* Jeff Sessions and Kris Kobach are huge endorsements especially if you are single issue voter, and that issue is immigration. If you are such a voter and have been leaning to Cruz, or anyone else for that matter, these two endorsements should seal the deal for Trump.
* Trump’s methodology is to stake out extreme positions early, then negotiate a compromise toward the middle. I’m sure he will apply this basic methodology, which he has obviously used his entire life as a businessman, to the presidency. So I would expect him to be a very centrist President. I think he’ll build a wall, figure out a way to get Mexico to contribute to some of it, and then he’ll negotiate a set of compromise policies regarding deportation and amnesty. He obviously won’t implement his entire immigration policy platform but it will be a hell of a lot better than anything Clinton or Rubio would do.
While he does not seem to hold a set of ideological principles, I agree that he shares a basic loyalty to America. He views the American people as an in-group and sees that they are being ripped off. As a billionare businessman he thinks he can get them a better deal. In these dark times, I view this attitude as a far superior qualification for being President then an existing politician with a set of policy proposals. Why vote for a politician who you agree with on most of the “issues” when many of those issues aren’t even relevant to the role of the presidency, and in any event, we know they will never deliver on the issues that do matter?
I do share some fear of Trump as President due to his uninhibited nature, but I actually think his incentives are mostly aligned with the good of the American public and thus that he will (mostly) not abuse power. All Presidents do to some degree. But Trump has a brand and a $4 billion net worth to maintain. He is 70 years old and (if he is elected) this will be his final act. With his legacy on the line, and his fortune already made, he has no incentive to sell out and pursue policies that make him look like a traitor. He has already made his fortune and has no reason to betray the people by currying favor with special interests while in office. Also, Trump is not an ideologue. I worry about concentrated power in the hands of an ideologue more than in the hands of a pragmatist.
By contrast, Rubio’s entire life trajectory hinges on the events of the next few months. He is being bankrolled by billionaires and the GOP establishment. If he wins, he becomes President for 4-8 years, followed by a lifetime of book sales and speaking fees. His net worth will be much greater. If he loses he’ll just go back to having personal debt problems. His incentives are terrible – he has every reason to sell out and act in the interests of the establishment and not the American public. Note that Rubio is not returning to the Senate – it is all or nothing for him at this point.
* News media are 24/7 over Trump kicking out Black Lives Matter hecklers at a rally, a Secret Service Agent tackling some SJW photographer who cursed the Agent out; and David Duke.
* It is as if the spell cast by the civil rights movement is wearing off. The right is confident and the left is becoming afraid. The encouraging thing is not just that the Donald is refusing to wilt and fighting back and leading but that his followers are not responding to the race baiting either. Win, lose, or draw, the left will have used up what little guilt / shame they have remaining and that nothing they say for the next 50 years will be taken seriously.
Desperation.
* Asking Mexico to pay for the wall seems like a win-win gambit. If Mexico refuses to pay any part of the cost, that’s an acknowledgement that it wants an open border and unenforceable US immigration laws. It would make it easier for Trump to justify a harder line on illegal immigration.
* I think the Trump plan is actually to tax remittances sent to Mexico to pay for the wall.
He doesn’t actually think the president of Mexico is going to write him a check.
* Never mistake fluency and eloquence in speech for intelligence or capacity for leadership (Exhibit A: Obama). I believe Trump has the potential to be a great President. He is the anti-Obama and projects decisiveness and power and an optimism about the country.
* I really think it’s long past time to abandon the ridiculous notions that Trump is pulling some kind of publicity stunt, or that he’s a stalking horse in some Clinton plot, or that he’s going to cave on what he says he will do.
The fact of the matter is that Trump is a new kind of leader, and we are new kind of people now. Nihil esse rem publicam, appelationem modo sine corpore ac specie. The Republic is gone now; the Age of the Caesars has begun.
Those who cannot understand this will never learn how to speak Trump. They belong inwardly to the old order, the one that is passing away. But those who do understand this also understand Trump implicitly; the things he says and does are no mystery to them, and the connection he has with them will never be broken.
American, a nation born in rebellion and regicide, is coming to know, however dimly and confusedly at first, just what it means to have a king again. The ideologues of the old republic (read: the Cuckservative Establishment) will balk and throw fits, but their old shibboleths are nothing but barren and threadbare formulae now, shortly to be entombed forever in books that nobody reads. It is the living image of the warrior king which now speaks to men’s hearts, which now calls forth loyalty, courage, and valor.
Trump did not accomplish this all on his own. Trump is America; Trump is us. He knows it himself, and this is what gives him his unshakable confidence. The spirit that animates all of us also flows through Trump. He is like Antaeus the giant, who could never be defeated as long as his body touched the earth. Deep down inside, all of us who belong to the future are desirous of this change. We want Trump to be exactly what he is—the destroyer of the establishment.
But it is much bigger than one man. It is…The Birth of a Nation.
* Trump is no Gomer Pyle. He outwitted the entire brain trust of the Republican Establishment.
* Republican Congressman Tom Marino of Scranton endorses DJT and says “Mr. Trump is right about the desperate need to address illegal immigration and fight to keep our country safe” and that Trump is “able to attract new voters from across the spectrum and that is exactly what our party and country needs.”
* How can we test the authenticity of Trump’s positions? One way is to see if there is ideological coherence when we compare stated position against advisers. We see this coherence on immigration. Now we see it in foreign affairs with respect to Russia and Iraq:
Donald Trump is receiving foreign policy advice from a former U.S. military intelligence chief who wants the United States to work more closely with Russia to resolve global security issues, according to three sources. . . .
Flynn was also quoted this month as telling German magazine Der Spiegel that the Iraq war launched in 2003 by then-President George W. Bush was a mistake that gave rise to Islamic State.
Trump has often strongly condemned the Iraq invasion.
A former U.S. intelligence official who worked with Flynn said the retired general believes in a more aggressive approach to U.S. interests around the world.
“He’s a sharp guy, he understands foreign policy and national security and really understands intelligence,” said the official. “His positions and opinions are not always in line with popular thinking.”
Trump doesn’t seem to be as much of a seat of the pants guy as it appears because as we learn more about his advisers we see people with well thought out positions which are running counter to current policy thinking and so these positions are marginalized, you know, just like National Review marginalizes contrary opinions by purging people who don’t stick close to the neocon line.
* Did you see Kris Kobach win over a Manhattan audience to his immigration position on Intelligence Squared?
He is the smartest, most eloquent, best mannered Republican politician in the country.
He is the ideal “good-cop” partner for “bad-cop” Trump.
“Bad-cop” Chris Christie would be a disaster.
If Vice-Presidential nominee Kris Kobach can’t convince SWPL America to elect Donald Trump, no one can.
Anyone other than Kobach would be eaten alive by Hillary’s likely VP choice, Rhodes Scholar Corey Booker.
As NJ governor, Chris Christie never dared tangle with Newark mayor Corey Booker. He scheduled the 2013 Senate race for a different day than the gubernatorial race, because he was afraid of Booker’s coattails.
* There are no links between Kobach and myself, but there are links between Trump and Kobach. Trump employs ex-Sessions staffer Stephen Miller, Sessions and Kansas Senator Pat Roberts are both among the 7 Senators with career A+ rating from NumbersUSA, and Roberts and Kobach are both big fish in the little pond of Kansas Republican politics.
Interestingly, after a recent meeting with Senator Roberts Trump discussed the attributes he’d like to see in a running mate. Trump wants someone who would make a good President if, God forbid, Trump dies, and he also wants someone who can help push legislation through the Senate.
Unlike many running mates suggested for symbolic reasons, Kobach obviously has the talents and maturity necessary to be a successful president, and he is young enough to continue Trump’s legacy in the Presidential election of 2024. His experience drafting state level immigration bills such as Arizona’s SB-1070 would be invaluable on the Senate floor.
Furthermore, as one of your other commenters mentioned, Kobach has a plan to use the Patriot Act to force Mexico to pay for the border wall.
It would obviously be a mistake to draft Sessions or Cruz for VP – that would constitute demotion for either of those Senators. They are too valuable in their current roles – we can’t afford to lose a single vote in the Senate. Also, we need to bring an additional leader into the Senate to reinforce the patriots, rather than just reshuffling the existing leaders.
Trump’s greatest strength is his ability to bring Democrats, Independents and (especially) non-voters into the Republican fold. His greatest weakness could be his weak hold on the core Republican constituency, White evangelicals. Remember Iowa. No Republican Presidential candidate can afford to have apathetic support from White evangelicals. As a churchgoing family man from the heartland with a long history of social conservative activism, Kobach is ideally suited to fire up the Iowa base while the boss reaches out to Fishtown.
Both Kobach’s appearance on Intelligence Squared and Unz’s latter appearance on the same program are archived at VDARE. If memory serves, the audience found Kobach’s direct advocacy for immigration enforcement more persuasive than Unz’s oblique minimum wage based strategy.
* This is to Trump’s benefit. Trump himself can insure outreach to independents and Democrats but he has to be able to calm the Shrieking Sallies in the Republican fold and a solid guy like Kobach would do it. Secondly, with Trump being a New Yorker with New York values, a Baptist, who home schools his kids checks off another mark. Then we get the educational pedigree for all the nose in the air elitists. Then there is the issue of character – the guy is fighting a principled fight, he’s regularly getting called racist by liberals, he’s not bought by the open borders crowd, so that has to be a good calling card for those worried about Trump’s vacillations on issues.
* There is a long history of interaction between black separatists and white separatists. Most of it is surprisingly amicable.
The great photojournalist Eve Arnold (most famous for her portfolio of Marilyn Monroe and her associates-she was on the set of The Misfits and as I recall introduced fellow photographer Inge Morath to Arthur Miller, whom he married and fathered two children with) covered a Black Muslim group in the later 1960s. Being Jewish, she endured a certain confrontation from the leadership, but they were respectful about it: her biggest problem was the women, who assumed she was a white huntress after their men and would burn her with cigarettes when she wasn’t looking.
The best image from the project is one of American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell
flanked by his lieutenants, Matt Koehl and the other guy (I forget his name-it wasn’t Pierce, nor the guy that shot him, Patsalos/Patler) sitting front row and surrounded by perhaps a thousand Black Muslims. They look pretty comfortable.
