Miscellaneous

He was a patriot, and while he would have made a terrible President, I admire him for that.  He flew B-29’s over Germany in the war.  For men of his age, their service in World War Two, or lack thereof, tells you most of what you need to know about them.  George McGovern loved this country.  Even today, a lot of people on the political left do as well.  Unfortunately, a lot of them really don’t.  All they want to talk about is slavery and the displacement of Native Americans.  Manifest Destiny was just American imperialism, and nothing more.  They read Howard Zinn and think they know something about American history.  They know nothing about it at all.

McGovern was a liberal idealist, and when the left wing of the Democratic Party, including Bobby Kennedy, wanted to take Johnson out in 1968 they turned to him.  He declined, mainly because his term was up in the Senate, and he wanted to run for reelection.  So Gene McCarthy did the job.  Somebody had to do it.  Johnson was a national disgrace.  No one thought McGovern had a chance of winning the Democratic nomination in 1972.  He was from South Dakota, for Christ’s sake.  He announced in January of 1971 and worked his ass off.  He was so angry about the Vietnam War that he was determined to win, and he did.  It was a remarkable piece of politics.

The Clintons are another Lyndon Johnson.  They’re just as corrupt and in love with power as he was, which is saying something.  A lot of young Americans died in Vietnam, needlessly, because it suited the political needs of this despicable man.  I guess he’s buried in Texas in a grave somewhere.  I’d like to pay it a visit.  Benghazi wasn’t Vietnam, and I don’t know all the details, but it certainly appears to me that Hillary would leave brave young Americans to die if it was politically necessary.

Could Lincoln Chafee be another George McGovern?  I would love to think so.  He’s diffident, not a real politician.  But neither was McGovern.  He always seemed to have a snarl on his face.  Now that I’m a Democrat, I can join his campaign.  I went on his website and signed up for email updates.  As soon as a California chapter is formed I’ll join.  I won’t spend much time on it.  Article V comes first.  But it will be fun.  I’m looking forward to it.

My father and his four brothers are all buried on the Frying Pan Ranch, on the White River, next to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.  They all served in uniform in the war, which they were proud of.  Only one of them accomplished anything, especially not my father.  He’d always get pneumonia right before his tank battalion was supposed to go into action, so he never saw any.

Then there was Uncle Fritz, the family legend.  He ran off from home when he was twelve, after his mother died.  She died giving birth to his sister, my Aunt Rosemary, her ninth child.  She was Irish, a MacNamara, and a devout Catholic who did not believe in birth control.  Fritz was her favorite.  He was an original member of the 82nd Airborne Division, and fought all the way from Africa to Berlin.  During the war, he was a savage.

I went to Alaska to meet him, and when our eyes met there was instant recognition.  We looked very much alike, same build, same everything.  Except add about thirty pounds of muscle to the upper body.  He had a 53 inch chest.

I got to know him very, very well.

He was a junior at Yale when Pearl Harbor was attacked.  He joined the Marines, and fought from Guadalcanal to Okinawa.  Based on his later service in Korea, author James Brady said of him, “He was the only truly great man I’ve yet met in my life.”  When he got back from Korea he fathered a son, who he named Lincoln.  The Chafees come from a long and distinguished line of Rhode Island politicians, and both father and son served as Governor.  Now Lincoln has declared his candidacy for President as a Democrat.  He represents the only serious opposition Hillary will have for the nomination.

He’s smart.  He’s basing his opposition to her on her vote for the Iraq war.  That’s how Obama beat her, and it’s her greatest vulnerability among Democrats.  That vote could conceivably cost her the nomination again.  She voted for war because she thought it was the right thing to do, for her, politically.  She voted to send young Americans overseas to fight and die in a pointless war, because, for her, she figured it was smart politics.  Lincoln Chafee, and a lot of other Democrats, are well aware of this, and they will not sit idly by while this vile woman lies her way back to the White House.

I don’t know much about Lincoln Chafee, or Rhode Island, for that matter.  This postage stamp of a state was founded by Roger Williams, who fled the religious tyranny of Massachusetts because of his commitment to religious freedom.  It was the first colony to declare its independence, and the last to ratify the Constitution.  It was the only state which did not send a delegation to Philadelphia.  It joined the Union only after the Bill of Rights had been adopted.

I think Lincoln Chafee is another Howard Dean, with a little more discipline.  Despite his overbearing personality, Dean, the antiwar candidate, had a real shot at the Democratic nomination in 2004.  I think Chafee should be taken seriously.  The Clinton war room is hard at work, trying to dig up dirt on him, thinking of ways he can be attacked.  Chafee knows this, and doesn’t care.  He is his father’s son, a patriot.  I don’t discuss politics with my wife’s circle of friends, for obvious reasons.  But I’m going to tell them about Chafee.  He’s a liberal, like they are, but an honest, good man.  He’s a Jack Kennedy Democrat.

It’s because of people like Lincoln Chafee that I enjoy politics.  People I admire.  As long as this country produces people like the Chafees, we’ll be alright.

That would be Lew Uhler, granddaddy of this Article V movement.  Eighteen months ago when I decided to get involved I called a number for Lew I got off the internet.  He picked up, and we had a nice chat.  I went down to his office near Sacramento and met him and his son Kirk.  Lew drove me to lunch in his 1991 Buick.  He got me on the BBA Task Force, which I’ve been working with ever since.

Lew’s been in Mexico for ten days and said he had a way to stop illegal immigration.  Make all the illegal immigrants go through the hell he and his wife had to endure getting back into this country.  I told him all about the Seattle meeting.  We talked for half an hour and he’s putting it on his calendar.  He understood quite clearly the effect of Constitutional regulatory reform on the economy and the deficit.  He’s going to get a couple deep thinkers, one from Cato, one from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, to make a presentation in Seattle on that precise topic.  It’s the kind of thing everyone knows, in a general sense. But when you really make the case, using hard numbers, of the positive economic impact of regulatory reform it’s overwhelming.

We talked about how, until the Civil War, the new land was always given to the people, and from North Dakota down to Texas, and everything East, it was.  That stopped, and the federal government kept a large share of the land of the West, from Montana down to New Mexico, and everything West.  Giving title of this land to the states, with the federal government retaining a beneficial interest, entitling it to 50% of the proceeds of development, would result in an enormous expansion of economic activity.

Speaking of deep thinkers, election analyst Nate Cohn had a big piece in the New York Times on how the Republican nomination contest was going to play out.  Nate has obviously been giving it a lot of thought, and makes a pretty good case for the conventional wisdom.  But he really shouldn’t take himself so seriously.  He’s basically a numbers cruncher, a numbers guy.  They have their uses but when they start telling you they know what’s going to happen, this far out, they’re blowing smoke.  In April of 1971 George McGovern had been running for President for four months, and was at 1% in the polls.  In January of 1972 he was at 3%.  People like Nate Cohn don’t understand that things happen, and people make them happen.

I think I know what’s going to happen.  We’re going to have the dirtiest campaign in modern history.  The Clintons and all their allies will stop at nothing to win.  Will we fight back?  I’m confident we will, and effectively, and beat them.  It’s a matter of political will.  One thing I’ve learned on the Task Force these last eighteen months is that there’s no shortage of that.  It’s really just a question of organizing it.  That’s what Seattle is all about.

I’ve always liked to fight, ever since I was a kid growing up in Richmond.  I got in a lot of fights.  It was a form of recreation.  We were just little kids, nine and ten years old, and we couldn’t really hurt each other.  We’d fight in the playground in the back of St. Cornelius at recess or at lunch.  The nuns knew what was going on, but they didn’t care.  Boys will be boys.  When we moved to Pleasant Hill, in the suburbs, I found out that kids didn’t fight as much as they did in Richmond, so I didn’t get in very many.   Anyway, I’ve always had a kind of combative attitude, and enjoy political fights like I used to enjoy real fights.  The one we’ve got coming up is going to be a doozy.

And I’m going to enjoy myself.

Two old bulls are facing off in the South Carolina Senate, and we’re caught in the middle.  One wants a gas tax, the other an ethics bill.  Neither one wants what the other does, and it takes 2/3 to do anything.  In order to force the issue, one of them, 85 year old Hugh Leatherman, is refusing to allow anything to pass, including our bill, which he doesn’t like anyway.  This impasse could last until the end of the session, and carry over to next year.  In which case we don’t get South Carolina this year, even though we have the votes.

Leatherman’s a piece of work.  He’s made a living, and a good one, being a State Senator for 34 years.  His income from his legislative salary is chump change.  He’s found other ways.  He’s really a Democrat. He just switched parties to keep his chairmanship when the Republicans took over the Senate.  No one has any influence over him, except fellow state senators.  I like to think that I’ve got a good imagination.  But I’m damned if I can think of what to do with Hugh Leatherman.  I’d give him his damn gas tax, but that’s not in my power.

On a brighter note things are looking up in Oklahoma.  We got out of the Senate committee 7-5 and will be on the floor in a week or two.  CoS has already passed there, so we should too.  Gary Banz, on the ground, is feeling better about his chances.  If we don’t get South Carolina this year, Oklahoma would be sweet consolation.

There’s a lot of presidential poll numbers floating around right now, and most of them are meaningless.  But one caught my eye today, from Colorado and a couple other purple states.  It’s from Quinnipiac, which means it’s non-partisan.  Asked if Hillary was honest and trustworthy, 38% said yes, and 56% said no.  That’s kind of amazing.  If 3/5 of voters don’t trust you, how in the hell do you get elected President?

One way, and one way only  — destroy your opponent, just like Bill Clinton did to Dole in ’96, and Obama did to Romney three years ago.  Whoever the Republican is, he or she will be smeared, libeled, and slandered.  Put it in the bank.  Just win, baby.  The Clintons are the Oakland Raiders of politics.  It will be ugly.

If they knew who the nominee will be, they’d be after him right now.  Without doubt they’ve begun opposition research on all that they think could win.

That’s why Hillary is going to run, in spite of the political problems a lot of people see in her path.  She’ll get the nomination, and she’ll win by running the dirtiest campaign in modern American history.  That’s why introducing the American people to Paula Jones is so important.  What the Clintons, and their allies, did to her, and tried to do to her, is absolutely disgraceful.  I get pissed off about it to this day.  If the American people hear her story they’ll understand who these pests are who wish to disgrace the White House yet again.

I’m 69, Dan Fleming is 68, and we still learn things about each other.  Dan’s always been a bleeding heart liberal, and I’m finally beginning to understand why.  It all came from his dad.  That was his dad’s politics, so that’s going to be his politics.  His father was a lot bigger, and a lot meaner, than Danny.  He was a professional basketball player and the President of a Teamster’s local.  This was at a place, and during a time, when it was helpful to be a huge and violent man, with a hair trigger temper.  And he was a professional Irishman as well, who would not fight in World War Two because he hated the English.

Danny and I have mostly stayed clear of politics on our camping trips.  He was a huge fan of Obama.  We went camping before the first Obama-Romney debate and he told me he couldn’t wait to see Obama clean up.  I told him not to be so sure.  A couple days ago we were at Steep Ravine on the Pacific Coast and he asked me who I was supporting for President.  He said he liked Rand Paul.

I was floored.  Danny has been very active in California Democratic politics his whole life.  He was served it at dinner.  He was a Sacramento lobbyist and political activist, involved in countless campaigns.  I know it’s just a straw in the wind, but if Rand Paul appeals to Danny, he may have something going for him.

I think I know why Danny likes Rand Paul  — he sees him as antiwar, which is what Danny, and his father, are, and were.  Danny hated Bush’s war in Iraq, and does not want to see another one.  He was right about that war, and I was wrong.  The older I get, the more I hate war.  I reminded Danny of Hillary’s vote in favor of that war, and what it said about her.  It was a completely political vote.  She voted for war because she thought it would help her politically.  She was willing for young Americans to go to the Middle East and die, in a pointless war, because it was good politics.  This woman must not be allowed near the White House again.

Article V is the goal.  Hillary will be collateral damage.

I love politics.

In 1765 she came with her family to the Waxhaw region on the border of the Carolinas.  They were poor Scotch-Irish, and couldn’t afford good land, and her husband worked himself to death within two years, trying to scratch out a living.  She was carrying his third son, which she named for him.  She moved in with her cousin Jane Crawford, who had eight children of her own.  Jane was unwell, and she did the work of two women, taking care of the whole family.

When the Revolutionary War came to the Carolinas her oldest boy, Hugh, rode with William Richardson Davie at the Battle of Stono Ferry.  He died from exhaustion right after the fight.  He was 16.  Her remaining sons rode with Davie at the Battle of Hanging Rock, then became guerillas, and were captured and imprisoned at Camden with 250 other men.  They were dying of starvation and disease when she rode the 45 miles to see them.  She pleaded with the British to let her boys go, and they were finally released in a prison exchange.  When she got them home they were in desperate condition, and after two days her middle boy, Robert, died.  He was 15.  She nursed her youngest, 13, to a semblance of health, and then rode with two other ladies to Charleston to nurse and comfort the Americans being held on prison ships there.  Some of them were her kin.  She contracted cholera and, shortly after the great victory at Yorktown, died and was buried in an unmarked grave.

Her surviving son became a truly ferocious man, a lion.  He was his mother’s son.  She gave birth to him on March 15, 1767, and in less than two years we will celebrate the 250th anniversary of that day.  If she’s not the Mother of this country I don’t know who is.  Let’s all honor the life of Elizabeth Jackson on that day.