These people are not conservatives

 MAGA has a challenge based on a paradox. It is at least as purist a movement as any flavor of either progressivism or conservatism, but, given its intrinsic incoherence, it must try to define what it wants to be pure about in terms of stomping into the dust anyone who deviates the first micro-inch from its jumbled set of orthodoxies. In short, it makes more clear what it's against than what it's for.

It also, by its nature, operates in the short term.  It can't conceive of any kind of principles that would guide it through, say, the next century. 

Nothing sparks its hatred like public recognition of anyone's actual conservative bona fides who ever obstructed anything about its "program."

As you know, Mitch McConnell has announced he will step down as the Senate GOP leader in November. Now, I have my share of real frustrations with McConnell. Shortly after having given a floor speech in which he placed the moral culpability for January 6 on Donald. Trump, he told an interviewer with a great deal of certainty in his tone that he'd vote for Trump if Trump were the GOP nominee.

But, sitting out here in the hinterland as I am, I'm sure I don't appreciate all the factors McConnell has to balance every day in his role. And the fact is, he steered a lot of legislation through his chamber that advanced conservative causes. And he was primarily responsible for getting three great Supreme Court nominees approved during the otherwise unfortunate administration of the Very Stable Genius.

Here's how the ate-up yay-hoos are framing McConnell's legacy:

Jeremy Carl

@realJeremyCarl

McConnell was a cancer on the GOP and the most unpopular national political figure for many years. He hasn't died and there's no reason to sugarcoat his legacy.

Carl is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, which at one time was an exemplary think thank. It was founded by the west coast Straussian Harry V. Jaffa. But it has pretty much gone all in for MAGA-ism.

How about this charmer from a group of currently-serving federal lawmakers?

House Freedom Caucus

@freedomcaucus

Our thoughts are with our Democrat colleagues in the Senate on the retirement of their Co-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (D-Ukraine).  

No need to wait till November… Senate Republicans should IMMEDIATELY elect a *Republican* Minority Leader.

What's the main thing that leaps out at you in each of these tweets?

Is it not the utter lack of grace? The refusal, or perhaps incapacity, to consider any kind of context?

Matt Vespa, one of the most toxic columnists at that sewer of MAGA-ism, Townhall, has a piece today - sorry, not giving it any linky love - on the occasion of Liz Cheney on yesterday's Supreme Court decision that throws a wrench in Jack Smith's ability to move his cases against Trump forward. The whole piece is an attempt to portray her as an irrelevant laughingstock. At one point his poses the question of how does someone in deep-red Wyoming lose the state's House seat? He doesn't answer his own question, but the piece is pregnant with the clear implication: She saw Trump's behavior on January 6 as disqualifying him from further participation in America politics. Her voting record in Congress was as conservative as you can get. She was elected conference chair when she was only in her second term. Hell, she voted with Trump's preferences 93 percent of the time.  She had a reputation for policy chops. 

But she crossed the MAGA red line. 

Let us also bear in mind that to Trump, his former UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, is now "braindead."

The drool-besotted throne-sniffers have completely taken over the Republican Party, which is why I'm staying home in May and November. 

I won't have any truck with a movement based on pure meanness. 

 

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Border thoughts

 I recently discussed this issue here, with a focus on Mitch McConnell's we-don't-want-to-undermine-Trump remark. That quickly became an angle - to a significant degree, legitimately so - that those inclined to reflexively put Republicans in the worst possible light used to understandable advantage.

There was no completed Senate bill at the time. Now that there is one, it's possible to make a more concrete assessment of where things stand.

The bill's principal architect, Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma (working with Democrat Chris Murphy of Connecticut and independent Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona), feels like it's a good combination of teeth and humanity:

“Even if President Biden will not admit it, this is a crisis. We must secure our border now. It cannot wait any longer.

“Americans are not opposed to legal and orderly immigration, but they are tired of the chaos and abuse at our border. I am happy to announce, we have finally finished strong bill text to add to the supplemental funding bill. Though most members of the Senate have already been briefed on the contents of the bill, the final text will be distributed to members of the Senate soon and posted online within a day.

“The border security bill will put a huge number of new enforcement tools in the hands of a future administration and push the current Administration to finally stop the illegal flow. The bill provides funding to build the wall, increase technology at the border, and add more detention beds, more agents, and more deportation flights. The border security bill ends the abuse of parole on our southwest border that has waived in over a million people. It dramatically changes our ambiguous asylum laws by conducting fast screenings at a higher standard of evidence, limited appeals, and fast deportation."

“New bars to asylum eligibility will stop the criminal cartels from exploiting our currently weak immigration laws. The bill also has new emergency authorities to shut down the border when the border is overrun, new hiring authorities to quickly increase officers, and new hearing authorities to quickly apply consequences for illegal crossings. It changes our border from catch and release to detain and deport.

A main point of contention for those opposed to the bill is that it apparently has a tripwire number of 5,000 illegal crossings a day that would automatically close the border. 

That seems pretty leaky. It would only take ten days of such numbers to equal the population of the city where I live, and 100 days to equal the population of several major US metropolises. 

But it's also moot, given that that number has been exceeded a lot lately:

If the proposal were passed into law, the new authority could be triggered almost immediately, given that border encounters topped 10,000 on some days during December, which was the highest month on record for illegal crossings. 

 But there's a ludicrous amount of good faith packed into this bill:

The bill’s authors would have you believe that after immigrants have traveled thousands of miles and spent thousands of dollars to enter the United States illegally, they will voluntarily surrender to ICE for deportation. It is a fantasy. All immigrants released into the U.S. under the “noncustodial removal proceeding” will disappear into the country forever. Biden will not lift a finger to track them down. He certainly hasn’t so far. He is utterly untrustworthy on this.

And good old subsidization:

The legislation also includes billions of dollars of spending to bail out local governments and nongovernmental organizations so they can continue to provide housing, food, clothing, education, and healthcare for immigrants.

Matthew Continetti makes the point that Biden has legitimate executive authority to act right now, without an unwieldy Congressional bill.  It's more legitimate authority than that which he's used for a number of matters, immigration-related and beyond:

Biden didn’t say he required congressional approval when, on his first day in office, he reversed his predecessor’s order to exclude illegal immigrants from the Census Bureau’s calculations for congressional reapportionment; insulated Dreamers from legal challenges; ended restrictions on entry into the United States for citizens of nations deemed a national security risk; paused deportations; stopped construction of the border wall; and extended the ability of Liberian immigrants to remain in the United States.

Nor did Biden say he required congressional approval when he ended his predecessor’s Remain in Mexico policy; first tried to halt Title 42 authority to remove illegal migrants deemed a public health risk; and expanded presidential parole to admit more than 1 million migrants to the United States.

Biden didn’t go to Congress when he extended the pandemic eviction moratorium. Or when he announced a blatantly unconstitutional workplace vaccine mandate. Or when he revived an egregiously expansive interpretation of the Clean Water Rule. Or when he erased $400 billion in student loans.

True, the courts tossed out the eviction moratorium, vaccine mandate, EPA overreach, and the initial student loan forgiveness plan. If Biden assumes that the courts also would intervene on the border, then he should say so. The point is that Biden’s self-imposed limitations on executive authority have appeared only when the issue is illegal migration.

And then there's the matter of bundling border-policy legislation with with foreign policy. In a sane universe, aid to Ukraine and aid to Israel would be handled on a stand-alone basis (and passed without difficulty).

I'm inclined to think this bill has too many shortcomings to warrant support. But then again, what the hell are we going to do at this late date? 

Ukraine needs ammunition more than ever, given Putin's amassing of 40.000 troops and 500 tanks for a fresh drive into Kupyansk within the month.  Not to mention all kinds of other materiel. 

So the bill is just another example of how post-America cobbles together feeble measures to address its threats in lieu of a strategic vision that would guide us and give a unified sense of why the hell we're doing anything we're doing. 

 

 

 

The Biden thumbs-down on LNG exports: more hatred of human advancement

 I hope that you're aware of this development:

The White House is halting the permitting process for several proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal projects over their potential impacts on climate change, an unprecedented move environmentalists have demanded in recent months.

In a joint announcement Friday morning, the White House and Department of Energy (DOE) said the pause would occur while federal officials conduct a rigorous environmental review assessing the projects’ carbon emissions, which could take more than a year to complete. Climate activists have loudly taken aim at LNG export projects in recent weeks, arguing they will lead to a large uptick in emissions and worsen global warming.

“As our exports increase, we must review export applications using the most comprehensive up-to-date analysis of the economic, environmental and national security considerations,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told reporters on a press call. “This action includes a pause on pending applications for exports of U.S. natural gas as LNG to non-free trade agreement countries until the department can update the underlying analyses for authorizations.”

Is there any doubt who has had the administration's ear on this subject?

LNG export terminals have been opposed by Democrats and environmentalists who argue they would create harmful pollution and contribute to global warming. The issue has led to activists posting videos on social media which, over the last two months, have generated tens of millions of views.

Additionally, in December, dozens of environmental groups wrote to Granholm, imploring her to reject the LNG development “for the sake of our climate and communities.” Days later, 170 scientists penned a letter to President Biden, asking him to reject pending LNG facilities.

Here's another viewpoint, one based less on hysterics and preening, and more on an understanding of LNG's comparative advantages:

Natural gas is an incredibly versatile fuel--providing low-cost, clean residential heating; low-cost, clean "industrial process heat"; and low-cost, highly controllable and reliable clean electricity.

While natural gas used to be so hard to get that the US imported it, thanks to fracking and other shale energy technologies, the US now has a virtually limitless supply of low-cost, reliable, versatile, clean natural gas.¹

Between 2008 and 2018 fracking natural gas added 17 times more energy to the US than all solar panels and wind turbines combined. And that’s 100% reliable energy, unlike the unreliable energy from solar and wind that needs constant backup from...fracked natural gas.²

One of the best things American energy producers can do with our endless natural gas supplies is to export natural gas to places that need it. There are 800 million people who have no electricity and the 2.6 billion people still using wood or dung for heating and cooking.³

The key to exporting natural gas is LNG--liquefied natural gas. By cooling natural gas to very low temperatures, we can turn it into a liquid that can be easily and cost-effectively transported nearly anywhere in the world.

The world wants US natural gas and American companies want to build the LNG facilities to get it to them. But our government is strangling progress with an onerous and irrational permitting process.

LNG export facilities are burdened not only by standard, onerous state and federal permitting requirements in need of reform, but also requiring additional approval by the Department of Energy--which can take years.

Fortunately, there is proposed legislation that would expedite permitting for LNG exports: the “Natural Gas Export Expansion Act,” introduced by @AugustPfluger, which would allow expedited LNG approval for any country except those determined to be national security threats.⁴

There is no good reason for opposing expedited permitting of LNG. Those who complain about LNG's emissions ignore the fact that if we don't export LNG, it will be substituted for by higher-emissions Russian LNG or by coal.⁵

And our trading partners are going to find some LNG to import anyway - or substitute coal for it:

Countries that would have purchased U.S. LNG can substitute LNG from other countries. Mother Earth doesn’t really care which country it comes from.

Countries that aren’t able to substitute LNG from elsewhere are likely to use coal instead. Coal burns dirtier than LNG. The largest single reason for the decline in U.S. carbon emissions in the past several years is the switch from coal to natural gas for electricity generation. Making LNG exports more difficult hinders the ability of other countries to make that switch.

As has been proven with such developments as "gender-affirming" mutilation of thirteen year olds and an electeds-of-color holiday party hosted by the mayor of a major post-American city, progressivism doesn't need a majority of the population to impose its corrosion on the rest of us.

Climate alarmism brings together an older element of the leftist impulse - class-based antipathy toward organizations formed for industrial purposes (see California Governor Gavin Newsom's accusation that "big oil" is gouging prices and lying about the effects of its products), and the profits resulting from their activity - with more modern features of that impulse: a deification of the ball of dirt and water we inhabit, and an "intersectional" lumping together of its adversarial stance toward normal-people energy forms with its paradoxical portrayal of the female half of the human species: portraying them simultaneously as helpless and particularly vulnerable, and powerful and assertive in the same way a man is. 

The entire vision is mad. It's also collectivist in the extreme. It allows its architects to supposedly justify the sinking of government's teeth into every realm of human activity.

Would that we had some kind of coherent and viable political counterforce that could mitigate this onslaught. That's not in the offing at present. 

 

 

 

Stay home in November - today's edition

 The immediately preceding post here at LITD got into the fissures that suggest a bipartisan package deal combining border measures and Ukraine aid is in peril, with a focus on Mitch McConnell's cowardice and cynicism. 

The matter continues to get more pathetic, with a group of ate-up yay-hoos  organizing a trucker convoy to travel to three points along the border to make a statement about the "globalists" and proclaim that God takes an unambiguous stand on the issue. 

The cynicism now clearly extends to the top of the not-so-grand old party, with the Very Stable Genius asking anyone concerned with a stall in a solution to "please blame it on me." His thinking is that such blame launches a narrative in which he alone can come up with the golden remedy, just like the way he'd end the Ukraine-Russia conflict in 24 hours.

States are now squaring off against the federal government over the matter. 

It's not as if the Biden administration deserves any cutting of slack. It has handled the illegal immigration issue abysmally, and even Democrat big-city mayors are insisting that the administration get serious, so that immigrants quit arriving on buses and finding miserable circumstances. There are also the human trafficking and fentanyl elements. Probably a terrorism element as well, which may fully present itself in ways we don't want to imagine.

A lot of Democratic fecklessness stems from the fact that the always-automatically-ascribe-unassailable-virtue-to-those-from-the-global-south wing drives everything about that party's policy orientation. Perhaps the best-crystallized display of the self-congratulation behind this bias is the moment when AOC put on a crying jag at the border fence.

I have always thought it was ill-advised to package a major domestic issue (the border) with a pressing foreign-policy concern (Ukraine), but Capitol Hill dynamics often result in awkward legislative bundles.

Republican wack jobs like Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Matt Gaetz have made Ukraine aid a matter of "principle," calling that West-friendly country's desperate attempt to roll back the brazen aggression inflicted on it by its neighbor a waste of taxpayer dollars. Those in that camp often cite the corruption problems Ukraine has dealt with since its 1991 independence. Their hope is that those willing to give them  an airing will not look at the big picture: Zelensky's understanding that those he's trying to weed out of his government for skimming money and war materiel are stymying his and the nation's ability to set things aright. They're traitors, in a word.

If it seems like I'm going back and forth between Republican and Democratic transgressions, it's because I want to make it clear that I take no side in this year's election cycle. I don't give a flying diddly who gets elected president or to my city council. 

All I'm standing for is seeing that tried and true fusionist conservatism gets an airing. 

David Corn, a well-credentialed lefty columnist, has a piece today that demonstrates how hard it is for most observers - of his stripe or the Trumpisst stripe - to keep an agenda out of their assessments of the lay of the land.

He accurately paints the picture of who the players are, with a focus on Never Trumpers. But when he takes his scalpel to the distinction between types pf Never Trumpers - Bill Kristol types on th one hand, who are going to vote for Biden because "binary choice," and those who are going to fold and kiss the ring of the Very Stable Genius - he shows his hand.

David, there's another type: me.

I refuse to have any truck with the drool-besotted leg-humpers of my former party. I come from a red state, but one with a reputation for its Republicans generally avoiding the yay-hoo vibe. But that era appears to have ended.  Both major candidates for governor are dead to me. 

But on the other hand, I will never abide by the hatred for human advancement, comfort, convenience and safety that drives the Democratic Party, nor its militant identity politics, nor its penchant for wealth redistribution. 

Furthermore, I will not take the bait and engage in any kind of argument catalyzed by an are-you-saying-that-stuff-is-as-bad-as-trying-to-prevent-a-Constitutional-transfer-of-power type challenge. 

I will not choose between poisons. 

I am staying home for both my state's primary in May and the general election in November, and I will tell you that you should, too.

It's the only moral choice.

This isn't the first time I've spelled out this position, and I'm sure it won't be the last.

But I honestly can't see how anyone who likes to sleep well at night can proceed otherwise.

Mitch McConnell goes all in as the Very Stable Genius's eunuch

 The Senate Minority Leader stands at the corner of Cynical and Cowardly to publicly announce the abrupt reversal of his view on a bipartisan package that addresses the US southern border as well as aid for Ukraine:

In a private Senate Republican meeting on Ukraine, McConnell said effectively that time and the political will to pass a bipartisan immigration and border security compromise are quickly running out — and may have actually run out already.

McConnell told GOP senators that before border security talks began, immigration policy united Republicans and Ukraine aid divided them. “Politics on this have changed,” McConnell said of solving the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. That’s because former President Donald Trump wants to run his 2024 campaign focusing on immigration.

“We don’t want to do anything to undermine him,” McConnell said of Trump, a one-time collaborator turned nemesis.

This is a big about-face for McConnell, who earlier this week said Congress needs to pass the border security bill and unlock billions of dollars in new Ukraine aid.

On the floor Wednesday, McConnell asserted that supporting Ukraine was a matter of “cold hard American interest.” But the Kentucky Republican made his own cold political calculation later in the day that the scheme he had been relentlessly pushing for weeks was in jeopardy and a new approach was needed.

Got that? "We don't want to do anything to undermine him." He's decided that it's more important to give Squirrel Hair a talking point for the remainder of this election cycle than to get going on solution to the thousands of illegal immigrants pouring across the border weekly. And aid for Ukraine, a West-friendly European nation that had its sovereignty suddenly and brutally violated, remains flapping in the breeze for the foreseeable future.

I guess what McConnell had to say in his February 2021 Senate floor speech about Trump being "morally responsible" for the Capitol riot the previous month was a lot of hooey. Is anything he's ever said anything other than hooey? How would we be able to tell?

Ted Cruz, who got a double dose of humiliation from the VSG in 2016 in the form of getting his wife called ugly and his dad accused of conspiring to assassinate JFK, now wants to talk tough about what a bad deal it would be immigration-wise:

“This supplemental bill is a kamikaze plane in a box canyon with no exit headed for a trainwreck,” quipped Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

Gee, it looks to me like it has some teeth:

The deal – which has not yet been finalized – would reportedly make it harder for migrants to claim asylum, make it easier for U.S. officials to deport migrants who have remained in the country illegally, expand detention capacity and add Border Patrol staff.

Add this cynical calculation to the zeal with which Tim Scott and Marco Rubio have lined up to publicly fellate the VSG.

Cowards, loonies and sycophants. The entire Republican Party is now given over to them.