Mr. Trump, meet Senator Sanders

Posted on by Fritz Pettyjohn

There are 185 comments at the American Thinker on “The Trump Card”, the vast majority solidly behind the Donald.  He’s calling spades spades.  He speaks for them.

Actually, he speaks for a lot of us when he expresses contempt for, in Ted Cruz’s phrase, the Washington cartel.  Bernie Sanders is tapping the same vein, except on the left.  The politics of Washington D.C. is a sink of corruption, and it’s plain for all to see, left and right.  The question for us is bringing Trump people into the fold.  The Democrats will need to get Sanders people lined up behind Hillary, which could be an even tougher task.

Sanders crowds are pumped, motivated.  Hillary will never generate that kind of enthusiasm.  So for every Trump voter who sits it out, there may be a Sanders voter joining them.

Despite having been married so long to a truly gifted liar, Hillary can’t pull it off.  Great liars, like Bill, are shameless and unembarrassed by their lies, so they betray nothing in their speech and manner.  Poor liars, like Hillary, compensate by aggression.  They know that people don’t believe them, so they get pugnacious about it.  Even on the willfully blind left, it’s obvious to see that Bernie Sanders is speaking from the heart, something Hillary doesn’t know how to do.

So go Bernie and go Donald.  Maybe they should do a campaign event together.  They agree that massive immigration is hurting the American working poor.  Get together on that, and their opposition to trade deals, and have a rally.  Trump people meet Sanders people.  It would be good theater.  The Donald needs to give Bernie a call.

I’ll be submitting more stuff to AT, and as long as it’s good quality I’m confident they’ll run it.  AT’s Rick Moran edited “The Trump Card”, and made it better.  They take themselves pretty seriously there, so humor and flippancy are out.  Erick Erickson calls his meeting RedState, and I referenced it as Red Meat.  They took that out.  That’s fine, as long as I know the rules.

I like to think that I can match the quality of most of the stuff they publish at AT, so I’m looking forward to having an outlet other than this blog.

We shouldn’t lose sight of what a great success the debate was.  Just about everybody did well.  Thanks to Trump, 24 million people saw a lot of our candidates for the first time.  Collectively, and individually, a pretty impressive group.  This was the real kickoff of the 2016 race, and, as a harbinger of things to come, it bodes well.

Next year’s Article V campaign will take place in the heat of the most critical time of the primary campaign.  If the Republicans seem to be getting their act together, and Hillary is struggling, it should help us.  At this point in our political history the last thing anybody needs to be worrying about is the threat posed to our freedom by an Article V Convention.   Fear is what we’re fighting.

Six months from now, if we’re winning, fear strikes out.

The Trump Card

Posted on by Fritz Pettyjohn

My article on Trump is in American Thinker today.  Here it is. 

Judging from the first 60 or so comments, the Trump people are uninterested in the leverage Trump is attaining.  They expect him to either win the nomination or win as an independent.  Cruz seems to be the only other Republican who isn’t a RINO.  These commenters are the most zealous of Trump’s supporters.  Hopefully the specter of eight more Clinton years in the White House will pacify the less zealous.

Competition

Posted on by Fritz Pettyjohn

Dave Guldenschuh, the silver tongued terror of the Rome, Georgia, Police Department, has a new blog, thearticlevproject.wordpress.com  .  Here it is.  Just as I have been recording the progress of the Article V movement, so will Dave.  Lately I’ve been posting about a lot of other things, and not really keeping up in reporting on Article V.  So I’m very pleased to welcome Dave to our little corner of the blogosphere.  He starts off with a great story about George Mason, the Father of the Bill of Rights.

Submitted a blog piece to American Thinker (AT) today, entitled “The Trump Card”.  I’ll print, or link, to it tomorrow.  The commenters at AT are mostly Trump people.  But they’re not all crazy.  Half of them approved of my piece on Article V.  These are the Trump people who can be brought back in.  But some of them are so pissed off that they’ve thrown in the towel on all politics, parties and politicians.  They’ll sit it out, they say.  We’ll see.

I’m trying to think of an analogy to Trump in our political history.  Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura come closest, I guess.  And they both won.  This is a little scary.

You can compare him to Ross Perot, but Trump is much more.  He’s a top tier celebrity in his own right.  What we’re witnessing is the intersection of the world of politics and the world of entertainment.  And there are a lot of people who are more interested in Hollywood than politics.  I’m married to one.  Half the people who watched the debate were there to see Trump.  He’s got the networks eating out of his hand.  He’s the lead on most of the Sunday shows, and he’s phoning it in.  That’s all he’ll give them.  They’ll take whatever they can get.  Ratings.

He can keep this up as long as he wants.  He just can’t try to top himself, to be even more provocative.  There’s a line there somewhere.  He hasn’t crossed it yet, but he’s gotten close.  I’m betting he keeps his head.  He’s a pro at this stuff.  I think he lasts into New Hampshire.  And anyone who tells you they know how he’ll do is full of it.  Nobody.  Knows.  Anything.

Jeb!’s response to the flap was instructive.  He did what was expected him, and harshly criticized Trump.  Jeb! will always do what’s expected of him.  He’s very dutiful.  He’s not his own man.

Kasich is playing the Trump story just right.  Perfect, in fact.  He’s showing skills.  His performance at the debate bodes well.

He’s getting closer to the catbird’s seat.

The Donald, the Curse, and Latent Homosexuality

Posted on by Fritz Pettyjohn

In an exclusive interview with Larry Flynt of Penthouse magazine Presidential hopeful Donald Trump clarified his criticism of Fox News host Megan Kelly.

Trump:  “I never said she had the curse.  That’s bullshit.  But I’ll tell you this, Larry.  I know women, and this broad needs to get laid.  Big time.  If her husband was doing his job she’d be walking around with a smile on her face, instead of being a complete bitch.”

The piece before this, about Jeb! Bush, was declined by the American Thinker.  They don’t do humor, I guess.  But the editors there are giving me a fair shake, which is all I can ask.  Maybe I’ll do the Jeb! thing over, this time without the humor.

I like writing about Jeb!, mainly so I can always refer to him as Jeb! Bush.  The exclamation point is a reference to the intensity of his appeal.  Whatever you say, Jeb!

His brother’s record of failure is not a joke.  It’s a very big issue for Jeb!  The smart thing would be to cop to the fact that George was always the dumb one, Jeb!’s the smart one, and Jeb! won’t screw up like his brother.  But, family loyalty.  He’s in a box.

My wife watched most of the debate.  She didn’t like it when Jeb! was taking heat over his brother’s conduct of the Iraq War.  He was being loyal to his brother, so she sympathized with him.  This is important.  Kasich should not personally try to tie Jeb! to his brother’s dismal record.  Women will sympathize with him.  This is the job of the media, or of surrogates.

She liked Rubio, a lot.  She didn’t hear a word he said, but he’s her favorite.  He’s a hot Latino.  Boy is this guy going to be an asset as VP.  He could help all over the country, not just Florida.

She thought Kasich looked a little goofy, like he should have been wearing a string tie.  I didn’t see it, but she’s a woman, and she sees what she sees.  He can’t change who he is, but he needs to comport himself as a serious man.

Fox News in general, and Chris Wallace in particular, are in the tank for Kasich.  It’s plain as day.  Wallace has gotten so bad he spouts Kasich talking points, like “86 out of 88 counties!”  They’ve got to dial it back.

The Right is not a hive, like the Left, and we don’t have a Queen like they do.  Fox News, and Roger Ailes, are somewhat analogous, though.

It’s nice to have friends in high places.

Jeb! and his burden

Posted on by Fritz Pettyjohn

My name’s Jeb!  —  and the smart money’s on me as the next President.  But I’ve got a problem.  It’s my dopey brother George, and his record.
According to the CBO George ran a $4.9 trillion deficit.  When he had Republicans running both the House and the Senate, 2003-2007, the deficit was over $1.8 trillion.
How do I defend that?
Mom and Dad always told us that family comes first.  But George is killing me. I wanted to call him out on his stupid war in Iraq, but Dad says that would be throwing my older brother under the bus, and I can’t do that.  So I get in trouble.  Because of George.
The whole family has always known that George wasn’t that bright.  I’ve always been the smart one, the one everyone knew was destined to uphold the family tradition of public service.  Then  Karl Rove got ahold of him, and told him he could get elected Governor of Texas if he stuck with a few talking points.  They were simple and easy  points to make, right up George’s alley.  He’d quit drinking and had a kind of manic discipline.  He hated (we all did) Ann Richards, his opponent.  She’d mocked Dad at the ‘92 Democratic Convention, saying he’d been born with a silver spoon in his mouth.  So everybody pitched in, he stuck to the script for his whole campaign and won.  The next thing you know he’s President.  Go figure.
I know everybody who’s anybody, and everybody who’s anybody knows me.  And everybody who knows me knows I’d be a great President, just like Dad.
I’m Jeb!, darn it, not George.  (Oops! Sorry about that strong language.  Sometimes I just get so worked up.)
Everybody knows there has to be a Grand Bargain.  When I’m President I’ll sit down with the Demcrats and we’ll make a deal.  It will be a bipartisan, middle ground agreement.  They won’t get everything they want, and neither will I.  But it will show that Washington works when a man of good will and generosity of spirit leads the nation.  That’s me.
I know what’s coming, and where it will be coming from — Cocky John Kasich.  From 1998 to 2001, when he was Chair of the House Budget Committee, they ran surpluses of close to half a trillion dollars.  With Clinton in the White House.  He’s going to ask me to admit that George took all the savings and blew it.  Which he did.
But I’m not George, I’m Jeb!
I’ll never forget when Reagan beat Dad in 1980 with his voodoo economics.  It was tough on the whole family.  But Dad became maybe the best, most loyal, and brilliant Vice President in history.  He was so good he won the Presidency himself.  And he won by promising to take the rough edges off Reagan’s rigid conservatism, to be kinder and gentler.  And he was.  And he was taken advantage of, and lied about, and the conservatives took him down because of it.  They walked away from him, even after he won the Gulf War, and let Clinton beat him.  The family will never forget, and never forgive.
Because he stayed in Texas and acted like a cowboy, people thought George was a conservative.  But, though he’s little slow, George is a Bush, and we have compassion.  We care about the little people, especially the little brown people, the people who can’t help themselves.  We want to help them.  Conservatives don’t care about all the little people, especially the brown ones.  They think they should take care of themselves.  They’re unkind.
I ought to be the next President.  If I’m not,  I’ll know what I’ll be beaten by.
By George!