election

The Perfect Veep

~ thebeltwaybandit ~ 1 Comment

Trump is making me cringe.

He has spent two weeks doing public events with potential vice presidential candidates. We’ve seen him with Washington politicians, both men and women, as they smile and chat together in front of the cameras.

It’s his way of giving each one a test-drive before asking them to join him on his presidential bumper sticker.

He even spends his time with a guy like Senator Bob Corker, who famously changed Senate rules to allow a treaty to not be called a treaty, just so President Obama would not have to submit the Iran Nuclear Treaty–er, uh, “Deal”–to the Senate and have it rejected.

Then Trump shows up with Newt Gingrich. Yikes!
Ol’ Newt–and yes, he is old: 74 years old at last count–hasn’t done anything in politics since he was voted out of the seat of Speaker of the House during the Lewinsky Scandal in the late 1990s. Sure, he writes a lot of books, and must mint money on the lecture circuit. But he hasn’t done or said anything innovative since he won the Speaker’s Seat in the landslide election of 1994.

If Trump wants to pick an old white has-been as his running mate, why not choose Romney?

But if Trump is smart, there is only one choice: Sheriff Dave Clark of Wisconsin.

Here’s why:

  1. He’s calm, concise and articulate
  2. He’s pro Law-and-Order without being in your face
  3. He’s a vigorous proponent of the 2nd Amendment
  4. He’s really good on TV, and has lots of experience doing interviews
  5. He is a serious man
  6. He’s really tall
  7. He’s melanin efficient
  8. the base loves him: he will REALLY fire them up

In these bleak times when the President of the United States insults police forces all over the country, Americans crave a man who is the direct opposite.

There is a powerful vacuum of leadership when it comes to our civil society. By very calm example of American Manliness, Sheriff Clark fills that void.

–The Beltway Bandit

 

 

 

 

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Trump! Trump! Trump!

~ thebeltwaybandit ~ Leave a comment

A breath of fresh air!

A man who speaks his mind!

A man of conviction—whoa—wait a minute…

 

These three comments typify those which have flooded internet message boards since early last Summer. While I nodded to myself over most of those I’ve read everywhere, the last one stopped me cold.

You can say a lot of things about why Trump is wildly popular; but “a man of conviction” is absolutely not one of them.

The big reasons Trump is popular are clear:

First, he believes in America, and obviously loves his fellow Americans.

Second, he believes in winning.

 

Ever since President Reagan left the White House 27 years ago, there has not been a single Republican who has proudly (and boastfully) projected these two qualities. Except for Jesse Helms, every congressman, senator, governor and presidential candidate has always tip-toed through the minefield of interviews with the two national overlords of public opinion: the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Because of these two publishers’ clout in manipulating what is broadcast on the Nightly News, every Republican has spent these past three decades hunched over in fear of being targeted as an enemy of what those two papers find distasteful, wrong, or bad about America. Once challenged, they never fight back. Americans have noticed this persistently cowardly presentation of what they believe, and have spent election after election fighting when their candidates won’t.

Trump does the direct opposite. He bashes the News Media. He talks back to a reporter who tries to talk down to him, and he plays the TV Media like an expert violinist. Americans have noticed, and enthusiastically support him because of it.

My favorite Trump success is his daily stabs at political correctness. Watching reporters and pundits clutch their chests in fabricated outrage is becoming my favorite entertainment!

But Trump should be running as a Democrat. He believes in big government, has funded and voted for liberal causes his entire career, and is VERY shaky on his belief in private property and more important, his constitutional perception of eminent domain.

Watch the Pixar movie “Up!” The first 15 minutes are taken directly from a case where Trump sued an old lady in 1993 to force her out of her home in Atlantic City, New Jersey so he could build a giant new building. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Coking).

He beat her too. Does anybody think that case won’t come up in the General Election?

Worse than that, he continues to demonstrate his comfort with Huge Government.

Just this morning he told ABC News that while ObamaCare “is a disaster!” he would fix it: with a different government program that works. We’ve been watching them tinker with Big Government Healthcare in Europe for 60 years now. It doesn’t ever get any better, just more expensive. But because he “cares about people”, Trump’s health-care-bureaucracy will be more efficient than Obama’s. Does anyone who has ever filled out all those government-required-forms at the hospital really believe that?

If Trump ran as a Democrat, he would have quickly eliminated Clinton as a viable candidate last September. He would have kept Sanders in the race just to make him look stupid. He would be drawing 85% of Democrat voters, with gushing praise from the Democrat Party’s pundits. Instead, he has sparked their sheep-like wrath, because with Democrats it’s always tribe above everything else.  He would also have at least 40% of Republican voters, because of his unabashed candor. Unlike any candidate in either party, he has drawn support from blue collar workers, the chronically underemployed, and even blacks.

Who was the last politician who achieved such broad support?

But as a Republican, no one knows who he really is, because he has never supported any constitutional cause, either with his money or his mouth.

As one Republican supporter explained: “We like him because talks American!”

Except for Herman Cain, Sarah Palin and Ben Carson, who else has done that?

The other reason Trump is popular is because Congress has ceded most of its power to huge federal agencies to do its job.  Read the soon-to-be-published book Bureaucratic Bombs to see how bureaucrats spend their time writing rules to micromanage the lives of everyday Americans; something forbidden in the Constitution. Will Trump accelerate this trend like Obama, or will he halt the arbitrary bureaucracy, call it what it is and eliminate this “rulemaking”, as bureaucrats like to call it.

I’ll bet he will do just as Obama taught him: continue to bypass Congress, write Executive Orders to get what he wants done, and then go on The View and blame “those stupid congressmen” for not understanding what Americans really want.

We’ve spent the last 7 years watching this game. When Trump continues to do the same thing, we will be firmly down a road which permanently makes Congress a secondary force to the power of the President.

And let’s not forget the end game here: getting Ted Cruz and Rand Paul appointed to the Supreme Court.

These two men are powerful advocates for The United States Constitution, and will be passionate defenders of it against the anti-Constitutionalists now serving on the bench.  Does anyone in America really think Trump will appoint a pro-Constitution justice to the Supreme Court?

I like Trump—a lot. I absolutely love his chutzpa!

But we’ve seen this movie before—three times, in fact.

There have been popular uprisings around the United States over the past two decades. The first time was in Minnesota. People were so frustrated at their unresponsive state government that they elected an outsider and complete political novice, Jesse Ventura.

The second uprising was in California, when they elected Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The third was in New York City. Not so much a popular uprising so much as a manipulation of the “conservative” label. Billionaire Michael Bloomberg got himself elected by being the only candidate on the Republican side of the ballot, and then flooding the city with campaign cash.

But in all three cases, the well-known-celebrity talked a great can-do speech swimming in common sense. Once elected, all three forgot what they promised, and were complete disasters.

Like Trump, Ventura trash-talked his opponents, and ended up a loud-mouthed embarrassment.

Like Trump, Schwarzenegger was a well-known celebrity who, once elected, caved to the unending stampede of liberal rants and union demands. He was a lame-duck eunuch halfway through his first year in office.

And Bloomberg—my goodness. He spent his entire term micromanaging New York: you couldn’t own a gun, couldn’t smoke, shouldn’t drink soda, shouldn’t use salt, shouldn’t drive a car…

Meanwhile, he pretty much ignored constitutional voting violations all over his jurisdiction, yet jumped to the TV every time there was a terrorist attack so he could blame Americans.

People got sick of Ventura’s public tantrums real fast; of Schwarzenegger’s tough guy image even faster; and of Bloomberg’s micromanaging in a New York Minute.

How it starts is how it goes, and I see Trump as the billionaire blend of all three of these men. Each one is famous, rich and loud.

And not one has a conviction in his body.

–The Beltway Bandit

 

America’s Presidential DreamTeam

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After watching this political game for over a year now, it is finally time for people to cast votes. The Iowa Caucus assembles to vote this weekend. And from there, the State Primaries begin at a breath-taking speed.

The one blessing of watching the numerous candidates over the last year is that we get many opportunities to see how each one behaves in interviews, on the stump, and in person when they think no camera is watching.

We get to see how easily one gets mad, how calm another stays when shouted at, and how another can come up with a pithy response to the most insulting question.

The most amusing is watching Mrs. Clinton, a candidate who has been running for this specific job since 2006. She still has no ability or interest in talking to regular folks!

The year gave us a healthy opportunity to see how each one of these candidates would act when the door to the Oval Office is closed, when they must sit there and make decisions or make a calm call to a belligerent foreign leader.

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The past seven months have been a delightful surprise as Trump popped up from nowhere; then Carson became a shooting star; and then Fiorina appeared to earn a fresh breath of opportunity after a hearty debate performance.

But best of all, we learned one thing: the Republicans have a very deep bench, and the Democrats have nobody.

The Republicans have several governors, senators and business leaders, many of whom are under 50 years old. They have a black, two Hispanics and (until recently) an Indian running.

We all know Trump is a billionaire, but nobody knows that Clinton is worth over a $100 million dollars. Everybody knows that the Democrat Party is the party of minorities, but the Republican Party has all the minorities running for president.

The Democrats have a white woman in her late 60s, a white man in his mid-70s, and another white man in his mid-50s. None of the three has ever thought creatively on any issue of national importance.

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So, drawn directly from the Republican Party’s deep bench, here is the Presidential Dream Team:

President: Ben Carson

Secretary of State: Carly Fiorina

Attorney General: Ted Cruz

Secretary of Defense: Chris Christie

Secretary of Treasury:  Rand Paul

Presidential Press Spokesman: Mike Huckabee

First Supreme Court Pick: Ted Cruz

Second Supreme Court Pick: Rick Santorum

Since all other Cabinet-level departments aren’t constitutional, we’ll skip all of them for now. It seems that except for the aggressive and belligerently anti-constitutional EPA, not one of these agencies does anything more than just keep doing the same thing over and over and over. They spend trillions of dollars every year, but no more Americans are working than there were 15 years ago, the nation is far less safe than it was 25 years ago, and kids don’t learn more than they did 50 years ago.

If Carson is smart, he should take all the other candidates (including former candidates Governors Walker and Jindall) and create a brain trust to eliminate as many of those cabinet agencies as possible. They should be tasked to reduce the size of the federal workforce by a third by the end of 2019. Read the soon-to-be-published book Bureaucratic Bombs. You’ll be shocked at the way much of our government workforce wastes their time.

If Carson is really smart, he’ll pick Allen West as his running mate. Just think: The Washington Media would go haywire. How would they write all their political stories trashing Republicans when BOTH slots on the ticket are successful black Americans? After spending the last 7 years openly calling everyone who doesn’t agree with Obama a racist, they would spend all of next Fall in a panic trying to come up with their typically insidious angle of attack.

Better still, how would the Democrat Nominee attack this ticket? As of this writing, they will either face Sanders, a proud European Socialist; or Clinton, a protégé of Sanders beliefs, but still money-grubbing enough to keep her mouth shut about it until elected. Both potential nominees are old, void of both enthusiasm and intellectual vigor, and worst of all, lack any affection for the American people.

Carson’s bold move will offer our nation two strong men who believe in America, who fluidly talk about their love of and pride in America, and who are strong role models of the American Dream for young men and women across the country.

Best of all, it would shatter the minority coalition that The Media has created for the Democrat Party over the last 40 years. Even when the Carson/West ticket steals only 3% of the black and other minority vote, it will draw in all the Tea Party and Evangelical voting blocks which stayed home in 2012. The two men will also jolt all the bitterly disenfranchised people who are crying out for a president who believes in America, and who believes in Americans.

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So let’s put details onto our Presidential Dream Team:

President: Ben Carson.

He is an adult who speaks with wisdom, and is a powerful antidote to the last 7 years of the social and racial poison which has been injected into our culture. Our nation has been wounded by our current leader, who has spent his entire term trashing everything positive about our heritage and our people. Ben Carson has the reputation, the calm presence, and the wisdom to heal the bleeding racial and social sores which Obama has spent his entire term tearing open. Americans looks up to Carson with respect, because we crave a real man who can positively talk about something beyond himself.

 

Secretary of State: Carly Fiorina.

She is thoughtful and considerate–and believes in America. She will be a proud and unapologetic proponent and spokesman for the United States. She would be an advocate for the interests of the United States, not of the United Nations. She studies the issues, thinks before she speaks, and understands how military power affects diplomacy and vise-versa. She also comprehends all the moving parts to a situation.

 

Attorney General: Ted Cruz.

One of our two current advocates for the Constitution. On January 20, 2017, he will go down to the basement of the Justice Department and find the copy of the Constitution, dust it off, and repost it on the wall of the building’s main lobby.  He would recommend judges who believe in America, and also begin enforcing all the laws which Obama, Holder and Lynch have ignored or “re-considered”.

 

Secretary of Defense: Chris Christie.

He believes in victory. He understands the importance of a fierce American military presence around the world.

 

Secretary of Treasury:  Rand Paul.

The other current advocate for the Constitution. This man believes in the constitutional authority of the Treasury to protect and stabilize our currency, not to manipulate the economy and society. He is a fervent defender of Sound Money, and knows we must stop these ridiculous annual deficits and need to pay off our National Debt. He will rebuild international faith in The Dollar. He will renew the concept we used to call “Sound as a Dollar”.

 

Presidential Press Spokesman: Mike Huckabee.

He is superb on his feet, understands policy, an excellent speaker off-the-cuff, is intensely loyal to the party, remains calm, and best of all, always speaks with a smile. He would be a powerful weapon against the venomous Washington Press Corps.

 

First Supreme Court Pick: Ted Cruz.

Once appointed, he would be the energetic and articulate heir to Justice Scalia. He will explain why the Constitution matters. He will be in the perfect seat to give a 20-year-long national class on the grandeur of the Constitution.

 

Second Supreme Court Pick: Rick Santorum.

Once appointed, he would be an advocate for the American Family and an excellent teammate to Justice Cruz.

 

Walker/Jindall/Kasich/Perry Brain Trust.

These men have done impressive and creative work as governors in their states. They have managed budgets that were out of control when they assumed office, and in some cases have controlled the cash-gobbling impulses of their bureaucracies. Carson should request their talents to begin to severely shrink the federal bureaucracy, and to dismantle the Arbitrary Administrative State which smothers our liberties.

 

Vice President West.

This office has been squandered time and again. Vice President West can be an advisor to Secretary of Defense Christie as an advocate for the enlisted man, and for the importance of crushing an enemy once engaged. But his greater mission should be to visit—every week— poor areas and especially the Inner Cities in America to advocate for what a great country these children live in. With a 50% unemployment rate for black males under 30, West is the direct opposite example to their current national icon. Allen West is a natural advocate for all the good that America stands for. Young Americans deserve his and President Carson’s message.

–The Beltway Bandit

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P.S:        “WHAT—no Trump?!”

I’ll explain that in the next post…