Tag: politics

Credit where credit is due

It’s always embarrassing when writers who have never worked a single day in their lives at any business that actually makes anything try to opine on matters related to management:

Conservative writer Roger Simon argues that all “remaining Never Trumpers” must apologize for being wrong about the president. He chalks up Trump’s “astoundingly successful” first year to the fact the president is a “quick study.”

But what evidence is there that Trump has actually learned the art of presidential management?

Aside from the mandatory flattery required of Republican elected officials, there’s remarkably little testimony that Trump has involved himself in the process of governing. Tax reform was carried across the finish line by the GOP congressional leadership. Net neutrality was repealed by independent Republicans at the Federal Communications Commission. Foreign policy is a more mixed bag. If the president deserves credit for the defeat of Islamic State, it’s because he let “the generals” do their thing. On the other hand, credit (or blame) for recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel or pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris accord on climate change certainly goes to him.

In general, it seems to me that Trump’s success (such as it is) is less attributable to sudden mastery of the issues than to staying out of the way of rank-and-file Republican policymakers, activists, and bureaucrats.

What Goldberg fails to recognize is that staying out of the way of competent subordinates is the key to the art of all successful executive management. Donald Trump is the exact opposite of Richard Nixon Lyndon Johnson, who didn’t hesitate to get on the phone with a lieutenant in the field in Vietnam in setting a ridiculous new standard for micromanagement in foreign policy.

Micromanagers like LBJ reliably fail for the obvious reason that no one can know everything, master everything, prioritize everything, and be everywhere at once. Only Reagan had similarly developed delegation skills, but he did not choose his subordinates as well as Trump has, and more importantly, Reagan did not hold his subordinates accountable the way Trump does.

None of this should be a surprise. Back in November 2016, I observed, “The God-Emperor is absolutely ruthless when it comes to taking action on underperforming team members. He doesn’t care how it looks, he just shuffles the deck and draws.”

That’s why I expected, and continue to expect, the Trump presidency to be vastly more successful than anyone anticipated. It’s why I expect him to easily win re-election in 2020. The great CEOs have always been able to master the delicate balance between staying out of their subordinates’ way and stepping in to deal with matters themselves when personal intervention becomes necessary. And lacking business experience as he does, Jonah completely fails to understand Trump’s demonstrated mastery of this balance, as he absurdly credits the Republican establishment for Trump’s success.

To listen to Trump’s cheerleaders, the biggest obstacle to conservative victories is the party establishment, when in reality it looks more like it’s running the show.

Not only is the GOPe not running the show anymore, it has been largely broken to heel by Trump, as evidenced by the Republican Congress’s sudden ability to pass tax reform after repeatedly failing to do anything. The large number of pre-2018 retirements and resignations will further demonstrate that the GOPe is no longer in control, as will the success of Trump-endorsed candidates in the Congressional and Senatorial elections.

Alabama: It’s not technically over

The Alabama Secretary of State is still counting the votes:

December 18, 2017 – MONTGOMERY – Pursuant to Act 2016-450, regarding the identification and recordation of write-in votes, the Secretary of State has determined that the individual write-in votes cast in the U.S. Senate Election will be identified and documented for the results of Special General Election on December 12, 2017.

This decision on whether to count these ballots was made based on Act 2016-450 which provides, upon a determination that the number of write-in votes for Office of United States Senator is greater than or equal to the difference in votes between the two candidates receiving the greatest number of votes for the Office of United State Senator.

The difference, as of today, in the two candidates total votes received is 20,634 and the total number of write-in votes cast was 22,814. Upon the introduction of UOCAVA ballots and approved provisional ballots, these numbers are subject to change.

Upon completion of the count of write-in votes, the write-in votes are to be included in each county’s final canvass of results that will be certified to the Secretary of State on December 22, 2017.

Now, if these were normal times, it would not matter. However, the probability that there was significant voter fraud involved in creating that 20,634-vote lead for Jones may – MAY – turn out to be relevant here.  Or it may not. But the point is, Moore has not conceded and the Secretary of State has not certified the election, and this may be for a good reason.

It seems incredibly far-fetched, but there does seem to be something strange going on with the Alabama election count, and it won’t surprise me if we see more weirdness out of there before it’s finally over and someone is seated in the U.S. Senate.

The wind picks up

Is there a storm on the way? The Dailywire claims that “more than a dozen” Congressmen will be resigning before the end of the year.

An investigative reporter with The Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) announced on Friday that Congress’ human resources scandal is about to break wide-open and predicted that over a dozen members of the House of Representatives will resign.

DCNF reporter Luke Rosiak tweeted on Friday: “Congress’ human resources scandal is just getting started. I anticipate we will see the resignation of more than a dozen House members over harassment and secret settlements, and soon.”

Last week Rosiak broke the story that Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) had made a settlement with a former congressional aide that he fired after she reported being sexually assaulted at the business of a major campaign donor. The first congressmen to go down in the post-Weinstein era of sexual misconduct was Michigan Democrat Rep. John Conyers, who eventually resigned after accusations against him snowballed.

Mike Cernovich says the number may be as high as 50. However, based on what the chans are saying, this Congressional scandal will only be part one of three, as both Hillary and Obama are now reportedly in the investigative crosshairs. For what, I don’t know exactly, but it appears to be considerably more serious than the usual “lying to the FBI” sort of thing.

You will note that we have heard virtually nothing from either of the Clinton or Obama in recent weeks. This may be why.

Something turbulent this way comes

Mark Tapscott gives warning on Instapundit:

The journo community in the nation’s capital has been rumbling in recent days about a bombshell report supposedly being prepared for publication by the Washington Post that will ruin the careers of dozens of Members of Congress, from both parties.

Fasten your seatbelts, folks.

That may explain why the heat on the God-Emperor has been turned up to eleven. And yet it smells like… pizza? The chans have been predicting something of this sort coming for months, so it’s interesting to see that word has now leaked out into the DC press.

Never trust the moderates

They will sell out you and their previously professed principles in favor of their new friends on the other side in a heartbeat, as the True Finns learned the hard way.

The Finns Party, formerly called “True Finns”, rose from obscurity during the euro zone debt crisis with an anti-EU platform, complicating the bloc’s bailout talks with troubled states. It expanded into the second-biggest parliamentary party in 2015 and joined the government, but then saw its support drop due to compromises in the three-party coalition.

This June, the party picked a new hard-line leadership and got kicked out of the government, while more than half of its lawmakers left the party and formed a new group to keep their government seats.

Huhtasaari, 38, who was picked as deputy party leader in June, said voters were still confused after the split-up but that the party would eventually bounce back.

“The game is really brutal. The biggest parties want us to disappear from the political map. No one is in politics looking for friends.”

The Finns party ranks fifth in polls with a support of 9 percent, down from 17.7 percent in 2015 parliamentary election, while the new “Blue Reform” group, which has five ministers, is backed by only 1-2 percent.

This is why moderates can only be permitted in support positions and should never be allowed in positions of leadership, policy-making, or personnel. They love to talk about principles for the reason that they don’t actually have any, and use these nonexistent principles as an excuse to break promises and commit betrayals whenever it suits them.

It’s not necessary, and it’s not possible, to spurn them entirely. There are enough of them that they have to be accepted. And this is fine, this is not a problem, so long as they are not allowed into any positions of power or influence despite their best efforts.

That being said, it won’t be surprising if the True Finns end up outperforming their 2015 results, while their short-sighted sell-outs vanish from the political scene.

Republicans never learn

The cucks are eager to bury Steve Bannon in light of Roy Moore’s apparent defeat in the Alabama special election:

The big loser in Tuesday’s Alabama’s special Senate election was not the Republican Party. They had already lost weeks ago, the moment the Washington Post wrote their (carefully vetted, in this instance) exposé of the thirty-year-old sexual proclivities of Judge Roy Moore.

It was checkmate from the start.  In this #MeToo era with politicians flying out the window as fast as you can say Conyers and Franken, the Republicans were damned if they did and damned if they didn’t — support Moore, that is.  And Moore didn’t do himself any favors with an execrable performance during an interview with Sean Hannity shortly after the allegations. He was, to put it mildly, not ready for prime time. To be honest, Moore sounded pretty dopey, even if he was innocent, which he didn’t come close to proving.

In many ways, the Republicans are lucky not to have Moore to deal with in Congress.  They can face obvious White House aspirant Kirsten Gillibrand and her merry band of hypocrites with a straight face.

No, the big loser Tuesday is Steve Bannon, the sometime movie producer cum finance expert cum political strategist that some claim put Donald Trump in office and then left the White House to better support the president from without, or so he said. In this instance — purportedly to do that, I guess — he went against Trump, who originally backed the more establishment candidate Luther Strange, to back one of Bannon’s own, Judge Moore.

Moore would have won if the cucks and the Republican establishment hadn’t joined forces with the Democrats to bury him. Now the cucks are crowing, cuckishly, in the belief that they have managed to turn back the nationalist, populist tide. After all, a defeat in the reddest of so-called “Red States” means that America is back to business as usual, right?

Wrong. All this new Tripartite Alliance accomplished was to alert millions of Americans that the Republicans and the Democrats are a single bi-factional ruling party whose interests are diametrically opposed to American interests. It also underlined the obvious fact that there will be no political solution to the identity politics that divide the American nation from the various other nations now striving for control of the imperial capital.

We are now one small step closer to the dissolution of the US empire. Not because Roy Moore was going to prevent, or even delay, that, but because the complete charade of representative democracy is that much more apparent to average Americans. We can safely anticipate more women, boys, and animals coming forward, decades later, in every election that the Democrats feel they have to win. The ever-forgetful media will be exultant over its restored electoral veto, unaware that there are now investigative reporters and information channels that are entirely outside its control.

Steve Bannon isn’t going anywhere. Neither is the God-Emperor. And neither of them has even seriously begun to fight. And then, there is the fact that the special election is not actually over.

Alabama special election

Roy Moore leads by 6 percentage points over Doug Jones with 37 percent of precincts fully reporting. 

52.3{1a6f90088d4f05ef35a4e876162d75ba3441d01e0adc6587c6637d9d7dba228b} Moore
46.3{1a6f90088d4f05ef35a4e876162d75ba3441d01e0adc6587c6637d9d7dba228b} Jones

The fact that Moore is winning despite the fact that the entire national media and half the Republican Party has been mercilessly attacking him demonstrates how much the media’s influence has faded in recent years.

Shock poll in AL!

I think they left out the part where 100 percent of the likely voters were Democrats:

Democrat Doug Jones holds a 10-point lead over Republican Roy Moore among likely voters in deep red Alabama. Greater party loyalty plus higher interest in the election among Democrats combined with more enthusiasm among Jones supporters gives him the advantage in the race to fill the U.S. Senate seat previously held by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

That’s according to a Fox News Poll of Alabama voters conducted Thursday through Sunday using traditional polling techniques, including a list-based probability sample with both landlines and cellphones.

Jones receives 50 percent to Moore’s 40 percent, with 1-in-10 undecided (8 percent) or supporting another candidate (2 percent) — which could make a difference Tuesday. That’s even truer with such an unconventional election with unconventional candidates.

Color me skeptical. Very, very skeptical. Sounds like more futile media magic to me.

Dems to the Frankengroper: resign

The Democrats have finally concluded that it is time for (((Al Franken))) to resign:

Fourteen Democratic senators and the DNC chief urged Sen. Al Franken to resign Wednesday following the latest sexual misconduct allegation against him. After the resignation calls, Franken’s office said the senator would make an “announcement” on Thursday. It didn’t elaborate.

 Earlier Wednesday, Politico reported that a former Democratic congressional aide is accusing the Minnesota Democrat of forcibly trying to kiss her 11 years ago, adding to a string of allegations against him. In a statement before the calls for his resignation started, Franken denied the latest accusation against him.

In a succession of statements Wednesday, 14 of Franken’s Senate Democratic colleagues — nearly a third of the party’s caucus — pushed for him to step down. Among them was Patty Murray of Washington, the third-ranking Senate Democrat.

Although it would be advantageous to Republicans if Franken tried to run for re-election, it would be even more satisfying to see the nasty little creep forced to resign in disgrace. His election was fraudulent and he never should have even been nominated by the DFL in the first place.