GOP & LP 2024

It looks like we’re finally getting rid of #45 and replacing him with a Democrat who most people choose because he’s not nearly as obnoxiously incompetent as Trump and not nearly as arrogant and unlikable as Hillary Clinton.  Over the last 4 years, the Republican President cost his party the House (2018 midterms) and the Senate (losing both Georgia seats).   He’s compromised the integrity and reputations of all the Republican congressmen who were induced to follow him, not that we’re particularly sympathetic to their plight.  What’s next for the GOP?

 My suggestion, likely to be immediately rejected by everyone, is for the party to break up.  Any Republican with something close to ethics and real values should defect to the Libertarian Party.   I can understand most politicians’ reluctance to do so piecemeal, in dribs and drabs, but a wholesale defection of sitting Congressmen should be another story entirely.  Possibly, but not likely, some Democrats could also defect, though as I write this I can’t identify any plausible candidates by name.  The leading Republicans would be Mitt Romney, Justin Amash, Rand Paul, and Thomas Massie, just to name a few. 

I’ve been re-reading, for the third time, Harry Turtledove’s alternate history series which begins with How Few Remain and continues with three WWI stories, three interwar stories, and four WWII stories.  Herein, the CSA won the Civil War (1861-62), also defeated the US in the so-called Second Mexican War (1881-82), and allied itself with Britain, France and Russia in WWI.  For its part, the US found itself allied with Imperial Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire.  Now imagine US and Confederate soldiers fighting in trenches, with biplanes, machine guns, and poison gas, but in western Virginia, Kentucky, and other locations.  The CSA had purchased Sonora and Chihuahua states from Mexico in 1881, so their territory extends westward from Texas, along the New Mexico/Arizona border to the Pacific Ocean, giving the CSA a Pacific Coast port city at Guaymas.  They also have Cuba.

 In the aftermath of the Second Mexican War, Abraham Lincoln – who was not assassinated in 1865 but survived to become a Marxist – split up the Republican Party in 1882 into a Socialist Party, with the Democrats taking the role of a conservative/reactionary party.  The twin Presidents in 1914 are Theodore Roosevelt (USA) and Woodrow Wilson (CSA).  By this time the Republicans are reduced to an insignificant third party.

 The LP candidate in 2020 was Jo Jorgenson, who had no experience as an elected official and her prime political experience was being Harry Browne’s VP candidate back in the day.   Gary Johnson, the 2016 candidate, was much stronger: a successful two term state governor (New Mexico).  His 2012 result, 1%, was somewhat disappointing, but he was up against both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.  In 2016 he received 3%, and probably would have gotten more had he known where Aleppo, Syria, was.  If the LP has former state governors or US senators as its candidates – the kind of candidates the major parties run – they may well have a much stronger shot. 

 Returning to reality, I do believe the heretofore marginal Libertarian Party may well be able to accommodate a large influx of dissatisfied Republicans.  Sadly, over the years the Republicans went from Lincoln’s party abolishing slavery to a conservative party giving lip service to capitalism but more accurately being a quasi-fascist party giving us a corrupt form of capitalism mixed with religious right nonsense telling us how to live our private lives.  The Libertarians, in many ways, are a more pure and principled form of what the Republican Party would be if it actually adhered to many of the ideals which it claims to stand for but which fall by the wayside either due to true indifference or political reality.   Trump’s debacle here in 2020 can serve as the impetus for the more principled Republicans to abandon the party altogether and turn the Libertarian Party from a marginal third party to a real competitor with the Democrats. 

 Quoting Picard:  MAKE IT SO.

The Other Side

I feel compelled to address a broader issue in this country:  rampant hostility.   Since the Florida shooting, I’m seeing a plethora (!) of memes on both sides, tinged with contempt for opposing viewpoints.  I’m pro-gun, myself, but I don’t assume my opponents are idiots simply for disagreeing with me.   And calling each other idiots really doesn’t get anything done.

Gun Control.   When someone shoots up a school, we have to wonder how they acquired access to the weapon in the first place.  Naturally, the weapon itself didn’t kill all those people.   Every day, lawful owners of AR15 do not kill other people.  Criminals kill people with illegally obtained weapons – mostly handguns – and as usual criminals by their nature ignore the laws, including gun control laws.  Knife attacks occur all too frequently.  And again, in the aggregate, more people successfully defend themselves from violent crime with legally owned weapons than are killed in school shootings.   The Armed Citizen, a feature in the NRA’s American Rifleman magazine each month, chronicles exactly that – lawful use of weapons by private citizens in legitimate self-defense - complete with cites to the original news source.  But somehow I doubt gun control advocates are reading the American Rifleman each month – if at all.

Sometimes they cite a combat veteran as being against the Second Amendment.  “I’ve seen what my own M4 carbine rounds do against the Taliban and other enemy combatants, and it boggles my mind how anyone can argue that civilians should have access to weapons like these.”  Combat veterans are in a position to see the damage these weapons can do, and are as entitled as any of us to their political opinions.  But this isn’t Starship Troopers:  you don’t need combat experience to have the right to vote.  Timothy McVeigh was a combat veteran:  does that make his attack in Oklahoma City OK?

Anyhow.  I don’t blame people for wanting to solve the problem.  However, I will oppose any effort to disarm lawful gun owners who aren’t killing anyone or causing problems.   Restrictions on guns for children or the insane, strikes me as a reasonable compromise which is reasonably calculated to address the problem without affecting the rights of sane adults.

Fact: there are highly intelligent Trump voters.  There are highly intelligent Hillary voters.  There are highly intelligent Sanders voters (they’re not all clueless theater majors).  Hell, there were highly intelligent Marxists, and highly intelligent Nazis and SS officers.   That also applies to many senior Al Qaeda and ISIS leaders.  Of course, highly intelligent doesn’t necessarily mean “moral human being”, but it does mean “not an idiot”.

I also see people on MY side use ad hominem attacks – insults instead of arguments – and proffer poor and easily refuted arguments to support my side.  I have to shake my head as being ineptly defended is just as bad as being competently attacked. 

Donald Trump.  I’ve noted earlier that he’s no Hitler.  I’ll add that while I’ve seen my share of inarticulate, misspelling ALLCAPs MAGA maggots, there are others who can spell properly and form coherent sentences who did vote for Trump.   Generally these are people who held their nose to vote for Trump because they disliked Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton.  Remember her?  She hijacked the Democratic nomination from Bernie Sanders, arrogantly asserting that it was her turn to be President, after seeing Barack Obama take what she felt was hers back in 2008.   Arguably more hawkish than Trump, and recall it was a Democrat, LBJ, who sent US troops to Vietnam in 1965 and a Republican, Nixon, who took them out.  As popular as her husband may have been, no one really likes Hillary.  Trump got less votes than Mitt Romney, and he still won, which means Trump was elected as much because Hillary was unpopular as because he himself was so compelling as a candidate. 

Gary Johnson.  Of course, I didn’t vote for either of them:  I voted for the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson.  Of course, he wasn’t particularly charismatic and didn’t do himself any favors by not knowing where Aleppo was – he should have known someone would ask him about US’ proper role in the Syrian conflict.  But he got 3% of the vote.  That may not sound like much, but it’s 3x his 2012 vote tally of 1%, which itself roughly matched the prior record for LPA, the 1980 Clark-Koch ticket. 

By now I’m solidly Libertarian.  I have to shake my head, though, that many Libertarians refused to support Johnson.    Up until 2012, he was a Republican, albeit a successful two term state governor of New Mexico.  

 Was he a solid, 100% Libertarian?  Did he rise through the ranks of the party and do his time in the trenches?  No.  But his closest competitor for the LPA nomination, Austin Peterson, was 35  years old – the bare minimum to qualify for president – and had zero political experience.  

Here’s a news flash.  About 1/3 the country’s voters are Democrat, 1/3 Republican, and 1/3 independent.  This means to win, a candidate has to appeal to independent voters.  A candidate who ONLY appeals to his or her own core constituency will be giving a concession speech on Election Night. 

If the Republicans and Democrats can’t elect a President on their own, certainly the Libertarians, who could probably fit in a football stadium, can’t.   Expecting everyone else to vote for your guy because he’s ticked all the boxes yet has zero relevant experience at any level of government is not realistic, though our current President may either be the 800 lb gorilla exception to this or a growing trend.  We'll see.

ANYHOW.

Let’s work together here.   Don’t assume your opponent is an idiot because he or she disagrees with you.  Don’t insult your opponent because he or she disagrees with you.  Make some good faith effort to find a mutually agreeable solution.  If you can’t, agree to disagree and leave it at that.  (Then call your local congressman.  :D)

Evil Queen, Evil King

Tempers are flaring on Facebook these days about the election.  In particular, the Trumpers and Hillary crowd are at each others’ throats, and the Johnson camp – myself included – have been caught in the crossfire.  Even nominal Libertarians are pulled in to vote for Trump or Hillary instead of Johnson.  At this point I don’t believe my blog will change anyone’s mind, but I do feel some points are worth making.

GOP Victories.   Obama won handily in 2008 and 2012 against McCain and Romney.  Not landslides, but not razor-thin margins.  George W. Bush’s victories against Gore (2000) and Kerry (2004) were razor-thin, even to the point where recounts were necessary.  For his part, Bill Clinton easily beat George H.W. Bush in 1992 and Bob Dole in 1996.  The last overwhelming GOP victory was in 1988:  Bush Sr. vs. Dukakis.  Let that sink in.

Neither major party has enough hardcore voters to carry the election by themselves.  Appealing to independents and moderates is a must.   So picking a candidate that ONLY your side likes is a recipe for failure.  The Democrats did it in 1988, and the GOP has been doing it ever since 1992.

Good vs. Evil.  A few weeks ago I discussed Machiavelli, and “The Enemy Within” episode of Star Trek, the Original Series, in which Kirk and Spock agreed that a starship captain needs some evil in him to be effective.  Ronald Reagan we could call 60/40 (good/evil), while Jimmy Carter was probably 90/10.  What’s the right balance?  Ideally over 50 on the good, but 60-75 is probably the max.  Beyond that, you wind up with a President who is too good for his own good, too naïve, and even with the benefit of experienced advisors, may still be too trusting of foreign leaders.  With dangerous bastards like Vladimir Putin out there, we need someone who can compete on his terms.  My impression is that Hillary will lock horns with him – and NOT necessarily effectively - while Trump would sell out the country if he could make a profit on the deal.  His loyalty to anyone outside his own family is nonexistent.

Remember Spielberg’s movie “Lincoln”?  Abraham Lincoln is probably our most esteemed and virtuous President.  Yet even he showed some very clever guile and duplicity behind the scenes.  My impression is that Spielberg wanted to show us that even with that, Lincoln was still a good President and a good man – but that there was more to him than we give him credit for. 

Among the current candidates, Hillary Clinton is probably no better than 50/50, and most likely 40/60.   She falls below the threshold of good vs. evil.  Disqualified?  Maybe, but Donald Trump is more like 5/95.  Finding any trace of good in this man is almost impossible.  Whatever good he has is reserved for his immediate family, and the country does not qualify.

 

Gary Johnson looks similar to Carter in this regard.  I don’t see a whole lot of cynicism or guile, but there is some there.  And Weld probably has enough.  So in addition to their superior platforms, and both being former state governors – the highest ranking executives in this country short of President – I’d say they meet the requirements.  Barely.

In fact, because both Hillary Clinton AND Donald Trump are evil, neither is an acceptable substitute for the other and neither should be President.  We should not vote for one to avoid the other.  We should not settle for less than a GOOD President, as opposed to a less evil President.   I can’t say I’ll be able to persuade anyone at this …juncture…but the least I can do I present the argument.