Politics – Page 27 – Shall Not Be Questioned

The Dem Debate Still Convinces Me This is a Cartoon Race

I think Jim Geraghty has summed it up best, “America Now Has An Openly Socialist Party”, but he notes about Hillary:

With that in mind, Hillary Clinton is the class of the field on that stage, and the only real obstacle to the nomination that remains is a Joe Biden bid. Compared with everyone else, sheâ€™s polished and knows what sheâ€™s doing. Even when sheâ€™s being robotic and inauthentic, sheâ€™s remembering her talking points, pivoting to her preferred issues. The software upgrades to her personality may look awkward when sheâ€™s alone, but sheâ€™s still a much, much better candidate than anybody else on that stage.

Geraghty is absolutely right about his assessment of where the Democratic Party has ended up, as the party of Democratic Socialism. But Bernie Sanders struck me as a formidable candidate given the populist zeitgeist among both the right and left baseÂ in this race. Back to Geraghty:

In one of the few surprises of the night, Bernie Sanders did his best to try to save her on her troubles with her personal e-mail server. Heâ€™s an old fool if he thinks Hillary will return the favor when he needs it.

That struck me as an unwise move on the part of Sanders. What better way to sink her as an establishment candidate than to ride that hobby horse? But I don’t agree with the rest of Geraghty’s assessment of Sanders. There is a tendency to want to dismiss populism — I speak as someone who has that tendency. There is no denying it anymore. Nothing I saw in the Dem primary convinces me that this is anything other than a race between Bernie Sander’s left-populism and Hillary Clinton’s left-establishmentarianism, and I think Bernie’s populism is going to be more appealing to the Democratic base.

I do have to agree with Geraghty about Jim Webb, in that “Webb has a good chance of winning the Democratic nomination in 1948.” But I don’t think anything I saw tonight will help Hillary stop feeling the Bern, and for anyone else to put serious pressure on either candidate.

God help us. The stakes are very high, and I don’t honestly think anyone who’s a real contender, on either side, is really anything other than a cartoon.

Shocking News: Hillary Doesn’t Like Gun Rights

I’m always ambivalent about whether Hillary Clinton saying something anti-gun is really news. Is there anyone who thinks Hillary favors gun rights? Perhaps they might remember Hillary trying badly to run to the right of Obama on guns in 2008. There may be some remote tribesmen in New Guinea who are unaware that Hillary Clinton is anti-gun. But for the rest of us, I think this comes as no surprise:

Hillary Clinton slammed the Supreme Court as â€œwrong on the Second Amendmentâ€ and called for reinstating the assault weapons ban during a small private fundraiser in New York last week, according to audio of her remarks obtained by theÂ Washington Free Beacon.

This is my shocked face. I had no idea Hillary Clinton was an enemy of Second Amendment rights. No idea she supported assault weapons bans! I figured it wouldn’t be too long before Hil was out on a hunt with Sarah Palin sporting an AR in .308. Good thing we have the media around to keep us informed.

Christie Pardons More Gun Owners, Tripped Up by Draconian NJ Laws

Chris Christie has been trying to convince gun owners he’s not like all the other New Jersey Governors and politicians on gun issues, and to be honest, he’s not. Today he pardoned three more people, otherwise law abiding, who happened to run afoul of New Jersey’s draconian gun laws. Chalk it up to wanting to do better among GOP primary voters, but no other New Jersey governor has been willing to pardon honest citizens who mistakenly run afoul of their gun laws. These are not isolated incidents. These kinds of cases have been happening in New Jersey at a pretty regular frequency for years, and often these people just end up rotting in jail, their lives and families destroyed. So I will give Christie credit where it is due.

A tip of the hat to Charles C.W. CookeÂ over at National Review, who broke the story.

No, I Did Not Die in the Popeocalypse

The dead air has honestly been for lack of news, and I’ve gotten to the point in blogging I hate just producing useless filler (you know, like this post). There’s way too much of that out there, and it wastes your time and mine. Speaking of the Pope visit, as anyone with half a brain could have predicted, turnout was way lower than expected, and there are businesses that lost a lot of money. Restaurants were told to expect to be very busy, probably figuring a communion wafer is hardly even a light afternoon snack. But the crowd disappeared as soon as Frances did.Â Now the finger pointing begins! I was out in the Harrisburg area this weekend, partaking in the grand tradition of my Huguenot ancestors: running away from Catholics. Even out there, the signs were flashing advisories that might as well have said, “Danger! Pope Visiting Philadelphia!”, like Godzilla had come ashore and was heading inland. Nonetheless, the light turnout didn’t prevent the Secret Service from turning security into a mess.

The Onion had some commentary on the visit here, and here. That’s funny right there. I don’t care who you are.

Hopefully tomorrow we’ll have non-pope news. It’s been quiet, almost too quiet on the gun front. Every time I worry about a sagging news cycle, I’m reminded that December 2012 was also a sagging news cycle, and I’ve learned to be careful about complaining about a lack of news.

Best News I’ve Heard in a While

John Boehner is stepping down as speaker, and resigning from Congress. Maybe now we have a prayer of getting some opposition to this Administration from Congress. I can’t say I’m optimistic though. Boehner, more than anyone, I think deserves the blame for the Trump phenomena. Boehner has been so easy on Obama, you almost have to wonder what kind of dirt they have on him. Good riddance, I say.

A Good Explanation for the Trump Phenomena

Trump’s success in the early primary season has pretty much baffled anyone who is an avid observer of politics. I’ve been reading Scott Adams series that Donald Trump is a master persuader, very skilled in the art of persuasion. I think there’s probably something to that, but the big fact that I think stands in the way of that theory is that Trump has run for President before, and never managed to get all that far. It’s possible that the environment had to be just right for his populist fire to start burning, and now he’s at the right place at the right time.

I’m not a regular reader of RedState, but this particular article caught my attention, and I think it’s a pretty good explanation for the Trump phenomena:

I donâ€™t think the Trump support is reflective of any issue at all. I donâ€™t think itâ€™s even reflective of disgust with the GOP. I think itâ€™s reflective of the disgust we have with the new unwritten rules of society …

… The reality is that people are excited to see, hey, hereâ€™s a guy who goes on TV, and if he wants to pop off at the mouth, he pops off at the mouth, and if this guy can rise to being President of the United States then maybe I donâ€™t have to always shut my mouth and I can sometimes say what I feel and maybe I can call my annoying coworker ugly and not have to risk being sued, too.

Read the whole thing, as they say. That makes a lot of sense to me. I know I’m tired of the Troller in Chief in the White House stirring up division for political advantage, and sick of seeing people’s lives destroyed for expressing opinions that run counter to the prevailing left-wing orthodoxy. It is satisfying to watch someone giving the middle finger to the PC police and the media (but I repeat myself) and get away with it.

I was leaning towards Scott Walker out of the gate. Walker is a proven fighter and reformer,andÂ heÂ pulled it off while coming off as midwestern boring to the public. To me the ideal candidate is one who can maintain an air of public respectability and charm, but behind the scenes will eviscerate his enemies with a surgical precision. Walker did that very well. That is his record. Another political figure who is very good at that schtick? Barack Obama. In fact, I would argue that Obama is the master of this style, with a talent for it not likely to be seen again in our lifetimes.

Walker is out now, largely because I don’t think very many people wanted what he was offering. He probably also screwed himself by listening to the GOP consultant class rather than being himself. But I think he was ultimately done-in by the fact thatÂ a large part of the GOP base, the ones enamored with Trump, don’t want midwestern nice. They want vengeance, and Trump is playing to that.

Scott Adams is predicting Trump will go all the way, and win the Presidency in a landslide. I will admit, I’d vote for Trump over any of the three possible Democratic candidates, but I will definitely have a “Dear God, what have we done?” moment if that ends up being the choice. Right now I don’t have a horse to back, and it’ll probably stay that way until I can see whether Carly can build momentum, or whether she starts getting repetitive. I’m also keeping an eye on Rubio.

Kathleen Kane Now Ineligible for Office?

It seems like there’s now a question over whether Attorney General Kathleen Kane is, as of today, now ineligible to hold the statewide office. Why? Because the state Supreme Court just suspended her law license.

Yes, the woman who Mike Bloomberg spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to elect, can’t even represent one of Mike’s Illegal Mayor allies who held a man hostage with a gun.

Oh yeah, and just because I try to remind the voters in the central part of the state who voted their football allegiances over gun rights every time that Kathleen Kane is in trouble – elections have consequences.

Toomey Backs off Gun Control

This just might lead you to believe that an election is coming up, because there were plans for a gun rights group to protest Pat Toomey’s office, but they were cancelled when apparently, “a Toomey staffer promised the senator would not reintroduce the high-profile gun control bill known as the Toomey-Manchin proposal that stalled in the Senate two years ago.” The article notes Democrats are exploiting this weakness:

A spokesman for Democratic Senate candidate Katie McGinty […]Â accused Toomey of telling gun-control advocates one thing and gun rights advocates another and said he is â€œplaying politics with the issue of gun safety instead of being honest with the people of Pennsylvania.â€

The truth hurts, don’t it Pat? She’s got your number. My impression that Toomey still has a pretty good chance of winning the election. Pennsylvania likes dull, bland politicians, and he fits that role like a glove. We will almost certainly be able to get a number of pro-gun votes out of him if he stays in office that we would not from any potential Democratic challenger. Personally, I’d rather have Casey and Manchin’s seats than Toomey’s, even though I’m still angry at his concessions on this issue.

This Kathleen Kane Drama Couldn’t Get Any Weirder

Apparently Kathleen Kane has an evil twin, who is in some legal trouble of her own:

Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s twin borrowed $200,000 from an FBI agent who was living with her and then kicked him out the door, the agent says in a civil lawsuit filed in Lackawanna County.

Kane’s twin is being sued because apparently that was the guy’s life savings, and he’d like it back. Classy.Â Meanwhile, apparently Kathleen Kane has used her evil twin to throw off the press. Maybe her next defense will be that it was her evil twin all along!

Surreal Headline of the Day

You can bet the editors were just itching to run this one: “Lawyer Invokes Porn as Pennsylvania AG Is Ordered to Trial.” I wish I could say Bloomberg must be cringing about the 600,000 dollars he donated to her campaign, but the fact is he already got what he wanted out of her, and Kane’s reciprocity take backs are unlikely to be overturned by any future successor, at least until we can have an election. What’s unbelievable to me is that she refuses to resign. Even Governor Wolf is calling on her to resign.

For those of you who haven’t been following, Kathy Kane’s defense has essentially been this whole indictment thing is just a “stealth political weapon” to get back at her for exposing various high-ranking state employees sharing tasteless jokes and porn via state e-mail, including former Democratic Supreme Court Justice Seamus McCaffery.