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We’re back after our 4th of July break (well, most of us are back — we have Ricochet Editor Bethany Mandel sitting in for the vacationing Peter Robinson) and we’ve got another super-sized episode to make up for our time off. First up, the always great Heather Mac Donald, who speaks truth to protestors like nobody else. Then, meet Shermichael Singleton, former political strategist, a former Deputy Chief of Staff at HUD, and a former member of the GOP. Shermichael tells us why he’s left the latter two organizations and it should be required listening at the RNC. Luckily for us, Shermichael is a current Ricochet podcaster and if you have not listened to the Speak-Easy podcast he co-hosts with Antonia Okafor, we highly recommend it. Also, a bit on the Harper’s free speech letter, the triumphant return of the Lileks Post of The Week, and Bethany has a new Twitter friend.
Music from this week’s show: Everything Is Broken by Bob Dylan
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Inshallah—If God wills it.
I think it may have been in a Tom Clancy book where he referred to “Inshallah” as “like mañana, but without the hurry.”
The criminal justice industry is leftist, she says. It would be quicker to list the industries that are not leftist. Which are those? The only semi-right industries I can think of are non-union blue collar jobs (electricians, plumbers, carpenters, etc) and oil.
Someday, remind me to tell you how Adam Curry (aka, “The Podfather”🙄) was partially responsible for getting the Ricochet Podcast off the ground.
Does it involve a quotation? You could sign up for Quote of the Day and tell the story. 😁
Trump’s oafish rhetoric and sometimes stupid (but sometimes savvy) messages do make selling the Republican party — and to a lesser extent conservatism — more difficult. Thankfully, Trump claims to be neither a Republican nor a conservative, though good luck convincing a Democrat or mushy middler of that.
But it would be foolish to think that Trump’s unique personality is a barrier to conversions in a wholly extraordinary way. Conservative evangelists are not primarily challenged by Trump, but rather by various media and influences which for generations have advanced “news” and narratives contrary to the facts.
Left and Right are rarely able (or allowed) to reasonably debate upon the facts of any situation because we disagree on the validity of facts. We disagree on the basic information, so we cannot proceed from that information to arguments and implications.
Reasonable, respectful debates were rare under the presidency of George W Bush. They were rare during the Obama years. Reasonable debates will continue to be impeded by misinformation and animosity during whatever follows Trump’s term(s).
Trump is often a problem, but he is never the core problem.
Again, we did not decide to carry Speak-Easy because of the host’s position on Trump. Quite frankly, it never came up. We want a network with a variety of voices, views, experiences, and opinions on it, and this show helps us achieve that. I would look at it not as some sort of audio Lincoln Project video, but rather as a window into how the Republican party might reach out to people of different backgrounds and the issues that are important to them. The party must do this if it is to survive.
We did not create the NT movement nor are we as a platform taking a position on it one way or the other. And Shermichael Singleton is hardly the only podcaster, contributor, or member who feels this way. Republicans (or Conservatives, if you prefer) who don’t support President Trump are an actual constituency on the Right.
Thought experiment: Rather than trying to silence the messenger (us), maybe it would be more productive to ask yourself why so many dedicated Republicans do not support the President and are willing speak out/write about it? What are they missing that you apparently see?
Wow, just saw I have been listening for 90 minutes! Enjoyed it.
Re Trump tweets…sometimes, when Trump tweets, I roll my eyes. Sometimes when Dems tweet, I buy guns or ammo, or both. (Last week I bought a Smith and Wesson Shield 380EZ and love it.) I will pick my poison wisely in November. I hope Singleton does, too, and will give his Podcast a listen.
Heather McDonald is always great.
He also cited Charlottesville as one of the reasons he stated disliking Trump. Is he listening to the media’s lies about it instead of what Trump actually said?
Singleton should explain on his own podcast (unless I missed it) why his great grandfather abandoned the Republican party. How did the party change that could make many blacks uncomfortable?
Are those reasons fundamentally different than the reasons many Republican voters of other races, including whites, often curse the party they vote for? Might his great grandpa had been as infuriated as the rest of us when the GOP with majorities in both the House and Senate failed to even propose repeal of Obamacare while Trump could sign it?
Both economically and socially, Democrat policies have been disastrous for poor people generally and poor urban blacks particularly. So the barrier seems to regard narratives rather than facts.
There’s no particular reason for you to know this. I do not see you participating in the posts and comments at the site, and my impression is that your focus is on the podcast side of the site. So you may not know that I’ve been carrying out your “thought experiment” for years, right here on the site.
I do think that you are making an incorrect claim. There are not a lot of dedicated Republicans who do not support the President. There is a very small number, maybe 5-10%. They seem to be significantly overrepresented among purported conservative commentators.
What are they missing? Gee, let’s talk about what Mr. Singleton said. He complained about the President making it difficult for people who care about “expanding the party” to do so. But the President did expand the party, in a very important way, by picking up the white working class. He did this largely by punching back against the elite narrative that thought of them as “deplorables” — a point about which the NeverTrumpers seem to agree with the radical Left. The President also made great efforts to reach out to black voters, as hightlighted in his SOTU address this year.
My main problem, though, is Ricochet’s selection of Mr. Singleton as the person to lead its outreach effort to black voters. I think that it is a good idea to find one or two young, capable, black conservatives to make such an effort. But then the one that you pick turns out to be completely unrepresentative of the Republican electorate, and to oppose our sitting Republican President who is very popular among Republicans. How is that going to win black voters to the conservative side?
Mr. Singleton seems to adopt the NT plan to crush the Republican Party, in the expectation that something wonderful will rise in its place, like a phoenix rising from the ashes. With the face of Mitt Romney, apparently, of all people.
I find this plan to be risible. Hey, let’s reach out to black voters for conservatism, so that we can grow the Republican Party (which I just abandoned). They’ll be ready to come over — as soon as the 90%+ of Republicans who support the President abandon him, and do penance in sackcloth and ashes.
[Cont’d]
Look, you made a mistake. You picked a messenger who is not going to work. You probably didn’t know it at the time. My impression is that Mr. Singleton just came out as a NeverTrumper, and left the Republican party, in the past couple of weeks.
C.S. Lewis has a great essay on this point, Christian Apologetics (here) (it’s actually about Anglican priests who don’t believe in the faith, but he uses a political analogy, and he is correct in both areas):
And yes, I know that the response will probably be that you’re trying to support conservatism, not the Republican party. But give me a break. That sounds much like “we had to destroy the village to save it.”
I wish Mr. Singleton well. I think that he is quite incorrect in his conclusion, and it would be better to continue to support the President — who he admits has done a great deal of good — despite some fair concerns about his character, tactics, and rhetoric on occasion. But I think that he is not the right messenger for Ricochet at this time.
The Confederate / Rebel flag is not fundamentally a symbol of racism. It is a symbol of Southern pride. Anyone who cannot distinguish the two has little understanding of Southern history or culture.
The South was a distinct region long before the CSA, while the North too had slavery. The South remains culturally distinct today, as evidenced not least by voting habits and by more interracial mixing than is found in the Northeast.
The Rebel flag remains the simplest and most recognizable shorthand for that cultural affinity. That the flag was coopted by racist groups in living memory is considerable. But, as I hope the rainbow one day regains its popular understanding as a symbol of God’s mercy rather than pride in a decadent fad coopted by intolerant statists, we can expect people to acknowledge context and grant that millions of Southerners enjoy the flag for amicable reasons completely unrelated to race.
In any case, people of every American region now see their public symbols vandalized and petitioned for removal. I wish more Republicans had the sense to understand a campaign of intimidation and mob criminality is not an acceptable impetus for debates and inititatives to uproot historical markers. Whether some symbols should be reconsidered or not, now is not the time. Don’t encourage people to join the angry mobs trying to erase history and start a revolution.
The problem with lawyers is you can’t have a conversation. these guys argue for a living. 😈
Aaron, I think that you are incorrect about this. There were repeal efforts. Here is a Wikipedia entry on it.
The House passed a repeal in May 2017.
The Senate failed to repeal on July 27, 2017, by a vote of 49-51. My treacherous John McCain — who had promised to repeal Obamacare, and for whom I had voted — was the one who prevented passage. Collins and Murkowski also voted no, but that was to be expected — we still would have won but for McCain breaking his pledge. As far as I can tell, he had no reason to do so except hatred of President Trump.
Multiple Southern states incorporated it into their flags as a symbol of defiance of federal civil rights intrusions in the 50s and 60s. That’s the issue.
This is outrageous. It makes me so mad.
I hope you don’t think I intended that as stating or suggesting that you didn’t. It was aimed at Shermichael Singleton (and Gary Robbins, and fellow travelers).
[This reply to #18 got scrambled somehow, possibly an address bug. In any case, the deleted text was restored, and Taras’ remarks follow.]
@kedavis — Watch what you say. In Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to hurt a black person’s feelings.
On the other hand, beating up on @garyrobbins is permissible, even laudable.
I’m partway through the podcast and I thought this was pretty interesting about the Minneapolis Police Department. This is a local activist that wants to completely overhaul the police department. They want to completely change the Charter. These guys are serious. Well, he’s unhappy about various recent fallouts from riots and political events:
We didn’t pick him to lead anything. That’s not our job. We offered to carry and sell the podcast he does with Antonia Okafor because we thought they were good podcasters with an original and under-represented POV on our network. We do not pre-approve or disapprove of the topics they choose to cover or the opinions they put forth. Or anyone else for that matter.
We hope they will be one of many podcasts we distribute from under-represented constituencies in the party. Happy to consider recommendations of other shows or people if you have any.
Mr. Singleton explained it very well. Trump does do good things but it is nearly impossible to support him because of all the God awful, stupid things he says. And those stupid things make people turn away from him in disgust. Really hard to keep defending him even if he does DO good things.
I often think if only Trump could stick to well written speeches and shut up otherwise for the rest of his term. He’d win this thing easily.
I did not hear him say this in our interview or on any of the Speak-Easy podcasts that have been released.
And yet on the one hand, you state that the NT’s are “small in number – 5% to 10%,” but you’re very concerned that we’re giving space to someone whose (alleged) plan is to “crush the Republican Party in the expectation that something wonderful will rise in its place, like a phoenix rising from the ashes.”
If they’re so small in number and presumably not a threat to the President’s re-election chances, why do you care what they say?
Trump’s big problem was he didn’t have any civic experience and he’s never spoken under what I call civic pressure. It was hard for those guys to get talented people to work for them initially.
He made a bunch of initial hiring and firing mistakes that other presidents wouldn’t make.
It didn’t help that they were going after him legally and politically so much. To me it’s almost all gratuitous. Shameful.
Plenty of podcasts to choose from. If anyone doesn’t like one, he can fill his day with a different one. I love choices.
When the bond market collapses, Ricochet is going to regret not already having an Austrian economics podcast.
Thanks. But that was a proposal to replace, not to repeal, Obamacare. Republicans stupidly accepted the premise that the situation before Obamacare was worse than the ACA. Rather than repeal and then separately proceed to discuss reforms, they offered their own big government strategy to healthcare.
In any case, the only memorable legislation the Republican-controlled Congress passed for President Trump to sign was a tax reform bill. That’s all any Republican Congress can be counted on to pass. And the corporate tax (double taxation) cut was only as large as it was because Trump aimed higher than a typical Republican.
Great rant by Heather McDonald at about 41:00 – I am going to do my best to transcribe it for future use. And for Mr. Singleton – so how are you going to vote in November? It just amazes me how many people think the “Party” is something special when I view the “Party” as a means to an end…not the end itself. So I guess in MY case, what Trump says or behaves doesn’t matter, it is what he does – and it doesn’t matter how Biden behaves or what the does, but what he (apparently) intends to do that matter. I voted for McCain because in my opinion he was better than the alternative…and I REALLY didn’t like McCain – as a for instance…and as usual, your mileage may vary. And when I started listening to the Podcast there were no comments and now there are a ton – a lot of which I concur with so “note to self – check out the current state of the comments before commenting -“. Dang, I hate it when that happens.
Yes, Ricochet has anti-Trump podcasts and pro-Trump podcasts — but where are the podcasts in which the two sides confront each other?
Nearly all of the shows I watch on Fox News feature panels, with at least one liberal voice to keep things lively.
I would really like to hear Never Trumpers explain why keeping the Left from controlling the Supreme Court is unimportant, for example.
Rob Long and Peter Robinson do this every week on this very show.
Stanley Kurtz was on Mark Levin about this crap the Democrats are trying to do to the suburbs. it’s insane. They are definitely trying to do it here in Minneapolis.
Minneapolis needs way more cops so they can hire and fire and train more easily. They need to loosen up the economy. They also need to radically improve the schools. None of this is going to happen until we have some dramatic event like a depression.
Leave the suburbs alone.
Actually, I recommend commenting first. If you read other comments, you will forget what you wanted to say. Sometimes I kick myself for not pausing a podcast to comment for the same reason.