Category Archives: Neoconservatism

Trump Called Bush A Liar & Won South Carolina (Nevada, Too)

Bush, Donald Trump, Iraq, Neoconservatism

“Trump Called Bush A Liar & He Won South Carolina (Nevada, too)” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

Donald Trump has buried George W. Bush, for good. Or so we hope.

This might not be “Morning in America,” but it is a moral victory for values in America. Somewhere in those Judeo-Christian values touted by “values voters” is an injunction against mass murder.

Before the February 20 South Carolina primary, it looked as though G. Bush might just make a comeback.

After the South Carolina primary, where Donald Trump won with 32.2 percent of the Republican vote, it seems certain that nothing will resuscitate the legacy of “one of the nation’s worst presidents.”

Notwithstanding his war crimes and unprecedented intervention in the financial system and the private economy, “W” also happened to preside over the largest domestic spending since Lyndon Johnson. As chronicled in Ivan Eland’s “Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty,” “[Bush] advocated bad policies and demonstrated horrendous operational incompetence.”

The disastrous and expensive (in casualties and money) nation-building project in Iraq and Afghanistan were only exceeded in catastrophic results by Bush’s expansion of executive power and theft of the civil liberties that make the United States unique. Bush had almost no accomplishments to offset such foibles.

Trump addressed the war: “They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction.”

The chattering class, Left and Right, was—still is—gobsmacked. A political Samson was bringing down the pillars of their world.

Desperate to restore equilibrium before the crucial SC vote was CNN’s Anderson Cooper: “You would not say again that George W. Bush lied?”

Trump obliged. He backpedaled before the primary, going with non-committal: “I don’t know. I can’t tell you. I mean, I’d have to look at documents.”

So America has some unfinished business. Because we do know. We can say for sure. And we have all the documents.

George W. Bush lied America into war.

Bush began his ballyhooed presidency by lying during his campaign. He promised America a humble foreign policy, but came into office with the express purpose of using his plenary powers to unseat Saddam Hussein. …

… “Trump Called Bush A Liar & He Won South Carolina (Nevada, too)” is the current column, now on WND.

Marco Rubio Has Been Probed, I Mean Tapped, By ‘The Kochtopus’

Conservatism, Intelligence, Neoconservatism, Propaganda, Republicans

The Onion’s spoof is not far off. Marcobot, aka “GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio, reportedly awoke in the Koch brothers’ secret compound Thursday and reached suddenly to his throbbing head to discover a cold metal device implanted behind his left ear.”

The Koch Brothers are a GOP Goliath worth around $115 billion. They’re gunning for Donald Trump who’s worth $10 billion.

USA Today:

A key player in the Koch brothers’ inner political circle will work directly on Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign, bringing deep connections to the brothers’ vast network of donors and experience helping oversee their sophisticated political operation.
Republican power brokers Charles and David Koch haven’t endorsed a GOP primary candidate, but Marc Short’s decision to move to the Rubio camp, first reported by Politico, comes as the party’s top figures grow increasingly alarmed by Donald Trump’s rise and looks for ways to stop his momentum.

WARNING: Donald Trump appears partial to Rubio and is making overtures to crooked prosecutor Rudy Giuliani. At the same time, Trump is trashing Ted Cruz, an enormous talent who has argued brilliantly and numerously before the Supreme Court and WON.

Were I president, I’d tap Cruz for Attorney General and task him with getting the U.S. out of binding, costly, and disadvantageous agreements with the UN (such as when “our” refugees are vetted by their Palestinian-run refugee division). Just for starters.

Intelligence, as in a very high IQ, is a rare thing. Intelligence that is as focused as that of Cruz is still rarer. No conservative should squander the scarce resource that is Cruz’s legal aptitude and ability to win big for the country.

Then again, conservatives do squander.

UPDATE II: If Allowed, The Rubio Snake Will Charm Trump Into Defeat (Giuliani?)

Donald Trump, Elections, Neoconservatism

The establishment might just get its way and see Donald Trump defeated by a nobody like Barack Obama (who was invented as a presidential candidate by Queen of kitsch Oprah). If Trump continues to hammer at the wrong man, the talented Ted Cruz, and ignore the Marco Rubio menace; the front-runner could come short.

CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: All right. Let’s talk about Marco Rubio and his fitness to be president.

TRUMP: Well, he’s a talented guy. He’s a good guy. I like him. We’re going to have to see what happens.

You know, I start off liking everybody. Then, all of a sudden, they become mortal enemies. So, we’ll see what happens. But he’s been very respectful, very nice. I hope to beat him.

Neoconservative Sen. Marco Rubio was once the deserving object of Sen. Rand Paul’s scorn. Now that Paul and Chris Christie are gone; this charming empty suit seems poised to slither into Donald Trump’s good graces. Trump appears to refrain from attacking individuals if they’re nice to him. This would suggest that so long as they’re nice to him; anyone could become Trump’s running mate or cabinet member.

You’re supposed to deconstruct an opponent’s positions and like or dislike only those.

The foreign policy forays of Rubio—and of John Kasich; I can’t tell with Cruz—will be of a piece with those of Genghis Bush.

Where Trump truly loses credibility to me in is in the way he’s treating Cruz. Trump and Rubio say Cruz is a liar and a bit loopy. This is not immediately obvious from the “evidence” they muster. Cruz’s resume belies it.

UPDATE I (2/22): Crooked prosecutor Rudy Giuliani is Trump’s “campaign consigliere,” reports the New York Post. Is Trump showing his true colors? As I wrote, 03.04.07:

to mention Giuliani without speaking of how he Nifonged Michael Milken is to fail as a libertarian, an individualist, or as an individual who cares for liberty and justice. (I like the verb I’ve just coined: Nifonged.)

Read “American Prosecutors Deserve Count Of Monte Cristo.”

UPDATE II (2/24):

The Russell Kirk We love Is …

Classical Liberalism, Conservatism, libertarianism, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy, War

… the Russel Kirk who, “Toward the end of his life, … returned to his anti-war beginnings. He went so far as to say that ‘not a single American war … had been absolutely necessary.’ He denounced the neoconservatives as warmongers; and he had no use for National Review. ‘Kirk came to believe that Buckley had sold out to the neocons, claiming in a private letter to [Peter] Stanlis, ‘As Patrick Buchanan remarks, National Review is now the New York office of the New World Order.’”

David Gordon is always streaks ahead of the rest of us mortals. Read David’s review of Russell Kirk: American Conservative, by Bradley J. Birzer (University Press of Kentucky).

I will say that I knew, from my edition of The Conservative Mind, “that Kirk in the 1940s was himself a libertarian, or close to it.” And that: “… he strongly opposed America’s war policy, in particular the use of atomic weapons and the internment of Japanese Americans.”

I didn’t, however, know that Kirk “corresponded with both Albert Jay Nock and Isabel Paterson, both renowned libertarians. Indeed, he favorably discussed them in the first edition of The Conservative Mind.”

Best tidbit from David’s review:

Buckley was a former CIA agent, and the principal point of the [NR] magazine was to reorient the American Right from a noninterventionist foreign policy toward a militant pursuit of the Cold War against Russia and to purge those who dissented from militarism and war. Four of the editors, Willmoore Kendall, James Burnham, Frank S. Meyer, and Willi Schlamm, favored preventive war against Russia. Kendall and Burnham were also former CIA agents; and the late great George Resch told me that Henry Regnery, Kirk’s publisher, called National Review a CIA operation.

READ “The Real Russell Kirk” by David Gordon.