Today in 1964, the Beatles made their debut on the BBC’s “Top of the Pops”:
The number one single today in 1967:
The number one single today in 1972:
No comments on Presty the DJ for March 25
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The April 4, 1977 Sports Illustrated reported:
To the NCAA, the networks and the Vegas odds makers, it was not an E-vent, like the basketball show in Atlanta. But for those to whom college hockey is a religion, last weekend’s NCAA tournament in Detroit’s Olympia was the true thing. Oh, there were no stunning upsets, just a couple of “almosts,” and Wisconsin, as expected, won the championship. It was how Wisconsin won that produced the excitement.
On Friday night the Badgers rallied to defeat stubborn New Hampshire 4-3 in overtime. Then on Saturday night, playing before more spectators (14,357) than had watched the NHL’s inept Red Wings in any game in the Olympia this season, Wisconsin won the title in another overtime chiller, a 6-5 defeat of Michigan. As the Badgers celebrated in the dressing room, Red Wings General Manager Ted Lindsay arrived to congratulate Coach Bob Johnson. Said Lindsay, “That’s the best team that’s been in this room all year.”
A morgue during Red Wings games, the Olympia rocked with Badger vibes both nights. Dressed up like radishes with their red-and-white T shirts and beanies, Badger fanatics made up at least half the crowd for Wisconsin’s games and made all the noise. They tormented opposing goaltenders by shouting “Sieve! Sieve! Sieve!” after every Wisconsin score. They rarely stopped chanting their fight song—”When you’ve said Wisconsin, you’ve said it all.” They relieved the souvenir hawkers of all Badger paraphernalia, and they plastered the Olympia with red-and-white signs. When Wisconsin played New Hampshire, there were 58 Wisconsin banners draped about the building—and only one for New Hampshire. The Badger-niks so overwhelmed two hotels that one couple at the Sheraton-Southfield demanded accommodations elsewhere—with a guarantee that no one from Wisconsin be allowed to register there.
The noisemakers anticipated all along that Wisconsin would win its first NCAA title since 1973. Boston University and New Hampshire? Eastern teams had won the NCAAs only six times in 29 years, and none had made it into the finals since 1972. Michigan? After losing to the Wolverines in the season opener back in October, Wisconsin had beaten Michigan five straight times.
Michigan opened the tournament by beating BU 6-4 but needed four cheap goals and a questionable referee’s call—for too many BU players on the ice—to do it. The following night, supposedly overmatched New Hampshire shut off Wisconsin’s vaunted power play and led 3-2 with less than nine minutes to go before losing in overtime.
The tension and grind of that game no doubt took its toll on Wisconsin in the finals. “We flew for about a period,” said Johnson, “then you could see us gasping for breath.” What had been a safe 5-2 third-period Wisconsin lead suddenly became 5-5 and overtime—and Michigan was flying. But just 13 seconds into sudden death, Badger Winger Tom Ulseth swept in for a stuff shot. It was blocked, but the rebound came out to Tri-Captain Steve Alley who rammed it past Goaltender Rick Palmer. “Great teams know how to win games like these,” said Johnson, “and this is a great team.”
Although Wisconsin was coming off a dismal 12-24-2 season, the Badger players thought back in October that they had a good chance to win the national championship. Last season Johnson took a sabbatical to coach the U.S. Olympic team. Alley and star Defenseman John Taft had joined him, leaving the Badgers bereft of their main men. In addition, Mark Johnson, the coach’s son, was still a high school hotshot. They all joined forces on campus this season, during which sophomore Goaltender Julian Baretta became an All-America. This, hockey fans, is the same Julian Baretta who gets to his net each period by skating backward through a lineup of his teammates, and sings Penny Lane when the puck is at the other end of the ice.
Young Johnson played center on Wisconsin’s second line and scored 36 goals, joining nine other forwards in double figures. Moreover, he became a key figure in the destructive power play that helped the Badgers to a 37-7-1 season.
New Hampshire, in fact, was the first Wisconsin opponent to survive four straight power plays without yielding a goal. In 45 games, Wisconsin had scored 93 power-play goals, converting 40% of its opportunities. Remarkably, everyone on the power-play unit was born in the U.S. Up front, Johnson had Alley, a native of Anoka, Minn., who had 31 goals at left wing; Mike Eaves, a Denver-born center, who had 81 points; and Mark Johnson, who played at the top of the right face-off circle. Back at the points were Taft and Craig Norwich.
“We just seem to be a perfect combination,” says Norwich, a junior from Edina, Minn. He is the best rushing defenseman in college hockey, a strong-skating, gambling stickhandler who had 18 goals and 65 assists. Where Norwich is smallish (5’11”, 170) and flashy, Taft, born in Minneapolis, is rangy (6’1″, 185) and consistent. Taft has spent his last five years playing for Johnson, including the year he spent as the captain of the Olympic team. Norwich and Taft played against each other in high school, and while they have contrasting styles, they both do one thing exceptionally well—pass the puck. “Since what we do on the power play is basically what a quarterback does, our power play is built around our ability to move the puck,” says Norwich. “And we’re such good friends and have such tremendous communication, we just seem to work perfectly together. It’s too bad we won’t be able to play together forever.”
… Taft’s next team may well be the Detroit Red Wings, who drafted him three years ago. “Until Lindsay took over the Red Wings, no one had even talked to me,” says Taft. What Lindsay ought to do, considering Detroit’s plight, is talk to all the Badgers.
Click here for the video and audio highlights. The TV announcer is Tim Ryan, who formerly announced hockey for NBC. The radio announcer is Paul Braun.
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Roman Catholic Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen wrote about Judas Iscariot, who we Christians encounter tonight and on Good Friday:
His name was Iscariot; no one knows exactly what that meant. Maybe it was Sicarius, in the Greek, a dagger bearer. In this case he would have been classified as a revolutionist bent on driving the Romans out of the land of Israel. But in any case; one day a babe was born in Kerioth, a child of promise. Friends brought gifts to the parents and time went on and that babe of Kerioth grew in age and he met a babe who was born in Bethlehem who had grown in age and grace and wisdom, and at the parting of the waters, Christ chose Judas to be an Apostle. He did not choose him to be a traitor, but to be an Apostle.
Almost all studies that have been made seriously of Judas say that the principal reason that he left is because he was avaricious. There is indeed some Gospel evidence for this. For, just a week before the Passion of our Blessed Lord, the Savior was invited into the house of Simon, the Pharisee, and what the host saw brought a blush to his cheek. He looked up and saw a woman who was an intruder. Outside, friends could come and stand along the wall and listen to a conversation at table. This woman however, annoyed him to some extent. He would not have minded it if anyone else had been there; but the Rabbi, what would he think of it.
She was a woman, a sinner. Her hair was long and she did not attempt to brush it back. As she came toward the table, and in those days everyone reclined at table on the left arm leaving the right arm free to eat, she came and stood over the feet of our Blessed Lord and let fall upon the sandaled harbingers of peace, a few tears like the first warm drops of a summer rain. Then ashamed of what she had done, she attempted to wipe away the tears with her hair. All the while Simon was thinking to himself,
“If He only knew what kind of a woman she is.”
How did he know?
She took from about her neck, a small vessel. In those days women carried precious perfume about the neck in a bottle and when they attended funeral rites, they would break the bottle over the remains and then after allowing the perfume to fall upon the corpse, they would throw even the remains of the bottle onto the body. And she releases from her neck, this vessel of precious ointment but does not do what you and I do, pour it out gently drop-by-drop by drop, as if to indicate by the slowness of our giving, the generosity of our gift. She broke the vessel… gave everything. For love knows no limits.
Judas all the while got a whiff of this perfume. Oscar Wilde describes a syniac as one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. And he immediately fixed a price, three hundred days wages. This perfume let me tell you, was no ordinary smell #5. So Judas now becomes the defender of the social order. He breaks up the routine of the dinner by saying,
“Why wasn’t this sold; sold for three hundred pennies worth and given to the poor?”
The poor! I can imagine that he probably went on and argued in some such way as this,
“I heard you on the mount of the Beatitudes say, Blessed are the poor. Where is your love for the poor now? Have you forgotten all those fishermen sheks that are laying in the Sea of Galilee? Remember all those huts that were hugging the highway between Jerusalem and Jericho; are you mindful of those? Have you forgotten the inner city of Jerusalem; it’s slums? Where is Your love of the poor?”
The Lord answered,
“The poor you have always with you; Me, you will have not always; and what this good woman has done was done for My burial and it will be told about her around the world.”
Here is another instance of an emphasis on social justice when there is a forgetfulness of individual justice. …
Can you think of the first time that the fall of Judas is mentioned in the Gospels; the very first time? If you can recall that moment then you can have the answer to why there is a break in the priesthood. Where is the first mention of the fall of Judas? The day our Lord announced the Eucharist! When did Judas leave? The night our Lord gave the Eucharist! He broke at the announcement of the Eucharist; as a matter of fact, that was a critical moment in the life of our Blessed Lord. When He announced the Eucharist He lost the masses because He refused to be a bread King. Secondly, He lost some of his disciples; they left him and walked no more. Finally He split His Apostolic band. And here is the end of the story in the announcement of the Eucharist.
Conclusion of the 6th chapter of John,
And when the disciples withdrew and no longer went about with Him, Jesus asked the twelve,
“Do you also want to leave me?
Simon Peter answered,
“Lord to whom shall we go? Your words are the words of Eternal Life. We have faith and we know that you are the Holy One of God.” And Jesus answered, “Have I not chosen you? All twelve? Yet, one of you is a devil!” He meant Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. He it was who would betray Him and he was one of the twelve. …
Our Blessed Lord had to live with this man for two years yet; think of it! He did not say who the devil was, He merely said, “One of you is the devil.” John, later on of course wrote the name. Now you know why we have centered this retreat on the Eucharist. There has never yet been a priest, who daily kept his faith in the Eucharist by watching an hour with the Lord who ever left him; no priest ever will! And those who are thinking of leaving… and I have many such letters in my possession about such men, from such men, who have come back because they restored their faith in the Eucharist. …
Now we come to the Last Supper and Judas leaves the priesthood. The seating arrangement of the table was one in which certainly John sat at the right. Who sat at the left? Judas! Now I will prove this to you. In the painting of Leonardo Divinci, Judas is down the table, I think about the fourth and upsetting the salt. And from that time on it became bad luck to upset the salt. He was holding his money bag but I think Our Lord always anxious to save us said to him, “Here Judas, sit near Me.” Where was Peter? On the other side of John.
Our Blessed Lord now washes the feet of His disciples. There are seven gestures mentioned; I think it is the beginning of the 13th chapter of John. As Our Lord washes the feet during supper, Jesus was well aware that the Father had entrusted everything to Him and that He had come from God and was going back to God. Now get the picture of the Incarnation here, (rose from the table as if God the Son was now prepared for the Incarnation), laid aside His garments, (the glory of His Divinity,) taking a towel which is the mark of a servant, a slave, (tying humanity about Himself, tied it round Him,) poured water into a basin, (poured out His blood,) washed His disciples feet, (cleansed us,) wiped them with a towel, (the purification of the spirit). It is interesting to compare this passage with the second chapter of Philippians, verse 6 which was a hymn in the Church, verse 6 and on in Philippians.
And Our Blessed Lord, after washing the feet of His disciples said, “You are clean, but not all. One of you is about to betray Me.” Ten said, “Is it I Lord?” In the Face of Divinity no one can be sure of his innocence. One said, “Who is it Lord?” We will come back to that later on. And one said, “Who is it Master.” St. Paul tell us that it is only by the Spirit that we can call Jesus, Lord. Eleven called Him Lord, one, Master. Now at this particular time there was whispering going on and you will understand why the seating arrangement was as it is here described.
When Our Lord said, “One of you is about to betray me, Peter always curious and inquisitive had to be in on everything; he just couldn’t bear the suspense. If he were seated next to our Lord, you may be sure that Peter would have said. “Who is it Lord?” But Peter, says the Gospel, turns to John and said, “Ask Him who it is?” He asked John to ask and John said, “Who is it Lord, who is it?” And the Lord said, “It is he to whom I will reach this bread after I have dipped it in the sauce.” That is the way toasts were paid in those days; the bread was dipped in the sauce and given to a friend, the assumption being that they who ate the same bread were one body. Our Blessed Lord at that dipped the bread and gave it to Judas and said, “What you are about to do, do quickly.” Then Satan entered into Judas and the Gospel says, “And Judas went out and it was night.” It is always night when we leave the Lord.
None of the other Apostles at table knew what was happening because the Gospel tell us that they thought Judas had gone out either to buy food for the Passover or else to give money to the poor. In other words, do not expect that anyone who is satanic looks satanic. You would never think that anyone who is going out to conduct the Liturgy, to prepare the Liturgy, was satanic. You wouldn’t think that anyone who was going out to distribute alms was satanic, but Satan was in him. Then it is after he leaves that our Blessed Lord pronounces that word “now”. “Now Father, glorify Thy Son with the glory that I had with thee before the foundation of the world was laid.”
The Lord now prepares to go down to the garden; there is only one recorded time in the life of our Blessed Lord that He ever sang and that was the night He went out to His death! They go into the garden, He thought He could depend on three, Peter, James and John; John rather loving, Peter loyal in an intense kind of way, James ready always to follow leadership, but He told them to watch and pray. “Watch!” (Look out for the external environment…that is your horizontal problem.} “Pray!”…(Vertical attachment to Heaven.) And they slept! Men who are worried do not sleep, but they slept. Three times our Blessed Lord came back to them and said, “Can you not stay awake one hour with Me?”
Now on the hill opposite the garden one can catch the sight of lanterns and a group of men, the Greek word that is used, spira, would rather suggest that there were about two hundred in this army of Judas. It is a full moon, very easy to distinguish anyone. Further more, our Lord was well known in Jerusalem, everyone saw him, at least on Palm Sunday. And as Judas leads his band of ruffians down the hill he says, “I will give you a sign, a sign. He whom I shall kiss, that is He. Lay hold of Him.” Why did he have to give a sign, a kiss? Somehow or another when we leave the Lord we never understand Him, we forget His Divinity, we forget His wisdom and we forget His love. And Judas thought our Blessed Lord, coward that He was, would run back into the olive grove hiding in the dark. And so he would have to flush Him out and in the darkness he would give them a sign, he would kiss Him. And our Lord comes forward, “Who do you seek?” ‘Jesus of Nazareth!” “I AM!” (Exodus) And they all fall backwards until He gives them strength to stand.
And Judas then throws his arms around the neck of our Blessed Lord and blisters His lips with a kiss. And the original word that is used in the Gospel is means he smothered Him with kisses. (So, books are written; I love the Church BUT!) “Hail, Rabbi,” and then he kissed Him. Why the kiss? Because Divinity is so sacred that its betrayal must always be prefaced by some mark of affection and esteem.
The Lord is arrested, led over the brook of Kedron; a story we will tell about in the last Holy Hour. And Judas had found his Lord because the Gospel tells us that our Lord was often accustomed to go there to pray. Only those who have been cradled in the sacred association of the Church know how to betray. Judas knew where to find the Lord after dark, and in all the great apocalyptic literature, Robert Hugh Benson, Soloviev, and Doesteovsky. The betrayal of Christ in His Church is always from within, not from without. In Benson, it was a Cardinal, in Doesteovsky it was a Cardinal, and in Soloviev it was a Cardinal. The title means nothing but the fact is, he was a priest. These writers made the priest one who had been at the top.
Who will ever forget Doesteovsky’s description of Christ coming to the city of Seville in about the 16th Century? The Grand Inquisitor is a wisened old Cardinal over ninety years of age. And when our Blessed Lord returns he sees a child being brought into a Church. He raises the child to life and the Grand Inquisitor reminds Him that He came to bring freedom but people did not want to be free. They really want to be slaves of something. And he said, “Tomorrow we will burn You. Leave and never come back.” And our Lord bent over and kissed the whitened cheeks of the old cardinal and for the first time in many years blood came to his cheeks. And once again he said, “Never again come back.”
Is it any wonder then that St. Peter along with Ezekiel in the Old Testament speak of the destruction of the Temple and the persecution of the Church is coming from within. Ezekiel said, “Incipite a sanctuario meo,” and St. Peter; “Begin at my sanctuary.” Begin there in the sanctuary, and that was what was first destroyed when Titus and Vespasian took over Jerusalem. And Peter said that’s the way it will be at the end.
Judas now has his money but not very much, $17.40. Divinity is always betrayed out of all proportion to its due worth, always a ridiculous figure. So when a man gives up his priesthood what does he get? He gets $500.00 in royalties for a book attacking the Church, an hour on television to make light of it and celibacy. Three thousand nights in bed and he is sick of it all. Judas was sick of it all, took back his thirty pieces of silver and sent them rolling across the temple floor and he said, “Look, you do it.” All that it was fit for was to buy a field of blood. And he might have, if he had just a spark of faith, have received pardon and forgiveness from the Lord, Who would forgive such betrayals seventy times seven.
It is interesting to make a comparison of Peter and Judas. Our Lord warned both that they would fail. They both failed, they both denied or betrayed the Lord and they both repented. But the difference in the word repent is that Judas repented unto himself and Peter repented unto the Lord. They were the same up to that point. St. Paul therefore says there are two kinds of sorrow, the sorrow of the world and the sorrow of true faith. So Judas no longer has any hope having refused to return to the Savior and he takes a rope and goes out to some rocky ground, we know not where it was.
I wonder, maybe…and here I am only speculating, up to this point I have used the Gospel. After Good Friday did he throw the rope over one of the beams of the Cross? We know he fell from the rocks and was burst asunder. That we do not know; it is mere speculation. That speculation was confirmed a few years ago when the cook of one of our bishops in China, who had been with him for about twenty five years, When the Communists came in the cook sold out to the Communists and became a sheriff and, he became the sheriff prisoner of the bishop and the bishop died on the death march. The cook, in remorse went to the Chapel of the Bishop and threw a rope over the rafter and hanged himself. He went back as it were, to the scene of his crime.
Leaving aside this speculation because that is all it is, Judas now is full of despair and he walks over the rocky ground and each rock seem just as hard and cruel as his own heart. The limb of every tree seemed like a pointing finger, “Traitor, traitor, traitor!” The knot on every tree seemed like an accusing eye. And he hanged himself and as the Acts of the Apostles tells us, his bowels burst asunder. “And he went to his own place.” That is all… his own place. Everything has its own place. You open the cage of a bird and the bird goes to its own place. You drop a stone from the hand and the stone goes to its own place. We do not know what this propriam locum was of Judas but we do know the reason of the fall and may that reason sharpen the resolution of our will so that we will not fail the Eucharist. If we could read the hearts of those who have left, faith broke, it snapped somewhere making light of the Eucharist, anything at all but no longer the sense of the invisible and the beautiful presence of Christ.
And the great tragedy of the life of Judas, one of the twelve, is that he might have been Saint Judas.
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Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R–Janesville) gave a talk to House of Representatives interns:
I want to thank Chairman Brady and the Ways and Means Committee for hosting us here. I had the privilege of joining this committee my second term in Congress. It’s the perfect setting for what I want to talk with you about today. Because it is here, in this committee, that we debate some of the biggest, most consequential issues. Our tax code, health care, trade, entitlement programs, welfare reform. t’s a big deal to be on this committee. And understanding the privilege and the responsibility that came along with it, we took our job seriously.
And we always held ourselves to a higher standard of decorum. We treated each other with respect. We disagreed—often fiercely so—but we disagreed without being disagreeable. I speak of this in the past tense only because I no longer serve here. But it almost sounds like I’m speaking of another time, doesn’t it? It sounds like a scene unfamiliar to your generation.
Looking around at what’s taking place in politics today, it is easy to get disheartened. How many of you find yourself just shaking your head at what you see from both sides? You know, I see myself in each of you. I came here as a curious college intern. Trying to get a sense of everything. Trying to figure out where to take my life. I would always ask older, more experienced people: what do you know that you wished you knew when you were my age?
This is my answer to that. Here is what I know now that I want you to know—that you cannot see yourself today. And that is not just a lesson for young minds, but a message for all Americans. Our political discourse—both the kind we see on TV and the kind we experience among each other—did not use to be this bad and it does not have to be this way. Now, a little skepticism is healthy. But when people distrust politics, they come to distrust institutions. They lose faith in their government, and the future too. We can acknowledge this. But we don’t have to accept it. And we cannot enable it either.
My dad used to say, if you’re not a part of the solution, you’re a part of the problem. So I have made it a mission of my Speakership to raise our gaze and aim for a brighter horizon. Instead of talking about what politics is today, I want to talk about what politics can be. I want to talk about what our country can be…about what our Founders envisioned it to be. America is the only nation founded an idea—not an identity. That idea is the notion that the condition of your birth does not determine the outcome of your life. Our rights are natural. They come from God, not government.
While it was a beautiful idea, it had never been tried before. Early on, as our founders struggled to establish a suitable order, they decided that we would not maintain this idea by force. In the first Federalist paper, Alexander Hamilton wrote that “in politics,” it is “absurd to aim at making” converts “by fire and sword.” Instead, we would govern ourselves, with the people’s consent. Again, there was no manual for how to do this. That’s why they call it the American experiment.
So they made each other—and those who came after—take an oath to uphold the Constitution. And every generation since has inherited this responsibility. Leaders with different visions and ideas have come and gone; parties have risen and fallen; majorities and White Houses won and lost. But the way we govern endures: through debate, not disorder. This is one thing about our country that makes it the greatest on earth.
I must admit, I didn’t always find this idea so exciting…As I said, I came to Washington unsure of what I was going to do with my life. And then I ended up working for a guy named Jack Kemp. Jack once played quarterback for the Buffalo Bills. He went on to represent the people of Western New York in the House in the 1970s and 80s. He served in the Cabinet under President George H.W. Bush. And, like me, he was once our party’s nominee for vice president.
But I first met Jack exactly where you’d expect…at Tortilla Coast. It’s true…I was waiting on his table. I didn’t bother him that day, but I told a friend I’d love to have the chance to work for him. And, as luck would have it, such an opening soon arose. The thing about Jack was, he was an optimist all the way. He refused to accept that any part of America–or the American Idea–could be written off. Here was a conservative willing—no, eager—to go to America’s bleakest communities and talk about how free enterprise could lift people out of poverty. These were areas that hadn’t seen a Republican leader come through in years, if ever.
I had the chance to accompany Jack on some of these visits. I saw how people took to him. I saw how he listened, and took new lessons from each experience. He found common cause with poverty fighters on the ground. Instead of a sense of drift, I began to feel a sense of purpose. Jack inspired me to devote my professional life to public policy. It became a vocation.
Ideas, passionately promoted and put to the test—that’s what politics can be.That’s what our country can be. It can be a confident America, where we have a basic faith in politics and leaders. It can be a place where we’ve earned that faith. All of us as leaders can hold ourselves to the highest standards of integrity and decency. Instead of playing to your anxieties, we can appeal to your aspirations. Instead of playing the identity politics of “our base” and “their base,” we unite people around ideas and principles. And instead of being timid, we go bold.
We don’t resort to scaring you, we dare to inspire you. We don’t just oppose someone or something. We propose a clear and compelling alternative. And when we do that, we don’t just win the argument. We don’t just win your support. We win your enthusiasm. We win hearts and minds. We win a mandate to do what needs to be done to protect the American Idea.
In a confident America, we also have a basic faith in one another. We question each other’s ideas—vigorously—but we don’t question each other’s motives. If someone has a bad idea, we don’t think they’re a bad person. We just think they have a bad idea. People with different ideas are not traitors. They are not our enemies. They are our neighbors, our coworkers, our fellow citizens. Sometimes they’re our friends. Sometimes they’re even our own flesh and blood, right? We all know someone we love who disagrees with us politically, or votes differently.
But in a confident America, we aren’t afraid to disagree with each other. We don’t lock ourselves in an echo chamber, where we take comfort in the dogmas and opinions we already hold. We don’t shut down on people—and we don’t shut people down. If someone has a bad idea, we tell them why our idea is better. We don’t insult them into agreeing with us. We try to persuade them. We test their assumptions. And while we’re at it, we test our own assumptions too.
I’m certainly not going to stand here and tell you I have always met this standard. There was a time when I would talk about a difference between “makers” and “takers” in our country, referring to people who accepted government benefits. But as I spent more time listening, and really learning the root causes of poverty, I realized I was wrong. “Takers” wasn’t how to refer to a single mom stuck in a poverty trap, just trying to take care of her family. Most people don’t want to be dependent. And to label a whole group of Americans that way was wrong. I shouldn’t castigate a large group of Americans to make a point.
So I stopped thinking about it that way—and talking about it that way. But I didn’t come out and say all this to be politically correct. I was just wrong. And of course, there are still going to be times when I say things I wish I hadn’t. There are still going to be times when I follow the wrong impulse.
Governing ourselves was never meant to be easy. This has always been a tough business. And when passions flair, ugliness is sometimes inevitable. But we shouldn’t accept ugliness as the norm. We should demand better from ourselves and from one another. We should think about the great leaders that have bestowed upon us the opportunity to live the American Idea. We should honor their legacy. We should build that more confident America.
This, as much as anything, is what makes me an optimist. It is knowing that ideas can inspire a country and help people. Long before I worked for him, Jack Kemp had a tax plan that he was incredibly passionate about. He wasn’t even on the Ways and Means Committee and Republicans were deep in the minority back then. So the odds of it going anywhere seemed awfully low. But he was like a dog with a bone. He took that plan to any audience he could get in front of. He pushed it so hard that he eventually inspired our party’s nominee for president—Ronald Reagan—to adopt it as his own. And in 1981 the Kemp-Roth bill was signed into law, lowering tax rates, spurring growth, and putting millions of Americans back to work.
All it took was someone willing to put policy on paper and promote it passionately. This is the basic concept behind the policy agenda that House Republicans are building right now. As leaders, we have an obligation to put our best ideas forward—no matter the consequences. With so much at stake, the American people deserve a clear picture of what we believe. Personalities come and go, but principles endure. Ideas endure, ready to inspire generations yet to be born.
That’s the thing about politics. We think of it in terms of this vote or that election. But it can be so much more than that. Politics can be a battle of ideas, not insults. It can be about solutions. It can be about making a difference. It can be about always striving to do better. That’s what it can be and what it should be. This is the system our Founders envisioned. It’s messy. It’s complicated. It’s infuriating at times. And it’s a beautiful thing too.
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Today in 1945, Billboard magazine published the first album chart, which makes Nat King Cole’s “The King Cole Trio” the number one number one album.
The number one British album today in 1973 was Alice Cooper’s “Billion Dollar Babies”:
The number one single today in 1973:
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For all the people who support Donald Trump because of his business experience, read Inc.‘s story about Trump and his vendors:
With a resounding win in Arizona, one of three states holding presidential primaries on Tuesday, Donald Trump is inching closer to the Republican nomination. But for Beth Rosser, the co-owner and vice president of Triad Building Specialties, every one of the billionaire real estate mogul’s political successes just opens old wounds.
As Rosser remembers it, her father Forest Jenkins, who started Triad, an installer of toilet partitions, was as excited as other local contractors to get a decent book of business in 1989, when Trump set to work building the Taj Mahal casino. At the time, Trump called the Atlantic City, New Jersey spot “the ultimate property,” and it was to be the largest casino in the world, according to news reports at the time.
Triad, based in Westchester, Pennsylvania, was and is a tiny family enterprise in comparison, with just four employees. Rosser says on a good year, the business–founded in 1976 by her father, who had scrimped and saved as a union sheet metal worker–made about $750,000 in revenue at the time. The job for Trump, which was for installation of bathroom partitions in the sprawling 17-acre, 1,300-room hotel should have brought in $250,000.
But the Taj Mahal soon foundered under high-interest payments for the $1 billion project, and it was forced into bankruptcy by 1990. The legal proceedings stretched on for 15 years and included 341 meetings involving thousands of creditors as mounting debt was restructured and Trump received a $500 million credit line from banks that assumed ownership of the property. Most creditors received pennies on the dollar of what they were owed, experts said.
“It’s a disgrace, especially how [Trump] talks about making America great again,” Rosser says. “He made his way to the top on the backs of hardworking Americans.”
In the end, Rosser says Triad finally recouped about $150,000 after three years of court struggles. But it took the business close to a decade to recover from the $100,000 shortfall, she says, including paying off the loans to undertake the contract. Ultimately, Triad only managed to stay afloat by borrowing from the local manufacturer with which it had contracted to make components of the partitions. Today, the company still has the same number of employees, and has revenue just north of $1 million.
Other small businesses that worked with Trump on the casino were not as lucky and were swallowed up in the bankruptcy, Rosser says. That includes Altman Contracting, a Southampton, New Jersey, builder Rosser says lost millions of dollars in uncollected bills. Inc.’s request to speak with Trump or a campaign representative went unanswered.
Complaints about Trump’s lack of consideration for small business owners in Atlantic City surface over and over. “The fact is, there were a lot of small contractors and vendors who got hurt, who went out of business because Trump did not pay contracts on time,” New Jersey state senator Jim Whelan, who was the mayor of Atlantic City during Trump’s casino years, told Newsweek last year.
Bryant Simon, a professor at Temple University, whose book Boardwalk of Dreams chronicles the history of Atlantic City, including Trump’s business dealings there, says business owners who worked on the Taj Mahal were often paid just 10 to 20 cents on the dollar in the bankruptcy. That included not just building contractors, but carpet layers, limousine drivers, and other service providers.
And Simon agrees with Whelan that in the lead-up to the bankruptcy, things were scarcely any better either.
“[Trump] was a notoriously late payer, if payment was for net 60 days, he paid in 90,” Simon says.
In fairness, Simon adds, the owners of all the casinos in the area were late payers. He says his own father, who owned a used car rental business and at times rented to Trump’s business, declined to rent to any casinos in the area because of their poor reputation for payment.
Others in Atlantic City did benefit from the build-out of casinos in the 1980s and ’90s. Martin Wood, the owner of one of the city’s two pawn shops, Wood’s Loan Office, saw his business flourish as down-on-their luck gamblers pawned their jewelry for cash. But when the Taj Mahal had its massive crash-and-burn, few business owners were immune.
“Any time the casinos go into bankruptcy, everybody loses except them,” Wood says. As far as Trump goes, he says: “Suppliers and whatnot got shafted; if you sent Trump a bill for $400, he would say, ‘take $2.’”
On a macro scale, experts see disturbing parallels between Trump’s proposals on current business issues and the legacy he left in Atlantic City. …
Additionally, Trump’s anti-immigration stance would leave large holes in the economy; 3 percent of the population could be uprooted and sent back to their native countries, with no one left to do the jobs they currently do, Blinder says. He also points with alarm to the cost of Trump’s biggest gambit, the wall along the border with Mexico, which is now estimated at $10 billion, an increase of $2 billion from earlier forecasts.
“Did someone say ‘cost overruns?’” he writes. “Who cares? Mexico will pay, right? Wrong.”
It’s grandiose proposals for things like a wall that Simon and others find so troubling as well.
“One of the fascinating things about [Trump’s] campaign is that it has no obligation to the normal standards of truth,” Simon says. “There is a pattern of his making claims that can’t be substantiated, and a pattern of people who want to believe him.”
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The Weekly Standard reports:
President Obama said that he “personally would not disagree” with some of Cuban President Raul Castro’s criticisms of America:
“President Castro, I think, has pointed out that in his view making sure that everybody is getting a decent education or health care, has basic security and old age, that those things are human rights as well. I personally would not disagree with him,” Obama said.
“President Castro, I think, has pointed out that in his view making sure that everybody is getting a decent education or health care, has basic security and old age, that those things are human rights as well. I personally would not disagree with him,” Obama said.
Somewhere, John F. Kennedy is rolling over in his grave.
And while Comrade Obama was on his Disculpa y Rendición Recorrido, London’s Daily Mail reports what was happening elsewhere:
At least 34 people have been killed and many more have been left injured after a series of bombs blasted inside an airport terminal and Metro station.
It has been reported that at least one of the bombs at Brussels Airport contained nails.
Terrified passengers at Brussels Airport have told how there was ‘just blood’ everywhere after this morning’s bomb blast and likened the horrific aftermath to ‘the apocalypse’.
Witnesses described gruesome scenes inside the terminal in the wake of the suspected suicide blast which has claimed the lives of at least 14 people and left 50 more injured.
Blood-soaked passengers sprinted for their lives as smoke filled the area near the check in desks.
Alphonse Youla, who was working on a stand putting security wrapping around suitcases, said: ‘I heard a man shout some Arabic words then an explosion.. then a second explosion, a massive explosion, much bigger.
‘It was a horror. I saw at least seven people dead. There was blood. People had lost legs. You could see their bodies but no legs.’
One witness struggled to hold back tears as he described victims who had lost their legs lying in pools of blood in the airport’s main hall.
Others described seeing ‘dismembered bodies everywhere’ and the ceiling collapsing after two blasts rocked the building.
Just 90 minutes later a blast hit a Metro in the Maelbeek area of Brussels claiming another 20 lives.
Samir Derrouich, who works at a restaurant in the airport, said: ‘The two explosions were almost simultaneous. They were both at check in desk. One was close to the Starbucks. It was awful. There was just blood. It was like the apocalypse.’
Dries Valaert, 30, was waiting to get his boarding pass from a check in desk.
He said: ‘There was a first blast and then ten seconds later a second explosion. It was a big big blast, the ceiling went down. It was just 30 metres from where I was. I saw people down on the ground and I just went running.
‘I jumped over the security fences towards the departure gates as I thought it would be safer. My first intuition was to get out in case their were attackers with guns.
‘I saw a woman around 18 years old with a hole in her hand with blood pouring out and a man with an injured ankle and two people down. There was lots of panic. People were running all over the place.’
Mr Valaert, who was flying to a business meeting in Berlin, said he believed the bombs were hidden in suitcases that had just been checked in.
He said: ‘The explosions were just behind the service desks, they were blown towards us. To me it is the most realistic possibility. I don’t think it was someone with a sucide vest.’
He said he did not hear anyone shout anything before the blasts.
‘I saw two people dead. I looked around as I ran away and saw them lying there.’
Martin Buxant tweeted how a witness had told him: ‘We saw bodies go up in the air and then falling down heavily.’
There were reports that shouts in Arabic were heard before the explosions and shots fired in the aftermath.
Around 90 minutes later, ten were killed when an explosion hit a Metro station near the EU headquarters in the city centre in another suspected terror attack.
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The number one British single today in 1961:
The number one single today in 1963:
Today in 1973, the Immigration and Naturalization Service ordered John Lennon to leave the U.S. within 60 days.
More than three years later, Lennon won his appeal and stayed in the U.S. the rest of his life.
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As you know, the difference between real life and fiction is that the latter has to make sense.
That’s as opposed to this presidential election season, which appears to be following the path of political fiction, with possibilities of a convention without a first-ballot presidential nominee and a presidential election that ends in the House of Representatives.
Duke University Prof. Georg Vanberg explores what the term “majority” means and does not mean in a democracy:
Given Donald Trump’s continuing electoral success, it appears increasingly likely that only a “brokered convention” can prevent a Trump nomination.
Various voices have begun to suggest that such an outcome would be an illegitimate, undemocratic maneuver — essentially, the party establishment’s “stealing” the nomination (see Newt Gingrich’s comments). Party leaders “should not be able to use conventions as a way to subvert the will of the people” (see the Atlantic, for example). Even those who favor this route apologetically acknowledge a brokered convention as an “anachronistic, undemocratic” means to an end.
Such arguments represent a fundamental confusion about the nature of democratic decision-making. A little reflection shows that concepts like “the will of the people” are quite slippery – and that Trump has no special claim on that title.
Of course, what voters want is important in a democracy. But the results of elections are not simply a reflection of “the people’s will.” They derive from the combination of three factors: voter preferences, the rules that define how citizens can vote and how votes are counted, and the choices that are presented to voters.
Here’s the key point: Exactly the same voter preferences can result in widely different election results under alternative (and equally democratic) election procedures. As a result, it is not at all clear what “the will of the people” might mean.
A simple example illustrates this. The following table lists the preferences of 100 voters over three candidates — for example, 34 voters prefer Lopez to Lee to Lewis, and so on.
34 voters 30 voters 26 voters 10 voters Lopez Lee Lewis Lewis Lee Lopez Lee Lopez Lewis Lewis Lopez Lee Plurality rule — the person with the most votes wins — is standard for most elections in the United States. By this rule, the candidate who secures the most votes is declared the “winner” of a presidential primary (leaving aside the much more complicated question of delegate allocation). Under plurality rule, candidate Lewis wins with 36 percent of the vote.
But of course plurality rule is not the only plausible election procedure; many other procedures are used around the world and in the United States.
Consider, for example, an instant run-off procedure, used in some state and local elections in the U.S. Under this procedure, candidate Lee – who receives the fewest votes – would be eliminated in the first round, her votes would be transferred to her voters’ second choice (Lopez), and Lopez would win the election with a comfortable two-thirds majority (64-36) against Lewis. A majority run-off system (used, for example, to elect the president of France) would result in the same outcome.
Or consider the Borda count, which is used to elect the winner of the Heisman Trophy and baseball’s most valuable player, among others. Under this system, each voter ranks the candidates from best to worst, assigning one point for first place, two points for second place, and so forth. The points are totaled, and the candidate with the lowest score wins. In this case, Lee (180 points) beats both Lopez (192 points) and Lewis (238 points).
Finally, note that Lee is preferred by a majority of voters to both Lewis and Lopez – and thus would win a “round-robin” tournament between the candidates.
What is the point here? What the example underscores is that there is no straightforward or self-evident way to think about “what the people want” or what “the voters’ choice” is.
Step back for a moment. Does Lewis really reflect “the will of the people”? Sure, he secures the most votes if citizens can only choose one candidate. But two-thirds of the voters would prefer either of the other candidates!
Is Lopez “the people’s choice”? Almost as many voters place him first as Lewis, and he is second for many more. But Lopez would lose decisively to Lee!
So perhaps Lee represents “the people’s will”? Maybe. Lee seems to be a compromise candidate — but of course Lee is also the first choice of the smallest number of voters.
In short, it is not at all clear who voters prefer in a situation like this. The winner is determined as much by electoral rules as it is by the preferences of voters.
This fact — that aggregating the preferences of individuals is a vexing problem — is one of the most important insights of the social sciences of the past 50 years. It earned Kenneth Arrow a Nobel Prize, and William Rikerwrote powerfully about its implications for democratic theory.
Of course, these results do not imply that votes cast are meaningless, or should be ignored. This is why it is important to specify electoral procedures ahead of time, and not to change them “midstream.” By this logic, should Trump win a majority of delegates, the Republican Party should accept this outcome.
But if Trump fails to win a majority of delegates, the logic is equally clear: securing a plurality of the vote (or delegates) does not provide Trump with any special claim to legitimacy, nor does it give him the mantle of “the people’s choice.”
In this case, a brokered convention that denies him the nomination is not a coup in which the party’s establishment thumbs its nose at the electorate. On the contrary, such an outcome can represent the preferences of many voters, and have an equally powerful claim to be “democratic.”
The U.S. is organized as a republic, not a democracy. No president has ever been elected by a majority of Americans, only a majority of American voters (that is, those who voted, not merely those eligible to cast votes), and then only through the Electoral College process. If the political parties wanted a democratic process to determine their presidential nominees, then a plurality of votes cast in primary elections, not a majority of convention delegates (which are sort of a version of the Electoral College) or whatever process a caucus uses, would determine a party’s nominee.
Brokered conventions apparently were much more commonplace, according to Trey Mayfield:
With talk abounding about a potentially brokered GOP convention this July in Cleveland, a little background is in order. The convention’s primary purpose is to produce a nominee acceptable to a majority of the delegates, who are there, in turn, to represent the views of the party members of their respective states.
The delegates’ job is not to simply ratify whoever gets the most popular votes—or delegates—as the nominee. Were that the case, there would be no need for delegates, or a convention; the victor could be determined by merely tallying up the popular vote, and giving the nomination to the person with the most votes.
In the pre-telecommunications age, conventions were much likelier to need to be “brokered” because candidates weren’t well-known outside their own states or regions, and the party was much less “nationalized,” and instead needed the various factions to hash out their differences to find a commonly acceptable nominee (and platform). Today, all these things are well known to voters at the time they vote in their respective primaries, meaning the “hashing out” effectively occurs in a series of voting in the various states over a five-month process.
There’s no need anymore, for example, for states to nominate a “favorite son” who has no chance of winning in order to have other party members consider their views at the convention. In addition, a nationwide system of primaries and caucuses in which the voters at large get to participate is relatively recent, having really begun only in 1972.
All that said, the GOP has a storied history of brokered conventions where it was not obvious before the convention who the nominee would (or should) be. When a race is practically uncontested (like when there’s an incumbent president), or only two significant candidates, that process takes care of itself by producing a majority of delegates committed to one candidate, who is then obviously the winner long before the convention starts.
The GOP has a storied history of brokered conventions where it was not obvious before the convention who the nominee would (or should) be.
But where there are three or more candidates with significant support among the delegates, and none with a majority, the question of who has the most delegates is subordinated to the question of who will best represent the party in November. Indeed, since its first convention in 1856, the Republican Party has had ten presidential elections in which no candidate coming into the convention had a majority of delegates. In seven of those conventions, the GOP did not nominate the person who came in with the most delegates.
The last brokered GOP convention was in 1952 (although there was almost one in 1976 between Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, where the race was close enough that control over some disputed state delegations made a difference). In the ‘52 race, Ohio Sen. Robert Taft entered the convention with 35 percent of the delegates, followed by General Dwight D. Eisenhower with 26.3 percent, California Gov. Earl Warren with 17.3 percent, and Minnesota Gov. Harold Stassen with 11.3 percent. Most delegates at the convention preferred Taft as the true conservative, but shifted their votes to Eisenhower because he had a much greater likelihood of winning in November. As history showed, they were right. …
The purpose of brokered conventions is to produce a nominee acceptable to Republicans nationwide and who can win the general election. Six of the GOP’s ten brokered conventions have produced a nominee who went on to become president, with five of them winning the popular vote. By contrast, in the ten elections since 1960 in which the GOP was not nominating an incumbent, the Republican nominee has won four times.
Whatever one may think of the GOP brokering conventions, their track record in producing winning candidates has been slightly better than the modern system of choosing nominees. Perhaps the GOP ought not to be afraid of the possibility.
As for what happens after Nov. 8, I’m not sure why a minister, Rev. Adam Phillips, wrote this for the Huffington Post, but …
It’s hidden there in plain sight, even if it hasn’t happened since the election of 1825: The people will not pick the next president, Congress will.
We wrote about this last week on Medium, and now the story is beginning to flesh out.
Politico reports that leading conservatives will meet on Thursday to plot out a third-party spoiler plan to beat presumed nominee Donald Trump.
With Marco Rubio suspending his campaign after losing the Florida primary and it is beginning to appear he will reverse his previous words to support a nominee Trump.
Because there will be a third party candidate — and their name will likely be Mitt with a Kasich or a Rubio on the same ticket.
Michael Bloomberg practically left a breadcrumb for this theory in plain sight when he declared that he would not be running for President this cycle. While pundits focused on why the math wouldn’t work out for Bloomberg against Trump or Hillary Clinton, the former mayor of New York City buried this interesting analysis in his op-ed this week.
In a three-way race, it’s unlikely any candidate would win a majority of electoral votes, and then the power to choose the president would be taken out of the hands of the American people and thrown to Congress. The fact is, even if I were to receive the most popular votes and the most electoral votes, victory would be highly unlikely, because most members of Congress would vote for their party’s nominee. Party loyalists in Congress — not the American people or the Electoral College — would determine the next president.
What could be a major story-arc out of House of Cards or Veep may likely become a reality for our country come November when both Trump and Clinton do not secure a simple majority of electoral votes and Mitt Romney is elected President.
Here’s how it will happen:
Donald Trump is going to win the Republican nomination out right. The establishment won’t be able to stop him. He will get 50 percent. So there will be no brokered convention. There will be no Mitt Romney savior moment in Cleveland.
When Trump secures the nomination out right this summer, the establishment goes ballistic: Terrified at the prospect of losing their party with Donald Trump as president.
Suddenly they realize, “holy shit, what if we could stop Donald Trump and keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House?”
So they run a moderate establishment Republican as a third-party candidate — 100 percent as a spoiler candidate. Worst case scenario oh, they prevent Donald Trump from winning the White House. Best case scenario they pull enough votes away from Hillary Clinton to prevent her from securing the necessary majority of 270 electoral votes.
Then the election goes to a House of Representatives ballot presided over Speaker Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney’s former running mate in 2012.
If neither candidate gets 270 electoral college votes, Congress picks the president. And he will be called President Mitt, the one who is laying the groundwork for this doomsday electoral scenario.
It’s right there, hidden in plain sight in the 12th Amendment of the US Constitution:
The person having the greatest Number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice.
And Congress can pick whomever they damn well please.
A moderate conservative third-party would definitely pull enough votes away from Trump to tank his candidacy, but the right candidate could also spoil it for Clinton.
If you remember, in the 1992 election, Bill Clinton was unable to secure a simple majority of the popular vote, with Ross Perot serving as a third party spoiler — not only taking votes away from the Republican incumbent George H.W. Bush, but pinching off the odd moderate vote from the Democrats as well.
But Ross Perot was never able to win a state, thus, he was never awarded any electoral college votes.
In this cycle, however, a third party spoiler candidate could in fact carry a handful of states. Bloomberg recognized it and realized the grave implications of that type of candidacy — taking the highest elected office in the free world out of the hands of the people and into the hands of a Tea Party-influenced, yet establishment-Republican Congress.
If you are an establishment Republican right now, this is actually an even better outcome than a brokered convention: Because you have even greater control over, not only the conservative nominee, but the ability to handpick the next president.
And Speaker Ryan will ensure that Mitt Romney will be handpicked. Why else would you fly out for dinner in Utah?
The election of 1825 is our reference for this crazy-likely theory.
The election was actually in 1824 and Andrew Jackson won the popular vote, raking in 42 percent. John Quincy Adams came in distant second with barely over 30 percent of the popular vote. William Crawford and then Speaker of the House Henry Clay came in third and fourth respectively. Problem was, no one won a majority of the electoral college (also fun-fact: all four of the candidates were part of the same party, the Democratic-Republicans. Oh, also: Crawford had a stroke after the November election). With no legally elected President, the decision was kicked over to the House, where they deliberated for 3 months to determine who would be the victor.
Lobbyists? Everyone thinks they were invented in the lobby of the Willard Hotel during the U.S. Grant Presidency 45 years later. But believe it, lobbyists were in full effect those three months. And, they delivered the “Corrupt Bargain:” an unprecedented decision where Henry Clay presided over the ever-so-unpopular-with-the-electorate election of John Quincy Adams.
There is potentially a corrupt bargain underway in plain sight in the election of 2016 with the possibility of not only saving the Republican party but remake American electoral politics. John Kasich won big in the Ohio primary — he could carry Ohio again in the general.
Just imagine: a third party spoiler candidacy is waged by Mitt Romney (choosing, say Kasich as his running mate). The addled country is fatigued by Donald Trump’s endless shenanigans as well as burned out by the scorched earth campaign against Hillary and her emails.
Ohio goes. So does Michigan. And Utah. Maybe Idaho and/or the Dakotas.
With even just one of those states spoiled, you have a doomsday scenario where both Donald and Hillary do not have a majority of electoral college votes.
And so the election goes into 2017 — and Speaker Ryan holds the gavel.
Where does the hammer drop? …
This harebrained theory was co-conceived and written with Chris LaTondresse, VP of Communications and Strategy at The Expectations Project and former advisor at USAID’s Center for Faith Based and Community Initiatives.
“Harebrained” or not, who, other than diehards for Clinton and Trump, would consider this a bad thing? I am neither a fan of Romney nor Kasich specifically, but I would certainly vote for either over Hillary, Comrade Sanders or The Donald. I would also vote for, to throw another name out there, Paul Ryan over The Terrible Trio.
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Last weekend I began rereading Gustave Le Bon’s fantastic 1895 book about the psychology of large groups, entitled “The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind.” The book basically offers a synopsis of the Trump — and to some extent — the Obama spectacles of the past few years. It’s filled with snippets like this one:
The masses have never thirsted after truth. … Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.
And this one:
We have shown that crowds do not reason, that they accept or reject ideas as a whole, that they tolerate neither discussion nor contradiction, and that the suggestions brought to bear on them invade the entire field of their understanding and tend at once to transform themselves into acts.
And this one:
We have also seen that they only entertain violent and extreme sentiments, that in their case sympathy quickly becomes adoration, and antipathy almost as soon as it is aroused is transformed into hatred.
Whatever sparked the Trump movement, it now exhibits most of the irrational attributes of “The Crowd.” And this kind of boorish, herd mentality is human nature. Still, plenty of smart people continue spend a lot of time speculating about the movement’s deeper motivations. Rationalizing it. How many stories today, for example, will focus on the white hardscrabble working-class voter even after Trump ran away with the gray-haired retirees of Florida and the well-heeled homeowners of the Chicago suburbs?
Boy, they really suffer down in Boca.
Smart people like to theorize about Trumpism by imposing their own gripes about the GOP or trade or foreign policy or economics or whatever else they’re irritated by as proof that the GOP could have saved itself if it had only adopted some shrewder strategy. That strategy, amazingly, will almost always correspond with the views of the author. (I’m probably guilty, as well. If only Republicans had incorporated some kind of libertarian drug legalization proposal!) And because these thinkers see the “frustrations” of Trump fans as a manifestation of their clever warnings, they are sympathetic to the cause.
For the Left, Trump’s success supposedly tells us everything America needs to know about the id of the Right and the dead-end of conservatism. For a heaping dose of wishful thinking see Jonathan Chait’s piece on how conservatives openly rejected the working class: “Republican doctrine reflects the conviction that the main evil of modern government is to excessively punish the rich and reward their inferiors.”
Sure it does.
Other smart people like to make common cause with Trump as a way to show just how much they understand the “frustrations” of working and middle classes have with the establishment. So they hitch their aspirations to someone less conservative and less principled and less decent. Guess what? This is America. A man can hate all factions equally.
Other times, the professional political class seems to believe that, rather than making a compelling case of its own, it can piggyback populism by offering some watered-down progressive reforms, or maybe a slight alteration the H-1B visa program. Others, and you can see this troubling trend emerging among Republicans, believe Trump is the inevitable nominee and worth supporting because he’ll be malleable once in office.
Power-hungry egomaniacs are always more reasonable once they’ve taken control of government, I guess.
You’re free to patch together any theory you like, of course, but if you actually listen to the motivations of Trump’s core fans you will not be confused: They want to destroy you. Hang you by your fancy tie. Draw and quarter your career, and scatter the pieces from sea to shining sea. But don’t attack Trump supporters! They’re just salt of the earth, you elitist!
Unlike professional conservative activists, journalists — opinionators or otherwise — have no reason to glad-hand and empathize with 40 percent or so of Republican primary voters who aren’t dismayed by Trump’s violent rhetoric, his authoritarianism, or his self-destructive protectionism. There’s no reason to find common cause with those who don’t find the idea of a president ordering soldiers to murder the innocent families of terrorists — while countermanding American law — to be morally troublesome.
Being a working class American doesn’t mean you lack sense or morals. Those who treat you as if you did are the true elitists.
Nor do writers have any duty to be part of concerted efforts to lure back these voters. Journalists should write truths and arguments as they see them, pushing back against the whims of the mob and dumb notions its leader perpetuate. Everything in Washington disincentivizes the political class from doing this. The mass media — which drive other coverage — are incentivized to give Trump billions of dollars of unearned media, and that is only marginally better than the corrupt sites that do not merely support candidates, but act as shills for them.
“The Crowd” has taken legitimate criticisms about the GOP and transformed them into jokes, convincing itself that elected Republicans — who are often uninspiring, clueless, and spineless, but have stopped countless Obama initiatives — do absolutely nothing and always surrender. They believe that Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio are liberals but Donald Trump is a conservative worth supporting. They’ve convinced themselves that the United States is in worse shape today than it’s ever been in. The men and women of the Great Depression or the 1970s or 9/11 probably disagree.
These voters have heard about the violence, the illiberalism, and the attacks on the freedom of expression. They cheer it on. They justify it. They rationalize it. It’s not about some clause in TPP anymore. It’s a mob. If you support Trump — and I realize not every person who embraces him is paying close attention or fully understands what’s been going on — you’re an ideological opponent of limited government and liberal institutions. As Le Bon put it, “the beginning of a revolution is in reality the end of a belief.” Which sounds about right.
Journalists who have been doing their jobs know that people suck. Imagine, for instance, being about to see your daughter perform in a school production, only to be locked out of your daughter’s school because the school was locked down at the request of police because of a gunman (who probably didn’t exit) over on the college campus?
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 