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In 2020 I watched rioters and looters burn their way across American cities and, old enough to remember 1968, concluded that the Democrats in their support of these leftists had sealed their fate in the upcoming November election for president and Congress. I was entirely wrong.

Trump lost, at least on the count if not the vote, we got bitch-slapped in the Senate and fell short of expectations in the House. 1968 simply skipped past 2020 and 1968 might well skip past 2024 if we don't understand what happened in 2020.

Consider the really stellar record the Trump and put together in his time in office leading up to 2020. The economy was breaking records and delivering the goods for every race and class because Donald Trump had turned it around. The good times rolled until Covid but Donald Trump rushed a vaccine through that everyone at the time believed would save us. He pumped money into the system that should have bribed every self obsessed voter a time proven election winning practice of Democrats. Yet he and Congress fell short.

It is not enough to claim that the election was stolen, we have not yet proven that to be the case in any forum that would carry the day although it is clear that it was rigged by the government and media as typified by the Hunter Biden laptop censorship. It was rigged because Zuckerberg ponied up more than $400 million to buy offices around the country that set the rules on voting. It was rigged because Republicans, including Trump, simply failed to understand the implications of mail in voting.

Despite 1968 and despite the great record that Donald Trump had amassed, we lost because we did not understand how the game had changed. After 2020 when it came time to clean house at the Republican National Committee we dithered and left Rona McDonnell unchecked and mostly unaudited. Have we done the long overdue housecleaning too late? We reversed our positions on mail in voting but have we created the infrastructure necessary to beat Democrats at that game? Do we have time? Given the imbalance in the records of these two men, how could it be that the polls are remotely close to even today?

Did Russia gate, impeachments, and now lawfare turn the world upside down in 2020? Why not in 2024?

Given the times and given the history since 1968, I too am "genuinely concerned."

Gaetz' forensic skills are not to be underestimated. He deftly played whack-- a--mole, smiting one challenger after another in his prosecution of the motion to vacate speaker McCarthy. It was one against all when Gaetz stood virtually alone against many establishment Republicans, emerging unscathed, at least unscathed as judged by those considering his rhetorical skills rather than the outcome.

He's long been known as a bomb thrower in House committee hearings and has earned a reputation as dangerous when on the hunt.

At a time when we have an asymmetrical media battlefield in which to plead our case to the electorate, we need every single voice that can penetrate. Gaetz offers a nimble mind and a sharp tongue. Oh and by the way, he is right on nearly all the issues.

I think this is it just about right. Thanks a lot!

I think I got my avatar back!

I think I got it now, thanks a lot!

Kennedy’s Flanking Strategy.

“It’s not “anti-Trump” to accurately discuss his record in office”

Whether accurate or not, and whether “anti-Trump” or not, it is important to understand that this is, in essence, a pro Kennedy attack and, significantly, the attack is from the Right.

Kennedy is recently boasting that he is in possession of a poll of about 26,000 individuals that shows with a minimal margin of error that he would best both Biden and Trump if he can get into a one on one matchup. In other words, if one drops out the other is doomed.

None of us will accuse the Democrat party of patriotism or in recent days of sanity (2+2= 5) but none of us will deny that Democrats are the apex predator when it comes to getting and holding power. Therefore, it remains within the realm of possibility that the Democrats will jettison Biden for some other candidate. Perhaps this will come not from the party elite but it might come from grassroots at the convention if Biden continues to falter and Kennedy shows some game.

So what would Kennedy’s approach be? He claims with his 26,000 individuals polled that he would win in a walk if he faces Biden alone. Against Trump, however, Kennedy claims the narrowest of margins in the all-important electoral college.

Given this asymmetrical battlescape, Kennedy must run today against Trump rather than Biden but he must appear to be running against Biden rather than Trump. In other words, Kennedy must attack Trump from the right and be confident that he will hold at least as much or more of the leftist base as Biden enjoys. He must bet that Democrat propaganda has done its job so well that there is nothing that can induce the Democrat base to vote for Trump, although some may be inclined to stay home. On the other hand, many more who would have stayed home out of ennui with Biden might become energized under Kennedy.

So Stossel’s argument presented here, that Trump blew up spending and fertilized rather than drained the swamp, is calculated to woo never Trumpers, Republican fiscal hawks (those opposed to tax cuts etc.) good government patriots and independents.

Recall that in the run-up to the election of 2016, Trump evaded issues of budget cutting preferring instead to run on tax cutting. To be fair, Trump’s position was that by cutting taxes, cutting regulations, reigniting manufacture and, presumably, firing up energy production, he would generate economic growth that would more than compensate for spending.

Many would argue that he was well along to achieving this when all was shattered by Covid. We probably will never know whether he was right or whether Stossel’s claims made here are the true story.

Note that Kennedy wants to balance the budget by cutting defense In Half! This is a modified approach to the right of Trump who certainly wanted to build up the military and to do so by increased spending. But note that Kennedy couples this proposal to cut the military in half with harder-edged Trump-like arguments against foreign wars, an approach which will be saluted by the right and by Trump supporters. In effect, Kennedy hopes to divide Trump strong military supporters from Trump non interventionist supporters.

Kennedy tries to get to the right of Trump on the issue of voter identification by declaring that he will provide all citizens with voter ID and confine voting to those with his ID. One of the few issues where Kennedy is consistent with confirmed Democrat platform is the issue of abortion which, of course, he cannot afford to waffle on. But note his conciliatory language and his appeal to the right with social services for children who survived the knife. Thus he hopes to tiptoe around to the right as he soothes with words agreeable to conservative ears.

This analysis of Kennedy’s approach can be run on many issues. It will be interesting to see how he positions himself against what he perceives as his real opponent, Donald Trump.

Nathan

I am touched by your concern and the remarks of those on this thread. I have not lost interest but energy as I venture into my 80s. I promise to get back on the job and try to add something worth reading.

Nathan

To all:

I am touched by your concern, flattered by your remarks and cheered by your prayers. I have not been posting but I have been daily lurking because it is not lack of interest but want of energy with my fourscore years and two.

It seems to me that when we post we owe a duty to contribute some sort of value-added to the subject beyond adding our, “me too.” That commitment drives one to ponder underlying and first causes.

It seems that our duty to ourselves means that we must think hard about our present state of national embarrassment and offer more than bromides or indulge in the soothing echoes of an amen chorus. Drive-by posts and chirping in with, “ me too”, ain’t enough.

Do campus riots tell us that we have lost the generation of elitist college kids? Have we lost generations of all classes across-the-board? Is the nation on the verge of losing its way?

Is the problem race? Remember Nathan Bedford’s first maxim of American politics: all politics is not local but ultimately racial. Since Barack Obama and perhaps because of Barack Obama, animosity among the races has rarely been worse.

Is the problem class? The gap between the grotesquely rich and the bulk of the middle class living precariously from paycheck to paycheck is growing ominously wide.

Is the problem China? One drives through the Midwest Rust Belt, and increasingly in our ag-land, where one sees cancerous decay, decadence and fentanyl induced despair. Our most elite universities have been suborned by Chinese money that whore after Confucius Institutes. Does China for all practical and essential purposes own Congress? Is the President of the United States on the take from China? Was Donald Trump unhorsed in 2020 because he broke so many rice bowls?

Is the problem metastasized corruption? Every American institution is simply corrupted. Our national healthcare system betrayed us when the test was Covid. Together with our medical profession, our legal profession has abandon its sacred oath whether sworn as prosecutors, on the bench or on ethics committees. American media would be a laughingstock if it’s corruption were not so ominous. The Fed has become one more example of regulatory capture that has devolved into an institution dedicated to massive transfers of wealth to the already massively wealthy.

Is the problem the breakdown of our institutions? Our executive agencies, similar to the Fed, have become objects of regulatory capture. The public rightly despises even our most revered institutions such as the FBI and now even our military cannot meet quotas of recruitment or even quotas of ammunition stockpiles.

It is the problem that it is just too late? That is, are we in a self-inflicted doom loop that cannot be retrieved? Even assuming an unlikely predicate that we can as a republic muster the resolve to deal with our public and private national debts, are we too late to pay down the debt, save the dollar, fend off any aggressive foreign adversary, and indeed save a capitalist, market economy? Can we save the remnant of the economy and preserve our constitutional way of life within the protection of the Bill of Rights? In short if financial Armageddon comes, can our Constitution survive the Man on Horseback?

Finally Pogo, is the problem us? Are we so spiritually damned that we need salvation, a national epiphany rather than well-meaning solutions? Are we to be compared to Rome at the fall or to Israel earning God’s judgment? If so, the only meaningful response is to look inward and upward and that requires a wrenching, heavy lift indeed.

So here is a list of a few of the perils that confound and confront us every day all as chronicled on Free Republic. Challenges to which many of us have devoted decades and many others have encouraged us with some really perceptive and valuable contributions. I promise to do my part better as long as I can.

In pondering these things I have come to believe that there is some tissue that connects all of them so that I, as both a secular optimist and a Pilgrim with a thirsty soul, still believes will somehow be revealed.

Thank you all for who you are and for God’s work that you so often do on Free Republic.

Nathan

PS-the baleful logo does not work anymore, if any Freeper knows how fix it please advise.

Dick

Under your logic we could not fight Germany because we were fighting Japan and we could not fight against either because we were fighting Italy.

We could not fight World War II because we were in the Great Depression.

We cannot walk and chew gum.

If you want to hold the border up as a political tool to end aid to Ukraine, say so but spare us the ill logic; I’ve already stipulated:

“It is imperative that we close the border with Mexico, it may or may not be reasonable for us to be concerned about Ukraine’s border. One does not relate to the other, apart from the budget, except as a political talking point.”

I agree with everyone of your points but you have not demonstrated how those points relate to Ukraine.

It is reasonable to say that they relate because the money being spent, whether efficiently and wisely or not, to prop up Ukraine is money that we cannot afford on the eve of a looming financial crisis. Therefore, to spend money on Ukraine will topple us into bankruptcy when a new wave of refinancing looms in March.

Before we come to that conclusion, we have to ask, what part of our budget, especially that part dealing with entitlements, is Ukraine? Are we concentrating from a budget point of view on the wrong numbers? Are we crying poverty about Ukraine when our real poverty comes from entitlements?

If we are to cut the budget for Ukraine, will it not cost us more money in the long run?

I do not understand that an open border with Mexico prevents us from dealing with a border in Ukraine any more than I think that border compels us to deal with a border in Ukraine, except that the borders relate to each other in the budget.

It is imperative that we close the border with Mexico, it may or may not be reasonable for us to be concerned about Ukraine’s border. One does not relate to the other, apart from the budget, except as a political talking point.

The Vietnam War was the wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place. But our manner of leaving it was equally wrong.

The war in Afghanistan was the wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place. But our manner of leaving it was equally wrong.

God knows the war in Iraq was a wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place. But our manner of leaving (or perhaps not actually leaving) was equally wrong.

As a nation our dysfunction is all too clearly displayed in our manner of exiting wars. If you think any rookie strategist with a map can draw a line from Afghanistan to Kiev and project it on to Taiwan, then believe the strategists in Beijing have already drawn it and plan to exploit it.

We bugged out of Vietnam because the Democrats in Congress acted in a spasm of pique.

We bugged out of Afghanistan because our commander-in-chief is dysfunctional and his subordinates in charge are as ideologically conflicted and tactically obtuse as were the Democrat Congress that denied air cover in Vietnam.

Donald Trump does not endorse bugging out of Ukraine. Let that sink in. He would negotiate a “deal.” Trump’s history as president reveals that he would never negotiate out of weakness but always out of strength.

Lurching from one bug out to another, abandoning one ally after another, conducting foreign policy and waging war out of pique, makes America more vulnerable, not stronger. The question is how do we extricate ourselves from Ukraine and salvage something of national security?

“...he offers no supporting data whatsoever.”

In a one hour interview with Tucker, he gives the whole history of the IC censorship cabal. And you want, what, footnotes?”

no, I don’t want footnotes in an interview, but I do want data, I want references, I want authorities, I want some checkpoints, some way at least to check the man’s assertions.

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“It’s all easy to check, just easier to throw rocks, maybe.”
For the record, not a single rock was thrown.

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“Why not websearch Mike Benz and find out? “
Because it is not my job to search the Internet for Mr. Benz who’s making sweeping assertions. He bears the intellectual burden to provide more than bland assertions leaving us at risk of buying into a charlatan. For the record, I do not believe he is a charlatan I suspect he is quite accurate yet Ronald Reagan said it best, “ trust but verify.”

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I suppose between us it depends on whether one is desperate that some reader might form a conclusion contrary to our own or whether we should better form independent conclusions in which we have confidence because they are based on researchable data..

I found the Benz interview on Tucker riveting, so riveting that I watched twice. Benz has served up a compendium of censorship implicating every major institution of power from the government on down that explains our recent history since before 2016.

I believe what he says, perhaps because I want to believe it. It is in this context that one notes that in the entire interview he offers no supporting data whatsoever. As obviously knowledgeable as Mr. Benz is, his omission should make one wary. I note that Tucker took pains to credit Mr. Benz with encyclopedic knowledge but, apart from recommending we read what he published under his name, no specific reference of Mr. Benz is offered.

With that caveat in mind, I recommend the interview to everyone because it has the potential of busting open an entire Rico -like cabal that can destroy America.

I found her more effective indictment, that seemed to have gone mostly unremarked by the media, to be when she told Attorney General Garland that America is afraid of him.

The Attorney General of the United States makes Americans afraid of their own government.

Her passion was made all the more evocative by her personal biography and because it was delivered in her accent.

The election of 1876 presents a closer fact pattern to the situation which confronts us today except in one vital and decisive respect, the parties, the American North the American South, came together in 1876 in a corrupt bargain but one which least left contesting parties satisfied so that the compromise could prevail for 90 years. The deal put Rutherford Hayes in the White House and took federal forces of occupation out of the South ended reconstruction but sent the stage for Jim Crow.

The election of 1860 presents a closer analogy to today in this sense: the contesting factions had passed beyond understanding much less accepting the policies of the other side. The anti-slavery movement in the north, especially in Massachusetts and, fed by the powerful emotional reaction to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” condemned the South in moral terms and became increasingly militant in its demands that slavery be ended.

The South reacted to Lincoln’s election, a plurality victor without a majority, to conclude that the federal government would now deploy its power increasingly against the South which would find itself helpless. In other words, the South no longer accepted that the constitutional system would protect it, its culture, economy, freedoms and, yes, slavery from northern tyranny.

To the South, the mere election of Abraham Lincoln signaled that they could no longer coexist in the American government system as it evolved in 1860. So the South commenced what it regarded to be the Second War of American Independence.

What will patriotic conservatives conclude when and if the Marxists currently in power and who currently are abusing that power, prevail in their ambitions?

There is no hypocrisy like hypocrisy overgrown with ivy.

1860

The left’s political calculus tells it that 2+ 2 = 5 and that biological men can have babies, while at the same time assuring itself that it alone is the party of science. It is clear that the left has abandoned not just science but reason and, of course, common sense all together.

In other words, the left’s intellectual autoimmune system is so hypothalamic that, as you point out, rational dialogue with them is not possible because reason simply does not register while the subject individual (and more aptly put, the group) believes in his heart that he is the champion of science.

In the 19th century the left cited the likes of Charles Darwin believing that the entire edifice of Christianity would tumble because science demanded. Today, the entire edifice of Marxist/leftism is supported by the notion that it alone has the key to science. Consider the left’s underpinning by the global climate change “science.”

But now cracks are appearing in the solid know- nothing wall of pseudoscience upon which the left has built its rock, witness the discrediting of the Covid 19 “science.”

This is why from the very beginning of his candidacy I have said that Robert Kennedy stands as a human dagger aimed at the heart of the Democrat party and of leftism. I understand that he is inconsistent, that he accepts much leftist dogma but he stands for the proposition that the science currently used as a bludgeon by the left is bogus.

In my original post here, I misstated the truth of the matter, the left is not emotionally impregnable but spiritually perverted. From the spiritual decay comes the emotional symptoms.

At some point in the intellectual and spiritual journey of the American soul, a return to reason must come, beginning with a spiritual awakening opening the door to true science and rational common sense.

I am grateful for it but I must add a little embarrassed that I have forgotten your connection to the gift but clearly I did not forget the truth of Chambers’ message.

I know it’s been quite a while but how long? It seems about a decade.

Thank you for that quotation from Whittaker Chambers that brings to mind an occurrence of more than a decade ago that reveals something about the character of those of us who post on Free Republic and reminds me that my thoughts about the leftists playing God are not original but come from Whittaker Chambers.

Years ago a Freeper by private communication offered me a copy of his book "Witness" by Whittaker Chambers because he knew that it was difficult for me to obtain the book here in Germany. He sent the book, he sent it without compensation, he paid the cost of sending it. It was his idea and it was very generous, is tells us something about his generosity of spirit.

There is something about the humility that animates the conservative view of the world and man's place in it that compares favorably to the unmitigated conceits of the man of the left.