Month: December 2015

My review of Cruz’s A Time for Truth is up at American Thinker.

Someone with with the tag Magnante posted it at Lucianne.com,  which will roughly double the readership.  Thanks, Magnante.

I’m working on a piece describing how Cruz can win New Hampshire, and with it the nomination.  I’ll submit it to AT on Sunday, in the hope that they post it on Monday, the unofficial start of the actual campaign.  I think he’s got a real shot of wrapping things up by March 1st.

Cruz figured this whole thing out months ago.  Everything is going according to plan.  He’s outworking, and out-thinking, the rest of the field.

I gather from some of the comments at AT that a lot of people think Cruz is perfectly likable, and question my criticism of his personality.  Different strokes for different folks.  I’m turned off by what I see as his Texas preacher style, and a certain smarminess.

The side of him that appeals to me is the side he doesn’t let show — a man with a killer instinct and a zest for intellectual combat.

Cruz wasn’t my first choice, or my second, or my third.  But I’m very comfortable getting behind him now.

I’m prejudiced in favor of smart people.

 

The good news today is Marco Rubio endorsing the use of Article V by the states to propose amendments to the Constitution.  This is what the Reagan Project is all about, so welcome aboard Marco!

The not so good news is that Marco did not do his due diligence in coming to this decision, since he chose to endorse the Convention of States (CoS) proposal instead of the BBA Task Force’s version.

When Gov. Kasich decided to campaign for us a little more than a year ago, he did his due diligence.  He quickly understood that the CoS approach wouldn’t fly.  It calls for an essentially open convention, free to propose any amendment that reduces the power and scope of the federal government.  Thus, an amendment stripping the federal courts of jurisdiction in abortion cases would be allowed.  Whenever you bring abortion into a political calculation it upsets everything.  There happen to be a whole lot of people who want a BBA but do not want anything to do with an abortion amendment.  It’s a deal killer.  In some states, like Wyoming, term limits is a deal killer.  These are conservative legislators, but they hate term limits.  And so on.  The more potential subjects are included, the more opposition is engendered.

The Task Force has adamantly insisted from day one that at an Amendment Convention called pursuant to the Resolutions we support would take up one subject, and one subject only  —  A Balanced Budget Amendment.  Period.  We win in states where we convince legislators that the Convention will be limited to one subject.  When we are unable to convince them, we’ve got trouble.

This is why CoS has four states, and we have 27.

It is my hope that Gov. Kasich will take advantage of this opportunity to school young Marco.  Why wouldn’t he?  He’s publicly identified with the Task Force, having campaigned with us and for us in eight or nine of our target states.   This would be malpractice if he doesn’t jump on it.

Cruz is a bit of a cipher on Article V.  This is a purely political calculation on his part.  When he ran as a right wing insurgent in the 2012 primary, he had support from the very people who oppose us  — the John Birch Society, and  — until recently  —  the Eagle Forum.  These people are a little nutty, but there were enough of them that he had to placate them, so he expressed skepticism about Article V.  On the other hand, our man in South Carolina, Charleston County Republican Chairman John Steinberger, asked Cruz to his face if he supported the Task Force’s proposal, and he said yes.  This was last June.  We’ve heard nothing since, that I’m aware of.

I’m counting on Cruz’s vaunted intelligence to lead him to conclude we’re the horse to ride in this race.  Hell, we’re 23 lengths ahead.  He’s a very busy man right now.  But at some point he’ll give it some thought.  I’d be mightily surprised if he didn’t climb aboard.

At the January 14th debate they will probably have some way for the audience to pose a question, using Facebook or something.  The Task Force decided today to get everyone we can to submit a question about Article V and the BBA:   Do they support it?  It should be easy to do.  If everybody kicked in we might even get our question asked.

I’ve been with the Task Force for over two years now, waiting for this idea to see the light of day.  I have a feeling we’re getting close.  And when that happens we have a great story to tell.

I’ve got a piece up in American Thinker tomorrow, thank you, editor J R Dunn.  It’s a review of A Time for Truth, Cruz’s autobiography.

When you were a kid, what would you have thought of another kid who dressed up in a suit and drove all over Texas giving speeches, and singing songs, about the Constitution to Rotary Clubs?  What kind of a dorkwad does that?

That’s our man Ted, in a nutshell.  From the acorn to the tree, it’s his personal mission.  I’m glad he’s a dorkwad.

Otherwise he’d be scary.

This one was completely predictable.  Say whatever you want about Donald Trump.  You can burn his house, steal his car.  You can drink his liquor from an old fruit jar, but don’t you  —  step on his blue suede shoes.

All he needed was the right opening.  A true public relations genius, his timing is always impeccable.  Hillary calls him a sexist, and he pounces.  B. J. Clinton is now a legitimate target, and the Donald has fired the first salvo of, I hope to God, many  more.

There are Democrats and other half wits who think this could backfire, and help Hillary.  Her approval rating was in the 60’s at the height of Monicagate, don’t you know?  Women will once again sympathize with her as a fellow victim of just another no G– Damn good man.  Every woman knows one.

So, so wrong.  There are vast swathes of voters who have only a vague recollection of Monica Lewinsky.  Millions of women have never heard Paula Jones tell her story, and the $850,000 B.J. paid her to settle her sexual harassment claim.  No one knows who Juanita Broderick is.

This is the beauty of a political campaign, and a political showman like Trump.  He can force the light of day on to subjects the media doesn’t want to cover.  He did it with immigration.  He did it with the Syrian refugees.  And he’s doing it with B.J.’s escapades, and Hillary’s cover up.

Once yet again, the Donald does a great service to the Republican Party.  He deserves a prime time speaking slot at the convention.  If he’s willing to bow out gracefully in the end, he will go down as a Great American, one who stepped up.  If Trump campaigns for our candidate in the fall, the tide will reach some sort of crescendo.  He will have helped make America great again.

As a matter of pure speculation, I can see a reverse replay from the 2012 nomination fight.  Cruz is in Romney’s spot, the man to beat.  But a man a whole lot of people don’t want.  In 2012 Romney was too moderate.  In 2016 Cruz is too conservative.  Conservatives made four runs at Romney, with four different candidates.  In 2016 the moderates could make four runs at Cruz, with four different candidates.  Who knows?

On another happy note, Rep. Jim Gooch, a Democrat from Providence, Kentucky, has switched parties.  Gooch is a ten year veteran, and was part of the leadership, a committee chair.  Speaker Stumbo is down to 50.  Seven weeks ago he had 54.  Do you think maybe Gov. Bevin has something to do with this?  From far away it looks as though a dam is about to break.

That’s what happens when the tide is running strong.

I was thinking more about guilt, and how it explains a lot.  Like the Bushes.  All born on third base  — and they know they’re not triple hitters.  So they feel guilty about it.  Guilt is like a disease, a sickness.  It makes men weak.

John Wayne’s biographer says the Duke’s old man gave him a few words to live by  —  Don’t lie, don’t quit, and don’t apologize.

That’s what you want in a leader.

When Billy Jeff Clinton repudiated sister Souljah for saying “. . . black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?”, he was sending an important signal.  In the same vein he flew back to Little Rock in the midst of his campaign to preside over the execution of a mentally retarded black murderer.  He was saying to whites that, while I’m a liberal, I’m not a self hating white.  He was attacked by Jesse Jackson and others, but stood his ground.

In contrast Bush 1 signed the Civil Rights Act of 1991.  The courts had been refusing to buy into some of the more outlandish claims of racial discrimination in employment, and this bill was designed to open the door for these lawsuits.  It was a truly terrible piece of legislation.   Now lawyers could use statistics to show disparate treatment of minorities.  There was no need to show discrimination.  Bush had resisted signing, but was more or less bullied into it by Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska.

B.J. Clinton got 39% of the white vote  in the 1992 election, Bush got 41%.  Four years earlier, Bush got 60% against Dukakis.

What brought this to mind was a truly pathetic column in the NYT by a philosophy professor named George Yancey, called Dear White America.  He wants us all to feel guilty for being white.

I’m a white guy, always have been, and I don’t have a guilty bone in my body, never have, never will.  And when someone tries to guilt trip me it pisses me off.  I know a lot of people who are into guilt.  They’re all miserable bastards.

This NYT column is a problem for Hillary.  She can’t have her sister Souljah moment.  Martin O’Malley tried, when he told some Black Lives Matter protesters that all lives matter.  He quickly backtracked.  Only black lives matter, and to say anything different is racist.  This is Hillary’s party, so she has to toe the line.

Working class whites in the Midwest can win this election for the Republicans if they turn out.  I know these guys.  They don’t like being told to be guilty because they’re white.  And they don’t like to hear that only  black lives matter.  It pisses them off.

Informing and motivating these voters is not the work of the Rubio or Cruz campaign.  An independent outside group needs to do this job, similar to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.  There’s a big money anti-Hillary PAC, but from the looks of their first efforts they have no brains and no balls.  It’s establishment money, and won’t accomplish anything.

A new PAC needs to form.   The votes are there.

Does anybody want to go get them?