Author: Fritz Pettyjohn

That’s the way people like Trump look at politicians.  Why suffer the hassle of running for, and holding office, when you can buy or otherwise influence or control, a whole bunch of elected officials?  This seems to be the way Trump operates his businesses as well.   Why go through the hassle of running a company, when you can hire someone to do it for you?  Trump’s a big picture guy, who doesn’t want to sweat the details unless he has to.

In a sense, honest people who run for public office, as I did in Alaska, are fools.  I was in the Alaska Legislature from 1982 to 1990, at a time when  there was so much oil money coming out of Prudhoe Bay that everybody  in Alaska with any sense and ambition was getting rich.  The lobbyists who would follow me into the bathroom when I was taking a leak, in order to get a word in with me, were making as much as half a million a year.  I made $45,000 for a four month session, sometimes longer.  If I would have sold out, as a lot of people in the Legislature did, I could have made big money too.

I’m not complaining.  If had sold out, I would have been a whore, and I would no longer have any self respect.  I’m saying guys like Trump think I’m some kind of chump.  And maybe I am.

And so is Mike Pence.  He’s worth $500,000. Total.  He’s 57 years old, an able, capable man, at the height of his earning potential.   And he’s still putting money away for his kids’ college.   What a chump.

Trump and I are alike in many ways, and neither one of us should ever be President.  I think Trump is as smart as I am, and there’s good and bad in that.  Big picture guys, guys that don’t like to sweat the details, who don’t like being in a lot of meetings, who don’t put up with any bullshit, who are impatient with dullards, who just want to do things rather than talk about doing them, these kind of guys would not be good Presidents.  For a :President, you want a normal, intelligent and diligent man.  You want a Reagan, or a Pence.  Trump’s not normal, and he’s only diligent if he really has to be.  That covers me, as well.

What Trump is, is a traitor to his class.  He comes from a different world than the one I came from.  And I believe he wants to do right by people like those I grew up with.

I’m going to see him tomorrow in Reno.  It’s about 100 miles as the crow flies from where I live in the Gold Country.  I’ll get there early, so I can get as close to him as I can.  I want a real good look at him.  I won’t be wearing any Trump paraphernalia.  Just an old Goldwater button.

The idea of Trump exercising the Moses Option is based on a couple factoids.  I saw Donnie Deutsch on WADR back in July, and he swore Donald Trump had no interest in serving as President.  He claims to know Trump personally, and finds it inconceivable that Trump would exchange his fabulous lifestyle for the grind of the Presidency.  Later, on Morning Joe, he restated his case, predicting that Trump wants to start a new Trump TV Network, or something.  This makes sense to me.  The idea of running for an office, winning, but not actually serving, appeals to certain people.  I’m one of them.  I ran in four elections, won them all, and, as a result, was forced to serve eight difficult years in the State Legislature, where I mainly wasted my time, and put a strain on my family.  If I could have won the election, and then had someone else actually go to Juneau for four months or more, I might have done it.

The other clue is Trump’s refusal to confirm that he would serve if elected.  Just three months ago he told the NYT they’d have to wait and see if he would actually serve.  He said the same thing back in 2015.  So if he pulls a Moses, it ‘s not like we weren’t warned.

But he doesn’t have to wait until after the election to do a Moses.  He could do it tomorrow, or he could do it at the end of the third debate on Oct. 19th, or any time between.  He could do it the last week of the election, for that matter.  He just announces he’s withdrawing from the race, and asks Reince Priebus and the RNC to name Mike Pence as the replacement GOP Presidential nominee, with the Vice President to be selected jointly with Pence.  Trump’s name would appear on the ballot, but that wouldn’t matter.  Pence would be the Presidential nominee of the Republican Party.  You’re not voting for Trump, even though his name is listed.  You’d be voting for Pence.

I think Pence would win in a landslide.  He’s got Trump’s positives without his negatives.  He’d unite the Party, and win the independents easily.  Republicans would keep the Senate, and President Pence can do what Trump would have done if he were elected.

Does this make Trump a quitter, or a genius?

His name wouldn’t go down in the history books as President.  He’d have a special category, all to himself.  He will have transformed the Republican Party in his own image, changed the direction of American trade, immigration and foreign policy, and gone a long way to fulfill his promise to Make America Great Again.  Does that sound like a loser to you?   Or political genius  – – winning by losing.

The Trump brand, and the Trump family, would be American icons.  He could have an appointment as a roving Ambassador without portfolio, flying around the world in his Trump plane, making deals.  And, yes, Donnie, he could have his own TV network, if he wanted one.  He’d go back to living the high life, and no one would begrudge him a thing.  Even the people who loathe him, personally, would have to tip their hats.  What a guy.

Having gotten to know a little about how Trump operates, I can only imagine the way he’d orchestrate the whole thing.  It would be dramatic, that’s for sure.  Trump has confounded the chattering class this whole campaign.  With this move, he’d leave them speechless.

Because of his pride, Yahweh did not allow Moses to enter the Promised Land, and Joshua went in his stead.  But Moses is the man we all remember from the Exodus, and honor to this day.  Let Pence be Joshua.  Trump can be Moses.

 

“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?”

From “The Second Coming” by W. B. Yeats in 1919.

 

The center certainly wasn’t holding in 1919.  The whole world was going to hell.  The War to Make the World Safe for Democracy had been won, but all about was chaos, as ancient empires and powerful kingdoms collapsed.

We’re a lot better off today than we were in 1919.  It was a terrible year in American, as well as world, history.  President Wilson had lost his mind, and the government was being run by his nutty wife.  And everything seemed to be coming apart.

Then we had an election, the greatest landslide in American political history, and we returned to normalcy.   That’s what most Americans want, normalcy.  And who’s the most normal politician around?  Mike Pence, the normal man from the normal State of Indiana, where normal was born.

Everybody will get to see him Tuesday night, and it will be like a breath of fresh air.  Why can’t this guy be President?  That’s what everyone will be asking.

Trump’s surrogates are now calling him a genius, which may, in fact, be true.  But geniuses don’t blow a race against the most disliked woman in America, which he is in the process of doing.  Unless he really is a genius, and is exercising the Moses Option.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Senate race in Alaska and, if he doesn’t screw up, Miller should win it.  All the stars are aligned.  It’s like the perfect set up.  Murkowski doesn’t have a political base.  She’s not a conservative, but she’s not a liberal either.  She’s nothing, but a set of platitudes rattling around in her head.  She’s not handing out the money the way Ted Stevens did.  Those days are over, Ted’s dead.  She’s got the Native Corporations, and some other special interests, but Big Labor hates her, the Bernie Brigade hates her, the conservatives hate her, and everyone understands she doesn’t have a brain in her head.  Miller’s going to beat her.  He’s a good enough candidate to do it.  You don’t need to be Marco Rubio to win a Senate seat in Alaska.  It’s a small pond, in terms of political talent.

There’s a way to get the story on Montana Gov. Bullock out into the public.  Actually, more than one.  Plenty of time to try a few.  I really don’t like Bullock.  He doesn’t seem like a Montanan to me, just a slippery lawyer.   Gianforte would probably be a great Governor, in the mold of Matt Bevin in Kentucky.  And we could use some help on Article V.

There’s a small storm gathering out of the Northwest.  It will blow over by morning.

 

 

Clinton played the sex card at the debate, and Trump flinched.  He could have hit back, hard, but decided against it, and it’s been stuck in his craw ever since.  He’s been thinking about it all week, and finally he made his decision, at 3:00 in the morning a couple days ago.

She made the bet, on her sex card, and he folded on Monday.  Now he’s decided not to just call her bet, or raise it, but to go all in on it.  He’ll win or lose the election on this hand.  It’s time to show your cards, and see what you’ve got.

They both have good hands to show, but, in fact, Trump’s is better.  He’s a serial adulterer, a sexual braggart, and has been demeaning to women.  He’s treated them like sex objects for most of his life.  He’s the kind of man I can never have any respect for, on that count alone.  I believe you can judge a man on how he treats women, and Trump gets a failing grade.

But Bill Clinton is a wholly different story.  He’s a  serial sexual criminal, and in the law it is a felony to aid and abet in the perpetration of a crime, so Hillary is just as guilty as he is.  In a sense, she’s worse, because she’s a woman, and she betrayed her own sex.  And she’s so smug about it.  That’s what drives me crazy.

The editors at American Thinker decided against my Paula Jones piece, even after I switched it to the third person in the post before this.  They said it didn’t contain anything new, and that’s true, and that was sort of the point.  They and I are familiar with that story, but millions of low information voters are not, especially the younger ones.

I’d get Paula in front of a camera and have her read that script, or a modified version of it.  It’s all true, it’s her story, and most Americans have never had the chance to hear her tell her side of it.  Because of her courage, a sexual predator named Bill Clinton, President of the United States, was exposed as who he was, and was impeached.  Not bad for a good ol’ gal from Arkansas.  She’s proud of what she did, and has a right to be.  Let her tell her story.

This is a high stakes gamble, to put it mildly.  The media will fight him tooth and nail.  But the truth is, nothing Donald Trump has done is criminal.  That gives him a big advantage.  So let the steel cage death match begin.  Two enter, only one will come out.

And if it’s not Trump, there’s always the Moses Option.

 

In 1991 she was working as a temp, at a booth that was set up in the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock, Arkansas.  She was 25 and single, and when the Governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton, came by and chatted with her for a little while she was flattered.  Later that day an Arkansas State Trooper came by to tell her the Governor wanted her to visit him in his hotel room.  She didn’t know what to think, and agreed to go with the Trooper to Clinton’s hotel room.

The Trooper stayed outside as Governor Clinton invited her in.  He then pulled down his trousers, exposing himself, and asked her for oral sex.  She was amazed and horrified, and got out of that room as fast as she could.  She told some friends and family about what happened, and they were all disgusted with him, but there really wasn’t anything she could do about it.  It would be her word against the Governor, and she wouldn’t have a chance.

In 1994, after Clinton had been elected President, she saw an article in the American Spectator magazine by David Brock.  It mentioned her by my name, Paula, and it implied that she was a willing sex partner with Clinton.  That was a lie, and she decided that the true story of what happened should be made public, and that she should file a lawsuit for sexual harassment.  She wasn’t able to get a lawyer until two days before the Statute of Limitations would have barred her suit.

Clinton’s lawyers claimed he couldn’t be sued, as President, for something he’d done before he was elected, and this delayed things for three years.  Then in 1997 the United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously in her favor, and in the process of legal discovery the whole story of Monica Lewinsky and the blue dress with the stain on it came out.

In 1998 the trial judge, Susan Webber Wright, dismissed the case on technical legal grounds, but her lawyers were confident her decision would be overturned on appeal.  By this time it was time to put all this behind her, and she agreed to settle the case for $850,000, the entire amount of her claim.  Later Judge Wright ruled that she would only get $200,000, with the rest going to her lawyers.

A year later Judge Wright found Clinton in contempt of court for misleading testimony, and ordered him to pay her lawyers another $90,000.  Wright then referred Clinton’s conduct to the Arkansas Bar Association, and the day before he left office he agreed to settlement which stripped him of his law license for five years and made him pay a fine.

From the day she filed that lawsuit in 1994 until today she has been subjected to ridicule and scorn by the entire Clinton political machine, up to and including Hillary Clinton herself.  She was a bimbo, and her case was a bimbo eruption.  A bimbo was any woman Bill Clinton had approached in his long career as a sexual predator, and an eruption is when one of them went public.  There a lot of “bimbos” like Paula, and putting down eruptions was one of Hillary’s principal campaign duties.

James Carville, a close friend of both the Clintons,  called Paula, and women like her, trailer trash.  He said all you needed to do was go to a trailer park, and show $100 around, and you can find yourself a Paula Jones.  But that is all a lie.  She never did anything wrong, she’s not a bimbo, and she’s not trash.  She was a young woman who a powerful older man tried to take advantage of.  But she refused.  She didn’t deserve to be treated the way she was, not just by Bill Clinton, but by his wife as well.

I think it’s fair to say Bill Clinton was a serial sexual predator, and Hillary Clinton was his enabler in chief.  She tries to destroy innocent women in order to protect him, and her own position as the wife of a powerful man.  What does this have to do with this election?  As much, or maybe more, than some South American beauty queen.  That’s up to you to decide.

Her name is Paula Jones, and this is her story.

Fritz Pettyjohn is a former Alaska State Senator who blogs daily at ReaganProject.com