Bauxite:

Personally I think The Times are building a winning coalition.

Trump is just a guy crazy enough, for good and bad reasons, to reach out and touch the lightning.

That remains to be seen. Trump got lucky in 2016 and, with the exception of the Senate in 2018, his coalition hasn’t won anything significant since. Any political coalition worth a dime would be able to ride the current Democratic party chaos to a solid victory. Maybe Trump can do it. We’ll see.

One thing is certain, though, the 2016-2022 Trump coalition needs more voters. If Trump can add them, all credit to him. If he cannot, if Trump loses this year or just squeaks by like he did in 2016, we need to finally put to bed the idea that Trump is capable of building a winning coalition.

Trump has built a coalition that can win. It’s the Democrat-Lite Republicans that are unwilling to get on board. Right now it’s time for conservatives/Republicans to focus on the chaos brought to the country by the Democrat left– and yet the usual suspects can do nothing but complain that Trump isn’t the perfect candidate.

For 50 years pro-life/Christians have wailed against the unconstitutional Roe v. Wade decision. The stated goal was to overturn that monstrous decision. Trump delivered exactly what the pro-life movement wanted. Trump realizes that given the media obsession with abortion on demand– any national restriction on abortion would fail. Could even something like restrictions at viability or first trimester pass? And all of this is moot, since the majority of abortions are now chemical– which would be nearly impossible to enforce.

Homosexual marriage is now a constitutionally protected right in America. Could there come a time when a majority of SC Justices find that Obergefell was wrongly decided?

Why is the reaction to the changes to the GOP platform disturbing? A friend thinks some Christians take this as a betrayal and may not vote this year! They would rather have four more years of accelerating decline of the country under a President Harris? Has the right also lost their minds?

We have had nothing but chaos in the country since the summer of burning cities. Will it abate with a President Trump? Sadly no, because chaos is all the left knows.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/biden-s-awkward-joke-about-wife-of-nato-official-flops-causes-confusion/ar-BB1pKdiC (I’d link directly to the story in The Western Journal, but it’s behind a paywall)

The official transcript has “talking to…”. Well, OK then.

FWIW, I heard the same thing you did. I couldn’t believe my ears and thought it must be an AI fake. Or it could be Biden’s usual mush-mouth delivery. Or it could be a case of the media playing “Let’s Go Brandon”. Whatever it is, it’s a talking mess.

She KNOWS—woman’s intuition?— that they’re going to vote the big D anyway…(well, most of ‘em).

And so…win-win chez “Biden”!!!

File under: 4-D tic-tac-toe…

With the opposition candidate collapsing and his party descending into chaos, this is the time for the GOP candidate to consolidate and try to build a majority. Trump may not be capable of that, or maybe he he is. As a matter of policy, I’m not thrilled with the 2024 GOP platform. As a matter of practical politics, it was probably necessary, so credit to Trump for that. Let’s see if he can build on that with his VP pick. Haley or Youngkin would be ideal. Trump is going to bring the GOP base and his base. (Snubbing them on the platform demonstrates his confidence about that.) He needs someone who helps him salvage votes in the suburbs. I love JD Vance, but he’s not it, not this year. Winning requires a coalition. OK Trump, go build one . . . if you can.

Frankly, though, if the GOP cannot win a comfortable majority this year, with the Democrats having put themselves in this mess, then turn out the lights, the party’s over. And all of the kvetching that we do here is meaningless because our new progressive overlords are unstoppable.

(Last point – It’s kind of ironic to me that it is easier for some social conservatives to swallow the bitter medicine when it is administered by Trump. If any other Republican had done what Trump has in the past few weeks, especially with the GOP platform, the usual suspects would be screaming from the hilltops about the “GOPe” selling them out. A thousand and one pro-Trump arguments since 2016 have begun with an assertion that Trump really cares about social conservatives, unlike the evil “GOPe.” But the politics didn’t change. On abortion, and a number of other social issues, the war is over and the right lost. I’m not sure why news of the defeat goes down smoother coming from Trump than it did from Mitt Romney.)