Rick "Tin Ear" Santorum: Trump's base will be "turned off" by Brett Kavanaugh

Quoted here.

No one in the base who watched Kavanaugh's remarks was turned off in the least.

In fact, Kavanaugh impressed as a person with a common, ordinary touch, who is deeply committed to his family and to the law. And he endeared himself to his listeners because the emotion welling-up underneath his remarks went far to prove his sincerity. 

Methinks Santorum, exasperated that he didn't get more support from Catholics in 2012, is a little jealous of his fellow Catholic, whose credentials and experience already stand out from those currently serving on the Supreme Court, not to mention from Santorum's.

Nothing sank NeverTrump lower in the estimation of the voters than its "blithe indifference to the Clintons' gangsterism"

Yes indeed.

Here:

"Trump’s base was fighting a war; these guys were sipping tea." 

The article insists much of NeverTrump is Jewish, agnostic and libertarian, which is true, while failing to mention its many Christian, especially Catholic, representatives, the very same crowd which mercilessly destroyed conservative Presbyterian minister Todd Akin of Missouri. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

The narrowness of Trump's 2016 victory continues unexamined in the cold light of reason. Though badly outnumbered, Protestant America proved it isn't dead yet. Trump's partisans naturally would rather talk about why their winner won than why the loser lost. But Hillary lost primarily because 5 million former Obama voters failed to show up, a fact Trump himself acknowledged in the immediate aftermath. They were as disgusted with her as the rest of us were. Had just some of them shown up in the right places, we'd be in year ten of the biggest political disaster this country has faced since FDR.

Trump proves the dictum that one man can change history when all the rest cannot. And for this they hate him. He might as well be Martin Luther. 

A grandmother of Bolshevism over at The American Conservative is upset with her children

Hey, we are the chosen immanentizers of the eschaton, not you!

Kelly Marcum, here:

The left, which continues to decry the social faux pas of cultural appropriation with ever-increasing vehemence, is itself guilty of the very same crime. They, the proponents of a predominantly liberal post-Christian culture, have undertaken a great project of appropriating and reinventing orthodox Christian values. ...

The left has made it its mission to culturally appropriate Christianity and use it for its own ends; in too many cases, it has been allowed to do so and even aided in its efforts by Christians themselves. ...

If orthodox Christianity is to survive in an evermore hostile culture, its practitioners and leaders will need not only to withstand the pressure to accommodate and self-censor, but to repossess their own language and tenets that have been exploited by the left.

A cuck at Taki's Magazine falsifies some "moral equivalency" between Antifa and White Nationalism

From an "apocalyptic psychologist", here:

Lacking any higher values, and surrounded on all sides by the base and the untrue, white nationalists and diversity’s agents, Antifa and Black Lives Matter, understandably turn to violence—for at least it is real, a brutal assertion of something true in the midst of so much deception. Inspired by envy and pride, these groups all deserve one another, and the American public, relishing the opportunity to hate while appearing righteous, will delight in the evil spectacle.

The violence is all Antifa's, but hey, it takes a cuck to recognize cuckery in white nationalism, right? The truth is there is no white nationalist violence to speak of, let alone any white nationalism. One gets the impression for a moment that this cuckologist secretly isn't too happy about this. It's almost as if he's goading his readers with the unpleasant truth that, just like him, they're all just pussies.

Well, he is a Calvinist atheist.

White nationalism is pretty much a phenomenon limited to the internet's world of anonymous commenters, such as at Taki's. In the main the commenters there do a good job of giving voice to white identity, but most of the discussion ends up in arguments refighting every war ever fought and no one seems to be able to agree about much of anything important, including religion. Ardent Protestants and Catholics spar with each other, as do the theists with the atheists. The editors typically feature articles which tread right up to the line, creating the playground, but go no farther. Meanwhile the actual Party of Violence is threatening the real thing, the latest action being a nationwide event set to begin on Nov. 4.

We'll see how that goes. So far if it rains Antifa's legions have shown that they will find something better to do, so if the weather interferes, Nov. 4 may turn out to be just another bust no less than every demonstration of white nationalism has turned out to be a bust. In any case Antifa only makes its biggest splashes when the whites plan to show up to contest the field, so barring that I'm expecting nothing very remarkable on the first Saturday in November.

Besides, the nation's property owners, most of whom are white, have property to protect and keep busy doing just that. There are about 75 million owner-occupied single family homes in this country, occupied by 60% of the population. They look askance at anyone threatening that property, or the businesses in which they work or which they own, whether it's Black Lives Matter doing the rioting, burning and looting and killing the cops whose duty it is to protect that property, or any other group of hooligans promising this kind of trouble.

Until the lives and fortunes of these ordinary white Americans are at real risk, there will be no sympathy for movements claiming to fight on their behalf, despite what the alarmists at the Southern Poverty Law Center may tell you.

And from a theoretical point of view, ordinary whites have no sympathy either for those who only wish matters were so dire, or half-believe they really are. 

John O'Sullivan still refuses to accept the meaning of "ourselves and our Posterity"

Here:

Notice that Ronald Reagan did not say that the great civil ideas of the West were the property of those Notre Dame graduates who were descended from the Founding Fathers and their generation. Nor did he say that they were the property of white Anglophone Protestants who had fetched up on these shores in the meantime — since that would have excluded the son of an Irish Catholic father like himself. Nor that the children of black slaves or other non-white migrants were excluded from that same moral and intellectual Western inheritance which the black former slave and passionate reader, Frederick Douglass, so cherished and claimed as his own.

Melania and Ivanka in Saudi Arabia vs. at The Vatican: Capisce?

In Saudi Arabia

At The Vatican

Claes Ryn shoots one across Rod Dreher's bow

Here.

He comes as close as a Catholic can to recommending that conservatives stand and fight.

Meanwhile a certain Presbyterian has been hard at it already since June 2015.

His name is Donald John Trump.

Catholics are late to the party, again.

Russell Kirk voted for the Roman Catholic in 1976

Romney won the Christian vote but lost the election by losing the NONES to Obama 74%-26%

So says Matthew Sheffield, here, with data for IA, FL, PA, VA, WI, MI and NH showing Romney won Protestants on average with 54% and Catholics with 53%.

The problem for Republicans is the growth of the non-Christian population, especially among the young:

"[T]he Godless Gap cost Mitt Romney the election".

The daughter of anti-Trump billionaire Marlene Ricketts is a gay activist and bundler for Barack Obama

Seen here:

Laura M. Ricketts is co-owner of the Chicago Cubs. Ricketts is also a board member of Lambda Legal and the Housing Opportunities for Women organization. Ricketts' ownership stake in the Cubs is uniquely noteworthy because it makes her the first openly gay owner of a major-league sports franchise. ... Laura Ricketts is a former corporate lawyer. She lives with her partner on the North Side of Chicago. Ricketts received her Bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago in 1994, and her Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan Law School in 1998. Laura talks of her own struggle to come out; "I came out to my family I would say early to mid 90s. I think for a long time I wasn't really out to myself growing up in Omaha, Neb., to a Catholic conservative family. It took me a while to come out to myself and not long after that I came out to them. I think that it really couldn't have been a better experience. They were all immediately supportive. ... I have been really really fortunate in that regard."

The Washington Post reported in 2012 that Laura Ricketts raised about half a million dollars for Obama, here:

[Joe] Ricketts has an unusual profile for a rising political player, with little in his résumé to suggest that he favors controversial or attention-getting tactics.

A former Democrat who became a Republican, he later renounced all party affiliation to become an independent. His daughter, Laura, is a lesbian activist and prominent bundler for Obama; she raised about half a million dollars for the president.

Joe Ricketts, Pete, Todd, Laura, wife Marlene, and Tom

Laugh of the Day: It used to be just a rhetorical question to ask "Is the pope catholic?"

Now it's a legitimate one.

Rush Limbaugh, just now.

Laugh of the day: Tom DeLay says Donald Trump is a novice who needs to learn from first term novices Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz

Here in Trump's Liberty U Performance Was Insulting to Christians Everywhere:

'Is Donald Trump a "novice" Christian and "novice" conservative? "Know those who labor among you," says First Thessalonians 5:12. Do evangelical and Catholic Christians, along with conservatives in general really know Donald Trump? ... Trump would do well to learn from Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina and other candidates who speak evangelical Christianity with fluent ease because they really do have God deep in their lives, and not just as a political facade.'

Memo to DeLay: Trump is a mainstream Presbyterian, not an evangelical, who incidentally has dominated the race since he entered it while the novices from the Senate lag far behind him.

Gay columnist featured at Breitbart sneers at farcical hetero cult romance

The Princess Bride:

"The only interesting part of the entire movie is the inexplicable sexual energy in the ensuing duel between the Spaniard, Inigo Montoya, and Westley. There’s plenty of winking, lingering glances, and talking about favoured hands. Westley, sensing the presence of his soulmate, refuses to kill the Spaniard swordsman. Either that, or the hideous perm softened the blow he struck to the man’s curly head. ... Speaking for myself, the only way I got through the movie was fantasising about Inigo and Westley finally realizing that Buttercup wasn’t worth the effort, and going off to, err, cross swords again in private."

For some reason Milo Yiannopoulos decided it was time to review a twenty-eight year old movie, here. He was what, three when it came out? How old was he when he came out? The excuse given was something Lindsey Graham said, which should tell you who gets Milo's blood pumping, and why. Milo's Wikipedia entry describes him as a "gay Catholic".

Some people just don't fit into Western society, whether they live in San Bernardino, Manchester or Cambridge. 

Walls work: The pope's Vatican has a population of 8 people per acre, Manhattan 109

People who live in walled states shouldn't throw stones, even if they have plenty.

Charles Cook embraces the impotence of contemporary conservatism faced with Donald Trump

Where else but in National Review here, the locus of conservatism as ineffectual cult and ideology, which finds it impossible to revolt against anything except for the rebels:

"As it happens, Trump’s critics do grasp the appeal [of revolt]. What they do not do, however, is act upon it in this manner. The temptation to deliver a bloody nose to one’s ideological enemies is a human and comprehensible one, by no means limited in its allure to the disgruntled part of the Republican primary electorate. But temptation and reasonable conduct are two separate things entirely, and they should always be treated as such. Can one understand the instinct that is on display? Sure. Can one look beneath the surface and do anything other than despair? I’m afraid not. Such as they are, the explanations provided by Trump’s discordant choir are entirely risible and easily dismantled. Great, you’re annoyed! But then what?"

He's obviously proud of it. In 1776 he'd be called a royalist.

Was taking up arms against England "reasonable conduct"? Only a Catholic sensibility could fail to grasp the point. "But then what?" Well, a long war of several years, full of privations and without guaranty of success, followed by another long period of several years preparing for and culminating in a constitutional convention, during which local and colonial institutions were strong enough to support the absence of a centralized framework. The same is still true today, if only the locals more frequently told the federal courts to go to hell, as the Kentucky county clerk recently did.

By definition, an ideology ought to have some ideas in it which form a system, and should be, when all is said and done, unrealistic. That pretty much describes American conservatism since forever: unable to roll back anything, including the income tax, direct election of Senators, universal suffrage, the Federal Reserve Act, the Reapportionment Act of 1929, Social Security, Medicare, the minimum wage, Obamacare, and the enormous regulatory code, and unable to permanently refound the country on any constitutional principles, say, of limited government or separation of powers. Conservatism has a massive record of zero achievement while liberalism's untruths keep marching on like tanks in Tiananmen Square.

Trump's camp, meanwhile, thinks three modest things: the way to make America great again is to restore law and order by starting with enforcing its borders and putting an end to illegal immigration, to bring jobs back to Americans by reforming the tax code, developing energy independence, cutting wasteful spending and punishing unpatriotic corporations who profit from exporting jobs, and to rebuild the military to protect freedom at home and for our friends and allies abroad.

It takes near religious nuttery to call the proponent of these measures "a self-interested narcissist and serial heretic whose entirely inchoate political platform bends cynically to the demands of the moment."

To understand Trump, it takes a village . . . of Protestants.

TNR article on John Kasich's religion never tells you he's an Anglican convert from Catholicism

Here.

Liberalism always has something to hide.

Kasich's Anglicanism isn't what you might expect, according to this story:

'"But he does belong to a church — St. Augustine in Westerville, Ohio, part of the conservative splinter group the Anglican Church in North America. The denomination broke away from the Episcopal Church after that denomination consecrated an openly gay bishop. The ACNA does not permit female bishops or ordain LGBT priests. ... Kasich voted for the Defense of Marriage Act years ago and supported Ohio’s ban on gay marriage. But he was pragmatic after the Supreme Court ruling June 26 overturned state bans. Two days later, he was interviewed on “Face the Nation” and said: “I believe in traditional marriage, but the Supreme Court has ruled. It’s the law of the land, and we’ll abide by it. … It’s time to move on.”'

Scott Walker's school voucher program is enormously popular with the poor in Wisconsin, but not with the establishment

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported here last May about applications for the school year just now winding down:

Under state law, the 25 private schools that receive the most applications are selected for the statewide voucher program. Because of a tie, 26 schools are selected for the upcoming school year.

Six new participants in the program are Fox Valley Lutheran High School in Appleton, Saint Paul Lutheran School in Bonduel, Winnebago Lutheran Academy in Fond du Lac, Twin City Catholic Educational System in Menasha and Neenah, and Saint Paul Lutheran School and Trinity Lutheran School, both in Sheboygan.

Each of the 26 schools will receive at least 10 voucher slots, with the remaining assigned through a random selection process. ...

A total of 1,000 vouchers are available, up from 500 in the first year of the program. ...

"Once again, applications far exceeded the cap," Jim Bender, president of School Choice Wisconsin, said in a statement. "For the second year in a row we have thousands of parents — over 70% — on the outside looking in." ...

The statewide program, called the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program, is in its second year and is separate from voucher programs in Milwaukee and Racine. There are 1,220 students in the Racine Parental Choice Program and 25,397 in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, according fall enrollment data.

-----------------------------------------------

Governor Walker has proposed a complete elimination of the caps for the next two years, expanding the vouchers apparently at reduced amounts, and paying for it all by reducing allocations to the public school system by $150 per pupil in the first year.

School officials are predictably livid, as this story about a day long public hearing at Brillion High School recently reported:

Nearly all of the administrators who spoke opposed the expansion of the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program, which allows low-income students to attend private or religious schools using a taxpayer-subsidized voucher.

-----------------------------------------------

Here's a novel idea. True "parental choice" would allow the taxpayers themselves to decide which schools their taxes fund. Imagine a check off list on your income tax form or property tax form like they have now for various charitable causes to which you may allocate all or a portion of your tax refund. Let's see how the taxpayers vote to spend their education money. Now that might really upset the establishment.

Let the people decide!

Brian Williams of NBC garnered just 18 college credits from THREE colleges and universities

But all you're going to hear about is how Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin never finished at Marquette, where he still needs 34 credits to graduate.

WaPo is already on the warpath, here, saying Walker "was not close to graduating", under the headline "questions linger over college exit".

Hm. When it comes to Brian Williams, I'd say questions linger over his (many) college entrance(s). Whereas Walker is "about one-quarter of the required total away from earning his degree", Brian Williams is more than three-quarters of the required total away, having attended a community college, Catholic University of America, and George Washington but accumulating only 18 college credits.

Williams is not even in the same class of serial matriculators as Sarah Palin because she actually finished her degree after six whacks at it, but Williams still got to quote an NBC poll to her face in October 2008 in which 55% of Americans supposedly didn't see Palin as qualified to be president because the fourth estate doesn't really care about qualifications, just about who it is who doesn't have them.

Well, 33% of Americans today have now developed an unfavorable view of Williams in the wake of the revelation of the history of his many fabrications, according to Rasmussen here:

"Thirty-three percent (33%) view him unfavorably, with 18% who hold a Very Unfavorable view."

They are a little late, but we'll take it.

Bill Donohue to Hugh Hewitt: a single bishop has been found to agree with me, namely the Bishop of Rome

Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, here, happy that the pope agrees that there are limits to freedom of speech, limits we impose on ourselves:

"I am obviously delighted that the pope has taken the same position I have on this issue. Radio chatterbox Hugh Hewitt doubted last week whether a single bishop would side with me. What does he have to say now?"

Bill Donohue of the Catholic League is right: Charlie Hebdo went way over the top of acceptable

Here in "Muslims are right to be angry":

[W]hat happened in Paris cannot be tolerated. But neither should we tolerate the kind of intolerance that provoked this violent reaction. Those who work at [Charlie Hebdo] have a long and disgusting record of going way beyond the mere lampooning of public figures, and this is especially true of their depictions of religious figures. ... In 2012, when asked why he insults Muslims, [Charb] said, “Muhammad isn’t sacred to me.” Had he not been so narcissistic, he may still be alive. Muhammad isn’t sacred to me, either, but it would never occur to me to deliberately insult Muslims by trashing him.

Hugh Hewitt here can't believe there's an important Catholic alive who shares Donohue's opinion.

I can't believe it either, but at least we've got Bill Donohue.