Month: January 2016

Dick Morris told the Task Force a year and a half ago that Article V and the BBA would get traction when the Republican candidates for President began talking about.  So, a year ago, when John Kasich came aboard we figured we were on our way.  Kasich did all he could for us, and helped us in some states, and got some attention.   Then he went on the Presidential campaign trail, and as far as I know hasn’t really talked about it since.  I really don’t know why.  Maybe it’s hard to explain to people.  Although, I  must say, I was able to get my ten tear old granddaughter to understand it.

Now Marco Rubio and Texas Governor Greg Abbott have climbed aboard the Article V bandwagon.  They’re supporting an approach a bit different from ours  — the Convention of States  — but that’s not that important right now.  What’s important is when a leading Presidential candidate writes an op-ed about Article V in USA Today.  People start paying attention.

We hope the subject comes up at Thursday’s debate, but even if it doesn’t I have a feeling the other candidates will be stating a position.  I’ve submitted a piece to American Thinker designed to persuade them.

Another topic for the debate is ethanol.  I caught the Donald on Meet the Press, and there he was taking on Cruz on ethanol.  I strongly believe this is a big mistake for Trump.  This could cost him.  Anyone, left or right, with a lick of sense knows ethanol is a boondoggle.  The WaPo is out with an editorial praising Cruz for his stance, for Pete’s sake.

The New Hampshire battle space is shaping up quite nicely.  RCP has Trump with 31, Rubio 13, and Cruz-Bush-Kasich-Christie all at about 10%.  All four of the establishment candidates take heart from this.  Rubio only has a three point lead over the others.  They all think they can emerge as the consensus guy in that lane.  They’ll keep fighting each other, sometimes not very nicely, for the next three weeks.

Cruz wins Iowa, popping the Trump balloon, and rides into New Hampshire on a wave.  He will have beaten one of the paragons of American Crony Capitalism in its own back yard  — ethanol in Iowa.  The votes (about 10%) of Paul, Carson, Santorum and Huckabee all gravitate to him.  This is the schwerpunkt.

Do you see what I see?

My post in AT today was kind of a rush job.  I hadn’t planned on submitting it, so I didn’t really go over it carefully.  As a consequence, one part is misleading, and may be completely wrong.

In my lifetime the New York Times has been the Queen Bee of the liberal Hive.  The Washington Post and the networks have droned along in her wake.  I don’t read the NYT any more because of their pay wall, so I don’t follow them closely.  I made an ASSumption that they were at least partly responsible for allowing the renewal of interest in America’s Most Famous Sexual Predator.

That looks to be wrong.  The NYT would never have allowed this to happen, if they had the power to prevent it.  But the Washington Post, under new owner (and son of Cuban refugee) Jeff Bezos, has broken with the Times on this story.  It is the WaPo which has broken this topic open.   I broke down and paid for full access to the WaPo, mainly because of the articles at Lucianne and RCP that were behind their pay wall.  Also because they have shown some signs of independence from leftist orthodoxy.  I have been rewarded.

Bezos is a very interesting man.  I’m a conservative libertarian.  To me, he looks like a liberal libertarian.  That’s progress.  When he bought the Post he bought a brand, and he doesn’t want to tarnish it by insisting it conform to all of his views.  But a wink and a nod, here and there, lets everyone know what the boss is thinking.

I have no idea what it’s like to work in a newsroom.  But given the parlous state of American journalism, I imagine that reporters and editors are sensitive to what the man who signs their paychecks thinks.  This bears watching.  The Post is one of the pillars of the mainstream media.  If they’re declaring their independence, we could have a whole new Hive on our hands.

Cruz had a piece a few days ago in the Des Moines Register defending his stance on ethanol and the Renewable Fuel Standard.  He’s feeling the heat from Big Corn.  The latest poll in Iowa, from Fox News, shows him slipping a bit, probably because of ethanol.

This is where it gets interesting.  Trump has criticized Cruz on RFS.  Will Rubio?  If he does, it could come back to haunt him in New Hampshire.

Kentucky is getting very interesting.  It appears a legislative coup is in the offing.  As a veteran of the Alaska Legislature, I’m quite familiar with coups.  All the ingredients necessary for a successful one are in place.  Speaker Greg Stumbo, the last Democrat in the South to preside over a legislative chamber, is going down.

House Minority Whip (and soon to be House Majority Leader?) Jim DiCesare tells the Task Force that our fate in Kentucky is up to Gov. Bevin.  We are now working closely with the Tea Party Express, which has a relationship with Bevin’s campaign manager when he ran for the Senate.  Our request will be heard by the Governor.  If he decides to adopt us as one of his legislative priorities, we’ll get Kentucky.  It could be #34.

The Revenant, loosely based on the story of Hugh Glass, is a good movie, and Dicaprio will get his Oscar for it.  But the real movie, of this time and place, which needs to be made is the story of John Colter.  I have a friend in Montana, Steve Gough, who’s been working on it for years.  Colter was the original mountain man, one of the most complete bad asses of American history, and an inspiration to American special forces.  If you run across a Navy Seal, ask him about John Colter.

Chances are he’ll know all about him.

 

 

Mt piece on Hillary, Billy Jeff and the Hive is a “must read” at Lucianne.com today, linking to American Thinker.  Nice.

My experience and interest is primarily American history and politics.  I know as much as the average bear about world affairs, but claim no special insight.  So, for me, it’s good to see two guys who know a lot more in this area than I do  — Angelo Codevilla and David P. Goldman  —  coming out four square for Cruz.  Here’s Goldman in PJ Media.

Jonah Goldberg has demanded that we all stop dissing the neocons.  Now, I like Jonah.  He had the good sense and good fortune to marry a girl from a good Republican family in Fairbanks, Alaska*. Good on him.  But the neocons bear a large share of the blame for convincing dimwitted Bush 2 to invade Iraq.  They haven’t learned their lesson, and still like to beat the war drum.  A pox on them.

We should send American armies into wars only when there is a clear and present danger to our national security.  Not to promote democracy.  Until these guys acknowledge that their whole Iraq scheme was an enormous mistake, they deserve no quarter.

*Here’s a factoid for you.  Fairbanks and its environs are a winter tour destination for newly married Japanese couples.  For good luck, they like to make love under the northern lights, and Fairbanks is the place to go.

 

Since, a few days ago, I encouraged everyone to pile on to the Predatorgate story, I figured I should kick in myself, so I put in a piece to AT.

The Iowa Republican is the closest thing we have to a fingerspitzengefuhler in the Hawkeye State.  He’s no fan of Cruz, but concedes things are breaking, hard, his way.  J. Ann Selzer should be out with another gold standard Iowa poll next week.  If it shows Cruz expanding his lead, it may cause some of the field to concede the state to him, and concentrate on New Hampshire.  Trump, conceivably, could catch him him, I suppose, but there’s no way the Donald is going to take evangelicals away from him, and they’re practically all he needs.  Rubio’s too far back, and no one else is really in it.

Certainly not Rand Paul.  He really should drop out and support Cruz.  I’ll bet some of his Iowa supporters are getting a little antsy.  It’s great to be loyal to the Paul brand, so beloved by libertarians.  It’s another to throw away your vote, when it could help Cruz beat back the anathema of libertarianism — crony capitalism.  As a libertarian myself, I know we are actually a rather small slice of the Republican Party.  When we have a chance to make a difference, we should take it.

So what’s Big Corn to do?  Hit him even harder, raise millions more to run a media campaign against him, pull out all the stops.  He is an existential threat, and must be treated as such.  More and more, Iowa will be a battle between Ted Cruz, outsider, and the fat cat, government funded, crony capitalist ethanol industry.  Grist for the schwerpunkt.

So what’s the biggest problem facing the country?  The economy?  Unemployment?  Immigration?  Nope three times.  According to Gallup, it’s the government.

Let me see if I’ve got things straight.  Democrats are the party of, by, and for government.  To win they must restore trust in government.  Yet their nominee is personally mistrusted.  How, exactly, does this work?  Maybe Stan Greenberg can explain it.  Come on, I need help here.  Somebody’s got some ‘splainin’ to do.

Just another star in alignment.

There will be no schwerpunkt in New Hampshire unless Cruz wins Iowa. And if Cruz can’t win Iowa, there will be no excuses.   He’s all in, and it’s paying off.  His three fellow evangelicals  — Carson, Huckabee and Santorum*  — are going nowhere, Trump’s a turn off, and Rubio won’t put in the time.  The rest are an afterthought.  Cruz doesn’t just want a win, he wants a blowout.  He’s on his way.

The WSJ had a piece yesterday on Cruz and ethanol.  I’m sure there are more to come.  This is a good story line for Iowa, because the horse race seems to be shaping up as Ted Cruz vs. Big Corn, not Cruz v. Trump, or Carson or Rubio.  Every other Republican, save Rand Paul, kissed the ring of Big Corn, and gets a pass.  This is the story line that preps the New Hampshire battle space for the schwerpunkt.  America’s Renewable Future has 22 staffers devoted to taking Cruz down.    As reporter Reid J. Epstein points out, for the ethanol industry, the threat of Ted Cruz is existential.  They’re spending millions.  This is the Battle of Iowa.

There was some ill informed chatter on the internet about Cruz caving on ethanol because he favors a five year phase out.  Please.  He’s being reasonable.  He can’t be anti-ethanol.  He’s in Iowa.  He’s got to stick with his line about not having the government pick winners and losers.  A lot of people have invested a ton of money in ethanol, under the understandable impression that it represented public policy, as expressed by Congress.  Giving them five years to try to recoup their investment is fair.  In fact, there will need to be a lot of phasing out and grandfathering in as we start eliminating more federal programs.  It may not be intellectually satisfying, but it’s political reality.

Debate hosts Neil Cavuto and Maria Bartiromo are not dummies.  They know a few things about economics.  And they are both fully aware that ethanol is one of the great boondoggles of our time.  The problem is, Murdoch and Fox are for Rubio, and asking a question at the debate about ethanol would make Cruz look good.  We’ll see how their journalistic integrity squares with their employer’s political preferences.

The BBA Task Force is doing what we can to encourage a debate question about Article V and the BBA.  Rubio’s out today with a USA Today piece supporting the Convention of States.  Kasich should be coming out with something on the BBA.  This represents a conflict.  There are two prominent Article V organizations and campaigns  — the Convention of States and the BBA.  Rubio supports CoS, Kasich supports BBA.  This confuses people, who have a hard enough time wrapping their head around the existence of something like Article V.  Because the difference between the two approaches requires some explanation, the moderators may shy away from it.

Kasich shouldn’t.  He needs to make something happen.  Talking about Ohio doesn’t cut it.  He needs to try to explain why he supports the BBA, rather than CoS.  The BBA is massively popular on a bipartisan basis, is simple to understand, and is only seven states shy of the 34 needed.  CoS is confusing, much more controversial, and is 30 states shy of 34.

We don’t want to attack Rubio for coming out for our competitor’s proposal.  I, personally, support CoS, and as a private citizen have testified in favor of it.  It’s just first things first.  Do the easy one  — the Balanced Budget Amendment  — and then move on to the next one.

Ted  Cruz is famous for his prodigious knowledge of the Constitution, so he knows all about Article V from a legal perspective.  I’m not at all sure he’s spent the time to appreciate the political implications and possibilities of Article V, especially in the current context.

Cruz has a chance to be a great President.  If, during his tenure, fundamental Constitutional reforms were achieved through Article V, they could be the crowning glory of his administration.

As a constitutionalist, Cruz is a federalist.

Article V is federalism.

 

*Technically a Catholic, but an evangelic one.