HALF-FULL REPORT 05/20/16
Jack will be back in all his glory next week, so this is my last HFR for a while. It’s been an honor to be with all of you, and especially to stand in for my dear friend.
By the way, in case you missed it, Jack wrote a fascinating piece this Tuesday on “The Real Atlantis”. It’s not what you’ve been told all your life. It also holds lessons for America.
Since he has deserved it often but obviously cannot name himself, I am going to take this rare opportunity and designate the youngest-ever Eagle Scout, the architect of the Reagan Doctrine, and the real-life Indiana Jones, Dr. Jack Wheeler, our HFR Hero of the Week. Not for any particular reason, mind you, but for a lifetime of achievement in the service to America and of liberty.
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Yesterday, Bob Kagan made the case here in To The Point that Trump is bringing fascism to America (I’m not sure why he left Hillary out of that, but oh well: Jonah Goldberg’s done fine work on that).
Interestingly enough – and I have to say, I never thought I’d see this – the lefty kids over at Vox defended Trump. It’s worth a read: five scholarly experts on the nature and history of fascism, unanimous in their assessment that Trump is not actually a fascism (of course they still hate him, but that’s not the point).
As in past weeks, I’m going to leave that argument to others (I can’t possibly top Jack anyway). This is, after all, the Half Full Report, and by definition, well, not supposed to be depressing. Maybe Trump is the devil, but Hillary is for sure, so for today I’ll focus fire on her.
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Wednesday, The Donald released his short list for the Supreme Court. It’s a blockbuster.
If any candidate has ever released a such a list during an election campaign, I am certainly not aware of it. But on March 21 in a speech at Mar-a-Lago, the now-presumptive nominee promised:
“Some of the people that are against me say, we don’t know if he’s going to pick the right judges, supposing he picks a liberal judge or a pro-choice judge, or whatever…. I will get a list of anywhere between 5 and 10 judges, and those are going to be the judges that I am going to put in, it will be one of those judges, and I will guarantee it personally –like we do in the business world- but I guarantee that they will be up for nomination if I win.”
Wednesday, he delivered a conservative dream team.
To quote John Yoo at National Review, “these names are a Federalist Society all-star list of conservative jurisprudence.” He goes on:
“Everyone on the list is an outstanding legal conservative. All are young, smart, and committed. Several of the possibilities, such as Tom Lee of Utah, Allison Eid of Colorado, and David Stras of Minnesota, are former law clerks of Justice Clarence Thomas, while others, such as Steve Colloton of Iowa and Joan Larsen of Michigan, clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia. They are joined by other well-known judicial conservatives, such as Diane Sykes, Don Willet, Ray Kethledge, and Bill Pryor.”
Of course, Yoo also points out that he doesn’t trust The Donald. I address that at quite a bit more length here (“Trump’s Judges: Why They Matter”). But while I greatly respect the people making the case that Trump can’t be trusted, on this or anything else, there are some very good reasons to think this is more than a head fake.
First, unless we believe that Trump is a highly-committed ideological leftist – which seems the weakest of all the arguments against him: if anything, his beliefs have been all over the map and without any obvious consistent core – he gains a great deal by delivering on this issue. It’s an issue that, from his own perspective, costs him very little, but gains much needed capital with his chosen party. It allows him to be a conservative champion on the sort of big personal fight he clearly relishes. It makes him a hero.
Now if he’s deeply ideologically committed to leftist principal, that’s another matter. But does anyone really believe that? Do even his worst enemies believe he’s committed to anything but the greater glory of Trump?
But second, Harriet Miers pushed the Bush presidency off the cliff. Bush never recovered. And Miers wasn’t even a betrayal: she was just widely seen as inadequate, in a moment that called for (and eventually got, in the form of Sam Alito) greatness.
Trump is many things, but he’s not stupid. Whatever his agenda, in the short term it is advanced by swerving hard right – and winning – on exactly this. Having released this list, it will be greatly endangered by a betrayal.
And that being true, we need to take Trump’s list very seriously indeed.
Do take a minute to read “Trump’s Judges: Why They Matter” for more. It’s certainly not an endorsement. But I think we have to give this serious thought, particularly from a strategic perspective.
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A month ago, the conventional wisdom was that Trump would get slaughtered by Hillary. As I predicted (not entirely happily), that “wisdom” was ludicrously wrong. Rasmussen now has the race 42-37 – yes, that’s Trump beating Hillary by 5, well outside the margin of error – yesterday morning. That’s up from a 2 point lead last week in the same poll.
Last week Rasmussen was more-or-less alone. But Wednesday, Fox News found Trump with a 3 point lead, 45-42. For perspective, in the same poll last month, it was Hillary 48, Trump 41; and in March Hillary 49, Trump 38.
Trump is still behind in the NBC poll, but just barely: 48-45, within the margin of error. NBC also found similar gender-gaps for each candidate: men by 11 for Trump, but shockingly enough, women by only 15 for Clinton. But Rasmussen has Trump with a 22 point lead among men, and just an 11 point deficit with women. Either way, given that the male Barack Obama beat John McCain with women by that same 14%, Hillary’s “girl power” campaign appears to be tanking. And Fox actually has Trump winning white women 47-38.
Other polling highlights: NBC finds that self-identified “very conservative” Republicans trust Trump over Paul Ryan by 63-34, underlining my point from last week about who needs whom. NBC also finds that Trump leads among independents by 44-36, but Fox has it 46-30. And as I’ve consistently predicted, party unity is identical: Pubs 82, Dems 83. But as the Sanders-Clinton fight drags on, and as #NeverTrump fades, these numbers look worse and worse for Hillary.
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Oh, and don’t think this means people like them. Just 31% say Clinton is honest; 40% say so about Trump. Over half say “has strong moral values” does not apply to either: Clinton 57, Trump 58. Similar majorities believe neither candidate “cares about people like me.” By 71 Clinton and 65 Trump, voters say both candidates “will say anything to get elected.”
But at the end of the day, 59% say Trump is a “strong leader” to Clinton’s 49%. And 49% believe Hillary is “corrupt” vs. just 37% who say this about The Donald.
With or without an indictment, that may prove to be the ballgame.
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Just to illustrate the point, the Wall Street Journal – which has literally lampooned The Donald (and for that matter, Ted Cruz as well) from the beginning – did an abrupt about-face this week. James Tarranto entitled his Tuesday “Best of the Web”: “Can Hillary Win? It’s Hard to See How”.
It actually gets worse. The rest of the subtitle reads “Unless She Can’t Lose”, which is not a suggestion of her invulnerability but rather a mocking of the Washington Post’s vague hope in “demographic realities” and other such hooey.
To which I can only say, she’s been inevitable before.
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Juan Williams’ argument Tuesday night was even more pathetic. Arguing Hillary’s chances on Fox, Williams stated without obvious irony that Trump would soon run up hard against Hillary’s steadiness, statesmanship, experience and policy knowledge.
In other words, Juan believes Trump will lose to Jeb Bush.
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But of course Jeb! did not easily slay the Trumpster, despite all the confident punditry to the contrary. Hillary is starting to learn why.
This week, in a move that probably caused fainting in Miami and Houston, Donald Trump accused Bill Clinton of rape. Why? Well at least in part because he’s a rapist: if you haven’t read Juanita Broaddrick’s account of her ordeal, it’s past time you did (you should also pick up a copy of my friend Candice Jackson’s Their Lives: The Women Targeted by the Clinton Machine: it’s clear Trump has).
But of course the main reason is that the one-man wrecking ball that is Donald Trump intends to drive Hillary’s sky-high negatives as far as they can go. And part of that is to make the case that, far from being the women’s candidate, Hillary is a dirty enabler of the worst sort of misogyny.
Juanita’s story paints that picture in bold colors. Bill’s part almost pales in comparison.
But Juanita’s is far from the only one (full disclosure: Juanita Broaddrick is a very close friend of a very close friend of mine). And it’s a real problem for the PIAPS. To those of us old enough to have lived through the 1990s, all of this may seem old news. But there’s a reason Millennials – who have no such memories – are so vehemently opposed to her, supporting Sanders by over 80%, including a pretty consistent 83% of Millennial women. To them, Clinton is no feminist icon: she’s just old, and an enabler, and a sell-out.
This is why the Monica Lewinsky story – a classic case of sexual harassment if there ever were one – is about to have real power again, perhaps more than before. And with Hillary now promising that she will let Bill run the economy, he’s not just the future First Lady: she has made him inseparable from herself.
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Just an aside: did the feminist candidate really just say she’s going to let Hubby handle the money? LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
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You know this is starting to be all too real when the leftist McClatchy papers run a headline like “War on Women Has a Democratic Front Too”, featuring – in addition to the prospective First Rapist – Ed Rendell’s statement this week that there are “more ugly women in America than attractive women,” plus “a vulgar, jarring stream of sexist attacks chairwoman of the Nevada Democratic Party” by Bernie Sanders supporters.
Somehow they seem to have missed that other Democratic assault on women, the one inviting men into women’s bathrooms to assault them.
Don’t think I’m suggesting we mistreat poor little transgendered waifs (if any such people exist): we ought to be kind to everyone.
But Obama’s bathroom edict requires that schools stand by while the football team temporarily identifies “female” and harasses 7th grade girls. This, apparently, is social progress, and in no way violates “a woman’s right to privacy.”
Guess what women: you’re pretty much a subsidiary of the Democrat Party now, just like black people. Your rights no longer matter.
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Perhaps this meme will help understand the draconian insanity Obama and Hillary’s party today advocates:
If you ever wondered whether liberals actually care about the causes they claim to espouse, you no longer have to. A “woman’s privacy” is violated beyond all measure if we can’t force Hobby Lobby to pay for her abortion, or if we can’t give 12 year olds birth control (and even abortions) without their parents’ knowledge. But if a man puts on a dress and trolls her restroom, and she complains, she’s just an ignorant transphobic bigot.
Power is the left’s only value. Destroying the legitimacy of conservatives (and Christians) is their only obstacle.
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By the way, the cowardice on our own side is maddening. You will recall this February when, unprompted and in a GOP debate of all places, Jeb!, Marco and Chris Christie volunteered their support for drafting women. Ted Cruz stood against them, more or less alone.
The issue is back. Draft-dodger Mitch McConnell wants women drafted. Joining the Democrats, he opines that, because Barack Obama has allowed women into combat roles, it is a “woman’s right” to…be forced into combat. John McCain and Lindsey Grahamnesty agree.
This is as stupid as saying a man in a dress is a woman (which, by the way, would have outraged feminists just a couple years ago).
It is not that surprising that Mitch would sell out our daughters. It is a bit more so that McCain and Graham would. But in fact, only three Republicans on the Armed Services Committee voted against this travesty: Cruz, Lee and Rounds.
The more conservative House has blocked the measure…for now. But not before the House Armed Services Committee voted 32-30 for the exact same “right”. Expect more.
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On a lighter note, as you know, the Social Justice Warriors have been after the Washington Redskins for quite some time now: their name is apparently a hate crime, or something. (And be sure to see the brilliant, although definitely R-rated, South Park episode about this.)
This week put a hole in their tire. It turns out just 9% of Native Americans consider the name “Redskins” offensive.
That’s gotta hurt.
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Finally, one very encouraging note: despite the best efforts of Democrats to keep school choice from blacks, whom they prefer to keep in the union-dominated indoctrination camp, choice is working. A study released this week by the University of Arkansas shows just how dramatically.
And for the Dems, that’s a problem.
As I’ve written previously, 94% of New Orleans high schoolers are now in a charter school: they just exceeded the statewide average for standardized test scores for the first time in Louisiana history. 46% of Washington, D.C. high schoolers are in a charter, thanks to a courageous black Dem mayor ten years ago: they’re poorer on average than their public school counterparts, and their schools are more, ahem, financially efficient. Yet their test scores are better, their graduation rate is higher, and lots of them are getting accepted to college.
The liberal plantation just doesn’t work. And those consigned to it are figuring that out.
I don’t want to sound overly optimistic. We face a lot of problems, I know. But from the denial of reality inherent in transgenderism to the stupidity of letting public sector unions control education (and finance leftist politics with tax dollars), the left’s unending overreach provides opportunity to reteach fundamental principles: conservatism. And in the end, truth cannot help but win, as books must be balanced and lives must be lived successfully and things just have to work.
Don’t believe me? Ask the average Venezuelan today how happy they are with socialism.
Americans spend more now on taxes than on food, clothing and housing combined. That sort of thing catches up, just like failing schools caught up with the NEA in two predominately Democrat cities. Success breeds success too: it took a generation after Reagan repudiated Carterism before people unlearned the lesson. Add a few of the right judges, to undo some of the worst of the left’s abuses (such as the compulsory union dues Scalia would have nuked this term had he lived) and the country could be in very sound shape very fast.
I keep saying there’s an opportunity for a realignment. I don’t know if Donald Trump will help that along or kill it in its crib. But change is coming. And there’s a lot of opportunity in that.
It’s not time to give up. It’s time to dig in.
Rod D. Martin is a technology entrepreneur, futurist, hedge fund manager, and professor. Fox Business News calls him a “tech guru”, Britain’s Guardian labels him a “philosopher-capitalist”, and Gawker describes him as a “brilliant nonconformist.” He was a senior member of PayPal’s pre-IPO startup team and is a member of the Board of Governors of the Council for National Policy.
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