Weekend Open Thread

Mark Noonan25 Comments

Well, sub-prime revolving debt (credit card debt) is rocketing back up to levels not seen since before the crash. It appears that banks are aggressively lending to people with bad credit – for you non-bankers out there, this means they are lending money to people who can’t or won’t repay the debt. I’m sure this will work out just as splendidly as last time.

Will voters care about Trump’s behavior towards women? Perhaps – but any Clinton campaign will have to tread very carefully here.

Related: RCP average shows Clinton only up by 3.1 percentage points over Trump.

Scorching hot in India – but out here in southern Nevada, we’ve had the coolest and wettest Spring I’ve ever experienced. This is either Climate Change or Weather, depending how much Progressive propaganda you believe.

In case you were forgetting how savage ISIS is, they burned a Christian girl alive. True to her faith in Christ, she asked her mother to forgive them.

Related: French ban American performer who said the Bad Words about Islam.

Native Americans don’t seem too care about the Redskins team name.

Solar power plant catches fire. Yes, we on the right will laugh and laugh and laugh about this for quite a long time.

How a Conservative Revolution gets done – in this case, in Tennessee:

During the long years of Democratic rule, the Government Operations committees in the Legislature were boring exercises in routine housekeeping legislation. They were often stacked with some of the party’s less than stellar members, because you have to put them somewhere, and they rubber-stamped whatever the leadership wanted.

“Government Ops” under Republican rule has morphed into a very powerful operation, rivaling even the Rules Committee or Finance. The power to regulate state bureaucrats has always been there; it’s just not been exercised until now.

There has been a major revolution in the operation of state government that has occurred while everyone has been preoccupied with Bible bills, bathroom bills and other idiocy. State bureaucrats are no longer free to impose draconian regulations, increase fees or make rule changes without first getting a sign-off from the Legislature.

Take away the power of bureaucrats to make rules – take away money given to Progressive pressure groups – kick government unions out…this is how you do it. The tricky part is getting the power to do it – that takes winning elections, and winning them against people who simply lie and promise the Moon. But, it can be done – it has been done. First in Wisconsin, now in Tennessee. Duplicate it, again and again and again.

Understanding How Terrible SJW’s Are

Mark Noonan4 Comments

Billy Corgan – formerly of Smashing Pumpkins – understands it clearly:

…Corgan expressed his feelings about social media, the entertainment industry, drones, hacking and self-righteous people. “The tactics in the social-justice warrior movement are to stifle and shut down free speech,” he said. “And I would argue in the world that I live in, which is the bareknuckle world, they’re leveraging their position because they don’t have power.”

He also underscored that when he was talking about race and racism, with regard to social justice, he was not targeting and particular groups and that he condemns racism. Nevertheless, he expressed exasperation with the repercussions of saying a word that’s politically incorrect.

“It’s pretty remarkable that I could say one word right now that would destroy my career,” he said, as the screen displayed images of Michael Richards and Paula Deen, both of whom faced derision after using the N-word. “I could use the wrong racial epithet or say the wrong thing to you or look down at the wrong part of your body and be castigated and it’s a meme and I’m a horrible person. Every day through the media, through advertising, we see people being degraded, we see people doing all sorts of things that we should be horrified at as a culture. So we’ve normalized all sorts of things, but we live in a world where one word could destroy your life but it’s OK to, if you’re a social-justice warrior, spit in somebody’s face.”

Social Justice Warriors, as is common in all Progressive word usage, are not for being social, they are not for justice and they are more certainly not warriors. They hide behind online anonymity in social media, they unjustly destroy people who – even if they did do or say something wrong – should be forgiven in 99.9% of the cases, and by doing this they make us a less social people because everyone gets afraid to say something lest one, stray word ruin their lives.

The people who make up the Social Justice Warrior movement are precisely the kind of people who burned books in the 1930’s and who staffed Mao’s Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. All they want to do is express their hatred and shut down any form of civilized speech. I’m glad that more and more people are starting to understand this – and it will take people like Corgan to lead the fight…but when Corgan or someone like him steps in it and makes a statement which is, indeed, wrong then it is up to us regular folks to stand up in defense. We can’t let the SJW’s destroy one more person’s life…in fact, the next time they attack someone, we should do what we can to ensure that the target reaps a gigantic reward simply for being attacked. Nothing will cause this sort of fascist anti-thought to fold up and die than proof that it doesn’t work.

Hat Tip: Ace of Spades

Out and About Today

Mark Noonan40 Comments

Don’t be upset over politicians who break their promise when we live in a society where every year great, big bunches of people are allowed – by law – to break their promise to stay married. A people who can’t keep their word should have no complaint about politicians who can’t keep theirs.

To get to a Conservative America has hardly anything to do with tax rates, economic systems, border control, who precisely marries whom…it has all to do with absolute right and absolute wrong and a diligent effort – in spite of routine failure – to live up to one’s word. Chew on that for a bit and understand just how daunting our task is – winning political power is only a small part of it. The crucial thing is the re-conversion of society back to honor. We need a St. Francis of Assisi far more than we need a Ronald Reagan.

People suffering from depression are being allowed “assisted suicide”…because nothing says “compassion” like helping the suicidal along, I guess.

Related: Going to Church can help you live longer.

Koch Brothers withdrawing from electoral politics? Good. I never trusted them, anyways…bloody albatross ’round the neck of Conservatism.

By the way, Socialism is still a complete failure – ruining lives for more than a century. Astonishing anyone still adheres to it.

Related: North Korea has a batch of rich, spoiled kids who blow what a worker makes in a month on coffee. Another thing about Socialism – not only does it fail, but it always ensures a well-off elite sucking the life blood out of the nation. Now, think about this: we’ve arrived at Socialist America and most of us are living on potato rations…think our SJW Progressive types would lose any sleep over it as long as they were still able to buy an expensive coffee in a hip locale?

Weekend Open Thread

Mark Noonan22 Comments

So, Congress didn’t appropriate money for some Obamacare subsidies – naturally, Obama wasn’t going to allow that to stop him, so invoking the “because I wanna” clause of the Constitution, Obama provided the subsidies. Everything was cool until someone brought it before a judge who apparently glanced over the Constitution, only to discover that such a clause doesn’t exist. We’ve got to nip this right in the bud – before too long, we’ll have a bunch of Rule of Law nonsense going on, and then where will our Progressives be?

Hillary has it in the bag or Trump’s gonna win. Take your pick.

Rubio does best in FL Senate polling for November – but, there’s one small problem: he isn’t running. I suspect massive pressure will soon be on him to get into the race.

That terrorism thingy which Obama has completely solved? Iran is still a leading sponsor of terrorism. How is this possible? Rhodes told us that the Iranians were all moderately moderating!

Illegal immigration – it is a thing the rich and powerful like.

The murder rate is up – this part of our Fundamental Transformation?

Heroic Poem in Praise of Wine – Hilaire Belloc

To exalt, enthrone, establish and defend,
To welcome home mankind’s mysterious friend
Wine, true begetter of all arts that be;
Wine, privilege of the completely free;
Wine the recorder; wine the sagely strong;
Wine, bright avenger of sly-dealing wrong,
Awake, Ausonian Muse, and sing the vineyard song!

UPDATE: So, they want to use the polio virus to cure cancer? Does seem promising, but didn’t we see a movie about this?

I mean, nightlife will suck:

Should Conservatives Mount a Third Party Challenge?

Mark Noonan34 Comments

It certainly has been a subject on many minds of late – and The Resurgent provides five reasons for doing so. I’ll concentrate on their first reason:

A conservative third party will lay out the principles of the conservative movement of the future – a new Sharon Statement of non-negotiables.

Not only would a third party give us a candidate to rally around, but it would also give us a platform. With the virtual implosion of the “establishment,” this is the opportunity for conservatives to decide what principles and policies are truly important to the cause, and build a constitutional restorationist party platform. Additionally, like the Against Trump issue of National Review, it would provide a line in the sand for future historians, when liberals begin the inevitable attempt to sling the albatross of Trump’s misdeeds around conservatives’ necks.

That last bit would be the most important – not having Trump tagged as a Conservative, and thus splattering his muck on Conservatism. But it is already too late for that – Trump won the nomination of the Republican Party; the party of Conservatism in the public mind. We’ve already got Trump and will just have to deal with his effects going forward. But even supposing we could erase from the public mind the connection between Trump and Conservatism in the face of certain efforts by the left and their MSM megaphone to tie all Conservatism to Trump from now until the crack of doom, it would only work if such a Third Party effort scored at least 10-20% of the vote and was on enough State ballots to have a theoretical possibility of getting to 270 electoral votes…and that boat has already sailed, I think. It is just too late in the game – we’d need at least many hundreds of millions of dollars right away and an organization already in place to secure ballot access. It just isn’t going to happen. Making an ill-funded effort now would just make us, at best, spoilers in a couple States and if we wound up with less than 2% of the vote, it would work out to a repudiation of Conservatism, as a whole.

I’m going to stick with my views already expressed. For 2016, Conservatives will just have to vote their conscience and let the electoral chips fall where they may. Vote for Trump, vote for one of the existing Third Party choices, leave that part blank or cast a vote for Clinton. Take your pick – none of them are good options. In the end, you’ll really just be deciding which is least-bad. For 2017 and beyond, however, things could be different – if Conservatism shakes off the entirety of our corrupt, decaying Progressive system and strikes out on a new path to a Conservative, Constitutional Republic.

The failure of the #NeverTrump movement to stop Trump in the GOP shows how very difficult it is to change a system from within. It was about an 80 year process of slow infiltration by Progressives before the United States became a fully Progressive nation in policy. But for them, it was easy – they were trying to get into government to make it larger and more powerful. We, on the other hand, would like to get into government to make it smaller and less powerful…given this, no one who is currently deeply involved in government – in the overall system, given how deep government reaches into life these days – will just let us do that. We’ll be fought, step by step, all the way. A Progressive can co-opt a Conservative by offering him a job in Big Government…how can we co-opt a Progressive? We’re proposing to throw him out on his ear and force him to get a job in the productive economy where his pay and promotions will be based upon merit.

And this is why I think that Conservatism needs to stand outside the system – vigorously criticizing it, explaining the alternatives and, really, just waiting for the whole thing to collapse. And it will collapse. There is absolutely no doubt about that – you can’t sustain a civilization on debt, fake money and corruption, large and small. It just doesn’t work, folks. It is true that the collapse might entirely sweep the United States away, but I doubt it – and, at all events, Conservatism should proceed on the assumption that while the collapse will be bad, it won’t be bad enough to cause a complete break up of the Union. Whether Trump wins or loses, a Conservative party should be formed in 2017 – a formal break with the status quo and an insistence that the whole system is rotten to the core. We’ll have no part of it – no part, that is, in destroying the United States. But here we are, waiting for the American people to come around to our views – and the force of circumstance will eventually compel them to do so. Let the left be married to their own lousy creation – let a Conservative party demonstrate that the very “solutions” proposed by the Progressives are the reasons for our national collapse. And then reap the electoral reward when things go smash and we are an alternative absolutely innocent of causing the smash.

Anyway, that is how I view it – it is not a time to tilt at windmills with a Third Party effort in 2016. If we wanted to do that, we should have started in 2015, when we saw that the GOP – massively rewarded by us with power after the 2014 mid-terms – utterly failed to fight for what we believe. We hung around, sure that among our great crop of Conservative candidates, one would emerge as the 2016 GOP nominee – and then we’d get our way. Well, it didn’t work out like that. And, in hindsight, maybe it never was going to work out that way – after all, why would people like Graham, Jeb and Kasich even get into the race, if this was the Conservative Moment? Trump just happened to come along and wallop them, but suppose Trump hadn’t come along…how much you want to bet we’d be getting ready to nominate Jeb or Kasich at this point?

We’re already outsiders, my friends. We have no friends in there – so, let’s step outside and be ourselves. Let’s found a Conservative Party in 2017 – and even if we ultimately fail, at least we would fail being completely ourselves, rather than failing because others used us for cover as they continued the Progressive destruction of our nation.

May 10th, 1940

Mark Noonan

I’m bringing this up for two reasons. First off, because I saw this – click the link and you’ll see a series of “person in the street” interviews where they ask some basic questions about World War Two and people just don’t know the answers. Secondly, because this date is the 76th anniversary of the German invasion of France and the Low Countries – so, might as well try and help out with this historical ignorance.

This Wikipedia article is actually a pretty good run-down of the event – someone who cares (or some people who care) apparently put a bit of effort in there to get an informative and useful description. Naturally, it doesn’t tell the whole tale, but if you read it you’ll generally understand what happened. Another good source you can get is William Shirer’s The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940. Shirer carries the story back to the birth of the Third Republic in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and describes in good detail the various political cross-currents which contributed greatly to the collapse of 1940. Shirer was an excellent historian, though he was also an old-school Liberal of the mid-Twentieth Century type, and so he emphasizes some things I think less important and glosses over (just a bit – he was immensely fair-minded) the two crucial things in the moral collapse which preceded the military downfall: the relentless anti-Catholic actions of the French government and the gigantic amount of very absurd pacifist propaganda in the State-run schools between World War One and World War Two. If nothing is absolutely true and nothing is worth fighting for, you might find it difficult to get men to fight and, if need be, die for truth in war, you know?

Another thing which played a huge role in the collapse was the astonishing amount of corruption in the France all through the Third Republic. There are always people on the take, but in the Third Republic it became a way of life for French politicians, and by extension French business and French journalists. The Panama Scandal was, perhaps, the worst of them all, but over and over again French leaders were found to be taking bribes and various interests in France were found to be for sale to the highest bidder. The Dreyfus Affair is probably still fairly well known, but in the end the crux of that matter was that the French government and military spent a huge amount of money, time and energy defending what was known to be a lie pretty early in the process…because people were invested in the lie and money was to be had for those who would keep it up.

The bottom line was that by 1940, the French government, business, media and military leaders were all highly compromised and suspect in the eyes of the French people, and the destruction of Christianity and Patriotism in France had robbed the French people of the very desire to fight hard against a foreign aggressor. This is not to say that no French fought – some did. In fact, about 85,000 French soldiers died in the six week campaign. But, for the most part, it was just a general collapse – and it started at the top, especially among France’s military leadership.

Little realized by most casual observers is the fact that the Anglo-French armies in 1940 were very much more powerful in manpower and material than the German army (half the German troop strength was low-grade, untrained, badly armed reserve forces). The Germans did have a tactical advantage in their armored and motorized divisions (which made up only a fraction of the German force), but the French Army had more trucks and tanks than the Germans…and French tanks were better armed and armored than German tanks (though generally slower in speed and, crucially, lacking effective radio communication, thus hampering tactical deployment). Shirer notes in his book that the French Air Force ended the campaign with more planes than it started with – and yet it is seen that the Luftwaffe was always able to provide air cover when it was needed by the advancing German armies.

The French and British also greatly assisted the Germans by putting their best armies into Belgium when they were needed in the Sedan area of France. But, even then, the Germans ran a gigantic risk in their invasion plan. Guderian made his reputation in his breakthrough at Sedan and his race to the Channel, but had the French leadership had just a little more desire to fight, Guderian would be remembered at the fool who stuck his neck out too far, too fast and got crushed by an easy counter-attack by French forces. When he lunged for the Channel after his breakthrough, for a couple days he had a mere regiment or so of motorized troops guarding his flank…the French had in the area two armored divisions (in addition to a substantial amount of infantry) which could easily have crushed that flank guard, cut off Guderian and changed the whole course of the war…but, the French leaders lacked the will (and any sense of how short time was to act) and the French troops also showed a complete lack of desire to get at grips with the enemy (this lack of desire, I think, flowed from the top – when then-Colonel de Gaulle was given command of a scratch force of armored troops, his attack knocked the Germans about quite a bit…it was too late to change things and his small force was insufficient, at any rate, to do much…but he showed what French troops could still do when led in to battle by a warrior).

Learning about this campaign is very important for any citizen of a democratic republic – it shows, definitely, Napoleon’s dictum that “the morale is to the material as three is to one”. To be sure, someone with absolutely overwhelming force can crush an enemy no matter how spirited they are (as was seen in Stalin’s attack on Finland in 1939)…but in forces roughly equal (and Anglo-French superiority in manpower and material made up for German superiority in tactical doctrine – provided that leadership was available to react properly to events), who has the fighting spirit is probably going to carry the day. The French State was rotten to the core – both in government and military. Corruption, immorality, nihilist philosophy of varied stripes, various conspiracy-theory-mongering (often centering on Jews as a scapegoat) all led to a France which lacked the desire to defend itself. Only a few clear-eyed patriots saw that no matter what was wrong with France, fighting the Germans was the first duty of all French.

And if all that sounds familiar to American ears, then that should be a bit of a wake-up call. We, too, are buried under corruption, immorality, nihilist philosophy…and, of course, anti-Semitism is also gaining purchase in the United States as various conspiracy theories are tried out (by people on both left and right – but, actually, more on the left than on the right in this area), and all of them tend to gravitate towards Jews as the scapegoat. We still have an immensely powerful armed force at our disposal – but is there still the overall spirit, especially in our leadership, to actually fight a war? Meaning – to fight it with the ruthlessness necessary to secure victory in spite of all problems? That is an unknown – and unknowable – thing right now. Sure, there are plenty of patriots in America…and plenty of hard-working, decent people, as well. But who rules the roost? The patriots and hard-working people, or people who have lost all sense of morality and honor? Remember, we recently found out that a carefully orchestrated series of lies was used to advance government policy…and we know that corruption is endemic in our nation. We can see it in the fact that the leading contender for the Democrat nomination not only hasn’t been indicted, but almost certainly will never be indicted.

It is to be hoped that we aren’t too far gone – but the lessons of France, 1940, are valuable for us to learn if we want to make sure we aren’t too far gone.

Some Odds and Ends

Mark Noonan51 Comments

Let’s lighten it up a bit – things have been too depressing of late.

The Great Depression was not caused by some fundamental flaw in free markets. It wasn’t caused by taxes. It wasn’t caused by regulations. It was caused by a bit more than 20 million fit, healthy young people being ripped out of the global economy 10 years prior – and in the ripping of those people out, a century’s worth of stored wealth was shot out of a cannon. Economic Lesson of the Depression: don’t get into a major war, if you can avoid it…and if you must blow the world to pieces, try not to do it in sync with a global flu pandemic.

Had a couple things gone different in the 19th century, Cuba and the Dominican Republic would be part of the United States. Cuba because pre-Civil War Southern expansionists wanted it to counter balance the growing strength of the North; Dominican Republic because post-Civil War Grant wanted a means to punish Southerners over their KKK/Jim Crow nonsense…realizing that what it was really all about was a desire to retain a pool of cheap labor, Grant figured if he found an American place African-Americans could move to (thus depriving the South of the cheap labor), they’d wise up and stop treating African-Americans like dirt. Would it have worked? Probably, but we’ll never know – no one else picked up on the idea.

The United States, by itself, produced more military goods during World War Two than the entire Axis, combined. We didn’t need to be allied with anyone to beat them all.

For all the WWII buffs insisting that the Tiger and Panther tanks were superior to the lowly American Sherman tank, the fact of the matter is that the Sherman tank was whacking heck out of post-WWII tank designs as late as the Yom Kippur War.

There are, living today, Bourbon, Orleans and Bonaparte pretenders to the French throne. I figure we should have a cage match – whoever comes out, gets to the King (or Emperor – though my money would be on Louis XX; seems toughest of the bunch). As an aside, those squatters living in Buckingham Palace have no business being there – the proper King of England is this guy.

The Royal Navy’s first submarine is now on display as a museum piece – that isn’t remarkable. What is remarkable is that it was being towed to the wreckers in 1913 and sank on the way – when recovered many decades later, it was found that the electric batteries were still in good, working order. Clearly, however those batteries were made is how to make batteries, period…but I bet we don’t make them that way.

Weekend Open Thread

Mark Noonan24 Comments

So, Trump has some interesting ideas on what to do with America’s debt. Seems to be, “borrow all we want, then tell our creditors they get 80 cents on the dollar”. Remember, we’ve got nuclear weapons and this would stick – would, however, make it temporarily harder for us to borrow more…on the other hand, the global economy is built on fake money and debt, so eventually we’d be able to squeeze the orange again. And why not YOLO our way through this? The People’s Republic of China considers itself the sole, legitimate government of China – ok, fine. We loaned the government of China $500,000,000.00 in 1942, and we never got repaid. That is $7,304,660,000.00 in 2016 dollars. With 5% interest, that is $270,151,970,000.00 – we announce to China that we’re subtracting that amount from what we owe them. What are they doing to do? Oh, and it appears that China issued a bucket of bonds from the early to mid 20th century purchased by American investors, and then defaulted on them…after all is said and done, China might owe us a neat trillion dollars.

Futurist says we’ll all start living forever by 2029 – which is (a) impossible and (b) not a good idea, even if it was possible. It isn’t possible because the universe doesn’t last forever and even if it were possible, it wouldn’t be a good idea to have human beings live on and on like that…we’re bad enough when we’ve got 80 years. Imagine what we’d be like by our 8,000th birthday? The arrogant, insolent pride of someone getting that along in years would be just terrible to behold. Actually, you will live forever anyway – you’re just choosing here in this life where you want to live. Hang desperately on to this life, and you’ll be making a choice for a not-ideal “forever”.

President Lightbringer, who’s whole Administration is a triumph of fictional Narratives, says the Presidency is not a reality show.

Tax the Ivy League to reduce college costs? Yeah, maybe – but, mostly tax them to punish them for being cesspits of Progressive fascism.

So, we gained 196,000 jobs, but if you look further into the report, we lost 316,000 jobs…welcome to the world of government statistics! Oh, and the labor force participation rate dropped…again.

Rumors that Rubio lobbied to be Trump’s VP…

Foreign Policy of Fools, Drunkards and the United States of America

Mark Noonan3 Comments

That title is a bit of a paraphrase – a quote attributed to Bismarck:

“There is a special Providence for Fools, Drunkards and the United States of America.”

Bismarck, of course, lived in Europe at the acme of it’s power in the world and was dealing with a host of Nations in Arms, all competing furiously for wealth and position. Looking across the Atlantic, he probably envied the position of the United States…harmless neighbors north and south, oceans east and west…no need to play a deep game of power. To be sure, Bismarck was the ruin of a civilization – he instructed Europe that lying is ok, that increasing the power of the State is the only reason for living and that calculated military aggression is a useful tool in securing diplomatic ends. As a genius, Bismarck could handle that sort of thing easily – but genius only shows up every now and again, and his successors (and imitators in other lands) simply couldn’t do it, and so they unleashed Armageddon in the form of World War One. But he at least had a rational foreign policy. We don’t.

I bring this up because of a revealing article about how Obama’s foreign policy (so called) was presented to the American people by Ben Rhodes, described as someone who has a “mind meld” with the President:

Continue reading →

Ok, so Trump is the GOP Nominee. Now, What?

Mark Noonan47 Comments

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.