Author: Fritz Pettyjohn

We successfully passed the 2/3 threshold for further consideration in the Wyoming House, and are now before the Revenue and Taxation Committee.  We may have a problem there because of sabotage from Nick Dranias, the prime advocate of using the State Compact method of achieving an Article V BBA.  Dranias failed to get a hearing in the Wyoming Senate last year, and he knows that if the Task Force succeeds in making Wyoming its 28th state, his entire project is doomed.  He’s fighting for his own personal survival.

A few years ago, when it appeared the normal Article V process wouldn’t work for achieving a Balanced Budget Amendment because of fears of a runaway convention, Dranias and other think tank deep thinkers came up with the idea of having 38 states agree in advance on the actual language of the Amendment, and enter into a compact that would result in an Amendment Convention that would rubber stamp what had already been agreed upon.  This requires extremely complicated legislation, which many state legislators refuse to take seriously.  It contorts the simple concept of a BBA and pretzels it into something so convoluted it’s ridiculous.  For this, and many other reasons, Dranias has only four of the 38 states he needs, despite years of time and a lot of money.  I suspect Dranias will prove to be no more than a speed bump in Wyoming, but this sort of thing can no longer be tolerated.  If he keeps this up he needs to be drummed out of the conservative movement.

We hear he’s telling Wyoming legislators that many of our Resolutions are invalid, and that we have far less than the 27 we claim.  Apparently he got some backwoods lawyer somewhere to look at them, and that’s his opinion.  It is decidedly not the opinion of Bob Goodlatte, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, or Senator Mike Enzi, Chairman of the Senate  Budget Committee, or Rob Natelson of the Independence Institute, the foremost legal scholar on Article V in the country.  I could go on.  It’s total B.S., Dranias knows it, and we’re all very disappointed in him.

On a lighter note, Greg Casey of BiPac is as good as his word.  Back in December he shook my hand at Lew Uhler’s reception, and promised me he would take care of the Idaho Senate.  And that’s apparently exactly what he’s done.  It’s nice to have a guy who does what he says he’s going to do.  Life would be a lot simpler if there were more of them.  Rep. Christy Perry is in the process of whipping the House, and when she gets the votes the bill will be introduced, passed, and sent to the Senate.  There’s always one key guy in every state. In Idaho it’s Greg Casey.

Fruth’s in Oklahoma, having given an address to a group of House members.  Bill takes the whole idea of above and beyond the call of duty to a new level.  Senate President Bingman assures us we have the votes in the Senate.  Our sponsor, House Majority Whip Gary Banz has laid it all on the line.  He’s term limited out, and he’s been working on the BBA for years.  This is one he really wants.  His new helper is Kylee Williamson, Chair of the University of Oklahoma Young Republicans.  Working with Rep. John Michael Momtgomery, she’s doing absolutely everything possible lobbying for us.  A gem.

I’ve been thinking about New Hampshire.  I can no longer deny that Trump has a chance, however small.  But it can easily be prevented, and it will.  My confidence is undiminished that it’s one of the Cubans, though I give Cruz a big edge.  I submitted my cogitations to American Thinker and they should be up tomorrow.

Thomas Lifson started AT around ten years ago, and it’s a great success.  Since I consider myself an AT regular now, I was pleased to see a Rubio TV ad which featured a quotation from an AT article, with American Thinker being given attribution.  Go team AT!

Chris Christie’s moment in the sun is gone.  It lasted 72 hours.  For that three day period, people seriously considered him a possibility as President.  It’s not much, but it’s more than most ever get.  Next time he sees Obama he’ll get a nice big hug of condolence.

Last Friday Trump canceled a rally because of a little snow, which might have forced him to overnight in a Holiday Inn.  Little Richie Rich of Manhattan doesn’t have to put up with that, so see you later, suckers.

Trump has one superfan in talk radio, the Proctologist’s Dream, Michael Savage.  Savage absolutely loves this guy, everything about him.  At the end of the show yesterday he tells Donald not to back off, keep kicking ass and taking names like the Alpha Male you are.  A couple hours later Trump, just showing off, really, calls Cruz a pussy.  Michael Savage has at last found a candidate who listens to him.  He must be very proud.

I’m reconciled to Trump getting his 25-30%.  He really could shoot someone and keep his fans.  And that’s what they are, really like sports fans or movie star fans.  And we may see this repeated all the way through Super Tuesday.  But the ceiling he’s established for himself isn’t much bigger than that, and he keeps reinforcing it.  He won’t be able to break through it, and a candidate representing a 30% rump of the Republican Party is not going to win the nomination.  IMHO big money is being gathered to start pounding him, and blood will be drawn.  He’s not going to like it.

I love what’s going on with the D’s.  It’s absolutely hysterical.  The Clintons aren’t just corrupt, they’re Arkansas corrupt, and have been for 30 years.  It’s always been as plain as day to anyone who looked.  But the Queen and her Hive have always protected them, and most Americans haven’t really known how bad these people are.  Now, finally, at long last, people are waking up.  The Clinton Foundation was a money laundering scheme disguised as a charity.  I mean, how obvious does it have to be.  Older Democrats, especially women, cover their eyes because they don’t want to see.  But the younger they are, the more they look at the Clintons with fresh eyes, and they are disgusted.  These younger Sanders voters, convinced of her corruption, will not vote for her in the general.  They’re idealistic, and they just won’t vote.  They hate big money in politics, and she epitomizes it.

I think Trump’s a pussy, as a matter of fact.  He’s the exact polar opposite of the most bad ass guy I’ve ever known, my Uncle Fritz.  As a sergeant in the 505th Parachute Infantry Combat Team of the 82nd Airborne, he jumped behind enemy lines before the D-day invasion with twenty pounds of high explosives strapped to each leg.  Uncle Fritz didn’t like guys like Trump.  He told me about being in a bar in Fairbanks after the war when some big tough acting bouncer started giving an old timer a hard time.  To Uncle Fritz, old timers were 98’ers who stayed when the rush was over.  He really liked these old guys.  So he walks behind the bouncer, grabs him by the shoulders and rams his knee in his back, then picks him up and throws him out the front door.

I went to Alaska to meet my Uncle Fritz, and I’m glad I did.

You can tell by the name he chose for his newly formed political action committee:  RAPE-PAC.  Subtle, Roger Stone is not.

Back in October I had a piece in American Thinker calling for and predicting the formation of such a PAC, to begin operations in March.  Roger was way ahead of me.  Right about then he came out with his latest book, The Clintons’ War on Women.  (The reviews on Amazon are good, by the way.  It would be a nice graduation present.)  He’s been planning this project for years.

I’m proud of the fact that I was knocking on doors for Goldwater when I was eighteen.  Stone did too, but he was only twelve. This guy’s hard core, and a true pro.  There’s a good chance you’ll get more bang for your buck by a contribution to RAPE PAC than in any other way.

Hillary is such an awful candidate, in such a bad year for the Democrats, that I think any Republican but Bush or Trump can beat her easily.  So why take her down in the primary?  Why not save her destruction for the general?  Because she and her criminal husband must be ejected in a kind of national vomit.  Or, if that’s too graphic, it’s like cutting an ugly tumor from the body politic.  They have soiled this country, and we need a cleansing.  I was rooting for Obama to beat her eight years ago, and I’m rooting for Bernie now.  Not because I think they’d be a better President than she’d be.  But because she and Bill are truly awful people who disgraced the White House and must never set foot in it again.

In Roger Stone I’ve finally met a man who feels the same way I do.  On my talk show in Alaska I used to complain about opinion surveys asking if you approved or disapproved of President Clinton.  I said they needed a third response:  despise.

Because nothing is certain, anything’s possible (or is it the other way around?) in New Hampshire tomorrow.  But I still think it’s going to get down to Trump and the two Cubans.  I was wondering at the improbability of that, and it made me think of my old  buddy Frank Bickford, who I met when we were working on Murkowski for Senate in 1980.  When I got elected to the State Senate in ’82 he came down to Juneau with me.

Frank’s a Cuban-American, and he said that was why he was a Republican.  He went to college in New York, and he couldn’t believe how ignorant people were about communism and Castro.  Refugees from Communist countries were always violently anti-communist and pro-American.  With the Cubans, it was taken to an extreme, and Rubio and Cruz, just like my old friend Frank, are among the most passionately patriotic people you’ll ever meet.

That’s why it’s not really such a coincidence that one of them will be our next President.

 

 

Kasich has tenaciously stuck to his game plan, and I think it’s working.  There are four tickets out of New Hampshire, and he looks to have earned one of them.  Christie played the bully on Rubio, and it worked.  Yes, now we all know big Chris Christie can talk tough.  He hurt Rubio without managing to help himself.

So it should be Trump, Rubio, Cruz and Kasich heading into South Carolina.  Cruz and Kasich support the Article V BBA, while Rubio wants a broader Convention that would include a BBA.  Only three candidates, Trump, Fiorina and Christie, do not support amending the Constitution through Article V to get to a Balanced Budget Amendment.

Forget Article V for a moment.  Does Trump even believe in a Balanced Budget Amendment , period?  I think there’s a good chance he doesn’t.  If he’s President, maybe he wants complete freedom with the budget.  Any restraints on his awesome capacity to make deals would be counter productive.  He hasn’t really thought it through, most likely.  And as for Article V, he may very well have fallen under the sway of those who think it’s a communist plot.  They’re the same kind of people who think Cruz is ineligible for the Presidency.  They’re aren’t very many of these guys, but they’re definitely the types who would be most hard core for Trump.  If that’s the case, there may be a chance for one of his competitors to expose his complete constitutional ignorance on this important subject.

This has got to be an opportunity for Kasich.  He needs to distinguish himself from the others.  Talking about the BBA, his work across the country for the Task Force, and how his experience chairing the Budget Committee convinces him that only a constitutional amendment will ever allow us to balance our revenue and spending.  Of course, this can all be melded in with talk of his broader economic program.

I know it’s a little thing, but when Trump shooshed Jeb it pissed me off.  Who does this guy think he is?  What he is is a guy who compensates for his insecurity by playing the tough guy.  He may hang on and win in New Hampshire, and I suppose there are ways where that’s not such a bad thing.  But he coarsens the whole process, and I want him gone.

Hillary reminds me of these cheechakos you see on fishing streams in Alaska, all rigged up with their fancy Eddie Bauer gear, with a thousand dollar rod and no clue.  She’s got all the trappings of a Presidential candidate, in spades.  But when the music comes on she can’t dance.  It’s painful to watch her try.

And the bettors, and Nate Silver, give her a 50-50 shot at winning the Presidency?  Based on what?  Polls? The results from 2012?

The latter, I guess.  It’s looking backwards, not forward.  And when I look forward I don’t see anything like 2012.  They are two totally different elections, as different as night and day.  To assume the composition and mood of the electorate will be as it was four years ago is to refuse to notice what’s happened for the past three years, plus. Like, oh, for instance, the implosion of Obamacare, exposing  virtually every Democrat in the country as a calculating liar.

I’m getting fired up about this. I think I’m going to write an article for American Thinker.  It will be an open challenge to Nate Silver.  Explain yourself, sir.

Would you really take even odds on Hillary, Nate?

 

In the NYT Nate Silver makes the case against Cruz.  Forget evangelicals, Cruz wins by being the overwhelming favorite of “very conservative” Republicans.  There were enough of them in Iowa to allow him to win, but they’re not enough of them in New Hampshire or the big northern states.

All true, but there’s a bloc of voters who will soon be up for grabs who are not “very conservative.”   They are what I call the Sixth Ring  — the tribe of Trump.  They don’t come from any particular sector of the Republican Party.  Many aren’t Republicans.  They’re populists and one issue motivates them like nothing else:  immigration.  When Trump leaves they will not go to Rubio.  They remember the Gang of Eight, and will never trust him.  Based on my unscientific survey of American Thinker commenters, a fair number will sit out the election.  But most, by far, go to Cruz.  Based on what we saw in Iowa, 25% of Republican voters are Trump people.  If Cruz gets the bulk of them, he can start to build a majority within the Party.  Immigration is the key.

Since Iowa these commenters are not as numerous or vocal.  Every criticism of Trump used to be met with a reference to his polling.  Not so much of that now.  And there is leakage.  People are saying I was with Trump, but his erratic behavior is driving me away.  Before Iowa he was mad at all the stupid politicians.  Now he’s just mad, and it’s unbecoming.

If Trump loses New Hampshire I think he blames it all on voting fraud in Iowa and dirty tricks in New Hampshire, and he bails.  He will have made his point.  His candidacy will have forced his issue, immigration, to the front of this whole campaign, he neutered Bill Clinton, destroyed Jeb Bush, and lasted longer, and gotten more votes, than anyone could have imagined.  He declares victory, suggests a possible third party run, and withdraws.  But first he’ll tell us how much of his own money he spent.

I’m encouraged that he’s now making nice with Cruz.  But what the devil Trump is really thinking is anyone’s guess.  And that’s the scary part.  He could still, conceivably, go third party, but it could cost him $50 million of his own money if he really wants to try.  Her doesn’t want to do that, and he doesn’t want to lose a second time.  He’s a man who takes things personally, so Rubio and Cruz have to try to maintain a level of cordiality with this human time bomb.  I’ve read credible accounts that Ross Perot ran in ’92 mainly with the idea of screwing over the Bushes.  He had been disrespected, and got his revenge.  I’ve also read accounts that when Trump entered the race, the Bushes were partly responsible for him losing the Miss Universe franchise.  This only motivated him even more, and made him determined to take Jeb out.  Mission accomplished, Donald can retire from the field.  Eventually, after much dramatic posturing, he can declare he won’t go third party and will endorse the Republican — for a price.  Who knows what he’d ask for?  It might even be reasonable.

I’ll admit it.  I’m anxious to see the debate and find out what Trump’s latest will be.  He’s even got me hooked.