Neo-Liberals, Neo-Conservatives, Neo-Fascists, Neo-Nazis... There's A Difference?

My friend Frank-- whose dad was one of the 3 founders of the Moral Majority movement-- left evangelical Christianity many years ago... loudly. Yesterday, je sent me this video from Italy, where he's on vacation. He sure doesn't like fascists! "Be warned, America," he said, "when you elect a Nazi German to represent your country, who then calls other people "foreigners," when he is a foreigner-- because it is not an American idea to put children in cages... When you tell people of color to go back where they came from... when we forget that history, we will end up with places like this or their metaphorical equivalent." He was speaking from the ruins of a German bunker.

Commentary was founded by left-of-center Jewish intellectuals in the aftermath of the Holocaust and became a leading component of the new post-war Jewish identity until 1960 when a radical right freak, Norman Podhoretz, took over and turned it into a neo-conservative/neo-fascist magazine, destroying all credibility the magazine had developed in it's first decade and a half. His son, John Podhoretz, is the current editor and even nearly as toxic as the father. A #NeverTrumper, he broke with the fascist right on immigration policy: "[A]s a Jew, I have great difficulty supporting a blanket policy of immigration restriction because of what happened to the Jewish people after 1924 and the unwillingness of the United States to take Jews in." But, more recently, he gravitated back to his neo-fascist roots and supports both Trump and putting immigrant children in cages. I don't know much about Noah Rothman other than his position as online editor of Commentary. His new book, Unjust: Social Justice and the Unmaking of America, was published by neo-fascist publishing firm, Regnery. And his new post for Commentary, pathetic: "both sides" trash, that would have had the pre-Podhoretz editors of the magazine puking. His first couple of paragraphs sucked me into reading the article: "The 2016 election cycle was a forsaken orgy of racial anxiety, political violence, spineless complacency, and depravity of a scale that was abnormal even for American politics. The 2020 election cycle will be worse. America got a taste of what Donald Trump’s reelection bid is going to look like on Wednesday night, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. The president had only hours earlier intervened in a destructive civil conflict among Democrats by insisting that the conflict’s more progressive belligerents, all of whom are of minority descent with only one born abroad, should 'go back' to the countries 'from which they came.' Aware of the damage these remarks could do both to the GOP’s political prospects and the social fabric, some responsible Republicans dissented. Most did not. Those members of Trump’s phalanx who did not stifle their criticisms flattered the president and applauded his instincts. It was inevitable that his most committed supporters would do the same. So, when the topic turned to 'squad' member Ilhan Omar at Wednesday night’s rally, the crowd followed Trump’s lead." Eventually, so did Rothman.

First he noted that "There’s an ugly condescension inherent in the unspoken assumption that repudiating bigotry might fracture the president’s winning coalition of voters who are otherwise underserved by elite opinion-makers on the coasts, but there is no better explanation for Trump’s politically foolish compromises. Trump’s approach to constituency maintenance routinely manifests in the stoking of racial and class tensions, and there’s no reason to expect that to abate when the presidency is on the line." But then came the both sides bullshit conservatives can never resist:

Equally tragic is the fact that the Republican Party Trump represents is losing, or has already lost, the moral high ground in its efforts to call out Rep. Omar’s unveiled expressions of anti-Semitism for what they are. Democrats certainly aren’t doing so. Absent any check on her instincts, Omar and the 'squad' can be expected to renew their commitment to a special brand of ethnic and sectarian antagonism. For her part, Omar has transitioned from making anti-Semitic comments to crafting anti-Semitic policy. This week, she introduced a House resolution in support of the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions movement-- an amalgam of anti-Israel interests whose actions inevitably manifest in naked Jew-hatred-- equating Israel to Nazi Germany in the process." In other words, equating anti-Semitism with supporting the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and national identity. The brakes are off, and the temperature is rising. As the campaign season intensifies, so, too, will the emotions around the consequences of the next presidential cycle. The acts of political violence that we’ve witnessed over the last three years-- some of which are attributed to overheated political rhetoric by their perpetrators-- are unlikely to abate. As the legislative process grinds to a halt ahead of the upcoming election year, the crises that exacerbate these tensions, like the unanticipated explosion of migrants crossing the Southern border, will go unaddressed. Those crises will be demagogued; they always are. But there are no cooler heads left to prevail.

A responsible political culture can withstand the actions of a few reckless provocateurs, even if one of those provocateurs is the president. But ours is not a responsible political culture, and things are going to get worse before they get better.

Oh, well, at least I learned to never read anything by Noah Rothman again, nor to bother reading anything in Commentary. From now on, when I want to hear from delusional Republicans, I'll just stick to Andrew Sullivan, whose a lot smarter than Rothman and Podhoretz combined. His contribution to yesterday's dialogue: Trump Is Betting That Indecency Can Win in America. "In the deeply disturbing moments after Donald Trump invoked a three-minutes-of-hate session toward Congresswoman Ilhan Omar Wednesday night, and the crowd erupted with chants of 'Send Her Back! Send Her Back!', a protester yelled something inaudible, and caused a commotion. As security was called, the crowd chanted 'USA! USA!' and eventually the young man was handcuffed and led out of the stadium, to the mob’s vocal derision and pleasure. In those moments, you can see Trump pause to allow the mob to vent against the dissenter. Frenzied participants gleefully whipped out their phones to take photos of the man, who was holding up pictures of Jeffrey Epstein and Trump together and wearing a Native Trash T-shirt-- a defunct Charlotte band but also presumably," ventured Sullivan, a reference to all those who surrounded him."

This country has had volatile civil conflicts before. What’s different now is we have a president whose instinct in such turbulent times is actually to intensify the turbulence with rhetoric and mass rallies that foment greater and greater mutual hostility. Most presidents regard it as their responsibility to tamp down racial and cultural conflict. Trump, having no concept of any broader interest than his own, is incapable of it. His malignant narcissism prevents him from any other way of behaving, and each outrage becomes a new baseline for the next one.

So yes, we are in an abyss. And as Trump becomes increasingly emboldened by his survival, and one of the two major parties has become a cult, the bottom seems even more elusive than before. Think of what might happen if Trump loses the popular vote in 2020 by an even bigger margin but still ekes out an Electoral College victory. Think of how a close election could lead to Trump’s refusal to concede, and how the wheels could come off the entire system. What we know for certain is that, for the first time, we have a president who doesn’t care if that happens, who’d rather destroy the legitimacy of liberal democracy than compete legitimately within it.

Would Trump's Cocaine Addiction Affect His Ability To Be President?

And you wonder why he only sleeps 3 hours a night?

By the time I started working at Warner Bros Records I had long given up drugs, something I left behind with the 1960s, a dear old friend that was no longer part of my life. "Drugs," for the most part meant marijuana. Smoking weed had been an integral part of my college life and it ended there. I was in a sweltering parking lot in my van at the Pakistan-India border on December 1, 1969 when I had a life-changing experience. Instead of having to exercise will power top avoid drugs-- something I sometimes succeeded at and sometimes failed at-- the desire itself was ripped from my body. Thank God! And that was the end of that. A life of drug use was o-v-e-r. The pull wasn't something I had to resist; it no longer existed. And in those years I was smoking pot, I was, less regularly, using other drugs as well. I tried almost everything and I loved some, like acid, and hated others, like DMT. Cocaine was something in between-- something that gave me a lot of pleasure but that I could tell was very bad for me. It wasn't hard for me to stop using it-- considerably before by experience in my VW van on the Pakistan-India border. I never felt the slightest interest in using it since and soon it'll be 50 years!

But I still remember very much what it's like to be high on coke or to be strung out on coke. What time did the debate start last night? 4-5 minutes after 6 (PT)? 10 minutes in-- check the time stamp-- I sensed something crazy about Trump-- I mean crazy in a different than normal Trump crazy way. I had heard rumors in the past that he had a prescription drug problem and certainly what could have happened last night was that he chopped up some adderall of something and snorted it before hitting the stage. Hey, don't be judgmental; different people prepare in different ways. When I was in the midst of chemotherapy, somewhere along the line my doctor prescribed adderall. I hated it. But many people love it and its supposed to be especially helpful for people who, like Trump, have short attention spans. It contains a combination of amphetamine and dextroamphetamine, which stimulate the central nervous system and affect chemicals in the brain and nerves that contribute to hyperactivity and impulse control. Just sayin'. But adderall isn't what I was sensing even in the first few minutes of the debate. Nor were the diet pills (meth) he used to peddle on his pyramid scheme infomercials.



This is what I tweeted 10 minutes in:

Ten minutes later I wasn't laughing. He really was coked up! The next tweet:

Right around that time Hillary was saying, "Donald, I know you live in your own reality." Yeah, he does, but what I was feeling was that at the moment he was living in a cocaine reality. 11 minutes passed and I was positive.

Utterly positive... it was totally affecting his thought and speech patterns, even more than usual:

So was my old friend Susan positive-- and she's very smart:

I was glad I wasn't the only one who noticed. Another old friend, a Warner Bros co-worker, Steve, sent me a photo:

I ran a little poll when I noticed the incoherent babbling was getting worse and worse.

That's when the DWT art director sent me the photo up top. GOP strategist--and hipster-- Rick Wilson seemed to recognize the same same thing:

I wondered why no one in the mainstream media was saying anything about it. Then he started blaming all the sniffing on a "defective mic," something he doubled down on the next morning when he was making a fool of himself on Fox and Friends.

By the end of the night, I was suggesting that Kellyanne check him into one of those fancy Republican Party detox centers where they put their officials when everything explodes on their faces. I learned today that about an hour after I started tweeting about Trump's sniffling and crazy behavior could signify coke use, that Howard Dean had suggested it as well, significant not because of his place in politics but because he's also a medical doctor. On MSNBC Tuesday he explained his tweet to a hostile and especially moronic anchor-- establishment media hates this kind of speculation.

[H]e sniffs during the presentation, which is something that users do. He also has grandiosity, which is something that accompanies that problem. He has delusions. He has trouble with pressured speech. He interrupted Hillary Clinton 29 times. He couldn't keep himself together. So, look, do I think at 70 years old he has a cocaine habit? Probably not. But, you know, it's something that-- I think it would be interesting to ask him and see if he ever had a problem with that.

Dean's right; dummy MSNBC anchor is wrong. But the mainstream media won't go near this with a 10 foot pole. John Podhoretz, once a proud #NeverTrump dude, has been slinking back to the GOP OK Corral the same way Ted Cruz did. He sounded jilted the morning after but nothing to do with the cocaine elephant in the room. Although he found the unhinged Trump "exciting," he also admitted he was "embarrassingly undisciplined." When the coke was sparking all Trump's brain cells in the first 20 minutes, Podhoretz claims he was making sense (at least to inhabitants of RepublicanWorld) but then, as the high started wearing off... Well Podhoretz explained that "due to the vanity and laziness that led him to think he could wing the most important 95 minutes of his life, he lost the thread of his argument, he lost control of his temper and he lost the perspective necessary to correct these mistakes as he went... Trump was reduced to a sputtering mess blathering about Rosie O’Donnell and about how he hasn’t yet said the mean things about Hillary that he is thinking... [H]e went into a bizarre digression in which he alternately wondered whether his son Barron might grow up to become a hacker and defended Vladimir Putin from the accusation Russia had tapped into the Democratic National Committee’s emails (which the FBI says almost certainly happened). That has to count as the biggest choke of his political life... [Everything] was buried inside a weird word salad that reduced its effectiveness to almost nil." If you know anything about coke freaks, that should sound very familiar. And here's the part about Podhoetz feeling jilted:

His supporters should be furious with him, and so should the public in general. By performing this incompetently, by refusing to prepare properly for this exchange, by not learning enough to put meat on the bones of his populist case against Clinton, he displayed nothing but contempt for the people who have brought him this far-- and for the American people who are going to make this momentous decision on Nov. 8.

Canadian journalist John Ibbitson, writing for the Toronto Globe And Mail Tuesday morning felt the decision had been made, namely that no reasonable voter could want Trump as president after the debate. "Trump," he wrote, "was loud, angry, rude, boastful. He bashed China and Mexico, he constantly interrupted, he swaggered and strutted and jutted his chin. Most of all, he described a dying dystopian republic brought to its knees by Hillary Clinton and her friends that he alone could redeem." Sounds like a crazy cokehead to me-- "rambling, bloviating, incoherent, shouting, interrupting, boasting, ridiculing, low-blowing-- while rarely landing a single palpable hit."

And late in the debate, when asked by the moderator why he said he opposed the war in Iraq when in fact he had supported it in 2002, Mr. Trump went off on a rant of such length and violence of tone that millions could only have watched in horror, ending with the audience laughing when he pronounced: “I have a much better temperament than she does.”

He disproved that, however, by then insinuating he knew some terrible secret about Ms. Clinton that he would not repeat, because he was above such things. Simply disgraceful.

...To want Donald Trump as president, you would have to be as angry and bitter as Donald Trump was Monday night.

Or on crack.

When Will The Trumpanzee Be So Radioactive That Even The Peter And Steve Kings Of The World Start Abandoning Him?

The new poll out this morning from Vox Populi of New Hampshire registered voters confirmed what pollsters are seeing nationally-- a Trumpanzee meltdown. In a 4-way race, Hillary leads Mr. Trumpanzee 41-31% with Gary Johnson at 11% and Jill Stein at 3%. What worries New Hampshire Republicans far more than the collapse of Mr. T, is that he's dragging down incumbent Senator Kelly Ayotte, who can't give a clear answer about where she stands on supporting Trump. The poll shows Democrat Maggie Hassan beating her 46 to 43%, which would be catastrophic for Republican hopes to hold onto a Senate majorty. Mr. T seems to be losing whatever grip he had on reality; he's in never-never land, seemingly in some kind of an alternative universe, perhaps even believing what he said this morning, namely that "the polls are closing up very rapidly. I have a whole other group out there that people don't even know about." Perhaps because they're not registered to vote?

Trumpist congressmen are starting to worry. According to a report in today's Hill "gloom is setting in for GOP lawmakers and strategists who increasingly think Donald Trump will lose the presidential race, and their party will be left in the political wilderness. 'I’m not feeling great about the immediate future of the conservative movement right now,' said one southern lawmaker, a Trump supporter. 'As a conservative who believes our ideas are good for America, it is pretty gloomy these days.' A handful of House GOP lawmakers say they are already bracing for what could be a lopsided Trump defeat this fall. 'It’s an uphill battle,' acknowledged retiring Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.), who first endorsed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), then Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and finally Trump after he won the nomination. 'I think it will be Hillary,' predicted a northeastern House GOP lawmaker who is publicly backing Trump. 'If I had to bet, I'd definitely ‎bet that Trump loses,' said another House GOP lawmaker who is opposed to Trump. 'This is like a football game where you hate both teams. You root for a tie-- and maybe some minor injuries.'" Or maybe some major ones. On CNBC's Squawk Box this morning the chronically constipated insomniac said that "all I do is tell the truth. If at the end of 90 days, I fall short that's OK. I have a very good way of life." Yes, he does; what does it matter to him? But what about the destruction of the careers of Republicans up and down the ballot, like Ayotte? They haven't spent their lives cheating and robbing and amassing immense wealth. It looks like he doesn't care one bit that he's leaving the GOP a smouldering ruin. In his Washington Post OpEd yesterday, former Congressman Joe Scarborough (R-FL)-- AKA, "Morning Joe"-- explained that his party "must dump Trump."

The Muslim ban, the David Duke denial, the “Mexican” judge flap, the draft dodger denigrating John McCain’s military service, the son of privilege attacking an immigrant Gold Star mother and the constant revisionism and lying about past political positions taken are but a few of the lowlights that have punctuated Donald Trump’s chaotic chase for the presidency.

Any one of these offenses would have disqualified any other candidate for president.

...Paul Ryan and every Republican leader should denounce in the strongest terms their GOP nominee suggesting conservatives could find the Supreme Court more favorable to their desires if his political rival was assassinated.

Paul Ryan and every Republican leader should revoke their endorsement of Donald Trump. At this point, what else could Trump do that would be worse than implying the positive impact of a political assassination?

The Republican Party needs to start examining quickly their options for removing the Republican nominee.

A bloody line has been crossed that cannot be ignored. At long last, Donald Trump has left the Republican Party few options but to act decisively and get this political train wreck off the tracks before something terrible happens.

Former New Hampshire Senator Gordon Humphrey (R) is demanding that the RNC kick Mr. Trumpanzee off the ticket and replace him with an actual garden variety Republican. Former Congressman Chris Shays (R-CT) announced he's voting for Hillary Clinton, the more conventionally conservative of the two candidates. Ex-U.S. Senator Dave Durenberger (R-MN) and ex-Congresswoman Connie Morella (R-MD) announced yesterday that they're both voting for Hillary. GOP neocon war criminal John Negroponte announced that he too isn't just "not voting for Trump" but is going to vote for Hillary. And Carla Hills, Bush's Trade Rep who negotiated the original NAFTA agreement also said she's with Hillary.

In his NY Post column, rigfht-wing activist John Podhoretz worried that the GOP majority could get wiped out in November thanks to public revulsion over Trumpanzee. Many Republican operatives are worried about what he's saying, namely that "Three months before the election, the news is pretty much all bad for Republicans-- so bad, in fact, that the question it raises is whether November is going to see a Democratic wave that not only washes Hillary Clinton into the White House but also secures majorities for Democrats in the Senate and even in the House of Representatives... [I]f Hillary wins Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina, that would be indicative of a national 'wave'-- a win so broad and deep that it flips downballot races to the Democrats. And this is what terrifies other Republicans-- that a wholesale rejection of Trump will combine with the 'brand' problems of the GOP to threaten anyone and everyone who might be vulnerable. Democrats need to net four seats in the Senate to take control (assuming a Hillary victory). The GOP figures two are already gone (Mark Kirk in Illinois and Ron Johnson in Wisconsin). The popular former Democratic senator and governor of Indiana, Evan Bayh, seems likely to prevail in the Senate race there. Which means Democrats only need one or two more."

Podhoretz says he's worried about Kelly Ayotte (NH), Pat Toomey (PA), Richard Burr (NC) and John McCain (AZ). He's already figured out that Rubio will be safe as long as Schumer bamboozles Florida Democrats into nominating Patrick Murphy August 30. (If Grayson overcomes Schumer and Murphy, Rubio might as well look for a new job draining sitting water in Miami-Dade.) But a more interesting perspective on the unfolding GOP catastrophe was the subject of Josh Kraushaar's Wednesday post for the National Journal, Why Mainstream Republicans Fear Señor Trumpanzee-- or, more to the point, the rabid dogs who are part of his very dangerous anti-democratic (small "d") cult of personality. He wrote that to understand why elected Republicans are sticking with Trumpanzee even after he called on NRA nuts to assassinate Hillary Clinton after she's elected calls for a psychologist but, he adds, "if Trump gets angry and slams down-bal­lot Re­pub­lic­ans, his sup­port­ers are likely to fol­low his lead and pun­ish the tar­gets of his wrath. After all, they are far more loy­al to Trump than they are to the GOP." [Tuesday night, though, even with Trumpy-the-Clown cheerleaders Ann Couler, Sarah Palin and Phyllis Schafly openly campaigning for lunatic fringe anti-Ryan candidate Paul Nehlen, Nelhlen only garnered 10,852 votes (16%) against Ryan's 57,391 in the Wisconsin primary. The only Trumpist congressional candidate Mr. Trumpanzee actually campaigned for so far was Rep. Renee Ellmers, who lost her North Carolina seat with just 23.64% of the vote.]

Re­pub­lic­an lead­ers have main­tained a fra­gile détente with Trump since he locked up the nom­in­a­tion. It’s why they were so alarmed when Trump didn’t re­spond in kind when he de­nounced John Mc­Cain and Kelly Ayotte in an in­ter­view with the Wash­ing­ton Post, while with­hold­ing an en­dorse­ment of House Speak­er Paul Ry­an. His threat to with­hold en­dorse­ments of his party’s most vul­ner­able mem­bers threatened to shat­ter the peace with party reg­u­lars. Adding in­sult to in­jury, he half-heartedly re-en­dorsed them last Fri­day in Wis­con­sin, read­ing from a sheet of pa­per while do­ing so.

This is why Re­pub­lic­ans on a bal­lot in 2016 are sup­port­ing Trump, even if their back­ing is de­cidedly luke­warm. It’s why John Mc­Cain has main­tained his per­func­tory en­dorse­ment of Trump. It’s why Flor­ida Sen. Marco Ru­bio held a sol­id anti-Trump pos­ture, un­til he re­con­sidered run­ning for the Sen­ate and re­cog­nized he needed Trump’s sup­port­ers to win. It’s why even Jeb Bush’s son, Texas Land Com­mis­sion­er George P. Bush, told sup­port­ers he was re­luct­antly back­ing Trump. He has a polit­ic­al fu­ture to tend to, after all.

All these Re­pub­lic­ans have cal­cu­lated that the costs of split­ting with Trump-- even when he’s nas­tily de­noun­cing them-- are great­er than the costs of los­ing the sup­port of his core voters. This isn’t just a primary elec­tion prob­lem. It’s a re­cog­ni­tion that the Trump voters will fol­low the whims of their lead­er, no mat­ter what he says, through the gen­er­al elec­tion. And if Re­pub­lic­an of­fice­hold­ers aren’t suf­fi­ciently loy­al enough to Trump, his sup­port­ers will make them pay a price.

...[F]or Trump’s re­luct­ant sup­port­ers, here’s where the Faus­ti­an bar­gain falls apart. The pre­vail­ing wis­dom among the GOP es­tab­lish­ment is that if Trump loses, he quietly re­turns to Trump Tower and shrinks away from the polit­ic­al scene. It’s this same lo­gic that com­pelled Re­pub­lic­ans to in­sist, against all evid­ence, that Trump would be­come more “pres­id­en­tial” once he locked up the nom­in­a­tion.

It’s be­com­ing in­creas­ing hard to see that out­come, es­pe­cially as he raises the specter of a rigged elec­tion a full three months be­fore Novem­ber. One of Trump’s me­dia boost­ers, Fox News host Sean Han­nity, has already pree­mpt­ively blamed anti-Trump Re­pub­lic­ans for cost­ing the GOP nom­in­ee this elec­tion.

In real­ity, Trump has poured gas­ol­ine on a long­stand­ing di­vide with­in the Re­pub­lic­an party between the anti-es­tab­lish­ment pop­u­lists and the busi­ness-minded elites. His huge pub­lic plat­form re­vealed a fis­sure that is not likely to heal with one elec­tion. Trump has pub­li­cized anti-free trade, anti-im­mig­ra­tion, and nat­iv­ist views that GOP lead­ers have largely kept in check. The fact that Trump man­aged to pick off a healthy num­ber of Ru­bio and Jeb Bush back­ers on his way to the nom­in­a­tion con­firms that the old con­ser­vat­ive co­ali­tion no longer ex­ists.

Re­pub­lic­an lead­ers are choos­ing to pre­tend that these dif­fer­ences don’t ex­ist, pre­fer­ring to na­ively pro­claim that Trump will em­brace Paul Ry­an’s con­ser­vat­ive agenda if he’s elec­ted pres­id­ent. That’s not what his voters signed up for. It’s why Trump’s rote es­pous­al of more-tra­di­tion­al GOP po­s­i­tions, such as his eco­nom­ic speech at the De­troit Eco­nom­ic Club on Monday, will fall flat.

More likely, he will con­tin­ue to use his out­size pub­lic plat­form to settle old scores. He might even try and launch his own tele­vi­sion net­work to broad­cast the pop­u­lism that pro­pelled his can­did­acy. He’s not go­ing away, and neither are his core voters. The only ques­tion is wheth­er more tra­di­tion­al GOP lead­ers have the cha­risma and cred­ib­il­ity to bring Trump par­tis­ans in­to a new-look GOP, or wheth­er his sup­port­ers will con­tin­ue to stir up trouble with­in the party.

How excited are Democrats to have so many high profile Republicans-- like war criminal John Negroponte-- rushing to embrace Hillary? As one friend of mine put it this morning, many of the men on that Republicans for Hillary list were actually involved in authorizing killing people and promoting hatred and crashing our economy. We should welcome rank and file Republicans but the architects of disaster should be held accountable and not celebrated. As Michael Barbaro and Amy Chozick noted in the NY Times yesterday, Republican women are running from the Trumpanzee embrace as fast as they can.

Of all the tribulations facing Donald J. Trump, perhaps none is stirring as much anxiety inside his campaign as the precipitous decline of support from Republican women, an electoral cornerstone for the party’s past nominees that is starting to crumble.

In a striking series of defections, high-profile Republican women are abandoning decades of party loyalty and vowing to oppose Mr. Trump, calling him emotionally unfit for the presidency and a menace to national security.

But even more powerfully, his support from regular Republican women is falling after Mr. Trump’s provocative remarks about everything from the silence of the mother of a slain Muslim soldier to how women should respond to sexual harassment in the workplace.

“For people like me, who are Republican but reasonable and still have our brains attached, it’s hard to see Trump as a reasonable, sane Republican,” said Dina Vela, a project manager in San Antonio who said she had always voted Republican and remained wary of Hillary Clinton. But to her own surprise, she has started visiting Mrs. Clinton’s campaign website and plans to vote for her.

Since the two parties held their nominating conventions, Mr. Trump’s lead over Mrs. Clinton with Republican women voters has declined by 13 percentage points, according to polls conducted by the New York Times and CBS News.

The danger for Mr. Trump is that the erosion could accelerate as leading Republican women publicly break with him, making an argument that the national interest must supersede party loyalty... “We’re Republicans, she’s a Democrat, but the policy disagreements we have are far outweighed by the danger that Donald Trump poses to America,” said Jennifer Pierotti Lim, a lifelong Republican and an executive at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce who has pledged her support to Mrs. Clinton and spoke at the Democratic National Convention.

But Barbaro and Chotzick acknowledged that for the Clinton Machine, the alienation of Republican women from the Trumpanzee "creates a rare opportunity to capture a coveted demographic. But it poses a dilemma as well. Skeptical liberals are already looking for signs of betrayal from Mrs. Clinton, making it dangerous for her to make overt or ideological appeals to Republican women." Skeptical liberals don't have to look far-- who'd she pick for her running mate for example and why was she down in South Florida campaign for universally loathed corrupt and divisive Debbie Wasserman Schultz this week?  Is that an indication of what kind of garbage she'll be stocking her administration with? How could it not be? But Barbaro mimics the campaign spin to point out that "Instead, she is making her case to them by emphasizing kitchen-table issues like job creation and by raising doubts about Mr. Trump[anzee]’s temperament." I guess "I'm the lesser of two evils" will never work... since that's what Trump is using.

UPDATE: And South Carolina????

South Carolina has been reliably Republican for quote some time now, although Obama did hit 44.9% against McCain. But just-released polling from PPP shows even there Mr. Trumpanzee may be increasingly beyond the pale for suburban voters. He only has a 2 point lead over Hillary:

• Mr. Trumpanzee- 41%
• Hillary- 39%
• Gary Johnson- 5%
• Jill Stein- 2%

"The closeness," explained PPP Director Tom Jensen, "is a function of Democrats being a lot happier with their party's candidate than Republicans are with theirs. Clinton is winning 84% of the Democratic vote, compared to Trump's 77% of the Republican vote. Although neither candidate is well liked by voters in the state Trump's favorability, at 38% positive and 56% negative, comes in slightly worse than Clinton's at 38/55... Trump is only ahead because of a massive advantage among seniors in the state at 58/30. When you look at everyone in the electorate below the age of 65, Clinton leads Trump 41/36."

The Great Trumpf Take Down Falls Flat On Its Face

Louisiana's Duck Dynasty Klan is split on who to support for president. None are following North Carolina Republican Richard Burr's example and pledging fealty to Bernie Sanders, but Phil Robertson, patriarch of the reality TV show went for Cruz while Phil's son, Willie, a former Bobby Jindal backer, is now pumping for fellow TV reality star, Herr Trumpf. "Mr. Trump is a real leader. He represents success and strength, two attributes our country needs. Like me, he is a successful businessman and family man and I endorse his candidacy for President of the United States," said Willie. Willie Nelson, of course, supports Bernie Sanders.

Greg Sargent detects some cynicism among the GOP elites: they're "telling themselves that Trump doesn't mean any of it."

One Republican-aligned business figure says GOP elites prefer Trump to Cruz because Trump “has no obvious core values.” One Republican donor says: “in the middle of the campaign a lot of people say things that they think are going to help them get elected.” Another donor says that while he finds Trump’s demagoguery to be wretched, that’s overshadowed by the fact that Trump is the only contender with the “entrepreneurial spirit” to solve our country’s “big problems.” Bob Dole says that Trump is preferable to Cruz because in reality, Trump is “kind of a deal-maker.” Translation: Trump won’t actually go through with all that crazy stuff he’s talking about.

As I noted the other day, the emerging argument is that Trump’s various pronouncements (even if these establishment types personally loathe Trump’s expressed values) merely reflect an entrepreneurial and adventurous spirit-- they are the inevitable byproduct of thinking big, of a refusal to be constrained by convention. Come to think of it, that’s a good thing, isn’t it!

Yes, they think-- like the German industrialists thought in the early 1930s in regard to their version of Trumpf-- that they'll be able to handle President Trumpf. So just as the Republican Big Money Establishment convinces itself that Trumpf is just fine and is practically one of the boys, as long as he can stop Cruz who they-- and everyone in DC--now hate more... a last ditch effort to stop Trumpf breaks out from the Republican Not-Big-Money Establishment.

The GOP civil war always looks strange but now it looks like the Hate Talk Radio hosts have all turned on Herr Trumpf and are urging their listeners to get on the Cruz train. Limbaugh, Beck, Deece and Levin currently treat Trumpf like the enemy and Levin seems to be implying Trumpf has a private investigator on his tail and is trying to silence him or blackmail him or some kind of crazy right-wing nonsense.

And, as you know, while the Hate-Talkers rally for Cruz, the rightist intellectual base all got together and wrote up little snippets for National Review about why Herr Trumpf is the conservatives' anti-Christ. Now, Erick Erickson, one of the organizers of the anti-Trumpf effort says he would still vote for Trumpf over Hillary (although he hasn't said if he will join Richard Burr and Willie Nelson in voting for Bernie Sanders). Erickson is basing his anti-Trumpism on the Bible: "I take my conservatism seriously, and I also take Saint Paul seriously. In setting out the qualifications for overseers, or bishops, Saint Paul admonished Timothy, 'If anyone aspires to the office of overseer . . . he must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil' (1 Timothy 3:1,6)... Like the angels in heaven who rejoice for every new believer, we should rejoice for Donald Trump’s conversion to conservatism. But we should not put a new conservative in charge of conservatism or the country, so that he does not become puffed up with conceit and fall into condemnation. Republicans have wandered in the wilderness already by letting leaders define conservatism in their own image. Donald Trump needs more time and more testing of his new conservative convictions."

Public intellectual Glenn Beck kicked off the National Review anti-Trump onslaught. "Sure," he wrote, "Trump’s potential primary victory would provide Hillary Clinton with the easiest imaginable path to the White House. But it’s far worse than that. If Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination, there will once again be no opposition to an ever-expanding government. This is a crisis for conservatism." His case:

While conservatives fought against the stimulus, Donald Trump said it was “what we need,” praising Obama’s schemes of “building infrastructure, building great projects, putting people to work in that sense.”

While conservatives fought against the auto bailouts, Donald Trump claimed “the government should stand behind [the auto companies] 100 percent” because “they make wonderful products.”

While conservatives fought against the bank bailouts, Donald Trump called them “something that has to get done.” Let his reasoning sink in for a second: “[The government] can take over companies, and, frankly, take big chunks of companies.”

When conservatives desperately needed allies in the fight against big government, Donald Trump didn’t stand on the sidelines. He consistently advocated that your money be spent, that your government grow, and that your Constitution be ignored.

Cato's David Boaz's case is that Trumpf is not just crazy but that he lets everyone see that he's crazy-- bad enough, but... "From a libertarian point of view-- and I think serious conservatives and liberals would share this view-- Trump’s greatest offenses against American tradition and our founding principles are his nativism and his promise of one-man rule." So... exactly what the right-wing masses want.

Cruz organizer Brent Bozell III uses the Richard Viguerie test: does he walk like us? Trumpf, he says, doesn't. "Trump might be the greatest charlatan of them all."

Mona Charen finds Trumpf too much the boor, a creep and a louse to be president and has the backup:

• "My fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body"
• "If Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her."
• he tried to bully an elderly woman, Vera Coking, out of her house in Atlantic City because it stood on a spot he wanted to use as a garage.

And he's not a conservative, just an ego-maniac "simply playing one in the primaries."

Who, except a pitifully insecure person, needs constantly to insult and belittle others including, or perhaps especially, women? Where is the center of gravity in a man who in May denounces those who “needlessly provoke” Muslims and in December proposes that we (“temporarily”) close our borders to all non-resident Muslims? If you don’t like a Trump position, you need only wait a few months, or sometimes days. In September, he advised that we “let Russia fight ISIS.” In November, after the Paris massacre, he discovered that “we’re going to have to knock them out and knock them out hard.” A pinball is more predictable.

Is Trump a liberal? Who knows? He played one for decades-- donating to liberal causes and politicians (including Al Sharpton) and inviting Hillary Clinton to his (third) wedding. Maybe it was all a game, but voters who care about conservative ideas and principles must ask whether his recent impersonation of a conservative is just another role he’s playing. When a con man swindles you, you can sue—as many embittered former Trump associates who thought themselves ill used have done. When you elect a con man, there’s no recourse.

Ben Domenech of The Federalist asserts that "the case for constitutional limited government is the case against Donald Trump," not a bad argument, although none of the Trumpf backers would care about it. "Trump assures voters that he will use authoritarian power for good, to help those who feel-- with good reason-- ignored by both parties. But the American experiment in self-government was the work of a generation that risked all to defeat a tyrannical monarch and establish a government of laws, not men. A government of the people, by the people, and for the people is precisely what the Constitution offers, and what is most threatened by 'great men' impatient to impose their will on the nation."

Mark Helprin also makes the Mussolini/caudillo argument and likens him to "a tapeworm [that has] invaded the schismatically weakened body of the Republican party" and that "he is astoundingly ignorant of everything that to govern a powerful, complex, influential, and exceptional nation such as ours he would have to know."

He doesn’t know the Constitution, history, law, political philosophy, nuclear strategy, diplomacy, defense, economics beyond real estate, or even, despite his low-level-mafioso comportment, how ordinary people live. But trumping all this is a greater flaw presented as his chief strength. Governing a great nation in parlous times is far more than making “deals.” Compared with the weight of the office he seeks, his deals are microscopic in scale, and as he faced far deeper complexities he would lead the country into continual Russian roulette. If despite his poor judgment he could engage talented advisers, as they presented him with contending and fateful options the buck would stop with a man who simply grasps anything that floats by.

Should I keep going? How about William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, which probably has even fewer readers than National Reviews? He's posing questions to conservatives: "Hasn’t Donald Trump been a votary merely of wealth rather than of freedom? Hasn’t he been animated by the art of the deal rather than by the art of self-government? ... Hasn’t Donald Trump always been a man inclined to go along-- indeed, impatient to get along-- with history? ... Isn’t Donald Trump the very epitome of vulgarity? In sum: Isn’t Trumpism a two-bit Caesarism of a kind that American conservatives have always disdained? Isn’t the task of conservatives today to stand athwart Trumpism, yelling Stop?"

Dana Loesch writes that she knows Herr Trumpf. "He’s been a frequent guest on my radio and television programs, and I introduced him at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2015. He has always been amiable and complimentary. I genuinely like him. But not as my presidential pick." She doesn't believe his conversion (to conservatism) story. Does anyone?

David McIntosh, head of Club for Growth, which ran some ineffective ads against Trumpf to try to stop him a few months ago, says Trump isn't a conservative and that he's "no better than what we already have. He’ll say anything to get a vote but give us more of the same if he gets into office." Trumpf's platform, he says are "the ramblings of a liberal wannabe strongman who will use and abuse the power of the federal government to impose his ideas on the country."

If you've been listening to Michael Medved's Hate Talk Radio show you already know he loathes everything about Trumpf and sees him as an embarrassment to the party: "Worst of all, Trump’s brawling, blustery, mean-spirited public persona serves to associate conservatives with all the negative stereotypes that liberals have for decades attached to their opponents on the right. According to conventional caricature, conservatives are selfish, greedy, materialistic, bullying, misogynistic, angry, and intolerant. They are, we’re told, privileged and pampered elitists who revel in the advantages of inherited wealth while displaying only cruel contempt for the less fortunate and the less powerful. The Left tried to smear Ronald Reagan in such terms but failed miserably because he displayed none of the stereotypical traits. In contrast, Trump is the living, breathing, bellowing personification of all the nasty characteristics Democrats routinely ascribe to Republicans... If Trump becomes the nominee, the GOP is sure to lose the 2016 election. But the problem is much larger: Will the Republican party and the conservative movement survive?"

Edwin Meese, Reagan's Attorney General, compares Trumpf to Reagan and finds him negative, divisive and destructive. Another GOP Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, insists that a "Trump presidency would imperil our national security." (I bet he'd vote for him in the general anyway.)

Katie Pavlich from Townhall seems most worked up that "Trump has made a living out of preying on and bullying society’s most vulnerable, with the help of government. He isn’t an outsider, but rather an unelected politician of the worst kind. He admits that he’s bought off elected officials in order get his way and to openly abuse the system."

Can't leave out John Podhoretz, right? He makes an interesting and plausible case that Herr "is the apotheosis of a tendency that began to manifest itself in American culture in the 1980s, most notably in the persons of the comic Andrew Dice Clay and the shock jock Howard Stern: the American id. Guys like the Dice Man and Stern had been told and taught and trained by respectable middlebrow culture to believe that their tastes and desires were piggish and thuggish and gross, and they said: So be it! Clay filled stadiums across the country with young men who chanted dirty nursery rhymes along with him. Stern invited young actresses onto his show to discuss their breasts. The screams of outrage that greeted them were part of the act... The cultural signposts Trump brandished in the years preceding his presidential bid are all manifestations of the American id-- his steak business, his casino business, his green-marble-and-chrome architecture, his love life minutely detailed in the columns of Cindy Adams, his involvement with Vince McMahon’s wrestling empire, and his reality-TV persona as the immensely rich guy who treats people like garbage but has no fancy airs. This id found its truest voice in his repellent assertion that the first black president needed to prove to Trump’s satisfaction that he was actually an American. In any integrated personality, the id is supposed to be balanced by an ego and a superego—by a sense of self that gravitates toward behaving in a mature and responsible way when it comes to serious matters, and, failing that, has a sense of shame about transgressing norms and common decencies. Trump is an unbalanced force. He is the politicized American id. Should his election results match his polls, he would be, unquestionably, the worst thing to happen to the American common culture in my lifetime."

There's more, of course-- read it all here-- but how can anyone top the Trumpf/Andrew Dice Clay comparison? By the way, you can contribute to the antidote to all this Trumpism here.

Time For House Republicans To Lead The Country Into A War Against Iran?

The Good Lord, in His wisdom, has dealt Trent Franks a most unfortunate hand-- and he's been taking it out on the American people for a very long time

Over 60% of American voters understand it was the Republicans who are behind the manufactured crisis threatening a worldwide economic catastrophe-- and they blame them for it. Congressional approval is now an astounding 5% and independents have turned on the GOP in a BIG way.

Democrats lead the generic Congressional ballot 46/41, including a 42/33 lead with independents. Independents have shifted 21 points on the generic ballot from July when Republicans had a 39/27 advantage with them. The lean toward Democrats for next year reflects who they blame for the shutdown. By a 51/37 margin they say Republicans are more at fault than Democrats, and by a 57/41 margin they think Congress is more to blame than the President.

The Republican Party is viewed favorably by 28% of Americans-- the lowest since Gallup started polling that question. And even a right-wing ideologue like John Podhoretz is willing to write for general consumption that right-wing extremists have pushed the badly-led congressional Republicans into committing political suicide.

This is what my fellow conservatives who are acting as the enablers for irresponsible GOP politicians seem not to understand. They like this fight, because they think they’re helping to hold the line on ObamaCare and government spending. They think that they’re supported by a vast silent majority of Americans who dislike what they dislike and want what they want.

…One thing we know for sure is that it’s not an equal fight, this fight between a man who received 65 million votes nationwide and a man who received 246,000 votes in one congressional district in Ohio.

Meanwhile, Boehner is basically the face of the US Congress in the eyes of the public. John Boehner is also the effective head of the Republican Party. And the US Congress is viewed favorably by… 11 percent of Americans.

Eleven percent.

When I interact with these conservatives, they say they don’t care about the GOP; what they care about are conservative ideas.

They’re right not to assign special glory or power to a political organization and to hold ideas above party. But here’s the condundrum: There is only one electoral vehicle for conservative ideas in the United States-- the Republican Party.

It’s one thing to refuse to waste your time buffing and polishing the vehicle so that it looks nice and pretty; that’s what political hacks do, and ideologues have every right to disdain such frippery.

But if, in the guise of making the vehicle function better, you muck up the engine, smash the windshield, put the wrong tires on it and pour antifreeze in the gas tank, you are impeding its forward movement. You’re ruining it, not repairing it.

It may not have been a very good vehicle in the first place, and you may think it couldn’t drive worse, but oh man, could it ever. And it’s the only one you’ve got.

So could there possibly be a better time for Republicans to try to rally the nation around them with a full scale war? Remember when war criminals like Wolfowitz, Rumsfield, Bush, Bolton and Cheney were planting sentiments like everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran. One real man-- albeit a notorious closet case-- who never got over it is Arizona's most extreme right congressman, crazed little Trent Franks. Wednesday, Foreign Policy gave the bloodthirsty crackpot and his new bill the spotlight:

A new bill authorizing a U.S. military strike against Iran is set to drop in Congress on Thursday-- just days after leaders in Washington and Tehran began talking openly after three decades of silence.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), is currently being shopped around to various House offices this week in search of a co-sponsor, The Cable has learned. Besides providing President Obama with "all options" to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapons capability, the bill ticks off a list of grievances with the Islamic state dating back 30 years on everything from verbal threats to nuclear enrichment violations.

"Since at least the late 1980s, Iran has engaged in a sustained and well-documented pattern of illicit and deceptive activities to acquire a nuclear weapons capability and has provided weapons, training, funding, and direction to terrorist groups," reads the bill.

The hawkish legislation, which essentially hands the president the full-force of the U.S. military if negotiations fail, comes just one week before Tehran sits down with six major powers in Geneva to discuss its nuclear program. For some foreign policy observers on the Hill, it threatens to spoil the already-delicate negotiations.

"It's hard to imagine a more counterproductive effort to slow the development of Iran's nuclear program-- especially when sanctions have succeeded in bringing the Iranians back to the negotiating table," a Congressional aide tells The Cable. "This attempt to legislate the use of force in Iran is so far out of the mainstream that it makes Netanyahu look like a bleeding heart peacenik in comparison."

Rebuffing critics, Franks insists now is the perfect time to hand Obama the keys to the military. "There's never been a more important time to make sure that any negotiations are backed up by a credible military capability," he told The Cable. "Iran has watched the United States allow redline after redline pass and has played rope-a-dope with the United States to the extent that they're on the cusp of being able to become a nuclear armed nation in potentially months."

Ahead of next week's talks, Iran's newly-elected President Hassan Rouhani has made a series of friendly overtures with the West, including everything from pledging to never develop nuclear weapons to writing Obama letters to mentioning Israel by name -- all of which culminated in a historic phone call with President Obama last month. But no one thinks coming to an agreement on Iran's nuclear program is going to be easy.

Meanwhile, yet another GOP closet case obsessed with war and gore, Lindsey Graham (R-SC), is crafting a similar bill for the Senate to reject. What exactly are these Republican closet cases so scared about that makes them need to prove something-- something dark and ugly-- to the American people? Doesn't the congressional health care plan include psychiatric services?