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F. James Sensenbrenner Heads for the Exit

One reads that F. James Sensenbrenner, the pro-Trump septuagenarian multimillionaire congressman from a gerrymandered district that stretches all the way down to Whitewater, is retiring when his current term ends. Consigned to the minority forever must look unappealing. How time flies! It was not long ago that then-chairman of the Whitewater Community Development Authority was scampering…

Trump-Busting Issues for Wisconsin

Writing at Urban Milwaukee, Bruce Thompson looks at popular national issues to use against Trump, matches them against Wisconsin-specific polling, and offers How Democrats Can Beat Trump [in Wisconsin]. Many of the most popular poll issues are not libertarian ones, it’s almost unnecessary to say.  They’re issues that have national and statewide support, and so…

Trump’s Base Delights in Tales of Others’ Deprivation

In this conflict between defenders of America’s liberal democratic order and Trumpism, those of opposition and resistance have wisely steeled themselves for stories of cruelty as state policy. Trumpism’s aim is a herrenvolk, where his demographically homogeneous base receives permanent preference over others, and in which that same base delights in deprivations and depravities inflicted…

The Fifth Columnist at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

While a fellow traveler – however detestable – is merely someone who sympathizes with an adversarial foreign power, a fifth columnist is someone who actively cooperates – colludes, one might say – with a hostile foreign state. For all the talk of no collusion (styled as NO COLLUSION in a bigoted authoritarian’s tweets), Trump at…

Unforgotten, Unforgiven

What any given person thinks about Trump is hardly a source of useful criticism. The proper focus of criticism is Trump, His Inner Circle, Principal Surrogates, and Media Defenders and this includes Trumpism Down to the Local Level. Predictably, these Trumpists think that if they leave his employ, perhaps they might recover from the stain…

What Never Trump Means

Those libertarians (as I am) and conservatives who declared themselves Never Trump (written on Twitter as #NeverTrump) are those who took that position when considering Trump’s career and his presidential campaign.  On the ample record of Trump’s business career and political campaign, we found him unfit: a bigot, a would-be authoritarian, and an avowed friend…

Why Won’t You Smile?

One can guess that libertarians oppose the anti-market economics of Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. It’s odd, to me, though, how much time conservatives have spent complaining, critiquing, and analyzing that democratic socialist from New York. In those conservative critiques, however, one sees more than an economic or foreign policy disagreement: some of these conservatives are upset that…

Commerce Slows

Update, Friday afternoon: Trump folds under pressure agrees to a three-week re-opening of the federal gov’t.  Of his Rose Garden address this afternoon (one that I watched in full), Jennifer Rubin observes “[m]aybe this is part of an insanity defense for the Russia probe.” One reads that under the shutdown, interstate commerce now slows: Significant…

Yet Go He Will…

Ted Koppel cautions Don’t expect Trump to go quietly: There is a disarming innocence to the assumption that whether by impeachment, indictment or a cleansing electoral redo in 2020, President Trump will be exorcised from the White House and that thereby he and his base will largely revert to irrelevance. Truthfully, there are few among the…

Trump-Russia Roundup

While the proper focus against Trumpism involves a zealous lawful effort against Trump and his leading operatives, there is also a problem of Trumpism down to the local level. In both cases, officials advancing Trumpism ignore the overwhelming evidence of his betrayal of our own people to the benefit of a hostile foreign power. As…

On Trump-Russia, Right from the Very Beginning

Embed from Getty Images Virginia Heffernan reports Early on, Trump-Russia obsessives were marginalized; they’re prophets now: “I felt like the guy in ‘Rear Window,’ ” David Corn, the coauthor of “Russian Roulette,” told me this week. Corn was referring to his affinity for James Stewart’s character, L.B. “Jeff” Jefferies, in Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece film. Jeff witnesses…

Jennifer Rubin on ‘Three big ideas to bolster democracy’

Jennifer Rubin writes of three ideas to bolster democracy (enhanced voting rights, independent and non-partisan justice, and robust speech rights): First, Republicans, in an effort to hang on to their declining electoral advantage based on white voters, have tried every trick in the book to limit voting by those they suspect will favor Democrats. Hence,…