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Max Boot joins George Will in saying that Democrats must win in order to purify the GOP, or something like that — 90 Comments

1. There exists far more evidence for corruption among the Democrats than in Trump’s ranks (the shameful verdict in the Menendez trial, the outrageous plea deal by Awan, not to mention all the egregious misbehavior by lawyers in the FBI and the DOJ). It is also undeniable that TDS has driven many (including the odious Max Boot, and the equally repulsive Jen Rubin and Malcom Nance) into a kind of psychosis.

2. Meanwhile, the Rep mayor of the very small town where my brother lives has been invited to participate in a meeting at the WH to talk about the town’s needs. Gov Larry Hogan sent all the people in his cabinet to western Maryland (first time this was ever done) to talk about problems and policies for the area. Dems never listen to average people.

   I guess Boot wants to wipe them out.

3. There are many things that I don’t like about President Trump. I have been very happily surprised, there are a lot more things that I really like about President Trump. These Never Trumpers will do nearly anything to keep their, getting weaker by the day, ideas, valid. Trying to get the Republican Party to commit Hari Kari is world class stupid. Putting the Democrat of the day in charge of our Republic would do untold harm that will take years to recover.

4. What is it with these guys, Boot and Will and their ilk?

   They’ve lost their freakin’ minds. Or they don’t actually understand what the Dems would do if they got control of all 3 branches like they did the first 2 years of Obama.

   Open borders? check.
   Give the invaders the vote? check.
   Effectively govern the country for the next 50 years without meaningful opposition? check.
   Turn the country into a 3rd world cesspool? check.

5. So, basically the takeaway from all of this mealy mouthed NeverTrumper drivel is that cowardly ‘men’ like Max Boot have gone and got themselves stuck in a fantasy where they are the hero.

   They imagine themselves in the position of some Principled Objector to Nazism and Fascism. Only the side closest to Nazism and Fascism is the side they are effectively joining, so there’s really little risk at all. I’m possibly giving cowards like this too much credit: maybe they aren’t imagining anything. Maybe its just a cynical attempt to capitalize on a poorly analyzed, barely understood shifting of the political landscape?

   But I think its the inverse of the old saying ‘A coward dies a hundred deaths…”.

   In this case, a coward imagines himself the hero a hundred times without ever taking meaningful action.

6. Boot, Rubin, Will, Bush Inc. NeverTrumpers ad nauseam remind me of the tantrum-throwing child in the toy aisle at WalMart who’ve been told a definitive “No” by the adult in the household.

   There will be no toy coming home in the cart today & their shrieking “I hate you”s are being ignored.

   I never tire of seeing good parents raise better kids & I will never tire of watching these execrable “conservative opinion leaders” who have conserved nothing & led the US into debt, death & disintegration being swallowed up by their own bile and vitriol. (Reminds me a lot of the last pages of The Great Divorce in some ways)

   I often wander up to the Walmart-shopping good parent at some point & offer a quiet “Well done!” So…even though he can’t hear my voice, “Well done Mr President. You’ve pissed off the right people. I’m not tired of winning yet.”

7. NEO: What is it with these guys, Boot and Will and their ilk?

   You forgot the old days in which the party would decide to denounce someone or something and everyone competed on how much they would push it as if the one with the most distance wins

   Our old opposition used to do things like this and we would make fun of them for how strangely they were forced to think. not so much now, now we cant even remember this kind of thing as it looks so different when we do than when they did it.

8. “Their revulsion to Trump is so great that they have joined forces with people they have worked against their entire lives—Democrats, liberals, and particularly the left . . . .” [Neo]

   Perhaps the real revelation here is that they have not worked against these forces their entire lives; they have only appeared to work against these forces. I seems to me that they actually preferred their role as a grousing minority party because, like the Bushes, they actually agreed with many on the left of center (new world order, the uniparty and all that) and because it is much easier to complain, posture, and offer rejected solutions to problems than actually put those solutions into play.

   Also, why do right-leaning folk feel the need to claim their independence of Trump, or any conservative, before defending him (“I bow to no one in my discussion of Trump’s flaws . . . .”)? I have done it myself, and it seems almost a knee-jerk reaction. One never sees the left qualifying their defense of a leftist, even if it requires hypocrisy to do so.

   We have to stop apologizing for our defense of someone who advances the principles in which we believe.

9. People like Will and Boot may have been an overwhelming factor in the the seeming ineffectiveness of the Republican party when they had they had control of the House of Representative for 6 years of Obama’s presidency and both houses the final 2 years. I had a hard time believing Republican seriousness on such things as inheritance taxes and on and on–nothing substantial ever accomplished. Look at all that Trump has been able to do with a hostile media, culture and virulent segment of his own party. When Tom Wolfe died I read up on some of his works and his break-out work defined the role of seeking status as a powerful pursuit in the human arena. We work for the very wealthy–Democrat & Republican–and I have seen where status, outside of wealth, per se, is a huge motivation. Will & Boot and those like them, see themselves as above-it-all, better than, and probably are drawn to that very thing that is a huge part of those that align with the Democratic party. It seems there are “conservatives”, many of those elected and those interacting with the elected, that much prefer how things were than seeing to it that things be changed. And that they use the word “principled” to brand themselves is pure irony.

10. I strongly suspect that Will and Boot don’t have principles at all. Consider this: “Explaining my decision, I noted that Trumpkins “want to transform the GOP into a European-style nationalist party that opposes cuts in entitlement programs, believes in deportation of undocumented immigrants, white identity politics, protectionism and isolationism backed by hyper-macho threats to bomb the living daylights out of anyone who messes with us.””
    (1) “Opposes cuts in entitlement programs” like President G.W.Bush did, but he didn’t object then.
    (2) “Believes in deportation of undocumented immigrants”. Yes, as all conservatives should … as most Americans do.
    (3) “White identity politics”. Objection: facts not entered into evidence.
    (4) “Protectionism”. Objection: President Trump opposes being a sucker, demanding other countries drop their tariffs and subsidies against us.
    (5) “Isolationism”. Object: facts not entered into evidence.
    (6) “Backed by hyper-macho threats to bomb the living daylights out of anyone who messes with us.” I support defending this country by whatever means are necessary. Will and Boot don’t?

    This person is supposed to be a professional writer, but all he can do is throw around unsupported accusations and erect strawmen.

    [I didn’t vote for Trump or Hillary. I had serious reservations about both. But Trump is outperforming my expectations. (I’m an independent voter. I used to be a card-carrying democrat — back before the democrats lost their minds.) One thing that Trump has done very well: driving the useful idiots insane and exposing them for what they are.]

11. No, they haven’t lost their minds. They’ve lost what little relevance and influence they had. Conservatism, Inc. in general prefers to be in opposition. It always has. Men like Will and Boot care little about actual governing and policy implementation; they care about criticism. Their raison d’être is to be the noisy, scribbling, speech-giving, conference panel participating, C-Span interviewing, commentator/public intellectual/pundit.

    But with the ascendancy of Trump and Trumpism, they are utterly irrelevant to the GOP. Virtually no one on the right, outside of the Beltway (and a dwindling number inside the Beltway), care one iota what they think, write or say. That’s not going to change as long as Trumpism remains.

    Thus, Trump and Trumpism must be destroyed. The GOP must lose big, thereby allowing these sniveling little weasels to smugly declare how right they were and reassert their influence. Indeed, the more successful Trump is, the more outlandish the screeds of the Boots and Wills will become. At this rate, by October they both might not only be calling for a Democratic victory but making Alexandra Ocasio Cortez Speaker of the House.

    Their endeavors are destined to fail, in my opinion. But even if so, their secondary goal will succeed: endear themselves to liberals and follow David Brooks’ lead as the “house conservative”/useful idiot, Democrats can rely on.

12. Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary conclude, humans have a need to belong: “a pervasive drive to form and maintain at least a minimum quantity of lasting, positive, and impactful interpersonal relationships” (1995, p. 497)

    -=-=-=

    People who are accepted members of a group tend to feel happier and more satisfied. But should they be rejected by a group, they feel unhappy, helpless, and depressed. Studies of ostracism—the deliberate exclusion from groups—indicate this experience is highly stressful and can lead to depression, confused thinking, and even aggression (Williams, 2007).

    -=-=-=-

    Leon Festinger’s theory of social comparison (1950, 1954) suggested that in many cases people join with others to evaluate the accuracy of their personal beliefs and attitudes. Stanley Schachter (1959) explored this process by putting individuals in ambiguous, stressful situations and asking them if they wished to wait alone or with others. He found that people affiliate in such situations—they seek the company of others.

    [hint hint nudge nudge]

    -=-=-=-

    Common sense tells us that our sense of self is our private definition of who we are, a kind of archival record of our experiences, qualities, and capabilities. Yet, the self also includes all those qualities that spring from memberships in groups. People are defined not only by their traits, preferences, interests, likes, and dislikes, but also by their friendships, social roles, family connections, and group memberships. The self is not just a “me,” but also a “we.”

    [people with less knowlege, less ability, less focus, need to compensate by being part of a group they believe reflects them at least in public message, you instantly know them if you know the group standards=

    -=-=-=-

    …if we strongly identify with these categories, then we will ascribe the characteristics of the typical member of these groups to ourselves, and so stereotype ourselves. If, for example, we believe that college students are intellectual, then we will assume we, too, are intellectual if we identify with that group (Hogg, 2001).

    -=-=-=-

    our assessment of the quality of groups we belong to influences our collective self-esteem (Crocker & Luhtanen, 1990). If our self-esteem is shaken by a personal setback, we can focus on our group’s success and prestige. In addition, by comparing our group to other groups, we frequently discover that we are members of the better group, and so can take pride in our superiority. By denigrating other groups, we elevate both our personal and our collective self-esteem (Crocker & Major, 1989).

    -=-=-=-

    when researchers looked at groups closely, they discovered many groups shift toward more extreme decisions rather than less extreme decisions after group interaction. Discussion, it turns out, doesn’t moderate people’s judgments after all. Instead, it leads to group polarization: judgments made after group discussion will be more extreme in the same direction as the average of individual judgments made prior to discussion (Myers & Lamm, 1976). If a majority of members feel that taking risks is more acceptable than exercising caution, then the group will become riskier after a discussion.

    -=-=-=-

    Irving Janis (1982) labeled this syndrome groupthink: “a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action” (p. 9)

    -=-=-=-

    Janis identified both the telltale symptoms that signal the group is experiencing groupthink and the interpersonal factors that combine to cause groupthink. To Janis, groupthink is a disease that infects healthy groups, rendering them inefficient and unproductive. And like the physician who searches for symptoms that distinguish one disease from another, Janis identified a number of symptoms that should serve to warn members that they may be falling prey to groupthink. These symptoms include overestimating the group’s skills and wisdom, biased perceptions and evaluations of other groups and people who are outside of the group, strong conformity pressures within the group, and poor decision-making methods.

    -=-=-=-

    Janis also singled out four group-level factors that combine to cause groupthink: cohesion, isolation, biased leadership, and decisional stress.

    Cohesion: Groupthink only occurs in cohesive groups. Such groups have many advantages over groups that lack unity. People enjoy their membership much more in cohesive groups, they are less likely to abandon the group, and they work harder in pursuit of the group’s goals. But extreme cohesiveness can be dangerous. When cohesiveness intensifies, members become more likely to accept the goals, decisions, and norms of the group without reservation. Conformity pressures also rise as members become reluctant to say or do anything that goes against the grain of the group, and the number of internal disagreements—necessary for good decision making—decreases.

    and

    Isolation. Groupthink groups too often work behind closed doors, keeping out of the limelight. They isolate themselves from outsiders and refuse to modify their beliefs to bring them into line with society’s beliefs. They avoid leaks by maintaining strict confidentiality and working only with people who are members of their group.

    and

    Biased leadership. A biased leader who exerts too much authority over group members can increase conformity pressures and railroad decisions. In groupthink groups, the leader determines the agenda for each meeting, sets limits on discussion, and can even decide who will be heard.

    and

    Decisional stress. Groupthink becomes more likely when the group is stressed, particularly by time pressures. When groups are stressed they minimize their discomfort by quickly choosing a plan of action with little argument or dissension. Then, through collective discussion, the group members can rationalize their choice by exaggerating the positive consequences, minimizing the possibility of negative outcomes, concentrating on minor details, and overlooking larger issues.

    maybe one can notice above in these things why the left is always urgent, doesnt want you to listen to other sources, want strong cohesiveness with a biased leader in the front?

    what if psychology was a weapon?

13. I don’t get people like Will and Boot either.

    If President Trump had turned out as dark, corrupt and unfaithful as seemed possible based on his history — a legitimate concern in 2016 — we might be looking at a situation where we would have to “destroy the village in order to save it.”

    But that’s not what happened. If in 2016 I could have read a newspaper from 2018, I would have voted for Trump with enthusiasm.

    Boot’s notion that the Republican Party has become “a white-nationalist party with a conservative fringe” is stupid, offensive and dishonest. Likewise, his buying into the obvious Democrat propaganda that Republicans are now a party of “child-snatchers.”

    Despite his conservative cred, Boot is a UC Berkeley and Yale grad. All I can imagine is that Boot, like Will, is so blinded by his “elite privilege” he has no choice but to oppose Trump.

    During the Obama years I was troubled that Boot seemed to have gone soft on Obama’s military moves such as doing the bare minimum in Afghanistan, which to my mind insured no victory, but more dead American boys.

14. Their “principles” are to surrender to the Dems. And then to lie down to be trampled upon.

    I know where Max Boot should have a boot inserted. Just to get his attention, of course.

15. Yes, we would have been a lot better off with the Dowager Empress ruling over us all. After all, she was the MOST QUALIFIED PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE EVAH! (sarc meter turned to maximum.)

    🙂

16. Projections from the left-right nexus.

    Diversity or denial of individual dignity including color judgments.

    Abortion rites that deny lives deemed unworthy.

    Redistributive change or single/monopoly allocation of wealth.

    Jew Privilege… I mean, White… No, Asian Privilege.

    Social justice adventures including elective regime change, trials by sodomy and abortion, catastrophic anthropogenic immigration reform, etc.

    Overlapping and convergent special and peculiar interests.

    Their principal imperative is stability. They just realize it with a different bias than their left-wing counterparts. They are Pro-Choice in principle and practice in response to secular incentives.

17. Boot, Will, et al should be put on a poster saying We’re all Jonathan Gruber now.”

18. “What is it with these guys, Boot and Will and their ilk? Their revulsion to Trump is so great that they have joined forces with people they have worked against their entire lives—Democrats, liberals, and particularly the left, which, if Boot has been paying any attention lately, has taken over the Democratic Party.”

    As others have pointed out: The relevance of these “conservatives” – who have never successfully conserved anything, much less that rule of law which dissolved before their very eyes under Obama – will evaporate and their rice bowls be emptied to the degree that Trump and his advisers (culled from from Heritage Foundation recommendations) succeed in doing what he was elected to do. That is to say, to reestablish a functioning law ruled polity that does better than simply slate half of its population for government managed extinction in the name of “social progress”.

    We understand of course that the insulated class does prefer a more tractable, compliant, and servile population to be at its beck and call and to tend its lawns and chauffeur its children around.

    But why these bow-tie conservatives imagine that that is what they will get once the “democratic socialists” really do get their hands on the levers of power, is anyone’s guess.

19. I don’t think that Boot, Will and the rest of the NeverTrumpers have lost their minds. I do think they know exactly what will happen if the democrats once again regain control of the legislature and Presidency.

    I think Thomas Jefferson provides a perfect explanation of their motivations;
    “Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties:
    1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes.
    2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depository of the public interests.

    In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves.” Thomas Jefferson to Henry Lee, 1824

    Trump is a populist and instinctively supports that which favors the majority being free to achieve all that they may. That is profoundly threatening to the elite.

    Boot, Will and the NeverTrumpers are part of the elite, simply the flip side of the same party “who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes” i.e. those who know best.

20. As a voter for 50 years and a fairly vivid recollection of Presidents going back to Eisenhower, Trump is unique in that he does not act presidential. Given the state of communication technology, he has exploited it as if he were Rush Limbaugh. So I believe that the personages mentioned are turned off more by Trump’s style and demeanor than his actual policies, though the mercantilist trade ideas are bizarre. He has nominated conservative judges, championed tax cuts, reduced regulation, supported our oil & gas development, actually got North Korea to the table (whether anything comes of it remains to be seen), decimated ISIS, hounded NATO allies to pay their fair share for the common defense, backed our allies Israel, Saudi Arabia, etc. and discarded the feel good Climate Agreement. On balance most conservatives should be pleased with what he has accomplished.

21. As a never Trumper myself, I think I understand people like Rubin, Will, and Boot. They see Trump spearheading a counter revolution with real, scary change occurring at almost lightning speed. It isn’t the direction of the change that upsets them, rather the uncertainty it’s creating. Add in a man who delights in creating chaos, or the illusion of chaos, who to them seems erratic to the point of insanity, and anything that restores order is preferable. Read Edmund Burke if you want to know what’s driving George Will and the others.

22. “Read Edmund Burke if you want to know what’s driving George Will and the others.”

    Sorry TOC…you attribute good will to those who have shown none.

    They’ve enjoyed the spoils of being considered some of the “cool kids” for a generation or more & are afforded accolades far in excess of their wisdom or accomplishments.

    Anyone who actively (as those alleged august personages did) worked to see Hillary as president, or who work to undermine any future R success (as they clearly are doing now) deserves nothing at this moment but derision.

23. John Guilfoyle,

    Exactly. And very well stated.

24. The Other Chuck:

    Opposing Trump is one thing. Hoping for Democrats to take power is a completely different thing. If that’s Burkean, I don’t get Burke.

25. Frankly, what seems to be occurring with these types at this point is that being in the Cool Kids Club is more important than having some sort of coherent, principled beliefs upon which to stand.

    It is impossible to be an unapologetic conservative on social media or in real life, with a politically mixed audience – unless, of course, you have balls of iron, and, preferably, an armed security detail. Every lefty in the room will gang up on you and attack and these days, it really isn’t just insults but threats of physical and financial harm. I cope by avoidance and silence. If your job involves writing and/or talking about politics, avoidance and silence is not exactly going to work.

    So you get this kind of garbage. Basically, “I’m a conservative, even though I am publicly disavowing all support of conservative figures (except total Quislings such as myself) and undermining all positions held by normal conservatives.”

    It actually is a symbiotic relationship between them and lefties, because the next natural step is lefties crowing, “Look, see even the conservatives agree with us!” Since they’re not hearing from those of us who are keeping quiet to avoid losing our job or having our car smashed up, they presume that only a handful of evil “ists” (racists, sexists, etc) don’t agree with them.

    I don’t have an easy answer. I have learned painful lessons, second hand, from these “interesting times” – not the least of which is an understanding of why so many Germans sat quietly in the 1930s. You might lose everything if you dissent – so until there’s nothing to lose rational people avoid action.

26. Boot has just taken it one step further now — back in 2016, he came out for Hillary but said he was not yet ready to actually become a Democrat. Here’s some of what he wrote then:

    My allegiance to the GOP was cemented during the 1980s, when I was in high school and college and Ronald Reagan was in the White House. For me, Reagan was what John F. Kennedy had been to an earlier generation: an inspirational figure who shaped my worldview. Reagan had his faults, like JFK, but he was optimistic and gentlemanly. He was pro-free trade and pro-immigration. He believed in limited government at home and American leadership abroad.

    That’s what I believed in too — and that’s what I thought the Republican Party stood for. That’s why, despite my disagreements with social conservatives, I worked as a foreign policy advisor to John McCain in 2008, Mitt Romney in 2012 and Marco Rubio this year. All of those candidates, different as they were, recognizably represented Reagan Republicanism.

    Those “disagreements with social conservatives” stands out for me, and it sounds as if even those earlier candidates were hanging by a thread for Boot because of them.

27. “In fact, the Democrats Boot wishes to put in power don’t just appease dictators, they revere and wish to emulate them.”

    And provide great material support to them. Mohammed Morsi wasn’t president of Egypt for more than a few weeks, and president Obama shipped $1B worth of weaponry to them. Yes, the U.S. had a pre-existing contract with Egypt under Mubarak for the weapons, but I’m pretty sure that a president Eisenhower or G.H.W. Bush would have found a way to stop or at least greatly delay such a contract.
    _____

    John G. and Kyndyll are both spot on.

28. I really don’t get what is going on with Boot. I recently finished his biography of Edward Lansdale. It was excellent. Lansdale was an odd figure with some similarity to Trump. He was an advertising man who joined OSS and helped Ramon Magsaysay win the presidency of the Philippines. He was trying to get Diem, in Vietnam, to adopt some policies of Magsaysay but the Big Army saw to it that Lansdale was excluded from any role. The result was disaster.
    It amazes me that Boot can’t see the parallels.

29. I find this quite humorous.

    Before the election, I was of the mind that the GOPe must die to allow the republic to live.

    Now, the GOPe is saying that the GOP must die to save the country..

    Regardless, it seems that we (me, them) see the same necessity – there can only be one victor. The American people (championed by the grassroots Trump voters) or the bipartisan elite.

30. Ok folks, it has come down to this with Trump, either you are against me or for me. It’s time to draw a line in the sand. Remember the Alamo.

31. I’m with OldTexan, being another.
    But who is this Boot? Max Boot?
    The only Boot I know is Das Boot (Ger: The Boat), a movie so very worth watching.
    Isn’t Max Boot (Maximum Boat) a nickname for John Forbes Kerry’s yacht?

32. Why do Boot and Will attack Trump? They are elitist snobs.
    They are better than him.
    They think.

33. George Will seems to have a problem. Perhaps we just need a longer baseball season.

34. Look at Will’s and Boot’s milieu. They hang out with the intellectual (and to some extent political) elite. It’s more in their interest to parrot that elite’s hatred of Trump than to defend him to their erstwhile opponents. Even if Trump gets re-elected, he’ll be gone in six years, but the elite has a long memory and they have careers to worry about.

    And if the GOP needs to be destroyed in order to be rebuilt, what do they envision it being rebuilt as? We already have one liberal party.

35. Neo:

    Trump is a radical, a populist. Only a few years ago he was a Democrat. He has swung the Republican Party 180 degrees to where this article by Pat Buchannan defines conservatism:

    http://buchanan.org/blog/the-never-trumpers-are-never-coming-back-129609

    Here is a quote from Burke’s Reflection on the Revolution in France that sums up the right never-Trump thinking:

    But when the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people. If any of them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty, soberly limited, and defined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by his competitors, who will produce something more splendidly popular. Suspicions will be raised of his fidelity to his cause. Moderation will be stigmatized as the virtue of cowards; and compromise as the prudence of traitors; until, in hopes of preserving the credit which may enable him to temper, and moderate, on some occasions, the popular leader is obliged to become active in propagating doctrines, and establishing powers, that will afterwards defeat any sober purpose at which he ultimately might have aimed.”

    Can you deny that Trump plays to the crowd? There is no temperance in anything he does and very little thought. The latest and probably the most damaging policy he is hell bent on blowing up is the tariff regime. While it undoubtedly needed reform, the way he’s going about it is disastrous.

    I’m not about to vote Democrat like Will, Boot, and Rubin, but I can certainly sympathize with their dilemma. Here is a man who is not content to nominate conservative judges, repeal onerous regulations, sign tax cuts into law, rebuild the military, remake foreign policy, and eviscerate the deep state. He must goad, belittle, beat his chest, and dare anyone who disagrees with his methods to do anything about it. In short, he’s itching for a fight. He’s prodding the left to start something. And worst of all, he’s prodding the Chinese.

    Yes, I can approve of his accomplishments in stopping the long march of the left, but in the process he’s becomming active in propagating doctrines, and establishing powers, that will afterwards defeat any sober purpose at which he ultimately might have aimed.

36. So TOC, you are saying, don’t look at the actions, the substance, focus instead on the style. Hmmm.

    I completely sympathize with your dislike of his antagonizing rhetoric. On the other hand, we are currently way, way beyond polity our national debates, and even further beyond that with regard to a limited government.

    The left routinely burned GW Bush in effigy and the D-list actress held Trump’s bloody severed head. Chief Justice Roberts passed Obamacare by establishing the principle that the federal gov. can fine anyone by any amount, for any reason, by calling it a tax. Roberts stuck a fork in the Constitution. I think a metaphorical wrecking ball is in order.

37. On walking away from Democrats again —

    https://libertyunyielding.com/2018/07/06/founder-of-anti-democrat-walkaway-campaign-refused-service-at-camera-store/

    https://libertyunyielding.com/2018/07/06/ny-dem-says-will-support-gop-until-schumer-restores-sanity-and-honesty-to-party/

38. Ann Says:
    July 6th, 2018 at 7:29 pm
    Boot has just taken it one step further now — back in 2016, he came out for Hillary but said he was not yet ready to actually become a Democrat.
    * * *
    There’s a difference??!!

39. Max Boot has become that which he hated.
    The only way this could be more perfect is if his first name were Jack.

40. The Other Chuck Says:

    [Rubin, Will, and Boot] see Trump spearheading a counter revolution with real, scary change occurring at almost lightning speed.

    The thing is, this ATTITUDE isn’t new. The GOP base has been growing steadily more angry over the last two decades, mainly from the poor quality of its leadership.

    The only people this is news to are Rubin, Will, and Boot. They never took it seriously because they never had to.

41. I have a hard time getting my head around never Trumpers. The other Chuck makes a good case for being put off by Trump’s behaviour while distinguishing it from his policies. By background and education I should feel that way about Trump, but I don’t. And I know why. It is because of the shift to the left by the Democratic party from a robust party of ordinary people to a politically correct, virtue signalling pack of insufferables. Time to trot out Toynbee again. When the dominant minority loses the confidence of the internal proletariat civilisations fail. And the external proletariat gnaws on the bones – gnaws on the bones-oh if you recall that little Burl Ives ditty. Cue the jihadhis and MS13. ‘It’s all good folks’ – sure it is.

42. One of the problems with listening to talking heads and human experts is that humans have flaws. It is better to cultivate internal knowledge and a compass, than to look around for gurus and spiritual priests to tell you what to do in life.

43. Is there such a thing as vlrtue-signaling to oneself? Perhaps there’s another name for it.

    Having observed one or another Cool Kids’ Club in high school, college, and elsewhere, I surmise that it looks better from the outside to those who aspire to join than it does from the inside. People still have problems, issues, and misfortunes. The best thing about being inside is…you’re not outside. Everything else is…well, in each life some rain must fall and the Cool Kids are no different.
    From which I might deduce Boot and others like him aren’t in the Club. Because once you’re in, you no longer have to scrabble for membership.

    Oh, well. That metaphor ran out.

44. I had read columns by Boot over the years, and from what I had heard he seemed to be well regarded.

    Recently, though, I finally saw him on TV, and the guy appears to be a brain dead, rigid ideologue, a raving lunatic of a never Trumper.

45. I’m not super familiar with either gentleman, but based on the little I know, ISTM that Boot was just looking for an excuse to go public with his defection, and Will was (possibly) always working for the other side, more or less, as T said above.

    I haven’t had my coffee yet this morning, so I’ll let that be the explanation for my inability to remember the Shakespearean character who whispers in the ear of the hero – urges him to moderate his positions, in effect to become more like his opposition. That or I’m totally making him up.

46. Richard Aubrey, I like your take – virtue-signalling to oneself. I think maybe that has had to with why so many of us start every positive statement about Trump with, “I didn’t vote for him, but…” or “Of course he’s a terrible boor, but…” or “He was never my guy, but…” I hate that I do that (and I do, with everyone but my husband), but the craven little corner of me that insists that I’m “better” than some seems to hold iron control over those moments. I will commit – again – to trying to beat it back.

47. Mike K – Agreed on the bizarreness of Boot’s current insanity. Many years ago I read his book, “The Savage Wars of Peace,” and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t excellent. My recollection of it is foggy, but I do remember thinking highly of it.

    I used to read Boot’s articles in Commentary all the time, incidentally around the same time that I thought Jen Rubin was a warrior for the cause (the late Bush/early Obama years). So highly did I esteem Rubin, in fact, that I drove an hour to see her and John Podhoretz give a talk in Pasadena.

    My lord that seems like ten lifetimes ago!

    As of today, it’s hard to think of any two public intellectuals/pundits I have more contempt for than Boot and Rubin.

    I can at least say, on the credit side of my ledger, that I have never had any regard for George Will and nearly always find him simple-minded, smug, and somehow “off,” even (especially) when he’s discussing conservatism. Even when I agree with him, I *want* to disagree with him – perhaps that there is a clue to the impulse driving these folks, except raised to the power of snobbishness and multiplied by vanity.

48. The optics of this are kind of amusing aren’t they?

    Old white guys like Boot, Will, etc. leaving the GOP

    Gays, blacks, Muslims, Asians, Immigrants, Hispanics etc. following Brandon Straka in #walkingaway from the Democrats.

    Rich isn’t it?

49. “. . .virtue-signalling to oneself. I think maybe that has had to with why so many of us start every positive statement about Trump with, “I didn’t vote for him, but…” [Jaime @ 7/7/9:28]

    I think you nailed it here. More importantly, it implies how none of us are immune to the influence of a zeitgeist; in this case, that would be the narrative as pushed by the left and the leftist media.

50. One of the problems with listening to talking heads and human experts is that humans have flaws. It is better to cultivate internal knowledge and a compass, than to look around for gurus and spiritual priests to tell you what to do in life
    … ymarsakar

    But that flies in the face of seventy-plus years of conventional wisdom that can be summed up in this:

    ASSUMPTION SIX: Ordinary people neither have the resources, nor the intellect, nor the virtue, to help themselves – or each other – in the “right” ways. Only “experts” and “leaders” can provide such help, and should be empowered with the resources and monopoly on coercive force held by the government to do so.

    Will and Boot can’t see the forest for the trees … the difference that counts:

    Progressives seek to lord it over us.

    Trump does not.

    Everything else will be derived from this.

51. If Boot thinks the victorious Democrats will be as benign and constructive to conservatives as the Allies were to Germany and Japan in 1945-51, he is nuts

52. reminds me of the what the character Landru said in Star Trek Return of the Archons…
    Landru: for the good of the body, you will be…absorbed. the government media complex wants you…

53. Boot, et al, just need to stop using the “conservative” moniker. Anyone advocating for a Democrat/liberal/progressive/socialist victory in ‘18 or ‘20 is most certainly not a conservative and more likely a butt hurt ignoramus who’s hubris has choked out common sense. I used to have a few of Boot’s books from my War College days. They are now in the bargain basement bin of the local book store. I can’t trust his judgment at all anymore and will have nothing to do with him.

54. Eight years of the Democrats winning gave us Trump. How is more of the same going to change that?

55. The latest and probably the most damaging policy he is hell bent on blowing up is the tariff regime.

    Gosh, what a loss that would be.

56. …around the same time that I thought Jen Rubin was a warrior for the cause (the late Bush/early Obama years).

    kolnai: Likewise. Back then Rubin’s WaPo columns were a must-read.

    I remember how vicious the Democratic/progressive commenters were. They just blowtorched her with ad homs. And now they are her allies.

57. Here is a man who is not content to nominate conservative judges, repeal onerous regulations, sign tax cuts into law, rebuild the military, remake foreign policy, and eviscerate the deep state. He must goad, belittle, beat his chest, and dare anyone who disagrees with his methods to do anything about it. In short, he’s itching for a fight. He’s prodding the left to start something. And worst of all, he’s prodding the Chinese.

    Welcome to the modern, media-driven world TOC.

    Trump understands that he can’t let his opponents shape the battlespace … as the GOPExpedients have, certainly since Reagan left office, by “taking the high road” and opening the door wide to Leftist passive-aggressive advocacy of their fundamentally-flawed worldview.

    And his approach is working, as it exposes the Left, their ideas, and the appearances-based respect they demand as the morally/intellectually-bankrupt things that they are.

    Civility in response to intellectual dishonesty is counterproductive in the defense of liberty … for it gives the dishonest a veneer of legitimacy to cover their offenses.

58. “What is it with these guys, Boot and Will and their ilk?”

    Sleepers.

59. Mike H.said:

    “What is it with these guys, Boot and Will and their ilk?”

    Umm, they’ve been lying. The Bill Kristols, the Mitch McConnells, the whole crowd.

60. Pingback:Objectively Pro-Democrat | Transterrestrial Musings

61. Trump’s vulgar way holding of the salad fork so offended their dedicated sense of proprietary, they must burn the country down to show their disgust.

62. Everyone has missed the real point: If this crowd admitted to supporting President Trump it would make for some really uncomfortable lunches at the Yale Club, and perhaps being taken off the ‘A’ list for the really good Georgetown cocktail parties.

63. Greg:

    That point has been made many times here and elsewhere. And although it’s true, it doesn’t go to the deeper motives. Why do some of the same sort of pundits on the supposed right risk being shunned at those same cocktail parties? And why have these particular ones (Boot, Will, etc.) made a different choice? I think it all comes down to what I’ve written here.

64. I think Boot is doing this to help sales of his forthcoming book.

65. Boot and Will are tne eeeeeellllittttttteeeeeee RINOs who want to be seen as intellectuals. THey dont mind losing as long as they get invited to their cocktail parties.

66. If you love the give and take of politics, if you enjoy being near the center of power, if ideology is of minor importance, then you have a choice to make: do you want to be on the number one team . . . or do you choose the second best team. In this case the #1 team is the Democratic Party – the party of government. But the #1 team only recruits the best players. John McCain, for example, could not have made his name as a Democrat. I don’t think he ran as a Republican out of conviction but from the realization that he could only get into politics if he joined the 2nd best team. Yeah he paid lip service to the issues that would get him elected. But what he enjoyed was the “game” of politics. And knowing he was on the 2nd best team he was always a sucker for praise from the Democrats. Would George Will have made it as a columnist on the Democratic side? I don’t think so. So he joined the 2nd best team so that he could be in the middle of the political process and not out of any real conviction. I use George Will as an example but there so many more like him. Since they all really wanted to be on the best team, they always resent that they have to defend the deplorables. It’s not that Democrats don’t have their own share of uncouth members. It’s just that they view themselves as winners who don’t have to explain the hangers on that attach themselves to the Democratic Party. Then came Trump. Trump! Can you imagine anything more nightmarish for a Republican leader or thinker (who after all is only there to have a hand in the great game) now have to defend Trump? Thus the rise of the Never Trumpers. We conservatives, on the whole, are represented by a bunch of second raters who never had our interests at heart in the first place.

67. In the last couple of years, the only principles George Will has manifested would be an abiding commitment to his affectations. Forgivable snobbery is a byproduct of efforts to maintain standards. With these characters, it’s just self-assertion.

68. What most people fail to notice about Donald Trump is that he has succeeded brilliantly in a business where he must deal with every kind of egotistical, corrupt politician and every kind of egotistical, venal, corrupt bureaucrat. In the Donkocrat swamp of NYC he has gotten things done, and he drives some of the toughest bargains on the planet.

    I want him on my side

69. And if the GOP needs to be destroyed in order to be rebuilt, what do they envision it being rebuilt as? We already have one liberal party.

    These people write op-eds for a living. They haven’t a clue how to build anything and no real rapport with anyone outside their subculture. I think Bret Stephens had a brief run as a newspaper editor and Wm. Kristol likely employed a few dozen people at The Weekly Standard. That’s what they know of management. George Will was a congressional aide 40-odd years ago and has participated in a (losing) campaign as an employee. That’s it.

70. I have noticed too that it’s mainly elites who are so disturbed by the Trump election. My theory is that people whose lifestyle is largely immune from political changes, like doctors and lawyers and scientists, tend to either idolize (Obama) or demonize (Trump, Romney, etc.). They do not feel at risk at all by whoever is elected, so they are free to hate or love anyone they wish. And signal their virtue, of course.

    Try living on $40K a year and hearing that the plant is closing. Or that gasoline and electricity are going up again. Or that they’re putting in another sober living home on your street.

    These days, it’s interesting to watch them turn ever so slightly away from this stance as they have to step over the human poop in the streets or always, always accompany their Little Leaguer to the playground bathroom.

71. It is hard to believe Max Boot’s parents fled communism since he seems dedicated to importing it to the US. He also wants to ban private ownership of firearms. Max is an all around scumbag.

72. For the longest time MSM has operated with impunity at besmirching Cons. Cons have been convinced not to be petty and respond. Along come a “petty” person who does and MSM goes TDS instead of taking the high road as they have convinced these neutered Vons, is the right thing to do.

    These elite Cons have been convinced to play in this virtue signaling sandbox. They love the people who castrated them. Stockholm syndrome is alive and well.

73. Eva Marie Says:
    July 7th, 2018 at 4:37 pm
    If you love the give and take of politics, if you enjoy being near the center of power, if ideology is of minor importance, then you have a choice to make: do you want to be on the number one team . . . or do you choose the second best team.
    * *
    Interesting analysis.

74. Boot and Will were both for the Iraq War before they were against it. Who knows, maybe in four years they will be proclaiming Trump as Savior.

75. The reality is that George Will, Jennifer Rubin, Max Boot, David Frum, etc., just aren’t conservatives.

    They are, instead, persons who want the country governed by whomever strikes them as urbane and sophisticated. They will take the temperature of whichever portion of society epitomizes the urbane and sophisticated elite — a polite elite, an elite which is above being sullied by the mudslinging style in politics. And that reading, once taken, will determine their views on what constitutes good policy.

    Now, this may not have always been the case. Maybe once, some time ago, Rubin and Will and Boot actually supported conservative policies and ideas first, and supported the politicians and writers associated with those ideas in a secondary way.

    But even before the nomination of Trump, this causal relationship must have flipped.

    As a consequence, we now see that it is more important that the wrong sort of people be excluded than that the wrong sort of policy be prevented.

    And thus Will, Rubin, etc., cannot be properly regarded as conservatives. But they also cannot properly be regarded as leftists. They cannot, in fact, properly be labeled with any name suggestive of policy preferences, because the policy ideas are secondary.

    When Republicans are the party which carries the greater aura of politeness, the least stink of rabble-rousing, Boot & Co. will support Republican ideas and causes. When Republicans turn populist and Democrats become the cocktail-party crowd, Boot & Co. will propagandize gleefully for Democrat victory.

    I wonder very much if Will, Rubin, Boot, and the rest have yet discovered this about themselves, or are they still blissfully un-self-aware?

76. These people have been bought off. This is a war between fat/ugly girls and the rest of us.
    Simple as that.

77. Identification. That’s the problem I see. The 2016 election has revealed ugly truths about our so-called civil society. At the same time, people on both the left and right have attached way too much prominence to the role of president, with party affiliation becoming more of a refuge than an intermittent hangout. Will, ISTM, is sickened by the idea of affiliating with a party with whom he cannot identify, on principle, rather than take into account the facts on the ground. He’s doing this for himself in the name of the Founders while refusing to balance the benefits to the people. It’s properly called an ego trip.

78. I’m with Boot, Will, et al. I’ve been mostly biased in favor of the GOP my entire voting life, but I intend to vote straight Democratic this year.

    And, though I loathe Trump, I don’t oppose him because I think he’s busy engineering his own version of the Reichstag fire. It’s because everything that caused me to favor the GOP has been systematically betrayed by those currently representing it:

    1) The combination of the tax cuts and budget squishiness demonstrate that they’re utterly unconcerned about the debt.

    2) The spinelessness on the trade war is simply incomprehensible for a party that purports to care about free trade and free enterprise.

    3) For a party that claims to be interested in foreign policy as an instrument of American power, they’re ignoring Trump’s systematic destruction of the levers that allow that power to exercised.

    The old Hemingway quote about how you go broke: “Gradually, then all at once,” seems relevant here. It took Obama about 4 years before his foreign policy collapsed. Trump seems well on the way to beating that number by at least a year. I fear the same thing will occur with the budget and the economic climate.

    Bottom line: All the good things that allowed the GOP to be the lesser of two evils have been degraded, and all the things that I don’t care about but find vaguely distasteful are hyper-emphasized. Not only do I think that the GOP deserves a short, sharp shock to bring it back to its senses, but they frankly aren’t the better choice right now. So I’ll be pulling the big ‘D’ lever in November, then running out of the polling place to throw up in the bushes. I hope I further trips will be unnecessary, but that depends on the level of bad craziness.

79. Yeah, most people make their support of a candidate/politician based on emotions.
    But, that’s not unusual – most people make other decisions based on emotion:
    – marriage/love relationships
    – whether or not to have a child
    – choice of career
    – home purchase – in fact, most purchases

    Few people use rational analysis in any aspect of their lives.

80. The Radical Moderate:

    1) Tell me how you reduce the national debt when it takes 60 votes to pass a budget and there are 49 Democrats in the Senate?

    2) Free trade is a wonderful idea. When do we start?

    3) Exactly what foreign policy levers has Trump destroyed? The UN Human Rights Commission? The Iran deal? The Paris Climate Non-Accord? Building up the US military is destroying a foreign policy lever? Having a Secretary of State who is more interested in the interests of the US than lining her own pockets is destroying a foreign policy lever? Using “stick first, carrot later” as a strategy is destroying a foreign policy lever? Trump just got the Saudis to blow through their own self-imposed production limit — I guess Trump must have missed destroying that lever.

    Your stated objections are complete nonsense. You don’t like the man because he is a loudmouth parvenu asshole. I get that. I feel the same way. George Will, Max Boot, Jennifer Rubin, and Bill Kristol all feel the same way.

    But that doesn’t come close to offsetting what he has accomplished, which is why I and many others on this blog support him. And in no way does his crudity justify your trying to lay a load of biological solid end product of male bovine digestion on us.

81. RadicalModerate:
    1) The combination of the tax cuts and budget squishiness demonstrate that they’re utterly unconcerned about the debt.

    And you think that voting Democrat will solve the debt problem? After the debt increase since 2009? When any attempt to even FREEZE spending on any part of the budget gets the Democrats to rise up in mutiny?

    As they say in Venezuela, Decime otro de vaqueros. Tell me another cowboy story. Tell me another fish tale.

82. We have been at war in this country for quite some time. Many of us have just begun to realize it. And in war, when we defeat an enemy we treat captives humanely and tend to their wounded.

    But traitors? Traitors we hang.

83. “I bow to no one in my discussion of Trump’s flaws”

    The God Emperor Trump has no flaws, only characteristics lessers can’t understand.

    Also, Max Boot is a globalist Jew, uninterested in preserving and projecting American interests. From the mouth of Boot “I am socially liberal: I am pro-LGBTQ rights, pro-abortion rights, pro-immigration…. I am pro-environment: I think that climate change is a major threat that we need to address.”

    He isn’t a conservative and certainly doesn’t believe in America, much less that America has the right to define, maintain, and defend its borders. Fuck him.

84. Re: “Max Boot is a…”

    I believe you spelled “globalist functional atheist” incorrectly. There’s no public evidence of religiosity on Boot’s part.

    (Or perhaps you just meant to say “globalist,” but a keyboard macro fired-off unintentionally? One can never be sure what words another person types so often, that they’d make them into a macro.)

85. R.C.:

    Ah, yes, commenter “Ken” (who has commented a few times here before, often under different sock-puppet names) had to make sure that word “Jew” was in there, because the JEW part was so very very important to him.

    I wonder—if “Ken” were discussing George Will, would he be careful to put “non-Jew” into the description of Will? Somehow I doubt it.

    And yes, Boot is almost certainly not a religious person of any sort, Jew or otherwise. He is the offspring of emigrants from the Soviet Union, and his parents were almost certainly persecuted as Jews in their home country but—like most Soviet Jews—probably were secular ethnic Jews.

    I remember reading articles years ago about the influx of Soviet Jews to Israel, and how they had to be taught just about everything about Judaism because they had zero knowledge and training in it (the Soviets had tried to stamp that out). Of course, many never wanted to know; I’m just talking about those who did want to learn something about Judaism. I am not aware of any specific information about the religious habits of either Boot or his parents.

86. I thought it ironic that the Hebrew Old Testament predicted that the name of the Jews would become a byword and hiss in the mouth of the Gentiles.

    It is exactly what happened.

87. ymarsakar:

    I believe it had already happened, as soon as the Jewish people came to be.

    Anti-Semitism is exceedingly old.

88. @Richard Saunders:

    “Tell me how you reduce the national debt when it takes 60 votes to pass a budget and there are 49 Democrats in the Senate?”

    You use reconciliation. And I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t the Democrats that larded up the budget resolution. There was a halfway decent markup for the budget and then… oopsy! Everything snuck back in at the last moment.

    This might have been forgivable if the tax cut hadn’t been quite so generous, but it was. (BTW: I’m mostly supportive of the corporate tax cuts, in that they give companies the ability to manage their biz upstream of taxation. But given that nobody would even consider adjusting the downstream tax breaks like the dividend and cap gain preference items, it seems quite a bit more craven than it should have been.)

    “Free trade is a wonderful idea. When do we start?”

    I can tell you how we shouldn’t start. We shouldn’t nuke our largely functional relationships with our western trading partners to show how evenhanded we’re being with China. Pissing off Canada and the EU is utterly insane, and feeds into the foreign policy questions, which I’ll fisk as we go:

    “The UN Human Rights Commission?”

    Don’t care, and not what I’m talking about.

    “The Iran deal?”

    Yes, that’s a huge screwup. No matter how bad a deal it was (and IMO it was pretty bad but not horrible), when it’s structured so that you give all the value away up front, and you receive the value from the other side over time, getting rid of the deal before you’ve received that value is pretty stupid.

    Surely you don’t really think that the sanctions are actually going to snap back, do you? By repudiating the deal, all we’ve done is ensure that the EU, Russia, and China get full access to the Iranian market, while we get nothing, and a resurgent Iranian nuke program, to boot.

    It’s a magnificent achievement: We’ve done major damage to our credibility as a good-faith party and we get exactly nothing in return.

    “The Paris Climate Non-Accord?”

    Don’t care. Well, not quite true: Since the agreement was purely aspirational, we lost nothing by paying lip-service to it, but we lost still more honest-partner points by repudiating it. Not a huge deal, but vaguely stupid.

    “Building up the US military is destroying a foreign policy lever?”

    Without any ability to negotiate in what your counter-parties would consider good faith, the military buildup is somewhere between useless and scary. And, given that the CINC is obviously clueless about how to wield the military that he’s building up, I’m not sure what this accomplishes–other than larding up the contracts for the usually defense folks.

    “Having a Secretary of State who is more interested in the interests of the US than lining her own pockets is destroying a foreign policy lever?”

    I don’t even know what this means. Are you talking about Tillerson or Pompeo? Get somebody in the job for longer than 14 months at a time and I’ll be willing to reconsider. Until then, if you’re simply yelling “not Hillary, therefore good!”, maybe you ought to be reexamining your logic there.

    “Trump just got the Saudis to blow through their own self-imposed production limit — I guess Trump must have missed destroying that lever.”

    That one’s kinda nice, but of course a half-trained chimp could have achieved this. The Saudis will do almost anything to keep US shale oil shut-in. The only way to do that is to drive the price down to the point where it’s not worth restarting US production.

    But I notice that you’ve left out a few:

    Trump (with the tacit approval of most of the party, which is of course what I’m more concerned about) has managed to trade most of our diplomatic, military, and economic leverage on North Korea away for a photo op / PR stunt. And that leverage was important: it’s what kept China at least going through the motions on keeping up economic pressure on the Norks. That’s gone now. Punting on the military exercises with the South Koreans has freaked them out, driving them closer to China’s sphere of military and economic influence. And of course the rest of the world is scratching its head trying to figure out if Trump is just stupid or stupid and insane.

    Then you have Trump taking potshots at NATO allies (again, with the GOP’s tacit approval) for… what? Because they’re mean stuck-up Europeans? Because we’re gonna cut our own nose off to spite our faces if they drive a hard bargain on their defense contributions? (NB: We should be driving a hard bargain on this, but we’re not even negotiating this–we’re tweeting insanity.)

    And Trump’s doing this at exactly the historical moment where Putin’s decided that he’d really like to get the old USSR band back together (maybe with a side of Warsaw Pact for good measure), and Europe actually has some non-US defense partners (China, anyone?) available.

    I’m perfectly comfortable with the Nixonian madman theory of foreign policy, where you scare your counterparties into cooperating because they can’t tell what you’re going to do if they don’t. But the madman theory only works if you’re smart and appear to be crazy. Stupid and crazy is just… stupid and crazy.

    “But that doesn’t come close to offsetting what he has accomplished, which is why I and many others on this blog support him.”

    I assume that, by “what he has accomplished”, you mean the judicial appointments and deregulation. I like that stuff.

    But for you to think that this actually offsets all the stuff I have above, you have to think that the price that the GOP is going to pay has already mostly been paid. I don’t think that’s even close to true.

    Anybody can have a couple of good years if they’re willing to burn all the fiscal, social, and ideological capital that they’ve accumulated. That’s the Hugo Chavez version of political science. But when things go really, really wrong internationally (and they will), and when the economy goes into a downturn (which it will–sooner than it would without this idiot tariff war) and we’re already borrowing more than a trillion bucks a year (which we are), things are going to get ugly.

    Then, after the GOP has pretty much jettisoned every good idea that they’ve ever had, will they reap the whirlwind that they’ve sown. Personally, I’d rather that they take their lumps early, while there’s still some chance of correcting things without having to start from nothing but rubble. To that end, I plan to vote for the other guys, and hope that reason prevails.

    I’m not holding my breath. On the other hand, I don’t have much to lose.

89. Radical Moderate makes some very good points, and I agree with his general assessment of Trump. He had me until admitting his plans to vote Democrat to teach the Republicans a lesson. I get the logic of it, and could almost fall for it if I thought the Democrats would swing to the center. Unfortunately their trajectory is socialist, crazy left. Better to take our chances with Trump and the Republicans should economic Armageddon happen.

90. The Radical Moderate — your post is a classic example of the parallel universe the Never-Trumpers are in.

    You see “largely functional” trade relationships as okay. A little bit o’tariffs and non-tariff barriers makes the medicine go down easier, right? President Trump offered a no-tariff trade with Europe; did anyone accept?

    The TCJA has so far produced great results, the best part being 100% expensing. I’m not going to repeat the stats, we all know what they are. And you’re complaining about continuing the dividend and cap gains breaks? Since most Americans don’t like to be taxed on inflation, and virtually all economists agree the US savings rate is way too low, what’s your beef?

    The Iran deal. Hmmm. Let’s see. Iran gets billions of dollars, including billions in cash — perfect for funding terrorists — up front, and we get their promise that they won’t develop nucs for ten years. Of course, we can’t have an unannounced, all-sites inspection right, that would be mean! BTW, what are IRBMs and ICBMs for? Dropping four tons of aluminum on a city? Riddle me this, RadMod — why would you develop ballistic missiles if you didn’t plan on having nuclear warheads to put in them when they’re operational?

    Yes, I took Econ 101, I know what price oligopolies have to set their product at. But tell me, if it’s so easy to get them to violate what they agreed to at OPEC just a month or so ago, how come nobody else ever did it?

    I’m so glad Trump is clueless about wielding the military. Otherwise, he probably wouldn’t have sent three carrier groups into the Pacific to threaten L’il Kim, he wouldn’t have bombed Syrian airbases, and he wouldn’t have killed Russian soldiers. (First time the US has done that since 1921!) I can’t wait to see what he won’t know how to do next.

    Speaking of L’il Kim, what exactly did Trump give up? A photo op and postponement of a command post exercise in exchange for the possibility of denuclearization? Has Trump pulled any troops out of South Korea? Nope. Has he withdrawn any nuclear-capable planes or ships out of PACCOM? Nope. Has he relaxed economic sanctions? Nope. So what exactly are you complaining about? That L’il Kim will have lots of pictures of himself shaking hands with Trump to pass out to his adoring fans? And you consider that a bad deal?

    And we should pay for the defense of Europe because why? This is 2018, not 1970. Don’t you think it’s about time our European “allies” contributed a modest amount to their own defense, instead of spending the money on increased vacation benefits?

    I could go on and on and on, but why bother, I’m sure in your universe everything would be hunky-dory if only the better and wiser of us — meaning you — had elected THE MOST QUALIFIED CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT EVER!

    It’s just not that way in this universe.

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