Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Tut, Tut, Gov. Desantis: The Cult of the Raised Eyebrow Is Cheesed Off
David French’s rather tiresome shtick of high-minded disapproval of behaviors within the ranks of his (alleged) side gets him kudos from well-placed people, a gig on the NYT, and “respect” from the left. It is the kind of “respect” that made the British tolerate the presence of Benedict Arnold in the UK or the Russians’ provide desultory accommodations for Kim Philby, although admittedly neither of them got an NYT gig.
Yesterday French found DeSantis’ refusal to extradite “dangerous.” The incredibly brazen partisan weaponization of federal law enforcement and of blue-state Soros prosecutors (Bragg in this particular instance) is not the danger, according to Mr. French. It is DeSantis’ refusal to honor this particular abuse of law. That is a remarkably warped perspective. If an armed bank robber leaves his mobile phone behind and the branch manager brazenly refuses to return it as he should, would French do a critical tweet about the branch manager?
David French and his RINO predecessors in Cult of the Raised Eyebrow made Trump a virtual necessity even as they decried his rise. Precisely because they seem to prefer tut-tutting about the people on their side rather than vigorously confronting the hordes massing on the left getting ready to tear it all down. When so many of us feel the need for leader to gird up to fight the real enemy, the sheer fecklessness of the Raised Eyebrow crowd makes Donald Trump’s confrontational stylings that much more appealing and the choice by default despite some rather substantial drawbacks.
The entire sum of Donald Trump’s most intemperate remarks (and, let’s be honest, there is a lot of petty, inaccurate, and gratuitously ugly stuff there) is far less offensive and vastly far less of a threat to the republic than the Steele dossier/Mueller/impeachment conspiracy attempts to cripple an elected president and undo an election. It pales in comparison to the Obama/Biden/Soros partisan weaponization of federal and local law enforcement.
If your indignation and sheer rage against the real abuse is not evident and boiling over in your prose and Twitter feed, then why should anyone care if your panties are in a bunch by some crude tweet or some (allegedly) empty political gesture by Ron DeSantis? To be that disproportionate is to be a ridiculous man.
Team Raised Eyebrow is not built to deal with the modern left. The American left is no longer only about increasing welfare and benefits payments, expanding regulatory scope, raising taxes, or some other agenda that lends itself to debate and compromise. The American left is now expressly about the elimination of the moral, cultural, legal, and historical premises of the United States of America. What is the polite Romneyesque gentlemanly comprise that can avert that? How does looking the other way when the mules stuff the ballot box, the J6 demonstrators get more jail time than Chicago shooters, the entire federal health establishment lies about the science of COVID, the border is deliberately undefended, white children are brow-beaten into racial guilt, black kids are taught to despair because the system is rigged, people lose jobs and/or get harassed for noting that sexual identity is actually linked to biology, and we are force-fed the lie that America was founded solely to promote slavery, how does passivity with a gentlemanly smile effectively oppose much less undo any of that?
I have extensive reservations about the efficacy of a second Trump candidacy but I firmly reject the notion that the answer to the vital issue of the survival of our national political, moral, and legal culture is a Raised Eyebrow at tacky behavior by the wrong sorts of chaps who probably should not be in our party at all, eh wot?
If David French were picking at his usual targets because he knew of another fighter in the wings, someone willing to drain the swamp, jail the crooks, free the energies of the people, restore the republic, and who can get elected with sufficient margins to govern and change and if he were trying to clear the way for that leader, then his approach would be justified. As it is, he is just another self-promoting divisive figure whose net effect is to give aid and comfort to the real enemy. He is a ridiculous man.
Published in General
Suck down donor cash, drop out before the primary, spend that donor cash on a third house, a yacht, and helping overthrow a few third-world countries.
Kristol is channelizing his inner socialist again – ends justifying the means.
Seriously, how does one circumvent campaign finance laws to pay oneself out of donor dollars?
Doesn’t that happen all the time? Where there’s a will there’s a way.
It’s not a strawman. The principals are the same. The Fugitive Slave Act said what it said. The Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution says what it says. You say the Act was unconstitutional, but no Federal Court ever said so. Your saying that refusal to enforce the Act is justified because it is bad (it is), but that presupposes some discretion exist for a governor to refuse to do an apparently ministerial act. You can argue that this situation does not justify the use of that discretion, but that is a more moral argument rather than a legal one .
Consider Kentucky v. Dennison, 65 US 66 (1861), a case that marries the Extradition Clause with the Fugitive Slave issue. In that case, the Kentucky demanded the extradition of Willis Lago from Ohio. Mr. Lago was a free man, but was charged with helping a fugitive slave. The Ohio governor told Kentucky to pound sand. The Supreme Court held the the Ohio governor had a duty to extradite Lago, but that neither the federal courts nor the Congress could compel him to do so. Dennison is no longer good law because of a somewhat odd recent case, but I hope you would support Dennison in his decision.
If you want a good story about a Governor’s refusal to extradite back in the Dennison days, look up the Colorado governor’s refusal to send Doc Holliday back to face charges related to the Erp Vendetta ride (the last half of Tombstone, basically).
My son does that song with a group called Soul Shake.
I would love to punch that smirking face. Hard.
Can you please link to the song?
I oppose political violence. The elections of 1800 was awesome. Also, the guy has a glass jaw. Just at him. (I have a glass jaw so I can make that joke.)
Saw him in Reston VA. Nice.
Out of curiosity, how can DeSantis extradite him if he is not in the custody of the government of Florida?