Remember Joseph Warren This Memorial Day

RS: Remember Joseph Warren This Memorial Day

In this age of debased political leadership, it is worth remembering this Memorial Day one of the Founding Fathers who gave his life on the field of battle: Doctor Joseph Warren, killed in action June 17, 1775 at Bunker Hill at the age of 34.Warren was a doctor, a man of learning and distinction in that era (he graduated from Harvard), but he was more than that: along with John Hancock and Samuel Adams, he was one of the inspirational leaders of the Sons of Liberty, the patriot group that led the Massachusetts rebellion against British authority that grew after Bunker Hill into a national war for independence.  Warren was there at the creation: he was on the field of battle at Lexington and Concord, and it was he who dispatched Paul Revere and William Dawes to raise the minutemen with the news that “the British are coming!” (possibly due to information from the wife of British General Gage – perhaps one of Warren’s intelligence sources; some sources speculate that Warren may have had an affair with her, although this remains unproven).  He was responsible for dispatching Benedict Arnold to take Fort Ticonderoga; Arnold did not do so alone, but the capture of the fort would prove indispensable later on to breaking the seige of Boston when its guns were towed there by Henry Knox in March 1776.

Warren had every reason to seek safety, being the widowed father of four, but instead sought the most dangerous location on the Bunker Hill field of battle and fought in the ranks until he ran out of ammunition, at which point he was shot in the head and his body hacked to pieces by redcoats with bayonets.  His body was not discovered by his brothers until the following April, after the siege of Boston was raised, and identified by Revere by dental analysis.

You Won’t Believe Why Hillary Bagman Terry McAuliffe Is Under Federal Investigation

RS: You Won’t Believe Why Hillary Bagman Terry McAuliffe Is Under Federal Investigation

This afternoon, in perhaps the least surprising news to break since Bill Clinton’s affair with an intern, CNN reported that Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe (D-Cash) has spent the past year under federal investigation for campaign finance shenanigans:

The investigation dates to at least last year and has focused, at least in part, on whether donations to his gubernatorial campaign violated the law, the officials said.

McAuliffe, the former DNC Chairman, is of course best known as a longtime confidant of the Clintons and all-purpose bag man for their shadier ventures. As the Washington Post put it in a 2013 profile highlighting McAuliffe’s close ties to the Clintons and the various scandals that relationshi0p had generated: “McAuliffe and the Clintons: A friendship as close as family, with benefits, risks for both.” As left-wing magazine Mother Jones wrote in 2013:

McAuliffe represents an unseemly slice of Washington. His primary role in politics for the past two decades or more has been raising money—most notably, for the Clintons. He cooked up the idea of essentially renting out the Lincoln bedroom during the Clinton administration as a fundraising vehicle, and he smashed all previous presidential fundraising records in the process. When McAuliffe was the Dems’ top fundraiser, a campaign finance scandal besieged the Clinton White House. Coincidence? No. McAuliffe was all about pushing the envelope when it came to the political money chase.

That alone might not be enough to render him a distasteful political candidate. What’s different about McAuliffe is his brazen mixing of his campaign fundraising activity and attempts to enrich himself personally. Many of McAuliffe’s business deals have come about due to his place in the political cosmos, not because he possesses a wealth of business skill. That tangled history has linked him to a long list of unsavory characters.

Hey, I wonder if this latest scandal has anything to do with McAuliffe trading off his relationship with the Clintons?

As part of the probe, the officials said, investigators have scrutinized McAuliffe’s time as a board member of the Clinton Global Initiative, a vehicle of the charitable foundation set up by former President Bill Clinton.

As the Washington Post reported last summer:

More than 175 contributors to the Clinton Foundation and to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2016 Democratic presidential campaign have dug deep into their wallets for McAuliffe (D), often giving prolifically despite little or no connection to Virginia….[Ties to Virginia are] tenuous for many of the dual donors. Among them is an Omaha database executive who lavished so much corporate jet travel on himself and the Clinton family that shareholders forced him out. A Hollywood media mogul with a singular interest in Israel. And an Argentine-born energy tycoon who recalled visiting Richmond just once — flying in and out years ago with Bill Clinton, his Georgetown classmate.

Of the $60 million McAuliffe has raised for his two gubernatorial bids, inauguration, political action committee and the Democratic Party of Virginia, nearly $18 million has come from contributors to the Clinton Foundation or to Hillary Clinton’s current campaign.

Among the McAuliffe donations that drew the interest of the investigators was $120,000 from a Chinese businessman, Wang Wenliang, through his U.S. businesses. Wang was previously delegate to China’s National People’s Congress, the country’s ceremonial legislature.

“Neither the Governor nor his former campaign has knowledge of this matter, but as reported, contributions to the campaign from Mr. Wang were completely lawful,” said Elias.

Elias…who is he? That would be “Marc Elias, attorney for McAuliffe campaign,” a longtime Democratic fixer who is also the general counsel for Hillary 2016.

This is the same McAuliffe who, perhaps looking down the road at his own future, recently unilaterally by executive order restored the voting rights of over 200,000 felons in Virginia, many of them convicted of violent crimes (everyone involved in that debate assumes, with reason, that convicted rapists and murderers will be a heavily Democratic-leaning voter group).

(As is invariably the case when we’re discussing crooked Democrats, one of McAuliffe’s donors was Donald Trump, who gave him $25,000 in 2009 and was hobnobbing with McAuliffe as recently as 2014).

McAuliffe is hardly the only Democrat under this sort of cloud at the moment; New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, also elected in 2013, is under at least five separate investigations, including for campaign fundraising violations of his own – the New York Times conceded that “historians have been hard-pressed to find a mayor who, along with his administration and inner circle, was ever the subject of as many simultaneous investigations — conducted by as many different agencies — as Mayor Bill de Blasio now faces.” But even de Blasio was not as wholly predictable a magnet for campaign finance scandals as McAuliffe. Democratic voters knew exactly who and what he is when he was elected, and they got it.

The Never Trump Movement Is Neither Anti-American Nor Hypocritical

RS: The Never Trump Movement Is Neither Anti-American Nor Hypocritical

Dallas talk radio host Grant Stinchfield, writing at The Federalist, contends that “The Never Trump Movement Is Anti-American And Hypocritical.” Stinchfield’s article is a small masterpiece of the kind of point-missing, perspective-lacking commentary that got us into this mess in the first place.  Three examples of why before we get to the meat of his argument:

1. Ad Hominem

A hallmark of bad punditry is excessive name-calling in lieu of argument. In a column that runs barely more than 800 words, Stinchfield refers to those of us who won’t vote for Trump as “anti-American,” “ultra-conservative” (an odd charge for a guy who claims the Tea Party mantle), “arrogant know-it-alls who may be more narcissistic than Trump,” “ridiculous,” “nonsensical,” “throw[ing] a temper tantrum,” “whining and crying,” “sound[ing] like my seven-year-old son when I told him he could not have two cookies.”

This is not a particularly effective tactic for persuading people to vote for your side.

2. Assumption of Bad Faith

It’s always easier to avoid confronting the best arguments against you if you assume that your opponents don’t mean them and are acting from nefarious hidden motives. Rather than engage with the possibility that objectors to Trump have legitimate causes for doing so, Stinchfield accuses us of “acting exactly like the party elitists they purport to despise,” people who “seek to control the outcome of the election. They will stop at nothing to get their way”. He claims that Paul Ryan is “actively working to destroy America” and “acting like a spoiled rich kid who didn’t get what he cried for: a nominee like Jeb Bush.” As if Ryan, who endorsed nobody in the race, could only have wanted Jeb rather than the dozen-plus other alternatives to Trump. The need to brand all opponents of Trump as secret Jeb supporters was a hallmark of the Trump flacks throughout the primary (like Laura Ingraham trying to brand this website “JebState”).

3. Amnesia

Sometimes, it helps to remember what you were arguing yesterday. Stinchfield last appeared in the pages of The Federalist less than a month ago, writing a piece entitled “I Regret Voting For Donald Trump”. A flavor:

Donald Trump is off the rails. He is a train wreck. It’s not just his antics and childish behavior that has me so put off, it’s his failure to improve as a candidate.

After nine months on the campaign trail, I expected Trump to fully grasp the issues and have in-depth policy solutions to our problems….I fell victim to my own hatred. Donald Trump offered me a vehicle to stick it to the bloviating bureaucrats I despise…Trump was the guy who was going to scare the hell out of the “establishment,” the guy who was going to turn Washington on its head. So I voted with anger in my heart. I gave my vote to Trump with expectation he would find his way by putting smart constitutional conservatives by his side…

Sadly, I did exactly what my mother always warned me not to do. I made an important decision while in an emotionally fragile state of anger and despair. My vote for Trump amounted to a vendetta against the ruling class of DC career politicians. I made a mistake.

It’s why I am publicly apologizing to governors Rick Perry and Scott Walker. I abandoned them way too early. I now realize their level-headed grasp on conservative values and principles would have made them the perfect candidates to carry a torch of limited government straight into the White House.

Governor Perry, Governor Walker: I am sorry. The worst part I fear it’s too late. Can anyone save the Republican Party?…I have always said that the only way we lose to Hillary is if we sabotage ourselves. It’s amazing to me that’s exactly what we’re doing.

You’re Not The Boss of Me

Stinchfield’s main argument is that Trump’s status as the GOP nominee obligates us to follow him:

Trump is the boss now. It’s his party to lead. Ryan claims Trump “inherited” the party of Lincoln and Reagan. In reality, Trump won it in decisive fashion. The Never Trumpers like Ryan refuse to talk about reality. Trump has already surpassed 10 million votes. That’s more than Mitt Romney’s primary vote total from 2012 as well as John McCain’s from 2008.

To start with, yes: Trump has the delegates, so by the rules of the party, the nomination is his. But this is still America. Party membership is not mandatory. Nobody has to vote for anyone just because he’s “the boss,” and the day we do, this isn’t America anymore in any meaningful way.

Moreover, what’s missing here is that – with California, New Jersey, and five other states to go – there have also been more than 16 million votes cast against Trump, comprising 60% of the vote prior to the last of his opponents dropping out. That’s 5 million more than the votes cast against John McCain, 7 million more than were cast against Romney, 10 million more than were cast against Bob Dole (all of whom lost).  More people have already voted against Donald Trump in the primaries than have ever voted for a Republican presidential nominee.

The opposition to Trump has been unprecedentedly broad. More than 60% of GOP voters cast ballots against Trump in the following states:

Maine
New Hampshire
Vermont
Virginia
South Carolina
Georgia
Tennessee
Texas
Arkansas
Kentucky
Oklahoma
Kansas
Ohio
Michigan
Wisconsin
Illinois
Iowa
Minnesota
Utah
Idaho
Alaska

(That’s not even counting the convention voting in Wyoming and Colorado or the votes in DC or Puerto Rico).  In a number of these states (like Texas), more people voted against Trump than voted in the entire 2012 primary; in some (like Iowa), more voted against Trump than had ever voted in a Republican primary before.  Every one of those votes was for a candidate with radically different views than Trump, and Republican leaders should not easily abandon the 60% of the party that wanted a Republican nominee who stood for Republican ideas, ideals and proposals.

Paul Ryan comes in for most of Stinchfield’s ire, despite the fact that he has been equivocal and tentative thus far in withholding his support for Trump.  But Ryan’s not only the highest-ranking Republican in the country, he’s obligated to do what is best for his two constituencies – the voters of his district (who backed Ted Cruz over Trump in the April 5 primary) and, as Speaker, the members of the GOP House caucus. If his approach to Trump has been a cautious, arms-length one, perhaps Stinchfield should consider that this is because a wholehearted embrace of Trump would be very bad for a lot of Ryan’s caucus, trapped as they are between irate “never Trump” conservatives and non-Republicans in their district electorates who are horrified by Trump. Stinchfield claims that “Trump and the Ryan Establishment both need each other now more than ever. Trump needs their money and support, they need Trump to win back the White House to help roll back President Obama’s damaging agenda.” But this assumes three facts not in evidence, which Stinchfield makes no effort to support: (1) that Trump has a realistic prospect of winning the White House, rather than having destroyed such prospects for the GOP already by winning the nomination; (2) that support from Ryan would help Trump win, rather than diluting both of their brands at once; and (3) that anything in Trump’s record suggests that he would roll back any of Obama’s agenda. Stinchfield claims that Trump ” wants to build a border wall, beef up our military, simplify the tax code, and appoint a ‘Scalia-like’ Supreme Court nominee,” but aside from the wall, there’s no reason to suspect he means any of this, given how often he has also said the opposite (Trump celebrated his clinching the nomination by denouncing his own tax plan, and just last month said he did not want to change the abortion laws).

Playing To Win, Not Rooting For Laundry

More broadly, Stinchfield gives short shrift to how very dangerous Trump is to our party and our movement, to say nothing of the fact that his ignorance – which Stinchfield recognized a month ago, when he thought we might stop Trump – and instability would make him a perilously bad Commander-in-Chief for the country. I’m all in favor of telling people to grow up and take one for the team in most situations, but Trump is truly a bridge too far, much worse than any prior GOP nominee, and Stinchfield completely ignores the reasons why.

The point of voting Republican is to win: win elections, so we can win policy battles, so we can build our movement to win more elections and more policy battles, with the ultimate goal of making America a better place by implementing ideas that work. Sometimes you have to make compromises between elections and policy – win a little less here to win a little more there, win a little less now to win a little more in the future, go big now and pay the piper at the next turn. Sometimes, for the sake of teamwork, one faction of the party has to take a bit of a back seat to another faction, without staging a teary-eyed breakup every time your own favorite people and agendas don’t come out at the top of the pile. But unless you draw a check from the Party (which believe me, I don’t), winning elections solely for the sake of winning elections is not worth the effort – we don’t get involved in politics to “root for laundry,” just mindlessly cheer on one side simply because it wears an “R” on its jersey. You have to actually deliver something different than what your opponents would deliver, or the whole exercise is a waste of time.

Doing that is not easy, and our party has failed many times to deliver what it promises, partly for lack of nerve, partly for lack of cohesion and competence, partly because some of our leaders do not actually believe the stuff they say they want to do. Sometimes they deserve to lose as a result, but we the voters do not. And the answer to a failure to deliver on promises is not to replace people who don’t believe in some of our goals and principles with people who don’t believe in any of our goals and principles. Which is Trump.  One of the hallmarks of Trump – which we’ve seen again and again in his treatment even of those who endorse him enthusiastically – is that he sees loyalty as a one-way street, and will do nothing to help anyone else.  Notice how Stinchfield (as is routine in this genre of “get on the Trump Train” harangue) spends not a word of his article arguing for what Trump should do to convince anyone they should support him.  To the contrary, he basically tells Trump to tell the rest of us, “you’ll get nothing and like it”:

Trump needs to play hardball with Ryan and “The Establishment.” Trump purports to be a “deal maker.” He needs to realize he is operating from a position of strength, much to the dismay of GOP leadership.

So Stinchfield not only thinks we’re all obligated to support Trump, he doesn’t even think it’s a legitimate role of the party’s leaders to use what little leverage they have to try to negotiate with Trump now to throw a bone now and then to 60% of the party’s voters.  How exactly is this supposed to be followed by a Trump Administration in which Republican voters or ideas have any influence at all?

“But Hillary!”  Well, yes, I realize how bad Hillary Clinton is.  But if your sole anti-anti-Trump argument is how horrible Hillary is, you still have to face the facts that (1) Trump himself thought it was a good idea in the recent past to support Hillary Clinton, including to be President, and (2) Trump’s nomination has extinguished any possibility of stopping her, and his enablers and supporters must be given an object lesson in the catastrophe they have brought upon us, so we don’t repeat the error in the future.

It gets even worse than that. Because Trump isn’t just running a dead-loser campaign with no loyalty to conservative principles or to Republican officeholders and candidates, and an embarrassing clown show everywhere he goes. He’s also been a willing magnet for every sort of bigotry under the sun, in ways that promise to poison everything we stand for or wish to accomplish ever again. As Wisconsin conservative talk radio icon Charlie Sykes put it:

[T]his is not just ideological, it’s not just the fact that he’s abandoned one position after another or that he has the penchant for internet hoaxes or conspiracy theories. I mean a week ago tonight, remember, he was peddling the notion that Ted Cruz’s dad had something do with the JFK assassination. So there are people who say that just because of party loyalty we’re supposed to forget all of that. I just don’t buy that. Because I’ve cautioned my fellow conservatives, you embrace Donald Trump, you embrace it all. You embrace every slur, every insult, every outrage, every falsehood. You’re going to spend the next six months defending, rationalizing, evading all that. And afterwards, you come back to women, to minorities, to young people and say, that wasn’t us. That’s not what we’re about. The reality is, if you support him to be president of the United States, that is who you are, and you own it.

But Sykes is right: if you do more than just cast a reluctant ballot for Trump, you own it all. There is nothing hypocritical or anti-American about standing up and refusing to be bullied into doing that. Indeed, in a country founded by revolution and a party that rose from the ashes after its founders bolted the Whigs and stood on its principles even when those principles pushed the nation into Civil War, there is hardly anything more American than that.

A Very Different Republican Coalition: Can It Fly?

RS: A Very Different Republican Coalition: Can It Fly?

A group of coal miners wave signs for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as they wait for a rally in Charleston, W.Va., Thursday, May 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

There’s been a lot of attention paid to Donald Trump’s appeal to a particular type of voter: white working class, no college degree, not that religious or socially conservative but anti-immigration. Let’s look at a few exit poll numbers to contemplate how a Trump coalition might be shaped very differently from Mitt Romney’s coalition, which drew together a respectable but insufficient 47% of the general electorate.
I did some simple algebra combining the share of each group in the electorate and the share won by each candidate, to consider what chunk of their voters fell in each group. For example, college graduates were 45% of the 2012 general electorate and Romney won 48% of them, so whereas non-college-grads were 53% and Romney won 47% of them – thus college-educated Romney voters were 23% of all voters, non-college-educated Romney voters were 25% of all voters, and accordingly college-educated voters made up 48% of the Romney vote. For purposes of this exercise I looked back at the Trump coalition in three states that were decisive (Indiana, Florida and South Carolina). While primary and general election coalitions are different animals, this is the data we have to work with so far, and it gives us a clue as to some of Trump’s challenges ahead, as well as how a candidate with Trump’s appeal to such groups could be an electoral force if that candidate wasn’t also as off-putting as Trump is to other core elements of the Romney coalition.

Continue reading A Very Different Republican Coalition: Can It Fly?

Trump’s Next Victim: Pollsters

RS: Trump’s Next Victim: Pollsters

Donald Trump has proven adept at corrupting everyone and everything that comes into his orbit. He has constructed a kind of cargo-cult imitation of a real political campaign, with press flacks and pundits and elected officials and “policy advisors” and even now speechwriters all acting as if Trump was a real candidate rather than a bad joke told too long. But the one thing Trump has not really needed so far was thoroughly bogus general election polls. Oh, his strength has been overstated in some national primary polls, and the online Reuters poll has been a particular favorite. But Trump in the primaries has mostly been content to tell bald-face lies about his polling against Hillary Clinton, content that any rebuttal could be shouted down with “BUT I AM BEATING YOU IN THE PRIMARY SO YOU MUST BE WORSE.”

Continue reading Trump’s Next Victim: Pollsters

Yes, Donald Trump Would Be Worse Than Any Prior Republican Nominee

RS: Yes, Donald Trump Would Be Worse Than Any Prior Republican Nominee

My reasons for not voting for Donald Trump, even in a general election against Hillary Clinton, are straightforward. Trump is not with me on any issue I care about, would be a terrible and unstable Commander-in-Chief, and would discredit and poison the party and the movement I believe in. Why on earth would I give my vote to him, ever? One of the standard questions asked of #NeverTrump voters is why we find Trump a bridge too far even though a lot of #NeverTrump voters have voted for some pretty disappointing Republican candidates before.
Why now? Why Trump?

Continue reading Yes, Donald Trump Would Be Worse Than Any Prior Republican Nominee