There is increasing panic among the GOPe about the possibility that Trump could win the nomination. The “Anyone But Trump” fixation is obsessing the usual suspects.
Megan McArdle: As I see it, there are basically three strategies you can follow:
Anyone but Trump: It doesn’t matter, as long as you vote against Trump. Democrats in open primary states can play, too.
Vote the leader: Pick the winner in your state, and force the nomination selection to the convention.
Attempt to generate an actual alternative front-runner by voting for the national poll leader, or the most plausible candidate — probably Marco Rubio, given that he seems to have the most support from the highest number of GOP coalitions, but possibly Ted Cruz, since he appears to be the next most appealing to Trump voters.
I’ll just start by asking: Which of these would someone follow if their main priority is to defeat Trump? Or am I thinking about it all wrong?
Sean Trende: No, I think you have it basically right. I actually think that, for now, their best chance lies behind Door No. 2.
Why are the elites so obsessed with keeping Trump away from the levers of power ? This is not limited to the USA. Germany is having its own voter revolt.
The anti-immigrant AFD – Alternative for Germany – party has scored massive gains in municipal weekend elections which reflect growing public anger at the refugee policies of Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The polls for councils in the state of Hesse saw the AFD make significant inroads on the two main established parties – Merkel’s conservative CDU and the centre-left SPD – to come in third with 13.2 percent of the vote, knocking the environmental Greens into fourth place.
Frankfurt CDU politician Markus Frank said: ‘The preliminary result of the AfD is frightening. I had expected a maximum five percent.’
Where does this voter anger come from ?
Maybe it is one manifestation of the Principle Agent Problem.
A world where Angela Merkel feels compelled to accept millions of migrants for Europe even to the detriment of Germany and where president Obama feels he can sign major international treaties with Iran without reference to Congress is an unstable world locked in a game that is no longer transparent. Who do politicians work for? It creates a world of dubious loyalties and unpredictable coalitions.
If the obvious conflict of interest has been ignored by the politicians, it has not been lost on the voters. Many plainly sense what economists call an principal-agent problem, which may be the source of the current voter revolt. Bobbitt comes near to the identifying one of the causes of Market State failure when he observes that president Obama saw the ISIS problem from the standpoint of the international system rather than as president of the United States.
I think this is it. The “Market State” is a vision of a state which no longer is concerned with its own citizens. It is a citizen of the world.
In an interview in 2014, he described his vision of a new geopolitical balance of power in the region. “It would be profoundly in the interest of citizens throughout the region if . . . you could see an equilibrium developing between Sunni, or predominantly Sunni, Gulf states and Iran . . . If you can start unwinding some of [the distrust among the states of the region], that creates a new equilibrium. And so I think each individual piece of the puzzle is meant to paint a picture in which conflicts and competition still exist in the region but that it is contained.”
What Obama did by putting “the interest of citizens throughout the region” in the forefront was unconsciously subordinate the claims of principal, the American people.
Angela Merkel did much the same thing by being more concerned about Muslim refugees than about Germans. Then came New Year’s Eve in Cologne.
A 26-year-old Algerian man has become the first person arrested in connection with a string of sexual assaults during New Year’s Eve celebrations in Cologne that sparked a debate about Germany’s ability to integrate migrants.
Prosecutors said on Monday the unidentified asylum seeker had been arrested at a refugee home in the nearby town of Kerpen over the weekend. He is accused of groping a woman and robbing her phone, the prosecutor’s office spokesma,n Ulrich Bremer, told the Associated Press.
Two other Algerian asylum seekers, aged 22 and 24, were also arrested in Kerpen and the western city of Aachen respectively over the weekend, both for robbery, said Bremer.
The number of people accused of committing crimes in Cologne on New Year’s Eve now stands at 21, of whom eight are in detention, he said.
They are all Islamic “migrants.”
What has this to do with Trump ?
“it was only after “the San Bernardino killings in December 2015, [that] Obama acknowledged in a televised address to the nation that the US was at war, a concession he must have made with some reluctance.”
But Bobbitt has not taken his insight to its logical conclusion. Obama’s reluctance to recognize a threat to his country represents an unnatural state of affairs. The efficient cause of the current crisis lay in breaking the former chain of political accountability without replacing it with another. If there is any truth to Anne Applebaum’s belief that “we are two or three bad elections away from the end of NATO, the end of the European Union and maybe the end of the liberal world order as we know it,” it must be that the fuse was lit before Trump; perhaps in 2008 or earlier.
The fate of the State depends as much on principal/agent considerations as much as on Bobbit’s duality of strategy and law. What happens if those other considerations are added to his analysis?
Trump’s two most powerful issues are illegal immigration and Muslim immigration. Both issues had been ignored for years.
The core problem is thus the revolt of the elites against the values of the wider community: “[T]he new elites, the professional classes in particular, regard the masses with mingled scorn and apprehension.” For too many of these elites, the values of “Middle America” – a/k/a “fly-over country” – are mindless patriotism, religious fundamentalism, racism, homophobia, and retrograde views of women. “Middle Americans, as they appear to the makers of educated opinion, are hopelessly shabby, unfashionable, and provincial, ill informed about changes in taste or intellectual trends, addicted to trashy novels of romance and adventure, and stupefied by prolonged exposure to television. They are at once absurd and vaguely menacing.”
Charles Murray has been warning about this for a few years. From Niall Ferguson’s review of “Coming Apart:”
No doubt the same politically correct critics will complain about this book, because it is almost entirely devoted to the problem of social polarization within “white America.” They will have to ignore one of Coming Apart’s most surprising findings: that race is not a significant determinant of social polarization in today’s America. It is class that really matters.
Murray meticulously chronicles and measures the emergence of two wholly distinct classes: a new upper class, first identified in The Bell Curve as “the cognitive elite,” and a new “lower class,” which he is too polite to give a name. And he vividly localizes his argument by imagining two emblematic communities: Belmont, where everyone has at least one college degree, and Fishtown, where no one has any. (Read: Tonyville and Trashtown.)
The key point is that the four great social trends of the past half-century–the decline of marriage, of the work ethic, of respect for the law and of religious observance–have affected Fishtown much more than Belmont. As a consequence, the traditional bonds of civil society have atrophied in Fishtown. And that, Murray concludes, is why people there are so very unhappy–and dysfunctional.
The “Stop Trump” movement is almost all coming from the elites and the wannabe elites. From “Belmont” and not “Fishtown.”
The core problems are two. One is national identity. Hardly anyone actually likes multiculturalism. Even elite folks don’t much like it and we know this from expressed preferences – they spend buckets of money to isolate themselves into “nice neighborhoods and nice schools” which coincidentally just happen to be overwhelmingly white. Multiculturalism was imposed on Western populations through undemocratic means and then enforced via various freedom-raping and nasty methods. The second issue is related to identity, rejection of globalism. What your analyst casts as a principal-agent problem mostly expresses as people objecting to globalism stealing their sovereignty.
Across this upheaval and over time there is going to be one issue in play and that is “I want my society back” and until that is resolved satisfactorily there is going to be a lot of pain, harm, angst, disruption and tragedy. This will be much easier to resolve in some countries. Eastern Europe has so far been protected from multiculturalism so they don’t have to rip their societies apart, they simply have to keep protecting them. Germany is going to have to eject their recent refugee arrivals in order to buy peace but once started that may not be enough for that will leave in place the existing foreigners in Germany, even those foreigners with citizenship papers and who were born in Germany. France is going to turn out to be a bigger mess. The US is going to be the biggest mess of all.
we are two or three bad elections away from the end of NATO, the end of the European Union and maybe the end of the liberal world order as we know it
Europe has been shirking its NATO responsibilities forever. A few years ago, Merkel sold off most of Germany’s tanks since they were no longer required in her estimation. The game has long been that Europeans would let ‘stupid Americans’ pay for their defense – in both blood and treasure – while diverting that money to domestic social spending and simultaneously sneering at Americans as war mongers. I think it might benefit both Europe and the USA for Europe to be required to defend itself. They’re not children. Forcing them to face the world as it is will be a healthy development for them psychologically. It will make for a more realistic and adult like group of partners should we need to work together militarily in the future. To the degree Merkel and her confederates on the far left have sold out Europe, they deserve to be replaced. I look forward to seeing it.
This story suggests the possibility of a landslide election this fall, unless the elites succeed on throwing the election to Cruz who will get no crossover votes.
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Cleveland is seeking to buy 2,000 sets of riot gear, including riot-control suits and collapsible batons, as part of the city’s latest move to spend a $50 million federal security grant for July’s Republican National Convention.
The city this week posted to its contracting website a notice seeking bidders to provide the gear. City documents refer to the “Elite Defender” riot-control suit manufactured by HWI Gear and a 26-inch baton manufactured by Monadnock, plus 2,000 bags to carry them.
The city also wants to buy 310 sets of riot-control gear ”” long-sleeve jackets, gloves and shin guards ”” that would be suitable for use by police riding bicycles.
The Japanese find fire hoses to be useful but Cleveland is a Democrat city run by an African-American Mayor. I expect to see riots led by black lives matter types and a 49 state win by Trump if he is the candidate.
The last big riots at a convention were in 1968 nd Nixon benefited.
The last big riots at a convention were in 1968 nd Nixon benefited.
Revolutions are never pretty. Best for everyone involved if the revolution arrives via a ballot box. I’m having trouble putting myself in the shoes of elite Republican movers and shakers and wonder what they think that they’re accomplishing with their resistance. Their preferred candidate, Bush, was utterly rejected by the people. The policies they favor have no appeal to Trump and Cruz voters. Do they believe that this problem will vanish if they manage to knock Trump out at the convention? The Daily Caller had some dimwits writing about how to reach out to Trump voters and they were pushing Comprehensive Immigration Reform! These guys are so blind, not only to the man on the street issues, but to their own party’s welfare, how does giving Democrats 25 million new voters help Republicans win future elections?
As for convention riots helping the Republicans, yeah, same with more BLM protests but what I think will really help come the general election season is the turmoil which will unfold in Europe as another million plus invaders hit its shores. Norway already has plans in place to renounce its compliance with the UN Convention on Refugees if Sweden dissolves to chaos and people look to Norway as a safe refuge. With that drama playing out afresh that only helps Republicans.
Back to the theme of your post, check this out:
These diplomats are too divorced from a.) the man in the street concerns in their own countries, and b.) the man in the street concerns of Americans. They can be excused with regard to America if their area of expertise doesn’t require posting in America or being on their nation’s America desk, but they really have no excuse for isolating themselves in a cultural bubble, cut off from their own people’s views, and simply listening to the views of the professional diplomatic class, both domestic and international.
“European diplomats are constantly asking about Trump’s rise with disbelief and, now, growing panic,” said a senior NATO official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Better they should wonder about Germany and UKIP in England. I was in Brussels a few months ago and there were LOTS of Muslims all over. Then came the attacks in Paris. The train attack was even before we went.
Trump is the reaction here that UKIP and LePen is in Britain and France.
If Romney had won in 2012, some of the steam might have been let off if the economy improved as I expected it would.
Romney’s incompetence, especially in the GOTV collapse, took away all the legitimacy of the elites.
The Trump haters are all over conservative blog comments but they think the votes will go to Cruz after Trump has stirred them up.
I like Cruz but would prefer him on the Court. He might have trouble getting confirmed. I don’t see him getting elected.
I have no idea what Trump would do if elected but I am willing to try.
In the McArdle interview with Sean Trende, he mentioned that the GOPe might change Rule 40b right before the convention to stop Trump. Under the rules that the GOPe put in place to make sure that only their choices could be nominated; you have to have an absolute majority [50% + 1] of the delegates in 8 separate states in order to to be placed in nomination at the Convention. That is what they did with Romney in 2012.
As of today, Trump has 5 of the 8 states required. Rubio won Puerto Rico and got his first this weekend. No one else has the 50% + 1 of the delegates of any state.
It is likely that Trump will get 3 more. It is highly unlikely that Cruz or Kasich will pick up 8 or that Rubio will pick up 7 more before the convention. Which means that under the rules set up by the Republican party, Trump will be the only one who can be nominated.
If they change the rules at the last minute to prevent that after operating under those rules for 2 election cycles; the riots inside the convention will be worse than the riots outside. And the Republican party will lose the Presidency, the Senate, probably the House, and down ticket. By actual vote count at primaries and caucuses, Trump has 35-45% of the Republican voting base. It would not take all that many of them walking away from the party forever to destroy the Republicans.
Trump is the reaction here that UKIP and LePen is in Britain and France.
Ain’t multiculturalism grand:
There is no job in this country being done by an illegal immigrant that could not be done half as well for twice as much by an American. (This should be someone’s campaign theme)
If a restaurant has one immigrant dishwasher making 9$ an hour, that worker can be replaced by two Americans making 18$ a hour, and the dishes and kitchen will be just as clean.
Instead of one illegal immigrant living simply and sending money home, two American’s could make enough to have their own apartment, car and life.
Trump supporters, and most Americans have been waiting for the elites to enforce the law. They know that when they start a new job, our government can make sure that their IRS, Child Support, college loan and any other court ordered deduction will start within 4 to 6 weeks on the new job, even if they tell no one about the new job. Then they see the illegal immigrant washing the dishes and think, ‘I am held accountable by the law, why not these guys’
If you haven’t seen this, here’s a good interview that Trump did with Playboy 25 years ago
A favorite word of yours, tough. How do you define it?
Tough is being mentally capable of winning battles against an opponent and doing it with a smile. Tough is winning systematically.
Sometimes you sound like a Presidential candidate stirring up the voters.
I don’t want the Presidency. I’m going to help a lot of people with my foundation-and for me, the grass isn’t always greener.
But if the grass ever did look greener, which political party do you think you’d be more comfortable with?
Well, if I ever ran for office, I’d do better as a Democrat than as a Republican-and that’s not because I’d be more Republican-and that’s not because I’d be more liberal, because I’m conservative. But the working guy would elect me. He likes me. When I walk down the street, those cabbies start yelling out their windows.
“It would not take all that many of them walking away from the party forever to destroy the Republicans.”
I really wonder sometimes what they want.
I can understand if they think Trump will lose. I thought Romney was going to win.
“It ain’t gonna happen,” Gonzales said. “You really want the Mexicans to really, really stir, really get mad? Y’all don’t understand ”” we aren’t the minority anymore. We own Texas. Texas is Mexican-made.”
This reminds me of the day that illegals didn’t go to work thinking it would bring Los Angeles to its knees. We’ve been trying to get them to do that again with no luck. The traffic was the best its been since the 1984 Olympics.
I expect riots in Cleveland by Black Lives Matter types and it will be very impressive. Talk about a reason to vote !
They really don’t understand.
“It would not take all that many of them walking away from the party forever to destroy the Republicans.”
The question is how much are they willing to risk in order to dominate the party. Everyone knows the theory that splitting the Right just hands Democrats a winning field for multiple elections, so engineering a permanent exile from power doesn’t work to benefit the interests of the elite Republicans.
At the core of their position is the belief that normalcy will return after a while and they’ll again be in the catbird seat and they’re willing to let the Democrats have power this election so that they can keep control of the party.
What though makes them believe that they can whip the Trump/Cruz dissidents back into line again. The Rubicon has been crossed here, there is no going back. The sooner they see reality as it is the sooner they can figure out ways to unite the Right, which means that they have to cede some power and abandon some of their positions. Half a pie is better than wanting a whole pie and never getting it.
Once this immediate crisis passes there is probably going to be a generation long transition away from globalism back towards nationalism, this is going to completely change the dominant political ethos for the elite or it will push them over to the Democrats and we’ll have a Globalist Party facing off against a Nationalist Party.
All of what is transpiring is an unforced error. Consent of the governed actually counts as wisdom. There was never any popular mandate for removing borders, for imposing multiculturalism, for free trade in products and especially in services and guest workers. The battle over policies will be a piece of cake compared to trying to solve the multicultural problem.
The formation of the Occupy group and the BLM group, both totally the creatures of the dems political and funding organizations, were the preparatory measures taken to ensure that a trained and street tested group of violent activists were in place for future election cycles, starting with 2016.
This election will be the crudest, most violent, and most profoundly corrupt in our history, and that is saying something considering the turbulent, mud-slinging contests that were fairly routine in the 19th century.
I have been saying for quite some time that neither Trump nor Hilary will be the candidates. Trump will be closed off by a manipulation of the convention rules to nominate someone else, probably Cruz, now that everyone else seems to have crashed and burned.
While I think Cruz is preferable to Trump, who is clearly not a conservative, or even an actual republican, given his political history, this type of convention subverting will almost certainly result in Trump running as a third party candidate.
That scenario most probably leads to the election of a dem candidate, whom I have long suspected will be Michelle Obama, stepping in to take the place of Hilary when she has “health problems”, and must withdraw from the campaign.
If it’s orchestrated properly, Sanders will then also withdraw as a separate candidate, and campaign for the dem ticket as a pre-selected vice-presidential selection. This will bring his more leftist supporters back into the fold, and the two together will solidify the dem coalition of minorities, women, and leftists.
The captive media will then, of course, launch into a massive propaganda campaign for the dems, and a relentless negative “exploration” of all the terrible things that Trump and/or the repub candidate stand for.
Street violence, enhanced by the ongoing, and increasing, media attack on the police response to any incidents, will escalate far beyond anything seen in the 1960’s, and running battles reminiscent of the 1930’s in Europe will be common.
I have no clear idea how this might all play out, given the current regime’s love affair with extra-constitutional measures.
What is clear is that the ruling elites in this country, and the west as a whole, have badly misunderstood the level of dissatisfaction and hostility their endless corruption and incompetence have generated in the general population.
Living in a media and social bubble in which all their efforts to save the “great unwashed” from the folly of their unenlightened ways are noble, and all their great programs and initiatives are wonderfully productive and helpful in improving the lives of all the disadvantaged their rhetoric claims to defend, they have never understood the repeated waves of unrest that have moved through the populace, especially the most recent “Tea Party” movement.
Trump is a symptom of a spreading preferential cascade which rejects many of the sacred beliefs of the PC, multi-culti, progressive international elite, which operates in a borderless and inbred society, buffered by money, privilege, and the wholly captured media outlets which parrot their ideology relentlessly, both to sooth them, and to intimidate the non-member masses of society.
We are approaching very turbulent and dangerous times. The world’s economy, dependent on a massively corrupt China, and a bankrupt US, will not continue much longer without a serious adjustment toward reality, with all the accompanying pain and unrest that implies.
I had hoped, when the SU, and the other marxist monstrosities around the world, unraveled, that I would be able to spend my twilight years in peace, enjoying my children, and grandchildren, without the endless worry about a hostile and inimical power lurking always on the horizon.
I can see now how naive that was. The true dangers were here all along, being nurtured as vipers in our bosom, only waiting and building their strength to strike, injecting their venom into the veins and arteries of the republic, seeking to paralyze, and then consume, the carcass of a once free nation.
But that disaster is only one possible outcome of the current situation. There are many possibilities that can be realized if those who are committed to maintaining the culture of freedom and individual liberty take the proper actions in time, and with full effect.
The clouds gather, and the storm will break. Our only true protection lies in liberty, and the Constitution.
As always, the future is lying there in the gutter, where the failed ideas and policies of the collective have thrown it. Only the free and independent mind can grasp it, and realize its true potential for human progress.
There are many possibilities that can be realized if those who are committed to maintaining the culture of freedom and individual liberty take the proper actions in time, and with full effect.
Look at the present demographic make-up of the Republican Party. What do you see? Whatever it is that you do see, realize that this is a best-case scenario with regards to the population of people who value freedom and individual liberty.
Look at the present demographic make-up of libertarian groups and parties. Compared to these groups the broad Republican Party is a diversicrat’s dream.
Now look at the present demographic make-up of the United States and keep your eye on demographic trends that are in the making. What do you see? You see a population nothing at all like the Republican Party or libertarian groups.
When you write that those who are “committed to maintaining the culture of freedom and individual liberty take the proper actions in time” do you make this statement understanding the demographic challenges that face this group?
Trump’s two most powerful issues are illegal immigration and Muslim immigration. Both issues had been ignored for years.
George W Bush could’ve dealt with both right after 9/11 when he had 90%+ approval and the country was in shock. Worst lost opportunity in recent Western political history?
George W Bush could’ve dealt with both right after 9/11 when he had 90%+ approval and the country was in shock. Worst lost opportunity in recent Western political history?
Bush was a liberal, so why expect him to apply conservative insights into understanding reality and formulating policy. The key point of conservatism is to understand humans as they are. Here’s Sarah Palin to explain this to investors in Hong Kong:
Bush was delusional on a number of fronts, all likely stemming from his liberal world view. We can remake Iraq into America, we can create an “ownership society” by giving subsidized mortgages to minorities which will turn them into middle-class whites, we can all live like in a Coke commercial, in multicultural bliss, we should embrace Islam because it’s a religion of peace.
He, like Tony Blair, sold out his country in order to enrich his elite backers who all benefited from the destruction that he was visiting upon the US.
A nation can’t prosper when it’s leader doesn’t have its interest at heart and instead is leading in ways which only benefit a small, select group of internationalists.
Bush grew up a member of the elite. So did Trump but he seems, for some reason, to have a feel for the general public. It may all be a sham. Maybe his father was first generation wealth.
I think George HW Bush probably had the war experience that may have prompted him to go to Texas. He was still a brahman with his wife from even greater wealth.
Bush, unlike Blair, probably really believes that Mexican immigration is good for the country. Texas has gotten along pretty well because it has a minimal welfare state and is funded by sales tax which everyone pays.
California and Illinois are the examples of how destructive illegal immigration can be, plus of course Chicago with its black underclass.
Without the weather, California would be Illinois..
Bush, unlike Blair, probably really believes that Mexican immigration is good for the country
I don’t much care what he believes, I want policies grounded in reality. To quote Palin again:
On what basis would Bush believe that taking Mexican peasants, people who’ve failed to advance in their own society, and dumping them into a First World country would produce good results for American citizens? We all have to subsidize our own high school drop-outs because they tend to be life-long burdens for us, so how on earth could importing millions of grade-school drop-outs from Mexico be good for the country?
Nah, he didn’t believe it was good for America, he knew it was good for his elite buddies because they could get servants for cheap, they’d benefit from flooding the labor market with these Mexicans and driving down wages for everyone. It’s looting and plundering from the commons in order to enrich a parasite class.
Very Retired – I can almost agree with your comment above if Michelle’s name is removed and V.P. Biden or Sen. Liawatha Warren is inserted into the race. Michelle’s negatives are in the same range as Hitlery’s. Can’t imagine her even desiring the office after having been cooped up for the last 8 years by that “damn flag” thing.
As far as violence in Cleveland, I would not be surprised. As we type I’d bet some activist agitator somewhere is cooking up some vile act to blame on the repubs. That said, there are cameras everywhere now so BLM and Occupy idiots fomenting mindless and ruthless violence should be easily found out for the most part.
This does look like an interesting summer ahead.
My point was that Blair probably was fully into the Labour theory that they would get rid of those pesky Tory voters and import a new population of Labour voters. Like Lyndon Johnson said, “In my part of the country, when you buy a politician he stays bought.” The same for the imported voters.
Bush may actually believe that Mexicans would make good Americans. The immigrants from 60 years ago were better educated and probably had less pure Indian blood than the recent immigrants, many of whom don’t even speak Spanish, let alone English.
I spent ten years reviewing workers comp claims. About a third to half were Mexican, probably half illegal. The illegals were almost all illiterate, even in Spanish.
“BLM and Occupy idiots fomenting mindless and ruthless violence should be easily found out for the most part.”
I wish I believed that they would be punished. There are plenty of videos of the Ferguson rioters.
Tangoman:
“Bush was delusional … We can remake Iraq into America”
Answers to “Was Operation Iraqi Freedom about WMD or democracy?” and “Was the invasion of Iraq perceived to be a nation-building effort?”.
UN Recognizes ‘Major Changes’ In Iraq (2010) by VP Joe Biden on behalf of the UN Security Council.
How Obama Abandoned Democracy in Iraq by OIF official and senior advisor Emma Sky.
Bush may actually believe that Mexicans would make good Americans.
Why wouldn’t they? If you go back far enough you can find a record of skepticism about the mental capacity and citizenship potential of Jews/Irish/Italians/Poles/Chinese/Germans et al. I doubt today’s uneducated Mexicans are any different.
The difference between now and then is that we make less effort to Americanize immigrants, our political class is indifferent to hostile to the importance of cultural assimilation, and the current federal govt is (with the intention of creating millions of new Democratic voters) overtly encouraging poor Latin Americans to rush our borders.
Immigration under current conditions is a problem. However, properly managed immigration — i.e., of people who already share our values, and of people who agree to adopt our values as part of the deal — is a boon. The long-term solution is to reform our immigration enforcement (fence, enforce the law, reform the bureaucracy), cut entitlements and return to an assimilationist model. It may be doable in time, particularly if/when our entitlements system runs out of money.
Alternatives to an American cultural identity that is based on traditional American political values include multiculturalism and some kind of ethnically or racially based nationalism. Multiculturalism has failed everywhere else and is failing here. Ethnic/racial nationalism is a formula for civil war in a multi-ethnic/racial society.
Mike—I understand your reaction to Michelle, but you must remember that your reaction is not the same as that of an enthusiastic member of the dem coalition, who longs for much more identity politics and progressive policy, and would be indifferent to, if not supportive of, her lack of affection for the country.
If a major third party vote siphons support from the repub side, as Trump surely would, and the dem coalition can be re-energized by a well known black progressive female candidate, then an election held during a media frenzy of pro-dem and anti-repub propaganda, and accompanied by an increasingly divisive intimidation campaign by street gangs of political activists, could very possibly carry even someone as unappetizing as Michelle to victory.
Consider how wildly happy much of the dem coalition would be to lose an elderly, obviously corrupt, uninspiring Hilary, and replace her with a fairly young and energizing figure like Michelle, who can tick off so many of the beloved identity boxes compared to an aging white socialist of either gender.
The path of resistance to such a calamity would require the state and local political entities now controlled by repubs to actively refuse to cooperate with any federal orders or mandates, and a concerted effort to undercut the captive dem media operations.
I think the progressive faction will try to go for broke over the next few election cycles, as even their delusional ideology cannot ignore the rumblings of serious dissatisfaction with their control of policy, education, media, and much of the economy, none of which operate very well, and constantly expose their corruption and blatant incompetence.
” However, properly managed immigration ”” i.e., of people who already share our values, and of people who agree to adopt our values as part of the deal ”” is a boon.”
Australia and even Canada seem to be able to set requirements. Why do we want to import illiterate Indians who don’t even speak Spanish ?
I personally know a German couple who waited years and participated in a raffle for immigration visas until they won the right to come here.
He is a master plumber and she is a nurse midwife. They now live in Tucson where he established his own business. He said his reason for immigrating here was that he could never have his own business in Germany. They were both fluent in English when they arrived.
Why did they have to wait so long ? They had saved 60,000 Euros and bought a house soon after arriving.
As far as the question of who the Left would drop into the presidential nomination if Hillary was suddenly discommoded by legal or physiological reality, you have to keep in mind that to the Left, the Constitution is already moot.
There is a way for Obama to claim another term in the White House. A careful reading of Article II of the Constitution, and the 22nd amendment reveals that Obama cannot be “elected” as president again. There is a gap. Let us say that Biden is dropped in as the Democrat nominee. And that Buraq Hussein Obama is his vice president. The Constitution does not say he cannot be elected as Vice-President. And if something tragic happens to Biden, or if he resigns, Obama would not be elected President again. He would just become president.
Now Biden is dumber than the bear scat I shoveled off my lawn this afternoon. But even he has to realize that a pre- or post- resignation tragedy cleans up a loose end a lot better than a resignation alone. But he is dumber than bear scat.
But the route is there.
And as a fallback there is always the “state of emergency” gambit. And it would be backed by the Democrats, the GOPe, and the media 100%.
We ARE living in interesting times.
Subotai, you are mistaken about Obama’s eligibility for the vice presidency. The 12th Amendment to the Constitution (adopted in 1804) provides: “But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.” Under the 22nd Amendment, Obama is not eligible to be elected president again, so he is no longer eligible for the vice presidency.
Anyway, notwithstanding the Democrats’ disdain for the Constitution, if we are going to have a Democrat as president, it really does not matter which Democrat, so there would be no reason for the Democrats to try to keep Obama in power. There are no significant policy differences among Democrats; they are like Stepford wives.
Why did they have to wait so long ?
Because our immigration bureaucracy is terrible and our highest elected officials are more concerned with partisan advantage than the good of the country. Those illiterate Latin immigrants are mostly going to vote Democratic.
If we can enforce our immigration laws we ought to be able to reform our immigration bureaucracy. The political will has to be there and so far it hasn’t been. Once it’s there we ought to be able to have a sane immigration policy.
Why wouldn’t they? If you go back far enough you can find a record of skepticism about the mental capacity and citizenship potential of Jews/Irish/Italians/Poles/Chinese/Germans et al. I doubt today’s uneducated Mexicans are any different.
You understand that you’re engaging in a logical fallacy, right? Because these past Europeans were thought not to fit in, and they eventually did, this means that these Mestizo Mexicans who we see are not fitting in, eventually will. Well, those Europeans who did fit in came from civilizations where their people also built first world civilizations. Mexicans are coming from a 3rd world civilization. Those Europeans came at a time when class barriers in their home societies where so strong that smart peasants were blocked from rising, so when we got these immigrants we got a good representative sample of people, but when we get Mexicans today we’re not getting a representative sample of their society, we’re getting the people who are stuck at the bottom of their society and that’s almost exactly where they stay when they come to the US.
Here’s data on school completion in the US from Mexican-Americans over 4 generations. Fourth generation Mexican-Americans have a HIGHER HS drop-out rate than their 3rd generation parents, a rate almost 2x larger than the combined white+black rate. We don’t want immigrants assimilating towards African-America means, do we? Shouldn’t they be assimilating upwards to white means?
http://i.imgur.com/xx6lsDr.jpg
People have to be creationists to believe this fantasy view which is constantly contradicted by actual evidence all around them.
The difference between now and then is that we make less effort to Americanize immigrants, our political class is indifferent to hostile to the importance of cultural assimilation, and the current federal govt is (with the intention of creating millions of new Democratic voters) overtly encouraging poor Latin Americans to rush our borders.
Yes, you’re right, these are all problems, but they’re minor in comparison to the demographic issues. While we’ve had Mexican immigration, we’ve also had immigration for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, we’ve had boat people from Vietnam who’ve arrived emotionally scarred, in a land where many saw them as an enemy, having to deal with a language from a different root stock than Vietnamese, arrived here with no family networks and with no assets, and these people have done fairly well for themselves despite the presence of the factors you complain about.
However, properly managed immigration ”” i.e., of people who already share our values, and of people who agree to adopt our values as part of the deal ”” is a boon.
Well, where are these people? They’re sure not making their presence felt in the Republican Party. The ones we do get are primarily immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe, Europeans who’ve experienced the full flavor of communism and so have a different attitude than the recent immigrants from Western Europe who seem to prefer the Democrats. The Republicans sure aren’t scooping up people who’ve arrived from Africa, Asia or Latin America.
It should be obvious to us all that we’re not getting immigrants who share our values, instead we’re beginning to share the values of those who’ve arrived here and brought their values with them and because their vote is now equal to your vote or my vote, their presence and their values neutralize our values. Think about this, would you rather have the freedoms and relationship to government which existed in America in 1816 or what we have now in 2016? Not live in 1816, but have the freedoms of the Americans who lived in 1816? You point to the earlier immigrants from Eastern Europe, well the Know-Nothings were opposed to them because they feared that they would change America and that’s exactly what they did – those values which arose from a predominant English and Protestant culture where modified by a continental and Catholic influence, a more communitarian influence both from culture and from religion. China is not hotbed for the values you hold dear, neither is Nigeria and neither is Latin America, lands where Liberation Theology holds vast sway.
The long-term solution is to reform our immigration enforcement (fence, enforce the law, reform the bureaucracy), cut entitlements and return to an assimilationist model.
You don’t have the votes for this anymore. You probably did back in 1960, before both the Civil Rights Act and the Immigration Reform Act, but now you’re outvoted. This is why Republicans have lost the popular vote in 5 of the last 6 elections. The America that you yearn for is gone, it’s dead, just like the culture and the rights and man’s relationship to his government back in 1815 is gone, corrupted by influences from foreign cultures and religions and modified continuously to this day by those original forces of change and the subsequent forces of change.
We’ll be damn lucky if President Trump actually builds a wall and enforces the law for there will be tremendous pressure on God-Emperor Trump to not be so Hitler-like, but even if he lives up to his campaign promises, that simply arrests the rot. People today don’t want their entitlements cut, there are too many ethnic and racial groups who don’t want to assimilate and the reason that they don’t is because they don’t like American culture, they’re here for nothing more than economic opportunity and because their votes count equal to yours and mine, they neutralize our say and because they’re more committed to protecting their culture than those who favor assimilation are to forcing, FORCING, assimilation, they’ll win. Back in the early 20th century there was a pretty rough de-germanization process which was forced on German-Americans and other groups. Families changed their names, people were attacked in the street for speaking foreign languages, they weren’t hired into jobs due to their foreign origin, etc. That type of ostracization can work to force assimilation but now we have civil rights laws which actually take these effective tools out of the toolbox of the assimilationist forces. How, exactly, will you force assimilation onto unwilling immigrants who are here simply to further their economic interests. How? Ask them to pretty-please assimilate? Who is going to be most committed to their respective position, those who are doing the forcing or those who are trying to defend their family’s long cultural tradition?
Multiculturalism has failed everywhere else and is failing here. Ethnic/racial nationalism is a formula for civil war in a multi-ethnic/racial society.
Correct, multiculturalism always fails, because it’s a corrosive acid acting on civil society. Correct, ethnic conflict is our future. The very last thing we need to be doing is adding future shock troops to the battle that is coming. We’re never getting back the American traditions which informed our early culture, that America is dead. The best you can hope for is a holding pattern at the present level. When have you ever seen government rollbacks or cultural rollbacks? We’ll be blessed by God if we can hold the nation together at current levels, with all the ills we presently contend with. Very lucky indeed.
Bush was delusional on a number of fronts, all likely stemming from his liberal world view. We can remake Iraq into America, we can create an “ownership society” by giving subsidized mortgages to minorities which will turn them into middle-class whites, we can all live like in a Coke commercial, in multicultural bliss, we should embrace Islam because it’s a religion of peace.
The religion of peace thing was foolish. The rest of your statement is hyperbole and bullshit. Bush attempted, successfully until Obama threw it away by withdrawing our support, to create a democratic govt in Iraq in circumstances when other alternatives weren’t obviously better and appeared to have failed (our alliances with friendly dictators hadn’t prevented 9/11). Iraq was never going to be America, but it had a chance to be something less dangerous than a powderkeg dictatorship.
The ownership society was about the encouragement of investment and home ownership by ordinary people. It had nothing to do with subsidized mortgages. That was a Democratic project to the core, going back to the Community Reinvestment Act. Bush actually tried to reform Fannie Mae but was rebuffed by Congressional Democrats.
He, like Tony Blair, sold out his country in order to enrich his elite backers who all benefited from the destruction that he was visiting upon the US.
A nation can’t prosper when it’s leader doesn’t have its interest at heart and instead is leading in ways which only benefit a small, select group of internationalists.
Bush did the best he could with limited political capital and without the benefit of 2016 hindsight. The immigration situation in the late 2000s was somewhat less pressing than it is now, in large part because the following Democratic administration has acted lawlessly to increase illegal immigration, and because the economy was stronger then than now (a fact for which Bush deserves some credit). His approach to immigration may not have been right for the times but where is the evidence that he was corrupt? The Democrats had a Congressional majority after 2006 and they weren’t going to follow your plan. He did nothing like what Blair and Labour did; they are most accurately compared to Obama.
Bush did the best he could with limited political capital and without the benefit of 2016 hindsight.
I was sending bricks to my Congressman in order to stop Bush. Bush was moving in the wrong direction, not doing the best he could.
The immigration situation in the late 2000s was somewhat less pressing than it is now, in large part because the following Democratic administration has acted lawlessly to increase illegal immigration, and because the economy was stronger then than now (a fact for which Bush deserves some credit).
Yes, immigration was less pressing but the core truth with regards to multiculturalism has been known to humanity for 5,000+ years. Borders and fences and distance make for good neighbors. Diversity + proximity = war. Bush bought into liberal multiculturalism, he thought humanity had “evolved” and had purged tribal instincts yet the evidence on voluntary racial segregation in America’s housing markets was, and still is, plain to see. If people loved diversity then we wouldn’t need civil rights laws to compel people into associations that they prefer to avoid.
The ownership society was about the encouragement of investment and home ownership by ordinary people. It had nothing to do with subsidized mortgages.
Just picking a random link which pops up for Bush’s ownership society:
Again we see Bush bring a liberal world view to a problem. Look, says he, those white homeowners are nice middle class folks, they commit few crimes, they care about their neighborhoods, their kids finish school, boy, we sure could use some of those attributes in our minority communities, so here’s my brainstorm, if I can get more minorities to be homeowners then they too will exhibit the same behaviors as the white middle class. He got the causality completely backwards, people with those attributes become homeowners, it’s not home ownership which changes the person’s character and makes them responsible.
And now specifically to the issue of subsidy:
That was a Democratic project to the core, going back to the Community Reinvestment Act.
We’re not talking about Democratic malfeasance here, but Bush’s. The Democrats have a lot to answer for with their cockamamie schemes, but Bush was instrumental in pushing a liberal world view into his policies. You can’t absolve Bush and blame Democrats for Bush initiatives and programs and legislation and rhetoric.
. Bush attempted, successfully until Obama threw it away by withdrawing our support,
You can’t claim success if control is bought by having a military keeping the lid on a pressure cooker. Nation building is a liberal exercise, something which even Bush acknowledged in his 2nd debate with Gore. Once in office though, his campaign position flipped to the liberal vision in support of nation building.
to increase illegal immigration, and because the economy was stronger then than now (a fact for which Bush deserves some credit). His approach to immigration may not have been right for the times but where is the evidence that he was corrupt?
When Bush works to import labor into labor markets which are seeing a declining labor force participation rate, in an environment where middle class wages had been stagnant for over 20 years, then he’s most certainly not acting in the interests of the people of the US and instead is working to further the interests of capital, helping to drive down wages so that the very rich will benefit from greater returns to their capital. That’s corruption, putting the interests of his funders above the interest of the hundreds of millions of people in the labor force.
You understand that you’re engaging in a logical fallacy, right? Because these past Europeans were thought not to fit in, and they eventually did, this means that these Mestizo Mexicans who we see are not fitting in, eventually will.
I’m saying that the history of predictions is characterized by error. There is also a history of people from many backgrounds assimilating successfully into American culture. Not all groups have been equally successful, but as far as I know all have been successful enough as long as govt didn’t interfere too much (either by hostile discrimination or by multiculturalism and affirmative action).
Correct, multiculturalism always fails, because it’s a corrosive acid acting on civil society. Correct, ethnic conflict is our future. The very last thing we need to be doing is adding future shock troops to the battle that is coming. We’re never getting back the American traditions which informed our early culture, that America is dead.
I don’t share your pessimism. I don’t think ethnic conflict is necessarily in our future or that we’re never getting back our culture. Those things might happen but they are not certain. The culture has been durable and I suspect will continue, and I suspect it will assimilate most of the people who you think are unassimilable. That’s my guess. I’m also guessing that we’re close to a low point culturally. The Trump phenomenon is a symptom that suggests that enough people are becoming concerned about the direction of the country that a reaction is forming, and that reaction will eventually lead to improvements (though it’s anyone’s guess what forms those improvements will take).
You are correct about the FHA program. However, it was a limited number of mortgages in a context where the CRA had for years strong armed banks into making risky loans. It is also true that some Congressional Republicans supported the CRA. However, it is true that Bush attempted to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which held a vast number of risky loans and did not prudently manage the risk.
The Ownership Society idea was to encourage individuals to become investors and take a stake in the society. Why is that a bad idea? Even if not everyone is capable of it, what’s wrong with the idea?
I was sending bricks to my Congressman in order to stop Bush. Bush was moving in the wrong direction, not doing the best he could.
You disagreed with Bush. That doesn’t mean he was corrupt.
Not all groups have been equally successful, but as far as I know all have been successful enough as long as govt didn’t interfere too much
Shoe. Sock. Flip-flop. Boot. High Heeled Shoe. Sneaker. Anvil. Fire Extinguisher. Book.
I’ve created a list of objects. They are all different from each other. The first 6, while different from each other, all managed to be used as foot coverings. Based on past trends, how sure are you that the last 3 will be useful for the same purpose?
We have assimilation models based on European immigrants and we can see inter-generational progress and assimilation into a generic American identity. We’re not seeing that from Mexican-Americans even after 4 generations in America. The model based on European assimilation doesn’t transfer to Mexican assimilation even after the 4th generation in America.
The difference between a Dutchman and a Danishman who arrive in America can be measured and they’re fairly small, but the similarities between the two are far greater than the differences. We get more drastic difference and less basis for similarity when we focus on Mexican, Pakistani, Nigerian immigrants to America.
but as far as I know all have been successful enough as long as govt didn’t interfere too much (either by hostile discrimination or by multiculturalism and affirmative action).
When there exist racial groups with different mean abilities we will see their distributions centering on different means. Absent Affirmative Action you’ll see a racial sorting effect, one with fuzzy boundaries. Here’s a graph on admission to a state law school and this reflects the influence of AA.
http://i.imgur.com/2BIe5UT.jpg
Here, from the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, is data on racial breakdown on all test-takers in America who scored above 700 on SAT subtests.
http://i.imgur.com/oF0p2w0.gif
If the gov’t doesn’t interfere you pretty much wipe out admission of minorities into selective institutions of higher education. This is an intolerable outcome for minorities. They already believe in the phlogistan of institutional racism and their anger at society will grow even worse.
The unresolvable problem of modern America is this, in a homogeneous society there will be winners and losers, rich and poor, and when the people on the bottom look about them they see people just like them, similar in many, many ways, they see some of their family is successful, some not, and while they may be angry at their lot in life, their anger is measured. When you look into a heterogeneous society you will also see winners and losers, rich and poor, but now you overlay a racial factor on the income factor, and while there will still be poor whites, now you see blacks who are vastly over-represented in poverty and vastly under-represented in wealth. Those on the bottom can plainly see the racial composition of their income-group and the racial composition of income-groups higher than them. We’re not talking discrete boundaries, fuzzy boundaries are still interpretable. Now you get a lot of pissed off people who focus on the unequal outcomes. They care more about equal outcomes than they do about liberty or small government. Their votes cancel your votes.
This imbalance is manageable in a 9 white people to 1 black person society, but it’s not manageable in a 5 white person to 5 minority person society. In the former the cost of uplifting one person was spread onto 9 people. In the latter the cost of uplifting one person is pushed onto the back of another person. Kiss your liberty good-bye.
I don’t share your pessimism. I don’t think ethnic conflict is necessarily in our future or that we’re never getting back our culture.
We’ve seen a steady erosion of liberty over the last century and an increased erosion rate as diversity has increased. Being generous to your argument I suppose you can claim that 2nd Amendment rights have been expanded in reaction to prior contraction, but while this victory has been achieved the net result across all measures of liberty has been negative, the gains on gun right have occurred while free association rights have been utterly trashed, free expression of religious views and practices have been severely eroded.
If you believe that we can get our culture back I’d love to read why this will happen when all the trends point in the opposite direction and we’re looking at population growth from “Americans” who come from cultures and traditions which are alien to the one you champion.
The culture has been durable
The culture has not been durable. In the span of my own life I’ve seen a disentanglement from our history. Boys’ fantasy lives focused on playing cowboy and Indian. Deep instruction on the happenings and principles of Colonial America.
When our grandfathers were in Europe fighting and dying in the battle against Nazis, the beliefs they held then would, if expressed today, qualify them as Nazis to today’s culture.
When you change the people, then you change the culture.
I’m also guessing that we’re close to a low point culturally.
We’re nowhere close to a low point. Take a look at the UN population projections for Africa over the next 50 years. If we tap those immigration flows then we can expect to see more witch doctors and albino killing here in America. Look at the cultural practices of the Middle East. As we tap into those immigrant flows we’re going to see bride kidnapping taking root here, more honor killings, etc. You can test out this hypothesis by observing the behavior of American expats. When an American goes to live in India he doesn’t take up outdoor defecation and assimilate to Indian norms, that expat retains his American cultural norms. Well, the same works in reverse, immigrants to America cling to their culture and as their numbers in America grow, so too does their influence on our culture. Have you ever wondered why our movies and television shows are becoming cruder and simpler? Why whites are taking their TV viewing habits to specialty TV channels? Do you imagine that the AMC show Turn:Washington’s Spies has a viewership demographic which mirrors the American population? It doesn’t.
The Trump phenomenon is a symptom that suggests that enough people are becoming concerned about the direction of the country that a reaction is forming, and that reaction will eventually lead to improvements
I suspect that you’re correct in assessing what’s going on but incorrect in your prediction. If Trump has the backbone to do what he says with respect to the wall, deportations and Muslims, then he simply arrests the decline, but this doesn’t lead to improvement unless we define improvement as something like “when the hammer stopped hitting my head, that improved my comfort.”
What we’re still left to deal with is the battle between those who want equality of opportunity and those who want equality of outcome. This fundamental battle underlies the specific battles on issues like culture, taxes, welfare, liberty, etc. Equal outcomes require the heavy hand of government to be the enforcer. Look at the BLM movement, this is entirely focused on equal outcomes. The Oscars now need to have a special black category. After blacks, Hispanics are going to call for their own category, then Asians. This is our future.
However, it was a limited number of mortgages in a context where the CRA had for years strong armed banks into making risky loans.
I’m not disagreeing with you on the CRA or on Democrats. If this was DailyKos I’d be hammering the liberals for what they did to America’s financial system, but because liberals are not frequenting this place and looking to get straightened out there’s no need to go on the offensive against liberals and their skullduggery. The issue at the moment is Bush and his liberal leanings. Look, he could have gone full-bore against CRA, against FHA, but he didn’t. He tried with Fannie and I’m not criticizing him about that.
What this amounts to is Bush sharing the same goal as liberals but trying to use different policy tools to achieve that goal. Both the goal and the tools he wanted to use were wrongheaded.
The Ownership Society idea was to encourage individuals to become investors and take a stake in the society. Why is that a bad idea? Even if not everyone is capable of it, what’s wrong with the idea?
Finally I get to express my libertarian leanings. It’s not the job of government to parent people, to shape people, to elevate people, it’s the job of government to govern people as they are, warts and all. Here’s my conservative side, it’s not the job of government to take money from some and spend it on others in order to help them become homeowners. Bush’s vision of an ownership society is a vision that has no place in government. Why is it the government’s job to push an ownership society and diminish a renter’s society? There are pros and cons to each vision.
We learned a lesson from the desegregation battles. It was wrong for government to manage society so that it outlawed integration and favored segregation. The government wasn’t the parent of the people. So far, so good. Then instead of simple outlawing government enforced segregation, the government took on the parental role of the opposite position and now started parenting us by forcing integration onto people.
Government has no business in pushing either an ownership society or a renter society, it’s job is to govern us no matter how we choose to live from the two historical ways of living.
You disagreed with Bush. That doesn’t mean he was corrupt.
No, Bush was corrupt for favoring the interests of a small elite class, holders of the majority of capital in the US and to the disadvantage of every single person who earns income from the sale of their labor. He had no mandate to flood the nation’s labor markets with immigrant labor. He had no voter mandate to keep the middle class wage stagnation effect in place. He didn’t run on the platform of “I’m going to make the rich even richer and I promise to keep your wages stagnant, now please vote for me.”
If you go back far enough you can find a record of skepticism about the mental capacity and citizenship potential of Jews/Irish/Italians/Poles/Chinese/Germans
Did the above groups really integrate or did they change the country to suit them? Some, if not all, are underrepresented in the fight to preserve traditional American values and rights (guns for example) and several of them are massively overrepresented in left wing activist movements and media. I doubt Minnesota leftism owes much to any of the four groups discussed in Albion’s Seed but a lot to its Scandinavian settlers.
If these people get what they want, Trump in there, I guarantee you ”” you think the Mexicans are going to lay down that easily?
Americans took Texas from Mexico once, we can do it again.
Immigrants from Mexico and points south come from states with strong gun control. Texans own guns. Conclusion: obvious.
Bush may actually believe that Mexicans would make good Americans.
Mexicans made good Texans when they joined us to revolt against Santa Anna’s tyranny. Whether or not Texans make good Americans is another question, one which many people I have met have answered a resounding, “No!”
(I was asked in 1990 if Texas had abolished slavery yet. I have been harassed verbally and physically in three states NY, NC, CA, when it became generally known I was from””and proud to be from””Texas.)
There’s no doubt the Scandinavian heritage has a lot to do with modern Minnesota culture, particularly how damned nice they all seem to be, giving the rest of us Midwesterners a bad name. However, their strain of leftist politics really has its origins in the labor movement, which more of an international movement/conspiracy.
Can’t imagine why the RNC chose Cleveland. Common sense would have pointed to someplace that would have been miserably hot, difficult to get in and out of, and very unfriendly to the rioters. Given that this will be the last year for administration sanctioned chaos (we hope) I’d expect a big turn-out. Perhaps there is some kind of deal…”you burn it, we rebuild it” Dunno, like so much else, it baffles.
“Bush has strongly backed what he calls an “ownership society,”
Margaret Thatcher made the same mistake, encouraging residents to buy council housing.
It is the same fallacy that home ownership with create middle class values instead of the reverse.
It is a cousin of Michael Crichton’s “Wet streets cause rain” fallacy.
“There’s no doubt the Scandinavian heritage has a lot to do with modern Minnesota culture,”
Scandinavians had a culture of communal living and common culture that was partly due to isolation and climate. They are finding that it does not work with immigrants from alien cultures. I’m not sure Sweden will survive the present onslaught.
“What we’re still left to deal with is the battle between those who want equality of opportunity and those who want equality of outcome.”
The activism of the “equality of outcome” group may stem from doubt about their own capacity under “equality of opportunity.” Blacks know, at a subcortical level perhaps, that they can’t make it in an equality of opportunity society. I think this is what BLM is about and what the Dartmouth black students invasion of Baker Library is about. This, of course, is a disservice to the right tail of the IQ curve but those blacks are not of interest to the activists. They are making it on theor own, as Sowell and Williams and hundreds of others like Thomas did.
The activism of the “equality of outcome” group may stem from doubt about their own capacity under “equality of opportunity.” Blacks know, at a subcortical level perhaps, that they can’t make it in an equality of opportunity society.
Exactly and as a result we get a constant low grade warfare to deal with every waking moment in society. This is wearisome to the soul. Disparate outcomes across race create the cry of institutional racism. Thanks guys, thanks for blaming all whites for being racist in unconscious ways, this makes everyone feel terrific, to be accused of some evil that they’re not actually committing. In a 9:1 society, this angst and anger and accusation was background noise, but in a 50/50 or even a 30/70 society, it’s going to reach oppression levels. We’re already starting to see mandatory reeducation programs popping up. So when I see conservatives and libertarians calling for a flowering of liberty I can’t but help laughing at their blindness. That liberty is going to create unequal outcomes and that’s an intolerable outcome for America’s minority voters. Your liberty has to be squashed in order to salvage their egos.
And coming back to Trump, supporting any politician who continues the immigration folly just assures us that liberty will die a quicker death than if Trump actually follows through on his positions.
Will Says: Can’t imagine why the RNC chose Cleveland.
I can’t why they half of what they do. Morons in the leadership? Why not a Republican controlled state in a low-tax, low crime city? Why not somewhere in Texas or Florida? For that matter, why do they hold debates at NBC? Idiots.
I missed that and admit I was wrong.
However, the requirement quoted was at the very end of the amendment and shysters could argue that the restriction only applies to when the election is thrown into Congress. Remember, that if that version of an attempt to keep Obama in office is tried, both the Democrats and the media will be 100% in favor of it, and the Republicans will not say boo.
State of emergency it is then. ;-)
“in a 50/50 or even a 30/70 society, it’s going to reach oppression levels.”
Jews have learned this and it’s in their DNA by now. The not-equals hate the more than equals. This has been the source of much pain and terror to Jews.
My friends in England are self segregating to southeast and their daughters are in Wales.
Whites and self-confident blacks are moving to Orange County CA which has a pretty Republican political structure with lots of private schools springing up.
Asians seem to be self segregating to the San Gabriel Valley in LA.
Jews are leaving England for the US and France for Israel. The US and Israel will be the refuge for Jews and they had better start figuring out that Democrats are not the friends they thought they were. Any more than Labour, which imported millions of Muslims, are their friends.
It’s kind of interesting to see the Democrats trying to demonize Trump as a Hitler figure while the left revels in Jew hatred and conspiracy theories worthy of Nazis.
Grim. I spoke recently to someone in Yorkshire, and they seemed oblivious to what’s been happening. I guess as long as the liquor store, pub and Tesco stay open, it’ll be okay. But then again, I knew people in Manhattan that could never figure it out either. In fact, I lived across the river, right in the belly of the beast, and found it all rather interesting, until I didn’t.
As for Cleveland, I hope someone at one of these chest-beating events has the temerity to ask John R. Kasich, Governor Of Ohio, if he’ll allow Red/Green to burn the town like they did in Maryland and Missouri.
” if he’ll allow Red/Green to burn the town like they did in Maryland and Missouri.”
I wonder how much he has to do with Cleveland as it is another Democrat city with a (half) black Mayor.?
Neither Trump’s rise nor the vociferous opposition from the establishment he inspires are difficult to understand. His rise is a direct reaction by the base to the GOP elected class (Boehner, McConnell, etc., now including Paul Ryan), who not only have completely disregarded the conservative Republican base, but actually have actively opposed it. But, since Trump is an outsider with no bona fides whatsoever as a Republican, let alone as a conservative one, it is natural for his candidacy to generate official opposition to his efforts to hijack the party and take it to unknown places. Me, I’d be a lot more enthusiastic about Trump if I had some reassurances about what sort of nominee he’d make to the Scalia chair on SCOTUS.
My best guess as to the real meaning of the Trump phenomenon is that it represents the mobilization of the people whom the Democrat/Media Elite drove out of the Democrat party since 1968. They are largely white, working class and middle class, religious, and Jacksonian.*
Trump and the Trumpeters are turning the Republican party into a fun house mirror image of the Democrat party. The Democrat party is a mere conglomeration of tribes that hate and fear each other. The best way to counter it and them would be to create a party of ideas, which is what conservatives have been doing since Reagan. Trump and the Trumpeters are the negation of that effort.
Trumps voters were driven out of the Democrat Party to be replaced by blacks and Mexicans whom the Democrat/Media Elite saw as easier to control, and government employees who are in the hip pocket of the Democrat/Media Elite. Trump is recreating the Democrat Party in exile, not a conservative alternative to the Democrat party.
Conservatism will live on after Trump, because it is a true. The Republican party will be destroyed.
*Walter Russel Mead’s terminology:
“Jacksonian populism, the sense of honor-driven egalitarianism and fiery nationalism that drove American politics for many years, has never been hated and reviled as often as it is today, and many American academics and intellectuals (to say nothing of Hollywood icons) are close to demanding that Jacksonian sentiment be redefined as a hate crime.”
Mead says: “Jacksonian sentiment embraces a concept of the United States as a folk community”. Jacksonians are patriotic and despise European Elites, whom Jacksonians see as effete and corrupt. The Democrat/Media Elite want to transcend the nation state and join up with their classmates in Europe.
The Democrat/Media Elite view the military as uncouth, and its codes of honor and duty as barbaric. They shun the military, and would dismantle it entirely if they had their druthers, which would free up more money with which to pay off their government employee constituency, and the legions of lumpenproletariat who vote Democrat. Jacksonians favor the military, and, indeed, are the single largest class of people in the military.
Similarly, the Democrat/Media Elite are Marxists atheists want to destroy religion. The Democrat/Media Elite want to destroy the communities created by religion so that the state will be their only community, and the Media and the government schools their only source of moral instruction. The Democrat/Media Elite want to destroy families, so as to deprive people of their primary source of strength and comfort, and force them to rely of the Leviathan State for all of their needs.
It is possible that Trump is a phenomenon created by the Democrat/Media Elite for the purpose of destroying the Republican Party and electing, the otherwise unelectable Hillary Clinton.
Consider this:
“Les Moonves Exposes the Trump Media Game” by Stephen L. Miller ”¢ March 3, 2016
Am I saying that Trump is conspiring to the ends discussed above? No, it is not necessary for him to be an active conspirator, he could simply be the passive vessel through which these plans are achieved. OTOH, given his history as a con artists and fraudster, I would not put it past either Trump or the Clinton’s to have dreamed up this entire plan in conjunction with each other.
I am a conservative. I see Trump as a short fingered vulgarian, a bully, a boor, a fraud, a philanderer, an ignoramus, and a buffoon. I have never heard him say anything which indicates in anyway that he is a conservative, a Republican, or a constitutionalist. He is unfit to be be President, by his character, his licentiousness, his ignorance, and his poor judgement.
I fully understand that Hillary is a felon and a socialist, and that Bernie is a flat out communist, and either one of them would do incalculable damage to the Republic if she/he were to be the next President.
However, I think that Trump would be just as damaging because he would advocate the same damaging policies that the Democrats favor, but his presence would prevent the Republicans from acting as an effective opposition.
For these reason I will vote for neither Trump nor a Democrat in the General Election.
As for the Trumpeters, I see them as suffering from a delusion caused by a toxic stew of their own anger and the intoxication of the illusions they have created for themselves about Trump.
I know that there are lots of Trumpeters, but vox populi is not vox dei, and communis error non facit jus.
Robert, this election, like many elections, is a vote against as much as it is a vote for. I think it is most important to vote against Hillary.
Me, I’d be a lot more enthusiastic about Trump if I had some reassurances about what sort of nominee he’d make to the Scalia chair on SCOTUS.
The benchmark for comparison is going to be Obama/Hillary. With Trump, elected by Republicans, allied with Republicans, influenced by Republicans, and already stating his own preference for an originalist like Thomas, you’re guaranteed to get a better outcome than with Obama/Clinton.
The best way to counter it and them would be to create a party of ideas, which is what conservatives have been doing since Reagan. Trump and the Trumpeters are the negation of that effort.
Let’s treat this proposition as true. Republicans have utterly failed at this effort after losing the popular vote in the last 5 of 6 elections. True, Romney would have won a larger landslide than Reagan did if only Romney had faced the same electorate as Reagan, but Republicans, you know the party of ideas sold out to Big Capital, and colluded with the Democrats to flood the nation with 3rd world voters who love free stuff and so vote for the Democrats. How many more elections do Republicans have to lose for the advocates of “Republicans must be a party of ideas” to realize that their dream is dead in a multicultural society where the new “Americans” hate the ideas of the Republican Party?
Conservatism will live on after Trump,
I have no idea what you mean by conservatism. What are Republicans conserving? The only success I can see is rolling back attacks on the 2nd Amendment. Republicans establishment, the true believers in “conservatism” are orgasmic about the idea of Comprehensive Immigration Reform. They are fighting bitterly against the multi-decade trend of the Republican Party becoming the party of white voters, you know, the actual people who like the ideas of the Republican Party. The leadership is fully on-board with the Leftist-Marxist idea of multiculturalism. Tax cuts for the rich while simultaneously hollowing out the middle class has nothing to do with conservatism, it’s more aligned with parasitism.
They are largely white, working class and middle class, religious, and Jacksonian.*
Frankly, I’m puzzled by your rejection of Jacksonian voters based on the definition you quoted. They love America, they are patriotic, they reject a global cosmopolitan identity and put America first, they favor numerous power and cultural centers over the alternative of one centralized government, they favor the military. So, okay, they reject the parasite class which presently defines key elements of “conservatism” but seeing how the parasite class doesn’t have enough votes to win elections with their “conservative” product, isn’t what the Trump Jacksonians offer the next best alternative?
One final note:
I fully expect that if Trump is nominated, the media and the Democrats (which are one and the same thing) will set off a VEI 8 supervolcano of anti-Trump mud. It will be all Trump all the time on every network. You will hear about all of his frauds and the widows and the orphans he ripped off. You will here about every adultery, and every divorce. You will hear about his numerous bankruptcies. And, you will hear every one of his vulgarities, and his stupidities. You will reach the point where you break out in hives if you see or hear his name.
And, no, Hillary’s felonies will get no airtime at all.
Right now the all time record low vote for a presidential election with only 2 serious candidates, is 1964, when Barry Goldwater garnered 38.5% of the vote. I think that will set the over/under for Trump. I am also expecting record low turnout, a wipeout of Republican candidates for Senate, and a possible change in control of the House.
Jonathan: “I think it is most important to vote against Hillary.” Which is why I will vote Libertarian.
I am also expecting record low turnout, a wipeout of Republican candidates for Senate, and a possible change in control of the House.
Yes, if anything can be said about this election season so far, it’s that it’s a low turnout year.
Which is why I will vote Libertarian.
Ah, someone who wants Hillary in the White House. Thanks for the clarification.
“Which is why I will vote Libertarian.”
Which, of course, is a vote for Hillary. The hysteria on the part of “movement conservatives” is understandable in that they don’t know what they are getting with Trump.
The rest of the GOP feels the same way about the candidates of the “Movement conservatives.”
I supported Romney and think he would have been superior president but his GOTV effort failed miserably. It absolutely collapsed on election day. People who were volunteers found no organization at all.
I’m not yet decided on Trump but I think Cruz may have trouble getting elected.
Enough. I have said what I have to say.
By the way has anyone analyzed the differences, if there are any, between open and closed primaries and does anyone know if the larger turnout has been enthusiastic or strategic voting? Just curious.
Some states have seen a 100% increase in turnout. Turnout has increased, to varying degrees, in all states. Turnout for the Democrats is down in all states. The Democratic race is more competitive than most Democrats thought it would be. Any Democrat who thinks that they’re mucking up the works for the Republicans is forfeiting the ability to influence the Democratic race. Also, the issue of strategic voting solely within Republican ranks would show itself in terms of turnout by spiking in the primaries which occurred AFTER the NeverTrump movement began but we’re not seeing that spike in turnout, rather the turnout in primaries before the NeverTrump issue was born are about the same as the level of turnout seen after NeverTrump was birthed, or stillborn.
I can understand floating the hypothesis but once floated you need to analyze it and I’m not seeing how one can discount the massive rallies, the appeal of a.) The Muslim Ban, b.) The Trade Position, c.) The Deportation Position, and d.) The No Warmongering Position. All four positions were entirely neglected by both parties, meaning the supporters of these positions had no one to root for in an election, so now that there is a champion of these policies, doesn’t it seem rational that the supporters of such policies would come out and support the candidate championing the policies. In addition there is the anti-PC sentiment which appeals to people. If you can discount all of these factors then you can assign some validity to the strategic voting gambit, either from the Democrats or from the Republicans, but I don’t see how these factors can be discounted away, hence I don’t assign any value to the strategic voting concern.
I have no idea of what Trump will do when elected.
This is a revolution and revolutions take turns that cannot be predicted.
I would be OK with Cruz but I think he is too polarizing to get cross over votes and might have trouble getting elected. I’m willing to be convinced and thought Trump would flame out before now.
I do think this is a preference cascade and cannot be predicted by traditional political rules.
I would like more Republicans like Sessions, and I was hoping Coburn, would sign on and help him with policies.
Even the Archbishop of Canterbury is figuring it out, and that is a surprise.
Britain has a ‘genuine and justified’ fear of mass immigration, the Archbishop of Canterbury declared last night.
The country’s most senior churchman said it was ‘absolutely outrageous’ to dismiss the public’s legitimate concerns as racist.
Archbishop Justin Welby warned: ‘There is a genuine fear. And it is really important that that fear is listened to and addressed. There have to be resources put in place that address those fears.’
He added: ‘What happens about housing? What happens about jobs? What happens about access to health services?’
The Archbishop still doesn’t get it. People want back what was taken from them. You can’t get to there simply by listening and putting resources into listening to what people are angry about. The way you satisfy people is to rollback multiculturalism. You can do it peacefully, with financial incentives for minorities to leave the UK, or you can do it more brutally, by government goons sending them out. The UK isn’t at this point yet, but it will be. This is why we no longer have Czechoslovakia to kick around anymore, nor Yugoslavia. When people look at Yugoslavia, a civil/ethnic/religious war simmering for centuries doesn’t look like an attractive future.
Chicago is giving us a preview of Cleveland this summer.
“I didn’t want to see anybody get hurt,” said Trump, who insisted he could have held the rally. “I think we made the right move.”
Trump said he “can’t even have a rally in a major city anymore,” while suggesting the images from the protest broadcast nationally could lead to higher voter turnout on Tuesday, when Illinois, Florida and Ohio hold primary elections.
I watched bit on Fox News just now and the hostile demonstrators, who broke into the rally site, seem to be about 50% Bernie supporter white college students and 50% black BLM types.
In Chicago, more than 30 minutes after the event was scheduled to begin, a voice came over the sound system informing the thousands in attendance that the event had been postponed due to “security concerns.” Trump’s campaign later released a statement saying the event had been canceled “for the safety of all.”
Protesters inside the arena cheered. “We stopped Trump,” they chanted.
Officials moved to empty the arena with an announcement of “please exit the building” over the public-address system. Thousands of Trump backers and protesters filed out, joining the thousands of protesters outside. There were some clashes and pushing, images captured by cable news networks.
He may have trouble holding these rallies, especially in Blue/Democrat cities, but this will elect him just as the Chicago 7 elected Nixon in 1968.
Yes indeedy, I keep thinking about the Cleveland police getting a big chunk of federal money for security concerns, and the corresponding Red/Green riot team. Now would be a great time for the candidate to start calling out the organizers, start making noise. I’m sure his security people have a pretty good idea who the actors are. Take a page from the Alinsky playbook, litigate it in the media…”Cleveland businesses stand to lose millions because of these clowns”
The anarchists have now have now taken over the Sanders campaign.
We are the danger. #TrumpRally #FeelTheBern #ByeAnita #AlvarezMustGo
The operational rule of thumb here is that everything helps Trump. This kind of boxes protestors into a corner.
Wow, this diversity sure is working out well. Thanks liberals.
The Chicago riot at the Trump rally is exactly what I predicted a few days ago in this thread. Expect it to get worse and worse, and become much more violent when Trump supporters really decide to fight back. Needless to say, the Dems tame media will always find some way to ignore any violence by the leftists, or blur it with rationalizations, but will highlight any actions by Trump people or police to shift blame and incite further violence.
We are entering a period of low-level civil war between the left and other dem/progressive groups and anyone who attempts to resist their ongoing cultural revolution. (And yes, the use of that term is deliberate).
@Tangoman – same as the riots in 68 helped Nixon
same as the riots in 68 helped Nixon
I find it interesting to watch reactions of large groups. There are people who are like Early Warning Radar, they see the threat at the very moment that it appears on their screens. There are others who don’t see that threat but clue in when it’s grown more severe. There are others who see the other groups reacting but dismiss them for reacting to something that they don’t regard as a threat.
I don’t think it’s a controversial position to take to claim that the people who already see immigration and demographic change as a threat to the America they love are mostly on-board with Trump, even if he’s blind to it. What I’m curious about are the people who see the threat but are aligned with Cruz or Rubio or Clinton or Sanders or Kasich. What good does that do? Cruz came out and blamed Trump. OK, let’s work with that. Trump has been talking about issues from a position which rejects a full embrace of multiculturalism, it’s clear that most of his supporters are far, far ahead of him on this issue, but no matter. Does Cruz really believe that absent Trump the racial and national and ethnic tensions would not be present? BLM arose before Trump launched his campaign. I just don’t understand how people can rationalize that things will get better in society as multiculturalism and its handmaiden, the equal outcome society, gather more power. Do they really believe that Trump is causing this or are they making this accusation for partisan reasons?
I don’t know what to make of these issues, but I find them interesting to toss around.
I don’t think for a moment that they believe Trump is responsible. The shenanigans in the McDaniel/Cochran race in Mississippi employed by the RNC demonstrate that they as well as the Democrats will stoop to racial/class tactics to satisfy their goals.
That’s why the choice of Cleveland as the convention site troubles me. It’s as though the RNC deliberately wants a violent, chaotic result. As someone on another blog so aptly put it: “blaming Trump for the Chicago mess, is like blaming Benghazi on a YouTube video” It’s a lie, and everyone knows it is.
“the choice of Cleveland as the convention site troubles me”
Me, too. I don’t think it had any significance but trying to get Ohio to vote GOP but the Trump thing has made it a real concern. A local Democrat politician was involved in organizing the Chicago protests and I expect the Democrat Cleveland administration will not be helpful. A Chicago cop has announced that they could handle the demonstrators, which is nonsense if you watch the TV of the riot.
There were a lot of Trump security people there but only a half dozen cops inside. There were more outside but a thousand demonstrators inside. Trump was wise to cancel.
I didn’t see it but Cruz has now blamed Trump for the riot which is pretty sleazy.