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This week, some rumination on Trump’s tete a tete with Putin (along with a history lesson for Rob Long), we introduce you to Elizabeth Heng, who is running for Congress in California’s 16th District, we get some #MeToo education from our good pal Mona Charen, (stop whatever you’re doing and buy her book Sex Matters right now) and the city of Santa Barbara declares that if you use a straw in that fair city, you’ll do time. Which sucks. Also, the Word of The Day is spizzerinctum.
Music from this week’s podcast: Sex Bomb by Tom Jones
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This was a great podcast. I listened to it three times to hear what Rob had to say.
This would be the Republican party that not only did nothing to prevent the assaults on middle-class, small town, small business, ordinary, normal Americans, but gleefully added to their burdens? The Republican party that decided that it was a good idea to open our borders to vast hordes of invaders, who have no respect for our laws and our citizens? That decided that their role was to be the gracious, civilized losers, while Obama wrought havoc at home and abroad? The Republican party of Max Boot, Bret Stephens, and Jennifer Rubin, who want to replace us with compliant foreigners? That Republican party?
That Republican party should thank God that they only got Trump instead of the revolt that they deserve.
The problem is, the results will be the opposite of that. It reminds me of the joke poster, “The beatings will continue until morale improves.”
Coolidge. It’s about twice the price, I believe.
Best Trump support ever. There needs to be more of this.
Yes, Rob had a rant, but other than that, it wasn’t bad. And there were definitely some funny moments.
Fortunately, Rob is – and in the past has demonstrably been – wrong about so many things, it’s not difficult to just dismiss a lot of what he says.
I think it would be funny if someone in the podcasts had a sound button to press that has Mary Tyler Moore saying “Oh, Rob!”
Yes. Mona being interviewed by Peter about her book was excellent. I enjoyed the interview of the young Republican congressional candidate. Based on what I hear from Victor Davis Hanson about life on the ground in California’s central valley, I think her message will be received among her potential voters more positively than Rob Long seems to think.
Please don’t skip it on my account. Except for the two minute rant I was glowering in my troll-cave.
The answer to all these questions is, yes, that Republican party.
I guess I’ve remembered Rob’s previous position incorrectly. I thought he believed the President was unfit to serve due to character, not mental illness. If he has always thought President Trump was mentally ill, he has been not just wrong, but spectacularly wrong.
Character, Kompromat, Mental Illness. With Trump it is always hard to tell which is predominating at one time.
I agree with Rob and I agree with the anti-Trumpers Trump is mentally ill and obnoxious. But he is still and effective tool for freedom. He is mentally ill like an high-functioning alcoholic. He is rude and vulgar but he gets stuff done.
Getting stuff done is the most important thing.
So, armchair diagnosis of the President’s mental health – that’s so helpful. Putin obviously has kompromat on Rob Long, to get him to say the U.S. President is mentally ill, and unfit to lead. Good job, Ricochet Podcast.
So Helsinki was Trump going “completely off the deep end”? You realize that means we have nothing to fear, right? As mentioned in the podcast, other presidents have done the same, or worse.
No, wait, you just said we have a choice between Trump and Pence. Please tell us how to get to whatever universe in which you live.
What Julia wrote. God Bless you, Julia. And thank Rob Long for being a Founder. He is wonderful. A breath of fresh air.
Nobody on Ricochet even remotely liked Obama as a president. That does not mean we have to like Trump.
Where to begin. The Republican Party of Ronald Reagan gave us a couple of decades of a growing economy, the end to the Soviet Union, and a feeling that it is good to be called a Proud American again. Trump has given us a good economy, yes, and good judges, among other things; but also a feeling of embarrassment to have as a leader a man who can’t control his fragile ego, and thinks nothing of consigning people to Hell who would dare to dispute that the is the greatest American alive today.
Not only did Reagan help us all to be proud to be Americans, he helped many of us to be proud to be Republicans.
I am ashamed to be a Republican when the overwhelming majority of us Republicans allowed a determined minority (but plurality in a large field) to take over the conservative movement in a fury of populist rage.
Part of the rage against the anti-Trump forces is because the peasants are so tired of being assaulted by the urban elites. If you don’t live in flyover country, you don’t have any idea of how devastating the leftist-globalist agenda was and is to the people, towns, and industries in the interior of the country. It’s one thing to read about such things, quite another to live them. It is one thing to spout compassion for illegal aliens when your kids go to private schools, and quite another when your kids don’t get much attention from teachers because the teachers are busy dealing with illegal alien children who don’t speak English, and whose parents are not literate in any language. When you are paying property taxes to pay those teachers, this is enraging. On top of the economic warfare, there is the constant drum of racist, sexist, homophobe, when we are not any of those things.
I agree with every word, but wouldn’t our goals have been met 1,000 times more effectively and efficiently if we had supported Scott Walker from Wisconsin? He was available to be drafted when Trump had gamed the winner-take-all primaries to come out on top with 35% support at the convention.
Update: Note that Gary and my comments were posted without awareness of the other.
Governor Walker bowed out early. Many of us were supporting him before he did so.
He was still, in my opinion, the best available answer to the problem we were confronted with after the Indiana primary. He bowed out specifically to stop Trump urging real Republicans to unite behind one candidate that could do that job.
I am proud to be a Scott Walker Republican. Scott Walker has been a highly successful governor of a purple state. He doesn’t have any of the character/kompromat/mental illness issues that Trump has. He is a humble man who has sparked a revolution. I would be proud of a Scott Walker President.
Governor Walker pleaded with the rest of the field to step away if a candidate wasn’t catching fire. Nobody else did until too late.
If we had the proportionate awarding of delegates, an extended series of primary elections, and super-delegates we could stop a demagogue like Trump.
Other tools would be “negative voting” where an elector could either vote “for” a candidate, or “against” a candidate. Another tool would be to require any candidate to win a 60% or 2/3’s majority. Another tool would be to require the release of tax returns.
It appears that the only ways to excise the Trump nightmare will be for Mueller to prove kompromat, or for our party to be wiped out in the 2018 and/or 2020 elections.
McCaine Finegold over-empowered the 527s. I heard that somewhere.
17 candidates means you have to have a national two-step primary. 17–>2.
Gary still thinks they are going to get Trump on something related to Russia.
I can not believe anyone is for this in this era.
After Helsinki, yes!
The best way for people to manage their sex drive is to have good parents or listen to Dennis Prager. Good luck if you don’t.
As a true, Reagan conservative, I am hoping for Red Wave elections in both those years. And for Mueller to end his investigation, stating positively that neither the election nor the President has been compromised. Obviously, it’s what Reagan would want.
If you want to know why populists are taking everything over, listen to the David Stockman interviews on the Tom Wood show and Contra Krugman around September 2016, D.C. McAllister on Whiskey Politics and David Horowitz on the Rubin Report or basically anything, and Angelo Codavilla on the Tom Woods Show. Bonus credit: listen to Dr. Joseph Salerno on Ludwig von Mises and nationalism and Hans Herman Hoppe on Democracy the God that failed on Mises weekends.