By Mark Steyn... who is a brilliant friggin' guy!
* * *
Long, long ago - August 12th last year, in fact - I
wrote:
"The integrity of a nation's borders and the privilege of its citizenship is certainly a "truly conservative" principle. More practically for this election, it may be the one on which all the others depend... And, as Ann Coulter says to the other candidates, if you don't like Trump, steal his issue."
According to exit polls, in New Hampshire on Tuesday
night, two out of three GOP voters favor Trump's proposed temporary ban on all
Muslim immigration - despite the universal reaction from the massed ranks of
the politico-media class that this time he'd really gone too far.
In other words, as I said all those months ago, it's the
old Broadway saw: Nobody likes it but the public.
The only reason any pollster is even asking this question
is because Donald Trump proposed it.
As those numbers suggest, any of Trump's rivals could
have helped themselves by "stealing his issue." And yet no other
candidate has gone anywhere near it - or anything like it.
Perhaps one reason why American elections have the lowest
voter participation rate of almost any developed nation is because the
political class mostly seems to be talking about its own peculiar
preoccupations.
Consider this astute observation by Steve Sailer:
"American citizens have turned in large numbers to old-white-guy candidates like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. For all their differences, both give the impression that they are running for president of the United States, not president of Davos."
I live in northern New Hampshire, where every town that
isn't a ski resort is dead.
They were pleasant, sleepy places in genteel decline 20
years ago.
Now they're hollowed out by heroin and meth, and offering
no economic opportunity beyond casual shifts at the KwikkiKrap.
And when you listen to the Dems... they're worried about
micro-aggressions and transphobia.
And when you listen to Congressional Republicans...
they're talking about the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
The two-party one-party state has nothing to say to tens
of millions of Americans.
Trump won because he put real-world issues on the table.
Nobody needs to be told that he "isn't a real Republican." That's the
point of Trump! The Republican base loathes the Republican leadership far more
than they love the vessel they've chosen to express their loathing.
* AMEN!
There are contrasting approaches on offer: John Kasich
wants to bring everyone together; Ted Cruz says he can bring back "Reagan
Democrats" (although I'd love to know what that term means in 2016 other
than non-agenarian FDR voters); and Trump is promising to blow up the party. In
New Hampshire, it's not hard to see why that last option won.
* PREACH, BROTHER STEYN! HALLELUJAH!
Did Marco Rubio really destroy himself in that debate? Or
is it the case that, after a week of fawning profiles post-Iowa, there aren't
really a lot of takers for him beyond that 11 per cent fifth-place finish?
More than Trump, Kasich, Cruz... or even Bush... Marco
Rubio - policy-wise - is offering the "same old same old." I doubt
there are enough takers for that to win the nomination this season. As for his
promise of "a new American century," I said a few weeks ago:
In 1980, Jimmy Carter's "malaise" was an
aberration - a half-decade blip in three decades of post-war U.S. prosperity
that had enabled Americans with high school educations to lead middle-class
lives in a three-bedroom house on a nice-sized lot in an agreeable
neighborhood. In 2015, for many Americans, "malaise" is not a blip,
but a permanent feature of life that has squeezed them out of the middle class.
They're not in the mood for bromides about second American centuries: They'd
like what's left of their own lifespan to be less worse.
(*SIGH*)
(*SADLY NODDING*)
The New Hampshire results bear that out.
* YEP...
(*STILL NODDING*)
Carly Fiorina, the Great Emasculator, is out. She was
impressive in debates, if somewhat severe in mien - which undoubtedly is part
of why primary voters never warmed up to her. On the other hand, given the way
the media treat more genial Republican women like Sarah Palin, you can see why
Mrs. Fiorina preferred to stick with deadly seriousness. Her brutal dissections
of Hillary will be missed.
On the Leftie side the sewer that which is the Democrat
Party organizing apparatus may yet save Mrs. Clinton.
* I DON'T THINK SO. THE REASON HAS LITTLE TO DO WITH
BERNIE SANDERS AND EVEN LESS TO DO WITH DEMOCRATIC VOTERS. NOPE. THE REASON IS
BECAUSE THE LAST THING THE SITTING DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
WANTS IS TO RISK THE OBAMA MACHINE BEING SUPPLANTED BY THE CLINTON MACHINE -
WHICH WOULD HAPPEN IF HILLARY WERE TO BECOME OBAMA'S SUCCESSOR.
* FOLKS... JUST AS RYAN AND MCCONNELL AND MANY WASHINGTON
RINOs WOULD ACTUALLY PREFER A DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT TO A PRESIDENT CRUZ, SO TOO DOES
OBAMA ACT OUT OF NAKED SELF-INTEREST IN MAINTAINING AS MUCH POWER AND INFLUENCE
AS POSSIBLE ONCE HE'S NO LONGER PRESIDENT.
(*SHRUG*)
* FOLKS... YOU NEED TO THINK LIKE THESE SCUMBAGS THINK...
(*ANOTHER SHRUG*)
Bernie crushed Hillary by 22 points, but the machine
hacks nevertheless delivered up more delegates to Hillary because she's sewn up
the "super-delegates."
* OH... YOU DEMOCRATS MUST BE SO PROUD...
(*SMIRK*)
Facing a grassroots revolt, the party elders have
declared they don't need no steenkin' grassroots. (This is likely to get
problematic if he keeps winning states but she keeps getting the delegates.)
Hillary's real problem is that she's running on
biography, and no one gives a crap.
* AND HER HUSBAND'S BIOGRAPHY AT THAT!
(*SNORT*)
* YOU FOLKS READ PAGLIA'S LATEST... RIGHT?
(*CHUCKLING*)
The consultants always say candidates need a
"compelling personal story." Really? Trump doesn't have one, nor does
Sanders, aside from occasional glimpses of his Soviet honeymoon, etc.
No one cares about Kasich being the son of a mailman or
Rubio being the son of a bartender.
But whatever the opposite of a "compelling personal
story" is, Hillary's is it. Everything she has "accomplished"
derives from the two central facts of her life:
1) She got married...
2) ...to a serial adulterer.
(*GUFFAW*)
* YEP! THAT ABOUT COVERS IT!
She was the first First Lady to be turned publicly into
the First Doormat. And, because of that, Democrats felt sorry enough for her to
give her a Senate seat in a state she'd never lived in.
She accomplished nothing as senator but felt she was owed
the presidency.
(*STILL LAUGHING...WHILE SNORTING*)
This time Democrats felt that was a consolation prize too
far and went for a more glamorous and seductive rival. This time the
consolation prize was responsibility for America's foreign relations. Again she
accomplished nothing: She traveled while the world burned. Everywhere is worse
than it was in 2008: Iraq, Libya, Syria...
* YEP. HER TENURE WAS A TOTAL FRIGGIN' DISASTER FROM ANY
RATIONAL PERSPECTIVE.
Afterwards, Mrs. Clinton joined her husband in massively...
* YEP! MASSIVELY!
...enriching herself by giving six- and seven-figure
speeches to those who understand that, while you can never really own a
Clinton, you can put down a deposit for services to be rendered.
(*SMIRK*)
* BUT SERIOUSLY, FOLKS... IT'S REALLY NOT FUNNY...
(*SIGHING*)
She became a senator, a presidential candidate, a
secretary of state because she was Mrs. William Jefferson Clinton - and her
sense of entitlement was such that she never felt obligated to make anything of
the job other than using it as a springboard for personal enrichment.
* YEP...
(*SHRUG*)
And even then it need not have mattered had her campaign
had a rationale other than her curious belief that somehow she's entitled to be
president.
By contrast... Bernie is all policy.
Lunatic policy to be sure, but policy nevertheless.
Hillary is nothing but "I'll never stop fighting for
you."
* AND BY "YOU" (BY "US") SHE MEANS
HERSELF.
She has no platform. Nothing. Its vapidity is
encapsulated by her pledge to the young voters who have abandoned her all but
totally that even though they aren't "there for her" she will always be "there
for them."
You can almost hear the snorts of derision in response.
* HEAR THAT! "SNORTS!" (SEE, FOLKS - IT'S NOT
JUST ME!)
(*GUFFAW*)
She'll always be there: That's the problem.
* YEP...
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