Rush Limbaugh, R.I.P.

 He finally succumbed to the lung cancer that had menaced him for some tine but did not deter him from his life's calling, right up to the very end.

The son and grandson of lawyers in the small river city of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, he dismayed his family by dropping out of college after a year to plunge without looking back into a radio career, first as a spinner of platters in Pittsburgh and elsewhere under the name Jeff Christy. Career advancement was eluding him, though, so he took a hiatus and went to work in a marketing position for the Kansas City Chiefs. Then he got an opportunity at a Sacramento station, where management gave him the one-sentence guideline that catapulted him to legend status: Be yourself.

He combined the elements of schtick he'd developed earlier with utter conviction about the core principles of conservatism. His regular features such as the Environmental Update, the Feminist Update, the Homeless Update and the Peace Update shone the unsparing light of common sense on various leftist presumptions, creating space for an alternative viewpoint even as those presumptions, which, in sum, came to be known as political correctness, ever-increasingly permeated our culture. 

Millions of regular Americans who had a vague sense that their outlooks were informed by this worldview called conservatism were thrilled to hear him articulate their principles daily, forthrightly and entertainingly. Suddenly one could come right out and say these things!

He was also a man of great generosity, giving his time and money to a number of charitable causes. 

There was something kind of lonely about him, though, and part of that was his own doing. The combination of self-isolation and huge ego manifested itself in such ways as decking out his home and means of transportation so that he could enjoy mundane activities as going to the movies or watching sporting events in person in a way that kept his personal contact with the general public to a bare minimum. He took care to brand himself as being in a sphere separate from other practitioners of the talk-radio genre. It took him the fourth of his marriages to make a successful go of that institution.  

Ultimately, part of being a talk-radio pioneer meant that he made manifest the genre's limitations. Bombast was central to his persona, and in his wake came a number of imitators who could not pull that off with anything like his palpable humanity. 

And I daresay that that is how he succumbed to the Trumpist fever. He could identify with the Very Stable Genius's bombast, and it caused Rush to lose sight of the self-deprecation ("I'm just a harmless little fuzzball.") and commitment to consistency of principle that had made him the Big Voice On The Right. He'd been feted by big-shot celebrities in just about every field since he went national, and was impressed by how Trump had done likewise.

For that reason, I quit listening to him years ago, but I've never lost sight of the essence of the contribution he made to American life. 

He said it was okay to point out that some things are right, some things are wrong, some things make sense and some things are utter hooey. In the years when he was on top of his game, he did it with utter hilarity, self-confidence and an ease of comportment that created a space on our society's ideological spectrum that conservatism had never enjoyed before.

A true American original.

A case study in conversion: how Laura Ingraham went from principled conservative to Kool-Aid-guzzling Trumpist

I don't know that it satisfies my curiosity completely, but Anne Applebaum's piece at The Atlantic today goes a long way toward answering my questions about why Laura Ingraham enthusiastically hopped on the Trump train pretty much from the moment the Very Stable Genius descended the escalator.

She brings an insider's perspective:

It was cocktail hour on the opening day of the new, Republican-dominated Congress, and the long, chandelier-lighted parlor of David Brock’s town house in Georgetown was filling up with exuberant young conservatives fresh from events on the Hill.”

That was the opening sentence, in 1995, of a New York Times Magazine cover story called “The Counter Counterculture.” The author was the late James Atlas, and one by one, he introduced a series of characters. There was young David Brooks, then of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page. There was Brock himself, best known at the time for his vicious investigations into the personal affairs of President Bill Clinton. There was David Frum—now a writer for The Atlantic—and his wife, Danielle Crittenden, with whom, years later, I co-wrote a Polish cookbook.

There are amusing details—expensive Georgetown restaurants where educated conservative elites pour scorn upon educated liberal elites—but the tone of the article was not negative. It included a parade of other names and short profiles: Bill Kristol, John Podhoretz, Roger Kimball, Dinesh D’Souza. I knew most of them at the time the article appeared. I was then working in London for The Spectator, a conservative political magazine, and my relationship to this group was that of a foreign cousin who visited from time to time and inspired mild interest, but never quite made it to the inner circle. I wrote occasionally for The Weekly Standard, edited by Kristol; for TheNew Criterion, edited by Kimball; and once for the Independent Women’s Quarterly, then edited by, among others, Crittenden.

I also knew, slightly, a woman whose appearance, in a leopard-skin miniskirt, was the most notable thing about the magazine’s cover photograph: Laura Ingraham, who had been a clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and was then an attorney at a tony law firm. In the penultimate paragraph Atlas finds himself, near midnight, “careering through the streets of downtown Washington with Brock in Ingraham’s military-green Land Rover at 60 miles an hour looking for an open bar while the music of Buckwheat Zydeco blasted over the stereo.”

As someone who only knows what Ingraham is about through consuming her radio, television and website output through the years, I know that I started seeing signs that she might not hold up as a spokesperson for basic conservatism. Some if it was a matter of demeanor. The infectious Type-A way she engaged life became a little tiresome. She started to seem nervous in television appearances, like her mind was already halfway on whatever she was going to do next. The way she'd describe ordinary interactions with people in her daily life hinted at an imperiousness that did not leave a good impression.

Back to Applebaum's piece, I wonder if she doesn't depict a little too much of a clean break between the optimism of Reagan-era conservatism and the sense of foreboding that has permeated conservatism in more recent times. Concern for the set of issues that we now deem as constituting the culture war was already there.

But she is probably onto something when she discerns a rising sense among a lot of conservatives that means outside what's Constitutionally available were going to be needed to wage that war:

Since the 1990s, we had gone in radically different directions. She had left the law, drifted into the world of conservative media, and tried for a long time to get her own television show. Though these early attempts all failed, she eventually had a popular talk-radio program. I was a guest on the program a couple of times, once after the Russian invasion of the nation of Georgia, in 2008. Listening again to the conversation—the magic of the internet ensures that no sound bite is ever lost—I was struck by how consistent it was with the optimistic conservatism of the ’90s. Ingraham was still talking about America’s power to do good, America’s ability to push back against the Russian threat. But she was already groping for something else. During our conversation, she quoted from an article by Pat Buchanan, one of her mentors, who had repeatedly railed against the pointlessness of any American relationship with Georgia, an aspiring democracy, and lauded Russia, a country he imagined to be more “Christian” than his own.

The reference was a hint at other changes. At some point in the intervening years, her Reaganite optimism slowly hardened into something better described as a form of apocalyptic pessimism. This can be found in much of what she says and writes nowadays: America is doomed, Europe is doomed, Western civilization is doomed—and immigration, political correctness, transgenderism, the culture, the establishment, the left, and the “Dems” are responsible. Some of what she sees is real. The so-called cancel culture on the internet, the extremism that sometimes flares up on university campuses and newsrooms, and the exaggerated claims of those who practice identity politics are a political and cultural problem that will require real bravery to fight. But it is no longer clear that she thinks these forms of left-wing extremism can be fought using normal democratic politics. In 2019, she had Buchanan himself on her show and put the point to him directly: “Is Western civilization, as we understood it, actually hanging in the balance? I think you could actually make a very strong argument that it is tipping over the cliff.” Like Buchanan, she has also become doubtful about whether America could or should play any role in the world. And no wonder: If America is not exceptional but degenerate, why would you expect it to achieve anything outside its borders?

Applebaum points up the irony with which a 2007 Ingraham speech is fraught:

few elements of ingraham’s trajectory remain mysterious. One is her frequent invocation of moral values, Christian values, personal values. During a 2007 speech, she told a group in Dallas that “without virtue there is no America. Without virtue we will be ruled by tyrants.” She then listed those virtues: “honor, courage, selflessness, sacrifice, hard work, personal responsibility, respect for elders, respect for the vulnerable.” None of these virtues can be ascribed to Donald Trump. More complicated is her participation in the opprobrium that the president heaps on all immigrants, and her own fears that legal immigration has undermined “the America we know and love.” Ingraham herself has three adopted children—all immigrants.

And Applebaum does an admirable deep dig into the possible reasons for Ingraham signing on so unwaveringly to Trumpism:

I don’t know how she explains these contradictions to herself, because Ingraham wouldn’t speak with me when I tried to ask. She answered one email and then went silent. But there are clues. Some mutual friends point out that she is a convert to Catholicism, and a breast-cancer survivor who is deeply religious: She told one of them that “the only man who never disappointed me was Jesus.” The willpower required to survive in the cutthroat world of right-wing media—especially at Fox News, where female stars were often pressured to sleep with their bosses—should not be underestimated. This combination of personal experiences gives a messianic edge to some of her public remarks. In that same 2007 speech, she spoke about her religious conversion. If it weren’t for her faith, she said, “I wouldn’t be here . . . I probably wouldn’t be alive.” That was why, she said, she fought to save America from the godless: “If we lose faith in God, as a country—we lose our country.”

Professional ambition, the oldest excuse in the world, is part of the story too. Partly thanks to Trump, and her connection to Trump, Ingraham finally got her own prime-time Fox television show, with a salary to match. She has secured interviews with him at key moments, during which she poses only flattering questions. (“By the way, congratulations on your polling numbers,” she told him while interviewing him on the anniversary of D-Day.) But I don’t think, for someone as intelligent as Ingraham, that this is the full explanation. She ran a radio show throughout the many years in which Fox didn’t give her a television program, and I believe she will go back to running a radio show if it ever cancels her program. As in the case of so many biographies, picking apart the personal and the political is a fool’s game.

There are some clues to her thinking from other times and other places. The Polish writer Jacek Trznadel has described what it felt like, in Stalinist Poland, to be a loud advocate for the regime and to doubt it at the same time. “I was shouting from a tribune at some university meeting in Wrocław, and simultaneously felt panicked at the thought of myself shouting . . . I told myself I was trying to convince [the crowd] by shouting, but in reality I was trying to convince myself.” For some people, loud advocacy of Trump helps to cover up the deep doubt and even shame they feel about their support for Trump. It’s not enough to express tepid approval of a president who is corrupting the White House and destroying America’s alliances and inflicting economic catastrophe on the country:  You have to shout if you want to convince yourself as well as others. You have to exaggerate your feelings if you are to make them believable.

Applebaum's piece includes one concrete anecdote that further points up the irony of Ingraham's conversion:

She has known Trump since the ’90s; they once went on a date, though apparently that didn’t go well—she found him pompous. (“He needs two separate cars, one for himself and one for his hair,” she told some mutual friends.) 

Ingraham should have contemplated her impression of the VSG as pompous more deeply. It is the trait that has led to his present juncture (low poll numbers, a panicked campaign staff, a barrage of unflattering books about him). And the implications are far greater than an off-putting personality. There's foreign policy, for instance. Some serious repair is going to be needed in the wake of the way Trump has routinely insulted the leaders of our closest allies.

Applebaum's piece is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the damage that the Trump phenomenon has done to conservatism. One conclusion seems clear, to me at least: The real deal needs more vigorous defense than ever.

 

 

 

 

The (as it turns out, very limited) usefulness of talk radio in advancing conservatism

The inspiration for this post came from having run across this announcement of the speaker lineup for this year's CPAC while scrolling my Twitter feed. I retweeted it with the comment, "And to to think the great Dutch was a regular featured speaker in the early days."

Every stinking one of them is a Trumpist to one degree or another. My attention was particularly drawn to Mark Levin, to whom we'll return shortly.

The whole phenomenon of conservative talk radio was like manna from heaven when, in its present form, it took off in the late 1980s. (It has a longer history, but figures like Joe Pyne and Bob Grant never had anything like the impact of the figures that have peopled the last 30-plus years.) Even in the era of Reagan and Bush 41, the pressure, which has only intensified in the ensuing years, to keep the peace with one's left-leaning fellow citizens made conservatives feel like aliens in their own land.

The thrill of hearing Rush Limbaugh for the first time was palpable. He was coming right out and saying things that one could only otherwise avail oneself of in the pages of National Review, The American Spectator and Commentary in the privacy of one's own home.

In retrospect, one can see that his style was the prototype for today's own-the-libs approach to right-of-center opining. He relied heavily on segments he called "updates," which were devoted to aspects of the national landscape such as feminism, environmental activism, and peace activism. He had theme music for each one explicitly designed to get a rise out of any progressive who might encounter it. (Case in point, leading into the Feminist Update with Sandy Posey's "Born A Woman.")

It fired conservatives' imaginations because it was unprecedented. It was the first major pushback against the onslaught of "social change" that had been laying siege to our civilizational underpinnings for the previous 20-plus years. And Limbaugh could pull it off effectively, given that his background was the radio industry. He's spent years spinning pop records as Jeff Christy. He was an experienced showman.

But in retrospect it can be seen that it was to a large degree about giving space to conservatives to self-congratulate. "Hell, yeah, that's my brand." Since he was the first and he was so good at the schtick, he quickly gained entree into highbrow circles. He addressed Heritage Foundation events and was interviewed by William F. Buckley, Jr.

It must also be conceded that he was a loudmouth. While his interest in, and success at, carefully thinking out his positions and rooting them in actual principle was impressive compared to most who have followed in his wake, he reveled in delivering his message in the style of an overheated yay-hoo. It was not easy to see for the enthralled conservative at the time, given that there wasn't anyone or anything to compare him to.

The success he's enjoyed in the intervening decades, as manifested in the ever-more-hoity-toity circles he's run in, hanging with NFL team owners and golfing with - well, to hew to the point at hand, Donald Trump -  has undoubtedly had an effect on him. Still, until relatively recently, he made a point of distinguishing between conservatism's immutable principles and the rising and falling fortunes of the Republican Party. He wanted it to be clear that he was no figure's or party's water-carrier.

Something changed in 2016. The stakes involved were no doubt a factor. Still, his giddiness at Trump's entry into the fray when there were still several appealing candidates couldn't be hidden. He tried his best to couch his remarks in an objective-analysis framework - an eyebrow-raising move, given that he was most definitely in the opining business - but there was no denying that when he would bellow about how Trump was going to swagger onto the debate stage and upend the board-game table, how Trump had no patience for the rules of the game, it was because he thought it was great. Since then, any remaining trace of his I'm-just-providing-objective-analysis-here posture is gone. He's one of the biggest shills for the Very Stable Genius barking and blustering today.

One of the next talk-radio stars to come along in his wake was Sean Hannity. He'd gotten into radio from a background of bartending and construction work. He brought an Irish Catholic Long Island sensibility to his radio work. He made it clear that his self-made-man route to success was the main formative factor in his embrace of conservatism.

He didn't - and doesn't - have much depth. He's a crummy polemicist. So many times leftists who were standing on shaky ground would call his show, and I'd want him to step back and let them expose their hollowness, let his audience get the full measure of leftism's inherent flaws. But no, he'd interrupt with some you-and-your-liberal-friends bluster and hang up.

So it was really no surprise that he became a Trumpist early on. He shares with the Very Stable Genius a tendency to drop a train of thought like a hot potato before anyone listening would have a chance to get a full picture of the point ostensibly being made.

Now, back to Mark Levin. When he first became a well-known figure, it was as the author of some very good, well-researched-and-argued books on the legal framework for defending liberty. He demonstrably had those chops in good working order. But on the radio, he was prone to shouting, at a decibel level even higher than that of his run-of-the-mill competitors. He was, like Hannity, a hanger-upper. "Get off my phone, you dope!" he'd bark.

Still, he seemed to have his wits about him as he informed his audience that he was an ardent supporter of Ted Cruz. He publicly declared himself a Never Trumper.  What a difference three years makes. He now calls Trump the first Jewish president. 

My point is that there seems to be a correlation between the degree of bombast in a talk radio host's style and the fullness of his conversion to Trumpism. The medium itself lends itself to the kind of brand-hustling and verbal swagger that is the VSG's hallmark. Thoughtful reflection and calm discourse don't play well on the AM airwaves.

For a while, talk radio had a role to play in advancing conservatism's three pillars. It could reach people and provoke thought in a way that highbrow magazines and think-tank conferences could not. But when the Very Stable Genius descended the escalator at Trump Tower and made his announcement, radio hosts saw way more potential for positive impact in a style of comportment with which they identified than was really possible. And now they're so inextricably tied to to the success of the project that they can't back away. For one thing, like Republican Senators who voted not to call witnesses in the impeachment trial, they have no interest in being the objects of the VSG machine's wrath.

They love this stuff at the modern iteration of CPAC, though. I notice that Dan Bongino is also among the speakers. Notice has been served that, whatever the "C" is supposed to stand for, this annual and once-important gathering has been reduced to a sewer of cult worship.

If you want to convene with actual conservatives, there are alternatives.

Talk radio's limitations are on full display in 2020 post-America. At this point, it's a medium best avoided.

Sunday roundup

I've always maintained that freedom is elegantly simple compared to any alternative. That's demonstrated once again in this piece at Market Watch entitled, ""The US Can Slash Health Care Costs With 2 Fundamental Changes - and Without Medicare For All."

Protests flare across Iran in the wake of a three-fold increase in gasoline prices. 

Denver radio talk show host Craig Silverman was doing his show Saturday, discussing the late attorney Roy Cohn's mentorship of Donald Trump in the 1970s, when suddenly the station went to network news, and program director Kelly Michaels came into the studio and said, "You're done." KNUS is owned by Salem Communications. You'll recall that the website Red State was purged of non-Trumpists after it was acquired by Salem.

Insightful piece at the Washington Examiner by Joel Gehrke on how Mike Pompeo was 'powerless' to prevent Marie Yovanovitch's ouster as ambassador to Ukraine.

If anything I'm mentioning here is a must-read, it's Kevin Williamson' National Review piece on what a crock Marco Rubio's "common good capitalism" is. 

Um, how's that again?

A Texas school district’s decision to allow a drag queen to conduct a class on makeup application has many parents up in arms after the fact. A Willis ISD English teacher added fuel to the fire when he posted on social media that ‘parents should not have the final say’ and ‘don’t know what is best” for their children.

Colin Kaepernick's latest spoiled-brat stunt gets the cold shoulder from the NFL. 

The pathetic gaggle of Kool-Aid guzzlers still shilling for the VSG

Exhibit A is Jeff Sessions, who, before the VSG made the switch from business to politics, had amassed an impressive record as a principled conservative.

As we know, his stint as Attorney General did not go well, and ended in cringe-inducing humiliation:

It's no secret that President Donald Trump loathes his attorney general, Jeff Sessions. The reason it's no secret is because on a weekly basis -- and sometimes even a daily basis -- the President is tweeting his distaste for Sessions.

Just when you thought the bullying couldn't get any worse -- Trump has repeatedly said he would never and should never have hired Sessions, called him "beleaguered," "very weak" and "disgraceful," and reportedly refers to the former Alabama senator as "Mr. Magoo" -- today happened.

The scene: A FEMA briefing in which Trump and a number of his Cabinet officials were seated around a table. For most of the Cabinet officials, Trump was effusive in his praise of the job they were doing. And then there was Sessions.

Here's what Trump said about each of the Cabinet members; I saved Sessions until last because, well, you'll see.

* Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: "Mike. Mike, another great job you are doing. Secretary Michael Pompeo. We're keeping him very busy. We're keeping you so busy. You're going to be flying -- a lot of flying in the next couple of weeks. But what a job you've done, and we appreciate it. The whole country appreciates it, Mike. Thank you very much." (57 total words)

* Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin: "Steve Mnuchin. Steve, wherever you may be. He's working hard on those taxes and keeping the taxes down. We passed the greatest tax cut in the history of our country, and lots of other things. And thank you very much. Great. I think we say that we have had the strongest -- this is the strongest, from an economic standpoint, that our country has ever been. We're doing better in terms of business, in terms of unemployment. We've broken the record with so many different groups. African-American, the lowest unemployment in history. The Hispanic lowest unemployment in history. Women, lowest unemployment in 21 years. Seven trillion dollars in worth we've created since the election. Seven trillion with a 'T.' Not with even a 'B.' And that's a number that nobody would have thought was possible. So thank you to everybody. That's been fantastic." (144 words)

* Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke: "Secretary Ryan Zinke. Keeping very busy. I know that, Ryan. That's good. That's good for you. Right? Keeping busy and opening up those lands so people can use them and enjoy them. Largest landlord in the world, Ryan. Nobody knows that. But you're the largest -- by far, the largest landlord. It's almost half the United States if you think about it. Right? So great job you're doing." (68 words)

* Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue: "Sonny Perdue. And those farms are doing well, and I did the farmers a big favor last night. Right? I did a big, big favor for the farmers. We love the farmers, and they were happy. I know that Sen. Grassley and Sen. Ernst were very happy with what we did. So thank you for your help. I appreciate it." (60 words)

* Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross: "Wilbur Ross, secretary. I appreciate it, Wilbur. We're renegotiating a lot of trade deals, and they're really fantastic. And it's going to -- we have the worst trade deals ever made. And we're going to have now fair trade deals. We have made the worst deals ever made. NAFTA is a disaster. World Trade Organization is a disaster. I could go deal after deal, and it's been very unfair to our country, to our workers, to our companies and to everybody else involved. And we're changing them around rapidly. So, Wilbur Ross, thank you very much." (96 words)

* Labor Secretary Alex Azar: "Secretary Alex Azar. Alex, I'm very proud of what you've done. And you're coming up in about another month with health care. Maybe even sooner than that. We're going to have a great health care bill planned. And it's going to be great health care for a much smaller price than anybody ever thought possible. And I really appreciate that. And our new project that we're really working on very hard is reducing the cost of prescription medicine. And that's going to be something that people will not forget. Some people think that's almost more important than the health care. I've had people say, 'Which is more important?' They're both important. But we're reducing the cost of medicine because of what you're doing, and we appreciate it." (127 words)

* Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson: "Secretary Ben Carson, who's got some things going on at HUD that we're very excited. We had lunch the other day, and what you're doing is great, Ben. That's really inspirational. More than just brick and mortar. It's really inspirational, Ben. And we appreciate it very much. Thank you very much." (51 words)

* Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao: "Elaine Chao, secretary. All you do is produce. You do it in a very quiet way and so effective and so incredible. What a job you're doing with transportation. It was a great decision. Thank you very much." (38 words)

* Energy Secretary Rick Perry: "Rick Perry. Rick is -- I thought you were going to the VA. But we have great people at the VA, so -- so now we don't have to worry about the VA. I think we have great -- I always thought Rick -- I'd put him right over in the VA, and you would have done great there, too. But you're doing a fantastic job at Energy. And we're now the largest in the world in energy, Rick. The largest in the world. And we're now exporting energy for the first time. Never did it. Now we're exporting energy. But we have become the largest energy producer in the world. Who would have thought? But we've opened it up a little bit, Rick, right? And we've let our people go and do their thing. And they're doing a great job." (141 words) 

* Acting VA Secretary Peter O'Rourke: "Acting secretary of the VA, Peter O'Rourke. And, Peter, the combination of you and Wilkie, I think that's going to be an unbeatable combination. So thank you for all your help. I'm hearing only good things." (36 words)

* Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen: "I don't know, what do I say about you? Huh? You are doing great. And the border is coming along. And the wall is going up. We have $1.6 billion being spent on phase one of the wall and we'll get additional funding. And every week that goes by, people realize it more and more that we have to have the wall. And we're doing great in San Diego and different places." (72 words)

* EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt: "Administrator Scott Pruitt. Thank you, Scott, very much. EPA is doing really, really well. And you know, somebody has to say that about you a little bit. You know that, Scott. But you have done -- I tell you, the EPA is doing so well. So many approvals -- and disapprovals. If they don't qualify, they don't qualify. But we don't have to wait 15 years to tell somebody they don't qualify. And people are really impressed with the job that's being done at the EPA. Thank you very much, Scott." (91 words)

* OMB Director Mick Mulvaney: "Mick Mulvaney. He's got two hats on now, right, Mick? You've got two hats, not just one. And you're doing great at both. But Office of Management and Budget has been good, and our budget this year will be -- there will be a lot of cutting, because we want to cut. You know, Mick is really more of a cutter than the other. But we had to get the military through. We got $700 billion approved for military. We needed that. And in order to get that done, we had to do some things for the Democrats that we would normally not do -- because we consider a lot of it waste and a horror show. But in order to get our military and $6 billion for opioid. So we got the -- which Melania is so heavily involved in -- and we got that taken care of. And very importantly, next year, $716 billion for military. So, Mick, great job. And this time, you can start cutting, OK? Because we have our military taken care of now, so you can start really cutting." (185 words)

* Small Business Administrator Linda McMahon: "A friend of mine for a long time, Administrator Linda McMahon. And, Linda, I was just being told the other day what you've done in small business has been incredible. One of the real stars. And Vince and myself and your family, we're all proud of you. But what you've done is fantastic. So much work. People don't realize your small business is really -- it's really a very massive business. And you add it all up and those numbers are not small business. They're bigger than just about any company you can even think of. So congratulations, Linda. Thank you very much." (103 words)

* Attorney General Jeff Sessions: "Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you very much." (11 words)
Eleven words. And five of those 11 are either Sessions' name or his title!!! Trump was even capable of coming up with 91 nice words about Pruitt, his beyond embattled EPA administrator.

All because Sessions followed the law and recused himself from the Russia investigation.

So how does Sessions launch his bid to reclaim his Senate seat?

Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions wore a “Make America Great Again” hat in a new campaign advertisement, telling prospective voters he would be President Donald Trump’s “number one supporter.”

Sessions, 72, was Trump’s top law enforcement official from 2017 to earlier this year. Sessions was in the Senate when Trump announced his campaign and famously became the first Senator to endorse Trump, announcing on Feb. 28, 2016: “We need to make America great again.”

The phrase was Trump’s slogan during the campaign and helped spawn the so-called MAGA hats.

“Out of the 100 United State Senators, I was the very first one to stand with Donald Trump. While the others were hiding under their desk, I went to work. I knew he was the one to make America great again,” Sessions said in the new campaign video.

“I’ll keep fighting for President Trump and his agenda.” 

 

Sessions then put on a “MAGA hat” and said he approved the message in the ad.

Sessions in his campaign announcement video touted the fact he hasn’t criticized the president since leaving the administration.

“When I left President Trump’s cabinet, did I write a tell-all book? No. Did I go on CNN and attack the President? No. Have I said a cross word about President Trump? No,” he said. “And I’ll tell you why: First, that would be dishonorable. I was there to serve his agenda, not mine. Second, the President is doing a great job for America and Alabama, and he has my strong support.”

Then there are these takes from talk radio's two premier loudmouths:

As the impeachment hearing was underway today, Rush Limbaugh said that both Bill Taylor and George Kent are “self-important nerds” who are only upset because the president wouldn’t do foreign policy their way.

Limbaugh said the impeachment hearings are revealing “exactly what this deep state is,” remarking that the witnesses are “professional nerds who wear their bow ties and they have their proper diplo-speak.”

Taylor and Kent have both testified to concerns they had about how U.S. policy towards Ukraine was not being helped by the “irregular” channel Rudy Giulianiwas part of.

Limbaugh mockingly said, “These guys are simply ticked off that they were not listened to. They are ticked off that they were not heard… There hasn’t been anything but a bunch of self-important, narcissistic, ‘we run the world’ kind of guys really ticked off that they were ignored, that they were not listened to.”

He continued framing Taylor and Kent as arrogant and called them “self-important nerds who do not understand how they are seen, do not understand how their work is perceived by people.”

“They are from a different world, and it’s a world where they think they are in charge. It’s a world they think they run,” Limbaugh said. “They don’t get to determine foreign policy. But in their world, they do. In their world, they are in charge of foreign policy. They believe in their own superiority. They believe in their own competence and importance with a complete cluelessness.”

Sean Hannity made similar remarks on his radio show today, saying, “What you’re really watching are these nerdy guys that don’t know President Trump, never met with President Trump, that speak to the European Union ambassador, make interpretations out of his conversations that actually contradict his testimony, and obviously they have a level of self-importance that is just nauseating to me.” 

Now, the Limbaugh transformation is a true disappointment. At one time, he was a brilliant analyst and articulator of core conservative principles. Hannity, I never cared for. He's a crummy polemicist who has never demonstrated any depth to speak of. He's always been a hot dog.

The momentum is gathering, isn't it? Everybody's true character is coming to the fore. There's no margin left between image and reality.

 I think it behooves us to heed the admonition of King David, who was qualified to say it because he knew what a fallible leader he had been in his time:

"Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save"

But at least some human beings make the attempt to conduct themselves admirably.

 

A former first-tier hero of conservatism jumps the shark

Can anybody tell me how the hell Rush Limbaugh thinks he is getting from his starting point (Trump's humiliation of Sessions looks baffling on the surface) to his conclusion (Trump is once again playing 4-D chess) with this line of "reasoning"?

His launching point really comes as a subtext to some kind of point he seems to be trying to make about Scaramucci asserting that most administration leakers are Obama-era holdovers.

Get any sense about how he's going to tie those together? Me neither.

Anyway, the launching point:

This public disrespect of Sessions by Trump has never made sense to me in any away. It hasn’t made sense in common sense. It doesn’t make sense. I don’t think Trump is off his rocker. I’m not like the media who think Trump is unbalanced and deranged. I think Trump is a masterful user/manipulator of the media. You take Sessions, whose incomparable value is advancing the Trump immigration agenda, and that’s why Trump was elected.

Okay, while I think Rush is deluding himself here, so far he's being coherent.

And the next paragraph is a pretty linear  recounting of what Jeff Sessions has been experiencing over the last year-plus - with one exception: this "diversion" business.

If he gets rid of Sessions, there’s nobody he’s gonna find that, A, could get confirmed, and, B, would continue what Sessions has started on implementing and enforcing the Trump immigration agenda. And that’s his value; not, you know, running defense on this Russia business. I think it’s all been a diversion. I go back to the time Sessions endorsed, through the campaign, through the transition, and then Sessions being nominated to be AG, the confirmation hearings. What’d they do? They savaged the guy as a typical Southern plantation-owner racist.

By "diversion,"  Rush seems to mean "running defense on this Russia business," given where he goes next:

They said despicable things about him, making fun of his middle name: Beauregard. But this week he has found new acclaim. He has been attacked by Trump, and the media and his fellow colleagues — the Democrats in the Senate who wanted to destroy him — have come to his defense. They’re speaking of his integrity, of his honor, and how it’s unseemly that some pig from Queens would ever treat somebody this way. Trump says (summarized), “He’s not doing a good job getting rid of the Russian thing. He’s not going on a good job investigating this. He’s not doing a good job. He’s disappointed me. He shouldn’t have recused himself.”

By the way, on that, don’t you think it’s still a little odd to still be carrying a torch for something that happened six months ago? I mean, get real. Sessions recused himself six months ago, and Trump’s acting like he’s still not over it? Come on, folks. So yesterday, Trump savages Sessions again. “Where’s the investigation into the leaks? That’s what’s really important here! We need the leaks investigated,” and today we get news that Sessions is on the verge of announcing just such an investigation, and this investigation will be of these Obama embeds and these people in the deep state, who they are and what they’ve been.

‘Cause real felonies have been committed there, and Comey wasn’t interested in it. We don’t know how many other people the FBI may or may not have been. Comey was not interested and didn’t do diddly-squat. So Trump sends out a call last night and the announcement Sessions is doing that, and Scaramucci is on Fox News today saying Obama holdovers are responsible for all of these leaks. I think that’s what this is all about. They know who the leakers are. ‘Cause there’s so many of them.

There’s so many leaks, so many leakers, they have to know who it is, at least some of them. So with Scaramucci today blaming Obama holdovers for a series of damaging leaks that have rocked the White House, distracted the White House, whatever, these leaks and these Obama holdovers are not helping, and he hinted that more staff changes could be on the way. He said: Listen, we have to crack down on leaks on a number of different fronts. What’s happened now in this past week, all these Sessions distractors are now saying what a great guy he is.

How much integrity he has and how it’s just unseemly for Trump to be treating him this way. I myself have joined that particular complaint. So now Sessions announces this investigation, and what are they gonna say about Sessions? Well, they’re gonna have to go back and say he’s a tool. “He’s a coward. He couldn’t take it! Trump starts ripping him publicly, and what does Sessions do? He bows town and says, ‘Okay, what can I do to get back…?'” So they’re gonna savage him again, but it’s gonna be funny to watch because they don’t have the credibility to do it anymore because they’ve just spent a week or more praising the guy.

As if Sessions detractors were a major factor in all this.


He then digresses into a reminiscence about how the Beltway establishment hated Dick Cheney when he was Bush 43's Vice President, and how that establishment then fawned over Obama and Kerry.

Well, okay, but he utterly fails to demonstrate any kind of parallels between any of that and this.

In the current situation, we're talking about the president publicly showing the utmost disrespect to his attorney general, who happened to be one of his earliest staunch supporters. And it's pretty clear Sessions is very pissed about it. Sessions and Trump are not even speaking. That fact is not going away just because the Justice Department is going to investigate leaking. To make some kind of connection, one would have to believe that Sessions was willing to be a pawn in a game designed to root out the deep state. I can't think of anything less likely.

Does this last paragraph tie it all together for you?

Jimmy Carter, smartest guy, he ended up not doing too well, but smart, smart focused guy. All these Democrats are brainiacs, John Kerry, and every Republican is an idiot. And so now here we have what appears to be a bit of media manipulation, a little bit of a feint. You put this all together, I think this is what they’re doing. I think it makes some sense because what’s apparent doesn’t.

Me neither.

Rush is trying to read tea leaves that aren't there.

Something happened when he got wowed, during the campaign season, by the unprecedented nature of the Trump phenomenon. He readily admitted then, and still does, that Trump's worldview and way of operating is not conservative, occasional policy dovetailing notwithstanding.

He was mightily impressed, in a slightly different way from the slavish devotees such as Hannity and Ingraham, but it now appears he may be going full fanboy.

And it's made a wreck of his vaunted powers of analysis.

The Obama holdover is probably one type of leaker. It's not the only type. Government is so big and the people comprising it have such an array of agendas that any number of people could have motivations for speaking clandestinely to reporters.

Then there's Squirrel-Hair himself. A guy who would rail repeatedly about the New York Times being a dispenser of "fake news" and then sit down with it for an extensive interview in which he gets the humiliate-Sessions ball rolling doesn't seem to be too preoccupied with message discipline.

No, Rush, it's what it appears to be. Trump demands fealty and ring-kissing from those who step into his orbit, but he doesn't give a flying diddly about reciprocating it. He's just an impulsive loudmouth.

The facts are so obvious as to be contortion-proof. Squirrel-Hair isn't nearly clever enough to mystify anybody.

Rush, you may be reaching your sell-by date.

Have Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham boxed themselves into an inescapable corner?

Now, of course, the easy retort to this would be that it's still mid-August and, as they say, a day in politics is an eternity.

But it's looking real bad for Squirrel-Hair. Reince Preibus is nervous. Down-ballot candidates are nervous.

And the two most ridiculous Trump-bots of all, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, are in a frenzy. They're reduced to - well, check it out for yourself:

Assuming Trump loses, there is no evidence to suggest that it will be because he didn’t get enough Republican votes. It will be because the entire concept that Trump and Hannity sold to GOP primary voters that he could appeal to Democrats and Independents, while Hillary would be easy to beat, was an obvious myth. In my view, there is no election to “sabotage,” because it was forfeited the moment Trump was nominated.

But none of this was nearly as bizarre as when Hannity brought on Trump super fan Laura Ingraham. After his rant, Hannity went to Ingraham for the classic TV talk host device of “here’s a guest who agrees with me on to tell me how right I am.” Ingraham proceeded to utter what is now the leader in the clubhouse for the most asinine thing a (once) respected conservative has said about Trump:

“If you call yourself a conservative and a Republican, it’s actually immoral not to vote for Donald Trump.”

Let that one sink in for a moment.

We conservatives are now being lectured that if we don’t vote for a guy who has at one time held nearly every liberal position there is, is professionally and temperamentally unqualified for the job, gave Hillary lots of money and praised her even after Benghazi, and consulted with Bill Clinton just before he entered the race, we are IMMORAL?!

We have officially left the gravitational pull of the rational earth. This reminds me of a black leader claiming that blacks had a moral obligation support O.J. Simpson in his murder trial (when O.J. wasn’t really even “black” and he certainly didn’t deserve to win).

Of course what is really happening is that Hannity and Ingraham know that they picked the wrong guy in the primaries (those ratings Trump provided rendered them intoxicated) and that it is they who are going to be responsible for whatever Hillary does in office. They are just getting a huge jump on trying to dupe the very same naïve customers they fooled into supporting Trump in the primaries, into believing it wasn’t really the fault of Trump, or his surrogates, that he lost.

And poor Sean has to keep assuring us himself that the pivot is still forthcoming, as does the so-he-humiliated-me-during-the-primaries-I-now-am-placing-my-hopes-in-him Hugh Hewitt:

For more than a year Trump and his choir assured everyone that he would indeed “pivot” and become more presidential.

As he told Hannity: “At the right time, I will be so presidential that you’ll call me and you’ll say, ‘Donald, you have to stop that, it’s too much.’” “

As I get closer and closer to the goal, it’s going to get different,” he told Greta Van Susteren in February. “I will be changing very rapidly. I’m very capable of changing to anything I want to change to.”

As I wrote last week, this was always a lie (and a ridiculous thing to say even if it weren’t). Trump can no more promise to be presidential than a leopard can promise to be a top-loading washing machine that runs on good intentions when in energy-saver mode (did I get that phrase wrong?).

But as 8 trillion eggs on Twitter keep telling me, what I think doesn’t matter. But Sean believed it. Hannity even suggested in that interview that the real Trump – the one Hannity has known for years — is the presidential one. Hannity in effect seconded Trump’s own assurance that Trump could change instantly into a mainstream, mature candidate whenever he wanted. Many honest and decent people pocketed this IOU of presidentialness. In fact, this promise of a new, disciplined Trump seemed to be the only thing that kept Hugh Hewitt off suicide watch.

And now poor Sean is becoming a case study in how denial wraps itself in fantasy:

He has chosen to eschew the numbers of more reliable polls, in favor of the Gateway Pundit nonsense, as mentioned here this past weekend.

From Hannity’s own site:

As we’ve seen recently with Reuters, presidential polls cannot always be trusted.

So for anyone who’s been disheartened by the post-convention bump for Hillary Clinton, the Gateway Pundit has some uplifting numbers for you:

The website reports that analysis from the two candidates’ social media accounts could mean Donald Trump will win in a landslide.

Consider the two candidates’ Facebook accounts: Trump has over 10 million “likes” while Hillary has just over 5 million.

Stop laughing. That’s an actual excerpt from his actual website.

How about when the two candidates live stream their events? Trump averages 30,000 live viewers per stream while Clinton receives on average, a measly 500 viewers.

And on Reddit, “Hillary for Prison” has more than double the subscribers (55,000) than the actual Hillary Clinton page does (24,000).

This is an entirely new level of seat sniffing for Sean Hannity. If anyone ever had any lingering shreds of respect for the man, I’m not sure how those remain, at this point.

So, no, I am not at all getting hot under the collar in response to the finger-wagging from Sean and Laura. This righteousness pose they've assumed is wearing pretty damn thin.


The Hugh Hewitt types, the Mark Davis types, good people like Dennis Prager and the great bloggers Bookworm and Ace, I will not comply with their exhortations to get behind Squirrel-Hair, but at least I can respect them. They were vehemently opposed to him right up until that night in May, when, in Indianapolis, the finest candidate in the original field of seventeen, Ted Cruz, pulled the plug on his campaign. They still acknowledge S-H's awfulness and in fact usually preface their exhortations with such acknowledgement.

But Sean and Laura? No, you people were palpably giddy about this walking train wreck last damn summer, when the world was full of sweet possibilities.

You have a lot of nerve trying to shame those of us who remained actual conservatives.

Laura Ingraham is one of the five most poisonous public figures in post-America today

Yesterday on her show, she got a call from someone - I wonder how many such callers there are who don't get through - who basically asked how she can overlook Squirrel Hair's seemingly infinite demonstrations of moral squalor.

Her lame response? That Reagan was divorced and that Lincoln "had flaws."

Allahpundit at Hot Air parses the full flimsiness of this position:

Lincoln suspended habeas in the middle of a Civil War, Reagan got divorced, and Trump — well, Trump’s going to end globalism. When you’re judging whether he’s fit for office, what more do you need to know?

What you’re hearing here is a variation on the argument Trump fans have been making to conservative Trump skeptics in many contexts lately: He’s a difference in degree, not in kind. That was Katrina Pierson’s and Mike Huckabee’s point last week in grumbling at #NeverTrumpers for refusing to back the nominee. Grassroots conservatives held their noses and voted for McCain and Romney, right? Well, time to repay the favor by voting for Trump. He’s different — but only in degree, not in kind. Meanwhile, when they’re not pitching him to skeptics, every breath they spend praising him is devoted to the idea that he is different in kind, not just degree. It’s a “takeover” of the party. It’s a “new” GOP. It’s a revolution! We’re a nationalist party now! Read this new WaPo analysis and ask yourself whether Trump is a difference in degree or in kind. And if he’s a difference in kind, if he really has formed a new party, what duty to him do people who belong to a fundamentally different party owe?

In order to believe that Trump is “conservative,” you need to believe that taking a hard right-wing line on one policy question, immigration, is sufficient to qualify. And in order to believe that Trump’s character is no more disqualifying than Reagan’s, you need to believe that any single moral failing is no less damning than a multitude of them. This is conservatism now, I guess.

I realize she's not stupid. She clerked at SCOTUS for Justice Thomas. And she claims to be a devout Christian, although on this latter point, I think she's mouthing by rote what she was before she sold her soul.

Oh, and perhaps the question is arising as to who the other four are. Well, now, that makes for an interesting parlor game doesn't it? Lots of candidates to choose from in these dark times.

The vilest kind of swindler

Allahpundit at Hot Air takes a look at the claim Rush Limbaugh made on his program yesterday that, based on his "gut feeling," Squirrel-Hair is going to beat Hillionaire handily in November.

Here at LITD, we've discussed many times the fecklessness of a pundit or talk-show host taking the I'm-just-objectively-analyzing-this-unpreecedented-phenomenon stance regarding S-H. Hell, these people are i the opining business. They make a living taking strong positions. And now they go all Edward R. Murrow over the most cartoonish public figure in their lifetimes.

Anyway, Allahpundit excerpts a great deal of Rush's tortured (and that's another thing that kills me, the way he starts one of these interminable parsings with "It's very simple, folks") examination of his reasons for his hunch.

Then he grants the possibility, given that the next seven months are not likely to proceed in a linear fashion, that S-H could pull out a narrow win, but feels that Rush is, well, going way overboard here.

And then he excerpts from Ross Douhthat's fine, albeit grim, NYT column about what has happened, and then offers just a bit of his own thoughts on a key point of Douthat's:

I can imagine all sorts of scenarios — the Hillary landslide, the barely-hanging-on narrow Hillary win (which I think is most likely), the narrow Trump win, but … the Trump landslide is a toughie. I could even understand it if Rush was counting on some deus ex machina to upend the electoral table, whether an economic crash, a terrorist attack, or a string of very ill-advised protests-turned-riots by SJWs that drive voters towards Trump’s authoritarian message. (If you’re a Trump critic, read Sean Trende’s argument for why the 2020 cycle and the heightened risk it brings of black-swan disasters is when you should start really worrying about a populist-nationalist candidate’s chances.) Rush isn’t predicting that something extraordinary will happen to shift liberals towards Trump, though. All he’s saying is that in a populist climate, an underwhelming oligarch like Hillary Clinton will surely end up the target for a broad-based revolt among most of the electorate. It’d be some neat trick for the candidate who embodies “identity politics for white people” to peel off enough members of the Democrats’ racially diverse coalition to win (never mind Trump overcoming his problems with women voters), but a day after the Trumpocalypse, anything seems possible, I guess. Vaguely.

Incidentally, isn’t there a bigger story out there today than whether Trump can pull off a win against Hillary this fall? The conservative-media belief that a strong “true conservative” candidate would be unstoppable in the primaries has now been conclusively disproved. Ross Douthat:

Trump proved that movement conservative ideas and litmus tests don’t really have any purchase on millions of Republican voters. Again and again, Cruz and the other G.O.P. candidates stressed that Trump wasn’t really a conservative; they listed his heresies, cataloged his deviations, dug up his barely buried liberal past. No doubt this case resonated with many Republicans. But not with nearly enough of them to make Cruz the nominee.

Trump proved that many evangelical voters, supposedly the heart of a True Conservative coalition, are actually not really values voters or religious conservatives after all, and that the less frequently evangelicals go to church, the more likely they are to vote for a philandering sybarite instead of a pastor’s son. Cruz would probably be on his way to the Republican nomination if he had simply carried the Deep South. But unless voters were in church every Sunday, Trump’s identity politics had more appeal than Cruz’s theological-political correctness…

Finally, Trump proved that many professional True Conservatives, many of the same people who flayed RINOs and demanded purity throughout the Obama era, were actually just playing a convenient part. From Fox News’ 10 p.m. hour to talk radio to the ranks of lesser pundits, a long list of people who should have been all-in for Cruz on ideological grounds either flirted with Trump, affected neutrality or threw down their cloaks for the Donald to stomp over to the nomination. Cruz thought he would have a movement behind him, but part of that movement was actually a racket, and Trumpistas were simply better marks.

Conservative talk-radio hosts who “affected neutrality” between Trump and Cruz? I can’t think of anyone like that. Can you?

I'll put it this way, straight up: the only ostensible conservative opener you can trust is one who is forthrightly and vehemently opposed to Donald J. Trump. Oh, and equally opposed to Hillary Clinton.

Talk radio is by no means a monolithic realm

An interesting fissure became apparent today. After weeks of listening to Rush Limbaugh somewhat echo Laura Ingraham on the dynamics of the Pub prez field, He markedly departed from that narrative.

Of course, he didn't even mention her by name, but that was the gist of what he did. And I say "somewhat," because he shared with her the stance of "wow-this-is-so-big-and-unprecedented-all-I-can-do-is-attempt-to-objectivel-analyze-it" when it came to the Squirrel-Hair phenomenon.  Ingraham has been taking it a step farther, becoming an unabashed two-note johhny, making a point of working the phrase "trade and immigration" into anything she talks about. Being very overt about using the terms "populism and nationalism" in such a way that it's been an unmistakable endorsement of those sentiments. Rush has, as I say, done this dance in which he's kept it all at the level of "analysis," doncha know.

But that's the point on which there was a very different message on each of those shows today. Ingraham was hammering home the trade-and-immigration / populism-and-nationalism message as usual today, this time in the context of Marco Rubio's impressive third-place showing in Iowa last night. She raised her voice to emphasize her view that Rubio's brief involvement with the Gang of Eight bill is central to what he's about as a legislator and Republican. Warned S-H and Ted not to spend time going at each other, saying it would do nothing but hand the race to Rubio, and she was none too subtle about painting Rubio as having gone full-out establishment. By contrast, Rush was equally emphatic in his view that Rubio is a solid conservative, not an establishment tool or a squish, in no way from the same mold as Romney, McCain and Dole.

I'll cut to the chase and say that Rush has this one right. Of course, Ingraham's views on a number of matters have become skewed beyond recognition over at least the last year.

And it seems that Andrea Tantaros has gone the same route. On FNC's Outnumbered show today, she thought she'd really ripped Rich Lowry a new one saying that the voters are now in a "nationalist mode" and that Lowry's magazine had "insulted" them.  Only thing is S-H's loss in Iowa really was of major significance, since S-H and most polls had him winning handily. So the point Lowry was making that set her off was quite valid. (By the way, Gateway Pundit, to which the link will send you, seems to have gone full Trumpbot. Really sad. I wonder if Jim Hoft still gets along with his old pals Dana Loesch and Michelle Malkin, given that they give Squirrel-hair the big thumbs-down.)

Then there's Mark Levin, who has gone from being wary of S-H to getting on board at least somewhat with the wow-this-is-big-and-unprecedented school to being at war with S-H. Sneers when he uses the terms "populism" and "nationalism," juxtaposing them (quite rightly) against the concept of Constitutionalism.

So the fur is flying on the airwaves as much as it is on the Web.

You'll find no dancing, no equivocating, no splitting the difference or striking a "this-is-so-big-we-don't-know-what-to-make-of-it" pose here at LITD. This is your source for straight-up three-pillared conservatism. Cruz is the first choice here, Rubio second.

Refreshing, huh?

If Laura's starting to waver . . .

Squirrel-Hair's Iowa speech last night may have been, to use a hackneyed-in-the-extreme term, a tipping point.

The Carson's-temper-as-a-kid-makes-him-comparable-to-a-child-molester remark.  "How stupid are the people of Iowa? How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?" The "bomb the shit out of ISIS" remark.

It was such a volley of stink bombs that it caused a flying-pigs moment on talk radio this morning. Laura Ingraham, whose just-providing-objective-analysis-of-the-populist-anger-in-the-country schtick has rung completely hollow, given her undisguised glee whenever she has cited S-H's poll numbers or rally attendance numbers, was actually lambasting his performance without reserve. She actually spoke of his rise in the past tense. Took several calls from people who branded him toast. This is, as, S-H would say, yuuuuuuge. 

It's not as if she's done a turnabout on any other level, though. She's still a two-note johnny, the two notes being immigration and trade. In fact, she clearly has a goal of cramming those two words into every segment of her show as frequently as she can.

Look, LITD counts immigration as one of post-America's must urgent dilemmas - and for the reasons Ingraham harps on at every opportunity. National sovereignty, the rule of law, cultural cohesion and the ability of millions of citizens to make a decent living are all being mocked and indeed destroyed by not only the Most Equal Comrade's executive-overreach amnesty-granting to illegal aliens, but by the government's visa policy toward those who come here with their paperwork in order. I get that.

But one-note johnnies are a corrosive factor in our nation's political life.

To focus on immigration - or any other issue - to the exclusion of the others comprising the full array of forces dooming this country and Western civilization inclines one to latch on to a figure who carries the banner of that particular issue, even if that figure is a narcissistic blowhard completely lacking in a coherent conservative worldview, not to mention in depth as a human being.

And Squirrel-Hair is thusly lacking. 

Breitbart.com has also largely become a shill for S-H. In fact, today, Julia Hahn, executive producer for Ingraham's radio show, has a way-too-long piece at Breitbart on how National Review is "clear[ing] the way for Rubio with a war on Trump." Most of the piece is an argument that Rubio has not wavered from the position he eked out during the Gang of Eight episode. That, and an argument that National Review has lost its conservative moorings.

The hell it has. One could only argue thusly if one were so ate-up with Squirrel-Hair Kool-Aid that one were willing to completely ignore all evidence that S-H is an utter charlatan.

The only merit to Hahn's screed is that it has alerted me to the news that the magnificent Kevin D. Williamson of National Review has a new book out about this very subject, titled, quite simply, The Case Against Trump.

My must-read-soon list just got a little longer.

I've written before about how a secondary type of evidence, after S-H's own behavior and pronouncements, of the disturbing nature of his rise, is the manner in which most of his followers on comment threads not only at Breitbart, but pretty much anywhere one finds a piece discussing their hero, express themselves. The dismissing of the entire rest of the GOP field as donor-class RINO squishes and sellouts. "Go Trump!" in all caps. The characterization of National Review as a leftist rag of the same sort as Mother Jones. The one-note-johnny harping on immigration. The turning of any subject of conversation to their idol.

I don't know if Hahn wrote her piece before Ingraham's show today, but it seems likely. Then again, Hahn seems so up to her eyeballs in Kool-Aid that it may not have made much of a difference.

But her boss's new-found willingness to candidly assess S-H's grave misstep last night gives LITD hope that we may see the Pub field winnow down to real conservative contenders - and, yes, that includes Marco Rubio.

And when that scenario plays itself out, it will be a joy to see Ted Cruz give his acceptance speech at next summer's RNC convention.