Author: Fritz Pettyjohn

Our ideas work, theirs don’t.   Compare California to Texas.  Which one is working, and why?   Compare Reagan to any of those who came after him.  He put this country back on track, with policies that worked.  Bush 1 was Reagan’s third term, but without Reagan.  Instead we got a kinder, gentler and pale imitation of the original.  Which led immediately to Clinton, the phony conservatism of Bush 2, and Obama.

In politics you’re making a sale, and it matters what you’re selling.  The dog food has to taste good, it’s got to do what you say it’s going to do.  Clinton is running for Obama’s third term, but in the final days his record of incompetency is catching up with her.  Obamacare is such a colossal wreck that it could cost her the election.  If she does lose, don’t blame the FBI.  These premium increases are coming at exactly the wrong time.  They open up old wounds.  Why didn’t Obama delay them, on some pretext, for two weeks?   It could prove a fatal mistake.

Or not.  Babbie and I watched the World Series, and the campaign ads were instructive.  These were the best messages the two campaigns have.  Clinton hit him as a sexist pig.  Trump called her a liar and a thief.  Both ads were effective, because they were both true.  But there was flaw in Trump’s ad, perhaps caused by his Achilles heel, his vanity.  The ad ended with a picture of him, and that was a mistake.  The charges in his ad may have been true, but they were being made by a man who is personally loathed.  That’s why he’s a two to one underdog today.  No one is going to change their mind about how they feel about these two.  That’s baked in.  We know who they are.  But that small businesswoman in Michigan, or Wisconsin, or Pennsylvania has to decide which poison to pick.  If she holds Clinton responsible for her Obamacare problems, she may cover her eyes and vote for a man she despises.  Or not.  On such things this election will turn.

Congress looks to stay pretty much the same.  No one even remarks about it anymore, but every two years we get a demonstration of the corruption of Congress.  A few uninformed voters approve of Congress.  Anyone with a brain knows they’re a collection of political whores who have created an incumbency protection racket.  A 98% reelection rate, cycle after cycle.  All they care about is their power and perks.  Most of us that have been in politics have seen what service in Congress does to people.  They start out with the best of intentions, and then they get sucked in to the system, the bubble. Life’s good in the bubble, and they hang on to it for dear life.  Only an outside force  — the States, using Article V — can burst that bubble.

I was thinking about yesterday’s post, and American blacks.  I realized Obama is not one of them.  His father was a Kenyan, not an American, and he dreams of his father.  Real black Americans have an attachment to this country, even when some of them hate white people.  They played an indispensable role in making it.  When Washington marched south with the French, heading for Yorktown, and victory in the War of Independence, as many as 20% of the Americans under his command were free blacks.  A lot of blacks serve in the military today, and wear their uniform proudly.  They’re American patriots.  Obama’s not like them at all.  Deep in his bones he’s a Kenyan, not an American.  Begone with him.

Project 2017, the plan to get 34 States this year, is in the advanced planning stages, and all goes well.  The Presidential election has no bearing on our plans, except to the extent that a Democratic Senate would pose a problem.  But I think we could even overcome that.  Joe Manchin does want to get reelected after all, as do a number of other red State Democrats.  To survive the 2018 midterms, the Senate Democrats can’t be too overtly partisan when it comes to aggregating Article V Resolutions.

We’re about to enter the dark season of the year.  From now until the winter solstice, right before Christmas, every day will be shorter than the one before.  And then the days of light start to come back.

 

I can’t quite understand a lot of the hysteria surrounding this election, as though end times are at hand, and the world will go all to hell if one or the other of these disgraceful people is elected.  This election has no significance, and neither do either of the candidates.  Regardless of who wins, some very difficult days lie ahead.  But we’ll get by.  We always do.  What’s the alternative?

My political life began in 1960, when we elected a charismatic young Senator who had no idea of what he was doing, and got us on to the path to disaster in Vietnam.  Then he was assassinated, a wound that still festers for those my age.  Johnson took over, and the debacle in Southeast Asia came to a head.  He lied about the war, just like he lied about everything else, and was hounded out of office, a national disgrace.  Then the criminal Nixon, the inept Ford, and the fool Carter.  We had eight good years with the Gipper, then the feckless Bush 1.  Then the Clinton crime family had eight years in power, followed by the half witted Bush 2, and then the man who didn’t really like the country he was elected to lead, Barack Obama.  And you’re telling me four more years of this garbage is what is going to finally be the downfall of America?  Rubbish.

Trump’s drawing to an inside straight, and could get lucky.  So what?  Don’t talk to me about judicial appointments.  Judges only run this country when the people actually responsible for running it, in Congress, refuse to do their job.  Give me a Congress with a will, and a leader, and we’ll take this country back, otherwise forget it.  Trump has no idea of what’s involved in being a successful President.  He’s a celebrity, with no real talent, another Kardashian.  He’s run a celebrity campaign, and would be a celebrity President, and a total failure.  If you want to know what kind of a Presidency to expect, look at the way the President-elect ran his campaign, what kind of candidate he was.  Trump is only able to discipline himself for short periods of time, then he gets bored, and wants to do his lounge act.  Since he’s a “Republican” he’d screw things up for the whole party.

The one thing he would do is get us an Article V Convention, but it would not be by design.  He wouldn’t lift a finger to help us get to 34 States.  What’s in it for him?  But with Trump in the White House, and the R’s running Congress, we’d finally get some Democratic legislators to vote for a Balanced Budget Amendment.  It would be a way to restrain Trump’s spending, so they’d like that.  They just don’t want a Democratic President’s spending habits restricted.

But we’re going to get to 34 before long, and when we do it will be the most significant political event since the R’s took Congress in 1994.   What we need is another Newt Gingrich, not another Ronald Reagan.  A month from now I’ll be in D.C, reporting live from Article V Central.  It will be remembered as the tipping point in this whole campaign, which Lew Uhler started nearly 40 years ago.

This election is the reverse of the World Series, where you want both teams to win.  Most Americans want both of these people to lose.  Baseball’s more fun than politics.

 

No matter who wins this election, the Clintons are going down.  The FBI took out Nixon.  He had it coming.  It will take down Clinton, in much the same way.  If you’re running a crime family, you don’t want to piss off the FBI.  Big mistake.  Like David Goldman at PJ Media, I tip my hat to these patriots.  Somebody still believes in this country.

The Clintons, Obama, and the left in general don’t love their country, not the way normal Americans do.  From the day the English landed at Jamestown, 409 years ago, we’ve taken the land that once belonged to the Native Americans.  And just twelve years later, in 1619, we imported our first black slaves.  And the labor of those black slaves produced most of the wealth in our early history.   That wealth was not only the backbone of the Southern way of life, it provided capital for the North, and fueled the entire economy.  Of all the people of the world, black Africans were the only ones capable of performing this labor.  The Mason-Dixon Line is also roughly the malaria line.  South of it, malaria was a debilitating and even deadly disease.  But not for black Africans.  They came from lands infested with malaria, and had evolved special genetic defenses against it.  This special genetic endowment allowed blacks to thrive, even in slavery.  Their numbers increased exponentially, and at the time of the Revolution a full one quarter of Americans were black.  I remember reading a book by a black American journalist who had spent a lot of time in Africa.  He said he got down on his knees and thanked God his ancestors were brought to this country.  And he was right.  It’s their country just as much as it is mine, and it’s the best one around.

So, like most normal Americans, I’m glad my black fellow citizens have full and equal rights.  I’m going to treat them the same way I treat every other fellow citizen, no better, no worse.  But the left is on a guilt trip about slavery.  They won’t give up on it.  They’re like some Jews are about the Holocaust.  They won’t let it go.  So the left insists on giving special treatment to blacks, as a form of reparations.  But it does more harm than good.  But they don’t care.  The race hustlers and the Democrats, in on the scam together.  The black grievance industry.  It gets a lot of votes.  The blacks actually don’t get much out of it, and some of them, like Jason Riley of the WSJ, are trying to show what’s really going on.  The truth will out.

Which gets me back to the Clintons, and their death knell.  The truth will out.  And justice will be served.

Somebody’s going to lose this election, but nobody is going to win it.  Whoever “wins” will be roundly detested by most Americans.  One third of the country hates Clinton, one third hates Trump, and the other third hates them both.  It will be hard to govern when 2/3 of the population can’t stand to see your face on television.  The 45th President of the United States will fail, spectacularly.

The smart money is still on a close Clinton win, and no coattails.  I really don’t think it matters much who controls the Senate.  Nothing’s going to get done, either way, as long as the R’s keep the House.  Wall Street doesn’t want anything done.  It wants gridlock, and it looks like that’s what we’ll have.

This joke of an election is just a sign, a symptom, of our real problem.  Our political system, at the national level, is broken, and beyond repair. It is so clogged with rent seekers and tit suckers it can’t function properly.  And it’s completely bipartisan.  The Republicans in Congress, with few exceptions, are almost as bad as the Democrats.  They’ve all sold out.  They’ve all bought in, or have been bought off.  The entire system is irredeemable, in the sense that it can’t fix itself.  A superior, outside force must be brought to bear.

This is what the Framers had in mind when they wrote Article V.  They didn’t design it for light or transient causes.  The normal Amendment process could handle that.  But when the existential problem is the federal government, and the Congress itself, that’s when the States must step in.   And that’s where we are today.

Bill Fruth and I have figured something out, and if we’ve got it figured right we’re going to pull this off.  I feel it in my bones.  From Florida to Alaska, and Maine to California, the word’s going to get out.  And when the word gets out, it will take on a life of its own.  It couldn’t happen at a better time, really.  Whatever happens next week, a lot of people are going to throw up their hands in despair.  We’re going to offer a way out.

Looking forward to ALEC in D.C. on Nov. 30th.   It was three years ago, exactly, when I decided to dive back in to the game.  I spent a few thousand dollars and went the ALEC meeting as an alumni legislator.  Same hotel as this year.  That’s when I met Fruth.  He didn’t make much of an impression on me.  He looked like an accountant.  Fruth’s a numbers guy, without a whole lot of political experience.  So I underestimated him.  Turns out he’s a hell of a lot more than a numbers guy.

I made a lot of friends three years ago, and hope to make some more at ALEC.

I wouldn’t bet on it, but Trump may have a shot at winning.  I doubt he’ll get there because of one particular group of women.  They’re Republicans who live in the Philadelphia suburbs, and they’re his problem in Pennsylvania.  He’s sending his wife there to give a speech.  I doubt they’ll be impressed.

Republicans around country seem to be reconciling themselves to Trump, but not these women.  He’s only getting around 75% of Pennsylvania Republicans because of them.  If he can’t turn them around he’ll lose Pennsylvania, and the Presidency.  Good luck with that, Donald, they think you’re a pig in a wig.  Their memory of the Access Hollywood tape will not be erased, and that alone disqualifies you.  I don’t think they’ll ever vote for you.  If I’m wrong about that, this whack job could be President.

So we get some decent judicial appointments.  Whoop de do.  Is Chief Justice Roberts going to use his five member majority to restore the Constitution?  Good luck with that.  If Obamacare is constitutional, what isn’t?   The importance of the Court is overblown.. They’re not the real problem, and they’re sure as hell not the solution.

And our problem for the last eight years hasn’t really been Obama.  The problem is Congress.  It’s a parliament of whores.  90% of them, Republican and Democrat, are careerists more interested in winning elections than serving their country.  If you have majorities in both Houses of Congress you run the show.  You call all the shots.  Nothing happens that you don’t want to happen.  But that’s only if you do your duty.  If you want to secure reelection, above all else, you don’t rock the boat, you pay off the special interests that fund your campaigns, and you don’t piss anyone off by actually doing anything.

That’s Congress, and it’s not going to change no matter who is President.  Trump probably doesn’t realize it, but he’s not going to get anything done if he does win.  He’ll have less power than Obama, because the Courts won’t defer to him as they did with Obama.  And the problem is not the leadership, Ryan and McConnell.  The problem is the members.  They’re worse than worthless, and they’re why nothing gets done.  The House Freedom Caucus needs to realize that getting rid of Speaker Ryan isn’t going to do any good.  The real problem is the 90% of the Republican Caucus that is not part of the Freedom Caucus.

In his final argument for the Constitution, in Federalist 85, Hamilton closed with what he thought was the clinching argument in its favor.  Our freedom was assured, he said, because “We may safely rely on the disposition of the State legislatures to erect barriers against the encroachments of the national authority.”  The States, under Article V, would always be there to ride to the rescue.

The time is ripe.