As Tucker and I discussed the other night, prudent persons have no choice but to drag the Republican Party across the finish line this November - because the only alternative is a post-American Reign of Terror mob who look at you as a pigeon-crapped statue they just haven't got around to yet. That said, the GOP remains as unlovely and useless an institution as one could find. To reprise my mournful refrain, when Democrats win, they're in power; when Republicans win, they're in office. That's why the trend-line never changes: on everything that matters - debt, China, transformative immigration - you're either driving off the cliff in fourth gear, or heading in the same direction in a more relaxing third gear.
All that's different this time round is that the Democrats have decided to floor it - and, if Trump goes down in November, the GOP Senate will be gone too, so whoever's waggling the moth-eaten sock of the "Biden Administration" will have a clear run. And, when Dems hold the House, Senate and Oval Office, they don't waste their time: contrast 2009-2011 with 2017-2019. Thank you, Paul Ryan.
Mitch McConnell is the very embodiment of this wizened insufficient alternative. the Senate Majority Leader is currently spending two million bucks (given to him by Republican voters) trying to defeat Kris Kobach in the Kansas GOP primary. Why? As Ann Coulter puts it, "because the Chamber of Commerce wants more cheap foreign labor".
Quite. Kris Kobach is serious on immigration, and where it takes America if nothing changes. He has spent years attempting to expand the bounds of public discourse on the subject, because as long as the conversation is kept within the approved parameters of the left - "comprehensive immigration reform", "jobs Americans won't do" - the people will continue to lose, regardless of who wins the election.
Mitch McConnell is a narrow-parameters man down to his Chinese-made wingtips. And don't give me that "What about the judges?" crap: That reductive thinking is a big part of why America's where it is. As I said on this weekend's Mark Steyn Show, when you're fretting about 5-4 SCOTUS appeals, you're implicitly admitting you've already lost everything else in the country. I want Republicans who are prepared to move the ball down the field, so I'd rather there were fewer McConnells, fewer sleazy opportunist open-borders hedge-fund hacks like this football coach Tuberville ...and more Kobaches.
~If you don't follow Kansas politics as closely as McConnell's Chamber of Commerce chums do, here's me talking to Mr Kobach a year or two back:
"There are actually more immigration laws than any functioning society would need," Steyn pointed out. "It's the fact that there's not the political will to enforce the immigration laws that's the issue."
Kobach agreed. "We often hear this cop-out, 'Oh, our immigration laws are broken.' No, they're not broken. If you actually read them, Congress over the many decades that we've had these laws has inserted a lot of really good provisions in there that if we have the will to actually use them, we could reinforce our rule of law in this country."
See what you think:
~What with the Covid, the lockdown, the looting and the statue-toppling, a one-trick pony has to work a little harder to keep his single issue in the public discourse. Nonetheless, vanity plaintiff Michael E Mann has been doing his best. Anthony Watts at the indispensable WattsUpWithThat reports:
Dr. Mann (or as Mark Steyn calls him – Dr. Fraudpants)...
Whoa, hold it right there. I certainly did call him Doctor Fraudpants, but I'm thinking of switching that to Doctor Deadbeat - because it is now ten-and-a-half months since the British Columbia Supreme Court ordered Mann to pay Tim Ball's costs, and Mann, having lost his case, has yet to pay Dr Ball a penny. I'm not really sure why I should be expected to play along with a plaintiff who declines to respect the judgment of the courts, but, as he's now the Penn State version of those deadbeat dads on the milk cartons, I think I should call him Doctor Scofflaw McDeadbeat, PhD, MS (Deadbeat of Phraudology, Miserable Scofflaw).
Where was I? Oh, yeah. Doctor Deadbeat, with his hockey stick drooping ever more flaccidly, has been trying to cut himself a piece of the #BlackLivesMatter action. Shouldn't be that difficult really: Both #BLM and Mann like to take the law into their own hands - #BLM setting up autonomous zones in American cities, and Mann carrying on like a one-man autonomous zone, rejecting the ruling of judges he himself has petitioned.
Where was I again? Oh, yeah. So Doctor Deadbeat tries to muscle into the fracas du jour with the following Tweet re the Glorious Fourth at Mount Rushmore:
A perfect storm of antiscientific stupidity, malicious ignorance and bigotry as Trump disregards climate change-fueled fire danger and the spreading pandemic to cynically stoke the fires of nativism and racism on our nation's birthday.
In the event, South Dakota didn't catch fire. But, even if it had, so what? Everywhere else is alight, so what's the big deal? Setting Atlanta and Minneapolis and Seattle ablaze is supposedly a legitimate contribution to public debate, so why not Mount Rushmore? And, had Mann got his way and had Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt emerged on the morning after all sooty and ravaged, they'd just look like every other monument in the country.
As for "antiscientic stupidity", that's on a scientific establishment that spent four months telling America that almost all formerly routine activity is now too dangerous to contemplate and those few exceptions to that rule have to be conducted in surgical masks and six feet apart - and then turned around and said, hey, but if you want to engage in mass riots, have at it because white supremacy is a bigger public health crisis than the Covid.
Pay Tim Ball what the court ordered, Doctor Deadbeat, 'cause right now the only tinderbox is your pants.
~Just to tie those themes together (Covid and immigration), since Chairman Xi decided to loose it upon the world, the WuFlu has gone in waves: first Europe, then the US, and latterly Latin America. In the last couple of weeks, Brazil's death toll has averaged a thousand a day and rocketed up to 72,000 - second only to America. Hard on its heels, Mexico is now in fourth place, having overtaken Italy and on course to pass the UK.
So what do the American states newly stricken by ChiCom-19 have in common? Republican governors? Trump rallies? Actually, California, Arizona, Texas and Florida are all states with porous borders to Latin America and consequently high and mobile populations of the "undocumented". Given that reality, it's hardly surprising that they look more like the northern end of the surging southern pandemic than the southern end of the now muted north-eastern pandemic.
Of course, no one would ever dream of compiling statistics on that, so the media will continue to blame it on MAGA super-spreaders from Mount Rushmore.
~The Washington Redskins have caved, and ditched the name. No word yet on its replacement - The Washington Yellowbellies? The Washington Pantywaists? The Washington Wussy Wimpy Mincing Milquetoast Pansy Nancies?
Honestly, if you're one of these butcher-than-thou types sitting in your man cave with a case of Bud Lite watching ESPN and waiting for the "black national anthem" to end, don't you think it's time to man up and switch to the ballet channel? At least the tutus don't have shoulder pads.
~It was a busy weekend at SteynOnline, starting with a brand new edition of The Mark Steyn Show with the ongoing bonfire of our civilization, plus the Club of the Canceled, Blake goes black, Miss Egypt meets the Muscles from Brussels, and much more. You can listen to the full show here. What with the stampede to erase the entirety of American history, Kathy Shaidle's Saturday movie date revisited 1776 while we still can, and our Sunday song selection offered a classic hymn to a now shrunken state, "Oklahoma!". Oh, and I hosted the first of our weekend summer specials: an anthology of my Sunday poems - and music. If you were too busy sweepin' down the plain before handing it over to the Cree, I hope you'll want to check out one or three of the foregoing as a new week begins.
The Mark Steyn Show is made with the support of members of The Mark Steyn Club. For more on the Steyn Club, see here.
