim Butcher: Larry Correia, how DARE you. How DARE you slander Mussolini by comparing him to Trump. Have you ever read Mussolini? Guy was an eloquent, elegant, refined and academic scholar and gentleman by comparison. I mean, jeez. Trump is PT Barnum in a hairpiece. He’s the capitalist Putin. He’s the Grinch in a Santy-Con suit.

  25. The only reason the media started reporting on Trump’s candidacy was not to help him, but to hold up what they thought was frothing insanity to the light and say “See? Typical Republican racist woman-hating EEEEBIL! He wants to Ban All the Muslims!” Boy were they shocked by the reaction. Now they can’t stop reporting and they still can’t figure out why everybody isn’t making fun of him like they do. In the movie in their head, he starts crying and runs away when the media mocks him! Everybody else in politics does!

    I wouldn’t despair too much at the poll results right now. I can certainly understand the impulse of conservatives, being told they can have a big steaming pile of Jeb or nothing, saying “Fine, I pick Trump. Choke on it.” For much the same reason I have been sending more and more junk mail in the stupid mailers the RNC sends me wanting money. (Those dried up lately…I wonder if it was the entire boxful that finally got through to them?) Sometimes stalkers have to be set on fire to get the message.

    No, I don’t care for Trump either. But as long as he’s out there being loud and obnoxious, he’s soaking up attack energy and money that would otherwise be aimed at Cruz.

    There are a few bright points. Has anyone else noticed that even with the RNC, and lots of cash, and all the People Who Count, Jeb Bush couldn’t even get a lemonade stand off the ground? Guess money and contacts aren’t the only things you need in politics. 😀

      2. Well, he didn’t do that bad as Florida’s governor. He had the coattails to get John Morgan’s Bidet, er, “Switchin” Charlie Crist elected as governor.

    2. Yep. I like Trump for setting a precedent of diminished MSM and RNC power. At some point soon, we have to declare that job as well done as it can be at present, and get on with vetting/selecting someone else for POTUS. After that inflection, if Trump wants to stay relevant, he’ll need to make himself useful to a conservative candidate.

  26. From the RES news desk, This just In:

    Our cracked team of investigative reporters has just determined that, as of today, 24 January 2016, NOT ONE SINGLE vote has been cast in the GOP presidential primary process! Nor has any official, delegate-awarding caucus convened. For all the MSM hullabaloo, Donald Trump is thus far merely the Howard Dean Campaign, 2016 edition.

    Concerned conservatives are advised to keep calm and carry on, work for your candidates of preference and keep in mind that pollsters lie, the MSM lies (is MSM Lies a redundancy?) and politicians lie. This is one balloon which has not yet gone up and which has not demonstrated a capability to survive higher altitudes.

    1. Look, we had a perfectly fine imaginary battle all set up, with trenches and barbed wire and everything, before you barged in being reasonable all over the place. The nerve of some people!

                  1. yes, but I can’t play so it is like handing a chimp an AK ready to rock and all in the vicinity are holding a deadman switch to a nuke grenade

        3. Haul it down south, as soon as the wall is built (Which will be started as soon as the elections are over, we were promised, remember?) you can put it on top of it.

              1. Video game, although it would be accused of being “hate speech” (which oddly no one has accused the popular punch Trump game of).

              2. I saw “Independence Day” at the theater. Most of the crowd stood up and cheered when the aliens zapped the White House.

                I figured that was a good grassroots indication of what the average American moviegoer thought of the government…

    2. And remember, Iowa is just a straw poll among those willing to spend the 2-3 hours doing local party organization for the year.

      No delegates are awarded until New Hampshire. Iowa’s delegates are awarded at the state convention which has some relationship to the caucuses (the caucus is binding on the local organization delegates but gets filtered by regional conventions and then the state one so there can be come re-arranging).

    3. Just because you pointed this out let me lay down a marker: Trump will not win the Iowa caucuses. The nature of the caucuses is such that even when they are high turnout they attract only the most politically minded.

  27. Those seeking good news from Washington can enjoy this weather advisory from the Examiner:

    Snowzilla brings down the House
    The House of Representatives will not be voting on any bills this week because of the massive snowstorm that hit the D.C. metro region this weekend. The next votes are now scheduled for Monday, Feb. 1.

  28. Thanks Sarah, you and Larry are correct.
    Extra credit question for some of you: What’s the difference between a Nazi and a Communist? Answer: About one millimeter.

    2. Actually, the commies mostly used 7.62x54R with an unfired bullet diameter of 7.92mm, while the Nazis mostly used 7.92×57 Mauser (also known as 8×57) with a bullet diameter of 8.08mm, so the difference is actually 0.16mm.

      1. Both tended to use .32 caliber pistols to shoot dissidents in the back of the head- Tokarevs and Nagants for the NKVD, and Walther PP/PPK’s for the Gestapo.

            1. That’s more of a post-war, cold war kind of thing, after Nazi became the term for “not Communist”.

      2. Interesting tangent. The Viet Cong had a habit of shooting unlinked M60 ammo (7.62×51 AKA .308) out of old Mosin-Nagants (7.62x54R AKA Rimmed Russian) like Daniel Boone, they carried a ramrod with their rifle. Because 7.62×51 is a rimless cartridge, the Nagant won’t eject it, so after firing the would open the bolt, then run a rod down the barrel and push the empty cartridge out.

        1. Unless shown actual citations, i’d call this an urban legend. Mosins come with a cleaning rod.

            1. Doesn’t mean it was actually used as such. also, .308 vs .311 bullet issues. Like i said, sounds like an urban legend.

              1. It’s no longer common to use .308″ bullets when loading 7.62x54R, 7.65×53 Mauser, .303 British, or 7.62×39, but that’s due to the (relative) availability of new jacketed bullets in that size.

                My older loading manuals from the 1960s into the 1980s show reloads with .308″ bullets, because those were far more common and worked well enough. (“Obturation”)

                Mosins, depending on when and where they were manufactured, may have a bore size anywhere from .307″ to .315″ or so.

                [twitch] Just some reloader OCD; nothing to see here…

      3. Actually the Russian projectile spec is supposed to be .312 inches, which works out to 7.98mm so they were much closer(0.10mm), heh, heh. But let’s not pick the nit. They were the same until Stalin decided that they should be different and ordered his propaganda machine to, “Make it so.”

  29. “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”

    So now you’ve got me fearing that Trump is going to play Gaius Gracchus to Obama’s Tiberius. Which means the American analog to Gaius Julius Caesar is waiting in the wings somewhere.

    2. Pope Franciscus. *crickets* You see, Gaius Julius Caesar had fixed the elections so that he would be top priest, and maybe he had a title in common with the Pope, so…

  30. Some years back. I don’t remember exactly when but I remember watching it unfold, the term “neocon” was someone who was basically “left” but mouthed a few conservative talking points (chiefly being “hawkish” and “pro military”).

    Then, sometime around the election of Bush W, a “neocon” in that mode, people on the left started using “neocon” as though the word meant some kind of arch/uber conservative. All of a sudden the “center” got moved miles to the left from where it had been before and formerly moderate positions became “right wing extremism.”

    So, best case of a Trump victory is doing that again.

    2. “Neocon” has also come to refer to “The Jewz” in the Progspeak lexicon.

      That is why many of Trump’s reactions to the NR stance have involved name-dropping Bill Kristol and John Podhoretz.

    3. Here I thought “neocon” meant “culturally imperialist, but not enough so to actually succeed at it.”

      Let’s just say the word is confusing bordering on meaningless and substitute in what we actually mean.

  31. This was how I felt when I watched the current president get elected both times. I am not happy with any of them. After the last election, I am not sure that “we the people” are being represented even by the supposed “right” party. I am sick and tired of electing someone who doesn’t hold to his supposed principles. I am sick and tired of the whole crop of politicians… I seriously wish we were allowed to tar and feather politicians who have lied to us over and over. If there was a consequence to the lies, then maybe— maybe– we would not see our freedoms running off into the distant horizon.

    1. Aye, but putting the Right Man into power is not the way to fix this. Even if we could resurrect Silent Cal, and fill him with the both the political savvy of Veternari and the virtues of Prof. De La Paz, this won’t fix things.

        1. See GWB’s attempt at Amnesty. A coworker once pointed out he was for it until he took his citizenship test. Then he realized all those folks would be screwing him. A younger relative mentioned how illegals and minimum wages massively hurt those who just need a bit of work to either learn, or make ends meet easier when schooling etc. Reminded me of Jason’s character in Noah’s Boy when working as a day laborer.
          So I’ve been rereading the series.

        1. If Top Down won’t work, you got to go from the Bottom Up.
          This will take a lot of time and patience and work and money and effort.
          It. Will. Not. Be. Quick. Or. Easy.
          I wonder just how many people really only care about the top part of the ballot (President/Governor/Senator/Congressman) and pretty much Christmas tree the rest of the names. How many people complain about the timber of the candidates, but aren’t voting in the primaries. Whinging about the bad candidates a party has to offer, but not doing a single thing to support good ones. And so on.

        2. We’re going to have to recapture things one piece at a time… It’s the same way we lost them, which is why I’m pretty sure it’ll work as long as we can focus.

        1. The only reason I have not cited that poem re: Trump is an ill-fated desire to make some kind of wordplay on the word “trumpets”. Good for you on settling.

    2. We are all sick and tired. But Sick and Tired makes a good song:

      Freedom is elusive, may even have always been an illusion. See Romans 8:22, e.g.

  32. Reblogged this on The Arts Mechanical and commented:
    Sarah and Larry get the Donald right. But the people making the biggest mistake is the people in the establishment and the entire corporate media government complex run by “those guys.” “Those guys” thought that they could feed the people that they have been trampling all over for decades now the same package deal candidates that they’ve been running at us and they would get the same results. What they have missed is that this time, people are really generally upset with the way the country is being run, the economy and “those guys” in particular. Trump is an opportunist and a shark who’s survived in some of the nastiest shark pits in the country. That doesn’t happen because you are stupid, weak or introverted. But it also means that you can’t afford to have any loyalties to anybody or anything else. And Trump, ot my extensive knowledge has held no loyalties to anything other than himself. How many trophy wives has he had, how may investors has he screwed over and when the words you are most remembered for by your employees is “you’re fired” it can be taken for granted that loyalty and principles are not going to be your strong suit.

    1. He’s a good salesman. But, we’re not looking for a salesman. We’re looking for a manager. Totally different skill set.

      2. “A hot-dog salesman that somehow found himself down on the field” is the description of Trump that amused me most.

    2. What do the people in the establishment and the entire corporate media government complex run by “those guys” have in common?

      Both think that the American People can be given the mushroom treatment without any repercussions.

  33. Of course, win or lose, Trump will be the bludgeon they use against us for the next 50 years. Expect a spate of dystopian novels with suspiciously Trumpian presidents very soon.

    What’s ironic is that Left and Right equally loathe the guy. We should be united behind our mutual dislike.

    1. Actually, there’s a fair number of the “Right” that are supporting Trump simply because at the end of the day, they know his principles are for sale. What really scares them is someone like Cruz, who has principles he’s stuck with.

  34. Better example would be Silvio Berlusconi. Said all the right things and governed mostly to defend his own commercial interests. Helped crater the Italian right and the Italian economy for a generation.

    2. I think that’s a bit harsh on Berlusconi.

      The Italian right had managed to crater itself quite successfully before Bunga Bunga showed up. In fact that was why he showed up. All the “respectable” right in Italy had been shown to be corrupt and incompetent SoBs.

      I also think its tough to blame him for failing to fix economic problems that hail all the way back to WW2 and its immediate aftermath. Exacerbated, of course, by the problems caused by that monument of hubris and economic idiocy called the Euro.

      Now, having said that, I don’t think he did anything positive either. In fact he made no serious attempt to fix things at all. But he didn’t IMHO make things much worse

      1. “All the “respectable” right in Italy had been shown to be corrupt and incompetent SoBs.”

        Sounds familiar. Just replace Berlusconi with Trump.

  35. Trump is one of the long term effects of Politically Correct Grey Goo. If you use the club of political correctness to silence and cower opponents, you pave the way for a demagogue. To people used to a diet of bland grey goo, bluster and strong words look like Honesty and Virtue.

    It’s a bit like having a friend who is besotted with a person of know questionable morality. It isn’t until after their paramour has broken their heart (& bank account, credit rating, ect) that they are willing to listen to what a worthless, sorry, no good person the former beloved was.

    2. I’ve always viewed it as “our only concern is that our candidate might win.”

      They’d happily put *anyone* on the ticket to achieve that.

  37. This pretty much sums up Trump

    http://neoneocon.com/2016/01/23/in-his-own-words/

    Both the video and the closing para

    I’ll add a famous German saying written by Goethe. I’d like those support Trump and believe they can predict what he will do, and who trust him and want to give him power, to mull it over:
    Die ich rief, die Geister,
    Werd ich nun nicht los.”
    (“The spirits which I have summoned/I now cannot banish.”)

      1. Which is why the Cruz campaign needs Larry Correia as an advisor – he has experience plotting how to put down the unputdownable.

        1. But as I recall, Larry’s methods of putting down Lovecraftian nightmares involves tactical nuclear weapons. Those tend to be hard on the environment. Cruz might lose the Greenpeace vote.

          1. I think the nuke was just an owie for that particular critter – IIRC the actual putting down involved different tech.

          2. You laugh…how many Republicans would cave if you showed them numbers proving they’d loose one Greenpeace vote.

            The only voter they don’t care about alienating are those who regularly vote Republican.

            1. To risk losing a vote, one must first have a vote. I wouldn’t be surprised if Greenpeace routinely waterboards their members to see if any of them have voted for Republicans.

              1. But do the Republicans know that. Look at all the energy spent on getting a bigger share of the Hispanic vote while not caring about what became the Trump vote.

                1. There’s a philosophy of business that says that you shouldn’t cater to your customers, you’ve already got them coming through the door, you should be catering to those who aren’t your customers. The GOP has been buying into the racist Progressive (BIRM) idea that wide demographic changes spell their doom and trying to court groups rather than individuals. Trump’s been doing the same thing, just targeting different groups.

  38. Sarah said of Trump’s coverage essentially the same thing I’ve told others: #JournoList finds covering Trump a “Can’t Lose” proposition. First, their relentless attention on him keeps more substantial, accomplished candidates (Cruz, Rubio) out of the lime light, so the low info folks don’t see the difference in both deportment, plans, and actual background. Second, it serves the ends of #JournoList because they can paint conservatives as anti-immigrant racists (mortal sins in LibProg Theology, until we decide we have always been at war with Oceania again) without having to say a word. LibProgs will see the proof, proof I tell you! right there in any story about Trump.

    1. The only flaw in that thesis is they were no-platforming Cruz before Trump ever showed up.

      1. And now they’re making crud up.

        Seriously, when you have to misunderstand what someone says in order for them to “misspeak,” there’s an issue.

        If someone can show me where he has said something that was ACTUALLY FALSE and is what the media claimed he said, I’d appreciate it– because this is getting kinda creepy.

        1. What? Spend time looking stuff up?

          Much easier to just make up an appropriate Narrative(tm), echo it back and forth to each other, and nod at each other wisely. “Everybody knows” Straw Ted barbecues live kittens, they don’t have to waste their time with documentation.

      1. Let’s hope we don’t have five more Trumpy years, or worse yet, nine. I might feel compelled to seize control of a foreign country to serve as a refuge for American dissidents from the tyrannical Trump regime. (I started writing that tongue and cheek and by the time I finished I realized I fear it may come to that.)

      2. Gah… now I remember something from MST3K.

        The “Pod People” movie.

        “Trumpy Does Magic!”

  39. To be completely honest, I have no idea how Trump will govern, should he win. Left, right, middle, upside down, no clue at all. He’s been all over the map politically, mainly doing whatever he had to do, to forward his own interests.
    What he will do when he doesn’t have to please others, and can be himself?

    I honestly don’t have a clue. He could be the worst thing that ever happened, the best thing that ever happened, or somewhere in between.

    But whatever he is, if he gets elected, then we deserve it, just like we deserved Obama.

    1. How would Trump govern?

      …mainly doing whatever he had to do, to forward his own interests.

      There’s your clue right there.

      1. OK. So Trump is immensely self-centered, opportunistic, and inconstant. And he has supported progressives & their policies (which most crony-capitalist businessmen also do.) Do we know from this what – and whether – he has ANY principles or ideologies, left or right, that would inform his future action? Or is it more likely that his future actions, if elected, would be governed solely by the personal power, enrichment, and/or entertainment he would get from them? I.e. would he be as likely as not to do the right thing, so long as it benefited him?
        Granted, it’s hard to manipulate a super-salesman overtly, but a close understanding of what motivates him might be used to keep a Trump presidency from being a total loss.

    2. How will Trump govern? Like he has run his previous businesses, and quite frankly, he’s really not that good at running businesses.

      1. And yeah, we’re putting him in charge of the most spectacularly bankrupt enterprise in the history of the world. But his personal finances should come out okay. So everything’s cool, right?

        1. As I like to say over and over about how not to win over Trump voters saying he’ll leave the US bankrupt while he gets richer is essentially saying, “He’s just like your typical Republican office holder”. Who was the last mainstream GOP Congressman or Senator to be as in debt as he helped leave the US government?

          Maybe if people isolated his support of the assault weapons ban, because it touches on the one place where the GOP as a whole hasn’t been like Trump, that might gain traction.

  40. I don’t especially trust Trump, but what frustrates me immensely is how completely the people who oppose him fail to acknowledge the issue that is carrying him so far, which is primarily immigration. I’ve heard a lot of people attack him, but none of them attempt to address this question and why it matters. If one of the other candidates would believably take up that issue the way he does, they could take a lot of his support, but the donor class wants cheap labor and so they won’t stop it.

    And Sarah, I know you’re an immigrant and we’re glad to have you, but far too many for the past four decades have come here with no intention whatsoever of becoming Americans, and I have no interest whatsoever in my country becoming like theirs, which is what will happen.

    1. Yeah, the damage done our economy by open borders is something NOBODY BUT Trump has addressed!

      For certain values of nobody.

        1. And it’s more than planning on a one-term ‘wonder’ and having “AMERICA TO TRUMP: YOU’RE FIRED” headlines. Or, maybe, it’s actually even less than that.

      2. Yes, I like what Cruz is saying, but he is playing catch-up here. For instance, unless I’ve been badly lied to, he recently was in favor of a bill greatly expanding our H1-B visa program. Is it as bad as the illegal immigration problem? No. Is it helping or harming Americans? Almost certainly harming.

        Whether you trust Trump or not, you must credit him with doing us the service of seriously stretching the Overton window. Until he came on the scene, a conservative who was accused of racism for opposing illegal immigration would defend himself by talking about how much he loves legal immigration. None of them could even suggest that maybe we should stop bringing in anybody for a while. Cruz has some baggage from that, even if it wasn’t the policy he actually believed in.

        1. The H1-B program is a real issue, but it’s a pretty darn narrow one compared to the other stuff being discussed.

          We should not fall into the “comprehensive reform” trap, where no individual aspect can be addressed unless every little corner is also addressed in detail. Securing the borders and enforcing current laws re illegal immigration (and penalizing “sanctuary cities” through withholding Federal monies) should not also be dependent on H1-B reform or screening for student visas or any of the other tangles on the mess that is U.S. immigration policy.

    2. And yet immigration is not the issue. I’m with you on the need to control our own borders, but controlling the borders will do jack sh*t if you continue to allow the schools to indoctrinate the kids into hating America. It’s not the immigration. It’s the multiculturalism.

      1. Real multiculturalism would be an improvement on the oikophobia of today. What currently passes for “multiculturalism” seems more to involve condemnation of the West generally and the US specifically than with treating all cultures as equally valid and worthy of respect. I would find a pro-American approach an even bigger improvement.

        2. What they’re pushing is Food Court Multiculturalism. A variety of superficial versions of the various cultures, stripped of their real character and presented as an attractive alternative to (while telling you all of the potential risks of eating) hamburgers and hot dogs.

          1. Ironically, it appears to me that those of us who oppose “multiculturalism” are the only ones who actually believe in other cultures. Most of the left seriously seems to think that everyone across the world is pretty much the same and holds the same values. The only difference is that they eat fascinating food and have attractive native clothing.

            On the other hand, conservatives say Yes, there are other cultures out there, and some of them are horrifying. Have you seen how Muslims treat women? Do you understand the level of government corruption which is considered run-of-the-mill throughout Latin America?

            Once again, what leftists say they believe is 180 degrees opposed to the truth.

        3. Since multiculti starts from the provably untrue thesis of “treating all cultures as equally valid and worthy of respect,” it isn’t preferable to anything.

            1. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think multiculturalism is a good approach for American society or even with respect to our foreign policy objectives. What I do think is that currently our schools aren’t accepting American culture as valid or worthy of respect, but are bashing it instead, and that needs to stop.

              Multiculturalism makes sense within the context it originated in, which was in the social sciences when engaging in observations and research of other cultures. However, it makes far less sense outside that context.

      2. Amen.

        Cultures are easily rated on the success and freedom of their members.

        Teaching that they are all just as good is evil/insane.

      3. Actually, Sarah, it is the immigration, because you cannot feed material the machinery of assimilation cannot process into it and expect it to function; it’s like feeding diamonds into a machine for cutting granite.

        And Islam, because of its’ foundational doctrines, is such a material.

        1. What “machinery of assimilation”?

          They’ve shut that down in most of the country decades ago.

          1. And if the plan is to rebuild it, the first thing is to recognize both what assimilation can do / has done in the past, and the cases and cultures it simply isn’t geared to handle.

            If there are no plans to rebuild it then we need to realize that without assimilation we will simply be further invaded and overrun.

            1. Honestly, just enforcing our laws – say, arresting any imam who incites people to violence – would probably do a lot for what’s not caught by, like, having a concrete concept of what it is to be American. It’s not the barbarians at the gates, it’s the patricians opening them.

      4. I’d say immigration is *a* factor, certainly where California is concerned. But Steyn, my long-trusted source for doomography, has gone so absolutely nuts on the subject that he’s apparently no longer too keen on the free market, the separation of powers or the rule of law when it comes to “preserving America.”

        Yes, he spent about half of After America railing against our institutional self-loathing. But never mind, that’s insurnountable in his eyes. And yes, he did make several predictions that hostile immigration would give rise to support for a “strongman-on-a-horse”, a bargain-basement Mussolini. But he’s been awfully quiet on that since he decided Le Pen and Trump were the way of the future.

        It really saddens me that such a normally astute man can fall for this bunk.

        1. Steyn’s a bright guy, but in some way he reminds me of the Mad Expatriate–something of a single issue wonk, and prone to trying to fight fire with fire.

        2. That seems to be a bit unfair to Steyn. I can’t find evidence of him being a supporter of Trump or Le Pen. Rather he points out (correctly IMO) that when the ‘respectable’ EU parties and the US Republicans refuse to represent the man in the street, one should not be shocked that some voters turn to Trump, Le Pen, AfD, Pegida, etc. Steyn admires Trump doing an end-run around both the MSM and GOPe, an admiration which I think many folks can share (regardless of one’s opinions on Trump himself).

          1. Actually the NR article is a prime example of this. Consider Larry’s comment:

            When Trent Lott, Bob Dole, John McCain, and Orrin Hatch would all prefer Trump over Cruz, you guys might want to reexamine who is the “anti-establishment” candidate. Duh.

            Yet NR encouraged us to support all of the above or $DEMOCRAT. To do so then use them as the reason not to support Trump because he’s just like them winds up hurting their credibility much more than Trump’s.

            Trump is, in this way what our hostess (and many others including myself) have feared in the sense that people would get frustrated by the GOP before the GOP could be changed. We all had different thoughts on how to avoid that (mine, in particular, was not well received) but now events have made any such ideas moot.

            1. Challenge: “NR encouraged us to support all of the above or $DEMOCRAT.”

              False Narrative.

              Refutation:
              “Tantaros later took to the Internet, tweeting: ‘NRO ENDORSED Romney & McCain & gave us W’s wars, huge deficits, amnesty, bailouts. They helped create Trump’s rise.’

              “As National Review writer Kevin Williamson soon pointed out, the magazine endorsed Romney over McCain in 2008, and did not endorse Romney in 2012.”
              http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/430238/against-trump-fox-newss-fury-national-review

              RTWT

              1. During the primaries, yes. Williamson is correct.

                During the general election, NR routinely encourages support for the Republican du jour. They believe that is a manifestation of Buckley’s idea about supporting the most conseravtive electable candidate and is reasonable.

                However, once something like Trump comes along saying he’s “death to conservatism” if he gets the nomination becomes a hard sell on that count. It is reasonable to ask “why wasn’t McCain or Romney death to conservatism as the nominee…why was support for Thad Cochran in the Senate general in 2014 not the death of conservatism”*.

                This tendency means the easy response is “well, then Trump is just like existing Republicans except he fights.”

                The solution to Trump was for the GOP to vote like they campaigned. As late as the last omnibus they could have blunted him but instead increased H-2B visas and other stupid moderate tricks. This gutted the “but he’s not conservative argument”.

                * Actually, when we look back 50 years from now that is probably one point where historians will argue the pretense of the GOP being the conservative party was broken permanently. The fact is the GOP is not, despite the linked NR article, the conservative party and they have only been close once in my life for a brief period in the mid-90s. There has been a lot of work to make it such but that has yet to bear lasting fruit. The choices of the non-conservatives in the party in the wake of 2014 probably undid much of that work in the sense they made a Trump much more likely.

                1. “… the easy response is ‘well, then Trump is just like existing Republicans except he fights.’”

                  The easy response is rarely the correct response.

                  Trump’s claims aside (there being no credible evidence of them being more than Souteresque confirmation conversion) his recent history is as a pro-choice, pro-single-payer, pro-every Progressive agenda item except open borders (and even there his bona fides are suspect) there is not one single shred of evidence this snake-oil purveyor supports one single item on the conservative agenda.

                  “Make America Great Again” is as void of meaning as “Fundamentally Transform America.”

                  1. The easy response is rarely the correct response.

                    I didn’t say it was correct. However, if the argument against Trump is as facile as “but he’s not a real conservative and making him the GOP nominee will destroy conservatism” why should any stronger response be expected.

                    I don’t want Trump. I don’t support Trump. I think he’ll be a diasaster as a nominee and as President. I don’t quite share Sarah’s concern about retribution because we survived Obama who is just as narcissistic and who, unlike Trump, has the media and the entrenched bureaucracy at his beck and call.

                    That said, I have a hard time buying that Trump, all by his lonesome, can magically kill conservativism in the US. He might deliver the death blow but that blow will only become fatal because the leading lights of American conservatism let themselves become the blacks of the GOP: reliable votes as long as the party mouths the right pieties regardless of actual outcomes.

                    The way to stop Trump, even now, is for the GOP Congress to actually follow through on its promises in a way that is meaningful. But given most of them don’t believe in those positions any more than Trump means that’s not going to happen.

                  2. Perhaps – but I think there’s a big difference between ‘Fundamentally Transform America’, and ‘Make America Great Again’.

                    You can ‘fundamentally transform’ a Ferrari into a pile of scrap pretty fast against a bridge abutment. You can ‘fundamentally transform’ a nice piece of beef into something akin to a Vibram shoe sole by cooking it badly. You can ‘fundamentally transform’ a sick person into a corpse by improper medical treatment.

                    ‘Make America Great Again’ seems, to me, to be trying to build up instead of ‘fundamentally transform’ when there’s no definition of what ‘transform’ would mean in that case. As a slogan, it works.

                    Would Trump work out? It’s hard for me to see he’d be worse than the current occupant of the Oval Office.

                    1. They’re both vague promises devoid of goals or methods.

                      Trump COULD very well mean “it was great back before the Supreme Court ruled that it wasn’t legal for me to have cities steal property to sell to me,” or any of dozens of ways that it was before this or that rule got in his way.

                    2. Might be he thinks America was Great back when minorities and women “knew their place” and will restore that? i know what I believe made America great; I know what Sarah and many of the rest of the Huns believe made America great — what I haven’t heard from Trump is what he believes made America great and how his plans will restore it. “I’ll make such great deals” is the kind of approach that got us into this ditch.

                      Caesar “Made Rome Great Again” but that isn’t what our Founders designed our system to do. Our system is intended to protect our liberty; protecting our liberty is what made us great. Greatness without liberty is too high a price for too little reward.

            2. National Review doesn’t style itself as “anti-establishment”– that would require changing their philosophy based on who else holds it.

              They at least claim to actually believe what they’re supporting. You know, the old “right, even if nobody is saying it; wrong, even if everyone is saying it.”

              1. Actually, saying NR styles itself as anything more than conservative is generally hard to do. They cover a wide swath of right of center thought most of the time, although they have gotten a bit too concerned about not ruffling feathers and used that to quit using three popular writers since 2001 (I especially miss Mark Steyn).

                In that the Trump issue is close to if not unique although that’s as much good as bad (it will color the views of non-regular readers for quite some time and will probably alienate more than it attracts for good or for ill). It was the first issue in a I only read one online article all day (oddly, Glenn Beck’s because of the title which I considered the epitome of missing the point) but it hasn’t scared me away (The Weekly Standard hasn’t even driven me off and they’ve been trying pretty much harder for a decade…their arts articles are too good to give up).

                1. Actually, saying NR styles itself as anything more than conservative is generally hard to do.

                  Exactly; that’s a broad area of philosophy, but it is a belief, rather than “I’m against that group which has been powerful for a period of time!”

                2. “they have gotten a bit too concerned about not ruffling feathers”

                  Not actually why they parted ways with Steyn. In his case it was a difference over legal strategies for handling the Mark Mann (as I recall) lawsuit. NR wanted to get the suit tossed on technical issues (a pragmatic legal strategy as their goal was to remain a magazine rather than an income transfer point to legal counsel) while Steyn wanted to fight the suit on the issue of his claims.

                  Similar to an Obstetrician wanting to defend against a malpractice suit as a slur on her honor and her insurance carrier wanting to settle for known cost rather than roll the legal dice.

      5. Back in the 1980s I got a piece of franked mail from my Congressman. It was a description of his positions on various issues. One of them was that he wanted to deal with the “illegal immigration” problem by further restricting *legal* immigration.

        I wrote a rather nasty letter back, pointing out that illegals would be entirely unaffected by his proposal. I didn’t really expect anything to come of it.

        A few weeks later I got a letter that I believe was written by the Congressman himself, containing an explanation and an apology. He had made use of some kind of outsourced political consulting firm and had not bothered to actually read their tract before it went out over his name. He apologized and said that was a mistake he would never make again.

        I didn’t agree with all of his positions, but I voted for him at the next election. Alas, a bunch of PAC money overwhelmed his campaign and he retired a while later.

        1. yeah. Look, we need to control our borders or we’re not a country. BUT legal or illegal (and our legal immigration right now is a crying mess) the immigrants must come in and be PUSHED to assimilate. And our own kids must not be made into hostile aliens. Post on this tomorrow.

          1. That’s an understatement (on legal being a mess). And both political parties trying to be easier on illegals in terms of status and family reunion than we are on legal immigrants (to the point I know US citizens with non-citizen spouses claiming they should just get them here illegally and wait for amnesty…it’ll be quicker).

            1. I, personally, want to make it as easy for “Americans who happen to have been born elsewhere (folk like our esteemed hostess 😉 ) to come here. People who want to turn America into the same hellhole they came from, not so much. I’m all about the “huddled masses yearning to breath free” if not infiltration by an invading army intent on subversion and conquest.

              I have no idea how to do that, what needs to be done to encourage the former while discouraging the latter.

                1. A law prohibiting any non-citizen (legal or illegal) from receiving welfare, SNAP, EITC, Section 8 vouchers, free school lunches, etc for 10 years after entering the US might be a start. It’s one thing to have uninvited guests, but quite another to have them send the bills for their food and rent to you, their host (in the epidemiology, rather than hospitality sense).

                  1. SCUS has already overruled you on that one.

                    They ruled the 14th Amendment requires ILLEGALS get education when Houston tried to deny illegal aliens spots in public schools. When California tried what you describe the 9th Circuit overturned it based on that SCUS opinion.

                    1. It is a great time to revisit whether Plyler v Doe correctly interpreted the equal protection clause. After all, we are constantly informed that illegal aliens CANNOT be subject to certain US laws. Are illegals truly “within [US] jurisdiction” ?

              2. It’s very, very simple and very, very difficult: put an end to the welfare state.

          2. My brother’s wife wanted her brother to come visit for a month or so. He’s a Philippine citizen. Clean record, return ticket, cash in hand, room and board. After more than a year of my brother fighting with Immigration, they gave up.

            Apparently Immigration saves its wroth for the suckers who try to play it straight and follow the rules.

            It wasn’t nearly as funny as when Immigration sent a deportation notice to my niece. It eventually made it to her in Baghdad, where she was on her third tour in the US Army…

            1. See : Margaret Dumont vs Groucho. INS only has authority over those who recognize its authority ab initio.

  41. I just thought of this. I’m tired of spending my grandchildren’s money. The United States could declare bankruptcy. Trump has lots of experience with bankruptcy.

    Donald Trump the bankruptcy president.

  43. So Sarah voted for Ramalho Eanes. Well, I was too young to vote, but strongly supported Nixon over Humphrey, when the correct answer was “None of the Above.”

    Portugal had a PM at the time with some potential, named Sá Carneiro. He died in a suspicious plane crash. I guess no country is exempt from this. All countries are bankrupt, too.

    2. None of the above is only the correct response if it means something (i.e., if NOTA wins, there’s a do-over). Otherwise it’s the equivalent of half a vote for the person you like least.

      1. At some point people want more than the lesser of two evils. Denied that option long enough they’ll go for the larger evil as long as he hates the right people (see Trump, Donald).

          1. You’re standing next to your ally confronting your enemy. Your ally stabs you in the back. As you’re dying, who do you stab: your enemy or your “ally”.

            A large part of the GOP base thinks (with some reason) they are facing this choice and they are deciding to stab their “ally”. You may question the wisdom but belittling them, calling them names, and so on isn’t the way to tell them they still have time to stab their enemy instead. It’s just reinforcing their belief their knife is pointed in the right direction.

            That’s why I think things like the NR issue are worthless at best and counterproductive at worst. It isn’t that they aren’t factually correct; it’s that they aren’t addressing the real issue.

            And for everyone who says “but if they’re angry why not vote Cruz” the sad, and very unfair to Cruz, fact is he’s a sitting Repubilcan offician holder. That brand has been so damaged that it is easier to trust a charlatan like Trump than someone with a ‘R’ after their name that holds office for a lot of people.

            1. “A large part of the GOP base thinks … ”

              Assumption based on facts not in evidence. Media reports to this effect are no more reliable than media reports that the public adores Obamacare or that Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

              1. If it were just the media I might agree. It’s not. The conservative blogosphere’s disenchantment with the GOPe has been obvious for a couple of years now. One thing that seems common among people who despise Trump and his supporters is that “just because I haven’t seen any disenchantment reported by an MSM and social media that’s adopted no-platforming as standard practice, it can’t be real.”

                Bet on that and lose.

        2. Thus far there is a) no proof of support for Trump within the Republican or conservative base and b) ample proof that the Strumpettes are from outside that base.

          See: GOP fear and loathing in New Hampshire
          [SNIP]
          In one of my first conversations at the Radisson, with two Republican activists, I asked a simple what’s-up question about Trump. Both immediately responded in exactly the same way: “I don’t know anybody who supports him.” They’re politically active and aware, but they said they have no contact in their daily lives with even a single person who supports their party’s front-runner.

          After that conversation, I began to ask everyone I met: Do you know anyone who supports Donald Trump? In more cases than not — actually, in nearly all the cases — the answer was no. … Given Trump’s big lead in the polls, if so many politically active Republicans don’t know even one Trump supporter, either the polls are wrong or there is some serious GOP Pauline Kaelism at work in the nation’s first primary state.

          1. After that conversation, I began to ask everyone I met: Do you know anyone who supports Donald Trump? In more cases than not — actually, in nearly all the cases — the answer was no

            I know a few, mostly people who are frustrated at “conservatives” saying one thing when campaigning then voting another way once in office. The claim was that “at least Trump doesn’t have a history of voting…” (Never mind that he is on record as claiming to have voted for Obama.)

            Say’s one, when it’s pointed out his long history of support for liberal caused (I called him “Obama with a border wall”), “people can change their minds.

            Yes. And people can lie to get elected too. When someone “changes his mind” with no run up, with no reason behind it except that he’s running under a different parties banner, and with no established history under the new views, well, I know which way to bet on that.

            Some people are desperate and, in their despair, grasp at an anchor thinking it will help them float.

            1. Beloved Spouse & I were discussing Fiorina’s address to the march for Life last Friday. While we agreed Trump needn’t have shown up, he might at least prepped a video address congratulating the marchers on their commitment to their views.

              The fact he didn’t even bother to send so anodyne a statement as that indicates a great deal about his “conversion” from the Pro-Abortion viewpoint.

    4. That must be a local thing. “None of the above” is not a choice in my electoral district, anyway. There’s no such thing as a write-in candidate, either.

  44. I did actually run into a gaggle of fairly educated people who were Trump supporters. Their rationale: the Republic is outliving its effectiveness. Time for an Empire, or else we die.

    I weep to think of it even if it is true. But if it is true… Trump is still not the guy for the post. If you want an Emperor to save your civilization, he has to give the first flying hoot what happens to the country after he’s dead.

    2. If you want an Emperor to save your civilization, he has to give the first flying hoot what happens to the country after he’s dead

      Hell, I’d settle for one who gets a hoot about the country while he’s alive (as opposed to just his own little slice of it).

        1. About 3pm Friday my posting from home was either blocked or sent to the moderation queue. Figured I’d try at work this morning.

          Not sure if I’m supposed to be on the naughty step, if my home IP got sent to the naughty step by accident, or some third type of issue.

          2. The rolling IP hoaxer probably got ’em; my mom’s ISP got added to Barracuda’s list for a few days last year, even though they don’t have the hardware to be able to do what they were measured to be doing.

  47. What makes you think we won’t see a Trump-Biden ‘national unity’ ticket?
    I bet those two would get along great together.

    Biden: Great haircut, boss! Here’s the nuclear football, comin’ at ya! (fistbumps Trump)
    Trump: Yur lookin’ good, too, Joe! Been workin’ out? You look like you’ve been workin’ out.

  48. Thanks Sarah. Thanks Larry.

    Trump claims he is a businessman. Baloney. He is a casino operator. That requires three things: (1) the knowledge that there are plenty of suckers out there (Barnum knew that), (2) knowing which politicians to bribe, (3) knowing how to stay on friendly terms with the mafia bosses. None of these require an IQ over 80, much less any real business skills.

    When the choices for president seem to be between a socialists and a fascist (or two fascists, if Bloomberg gets in), you know things are in bad shape.

      1. It helped a recession clobbered Atlantic City. Hard to make money when your expenses to keep the building open and the lights on outstrip the revenue from the few suckers coming in…

  49. “The only person throwing doubt on that is Trump, and it’s insane and unfounded.”

    Unfounded, yes. Insane, no. It’s a calculated ploy on Trump’s part. From today’s Wall Street Journal (behind the paywall, but searchable):

    “NASHUA, N.H.— Donald Trump made his decision to start skewering Sen. Ted Cruz as his private jet was approaching here earlier this month.

    ‘Ted is hanging around the top too long,’ the Republican presidential front-runner announced on the plane, according to his campaign manager. ‘Time to take him down.’”

  50. And he’ll govern left. And it will be a continuation of Obama’s disaster.

    Honest question, do you believe anyone other than Cruz* will govern significantly to the right of where Trump would? I have a hard time believing they would based on the last GOP President plus GOP Congress. Do you honestly think he’ll govern as left as Obama? I’m hard pressed to believe that (he might be as stupid in terms of policy but he’ll be stupid in his own way).

    Then again I think the GOP in the Senate would sabotage a President Cruz (despite Cruz being the mostly likely to get my vote in the GA primary) so I might be just a wee bit too cynical about the GOP.

    * I know you said Rubio as well but, and I know I’m in the minority among those politically active on the right, but I trust Rubio less than anyone else in the GOP primaries except maybe Trump. That’s what happend when you campaign as anti-X and become X’s leader supporter as your primary focus in office. Having done that on amnesty why should the fact he talks so conservative on everything else matter.

    1. Significantly to the right of Obama and Trump? Oh, hell yes. Even W was that. “Right” Probably not. Yet. Incremental, remember. And while we have the fifth column we do in the press and in the clerisy, government beyond social democrat is difficult.

      1. I think we have different expectations of how Trump would govern. While I won’t pretend he would be anything resembling right I don’t see as far as Obama. Then again, I believe the GOP is now committed to embracing Obamacare even if they repeal and replace it. Their replacement will essentially be Obamacare 2.0.

        One significant difference between Trump and most of the GOP is I do believe Trump won’t sign off on amnesty although he won’t be nearly as tough as he talks.

        On a lot of issues he might govern as the GOP moderates wish they could: getting with the times on abortion, gay marriage, and other issues that matter to those mouthbreather religous nuts; more corporate welfare; a more complex tax code with favors for sale, etc. However, given I suspect he’ll just be more blatant in supporting it than say McConnell and company would be I’m not sure that’s a huge difference.

        I do think he’d try to settle scores but I disagree with you about how much cover the press and bureaucracy would give him (that said, I’d rather not run the test to see which of us is right) which would temper it relative to Obama (in fact, that is my single biggest Hillary fear…she’s more vindictive than Obama or Trump and would that cover/assistance).

        Perhaps I’m jaded now that we’re headed in the fifth consecutive “do or die” election (this century we’ve only had one that wasn’t: 2006). Maybe if people like NR and a good number of GOP office holders (including the GOP nominee) had treated defeating Obama in 2012 with half this seriousness (or, for GOP Senators their dump Cruz movement) I might be more afraid.

        1. but, but Trump has said that Obamacare does not go far enough, that we need national health care like Canada. That is not governing to the right of Obama at all!

          1. Do you believe a GOP Congress would pass single payer? If so, how is he different from the GOP as a whole? If not how will he impose it (valid question given the ‘bamster).

            Exit question, if he does impose it somehow and a GOP Congress refuses to overturn it (like they have with executive amnesty) how is the GOP Congress different from supporting it?

            These are the kinds of questions that need easily explained answers to stop Trump. At this point a large subsection of the American public:

            1. Thinks voting doesn’t matter beyond the liar it installs.
            2. Sees voting based on supposed party ideology is a joke.
            3. That because of 1 & 2 voting is basically about who the government pisses on for the next four years.
            4. Wants people they don’t like pissed on for a change.

            All of that has been pent up under voting for the lesser evil and due to a confluence of a really bad case on #1 after the 2014 elections and an opportunist in the form of Trump has come to a head.

            Yelling that Trump is a opportunist (ie, not a conservative) is a weak argument in the face of #1-4. If you cannot damage the opportunist you have to damage the events that provide the opportunity. Right now it seems like the GOP is fighitng over:

            a. Coopting Trump to keep the goodies flowing
            b. Demanding everyone pretend the events that provided the opening don’t exist because Trump is a lot like the people in a who were the standard bearers of the GOP more often than not for 30+ years

            No one is fighting for:

            c. Actually act like you care about what your voters want, act like you won an election even after a government shutdown (your current excuse for inactivity), and follow through on a promise or three.

            Or at least don’t fight to re-authorize the ImEx bank (that we couldn’t let that die tells me how much success conservatives have had in moving the GOP to the right) and expand H-2B visas.

              1. A GOP Congress, unlike the Obama presidency, is constrained by the Constitutional limits on its authority.

                1. “Power of the purse”. The Founders answer.

                  They’re limited by what they want to do.

                  1. They’ve tried that and the MSM framing of the narrative convinced them it is a disastrous route to march.

                    While many of us disagree with that, we aren’t the ones making the death march.

                    1. House could fund govt one department at a time, daring the Senate or Obama to kill them. Fact is that both parties and both Houses actually like monstrous ‘omnibus’ bills and continuing resolutions to fund govt.
                      Makes it easier to hide the graft and mutual back-scratching from the rubes.

                    2. I believe they tried that last session and Reid blocked the bills in the Senate by filibustering, demanding a budgetary vote.

                      House conservatives shut down the process forcing/enabling Boehner to turn to Pelosi for deciding votes.

                    3. No, we elected them to do precisely that. If they refuse to do it because of corruption or cowardice, then what, pray tell, is the use of an election?

                    4. Apparently “we” failed to convince them that that is what a significant majority of “us” intended. Some of them seemed to think they had been elected to compromise rather than shut down the government.

                      Shocking, I know.

                    5. And if they had said that when they were trying to get elected, and gotten elected anyway, there would have been nothing to say.

                      They didn’t. They LIED, and said elect us and we’ll stop Obama. That was the offer, and we accepted, and handed over our valuable vote.

                    6. Anybody who accepted that “promise” was ignoring the structure of our system of governance; the most any could “promise” was to try to stop Obama. There are limited tools available for doing that, and and the other side has a say in it as well.

                      If you say “they lied” you ought also acknowledge it was a not credible lie, and what does that say about any who believed it?

                    7. Except that they DID have a way to stop Obama, outlined in the Constitution, which they knew was there when they ran, and they then refused to use it out of personal and political cowardice and dishonesty.

                    8. Steve, politically they couldn’t impeach him. First it would do nothing, as it did nothing with Clinton. Second, it would tarnish the republicans for a generation.

                    9. Has nothing to do with impeachment; defund his crap and shut down as necessary. Unpopular? Sure. They didn’t run for Homecoming King / Queen.

                    12. “Has nothing to do with impeachment; defund his crap and shut down as necessary.”

                      Defund? How? Remember, Democrats hold enough seats in Senate to block passage of any appropriations bills that do not contain “adequate” funding, Obamacare was funded on auto-pilot and thus can’t be defunded, and the president has already proven willing to a) veto bills he thinks do not provide adequate funding b) shut down the government and let DNC operatives with bylines scream about Republicans being unreasonable.

                      Unlike not getting to be Homecoming Queen, in this case “unpopular” means being in the minority for at least a generation if not forever as Obama radically remakes the voter pool in the absence of any legislative restraint.

                    13. Every time there has been a government shutdown, or near shutdown, Congress (GOP specifically) has been blamed. Whether that’s rational or not (it takes disagreement by both Executive and Legislative) it is the political reality.

                      So if the GOP shut down the government, they would have been blamed for anything, and everything. And, as happened the last couple of times, because the Executive gets to decide how the shutdown is spread out, the most politically negative (for the GOP) aspects of the lack of funding would have been used.

                      We need to remember that most voters, particularly the LIVs, aren’t of the ‘that government governs best that governs least’ point of view. It’s hard not to believe that everyone is like us, but “wae’s like us? Damn few, and they’re a’ deid.”

                      So, maybe, you’d get a shut down government for at most two years (not really, a few months at most), but at the next Congressional election the GOP would be voted out, and the Dems would almost certainly have a supermajority.

                      Short term thinking doesn’t work. We need to think long term. Or to use Thomas Sowell’s idea, we need to think beyond Stage One. It’s not as if there would be a government shutdown and suddenly every voter would be convinced that we’re right.

                      As the Beautiful, but Evil, Space Princess noted above, we need to adopt incrementalism.

                    14. You need to be more specific in such arguments. If by a Constitutional weapon you mean impeachment, how would that have gone down with the Democrats holding a Senate majority, able to determine what does and does not come up for a vote? How would it have gone down with Democrats holding enough Senate seats to maintain a filibuster?

                      Do you doubt for a moment that Obama was acting precisely in alignment with Senate Democrats’ purposes?

                      Is it not possible we’d have seen a landslide of Democrats and their MSM proxies decrying the racist GOP wasting the Congress’ time instead of addressing the real problems afflicting the American people?

                      If you are going to call for impeachment you need to say it explicitly and outline a scheme by which it doesn’t blow up in your face 99 times in 100.

                    16. “So if the GOP shut down the government, they would have been blamed for anything, and everything”

                      The last time they got the blame, the next election was horrible — for the other side.

                    17. Largely because the shut-down ended well before the election, and the Dems conspicuously governed against the national interest. A 1-in-100 occurrence only a fool bets on happening again. You’ve committed a post hoc, ergo propter hoc error.

                    18. Well, that’s your assertion, anyway. I have just as much analysis that says otherwise.

                    19. The last time the government was shut down, the shutdown was over a year prior to the next election. Out of sight, out of mind for voters. It lasted about two weeks, and served no useful purpose, the ACA was still funded.

                    20. Supporting: the folks who are mad about the gov’t shutdown and aren’t us-but-liberal are the same ones that thought the Republicans controlled Congress absolutely, not that they had part of part.

                      I know that I mentioned, here, the conversation with a lady who functionally thought Harry Reid was a Republican.

                    22. From memory:
                      She was going on an epic rant about how the Big Nasties in DC had stopped the bill and they weren’t doing X, Y and Z.

                      I piped up something like ‘Nah, Dirty Harry Reid is the guy who keeps killing the bills– they keep sending them up, and he keeps refusing to even let anybody vote on them. He’s a Democrat, probably owned by the Vegas mob.’ (Or something similarly deflecting from her being able to throw fits.)

                      It switched it from “Republicans suck” to “politicians suck,” even though all the stuff she was complaining about was Dem based.

                    23. I certainly understand the frustration here – yes, perhaps the demonstrative actions that Congress has generally refused to pursue (Make him veto stuff, over and over again. Pass per-department appropriations and authorizations instead of omnibus bills, and make him veto those individually for the departments that he demands be funded differently.) would have been enough to satisfy the base that they had tried, but bottom line it would have been just that: Demonstrative theatrics, not actually stopping anything. I’m just not sure the electorate that sent the Rs to DC would have been happier with “we tried really hard” rather than the current line of “we did do some stuff, but we also were smart in playing the media games.”

                      On the other hand, I keep hearing how the Rs got blamed for the shutdowns, and reaped the terrible whirlwind from those horrible horrible times ow woe, but when I actually look at the election record, I don;t really see that. Sure, maybe the R leadership got snarky stories written about them, but at the polls they were not thrown out but in fact reelected, and put in the majority, and then added to their majority. I’m having trouble seeing the actual cost paid by the Rs.

                      My bottom line is I never expected this to be a two-year fix – the damage done, and the doors opened into lots of chaos in the future, will take some time to undo. If we are lucky, the combination of a R Congress and any flavor of actual-R President will let some of this be rolled back if they don;t slack off like they did under GWB. If we get either the Dowager Empress of Chappaqua or The Hairpiece, Congress will have to start damn well blocking stuff – none of this “it’s the will of the people” crap when either one of them will make Obama look restrained and practical.

            2. Yes, they’ll pass single payer with Trump at the helm. Look, Herb, I see the press herding us towards him. They will be at his beck and call as he gives them what he wants.
              NO one is pretending there isn’t a reason people are flocking to Trump, but a lot of that is the press. Cruz has been faithful to those who elected him. Do you ever hear that?

              1. I do.

                Maybe you missed where I said I don’t support him, I don’t want him, and I think he’ll be a disaster. I don’t need to be convinced.

                What I don’t think is that merely screaming “he’s not a conservative and he’s been a progressive all his life” is going to work because it is missing the entire point and, possibly, even feeds his narrative.

                Cruz has been faithful. I even said up thread I’m probably voting Cruz in the GA primary (if I don’t it’ll be because I wrote in my own name…the three people I prefered over Cruz are already out). However, the very thing that gives Trump an opening, the out and out routine betrayal by the GOP of its base voters, hamstrings Cruz.

                Read what you wrote about Trump supporters (outside the burn it all down camp) being objectively LIV. Well, what do LIV voters who tend right know about the GOP? That the GOP will sell them out for a bike path much less real money. What do they know about conserative politicians? That they are GOP first. What do they know about Cruz? Cruz is a conservative GOP Senator. What do they, then, conclude about Cruz? That he’ll sell out conservative voters for a bike path much less real money.

                Trump is the cancer of GOP feckless metatestisizing. Claiming he’s like he’s just like the benign tumors of the GOP but dangerous (which, in fact, is the exact truth…he’s like a lot of the party in his progressive leanings but possibly more dangerous) is trying to convince a metatestisizing tumor to become benign. Better to have removed the polips to avoid any metatestisizing in the first place.

                It’s late for the later and we’ll probably need political chemo but until the benign tumors are gone we’re just pretending we’re not sick and waiting for the next one to bad.

                So, indeed, I concede everything said about Trump in the entirity of the NR issue. I contend it does not matter and until we get that and think of new ways to strike at Trump all we’re doing is making him look like the hero on the white hourse fighting the faithless establishment…at best ineffective and at worst counter-productive.

                1. “what do LIV voters who tend right know about the GOP?”

                  That they’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic bitter clingers with sticks up their assizes.

                  They don’t know the “That the GOP will sell them out for a bike path” because they are Low Information Voters. Again with the assuming facts not in evidence.

                  Nor do LIVs know or care what National Review says. Because they are Low Information Voters.

            3. I can readily envision several ways Trump could effectively impose single-payer. If you think briefly about what precedents Obama has set, so could you.

              Given that a GOP congress’s repudiation of that would have to hold enough Senate seats to impose cloture on a Dem filibuster, much less hold the two-thirds of the House and Senate required to override, your proposition falls several lengths short of any customary standard of reasonable.

              1. I can readily envision several ways Trump could effectively impose single-payer.

                A presidential finding that 21 is the new 65 (pushing everyone into Medicare)?

                An executive ruling that everyone who is a citizen was in the unorganized militia in time of war over the last 15 years, and as such is found to be a veteran and directed to go to the VA if they don’t want an IRS audit?

                A direction to the IRS to intensively audit all health insurance companies for their compliance with every jot and tittle of all laws, regulations, and imaginary whisperings into the ears of federal bureaucrats, with the objective of making them quit, then declaring a “healthcare emergency” and using emergency powers to do whatever he wants?

                  1. Ayup — I didn’t want to put any ideas out into the ether, but for a philosophy in which words have no fixed meaning, anything is possible.

      2. Yes!!
        Incremental. Push a little here, push a little next set of primaries, keep pushing, and trying to educate.
        Jumping off the cliff, because one isn’t getting what one wants immediately is extremely foolish.

    2. Heck, even Jeb! would govern to the right of Barry The Super Genius.

      Not really all the high a bar for comparison.

    3. Whether a candidate would govern to the right of Trump is actually less important to me than that he or she be a basically sane and willing to accept the limits of the office as well as the powers. Trump is a vindictive piece of work who either believes his own lies as soon as he spouts them, or thinks we’re too stupid to remember what he said the day before. No, I don’t think Trump would be quite as far left as Obama – but while Obama might be out for his own ego & legacy, Trump appears to function according to “I want what I want – now.” I suspect he’d be incapable of working either with Congress or with foreign countries.

  51. Saying that Trump and Sanders are simply drawing support from the ignorant is shortsighted.

    They are addressing real issues – those being that both parties have chosen to ignore the lower middle class and social conservatives.

    Both parties agree on free trade pacts – which have demonstrably negatively impacted manufacturing in this country. Legal immigration really does, intuitively and practically, increase competition for jobs with local labor. I’ve hired plenty of H1b and the notion that lowered wages, and the ability to avoid raises, doesn’t play a big role is just idiotic. I mean, maybe immigrants like working for 20% less and maybe our ‘yougotagreencard’ raises were just coincidence…but, if you believe that, I’d like to interest you in some novel investment opportunities… Similarly, they agree on bailing out big banks – which corresponds to paying off bad bets with taxpayer money. And on massive military spending in a world with weaker enemies than before. And, well, both parties make fun of white manufacturing workers who haven’t fared well over the past few decades.

    Those people have a right to be angry – given that their leaders farmed those manufacturing jobs out to overseas. This isn’t exactly a libertarian issue – except insofar as everyone in this nation should be free to buy from cheaper outside sources…and free to work wherever they choose.

    Right now, it really isn’t about principled libertarianism or communism, just about a large section of the nation’s voters who have gotten the shaft for decades. So, yah, populism is on the rise. That may or may not be a bad thing. It is, however, inevitable.

    The reckoning has started. I suspect it won’t end until some of these policy choices are addressed.

    1. As a rule, a Demagogue is a person with all the wrong answers to real problems.
      And just because a person is talking about a real problem does not automatically mean they have the right solution. Dear Dreaded Cthulhu, so many people cannot separate the two. Talking ’bout problems is easy- fixin’ them’s the hard part.

      1. That seems to be the mode for the tyrannical impulse lately – “Y Solution seems really, really scary” is answered by “Do you deny that Problem X is a problem?!”

        I swear, the day they cut formal logic out of the curriculum…

        1. The “logical” chain: Person A’s finger hurts. Person B spots a splinter in the finger, and makes the suggestion that the best course of action is to remove the entire arm by using a dull hatchet. Person A suggest that amputation may be a little extreme. Person B says “do you deny that you have a splinter in your finger, and something needs to be done? Besides, Person C wants to remove your arm using a set of fingernail clippers- my dull hatchet would be much better for the job!”

          1. Brilliant analogy. I’m going to use that next time it comes up. Which, given it’s an election year, will be within the week.

        2. Beware the man who has the same solution to any and all problems.

          Big Government is no more a universal solution than is Mommy tiss boo-boo.

  52. Sarah,
    Power Line today has an interesting post on Arthur Schlesinger’s The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (published in 1949), notable for these quotes (among others):

    “It is this final fatuity [about human nature and becoming an emotional creed] of progressivism which has turned it into, if not an accomplice of totalitarianism, at least an accessory before the fact. . . Too often the Doughface really does not want power or responsibility. For him the more subtle sensations of the perfect syllogism, the lost cause, the permanent minority, where he can be safe from the exacting job of trying to work out wise policies in an imperfect world. Politics becomes, not a means of getting things done, but an outlet for private grievances and frustrations.”

    And:

    “Ask a progressive what he thinks of the Mexican War, or of our national policy toward the Indians, and he will probably say that these outbursts of American imperialism are black marks on our history. Ask him if he regrets that California, Texas, and the West as today part of the United States. And was there perhaps some way of taking lands from the Indians or from Mexico without violating rights in the process? Pushed to it, the progressive probably thinks that there is some solution hidden in the back of his fantasy; but ordinarily he never has to push the question that far back, because he never dreams of facing a question in terms of responsibility for the decision. For him it is sufficient to dissociate himself from the Mexican War so long as he is not required to dissociate himself from the fruits of victory. . . ignorance is never any bar to certitude in the progressive dreamworld.”

    THEY DON’T MAKE LIBERALS LIKE THEY USED TO

  53. In 2008 I was astonished to see our Congress pass a bill they had no authority to debate, let alone vote on. Nowhere in the Constitution will you find any authorization for such a bill to even be written. Conservatives sat on their hands while all this happened, and nobody raised the BS flag, claiming “well … we’re not the majority”. BS. Unconstitutional is unconstitutional, the same Constitution under which you were elected, the one you all vowed to uphold.

    Give us the House. we’ll work on repealing, or at least de-funding this horrible bill. BAM — you got it.
    Er, well. Give us the Senate. We’ll be able to do much more about that bill. BAM — yours.
    Now give us the White House. We promise that bill is toast!

    So, I guess I’m one of the unwashed, uneducated, hoi polloi (I give myself that label) who hasn’t seen the movie. I like the way this one is starting, and I hope the denouement is better than we’ve been getting. Hope.

    Big government conservatives are what the GOP establishment have slowly become. There is no Republican party anymore. We are told that reaching across the aisle is a must, but nobody believes compromise means sellout. There’s an obvious difference between give and take, and total abandonment. We conservatives haven’t changed, our party simply turned their back on us. They moved, we didn’t. Anger and frustration are hellacious motivators, and I am motivated mostly due to Democrats … the ones carefully disguised as Republicans in Congress.

    As a Trump guy, I can take being called uneducated (heck, I don’t have a degree), or racist, or misogynist (although I hate that word, thank you Elton John), and all the derogatory labels (none are from this page), and use them as fuel. But when a political party is attacking their own front-runner, doesn’t that raise a flag? Attacking Trump isn’t working, so go after his followers. I say sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will only re-fuel me.

    End of rant. Let me just say that some of the most beautiful parchment is the parchment on which our founders wrote the Constitution. Too bad they wasted all that ink.

    1. What the heck do you want us to say when you’re voting for someone who promises to rule by decree, someone who wants to “rule”? You think that will restore the constitution? Can I have some of what you’re smoking?
      This is like watching the beginning of a romance movie and saying “I wonder if they’ll end together.” But we’re supposed to respect that? HOW?

      1. I am motivated mostly due to Democrats … the ones carefully disguised as Republicans in Congress.

        And we KEEP ON TELLING YOU that Trump is also a Democrat carefully disguised as a Republican. He tried to use eminent domain to kick Vera Coking out of her house to build a parking lot for his casino, and HAS DEFENDED THAT ACTION. Meanwhile, Cruz has an actual voting record that matches what he promised the people of Texas, and that’s almost entirely in line with what conservatives want. I don’t like his vote on the H-1Bs, but that’s about it. Ditching a good candidate like Cruz in order to support a freakin’ DEMOCRAT is the epitomy of cutting your nose off to spite your face.

        Yes, I’m yelling a bit. I’m freakin’ FRUSTRATED that people keep thinking Trump is anything but a Democrat who’s faking it, when his ENTIRE record so far is liberal. You know those conservative words that keep coming out of his mouth? His ACTIONS don’t match them.

        1. Gah. Clicked the wrong Reply link. I’ll re-post that as an answer to the right person.

        2. A person with no morals like Trump has no problem saying things that you think sound good. That’s what people like him do!
          Funny how people who can see through Obama’s pandering to voters cannot see when the EXACT same thing is happening to them.

    2. I don’t care about his followers, but Trump is a LIFE-LONG LIBERAL DEMOCRAT.

      I hate both parties, I say a pox on both their houses (Literally, I want them all to get painful boils on their naughty bits) BUT TRUMP IS NOT A FUCKING SMALL-GOVERNMENT GUY. HE’S AN AUTHORITARIAN FUCKING STATIST AND HE’LL TAKE US THE SAME FUCKING PLACE OBAMA IS, JUST WITH DIFFERENT FUCKING TRAPPINGS.

      He’s not what you think he is. I get being angry. I’m angry. I get wanting SOMEONE, ANYONE different. But Trump made his money manipulating the system to get what he wants. He’s as corrupt as anyone in Washington.

    3. Let me get this straight. You claim compromise = sellout, but are publicly and vocally supporting a guy who is proud of “making deals.”

      You claim to be “conservative,” but support a guy who would relieve you of your Second Amendment rights without due process.

      You would support someone who would gladly relieve you of your property by using government force against you through eminent domain, and you claim to oppose big government?

      You claim to be sick and tired of establishment GOP, and yet you’re supporting a guy who’s bragging the establishment is lining up behind him.

      And you claim our Constitution is “beautiful,” while supporting a bragging assclown, who publicly promises to violate it?

      No wonder Trump’s drooling acolytes are considered some of the most frothing, blind, stubborn, and uninformed supporters in this election! He may have been joking about shooting someone in broad daylight and not losing support, but there’s a grain of truth in what he says.

      You don’t have to be educated to see what’s before your eyes. It’s not about education, but about willful ignorance, which you have just displayed in spades!

      People like you don’t deserve the damn Constitution, if you’re too stupid to defend it from an obvious foe!

      1. Point of order: I don’t deserve the constitution either. When younger, I was fortunate to have the protection of the constitution and the societal consensus of ours that backed it. My efforts to preserve, protect and defend the constitution do not measure up to the benefits I have gained.

        Deserve isn’t the question. The question is whether the supporters of the constitution or the enemies of the constitution shall prevail in this conflict.

        If we win, the constitution will protect the good and innocent as well as some of those who frankly deserve a bullet in the neck. If we lose, something precious will be gone from this Earth.

    4. “As a Trump guy,” You have failed to say how anything Trump has said will address any of these problems.

      “As a Trump guy,” you are advocating ridding the barn of rats by setting it afire.

      The Monster from the Id is not your friend.

      1. The Monster from the Id is not your friend.

        …but what if the Abominable Snowman likes it and decides to hug it and hold it and call it “George”?

    5. Gary, that is what sleezy salesmen and Demagogues do. They tell you what you want to hear, but have their fingers crossed, the fine print blurred, and will gladly sell you and the other “Trump guys” to China for a buck a piece.
      Ponder, this- if Mike “Big Gulp” Bloomberg were to declare himself to be a born again, Constitution loving, border closing conservative Republican, would you believe him? How about Hillary?

      1. I doubt anyone would simply because they’ve held office and we saw what they did with it. Major difference: voters gave them power and what they did with it was bad. As I said a while ago, part of Trump’s appeal is “all (except Fiorina) already lied to us to get power and then proved they were lying once in office. Trump may be lying, even probably is, but he hasn’t had his one bite and turned around and bit those that elected him.”

        Not saying that’s the best logic, but it is a factor. The biggest reason Cruz is doing as well as he is is that he got elected to go to Washington and fight, and that’s exactly what he did.

      2. I said I didn’t have a degree, I didn’t say I was stupid. Bloomberg could die and be resurrected 3 days later, I still wouldn’t vote for him. Hillary?…

    6. The ink wasn’t wasted. That lasted at least a generation, which isn’t bad as such things go.

      I may end up apologizing for things I have said of Trump. I can and will attack who I want. Anyone who takes the polls too seriously after 2014 has not been paying attention.

    7. I am motivated mostly due to Democrats … the ones carefully disguised as Republicans in Congress.

      And we KEEP ON TELLING YOU that Trump is also a Democrat carefully disguised as a Republican. He tried to use eminent domain to kick Vera Coking out of her house to build a parking lot for his casino, and HAS DEFENDED THAT ACTION. Meanwhile, Cruz has an actual voting record that matches what he promised the people of Texas, and that’s almost entirely in line with what conservatives want. I don’t like his vote on the H-1Bs, but that’s about it. Ditching a good candidate like Cruz in order to support a freakin’ DEMOCRAT is the epitomy of cutting your nose off to spite your face.

      Yes, I’m yelling a bit. I’m freakin’ FRUSTRATED that people keep thinking Trump is anything but a Democrat who’s faking it, when his ENTIRE record so far is liberal. You know those conservative words that keep coming out of his mouth? His ACTIONS don’t match them.

        1. Like I said, I don’t like his vote on H-1Bs; he’s not 100% perfectly in line with my preferred positions. (But nobody is.) But here are a few holes I will poke in Diana West’s article:

          1) She claims that Cruz “distort[ed] and mock[ed] what is widely perceived to be the constitutionally conservative, or “originalist” understanding of the Constitution’s “natural born” clause.” She doesn’t explain that position in this article, so I followed her link to her earlier article about the “natural-born” position — where I learned that the position she thinks is “widely perceived” is “to be a natural-born citizen, both your parents must be citizens at the time of your birth.” Which makes me go “Huh? In what world is that widely perceived as the originalist understanding?” Certainly not anyone I’ve seen before. She’s the first person I’ve ever seen taking that particular position. It’s not widespread, nor is it the constitutionally conservative position she claims it is. It’s not an unreasonable position per se — it’s not unreasonable to think that “natural-born citizen” could mean that — but very few people do. Almost everyone seems to think that it means “a citizen at birth, as opposed to one who was naturalized later on.” So Cruz is not mocking the constitutionalist position.

          2) She says “Cruz has a good record defending the Constitution as a lawyer, but where’s his record as a senator?” Well, here are a few of his Constitution-defending votes. (I’ll post links to each of them, but in a separate comment so that this one doesn’t go into moderation):

          – He voted against expanding the non-discrimination act (already much abused) to sexual orientation and “gender identity”, which would have led to even greater abuses. He also voted for an amendment (which ultimately failed) that would have carved out an exception for religious organizations. (Without that amendment, a Christian college that opposes homosexual behavior on religious grounds could have been forced to hire a practicing homosexual, which would have been a violation of the First Amendment.)

          – He voted for limiting the FBI’s power to conduct mass data collection, and be more targeted in what they ask for warrants for. This still allowed them to gather data they need on known threats, but reduced their ability to go do “fishing expeditions” against, say, Americans whose politics the government didn’t like. He was in the minority of Republicans for this one, incidentally.

          – He voted to repeal Obamacare (and the Senate and House passed the bill, forcing Obama to veto it).

          – He voted against increasing the debt limit (yet again) in 2015.

          – He voted against funding the Export-Import bank (a provision that was hidden away in a bill about roads and truck drivers).

          I didn’t cherry-pick any of these votes. I looked at the list of Cruz’s votes at Project Vote Smart, and clicked on all the ones that seemed relevant to Constitutional issues. One of the ones I clicked on (a bill about limiting interest on student loans) didn’t seem like it had any obvious Constitutional implications, so I didn’t include it. (Cruz voted for the bill, in case you were wondering). ALL of the others were the first ones I found, and on all of them he voted for protecting the Constitution. For a random sample, that’s a pretty good record!

          And yet, Diana West never mentions any of these. She says that “that the consistent, reliable and trusted defender of the Constitution is AWOL” on defending the Constitution in the Senate — yet my random sampling of Cruz’s votes on matters where the Constitution was at stake found that he voted to defend the Constitution quite often. A fact that demolishes Diana West’s argument, and that she left out of her article. Which doesn’t speak well of her: either she didn’t do her research, or she knew that her premise was false and chose to ignore the evidence that it was false. Neither one of those possibilities is flattering to her as a political commentator.

          3) She criticizes Cruz for voting for the Corker-Cardin bill after he’d spoken out so forcefully against it. Here I actually agree with her: his vote wouldn’t have mattered in the slightest given that it passed 98-1, but it would have at least been a symbolic gesture. So I can’t poke much of a hole in this one claim of hers, except to say “How much does a symbolic gesture matter, really?” But it does matter, at least a little. I also agree with her about a couple of his votes that I don’t particularly like, like the H-1B expansion.

          So there you go. I agree with her on a few minor points, but disagree with her on the MAJOR premise of her argument. She says “Cruz has been AWOL on defending the Constitution”, but his voting record shows the complete opposite. And she proves earlier that she’s looked at his voting record, which means that that glaring omission on her part can only be deliberate. And that is a grave sin against intellectual integrity.

          My next comment will contain the links to all Cruz’s votes that I mentioned here. It will go into moderation due to excessive links, so you won’t see it at first; it might be a few hours until Sarah spots it and releases it from moderation.

        2. Links to back up what I said in my 11:32 AM comment:

          – Cruz voted against expanding the non-discrimination act: https://votesmart.org/bill/17391/46286/135705/employment-non-discrimination-act-of-2013#.VqeVAK8xD0o

          – Cruz voted for limiting the FBI’s power to conduct mass data collection: https://votesmart.org/bill/20475/54019/135705/uniting-and-strengthening-america-by-fulfilling-rights-and-ensuring-effective-discipline-over-monitoring-usa-freedom-act-of-2015#.VqegKK8xD0o

          – Cruz voted to repeal Obamacare: https://votesmart.org/bill/20529/54637/135705/restoring-americans-healthcare-freedom-reconciliation-act-of-2015#.Vqea_q8xD0o

          – Cruz voted against increasing the debt limit in 2015: https://votesmart.org/bill/19826/54266/135705/bipartisan-budget-act-of-2015#.VqebO68xD0o

          – Cruz voted against funding the Export-Import bank (a provision that was hidden away in a bill about roads and truck drivers): https://votesmart.org/bill/20486/54061/135705/fixing-americas-surface-transportation-fast-act#.Vqebu68xD0o

    8. Gary, you complain about Obamacare. I get it; I’m extremely unhappy, too, and unhappy that the Republicans only got a repeal to Obama’s desk a few weeks ago for the first time.

      But why are you supporting a guy who thinks Obamacare doesn’t go far enough?!

      Trump’s on record as supporting a Canada-style single-payer program, this cycle. If Congress doesn’t have the authority to do Obamacare – and I agree it doesn’t – then it damned sure doesn’t have the authority to do single-payer!

      The Donald is not going to govern the way you think the country should deb governed. He will ignore the Constitution in favor of making deals to get things done, and that’s exactly what you think is wrong with the system.

      Take a step back and look at Trump. Measure his positions against the Constitution. Then ask yourself if electing him will really produce the results you want.

  54. Annnnd Gary for the win – unfortunately.
    I wish I could remember where I read a really good piece about cold anger – might have been in a link at the Cold Fury blog. It pretty well summed up the Trump popularity in a nut shell. ABIR cold anger was the kind that stayed locked up in a person because they felt they were the only one who felt that way.
    In the old days of the one-ideology press, there was no way for one angry person to connect with others like themselves because of media mind-set.

    Then came the internet and talk radio. Suddenly angry people realized that they weren’t the only ones. So they started talking to each other about how to fix the things that were making them angry. And eventually a smart salesman figured out that if that if all those angry people could be harnessed and focused, they could be a very powerful force – for good or bad – but a force to be reckoned with…
    …And meanwhile the aristocrats sat around telling themselves that if the peasants didn’t like the bread being fed them, let them eat cake if they could find it. That didn’t turn out so well for France.
    And it probably won’t here either.

    1. Do not forget that Anger is also one of the Feelz.
      Being motivated by the Feelz is bad even if it’s right wing feelz.

      1. Feelz are only a problem if irrational. Rational feelz include happiness at the triumph of a citizen against a persecuting bureaucracy, grief at the death of a child, and anger at injustice.

        Rightly ordered feelz are of great aid in doing the right thing, as C. S. Lewis observed.

  55. I’d just like to gripe that I’m tired of political discussions that sound like this:

    Not directed at present company, just kvetching to a sympathetic audience. 🙂

  56. Pingback: Two interesting posts | Forks and Hope

  57. A very disturbing though occurs to me.

    If Trump were to win, govern from the left, while all the media prates about how “right wing” he is, the ensuing disaster–basically doubling down on the current mess–would be blamed on the right ensuring a Democrat stranglehold for at least a generation.

    But, I have to wonder if anyone non-left could improve things enough in a single Presidential term for people to recognize the improvement in the face of media hostility that will try to present whatever does happen as disastrous (in converse to the way they attempt to whitewash the mess under Obama)?

    Why, yes, I do believe in the no-win scenario and have to wonder if that might not be what we’re facing.

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