Month: October 2015

Don Juan of Florida is to be congratulated for having predicted the Soviet incursion into Syria.  He did it in front of 23  million people at the second debate.  Impressive.  But I don’t recall him telling us what to do next.

If I’m right, and it boils down to Kasich, Rubio and Cruz, there could be a Republican divide on foreign policy.  The Young Guns are hard core, and want to kick ass.  They seem like they’re itching to take on the Iranians, ISIS and Assad, and are upset with the Russians for butting in.  If you want to be cynical you could say they’re competing in the Adelson primary.  I’m fairly confident Kasich will take a less bellicose line, but we’ll have to see.

I think they’re wrong on the substance and wrong on the politics.  The Donald may be a bit of a buffoon, but he’s seen a quarter century of life that the youngsters haven’t.   As have I, and has Kasich, for that matter.  Don Juan and the Parson were teenagers when the Cold War ended.  Not having lived through this period of history, they don’t fully appreciate it.  Russia remains a great power, and a nuclear one.  When Putin insists that we do not live in a unipolar world he’s telling us the truth.  So I did a piece on this subject for American Thinker which I’ll probably submit tomorrow.  Maybe a day later, since editor JR Dunn tells me my previously submitted and modified article should be out tomorrow.

Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations is a wonderful book, but it is not a book about geopolitics.  In that world, Islam is not important, because no Islamic country is a great power, and none will be.  If you think globally, you think of the balance of power between the most important countries in the world: the U.S., Russia, China, Germany and Japan, with Germany a proxy for western Europe.  Even if Iran goes nuclear it will not be a great power.  Exhibits A and B: India and Pakistan.

Since no power on earth is presently a threat to our national security, we have no reason to go to war with any of the other four great powers. It would be madness.  None of the great powers seeks global hegemony.  Everyone understands we live in the 21st Century. We will fight to maintain the freedom of the sea, and the air, and space.  We are Americans, and we will not tolerate being cooped up in the Western Hemisphere.

But we will not fight for commerce.  The only reason we would join the Germans against the Russians, or the Japanese against the Chinese, is commercial.  We will not see American kids get killed to protect a country that refuses to protect itself.

As Americans, we’re spoiled.  We can drive from sea to shining sea, and see nothing but fellow Americans along the way.  Canadians are just Americans Lite, and we’ve gotten along with Mexico ever since we grabbed half their country.  We’ve never had anything to worry about.  Russia, and the other powers have had a different historical experience. We need to understand and respect their point of view.

So foreign policy may be a bit of a wild card in the nomination fight.  But it’s very difficult for me to see how it helps the Democrats.  Unless the Republican is so hawkish that it unnerves a public very reluctant for war.  I guess that could happen.  That would really be dumb.

Babbie put a gun to my head and we saw The Intern with Robert DeNiro, a geezer chick flick.  Its a gender role reversal movie, where this wonder woman, an internet retail innovator, has this weakling for a husband who stays home and acts as mommy to their three year old daughter.  I think it’s got to be a parody.  They can’t be serious.  And then she makes a move on him in bed, and he turns away and says he’s had a rough day, and I laugh out loud.  This is hilarious.  But nobody else is laughing.  I’m wrong.  It’s not a parody.  They’re sympathizing with this sorry son of a bitch.  The whole movie was an advertisement for role reversal.  Stay at home dads are special, just like moms are.

They want us to think this is the new normal.  We’re not that dumb.

I’ve made peace with JR Dunn, my editor at American Thinker.  I’m working on a campaign, a campaign for an Article V BBA.  AT is not a campaign platform.  It’s a website for a variety of conservative opinion.  So I took out all the Article V stuff, which I reproduce below, in quotes, and resubmitted my piece from a couple days ago, which I’m pretty sure he’ll use.

“On a website supposedly devoted to the promotion of Article V, I talk a lot about the Presidential race.  That’s because I’m not convinced we’ll get to 34 this year.  If Maryland rescinds, which we expect, we’d need Virginia, which is going to be a very tough nut to crack.  So I expect we have to wait until after the 2016 elections.  As Thomas Edsall points out in the NYT, straight ticket voting is on the rise.  And no Party has won the White House while it lost a majority in the Senate since 1860.  We need a Republican Senate, and a Republican President will virtually guarantee it.

We also need more targets.  We want  the Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota and Washington legislatures under complete Republican control.  Recently a party’s performance in a Presidential contest closely tracks its success in state legislative races.  This is new.  If I’ve got this election figured out correctly, Kasich or Rubio will win in a landslide and we get at least a couple new targets, giving us everything we need to get to 34 in 2017.

The pendulum swings, the tide surges, and we get our turn in the saddle.  It won’t last forever.  You shouldn’t plan on more than eight years.  What matters is what you do with the opportunity.  Make changes that are permanent and fundamental.  Like a supply side BBA, for openers, with other Article V reforms to follow.   Harding and the Republicans turned this country around after the 1920 landslide, but it was a temporary victory, entirely washed away by the New Deal.  We want our win in 2016 to be a watershed.

That’s what Article V is all about.”

I started writing articles to promote Article V, and the only place I can get them out on the internet doesn’t want to hear about Article V.  It’ll take me a while to figure this out.  For now, I’ve concluded that, for the purposes of Article V, Kasich is our best candidate, followed by Rubio, and, further back, Cruz.  The people at AT are hard core.  Kasich is too soft for them.  A lot of the commenters turn purple when they start talking about him.  He’s a RINO, a sellout, a typical corrupt Republican bought and paid for politician.  These guys bitch at the editors  at AT for even allowing me a place on the website.  They get all fired up, and swear holy oaths that they’ll never vote for a RINO again.

I want all these votes.  When the time comes I want them to calm down and look at the alternatives.  I’m trying to introduce them to the Kasich I’ve been watching from afar for 30 years.  The one that balanced the budget.  I want them to realize that he’s 80% of what they want, or maybe only 60%, but with the Democrat they get nothing.  They get ruin.  Some of these guys will hang tough and not vote, or waste it on an oddball candidate.  We just want to keep that to a minimum.

So I’ll continue to submit articles to AT.  And I’ll try to include references to Article V and the BBA.  I make a lot of predictions in these articles.  It drives some of the Trump people crazy.  It will be interesting when they start to come true.

Knowing these guys, it’ll probably just piss them off.

Former Speaker Bill McIlvain is 83, and our man in Wyoming.  We like them experienced.  To hell with all these whippersnappers.  He’s working closely with our man in the field, young Fruth, who hasn’t even hit 70 yet.  They’re having a dinner for all 100 of the legislators on Feb. 6th at the swankiest place in Cheyenne  — Little America, out by the freeway.  Bill and I had lunch there earlier this year, and I can vouch for it.  It’s all top of the line stuff, and may end up costing a cool seven grand.  The Heartland Institute and NFIB are kicking in, and we’re looking for other co-sponsors, like ALEC or the Peterson Foundation.  Fruth has been on the ground, and understands the state of play.  He says this dinner could seal the deal.  It will be the social event of the session.  Seriously.  They don’t do a lot of this stuff in Cheyenne, particularly in an even year, when they’re actually in session for only 20 days.  Bill and his wife will be on top of things from day one, and he knows as much about getting a bill through the Wyoming legislature as anyone.

Right now, if I had to call it today, I’d say Wyoming will be our 32nd.  And at that point I don’t think we can be ignored any longer.  At that point the Republican nominee puts us over the top.  So I’m feeling good.

God, I like Netanyahu.  I saw a clip of his speech at the U.N., where he just glared at these gutless bastards, in silence, for 45 seconds.  It takes a certain kind of guy to pull that off.  I like this guy.

I try to pay attention to the other side, keep an eye on them, how they think they’re going to win.  It’s all mechanics, and statistics, and social media, and turnout models, and demographics, money, and race.  That’s all they’ve got.  They don’t have any issues.  And they don’t have any candidates.  They’ve got nothing to brag about, and a lot to defend.  They’ve got nothing.  And no prospect of getting anything.  The trifles they do have on offer will be flotsam in the tide.

I have to say this.  How can we lose this one?  How can we possibly screw this up?  It’s set up to fall in our hands, as long as we don’t blow it.  Political ineptitude has cost us before, as in 1948.  But I don’t see that happening.

A terrorist attack could happen here.  We are so fortunate that so few attacks have taken place since 9-11.  The media would try to blame the Republicans.  But I don’t see how that sticks.  It’s not a partisan issue when Americans are killed.  I don’t think it helps the Democrats.

In 1979 I got a call from Ralph Winterood, the western states (excluding California) director of Reagan for President.  So I went and met him in his room at the Cook.  We talked for a while, and then he asked me if I wanted to be the Chairman of the campaign for Alaska.  I thought about it for half a second and said yes.

I really liked this guy.  I don’t think he was on salary.  He was from Montana, and an easy guy to know.  At the time I was 33 and he was about 70.  I remember thinking, that’s kind of cool, how this old guy is out doing politics.

It’s nice to carry on traditions.

This is going to be a good month.  The American people are ready for something completely different, and a year and a month from now they will be offered a clear alternative. Every month that goes by in which the current narrative of the 2016 campaign is not changed is a good month.  A worn out political party, a spent force, and a deeply flawed field on one side, versus a resurgent, confident conservative movement riding an historically powerful political tide, with at least two very attractive candidates.  That’s what I see.

The Donald bears watching.  He’s obsessed with polls, and he’s starting to slip.  His fragile ego may, at some point, wilt in the face of public rejection.  If he starts to look like a loser he’ll pull the plug.  Trump is above all else a winner, and at some point he’ll declare victory and withdraw.  The Parson will get a boost when it happens, maybe even getting to the top in some polls.

The other two media candidates will glide along, and that’s a good thing.  The kindly doctor and the Lady of Steel are good faces of the Republican Party.  I hope they stick around through February.

I gather the big media buys by Bush 3 and some others don’t start until November.  If that’s true I can’t see anything that would boost Jeb!  As the Mideast unravels his embrace of Bush 2’s foreign policy there will backfire on him.  He’ll continue to languish and his donors will be restless.  He thinks as people get to know him he’ll do better.  I think he’s wrong.  He’s not a strong candidate, and people can see it.  In most of the pictures of him that accompany news stories he looks a little befuddled, as if he’s asking,  Why am I not winning?  He doesn’t have it, he doesn’t get it, and he doesn’t know it.

I have the feeling that the Parson’s “blow up the government” strategy is going to blow up on him.  It will if Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and Kevin “Irish eyes are smiling” McCarthy get their way, and they’re in positions where they can make it happen.  The rage vote won’t care, and will celebrate with him in his defeat.  But they are only a third or less of the party, and the rest of Republican voters will not be impressed.

Kasich and Christie will be ramping up in Iowa.  Ohio sells better there than New Jersey.  In its political culture, Iowa is a colony of the Midlands, and Kasich will feel comfortable there.  And like Midlanders everywhere, Iowans are not drawn to people from New Netherlands, and I doubt Christie will do that well.  If he can’t bump his numbers up here or in New Hampshire he could be gone after the next debate, on the 28th in Boulder.

Depending on how the that outcome is perceived, it’s possible Paul, Gilmore and Pataki get out as well.  Paul needs money for his Senate reelection, and he needs to bow out soon to stop bleeding cash.  Huckabee, Santorum and Graham are vanity candidates and will probably stick around.  They are not factors, except to the extent that they muddy the waters.

Based on his remarks in Iowa yesterday, we might see a new, aggressive Kasich in this debate.  The timing is just right.  People have watched.  Now they may be ready to listen.  Kasich knows exactly what he wants to say, and he knows how to say it.  I’m looking forward to this one.

I don’t know what he’ll say about Russia.  I hope he doesn’t start beating his chest.  Leave that to the Parson, Don Juan and the rest.  Realpolitik says work out an understanding with them.  That won’t happen with Obama in the White House.  They have no respect for him.  But the next President needs to sit down with Vlad the Impaler and divide the world into spheres of influence.  Russia and America have a great deal in common, even though our societies are radically different.  We’re both continental nations, the only two in the world if you leave out Australia.  We have no reason to ever fight the Russians.  They’re east of the Hajnal Line, but they’re a Christian country again, and not our enemy.

People seem stuck in the past, when Russians were communists and we needed Mideast oil.  Those are world historical shifts, and we need to adjust our view of the world accordingly.  Russia is a great nation, which should be respected, not fought.  They don’t want to rule the world.  Puitn is not Hitler, or Stalin, or Napoleon.  And the centuries long war within Islam, taking place before our eyes in the Middle East, is of no interest to us.  None.  We’re humanitarian, and want to limit the bloodshed.  And we want to kill as many terrorists as we can, the more the better.  But we don’t want to get into a war to do it.  If Russia does, they’ll do better at it than we could.  They’re ruthless, and we’re not.  The media sees to that.

I don’t read many novels, but I liked Hunt for Red October, and when Babbie and I were in Hawaii 30 years ago, and she asked me if I was so smart how come we didn’t have any money, I told her I’d write a book, and I did.  If Tom Clancy could do it, so could I.  It was an Alan Drury kind of book, a cold war thriller called Brinkman.  A big time literary agent in New York named Jay Garon liked it, and he told me I reminded him of another young client, a guy in Mississippi who was a lawyer who had also served in the state legislature.  One of his editors was assigned to help me spruce it up, but he said he’d get it published.  Then the Cold War ended and my plot was obsolete.

Yeah, that guy from Mississippi was named John Grisham.