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DECEMBER 10,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

OUR SO-CALLED BASTIONS OF HIGHER EDUCATION – FROM COLLEGE FIX:   Journalist Abigail Shrier spoke to Princeton University students at a private event on Wednesday, discussing everything from free speech and academic freedom to gender ideology and parental rights.  The talk was held at an off-campus venue, the location of which was revealed solely to RSVP’d guests just a few hours before the event due to “threats and harassment” organizers said were leveled against Shrier and student groups co-hosting the lecture.  That along with Princeton’s remaining coronavirus restrictions necessitated the heightened security measures, Adam Hoffman, publisher of The Princeton Tory and a student organizer of the event, said in his introduction of Shrier.  But the talk did represent the start of a recommitment “to the relentless pursuit of the truth,” Hoffman said, adding that he hoped his peers’ scare tactics would no longer suppress open debate at the Ivy League institution.  Shrier’s talk was co-hosted by The Princeton Tory, the Princeton Open Campus Coalition, and Public Discourse, the journal of the Witherspoon Institute, where the event was held.

December 10, 2021      Permalink

THE POSSIBLY BRIGHT FUTURE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY – OVERNIGHT:  The party is doing well right now, thanks largely to the excesses and obnoxiousness of the opposition.  But how does it stay well, and soar?  From Josh Hammer at American Greatness:

Trump’s victory was primarily propelled by a white working-class revolt, but the emergence during his presidency of a deeply censorious and anti-American left—epitomized by the Democrats’ outrageous conduct during the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation battle and the destructive “1619 riots” last summer—opened the door for a broader working-class, pro-America political coalition. By Election Day 2020, that multiethnic, working-class conservative coalition had begun to take more definite shape. Trump lost a nail-biter of an election, but the GOP made massive inroads in crucial black and Hispanic communities, such as Florida’s Miami-Dade County and the heavily Mexican counties dotting Texas’ Rio Grande Valley.

Now over a year removed from the 2020 presidential election, as Joe Biden’s poll numbers plummet and frantic Democrats gird themselves for a 2022 midterm election shellacking, data continues to trickle in supporting the emergence of a “Somewhere”-centric, multiethnic, working-class Republican coalition. In Texas, where former Democratic Representative Beto O’Rourke lost to incumbent Republican Senator Ted Cruz by less than three points in 2018, a new Quinnipiac University poll finds Republican incumbent Governor Greg Abbott, up for reelection in 2022, leading challenger O’Rourke by a whopping 15 points. Abbott outright leads O’Rourke among Texas Hispanic voters, 44 to 41, and Texas Hispanics disapprove of Biden’s job performance by a massive 27-point margin.

A new Wall Street Journal national poll evinces much the same trend. On a generic Republican versus Democrat ballot, the WSJ poll shows Hispanics evenly split 37 to 37. Nationally, Hispanics disapprove of Biden’s job performance by 12 points, and they support Biden over Trump in a hypothetical 2024 presidential rematch by a razor-thin 44 to 43 margin. Nor, of course, is the GOP’s good news with Hispanic voters limited to Texas; in Florida, the state’s growing conservative-leaning Cuban and Venezuelan populations make Republican incumbents Governor Ron DeSantis and Senator Marco Rubio heavy favorites for reelection next fall.

If the trendlines continue, the Democratic Party could end up as a parochial regional party with extremely limited statewide appeal outside the Northeast and the West Coast. But the trendlines are not guaranteed to continue; the onus is now on Republican leaders to ensure the party’s new coalitional inroads are nurtured, not squandered.

The woke Left’s dramatic cultural excesses, especially on such issues as policing, critical race theory and gender ideology, have already paid some handsome dividends for the GOP—just look at Virginia Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin. And because the Left has overstepped so much on bread-and-butter cultural issues, the temptation will be strong for the Right to exclusively focus on that fertile terrain.

This would be a mistake; the Right can and should aggressively fight the culture war with the aim of victory, but it must not lose sight of the economic issues that helped propel Trump’s insurgency and the subsequent emergence of the GOP’s multiethnic, working-class coalition. That coalition is deeply discomfited by the wokesters’ anti-American cultural assault, but it is also turned off by the old Republican guard’s dogmatic commitment to laissez-faire absolutism. Immigration restrictionism, trade pragmatism, total disentanglement from China and the prudential use of antitrust against the Big Tech giants and other woke corporate miscreants must become part of a standard “common good capitalism” Republican economic repertoire.

COMMON:  Read the rest.  What we have today is a Democratic Party that is losing, not necessarily a Republican Party that is winning.   The author wants to put the Republicans on a winning path, and he is correct.

December 10,  2021     Permalink   

DECEMBER 9,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

WELCOME TO THE PAST – FROM DAILY MAIL:    Joe Biden's commitment to blue collar workers has been called into question after his infrastructure tsar listed climate change and equity before mentioning helping industrial workers in a new interview.   Speaking on MSNBC's Morning Joe on Wednesday, as Biden flew to Kansas City to promote the $1.2 trillion bill, Landrieu said he had met personally with 30 mayors and had reached out to every governor in the US to discuss the infrastructure plan.  'What the president's asking us to do is use this policy to rebuild the country,' Landrieu said. 'This is a three, five, ten-year proposal...Look, we're going to build a better America'   'We need to think about climate. For those of us that are from the south, we know this really, really well. Of course resilience, and building back in a way that's stronger and better.  'Also, for communities that have been left out, he said secondly, equity is critically important. We cannot leave anybody behind,' the former Mayor of New Orleans said  Landrieu continued: 'Third, blue-collar jobs, so he wants labor involved in this in a big way with workforce training. And then he said he wants to rebuild America's industrial base by investing in Made in America products.'  Yeah, right.  Put the actual working people third.  Put the fashionable issues first and second.  Great way to lose the next election.

December 9, 2021       Permalink

FUTURE OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY? – OVERNIGHT:  That's what he calls himself, although he'll first have to settle for "Mr. Mayor."  Eric Adams is about to take over the Big Apple from Comrade Bill de Blasio, perhaps the worst mayor in the entire history of the universe.  Under de Blasio, the "city that never sleeps" became the city where no one sleeps because of all the gunshots outside.   And Adams is already making it clear that he's no de Blasio.  From the New York Post: 

An impassioned Mayor-elect Eric Adams delivered a tough-on-crime speech in Manhattan Thursday, while repeating his warning to Black Lives Matter leader Hawk Newswome not to mess with New York.

“We’re not going to surrender to those who are saying we’re going to burn down New York. Not my city,” Adams said at a Police Athletic League event at the Harvard Club.

Last month, Newsome threatened “riots, fire and bloodshed” if Adams makes good on a plan to reinstate the NYPD’s anti-gun unit.

He also had a message for agitators — like the ones who destroyed property in Middle Village, Queens after Kyle Rittenhouse’s acquittal.

“We’re not going to have a city where anarchists come from outside our city and go into a community such as Queens and destroy the community for their own selfish needs and desires,” Adams said.

The retired NYPD captain received a warm reception from the largely Republican crowd that included former New York Republican Party Chairman Ed Cox, billionaire business mogul John Catsimatidis, actor and former talk show host Tony Danza and former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton.

Adams praised Bratton for slashing the city’s murder rate, and for his broken windows policing style that cracked down on quality of life issues like graffiti to make the city safer from violent crime. “Bill Bratton, your legend has not been completely closed,” said Adams, adding that he intends to build on the two-time top cop’s public safety model.

The outgoing Brooklyn borough president also joked that it’s a good thing he won the crowded Democratic primary — and not any of the other candidates who were anti-police and anti-business. “I burn candles and say prayers and Hail Marys that those other characters were not elected to be mayor right now.

“People who were talking about disarming police, running out business people from our city,” Adams said in a reference to third place finisher Maya Wiley who couldn’t say at a debate whether she’d strip NYPD cops of their firearms.

Adams then pivoted to the economy for the second half of his 15-minute speech.

COMMENT:  He speaks as much to the nation as to the city, and it's clear that he has major ambitions.  Good.  I like ambitious people.  But he knows what he has go do to demolish the catastrophic record of Bill de Blasio in New York, and to break the epidemic of crime.

He's a Democrat, but don't be surprised if his party abandons him.

December 9,  2021     Permalink