Politicians Field Guide: The Moderate In The Race

Elon Musk illustrated the truth for many in America’s political “middle”:

I’m not in “the middle”, by any means. I used to call myself “center right”, but these days I am proud to call myself a Paleocon, from the “let’s get back to the Sharon Statement” school of paleoconning.

Trump from 2016 to 2020 governed largely, but far from consitently, as a conservative; he secured the border, exerted productive pressure to support US interests overseas, and cut a crap-load of regulations. He also blew up the deficit – just as Dubya and Lightworker before him, and not nearly as badly as Joe “Obama 2.0” Biden have. Never mind his Democrat origin story – I have one too – but he’s a populist standup comic, not an activist. He can, and is, publicly on any side of any issue that suits him. No different than his opposition.

But as the Biden campaign settles in to try to battle back from polls that, at the moment, seem a little encouraging to Trump, it’s worth asking – what is “the center” in America today? Or, more accurately, where are the American people as a mean, and who is closer to it?

IssuePollingBidenTrump
The BorderTrump +21Mayorkas: “The Administration bears no responsibility for the problems”. Illegal immigration is destroying the country. Build the wall.
AbortionTrump +5. 16 week ban has 48% approval. Biden supports taxpayer-funded abortion until and after birth and repealing the Hyde Amendment. Trump opposed a federal ban and the six-week ban, and is casually pushing the 16 week ban.
National SecurityTrump +6Do we even need to go into it? “Make America strong again”. “Today, [the world] laughs at America”
CrimeTrump +13Crime is a result of “systemic racism”. “We should execute…” fentanyl smugglers.
InflationTrump +18“Inflation is transitory, so let’s spend our way out of it” Time to reel in the spending – but don’t touch
Jobs and the economyTrump +5. Also – in 10/14, interventionism was nine points behind “government does too much”Tripling down on “Bidenomics” – spending our way to Pointing out, correctly, that Bidenomics is strangling the American dream.
Climate Pew, 10/23: 30+ support phasing out fossil fuels Administration is committed to “net zero by 2050”“Drill, baby, drill!”
Israel vs. Hamas82% of Americans support Israel. 62% say any ceasefire must be contingent on release of the hostages. February 2024: “The hostages should be released, but…” Administration is actively undercutting the Israeli war cabinet supported by 80% of Israelis. Trump advocates revoking student visas for antsemitic students.
Ukraine54% of Americans support maintaining / increasing aid to UkraineBiden has no clear realistic end goal in sight. July 2023: “We’ll stay as long as it takes”, whatever that means. Trump supports increasing aid with the goal of bringing Putin to an “off ramp”, a negotiated settlement. February 2024: “Trump is the only president who hasn’t given Putin what he wants”.
NATO53% of Americans support NATOBIden has pushed NATO in no direction in particular. Trump pushes for NATO members to pay fair share, thus strengthening the alliance.
EducationBiden +2 (43-41) – hardly a mandate.Biden backs CRT, racial division. Promises cutting federal funding to school systems teaching CRT.

Say what you will about the value of moderation; I’m here to pull the conversation to the right however I can.

But if the center decides the election, then Trump might just have a shot.

Primary Motivations

On the one hand, I think optimism is extremely premature for Republicans. While some polling is showing deep divides in the Democrat party, we’ve heard this tune more that “Freebird” on KQRS. Democrats may kvetch and moan – they whined about Bill Clinton – but they, being essentially herd animals, always “come home” at election time.

But it looks like a lot of them will have to come home a looooong way this fall:

“Uncommitted” takes almost 20% of the DFL primary vote.

And that was only the half of it:

Looks bad for Biden?

For now, sure.

But don’t get fooled – they’ll get goaded, logrolled, gaslit, threatened, or just talk themselves back into line this fall. Trump (who easily skated through the GOP contest) will have a hard go it it, nationwide and here in Minnesota.

Haleyed

I don’t get the National Review hate – that might be worth a letter from Joe in and of itself.

Anywayt, Joe Doakes emails:

I know better than to read National Review Online but sometimes I can’t help myself.   The recent article about Nikki Haley reminds me why that’s such a dumb thing to do. 

I hate ‘gotcha’ questions.  They are inevitably out of context and intended for use in a slanted, partisan media campaign.  For instance (paraphrasing):

Q: What was the cause of the Civil War?

A: It was a dispute about who decides how a state will be run – the federal government or the people living in the state.  

Q: You didn’t mention slavery. 

A: Well, what do you want me to say about slavery?  That wasn’t the cause of the war.  

GOTCHA!!!!

Except she’s right.  Elimination of slavery was not the cause of the war.  We know this from two crucial pieces of history.  You can look it up and should, because almost everything being said today is wrong. 

First of all, if abolishing slavery was the reason for the war, why did four slave states – Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri – fight for the North?  If those states had wanted to abolish slavery in their state, they could have done it any time.  Instead, they joined the Union side to fight against the Secessionist side. Slavery was not the issue.  Secession from the Union was the issue.  

Second the publicity campaign to make the war about abolition of slavery came with the Emancipation Proclamation, announced long after the war was already going.  It only applied to the states in rebellion – NOT to the slave states in the Union – further evidence that the abolition of slavery was not the reason for starting the war in 1861, but was simply a tactic intended to divert attention from federal government over-reach to a high moral crusade of abolition which would justify Lincoln’s unconstitutional actions during the war.  

The historical evidence supports Haley but you can’t convince anybody of that today.  Slavery is everything and always the most important thing, to Liberals and RINOs alike.  Haley didn’t mention slavery so GOTCHA.  

Infuriating.

Joe Doakes no longer in Como Park

I’m going to stake out one (actually two, given that I don’t get the zing at NR) difference Joe.

“Secession was the issue”. And what were they seceding about?

  • “Preserving the Union” – and what was the political issue breaking up the union? Slavery.
  • “Economics” – And what was the economic issue? Competition between an industralizing society and an agrarian plantation society based around slavery.
  • “Why were border states exempt?” – For the same reason the US allied with a rogues gallery of dictators when it was in their interests.

“Abolishing slavery” wasn’t the reason for the war – and yet all of the reasons for the war were one degree of separation away from slavery.

So the real answer, as usual, is everyone is wrong.

The Company You Keep

As I’ve been noting for about eight years on this blog, I’m intensely ambivalent about Donald Triump.

His personality roils with traits I personally don’t care for.

But something about all the prosperity, peace and border security is looking good.

“Oh, Merg, so you just want someone who’ll make the trains run on time, yuk yuk”

Peace and security are legitimate jobs of a national government. Prosperity is the opposite of the “Fascist” dynamic you’re yukking about. And Trump at his wackiest didn’t approach the level of authoritarianism of any of Baraclk Obama’s three terms in office.

I’m on Team DeSantis [1],but if it came down to Biden, Harris or Newsom against Trump, I’d probably hold my nose and vote Trump.

The worst thing about Trump is that he, like Obama before him, is the center of a personality cult. And with Trump, soooooo many of the cultists are just so deeply dim:

Loomer – charitably described as “insane” – cites a piece on by David Greenberg, a Rutgers historian who’s never been mistaken for someone who’d throw a life ring to a conservative who fell overboard.

Bill Clinton infamously threw some of his more extreme supporters under the bus in his long forgotten”Sista Soulja” moment (in the the long-forgotten Sista Soulja”). Trump’s never gonna have a “Crazy Laura” moment.

If he did, I might have to hold my nose a little less hard.

[1] And yeah, I think in a just world Doug Burgum would be on the short list, but we don’t live in a just world.

The Next Big Thing

2022 was an upset and a good year at the polls for the DFL, largely on the strength of:

  • Hysteria about abortion, whipped up after the SCOTUS overturned Roe.
  • “Fully Funding Education” – a concept literally no DFLer could or would define.
  • …that’s about it.

In terms of divisive issues that turn out Democrats in droves, the big kahunas of recent years? They can’t re-overturn Roe, re-legalize pot, re-sanctify stalking and Munchausens Syndrome, re-legalize same sex marriage – and they got literally everything they asked for in education, so the schools should be “Fully Funded”, whatever that is.

So – let’s do some predicting.

What will the the next issue the DFL uses to try to panic their herds of ill-informed, uncritical, gullible, emotion-driven hysterical voter base to the polls?

Leave ’em in the comments.

The Ghouls Among Us

During the debate on the state’s #1 priority, Rep. Peggy Scott asked Rep. Skeletor when a baby becomes human.

Liebling’s response:

I’m going to park this is a post for 2024. The media will try to memory-hole this entire shameful episode. I may not be able to fix that, but in the little corner of the world I influence, this is going to be a topic in about 18 months.

Inevitable

DeSantis tops Trump in a new poll – and not by a little bit.

Emphasis added by me:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) leads former President Trump by 23 points among Republicans in a hypothetical GOP presidential primary, according to a poll released Tuesday. 

The USA Today-Suffolk University poll found that 56 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters prefer DeSantis, while only 33 percent would support Trump. More than 60 percent said they want a nominee who will continue Trump’s policies but is not Trump, while 31 percent want the former president to run. 

I don’t care about mean tweets. I do care very much about slashing regulation (and, since Trump didn’t do it, spending as well) and acting in the nation’s best interest.

I’m not interested in relitigating the 2020 election; rooting out the corruption that does exist, sure; barbering on about remedies that aren’t anywhere in the Consitution, not so much.

Most of all? I want to force the Democrats to defend themselves, their record, their squatting on American democracy, in 2024. Without Trump to deflect to, they fail.

Curious

Remember when Jesse Ventura got elected governor?

He had what appeared to be a “deer in the headlights” look about him – like he never expected to win the race, I had no idea what to do when he did. When he said “we shocked the world“, he was being inclusive.

There are those who say Donald Trump was in the same basic boat; He never really expected to become president. I don’t necessarily believe that.

But I could read this next story and wonder if he’s really thought all that terribly hard about running again.S

Stay with me, here.

Now, I was never a Donald Trump fan, but it would be dishonest not to say that he did some great things in office, and punched way above his weight on many levels.

One of his greatest achievements? The sentencing reforms he drove halfway through his term, reducing federal sentences for petty drug distribution convictions and renegotiating sentences imposed during the insanely oversentenced crack epidemic, started breaking the log jam of the black vote.

This was one of his announcements last night:

Is he actually going to do a complete 180 on one of the best things he ever did for the actual party that nominated him?

Flipped

Tulsi Gabbard is sick and tired of the Democrat party, and she’s not going to take it anymore:

Click on the tweet to read the entire thread over on the hellscape Musk might buyoughts

A few thoughts:

The Key Log: As Berg’s Seventh Law foretells, one of the reasons that Democrats like to harp on the “extremism” of the GOP is to deflect away from their own. One can hope the popular Senator from the very blue state might be the crack in the dam that brings out this century’s “Reagan Republicans”.

Speaking of Reagan: There’s at least some conventional wisdom that Gabbard has made this move to put her name in the VP stakes for 2024.

“She’s a LIBERAL”, some of my conservative friends say.

Let’s back up a moment.

One of Ronald Reagan’s great bits of genius was his ability to reach across the aisle to get people to pull together on the issues that mattered to his agenda. His agenda, by the way, was two items: right the economic ship, and destroy communism. He used his bully pulpit to push others to make headway on other issues – abortion, 2nd Amendment, the border – but he kept his own political powder dry to get the deals he needed made with Dems like Tip O’Neil on the 1982 Tax Cuts, and with the AFL-CIO’s Lane Kirkland on assisting the Eastern European labor movement against the USSR.

So – could a future Republican president focused on our society’s current enemies – the deep state, stagflation and China – benefit from reaching across the aisle to a center-left “libertarian” Democrat who shares those concerns (in as many words, in her statement above)?

It’s worth a look.

It’s Quiet

A week after a massive, potentially catastrophic hurricane, and the media is fairly quiet about things.

It’s because while it was a disaster, they haven’t been able to pin anything on Ron DeSantis.

They’ve tried. Oh, Lord, they’ve tried.

But the attacks have bounced off like lawn darts off an M1 Abrams. Even the complete fabrications squibbed:

So come on, Dems. If you think you’re gonna convict Trump of something, do it, so DeSantis can sweep unopposed to the nom in 2024.

Berg’s 24th Law Is New Yet Omniscient

Last week, President Biden said this:

And the left social-media bashibazuks spent the rest of the week repeating it as if – aaaaalmost as if – driven by a coded algorithm.

Why, it’s aaaaaaalmost as if the Democrats know they can count on stupidity, incuriosity and inability to reason to bring out the vote for them.

Let’s Not Put Too Fine A Point On This

Joe Biden is a terrible president – he’s passed Jimmy Carter as the worst of my lifetime, and if his (or, let’s be honest, Obama’s) agenda follows through, could pass Woodrow Wilson as the worst ever.

But let’s talk a little compassion, here, first.

My mom passed away at the end of April, as wrote earlier this month. As I noted at the time, she had Alzheimers.

We first started noticing her memory issues around the end of 2016. It started out with little things – not being able to find her purse over and over, mistaking who she was talking with, that sort of thing. It progressed, slowly and yet inexorably and all too fast at the same time.

Biden reminds me of my mom in early 2017.

The sinister element behind all this is that my mother was not simultaneously at the head of the world’s most powerful bureaucracy and military, and a talking head basically parroting the words put in front of her on a teleprompter.

LIke this:

“A .22 will lodge in your lung; a surgeon can fix it. A 9mm blows your lung out”.

If Biden is going off-script, he’s babbling. If he’s repeating a chanting point fed to him by a Democrat messageer who can count of Democrat voters not being critical enough a bunch of thinkers to see through the BS, then he’s still babbling.

Inflation is off the charts.

Crime is exploding.

Our debt is going to crush us, sooner than later.

Americans hate each other, and are sorting themselves out ever more strictly.

And we’re led by a muppet.

Literally Hitler

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I can’t wait to learn who GOP, Inc. will select as the Republican candidate for President in 2024. It won’t be Trump, that’s for certain. But I’d like to know now, so I can start working on my “literally Hitler” memes.

Well, yes, of course s/he will be “literally Hitler.” Every Republican candidate is “literally Hitler” until defeated. Reagan was “literally Hitler” for walking away from Reykjavik. Bush the Elder was ‘literally Hitler” for secretly flying an SR-71 Blackbird to Iran to negotiate the release of Jimmy Carter’s hostages. Romney was “literally Hitler” for having binders full of women. McCain was “literally Hitler” because he agreed to have Sarah Palin as running mate and she was “literally Hitler” too. Chimpy McBushHitler was “literally Hitler” because he lied and people died. Trump was “literally Hitler” because he bragged about grabbing women by the . . . and now, the next Republican candidate for President will be “literally Hitler” simply for . . . being the Republican candidate for President.

About the only person who wasn’t “literally Hitler” was Hitler himself, because he declared war on the Russians who weren’t led by Putin at the time, but someday would be. And Putin is “literally Hitler.”

Joe Doakes

They have been building the “literally Hitler“ file on Ron DeSantis for a while now.

Will The Real Donald Trump Please Stand Up?

The Left wants Donald Trump on the ballot this fall – the Trump with no internal governor who wrote the mean tweets, the Trump of the (often dishonest or fabricated) media narratives, and especially of the “January 6” of fact, fiction and in between.

But then, so does the GOP.

But which Donald Trump? The business tycoon? The loose cannon that could rope-a-dope either world leaders into agreement, or his own cabinet into distraction? Or the person that focused the economic and social concerns of a whole lot of people – middle America, blue-collar “Red” America, and by the bye more Black and Latino voters than any Republican in two generations, into political action?

The Virginia gubernatorial election showed us a hint: it’s #3. The first two camps barely registered in that fairly meat ‘n potatoes contest.

We’ve got a group of primaries coming up this month – Idaho, and later this month Georgia.

But it started last night, with Ohio’s primaries for Governor and Senate.

And it saw the above-mentioned three camps squaring off:

Was it that voters wanted a businessman? Well, Mike Gibbons was a successful businessman.

Was it that Trump was “the craziest son of a b****” in the room, as Thomas Massie sometimes wondered? Then Josh Mandel was your man.

Or was it the “America First” agenda on the immigration, trade, and foreign policy? If that’s what you thought, then J. D. Vance was your candidate.

And the winner: Vance.

But Vance’s advantage was that he campaigned on the politics he believes in. That’s one of the reasons he was able to campaign so much more than his opponents; he doesn’t need to read from cue cards. It’s why he was able to constantly reiterate his position on the Ukraine war with confidence, even as his opponents got lost while searching for their own views. Much has been made of Vance’s supposed transformation from the author of Hillbilly Elegy to the Senate candidate endorsed by Marjorie Taylor Greene. He shifted his assessment of Trump, absolutely, but his politics have remained much the same. Even Vance’s vengeful former roommate — who tried to harm his campaign by sharing a text showing that, years ago, Vance made an overheated comparison of Trump to Hitler — ended up proving the point. In that text exchange, Vance was saying that the Republican Party needed to deliver tangible benefits to working-class white people who have migrated into the party. That’s the message he had three years ago, too.

I suspect this is at least part of the reason Big Left is trying to make they hay they are over the leaked Roe decision; the GOP is running on the Trump legacy that’s least convenient to then. .

We’ll wait to see how Idaho and Georgia turn out.

The Solo Genius?

Joe Doakes from Como park emails:

Hillary figured out how to turn Haitian Relief donations into family funds. Of course she did, she’s the Smartest Woman in America (TM).

But Lesko Brandon figured out how to convert Ukraine foreign aid into 10% for The Big Guy, and he’s the dumbest man in Congress. He didn’t think up the scheme on his own, someone coached him. Who? And who else did they coach to use a similar scheme: maybe not Haiti but some other grant recipient, some other non-profit, some other book deal or art sale?

There doesn’t seem to be much enthusiasm in Washington for investigating money-laundering corrupt politicians, not even among Republicans. I wonder if the reluctance to throw stones has anything to do with living in glass houses?

Joe Doakes

That’s why I’m really, really, really hoping DeSantis gets the nod in 2024. Call me naïve, but I think he will at least have enough moral high ground, personally, to try to tackle this.

Not For Turning

It was a generation ago – when I was in high school – that Margaret Thatcher become Prime Minister. The media and popular culture were less tribalized then than they are today – but the drumbeat from the cultural authorities was this is a very bad thing.

And it foreshadowed the great American resurgence that followed; a wave of center-right leaders followed – Kohl in Germany, Mitterand in France, Pope John Paul II in the Vatican, and of course Ronald Reagan – who altered the course of, and in many ways saved (or postponed the demise, at least) of Western Civilization.

Is Eric Zemmour cut from the same cloth?

I don’t know, and he’s only a candidate at the moment.

But if he turns into the man of the moment in France, perhaps there’s still hope for the West.

Here’s his speech announcing his candidacy. Translation here.

It’s an incredible work of political rhetoric and, if not oratory, certainly videography.

Steven Hayward:

Today Zemmour released a video declaring his candidacy for president, and I’ve heard comparisons (including from a French student in my political science class this semester) comparing it to Charles de Gaulle’s famous July 18, 1940 radio broadcast pronouncing the cause of Free France amidst the nation’s collapse before the German army. 

This caught me:

We are worthy of our ancestors. We will not allow ourselves to be mastered, vassalized, conquered, colonized. We will not allow ourselves to be replaced

It’s an overtone of my wish, every Memorial Day, that we leave a society worthy of the sacrifice so many have made for this civilization.

The other overtone?

The moment isn’t a whole lot less grave.

Countdown to anguished “think” pieces on NPR starts now.

Scabrous

There are so many reasons to flush the Biden administration like a bad tequila and gas station burrito bender the next morning.

This story is merely one of them. But it’s a big one:

Veterans that chose not to get a COVID-19 vaccine and are dismissed from their posts will not receive any special protections or preferential evaluations for veterans’ benefits eligibility, with the decision being ultimately determined by their discharge status.

The decision of whether to give these veterans other-than-honorable discharges will be left to their local commanders.

I don’t care what Betty McCollum and Ilhan Omar have to say about this – it’s perfectly predictable.

Now Dean Phillips and Angie Craig? That’s an opinion I’d like to get.

Build Bull Blocker

Scene: it is 2020. The scene fades up in a DNC/Biden campaign office, in the middle of the 2020 presidential race.

A group of democratic party operatives is sitting in a crowded, messy campaign office, with video screens silently relaying the news all around them.

Operative 2: “OK, we are clear on this; rebuilding the economy from this pandemic is going to be a huge issue.“

Operative 1 (the campaign Manager): “That is why the “American Phoenix“ program, the presidents plan for what he will do about the economy after he’s elected, will be so important“.

Operative 3: “So we’ve gone over with the president exactly how he supposed to message this plan?”

Operative 4: “We’ve been rehearsing it every waking hour”

(Operatives 2-4 chuckle)

Intern: (Walks into the room, holding a TV remote, looking nervous) “Sir? Senator Biden is on television right now…)”

Operative 1: “Right? He’s supposed to be, isn’t he“ (Other operatives vigorously nod)

Intern: (points remote at television monitor, clicks a button) “I think you need to see this, sir…”

Candidate Biden (on video) “… my Build Back Better plan will put Americans back to work…“

(All of the operatives blanche)

Operative 4: “what the…“

Operative 1: “How the hell did he get from American Phoenix to… what did he say?“

Operative 2: “build… Better… I have no idea.“

Operative 3: “What?“ Operative 1: “Well, I’ll be; he actually was too senile to remember “American Phoenix“.

Operative 2: “so what do we do?“

Operative 1: “Well, he’s sort of made the decision for us. American phoenix is now… Better… Build now? What was it?

Operative 3: “back build…“

Operative 4: “I have no idea“.

Intern: (Silently rewinds the video)

 

(And SCENE)

Safety

Remenber the old japes about both Presidents Bush, and for that matter Trump, were utterly safe from threat of assassination, because their various Vice Presidents, Quayle and Cheney and Pence, were “even worse?”

Given Vice President Harris’s performance so far, I’d call that a retroactive case of Berg’s Law.

Power Line on the little veep who just can’t:

Harris caught a major career break when Joe Biden more or less committed to having a black woman as his running mate, leaving Harris as the obvious choice, but she didn’t seem to take much advantage of it. With the elderly, frail Biden making few campaign appearances, one might have thought that Harris would be more visible on the campaign trail. Then again, maybe the Democrats didn’t want her to expose the hollowness of Biden’s excuses for staying out of sight. In any event, her vice-presidential run seems to have done little or nothing to enhance Harris’s standing with the electorate.

Now, a YouGov poll finds Harris under water, with 41% viewing her favorably and 48% unfavorably. The Washington Examiner points out that this negative perception contrasts strongly with other recent vice presidents. Dick Cheney, Mike Pence and Joe Biden himself, in 2009, all polled quite a bit better at a similar stage.

Harris has never shown much skill or appeal as a politician. Her path to the top in California, essentially a one-party state at this point, was paved by her illicit relationship with Willie Brown. I am not sure what it is about Harris that repels voters, but it should scare the Democrats. 

The current theory is that Biden will hold on until at least mid-terms,, so that Harris can run on her own twice.

Barring massive fraud and retroactive doctoring of her record, I think she’s a one-and-done, whenever Biden shuffles off.

I’ll just leave those qualifications hanging htere.