Never Trump

Open Thread

Mark Noonan40 Comments

What will happen in Virginia on Tuesday? Your guess is as good as mine – if I was confident that fraud was unlikely, I’d figure that Youngkin has it. All trends, polls and increasingly ridiculous actions by the Democrats indicate that Youngkin has the momentum. But, after 2020, none of us are going to be sure in any place Democrats have control over the vote count. At all events, if they manage to cheat to a narrow win, it is still a disaster for them. This should be a walk over for them…Virginia with its massive population of DC people living in Northern Virginia is a Blue State. It isn’t California Blue, but its just a couple steps away from it. And the Democrats are in trouble.

And they are in trouble because at the top of their heap sits a senile old crook who’s staff is made up of idiots. Add to this the complete failure by Democrat Congressional leadership and what we have is a nation spinning out of control into political and economic paralysis. My view is that Biden didn’t get close to 81 million votes in 2020 but even supposing he did, those votes are long gone, now. He’ll keep the partisan Dems on board but all indications are that he’s already lost Independents and absent a complete turn around where things are positively booming in November of 2022, the Democrat party is going to get wiped out everywhere they don’t have total control over. Its why they’re doing things like their absurd redistricting in Illinois which will result in 3 GOP House members in a State Trump got 43% percent in…these are desperate expedients to save as much as they can.

Kinzinger announced his retirement today – it looks like, at most, only 1 or 2 of the GOPer’s who voted to impeach Trump over 1/6 will return to Congress in 2023. Good riddance. They cast their action as a vote against political extremism but that’s only because they’re stupid and corrupt. Whatever 1/6 was, it wasn’t an insurrection. It wasn’t a threat to the Constitutional order. The only person killed was an unarmed protestor, shot by an incompetent cop. The impeachment of Trump over it was a crude and disgusting political ploy and no person of sense or honor could lend it credibility. They did: and now their careers are largely over and they’ll end their days as pathetic “Conservative” punching bags on MSNBC.

Some Conservatives have recently made the startling discovery that we should be gearing our economy so that one person working can support a spouse and kids. Glad to see the guys getting to where I was more than a decade ago.

What destroyed the Bonhomme Richard? It appears that what the ship lacked was sailors. Go ahead and read this article about it – and if you are an old sailor like me, weep. I wasn’t on my ship part of the Damage Control Party but I could have been grabbed at random to fight a fight or fix a leak because I was trained to do so – by actually fighting staged fires in training. I knew how to use the equipment and where it was stored. To this day, I would know exactly where to hit the fire with water or chemical retardants if I was aboard a ship on fire. It astonishes me that this basic sort of training is lacking. And, my goodness, the training, itself, is the most fun you’ll ever have in the Navy! They set steel buildings on fire for you and let you go put it out. For a bunch of 19 and 20 year old kids, it is a blast. But, I guess the kids are busy with other things these days.

One of the things that scares me about cruise ships is the knowledge that hardly any of the crew are sailors who know how to handle a ship in a crisis. I didn’t imagine in my wildest dreams that US naval warships had become heavily armed cruise ships. The report about the Bonhomme Richard shows that the ship wasn’t prepared for disaster and the crew was untrained in how to deal with disaster. It was a war ship! It is supposed to he shot at. It is supposed to experience life and ship threatening disaster…and everyone on board better know how to knock down a fire and plug a leak. The next President simply must clean house – drop all the intersectional pronoun drivel and get our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines back to doing their jobs.

America’s Future is Trump or Bolshevism

Mark Noonan9 Comments

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types — the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob. This is called the balance, or mutual check, in our Constitution. – G K Chesterton

I saw earlier today a bit of a Blue Check Never Trump True Conservative discussion, the gist of which was a division between those True Cons who say they want to keep fighting in the realm of practical politics and those who are throwing up their hands and will just observe from the outside, as it were. To be clear, this is different from those True Conservatives who have now become mere Democrats (Bill Kristol, Jennifer Rubin, etc). These people still argue in favor of at least some conservative ideals (though I’ve noticed in all of them a softening on issues such as gun rights and abortion) but they simply hate Donald Trump and they despise his legions of supporters. Some, like Jonah Goldberg, have now given up – they’ve written us off, you see? We’re not just Deplorable, but Irredeemable. Others, like Dan MClaughlin haven’t quite given up on us, but they still hate Trump and figure their job – their duty! – is to ween us away from Trump so that a pure, clean Conservatism can revive and… and…

Do what? I mean, what really?

The quote above tells you what: this clean, pure Conservatism will merely ratify what the Progressives did a few years ago. It is all Conservatism has ever done ever since it first arose in response to the enormities of the French Revolution. What the Goldbergs and McLaughlins are aiming at, if anything, is their idealized version of Conservatism circa 1977. If you recall (and some of us are just old enough to remember) it was going to dismantle the New Deal and restore the old American ideal of rugged self reliance. It was going to restore order in the streets, discipline in the classroom and the rule of law in the country. It was led by some very high intellects and, of course, in Ronald Reagan it had a leader who could articulate the ideology in a way that regular folks responded to. And, of course, for all the things that had happened from, say, 1967 to 1977, we were still living in the America our grandfathers would recognize. The seeds of social disintegration were firmly planted and being vigorously cultivated in popular culture, but it hadn’t fully taken hold. Most people were still living in families and there hadn’t been a divorce. Most wives still stayed at home. Most jobs included a nice pension to retire on. We still were a manufacturing powerhouse.

This old Conservatism swept very famously into power in 1980 and here was the big chance – we had the White House, the Senate and a shell-shocked Democrat House majority which still contained a fairly large number of center-right Democrats. We had our matchless Ronald Reagan to lead the charge. And what did we get? Tax cuts and a defense build up.

That’s it. We didn’t even get rid of the Department of Education which had only been created the year before Reagan came in. We couldn’t even dispense with that boondoggle for the teacher’s unions. There was no push back against the social disintegration and no effort was made, even on the smallest level, to stop the hard left’s march through our institutions. But this is still what the Never Trump True Conservatives want us to go back to – to something that ultimately failed.

I’m sorry, guys, but you had your chance. The True Conservatives of 40 years ago messed up. They lost. They conserved nothing. Now its 2021 and there are no rules or norms or even an agreement on basic things such as what is right and wrong. We’ve got a Democrat party enthralled to whomever is the most woke at the moment on the Left. They are pushing programs which will disenfranchise us and force us underground. They are striving to set up an electoral system where no matter what, we lose. Led by whomever is most lunatic at the moment, the Democrat party is leading us, step by step, into a Bolshevik future. It doesn’t matter if Pelosi or Biden don’t mean to lead us there – it is where we’re shoved because inside the Democrat party are hard-left, anti-American, hate-filled lunatics who ultimately set the agenda. At best, the most insane proposals get pushed to the back of the line for a while – but they never get rejected and a few years down the road, they are brought back up to be implemented as if it were common knowledge that they had to be implemented.

We won’t ever go back to the Old America. It is done. Finished. Kaput. A nice memory of days gone by, never to return. What sort of America we will have is what the argument is about – and we are here deciding if it will be a Bolshevik America, or a non-Bolshevik America. It doesn’t matter that you don’t like Trump. It doesn’t matter that you don’t like his most ardent supporters. It is either Trump and his people, or some purple-haired radical activist getting you fired because you didn’t say the correct words fast enough. I mean, seriously: take your pick. Whatever Trump and his Trumpsters are up to, they aren’t going to force you to say things you know are untrue. The left will. They’ll make it a condition for you to be able to hold a job, carry out financial transactions, own a home. You can try to fool yourself – but I don’t believe you can, really – that they won’t go for the most radical of the current proposals, but you’re stupid if you do. You know they will. What was insane on the left a mere five years ago is dogmatic Party Line today.

Anyone who wants to be free has to get in line here. I don’t like a lot of things. But there is only one side which wants to force me to say things I know aren’t true in order to live. I already can’t say a hundred things I know are true – as in indisputable, scientific facts – because if I say them I risk social destruction. The next step is to force me to say lies. I don’t want to go there. I just want to live my life free of coercion. I’m not asking for much. But I can only get that – I can only possibly get that – by signing on to Donald Trump and his supporters. Only they have the chance of stopping the imposition of totalitarian dictatorship in the United States. It isn’t what I would have preferred. I can think of lots of better possibilities. But the only thing I got his him and them so, I’m in. Because I’m not stupid.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan48 Comments

Now that McConnell has come out against Majorie Taylor Greene all the liberals who hate us will…keep hating us.

We must stop playing this game with them.

Bernie Sanders is a White Supremacist. Eventually, every non-insane person will realize that you can’t be woke enough. That’s when we win.

Portland has discovered that allowing Antifa to run riot for a year kinda sucks.

The guys at the Lincoln Project are pretty much what you expected them to be. We must keep in mind that for decades, these people were the real leaders of the GOP. Now we know that some of the accusations against “us” were true because these garbage people were our face to the world. I am so glad they unmasked themselves and are no longer part of us.

The MSM is now reporting what a lousy job Cuomo has been doing in NY regarding ‘Rona. This, I suspect, is Team Harris making sure Cuomo doesn’t run for the Democrat nomination in 2024.

We’re supposed to get hair-on-fire about the coup in Myanmar. Democracy is under attack! Well, it is a Democracy which brutally forced into exile about 740,000 Rohingya Muslims. I’m not sure I want us propping up a “Democracy” which does that sort of thing. I’m also just sick and tired of Imperial America. Its none of our business. The people of Myanmar have my prayers for peace, freedom and prosperity and I hope they are able to work out their problems. Without us.

Florida never went into the massive lockdowns and they are doing very well – and their economy isn’t crushed. The lunatic Democrat attacks on Governor DeSantis are because they fear this man running against Kamala. You know – the lady installed as VP. Who couldn’t even make it out of the Iowa Caucuses.

Post Vacation Open Thread

Mark Noonan170 Comments

Hi guys! Sorry, went to San Diego for a few days. Del Mar and La Jolla are still heaven on Earth, even though they are in Commiefornia.

Anyways…

I think three days of rioting is “ok” in the sense that people won’t get too upset about it. Three weeks of rioting raises a lot of eyebrows. Three months of rioting…I think there could be massive reaction against it. Like a Trump 45 State landslide sort of reaction. I don’t know, of course: I am theorizing. Democrats seem convinced that chaos helps them: the implied threat is “vote Biden or this continues”. But Trump has his answer for that: sending in federal cops to arrest the BLM/Antifa types on federal charges (did you know merely spray painting a federal building can get you a year in jail?; the laws against vandalizing federal property have some teeth!). Trump is letting the American people know that their choice is him and peace or them and war. We’ll see how people decide: but I’m starting to run across deep blue people who have had enough.

Do keep in mind that we are already 2nd class citizens in our own country. That is an established fact: the St Louis couple who defended themselves have been charged with a felony while the rioters get their charges dropped. To be sure, the State AG is going to ride to the rescue, and that is good: but how many times will you and I be let off by liberal city politicians and how many times will the GOP AG ride to our rescue? We are the oppressed; not them. Their oppression is a made-up thing (so made up that they have to fake racist incidents) our oppression is real: our jobs and social standing is at grave risk merely for people finding out we’re Trump voters. Voting Trump is the only chance we’ve got to restore ourselves to full citizenship.

Kasich will speak at Biden’s convention. I think that Kasich will switch parties and run as a Democrat in 2024, myself. I think he also knows that Biden is doomed and he’s essentially going to build his brand as the man who can lead the Democrats out of the far left fever swamps starting in 2021. It won’t work: he doesn’t realize how much he’s despised by the left base of the Democrat party. Only a complete rejection of everything he’s ever stood for will be acceptable to them…and even then, they’ll just take the scalp and go with someone who has always been a true believer. Its not that Kasich isn’t willing to crawl…its that no one like a turncoat.

Planned Parenthood is ditching their founder, Margaret Sanger, over her support for eugenics. They won’t ditch the baby-killing, of course. After all, Hitler built the Autobahn…

This be ridiculous.

I don’t think teachers realize how much they are shooting themselves in the foot by insisting schools remain closed. Every ounce of goodwill they have is being wrecked. Kids don’t seem to catch the ‘Rona very much and they also don’t seem to transmit it very much. Meanwhile, store shelf stockers have been doing heroic work for months. My hope: this kills the very concept of public education.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan29 Comments

Jared Kushner’s peace plan was released – looks like it would be excellent for the Palestinians if they would accept the deal (and the money) and settle down to build themselves a national life…but we can rely on it the Palestinian leadership will reject it out of hand and work up some paid mobs to pretend to be the Palestinian people expressing their righteous anger. Two things will decide the fate of this plan:

1. Trump getting re-elected: if he is, then US policy on this won’t change any time soon.

2. Most of the Muslim world telling the Palestinians to accept the deal or get bent.

We’ll see how it comes out. Elder of Ziyon has a brief rundown.

The impeachment thing still goes on – now with Bolton being the White Knight who will save the day for the left. What really irks me is now many times we on our side went to bat for Bolton and this is how he pays us back. They really are garbage, these old-line GOPe types, aren’t they? You wonder if they ever really believed anything they ever said when they were supposedly on our side. Thanks to RINO’s like Mitt and Collins, there’s still some back and forth about whether witnesses will be called. Ultimately, the witnesses, themselves, don’t matter: there’s nothing for them to tell. But it is amazingly irritating that the RINO’s keep doing this stuff – they’ve got to realize by now that we really can’t stand them doing this. In the end, though, its all a big nothing: Trump won’t be removed – it is only a 1% chance that any GOPer actually votes to convict (10% chance that Manchin votes to acquit).

The Supreme Court ruled that Trump, indeed, has the power to enforce American law which bars welfare bums from immigrating.

Latest on the Coronovirus: 100,000 may already be infected. I’m still pretty “meh” about it.

Some of our Liberal and Never Trump Elite Expert Super Smarty-Pants guys yucked it up about how we Trump supporters are all morons. They have been massively dragged on social media for it, and deservedly so. But it got me thinking: these guys really aren’t too bright and really don’t know much. They are always insulting us as having not gone to college and that we don’t read books. But I’d stack my list of read books against any of these dimwits…and I’ll bet mine is a lot larger and covers more variety.

The Last Gasp of Never Trump

Mark Noonan10 Comments

So, one-term Congresscritter Joe Walsh has decided to challenge President Trump in the GOP primary. I can figure why Walsh would do it: attention hounds do need attention and grifters do gotta grift…I’ve been watching Walsh implode towards this position since 2017 and it hasn’t been a pretty sight. But, he’s going to get media attention and donations and, for him, that is what is must be about. But what about those who engineered his entry?

We must not discount the mere sins of Pride which are likely driving a good portion of this, but beyond the Never Trumpers risking their immortal souls there is, I think, something else behind this: I can’t remotely prove it, but I’m thinking that the selection of the old GOPe money class – seconded by Democrat money bags sowing division – it making one, last effort to recapture the GOP. They only liked the GOP when it was a party of Progressive Light: the Progressive party which wanted low taxes, especially on corporate earnings and large amounts of stored wealth. As far as it went, such people only tolerated gun owners, pro-lifers and such because these people were, by an large, in favor of low taxes. But, all along, these Never Trump types despised their base…considered them hicks and were never going to do anything to help the base’s cause. Trump came along, read the situation precisely as it was (and is), and proceeded to roll over the GOPe simply by speaking to the desires of the GOP base. The real fear of the GOPe types is not just that Trump will be re-elected (though they’d hate that). No: their real fear is that the GOP base will never come back to the GOPe. That after Trump, the GOP will become an increasingly Populist Conservative party and start doing horrendous things like breaking up large corporations; taxing high end wealth; dismantling the education system…you know, destroying everything that keeps GOPe types rolling in wealth and privilege.

So, they’ve been looking not for a way to win, but for a way to show the GOP base that they can’t have what they want. They want to show that Trump was a one-off which only happened because the GOPe was asleep at the wheel and that the GOPe can just whistle up a situation where Trump gets destroyed. After that, the GOP base – in their thinking – will just have to knuckle under and accept a whole string of Mitt Romney’s and Jeb’s and live with the fact that every last iota of the Progressive agenda will be enacted (except high taxes on corporations, of course). Trouble is, they couldn’t really find anyone to go after Trump. In this, I think that the leadership of McConnell and Graham has been crucial: by understanding what Trump really represents, these two (and there are others) have understood that the GOP can win smashing victories for an indefinite period of time…and all it takes is actually doing something for the base. McConnell is cementing his legacy as the most consequential Senate Majority leader in half a century…and he seems to be enjoying the heck out of himself doing it. Why would he want to give that up so that Democrats can take the White House in 2020 just because Orange Man Bad? Why would any serious political leader want to do that?

But now momentum takes over – the Never Trump contingent has to keep going, or admit defeat. Too filled with Pride to admit defeat or error, they just kept going and going and going…until the found Joe Walsh, who seems to be a bit of a raving lunatic. He’s made racist statements in the past – and I’m not talking Progressive versions of racist statements; actual, genuine racist statements. He once tweeted out that if Trump lost in 2016, he’s grab his gun and start shooting. He peddled stories about Obama that would make a paranoid conspiracy theorist blush. The guy, in short, is all over the place…with the only consistency being that he’ll say whatever garners him attention. Being just another trooper for Trump wouldn’t get him anywhere (likely because he’s so mercurial that only an idiot would trust him); so he decided to become anti-Trump…and the Ahoy Boys of Never Trump have now latched on to him. It is going to be fun to watch.

But, mostly, it is going to be fun to see the last of these types. We’ve been sold out by them too many times and for too long. They’ll ride Walsh right out of the GOP and Conservatism, and I believe for good.

Conservatism Recovered

Mark Noonan38 Comments

Excellent article by Julie Kelly about understanding what has really happened to Conservatism:

The realignment of the political Right has prompted a public confessional of sorts, a raw acknowledgement that millions of us were led astray by Republiican leaders we trusted, we voted for, and we defended during times of war. We only have ourselves to blame, of course, because we did it with our eyes wide open. But the Trump era is forcing many Republicans to reexamine what we once believed and reassess what actually is true.

In a fiery speech earlier this month at the National Conservatism conference in Washington, D.C., Fox News host Tucker Carlson talked about purging his “mental attic” to dust off the ideas that he had accepted as legitimate over past few decades.

“The Trump election was so shocking . . . that it did cause some significant percentage of people to say ‘wait a second, if that can happen, what else is true?’” Carlson said. “Just look around . . . who are the good guys and who are the bad guys? A lot of the people we’ve been told are good guys are not. Some of them are the worst guys. I’ll let you figure out who.”

One of the crucial things to understand about politics is that it draws layabouts like s*** draws flies. That is, it draws rent-seeking nincompoops who are determined to live well without having to actually produce anything. No political ideology is free from this. Heck, even the most productive companies in the world aren’t entirely free of it. There are always – always – people trying to get a free ride.

Modern Conservatism got its start in reaction to the changes in American governance introduced during the Roosevelt Administration in the 1930s. It was correctly understood that the ultimate result of Roosevelt policies would be the end of the America founded in 1776. It was a movement to roll back the government; stand firm for American defense and defend the family and our social institutions from the remorseless attack of the Left. This movement reached its peak in the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980…and I think we all thought that we really had won. That is, we thought that our ideas had proven correct and that going forward it would just be the increasing implementation of the ideas of Conservatism. We now know that it didn’t work out that way…and it didn’t work out that way because in the wake of Reagan, we got a host of political barnacles who spoke the words of Conservatism, but didn’t really have an interest in carrying out Conservatism. We were consumed by rent-seekers when we needed committed fighters.

But for the longest time, most of us went along with them – they were our leaders, after all. They wrote for prestige magazines. They had best-selling books. TV shows. And they did, indeed, speak the words of Conservatism…but always with a caveat which we ignored or didn’t understand. Now was always not the exact, perfect time to really press for Conservatism. We always had to do something else first, and getting that done invariably meant not fighting a particular battle for a Conservative principle. We were kept on the hook by endless promises that the New Dawn would come, and we’d finally be in the right moment where we could fight the left tooth and nail. But, it never came. Of course, it was never meant to come. The grifters running the Conservative show didn’t want that – because they weren’t really Conservative. They liked their swank gigs and they knew that to keep them they needed to keep talking right, but they weren’t about to go to their liberal friends and explain that they had to actually fight to defend the family, or even to defend the concepts of “male” and “female”.

Those of you reading me here have known that I had my doubts for many years – even stretching back to the Bush the Younger years…and, truth be told, some doubts even in the Clinton years. A gnawing feeling that we were being sold down the river and that not everything we were taught to revere was worthy. But I did keep to being a loyal foot soldier. Partly, of course, because no matter how bad the GOPe squish being foisted upon me, he or she was still miles better than the Democrat. But that was still folly on my part, and I see that now with blinding clarity. It has always been better to suffer even crushing defeat while fighting for what we believe in than to “win” with someone who will merely slow down our defeat. Douglas MacArthur was once asked his formula for defensive war and he gave a one word answer: “defeat”. You can’t win unless you attack – and attacking requires a ruthless willingness to take and inflict pain.

Trump isn’t a Conservative; not remotely. Except in one, crucial aspect: Conservatism is really just common sense, and Trump has bags of that. He’s not someone, I think, who has delved deeply into Adam Smith, Edmund Burke and F.A. Hayek. He’s not, that is, an intellectual of the Right. But, then again, who is? Bill Kristol? Max Boot? David French? If these are our intellectuals, then we’re doomed. Trump isn’t advancing Conservatism in a conscious sense – but by doing what makes sense, he’s advancing it all the same. It is common sense that the judges merely enforce the laws; to do otherwise means there is no law, and thus no chance for justice or mercy or even sanity. The only judges out there who will simply enforce the laws are Conservative judges…and, so, common sense dictates the appointment only of Conservative judges. It’d be stupid to waste even a single life time appointment on a non-Conservative judge because that means you’re just giving the anti-law, insane Left side of the aisle an unearned win and making life harder for yourself going forward.

So it is with act after act. True, it’d be nice if Trump would take on the national debt, but that is something that only concerns a small number of people. Yes, the debt is a looming national catastrophe and if we don’t get a handle on it, we’re going to pay a high price for our profligacy. But Trump isn’t particularly concerned about it and never has been. Can’t ask a man to be what he isn’t. And at the end of the day, the pretend-Conservatives who ran our movement since Reagan also didn’t do a damn thing about the debt. Perhaps Trump’s successor can be made to do what is necessary (it won’t really be hard: at it takes is a good economy and a really very small reduction in overall government spending over a period of 10 years to get to balance and debt reduction). But the bottom line is that outside of the debt, Trump is moving the Conservative ball forward even more effectively than Reagan (who also didn’t tackle the debt). And by doing this – by actually implementing Conservatism – Trump is doing the best thing anyone has ever done for us: exposing the traitors in our ranks.

Remember, these are grifters who merely want to live well without doing anything. They are best friends with their Leftist counterparts, who are also grifting (but who also do advance Leftism…so while the liberal foot soldiers are getting robbed just as blind as we were, at least Leftism is being advanced; this makes the Leftwing grifters the moral superior of the Conservative grifters). It was all fine as long as nothing actually happened in a Conservative sense. Along comes Trump and he starts doing Conservative things and they all had a choice to make: some choose to actually join the side they said they were on…others have decided to join the Left, which they always in fact were part of. For us, it means we have been able to recover Conservatism. We’ve taken it out of the hands of the thieves who stole it in the aftermath of Ronald Reagan…and no longer bound to anything that happened in the past, we are able to jettison even the mistakes that Reagan made, most notably the 1986 Amnesty. But we’ve also given up on nation building and endless war. We no longer desire to defend large corporations. We no longer defend “free trade” which merely meant middle class jobs being sent to Chinese sweated labor. We are able to start counterattacking the advances of the Left.

In my view, it is time to forget 1989 to 2009. It was a wasted 20 years, as far as Conservatism was concerned. Anyone – even the most dyed in the wool Never Trump – is free to join or reject us; we don’t care what anyone chooses and no hard feelings against anyone who repents and gets on board. But we’re now going to fight. We still may lose, but we’re not going to roll over for the Left.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan49 Comments

Trump came back from Vietnam empty handed – seems that the North Korean’s tried to pull a fast one and Trump walked. Neither Trump nor the North Koreans are saying this is the end. I figure the North Koreans were testing to see how far Trump would go to get a deal. They found out: not too far.

Here’s the thing that our Experts are missing: the proper goal for American foreign policy vis a vis North Korea is to detach North Korea from China. I’m starting to see some hints that Chinese realizes this might be Trump’s goal, and they don’t like it one bit. China likes having a crazy North Korea around to muck up things in east Asia. Makes it easier for China to do things…at least they aren’t crazy, right? That Trump went to Vietnam to meet Kim is also interesting: in relation to China, we need the Vietnamese as allies. I’m wondering if Trump is working on a grand realignment in Asia? Hope so. It is long overdue.

Now, if we could just get everyone to see that our proper policy in Syria is to detach it from Iran…even if this means making a deal with Assad.

In a very quiet way on a Friday night, the Washington Post issued a correction regarding its original reporting on the Covington Catholic boys. I don’t think this will be good enough. I do think that they’ll eventually settle out of court for a large sum of money in order to avoid a crushing loss in Court. Either way, the MSM is being instructed that they must not slander regular folks. I like this.

Seems that religious believers don’t like it when their parish or synagogue gets all SJW. My parish is mostly free of overt Progressivism, but there is still the jarring note from time to time. I understand that in some parishes, it is quite SJW…one friend of mine going to a Church for Mass and the first thing she noticed was no crucifix. If you’ve ever been to a Catholic Church, you know the most prominent thing is usually a gigantic statue of Christ crucified right over the altar. I can’t imagine why anyone calling themselves Catholic would find such a thing inappropriate, but apparently some do. The bottom line is that when religious bodies seek to become part of the world, they die. The end. I know the Catholic Church is in sorry shape right now, but I also know plenty of young Catholic men and women are rising up to rebuild the Church. This Progressive drivel shall pass. Don’t know about the old mainline Protestant congregations…they seem to be gone for good.

The Tru Cons sent a pro-choice liberal to cover CPAC. That’s all you really need to know about the Tru Cons. As Glenn Reynolds points out:

“Conservatism conserved?” They haven’t even conserved women’s sports without penises. And, more tellingly, they haven’t even tried.

Governor Northam’s (D-Minstrel Show) wife handed out cotton balls to African-American children.

No, I did not make that up.

Pre-Trump, Conservatism Was a Grift

Mark Noonan17 Comments

Back in March of 2017, I was of the opinion that the Never Trumpers were mostly just dismayed by Trump’s personality and that most of them would eventually realize that Conservative victory was more important than hurt feelings. As Trump’s policies have been vigorously Conservative, it would only make sense that anyone who wants Conservative victory would sign on with Trump.

And, man, I hate finding out that I was a sucker.

Today, it was announced that Jonah Goldberg is leaving National Review to found a new outfit with former Weekly Standard Editor-in-Chief Steve Hayes. They say they’ll be Trump-skeptical and opposed to partisan boosterism. So, yeah, they’ll be out there vigorously tearing down anyone who can help Conservatism while helping Democrats in any way they can. They’ll likely still shill for “free trade” agreements and low corporate taxes, but that’s because most liberals are in favor of such things. You can rely on it that over the first six months or so in business, these “Conservatives” will “evolve” on issues like abortion and gun control.

Let’s pause for a moment here and review a bit of what Trump is doing:

1. Remaking the Courts in a solidly conservative manner.
2. Reducing onerous regulations.
3. Tax cuts.
4. Working to de-fund Planned Parenthood.
5. Pushing back against the emerging Trans agenda.
6. Rebuilding our military might.
7. Standing by Israel in deed as well as word.
8. Destroying one after another of the Progressive heroes of our era.
9. Exposing the hypocrisy and dishonesty of the MSM like no one ever has.
10. Reviving the Rule of Law.

As far as I can tell, there’s not much missing there from what Conservatism has said it wants. Now, to be sure, Conservatism is still largely in favor of so-called “free trade” and Trump is obviously against it, but that’s just one thing…and it’s not like he’s trying to erect permanent barriers to trade. His whole thing is using tariffs as a weapon to force our trade partners to be fair: in the end, Trump wants free trade, as well…though he clearly recognizes the national security aspect of the matter: if we could get 100% of our steel cheaper in foreign markets, we’d still want a very large steel industry here at home. But, still, that is just one thing – and we Conservatives are getting so much else, what is there to complain about? Apparently enough to convince Goldberg and Hayes to found a new media outfit to fight Trump…but fight him on what?

That’s the thing: they want to fight Trump and that means they want to fight Conservative victory. I’m not buying some bullsh** story about how Trump is so immoral that we have to stop him. I doubt that Hayes and Goldberg are stupid enough to believe the Trump-Russia drivel (but, hey, maybe they do?). They are fighting Trump while Trump pushes through a Conservative agenda more comprehensive than even Reagan attempted. If you’re fighting Trump, then you simply must not want Conservatism to prevail. And that’s what I think is at the root here: they don’t want Conservatism to prevail. They are revealing themselves as grifters…people who merely said what they figured we wanted to hear as a means to make a buck or two. They never actually wanted Conservatism to win, and that must be because they don’t actually like Conservatism. I’m open to other explanations if anyone has them – but from where I’m sitting, I can only figure that when Goldberg and Hayes and the rest of the Never Trump regiment finished their articles advocating for Conservatism in the past, they smiled and thought to themselves, “that’ll keep the suckers donating for another month”.

For fifty years they’ve been at this. In hindsight, it was probably Nixon who injected the poison into the Conservative movement Buckley founded in the 1950’s. Nixon was not remotely Conservative – he started the EPA, after all – but he knew that he needed Conservative votes to prevail…and he got them. He hired a few high powered Conservative voices, and that was that. Conservative leaders found that there was money and prestige to be had…as long as you sold yourself off to whatever non-Conservative guy was out there willing to pass out the jobs. Reagan, then, was an anomaly: someone who only slipped in because the base loved him so, and Carter collapsed. I think back now on the Reagan years and all the things that didn’t happen. All the things which could have been done to roll back liberalism, and yet none of them were. Reagan, after all, kept Nixon’s EPA, and Carter’s Department of Education. There’s some old video, I think, of Trump ripping into Reagan back in the day – I think I see why he might have done that: Reagan was great and he’ll never be forgotten, but he had a lot of opportunities which slipped by unused. And now I wonder who in the “Conservative” movement helped those opportunities to be lost?

The old movie line goes, “once is an accident; twice is coincidence; three times is enemy action”. Conservatism has blown potential victory many more than three times. We’re not that stupid nor are we that incompetent. The only thing we’ve won on is the gun control issue – but, please note, that wasn’t won by Conservatism, as such, but by gun owners, themselves, fighting it out tooth and nail against the same liberal Establishment which Conservatism gets beaten by day in and day out. We can’t even muster up the grit to keep boys out of the girls’ bathroom. Or, at least, we couldn’t until Trump came along. Prior to Trump, we just kept losing – and looking back on it in hindsight, I can only assume that our defeat was the result of sabotage. This is not to say that we were destined to win, but it is to say that in conflict after conflict with the left, we just kept throwing in the towel. Why? Why give up? Why did we quit?

I think we all should have woke up a bit when National Review fired John Derbyshire. To be sure, the offending article by Derbyshire was a bit out there, and I thought so as soon as I read it. But, still, it was just an opinion. It could be countered with other opinions – but no one on the right did that. He was just fired, defined as a racist and never spoken of again. But, we all could be forgiven for not catching on at that point because, as I said, Derbyshire’s article was way outside the norm. But a couple years later, Mark Steyn was also out at National Review and, while the issues were varied, the final trigger was Steyn repeating a couple old jokes from Bob Hope and Dean Martin about homosexuality (Hope: “California just legalized homosexuality; I got out of there before they make it mandatory”; Martin: “How you make a fruit cordial? Be nice to him”). We were shown, right then, that Conservatism was entirely in line with the left when it came to proclaiming certain subjects forbidden territory…and, what, then is the difference between Conservatism and Liberalism? None that I can see.

Well, it is all exposed, now: no one is so blind that they cannot see the truth that the pre-Trump Conservatism was useless, if not deliberately baleful. The grifters are leaving us – well, more accurately, they are packing their bags and getting out as we show them the door. None of us know what will happen going forward – Trump may win or lose in 2020. But we’re done with the Never Trump losers. They are free to break out the kneepads for whomever is paying them to shill for the Establishment. We’re now busy with other things – that whole tearing down the Establishment and winning Conservative victory. It is a relief, actually. At least, now, we know that if we lose, we lose because we got beaten…not because our “leaders” waved a white flag.

Never Trump Never was Conservative

Mark Noonan18 Comments

Ace takes Jonah Goldberg to task over an article Goldberg wrote in 2013 – an article arguing that GOP voters should ignore Mark Sanford’s adultery and vote for him, anyway, because the Democrat candidate was so liberal that it wasn’t worth, in 2013, standing by an absolute condemnation of adultery to the detriment of the overall political cause. There are, of course, strengths and weaknesses to such an argument, but Ace’s main point is that for some, weird reason in the middle of 2015, Goldberg (and the rest of Never Trump) suddenly decided adultery was such a hideous sin that it’d be better if Hillary were elected President. Because the lady who helped cover up her husband’s adultery is morally superior to a guy who committed adultery, or something.

And the “or something” is this, in my view: the people who make up Never Trump never wanted Conservatism to win. What such people wanted was the entirely of liberal social policy combined with low taxes (especially on corporations, and especially in the form of so-called “free trade” agreements). Oh, and drop a few bombs every now and again on poor foreigners and send Flyover Americans out to fight from time to time – always on the understanding they’d never be allowed to win and they could face criminal charges if their actions upset some DoD lawyer.

What we have to do here is to realize we were suckers. Conned. Yokels who were taken in by city slickers. No shame in it, because the con artist is still the bad guy. But, we were stupid: we paid and we voted and we waited and waited and waited for decades for the Great Conservative Victory…and even when we had power (including total power under Bush from 2003 to 2007) nothing Conservative ever happened. Even after that, we still didn’t put two and two together. It wasn’t until Trump came along that the mask was ripped off – and it was ripped off because Trump not only said he’d do conservative things, but he actually started doing them.

Now, to be sure, the original Never Trump objections to Trump had some validity. I know people who were Trumpsters from Day One (my brother is one of them) but there were a lot – a lot – of people, like me, who went for Anybody But Trump until there was no one left but Trump. I even know some people who, faced with the choice between Hillary and Trump, decided to not vote for President, or vote for some Third Party candidate as a protest. The bottom line is that in 2016, there were plenty of solid reasons to not want Trump – not least of which was what I feared the most: that if he got in, he’d strike a deal with the left and leave us high and dry. But, still, I voted for Trump – because I saw clearly that there was a moral issue at stake here and no matter what Trump had done, it wasn’t remotely as bad as Hillary had done and in policy, with Trump, I might at least get something I wanted from time to time. But then Trump won and started to govern. Lo and behold, within months of taking office, he was accomplishing more solid, conservative things than even Reagan had done. In short, by about July of 2017, if you were conservative, you made your peace with Trump because, as it turns out, his victory was a good thing.

Now it became crunch time, as it were. I wrote, I think shortly after the election, that anyone who remained Never Trump for a long period of time would eventually become left. I was a bit wrong about that. They didn’t become, they already were. There is plenty of evidence of this – most notably in how so many Never Trump people have jettisoned their beliefs nearly entirely. They no longer offer conservative criticism of Trump because you can’t conservatively oppose the conservative policies of Trump’s Administration (small exception is on trade: you can be a conservative free trader…I’ll disagree with you on that, but because you want Free Trade and I want Protection doesn’t mean either of us are liberal). To me, this just isn’t really possible, outside of a religious conversion. And while liberalism is like a religion (more like a cult, these days), it isn’t exactly like that. But we do have people who are becoming liberal and just baldly asserting things as truth which yesterday they said were lies.

I can only work from the assumption that they never believed a word of what they said before. I don’t know (and don’t care) if they believe what they are saying, now. But that rapid a 180 by such a large number of people – supposedly educated people – is just too unlikely except as a result of cynical dishonesty. They were dishonestly and cynically parroting Conservatism when it punched the ticket (and had no chance of winning and thus no chance of forcing them to do something they didn’t want to do) and are now parroting Liberalism because that is now punching the ticket. I wish the liberals a lot of luck with them (and some liberals are on to the scam and are disgusted by the embrace of these people by the left…no decent person likes a traitor. Ever.). As for me, I’m just glad we are rid of them – we still might lose, but at least now we’ll lose after a fight, and that allows you to rest easy, no matter what the outcome.