The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Surrender Without a Fight?

Posted on | May 31, 2016 | 94 Comments

“Americans traditionally love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle. . . . Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. . . . Because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans.”
— Gen. George S. Patton, 1944

Today, there is encouraging news for Republicans. The latest NBC tracking poll shows Donald Trump closing in on Hillary Clinton:

While Clinton is looking to wrap up the Democratic nomination with a strong performance in the final group of states on June 7, her advantage in a hypothetical matchup against the Republican nominee has dwindled by the week. Over the last seven days, Clinton led Trump 47 percent to 45 percent, with the Manhattan businessman drawing 2 points closer since the last weekly survey.

This is mirrored in the Real Clear Politics poll average, where Clinton led by 10 points six weeks ago in mid-April, but is now just a single point ahead of Trump. This is encouraging news, I say, if you are a Republican who considers it imperative to defeat the Democrats. On the other hand, if you are a disgruntled intellectual like David Frum, Trump’s impressive success is a threat to all that is good and holy:

The television networks that promoted Trump; the primary voters who elevated him; the politicians who eventually surrendered to him; the intellectuals who argued for him, and the donors who, however grudgingly, wrote checks to him—all of them knew, by the time they made their decisions, that Trump lied all the time, about everything. They knew that Trump was ignorant, and coarse, and boastful, and cruel. They knew he habitually sympathized with dictators and kleptocrats—and that his instinct when confronted with criticism of himself was to attack, vilify, and suppress. They knew his disrespect for women, the disabled, and ethnic and religious minorities. They knew that he wished to unravel NATO and other U.S.-led alliances, and that he speculated aloud about partial default on American financial obligations. None of that dissuaded or deterred them.  . . .

You can read the whole thing, if you’re into that kind of totally demoralizing Voice-of-Doom trip. David Frum hates Donald Trump about as much as does former Hillary adviser Alec Ross, who called Trump “a vulgar, demented, pig demon.” There is a bipartisan consensus against Trump among the decadent intellectual elite, while among the electorate — you know, the actual citizens of America who elect presidents — there is a bipartisan consensus that we need to stop listening to the intellectual elite. It seems a substantial segment of the electorate have decided that the “experts” got us into this mess, and so to hell with the experts.

Is it my job to tell the America people they’re wrong? No, because I actually agree with this anti-elite consensus and the fact that the chosen messenger, Donald Trump, is far from ideal in many ways does not alter the basic politica goal, i.e., defeat the Democrat Party.

We must fight the war we are actually in with the army we actually have.

Now is not the time — scarcely five months before Election Day — to sit around bemoaning the accumulated problems of the GOP political apparatus that made it impossible for conservatives to nominate some other candidate that they might have preferred over Trump.

Honestly, a year ago, it seemed to me that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was the man to beat, but he didn’t catch fire in the early debates and was the first candidate to quit the primary race. So much for my own “expert” opinion, I suppose. When he quit the campaign, Walker urged others in the crowded primary field to emulate his example, in order to unite behind a non-Trump candidate. Yet 11 candidates went all the way to the Iowa caucus in February, with eight candidates (Ben Carson, Rand Paul, Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, John Kasich, Mike Huckabee, Chris Christie and Rick Santorum) divvying up about 25% of the vote, which might otherwise have gone to either Ted Cruz (who narrowly won Iowa) or Marco Rubio, who placed third in the caucuses. How different might the outcome of the primary campaign have been, if Cruz had won Iowa more decisively and Rubio had finished second, with Trump third? I don’t know, but nearly three weeks later, when Trump decisively won the Feb. 20 South Carolina, only five other candidates (Rubio, Cruz, Bush, Kasich and Carson) were still running, and defeat in South Carolina ended the campaigns of Bush and Carson.

Could this winnowing of the GOP field have been done much earlier? Yes, but do you think any of the consultants and campaign operatives on the payrolls of Team Bush — which raised $162 million — were going to tell Jeb that his candidacy was a waste of time and money? Or what about the various political “experts” hired by the campaigns of Carson, Kasich, Christie, Fiorina, Rick Perry and Bobby Jindal who between them raised a combined total of more than $200 million? Wasted money, wasted time, and nothing meaningful to show for it. All in all, about $400 million was squandered on the ultimately futile campaigns of Republican candidates who didn’t make it past South Carolina, and did anyone seriously believe John Kasich’s extended candidacy could help stop Trump in the much-talked-about “brokered convention” scenario?

Well, all that is now decisively over, and Bill Kristol is now publicly fantasizing about a third-party candidate — an idea perhaps slightly less realistic than a teenage boy’s wet dreams about Kate Upton.

Simple question: Do we want to beat Hillary, or not?

It is evident from the polls that Donald Trump can beat Hillary, and if some of our conservative pundit friends can get over their hurt feelings over their failures in the GOP primary campaign, maybe Trump will beat Hillary. But if we wake up the morning after Election Day and find that Hillary Clinton has been elected president because some disgruntled Republican “strategist” types didn’t do all they could to help beat Hillary, there is going to be hell to pay. The very thought of losing is hateful to Americans, and a victory for Hillary is a defeat for America.

Let’s win this thing.





 


Category: Donald Trump, Election, Hillary Clinton, Polls

Comments

94 Responses to “Surrender Without a Fight?”

  1. SouthOhioGipper
    May 31st, 2016 @ 11:56 pm

    I was just behind a car the other day that had a bumper sticker of skull and cross bones that said “Flouride: There is poison in the water” I was flabbergasted because this was a conspiracy theory made fun of in Dr. Strangelove 50 years ago and here it is getting a resurgence not just on the right. But from green “natural purity” leftists! The political spectrum really is a horseshoe!

  2. Lemuel Vargas
    June 1st, 2016 @ 12:11 am

    If they are afraid of the Donald, so much the better because they will have this doubt that the Donald will do something to them if they will do the wrong thing. W/c will make them do the right thing.

    Think almost all the commenters here are anti-Trump. Maybe you have not read his policies. Here it is:

    https://www.donaldjtrump.com/ go to “positions” to see his policies. Hope this removes all your blinders about the Donald.

  3. Lemuel Vargas
    June 1st, 2016 @ 12:13 am

    To me, the way he raised his children (nobody went on a destructive rebellion phase like the rest of the billionaires), tell me much about his character.

  4. Lemuel Vargas
    June 1st, 2016 @ 12:17 am

    Remember that almost all the leaders from antiquity has shown signs of egotism.

  5. Lemuel Vargas
    June 1st, 2016 @ 12:18 am

    So you would rather have Hillary “empathize w/ the enemy” Clinton as POTUS…We will be doubly doomed…

  6. Lemuel Vargas
    June 1st, 2016 @ 12:23 am

    Well, those politicians will promise everything under the sun and once elected, will do the bidding of the vested interests that propelled them to victory. Would you want those kinds of politicians to run our country?

  7. Lemuel Vargas
    June 1st, 2016 @ 12:25 am

    And, after his (Sander’s) term, we will be much closer as to what is happening in Valenzuela.

  8. Finrod Felagund
    June 1st, 2016 @ 2:13 am

    Stacy, how can you support a liar like Donald Trump? Here are 101 of his lies and this list barely scratches the surface of the man’s mendacity:

    http://www.dailywire.com/news/4834/trumps-101-lies-hank-berrien

    I shouldn’t have to remind you what the Good Book says happens to all liars.

    #NeverTrump
    #NeverHillary

  9. Lemuel Vargas
    June 1st, 2016 @ 2:25 am

    As with almost all the politicians.

  10. thesickmanofeurope_com
    June 1st, 2016 @ 2:44 am

    Why do you care what Progressives do? And why do you care if they blame you (If you are a MASCULINE MAN they will always blame you anyway!)?
    Perhaps you should STOP caring of what White Knights, Cuckservatives, Closet SJW/liberals/feminists (like some of the “MEN” MALES posting here think?

  11. Finrod Felagund
    June 1st, 2016 @ 2:44 am

    No. I’m not going to let you get away with that bullshit equivalence argument, not when we had a good man like Ted Cruz running. You can make a reasonable case that Hillary Clinton is as big a liar as Donald Trump, but there are still good men running for office occasionally, and Donald Trump is far from being one of them.

  12. Finrod Felagund
    June 1st, 2016 @ 2:46 am

    There is no functional difference in rhetoric between you and the Progressives, idiot Alex Jones troll.

  13. Finrod Felagund
    June 1st, 2016 @ 2:47 am

    Trumpbots can’t make it through a single comment without lying their face off.

  14. Finrod Felagund
    June 1st, 2016 @ 2:51 am

    Stacy, here is how Donald Trump treated the beauty pageant contestants in the various beauty pageants that he ran. Would you let any of your daughters associate with a man like that? If not, why are you supporting him for President?

    https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2016/04/16/trump/P6jVWXAzaG12Ou5dPXYCDL/story.html

  15. thesickmanofeurope_com
    June 1st, 2016 @ 2:52 am

    “There is no functional difference in rhetoric between you and the Progressives, idiot Alex Jones troll.”

    So says the guy that called me a Alex Jones troll…..Are you going to call me a Racist, Islamophobe, Rape Apologist and Misogynist next?
    Wait….You already did!

  16. Finrod Felagund
    June 1st, 2016 @ 2:55 am

    You support a man who is all of that, fool.

  17. Finrod Felagund
    June 1st, 2016 @ 2:59 am

    Donald Trump has no interest at all in restoring constitutional order, Stacy.

  18. thesickmanofeurope_com
    June 1st, 2016 @ 3:11 am

    I’m breaking my own rules to NEVER argue with White Knights, Cuckservatives, Closet SJW/liberals/feminists……
    So here is my last word for you and your girlfriends here……
    Trump WILL be the next POTUS.
    GET OVER IT!
    If your butt hurts too much…. Canada (or Mexico) is your next move.

  19. Finrod Felagund
    June 1st, 2016 @ 3:15 am

    Blow me, idiot Trumpbot. Trump will lose to Hillary and it will be your fault for getting the Orange Blowhard nominated, the one candidate running that’s worse than her.

    Go crawl back to your Alex Jones forums and whine about how those mean conservatives won’t support your Orange Messiah.

  20. Tom
    June 1st, 2016 @ 6:54 am

    Having a big ego is not the same as narcissism, never mind pathological narcissism.

  21. Tom
    June 1st, 2016 @ 6:57 am

    Oh, please. First, name those “rest of the billionaires” and the children that supposedly went on destructive rebellions. Specifics, please.
    Second, you have no idea how direct a role Trump played in the raising of his children. They were most likely raised by nannies and babysitters. And that does not excuse the incessant lying, bullying, misogyny, naked greed, and mocking of the disabled that Trump engages in.

  22. Bob Belvedere
    June 1st, 2016 @ 6:58 am

    I’m with Jeff Goldstein:
    http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=58440
    http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=58521

    A few weeks ago, after 36 years, I resigned from the GOP.

  23. Tom
    June 1st, 2016 @ 7:00 am

    Reagan and H.W. Bush. I will not even mention the Cheeto-dusted carnival barker in the same sentence.

  24. Tom
    June 1st, 2016 @ 7:01 am

    You’d think with the money he supposedly has that he’d be able to get a better spray tan.

  25. Rhino ?
    June 1st, 2016 @ 7:37 am

    Newsflash: Ted Cruz is not running for president.

  26. Rhino ?
    June 1st, 2016 @ 7:39 am

    Keeping majorities is not the goal of politics, implementing policies is. Cf., democrats and obamacare, they passed their policy despite knowing they would lose their majority over it while republican politicians would never risk losing office.

  27. Trespassers W
    June 1st, 2016 @ 9:21 am

    The outcome of the election is in God’s hands. But I know that I will one day stand before him to answer for all my deeds, including who I cast my ballot for. I do not want to try to explain why I voted for a dishonorable, dishonest, bullying, narcissistic, crony capitalist.

    #nevertrump

  28. Quartermaster
    June 1st, 2016 @ 9:50 am

    There are people to whom the “C” word applies, but none of them reside here. You’ll find them in the House, The Senate, NRO, and anywhere else the GOPe congregates.

  29. Quartermaster
    June 1st, 2016 @ 9:53 am

    By reading the Birchers out, Buckley made a very serious mistake. That’s assuming Buckley had the welfare of the Conservative movement at heart. There is much evidence, however, that he did not. A number of Reagan appointees I have met had no use for him, applying the term “respectable” before conservative as it applied to him. Given what I have seen in NR since 1989, I’ve come to agree with them, and have a very low opinion of Buckley and especially those in whose hands he left NR.

  30. Quartermaster
    June 1st, 2016 @ 9:55 am

    There is much evidence that drinking fluoride is not a good idea. Much has been discovered since the 60s. Fluoridating water isn’t a NWO conspiracy, but it does not have quite the benefits claimed for it.

  31. SouthOhioGipper
    June 1st, 2016 @ 10:29 am

    All the evidence I need is right here in this pdf put out by the CDC and I see no reason not to trust it.

    http://www.cdc.gov/fluoridation/pdf/statement-cwf-6-8-2015.pdf

  32. M. Thompson
    June 1st, 2016 @ 10:29 am

    Interesting point here. It bears to watch.

    As for me, my voting decision will most likely be made shortly before November 8th.

  33. Quartermaster
    June 1st, 2016 @ 11:52 am

    That’s your choice to believe what you will.

  34. Greg
    June 1st, 2016 @ 2:36 pm

    Hillary is a far worse narcissist than Trump is. And she would definitely lead us down the tubes.

  35. Finrod Felagund
    June 1st, 2016 @ 3:02 pm

    Because fools like you supported the Orange Charlatan.

  36. Finrod Felagund
    June 1st, 2016 @ 3:03 pm

    The GOP has a hard enough time implementing anything being in the majority, much less the minority that Trump is going to cause.

  37. Rhino ?
    June 1st, 2016 @ 4:02 pm

    So you’re fully in favor for continuing lose even when we win.

  38. Finrod Felagund
    June 1st, 2016 @ 5:55 pm

    Donald Trump is a Democrat running as a Republican. I don’t count his election as a win.

  39. Daniel Freeman
    June 1st, 2016 @ 9:40 pm

    Trump is a deeply flawed candidate, and I don’t care. He’s already given a master class in how to win, how to defy political correctness, how to control the game by reframing the axis of conflict (nationalist-globalist instead of left-right or libertarian-authoritarian).

    I’m an optimist. I think he’ll do some good things. But I would vote for him just to spite the effete elites that he is driving so crazy, let alone to defeat that haggard, crooked witch, Hillary Clinton.

  40. Glenna Wood
    June 2nd, 2016 @ 1:24 am

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    two days ago grey McLaren. P1 I bought after earning 18,512 Dollars..it was my previous month’s payout..just a little over.17k Dollars Last month..3-5 hours job a day…with weekly payouts..it’s realy the simplest. job I have ever Do.. I Joined This 7 months. ago. and now making over hourly. 87 Dollars…Learn. More right Here !tr450u:?:?:.?.?.?.? http://GlobalSuperJobsReportsEmploymentsGateGetPay$98Hour…. .????????????????????????????????????????????????????::::::!tr450o….,..

  41. NCMountainGirl
    June 2nd, 2016 @ 7:57 am

    Been active in Conservative politics for almost 40 years and I will never vote for Trump for the same reasons I never voted for other nominal Republicans over the years. Trump is a morally degenerate con man who plays footsie with racists. The only argument being made for him is that he is not Hillary. Sorry, that isn’t good enough to earn my vote,

    Between Hillary’s blunders and Trump’s bluster I find I am indifferent:Both paths lead to oblivion.

  42. @ImaCarNow
    June 2nd, 2016 @ 9:53 am

    People who want to “win at all costs” need to consider what the phrase “all costs” actually means. The signers of the Declaration knew what it meant, and most of them ended up experiencing it. They craved liberty and they knew it’s source. After more than two centuries of diminishing appreciation for the bounty of their sacrifice, we are awash in a dismal sea of charlatans and thieves who treat it like a punchline or toilet paper. A pox on all their houses.

  43. ajpwriter
    June 2nd, 2016 @ 10:22 am

    Stacy, I’ve held my nose since 1996, when I voted ancient Bob Dole, for no other reason than he was not Bill Clinton. I’ve been a good little GOP voter, grumbling time and time again about the weak candidates they’ve thrown up, but getting in line on election day.

    I’m tired of it. Plumb tired. I’m tired of my vote – primary or general – not mattering. I live in Maryland. Neither the primary nor the general is ever close. Holding my nose serves no purpose.

    So the hell with Donald Trump. At least with Romney, I knew what I was getting – a centrist, middle-of-the-road man of the Dewey and Rockefeller tradition. What is Trump? I can’t know with any surety. I’m not going to commit myself to the hope that the Caudilla will be averted, only to watch it all go down in flames as Pennsylvania fool’s gold again proves false. Or to see him win, and then watch him betray everything he’s claimed to be for. One Cult Presidency per generation is more than enough.

    Gary Johnson 2016. I’ll still vote GOP in the downticket races, as I still have a GOP congresscritter, for whatever that’s worth. And if Trump wins and proves in any way useful, I’ll vote to re-elect in 2020. But for now? My vote is mine, and the GOP is not entitled to it. When they want it, they can come earn it.

  44. FMJRA 2.0: D-Day : The Other McCain
    June 4th, 2016 @ 8:14 pm

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