Rod Dreher goes hunting a confederacy of dunces, bags prey from The Week, National Review, Religion News Service, The New Republic, Reason, NYMag, and Vox

 

It's a veritable cornucopia of 2020 Iowa Caucus debacle headlines this morning

Iowa caucus: Biden campaign blasts Democratic Party over reporting meltdown

Iowa caucuses delays revive concerns and conspiracy theories of Bernie Sanders supporters

SANDERS CAMPAIGN’S INTERNAL CAUCUS NUMBERS SHOW THEM WINNING IOWA, WITH BIDEN A DISTANT FOURTH

Frustration, questions as delays hamper Iowa caucuses

‘A Systemwide Disaster’: How the Iowa Caucuses Melted Down

Iowa officially has its first caucus-deciding coin flips of the year

Chaos reigns on Iowa caucus night

Iowa caucuses turnout: Entrance poll shows dip in first-timers

Results for Iowa caucuses delayed as state Democratic Party finds 'inconsistencies'

'It’s a total meltdown': Confusion seizes Iowa as officials struggle to report results

What went wrong: Tech troubles behind delay in Iowa results

Iowa Democrats rush "quality checks" after "inconsistencies"

Iowa Reports No Caucus Winner After ‘Inconsistencies’ Bedevil Count

Democrats threaten with chaos and tyranny, stand for overturning all basic American political institutions and norms

Voting Republican has literally become a vote for survival and is no longer simply a policy preference:

The Electoral College is a civic abomination, Damon Linker of The Week, September 19, 2018

The Supreme Court Is a Historically Regressive and Presently Expendable Institution, Christopher Sprigman in Slate, October 11, 2018

Abolish the Senate. It's the only way to rein in modern presidents., John Bicknell for WaPo, August 30, 2016

Democrats’ ‘Fighting Words’ Take on an Ominous Tone, Carol M. Swain, The Epoch Times, October 12, 2018

Brett Kavanaugh and America's vanishing presumption of innocence, Edward Morrissey of The Week, September 19, 2018

140 House Democrats Refuse to Condemn Illegal Aliens Voting, John Binder of Breitbart, September 26, 2018 

Damon Linker: Liberals will struggle foolishly for an emerging Democrat majority through anti-White identity politics

Foolish because, well, because it is.

Here.

Meanwhile the redundant Damon Linker is just fine with a thieving lefty as defacto head of the Democrat Party

Here in "Democrats don't need 'A Better Deal.' They need Bernie Sanders":

That he was an independent who became a Democrat solely for the purpose of running for president and spent a good deal of time on the stump railing against the party's choice to succeed Barack Obama as president is just one reason why he should be treated as the party's de facto leader and its presumptive presidential frontrunner — and why he should have been the one to craft and deliver the party's message heading into the midterms. ... Populism is a politics of anger. It needn't escalate to violence. It shouldn't tear down institutions that can be reformed in productive ways. But it does need to channel the passion for justice and give voice to justified resentments.

Emotion, not reason, has the better of a person who can write that, or "who is sufficiently woke enough" and "now, at long last . . . has finally . . .."

If you get WaPo delivered and live next to Damon Linker, make sure you are "woke" before he is or you might be out of luck. 

Lefty Damon Linker thinks "The Flight 93 Election" is radical when it's hardly radical enough

The "conservative" world conceived of by the author of "The Flight 93 Election" isn't radical, it's unimaginative.

Being the good leftist that he his, however, Damon Linker senses the inherent weakness and flogs the man as a "reactionary" just for thinking about getting his feet wet, almost daring the author to defend what he knows he probably would not.

Struggling swimmer in the water. Shark arrives. 

The weakness of the anonymous author, Publius Decius Mus, is illustrated by the closing which imagines what actually lassoing the moon would look like in his mind: a return to constitutionalism, limited government and a top marginal income tax rate of 28%. Really?

You won't get either of the first two while keeping the third. And the income tax wasn't "constitutional". 

It doesn't occur to our anonymous author that through the income tax is how big government in this country made a big splash in the first place, and that it was necessary for progressives to eradicate the constitution's self-limitation expressed in its direct taxation handcuffs in order to achieve that big government.

In effect repudiating "constitutionalism" was necessary. And that's what the progressive era achieved, sweeping away the defenses of the constitution through the amendment process, bringing us woman's suffrage, the direct election of senators and the income tax. It made the country sick enough, but only enough to cut off the fourth leg of the progressive stool by repealing Prohibition.

So it works both ways. We can change our minds. The task of conservatism in our time ought to be to wake up the country to the possibilities of more repeal, to the conviction that we can correct our mistakes, whether it's the income tax, direct election of senators, or the vote of 18-year olds. And to the possibilities of ratification, say of Article the First.

Being "reactionary" isn't a bug, it's a feature, and thoroughly American.

Unless you're a communist. Or Damon Linker. But I repeat myself.

Chutzpah: Trump one ups Carson's answer for IRS tax audits

Ben Carson implied in the Republican debate last night that he was politically targeted for an IRS audit after speaking out publicly against Obamacare.

Donald Trump seemed to like the answer so much he decided to go for it for himself.

In remarks made to Chris Cuomo on CNN immediately after the debate, Trump blamed his long history of tax audits on the fact that he was being targeted for being a Christian.

Yeah, like the whole world thinks that's the reason.

Donald Trump: Sam Francis' revenge

Michael Brendan Dougherty here.  Sam Francis here.

"Capitalism is notorious for demanding cheap labor to undercut the cost of native workers." -- Sam Francis

Senator Claire McCaskill, Missouri's big fat condescending Stalinist bitch feminist

But other than that she's alright.

Here.

Damon Linker wants to replace the electorate which likes a vulgar blowhard like Donald Trump

You know, with an electorate like the one that put these two together in the White House.

Here.

Liberal contributor from The New Republic advocates for tyranny as all Lincoln lovers must

Here:

[T]here will be situations in which the common good demands and requires that the executive go beyond the letter and even the spirit of the law. In these extreme or emergency situations — situations in which an existential threat poses a grave danger, with the survival of the political community itself at stake — the executive's extralegal decisions effectively become the community's higher law.

Probably the clearest example from American history is Abraham Lincoln's 1861 suspension of habeas corpus, defiance of the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (who denounced Lincoln's actions as unconstitutional), and subsequent arrest (without charge) of pro-secessionist Maryland state legislators who appeared poised to condemn the suspension and vote to join the Confederacy.

Was Lincoln acting like a tyrant, as Maryland native John Wilkes Booth and many other critics of the time contended? You bet he was. And it's a good thing, too. Had Maryland seceded, Washington would have been surrounded by enemy armies and the South almost certainly would have won the Civil War quickly and decisively. Extralegal action was required to keep that from happening.

Stupid Frenchman's solution to American capitalism is to make it even less capitalistic than it already is

He wants to prohibit you from selling "too soon", here:

"[I]f you want to hire someone else to manage your money, whether a mutual fund or a private equity fund or a hedge fund, you have to lock up your money for 15 years."

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Not a word in this guy's story about, for example, soaring corporate stock buybacks, suspension of mark-to-market accounting rules, the recently increased long-term capital gains tax rate, the much higher tax penalty for earning a big paycheck than for profiting from a big stock sale, nor the existence of long and short term gains in the first place, all of which are anti-free-market.

Cancun 100 Year Record Low of 54 Degrees, For Global Warming Summit!

The story is here.