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.

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.

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)

President Trump used to say that, with him as president, we would win so much, we would eventually get tired of it.

I don’t know about that.

But after eight months of this administration, I am sure as hell tired of losing.

… Jimmy Carter is hitting his knees and thanking God that, while he is still alive, there is going to be a debacle and hostage crisis worse than Iran.

As Covid cases rise nationwide, it’s become fashionable among administration circles and their media lap dogs to try to make Ron DeSantis (and Greg Abbott) scapegoats – largely to head off both of their obvious ambitions and opportunities in 2024.

Is the slander false?

It’s the Biden administration and the main stream media. What do you think?

It’s almost a year and a half until the next elections. But I’m starting to think that things aren’t polling nearly as well for the Harris (or, haha, Biden, sure, whatevs) ticket as the media says.

Reason?

Because the “Christian boogeyman“ is already making headlines.

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.

Dominic Greene at the Spectator ponders the depressing spectacle of the Biden “presidency” via the lens of last week’s gawdawful “news conference” and what it symbolizes for our democracy:

Joe Biden is the face of the United States. But Joe Biden no longer looks like Joe Biden. And he no longer sounds like Joe Biden — especially in the long and excruciating silences when he forgets what he’s saying or fumbles for his cue cards.

The United States no longer looks like itself either. The sorry theatrical display of Biden’s first press conference is an accurate image of what has happened to American democracy. A carefully limited number of carefully selected journalists asked carefully vetted questions. A carefully chosen president read carefully written answers off his cue cards, and carefully avoided taking any questions from Fox or Newsmax.

The White House is no longer the home of democracy. It’s a reality TV series in a care home. Biden mused about how the country has lost its way, about how it used to be so much better, but he seemed fatalistically feeble, as if it was all too much and all too late, and he has already given up. As if the nation is in its twilight years.

Open note to Ron DeSantis, Kristi Noem, Dan Crenshaw, Nikki Haley and everyone else lining up to run against this ongoing case of elder abuse: do lots of press ops involving clearing brush with a chainsaw, or out at the range, or just being joyfully, intensely physically capable. America – real America – doesn’t like seeing itself as feeble, of mind or body.

And that’s the vision we’re being gaslit with today.

….that Ron DeSantis is high up on my short list of candidates for 2024.

I am saying that if he keeps up with his competent, fact-driven crisis management combined with his Trump-like ability to cut through the narrative BS while maintaining an air of measured acerbity…

…he could get there pretty quick.

My old friend and radio colleague Ed Morrisey is one of more than a few Republicans who, disgusted by (obviously) the riots, but  moreso by the usurpation of the state control of elections and Electors that happened in Congress last week (the real “coup attempt”, and one of the  most self-destructive power grabs in my memory), is leaving the GOP.

Read the whole thing at your leisure.  Here’s the conclusion

The caveat of “I don’t support violence in any way” is meaningless — a dodge around the betrayal of the principles on which this party stood at one time. This is nothing more than an endorsement of brute-force majoritarianism at best, and at worst an explicit endorsement of mob rule. In fact, it seems like a celebration of mob rule, one cheered on by Donald Trump’s closest formal adviser in the White House.

Before this, questions had already arisen as to how republicanism could coexist with populism. This goes waaay beyond that question. The disgrace in Congress, even apart from the mobs, severed the connection between Republicans and republicanism in any meaningful American sense. They aren’t republicans now, but instead a radical form of small-D democrats whose only aim is gin up outrage in sufficient quantities to “own the libs.” That’s not just on Donald Trump; it’s now on the entire party and its leadership.

That’s their choice; my choice is very clear. I don’t choose to participate in such a nihilistic political party. I’ll stand on my own as an independent, ready to vote for responsible conservatives but under no obligation to vote for or support anyone else. Until the GOP comes to its senses and returns to true republican and federal principles, I will not be back.

Speaking for myself?  I’m not going to pretend that my party affiliation matters for much of anything to anyone.  I stopped donating money to non-conservative candidates years ago, after the party’s establishment slandered the Tea Party away from its place at the table.  I stopped being an activist two years ago – not “over Trump” per se (again, I’m not of the opinion that my choices of affiliations, or activism, matter in the great scheme of things all that much).

For what it’s worth?   I intend to fight to re-save the soul of the GOP.   There is a legacy worth saving, and passing on to people who haven’t seen much evidence of it in the past decade.

But it ain’t gonna be easy.

I believe there was massive fraud in this election. I believe President
Trump will fight it in the courts. I don’t know if he will win. But
even if he doesn’t, things are going to be okay.

Shouting aside, it seems each state makes their own rules on who can
vote, how votes are counted, and what it takes to set aside the results
of the election. I don’t know the standards of evidence required or the
procedures to be followed. None of the Instant Experts on the internet
seem to know, either.

Assuming the worst – that Biden is certified as the winner and sworn in
as President – what then?

Really, not much. I’ve lived under Democrat regimes pretty much my
entire life. They’ve always been morons and the younger ones are
getting worse, but I don’t think the people behind the scenes are ready
to let them destroy the country, yet. That’s why Bernie got the axe in
the primaries and Biden became the nominee. They needed someone
moderate-looking to hoax the yokels a while longer.

I still believe the Covid crisis was a political crisis manufactured to
justify mailed ballots to steal the election (I didn’t think it would be
so brazen). The lock-downs will continue during the Fourth Quarter to
make Trump’s economic numbers look bad. But when Biden is sworn in,
he’ll need to start generating good economic numbers to help Democrats
in the 2022 mid-terms. Covid will become just a bad flu, something we
must live with, restrictions will be lifted.

I assume Biden/Harris will resume meddling in foreign affairs. I’ll urge
my grandkids NOT to enlist because it’ll be too risky. Not risk of dying
in defense of our nation, that’s defensible; risk they’ll be sent to die
in some shit-hole Third World nation defending some pie-in-the-sky
notion of Utopia dreamed up by bureaucrats. At least President Trump is
trying to get us out of those places now, before he leaves office.
That’s a good start. If he can ram through a whole bunch more federal
judges before he goes, that’ll help a lot.

I assume Biden/Harris will be urged to raise taxes, ban guns, eliminate
cars, and endless other foolishness but I assume the adults in the
Senate will block that. As the pundit says, gridlock is the next best
thing to Constitutional government.

All in all, I’m not despondent. I think President Trump’s super-power
was to so enrage the Left they tore off their own masks, letting
sensible people see how bat-sh*t crazy they are. I think that opened a
lot of eyes, hopefully to continue in future elections as the cultural
pendulum swings back to sanity.

Fear not. This too shall pass.

Joe Doakes

I agree.

I also believe the natural “progressive” urge to overreach, combined with the customary crash at the polls for the President’s party in the 2022 midterms – which, given the burgeoning extremism of the left, could rival 2010 – has the potential to be epic.

Florida governor DeSantis proposes broadening Florida’s self-defense laws to make shooting in defense of property against looters more legally tenable.

The media is howling that it would enable roaming packs of vigilantes to slaughter people on the streets. Like most media reports on expanding self-defense rights, it’s a lot more nuanced than that:

The law would expand the state’s self-defense law, which currently forbids “the use of force in defense of property,” by increasing what constitutes a “forcible felony,” according to the Miami Herald. DeSantis seeks to make looting or “interruption or impairment” of a business such a felony, thereby justifying deadly force to prevent it…The Republican’s bill would also make it a third-degree felony to obstruct traffic, and would allow drivers to have legal immunity if they unintentionally kill or maim anyone engaging in blocking a roadway during a demonstration, according to the Herald. The law, which is only a draft at the time of publishing, is also set to grant state authorities the ability to withhold funds from localities that choose to reduce their police budgets

Expect much pants-wetting from the class that still thinks looters are “mostly peaceful”.

But they’re missing the point. The target of this bill isn’t looters.

It’s Kamala Harris.

DeSantis is setting himself up as the “Law and Order and Competence” candidate for the presidency in 2024.

And after this past year, I gotta say he’s on my short list.

The 2024 campaign has started…

…and the Associated Press is doing its job: trying to undercut Republican challengers.

In this case, South Dakota’s Kristy Noem, widely seen as a solid dark-horse contender (I’ve added emphasis):

It’s unlikely that much, if any, of the money will end up going to Trump, said Paul S. Ryan, the vice president of policy and litigation at Common Cause, a campaign finance watchdog. Ryan, a campaign finance lawyer, pointed out that the governor can give a maximum of $2,800 to Trump’s campaign under federal law. If she wanted more to flow to Trump, she could have directed donors to the president’s own donation site.

“In all likelihood, she is keeping this money that she is raising,” Ryan said. “If she were actually interested in raising money for Donald Trump’s own legal efforts, she would use a joint-fundraising committee.”

Note the source – Common Cause, a “campaign finance watchdog”…

…that is part of the progressive non-profit industrial complex, outside of media quotations.

They must worry about her.

Remember during the impeachment fiasco, when a few Democrats who weren’t smoking pot outside school during civics class remembered the order of succession? And realized Mike Pence, not Hillary Clinton, would be taking over?

The fear they felt?

You could see why last night. Mike Pence mopped the floor with Harris.

How bad?

Bad enough that “feminist” pols had to revert to calls for victorian deference, that’s how bad:

Mike Pence showed that talk radio background of his. He controlled the tempo, seized the initiative, and led Harris into more traps than the Road Runner vs. Wile E Coyote.

He got her to contradict herself on tax increases.

He made her deflect to “diversity” when the question of packing the court came up.

He got her to sweep her record as a prosecutor under a rug of bluster.

He reduced her to a smirking, hectoring blob.

How bad was it? Even NPR had to step in to do Harris’s deflecting for her:

One pundit called the Veep debate “the first debate of the 2024 campaign cycle”. Judging by tonight, Harris isn’t going to do any better this time around than in 2020.