This is the cover of the Time news-pamphlet.

Trump is not dismantling “Government,” he’s trimming (not nearly enough in my view) a bloated, heavy-handed, highly corrupt Federal bureaucracy. Which I guess is sort of the progressive definition of “Government.”

The progressives will sneer in return, “Why don’t you move to Somalia if you hate Government.” This is the quintessential progressive argument; an emotive, hyberbolic reductio ad absurdum. As if there is no middle ground between complete dystopian anarchy and a dystopian, Terry-Gilliam’s-Brazil-like. Brobdingnagian Leviathan bureaucracy that not only does things like:

• A Veterans Administration that gives its chief bureaucrats huge bonuses while veterans die on waiting lists
• An ironically named Environmental “Protection” Agency that dumps millions of gallons of toxic waste into a pristine river then exempts itself from consequences
• A Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms that supplies semi-automatic weapons to Mexican drug cartels (while simultaneously lobbying to outlaw ownership of those same weapons to law-abiding American citizens.)
• A Federal Aviation Administration that resists all efforts to modernize a thirty-year-old air traffic control system because of opposition from wealthy corporate jet owners.
• A Department of Education and a Food and Drug Administration that… for some reason… have their own de facto SWAT Teams and can legally kill you for committing student loan fraud or selling raw milk to willing buyers. Other civilian Federal Agencies with their own heavily armed, tactically-trained enforcement squads include the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Office of Personnel Management (make sure to get your TPS reports in on time, or we’ll kill you) and the Railroad Retirement Board.

Not to mention, in the hands of a corrupt administration these agencies become weaponized against critics and opponents. Journalists who ask the wrong sorts of questions can be put in jail.  An administration can make sure supportive political groups are funded from public coffers while denying funding to opponents.

They can even use Federal Law Enforcement agencies and Intelligence Services to attack political opponents.

And meanwhile, throw themselves lavish, taxpayer funded parties in Las Vegas.

But the progressives insists… it’s either that, or warlords shooting at each other from rooftops while our cities all become Mogadishu. (Some of them are already there.)  The idea… the concept… of having a Government that does no more than those things for which there is no private alternative is not a thing they can imagine.

But getting back to Trump, if he is to any degree “dismantling Government as we know it,” more power to him.  He’s only doing what “conservative” Republicans have been promising to do for the past thirty years. Every time a Republican Congress has struck a “budget deal” it’s always been, “Yeah, we’re spending more money in the short term… but ten years from now, we pinky swear there will be severe cuts.”

Trump is at least moving a little bit in the direction of  downsizing Government to an affordable, responsible level. While I wish he would do more, faster… any reduction in the Federal Leviathan would have been unimaginable under a Jeb Bush or John Kasich presidency. (But they would have had very polite twitter feeds.)

News-wise, it’s been a busy few days. Following Scaramucci’s appointment a couple weeks ago to replace Sean Spicer (as WH Acting Communications Director), now DHS Secretary Kelly is appointed to replace Reince Priebus (as WH Chief of Staff). We also heard that AG Sessions is finally going to crack down on leakers.

Spicer and Priebus both came to President Trump via the Republican National Committee. In other words, though perhaps good human beings, they were traditional Swamp creatures. Rumors have swirled for months that Priebus had Spicer working more on behalf of Priebus’ reputation than Trump’s, and that Priebus was one of “the leakers” who have caused trouble for Trump. Even if that isn’t true, I still can’t say that the Priebus-Spicer team has done a wonderful job of advancing an America First agenda.

Politically, Trump is a “fighting” President and the combination of Scaramucci and Kelly says that he wants to stop playing defense and go on offense. Scaramucci seems more genuinely combative than Spicer and more adept at new media (getting Trump to do his first Periscope live stream, for example). General Kelly seems like an effective manager who really believes in Trump’s agenda in terms of America First, controlling the border, cracking down on gangs (MS13), and so forth.

The rumor mill says that NSA McMaster could be on his way out. He is said to be yet another leaker, who carries forward Obama policies and appointees rather more than he should. He apparently championed a Syria war, and Trump has apparently decided against a Syria war. We shall see.

Our favorite Senator, Lindsey McCain, still hates Trump passionately. Here is video of Lindsey Graham saying that Trump is an enemy of the Rule of Law who “turns democracy upside down”. And video of John McCain pumping fists with Chuck Schumer (D) when the Senate failed to repeal Obamacare on Friday.

Why does John McCain love Obamacare?

UPDATE – Not so much on offense? Scaramucci has just resigned. This is probably not great, if Trump wants a forward communication strategy. And it’s probably something that Kelly wanted.

So, we would have a scenario where Scaramucci is brought in, takes out Priebus (by means of a conflict that I didn’t go into, above), makes room for Kelly to come in, and then Kelly says “I’m the boss – you’re done”?

UPDATE: A report says yes, the above is what Jared and Ivanka wanted. Scaramucci was just their blunt instrument for removing Priebus; Bannon, Kelly and others were never going to stand for having Scaramucci around.

Also, if you believe Jack Posobiec’s sources on Capitol Hill, McCain defeated the latest Obamacare repeal just to screw Trump and Rand Paul. Totally unprincipled.

Well, the Democrats spent about $40M to try and win a seat in a purplish district and failed. Pajama Boy not only underperformed Hillary in the district; he got fewer votes than the 2016 Democrat candidate in 2016.

So, maybe they need to up the ante and, in 2018, spend $50M on each of the 25 districts they need to retake the House. A cool $1.25 Billion. (About what Hillary spent in 2016, BTW.)

One potential fly in the ointment… the Democrat Party is broke and had a terrible fundraising month in May.

Many Democrats really believe that recruiting clones of Liz Warren and Kamala Harris and engaging in more street violence will help them flip red districts in the Midwest to blue. It won’t.

Nothing preps you for next election more than concluding your team is too virtuous to win & voters are too evil or dumb to see the truth. – Jonah Goldberg

A few Democrats recognize that normal Americans care about the economy, (also, border security, and protecting civil society from terrorism {the Trump agenda}). Not a phony, “Russia Russia Russia” scandal ginned up by Hillary Clinton campaign operatives after losing an election, or phony, virtue-signaling issues like Transgender locker rooms for teenagers. But all of the money and power in the Democrat Party is held by wealthy people in Washington, New York, San Francisco, and Chicago.

(BTW: It also looks like Trump was right about illegal voters. There may have been five million or more of them in the 2016 election.)

Honestly, the best shot the Democrats have at retaking the House and Senate in 2018 is for Republicans to continue to sabotage the Trump agenda. The Republican Establishment may despise PDT, but Republican voters want border security, want tax and regulatory reform to help grow the economy, want a revitalized manufacturing sector, and want a rational policy response to the growing threat of Islamic Supremacist terror. If Republicans in Congress don’t deliver on this agenda, then they will bodily function away their majority.  The only question is whether they hate Trump more than they love their phony-baloney jobs.

Figuring out what’s happening in Washington – under the surface, with the Deep State factions – is a guessing game. Highly uncertain. Of course I don’t “know anything”, in the sense of having sources. I read the tea leaves as best I can, and I guess.

When President Trump unexpectedly did a huge Saudi arms deal, I had a feeling that former FBI Director Comey’s testimony would then turn out as a net win for Trump. What’s the connection? Hard to explain. I’m going to say some stuff now which could easily be crap; feel free to shoot it down in the comments, or to add your own ideas.

(more…)

The flow of new regulations (Government micromanagement) under Donald Trump is running at a tiny fraction of the fearsome clip of Barack Obama.

President Trump is winning on one key campaign promise, cutting regulations and virtually eliminating the release of new ones.

In fact, he has cut the output of costly regulations so deeply that a group that charts the federal government’s output of rules has called the shift “historic.”

American Action Forum told Secrets that Trump has cut the output of regulations to just 8 percent of the averages under former President Obama and other recent administrations.

What’s more, the cost of the new regulations has dropped from an average of $26 billion to $33 million, or just 0.12 of the past average for the first five months of the year.

Nice start, but regulatory reform is desperately needed if the economy is to grow at its full potential. Regulatory reform is unsexy, and doesn’t make for good re-election ads, but the almost 100,000 pages of Federal Regulations and our absurd 70,000 page tax code force our industries to compete with the world with cinder blocks strapped to their feet.

And here’s something else Trump is doing right:

The Justice Department announced Wednesday it will no longer allow prosecutors to strike settlement agreements with big companies directing them to make payouts to outside groups, ending an Obama-era practice that Republicans decried as a “slush fund” that padded the accounts of liberal interest groups.

Under Obama, coerced settlements were used to force businesses to fund left-wing groups and created the professional protest industry to guarantee that there will be media-friendly protests any time any left-wing policy is in danger of being overturned.

At least some people are noticing that the Controlled Media witch hunts against Trump are an attempted coup d’etat against a lawfully-elected president.

What’s the endgame? Does President Trump resign in disgrace? Or does he triumph, as the hysteria is exposed and burns itself out? Or does he allow himself to be neutered, governing from now on as a captive of the Democrats? I don’t know.

Nobody’s perfect, and the Controlled Media is great at keeping up drumbeats; so yes, they will find something real or semi-real against Trump eventually. Let’s face it.

I could dismiss the Controlled Media as an irrelevant province of old people, and to a large extent that would be true. But they have ongoing relevance to the extent that they can scare the Congressional Republicans into rejecting (or at least unsupporting) Trump.

To get his appointees in office (including judges), to build a wall, to pass his desired infrastructure spending or tax reform, etc., Trump needs Republican unity. The purpose of the manufactured hysteria is to destroy intra-Republican unity and so to derail Trump’s appointees, criminal investigations (of the Left) and legislative agenda.

I could see a scenario where Trump resigns in contemptuous frustration. He denounces the hysteria (rightly) as he does so, and his Tweets remain a force in American politics. What happens next?

Do the Deep State and Controlled Media play the same game on President Pence? Will it work again, so soon? If it does work again so soon, does America slide into civil war at some point?

Whom does President Pence choose, as his Vice President? Does he let the Deep State run wild, taking us into another war? Questions, questions. Please let us know your thoughts, in the comments.

Washington “Democracy Dies in Darkness*” Post: Bannon: Trump administration is in unending battle for ‘deconstruction of the administrative state’

Atop Trump’s agenda, Bannon said, was the “deconstruction of the administrative state” — meaning a system of taxes, regulations and trade pacts that the president and his advisers believe stymie economic growth and infringe upon one’s sovereignty.

This goes a long way toward explaining the Left’s absolute derangement with Steve Bannon. The all-powerful, unelected bureaucracy is the Left’s primary implement of social control.

* Yes, that’s their new motto, and not the name of Metallica’s next album.

Democrats have vowed to filibuster Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee if it is anyone other than Lockstep Leftist Merrick Garland, who would have cemented the left-wing majority of Democrat dreams. (Hat Tip RSG). They are also dragging their feet on Trump’s cabinet nominations. This is the political equivalent of a two-year-old throwing herself on the floor at WalMart and screaming until she’s red in the face because Mom said she couldn’t have a Barbie doll.

In playing these childish political games, Democrats in the US House and Senate are behaving much like Wisconsin Democrats did under Governor Scott Walker. Remember when a bunch of them left the state to deny the senate the necessary quorum to pass a budget? Remember their failed attempt to recall Scott Walker?  Remember how they tried to run a Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice off the bench and replace him with a Democrat hack? And, of course, they compared Walker to Hitler.

I can’t help but wonder if the childish antics and tantrums of Wisconsin Democrats are one of the reasons Wisconsin went red this time around, and why Ron Johnson handily re-won his senate seat against leftist darling Russ Feingold? Not only that, solid Republican majorities have been elected to the Wisconsin State Legislature.

One of the reasons Donald Trump is president may be because of the decision made by Democrats in the first term of George W. Bush’s presidency to go scorched Earth. George W. Bush was a pretty moderate Republican, who prided himself on “reaching across the aisle” (Republican codespeak for “giving Democrats whatever they want.”) He let Ted Kennedy author the No Child Left Behind law. He created a new Medicare Prescription Drug entitlement. He pushed for amnesty for millions of undocumented Democrat voters, and, on his watch, was more likely to prosecute Border Patrol Agents than illegal immigrants. On conservative initiatives like supplementing social security with private investment accounts, or opening Alaskan wastelands to oil exploration, he folded faster than Superman on laundry day.

Did Democrats cut him any credit for this? No, they compared him to Hitler and fantasized about assassinating him.

Likewise, Mitt Romney, was a very moderate Republican; moderate enough to be elected governor of Massachusetts and sign the first draft of Obamacare into law. He was also pro-gun control and a Global Warming True Believer.  Did it matter? Nope, he was still Hitler.  And they said he wanted to put women into binders and outlaw tampons.

Democrats created this no-win scenario where Republicans would never advance any conservative ideas, and would get called Hitler no matter how much they appeased the left. If it any wonder that Republicans voters finally said, “Screw it, we’re gonna give them Trump.” And now that Democrat Media organs are making the Trump-Hitler comparison … the only people who are impressed are the same people who said that Bush was Hitler and Romney was Hitler. We get it. Every Republican is Hitler. Whatever.

Now that Democrats are embracing childish temper tantrums as their party’s signature move, the question is whether the rest of the country is going to go along with it? Or whether enough sensible people will tire of their antics and shift to the right, as happened in Wisconsin.

Donald Trump’s budget team is said to be considering major, significant cuts to the bloated, gigantic Federal Leviathan built up by Bush and Obama.

Overall, the blueprint being used by Trump’s team would reduce federal spending by $10.5 trillion over 10 years.

At the Department of Justice, the blueprint calls for eliminating the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, Violence Against Women Grants and the Legal Services Corporation and for reducing funding for its Civil Rights and its Environment and Natural Resources divisions.

At the Department of Energy, it would roll back funding for nuclear physics and advanced scientific computing research to 2008 levels, eliminate the Office of Electricity, eliminate the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and scrap the Office of Fossil Energy, which focuses on technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Under the State Department’s jurisdiction, funding for the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the Paris Climate Change Agreement and the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are candidates for elimination.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be privatized, while the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities would be eliminated entirely.

I’m gonna see a doctor if my response to this article lasts more than four hours.

Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t wish GHWB any ill, like all decent Americans, I wish him a speedy and thorough recovery and many happy years left on Earth. However, the symbolism of Bush 41 being possibly on his death bed as Trump takes office is so strong I’m surprised Peggy Noonan hasn’t written four columns about it.

The Bush Brand of Republicanism has dominated the GOP ever since 1989, when Bush 41 took office and almost immediately began repudiating everything Ronald Reagan had accomplished. “Bushism” could be characterized as using ‘conservative’ as a brand for electioneering, and occasionally paying lip-service to social conservatism and fiscal responsibility. In practice, it meant continuing to expand the Federal Government, deficit spending, and expensive-but-indecisive foreign wars. The Bush Style of Republican politics was a tacit acceptance that liberal Democrats and the media were the natural owners and operators of Washington DC, and Republicans should consider themselves temporary, unwelcome guests and defer to their hosts as much as possible.

Bush 41 gave us the largest tax increase in history up to that point, foreign interventions in Panama and Kuwait, the Americans with Disabilities Act (well-intended, but a massive regulatory burden) and David Souter on the Supreme Court.

Bush 43 gave up a minor, temporary tax cut (that left tax rates higher than his father had raised them), monstrously expensive but ultimately indecisive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a massive influx of illegal immigrants, massive increases in domestic spending, No Child Left Behind, McCain-Feingold, Sarbanes-Oxley, the TSA, the Incandescent Lightbulb ban, a doubling of the National Debt, the Prescription Drug Entitlement, and John Roberts on the Supreme Court.

In the Obama years, Bushism has meant that Republican majorities in the House and Senate verbally attack the progressive policies of the Obama administration, occasionally pass meaningless symbolic votes against them…. but at the end of the day fully fund every initiative even ones like ‘Exectuve Amnesty’ that they claim to oppose.

We don’t know that President Trump will bring, but he has already made it clear, he’s not going to just play nice with the Democrat Media Complex that seeks only to destroy him. He has appointed General James Mattis as Secretary of Defense and put Jeff Sessions in as Attorney General. He has nominated an advocate for school-choice as Secretary of Education, and a skeptic of Global Warming Hysteria as head of the EPA. He is rumored to be considering repealing as many as 100 of Obama’s Executive Orders upon taking office, and ordering his agency heads to pursue 20% budget cuts. And he really does intend to get serious about stopping illegal immigration.

It is impossible to imagine Jeb Bush doing any of this.

An interesting thing is happening. The senator that Donald Trump spent weeks vilifying as “Lyin’ Ted” has become one of the strongest and most forceful defenders of his administration as the President-Elect’s cabinet choices face confirmation hearings. Here is what he said in support of Attorney-General nominee.

“Senator Sessions believes in the foundational idea that we are governed by objectively knowable, written rules, and that we should not be subject to the interpretive whims of unelected, power-hungry bureaucrats. Sessions will instill this belief at the Department of Justice.”

“The fact that this is controversial tells you all you need to know about the sorry intellectual state of our country’s elites, especially in the legal academy and federal bureaucracies.”

Not just a strong endorsement, but also a strong restatement of conservative principles. And an “in your face” to the outgoing administration, which has subverted immigration laws, the constitutional separation of powers, and generally treated the rule of law as an obstacle its political agenda.

Good going, Ted. Love you, Man.

Meanwhile, John McCain is undermining the Republican president-elect by passing on opposition research apparently sourced from 4Chan (from a firm with links to Planned Parenthood) containing salacious rumors to the FBI and offering an imprimatur of bipartisanship to Democrat Conspiracy Theories about Russia “hacking the election.” Marco Rubio went on the attack against the president-elect’s nominee for Secretary of State for not labeling the leader of a country the incoming administration will have to work with a war criminal. (Kind of baffled why so many people want to start a war with Russia, these days, but that’s the vibe.)

The thing is, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are both outsiders. Donald Trump is a populist, who ran under the Republican label perhaps because the Republican primary process isn’t rigged against outsiders to the degree that the Democrat primaries are. Ted Cruz is a conservative, not just a Republican who runs as one and then becomes a JV Democrat while in office. During the primaries, it was tough to decide which one the party establishment hated more.

John McCain and Marco Rubio represent the real Republican Party; a party that has refused every opportunity it has been given to reform and reduce Government, a party unwilling to stand up to their Democrat “friends,” a party cowed by a media complex that despises them and disloyal to the base that elects them. Trump and Cruz may wear the label of this party, but they are not really part of it.

End of one era, beginning of another pic.twitter.com/JG0LTuiFXc

— Drew (@FigDrewton) December 17, 2016

The New First Family of America — I think Melania makes a much more fetching first lady than Bill would have.

President-Elect Trump has already released his 100 Day Action Plan, and I don’t think I disagree with anything on that list. As his administration moves forward beyond the hundred days, it would be nice to see him focus on necessary themes and priorities throughout his first term.

1. Trump campaigned on shutting down illegal immigration, so he better follow through. Building the wall is not a total solution, but physical security barriers at our vulnerable southwestern border are a necessary element of any security plan, as are vigorous prosecutions for people engaged in human trafficking. But he also needs to crack down on people who illegally overstay visas and on businesses that hire illegal workers. Massive fines and jail should do the trick. Seeing the entire board of the JW Marriott corporation frog-marched out of their corporate headquarters would be quite a sight.

2. Another priority, Attorney General Chris Christie should go after corruption in DC hammer-and-tongs. Seeing congressmen, senators, lobbyists, and Federal bureaucrats indicted would be as therapeutic as when Iceland arrested and jailed the corrupt bankers that tanked its economy.

3. American business needs regulatory reform even more than tax reform. A Task Force should be put to work immediately on identifying red tape that is an obstacle to economic growth while providing little or no tangible benefit. The guy I wish were president thinks this should be a top administration priority, especially after Obama’s eight year spree of over-regulation, cronyism, and micromanagement.

4. I’m willing to cut Trump some slack on the first year deficit because there’s going to be a lot of budgetary momentum and carryover from the free-spending, borrow-and-spend Obama years.  I think once Trump examines the Federal Leviathan, he will find tremendous opportunities to cut bloat and waste. This would be an excellent project for Vice President Pence to focus his attention on.

5. You know what also might be a good idea? Some voting reform to overcome the massive, institutionalized vote-fraud that the Democrat Party propagates. Because, someday, it might be nice to have another Republican president.

Also, he should go back to correctly calculating and accurately reporting the unemployment rate, instead of fudging the numbers for the last eight years as Obama has done. Even if this hurts his public image, it would be a welcome step toward transparency and honesty.

Accomplishing this relatively short list of things would go a long way toward his promise to Make America Great Again (TM)

The hippie-dip social juicebox wanking of the Millennials is maybe… *maybe*… not rubbing off on their little brothers and sisters.

People now in their mid-teens are much more cautious about drugs, transgender rights and same-sex marriage, and are even sceptical of tattoos than those a few years older than them.

59% of young people responding to the survey said their opinions on same-sex marriage, transgender rights and marijuana was either “conservative” or “moderate” – a drastic swing from Millennials and members of “Generation X”, more than 80% of whom said their opinion was either “quite liberal” or “very liberal”:

Unfortunately, if they are in their mid-teens, it means they still have 4 – 8 years of indoctrination ahead of them via the Leftist–controlled education system.

Congratulations to Daryl Glenn, a conservative African-American who won the GOP Colorado primary for Senate.

The GOP reaction: The NRSC has decided not to provide funding for his campaign. Glenn beat Republican Establishment’s preferred candidate, and Glenn openly supports the removal of McConnell from Leadership.

Republicans just nominated a candidate who says Donald Trump is a ‘patriot,’ thinks Ted Cruz should be the next Supreme Court justice, and believes the real problem with Washington is that there is too much bipartisanship between Republicans and Democrats.

That was the description provided by Glenn’s Democrat opponent. It’s intended as an attack, but it sounds right to me. Our country’s $20 Trillion National Debt is a monument to bipartisan cooperation.

Hunter Baker is a university professor running a longshot campaign for the open congressional seat in the 8th District of Tennessee. He is very clear-eyed about his challenges. In explaining why he chose to run, a lot of it has to do with the gay left’s bullying, anti-American behavior. He cites the hate campaigns against Brendan Eich, Atlanta Fie Chief Kelvin Cochran, Christian florists and bakers, and the left’s all-out-war on Religious Freedom in general as his motivation.

When Dan Cathy of Chick-fil-A affirmed traditional marriage, a media storm followed. Mayors of Boston and Chicago said the company shouldn’t be allowed to do business in their cities. But instead of leaving Chick-fil-A vulnerable, millions of people rallied to its support. A huge show of solidarity and the company’s simple dignity changed the story.

Houston Mayor Annise Parker tried to silence pastors in the city by issuing subpoenas demanding they turn over their sermons so they could be examined for any mention of a controversial local equal rights ordinance. The response was overwhelming against such a move. Parker backed down.

These two examples show we can stand up to those who demand conformity to the corporate/DC/Hollywood party line. We deserve to have rights of faith and conscience protected. But every time a Republican office holder runs scared, the task becomes that much harder. We need people in office who are able to offer a simple, reasoned defense of religious liberty.

I wish him well. Without him and people like him, the future is going to look like a pair of Birkenstocks tramping on a human face forever.

Providing a reason for doing what you do is, in politics, almost as important for doing the thing. Instead of their lame, inside-baseball rationale of “we just don’t confirm Supreme Court Justices in an election year, here’s how Republicans should clarify their opposition to Obama’s Supreme Court nominee:

We cannot, and will not, confirm any Justice to the Supreme Court whose vote would imperil important Constitutional Rights such as the Right to Bear Arms and the Right to Practice Religion.

This would clarify why Obama’s nominees need to be opposed in a manner that reaffirms commitment to Constitutional Principles and resonates with key constituencies of the Republican base.

But, instead, they will probably just stick with that “We’re not going to confirm anyone in an election year” thing that makes them look like a bunch of yammering, out-of-touch, politicians.

The Media/Establishment consensus seems to be that losing two major issues at the Supreme Court (Obamacare and Gay Marriage) was actually *good* for Republicans. If the SCOTUS had held Obamacare to the actual language of the law and struck down the subsidies, Republicans would have quickly restored them; all the while trying to pretend that they weren’t really saving Obamacare. Gay marriage is now “off the table,” the “know-betters” tell us, and this is also good for Republicans.

No, it isn’t. Here’s why.

Imagine there were two restaurants in town, the Democrat Bistro and Cafe Republican. Imagine that the two restaurants were basically the same, except that Cafe Republican serves red meat and Democrat Bistro removed it from their menu back in the 90’s and has become increasingly vegetarian ever since. Cafe Republican has been told for years it needs to stop serving meat to be competitive with the Democrat Bistro. In fact, the Yelp reviews for Cafe Republican are filled with bad reviews, mostly from customers of the Democrat Bistro, most of them attacking Cafe Republican for serving red meat.

So, finally, Cafe Republican relents and takes meat (i.e. Social Conservatism) off the menu. And they won’t replace it with anything else, they’re just taking it off the menu.

If you were customer at Cafe Republican and meat was your main reason for eating there, why would you keep eating there?

And suppose Cafe Republican kept promising you that they would replace the meat on its menu with something you would like just as much, but instead they just copied stuff off the Democrat Bistro menu; claiming it was necessary to bring in Democrat Bistro customers.

If you were a customer at the Democrat Bistro, why would you switch to Cafe Republican?

Is the metaphor obvious enough?

The GOP has a very discouraged base because their Senate and House majorities have done little but advance the Democrat agenda; fully funding Obamacare, fully funding Executive Amnesty, confirming all of Obama’s appointments, and granting Obama unlimited trade authority. A Democrat Congress would have done exactly the same thing.

Further, the social conservative segment of the base may well decide “why bother?” It’s bad enough fighting for a lost cause; but when a former ally becomes neutral, there’s no point in being on their team.

So, social conservatives abandon the GOP. The GOP thinks this isn’t a problem because they’ll be replaced with moderates and maybe some Democrats. So far, in the northeast and California, it hasn’t worked out that way.

Ace of Spades is a great blogger. I’m a fan. Although perhaps he hasn’t been as cynical about our two-party system, all this time, as I’ve been. He may be changing his mind. See his recent piece, titled Jay Cost: The Republican Party Is Not Your Friend. Ace begins:

I have long argued against a third-party split and the Nightmare Option of simply conceding the country to the liberals for 20 disastrous years.

I am no longer confident in such arguments.

At some point — and that point is coming soon and hard — the Republican Party must be treated as what it is, a second enemy party dominated by corporate liberalism. [sic; meaning leftism]

He gives his reasons, which you can go read. I’m not sure I agree with Ace’s conclusion:

I am not only ready, but eager to ditch the corporate class — and, frankly, the wealthiest 1% generally, which largely supports liberal policies — and begin taking a very, very agnostic view on whether or not their taxes should be raised until it hurts.

And then, once it does hurt, and they are begging relief, we can…insist that corporate interests serve the conservative agenda, rather than, as it has been forever, that the conservative agenda be made a slave to corporate interests.

First, I don’t think the libertarian-conservative movement can control the situation so finely as that, anytime soon. Ace may just be fantasizing.

Second, I’m all in favor of rejecting corporate leftism (let’s have no bailouts!); but we must always be ready to lower taxes, on moral principle. High taxation is theft; it just happens to be legal theft (since the government is doing it). It’s wrong. Doing the right thing should be a person’s first response in life, not a bargaining chip. Thus, lowering government spending and taxes should be our basic position; even automatic.

Your thoughts?

Not because you’re gay; don’t be a frickin’ drama queen. No, Republicans don’t give a damn about you if you’re in the middle class, if you’re in the working class, or if you care about fiscally responsible Government.

John Boehner and the GOP leadership will not go to the wall to protect your jobs and income from illegal immigrant labor; they claim they don’t want to risk “shutting down the Government.” But they will totally go to the wall, and risk shutting down the Government, to protect corporate welfare for big bankers.

The provision would no longer require that big banks separate trades in financial derivatives from traditional bank accounts, which are backed by the government through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The derivatives played a key role in the financial collapse.

The Provision is strongly opposed by extreme-left Democrats, led by Democrat Elizabeth Warren. But, just because Democrats hate it doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea for taxpayers to be backing up the risky investments of multibillion dollar megabanks.

(Also, I am open to Jeff slapping me upside the head and telling me I got this wrong.)

It’s just telling whom Republicans will fight for, and whom they won’t.