Month: May 2016

When Bush 1 signed the Civil Rights Act of 1991 (allowing discrimination against whites and Asians based on statistics alone) he kicked the white working class in the teeth, and began the expulsion of Reagan Democrats from the Republican coalition.  Sen. Susan Collins of Maine is attempting to kick the white suburban middle class in the teeth.  She has a competing Amendment to one by Sen. Mike Lee, and they may be voting on it as I type.

Lee would stop a program known as Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) which empowers the federal government to go into middle class suburbs which are too white, and force them to adopt policies to correct the situation.  If they refuse, they lose federal funding.  These federal bureaucrats enforcing this policy are affirmative action fanatics, and have no problem jamming extremely expensive and disruptive remedies on totally innocent communities. They’re just too damned white.

Sen. Collins supports AFFH, and her amendment would allow it to continue.  This is what’s wrong with the Republican Party.  If you got a focus group together of people living in a community likely to be targeted by AFFH, and explained what it was to them, they would explode in anger.  Why the hell does the federal government need to come into our community and tell us how to run it?  But that doesn’t matter to Sen. Collins.  She’s for racial justice.  If some white people are discomfited  by it, oh well.  It’s for a higher cause.

I wonder how Sen. Murkowski will vote?  She follows Collins instinctively, but this is an election year, so we’ll see.

Donny Deutsch was on WADR today, and I have to listen to this guy.  I think he’s a straight shooter, and he’s smart as hell.  He was talking up Trump’s chances.  Let’s see what he has to say when Trump’s tax returns get leaked.  Things that can turn a general election in a Democrat’s favor tend to come to light.

But I can now see scenarios where Trump could win.  But they all involve him acting normal, so they’re all far fetched.  If we get another San Bernadino, God knows what happens.  And if anti-Trump protesters keep rioting, as they did in California, things could go weird.

Trump did a normal thing today, and to his credit came up with a fabulous list of potential Supreme Court nominees.  His problem is that he’s got to continue to be normal, and it goes against his nature.  But a New Hampshire poll cited on WADR says 80% of millennials can’t stand Clinton, and most of them prefer Trump to her.  Holy Hiawatha!  She is one terrible candidate.  But that number is a killer.  And, as Donny Deutsch pointed out, she really has no way to move it.  She’s stuck.

I swear to God, if it wasn’t for the stakes involved, this campaign is actually turning in to a comedy TV reality show.  Maybe this is the way campaigns are now won, by conducting competing TV reality shows.  For people who don’t read, it’s informative, and entertaining.  And it doesn’t require any thought.  Just watch the show.

I have long maintained that nobody knows anything, and that belief is fortified by events on a daily basis.

Institutions are crumbling and cracking.  Print journalism, publishing, higher education, and the law, too.  I’m a practicing lawyer for 42 years, and an active member of the Alaska Bar Association.  When I joined this guild, Babbie and I found the key to my modest personal fortune.  We started a debt collection business that you had to be a lawyer to do.  Anybody with medium intelligence could have done what I did.  But my guild, the bar association, had the power to prevent anyone but a member from performing this routine function.  Babbie did most of the work, which was secretarial, and intense.  When we came back to California she had to have her finger prints taken in order to become a notary public.  But she didn’t have any, and she flunked.  She’d typed the prints off her fingers.

I didn’t give out too much advice to my boys when they were growing up.  But I did tell them that the key to the whole thing was to marry well.

…have their holes and hiding places; but the men who fight and die for Italy enjoy only the light and the air.”  Tiberius Gracchus, 133 B. C.

According to Will Durant, “Rome remained great as long as she had enemies who forced her to unity, vision, and heroism.  When she had overcome them all she flourished for a moment and then began to die.”

After the final and total destruction of Carthage in 150 B.C. the Romans ruled the known world.  They were the uncontested superpower of their time, sort of the way the United States was after we succeeded in destroying the Soviet Union.  Just seventeen years after this supreme triumph, Tiberius Gracchus led the attack on Roman Law which succeeded briefly, and then continued over the course of a century in fits and starts, with the Agrarian Revolt, the Social War, Sulla and finally Caesar.

Roman Law, or the Twelve Tables, was their Constitution, and the reason they were a Republic for over four hundred years.  When they lost their Constitution, the law was dead and so was the Republic, and Roman freedom.  All of this was very familiar to the Framers.  In Philadelphia they were duplicating and improving upon the work of the ancient Roman sages who wrote the Twelve Tables 2,466 years ago.  And they saw a fatal defect, which they remedied.  For the Twelve Tables were incapable of Amendment.  There was no mechanism within them that allowed the people to make fundamental change.  They had no Article V.

The election is a little more than six months away, and I’m starting to recoil in disgust.  It was always clear that a fight between Clinton and Trump would be a race to the bottom.  The gun has sounded, the race is on, and we’ve got six months of this stuff to put up with.  Two thoroughly disreputable people, wrestling in the gutter, for the Presidency of my country.  To me, this is the failure of politics, and the American political class, of which I am a member.  It’s embarrassing.

But Article V marches on.  We need it now more than ever.  If the people of this country, acting through their state legislators, take enough time away from the television set to demand change, it will come.  But watching TV is easy.  Getting involved takes effort.  If we lose our country, we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves.

I’ve testified on behalf the Article V BBA before legislative committees in Utah, Montana, and Wyoming.  I try to make the point that Article V is the key to the restoration of federalism in this country, but I don’t think they believe or understand me.  It’s as though Article V is some weird part of the Constitution that’s never been used because it’s dangerous.  They’ve never heard of Article V before our Resolution came to their committee, and they don’t know what to think of it.

This is why the Assembly of State Legislatures meeting in Philadelphia next month is important, as well as inclusion of Article V in the Republican Platform.  It legitimizes Article V to these state legislators.  These guys aren’t constitutional scholars. They’re ranchers and small businessmen.  They need to be reassured that this is all legit.

We’re not Rome, we’re Americans, and we can avoid the fate of the Roman Republic.  People like Trump arise when there’s been a failure of politics, and the entire political class, and Trump/Clinton 2016 is proof of our collective failure.  As the political class of Italy, Spain and Germany failed in the early 20th Century, we got Mussolini, Franco and Hitler.

Maybe Trump isn’t another Mussolini, though he acts like him.  Look at some old footage of Il Duce, and see him strut and stick out his chin like the Donald.  It’s quite a resemblance, actually.

But Trump doesn’t aspire to be Il Duce.  He wants to be Vladimir Putin.  And he doesn’t really care about the Constitution.  He’s a fundamentally ignorant man.  He needs to lose.

I’ve despised Bill Clinton from the time I first saw him at the 1988 Democratic Convention.  The thing is, Clinton just raises the hackles on my back, like no other politician.  It’s personal.  I’ve actually fantasized about punching him out.  And he may be headed back to the White House.

But I expect to out live him, and I will piss on his grave.

We gotta head for higher ground, can’t come back ’til the water comes down, five feet high and rising.

Tick, tick, tick goes the debt bomb, but we’ve decided to ignore it.  Maybe it will just go away.  Adding a half a trillion a year doesn’t seem to be anything to worry about any more.  We can’t sell our debt to Japan, China, or any other creditor, but we can print money, so there’s no problem.  Anyone who thinks Speaker Ryan, soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and either President Clinton or Trump will get together and fix things is a believer in unicorns.  Things are going to get a lot worse in this country over the course of the next four years.  Medicare and Social Security are going broke, we can’t adequately fund our military, and the aging population will need more and more entitlement spending.  Taxes will surely be increased, but the revenue will be offset by the slowdown in economic growth they will cause.  Fundamental reforms are desperately needed, and neither a Trump nor a Clinton Presidency will be up to the task.

If it’s President Trump who is presiding over this stroll into an economic depression, the Republican Party may as well hang it up, like the Whigs.  Let’s just start over with a new one.  Republicans were tied to Hoover for over 20 years.  We won’t have 20 years.  Some people believe in Trump.  I think his Presidency would be a disaster, for him, the country, and the death of the GOP.

With Clinton it would be worse.  A Trump Supreme Court appointee would be a Chris Christie type, a moderate.  But no liberal, and that’s something.  Because Clinton would find another Sotomayor, and there would be a five vote majority to do a frightening amount of damage to the Constitution, for perhaps a generation.

Unless we use Article V.  If we have a successful Amendment Convention for the BBA, the code to the kingdom of Article V will have been broken, and the door left wide open for further Amendments.  One of the very best, in both Levin’s Liberty Amendments and the Texas Plan, would allow 2/3 of the States to overturn a Supreme Court decision.  What’s not to like about that?  I get a tingle in my leg when I think about it.  Another one in Greg Abbott’s Texas Plan would require seven votes on the Supreme Court to overturn a duly enacted statute.  I’m not as crazy about that one, but I could be convinced.

Forget the Supreme Court.  Article V is more important.  And if Trump’s elected Article V is dead.  He opposes it, and he’ll say it’s now unnecessary now that he’s in charge.  He doesn’t give damn about federalism, or the Constitution.  He’s a Mussolini.

If it’s President Clinton it will be full speed ahead for Article V.  We’ll probably get to 34 next year, and if it’s Majority Leader Schumer he won’t set the time and date of the Convention, which means we’d have to wait for the Republican takeover of the Senate after the 2018 elections.  From 2018 on Article V will be running on all cylinders, and whatever damage The Clinton Majority on the Supreme court can do, Article V can undo.  In case you haven’t looked into it, there’s literally nothing Article V can’t do, except reduce a State’s suffrage in the Senate.

And our candidate in 2020 will  be running against a haggard, scandal ridden, and thoroughly unlikable woman named Clinton, a failed President.  Exactly 100 years later, a second landslide of 1920 proportions.  And for the same reasons, under the same political circumstances.  I should write a book.  And what did the 1920 election produce?  The Roaring 20’s, in case you hadn’t heard.  By God, we can do it again.

The drought broke in the Gold Country this year, but only for one year.  The climate in this part of the country will be drier than it’s been.  We’re on a well, and some not too distant neighbors have had theirs go dry.  So our front lawn is going brown, and we’re off irrigating anything.   Except I’m trying to save a patch of green in the back, for the deer.  It’s not grass, it’s natural ground cover, which they eat.  This is deer country, and I have a little herd that hangs around the house a lot.  Ever since I lost Bud, my black lab, a few years ago, they feel right at home here.

I live in beautiful country.

 

The article below was up at American Thinker yesterday.   I’ve got another one on the Assembly of State Legislatures meeting in June that I’ll be submitting in a couple days.

The Trump Brigade at AT are frothing at the mouth in the comments section, as usual.  These guys don’t use language that well, so they resort to the use of capitalization for emphasis.  They’re like people who can’t communicate in a foreign language who raise their voices trying to make themselves understood.  Some of them are a little unhinged.

Someone made the point, which I agree with, that all the wind came out of the Cruz campaign around May 1st, when Trump was harassed by protesters at the Republican State Convention.  That pushed Trump over the top in California, and all was lost.  Dr. Evil, George Soros, strikes again.  He funds these groups, and they have the effect he’s paying for.  Rep. Ken Ivory of the American Lands Council tells me he’s being stalked by them.   It was a Soros funded group that killed the BBA in Montana.  Well, at least we’ve got Rupert Murdoch on our side.  Oh, wait.

If Fox is a conservative network, why do they boycott any news about Article V?  I used to watch Special Report almost very day, and nary a word.  I’m starting to think it’s deliberate.

On a brighter note, I just joined seven million other Americans in cancelling my ESPN feed on Directv.  Altogether my new package is $33 less a month.  The firing of Curt Schilling pushed me over the edge.  Everyone who’s boycotting Target, and yet subscribes to ESPN, is missing the boat.  Every ESPN cancellation is a blow against the thought Nazis.

For once the Queen of the Hive, the NYT, is following, rather than leading in political coverage.  When Bob Woodward announced that Jeff Bezos and his WaPo had declared war on Trump, the Queen was forced to follow suit.  It’s still too early, as far as the Queen is concerned, but she can’t be left behind.  The juiciest stuff was supposed to be withheld until after Cleveland, when Trump will be formally nominated.  Starting in on him too soon runs the risk of exposing him as unelectable to the delegates, perhaps sparking a revolt.  But the WaPo isn’t waiting, so neither can the Queen.  She’s out with a piece describing Trump’s boorish private behavior with women.  Drip, drip, drip.  They’ll keep this up for six months.  There’s so much to work with.  New York politics is corrupt through and through.  It’s probably why Andrew Cuomo never ran for President.  Anyone in it gets dirty.  Trump enjoys wrestling with pigs, and he’s up to his ears in corruption.

Let the sun shine on in.

 

 

A New Federalist Coalition

The Reagan coalition is dead.  A new one is needed.  We’ve got four years to figure it out.

In 1979, as Reagan launched his second campaign for the White House,  Communism was still on the move.  After receiving a kiss on the ear from Leonid Brezhnev, President Jimmy Carter believed our fear of Communism was inordinate.  Then came the invasion of Afghanistan, and he changed his tune.  But if you wanted to stand up to the Soviet Union, it was clear you for Reagan.  Big Labor, under George Meany, was fiercely anticommunist, as was the Catholic Church.  Anticommunism was the glue that held the Reagan coalition together.  In defeating the Soviets, Reagan broke up his own coalition.

In 1980 Roe v. Wade was seven years old, and the religious right was in ascendancy.  Social conservatives were the second leg of the Reagan stool.  But this bloc of votes is dispirited, and has disintegrated.  Republicans have not only failed to reverse Roe v. Wade, they’ve been losing the culture wars on all fronts, from gay marriage to transgender rights.  When Cruz lost the evangelicals of the South, his path to victory became narrow and treacherous.  These voters, more than any other, gave Trump his eventual victory.  They care a lot more about Trump’s issues than the ones their Preacher is always talking about.

So we’re left with constitutional conservatives and libertarians.  But we don’t control the Republican Party.  The Chamber of Commerce controls the Republican Party.  These people are in it to line their pockets.  The first step to putting a New Conservative Coalition together is to take control of the Convention in Cleveland.  By doing so, we will write the Rules for the 2020 primary, and write them in our favor.  We also preserve our conservative Platform, and improve it.  Not only will we remain pro-life, we’ll also become pro- Article V, and pro-transfer of federal lands to the States.  Come 2020, these could both be powerful issues.  If Article V continues to make progress, as it will, the realization that the States, and the people, have a way to get control of the federal government will help us put our new coalition together.  And the transfer of federal lands gives us the bedrock of our new coalition  — the Far West.

We need a candidate with the courage to stand up for the bedrock principle of the Constitution  — equality before the law.  In fact, in America today, we are not equal before the law.  Some minorities are given privileges not available to their fellow citizens.  It’s wrong, and everybody knows it’s wrong, and counter productive, and destructive of harmonious racial relations.  But no one will campaign against it, because they’re afraid of being called a racist.

Donald Trump is an unabashed supporter of affirmative action.  If Ted Cruz had gone into the Southern primaries campaigning against him on this issue, he could have won the nomination.  People are very much against affirmative action in the South.  But he was afraid of being called a racist, so he kept quiet.  As did every other Republican running, for the same reason.  None of them had the guts to stand up for equality before the law.

If a political party and its candidate refuse to stand for that, I don’t want any part of them.  The most important accomplishment of my political career was defeating an effort to create an exception to the principle of equality before the law in the Alaska Constitution. I was called a racist, and anti Native. But if fear of being libeled as a racist paralyzes you, you’re not a leader.

The new coalition must be an anti-government coalition.  If you want to fight the federal government, and Congress, and the political class, then you’re with us.  Environmental extremism, over regulation, crony capitalism, and the IRS have combined to create the conditions needed for a revolt against the Washington cartel.  But being anti-government doesn’t mean being necessarily libertarian.  We’re just against the out of control federal government.  Every state can be as libertarian, or as evangelical, as it wants.  We’re a big tent.

For lack of a better term I’ll call it the Federalist Coalition.  It will not be led by neoconservatives, who are really warmed over Wilsonians, or American Imperialists.  The rise of Trump is, in part, a repudiation of foreign entanglements.  NATO is not really an alliance at all.  It’s simply an American guarantee to West Europe against the Russians.  It made sense when Russia was part of the Soviet Union.  But that ended a quarter century ago.  Today, the American people will not send their sons and daughters to die in a European war, and NATO is a dead letter.   Adventurism in the Middle East is also no longer on the table.  Lindsey Graham talks, but nobody listens.  With North America self sufficient in oil and gas, we no longer have a vital national interest in that part of the world, other than guaranteeing Israeli security.  The proper foreign policy for the Republican Party is the peaceful advancement of American interests around the world, in concert with our allies.  We do not seek world hegemony.  It was thrust upon us after world War II, but it was a temporary and unnatural position for a nation such as ours, with no natural enemies, and no desire to rule the world.

Trump’s strident opposition to illegal immigration succeeds because both parties have lied to the American people about this issue for 30 years.  Securing the border and adopting an immigration policy that puts the interests of the American people first is indispensable to the formation of an electoral majority.

Political coalitions come and go.  What must never change is our commitment to the Constitution and the rule of law.  This must be the glue which binds the new Federalist coalition.

2016 may be a disastrous year for American conservatism.  But if we listen to the voters, and heed their concerns, 2020 could be the year of conservative revival.

If not, the party’s over.

 

The differences between Trump and constitutional conservatives are irreconcilable.  Sometimes A is A, B is B, and the distinction between the two means there cannot be an AB.  If Trump is nominated, the GOP will have as its Presidential candidate a man who is at war with the essence of what the Party is, or should be.   Trump doesn’t own the Republican Party, nobody does.  It’s a propositional party, or was, and is dedicated to the Constitution, limited government, and individual liberty.  Trump’s not interested in any of that.  To him, the Party is a means of achieving power, and nothing  more.

We’re at this sorry state of affairs as a result of Bush Republicanism.  It didn’t start with Bush 1, but since 1988 his brand of wishy washy, kinder and gentler, compassionate “conservatism” has owned the Party apparatus and controlled the RNC.  The nomination rules were rigged, but not against Trump or a candidate like him.  They were rigged by Haley Barbour and other Bush Republicans to favor someone like Bush 3, a moderate, establishment candidate.   If Ted Cruz has anything to say about it, that changes in Cleveland.

I saw the same sort of thing happen, and was a foot soldier on its behalf, in San Francisco in 1964.  Goldwater’s nomination was the beginning of the Reagan Revolution.  We had to wait sixteen years for Reagan.  This time, we only have to wait for four.

The first rule must be one that neuters the RNC.  The Convention must set the Rules for 2020.  The RNC must not be given the discretion to change them.  The RNC is controlled  by the Bush wing of the Party, because that’s where the money is.  Money = Establishment in Republican politics, with some honorable exceptions.  But the Fortune 500 is where the bucks are, and that’s Bush country.  These people don’t want to limit government, they want to use it to line their pocketbooks.  We’ll see if the delegates in Cleveland have the courage of their convictions.  Ted Cruz has a vital service to undertake on behalf of constitutional conservatives, and he is just the man for the job.  He may not be a natural politician like Marco Rubio, but in this kind of infighting he should excel.  The outcome of the Republican nomination for President in 2020 may well be decided in Cleveland.

No Democrat should ever be allowed to vote in a Republican primary.  Allowing independents is a different story, and subject to discussion.  And, at a minimum, Colorado should replace Nevada in the primary calendar.  There is much that can be accomplished, and I actually am looking forward to watching the Rules Committee at work.  I’ll learn a lot.  The 2016 Convention of the Republican Party could be the most consequential of my lifetime.

In 1987 Ted Stevens had his ducks lined up.  He and Democrat Governor Steve Cowper were determined to overrule an Alaska Supreme Court decision which held that giving Alaska Natives a subsistence preference to hunting and fishing rights was a violation of the equal protection clause.  Stevens and Cowper wanted a constitutional amendment that would divide Alaskans into two classes, one of which would be given preference over the other.  They were the two most powerful politicians in Alaska, a Republican  and a Democrat, and they had every interest group in the State backing them, from the oil companies to the labor unions.

When it passed the Senate, 14-6, I was shocked.  My drinking buddy, Sen. Tim Kelly of Eagle River had sold his soul to Stevens, and killed his own political career, by providing the winning vote.  I was the leader of the sixteen member House Minority, and I could only lose two.  If I lost three, they had a 2/3 majority and victory.  I watched my members like a hawk, sniffing out any weaknesses.  There was a lot of pressure on this vote, as much as I’ve ever seen.  But we held, and beat it.

In July I was in Santa Barbara with Babbie and the boys when I got the call.  I had to immediately fly back to Juneau to take up the Amendment in a special session.  They kept us there for three days, and then finally held the vote.  We all stood together, and beat them again.  After the vote the Speaker, Sam Cotton, called me up to the podium and said that the Governor wanted to talk to me.  I said, “Why would I want to talk to him?” and we adjourned the next day.

A lot of people in Juneau didn’t like me.  That was fine by me.