Mussolini 1 and 2.

Trump can’t beat Hillary. Trump can’t beat Hillary. Trump can’t beat Hillary. Trump can’t beat Hillary. Trump can’t beat Hillary.

A mantra with two different meanings. On the Democrat side a mantra of fear, Type 1. On the Republican side a mantra of fear, Type 2.

Type 1 is genuine fear, akin to panic. The Dems know Hillary is an incredibly weak candidate. She’s awful on the stump. When she isn’t faking black or southern accents, or simpering little woman fake humility, she turns into a banshee, a braying, shrieking, bitter harridan whose voice is worse than chalk on blackboards. She’s got the sword of Damocles hanging over her head, investigations in the FBI and the DOJ proper that could or at least should land her in prison.

Type 2 is the fear that lies will be found out. The Republican leadership, its congressional majorities, and its politician enriching donors don’t care if Hillary is elected president. In fact, if they can’t have Jeb, they’d prefer Hillary. Their sweet deal will continue. Boundless funds for their reelection campaigns and boundless riches for the lobbying careers they will enjoy after they end their legislative careers. Absolute corruption on a scale not seen since Tammany Hall. Or Ancient Rome. Everyone for sale. Every issue and bill for sale, no matter what lies have to be told barefacedly to their party faithful. Run on border control, immediately propose amnesty. Run on fiscal responsibility, immediately ratify the Dems’ bloated budget whole hog (pun intended). Pretend you’re against ObamaCare, then do nothing to repeal, fix, or replace it.

Type 1 and Type 2 have one thing in common. At this point they both want to do whatever it takes to prevent Trump from becoming the Republican nominee. Why? Well, the George Wills and Chris Matthews and Charles Krauthammers and Anderson Coopers and David Brooks of the world don’t know much about boxing metaphors, but they can sense the excitement, danger, and unpredictability of a heavyweight prizefight. And the very thought of it terrifies them to death. Why they tell us we’re stupid. You know. If you’re David Brooks or George Will, might as well have rape enabler Hillary instead of a guy who probably pinches bottoms in Italy. Something, no doubt about canapés in the Hamptons and NR cruises with Kevin Williamson.

What a Trump-Clinton electoral campaign would be. It would be slugger against slugger, which is relatively rare even in the prizefight world. Nobody’s tried to handicap the contest as it would really unfold. There is reason to do so. Both fighters have records, both have been penalized points and rounds for unsportsmanlike conduct, but in this case they are in the ring together. Who has the edge?

Let’s pick a couple of avatars. First, Hillary as Mike Tyson. (Incredible cheap shot at 6:47 in.)

Second, The Don as Rocky Marciano.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c6Qv4_oKx6U
Tyson had a soundtrack. Marciano should too.

Because that was the day and the life of Rocky Marciano. For all you hedge fund managers who don’t know what it’s like to fight to the death for anything.

RELATIVE STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES

Both aggressive punchers and counterpunchers. Tyson the more controlled on the attack, well prepared, planned, expert at ducking and weaving, comes in willing to take a punch or two to get in some savage body body blows and head shots. Tremendous and balanced power in the overall attack, and always waiting for the inside uppercut to bring it to an end. Only sign of wildness is a practiced left hook, designed to pulverize the opponent. Weakness? Violent felony convict, sexual predator, and dirty fighter.

Chew my way to victory if necessary.

Marciano. The only ever undefeated heavyweight champion of boxing. He was a wild swinger without much of a jab. The Brockton Bomber, they called him. He fought more champions in his division than anyone but Muhammed Ali. Fabled names. Joe Louis. Jersey Joe Walcott. Ezzard Charles. What was he famous for? Taking a lot of punishment to land one telling blow. He frequently finished fights with his face a bloody mask. But he won by knockout 87.5 percent of the time. Simple arithmetic. Hit him and be prepared to be hit back harder by a factor of ten. Sledgehammer, canvas time. He won in early rounds and late rounds. Unlike Tyson or Foreman. He won when he was behind on points, as Ali was late in his career. The champion rises as his energy seems to fall. A law of physics MIT hasn’t yet explained. Weaknesses? A bleeder. Easy to cut him. Today’s referees might have stopped fights he won. Should they have? That would be a PC matter, wouldn’t it?

CAMPAIGN IMPLICATIONS

Hillary knows how to hit hard. She has teams of morlocks working day and night to compile her ammunition. But there are two factors her dimwit Yale advisers should take into account.

1. Trump has already survived the greatest prolonged assault of negative advertising in the history of televised and otherwise mass media-driven presidential campaigns. He has been called every name in the book, every nasty adjective in the book, every obscenity, every repulsive historical epithet, had his character assassinated by both snipers and organized commando teams, and there he still is, leading the pack for the Republican nomination. What’s left to throw at him? Some personal foible you’ve been hiding under your skirt, Hillary? Which brings us to Point Two.

2. Hillary’s first and only impulse, in the absence of real experience, accomplishment or policy prescriptions that aren’t mere jargon, is to go for the jugular with her famed Clinton factory for oppo research. But the sad, pitiable fact is that no matter what Hillary accuses Trump of, he can respond instantly, in her own words, on video, that she is guilty of worse. Hit him for a loose and sybaritic lifestyle, will you? Think again. He can hit you for committing felonious acts against Bill’s girlfriends. Hit him for shaving corners on construction projects, and he can demand that you lay out the whole financial history of the Clinton Foundation. Trump says stupid things. Quote them in ads. Then wait for Rocky Marciano to bludgeon you with your email server, Benghazi, and Lewinski lies. He doesn’t have to do research. You’ve revealed the reality a hundred times in a hundred on-camera lies.

In what round will she fall? Every time the Clinton machine strikes like a cobra, the Trump mongoose can take her head off with barely a hundred dollars of research. That’s how exposed and vulnerable they are. A once formidable counterpuncher actually needs to learn a defensive crouch.

Before he even gets to the question of why you keep walking around bumping into things, coughing through tiny campaign events, and braying like a donkey at everyone who asks you a question.

Trump can do all this without saying anything anti-woman to you in person. You’ve provided all the ammunition. On film, digitally available, immediately viral on command.

Champions fall. Especially would-be champions who never were.

HOW THEY FELL.

Tyson.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rt8LZ8FjGN8
Guy comes out of nowhere and knocks you on your ass.

Marciano.

He didn’t. Died in a plane crash. Don’t think about it, Hillary. You heard it here first.

AND THERE’s that little something extra. Who has it? You know.

I’m the Greatest. Best at Everything. Ever heard that before? He kind of was.

Sonny Liston was the Mike Tyson of his day. Cassius Clay, considered a lightweight amateur, beat him up to win the title. Liston got his second chance though. People thought he’d win, what with all his experience and power and whatnot. He went down in the first round. They called it a phantom punch because the camera angles couldn’t catch the blow that did it. All you had to see, though, was the ripple in Muhammed Ali’s chest muscles to understand the impact that occurred in fact. The amateur took down the invincible monster, in a single round.

THE ULTIMATE IMMUNITY FACTOR

The ability to take it and fight back to win.

THE LAST DEBATE BETWEEN THE DAMNED

She wants to be destroyed. Let him overwhelm her.

You know the scene. Saw it three times today.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eyjrUAimzZg

Nothing like a good piece of hickory.

There’s always been an Establishment.

And all too rarely, somebody with bullet holes in his back who knows who they are and how to take them down.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WQuKXGOoqUc

Long walk. Many are now taking that walk.

What all the beltway nerds forget. People want confrontation. There are good guys and bad guys. We all know it. We want to see the bad guys taken down. Why Hollywood exists. Why there are tabloids. Why there are cop shows. And lawyer shows. And action movies. And westerns. We want the bad guys taken down.

Let’s be honest. Sometimes we want brutality for its own sake. Why it’s sometimes forgivable.

But we also want valor and beauty. Which is why we resort to real life.

Battling the odds and the hatred in a rigged game.

We want drama and hair-trigger justice.

Until we all want to break loose, because we’re just completely fed up.

Unless we want to do it all alone. All all alone.

Because there are true stories of confrontation…

And iconic stories of confrontation…

Then there’s myth. First three…

And legend. Down to two…

And godawful reality, when it’s down to just one damned mean one.

And the low down bitter reasons why we fight. We don’t all want to be just a number.

Confrontation. We all die in the end, don’t we? But some of us die fighting. Maybe that’s what people are hoping Trump brings out in them.

There comes a time when the frontrunner is everyone’s target. The blows come thick and fast, hard, brutal, fair and unfair. It’s a time of punishment and a necessary proof of endurance and resilience. For Trump that time is now.

I have said, repeatedly, let the voters decide, because this day would one day come. Now we’ll see. The video above is instructive because the legend has always been that Ali invented the rope a dope tactic on the fly because he hadn’t anticipated the terrible power of George Foreman’s punches. Not true. Ali trained for the rope a dope strategy, knowing he had to last and last until Foreman had punched himself out.

Does Trump know how to last through the rounds of pure pain and come back dancing? We’ll see. Won’t we?

Contrary to official opinion, we’re not dumb. We know he’s a risk. A big one. But we’re all in. Why?

Because we cannot go on as we have been. Seven years of Obama have shown that this unique and glorious nation is in danger of dying. While every single establishment institution has played along, caved, hid under the bed, pretended that business as usual would somehow see us through to another better day.

We have a president who hates his country, who hates Jews, is probably a jihadist Muslim, and has done everything possible to foment race war while dismantling the prospects and lives of a once sturdy middle class. He wants to dissolve the America we grew up in. He flings open the border to illiterate, criminal speakers of a foreign tongue he laughs at our opposition to. Meanwhile we have a party which cheers this destruction on, thinking they can make electoral hay of it, and a party which supports or blinks at every rotten tactic because they’re beholden to a monolith of millionaires called the Chamber of Commerce, who don’t care about black Americans or the middle class because they just want cheaper labor, no matter who they have to buy to get it.

Who could possibly stand up against such a successful and deep seated conspiracy? Well, it would take someone wildly unlikely, wouldn’t it? What would his attributes be? He would have to be a politician and not one at the same time. He would have to be enough of an insider to know exactly how this scheme is being organized and run. He would have to be unafraid of the powers that be due to some acquired immunity over a long life of wealth, power, and influence. He would have to be unusually self motivated, a kind of born again rebel against evils he has been party and witness to. A kind of Augustine, coming to the light later in life. He would have to be the kind of man Donald Trump says he is. And then we would have to believe him because there is essentially no other choice. We’ve seen all the earnest pretenders attain office and fail their principles immediately. Only the richest of rich men can be hoped to be above temptation.

We know. We know we could be placing our faith in the wrong man. But where else should we place our faith? Eric Cantor? Paul Ryan? Every first term goober in the senate? Every old dinosaur in the senate? Justice Roberts? They’ve all failed us utterly.

So Trump is the Hail Mary pass. We’ve watched the prevent defense of the Republican establishment fail every time. We have the ball this one last time. And if we don’t score a touchdown the game is over, for ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren.

And we’re the stupid ones, beneath the contempt of the pundits and the oppressed lowlifes who think it’s more important to be smarter than Trumpsters than to fight for our dying nation. But let me ask you. Is there any one of you who truly believes that not one of us knows this is a game of Russian Roulette? Of course it is. But we’re willing to play. You just want to sit on your smug asses and wait for the end of the world. Like you always wanted it to come.

In Trump algebra, guess what. We’re the winners. You’re the losers. Because we still dare.

Close in. The way it will go. Rubio Ringo versus Trump Holliday. The callow versus the Killer.

Rest in peace, little Cubano.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DT3GnJStVEw

Rubio’s the one with flop sweat. And sheer terror.

The cognoscenti have descended on last night’s debate as if it meant anything. It didn’t, doesn’t. Trump shows up. The moderators talk, the desperate also rans attack, and Trump is basically, well, bored by the check the box attendance requirement.

Nobody on the stage with him knows much about winning, ugly or otherwise.

Cruz has been courageous and valiant, but he has lost every confrontation he has sought out. Not his fault. But his senate record is one of losing. Every time.

Rubio is just a player. He still thinks he can spin huge losses and humiliations as sorta kinda wins. Wrong. Given his disgraceful, self congratulating, personal, borderline pansy lockerroom gossip performance on stage today, it’s safe to say he’s learned the ugly part, just not the winning part.

John Kasich thinks winning is about convincing people Ohio is a stand-in for the entire nation. No, it isn’t. He’s a big fish in a small pond, and he thinks everything outside his pond is the ugly. Wrong. If he’s not wearing white shoes and a white belt, everyone in the audience thinks he is.

Ben Carson has made himself a shining footnote in American history. Not the same thing as being a winner in the Big Game.

Trump. Listen to the song up top. That would be Trump. He can take a left hook to the head and keep brawling. Winning is the end result of what happens after all the rounds have been punched and clawed and kicked till the closing bell.

What his supporters know about him. The good fighters get stronger as the challengers get meaner. What’s most interesting is the punches he does not throw. They call him stupid, uneducated, ignorant, a dumbass. Does he ever mention that he went to a New York Jesuit prep school where education is a certain by-product? No. Rubio says Trump never punched anybody. Does Trump mention he was a varsity athlete in secondary school? No. He just keeps on rolling. Because he knows Marco is the one who looks like a scared little boy acting out as he’s losing the election for class president.

Trump intends to be THE president. Rubio is just trying to suck up to his donors. See the difference anyone?

Think what you like, all ye pundits and poseurs. Dream your delusions of perfect Justice. Life ain’t like that. At all.

We watched Trump’s rally in New Hampshire today. When he finished, they played the Stones “Can’t Always Get What You Want” and Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma.”

Seems clear that music is a big part of presidential campaigns.

Got a problem here, kids. Can’t commit to Trump without declaring a unifying song for all his rallies and stuff. For example, my wife is sold on the one up top, and probably nothing I can offer will change her opinion.

However. I have two more candidates. Which I will show you.

Sorry about the lewd language and behavior people are always ascribing to Trump. As if no one in our pristine and utterly coarse culture has ever heard such terms before. [Guffaw]

And this one, which is a tough call because of this and this from the same album:

I suppooooose you’re allowed to have your own opinions and your own bands and songs and like that. Just remember. Get yourself noticed and you bear the consequences. There. Is. No. Security.

Now. Vote like a good little boy or girl.

P.S. Yeah. We know Trump is a bit of an opera buff. People think he’s of the love’em and leave’em variety. Nobody’s above this.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi2AqTZCkR0

P.P.S. But my wife thinks Madame Butterfly might be a bit too highbrow for the general population of Trumpians (though she is one herself). Her classical nomination is this, which it’s hard to disagree with:

Trump 2016.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xiSIfgGvh0k
I love Iowa. I think I’ll buy a farm there, you treacherous, ungrateful, ignorant, unprintable losers. Then we’ll find out which animals are more equal than others.

So Trump lost. Muhammed Ali lost to Joe Frazier in their first fight. Which clearly ended Ali’s career.

Everybody thinks they know what it means. But even Rush was tap dancing like Bill “Bojangles” Robinson today. Like everybody else in all the media.

Truth is, nobody knows what will happen next. The only fun to be found in the whole rock and roll proceeding. One basic scenario can be played out in any number of ways.

Who knows how they’ll dance in the week and months to come?

Wasn’t really ever going to happen for Trump in Iowa though. Conservatives don’t seem fond of this kind of goings on sponsored by an old roué.

Miss Iowa, USA pageant.

Especially not with Cruz’s newfound born again evangelical Roman Catholicism. Which is, uh, what exactly? Playing with congressional rattlesnakes in the apse of a cathedral?

Think this plays better outside of Iowa? I don’t know. If you think you do, you must be a paid pundit of The Greater Media (TGM). Yeah, I am taking this opportunity to lump the MSM in with the ACM (Alternative Conservative Media), all of whom hate Trump. We’ll see now, won’t we?

My money’s on Rodney Dangerfield as Trump and Sam Kinison as the soul of the American electorate.

All figured out.

Because we want a Pulitzer. Which we don’t know exactly how to pronounce. Pullitzer. Or Pewlitzer. But you can see my Albany Law School intellect on display every weeknight on Fox News. I have no cleavage. I must be a fucking genius. Meaning, I am a STAR.

Every night I thank God for invisible desks, Jimmy Choo shoes, incredibly expensive French panties, and a viper tongue I learned from Keats.

She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue,
Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue;
Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard,
Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr’d; 50
And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed,
Dissolv’d, or brighter shone, or interwreathed
Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries—
So rainbow-sided, touch’d with miseries,
She seem’d, at once, some penanced lady elf, 55
Some demon’s mistress, or the demon’s self.
Upon her crest she wore a wannish fire
Sprinkled with stars, like Ariadne’s tiar:
Her head was serpent, but ah, bitter-sweet!
She had a woman’s mouth with all its pearls complete: 60
And for her eyes: what could such eyes do there
But weep, and weep, that they were born so fair?
As Proserpine still weeps for her Sicilian air.
Her throat was serpent, but the words she spake
Came, as through bubbling honey, for Love’s sake, 65
And thus; while Hermes on his pinions lay,
Like a stoop’d falcon ere he takes his prey.

Until I came into my own. I am Lamia.

And God help you all.

Quin Hillyer. Another National Review know-it-all.

Quin knows better. Or he did before Paris last night. Loved the part about “knowing more than the Generals.” Right. That’s what sank Lincoln’s career, right? Except maybe not even Lincoln’s lame predecessor fired ALL the fighting generals.

Answer. Let’s revile and despise and dismiss him. His commenters overwhelmingly agree.

He knows nothing about anything. People really want Jeb or Rubio. Reasonable men. They just don’t know it. Unless they don’t want sweet and reasonable any more.

Maybe The People are tired of candy asses who don’t stand up for them anywhere, anytime. Maybe they don’t want America in a Global Versoion of the EU with a 12,000,000 word constitution, fake crises like Global Warming, and utter loss of control over their children and their future..

Yeah the drumbeat. Hear it if you’re still capable of listening to something other than your own chords of ego.

Bottom line. Those of you who know me know I never use that term. Using it on account of Trump. Quin Hillyer is an admirable man who is a Reagan/Santorum Republicam. Dulce et decorum est.

But there is no more decorum. The lefties have swept all that away. The coarseness and venality of Trump strike broad parts of the electorate as honesty. And his message is simple. Stop Illegal immigration. And bomb the shit out of Isis. Like it or not, this registers with a lot of people the cognoscenti look down on.

Secret Weapon. Self-deprecating sense of humor.

Yes, he’ll get a bump in the polls. He’s funny. He knows how to do this. Some of the best comedy writing to come out of SNL in years. Can’t imagine the production meetings. “This is going to help him.” Egad. “Yes, but we can’t resist. It’s too sweet to pass up.”

And so it was. He allowed himself to be mocked and impersonated. He got to take credit for an impossible series of positive events in his first year of presidency, while acknowledging that those outcomes were unlikely. He made SNL The Trump Show, against all odds, and he probably showed exactly how and why he can become president. He takes his quest seriously but not himself. An unusual combination.

My mother told me the exact moment Frank Sinatra’s career ended. It was during the performance of Ol’Man River above in the 1940s. Of course, she always preferred Dick Haymes (Sorry, Ma, but I have to tell the truth. Anybody out there even heard of him?) and, of course, F. Scott Fitzgerald who famously said there are no second acts in American life was long dead by then. So he didn’t have to eat any crow when Sinatra came roaring back from oblivion to become the biggest singing star EVAH!!!

Now the media are trying to take out Ben Carson. Because that’s who they are. Here’s the story.

***************+*

No, Ben Carson Didn’t Lie About West Point. It’s Another Media Hit Job.

Never underestimate the capacity of the media to propagandize against Republicans.

That’s the theme of this morning’s overwrought news coverage on Dr. Ben Carson’s supposed “lie” regarding a “scholarship” to West Point. The story began with Politico, which ran with the audacious headline, “Ben Carson admits fabricating West Point scholarship.” Even I was taken in by the headline – after all, that’s a pretty bold claim!

Politico began thusly:

Ben Carson’s campaign on Friday admitted, in a response to an inquiry from POLITICO, that a central point in his inspirational personal story was fabricated: his application and acceptance into the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

The key word here is “fabricated.” Did the Carson campaign admit any such thing? Absolutely not. The facts reported by Politico don’t even support this interpretation of the Carson campaign’s response. According to Politico, Carson said in his 1992 memoir Gifted Hands that he was offered a “full scholarship” to West Point after dining with General William Westmoreland in 1969. Here’s the relevant passage from Carson’s autobiography:

At the end of my twelfth grade I marched at the head of the Memorial Day parade. I felt so proud, my chest bursting with ribbons and braids of every kind. To make it more wonderful, We had important visitors that day. Two soldiers who had won the Congressional Medal of Honor in Viet Nam were present. More exciting to me, General William Westmoreland (very prominent in the Viet Nam war) attended with an impressive entourage. Afterward, Sgt. Hunt introduced me to General Westmoreland, and I had dinner with him and the Congressional Medal winners. Later I was offered a full scholarship to West Point. I didn’t refuse the scholarship outright, but I let them know that a military career wasn’t where I saw myself going.

That’s the entire relevant portion of Carson’s account. He reiterated that account last month in an interview with Charlie Rose, when he said, “I was offered a full scholarship at West Point, got to meet General Westmoreland and go to Congressional Medal of Honor dinners. But decided really my pathway would be medicine.”

Politico followed up on this story. They reported one additional piece of information that seems to conflict with Carson’s story: Carson never applied to West Point, and was never extended admission.

But Carson never said he applied. He said he was extended a full scholarship offer. What’s more, West Point doesn’t offer scholarships: all admission is free contingent on serving in the military afterwards. It thus seems probable that Westmoreland or another military figure tried to recruit Carson, telling him that he wouldn’t have to pay for his education – and that Carson read that as a “full scholarship,” and never applied.

*************

But if they thought they could take out Trump, don’t you think they’d already have done it?

We can get away, we can get away…

Sad and awful, yes, you liberals. Who the fudge do you think you are?

Shouldn’t be a big mystery. Except to everybody in charge. He doesn’t care who you are. Equal opportunity offender. The bad uncle. We are all secretly hoping for the bad uncle. He doesn’t care if you’re black or white, male or female, Hispanic or Chinese or Russian. He’ll do a deal with you. And it will always be his goal to win. So he can bluster over the turkey at Thanksgiving. In Triump.

Why is Rush so gleeful? Because the dead headed ones inside the beltway still don’t get just how furious the rank and file Republican majority, which delivered both houses of Congress to their party, are the dupes of those who are shellacked and otherwise shiny sellouts to the cause of Democrat-Lite.

Stop. Nobody has yet discovered that a Hillary presidency would lead to fighting in the streets. A lot of us are just done with this shit.

Read her bio here. Saint Philomena. You think you have a cross to bear? Think again. In the age of New Media you can have fame and acclaim even after you’ve lost your head.

The very estimable Debra Burlingame lived in New York for 27 years. She hates Donald Trump, which is her right. The other day she linked to a 1988 documentary about him and declared that anyone who saw it would realize that nothing more need be said. This led to the following exchange between us.

RL: Sorry. Documentaries always come with a point of view. They’re all a function of EDITING to a particular point of view. You haven’t see hagiographic documentaries about Hillary? The “nothing more needs to be said” close rings kind of hollow in this context. You made up your mind long ago.

P.S. 1988? 27 years ago? 27 years before Reagan won the presidency, he was a Democrat or had been recently. He had been an FDR Supporter and president of the Screen Actors Guild, a union.

DEBRA: I lived in New York City for 27 years, when all this was happening. I remember it. There are court documents and press on this. Roy Cohn, the chief of Trump’s army of lawyers, was a brilliant but sleezy. This documentary covers stuff Trump himself cops to and insists he’s proud of. For me, it shows his character and values, beyond the bottom line of his string of business successes and failures.

If you knew more about Ronald Reagan, you’d know that his biography is the story of how his political philosophy evolved, not because of opportunity, but because of his nature to find and do the right thing. But everything he did was governed by and grounded in his principles and his political philosophy.

DEBRA: Thanks, Robert, for catching my spelling error.

Now. Here’s what’s interesting. I responded at some length to her last major comment. That response no longer exists on her post. Gone. Fortunately, I have a very good memory for what I write and the erased comment is very close to this.

RL: If I knew more about Ronald Reagan? Don’t insult me. I watched the first television broadcast of The Speech. I followed his career closely. I saw him in person during the years he was considered a has-been. I came away convinced of his greatness long before he won the nomination.

You hate Trump. Fine. (Did you mean Roy Cohen or Roy Cohn? Big difference. I’d have hired Roy Cohn too.) But what’s the point of your ire?

So what if he’s a circus ringmaster. If he’s as bad and low of character as you say, he will flame out long before the nomination. Why the paranoia? I’m not a Trump supporter. In the words of John Nolte, I’m a Trump supporter-supporter. All the a Trump haters seem disinclined to recognize that they are insulting millions of people in flyover country who have seen their elected representatives ignore them in favor of lobbyists who will give them huge jobs after they’re voted out of office. That’s Trump’s appeal. Despising the people who support him is a sign of tunnel vision, focused on proving your superiority to the poor dopes who are legitimately angry about the breakdown in the contract between the electorate and their representatives.

You hate him. You hate him. You hate him. And by inference, you despise the people who support him. This has been your whole message for months. In the meantime what has he done? He’s drawn 25 million viewers to the first two Republican debates. Without him, no one would have seen your personal favorite candidate. He’s done an enormous service to the Republican Party and the conservative cause. Why the vitriol? Who does it help? Not me. And, I suspect, not you either.

With all due respect, new media maven, Debra Burlingame. If you deliberately deleted my comment, (proof being that your thanks for my spelling correction refers to nothing in your comment thread), I can no longer call you Saint Debra. Sorry.

Here endeth the epistle.

The punditocracy is not amused.

I’ve been having a blast the past week or so, posting and commenting on the subject of Donald Trump and the completely, laughably, hysterical reaction to his candidacy by the MSM in all its forms, including National Review (Kevin Williamson, throat clearing noise), and all the pundits on every side of the aisle. I’ve been struggling to come up with an appropriate comparison that illustrates the sheer ridiculousness of the dudgeon. I finally found it. A sudden lightning bolt of insight that’s just perfect.

Here it is. He’s Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack. The outsider who doesn’t care about all the rules he’s breaking and yet understands exactly what rules he’s breaking. He’s enjoying the hell out of himself and the frightened country club members are terrified he will buy the club out from under them and bring in more of the very worst sort, just like him. Enjoy.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW-enbDAsAg

Think of all the people you’d cast in the Ted Knight role.

The man to make the others man up.

Guess I have to explain its meaning since no one else can or will.

National Review has been fulminating en masse. How dare he? He’s a joke. He drags us all down.

Well, yeah. Off your high and mighty perch. You, like the rest of the Republicans, have your delicate debates with one another about immigration and same sex marriage and political correctness and all the other ways the left is totally carjacking and home invading the American way of life in directions it never thought of and doesn’t want. But actually being rude or (OMG) coarse would be a blasphemy to the ghost of WFB. This nation is in the grip of a kind of Stockholm syndrome. A hard won republican majority is so supine as to be emblematic of the old axiom, “If you’re going to be raped, you may as well relax and enjoy it.” (More fodder for the War on Woman meme, I expect.) Aliens have taken control, under the aegis of the president, an impotent and bought and paid for congress, and a corrupt, totally derelict Supreme Court, and no one knows what to think anymore.

The polls are all over the place. They report that people massively approve the two most recent precedent-destroying SCOTUS decisions. Huh? They also report that 63 percent of people believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, and one in three Americans would consider leaving their country for somewhere else — if there were somewhere better to go. Many of these are the very kids who propelled Obama to power and reelected him. Huh? Ironically, most of those enlightened ones couldn’t find a country on a map, not even their own. Thank whoever for our great public schools.

The Democrats are running an aged, empty crone who has cheated and broken laws at every turn her whole life long without recording a single signal achievement except having a vagina her husband hasn’t desired for at least a quarter century.

The Republicans have acquired a crew of candidates who are so afraid of a predatory press that they can barely stop stammering when asked about their greens fees, Mexican gardeners, bald spots, and choices in music and cuisine. “Please don’t hurt us,” they cry, while Hillary sits (dead?) silently atop a mountain of scandal no one in the nation has the balls to call her on. Okay. That’s how it’s going to be.

Except that the great Republican hope is Jeb, who is a Lyndon Johnson Democrat fluent in Spanish. How cool is that? The strategists are having orgasms in their $3000 suits. “We can win this thing.” Except they haven’t for a long long deleterious time. They are so wired in, so smart, so attuned to the political process that they have failed to understand Jeb fails in every respect. He likes Hispanic immigrants more than Americans, he wants the federal government to control elementary and high school education, he has no real problem with Hillary, having given her some freedom medal or something, and he acts in every way just like — Hillary, a scion, an heir, whose time has come.

Enter The Donald. He comes on the scene like a bellowing bull, albeit with an odd combover, yet even that is a kind of becoming display. If anyone could afford the best efforts of the Hair Club for men, it’s Donald Trump. He’s his own defiant Lion King, a supreme alpha male the Republican Party has lacked for at least eight years.

No matter how angry the precious of National Review editors are about his candidacy, he is saying things the silent majority (yes, that old trope) wants to hear. Obama is destroying the country. It is the market which creates jobs, and Obama hates both markets and capitalism. Obama has made the U.S. a laughingstock on the world stage while the world seizes on our weakness and descends into chaos. An immigration policy which refuses to enforce our borders or deport the worst of illegal immigrants is ensuring a steady infusion of uneducated, unskilled, often violent opportunists, who at best are not part of any high tech, world competitive workforce and at worst are an economic and criminal assault on communities throughout the nation. And the spending, the spending, the debt and the debt.

The Trump appeal in a nutshell. Everyone with a grain of common sense knows what he says is so. And it’s Obama’s fault. And Hillary, more self-involved than Marie Antoinette and more low in morals than Catherine the Great, will only make things worse.

The media attack him because they are afraid. The political environment in this country is more volatile than they dare to admit. The prospect of the coronation of Hillary is oddly at odds with the deep mood of an electorate which has been fooled twice by an image built upon lie after lie after lie. Hillary is the antidote to eight years of blatant, arrogant, self-serving lies? The media are concerned. Time to take out The Donald. Immediately if not sooner. Hence all the sound and fury of the past week or so.

Not saying I expect Trump to win the nomination. But he does have a valuable role to play that could help the republicans win the White House.

What no pundit I’ve read or heard has yet said: A debate including Trump will increase the ratings for what might otherwise be a sorry parade of appeasing platitudes.

Yeah, the army of Republican strategists have their candidates well schooled. Don’t offend anybody. Be nice. When Matt Lauer or Katie Couric assaults you with a bit of misrepresented trivia, answer the question and make sure no one in the whole country misunderstands your sincerity and absolute virtue. Be nice, be outreachingful, be a Democrat but less so. And never lose your temper or demean your opponent the way he and the media will demean you. How McCain lost. How Romney lost. How most of the current 45 Republican candidates will lose.

The Trump opportunity in addition to increased ratings is that some one or two republican candidates will discover that they also possess a pair of balls. The ability to fight back. To say something honest and mean it. Having a pair of balls is the way to beat Hillary in 2016. If no one else does, I may have to side with Trump. Because however much she wants them, Hillary has no balls. Why she hides at Chappaqua and never Meets the Press.

God help me.

Y’all think you’re new. All a generation or two old and unoriginal. You’re all yesterday’s news and don’t know it. Mostly anticipated in the Sixties. A few hip-hopped in ridicule.

Theme Songs of the Uni-Party

Antifa — In the Flesh, Pink Floyd

BLM — Fire, Arthur Brown

Democrat Party — Satisfaction, DEVO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96I2CWHa_-A

RINOs — Creep, Radiohead

Never-Trumpers — Better Than You, Metallica

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1cVZGFPO30

CDC — Uncle Albert, the Beatles

The People’s Republic of California — Hotel California, the Eagles

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbYEPYE4_Eg

DOJ — Cleaning Out My Closet, Eminem (So sorry, Hillery. But we have paper shredders.)

FBI — F**k You, Yo Gotta

NSA — I’m a Snake, Matt Keck

CIA — Chess King, Jus Allah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GgUJ5X5Wic&list=RD8GgUJ5X5Wic&start_radio=1&t=84

IRS — The Taxman, the Beatles

The Pentagon — Born on the Bayou, CCR

Greens — It Ain’t Easy Being Green, Kermit

Universities — Five to One, the Doors

LGBTGQ — Lola, the Kinks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8QXa8LkR_w

The Social Networks — The Chain (Rumors), Fleetwood Mac

The Mass Media — Rockin’ in the Free World, Neil Young

The White House — Vesti La Gubbia (‘Laugh, Clown, Laugh’) Domingo

*****************

Trump — Redemption, Johnny Cash

ONE AND ALL — Locked Away, Keith Richards