Author: Fritz Pettyjohn

The John Weaver hire was a tell, but one that I was too blind to see.  This is a guy who went to work for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2002, and thus played a role in making Pelosi Speaker.  Later, he was the brains behind the Huntsman for President train wreck.  Since Weaver believes  the right wing base cost Romney the 2012 election, it follows that his candidate, Kasich, must avoid the same fate.  He must not cater to the right, as Romney did by declaring himself, and pretending to be, a severe conservative.  Kasich must follow the Bush 3 strategy, and be willing to risk losing the primary to win the general.  So the 30-40-50% of the Republican Party who are strong conservatives can go chew rocks.

The disdain Kasich feels for us is the reason he wants to give us Bible lessons.  He and Weaver are two peas in a pod.  I liked Kasich because he gave the Article V BBA campaign a boost.  He visited the Capitols, lobbied the state legislators, and  made the phone calls.  I figured he’d make it part of his Presidential campaign, and once he brought attention to, and made the case for, an Article V BBA, we’d get a boost over the top.  I didn’t like his Medicaid expansion, but, hell, when you’re an elected official and you get a chance to pass out goodies to constituents, it’s hard to resist.  I’d been aware of Kasich since ’94, and admired his conservative record in Congress.  He was a Reagan man, and he stuck by his guns.  If anyone was going to actually balance the federal budget I thought it would be him.  I thought his record in Ohio was conservative.  If he won, he’d have the experience and connections to get the job done.

That was then.  Now it’s Don Juan or the Parson.  In fact, there’s nothing much that Kasich can do for us on the Article V front any longer.  The state legislative leaders who we need are, by and large, not interested in Kasich or his candidacy.  This spring, once one of the Cubans wrap up the nomination, whoever prevails can help a lot.  Until then, we’re on our own.  Our job is to get to 32, and then the entire Republican Party will clamber aboard.  Five to go.

The media candidates are a distraction, Christie’s going nowhere, Bush 3 will not get the nomination, and Kasich has taken himself out of contention.  We’re left with the Young Guns, Senators all:  Rubio, Cruz and Paul.  I still like Paul, but he’s flailing as a candidate, so it’s one of the Cubans.  Rubio has vastly more political appeal than Cruz, so he’s my guy.  I’m going to be in touch with his Nevada campaign.

I’ve been taking shots at Nate “Numbers” Silver and the 538 boys, with all their useless mathematical models (at least at this stage).  But they also get together and B.S. about what they think is happening, and they’re actually not far off.  They think there’s a 75% chance the nominee will be Rubio, Bush or Kasich (in that order), with the other 25% going to Cruz or some other hard right candidate.  They do not acknowledge  —  because they’re statisticians, not politicians  — that Bush and Kasich are or will be damaged political goods, with heavy negatives among the rank and file.  But all in all a pretty impressive analysis.  These guys are worth keeping an eye on.

Here’s the question Kasich can’t answer:  You say it’s immoral for us to spend money we don’t have, when we know full well that our children and grandchildren will be picking up the tab.  But every nickel of federal Medicaid money you chose to take was borrowed.  In order to provide services to the people of Ohio, you took borrowed money and spent it, and because someone else has to pay this bill down the road, it’s not your problem.

Rubio’s too damn hawkish.  He thinks Russia is an enemy.  He used the word.  Wrong.  It’s a competitor, not an enemy.  We have some common interests with the Russians.  Why be enemies with a guy with 5,000 nuclear warheads?  It doesn’t make sense.  We can sit down and work things out with Bad Vlad.  Marco’s bright.  He’ll figure it out.  Hopefully.

Like Kasich, Rubio’s a blue collar guy, but at only 44 he’s closer to his roots.  He’s clean, which means he hasn’t enriched himself at the public trough.  When he starts doing New Hampshire seriously, he should do very well.  He can relate.

I spend a lot of time analyzing the field, thinking things through, and trying to reach conclusions.  Babbie, not so much.  When I convinced her to watch the first debate, I was rooting for Kasich.  She wasn’t impressed.  She liked Rubio, hands down.

You really need to pay attention to the ladies.

I’ve already got one, and I even know about the Old and New Testaments.   And I really don’t need any pointers from you about what’s in them.  Who the hell do you think you are to instruct me on Christianity?

I’ve got some advice for you.  Stop insulting people whose votes you want.  Unless you really don’t want them, in which case you’re in the wrong business.

If you missed the story, here’s the link  —  Kasich’s taking heat.  He’s been getting a lot of questions about Medicaid expansion, and he’s getting tired of it.  If I’m Bush 3, I’ll make damn sure he keeps on getting them.  Because this kind of response, questioning the religious sincerity of those who disagree with him, is politically deadly.

This is the kind of thing conservatives are used to hearing from liberals.  We’re mean and uncaring.  But to hear this attitude from a man who wants to lead our Party is something else again.  This preening, this moral superiority, of a politician seeking votes is idiotic.

The next thing you know he’ll start talking about conservatism that cares, or some Goddamn thing.

He’s said this kind of thing before, but I thought he’d realized his mistake.  At the first debate the issue came up, and he handled it fine.  But now, a relapse.  One that will haunt him.  I’m already imagining the cartoons and TV ads that can come out of this.

A lot of people have said that Kasich’s mouth would be his undoing.  They may have been right.

Maybe this was just a mistake, he was tired and pissed off.  Maybe he’ll realize he screwed up.  Or maybe he and his guru, John Weaver, think the whole Bible thing is real clever.  Weaver actively despises the right wing of the Republican Party, calling us a bunch of cranks, whose intolerance cost Romney the election.  The crack about the Bible sounds like something Weaver would come up with.

Maybe Weaver won’t last.  He has a history of not making it through an entire campaign.   Maybe somebody else could come in and clean up the damage.  Until that’s done Kasich is going nowhere but down.

Which leaves me with Don Juan and the Parson.  A couple of Cubans.  Only in America can a Cubano get elected to anything.

It’s like when I was in law school, and me and Tom Pitaro would go down to the Los Angeles Sports Arena for the Friday night fights.   Everything was about 90% Mexican.  One time we saw two of our favorite fighters in a big showdown fight.  They were “Little Red” Lopez and “Schoolboy” Bobby Chacon.  They called him schoolboy because he went to a junior college for a semester.  I liked Chacon mainly because of his nickname.  It was a great fight.  These guys were warriors.

Cruz is Lopez, Rubio is Chacon.   Either one can win.  It will be a fair fight.  May the best man win.

He’ll be the next President.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You should have listened to your mother, Jeb!

Bush 3’s not stupid.  He sees what’s going on.  He’s being rejected.  He’s not connecting.  And he really doesn’t understand why.  What’s he supposed to do?  He’s being himself, he can’t change who he is.  He’s nothing if not dutiful, and will soldier on.  But if he gets his ass handed to him in Iowa and New Hampshire, he’s got to win South Carolina or it’s over.  I doubt he’d subject himself to sustained humiliation.

He’ll soon be bringing in big brother, it seems.  This is clearly desperation.  Apparently people with short memories are  telling pollsters they now like Bush 2.  But when they’re reminded of his failures  — and they will be  — he’ll wind up being a major negative.  Setting aside what he did to the country, his time in the White House was an absolute disaster for the Republican Party.  And while Bush 2 was a dope, but he had that swagger and confidence that little brother so obviously lacks.  Bush 3 doesn’t come off well in comparison.  And when he starts criticizing his brother’s administration, he looks disloyal.  He’s just screwed.

And now for some idle speculation.  I like having the three media candidates in the race right now, and I like having Bush 3 as well.  They all keeps things in flux.  As long as the race is fluid, a candidate polling in fifth place in New Hampshire, like Kasich, is still perceived to be in the hunt.  The fact that those ahead of him are the media candidates and Bush 3 means he’s still in good shape there.

I continue to assume Bush 3 doesn’t win the nomination, leaving either Kasich, Rubio and Cruz as the conceivable nominee.  Rubio is enjoying a boomlet, but I think the timing is off, and he knows it.  A year ago Bush 3 was the consensus favorite.  Then came Walker’s moment in the sun.  If it’s now Rubio’s turn, he’ll be scrutinized and criticized as never before in his political career.  The media will happily spread any dirt an opposing campaign can come up with, and the Bushes can play dirty.  Bush 2 gutted McCain in South Carolina fifteen years ago.  The same slimy tactics used to reelect Thad Cochran in Mississippi can be applied to Rubio.  I’d be surprised if the Bushes didn’t play dirty.

I don’t think they can take Don Juan out, but they can hurt him.  Cruz is unlikely to benefit.  Rubio’s voters choose him over the Parson for a reason.  He’s Don Juan.  Cruz is the Parson.  Cruz makes it to the final round if he picks up votes when the media candidates drop out, which he should do.  He’s the Trump tribe’s second choice.  For Kasich to get into the title fight with Cruz, Bush 3 must fade, and Rubio must be seen as unacceptable.  For Kasich, the ideal scenario has always involved watching Rubio and Bush 3 go to war.  It was supposed to happen in Florida, leading up to the March 15 primary.    The way things are shaping up, I wouldn’t be surprised if Bush 3’s Super-pac runs some negative ads against Rubio in New Hampshire.  Somebody’s got to be the one to fire the first salvo of attack ads.  It may as well be the guy with the most money.

I saw pictures of the candidates when they were kids.  Cruz’s freaked me out, it was so phony.  He’s about twenty, and it’s a picture you’d send a casting agent in Hollywood.  Cruz was into acting at the time, so maybe that’s what it was.  He’s trying to look like Don Juan.  All he needs is a Zorro outfit.  He’s trying to look sultry, with hooded, or veiled, eyes.

He may, in fact, be vain.  I haven’t picked up on that before, so maybe it was a stage he went through.  If not, it’s deadly.  Nobody likes vain men.  It’s something to keep an eye out for.

According to everything we’ve heard, the gridlock in the South Carolina Senate that has blocked us was a fight between Sen. Leatherman, who wanted a tax increase for roads, and another faction, which wants an ethics bill.  This hurricane broke the logjam.   The damage to the roads will require emergency appropriations of such a size that they’ll have to take a tax hike.   Leatherman wins.  We don’t think he’s got anything against us.  It was just, if he didn’t get new taxes for roads, nobody got anything.  Hugh Leatherman is 85, I believe.  I hope I’m kicking ass like he is when I get there.

My previous post, Trump for Ambassador, was going to be submitted to AT, but I hit the Publish command instead of the Save Draft command, so it’s out on the internet and AT won’t use anything but original stuff.  It’s just as well.  I wrote it four days ago and it’s a little dated.  There’s an article up in today’s AT by Fay Voshell that’s far better.  Here’s the link.  I have no expertise in foreign affairs, and shouldn’t pretend that I do.

Voshell seems very well informed.  If you’re interested in what’s really going on in Russia right now, I’d read it.  Vladimir is pronounced like “redeemer”, and Vladimir the Great brought Christianity to Russia.  The enormous statue of him going up near the Kremlin will be one of the dominating icons of the city.  Putin is a self conscious Christian, and believes that Russia will revive when her ancient Christian spirit is revived.

This is a man that can be dealt with.

The Donald applauds Putin’s entry into the Middle East, and the geniuses who invaded Iraq and helped create this whole mess are horrified.  What can he be thinking?  Putin is not a nice person, and it’s our job to oppose Russia in the Middle East and everywhere else.  Because they’re Russians, and that’s what we do.  And there’s all that oil that Iran and the Arabs have.  If Putin’s the strong horse, he’ll have a say in what happens to it.

The whiz kids who have directed our foreign policy live in a bygone era, when Russia was an aggressive Soviet Union bent on world domination, and we needed Mideast oil.  But Russia is once again a Christian nation, a great if diminished power, and we don’t need anybody’s oil.  If Putin wants to ensure the survival of his ally in Syria, that’s his business.

The legitimacy of Russia’s great power status needs to be recognized and acknowledged.  Accommodation is not appeasement.  Realpolitik isn’t weakness.  The five legitimate world powers haven’t changed since the Second World War.  They are the U.S., Western Europe, Russia, China and Japan.  America competes, but will not fight, with its geopolitical rivals.  We want trade and good relations with all of them.  Conflicts arise, but are peaceably resolved by statesmen.

We won the Cold War because, after the Sino-Soviet split, it was three to one, with China on the sidelines.  But that was when there was a Soviet Union out to control the world.  Russia doesn’t want to rule the world.  Nobody does, except Islamic fanatics, and suicide bombers can’t conquer anything.  China has never been all that interested in the outside world.  Japan isn’t going to cause anybody any trouble.  Western Europe?  Please.

Trump understands that Putin is just a Russian nationalist, seeking to regain the influence the Soviet Union had in its legitimate spheres of influence, which includes Eastern Europe.  Putin can’t recreate the Warsaw Pact.  He doesn’t need to, because NATO is a dead letter, and he knows it.  It was a pledge by America to fight a European land war against the Soviets, and was grudgingly accepted by the American people.  The Soviets are no more, and neither is the American will to fight.  Putin knows that.  We pretend it isn’t true.  But make believe thinking is very dangerous, and American war hawks need to accept reality.  We will not fight the Russians for the Germans, the Poles, the Estonians or anyone else.  It’s a European problem, and we’re happy to help.  But no boots on the ground.  Europe isn’t worth the life of one Nebraska paratrooper.

Andrew McCarthy in National Review Online gets it.  Other than a secure Israel, our only interest in the Middle East is killing terrorists.  Obama doesn’t have the stomach for it.  The next Republican President will inherit a mess.  Right now, it’s impossible to say that a police action in the Middle East might not be justified, so long as it was quick, and limited in scope.  Nation building is a joke, we’ve learned that much.  Get in, kill as many of them as possible, and get out.  Repeat, if necessary.  If the Russians are still in Syria we might even work in conjunction with them.  If not, we could go in with Anglosphere  and other allies if they want to come.  Forget the U.N.

Trump may be fading a bit, and if his numbers really start to drop he might get out.  If so, he can hold his head high, for he will have performed a valuable service.  He speaks for the Middle American Radical,  as aptly described by John Judis in National Journal.  He singlehandedly forced illegal immigration into the center of the national debate, and he speaks for the great American middle in rejecting reflexive hostility to competing world powers.

We don’t want to be overrun by illegals.  And we don’t want to send our sons and daughters into senseless conflict.  You don’t make America great again by getting into wars.

Good on Trump.

Thanks to the guys at AT for putting my article on the “A” list, with attribution.  Here’s the link.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/10/the_center_holds.html  The full article is below.

I’m getting annoyed with the commenters who accuse me of being a GOPe (rhymes with dope.  ha ha).  I was working for Barry Goldwater before a lot of them were born.  He was the last candidate I supported without reservation.   I liked Reagan, but he wasn’t a hard ass like Barry.   I have my criticism of Reagan, but it’s quibbling.  You don’t always get what you want.  You take what you can get.

It’s realpolitik.  It’s an unsentimental analysis of political reality, divorced from wishful thinking.  We’ve got a once in a century chance at a realignment election, one which could form the basis of a new center right coalition of interests that would endure.  This is an election we simply can’t lose.  And if we win we have to take full advantage of the opportunity.  Cruz and Rubio have their attractions.  They’re talented and smart.  But we don’t need inspiration.  We shouldn’t put a man in the saddle who’s at his first rodeo.  I have only a limited understanding of the amount of work that needs to get done.  But I know it would be overwhelming if you’re doing it for the first time.

The center holds

That’s my prediction for 2016 in a nutshell.  We have two extremes in our politics today.  On the right are furious populists, on the left socialist misfits.  Neither represent a majority.  As always, the center is the key.

Kasich and Rubio are mainstream conservatives.  Kasich’s record and Rubio’s rhetoric line up quite nicely.  Either of them will have natural appeal to the center, where elections are won.  Pundits worry that the Trump appeal to nativism will tarnish the Republican  brand.  Nonsense.  The winning candidate will be the brand.

While the Republicans will not nominate an extremist, the Democrats will.  Like Wilson before him, Obama has taken his party far to the left, too far.  The political pendulum is just starting to swing to the right, but Obama will insist that the Democrat candidate run for his third term.  Hillary, Biden and Sanders will comply with his wishes, or lose the essential black vote.  This is a recipe for disaster.

Centrist voters will have a clear choice.  A center-right conservative vs. a hard core leftist.

And hard core the Democrat will be, we are assured of that.  All the whack jobs on the left are becoming more shrill and militant.  The D’s have embraced Black Lives Matter, and there’s a great chance that could blow up in their face.  They kowtow to the earth-worshiping eco-nazis, who are wildly out of touch with the American people.  They cater to pro-abortion extremism, cheerfully celebrate the war on men, and sympathize with the mentally ill who complain of micro-aggressions.  Gay marriage is the tip of the iceberg of the homosexual agenda.  They will always want more.  They want their lifestyle openly celebrated, and the D’s will gladly comply.  The war on coal is just the start of a campaign to seize control of the energy industry.  They want to eliminate fossil fuels, and to hell with the consequences.  The war on white and Asian men that masquerades under the euphemisms of affirmative action and disparate impact widens in scope.  HUD plans to disrupt residential areas it deems too “homogeneous”, as in affluent white.  The smothering regulatory state marches inexorably on, laying waste to private industry.  I could go on, but this gets depressing after a while.

The point is that the Democrat is going to have a hell of a time appealing to the center, which Kasich or Rubio can do effortlessly.

On a website supposedly devoted to the promotion of Article V, I talk a lot about the Presidential race.  That’s because I’m not convinced we’ll get to 34 this year.  If Maryland rescinds, which I expect, we’d need Virginia, which is going to be a very tough nut to crack.  So I expect we have to wait until after the 2016 elections.  As Thomas Edsall pointed out in the NYT, straight ticket voting is on the rise.  And no Party has won the White House while it lost a majority in the Senate since 1860.  We need a Republican Senate, and a Republican President will virtually guarantee it.   We also need more targets.  We want  the Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota and Washington legislatures under complete Republican control.  Recently a party’s performance in a Presidential contest closely tracks its success in state legislative races.  This is new.  If I’ve got this election figured out correctly, Kasich or Rubio will win in a landslide and we get at least a couple new targets, giving us everything we need to get to 34 in 2017.

The pendulum swings, the tide surges, and we get our turn in the saddle.  It won’t last forever.  You shouldn’t plan on more than eight years.  What matters is what you do with the opportunity.  Make changes that are permanent and fundamental.  Like a supply side BBA, for openers, with other Article V reforms to follow.   Harding and the Republicans turned this country around after the 1920 landslide, but it was a temporary victory, entirely washed away by the New Deal.  We want our win in 2016 to be a watershed.

That’s what Article V is all about.