Tag: politics

You may not believe Donald Trump. But unlike all the other candidates, he is saying precisely the right things on immigration, on foreign policy, on war, on free trade, and on the existence of the American national interest.

I will seek a foreign policy that all Americans, whatever their party, can support, and which our friends and allies will respect and welcome.

The world must know that we do not go abroad in search of enemies, that we are always happy when old enemies become friends, and when old friends become allies.

To achieve these goals, Americans must have confidence in their country and its leadership again.

Many Americans must wonder why our politicians seem more interested in defending the borders of foreign countries than their own.

Americans must know that we are putting the American people first again. On trade, on immigration, on foreign policy – the jobs, incomes and security of the American worker will always be my first priority.

No country has ever prospered that failed to put its own interests first. Both our friends and enemies put their countries above ours and we, while being fair to them, must do the same.

We will no longer surrender this country, or its people, to the false song of globalism.

The nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony. I am skeptical of international unions that tie us up and bring America down, and will never enter America into any agreement that reduces our ability to control our own affairs.

NAFTA, as an example, has been a total disaster for the U.S. and has emptied our states of our manufacturing and our jobs. Never again. Only the reverse will happen. We will keep our jobs and bring in new ones. Their will be consequences for companies that leave the U.S. only to exploit it later.

Under a Trump Administration, no American citizen will ever again feel that their needs come second to the citizens of foreign countries.

I will view the world through the clear lens of American interests.

I will be America’s greatest defender and most loyal champion. We will not apologize for becoming successful again, but will instead embrace the unique heritage that makes us who we are.

I would like to get a copy of On the Question of Free Trade into his hands. I suspect he might find it very useful in the near term. In any event, read the whole thing. It’s a great foreign policy speech.


“We will no longer surrender this country, or its people, to the false song of globalism.”

How can you not support the man at this point?

Primaries today in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. Pennsylvania is the big one. If Trump does well there, it’s all but in the bag.

I wouldn’t be shocked if either Cruz or Kasich finally give up after today, if Trump does well enough.

This is an open thread to discuss the primaries and report results as they come in.

Ted Cruz demonstrates his anti-establishment bona fides by siding with John Kasich against Donald Trump:

Senator Ted Cruz and Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio have agreed to coordinate in future primary contests in a last-ditch effort to deny Donald J. Trump the Republican presidential nomination, with each candidate standing aside in certain states amid growing concerns that Mr. Trump cannot otherwise be stopped.

In a statement late Sunday night, Mr. Cruz’s campaign manager, Jeff Roe, said that the campaign would “focus its time and resources in Indiana and in turn clear the path for Governor Kasich to compete in Oregon and New Mexico.”

Minutes after Mr. Roe’s statement, the Kasich campaign put out a similar message. The Ohio governor’s chief strategist, John Weaver, said that his campaign would shift its resources to states in the West and “give the Cruz campaign a clear path in Indiana.”

Both campaigns said they expected allies and third-party groups to follow their lead, and a representative from the “super PAC” supporting Mr. Kasich confirmed late Sunday that it would not advertise in Indiana.

I very much doubt this is going to help them stop Trump. They’re operating in 2D while Trump is moving around in 3D. But it demonstrates my point about how Trump is on track to reach 1,237; his big win in New York has boosted him in Pennsylvania and California, the two states in which he needs to do well in order to go over the top.

While it’s true that Cruz hasn’t played nicely with the GOP establishment, it’s always been clear that he wants to be a part of it. Now he’s not bothering to pretend otherwise. He’s a smart guy, and he would have been a pretty good candidate several election cycles ago. But he’s still playing the game, and the time for playing the game is over.

Conservatives United Cruz Kasich. C.U.C.K.

Perfect.

A take on Trump that is entirely more interesting than my own on the man:

Trump is probably the least qualified candidate who ran for the Republican nomination this year. If you didn’t know that, you’d have to be a hermit to avoid finding it out. He also has far more delegates than any other candidate. I would think that would send a clear message to the Republican elite, particularly the country club establishment; but like the Bourbon kings of France restored after the Revolution, they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

Wouldn’t I want a more qualified, somewhat more experienced candidate? Well, of course. But the establishment wasn’t about to let anyone not within its ranks to get anywhere close to the nomination. In 1956 the goal was “anyone but Reagan” among the Republican elite. Now it’s anybody but Trump. Before Trump they made it clear to all: it’s going to be one of us, like it or lump it. We can deal with upstarts.

But they didn’t intimidate Trump, and now he’s laid all of their compliant candidates low, and they’re turning to an old enemy, Cruz, in despair. The notion is that he’ll “grow” in office; it’s for sure that Trump won’t grow under their definition of grow.

But in fact he’s likely to. He has some good advisors and he has a definite point of view that may be hard to discern because it’s masked by his blatant – loudmouthed and irritating, if you like – tactics. But he has never wavered on his desire to fill the Supreme Court with Justices as near in scholarship and view to Scalia as possible; that alone would be enough to get me to the polls for Trump if he’s nominated.

He has consistently said we need to turn control of the schools to the local districts and stop dictating to them from Washington. This has been taken as meaning that he doesn’t know what to do on a nation al scale. Well, I have news: neither does anyone else, and the attempt, even with the best of will, will always fail. The schools worked better, over all, when they were paid for by local school district taxes and run by local school boards elected by the people who paid those taxes. If you don’t believe that, get a copy of the California Sixth Grade Reader from a hundred years ago and compare it to your child’s present day ninth grade reader. Then weep.

No, he’s not a “movement conservative”, but I’m not sure I still am, and I was a protégé of Russell Kirk and Stefan Possony, and a friend of Bill Buckley and Willmore Kendall. I’ve been in that “movement” a long time. Long enough to see National Review use the egregious Frum to read most of us out of the movement.

Trump is not a movement conservative, but his inclination is to set goals and get people working on them, not to jail and fine them for not doing so. He understands that being served by mindless minions is not the path to glory or wealth. Compared to Hillary or Sanders or anyone in Obama’s train, I’ll take Trump any day. I would prefer someone with government experience – some, not one whose only experience is in government – but we seem to be fresh out of those. I suppose I’d rather have establishment country club Republicans than anyone likely to be nominated by the Democratic establishment even if a plague took all the present candidates; we tried that with Bush I, who cleared the White House of Reagan people the day after inauguration, and proceeded to saddle us with the Americans With Disabilities act and a new Federal bureaucracy; but that’s another story.

Trump is a pragmatic populist. I can live with that.

Considering the manifold failures of what we’ve been told are principled ideology, pragmatic populism is sounding pretty good right now. Whatever gets the borders closed and starts the respections. Say what you will about Dr. Pournelle, but he’s not only smart, he has accumulated a fair bit of wisdom along the way.

60.5 Trump
24.8 Kasich
14.7 Cruz

From the Decision Desk results, it looks as if Trump will take as many as 94 of the 95 delegates. So, obviously, the most important consequence is that it puts Trump back on track to win the 1,237 delegates he needs.

But the primary result also makes clear that Cruz is not a serious national candidate. No one who has observed the way he is attempting to lawyer himself into the nomination while getting repeatedly destroyed at the polls can possibly conclude that he is a viable Republican nominee, considering how he can’t win in either the more liberal northeastern states or more conservative southern ones.

His core constituency appears to be cuckservatives in states with sufficiently low immigration who are still unaware of the realities of the great issue of our day.

“New York will award 95 delegates on the GOP side, and 247 on the
Democratic. If Trump wins by one vote over 50 percent, both statewide
and in every congressional district, he will take all 95 delegates.”

Trump needs a big performance here to regain his momentum. This is an open thread to discuss the New York primary.