Texas Californicated?

Texans are an interesting bunch, as the DrsC learned spending a post-retirement year living and teaching not far from Dallas. Friendly, outgoing, mostly Republican, and very church-oriented. Many of the natives might be comfortable with the hyphenated label "Texan-Americans."

In Texas you can drive all day east or west at interstate speeds and still be in the same state when the sun goes down. During the five decades we RVed, we actually had that unique experience more than once.

Mulling the surprising TX turn toward Democrats in the recent election, I've wondered if the switch to voting Democrat had anything to do with the tsunami of internal immigration Texas has recently received. I can imagine Texans feeling like they are strangers in their own state, and blaming the long-ruling GOP for not defending their culture.

I'm not claiming the above is a complete explanation, I think it might be a contributing factor.

Saturday Snark

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The DeSantis Boomlet

Following the recent election disaster, many Republicans are again talking up Gov. Ron DeSantis as our presidential candidate for 2028. Hands down, he is our most effective Republican governor. 

Unfortunately DeSantis isn't a dynamic speaker or campaigner. Both skills seem to be a prerequisite in most presidential election cycles (except 2020).

Until he demonstrates otherwise, my view of DeSantis is this: a great administrator, a poor salesman. Rubio, on the other hand, seems to do both well. For reasons I can't quite define, Vance leaves me uncomfortable.

Friday Meme Fest

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Cartoons of the Week.

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The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

The Lesser Evil

In Tuesday's runoff Los Angeles voters had only bad choices for mayor. It appears that Nithya Raman has defeated incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and will be the next mayor. 

The voters have spoken, and I halfway agree with them. In various ways Karen Bass has done such a bad job as LA's mayor that she deserves to lose her reelection bid, deserves to be punished. 

I don't believe Nithya will do a better job than Karen. Four years from now it is a near certainty that Nithya will deserve the same fate, the same ouster from office.

Still, Raman could surprise us and do a good job. For LA's sake, I hope she succeeds. The City of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels could use a steady hand at the helm.

Doing the Difficult Things

At the New York Post Joel Pollak argues the electorate just punished President Trump for doing exactly what he promised to do. The argument is too long to reprint here, but I didn't find much to argue with in Pollak's list of accomplishments. He concludes thus:

Trump was elected to do difficult things. And while Republicans are paying the political price, Trump is correct to believe that history will remember his choices as the right ones.

I'd like to believe Pollak is correct, even if I can't quite get there yet. My disagreements with Trump have been largely stylistic. 

I find bombast, B.S., and hyperbole tiresome and unhelpful. His actions, as opposed to his comments, have mostly been what I expected and hoped for.

Adieu, Salon

I write to report the death of the publication Salon, which its staff just announced. Though irredeemably left-wing, it often had material I found worthy of comment, not always with derision.

My initial impulse was to celebrate Salon's death, but I quickly thought better of it. A quick web search found some 18 times COTTonLINE has referenced Salon in one context or another.

The left seeks to shut down conservative comment and opinion. On the right we put down leftish opinion without wanting it shut down. I celebrate that difference, and free speech generally.

MAGA

Image courtesy of today's Lucianne.com.

Blame the Iran War? Maybe So

Hashing over the GOP loss yesterday, many are focusing on the Iran war. VP Vance has made a point of it. I have my own beef about how that conflict was conducted by our side, though it didn't cause me to vote for the crazy Ds.

My personal beef with how Trump carried out that conflict had to do with him talking fierce and not carrying out his threats. Time after time he threatened civilization-ending hellfire, and delivered much less than that. 

After a couple of cycles of brave talk followed by not much "walk," I think it likely that the mullahs decided he was mostly bluster and began to ignore him. He was sounding just like them, talking big and delivering small, or often not at all. 

After yesterday's vote, universally seen as a slap down for Trump and MAGA, I hope he doesn't give up and end the blockade. It isn't hellfire and brimstone, but it will grind down Iran's economy in ways that don't create sympathetic enemies opposed to us.

VDH Brings Perspective

History isn't popular these days, isn't much taught in our schools. But history has many wise lessons for us, especially in understanding complex social phenomena like politics. 

Victor Davis Hanson is both a serious historian and a prolific observer of the current scene. Today he reflects on the yesterday's GOP wipeout election for the Daily Signal.

In the last 126 years since 1900, when the party in the White House faces a midterm—whether its first or second—90% of the time it loses House seats. Ninety percent.

And 75% to 80% of those administrations lose Senate seats, depending on how you count some independents. So, the odds were 90% against this administration avoiding House losses.

Consequently, he observes prior presidents to whom this kind of midterm shellacking was given.

Presidents [Barack] Obama and [Bill] Clinton had worse midterm losses in 2010 and 1994 than anyone except FDR in 1938. They came in with huge House and Senate majorities and held the White House. By the time of their last midterm, with two years left in their second terms, they had lost both the House and Senate, and dramatically so. And nothing happened.

But Clinton and Obama left office with 70% and 59% popularity, respectively. They were more popular than they’d ever been.

His point is that what happened yesterday is neither very unusual nor necessarily catastrophic. It is close to the norm; sackcloth and ashes are not called for. Certainly we'd rather have won, but that would have been the unusual event, yesterday's outcome is very nearly routine, albeit unpleasant.

In Support of the Filibuster Rule

It now looks like Senate Majority Leader Thune was right about hanging onto the rule that most bills need 60 senators’ favorable votes to pass the Senate. I understand why that filibuster rule frustrated lame-duck President Trump, but he was wrong in urging its removal.

We next get to see if Democrat senators are as smart as Republicans were. Will they similarly refuse to dump that rule, now that they have the votes to do so?

What long-time senators know: it is more important to forestall your opponent’s crazier plans than it is to pass every bill your own side likes. The rule exists to keep the ship of state in mid-channel, not veering overmuch toward either side. If it often impedes progress - slows change - it follows the physicians’ pledge: To do no harm.

The Midterm Sucked

Team GOP had a pi55-poor night, politically. I've experienced way more of these disappointing nights than I'd like in a long and mostly well-spent life. 

A priori, I expected to point to Trump throwing Sen. Cornyn under the bus in Texas, as an example of doing what feels good but was tactically stupid. Now I'll add supporting Lindsey Graham's sis as another such move, and forcing out Sen. Tillis as a third. 

Even if those three "own goals" had been avoided, it wouldn't have been enough. And while I'm sure the entertainer side of President Trump enjoyed the adulation of the crowds at his many rallies, that appears to have been the rallies' only upside.

Now we will have a jihadist senator from MI and a weirdo beta male senator from supposedly solid GOP TX. I hope the poor old ship of state is up to surviving the stormy seas that lie ahead, with the mutinous 'crew' in charge and the 'captain' barricaded in his White House cabin, firing vetos through the mail slot.

With hindsight as my guide, I will now make a prediction. The next couple of years won't be a lot of fun politically, not for either party nor for us who follow politics as a spectator sport.

Old Wisdom, Remembered

My father, who wasn't young when I was born, died in the early 1970s. He was a lifelong Southern Democrat who, I like to think had he lived, would have become a Republican when the South converted, en masse.

While I was growing up I spent the Eisenhower and Nixon years hearing him complain about how the darned Republicans were more likely to turn out to vote than would his Democrats. As I write this there are some tentative signs Republicans are turning out to vote in unexpectedly large numbers for the election that concludes today. 

Which has me thinking "Dad, I hope you are right, again this time." 

State-Fed Cooperation at Work

The effort to clear illegal immigrant truck drivers off the roads has taken an excellent new step. Officials in many Republican-led states are cooperating with ICE to apprehend (and deport) these dangerous guys. American Greatness has the story.

Officials in both Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas are among those participating. If my geography is correct, that means there is a solid wall of such states across the entire middle of the nation, making cross-country routes that avoid the crackdown impossible. 

Safe north-south routes may still exist although much of the South is also on-board with the effort. Readers who live in GOP-led states not yet a part of the effort should press their governors to join up.

Last Minute Advice

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Perturbations in Poland

Weird goings-on in Poland recently. A quasi-coup of sorts planned for All Saints Day, when the elected nationalist President was scheduled to be in Africa on a diplomatic visit and many urban Poles out in the countryside visiting ancestors’ graves. 

The globalist, pro-EU PM Tusk tried to take over Poland’s version of the Supreme Court, in a tussle over whether Poland would follow EU rules, thereby giving up its own currency and strict immigration controls. A public upswell of support ensued for the President, who turned his plane around over Spain and came home.

This is a situation worth watching. Don’t expect a lot of coverage by legacy media, which is pro-EU.

Waiting for Results

The election concludes tomorrow, early voting has been underway for some time. Most predictions say Democrats will gain seats in the House and Senate. If you bet elections the way you bet horse races - on past performance - that’s the way you’d bet. Ditto if you believe polls.

The other DrC and I voted weeks ago via absentee ballots from WY, which may be the most Republican state in the nation. So Republican in fact that for some state vacancies no Democrat bothers to run.

If you’re hoping I’ll make predictions about whether the GOP will or won’t control the House and Senate next term …. sorry, I won’t. I find the ‘political waters’ sufficiently muddied that I am unsure of the outcome. 

An electorate that can elect Trump, then Biden, then Trump again can do pretty much anything. At least two of those three were not what polls predicted. I do notice literally nobody is running on a “bring back the Biden years” platform. 

Saturday Snark

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