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Who says we don’t break news on this show? The whole gang is back this week, and they’re joined by National Review’s senior political correspondent, Jim Geraghty for a long chat on Republicans leaving the party, fealty to you-know-who, and an update on Wuhan lab theories. Then, Elliot Abrams, who’s most recently served as President Trump’s Special Representative to Venezuela and Iran; joins to discuss They Israel’s ongoing fight with Hamas and speculate on how it might conclude, while marveling at the strength of the Abraham Accords (negotiated at the direction of you-know-who). Ricochet member @MarkAlexander gets the coveted Lileks Post of The Week® badge for his post My Shakespeare Confession and Rob and James mull the wisdom of a million dollar vaccine lottery.
Song from this week’s episode: Bad Blood by Taylor Swift.
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Put a fool like Cheney or Hogan on the ticket and I’ll vote Constitution Party again or leave the top slot blank. Ducey? I don’t know enough to say now.
For some reason, I have an instinctive distrust of Hawley, but I could overcome it. I’d rather have Cruz on SCOTUS.
NT’s are at 15%, and Post-Trump Republicans are at 20%. The NT’s swung the vote in Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. With the Post-Trump/NAT votes, if Trump is nominated, North Carolina goes Democrat, and maybe also Florida and Texas. My source is a March 12, 2021 article by Maggie Haberman in the NYT. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/12/us/politics/republican-factions-.html The money quote:
“The ‘Never Trump’ Republicans comprised 15 percent of the Republicans surveyed. Another 20 percent were described as ‘Post-Trump G.O.P.’ who like Mr. Trump but want to see someone else as the party’s nominee.”
I would have agreed to Cruz being on the Supreme Court until he signed on to the Texas v. Pennsylvania garbage.
I’ve lost track of the lawsuits filed but there is no doubt that this clause was violated in PA:
Article 2 Section 1 Clause 2 | Constitution Annotated | Congress.gov | Library of Congress
What legal remedies are available I don’t know.
Did he really? Has he said that on a podcast? That’s kind of amazing.
Seriously, get a life backbencher.
Yes. He mentioned it on… the previous podcast, I think it was. I took it as an effort to reach some kind of truce with the membership. (I was mistaken. I’m a sucker for that kind of thing.)
His life appears to at least consequently consist of making everyone else miserable by giving them presidents etc who ruin things.
Meanwhile, I don’t think “who like Mr. Trump but want to see someone else as the party’s nominee” is the same as “people who would never vote for Trump again even if he was the nominee.”
While State A suing State B is part of the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction, I have seen that only in two contexts. First is boundary litigation such as when New York and New Jersey had a lawsuit over what state the Statute of Liberty and Ellis Island were located in. Second, is the division of the Colorado River water between Arizona and California.
In both situations, the U.S. Supreme Court appointed a Special Master to take testimony and to issue a report which the Supreme Court then adopted. The Supreme Court is not set up to take testimony in an evidentiary hearing.
If any lawyer believes that my summary of the Court’s original jurisdiction is wrong, please provide citations to the contrary.
The Court’s response to Texas v. Pennsylvania was that the Texas case “failed to state a claim upon which relief may be granted.” That is a polite way to say that the Texas position was “Bravo Sierra.”
The remedy for Trump is exactly what he did. He filed some 60+ lawsuits before 90+ judges. Not a single vote was changed.
Attorney General William Barr did an investigation and found no evidence of election fraud that would have changed a single electoral college vote.
The election is over. The votes were certified by the Safe Harbor date of December 8, 2020. (This was the holding in Bush v. Gore.) It is an embarrassment that any lawyer tried to fight the election after December 8, 2020, and frankly those lawyers should be disciplined for filing any actions after December 8, 2020.
That’s like telling someone who stole a car on Nov 3 that if they keep it until Dec 8, they’re home free.
Yes there are statutes of limitation, but that’s just for prosecution. Which usually require years, not just days or weeks. And even if the statute runs out, that only means they escape prosecution. It doesn’t mean they get to keep what they stole.
And, once again, “certifying” a bogus election is no more relevant than “notarizing” a phony document.
Your usual tactic, that is, diversion and BS. You did not address the fact that the relevant clause was violated. The question is “What is the remedy for that specific violation under the constitution?” If there is none, why is the clause there?
The fact that Trump filed other lawsuits is irrelevant.
The rest is your usual talking points and the reason I think you aren’t worth taking seriously.
For most of the Iraq War, Liz Cheney was a mid level official in the State Department and had nothing to do with the prosecution of the war. Her father is of course, a different story, but I don’t think it’s fair to hold her responsible for his actions just because they are related.
I’ll make a more full throated response, but this will eat up the 3%-10% of my time I’ve allotted to backbenchers.
You once again offer nothing positive to the discussion or future of the Republican party, focusing on your own destructive impact in the 2020 election rather than the main point of my comment, i.e. the incredible increase in minority votes for Republicans that Trump brought to the party. How to retain and expand on those 12 million new Republican votes is the key to the future. But thanks for the extra abortions and open borders with Biden, Gary. Nice work.
When it comes to the 2020 vote in Wisconsin, you don’t know what you’re talking about. What happened and what’s happening with voters in the suburbs of Milwaukee right now has nothing to do with NTs. I should know. I follow Wisconsin politics extensively. I grew up there and am sitting there right now. I’ve posted analyses on Wisconsin in threads you’ve also been a part of and it’s clear you did not read the linked articles, do any kind of research, or learn a single thing. Time and time again I watch you regress in every thread you participate in. Other members commenting on your own post months ago convinced you that January 6th was a riot, but now you’ve gone back to calling it an insurrection. I’m seriously asking – do you not remember that?
Finally, you’re in the wrong place to think that quoting the NYT and Maggie Haberman in particular carries any weight or authority. She’s been an untrustworthy Democrat party shill since her Politico days, so her analysis of the Republican party is suspect at best. As the leaked Clinton email reads:
But don’t you get it? It’s OUR fault, all 74 million of us, for supporting Trump rather than some squish acceptable to Gary and The Bulwark etc.
The fact that this even enters into our thought processes proves that he’s become a cancer upon his own creation. It’s like George Lucas minus positive attitude.
Ahem. Well, I admit I find the guy challenging, and would like him to tone it way down. But, I mean, come on. “Cancer” is a bit much.
Every week he adds to the rant total minutes, this becomes harder to say.
It’s a treatable version.
Life is short, and I watched a segment with Elliot Abrams earlier on the youtube, I think from Scott Johnson at the Powerline blog. He made some very good points, and although I don’t always agree with Elliot, I do seem to always learn something from him.
But I work for a living, and I had the Zoom meeting on one of the monitors while I was writing SQL Queries and loading data. But it was just too much. Rob going on and on and Orange Man Bad and Jim going YES, YES! ORANGE MAN BAD… I had to turn it off.
Rob and Jim got their wish and Orange Man Bad is no longer in office. Now the country is hurtling towards a cliff like Thelma and Louise, and still the problem is Orange Man Bad. Biden and his handlers have reversed every policy that Trump had in place via Executive Orders, and UNEXPECTEDTLY everything is going to hell in a handbasket.
I joined Ricochet early on, when Mark Styen was still on the main podcast. Has it been 10 years? I never pitched in at the Reagan level, cause I’m not rich, but I did pitch in at the $100 level for a few years, what ever that was called. Now I just put in the minimum, just so I can check in every now and then.
I can’t read National Review, and thankfully The Weekly Conservative is kaput.
You want to know where the action is? Steve Bannon’s War Room. Real grass roots action, tea party style activists. Precinct level, bottom up conservatism. You want to make a difference, go to the War Room.
https://rumble.com/c/BannonsWarRoom
Well, that’s a pity. There’s a lot there. Right now on the home page:
Seems like a diverse round-up to me; is it objectionable because some of the writers may not be Trump supporters?
I also recommend Conservative Daily. Max knows the legal stuff and Joe is a tech entrepreneur who broke the Eric Coomer connection, and is one of the guys Dominion is suing over it. He’s gleefully fighting back itching for the fight and they’re constantly getting out fax blasts and providing action steps to combat this junk. They’ve been kicked off YouTube twice for dishing the truth Big Media is afraid to touch. https://conservative-daily.com/cd-livestream/get-in-here-dominion-refusing-to-hand-over-election-machine-passwords
So many professional conservatives don’t appreciate or have forgotten the tactical importance of building coalitions to elect the better candidate of a choice of two. So go ahead and build your boutique “conservative” party. Eliot Abrams comment on the Trump policy in the Holy Land was a study in what I find most incomprehensible of this inclination to attack the personality of Trump to justify the “creation” of new party while holding his policies in the Middle East as diplomatic successes.
There are dozens of political parties in the United States. Why not take over the Conservative Party of New York State and go national? I suspect this new party is going to be Lincoln Project party…. Lots of profits for the founders and defeated republican candidates wherever they manage to field a candidate to split the Conservative vote.
Hasn’t the Libertarian party example taught us anything?
Both Bush Presidencies were failures and like Trump were not my first choice of candidate.
Trump is still our Generalfeldmarschall Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher.
This guy is always good at explaining social problems, fiscal issues, and the economy. Really original. What is the Trump GOP or the anti-Trump GOP going to do?
RufusRJones (View Comment):
Good talk, glad this sort of info is out in the main stream media, and is apparently well known on Wall Street.
Interesting idea: Total Capital of S&P 500 in ratio with Fed balance sheet equals a constant. Question; does the move up from zero interest dissolve that relationship?
He had a long interview about a year ago with Yahoo finance that was even better. I don’t think that much of it is dated either. He is just exceptional at explaining social problems and the math of the economy and government. He makes financial anomalies understandable. He is an Ivy League math major but you wouldn’t know it the way he talks. Grew up totally poor.
This is what I’m talking about. Definitely watch this cut.
People just don’t get how the Fed affects everything.
For me the straw that broke the camels back was their coverage of the post election trials. They clearly made up their mind and were not interested in calling balls and strikes, and were straight up bigoted in their coverage.
I switched my subscription preference to the American Spectator. And though Emmet Tyrell made a public break with Trump shortly after the election, I felt his peoples coverage was fair and balanced in a way NRO was not.
Not exactly. It’s just that NR looks down on those of us who voted for Trump. The exude the “it’s better to lose than to vote for the Orange Man” vibe.
Maybe it’s because I’ll never be able to afford a cruise, and cannot get comped for one.
Evening ToryWarWriter,
I think this thread is an example of the problem in microcosm. Henry wishes we could stop arguing and work on building our party, maybe following the Trump model but not necessarily with Trump. I think the first thing we need to do is work on trust. Think about the Geraghty infomercial that opens the show, hey sign up for the Jolt it’s good. Jim says that it would be excellent if the members of congress would at least unite in stating that the election was fairly done, and their are no hackers from Venezuela or bamboo whatevers. And nobody said, well you know Mollie has this book coming out and she already has written about Georgia
https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/17/medias-entire-georgia-narrative-is-fraudulent-not-just-the-fabricated-trump-quotes/
noting that the vote count was up to no good, and Sharyl Attkisson has written recently about some iffy goings on in Arizona, Why are so many folks in the media lacking curiosity or skepticism, and why are so few journalists calling them out? In 2000 we counted every chad, and there were less problems, and there was less illegality than now. Why would I trust Jim over Mollie and Sharyl, and why would I think doubt is a sign of being a nut?
Earlier Lileks makes a humorous reply to harrisventures and while he is giving a bit of payback he shows the blind spot that the conservative establishment has, he doesn’t dive in and work to figure out what has got Harrisventures so discouraged and disengaged. Later, Mr. Lileks suggested that harrisventures should take a look at NR because their are many topics from many points of view and it is a pity to see that Harrisventures is missing out. Really. I guess harrisventures is just not smart enough to see what he is missing, too bad he didn’t get more education. Rather like harrisventures, I am just an old wacko bird, I don’t know where good conservative writing is to be found. And one wonders that folks don’t trust each other, I guess we have been just been taken in by a media personality.
Frankly, I suspected those NR story titles were meant to be jokes, and if they were real I certainly wasn’t interested in reading them.