Author: Fritz Pettyjohn

When Clinton and the media get done with Trump his candidacy will be a shambles, the Republican Party will be a mess, and someone will need to pick up the pieces.  It’s tempting to become a Libertarian, but it’s too soon.  (Voting Libertarian in November is another matter.)  All we need is another Reagan and we can have a party to be proud of again.

Reince Priebus will want give Trump what he wants, but only with the approval of the RNC, and subject to the will of the National Convention.  I think most of the delegates there will be in no mood to kowtow to Donald Trump.  Winning the nomination doesn’t automatically give you complete control over the party.  Not if half the delegates voting for your nomination think you’re an unqualified jerk.

The Republican Party Platform should reflect the views of the delegates, not Trump.  The Rules should be rewritten not at Trump’s behest, but in the interest of denying anyone like him the nomination again.  The new Party Chairman should not be some Trump puppet like Corey Lewandowski.  The delegates should decide independently.  Ben Carson is out today suggesting Trump consider selecting a Democrat as his running mate.  To hell with that.  The delegates should listen to Trump’s request, and make their own, independent determination.  I’d nominate Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska.

Paul Ryan may get this.  His refusal to endorse Trump is a signal.  If he wants to retain his majority, he’s got to distance himself from Trump.  With Trump, what was once unthinkable  – losing the House  —  is a possibility.  Women, especially independent women, hate Trump with a passion.  And these women don’t know the half of it  — yet.  They’re going to hate him even  more when the media starts telling them stories about him.  This will begin right after Cleveland.  A Republican candidate for Congress who gets on the Trump bus is embracing a candidate who’s going to be absolutely toxic with these women voters.

The delegates to Cleveland have one overriding goal  — separate the identity of the Republican Party from the obnoxious lunatic who just got the nomination.  Once he’s gone, the party will remain.  And the greater distance it has from Donald Trump the better off it will be.

I think I’ve discovered the secret of Trump’s appeal.  He is the exact opposite, in almost every way, of a Bush.  He’s like the anti-Bush.  That’s why people are attracted to him.  I’m reading Impostor, by Bruce Bartlett.   He cuts up Bush 1 and Bush 2 pretty bad.  If you want to know why I can’t stand a Bush, just read it.

In addition to maintaining a separate identity from Trump, we need to find one person we can all get behind for next time.  Maybe that’s not possible.  Nobody jumps out at you right now.  It may well be that Cruz is the new Goldwater, the ground breaker for the eventual winner.  We were lucky in 1964.  We all knew who the guy was, Ronald Reagan.

And it took Reagan two tries before he could win it.  I thought by the lay of the land that 2016 was going to be a Republican landslide.  Thanks to the geniuses at the RNC who devised the 2016 nomination rules, we’ve got a landslide loss looking at us.  But I’d say 2020 will be even better.  Four years from now Clinton will be a worn out disaster of a President, worse than Obama by far.  The country will be a mess, because the politicians in Washington refuse to fix our problems.  It’s too hard, politically.  They’re cowards.

But not Ben Sasse.  He looks like a guy to keep an eye on.  You’ve got to try and look at the bright side.  The big shift in our politics that I’m waiting for may need a substantial shock to the system to get it started, one that gets people really worried.  Something like that will probably happen in the next four years.  I sense rough waters ahead.

 

Article V, to be precise.  The Republican Party, at this point, should be supported on this basis alone.  If the 34 state threshold is reached, a Republican House Majority would aggregate the Resolutions and set a time and place for the Amendment Convention, as would a Republican Senate.  If either body falls under Democratic control, Article V will have to be on hold, on the federal level.

When Trump crashes and burns, he may take the Senate with him, in which case Article V would be unavailable until after the 2018 election.  Delaware rescinded last week (thanks, George Soros) so we’re back down to 28.  Potential pickups (that is, states where Republicans control both chambers) are Arizona, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Wisconsin, South Carolina and Virginia.  All but Montana and Virginia have Republican governors.  If those Governors could be convinced to call special sessions this summer, we could be up to 33 by the end of the summer.  I think, at that point, Gov. Bevin of Kentucky could call his legislature into session, and the razor thin Democratic majority in the House would buckle, getting us to 34 this year.  If necessary, a major drive in Montana could convince their legislature to call itself back into special session.  That would require a media campaign costing a million dollars.

This is not something the BBA Task Force can pull off.  We would need some real heavy hitters to push it.  Like, for instance, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina.  If they all joined together, they could get it done.

When Kasich withdrew today he touched on policy just once, when he said nothing was more important than getting a BBA. He’s right.  These people all know it’s right.  If they want to save this country it’s up to them.  Once the reality of Trump sinks home, and the November electoral disaster is obvious to everyone, they people can be roused to action.

The wave I sensed forming in October of 2013 is as strong as ever.  What I didn’t see was the complexity of the wave.  It includes half the Democratic Party.  They’re as pissed off at the Washington elites as we are, though for slightly different reasons.  Everybody, right and left, can see the naked corruption at work.

I also didn’t foresee the various forms the wave manifested itself in, to wit, Trump, a demagogue.  It shouldn’t be that surprising, when you think about it.  People were even more pissed of than I realized, and they’ve settled on a vulgar celebrity as their champion, as predicted in Idiocracy.  The media made him, and they will break him.  It won’t be pretty, and by the end of it, with President Clinton, practically the whole country will be pissed off.  The Arsonist, as I call him, will tear down as much as he can on his way to defeat.  Yuk.

Since there is no good outcome, we’re heading further downhill.  The economy will continue to stagnate.  For all I know, the market may break.  The case for optimism, and growth, is weak.

We’re still very much in a period of major political transition.  The old order is going to fall.  It’s unsustainable.  We could go the way of Greece and Venezuela, but I doubt it.  We still have the Constitution, with the emergency brake of Article V.

Ted Cruz wanted to break the Washington cartel, but it was too strong for him.  It may be too strong for any constitutional conservative.  It may be that the only way to break it is with Article V.

In the two and a half years I’ve been working on Article V, I’ve always been amazed by the lack of financial support we’ve received, and by the amount of education that needs to be done.  If we had the money we could do the education, and get it done.  I figure we could do it with about half of what Bush spent attacking Rubio.  But all the right wing billionaires don’t seem to be really interested in breaking the Washington cartel.  They sure as hell weren’t with Cruz, and don’t tell me it’s his personality.  He was a threat to everybody who games the system to enrich themselves.

I got involved in the Presidential campaign, at first, to promote Article V.  When Cruz adopted the issue of the transfer of federal lands, around three months ago, I got totally invested in his campaign.  That’s over.  It’s back to Article V.

I just hope it’s not too late.

You have to chuckle whenever you hear anyone talk of Trump uniting the Republican Party.  It’s really hard to unite something you’ve pissed all over.  And what, exactly, besides Trump himself, is the party supposed to unify behind?  His political philosophy?  He doesn’t have one, all he’s got is attitude, and that attitude is repellent.

So he’s got one serious challenger left, who he hopes to take out in Indiana tonight.  Ted Cruz may or may not win the nomination, but he has acquired millions of Republican admirers.  Trump wants these Cruz voters to come around to him.  So he naturally cites a National Enquirer article to accuse Rafael Cruz of being an accomplice in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  Way to go, Donald!  That’s the ticket!  You sure as hell know how to unite the party!

He’s like a 16 year old with a hot car and a case of beer.  He’s just got to piss people off.  It’s his nature.  If you can’t see that, and that it disqualifies him from the Presidency, you’re really not paying attention.

I learned a lot about politics after I got into the State Senate in 1982.  Among my 19 colleagues I had two with complete integrity.  Everybody else was weak to some extent.  It’s probably worse today.  As I watch Republican politicians go soft on Trump, I’m reminded of these guys.  These are not honorable men.  They are almost exclusively focused on what’s in it for me, what’s good for me?

But delegates to a state convention aren’t in it for themselves, for the most part.  There are a whole lot of state conventions still to be held, 19 by my count.  Will these delegates roll over for Trump?  I don’t think so, but we’ll see.  These are people who are paying a lot of attention to this nomination fight.   I can’t imagine these people “uniting behind Trump”.

The casual slander of Rafael Cruz, a Great Living American, won’t be the last we’ll hear from Donald Trump, compulsive arsonist.  He’s liable to keep it up all the way to the Convention, especially if he’s provoked.  As the delegates to Cleveland watch this buffoon in the weeks leading up to the Convention, they have to be asking themselves  — my vote is going to give the nomination to this clown?  That’s why it isn’t over until he gets his 1237th vote in Cleveland.

And that’s why it’s important for Cruz to keep fighting, regardless of tonight’s result.  If Trump is nominated, and the Republican Party burns to the ground, someone is going to need to rebuild it.  Handing the keys over to the Arsonist right now doesn’t help lay the groundwork for the reconstruction that must happen.  He must be resisted to the last day.  Giving in one inch to him ratifies him, in a sense.  He’s not a serious man, he’s a dimwitted celebrity.  He should never be accorded any respect whatsoever.  He is anathema.

Cruz took off the gloves today, after the attack on his father.  He called out Murdoch and Ailes, at long last.  I think he should have done it long ago.  Attack the media, all of it.  Not just Fox, although they deserve special contempt, as either apostates or whores.  But the entire media is in on the game.  I’ve lost track of how many times Trump has made some political screw up, and the entire media has willfully ignored it.  The example that comes to mind was on Feb. 21st in Vegas.  Trump tried to explain his position on the transfer of federal lands by citing his ignorance of the subject.  Two minutes later he exhorts his audience to punch somebody, and that’s all we hear.  The glaring admission he made, of his own ignorance on an important issue, was never reported.  By any media.  I googled and found it at Twitchy.com.

In crisis there is opportunity, and if Trump gets the nomination we may still have one card to play.  I talked to Biddulph about it today, and I’m enthused.  I haven’t really considered it, because I never seriously thought Trump could win.  It’s an idea that only works if Trump does win, so I’ll wait a while before I jump in.  But the ducks are in line.

It would be a political shot heard around the world.

If Clinton wins Obama’s third term, we’ll see how much ruin we have left.  I think it would be pretty ugly.  If the media gets their way, we’ll all get to see just how bad things can get.

In a way, it’s better to let the last 30 years in American politics, despoiled jointly by Bushes and Clintons, play all the way out to the bitter end.  That may be what it takes for the American people to wake up.  And having a Clinton in the White House when everything goes to hell might not be such a bad idea.

There’s nothing like getting hit in the side of the head by a two by four to get a man’s attention.

Which gets us to 2020.  Four long years, but what’s the alternative?

Back in December I got a chance to talk to Ed Meese about the ’76 campaign.  He really didn’t regret losing it.  He said they weren’t ready.

I thought the country would be ready for a new direction this year. If I was off, it was by four years.  But the “Blue Model”, as Walter Russel Mead calls it, is toast.  It just doesn’t work.  It’s run its course, and will be killed off one way or another.

In the mean time there’s Article V, and the transfer of federal lands, two issues I care a lot about, and can do some good with.  Plenty of work to do, for sure.

You see, I think I understand the arc of history better than Barack Obama does.  It doesn’t bend on its own.  We need to bend it toward freedom.

Before television, and then smart phones, a lot of people used to read.  Reading makes you think, and if you are unthinking you are vulnerable.  It’s not just the Trump cult.  The American people have given up thinking for themselves, it seems.  It’s too hard.  If they don’t wake up, they’re going to lose their country.

There will still be something called the United States of America, but that’s just a name, and a place.  Without our Constitution this country is no different than any other.  The source and expression of American exceptionalism is the Constitution.

Nothing more perfectly expresses the contempt the Democratic Party has for the Constitution than the shock shown by Speaker Nancy Pelosi when she was asked about the constitutionality of Obamacare.  “Are you kidding?” she asked.  The very idea that a law passed by Congress would be unconstitutional befuddled her.

The Clintons are no different.  They’re criminals at heart, and they would never let the Constitution stop them from doing anything.  We’ve got one party that was interested in the Constitution, the Republicans.  As far as I’m concerned, that’s the reason to be a Republican. If Trump is nominated, and Clinton elected, there will be at least five Justices of the Supreme Court who don’t give a rat’s ass about the Constitution.  Put out the lights, the party’s over.

This country’s on the verge of losing it.  Every Republican who sidles up to Trump is either a whore or an idiot, or both.  This man is a disaster.  He will destroy the Republican Party, and he doesn’t care one bit.  The Republican Party means nothing to him.  He’ll walk away from the chaos he’s created with a big smile on his face.  How many guys can destroy a political party that’s as old as Lincoln?

This will end in Cleveland, not before.  If the Republican Party is to commit suicide, 1237 delegates will have to vote for it.

I’ll say this for Lindsey Graham, he’s got balls.  Where are all the other pillars of strength in the Republican Party?  What a sorry excuse for a bunch of so called leaders.

I don’t watch Fox News any more.  I’m a CNN man now.  Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes have disgraced themselves, and everyone on their network.  They’re pathetic.

At long last Ted Cruz called out the press today, in the person of Chick Tod and NBC.  He openly accused the NBC brass as being activist Democrats.  Trump is a media creation, a brilliant example of packaging and marketing.  Once he’s served his purpose he’ll be discarded like a used kleenex.  This is all true, but getting the truth out in this media environment is hard to do.

Rather than talk repeatedly about repealing Obamacare, maybe  Cruz should explain to people on the campaign trail exactly what’s going on.  The media willfully created Trump, in an deliberate effort to sabotage the Republican Party.

It is a time for truth, isn’t it?