Month: July 2016

My hunch is that Cruz’s failure to endorse was more personal than political.   Trump insulted his wife and implied his father was an accomplice in Kennedy’s assassination.  If someone does something like that to you, are you going to tell people to vote for him for President?   Cruz may just be acting like a normal husband and son.  Politicians don’t have exclusively political motives.  Sometimes, it’s personal.  Cruz will wait and see.  He could endorse Trump in October to greater effect than today.

Ivanka Trump is one of the best arguments for voting for her father.  He listens to her, and trusts her judgement, and values her opinion of him.  The love of a daughter can restrain even someone as impulsive as Trump.  The big fear with Trump is that he’d do something really nutty, and harmful to this country, and wouldn’t listen to reason.  With Ivanka and her husband keeping an eye on him that’s unlikely.  Maybe.

I bought some COP this morning, on the off chance that Trump will endorse opening ANWR tonight, or at least state his support for the Transfer of Public Lands.  Harold Hamm’s speech last night was an implicit endorsement of TPL, and now there’s talk that he might be Secretary of Energy.  It would all make political and economic sense, with only the environmentalists upset.  They all hate Trump anyway, so no loss.  He could tie it all in with the Keystone Pipeline in one pretty package.

Hal Wick of South Dakota tried to get the Article V BBA into the GOP Platform, but lacked support on the Committee.  This was a failure of organization on our part.  The Trump forces on Platform were not whipping against us, which is some consolation.  He may have an open mind on this.  Ivanka could turn him if she wanted to.  So there’s some cause for hope.

Better news from the Assembly of State Legislatures recent meeting in Philadelphia.  45 States were represented, and, in this their fifth meeting, they were able to adopt proposed Rules for an Amendment Convention.  This is major progress, and will be helpful as we make our push to 34 next year.

Tony Schwartz ghost wrote The Art of the Deal, and tells all to the New Yorker.  This guy thinks Trump’s crazy, and he got to know him up close and personal.  He’s a big time liberal, so take it with a grain of salt.  Why did this guy wait until Trump got the nomination?  He makes Trump sound like he’s got the attention span of a gnat, refuses to do due diligence, and is a kind of sociopath.  This doesn’t square with Trump’s current family life, but who the hell knows?  I guess we’ll all find out.

I don’t feel comfortable giving power to a man with such deep insecurities as Trump.  Clinton’s no better, unfortunately.  She’s a bitter, angry woman, who has been humiliated by her sexual predator husband since they moved back to Arkansas.  In her own way, she’s as much of a nut as Trump.  I don’t trust her as far as I can throw her.  She’d be a terrible President.  But so would Trump.  Maybe.

Gary Johnson would do a good job, though he needs to reexamine his position on immigration.  We’re a libertarian country in a world hostile to libertarianism.  Every person we allow into this country is being granted a privilege, and they have to be of value to the current citizenry to justify that privilege.  That’s not jingoism, it’s common sense.  But unless Johnson starts making some waves in August he won’t make the debates, so it would all be moot.  He needs some political imagination, which is in short supply.

I didn’t parse Cruz’s language on his recommendation for election day.  He may have been hinting:  take a look at the Libertarian.  I was very pleased to see him go whole hog against the establishment.  They’re the real problem, and that’s where the votes are.  Cruz will still be on the sunny side of 50 in 2020, and I don’t think he hurt himself last night.  He’s willing to gamble that Trump either loses or is a disaster in the White House.  If Trump is something of a success as President he’s probably a one termer anyway, and 2020 would be wide open.

The best thing Cruz can do is get involved with the Article V movement.  It’s right, and it’s a political winner.  He’d make a lot of friends if he did.

Cruz was the last man standing between Trump and the nomination, because he was almost as anti-establishment as Trump.  He just got out-disestablishmented by a showman with extremely unusual talents.  The antidisestablishmentarians (I’ve always wanted to use that word) didn’t want either one of them, and never will, though for different reasons.

I hope Cruz takes on the establishment tonight, harder than ever.  They’re responsible for Trump.  They set the stage he performs on.

My friends from Alaska say they aren’t mad at Trump for having their votes stolen.  It wasn’t Trump, it was the RNC  — some pinhead lawyer who saw an ambiguity in Alaska’s Rules, and used it to give a State the shaft.  Brilliant!  Oh, yeah, he also screwed up the timing of the whole show while Alaska was being needlessly polled.  This guy’s got a bright future in politics.

He’s part of the RNC establishment that needs to go out on its ear.  The RNC is controlled by a majority of its 156 members.  Alaska has three, so 76 to go to a majority.  Start with Wyoming, which I am very pleased to see is sharing venues with the Alaska delegation in Cleveland.  These are Wyoming contacts that I will try to exploit next year in the Wyoming legislature for the Article V BBA.  Take over the RNC, and clean house on these time servers.  After Wyoming go to North Dakota and talk to Curly Haugland, and than call Morton Blackwell of Virginia.  Colorado should be eager to join.  This can be done, and it should be done.  Alaska needs some payback.

I’d like to see Dave Donley, my old friend from the legislature lead the charge.  He was the guy who objected, and called for a poll of the Alaska delegation.  He walked off the floor in disgust when they finally ruled against Alaska.  I didn’t recognize him when I saw him on C-SPAN.  It’s been 25 years.  Donley always had balls.  We served in the House together, and back then he was a Democrat. In the biggest vote in my legislative career, the vote against a subsistence Amendment, I had to keep 14 of my 16 Republican members with me, and I did.  But on the final vote I found out I had one to spare  — Dave Donley, the only Democrat in the legislature with the balls to stand up for what was right.

They’re loading a tanker in Valdez, destination Far East.  That’s the other part of the Transfer of Public Lands, the geopolitical part.   With federal Western lands transferred to the States, the entire region will boom economically.  Not to the extent of North Dakota, but big nonetheless.  The fracking revolution will double in size.  Estimates of the value of hydrocarbons on these lands is in the trillions, but nobody really knows.  You’ve got to drill, baby, drill.  We’ll be exporting our LNG all over the world, and as energy suppliers we will have influence wherever we sell.

And then there’s Alaska, and ANWR.  Open it up and export the product to Japan and South Korea, binding them tightly to us with commerce.  All of Alaska’s economy would rebound.  We could even have a timber industry again.

The impact would be felt in every corner of America, just as it was back in the pipeline days of Alaska, except this will be much, much bigger.  TPL, alone, could trigger a national economic recovery, with real jobs going to American working men, at good wages.

The good people at the American Lands Council, who are at the center of the TPL effort, don’t want to talk about this.  They say suburban women will oppose it for environmental reasons.  And they may be right, this may not be the way to sell TPL to the public.  That doesn’t make it any less true.  I’ll let Trump decide that.  How can this issue not appeal to him?  Win the West, and win the country.

It was good to see crazy Jerry Ward at the Convention, all decked out like an Indian, which he is.  I served in the legislature with Jerry, and he was a character.  A little hot headed, he nearly punched out the lieutenant governor one day.  He and his lovely wife Margaret  must be coming up on their 50th.  My regards.

Rules are made to be broken, according to the RNC.  It’s like when I was in the Alaska Senate, and complained to Senate Majority Leader Bill Ray that he was conducting the business of the Senate in violation of the duly enacted Rules of the Alaska Legislature.  He explained that the “rules” were really just guidelines, and that the only Rule that mattered was Rule 11.  Eleven votes was a majority, and that was the rule that counted.

On March 1st thousands of Alaskan Republicans voted in precinct caucuses, from Ketchikan out to Nome, 1300 miles away.  Cruz won by 622 votes, and was awarded 12 delegates, to Trump’s 11 and Rubio’s 5.  That’s the vote State Party Chair Tuckerman Babcock just announced to the Chair of the Convention.  But by some cynical interpretation of the “rules” of the RNC, all 28 Alaskan delegates were counted as Trump votes.  The express will of the voters, and the delegates they elected, was ignored.

This was completely unnecessary.  It’s as though Trump and Manafort are little mini-nazis, throwing their weight around because they can.  This attitude does not bode well for Trump.  Attitude counts, or at least it used to.  I always thought Reagan’s humility was one of his great political assets.  But that was long ago.

I’ve seen enough of Donald Trump to form an opinion of him, as a man, and that’s not going to change.  But one of his flaws, his ignorance, may represent an opportunity.  I think he knows full well that he doesn’t understand all of the issues, and will need guidance to make sound decisions.  If he listens to sound people, giving sound advice, there’s a good chance he’ll follow it.  I feel like I’m grasping at straws with this guy, trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, and it’s hard.  With him, hope is all you’ve got.

One of Trump’s henchmen in Alaska, Jim Crawford, served on Platform with Judy Eledge-Norton, and supported her successful efforts to insert the Transfer of Public Lands into the GOP Platform.  The Trump forces were in control of Platform.  Nothing went in over their objection, and they didn’t object to TPL.  To me, this means Trump realizes he made a mistake opposing TPL, and has changed his position.

After he won Nevada, either he or someone on his behalf looked at the State to see where he did well, relative to his total statewide.  He won every county in the state but two, and he knew why.  Those counties were the birthplace of the Sagebrush Rebellion, and Cruz campaigned there on TPL.  Largely on the strength of that issue, Cruz proceeded to make a virtual sweep of the Far West, beginning in Alaska, where his win was unexpected.  Trump has figured out that TPL is a political winner, and will use it to try and win Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico.  All four states have over a third of their land in federal ownership, and they want their land.  This issue could put him over the top in all four.

If Trump wins we could actually get our land.  It all traces back to the call I made to the Cruz campaign’s  Joseph Semprevivo five months ago.  This issue, or this movement, if you will, is blossoming before our eyes.

I’ll never forget, the night before the Nevada vote, Trump was at a rally in a Vegas hotel.  He meanders on to the subject of the Transfer of Public Lands, and he says, almost apologetically, ” . . it’s not a subject I know anything about.”  It was an awkward moment, which he escaped by telling someone in the crowd to go ahead and punch some guy.

Trump’s not stupid, and his political gut is telling him this issue is a winner.  I’ll be looking for it in his acceptance speech.  As the world turns.

 

That’s what the little boy said when he saw a pile of horse manure under the Christmas tree.   The manure, in this case, was the afternoon session of the GOP Convention, with its totally unnecessary strong arm tactics from the Chair.  All the dissidents wanted was a vote on the Rules.  They may or may not have had the votes, but it was foolish to deny it to them.  This was the only chance any of them had to have a personal involvement in the proceedings.  For the next three and a half days they’ll be mere props in  an orchestrated bit of television theater.  They’ve spent thousands of, mostly, their own money to come thousands of miles, in some cases.  They’re pissed off.  This is not the way to unity.

Trump seems graceless in victory, one of his many unappealing qualities.  It reminded me of his gratuitous slander of Rafael Cruz on the eve of winning the nomination in Indiana.  It is the mark of an insecure man, which describes Trump to a T.  He resembles Nixon in a number of ways.  Nixon was not a good man, or a very good President.

But, behold, a pony!   Sen. Barrasso of Wyoming, co-chair of Platform, gave a very brief description of his committee’s work product.  The only specific item I recall him mentioning was, — ta da! — the Transfer of Public Lands.  Wyoming is near the top of the list of States who very much want their land.  Barrasso is one of the smartest and most respected men in the Senate, and part of its leadership.  He’s dedicated to doing right by his State, and he knows that TPL would be a boon to the Wyoming economy, which is suffering right now with the coal industry.  If the loon Trump manages to get elected, and the R’s keep the Senate, we could see a major push in Congress for TPL next year.  It could even happen.  Glory be.

I gather from Alaska friends in Cleveland that one of Cruz’s Alaska Co-chairs, Judy Norton-Eledge, who served on Platform, may have played an important role, along with Marti Halvorson of Wyoming, in  getting TPL adopted.  If so, mega congrats to Judy, who I’ve only talked to on the phone, but have been impressed with.  Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska is slated for a speaking slot.  He’s a fool if he doesn’t talk about the importance of TPL to Alaska and the other western States.

Republican Congressman Zinke from Montana doesn’t like TPL.  He’s a fool.  He may be thinking of running against Tester for the Senate in 2018.  If he doesn’t turn around on TPL, he’ll be challenged in the primary, on that issue.  Zinke is a bad ass former Navy Seal, and new to politics.  Maybe he can learn.

Tonight I’m having a beer in honor of Cheniere Energy, and it visionary founder, who I believe is Lebanese-American.  One of their tankers is unloading its cargo of LNG in the Middle East.  That’s right, because of fracking, we’re exporting hydrocarbons to the greatest oil and gas region in the world.   That, my friends, is America for you.

I don’t like Trump, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong, and he’s mainly right.  I don’t like saying that, but it’s true.  Apparently the only change demanded by the Trump forces at Platform related to the deletion of a section promising lethal aid to Ukraine.  This was the neocon section of the Platform, and it’s out.  Eat your heart out, Bill Kristol.  Trump doesn’t want to confront Vladimir Putin in his own back yard.  So, yes, it’s scary to think about him in power, but at least he doesn’t want to piss off the second most powerful military in the world.

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit said that on his drive home from Kansas he noticed a lot of apparent good will being exchanged by a lot of black and white Americans to each other.  That’s heartening.  Right after the Dallas shooting I was being checked out by a young black girl, working in some store.  I paid her and gave her my brightest and friendliest smile, and thanked her.  She gave me a great big smile back.  We all need to do a lot more of that.

Until recently, I’ve suffered from it myself, and it partially accounts for my inability to acknowledge Trump’s political skills.  But after Baton Rouge, he’s got a better than even shot at the White House, so it’s time to think about him as President, however distasteful that may be. Nate Silver’s giving him a 37% shot now, but Nate follows the polls, and is a lagging indicator.

How bad might he be?  Really, really bad, almost as bad as Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Bush 2, and Barack Obama.  And that’s bad.  But he probably wouldn’t be any worse.  And he wouldn’t be any worse than Hillary Clinton.  So the country will survive him, just as we survived them.  When they designed our government, the Framers made sure that no one man could ruin it.  And no one has yet, although we’re heading in that direction, or so it seems on days like today, with three more police officers dead in the street.  That’s the sort of thing we just can’t tolerate in this country, and it’s got to stop.

Everybody hates Nixon, but six months after he was inaugurated he started pulling our troops out of Vietnam, and he never stopped.  Even the Nixons of this world can do the right thing.  Trump is capable of it as well.  The main thing is, I don’t think he has a penchant for war, and would not squander American lives overseas, as Johnson and Bush 2 did.  That’s the main thing to me.  He knows NATO is a cold war relic, nothing more than an empty American guarantee of Europe’s borders.  A guarantee that isn’t worth the paper it’s written on, because the American people will not allow it to happen.  And Trump just isn’t stupid enough to get in a war with China.  That would take someone with deep, deep stupidity.

His protege, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner seems to have as much influence with him as anyone.  I like this guy.  I admire him for winning the hand of Ivanka, and getting her to become an Orthodox Jew.  And I like the way he torpedoed Chris Christie, the guy who screwed his father, who he is extremely loyal to.  He seems like an extremely bright guy.  His father was a big time Democratic donor, but who knows with the son.

Kushner’s grandparents were Holocaust survivors, and he’s a hard core Jew.  Since he’s so devoted to his father, he may have picked up his leftism as well.  He’s as much of a cipher as his father in law.

His old man got in a business dispute with his brother in law, so he hired a hooker to get him filmed in the act, and sent the film to his sister.  I’m sorry, I kind of like this guy.  That’s pretty creative.  But Christie wanted his ass, and insisted on a full two year term, in spite of the old man’s numerous good works.  Jared Kushner didn’t forget, and Chris Christie’s role in a Trump administration will be limited.  If I wanted a friend in Washington right now, Kushner would be a guy to know.

I expect to be impressed with Trump’s acceptance speech.  It writes itself.  And this guy has a good ear.  He has a sense of where the people of this country are coming from.  And he has some things to say about it.  The guys at the Elks Club will eat it up.

The Center has been lying to us about immigration for years, and we’ve had enough.  And we want all American policies, foreign and domestic, to be decided by one principle  — what’s in the best interest of the citizens of the United States?

Why is that so hard to understand?