UPDATED: Briefly Noted: Steve Hayward Surprises Me, 'Dr.' Biden Doesn't

The reason Hayward surprises me in his election retrospective is that I didn't expect two things: 1) That recovering TrumpSkeptic Hayward is rather complimentary with regard to Trump, and 2) He advocates war to the knife against any Biden administration--assuming that comes to pass:

They Stole It Fair And Square

Hayward first makes the observation that came up in the comments this morning--that Trump had warned of fraud, had claimed to have an army of lawyers ready to deal with it, but then ...

Hayward places some deserved blame on the Trump campaign, but he also singles out Republicans in the States for being "foolish if not derelict in their duty." In our "decentralized" election "system"--which Hayward aptly describes as an astoundingly chaotic way to choose a president--the State party organizations are largely responsible for policing the "system." That was the brainchild of the Founding Fathers. The Republican response to what they knew was coming was simply haphazard.

After briefly noting the difficulty in America of doing anything effective about fraud, Hayward offers some concrete recommendations:

#1 What is to be done? Step one is for Republicans to get better at “ballot harvesting” themselves. Game theory would recommend this.

 

He cites the example of California Republicans success in learning this time around to fight fire with fire. He also suggests that full advantage be taken of gerrymandering.

Hayward's second recommendation is just as simple: Get even:

#2 What else is to be done? Game theory (and justice) would also recommend payback to Democrats for their embrace of the Russia hoax and their “Resistance” stance that Trump was an illegitimate president. ...

In making that recommendation Hayward makes no suggestion of drawing any line of 'civility.' Biden Inc. in the White House should be a target rich environment and Hayward's recommendation is to forget about about legislation and go for the jugular. And by all means seek to exploit Dem divisions. Hayward doesn't quite say it, but it certainly would follow from his admonition to exact "payback" that he would approve of questioning Biden's legitimacy. He adds:

Prudence dictates that Republicans will be better off going on offense against the weakest incoming president in modern American history, ...

Trump’s defeat is both bitter and tragic—tragic because it took COVID-19 to take him down. Maybe this was no coincidence, but the fact that he almost prevailed in spite of circumstances and most hostile media attacks ever faced by a president is amazing. ...

Now, 'Dr.' Jill. I delightfully wicked person at Red State, Nick Arama, got his hands on Jill's “executive position paper”--the one she wrote to become a "Doctor." She sounds as dumb as Joe:

Jill Biden Wants Us to Call Her 'Dr.' So Here's a Look at Her Ed.D 'Position Paper' to Receive That Doctorate

Two examples:

First, there was this gem in the second sentence: “The needs of the student population are often undeserved, resulting in a student drop-out rate of almost one third.” Were their needs “undeserved” or did she mean “underserved,” as I suspect?

Then there were some other fun ones: “Three quarters of the class will be Caucasian; one quarter of the class will be African American; one seat will hold a Latino; and the remaining seats will be filled with students of Asian descent or non-resident aliens.” How many quarters is that, Dr. Biden?

And there's more. Unimpressive would be a kind way to put it.

Mean spirited?  Go talk to Hayward about that. Melania deserves some payback, too.

UPDATE: Steve Hayward starts the first part of a projected multi-part series on the Trumpist future with a bang. Hayward has never struck me as hyperbolic in these matters:

Some day I believe honest historians (both of them) will conclude that Trump’s administration was the most consequential and effective one-term presidency in American history, whose legacy will last for a long time. The best comparison would be Lincoln, who never got to serve his second term. Most one-term incumbents who are defeated lose because they have been abject failures, which Trump most assuredly wasn’t (which is why, unlike all past defeated incumbents who lost votes, Trump got 10 million more than his initial election).

Trump may or may not purposely dominate the political scene in the background as Teddy Roosevelt did from 1909 – 1912 and then run again in 2024, but I argue that Trumpism will dominate the scene for a long time to come, and that any successful GOP presidential nominee will need to be a Trumpist. I go further, in fact, and believe the shuffling of the issue map and the realignment of voting coalitions are as substantial as FDR and the New Deal—and it took FDR four terms to effect that change.