The Questionable Major Premise in the Case Against Trump

Whether you think that Trump acted unethically, or criminally, or impeachably (is that a word?), what exactly is the argument? I have often said that, when you are trying to analyze an argument in real life, the first thing to do is to figure out the major premise of your opponent's argument.

All arguments have one big, universal premise. In the argument, 

All men are mortal

Socrates is a man

Therefore, Socrates is a mortal

The big, universal premise is the first one, "All men are mortal." It is called the "Major Premise." In formal logic, it is always stated first. But when we argue in real life, we generally omit it altogether--usually because everyone is assuming it. Usually it involves the common believe of those on both sides of the argument. But  many times, it goes unstated because the person making the argument knows it is questionable and he doesn't really want to draw attention to it. 

Let's take the major premise at the stasis of the current argument over impeachment: that there was a "quid pro quo" in aid to Ukraine. Here is the argument as it is commonly stated, missing the major premise:

The Trump administration's aid to Ukraine involved a quid pro quo

Therefore, the Trump Administration's aid to Ukraine was an impeachable crime.

What is the missing, major premise? "Any action involving a quid pro quo is an impeachable crime." Here's the complete argument, with the major premise highlighted:

Any action involving a quid pro quo is an impeachable crime

The Trump administration's aid to Ukraine involved a quid pro quo

Therefore, the Trump Administration's aid to Ukraine was an impeachable crime.

And here is where the defense of the President (a defense originating with him) has gone down precisely the wrong path. The administration and his defenders in Congress have implicitly accepted this major premise, when what they should have done is question it from the beginning.

This is where Trump's defense is terribly, horribly mistaken and it will cripple his defense until the process plays itself out. This was part of the point in a recent article in Human Events: 

The response they should have given to the charge that there was a quid pro quo is "So what." There are a lot of governmental actions that involve a quid pro quo, and none more obviously than foreign aid. Foreign aid not only can, but always involves an implicit or explicit quid pro quo. With the possible exception of humanitarian aid, we don't give taxpayer money away to foreign countries unless we expect something back. And there is the implicit understanding that if a country is receiving foreign aid, then it can be taken away the moment it displeases us.

And not only do we implicitly consent to the quid pro quo behind all foreign aid, we expect it. Foreign aid has never been purely charitable, and has always been a tool of foreign policy. Of course this what precisely Mick Mulvaney's point in his controversial remarks at a White House press conference. The problem with Mulvaney's remarks was not that they were incorrect, but that they went against the official narrative.

Now let me anticipate an objection here. An anti-Trumper could say, "But it is not just the fact that it is a quid pro quo; it's that the quid pro quo is one that helps him personally and politically. Once again, let's look at the major premise. The argument is stated publicly without it:

The President's Ukraine action is one that helps him politically

Therefore the President's action is an impeachable crime

Missing premise?

Any action that helps a president politically is an impeachable crime

The Trump administration's aid to Ukraine involved a quid pro quo

Therefore, the Trump Administration's aid to Ukraine was an impeachable crime.

Again, almost every act a president engages in while in office is designed to help him politically. Every policy decision, every public declaration, every presidential domestic trip helps him politically. There have even been objections to taxpayer-funded presidential junkets in the days leading up to elections in which the president is running that they are really campaign trips and shouldn't be paid for by taxpayers. But despite this, it happens all the time, and even those who protest never say that such trips are impeachable offenses.

Once again, no one can plausibly argue that acts by presidents that politically benefit them are either impeachable, or criminal, or even unethical. The major premise is just wrong.

Let's just take the most famous case of foreign aid, which is our longstanding foreign aid to Israel. Not only is there a quid pro quo (the expectation that we will receive something back from it)--that we will enjoy cooperation and support from Israel in our Mideast foreign policy, but there is a very obvious political benefit to any administration that continues our foreign aid to Israel. Every President, whatever else he may expect from aid to Israel, understands that it helps them greatly with Jewish voters. 

So neither a quid pro quo in foreign aid, nor the fact that political advantage is gained from it are either unethical, criminal, or impeachable--nor would they be so if they both involved a quid pro quo and resulted in political advantage, since two bad arguments don't make a good one.

But here is the problem: The Trump administration has mistakenly chosen what ground it will fight on, and, unfortunately for him, it is not the high ground. And to shift his position now will look like pure opportunism. He will have to admit that there was a quid pro quo, which undoubtedly there was in some form, despite the fact that he has been denying it all along. I will look like a rhetorical retreat.

And yet, I don't see another alternative. 

In either case, the President is not going to get convicted, as I have said before. But if you're going to get impeached, you might as well get it right, win or lose.

Three Questions about Impeachment

There are three questions to ask about impeachment: 1) Did the President commit a crime? 2) If the President committed a crime, is it an impeachable crime? 3) Are the Democrats running the impeachment process qualified―ethically or politically―to judge him.

Did the President commit a crime? I'm not sure we know this. I think a lot of people think he acted unethically, but not all unethical behavior is criminal. By saying someone committed a crime, we mean one of two things: either he violated statutory law, or he engaged in behavior that legal case law has adjudged to be criminal.

The President's opponents accuse him of 1) asking a foreign government for a partisan favor, and 2) the request was contingent on the foreign government receiving aid from the United States.

If he violated a statutory law, which one did he violate? Federal laws have numbers. "Pub. L. No. 108-45" is the 45th law passed by the 108th Congress. What is the number for the statute Trump violated?

If he violated the findings of some judicial ruling, then what ruling was it?

I'm not saying there are no good answers to these questions. I'm just saying that, as someone who has paid pretty close attention the debate, I have not heard a single person address these questions. It is supposed to violate campaign finance law. Which one? What does it say? Some people say it could violate several laws. Which ones?

For all the certainty about the fact that Trump violated laws, it is curious there has been so little discussion about the laws themselves.

This is important, since laws are stated in ways that often invite interpretation. But when you have no particular law you can refer to, it's kind of hard to figure out whether the activity you are pointing to violates it or not.

If the President did commit a crime, was it an impeachable crime? This is even more murky, since the Constitution says that a president may be impeached for "high crimes and misdemeanors" What makes a crime or misdemeanor "high"? The Constitution gives no guidance on this, nor, apparently, does case law. Given that fact, the determination is a political judgment.

We as a people have to decide, through our representative government, whether it qualifies or not. If we decide it does, then it does. If we decide it doesn't, it doesn't. Period.

The outcome of that process is yet to come.

Are the Democrats running the impeachment process qualified to judge him? This, in the end, is the most important question. The one that will really tell.

For Americans to see Trump's actions for what they are, they are going to have to have confidence that the people doing the judging themselves be above politics and partisanship. They are going to have to know that the process is fair.

On this ground alone, impeachment hangs. Even if the other two questions are answered in the affirmative, the answer to this one is determinative. And to mark it worse, it is the one of which Trump's enemies seem clueless. 

The Democrats will kill their own impeachment agenda. No one except the most blind Democratic partisan believes that the partisan Democratic politicians who are now engaged in the impeachment inquiry are even remotely fair and nonpartisan. 

First, House Intelligence Committee Chariman Adam Schiff has already stepped in it twice--once by rewriting the President's comments in the transcript of the call to the Ukrainian president, and then again when he lied about when he knew about the whistleblower complaint. 

Schiff cannot play both sides of the track here. He cannot act as a partisan one moment, and in another pretend to be scrupulously judicial. It hasn't worked so far, and will continue to plague the investigation.

Second, the Democrats would impeach Trump of anything if they could, legal or illegal, ethical or non-ethical, and the voters know this. They were talking impeachment before he even took office. Americans have seen a parade of charges, one after another, each eliciting a cheer from Democrats as the think that will take down Trump, and each fading into obscurity. The Ukraine call is only most recent of these charges.

At some point (and I think we have reached it), voters just say, well, Democrats just don't like Trump and they will stop at nothing to bring him down. This is just another attempt, and it will fail like all the rest.

Can we talk about something else now?

Third, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's failure to call a vote on articles of impeachment makes the Democrats look even worse in this regard. Trump's defenders know this, and are honing in on this weakness. The administration is now refusing to turn over documents until this is done, which is the smartest thing they could do, since it puts Pelosi in a dilemma: either she calls an impeachment vote, which she knows, at this point, her party really doesn't want, or she doesn't call it, in which case she denies the administration legal protections that the formal impeachment process provides. 

Pelosi won't call a vote on impeachment, but not because she doesn't have the votes. She may have the votes, but that doesn't mean members want a public vote. In these kinds of cases, there are people who will vote yes when it comes to it, but they don't want to pay the costs of such a vote. They are the ones that, right now, are approaching Pelosi and discouraging her from calling a vote. 

Democrats have managed till now to convince the public that they are now operation according to some "formal process" of impeachment, when, in fact, they are not. The only "formal process" when it comes to impeachment is impeachment. And the only thing that qualifies as impeachment is a vote for articles of impeachment.

The only claim the so-called "impeachment inquiry" has to formality is their own rhetoric. This is what the Trump administration is betting on: that they can make this clear by refusing to provide documents.

And let's be plain about this: Pelosi doesn't have the votes for articles of impeachment. The only support she now enjoys is support for an "impeachment inquiry." And those aren't impeachment votes. This is why the Democrats will continue to punt on actual impeachment and continue equivocate about an  "impeachment inquiry" constituting a "formal" impeachment process.

All of this goes, again, to the issue of fairness. The Democrats are accusing Trump of using his office for partisan gain. But if the public becomes convinced, as I think many already are, that the Democrats are only using the impeachment process for partisan gain, then how, they will ask, are they any better than the man they are trying? People will not accept the legitimacy of a process in which the judge is guilty of the same crime as the person being tried. They just won't.

So far, the Democrats are playing right in to Trump's strategy here. Some people think his tweets hurt him. They don't. They further anger his Democratic opponents, and they overreact, looking partisan themselves, and play right in to his strategy.

They will continue to do this. This is why Pelosi won't win her vote, and why, even if she does, the Senate will acquit. And will help Trump in the 2020 election.

#Donald Trump may be down but he is not out

My most recent piece at Intellectual Takeout:

Trump's lack of popularity is no surprise. Of course, he has brought much of this on himself. With the help of a hostile media, it is understandable why he can't seem to break the 45 percent ceiling. The result has been predictions of an imminent loss of the White House by Republicans, and that explains the burgeoning crowd of Democratic presidential primary challengers we see blocking the horizon.

Under normal circumstances, the prognostications of Republican disaster would ring true. How can a president with popularity as low as Trump's have any hope at all? 

Writing in the Jan. 10 Wall Street Journal, columnist Daniel Henninger explains why it is the Trump shouldn't be counted out--at least not yet.

Read the rest here.

How an Ancient Philosopher Predicted the Outcome of the #2016Election

My newest post at Intellectual Takeout: 

Many people depend upon polls to predict the outcome of elections. What pollsters do appeals to all the prejudices of the post-Enlightenment modern mind: They employ a distinctive technique (thank you Rene Descartes), they focus on empirical evidence (thank you Francis Bacon), and they invoke the mathematical forms of statistics (thank you John Graunt and William Petty).  

But the responsibility for making an accurate prediction of this year's election might better have been put into the hands, not of a pollster, but a philosopher.

Read the rest here.

The question is not whether Trump, will accept tomorrow's election results, but whether the rest of us will

Amid all the absurdities of this year's election, one of the more inane issues the took up hours of media time was the fear that Donald Trump would not accept the results of the election if it didn't go his way. 

Apparently Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon were under the impression that an intransigent Trump could just bring the whole election to a grinding halt and they would have to park their cameras outside Trump Force One waiting in unrelieved suspense until he relented and agreed to sign off on the vote.

I mean, we all know about that section in the Constitution that says that a presidential election cannot be certified until billionaire reality televisions stars running for president agree to it. Right?

WHO CARES IF DONALD TRUMP DOESN'T ACCEPT THE RESULTS?!!! ARE YOU PEOPLE COMPLETE IMBECILES???

The correct answer is "Yes."

In fact, it had to be rather gratifying to Trump's ego (which was rather substantial already) that leaders of the liberal media were running around like frightened chickens worrying that Donald Trump might dislike the election results. Fortunately the media—every bit as ADHD as Trump himself—flitted to some other Trump outrage and spared us another week of the ridiculous discussion.

The more important question is whether most Americans are going to accept the election results. 

I don't know how most people feel (we'll find out tomorrow), but I'm less disturbed by a Trump win than a Hillary win, since the decision tomorrow is between bufoonishness and evil. Faced with that alternative (although, as I suggest in my last post, those are not the only alternatives), I guess buffoonishness is less scary. Trump is merely silly and inept, but Hillary represents a positively malignant political force.

Trump represents America at its most trivial and fatuous. It's fitting that he is a reality TV star. If elected, he will need full time political care. Forget the warnings that a Trump presidency will result in a nuclear war. The man will be too busy insulting people on Twitter in the wee hours of the morning to even think about wars. 

Storage Wars, maybe. But not nuclear ones. 

In fact, has anyone ever asked Hillary how she cay say that Donald Trump is cozy with Putin AND that he might start a nuclear war with Russia at the same time?

We won't have to worry about government interference in much of anything under a Trump administration, since that takes a lot of thought and a lot of knowledge of how the government works. He is incapable of the former and devoid of the latter. He is more likely to spend his time watching The View than thinking of ways to bother average Americans.

Hillary, on the other hand, is the Nanny from Hell who will make sure you eat according to government dietary guidelines, get the proper government-approved amount of daily exercise, and make sure no one ever questions what gender you decide to be when you get up in the morning. She's against the government in your bedroom, but will have government bureaucrats stationed in every other room in your house.

She's the quintessential representative of modern secular liberalism who wakes up every morning thinking of new ways in which she can bring about a society efficiently administered by secular elites. She thinks in talking points and talks in jargon. She's got a 4-point plan for putting on her pants suits in the morning and wants to require you to have one too (It will be dresses for men).

Hillary is not incompetent. She knows what she wants and how to bring it about. It would be far better if she were incompetent. Trump doesn't have the competence or the inclination to do bad things. He will only do bad things by accident--because he doesn't know any better. Hillary will have the bad things planned out months in advance, and will speak about why they are good for us in speeches paid for by questionable foreign governments who donated to her foundation.

The choice in this election is between stupidity and corruption. I don't think Americans will accept either of these. Our culture will continue to come apart no matter who wins.

If the founders could only see what we've made of their noble republic.

Liberals Living in Glass Houses Shouldn't Throw Stones

The next time you hear the liberal media waxing high and mighty about Donald Trump's truly objectionable remarks on a recently released videotape, you need to remember a few important things.

First, you need to remember that you are hearing all this self-righteousness from a group of people, now fully a part of the entertainment industry, who consistently look the other way when their own industry make millions of dollars every year by selling rap and hip hop music the glorifies sexual violence, who defend the right of the porn industry to produce blatantly misogynist and objectifying pictures and films, and who, when it had the chance to condemn Bill Clinton's abusive behavior toward women instead gave him a pass.

And the next time you hear the Democrats preening about their high ethical standards, you need to compare two things:

1. How the Democrats dealt with Bill Clinton when it came to light that he had engaging in sexually abusive behavior with, among others, people over whom he was in a position of authority, which consisted of dismissing it as unimportant and making excuses for him; and

2. How the Republicans are dealing with Donald Trump now.

The fact that Trump's words have been condemned and that many Republicans have disowned him because of it, and that the much worse behavior of Bill Clinton was excused and caused no serious defections of Democratic support at the time is about the best evidence you can have about that the relative standards of the two parties are.

And, of course, it's a measure of the kind of hypocrisy liberals--inside and outside the media--are willing to engage in to promote their cause.

My Five-Step Method for Determining Who Wins Presidential Debates and How to Apply It to Last Night's Debate

I have a five-step method for determining who wins presidential debates. Here it is:

1. I switch to Fox News to see how Sean Hannity is feeling;2. I then switch to CNN to see how Jake Tapper (or Anderson Cooper) is feeling;3. If Sean Hannity looks grim and Tapper (or Cooper) looks chipper, then Hillary won;4. If Sean Hannity is chipper and Tapper (or Cooper) grim, then Trump won.5. If they book look about the same, then it was a draw

Applying this method last night, I determine that Trump won.

Tapper looked like his dog had just died. He had circles under his eyes and looked like he badly needed a long vacation. Of course, he wouldn't admit that Trump won, and he had to settle for saying that the debate wouldn't help him to win, which, of course, has nothing to do with the question, and which, if Trump had engaged in any similar confusion would have prompted Anderson Cooper to interrupt him and pointed it out and if Hillary had done it would have prompted neither moderator to do anything, since she can do no wrong.

Hannity, on the other hand, was positively ecstatic. The Donald had perpetrated the most decisive victory in the history of debate, beating out Demosthenes, Pericles, Cicero, and every other -es and -o who ever rose to a podium. He made Clarence Darrow look like a Sunday School teacher. He had destroyed Hillary so utterly and decisively that it was a wonder she wasn't taken off the stage on a gurney.

The first debate was, of course exactly the opposite.

What always gets me is the utter bias with with both networks deal with issues, although I will have to say that in the days leading up to the debate at least Fox extensively covered Trump's video scandal in addition to its coverage of Hillary's emails, while CNN hardly mentioned the emails.

And this morning on NPR, Mara Liasson's report on the debate included a discussion of everything but the emails. This is just unethical journalism, and it is why public broadcasting has so little credibility any more. And it isn't even necessary: Trump tends to hang himself. He doesn't need liberal journalists grinding an ax and pretending to be objective to do it for him.

The chickens come home to roost for Trump supporters

You know it's bad when Trump fanboy Hannity is reduced to the argument that his candidate is no worse than Bill Clinton.

On the one hand today's release of a videotape containing Trump's lurid remarks about a soap star right before meeting her is nothing new. Is anybody really surprised at this? The only thing new about these remarks is their explicitness. But they are no different in character than other things he has said.

Remember when Republicans said that character mattered? Those were the good old days. That was when the people with bad character were Democrats. Now that the people with bad character are Republicans, all of a sudden character doesn't seem to matter much anymore.

Funny how that works.

I have been telling my conservative friends who are so fearful of Hillary that they are supporting Trump that they'd better watch out. He is the political poster boy from Hell.

Well, welcome to my nightmare.

As much as I like many of the people who have supported Trump, I don't feel sorry for them. They should have known better. Will a Hillary Clinton presidency be bad? Yes it will. But if we're going to have a screwed up Presidency, which I don't see any way out of, I'd rather the party of which I am a member not be responsible for it. 

This is not the last time something like this will come out. In fact, it's a fair bet that there will be several more revelations like this before the election. And, if he becomes president, he's sure to add new outrages. He's the gift that will keep on giving.

No worse than Bill Clinton? There's got to be a campaign slogan better than that. 

Why Trump Should Win Tonight's Debate

There are several reasons that, barring some major gaffe on Trump's part, he should win the debate tonight with Hillary Clinton.

First, all you have to do to win this kind of debate is exceed expectations. As it stands now, the expectations for Trump's performance are lower than Hillary's, giving him a much lower bar to clear.

Second, Hillary faces a dilemma that Trump does not: She either plays it conservative, in which case she appears too boring and Establishment, or she plays it aggressive and tries to trash-talk Trump, in which case she will get the short end of the stick because no one can out trash-talk Trump.

Given these realities, Trump's strategy should be purely reactive: If Hillary remains docile, just stand there, make a few policy statements and look presidential, in which case he will have exceeded the expectations. If Hillary goes on the attack, then deploy the email scandal, the Bengazi scandal, the Goldman Sachs connection, and her husband's Bimbo scandal, in which case he will at least neutralized her attacks and possibly draw blood.

Thirdly, Each candidate comes with a constructive and destructive narrative and both will be trying to play to one and downplay the other. Hillary's positive narrative is that she is competent and tested; her negative one is the mirror image: she is an establishment figure who skirts ethical rules and gets away with legal transgressions that mere mortals would do time for. Trump's positive narrative is that he is an anti-establishment figure bent on shaking things up; his negative narrative is that he is impulsive and reckless with his words and a lightweight when it comes to the serious policy work it takes to be the leader of the Free World.

That's pretty much a draw. However, Hillary has one more narrative working against her, and it has to do with her health. Up until about a week ago, I thought her health really was a tempest in a teapot that no one really cared about. But I think that I thought that because I didn't care about it. As has become evident, a lot of people do care about it. The video of her collapsing as she got into a car made it an issue.

This debate is supposed to be 90 minutes without commercials. Do they even get a potty break? If not, Hillary has another dilemma: If she drinks water before the debate, then she's going to need one (remember the several times in the primary debates when she disappeared from the set?); if she does not drink water, she faces the problem of dehydration, in which case she faces the problem of passing out again (this was the reason given for collapsing in the now famous video).

Again, Trump doesn't face the same dilemma. If we can go by past experience, he can hold it--and he is more likely to make other people pass out than to do so himself. In fact this is the one thing that could completely change this election: If Hillary collapses or shows any significant evidence of fatigue or physical weakness, this election could well be over. 

Finally, even if there is a gaffe, there is going to be an automatic double standards for the candidates that, once again, favors Trump; namely, that Trump can get away with gaffes that Hillary cannot. In fact, gaffes are such a regular part of Trump's rhetorical repertoire that the gaffe is going to have to be a big one in order to be news at all, whereas Hillary will be hurt by even a moderately serious gaffe, since her strength is stability and experience.

And of course this plays back into the expectations game.

Trump has more to gain and less to lose than Hillary, making him the favorite to win.

Ann Coulter Finds Out that You Can't Trust Trump

There is some kind of poetic justice in Ann Coulter having to admit you can't trust Trump on the very day of the release of her book In Trump We Trust. 

The invasion of the body-snatchers thing that has been going on with many so-called conservatives infected Coulter fairly early on. Why? Almost exclusively because of the immigration issue. He was the only one addressing it, she thought. 

Okay so far. I get that. I don't agree with the immigration panic, but I can understand why Coulter thought that. Trump is right on the immigration issue: I can understand why someone would think that. But where, precisely, did she get the idea that you could trust Trump?

I'm sorry, but that doesn't make any sense at all.

Trump is exactly the kind of candidate that you can never trust: One who has no moral or political center. One whose attitudes are determined by what will either get him attention or help him win. That's what demagogues do.

And that's all they are: attitudes. They are not positions. Positions are come to by a process of application of some underlying principle or philosophy. Trump is incapable of even having a principle. 

Attitudes change with the political wind. So now he's calculated that this new position, now different from Coulter's, will help him win. That is literally the only factor in his decision to make the change.

Coulter is no fool. But she now looks foolish. Why? Because she should have known better. Now let's just wait for the evangelicals who have backed Trump to get their comeuppance. He'll turn on them too in time.

As someone who does not suffer fools gladly, I wonder what Coulter thinks about herself.

#DonLemon 's Violent Campaign Rhetoric

The liberal media spent a full two or three days this last week castigating Donald Trump for using what it maintained was violent rhetoric. CNN anchor Don Lemon was particularly outraged by Trumps comments.

No one seems to have noticed yet, least of all the liberal media, but most of the rhetoric used in political campaigns is based on violent rhetoric. In fact, the chief metaphor used in any political campaign comes straight from warfare, where the rule of the day is killing and general mayhem.

Like a lot of terms in our daily vocabulary, campaign terms are metaphors from some other area of life (and, in this case, death) whose original usage we see right through because of our common use of them. 

In fact, the term 'campaign' is itself a martial metaphor. Before there were ever democratic forms of government, armies when "on campaign," meaning they went off to kill people and break things. In fact, the earliest occurrence of the political use of the term in English dates only to the very beginning of the 19th century A.D.

And the military metaphors don't end there. 'Win', 'lose', 'victory', 'defeat', 'war room', 'battleground' states, 'fight', campaign 'foot soldiers', an election constituting a 'rout'—not only is it common in political language, it is the dominant metaphor.

So let's all panic now and run around telling everyone the political sky is falling because virtually every politician out there is using explicitly martial language, clearly indicating that they are advocating death, rape and pillage—even Hillary. I'm expecting that any second now Don Lemon will go into full apoplectic mode, warning everyone that they should head for their basements and stay there until after the election is over.

Oh, but wait. 

It is not only politicians who use these terms, but journalists who cover their "campaigns." In fact, Don Lemon uses them on a daily basis.

Don Lemon. Advocating death, rape, and pillage. So sad. Maybe he could conduct three consecutive days' worth of overheated interviews with liberal commentators on what a hypocrite he is.

Watch Don Lemon get put in his place after the ridiculous charge that Trump was encouraging people to mass insurrection

The comical imbroglio over Donald Trump's Second Amendment remark gets more comical by the hour. Trump makes one of his usual unintelligent, off-the-cuff, meaningless remarks, this time joking about what Second Amendment advocates might do if Hillary puts judges on the Court who want to do away with gun rights through judicial fiat (and barely even doing that).

Just watch CNN's Don Lemon go completely apoplectic, accusing Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent who backed Ted Cruz in the primary with being a "Trump surrogate," all the time acting himself as a Hillary surrogate.

Three minutes in, Bongino: "For twelve years of my life I was a secret service agent ... while you were learning how to be a TV personality."

OUCH.

Trump's comments didn't even approach irresponsibility, and as jokes go, it was pretty poor. But folks, bad taste and inarticulateness (not to mention being ungrammatical) do not constitute a threat to the Republic.

But, as you might expect, Hillary and her surrogates in the liberal media fell all over themselves, acting like Trump had just suggested mass violence and insurrection.

C'mon.

In fact, one of the funny things about all this is that, even if Trump were encouraging people to take up arms for the right to take up arms, he would only be doing the very thing the founders intended for people to do under the Second Amendment. Even Allan Dershowitz, commenting on CNN (I think) made the point that the Second Amendment is not about the right to hunt. It was put there to ensure that if the government became tyrannical, people would have the means to preserve their freedoms.

This is a liberal talking here and he's absolutely right. That's why the Second Amendment is there. And that's why Dershowitz was so outraged by what he was convinced in his conspiratorial liberal mind Trump was doing: the very thing the Second Amendment authorizes people to do (but which Dershowitz doesn't happen to like, but which doesn't matter because all a liberal has to do is ignore plain constitutional language and change the definitions of words and generally make things up).

But still the more important lesson here is that the media has now as become as trivial and unserious as the candidate they are trying to convince everyone is trivial and unserious--except when he's calling on Americans to start firing their weapons at public officials in which case he is a threat to our system of government which they don't really care about anyway which we know because they support Supreme Court justices who want to rewrite it.

Don Lemon and his liberal media colleagues are a far more serious threat the Republic than Donald Trump.

You think Trump shot himself in the foot? Check out what the Establishment is doing

Just when the air was going out of the Trump campaign for newer ever more blithering stupidity, along comes the Republican Establishment to rescue him by openly repudiating him and in the process reminding people once again how utterly worthless they are and underscoring the opposition Trump offers to them which makes people hold off on abandoning him for just a little bit longer.

Thank you, Establishment. Just keep it coming.

Even McMullin

First they launch an alternative supposedly "conservative" candidate. Now think about this. You have the Republican nominee who got where he is on the wave of disaffection among normal Americans toward Establishment conservatism, which is led by "Republican operatives" and which is associated with economic entities like Goldman Sachs, and you put up someone supported by "Republican operatives" and who worked for Goldman Sachs? 

Seriously? Will someone please issue an orange alert for political blindness? Please?

Add in the fact that Evan McMullin worked for the CIA and you have a candidate who makes Jeb Bush seem Bohemian by comparison. Ugh.

Then you have fifty national security experts come out in public opposition to Trump. Why wait for Trump's birthday to give him presents. 

Fifty national security experts? Who think Trump is a threat to national security? Are these the same people who supported the Iraq War--which, by the way, if we haven't mentioned it already (which we have) is the precise reason we have a Middle East crisis right now?

Real conservatives are not completely surrounded by imbecility. I, personally, am going to stock up on provisions and tidy up the bunker.

Headlines that make you want to vote for #Trump

I am not voting for Donald Trump, but there are a daily parade of news events that make me want to. The latest is the news that "Russian Rock Band Warns Americans Voting For Trump Is Like Voting For Putin."

The rock band is, of course, P***y Riot, a Russian rock band famous for the smash hit ..., um, well, there's the song ..., hmmm. Now that I think about it, they don't have any hits at all and for that matter no one has ever actually heard them play music. Which is probably a good thing.

The only reason they are famous is because the Russian government put them in jail. Not only does that not make them a rock band, it doesn't make their rantings meaningful. 

I, personally, am in favor of putting them back in jail. Maybe they could figure out how to play some instruments and actually play music, which is what rock bands are supposed to do, after all.

Trump rains on Hillary's parade

The dude's a maniac. Trump has now invited the Russians to release more hacked emails. And, of course, the liberals are fit to be tied.

And they ought to be. Why? Because Trump has sucked all the attention away from them once again and attracted all the attention to himself. Now instead of everyone talking about Bill's speech last night, they're talking about Hillary's emails again.

In an effortless, off-the-cuff remark, Trump has rained all over the Democrat's parade.

Again, I'm not voting for him, but you've got to give him credit: He's willing to go where no Republican candidate has gone before. No timidity, no reticence. He just comes right out with it. He does what Lincoln said Grant did, when Lincoln was asked about the competence of his new general: "He fights."

This has been the Republican's problem. They don't fight. They're haven't been willing to take the gloves off and get serious. The trouble with Trump, of course, is that you can never be certain exactly what he's fighting for, other than himself.

His ego is so big that it's irresistible centripetal pull forces all things into the vortex of its influence. He's a crazy man. I'm just glad it's at Hillary's expense.

The lyin' guy whose father helped assassinate JFK and whose wife is a bimbo didn't endorse #Trump. Go figure.

That the Trumpites who are all up in arms about Ted Cruz not explicitly endorsing Trump last night did not expect Cruz say exactly what he said (and didn't say) is a measure of just how fatuous is Trump's support.

The Morning Jolt captured it perfectly:

But why is everyone so surprised? Trump nicknames him “Lyin’ Ted,” argues he’s a Canadian ineligible for the presidency, retweets an image mocking his wife’s appearance and suggests his dad had a role in killing JFK, and never apologizes for any of it… and the Trump team is surprised Cruz didn’t endorse him?

Why were they and the RNC so surprised by a text they saw beforehand? Trump’s chief strategist, Jason Johnson, contends they weren’t.  “Since it’s obvious the shock is contrived, let me ask: What the H**l did they expect from the son of the man who killed JFK? Lighten up.”

Either the people booing were naive (a tendency common among many of Trump's supporters) or it was disingenuous.

And the only thing worse than the common run of naive or insincere Trump supporters is those current Trump supporters who were formerly Cruz supporters who now profess to be ashamed of him.

After all, if I have give up my principles so that my party can "win," why doesn't Cruz do it?

Wednesday night is going to be one of those nights that political junkies talk about for a long time. Ted Cruz’s decision was bold, reckless, politically stupid, brave, principled, divisive, gutsy and vindictive, all the same time. If you’ve spent the last couple years complaining that all politicians are spineless hacks who only follow the weather-vane and refuse to stand on principles, you’ve got no reason to complain this morning.

I agree with all of that except the part about political junkies talking about this for a long time. Political junkies don't talk about anything for a long time. They have very short attention spans. They're a bunch of Dories who can hardly remember what happened last week, let alone a year ago.

This will be virtually forgotten after next Sunday. Two weeks tops.

Will #MikePence be any help to cultural conservatives?

Rod Dreher today on Mike Pence, Donald Trump's new running mate:

Trump has picked a running mate who, when confronted by alpha-male bullies in corporate boardrooms who want to impose their will, will acquiesce. Trump, an alpha-male corporate bully in his own right, must have seen what Pence did when big business ganged up on the state of Indiana over religious liberty, and then decided he was a man with whom he could easily dominate. They deserve each other. So, vote for Trump if you like — he’s still the better choice for people who only vote on the Court — but don’t do it because you think Mike Pence will be of any help to religious and social conservatives.

Amen.

I'll be posting later on why social conservatives need to break entirely with big business "conservatism." The mega-corporate world has broken almost completely with cultural conservatism. It is now, almost without exception, the enemy. And the sooner social conservatives see that, the better off they will be.

Is Mike Pence really a "principled conservative"?

Trump has picked Mike Pence as his vice presidential running mate. In response, U. S. Senate President Mitch McConnell, Kentucky's senior senator stated, "Pence is a principled conservative, man of faith, and talented messenger for Republican ideas."

Um, well, if he was a principled conservative, why did he wimp out in the defense of his state's religious freedom bill, agreeing to a change that made Indiana less friendly to religious freedom, not more? And if he was a "talented messenger," why wasn't he able to hold his ground on it?

You can't rightly call conservative politicians principled if, when the debate get's heated, they bail on you. It's easy to stand for things you don't have to fight for. It's what you do when you're faced with opposition that tells you just how principled you are.

Pence failed that test. 

The Anti-Establishment Establishment

One of the mantras of the anti-Establishment forces in the Republican Party has always been principle over politics. And the biggest criticism by it of the Establishment was that the Establishment was too willing to sell out their principles to win politically.

But ever since Trump became the Presumptive Nominee (let us capitalize this expression to underscore its official status--or at least its presumptive official status), the anti-Establishment has begun to do the very thing that they have always criticized the Establishment for doing.

Now we are told that we get over our principled objections to Trump because otherwise we will lose. 

Yo, Anti-Establishment, are you listening to yourself? Do realize you are championing precisely the position you have always criticized the Establishment for? Sean Hannity? Mr. Anti-Establishment? You there?

These people preached to us about how important it was not to sacrifice principle for politics and yet now you are  that it is imperative that we do just this.

Interesting how, when the pigs take over the barnyard, they begin acting just like the humans who they replaced.

Trump and the Establishment: A plague on both their houses

The chief problem in the discussion over Trump is that he is disliked for all the wrong reasons. This is what makes the discussion about Trump's hostile takeover of the Republican Party so utterly frustrating.

The question has become whether Trump is going to change the Republican Party into something other than a conservative party. But the trouble is that the national Republican Party has had a tenuous relationship with conservatism ever since Ronald Reagan left the scene.

People forget that, before Reagan came along, the Republican Party establishment was largely made up of what were then called "country club Republicans." These were people who, generally speaking, wanted a strong national defense, a balanced budget, and a highball by the pool in the afternoon. They were in favor of the military-industrial complex to fix the world, monetary policy to fix the economy, and good security guards in their gated communities to fix their neighborhoods.

Then came the social conservatives.

In the early 80s, an army of Pat Robertson supporters invaded local Republican Party organizations. Because they were uncouth, religious but unPresbyterian or unEpiscopalian, and actually believed in something, the country clubbers fought them—and lost. Reagan, who, although he was really too principled for the country-clubbers, they were willing to accept because of his celebrity background and success as a governor. But, to their shock and dismay, he ended up embracing the social conservatives. Later, he scandalized them even worse by abandoning the stilted foreign policy doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction in favor of Star Wars, and the stilted economics of monetary policy in favor of supply-side economics.

 

Hence was born post-Reagan Republican conservatism, characterized by the triple doctrines of strong (but not expansionist) national defense, the pragmatic spending policies of smaller government and lower taxes, and advocacy of traditional values.

Since then, although outwardly championing Reaganism, the Party establishment has been moving away from all three of these.

In foreign policy, the Party was captured by neoconservatives who wanted to spread American influence the military adventurism and the religion of democracy. While Reagan bombed Tripoli and quickly left, George W. Bush invaded Iraq and ended up trying to run the place. The first achieved its goal (a less dangerous Quaddafi), the second did not (Iraq is now a satellite state of an even more dangerous Iran).

In economic policy, the Republican brand was ruined by the establishment advocacy of international free trade agreements and the Medicare Part D drug prescription benefit that amounted to a new and costly social entitlement. And while Reagan's advocacy of the free market was a position based upon the pragmatic benefits of policies whose goal it was to get government off people's backs, the increasing influence of libertarians in the Party has resulted in what amounts to a religion of the free market that has, through ostensibly free market trade deals, caused jobs loss at home.

 

And where once the Republicans were the party of traditional values, their replacement of them by "market values," a phrase that exalts freedom at the expense the common good, has resulted in the abandonment of the commitment to integrity of marriage as the central social institution in particular, and jettisoning of defense of the moral order of the Judeo-Christian ethos in general. And then there is the increasing acceptance among the Party elite of more virulent forms of gender ideology that threaten to displace the common sense categories which are the only basis for even believing in marriage. Ronald Reagan was not a libertarian, he was a conservative, and he knew the difference.

In short, the Republican Party had already experienced a hostile takeover before Trump ever started running for president.

But since everyone seems to have forgotten this, they talk about Trump's policies as if they were somehow opposed to conservatism, when, in fact, many of them are perfectly conservative.

His opposition to foreign military adventurism is perfectly in line with Reaganite restraint. And those people who keep characterizing Trump's foreign policy and economic views (as he has stated them) to the "American First" movement need to go back and listen to Alexander Haig's remarks as he articulated Reagan's foreign policy as his Secretary of State. He talked about "American national interest" and criticized the Soviet Union for its expansionist foreign policy. And they need to go back and take note that it was only with the George W. Bush administration that the United States began signing wide-ranging trade deals that ignored the consequences on jobs at home.

Far from being at odds with conservatism, Trump's views on foreign policy and economics are actually closer to conservatism than the views of the Republican establishment which appears to have forgotten what conservatism actually consists of, at least in its Reaganite form.

 

The worst criticism that could be leveled against Trump is on social issues, an area of Trump's stated agenda on which the paint has barely dried. It is on social policy that authentic conservatives have the most cause to be worried. 

And it is on all these views that conservatives need to ask themselves whether Trump really believes the positions he has taken or whether they are the product of pure political expediency. 

It is not Trump's stated positions that are the problem. The problem is whether he has any principles underlying these positions which we can have any confidence will cause him to keep them. Already he is abandoning his positions on his tax plan and the minimum wage are devolving into something different from what he ran on. How do we know his other position won't undergo the same devolution?

Trump is a creature of opportunity, and such creatures don't stay in one political position for long. But let's be clear on the fact that the establishment of the Party left conservatism before Trump ever came along.

The Republican choice this year was between someone who doesn't seem to have any principles and a Party establishment that has the wrong ones.