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Thursday, January 7, 2021

Brilliant: The Road Ahead

Smart people are unfazed by the events of yesterday. After all, as I ... 

mark wauck January 7, 2021 at 8:11 AM

74M voted for Trump, and I doubt they'll repent of their vote. Trump has done the great service to the nation of pulling the masks down off establishment figures. I suspect that those who are now revealing themselves as fair weather conservatives will experience a very large drop in their credibility and influence, analogous to what has happened to Fox on a larger scale and what has also happened to the WSJ over the Trump years.

and commenter Cassander ...

Cassander January 7, 2021 at 8:47 AM

If you count unregistered children and friends and neighbors of Trump voters, maybe he's got 100 million supporters. Maybe more. That's a big number, which would appear unlikely to just apologize for having a different point of view and slink away so that Chuckie Schumer can "Change America".

noted this morning, there is still a future. Mitch McConnell's GOP--based, it seems, on attempting to foist unelectable females of a certain type (McSally, Loeffler, Ayotte ... no Blackburns need apply to Mitch) on an unwilling electorate --is not the model for the future that awaits us, or any successful political party, down the road.

The future happens a lot faster than most people can imagine, so it's best to be ready for it. John Daniel Davidson writes about that this morning:


Georgia Confirms The Pre-Trump GOP Is Dead And Gone

Trump leaves his party in better shape than his previous two predecessors left theirs, but the GOP is still at war with itself.


What I want to focus on, however, is the lead up to, and then the actual content of, three tweets that Davidson cites. Because a picture is worth a thousand words.

First the lead up:


Republican voters, along with millions of Independents and moderate Democrats, were fed up with an entrenched establishment beholden to a donor class whose interests conflicted with those of ordinary people. The chasm between these two groups was (and still is) especially obvious on issues like immigration, free trade, and foreign policy. For too long, Republican leaders paid lip service to what voters want—a secure border, protections for American workers, an end to foreign wars—while doing what the donors wanted.

Trump was in many ways the perfect candidate to channel these frustrations, which he did with aplomb and sincerity, given his long opposition to U.S. elite consensus on these issues. His 2016 victory underscored just how dead the old GOP consensus was—the Cold War “fusionism” that kept otherwise disparate elements of the Republican coalition together. Once in office, resistance to his agenda from within the GOP establishment made these divisions even more visible.

What became clear, at least outside the corporate media echo-chamber, was that the old Republican Party was already dead—had been dead since before Trump came along. Trump’s election offered the party new life and a new direction.

Instead of being beholden to a wealthy donor class and the exhausted ideas and slogans of the Reagan era, Republicans could embrace populism and become a right-of-center, multiracial, working-class party. Studies of the 2016 electorate indicated GOP voters were more economically liberal and socially conservative than anyone had thought, while Democrats were moving steadily to the left on both counts.


OK, Davidson is fundamentally talking about 2016. By the standard narrative, Hillary was set to walk right into the White House and continue Obama's "fundamental transformation" of America--despite what should have been obvious to the smart people that Americans were not up for fundamental transformation. That fact was obvious to one very smart guy--Donald J. Trump. He won, with a vast new coalition.

In doing so and offering the GOPe a path to renewed power Trump exposed the dirty secret of the GOPe. That secret gave the lie to Henry Kissinger's famous quip--if quip it was--that 'power is the ultimate aphrodisiac'. As it turned out, for the dull fellows running the GOPe, money--as supplied by the donor class--remains the ultimate aphrodisiac. Not so for the tens of millions in Trump's coalition. Those people have always been and always will be turned on by something different: a normal human life, supported by honorable work. Family, children, grandchildren.

The GOPe turned their back on those normals, but they're still out there. In fact, they turned out for Trump in 2020 in unprecedented numbers--in person. Not so much that the-ballots-in-the-mail stuff. They felt that strongly that they wanted to get out there and cast their vote personally, in company with their fellow citizens. These are the people who have been crushed by the Great Lockdown, the various hoaxes, and now by the Great Steal. They're still out there waiting for a standard bearer.

Where can they be found, on an ideological scale? That's where these three brilliant tweets by Nick Solheim come into play:




Now, recall what Davidson criticized in the GOPe's agenda: "the exhausted ideas and slogans of the Reagan era." What's he talking about? You'll find the home for those ideas on the second graph, in the bottom right corner--where the donor class lives: Economically "conservative" but "socially" liberal. Translation: Libertarians. 

All those millions of people who loved Ronnie didn't understand what they had brought upon themselves. He seemed so decent, they didn't understand the poison hidden in his simple minded libertarian ideology, framed in terms of dignity. But that's how we got to this point. It was that libertarianism that crushed the middle and working classes by sending their jobs overseas. It was also coopted to gin up the forever wars of the Bush and Obama eras, which were supposed to export that same libertarian ideology in the name of a borderless, transnational Globalism. 

Here's what Solheim is calling for:


Family, Nation, Work, Faith, Community, Sovereignty, and Substantive Growth must be the orienting values of an American right prepared to govern and lead this great nation in the 21st Century. These are the building blocks of any healthy civilization.

We don’t endeavor to liberalism-lite, a worldview that seeks to champion the Democratic platform of 2010, nor do we believe there is any way to restore the post-war era of the 1950s. We seek an America where families can thrive and grow, where faith and tradition are supported, where workers are treated fairly, where technological progress begins anew, and where our distinctly American identity is nourished and preserved.

As it has in generations past, young patriots will meet the challenges of this American moment and usher in the next chapter of the conservative political project.


That, I submit, is the heart of the Trump coalition, for anyone willing to reach out to it. You can find it in the upper middle portion of the graph.


25 comments:

  1. Here's an article from Solomon that pretty much sums up what happened. For your review Mark.

    https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/how-gop-lost-control-washington-and-what-comes-next

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    1. "Universal mail ballots can be ended, limited only to those who absolutely need it. Voter IDs can be mandated. Exemptions and legal settlements could, by law, be required to be approved by the legislature. Setting the rules of the election are easy if there is a will, Kline added."

      Umm....No....sorry....but....trying to tighten or change the rules - especially in battleground states - will be met by a judiciary that is already joined at the hip with the left. Lawsuits and pliant judges changed the rules and you now think those same judges will admit they were wrong and change them back? How are you going to get that back? Look at DACA - unconstitutional but the courts keep upholding it. Do you think something as esoteric as changing the rules back in these states will be taken up by an honest judiciary? I fear we are headed for a violent time - the left has already shown us it's the only way to get attention.

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    2. @ Rich

      I agree. You can't get constitutional outcomes from a system in which the constituent parts view the constitution as no better than guidelines, to be deviated from at convenience.
      Tom S.

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  2. Compelling graphic. It makes intuitive sense. Any word on how it was derived?

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  3. Does it really matter? Elections can be stolen, with impunity. How do we win?

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    1. I listened to this in the background Robert Barnes discussion last night while working on other things last night.

      He seems to think that there's a very good chance we can see state level election reform (especially in PA, GA, etc.) before the next election to lessen the "discretion", fix election challenges so that there are meaningful remedies available, strong protections for observers etc. Quite upbeat. I wish there was a transcript (since it is ~90 minutes long) but... food for thought. It doesn't do any good to just give up on voting, even if the fix is in... then they wouldn't even have to cheat. At least let's make the bastards have to work hard to steal it.

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  4. What do Citizens do when they believe, with good reason, that they and their Constitution have been betrayed? When they believe, with cause, that every element of every institution whose purpose is to serve them, their Republic, and their Constitution, is arrayed against them? When every legal and Constitutional avenue for recourse has been foreclosed them?

    What do we do when we can no longer accept the continuing betrayal by our leaders, the continuing undermining of our Constitution, and the piecemeal destruction of our Republic?

    What do we do when there is no legal or Constitutional avenue for our challenges, our efforts to right the ship, our efforts to preserve our Constitution, our Republic, our society, and our freedom?

    The events of January 6, 2021 were not an anomaly. The were the angry cries of a desperate citizenry flailing about, trying to get the self-anointed powers to acknowledge their grievances.

    Instead, an unarmed member of their group was murdered. Their so-called political leaders betrayed them again, disparaged them and their concerns, and joined force with those who would utterly destroy them. There is now no recourse.

    Except violence.

    And it will come. It may not be immediate, but it will be certain, and will almost certainly be brutal.

    When Citizens' representatives betray them, joining force against them to punish them for their legitimate grievances and for being so bold as to notice the betrayal, and there is no avenue available to them save violence, there will be violence.

    It may be too late to save our Republic. God save our Republic.

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    1. Donald Trump will be the new John Adams.


      Rob S

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    2. Unconstitutional: January 6th explicitly designated as the DATE; January 7th congressional vote is voiid.

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  5. I no wonder how the graphic changed for the 2020 election.

    My guess Trump picked up a lot to the Left. Lower income not left. The area above the -1, 0 coordinates.

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  6. John Solomon’s article has a lot of truth in it, but he misses the huge blue elephant in the room, voter fraud.

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    1. Throughout the article, I was looking for the word fraud. There is none.

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  7. So Zerohedge has an interesting writeup....what if the violence was staged by Trump's opponents?

    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/questions-about-chaos-capitol-desperately-need-be-answered

    Who benefits most from the violence, indeed? Social media on the right is already tracking down evidence of those doing violence being actually antifa or BLM members.

    So why do this? Zerohedge points out the effect to Trump's long term prospects and on the immediate impact on the debate over challenging election results. But I have another--the calls to remove Trump right now, before the end of his term, have grown quite loud. Schumer is explicitly calling for his removal. Kiss goodbye any last minute release of declassified information or any other moves that may constrain Biden as he comes into office if that happens.

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    1. I have no doubt that the miscreants were bought and paid for by President Trump’s enemies and that the “rioting” was done by those who inflitrated the peaceful election protesters. The same thing happened with the George Floyd peaceful protests in Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills and elsewhere in California. Watching on TV one could almost detect when the character of the “marchers” was transformed to rioters/looters...

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  8. When the troops stop complaining it's time to worry. Might be near the time to go quiet.

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  9. If mail in voting is here to stay, then the coalition doesn't matter. They will always find more votes. The left has been emboldened by getting away with the biggest heist in electoral history, so why go back, particularly if nobody is going to stop them?

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  10. "Kiss goodbye any last minute release of declassified information"

    Hmmmm.

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  11. By "Not so much that the-ballots-in-the-mail stuff", do you mean "Not so much THAN the-ballots-in-the-mail stuff"?

    "whenever our party apparatus would like to return to winning elections."
    As long as party wheels keep getting cuts of the Action, they're fine with losing elections.
    Once the Dems know, that they can stop these cuts of the Action, it'll be too late for the GOP brass to be able to do zip about it.
    At that point, the GOP brass will be lucky to avoid the guillotine.

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  12. https://secretsun.blogspot.com/2021/01/that-ol-time-ritual-religion.html

    Meh I think a shearing is the next order of business of babble on 2021.

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  13. For President "You're Fired!" Trump, he sure knows how to pick traitors. Chris Miller discussed the National Guard deployment with everybody but the president. What a clusterf**k of a cabinet:

    https://americantruthtoday.com/politics/2021/01/06/breaking-defense-sec-says-he-discussed-deploying-national-guard-with-pelosi-and-pence-not-president-trump/

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    1. The DC National Guard reports to only the President. The President can delegate that authority to the Secretary of Defense. Pelosi and Pence requested the National Guard. All of that seems to be appropriate as there may be some protocol whereby those two have to permit the NG to enter the Capitol. Reporters can and do get things wrong. They also slant coverage to suit their biases. No surprise.

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    2. More from that same American Truth blog article, which went on to say:

      White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, however, has said that President Trump made the decision.

      “At President @realDonaldTrump ’s direction, the National Guard is on the way along with other federal protective services. We reiterate President Trump’s call against violence and to remain peaceful,” McEnany tweeted.

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    3. The DC National Guard reports to only the President. Only the President has the authority to deploy it. However, the President can delegate that authority to the Secretary of Defense. Pelosi and Pence requested the National Guard. All of that seems to be appropriate as there may be some protocol whereby those two have to permit the NG to enter the Capitol. Reporters can and do get things wrong. They also slant coverage to suit their biases. No surprise.

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  14. I know this, after weeks of affidavits from eyewitnesses, of fraud, data analysis of voting in the 5 swing states indicating major vote swings and absolute inaction by law enforcement and the DOJ of the evidence presented to them I am pleased to say that they are back. They are diving into the events of January 6th and bringing to justice any and all who took part. In fact an AUSA has already announced, within 24 hours of the rally, that he is looking into filing criminal charges on our president for inflaming and causing the assault on the Capitol. God they are good. We can rest easy.

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