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media and media people national politics & policies political challengers

#NeverTrump Red Herring

Neoconservative writer Bill Kristol doesn’t like the prospect of Donald Trump running as the Republican presidential candidate this year. And Kristol’s not just going to talk about it. He’s trying to get something done.

But instead of doing the rational thing and lobbying each and every delegate to the Republican convention, pleading with them to vote their consciences, not their fictional primary “commitments,” he’s trying to recruit an independent candidate to run against Hillary and Donald. (Donald isn’t worried.)

At first he mentioned, in fleeting, Mitt Romney as the type of candidate “coming soon.” But in discussing his mission, he kept the candidate’s identity secret. He was trying to create a stir of interest.

Yesterday it was leaked that Kristol’s Great White Hope is … David French.

Writer for National Review.

And the American people say, together, Who?

No matter Mr. French’s many virtues, the truth is that he’s the darkest of dark horses.

I’m sure his principles align somehow with Kristol’s. But be realistic: the Libertarian Party ticket sports far more plausibility — two former two-​term governors, former Republicans of blue states.

It’s still possible that this newest story is just a leak to get us to a false sense of … well, whatever this is.

After all, Kristol is a neoconservative. He has secrets and strategies above us mere mortals. Conspiracy buffs might contend that throwing another “right-​wing” candidate into the mix is his way of splitting “the right,” allowing his real (if secret) favorite, Hillary Clinton, to squeak by. She is the one candidate he could count on to keep throwing money at the Pentagon — and dropping bombs overseas.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Bill Kristol, National Review, President

 


Photo credit: Gage Skidmore on Flickr

 

Categories
Accountability Common Sense crime and punishment First Amendment rights

Wisconsin Raids Speak Volumes

Where’s the outcry among campaign finance “reformers”?

Silence.

In Wisconsin, laws regulating political speech, along with the clamor for stepped-​up “enforcement,” have facilitated an awesomely powerful prosecutor to launch dawn SWAT raids, dragging men, women and children out of their beds, stealing their computers and cell phones and ransacking their homes.

For what crime?

Supporting an act passed by the state legislature and signed into law by the governor.

And for having the bravery, or naïveté, to think we live in a free republic where organizing with others to promote ideas about public policy is a noble pursuit.

Not a one-​way ticket to Room 101.

Here at Common Sense we’ve been following these dystopian John Doe raids since 2013, when my friend and hero, Eric O’Keefe, refused to be bullied into silence: he violated a gag order to tell the Wall Street Journal and other media about secret investigations tying up 29 conservative groups.

O’Keefe’s courage inspired several suffering the dawn raids to finally speak out. An article by David French in the May issue of National Review tells their stories, which sparked attention last week from Rush Limbaugh and on Fox News’s The Kelly File.

Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm “correctly identified some of the most important communicators of political messages in Wisconsin,” O’Keefe told Meghan Kelly, “and they raided their family homes, with kids at home .… They came in the dark.”

“Put aside whether people should have filed different campaign finance reports, is this an appropriate tactic for any kind of campaign finance question?” he asked.

O’Keefe has fought back, suing Chisholm in federal court. Today, we may discover whether the U.S. Supreme Court will hear an appeal in his case and determine whether a federal district court judge’s injunction against Chisholm’s witch-​hunt will stand.

We all know what this is really about. Chisholm was retaliating against individuals and groups that supported Governor Scott Walker’s ultimately successful moves to curb Wisconsin’s public employee unions. It’s a grand example of our age’s real class warfare: between insiders with power and outsiders trying to curb that power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Assault on Free Speech in Wisconsin