Category Archives: Politics – international

“A narcissistic, fearmongering authoritarian peddling a destructive, fascistic policy agenda”

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The quote is from an article at Reason.com aimed at Donald Trump. But in spite of the author’s aversion to common sense, the article is quite interesting, coming as it does with the following title, How Political Correctness Caused College Students to Cheer for Trump. You are advised to read it all, but this gets to the essence of the matter. I will say here that the author seems blinded by his own prejudices but notwithstanding any of that, he was still able to work some of this out:

College students and Trump supporters, have at least something in common: both groups are plagued by legitimate economic anxieties: middle-class job losses and burdensome loan debt, for example. But the argument can certainly be made that these concerns are trumped (pardon the pun) by cultural issues, at least as evidenced by the priorities of both groups. And when it comes to the culture wars, they are on opposite sides.

The masses of people who show up at rallies for Trump—and have propelled him to Republican frontrunner status—are thought to be uneducated, coarse, and intolerant of immigrants [zero out of three in my case]. College students, on the other hand, are so tolerant their tolerance is borderline oppressive. Trump’s backers despise the political correctness of liberal elites: students think liberal elites are closet reactionaries who disdain leftist goals and refuse to nominate black actors and actresses for Oscars. The two groups might possess a shared distrust of social progress—Trump people, because it’s happening too quickly, and student protesters, because it’s not happening quickly enough—but they are on opposite ends of that fight, and virtually all others.

Not every college student is a SJW, and libertarians and conservatives least of all. Trump does have policies that make sense, although if you start from the standard presuppositions of our present much deformed age, you will have no idea what they are or how much sense they make. But it is very nice to see that even on an American university campus, Donald Trump’s message is able to get through at least to some.

Via Instapundit who, by the way, chose the following quote to highlight the article:

“For these students, Trump is not the leader of a political movement, but rather, a countercultural icon. To chant his name is to strike a blow against the ruling class on campus—the czars of political correctness—who are every bit as imperious and loathsome to them as the D.C.-GOP establishment is to the working class folks who see Trump as their champion.”

We working class folk have got to go somewhere, and to Trump we are now going, along with the occasional anti-PC student, and then some others like Rudy Giuliani and Art Laffer.

Trump’s kitchen cabinet

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trump guiliani

Naturally not in the American press but from The Daily Mail Online: Rudy Giuliani says Trump is smarter than he looks as The Donald consults with former NYC mayor and other ‘kitchen cabinet’ advisers. Here are the sub-heads for your delectation:

  • Donald Trump is assembling a ‘kitchen cabinet’ advisers
  • Former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Education Secretary Bill Bennett, economists Art Laffer and Steve Moore rumored to be involved
  • Trump promised in South Carolina that he would soon unveil a foreign policy advisory team
  • ‘He has an exceptionally good understanding of how the economy affects our foreign policy,’ Giuliani said of Trump
  • ‘This idea that he’s only familiar with slogans, it’s not accurate at all’

And the opening paras of the story:

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and a handful of policy wonks are casually advising Donald Trump as the Republican front-runner prepares for the kind of scrutiny he has yet to face.

But Giuliani says The Donald is up to the task.

‘You know, he’s very good,’ Giuliani told The Washington Post on Sunday, when a reporter asked whether the Republican front-runner has a decent grasp of complicated public policy issues.

‘It’s clear that he has an exceptionally good understanding of how the economy affects our foreign policy,’ he said of Trump.

‘He understands what’s happening with China, how they could stop North Korea in a heartbeat. This idea that he’s only familiar with slogans, it’s not accurate at all.’

A kitchen cabinet that includes Giuliani, Bill Bennett, Art Laffer and Steve Moore! This is the Dream Team of conservative political economy. And he’s anti-PC, and he knows his way around politics. And he can beat Hillary Clinton in a way no one else can even come close to trying. If you don’t see Trump is the closest answer there is to the problems we now face then you should renew your subscriptions to The Age and New York Times and be done with it.

Mark Steyn Update: Steyn, presently in Australia, casts his eyes back home to the election. Here he explains the formidable problems facing any Republican and concludes:

Long term, two things have to happen: America has to restore the integrity of its borders, and conservatism has to get a piece of the action in the schools and the culture. Short term, the GOP has done a grand job of screwing itself out of electoral viability.

The problem has been that many on the right side of politics believe it has to win over the left, hence Malcolm Turnbull, PM. Being a veteran between-the-lines-reader as I am, Steyn is saying it is Trump or no one. Alas, no one on the respectable right is permitted to say a good word about Trump, so he doesn’t either. But if the article doesn’t manage to set out for you where things are and how dire it is, then just wait till the campaigns start for real.

Donald Trump and international trade

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A comment from the thread in this case dealing with Donald Trump on free trade:

Heads explode all over these days. Note the outrageous claims, lots of personal invective and total lack of balance. Lowenstein was (is?) in the employ of the ferociously anti-Trump Murdoch vehicle, the WSJ. The same outfit who love their cosy relationship with the current political apparatus, and who run bogus ‘agenda polls’ to undermine Trump. RL is a shock jock journo. So think of this:

‘As someone who lived 27 years in East Asia, I know what a rich seam Trump is tapping into as he focuses on America’s trade disaster. For two generations already, increasingly pathetic American trade officials have turned a blind eye to the blatant barriers facing American exports in key foreign markets. One result has been a tragic roll-call of factory closures in the American heartland. Another result, as Trump has insistently pointed out, is that other nations literally laugh at the United States. They think of the U.S. government as idiotic where it is not corrupt.

The problem with free trade is not just that other countries cheat but that they see no reason not to cheat. Cheating confers several key benefits that American officials and commentators consistently sweep under the rug: just the most obvious is that it forces the transfer of American production technology.

Perhaps the most telling evidence of how formidably the Japanese car market is protected has been the performance of the Korean auto industry. At last count the Koreans had less than 0.02 percent of the Japanese car market.

Even Hyundai, Korea’s largest auto maker, sold a mere 1,700 cars a year in Japan in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Repeated efforts to surmount Japanese trade barriers yielded so little that in 2009 Hyundai shut down its Japanese car sales division.’

I post regularly on this subject since I check out each of DJT’s claims. Technology theft from the engine of innovation is extremely well documented as are the methods of coercion in US-China trade relations.

I suspect Trump knows a good deal more about the realities of business dealings national and international than virtually any of those who comment in the press.

So it’s all but settled then: Trump v Clinton

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With Donald Trump’s convincing win in South Carolina and Hillary Clinton’s win in Nevada, the dust has settled early this time on the respective party nominees. You must not think of this as carrying a great deal of satisfaction on my part in relation to Trump. He is the only candidate who had a chance to beat Hillary and even do some good if elected. More than ever do I see how the 2012 election was the one that mattered. But he remains a high risk candidate who will change the nature of politics in the US and across the world.

Perhaps to help us all see clear of what’s involved is an article by Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of the right-side National Interest, on Trump Is Trampling Over the GOP’s Corpse. He has no more satisfaction in seeing this outcome than I do, but also has something else to say about how out of touch the Republican establishment had become. I might say that the comparison in my own mind has been to Andrew Jackson, which you’d have to know a bit about American history to see the parallel. This is his conclusion but there’s lots more at the link.

Militaristic unilateralism is fine for a conservative nationalist like Trump who displays a macho Jacksonian attitude about American honor—calling Iran’s seizure of American sailors an “absolute disgrace” that evinced a “lack of respect for our country and certainly our president.” But he’s also made it clear that he’s ready to give Russian president Vladimir Putin a free hand when it comes to Ukraine. And when it comes to Syria he’s cast doubt about the rebels by implicitly backing Bashar al-Assad — “we have no idea who these people [are] and what they’re going to be, and what they’re going to represent.” Trump’s intense repugnance for allies is deeply rooted in the GOP and in American history. Trump’s truculent stands prompted the historian Max Boot, an adviser to Rubio, to complain in the February Commentary that both Trump and Cruz are turning “their backs on decades of Republican foreign policy, which has been internationalist, pro-free trade, pro-immigration, pro-democracy, and pro-human rights.”

It’s not quite that simple—Republican foreign policy has veered between the pragmatism of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush to the truculence of George W. Bush—but Boot is definitely onto something: like it or not, Trump and Cruz do represent a return to the party’s older traditions. Republican grandees are responding by trying to paint Trump as some kind of closet leftist for having the temerity to question the Bush war on terror. On Monday, Sen. Lindsey Graham called Trump “the Michael Moore of the Republican Party,” and poor Jeb Bush echoed him. “I don’t get it,” Jeb said.

You hear a lot of leading Republicans use that phrase nowadays: “I don’t get it.” That’s because they don’t get it. All Trump is doing is simply telling the truth as Trump sees it, and what he says is resonating because while it may be wrong at least it is new, and other Republicans are pretending the old bromides still work. All of which is why the GOP is becoming unmoored by his candidacy.

What worries me is that we will find, yet again, “Republicans” sitting the election out, or even worse voting for Hillary. I can only think that people don’t read the news or cannot see what’s happening with the borderless world that is being created. Trump says he will return us to a world of nation states and close the American border to all who cannot become Americans. I have no idea whether it can at this late stage be done, but I definitely want someone to try. But with Donald and Hillary selected, the big guns of the media will now turn on Trump. One of the parts about Romney that made a difference was that he was so clear of scandal that ultimately the only blemishes that could be found was that he had driven from Boston to Montreal with his dog on the roof, and when he was sixteen had been mean to some other kid at summer camp. Trump no doubt has much more scandal (but then so does Hillary in spades!), but on the other side, he will take none of this lying down, as the Pope himself recently discovered.

We shall see. I think it’s largely too late, but if there is anyway to ensure the collapse of the West, it is to elect Hillary Clinton president. Although I imagine no newspaper you will read between now and November will say so, Trump is the only one who might, just possibly, bring some order back into our world which is now disintegrating at every turn.

If they are so worried about Hillary why don’t they start being positive about Trump

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It is not hard to see that our Republican elites are unable to accept that Donald Trump could win the nomination. The highest risk candidate imaginable, but also the only one who, if elected, could make a genuine difference in the right direction. Here is Paul Miringoff at Powerline, FOX NEWS POLL HAS SANDERS AHEAD OF CLINTON NATIONALLY, AND BOTH AHEAD OF TRUMP. About this, he concludes:

Anyone frightened by the prospect of a President Hillary Clinton or a President Bernie Sanders should also be frightened by the prospect of Donald Trump as the GOP nominee.

Trump is not impossibly behind in any of these polls and others have him ahead. But the extreme negativity about Trump’s policies among establishment Republicans will end up settling the issue in Hillary’s favour. If you are really worried about a Democrat win, why don’t you start looking for some of the virtues in Donald Trump as president. It is the lack of imagination on the right side, who looks for a kind of French polish on its candidates, rather than the rough and tumble fighters that we truly need, that is going to pull the West into oblivion.

The Democrats could still win

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Meaning, no matter who the Republicans put up, the Democrats, even with Hillary and Bernie, might actually win. It’s the 12-13% still unaccounted for who will now decide the fate of the American Republic and much else.

Against Hillary:

Trump wins 45% to 43%.
Cruz wins 45-44
Rubio wins 46-42

Against Bernie:

Trump wins 44% to 43%.
Cruz loses 42-44
Rubio wins 46-42

The question remains, who would be the best president, although to be the best president you also have to be the winner of the election. Meanwhile, you have this kind of nonsense from The Wall Street Journal to contend with: Donald Trump’s hostile takeover of the Republican party. And when we are talking about voting Democrat, we are talking about putting either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders into the White House, not some anonymous person unknown. So you tell me what sense there is in this?

The Trump phenomenon offers a moral challenge not only to evangelicals, but to the entire Republican leadership. Nine months ago I couldn’t imagine a scenario in which Mr. Trump would receive his party’s nomination and go on to win the presidency. Now I can. If he wins in South Carolina, conscientious Republicans will have to ask themselves whether they can be complicit in a course of events that hands the Oval Office to a man so manifestly unfit for the presidency. It is hard to decide which is a greater threat to the republic — Donald Trump’s pervasive ignorance or his deep-seated character flaws.

Some leading Republicans have quietly told me that they would break ranks if Mr. Trump wins their party’s nomination. A few have said so publicly. Unless a viable alternative emerges soon, every Republican will face the same dilemma.

The same kind of idiocy that found itself walking away from Romney in 2012. I cannot think of two more extreme possible representatives of the Republican Party than Trump and Romney, businessmen though they both may be. I will merely add this comment from The Australian thread following the article:

It seems clear to me that Trump’s critics have got him completely wrong.

Many Americans are looking for the one man they believe can fix the problems created under Barack Obama. They know it’s Donald Trump.

Trump’s supporters already know what he plans to do as President. They know what he will do, why he will do it, how he will do it, and how he will pay for it. It’s all set out in Trump’s two books “Time To Get Tough: Making America #1 Again” and “Crippled America: How To Make America Great Again”.

Trump’s critics haven’t bothered to find out his plans … they prefer to pander to the tabloid sound-bites.

If Trump can win South Carolina, it will send shock waves through the republican party. You see, while New Hampshire has produced the republican nomination 15 out of 17 occasions, South Caroline has a perfect record in picking the eventual republican nomination.

Anyone who thinks that it ought to be a toss up between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump should never be allowed to comment on politics again. You may not think he is the best among the Republicans, but if you vote Democrat because Trump is the nominee then you are too stupid for words.

Isn’t it obvious that Obama is on the other side?

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Eight years is a long time for a political mistake to continue. Victor Davis Hanson looks at Obama and the Middle East in a post on Speak Loudly And Carry A Twig. That Obama has continually sought to aid and abet the most radical of the Islamists in every one of the theatres of war ought to make clear whose side he’s on. Yet it remains merely a series of errors and examples of poor judgement. No one in Israel or Egypt misunderstands even in the slightest, but it still cannot be said that Obama sides with the Muslim Brotherhood. Here is one of the examples Hanson gives.

The Egyptian military junta tried to explain to the Obama administration that it had no choice but to abort the one-election/one-time Islamization efforts of Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is baffled that Egypt’s opposition to radical Islam has not softened American anger, but apparently only cemented the estrangement.

The only thing that baffles him is that Obama could get elected and that his policies have not brought the house down on his head. It’s now just about waiting it out since whoever is next is bound to be better. But then again, it might be Hillary Clinton or even Bernie Sanders so “better” might need to come with the modifier “slightly”. And even if it’s not, everyone now understands that the US cannot be the long-term anchor. Security must be found elsewhere. As Hanson says:

The only upside is an emerging de facto alliance between Israel and the so-called moderate Arab monarchies. That odd coupling assumes that Iran threatens both more than they do each other, and that the United States is no longer a reliable patron to either.

The US under Obama has not been “unreliable”, it has been positively hostile. This is a lesson learned, but we are not living in a better world as a result.

David Horowitz on Trump and the War in Iraq

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This is from a post by David Horowitz at FrontPageMag which he titles, Election Fog. And what was important to me was that he sees past the lack of knowledge and historical understanding to the core motivations of Trump’s run for president.

Trump showed himself recklessly ill-informed on the causes of the Iraq War during the South Carolina debate. George Bush did not lie to lead us into war – that is, in fact, a Democrat lie. The Iraq War was about Saddam’s defiance of a UN Security Council ultimatum to disclose and destroy his Weapons of Mass Destruction. Contrary to an enormously destructive political myth, the WMDs did exist – including 2250 Sarin-gas-filled-rockets and chemical weapons in storage tanks that Saddam buried and are now in the possession of ISIS. Finally, the destabilization of Iraq and the Middle East are entirely a consequence of Obama’s policies not George Bush’s as Trump falsely maintained. Trump’s misreading of the Iraq War is a serious political fault. But it is the result of ignorance rather than malice against his country, which is what motivates the left. Whatever one thinks of Trump, he is justly hated by the Sanders radicals, who understand that his intentions make him their nemesis not their twin.

It’s not something you can pass over lightly since understanding history is crucial to political judgement, but history can be learned. The will and judgement to do the right thing is what matters in the end, and the question that does still remain open is whether Trump does have the judgement to succeed. I think he does, and more so than any of the others, but that still remains the question after all of the other issues have gone by.

Donald Trump passes the Jeff Sessions test

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This is the headline Jeff Sessions Praises Donald Trump’s Answers to ‘Sessions Test’ and this is the story:

Alabama Senator Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) praised GOP frontrunner Donald Trump’s responses to his GOP candidate questionnaire.

Sessions noted that to date Trump is the only candidate who has “answered to my satisfaction.”

On February 5th, Sessions, the intellectual thought leader of the conservative nation-state movement, issued a questionnaire to all candidates seeking the Party’s nomination. The Sessions test consisted of five straightforward questions addressing immigration, trade, and crime in the United States. In his response, Trump wrote, “After my inauguration, for the first time in decades, Americans will wake up in a country where their immigration laws are enforced.”

On Monday’s program of the Mark Levin Show, Sessions said:

The American people need to be alert. This is a very, very critical election. I think if they care about immigration issues and trade issues, they need to be sure about where their candidates stand. And I’ve asked them questions about trade and immigration and one question on crime. And Trump has answered to my satisfaction, but the others haven’t yet. So I think these candidates need to be specific about where they stand before Americans start giving them their vote.

“I’m a fan of Trump,” Sessions said. “He’s been clear on immigration, he’s been clear on trade, and he’s talking directly to the American people.”

Sessions said that he was similarly impressed with Trump’s picks for the Supreme Court. During Saturday night’s GOP debate, Trump was the only candidate to list his potential picks: Bill Pryor and Diane Sykes.

Sessions, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said “Trump really hit a home run with me when he mentioned [Pryor].”

“Sykes and Pryor are conservative federal judges,” Business Insider reports. Because Pryor is adamantly pro-life, “Senate Democrats tried to block Pryor’s nomination to the 11th Circuit court, saying that he had described Roe v. Wade as ‘the worst abomination in the history of constitutional law.’”

In recent days, Trump has been hitting Cruz for his prior support of John Roberts. In 2005, Cruz penned an op-ed in favor of Roberts’ confirmation, declaring: “John Roberts should be a quick confirm” for the Senate.

Trump comes across less serious than he is but those with an agenda can see he has been thinking about the questions and has some seriously sensible answers.