Tag: politics

Moderate loyalty

Remember when it was the mostest importantest election ever and it was vital that disappointed conservatives and libertarians rally around the Republican nominee? Yeah, well, it seemed those who appealed to party loyalty to get the disaffected right to vote for Bush, Dole, Bush, McCain, and Romney are suddenly singing a very different tune now that it is becoming apparent that Donald Trump is going to be the nominee:

Conservative donors have engaged a major GOP consulting firm in Florida to research the feasibility of mounting a late, independent run for president amid growing fears that Donald Trump could win the Republican nomination.

A memo prepared for the group zeroes in on ballot access as a looming obstacle for any independent candidate, along with actually identifying a viable, widely known contender and coalescing financial support for that person. The two states with the earliest deadlines for independent candidates, Texas and North Carolina, also have some of the highest hurdles for independents to get on the ballot, according to the research.

“All this research has to happen before March 16, when inevitably Trump is the nominee, so that we have a plan in place,” a source familiar with the discussions said. March 16 is the day after the GOP primary in Florida, a winner-take-all contest that Marco Rubio supporters have identified as a must-win to stop Trump’s early momentum.

I wish I could say that I’m even a little bit surprised. But I’m not. It is rather funny, though, that the rules the moderates installed to permit a Romney clone to keep out the Ronulans are going to seal Trump’s victory sooner rather than later.

Never trust a moderate. Never permit a moderate in a position of leadership. And the moment he snipes at you, treat him exactly like you would treat an enemy taking a shot at you.

Racial identity is dispositive

As I said, I always find Sarah Hoyt’s take on things both interesting and amusing. In this case, it’s because she completely fails to see how utterly predictable her response is, or how she is unwittingly providing observable support to the very argument she intellectually rejects:

One thesis I have seen a lot in recent months at The Blog Which Is A Misspelled Religious Latin Term is, to boil it down to its harshest formulation, “Shoot the Moderates”, because essentially the community there has given up on the idea that anything less than the extremism therein advocated will work, and that any attempt to restrain, control or suspend that extremism — for the sake of preserving future strategic alliances, for example — amounts to shooting your soldiers in the back when they look like they might be winning. From a certain point of view, I understand this reaction, but to me it is essentially saying, “We are sliding backwards so fast that we may as well disconnect the brakes,” without worrying about what will happen if you do successfully reverse the slide only to rocket back up the slope and go over the peak too fast. Reasonable men can argue in good faith over the difference in judgment required, but it strikes me as the stance of an unreasonable man to insist that even to ask to have the argument is sufficient grounds for rejecting it.

    accordingtohoyt | Reply   

THIS. and that’s why I said “they’re killing the republic I love and it feels like they’re killing me.” And when we respond we get told we’re insulting THEM. Oh, for heaven’s sake people, we’re just trying to understand why otherwise rational people would respond so irrationally. We would like you to leave us our republic. We’d like to keep it. And it’s not like I haven’t been fighting the progs all along. It’s not like I haven’t been in the trenches. What more could I do? Defend and imaginary “white race?” Screw that. any philosophy that enshrines your pasty white middle aged guy over Dr. Sowell is sick. I will not shut up. I will not submit.

The white race is not imaginary. America as an Anglo-Saxon nation is not imaginary. What is imaginary is the “proposition nation” version of America that she, the Portuguese immigrant, erroneously believes America to be. Red Eagle and I cover this in moderate detail in Cuckservative: How “Conservatives” Destroyed America.

We’re not killing “the republic that she loves”. It never existed in the first place. Nations are not places, governments, or ideas. Nations are people. Nations are, as the Founding Fathers wrote, posterity.

Sarah may want to consider herself their posterity, but she is not and they would not regard her as such either. Her position requires denying both history and reality, and her postnationalism is as deluded as any progressives. And it’s hardly a surprise that the immigrant declares immigration, the very issue that is propelling Trump to the White House, isn’t a problem.

“Look, immigration is not even a real thing anymore.”

So the largest invasion in human history isn’t “a real thing anymore”? Sarah, with all due affection and respect, it’s not our opinion that is not reflective of reality. And Trump will not be Obama’s third term. I don’t know what he will be, but he won’t be that.

That being said, I do rather like the sound of “Shoot the Moderates”. They’re certainly not good for much else besides target practice. But here is the very important point so many people fail to understand: we’re not the extremists. We’re the only viable alternative to the extremists.

Finally, Sarah, when you “respond” by telling people they are “confused” and “crazy” and “monsters” and “buffoons” and irrational and insane, you are insulting them.

“Something big has happened”

A surprisingly astute article from a dyed-in-the-wool member of the US establishment, Robert Reich:

Something very big has happened, and it’s not due to Bernie Sanders’ magnetism or Donald Trump’s likeability.

It’s a rebellion against the establishment.

The question is why the establishment has been so slow to see this. A year ago – which now seems like an eternity – it proclaimed Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush shoe-ins.

Both had all the advantages – deep bases of funders, well-established networks of political insiders, experienced political advisors, all the name recognition you could want.

But even now that Bush is out and Hillary is still leading but vulnerable, the establishment still doesn’t see what’s occurred. They explain everything by pointing to weaknesses: Bush, they now say, “never connected” and Hillary “has a trust problem.”

A respected political insider recently told me most Americans are largely content. “The economy is in good shape,” he said. “Most Americans are better off than they’ve been in years. The problem has been the major candidates themselves.”

I beg to differ.

Economic indicators may be up but they don’t reflect the economic insecurity most Americans still feel, nor the seeming arbitrariness and unfairness they experience.

Nor do the major indicators show the linkages Americans see between wealth and power, crony capitalism, declining real wages, soaring CEO pay, and a billionaire class that’s turning our democracy into an oligarchy.

Median family income lower now than it was sixteen years ago, adjusted for inflation.

Most economic gains, meanwhile, have gone to top.

These gains have translated into political power to rig the system with bank bailouts, corporate subsidies, special tax loopholes, trade deals, and increasing market power – all of which have further pushed down wages pulled up profits.

Those at the very top of the top have rigged the system even more thoroughly. Since 1995, the average income tax rate for the 400 top-earning Americans has plummeted from 30 percent to 17 percent.

Wealth, power, and crony capitalism fit together. So far in the 2016 election, the richest 400 Americans have accounted for over a third of all campaign contributions.

Americans know a takeover has occurred and they blame the establishment for it.

Damn straight it has. And damn straight they should. They’ve created a system that is every bit as centralized and bureaucratic as Soviet communism and they called it “capitalism” and “free trade”.

It isn’t. It’s financial rape and plunder.

The coming Trumpslide

Historical model predicts Trump will win the general election in a landslide:

The odds of Donald Trump becoming America’s next president currently range from 97 percent to 99 percent…. Norpoth predicts that Trump has a 97 percent chance of beating Hillary Clinton and a 99 percent chance of beating Bernie Sanders.

Norpoth announced his prognostication on Monday night during Stony Brook Alumni Association event at the SUNY Global Center in Manhattan.

“The bottom line is that the primary model, using also the cyclical movement, makes it almost certain that Donald Trump will be the next president,” Norpoth said, according to The Statesman. “When I started out with this kind of display a few months ago, I thought it was sort of a joke,” the professor told the alumni audience, according to the student newspaper. “Well, I’ll tell you right now, it ain’t a joke anymore.”

“Trump beats Hillary 54.7 percent to 45.3 percent” in terms of popular vote.

Well, it’s obviously now time for all those pragmatic Republicans whose only concern is electability to get on the Trump train, isn’t it. After all, we have been repeatedly assured that principles are not important, winning elections is important.

No, that’s not it

It’s amazing how many so-called pundits and analysts are casting about, looking everywhere except at the real reason, in their attempts to explain why Trump supporters are angry:

Bernie Supporters’ Hatred Of Work Is Why Trump Supporters Are So Mad.

The cultural disconnect about the value of work explains why there’s an open revolt in both parties and the future seems so uncertain…. Indeed, it is precisely this cultural disconnect about the value
of work that explains why there’s an open revolt in both parties and
the future seems so uncertain.

If any one issue defines this election, it’s economic stagnation.
Many Trump supporters in the GOP feel left behind by the
twenty-first-century economy. They’re angry about it, because our
“follow your bliss” culture doesn’t begin to appreciate coal miners or
people who work in brake disc factories, even as it obsessively
venerates empty celebrity and people like social media executives and
hedge fund managers who are filthy rich in spite of the fact their
contributions to society aren’t very tangible.

Combine that with the
self-loathing these guys feel from, say, being laid off and having to
fake a fibromyagia diagnosis so they can collect disability and feed
their families, and you have tremendous resentment.

Trump was not only canny enough to speak to this, but he still
remains arguably the only candidate to forthrightly talk about issues
such as immigration that are feeding this anxiety, even if he speaks
about them with great ignorance. It’s regrettable in many ways, but it’s
also not a mystery why 30 percent of Republicans are lining up to
support a lunatic who has (allegedly) made a lot of money and wields
considerable influence despite now being despised by our cultural
betters.

What a prodigiously stupid headline. And what a transparently futile attempt to redirect that anger to the conventional Bad Democrat Good Republican channel. As usual, conservatives have it completely backwards. Americans are struggling economically, in part due to the economic policies that have caused their real wages to peak in 1973. But that merely exacerbates the anger that they feel at their country being subject to the largest invasion in human history, an invasion of 60 million that is nearly 16 times larger than Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union.

They want their country back. They want to see America be great again, not prostrate before the boots and burqahs of foreign invaders.

That is why they are angry.

Why Trump will win

It’s really quite simple, as this commenter at Althouse explained it:

Hillary says “Vote for me because I’m a woman.”
Bernie says “Vote for me and I’ll give you some of his.”
Ted Cruz says “Vote for me and I’ll kick over all those rice bowls in Washington”.
Donald Trump says “Vote for me and the emergency room at your local hospital won’t look like a bus station in rural Mexico”

Might not be fair but I think I know who is going to win that argument.

To this we can add: Marco Rubio says “Vote for me because I am electable as determined by the Republican establishment.”

People want relief from pain. And the pain from losing their country to 60 million invaders is much greater than the constant Washington shenanigans that few understand anyhow. 

A world-class tantrum

Matt Walsh is exceedingly butthurt by the fact that Donald Trump just took his third state in a row:

Dear Donald Trump Fan,

I’m going to tell you the truth, friend.

You say you want the truth. You say you want someone who speaks boldly and brashly and bluntly and “tells it like it is” and so on. According to exit polls in South Carolina, voters who want a president who “tells it like it is” are an essential demographic for Trump, just as they’re an essential demographic for Judge Judy and Dr. Phil. You say you want abrupt and matter-of-fact honesty, and you want it so much, you’ll make a man president for it regardless of whether he defies every principle and value you claim to hold.

Personally, I think you’re lying, and I’m going to test my theory. In fact, I believe I’ve already proven my theory because you’re now offended that I called you a liar. But Trump has called half of the Earth’s population a liar at some point over the past seven months, and you loved every second of it. You said you loved it not out of cruelty or spite, but out of admiration for a man who’s willing to call people liars — even if he’s lying when he does it.

Yet here I am employing the same tactic — accurately, I might add — and you recoil indignantly. Over the course of this campaign season I’ve said many harsh words about you and your leader, all of which I stand by, but you’ve never respected my harsh words, or the harsh words of any Trump critic. Indeed, you insist that our tough criticism of you only vindicates your support of Trump, while Trump’s vulgar and dishonest criticism of everyone else also vindicates your support of Trump. You’re tired of people being critical, but you love Trump because he’s critical. You say you like Trump for his style, but you hate his style when it’s directed at him or you.

It’s epic. You really have to read the whole thing to believe it, let alone appreciate it. But wait, there’s more! I happened to tweet about it.

Supreme Dark Lord @voxday
The butthurt. The salt. The tears. The meltdown of @MattWalshBlog is simply delicious. Deal with it, cucky.

Matt Walsh ‏@MattWalshBlog
Thanks for sharing my stuff

Supreme Dark Lord @voxday
Are you kidding? I made certain to archive it before you come to your senses and delete it. That was a self-evisceration!

Now, I don’t know much about Matt Walsh, but I do know where he stands socio-sexually now, because like every other Gamma bitterly licking his wounds, he didn’t hesitate to leap in and take a shot when he thought he saw the opportunity.

Supreme Dark Lord @voxday
Even as the political elite sneer at them, Trump tells the poorly-educated that he loves them. And they will love him back. #Trump2016

Matt Walsh ‏@MattWalshBlog
So you need politicians to tell you they love you? Are you an actual toddler or are you just pretending?

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
No, Matt, the difference is that they know you hate them and think you are better than them. That’s why you’re irrelevant.

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
Also, you’re projecting, Matt. That was a world-class tantrum you threw. That’s why so many people are laughing at you.

Klejdys ‏@klejdys
What @voxday is doing to @mattwalshblog now is illegal in 38 states.

That little exchange explains something I didn’t understand when I first read the article/tantrum, which is why Matt Walsh doesn’t merely oppose Donald Trump politically, but harbors genuine hatred for him. As a Gamma, he’s a Secret King, which is why he is simultaneously contemptuous of Trump and envious of Trump’s success.

Anyhow, enjoy the salt. I certainly did.

The ceiling just broke

How much farther can Trump rise? Is 25% his ceiling, or his base?
– Red State

Nevada is a notoriously difficult state to poll and the caucus format could hurt Trump’s turnout.
– Slate

Yes, Trump leads all the national polls, and he keeps busting through what look like ceilings. But (unlike Dean) he doesn’t lead in Iowa, and his ceiling there looks very stable: He’s been hovering around 25 percent since September, and he’s never broken 30 percent…. There is no credible scenario in which a consistent 30 percent of the vote will deliver the delegates required to be the Republican nominee. So for Trump to lose, he doesn’t actually have to collapse; he just has to fail to expand his support. 
– Ross Douthat, New York Times


Yeah, well, that ceiling may have looked very stable, Ross. But looks can be deceiving.

Nevada Results:

45.9 Trump
23.7 Rubio
21.5 Cruz
6.1 Carson
3.6 Kasich

Stopping Trump now looks like a steeper proposition after he trampled Rubio and Cruz on Tuesday, scoring huge wins across nearly every cross-section of the Republican Party. Entrance polls show Trump won moderate voters and very conservative voters by huge margins. He won in rural and urban areas, and among voters with only high school diplomas and those with post-graduate degrees.

Trump even handily bested Cruz among his supposed based of evangelical Christians, and, though the sample was small, topped his two Cuban-American opponents among Hispanic caucus-goers.

Trump reveled in the details. “I love the evangelicals!” he yelled. ““Number one with Hispanics,” he bragged.

And he pointedly called out the home states of his remaining rivals — Texas for Cruz, Florida for Rubio and Ohio for John Kasich — as places he now leads in the polls and will win the coming weeks.

It looks like Cruz is effectively done. He’s a Christian who can’t win evangelicals and a Cuban Spanish-speaker who can’t win Hispanics. And there is no way, none, that all of his support is going to go to Rubio. I wouldn’t be surprised if more than half of it either went to Trump or goes home.

I have no idea why Kasich is still in. And Carson badly misplayed his hand; he should have thrown his support to Trump in return for a Cabinet position before South Carolina. Now Trump doesn’t actually need him, although it would still be wise to reach out to Carson and secure his support just for the optics.

Hillary’s stalking horse?

If so, Donald Trump is doing a very, very poor job of it:

The Fox News-sponsored controversy over Hillary Clinton’s use of a
private email server will become another anti-Clinton national tragedy
if Donald Trump wins, the Republican front-runner told Fox News’ Sean
Hannity at a town hall Monday night.

Hannity
asked if Trump would order his attorney general to investigate Clinton
if he wins the White House in November, and Trump said he would “have no
choice,” because “in fairness, you have to look into that — she seems
guilty.”

He momentarily tried to walk his comment back, saying,
“but you know what, I wouldn’t even say that,” before saying what he
just said he wouldn’t say again. “But certainly, it has to be looked
at,” he said. Trump later added that “she’s being protected, but if I
win, certainly it’s something we’re going to look at.”

Wheels within wheels, my friends. Wheels within wheels.This post also serves as an open thread to discuss the Nevada Republican caucus and its results.

In a state where only 33,000 of the state’s 400,000 GOP voters turned out to caucus in 2012—a mere 7%—the campaigns of Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and one-time candidate Jeb Bush got organized early, snapping up talented operatives and key endorsements, while beginning caucus trainings last fall in the hopes that a strong organization could overcome Trump’s momentum.

But Trump appears to have steamrolled through all of that, dominating not just Nevada’s unreliable polls, but capturing the excitement and buzz in the race with his visits here. In interviews with dozens of Republican voters across the state over the last week, many said without hesitation that they were standing firmly with Trump and had given little thought to the other Republican candidates.

It’s going to be interesting to hear the convoluted explanations of how winning three states in a row is the certain death knell of the Trump campaign.