It sounds a little bitty bit like Mitt Romney’s (yes, that Mitt Romney) “self-deportation” plan:

Romney suggested his administration would make it harder for illegal immigrants to get jobs, which would in turn lead them to seek work elsewhere.

More to the point, it has echoes of what Trump was saying during his 2016 campaign. Actually, he said a lot of things back then as a beginner feeling his way towards a policy during the 2016 campaign:

Donald Trump and his top aides have spent the last two weeks sowing confusion about what the status of the country’s 12 million illegal immigrants would be under a Trump administration. Would they all be deported, as Trump argued last year? Or would some have to go while others would be allowed to stay, as Trump has hinted in the “softening” of his position in recent days? …

First, Trump announced that he will aggressively move to deport criminal illegal immigrants — that is, immigrants who have committed crimes beyond the act of entering the country illegally. “We will begin moving them out day one, in joint operations with local, state and federal law enforcement,” Trump said. …

… Trump [also made a] statement that those here illegally would have “one route and only one route” to legal status … Everybody seeking legalization would have to leave and then return.

But then, a few short paragraphs later, Trump said that “in several years,” when tough enforcement measures are fully in place — not contemplated, not in the planning stage, but actually up and running — then “we will be in a position to consider the appropriate disposition of those who remain.”

So, as an old boyfriend of mine used to say, clear as mud. Then again, I think it was made intentionally unclear, and the same is true today. I’m not even saying that in a critical way. I simply think the problem of illegal immigration is so huge and so complex at this point that it makes sense to do the most important part first and then see if there’s a next step and what it would be. As Vance describes.

I think Trump is more serious about it now and also more aware of the difficulties. And I think the leftist fantasy of an expulsion of 20 million people is just that, a fantasy.

Oh, and back in 2012 – which, granted, was a long time ago – Trump criticized Romney’s “self-deportation” idea:

Donald Trump on Monday said Mitt Romney’s “maniacal” and “crazy” policy of “self-deportation,” alienated Asian and Hispanic voters and helped cost him the election. …

“Republicans didn’t have anything going for them with respect to Latinos and with respect to Asians,” the real estate mogul-turned-reality TV star said.

“The Democrats didn’t have a policy for dealing with illegal immigrants, but what they did have going for them is they weren’t mean-spirited about it,” Trump added. “They didn’t know what the policy was, but what they were is they were kind.”

The post Vance explains the Trump administration’s deportation policy – as of now appeared first on The New Neo.

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, argued that President Joe Biden should have pardoned Donald Trump after the Justice Department brought indictments against the former president and pressured New York prosecutors not to pursue Trump’s ongoing hush money trial. …

“I think it’s a terrible fault for our country to see people attacking our legal system — that’s an enormous mistake. I think it’s also demeaning for people to quite apparently try and run for vice president by donning a red tie and standing outside the courthouse. It’s just — I’d have felt awkward.”

Fascinating. Note the strong word “attacking” – in “attacking our legal system.” Our legal system is an institution that people need to respect in order for it to function properly and to maintain civil order; that’s me writing; not a quote from Romney, but it’s what I think he’s trying to say. And it’s true.

But what Romney leaves out – and it’s not a detail but rather the heart of the matter – is that in order to be respected, the legal system or any other system must act in a way that earns that respect. And what’s happening now in that courtroom is a perversion of our legal system and an outrage.

As a lawyer, Romney should know that. Does he know that? Or is he saying this cynically, despite knowing it? Perhaps, but my guess is that he’s still living in a dreamworld in which if we all just acted with decorum then everything would be just fine and dandy and peachy keen. And Trump – terribly disrespectful and coarse, not Romney’s “type” at all – has upset everything. Romney is keen to show us that he, Romney, is very much a different type. A polite type.

Trump and those who support Trump make Romney feel awkward.

On the other hand, Romney says:

The Utah Republican argued that Biden should have pardoned Trump when the Justice Department announced charges against him and that the president “made an enormous error” by not pressuring New York prosecutors to drop their case against Trump. (Presidents can pardon only in federal cases.)

“He should have fought like crazy to keep this prosecution from going forward,” Romney said, referring to Biden. “It was a win-win for Donald Trump.”

The word “error” leaps out there. In a sense, it may have been an error on the part of Biden and company – but only because it may end up backfiring and causing a great deal of sympathy for Trump, especially among minority groups but also just in general. Oops! Not their intent. But otherwise it was no error, and in fact it was orchestrated by Biden and/or his aides and/or the Democrats as a whole, as were all the prosecutions. This was not Bragg acting on his own; the thought is ludicrous.

And yet you have to say that – at least so far – Romney is correct in the practical sense when he says that Biden “should have fought like crazy to keep this prosecution from going forward … It was a win-win for Donald Trump.” It is also true in the moral sense that Biden should have prevented it, but neither Biden nor the left is operating morally, except that they think that anything is morally acceptable in order to stop Trump.

Romney added:

… [H]ad I been President Biden, when the Justice Department brought on indictments, I would have immediately pardoned him. I’d have pardoned President Trump. Why? Well, because it makes me, President Biden, the big guy and the person I pardoned a little guy.

So Romney, when you voted to convict Trump after he’d been impeached on bogus charges, did you do it because you thought it made you the big guy or the little guy? My answer is “the little guy.” What’s yours?

The post Romney: Biden should have pardoned Trump appeared first on The New Neo.

Anyone on the right knows the history of GOP weakness and caving, and of “reaching across the aisle” that remains unreciprocated, to say the least. Whether there is actually a “uniparty” or not (I don’t think so; I think there remain major differences between the parties although they have certain selfish interests in common), there is little question in my mind that many representatives of the GOP all too often have mounted a weak opposition to the left or none at all.

I also wrote a post recently that asked how far the right should go in playing hardball. I notice today that the same question has been taken up by Josh Hammer in this essay. An excerpt follows:

A decade ago, around the time liberals were boycotting Chick-fil-A en masse due to the devout Christian beliefs and strongly held views on marriage of the company’s founder and managers, many on the Right refused to countenance reciprocating with such “nasty” tactics, preferring instead to seize an illusory moral high ground. But concerted economic boycotts, it turns out, work: They are effectual punishments of one’s cultural enemies using the undoubtedly legitimate means of market pressure. The Right, it turns out, can mass-organize just like the Left can. Perhaps Anheuser-Busch will see the folly of its ham-fisted attempt to foist the transgender agenda down the throats of its disapproving — “fratty,” to use the Bud Light vice president of marketing’s now-infamous description — customer base. Or perhaps it won’t. Regardless, the dramatic and successful pushback, which continues almost two weeks later, underscores that the only way out is through.

Regardless of whether it’s enough (and I don’t think it is), I do see signs that the right has hardened in its fight against the left. Another example would be the recent behavior of Kevin McCarthy.

And here’s something a bit interesting. In the “Republicans hang tough” thread, commenter “Eeyore” mused:

The question is whether they’ll start to peel away. I wonder who’ll be first.

To which commenter “Art Deco” quickly replied:

The smart money says…
“1. Sleaza Murkowski
“2. Pierre Delecto”

The latter is, of course, an alias Mitt Romney once used.

Good guesses. But so far, no one appears to have budged.

And what did Mitt Romney aka Delecto actually say on the matter? This:

“They’d like Republicans to help them speed the appointment of more liberal justices? Yes — when hell freezes over,” he said.

Now, you might say that’s only rhetoric. But it’s certainly uncharacteristic rhetoric from the likes of Romney, and it’s been backed up by behavior.

So far.

And yes, a great deal more has to happen before the right manages to effectively counter the left, and it is by no means certain that any of it will be successful. But still, it’s a wee bit encouraging.

The post On the GOP and fighting the left appeared first on The New Neo.

Why was our intelligence community caught flat-footed about Putin’s moves? That’s a question being asked on Capitol Hill, and in Politico…

The tone was set by our president and his entire administration, followed slavishly by most liberal journalists, who have spent a great deal of time and effort saying what a pussycat Putin is, and ridiculing as outdated (Obama to Romney: “the 1980s are calling to ask for their foreign policy back”) anyone who might say otherwise. This began in 2008 with mockery of Sarah Palin, and reached a crescendo with Romney during the 2012 campaign.

To take any other scenario seriously would mean giving credence to those troglodytes Palin and Romney, agreeing with them instead of mocking them, and admitting that the world hadn’t turned into the fantasyland that suited Obama’s, Democrats’, and the MSM’s own rhetorical and political purposes.

A day prior to that, I had written a post that quoted this Slate article as follows (written by David Weigel, not on the right):

Romney was right. Why was Obama wrong?…

Romney really did maintain a more cynical long-run view of Russia than Obama did. Obama saw Russia as a declining power that he could do business with, as he did with the New START treaty. Romney, as he laid out in his pre-campaign book No Apology, saw Russia as a recovering power. Its “rediscovered ambition for superpower status,” he wrote, “is fueled by its massive energy reserves.” This wasn’t as sustainable as China’s free-enterprise empire strategy, but it was an empire strategy, and that was enough to get spooked about.

Say what you will about Romney. He’s been a bitter disappointment in many ways, but when he’s right, he’s right.

It wasn’t that hard to see at the time that he was right, either. But Democrats and the MSM praised Obama highly for his sophomoric snark. And that’s even more common today, isn’t it? Sophomoric snark passing for wisdom among our “elite.”

And that’s on their better days.

The post Looking back: remember that debate between Romney and Obama about Russia? appeared first on The New Neo.

Note also Obama’s affect when Romney questions him as to whether he really means to assert that he called it an act of terror the day after the attack. The camera zooms in on Obama as the president says to Romney “Please proceed, Governor,” and then cuts away just after the fleeting ghost of a faint smile crosses Obama’s face (mostly in his eyes; it occurs at about 1:22). It is at that point that Obama summarily orders Crowley to “check the transcript” (no “please” for Obama), and she immediately answers that Obama did say it that way. Not only do we know that assertion is false, but she didn’t even seem to have time to check any transcript between Obama’s request and her answer.

So, to recap: Obama made a false claim (that he had called Benghazi an act of terror the day after the attack), Romney challenged him, Obama told the moderator to “check the transcript,” and she asserted that Obama was correct (without her actually checking a transcript, but just by waving some papers around).

Last night, here’s how the fracking exchange went:

“We’re going to have the greatest economy in the world,” Trump said. “But if you want to kill the economy, get rid of your oil industry. And what about fracking? Now we have to ask him about fracking.”

“I have never said I oppose fracking,” Biden claimed.

“You said it on tape,” Trump fired back.

“I—show the tape, put it on your website,” Biden yelled. “The fact of the matter is he’s flat lying.”

Within a matter of moments, Trump’s team tweeted out a video of Biden making the remarks.

Last night, the moderator didn’t jump in to correct Biden, and of course we wouldn’t expect her to do so, since Biden is the Democrat. But Biden responded to Trump by saying the equivalent of “get the transcript,” and here’s Trump’s tweet with the video:

Here you go @JoeBiden! pic.twitter.com/UBqPJT85Pt

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 23, 2020

It’s also instructive to see the way this is now being spun by the left – that what Joe really had meant each time he said he would ban fracking was to ban it just on federal lands, or over a very long period of time, or whatever they think might soften what he said and how he lied about it.

In this case, the debate moderator Welker didn’t ask the question and didn’t participate in the exchange, unlike Crowley in 2012. In 2020, it was Trump who brought up the issue and Trump who provided the evidence in real time.

The post The fracking fracas during last night’s debate was a bizarro reversed version of 2012’s Candy Crowley incident appeared first on The New Neo.

Hanson compares that to media bias today as exhibited – just to take two examples – by Chris Wallace and John Roberts. The entire article is well worth reading.

Those of you who’ve read this blog for many years may remember that I did some exhaustive analysis of what happened during that Crowley exchange. You may want to stroll down memory lane and revisit a few of those posts, this one and especially this one and this one (the latter has a video embedment that no longer works, but it’s a reference to the moments I highlighted in that second link, which contains a video of the debate cued up to start with the exchange in question).

Looking back on all of it – on the full Crowley treatment that was given Romney – I feel even more strongly now that the episode was at least somewhat pre-arranged between Obama and Crowley. When you study the details, it’s almost impossible to escape that conclusion.

The post The full Crowley appeared first on The New Neo.

Well, well, well. Mitt Romney is going to vote to convict Trump:

In a stunning break with his party, Romney became the first Republican to say that he would find Trump guilty of an impeachment charge, with his remarks coming just hours before the Senate was set to vote.

“The grave question the Constitution tasks senators to answer is whether the president committed an act so extreme and egregious that it rises to the level of a high crime and misdemeanor. Yes, he did,” Romney said in remarks on the Senate floor.

Not a single GOP senator was in attendance for Romney’s somber remarks…

I wonder if there’s a single person (except the left and NeverTrumpers, of course) who will see Romney’s vote as anything other than pure revenge and an attention-getting device. Ah, how the left will love him and laud him as the only Republican patriot and hero!

That seems to be the attention he craves. Obviously Romney doesn’t care about being re-elected. My guess is that this sort of opportunity was the main reason he decided to run for the Senate from a safely red state – to hurt Trump. Senators serve for 6 years, so the state of Utah is stuck with him for a while, and so are we. He’s going to be there till 2024. I don’t think there’s any way to recall a senator, either.

Very very sad, I think.

[NOTE: I see that Schiff says Romney is displaying “moral courage.” Coming from Schiff, that’s rather humorous.]

The post Romney will vote to convict Trump appeared first on The New Neo.

But it’s not at all clear to me that the Democrats will win much if anything by pressing for more witnesses and calling Bolton. Yes, the Democrats’ plan is most definitely to “Kavanaugh” the proceedings. But how did that work out on the end for the Democrats? Yes, it may yield some further grist for the Democrats’ mills. But I doubt it will deflect a single one of Trump’s supporters, and it will open the door for the GOP to call more witnesses, too. That might lead to the GOP’s own bombshells.

After all, we know a lot about what the Democrats’ witnesses might say. Some of it actually exonerates the president. We don’t know what Hunter Biden or the-whistleblower-who-must-not-be-named would say, and it could definitely open up several cans of worms for the Democrats. When last I checked, it’s McConnell who’s in control of who to call if the majority votes to call more witnesses. And even Mitt Romney has now come out in favor of the Republicans getting some witnesses of their own:

Sen. Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah who wants former national security adviser John Bolton to testify in the president’s impeachment trial, said he supports Republican witnesses being called too.

When the Washington Examiner asked on Tuesday if former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter should be called as well, Romney responded, “I think if you heard from one side, you probably ought to have the chance to hear from a witness from the other side.”…

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, told reporters Tuesday he is confident that 51 votes exist in the conference to call witnesses on the GOP list if necessary.

“I’ll make a prediction. There’ll be 51 Republican votes to call Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, the whistleblower, and the DNC staffer [Alexandra Chalupa],” he said.

Senate Republicans said Monday that any deal to call for witnesses will include Hunter Biden.

“If we need to hear from more people, it’s going to be a group of individuals,” said Sen. John Barrasso, a Republican from Wyoming, on Monday.

This entire push could boomerang and hit the Democrats squarely in the face.

The post Impeachment: to call witnesses or not to call witnesses? appeared first on The New Neo.

I have to say that I’m fascinated by the chose of moniker. First, there’s “delecto” from the Latin for ” delight, charm, please.” And Pierre, of course, is the French variant of Peter but which originally meant “rock” or “stone” in French.

And then there’s the possibility of a pun on the Latin phrase “in pari delicto,” which is a legal term meaning “two persons or entities who are equally at fault,” where the court decides not to rule in favor of either of them.

For most people, though, it might conjure up another Latin phrase, “in flagrante delicto.” You all know that one, I bet: “in the very act of committing a misdeed : red-handed; in the midst of sexual activity.”

And now I’ll just tiptoe quietly away…

The post On the delights of Delecto appeared first on The New Neo.

He lacks the common touch completely, which is probably the main reason he lost in 2012 and helped us get four more years of Obama. Although Romney was far from my favorite of the rather anemic choices available to the GOP in 2012, once he was nominated I supported him fully against Obama, as I would today if it were to somehow happen all over again.

In that sense – the “consider the alternative” sense – it was an easy thing to do. It was easy in another sense, too, because on a personal level Romney was and still is the kind of guy who doesn’t cheat on his wife or beat his kids. The worst thing Democrats could come up with in that sense was a prank in high school and putting his windshield-equipped dog carrier (with the dog in it) on the roof of his car for a 12-hour road trip.

Romney the politician was another story. It’s not true that he didn’t fight back at least somewhat in 2012 or that he didn’t criticize Obama. He did both, as I detailed in posts at the time. But he did not do so effectively, and not at all at especially critical times (the awful Candy Crowley intervention in debate number two being a prime example). I think Romney would have been a mediocre but okay president and a much better one than Obama (a low bar, to be sure), but he had and still has no big constituency and no large following, although he seems to be aiming to be the leader of the rather small but vocal group of GOP NeverTrumpers.

In addition, I think that Trump fills Romney with personal revulsion to go with the political envy. Trump is the un-Romney: he’s richer than Romney (hard to accomplish, because Romney is plenty rich) but has the common touch, he’s relaxed in front of the camera rather than stiff, he’s cheated on wives, and he fights. He fights and fights and fights, rather than turning the other cheek. Plus, Trump won the election and Romney lost, and then Trump did some public humiliating of Romney.

It’s with that sad background that I’ll (briefly) take up the subject of Romney’s speech criticizing Trump’s decision on Turkey and the Kurds. It’s certainly possible to criticize that decision, and as I’ve said several times we don’t know how this will work out or not work out. But I’ve read the speech, and the fact that Romney calls the Kurds an “ally” and says that we are therefore abandoning that ally to our dishonor and shame, and yet doesn’t mention that it is Turkey that is actually an ally of ours (NATO, for example) in the formal sense, seems to be a major major omission of a vital fact. Talk about simplifying the matter!

The post Romney wants to be the leader of the NeverTrumpers appeared first on The New Neo.