There's no place for principle, character or spine in the 2022 Republican Party

 Last month, at Precipice, I summarized the challenge that I've had as a cultural observer since the insertion of a new force in our nation's politics since 2015:

When I started opining on culture, politics, economics and world affairs online, and in a column I wrote for several years for our local newspaper, the lines of demarcation were more clear-cut. There was right, and there was left. I expended a great many keyboard strokes trying to get people to see that Barack Obama was a lurch leftward beyond any that had come before for the Democrats. Frank Marshall Davis, Rashid Khalidi, the Midwest Academy, Bill Ayers and all that. The task before conservatives (back when that term stood for something recognizable) was straightforward: explain and defend our glorious lineage, from Edmund Burke through Frederic Bastiat, Richard M. Weaver, Russell Kirk, National Review and on up to Reaganite fusionism, and point out the dark nature of the lineage on the other side.

It’s all quite different now, isn’t it? Yes, the Left has grown increasingly grotesque, but an entirely new element has upended everyone’s previous assumptions . . .

That’s why any pundit, let alone fundraiser or political candidate who focuses solely on the very real grotesqueness of the Democrats - “We’ll defeat these leftists and then everything will be alright” - must be viewed with suspicion. Such a figure wants you to ignore the at least equally monstrous malignancy on the Right.

Now, the governor of Florida has illustrated exactly that kind of smokescreening maneuver:

"Liz Cheney is just totally off the rails with her nonsense," DeSantis said during an interview Monday with Fox News Digital. "And I think she's not really a Republican in terms of terms of what she's doing. We want people that are going to fight the left, and that's what we need to do in this country. That's what we're doing in Florida, standing up for people's freedoms. We're opposing wokeness. We're opposing all these things." 

A tactic closely akin to the the-Left-is-all-we-have-to-oppose ploy is whataboutism taking the form of "but there was urban violence in 2020." That's how Elise Stefanik, who assumed Liz Cheney's number three position in House Republican leadership, even thou her voting record has been far less consistently conservative that Cheney's, has chosen to obscure the 800-pound gorilla in the room:

“House Democrats did not condemn the violence that happened all of 2020,” she said in reference to riots in some cities following the murder of George Floyd in police custody. “And we believe the January 6 commission is political theater.” 

Sorry, Madame Conference Chair, but that's a non-sequitur. It's not the subject at hand. 

Then there's the dragging-our-brand-across-the-finish-line-is-far-and-away-our-primary-mission approach, as exemplified by Nikki Haley in response to a question from Bret Baier on FNC's Special Report:

“Mike Pence is a good man,” Haley said. “He’s an honest man. I think he did what he thought was right on that day. But I will always say, I’m not a fan of Republicans going against Republicans.”

Donald Trump has, of course, been breaking people who once prided themselves on being animated by principle since he entered the political fray. What a lifetime ago it seems when 

Lindsey Graham characterized the Very Stable Genius thusly:

"If Donald Trump carries the banner of my party," Graham said, "I think it taints conservatism for generations to come. I think his campaign is opportunistic, race-baiting, religious bigotry, xenophobia. Other than that, he’d be a good nominee."

and Rick Perry put it like this:

"Let no one be mistaken Donald Trump’s candidacy is a cancer on conservatism and it must be clearly diagnosed, excised, and discarded," Perry said during a speech in Washington, D.C. "It cannot be pacified or ignored for it will destroy a set of principles that has lifted more people out of poverty than any force in the history of the civilized world and that is the cause of conservatism."

and Ted Cruz, full of righteous indignation, said this:

“This man is a pathological liar. He doesn't know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth,” Cruz told reporters in Evansville, Indiana.

The Hoosier State primary is crucial for Cruz’s goal of preventing Trump from gaining enough delegates to secure the GOP presiential nomination. Most polls show Trump with a lead in the state, and Cruz’s attacks against his rival on Tuesday went into his personal life in a way Trump’s opponents have largely avoided until now.

“Donald Trump is a serial philanderer and he boasts about it,” Cruz said. “This is not a secret, he is proud of being a serial philanderer." 

The only people left in the Republican Party interested in having any personal honor almost certainly have no future in it. They don't even respect each other. They each and all know that they opted to be motivated by fear of a four-year-old in a 76-year-old man's body. 

They claim to be so concerned about the impact of progressive aggression on the foundations of the American way of life, but deep inside they know they've chosen a path that is utterly ineffective in addressing it.

The entire party, save for the handful of outliers with no voice in it, is in the throes of a delusion borne of cowardice. 

 

 

 

 

The Republican Party is no longer just the stupid party; it's confirmed its status as the garbage party

 Justin Stapely, who writes the Substack newsletter Self-Evident, sees everything about the political landscape at this moment as I do - save for one conclusion. He understands that Trumpism is a sewer of cult-worship and incoherence and that what is happening to Liz Cheney is a travesty. He is a defender of free markets, foundational American institutions, traditional morality and ordered liberty. 

And I have struggled with what he has already concluded. He thinks the Republican Party can be rescued from Trumpism. 

I wish so fervently that this cause had even a miniscule chance, but my doubt grows exponentially by the moment. I do not scoff at him for it. I respect it a great deal, but it looks hopelessly quixotic to me now:

Justin Stapley

@JustinWStapley

Let me be clear: I will fight for conservatism in the Republican Party until it reasserts its traditional values or until a credible, concrete alternative presents itself. I'm holding my ground and I will not budge, not for the Trumpists and not for the naysayers.

Justin Stapley

@JustinWStapley

Replying to 

@JustinWStapley

I have said time & time again: I'm done listening to the voices of defeatism who turn every battle into the final one. I'm going to fight. I'm going to fight, sweat, & bleed, and maybe even fall down, but then I'll get up and fight some more.

Heath Mayo is a Texas attorney and anti-Trumpism conservative who founded Principles First about two years ago.  I'm involved. I attend its nationwide Zoom sessions and intend to go to this year's summit in Washington D.C. in October.

The last Zoom session had as its guest Michael Wood, the Texas 6th district congressional candidate who, as we now know, did not do well enough in the runoff to continue. During the session, someone asked Wood about the prospect of leaving the Republican Party and building a new one from the ground up. He said that maybe after the 2022 election cycle the fate of the GOP would be so clear that he'd get on board with such an enterprise, but for the time being intended to give the GOP one last shot.

Mayo had not, to date, weighed in with utter certainty on which way he thought conservatives should go. A tweet he sent out today, however, strongly indicates that he thinks the GOP deserves to die and, in any event, is going to:

Heath Mayo

@HeathMayo

A party that doesn’t live in reality won’t long survive—and shouldn’t.

I'm inclined to see things Mayo's way at this point. A party that does not vociferously denounce Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz but is determined to topple Liz Cheney from her position as the third highest-ranking House Republican, simply for stating the truth - that the election was not rigged and that there must be a full reckoning regarding January 6th - is a party given over to garbage. 

I mention the four in the preceding paragraph by name to establish what is the nutcase element in the party. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy would surely like to distance himself from the likes of them, and it's true he's not a nut. He is a coward, sycophant and opportunist. He wants so much to be Speaker that he's hitching his wagon to what is surely the way to Republican political success next year, making the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring of the Very Stable Genius mere weeks after shouting into the phone to the VSG from the besieged Capitol on the afternoon of January 6th, "Do you know who the fuck you're talking to?"

And now he's on board with cutting Cheney loose:

Kevin McCarthy says he has “lost confidence” in Liz Cheney in comments he made on a hot mic, according to a report.

“I think she’s got real problems,” the Republican House minority leader said about his colleague during an off-air moment in an appearance on Fox News, Axios reports, citing a recording made of the exchange with a host.

“I’ve had it with ... I’ve had it with her. You know, I’ve lost confidence. ... Well, someone just has to bring a motion, but I assume that will probably take place,” Mr McCarthy told Steve Doocy before a live interview on Fox and Friends.

And what of the woman who would replace Cheney in her position? She bought the lie about the election:

Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) on Monday said she would join the growing coalition of GOP lawmakers who plan to object to Congress's certification of President-elect Joe Biden's Electoral College victory on Wednesday.

"I do not take this action lightly," Stefanik said in a video posted on Twitter on Monday. "I am acting to protect our democratic process. Article II in the 12th Amendment of the Constitution make clear that I have an obligation to act on this matter if I believe there are serious questions with respect to the presidential election."

For me, there's been no disappointment that approaches heartbreak nearly so closely as seeing the transformation of Ted Cruz over the last five years. He was my hands-down favorite among the 2016 slate of presidential candidates, primarily due to his list of 25 cabinet-level departments and independent federal agencies he'd dismantle. No one else was speaking with that kind of clarity. I considered what went down in Indianapolis on May 3 one of the great tragedies of American political history. No more. He's shown since his loss in the Indiana primary that his fortitude and fealty to principles could easily crumble. He went from saying Trump was a pathological liar and a narcissist the likes of which this country had never seen in a public figure to making the Mar-a-Lago trek a la McCarthy and Nikki Haley (who has said that she'd step aside if Trump decided to run in 2024).

The Kool-Aid-besotted die-hards still use the "he's-a-fighter" line to explain why they continue to be thrilled by this lunatic charlatan. 

I'm sorry, but this kind of rhetoric goes beyond any decent person's notion of what kind of "fighting" is acceptable:

This is the ranting of a delusional big baby. 

Note the resentment-drenched mention of Mike Pence. Then recall Pence's remarks on the municipal airport tarmac in Columbus, Indiana upon returning home on January 20. The first thing he said was how thankful he was to Trump and his trophy wife Melania for four years of stewardship of the country. What a pathetic little lapdog. And to think he is also someone I once admired greatly.

I understand what a Herculean task starting a new party is going to be. It means finding donors that can ensure national viability. It means going toe-to-toe with Trumpism in a more fierce way than has been the intra-party case to date. It means constantly weeding out elements that aren't going to fit. It means building a grassroots organization, convincing erstwhile Republicans on the municipal and county levels to abandon ship and come aboard the new project.

I just don't see how the Republican Party can be rescued. Except for Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, Larry Hogan, Ben Sasse and a handful of others, it is wholly given over to nuts, sycophants and cowards. 

And that's not going to cut it in the struggle against the leftist infection of post-America. Let us not forget that the other major party is also garbage. 

 

Unforced errors and political implosions

 The fact of the matter is that post-America's current state of polarization is not just a tug of war between left and right, or even a three-way struggle, behind left, right and Trumpism. The more basic plight of human beings generally - the inability to get out of their own way - is an element that's had a lot of influence on events lately.

The currently popular way of framing the Republican party's role in this scenario is that it is weakened in such a tug of war by the fact that, while Trumpism is decidedly ascendant within the GOP, an opposition, represented by the likes of Ben Sasse, Adam Kinzinger, Peter Meijer, Liz Cheney and Larry Hogan, refuses to concede any kind of finality regarding the outcome of the standoff. It's a largely accurate depiction, but one more factor has to be considered: jaw-droppingly stupid decisions by various Trumpists that are immediately recognized as horrible optics by the general public. The antics of Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor-Greene certainly qualify, but this week Senator Ted Cruz of Texas blew their doors off.

His Cancun fiasco was such an egregious unforced error as to be surreal. The Texas Senator is not a stupid man. He was recognized by faculty and fellow students alike at Harvard Law School as a formidable intellect. His command of the Constitution is widely recognized. While his attempts eight or nine years ago to overturn the Affordable Care Act were arguably quixotic to the point of being ill-advised, they were based on the principle that the free market and not government should address glitches in the production and consumption of health care. The list he put forth when running for president in 2016 of departments and agencies he'd target for dismantling was likewise bold to the point of improbability, but it was born of principle. 

Like many a Republican politician, he's displayed a character-level deterioration during the Trump years. Still, nothing could have prepared anyone for the stunning lapse of basic judgement he exhibited this week. Every aspect of it - not sticking around his home state to coordinate relief efforts and engage in other concrete manifestations of compassion, leaving the country during a pandemic, blaming his daughters for the decision to take off for Cancun, the fancy resort that was his destination, and leaving his pet poodle alone in a freezing house - was a public-relations nightmare. 

It mystifies. 

Then again, so does the entire cooking-the-nursing-home-numbers scandal in which New York governor Andrew Cuomo is embroiled. It has opened a floodgate of revelations about his personal conduct while in office that will be daunting, to say the least, to recover from. It brings out into the harsh light of day the mutual animosity between him and New York City mayor Bill DeBlasio:

Threatening Queens Assemblymember Ron Kim (D) sounds like something New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) would do, according to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D).

The New York mayor spoke to MSNBC's Morning Joe on Thursday after Kim alleged that Cuomo called him to "threaten my career" amid a growing scandal involving the state's handling of information on COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes. De Blasio, who has often clashed with Cuomo, expressed support for Kim on MSNBC.

"That's classic Andrew Cuomo," de Blasio said. "A lot of people in New York State have received those phone calls. The bullying is nothing new."

And it's a long-standing modus operandi:

Such is life on the wrong side of Cuomo, whose credo for those who stand in his path was coined early in his first term by one of their own: “We operate on two speeds here: Get along, and kill," Steve Cohen, then Cuomo’s top aide, said in an exchange first reported by the Connecticut Post in 2011.

The characterization, which came during a contentious discussion with former Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy’s team, has come to define the Queens native’s modus operandi to the point of becoming a cliché in New York political circles. (POLITICO on Thursday confirmed the 2011 exchange with multiple people around Malloy at the time.)

The proverb has even become something akin to a badge of honor for some Cuomo staffers in the years since, cocksure in their belief of their boss' singular ability to bend the state government apparatus to fulfill his vision of Democratic politics.

 On the other side of the continent, California governor Gavin Newsom has done his best to contend for the prize of Most Astoundingly Foolish Move By A Democrat With A Formerly Promising Future, with last November's maskless lunch at The French Laundry, a Napa Valley restaurant that is as upscale as it gets. It has resulted in a recall effort that has a real chance of succeeding.

It's probably best advised not to be too hasty about using commonalities among these situations to draw conclusions, but it does seem that ambition is clearly at play in all of them. The brass ring in politics must have the power to skew one's judgement in a particularly powerful way. 

How the moves on the part of all these figures could have been avoided will haunt them and their supporters in that distinctive way that anyone living with deep regret knows all about. One more five-minute pause before acting, one more conversation with a trusted confidant who is permitted to offer an opposing viewpoint, could well have changed the trajectory of personal fate and, indeed, history. 

We see, once again, that fallibility is baked into who we are as human creatures. Resisting its predominance in our psyches is no easy task, and probably cannot be done without reliance on a presence wholly other than ourselves, or any person around us. 

These people probably know that in the core of their beings and would give anything to turn back the clock and give that quiet presence its proper heed. 

 

Nikki Haley finds out that even the slightest deviation from slavish devotion gets you cut loose by the VSG

 This is rich.

Nikki Haley has been the poster girl for have-it-both-ways-ism since the Very Stable Genius lost the November election. 

In mid-December, the was playing the we-must-humor-him-in-his-delusion card:

Channeling George Costanza in mid-December, Haley refused to confront Trump over his election lies because he believed they were true. “I understand the president. I understand that genuinely, to his core, he believes he was wronged,” Haley told Alberta. “This is not him making it up.”

Then came the interview with Tim Alberta of Politico in which she went for the he's-done-as-a-force-in-our-party angle:

“We need to acknowledge he let us down,” Haley, who served in her ambassador role under Trump, said. “He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.”

Haley’s remarks are her strongest yet against the former president in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and come as Trump's legal team is set to present its defense of Trump on Friday in his second Senate impeachment trial.

She was mighty ticked off, doncha know:

“When I tell you I’m angry, it’s an understatement,” Haley said. “I am so disappointed in the fact that [despite] the loyalty and friendship he had with Mike Pence, that he would do that to him. Like, I’m disgusted by it.”

Then, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, she went for the oh-come-on-let's-be-grown-ups-capable-of-embracing-complexity-here-and-eschew-polarization angle:

. . . the liberal media . . . wants to stoke a nonstop Republican civil war. The media playbook starts with the demand that everyone pick sides about Donald Trump—either love or hate everything about him. The moment anyone on the right offers the slightest criticism of the 45th president, the media goes berserk: Republicans are trying to have it both ways! It’s a calculated strategy to pit conservatives against one another. It’s also a ridiculous false choice. Real life is never that simple. Someone can do both good and bad things. 

People feel strongly about Mr. Trump, but we can acknowledge reality. People on the left, if they’re honest, can find Trump accomplishments they like—a coronavirus vaccine in record time, Middle East peace, more accountability from China. People on the right can find fault with Trump actions, including on Jan. 6. Right or left, when people make these distinctions, they’re not trying to have it both ways. They’re using their brains.

Just as important, they’re proving people are more than their party affiliations. If we can’t make judgments beyond whether someone is Republican or Democrat, then America can’t face its biggest challenges. We separate into two camps that always hate each other. We become estranged from family and friends over politics.

And now comes the hardee-har-har moment. 

She wanted to make the pilgrimage, a la Kevin McCarthy, to Mar-a-Lago, but the VSG has said, "Nothing doing."

She's certainly mastered the art of 2021 Republican self-abasement, although, to be fair, it seems she's been outdone, at least for the time being, by Ted Cruz. How were the margaritas at that Cancun resort, Ted?

 

 

Shelly Luther

This is another one of those stories in which the protagonist is, while clearly more wrong than right, something less than a clear-cut hero. We live in a time of lionization of lightning rods, but that rarely presents the entire scenario.

To be sure, Judge Eric Moye behaved like a total bonehead. Texas was about to ease its restrictions on businesses such as hair salons, and it would have made all the difference if that had been taken into account. A week in jail for not apologizing merely provided fodder for the open-it-all-back-up-right-now camp's push to paint a picture of heavy-handed government.

Luther, however, was clearly grandstanding when she tore up the cease-and-desist order at the rally. Yee-haw gestures aren't helpful at the present moment.

Then there's the question of why she didn't have some support from friends, family or loyal clients. Hair stylists tend to have particularly supportive customers who have a vested interest in seeing their favorite salons make it through challenging times. To wax anecdotal, my wife is a stylist and salons owner, and her clientele has not only stepped up in the present situation, but rose to the occasion during a couple of surgeries in recent years that necessitated some days of inactivity. And it's my understanding that since this brouhaha, a Go Fund Me account has raised several thousands of dollars for Luther and her business.

Then there's the matter of Ted Cruz seeking out Luther for a haircut yesterday. It's the perfect political move, is it not? Great publicity all around.

Glad to see that this one seems to have been resolved in a win for an entrepreneur under economic duress, and for freedom generally. But on the way to that resolution, there were some moments of testiness and excess that, sadly, probably portend more of the same as we work out the delicate balance this nasty virus is requiring of us.

A New York Times editorial board member tries to deem Ted Cruz unqualified to utter Frederick Douglass's name

Seriously. Just take a moment to let in the smugness, the supreme arrogance, of this.

The story begins with race hustler Colin Kaepernick's cherry-picking of a Frederick Douglass quote to make it seem like Douglass had a 2019 leftist view of America:

Kaepernick initiated his descent by tweeting a quote from Douglass: “‘What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? This Fourth of July is yours, not mine…There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.’ – Frederick Douglass.”

Cruz then launched his fusillade:

You quote a mighty and historic speech by the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass, but, without context, many modern readers will misunderstand. Two critical points: This speech was given in 1852, before the Civil War, when the abomination of slavery still existed. Thanks to Douglass and so many other heroes, we ended that grotesque evil and have made enormous strides to protecting the civil rights of everybody.

Douglass was not anti-American; he was, rightly and passionately, anti-slavery. Indeed, he concluded the speech as follows: “Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably, work the downfall of slavery. ‘The arm of the Lord is not shortened,’ and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from ‘the Declaration of Independence,’ the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age.”

Cruz concluded, “Let me encourage everyone, READ THE ENTIRE SPEECH; it is powerful, inspirational, and historically important in bending the arc of history towards justice.”

And then the NYT editorial board member chimed in:

Mara Gay‏Verified account @MaraGay

Mara Gay Retweeted Ted Cruz

Frederick Douglass is an American hero, and his name has no business in your mouth.

Will she get in trouble? After all, she's pretty clearly in violation of her paper's policy:

The New York Times announced on Friday an updated and expanded set of guidelines for our journalists’ use of social media.

The new guidelines underscore our newsroom’s appreciation for the important role social media now plays in our journalism, but also call for our journalists to take extra care to avoid expressing partisan opinions or editorializing on issues that The Times is covering.

In the interest of transparency, we’ve included the complete guidelines below, along with an introductory memo sent to the newsroom by Dean Baquet, our executive editor.

We’re always interested in hearing from our readers. Do the new guidelines raise any questions for you? If so, please share your thoughts in the comments section.

To the newsroom:

The New York Times has been a dominant force on social media for years. Our newsroom accounts have tens of millions of followers. Many of our journalists are influential voices on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other platforms. The voices of our readers, listeners and viewers inform and improve our reporting. 

We believe that to remain the world’s best news organization, we have to maintain a vibrant presence on social media. 

But we also need to make sure that we are engaging responsibly on social media, in line with the values of our newsroom.

That’s why we’re issuing updated and expanded social media guidelines.

The guidelines were developed in a collaborative way by Cliff Levy, Phil Corbett and Cynthia Collins, and are rooted in the very experiences of our journalists. 

Please read them closely, and take them to heart.

— Dean Baquet, Executive Editor

I'm not holding my breath, though.

 

Absolute savages - today's edition

Here's the state of societal rot in 2018 post-America:

Republican Texas Senator Ted Cruz was chased out of a DC restaurant by protesters on Monday night, according to video posted on Twitter.

Two videos were posted by “Smash Racism DC” and they show a large group of protesters chanting “We believe survivors” in reference to sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh at Sen. Cruz and his wife, Heidi Cruz.

One video shows a protester confronting Sen. Cruz and his wife as they entered the restaurant. Sen. Cruz tells the woman “God bless you” before attempting to take a seat at a table.

After the protesters surround the table, Sen. Cruz tells Mrs. Cruz, “Let’s go ahead and go” and puts on his jacket to leave.

“Vote no on Kavanaugh!” one protester screams. “Cancel Kavanaugh for women’s rights.”
Toward the end of a video, a restaurant employee can be heard asking the protesters to leave because the area is a “private space.”

A spokesperson for Sen. Cruz did not immediately return a request for comment. 

They haven't gone as far as they can and are going to.

Time for us to look unflinchingly at what we're up against and deal with it accordingly.

The current state of the Ted - Beto race

Two noteworthy pieces this morning.

Salena Zito's latest column is entitled "The Rise of Beto O'Rourke Is Mostly a Media Fantasy," and she invites us to look at the big picture:

. . . when it comes to the final stages of this fight, O’Rourke can’t duck the issues, Cruz says.

“Usually in Texas in a general election, Democrats at least pretend to go to the middle. Congressman O’Rourke is not doing that,” Cruz says. “He voted against the tax cut and he wants to raise taxes on Texans. He supports the Obama regulations that hammered the state of Texas in the oil and gas industries as well as farmers and ranchers. He wants to expand ObamaCare to full-on socialized medicine, putting the federal government in charge of health care and your doctors. He not only opposes a wall, but he supports sanctuary cities, and he has said he is open to abolishing ICE and the entire Department of Homeland Security. On gun control, he’s tweeted out how proud he is that he has an F rating from the NRA.

“And in 2014, he was one of only eight members of the House to vote against funding Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system while Hamas was raining rockets on Israel — something virtually every Republican and Democrat voted for.”

Despite Democrats pushing the idea that Texans are moving blue, the Dems in this state tend to be more conservative than Beto and they want to know how a candidate stands on issues. Currently, RealClearPolitics puts Cruz over Beto by 4.5 percentage points in a match that is ranked “a toss-up,” but a new Quinnipiac poll shows Cruz surging by 9 percentage points. And for all the talk of a blue Texas, Republican Pete Flores last week won a state senate race in a Lone Star district Hillary Clinton took by 12 points, flipping the seat red for the first time in 139 years. 

The other piece is from Beckett Adams at The Washington Examiner. It makes plain what tribalist shills post-America's mainstream outlets have turned into:

It’s a shame that we have only a few more weeks to enjoy the national press’ fawning coverage of Democratic Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke. I’m not sure I want to live in a world where newsrooms aren’t publishing 2,000- to 4,000-plus-word articles every other week explaining how the “ Kennedyesque” Texas candidate's “ energy” has Democrats hoping he’s the “ next Obama.” 

The Beto puff piece is the hot new thing in this industry, and I don’t ever want it to end. So, to keep this trend going, I’ve cobbled together a guide so anyone can write their own Beto profile ( also, check out the one the Washington Free Beacon published last month). Let's flood the market. You don’t have to be employed by the New York Times or Esquire magazine to do it. All you need is the candidate’s name and a few choice themes. Just remember these Dos and Don'ts: 

Dos:

Talk about his energy! 

• New York Times: “He has a restless energy”
• BuzzFeed: “O’Rourke’s energy is palpable, infectious”
• Politico: "The early morning runs help O’Rourke ... project youth and energy"
• Texas Monthly: "O’Rourke felt a kind of restless energy"

Talk about driving! 

• BuzzFeed: “O’Rourke prides himself on how much of the driving he’s done during this trip across the state”
• Town and Country: “He jumped back into the white Dodge Grand Caravan, driving it himself”
• Time magazine: “On a dusty road in southwestern Texas, Beto O’Rourke leans out the window of the Ford Expedition he’s driving and mutters, ‘You gonna let me pass you, state police?'"
• New York Times: He has driven “tens of thousands of miles, fueled by bad coffee and Hostess cupcakes that supporters bring him ... Driving with his left forearm and right elbow on the steering wheel”
• Politico: "He asked an aide to lay down a towel on the driver’s seat of his Dodge Caravan, the model he rents whenever he is campaigning."

Mention he speaks Spanish! 

• New York Times: “[H]e is speaking Spanish — which he does, fluently.”
• Time: “O’Rourke ... spends several hours a week practicing his Spanish.”
• BuzzFeed: “O’Rourke speaks fluent Spanish, and regularly dots his speeches with Spanish phrases”
• Politico: “A fluent Spanish speaker”
• Texas Monthly: He speaks fluent Spanish

Talk about his sweat! 

• Town and Country: "As he stood on one porch, a prospective voter seemed to notice the sweat accumulating on his face and throughout his shirt, so she offered him a popsicle.”
• Politico: "Sweat pours off his lean, 6-foot-4-inch frame"
• BuzzFeed: "Beto O’Rourke is a prolific, prodigious sweater. We’re talking shirt-soaking, chin-dripping sweat, most visible as he takes questions from the audiences that have gathered to see him across Texas."

My goodness is he charismatic! 

• Time: “The Congressman is lanky, handsome and charismatic”
• Texas Monthly: "[I]t’s O’Rourke’s charisma that sells his pitch"
• Politico: "He is his own strategist, and his strategy is simple: campaign relentlessly, project vitality and hope his raw charisma combines in just the right proportion with anti-Cruz animus"

Everyone loves an underdog! 

• New York Times: "[T]he long-shot is going it alone."
• Town and Country: "He's a Kennedyesque longshot"
• Politico: "This, in short, is how O’Rourke plans to pull off his long-shot bid to take away Cruz’s Senate seat: by outhustling his opponent."
• Texas Monthly: "The El Paso congressman is waging a long-shot campaign to prove a Democrat can win in Texas."
• BuzzFeed: "In that way, he’s not unlike another young, first-time, long-shot Senate candidate who grabbed the national imagination a decade ago."

Don'ts: 

Do not under any circumstance mention his 1998 high-speed drunken car accident, including the part where witnesses said he crashed his car into oncoming traffic and endangered others' lives — as he now admits. Especially do not mention that the police report includes testimony from witnesses who claim he attempted to flee the scene of the crime. And don't mention that he managed to get off Scot free, probably because by some miracle no one was killed and even more likely because of his family's political connections.

LITD's two cents to throw into this: I'd count on Texans being turned off on the policy and ideology level. And, per the litany that Ted offers above, I'd count on him to hammer that home in the final stretch. You really want a guy who's for socialized medicine, sanctuary cities and giving the finger to Israel?

Of course, there's a minuscule possibility that LITD will be saying come the first Wednesday in November, "Well, we missed that one by a Texas-size mile, didn't we?"

But Texas is one of the sanest spots remaining in post-America. At this point, Beto seems like this year's Wendy Davis.

Wednesday roundup

In recent years, India's demonstrated willingness to be a US ally has been an encouraging development on the world stage - which makes its tolerance of the kinds of regimes besetting Iran and Venezuela so unnerving.

Italy's shaky economic situation could trigger a new global crisis, says The American Enterprise Institute's Desmond Lachman.

What's happening with Tommy Robinson in the UK will chill your bones:

On Friday, British free-speech activist and Islam critic Tommy Robinson was acting as a responsible citizen journalist — reporting live on camera from outside a Leeds courtroom where several Muslims were being tried for child rape — when he was set upon by several police officers. In the space of the next few hours, a judge tried, convicted, and sentenced him to 13 months in jail — and also issued a gag order, demanding a total news blackout on the case in the British news media. Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was immediately taken to Hull Prison.

Hull Prison, in Kingston upon Hull, England, where Tommy Robinson was taken to serve a 13-month prison sentence just hours after his arrest on Friday, May 25.

Most media outlets were remarkably compliant. News stories that had already been posted online after Robinson’s arrest at the Scottish Daily Record, Birmingham Live, The Mirror, RT, and Breitbart News were promptly pulled down, although, curiously, a report remained up at the Independent, a left-wing broadsheet that can be counted on to view Robinson as a hooligan. Indeed, the Independent’s article described Robinson as “far-right” and, in explaining what he was doing outside the courthouse, used scare quotes around the word “reporting”; it then summed up the least appealing episodes in his career and blamed him for an attack on the Finsbury Park Mosque last January. Somehow, the Independent also got away with publishing a report on London’s Saturday rally in support of Robinson.

Also on Saturday, Breitbart UK posted a copy of the gag order, but redacted it as required. The resulting document proved to be a perfect illustration of Western Europe’s encroaching tyranny.

Hamas has not relented in its current aggression against Israel:

On Tuesday, Hamas fired an enormous wave of mortars into Israel, striking an Israeli kindergarten but causing no injuries. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis were forced to bunkers to weather the attack. That wave of mortars followed an attempt over the weekend by Islamic Jihad terrorists to cut through the Gaza border in order to murder Israelis in their beds; during the chase, terrorists fired at Israeli troops. One terrorist was killed, and another injured. The Israeli Defense Forces also announced that several days ago, Hamas attempted to fly a drone loaded with explosives over the border.

If you're looking for a bracing dose of thunderous moral clarity, check out "My 'Black Lives Matter' Problem" by Jason D. Hill at Commentary.  He demonstrates why BLM is wrong as wrong can be on crime, Israel and education. In the course of so demonstrating, he revisits some fundamental conservative principles and states them incisively.


Good things may be happening on the Very Stable Genius's watch, but let us remember that he's an extremely immature brat. How can we forget? He constantly reminds us with  tweets like this one about Bob Iger of ABC / Disney and the Roseanne situation, and this one saying he wishes he hadn't picked Jeff Sessions to be attorney general.

New Quinnipiac poll: Ted Cruz has an 11-point lead over Beto O'Rourke in the Senate race down in Texas.

At some point, the music must be faced

The recently passed tax-reform package was, in and of itself, a great piece of legislation, and it's having immediate effects all over the country. Bonuses, pay raises, capital equipment expenditures.

But it can't be considered in isolation. Its beneficial effects coincide with this:

It was another crazy news week, so it's understandable if you missed a small but important announcement from the Treasury Department: The federal government is on track to borrow nearly $1 trillion this fiscal year — Trump's first full year in charge of the budget.

That's almost double what the government borrowed in fiscal year 2017.

Here are the exact figures: The U.S. Treasury expects to borrow $955 billion this fiscal year, according to a documents released Wednesday. It's the highest amount of borrowing in six years, and a big jump from the $519 billion the federal government borrowed last year.

I'll cut to the chase: Nothing changes on the debt and deficit front until and unless this nation changes its view that government ought to be in the business of providing "services." And no one has a good suggestion for putting that horse back in the barn.

Ted Cruz made the most admirable effort I've seen in years, perhaps ever, in 2015, when he issued his Five for Freedom, listing the IRS and the departments of Education, Energy, Commerce and Housing and Urban Development as cabinet-level entities he'd get rid of. That's the first of his five initiatives. the others are as follows:

Second, besides these unnecessary cabinet agencies and the IRS, we will sharply reduce the agencies, bureaus, commissions, and other programs that are harming American households and businesses — including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Together with the four departments and the IRS, our conservative estimate of the effects of these eliminations and reductions is a savings of over $500 billion over ten years. And that’s just a start. The true savings — of scaling down the scope of the federal government, of restoring to the states their rightful authority, and of unleashing the people’s ingenuity — cannot be measured by a number. We are uprooting the centralized power that we have lived under for far too long.

Third, we will bring back a proven approach from the prosperous days of the Reagan administration: a private-sector panel to assess federal spending levels and evaluate areas of waste and fraud for removal. At President Reagan’s behest, the Grace Commission recommended 2,478 “cost-cutting, revenue-enhancing” suggestions, without raising taxes, weakening defense, or harming social welfare. It was a major success among other policies that created a great economic boom, and it deserves a reprise.

Fourth, we will hold Congress accountable; it too often delegates its authority to unelected bureaucrats. We will enact a strong Balanced Budget Amendment. And, by enacting the REINS Act, we will require that a majority of members approve any major, cost-inducing regulations.

Fifth, we will put in place a hiring freeze of federal civilian employees across the executive branch. For those agencies in which it is determined that a vacant position needs to be filled, I will authorize the hiring of a maximum ratio of one person for every three who leave. And rather than automatically increasing federal workers’ pay annually, workers will have more opportunities for merit-based pay increases.

What a national treasure he is - and we could have had him as our president.

He's spot-on with regard to what needs to happen with Social Security as well:

we need to honor the promises made to our seniors. But for younger workers--look, I'm 44 years old--it is hard to find someone in my generation that thinks Social Security will be there for us. We can save and preserve and strengthen Social Security by making no changes for seniors; but for younger workers, gradually increasing the retirement age, changing the rate of growth so that it matches inflation and critically allowing younger workers to keep a portion of our tax payments in a personal account that we own, we control, and we can pass on to our kids. We can do both.

And recall that he was at the forefront of the push to use defunding as a way to repeal the "Affordable" Care Act. It's safe to say that it's too late to look at that now. The program is too well entrenched. It will just have to die of its own accord, leaving more upheaval in American lives in its wake than would have been the case if we'd defunded in 2013.

Look, the point here is not to engage in a tribalist yay-rah about Ted Cruz. He's great, but it's because he's been such an articulate spokesman for freedom and fiscal responsibility.

But demagogues abound, and in this age of coarse dismissals of defenders of freedom, and emotion-based appeals ("government made us promises, and now it by golly needs to figure out how it's going to honor them!") we don't proceed in a clear-headed, principles-driven manner.

But to say these great tax cuts shouldn't have happened because the debt and deficit continue to balloon is disingenuous. We all know in our heart of hearts what needs to happen, and it's not government seizing even more of our money at gunpoint.

The difference between Ted Cruz's position in 2013 and Schumer's in 2018

Caleb Howe at Red State uses an exchange between Senator Cruz and a snarky MSNBC reporter to illustrate the glaring difference between Cruz's 2013 filibuster during spending deliberations - in which he famously read Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham - and Schumer's position in this latest shutdown situation.

MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt jumped in and began peppering the Senator with objections and debate. Now they had something to gnaw on. ‘How could Ted Cruz of government shutdown Dr. Seuss fame say with a straight face that he was opposed to government shutdowns?’ they asked with every sarcasm-filled sac in their lungs.

Senator Cruz has an answer, and he gave it to us. 

RedState reached out to the Senator after the Kasie Hunt clip started shooting around social media, and he gave us this exclusive statement.

There have been few policy fights more important this decade than Obamacare – one of the most disastrous laws to both our health care system and Americans’ freedom over their health care. In 2013, we faced a critical turning point: whether to let Obamacare go into effect or to try and stop it — a choice of whether to transform our healthcare system into a socialist government-run, government-mandated enterprise, rather than a patient-centered free-market system, which everyone agreed needed serious reform. The reason that stopping Obamacare in 2013 was so important is because once it took root, it would be near impossible to reverse it. We’ve seen today the complexities surrounding the repeal and replace debate, even with Republican majorities in Congress and control of the White House, but nonetheless, we are still working to accomplish that goal, because it’s the number one thing voters elected us to do. 

The goal in 2013 was to stop funding Obamacare, not shut down the government. Republicans voted numerous times to fund vital government services, and I fought for measure after measure to fund different government agencies, only to be blocked by Harry Reid and the Democrats time and again. They repeatedly blocked the funding of vital government services, including the military, veterans benefits, the National Guard, and National Health Institute, among others. 

We saw the same Democrat obstruction this time around too. Despite what is being reported in the media, the truth is Democrats voted to shut down the government while Republicans voted to fund it.

None of the Republican senators wanted to see a government shutdown. Democrats, on the other hand, saw a political benefit from a government shutdown. They think it energizes and excites their far-left base. Well, that may be good for the extreme left, but it’s not good for the American people. It is unfortunate that we see such a partisan and divided Senate right now. For instance, last month, we passed historic tax cuts. In the past, tax cutting has always been a bipartisan endeavor. Over and over, Republicans and Democrats have come together to cut taxes. This time, in both Houses of Congress, zero Democrats voted for tax cuts. That’s really unfortunate and it’s a manifestation of just how radical and extreme Democrats have become. 

As Senator Cruz knew, and as I heard him explain that year (2013) in person, the way to move on the "A"CA was cut off its lifeblood, before the bureaucratic entrenchment became irreversible.

Then as now, Republicans wanted very much to fund the government. In both cases, they just insisted that bad policy not be attached to the basic functions that needed funding.

Steve Bannon is a world-class jerk, but probably the world's most enigmatic jerk

The guy's been all over the map in terms of his enthusiasms and loyalties.

Everybody thinks of him as a diehard Trumpist - indeed, the architect of the still-vague blend of populism, nationalism and a sprinkling of conservative tenets.

But three short years ago, he was on board a very different train. At that point, in addition to running Breitbart, he was involved with the Government Accountability Institute, a watchdog organization he'd founded in 2012 with Peter Schweizer, the former Hoover Institution fellow who'd authored Clinton Cash. In 2015, the group was supporting Ted Cruz's run for president, and shopping  opposition research on Donald Trump, research that alluded to the Trump organization having mob ties.

Well, as we know, one tragic night in May 2016 in Indianapolis, Ted Cruz threw in the towel. The GAI then, as the above-linked CNN story puts it, "curried favor" with the Trump campaign, and, as we also now know, it wasn't long (August) before Bannon was brought in to run that.

The GAI is financially backed by the Mercer family. The patriarch of that family is an intriguing fellow in his own right. Robert Mercer was born in 1946, so he was a first-wave boomer, a contemporary of Trump and both Clintons. (Bannon's a boomer as well, but of a subsequent wave. He was born in 1953.) Mercer was a computer nerd from an early age, designing a program for a donated IBM computer at a National Youth Science Camp in West Virginia in 1964. Got a PhD in computer science in 1972. Worked for IMB Research for a while. Was spotted by a hedge-fund bigwig, Nick Patterson, in 1993. Patterson preferred to work with tech nerds rather than finance people.


The Mercer family has also bankrolled Breitbart, but is now cutting Bannon and his website loose.

It gets weirder. Did you know that while he was in college, Bannon was a "Jerry Brown liberal," history nerd and a big Grateful Dead fan?

Old friends, acquaintances, and roommates who spoke to The Daily Beast described Bannon in his Virginia Tech undergraduate days as a “Jerry Brown liberal” who was a devotee of rock artists and jam-bands such as the Grateful Dead and Bruce Springsteen. He was a book-wormy-y “history nerd,” an idiosyncratic football player, and a charismatic “ladies man,” say his college peers. He was a force in campus politics who would, with a large pot of coffee, regularly preside over huddles of student leaders and activists in his apartment meetings that he and his college chums jokingly dubbed “The Kitchen Cabinet.”

“I can remember one of [our] roommates saying, ‘Steve’s gonna end up in the White House one day,’” John DePaola, who lived with Bannon for a year, told The Daily Beast. “He was more intellectual than any of us.”

Apparently, Bannon's time in the Navy, during which the Iran hostage crisis took place, catalyzed his ideological shift.

Lots of people have such shifts. Ronald Reagan comes to mind. A lot of the original editors of National Review, such as Willmoore Kendall, Frank Meyer, James Burnham and Whittaker Chambers, all of whom had been Marxists of one stripe or another. A little later, the neoconservatives made their transition. But you can usually discern some kind of thread of continuity, some underlying aspect of their worldview that made them say, "I thought this route spoke for my core values, but I see that this other route really speaks for them."

Can you detect anything like that in the Steve Bannon trajectory?

Especially since he is still all over the map, having supported a higher tax rate on upper-income Americans during last year's tax-policy deliberations.

And then there is what all this says about Donald Trump. Loyalty is something he demands from his sycophants, but he approaches it with blinders on. It's conditional and momentary. He may have beat up on someone in the past, or been beaten up, but he'll form an alliance as long as it's useful to him. And when it's not useful anymore? Buh-bye!

Something anyone currently sucking up to him would do well to keep in mind.