Category: Politics and Issues

Article 1, Section 5 of our Constitution gives each house of Congress the right to “punish its member for disorderly behavior.”  Diane Feinstein has disgraced herself, and taken the Senate a descent into Dante Inferno below what many thought possible.  San Francisco Chronicle stated the process unfair to Judge Kavanaugh and no one will confuse the Chronicle as part of the right wing conspiracy.  The Senate should censure Feinstein at the very minimal for what she did.

 

Feinstein was aware of the charges before the hearings began and refuse to share this information or even confront Kavanaugh with this when given the chance.  Even today, Grassley has yet to receive the un-redacted copy of the letter so we have no clue what was in the letter.  Feinstein misled her colleagues and in the process, disgraced the body she serves. The last three Senators censured dealt with financial misconduct.  For Feinstein, it was not about finances since she is worth nearly 100 million dollars but she is facing a tough re-election campaign and her own party refuse to endorse her at the state convention.  Her ambush of Kavanaugh was to save her political skin and she was willing to traffic in smear tactics that compare to Joseph McCarthy to do so.

National Review Michael Swartz noted, “Not only did she fail in her committee duties, but she did everything she could to make the charge public in a way that made the target’s defense difficult or impossible. The charge was lodged anonymously, and rather than subjecting it to vetting by her fellow senators, Feinstein made a transparently groundless referral of the matter to the FBI — as if there could conceivably be a federal law-enforcement dimension to the decades-old claim of sexual assault — which the FBI, to its credit, unceremoniously filed away. Left hanging in the glare of a still-untested sexual-assault charge — which today has the same resonance that a charge of Communist sympathies had in McCarthy’s day — are Judge Kavanaugh, his wife, and his two daughters. They are in a far worse position than was the young lawyer in whose defense Welch made his famous statement… Where does all this leave the Kavanaugh nomination? Barring the emergence of evidence unequivocally confirming the charge, senators who are on the fence might want to consider that a vote against the nominee now necessarily excuses and even legitimates Feinstein’s misconduct. If the senators don’t take their own institution’s procedures seriously, and refuse to stand against so blatant a breach, it’s hard to expect the rest of us to do so.”  If they don’t censure Feinstein, the Senate is rewarding this behavior and shouldn’t be surprise if it happens again.  It would even be better they expel Feinstein, if they want to prevent this in the future and send a message to future Senators that this behavior will never be tolerated.  It requires a two third vote to remove Feinstein from the Senate but only a majority to censure.  If Senate doesn’t expel Feinstein, then censure her.

PJ Media Roger L. Simon noted, “It took the French Revolution ten years (1789-1799) to go from an idealistic fight for freedom to the one-man rule of Napoleon, but these are fast-moving times and the #MeToo movement has gone from the necessary correction of monsters like Harvey Weinstein to an all-out assault on the rule of law and hatred of the entire male sex in about eighteen months. (Well, it was men who came up with the Magna Carta.)”

What we are witnessing is the end of the rule of law and presumption of innocent until proven guilty and simply assume all men guilty if accused of sexual assault and rape.  Worse, it is becoming a political weapon as woman will be believed based on whether a Republican or Democrat is being accused.  Karen Monahan accused Keith Ellison and has far more evidence that abuse may have occurred but Ellison has denied the charges. Because Ms. Monahan has more evidence doesn’t mean Ellison assaulted her but 95% of Democrat voters believe Ellison and not Monahan.  Democrats’ view of Kavanaugh’s guilt is reverse as they view him a sexual predator and yes, I have heard that phrase on programs I appeared on.

Senator Mazie Hirono, who demanded that men shut up about Kavanaugh, accepted money from Senator Tom Carper who is on his way to win re-election in Delaware.  Carper admitted in a child custody fight a couple decades ago that he struck his wife so Hirono is willing to deny Kavanaugh a seat on the Supreme Court based on allegations that no one can even prove  but is accepting money from a Senator who admitted abusing his ex-wife.  The hypocrisy is striking just as the hypocrisy about Keith Ellison who is running for the chief law enforcement officer of Minnesota is striking as no Democrats has yet demand that Ellison resigned his present congressional seat or position as number two man in Democratic National Committee. There is an investigation going by the DNC but call me cynical, but don’t expect any result from this investigation until after the election if at all.

Rape and sexual assaults are serious and need to be handled by the legal system and turn into political footballs and certainly not the accusation be used in political matters, especially if there is no or little evidence.   What will happen in the future?  In the future, women accusation against politicians or the powerful won’t be determine by the evidence but whether they can be used against their opponents.  The woman will only be believed if the right person is accused and we are now moving toward a world in which innocence is no longer assumed.

Roger L Simon concluded, “What we have here, Senator Feinstein, is the #MeToo movement going into its Robespierre period, lopping off heads as it goes.  Where this Reign of Terror will end, nobody knows, but Dianne Feinstein and this odd Dr. Ford (imagine being in therapy with her) have a lot to answer for.The endless tap dance about how and when Ford should testify — and the absolutely astonishing demand that Kavanaugh should testify first, before his accuser, turning the rule of law on its head — completes this picture of the #MeToo movement gone berserk.  Genuine victims of abuse will, of course, suffer as people become increasingly fed up with this charade.” Real women will suffer as a result.

 

We are in the final week of the Kavanaugh-Ford Confrontion and it is looking like an ambush. Are we are witnessing a smear job with a accused who so far has been less than forthcoming and evidence pointing to Kavanaugh innocence?

Let begin with what we know as of Sunday night, all of those who have been identified as being at the party including one friendly witness that was supposed to back Ford’s claim have all denied that the event occurred so we have no witnesses to the alleged rape and sexual assault.   As for Ford’s friendly witness, she even denied that she even know Kavanaugh.  The case against Kavanaugh is imploding.

What did happen some 36 years ago and with no witnesses to collaborate the story, what will a hearing settle other than get Ford statement on the record.  This case is similar to the original Thomas –Hill hearing 27 years only there was even less evidence than in that case.  (For those who might not remember, the FBI concluded that the charges against Thomas unsubstantiated and it is a good thing for Ford that Feinstein sat on this as oppose taking it to the FBI several weeks ago since she would look even worse than Hill did in her hearing. It is obvious that even Feinstein had her own doubt about the story and released it in this fashion because she was attempting to smear Kavanaugh’s reputation if he got confirmed.)

Here is a question I was asked and it is a good question, why would Ford lie knowing what storm awaits her. Even a liberal friend, who was a rape victim, admitted that women do lie about being rape.  A few years back, a woman lied about being rape by fraternity members at University of Virginia to a reporter of the Rolling Stone magazine. (Rolling Stone lost more than 1.5 million dollars in a lawsuit over this case.)  So why would a woman lie about being raped to a national magazine Kavanaugh case enters the final week but what we are learning, this is looking more like a? Did she assume that she would not be exposed and that automatically believed?

In looking at Ford’s own career, we see a Professor who was politically active and her brother law firm worked with Fusion GPS.  Fusion GPA worked on behalf of Obama campaign, doing opposition research (which occasionally does include looking for dirt on the opposition campaign.)  It is known that as early as 2012 that Ford feared that Kavanaugh could be a nominee for the Supreme Court and CNN reported that Kavanaugh was on Romney’s short list.  Ford’s brother law firm work with Fusion GPS was in 2016 so there was no evidence to suggest that Ford got any information from Fusion GPS about Romney possible nominee to the Supreme Court.

Professor Ford was politically astute and her brother may be equally politically aware.  So was Ford prepared to do sabatoged the Kavanaugh nomination if Romney did this in 2013, if elected?   Was Ford willing to do what it takes to stop Kavanaugh nominations?  That is a big if but what we are learning about Ford and her legal team, it is not beyond imagining since her team are made up of political operatives with law degrees. Truth is not their concern.  My own view is that Ford is complicit in this and not an innocent bystander exposed accidently by Feinstein.  I don’t know what happened 36 years ago and no one does but based on what we know, there is no evidence to suggest Ford was sexually assaulted or the event happened as she said.

Did Professor Ford think that she would not exposed by Feinstein and did this slip out of her control?  Or did she understand that once she wrote her letter and Feinstein got a copy, was she prepared to do what was needed to stop Kavanaugh’s confirmation?  These are questions that can no longer be ignored as the case against Kavanaugh has imploded with every witness denying anything happened.  I can’t imagine any woman lying about rape but it does happen.  And as I will discuss later, Christine Ford and Diane Feinstein has hurt the MeToo Movement and undermined other women who will have a stronger case against powerful people.

In a recent discussion, I heard a leftist talk show viewed Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas as sexual predators prepared to strip women their right to choose.  The problem with this argument is that anyone who actually witnessed the actual Thomas-Hill hearing would know that Thomas confirmation came as a result of Thomas testimony being viewed more truthful as Anita Hill. 

For those who don’t remember or those not old enough to know the actual truth and exposed to revisionist history, not a single colleague of Anita Hill came forward to support her allegations and Senate Judiciary Committee included a panel of women, seven of whom worked with Thomas rejected Hill’s charges and one of those women was a previous victim of sexual harassment.

Hill didn’t mention the more salacious details that later become a focal point in the hearing to the FBI in initial meetings.  Charles Grassley and Arlen Spector asked Hill why her story changed and Hill responded, ““I did not tell the FBI all of the information because the FBI agent made clear that if I were embarrassed about talking about something, that I could decline to discuss things that were too embarrassing, but that I could provide as much information as I felt comfortable with at that time.”  Both of the FBI agents responsible for the initial investigation into her charges filed statements about the untruthfulness of Hill’s testimony. Anita Hill testimony was rebuked by her own fellow colleagues and while there have many attempts to rewrite the history of the hearings but the reality is Thomas testimony and follow up testimony backed up Thomas’ version, not Anita Hill.

Anita Hill did not support women in every cases where sexual harassment occurred.  Just read this Hill’s quote about a charge that President Clinton grope a White House volunteer, “For President Clinton, he’s going to suffer a disadvantage because it is now that these allegations are coming out, during his presidency. But I think what Ms. Steinem also says is we have to look at the totality of the presidency and how has he been on women’s issues generally? Is he our best bet, notwithstanding some behavior that we might dislike? I don’t think that most women have come to the point where we’ve said, well this is so bad that even if he is better on the bigger issues, we can’t have him as president.” Translation, if a Democrat is accused, the woman expendable since a Democrat is “better on the bigger issues” like abortion.  That is the Anita Hill I remember and Clarence Thomas was right when he described what happen to him as “high Tech lynching.”    It is looking  more like Kavanaugh case is ambush similar to Clarence Thomas leaving one to ask, do Democrats have no shame to attempt the same tactics some 27 years apart? I don’t have to answer that for the answer is obvious.

 

We are selecting a future Supreme Court Justice. Not one American should dismiss Dr.Fords statement. The actions by K should not be tolerated, covered- up nor ignored. Actions speak to character or the lack of. Dr. Ford has taken risk to her personal, professional and future state of mental and physical health to have come forward

. One must also be cognizant that this action of hers will affect her family for generations. It is not dramatic and certainly not an ignorant stance to realize that we as a country must understand that citizens will either become heroes, fools or exist in an apathetic state of being.

These are extraordinarily important moments which with just one brave act…, America will be forever the Land of the Free, or continue down a path whereas we will completely forget our humanity.

(Ms. Bies is presently living in Ireland, pursuing educational opportunities and working advance degree. She is an director, theatre screenwriter, poet, and scholar. This was an email read on the Donelson Files)

 

The starting point for a discussion of a national health care system should be setting our goals.

American health care should be:

1. High quality, state-of-the-art
2. Available to all
3. Affordable
4. Abundant
5. Well-funded 

What are the principal obstacles to these goals

A. The shortage of medical personnel. This shortage has two facets:

Not enough medical professionals are produced in the first place, and too many drop out before their time.There are whole areas of inner cities and rural America, for example, which have no physicians at all. Why? Because our medical schools do not graduate enough doctors to serve the population of the United States. Why not? Lack of intelligent students? Lack of students who are motivated to give their lives in service to their fellow man? Not at all.

The reason is lack of money! Medical education is so lengthy and so costly in this country that very few students can afford to go to medical school. This situation has created a national crisis.

One very good use of taxpayer funds would be to offer medical and nursing school students free tuition, open to all qualified applicants. We do it for the military, why not for doctors and nurses? The cost would be miniscule compared to the Department of Defense or agricultural subsidies.

This policy would have a massive return on public investment. More doctors would increase coverage of the population (perhaps there should be a requirement for a graduate M.D. and R.N. to spend two years in a “no-doctor zone”). More doctors would increase competition for the patient dollar. More could devote themselves to research. New people, new ideas, new openness to change. The quality of care would go up, and the cost would go down – a mantra we have been hearing a lot lately. This program would also assure continuing support for U.S. medical technology which is already the envy of the world.

B. Inadequate funding

So how do we provide for adequate funding? Where does the $3 trillion we now spend go? The money flow starts with the employers who pay the insurance companies out of profits. It then goes mainly to the vast bureaucracies in the insurance companies which distribute the money, the government which oversees the money, and the hospitals and practitioners who must respond to the companies and the government. Only about one-third of the $1 trillion spent on healthcare gets to the practitioners. So how can this labyrinth be simplified?

1)  First, take the employers out of the picture. The added financial and personnel burdens on businesses of paying and accounting for employee health care is a double disaster. It is a drag on the efficiency of the economic system by vastly increasing the cost of starting and staying in a business, and on the healthcare system by removing from individuals the responsibility of seeing to their own health needs.

2)  Next, reduce the role of insurance companies. They are not chartered or ordained by God to be judging the value or disvalue of medical procedures. They are supposed to know about money, not cancer! The decisions about medical care and the balancing for costs versus therapies should be in the hands of the patients where they belong. When the ultimate decisions of life and death have been left with the patient, we will have come a long way toward patient-centered medicine. Face it, there is no way for the patient to become the main arbiter of his or her fate unless the patient is the source of the money which runs the system.

3)  This free market system would be much better and much cheaper. The individual works for the money; the individual chooses the doctor, makes the final decision as to spending the money, and pays the doctor, hospital, physical therapist, and pharmacist. So where does the individual get the money? From his or her own health savings account with enhanced income from fewer deductions, also from voluntary insurance or cooperative membership, or from family, friends or philanthropic sources. Since the money is the patient’s own, the patient is far more likely to become very cost-conscious – unlike today’s insured patient, who is always spending someone else’s money

C. Insurance Companies and Government

A patient-centered system also reduces the role of federal and state governments (46.9% of health expenditures, NCHS, 2016). The patient doesn’t need the insurance company or the government. If both the government and the insurance companies were completely eliminated from the system, about two-thirds of the cost of American health care would be gone. Of course, there will always be some need for both, so assume that half of that cost would be gone. At today’s rates, that would be about $1.5 trillion. This is a gross number, but it shows the potential.

1) There is still a place for insurance companies in this system, although dramatically reduced. The most obvious place is for catastrophic insurance. A safety net for when something very expensive happens to someone in the family – or the church, or the credit union, or whatever assembly of people the individual chooses to participate with. And this brings us to the role of governments.

2) The first federal government act should be to lift all interstate commerce restrictions on insurance companies, so that they are free and invited to offer policies in any or all the states they wish without the necessity of creating a separate bureaucracy for every state they enter.

3) The second federal reform should be the creation of a program for financial aid to qualified students in the medical professions. My suggestion would be a free education in exchange for a period of service in underserved areas of practice as determined by a federal government body, such as, CDC or NIH or HHS.

4) A third federal reform which would dramatically reduce national health care costs is tort reform. Everyone makes mistakes, including medical practitioners and hospitals. It is the federal government’s role to protect both the treatment sector and the patient. But the current practice of unlimited liability has led to “defensive medicine,” that is, exhaustive tests and treatments used far beyond medical purposes. These extras are done to provide a defense against the inevitable lawsuit in case anything goes wrong. This uber caution has become a major cost driver in American medicine. Congress should set reasonable and realistic limits on the monies which can be given to the victims of everything from malfeasance to honest mistakes. No more windfalls for injury lawyers.

D Universal Coverage

The larger issue is care for the poor and the other underserved members of our nation. The concept of universal care is a noble and worthwhile goal. But socialized medicine is not the only or even the best way to achieve universal care. We have government programs to feed the hungry; to provide health care for the elderly; to protect the innocent. We can provide health care access to the poor and the underserved, whether because of poverty or location. We can also do better than the COBRA coverage for those who lose their jobs, or those who are excluded because of pre-existing conditions.

It is very tempting to design a system in which no government plays a major role. However, the most efficient way to care for the poor would seem to be a State-run program which levies a small per capita fee on each pool of insured to be placed in a designated fund, administered by the State, for the benefit of qualified citizens. A model for such a program might be the Medicaid programs in each State. Another model is the Uninsured Driver programs administered by the states.\

E. Medicare

We have now discussed the entire healthcare cycle without mentioning Medicare. There is a moral and legal mandate involved in Medicare which does not exist elsewhere. Medicare works reasonably well as a medical insurance system for those who contributed to it all their working lives. The most prudent and honorable way to approach Medicare would seem to be to leave it alone for those to whom commitments were made, even while moving the system slowly toward a patient-centered system for those just starting out, with free choices developed for those in mid-career. The pressure of the free market system we have been describing here will undoubtedly alter and reform Medicare as the new system matures in due course.

So here is what a free market system might look like. It would fulfill all our goals for an American system that is:

1. State-of-the-art;
2. Available to all in need;
3. Affordable;
4. Abundant; and
5. Well-financed.

To get there, we need to:

1. increase the supply of medical practitioners,
2. create a patient-centered system by letting the patient spend his or her own money on healthcare;
3. create state-sponsored safety nets for the poor and underserved. 

These proposals, of course, seem radical today, even in America’s free market culture. But sometimes the most obvious solution is indeed the best. The fact is that the employer-based system we have today was initiated because the elite of another day considered average Americans too irresponsible to handle their own health and welfare. Not true today.

(Larry Fedewa, Ph.D. is a conservative commentator on social and political issues. Former international technology executive, business owner and college president, he lives on an Arabian horse farm near Washington, D.C.  He granted permission to use this article and we are appreciative.  He will contribute to the websites and is presently working on a his own radio show/podcast)

Many of us remember where we were on 9/11 and while we remember the collapse of the twin tower, we should note that New Yorkers have rebuilt their city in wake of the attack.  Where the twin towers existed, stands One World Tower, orignally called the Freedom tower and around the area, the 9/11 museum and memorial reminds of that day.  Other buildings being constructed or are completed include 7 World Tower, 4 World Tower and 3 World towers.  Out of the ashes of the old, arises the new.

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John McCain Legacy for me is a mixed bag, a Senator who served his country first as a soldier who sacrifice much for his country and finally in Congress, first as congressman before moving to the Senate.  The first time I saw John McCain was in 1993 when he appeared at a health care conference opposing what was then Hillary care. Ms. Clinton appeared briefly in the morning, made her statement and left without taking questions from the media or anyone and leaving the heavy lifting to others to defend her position during the rest of the conference.  I covered the event for KC Jones, a conservative newspaper and had a chance to interview people from both sides including McCain.  When John McCain voted against the skinny repeal proposed by his friend, Lindsey Graham, I remember the McCain of 1993 and wonder if maybe Senator McCain of 2017 might wanted to reread his own speeches on health care reform. He betrayed his own voters who he promised in 2016 that he would lead the fight to repeal Obamacare and his past beliefs.  This vote represented for many of us the most frustrating aspect of John McCain career, a man whose often voted conservative most of his career but in many crucial moments over the years, become the Maverick by not just compromising on his beliefs but abandoning them.

It is the Maverick McCain that helped open the door for the National Populist movement that he would spend the last years of his life fighting. In 2000, the McCain express opposed George Bush run to the White House and his campaign was based on a premise that many voters were no longer satisfied with both political parties. He often moved to populist points starting with campaign reform and later opposing Bush Tax cuts from a populist position that mirrored Bernie Sanders and in some respect, Donald Trump.  The 2008 McCain ran a more traditional conservative campaign but his selection of Sarah Palin, who was a Maverick in her right opposing the Republican establishment in Alaska showed that he had not abandoned the populist and anti-establishment route. Throughout the Obama years, he was a leader in opposition to a good portion of the Obama agenda including foreign affairs.

McCain legacy will be the last of what I would call the Wilsonian internationalist who believed in the goodness of America to influence the world as Coco Konski and I discussed his legacy on our podcast,. What is often forgotten, McCain ran on a platform of a muscular foreign policy and American Greatness, influenced by the staff of Weekly Standard in 2000 and it was George W. Bush who ran on a platform of “more modest Foreign policy,” similar to the Trump campaign strategy 16 years later. The American Greatness did evolve into a more Nationalistic view of America that Trump took advantage of.  Trump ran on the more modest foreign policy but he also ran on the greatness of America with the idea of Making America Greater.  After the 2000 election, while McCain still held Bush’s tactics in the 2000 primary against him, both men found common grounds after 9/11 as Bush sided with McCain view of foreign policy.  Bush adopted the Freedom agenda of McCain and we spent the next decade importing Democratic procedure to the Middle East where so far, they have not taken much root.  We can argue the mistakes made in the Middle East and whether the pro-democracy agenda was doomed from the beginning or had a chance for success, sabotage by poor execution and Obama retreat from Iraq. That is a debate for another time.

The Freedom agenda also led to bad judgment including supporting the rise of Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and deposing Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.  David Goldman describe Egypt plight before the military finally disposed of the Brotherhood, “In 2012, Senator McCain backed the installation of a Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt…In July 2013, more than 30 million Egyptians – a majority of the adult population – demonstrated against the country’s Muslim Brotherhood government. Under General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Egypt’s military took control of the country, which was nearly out of food. Al-Sisi saved Egypt from starvation and chaos…Senator McCain sadly denounced the military takeover as a violation of the democratic process. Technically speaking it was a coup against an elected government, although under emergency conditions and with massive and visible popular support. So beguiled was McCain with the prospect of a democratic Islamic regime that he never accepted that his illusion had vanished.”  The irony is that Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood was seeing the fabric of Democracy already being throttled plus the country was about to enter into chaos and massive starvation.  In the case of Libya, there was no game plan for a post Gaddafi and it became a terrorist playground.

Goldman noted the difference between McCain and Trump when he noted, “The bright line in American policy divides the utopians who believe that America’s mission is to bring free markets and liberal democracies to the benighted, backward nations of the world, and realists like Trump…Senator McCain threw his support to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the expectation that it would become a vehicle for Muslim democracy; Donald Trump proposed to insulate America from the problems of the Muslim world.”

The modest foreign policy promised by Bush in 2000 is the basis of Trump’s policy in 2018 and America rejected the more internationalist view of McCain for a more realistic policy that accept the limits to American foreign policy and constructing policy toward a identifying and defending America’s national interest. As I noted in my book, “The Rise of National Populism and Democratic Socialism What our response should be”, Trump foreign policy would be “Donald Trump s bringing back realpolitik, in which our country’s foreign policy will be based on America’s national interest. Idealism will no longer be a reason to send young Americans into combat, but defending our national interest will.”  This approach is not isolationist but a more realistic approach to a world that is now multipolar with different blocs and Nations defending their national interest first, world predicted by the late Herman Kahn in his book, The Coming Boom. I observed in my book, “In 1982, Herman Kahn wrote The Coming Boom, in which he foresaw the economic prosperity of the Reagan years and a new world order that included the rise of regional powers and new challenges to the bipolar power struggle between the United States and the U.S.S.R.  Kahn thought that a multipolar world would eventually stabilize but the era before stabilization could be chaotic.  Kahn’s predictions proved to be accurate.”  McCain worldview has now been overtaken by events and the desire from the American people for a more modest foreign policy.  The world of John McCain internationalism has passed and he, like many within the foreign policy right including William Kristol, fail to realize the changes in the world.  McCain defended those institution that kept the peace just as NATO, Trump is asking the question if these institution serves our national interest.

McCain was a man in full, not a perfect man or the master of the United States Senate and often times, his own view disagreed with his Party. In many cases it was his Party that was right and not McCain. His support for carbon tax to save the planet has been rejected by his Party and with good reason and the one bill that bears his name, McCain-Feingold was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court for the simple reason that it interfered with freedom of speech.

McCain was not perfect and there were times he could hold grudges that last a long time and mistakes were made. McCain would be first to admit that he should have supported Martin Luther King Holiday in 1987 and his refusal to allow Sarah Palin to come to his funeral was more than a mistake since Ms. Palin had stayed loyal to McCain, never uttered a bad word about him and even campaigned for him after 2008.  As Sarah Palin noted not once did McCain ever said to her that it was mistake to place her on the ticket in 2008 only to find out that he would declare this in his last book not yet published.  For many politicians, loyalty is a one way street and John McCain is not the first politician nor will he be the last to throw some of his own past supporters under the bus if need be.  Every politician at some time has but unlike former campaign staffer, Steve Schmidt and Nicole Wallace, who profited from their own disloyalty, Palin stayed loyal.  National Review John Fund summarize John McCain, “But John McCain was enough of a genuine American hero that he need not be placed on a pedestal and treated like a plaster saint. He was throughout his career what is called “a man in full,” a leader defined by his bold moves, bold personality, and bold accomplishments. He also deserves to be described in our farewells as a man in full, with all of his contradictions, inconsistencies, and expedient behavior…By holding up him up as a paragon of virtue, the media failed last week in their job of telling John McCain’s story in full. I suspect their credibility took another hit with many Americans as a result, a credibility that is already so low that someone like Donald Trump has been able to exploit it.”

McCain served his country and suffered as a result and many of the same people who praised him during his funeral were perfectly willing to call him a fascist, a racist and everything in between when he oppose their agenda and it suited them in his 2008 presidential run against Obama.  McCain was not the perfect vehicle and over the last half of his legislative career, he often abandoned principle to reach across aisle and like many of his generation, he failed to see causes of the present rise of Populism, a movement that he himself help start two decades earlier.  There is much to praise about McCain heroism and much to criticize record wise as a legislator.  History and Historians will make their own judgement years from now and I will let others decide if working across the aisle as Man putting country before Party or simply fool errands that did little to advance the causes he believed in.  I remembered the McCain who took a stand to defend free market reforms in health care in 1993, ran on those platforms in 2008, campaign on them in his 2016 Senate race only to desert them in 2017. This sums up the contradictions of McCain the Senator.

 

 

 

Another way to look at the Trump phenomena is to understand his populist base is for real and for many Republicans, their future is tied to the success of their ability to combined conservatism with a populist edge.  As I noted in my book, The Rise of National Populism and Democratic Socialism, conservatism Trump populism is compatible with Trump populism as Trump based his individual tax plan on the Rubio proposals from the 2016 election including tax rates. (Trump did add an additional 37% tax rates on the wealthy but he added many tax breaks that benefits the Middle Class, similar to what Rubio proposed.)  The corporate tax plan proposal begin at 15%, similar to Cruz’s 16% rate and ended up at 21%.

Trump own view of immigration is a combinations of amnesty for many of them here illegally now combined with restricting future immigration levels, border security, vista reform and moving toward a more merit base system, most of which is supported by majority of Americans and this is where most Republicans are.  For many Americans, they no longer believe that immigration is a boon to their economic prospect and while many in the political class wants increase immigration levels and amnesty for illegals but little in the regard for border security or change in our present immigration levels.  Immigration increases GNP overall but it also impacts those at the bottom of the economic skills as lower income and Middle Class compete with both legal and illegal immigrants. What we see is that overall economy goes up while those at the bottom of the economic ladder see their overall income go down.

The political class, in particular the left, biggest failure has been in foreign policy.  While we debate the wisdom of the second Iraq war, we can positively say that America was safer in 2009 than in January of 2017.  Isis rose in the ashes of Obama pulling out early, only to force Obama to begin putting America troops back, and his policy in Syria has led to the death of at least 500,000 million civilian and a weakening of our position in the Middle East. The Iranian deal allowed Iran free reign throughout the region and the deal will allow Iran to produce a nuclear weapons.  Russian essentially annexed half of Ukraine and added Crimea.

China has essentially used the WTO to its benefit while applying its mercantilism theory to gain the upper hand in its own quest to turn the Middle Kingdom into the center of the universe in place of the United States.  Many of the post-World War II era institution that kept the peace are fraying and Trump is asking the right questions.  What is the role of NATO today? How do we get our Allies pay more of their defense? What should our relations be with Russia and is Russia a greater threat or is China over the long run?  How do we liberalize trade while dealing with various inequality that exist within the United States?  We could go on but Trump own view is that American interest comes first and while I question his views on trade, it would be ironic that Trump may end up be a more free trader after being elected to be the most protectionist.

For the Republicans, a new coalition is within reach that includes a portion of the minority whose economic interest no longer served by Democratic policy, blue collar workers and the Middle Class, and need to get some of those suburban whites who deserted Trump.  The Democratic Party has moved to the left and within the Democratic Socialism movement, many Trump voters understand the when it comes to Democratic Socialism movement, the Democracy is expendable when it comes to push socialism and as Trump voters see their own views censored on many of the social media sites, they understand that what stands between them and the political class is Donald Trump.

Despite recent convictions of Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen, many Trump voters still stand by their man as Salena Zito noted, “Last week, a woman in her mid-40s who lives in a tidy suburban enclave just outside of Columbus, Ohio, summed up her continued support for President Donald Trump despite his morals, values and behavior not matching hers nor matching her expectations she had for any president of the United States. (the woman stated) “For decades I have been inspired by aspiring politicians and elected officials who took to the podium or the camera and delivered poetic speeches to earn my trust and my support. They would sway me with expressive words and artfully delivered promises. It took me a while to realize those words weren’t theirs, but skillfully crafted sentences that had been massaged and focus-group tested by a full staff of speechwriters and strategists.”…While the words were beautiful, they never manifested into anything tangible in her community.”  For many, Trump is producing results as Zito added, “Along comes Trump in 2016. She cannot abide anything he tweets, finds his speeches a stream of consciousness that is hard to unscramble and considers his morals in the gutter. She reluctantly voted for him and knows she will vote for him again, something she admits even surprises her. Why does he hold her support? He delivers results.”  He got tax cuts passed and the economy has continued its upward trajectory, we may witness the first 3 percent growth since 2007.  This recovery is now starting to impact many of the blue collar workers, minorities and others left behind in the Obama recovery.

Many Trump voters understand his moral failings and figure that into their calculations as they understood that he is what stands between them and the political class they viewed have screwed them over.  Zito added, “Right now the value of Trump to the Trump voter is he is all that stands between them and handing the keys to Washington back over to the people inside Washington. That’s it. He’s their only option. You’ve got to pick the insiders or him.”

If anything, Trump has exposed the incompetence of the present political class and how they truly feel about the people they governed.  For many of the political class, many Trump voters are merely deplorable and they see their values mocked by the political class.  This is the worse political class since the end of World War II, combined with an Academic and Science class that no longer seeks truth but are so politicized that the search for truth no longer matters.

The hatred for Trump expose the length that the political class will go to protect themselves including the pursuing the Russian collusion that can’t even be proven to exist but was designed to undermined the Trump administration and seek to overturn the 2016 elections as Paul Sperry noted, “Bitter to the core, Hillary Clinton and her campaign aides hatched a scheme, just 24 hours after conceding the race, to spoon-feed the dirty rumors to an eager liberal media and manufacture the narrative that Russia secretly colluded with her neophyte foe to sabotage her coronation… The plan, according to the book, was to push journalists to cover how “Russian hacking was the major unreported story of the campaign,” and it succeeded to a fare-thee-well. After the election, coverage of the Russian “collusion” story was relentless, and it helped pressure investigations and hearings on Capitol Hill and even the naming of a special counsel, which in turn has triggered virtually nonstop coverage.”  The Steele Dossier, paid for by Clinton’s administration, became the basis for FISA warrants and used to spy on the Trump campaign and administration.  While Manafort was convicted on crimes that occurred before the 2016 campaign and Cohen was pursued over other crimes nothing to do with Russian Collusion but in one case, it dealt with paying off porn stars to keep quiet about affairs. Investigation now spread into Trump Foundation and Trump organization so the political class has spread it tentacles beyond the Collusion.

What many voters understand is that the class protects its own as Hillary Clinton and the Obama Administration allowed the Russian to get 20 percent of uranium reserve, on investigating the Clinton Foundation which could be describe as a pay to play including foreign contributors, how the FBI and DOJ tanked the Clinton’s email investigation, and the IRS went after conservative groups and no one pay the legal price. They know that there are two standards, one for the political class and one for them.  Trump, the imperfect vessel, is what stands between them and the political class.