Schumer lets us know he wants the Iran deal to go through

The New Neo Posted on by

Why do I say that? Because of this Politico piece entitled “Chuck Schumer working the phones on Iran.”

Now, if you were to stop there, you might assume that Schumer is trying to get other Democrats to agree with him to block the Iran deal. But you would be wrong—as the subtitle of the piece makes clear, “He calls colleagues to explain his decision and assure them he will not be whipping opposition.”

So the message has to be: “I’m going to vote this way because I have to in order to please my constituents, but I don’t want you to vote the same way and I’ll do nothing to either persuade you to come over to my side or stop you from voting against me. What’s more, when I take over Harry Reid’s position I won’t take it out on you for disagreeing with me.”

This is the way it will go down:

Schumer, though, is not lobbying his colleagues to vote against the agreement when the Senate takes up a “resolution of disapproval” next month, several undecided senators said during interviews. The disapproval resolution is expected to win the 60 votes needed to overcome any Democratic filibuster.

The real question, however, is whether President Barack Obama can rally the 34 senators he needs to uphold a veto of the resolution. Right now, the Senate vote is too close to call, although Obama’s support for a veto override appears more solid among House Democrats, with three more coming out on Tuesday in favor of the agreement.

Prediction: the override will fail.

When it does, I’m wondering whether the Senate will then vote on it as a treaty, in which case it will not be approved. That is of interest to me in terms of whether the GOP shows any spine. But as I’ve written before, even if that were somehow to happen, Obama would ignore it and say it’s not a treaty. And I believe he would win any challenge on that in the Supreme Court.

The varsity versus the JV: remember Claire McCaskill and Todd Akin?

The New Neo Posted on by

Claire McCaskill certainly remembers, because (as was strongly suspected even at the time) she helped engineer Akin’s win in the 2012 Republican primary for senator in Missouri, since she was well aware he’d be a weaker opponent against her than his major opposition, John Brunner.

Now she has published an article in Politico describing some of the details of her machinations. It’s an excerpt from a memoir of hers that’s just come out:

It was August 7, 2012, and I was standing in my hotel room in Kansas City about to shotgun a beer for the first time in my life. I had just made the biggest gamble of my political career””a $1.7 million gamble””and it had paid off. Running for reelection to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat from Missouri, I had successfully manipulated the Republican primary so that in the general election I would face the candidate I was most likely to beat. And this is how I had promised my daughters we would celebrate.

McCaskill describes how she had done polling and research that led her to conclude that Akin—who at the time was polling poorly and was unlikely to win the primary—would be her weakest opponent and relatively easy to defeat. The rest of the article describe how she went about trying to help him get nominated; please read the whole thing, replete with details such as this:

As it turned out, we spent more money for Todd Akin in the last two weeks of the primary than he spent on his whole primary campaign.

If we were going to spend that kind of money on ads for Akin, I wanted to get him nominated and start disqualifying him with independent voters at the same time. By that prescription, our ad would have to include Akin’s statement that Obama was a “menace to civilization” and that Akin had said of himself that he was “too conservative” for Missouri. This presentation made it look as though I was trying to disqualify him, though, as we know, when you call someone “too conservative” in a Republican primary, that’s giving him or her a badge of honor.

There’s much much more. But we all know what happened in the end—Akin was nominated with McCaskill’s assist, put his foot in it big time and alienated voters, and McCaskill now sits in the Senate and will till at least 2018.

Her piece has an air of very proud triumph, even though the events occurred three years ago. It also is a primer, a how-to for the future. My guess is that that’s why it’s being published now, as an election guide for the left and a reminder as to how it’s done. And you know what? If it happened again, the conservative electorate in Missouri and elsewhere would again fall right into the trap.

Here’s an interesting sidelight: Rick Hasen, an election law expert and professor, indicates that McCaskill may be admitting to acts that indicate she violated election law when she describes giving advice on tactics to the Akin camp through intermediaries she knew. MCaskill had decided that an ad showing a Huckabee endorsement for Akin would be golden for the Akin camp, which had unaccountably pulled it. She wanted Akin to win, and so she wanted that ad back up there, and this is what she did:

On the Thursday before the election, I called Ron Gladney, the husband of Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, a Republican from Missouri. I asked him if he could get a message to the Akin camp to put the Huckabee ad back up. Of course Gladney started laughing and asked, “Are you kidding?” “No,” I replied. “If he gets the Huckabee ad back up by Friday, he’s going to win.” I also placed a call to Michael Kelley, a Democratic Party and labor operative who was friends with a former Akin staffer, and asked him to convey the same message to the Akin camp. A short time later my campaign manager, Adrianne Marsh, got a call from the Akin campaign. The person on the line wanted to talk to our pollster. Adrianne called me, and I gave clearance, allowing Kiley to speak in broad generalities. Three hours later the Huckabee ad was back up.

For me, there are a lot of unanswered questions there. I get what McCaskill was doing, but what was Gladney thinking? He’s the husband of a Republican member of Congress, but is he perhaps a Democrat? Because if he’s a Republican, why would he not be more suspicious of what McCaskill was doing? In fact, his “Are you kidding?” response to McCaskill, and her response to him, indicated he knew full well that she was trying to orchestrate Akin’s win, and the only explanation for that would have been that she felt very confident she would beat him in the general. So what was Gladney’s motivation for co-operating? Was he a McCaskill supporter? Or was he so strongly pro-Akin that he thought Akin would be the best candidate against McCaskill despite whatever McCaskill thought? Or did he just not care?

And then there’s whoever it was from the Akin campaign who called McCaskill’s campaign manager back in order to speak to the McCaskill pollster. Their motives are more clear: even though they probably were suspicious of McCaskill’s motives, their job was to get Akin nominated and her pollster had information to help them do it. The fact that her motive was her conviction that Akin would be toast in the general was not their concern; I suppose they had faith (or they were paid to have faith) that Akin could surge in the general and beat her, no matter what she thought. It is also interesting that McCaskill had a lot more money than they, and since they couldn’t even afford polling, hers was the only polling information they had access to.

It was JV operation (Akins) versus varsity operation (McCaskill) all the way.

This is what Rick Hasen thinks about it:

Rep. [Justin] Amash contends this should count as illegal coordination, and I think this does raise a serious question about coordination. The Senator’s campaign was sending a message to the Akin campaign about what strategy to follow.

So, will possible charges against McCaskill ever be followed up? I think we know the answer: unlikely.

Top secret

The New Neo Posted on by

For a while now I’ve been ignoring the emerging information about Hillary Clinton’s use of her server for classified information. My assumption was that, no matter how incriminating the evidence, she would be protected from any serious repercussions.

So—what difference would it make?

Now I’m beginning to think that more news like this could in fact make a difference and mean that her baggage is just too weighty for even the Democrats and the MSM to drag around.

Maybe. Of course, as I wrote here, be careful what you wish for. Her replacement could be worse.

[NOTE: More here.]

Beauty at the Sunapee Fair

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been going to the Sunapee League of NH Craftsman Fair nearly every year for decades, and look forward to it with delight each time.

A juried fair with about 350 exhibitors in a series of large tents, the setting is a ski area in New Hampshire in the summer. There’s something about it that is just beautiful on a lovely August day or even a not-so-lovely one; I’ve even gone in light rain. I often meet a friend there who lives nearby, but this year she couldn’t make it and neither could anyone else I tried to rustle up, so like the Little Red Hen I did it myself.

The drive is long but extremely pleasant, especially as one gets within about thirty miles of the park and the mountains start coming into view. I always pass a couple of lakes, too. Sunday it was supposed to be overcast but the sun was out almost the whole time, not too hot and not too cool. And the Fair itself did not disappoint, not for an instant. But it never has.

It’s a riot of beauty and color, created by the dedication of a group of people who focus on the old-fashioned task of making objects by hand with skill and precision and a devotion to beauty. The vast majority of them succeed; I can only think of one or two exhibitors whose work is a tad bit schlocky.

Sometimes I don’t buy anything. They’re not giving this stuff away, after all. But this year I splurged a bit and purchased a couple of items.

Most of the exhibitors don’t seem especially focused on their websites, because when I looked them up I noticed that many are in a state of some disrepair, with only a couple of forlorn photos. But I thought I’d show you some of the better and most interesting ones.

Here’s a very strange necklace that is something like one I purchased, only mine doesn’t have that metal “x” on the wood. All of this woman’s stuff (her name is Kathleen Dustin) is extremely expensive, but this one was considerably less so. It gives me a very Zen-like feel, and I could use a bit more serenity these days:

necklace

Take a look at the entire website. Everything there is very unusual but beautifully done and definitely an eye-catching conversation piece. Here’s one of her polymer (clay) purses:

purse

Here’s another artist from the Fair, Ira Frost. I will say at the outset that his work isn’t especially to my taste (and it’s mega-expensive) but I find it fascinating and I am lost in admiration for his astounding carving skill. These pieces are all painted woodcarvings, and they look even better in person:

kestrel

owl

owlwing

woodpecker2

You can find an almost endless supply of photos of his work here.

Here’s another artist I like, Matt Brown. These are woodblocks that are made by the traditional hanga method. They are much more beautiful in person than in the photos. I own this one; bought it many years ago; it’s more dramatic than this, because the dark is actually much darker:

AlongFranconia2nd200

As I said, a lot of the artists don’t have fully functional webpages with good photos. And often the photos don’t do the work justice. The Fair has everything, and I never have enough time to see it all, no matter how much time I allow. If you’re ever in New England in August, hie yourself there.

John Hinderaker on the plight of the unarmed perpetrator

The New Neo Posted on by

Excellent, excellent article. Here’s an excerpt:

This is the point I really want to make: the constant emphasis on police shootings of *unarmed* men that we see in the press is, for the most part, crazy. If you are a perp, or a suspect, or an inoffensive person walking down the street, you may be unarmed, but the police officer is not. Nor, in most cases, will he have any immediate way to know whether you are armed or not. If you attack him, what do you expect him to do? Challenge you to an arm-wrestling match? He is entitled to use deadly force to defend himself. Attacking a police officer rarely ends well. Likewise with fleeing a police officer who is ordering you to stop.

If there is a problem here, it does not demand a thorough revamping of American police practices. Rather, it suggests that those who have influence with a small demographic group”“6% of the population, according to the Post”“impress upon them that they should not attack police officers under any circumstances, and if told to stop, they should stop. If they put their hands up, they are not going to get shot.

This makes the point that should be obvious to all but has somehow gotten obscured by all the post-Brown propagandist verbiage, which is that a police officer can’t tell whether a belligerent aggressive suspect is armed or not unless he/she is brandishing the weapon in full sight. If you begin to attack a police officer, that officer can’t ascertain what hidden weapons you might have, but must defend him/herself and do it quickly and effectively. Officers are not required to be martyrs, although the left would like to pretend they should be.

Just one quibble with Hinderaker: the press is not crazy when it writes these preposterous things. It is purposeful. The press wants to guide you in a certain direction and believes that you don’t have the brains to see the fallacy of its argument, and in a large number of cases the press is correct about this.

I would also like to add something. Hinderaker writes that “If they put their hands up, they are not going to get shot” should be a message taught to all those who would otherwise defy the police and try to attack them. I believe that most of these people already have heard it, and perhaps were taught it by their parents. However, they choose to defy that advice for a number of possible reasons: macho bravado, knowledge of guilt of crime and fear of apprehension, and/or being high on drugs and/or alcohol. What’s more, the “hands up, don’t shoot” crowd has perpetrated a related lie about Michael Brown, who never said or did any such thing. For some, their motivation is to get the opposite message across than the one that Hinderaker suggests should be spread around. One effect of the “hands up, don’t shoot” lie is to tell would-be perpetrators that they’re better off defying a cop than surrendering, because it won’t help them to put their hands up since the cop will shoot them anyway. So the covert message is that they may as well try to attack the police officer (or run), who would just as soon shoot them as not no matter what they do.

In addition, if the person happens to be killed by a police officer as a result, it wouldn’t be so bad for the movement because it would garner more publicity and become another cause célé¨bre and grist for the publicity mill.

And then there was Sanders

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “physicsguy” has an observation and a question:

Given what I’m seeing this morning about his west coast trip, I’m beginning to think we all need to worry a lot more about Sanders than HRC. A declared socialist and drawing huge crowds”¦I don’t like to think about what this means for the US. We all keep talking about the “drive over the cliff”; maybe we already did that and are now in free fall.

Neo: what’s your take on Sanders??

I agree that Sanders is a force to be reckoned with, and we discount him at our peril. Unlike the paucity of Bush-supporters in my life, I’m acquainted with a lot of Sanders-supporters.

A lot. After all, I’m in New England, and here he matches the viewpoint of a great many people, especially among those liberals who have become disaffected with Hillary and still think Obama’s a great guy who has done wonderful things for the country.

Sigh.

I consider the election of de Blasio in New York as a portent of possible things to come with Sanders, who is somewhat of the same ilk, although older (and Jewish). I would never discount him, and although I don’t think he could win the election, it would not shock me if he was nominated and if he did win. The left is very strong right now in this country. The electorate is somewhat like the slowly-boiled frog in terms of socialism: many people have gotten used to the idea and it no longer frightens them, even if they don’t understand it very well. Sanders has that 60s-ish appeal; let’s all do good in the world! Make peace not war!

So yes, Sanders is one of those “be careful what you wish for” candidates.

Let’s talk about polling

The New Neo Posted on by

One thing I’ve noticed is that all of the post-debate polls I’ve located so far (except two that only deal with Iowa; see this and this) are online polls.[* see below]

Now, they’re not the sort of online polls that have no science whatsoever to them, where anyone can vote over and over and they’re easy to game (usually by Paul-supporters, although I don’t see them having the same enthusiasm for Rand as they did for Ron). These recent post-debate online post-debate polls are better than that; for example, they try to weight their subjects as regards party affiliation, etc. But as unreliable as ordinary polls can be, these tend to be even more unreliable.

So I doubt that we know all that well who has really gotten a bump from the debate, who has fallen, and who has remained the same, although we know what people on blogs are saying and what the pundits are writing. We also know whose coffers are getting an infusion of money (Fiorina) and who is going broke (Perry, who I predict will drop out fairly soon if that report is correct).

Putting that aside, here’s a question I’d like to see answered in future polls: who did you vote for in the last presidential election? I have a completely untested theory that quite a few of those who say their favorite candidate is Trump and that they will vote for him in the primary are people who previously had been so turned off by politics and the GOP that they quit voting a while ago. I would predict that perhaps a third of them hadn’t voted in 2012 (or wrote in a candidate), and hadn’t planned to vote in 2016 except for Trump’s candidacy.

Another question that interests me regarding polling is one that was broached by commenter “beth”:

There is an interesting thing about these polls and even Steven Crowder has picked up on it, can you find anyone who says they are voting for Bush? I can’t. Do any of you know anyone? How in the heck is he in 2nd and 3rd place?

Beth is voicing what I’d call the Pauline Kael fallacy (actually, the pseudo fallacy, because Kael was somewhat misquoted). Just because you or I don’t know a single person who is supporting Bush doesn’t mean such people don’t exist. Actually, I hardly know anyone who votes Republican to begin with, but the few I know are not Bush-supporters.

However, Bush has a lot of money, so somebody out there likes him. There are still quite a few moderate Republicans around, and in fact I know one of them quite well, although I haven’t talked to her recently and I certainly haven’t talked to her about the election. But she is what used to be known as a “country-club Republican.” She was raised a Republican in a very country-clubby family and still lives that sort of life, for the most part. She’s also what you might call a Republican LIV; doesn’t pay all that much attention to politics but almost always votes and votes Republican.

As I said, I don’t talk to her often and haven’t talked to her this election cycle. But if I had to guess, she’s a Bush supporter. She’s not alone in her political viewpoints and background, either. That’s where his support comes from, I believe—that and the Chamber of Commerce-ers (a certain amount of overlap there, I’d guess). I believe the polls are accurately reflecting those groups, although they’re not groups whose representatives you find on blogs all that often. They’ve got better things to do, especially in the summer: golf, sailing, drinks on the patio, you know the drill.

I’ll have to remember to ask her next time I see her, because now I’ve gotten curious.

So, do you know any Bush-supporters?

[ADDENDUM: Nate Silver has an interesting take on the Trump polling figures and what they mean.]

[* Commenter “jack” has offered a link to a post-debate Rasmussen poll.]

Yes, I’ve been writing a lot about Donald Trump lately

The New Neo Posted on by

Why?

It’s not just that he’s been the talk of the news cycle for a while now, although he has. It’s not just that he engenders a lot of discussion in the comments section, although he does. It’s not just that he’s a flamboyant personality who knows how to seize the spotlight, although he is.

It’s that his candidacy has acted as a sort of plaque discloser for some problems on the right that I’ve noticed festering—and often exploding—for many many years. I summarized some of what I’ve written on the subject here, but suffice to say it’s not new although it’s reached a fever pitch.

Now might be a good time to revisit this prediction I made right before the 2012 election:

One thing I believe is that, if Romney loses this election, the right will start tearing itself apart in anger. That’s another thing the left banks on, and””if indeed some of the polls are being rigged to favor Obama at present””it would also be one of the goals of such deception: to demoralize the right and cause the usual circular firing squad to begin. I already see some evidence of it in articles and comments from the right that accuse Romney of not wanting to win, of not going on the attack enough (as though that would elude the negative media spin), of not doing whatever it might be that the brilliant armchair strategists would be doing if they were running for president, an election they of course would win by dint of their brilliant strategy. If Romney loses, the RINO theme will rise again undiminished, and the hatred of the “Republican establishment.”

And then the aftermath of the election of 2014, and the impotence of the Republican Congress in the face of Obama, has exacerbated the feelings of anger a thousandfold. I’ve written before many times about what I think about that Congress, so I won’t repeat it here.

Right now I’ll just add that all of this is fueling the Trump fervor. Separating out that anger, and channeling it in the best way possible in order to produce a result that isn’t destructive towards conservatism, and that doesn’t end up helping the election of Clinton (or Sanders) in 2016, is my goal in all of this.

Hey, I’ve got an idea! Let’s find something each candidate once did that was not to our liking and reject them all

The New Neo Posted on by

Let’s excoriate Ted Cruz for changing his mind on fast-track. Let’s do the same to both Rubio and Walker on amnesty. Let’s ignore their stated reasons for doing so. And by all means, let’s resurrect a post-9/11 speech Carly Fiorina gave fourteen years ago when as CEO of Hewlett-Packard she praised the ancient civilization of Islam (not the present one) in ways that very much reflected what George W. Bush was saying at the time, based on the work of Bernard Lewis and others. Let’s ignore everything else she’s said in recent years about Islamic terrorism, because of course that earlier speech on ancient Islam represents her real views on the matter of what to do with terrorists today.

And oh, while we’re at it, let’s ignore everything Donald Trump has said recently—not a few years ago or decades ago, but very recently—about matters such Pam Geller and how she “taunted” people and should have found something better to do than the “draw Mohammad” contest, as well as how single-payer health care in Canada is a great success. The statements about Geller were made by Trump in May of 2015, and the one about Canadian single-payer was made during the Fox debate this past Thursday.

If anyone other than Trump had said what Trump said in his answer about single payer last Thursday, conservatives (and even the “let it burn” crowd) would have rejected that person as a viable candidate. Health care insurance is a huge issue, not a tangential one, and Trump’s statement was recent, not years ago. Trump’s statement displayed an unfortunate but not uncharacteristic combination of error, misdirection, inconsistency, confusion, braggadocio, and vagueness (characteristics which also are on display in his policy on amnesty).

It seems obvious to me that, at least generally speaking, recent statements are more indicative of a candidate’s current thinking and judgment as well as his/her future plans than older ones are (and the older the statements, the less relevant they tend to be). In other words, to be clear, let me say that I care less about what Trump said 15 years ago about how great Canadian single-payer was than what he said just the other day. What’s more, certain subjects are far more important than others: for example, even if Fiorina happens to continue to think that Islamic civilization from the 800s to the 1600s was pretty inventive and creative (as she did in her HW speech from 14 years ago), that is relatively unimportant to me and evidence of very little as long as right now she speaks out against Islamic terrorism, calls it evil, and is determined to fight it. Which she does, conveying great conviction.

But perhaps even more importantly, I don’t understand this business of getting angry at a candidate for flip-flopping, otherwise known as changing one’s mind. To never change one’s mind is to risk being ossified, stubbornly clinging to outworn or outdated points of view in the light of new learning or new information. Of course, sometimes when people change their minds it is disingenuous. But that needs to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, using evidence from the candidate’s demeanor and history of betrayals or breaking his/her word. There’s nothing inherently disingenuous or wrong about changing one’s mind, however (take it from me; I’ve changed my mind on a lot more than they have).

Most people change. They change over time. They learn things. They realize things. They grow older and perhaps wiser (one hopes wiser). Our job is to sort out sincere changes from insincere manipulative ones, not to reject every single person who’s ever changed his or her mind, or believed or said something we are not in 100% agreement with. We are human beings, and the perfect is most definitely the enemy of the good.

But if you’re really determined to look back at what candidates were saying a decade and a half ago, and to hold it against them, let’s actually take a look at Donald Trump’s words on health insurance policy back in 1999 and 2000 (and on abortion, if that’s a big issue for you):

“If you can’t take care of your sick in the country, forget it, it’s all over. I mean, it’s no good. So I’m very liberal when it comes to health care,” he said. “I believe in universal health care. I believe in whatever it takes to make people well and better.”

Asked if he thought it was an entitlement, Trump affirmed he did indeed believe it was one from birth.

“I think it is. It’s an entitlement to this country, and too bad the world can’t be, you know, in this country. But the fact is, it’s an entitlement to this country if we’re going to have a great country.”

Speaking with The Advocate that year, Trump said he’d fund his universal health care plan with an increase in corporate taxes.

“I would put forward a comprehensive health care program and fund it with an increase in corporate taxes,” Trump said.

In his 2000 book, The America We Deserve, Trump also spoke favorably of the Canadian health care system and said he “we need, as a nation, to reexamine the single-payer plan, as many individual states are doing.”

On Dateline NBC that year, Trump also mentioned he was “totally for choice” when it came to abortion.

“I hate the concept of abortion,” said Trump. “I hate””, I hate anything about abortion, and yet, I’m totally for choice. I think you have no alternative, too.

Trump had a short third-party run for the presidency in 2000, by the way, and his support for single-payer was clearly stated:

…I would press for universal health care…I would put forward a comprehensive health care program and fund it with an increase in corporate taxes…I like the Canadian system, although their health care is not the best. If you combine their system with the quality of our health care, we could provide cradle-to-grave health care for everyone.

I don’t know about you, but that indicates not only a support for single payer, and a lack of knowledge of the major flaws in the Canadian system, but a far more profound misunderstanding of (a) what the effects of increased corporate taxes high enough to fund single payer health care would be on the business life of the US; and (b) the inherent contradiction between our high quality of health care and a single payer system. Trump’s entire statement back then makes me wonder (and I can’t believe I’m saying this about Trump, of all people) if Trump understands the things that give capitalism its strength.

However, as I said earlier, I don’t care all that much what exact position Trump held on single-payer fifteen years ago—that is, if he could give a cogent and intelligent reason for a change of mind, and showed understanding of the entire system and a clarity of thinking about it then or now. Quite simply, he did not show these fundamentals then and far more importantly he does not show them now, and he demonstrated that in the debate last Thursday.

About Trump’s “blood out of her whatever” remark

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m getting rather tired of talking about Trump. But he certainly knows how to get publicity. For example, there’s a predictable furor right now about Trump’s remark that during the debate Megyn Kelley had “blood coming out of her whatever.”

But IMHO the discussion focuses on the wrong thing, as these furors so often do.

To clarify: I don’t care whether Trump was insinuating that Kelly was having her period, or if he instead meant that there was blood spurting from her nose or her ears or her—whatever. I don’t much care if he was being sexist, although he might have been and that’s a drawback in the world in which the Democratic charge of “war on women” is able to stick and garner votes. Actually, however, I’m more inclined to consider him pretty much an equal-opportunity insulter who is perfectly capable of saying something roughly similar about a man.

What do I think this particular discussion should be focusing on? Just this: in this instance and in others, Trump has shown himself to be remarkably thin-skinned, and the quality of his attacks is simple schoolyard stuff, mostly name-calling and bluster failing to coverup the fact that he doesn’t have a substantive retort. He seems almost incapable of demonstrating qualities I would want in any president: logic, clarity of thought, pointed and convincing attack and argument. When under pressure, nearly all the man has is savage, mocking bluster, the more outrageous the better, although that does appeal to those who hunger for it.

But that’s not a demonstration of strength, it’s a demonstration of weakness. And Trump continues to remind me of none other than Obama in his propensity to strike out at criticism with low blows, and of course with the extent of his narcissism.

Let’s take a look at what Trump actually said about Kelly:

“Well, I just don’t respect [Megyn Kelly] as a journalist,” Trump told CNN via phone interview. “She gets out and she starts asking me all sorts of ridiculous questions.”

“You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes,” Trump continued, “blood coming out of her whatever.”

“In my opinion, she was off-base,” he concluded. “She’s a lightweight. I couldn’t care less about her.”

I have no idea what Trump meant by her “whatever,” although it certainly makes sense that some people think he was insinuating something about her menstrual cycle. But just for the sake of argument let’s take him at his word and stipulate that’s not what he meant at all. It (and his entire quoted reaction) remains a mindless response, devoid of substance, and that would be true whether it had been directed at a man. Kelly may be many things, but although her questions were not what I would have asked, they were not ridiculous, nor were they off-base, and she has proven time and again she’s no lightweight.

Nor is Trump the least bit convincing when he asserts he “couldn’t care less” about her. He very clearly does care.

More importantly, this was not an isolated incident of Trump’s inability to think of a criticism that isn’t basically a schoolyard taunt when he perceives he’s been shown to disadvantage by someone. Many of his supporters see this as an alpha male quality; I don’t see it that way at all. It’s the mark of a weak thinker and a weak person. Compare and contrast to someone like Reagan, an “alpha male” who skewered his opponents with class, dignity, and substance. Compare it even to someone like Newt Gingrich (who long-time readers here know is not one of my favorite politicians, to say the least), who actually is a fighter with the ability to not only strike out verbally but to use his brains while doing so.

Why support Trump when there are other non-establishment, bona fide conservatives in the race?

The New Neo Posted on by

Those people on the right who are mad at the establishment and continually frustrated by it, and are therefore supporting Trump, puzzle me for the following reason: this election cycle they finally have a very good chance to elect what they’re been saying they want, a stalwart conservative and/or political outsider who is a conservative, far more conservative than Donald Trump, and yet they are rejecting that chance.

That is why I see Trump support as an eruption of satisfying yet mindless anger more than anything else. If the support given to him were instead thrown behind a conservative, it is my opinion that that person would beat Jeb Bush and others for the nomination, hands down.

For example, there’s Ted Cruz. Cruz is not any sort of establishment insider. He is in his very first term as Senator, having been elected in 2012 as a Tea Party candidate after primarying the establishment candidate, and with the support of anti-establishment types like Mark Levin.

Before that, Cruz basically had a career as a lawyer, including as associate deputy AG in the DOJ and Texas Solicitor General. In the latter capacity, he was the lawyer who pled the Heller case before the Supreme Court (successfully, I might add) and won a case arguing the constitutionality of the Ten Commandments monument, as well as one involving redistricting in Texas—all conservative causes.

Cruz is not only a very brilliant man, but in addition to that his conservative credentials are impeccable. The GOP establishment in DC hates him just about as much as Trump supporters hate the GOP establishment. He’s hard-hitting, outspoken, and articulate in discussing conservative causes. He has also kept his campaign promises to the right at the cost of a great deal of personal criticism in the press and from the party.

So, what’s the problem with Cruz for you? Truly, what’s the problem? Why aren’t you all supporting him? I’m very serious about this question. He would seem to be the perfect candidate.

Then there’s Carly Fiorina, whose credentials are nowhere near what Cruz’s are. But her ability to communicate a similar degree of fight as Trump is coupled with more brains and delivered with style and flair and class without sacrificing force. Her arguments are nearly unanswerable (as you could see from that Chris Matthews takedown). What’s more, as a woman she is uniquely positioned to do two things that Trump couldn’t do nearly as well: argue with Hillary without looking like a bully, and appeal to women. She is far more conservative, with a far more conservative history than Trump, and what’s more she’s very rich herself and not as beholden to her donors as most. In addition, she is not a Washington insider or a member of the GOP establishment, and has never held elective office although she did do better than most conservatives in California when she challenged Boxer for her seat. So if for some reason Cruz doesn’t suit you, why not support her and send some money her way?

Oh, but maybe if Trump is elected he’ll just say “you’re fired!” to the entire Republican Congress. Is that your fantasy? Or maybe it’s that Trump got so much money he’ll foot the bill to build the Mexican wall himself? And to buy the land along the border, too? Is he such a leader that he can wave a magic wand and make it happen? Because I see absolutely no leadership qualities in him; I see a blustering, bombastic narcissist with very thin skin. Do you also like his “me, me, me” approach, a braggadocio that annoys you so much when Obama does it? Because to me it sounds very similar.

I don’t see how Trump could get elected, if he were somehow to be nominated. Maybe you disagree with my prognostication, or maybe you don’t care if he’s elected or not. Maybe it’s enough to you to try to keep some RINO from being elected instead, and to you they’re all RINOs, even Cruz who’s spent a great deal of his life fighting for conservative causes and fighting for them well. Maybe the main thing you want to do is to punish the GOP with a loss. Ah, that’ll show them!! Because your abandonment of a candidate like Cruz, the truly conservative alternative, means that someone like Jeb could easily get the nomination instead. Then you’ll complain, and blame the GOP for nominating such a loser when instead you might have gotten behind Cruz and made him a winner, as happened in Texas.

In sum, it seems to me that in your anger you are stabbing yourselves in the back. This requires a certain amount of gymnastics, but it can be accomplished nevertheless.

Caroline Glick on the Obama, the Iran deal, and the Jews

The New Neo Posted on by

Caroline Glick writes:

…Obama’s appeasement policy toward Iran has been going on since he took office six-and-a-half years ago…

Every time Obama has sided with the mullahs against domestic opponents he has played the Jew card in one way or another. He has blown more anti-Semitic dog whistles than many in Washington even realized existed.

Now the stakes are far higher than a mere sanctions bill. Obama has gotten his deal with Iran. And he’ll be damned if he allows it to go down.

So it is open season on Israel and its supporters.

This all could have been predicted in 2008 by anyone who took a look at Obama’s history. Therefore, those who excoriate Jews for nevertheless supporting Obama in 2008 and 20012 have a point. But please remember that “the Jewish vote” contains a huge number of secular Jews who are not only not religious but whose “faith” amounts to leftism, and that the left has become strongly anti-Israel for the last forty-five or so years. Talking about “the Jewish vote” as though it had anything to do with Judaism or support of Israel is like including everyone who was born into a Christian family but left the Christian church in “the Christian vote.”

That aside, Obama is also a liar and a double-crosser, and he takes the Jews for fools and patsies and marks:

In the president’s words, opposition to his deal comes “partly from the $20 million that’s being spent lobbying against the bill,” and “partly from the same columnists and former administration officials that were responsible for getting us into the Iraq war.”

One of the ironic things about this statement is that while AIPAC studiously avoided taking a position on the Iraq war, (while both of Obama’s secretaries of state and his vice president supported it), two years ago Obama strong-armed AIPAC ”“ against the wishes of its members ”“ to lobby Congress to support his plan to bomb regime targets in Syria. He then left AIPAC high and dry, with its credibility in tatters, when he changed his mind at the last minute and did nothing…

The point is demonization…By casting aspersions on the motives and character of his opponents Obama seeks to end debate on the merits of his plan in order to force Democrats to support it.

And that, more than anything, is why it’s at least a possibility that Obama may actually be genuinely angry at Chuck Schumer’s rejection of the deal rather than just pretend-angry, even if it ends up that there aren’t enough votes in Congress to make that rejection stick. Schumer not only said no to the deal, but he composed a defense of his “no” position that makes it clear that he has good reasons for opposing it, and he is one of the most prominent Democrats in Congress.

Schumer’s position legitimizes opposition to the Iran deal by Democrats, at least in the eyes of some of the public. The rest will just dismiss him as a Jew with dual loyalty, a position that Obama has hinted at for years for American Jews who oppose his policies.