The tragic mistake of nominating Squirrel-Hair

Let's just start with a roundup of pieces by those who get it.

Peggy Noonan at the WSJ:

Fox News shows Mrs. Clinton with a 10-point lead, with Mr. Trump at 78% of the Republican vote, compared with Mitt Romney’s 93% in 2012. Mr. Romney won the white vote by 20 points; Mr. Trump is ahead by 10. “High-end Republicans are walking away,” says a GOP oppo guy. “Who is choking now?” The battleground states, too, have turned bad.

This is what became obvious, probably fatally so: Mr. Trump is not going to get serious about running for president. He does not have a second act, there are no hidden depths, there will be no “pivot.” It is not that he is willful or stubborn, though he may be, it’s that he doesn’t have the skill set needed now—discretion, carefulness, generosity, judgment. There’s a clueless quality about him. It’s not that he doesn’t get advice; it’s that he can’t hear advice, can’t process it or turn it into action.

“He’ll reach out, he’ll start to listen. He’ll change, soften.” No, he won’t. Nor will he start to understand that his blunders are a form of shown disrespect for his own supporters. They put themselves on the line for him, many at some cost. What he’s giving them in return is a strange, bush-league, pull-it-out-of-your-ear, always-indulge-your-emotions campaign. They deserve better.

Jonathan F. Keiler at The American Thinker:

This has been an awful week for the Trump campaign. Trump engaged in an ongoing self-defeating fight with a Gold Star family, refused to endorse Republican leadership (who now barely endorse him), displayed ignorance of events in Ukraine, possibly made disturbing commentsabout the use of nukes, saw the public defections of prominent Republican politicians, and heard the doubts of friends and close supporters over his conduct. Plus, he practically ignored his opponent, mostly giving Hillary Clinton a pass on recent events that should hurt her (e.g., baldly lying to Chris Wallace on national television, bad economic reports, money for hostages.) All this no doubt cheered Clinton and the Never Trump crowd, but has dispirited many ordinary Republicans who swallowed hard and went along with his candidacy. Trump must quickly right the ship or face certain disaster in November.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:

He’s not the only one asking this question, either ["I don't know why we're not leading a lot."]. People who reject polling data — which certainly can be problematic — have wondered the same thing. Donald Trump gets tens of thousands of people to attend his rallies, while Hillary Clinton appears to struggle to fill smaller venues. Shouldn’t that indicate that Trump’s dominating the presidential race, and if not, doesn’t it indicate that polling is meaningless?

The correct answers to those questions are no and not necessarily. Trump appeared to acknowledge that even as he posed the question yesterday in Florida:

“We go to Oklahoma, we had 25,000 people. We had 21,000 people in Dallas. We had 35,000 people in Mobile, Alabama. We have these massive crowds,” the Republican nominee said. “You’ve got thousands of people outside trying to get in [today], and this is one hell of a big stadium.”

Trump then mocked the Democratic nominee’s use of scripted speeches, marveling at his own improvisational style even in large venues.

“Do you ever see Hillary Clinton? If she speaks in front of 24 people she’s got the teleprompter,” he jested. “If she came here tomorrow — so look at this place, packed, thousands outside, we actually put screens outside — so, Hillary, if she came here, if she had 500 people I’d be surprised.”

Trump then questioned how the attendance at his rallies hasn’t been reflected in the polls.

“I hear we’re leading Florida by a bit,” he said. “I don’t know why we’re not leading by a lot. Maybe crowds don’t make the difference.”

Paul Manafort made a similar argument in his interview with George Stephanopoulos this morning as evidence that the campaign was running as planned, It does have one subtle difference from Trump’s claim:

Look, last night he spoke in two events in Florida. One had 10,000 people, another 15,000 people and it’s August. I mean, these are crowds you see at the end of September, beginning of October so the support for Mr. Trump is there.

The problem with counting crowd size is that it’s not data as much as anecdotes. Romney drew tens of thousands to a rally in Hillsborough County, Florida in the last week of the campaign, and lost the key I-4 Corridor county by almost seven points and 36,000 votes. In the same time frame, Romney packed Red Rocks Canyon in Colorado and “turned [the] interstate into a parking lot,” as one Twitter follower recalled, only to lose the state days later by five points and 137,000 votes.

I kind of pride myself on having recently already made a couple of points here at LITD - one, that prominent Freedom-Haters were going to have the cringe-inducing advantage of being correct when they would point out what a mess Squirrel-Hair is (I used Hillionaire as my example), and two, that S-H's water-carriers on what's left of the tattered right would be reduced to digression and obfuscation in their feeble attempt to maintain their stance (I used the despicable and increasingly pathetic Laura Ingraham as my example) - that are the gist of a piece by Kevin Williamson at NRO entitled "Obama Is Right About Trump":

Trump apologists on the Right will no doubt insist that the president’s dismissal of Trump is unseemly, and perhaps it is. Hugh Hewitt responded with criticism of President Obama’s “lead from behind” strategy, his failure in Syria, etc., as though those were relevant to the question. Of course Barack Obama has been a terrible president. He could be ten times worse, a thousand times worse, Adolf Hitler, or the screenwriting team behind the Star Wars prequels and that would not change anything. This is a classical example of why the ad hominem fallacy is a fallacy: Yes, Obama is a preening mediocrity and a genuine dullard in the matter of international relations — but is what he said about Trump true? Of course it is true.

Dennis Prager, who in January insisted that “Trump is unfit to be president” and that arguments about Supreme Court appointments were mostly baloney because there is no reason to have “confidence that he would nominate conservatives to the Supreme Court,” is lecturing Trump critics that we must support him in order to “prevent a left-wing Supreme Court.” Prager should read Prager.

Roger L. Simon (who has been one of those water-carriers) at PJ Media:

The way things are going in this country and the world—the worst U.S. economic recovery since 1949, hideously-violent Islamic terrorism metastasizing across the globe on a daily basis, an appalling epidemic of police assassinations, an opponent who was branded a pathological liar in 1996 and has proven that assertion multiple times to the present day with even more of her treachery yet to be exposed—Donald Trump should be winning the election by acclamation.

But at this moment he appears to be floundering, losing as much or more ground than he gains by engaging in self-destructive personal battles he should never have participated in in the first place. Even when he is right, these fights accomplish nothing and almost always hurt the larger cause, allowing the media to paint him as racist, sexist or, most importantly to them, unfit to lead.

They would do so if he were St. Francis of Assisi, of course. Former Democratic pollster Pat Caddell calls pro-Clinton media bias a "terrifying crisis in democracy" for good reason. But Trump should know better than to give that media the chance to exercise that bias by naively playing into the hands of the likes of George Stephanopoulos and The New York Times.

It's his old signal to noise problem I wrote about earlier coupled with the most juvenile narcissism. And, tragically for all his supporters, not to mention the country, it doesn't appear to be getting any better.

Driven by private demons, Trump is on the verge of betraying all of us. He says repeatedly he is leading a movement, but he acts like a man off by himself, tilting at windmills. Though different in specifics, the controversies surrounding Khizr Khan and Judge Curiel both have that characteristic. In both cases, he shouldn't have gone there.

Susan Wright at RedState:

Mmmm… Smell that party unity.

The POLITICO Caucus is a panel of activists and strategists from 11 swing states. In a recent survey conducted by this caucus, their results show that a solid 70% of Republican insiders desire to see the earth open up and swallow Donald Trump, along with every red cap-wearing troglodyte supporting him.

Okay, that last bit was just me, but that 70% mentioned really wish he would step aside and allow someone else to pick up the race, as concerns for the down ballot races rises.

“I’d rather take our chances with nearly anyone else than continue with this certain loser who will likely cost the Senate and much more,” said a New Hampshire Republican — who, like all respondents, completed the survey anonymously.

“The effect Trump is having on down-ballot races has the potential to be devastating in November,” added a Florida Republican. “His negative image among Hispanics, women and independents is something that could be devastating to Republicans. Trump’s divisive rhetoric to the Hispanic community at large has the potential to be devastating for years to come.”

It's highly unlikely Trump, the spray-tanned narcissist he is, would voluntarily step down for the good of the party. Or country. This entire charade was for himself and never out of any sense of patriotism or good will, in the first place. 

Okay, this gives you a taste of how many pundits are standing with mouths agape at this horrifying spectacle. Now, let's look at the intensity of the bitterness that is obliterating the conservative movement. Consider Erick Erickson's back-and-forth about a post he put up at The Resurgent, finally deciding that he had no regrets about its essence:

One thing I have learned about 2016 is that Trump brings out the worst in everybody, including in me. He’s bad for my sanctification.

So I should not have written with so much anger last night, but I am at this point genuinely horrified to see people championing this man.

It is one thing for people to be reluctantly voting for him as better than Hillary. But to have people in a crowd cheering on the idea of turning NATO into a shakedown scheme is noxious and it should be noxious to every American. We are not the world’s bully demanding lunch money for protection, but Trump supporters across America are cheering on the guy without even considering the implications.

What is worse, he clearly has no clue what he is talking about.

I should not have written what I wrote in the way I wrote it. It was in anger. But the central point remains.

Donald Trump wants to turn NATO into a damn shakedown scheme and you people are cheering him on. You should be ashamed of yourselves. You should be ashamed of the fact that your cult leader who claims to have been personally affected by 9/11 does not even know our NATO allies protected his ass that day. You should be ashamed that he wants to turn one of the strongest military alliances in the history of the world into a racket where protection is bought. You should be ashamed that you are not ashamed.

The aforementioned Susan Wright of RedState disembowels the always-vastly-overrated-but-now-irredeemably-disgusting Sean Hannity:

In this instance, the pathetic little bootlick is not entirely off-base [regarding the ineffectuality of GOP Congressional "leaders"]. The people watched as House Republicans did very little to combat Obama’s destructive agenda. When you combine that frustration with a dumbed down segment of bumper sticker voters, who’s knowledge of issues is limited to the aforementioned bumper stickers and internet memes, you get a corrosive mix of electoral angst.

Sadly, outlets like Fox News and talk radio read that seething anger as a ratings boom, and rather than attempt to mobilize society around a common goal of sound policy and free market conservatism, they fed the anger.

In Donald Trump, they found a walking meme to support as the public’s big middle finger to a government that had failed them. Plus, he already had experience in reality TV, so he knew show business. It didn’t matter that he was unqualified. It didn’t matter that he might be unstable. It didn’t even matter that he knew nothing of the job he was applying for. After all, the angry masses know nothing of policy or the job, either, so why should he?

Sean Hannity is probably the single-most pathetic voice to come from the media cesspool, lapping at Trump’s heels, crotch-sniffing and doing his level best to shame his family name for generations to come.

While kernels of reason pepper some of his rant from Wednesday, the overall scope of his words was fanboy lunacy.

“It seems Paul Ryan and some of these other establishment Republican types have taken to the idea that they are going to be true to what it means to be a Republican,” Hannity said. “I don’t think there’s anything about Trump’s agenda that isn’t conservative except maybe with the issue of trade.”

1. Trump IS the establishment, and the worst kind of crony capitalist.
2. Nothing Trump has said bears any resemblance to conservatism.

Hannity said he’s also frustrated that the conversation among GOP leaders on Capitol Hill has been focused on Trump and not on his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. (Ryan made the same point on Thursday but placed some of that blame on Trump for igniting various national political firestorms.)

Maybe if he was really serious about Republicans not going after Democrats, he could get off of his knees long enough to see that Trump has kept his attacks focused mainly on other Republicans for the entirety of his campaign?

“So Trump fires back, because he’s sick and tired of these idiots,” he said. “We just had a Democratic convention where you had the single most leftist socialist platform ever written in American history. I don’t hear a peep out of any of these people about it.”

What a coincidence. We just had a GOP convention where the single most leftist, socialist platform masquerading as Republican policy was put forth, and conservatives were shut down. We basically had two Democrat conventions, this year.

Hannity also offered the Trump campaign some unsolicited advice.

“There needs to be extreme message discipline,” he said on his own Fox News show. “There can be no more unforced errors.”

He’s offering this advice to the most undisciplined candidate to ever run for the office of the presidency.

We’re less than 100 days out from the general election and Trump is no closer to resembling a serious candidate than he was in the beginning.

Hannity, the Trump campaign, and all the Branch Trumpidian members are already laying the groundwork to place blame on anyone not a part of the cult.

The reality is, this race was lost from the moment Trump was forced on us. Anyone who voted for Trump in the primaries, any talking heads that gave him never-ending, breathless coverage leading up to his nomination, they bear the responsibility for what happens in November.

As Jonah Goldberg has said a couple of times recently, I hate this.  There's no aspect of it - the candidacy itself, the recriminations, the ended friendships, the sad spectacle of people with refined intellects reduced to infantile excuse-making - that isn't spiritually poisonous.

The name of this blog continues to be more apropos by the minute.