Programming note: I'm a little under the weather today, but, all being well, tomorrow, Wednesday, I'll be here to answer Mark Steyn Club members' questions live around the planet on another edition of our Clubland Q&A. That's at 3pm North American Eastern time/8pm Greenwich Mean Time/9pm Western and Central Europe. Hope you'll swing by.
~Donald Trump is now an heroic figure. He fought a brilliant campaign, amazingly good-humoured considering he was up against a sick American state determined to gaol him and, failing that, shoot him. In return, the dying New York Times said he had won with a "dark" and "disturbing" campaign - because nothing says dark and disturbing like serving fries at the drive-thru window and tootling around in a garbage truck.
I am so bored by the bollocks. But bollocks is all there is. Do you watch Joy Reid? Nah, me neither. But, in the days when I used to host the Tucker warm-up slot at Fox, I used to feel bad about clobbering her in the ratings night after night, because I thought she was quite cute with her old haircut (not the one she's got now).
If that sounds shallow, well, what am I meant to say? She's spent the last week hailing Kamala for her "flawless" campaign - even though she, er, lost. And, when asked to produce evidence of this "flawlessness", Miss Reid cites her ability to corral all the A-list celebs from Taylor Swift to Beyoncé. Alas, my eminent compatriot Alanis Morrissette was obliged to cancell her endorsement because the Harris campaign blew through so much dough on celebs that it developed an unfortunate cash-flow problem:
Canadian Alanis Morissette had to cancel giving her support to Kamala Harris because the check would not clear.
— Big Fish (@BigFish3000) November 10, 2024
Isn't that ironic. pic.twitter.com/Fcvmrq9euy
Amazingly, even in America's uniquely unique two-year election campaign, there are still some people who'd like some public discourse in their public discourse. Say what you will about Trump, Musk, RFK, but all of them want to talk about the issues rather than the Swifties. It is interesting that neither the Strength Through Joy Reid Democrat-media complex nor the McConnell Republicans ever want to talk about anything that matters. Trump 45 was a lonely exception to this rule; Trump 47 has a talented and mostly non-GOP team. As I wrote nine-and-a-half years ago:
But here's the funny and consequential thing. Trump is supposed to be the narcissist blowhard celebrity candidate: He's a guy famous for erecting aesthetically revolting buildings with his "brand" plastered all over them, for arm-candy brides, for beauty contests and reality shows. The other fellows are sober, serious senators and governors.
And yet Trump is the only one who's introduced an issue into this otherwise torpid campaign - and the most important issue of all, I would argue, in that ultimately it's one of national survival. And so the same media that dismiss Trump as an empty reality-show vanity candidate are now denouncing him for bringing up the only real policy question in the race so far.
Trump's spectacular success in out-Grovering Cleveland should not blind us to the structural defects of the American system, well demonstrated by Chinese asset Mitch McConnell, who announced his resignation nine months ago but timed it to inflict maximum damage on a "colleague" who gave the Republican Party its best results since the Eighties. Right now, "free speech" in America rests on Elon Musk; avoiding another Covid fiasco rests on RFK. But the bigshots in the party remain the process wankers like McConnell. Here's what I wrote exactly four years ago today:
One of Mrs Thatcher's great insights was: First you win the argument; then you win the election.
To win the argument, you have to make it. In the Westminster system, you make the argument for three or four years, then you have a six-week election campaign. That's when the system's functioning, which it certainly wasn't under, say, Andrew Scheer's Tory leadership in Ottawa.
But, even when it's not functioning, somebody's making an argument. Thus the fatal miscalculation of David Cameron when he decided that the Brexit referendum would be the best way to put the EU issue to bed once and for all. By then every electorally viable political party - from the Tories to Sinn Féin - was "pro-Europe". Nigel Farage had been making the argument for twenty years, but, because he had no real political party to advance it, it didn't get him anywhere at UK general elections. So, the minute Cameron called a referendum on Nigel's issue in splendid isolation, it gave Farage a shot at the second half of Maggie's great formulation: He'd won the argument; and Cameron delivered up a mechanism that allowed him to win the vote.
In the American system, it is, as the Brits say, arse over tit: As Monty Python once asked, where's the room for an argument? There are no parliamentary debates, so you never see a Dem senator going at it with a GOP senator. Even more strikingly, there are a bazillion political talk shows, none of which ever features a Dem senator going at it with a GOP senator - the way that even the most despised BBC, CBC, ABC yakfests routinely feature opposing legislators debating health care or the Irish backstop or the Covid response.
Instead, there is a multi-billion-dollar two-year campaign, which is all polls, fundraising, horse-race piffle, soft-focus telly ads for the halfwitted, plot twists of no interest to anybody normal (ooh, look, Cory Booker is up from point-three to point-four in Iowa!), all culminating in a stilted pseudo-debate tediously moderated by a pompous mediocrity asking questions all framed from the left's point of view. You'd almost get the idea that the entire racket was designed to eliminate the very possibility that someone might make an argument.
My Republican chums now tell me I should be excited because Susan Collins won by nine points and Mitch McConnell managed not to lose as many Senate seats as expected. But when was the last time Susan Collins or Mitch McConnell ever made an argument? Ms Collins is famously "pro-choice", but that's merely a label, discussed only in crude arithmetic: conservatives have to work hard to drag Susie over the finish line in hopes she'll be grateful enough to give us the fifty-first vote for some rock-ribbed originalist judge who'll discern a provision in the Civil Rights Act that means your daughter has to compete at school track against a six-foot-two hunk with magnificent cleavage and a touch of five o'clock shadow.
So now we're told that we all have to rush to Georgia for two months to focus on the run-off election because those two GOP Senate candidates are the only things that stand in the way of Biden-Harris ramming the Green New Deal down your gullet, and giving statehood to DC and Puerto Rico, thus greatly diminishing Susan Collins' importance in Senate arithmetic now and forever.
Maybe. But it really would be nice if these guys would make an argument for something once in a while, instead of just saying we're the fellows to block the other fellows. I mean, we've been here before even within the shriveled perspective of political memory: A decade ago we were told we had to back Republicans because they're opposed to Obamacare. They raised a zillion dollars, saved their seats, won total control in 2016 ...and had no plan.
It's not enough. Last time round, the only guy making real arguments was Trump: Build the wall, renegotiate Nafta, get tough with China... So he won the argument, and then he won the election.
If they succeed in taking him out, we're left with Republicans who have no argument other than process: Vote for me, so we'll save the Senate. If we save the Senate, we can block Biden's judges. So we'll save the courts, so they can keep ruling that, er, Obamacare's unconstitutional and that Pennsylvania shouldn't be monkeying with election rules this close to the big day.
Wouldn't it be easier to stand for something?
~from SteynOnline, November 12th 2020
If your object is to prevent America going off the cliff, McConnell, Thune and Cornyn have nothing to contribute. That this is the subject of conversation a week after the most spectacular political comeback in American history is very dispiriting.
~We opened The Mark Steyn Club seven-and-a-half years ago, and I'm thrilled by all those SteynOnline supporters across the globe - from Fargo to Fiji, Vancouver to Vanuatu, Surrey to the Solomon Islands - who've signed up to be a part of it. My only regret is that we didn't launch it twenty-two years ago, but better late than never. You can find more information about the Club here - and, if you've a pal who might be partial to this sort of thing, don't forget our special Gift Membership.
Oh, and if you're seriously chafing under the prospect of Mitch McConnell installing his stooge as Senate Majority Leader, there's no better cure than booking a berth on our Fifth Annual Steyn Cruise sailing from Portugal next year - and with Michele Bachmann, Dan Wootton, Naomi Wolf and Leilani Dowding among our shipmates. We'll be attempting some seaboard versions of The Mark Steyn Show, Tales for Our Time, our Sunday Poem and other favourite features. If you're minded to give it a go, don't leave it too late: as with most travel and accommodations, the price is more favorable the earlier you book - and, if the post-election shenanigans go south, you'll surely be grateful for a break.
