UPDATED: Trump Vs. The Banana Republicans

Conservatism, Constitution, Donald Trump, Republicans, Ron Paul

“Trump Vs. The Banana Republicans” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

There’s a difference between (small r) republican principles and the Republican Party’s rules of procedure. But National Review neoconservative Jonah Goldberg doesn’t see it.

Or, maybe Goldberg is using America’s founding, governing principles to piggyback the Republican Party’s oft revised and rigged rules to respectability.

Conservatives who harbor the quaint expectation that voters, not party operatives, would choose the nominee stand accused by Goldberg of fetishizing unfiltered democracy.

“America is a republic not a simple democracy,” says Goldberg, in motivating for Grand Old Party chicanery.

Goldberg’s argument is a cunning but poor one. It confuses bureaucratic rules with higher principles: the republicanism of America’s Constitution makers.

Through a Bill of Rights and a scheme that divides authority between autonomous states and a national government, American federalism aimed to secure the rights of the individual by imposing strict limits on the power of thumping majorities and a central government.

The Goldberg variations on republicanism won’t wash. The Republican Party’s arbitrary rules relate to the Founding Founders’ republicanism as the Romney Rule relates to veracity.

The Romney initiated Rule 40(b) is a recent addition to the Republican Party rule book. It stipulates that in order to win the nomination, a candidate must demonstrate he has earned a majority of delegates from at least eight different states. Rule 40 (b) was passed post-haste to thwart libertarian candidate Ron Paul.

Party crooks and their lawyers now find themselves in a pickle, because Governor John Kasich, candidate for the establishment (including the New York Times and the Huffington Post), has yet to meet the Republican rule du jour.

So, what do The Rulers do? They plan to change the rules. Again.

Pledged delegates are not supposed to act as autonomous agents. Their voting has to be tethered to the candidate whom voters have overwhelmingly chosen. But not when The Party parts company with The Voters. Then, delegates might find themselves unmoored from representing the voters.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus has hinted at allowing pledged delegates the freedom to betray their pledge. …

… READ the rest. “Trump Vs. The Banana Republicans” is the current column, now on WND.

UPDATE: Two people noticed the “Goldberg Variations” Bach reference. Via Facebook:

Joshua Jennings: Love the Bach reference!

Ilana Mercer Love the folks who noticed, all 2 of you, Joshua Jennings.

Ilana Mercer: The other was my editor.

How Self-Styled Fem ‘Strategists’ Of Failed Campaigns Flourish On Tard TV

Affirmative Action, Donald Trump, Feminism, Gender, Republicans

“Longtime political operative and outspoken Donald Trump supporter Roger Stone” had this to say about one Ana Navaro (who has a dossier on my blog).

“My problem really is the same, whether it’s Roland Martin or Ana Navarro: why do we have people who have no qualification whatsoever to opine on political matters being asked their opinion?” he added. “Ana is a ‘Republican strategist?’ OK, what campaigns? Who are the people she’s elected? Name them. City council, county commission, governor, senator, congressman, president, anybody? And the answer is nobody.”

Look, I’ve admittedly done and said many controversial things. But, I’m also a veteran of nine Republican presidential campaigns, and I’ve helped elect three Republican presidents, and I have a unique perspective on the current Republican front-runner. What is her credential? Other than being a Hispanic woman, what is her credential?” he said at the time in an interview with the Daily Caller. …

Read my 2015 post about this Republican operative’s racebaiting, so typical among neoconservative regimists.

As noted first in 2012, “In addition to being a plain idiot, Ana Navarro, for example, is a Republican identity politics activist, who would have liked BHO to have delivered on his immigration promises. Known for siring —and surrounding himself with—stupid women, John McCain had once employed the gaseous Navaro as his consultant.”

TRUMP’S ‘Bad Week’ Tweets: Silent Majority Rising, Says No To NATO, RNC, Neocons, Kasich, Cruz & Debt

Debt, Donald Trump, Economy, Foreign Policy, Republicans

RepubliKeynesian Ben Stein Froths At The Mouth About Trump

Debt, Donald Trump, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, libertarianism

“Frightening, idiotic, nonsensical, insane, breathtakingly horrible, flabbergasting, makes me want to cry”: Does this spleen, vented by Ben Stein, resemble an “argument”? It was the sum total of Stein’s “case” against Donald Trump’s recent pronouncements about a foreseeable recession.

As an “expert” who despises Mr. Trump, Stein—an actor, comedian, lawyer and self-styled economist—holds sway with the liberal, malfunctioning media. Our establishment “RepubliKeynesian” appeared on the anti-Trump channel, CNN, to huff and puff about Mr. Trump’s alleged far-fetched doom-and-gloom about a troubled economy. If I recall, this expert was clueless about the previous bubble, not that errors prevent the pundit class from returning for encores.

“We’re not in a bubble, unemployment is not high, Trump needs to consult a real economist [take me, me, screams Stein silently] were some of Stein’s assertions to the smirking, vacuous looker, Pamela Brown. Naturally, Brown provided no counter perspective.

Suffice it to say that Trump’s warnings about the effects of the enormous national debt, the still bigger burden of unfunded liabilities owed, as well as his assessment of the real unemployment numbers would certainly comport with more distortions in the economy and more bubbles.

Oh, and Trump supporters are all idiots for not sympathizing with Stein’s outrage.

Anyhow, not one argument was advanced by Stein for his case against Mr. Trump, only ad hominem. Had the smirker in the anchor’s chair called in an economist, say, of the Austrian persuasion—or even Paul Craig Roberts, United States assistant secretary of the treasury for economic policy under President Reagan, in 1981—she would have heard a perspective more in agreement with Trump than with RepubliKeynesian Ben Stein.