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John Podhoretz
Based on years of listening to him, and on everything I’ve heard about him, John Podhoretz is a gentle, humane, and thoroughly decent man. I envy him his ability to pluck precisely the right word from his obviously vast vocabulary, and to speak, when he chooses, with extraordinary nuance and precision.
Sure, he’s prone to outrageous hyperbole (a quality hardly unique to him in this, the Age of Trump), is unduly proud of his Judaic morosity, and has a sense of humor that resonates with 12-year-old boys and Jonah Goldberg (but I repeat myself). But still, I enjoy listening to him.
But he often lands a clinker, as he did in the June 6 podcast (here) when he averred, at about 1:10:00, that, should the Democrats win in 2020, the right is “certainly going to turn anti-patriotic in the event of his defeat. … So you’re going to have the right hating America and the left hating America.”
I’ve mentioned this before about our own Rob Long, and I’ll say it now about John: I think too many conservative intellectuals have a poor idea of what actual conservatives are like, and of who makes up “the right” out in that vast unexplored and boring portion of America that people who don’t live in New York, Washington, or Los Angeles call home.
Thank G-d we still have VDH.
Published in Culture
It seems odd that somehow the black woman’s name sounds more white than the white guy’s name.
I’m sure if she could, Kamala would be editing or deleting all the videos of her versus Biden from the first debate, when she all but called him a racist for opposing busing. Wonder if anyone will interview Tulsi Gabbard right after the selection?
I fully expect Trump to lose. That doesn’t mean that I think he should.
If he does lose, everyone who “predicted” it will probably think they were correct about the “reasons,” but there’s no way to really know that.
At a minimum, Roy Moore would have served for 3 years.
This is an excellent analysis of the short term pain, long term gain of voting for Biden to rid our country and party of Trump.
BTW, I got my “Republicans for Biden” bumper stickers yesterday. They are already on my car.
I have already donated to the Democrat in CO-3. The Republican incumbent was doing a good job, but the Q-Anon who beat him was a nut. I hope that the Dem wins, and then a sane Republican can take back CO-3 in 2022. CO-3 is a R+6 district. We should be able to win it back if we don’t run a Q-Anon.
538 gave Trump a 28.6% chance of winning in 2016. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/ That seems about right in 2020, maybe a bit lower for Trump.
This is all more the reason to defeat Trump in 2020, and to drive a wooden spike through Trumpism.
Another reason to vote for Biden in 2020, my first vote for a Democrat for President since 1972. I got my “Republicans for Biden” bumper stickers yesterday and have already put them on my car.
I “know” to a metaphysical certitude that Trump losing in 2020 will disempower the Q-Anon, David Duke, and populist factions of the Republican Party.
Would you say the nut that beat him in CO-3 is closer to the inner circle of power on the GOP side than this guy is on the Democratic side? (I’m assuming you now know who he is, and these are the types of people you’re enabling to put into national power:)
I agree that the nation is obviously better off with a Republican in the White House than with a Democrat. I disagree that Trump is a Republican. Instead he spear-headed a populist take-over of the Republican Party. Get rid of Trump, and restore the Republican Party of Reagan, Ike, Coolidge and the Bushes.
So Biden wins, and, since he was barely capable of running in 2020, steps down in 2024 for his VP. However, during those four years, the entire machinery of the federal government is dedicated to reinforcing woke culture and pandering to the worst of what we’ve seen over the last couple of months.
Using the power of incumbency, Biden’s VP wins in 2024 and 2028, giving us eight more years (for a total of 12 years) of Supreme Court Justices, abortions, and unfettered illegal immigration.
Don’t you just love what some consider “short term pain.”
Once after submitting a very, very long paragraph, a Judge told me, “Gary, we need to introduce you to ‘our friend the paragraph.'” Three to five sentences are best. 19 sentences are exhausting.
As said on another thread a few weeks ago. it’s 1917. Gary’s logic is “Sure, we have to put up with the Bolsheviks for a short time. But at least we’ve gotten rid of the Czar.”.
The paragraph was well-written and reasoned. It just needed pauses. I want to join Henry in saying that what you wrote was well said and made a lot of sense. Good writing. With a smidge of editing, you are a gang-buster writer.
I once read a history of the WWII Eastern front. I don’t think there was a single paragraph in the entire book that was less than half a page. It was a real slog to get through.
No. Trump is unique among Republican nominees in that he was not voted in by a “majority” of GOP voters, only a plurality. Romney, McCain, W., Dole, H.W. and Reagan all received a majority of GOP voters.
The McLaughlin Group has returned, with three of the old gang. It airs every Friday, and can be found on Apple iTunes.
I absolutely oppose Keith Ellison. Minnesota is getting what they voted for.
I noticed that you skipped over the fact that Trump endorsed your preferred candidate, the incumbent, who “the nut” defeated.
In 1976 Carter won and was holding all of the branches of government. Carter screwed up so badly that the Republicans gained a net of 12 Senate Seats, taking control of the Senate for the first time since the 1950’s.
One of the seats was Chuck Grassley who beat an incumbent senator. Grassley is now the longest serving Republican in the Senate.
I don’t think that it is 1917 in Russia or 1933 in Germany. This is still the United States.
That’s interesting, if irrelevant. So you plan to support a candidate and then hope he “screws up badly”?
Trump did endorse Scott Tipton, the five term incumbent. Trump also endorsed incumbent Alabama Senator Luther Strange over Roy Moore in 2017.
Given that Trump has screwed up bigly, yes, I support Biden whose policies I dislike to get rid of Trump and Trumpism.
I’m sorry that you’re opposed to Trump’s significant policy successes. But the question that I raised was why would you support a candidate and then hope he screws up? That just doesn’t compute.
It is a calculated risk. If Bernie were nominated, I would likely be sitting this one out. If AOC were old enough to be nominated, I would hold my nose and vote for Trump.
I hope that I am right. But if we can rid the party of Trump, and Uday and Qusay (DJTJ and Ivanka) are not nominated in the future, I think that the price of Biden will not be too high.
There won’t be a Biden administration. Biden will come out and try to read from a teleprompter every once in awhile, get a pat on the head from the media, and go back to his desk pretending to be President. The AOCs, the Omars, the BLMs, etc will go back to actually making the decisions and policies.