The president must start protecting our democracy from Russia, says Thomas L. Friedman

More New York Times disinformation.  If there is anybody who is a threat to American democracy it is the NeverTrumpers, not Russia.  It is the NeverTrumpers who want to overturn a democratically elected president. What can Russia do?  Come and seize all the voting machines? Friedman is the towering fool.  All he has is a series of unsubstantiated allegations.

Our democracy is in serious danger.

President Donald Trump is either totally compromised by the Russians or is a towering fool, or both, but either way he has shown himself unwilling or unable to defend America against a Russian campaign to divide and undermine our democracy.

That is, either Mr. Trump’s real estate empire has taken large amounts of money from shady oligarchs linked to the Kremlin — so much that they literally own him; or rumors are true that he engaged in sexual misbehavior while in Moscow running the Miss Universe contest, which Russian intelligence has on tape and he doesn’t want released; or Mr. Trump actually believes Russian President Vladimir Putin when he says he is innocent of intervening in our elections — over the explicit findings of his personally chosen chiefs of the CIA, NSA and FBI

SOURCE 

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A lot of intellectual conservatives still don't "get" Donald Trump

That he has actually taught us all lessons they are resisting  -- including the reality that in the present climate politics can no longer be a gentleman's game

David Limbaugh

I happened onto a piece by Bill Kristol in The Weekly Standard, wherein he links to "a short, powerful piece in National Review" by Rick Brookhiser, who "concludes that 'the conservative movement is no more. Its destroyers are Donald Trump and his admirers.'"

I somewhat get the sentiment — or at least I used to — because during the GOP primaries, I fleetingly entertained a similar concern that Trump, whom I didn't consider a conservative, might undermine the conservative movement in the long run if elected.

Presumably trying to console Brookhiser, Kristol writes: "Movements grow old. They eventually die. Bill Buckley founded the American conservative movement in 1955. Can a political movement reasonably be expected to thrive and retain its vigor for more than 60 years? ... Trump is the proximate, the efficient, cause of the collapse of the conservative movement. The principles of sound conservatism compel us to criticize him, to rebut him, to resist him, and to plan to overcome him. But, perhaps it is the 'silent artillery of time' that has done the damage which Trump was able to take advantage of. And that suggests our task, the task of the descendants of the founders of American conservatism goes beyond that: It is to rebuild, or to build other pillars that will uphold the temple of American liberty in the 21st century. Brookhiser suggests at the end of his piece, 'It will take a lot of arguing to rebuild a conservative movement that one can contemplate without scorn.' True. And it will take a lot of work to create a new birth of conservatism — if it even is still called conservatism — that will support American freedom and greatness."

The first thing that pops out at me is Kristol's apparent ambivalence. If all movements inevitably die after a while, then why blame Trump, who just apparently accelerated conservatism's downfall? Indeed, Kristol doesn't really seem to be grieving conservatism's alleged demise, because he is suggesting we find some substitute ideology or movement that will serve as a pillar to uphold the temple of American liberty in the 21st century.

This strikes me as doubly ironic. Conservatism, by definition, comprises inviolable principles. It is not just one of many possible ideologies that support constitutionally limited government and ordered liberty. If Kristol believes we can find some other satisfactory "pillar," then he shouldn't cry over the supposed death of conservatism. On the other hand, if I thought it were truly dead, I would genuinely cry over it.

It's also ironic that Kristol seems to be proposing a solution that many Trump supporters would argue Trump has already implemented. That is, they believe conservatism — though it could never die intellectually — had become ineffectual because its modern standard-bearers in office were simply not getting the job done; they weren't advancing conservative principles. So, for want of a better term, they found a new "pillar" in Donald Trump to uphold the temple of American liberty in the 21st century. (Please don't send me emails about Trump's not being a pillar. That's not the point.)

I dare say that most of the tens of millions of people who voted for Trump are still Reagan conservatives who advocate mainstream conservative solutions. They could not bear to stand by while President Obama and Hillary Clinton continued to dismantle our constitutional liberties, undermine our traditional values and facilitate the further erosion of our culture. They don't have to like everything Trump does or everything he advocates, but they did have to stop the bleeding and save America. When are you guys going to understand that?

Unlike Kristol and Brookhiser, I don't believe the conservative movement has died or will die. As I said in a recent speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, I think fears that Trump is creating some nationalist or populist movement are unwarranted. What we're seeing under Trump is closer to mainstream conservatism than nationalism, in the pejorative sense of that term. Trump isn't steering the movement in that direction; rather, the movement is nudging him more toward mainstream conservatism, with a few exceptions, but even in those exceptional cases, Trump is not veering toward nationalism. And he certainly is not governing as an alt-rightist — whatever that means these days. I also do not believe his successor will be Trump-esque in a personal sense. Trump is sui generis. The front-runner at this point is probably Mike Pence, who, in terms of style, is the Antitrump. So quit hyperventilating.
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In the quoted piece, Brookhiser writes: "Admiring Trump is different from voting for him, or working with him. Politics is calculation. ... But to admire Trump is to trade your principles for his, which are that winning — which means Trump winning — is all. In three years (maybe seven), Donald Trump will no longer be president. But conservatives who bent the knee will still be writing and thinking. How will it be possible to take them seriously? The short answer is, it won't. ... It will take a lot of arguing to rebuild a conservative movement that one can contemplate without scorn."

To the contrary, most of the millions who appreciate what Trump is doing haven't traded their principles for just winning. That is insulting and ludicrous. We do want to defeat liberalism, and we want to retain our principles in doing so, even if you think that sometimes conservatives or Christians have compromised theirs in the process. That is a complex issue that should be discussed and unpacked in detail rather than in the back-and-forth volleys of intramural conservative wars. Suffice it to say, for now, that most are not "bending the knee"; they are animated by the same principles they always have been. Most conservatives aren't in thrall to Trump in the idolatrous fashion Brookhiser implies. But they are grateful that he's employing his unorthodox style to set liberals back on their heels.

It is sad that Brookhiser paints with so broad a brush and is making this personal — with his talk of scorn. That's unfortunate because Brookhiser is a fine, principled man of formidable intellect. In his rush to judgment, he seems to have misplaced his usual grace.

SOURCE

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Pence to CPAC: ‘Promises Made, Promises Kept

Vice President Mike Pence told the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Thursday that “2017 was the most consequential year in the history of the conservative movement” and that President Donald Trump kept his campaign promises, ticking off a list of the president’s achievements.

He said Trump kept his promises on issues like military readiness, securing the border, supporting law enforcement, appointing strong conservatives to the court, and defending the right to life.

“Think about it. President Trump promised to rebuild our military and restore the arsenal of democracy, and in just a few weeks, he’ll sign the largest investment in our national defense since the days of Ronald Reagan. He promised to stand without apology for the men and women of law enforcement, and today we’re once again giving those peace officers the respect and the resources they deserve all across America,” Pence said.

“President Trump promised to enforce our laws, secure our borders, and today illegal crossings at our southern border have been cut nearly in half, and make no mistake about it, we’re going to build that wall,” the vice president said.

“He promised to appoint strong conservatives to the federal courts at every level, and President Trump came through. He appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and set a record for the most circuit court judges appointed in the first year of any administration in history,” he said.

“And President Donald Trump promised to stand for the unalienable right to life, and from the first day of this administration, he reinstated the Mexico City policy, and I was honored to cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate to send a bill to the president’s desk to allow states to defund Planned Parenthood,” the vice president added.

Pence also pointed to the president’s progress in rolling back excessive government regulations, approving the Keystone and Dakota pipelines, withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord, and tax reform.

“And we’ve been busy rolling back the heavy hand of government as well. This president has actually repealed 22 regulations for every new federal rule put on the books, and finally, President Trump promised to cut taxes across the board for working families and job creators, and two months ago today, President Trump signed the largest tax cuts and tax reform in American history. Promises made, promises kept,” he said.

“On the world stage, we’ve also been restoring strong American leadership, and under President Donald Trump, America once again stands without apology as leader of the free world,” Pence said.

He pointed to the increase in NATO contributions from U.S. allies and the president’s decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.

“And for decades, after one president after another promised to move the U.S. embassy to the capital of our most cherished ally, President Trump made history on December 6 when the United States of America recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” Pence said.

SOURCE

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Not My President

Melissa Emery

I recently received an email from an old friend who lives in a very blue state exclaiming that Trump was “not his president.”  This was completely unsolicited, as our email conversation up until that point had been non-political. He just felt it necessary to toss that in at the end, either as a way to build camaraderie with a fellow liberal or to be a flame-thrower to a conservative.

In my case, it was the latter.

I tried not to respond in anger, but merely with regret to learn that Trump was not “his” president, since wages were up, taxes were down, the stock market was up, and over 2 million new jobs had been created. Black and Latino unemployment were at new all-time lows. Were these not things that liberals cared about anymore? But, perhaps, I suggested a bit snarkily, these bits of news had not appeared in the New York Times. I doubt that I’ll ever hear from him again.

As the days went by, his comment that Trump was not his president kept rolling around in my head. I wanted to ask him, who IS your president? Are you operating now without a president? Is your state no longer part of the Union? And how does not having the United States’ president as your president work for you? Do you still get all your Social Security payments and Medicare benefits? Can you still sit in your lovely cabin by a lake and pontificate about how much smarter you are than people who voted for Mr. Trump?

And, after all, isn’t that really what such a comment was meant to convey? It meant that you, my erudite former friend, were just too smart to vote for someone like The Donald, and anyone who did vote for him was some sort of fool. So, you would sit back for four or eight years, take pot shots at him, smirk and guffaw at the peons who elected him, and bemoan the fact that the smartest woman in the world, for whom you voted, was not in the White House.

You would “resist”, whatever that means. You would not endorse anything Trump wanted to accomplish, even when it matched up with your liberal agenda of pre-November, 2016.

Let us imagine if Hillary had won, how things might be different now. The economy would still be limping along. The stock market would be at pre-election levels, give or take a modest amount. It certainly would not be up over $26 trillion, as stocks are now. Taxes would not have been cut, and the resultant business growth, bonuses and raises would never have happened. There would be no thought given to trying to stop illegal immigration, so our borders would be increasingly porous and crime rates would continue to climb. There would be no investigations into collusion with the Russians during our election because, as we are learning daily, the only collusion was on the part of the Democrats.

Our trade deals would continue to disadvantage the US. We would still be dependent on foreign sources of energy, and our military would be underfunded. Veterans wouldn’t even be on the list of priorities, and attacks on police would be ignored or deemed to be the fault of bad police practices. As a result, fewer people would join the ranks of the thin blue line, and more crime would take over in our cities. Sanctuary cities would not be challenged, and federal benefits to illegals would be increased at the expense of our citizens and those waiting in line to enter the country legally.

Obama’s policies would be continued, further regulations would hamper business growth and formation, and the economy would fail to grow. The deficit would climb, and tax increases would be the only solution she would offer, further stifling growth.

Gee, sounds great, but then, I am a deplorable rube who doesn’t know what’s good for me. I don’t realize that government should take care of me rather than me doing it for myself. And I don’t realize that achievement and hard work are now bad things that must be destroyed so that government can rule over all with an iron fist and make all of us dependent on them.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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