COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Wednesday, November 09, 2016

Do We Need the Advice of George Will?

A Disruptive yet Ruinous Triumph for the GOP

Will the Republican party learn the wrong lessons from its election victory?

At dawn Tuesday in West Quoddy Head, Maine, America’s easternmost point, it was certain that by midnight in Cape Wrangell, Alaska, America’s westernmost fringe, there would be a loser who deserved to lose and a winner who did not deserve to win. The surprise is that Barack Obama must have immediately seen his legacy, a compound of stylistic and substantive arrogance, disappearing, as though written on water in ink of vapor.

His health-care reform has contributed to three Democratic drubbings. The 2010 and 2014 wave elections, like scythes in a wheat field, decapitated a rising generation of potential party leaders. Then came Tuesday’s earthquake, which followed shocking increases of Obamacare’s prices. This law has been as historic as Obama thinks, but not as he thinks: It might be the last gasp of progressivism’s hubris expressed in continentwide social engineering imposed from the continent’s eastern edge. Hillary Clinton’s proposed solution to Obamacare’s accelerating unraveling was a “public option”: intensified government manipulation to correct the consequences of government manipulation of health care’s 18 percent of the economy. Her campaign’s other defining proposal, “free” tuition in public higher education, insulted the intelligence of voters aware that “free” means “paid for by others, including you.”

Obama’s foreign-policy legacy, aside from mounting chaos worldwide, was the Iran nuclear agreement. By precedent and constitutional norms, this should have been a treaty submitted to the Senate. Instead, disdainfully and characteristically, he produced it as an executive agreement. Because the agreement lacks legitimizing ratification by senators, the president-elect will feel uninhibited concerning his promise to repudiate it.

The simultaneous sickness of both parties surely reveals a crisis of the American regime. The GOP was easily captured, and then quickly normalized, by history’s most unpleasant and unprepared candidate, whose campaign was a Niagara of mendacities. And the world’s oldest party contrived to nominate someone who lost to him.


To an electorate clamoring for disruptive change, Democrats offered a candidate as familiar as faded wallpaper. The party produced no plausible alternative to her joyless, stained embodiment of arrogant entitlement. And she promised to intensify the progressive mentality. “If you like your health-care plan, you can keep it”? Actually, you can’t even keep your light bulbs.

Americans perennially complain about Washington gridlock, but for seven decades they have regularly produced gridlock’s prerequisite — divided government. From 1944 through 2016, 22 of 37 elections gave at least one house of Congress to the party not holding the presidency; since 1954, 21 of 32 did; since 1994, eight of twelve. Republicans now lack excuses: If 40 Democratic senators block repeal of Obamacare (or Supreme Court nominees), the Republicans’ populist base will demand Democratic behavior — revision of Senate rules to make this body more majoritarian.
For constitutional conservatives, the challenge is exactly what it would have been had Clinton won.

For constitutional conservatives, the challenge is exactly what it would have been had Clinton won: to strengthen the rule of law by restoring institutional equilibrium. This requires a Republican Congress to claw back from a Republican executive the legislative powers that Congress has ceded to the administrative state, and to overreaching executives like Obama, whose executive unilateralism the president-elect admires.

From Clinton’s nastiest aspiration, we are now safe. She promised Supreme Court justices who would reverse Citizens United, thereby eviscerating the First Amendment by empowering the political class to regulate the quantity, content, and timing of campaign speech about itself. This will never happen.


Demography need not dictate for Republicans a grim destiny but it soon will, unless they act to counter adverse trends. Republicans should absorb Tim Alberta’s data in National Review: Arizona whites have gone from 74 percent to 54 percent of the population in 25 years; minorities will be a majority there by 2022. Texas minorities became a majority in 2004; whites are now 43 percent of the population. Nevada is 52 percent white and projected to be majority-minority in 2020. Georgia is 54 percent white, heading for majority-minority in 2026. Because of inexorably rising minorities, Clinton, an epically untalented candidate, did better than Obama did in 2012 in Georgia, Texas, Arizona, and where one in eight Americans lives — California.

The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on, perhaps soon to inscribe this: In 2016, Republicans won a ruinous triumph that convinced them that they can forever prosper by capturing an ever-larger portion of an ever-smaller portion of the electorate.

This kamikaze arithmetic of white nationalism should prompt the president-elect to test his followers’ devotion to him by asking their permission to see the national tapestry as it is and should be.

— George Will is a Pulitzer Prize–winning syndicated columnist. His e-mail address is georgewill@washpost.com. © 2016 Washington Post Writers Group

39 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. It's Trump's fault that for half a century we've had immigration and welfare policies guaranteed to break apart and ruin this country.

      Delete
  2. "

    As Donald Trump celebrated his surprise election win over Hillary Clinton and equity futures swooned in response, billionaire investor and Trump supporter Carl Icahn headed home to start trading.

    Mr. Icahn, 80, left President-elect Trump’s victory party in the early hours of the morning to bet about $1-billion on U.S. equities, he said Wednesday in an interview on Bloomberg TV.

    “I thought it was absurd that the market, the S&P was down 100 points on Trump getting elected,” Mr. Icahn said in a phone interview. “I tried to put a lot more to work, but I couldn’t put more than about a billion dollars to work,” he said.

    Mr. Icahn also said he’d taken off some hedging trades last night, after saying in August that he was more hedged than ever."

    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/investment-ideas/icahn-left-trump-victory-party-to-bet-1-billion-on-us-stocks/article32767291/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anyone that is 80 years old and has his mind on the equities market has his head up his ass.

      Even at 70 one should have long ago moved along....

      Delete
  3. QuirkWed Nov 09, 11:12:00 AM EST
    .

    I doubt it. There's no point.

    George H. W. Bush called up Trump to congratulate him and wish him luck.

    .

    Guess which sick twisted Texan didn't.

    Go fuck Hillary, George, she vibrates.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Listening to a podcast from last night, the reporters present were discussing how they got it so wrong.

    An ABC Reporterette mentioned not listening to the middle of this country.

    To that end, I hereby nominate our own MOME to be Ambassador of Middle America !


    ReplyDelete
  5. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/elections/how-trump-pushed-the-election-map-to-the-right.html

    His most significant support came from counties in the industrial Midwest where whites without a college education are the majority.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. .

      .

      I don't want to piss on the Trumpsters' parade today but it is interesting to note where the markets are placing their bets. If the market is right, most here may not care; however, the people that put Trump in office, the middle class, the blue collar workers, the unemployed may be disappointed.

      The sectors that went up today...big...

      Defense stocks: Trump has said he plans on upping military spending. Interesting given that he has also said he will avoid foreign entanglements. We already spend more than the next 15 countries combined. And he wants...what...to increase that to spending more than the next 20. Never bet against the MIC. A dollar spent on guns is a dollar not spent on butter. Not good for Trump voters.

      Healthcare: The GOP has been fighting the ACA since it was first passed. Now, Trump wants to eliminate the ACA and reduce regulation. This has got to be great news for the healthcare industry. However, good news for the Healthcare industry usually translates to bad news for the American public. Trump talks of increasing competition. He and anyone like him who thinks competition will help control healthcare costs is nutz. Healthcare and the Drug Industries are two of the most corrupt and venal industries there are. Trump voters will be taking in the ass. Again.

      Financials: Trump has said he wants to cut regulation starting on job one. If he asks the GOP which is the key legislation to eliminate it's almost certain they will want to get rid of Dodd-Frank and the Volker Rule. This will help the banks but it is running us back down the same road that led to the Great Recession. As we saw the last time, it's not the 1% who will suffer, it's the Trump voter.

      Industrials also went up today because of Trump's plans to increase infrastructure spending which would be helpful to all Americans.

      Trump's tax plan, a tax reduction for everyone but skewed more towards the 1%, will only increase the spread between the 1% and the remaining 99% (not to mention increasing the deficit and national debt.)

      While Trump talks like a populist, his economic policies are right out of the GOP playbook, which is great for the banks and Wall Street but not so much for the Trump voter.

      .

      Delete
  6. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

    ‘We are disgusted, embarrassed, we are sorry on behalf of our country that the white male uneducated vote has spoken today,’ railed Celia Rowlson-Hall, a 32-year-old filmmaker.

    ‘We, as the other half of the country that believes in love, unity, and fairness - we have to gather together even stronger to fight against this man who only represents hate and bigotry and xenophobia.’

    ......

    ‘It is surreal,’ said one government employee who gave her first name as Margarita, a beer in front of her.

    She says she fears a new era in America, not just in terms of politics, but also from those who voted for the 70-year-old Trump.

    ‘Our lives are not safe - as queer women, as brown women,’ she told AFP, struggling to put her feelings into words.

    Many spoke about what they felt was total ignorance among Trump supporters.

    ‘I think these people probably flunked out of school - they don't know history, they don't understand the world,’ said Elmy Bermejo, who traveled to New York from San Francisco for the occasion.
    (end excerpt)

    Real horror for these progressives is that ‘the white male uneducated vote were allowed to be heard’ last night.

    These fragile snowflakes, who had been lied to by the Obama/Clintons/media echo chambers for decades, as evidenced by all the prediction of “Hillary landslide”, can not grab hold of the notion that maybe, just maybe, those who supported Trump are not simply ‘white’, and ‘male’, and ‘uneducated’, etc. etc.

    I just want some honest reporting of the real demographic breakdown for this election, and finally dispel the ‘hate, bigotry, and xenophobic’ label of real Americans.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3919142/Shock-despair-silence-Clinton-HQ.html)

    ReplyDelete
  7. CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi spoke to Donald Trump on the telephone on Wednesday, congratulating him on his victory in the U.S. presidential election and seeking to foster closer diplomatic ties, an Egyptian presidency statement said.

    "The U.S. President-elect Donald Trump expressed his utmost appreciation to the president, pointing out that his was the first international call he had received to congratulate him on winning the election," the statement said.

    "President Trump said he looked forward to meeting the president (again) soon."

    ReplyDelete
  8. One of Quirk's best contributions:

    http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/81d6ba4237/holy-sh-t-youve-got-to-vote?_cc=__t___&_ccid=777f3640-5344-4205-a26c-45cde6c6f419

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    2. .

      Best when viewed full screen to pick up detail.

      .

      Delete
    3. .

      Perhaps, the best...

      Slut Spill

      [View full Screen]

      .

      Delete
    4. Thanks for the 'full Screen' heads up, Quirk-O.

      The best viewing is often in the detail, especially in slut sightings.

      Did you see that gal slut humping that interstate light pole ?

      WOW !

      Delete
    5. The one with the misspelled 'Liberty' tattoo and taunt pulled up and in panties ?

      Delete
  9. Analysis: Trump Would Have Beaten Obama in '12...
    http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/442059/dont-blame-clinton-trump-2016-wouldve-beaten-obama-2012
    ===
    Any volunteers to read and report?

    Sounds like stinking pile of cow shit in so many ways.

    Anal Lysis

    ReplyDelete
  10. Why didn't Ginsburg retire under Obama?

    Damn hag will probably outlast Donald, now.

    http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/305246-ginsburg-appears-to-wear-dissent-collar-on-bench

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. She was going to but forgot, or fell asleep.

      Delete
  11. No, we do not need the advice of George Will.

    I will give some advice to George Will.

    Retire, gracefully, and pleasantly go sit somewhere.
    *************


    Is Trump about to help pardon Assange? Shock calls after WikiLeaks release Clinton e-mails


    http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/730637/Julian-Assange-Wikileaks-Donald-Trump-pardon-emails-Hillary-Clinton-US-election-2016

    ReplyDelete
  12. Say, did anyone but me notice that the two polls that got it closest were:

    LATimes/USC Tracking

    and

    IBD

    ReplyDelete
  13. When is Susan Sarandon hitting the road ?

    Before or after the Inauguration ?

    I'll give her a free ride to the airport.

    Drive her to the Canadian border.....hand her over to Ash....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. She has done some good movies, 'Thelma and Louise' for instance.

      But, she can act and act out in Canada, too.

      Delete
  14. After publishing material during the U.S. presidential election negative to the Clinton campaign, and whether he likes it or not, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has strangely become a Trump poster boy.

    ...

    Assange is expected to be questioned by Swedish authorities next week in the Ecuadorian embassy.

    ReplyDelete
  15. 'Anxious and fearful' students demand day off to cry....DRUDGE

    Another 'non-negotiable' demand

    ReplyDelete
  16. Damn!
    Neighbors made me take down my flag !

    http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/San-Francisco-homeowner-s-Nazi-flag-protest-of-10605083.php

    ReplyDelete
  17. Clintons must be fairly pissed at Assange. Wonder what that does to his longevity?

    ReplyDelete
  18. Students have staged walkouts Wednesday at several Phoenix schools, over the victory by President-elect Donald Trump in Tuesday's election.

    ...

    A protest was also staged by Arizona State University students in Tempe which happened around 6 p.m.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The boys of Pointe du Hoc had nothing on these Alpha Snails.

      Delete
  19. RWE3 •

    So it would appear that the "Deplorables" comment was not merely a window into Hillary's soul.

    It was a window into their strategy, their plans, their weapons.

    "If they ain't one of us, then ta'hell with'em! They don't count!"

    Hillary's campaign was made up of Pod People.

    Ever read the end of the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers novel? After all the drama and horror, ordinary people were moving into the town and occupying the empty spaces left by the Pod People. Plants that grow that fast don't last long. We are not talking mighty oaks but more like sunflowers.

    These photos of Hillary's female supporters sitting around and looking at the election returns with tears running down their cheeks would be tragic if I could stop laughing.

    ====

    wombat RWE3 •
    Here ya go. To brighten your evening. Lamentations ... women ... something like that.

    https://a.disquscdn.com/get?url=http%3A%2F%2Fll-media.tmz.com%2F2016%2F11%2F09%2F1108-hillary-clinton-supporters-upset-getty-1b-2.jpg&key=f05k8PlrKRaO1GXs92oXAA&w=600&h=444

    ReplyDelete
  20. A female scholar of the liberal variety....an honest liberal one....was saying on Fox that being viewed as an 'oppressed' female actually helps at the voting booth.

    People vote party and policy, except the fems can get a little edge sometimes, if they play it right.

    This 'sexism' stuff has gone way too far.

    I stood out in the rain and sleet for Sarah.

    Hillary ought to be in prison.

    There is no 'sexism' is the United States of America.

    Not these days.

    Check out who is sitting in the Law School classes....

    What sex controls the most property in the USA ?

    Who, even occasionally, still has the doors opened for them ?

    I may be a peckerwood but I ain't falling for this sexism craparoo.....especially after living with my Boss, my wife, all these years.....

    ReplyDelete
  21. Hillary Clinton got more of the popular vote? So what?

    Reviewing the presidential election results, many commentators note that Donald Trump -- like several previous Republican presidential candidates -- prevailed in the electoral college without winning the popular vote. This is true, but it's also irrelevant. It's irrelevant legally, of course, because the Constitution provides for the election of a president through the electoral college. But it's also irrelevant in terms of the democratic legitimacy of the result.

    In the election concluded Tuesday, Hillary Clinton received more popular votes than Trump. This does not mean, however, that Clinton would necessarily have prevailed in an election that was determined solely by the popular vote. This is because the popular vote total is itself a product of the electoral college system. As a consequence, we do not know what the result would have been under a popular vote system, let alone whether Clinton would have prevailed.

    The reason for this is because the electoral college system encourages the campaigns (and their surrogates and allies) to concentrate their efforts on swing states -- those states in which the electoral votes are up for grabs -- at the expense of those states in which one party or the other has no meaningful chance to prevail. The presidential campaigns make no meaningful effort to turn out votes in populous, but non-competitive states such as California, New York and Texas. There is no advantage to running up the score in a state that is solidly in one camp, nor is there much benefit in trying to drive up turnout in pursuit of a hopeless cause.

    So, for instance, a GOP campaign would invest little in trying to drive up the vote total in Texas or reducing the margin by which its candidate loses in New York or California, and ditto the Democratic campaign in reverse.

    Under a popular-vote system, on the other hand, every vote in every state would count equally, and campaigns would be likely to devote substantial resources driving up turnout in these same states.

    We don't have any particularly reliable guide as to what vote tallies such efforts would produce. Voter knowledge as to whether they are in a competitive state may also effect voter behavior, such as the willingness to support a third-party candidate or to cast a protest vote, further altering the result we would see under a different system.

    What all this means is that when the popular vote is reasonably close -- as it was this year, as it was in 2000 and 2004 -- we cannot say with confidence that the candidate who won the popular vote under the electoral college system would also have won the popular vote under a popular-vote system. It's possible, but anything but certain. So while it's true that Clinton won the majority of popular votes cast, we don't know that she was actually the candidate voters would have picked were we to rely on the popular vote.

    http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Opinion-Hillary-Clinton-got-more-of-the-popular-10604955.php

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "Voter knowledge as to whether they are in a competitive state may also effect voter behavior..."

      AFFECT, Dammit!

      Delete
    2. I like the effect of effect, Dammit !

      Delete
  22. Thailand's military government, which has been agitated by US pressure to allow the country to return to democracy after a 2014 coup, said it would accept "the voice of the American people" and was "looking forward to a continuity in diplomatic cooperation".

    "What is clear is that people wanted changes … there's a word for that in English: seven-year inch," said Thai foreign affairs minister Don Pramudwinai.

    "It's a term of married people but it's no different when it comes to the relationship between a government and its people."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hmmmmm......

      seven-year inch

      Is that really what Marilyn Monroe was seeking ?

      Delete
  23. For our head scratching quizzical poll challenged Quirk -


    The USC/L.A. Times poll saw what other surveys missed: A wave of Trump support

    For most of the last four months, the USC/L.A. Times Daybreak tracking poll has been the great outlier of the 2016 campaign -- consistently showing a better result for Donald Trump than other surveys did.
    In light of Tuesday’s election returns, the poll now looks like the only major survey to see the wave coming....


    http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-usc-latimes-poll-20161108-story.html

    ReplyDelete