Political Theater

Tonight, a round of performative, propagandistic, political theater kicks off, scheduled for "prime time" specifically because it is theater. It isn't an attempt to get to the truth and hold criminals accountable. Rather, it's a mere partisan political skit.

The political party that encouraged, enabled, and excused rioting and looting for months on end, that has left our borders wide open and encouraged illegal border traffic, that wants non-citizens voting, that colluded to push hoax after hoax, lie after lie, and a doomed impeachment to undermine a legitimately elected President whose success is an ongoing embarrassment in comparison the disastrous failures of, and restrictions placed on the American people by, the current President.

With all of the problems going on - war in Europe, inflation, crimes, baby formula shortages, supply chain disruptions, bare shelves, record gasoline prices, loss of energy independence, threats to "conservative" Supreme Court Justices, border failures, drug deaths, stock market struggles - they are intentionally wasting time and redirecting attention out of desperation. 

While an extremely tiny percentage of the people at the Capitol on January 6, 2020 engaged in shameful, destructive behavior, it can hardly be called an attempted coup or insurrection. People on the Right own many firearms; they didn't bring them to the Capitol that day. Because it wasn't an organized attempt at insurrection or a coup.

Instead of this symbolic performance, people are better of watching something else.

UPDATE: Michael Medved keeps asking, rhetorically, what President Trump thought was going to happen when he encouraged his supporters to march (peacefully, as Medved usually leaves out) to the Capitol after he spoke to them on January 6, 2021.

Well, Medved, how many marches on the Capitol have there been? What did the people who called for those protests think was going to happen? It's called PROTEST.

There were many thousands (tens of thousands?) of people there while he was speaking, and the crowd he was speaking to was peaceful.

Please, Medved. Stop unquestioningly accepting the narratives of the Left and swamp-dwelling Democrats. You may have been in Seattle a little too long. And how about focusing on the bad things Democrats are doing? There's plenty to talk about. If you want your terrestrial radio show to be the method for shaping the GOP into what you want it to be, why should most people bother listening?

Tom Leykis Is a Political Idiot - In My Opinion

"Who is Tom Leykis?" you might be asking. And for good reason. He's irrelevant now, but yes, here I am writing about him. Because I can.

Tom became "a thing" because radio station KFI AM 640 in Los Angeles needed a "liberal" to balance the legendary and unmatchable Rush Limbaugh. Leykis benefitted enormously from Limbaugh's coattails (and the Fairness Doctrine, IMO), as Limbaugh had the 9am-Noon slot, and Tommy had afternoon drive. Somewhere along the way, Tommy had the luck to get the same agent as Howard Stern, and, as a result, was paid very good money, which he constantly claims to have invested well. 

Apparently, that, along with prenups at least in his later marriages, and having all of his children that he knows about aborted, has kept him financially comfortable. And hey, except for the multiple babies he's had slaughtered in abortions because he was apparently, in my opinion based on his own words, too much of a wimp to get a vasectomy even though he knew he didn't want kids, good for him.

I'm Not Proud of Being White

But I think very highly of a lot of "white" people, just as I think very highly of a lot of people who would have some label other than "white". I'm neither "proud" of being white nor ashamed of it. That's because I had no say in the matter (despite what some "transracial" folks would have me believe). I can say I'm proud to be an American because I could have left the Union and renounced my citizenship. UPDATE: It IS OK to be white. [This entry has been bumped up.]

Lately media and social media SJWs have been giving way too much attention to "white" racists. Yes, they're evil and need to be exposed, but part of exposing them is to note how few and ostracized they are, and not giving them too much attention beyond that. The MSM-SJW Complex (MSC) wants a lot of people to think white racists are everywhere and powerful, and the only way to keep them from hanging everybody is through ceding more of our individual rights to Leftist power, increasing the powers and size of central government.

Hating white people or discriminating against white people based on their skin color is not supporting equality. That should be self-evident, but Leftism has warred against logic, reason, and facts in the name of feelings and breaking the people into squabbling tribal groups.

Leftists will tell you that "racism" can only be done by white people, because it requires power. Call me ignorant, but I understand racism to be thinking of race as important, especially if that is used to mistreat people of a different race. Leftists add systematic oppression as a requirement. Thus, it isn't racism if an African-American business owner tells me he or she won't hire me because I'm white. A lot of people, including some of those Leftists breathlessly tout statistical trends that indicate non-Hispanic or non-Latino white people will soon be a minority in the USA. So what happens to their definition of racism then? My guess is that they will say despite being a minority, even if surpassed in size by another group, racism will still be a white thing because whites will have supposedly retained "too much" power in our systems.

I'm convinced the best way to fight racism is to stop focusing on race and treat people as individuals, not favoring nor disfavoring someone because they would be categorized in the same racial group as you or a category you think needs help. Half a century after the Reverend/Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. proclaimed a dream of treating people according to their character rather than the color of their skin, Leftist "civil rights" activists and professors now say it is racist to do that! They call it racist for me to say "There is one race: human, and someone's 'race' beyond that doesn't matter."

We Should Defend Our Borders

Remember when the latest Leftist panic was guns (again)? As I type this, the Left's panic-du-jour is "children separated from their parents" at the nation's borders. The Left is desperately pushing this panic with everything they have. This is probably an effort to derail momentum for border security (because the Left doesn't actually believe in national borders but will gladly use them to their advantage anyway) and distract from devastating things like the IG Report and Hearings.

Plenty of people generally not the Left have hopped onto this bandwagon, and understandably so. We can all agree it is sad that kids are placed in the position of being detained in a different location than their parents. It looks awful and it sounds awful. But how did things get this way?

It's really awful when a surgeon has to cut into somebody, especially a kid. It looks bad. It's going to cause a lot of pain. It would be great if the surgeon never had to do that. But the surgeon is reacting to events that were set in motion when someone assaulted someone else. Then the victim was brought to the surgeon, who has to deal with the mess with no perfect way forward that looks tidy and won't cause any pain.

What's really going on?

Two Weeks Under Trump

Under the headline "Yes, All This Happened. Trump's First 2 Weeks As President" (which allows writer Jessica Taylor to throw in things other people did and associate it Trump), we get a recap from National Public Radio.
She starts off noting the claims about Inauguration crowd sizes, and returns to it a few times (because Trump and his reps kept addressing it). I can believe Obama's crowd was larger. His Inauguration was especially historic, and Washington D.C. and some nearby areas have a high percentage of Democrats and government employees who directly benefit from enlarging government, as Obama promised to do, and African-Americans who felt a connection to Obama because his father was African.

It's not like Trump was promising you can keep your doctor. If he was lying, it's a rather silly lie.

The biggest news happened when Trump met that evening with both Republican and Democratic congressional leaders, reviving his unfounded claims that there were between 3 and 5 million illegal votes cast in the 2016 election that caused him to lose the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton.

It's probably a hyperbolic statement. Trump should have left it at noting that there were probably some illegal votes cast, and, combined with the fact that if the process of electing the President was based on the popular vote he would have taken a different strategy, and he would have won a legitimate popular vote.

The fact is, California, which is where Clinton got her high numbers, 1) has millions of illegal aliens; 2) gives driver's licenses to illegal aliens; 3) has a "motor voter registration" program. Is it far fetched to think that there was significant voter fraud?

What Are You So Afraid Of?

There has never been a reaction like this to an election in this Union. Oh, sure, there were people holding demonstrations after GWB won (and he did win) the 2000 election, at least through September 11, 2001. Television news personalities and others covering the 2016 election were clearly upset, and you've seen all of the people, and you certainly know some (or maybe you ARE one) who have done everything from cry to engage in rioting as they insist that DJT is #NotMyPresident. People have been talking about how afraid they are, fleeing to "safe spaces" that are like preschool nursery rooms for alleged adults, talking about "dark times", and shunning people they'd claimed as friends and even family who not only "admit" they voted for Trump, but that are even suspected of voting for Trump because they haven't loudly decried his election. Hollywood celebrities and others appeared in a futile video to implore the Republicans in the Electoral College to become "faithless electors", there are still people hoping Congress won't certify the results and for some other shenanigans to prevent President-elect Trump from taking office. Protests are being planned for Inauguration Day.

What are you so afraid of? Why are you so upset?

Let's go over the things I've heard/read one-by-one.

David Benkof Dismantles the Popular Vote Claim

If you're a party-line partisan, you're going to have disagreements with Benkof, whether you're a Republican, Democrat, or belong to another party. I wouldn't call myself a party-line partisan, but I'm in the conservative camp consistently enough that I don't always agree with Benkof. To his credit, Benkof seeks out thoughtful disagreement, which makes his arguments better. Because of these things, I'm happy when he writes something with which I can completely agree that makes arguments I hadn't grasped before.

His latest column at the Daily Caller is an example. It is provocatively titled "The Popular Vote Is A Hoax." As he says in the column, he voted for Secretary Clinton, but his fellow HRC voters need to stop pointing to her winning the "popular vote".

Preposterously, since the election some leading Democrats have been calling the Electoral College racist and even akin to slavery. But usually leftists argue the opposite – that popular vote systems are racist, not those that count by jurisdictions. Heavily Democratic California passed a voting-rights law in 2001 that allowed minority groups to sue cities with “at-large” systems of electing councilmembers. Supporters of such laws argue that citywide systems (the popular vote) stifle minority voices, and thus only Electoral College-like district elections ensure racial fairness.

This is a very important point. I have been a witness to local governments in California being subjected to lawsuits and other objections that demand voting districts. An example is that a city might have five councilmembers and only one or none of "Latino ancestry" even though about half of the city's population fits into that category. This is seen as evidence of a problem, even though it presumes that 1) all of those residents are citizens, 2) all of those citizens vote; 3) they only vote for people of Latino ancestry. Anyway, the point is, it has been decided that each district needs representation.

Of course people will object and that mayors are often elected by citywide popular vote and districts elect members of the House of Representatives, rather than having all voters decide every member of the House. Yes, but we have to remember our nation is a union of states. Those states are republics or commonwealths that have always retained some powers, some degree of sovereignty. This is why the voters of each state elect their own Governor, Senators, and certain other statewide offices rather than having them appointed by Congress and/or the President. It is the states that collectively elect the President, not a direct national popular vote. We are a union of states, not a centralized government with 50 divisions called states, plus districts and territories.

Not that it matters much, because a popular-vote constitutional amendment would probably be unconstitutional. That seeming absurdity dates to a wrinkle the Founding Fathers ironed out in drafting the Constitution. The Electoral College is based on the two-chamber legislative structure known as the Connecticut Compromise, which gave big states like Virginia representation by population in the House; and small states like New Jersey an equal voice in the Senate.

After that careful balancing act, the Founders froze their hard work with the only permanent exception to the provision allowing constitutional amendments: that the Connecticut Compromise could not be repealed without the consent of every affected state (look it up: Article V).

How many of you were ever taught about this?!? Whine all you want about smaller or less populous states having a disproportionate influence; this was the contract to which the states agreed. Without this conditions, we literally would not have the country we do. Some states would not have joined the union. They joined, at least in part, because of what the Constitution assured.

In fact, the nominees themselves might very well have been different without the Electoral College. Candidates garner primary endorsements, volunteers, donations, and votes based mostly on their case that they would be the strongest nominee in November – under the rules of the Electoral College. Marco Rubio, to take one example, may have looked like a stronger 2016 nominee under a popular vote system, because votes from his fellow Latinos in Texas and California would matter, whereas they barely register in the Electoral College. If Trump – or Hillary – had lost the nomination, what relevance would her 2.7 million-vote margin have then?

Read it all.

Secretary Clinton and President-elect Trump, and every other candidate, entered the race under the understanding and implicit agreement that the Electoral College is how we choose our President.

An Election Retrospective

Here is the entry I posted on my Townhall user blog* on November 5, 2008,  "Why McCain Lost". I am reprinting it as it was on presented originally, except I'm going to color certain parts red before emphasis.


*****


As with the elder Bush losing in 1992, and Bob Dole losing in 1996, Senator John McCain’s loss yesterday was not a rejection of conservatism.

McCain was the GOP nominee because he was the most unlike Bush, and Bush, rightly or wrongly, has been effectively trashed in the populace.  We knew Bush wasn’t a consistent conservative before he got the nomination in 2000.  He’s proved it in his Presidency, and although there has been much he has done right, there have been things that he’s done wrong, or ineffectively, including public relations.  McCain ran against Bush in 2000.  In a year where Bush was unpopular, choosing McCain was seen as perhaps the only way to get a Republican elected President.

Unfortunately, McCain had a hard time winning over the GOP base.  His campaign finance reform, which has obviously been ineffective in removing the influence of money from campaigns, had left conservatives with a bad taste in their mouths.  Many conservatives and others were also upset with his work on the shamnesty bill for illegal aliens.  Instead of having a nominee who offered a clear difference from Obama in that regard, we had McCain.  And did it help him or anyone else in the GOP with Latino voters?  No!  So he lost some of the base and independents, and didn’t gain Latinos.

While McCain touted federalism in some areas that weren’t a major focus in this election, he failed to articulate truly conservative or libertarian positions clearly enough or early enough in the general campaign.  That’s because in many areas, he couldn’t without disavowing his own votes and previous positions.  Instead, he tried to play Santa Claus.  But a Republican can never outpromise the Democrats.  The Democrats will always promise more goodies.  So to a lot of people, McCain appeared to be doing the same thing Obama was doing – only halfway.  And they thought – why go halfway when we can get the genuine (new) deal?  Why go for someone who is always "reaching across the aisle" when we can pick someone who is already across the aisle?

People who want Democrats will vote for Democrats, not Republicans.

McCain also lost because he wanted to run a nice, respectful campaign that would be applauded by the MSM once it was over, instead of running a campaign that would win.  For far too long, he was busy disavowing comments from his own supporters instead of focusing on the weaknesses of Obama.

He lost not because of choosing Palin as his running mate, but by not letting Palin be Palin.

Obama doesn’t have all that much experience, but he had enough –and recent - experience organizing people to get out the vote, and then getting to higher and higher offices. He's good at getting the vote, but we don't have any reason to believe he can actually govern.  The MSM was already on Obama’s side, but he knew how to work them all the more.  He is more photogenic and a smoother speaker.  He can talk for hours and not say anything.  This allowed him to avoid really dealing with the facts that he was low on experience, low on accomplishment, and prone to extremist associations and thinking.

Finally – McCain lost to Obama because of racism.  It wasn’t just African-Americans who voted for Obama in part or in whole because of the color of his skin.  And that’s racism.  There is no way around it.

What we need now is for Republicans to be Republicans.  We need them to fight for limited government, federalism, and sticking to the Constitution.  We need them to fight for fiscal responsibility.  And we need them to start organizing NOW for 2010 and 2012.  Start identifying, grooming, and promoting ethical, effective people for local and state offices, as well as Congress and President.  If you contribute money to any Republican organizations, instead of donating in bulk, donate small amounts.  Donate when they do something right, and refrain from donating when they get it wrong, and let them know why.

We need not surrender to socialism.

*****

Wow! What did we see this year? We saw Trump drive the MSM crazy AND repeatedly take a tough stance on border control and dealing with illegal aliens, and it paid off. He also got a higher percentage of the Latino American voters.



*Townhall abruptly and without warning removed user blogs and our access to our own blog files, so I retrieved this entry from the Wayback Machine.