Joe Biden, unmistakably Democrat

 Wednesday, January 20 - up through early afternoon, and I want stress that point - brought the nation the sigh of relief and the moment of Constitutional stability and plain decorum for which it had yearned (save for the handful of post-bitter-enders who will probably insist that November's election was stolen the rest of their mortal lives). The performances by Lady Gaga, Amanda Gorman and Garth Brooks were all appropriate to the moment. The talk of unity and turning down the temperature may have been merely obligatory, but they had a calming effect.

But after the crowd, such as it was, dispersed, President Biden, as promised, came back up Pennsylvania Avenue to the Oval Office and served notice that his was going to be an unmistakably twenty-first-century Democrat agenda, steeped in identity politics, climate alarmism and disregard for the nation's economic health. 

There was a stack of executive orders awaiting him and he dug right in.

He himself admitted that on some of the fronts, legislation will be needed to flesh out details. 

Um, yeah.

I was gratified to see Mitch McConnell address this on the Senate floor, in a speech that struck a measured balance between an attitude of willingness and a firm assurance that Republican legislators would not gloss over areas of absolute disagreement, but rather forthrightly voice opposition to such measures that Biden has put forth.

More broadly speaking, is this now a permanent fixture of the federal-government landscape? Is it going to be an entrenched tradition for a new president to sign executive orders right after being sworn in, the net effect of which is to say, "I hereby render all the measures my predecessor took by executive order null and void"? So much that ought to be codified - or rejected - in the legislative branch, a lot of it with immediate and profound impact on Americans' daily lives, becomes a ping-pong ball bounced back and forth every four or eight years. 

In any event, reversals were the order of the day.

In the immigration realm, three abrupt changes will be made to policies that, whether the Very Stable Genius truly grasped the real reason behind them or not, were about the rule of law and national sovereignty. In short, they were among the handful of policy moves the VSG got right. Biden has revoked the 2017 order that prioritized the arrest of illegal aliens. The "remain in Mexico" policy will now be reversed. Biden's administration will preserve the DACA program.

Then there's the disbanding of the 1776 Commission. No discussion of whether its scope or focus needed any reexamination,. Nope. Just pulling the plug on it. 

Again, I'm pretty sure the Very Stable Genius, the historically illiterate non-reader that he is, did not grasp the full depth of what he was setting up with this commission. The bottom line, though, is that it was a good idea, especially one to get underway in such an inflamed year as 2020. It served as a corrective to the lie-filled and America-hating 1619 Project, which, like critical race theory and Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, has insinuated itself in the curricula of school systems across the country, poisoning impressionable young minds and deeply damaging the field of history as a scholarly endeavor.

It's understandable why Biden did it. He goes all in for the idea that there is still systemic racism in American society, and a commission like that doesn't contribute to that narrative. 

No, the era now dawning is going to bring us diversity and inclusion on steroids. 

Exhibit A is another one of Wednesday's executive orders, this one saying that people who "feel" like they're the sex opposite of what the DNA in every cell of their bodies makes clear that they are have "rights" - to use the public restrooms they "feel" like using, and to join sports teams designated for the sex opposite of the one their DNA tells us that they are. 

This is another step, like the pronoun-usage laws in effect in various municipalities, toward making people indulge the delusion harbored by transgendered people, further distancing language and reality from one another. 

He's even appointed such a person to be assistant HHS secretary. The photographs of this individual  make clear that he's not fooling anybody. That's a dude with long, stringy hair.

Then there's the cancelling of the Keystone XL pipeline construction. Very stupid, on several fronts. It's a poke in the eye to our good neighbor to the north. Canada may at present have a soft-left government, but it is, as it always has been, in America's inner circle of allies. This move also throws thousands of skilled tradesmen out of work.

Democrats would rather you not think through the lack of logic in this move. Transporting oil by pipeline means you are not introducing the fossil-fuel exhaust of freight trains into the atmosphere. It's the clean way of getting it from Point A to Point B. 

I made this move the subject of an entire LITD post the other day:

Lots of Canadians are not okay with this:

Former TC Energy executive Dennis McConaghy is not surprised the project is among the first decisions by the new administration.

"I have consistently said Biden would indulge in this rescinding of the permit immediately because it's something he has to do largely to follow through for expectations of his political base and many of his donors," McConaghy told CBC's Kyle Bakx on Sunday.

The decision would likely lead to disappointment in the Canadian oilpatch, even after so many other setbacks for the project over the last decade.

"Ideally the project should have been completed and put into operation during the Trump administration," McConaghy said. "It's a very audacious thing that is being done here by the Biden administration."

Kirsten Hillman, Canada's ambassador to the U.S., said in a statement sent to The Canadian Press that the pipeline expansion fits with Canada's climate plan.

"The Government of Canada continues to support the Keystone XL project and the benefits that it will bring to both Canada and the United States," she said.

"Not only has the project itself changed significantly since it was first proposed, but Canada's oilsands production has also changed significantly. Per-barrel oilsands GHG emissions have dropped 31 per cent since 2000, and innovation will continue to drive progress."

Jazz Shaw at Hot Air gets into some of the specific fronts on this would be a wrecking-ball move: 

This move would cause significant damage to the stakeholders in the pipeline, leading to possible liabilities for the federal government. They played by the rules and jumped through all of the required hoops to obtain that permit and then began investing heavily in the work based on their belief in the good faith of the United States government. It’s not hard to imagine them going to court to recover their losses and finding judges amenable to the idea. That would leave the American taxpayers holding the bill for this fiasco.

Let’s not forget that large sections of the pipeline are already complete, including portions that cross the border. What happens to all of that pipeline? Will it just be left to rust or will the federal government attempt to force the pipeline’s owners to spend even more money to rip everything out?

As I mentioned above, there are literally tens of thousands of jobs on the line here, ranging from the workers who are directly engaged in the construction of the pipeline to all of the supporting industries that make such work possible. Joe Biden is signaling that he’s ready to come into office and evaporate a huge number of jobs “on day one.” Wasn’t he only recently complaining about the number of people who are already out of work because of the pandemic?

Somebody who holds elected office in the United States needs to speak the plain truth about energy  policy, and not just once. It needs to be driven home repeatedly.

Dense and consistently available energy forms are by definition far less expensive than diffuse and intermittent forms. The latter are not viable in the marketplace without government subsidization. And it's fine to use the former all we want. It is not putting the global climate in peril.

The above paragraph needs to be stated emphatically in debates between candidates, on the House and Senate floors, in television appearances and in columns and articles. 

The entire climate alarmism movement has been nothing but a nauseating exercise in preening and self-congratulation over how much it cares about humanity in general, the lives of actual individual human beings be damned.

Let us just hope that the pushback and court cases that arise from this shut down not the pipeline, but rather Biden's blatant assault on human advancement. 

Rejoining the Paris climate agreement is a similar type of move. No country in the world is meeting the agreement's targets. China is approving new coal plants like there is no tomorrow. Even if every signatory nation did adhere to the letter, the effect on the global average temperature in 2100 would be negligible. All it does is erode national sovereignty and interfere with energy companies' right to determine what products to bring to market (and consumers' choices regarding what energy forms to consume). 

Then there is the matter of the extermination of fetal Americans, something that it seems a self-described devout Catholic would not be cool with. Alas, it appears that the US will once again fund health organizations that are in that grisly business. 

I can't say any of this surprises me in the least. Biden was portrayed as some kind of centrist when juxtaposed against Bernie Sanders, but the entire Democrat party has largely become a leftist enterprise in recent decades. (Ironically, the lone holdouts in the Senate, truly centrist if not slightly right-leaning Democrats such as Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema, may have a certain kind of power to determine how far this agenda does or does not go, given the 50-50 makeup of that body at present.)

And it becomes incumbent on actual conservatives (Trumpists are not, or ought not to be, invited to participate in this discussion) to articulate their position on each and all of these matters in the most soundly reasoned, most consistent and coherent way possible, because a great many of those who disagree with us are going to try to go for the "you-worshippers-of-the-Orange-Man-had-your-day-your-views-are-part-of-that-failed-agenda" angle.

We have to be ready to say, "No, they're not. They go way back before the Trumpism infection beset our movement and they merit a ringing defense."

 We know at the outset of the new era what the lay of the land is going to be. If Biden is devout in anything, it's being a Democrat, and he's "grown" with his party at every turn since 1972.

 

Another bit of energy-policy grandstanding Biden intends to indulge in right off the bat

 This is just plain nuts:

U.S. president-elect Joe Biden has indicated plans to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline permit via executive action on his first day in office, sources confirmed to CBC News on Sunday.

A purported briefing note from the Biden transition team mentioning the plan was widely circulated over the weekend after being shared by the incoming president's team with U.S. stakeholders.

The words "Rescind Keystone XL pipeline permit" appear on a list of executive actions supposedly scheduled for Day 1 of Biden's presidency. 

Lots of Canadians are not okay with this:

Former TC Energy executive Dennis McConaghy is not surprised the project is among the first decisions by the new administration.

"I have consistently said Biden would indulge in this rescinding of the permit immediately because it's something he has to do largely to follow through for expectations of his political base and many of his donors," McConaghy told CBC's Kyle Bakx on Sunday.

The decision would likely lead to disappointment in the Canadian oilpatch, even after so many other setbacks for the project over the last decade.

"Ideally the project should have been completed and put into operation during the Trump administration," McConaghy said. "It's a very audacious thing that is being done here by the Biden administration."

Kirsten Hillman, Canada's ambassador to the U.S., said in a statement sent to The Canadian Press that the pipeline expansion fits with Canada's climate plan.

"The Government of Canada continues to support the Keystone XL project and the benefits that it will bring to both Canada and the United States," she said.

"Not only has the project itself changed significantly since it was first proposed, but Canada's oilsands production has also changed significantly. Per-barrel oilsands GHG emissions have dropped 31 per cent since 2000, and innovation will continue to drive progress."

Jazz Shaw at Hot Air gets into some of the specific fronts on this would be a wrecking-ball move: 

This move would cause significant damage to the stakeholders in the pipeline, leading to possible liabilities for the federal government. They played by the rules and jumped through all of the required hoops to obtain that permit and then began investing heavily in the work based on their belief in the good faith of the United States government. It’s not hard to imagine them going to court to recover their losses and finding judges amenable to the idea. That would leave the American taxpayers holding the bill for this fiasco.

Let’s not forget that large sections of the pipeline are already complete, including portions that cross the border. What happens to all of that pipeline? Will it just be left to rust or will the federal government attempt to force the pipeline’s owners to spend even more money to rip everything out?

As I mentioned above, there are literally tens of thousands of jobs on the line here, ranging from the workers who are directly engaged in the construction of the pipeline to all of the supporting industries that make such work possible. Joe Biden is signaling that he’s ready to come into office and evaporate a huge number of jobs “on day one.” Wasn’t he only recently complaining about the number of people who are already out of work because of the pandemic?

Somebody who holds elected office in the United States needs to speak the plain truth about energy  policy, and not just once. It needs to be driven home repeatedly.

Dense and consistently available energy forms are by definition far less expensive than diffuse and intermittent forms. The latter are not viable in the marketplace without government subsidization. And it's fine to use the former all we want. It is not putting the global climate in peril.

The above paragraph needs to be stated emphatically in debates between candidates, on the House and Senate floors, in television appearances and in columns and articles. 

The entire climate alarmism movement has been nothing but a nauseating exercise in preening and self-congratulation over how much it cares about humanity in general, the lives of actual individual human beings be damned.

Let us just hope that the pushback and court cases that arise from this shut down not the pipeline, but rather Biden's blatant assault on human advancement. 

 

 

 

Biden's pandemic-relief / economic stimulus bill: an opening gambit that indicates how Democrats intend to jump into this next era

 $1.9 trillion. Whew! That's s lot of addition to the debt and deficit.

Is all of it really related to to addressing the virus and attendant economic fallout?

Well, certainly the parts having to do with vaccination, testing and contract tracing self-evidently are.

An argument can be made for aid to state and local governments. States and municipalities generally are obligated by law to keep their governments in the black, and in this past year, that's resulted in a lot of layoffs and curtailing of services.

Tax credit for children? Again, a case can be made. 

Another big check - $1400 per person - to everybody that has received a $600 check recently? Now we get a little questionable. It's another band-aid at best. It does nothing on the structural level, which is where resources need to be applied. 

But then we get into the stuff that has the strong odor of wanting to permanently impose a new degree of statism on the nation under the guise of doing something about the current crisis. Expansion of child-care subsidies and family-leave benefits look primarily to be ways to double down on social engineering. The Left has long wanted to use the heavy hand of government to lessen the primacy of the family unit in our society and get the kiddies out of the home at the earliest possible age. And child-care subsidies amount to making Citizen A foot the bill for Citizen B's choices in life. 

Of course, the retort to that is, and has been for some time, "But families can't make it on one income anymore!" Is that universally true? It seems to me to be laden with assumptions about how much leeway a husband and wife don't have about setting household budget priorities. 

And family-leave policy is, at its root, using the coercive power of government to make private organizations conduct operations in a manner not necessarily of their own choosing. Certainly, any business that has a great staff member who turns up with a work-home balance challenge engendered by the arrival of a new family member (or the illness of a family member) is going to be motivated accommodate that in order to retain that person's contribution to the company. But that ought to be thought out and agreed upon between the business and the employee.

Which gets us to the most egregious item in Biden's grab-bag of goodies: an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 / hour.

Longtime LITD readers know that the minimum wage is a major burr in my saddle.

To reiterate, there are at least three reasons it's bad and wrong:

1. It is government telling a private organization how to conduct its operations.
2. It distorts the market value of an hour's worth of labor
3. It elbows the most economically vulnerably among us - minority youth - out of the labor market. 

You can always find some wiseacre who will cite certain sectors in certain cities in which a hike in the minimum wage has not had a big detrimental effect. Debating such folks can take one down a rabbit hole. Various studies come to different conclusions, and often hedge at that, given all the variables involved. 

Plus, anecdotal evidence of restaurant, coffee shop and bookstore owners in progressive areas who had to lay off staff and/or cut hours and/or close abounds.

The CBO has chimed in on the big picture of what kind of effect such a hike would have:

 The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that even gradually raising the minimum wage to $15 by 2025 in a growing economy would likely kill 1.3 million jobs, and perhaps as many as 3.7 million. Imposing a drastic minimum wage increase on small businesses that are already struggling to stay afloat during a recession is especially absurd. Moreover, forcing restaurants, which are failing at record rates, to raise their own tipped minimum wage by 600 percent is economic malpractice. Perhaps high-cost cities like New York City and San Francisco can afford a much higher minimum wage, but other parts of America with lower incomes and prices will not be able to absorb this policy. It has no business in a relief package.

So we can begin to see the broad contours of how confident Dems are that they can at least float a pretty aggressively leftist initiative right out of the gate.

The Senate, tied as it is, is not going to sign on to this in its present form.

But be prepared for howls about heartlessness when conservatives object to the statist stuff. 

One favorable aspect of the scenario is that, with Trump out of the way, Congressional righties can articulate the case for their position in a coherent manner, based on principles and not on good or bad "deals."

Let's hope they're up to it.

Another case of a Trumpist having a better-late-than-never change of heart

 The American Spectator was one of the first conservative magazines I subscribed to when I had my conversion experience in the 1980s. Part of its appeal for me was that it was, at that time, still published in the college town, Bloomington, Indiana, where it was founded. That's about forty miles, over the hills of southern Indiana, from where I live. It's a lot like college towns have been for the last 50-plus years: a hip music scene, good dining scene, film series in abundance, and lots of left-of-center public policy and cultural influence. As I got to know the story of TAS's founding - in 1967, by a group of grad students who were clearly going against the grain - I was fascinated. Due to the friendships founding editor R. Emmett Tyrell had formed, visitors to the magazine's offices included people ranging from Daniel Patrick Moynihan to P.J O'Rourke.

TAS took the tone of witty irreverence that had been one of National Review's charms one step further. The zany artwork that accompanied such monthly departments as The Great American Saloon Series and The Continuing Crisis was half the fun of getting each new issue. 

TAS moved to Washington and underwent some ownership changes. Tyrell remained at the editorial helm,  but he, too, seemed to have absorbed some of the Beltway ethos. Gone were the floridly acerbic edges to much of his writing. The impact of being nearer the seat of national power became discernible. 

Other magazines, and then websites, came along and provided the freshness that had to some degree gone out of TAS. I didn't keep up with TAS on a regular basis as I once had. 

That became more the case after Tyrell became a full-throated Trump supporter. I didn't need to check in on one more of those on a regular basis. 

But he has now come out with a very public expression of disillusionment that bears noting:

I was the first editor-in-chief of an intellectual review to support President Donald Trump. Possibly, I was the first editor to do so. Yet now, after a thorough review of last week's bruising events, I most emphatically condemn his reckless rhetoric, and I affirm that I can no longer support him. If anything, I should have done so earlier. Too much wreckage has accumulated around him. Too many reputations have been destroyed by him. One of the most admirable virtues in politics is loyalty. I know who has been loyal to Donald. Whom has he been loyal to?

 

In his first years in office, he surprised even me with his policy choices. There were tax reductions that put me in mind of Ronald Reagan. There was his unparalleled deregulatory campaign that proved how easy it is to revive an economy and to bring employment back to historic heights. There were the courts: the Supreme Court with three splendid appointments, and the appellate courts with 54 appointments. There was the Jerusalem embassy and, for the first time ever, the possibility of peace among the Arabs and the Israelis. There was criminal justice reform, opportunity zones and the withdrawal from the Paris climate accords. All of this achieved while he was being hounded by spurious charges of collusion, espionage and the idiotic "dossier" that Hillary vouchsafed us. Has anyone been prosecuted? I, too, was very angry, but not mad.

Tyrell is starting to fully consider how abusive Trump has been to a lot of people who could have been a great help to a president who had any sense:

Donald was an amazing man, but now his legacy is endangered, and the man who endangered it is Donald Trump. He never took advice from anyone, and he went through many first-rate advisers. He treated staff horribly, men such as Jeff Sessions, Mick Mulvaney and Mark Meadows. He had the best vice president that I have seen in my lifetime. For a while, he treated Mike Pence with dignity. When it came down to last week -- Washington's Hell Week -- he treated the vice president as shabbily as he treated everyone else.

 

Then came Georgia. As with his inscrutable COVID-19 circus, he talked too much. His final speech to the Georgia voters might have been delivered in Chinese. I could make no sense of it, and the average Georgian, too, was confused. According to Donald, they were to vote for the two Republican candidates, though they were not to trust the voting apparatus of the state or even the state's Republican leadership -- very puzzling, very demoralizing.

And then he makes plain where he is going:

. . . as for me, I know that I am finished with Donald Trump. He is not the engaging man I met years ago in Trump Tower. He is not the natural campaigner I had at our yearly dinner in 2013. 

Actually, he is, Bob. I'll chalk your formulation up to your natural graciousness and enjoyment of social settings among people you're eager to see as kindred spirits. (I've attended receptions in both Indianapolis and Washington at which I had glancing face time with Tyrell, and he clearly relishes such networking environments.)

In any event, welcome back to Earth, Bob. Keep your train of thought going. It will lead to some uncomfortable places, particularly the conclusion that the whole enterprise of supporting the Very Stable Genius was not worth it, judges and deregulation notwithstanding. 

But you'll feel like a more authentic human being for having pursued it. 

Trying to keep Trumpist zeal going at this late date is spiritually corrosive. The remaining throne-sniffers will at some point have their moment of reckoning. 

 

 

The VSG's business empire faces an unfavorable climate as the brand becomes more tarnished by the hour

 Josh Dawsey, David A. Farenthold and Jonathan O'Connell of The Washington Post have a piece today that portrays a Trump brand in serious decline. From banks to social-media platforms to vendors for hotels to golf organizations, the VSG and his family are looking at a bone-dry landscape when they depart Washington.

In the past week, it has lost a bank, an e-commerce platform and the privilege of hosting a world-famous golf tournament, and its hopes of hosting another have been dashed. In the future, the Trump Organization also could lose its District of Columbia hotel and even its children's carousel in Central Park, if government landlords in Washington and New York reevaluate their contracts with Trump.

By refusing to acknowledge that he would be returning to private life, Trump appears to have sabotaged what could have been his best chance at success in that realm - a rebound of the battered Trump brand.

The VSG was nobody's idea of a great business partner beforehand, but his antics of late have really fouled the nest:

"Most financial institutions and investors avoided doing business with him before he ran for president, and the situation now has only gotten worse," said Kathryn Wylde, the leader of the Partnership for New York City, an influential group that includes the leaders of banks and Fortune 500 companies.

Wylde secured support for an open letter against Trump's efforts to overturn the election from almost 200 major companies - including most of the major banks and real estate firms in New York - within 36 hours, a sign of how angry many are with his actions. That was before Wednesday's riot

"If he remains a visible player, no one will want to be associated with him in any kind of public way, because he is going to symbolize the destabilization of the American political system," Wylde said.

Apparently the PGA pulling out of Bedminster particularly set him off. I'd read elsewhere that, for a while, he was more preoccupied with that than with the losing-the-election stuff - and certainly stuff like the pandemic and the ongoing cyberattack. You know, the stuff that a president would be deeply focused on if he had any interest in leading. 

He'd been increasingly behind the eight ball for some time:

Four Trump-branded hotels had closed. The company's plans for new hotel chains had fizzled. The remaining hotels had been hit by political backlash, and then by the pandemic, which has devastated the hospitality industry: At Trump's Chicago hotel in the fall, the managing director told investors, "It's going to be very, very tough to keep the boat afloat."

The D.C. hotel's BLT Prime restaurant had quietly lost its decorated chef, David Burke, who told The Washington Post on Tuesday that he left in the fall after ESquared Hospitality, the New York-based company that operates the upscale steakhouse, ended his contract. Burke said it was probably because of the economics of the pandemic.

Trump has at times railed about business losses resulting from his being president, a senior administration official said, complaining in the Oval Office that the scrutiny and bad publicity were costing him "billions."

Trump also is facing state-level investigations into his financial practices in New York, and more than $400 million in loans will come due in the next few years.

But in the last week, the momentum has gathered:

The first backlash fell upon, of all things, the Trump website that sells candles and T-shirts.

Trumpstore.com had been hosted by the e-commerce website Shopify until last week.

"Shopify does not tolerate actions that incite violence," the company said. As of Tuesday evening, the site was still down.

Then Trump lost the real estate broker working to sell his D.C. hotel. He lost the PGA Championship, one of golf's four majors, which was scheduled to be played at his Bedminster, N.J., club in 2022. The event would have given him a massive spotlight in a sport he loves.

In Britain, Trump's hopes of landing another major golf tournament - the British Open - were dashed when the organizers said they would not use Trump's Turnberry club in Scotland for "the foreseeable future."

This week, Trump lost his accounts at New York's Signature Bank, which gave back the money and put out a statement telling him to resign. New York City said it was "reviewing whether legal grounds exist" to terminate Trump's contracts for ice rinks, the carousel and the city-owned golf course.

Also on Tuesday, Professional Bank - a Florida entity that lent Trump's company $11.2 million in 2018 to buy the president's sister's home near Mar-a-Lago - said it would no longer do business with Trump.

"Professional Bank has decided not to engage in any further business with the Trump Organization and its affiliates, and will be winding down the relationship effective immediately," the bank said in a statement. Trump also has a money market account at the bank worth at least $5 million, according to his most recent financial disclosure. The bank's decision was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

To all actual conservatives - those of us who didn't vote for the VSG either time, and who have pointed out examples of his unfitness as they came along over the last five years - I say: We've been vindicated. And we can take a moment to bask in the knowledge that we don't own any of this. 

Rebuilding a viable conservative movement is going to be a Herculean task, but I don't think having Trumpism as competition is going to be one of our major challenges.

Now, if we can just get him out of the White House in the next six days.  

 

 

 

Some thoughts from recent days on whether the Republican Party has a future

 Here's a mince-no-words declaration of departure from Ed Morrissey at Hot Air. This one surprises me a bit. I'd never taken him for a Trumpist, but I didn't know such a clear line in the sand was brewing for him:

In the wake of the trauma of the last two months, two inescapable questions emerge. First, what does it mean to be republican? And second, does the Republican Party represent those values at all any more?

The answers to both have led me to disaffiliate myself from the GOP after the disgrace that took place in Congress last week, with not just tacit but explicit cooperation from party leadership. Granted, in Minnesota, it’s easy to disaffiliate as the state does not have any affiliation attached to its voter registration process, so the only action necessary is to just tell people you’re no longer a member of the party. Still, at this point it’s impossible to act as though Republicans are republican, especially while its leadership makes clear that it doesn’t care one whit about the party’s own foundational principles.

I'm generally inclined to align with his position, but every time I get ready to commit myself to it here or at Precipice, I come across signs of hope, in the form of principled pronouncements from relatively new legislators who are Republicans.

There's Ben Sasse. Now, Ben's come in for a few darts of strong objection since he came to the Senate, most recently for not voting to impeach the VSG last January. But if you really examine his pronouncements on the basics going back to his February 2016 open letter to Trump supporters that he posted on Facebook, you'll see an admirable consistency.

More recently, he spoke candidly about his colleague Josh Hawley:

So Sen. Hawley was doing something that was really dumbass. And I have been clear about that in public and in private since long before he announced that he was going to do this. This was a stunt. It was a terrible, terrible idea. And you don't lie to the American people. And that's what's been going on. The American people have been lied to chiefly by Donald Trump. And lies have consequences. And those consequences are now found in five dead Americans in a Capitol building that's in shambles. And there's a lot of work that has to be done to rebuild, and legislators should not be aiding and abetting those kinds of lies.

There's also Adam Kinzinger, who at present consistently impresses me:

Republican U.S. Representative Adam Kinzinger on Thursday called for the 25th Amendment to be invoked to remove President Donald Trump from office, a day after the president's supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in a harrowing assault on American democracy.

"All indications are that the president has become unmoored, not just from his duty or even his oath, but from reality itself," Kinzinger said in a video he posted on Twitter. 

House member from Michigan Peter Meijer likewise seems to have his head on straight:

We are 24 hours into a new reality. Tuesday I signed on to a letter that was authored by Chip Roy, Ken Buck, Thomas Massie, the Freedom Caucus guys. And then there were plenty of moderates in that mix, there were establishment folks. This ran the gamut, it crossed every sort of internal little caucus division. You had Problem Solvers, Freedom Caucus, and everybody in between. I don't know where that's going to lead, but I was really proud to see a number of folks vote on their principles, taking the heat from constituents, but again, telling them what they needed to hear, not what they wanted to hear. Exhibiting some leadership.

And then one of the saddest things is I had colleagues who, when it came time to recognize reality and vote to certify Arizona and Pennsylvania in the Electoral College, they knew in their heart of hearts that they should've voted to certify, but some had legitimate concerns about the safety of their families. They felt that that vote would put their families in danger.

Now, guys, don't disappoint me.  One of the toughest aspects of getting through the Trump era has been seeing former objects of my admiration jettison their principles. Ted Cruz is Exhibit A. It's the principles for me, and if you guys stray for opportunistic reasons, my enthusiasm for you will fade really fast. 

What about the legal arguments that what Trump did last week doesn't rise to the level of impeachable offense? Jonathan Turley has been vocal about this as has Jeffrey Scott Shapiro. 

Well, okay. If their arguments against impeachment are airtight, and I'm not 100 percent convinced, that leaves us with the 25th Amendment, a tougher sell, especially to the guy who would have to pull the trigger - that is, Mike Pence.

And the plain fact - and I hope the likes of Turley and Shapiro would agree with me on this basic point - is that Trump has to go, now. He's wrecked our basic institutions, debased our standards for discourse, left our allies - and, for that matter, our adversaries and enemies - harboring doubts about American stability, and, to the point of this post, infected the Republican Party with his peculiar brand of recklessness and solipsism, perhaps fatally. 

I think Daren Jonescu's take nicely addresses both the Turley/Shapiro objection to impeachment and the larger question of Trump's fundamental unfitness:

Did Trump know he was inciting insurrection? No. For Donald Trump does not know what insurrection means. He does not know what incitement means. He does not understand the limits of authority or free speech, or the responsibility resting on the shoulders of a man in the seat of power. He does not respect the concept of civil society, and does not even know what such a thing would be. He believes everything he does is part of a grand publicity stunt aimed at aggrandizing the name of Trump and bringing adulation from the unwashed masses, or rather audience. For he was nothing, is nothing, and never could be anything, but a conscienceless showman and self-promoter.

Now, I came across this piece this morning, which revisits that years-old question of whether Ronald Reagan should loom so large over discussions about the future of the Republican Party. Among a fair variety of interested folks, there's been a strong feeling that times have changed so much since the 1980s that reference to Reagan's style and set of concerns is only of limited usefulness. This piece quite unabashedly comes to an opposite conclusion, based on six elements of Reaganism that would stand Republicans - or anybody - in good stead at any time:

1. Tone matters. Be careful of personal conduct. People who regularly denigrate or abuse other people raise questions as to their fitness for office. In the policy world, communication is usually not an end in itself, but a means to an end. The goal of communications is to help shape a consensus for a decision, and using it to demean others makes it harder for some to support you. Reagan occasionally found support from Speaker Tip O’Neill. Trump ended up with nothing from Speaker Pelosi.
2. Inclusivity matters. The advantage of a political philosophy is that a political party becomes a universal party. The Republican Party was founded on a set of ideas rather than individual identity, so people from any background should be welcome. Spend time with constituencies that might not be a natural fit. Reagan’s outreach was universal, shaped by his radio and movie experience. You need to talk with everyone you can. Trump’s approach was insular. The point of a Trump rally was to speak only to the base.
3. International leadership matters. We value alliances and collaboration not because we are naive or because it is an act of charity. We undertake a leadership role because America is safer and more prosperous when we build alliances and reduce trade barriers. Our two great international successes of the past century, World War II and the Cold War, depended on America’s ability to lead a coalition. Reagan set the stage for NAFTA with his call for a “North American Accord.” Trump sided with Bernie Sanders in withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
4. Economic growth matters. Whatever problems we face, from racial disparity to clean energy, will be that much easier to tackle with economic growth. To give Trump credit, he was able to preside over three years of growth. This is arguably the one area where there is an overlap between Reagan’s worldview and Trump’s.
5. Values matter. The first rule of a president should be to act like a president. Behave in a way that makes it easy for people to like you, to want to respect you, and to follow you. Reagan knew he was leading a great nation and reached an approval high of 71 percent according to Gallup. Trump merely asserted greatness, and reached an approval high of 49 percent.
6. Defeats matter. Reagan actually received more votes in the 1976 Republican primaries than did his rival, President Gerald Ford, but the distribution of these votes allowed Ford to be awarded more delegates. Reagan was gracious in defeat, endorsing Ford from the convention podium and campaigning for him in the general election. Accepting defeat showed a level of maturity that allowed Reagan to unify the GOP when he went on to win the nomination four years later. Trump’s bitterness at defeat and his sustained efforts to overturn an election reflect, to put it mildly, a lack of maturity and a willingness to hurt both Republican Party interests and the national interest in pursuit of his personal benefit.

And that's the crux of the question whether the GOP has a future. 

Even before the whole series of events beginning with Barry Goldwater's 1960 book The Conscience of a Conservative, Goldwater's 1964 presidential nomination, the subsequent dynamics that led to Reagan's 1980 nomination and his astoundingly successful two terms (and then later developments such as the 1994 Contract With America), the Republican Party was considered the standard-bearer for the federalism that Morrissey discusses in his piece linked above. These are ideas rooted in Madisonian (building on the thought of Locke and Montesquieu) notions of how to maximize freedom and simultaneously ensure order. During Republicans' years in the wilderness between 1964 and, really, 1980 (the Nixon years perhaps being a bit of a respite, except that Nixon was pretty rudderless ideologically and had, well, you know, his share of troubles), National Review held strong, Commentary solidified its neoconservative shift, and The American Spectator was born in a burst of irreverence in an office suite above Betty Jean's candy store on the courthouse square in downtown Bloomngton, Indiana. The Heritage Foundation was founded during that time. 

There were nudges from several directions, and the GOP eventually became truly conservative. 

What are the signs that some kind of understanding of the basic tenets and underlying values of conservatism still exists, at least in remote corners, in our own time of exile?

I'd offer Principles First as proof of such a sign. Also The Bulwark, The Dispatch, and the work of Justin Stapley. 

None of these outlets or people know for sure if the Republican Party has a future. I'm pretty sure they see three basic possible scenarios: The GOP just flat-out dies, it becomes the repository for residual Trumpism (in which case, if you ask me, it winds up flat-out dying anyway), or folks interested in a more traditional understanding of what conservatism is all about make it their own.

I'm a lot of things right now - disgusted, alarmed, doubtful about the GOP's prospects - but I don't despair that conservatism has been strangled by Trumpism. Conservatives has survived four years of derision and ostracism from the MAGA-hat crowd, and we're still here. Every day, more people of every stripe come to see what a poisonous figure and phenomenon Trump and Trumpism have been.

If you're one such person and the progressive alternative doesn't strike you as being a viable way forward, come hang with us. We're having the most important conversations around. 

 

 

The fruits of patty-cake - today's edition

 During the later years of the Obama era, I had many posts with this title. Evidence was ample that Iran had not done much beyond complying with the narrowest interpretation of the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. There'd certainly been no change of heart, no desire on Iran's part to begin to really act like a well-intentioned member of the international community. When two US Navy patrol boats were captured by Iran in the Persian Gulf, their crew members photographed on their knees with their hands behind their heads, on the day Obama was to give the State of the Union address, or when the Ayatollah Khameini or top-ranking Quds Force or Revolutionary Guards spokesmen continued the rhetoric about the US being Iran's number one enemy, or when Iran continued to build ever-more powerful missiles, or when it would get caught shipping materiel to terrorist groups, I'd write a post with this title.

The reason was to hammer home a basic point of sensible foreign policy: you don't appease rogue regimes that have repeatedly declared that you are their enemy.

Pulling out of the JCPOA was one of the handful of laudable policy moves to come out of the Trump administration in my estimation.

But I feel pretty sure Trump did it from a transactional motivation rather than from adherence to the above-mentioned principle. He thinks in terms of deals, and saw the JCPOA as a bad one.

And then he put his signature inconsistency on display by making an abrupt turn from longstanding US policy toward North Korea and setting up and participating in the summits with Kim Jong-Un. We had to listen to gushing rhetoric about beautiful letters and North Korea's enormous potential, knowing full well there'd be no resulting change in that country's stance. 

If the JCPOA was driven at least largely by Obama's and Kerry's narcissistic determination to be seen as visionary peacemakers, Trump's overtures to Kim were that determination on steroids. 

And, no surprise here, it was all for naught:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un threatened to expand his nuclear arsenal as he disclosed a list of high-tech weapons systems under development, saying the fate of relations with the United States depends on whether it abandons its hostile policy, state media reported Saturday.

 

Kim’s comments during a key meeting of the ruling party this week were seen as applying pressure on the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden, who has called Kim a “thug” and has criticized his summits with President Donald Trump.

 

The Korean Central News Agency quoted Kim as saying the “key to establishing new relations between (North Korea) and the United States is whether the United States withdraws its hostile policy.”

The Kim regime has the same basic stance it's had for decades:

He again called the U.S. his country’s “main enemy.”

“Whoever takes office in the U.S., its basic nature and hostile policy will never change,” he said.

So when some drool-besotted Trumpist starts in with the list of supposedly great accomplishments of the Very Stable Genius and gets to this subject, you can respond, "I think we can take that one off." 

  

Heading for the exits

 Several people who have been major players during the Trump administration have finally come to their bridge too far.

Mick Mulvaney:

Mick Mulvaney, former White House chief of staff and current special envoy to Northern Ireland, announced he is stepping down in what appears to be the latest in a stream of resignations following the chaos that was unleashed at the US Capitol by supporters of President Trump.

“I called [Secretary of State] Mike Pompeo last night to let him know I was resigning from that. I can’t do it. I can’t stay,” Mulvaney told CNBC in an interviewThursday.

“Those who choose to stay, and I have talked with some of them, are choosing to stay because they’re worried the president might put someone worse in,” Mulvaney said.

Betsy DeVos:

U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos sent a letter to President Trump on Thursday announcing her resignation. She is the latest administration official to quit in protest of Wednesday's violence at the U.S. Capitol. The news was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

For four years, DeVos has been one of Trump's steadiest allies in a Cabinet with revolving doors, but in a letter to the president, DeVos said she was tendering her resignation, effective Friday, because she had seen enough this week:

"We should be highlighting and celebrating your Administration's many accomplishments on behalf of the American people. Instead, we are left to clean up the mess caused by violent protesters overrunning the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undermine the people's business."

She called the riots "unconscionable," and contrary to the president's efforts to downplay his role in fomenting the unrest, DeVos said she believed "there is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me."

"Impressionable children are watching all of this," she wrote of Trump's role in Wednesday's events, "and they are learning from us. I believe we each have a moral obligation to exercise good judgment and model the behavior we hope they would emulate."

Elaine Chao:

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao announced that she will resign following Wednesday’s vandalism of the U.S. Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump.

“Yesterday, our country experienced a traumatic and entirely avoidable event as supporters of the President stormed the Capitol building following a rally he addressed,” she said in a statement addressed to her colleagues. “As I’m sure is the case with many of you, it has deeply troubled me in a way that I simply cannot set aside.”

Chao, who called her appointment “the honor of a lifetime,” said her last day will be on Monday. 

John Kelly has been gone for a while, and he's been fairly self-restrained in remarks since his departure. But he's decided the time is now to be bracingly forthright about what ought to happen:

• John Kelly, who served as President Donald Trump's chief of staff from July 2017 to January 2019, called for the president's removal via the 25th Amendment on Thursday.

• "What happened on Capitol Hill yesterday is a direct result of his poisoning the minds of people with the lies and the fraud," Kelly told CNN's Jake Tapper.

• When Tapper asked if Kelly would vote to remove Trump under the 25th Amendment if he were still chief of staff, he replied "Yes, I would."

• "When you first meet or start working with him — in my case, no idea of the flaws — and you start working for him and begin to understand how flawed he is, then it's a matter of staying in the job as long as you can to prevent some sort of disaster."

Several others have said they've had a bellyful as well:

 . . . several White House staffers — including Stephanie Grisham, first lady Melania Trump’s chief of staff, and deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews — have said they would step down.

White House social secretary Rickie Niceta and deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger also reportedly stepped down Wednesday.

Other resignations reportedly include: Ryan Tully, a senior director for European and Russian affairs at the National Security Council, John Costello, deputy secretary of Commerce, and Tyler Goodspeed, acting chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Fewer grownups than ever who might be able to get the president's ear. If he listens to anybody, it's more likely than ever to be a wack-job. 

We're in for a tricky couple of weeks if the Very Stable Genius isn't gone within a matter of hours. 

 

 

 

 

Post-America stares into the abyss

 

So the pipe bombs have been found and presumably dismantled. The gallows that had been hastily erected on Capitol grounds is likewise presumably gone by now. A fistfight between two Democrat House members and one Republican was averted on the floor of that chamber once Congress returned after the National Guard had secured the Capitol. Some of the idiot Republicans who'd intended to object to the Arizona and/or Pennsylvania Electoral College results had changes of heart after the, shall we say, interruption. 

But this wasn't a hiccup-type incident, after which basic order will once again prevail and the nation's citizens will turn their eyes to productive and unity-conducive activities. Lasting damage has been a feature of the post-American landscape for some time, but yesterday afternoon gave us a look at an entirely new level.

The head of the executive branch egged on his cult followers with a fiery speech harping yet again on the theme of a stolen election. He exhorted them to march up to Capitol Hill. His subsequent tweets - what a lame way for the chief executive of the world's most powerful nation to address what was going on  - finally culminated in a call for his slavish devotees to go home, but not before he, yet again, spoke of a stolen election. 

Did he anticipate that they would take their actions as far as they did? Do you really doubt it?

He was surely radiating glee at the thought of the Constitutional obligation of the legislative branch to count electoral votes being interrupted by force. 

It's being reported that Mike Pence is red-hot angry with Trump for his midday speech and his recent antics in general. That's good, Mike, you just stew in your anger for a while. Let it steer your thoughts back to May 2016, when you, while sitting in the governor's mansion in Indianapolis, made your Faustian bargain. Let it steer your thoughts back to that state dinner in Washington at which Marilyn Coats kept sending you looks intended to say, "How do you sleep at night being part of this?" You got it. It burned deep into your soul. But you stayed the course and now here you are.

It's a pickle, isn't it? We have two weeks to go. Not enough time for a Senate trial if impeachment is initiated. The 25th Amendment would surely ratchet up the ugliness. We now have proof that Trumpism can be as savage as Antifa-style leftism. 

But he does need to go, yet this morning. 

The damage done to the Capitol building's offices and hallways, doors and windows serves as a kind of metaphor for the damage done to our institutions and our national character by giving this charlatan the time of day.

I don't know if the Republican Party can be salvaged or not. It is encouraging to see some principled voices speaking out. But I do know that conservatism needs to squarely look at how so many of its adherents ever came to think that this unfit buffoon could somehow embody their hopes for the kind of nation they'd always envisioned.

I wish it did not have to go as far as it has for the colossal mistake of giving the time of day to Donald Trump to become apparent to most of us. 

But now we know. What shall we do?

The Georgia rally: as toxic as you'd anticipated

If you'd held out some kind of hope against hope that the VSG was going to do some growing up between Saturday night and last night, that maybe reaction to the phone call to Raffensperger was going to have some kind of upside-the-head effect, and that maybe if he wanted to salvage some kind of positive legacy while he still has an opportunity, it was dashed in Dalton:

The first words out of his mouth at the rally in Dalton were: "There's no way we lost Georgia. That was a rigged election."

Trump went on to bash Kemp and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, claim they were not real Republicans and vow to campaign against both men when they stand for reelection in 2022.

The president also falsely claimed that he had won reelection "in a landslide" and suggested that he expects Vice President Mike Pence to make it so when he fulfills his constitutional duty to preside over Wednesday's joint session of Congress, even though the vice president does not actually have the power to overturn the results.

"I hope Mike Pence comes through for us, I have to tell you," Trump told the applauding Georgia crowd. "Of course, if he doesn't come through, I won't like him quite as much."

GOP strategists say Trump's infatuation with personal grievances and false claims of a "rigged" and "stolen" election in November could depress their party's turnout Tuesday, dooming Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.

Georgia's voting systems manager, Gabriel Sterling, refuted Trump's voter fraud claims point by point at a news conference Monday in Atlanta. "This is all easily, provably false, yet the president persists," Sterling said. "We have claim after claim after claim, with zero proof. Zero."

Trump has been uninterested in governing or managing the pandemic - or even burnishing his legacy - and is almost entirely focused on the election, spending considerable time talking about it with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Johnny McEntee, the presidential personnel director, officials said.

To those who have attended these rallies, in full MAGA regalia, who have participated in Trump Train parades through their communities, who have defended this pathetic figure vociferously in social media comment threads, focusing on the few laudable policy moves - judicial appointments, deregulation, pulling out of the Paris climate accord and the JCPOA, moving the embassy to Jerusalem - which are moves we could have had with an actual conservative grownup* - while dismissing his glaring unfitness, you still may not be able to hear this, but it bears repeating: Donald Trump does not love America. He has no understanding of the foundations of this country, such as the Constitution and free-market economics. He doesn't care about you as a voter or a citizen. All that crap about bringing jobs and robust economic activity back to your communities was utter hooey. He was blowing smoke. You've been useful to him only because of your slavish loyalty. 

He's on the way out now. Give up that loyalty. He hasn't earned it. Take a square look at how you've been used and betrayed. Get reacquainted with the conservative impulses that motivated you to give him a look in the first place. And then resolve to never squander your devotion on such a solipsistic man-child again.

*I still speak of "actual conservatives" among the 2016 Republican presidential candidates, but perhaps I, too, am harboring an unfounded hope. Most have since showed themselves to be all too willing to jettison their supposed principles out of fear that the VSG had so thoroughly made the GOP his own that they had to cast their lot with him. I remain convinced - why I'm not sure - that conservatives who cannot be subsumed by a movement like Trumpism are out there. Adam Kinzinger and Ben Sasse continue to impress me, as does Larry Hogan. I am greatly relieved to see that Tom Cotton in not going to join this plan to disrupt electoral-vote-counting day. 

"Find"

 Of the angles that the Very Stable Genius tried during his Saturday phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, from extortion ("it's gonna be costly to you") to an appeal to Raffensperger to gloss over niceties such as certified election numbers ("There's nothing wrong with you saying that, you know, that you've recalculated") to begging ("Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break"), what has stuck in my mind is the use of the word "find," as in "find 11,780 votes."

It is so inconceivable to the VSG that he really lost that he'll pressure people to pull the imaginary set of circumstances he's looking for out of thin air.

It all sheds a bit of new light on the impeachment proceedings of a year ago and the way the VSG had behaved toward the Ukraine president in the previous summer's phone call on which impeachment was predicated. 

Exit question: Do 11 Senators and 140 House members still intend to cause chaos on electoral-votes-counting day, in the wake of this astonishing conversation?

Are they still willing to hitch their wagons to this figure who, daily, ensures an-ever-less-favorable assessment by history of his time in this office?

16 days out from inauguration and we have a full-blown constitutional crisis on our hands. 

Because the VSG is a big baby with a dangerous amount of power.

Donald Trump has no qualms or regrets about having ruined the Republican Party

 It has never been about ideas, principles or coherent policy for the Very Stable Genius. If it had been, he'd take a look at the present situation and say to himself, well, I won't be there to shepherd the initiatives I'm passionate about, but I can apply my energies to seeing that the Senate retains a Republican majority.

But since his sole motivation his entire pathetic life has been self-glorification, he intends to burn it all down on his way out of DC:

President Donald Trump declared the Senate runoff elections in Georgia both “illegal and invalid” in a tweet on Friday, which could dissuade his followers from heading to the polls.

The results of the Jan. 5 vote will determine which party controls the Senate. More than 3 million Georgians have already voted during the state’s early voting period.

Trump issued his baseless conclusion in a Twitter thread Friday night when he attacked the election process in the state, which is controlled by Republicans.

In his slam, Trump wrote that the Georgia “consent decree” is “unconstitutional.” He was referring to a bipartisan agreement forged by election officials in March that helped establish standards for judging valid signatures on absentee ballots. Lawsuits challenging the decree on Trump’s behalf have failed.

“The Georgia Consent Decree is Unconstitutional & the State 2020 Presidential Election ... is therefore both illegal and invalid, and that would include the two current Senatorial Elections,” Trump tweeted.

And let us mention the larger point as well: He intends to do as much damage as possible to the American public's faith in bedrock institutions as possible. 

All that flag-hugging was for the benefit of the drooling, zombie-eyed cult followers. He doesn't give the first diddly about this nation.