Spurred by Donald J. Trump’s mounting victories, a small but influential — and growing — group of conservative leaders are calling for a third-party option to spare voters a wrenching general election choice between a Republican they consider completely unacceptable and Hillary Clinton.
While he has gained intense popularity on the right, Mr. Trump has alienated key blocs in the Republican coalition with his slash-and-burn campaign. For many, his initial refusal last weekend to disavow an endorsement from David Duke, the white supremacist, was a breaking point.
Two top Republicans, Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, said this week that they would not vote for Mr. Trump in November.
William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine, said he would work actively to put forward an “independent Republican” ticket if Mr. Trump was the nominee, and floated Mr. Sasse as a recruit.
“That ticket would simply be a one-time, emergency adjustment to the unfortunate circumstance (if it happens) of a Trump nomination,” Mr. Kristol wrote in an email. It “would support other Republicans running for Congress and other offices, and would allow voters to correct the temporary mistake (if they make it) of nominating Trump.”
Boot’s 2016 Dream Ticket
Max Boot, a foreign policy adviser to Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, said that if efforts to block Mr. Trump fell short, he would vote against a Republican nominee for the first time in his life.
“I would sooner vote for Josef Stalin than I would vote for Donald Trump,” said Mr. Boot, who expressed optimism that Mr. Trump could still be defeated.
He added: “There is no way in hell I would ever vote for him. I would far more readily support Hillary Clinton, or Bloomberg if he ran.”
But a Stalin-Trotsky Unity Ticket would really get Max’s juices flowing.
Is anybody going to be asked to disavow their old compadre Max Boot for his avowing Stalin? Or does this game only work in one direction?
… Defections of any scale could prove lethal to Mr. Trump. He already trails Mrs. Clinton in general election polls, and polling already shows the possibility of mass desertions from the party. A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey this week found that 48 percent of Republicans who do not already back Mr. Trump said they would probably not or definitely not support him in November.
What should the donor party be named? I asked that question last week and got 344 suggestions, including the Donner Party and the Banana Republicans.
Any new suggestions?
Posted inDonald Trump|Comments Off on Max Boot: “I Would Sooner Vote for Josef Stalin Than I Would Vote for Donald Trump”
Noam Neusner is a principal with the communications firm 30 Point Strategies and is a former White House speechwriter for George W. Bush. Follow him on Twitter @NoamNeusner
There is no sugarcoating it — these are the darkest days for Republican Jews like myself. Donald Trump, the most likely Republican candidate for president, has built within our party the nearest thing America has ever seen to a European nativist working class political movement. Such movements, to put it mildly, have never been good for the Jews or allies of free thought and the free market.
Trump has a commanding lead, which he extended significantly with wins on Super Tuesday. The only way he can be stopped is if blue state Republicans — those living in New York, Maryland, California and other states whose primaries fall after Super Tuesday and contain significant numbers of delegates — side with the conventionally conservative Marco Rubio. It’s possible, though not likely.
Republican Jews are therefore beside themselves, and rightly so. Trump has proven himself anathema on so many levels that it’s hard to identify just one element of his personality or his adopted policy agenda that is particularly toxic.
It’s not just his appeal to nativism, or his crony capitalism, or his crassness, or his expressed desire for “neutrality” between Israel and the Palestinians, or his admiration for Vladimir Putin, or his quotation of Mussolini, or his approval of the crushing of Chinese democracy protesters, or his rejection of permitting any Muslims into the country, or his initial refusal to forswear the endorsement of white supremacists.
It could be any of these things, it could be all of these things, but what perhaps bothers Republican Jews most is this: They think Trump would also abuse the office’s powers. Again, the Jewish experience with overweening, oversensitive wannabe dictator-chieftains is not a good one.
The fact that Trump has a daughter who has, in marriage, embraced the Jewish faith is largely immaterial to Republican Jews. We don’t vote on the basis of personal identity or inherited identity — if we did, we would have supported Gore-Lieberman (we didn’t) and today we would support Bernie Sanders (we don’t).
Let’s assess the opportunity that was lost. At the outset of the campaign there were three or four trusted candidates who enjoyed meaningful Republican Jewish support because of what they were likely to do to repudiate and reverse Barack Obama’s policy gains: Jeb Bush (for whom I worked as a speechwriter), Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and, to a lesser extent, Scott Walker. Today, Republican Jews have coalesced around the last of these men who still stand for office: Rubio and Cruz.
… This is about the entire Republican Party.
Consider the following: Trump is bringing a lot of people into the Republican Party. The results from Republican primaries show the number of votes cast rising by significant amounts — 20% in South Carolina, 15% in New Hampshire and more than 100% in Nevada. These are voters who may or may not have voted for a Republican before, or in any election before. He might well beat Hillary Clinton in states where Republicans haven’t competed in decades.
Were Trump a conventional Republican, his rise would be something Republican Jews would quickly get behind.
The problem with Trump bringing in lots of new voters is that he’s bringing in Americans. That’s just not done. You are supposed to bring in foreign ringers to win elections, not inspire Americans.
But he is neither conventional nor Republican. That’s his appeal, and for those of us who are comfortable with conventional Republicanism, it’s a repudiation of the highest order.
We have to recognize this and decide what to do next.
Let’s wipe away our gauzy myths. We Republican Jews have believed that American families, American workers and American savers and investors form a solid spine in the party of Reagan. But that spine has been shattered by economic stagnation and job loss, opioid addiction, a breakdown in marriage and fatherhood and a sense of cultural surrender. It’s been shattered by a deep sense of resentment among Americans who distrust political power and political institutions. These Americans have concluded that the Republicans of Washington are no different from the Democrats.
The America that we have long admired and championed — a land of open opportunity, where a person could rise to the level that his energy, effort and moxie would take him, a land of justice and fairness, a land that stood proudly alone in the world when necessary, a land where the intrusive powers of the state are held at a distance, a land that was skeptical of the big dreams of faraway leaders — simply doesn’t exist for a great share of Americans. They don’t recognize it, and frankly, they believe Republicans have stopped fighting for it.
So that’s where our future lies. We have previously promised to protect this America and restore it. But we failed. Perhaps if we focused on delivering on our promise, we might also see the rebirth of the party we have called our home. Because the alternative is no political home at all.
An eloquent ending, but Neusner is perhaps too subtle and understated to get his message through to the Adelsons and Singers that it’s time for some self-scrutiny about their role in helping create the public’s dissatisfaction with the Establishment.
COMMENTS:
* I wonder if Jonah Goldberg and Bill Kristol consider themselves “Republican Jews” and if their various political positions are motivated less by their conservatism and more by their belief that “its good for the Jews”?
* “The fact that Trump has a daughter who has, in marriage, embraced the Jewish faith is largely immaterial to Republican Jews. We don’t vote on the basis of personal identity or inherited identity.”
What an astonishingly deranged falsehood! This whole article is about Jews voting on the basis of their personal inherited identities!
* I’m surprised no-one has yet pointed out that The Donald abstains from alcohol – just like Hitler!
* Trump always wears a neck tie too. Just like Der Fuehrer.
* You can see what really bothers American Jews about Trump: Not that he’ll become “the next Hitler,” but that he has the potential to become a competent Hitler, namely, one who will defend the interests of America’s white population, especially its working class, without Hitler’s bloody-mindedness.
* Beginning with Joseph’s sojourning in Egypt, the story of the Jews has been one of tension between acquiring the status and wealth they love (greed, pride, envy, and lust) and pissing off the indigenous people, which they rightly fear.
The pissing off the indigenous thing leads to enslavement, expulsions from Britain etc., pogroms, Spanish Inquisitions, holocausts, people hating Israel, et cetera. And this Neusner dipshit is a perfect example of the problem. If he was smart, he’d tell Jews to back Trump, because Jews have been fucking this country’s founding stock since before the 1920s (the immigration bill during which was a direct response to Jewish excesses). Since the Jewish elites and Teddy K’s ’65 bill, Jewish elites have been giving it to Americans good and hard. The loss of THAT–the complete supine submission of global Europa–is what Neusner mourns.
* I just see confusion and self-contradiction in his article. When somebody writes something like “those of us who are comfortable with conventional Republicanism” it’s an indication that they’re not really thinking critically about politics as something that is separate from and reacts to conditions in the real world. Neusner’s position is just “I like yesterday, so let’s not change anything in the political system and then tomorrow will be like yesterday too.” Frankly, that’s just not that smart.
* Trump would be good for American Jews because he will prevent hundreds of thousands of virulently antisemitic Arabs from immigrating here. So when The Forward says “good for the Jews,” it doesn’t mean American Jews. It means good for Israeli Jews. The Forward is saying Trump is insufficiently pro-Zionist.
* Jews comprise about 2% of America’s population and generally vote 80% Democratic. That means he speaks for approximately 0.4% of Americans.
* That is essentially what the neoconservatives are saying. They don’t like Trump’s non-interventionist foreign policy, which cuts against Israel’s interests, and the fact that they might be losing a seat at the table where the decisions are made.
* Here is a quote from neocon Norman Podhoretz from 1979 which dovetails your comment.
There was, to be sure, one thing that many of even the most passionately committed American Zionists were reluctant to do, and that was to face up to the fact that continued American support for Israel depended upon continued American involvement in international affairs– from which it followed that an American withdrawal into the kind of isolationist mood that prevailed most recently between the two world wars, and that now looked as though it might soon prevail again, represented a direct threat to the security of Israel.
* “What is good for Jews” is only about the current consensus among the rabbinical, intellectual and financial elite of the Jewish people. If some just minding their own business Jewish deli owning family is hacked to bits by some crazed Jihadis, or hundreds of finance MBA cubical jockeys die in 9/11, well then all the better. Their deaths will be exploited to tighten the very consensus which played a role in their deaths in the first place.
And the “Consensus” of “What is good for Jews” can be remolded and rewritten as needed. There is no external and eternal, truth, history, logic or morality. Betrayal, retribution and banishment are inevitable and mere price to be paid if it lays the ground work for a new “consensus” to be reformed based on the selective memories and histories based on victimology.
Hence the obsession of and need for elite Jews to control not just majority culture, media and political system, but to ruthlessly define which Jews are worthy of contributing to the shaping of consensus. Every other Jew who stands opposed to the consensus formation is to be labeled and dismissed as “self hating”. Every Jew of too low status to contribute to “consensus” formation is mere fodder for exploitation as victims as the “consensus” invariably brings on its own havoc and mayhem.
However, history and “facts” can be always rewritten and remolded to form a new “consensus” as needed.
As Kevin MacDonald might say, group evolutionary strategies are not concerned with enhancing the survival on any one individual member, family or even subpopulation within the group. “Sacrifices” are too be expected and even deemed necessary, what matters is that the group’s traditions, customs and most importantly “consensus” survive as much as its genetic legacy.
* The problem with having a media controlled by a handful of open borders billionaires is it cuts the feedback loop between decisions and consequences.
The cheap labor lobby has totally wrecked the lives of scores of millions of their supposedly fellow citizens but all the evidence was suppressed so it couldn’t feed back and so didn’t lead to a change in direction.
That’s the kindling part imo.
Personally I don’t think Trump is the spark; I think Trump is just mad that illegal immigrants are pushing in front of veterans with no legs.
I think the spark has been the percentage of young white kids who have gone through integrated PC schools, especially white-minority ones.
In all-white areas the psychological abuse resulting from PC schooling leads to SJWdom, depression, and various other forms of self-harming behavior but in integrated schools and especially white minority PC schools it leads to racial identity – red in tooth and claw.
Posted inJews|Comments Off on Forward: “How Republican Jews Utterly Failed to Prevent Rise of ‘Toxic’ Donald Trump”
Steve Sailer writes: Israelis, empowered by their pro-Israeli political class, have been thriving in recent years. Americans, on the other hand, distracted by their pro-Israeli political class, not so much …
For many years, I’ve been arguing that Americans should pay Israelis the compliment of studying what works for them and trying it for ourselves here in America. In contrast, the GOP establishment has instead attempted to outsource Americans’ natural feelings of patriotism to the small, far-off country of Israel, while elites practice profitable globalism at home.
In their Super Tuesday speeches, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio tried to use an Israel hammer to bash Donald Trump. Cruz sneeringly lambasted him for saying he would remain “neutral” while Rubio trounced Trump for trying to stay “impartial”, as his audience booed accordingly. And Trump? Trump was racking up victories, amassing delegates and laughing all the way to the top of the Republican presidential field.
In this way, the New York billionaire is decimating the conventional wisdom, one of many, that in 2016, total and unconditional support for Israel is a prerequisite for any aspiring GOP candidate wishing to run for president; that such a pledge of allegiance to Israel, in general, and to Benjamin Netanyahu, in particular, is a threshold requirement for gaining the support of Evangelicals, who set the tone during primary season; …
But exactly a year after Netanyahu took this logic to its extreme and stood on the podium of Congress as Leader of the Republican opposition to President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, the conception is falling apart. The notion that the Republican Party is a monolithic bastion of support that will withstand the test of time is evaporating. … Faced with the Trump phenomenon, Netanyahu’s Fortress GOP strategy is collapsing like a house of cards.
And it doesn’t really make that much difference whether Trump is a “phony” who is pulling the wool over the GOP’s innocent eyes, as former presidential contender Mitt Romney asserted in his astonishingly harsh speech on Thursday, or whether Trump has simply exposed the dark subterranean streams of jingoism and prejudice and resentment of Jews that were there all along.
Huh?
If Trump is the Republican candidate, never mind if he’s elected president, Israel’s place in American politics and possibly around the world will be put in question. But if Romney’s scary portrayal of Trump is even half true, that should be the least of our worries.
In the outgoing dogmatic GOP, Trump’s equivocations would have earned him a place in the all-time rogues gallery of Enemies of the Jewish People, somewhere between Obama and Father Coughlin. Today, Evangelicals shrug them off and continue to vote for Trump, as they did this week in Alabama, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia.
Every time Cruz and Rubio try to hit Trump over the head with an Israel club and nothing happens, it is Israel’s weakness that is exposed. Every time Trump wins a party primary without challenge from his supporters, another nail is driven into the coffin of the unshakeable alliance between Israel and America’s deep right.
And it’s not as if Trump is really anti-Israel; hardly. Like in most other complex policy issues on which he has spoken, Trump is mainly incoherent, improvising as he goes along, shooting from the lip, saying one thing one day and the opposite the next. He is “totally a friend” of Israel, Obama is “the most horrible president ever” for Israel, and the Iran deal is a joke. But Trump refuses to acknowledge United Jerusalem, wants to remain “neutral” so that he can broker a peace deal with the Palestinians, which is a challenge worthy of a master dealmaker like him. If he fails, he’s already made clear, Israel will be to blame.
Trump not only diverts the Republican leadership from uniform automatic support for Netanyahu, he is destroying the internal coalition that was the lynchpin of the party’s strong pro-Israel stance. Evangelical support for Trump has already sparked an internal rupture, which has some experts declaring the death of America’s Religious Right. …
If Trump becomes their candidate, the GOP will lose its most hawkish, most neoconservative and most pro-Israel secular elements as well. They [neocons] are repelled not only by his indecipherable positions on Israel but also by his harsh criticism of George Bush and the Iraq War, his undisguised adulation of dictators for Vladimir Putin to Bashar Assad, his all round belligerence and his neo-isolationist vision of making America great again within its hermetically sealed walls.
“His all round belligerence and his neo-isolationist vision” — Huh?
The third leg of the GOP’s pro-Israel array that Trump is eviscerating are the Jews. Although Sheldon Adelson’s ongoing silence has caused some people to suspect he will end up supporting Trump, other big time Jewish donors, including hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, have placed their money on his currently losing rivals. And the Republican hope that 2016 will finally see the long awaited migration of Jews disappointed by Obama to the GOP is dashed once again. Trump hardly stands a chance of garnering 30% of the Jewish vote, as Romney did in 2012, never mind the 40% that Rubio might reasonably be expected to receive. He’s more likely to revert the GOP’s Jewish vote in the direction of the 11% that George Bush Sr. got in 1992, or the 10% that Barry Goldwater received in 1964. …
The Jews will run away from Trump because he scares them. Because his demagoguery is ominous, his willingness to slash and burn anyone standing in his way is disturbing, his tendency to incite his supporters against other ethnic groups from rapist Mexicans to terrorist Muslims, is a source of deep anxiety. Beneath the great wave of popular support for Trump one can make out with increasing clarity the dark undercurrents of rage and resentment and xenophobia that is often seen morphing into White supremacism and abhorrence of African Americans and then, on the outskirts, bad old hatred of the Jews. The allusions to Germany in the 1930’s are absurd, no doubt, but nonetheless surfacing with ever-increasing frequency.
It’s always 1933.
COMMENTS:
* Steve, this is just Ha’aretz being Ha’aretz and prosecuting their jihad against B. Netanyahu. The Israeli joe sixpack is very comfortable with Trump and views his rise with equanimity. The agony aunts at Ha’aretz are beholden to the NYT for their view of Trump as 1933 all over again.
* The guy has a Jewish son-in-law, for christsakes. Is that enough? No…no…nothing short of groveling at the feet of Isreal will suffice.
One of the few things I liked about Obama was his tendency to keep Israel at arms length–relative to the neocons, anyway.
At some point, all this racist/Hitler accusing will wear thin. When a real ill-intentioned demagogue rises, the left may find out they’ve called “wolf” one too many times.
* Another wishful thinking op-ed from the Haaretz. They publish two types of articles:
1) How Bibi has got Israel by the balls and everything is terrible.
2) How Bibi is a moron and his world is about to collapse.
This isn’t the first time they’ve published a “Trump is Netanyahu’s nightmare” piece. Weirdly, this places Haaretz’s leftists in a conflicted position, as they find themselves admitting that Trump should actually be their preferred candidate. But they’re still as revolted by him as liberals everywhere else in the West.
* My vague impression is that Sheldon Adelson prefers Rubio and his wife prefers Cruz, but Sheldon could live with Trump, his fellow casino mogul. Perhaps Trump seems like the kind of guy you could have a productive chat with about how online gambling is a bane compared to good old tangible casinos that employ real construction workers and real croupiers? (I’d probably side with Adelson on this: gambling should be something you have to go somewhere to do in person, not just a click away on your smartphone.)
My vague sense is that Adelson is less hyperactive this election cycle. The wisdom of age?
* Donald Trump’s core support is overwhelmingly white, lower middle-class men with a high school education. He draws most of the rest of his support from white middle-class men and women. The increasingly hysterical denunciations of Donald Trump demonstrate the hatred and contempt for, and yet palpable fear of, that demographic group among American elites.
* Quite, it just shows how extreme Zionism is that they find Trump’s, with all his links to Israel and the Jewish community, modest proposal to place American interests first in the Middle East so unacceptable.
* I am feeling more and more estranged from my co ethnics lately. Israel should be solidly behind Putin and Assad, and Jews here should be supporting Trump. Nothing is worse for us, or whites generally, than mass Muslim migration to the US and Europe.
I am predicting right now that Trump will quell the neocon attacks by going over the top with pro israel statements. the best nationalist right leader in Europe is Geert Wilders and he does this. Promising to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem woud be a good start. There is no downside really, it is not like Trump is going to lose Muslim support this way. I do hope he also keeps attacking Bush and the Iraq War.
* People are looking at Trump’s demeanor and the way he interacts with the other candidates in debates. Of course, yelling people down and waving your hands a lot does not mean you’re going to pull the trigger on North Korea. Even without reasoning, people’s experience with Obama should tell them that talking like a wall-flower academic doesn’t mean you’re real peaceful, but people haven’t learned that lesson, I guess.
* Trump sounds pretty reasonable to downgrade to neutral. Netanyahu has a permanent ban on Muslim immigration and officially makes Islam a second-class religion in Israel. I don’t see any logical ground for criticizing Trump’s temporary Muslim immigration ban proposal.
* Putin is actually very popular in Israel, not only among the large Russian emigre community but among average Israelis. He is by a wide margin the most popular Foreign leader in Israel. It is only the leftist elites in Israel that despise him.
* If people are brought up with a version of their history which cuts out any bad stuff their group did and just listed the bad stuff done to them by others then I think culturally induced paranoia is the likely result – as Trump has been proving quite spectacularly.
Also if no logical explanation for the bad stuff is ever looked for then some useful insights might be missed.
(Obviously some of it will be minority prejudice / bigotry etc but all?)
For example, if wages are driven down to subsistence levels the economy will collapse and then stagnate because a prosperous economy requires disposable income. (I’d say innovation is mostly driven by disposable income also.) So if people had a habit of trying to drive wage levels to subsistence (whether thru immigration or slavery) and it always led to collapse and backlash they might decide it would be better to stop doing it.
Similarly unrestricted money-lending has the same effect as even if people nominally have disposable income if an ever increasing percentage of it goes on loan repayments for previous consumption then it’s the same as having none.
* I think they dread the diminution of their stature and influence in a Trump administration; A sort of Public Choice theory of neo-con public intellectuals if you will. Ironically , they probably wouldn’t have been marginalized to much extent had they not pursued their scorched earth campaign in the first place. Additionally I suspect (more in the case of Kristol than Boot) that they find Trump vulgar, and falling far short of what they perceive as the standard of presidential dignity. To be honest so do I, but A) I think the ship of presidential dignity sailed with the election of Bill Clinton a quarter of a century ago. and B) All other considerations must take a back seat to the immigration issue which is in the words of Ecclesiastes 1-15 “מעוות לא יוכל לתקן”
* Goldwater had a Jewish father who converted to the religion of his wife. So Goldwater was at least half Jewish by ethnicity even though he was a Christian.
Question: Which contributed more to Goldwater’s low take among Jewish voters, his religion or political ideology?
* For Jews, identifying the majority’s interests as their own would be tantamount to abandoning their jewishness.
* >the unshakeable alliance between Israel and America’s deep right
Boy are they in for a surprise when they finally figure out who Americas new “deep right wing” is, and what we think about them.
* Trump is actually relatively popular amongst Israeli Jews – which is a population enamoured with populism. Israel has fewer Ashkenazi leftists than, say, New York City. And, like in the US, these Jews find themselves disproportionately in elite positions (like writing for Ha’aretz – which no one buys). But don’t get things confused, Israel’s demographic power lies in Right-Wing, traditional communities that dominate most towns not named Tel Aviv.
Trump, to allay Israeli fears, can make a few derogatory comments about Palestinians and will find himself loved by the masses. As an Israeli Right-winger, I find it a bit embarrassing how easily one can get a “Death to Arabs” chant going in any crowd of Rightists. In any case, if Trump can use some of Netanyahu’s (own!) tactics to build support in Israel, then he’ll rise in popularity. If his campaign can say, “57% of Israelis back Trump”, and use Israeli xenophobia and illiberal attitudes against Zionist-establishment types in the US, well, that’s a winning strategy.
* Hmm, a Jew thinks that a presidential candidate should encourage Israel do whatever it wants while America pays the price. That’s novel.
Under what circumstances and to which candidate would you not offer that advice?
When does Israel have enough? When has America given enough for Israel? When can our political contests be about our needs, not yours? Can you even imagine any downsides for us Americans to be your tool, or do you believe it only does us good?
* This could all be shtick.
Obama has been very good for Jews. Even his Iran Deal was hatched by J-Street Jews.
But we are told Obama threw Israel under the bus. Zzzzzzzzzzzz.
And now, Trump is bad for Israel. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Jews say one thing but feel another.
I think Jews are mainly afraid of people realizing that Jews/Israel owns the US.
I mean George W. Bush and McCain were excessively servile to Israel, and this made Jews nervous.
Better to create the impression that US politicians are NOT controlled by Jews/Israel.
Now, there may be some sincere anxieties among Israelis… but they surely know Trump isn’t anti-Israel or anti-Jewish.
Trump’s fortune is built on Jewish ties. So, there is no need for Jews to fear Trump.
I think what is really worthy worrying about is what Trump may have unleashed in the long term. Will this grass-roots nationalism stop with Trump or go beyond that?
It’s the ‘beyond’ part that is worrying to Jews.
* This is not a problem but a conflict, and in the words of Conor Cruise O’Brien, conflicts do not have solutions, they have outcomes. Hillary Clinton and along with neocons and interventionists, wants to freeze the Middle East situation by preventing or suppressing revolution in Israel’s neighbours. But this would condemn the Jewishness of Israel to inevitable ellipse, for the reasons that Mearsheimer has pointed out.
Trump is not committed to unending war in the Middle East with the objective of keeping the current Arab family dictatorships in power irrespective of the popular will in those countries, the Israel Lobby seem to be; it would lead, sooner or later to certain doom for Israel by freezing the current long-term-untenable situation. For the Jewish state to have a future, Jews will have to leave the West Bank or the Arabs will. The conventional “solution”- minded US establishment of neocons, liberal and interventionists would not stand for the necessary transfers of Arabs; do they not understand what the alternative is?
* The Republicans have been hoping to pry the Jews away from the Democrats for the last 30+ years; with absolutely no hope of ever making it happen. Jews control, fund, are the mouthpieces, and set the agenda for the Dems. And they don’t have to share the power with anyone else, if they don’t want to.
What can the Repubs offer? Jews can share power with the Evangelicals that only care about Armageddon; where only the Evangelicals go to heaven (already got their seat assignment to heaven on Jesus 1) and everybody else (jews included) dies and goes to hell for eternity. Jews seem to have ‘issues’ with Evangelicals about this; that jews assuming room temperature is part and parcel of Evangel interest.
Or share power with white gentile men, the ones that have spent the last 2000 years wailing on the Jews when they got tired of Jews not playing by the rules ( tested by college psychology types as the one type of misbehavior that the vast majority of people won’t/can’t let slide).
Or the Nationalists that observe what Israel is doing about immigration ( build walls), deport undesirables from Israel instead of giving them same rights as a citizen. Don’t allow a small minority with dual loyalties to control media and by extension the country.
Yeah, that’s something the Hebrews are having a real difficult time resisting….
Posted inDonald Trump, Israel|Comments Off on The View From Israel On Trump
It is not hard to notice that many of these terribly anxious people are Jews.
One could argue that Jews are more emotional or that they are more sensitive to seismic shifts in society or that they are paranoid and more prone to mental illness.
To the catalogue of anxieties her patients explore during therapy — marriage, children, and careers — psychologist Alison Howard is now listening to a new source of stress: the political rise of Donald Trump.
In recent days, at least two patients have invoked the Republican front-runner, including one who talked at length about being disturbed that Trump can be so divisive and popular at the same time, said Howard, who practices in the District.
What had happened to Trump during his childhood, the patient wanted to know, to make him such a “bad person?”
“He has stirred people up,” Howard said. “We’ve been told our whole lives not to say bad things about people, to not be bullies, to not ostracize people based on their skin color. We have these social mores and he breaks all of them and he’s successful. And people are wondering how he gets away with it.”
Hand-wringing over Trump’s rapid climb, once confined to Washington’s political establishment, is now palpable among everyday Americans who are growing ever more anxious over the prospect of the billionaire reaching the White House….
Judith Schweiger Levy, a psychologist in the neighborhood, has noticed a recent uptick in Trump references among her patients, including a middle-aged businesswoman who blurted out this week that her sister is supporting the billionaire.
“She was so upset and worried that she could have a sister — someone so close to her — who would have zero problem with Trump,” Levy said. “Another patient — also a woman — all she could talk about was Trump and how he’s crazy and frightening.”
Ruminating on Trump’s effect, Levy said, “Part of the reason he makes people so anxious is that he has no anxiety himself. It’s frightening. I’m starting to feel anxious just talking about him.”
Another psychologist, Paul Saks, who practices in Greenwich Village, said Trump’s recent refusal to immediately disavow David Duke, the Ku Klux Klan’s former Grand Wizard, has riled one of his patients who is the grandson of Holocaust survivors.
“This is really resonating with him, and troubling him,” Saks said. “Just that Trump has survived and that there’s such a cataclysmic shift in the Republican Party — an institution that’s part of our way of life even if you’re not a Republican — is going to disturb a lot of people.”
Mary Libbey, a psychologist on Central Park West, isn’t hearing about Trump from her patients. But she finds herself expressing her own anxiety about him to friends and colleagues.
“It helps me to talk about it,” she said. “I’m terrified that he could win. His impulsivity, his incomplete sentences, his strange, squinty eyes — to my mind, he’s a loosely held together person.”
…What makes Trump distinct now is that he’s “a demagogue who has become a vessel for peoples’ anxiety and anger,” said Michael Kazin, a Georgetown University history professor. But Kazin likes to remind anxious friends that Trump’s slice of the Republican pie is 35 to 40 percent, and Republicans in general account for perhaps a third of the population.
“Half of his own party is against him,” Kazin said. “And even if he is elected, he’s not a hardened right-wing ideologue. Above all, he’s a great entertainer. He’s a con man who cons himself.”
…Ken Goldstein, a Los Angeles-based author and businessman who is a Democrat, recalled meeting with a business associate recently and feeling astounded when the man said he thought Trump would “be great for America.”
“You just realize you have nothing more to say to that person,” he said.
Goldstein finds small comfort imagining Trump’s defeat, if only because his followers “are still there.”
“Who are these people?” he asked. “Are they at the grocery store, are they sitting next to me at Dodger Stadium? That makes me nervous.”
Posted inDonald Trump|Comments Off on Therapists Treating Trump Anxiety
Ex-CIA officers tend to have a burn against Israel because they perceived America’s interests as often put second behind Israel’s when they were on the job.
I disagree with much of the following. I don’ think Jews have a desire to be in a war against Arabs, that conflict is entirely driven by the Arabs. Jews want to live in peace and make money and provide for their families. I don’t disrespect Arabs for hating the Jewish state. If I were in their shoes, I might do the same.
The disloyal Israel-First/Neoconservative (IF/NC) crowd seems to be having a collective and hopefully fatal seizure over Mr. Trump’s pledge to be strictly even-handed and neutral in the ongoing war between Israel and the Arabs — a war both sides clearly intend to fight to the death.
Now, many past presidential candidates have said much the same thing, but they have always added that silly, ahistorical mantra that the United States will defend Israel’s “right to exist”. But Trump did not add that mantra of the brain-dead, and so has markedly distressed the Israel-Firsters and Neocons. Indeed, they always have opposed Trump because, it seems, they sense that he will always put America first and let those individuals, nations, and groups irrelevant to the republic’s security and economic prosperity swing in the wind. I think — or at least hope — they are right.
What makes the current Israel First/Neocon seizure so hearteningly severe are not only Trump’s words and apparent America-First foreign policy inclinations, but the fact that he is getting so very many votes. “Could it possibly be,” ponder the likes of Bill Kristol, George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Max Boot, Eliot Cohen, Robert Kagan, Michael Bloomberg, Peter King, Elliott Abrams, Eric Edelman, Michael Chertoff, Mitt Romney, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and John Bolton, “that Americans are not genuinely happy, proud, and eager to have their fellow citizens and soldier-children dying uselessly in wars motivated in large part by the U.S. interventionism we advocate and by America’s subservience to a country that does nothing but degrade the republic’s security and drain its treasury?” “Could it be,” the IF/NC’ers are wondering, “that Trump and the increasing number of voters supporting him know that we Israel-Firsters and Neocons have played them for fools, corrupted their political system and media, and done our best to keep their kids dying in wars meant to serve a foreign nation’s interests at the cost of their own?” Well, it is too soon to tell, but the words of the Israel Firsters and Neocons and their fierce hatred of Trump surely suggest that they fear their war-causing disloyalty has been identified and — at long last — their jig is about up.
Facing the next-to-last last ditch, the disloyal are nearly frantic in their support for Senator Marco Rubio. And why not? Rubio is a thorough-going IF/NC, and — as he has little money of his own — is on the payroll, according to the media, of two pro-Israel, Jewish-American billionaires. Rubio also has denounced the Founders’ approach to foreign policy, expressing his belief that the IF/NC approach to U.S. foreign policy — that is, America at war everywhere, all the time, to protect Israel — is superior to John Quincy Adams’ republic-preserving advice that the United States must never go abroad “in search of monsters to destroy.”
But Rubio, after his Super Tuesday shellacking, is circling the drain until the Florida primary sends him barreling toward the sewer, and the Neocons and Israel Firsters, as Jacob Heilbrunn has written in the National Interest, have only one place to go, and that is to Hillary Clinton, who already has few of both detestable species on her team, but, the media says, only one pro-Israel, Jewish-American billionaire.
Mr. Heilbrunn’s excellent article notes that the IF/NC was originally based in the Democratic Party and so in a sense would be going home if they side with Clinton. That they were once aligned with the Democrats is clearly true, but being aligned with is much different than being part of, and I would argue that the IF/NC have never been anything but a one-issue party of their own.
Their party — best identified as the Disloyal Party or perhaps just as Copperheads — has never had any goal other than protecting the interests of Israel and keeping the United States steadily involved in the Israel-Arab war by promoting and purchasing a U.S. foreign policy that results in wars to install “democracy” abroad, but which are, in reality, only wars that are intended to annihilate Israel’s enemies, while unnecessarily making Israel’s enemies America’s. Can any clear thinking person really believe, for example, that “Foundation for Defense of Democracies” is anything but an IF/NC tool for fomenting war against Muslims in order to protect what they describe as “the only democracy” in the Middle East?
The use of the democracy angle by the IF/NC crowd is amply demonstrated in a recent article by one of its leading lights, Max Boot, titled “The GOP’s Apologists for Tyrants”. In this piece, Mr. Boot denounces Republican presidential candidates Trump, Cruz, and Kasich for “their support for dictators” and their clear lack of enthusiasm for unnecessary overseas democracy mongering and interventionist wars. Mr. Boot lauds the usual Copperhead line and insists that overthrowing Saddam, Gaddafi, and others was the correct thing to do. The only problem, he says, is that the U.S. government did not go far enough in waging those useless and massively counterproductive wars. Only the Israel First-owned Marco Rubio, Boot declares, refuses to “embrace genocidal tyrants”, which means the Copperheads were betting that they could count on Rubio for more war.
Well, Mr. Boot, no, Trump, Cruz, and Kasich are not seeking to “embrace genocidal tyrants”, but rather are looking out for America first. They know that neither Saddam nor Gaddafi was ever a serious national-security threat to the United States; indeed, both were key and extraordinarily lethal allies — and ones we did not have to pay — in the war against the Islamists.
Saddam kept Iraq’s door locked tight and so prevented the Islamists located east of Iraq from moving westward in large numbers, and he made the Iranians little more than marginal players in the Levant. How are things looking in that area now, Mr. Boot? Gaddafi kept the Islamists at bay in much of North Africa and murdered or incarcerated every Islamist that Libya’s military and security services could get their hands on, but IF/NC wanted a pro-democracy war in Libya and got it. How are affairs in the Maghreb going these days, Mr. Boot?
And do not forget, Mr. Boot, that you and your IF/NC sidekicks insisted that the U.S. government go democracy mongering in the Middle East in the name of the Arab Spring, and then you supported the military coup in Egypt that destroyed a democratically elected regime. Now, Mr. Boot, how is all of that working out? Finally, what about that clever IF/NC plan to build a new, pro-Western democracy in Afghanistan, how is that doing? Could you check on the progress of democracy there and get back to me?
What I think Mr. Trump is saying, Mr. Boot, is that it is too bad/so sad that there are murderous dictators loose in the world, but as long as they pose no life-and-death threat to the United States there is no reason for America to militarily intervene and give them — as the saying goes — the boot. After all, if the dictators are not killing Americans and/or threatening genuine U.S. national interests, who cares? Humans are hard-wired for war, so let them fight. The U.S. government exists only to defend the republic, its commerce, and its citizens and their liberties; it is under precisely zero obligation — legal, moral, or one dreamed up by disloyal U.S. citizens — to defend any set of foreigners against the murderous machinations of the dictators who rule them or the enemies who threaten them.
The wars that disloyal IF/NC Copperheads like you champion, Mr. Boot, have invariably been greatly counterproductive for U.S. national security, the national debt, and, especially, for those you and your colleagues care the least about; namely, the parents, wives, husbands, and children who suffered the loss or maiming of their loved ones in the military while they were fighting in the unnecessary wars you and your kind demand that America fight for only one reason, to make the world safe for Israel.
So, Mr. Boot, if you and the rest of your wretched and disloyal IF/NC associates want to go to the Democratic Party and side with IF/NC’er Hillary Clinton, please go immediately and trumpet your departure from the roof tops. After all, what could be more appropriate than today’s Copperheads — a kind of snake that sneaks and strikes without warning — joining the Democratic Party, the original incubator and home of the Civil War’s Copperheads? In the decade before that war, Massachusetts’s Senator Charles Sumner was speaking when he saw one of his pro-slavery foes enter the Senate Chamber and walk toward his seat. Sumner stopped and asked, I paraphrase here, the other senators to witness that a slug was slithering across the chamber’s floor looking for a chair to adhere to. For the Republican Party, the movement of the entire IF/NC crowd to the Democratic Party would be a Godsend, a veritable slithering slug migration that would find no shortage of fellow slugs waiting for them in Hillary’s camp, and there probably would be enough chairs for all of them to adhere to.
There is, then, nothing that could strengthen the Republican Party more and attract more voters to its side than to be shed of you, Mr. Boot, and your disloyal fellow Copperheads. Be gone, good riddance, and praise God for cutting out the festering IF/NC malignancy from the Republican Party so that it can once again stand for something more than endless war and Israel First.
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There is no sugarcoating it — these are the darkest days for Republican Jews like myself. Donald Trump, the most likely Republican candidate for president, has built within our party the nearest thing America has ever seen to a European nativist working class political movement. Such movements, to put it mildly, have never been good for the Jews or allies of free thought and the free market.
Trump has a commanding lead, which he extended significantly with wins on Super Tuesday. The only way he can be stopped is if blue state Republicans — those living in New York, Maryland, California and other states whose primaries fall after Super Tuesday and contain significant numbers of delegates — side with the conventionally conservative Marco Rubio. It’s possible, though not likely.
Republican Jews are therefore beside themselves, and rightly so. Trump has proven himself anathema on so many levels that it’s hard to identify just one element of his personality or his adopted policy agenda that is particularly toxic.
It’s not just his appeal to nativism, or his crony capitalism, or his crassness, or his expressed desire for “neutrality” between Israel and the Palestinians, or his admiration for Vladimir Putin, or his quotation of Mussolini, or his approval of the crushing of Chinese democracy protesters, or his rejection of permitting any Muslims into the country, or his initial refusal to forswear the endorsement of white supremacists.
It could be any of these things, it could be all of these things, but what perhaps bothers Republican Jews most is this: They think Trump would also abuse the office’s powers. Again, the Jewish experience with overweening, oversensitive wannabe dictator-chieftains is not a good one.
The fact that Trump has a daughter who has, in marriage, embraced the Jewish faith is largely immaterial to Republican Jews. We don’t vote on the basis of personal identity or inherited identity — if we did, we would have supported Gore-Lieberman (we didn’t) and today we would support Bernie Sanders (we don’t).
Let’s assess the opportunity that was lost. At the outset of the campaign there were three or four trusted candidates who enjoyed meaningful Republican Jewish support because of what they were likely to do to repudiate and reverse Barack Obama’s policy gains: Jeb Bush (for whom I worked as a speechwriter), Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and, to a lesser extent, Scott Walker. Today, Republican Jews have coalesced around the last of these men who still stand for office: Rubio and Cruz.
Unless either of these men emerges with a come-from-behind victory, the opportunity to undo the Obama agenda is lost. Fix the U.S.-Israel relationship? Trump wants to stay neutral. Focus on the economy? Trump offers no credible specifics. Pull back the regulatory state? Trump has a business history replete with special deals, use of the bankruptcy courts and eminent domain to suit his own development projects. Politically, he has saved his most vicious attacks for other Republicans, rather than for Clinton or Obama.
The best Trump can offer Republican Jews is not who he is, but who he isn’t: Hillary Clinton. Choosing between these two isn’t exactly Sophie’s choice — we’d rather let them both go.
But let’s not kid ourselves: What Republican Jews do or don’t do is not really the core issue. What matters is what we take away from this politically life-changing moment. This is about the entire Republican Party.
* That the Republican establishment apparently cares more about the support of “several dozen GOP foreign policy insiders” than it does for 80 million Trump voters tells you everything about how they got to this point.
It’s a foreign policy that puts America first. What would American foreign policy look like if America actually cared about America? What would the world look like if America actually cared about itself?
* There’s a Hispanic Republican/Trump opponent on Twitter who raised the neutrality issue too, implying that it means Trump, former Grand Marshall of New York’s Israel Day Parade, and celebrity endorser of Israeli PM Netanyahu, sees a moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel. But a more likely interpretation is that Trump was pointing out the difficulty of negotiating a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians while we are more committed to being a strong ally of Israel than being an honest broker.
Reading between the lines, it seems a President Trump wouldn’t waste energy on negotiating a final peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Instead, he’d have a policy of benign neglect toward the conflict, while focusing his energy on making America great again.
Perhaps, in the 7th year of a Trump administration, if we had full employment, 4% annual GDP growth, and everything was going great here — and the Israelis and the Palestinians had made progress toward a deal on their own and asked for his help with a final push — then maybe he’d apply his “Art of the Deal” to the problem. Otherwise, probably not.
* I wonder if all the neocons plus Jennifer Rubin plus William Kristol, et al. will be asked to “disavow” Avigdor Lieberman, the former foreign minister of Israel and demand that Benjamin Nentayahu do the same (or lose his long-standing reservations to address the U.S. Congress). Lieberman, of course, is a famous “separatist,” along the lines of David Duke and Louis Farrakan:
“Lieberman Plan[edit]
Main article: Lieberman Plan
According to Lieberman, “The peace process is based on three false basic assumptions; that Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the main cause of instability in the Middle East, that the conflict is territorial and not ideological, and that the establishment of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders will end the conflict.”[49]
In late May 2004, Lieberman proposed a plan in which the populations and territories of Israeli Jews and Arabs, including some Israeli Arabs, would be “separated”. According to the plan, also known as the “Populated-Area Exchange Plan”, Israeli Arab towns adjacent to Palestinian Authority areas would be transferred to Palestinian Authority, and only those Arab Israelis who migrated from the area to within Israel’s new borders and pledged loyalty to Israel would be allowed to remain Israeli citizens. On 30 May 2004, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon condemned Lieberman’s statements, stating “We regard Israeli Arabs as part of the State of Israel.”[50] On 4 June 2004, as the disputes over the up-coming disengagement plan grew more intense, Sharon dismissed Lieberman from the cabinet.[51][52]“
If the military fall in behind Trump, he can do anything. If he appoints conservative southern whites to run the military, they will support a Trump reign to the hilt.
If I were in the MSM, I’d be a tad nervous about my safety. People really really hate you.
I don’t think you can over-estimate the fright that nationalists currently feel about America. You can’t over-estimate their desperation. Many of them see Donald Trump as the last best hope for America. They’re willing to die for Trump. How many Americans are willing to die for Hillary?
In the atmosphere of hate Trump has created, anything is possible.
Awake Goy: “That would be awful! I work with a guy who studies Southeast Asia and he goes to Singapore all the time and he virtue signals all the leftist hand-wringing about the ‘autocratic’ nature of it… but finally he concedes that it is the safest, most beautiful city he’s ever visited, and the people seem genuinely happy in measures not imaginable in the West as it currently exists. I sure hope we don’t end up like that. Just hope we can stay vibrant.”
Chaim Amalek: “And ever more diverse. Don’t forget that. Diversity is what makes us vibrant and prosperous.”
“I’m going to invent a new device to help called the vibrantor. Women will love it.”
If we lose our values in all this, then we’ve lost everything. It’s all about process, the constitution, and staying true to who we are.
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Is that a traditional Jewish practice? In LA, it seems like many of the Jews surf. In New York, Jews don’t surf.
Either you learn or you earn. No playtime allowed.
That’s for goyim.
I worry about this Trump thing. It may lead to hundreds of establishment figures jumping off cliffs.
I hear news about Flint, Michigan, all the time, about how the lead in the drinking water can lead to lower IQs and how horrible that is. In this type of story, the MSM displays no doubts about the importance of IQ. Also, when it comes to morons getting off the death penalty because they are so stupid, again the MSM believes in the importance of IQ.
My Harvard Ph.D. dissertation contains some scientifically unremarkable statements about ethnic differences in average IQ, including the IQ difference between Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites. For four years, the dissertation did what almost every other dissertation does — collected dust in the university library. But when it was unearthed in the midst of the immigration debate, I experienced the vilification firsthand.
For people who have studied mental ability, what’s truly frustrating is the déjà vu they feel each time a media firestorm like this one erupts. Attempts by experts in the field to defend the embattled messenger inevitably fall on deaf ears. When the firestorm is over, the media’s mindset always resets to a state of comfortable ignorance, ready to be shocked all over again when the next messenger comes along.
At stake here, incidentally, is not just knowledge for the sake of knowledge, but also how science informs public policy. The U.S. education system, for example, is suffused with mental testing, yet few in the political classes understand cognitive ability research. Angry and repeated condemnations of the science will not help.
What scholars of mental ability know, but have never successfully gotten the media to understand, is that a scientific consensus, based on an extensive and consistent literature, has long been reached on many of the questions that still seem controversial to journalists.
For example, virtually all psychologists believe there is a general mental ability factor (referred to colloquially as “intelligence”) that explains much of an individual’s performance on cognitive tests. IQ tests approximately measure this general factor. Psychologists recognize that a person’s IQ score, which is influenced by both genetic and environmental factors, usually remains stable upon reaching adolescence. And they know that IQ scores are correlated with educational attainment, income, and many other socioeconomic outcomes.
In terms of group differences, people of northeast Asian descent have higher average IQ scores than people of European lineage, who in turn have higher average scores than people of sub-Saharan African descent. The average score for Hispanic Americans falls somewhere between the white and black American averages. Psychologists have tested and long rejected the notion that score differences can be explained simply by biased test questions. It is possible that genetic factors could influence IQ differences among ethnic groups, but many scientists are withholding judgment until DNA studies are able to link specific gene combinations with IQ.
How can I be sure all of this reflects mainstream thinking? Because, over the years, psychologists have put together statements, reports, and even books aimed at synthesizing expert opinion on IQ. Many of these efforts were made in explicit response to the periodic media firestorms that engulfed people who spoke publicly about cognitive science. It’s worth reviewing some of those incidents and detailing the scholarly responses — responses that are invariably forgotten before the next furor begins. I’ll place my own experience in that context.
Let’s start 25 years ago, with the publication of The IQ Controversy, a book by Mark Snyderman and Stanley Rothman. The authors surveyed more than 1,000 experts in the field of cognitive science to develop a picture of what the mainstream really looks like. It was very similar to the description I’ve supplied above.
Snyderman and Rothman then systematically analyzed television, newspaper, and magazine coverage of IQ issues. They were alarmed to find that the media were presenting a much different picture than what the expert survey showed. Based on media portrayals, it would seem that most experts think IQ scores have little meaning, that genes have no influence on IQ, and that the tests are hopelessly biased. “Our work demonstrates that, by any reasonable standard, media coverage of the IQ controversy has been quite inaccurate,” the authors concluded.
In conducting the expert survey and contrasting the results with media depictions of IQ research, one would think Snyderman and Rothman had performed a valuable service. Surely public discussion of IQ would now be more firmly grounded in science?
It didn’t happen. Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve was published in 1994, and real science was hard to find in the media circus that ensued. Herrnstein and Murray’s central claim about IQ differences shaping class divisions continues to be the subject of reasoned debate among social scientists. But non-experts in the media questioned whether IQ is even a valid concept. Intelligence research – psychometrics — is a pseudoscience, they said. The tests are meaningless, elitist, biased against women and minorities, important only to genetic determinists. And even to discuss group differences in IQ was called racist.
In short, the media did everything Snyderman and Rothman had warned against six years earlier. As a consequence, the interesting policy implications explored by Herrnstein and Murray were lost in the firestorm.
Posted inIQ|Comments Off on Lead Lowers IQ Levels, Mexican Immigration Lowers America’s Average IQ
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
But a Stalin-Trotsky Unity Ticket would really get Max’s juices flowing.