It's this kind of stuff - today's edition

Actually, I may either need to rename this series of LITD posts or begin another series the name of which expresses a greater degree of alarm at how the Trump phenomenon is making a mess out of several levels of our national life: foreign policy, political discourse, the nation's economic health, and conservatism as a recognizable world view. "It's this kind of stuff" indicates mere annoyance, a message of, "He sure does make it hard to continue supporting him." I was never going to don a MAGA hat, but until recently, I had a fairly solid sense that there were enough adults in positions of influence within the administration that it presented the actual alternative to the Left's obvious agenda of civilizational destruction. I'm now increasingly convinced that it presents nothing but a steaming pile of incoherence.

There's foreign policy.

Regarding China, there is the Very Stable Genius's call for the Chinese government to investigate the Bidens - something which caused LITD to express gratification that Ben Sasse had spoken against it. There's also the VSG's pledge to China to not weigh in on the Hong Kong situation as long as US-China trade negotiations were ongoing. Those freedom-loving protestors filling Hong Kong's streets are not a bargaining chip in a deal, Mr. President. To go back a bit further, there is Trump's characterization, in a tweet, of Xi as an enemy, mere days after saying they had a great relationship (and, in order, you'll recall, to set up Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell as much more of an enemy than Xi - yet another example of how Trump expects heads of autonomous agencies to be his personal henchmen).

Then there is this withdrawal of US troops from northern Syria (a move that has apparently left the Pentagon "completely blindsided") Turkish president Reccep Tayyip Erdogan has long held the region's Kurdish population in low regard, and it's clear he's about to have Turkey invade it. That will pretty much pull the plug on any confidence the largely-Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces has had in the United States. And then who will be left to fight the resurgent ISIS that will waste no time regrouping and reestablishing its hellish rule?

Two Senators who have, of late, been quite willing to see Trump as a glass half full are no fans of this latest move:

Here’s what Rubio has said on Twitter: “If reports about US retreat in Syria are accurate, the Trump administration has made a grave mistake that will have implications far beyond Syria.” There’s a weird balance here between condemnation—”a grave mistake”—and a tentative escape route for Trump—”if reports…are accurate.” But of course the reports are accurate! They’re not reports. The White House released the news itself!

Graham was far tougher: “By abandoning the Kurds we have sent the most dangerous signal possible – America is an unreliable ally and it’s just a matter of time before China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea act out in dangerous ways.”

Then there's political discourse. A recent response to a remark by Mitt Romney on Trump's conduct of foreign policy engaged the Utah Senator on the merits of his argument for one short tweet and then  took the alpha-male / playground-bully tactic of trying to portray Romney as a political weakling and loser, alluding, without substantiation, to some kind of growing buyers' remorse on the part of Utah voters, and an assertion (a false assertion) that Romney had begged for Trump's endorsement when Romney ran for Senate.

Rick Moran at PJ Media states exactly what this boils down to:

. . . it's Trump's insistence on slavish loyalty that makes him dangerous. He brooks no criticism whatsoever. If you get out of line by a millimeter, he falls on you like a ton of bricks. He has Republicans terrified and running scared. Trump is partially aided by the hysterical partisanship of Democrats, which creates an atmosphere where sticking together is the only way to survive. But that support is a mile wide and an inch deep. It will melt away if it's found Trump committed an impeachable offense.

Is this really the sort of Republican Party you want -- with Trump as fuhrer taking out his rage on anyone who isn't 100% for him? Romney is a meaningless actor in this drama. Why spend the time cutting his legs off? Used to be in America that "everyone has his own opinion." In Trumpland, you're not allowed that freedom.

Trump's thin skin and pettiness may yet be his undoing.

If the current trajectory continues, we may reach a juncture at which a critical number of GOP lawmakers decide that being shredded on Twitter by the VSG - and the attendant effect on the flow of donor dollars - is a price they're willing to pay in order to speak out against what is happening.

At this point, at the very least, I think Trumpists are beginning to see that actual conservatives with a dedication to a coherent worldview and consistent set of principles never went anywhere, were not marginalized, and intend to keep defending the only viable alternative to leftism.

Conservative objection to Trump is not going away

The Bulwark is up and running. It's the site where many of The Weekly Standard's writers have landed. It's immensely gratifying to see them having regrouped and resumed their mission so quickly.

Charlie Sykes has a hugely important piece there this morning about the reactions to the Romney op-ed. He takes on Bill Bennett, David Perdue, Henry Olsen, and Roger Kimball throroughly and with gusto.

Sykes on Bennett:

Back in the 1990s, under a different president, Bill Bennett argued eloquently that:  “It is our character that supports the promise of our future—far more than particular government programs or policies.” And: “The President is the symbol of who the people of the United States are. He is the person who stands for us in the eyes of the world and the eyes of our children.”

But that was then.

Like so many other figures on the right, Bennett made his accommodation with Trump, becoming one of the first conservative intellectuals to make the case for overlooking questions of character in choosing a president. “Our country can survive the occasional infelicities and improprieties of Donald Trump,” Bennett wrote. “But it cannot survive losing the Supreme Court to liberals and allowing them to wreck our sacred republic. It would reshape the country for decades.”

That was one of the first attempts to codify the conservative accommodation of Trump’s full-spectrum mendacity. We know the rest.

On Senator Perdue, who wrote his own Washington Post op-ed a couple of days after Romney:

 Perdue’s op-ed is less of an argument than a reheated Trump tweet storm. He accuses Romney of engaging in “character assassination of the president,” but offers not a word of defense of that character. His main objection is that Romney has criticized a fellow Republicans out loud.

“Criticism of the president or his policy decisions is, of course, not off-limits,” Perdue concedes. “But I believe it is much more productive to have candid conversations behind the scenes.” In other words, daddy may be cheating, but let’s talk about it in whispers so the children don’t hear. Except in this case, the children are the American people; and Perdue’s version of moral populism apparently means not discussing issues like trustworthiness, responsibility, fairness, or decency in public.

On Henry Olsen:

This is the same argument mounted by Henry Olsen (with a slightly more intellectual gloss and a sprinkling of poll data) in his own response to Romney. Employing many of the familiar clichés of Trump world, Olsen claimed that Romney’s op-ed demonstrated all of the ways that the newly elected senator was “wildly out of touch” with Republican voters.
Those voters, Olsen tells us, don’t accept the argument that character is more important than Trump’s “accomplishments or principles [sic].”

Most Republicans simply don’t accept this argument. Many instead see Trump’s pugnacious and sometimes crude talk as an essential part of his virtue—he fights while other Republicans cower. Others would prefer he tweet less and do more, but still prefer Trump’s fallen angel to a Democratic devil.

Of course the problem with Trump is not his “pugnacity” or his “crudeness.” Mitch McConnell is pugnacious—he held a SCOTUS seat open in defiance of massive liberal push-back. And this pugnacity—whether you approve the ploy or not—achieved an actual policy goal. Lindsey Graham can be crude.Neither of these men could ever be accused of “cowering” from their political opponents. No, the problem with Trump is his grifting, bullying, and chronic deceit. (Also odd is Olsen’s description of Trump as a “fallen angel,” since fallen angel = Satan. But I suppose you can’t assume that a guy reads Milton just because a guy works at the “Ethics and Public Policy Center.”)
Olsen’s argument is that conservatives are positively obligated to embrace—or at least be silent about—Trump’s character, because that’s the only way to get what they want:

Romney would like you to believe you can have your cake and eat it, too — that you can be against Trump’s character but for his policies. But that doesn’t work in the real world. Railing about character hurts the president, and Republicans know that.

Well, yes. But since Olsen wants to cite polling to determine moral standards, it’s worth pointing out that Trump’s character clearly hurts the GOP with non-Trumpian voters. And in the wake of the Republican thumping in the midterms, it seems surpassingly strange to hear an expert in public opinion insisting that we should not talk about one of the factors that is an electoral millstone about the neck of the GOP. 

On Roger Kimball:

Neither Olsen nor Perdue, however, are Peak Trump Rationalizers. The championship belt for moral puffery is held, of course, by Jerry Falwell Jr. and his fellow evangelicals, who look at Donald Trump and see King David.

But there may be a new contender on the horizon. Roger Kimball has heroically taken up Jonah Goldberg’s challenge to “come up with a definition of good character that Donald Trump can clear.”

I use the term “heroically,” advisedly because Kimball brings to the task all of his formidable intellectual and rhetorical skills, including the use of original Greek, quotes from Voltaire, and commentary from Cardinal Newman.

In his book The Grammar of Assent, Newman devotes some interesting pages to Aristotle’s concept of φρόνησις, “prudence.” “Properly speaking,” Newman says, “there are as many kinds of phronesis as there are virtues: for the judgment, good sense, or tact which is conspicuous in a man’s conduct in one subject-matter, is not necessarily traceable in another.”

Rising to the challenge, Kimball writes that voters did not vote for Trump because they thought he was “a candidate for sainthood.”

On the contrary, people supported him, first, because of what he promised to do and, second, because of what, over the past two years, he has accomplished. These accomplishments, from rolling back the regulatory state and scores of conservative judicial appointments, from moving our Israeli embassy to Jerusalem to resuscitating our military, working to end Obamacare, and fighting to keep our borders secure, are not morally neutral data points.

These accomplishments, Kimball says, are “evidences of a political vision and of promises made and kept.”

And it is here that Kimball makes the audacious bid to redefine the meaning of the word “character.” Add up the list of Trump wins, Kimball concludes, “and I think they go a long way towards a definition of good character that Donald Trump can clear.”

Do not overlook Kimball’s accomplishment here: There as a time when character referred to such hoary values as justice, prudence, truth, temperance, and fortitude. But in this telling, character becomes simply a threshold to be clear by tabulating political outcomes.

In his response, Goldberg notes that Kimball “employs an enormous amount of logic-chopping and squirrel-spotting,” to come up with a “new and wholly instrumental definition of good character”:

He is saying that a man who bedded a porn star while his (third) wife was home with their newborn child now fits the—or at least a—definition of good character because he delivers tax cuts. A man, who by his own admission, “whines until he wins” and boasts of how he screwed over business partners, a man who lies more egregiously and incessantly than Bill Clinton and used his family charity in Clintonian ways, has a good character because he’s “working to end Obamacare, and fighting to keep our borders secure.” Is that really what conservatives should be telling presidents? That so long as you fulfill your promises to the base of the party, not only will we abstain from meaningful criticism, but we will in fact redefine good character to fit the president? I have deep admiration for Roger, but if I knew what the original Greek for “bologna” is, I would use it here.

But this is where I have to differ from Jonah a bit. The Trumpian celebration of strength over goodness and the sneering at traditional values as emblems of weakness is not utterly new. It is, in fact, somewhat surprising that Kimball would quote Newman and Voltaire, but not Nietzsche, since he seems to channeling his transvaluation of values.

Sykes concludes by framing Trumpists' defense of the Very Stable Genius as stemming from one of Western civilization's least admirable strains: Nietzchean philosophy. He sums his argument up quite tidily with this line:

Nietzsche would have fit seamlessly into the pages of American Greatness or on Fox News’ primetime lineup. 

I'm looking forward to more of this kind of courageous and incisive observation. The Bulwark looks to be a timely - indeed, urgently needed - voice in the cacophony of 2019 post-American discourse.

 

The Romney op-ed

Well, now.

The newly elected Utah Senator's unloading in the Washington Post is pretty much impossible to ignore isn't it?

It's nearly exactly the LITD take on the Very Stable Genius (with a quibble here and there; Mike Pompeo is a definite improvement over Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State). Coming as it does on the heels of General Mattis's resignation letter, it suggests a gathering of sentiment at high levels.

Still, in the age of Trump we've had ample opportunity to learn a particular lesson over and over again, namely, that two things not so very congruent can both be true. And the other thing that's true here is that Romney's column is ill-advised.

For starters, it sets up immediate speculation that it's the opening salvo in a 2020 presidential primary bid - which it may well be. The problem is that Mitt Romney is the exact wrong person to be a presidential-primary lightning rod at this juncture. He, along with the recently departed John McCain,  is the poster boy for conducting the most tepid campaign one could possibly mount.

Now, here's where other factors enter the picture.

Damn right, he's a poster boy for tepid campaigns, say the drooling, zombie-eyed, slavishly devoted cult followers of the Very Stable Genius. We've had it with the idea that there's something honorable about losing.

And about that narrowly defined point they are exactly right. My own personal top three moments of disgust and outrage with Romney's 2012 race were

1. "He's not a bad guy; he's just in over his head."
2. Declaring that he'd support cost of living increases to the minimum wage
3. Declaring that the notion of anthropogenic climate change had validity and was an issue needing addressing

Regarding the first, there would have been two ways to go about stating that Barack Obama was a bad guy - which he was. One would be to engage in juvenile snark and the coining of cringe-inducing nicknames. Of course, Mitt Romney would never have thought of that (which is a good thing). For such antics we'd have to wait for 2016 and Trump. The other would have been to lay Obama's radical socialist past on the table - and not just Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright, but the entire lineage: Frank Marshall Davis, Frances Fox Piven, Heather Booth, Greg Galluzzo, Rashid Khalidi. That case could have and should have been made.

Regarding the second, I can't say I've heard Trump weigh in one way or another, but given his we've-got-to-take-care-of-everybody starting point for discussing health care, I don't know that there would be a clear distinction between Romney and Trump should the subject surface in any kind of debate setting.

Regarding the third, Trump would own Romney, and rightly so.

But there's the matter, as I say at the outset, of Romney being correct about Trump's character and lack of depth. It's the glaring reality that won't go away.

If there's any reason besides sending a political signal for Romney to have penned this - and it's hard to see one - it's still a very odd way to start a stint as Senator, given the issues that are going to be on Washington's plate in the next two years. There's going to be much work to be done on a number of fronts, including, surely, more judicial appointments.

If there is any way in which this might - might - be seen as a positive development, it would be as one more indicator that, outside Trump's base, support for him as president and as the Republican Party standard-bearer is shallow and conditional.

One thing we can say for sure is that it makes one hell of a tone-setter for the year 2019. There's not going to be any easing into the tumult. It's not some gentle lapping at the shore. It's a tidal wave. Have your life vest handy.

Thoughts on filling the Secretary-of-State position

The latest bit of excitement, of course, is General Petraeus's visit to Trump Tower.

Peter Bergen at CNN makes a compelling case for Petraeus:

There would be no learning curve for the retired four-star general. Consider that Petraeus commanded US Central Command (CENTCOM) from 2008 to 2010. In many ways the CENTCOM commander has the most demanding job in the US military, because the command oversees America's wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen. The CENTCOM commander also oversees military operations and alliances with 20 countries across the Middle East and Central Asia, which means regularly meeting and working with the top officials in those regions.

Petraeus also was the on-the-ground commander in both Afghanistan and Iraq. As the commander in Afghanistan, Petraeus dealt extensively with the dozens of NATO and other countries who were part of the coalition he led there.

Bergen goes on to discuss Petraeus's role as an architect of counterinsurgency strategy, and then looks at how the general has rounded out his understanding of the world stage through his exposure to the business view, and points out that Petraeus definitely has Vladimir Putin's number:

Since leaving government four years ago, Petraeus has traveled around the globe in his job as chairman of the KKR Global Institute, which acts as a kind of internal think tank for the leading private equity firm, New York-based KKR. In this role, Petraeus has interacted with business and political leaders around the world, which has given him another perspective that supplements the senior military and intelligence posts he has already held.

Petraeus' foreign policy positions haven't always been in sync with Trump's. In the June interview, for instance, Petraeus was clear about the threat posed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Trump has praised, and the continuing relevance of NATO: "God bless Vladimir Putin because he's given NATO another reason to live. Having just been in Europe, I can assure you there is new urgency about the threat posed by Putin, and the farther east you go the greater the urgency is felt. And if you're in the Baltic States or Poland, the threat indicator is blinking red." 

But if his foreign policy positions haven't been fully aligned with Trump's, Petraeus avoided taking any public political positions during the presidential campaign. He did not, for instance, declare support for Hillary Clinton during the campaign, as more than 100 flag officers did.

All very well. There's just one little problem, as Patterico at RedState points out:

Even if you think Petraeus is a smart guy who might do a good job — and I do — the comparison to Hillary Clinton [for having been convicted of reckless handling of classified information] is a tough mental hurdle to surmount.

And now, with word of a new investigation related to the Petraeus scandal breaking today, it’s getting tougher still:

The Defense Department is conducting a leaks investigation related to the sex scandal that led to the resignation of former CIA Director David Petraeus, The Associated Press confirmed Monday, the same day Petraeus was meeting with President-elect Donald Trump in New York.

Petraeus, who could be in line for a Cabinet nomination, arrived at Trump Tower in early afternoon. He walked in without taking any questions from reporters.

A U.S. official told the AP that investigators are trying to determine who leaked personal information about Paula Broadwell, the woman whose affair with Petraeus led to criminal charges against him and his resignation. The information concerned the status of her security clearance, said the official, who was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Disclosure of the Broadwell information without official permission would have been a violation of federal criminal law.

The latest twist in the case could complicate Petraeus’ prospects of obtaining a Cabinet position in the Trump administration, resurfacing details of the extramarital affair and FBI investigation that ended his career at the CIA and tarnished the reputation of the retired four-star general.

Another Trump Tower visitor currently garnering buzz  is Mitt Romney. I do not get this one at all. What in Mitt's resume comes anywhere close to any kind of experience in international diplomacy? Plus, it's pretty clear he and DJT loathe each other.


I really don't understand why the obvious choice, John Bolton, is not front and center in this process. Is there something of a sensitive nature involved that no one wants to bring to light?

If not, I see this as a no-brainer.

The phony establishment-vs-the-people dichotomy

Yesterday on my podcast, I said that I had had it with this false establishment-vs-the-people dichotomy. It is a straw man put forth by formerly admirable, formerly conservative figures who now willingly overlook Squirrel-Hair's spiritual rottenness because they find a few things he's said about the two issues they obsess over - immigration and trade - exciting. These people have abandoned their principles and gone full in for "populism" and "nationalism."

There's a great piece today at the great National Review Online by Stephen L. Miller that dispels this phony juxtaposition.

To begin his argument, Miller looks at the sheer numbers involved in mainstream-media coverage of Squirrel-Hair:

Fox News granted two nights of town-hall coverage to GOP’s primary candidates to fight over. The night before, MSNBC’s Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski had allotted a full primetime hour to Trump.

On the eve of Super Tuesday, Trump sat down in person for an interview with Sean Hannity. On the same night, Trump’s wife, Melania, was sitting down for an interview with Anderson Cooper; this was fresh off the heels of her interview with Mika Brzezinski on Morning Joe.

The  Sunday-morning news shows allow Trump to call in for interviews, something practically unheard of for presidential candidates. Yet Chuck Todd, George Stephanopoulos, and Chris Wallace all allow Trump to do so. And last year, CNN even shelved its long-planned tenth-anniversary Hurricane Katrina special hosted by Anderson Cooper. In its place, they aired a post-Trump-rally special with Don Lemon.

TMZ, both online and on their television show, routinely run segments on Trump, as does ET! Greta Van Susteren has frequently invited Trump’s sons on as guests, either in the studio, via satellite, or on the phone. CNN and MSNBC carry Trump’s campaign rallies in full — and Fox, too. Media outlets breathlessly hang on his every word and insult and bombastic threat or incitement, and then they become instantly appalled when one of their own is choke-slammed to the ground by Trump security guards. Such reactions from them are telling.

New York magazine columnist Frank Rich declared on CNN that Trump wasn’t stealing oxygen from other candidates, because he “was the oxygen.” Trump was the one making the race interesting, according to Rich. But interesting to whom? Persuasive evidence suggests that there is a direct correlation between Trump’s poll numbers and his media coverage compared with the media and polls for the rest of the field.

When Trump happily sits down with Rolling Stone — a magazine that has published fawning interviews with Al Gore, Barack Obama, and Bernie Sanders and that also featured each as a cover star – his supporters exult over how easily Trump is playing the media. Saturday Night Live — a show that weekly offers backhanded praise of Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders and that portrays Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio as greasy Latin dancers — gave Trump a full episode, inviting him to host.

The coverage of Trump is so lopsided that it’s impossible to deny any more. According to NewsBusters and the Media Research Center, 62 percent of all Super Tuesday evening network news coverage (NBC, CBS, ABC) went to Donald Trump alone. For the entire month of February, Trump accumulated more than 180 minutes on those newscasts, accounting for more than 50 percent of the coverage. Marco Rubio was second, with 67 minutes; and Ted Cruz was third, with 62 minutes. 

Is the fact that he's the frontrunner the long and short of it? No, there's a bit more to the explanation:

Robert Thompson, director of the Belier Center for Television & Popular Culture at Syracuse University, offered a perceptive analysis to The Wrap, a news site that covers Hollywood.

"The Apprentice was very good for NBC. . . . It fashioned and reshaped Donald Trump for a new audience, many of whom didn’t even know who he was when that show started. . . . Now Zucker is at CNN and, once again, seems to be using Donald Trump to both of their benefits."

CBS chief executive Leslie Moonves explained it in blunter terms to the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco (as The Hollywood Reporter originally reported): “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”

Moonves elaborated even more on what Trump’s rise means for his network. The Hollywood Reporter wrote: "Moonves called the campaign for president a “circus” full of “bomb throwing,” and he hopes it continues. 'Most of the ads are not about issues. They’re sort of like the debates,' he said. 'Man, who would have expected the ride we’re all having right now?#…#The money’s rolling in and this is fun,' he said. 'I’ve never seen anything like this, and this is going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going,' said Moonves. 'Donald’s place in this election is a good thing,'

"'There’s a lot of money in the marketplace,' the exec said of political advertising so far this presidential season.

Moonves just happened to give the exact same quote at a conference on entertainment law in Los Angeles in March of 2012. Referring to Citizens United, he declared “Super PACs may be bad for America, but they’re very good for CBS.”

Last August, Moonves even foreshadowed the oncoming media-induced Trump when, in a CBS quarterly-earnings conference call, he declared, reportedly to applause: “The coming election cycle will clearly ‘Trump’ anything we’ve ever seen before.”

Perhaps this would be a good place to mention that Les Moonves is also a self-declared Clinton friend. In 2001, CBS quoted Moonves as acknowledging, “I’ve had numerous chats with President Clinton over the past few years. . . . He is a friend of mine.”

Bottom line:

Trump supporters who believe their candidate is the anti-establishment destroyer of media are being conned, and the con is being perpetrated by the people they hate the most: the Clintonistas of network media. 

Laura Ingraham, arguably the most despicable of the former conservatives now quite overly shilling for Squirrel-Hair and her two-note-johnny obsession with immigration and trade, has tried to use various figures from, yes, the establishment to perpetuate the myth. For the longest time, she clung to  Jeb Bush as some kind of symbol of the general opposition to S-H. She was even still trotting him out after he'd withdrawn. Now she has a new poster boy for her sham argument: Mitt Romney, who, of course, gave that anti-S-H speech this morning.

It's a load of crap. The actual major voices imploring post-America not to drink the S-H Kool-Aid are not Jeb or Mitt groupies.

People like Ingraham go on to suggest very strongly that there's something morally cowardly about denouncing S-H without endorsing someone else.

No, there's not. Pointing out that S-H is a bad human being on every level is a valid undertaking on its own. Those of us doing so aren't saying it in the context of a choice.

Kevin Williamson is not establishment. Erick Ericsson is not establishment. Dennis Prager is not establishment. Dana Loesch is not establishment. Andrew Klavan is not establishment. Guy Benson is not establishment. Ben Shapiro is not establishment. This blog is not establishment.


The third most disgusting and horrifying force in contemporary post-American politics, after leftism and Squirrel-Hair, is the abandonment of conservatism by formerly respect-worthy public figures who now shill for S-H in the hope of achieving some vague kind of national virility. He won't deliver, and it was stupid to ever think he could.

Just become a Democrat, Mitt

One of the two Squish Titans of the upcoming presidential cycle just stepped on his own you-know-what, big time.

Former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney, who’s contemplating another White House run, said climate change was real, that humans helped it along and that it was the responsibility of the world to turn back the environmental tide.

“I’m one of those Republicans who thinks we are getting warmer and that we contribute to that,” he said during a Wednesday night speech at an investment management conference, The Associated Press reported.

Tell you what, Mitt.  Change parties, take Renee Ellmers with you, and and give the Freedom-Haters a slightly less America-destroying option than the Hillary ticket.

 

Why the Pubs deserve the "stupid party" label

Making someone who, according to Tagg Romney "wanted to be president less than anyone I've ever met in my life," the presidential nominee in a year in which America's survival as the beacon of human freedom was at stake was not a real swift move.

Start your Saturday with a smile

Mitt up by by 4 in Pennsylvania per Susquehannah Polling.

Maintaining a solid 51 - 45 lead in Florida per Miami Herald / El Nuevo herald poll of likely voters.

Overflow crowd at Mitt rally in Wisconsin


Up by 5 among independents in Iowa per Gravis Marketing.

Maybe it's just because he's got the stuff

J.R. Dunn has a piece at The American Thinker that is a bit humbling for someone like me, who was in the anybody-but-Mitt camp throughout the primary season, to read.  He employs the Occam's Razor methodology to the question of why Romney has surged since the beginning of October:  He's just really good at politics because he takes the largest possible view of his objective.

Worth pondering, anyway.

Another breach of the firewall

Mitt up 50 to 48 in Ohio.

It's not just the DesMoines Register

Mitt gets the nod from Iowa's other three major newspapers as well.

Not since Nixon . . .

. . . has the Des Moines Register endorsed a Pub prez candidate, but this year, it's going for Mitt.

The third debate

Every once in a while, my preconceived notions about what ought to happen to advance the cause of liberty run counter to what needed to happen, and did indeed happen.

Such was the case last night.  The MEC offered Mitt so much low-hanging fruit - on Iran and Libya, certainly, but  also on domestic issues that worked their way into the proceedings, such as the MEC's standard canard about "asking the wealthy to pay a little more" and "investing in clean energy."  Of course, I was thinking, 'Jump all over that crap, Mitt!'  As the evening wore on, though, I realized the scope of his perspective.  At this late date, it's about convincing the remaining undecideds.  It's about speaking broadly to desires for a peaceful world and fundamental reasons why America must lead.  Hammering a failing ideologue every time he spouts radical rhetoric is not the most effective use of 90 minutes of live nationwide exposure on October 22.

So we got the restrained Mitt.  I just hope that the fact that he exuded a few too many symptoms of Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome ("I know how to work in a bipartisan fashion") for my comfort can be explained by his understanding of what he needed to do in that particular situation.

In any event, it bolsters the argument that it is urgent to also send the most principled Tea Party-type Congress to Washington next year along with the statesman from Massachussetts.

Beautiful and glorious - this hour's edition

A lead in the electoral college race for the first time.

And endorsements from two libbo papers - the Nashville Tennessean and the Orlando Sentinel.

Sink, Comrade sink!

Increase to seven-point lead for Mitt in Gallup poll.  Up by two in Rasmussen.

Hurt him bad, Mitt.

About last night

It certainly was more contentious than the first debate.  Having them prowl the stage, almost circling each other like prizefighters in the ring, gave the evening a decidedly different vibe.

While Mitt held his own pretty well against the MEC's predictable disingenuousness, we saw much too much of the inclination toward Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome / centrist / me-too-ism that made me skittish about the guy during the primaries. "All-of-the-above" energy policy and revenue-neutral loophole closing that makes sure the rich still pay the lion's share of taxes, by golly.

How I longed for him to just look the MEC in the eye and say, "Nobody - rich, middle class or poor - needs to be paying one cent more in taxes.  What needs to happen is that government spending needs to shrink  - abruptly and drastically."

But that's just not Mitt's style.

The MEC's cynicism was on full display in his answer to the question about high gas prices.  It was a stupid answer and he knows it, but he's counting on the transformation of the American populace into a herd of cattle to be sufficiently far along that we'll all just bob our heads and swallow it.

And then there's Candy Crowley, who wound up making an ass of herself trying to make Mitt look like he didn't know what he was talking about with regard to when the MEC decided to use thee word "terror" in conjunction with the Benghazi attack.

About those Ohio coal miners who were the object of some attention back in August . . .

 . . .they've sent a letter to the Most Equal Comrade deploring the lies he's been telling about them, as in supposedly being forced to atend a Romney rally.  No one had to force them; they dig the guy, because he champions their industry.

Yes, we must resist the temptation to get cocky with three long weeks still ahead, but . . .

. . . it's nice to start the day with a smile, particularly one induced by Mitt's very latest poll numbers.

Nothin' slow about this news day

Let's do a quick roundup of this morning's noteworthy developments:

Wynn Resorts CEO Steve Wynn lets loose on the Most Equal Comrade, saying that business people across the country are afraid of him.

The MEC went to the 1991 wedding of ABC's Martha Radditz, who will moderate tomorrow night's veep debate.  The guy she married was later appointed by the MEC as FCC head.

Security officer Eric Nordsrtom was denied his request for additional security, a request he made on the basis of 200 security breaches in Libya from mid-2011 to mid-2012, 48 of them in Benghazi.

The H-word Creature is to meet with the MEC this afternoon about the unraveling of the regime's Benghazi narrative.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee gets an earful about weak Libyan security at its hearing today.

RCP average has Mitt beating the MEC.  Mitt's ahead in all swing states, ahead with independents, and he's closed the gender gap.

When the full light of factuality beams upon her disingenuousness, she folds like a cheap card table

Stephanie Cutter is forced to admit, under the withering and relentless questioning of a CNN anchor, that Mitt's tax plan does make sense and is revenue-neutral.