I’m finishing up this five-column week – yes, in case you missed it, I posted a new column yesterday afternoon – with a few thoughts on three subjects: the early indicators that the Dems aren’t learning their lesson; the many positive signs for a strong start to Trump’s upcoming term, and a quick reaction to Trump’s personnel picks so far.
After the whipping the Democrats just took, they are in disarray. The power in their party still seems to belong to the extremists, who are dead-set on mis-interpreting why they lost. They look at data showing that Trump won more women and minorities than any GOP candidate ever, and that almost every state – and every major blue city! – moved toward him in the election, and they see… wait for it… sexism, racism and bigotry everywhere!
They are incapable of looking into a mirror, or considering that they might be wrong about anything. Their central messages were widely rejected from coast to coast, but they conclude that they just weren’t able to get their messages out!
Which means that they are likely to have a bloody internal war in the near future, and just like a hiring decision between two excellent Vietnamese candidates, it’s going to be a Nguyen-Nguyen situation for us. (Boom! Terrible dad joke when you least expected it!)
If the delusional radicals win, their party will go even farther left, and get stomped in the next several election cycles. But if the few moderates/centrists they still have come out on top, the country will benefit from having two sane parties again.
On our side, I’m thrilled that Trump’s win demonstrates that we’ve learned the lessons of 2020 in ways that have set us up well for future cycles. Charlie Kirk and others chased ballots, encouraged early voting, and used podcasts and smart social media to circumvent and further erode the power of the dying, hysterical MSM. (Sure, some of that succeeded because of how existentially awful Que Mala was. But still.) We also had lawyers and observers everywhere, and were able to greatly curtail the amount of Dem cheating.
One other looming advantage for us is the change in the electoral college that is almost certainly coming after the 2030 census. Between correcting for errors in the 2020 census, and the continuing trend of migration from blue states to red ones, we’ll likely have around 10 more electoral college votes assigned to red states from blue ones starting in 2032. (If those had been in place last week, Trump could have lost MI, WI and PA and STILL won with 278 electoral college votes!)
Trump is also benefiting from the experience of 2016-2020. I think that even he was a little surprised to win in 2016, and without prior political experience and connections, he was slow to staff up, and the Dems effectively conspired to slow him down and hamstring him with investigations, the Russia hoax, etc.
This time he’s got a stronger team around him, he knows what to look out for, and we’re hitting the ground running. He made a lot of bad personnel picks last time, but so far every pick he’s made – starting with JD instead of Pence! – is a clear improvement over the first term.
My favorites so far are Homan as Border Czar (about whom more in a minute), Elon and Vivek at the new DOGE, and Marco as Sec State. I didn’t know anything about Susie Wiles a week ago, but I’ve read up on her, and I like everything I’m seeing.
I also don’t know enough about Stefanik, Hegseth, or Mike Waltz to have a strong opinion, though what I know is positive. I like Lee Zelden a lot. I’ve got some questions about RFK Jr. and Tulsi, and am not happy with Gaetz.
I love Homan for the border, though! You might recognize him from when he was Dennis Franz on NYPD Blue, or possibly Michael Chiklis on The Shield. He’s got the best attributes of a gruff NYC cop, including an aggressive, tolerate-no-BS demeanor.
If you haven’t seen it yet, you should watch AOC and Pramila Jayapal trying to question him before congress. In both instances they recreate the stories you see every so often when some dimwit jumps into a tiger enclosure in a zoo and ends up getting pummeled like they were on a date with Doug Emhoff. (I love the part where zoo officials yank them out, usually with all of their limbs, most of their blood and half of their clothes.)
I’m hoping that Elon is using Starlink to beam video of Homan’s congressional testimony – with appropriate local subtitles – into every country from which illegals are coming. He’s got to be worth about a third of a border wall by himself!
I’m generally okay with RFK Jr., pending how he does during confirmation and on the job. I know he’s been labeled anti-vax (in general, not just re: covid) and kind of kooky. But I think he brings a needed skepticism (if not antipathy!) to the medical establishment that, if kept disciplined, will be a useful corrective to the Fauci-esque arrogance and corruption. I’m not thrilled that he was a lifelong Dem until 10 minutes ago (like Tulsi), though he was helpful to us in the election, and if his repudiation of the Dems is authentic, I’m all for welcoming people from the other side who wise up and come over, to sin no more.
Tulsi has impressed me this last year – she’s smart, her military background and love of country are obvious plusses, and leaving the Dem party (after demolishing Que Mala in the 2019 Dem primaries) was a service to the nation. She appears to have really gotten her mind right lately.
On the other hand, she too was a life-long Dem, and that’s always going to be worrisome to me. Ideally, our big appointments would have a long record of demonstrated conservatism behind them. (On the other hand, I was worried about Trump in 2016 for similar reasons: he was a life-long pro-choice Democrat, had worked hand-in-glove with the sleazy NY leftist/Dem power structure for decades, etc. But he’s obviously come around, so I think Tulsi has that possibility too.) So I guess I’m cautiously optimistic about her, just like RFK.
I don’t like Gaetz though. He acted like a selfish attention-seeker in the GOP house wars, IMHO, and I was not convinced by his argument that he went after McCarthy out of conservative principle rather than personal rivalry and spite. His defenders will say that McCarthy was a RINO traitor and deserved his over-throw, and I would agree that he wasn’t conservative enough for me. (But neither is almost anyone, including Trump, Gaetz, most of the GOP House and Senate, etc.)
On the other hand, Trump supported McCarthy for Speaker, so if you’re a consistent always-Trumper, I think that means that Gaetz is a RINO too. (I think that’s the transitive property in action, but I was never that good at math.) And the fact that Gaetz (and his handful of unimpressive backers) scuttled McCarthy by siding with all of the terrible Dems in congress was not great. (As a general principle, I’ve always believed that if you ever find yourself being cheered by Ilhan Omar, AOC, Rashida Talib, Hakeem Jeffries et. al., you’ve taken a very wrong turn in life.)
And that he did so while having no plan for a more conservative replacement – who, as it turned out, doesn’t seem to have existed – was very dumb, and self-destructive to our cause.
It’s also a red flag for me that he quit the House one day before they were to release a report on the sex allegations against him, apparently in an attempt to keep that report under wraps. Don’t get me wrong: any report or investigation that was put together by the corrupt Dems is NOT dispositive to me. I don’t trust them, and I’d like to hear the evidence, and Gaetz’s side of the story.
By the same token, I expect much better (and a higher standard) from our side than the Dems have held themselves to. I think it would probably be smart to air that report and allow Gaetz to defend himself against it as part of his confirmation hearings. (If it looks like BS, I’d love to see us confirm him, just as a groin-kick to the Democrats!)
Last, and least importantly, Gaetz has a SFPI (Simpson Face Punchability Index™) of 8.8. So that’s not good.
Overall, I think that Trump deserves his picks, and it looks like he’s off to a very good start, but at this point Gaetz feels like an unforced error to me.
Finally, even before the news came out that Bob Casey is trying to cheat to win the Senate seat he just lost to Dave McCormick – and how sweet is it that we’re on top of it, and suing and ready to expose that corruption to the whole country! – I love it that Casey wouldn’t give up.
Remember back to last Monday, when refusing to concede an election was treason, and a disqualifying attack on our sacred democracy which merited a long jail sentence, if not execution?
I do. But just barely. Because every time I start to remember it, I’m hit with another incoming wave of dopamine as I lie on a metaphorical beach with my MAGA hat down over my eyes to protect them from the dazzling sunlight of a glorious dawning of four years of American recovery.
But I haven’t forgotten about the Dems completely. Because as the old 80s song said, “The future’s so bright, I’ve got to throw shade!”
I think I’ve got that lyric right, but between the bourbon and the dopamine, who knows?
Have a great weekend everybody!
Hamas delenda est!
Martin Simpson 