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Rich Lowry, August 6, 2014: “The Invaluable Jeff Sessions – The Alabama Senator is a one-man wrecking ball for foolish immigration policy….”
Lowry praised Sessions and talked tough on immigration when the stakes were low.
It is interesting that when Obama called Southern, Bible-belt voters “Bitter clingers to guns and religion,” the liberal media fleshed it out with studies on gun ownership and church attendance correlated to voting habits while conservative media attacked Obama’s church attendance and Jeremiah Wright’s theology.
It didn’t work.
So, Trump says something “outrageous” (I don’t think it was any more outrageous than Obama’s statement and satire/sarcasm only work if they have some truth in them). The liberal media reacted just the way it was supposed to. If they reacted the way you suggested in targeting Trump’s past views, they lose just like we did. They did the right thing from a winning perspective… and look! its working for them.
Conservative media, if it had been united behind the firebrand with the big mouth that always says things with a grain of truth in them, SHOULD have highlighted on the truth while the news cycle was focused on it. Trump is handling this the right way by fleshing out his statement and keeping it in the news cycle. It draws attention to Obama’s failed policies.
I could not believe the incredible disingenuousness of attempting to infer that the motivation of NeverTrump people was the desire to keep open borders. That is really over the top and demonstrates a total inability to see beyond the walls of your own echo chamber.
I imagine that you must keep your chiropractor busy on almost a daily basis correcting your body after you turn it into a pretzel in attempts to justify the things Trump says. On one hand you talk about the intelligence of the American people. On the other you say things which insult the intelligence of anyone who has ears to hear and a mind to understand. You need to get out of that echo chamber, it is warping your thinking.
It may not be true for you, but it is a motivating factor of loud contingent.
I don’t believe that Jonah Goldberg, Kevin Williamson, Charlie Cooke or any of the other writers whose work I have been reading for years on NRO are anti-Trump for any reason other than his essential inability to do the job and his patent dishonesty.
According to Jeff Sessions, “Nobody wants to talk about immigration. Nobody wants to talk about trade… I believe that Donald Trump is forcing the issue.” Obviously Trump isn’t forcing the issues, given that nobody is talking about them. He’s managed to make it easy to talk about him and his outrageous statement du jour rather than anything of substance.
But, according to Sessions, the fact that Trump is down in the polls with every demographic except for white men with less than a college education is thanks solely to #NeverTrumpers.
According to Jeff Sessions, “Median income since 2000 has dropped from $58,000 to $54,000 for American households.” As soon you hear someone talk about per household income rather than per capita, you know he’s using statistic to lie. The average number of people per American household has been steadily dropping.
According to the hosts, Trump’s claim that Obama is the founder of ISIS, “was simple political rhetoric, which did a brilliant job of focusing national attention on an issue that is very favorable to Trump.”
But then they go on to contradict their statement with example after example of how Trump’s “brilliant rhetoric” focused attention, not on foreign policy, but on what they admit is Trump’s “belligerent nature.” They go on to explain that Trump’s insistence on a literal interpretation of his comment painted him as “unpresidential” in everybody’s mind.
Toward the end of the podcast, the hosts all but admit that Trump is a lousy candidate because he can’t or won’t control is tongue and he won’t take advice. The only convincing argument they had in favor of their candidate is that Hillary is bad (no argument there). In the end, all defenses of Trump end up wrecked on the rocky shores of Donald J. Trump. Sad.
I don’t really exist in an echo chamber because no one I know – aside from people in the campaign – think the things that I do and I don’t talk very much about issues with the people in the campaign. My echo chamber consists of Ann Coulter and Jeff Sessions and a few others who believe that immigration is far and away the most crucial issue in this election.
To that point, Sessions agreed that political donations from people who can’t make their businesses work without illegal aliens is a problem. He did not quantify (hard to do so).
As for pundits like Will and Williamson and Goldberg or the others, I simply do not know. They have never stated that they do not have personal ties to illegal aliens. I could easily see that if they live in California or Texas they could have an uncle who owns a building that is filled with illegal alien renters but they don’t really consider that a conflict of interest but it makes it obvious to them that illegal aliens are never going home nor should they, etc. etc. Of course some of them might, like Meg Whitman, simply have an illegal alien maid they don’t want to let go of.
Do you really consider it “over the top” to suggest this possibility? By my simple calculations there are at least 100,000 employers of illegal aliens in America. You think that the money involved in that has no consequences? If so, you are a trusting fellow, Eugene.
Michael, I like and respect you a great deal. On the issue of Trump, however, we are on opposite sides. Your support for Trump based solely or largely on his alleged stance on immigration, which I agree is a very important issue, has the feel of something more akin to the left, The ends justify the means. This is something I feel over and over in the Trump supporters. The manner in which they, you and Todd to a far less obnoxious degree than most, rephrase and parse everything that Trump says or Tweets to make it sound more rational. Attacking those of us who are simply unwilling to vote for Trump for reasons we feel are fully justified. I think it is both a cheap shot and total demagoguery to accuse men of proven conservative credentials of actions and statement motivated by financial benefits gained by supporting open borders. I have read all of Jonah Goldbergs, every piece he writes on NRO, I have never found any evidence that his motivations for being anti-Trump are anything but a clear statement that Trump is not a conservative, never was a conservative, and never will be. Ben Shapiro is the same, and is David French, Thomas Sowell, and all of the other writers on NRO. They are men of integrity which is something that Trump most certainly isn’t. It is amazing to me that man of such obvious integrity as you have would choose to support someone with none.