Half-Baked ‘Low-Tax Socialism’ Is Getting Us a Whole Progressive Hell

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It feels like only yesterday that I was writing policy statements for candidates running in the “tea party year” of 2010 stating the shocking fact that we had reached $13 trillion in debt as a nation so quickly. Republicans indeed succeeded in winning back the House at the end of the year, they won back the Senate in 2014, and they controlled the trifecta for the past two years. Now, the debt stands at $21.8 trillion, an increase of over $8 trillion in just eight years, and the trajectory is about to explode. Isn’t it time we finally ask what Republicans actually stand for other than low-tax socialism?

Not only do Republicans have a big decision to make on immigration in the final budget with control of the House, they also must confront the debt crisis they made worse rather than helped. The debt has grown $8 trillion since they took over the House, $3.8 trillion since they took over the Senate, and even $1.9 trillion just in the 22 months of trifecta control. Most of the growth (roughly 88 percent) in debt has come from the public share of the debt, not the so-called debt we owe ourselves. President Trump’s Office of Management and Budget introduced budgets cutting billions in spending, yet Congress went in reverse and increased spending in every category the president promised to cut. Sadly, the president’s veto pen is gathering dust.

Just for the first month of this fiscal year, the deficit topped $100 billion, on pace to easily bring back the trillion-dollar deficits of Obama’s first term. And to be fair, that was during a great recession. Now we have the most robust job growth since the late ’60s. Where’s the deficit coming from? Revenues were actually up $17 billion relative to last October. However, spending increased by $55 billion this October relative to October 2017. Annually, Republicans increased spending by $136 billion in FY 2017 over Obama’s last year in office and another $127 billion on top of that in FY 2018.

While the tax cuts obviously reduced some revenue that we would have received had rates remained the same, given the growth in the economy, we still took in more money last year than the year before. Even if you isolate the 10-month period since enactment of the tax cuts – January 2018 through October 2018 – and compare it to the equivalent 10-month period in calendar year 2017, we are actually $2 billion ahead on the revenue side. Again, revenues would have been higher on the corporate side if not for the tax cuts, but there is evidence that much of the increase in payroll tax revenue was due to job growth, which was fueled, in part, by the tax cuts themselves. The culprit is the spending, which has increased by $138 billion over the past 10 months.

We are now at the point where despite robust economic growth, the current dollar GDP of our entire economy is $20.66 trillion, almost $1.2 trillion smaller than the size our debt! Our debt will remain larger than our entire economy in perpetuity. According to some estimates, in 30 years from now, the debt will be over 175 percent of GDP, which is where Greece is now.

Yet rather than discuss any plan to cut spending and actually reduce the harmful footprint of government in the private economy, Republicans are talking about another tax package and more spending, totaling $54.7 billion. Tax cuts are good, but at some point, we’ve crossed the Rubicon where, if all Republicans do when in power is cut taxes, but at the same time they increase spending rather than cutting it, the tax cuts become counterproductive in many ways. Like many things in life, you can’t half-ass free market doctrine by having low taxes but keeping socialist programs and market interventions in place, because the mix of the two breeds crony capitalism/venture socialism at the corporate level and creates dependency among individuals without exposing them to the pain of higher taxes that are endemic of European socialism.

Until now, the low tax doctrine has been worthwhile, but any continued effort to only cut taxes while continuing to increase spending is counterproductive both policy-wise and politically.

In terms of policy, the debt is reaching a tipping point, because next year we will spend as much money just on interest as we spend on Medicaid. In five years, it will surpass military spending. The dead weight and misallocation of investment in the debt and treasury bonds is crowding out private investment and is ensuring that, despite the job growth, we are not realizing economic growth commensurate with the job market like we saw in the late 1990s and late 1960s. The more we are desperate to service the debt, the higher the interest rates will rise, which will attract even more investments into treasury bonds and away from private investment, creating a perpetual death spiral of more debt, higher interest rates, increased debt payments, and less private investment.

Which brings us to the political problems. Republicans are planning to lock in the spending levels of the FY 2018 omnibus, pass a massive $900 billion farm bill that has Obamacare-style market distortions of land and crop use and food stamps and more extra money on disaster spending – but all mixed together with a “tax extenders” package full of special interest credits for big businesses. This pattern of low-tax, high-spending socialism is creating the perfect climate for corporate bosses to use low taxes as their nourishment to then turn around and serve as the enforcers of cultural and economic Marxism for the Left on every other issue. The moral of the story is that you can’t half-bake free markets. It’s time to force Republicans to pick sides – either they support all of Coolidge’s free-market policies, or we will give them the full Bernie Sanders.

Corporate America has become the number one enforcer – even more effective than the media and academia – in promoting open borders, endless Middle East migration, weak-on-crime laws, anti-religious liberty policies, mindless multiculturalism, and the transgender agenda. Even on fiscal issues, they support the welfare state, Obamacare, and all the regulations that help them shut out competition. The one missing component from the Democrat portfolio is the tax issue. If the corporations empowered Democrats on that issue too, they couldn’t survive. Thus, they feast off the Republican lifeline against Democrats raising taxes so that they can promote the rest of the progressive agenda. And remember, government-run health care is the single biggest driver of our debt, and that is being fueled by big business.

The package of tax extenders Republicans plan to pass costs $54.7 billion together with more disaster spending. There are a number of handouts, such as the biofuels blending credit and handouts for electric cars, Big Wind, and NASCAR in the bill. Then there is the farm bill, which is the Obamacare of agriculture.

It’s time we promote free market reduction of government market interventions along with the tax cuts or no tax cuts at all. Trump needs to use his veto to enforce his budget proposals in addition to his immigration agenda. We need to plow forward with a holistic view of conservatism – fiscal, cultural, and security – as one unit. Split-the-baby conservatism leads to nothing but a perfect, holistic progressive hell. (For more from the author of “Half-Baked ‘Low-Tax Socialism’ Is Getting Us a Whole Progressive Hell” please click HERE)

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Obama’s Legacy Doesn’t Look as Strong as You Think

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“I didn’t know I was a slave until I found out I couldn’t do the things I wanted. I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”

That quote about escape from slavery is often attributed to Frederick Douglass, someone who knew what it was like not to be able to move on from one thing to the next — no matter how bad the former is, no matter how beautiful the promise of the latter is.

Sometimes the chains that bind us within are even more restricting than those made of iron without. Perhaps it’s because fear, instead of freedom, dominates our thinking.

It appears that a taste of freedom may have been at hand, though, in the 2018 gubernatorial elections of Ron DeSantis in Florida and Brian Kemp in Georgia. Not because Republicans beat Democrats, but because racial tribalism wasn’t allowed to carry the day by a rare few who prefer to their destiny be tied to something other than pigmentation.

As laid out on Twitter by longtime Fox economic analyst Charles Payne, it appears black women have as much to do with DeSantis beating his opponent as any other voting constituency. Black men were similarly significant in propelling Kemp to victory in his race. The twist in both cases is that the Democrat nominees were themselves black.

Whereas President Barack Obama attracted 95 and 93 percent of the black vote nationwide in 2008 and 2012, DeSantis grabbed 18 percent of the black female vote in Florida, and Kemp received about 10 percent of the black male vote (while 97 percent of all black women voted for Democrat Stacey Abrams).

At the very least, that tells you the legacy of Obama doesn’t seem as galvanizing as some might think when it comes to racial politics. While his eight years as president certainly induced more white Americans to throw around accusations of racism like confetti at a wedding, a small but influential portion of black America clearly doesn’t want to be in on such a toxic joke. Instead, these voting patterns signal a willingness to return to a more dynamic place, pre-Obama, where people weren’t racing to make it 1968 again and calling it progress.

Their reasons for doing so may be legion – Trump’s economy is better than Obama’s, they think transgenderism isn’t the same thing as Rosa Parks, or they just want their damn NFL back from the kneeling crowd. Regardless, sooner or later, my guess is some folks must be sick of the day-in, day-out propaganda posing as “news” like this from the Washington Post following the election:

“What’s up with all those black men who voted for the Republican in the Georgia governor’s race?”

You don’t even need to read beyond to the data or the analysis to resent the entire concept that you are supposed to be the property of one political party because of the color of your skin. Every black American has the right to hope for something better than that. Check that: Every American does.

I’m not highlighting this because this surprising uptick of black voters benefited Republicans. I can’t stand the Republican Party and have literally prayed for its destruction so that something genuinely conservative might have a chance to take its place. The inspiring fact is that these black Americans had to break through the tribalism to vote this way.

Now, lest anyone think I’m being myopic, I readily concede the road to hope clearly isn’t without its jagged turns or steep cliffs. The disparity between the sexes when Florida and Georgia are compared may very well show a distrust or disrespect between the sexes in the black community, born of years and years of abuse and now amounting to an out-of-wedlock birth rate for black babies that exceeds 75 percent. So how can a particular demographic help heal our nation’s civil war if it is at civil war with itself, especially at a level as foundational as the family?

It can’t.

But as I’ve long held that nothing short of revival will heal our land, I can say with equal confidence that there isn’t a more perfect or historically fitting place for revival to take root than in black America. Somebody needs to go first. Somebody needs to break the cycle of tribalism and idolatry before it is too late. (For more from the author of “Obama’s Legacy Doesn’t Look as Strong as You Think” please click HERE)

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Stop Calling It Prison Reform. It’s a Prison Release Bill

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If you call a piece of legislation “reform,” do basic facts suddenly not matter?

When it comes to jailbreak legislation, as long as you refer to it as “reform,” the fact that there is nothing reform-minded in the bill other than sentencing reductions and early-release credits for the most hardened criminals in the country doesn’t seem to matter. As late as March 10, 2015, before he inexplicably flipped on the issue, Sen. Chuck Grassley referred to this very bill as “Orwellian,” promoted by “the leniency-industrial complex” simply “as a matter of ideology” because “facts do not matter to them.” He and his friends should now take his own advice.

Advocates of sentencing reductions and early-release programs for drug and gun traffickers argue passionately for their cause. Then, suddenly, when they introduce the actual legislation, precipitating a more public debate on the issue, they become bashful about their cause and deny that their cause is even in the bill. Thus, “it’s not amnesty, it’s comprehensive immigration reform,” has now proceeded to “it’s not prison release, it’s prison reform.” Much as proponents of amnesty actually said their bill was border enforcement and that anyone opposing it was voting against border security, proponents of the Soros-Koch-Van Jones jailbreak are saying that this bill is tough on crime!

For several years, Republican supporters of the Soros philosophy on crime have passionately argued for sentencing reductions (Senate judiciary bill) and early-release credits (House bill) because they believe too many people are in prison for too long for drug and firearms charges. So they introduced these two bills and merged them into one. Then, the minute we call them out for promoting jailbreak for such people, they suddenly look at us as if we are from Mars. “No, this is not an early-release bill; this is reform!”

Proponents are suggesting that this bill merely reforms some programs to educate prisoners and has nothing to do with early release. Sure, early release is not automatic, because prisoners must apply for it. But the bill requires nothing more of the prisoners to receive sentencing reductions and early-release credits that, when put together, will reduce time spent in prison by at least 50 percent for repeat drug traffickers with significant rap sheets for other crimes in the state system. And much as with amnesty, where there was nothing reform-minded in the bill but only straight-up amnesty, this bill is straight-up leniency for everyone with no stringency or even restructuring of the criminal code and fixing of the overcriminalization problem of junk crimes that we all agree are dumb.

As with the Gang of Eight amenesty bill, proponents have carefully crafted exceptions to the jailbreak and use them as talking points for why the bill is not jailbreak. They say this is all about nonviolent, first-time offenders serving 300 years in prison, just like amnesty is all about Rhodes scholars and Navy SEALs. But in reality, the entire structure of the bill itself refutes this talking point. Here are several general observations about the bill:

As I noted earlier this month, the bill was written with a catch-all baseline to include all federal prisoners in the early-release programs, then targeted a few people for exclusion from those programs. If the bill’s authors were honest about their agenda, they would have targeted only those whom they felt were legitimately low-level, spelled out those categories of offenses clearly, and kept the rest ineligible. Even if we have some disagreement over a small portion of the prison population, we can all agree that the federal system is loaded with the worst of the worst. Why include them in the baseline of so many of the leniencies? And indeed, the DOJ confirmed for Senator Tom Cotton’s office yesterday that those serving time for failure to register as a sex offender, importing aliens for prostitution, female genital mutilation, and assault with intent to commit rape or sexual abuse will all be eligible for the early-release credits.

The bill is written like a press release, not a statute. It uses Orwellian language to describe the programs. If a prisoner participates in an “evidence-based recidivism reduction program” absurdly described as having “been shown by empirical evidence to reduce recidivism,” he or she is eligible. There is no legal standard to this, such as the typical language of “clear and convincing evidence.” Everyone is eligible based on the programs they already must participate in. These very groups writing this bill have endless “research” ready-made “indicating” that anything they do will “likely” reduce recidivism. Section 102(h)(5) mandates that the DOJ enter into partnership with the very “nonprofits” and “institutions of higher education” that are poisoning the minds of prisoners and teaching them that society failed them. The very rent-seekers in government advocating for this bill will be the ones administering it.

Worse, the bill has a second way to qualify – to participate in “productive activity,” defined as a “group or individual activity that is designed to allow prisoners determined as having a low or no risk of recidivating to remain productive.” They could participate in workshops on hating the police or they could play basketball and lift weights. No serious human being, even those committed to leniencies in sentencing, would have written a bill this vacuous unless they are committed to casting the widest net on jailbreak.

Not only are they eligible for home confinement, which is an utter joke, especially given that this bill purposely fails to allocate the resources, the bill creates a new category of “supervised release.” That is never defined in the bill, even though we are dealing with some of the most dangerous criminals; 4,000 will be eligible to be released immediately with no understanding of how local law enforcement will deal with such an unprecedented deluge of career criminals re-entering.

The bill requires the DOJ to assess all 180,000 federal inmates in terms of risk status within 180 days. This is ludicrous given the number of violent offenders and the fact that at least a quarter of the population is composed of criminal aliens. The Fraternal Order of Police called this provision unworkable. Why wouldn’t you simply target the specific categories of convicts that you want assessed?
While the standards of eligibility for release and access to programs cast a wide net and are ill-defined, the standard for DOJ or prison officials to deny the leniencies are tight and defined with a rigid legal standard. If a prison warden wants to place a hold on the release of an inmate into “supervised release,” he must show “by clear and convincing evidence that the prisoner should not be transferred into prerelease custody.” They use the legal standard of “clear and convincing evidence,” in addition to prohibiting BOP officials from using the nature of the conviction or behavior from or prior to the conviction. In other words, almost anyone will be able to litigate their way into early release through the courts. Again, take note of the fact that they don’t exempt any sort of conviction from being used as evidence. If this is about first-time, nonviolent offenders, why not limit it to those individuals? Obviously, because there aren’t too many of those in federal prison.

The bill requires the BOP to establish a “procedure to restore time credits that a prisoner lost as a result of a rule violation.” Now the onus is on law enforcement to restore lost credits due to bad behavior, not upon the criminal to actually earn them. No exceptions are made to this provision to more narrowly target a specific population.

The much-forgotten sentencing reduction portion of the bill expands the safety valve, which was designed to allow first-time offenders to escape the mandatories, to repeat offenders. A number of career drug traffickers and other people serving time for assault in the state system will now be eligible to avoid the minimums altogether when convicted on federal drug trafficking charges. So much for “first-time” offenders only.

As a means of better fostering reintegration, the bill mandates that the BOP place convicts in institutions within 500 miles of their homes. Once again, the bill makes no exceptions for violent drug traffickers or even murderers. Most gun and drug traffickers in federal prison, the biggest beneficiaries of this bill, are gang-bangers or criminal alien cartel leaders. Often, when the feds bust up a gang, they need to disperse the leaders, so that they are not together in the same institution or close to their base of operations. Yet this bill forces the transfer of existing gang members to new facilities in what is an unworkable security nightmare.

As you can see, there is nothing reform-minded in this bill. It is 100 percent focused on leniencies and casts a wide net rather than using a scalpel. The reason is because almost all the pseudo-conservative and libertarian promoters of this bill have fundamentally adopted the philosophy of Bernie Sanders and George Soros that there are too many people in prison and the system is racist:

I have previously thoroughly debunked that myth. In reality, there is an under-incarceration of truly violent criminals, and there is no racial disparity in those categories.

Ultimately, the question for supporters of Soros jailbreak is: Why are they not brave enough to stand on the truth of what is surreptitiously woven into the fabric of this bill? Why are they suddenly ashamed to admit their goal is to empty the prisons? (For more from the author of “Stop Calling It Prison Reform. It’s a Prison Release Bill” please click HERE)

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Twitter CEO Lied Under Oath to Congress. Shouldn’t That Matter?

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On Wednesday September 5th, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey swore that he would tell the truth to Congress. He didn’t. He lied. I have the old fashioned opinion that such a lie should matter. It remains to be seen whether Congress agrees.

Dorsey was called to testify regarding Twitter’s pathetic attempts to head off the abuse of its platform by continued assaults and abuse from various international sources as it relates to U.S. news and politics, which is a fine issue for Congress to deal with but not from my perspective a very important one. In the course of his hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, two Representatives raised the issue of a specific violent posting regarding my wife, which had already attracted national attention.

Their questions amounted to: why wasn’t this obvious violation of your stated rules removed faster? Why did it require publicity to get attention from your offices? What do you intend to do to prevent this in the future?

Dorsey’s answers equivocated on each point. He lied, blatantly, about the details of the matter – particularly how long the image was up (I have the screencaps to prove that). . .

The basis is a new Twitter policy announced this week – one must keep up on Big Brother’s latest pronouncements – that “misgendering” and “deadnaming” are bannable offenses. This policy is going to be a beast to enforce given that the offenses are easy to slip into – even today there will be people who refer to Bruce Jenner, and Caitlyn Jenner has said that isn’t offensive. Twitter has now decided it’s a bannable offense. (Read more from “Twitter CEO Lied Under Oath to Congress. Shouldn’t That Matter?” HERE)

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I Was Tear-Gassed, Along With 60 of My Closest Friends, in an Enclosed Space

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. . .I was marched, along with the 59 other members of Echo Company, 2/60th Infantry Battalion, into a room. The room — barely big enough for the 60 of us — was dark, the windows were tiny and sealed, and the doors were closed. . .

The Drill Sergeant gave an exaggerated wink as he pulled the pin and waited. As the gas slowly leaked into the room, he delighted in asking us random questions, demanding that we tell him about a favorite family vacation or sing the alphabet backward. The more we talked, he knew, the more we would breathe in the gas.

My eyes began to water. My nose began to run. My throat felt raw. The temptation to rub my eyes was almost unbearable — but we had been warned that would only make it worse, so I restrained myself. . .

They released us from the room into the blistering heat of South Carolina in July, and suddenly things began to look up. My eyes cleared after 5 minutes. My nose and throat were back to normal in 15 minutes. . .

Having been through it myself, I would argue that tear gas is absolutely a reasonable — even somewhat restrained — response to violent attempts to charge the border and to injure Border Patrol agents. (Read more from “I Was Tear-Gassed, Along With 60 of My Closest Friends, in an Enclosed Space” HERE)

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Time for Grown-Up Christians to Confront Materialism

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Linda Thompson-Jenner and David Foster wrote a song entitled “My Grown-Up Christmas List” about three decades ago. No, it wasn’t the kind of “grown-up” list that Hugh Hefner or Howard Stern would have handed to Santa. It was about world peace, enduring marriages, friendship, justice and emotional healing – that sort of thing.

But it was also about Christians growing up, emerging from the materialism that gradually overtook American childhood – and children’s Christmas – in the 20th Century. “Heaven surely knows that packages and bows can never heal a hurting heart.” It was a prayer, actually. Heartfelt, poignant, and yet optimistic.

But 30 years later, materialism has strengthened its grip on Christians. Adults are, if anything, more materialistic than children. Our Christmas list needs to grow up.

We have a family friend who is very “churchy.” She sprinkles her conversation with Biblical aphorisms, enforces modesty of speech and dress in her family, and rarely misses Sunday worship. But she shops at Target.

I don’t know how she could be unaware of the boycott against Target, or of the reason for it: Target allows grown men into women’s restrooms and changing areas, no questions asked.

The American Family Association has documented several incidents of menace and voyeurism against girls and women in Target restrooms, in Texas, Oregon and Idaho, to name a few. But the corporation has refused to revoke its dangerous policy, and is counting on a strong Christmas shopping season to redeem its disappointing sales thus far this (boycott) year.

How heartbreaking that a Christmas tradition would strengthen depraved executives against decent believers, against girls who just want privacy where they remove their clothes. But how decent are Christians, anyway, who continue to shop at Target? Have the libertines called our bluff? Have they correctly calculated that we don’t really care?

Last month in Massachusetts, a man dressed as a woman followed a 10-year-old girl into the ladies’ room in a Target store. He knocked on the door of the stall where the girl sat. He complimented her T-shirt, offered her candy and changed his clothes while they were alone in the restroom, her father waiting outside. Is that OK with Christian shoppers?

Target’s Christian clientele would deny, of course, that they intend any endorsement of the corporation’s policy to allow men into the women’s restrooms. And that may be accurate. But they have to stare pretty hard at the ceiling to avoid seeing that their patronage accommodates and acquiesces in the worst impulses of Target executives. By prospering Target executives, Christian shoppers are giving the gift of impunity, and inviting further victimization.

Bible Belt shoppers may calculate that transgenders are rare in this zip code, so the Target policy’s not a serious problem here. But that’s faulty reasoning, a non sequitur. The problem at Target isn’t so-called transgenders. The problem is predatory male aggressors who are empowered and emboldened by Target’s restroom policy to menace girls and women behind closed doors, undeterred by security, retail staff or the victims’ own male family members. It’s a green light for voyeurs, exhibitionists and assailants.

At the very least, Christians who shop there have to admit that they have subordinated their values to their materialistic desires. Whatever they’re selling in those stores must be more important to them than decency, privacy, modesty and the physical safety of girls and women. The only alternative to that conclusion is that they do not hold those values in the first place.

It’s not just Target. In February, Walgreen’s announced it too will allow men in the ladies’ room in its 8,100 stores. They announced it in self-flattering language about equality and respect, but the bottom line is that Walgreen’s executives have shrugged off the privacy and physical safety of girls and women in 8,100 restrooms nationwide.

It’s not always clear where a Christian should shop. Human Rights Campaign, a potent Sodomite advocacy organization reports this year that 609 major businesses earned a perfect rating for “LGBTQ equality.” The T in that acronym is for “transgendered.”

Sometimes it’s unclear because a company has some Christian-friendly practices and policies, as well as some hostility. According to conservative watchdog 2ndVote, Wal-Mart contributes to three pro-abortion organizations and two prolife organizations. It contributes to two organizations that favor same-sex marriage, and to one that favors traditional marriage.

The American Family Association posts an annual “Naughty or Nice” list that rates retailers on their attitude toward Christmas. If the retailer is reluctant to use the word Christmas in its promotions and marketing materials, it ends up on the naughty list.

This year, that would be Walgreen’s, Family Dollar, Nordstom, Gap, Best Buy, Foot Locker, Barnes & Noble and 11 others. They list eight stores that are “marginal” (neither naughty nor nice), including Kohl’s, Dollar General, CVS and Safeway. The good news is that there are 48 retailers on the nice list.

There’s certainly room for disagreement whether we want Christmas associated with commercial activity in the first place. It’s not entirely clear that we should direct our patronage to retailers who say “Merry Christmas” instead of “happy holidays.” But this much is clear: it’s time for grown-up Christians to re-think our Christmas list.

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I Can Tell You Right Now What Will Happen in 2020

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Before looking ahead to 2020, we first need to look back at 2016.

In my 2014 book Rules for Patriots: How Conservatives Can Win Again, which was endorsed by Donald Trump, I laid out a three-pronged path for a Republican to recapture the White House in 2016:

1) Higher turnout of white evangelicals, perhaps the biggest voting bloc within the GOP base, than McCain or Romney could generate.

2) Win middle-class voters, because post-WWII, whoever has won middle-class voters has won the presidency, except for the infamous 2000 Florida recount election. And I pointed out that would require a message of economic populism more than the “reform and growth” talking points favored by GOP consultants.

3) Win Catholic voters, because since Roe v. Wade, no Republican has won the White House without winning the Catholic vote.

This was nothing revolutionary. All I suggested is that Republicans rebuild the coalition that helped them win the White House in four of the six previous presidential elections, before they nominated two milquetoast standard-bearers who eroded it. However, while the suggestion wasn’t radical, it’s controversial to the Republican establishment, which either opposes or isn’t willing to do and say the things required to rebuild and maintain that coalition. Trump was willing, and that’s one of the major reasons he won.

The other major reason Trump won was he got to run against Hillary Clinton, a widely unpopular corruptocrat with the highest negatives of any Democrat presidential nominee since Jimmy Carter. That’s why I decided a year in advance to forgo milking the first-in-the-nation Iowa Caucuses happening in my backyard for exposure and instead leverage every contact in my network to coalesce behind a non-establishment candidate capable of capturing the nomination early on. Because Hillary was such a weak opponent, we had a chance to get a non-swamp creature into the White House.

I was right; I just had the wrong candidate. I preferred Ted Cruz, the trusted conservative. The GOP base preferred Trump. The rest is history. Trump defeated Hillary and is president now.

Along the way, he violated several social norms: tawdry videos advocating vile groping, singling out judges for their ethnicity, mocking disabled reporters, and so on and so forth. The violation of these norms convinced a lot of analysts that Trump had no chance to win on Election Day. And they were wrong, because they assumed that since the frosting on the cake had changed, the cake had changed with it.

But cakes still require all the same ingredients and baking instructions they always have. The fundamentals of cake-making haven’t changed. The flavor of the frosting can alter the taste, but it doesn’t change the essence of the cake itself.

Granted, Trump’s ego and bombastic use of social media are a frosting we’ve never tried before and likely limited the potential voters he could reach. But it was still the same cake. Trump’s winning 2016 coalition was fundamentally pretty much the same as every other successful GOP presidential run the past few decades.

We in the media and analysis business have convinced ourselves that because of his persona, Trump is the outlier — and we’re wrong. Trump won with the same formula that has always worked for the GOP in this era. Any of the other 16 GOP candidates who contested the nomination would have needed the same exact formula to win in November had they won the primary.

It’s actually Obama who was the outlier.

Obama swept the traditional crucial swing states that have decided things for decades – Florida and Ohio. But along the way he became the first Democrat to win North Carolina since Reagan built his coalition and the first Democrat to win Indiana since LBJ’s historic romp in 1964. And Obama turned Virginia, which had gone Republican in every presidential election but one since Eisenhower, into a swing state.

While Trump may have violated norms, Obama changed the Electoral College map. Trump simply reset it, while adding different states – Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin – than anticipated. But it started with reclaiming Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina. Had Trump not won those states that have always vaulted a Republican to the presidency, he wouldn’t have won. He could have swept those Rust Belt states filled with former Obama voters and still lost to Hillary.

Because Obama’s persona and politics are more favored by the media and analysis industry, they don’t see this, preferring to tilt at Trumpian windmills while breathlessly clutching their pearls as they “can’t even” on cable news every night.

But this also explains what happened in the 2018 midterms.

For the first time in two-party history, a political party lost control of one chamber while gaining seats in the other. The Republicans lost more House seats in 2018 than they did in 2006, which was considered a “wave” election. At the same time, the GOP gained two seats in the Senate.

This may seem shocking, but we probably should have predicted this all along. There were too many swing districts and House retirements in places where Hillary won in 2016 and too many Senate races in states Trump won. We basically got the outcome we should always have expected.

It’s just that because Trump’s persona changes the flavor of the frosting, we keep missing that the making of the actual cake hasn’t changed. Trump really hasn’t changed things as much as we’re led to believe. He’s just offending a bunch of people who aren’t used to someone so effortlessly offending them.

This means we already know what will happen in 2020, too. Right now, two years before that election. Forget all the annoying ads and all the controversies, real or pretend, that we’ll suffer through. I can tell you right now what will happen, not because I’m a prophet, but because I’m actually paying attention to the electorate rather than projecting my preferences upon them.

Barring something unforeseen from the Mueller or any future probe, or something none of us wish to happen, like another 9/11, the result is already known. Those are the potential game-changers, not a Trump tweet or CNN’s kvetching over it.

Minus those, the 2020 election comes down to this: If Democrats nominate a likable candidate, they will win, but if they don’t, they won’t.

If the 2020 Democrat nominee is a likable and inspirational figure, like Obama was, Democrats can take advantage of those voters Trump turns off with his ego and persona. But if not, then the Democrat nominee will suffer the same fate under Trump’s master trolling as Hillary did.

A celebrity with high favorables like Michelle Obama, or a progressive businessman who’s also a capitalist with no prior political record for Republicans to attack, would be tough for Trump to beat.

However, should Democrats nominate a known and unlikable leftist like an Elizabeth Warren, a Cory Booker, or a Kamala Harris, they will feel the wrath of Trump successfully exploiting the culture war divisions these unlikable Leftists are known for. This will help him turn out another mass of white evangelicals, hold onto offended Catholics, and retain those middle-class voters who don’t fit in at a Berkeley faculty meeting.

Save this for the next two years and see if I’m right. (For more from the author of “I Can Tell You Right Now What Will Happen in 2020” please click HERE)

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If We Can’t Stop This Invasion, We No Longer Have a Sovereign Nation

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You might not have heard the news overnight, but our national government has been shut down. Yes, that long-dreaded government shutdown is upon us. No, there was no appropriations lapse of 18 percent of the bureaucracies, nor was there a three-inch snowstorm in the nation’s capital. A single district judge thinks he can violate all rules of standing, 130 years of Supreme Court precedent on sovereignty up to and including Trump v. Hawaii, and shut down any effort to secure our border, including the administration’s half-baked plan on bogus asylum.

Despite spending $892 billion on the military and defense, we refuse to assert our rights over our own border because the ACLU and judges evidently control our borders. We continue to allow lawfare to incentivize and actually allow the entirety of Central America to cross our border, along with drugs, gangs, violence, poverty, and possibly diseases.

In every media interview I’ve given, when asked about the future of the caravan, I emphatically said that there was no way Trump would allow any of them to submit “asylum” claims, because if he couldn’t stop such a brazen invasion, it would be the end of his presidency. Nonetheless, I expressed concern that we’d still ignore the dangerous invasion of roughly 1,000-2,000 coming over every day independently smuggled in by coyotes.

Now it appears I was too charitable. We are not even categorically blocking the caravan, and that was before last night’s illegal, lawless injunction from an Obama judge in San Francisco. It appears that the people in the caravan are being allowed to submit claims, 100 a day. I guess slow-motion catch-and-release is better than a mass rush, but why should we be “managing” an invasion rather than repelling it, as required by the Constitution’s Guarantee Clause, Article IV, Section 4? Slow-motion admission is not what Trump promised before the election:

If we can’t stop a belligerent group of economic migrants carrying flags of their “persecutors” and will instead indulge them as questionable asylees, we no longer have a sovereign nation. Mexicans in Tijuana are now vigorously protesting the caravan’s illegal occupation of their own country. The migrants are reportedly smoking weed and throwing garbage in their neighborhoods, after rejecting Mexico’s own offer of asylum, which in itself is a violation of international asylum law.

Here is a video of a Honduran man in the caravan threatening to kill Mexicans and burn Tijuana after residents of Playas de Tijuana demanded that the caravan leave.

Folks, a functioning government would send our military to the San Diego border, not as “confidence builders” for Border Patrol, as Defense Secretary Mattis suggested, but locked and loaded. This is an invasion, plain and simple. Why are we even discussing how many of these applications we should process? What ever happened to the promise to use Trump’s inherent and delegated authority to shut down all border migration for the time being?

The Trump administration deserves credit for its decision yesterday to shut down all northbound lanes and half the pedestrian crossings into the San Ysidro crossing at Tijuana. That will slow down the pace, but still, why are we taking in invaders at any pace? And why is the DOJ even showing up in two separate lawsuits lodged by the ACLU on behalf of invaders, when the most unassailable case law says that A) the president controls who comes into the country; B) foreign nationals have no standing to sue; and C) courts have no jurisdiction to second-guess the executive on exclusions? If after 130 years of settled law on this issue, we are going to allow California judges to destroy our border, that is the ultimate government shutdown.

And this is just the problem with the caravan at the points of entry. The larger problem is the invasion of hundreds of thousands between the points of entry who are helping the drug cartels prosper. In just two days last week, over 650 illegals were apprehended in the Yuma sector. This is just one sector, which means that the pace of the broader border invasion has intensified to well over 1,000 apprehensions a day. And that means there are at least as many we don’t apprehend.

I spoke with Sheriff Leon Wilmot of Yuma County yesterday, and he was frustrated that everyone is missing the point about the lawfare. “We already have a fence here, and it worked fine during Operation Streamline last decade, when we prosecuted 100 percent of the border crossers rather than processing them. But now they are just hanging off the fence and surrendering themselves to border agents.” He told me about women “dropping babies off the fence” and breaking limbs. His sheriff’s deputies must deal with the medical emergencies. “None of these folks are being prosecuted. My deputies are the ones who have to take those rape and robbery reports because the feds refuse to do their jobs.”

Meanwhile, drugs continue to pour over the Arizona border. While most of the drug operations in recent years have been in the Tucson sector, Sheriff Wilmot, who is also the chairman of the Southwestern Border Sheriff’s Coalition, has seen an increase in drugs in Yuma in recent months. “Cartels are exploiting the situation in remote areas by backpacking in meth while border agents are busy dealing with the family units hanging off the fence. They are also exploiting juveniles – both the unaccompanied aliens and the American citizens who have family in Mexico but cross over to go to school on our side of the border.” He lamented that the feds will do nothing about the teenage drug smugglers and that the cartels are fully aware of that.

Now, if the jailbreak bill passes, the traffickers will enjoy multiple leniencies. And a number of sanctuary cities are giving taxpayer funding for “free” legal counsel for illegal aliens. If you or I were attacked by illegal aliens, we’d need to marshal our own resources to seek justice, yet they can invade for free.

Rather than waste the final month of GOP control of the trifecta of government on promoting a bill that releases these very drug traffickers from prison, Trump should shoot for the moon on immigration in the December budget bill. Unless he demands not just full funding for the wall and border patrol, but clarity in statute on asylum, UACs, sanctuary cities, and interior enforcement, his presidency is done, and we will face the ultimate government shutdown: the end of our sovereignty. Unless Trump leverages his veto until Congress reiterates existing law – that courts have no jurisdiction over border security – he should just step down and allow the ACLU to run our border. (For more from the author of “If We Can’t Stop This Invasion, We No Longer Have a Sovereign Nation” please click HERE)

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Jim Acosta Is the Reason We Have Stupid Warning Labels

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Following the legal saga of #AcostaGate, the White House has now put out some ground rules for journalists.

It’s pretty simple: Journalists get one question when called upon, follow-ups are at the discretion of the president or White House official giving the press conference, and when it’s no longer your turn, you hand the microphone over. It’s so simple a kindergartner could grasp it. This short set of protocols seem to be basic rules of conduct for a reasonable human being.

However, most reasonable people wouldn’t conduct themselves like a self-important showboat, as Acosta did at the November 7 White House press conference. No, we’re dealing with a different standard here. It’s the same kind of standard that requires warning labels on products that seem silly, but probably exist because someone did something stupid and then sued when things went badly.

Most people in this world don’t need to be told that packages of peanuts might set off peanut allergies or that they shouldn’t use cleaning chemicals as body wash. For everyone else, there’s a warning label to inform them of how to handle themselves like a functional human being without adverse effects from their behavior.

Yes, it seems there’s always “that guy” who does something that requires either a special safety label, a new rule, or a company-wide safety briefing in its aftermath. For the White House press corps, Jim Acosta is that guy. (For more from the author of “Jim Acosta Is the Reason We Have Stupid Warning Labels” please click HERE)

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Dear TSA, Please Stop Molesting Kids at the Airport

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The other day, after slogging through a check-in line at one of the nation’s busiest airports, dutifully removing my shoes and belt and checking my bag and pockets for other potentially dangerous items (water and loose change), I was pulled aside by a crack Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent so he could further investigate the contents of my carry-on. While waiting, I took this picture of what looked to be a ten-year-old boy being molested by a 250-pound man.

Now, normally I would have reported this incident to the proper authorities. Inappropriate contact with a child, inside or outside his clothing, is a criminal act. But, in this case, the proper authorities were the ones feeling up the kid and the father had already protested the frisking—although, like all of us, he probably understood that no matter how vociferously he objected to this bit of state-sanctioned criminality it wasn’t going to change anything.

Who knows? Maybe the kid had earned the attention of TSA by sporting that Minecraft hoodie? Or maybe his laptop had set off the explosive trace detection machine? Or maybe he was randomly picked. The boy looked innocent enough to me—which might be exactly what the little would-be villain had in mind. When the father inquired, the agent told him, right before touching his son’s crotch, that this sort of thing had become necessary due to drug mules using children.

If you don’t think the terrorists have won, you probably haven’t visited an airport in a while. Not only do these places needlessly gobble up hours of our day and billions of our dollars, but here that we collectively lose all dignity and act like a bunch of automatons just so they’ll let us out of the place. Though sometimes it seems like we might never escape. If we really wanted to slow the caravan from Central American down, we would make them enter through a TSA checkpoint.

It is at those checkpoints that we suspend our disbelief and pretend that (often) disheveled and (very often) rotund government agents who separate us from our water bottles possess the expertise to ferret out terrorist plots. (By the way, is there not a single physical requirement needed to hold this allegedly vital security job? There are many good reasons I’m not a pro-basketball player or a male model. If you’re not in relatively good physical shape, maybe law enforcement isn’t the profession for you. The only way these agents are the “the last line of defense against terrorism” is if the terrorists are unable to squeeze by them to get on the airplanes.) (Read more from “Dear TSA, Please Stop Molesting Kids at the Airport” HERE)

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