The American Spectator
Steve Baldwin’s Republican STRATEGY
11/20/2018

There’s a quite a bit of talk about how the two parties will work together to pass some policy initiatives over the next two years but don’t believe it for a minute. It is unlikely the Democrats will compromise with the Republicans on any issue that would give Trump a win. The reality is that when it comes to important issues such as border security, tax cuts, and health care, the Democrats simply don’t share the same underlying principles with the Republicans. We need to realize that today’s Democrat Party is not the same one that existed in the pre-Obama era when they were often able to find common ground with the Republicans. The last decade has seen the Democrat Party transform itself into a socialist party with little in common with traditional American governance.

Indeed, there are no more moderate Democrats in any key party positions whatsoever and those who today set the party’s agenda have a socialist orientation, despise capitalism, and support identity and group politics over merit and individual accountability. They have rejected the traditional norms that undergird the Christian-based value system America was founded upon. They defer to globalist institutions over U.S. constitutional law and don’t even support basic governing principles such as sovereignty and the concept of citizenship.

If JFK ran for office today, he would not only get clobbered, but he would be denounced for his whiteness, his elitist background, and his support for capitalism, tax cuts, and a strong military. He wouldn’t even make it past the Democrat primary.

Whatever compromise legislation offered by the House Democrats would almost certainly be something that violates basic conservative principles and should be rejected by the Republicans. Even on the issue of “infrastructure,” what the Democrats will likely do is to turn such a bill into a “Christmas tree” pork bill, whereby hundreds of state and local infrastructure projects will be placed into the bill for federal funding.

Understand that most infrastructure projects have historically been funded by state and local governments. But such a bill would change all that and create a horrible new precedent whereby the feds would take over the funding of all these projects. The Federal government is already in gross violation of the Constitution by funding many activities the Constitution reserves for the states, i.e. education, welfare, etc., so why should the Republicans escalate the destruction of our limited-government Constitution? No matter what Trump thinks of this idea, the GOP should oppose such legislation.

The best thing the GOP can do for the next two years is to embrace gridlock and ignore the “compromise” rhetoric being spouted by both the Democrats and establishment Republicans. The real agenda of the Democrats is to use the next two years to create phony narratives that will feed right into their 2020 presidential campaign themes. The Democrats have made it quite clear that they care far more about accumulating political power than pursuing good policy, so everything they will do in the next two years will be about setting the stage to recapture the White House. Every act by the Democrats will be about creating and promoting a narrative that Trump is evil, corrupt, controlled by the Russians, etc., etc. The incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Congressman Adam Schiff, will grossly exaggerate the Russian collusion narrative and is already spreading the conspiracy theory that “the Russians may have laundered money through the Trump organization, and if that’s the case, then we need to be able to look into it.”

As the incoming chairwoman of the Financial Services Committee, Congresswoman Maxine “Mad Max” Waters will demand the release of Trump’s tax returns, giving her a platform to prattle on and on about how Trump is hiding illegal activity. Congressman Jerry Nadler is already claiming his Judiciary Committee will investigate the FBI’s background check of Brett Kavanaugh’s accusers, even though they performed a rigorous investigation of all the witnesses cited by the women who made the allegations. He also claims, erroneously, that “there’s a real indication that Kavanaugh committed perjury” and wants to impeach him. And on and on.

The object of these phony investigations is to find a justification to impeach Trump, since, to date, they haven’t found any impeachable crimes as defined by the Constitution. The Democrats also hope that spending two years creating fake narratives about Trump — all covered extensively by their media allies — will sway enough ignorant voters against Trump to win the White House in 2020.

So what are the Republicans to do? Well, for starters, the GOP-controlled Senate needs to vote out a series of clean bills on issues that working-class Americans care about in order to show a clear contrast with the Democrats. For example, they should send to the House a number of bills that introduce free market approaches to health care such as Medical Savings Accounts and forcing insurance companies to compete across state lines, a policy that would drive rates downward. Let the Dems vote these bills down and they will.

On the immigration issue, the Senate should send to the house a border security bill that authorizes the construction of a few hundred miles of border wall in heavily populated areas and funds more border patrol officers and immigration judges. With thousands of people heading toward the border in what now appears to be an endless number of “caravans,” border security will be a hot issue for the next few years. It would be very short-sighted not to force the House Democrats to vote on such border security issues. Ditto for bills addressing our broken asylum system, our visa process, chain migration, and anchor babies.

Even on taxation bills — which must originate in the House — House Republicans should put forth a middle-class tax cut which the Democrats loudly claimed to be in favor of while denouncing Trump’s tax cut last year. Despite being in the minority, House Republicans can still, of course, introduce bills and then let the Democrats kill them. In the past, the Republican minorities have introduced watered down bills in an effort to pick up Democrat support. Those days are gone. We’re at war and congressional Republicans need to start acting like it. No Democrat is going to help any Republican pass any bill that will make Trump or the GOP look good, so they need to ditch that notion. Nor will the Democrats’ rabid socialist base allow them to do that. House Republicans instead need to focus on introducing solid legislation that puts American workers first and if the Democrats kill them, so be it.

The main goal of the Republicans for the next two years should be to put the Democrats on record, over and over again, as being against the policies that elected Donald Trump: border security, the renegotiation of trade treaties, less taxes, policies that unleash our manufacturers and energy producers, an America-First foreign policy, etc. They need to expose the Democrat Party for who they really are: a party completely unconcerned about working class Americans but obsessed with taking back power so they can continue the socialist transformation of America begun by Barack Obama.

With the lame duck session now in progress, the GOP needs to take advantage of the last few weeks of Republican control by passing legislation funding a border wall, reforming asylum, and passing a middle-class tax cut bill. Or is that asking too much? If the two parties switched sides, there’s little doubt the Dems would pass a slew of legislation before the Republicans took control of the House. They know how to fight. Our side wants to be “nice.” That needs to end.

But there are a number of actions the GOP can do without control of the House. The Senate should be prepared to expand its investigations of the FBI’s effort to interfere with the 2016 election, the related FISA court illegalities, and the collaboration with Russian entities by the DNC and Hillary’s campaign to fabricate a phony dossier, not to mention Hillary’s role in the Uranium One scandal. These are all ongoing investigations by House Republicans but will surely be shut down or severely crippled by the Democrats come January. The Senate needs to pick up the ball where the House left off. It also needs to be prepared to expose the lies and exaggerations that will surely come out of the various House investigations of Trump; indeed, the Dems are already boasting they have a target list of 85 issues to investigate.

We know, for example, that Schiff will fabricate all kinds of Russian collusion allegations as he has in the past.

The Senate Intelligence Committee should be prepared to immediately challenge bogus allegations by Schiff. If Schiff’s House Intelligence Committee, for example, charges that Carter Page is a Russian spy but refuses to give Page the opportunity to rebut this charge, the Senate Intelligence Committee should immediately ask Page to testify and ask other experts to appear who have knowledge of how Page actually worked with the FBI to expose a Russian spy. They need to show that the Democrats have zero evidence that Carter Page ever colluded with anyone to affect any election.

The Senate Republicans need to assume that numerous House investigations will make dozens of outlandish claims over the next two years and they need to be prepared to have hearings ready to go that simply report the truth and use that opportunity to expose how it was the Democrats that actually engaged in illegal activity during the 2016 election. In short, the Senate needs to show the American people that the Democrats have unleashed a circus of investigations that have no basis in fact and are only designed to create a campaign narrative for 2020 and to cover up their own criminality in using our intelligence agencies to illegally interfere with a presidential election.

Yes, one can argue that the Senate has had committees investigating these scandals all along, but the reality is they were woefully weak and run by never-Trumpers who often echoed false allegations by Schiff and others. The painful truth is that with the exception of a few Senators such as Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham, the Senate Republicans as a group have been AWOL in pursuing the truth regarding the biggest scandal in a generation: the effort by Obama holdovers to use our intelligence agencies to affect the outcome of a U.S. election. This is why Senate Republicans such as Intelligence Committee Chairman Senator Richard Burr have received so much praise from the mainstream media; the more he was duped, the more praise he received. Burr needs to start putting his country ahead of “bipartisanship.”

Fortunately, it appears that Senator Graham will likely be the new chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and he has already commented to the press that he will investigate how the FBI handled the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections and Hillary Clinton’s email controversy. Praise God, we may finally see some real Senate leadership on prosecuting Democrat criminality.

If some of the more timid Senators don’t get on board with aggressively investigating and exposing the criminal activity of the Democrats, the House Democrats’ sensational narratives will dominate the media and not only create a climate for Trump’s defeat in 2020 but the defeat of many GOP Senators as well. They need to wake up and realize they are in a battle not just for our country, but for their own political survival as well.

Moreover, Judicial Watch has managed once again to pry away more documents that confirm that Hillary not only used her private server to send classified emails but that the FBI did everything it could to cover for her.

Incredibly, Senate investigators have not even acknowledged these new documents. People need to be prosecuted and the Republican Senators should get off their lazy backsides and start urging the AG’s office to initiate prosecutions. The evidence of criminal activity by both the Deep Staters within the FBI and Hillary is now abundant and the time has come for the Senate to quit being “nice guys” in the face of massive Democrat criminality and start getting serious about their constitutional requirement to check out-of-control agencies.

Moreover, AG Jeff Sessions is gone and the appointment of Matthew Whittaker, and soon the permanent appointment of a new attorney general, almost guarantees that thousands of incriminating documents sought the last two years by various House committees will be released, but with the House investigations now crippled, the Senate needs to step up to the plate and act on the criminal activity some of these documents will likely expose. There is nothing in the Constitution that prohibits the Senate from taking the lead on investigating the massive criminal enterprise undertaken by Obama holdovers within our intelligence agencies.

The Senate also needs to be prepared to kill what will likely be the most radical group of House bills the Senate has ever encountered. Already, we know there will be bills to eliminate ICE, subsidize all college education, undermine the Second Amendment, socialize health care, and force all employers to pay $15 an hour wage. There will be bills to reverse the Trump tax cuts and to implement a radical “Green Deal” agenda which will essentially stop oil exploration and drilling.

If these reckless bills actually passed, they would bring our economy to a screeching halt and return America to the pervasive stagnation of the Obama era. Our Senators should give clear speeches as to why these bills are bad for America and use this opportunity to educate Americans about the difference between socialism and capitalism, between stagnation and growth, between liberalism and conservatism and between a strong America and a weak America.

And, of course, the Senate needs to expedite the confirmation of all the judges needed to fill the 79 vacancies and vote on the existing pending nominees for another 56 openings; altogether they could be responsible for placing 135 conservative judges onto federal courts over the next two years. In case the GOP loses the White House in 2020, the Senate needs to make sure they do not get behind in filling these vacancies. These judges will have far more impact on the country than anything Congress is able to accomplish in the next two years (nothing). The Obama White House left hundreds of judgeships vacant when they left office. The Senate should not be so stupid as to do the same thing.

There should also be some thought given to the way subpoenaed Trump officials will testify. With 85 investigations being pursued by the Dems, there will be hundreds of subpoenas issued to Trump officials from the White House, ICE, DHS, DOD, FBI, etc. Rather than have all these appointees sit there looking like subdued bureaucrats, the White House should encourage all of them to be confident and to make it clear in their opening statements that the Democrats are wasting millions of taxpayer dollars investigating phony crimes while at the same time refusing to pursue policies that benefit working class Americans. They should all be civil but their remarks should expose these kangaroo court type hearings for what they really are: a circus designed to help Hillary or whoever win the White House in 2020.

There are also other things the White House could be doing to prepare for 2020. Trump’s new Attorney General, whoever that will be, will be sitting on a large accumulation of evidence of felonious actions by Obama era officials, FBI leaders, and even Hillary Clinton, that were not acted upon by Sessions. Not only will the new AG have access to incriminating internal documents — some of which were withheld from congressional investigations — but the next DOJ Inspector General report, if it’s an honest report, will be chalk full of additional evidence of criminal wrongdoing by FBI/DOJ personnel in regards to illegally interfering with the 2016 presidential campaign.

The next two years may be the last time any of these Deep State people will be held accountable. Not only is prosecuting such criminal conduct the proper thing to do, but politically, it will educate the American people about how indeed there was collusion but not of the kind the media kept yapping about. Rather, the new AG will have the opportunity to lay out the facts about the real collusion between Russian entities, Hillary’s campaign, and the DNC to interfere with the 2016 election by fabricating a dossier full of sensational allegations which was then used to justify the wiretapping of Trump campaign aides and to create phony media stories.

Another thing that the White House can do is to address the issue of illegal alien voting. A number of academic studies have confirmed that 2-3 million illegal aliens are now voting in our national elections, which makes it imperative that voter ID laws be passed in as many of states as possible in the next two years. This should have been done the last two years when the GOP controlled more states than they do today, but they didn’t and the Republicans are now paying the price. This is why conservative leaders often refer to the Republican Party as the “stupid party.”

It is likely illegal aliens put Kyrsten Sinema over the top in the Arizona Senate race and if Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis had lost their races for the Senate and Governorship in Florida, it would have been in no small part thanks to the large illegal alien community there. Many of the ballots that arrived after the deadline in Florida and Arizona are absentee ballots and the reason why they are mostly Democrat votes is that absentee voting is the chosen voting system of the illegal alien community. This is why Obama AG Eric Holder spent much of his time threatening states with legal action for even thinking about implementing voter ID laws. Registering for an absentee ballot is easy to do, requires no identification, involves no face to face meeting with anyone, and the application can be easily filled out by those who coach illegal aliens how to vote.

Indeed, the USA is the only industrialized country in the world without voter ID laws. Even Mexico — which is often critical of our efforts to restrict illegal aliens — is far stricter when it comes to voting and every Mexican citizen must prove who they are before they can vote.

The White House should have created a task force two years ago within the Department of Justice that works with GOP legislators in every state to create and pass voter ID laws, but they didn’t. It’s not too late to do it now and Trump should immediately ask Kris Kobach, who just lost the Kansas Gubernatorial race, to head up such an effort. Kobach is one of the nation’s leading experts on vote fraud and has been crafting voter ID legislation for years.

Part of the problem with illegals voting is the Trump administration itself. The Obama administration dumped all kinds of money into programs and groups that allegedly help “immigrants” acclimate to the USA, but as Judicial Watch discovered, these grants were used “to register new, immigrant voters that likely supported Democrats in the presidential election.”

We have no idea how many of these immigrants were illegal but there is no evidence such programs restricted their efforts to only legal immigrants. Indeed, Obama’s efforts were headed by Cecilia Munoz, the former VP of La Raza, a radical open borders group which supports voting by illegal aliens. The ideal person for the job.

In the final months of the Obama regime, $29 million was pumped into this program. Incredibly, the Trump administration naively continues this program, granting at least $20 million to groups engaged with this work in states with the largest “immigrant” communities, such as Arizona and Florida. The agency that funds these efforts is the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Can someone please tell Trump that his own agency may have contributed to the GOP’s electoral losses in these states? Moreover, aside from the government funded efforts to register illegals, socialist billionaire George Soros funds many private groups who engage in this activity as well.

Given the efforts to register illegal aliens to vote, there’s a good chance that by 2020, the number of illegal aliens voting will be much higher than 2-3 million. While the GOP dithered on passing state vote ID laws the last two years (only four states now have voter ID laws), the left was busy canceling out the votes of legal Americans by registering illegals. If five million illegal aliens come out to vote in 2020, you can say “bye-bye” to the USA as the Republicans will never again win the White House. It’s game over.

We are in a battle for the soul of America. It’s time for President Trump and Republicans in both houses to get on war footing, fight the incoming wave of socialist legislation, expose and prosecute Democrat criminality, restore integrity to the voting process and prepare for 2020 by using every opportunity to show the American people the difference between an American-first agenda and an agenda that returns the country to Obama-style economic stagnation, military weakness, and a borderless country. If we don’t fight, the country we pass on to our children will have nothing in common with our founding principles.

Unhypnotizing a Clinton Supporter

Posted November 4th, 2016 @ 1:08pm in #Trump #Clinton

Today I teach you how to unhypnotize a Clinton supporter.

Keep in mind that the strongest form of persuasion is fear. Clinton’s team of persuaders has convinced her followers that Trump is dangerous. If you remove that part of her spell, Trump wins. Here’s how.

1. Trump’s Tough Talk Inspires violence: Ask Clinton supporters if they have seen the Project Veritas video of Clinton operatives talking about paying people to incite violence at Trump rallies. The people on the video have been fired, and we haven’t seen violence at Trump rallies since.

2. Temperament: Ask Clinton supporters if they have seen the video of Clinton ranting “Why aren’t I already fifty points ahead?” She looks either inebriated or deranged. Mention that the people who know Trump personally have reported that he is both smart and sane in person. Even his enemies who know him personally don’t claim he has a temperament problem. If he did, is there any chance we wouldn’t have heard about it by now?

3. Trump might insult foreign leaders into a war: Trump and Putin seem to get along fine. Netanyahu said he could work with Trump. Mexico isn’t likely to start a war over trade, or the wall. Trump says North Korea is China’s problem, which is literally the safest thing you could say. And China’s leaders are adults who know Trump says offensive things now and then. China will pursue its own interests, and none of those interests involve going to war over some words. Likewise, other leaders are adults too. They won’t change their foreign policy over some insults.

5. Trump might start a war: Trump owns buildings and property around the world. As a general rule, people who own a lot of real estate don’t start wars because their own assets are at risk. But Clinton is “sponsored” – via the Clinton Foundation and speaking fees  – by defense companies that profit from war. Likewise, Clinton is sponsored by foreign countries whose interests don’t align with American interests. Clinton supported war in Iraq and Libya, and she threatens Russia, just as the money trail suggests she would. Trump talks mostly about having a strong military to avoid war. He gains nothing by war.

6. Alcohol: Normally alcohol would not be a risk factor in picking a president because usually both candidates are social drinkers. But Trump has never had an alcoholic beverage while Clinton tells us she enjoys social drinking. Having a few social drinks is not a problem unless you plan to drive a car…or make a nuclear launch decision. If we don’t trust a social drinker to operate a motor vehicle, can we trust a social drinker to manage a nuclear arsenal?

If you have ever drunk-texted, or received a text from someone who has, you already know how much “social drinking” can influence decisions.

7. Group Violence versus Crazy Individuals: Have you noticed that when you see election-related violence from a group, it is always Clinton supporters? That happened at Trump’s San Jose rally, and it happened with the homeless woman protecting Trump’s star on the Walk of Fame. When Trump supporters do something violent they are usually acting alone, and crazy. When Clinton supporters get violent it comes in the form of mobs who are NOT crazy. That’s the dangerous kind of violence because they are literally Stronger Together.

8. Pacing and Leading: When normal politicians change their minds we label it flip-flopping or – more kindly – “evolving” in their thinking. When a Master Persuader does it, you are seeing pacing and leading, which is a major tool of persuasion. Pacing involves matching people – in this case emotionally – and later using that bond to lead them. We see Trump doing this often.

a. Trump paced his base by saying he would deport 11 million undocumented immigrants. Once he had his base on his side emotionally, he led to them to his current policy of deporting only the people who committed crimes while here. Have you heard any Trump supporters complain about it lately?

b. Trump paced his base by saying he would ban all Muslim immigration to stop terrorist infiltration. Once he had them on his side emotionally, he led them first to a ban on specific problem countries, and then again to “extreme vetting,” which is a lot like Clinton’s plan. Trump supporters followed, and you don’t hear them complaining.

c. Early in the primaries Trump paced the racists in the Republican party by not disavowing them as clearly and as loudly as even the racists thought he would. Since then he has led Republicans to think that some form of a “New Deal” for African-Americans might be worth a look.

d. At the Republican National Convention, Trump used his emotional connection to his supporters to declare he was the strongest voice to protect the LGBTQ community. Republicans stood and cheered.

Readers of this blog might recall that months ago I predicted that Trump would soften his immigration proposals. That’s because I saw him from the start as a Master Persuader, not a crazy person, and not a common flip-flopper.

In my opinion, Trump might be the safest president we have ever had. He can lead the dark parts of his base toward the light (as Nixon went to China) and he has no incentive for war. Claims about his “temperament” are mostly about his penchant for insults, and that isn’t a mortal danger to anyone.

And there you have your formula for unhypnotizing a Clinton supporter who is mostly worried about Trump being dangerous.

—

You might enjoy my book because I paced you in this blog post.

 

An exchange with a Republican delegate observed on Facebook today, July 15, 2016:*

Melanie Sturm to Tom Krannawitter

Professor Krannawitter, I’m interested in your historian’s view on the #FreeTheDelegates movement that is gaining momentum.

Should delegates in Cleveland overturn the democratic primary process by selecting someone other than Donald Trump, is there justification? Are there historical precedents for such “anti-democratic” behavior in America?

Tom Krannawitter

I’m at my son’s baseball tournament, Ms. Melanie Sturm, so I have to be brief.
Bottom line: It’s hard to imagine a brand with less credibility than “Republican.”

Suppose the convention ditches Trump for some “conservative.” Maybe a Ted Cruz. Or pick any other.

Would such a move attract the vote of one liberal or one Democrat?

Would such a move cause millions of registered Republicans who voted for Trump in the primaries to ditch the Republican Party?

I don’t think most Republicans realize how close their party is to evaporating politically and disappearing forever. But reflecting on the questions posed above help illuminate that reality.

The Republican Party today really has become what the Whig Party was in the 1850s: It stands for nothing except being a power-hungry opposition to the Democratic Party.

If one doubts this, just consider: Pick any issue, and one finds prominent Republicans on both sides — big gov’t, small gov’t, pro private property, plunderers of private property, pro-independent regulatory agencies, anti-regulatory agencies, high tariffs, low tariffs, pro free trade, anti free trade, pro-Constitution, no idea what the Constitution is or means, etc, etc, etc.

In principle, that is identical to the Whig Party as it became increasingly irrelevant to the most pressing problems of the day.

Melanie Sturm

I get your disfavor of the Republican Party and share it, alas. But do we delegates (and I am one) throw our hands up in surrender?

With such a weak and dangerous democrat nominee, isn’t there an urgency to save the nation from President Hillary, thereby starting the process of reviving the Republican party by nominating someone who is willing and able to defend the principles (especially equality under the law) upon which it was founded? Wouldn’t Abraham Lincoln want that?

If conscience-voting delegates can replace Trump with someone whose character and governing experience contrasts with Clinton, isn’t that the first step on the road to reviving the party? Someone who could attract voters who say she is untrustworthy and who are repelled by her banana republic-like monitizing of public service? Someone who could argue that the American ideal that no one is above the law must prevail in this election?

We are where we are, and there’s no turning back. I infer from your comment that the “party is over,” so it may well not matter what delegates do in Cleveland. But I ran (and won) on a platform to help the Republican Party* recover its bedrock constitutional and economic freedom principles so it can better represent its voters. That’s why I support the #freethedelegates movement and hope we prevail, despite the anticipated backlash to what’s perceived as an anti-democratic and unfair “coup.”

That’s why I’m reaching out to you for some historical perspective (and argumentation) because this convention could be among the nation’s most historic….that’s the goal for which I’m hoping and ?.

Tom Krannawitter

Serious question Melanie Sturm: How does what you propose differ from what conservative think tanks, conservative magazines, conservative policy organizations, and the rest of the conservative movement have been doing the last seven decades?

Stated differently: What is the conservative movement? What does conservatism mean? And what is the relationship, if any, between the conservative movement and the Republican Party?

Melanie Sturm

It differs a lot because it’s action, not talk. Nominating someone who can unite (most) of the party and make a compelling case against Clinton and for constitutionalism is very different from the hot air vented by the movement you call “conservative.”

Also, notice I didn’t use the world conservative. It has been sullied and twisted out of all recognition. That’s why I’m using terminology like “equality under the law” because it is widely understood and accepted as an American ideal.

Tom Krannawitter

Will someone “unite (most) of the party and make a compelling case against Clinton and for Constitutionalism” with speech? How does that differ from what you call “hot air?”

Further, where are we to find someone who has mastered the ideas of the Founding, the ideas of freedom, and knows how to market those ideas effectively to modern Americans who don’t know about those ideas nor do they think they care?

Melanie Sturm

The “non-hot-air” action would be a vote by the delegates for an open convention and then for a nominee other than trump.

It’s my premise — and you are free to disagree — that 2-term governors like Scott Walker, Nicky Haley or Mitch Daniels would be far better than Trump at uniting the party and making the arguments for freedom and constitutionalism, based on their records (while not perfect).

And yes, I think enough of the general electorate detests Hillary that a quality non-Trump nominee could prevail.

Tom Krannawitter

Ms. Melanie Sturm, please help me understand: More votes were cast in Republican primaries for Donald Trump than any other 2016 Republican Presidential candidate.

In fact, I believe Donald Trump received more primary votes than any Republican Presidential candidate ever — in the entire history of the Republican Party, going back to its origins in 1854 and its opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Trump received something like 13.5 million popular primary votes, if memory serves, a number no Republican has ever matched or exceeded in any primary election for any race, ever.

And you are suggesting that replacing the candidate for whom 13.5 million (mostly) Republicans voted, with a candidate you think is superior (who’s not much different than any run-of-the-mill conservative, whether we use that label or something else), will UNITE the Republican Party?

I truly need help understanding how an un-democratic substitution of a democratically chosen Presidential nominee will unite a political party that has almost no public credibility and is already dissolving.

Melanie Sturm

With the “conscience clause” losing in the Rules committee tonight, this may well be a moot discussion. Also, to be clear, the two options — bind the delegates to Trump or unbind them and let them vote their conscience — both have potential downsides for the party and the nation. You describe the downside to the second, but there’s a potential downside to the first too.

My son is at space camp in Huntsville, Alabama where the running joke is: “If Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are in a fatal car accident, who lives? Answer: America.” According to a new AP/Gfk poll, eight of ten Americans don’t merely prefer one candidate to another, they are actually scared of one or both of the candidates.

But to answer your points, while it’s true that Trump got a record 13.4 million votes in the primary, Hillary got 15.9 million. It’s also true that Trump’s 44% plurality of support by the end of the primaries is the weakest showing of a Republican nominee in modern history — Romney had 52%, McCain 48% and Bush 61%. In other words, in 2016 more votes were cast for someone other than the presumptive nominee than ever before, yet according to the RNC rules, Trump still got a disproportionate 62% of the delegates. The primary system is clearly not working….a subject for another day.

Also, the reason more votes were cast in 2016 in the Republican primaries is because a record number of Democrats voted in them, and because the primary season lasted into May, bringing out more voters in states that were irrelevant in prior election years, like Indiana.

Finally, I’m going to attempt to venture into your wheelhouse: The Founding Fathers rejected the notion of “vox populi, vox dei.” As James Madison wrote in Federalist 10, one advantage of a representative republic over direct democracy is that representation may “refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations.”

Hence, the duty of a delegate is not simply to reflect public opinion (or be a rubber stamp on a beauty contest), but to find a way to “refine and enlarge” it, by aggregating the diverse views of the people into a final judgment that serves their interests better.

So according to Madison, the delegates are within their rights — indeed have the moral obligation — to nominate someone who they think can win in November, which is afterall the real role of the convention.

What I’m suggesting is that allowing the delegates to vote their conscience is not only honorable, it’s consistent with our founding values. If delegates think Trump is the right choice, they can still vote for him and should he win a majority, he has all the more legitimacy. But if they do not think he’s the right choice, they should not feel morally bound to vote for him. The delegates responsibility above all else is to the well being of the Republican party, and having a viable Republican party as a counterpoint to the Democrat party is in the national interest.

Tom Krannawitter

There’s much to be said in response to your comment, Melanie Sturm. But rest assured, in Federalist #10 Mr. Madison most certainly was not talking about delegates of a private organization to its national private convention.*

Also, one ought to read #10 as well as all the early essays in light of the later essays in The Federalist Papers — which is where one finds the gritty, hard teaching of self government. Based on what Madison argues in #57 alone — regarding citizens who allow their chosen agents in government to pass laws that apply to citizens while exempting the agents in government — Americans are no longer suited for the experiment of mixing freedom and self government.

The Federalist Papers were written for a people who had a century and a half of personal experience living and dying by the own efforts, without any parental or nanny or shepherd or “leader” figure around to offer (allegedly) free stuff.

Our situation today is strikingly different. Which is why we must think, speak, write, and act differently if freedom is to have a future in the United States of America.

Tom Krannawitter

In this case, the teacher who provides the most illumination is not Madison. It’s Tocqueville.

Tocqueville predicted with incredible prescience exactly what would happen in the modern hyper-Christian-egalitarian-democratic world when claims of superior wisdom bump up against the irresistible, relentless, flattening heavy presses of “democracy.”

Melanie Sturm

I respect your scholar’s take Tom Krannawitter on the trends that brought us to this moment, and your disdain for the consequence – a hollowed-out Republican Party. I share your frustrations and have catalogued them over the years in my Think Again column.

I think it’s remarkable — and a commentary on our dramatically unsettled electorate — that such an outsider and Republican Party critic is a national delegate to the party’s convention where I also won election as a committee member.

Now I’m struggling with my #1 goal: how best to avert a Hillary Clinton presidency, which would accelerate the lamentable “fundamental transformation” of America, chiefly by proving that Americans no longer uphold the tenet of equality under the law.

Giving Americans a better choice than the even more disfavored Trump – recognizing all the downsides of replacing him at the convention after a vote of no-confidence — is one way to avoid the “Clinton Crime Family” back in the White House.

I thank you for this dialogue, which has been instructive to me.

Tom Krannawitter

Melanie Sturm, to be clear: Hillary Clinton is a deeply immoral, wicked human being.

Even worse: her pathologies are not confined to the personal sphere, and she’s no petty criminal. When she harasses others, controls others, works to make the lives of others worse, steals, lies, or ignores people who desperately need her help, she does all of that by using government’s monopoly on legalized force.

The very thing that is supposed to keep people safe and protect persons and private property — government! — Hillary Clinton uses to harm persons and steal personal property.

Which is worse: A man who sexually harasses and abuses and possibly rapes women? Or the woman who protects that man by destroying the lives of those victims — using every government power, formal and informal, at her disposal! — simply so she can continue her own political ambition of controlling other human beings?

I don’t know the answer. I know only that they’re both very bad.

I, however, do not view Hillary Clinton as the beginning or cause of a new bad trend in the United States. I see Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and other prominent American socialists as a symptom of the political pathology originally called “progressivism” that emerged from American colleges, universities, and churches more than a century ago. A small number of academic and theological experts offered to give people free stuff in exchange for total control over their lives, and many of the people accepted the offer. That’s how FDR came to be elected President not once, not twice, not three times, but four times.

So this process has been at work for a long time now. It’s fruits are the millions of citizens who think themselves to be sophisticated if they can provide additional justifications to demand more government power and regulatory control over our lives. The result of progressivism is an American population who believe firmly that only increased government supervision of our lives follows any discussion of education, health care, medicine, technology, poverty, the environment, guns, or even government corruption and cronyism.

Think about it: Even when the subject is government officials taking bribes and accepting crony deals to help some Americans by hurting others, what’s the American response? Further government restrictions on what citizens may say and how citizens may spend their own money — rather than criminalizing the immoral, unjust actions of those in government!

We have much work to do. If you can keep Hillary Clinton from the levers of government power, I’m sure the gods of freedom will smile on you for your effort. At the same time, Hillary Clinton is neither the beginning nor the end of the American tragedy of free people freely choosing to give away their freedom.

And if my teaching has any influence, that tragedy will be dramatically interrupted by a great freedom revival. That is my goal.

Tom Krannawitter

This might be the end of the Republican Party.

And let us remind ourselves of two important facts:

A political party is a wholly private organization. A party is no part of the Constitutional design of government, nor does a party have any constitutional standing.*

Also, if this be the demise of the Republican Party, and if that demise involves Mr. Donald Trump, then it also involves the more than thirteen million Americans who voted for him in primaries.

I understand there was much crossover voting. I get that. Still, many Republicans voted for Trump. Many. And why did they do so? Look to the Republican Party ever since the New Deal and the history of the conservative movement during the same time period, and there you’ll start to find answers.

——————————————

* Italics mine.

Useful Republican quislings are missing the big picture – the big TV picture that is – coming to screens everywhere a month from now. The lead stories will be the Cleveland riots, and the betrayed Republican demographics, in that order. The convention will be reported in the worst possible light the media can economically provide, and those lead stories are already scripted and practically in the can. All that remains is to stage the show.

Meanwhile, the Republican quisling intelligencia obsess on their higher purpose of ferreting out the ideal candidate that they somehow overlooked through all of the primary festivities. This is denial on a grand scale – a scale unfortunately matched by the Left, who perpetuate denial about major destructive human behaviors such as abortion, nihilism, socialism, and jihadism.

The Right seem intent on proving to the world an equal capacity for denial in order to compete with the Left, where the Right should be planning to prevent the riot, and affirm their own voting base who’ve already expressed a candidate preference.

Those would actually be bona fide responses to the problem set presented by the Left in this election cycle – responses that could build trust in Republican leadership and expose the poverty of Leftist alternatives.

But Republican leadership has, evidently, already concluded that televising a Republican war zone complete with a rebel faction of betrayed loyalists all over the country would be more in their interest.

One has to wonder if the screenwriters for this fiasco live in Denver. Stay tuned….

“By now, you should have received your mail-in ballot for the Republican primary for Elbert County. We hope you will take the time to fill it out and vote for the candidate of your choice.

We are a group of Elbert County citizens who care deeply that our election process is fair and transparent. While we are not advocating for any candidate in this handout, we do want you to be aware of some things that are important to know as you consider your vote.

All the candidates have some area of vulnerability their opponents would like to expose, sadly we consider that part of our present day political process. Like you, we usually ignore these things.

However. when we see an area where we feel a candidate has not been transparent in their own promotional material, we feel it is important to communicate that with you. In this year’s election, we are happy to report that there is only one area of real concern out of all the candidates.

Grant Thayer, running in the primary for County Commissioner in District 3, has invested a lot of money to win this campaign. He has secured a campaign manager that is negative towards others while being vague about Thayer’s record. This concerns us as you decide how to vote.

Thayer has billed himself as an outsider trying to ride the popular wave against politicians. He is far from an outsider – he runs in circles of people in the county who have tried repeatedly to control county politics and policy. Many of them appear to be his supporters and financiers.

On January 23 of this year, the Elbert County News reported that Thayer had been on the county planning commission for 14 years and was chairman for most of those years.(1) And yet, nowhere is it mentioned in the 14 pages of his website that he was chairman of the planning commission for the majority of the 14 years. He did not even divulge his membership on his “Planning Commission” page nor on his “More About Grant” page.

He sates on his website that: “The Planning Commission is the BOCC and citizens best friend.”(2) If this is true, then it seems strange that he tries to hide his deep involvement in it for 14 years and completely omits that he was chairman. If he is vying for public service, wouldn’t this be an important part of his resume? The transparency may be missing because of the problems we discovered in his record.

A large part of Thayer’s platform is getting a new master plan done. While on his website he acknowledges that the county Master Plan is decades old, he then states: “The Planning Commission is responsible for the preparation and maintenance of the Master Plan.”(3) So why is it decades old if he was chairman for the better part of 14 years?

As part of the planning commission, he approved a water plan for Spring Valley Vista that led to a lawsuit against the county in 2006. The Master plan that was in effect at the time was bypassed by the planning commission and the commissioners.(4) A 2006 article listed Thayer, as a “developer”, planning commission member and sitting on a non-profit corporation with the commissioner who was voting in favor of the failed proposal for Spring Valley Vista. Questions about conflict of interest were raised.(5)

He also advocates cooperation with the county commissioners. Perhaps that is why his work on the planning commission is neglected in his promo material. As chairman of the planning commission, it took Thayer two and a half years to come up with oil and gas regulations that were voted down by the commissioners 2-1 . His response to this obstacle was to promptly resign.(6) If he did not work with those who questioned what he wanted to do just a little over two years ago, what has changed?

But that leads to another deep concern we have about Thayer. While he doesn’t seem to be transparent about his years of deep participation in county politics, he also is elusive about his business connections using political spin to skirt the issue. He flaunts his CEO experience, but is coy about for who and the results.

His site states: “His most recent industry responsibility was as Co-Chief Executive Officer of a firm that purchased a large portfolio of non performing financial assets. The assets included loans to several oil and gas companies that were in default. Within three years, Grant and his associates converted these assets into those that met the investment goals of the firm.”(7)

What firm? Doesn’t say. Assets in default? A takeover? Doesn’t say. Met the investment firms goals? Liquidation? Downsizing? Doesn’t say. Whatever it is, it seems if it is not flattering to Thayer then transparency is missing. That may be how a CEO does it, but not a public servant who represents the people. We are electing someone to represent us, not manage us.

Thank you for voting in the primary and we are proud this year that there are many other great candidates to choose from.”

(1) & (6) http://elbertcountynews.net/stories/Second-Repubican-joins-race-for-commissioner,205742
(2) & (3) http://www.grantthayer4u.com/assembly-position-statements/
(4) http://coloradocommunitymedia.com/stories/Subdivision-loses-legal-battle,75016
(5) http://coloradocommunitymedia.com/stories/Of-alter-egos-transparency-and-fairness,131598
(7) http://www.grantthayer4u.com/more-about-grant/

My 2¢:

Thayer is a planner. I’ve written and blogged dozens of times on this site about the malfeasance of planning and zoning. (http://elbertcounty.net/blog/category/planning/ => index says 140 times!)

My views have not changed.

It was passing strange when Ken Buck represented the 1% of Colorado citizens who attend Republican caucuses as 40% of all voters yesterday (4/11/16) on the Mark Levin show. Stranger still that Levin went right along with the charade that unelected caucus attendees represent the voters. I lost count of the number of times he echoed the 40% of all voters myth.

I have to separate my respect for Levin’s constitutional analysis from my disgust over his knee jerk support for the non-representative caucus system.

When will the Colorado GOP figure out that they cannot claim legitimacy because a minuscule minority of them show up at a meeting once every two years? Legitimacy comes from the consent of all the voters, not a self-selected few.

The hypocrisy of upholding the values of accountability and personal responsibility when talking about the failings of other people, but practicing an unrepresentative form of politics by local-loud-mouth, completely undermines their cause.

• I’m waiting for the politician who doesn’t promise me, or anyone else, anything.
• I’m waiting for the politician who doesn’t use my idealism to advance them self.
• I’m waiting for the politician who doesn’t try to pull an emotional response from me.
• I’m waiting for the politician who is known for the laws they repealed.
• I’m waiting for the politician who has no pitch, and who is not a salesman.
• I’m waiting for the politician who does not seek political office.
• I’m waiting for the politician who takes no satisfaction from governance.
• I’m waiting for the politician who admits the evil nature of power in them self.

On the one hand we have an ongoing food-fight egged on by the media who only ask questions about the food-fight, and never follow any thread about substantive solutions to the worlds problems.

On the other hand, a serene and respectful candidate discussion about fantasy subjects that have never worked is encouraged, with a reality reduced to simplistic emotions for the least common denominator of voter, and a fawning media who never follow up on any problem in the world remotely connected to their simplisticism.

The real adversary in this election is television media; CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS & FOX.

This presidential race illuminates just how far out of the bottle the genie has gone. Peel back the layers of President and Congress to reveal the massive federal, state, county, local, and special district bureaucracies – the envy of any socialist utopian – that forge ahead relentlessly to define and manage every corporeal and theoretical element about America and her people.

The electoral theater is in season, with many acts, many intermissions, and incessant analysis – all of it tracking to the myth of the constitutional consent of the governed. As if!!!

As if any one man (a President), or any consortium of men (a Congress) could even know what the American bureaucratic Leviathan does to us each minute of every day.

As if the millions of lines of written rules by all manner of governing body in America – a.k.a. The Rule of Law – could even be comprehended in any significant degree.

We are subjects to bureaucrats discretion now. Our consent is vestigial. Our Constitution is open to interpretation and we have no control over the interpreters.

These flourishes at the margin where individuals step into the limelight for a few moments to plant seeds of hope in the fertile soil of our founding ideology, just remind me of what will never be a reality for us again.

To get America back, the bureaucracy must be dismembered, amputated, discarded. There is no mending it. The people who recognize that truth are vastly outnumbered.

And that’s the nuts and bolts of it. All the rest – the ideological fights, the religious fights, the rights fights, the wealth fights, the health fights, the cultural fights, they’re all sideshows. Constant distractions to divert attention from the one hand in your pocket, and the other one wrapped around your spinal cord.

Going to caucus? Please….

This is a sound principle but law is the wrong remedy. Candidates could not get away with using teleprompters if the media did not enable the practice by keeping the teleprompter screens off camera.