Politics

The Sec of State Tillerson Firing

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There was no single reason for the Sec of State Tillerson Firing…there was a laundry list.

According to various sources, Tillerson was pretty much against implementing President Trump’s foreign policy, trade and immigration agenda for Trump’s 2nd year as President and chaffed Pres. Trump over Russia besides:

1. Tillerson was working with the EU to stop the President from tearing up the Iran deal.
2. Tillerson wanted to remain in the TPP, TAP, & NAFTA.
3. Tillerson was against NK talks.
4. Tillerson was against China Tariffs.
5. Tillerson wanted to remain in the Paris Climate accord.
6. Tillerson did not support making Jerusalem the home of our embassy.
7. Tillerson wanted to keep open borders/high refugee resettlement.
8. Tillerson was talking that Russia affected our election results just before the Nunes Committee put a bullet in the head of the “Muh-Russia Collusion Delusion.”

Working behind Pres. Trump’s back with the EU over maintaining Pres Obama’s Iran nuclear deal — which Pres. Trump wants eliminated and the abandoned sanctions reinstated — was the last straw for Tillerson.

Discuss.

The Russia Collusion story is becoming more clear.

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I was a little late coming to the Trump supporters, but it was interesting almost back to the beginning.

Then it began to form a preference cascade.

Can the GOP really be so out of touch with the legions of out-of-work Americans — many of whom don’t show up in the “official” unemployment rate because they’ve given up looking for work in the Obama economy? With the returning military vets frustrated with lawyer-driven, politically correct rules of engagement that have tied their hands in a fight against a mortal enemy? With those who, in the wake of the Paris and San Bernardino massacres by Muslims, reasonably fear an influx of culturally alien “refugees” and “migrants” from the Middle East?

April 2016:
Trump is a coward, four time bankrupt loser, con artist, bully, 12 time business failure, WWE character, hypocrite, liar, dullard, loose cannon and has very poor character. He will lose in November and people need to wake up to that fact. Otherwise, hello President Hillary.

A year later, that commenter is a supporter.

Trump was in touch with them.

The result was “Deep Confusion.”

I left Queens for Brooklyn to meet Dany L. Esquilin, a Republican I met in the first week of this assignment, aboard a train to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

Mr. Esquilin was not a stereotypical Trump supporter. His parents were born in Puerto Rico, he is black and he had once been a Democrat. (Then again, so had Mr. Trump.) A retired private investigator, Mr. Esquilin worked to marshal Republican votes from Jews, Russians and Chinese-Americans.

Oh Oh.

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“Why Did It Take Two Weeks To Discover Parkland Students’ Astroturfing?”

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This Federalist post by David Hines is well worth reading and full of points about political organizing that need to be made over and over to conservatives and libertarians.

However, Hines’s post is annoying because he confounds conservative voters with the Republican political establishment. It was probably obvious to most politically alert conservatives within hours of the Parkland murders that the media and Democratic Party response was scripted and agenda-driven. Most of us probably expected this if not that it would come so soon. Similarly, the seemingly spontaneous overnight emergence of attractive, articulate Parkland students with anti-gun views, and the sophisticated promotion of anti-RKBA demonstrations and similar political events, was no surprise. We didn’t know the details but the outlines of a coordinated media-activist campaign were clear.

So, no, it didn’t take two weeks to discover the Parkland students’ astroturfing. The only people who seemed to believe the spin about a supposedly spontaneous anti-RKBA youth movement were naive liberals and establishment Republicans. (From a John Kasich press release from 21 February: “Friend, in case you missed my interview on CNN this morning, I called on the President and Congress to end the politics and produce common sense gun laws that make sense.” Clueless and a sell-out.) The rest of us knew what was going on and knew that the Republican establishment would be weak, inept and slow in response. We agree with Hines about the importance of political organizing. That is one of the reasons why we voted against the effete Republican establishment in 2016 and will continue to do so. Perhaps one day conservatives and Republicans will become as good at politics as the Left and Democrats are. Until then we will vote for Trump because unlike many establishment Republicans he appears to mean what he says, and has real skill at promoting and defending his agenda even if he does so mostly rhetorically and without outside help.

UPDATE: Perhaps I was too negative on Hines based on a quibble. Ace’s post summarizing some of Hines’s tweets is worth reading, and Ace’s conclusion is particularly good:

I would further say the biggest division on what used to be called “The Right” are the two main factions’ understanding of this tactic and this desired end-state, and their total rejection of it — or soft toleration of it.
 
Some of us are still in Business as Usual Mode and some of us are highly alarmed at how close the left is to achieving its end-state of a society divided between the Empowered True Believers and the Denigrated and Threatened Underclass, and are no longer willing to walk towards the gulags.
 
As we consider civil equality and freedom-in-fact (not just theoretical freedom, but actual real freedom in the real world) to be principles that are more important than any other, we are willing to violate some of the less-important procedural principles to fight the left’s objective of complete subjugation of us.
 
To many of us, it appears the Business As Usual crowd is focused on fairly trivial procedural matters while performing their appointed duties as the left’s enablers and enforcers of complete social and cultural rulership by the left.

The Republican establishment is defined by its business-as-usual attitude in response not only to leftist political activism but to actual subversion of governmental and civic institutions.

Just sayin’

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In all the righteous indignation about the story that there were four cops who failed to enter the school after the shooting, I’ve yet to see a source cited other than CNN.

We on the right have spent a lot of time and energy yelling that CNN is untrustworthy.

Why, then, do we uncritically accept this story from CNN?

Boycott the NRA Boycotters

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Start with the Enterprise and Alamo and National car rental companies. Add other companies to the list as they join the PC #BoycottNRA bandwagon.

Do these people remember the Smith & Wesson boycott? Perhaps not. And the anti-RKBA boycotters in this case aren’t gun companies and therefore don’t stand to lose as much from a conservative/pro-RKBA boycott as S&W did. The management of National et al no doubt figure their political opportunism won’t cost them much. They may be mistaken. Late-night TV hosts can get away with antagonizing half of their potential audience if doing so gets them increased viewership from the other half. However, sellers of ordinary goods and services are unwise to expect any such political partisanship to be good for their businesses.