Don Surber's Case Against A GOP Senate

I'm having trouble finding anything worth writing about today, however ...

Don Surber makes a strong case for conservatives voters in Georgia to give up the Senate to the crazies:

The case against a Republican Senate

It's a longish blog, with Surber riffing off Senator Tim Scott's appeal to Georgia conservatives to get out and vote, and then running through the many ways the GOPe has betrayed conservatives generally and, in the last few years, Trump specifically. However, Surber's argument can be boiled down to two quite brief paragraphs:

A Republican Senate amplifies the power of Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, and other Never Trumpers. This will enable them to sell their swing votes to the highest bidder in the name of principle.

And they dare ask for our votes while allowing Democrats to steal the presidential election uncontested!

I'm normally one to argue that a bird in the hand is most likely worth two in the bush, but ... It's hard to gainsay Surber. The Senate should be made to pay for their betrayal of Trump--if they aren't held to account, then what will ever change? What other options are there?

The strongest argument against Surber's view may be contained in Monica Showalter's blog on So what did Nancy Pelosi promise The Squad? Showalter explains that the vote was actually much closer than even the final tally of 216-209 would suggest. She then argues that to get the Speakership certainly had to give away the house to the Squad crazies. This will have results:

What did Pelosi offer them in exchange for their votes? What did she offer that would disgust other Democrats and put them in an even more desperate position for re-election? Why did she throw moderation away? 

It comes as a red wave is building in the House, what with Democrats losing more than a dozen seats in the November presidential election, and traditional U.S. political patterns suggesting the Republicans are on track to win anyway. Kowtowing to the Squad and buying them off is going to make the red wave ahead much bigger.

There are a number of things that can be said. Has Pelosi ever been "moderate"? Not by my lights. That other bird, the one in the bush, the coming "red wave"--how red will it really be? 

But perhaps the most important consideration is in the question that Showalter left unanswered: "Why did [Pelosi] throw moderation away?" Is she really desperate to hold on to the Speakership for the prestige alone, or do the Dem power brokers believe that only Pelosi can guide their radical agenda through the House and on to what may well turn out to be a Dem Senate? Would Dems really go for broke in what may be only a two year window, counting on their agenda being cemented in place, never to be repealed by the typically feckless GOP and the Roberts judges? It's possible. It's also out of our control at this point. It was within the control of the GOP, if they had chosen to fight for Trump.

Who Wins The Narrative?

Michael Goodwin has a nice article today: The president is going nuclear. I can quibble with part of his premise--I think Pelosi intended her "coverup" statement as a sop to her crazy crazies rather than an open embrace of impeachment, but Goodwin has it right: With that, Trump had had enough. He was ready, his nukes were primed and ready to go, and he pressed the button.

I suspect that Left/Progs are spending this Memorial Day weeked contemplating past glories of The Movement and trying to come to grips with what just hit them. I say this because Trump's grant of declass authority to Bill Barr was so sweeping--placing him over the entire Executive Branch, from DoJ/FBI to the IC to State--that the epithet nuclear is entirely merited. Bear in mind, Barr is no newbie to Washington and its ways and, in particular, he has deep experience with the IC as well as the legal levers of the Executive Branch. I think the Deep State knows Barr will get his way, and not just "in the end": he'll get it on his terms and in his time--or else. Is Chris Wray sleeping easily these last few days--or any other formerly major players? I doubt it. Trump has full confidence in Barr. Barr knows it and everyone else knows it, thus: ou Won’t Believe What Happened When Attorney General Bill Barr Went To The White House Cabinet Meeting:

A little color from the President's cabinet meeting today. Sources tell John Roberts from FOX News that Attorney General William Barr walked into the room to a standing ovation. Barr said he was surprised and then smiled.

And so Goodwin writes:

With his memo giving Attorney General Bill Barr the authority to declassify any documents related to the investigation of the 2016 campaign, Trump made good on a longstanding promise. Most important, his decision signaled that the War of Washington is entering a crucial new phase. 

The president is going nuclear. 

Democrats who thought control of the House gave them control of the agenda now will face stiff competition. Their expressions of outrage will seem tired next to the sensational revelations about the actions of Jim Comey, John Brennan and ­others. 

Based on what we already know, it is highly likely those revelations will prove the White House, FBI and CIA engineered the greatest scandal in American political history by unjustified spying on Trump and by trying to tip the election to Hillary Clinton.

And they had no one to blame but themselves. Trump had given them fair warning back in November:

Barr Mocks Pelosi To Her Face

Self explanatory. It sure is great to have a guy like this as AG:

Nicholas Fandos
‏
Verified account

@npfandos

Today at a law enforcement ceremony at Capitol:

AG Barr approached Pelosi, shook her hand: "Madam Speaker, did you bring your handcuffs?"

Pelosi smiled and, per a bystander, told Barr the House Sergeant at Arms was there should an arrest be needed. Barr laughed; walked away.

11:31 AM - 15 May 2019

UPDATED: Ed Rogers Hits A Grand Slam

There's been no lack of commentary on the absurd "Bill Barr lied" meme that the Dems--in Congress and in the MSM--are pushing. It's obvious desperation yet, incredibly, the Dems are sticking with it. Andy McCarthy starts his latest with this:

I originally thought this was too stupid to write about. But stupid is like the plague inside the Beltway — one person catches it and next thing you know there’s an outbreak at MSNBC and the speaker of the House is showing symptoms while her delirious minions tote ceramic chickens around Capitol Hill.

But I think Ed Rogers gets to the important point of what's going on in his WaPo article, Did Nancy Pelosi just jump the shark? A few excerpts follow, but first a few comments.

The core of Roger's argument is this:

If you don’t tell Congress what it wants to hear, then you are by default lying and, hence, a criminal.

By this logic, truth is no longer an absolute. It is a relative norm. 

I believe this is a fair characterization of Dem "logic." But in that case, how do you carry on a conversation with people who, effectively, are holding their hands over their ears? Why would anyone who doesn't accept the views of Dems even bother going before the House?

But there's a bigger picture as well. The notion that truth is a "relative norm" rather than an absolute is not a new idea for Dems. It's the Orthodoxy--how's that for irony?--that they've been drilling into young Americans in our schools for several generations now. Are you a man or a woman? What do you feel like? By that logic, the idea that Bill Barr lied because he failed to say what Dems wanted him to say makes perfect sense.

The fact that Dem leadership no longer knows what the endgame is? Well, that's their problem, isn't it? But the fact that this mentality--I won't say "this way of thinking"--now controls a major political party is a problem for the entire country. If this is the hole that the Dems can't get out of, then the electorate gets to pass judgment.

As Rogers says, this is what "falling apart" looks like. But when so many people are this deranged, and are egged on by the MSM, Rogers may well be right in urging everyone to "buckle their seat belts." But there's far too much at stake here to allow this to continue.

Romney And Pelosi

I try to avoid doing blogs unless I have something somewhat original to say. However, there were two bits of commentary today that I found so cogent, given the current state of our polity, that I thought perhaps some originality could be found in simply uniting or juxtaposing key passages from each. I have one minor caveat for each.

First, Victor Davis Hanson comments on Mitt Romney's public auto destruct--and much more:


After listing Trump’s successful policies ... Romney mysteriously concludes that “These are policies mainstream Republicans have promoted for years.”

I think about at least 40 percent of the electorate might beg to differ.

Certainly, the prior appointments of Supreme Court Justices Blackmun, Brennan, Powell, Souter, and Stevens, to name a few, would not suggest much Republican consistency in appointing conservative Supreme Court justices. China’s unfair trade policies were never reined in, but often enhanced by laissez-faire Republican administrations hand-in-glove with corporate globalism. I am not aware that the regulatory state significantly decreased over the last 40 years, despite Republican governance.

Romney is certainly right that presidents “should unite us and inspire us to follow “our better angels.” And Trump has been often a catalyst rather than a restraint upon national mudslinging. But we also forget that, for the first time in modern memory, during the 2016 election, one candidate hired a law firm and opposition research team to employ a foreign-national operative, who in turn bought foreign sources to discredit his employer’s opponent and with others also enlisted the existing hierarchies of the DOJ, CIA, FBI, NSC, and FISA courts to break past protocol, and often the law, in order to obstruct the candidacy, transition, and presidency of  Donald Trump.

[Comment: Here's my caveat, or quibble: Too many in our conservative commentariat are Anglophiles, uncritical fanboys of Churchill. What needs saying here is not simply that Hillary recruited the help of a foreign national who bought foreign sources (Russian) to influence a US Presidential election, but that our Intel agencies were suborned to collude with the Intel agencies of foreign powers (Britain, Australia, and apparently others) for the same purpose.]