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Schmidt Versus Gabriel; Who Do You Got?
Never Trump likes to think of themselves as the thoughtful, reasoned, and above all principled(TM) alternative to MAGA. They are the wise, diplomatic Picards to MAGA’s boorish James T. Kirks. Which makes watching Lincoln Project founder Steve Schmidt’s descent into madness so compelling. And the most recent target of his outrage is our own fearless leader, Jon Gabriel. Who, according to Mr. Schmidt, is “a Christian Nationalist … an extremist and a fascist.”
The backstory is here. The TL;DR version is that Mr. Schmidt gets very, very testy when people point out that one of his Lincoln Project co-founders, John Weaver, had an unsavory interest in teenage boys and that this troubled the rest of his Lincoln Project cohorts about as much as teaching five-year-olds about gender ideology bothers Disney executives. After this and another recent Schmidt Twitter tirade against Sarah Palin (whom Schmidt called a “nut ball”) and Meghan McCain whom he called insane; Mr. Gabriel gently recommended Mr. Schmidt should perhaps seek help. And it was this that prompted Schmidt’s “Christian Nationalist, extremist, and fascist” riposte. Mr. Gabriel handled the insult with the class and aplomb we have come to expect.
Seriously, though, it does kinda look like the shingles are coming off Mr. Schmidt’s roof and maybe someone ought to look into that.
Really wanted to work in a reference to the crack pipes that the corporate media claimed no way would there be crack pipes in the taxpayer-funded safe smoking kits the Biden administration was distributing, but yeah, there totally are crack pipes in those kits, but… maybe I’m feeling too nice today to suggest a metaphorical connection between Mr. Schmidt’s tirades and the contents of the Biden Administration’s safe-smoking kits.
By the way, the “principled conservatives” at the NAMBLincoln Project have laid out their “2022 Roadmap for Republican Defeat.”
“The Lincoln Project’s mission heading into 2022 is simple and direct: Defeat the Republican Party and their candidates in key states and Congressional districts.”
Certainly sounds like something a group led by principled conservatives who aren’t at all a grift operation fronting for the Democratic Left would say.
Speaking of things angry people say on Twitter, Texas Republican Dan Crenshaw says if you don’t support sending billions of dollars to Ukraine with no financial oversight, you’re probably a Russian stooge.
Published in General
I don’t doubt your assertion about employers displacing American workers with foreign visa holders, but it seems logical to me. We have 5 million more job openings than we have Americans who want to work. Businesses all over the place are hurting from lack of job applicants and restaurants are cutting back hours because they can’t find enough people who want to work, even at vastly increased wages. I’ve never seen anything like it in my lifetime. It is the proverbial “Workers Paradise” and few want to take advantage of it.
That doesn’t support the interpretation, any more than Trump’s actual words supported the media interpretations. Not a word in those tweets says anything about oversight, or even implies anything about oversight.
I don’t buy this “Russian Stooge” business one bit. Crenshaw never said it nor Tweeted it. “Russian Stooge” has become a derogatory term that people opposing the aid to Ukraine now throw around to pretend that they are “victims” of hate by the people who are in favor of the aid. If somebody does not call you a “Russian Stooge,” then for God’s sake don’t claim that they said that. Be a little more accurate in your accounting. The truth really does matter. Crenshaw’s remark wasn’t even serious. It was a snide joke. We are starting to become like lefties who can’t tell the difference between satire and seriousness.
These events happened well before the pandemic (which led to the conditions you describe), as did Crenshaw’s pushing for more H-1B visas. And it still doesn’t make sense that we deliberately depress the wages of American workers by importing others who will work for a significantly lower wage.
I’ll add that the H-1B visas are supposed to be used when a firm can’t find qualified workers, not when a firm wants to lower its cost of labor.
I am not an economist but it seems to me that by having a lot of businesses that are running at below capacity because they do not have enough employees, that is suppressing the economy, which means less prosperity in general.
Thanks for the clarification.
But isn’t that the current situation we are in? Firms, for the most part, are raising their wages and they still can’t find enough Americans who want to work.
We are not set up to let in a lot of low skilled labor.
We ought to be, but we aren’t.
A lot of people take it as a given that immigrants are overwhelmingly low skilled, but is that true? America does not just draw the destitute and uneducated from the rest of the world. A lot of skilled middle-class people come here looking for opportunity. A lot of very successful American companies have had an immigrant founder or co-founder.
I chose my words carefully.
Elon Musk, for one.
That tells me what I need to know.
Um, not how I saw it.
But I guess I am shooting for a shot on Russia Today.
That is OK. I have already been called a Putin supporter.
How do you interpret his comment that she’s “going after that Russia Today slot.” In other words, working for Russia.
You don’t have to buy it, but it’s lying there in the shopping cart waiting for you to take it to the checkout.
LoL
To be clear I don’t dislike Greene. I am what I consider right wing , but I tolerate a lot of differing opinions because I want a big tent.
You have a point there about “Russian Stooge.” Now how about the rest of the sentence?
If he was talking to her at a party I could see it that way, but he is talking to her over twitter (
andan admittedly unserious platform until Trump used it when everyone decided that everything had to be taken literally and personally). His words are public and the implications are pretty clear. He was out of bounds by decorum and by party. At least according to the standards Republicans have adopted of late.MTG vs Crenshaw, that’s an insanely easy call and the choice ain’t MTG. It may be nothing but a proxy war to her but the Ukrainians are fighting for their homeland. They have risen to the occasion and far surpassed what EVERYBODY expected of them. Not every damn thing is about us. If all they were doing was fighting for us, they would have capitulated long ago.
If you are going by Republican standards of decorum by party then I think the standard was set firmly by Donald Trump. Check out these tweets:
“Truly weird Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky reminds me of a spoiled brat without a properly functioning brain. He was terrible at DEBATE!”
“.@FrankLuntz is a low class slob who came to my office looking for consulting work and I had zero interest. Now he picks anti-Trump panels!”
There are over 50 or 60 tweets where Trump calls Ted Cruz a liar and other things in tidbits like this:
“Cruz is a nasty guy, not one Senate endorsement, and despite talk, gets nothing done. Loser!”
“Lyin’ Ted Cruz and lightweight choker Marco Rubio teamed up last night in a last ditch effort to stop our great movement. They failed.”
“Ted Cruz lifts the Bible high into the air and lies like a dog over and over again.”
“Ted Cruz is a cheater. He holds the Bible high and then he lies and misrepresents the facts.”
“This shows what a complete and total liar Ted Cruz is – He said he would not have nominated John Roberts. Really?”
“Lying Cruz put out a statement, ‘Trump & Rubio are w/Obama on gay marriage.’ Cruz is the worst liar, crazy or very dishonest. Perhaps all 3?”
“Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he illegally stole it.” (at least he didn’t call him a liar in that one)
“Ted is the ultimate hypocrite. Says one thing for money, does another for votes.”
Makes you really question McCain’s judgement . He had both Schmidt and Nicole Wallace on his 2008 team.
I agree not every damn thing is about us. Like Ukraine.
We are expending our stockpiles to help them fight. Exactly the sort of thing one does in a proxy
Some of this stuff has long lead times even without the chip shortage.
The lack of foresight about giving these countries defensive weapons and plans is a disaster and it could get worse.
And then punch him, and fire him.
So glad Bill is on the planet to give direction to people, and then, subsequently, those people issue Bill’s orders to their own underlings.
I assume Bill sits on a couch a lot.
You can’t ever get anybody to explain in plain English how John McCain moved anything forward for libertarians or conservatives. I never even cared much until that ACA vote. None of those guys had any foresight about getting rid of the ACA and he is the worst. It is mind boggling. Then they whine about Trump. Also can we finish a war every once and a while?
I don’t even care about RINOs as long as they don’t do much damage.
Wouldn’t you like to do a zero dark 30 interrogation of Nicole Wallace and Steve Schmidt? All they care about is money, everything else is secondary. The good news is, I think that Ricochet’s Leading Never Trumper™ is getting his head around this.
If you’re going to go into politics or political consulting, I think it’s important to figure out how to never end up needing to go onto MSNBC and say whatever it takes to keep making money off of all of that.
It seems like a problematic way to make a living.
EDIT
For example. I couldn’t think of the guys name, but how would you like to be @MichaelSteele?
I think that’s fair. We could point to 100 places in the world where people are being killed or subjugated, then point at people and ask “Don’t you care about XXXXX lives”? No matter the answer, it may or may not automatically mean funding a war via proxy or other means. We’re not going to war with China over the Uyghurs.
There is nothing wrong with this as long as they don’t game it with HB1 visas etc. I find the topic tedious, but it sounds like it’s really bad.
If you have a very libertarian economy and the immigrants assimilate and disburse geographically, it’s fine to let in a lot of them at a constructive rate. We are too stupid to do this.
And another thing. Nobody is a refugee unless they are under one way political or religious persecution. You don’t get to move here because your country is a POS. i.e. Minnesota is notorious for a certain group and by God they got back in the news majorly after staying out of it for a couple of years. All of this garbage makes us worse off.
The 1965 Ted Kennedy immigration thing turned out terribly. The ruling class track record since World War II sucks
We have 100,000 people from the notorious country in Minnesota. We have 25,000 from the country right next to it. You can’t tell them apart. They look the same. One is in the news all of the time and the other ones are perfectly good citizens that stay out of the news. In a sane world you can make adjustments for how much they are in the news, but I guess that’s illegal or unconstitutional or something.