Tag: Republicans

Sanford Announces Presidential Bid

The Portly Politico3 Comments

Former South Carolina Governor and Congressman for SC-1, Mark Sanford, announced Sunday that he is seeking the Republican presidential nomination in 2020 against incumbent President Donald Trump.  When Fox News host Chris Wallace asked Sanford why, he said that “We need to have a conversation on what it means to be a Republican.”

Sanford’s ostensible desire is to draw attention to America’s massive national debt, and our political unwillingness to address the ever-expanding, elephantine gorilla in the room.  But as local radio personality and former Lieutenant Governor Ken Ard said on his show this morning, Sanford is shining a bright light on himself as much as he is on the national debt.

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TBT: [Four] Years of Excellence

The Portly Politico1 Comment

President Trump officially kicked off his 2020 reelection campaign earlier this week, and it’s been almost exactly one year since the post below.  I’ve been quite impressed with President Trump, who has governed far more conservatively than I and many other conservatives could have ever hoped.  While there is still much to be done on immigration—border crossings have accelerated due to misguided progressive policies that encourage child trafficking—and the wall seems to be more an abstraction than a concrete reality, Trump has slashed taxes, created jobs, and strengthened national security.

Trump has also stacked the federal courts with conservative-leaning judges and justices.  And that’s in the face of progressive aggression and Deep State coup attempts.

His record speaks for itself.  President Trump has taken the reins of the Republican Party and has done much to shore up the Republic.  Here’s looking to four more years—and to Keeping America Great!

Father’s Day—16 June 2018—marked three years since President Donald Trump’s now-legendary descent down the golden escalator at Trump Tower, following by his controversial but true-to-form announcement that he would be seeking the Republican Party’s nomination for President.

I was, initially, a Trump skeptic, and I voted for Texas Senator Ted Cruz in the South Carolina primaries the following February.  When Trump first announced, I wrote him off—as so many others—as a joke.  I appreciated his boldness on immigration, but I still thought the PC Police and the campus Social Justice Warriors were firmly in control of the culture, and that no one could speak hard truths.

I also remembered his brief flirtation with running in 2012, and thought this was just another episode in what I learned was a long history of Trump considering a presidential bid.  At the South Carolina Republican Party’s state convention earlier in 2015, I asked two young men working on Trump’s pre-campaign (this was before The Announcement) if he was reallyserious this time.  The two of them—they looked like the well-coifed dreamboat vampires from the Twilight franchise—both assured me that Trump was for real, and I left with some Trump stickers more skeptical than ever (note, too, that this was before the distinctive but simple red, white, and blue “Trump” lawn signs, and definitely before the ubiquitous “Make America Great Again” hats).

I even briefly—briefly!—considered not voting for Trump, thinking that he was not a “real” conservative.  I still don’t think he’s a conservative in the way, say, that a National Review columnist is (although, the way they’ve gotten so noodle-wristed lately, that’s a good thing; I’ve just about lost all respect for David French’s hand-wringing, and Kevin Williamson went off the deep-end), but rather—as Newt Gingrich would put it—an “anti-Leftist.”  That’s more than enough for me.

But my conversion to Trump came only belatedly.  I can still find a notebook of notes from church sermons in which I wrote, “Ted Cruz won the Wyoming primary.  Thank God!” in the margins.

Then something happened—something I predicted would happen on the old TPP site—and I couldn’t get enough of the guy.  It wasn’t a “road to Damascus” epiphany.  I started listening to his speeches.  I read up on his brilliant immigration plan (why haven’t we taxed remittances yet?).  I stopped taking him literally, and began taking him seriously.

And I noticed it happening in others all around me.  Friends who had once disdained the Republican Party were coming around on Trump.  Sure, it helped that Secretary Hillary Clinton was a sleazebag suffused with the filth of grasping careerism and political chicanery.  But more than being a vote against Hillary, my vote—and the vote of millions of other Americans—became a vote for Trump—and for reform.

Trump made politics interesting again, too, not just because he said outrageous stuff on live television (I attended his rally in Florence, South Carolina before the SC primaries, and I could feel his charisma from 200 feet away; it was like attending a rock concert).  Rather, Trump busted wide open the political orthodoxy that dominated both political parties at the expense of the American people.

Take trade, for example.  Since World War II, both Democrats and Republicans have unquestioningly supported free trade.  Along comes Trump, and suddenly we’re having serious debates again about whether or not some tariffs might be beneficial—that maybe it’s worth paying a little more for a stove or plastic knick-knacks if it means employing more Americans.

That’s not even to mention Trump’s legacy on immigration—probably the most pressing issue of our time, and one about which I will write at greater length another time.

Regardless, after over 500 days in office, the record speaks for itself:  lower taxes, fewer regulations, greater economic growth, greater security abroad.  At this point, the only reasons I can see why anyone would hate Trump are either a.) he’s disrupting their sweet government job and/or bennies; b.) they don’t like his rhetorical style, and can’t get past it (the Jonah Goldbergite “Never Trumpers”—a dying breed—fall into this group); or c.) they’re radical Cultural Marxists who recognize a natural foe.  Folks in “Option B” are probably the most common, but they’re too focused on rhetoric and “decorum”—who cares if he’s mean to Justin Trudeau if he gets results?  The folks in “Option C” are willfully ignorant, evil, or blinded by indoctrination.

As the IG report from last Thursday revealed—even if it wouldn’t come out and say it—the Deep State is very, very real.  That there were elements within the FBI willing to use extralegal means to disrupt the Trump campaign—and, one has to believe, to destroy the Trump presidency—suggests that our delicate system of checks and balances has been undermined by an out-of-control, unelected federal bureaucracy.  Such a dangerous threat to our republic is why we elected Trump.

President Trump, keep draining the swamp.  We’re with you 100%.

More Never Trump Treachery

The Portly Politico3 Comments

In the Culture Wars, the Right struggles with a commitment to principles, decorum, and intellectual honesty.  In every area of life, those qualities are virtues, but in the battle against the progressive Left, those virtues quickly become liabilities.

Nowhere is this handicapping more apparent than on the “Never Trump” Right.  In some cases—think neocon loons Max Boot and Bill Kristol—these figures are not even properly part of the “Right.”  In other cases, they’re effete elites—like George Will—who comprise the “loyal opposition” to the dominant Leftist paradigm.

In still others, the Never Trumpers are overly-literal ideologues who can’t accept anything but 100% ideological purity.  These are the Libertarians or “libertarian Republicans” that love 99% of what Trump has accomplished as president, but can’t abide tariffs or border control.  They point to Trump’s seemingly “authoritarian” rhetoric as evidence that the freedom-loving real estate mogul is not-so-secretly an American Mussolini.

Such is the case with Michigan Congressman Justin Amash, the self-styled “libertarian Republican,” who announced on Twitter that President Trump has committed impeachable offenses (without identifying what those offenses may be).

There are also rumors that Amash might run for president in 2020 as a Libertarian.  Given his tenuous but significant popularity in Michigan, he could siphon away enough votes from President Trump to cost him a crucial State and its electoral votes.

And herein rests the problem with so-called “libertarians” like Amash:  they’re willing to sacrifice the good—in Trump’s case, the overwhelmingly great—for the perfect.  “I can’t have Milton Friedman for President, so I’ll make sure the depraved socialists take office.”

Further, Amash has spent his entire career in politics, with the exception of one year working for his father’s company.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it definitely doesn’t fit with the Randian Übermensch ideal of spergy libertarianism.  Libertarianism works great if you’re shielded completely from the vagaries of the real-world job market.

The most generous interpretation is that Amash sincerely believes that the president’s reactions to the Mueller probe constitute what he calls “impeachable conduct” (never mind that the Constitution doesn’t identify “conduct” as worthy of impeachment, just “high crimes and misdemeanors”).  I can accept that Amash has applied his ideology so rigidly—and his distaste for real political brawlers so completely—that he believes the president should be impeached.

On the other hand, given his utter lack of real-world experience, it could be that Amash is attempting to make a name for himself after he leaves Congress (or gets voted out).  There are a number of Never Trumpers who, I’m convinced, are biding their time.  Should Trump lose in 2020—or when he leaves office in 2025—they look forward to resuming their place atop the political ruling class, getting back to their ineffectual, noodle-wristed “opposition” to official, state-sanctioned Leftism.

Regardless, the Right has no room in its ranks for such traitors (the Great One, Mark Levin, characterized Amash as a “Benedict Arnold against the Constitution“).  Fortunately, Michigan State Representative Jim Lower has announced a primary challenge to Amash.  Here’s hoping Lower lowers Amash a peg or two.

TBT: Six Long Years

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I’m still indulging in the unrealistic decadence of Spring Break’s unlimited freedom.  After a long Wednesday painting, I decided to go with an unorthodox pick for this week’s TBT.  Indeed, I’ve mined out the best of the old TPP blog; pretty soon I’ll be reposting pieces from this iteration of it, what I call “TPP 3.0.”  The benefit of daily posts is that I have a good bit of windbaggery to pull from.

Today’s TBT hearkens back to the dawn of the TPP 2.0 era, when I relaunched the blog after a six- (in reality, a seven-) year hiatus.  I was down on Fripp Island, a place that always seems to get the literary juices flowing.  There’s something about sitting at a dark, wooden desk in a study at the beach that channels some Pat Conroy-esque inspirado.

Anyway, it was there that I decided to do thrice-weekly posts for the duration of the summer.  The posts then were much longer than the average posts now.  These days, I average around 600 words on a post.  In those days, I was churning out 1200-1500 words three times a week.  There’s a reason I started the TBT weekly feature:  I wrote some quality content back in those days.

The post you’re about to read, “Six Long Years,” was a quick set of reflections on the very eventful years that passed from 2010-2016.  The world changed rapidly during the Obama Administration; we often forget how quickly and how much.  I can still remember, vividly, when many States—including deep blue ones!—voted against legalizing same-sex marriage.  Now, even suggesting what was the norm less than ten years ago would be grounds for deplatforming, doxxing, and SJW Twitter (and real) mobs otherwise destroying your life.

Now, even 2016 seems like an eternity ago.  Trump’s election that November was a “through-the-looking-glass” moment.  Who knows what the next six years might hold?

There’s no way to know.  Regardless, here is 2016’s “Six Long Years“:

A lot can happen in six years.

When I last posted on this blog, I announce that Nikki Haley had been elected Governor of South Carolina.

That was November of 2010.  Think about what was going on at that time:

– Democrats still controlled the Senate, but had just lost the House to the rising T.E.A. Party insurgency.

– The Affordable Care Act had been passed, but would not go into effect until 2013 (2014, as it turned out, due to the executive fiat of the Department of Health and Human Services).

– The Great Recession was, from a technically economic standpoint, over, but the much-vaunted Obama recovery was still frustratingly anemic at best, and virtually invisible to many Americans.

– President Barack Obama hadn’t completely divided the country along race, class, and gender lines, and his disastrous foreign policy hadn’t completely crippled American power and prestige abroad.

What a difference six years make.  Here are some highlights:

– Nikki Haley not only began her first gubernatorial term in 2011; she handily won reelection in 2014 in a landslide victory against her 2010 opponent, Vincent Sheheen.  The relatively unknown upstart from Bamberg made good on her promise to grow the State economically.  She guided the state through the horrible Charleston Nine massacre in 2015; adroitly handled the resultant push to remove the Confederate Flag from the Statehouse grounds; and entered VP buzz for the carnival-like 2015-2016 presidential election season.

– The Democrats lost control of the Senate after an unexpected Republican surge in the 2014 midterm elections, which cemented the gains of 2010 and showed Americans’ growing dissatisfaction with the Affordable Care Act in particular and the Obama administration’s equivocating in general.  This victory came despite an unpopular government shut-down (led by the brilliant Senator Ted Cruz of Texas) in 2013 and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s drubbing in the 2012 presidential election.

– Racial wounds that had mostly scabbed over were ripped open once again–this time with the president dumping plenty of salt on them.  Alleged police misconduct in Ferguson, Missouri and beyond brought out protestors in droves… despite the fact that many of these unfortunate events were not racially motivated (although some, such as the death of Eric Garner in New York City, highlighted the perils of excessive force and regulations).  Baltimore caught fire, Ferguson was ablaze, and the big losers were small black business owners who saw their stores looted amid cries for racial and social justice.

– The American college campus, always a training school for Leftist ideologues, became a breeding ground for illiberal Progressives, those who loudly (and sometimes violently) suppressed freedom of speech if such speech was deemed unacceptable or “hateful” (the latter often taking a rather protean definition).  Dovetailing with the rise in identity politics (see the previous bullet point), campus multiculturalism took on a dangerously Balkanized flavor, one that denounced the First Amendment and, in the process, heterosexual white men in favor of a vague commitment to skin-deep “diversity” (unless you’re transgender, in which case you can be whatever you feel like at any given moment).

– Out of all this craziness came the largest, most talented field of Republican presidential hopefuls in the nation’s history.  With seventeen (!) candidates, Republicans were treated to a wealth of talent—but also a great deal of muckraking, mudslinging, and intense political maneuvering.  From this crowded field emerged an unlikely victor:  business mogul Donald J. Trump.  In one of the biggest twists in American political history, a non-ideological, brash, gutsy-but-not-very-detail-oriented, and always-controversial reality television star won the nomination of an increasingly conservative Republican Party.  Put another way, a thrice-married, formerly-pro-Clinton, formerly-pro-choice New Yorker beat out a born-again, pro-life Texan.

Needless to say, it’s been pretty crazy.

With everything that’s happened, I realized that it’s time to get back into this world of political commentary.  The unique character of the 2016 presidential election alone has me salivating (be on the lookout for my brief overview of the 2015-2016 presidential nomination process).  There are so many questions:  what will become of the Republican Party?  Can Trump win the election (for what it’s worth, I think he can)?  Will Hillary manage to hold off socialist Bernie Sanders?  How will Trump and Clinton go after each other?  Should conservatives support Trump, or back a third-party candidate (for reasons I’ll explain in a future post, I’ll say “yes, with some caveats” to the first part and “no” to the second)?  What would a viable third-party candidacy look like—if such a thing is possible?

There’s a lot to talk about.

So, strap in and brace yourself—it’s going to be one heck of a ride.

All the best,

The Portly Politico

Irish Troll

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For Saint Patrick’s Day, the GOP sent out a cheeky tweet of Beto O’Rourke’s mugshot from a DUI incident (the senatorial hopeful tried to flee the scene, but bypassers stopped him from doing so) that occurred when he was 26.  The tweet (embedded below) features O’Rourke sporting a cartoon leprechaun hat and sign board reading “PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY”:

That is some grade-A trolling right there.  John Nolte of Breitbart breaks down the brilliance of the tweet, and why it works on so many levels, viscerally.  He also catalogs the outrage from the Left and the noodle-wristed Establishment/Never Trump “Right.”

In my mind, the tweet succeeds most immediately in two ways:  it highlights O’Rourke’s sordid past, and it draws attention to his lame attempt to Hispanicize himself by going by “Beto” instead of “Robert” (how’s this for an Irish Catholic name:  his real name is Robert Francis O’Rourke).

As Nolte points out, Leftists gleefully roasted George W. Bush for his youthful DUI.  But Bush took the hit, paid his dues to society, and redeemed himself.  Perhaps O’Rourke has made his peace with God about this issue—we can’t know his heart—but he walked away from the DUI scot-free.  The two-tiered justice system that punishes conservatives and lets well-connected libs walk free was at work once again.

One of the more ludicrous criticisms from the Right is that the tweet is “racist.”  Please.  The tweet isn’t suggesting that Irishmen are drunks; it’s suggesting that this particular Irishman actually was.  The only reason they call O’Rourke an “Irishman” in the tweet is, again, because he’s desperately pretending to be another ethnicity to get votes.

It’s the same story with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.  When President Trump calls her “Pocahontas” (he should call her “Fauxcahontas,” but the point remains), he’s not making fun of Native Americans; he’s drawing attention to Warren’s use of (falsified) Native American heritage to get an edge in her professional and academic career.  If anything, Warren and O’Rourke are the ones using race as a political tool, not the Republicans and Trump.

None of that should need saying, but that’s why small-time bloggers like me have stuff to write about every day:  if it were as obvious as it seems to us, it wouldn’t need saying.

Oh, well.  Kudos to the GOP for some excellent, cheeky, fun-filled trolling.  It’s the most harmless kind of effective trolling possible.  Remember:  that tweet didn’t hurt anyone, except for maybe O’Rourke’s already-tarnished reputation.  But Robert Francis O’Rourke did risk harm to real people with his actions.  His policies—like radically open borders and deconstruction of existing border barriers—would risk countless more lives.

Let’s hope this dweeb flames out, and soon.

Election Day 2018

The Portly Politico6 Comments

This blog has fallen dormant—has it often seems to do—during the height of election season.  A savvy, dedicated blogger would churn out the bulk of his content when the news comes fast and fresh, and folks are seeking out information about candidates—not during the middle of summer, the deadest time for political news, outside of some primary elections.

But, hey, that’s what makes The Portly Politico unique.

What won’t make it unique is this admonition:  VOTE.  Ideally—and if you’re a reader of this blog, this might go without saying—vote for Republicans.

I went out to vote this morning—the last time at my current precinct, as I’ve recently moved to the countryside (after two floods, it was time)—and it was hoppin’.  I arrived around 7:05 AM EST, and there was a line out the door.  I finished voting around 7:40 AM EST—that’s how many people were there to vote.

I’ve never experienced a midterm election this year.  Both sides are highly energized.  It feels like a presidential election.

I’ll refrain from offering detailed analysis at this point (I think Republicans will pick up some Senate seats, but the House is a complete toss-up), but this election—to recycle another cliché, but only because it’s true—is of the utmost importance.

If Republicans lose the House (which, I’ll confess, seems likely, albeit by a narrow margin), it will certainly stymie President Trump and the GOP’s conservative agenda.  The prospect of returning Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi to the Speaker position is also terrifying.

If Republicans lose the Senate, it will be utterly catastrophic.  You can kiss conservative Supreme Court nominees goodbye.  If you’re the most anti-Trumpist #NeverTrumper neocon that ever lived, you’ve gotta hold your nose and vote Republican for that reason alone.

If we lose both… well, I shudder to contemplate the kangaroo court of baseless investigations and accusations that Democratic Congress will unleash.  Impeachment might not result in removal, but the fraying fabric of our political system would be rent asunder as Democratic knives stab any opposition.

This election is a referendum on Trump and Trumpism, yes, but it’s also a series of choices:  the Constitution, or lawlessness.  Capitalism, or communism.  Rule by the people, or rule by an entrenched, technocratic elite.

Get out there and vote, folks—especially Republicans!