Archive for the ‘primaries’ Category

Five After Iowa Caucus Thoughts Under the Fedora: No Bust, Stalking Horses, The 50% Solution, Two Ignored Historic Firsts and the Scythe in the room.

Posted: January 16, 2024 by datechguy in election 2024, elections, elections, politics, primaries
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Well the Nikki Haley boom turned out to be a bust. Did the MSM and Bill Kristol really think their (Temporary) support would carry her over the top in Iowa? The real question is how long will she remain a stalking horse to make sure that moderates who don’t want President Trump as their nominee have someplace other to go than DeSantis? I suspect Trump will want her in through Super Tuesday although a poor showing in South Carolina should finish her off.

I hoped to see a better finish by DeSantis but 2nd will do for now. Given the size of Trump’s victory the real question will be how long there are 2 alternatives to Trump rather than three. The squish republicans in NH don’t want Trump but I suspect they hate DeSantis more because he has the potential to be trouble for a lot longer and as he has proved as Governor of Florida, he really means it.

That why Gov Sununu will likely decide to die on Haley hill.

President Trump drawing 50% in the caucus is significant for several reasons:

  1. It indicates that he is the preferred candidate of a majority of Iowa republicans.
  2. It indicates that a majority of the GOP in Iowa approved of his performance as President
  3. It indicates that neither the rantings of the media have no effect on the majority of GOP voters
  4. It indicates that at the very least a majority of GOP voter don’t give a fig for the “interesting” charges against him

If the President keeps up with 20 or 30 point wins in New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina this primary will be finished before we reach the first of the court cases against him.

There are two historic bits concerning yesterday’s primaries that would have gotten a whole lot more play if it had not been for the unprecedented and despicable tactics being used in an attempt to drag Trump off the national stage.

The first is that Donald Trump is the first ex president in over a century to appear on a primary ballot against members of his own party.

It’s a big difference from the last time President Trump won in Iowa when he was an incumbent running unopposed or the first time he ran in Iowa in 2016 when he was simply a businessman and one could only speculate has to how he would govern as president.

His victory in those circumstances would have been a great story even without the frantic (and highly satisfying) cries of the left and the relentless attempt of the left to eliminate him as a candidate.

The 2nd Historic event or lack thereof was the absence of a Democrat primary. This was a step taken to protect Biden from any primary challenge in a state that might have been iffy for him. While it’s not all that unusual for a party to make sure the slate is clear Biden’s record even among Democrats is not all that secure and a caucus would have been an excellent and useful test of his strength among the party.

That the party did all it could to chase away folks even driving RFK Jr. away from the democrat primaries to run as an independent speaks volumes as to how they percieve Joe Biden as a candidate.

Presuming he is the candidate that is.

Finally nobody is talking about what is normally called the Elephant in the room but in this case is the scythe in the room.

Donald Trump is 77, Joe Biden is 81. Most men their age…are dead.

Now it’s true that Donald Trump is a very vigorous 77 and Joe Biden is a comparatively frail 81 but no matter how you slice it if either one dropped dead tomorrow it would not be a gigantic shock, though perhaps it might be a bit of a surprise in Trump’s case.

The life expectancy of a man born in 1946 is under 66 years. In fact according to the CDC if you were a man born in 2015 your total life expectancy is less than Donald Trump’s age today.

People can say 60 is the new 40 but the reality is 60 is still sixty, 70 is still seventy and Bill Belichick interview not withstanding very few men of their age are generally hired to do a job of such responsibility.

Of course given the mechanisms of the dishonorable deep state left to try to disqualify Donald Trump from the ballot and the hints that Joe Biden might be replaced by a candidate who doesn’t need to face voters age might be a moot point but in the end all the scheming and shenanigans are nothing if the call that all men face demands an answer.

Ilia Calderón at last night debate brought back memories…

Posted: September 28, 2023 by datechguy in elections, elections, media, politics, primaries, primaries
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…of attending Trump press conferences as credentialed press during the 2016 campaign.

The thing I most noticed about said press conferences at the time was that every question to Trump seemed to be premised on one of three propositions:

  1. Why do you suck so bad?
  2. Why does the GOP suck so bad?
  3. What are you going to do about the fact that you suck so bad?

That’s why when I asked this question in Derry NH:

and this question in Worcester MA

It was such a shock to the room because it violated the narrative the left wanted advanced.

And that brings us to Ilia Calderón.

Ilia Calderón was there to advance the left’s narrative and make the GOP candidates bow to it. Ron DeSantis called out said false narrative when she tried to play it on him but the real question on the table is this:

“Why is the GOP putting someone whose goal is to advance the MSM/Left: ‘Why do you suck?’ narrative as a moderator at the GOP debate?”

I think that’s a very good question and Fox and the RNC need to produce a very good answer.

But that’s just me

Trump’s stand on life and Mother Angelica on Peanuts

Posted: September 19, 2023 by datechguy in abortion, catholic, elections, elections, politics, primaries
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Remember, vote for life. It may be your own.

Mother Angelica

Yesterday Donald Trump hit Ron DeSantis from the left for signing a heartbeat bill suggesting that such bills hurt the republican party and talking how he would sign a compromise national bill restricting abortion to 13 weeks.

I can’t speak for others but I’m catholic and abortion is a sine non qua for me. It’s they type of thing that you risk your soul over. I’ve got enough sins that I worry about without compromising myself over life for the sake of a primary or national election.

Mother Angelica, the founder of EWTN put it very well herself when it comes to compromising on sin in her famous story concerning Peanuts. Her nuns were selling peanuts as a fund raiser and were doing pretty well on it when suddenly a new concessions manager demanded an “advertising fee” or as mother put it a kickback. When he threatened to pull the concession from her her answer was classic:

Mother Angelica: Look, if I’m going to hell, it’s not going to be over a peanut.

Here is her telling the story

Now there is no question that Donald Trump’s record on life as president was a great one. Three Supreme Court Judges that got rid of Roe vs Wade, first president to attend the national march for life, there is no question that his record was excellent.

Furthermore I don’t have a problem with incremental change when that’s the best you can do. In a republic you can change laws without educating the public and persuading their representatives to vote with you.

  • If a state has laws allowing abortion to the date of birth then in such a state I’ll welcome a 26 week ban
  • If a state has laws allowing abortion to 26 weeks I’ll welcome & work toward a 13 week ban
  • If a state has laws allowing abortion to 13 weeks I’ll welcome & work for a six week / heartbeat ban
  • if a state has laws allowing abortion up to six weeks I’d welcome & work for an outright ban
  • and if a state has laws outlaw abortion except for rape and incest I’d welcome & work for those exceptions to be removed because a life isn’t defined by the sins of their father.

if your lifeboat isn’t big enough to fit everyone pull from the water who you can while you build a bigger one.

But to retreat and condemn the efforts to save life for the sake of a political campaign, to reject what can be done in the hopes of getting power, to make the life of the unborn child with it’s potential and God given soul and to abandon the soul of the mother and the father an all those involved who risk their souls in this action is to abrogate our duty and to abandon the spiritual work of mercy that is admonishing the sinner because it is these souls that are at risk. Or as Mother Angelica put it:

Those who tell the Truth love you. Those who tell you what you want to hear love themselves.

Mother Angelica

All for the sake of a few more votes? All in the hope that both sides will love you? I think not.

Again Trump is my 2nd choice and if he gets the nomination I’ll have no trouble voting for him vs any of the “abortion till birth” democrats from Biden on down.

But in a primary with a choice between a candidate who has advance the cause of life and one that says he will roll back that advance for the sake of compromise? Well that’s really no choice at all.

Why Kurt is Right and My Friend is Wrong

Posted: September 5, 2023 by datechguy in election 2024, elections, elections, politics, primaries, primaries

The whole point of Jacksonianism is “You leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone. You play fair with me and I’ll play fair with you. But if you fuck with me, I’ll kill you.”

Steven Den Bestie

I have a friend my age, a devout Catholic who was voting Republican long before I ever considered it who I occasionally get together with for breakfast where we talk sports, religion and politics.

He is appalled at what the left has been doing and has been most applauded and shocked by the blatant lying that we’re seeing being presented without challenge by media etc.

Yet despite all of this there is one thing that he’s said blatantly which surprised me, if Trump is the GOP nominee he will not vote for him. He’ll leave the presidential column blank.

I’ve argued that this is foolish and objectively pro-Biden and his answer is this: He believes that if Trump is re-elected the term will be all about vengeance against the left rather than getting things does and he doesn’t want any part of that.

I think he’s likely right about Trump seeking vengeance bit but I think it’s a feature rather than a bug, not because I want political vengeance to be the rule but because I don’t and the best way to explain why such vengeance is the best way to stop the use of government as a tool against the party not is power is to make sure that both parties suffer the consequences of such a thing.

I plan on bringing this up next time we meet for breakfast…or I can just send him this link to Kurt Schlichter who explains that this vengeance is vital better than I do:

First he notes that this is exactly the situation he didn’t want:

I am not for any of this. I think this is a bad idea. I warned people against creating these New Rules where you use the law, or, instead, you twist the law like some sort of Tibetan yogi into unrecognizable forms and shapes in order to trap your political enemies. I am on record saying it’s a bad idea. I still think it’s a bad idea. But what I think doesn’t matter. The New Rules are now The Rules, and it’s time to use them like Eric Swalwell used Fang Fang.

Quickly and unpleasantly for the recipient.

He points to this site which makes the case against this idea and I will quote it at the end of this piece but let’s make the point he is making and that point is all about consequences:

What about all the people who conspired to prevent Missouri citizens or citizens of Oklahoma or Idaho or Alabama or Florida or any other state not dominated by freaking communists from speaking freely on social media? It’s been a while since I’ve been at law school, but I think that the First Amendment still makes free speech a right, and if you’re interfering with the right to speak freely, well, that’s a conspiracy to RICO a felony rights fraud or something. Blah, blah, blah. It doesn’t really matter. You just take the present indictments against the people challenging an election that they thought was rigged, and you add a few facts. You change some theories from trying to challenge a disputed election to trying to keep people from saying what they think about the election shenanigans, and you file that.

They will scream and yell, and I think it will be funny. And I think it will be beautiful too. I am a big fan of symmetry. What they do to us, we do to them twice as hard. Suddenly, a whole bunch of them will be looking to the fed courts to 86 these nonsense cases, and, luckily for them, I think the federal courts will eventually throw out these nonsense Trump cases and create a precedent for throwing out theirs. Or not. So, they may beat the rap, but they will take the ride, just like thousands of good conservatives had to when leftists manipulated the legal system to screw over their political enemies.

emphasis mine

That is the entire point. Until there are actual consequences to actions they will keep happening, and as an example of this I cite the minor miracle that happened in a city that suddenly decided to enforce laws concerning homeless camps that they had previously ignored:

Murals along Commercial Street in downtown San Diego have long been blocked by encampments. Yet at the start of the week, no tents could be seen on either side of the road. The same went for the people who’d been living in them.

“There were hundreds,” Bob McElroy, president and CEO of the Alpha Project shelter, said in an interview. “Where did they go?”

In short once there were consequences behavior changed. Now if consequences make a difference to a homeless drug addict with very little to lose, how much more would consequences matter to a rich pol or a civil servant with money and position and pension to be put at risk?

Schlichter speaks a very uncomfortable truth in closing:

We should never have gotten this far. But we did. And if we ever want to go back, we better roll up our sleeves and be prepared to get our hands dirty because you can never be submissive enough that they won’t try and destroy you.

I’ll be voting DeSantis in the primary as I suspect my friend will too. DeSantis has actually made the best case against the path of vengeance without trying and it’s illustrated by the piece quoted by Kurt noting the other side of the argument:

All across the country, Governors have been quietly using that exact same “broken” system to achieve exactly the kind of victories we all say we want. They have fired George Soros backed prosecutors. They have removed CRT and gender ideology from grade schools. They have banned transgender athletes from taking opportunities away from women. They have banned vaccine mandates and protected businesses from forced closures. They have delivered on wildly popular School Choice programs. They have forced “Sanctuary States” to endure the consequences of their virtue signalling on illegal immigration. And they have fought the worst excesses of woke corporations who would use DEI and ESG to punish those who refuse to vote the way they want them to.

The careers of these Governors and other elected officials across the country are a testament, a stark refutation of the Conservative black pill position on the coming elections in 2024.

Indeed, Ron DeSantis in particular has been so successful at using our allegedly “broken” system to re-Conservatize Florida that he’s accidentally created an entire genre of social media engagement… the “I’m a Progressive and here’s why I had to flee Florida” post.

That’s a pretty good point and those successes are one of the reason I’m voting DeSantis in the primary but that ignores one fact. If we push on the state level but abandon the federal level to the left’s actions then eventually they will have enough federal judges whose primary commitment is to ideology rather than law to upend all of these state level reforms. Already we have a members of the Supreme Court citing falsehoods in opinions, once there are five who are committed to ideology rather than law then the next civil war is simply a matter of time.

I much prefer the DeSantis route and will continue to argue for his nomination but if I’m unsuccessful and Trump is the nominee I’ll try my best to make the case to my friend to join me in voting for him. I’ll cite Kurt and I’m make my points but in the end people are going to have to decide if they want to give whoever is ruling us four more years to use federal agencies to destroy us.

May we choose wisely

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