Tag: politics

Mytheos Holt performs a post-mortem on the quixotic Evan McMullin campaign:

For the forces that backed him, McMullin was not the first, the second, or even the third choice for his appointed task—namely, to prevent Donald Trump from winning the presidency in the name of donor-driven True Conservatism™. Rather, the forces that supported McMullin leaped from one anti-Trump hero to another, starting with the plaintive-sloganed Jeb!, continuing with the vapid dreamboat Marco Rubio, and finally ending up desperately lining up behind Ted Cruz because at least he went on their cruises.

What separates McMullin’s backers from other Jeb!, Rubio, or Cruz supporters, however, was their total unwillingness to accept that sometimes a primary just wouldn’t go their way. In many cases, this was because they belonged to a class of people for whom losing wasn’t supposed to happen because of who they were. This was particularly true of Bill Kristol, arguably the man who built what little meager infrastructure there was for McMullin, hoping to put up someone, anyone, who would stop the GOP from rejecting its self-appointed neoconservative establishment rulers, and their domesticated coterie of social conservatives, who, goshdarnit, were just too Christian and principled to limit immigration, or to attack the interests of major metropolitan donor industries.

And so it was that people who had never had to fight to win a primary decided they were going to try and fight back against someone whose only experience was winning a primary he was never supposed to win by sheer force of will. First, they did it by attempting to force a brokered convention, which presumably would have produced someone like Marco Rubio or Paul Ryan as the nominee. All they accomplished was screaming helplessly from the floor of the RNC like a certain highly distressed member of the #Resistance.

Not to be deterred, they then decided to follow in the august footsteps of George Wallace and John Anderson, and run a third party protest candidate to ensure that no True Conservative™ would have to sully his or herself with a vote for Donald Trump. And for a while, their push looked like it might be something to worry about. Names like Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, or even future Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis were bandied about with excitement. That is, until Romney, Sasse, and Mattis got wind of it and quickly made it plain that on no account were they involved in this, and would you please stop calling, Bill Kristol?!

But even after this, McMullin still wasn’t the first choice. That honor went to the august National Review columnist David French, who entertained the idea for just long enough to get a segment on Fox News complaining about how rude Trump supporters were. Then he promptly fled.

Only then, and finally, after casting about in the “darkness” of the dawning Age of Trump, the disappointed neoconservative Captain Ahabs realized they had to run someone if they wanted to look serious. Enter Evan McMullin, former House Republican Conference Chief Policy Director, former CIA agent, former investment banker, and man with nothing better to do because he was possibly the only unmarried Mormon over the age of 19 in Washington. And so, NeverTrump looked at McMullin, squinted, thought he looked enough like David French, and said: “OK, fine, you’ll do.”

Of course, quite rapidly it became clear that the chances of McMullin actually becoming president were someplace between zero and hahahahahahahaha . . . wait, what? But becoming president was no longer the point. It was all about sinking Trump, to prove to those awful populists who had dared to think for themselves, and not the way Bill Kristol and Bill Kristol’s donors wanted them to think, that they were servants, and could never live in the Big House as equals.

And so, a simple strategy for denying Trump the presidency was devised: McMullin would try to carve away enough of his voters in states with high Mormon populations so that even if Trump won a couple of swing states, the losses among Mormons would cancel out Trump’s victory. Whether McMullin won those states, or Clinton won them, was beside the point—which was, and only ever was, to hurt Trump. And, for a few moments, the strategy looked like it might work in Utah, right up until the Mormons thought it through, realized how much trouble they’d gone through making themselves part of the Republican coalition in the first place, and decided they’d rather not self-excommunicate for the sake of panicked Beltway grifters. Ultimately, McMullin came in third in Utah, behind even Hillary Clinton.

As has so often been the case, the light of the God-Emperor has revealed the true character of many a cuck and an America Secondist. I find myself wondering if McMullin even has the self-awareness to be ashamed of how he permitted himself to be used by Bill Kristol to screw over so many sanctimonious conservatives.

Then I recall who those sanctimonious conservatives were and how obnoxious they are, and I remember that I don’t care.

The South Korean president says the God-Emperor merits the Nobel Peace Prize:

South Korean President Moon Jae-in has shaken off a suggestion that he receive the Nobel Peace Prize, saying that U.S. President Donald Trump “can take the Nobel prize” as long as the Koreas receive peace in return.

Moon made the comment Monday in response to a suggestion that he receive the award by the widow of late South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 after a summit with then North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

Moon held a summit with current leader Kim Jong Un last week in which Moon and Kim, the son of Kim Jong Il, walked together across the tense border and agreed to a raft of initiatives meant to ease animosity. Moon responded to the suggestion of Nobel glory by saying, “President Trump can take the Nobel prize. The only thing we need is peace,” according to the South’s presidential office…. Also on Monday, the North’s parliament adopted a decree to sync its time zone with South Korea’s this Saturday. North Korea’s official news agency said the move was made at the proposal of Kim, who found it was “a painful wrench to see two clocks indicating Pyongyang and Seoul times hanging on a wall of the summit venue.”

President Trump still needs to Drain the Swamp and Build the Wall before he can nail down Rushmore status, but he has already accomplished considerably more than anyone had a right to expect.

There is no question that the next Nobel Peace Prize should go to Donald Trump:

North and South Korea will seek a peace ‘regime’ to end the 68-year Korean War, their leaders announced today, after Kim Jong-un agreed to a ‘complete denuclearisation’ during historic talks. Kim became the first North Korean leader to step into the South for 65 years as he met with President Moon Jae-in for a peace summit.

The two sworn enemies exchanged a warm greeting at the 38th parallel in the truce village of Panmunjom before the pair held talks and planted a commemorative tree together. The dramatic meeting has been seen as a precursor to planned talks between Kim and US President Donald Trump next month.

This afternoon, Kim and Moon embraced warmly after signing a statement in which they declared ‘there will be no more war on the Korean Peninsula’. The two countries said they will push for talks with the US, and potentially China, to officially end the 1950-53 conflict, which stopped with an armistice and left the Koreas still technically at war.

They also agreed to rid their peninsula of nuclear weapons but did not provide any new specific measures outlining how to achieve the objective.

Kim said: ‘We are going to be one again, as we share the same history, the same language, the same culture, the same blood. We are going to happily look back at the hard times in the past when we achieve a new future. No pain, no gain. Let us go forward, step by step for the bright future together.’

This is a staggering development of the sort we have not seen since 1989. I expect the Nobel committee will give the award to Kim and Moon, of course, but the world knows who really deserves it. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Donald Trump is already one of the greatest presidents in the history of the United States of America.

And he hasn’t even delivered on either of his signature campaign promises yet. But he will.

We can expect more of this inter-party conflict as whites cease to become the only identity group with influence who can be safely targeted:

California Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, the prominent #MeToo activist now under investigation for groping and sexual harassment of former legislative staffers, was reprimanded by former Assembly Speaker John Perez in 2014 for making racially insensitive comments directed toward Asians.

Perez confirmed to POLITICO on Saturday that he had to “strongly admonish” Garcia after she made comments against Asians in a closed-door Assembly Democratic Caucus meeting in 2014 — the same year in which she also acknowledged using homophobic slurs aimed at Perez, the first openly gay speaker of the California State Assembly.

Sources familiar with the incident say Garcia’s anti-Asian remarks came during a legislative battle that arose when Asian-American community activists successfully lobbied to defeat a Democratic proposal to overturn California’s ban on affirmative action in college admissions. They argued that such a move could hurt Asian student admission rates.

Perez in mid-March 2014 announced a move to return the bill to the Senate without any action from the Assembly, effectively blocking its advance. Garcia, the sources said, erupted in anger during a tense meeting of the entire Assembly Democratic caucus.

“This makes me feel like I want to punch the next Asian person I see in the face,” according to sources present at the meeting and other legislative sources who were told about the comments in the immediate aftermath.

It is beginning to look like there will be a Hispanic-Jewish alliance battling the Asians for control of the Democratic Party. Which is why LA Mayor Garcetti, who is the poster boy for that alliance, will be heavily pushed to be the next Democratic candidate for President.

Reince Priebus is determined to return the Washington Generals Republican Party to its more customary role of permanent defeat and retreat:

Priebus acknowledged Trump is, in some ways, not like any other Republican president. Trump is “extremely unique” in his personal style, Priebus said, and his campaign themes refocused the Republican Party on a populist message…. “I think post-Trump, the party returns to its traditional role and its traditional platform. It’s a Trump brand and he owns it and he has a way of protecting it,” Priebus said.

He’s proud to be a Republican because at least he knows he’ll lose.
He’ll surrender to the Democrats and he’ll defend the right to choose.
He’ll gladly stand up next to you and give up your liberty.
Cause there ain’t no doubt he loves to lose, God bless the GOP!

Like the Tea Party, both Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan proved to be Congressional failures, if not frauds:

In the aftermath of the Democratic waves in 2008, Ryan, McCarthy, and Eric Cantor presented themselves to Republican voters as The Young Guns – a new generation of conservatives largely untainted by the poor decisions of the Bush Administration, ready to lead in a time when Republicans were downtrodden and Democrats ebullient about the possibilities of the Obama years. Of the three, only Ryan had something particularly interesting to say: he was a blue-eyed salesman for the cod liver oil of entitlement reform. And he achieved something truly amazing: he got Republicans, at least for a time, to grasp that third rail. They voted for his reform plans reluctantly at first, but once they discovered the “throw granny off a cliff” ads had little power, their cowardice gradually dissipated.

Ryan was the most important Republican in Washington from 2009 to 2016. He now seems like a throwback from a bygone era, when voters expected their politicians to be straight-laced, honest, and sincere. He was serious, and dedicated himself to trying to tell stories to the American people about the fiscal direction of the country – stories which voters mostly ignored because they always seemed to involve hard news and histograms. Wisconsin nice and a truly decent person, Ryan’s approach was doomed in an era that values none of those things. It values the ferocity, the abandon of confrontational politics, not grand bargains and compromise.

We’ll see if the same proves to be true of Kevin McCarthy or not. Ryan seemed to start off well enough, but he rapidly disappeared into the weeds of cuckservatism and rendered himself irrelevant even before he became an ineffectual candidate for Vice-President. He proved to be timid and feckless non-leader in a time of intensifying cultural war.

And while I always thought it was unattractive, doesn’t the ticket of Romney-Ryan look even more ludicrous in hindsight than it did at the time? Even if Ryan is not being retired at the God-Emperor’s behest due to a Dennis Hastert-style problem.

It’s hard to know how much of this is genuine and how much is political smokescreen. But at this point, I’m a little surprised Trump hasn’t simply fired Mueller, Rosenstein, and everyone else who is part of, or playing along with, the legal charade:

President Donald Trump is considering firing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, multiple people familiar with the discussions tell CNN, a move that has gained urgency following the raid of the office of the President’s personal lawyer.

Such an action could potentially further Trump’s goal of trying to put greater limits on special counsel Robert Mueller.

This is one of several options — including going so far as to fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions — Trump is weighing in the aftermath of the FBI’s decision Monday to raid the office of Michael Cohen, the President’s personal lawyer and longtime confidant. Officials say if Trump acts, Rosenstein is his most likely target, but it’s unclear whether even such a dramatic firing like this would be enough to satisfy the President.

Trump has long been angry at top Justice Department officials, who he feels have not done enough to protect him from Mueller’s ongoing probe. But two sources said the raid could mark a tipping point that would prompt the President to take more aggressive action against the special counsel.

Firing Mueller could throw Trump’s presidency into crisis and not all of Trump’s legal advisers are on board. One source said Rosenstein wouldn’t be fired.

But some of Trump’s legal advisers are telling him they now have a stronger case against Rosenstein. They believe Rosenstein crossed the line in what he can and cannot pursue. And they consider him conflicted since he is a potential witness in the special counsel’s investigation because he wrote the memo that justified firing former FBI Director James Comey. The legal advisers also believe they have successfully argued to the American public that the FBI is tainted and think they can make the same case against Rosenstein.

A senior administration official said the White House has been discussing potential options with key congressional Republican leaders, fearful of “blindsiding them.” A person familiar with the conversations says a top congressional Republican advised the White House not to fire Rosenstein.

What a surprise that the do-nothing Republican leaders are fearful and advise doing nothing. That’s like saying that a fish recommends water. But President Trump not only has the legal authority to fire these jokers, thanks to Obama, he also has the legal authority to declare them enemies of the state and order drone strikes on them.

Both Fidesz and Jobbik outperform expectations in Hungary:

8 million Hungarians went to the polls to elect a 199-seat parliament in the 2018 general elections, which many expected would see the incumbent Prime Minister Viktor Orbán- and his right-wing Fidesz party – win his third consecutive term. And, as covered here on numerous prior occasions, Orban’s campaign had been centered around anti-immigration policies, an especially sensitive topic not only in Hungary and Central Europe, but across the old continent.

His main competitors are Gergely Karacsony, a candidate for the Socialist and Dialogue parties; and Gabor Vona of the far-right nationalist Jobbik party, or rather were because according to the Hungarian election office website, Prime Minister Orban’s ruling Fidesz party has won a sweeping, landslide victory according to preliminary results with 69{3f291be52f3892c625db69bf603a5e6e4e8a242d20ba3e933d9d39378ad5a5d2} of the votes counted.

• Fidesz with 49.5{3f291be52f3892c625db69bf603a5e6e4e8a242d20ba3e933d9d39378ad5a5d2} of party-list votes, matching most pre-election opinion polls
• Formerly far-right Jobbik second with 20{3f291be52f3892c625db69bf603a5e6e4e8a242d20ba3e933d9d39378ad5a5d2} of list votes, Socialists at 11.9{3f291be52f3892c625db69bf603a5e6e4e8a242d20ba3e933d9d39378ad5a5d2}
• LMP and DK parties also poised to clear parliamentary threshold based on partial count

In other words, Orbán’s Fidesz party has secured an absolute majority, and may even reach as much as a two-thirds majority of 133 seats, enough to pursue a constitutional amendment, making life for George Soros in Hungary even more unbearable.

Can Jobbik really be called “far-right” or “extreme” when it has nearly twice the electoral support as the Socialists?

This is what the Right needs to be doing throughout the West. Embrace nationalism. Reject immigration. It’s not that hard and it will be successful, because everyone can see that the neo-liberal world order has failed, that immigration is dreadfully destructive of both the economy and the society, and that those who are pushing the globalist vision of one race, one world, one government are literally and materially evil.

Orban’s strong win could boost other right-wing nationalists in Central Europe, in Poland and in neighboring Austria, and expose cracks in the 28-nation EU.

Of course it will. Nationalism is rising and the Alt-Right is inevitable, because the truth cannot be obscured indefinitely. Communism has failed. Socialism has failed. Neo-liberalism has failed. Conservatism has failed. Constitutionalism has failed. Civic Nationalism has failed. Multiculturalism has failed. Feminism has failed. Globalism has failed. Once the impossible has been eliminated, what remains, however improbable or unpleasant, must be the truth.

Notice that all of the alternatives are lies, knowingly and consciously told for the purpose of deception. That is not an accident or a coincidence.

It’s really not hard to figure out. No one believes anything the media says anymore.

It’s not surprising that after little more than a year in office many people who voted for a president still support him. But it’s also surprising that a president who has been the object of more negative reporting than any in our history still enjoys something like the same middling base of support he had before taking office. Unless it’s the negative reporting that is the problem, which I suspect is very largely the case. You can only ask adults to participate in the fiction that a retweet of a wrestling GIF is a credible threat of violence against some nerd reporters at a cable station or delight in what you hope will be the failure of American trade policy before they decide to tune you out. Very largely this had already happened by Inauguration Day, but now the work of MSNBC and The New York Times and PolitiFact is complete. Millions of Americans do not know the difference between what is true and what is false and have decided that they do not much care either.

There was, I like fondly to imagine, a different course that might have been taken here. It is just possible, I suppose, that members of my profession could have exercised their reasoning faculties to decide what in the administration was good, what was bad, what was unremarkable or indistinguishable from what any modern president would do, what was painfully idiotic, what was, perhaps, evil. We chose not to exercise this responsibility. Instead we decided to indulge in our live-action roleplaying fantasies about being brave selfless journos taking on a mean demagogue because we love the Constitution so much.

The morons in the media may have the memory of goldfish, but those of us who still remember how they said Bill Clinton getting it on with an intern in the Oval Office was no big deal aren’t inclined to take their solemn declarations that the God-Emperor banging the occasional Playmate or porn star more than a decade ago is an imminent threat to the Constitution.

The media killed its own credibility. Now they are Fake News and everyone knows it, even those who pretend to believe them. As Glenn Reynolds says, their chief occupation is now deciding what facts they are going to try to hide from the American people.

The God-Emperor continues to be more popular with the US electorate than Obama ever was.

President Donald Trump’s approval rating hit 50 percent in Rasmussen’s daily presidential tracking poll Monday, which puts him ahead of his predecessor at the same point in the presidency. The last time Trump hit 50 percent in the Rasmussen tracking poll was February 27. At the time, he was generally within the 47-50 percent range. The President’s approval rating outpaces that of former President Barack Obama, who sat at 46 percent in Rasmussen’s tracking poll on April 2, 2010.

But the more important thing about Trump’s persistent popularity is the way this reveals the increasingly limited ability of the US media to influence the way the American people think. They are throwing literally everything and the kitchen sink at this man and yet none of it sticks to him.

At this point, he could go down to the border, personally machine gun invading immigrants, and his popularity would increase 10 percent. The Stormy Daniels affair reveals that we have reached the point of negative returns for media hit pieces on the president.

The Washington Post is complaining that Trump is becoming increasingly hardline on immigration.

President Trump’s sharp shift in tone on immigration this week from would-be dealmaker back to the hard-line stance he campaigned on comes amid signs that some of his conservative base is growing impatient for him to fulfill promises on the border wall and other measures to crack down on illegal immigration.

Over the past two days, Trump has issued declarations on Twitter that shut the door on a legislative deal to protect young undocumented immigrants from deportation, blamed Democrats for the failure, demanded the Mexican government take stronger action to close the border, and conflated a refu­gee crisis from Central America with the Obama-era deferred-action program that Trump ended in the fall.

Here is hoping that we will see truly hardline policies put in place soon. His conservative base is right. It is time to send them back and build the wall.