Monthly Archives: June 2016

#NeverTrump7 = BREAK GLASS in CASE of “A Republic, if you can keep it” EMERGENCY

by Annie | Leave a comment

I’ve had this tweet pinned since before Memorial Day:

A week or so later, I was thrilled beyond description to see this paragraph in The Hill:

And then June 4th I see this, “Dear GOP Convention Delegates: Declare Your Independence”  by Steave Deace at Conservative Review, which I have excerpted below the line.

I sure hope this is the beginning of something…

If you’ve ever asked yourself “Why do we have conventions anyway? Who are these delegates? These crazy people on the floor with the straw hats and the pins and the red/white/blue shirts?” Steve offers an answer* but I would like to offer my own.

What if the primary winner dies? (God forbid! And I mean that sincerely. As catastrophic as I believe a Trump – or Hillary – Presidency would be, we don’t want anyone harmed. Ever.) Think about it. What if it’s right now, the beginning of June, 5 weeks from the convention, 5 months from the November election. We’ve just had a year of campaigning. Seventeen candidates, save one, dispensed with. What if something happens?

We couldn’t POSSIBLY get a 50 state mulligan (57 states & territories, actually, but let’s not be persnickety). There’s NO WAY we could have a do-over. For the OBVIOUS logistical reasons, but also the Constitutional question. The people had their say. They cast their votes, chose their delegates. It’s done. You can’t disenfranchise those millions of people. You just can’t.

Thus, the delegates system. THAT’S WHY THEY’RE THERE. “Break Glass in Case of Emergency.” Now, typically, they vote the way their states voted and it’s desperately anti-climactic, the nominee having achieved 50%+1 of his party’s popular vote and 50%+1 (=1237) of his party’s delegates.

But we don’t have that this time. Trump’s achieved roughly 40% of the popular vote of his party. 2 of every 5 Republicans. 3 of every 5 Republicans voted NOT Trump. Perhaps not affirmatively negative (!) but OTHER than, to be sure.

And the delegates “win”? Hardly resounding. Trump will be sent limping to Cleveland. The stupid frickin’ corrupt RNC purposely crowded the field with a dozen candidates knowing Jeb was worse than beige-Volvo-vanilla and needed the field fractured to emerge with the most votes/delegates.

Then Trump happened. And it backfired spectacularly. S-P-E-C-T-A-C-U-L-A-R-L-Y.

I won’t go through the whole history of 2nd ballot Presidents (or 2+ ballots) but it’s happened before. Several times. We got Lincoln that way.

Anyway… Trump should be any sane, sentient, moral person’s own personal red line. I can’t vote for him. I can’t. With Hillary or Donny it’s like being forced to choose which I wanted amputated: Hands? Or feet?

I choose neither.

I choose BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF EMERGENCY.

*I did not include that portion of his article below, but you can see it in his original text.

DEAR GOP CONVENTION DELEGATES: DECLARE YOUR INDEPENDENCE

…(The new book, “Unbound: The Conscience of a Republican Delegate” is) co-authored by Curly Haugland, a 17-year veteran member of the RNC, who also currently sits on the powerful rules committee for the convention[.] The book uses the RNC’s own actual rules to make its case all GOP delegates are not bound to vote for Donald Trump (or anyone else as the nominee) who violates their conscience. …

If Haugland is right, and he is on the rules committee after all, then not a single GOP delegate is bound to vote for Trump as the Republican nominee. Especially given that Trump’s politics and character make him a far better standard bearer for the Democrats.

And lest anyone think this sounds like Obama picking and choosing which laws he’ll uphold, these RNC rules are in place to protect the system from just such a leader. See, this is how a republican form of government works. The popular vote puts a check-and-balance on the political class, but elected representatives (in this case delegates) put a check-and-balance on the unbridled passions of a wayward electorate. It’s why the Founding Fathers gave us mechanisms such as juries and the Electoral College in the first place.

This is now your role in preserving our constitutional republic if you are a GOP delegate.

This is why our representatives take an oath “so help me God” and not “so help me will of the people.”  …Never fear, delegates. You have the green light. Now all you need is the same sense of duty and courage that drove our Founding Fathers to dedicate their lives, fortunes and sacred honors to a cause that would keep generations of Americans free from the various and relentless yokes of tyranny.

Oh, and that doesn’t mean “let’s compromise and move passive-aggressively on the floor to make Ted Cruz the running mate because, unity.” If you admire Cruz’s courage of conviction, and see him as a future standard bearer for our ideals, you will dare not paint him into such a corner. … Cruz has taken more flack on our behalf than pretty much any Republican in recent memory, so he deserves a much better fate than that no-win scenario. Instead, focus your ire where it belongs. …

Don’t let the media that hates you pick your nominee (again). Insist this July that we will be led by a leader who respects the laws of nature and nature’s God, instead of a crude populist whose tantrums seduce us from both the left and the right. The country deserves much better, as does the party of Lincoln and Reagan which you now steward. It’s either that, or we may sadly look back years from now as the moment you helped accelerate American Exceptionalism’s collective fade to black.

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Friends Don’t Let Stupid Friends Vote. Here’s How.

by Annie | Leave a comment 

Know how Ted Cruz won Utah with 69% of the vote? And won most of the caucuses handily? And most of the Republican-only primaries? 

Conservative Review’s Daniel Horowitz has offered a brilliant, near-term, totally doable solution to the problem of a “Dancing With the Stars” electorate, and it doesn’t involve any odious “literacy tests”… except it sort of does.

He offers what we may one day call “The Utah Solution” to stupid people voting and fouling up our Republic. He makes who votes bottom-up+self-selecting rather than top-down+we-know-what’s-best-selecting. He envisions a system 100% open to anyone who cares to participate yet by its very nature, separates the wheat from the chaff.

I offer a few salient paragraphs below, as it’s a long read, but when you have fresh coffee, take some time with it and read the whole thing. It’s great.

THE CASE FOR REFORMING PRIMARIES

By: Daniel Horowitz | June 02, 2016
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…Until 1912, most states still used the convention method during presidential elections, but that changed with the emergence of Teddy Roosevelt as the progressive leader. As Professor Sidney Milkis, a noted scholar on the progressive era, observed, Roosevelt’s “crusade made universal use of the direct primary, a cause célèbre.” Roosevelt went on to win most of the primaries, but conservative Howard Taft won the states that still had conventions and therefore won the party’s nomination at the national convention. However, Roosevelt’s views lived on through the election of Woodrow Wilson. It’s no coincidence that progressives succeeded at changing the nominating process precisely as the “newly emergent mass media” became dominant in our political culture, as Milkis puts it.

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Sound familiar to our time? Mass media and campaign advertisements determining the nominee among “the people?” As one groups of political scientists declared in a 2004 study on the effects of direct primaries, “the direct primary stands as one of the most significant and distinctive political reforms of the Progressive era in America.” While the 17th Amendment is what allowed progressives to ensure half the country would elect senators in line with the views the elites use to manipulate the masses, the institution of direct primaries ensured that even in conservative states only progressive Republicans would be able to survive the money/media/name recognition juggernaut. 100 years later, with a progressive oligarchy in Washington, they can declare mission accomplished.

But Aren’t Conventions Smoked Filled Rooms?

Progressive proponents of direct popular vote primaries complain that conventions allow the party hacks to choose the nominees behind the doors of “smoke filled rooms” without the input of the people. And undoubtedly in some states in the 1800s that is exactly what happened. But the convention model we are speaking of – “the Utah style convention” – achieves the perfect middle ground between the tyranny at both ends of the spectrum from oligarchy to pure democracy.

In Utah, every neighborhood holds a caucus meeting where people who are familiar with each other debate and discuss the races at hand. They select a delegate to represent the precinct at the convention. In the Beehive State, there are 4,000 delegates – all selected by the people in a process that tends to attract high information voters. This is true representative democracy our Founders envisioned, one which would foster an informed patriotism.

The benefits of representative conventions to choose party nominees include the following:

In most states the selection process would be dominated by grassroots activists.
Money and media would play a relatively minimal role in choosing the nominee.
Conservatives could put numerous Senate seats and dozens of House seats in play per cycle in the 25 more conservative states. The threat of numerous senators and House members in the South and Great Plains knowing that a Mike Lee-style conservative could down them at a convention the same way Senator Bob Bennett was defeated in Utah could instantly change their behavior. At present, primary challenges are so unsuccessful they rarely serve as a deterrent in the long-run.

The prospect of winning with a grassroots ground game, without the need for a massive money and media campaign, would attract better conservative talent to run for office.
The requirement to show up for precinct caucuses would automatically end the odious practice of “early voting” in primaries, which not only has a disruptive effect in fluid presidential primaries, but hurts insurgent congressional candidates who tend to surge during the final week – after “voting” has already begun.

Selecting state government officials through conventions would help build up a cadre of state governments that push back against federal tyranny. At present, Republicans control the trifecta of state government in 23 states, yet conservatives cannot count on a single state to consistently fight for conservative values because either the governor or state legislative leaders are part of the GOP establishment black hole.

Our Founders left us a republic – one which was divided between the rights of the individual and the powers of the states and federal government. The federal government itself was divided into three branches, which were supposed to serve as checks and balances against each other. That system has gradually been replaced with a political party system. Conservatives can’t even rely on a conservative party to save us, even as the federalist system has collapsed. …

(The entire article, well worth your time, is here.)

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Snoop Be Done

by Annie | Leave a comment

Lloyd Marcus, who I read with regularity at American Thinker, is someone I greatly admire. A black conservative, a Godly man, devoted family man, and multi-thousand-mile-road-warrior for the entirety of the Cruz campaign, he is tireless and fearless. He also happens to be a very gifted writer. The words just pour out of him, painting word pictures and eliciting moods in a way that can’t be taught. I’m not talking about (snooty) high-art here, though I have no doubt if that were his heart’s desire, he could produce it. I’m talking about a God-given talent for inviting you into his world and having that experience be fully dimensional and satisfying. He does it every time I read him, and he did it here.

Inspired by Snoop (of all people!) he writes today about paternalistic progressives perpetuating (alliteration!) the black-victim mentality well past its usefulness, which, in this case, is several hundred years, beginning the second after the first impulse to embrace it was felt. I present the first few paragraphs here, but heartily recommend you read it in its entirety.

June 3, 2016

‘Roots’ Remake: Snoop Dogg Got It Right

By Lloyd Marcus

Quoting the Pointer Sisters song, “I’m so excited!” Black pop icon Snoop Dogg’s comments about the remake of the “Roots” TV series, in essence, is what I have been preaching to fellow blacks for decades (without his profanity).

Snoop said, “I’m sick of this s—. They are going to just keep beating that s— into our heads about how they did us, huh?” Snoop spoke against new shows and movies such as “12 Years a Slave” which “keep showing the abuse we took hundreds and hundreds of years ago.”

Snoop said, “I ain’t watching that s—, and I advise you motherf—ers as real n—— like myself; f— them television shows. Snoop continued, “Let’s create our own s— based on today, how we live and how we inspire people today. Black is what’s real. F— that old s—.”

I say, “Right-on bro! (in my 1970s lingo)” Folks, for decades, I have been frustrated; trying to get through to fellow blacks that continuing to view themselves as victims and using slavery as an excuse for bad and trifling behavior only weakens them. America is the greatest land of opportunity on the planet for all who choose to go for it. My reward has been to be trashed in black and liberal media; called a traitorous self-hating Uncle Tom.

…continued here.

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