On Steve Sailer’s site, I commented upon one of the election threads that the most likely result will be Marco Rubio versus Hillary Clinton. Just for kicks, I went on to point out that this was Clinton – Lazio 2.0 and a suspicious mind might wonder if this was not the scripted result. For those who don’t remember Clinton’s senate run, she used pretty boy Rick Lazio like a Q-Tip and then tossed him away.
I was mostly joking, but it is not an outcome that is beyond the pale. If Rubio wins New Hampshire, he is most likely the nominee. Despite her debacle in Iowa, Clinton is probably going to win her party’s nomination. Democrats have gone around the bend, but there’s no way the brothers and sisters are voting for the old Jewish guy. Think about that. Blacks are now the party ballast for the Democrats.
Anyway, after a long primary for both sides, let’s say we end up with Hillary Clinton versus Marco Rubio. I’m going to assume that most people reading this would not be enthusiastic with either option, but democracy is all about the lesser of two evils, picking between electrocution and poisoning. My guess is most readers face every election thinking both choices are unpleasant. So, how to pick?
My first litmus test issue for any candidate these days is immigration. I’m a squish on the topic, but I think open borders is grounds for commitment to an institution. Here’s what Hillary Clinton says, “We need comprehensive immigration reform with a path to full and equal citizenship. If Congress won’t act, I’ll defend President Obama’s executive actions—and I’ll go even further to keep families together. I’ll end family detention, close private immigrant detention centers, and help more eligible people become naturalized.”
Marco Rubio tried to pass exactly that in the Senate, but he now says, “Our reaction needs to be what we should be doing anyway, which is passing immigration reform, beginning with getting illegal immigration under control.” I guess if you really want to make a case for a difference between Marco and Hillary, you can say he is slightly less enthusiastic about granting citizenship to the world, but we’re splitting hairs now.
My second litmus test issue is gun control. Hillary says, “I’ll take on the gun lobby and fight for commonsense reforms to keep guns away from terrorists, domestic abusers, and other violent criminals—including comprehensive background checks and closing loopholes that allow guns to fall into the wrong hands.” While I have no doubt she is a gun grabber, this word salad here says she will do nothing about it.
Marco Rubio has no history of gun grabbing and he said, “It’s not the guns, it’s the people who are committing these crimes.” His voting record here is solid and he has never said anything to suggest he is faking it. Rubio is also from Florida and you go nowhere in Florida politics if you’re soft on guns. This is one of those times where you have to look beyond the position statements and Rubio is the safe choice on guns
I used to put abortion as a litmus test issue, even though there’s not much to be done about it. My view is that while abortion should be legal, but very limited, calling it a natural right tells me you are too stupid to be trusted. I used to hold the same view of homosexual marriage. The fact is, Progressives have won all these battles and it will take a revolution to alter that reality. Most of the GOP is fine with abortion and homosexual marriage so a candidate’s opinion here is irrelevant.
That’s it for the big philosophical questions. Next on my list would be the smaller issues like taxes, spending and regulation. It’s easy to get lost in the weeds on these things. Look at the candidates websites and they have thousands of words on issues that fall into one of those three buckets. Clinton has a whole section on legal reform, whatever that means. Rubio has a section on common core, a topic that should not even exist.
I’m just going to keep it at the 30,000 foot view. What do the candidates have to say about reducing the size of government? Stop laughing. God help me, but I read everything on Hillary’s site and I have no idea what she wants to do as president. Her whole site is just emotive nonsense about various demographics groups. The only reasonable score here is to assume she would be business as usual, which means steady growth of the state, with some extras for Democrat barnacles.
On Rubio’s site, he has a laundry list of issues organized so the blind and stupid can easily navigate the topics. To his credit he has a section on debt, which is pretty funny given his personal finances. As you can see, there’s nothing there but some platitudes about saving stuff by reducing waste and reducing waste by saving stuff. As with Hillary, there’s no reason to think he has any interest in cutting government spending.
On taxes, it appears both candidates want to move commas around the tax code, which is always great fun. It accomplishes very little, but it makes for great flag waving. Both candidates think social engineering through the tax code is a great idea. Otherwise. there’s not much to distinguish them and they don’t seem to be making taxes a big part of their pitch. That really says a lot when you think about it. It used to be that taxes were the main difference between the parties.
That leaves regulation. Like taxes, you just don’t hear anyone talk about clearing out the regulatory thicket anymore. The Federal Registry is close to 100,000 pages now. There are more than one million regulations in the Code of Federal Regulations. No human can know all of them. Hillary Clinton is promising more regulations for all sorts of nonsense like requiring people to be happy on alternate Thursdays, but her posted positions are, as a I wrote above, emotive nonsense.
Rubio, to his credit, has a section on regulation. Hilariously, he proposes new regulations on the making of new regulations. I miss the days when Republicans talked about cutting departments. It was a lie, of course, but at least they were not talking about altering the space-time continuum. I went looking around for a better understanding of his idea and it is basically a budget that limits the total number of regulations each year, based on some exotic formulas.
The funny thing here is Hillary, the old commie, is showing her age. In her prime, a good statist promised a laundry list of free stuff from the public treasury. Today’s statists replace laws passed by elected parliaments with administrative degrees ginned up by autocratic agencies. Rubio’s regulatory reform is a complicated technocratic response to the metastasizing technocratic state. It’s unleashing a cobra in your house to kill the mice.
The long and short of it, when you start comparing the two probable contestants for president, is they are not all that different from one another. Unless you have some weird reason to care about how they move some commas around the tax and regulatory code, the only difference worth mentioning is the gun issue. Otherwise, your life will not be any different under the tyranny of Hillary than the tyranny of Marco.
Just in case someone is tempted to mention the courts, just keep in mind that the most egregious decisions of late are from Republicans appointees. The lesson of the last year is that the courts have locked shields with their fellow in the managerial class against any attempts by the dirt people to reign in their excesses. Like abortion, only a revolution will do anything to fix the courts.
We’re doomed.
One further downside to a Clinton restoration: Chelsea. Hillary wins and we’ll never hear the end of Chelsea’s greatness, fitness for office, rightness of her succession. Fill in the blanks for yourself. From what I can glean, she’s as entitled, haughty and condescending as mater but with fewer actual accomplishments. We’re doomed.
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Let it burn.
silver, canned food, and lots of lead.
If either of these clowns is President, an American national socialist party is inevitable. And won’t that be a hoot! Chateau Heartiste as Culture Kommissar; Rand Paul as gauleiter of Trans-Appalachia. If you’ve got any historical literacy at all, this is an exhiliratingly stupid time to be alive. And did you know that, in a pinch, you can use the inside of a banana peel to polish your jackboots?
I think you are off on the Dem side. None of the leaks would happen w/o WH knowledge – stakes are too high and Obama manages the left far more than he does the country. Obama is waiting for the optimal time to purge Clinton & co. Possibly after the Bern wins NH. Rubio is the GOP plan to package Dubya like Obama – Always behind fashion and the cool kids. This is the Bern’s true opening and the only plausible path for the left, as if will have a free hand to tap into the mood of anger /outsider. Rubio will blather about how optimistic he is and spend his tee vee Time on vague platitudes on Liberty and the Horatio Alger myth. He will say what a great country this is that someone of his background will have a chance to be Prez. Once again GOP plays the patsy for the corporate class, and Obama smells like a rose for destroying the Clintons. GOP talking heads whine about how unfair media coverage is and how little credit they are getting for their historic nominee. Dems call Rubio a race traitor and the Hispanic lobby backs them up. The Bern recruits fake Indian and they channel the anger into a political revolution. The SJWs, in full Stalin mode, aren’t going to let the country rest just b/c Obama has to vacate. Conservatives will believe it is all posturing and then be shocked that a piece of parchment doesn’t develop into a sentient being and put a stop to it. That’s where the fun really begins…
I think you’re being short sighted in regards to the courts, especially the circuit courts, where most of the action defending and expanding the state occurs.
I think Rubio’s picks would be better for the country since the democrat party has gone full socialist– OK, Hillary is more facist, but I may be splitting hairs.
On the SC, which I suppose has become our government’s counterpoint to the EU rulers in Brussels, would you rather have a Kennedy or a Sotomayor? Who knows, with a republican legislature we might even get another Scalia. Given the nature of the MSM hate machine, we might also get another Roberts.
It does matter, IMO.
It’s probably too late for any conservative to roll back the welfare state, but there are other areas that are still important.
Unfortunately I have to agree; we’re doomed. But we had a good run.
I don’t see Rubio taking the R nomination. I could easily be wrong, but I’m thinking Trump or Cruz. I favor Cruz myself, but I could vote Trump in the general. Cruz’s Texas senate campaign was a masterpiece against his establishment republican, and this campaign for nomination seems to shaping up similarly. Of course, and sadly, most of the rest of the states are not Texas in any way, shape, manner, or form, so a similar strategy may not work for him.
I’ve gone back and forth or Cruz. I Like that he is super smart and quite clever politically. I want guys like that on my side. The worry is that he, like so many other Republicans, is not really on my side. His skill at outfoxing the GOP grandees will be turned on my team once he wins office.
That said, Trump is too unpredictable to trust he will follow through on anything. I think he is serious about immigration and foreign policy, but otherwise he is a crapshoot. I also think he hates technocrats at a gut level. He has spent his whole life dealing with these petty tyrants in the bureaucracy. I suspect he would not be inclined to follow their advice on most things.
I would actually go out and vote for either of them. If it is Marco versus Hillary I stay home. If it is Bernie versus Marco, I’ll carry a sign for Bernie simply out of spite.
Bernie makes better sense on immigration than most of the RINOS. And Z, I assume that like me, your presidential vote doesn’t really matter? I figure Bernie will fight with Jill Stein for the Hampshire Co MA, vote.
And your “dropped a house on her” comment was amusing- and on the day we talked in class about the Wizard of Oz as a populist allegory!
If Rubio wins New Hampshire, he is most likely the nominee…..
Huh? Whut? 3rd in Iowa and 1st in NH gets him the nomination? How the heck does this system work? What a mess.
Oh well, if Rubio gets the nom, Hillary becomes president and the United States is finished.
Still, Trump’s my man.
History says you have to win either Iowa or New Hampshire to have a shot. Iowa was Trump’s worst state, but New Hampshire is his best. If he fails there, it’s over for him. If the party pulls the Bootsie over the line in NH, they crown him king.
Don’t think so. This is Rubio’s high water mark. He is now not only the Establishment choice by default, but way too many primary voters see it that way. The question of who can best beat Hillary doesn’t cut it anymore. Primary voters want to know who can beat Washington.
If the choice is between Hillary the old white woman and Hillary the young Cuban guy, both with the same policies, what is the point in voting at all? It’s like in the Soviet block countries where you got to vote for your choice as long as it was from the politburo. Seems like a waste of time.
Zman, you’re pretty bold picking Rubio this early, but he is clearly the choice of the GOP establishment. Hopefully you are trying to jinx him? Let’s hope it works. I’m sure they will resort to election fraud to make it happen; they might have even started with that already. Anyone who bothers to do some digging can discover evidence that Rubio is at least bisexual, or possibly even homosexual in a marriage of convenience. Funny how that seems to be a mandatory qualification for POTUS these days.
What do you make of Cruz regarding the “Natural Born Citizen” clause? The GOP-e must be holding Cruz in reserve as a fallback plan in case Rubio is caught in bed with an 8-year-old boy, right? Because legally it seems like a slam-dunk case that he doesn’t qualify as “natural born”…which begs the question, why not shut him down now?
In the 18th century, the British understanding of being a British citizen was that you were born of a British mother. In fact, that was the commonly held view throughout Europe before the concept of citizen was even known. Citizenship was heritable. Unless someone can find where the Founders cooked up a land based definition, I think you have to assume they held the same view of “natural born citizen” as everyone else at the time. Therefore, Cruz and Obama are natural born citizens, assuming their mothers were citizens.
The issue with Obama and Cruz, I think, is if they were ever citizens, as adults, of another country. Then maybe you can say they gave up their citizenship, but I’m not even sure that’s a valid claim.
The British were, and remain, Subjects, not Citizens.
The Founding Fathers of the United States drew a clear distinction between the status of being a Citizen and a natural born Citizen. A person could become a Citizen of the United States by following a naturalization process, which Congress was granted authority to establish, or by being a Citizen of one of the United States at the time the Constitution was adopted. To qualify as a natural born Citizen a person had to be born to an American Citizen and subject to the jurisdiction of the American government at birth, which meant in one of the United States or in a Territory of the United States.
This distinction is made explicit in the language of Constitution itself. Article 1 specifies that being a Citizen of a particular age is the only requirement to hold a seat in Congress–there are no restrictions on how Citizenship is acquired. Article 2 specifies that “No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.” This distinction in language between the Citizenship status requirements to hold a seat in Congress vs. the Presidency was not a mere oversight–one of the biggest concerns of the Founding Fathers was that one of the European powers would sponsor a Manchurian Candidate for the U.S. Presidency who would owe his loyalty to a foreign nation. (Sound familiar?)
The argument that natural born Citizenship is inherited by birth to a U.S. Citizen regardless of the physical jurisdiction in which the birth takes place is absurd. The absurdity of the argument can be demonstrated by simply projecting through time. If a child born on foreign soil to a U.S. Citizen qualifies as a natural born Citizen then, logically, so does that child’s children, and their children, and so on throughout time without regard to where they were born (or where they reside). This rule would render persons with no geographic ties or temporal ties to the United States eligible for the office of President. This is PRECISELY what the Founding Fathers sought to avoid by including the “natural born Citizen” phrase in Article 2 of the Constitution.
Ted Cruz is NOT eligible to hold the office of President of the United States. (Whether the Supreme Court would hear a challenge is a separate question.)
This is precisely my understanding. Ann Coulter makes the case against Cruz, and it seems convincing.
“The phrase “natural born” is a legal term of art that goes back to Calvin’s Case, in the British Court of Common Pleas, reported in 1608 by Lord Coke. The question before the court was whether Calvin — a Scot — could own land in England, a right permitted only to English subjects.
The court ruled that because Calvin was born after the king of Scotland had added England to his realm, Calvin was born to the king of both realms and had all the rights of an Englishman.
It was the king on whose soil he was born and to whom he owed his allegiance — not his Scottish blood — that determined his rights.
Not everyone born on the king’s soil would be “natural born.” Calvin’s Case expressly notes the children of aliens who were not obedient to the king could never be “natural” subjects, despite being “born upon his soil.” (Sorry, anchor babies.) However, they still qualified for food stamps, Section 8 housing and Medicaid.
Relying on English common law for the meaning of “natural born,” the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly held that “the acquisition of citizenship by being born abroad of American parents” was left to Congress “in the exercise of the power conferred by the Constitution to establish an uniform rule of naturalization.” (U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898); Rogers v. Bellei (1971); Zivotofsky v. Kerry (2015), Justice Thomas, concurring.)
A child born to American parents outside of U.S. territory may be a citizen the moment he is born — but only by “naturalization,” i.e., by laws passed by Congress. If Congress has to write a law to make you a citizen, you’re not “natural born.”
http://www.clarionledger.com/story/opinion/columnists/2016/01/13/coultercruz-not-natural-born-citizen/78762708/
Rubio is a mannequin, ventriloquist dummy, ken doll, and sock puppet of the globalist oligarchy. He’s not smart but good looking and good at memorizing his talking points. He is the perfect republican answer to Obama, with both advancing the globalist agenda at breakneck speed. (George Soros is 85/86 after all). Yes we are doomed if either wins. On the other hand, this will open up free time for immersing oneself in the past glories of Western Civ. There will be no need to worry about influencing politics or public policy.
Rubio is Pinocchio
If it’s Hillary versus Rubio, you gotta vote Hillary if only to punish the Republicans for their inability to listen to their own electorate on the immigration issue. Also, I think a weak and universally disliked Hillary Clinton would not accomplish much against a Republican Congress. Republicans would try and stop her at every turn just to earn favor with their base. If it’s Rubio pushing a statist agenda with a Republican Congress, there would be nobody to stop him.
Rubio would lose big to Clinton, not only because a good chunk of the conservative base will once again stay home, but because America is not going to elect a guy who looks like an 18 year-old grocery bagger as its President. If you want to beat the Clintons, you have to be willing to say what has to be said, and Marco just doesn’t have it in him.
Only Trump has the balls (and the security detail) to say the things that need to be said.
The mega-hipster Chuck Klosterman thinks that a revolution to overthrow the government is impossible in America: http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a2301/esq0107revolution/