The Adelson primary

Posted on by Fritz Pettyjohn

The Kochs will be supporting multiple Republican candidates.  That’s a good thing.  At this point in the proceedings I’m an anybody but Bush man.  As the titular frontrunner I’d like everyone taking shots at him and his dimwit brother.  He’s going down, there’s no doubt in my mind, and once he’s out things will get interesting.  The notion that he could somehow duplicate W’s path from 2000 was delusional.

Sheldon Adelson is in the process of auditioning for his personal primary.  Everyone knows the game.  It’s all about Israel, and Iran.  The Israelis look like they’ll go to war to stop Iran from going nuclear.  They want us to not only support them in this war, but to some degree fight it side by side with them.  It’s a terrible idea, but it will get backing from some candidates.  It’s the only foreign policy issue that really matters, because it’s the one that could cost American lives.

It’s a preemptive war.  Preemptive wars are waged by nations in decline, or in fear of decline.  France fought the 30 Years War because it didn’t think it could beat the a united Germany.  Germany fought World War I because it didn’t think it could beat Russia if it waited loo long.  Israel isn’t afraid of losing a war.  They’re afraid of losing their existence, which makes them extremely risk averse.  If there’s a one in a hundred chance that a nuclear Iran could deliver a bomb into Israel, the Israellis will act.  They’re not taking any chances.  I don’t blame them.  I’d do the same thing.

But the United States is not in decline, or in fear of going into decline.  We’re like Germany in 1914, if the Krauts had been thinking clearly.  We don’t need anything from any body.  We’re happy campers.  One bomb from a nuclear Iran is not an existential threat to us, as it is to Israel.  If that ever happened we could atomize Mecca (after it had been evacuated) and we’d be square with Islam, almost.  We’d have to kill a lot of the bastards as well, but not in a traditional war.  One by one, like the Mossad does.  Or in groups.  But not in an old fashioned war.  We never have to fight one of those again.

Who are we supposed to fight, and over what?  The Russians, over Europe?  Are you kidding?  The American people hated Communism, and stood on the wall of freedom for 50 years.  But the Russians aren’t Communists anymore.  I don’t know what the hell they are, but they’re no threat to us.  If the Europeans can’t figure out how to deal with them, that’s their problem, not ours.

Why would we ever fight a land war with the Chinese?  For what, Formosa?  What are you, nuts?

We don’t need an Army.  Army Rangers et al, for sure, but no regular Army.  The United States Navy, and the Marine Corps, rule the waves.  We own the oceans of this world, militarily, along with our Anglosphere allies.  And we want the United States Air Force to rule the sky, and space.  We want to be the biggest bad asses on the planet.  We just don’t fight other people’s wars.  No one is a threat to us, and we are a threat to no one.

That’s not what Sheldon wants to hear.  He wants us to fight a war in the Middle East.  Thankfully, Sheldon is so incompetent at politics that he won’t do any harm.  He’ll give some dope like Gingrich a bunch of money to piss away, and that will be that.  I don’t have any problem with Sheldon, who is a patriotic American.

But the American people don’t want to go to war.

Period.

Ignorance

Posted on by Fritz Pettyjohn

Politics and the movies have a lot in common.  In Hollywood, as in politics, nobody really knows anything.  But a lot of people make a living pretending they actually know things.  It’s all bullshit.  Nobody knows anything.  Which means my opinion is just as good as the next guy’s.

Nobody knows what’s going to happen next year.  There will be ten Republican candidates at the first debate in August, and going into Phase One.

Phase One goes on for the first three weeks in February, and features Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada  — a total of 133 delegates.  This will whittle down the field, but we don’t know, for sure, who gets whittled.

Phase Two is the first two weeks of March, including Super Tuesday, March 1st.  Eighteen states plus Puerto Rico, 940 delegates.  (These numbers and dates are approximate.  States are still adjusting their schedules).  March 1st features the Texas (155 delegates) showdown between Cruz and Perry.  Only one will walk away from it.  The other will be a casualty.  Florida just announced that its 99 delegate primary on March 15th will be winner take all.  That means either Bush or Rubio win it, and the loser goes home.

After March 15th a lot of campaigns should fold, including (if they’re even running) Jindal, Fiorina, Carson, Christie, Graham, either Bush or Rubio, and either Perry or Cruz.  Unless his campaign has turned into a debacle, Kasich should still be standing.  Almost all of these states will have delegates awarded in some proportionate manner, meaning he should have won something besides Ohio (March 8th, 66 delegates.)   He should get some traction in Illinois (69) and Michigan (59), as well as a number of other states.

Phase Three lasts almost three months, from mid-March to June 7th.  It has 28 states and some territories, 1400 delegates.  On June 7th it winds down with California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota, 303 delegates.  There really should be, at the absolute maximum, no more than six campaigns left: Cruz/Perry, Bush/Rubio, Huckabee/Santorum, Walker, Paul, and Kasich.  If it hasn’t been decided already, that is.  In 2012 Romney sealed the deal in April.  It was over.  But he was up against a very weak field.  Gingrich?  Santorum?  Give me a break.

If more than one candidate is still standing it could come down to California, as it did in 1964.  172 delegates, divvied up mainly by the vote in Congressional districts.  Kasich could do well here.  He could win it here.

Especially if he’s the guy a lot of the “establishment” has fallen back to.  I really don’t think either Bush or Christie make it to Phase Three.   I think Kasich is a better candidate than Walker, and that will have been demonstrated in February and March.

I don’t pretend to know any of this, it’s just speculation.  But it’s just as plausible as any other scenario.  You can’t dismiss it out of hand.  You should be prepared for it.  Just as you should be prepared for a lot of other scenarios.

I’ve been involved, to some extent, in campaigns since ’64, and Goldwater.  This is the most fun I’ve had in my life.

The Tour of Regulatory Horror

Posted on by Fritz Pettyjohn

Everybody hates Washington, especially Republican primary voters, who tend to the hard right.  How do you appeal to them?

Start in McFarland, in the California Central Valley.  Dying because of environmental devotion to a three inch bait fish.  Then go down to San Diego to talk to the poor schmuck who’s trying to build a billion dollar desalinization plant.  The regulators are killing him.  It may never be built.  You can go to Fork, Washington, which used to have a thriving timber industry.  To save spotted owl habitat, it was ruined.  Clinton showed up back in the 90’s to tell everybody not to worry.  Tourism would replace logging.  Horseshit, and everybody knew it.  Now barrel owls are taking over spotted owl turf.  They’re bigger, and more suited to survival in this ecosystem.  But they’re a threat to the spotted owl, so Fish and Wildlife is killing thousands of them.  Killing beautiful wildlife, in the name of the environment.

You can go almost anywhere in the country and find horror stories like that.  The environmental left is bat shit crazy, and they’re drunk with power.  They ruin businesses and lives without a care in the world.  Working class Americans, of all races and ethnicities, understand the insanity that takes place in the name of the environment.  It affects people every day in their personal lives.  Today you can’t but a gasoline container that’s vented.  So if you have to pour the gasoline from the container it doesn’t come out easily.  It’s a pain in the ass, but the EPA thinks the fumes from your two gallon gas can is going to ruin the environment.  This happens to people all the time.  It’s fertile political ground.  It needs to be plowed.  There’s a harvest of votes to be had on this issue.

Biddulph is making another approach to Jeb Bush, who he apparently has some history with.  We got a chance a while back  to make the pitch to one of Bush’s top “issues” guys, and nothing came of it.  So Dave is trying again, directly to Bush.  I’m not counting on this.  As far as we know every Republican candidate, including Bush, supports using Article V to get a BBA.  Rand Paul brought it up in South Carolina once, but other than that we’ve had radio silence, except, of course, from Kasich.  It’s like this is Kasich’s issue, and nobody wants to be seen as a follower.  This is unfortunate.  We really want all the candidates pushing this.  I’ll bet money that Kasich brings up the BBA, and his travels in support of it, at the August 6th debate.  All he has to do is say that, while all the candidates on the stage agree with him on this (as far as we know), more of them should be pushing this in their campaigns.  He could even ask Walker to help get the bill through the Wisconsin Senate, which he thus far has refused to do.  It could be an interesting moment.

After tomorrow morning’s cc with Faber we’ll have another call to divvy up the states.  I’ll take twelve, and between the rest of us (including Faber and Long) we’ll do follow up phone calls to every state, encouraging the presiding officers to attend.  We’ll keep after them, and if they say no we’ll ask them to designate their Majority Leader as their representative.

Paula Jones did an interview for the Daily Mail, a good one.  She’s just a regular housewife in Little Rock who still wants to tell her story.  If I was able I’d fly down there and see if she’d agree to tape a 60 second spot, recounting her history with Clinton.  Millenials haven’t heard this story, and it’s too good not to tell again, over and over.  The only way Hillary gets elected is to destroy her Republican opponent.  This is what they did to Dole, and to Romney.  Except this time the fire will be returned.

In spades.

Islam

Posted on by Fritz Pettyjohn

Obama’s right when he says they’re no real threat to us.  And while his policy is incoherent, I’ll say this for him.  His heart is in the right place: no war.  His troop surge in Afghanistan was halfhearted.  He should have just withdrawn, and left these people to themselves.  But we’re in the process of leaving, at last.  He was foolish to draw a red line in Syria.  He’s a terrible bluffer, doesn’t know how.  He just doesn’t know how to play poker, period.  It’s embarrassing.  And he really doesn’t like Israel.  To him it’s just another white colonial outpost in the third world.  Kind of like Zimbabwe.  Israel is much more than that.  Judaism is the father of Christianity, and we are a western Christian nation.  We’re simply not going to allow another holocaust.

But if Israel wants to fight a preemptive war they’re on their own.  We don’t do preemptive wars.  They’re un-American.  We fight defensive wars.  World War One was started as a preemptive war.  Once one country began to mobilize, they all had to, in order to keep up.  The Germans, especially, had absolutely nothing to gain, but blundered into war because they thought they had no choice.  Stupidity in high places  leads to tragedy.

It looks as though Iran may get the bomb, and that’s a huge problem for Israel.  But not for us.  We can’t go around the world getting into wars to stop people from getting the bomb.  Back in the 60’s William F. Buckley advocated bombing Red China to prevent it from getting the bomb.  He was crazy.  His rabid anticommunism clouded his judgment.  We don’t do wars of choice, only of dire necessity.

Absolutely the worst case scenario is a nuclear 9-11.  It’s impossible to say that it can never happen.  It could.  We could wake up some sunny morning to see Manhattan in smoldering ruins.  It’s a remote possibility, but it’s real.  So do we engage in perpetual warfare in the Middle East to lessen this possibility?  Might such warfare actually increase it?  How do we know?  Which side do we err on, caution or war?

I vote for caution.  We’re allied with Israel and will defend it.  But we should not wage war on its behalf.  There’s a difference.  You could make a case, geopolitically, for kicking Iraq out of Kuwait.  It was a war for oil.  But with fracking we don’t need that oil anymore.  Our European and Asian allies need that oil.  If blood needs to be shed to secure it, so be it.  Just not American blood.

The West and Islam are two different worlds.  I experienced that when my caravan of Mercedes’ crossed from Bulgaria into Turkey.  It was almost a physical sensation.  This was 1967, and Bulgaria was as backward as Turkey.  Istanbul was more of a modern city than Sofia was, but it was different, strange.

I met some English guys at the Hofbrauhaus in Muncih, and they invited me to go with them to Tehran.  They’d hooked up with some Iranian car smugglers.  The Iranians  wanted guys with western passports to put on the title of the cars they were smuggling back into Iran.  You drove from Munich to Tehran in a caravan, and they’d give you $100 and a bus ticket back to Istanbul or on to Kabul.  I was very short on money, and signed on with them, and off we went.  It was a trip.

Iran was Islamic, like Turkey, but I felt much more comfortable in Tehran than I did in Istanbul.   I even made friends with an Iranian guy I ran into. He spoke good English and he showed me around.  The Shah was still in power, and he was trying to westernize his country.  My friend explained to me that Islam was not the traditional religion of Iran.  That was Zoroastrianism, which he described to me.  It was kind of a laid back paganism.  We even went out one night for a couple beers.  They were playing a popular song by an Iranian singer, a woman.  It was kind of a love ballad, I guess.  Haunting, exotic.  There was even a beautiful Iranian girl there, and we were looking at each other.  My friend said that was very unusual.  Iranian girls weren’t loose, to say the least.

So do we bomb Iran, on behalf of the Israelis, and drive them further back into the stone age?  No, we don’t do that.

We don’t do that.

It’s on

Posted on by Fritz Pettyjohn

Thanks to the continuing generosity of Dave and Suzie Biddulph we’ll have a room in which the San Diego Article V Summit can take place.  So it’s going to happen.  Everything else is gravy.  Faber and Long’s invitation letter, along with the invites I and others will be issuing, will get enough attendees to make it a success.  A slam dunk would be 26 states represented by their Speaker, Senate President, or both.  31 would be better, 34 better still.  We’ll need to raise the money for scholarships to get that kind of a turn out.  And a draw.  Lew Uhler is going to try to get Rep. Goodlatte of Virginia, Chairman of House Judiciary to come.  His committee will aggregate the Resolutions, and recommend a time and place for the Convention.  I hope he’s attracted to the idea of doing it in Richmond.  We need all the help we can get next year in the Virginia legislature.

On today’s Loren Enns mentioned that a Maryland State Senator has been quoted to the effect that they will rescind their Resolution if we get close to 34.  No surprise there.  If that were, in fact, to happen we’ll need Virginia.  As I’ve mentioned before, I think there needs to be a follow up to San Diego.  I like doing it at the Capitol in Annapolis.  Maybe this state senator can help us with the arrangements.

Lew Uhler talked with former Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli, who says there are five competitive state senate races in Virginia this November, the outcome of which will determine if we have a shot there next year.  Everyone will have to do all we can to help.  Those races may decide if we get 34 next year.

Our man in South Carolina, John Steinberger, sees a lot of Presidential candidates.  He asks them about an Article V BBA, and the latest to sign on are Donald Trump and Dr. Ben Carson.  To the best of my knowledge, only Bush, Christie, Walker and Huckabee haven’t come over.  I’m hoping Kasich calls them out on it at the Cleveland debate.  They’re not crazy, so they’ll say yes.  Then we can go in to 2016 saying every single Republican Presidential candidate wants an Article V BBA.  We’ll ask them to sign a letter, urging the state legislatures of our target states to pass our Resolution.  Who’s not going to sign that letter, and why?  This may be a good tool next year.

If you’re going to run for President, it helps to be smart.  If you’re not that smart, you’re at a disadvantage.  Not fatal, necessarily, but a distinct hindrance to the Cause.  Walker’s not that smart.  Our man in Wisconsin, Chris Kapenga, the Legislative Kid, hit Walker up on an Article V BBA two and a half years ago.  He passed.  For whatever reason, he passed.  He wasn’t bright enough to figure it out.  He’s either a little dense, or he didn’t think it through.   Maybe a little bit of both.

I think that’s going to cost him.