I’m With the Herd!
Original (cc) photo by Jason Hollinger on Flickr
Tag: 2016 Presidential race
Last week, Donald Trump’s enemies staged an “emperor has no clothes” gag in full view of the public. It was a caricature of Trump, and featured him fat, old, and nude . . . and gave us a full view of the pubic.
Titled “The Emperor Has No Balls,” it failed to qualify as highbrow.
Kristin Tate, author of Government Gone Wild, was one of many non-left commenters to take note of the double standard in plain sight: while media folk chuckled and even gloried in the short-lived art placements, their reaction to a similar graven image of Hillary Clinton would almost certainly have been viewed with horror and outrage.
This week, the real (non-effigy) Hillary proffered another stunt.
Facing rumors that she is not well, that her fall several years ago left her with a host of neurological and physical disabilities — rumors that focus on her weird leave of the stage at one of the Bernie debates, her strange, uncomfortable and borderline autistic bouts of laughter, her exaggerated motions, and much more — Mrs. Clinton went on Jimmy Kimmel Live to open a jar of pickles.
Considering the pickle she placed America in throughout the Middle East, perhaps there was a message here.
Whatever feat of strength this was supposed to amount to, Kristin Tate is having none of it. On Fox News’s RedEye, Ms. Tate insisted she heard no telltale “pop” that would indicate the unsealing of a sealed jar.
Somehow, this whole election season is symbolized in one lame stunt.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
When Donald Trump called our country’s electoral process a “rigged system,” he was not wrong. The system is a legally secured duopoly.
I’ve discussed a number of the elements of this system previously. But one I may not have explored enough is the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD).
The League of Women Voters sponsored the first televised presidential debates in 1952, and from 1976 till 1988 ran a “tight ship,” as How Things Work puts it. After the League refused to cooperate with the bullying major parties, the CPD was established by former R and D bigwigs aiming to fully accommodate the major party candidates.
And no one else.
The CPD calls itself “non-partisan,” but that’s a misnomer. It is a bipartisan commission, as everyone who knows its history knows. The commission raised the bar on minor party candidates to polling 15 percent in a number of polls.
Recently, we’ve been hearing that the commission is preparing a third place on stage, for Libertarian candidate Gov. Gary Johnson. But he still hasn’t quite yet hit the prescribed percentage, though he has met the most important qualification: he is the only minor party candidate likely to be on all state ballots.
And now there’s a kicker. According to Brian Doherty, historian extraordinaire of Reason, “The Socially Liberal and Fiscally Conservative PAC (Solifico) [yesterday] morning sent a letter to Janet Brown, executive director of the [CPD], threatening to send the IRS after them over their policy of not allowing all legitimate candidates for president in their debates.”
The case looks solid.
And could secure for Johnson a podium at the debates.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
“If the disgusting and corrupt media covered me honestly,” Donald Trump tweeted on Saturday, “I would be beating Hillary by 20%.”
Argue the percentage, sure, but acknowledge the obvious bias.
Asked by MediaBuzz host, Howard Kurtz, about a “tilt against Donald Trump,” Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, replied, “I don’t think there’s any question about that.”
“But look,” continued Sabato, “there was a media tilt against Mitt Romney. There was a media tilt against John McCain. There was a media tilt against George W. Bush. It has more to do with party and personal characteristics of journalists than anything else.”
The bias is as old as it is obvious, “but of course I’ve never seen anything like this level of vitriol,” Kurtz clarified.
Kurtz noted a front-page New York Times column by Jim Rutenberg, which argued that reporters who believe Trump is “potentially dangerous” must “throw out the textbook American journalism has been using” and become “oppositional” — regardless of the fact that the stance “threatens to throw the advantage to his news conference-averse opponent . . . who should draw plenty more tough-minded coverage herself.”
According to Rutenberg, an unbalanced approach during the campaign’s homestretch would help remedy the $2 billion in free coverage the media gave Trump during the primaries.
Notice that the anti-Trump bias now helps the Democrat, whereas the pro-Trump bias previously helped the GOP nominate a candidate likely to lose to the Democrat.
Perhaps there’s a method to such media madness.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Donald Trump states things in a manner simultaneously ambiguous and incendiary.
Of course, he has help from the media, the Clinton camp and other embittered opponents, all elated to act as firestorm propellants . . . through as many 24-hour news cycles as possible.
At a rally this week, Trump claimed that a President Hillary Clinton would appoint justices to the Supreme Court committed to undermining our individual right to bear arms. “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks,” he told the crowd, before adding, off-the-cuff, “Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.”
The Clinton campaign and much of the media (but I repeat myself) immediately took this as a clear call to Second Amendment activists to . . . well, summarily execute Mrs. Clinton.
A leap? As Hillary would say, “Let’s unpack this.”
Would Mrs. Clinton curtail gun rights as Trump charges? She recently told Fox News that she would not choose justices seeking to overturn the High Court ruling in the Heller case, which interpreted the Second Amendment as guaranteeing an individual gun right.
Do I trust her? Stop laughing and read on.
Was the Donald attempting to incite violence against Hillary? No.
But what should be the people’s response were a future president or court to declare our right to defend ourselves null and void?
Remember, musket-armed American patriots met the British redcoats at Lexington and Concord for the shot heard ’round the world. Why? Specifically to stop the Brits from rendering the colonists defenseless by confiscating their arms and ammunition.
The implication? Clear.
So, with a chill down the back of our necks, let’s hone and redouble our peaceful support for our most basic right, self-defense.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
With the two most disliked and distrusted politicians in American history snatching the two major party presidential nominations, lots of voters — free-market conservatives, libertarians, liberals concerned about civil liberties and war, moderates, decency advocates — are looking for an alternative.
The Libertarian Party, our age’s perennial “third party” on state ballots, has a golden opportunity.
Perhaps that’s why delegates to 2016’s Libertarian Party nominating convention chose two two-termed former Republican governors to take up the freedom banner: New Mexico’s Gary Johnson and Massachusetts’s Bill Weld.
Both are nice men. They are the most accomplished and credentialed politicians in the race — more than Hillary Clinton; far more than Donald Trump. They don’t seem radical or threatening.
But that might be a problem. They are too nice. They are not threatening enough.
I’m not suggesting they threaten anyone, but in ideological terms they often appear more as moderates than as libertarians, as Ilya Shapiro noticed last week when he asked the pointed question, “Is Johnson-Weld a Libertarian Ticket?”
The Johnson-Weld take, economist Mark Thornton noted, is more libertarianish than libertarian: the pair are “fiscally conservative and socially liberal for Republicans which is great, but they fall short of Libertarian.”
This isn’t exactly a shock. Anyone who watched the bizarre CNN town hall with Johnson and Weld will remember that odd moment when Johnson called Democrat Hillary Clinton “a wonderful public servant” and Weld dubbed her a “lifelong friend.”
No need to attack Mrs. Clinton personally, of course, but when a Libertarian cannot find one discouraging word about what a President Hillary would mean, it seems they want to appear Democratish.
And not libertarian.
Well, it’s a strategy. But it won’t appeal to #NeverHillary voters, or impress many #NeverTrumpers, either.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
