How Not To Find Support For The Donald

It is a strange way to try to convince people to vote for a candidate. We’ve see a couple of columns like Kurt Schlichter’s Time To Rethink Your Never Trumpism. Kurt probably didn’t write the title so we will forgive that he is not trying to convert the Never-The-Donald crew. There are, however, conservatives like Men With Gloves, Nikki voters, and other people on the right and some in the center who might be convinced to vote for The Donald in 2024. So what does Kurt do to woo us? He insults us:

Let’s agree that he’s icky for the purposes of this discussion. Let’s agree that his tweets are mean, that he’s not a conservative ideologue, that he says dumb things and gets into useless fights, and that he does many other unseemly and annoying things. Let’s agree that this is all true. Let’s concede that in normal times, one might want to forgo supporting a guy like that. But these aren’t normal times.

It is true that The Donald’s foolishness and boorishness has and will continue to damage the GOP brand. But the real problems with The Donald are bad policies and lack of effectiveness on good policies. The Donald’s behavior cost him leadership like Paul Ryan who fixed corporate taxes during The Donald’s administration. Age cost him Cocaine Mitch who saw that the judicial nominations from the Federalist Society were approved. The stuff that The Donald tried to do himself like the wall between the US and Mexico never happened. And he did start the trade wars but, as expected, everybody lost.

The Donald received substantial support from conservatives in 2016 despite, as Kurt hilariously says, The Donald not being a conservative ideologue. He received conservative support because he promised to nominate judges selected by the Federalist Society. Many conservatives voted for him again in 2020 because he, well, Cocaine Mitch, kept that promise. Perhaps he intends to do it again but we have not heard much about selecting judges from The Donald. Instead we have heard about increasing tariffs, devaluing the dollar, ignoring entitlements, and, of course, revenge. Rarely have conservatives been offered such a large negative return for their votes.

We agree with Kurt that we don’t want The Frontrunner’s administration to win another term. As of today, however, we would rather spend the next four years trying to get to gridlock with a Democrat president and hoping that the GOP would become a useful party by 2028.

Still, we could be convinced one way or the other. As we have said, if our current vice-president, Triple A was to engineer a takeout of The Frontrunner and make a feint to the center we would vote for her. On the other hand, if The Donald was to nominate ND Doug (Doug Burgum) for vice-president we would only be a heartbeat or a conviction away from having a good president. We doubt either of those will happen but we can still hope for both.

Insults have gotten The Donald three nominations and one general election win to date. It is not surprising that his minion Kurt used The Donald’s playbook to try and help his master. And, as the last sentence shows, insults are really easy. We would suggest limiting insults to the opposition and offering policies that might attract those few voters still on the fence. We really don’t expect either of those to happen either.

Entitlements, Climate Change, And Politics

Entitlements generate a horrible fiscal set of fiscal problems that grow worse every day. For reasons that no longer astound us, Climate Change and proposals to attempt to change Climate Change are always in the news but entitlements rarely make headlines. Below we will discuss an ad that explains why elected officials are reluctant to reform entitlements.

Sidebar One: Bjorn Lomborg’s latest at the WSJ is behind a paywall. If you can’t afford it the subtitle tells you what you need to know: Climate policy needs to take into account the costs of draconian measures, which are enormous. The reason foolish Climate Change proposals no longer astound us is that we recognize the importance of elected officials giving money to people who might have already been friends but certainly will be friends after the fact. End Sidebar One.

Reforming entitlements will require elected officials taking money away from folks and that will not make friends that are critical to winning elections. Particularly curious for us is the resurgence of the 2012 throw granny off the cliff ad. We thought it was hilarious at the time but perhaps it was effective. Our sudoku app has ads. Several times a week we are subjected to an ad attacking our local congress critter on Social Security.

Sidebar Two: We are well aware of the failing of human memory. So we are not certain of all the details because when the ad finishes it is gone. We are certain of the basics after dozens of doses. So we may have embellished or under reported some of the precise details. End Sidebar Two.

The ad has two characters. The first is an older woman from a local hamlet talking about how she worked on the factory floor for thirty (?) years and paid in to Social Security with every check. The other character is a youngish guy with a pickup truck that doesn’t understand why our congress critter would do such evil thing. No, he we don’t think he says evil. It ends with a text showing something like our congress critter is is proposing slashing Social Security while providing billions of dollars in corporate tax breaks. The cite for these claims is House Joint Resolution 21 (HJR 21). After watching the ad dozens of times we decided to look it up as it seemed strange that it wasn’t a proposed law. We were gobsmacked to find that HJR 21 is a proposed amendment to the Constitution for a balanced budget. The entire text is at the end of the post or you can read it here. As you would expect, a balanced budget amendment has nothing to do with entitlements or corporate tax breaks.

What is amazing is that the folks creating and paying for the ads think that such ads will be effective. And there is the possibility that congress critters are worrying about such ads. Surely our two presidential candidates are as they are both supporting 20+ percent Social Security cuts in 2033 or 2034 caused by the existing law rather than propose a possible solution.

This is where we sit in 2024. We love to spend money and make enormously costly regulations about Climate Change. We don’t consider what, if any, are the benefits associated with those costs yet we are unwilling to confront the serious problems related to entitlements, the deficit, and federal debt. An ad tells us that a balanced budget amendment will lead to all manner of “bad” fiscal outcomes through processes difficult to discern. We expect it will only get worse as the election nears.

JOINT RESOLUTION [21]

Proposing a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years after the date of its submission for ratification:

1. Total outlays for any fiscal year shall not exceed total receipts for that fiscal year. Total outlays shall include all outlays of the United States except those for payment of debt, and total receipts shall include all revenue of the United States except that derived from borrowing.

2. The Congress may by a roll call vote of three-fifths of each House of Congress declare an emergency and provide by law for specific outlays in excess of the limit in section 1 with respect to a fiscal year.

3. The Congress may provide by law for increasing revenue of the United States, except that derived from borrowing, only by a roll call vote of a majority of each House.

4. The limit on the debt of the United States held by the public shall not be increased unless three-fifths of each House of Congress provides by law for such an increase by a roll-call vote.

5. The Congress may waive the provisions of this article for any fiscal year in which a declaration of war is in effect. The provisions of this article may be waived for any fiscal year in which the United States is engaged in military conflict which causes an imminent and serious military threat to national security and is so declared by a joint resolution, adopted by a majority of the whole number of each House, which becomes law.

6. Prior to each fiscal year, the President shall transmit to the Congress a proposed budget for the United States Government for that fiscal year in which total outlays do not exceed total receipts.

7. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

8. This article shall take effect beginning with the tenth fiscal year after its ratification.

Democrats, Democrats

In the song New York, New York (and if you want to be picky The Theme From New York, New York) one of the lead-in phrases is: It is up to you. We were already convinced that our president, The Frontrunner was well past his prime. The transcript of The Frontrunner’s interview with Robert [Ben] Hur should be enough to convince everyone that the Democrat ticket needs a change.

We know, it is 159 pages so if you can’t make the investment you could read Dan McLaughlin or Andrew McCarthy at NRO. We’re still working on the transcript. Here is Andy’s conclusion:

So please, read the transcript, but not for what it says about [The Frontrunner]’s carelessness regarding the nation’s secrets. Instead, read it and ask yourself whether he should be president right now, let alone for the next five years.

The fact is that neither conservatives nor the GOP can get The Frontrunner off the Democrat ticket. Now that The Frontrunner has secured the nomination it is time for the Democrats to remove him from the presidency, make the Vice-President (Triple A) President, have her choose a new Vice-President, and have that ticket accepted at the convention in Milwaukee. It needs to be done by the Democrat Convention which starts on August 19. Why? Because it gives Triple A the best chance to win the election. She will be seen at the legitimate Democrat candidate and get her chance to make her pitch.

We’re not saying that Triple A is a great candidate or that she will make a great president. She just has to be more coherent than The Frontrunner, an easy task, and beat The Donald, a more difficult task. She has, however, a great pitch that we are open to: Let’s get rid of grumpy old men.

This is one of those times when what is best for the Democrats in congruent with what best for the country. It is up to you, Democrats, Democrats. Do it quickly.

Foolish Presidential Candidates

It is now official that our former president, The Donald, and our current president, The Frontrunner, have enough delegates to assure their nomination. David Zimmerman at NRO says:

Former president [The] Donald … and President [The Frontrunner] have officially clinched their respective parties’ presidential nominations, setting up a rematch in November.

So the general election campaign that majorities didn’t want is going to happen is going to happen unless the 22nd amendment or some other health issue comes into play. We like our description of the two candidates as nasty, angry, and foolish. We don’t see much to choose between the two on nasty and angry so, for us, it is going to come down to the least foolish.

During his State Of The Union (SOTU) speech The Frontrunner made many foolish proposals but the one that was within in ability to create was a three century update on Boston’s Long Wharf in Gaza. Sure enough, today’s Morning Dispatch has a lead story that US Ships Depart For Gaza. You should read the whole thing (paywall alert) as the authors try to find a reason to build the pier. Here is a taste:

The hope is that the pier increases the volume of aid that can be delivered to Gazans—but Goldberg warns that the plan, as currently conceived, might not greatly improve the current situation. “The problem that the president faces in trying to force the pier to work—before you have a plan for distribution and security on the ground when you reach the port—is that this can very quickly go sideways,” [Emphasis added]

We think sideways is the best outcome for the pier. And, of course, there won’t be US boots on the ground. They will be on the pier. No danger there. To us, the reason for the pier is clear. It is to shore up the pro-Hamas vote in Michigan and other key states.

Sidebar: It is a pro-Hamas splinter rather than pro-Palestinian because the splinter supports the government rather than the people in Gaza. If they were pro-Palestinian they would be calling on the Hamas led government to surrender. End Sidebar.

It is hard to believe that The Frontrunner is doing something as internationally foolish as building the Gaza pier. Yet, The Donald let out an even more foolish international idea the same week. Jim Geraghty in yesterday’s NRO’s The Morning Jolt tells us that The Donald’s plan on Ukraine is to let Russia win. Here is Jim’s quote from Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, a darling of the populists:

“He ([The Donald]) has a very clear vision,” Orbán said in an interview to Hungarian broadcaster M1 broadcast on Sunday. “He says the following: first, he will not give a single penny for the Russo-Ukrainian war. That’s why the war will end, because it’s obvious that Ukraine cannot stand on its own two feet.”

In today’s Jolt Jim thanks the over 1200 commenters. It is now closing in on 1500 comments. One of the silly defenses of The Donald is that he has said he would sell weapons to Ukraine on credit. It is silly to think that Ukraine would ever pay us back.

We give this week’s foolishness award to The Donald although there are a few days left. Buckle up! It is going to be a wild ride from here to election day and probably beyond as these two Blue Footed Boobies try to outdo each other on the foolishness scale.

Nasty, Angry, And Foolish

Last night we watched Resident Alien on Peacock rather than The Frontrunner’s State Of The Union (SOTU) speech. Are we glad we did! Episode four of season three was an epic show in an excellent series. We don’t even mind that it took us an extra day to finish. The Frontrunner’s speech just confirmed what we strongly suspected. Usually in political races candidates are trying to find different lanes. In the 2024 presidential election we can be sure that both of these candidates are going to be in the nasty, angry, and foolish lane.

Let’s start with The Frontrunner. We were going to go with 43 cites of 43 sites but today’s The Morning Dispatch was enough for us. Their headline for the SOTU was: The State Of The Union Is Angry. Read it all and subscribe so you can read their editorial about the rematch between The Donald and The Frontrunner: The American People Should Demand Better. We agree but the American people didn’t.

For nasty we will use this from the the NRO’s real time analysis of the SOTU:

[The Frontrunner] leans over the lectern and taunts Republicans who scuttled the bipartisan Senate supplemental bill dealing with the border crisis. [Emphasis added]

Dealing is a bit of an overstatement. But this is even nastier:

[The Frontrunner is] now berating the Supreme Court justices, to their faces, about overturning Roe v. Wade, and declaring that “my predecessor” failed to care about the American people,

Well, foolish is too easy. To include just a few things from the SOTU: shrinkflation, caps on drug prices, raising the minimum wage, and increasing incentives to buy houses without trying to increase the incentives or ability to build them. For ongoing stuff check out Scott Lincicome’s recent Capitolism Newsletter at The Dispatch. Here is a bit:

Leaving aside the obvious entertainment value of having the federal government officially weigh in on the age-old internet debate over whether burgers, tacos, gyros and other bread/meat combinations are “sandwiches,” this—like the case against Big Sauce—is simply not something that requires the full force and attention of the federal government.

As Scott says, when administration focuses on trivial things, and he has the evidence that they do, it is less able to do important things.

When we compare The Donald to The Frontrunner on the Nasty, Angry, and Foolish criterion it doesn’t seem necessary to provide any evidence on the first two. The tricky thing is trying to evaluate The Donald’s policies for foolishness because as we think somebody else said (we don’t think there was a copyright), The Donald has moods rather than policies. So to look at something written we took NRO’s interview of The Donald’s minion, Kari Lake who is running for the Senate in Arizona. The first question can be summarized as: Do entitlements need to be reformed? Kari’s answer is:

I do not think we should touch [entitlements]. There’s so many other things that we could do. But this is something that the hard-working people of this country have paid into and earned. And to pull the rug out from under them at time when they need it most, especially as people are struggling so much — it’s wrong, it’s a promise we made, they paid into it. They never got the option to not pay into it. They paid into it and that’s the wrong place to be tinkering and moving things around, and at risk of those people not having that security blanket.

Check out the full questions and answers at NRO. Note that this first one ties into The Donald. At best Kari’s answer can be most kindly described as foolishness. Not reforming Social Security means about a 23 percent reduction across the board that will likely happen in 2033. Means testing is an important part of our preferred solution because it saves the security blanket.

Then there is the deficit and debt:

Well it’s going to be difficult. I mean, we’re in a dire situation, I don’t think there’s a lot we can do. This is gonna be difficult to pull ourselves out of this. And we’re gonna have to get very creative. And I’m not going to be able to sit here in three minutes and tell you how we’re going to fix the problem. If it were a problem we can fix in three minutes, it probably would have been fixed, but we’re certainly not going to do it on the backs of the hard-working American citizens who have worked hard and paid into this. I think a lot of the things we need to do is increase revenues by bringing manufacturing, home bringing back some high-paying jobs. All of the things that Joe Biden has done have hurt American workers. He’s on the verge of sending our auto industry overseas with these EVs to China. [The Donald] wants to make sure we’re keeping those good jobs here. We need to bring and reshore some companies in manufacturing and get some jobs that are actually paying Americans a good living wage, where they’re able to then pay into the system and pay into taxes.

More foolishness. We would be impressed if she was able to finish that answer with a straight face. We will translate and summarize: Kari is saying we need to increase tariffs so hard working Americans can pay more taxes and subsidize business we like.

Read the rest of it to get some foolishness on Ukraine and elsewhere. With The Donald and Kari we need to ask: Why do we need the GOP? Why would a person vote for the GOP when it is just a slightly different version of nasty, angry, and foolish?

Presidential Rumble II

Before we get back to important stuff like baseball, let’s talk about the election now that we seem destined for The Donald versus The Frontrunner II. We still advise the Democrats in the White House and Congress to take out or force out our current president, The Frontrunner, and make the Vice-President, Triple A, President before the convention. Barring that or some stoke of luck we are stuck with The Donald versus The Frontrunner II.

Jeffery Blehar at NRO says Charlie Cooke at the same site was eloquent when he said the loser this fall will be forever stained. Charlie concludes

Even before the election, it is rare that one meets a voter who is enthused by the choices on offer. Once the contest is over, it will be a veritable impossibility — and the aspirant who loses will be forced to start looking at impenetrable compounds high up in the Swiss Alps.

Jeff is just in disaster mode as he concludes:

That’s it, that’s all that’s on the itinerary for us in November. [The Donald versus The Frontrunner II]. The course is locked in. There can be no deviation from the path now, absent death or disability. One way or another, the result will incinerate the social fabric of the country. Set the controls for the heart of the sun.

Check out Jeff and Charlie and NRO. Time will tell but we think Charlie has it exactly wrong. We think the winner of The Donald versus The Frontrunner II will be forever stained. In part because Jeff is right about the election and that fraying social fabric will set the opposition to the winner. If one of them had the ability to heal that fraying fabric it would give us a candidate to root for but both of them are such fools that the winner will have a disastrous presidency. Our prediction is the winner will be forever stained while the loser can say you shoulda voted for me. We hope we are wrong and Charlie is right.

Ukraine And The Donald

Jim Geraghty’s Morning Jolt today is mostly about supporting Ukraine. As always, you should read what Jim says and subscribe to the National Review as well. We want to start with where he ends with this addendum on advice for The Donald from Henry Olson at NRO:

ADDENDUM: Henry Olsen wants to help Trump win over skeptical Republicans:

[The Donald] could accomplish the same thing without sacrificing his vice-presidential pick. Perhaps a clear statement that he acknowledges our NATO treaty obligations, or a pledge to introduce a balanced-budget constitutional amendment would do the trick. Nods like this would be welcomed by the holdouts without hurting him among independents. That, rather than a radical shift in course, is Trump’s best option going forward. [Emphasis added]

The thing is, if Trump was the kind of guy who could do that, he wouldn’t be in his current situation now.

The vice-presidential comparison Henry was making was Mitt picking Paul Ryan. We are always nervous about a sample of one but from our point of view the items in bold would not do the trick. Of course, we are a skeptical conservative rather than a skeptical Republican. Still, we think Henry is talking about voters like us that have voted for The Donald once or twice but are leaning away from him because of his behavior since we voted for him. Having The Donald merely acknowledge our treaty obligations provides us with dread. A balanced-budge amendment is a questionable idea and The Donald is never going to get passed. He doesn’t have the skill set to get things like that done.

Our minimum criteria to consider The Donald in the general election would be:
A serious person for vice-president,
Unequivocal support for Ukraine at least matching his rival, The Frontrunner, and
Clear promises for outsourcing judicial appointments to the Federalist Society.

We don’t think that is a radical shift. The Donald did the first and third items in his previous runs for the presidency. We’re not promising to vote for The Donald with those steps but we would seriously consider him then. We think the last two points are obvious but why do we want a serious person for V-P? Because The Donald needs a serious voice and because we think he is unlikely to complete his term. We don’t have a list of serious people yet.

The Donald might get somewhere if he listens to Jim on Ukraine and other topics. We see Henry’s suggestions as weak beer the will turn off conservatives even more.

Critieria For Evaluating Presidents

We told you that ranking presidents was fun and interesting and we were right. A few days ago Jonah Goldberg at The Dispatch nominated James K. Polk as one of our greatest presidents. Why? Because he kept his campaign promises:

I can make a very strong case that he was one of our greatest presidents. Polk promised to run for one term and kept his promise. I could almost stop there. But as a candidate he made four big promises:

1. Restore the Independent Treasury system, which had been dismantled by the Whigs. 
2. Reduce tariffs. 
3. Acquire the Oregon territory (“54°40’ or fight!” wasn’t his slogan, but it was written on his heart).  
4. He promised to yoink—a term I long thought came from Scooby Doo, but was actually minted by The Simpsons—California and New Mexico from the Mexicans. 

He accomplished all of these things.

Hurray for number two. What a great idea! Too bad neither of the current leading candidates have figured that out. But we can’t give him full marks for number three. Almost all of the territory south of the 49th parallel is not very close to everything south of 54°40’. But still James did accomplish much of what he promised to do. Our bigger question is: Is keeping promises a good measure of a presidency?

If it is we would argue that The Donald was a pretty great president. We don’t think he is but we would give hime good grades on keeping his promises. Here is a list of The Donald’s 2016 promises from Politicifact. As they say, it is hard to keep track of The Donald’s promises and they miss the most important one: His promise to nominate actual judges (as opposed to politicians in robes) vetted by the Federalist Society. We’ll call that promise zero and give him an A+ on that.

He gets close to a perfect score on promise nine: cut taxes. PolitFact leaves out the most important part is to reform corporate taxes. PolitiFact puts tax cut’s chances of success at a D but Paul Ryan did it and earned The Donald an A on promise nine.

Promise one is ‘Build a wall’ — and make Mexico pay for it and promise two is Temporarily ban Muslims from entering the United States. Well, no to both parts one and two but yes to restricting illegal immigration especially compared to his predecessor and successor. If James gets credit for his deal with the British then The Donald should at a C on these two.

Promises three, four, and five are about The Donald’s opposition to free trade. Promise eight is not to reform Social Security. Unfortunately he kept all four of those promises. That is four more As.

Promises seven and nine have to do with ISIS and Iran. Your milage may vary but The Donald gets at least a pass on these if not a pass plus. We are going to give him a B on both.

His failure, unfortunately, is on promise six: ‘Full repeal of Obamacare’ and replace it with a market-based alternative. It is a clear F.

So we have eleven promises by The Donald and our grades are A+,A, A, A, A, A, B, B, C, C, F. If keeping campaign promises is the measure of greatness then The Donald was a great president. And we didn’t even give him credit for the inexplicit promise to be a jerk. That would be another A+. He is not a great president because most of his As come from implementing bad ideas.

Keeping campaign promises is generally a good idea. But not all promises are good ideas while some are great. When Jimmy Carter ran, amongst other things, on deregulation and implemented it he gets a great that few other presidents got. The rest of his presidency didn’t measure up to that apex but we shouldn’t forget it in evaluating him.

So, no Jonah, James wasn’t a great president just because he kept his promises. He might be a great president if you think his promises were great ideas. We are open to that notion.

The Devil IS In Georgia

A little over a week ago we wrote about the suspicious alleged use of large sums of cash by Fani Willis and her lover/associate Nathan Wade as they pursue The Donald and friends. Now it appears that that there was another clear allegation of lying under oath about the timing of their tryst. John Hinderaker at PowerLine cites a report that includes this:

Mittelstadt’s report also showed Wade and Willis had made more than 2,000 voice calls to each other and exchanged just less than 12,000 text messages over an 11-month period in 2021.

John has more at the link above. Combining the voice calls and the texts that is over 40 communications per day! It is amazing.

The Donald is extraordinarily fortunate in his adversaries.

The Devil SHOULD Go To Georgia

In the song, the Devil went down to Georgia because he was way behind on souls. With The Donald, Fani Willis, Nathan Wade, and the rest in various courtrooms it seems like another opportune time for the Devil to return to Georgia.

Sidebar: Grammar is not, as readers know, our strong point. Our question is: if the Devil is properly capitalized, and we think it is, what about the pronoun? Should we go Him or him? End Sidebar.

We want to limit our comments to this passage from John Hinderaker at PowerLine:

[Nathan’s] testimony was incredible. He and [Fani] had both hoped to avoid taking the stand, but [Nathan] was required to testify and counsel asked him about the trips he took with [Fani]. These trips, to Napa Valley, the Caribbean and other locations, were put on [Nathan’s] credit card, which supports the idea that Fani was benefiting financially from her exorbitant payments to [Nathan]. [Nathan] tried to avoid this conclusion by claiming that [Fani] paid him back, but there is no record of this because she paid him in cash. [Emphasis added]

You should read all John has to say but you might find the state of public service too depressing. Our comment is about the part in bold. The issue is not one of whether you put $10 or $20 in the collection plate each week. A small amount like that would be untraceable. These payments, however, would be a single transaction of at least four figures. It is highly unlikely that both Fani and Nathan keep large sums of currency on their person or in their residence. If a quick audit of their bank accounts found neither withdrawals or deposits that would likely move the probability of lying under oath to beyond a reasonable doubt. Even we rarely have a grand or more in ready currency. Most younger folks have little or none. If Fani isn’t making any big currency withdrawals and Nathan isn’t making any big currency deposits during the appropriate periods then we would say they need to prove why they haven’t lied under oath.

Fani and Nathan aren’t the only souls for the Devil to steal in the current legal dust-ups in Georgia but they are a ripe opportunity for him or Him.