In all the hoopla about how lousy Trump is, a small item rather escaped me:

Why have some religious conservatives decided to support Donald Trump for United States president? Leaders have named their reasons: He’s promised to appoint pro-life Supreme Court justices; he’s allegedly good at business. But they have also consistently cited something else, perhaps more unexpected: the tax code.

Trump has promised to repeal the so-called Johnson Amendment, a 1954 provision that prohibits tax-exempt organizations from participating in political activities. Proposed by then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson and later revised by Congress, it keeps churches and other non-profits from lobbying for specific causes, campaigning on behalf of politicians, and supporting or opposing candidates for office…

In case you ever wondered why no one in politics really pays much attention to what religious leaders say, there’s your reason: money. You might note that unions and various leftwing political groups – some of which are tax exempt – are free to pour money into political campaigns to their heart’s content…but religious groups can’t. This is why, at election time, the concerns of religious people are very much a secondary consideration…why what the union or the corporate PAC wants is paramount; you risk campaign money if you cross a union or a corporate PAC, you don’t risk money if you cross a religion. Repealing the Johnson Amendment would put religious people on the same level as everyone else. And, so, yes: it has to go.

I freely admit that I hadn’t heard of this until maybe a couple years ago – but now that it is brought to mind, I realize that part of the reason that we are ratcheted ever leftwards on social issues is because the prime source of Conservative power on social issues – the Church, the various Protestant denominations, etc – are essentially prohibited from engaging in the battle. It isn’t that there’s no one willing to fight the battle, but there is no one writing a check which makes politicians actually beholden to religious groups (and thus we see so-called Conservative politicians ever finding reasons to leave religious people in the lurch when push comes to shove). Allow religious money to enter the fray, and politicians will serve that money, even if they don’t want to serve the dogmas.

Rather crude, I know – but democratic politics is like that…and it is time for religious people to gain the power to really influence politics.

As of this writing, we still don’t know all the facts – not about the Dallas massacre, nor the Sterling and Castile shootings. As things now stand, with what I’ve been able to learn, I’m highly doubtful of the justification for the Sterling and Castile shootings (especially in the case of Castile – if he did have a CCW, then that strongly indicates a solid citizen who tries to stay out of trouble). I’ve little doubt that the person or persons responsible for the Dallas massacre were (a) likely mentally deranged and (b) at least partially incited in their insanity by the over-heated rhetoric on police and race we’ve seen this past couple years. But everything I believe about these cases is subject to change as new facts emerge. Never pre-judge these situations…and never arrive at a hard and fast conclusion you’re vigorously defending for at least some days after the incident. You may end looking foolish and, worse, you make get so invested in your Narrative that you actually take to spreading lies to defend your position.

I don’t know what went through your hearts and minds as the events unfolded, but I got a rather sick feeling – that our nation is poised on the edge of complete disaster.

We’ve discussed this a lot lately, and I haven’t modified my views on how we got here, nor on what needs to be done to fix it. We’ve got here because dishonest people have stirred up hatred in order to advance themselves in power and wealth. To get out of this our primary focus has to be on reducing the power of government because a powerful government is a government which will be prey to whomever shouts the loudest – whomever stirs up the most hatred. No one is out there rioting in favor of being left alone to live their lives as they see fit. Riots are started by people who want someone punished; someone to pay; by people who want to garner themselves some unearned wealth and power. Riots and all manner of gutter politics are the tools of those who want Big Government to do something – either to someone or some group or for someone or some group. Reduce the power of government and you immediately reduce the scope of action for gutter politics.

The only people who can reduce the power of government are Conservatives. And so to reduce the power of government, Conservatives must gain power. To do this, Conservatives are going to have to radically rethink how they approach issues and come up with solutions which appeal to the electorate as it is. We’ve talked about that a bit, as well – and there has been dispute over what precise actions we should take. And I’m ok with that – unlike Progressives, no Conservative will ever figure he or she has the exact right answer. But we do need to change how we do business, that is a certainty. We need to find a way to lead the charge for reform – for revolutionary reform which will restore limited government, the rule of law, public decency and a sense of moral responsibility.

Right now, a lot of usual suspects on the left and right are trying to make these terrible events into mere talking points – we can’t allow that to happen. People are dying; our nation’s future is at risk. We do have to speak firmly, but not in hatred or anger. We have to listen. We have to think. We have to be merciful. It is time for Conservatives to live up to their ideals, is what I’m trying to say. Whether or not we do so determines the fate of the nation.

I know a former PTA President who had parents lobbying to have their kids declared special needs, because such a child (a) got more resources and (b) had a better chance of getting into the better schools. This suddenly came back to my mind here on our Glorious Fourth – the day we celebrate the independence of our nation. In a nutshell, this is what is wrong with the United States. People are demanding more and more special treatment and Big Government has set itself up as the dispenser of special treatment…and you’re a fool not to grab as much special treatment as you can. Of course, this makes you entirely dependent upon government (and your ability to whine until someone in government gives you something unearned). This, I suspect, it not what the Founders had in mind.

If you want to see where we’re heading, don’t pay too much attention to what the Democrats are up to – they still, to maintain electoral viability, pretend to hold to some of the old, American ideals. If you want to see the future, check out the Green Party plan. Here’s a sample:

Abolish student debt to free a generation of Americans from debt servitude. Guarantee tuition-free, world-class public education from pre-school through university. End high stakes testing and public school privatization.

You know me, I’ve advocated abolishing student debt for a long time – coupled with abolishing the student loan program because all that program does is allow colleges to charge ever higher tuition while incentivizing colleges to dumb-down the curriculum because the easier you make college, the more tuition-paying students you get, the more money you have to over-pay professors and administrators (and donate to Progressive causes, of course). The Green Party takes whats wrong about student loans and just puts it on steroids. Now there won’t even be the slight discipline of having to eventually pay back the money…its all “free”, and you can bet your last dollar (if you had one, after paying the taxes for all this) that curricula would become even more vapid as more and more kids are shoveled into the schools so they can sit there until they are 30 providing massive funding for the colleges (and Progressive politics).

If you look over the whole plan, you can see that it’s a litany of proposals to massively increase the power of government. It is absurdly titled the “Power to the People” plan, as if the people will have any power under a system where, among other things, we’ll be forced to transition to “renewable” energy by 2030. But that is how our Progressives view the world – we can’t be free unless we are all forced to live the way Progressives think best for us. Everything is to be owned by the “people”, but of course all the people can’t simultaneously turn the crank of government – just a select (self-selected, naturally) few will be able to do that. You and I will just have to wait and see what comes out – for those most juiced in, a great life; for the rest of us, our potato rations and permission to have electricity 6 hours a day. And while this is the far-out, kook Green Party plan of 2016, you can rest assured it will be standard Democrat party boilerplate by 2024 or so.

Will the people rebel against this, or will they – like those parents shouting at the PTA – merely demand a cut of the government swag?

The whole system is a mess – and it just keeps getting worse. And the answer to Progressive failure is always to apply more Progressivism. I don’t know how we break the cycle. How, that is, we get people to understand that the reason things are lousy is because of the programs allegedly designed to help. It is massively difficult to get someone who is receiving SNAP to understand that they are forced to used SNAP because SNAP exists…and that if SNAP didn’t exist, they wouldn’t starve but would, instead, live in a free society where hard work would raise them up to the point where SNAP isn’t needed. It is hard to get people to understand that the reason they are being harassed (at least in their view) by the police is because the Progressives (who say they are anti-police) are making law after law after law which essentially forces the police to harass the people. It is hard to get people to understand that the fat cat CEO is making all that money because Progressives set tax and regulatory policy just so the CEO can make all that money, even as he ships jobs overseas.

But we have to figure out how to do it before such a large majority is dependent upon government (either for their crumbs from the table, or their position high on the table) that they won’t dare to rock the boat. 2016 is turning out to be a wasted trip for Conservatism – even if Trump manages to win, it won’t help us and may, indeed, harm us as Trump gets identified with Conservatism and starts to screw up. But for 2020 and beyond, we’d better think anew and act anew. Time is running out for the freedoms we declared on July 4th, 1776.

Here’s what California’s leadership is up to these days while drought, degrading infrastructure and economic malaise proceed apace – from Joel Kotkin:

In a state ruled by a former Jesuit, perhaps we should not be shocked to find ourselves in the grip of an incipient state religion. Of course, this religion is not actually Christianity, or even anything close to the dogma of Catholicism, but something that increasingly resembles the former Soviet Union, or present-day Iran and Saudi Arabia, than the supposed world center of free, untrammeled expression.

Two pieces of legislation introduced in the Legislature last session, but not yet enacted, show the power of the new religion. One is Senate Bill 1146, which seeks to limit the historically broad exemptions the state and federal governments have provided religious schools to, well, be religious.

Under the rubric of official “tolerance,” the bill would only allow religiously focused schools to deviate from the secular orthodoxy required at nonreligious schools, including support for transgender bathrooms or limitations on expressions of faith by students and even Christian university presidents, in a much narrower range of educational activity than ever before. Many schools believe the bill would needlessly risk their mission and funding to “solve” gender and social equity problems on their campuses that currently don’t exist.

The second piece of legislation, thankfully temporarily tabled, Senate Bill 1161, the Orwellian-named “California Climate Science Truth and Accountability Act of 2016,” would have dramatically extended the period of time that state officials could prosecute anyone who dared challenge the climate orthodoxy, including statements made decades ago…

You might think that the people of California would revolt against this – but, they won’t. This November, California’s voters will retain the massive, Democrat majority in their State legislature, will award their Electoral Votes to Hillary Clinton and in 2018 will elect another far-left kook to replace Jerry Brown as Governor. California will get more laws and regulations designed to make it ever harder for poor and middle class people to work and thrive. Infrastructure will continue to get worse (don’t even think about building new power plants or water reservoirs!), education will continue to get worse, it will get ever more expensive to buy a house, gasoline prices will continue to get higher…and the people will just take it and take it and take it. Why?

Because after all this time of Progressive control of government, a permanent, Progressive majority has been created. You see, the very rich can afford the freight. It doesn’t matter to people living in San Francisco and Santa Monica if gas prices are high, or electric rates are high, or that new houses can’t be built. They’ve got the money to afford all that – and by voting for Progressives who talk of Social Justice, they get to feel good about themselves. Meanwhile, the poor are bribed with welfare – scraps from the table, to be sure, but so far no one has been able to convince them (or even try to convince them), that they’d be better off under a system which pays them less welfare but allows them to gain property. A combination of poor and rich ensures a permanent Progressive majority in California. And this is precisely what Progressives want for all of the United States…because it best ensures control for themselves.

Can this really continue for an indefinite amount of time? That remains to be seen – but it might well continue long enough until anti-Progressive forces are so atrophied that there is no alternative available. Britain is about to have a vote on Brexit and my bet is that they will vote to remain. I hope I’m wrong – but Britain has been down the Progressive route even longer than California…there is even more fear among the rich of being out of step with Progressive ideology than even in California; the poor are even more awash in welfare there than America’s poor. To step out of the EU is the act of a free and independent people who know that they want to work very hard to advance themselves and their community. I don’t see much prospect of that being the case; I think Britain is too far gone to reclaim self-rule. In the minds of most, I think, is this idea that without Progressive rulers to take care of them, things will get bad (never mind that they are bad because Progressive rulers…at least the welfare check comes each month, right?).

Of course, a vote to leave would be a grand and great thing. And I do believe the Progressive stranglehold can be broken, even in California. But that will take us on the right explaining to people we don’t want to talk to (ie, poor people), just how they are being shafted…how they are living on scraps while the Progressive dispensers of the scraps are living swell lives. It will take an all out attack on the basic ideas of the Progressive State…which will take courage, a thing notably lacking on the right since Reagan left office.

From Veronique de Rugy over at NRO:

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is at it again. In the name of protecting consumers, it would like to ban or heavily restrict a tool that is very useful to them. This time the target is payday lending – high-interest, low-dollar “payday loans” – that the federal government wants to regulate out of existence. Yet, no matter how horrible the well-intentioned bureaucrats at the CFPB think it is, the $38.5 billion payday-lending market is used daily by many customers for whom it is the only source of credit available.

I almost can’t even talk about this – it is just so blind to reality.

The article goes on to make all sorts of arguments that the payday loans aren’t that bad and that poor people need them. At the end of it all, you have a strong and vigorous defense of an institution – and a practice – which Progressives can easily demonize and which they can use to garner support among poor people. That Progressives won’t ever do anything to get people to a point where they don’t feel a desire to use payday loans is neither here nor there – by attacking payday loans as a blood-sucking “soak the poor” scheme, Progressives will gain support. Meanwhile, we’ll be out there going, “come on, guys; it’s not so bad”. We deserve to lose, we’re so stupid.

The reality is that payday loans are a horribly anti-Conservative thing. Conservatives are supposed to be about making things so that people can live independently of the ministrations of Big Government. This means we have to convince people that working hard and saving money is the way to go…not working part-time and using payday loans to even out the cash flow for immediate consumption!

I know full well that payday loans are often the only form of credit a poor person can get – but it is far better that they get no credit, at all, then get vastly expensive credit which is used for immediate consumption rather than long-term investment. Having access to payday loans – like having access to welfare – encourages improvidence. Such things make people less conservative in thought and action. And the only purpose of sustaining such things is – aside from encouraging irresponsibility among the poor – is to make a few people rich by making the loans. They do nothing good in a Conservative sense.

But the real stupidity here is that Conservatives don’t think – we see a business and it’s profitable and legal and we instantly assume it is worthy of defense. It doesn’t work like that! What is legal is not necessarily what is right. A Conservative response to payday loans is to encourage savings – figuring out a way to make saved money so clearly a good thing that people will want to save (you know, so the poor person will have $300 in his account when money is short for food, and thus won’t have to take out a payday loan). A major step on this would be, of course, to make real money again – gold and silver backed money – but that isn’t happening any time soon. But we could take a baby step and say to the Banks, “as long as you’re borrowing money from the Federal Reserve for next-to-nothing, you’re going to pay 5% interest on savings accounts up to $100,000.00”. Allow people to write off their taxes 10% of the amount of cash they have saved up to $100,000.00. Give EITC to people who make 100% or less of the poverty rate but still manage to save 10% of their gross annual income. That sort of thing. But whatever we do, for goodness sake don’t defend people can justly be accused of charging 400% annual interest! If the Progs want to slap another tax or regulatory step on payday loans, let them! Defending such companies is not the hill Conservatism should die on.

We really got to start thinking, Conservatives. We can’t forever be stupid – because if we are, then we’ll be living in the United Socialist States of America by 2030.

John Ralston (@RalstonReports on Twitter) says that Homeland Security as changed the national threat alert to “Orange”. My advice to everyone is to get a grip and get over it – Trump is the nominee; sitting around in recriminations about just how we got Trump is pointless. Now it is time to move forward.

More than likely, Hillary is the next President. Trump can win it, but he’d have to run a campaign the likes of which we haven’t seen since…well, since the 2016 GOP primary. He’ll have to go entirely outside the box and pull in voters who, until yesterday, never thought of voting Republican. Trouble for Trump is that the polling all says he can’t do that – that his statements to date have permanently alienated so many different demographic blocs that there’s no place for him to go. 95% of normal GOP voters will show up for him, but that won’t be near enough, even though Hillary’s numbers are bound to be down from Obama’s 2012 totals. I’m figuring it 53% Hillary, 47% Trump (Progressive – and anti-Trump Conservative – dreams of Hillary getting to 60% and winning 45 States are just silly; Hillary is just an awful candidate and no one likes her, not even her fellow Democrats…nothing is sure in politics, but with anyone other than Trump at the helm, the GOP would be looking pretty certain for a win in November). If polling is correct, Trump won’t be able to do it…but if polling is wrong, then we could be in for interesting times. And by “wrong” I don’t mean that someone is screwing up at polling – I mean that if there is a large bloc of Americans who (a) can’t stand the system, (b) usually don’t vote because they think both Democrats and Republicans are corrupt and (c) get excited about Trump as a grenade to throw into the political system, then polling simply won’t pick up on that, at least not any time soon.

Trump as the likely losing nominee will do damage to the overall Republican effort. But it might not be catastrophic. Thirty GOP Senators aren’t even up for re-election, and of those who are about fifteen are pretty safe, so even if Hillary does well, the GOP will drop to about 45 Senators (which would still be a net gain of 10 for them – not bad by anyone’s measure)…more than enough to sustain a filibuster. But that is if things go really well for the Democrats. I suspect the GOP will lose seats in FL, IL, PA, WI and NH. That is five, and it only gets the Democrats to 50, with Hillary’s VP casting the tie breaker. But, the GOP still could win Reid’s seat in NV, but could also lose it’s seats in MO and LA. The real worst for the GOP is 52/48, in my view…but with a bit of luck and some good campaign work, the GOP could actually retain a Senate majority even if Hillary wins (if the GOP loses those 5, but wins Reid’s seat, it is 51/49 GOP).

In the House, the Democrats could possibly score a majority, but it would take just about everything breaking their way. If Trump is really an utter disaster, then the House is in play – if it comes out like I suspect (Hillary winning by about 6 percentage points, that is), then the House is probably safe for the GOP, though losing a dozen seats would be rather baked in. If the Democrats do win a House majority, then it will likely be a pretty thin one – we’re talking maybe 220 House Dems and 215 House GOPers (getting to 220, by the way, means the Democrats net a gain of 30 – that’s a lot).

But fret not – if Hillary does great and Trump melts down in a 1964-style wipe out of the GOP and the Democrats go to 58 in the Senate and 230 in the House, it is only for two years. With Hillary being disastrously in charge (she will fail, utterly – she’s no good; not bright; horrible at policy; terrible at politics…) and the 2018 map exceptionally favorable to the GOP, it is pretty sure that the GOP will roar back to the Congressional majority in that year.

But what sort of GOP comes roaring back? That is the question. Don’t mistake this at all: Trump has radically altered the GOP. This is no longer Reagan’s party – it’s not really Trump’s, but it isn’t the party most of us have grown used to since 1980.

For us Conservatives, the task ahead is to craft a response to, on the one hand, the lure of Big Government Progressivism and, on the other hand, the lure of Big Government Nationalism. Hillary is the former, Trump is the latter. We all know that Big Government is a failure – but it is not yet a concrete, absolute failure in the minds of the American majority. Things are still bearable – and as Jefferson pointed out in a document Americans used to be familiar with, “experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed”. People are accustomed to the forms we have at present – but the forms at present are failing in every department. We need new forms (well, more actually, to restore the old forms…but they’ll appear new) – but we have yet to convince the American people of the necessity.

Hillary (or Trump, should be pull off the win) may be just the thing necessary to demonstrate to the American majority the bankruptcy of the very idea of an all-encompassing government allegedly “solving” our problems. But we have to be ready with credible, easy-to-understand alternatives to what people are currently used to. When things fall apart, we have to be able to show the people that the reason they are falling apart is precisely because of the “solutions” the Big Government (Progressive or Nationalist) types have implemented.

I’m not sure we Conservatives can do this within the Republican Party. In the aftermath of Obama’s 2008 victory, the TEA Party gave all of us (I think) hope that we could capture the GOP…but the 2016 race has shown how very difficult it is to dislodge a Ruling Class from within. Remember, the GOP Establishment could have coalesced behind Cruz right after Rubio pulled out of the race…this still might not have stopped Trump, but it would have given Cruz a much greater chance of doing so. But, they didn’t – because at the end of the day, the GOP Establishment is as wedded to Big Government as the Democrat Establishment is…sure, they’d prefer someone other than Trump, but anyone (in their minds) was better than Cruz who might have actually started to dismantle Big Government.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – it might be time for a new Party. I favor calling it Christian Democrat, but I’ve also heard people revive the old Federalist party label, as well as other proposed names. The reason I prefer Christian Democrat is because, well, first and foremost an American Conservative party must be in defense of Judeo-Christian morality (so, call it the Judeo-Christian Democrats…but that sounds a bit clunky). Adding Democrat to it is partially based upon the concept that we’d be for the freedom of the people (unlike the Democrat part of today) and partially because it would also be a very clear separation between us and the Republican party. The name, in and of itself, would help us pull in people who are currently Democrat but who, when you get right down to it, have nothing to do with the leftwing extremism advanced by the Democrat leadership…it would allow us to talk sensibly to millions of people who Republicans can’t even get a hearing from.

I think such a party could also immediately pull current GOP and Democrat office-holders away from the two parties. It would allow us to get out the gate already holding some political power. Naturally, most of those liable to shift will be Republican, but there are some Democrats we could also get. If we suddenly existed in, say, May of 2017 with 5 Senators and 20 House members, as well as a proportional number of State legislative seats, then we’re already made. The idea behind such a party is not to immediately capture a Congressional majority and win the White House in 2020 – but to provide a balance between the Republicans and Democrats and to provide an alternative party which is completely clean of all Democrat and Republican policy failures. Starting a party in 2017 which holds no legislative majority and no executive power means that whatever goes to heck in a handbasket in 2018 and beyond is simply not our fault…and there we are, sitting with easy-to-understand explanations for GOP/Dem failures and equally easy-to-understand alternative policies.

Also freed from the GOP we would be able to campaign in areas of the country where the GOP often can’t even show it’s face…or won’t show it’s face because to campaign in such areas would require the GOP to adopt positions in opposition to the desires of GOP donors. Such a party could well emerge after 2020 with enough House and Senate members to make the choice of who is Speaker and Senate Majority Leader dependent upon how much Democrats and Republicans promise us. If things collapse in a general sense (as they will – trust me, debt and fake money can’t go on forever), then we’re positioned to knock both major parties collectively down to minority status.

Anyway, that is how I see it – for now, Hillary is probably going to win, the GOP is going to suffer some serious Congressional losses (with a small chance of them being really bad if Trump melts down entirely)…and then the GOP profits off Hillary being Hillary for 2018. But, then, where are we? Back where we were in 2010…having handed a lot of power to a GOP which has relentlessly thwarted us from getting our way. The correct alternative, in my view, is to form a new party which will represent us – first to at least give us genuine leverage in getting at least a half a loaf from time to time, eventually to take over when things go smash. And if Trump wins? Even more important for us to form a new party – we don’t want Conservatism to be identified with the Big Government Nationalism of Trump…especially as his version of Big Government will eventually collapse just like the Progressive version of it.