Category Archives: Neoconservatism

Jennifer Rubin Is A Rubbishy Writer

Bush, Conservatism, English, Literature, Neoconservatism, The Establishment

This New York Review of Books reviewer suggests that the tedious neoconservative, Jennifer Rubin, made prominent for her banality, is reminiscent of the late Molly Ivins, who was an old-school, acerbic, liberal columnist.

Rubbish.

Ivins coined memorable monikers for George Bush such as “Shrub” and “Dubya.”

Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol was a neoconservative writer, organizer, and theorist for a quarter-century, at the barricades on controversies from health care reform to the Iraq War (he was also the most important promoter of Sarah Palin, who embodied Trumpism before Trump became Trump). Now he regularly issues withering tweets about Trump and is a fixture on the liberal-leaning MSNBC. The foreign policy writer Max Boot was a vocal and at times strident champion of the Bush Doctrine. These days he’s a ferocious and shrewd critic of the president. Washington Post blogger-columnist Jennifer Rubin was, among prominent conservative pundits, probably Mitt Romney’s most aggressive defender in 2012 and aside from that was known for her hard-line foreign policy views, particularly on matters relating to Israel. Now, her columns often read as if they could have been written by the late Molly Ivins. (Two recent Rubin headlines: “Trump Retreats on Iran, and He Will Need to Do So Again”; “The Enablers of the Racist President Are Back at It.”)

David Frum is also a much better writer than Israel Firster, Ms. Rubin.

MORE.

UPDATED (2/4/018): It’s Been A While Since Foreign Policy Has Been So Perilous On So Many Fronts

Foreign Policy, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Russia, War

Scanning the front page of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity should make all sane people gloomy. The neoconservatives are in charge and no one is the wiser. Certainly in foreign policy, there has been a speedy reversion to the neoconservative mean.

A smattering of headlines:

* “US Troops Arrive in Israel to Practice for Potential War With Hezbollah.” WTF!

*Mattis Threatens Military Action Over Syria Gas Attack Claims, Then Admits ‘No Evidence‘”

*Breaking: US-Backed Free Syrian Army Group Shoots Down Russian Jet, Kills Pilot

*Rex Tillerson: Neocon.”

Doesn’t look like President Trump has surrounded himself with the best people to optimize his original America First promise. Neoconservatives are indisputably the worst. In my book, The Trump Revolution: The Donald’s Creative Destruction Deconstructed, you will find recommendations for the excellent people we could have had in place, down to the military.

UPDATE (2/4/018):

Follow the money: Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD): Kurt Volker of the aptly named McCain Institute is speaking on Fox New charmingly about what’s essentially a nuclear arms race. So you know: US Missile Defense system has failed recently.

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“Pathway To Citizenship”: What Will Happen If President Trump Says Those Words, Tomorrow

Bush, Donald Trump, IMMIGRATION, Neoconservatism, Republicans

A source who shall remain anonymous writes:

If tomorrow night President Donald Trump utters the words “pathway to citizenship,” it will mark one of the biggest betrayals of the modern era and the effective end of his presidency.

1) He will cause the 2018 midterms to be a Democratic victory as a significant part of the demoralized and disillusioned base stays home and we lose the House – and perhaps even the senate.

2) Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats will impeach him in the House.

3) A Democrat-controlled Senate will proceed with a trial. A Republican-controlled Senate will not proceed with trial but nothing Trump wants will come out of the House and his “America First” agenda will be neutralized.

4) Trump will be challenged from the Right in the 2020 presidential primaries.

My well-connected source’s own sources tell him that, “Trump is proceeding down this road of self-immolation”:

The Koch brothers successfully infiltrated their agent, Marc Short, into the inner sanctum. Short, who led the Koch’s Never Trump movement in 2016, has teamed up with Establishment lackey Kirstjen Nielsen [with whom I was actually quite taken] and the princess regent Ivanka [whom I’ve grown to detest] to sideline and neutralize Stephen Miller, the last remaining voice for immigration sanity. [First they came for Steve Bannon, now it’s Steve Miller’s turn.]

Trump is being pushed off the cliff with all the happy talk from this cabal, buttressed by Lindsay Graham, Marco Rubio, Jeff Flake and Paul Ryan. In summation, the entire rabid Never Trump partisans are now in control of POTUS and are succeeding in getting him to do their immigration policy:

Amnesty now. Enforcement later, maybe.

No effectual changes to chain migration for at least ten years since all pre-existing applicants for green cards are grandfathered in . That’s at least a ten-year backlog.

This is the 1986 Bill on steroids.

The headline, all over conservative and populist media on Wednesday morning will be one word: betrayal.

We who want Trump to succeed have been trying to head this off all week, since this country killing plan was first floated in the press. Seemingly to no avail. Trump is cocooned, just as he was and continues to be on foreign policy. He’s captive to the neocon interventionists AND now to the open borders, cheap-labor lobby as well.

It’s as if we had elected JEB Bush.

This is NOT America First.

What a colossal disappointment. On Wednesday morning Trump supporters will be in disarray, the Conservative movement will be fractured and, once again, Republicans will be at each other’s throats – as the Kochs, the Bushes, Bill Kristol and all the other members of the Never Trump cabal are filled with glee and satisfaction as they celebrate the beginning of the end of his presidency.

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UPDATED (2/2/018): Reversion To The Neoconservative Mean On Immigration & In Commentary? Sure Looks Like It.

Donald Trump, IMMIGRATION, Israel, Media, Neoconservatism

Look, the establishment has never been on the same page as the people when it comes to immigration. So, to talk about a reversion to the neoconservative mean is probably slightly inaccurate. But in 2016, when Candidate Trump was in full Deplorable mode, Fox News would have been less neoconservative on immigration. However, as Fox News shifts back to its neoconservative happy place, no discussion of an immigration moratorium will percolate through the noise on that channel (other than on the great Tucker Carlson’s show).

Duly, on January 9, I believe it was, neoconservative broadcaster Tammy Bruce insisted that not sending home Salvadorians temporarily in the US prevents others—Mexicans, Filipinos, Yemenis, in Bruce’s words—from entering the United States. LEGALLY. All this unfolded on The Story with Martha MacCallum.

No doubt, President Trump has shifted the immigration debate immeasurably. But I suspect the consensus in the immigration debate will begin to shift back to the pre-Trump era, as Bruce’s imbecilic quip indicates.

Although an immigration moratorium is desperately needed, at one million individuals a year—legal immigration will continue to be touted as the American Way. The ONLY way. The objection being to illegal immigration only, and not to the transformative powers of mass immigration.

Foreign policy has certainly seen the normalization of neoconservatism, echoed in the hiring by Breitbart of Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick. Glick, whose writing I’m unable to plow through, is hardly an America Firster. However, Deplorables, apparently, need schooling from an Israel First, war-war-monger.

I say this as the quintessential (probably the original ), pro-Israel,  America First, libertarian, Jewish writer. See “The Titan is Tired,” for an example.

Here’s my critique of Glick’s weak One-State solution gibberish: “One State: Is It The Solution Or The Final Solution To The Jewish State?

UPDATE I (2/2/018): It’s spreading, or taking hold again: the neoconservative blight, evinced in “Trump Is Echoing Talleyrand In His Middle East Diplomacy. That’s Right. Talleyrand”:

Talleyrand? Wasn’t he a slightly diluted, cunning Jacobin, responsible for anti-clergy moves during the French Revolution, which was 100 percent the antithesis of the American Revolution? Indeed, conservatives are duped by and enamored of the modern-day Jacobins.

UPDATE II (3/26):

Bolton:

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