White House Race- February 24, 2024

I am wanting to get this post up before the polls close in South Carolina, as I really do not feel like I want to focus on this election tonight. When I was younger the event of a Saturday South Carolina Primary was very exciting to me, as my preferred candidates achieved big wins in 1996 and 2000. Those days of triumph for establishment figures Bob Dole and George W. Bush are long gone though. In fact, the Republican establishment itself has been shifted, after beginning to drift starting in 2008. Yes, the more moderate John McCain won the primary in 2008, but Evangelicals voted heavily for second place finisher Mike Huckabee, who now fits in well with MAGA world. Four years later, the acerbic Newt Gingrich, a one time Reagan conservative, who had embraced angry populism by 2012 won the Palmetto State. While he did not come close to being nominated, the stage was set for Donald Trump four years later. Now, Trump is the establishment, and the people supporting Nikki Haley, a former Governor of the state, are the party outsiders.

Tonight, Trump will easily win the primary and many will once again declare the race over and call on Haley to drop out. She has insisted she will not do so and will remain an active candidate until Republicans in every state have voted. With the bridges sufficiently burned, she has nothing to lose and I hope she sticks with it. Haley has been very vocal in recent days saying that Trump cannot win a general election. The problem is that most Republicans do not believe it. These primary voters believe, perhaps foolishly, that a genuinely vulnerable and embattled Joe Biden is doomed to lose. Biden's weaknesses and problems have done more than anything else to embolden the political rebound of Trump. Perhaps, Democrats are getting what they wanted all along, but it is a very risky gamble.

 
Haley gave a speech this week in which she announced she will stay in the race regardless of what happens today in South Carolina. In it, she fought back tears while talking about how her husband is away from her and the family at this time while he is off serving his country. Her display of emotion did not get a lot of attention, the way that Hillary Clinton's tears during the 2008 New Hampshire Primary, did and might have helped her pull off a surprise win. In the MAGA world, they would definitely use actual human emotions against Haley. So perhaps it is a good thing this was largely overlooked.

The more he "campaigns" the more Trump continues to say crazy and outrageous things. What else is new though? After being notoriously silent on the death of Alexei Navalny for days, Trump has taken the tack of comparing himself to Navalny as a "political dissident" being targeted by the forces of his country's government. He has still not said one word in which he has criticized anything Putin may have done to Navalny. Last night, Trump appearing before a group of black conservatives in South Carolina, said that black people now love him because he is in trouble with the law and has an angry mugshot. It is truly sick stuff if you think about it, but one cannot deny that in our culture, many people gravitate to the "anti-hero." Back in the 1980s, there were not an insignificant number of African-Americans in New York City who expressed their admiration for mafia mass murderer John Gotti and today, some have embraced Trumpism.

 

Trump also spoke to CPAC today. The conservative conference used to be a major event in the Republican Party but has fallen off in recent years. This year, attendance was said to be down a tremendous amount. Many media outlets were not even covering it, which I believe may relate to the restrictive press access that CPAC gave out. If one had Newsmax though, they probably saw a lot of the Trump VP auditions and various other craziness that should embarrass any true conservative  One pro-Trump voice from social media said that the intention of the movement was to "destroy democracy" and that they almost got there on January 6th, but not quite yet. Honestly compels me to say that when I heard that clip, I immediately detected the sarcasm behind the world and intent to "own the libs." However, the libs and many others took it literally and have been talking about it. I guess you cannot blame them.

It does not seem like C-SPAN even had cameras at CPAC this year. Instead, they covered a competing event in Washington D.C. from NeverTrump folks on the right called the "Principles First Summit." It seems like they had a decent sized crowd and I caught some of the panel discussions on C-SPAN today. It reminded me of my teenage years watching CPAC on television and how those type of intellectual discussions helped me learn a lot and think critically. Taking back the Republican Party from Trumpism, if it is ever to happen, will take years to accomplish, but in catching a bit of these discussions today, it is good to be reminded that there are other smart people who share my views.

Ukraine and Russia continue to be a major story. It has now been two years since Putin's brutal invasion of his sovereign neighbor. For these past two years, Ukraine has beaten the odds in many ways in fighting the Russians. The last couple of weeks though have seen somewhat of a military turnaround with Russia now making gains once again.This might very well have much to do with the United States finding itself unable to support Ukraine militarily as it had been doing, because of Congressional dysfunction and a bloc within the Republican Party being beholden to Trump, who frankly does not want Ukraine to beat Putin. If an aid bill for Ukraine were to reach the floor of the House, it would pass overwhelmingly, with a lot of Republican support, but current Speaker Mike Johnson has been refusing for that to happen, in fear of his job. There will have to be an effort, in which some Republicans will have to participate, for a "discharge petition" to put the vote on the floor. It is extremely important for our national security and potential to stay out of World War III to do so.

Another somewhat unexpected flashpoint this week involved IVF after a ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court saying that an embryo is a person and on religious grounds, needs to be treated that way. This is a very complex and layered issue and frankly much of the tumult is somewhat nonsensical.It is clear though that Democrats and the media are trying to make this into a huge issue, and comparing it to abortion in an effort to hurt Republicans at the ballot box. There is some fundamental dishonesty there, but it is political reality. Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville was asked about this and seemed to trip all over himself trying to figure out how to answer. It might be that Tuberville does not even know what IVF is and perhaps thinks they are fighting Hamas in Gaza.

I am  Pro-Life. I believe that a fetus is a baby. I do not believe that an embryo is a baby.While I respect people who believe otherwise due to religious convictions, I see a major difference. A life begins at conception in my view (or at fertilization at the latest.) In regards to IVF, a significant medical process has to be done before a pregnancy can occur and thus the life of a baby begins. An overwhelming majority of Americans, including Pro-Life conservatives support IVF and recognize how important it has been to so many people who have relied on it to become parents or to grow their families.

In many cases an abortion stops a beating heart or as has been scientifically proven causes tremendous physical pain to a scared and frightened baby inside a womb as its life is extinguished. None of this happens if an embryo is destroyed. This has never been an ethical or moral battle worth having. Of course many people have spent tremendous amounts of money and have so much emotionally invested in the IVF process. This is more of a property issue. Those people should be free to decide if their own embryos will be used by them or not. There should obviously be penalties if anybody were to deliberately destroy an embryo against the will of the people who hold claim to it. If somebody accidentally destroys an embryo at a clinic, that is a huge problem to say the least, but an accident is not the same thing as murder.

With this Alabama Court decision, which may just be a strict reading of a law passed in Alabama, some of the fertility clinics in the state haveceased operations. That may be an overreaction, as it does not seem like Alabama authorities had any real intent on prosecuting anyone over these matters, but the message was sent, and the story went national. Nikki Haley had a bit of a complex answer in which she said that she believes an embryo is a person. She did express her support for IVF and also volunteered, I believe for the first time, that her son was a product of artificial insemination. (The business practices of a sperm bank would also raise ethical questions for purists.) As the national discussion grew, Republican political figures realized they had to get ahead of this story and talk about how they continued to support IVF. Yesterday, Donald Trump  expressed his support, in a way that is more forceful than he usually is on social issues. We will see if the Alabama Legislature is as influenced by what he wants in regards to "fixing" their law than the Republicans in the U.S. Congress have lately been. Those who want to scare voters and want to tie this to abortion almost certainly do not want this issue to go away anytime soon. In that regard, they are just as wrong as those on the right who want to rail about the problems at the border, but not do anything about it, because it could help them win an election.

I am sure there is much else from the past week that could be discussed. One recent development has been the charges and subsequent arrest of a former FBI informant, who had claimed to have evidence that Joe Biden was deliberately profiting from the business activities of his son Hunter. Many Republicans, including those in Congress, had taken the word of this shady character as the truth and have thus said they had no doubt that Joe Biden had taken bribes and thus should be the subject of an impeachment inquiry. They should have known better because it seems like those specific allegations were made up. As I have said in the past, there are many legitimate ethical questions, that perhaps fall well short of criminal conduct, regarding Joe Biden's willingness to let his family members attempt to cash in on his name. However, when the other party puts up Donald Trump as the opposition, they lose all right to make a legitimate contrast on anything ethics related.

To conclude, I came across this quote from famed sportscaster Bob Costas today. It is no secret that Costas leans left politically and many have thought of him as someone who has always loved the sound of his own voice, but I think he speaks the truth here.

 

"We face a horrible choice before us. One likely Presidential candidate is a loathsome and reprehensible human being. The other is someone who, long ago lost his fastball. Neither one, for different reasons, is fit to fill the most important office in the country. If the one were a CEO of any company, he would have long ago been dismissed for all kinds of H.R. violations. The other would be forced out by the board because he's no longer capable of leading it. This is not the America we had hoped for."