Good morning, kids. Well, Ron DeSantis has bowed out of the race gracefully and even endorsed Donald Trump. That leaves one little Indian, literally, left standing and we'll get to her in a moment. It's quite telling that DeSantis' striking a conciliatory tone stands in stark contrast to his boosters:
It's quite telling that his striking a conciliatory tone stands in stark contrasts to his boosters:
While much of the political world rejoiced in DeSantis’s decision to unify the party and back Trump in the primary race to focus on defeating [spurious fraud "president"] Biden in November, many of DeSantis’s online influencers are having a much more difficult time letting bygones be bygones.
“It’s ‘Governor Ron DeSantis’ now, is it?” Jenna Ellis sarcastically asked in reaction to a statement from the Trump campaign on DeSantis’s exit from the race and subsequent endorsement of Trump.
“No more Rob DeSanctimonious? We’re all just supposed to forget? They think so. I don’t. The audacity here to use the line, ‘It’s time to choose wisely,'” she said.
“Instead of trying genuinely to recruit DeSantis supporters, the Trump Camp takes a parting shot at @bobvanderplaats and evangelicals who wanted to be post-Trump,” she asserted.
“It was all just a psyop. And you all still trust anything that Trump promises?!” she proclaimed in another post.
I thought in order to be considered an "influencer" you have to actually influence people in a positive manner. How'd that work out for you, Jenna Ellis? Pfft. If their results matched the hype, DeSantis would be the one with the massive double-digit lead going into New Hampshire after a double-digit win in Iowa. Look, I get it, and in all fairness, I was a Cruz booster eight short (long) years ago and absolutely hated the "Lyin' Ted" swipe. It was what it was and it is what it is. I voted for Trump just to protect us from Hilary and then four years later I voted FOR Trump period. In any case, when you realize that these schmucks have zero influence on anyone, their puerile tantrums are micturating into the 600mph eye of Jupiter.
I like and respect Ron DeSantis. More importantly I admire Ron DeSantis for his record as governor. He's done more in his tenure to preserve and grow it as a sanctuary (pun intended) and a haven for freedom-loving Americans escaping the insanity of blue-state anti-America. That he won the statehouse by a very narrow margin and in doing so, prevented crack-addicted Marxist Andrew Gillum from completely wrecking the state earns my gratitude. In fact, Florida's formerly Democrat-controlled election machine gave us fits every election cycle and victory was never a sure thing. That seems to be a thing of the past, in no small part thanks to DeSantis' presence in Tallahsee. Need I remind you of Al Gore and his hanging chakras, er, chads? DeSantis is going places and hopefully he'll be the one in '28. An unknown MAGA superstar on the horizon who captures the imagination, or the descent into total dictatorship after '24 notwithstanding.
As for Trump, he is who he is, warts and all. If you don't get that by now, you're never going to get it. His "style" and his "personality" are irrelevant, and those who attempt to make that the issue are fools or disingenuous in their real opposition to him. That said, those who have issues with his missteps and fiascos based strictly on policy, most egregiously his hiring practices and his record on the lockdowns, should not be dismissed. And I count myself in that category, and was indeed wavering on my complete support of him as the candidate to be the standard bearer.
Most likely, the appeal of Trump centers on two things: the abject destruction that Joey Sponge-Brain Shits-Pants has unleashed on the nation and is state-sanctioned persecutions via several kangaroo court trials with the cherry on the parfait of the attempts to remove him from state ballots. All of those things are interrelated and more and more people get it. For better or worse, Trump is seen as a martyr. With every new charge and accusation hurled at him came a significant rise in his polling. I don't think Ron DeSantis or anyone ever had a chance against that.
The fact of the matter is, Trump is indeed a political martyr and before long he will either be imprisoned or assassinated. And that will be the bitter end. Ditto if he manages to actually beat the odds and the Democrat cheat machine in the swing states and win re-re-election, because the Left, after equating him with "literally Hitler" who will take away our freedoms and throw people into concentration camps (like Merrick Garland has actually done, ironically) will unleash a wave of terror that will make the 2020 Summer of Floyd look like Disco Night at Comiskey Park (or Kaminski Field, pace Obama the Dog-Eating Boy).
All of that said, I still think Trump's worst enemy is himself. Mercifully, the scuttlebutt of his supposedly courting Nikki Haley as his running mate have been exploded. Mostly by Trump himself who ripped her a new one the other day. In any case, were the initial rumors real? His son Don Jr. a couple of weeks back supposedly told him to drop her like radioactive waste. If true, I hope this is an indicator that they are not of the same mindset as Jared and Ivanka and can effectively box them out this go round.
The late great William F. Buckley once said "I'd rather be governed by the first 3,000 random people from the Boston phonebook than an equal number of Ivy League graduates." Regardless of the fact that there are no more phonebooks or that most of Boston these days is solidly Democrat, the meaning of the quote still stands. In Trump's case, it goes back to staffing. Will he or even can he find a chief of staff, the guy/gal in charge of all the hiring and cabinet nominations, that is outside the Deep State? If he indeed hires outsiders, will they even have a chance at being confirmed? And even if confirmed, will they have the power to overcome mass insubordination and mutiny at the agencies they supposedly head at the behest of a President Trump 47?
Has Nikki Haley suddenly become the Republican frontrunner? In a certain sense, yes: she clearly represents the Mitch McConnell/Kevin McCarthy wing of the party, that is, the establishment Republicans who wish Trump had never come around and hope he’ll go away for good soon. Two of her mailings contain the same warning: “WE CAN’T RISK IT / With President Trump’s criminal trials and the Liberal media’s bias against him, our country can’t risk four more years of Joe Biden.”
While this may appeal to those who love Trump but are worried about his, and America’s, prospects, Haley also reaches out to those who hate him: “Donald Trump can’t defend his fiscal record, so he is lying about Nikki Haley’s,” says one mailing, which features headlines about how Trump increased spending and added to the national debt. The rest of the Haley mailings don’t mention Trump and try to present Haley as a fresh new alternative, although they’re larded with generic rhetoric that can be, and has been, said about every candidate under the sun: “Nikki Haley has a plan to make Washington work for you, not the other way around.” “She will be the new leader Washington so desperately needs.”
In contrast, all four Trump mailings spend as much or more time hitting Haley than they do actually touting Trump. “Nikki Haley & Joe Biden’s Open Borders Put America In Danger,” says one. Another asserts that “Nikki Haley’s Day One Checklist” will include “Cut Social Security & Medicare” and “Raise the Retirement Age to Receive Your Benefits.” Therefore, voters should “Reject Nikki Haley On Jan. 23rd.” Another says that Nikki Haley is “Too Weak and Too Liberal to Fix the Border!” In fact, “Tricky Nikki Is Too Close With COMMUNIST CHINA.”
From these mailings, one might get the impression that it was Haley who had a big lead in the polls, and Trump was trying to close the gap. Trump has plenty that he could run on from his tenure as president, but instead it seems as if his team has opted to demonize Haley front and center, and only secondarily to talk about what he has done and what he plans to do . . .
. . . For the establishment, Haley represents a return to the comfortable days of John McCain and Mitt Romney, when Republicans knew their place in the workings of official Washington, and were happy playing second fiddle and giving Americans the appearance of a multiparty free republic. They didn’t rock the boat.
Then Trump came along and upset everything. The people who want to make sure that he doesn’t get another chance to do so from the Oval Office are not all Democrats.
Tricky Nikki. I bet you that sticks. For one thing, it's shorter, punchier and more memorable than Ron DeSanctimonious. And unlike that, it's completely accurate. That segues quite nicely into our next item on the agenda which Robert Spencer touched upon in his essay. Last week we looked at the stupidity/co-conspiracy of the GOPe on the issue that will decide this election: the open borders. If that's not enough, look what the Galling Old Potemkins are planning now:
This new energy tax was voted out of committee 14-5, with four Republicans — Senator Kevin Cramer (from North Dakota, an energy producing state), Senator John Boozman (Arkansas), Senator Graham (South Carolina), and, most inexplicably, Senator Cynthia Lummis (from Wyoming, another state that produces energy) — joining ten Democrats to create this new tax.
Five Republicans, led by Senator Capito from West Virginia, voted against the new energy tax.
Like all energy taxes, this one will fall hardest on the poor, the elderly, those on fixed incomes, and local institutions that have limited budgets, like schools and hospitals.
The legislation sponsors, which include Senator Cramer, have tried to disguise the actual intention of the legislation — which is to increase the price of energy and everything grown, made, or transported with energy in an attempt to address global warming — with propaganda about being tough on our trade competitors, including China.
That charade is so embarrassingly thin that even Politico ignored it and declared in a headline: “Senate Committee OKs Carbon Tariff.”
The legislation directs the Team Biden over at the Department of Energy to set up the infrastructure that would be needed to tax imported goods based on their carbon dioxide content. These taxes, which are called tariffs when imposed on imported goods, could be imposed by the executive branch, without any Congressional votes.
The sponsors have tried to argue that those selling these goods into the United States will pay the tax. That’s nonsense. . . Those who drafted and those who voted for this legislation know that it is a way to create a domestic tax on carbon dioxide without requiring Congress to vote and get on the record one way or the other. They know that this energy tax will hurt the poor, the elderly, those on fixed incomes, and local institutions the most.
When we asked about this particular tax, voters opposed it by almost a 2-1 margin. This new carbon dioxide tax is intensely unpopular; that’s why its sponsors have shrouded it in a verbal smokescreen about communist China.
These fucking Quislings are selling us down the river. A Pinochet/Patton administration for the next 100 years couldn't do jack shit against this. Not if they play by the rules.
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