Here’s Claire’s preferred candidate for President of the United States. Note how belligerent he can be while holding 5 pounds of nachos. It’s very impressive.
Neither Chris Christie, Vivek Ramaswamy, nor Ron DeSantis are going to be the GOP nominee it Trump falters. It’ll be someone who can cobble together a coalition of political oddfellows. My guess is Tim Scott’s the only one in the race that can do it, if he plays his cards right.
You are absolutely correct about the horrors of Stalin and the similarities that Putin's regime is creating.
Shocking, horrifying, disgusting.
And an evil that has to be fought.
But we are Americans, let's focus on our country.
We are seeing the Biden administration destroying much of the fabric of our country for the Dem's political advantage (our debt, our deficit, the student debt forgiveness program, the attacks on SCOTUS, censorship, etc).
The Biden administration is systematizing a double standard (especially in the DOJ and FBI) between the left and some on the right (MAGA Americans, conservative Catholics, 1/6 rioters, gun owners).
Exaggerated?
Maybe, but one quick example (I have given examples in previous comments):
Trans shooter Audrey Hale died in February - the FBI still refuses to release his/her manifesto.
12 hours after Trump supporter Craig Robertson was killed by the FBI, every public utterance he ever made was publicized by the DOJ.
Why the courtesy of privacy to a trans mass murderer, while a 300 pound, 75 year old loudmouth who never killed anyone has his rantings publicized?
I am not worried about conservatives; we can take care of ourselves.
I am concerned that while the never-Trumpers continue to fulminate about the evils of Trump, the current administration gets a complete pass from otherwise intelligent people.
Apparently all that it takes for Christie to seduce you is for him to attack Trump!!! That is shallow and suggests that your TDS is far advanced.
The Biden administration's attacks on our political system should be recognized.
I know that you say that Biden's corruption has never been proven, but that excuse is wearing thin. You are showing the same mind that the jurors of the first OJ trial showed.
I mentioned that if you offended the Biden administration, you would suffer consequences. You laughed. Do you think that Matt Taibbi laughed when the IRS visited his home? What happens when the FBI asks media companies to throttle your writings?
Your publication, your viewpoints.
But as a thinking person, you should recognize that focusing too much on Trump has consequences - you are ignoring the dangers of the present while pursuing your Great Orange Whale.
More on the sociopath, Chris Christie. In 2017 when he was still Governor he became embroiled in a budgetary impasse with the state legislature. In a fit of pique, he closed all of the state beaches on a holiday weekend. He didn’t have to do it but he banked on the fact (wrongly it turned out) that the legislators would be blamed instead of him.
The punchline is that after telling tens of thousands of New Jersey residents that their holiday was ruined, including those who had spent thousands of dollars to rent hotels, motels and homes adjacent to the closed beaches, Christie was photographed by the Newark Star Ledger lounging on a closed, empty State beach with his family.
The New York Times covered the story and provided a picture of the former Governor lounging like a beached whale. See,
It must have been Chris Christie’s move that inspired his fellow Governor, Gavin Newsom when he enjoyed a lovely night out dining at the French Laundry after he ordered every restaurant in California to close during the COVID lockdowns.
If y’all are so damned concerned about narcissism and sociopathy, why the Hell are you still plumping for the Cheeto Jesus? Seems like someone as self-absorbed and toxic as Chris Christie would be perfect for you guys if Der Drumpf shuffles off his mortal coil. And I do agree with youse guys about Chris Christie, but ruling out a candidate based on narcissism, self-indulgence, and sociopathy seems a smidge passé, considering the last, what, thirty years?
It’s simple really, David. Trump for all of his flaws gets one thing spectacularly right; he wants to eviscerate the administrative state. I readily admit that he may not be competent enough to do it, but at least he wants to. His GOP opponents (except for Ramaswamy) are all creatures of the Administrative State. They represent the problem, not the solution.
Trump has two more virtues; he is single-handedly destroying the mainstream Republican Party. Given that the mainstream GOP is as evil or more evil than the Democratic Party, Trump is doing our country a great service.
Trump’s foreign policy is simply better than Biden’s and its better than the proposals of most of his GOP opponents. Our Uniparty wants nothing more than endless war, endless bloodshed and a hegemonic America despite the fact that they keep bungling us into military conflicts that we always lose.
As far as I can tell, Trump, Ramaswamy and RFK, Jr. are the only candidates who believe this is all a huge mistake. All three of them are wrong about a lot of things. What they are right about is much more important than what they are wrong about.
If Biden is re-elected or if one of Trump’s GOP opponents is elected there is an excellent chance that their arrogance will incite China to invade Taiwan. That would be the biggest disaster of the 21st Century.
It is completely avoidable but it will take more than deterrence based on ever-increasing military spending. It will take a less belligerent approach to diplomacy, something uniparty diplomatic elites no longer understand.
Biden already instigated Putin to invade Ukraine. The Turks, the French and the Israelis all offered to mediate. Biden wouldn’t hear of it. He was more interested in regime change, denuding Russia of its military capability and proving America was back after Trump. As we approach half a million dead Ukrainians and Russians, Biden must be very proud of himself.
By the way, just today, the Germans announced that they were reneging on their promise to spend the two percent of GDP on defense that all NATO members committed to. Right in the middle of the worst conflagration in Europe in decades, Germany tells the United States where to stick it. Trump would have gone ballistic, Biden and his Uniparty allies simply don’t care. See,
A war with China would be a tragedy of historic proportions yet the American Uniparty would be happy to incite another war that the United States might very well lose.
If by some miracle Trump is elected there won’t be a war with China. In my view, if Biden is re-elected, the chance for a catastrophic war with the Chinese is about 50/50.
I understand that many Americans don’t like Trump’s tweets or his behavior during the last election, but all of this pales in comparison to the prospects of war with China; don’t you think?
TL;DR You’re all trying to rationalize backing an ignorant blowhard to satisfy some primordial urge to supplicate before a God-King. I have watched y’all grasp at social conservatism, libertarianism, and now mere populist spleen just to stick it to someone. Doesn’t matter who. Most of the time it’s one of your own. Y’all have been tearing the GOP apart limb from limb for twenty years now. I’m not particularly happy that you’re pissing on my leg, but don’t tell me it’s raining. As I have said numerous times before, the only difference between Biden and Trump is which allies they crap on and which geopolitical enemies they embrace. The measure of the failure of liberal democracy in the United States isn’t whether Trump leads a coup or Biden raises all of our kids to be transsexuals; it’s whether or not there’s one major party who can nominate someone besides these two geriatric, senile, sad sack grifters. If either the Democrats or the Republicans can accomplish that, the West wins. If not, we slide into the abyss, and 400 years of Anglophone political progress will be lost. It’s disgusting and not even self-serving, because life will be immensely worse for all of us. You know, WigWag, I usually agree with you to a point, but you almost always take your points to absurdity. You can at least be honest and not defend the scumbag. At least a “but he’s our bastard” argument isn’t disingenuous and condescending. And no, I don’t need to read your argument, because I’ve read it a thousand times before.
Damn it. I just read this piece barely able to contain my anticipation for reading about Ramaswamy.
Chris Christie’s going for broke is great. And I think it could actually give him a surprisingly good shot at the presidency because he has nothing to lose and half the Republican party is done with Trump and exhausted by the dark vision of everything Trump propagated and the natcons have attempted to expand on intellectualy though everything they say has no intellectual merit whatsoever. Protectionism will fail because it has always failed, and indeed it’s failing catastrophically right now under Biden, who’s more of a natcon than anyone besides the natcons themselves in my opinion. Massive public sector investment, protecting social security and medicare, or expanding the social safety net will not make America “strong” or “resilient.” It will just make us poor, give us more inflation and walk the national debt right over a fucking cliff.
Desantis, Trump, Biden, Josh Hawley, Elizabeth Warren-- I see basically no difference. The opposite social values they endorse--immigration, abortion, guns-- is only a veneer, fabricated for their respective districts, disguising how remarkably similar and perfect the Squad and the Freedom Caucus are for each other in their pathological opposition to everything big-- Big Tech, Big pharma, Wall Street, and Israel, Ukraine, Afganistan, all “foreign wars” which what really strikes one is the arrogance as they delude themselves they’re so virtuous and smart for opposing. Purely for their own aggrandizement they advocate for growing the economy and protecting families by hurling money at “ordinary people” or “working families,” as if politicians could know what consumer demand was and better than consumers do and had any right to control that demand.
I mean Josh Hawley wants to engineer the body politic to have families with subsidies as much as Joe Biden wants to make us drive electric vehicles and plan the racial make up of society with mandating ESG and DEI with regulation. And isolationism--let Ukraine, Afghanistan, Taiwain, Israel and let the whole world burn, while we direct our cares “closer to home.” Forget about Ukraine. Why don’t we invade Mexico to protect drug addicts from the consequences of their Fentanyl addiction and collapsing nuclear families?
Who would be so stupid as to accept this asinine nonsense? It drives me crazy. We’re spending too much on Ukraine... but we should conserve our resources to bomb Mexican drug cartels to fight for guys shooting up on bus benches in Portland? It’s depraved!
However I think we need to cool it on expecting so much virtue from good Republican leadership. It really gets on my nerves the people at The Bulwark and Bret Stephens or David Brooks at the Times, who won’t vote for a Republican unless they’re sufficiently against Trump and MAGA, and pride themselves on how far they’ve come since they were Republicans or whatever. It’s irresponsible and unnecessary. America does not need someone as openly and purely anti-Trump as Chris Christie. I find the never-Trump fixation on “decency” gratuitous and self-serving and destructive.
i’m glad you do Claire, but if people like Charlie Sykes can’t forgive Chris Christie or Pence for supporting Trump, then the Republican party can never recover. But America desperately needs policies only a Republican, of course of a moderate variety, can deliver, so we need to be real, and put policy above character. Which is why we should open our eyes to Republicans with good policies who may not be as pure as Chris Christie.
Like I like Pence quite a bit. I think Nikki Haley is excellent. And Doug Burgum is brilliant. National security, pension reform, austerity, and a deregulatory energy policy I think are all of the utmost necessity. All the above candidates grandstand less than Christie and say rosy things about the American dream than Tim Scott and Ramaswamy (though he’s just a light-hearted version of Desantis), but they want to move on from Trump and they want to talk about policy as we move into a more dangerous world and with scandalous deficits, inflation and high energy prices and the threat of resource scarcity.
I despise Trump and I’m not a registered Republican, but I’m willing to overlook how Pence supported him and all Pence’s weird personal characteristics and his Christianity which I don’t like, because fixing entitlements and drilling for natural gas is more important to me than the moral perfection of our leaders. The same with Nikki Haley who fervently supports Ukraine if only to counter China.
If she’s not as morally inspiring as Tim Scott or cathartic as Chris Christie by the Bulwark’s standards of decency, and these candidates don’t criticize Trump quite ENOUGH, I don’t care. It’s irresponsible and doing a big disservice to the country exacerbating our division, the way some people’s careers in the media depend on how purely anti-Trump and scathing of the whole Republican party they are. Not sure why everyone is such a purist these days in general demanding needless atonement all the time. China and Russia, and Iran could care less while we stand around wringing our hands for “decency.”
I don’t think we ever demanded purity from our leaders so much as we do now. Why can’t we be nuanced enough to accept and support Pence or Haley despite their perhaps incomplete moral qualities, and put the national interest first? We concede to Trump and let him remake society for the worse by making personality so absolutely important at the cost of intelligent and urgent policy.
Chris Christie is a sociopath. A worse sociopath than Donald Trump by far and as sociopathic as Rudy Giuliani.
Bridgegate will follow him to his grave as well it should. Anyone would be a better President than the former New Jersey Governor. Trump would, Biden would. Christie is a slob and all it takes is ten seconds looking at him to realize he’s completely devoid of self control.
The real problem is that Christie is like all members of the Uniparty; he’s a war monger who believes that the United States shouldn’t go more than a few short years between military campaigns. The fact that our country is vanquished in these campaigns with alarming regularity gives him not a moment’s pause.
Claire’s suggestion that Ukraine’s offensive is bearing fruit, while music to my ears, is a distinctly minority opinion. There’s reporting almost everywhere that Ukraine’s campaign is stuck in the mire with at most 75 days left for a breakthrough before bad weather makes progress more difficult
There are as many reports that Russia has been so successful in stymieing the Ukrainians that they’re planning an offensive of their own as there are of the type of optimistic reports that Claire is presenting. I hope she’s right, a Russian victory would be an unmitigated disaster but I suspect Claire is being overly optimistic.
There’s one thing we know for sure, any information gleaned from American or British intelligence services and filtered through mainstream media or various “think tanks” is unreliable. These intelligence services are little more than propaganda machines no different than they were during the Viet Nam War. Anyone old enough to remember that war knows that we were told victory was at hand week after week. Of course, it was a lie.
While we hope that Ukraine finds a way to pull a rabbit out of its hat, it’s time to prepare for the possibility that Ukraine will lose. In fact, Biden is already doing that.
How else can we explain Biden’s new-found interest in midwifing Saudi-Israeli diplomatic relations?
Biden hates MBS and MBS hates Biden. How many months ago was it that Biden threatened to make the Saudi Prince a pariah? Biden disdains Netanyahu almost as much as he disdains MBS so what gives?
Biden understands full well that about a year from now Ukraine might just be on the verge of defeat. As bad as this would be for Ukraine, it would be tragic for Biden’s political prospects. If a Ukrainian defeat comes to pass, Biden will need a huge foreign policy success to distract attention from his failures in Afghanistan and Ukraine. A deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel fits the bill perfectly for Biden; it’s the reason he’s pursuing it. It may be the only reason he’s pursuing it.
State Department spokesmen are saying that to wrap up a deal will take about a year; that’s the dead giveaway. A year brings us right up to the next Presidential election.
A Saudi-Israeli deal could be negotiated within a few months. Everyone knows what it will include; a few meaningless tidbits for the Palestinians, American protection of some sort and weaponry and a civilian nuclear program for the Saudis and just maybe a Saudi promise to exclusively price oil sales in dollars. If Trumps idiot son-in-law could negotiate the Abraham Accords in months, Biden could extend it to Saudi Arabia and Israel very quickly if he wanted to; he doesn’t. He wants to time things perfectly so if the Ukrainians lose, he’s got something in his back pocket to brag about.
Pray that Ukraine prevails because a Russian win after Iran’s victory in Iraq and the Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan would mean it’s lights out for American power. That will make the world a far bleaker place.
It’s remarkable how incompetent Biden has been. If only he hadn’t goaded Putin into invading just so he could prove that after Trump, “America was back.”
The Russian economy is growing as fast or faster than most of the economies in Europe. It’s proven far more resilient than the German economy. Claire, at beginning of the Ukraine war you said the American role was critical to maintaining the reserve status of the American dollar. Now Biden is on his hands and knees begging the Saudis not to price oil in Yuan.
It’s pathetic.
But not as pathetic as the prospect of a President Christie.
I couldn’t agree more. I remember that case. Giuliani’s behavior was despicable. Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani are two peas in a pod. Evil as prosecutors and unhinged as executives.
Here’s Claire’s preferred candidate for President of the United States. Note how belligerent he can be while holding 5 pounds of nachos. It’s very impressive.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KIfGyBrj-_c
Neither Chris Christie, Vivek Ramaswamy, nor Ron DeSantis are going to be the GOP nominee it Trump falters. It’ll be someone who can cobble together a coalition of political oddfellows. My guess is Tim Scott’s the only one in the race that can do it, if he plays his cards right.
Claire:
You are absolutely correct about the horrors of Stalin and the similarities that Putin's regime is creating.
Shocking, horrifying, disgusting.
And an evil that has to be fought.
But we are Americans, let's focus on our country.
We are seeing the Biden administration destroying much of the fabric of our country for the Dem's political advantage (our debt, our deficit, the student debt forgiveness program, the attacks on SCOTUS, censorship, etc).
We are seeing what Roger Kimball calls "Contempt of Public" ( https://amgreatness.com/2023/08/13/introducing-contempt-of-public/?seyid=82720 )
The Biden administration is systematizing a double standard (especially in the DOJ and FBI) between the left and some on the right (MAGA Americans, conservative Catholics, 1/6 rioters, gun owners).
Exaggerated?
Maybe, but one quick example (I have given examples in previous comments):
Trans shooter Audrey Hale died in February - the FBI still refuses to release his/her manifesto.
12 hours after Trump supporter Craig Robertson was killed by the FBI, every public utterance he ever made was publicized by the DOJ.
Why the courtesy of privacy to a trans mass murderer, while a 300 pound, 75 year old loudmouth who never killed anyone has his rantings publicized?
I am not worried about conservatives; we can take care of ourselves.
I am concerned that while the never-Trumpers continue to fulminate about the evils of Trump, the current administration gets a complete pass from otherwise intelligent people.
Apparently all that it takes for Christie to seduce you is for him to attack Trump!!! That is shallow and suggests that your TDS is far advanced.
The Biden administration's attacks on our political system should be recognized.
I know that you say that Biden's corruption has never been proven, but that excuse is wearing thin. You are showing the same mind that the jurors of the first OJ trial showed.
I mentioned that if you offended the Biden administration, you would suffer consequences. You laughed. Do you think that Matt Taibbi laughed when the IRS visited his home? What happens when the FBI asks media companies to throttle your writings?
Your publication, your viewpoints.
But as a thinking person, you should recognize that focusing too much on Trump has consequences - you are ignoring the dangers of the present while pursuing your Great Orange Whale.
More on the sociopath, Chris Christie. In 2017 when he was still Governor he became embroiled in a budgetary impasse with the state legislature. In a fit of pique, he closed all of the state beaches on a holiday weekend. He didn’t have to do it but he banked on the fact (wrongly it turned out) that the legislators would be blamed instead of him.
The punchline is that after telling tens of thousands of New Jersey residents that their holiday was ruined, including those who had spent thousands of dollars to rent hotels, motels and homes adjacent to the closed beaches, Christie was photographed by the Newark Star Ledger lounging on a closed, empty State beach with his family.
The New York Times covered the story and provided a picture of the former Governor lounging like a beached whale. See,
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/03/nyregion/chris-christie-beach-new-jersey-budget.html
It must have been Chris Christie’s move that inspired his fellow Governor, Gavin Newsom when he enjoyed a lovely night out dining at the French Laundry after he ordered every restaurant in California to close during the COVID lockdowns.
Uniparty Governors; they’re all the same.
Nobody who has seen that picture of Christie should ever take him seriously.
Self-indulgent, narcissistic, sociopathic.
If y’all are so damned concerned about narcissism and sociopathy, why the Hell are you still plumping for the Cheeto Jesus? Seems like someone as self-absorbed and toxic as Chris Christie would be perfect for you guys if Der Drumpf shuffles off his mortal coil. And I do agree with youse guys about Chris Christie, but ruling out a candidate based on narcissism, self-indulgence, and sociopathy seems a smidge passé, considering the last, what, thirty years?
It’s simple really, David. Trump for all of his flaws gets one thing spectacularly right; he wants to eviscerate the administrative state. I readily admit that he may not be competent enough to do it, but at least he wants to. His GOP opponents (except for Ramaswamy) are all creatures of the Administrative State. They represent the problem, not the solution.
Trump has two more virtues; he is single-handedly destroying the mainstream Republican Party. Given that the mainstream GOP is as evil or more evil than the Democratic Party, Trump is doing our country a great service.
Trump’s foreign policy is simply better than Biden’s and its better than the proposals of most of his GOP opponents. Our Uniparty wants nothing more than endless war, endless bloodshed and a hegemonic America despite the fact that they keep bungling us into military conflicts that we always lose.
As far as I can tell, Trump, Ramaswamy and RFK, Jr. are the only candidates who believe this is all a huge mistake. All three of them are wrong about a lot of things. What they are right about is much more important than what they are wrong about.
If Biden is re-elected or if one of Trump’s GOP opponents is elected there is an excellent chance that their arrogance will incite China to invade Taiwan. That would be the biggest disaster of the 21st Century.
It is completely avoidable but it will take more than deterrence based on ever-increasing military spending. It will take a less belligerent approach to diplomacy, something uniparty diplomatic elites no longer understand.
Biden already instigated Putin to invade Ukraine. The Turks, the French and the Israelis all offered to mediate. Biden wouldn’t hear of it. He was more interested in regime change, denuding Russia of its military capability and proving America was back after Trump. As we approach half a million dead Ukrainians and Russians, Biden must be very proud of himself.
By the way, just today, the Germans announced that they were reneging on their promise to spend the two percent of GDP on defense that all NATO members committed to. Right in the middle of the worst conflagration in Europe in decades, Germany tells the United States where to stick it. Trump would have gone ballistic, Biden and his Uniparty allies simply don’t care. See,
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germany-walks-back-plan-meet-nato-spending-target-annual-basis-2023-08-16/
A war with China would be a tragedy of historic proportions yet the American Uniparty would be happy to incite another war that the United States might very well lose.
If by some miracle Trump is elected there won’t be a war with China. In my view, if Biden is re-elected, the chance for a catastrophic war with the Chinese is about 50/50.
I understand that many Americans don’t like Trump’s tweets or his behavior during the last election, but all of this pales in comparison to the prospects of war with China; don’t you think?
TL;DR You’re all trying to rationalize backing an ignorant blowhard to satisfy some primordial urge to supplicate before a God-King. I have watched y’all grasp at social conservatism, libertarianism, and now mere populist spleen just to stick it to someone. Doesn’t matter who. Most of the time it’s one of your own. Y’all have been tearing the GOP apart limb from limb for twenty years now. I’m not particularly happy that you’re pissing on my leg, but don’t tell me it’s raining. As I have said numerous times before, the only difference between Biden and Trump is which allies they crap on and which geopolitical enemies they embrace. The measure of the failure of liberal democracy in the United States isn’t whether Trump leads a coup or Biden raises all of our kids to be transsexuals; it’s whether or not there’s one major party who can nominate someone besides these two geriatric, senile, sad sack grifters. If either the Democrats or the Republicans can accomplish that, the West wins. If not, we slide into the abyss, and 400 years of Anglophone political progress will be lost. It’s disgusting and not even self-serving, because life will be immensely worse for all of us. You know, WigWag, I usually agree with you to a point, but you almost always take your points to absurdity. You can at least be honest and not defend the scumbag. At least a “but he’s our bastard” argument isn’t disingenuous and condescending. And no, I don’t need to read your argument, because I’ve read it a thousand times before.
Damn it. I just read this piece barely able to contain my anticipation for reading about Ramaswamy.
Chris Christie’s going for broke is great. And I think it could actually give him a surprisingly good shot at the presidency because he has nothing to lose and half the Republican party is done with Trump and exhausted by the dark vision of everything Trump propagated and the natcons have attempted to expand on intellectualy though everything they say has no intellectual merit whatsoever. Protectionism will fail because it has always failed, and indeed it’s failing catastrophically right now under Biden, who’s more of a natcon than anyone besides the natcons themselves in my opinion. Massive public sector investment, protecting social security and medicare, or expanding the social safety net will not make America “strong” or “resilient.” It will just make us poor, give us more inflation and walk the national debt right over a fucking cliff.
Desantis, Trump, Biden, Josh Hawley, Elizabeth Warren-- I see basically no difference. The opposite social values they endorse--immigration, abortion, guns-- is only a veneer, fabricated for their respective districts, disguising how remarkably similar and perfect the Squad and the Freedom Caucus are for each other in their pathological opposition to everything big-- Big Tech, Big pharma, Wall Street, and Israel, Ukraine, Afganistan, all “foreign wars” which what really strikes one is the arrogance as they delude themselves they’re so virtuous and smart for opposing. Purely for their own aggrandizement they advocate for growing the economy and protecting families by hurling money at “ordinary people” or “working families,” as if politicians could know what consumer demand was and better than consumers do and had any right to control that demand.
I mean Josh Hawley wants to engineer the body politic to have families with subsidies as much as Joe Biden wants to make us drive electric vehicles and plan the racial make up of society with mandating ESG and DEI with regulation. And isolationism--let Ukraine, Afghanistan, Taiwain, Israel and let the whole world burn, while we direct our cares “closer to home.” Forget about Ukraine. Why don’t we invade Mexico to protect drug addicts from the consequences of their Fentanyl addiction and collapsing nuclear families?
Who would be so stupid as to accept this asinine nonsense? It drives me crazy. We’re spending too much on Ukraine... but we should conserve our resources to bomb Mexican drug cartels to fight for guys shooting up on bus benches in Portland? It’s depraved!
However I think we need to cool it on expecting so much virtue from good Republican leadership. It really gets on my nerves the people at The Bulwark and Bret Stephens or David Brooks at the Times, who won’t vote for a Republican unless they’re sufficiently against Trump and MAGA, and pride themselves on how far they’ve come since they were Republicans or whatever. It’s irresponsible and unnecessary. America does not need someone as openly and purely anti-Trump as Chris Christie. I find the never-Trump fixation on “decency” gratuitous and self-serving and destructive.
i’m glad you do Claire, but if people like Charlie Sykes can’t forgive Chris Christie or Pence for supporting Trump, then the Republican party can never recover. But America desperately needs policies only a Republican, of course of a moderate variety, can deliver, so we need to be real, and put policy above character. Which is why we should open our eyes to Republicans with good policies who may not be as pure as Chris Christie.
Like I like Pence quite a bit. I think Nikki Haley is excellent. And Doug Burgum is brilliant. National security, pension reform, austerity, and a deregulatory energy policy I think are all of the utmost necessity. All the above candidates grandstand less than Christie and say rosy things about the American dream than Tim Scott and Ramaswamy (though he’s just a light-hearted version of Desantis), but they want to move on from Trump and they want to talk about policy as we move into a more dangerous world and with scandalous deficits, inflation and high energy prices and the threat of resource scarcity.
I despise Trump and I’m not a registered Republican, but I’m willing to overlook how Pence supported him and all Pence’s weird personal characteristics and his Christianity which I don’t like, because fixing entitlements and drilling for natural gas is more important to me than the moral perfection of our leaders. The same with Nikki Haley who fervently supports Ukraine if only to counter China.
If she’s not as morally inspiring as Tim Scott or cathartic as Chris Christie by the Bulwark’s standards of decency, and these candidates don’t criticize Trump quite ENOUGH, I don’t care. It’s irresponsible and doing a big disservice to the country exacerbating our division, the way some people’s careers in the media depend on how purely anti-Trump and scathing of the whole Republican party they are. Not sure why everyone is such a purist these days in general demanding needless atonement all the time. China and Russia, and Iran could care less while we stand around wringing our hands for “decency.”
I don’t think we ever demanded purity from our leaders so much as we do now. Why can’t we be nuanced enough to accept and support Pence or Haley despite their perhaps incomplete moral qualities, and put the national interest first? We concede to Trump and let him remake society for the worse by making personality so absolutely important at the cost of intelligent and urgent policy.
Chris Christie is a sociopath. A worse sociopath than Donald Trump by far and as sociopathic as Rudy Giuliani.
Bridgegate will follow him to his grave as well it should. Anyone would be a better President than the former New Jersey Governor. Trump would, Biden would. Christie is a slob and all it takes is ten seconds looking at him to realize he’s completely devoid of self control.
The real problem is that Christie is like all members of the Uniparty; he’s a war monger who believes that the United States shouldn’t go more than a few short years between military campaigns. The fact that our country is vanquished in these campaigns with alarming regularity gives him not a moment’s pause.
Claire’s suggestion that Ukraine’s offensive is bearing fruit, while music to my ears, is a distinctly minority opinion. There’s reporting almost everywhere that Ukraine’s campaign is stuck in the mire with at most 75 days left for a breakthrough before bad weather makes progress more difficult
There are as many reports that Russia has been so successful in stymieing the Ukrainians that they’re planning an offensive of their own as there are of the type of optimistic reports that Claire is presenting. I hope she’s right, a Russian victory would be an unmitigated disaster but I suspect Claire is being overly optimistic.
There’s one thing we know for sure, any information gleaned from American or British intelligence services and filtered through mainstream media or various “think tanks” is unreliable. These intelligence services are little more than propaganda machines no different than they were during the Viet Nam War. Anyone old enough to remember that war knows that we were told victory was at hand week after week. Of course, it was a lie.
While we hope that Ukraine finds a way to pull a rabbit out of its hat, it’s time to prepare for the possibility that Ukraine will lose. In fact, Biden is already doing that.
How else can we explain Biden’s new-found interest in midwifing Saudi-Israeli diplomatic relations?
Biden hates MBS and MBS hates Biden. How many months ago was it that Biden threatened to make the Saudi Prince a pariah? Biden disdains Netanyahu almost as much as he disdains MBS so what gives?
Biden understands full well that about a year from now Ukraine might just be on the verge of defeat. As bad as this would be for Ukraine, it would be tragic for Biden’s political prospects. If a Ukrainian defeat comes to pass, Biden will need a huge foreign policy success to distract attention from his failures in Afghanistan and Ukraine. A deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel fits the bill perfectly for Biden; it’s the reason he’s pursuing it. It may be the only reason he’s pursuing it.
State Department spokesmen are saying that to wrap up a deal will take about a year; that’s the dead giveaway. A year brings us right up to the next Presidential election.
A Saudi-Israeli deal could be negotiated within a few months. Everyone knows what it will include; a few meaningless tidbits for the Palestinians, American protection of some sort and weaponry and a civilian nuclear program for the Saudis and just maybe a Saudi promise to exclusively price oil sales in dollars. If Trumps idiot son-in-law could negotiate the Abraham Accords in months, Biden could extend it to Saudi Arabia and Israel very quickly if he wanted to; he doesn’t. He wants to time things perfectly so if the Ukrainians lose, he’s got something in his back pocket to brag about.
Pray that Ukraine prevails because a Russian win after Iran’s victory in Iraq and the Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan would mean it’s lights out for American power. That will make the world a far bleaker place.
It’s remarkable how incompetent Biden has been. If only he hadn’t goaded Putin into invading just so he could prove that after Trump, “America was back.”
The Russian economy is growing as fast or faster than most of the economies in Europe. It’s proven far more resilient than the German economy. Claire, at beginning of the Ukraine war you said the American role was critical to maintaining the reserve status of the American dollar. Now Biden is on his hands and knees begging the Saudis not to price oil in Yuan.
It’s pathetic.
But not as pathetic as the prospect of a President Christie.
Speaking of that sociopath Giuliani.
In 1987, he indicted and arrested Richard Wiggins, a mid-level trader at Kidder Peabody.
Marched him off the trading floor in handcuffs.
Wiggins was in tears.
Couldn't believe the humiliation.
Giuliani reaped all kinds of publicity at the "Marshall of Wall Street".
Two months months later, Giuliani dropped the indictment and never refiled.
Wiggins was crushed by the experience. His career was ruined. At his funeral, people remarked that he never fully recovered.
Even Giuliani (obliquely) admitted that the public humiliation was unwarranted.
A little bit of Schadenfreude on my part seeing Giuliani getting stomped by another unscrupulous prosecutor.
I couldn’t agree more. I remember that case. Giuliani’s behavior was despicable. Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani are two peas in a pod. Evil as prosecutors and unhinged as executives.