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A Quote from Rush, and a Never-Trumper Considers Voting for Trump
This is a scary quote from Rush’s show yesterday:
I think if the Democrats win, then it’s hello one-party rule, and it is one-party rule of a bunch of Marxists and Leninists and uber-left wing radicals who are not interested in a two-party system. They don’t believe in opposition. There is no legitimate opposition. Black Lives Matter operates that away. Antifa operates that way. The Democrat Party operates that way. There’s no reason to have debate. There’s no legitimate opposition.
They don’t want to have to go to the trouble of winning hearts and minds. They don’t want to have to persuade people to agree with them. They’re gonna use force to make people agree them, force, intimidation, threats. It’s how they’re doing it now, how they’re doing it in these cities that they’re burning and looting and so forth. They are literally manipulating and intimidating and frightening people. And there’s no discussion of issues.
This led into a story about a staunch never-Trumper who finally gets it.
Although Ms. Pletka hasn’t committed to vote for Trump yet, the fact she is seriously considering it should make other never-Trumpers question whose side they are really on . . .
Published in Elections
Stad,
I read the article. Thanks for making us aware of it. We’d better wait and see a few days. This is the Washington Post. Will lower-level staffers, like at the NYTimes, now play the cancel culture game and demand that her article be withdrawn? If it stands it could be the beginning of a trend.
Regards,
Jim
I can see some in the lefty MSM realizing that failure to properly cover the riots, or even deny they occur could result in a huge backlash against the Dems in November. I think some Dem politicians are starting to realize this, but they’ll get eaten by their own if they speak out forcefully . . .
For those who don’t recognize her name, Danielle Pletka is on the podcast, “What the H-ll is Going on Anyway,”with Mark Thiessen, who is not a Never Trumper. Having listened to a number of their podcasts, she is intelligent and sane. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to learn that she’s voting for Trump.
If you see the Republican Party as something where you had a certain fiefdom in, pre-Trump, due to your status either as a pundit, political consultant, or some other player within the former status quo, and you maintain a Masters of the Universe ego about your political skills, this op-ed is just going to be brushed off as a weak-minded caving in and betrayal of the #NeverTrump movement.
While the Democrats may want one-party rule, the grifters within the #NeverTrump movement want ‘their’ party back, eve if it’s a rump party with no political power other than the crumbs the Democrats throw their way (David Frum back in 2009 was perfectly happy to live within that concept, when he told Republicans the only way to stay viable was to move the party to the left, because there was no way to combat the Obama progressive juggernaut). Beating Trump is more about getting their little GOP fiefdom back, based on the idea if Trump loses, they’re going to be able to march in and tell all those cro-magnon Trump supporters how things are going to be done from now on.
(The more interesting ones are the decorum conservatives like George Will or Mona Charen, who get the vapors about Trump’s behavior in ways people like Rick Wilson don’t, other than to claim Trump’s behavior upsets them. For Will — who was getting the vapors over George H.W. Bush’s behavior in 1986 — or Charen, who keeps writing fantasies about how a Biden landslide will somehow roll the GOP back to the Reagan years, the Democrats’ antisocial behavior keeps testing their limits more and more of not caring how the Dems behave, or plan to behave if they win in November. Pletka seems to have been in that boat, but has finally reached her breaking point; I doubt the higher-profile Will or Charen will flip at this late date, but it is amusing to see them hating on Trump while trying to ignore the 800-pound belligerent donkey in the room.)
I’m still baffled about the people who are simply incapable of handling paradox. They don’t understand that you can greatly dislike someone’s behavior and personality, and also support their actions. You have to learn to let his statements roll off your back; there is zero chance that he’s going to change. And appreciate that he hasn’t done any of the dire things that people predicted. He’s also spearheaded some great actions.
A mature human being must learn to prioritize one’s values. It just seems more important to me to secure the United States and bring prosperity than to get a president that I like. Are you never trumpers listening??
I briefly discussed politics with a California hippie (a friend) the other day. When I described Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez as “revolutionary marxists”, she thought that was crazy. This is as level-headed and rational Democrat as I know, and she has no idea what’s happening to her party.
Rush makes his point really well.
Danielle Pletka’s writing is not good, a mishmash of confusing topics. Personal frustration showing through, perhaps.
Riffing off of Rush, if you don’t mind, it appears to me that the biggest issue with the Dems winning has been fully evident over the past years. And that is the weaponization of the justice system. Where Democrat party operatives are immune from prosecution, and Republicans are regularly subject to early morning police raids, prosecuted, jailed, or impeached, on fabricated charges. Basically a police state. There are so many examples that have piled up over the past 8 years.
I’m not that big a fan of Pletka, but I thought the article was well organized and well-written. Maybe you object to her many anti-Trump comments, Don? ;-)
Sadly, I believe you’re right . . .
Restoring law and order, building up the economy, and raising our military to a formidible level of power are things that must happen before we can afford to worry about our Presidential candidates’ shortcomings. We could lose our country waiting for a saint to run for office . . .
The anti-Trump comments are gratuitous.
And cranking up the Thesaurus to come up with phrases like “chronic mendacity” that would make a good name for a rock band. (Test it out here: “I saw Chronic Mendacity open for the Talking Heads.” Yep, ‘works.)
But my real objection is that she’s bringing up so many specific issues, and she’s so opinionated on each one, and they bop back and forth between the parties so much that the whole thing is hard to keep track of. The overall message is a tangled mess.
Rush, on the other hand, in the quote up there, is elegantly making a very solid point in just two short paragraphs.
“Odious Tweets” would also be a good name for a rock band.
Don’t be surprised if there aren’t already bands with those names. The novel I’m on the verge of publishing takes place in the rock music world, and coming up with unique names for bands was nearly impossible. No matter what I entered, there was already a group with that name. Even my disclaimer has a disclaimer in case a punk-rock group called “Dismembered Chicken” from Walla Walla, Washington tries to sue for defamation or copyright infringement.
And yes, I had to search that name to make sure there wasn’t such a band . . .
Senator Ben Sasse — BEN SASSE! — said on the latest Ricochet podcast that if Biden/HARRIS win and the Democrats take the Senate, they will immediately nix the filibuster, pack the Supreme Court, and then ram through every crazy idea they’ve ever had. Why wouldn’t they? Never Trumpers and most Americans don’t seem to understand this existential threat.
One down; many more idiots to go…
I saw a blog comment that put it like this:
If Trump is re-elected,
They’ll come AT us.
If Biden gets elected,
They’ll come FOR us.
Everyone needs to know, you’re not getting out of this without a fight,
The difference is, if Biden gets elected, the government will be defending the aggressors, and prosecuting the victims.
Cf. George Zimmerman, Kyle Rittenhouse.
Pin it.
I have a lovely daughter who has been a lefty for some time. She got a degree in Anthropology and went left from there. However, she is a very nice person and we talk. She spent ten years in the art world, the very high art world, flying to Geneva for gallery openings. She was a Bernie Bro in 2016. However, she will be 40 next month and is married with a 1 year old daughter. Her husband is a sculptor, a very good one, who sells his work online and has a 6 month wait for his pieces. She seems to be evolving as she sees what is happening in Santa Monica where they live. She asked me if I could bring her a gun next time we visit. She has one and knows how to shoot. They have 5 acres in northern Idaho and I could see them with a gallery in Sandpoint one day.
Interesting to watch reality slowly dawn.
I keep coming back to George Will’s 1986 column, where he called George H.W. Bush a lapdog for his shots at Geraldine Ferraro and Mario Cuomo. It was surprising when it happened, but in hindsight it showed the obsessiveness of Will in placing comity above all else. If you couldn’t win politely, it wasn’t worth winning at all.
The problem of course is when you hold your own side to higher standards than you hold the other, and when the other side is aided and abetted by much of the big media. Trump doesn’t happen if Romney wins in 2012, and a lot of GOP voters came to see Romney placing comity over doing everything he could to win, when he rolled over for Candy Crowley on the debate stage and refused to challenge her lying to save Obama on Benghazi. He might have lost anyway, but it cemented the impression that nice Republican guys finish last, and that’s what made those voters open to going with Trump in 2016.
I keep reminding myself of that factor: we needed someone who would drastically shake things up. It would probably difficult to do that “politely.”
That would be Obama’s band, right? Plenty of Mendacity, and he likes him the Chronic, too.
As Andrew Klavan has noted repeatedly, you can only maintain politeness if the referees — the media — are willing to call fouls on both sides for things like violating standards. When you have a situation, as during the final Bush 43 years, where the media is gushing over things like Bush assassination pr0n while crying foul whenever a Democrat is even gently bruised, it makes it far tougher to win purely on the basis of ideas and manners.
When the media portrays the Bushes or Mitt Romney as wretched scum who are either war criminals or would push grandma off the cliff for an extra dollar in profits, and GOP voters see the media and the Democrats using that as a winning strategy among swing voters, they’re eventually going to decide that playing by the rules is a sucker’s bet, if the other side is allowed to do anything they want and get away with it (which doesn’t mean you can’t win in the future with someone more tactful than Trump — you just need to find someone like Reagan who has the skill to go over the heads of the media. That’s what #NeverTrump should be targeting for 2024).
Or just get through their heads that regarding politics, they need to vote for a platform. They can find their charismatic, principled leader in their religion. (I wonder how many Never Trumpers are serious members of a church.)
I agree, Susan. I thought the article was very smart and well organized. I teach writing for a living.
I think this is exactly right, especially when I think of the progression of Republican/conservative nominees since Reagan–Bush 41, Dole, Bush 43, McCain, Romney, then Trump–and think of how the press became increasingly and openly partisan even as Republican nominees became more and more solicitous of their praise (McCain, Romney). And with the way they treated Mitt Romney in his run against Obama (Candy Crowley to the rescue!), the American press proved beyond any reasonable doubt that they believe fixing the fight for the Democrat, however unfairly, is a civic duty. Then comes 2016, and this same press is dumbstruck that the Republicans would nominate a personality like Trump! Trump got the nomination because Republican voters recognized he was very clearly the ONLY candidate possessing the requisite kind of reflexive, aggressive, hard counter-punching instinct necessary for a Republican to survive the corrupt, fixed fight that America’s hyper-partisan media was going to put him through.
And the joke’s on them. Because in a nation with an honest press, there would be no President Trump.
In a nation with an honest press, would there NEED TO BE a President Trump?
If you only watch the main stream media and only read liberals, Trump is a threat and the Democrats are not. I think I finally got my 93 year old sister to reconsider as I was caring for her we watched a little Fox and we discussed a few things. My 82 year old brother is into politics and doesn’t budge. He won’t realize what’s wrong unless the Democrats win and then it’ll be too late, but he’ll blame it on Trump. I make modest progress on issues with him by focusing only of the substance of the issue with no discussion of party position, stressing local politics and trying to make the point that Washington is organically different and a threat to his local politics.
I’m surprised that the Washington Post printed the op-ed.
A lefty in Northern Idaho is like a right-winger in Hollywood – rare. It sounds as if age and parental responsibility is making your daughter reassess her positions on issues . . .