More NASA PHOTOS: This time of Paris
after Radical Muslims Parade down Champs Elysee.
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Some diverse videos:
http://www.chonday.com/Videos/
https://israelunwired.com/
https://klipland.com/video/
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Dick
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Because Trump's quirky personality has become the focus and more and more duped Americans are looking at the political fight pertaining to building a wall through the lens of the mass media, our nation is looking foolish.
Trump's greatest threat is Trump! (See 1 below.)
Walls will not stop those determined to penetrate them but they, along with other facets of prevention, human and technological, are a deterrent, are effective and will pay for themselves over time. That said, the mass media is using building walls as another way to make Trump look foolish and to support the rantings of Schumer and Pelosi, who fears, if she relents, she will not become "Speaker." (See 1a below.)
It is another basis for rallying the unwashed. We have gone through the attack on Wall Street farce, we have managed to survive the destruction of our historical statutes, The Me Too Nonsense and now we are confronted by the hue and cry over becoming a border-less nation. (See 1b below.)
The "anti-wall" argument has reached biblical proportions and we now have an eleventh commandment - Though Shall Not Build! (See 1c below.)
Theoretically speaking, we elect supposed adults, send them to Washington to govern and after months of drinking Potomac Water they turn into cry babies and act infantile.
Shutting down government is not a bad idea in my humble opinion. However, because we have become so dependent on government's amoebic penetration of every facet of our society and most bureaucrats align themselves with the Democrat Party, that is the only reason Democrats trot out shutting down government as a threatening idea. Frankly, we should be shutting down entire agencies that have proven a total waste of money when one compares their cost with results and we should start with the Department of Education, which was a dumb idea of Jimmy Carter.
Pelosi and Schumer believe they will pin the "shut government tail" on Trump over building a wall and anything is possible when the mass media decide to get behind a "benevolent sounding cause."
If reason is allowed to prevail it should be patently clear presidents take an oath to protect and defend our nation against all enemies foreign and domestic. Allowing anyone who wants to benefit from living in America to illegally do so makes a mockery of this oath as well as our supposed claim we are a nation of laws. The same goes for entities that defy the federal government and decide to become sanctuaries for criminals.
These are the nefarious goals of radicals and chaos proponents who want to see America crumble into the dust heap of history. They wrap their aspirations in moral platitudes and argue we are a nation of racists because we are separating families etc.
In actuality, Democrats embrace open borders and illegal immigration because it adds to their voter ranks. This is why welfare is another one of their destructive social tools. Dependency is good because it equates with"do goodism." Taking care of the downtrodden is doing "God's Work" just through political means. Only a "Scrooge/Grinch" can be against such a worthy pursuit.
Getting an entire population to become dependent on drugs is another progressive idea that weakens a nation's resolve and ability to defend itself. Potheads do not make "sharpshooters." Neither, does it help citizens to perform increasingly complex tasks, gain and retain useful/meaningful employment.
Call me nuts but I see a linkage between welfare, an entitlement mentality, dependency on an external authority, poor education, loss of freedom and narcotic usage. But then I am a radical conservative who believes our "Founding Fathers" were smarter than those who trash our Constitution and those of faith.(See 1d below.)
There are some other trends I also find produced a series of unintended consequences:
a) Ford's auto allowed relationships away from the family's view/authority.
b) Then many years later came The Pill.
c) The Pill freed women to engage in more sexual activity at earlier ages while preventing unwanted pregnancies.
d) As sexual mores changed cohabitation, outside marriage, increased along with laxer laws pertaining to divorce.
e) As women entered the work force to increase family incomes as an offset to inflation and the cost of living, their own independent and more diverse lifestyles this gave rise to The Women's Liberation Movement.
f) This movement has produced mixed blessing. More women are subject to medical issues related to stress. More women are unhappy. More women are engaged in raising children as single parent family numbers have exploded. Generations of single parent children are less likely to succeed in the absence of male authority.
g) We have now entered the phase where sexual distinctions run the gamut of whatever one wishes to be.
h) All of the above has resulted in the breakdown of the family unit and the downgrading of marriage as an institution.
Today the goal is personal happiness and if that means self-indulgence so be it because nihilism is the in thing and political correctness is not only acceptable but the driving force in today's society.
Where all this change takes Democracies and Capitalism is yet to be determined but it is definitely radicalizing the Democrat Party and giving rise to increased female legislators racial and cultural diversity.
Furthermore, the battle between Mr. Rogers and Dr. Spock continues to rage.
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Is Romney a sanctimonious fool or did he choose to replace himself with the dog on his car's roof? (See 2, 2a and 2b below.)
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Another pile on and this time from a Ga. dingbat! https://www.dailywire.com/
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Dick
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1) Trump at the Turn
We have entered a Trumpian Twilight Zone and the path forward is not clear.
By Daniel Henninger
Donald Trump’s unique presidency has entered a strange period, a kind of Trumpian Twilight Zone. Mitt Romney’s opportunistic, up-yours op-ed for the Washington Post got one thing right: The odd mood around the Trump presidency has a lot to do with what happened in December.
Politics this Christmas season felt like Jimmy Stewart stumbling through the nightmares of “It’s a Wonderful Life”—but without the happy ending. Inside a week, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates, the stock market plunged, President Trump proclaimed he was pulling U.S. troops out of Syria, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned, the president told him to get out by Jan. 1, and the government shut down. The new year dawned with Mr. Trump meeting at the White House with his new Democratic frenemies.
You are looking at President Trump at the turn. Mr. Trump now occupies the middle space between the first two years of his presidency and the months devoted to his likely campaign for re-election. Does he deserve four more years? Do we? That last question has been coming up in conversations a lot since the week before Christmas.
By any conservative standard, Mr. Trump’s first year should be regarded as successful: a significant reduction in business taxation, radical deregulation of the U.S. economy, the Neil Gorsuch Supreme Court nomination and withdrawal from the quixotic Paris climate accord.
Pop quiz: How many of Mr. Trump’s primary opponents—or a President Romney, for that matter—would have done all of that? We’ve written previously that Mr. Trump could have walked away after the first year and entered the Republican pantheon.
He stayed, and year two has been up and down. Mr. Trump pulled out of Barack Obama’s flawed nuclear deal with Iran. Deregulation in 2017 resurrected U.S. energy production. The economy produced by the policies of the first year—an accomplishment shared with the McConnell-Ryan Republican Congress—has been strong, with more Americans finding work and getting paid higher real wages.
Mr. Trump’s most admirable act of 2018 was staying the course with Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination. Liberals’ willingness to ratify a radically lower standard of due process will affect politics for years. Under enormous pressure, Mr. Trump didn’t flinch.
But the policies and issues to which Mr. Trump dedicated his energy last year and took personal responsibility are incomplete at best—imposing tariffs on nearly everyone, trade negotiations, the North Korean nuclear threat, and unto eternity, the border wall.
Ultimately, the political world spent 2018 waiting for the midterm elections. Because Mr. Trump insists on being the hourly focus of the country’s political life, the midterms were rightly viewed as a referendum on him.
What we learned is that segments of the electorate—in large right-of-center suburbs and purple states—that once supported Mr. Trump or leaned Republican are now disaffected. They dislike the Trump persona, or are worn out by it.
It is hard to know if the Republican party has lost them or how many would actually vote for a Democratic presidential candidate, such as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. He is now calling himself a “pragmatic progressive” and his inaugural address this week proclaimed a “new justice agenda.”
One may ask: Have many moderate voters concluded that a Democratic presidency as defined by the party’s resurgent left is simply unacceptable? The anyone-but-Hillary vote was about more than just Hillary.
As a president enters his third year and turns toward re-election, attention normally would focus on his potential opponents and the prospects for his agenda. This being the non-normal Trump presidency, the conversation has turned to other things and, because Mr. Trump wants it this way, it’s always about him. As a result, much of Mr. Trump’s presidency operates in a state of near-total eclipse.
For example, the Brookings Institution’s Center on Regulation and Markets listsabout 150 Trump administration deregulation initiatives completed or under way affecting the environment, telecom, finance, housing, health, agriculture, labor and education. It is a conservative, growth-enhancing accomplishment to which the president gives zero publicity and therefore scores no political points. Humility isn’t the explanation.
Instead, most of the political conversation since those seven days in December has been about “constraining Trump,” confronting him or seeking primary challengers. It is politically depressive.
“Familiarity breeds contempt” is a truism that dates back more than six centuries. Also still true is that electorates desert politicians who wear out their welcomes.
1a) Enter the House of PelosiThe Editorial Board
The main Democratic goal will be destroying Donald Trump.
Nancy Pelosi takes the oath as Speaker of the House for the third time Thursday, a suitable reward for gaining 40 seats. If you expect a new era of progress in Washington, however, fair warning. The main Democratic goal will be investigating, not legislating. Then again, the country could do worse than policy gridlock, and it probably will.
The new Democratic House is being compared with the first Pelosi majority of 2006, but there’s one big difference: The 2018 Democrats ran on no discernible agenda beyond rejecting Donald Trump and all his works. The animating purpose of Congress will be investigations to damage, and perhaps impeach, the President to tee up total Democratic control after 2020.
Mr. Trump’s tax returns and foreign business dealings will get frequent star turns. Democrats think they can prove Mr. Trump has exploited his office for personal enrichment, or in some way that matters to Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. If not, at least they’ll embarrass the Trump family. Ivanka and Jared should prepare for subpoenas and dives into their email habits and security clearances.
Democrats will also run investigations into payments to Stormy Daniels; the Administration’s policy of separating children at the border; and every consultation with a business about a deregulatory decision. House Democrats will trail every cabinet officer down to whether he ordered a cocktail on a commercial flight. This will present even greater problems in staffing federal agencies.
On policy, Mrs. Pelosi owes her speakership to the left and she will tilt that way. She is already facing a revolt on the left over a rules change to impose pay-as-you-go budgeting. Liberals think it will hamstring their spending plans. That’s fine with us since Paygo, as it’s known, was always more political eyewash than genuine fiscal restraint.
The real House tension will be between the new socialist vanguard and the 30 or so Democrats who won in GOP-leaning districts. It will be instructive to see how many defect from the Green New Deal or Medicare for All if Mrs. Pelosi dares to bring those to the floor.
One certainty is the end of pro-growth legislation. The trend will be toward higher taxes, more regulation and more harassment of business. The new House rules have already cashiered “dynamic scoring” that forced the Congressional Budget Office to think about how a proposal affects the economy. Dynamic scoring isn’t some GOP effort to prove taxes “pay for themselves” but a tool that informs lawmakers of economic costs and trade-offs and can improve policy.
The GOP Senate, with a new majority of 53, should be able to check the left’s impulses to jack up the corporate tax rate or restore the federal deduction on all state and local taxes. Mrs. Pelosi will try to lure Mr. Trump into a deal on infrastructure or drug prices. But Mr. Trump will be less likely to go along if he has to rely on the GOP to fend off impeachment.
It’d be nice to think there’s a chance at cooperation on immigration, but it’s unlikely as long as Democrats think the issue gives them an edge in elections. It’s clear from the shutdown over “border security” that Democrats think they have the edge on immigration, even if collateral damage could be the young adult “Dreamers” who need legal clarity to stay in the country.
The best test of Mrs. Pelosi’s deal-making sincerity will be what she does on Mr. Trump’s new Nafta deal. The President went a long way in negotiations to appease unions, with Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown as Big Labor’s whisperer, but the President still doesn’t have the votes. When she took the gavel in 2007, Mrs. Pelosi stuck George Bush’s pending trade deals in a drawer.
All of this will unfold along with the fight for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, which will reinforce the party’s anti-Trump fervor. Voters may think they sent Democrats to Washington to “check” Mr. Trump’s unpresidential habits. Americans may soon discover that they’ve invested those hopes in more polarization and vitriol
1b) Dem Will File Articles of Impeachment Against Trump
By TTN Staff
Democrat Congressman Brad Sherman is wasting no time introducing articles of impeachment against President Trump. The Congressman from California will introduce the legislation on the first day of the new Congress in which the Democrats hold the majority in the House.
According to Fox News:
A California congressman is introducing articles of impeachment against President Trump on Thursday -- the first day of the new Democratic majority in the House.
Rep. Brad Sherman is reintroducing the impeachment articles that he first filed in 2017 with Democratic co-sponsor Rep. Al Green of Texas, a spokesman said.
“He will be introducing the same articles he introduced last year once the House is in session this afternoon,” Sherman spokesman Shane Seaver told Fox News.
The move is one of several indications that despite the go-slow approach of Democratic leadership, some in the rank-and-file will be eager to launch impeachment proceedings now that they're in the majority. A Detroit Free Press op-ed co-authored by incoming Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib, of Michigan, said the House does not need to wait for the outcome of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe "before moving forward now with an inquiry in the U.S. House of Representatives on whether the president has committed impeachable 'high crimes and misdemeanors' against the state: abuse of power and abuse of the public trust."
A measure failed in the previous Congress and even failed to gain Democrat support. Democrat leadership have yet to commit to pursuing impeachment.
1c) The Immorality of Illegal Immigration
New House majority leader Nancy Pelosi reportedly spent the holidays at the Fairmont Orchid on Kona, contemplating future climate-change legislation and still adamant in opposing the supposed vanity border wall.
But in a very different real world from the Fairmont Orchid or Pacific Heights, other people each day deal with the results of open borders and sanctuary jurisdictions. The results are often nihilistic and horrific. Here in California’s Central Valley over the holidays we were reminded of the wages of illegal immigration in general — and of California’s sanctuary-city laws in particular, which restrict formal cooperation between local and state law enforcement with federal immigration authorities in matters of deporting illegal aliens under detention.
In the first case, one Gustavo Garcia, a previously deported 36-year-old illegal alien, murdered a 51-year-old Visalia resident on December 17, gratuitously shooting his random victim, Rocky Jones, at a gas station. He apparently had been arrested two days prior and released.
Garcia entered the U.S. illegally in 1998 and was deported for a second time in 2014. He has been charged with at least three immigration violations since illegally returning to the U.S., and has been a convicted felon since at least 2002 for assaults with a deadly weapon, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, possession of a controlled substance, etc. In addition to the murder of Jones, Garcia shot a farmworker who was on a ladder working, and followed a woman to her car at a Motel 6 and shot her too. At the beginning of his violent spree, he seems also to have murdered Rolando Soto, 38, of nearby Lindsay.
Indeed, Garcia was a suspect in a number of prior shootings and thefts. During his final rampage, inter alia, Garcia tried to shoot his ex-girlfriend, then stole a truck from farmworkers and led police on a chase, deliberately veering into opposing traffic, and by intent injuring four more innocents, one critically. During the chase, he fired on police, who returned fire, before Garcia finally wrecked the stolen vehicle and perished in the crash.
The local sheriff of Tulare County, in understated fashion, labeled Garcia’s violent spasm of shootings and car wrecks a “reign of terror.” Garcia had an accomplice who is still at large.
Local law enforcement blamed state sanctuary restrictions on their inability to notify ICE that the felonious illegal alien Garcia was about to be released among the general public. Or as the sheriff put it, “Gustavo Garcia would have been turned over to ICE officials. That’s how we’ve always done it, day in and day out. But after SB 54, we no longer have the power to do that. Under the new state law, we must have a ‘federally signed warrant’ in order to do that. We didn’t honor the detainer because state law doesn’t allow us to.
Less than two weeks later, there was yet another example of Central Valley illegal-immigration mayhem. To the north in Newman, another twice-deported illegal alien, Gustavo Perez Arriaga (he apparently had a number of aliases), stands accused of shooting and killing Newman policeman Ronil Singh, who pulled him over on suspicion of drunk driving (Arriaga also had two prior DUIs).
Arriaga fled after murdering Officer Singh and evaded law enforcement for a few days thanks to at least seven enablers (brothers, girlfriend, friends, etc.), some of them confirmed also to be illegal aliens. They either gave police officials false information about Arriaga’s whereabouts or helped him on his planned flight to Mexico, finally aborted 200 miles to the south near Bakersfield.
The suspect’s brother, 25-year-old Adrian Virgen, and a co-worker, 32-year-old Erik Razo Quiroz, were arrested on “accessory after the fact” charges for attempting to protect Arriaga. Authorities report both men are also in the country illegally. Arriaga was at large for five days, also in part because he had so many fake identities and aliases that no one knew really who he was.
Stanislaus County sheriff Adam Christianson noted that SB54 prevents departments “from sharing any information with ICE about this criminal gang member.” He added, “this is a criminal illegal alien with prior criminal activity that should have been reported to ICE.”
Christianson finished, “Law enforcement was prohibited because of sanctuary laws and that led to the encounter with Officer Singh. I’m suggesting that the outcome could have been different if law enforcement wasn’t restricted, prohibited or had their hands tied because of political interference.”
These incidents, and less violent ones like them, are not all that rare in rural California. The narratives are tragically similar and hinge on our society’s assumptions of tolerance and its belief that entering and residing illegally in the United States are not really crimes. Fraudulent identification and fake names are not really felonious behaviors.
Driving under the influence is no reason for deportation — all crimes that can ruin careers and have expensive consequences for citizens.
Statisticians argue that immigrants commit fewer crimes than the native born, but never quite calibrate illegal immigrants into the equation (in part because no one has any idea who, where, or how many they are, as estimates range from 11 to 20 million) or note that second-generation native-born children of immigrants have much higher violent-crime rates than do their immigrant parents, and in circular fashion add to the general pool of violent Americans who then are used to contrast immigrants as less violent.
We should redefine the entire morality of multifaceted illegal immigration.
Immorality is undermining, in Confederate fashion, federal law, and normalizing exemptions that allow felons such as Garcia and Arriaga to wreak havoc on the innocent and defenseless. Too often the architects of open borders and sanctuary jurisdictions are not on the front lines where the vulnerable suffer the all-too-real consequences of distant others, who can rely on their own far greater safety nets when their grand abstractions become all too concrete.
And, finally, we forget that so often the victims of illegal aliens are (in California where one in four residents was not born in the U.S.) legal immigrants like officer Singh, and members of the Hispanic community like the late Mr. Soto. Polls show that support for open borders is not popular and most Americans want an end to illegal immigration and catch and release, as well as stricter enforcement of current federal immigration laws.
1d) Kamala Harris’s Dark Knights
The Editorial Board.
Does the Senator think Al Smith and JFK were extremists?
We’re still a year from the 2020 presidential primaries, but Senator Kamala Harris is already showing America how far the Democratic Party has strayed from its roots.
Democrats rightly take pride in the 1928 nomination of Gov. Al Smith, which signaled the party’s affirmation that Catholics had a place in American public life. Ditto for Jack Kennedy, who told a gathering of skeptical Protestant ministers in 1960 that “if this election is decided on the basis that 40 million Americans lost their chance of being president on the day they were baptized, then it is the whole nation that will be the loser.”
Judging from the questions Sens. Kamala Harris (Calif.) and Mazie Hirono (Hawaii) put to Donald Trump’s nominee for a federal district court in Nebraska, today’s Democrats would call Smith and Kennedy extremists. Nominee Brian Buescher is a member of the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization Sen. Hirono says holds “a number of extreme positions,” particularly on same-sex marriage and abortion.
Sen. Harris also criticized the “all-male society” and anti-abortion statements made by the leader of the Knights, Carl Anderson. Mr. Buescher said in response he would as a judge uphold precedent by both the Supreme Court and the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, including Roe v. Wade. But the grilling makes clear these Democrats regard membership in the Catholic organization as disqualifying.
For the record, the Knights take the same position as the Catholic Church. JFK was himself a Knight. If Mr. Buescher is unfit to serve as a federal judge because of his Knights membership, then so is every other Catholic American who doesn’t publicly repudiate the church’s moral teaching.
The argument against Mr. Buescher fits a distressing pattern. No longer is it necessary to engage the political merits of a position, or—in the case of a judicial nominee—demonstrate he’d use personal views to override the law. Today it is enough to label a nominee’s religion or associations “extreme” and use that to try to banish him from public life. Recall last year when President Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein told the Notre Dame law professor that “the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern.”
By the way, the Knights do extraordinary charitable work. The local D.C. chapter puckishly responded by assuring the Senators they are not extremists—and inviting both to join them for the annual Polar Plunge in February, when folks jump in cold water to raise money for the Special Olympics.
Ms. Harris’s embrace of religious intolerance is especially significant because in two years she could be the next U.S. President. What does it say about today’s Democrats that no one in the party of Al Smith and JFK sees fit to rebuke her?
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2) Romney's Harsh Trump Critique Shows Why He Lost To Obama In 2012
Investor's Business Daily
Unmentioned by Romney in his anti-Trump screed, however, is the character of those in Congress and in the government itself that have used positions of privilege to both sabotage Trump's presidency and, ultimately, seek his ouster.
Deep-State Democrats
Doesn't the actual attempted subversion of Americans' democratic will expressed through the ballot box by the Democratic Party and their corrupt deep-state allies — former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA chief John Brennan, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and oh so many others — reveal a far-more serious character problem?
Romney did have a few grudging compliments for Trump: "He was right to align U.S. corporate taxes with those of global competitors, to strip out excessive regulations, to crack down on China's unfair trade practices, to reform criminal justice and to appoint conservative judges."
Yes? In less than two years, Trump accomplished more than President Obama did in eight. And Obama's two signature policies, ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank, were both failures. Strangely, Romney can't bring himself to utter word one of criticism for our former chief executive, the most far-left president in our nation's history.
As a matter of record, we haven't always agreed with everything Trump does, or the way he does it. But that's not at issue here. What's at issue is a newly elected Republican senator has used a plainly anti-Trump newspaper to trash a sitting U.S. president. You might think Romney would wait until he himself had done something in the Senate.
Romney Joins Never-Trumpers
We have little doubt that Romney is using this moment to declare himself the de facto senatorial leader of the Never-Trump wing of the Republican Party. But to what end?
In his ill-considered op-ed, he promises to "speak out against significant statements or actions (by Trump) that are divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest or destructive to democratic institutions." In short, he'll join the other Trump-haters in his own party in dumping on Trump every time he opens his mouth or tweets something indelicate. Which, we admit, is a lot.
If we had to make a wild guess, it would be that this is a marker: Romney thinks he can run against a sitting president, Trump, in the primaries and unseat him. Then he'll get a second bite at the apple, without having to face the formidable Obama campaign.
We would say this to the new senator from Utah: You, and others like you in the GOP who promise conservatism but rarely deliver, are the big reason why Trump got elected in the first place. Americans were tired of empty suits at the top, and wanted someone who, however crude his manner, would act.
That's what the current impasse over the border wall is all about.
Just Another Brick In The Wall
We have little doubt that most of the other Republicans who have presidential aspirations would have rolled over by now to the Democrats on the measly $5.6 billion Trump's asking to build the wall. After all, the thing GOP members seem to fear most is seeming "mean." Our border security should be paramount, yet it's always subordinated to craven politics.
This is one of the peculiar elements of the Republican Party. Whenever it's on the verge of major success, it forms a circular firing squad and fires on its own. It can't help itself. And the Democrats, after lauding Republicans for betraying their own principles, stand to the side and laugh.
Romney's a classic case. An admirable executive, philanthropist and businessman, he has been a mediocre politician. He seems not to understand that conservatism defines his party of choice, the Republican Party — just as today increasingly extreme leftism defines the Democratic Party.
One could consider his time as governor of Massachusetts as successful — for a Democrat. He signed "Romneycare" into law in the state, an early precursor of ObamaCare. He embraced cap-and-trade as a solution for global warming, and as president would have done far worse.
'A Choice Not An Echo'
And, as Stephen Hayward notes at the Powerline blog, Romney "appointed the egregious Gina McCarthy (Obama's second EPA administrator) to be his environmental adviser." That's downright scary.
Romney's a Republican by registration, yes, but not much of a conservative.
Fifty-five years ago, conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly wrote a self-published a book, "A Choice Not An Echo." In it, she said the GOP's presidential candidates needed to stand for conservative ideas to win elections.
In 2016, that's exactly what happened. President Trump ran one of the most conservative campaigns in decades. Contrary to all the pundits' predictions, beat Hillary Clinton to become president.
Like him or not, Trump has been a promise-keeper. Even the Post admitted Trump kept more of his promises in just two years that Obama did in eight. Romney just provided Trump's worst enemies with more ammunition to sink his presidency. Quite a start to his senatorial career.
2a) Romney’s Reproach
The Editorial Board
Attacking Trump’s character is easy. How about defending trade?
Does Mitt Romney plan to run against Donald Trump for the GOP presidential nomination in 2020? That’s a fair speculation after the soon-to-be Senator from Utah blasted the President on Wednesday in an op-ed in the Washington Post, a leading publication of the anti-Trump resistance.
Mr. Trump “has not risen to the mantle of the office,” the 2012 GOP presidential nominee averred in an assault on the President’s character. He hit all the familiar points about Mr. Trump’s polarizing political style, his dishonesty, his “abandonment of allies,” and dismissal of talented appointees for lesser lights.
None of those criticisms will surprise readers of these columns, and Mr. Romney hit a particular nerve by noting Mr. Trump’s December “descent.” The departure of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis after Mr. Trump’s abrupt withdrawal from Syria, the President’s flip-flops on a government shutdown, and a torrent of defensive Twitter rants has many Republicans who have so far stuck with Mr. Trump wondering if he’s in a downward dive.
Mr. Romney is setting himself up as an alternative in 2020 if that trend continues. No one knows what Special Counsel Robert Mueller will produce, and impeachment is possible. The daily high-wire tension of the Trump Presidency makes for constant theater but is tiring. Democrats could do worse than nominate a candidate who promises a return to presidential normalcy, and many Republicans may feel the same as the New Hampshire primary approaches next year.
Mr. Romney said Wednesday he won’t run for President again, but don’t be so sure. Some Republican is going to run against Mr. Trump in 2020, even if it’s a nearly impossible mission. There’s also a chance that Mr. Trump might not run again if he looks like a loser.
Yet note that Mr. Romney found almost no fault with Mr. Trump’s agenda in his op-ed indictment. He praised tax reform, deregulation, conservative judges, even trade policy toward China. This is why Mr. Trump retains the support of most Republicans in most polls. Could Mr. Romney defeat Mr. Trump on character alone?
If Mr. Romney really wants to stand for principle, here’s a suggestion: Join Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander in trying to restrain the President’s ability to impose tariffs nearly at will under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act. Mr. Trump has defined “national security” so broadly under the statute that he is holding tariffs over the head of every U.S. trading partner even when he’s signed a new trade deal as he has with Mexico and Canada.
This would require Mr. Romney to show character of his own because trade protectionism is popular even in some GOP quarters. But he could also rally Senators who dislike the 232 tariffs but are afraid to speak up. Win or lose, principled opposition on trade would count for more than op-ed declarations.
2b)
2b)
Romney As The GOP Alternative To Trump Is Not Happening
Mitt Romney is a nice guy. In fact, he is a very nice guy. He would have been a good President who would have made a lot of decisions that I disagreed with and a lot I would have agreed with. He'd have no more reduced the size of the government than Trump has, would not have started a trade war or crapped on our allies, would have pushed tax reform, but would have probably abandoned Brett Kavanaugh pretty quickly and arguably would not have fought as hard overall for the judges Trump has back. Under Romney or Trump, we'd be where we are with Obamacare. In terms of policy, Romney would not be much different from Trump except on trade and allied relations and, more importantly, Trump won and Romney lost.
Romney is level-headed and even-keeled and he thinks character counts. What he said about Donald Trump was right and most of the people screaming loudly
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