How Donald Trump Pulled It Off: Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., Wall Street Journal, Nov. 9, 2016 — Donald Trump probably w
on’t get credit, even from those bending over backward to be charitable to last night’s winner, for his most-revolutionary endeavor—namely his effort to lighten up campaign rhetoric.
Donald Trump’s Assault on Both Parties Will Make America Better: Conrad Black, National Post, Nov. 9, 2016— It is not such a surprise that Americans have elevated Donald Trump to the headship of their country.
Tuesday's Biggest Loser: Michael Graham, Weekly Standard, Nov. 9, 2016— Forget Hillary and Trump. The biggest loser Tuesday night was Barack Obama.
Trump and Israel, Now What?: Herb Keinon, Jerusalem Post, Nov. 9, 2016 — “I love Israel and honor and respect the Jewish tradition and it’s important we have a president who feels the same way,” US President-elect Donald Trump said in a pre-recorded video message to a rally held two weeks ago in a restaurant overseeing the Old City.
Defeat Likely Spells the End of Clinton Dynasty: Daniel Halper & Marisa Schultz, New York Post, Nov. 10, 2016
Reminder: Hillary Clinton Lost Because She’s Hillary Clinton : Heather Wilhelm, National Review, Nov. 11, 2016
Iran Nuclear Deal Could Collapse Under Trump: Carol Morello, Washington Post, Nov. 9, 2016
What Israel Doesn’t Need From Trump: Jonathan S. Tobin, Commentary, Nov. 9, 2016
HOW DONALD TRUMP PULLED IT OFF
Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
Wall Street Journal, Nov. 9, 2016
Donald Trump probably won’t get credit, even from those bending over backward to be charitable to last night’s winner, for his most-revolutionary endeavor—namely his effort to lighten up campaign rhetoric.
Even now many Republican anti-Trumpers continue to fume over his remark about John McCain: “I like people who weren’t captured.” It was disrespectful, yes. It was also a joke; a wisecrack, offered in response to Sen. McCain’s equally flippant dismissal of Trump supporters as “crazies.”
Mr. Trump never stopped being an entertainer in his campaign. Though his approach went over the heads of the media, in one way it was genius: He basically stopped trying to convince anybody soon after his famous escalator ride in the Trump Tower in Manhattan. He figured out early that his voters didn’t need any more explanation or justification. His argument was completely embodied in “Make America great again” plus his outsize public persona. He only needed to keep his fans jollied up, and fired up, for the long wait ’til election day.
The biggest embarrassment of this campaign has been the sodden pundits who kept insisting on taking oh-so-seriously his every remark. They never understood that Mr. Trump did not speak to lay out a platform. He was inventing almost daily a new episode of the 16-month Trump-for-president reality show to keep his audience from drifting off. Mr. Trump was defined by the liberal media as the angry candidate. A few of his fans obviously were looking for an aggressive outlet, but Mr. Trump was not one of them. His performance over the course of the race was nothing short of remarkable. A man of his years, in rally after rally, kept summoning the juice to give his fans the upbeat, improvisational show they were waiting for.
The pantomime that was universally interpreted by the media as a parody of the disabilities of a New York Times reporter, his defenders pointed out, was actually pretty typical of how he mocks anybody whose words he wishes to satirize. His jokey monologue in the closing stage of the race about his struggles to stay on message was interpreted by some as a sign the pressure was getting to him. C’mon. He was engaged in meta hilarity at the expense of the unemployed campaign professionals who critique his efforts 24 hours a day on the cable channels.
Then there was the vulgar Billy Bush tape. Ninety-nine percent of America that doesn’t work in a media company in midtown recognized instantly that it wasn’t two rapists discussing the finer points of sexual assault. It was one guy clowning for another on the subject of celebrity sex appeal. Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist and auto-contrarian, stealing a line from the New York Post’s Salena Zito, spoke of voters taking Mr. Trump “seriously, not literally.” This was something the media should have understood earlier than it did.
His immigration stance correctly identified the anxiety of less-educated Americans who’ve seen the economy pass them by. Even so, by the end of the campaign, he had talked them down to a policy roughly identical to Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s. His Syria policy is closer to Mr. Obama’s than Hillary’s: He doesn’t believe in spending American money and lives to sort out that country’s problems.
None of this means Mr. Trump is actually prepared to be president, though he might be: Whatever his public persona, in his business life he has shown himself to be shrewd, flexible and capable of learning—especially from his own failed episodes of risk-taking.
He is dismayingly indifferent to the accuracy of his facts. He doesn’t give two hoots about what many of us consider policy holies concerning NATO, nonproliferation, international trade, etc. His platform comes down to “trust me”—a remarkable mandate if you can pull it off. More than anything, though, this column criticized his unwillingness to do what was necessary to win. He kept doubling down unnecessarily on his fan base long after it would have been advisable to reach out to undecideds and assure them that he would not be a crazy or dangerous president.
Indeed, it continues to be our suspicion that Mr. Trump took too long to begin taking his own presidential ambitions seriously. With his shocking win on Tuesday, now he will have to decide in his heart if the outcome was a colossal accident—or the hand of destiny. Ironically, had he lost and become a kibitzer on cable TV, Mr. Trump would have had to start thinking seriously about policy. Now he will have an entire government to help with that. Voters, perhaps shrewdly, saw him as better suited to being a leader than an adviser.
DONALD TRUMP’S ASSAULT ON BOTH PARTIES
Conrad Black
National Post, Nov. 9, 2016
It is not such a surprise that Americans have elevated Donald Trump to the headship of their country. It was improbable at first, because of his raucous personality, and the fact he had never held public office or a high military command (the almost invariable qualifications for a nominee). He financed his own campaign, avoiding the endless demeaning roundel of fundraisers, (and doing quite well selling silly hats and T-shirts). It was also apparently unpromising because he was attacking the entire entrenched leadership of both parties, the Clintons, Obamas, and Bushes, OBushtons, as I called them here last week, and because he was opposed by and deliberately incited the escalated hostility of the national media, and the officious polling organizations.
The whole Trump campaign was audacious because it relied altogether on a broad swath of all socioeconomic groups — it was not a coalition based on pitching to the particular desires of voting blocs. As Trump said on election night, and as his wife had stated in several speeches recently, it was a movement, a mighty national rejection of the prim, robotic flimflam that disguised a corrupt failing system and feckless leadership behind the façade of “bridge-building, inclusiveness,” and self-abasement in the world.
Two premises undergirded the whole enterprise: that the party elders and their apparatus in both parties were castles made of sand and sawdust, and that a majority of Americans were so concerned about the first period of outright decline in American history and when the economic well-being of the middle and working classes had deteriorated outside the downdraft of normal cycles, that they would vote for a purposeful strategy put in plain and politically incorrect language. These were bold conclusions, and even in the aftermath of their thunderous validation, those who right into election night counting were complacently expecting Trump to be sent packing back to his demi-monde of golf clubs, condos and low-brow television, are divided between those who wonder if they had completely misjudged or misheard or just missed what was happening, and the imperishables.
The latter group, including a number of the conservative intellectuals who stormed out of the Republican party and noisily slammed the door behind them, are claiming to be prophets who will be honoured, are proud of the martyrdom they have (unintentionally) chosen, and warn darkly of Trump’s authoritarian tendencies. Such tendencies are less pronounced in the president-elect’s character than in the personality of his chief opponent, and the whole concept is nonsense, given the robustness of the constitutional strength of the legislative and judicial branches of the U.S. government. (All three branches have performed poorly during the past 20 years, which is ultimately why Donald Trump will be the next president, but they are at least proficient in ensuring they are not overrun by the other branches.)
What made Trump such a long shot was the tenacity of the pompous certitude of entitlement of the political class. This is always a dangerous attitude in a country that actually holds free elections. Donald Trump was well known to the public before he started his campaign. He had the means to finance the campaign, used the social media and the conservative talk shows and bloggers to counter the mainline media and exploited their ignorance and malice to gain popularity from the wide section of the public that resented the bias and condescension of the Clinton News Network (CNN) and its ilk.
He knew, from polling and from echelons of the public that he encountered in his entertainment business, that the Archie Bunkers of America were angry and numerous, and that they were decent, plain-spoken, patriotic people, not ignorant slobs in need of guidance from my esteemed but disoriented friends such as (to pick two names out of a distinguishedly full hat) George Will and Fareed Zakaria.
Those who have been routed should have seen it coming. Trump thundered into the nomination race, cleaned up most of the primaries, routed 14 candidates, including five serious governors (Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee, John Kasich, Scott Walker), and three prominent senators (Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio). And is credited with raising the Republican primary vote by 60 per cent in four years.
His entire campaign was an assault on everyone in both parties who was complicit in the blunders of the past 20 years: the soft early response to terrorism, the housing bubble and financial crisis and great recession; the admission of 12 million illegal and unskilled migrants, the disastrous Iraq war, 15 million dropouts from the workforce, immense trade and budgetary deficits, and a doubling of national debt in seven years to produce one per cent economic growth. Given their lengthy intertwined involvement in high government office, the Bushes and Clintons were both obvious targets for Trump’s uproarious billingsgate, and his political incorrectness shattered many taboos and enjoyed a much wider appeal than had been thought possible for many months. He debunked global warming (more or less accurately) as a leftist attempt to hobble capitalism and incidentally destroy the coal and oil industries, and reviled U.S. President Barack Obama and former secretary of state Clinton for their inability to mention “Islamic extremism.”
His attacks in the crowded Republican debates were often brutal and personal: Sen. Rubio’s slight stature and tendency to perspire, Bush’s alleged lack of energy, Sen. Cruz’s claimed ethical lapses, even Carly Fiorina’s (unexceptionable) appearance; it was often gratuitous and unseemly but none of his opponents had any idea how to deal with it. He tapped a tremendous volcanic lava pool of public anger at poor government that has produced the first absolute and comparative decline in American history. Historians of the future will wonder how the political class imagined it could admit so many migrants without taking effective measures to control the southern border, and merely babble garrulously on, year after year, about “comprehensive immigration reform.”…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link —Ed.]
Michael Graham
Weekly Standard, Nov. 9, 2016
Forget Hillary and Trump. The biggest loser Tuesday night was Barack Obama. Yes, his approval rating is above 50 percent. In at least one survey Obama is more popular than Reagan was at the end of his second term. But numbers are fleeting. The facts are not. President Obama's record on foreign and domestic policy is dismal, to say the least. His withdrawal of American power from the world coincided with the rise of ISIS, the ravaging of Syria and a series of successful terror attacks both in the heart of Europe and here on American soil. Would there have been a Brexit, or victories for anti-immigration parties in Europe without the failure of Obama's leadership in the Middle East and North Africa?
President Obama's domestic-policy record is even worse: The weakest economic recovery since the Great Depression; a record number of Americans on food stamps and for the longest time; a stimulus plan that was an economic joke even before "Cash for Clunkers" became a punchline; and a doubling of the national debt in eight short years. And then there's Obamacare. On election night Democratic operative James Carville announced "Obamacare is dead." He's right, but that was true whether Trump or Clinton won.
Obamacare didn't die in the ballot box, it died in the mail box: Millions of Americans getting letters announcing premium increases of 50, 60, even 100 percent. And that's on top of huge deductibles that made their "insurance" little more than a reverse lottery ticket against medical catastrophe. President Obama did this to America on purpose. Obamacare wasn't crippled by being the best deal he could wrangle from the Republicans. It was crafted and passed entirely by Obama and his Democrat allies. He wanted it and he got it. Good and hard.
Obama's supporters shrug off such criticism. They believe Obama will be viewed as a success because history is written by political winners, not masters of healthcare policy. As the first black American to achieve the presidency and the first Democrat to win a popular-vote majority since 1976, Obama fans believe his two White House wins make him a lock for the list of successful presidents. But now President Obama is going to hand the keys of the White House to Donald Trump. It's the biggest of his electoral defeats, but hardly the first. In fact, the devastation of the Democratic Party is Obama's true political legacy.
If Democrats were a species of wildlife, Barack Obama would be indicted under the Endangered Species Act. As Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia reports, the Obama era cost Democrats 11 governorships, 13 U.S. Senate seats, 69 House seats and 913 legislative seats(!). And that's before the 2016 results, in which (for example) Kentucky Republicans won the statehouse for the first time since 1921, and the Iowa GOP picked up the state senate. The Obama Effect has wiped out a generation of Democrats—rising stars like North Carolina's Kay Hagan or Indiana's Evan Bayh or Wisconsin's Russ Feingold—who could be potential POTUS or VP candidates…if they hadn't been defeated in the Obamacare backlash (in Feingold's case, twice!) So who is the face of the post-Obama Democratic Party: Joe Biden? Elizabeth Warren? Bernie Sanders? I'd make a "Golden Girls" wisecrack but they'd all have to play Sophia. (She was the really old one.)
To paraphrase Hillary Clinton, the entire Democratic village went all-in to raise Barack Obama to the White House. He, in turn, razed that village and set it ablaze. Now he's leaving the White House in the hands of a man who spent a year searching for his birth certificate. Because Barack Obama couldn't beat him—not with all the money, all the media and all of his magical "light-bringer" political powers. Barack Obama is a failure. Obamacare is done. His executive orders will be overturned. He has no political successor. There are not "Obama Democrat" to champion his ideology. And the indisputable evidence of Obama's failure will come the moment Donald Trump stands with him on January 20 and takes the oath of office.
Herb Keinon
Jerusalem Post, Nov. 9, 2016
“I love Israel and honor and respect the Jewish tradition and it’s important we have a president who feels the same way,” US President-elect Donald Trump said in a pre-recorded video message to a rally held two weeks ago in a restaurant overseeing the Old City. “My administration will stand side-by-side with the Jewish people and Israel’s leaders to continue strengthening the bridges that connect, not only Jewish Americans and Israelis, but also all Americans and Israelis,” he said. “Together we will stand up to enemies, like Iran, bent on destroying Israel and her people, together we will make America and Israel safe again,.”
Now we will see. The unexpected, improbable, against-the-odds victory Tuesday of Trump over Hillary Clinton undoubtedly shocked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Jerusalem as much as it shocked leaders in capitals throughout the world. Now Netanyahu and his aides will have to begin figuring out what exactly it means for Israel. And that will not be an easy chore, considering that Trump does not have any real practical record on Israel.
While Netanyahu obviously had policy differences with Clinton, at least he knew where she stood and what to expect. Israeli policy-makers, in general, like the predictable; they like to know what they are getting, even if it is not everything they want, because at least in this regard they know how to prepare. Clinton was a known-commodity because she has been involved for so long at a policy level on Israel-related issues. There was a degree of predictability regarding how she would act, and who she could be expected to bring on board her national security team.
No such predictability exists with regard to Trump. He is a blank slate; a wild card. While during the campaign Trump hit the right rhetorical buttons when it comes to Israel –, though he also raised some eyebrows by talking at one stage about US “neutrality” in the conflict with the Palestinians and at another about the need for US allies to pay more of their share of US military assistance – he has no track record. Being the grand marshall of the Israel Day Parade in Manhattan is commendable, but it is not the same as having dealt over the years with the nitty-gritty of Mideast issues..
That being the case there are certain elements of a Trump presidency that had to have Netanyahu smiling on Wednesday morning. The first is Trump's running mate, Mike Pence. The former Indiana governor and congressman is an Evangelical Christian and strong supporter of Israel. He stated at that rally in Jerusalem two weeks ago – shortly after UNESCO voted to expunge any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount – that Jerusalem is the “eternal undivided capital of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.” He called Israel America's “most cherished ally,” and said that he and Trump stand with Israel because “Israel's fight is our fight, because Israel's cause is our cause.” And, unlike Trump, he has a long record of political support for Israel.
Pence is not the only reason Netanyahu is smiling. He is also smiling because the Republicans retained control of both the House and the Senate. During the last eight rocky years of his relationship with Obama, Netanyahu found some solace in having an extremely supportive Congress on his side. And although there was pre-election talk that the Republicans might lose the Senate, that did not transpire. Netanyahu, who in his more than 10 years as Israeli prime minister has never had the opportunity to work alongside a Republican president, will now get the chance to work not only with a president whose worldview is much closer to his own, but also with a president who will be buttressed by a Republican-held Congress whose support for Israel remains extremely strong.
Netanyahu also had to be smiling because as of January 20 there will be sitting in the White House a man who has trashed the Iranian nuclear deal. Though Trump never promised to scrap the deal, as some other early Republican candidates did, he has been scathing in his criticism of the deal, and he obviously does not have any emotional investment in it that could possibly blind him to Iranian violations. It is not clear who will make up Trump's national security team, but it will surely not include those who pushed through the Iranian deal, and are so wedded to that they would do anything to ensure that it succeeds, including overlooking any Iranian behavior that contravenes the agreement.
The prime minister also had to be smiling because groups such as J Street, a Jewish obbying organization that has encouraged Administration pressure on Israel, will lose much of its impact and influence as a result of the election results. J Street's influence stems largely from its connections and access to the Administration, whose work if often did. Tellingly, its head Jeremy Ben-Ami borrowed a football metaphor in saying to the New York Times in 2009 that “our No. 1 agenda item is to do whatever we can in Congress to act as the president’s blocking back.” The job of the “blocking back” is to protect the quarterback. But now that the quarterback has changed, and the playbook will be completely different, the importance of that particular blocking back will be greatly diminished.
Netanyahu has to be smiling as well at some of the names of candidates being bandied about to fill various high profile positions in a Trump administration, first and foremost as the new secretary of state. Among the names being discussed for secretary of state, for example, are former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, a leading Trump supporter, and former ambassador to the UN John Bolton. The appointment of either would be loudly applauded in the Prime Minister's Office, as their outlooks on the region and its threats are very similar to those of Netanyahu. Another leading candidate, current chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tennessee), would also be applauded, as he was a leading opponent of the Iran deal…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link —Ed.]
Defeat Likely Spells the End of Clinton Dynasty: Daniel Halper & Marisa Schultz, New York Post, Nov. 10, 2016 — Hillary Clinton’s second defeat in her quest for the White House — capped by a humbling concession speech Wednesday — may be the farewell for a family that has been Democratic royalty for nearly three decades.
Reminder: Hillary Clinton Lost Because She’s Hillary Clinton : Heather Wilhelm, National Review, Nov. 11, 2016—Well, that didn’t take long. Just hours after Hillary Clinton lost the presidency to Donald Trump — and hours after she left her disconsolate supporters at New York City’s Javits Center, hightailing it to the confines of Manhattan’s Peninsula Hotel—cries of “sexism” erupted across America’s fruited plain.
Iran Nuclear Deal Could Collapse Under Trump: Carol Morello, Washington Post, Nov. 9, 2016—The future of the historic nuclear agreement with Iran is in the air with the prospect that a Donald Trump administration could take steps that would cause Iran to abandon its commitments, experts said Wednesday.
What Israel Doesn’t Need From Trump: Jonathan S. Tobin, Commentary, Nov. 9, 2016—What assumptions can we make about U.S. foreign policy in the next four years, especially with regard to the Middle East? The first, I think, is that the contrast between Trump’s policies and those of President Obama will not be as great as people might think.
