Author: Fritz Pettyjohn

Mormons aren’t libertarians.  But Gary Johnson has as good a shot at winning Utah as any state, other than Alaska.  Because Mormons are constitutionalists.  I’m not sure if it’s church dogma, but many conservative Mormons believe every word written in the Constitution was divinely inspired.

Johnson can win Utah running on the Constitution, federalism, state sovereignty, and putting the federal government in its place.  In Utah, specifically, that means running on the Transfer of Public Lands (TPL) from the feds to the states, and the people.  65% of Utah is owned by the federal government, and they want their land.  Obama is on the verge of locking up millions of acres of southeastern Utah on a new National Monument called Bears Ears.  Gary Johnson should go there and announce his intention, as President, to sign legislation authorizing the transfer of Bears Ears from federal to state ownership.

Johnson should also become ardent proponent of Article V.  If he doesn’t, he’s really not much of a constitutionalist.  He should make TPL and Article V two of his top campaign talking points.  If he’s a good politician he won’t allow himself to be distracted by issues which are irrelevant to the duties of a President.

Take abortion.  Please.  If Johnson is a constitutionalist, he knows Roe v. Wade was one of the worst decisions in our history.  He should pledge to appoint Justices who are strict constructionists, using Clarence Thomas as a model.  If you’re a strict constructionist, you vote to overturn Roe V. Wade.  At which point, abortion laws are out of the President’s responsibilities.  If Utah wants to ban abortions, they can do it.  In California it would be abortion on demand.  It’s called federalism.  It’s the essence of the Constitution.  The same goes for gay marriage, LGBT issues, and all the rest.  It’s not the President’s, or the federal government’s, job to deal with all this.  It’s done by the States.  The same with prostitution, marijuana, and all the rest.  Johnson should refuse to discuss the merits of any of these arguments.   He’s running for President, not moralist in chief.

Red State reports a Gravis poll of Utah with Trump 29, Other 29, Clinton 26, and Johnson 16.  If he could pick up just half of the Other vote he’d be in the lead.  TPL alone would do it.

The glory of nature is its diversity.  The Gold Country where I live is not a particularly rich ecosystem.  We’re semi-arid.  But, especially in the spring, every walk in the woods, if you look close enough, reveals a little something new.  Every species, plant and animal, has a survival strategy, and a lifespan.  Every flower is like a woman displaying her beauty, hoping for fertilization and new life.  Most of them are gone now, but their seeds are dispersed throughout the valley.  They’ll sprout with the winter rain, and the cycle begins again.

One of the great glories of this country is its diversity.  Mormons are a subculture, but there are many others, all over the country.  San Francisco is a subculture, as is New York.  We’re all different.  I’m an Alaskan Californian.  The only way we can all get along is to tolerate each other, and not get into each other’s face.   Federalism fosters this, and at least as I understand it, so does libertarianism.  Talking about this could win Utah for the Libertarian ticket.  He doesn’t want to tell the people of Utah how to run their lives.  And he doesn’t expect Utah to tell anybody else how to run theirs.  If you know anything about the history  of Utah, and the Mormon Church, you’d understand the appeal of this line of argument.

Trump won’t apologize for calling out that Mexican judge from Indiana.  He can’t.  He can never apologize.  A strongman never apologizes.  It’s a sign of weakness.  One of John Wayne’s biographers claims that the Duke’s dad told him three things.  Don’t lie, don’t quit, and don’t apologize.  Trump just forgot the first one.

Isn’t it odd that all the hoopla about Trump U. didn’t come public until after Trump had the nomination?

No, it’s not odd at all.

But is Gary Johnson, the libertarian Presidential candidate, a constitutionalist?

The Constitution is libertarian, through and through.  It’s all about restraining and limiting the power of the federal government.  Not all government.  Just the federal government.  In 1787 the thirteen states which ratified the Constitution weren’t libertarian.  Most of them allowed legal slavery, which is the antithesis of libertarian.

Johnson needs to be a Presidential candidate, not an apostle of libertarian political philosophy.  I just saw him on Fox’s Special Report, and while he did well, he could have done far, far better.  During the entire interview, I never heard him say the word “Constitution.”   It’s his best line of defense, and his best line of attack.  When asked about abolishing the Department of Education, the first word out of his mouth should have been “unconstitutional.”  When asked about legalized polygamy, he should have deflected the question by deferring to state sovereignty.  As President, and leader of the federal government, he would have nothing to say on the subject.  If some state wants to legalize polygamy, the Constitution prevents the federal government from interfering.

He’s essentially for open borders, which is an intellectually indefensible position, and political poison.  It prevents him from being a serious contender.  And if his version of libertarianism requires a  borderless world, he’s a nut.  Nation states have borders, by definition.  Controlling those borders in a way that benefits the citizens of the nation state is a core function of any government.

But I digress.  Gary Johnson isn’t going to be President of the United States, and the Libertarian Party is not going to replace the Republican Party.  About 247 members of the House are Republican.  Maybe three or four are real libertarians.  There’s a reason for that.  It’s a minority view in this country.  I should know, since I’ve been a libertarian all my life.  I know I’m in the minority, and since I wanted a career in politics I never joined the Libertarian Party.

The Libertarian Party is a place for purists and absolutists, not real politicians, who are required to compromise.  My understanding of libertarianism is maximum freedom, minimum government.  But it all gets down to the meaning of the word “minimum.”  To me, at a minimum, a government must control its borders.  Not to Gary Johnson.  So I can’t take him seriously.

But I sure as hell can vote for him, and I intend to.   He’s off the weed, which is a good thing.  And I’m not really voting for him, though he’s much more appealing, personally and temperamentally, than the competition.  I’m voting for that “L” next to his name.  And as far as I’m concerned, that “L” doesn’t include open  borders.

This vote is strictly strategic.  I can’t choose between Trump and Clinton.  I refuse to do it.  I want my vote for Johnson to be counted as “none of the above.”  If Trump loses, the voters who supported him will hopefully learn a lesson.  Don’t get behind a guy that pisses most of the country off.  If Trump wins, he’ll screw the pooch, and quite possibly destroy the Republican Party for a generation, much as Hoover did.

Like Trump, Hoover was a highly successful businessman.  World class, as a matter of fact.  But Coolidge, one of my heroes, didn’t like the way he was always wanting to “do something.”  Coolidge, as President, tried to avoid doing things.  He was a constitutionalist, the last one before Reagan.

And then Hoover got elected, and royally screwed the pooch.  Do you see what I’m afraid of?  And Hoover never did any bitching about Mexican judges who were born in Indiana.

The Donald is special.

The Accidental Superpower was written two years ago, and its author, Peter Zeihan, is probably feeling pretty good about himself right now.  Donald Trump, of all people, is calling Emperor NATO naked, and is prospering as a result.  Of the three Presidential candidates, only the Democrat is even nominally invested in the Old World Order represented by NATO.

I think there’s an excellent chance Libertarian Gary Johnson will make the debates this fall.  One of them will be devoted to foreign policy, and only the Democrat will argue for international military engagement, and will do so tepidly, at best.  Trump will strut and fret, but the guy to watch will be Johnson.  Unlike Trump, he’s thought seriously about politics for a long time.  The arguments he will make for American military disengagement will be coherent and reasonable.  And they are what the American people want to hear.  They’re what the American people have always wanted to hear, from the founding of the Republic and Washington’s Farewell Address.  Nothing’s changed in over 200 years.  We have the enormous good fortune to live on a continental island, with neighbors far weaker than ourselves.  We don’t need to fight wars unless we choose to do so, and the people of this country vote against war just about every time they can.

Most of the Founders didn’t even want an army.  Why did we need an army?   We weren’t going to invade anybody, and nobody was going to invade us.  What we needed was a navy, and once we had one it was no worries, mate.  When you rule the waves, as Britain did for over 100 years, and you live on an island, you can’t be invaded.  Armies can’t swim, and paratroopers can’t conquer countries.

I have a hunch Johnson understands all this, and will communicate it quite effectively.  I’m very much looking forward to the reaction he gets.  I’ll bet the people, if not the pundits, will get it.  It’s really just common sense.  Even Trump gets it.

The case for war is commercial.  To the extent that the Iraq Wars made any sense, it was that they occurred where all the oil is, and we needed the oil.  But now we don’t need the oil anymore.  Without it, our friends and trading partners would be in big trouble, and we wish them well in securing a secure source of hydrocarbons.  But we won’t fight a war for them.  It’s not our job, man.

I hope Johnson points out that NATO is a misnomer.  It’s not a mutual defense treaty.  It’s a unilateral security guarantee by the United States, the only military superpower in the world.  And we give it for free.  Trump wants to get paid for it.  He’s a mercenary at heart, and making mercenaries of our soldiers is no problem for him.

Johnson doesn’t want to get paid for it.  He wants to withdraw it.  The only reason to keep this commitment is to ensure peace in Europe, which is good for business.  A war in Europe would hurt our economy very badly, but it wouldn’t kill us.  We only get killed if we fight a war for their security, even though they won’t fight for it themselves.  No mas.

There’s a reason neoconservative poster boy Bill Kristol is the last diehard looking for a warhawk independent.  To him, Johnson’s foreign policy is just as bad as Trump’s.  But the neocons are in a lonely place right now.  They may be going extinct before our very eyes.  They were helpful in the Cold War, and have been a nuisance ever since.

I gave up on this election when Cruz dropped out, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important.  This election won’t produce the change we need, but it will hopefully send a powerful message.  It already has.  Bushism is deader than a doornail.  Dole, McCain and Romney were Bushites, and we’ll never nominate one of those losers again.  Cruz and Trump were the last two standing, and both represented the repudiation of Bushism.  Our 2020 candidate will be an unvarnished conservative.

But not a hawk.  No one picked up any votes in the entire Republican primary by hawkishness.  Lindsey Graham represented that wing of the Party  —  it doesn’t even count, it’s so small.

Trump has proven the power of American nationalism as well.  He’s crude about it, but he hits the right chord.  Our 2020 candidate must be a nationalist free trader.  Free trade, but on our terms.  Free trade, as long as it’s good for us.   We don’t expect subsidies, and we won’t hand them out, either.  Our attitude in international negotiations should be real simple  — what’s in this for the American people?

And it’s the same with immigration policy.  It should be based on one principle  — what’s best for the people of this country?

I guess our 2020 candidate will sound like a rational Trump.  That’s my real problem with this dude.  He gives my ideas, and his, a bad name.  But I’ve got Johnson to vote for.

I feel like a guy who’s been married for 50 years, and is being unfaithful for the first time.  But, hell, I’m really a Libertarian at heart.  Better late than never.

 

 

What the hell good does it do when the Republicans control the Senate?  They roll over like whipped dogs at the first sign of a fight.  It’s easy to blame the Leader, McConnell, but he’s a symptom, not the disease itself.  The disease is lily-livered milk toast so-called moderates who are the balance of power in the Republican Senate Caucus.  A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and some of the Republican Senatorial links are made of linguine.

Take Lisa Murkowski.  Please.  Match her room temperature IQ with a hamster’s need for approval, and a desperate desire to be considered enlightened, and you get a Democrat in disguise.  Like many people who are in stations far above their capacity, Murkowski compensates by her arrogance, and her air of entitlement.  She’s just a lousy politician, all the way around.  I’ve known a lot of politicians in my time, and she’s about the worst.

Mayor Dan should beat her.  He’s no Marco Rubio, but he’s got enough of the old blarney in him to be an easy guy to like.  He had, or has, an Irish pub in downtown Anchorage called McGinty’s.  A guy that opens up an Irish pub is probably an all right guy.  There’s no one like an Irishman at being a politician.  I shook the hand of the best of them all, John F. Kennedy.  He was impossible not to like.

Ivan Moore runs a Democrat poll called Alaska Survey Research.  He tilts far to the left in his polling.  A week out, he called Begich a seven or eight point favorite over Sullivan.  He was off by ten.  So he has Murkowski and Mayor Dan tied at 51% approval, but with Murkowski with an eleven point higher negative.  (Hat tip to midnightsunak.com)

So, as the gun goes off, they’re tied.  There are a lot more Alaskans who don’t know Mayor Dan than don’t know Murkowski, so he gets to introduce himself to these people, by campaigning.   And spending money on media, money that needs to be raised.  A lot of money has been raised to try to take down RINO’s that weren’t as bad as Murkowski.  These people need to understand the golden opportunity that Mayor Dan represents.  But time is short, so we’ll just have to see.

The only time I spent any real time with George, Mayor Dan’s father, was at the end of the ’94 race for Governor.  Jim Campbell, who had a hardware store in Spenard, was the Republican, and he refused to go after the Democrat, Tony Knowles, about things Knowles had said about the Permanent Fund.  The things Knowles had said were enough to sink him, but Campbell wouldn’t do it.  I didn’t really know George Sullivan, but I called him up, and asked him what he thought, and he agreed with me.  So he arranged a meeting between me, Campbell, and George.  And George and I laid it out for him.  He had to expose this part of the Knowles’ record.  But he wouldn’t do it.  He said he didn’t want to run a negative campaign.  I’ve always wondered if he was afraid of something in his past.  He lost by about 600 votes, and I don’t think I ever saw George again.  Except I do see some of George in Mayor Dan, and I do believe George saw some of my Uncle Fritz in me.

This is going to be fun.

Original Dan Sullivan was Mayor of Anchorage, just like his dad, George.  He’s a solid, mainstream Republican conservative, as was his father.  He’s a fourth generation Alaskan, with roots in Valdez, Nenana and Fairbanks.  He’s 64, happily married for over 30 years, with a daughter and God knows how many nieces and nephews from his eight siblings.  And he’s got that Irish in his eyes.

I really like this guy, although I’m not sure I ever met him, but I did know his father.  He didn’t get into politics until he was 47, in 1999, when he ran for Anchorage Assembly.  Babbie and I left Alaska in 2001, so we never ran into each other, as far as I know.  But I knew all about his father, especially from my Uncle Fritz.

I don’t know all the details, but when Uncle Fritz came to Alaska after the war he drank like a fish and was a large, angry and violent man.  I’ve always believed that there were a lot of people like George Sullivan, who, after serving in the Aleutians became a Federal Marshall (just like his own father), tried to keep Uncle Fritz out of serious legal trouble.  They were almost all WW II vets themselves, and they all understood what my uncle had gone through in the war, and they respected him for it.   And Uncle Fritz always had nothing but good things to say about “Sully”.  In fact, to tell you the truth, I never heard anybody say anything bad about George Sullivan.  He was one of those natural born Irish-American politicians, and a man of intelligence and integrity.

This is the first time I’ve really felt the urge to return to Alaska.  The primary is on August 16th, so the next eleven weeks are going to be intense up there.  Murkowski has over $3 million, and Mayor Dan is starting from scratch.  But as soon as I get the green light, I’ll be trying to raise some bucks on his behalf here in the Lower 48.  As soon as he gets a campaign manager and a finance chair I’ll try to be of assistance in any way I can.

Political amateur Joe Miller beat Murkowski in the primary six years ago, and I’m not aware of anything she’s done to endear her to the conservative base of the Alaska electorate since then.  She may have bagged some pork, but that’s not what Alaska needs right now.  Substantively, she has no accomplishments in her fourteen year career.   The WSJ once dubbed her father, Frank, a Republican “utility infielder” in the Senate, and he shines in comparison to his dimwitted daughter.

Dan says he’ll run a positive campaign, and that’s smart.  Murkowski’s ineffectiveness in the Senate is glaringly obvious, and she is such a transparent airhead that even low information voters can see she has no business in the United States Senate.  But she’s a woman and a mother, so you can’t throw punches.  In her case, it’s not necessary.

The thing is, I love politics, I’ve been at it a very long time, and I have a lot of ideas.  I’ve known Lisa Murkowski since she was a 21 year old volunteer on her father’s campaign for the Senate in 1980.  And while I’ve been gone for fifteen years, I still know a lot about Alaska politics.

When I got to Juneau in ’83 I made a lot of friends who had been in the Legislature for a long time, and they used to tell me stories.  One of my favorites was about Mayor Dan’s father, who had been appointed to fill a vacancy in the House.  When the Good Friday earthquake hit South Central in “64, Governor Egan called a bunch of legislators up to his office to share the small bits of information he had.  Communication to Anchorage had been cut off, and nobody knew how bad it was, only that it was very bad.  Somebody made a wisecrack about how Anchorage kind of had it coming, and this totally pissed off George M. Sullivan.  He had a wife, nine kids, and innumerable friends and neighbors who were unaccounted for, and you couldn’t help but fear the worst.  He got up and knocked this guy flat on his ass, right there in the Governor’s Conference Room.

Anchorage’s sports arena is named for George M. Sullivan.  That’s where we have our boxing matches.  He was a great man, and a great Alaskan.