The View from Right Field

Beating Donald Trump: The Abraham Lincoln Option

In 1854, Stephen Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska Act brought Abraham Lincoln back into politics.¹  Lincoln even ran for election to the Illinois General Assembly again (he had left the legislature in 1842 and had only served one term in Congress since).  The election of 1854 produced a thirteen-seat majority of anti-Nebraska people in the legislature.  Seeing an opportunity, Lincoln resigned his newly-won seat in the legislature to try for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois.²

The problem was that the anti-Nebraska majority included a mixture of Whigs (Lincoln was a Whig), anti-slavery Democrats, a few members of the new Republican party, and others.  The only thing that united them was their opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act.  On the first ballot, Lincoln led the vote, but he didn’t have a majority.  He couldn’t get the anti-Nebraska Democrats to vote for him.  After a number of ballots, Lincoln realized he wasn’t going to win, and, if he continued, the regular Democrats might eventually win the seat.  Lincoln withdrew and threw his support to Lyman Trumbull, an anti-Nebraska Democrat, who won by one vote.³ 

Why I Will Never, Ever Vote for Donald Trump: Donald Trump and the First Amendment

It is not often I have my posts confirmed so quickly by events, but Donald Trump did it on Friday with respect to my post on Thursday that “I Have Too Much Respect for My Country and Myself to Vote for Donald Trump.”  In Fort Worth on Friday, Mr. Trump went after the news media, The New York Times and The Washington Post in particular:

“One of the things I’m going to do if I win, and I hope we do and we’re certainly leading.  I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.  We’re going to open up those libel laws.  So when The New York Times writes a hit piece which is a total disgrace or when The Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected.”

Fortunately, even if he wins, he won’t be able to do that.  The Founders gave us the First Amendment to stop people like him from doing things like that.  See New York Times Co. v. Sullivan.

Syria and President Obama’s “Don’t Do Stupid Stuff” Foreign Policy

President Obama (or one of his aides) famously said that his main foreign policy doctrine is “Don’t do stupid stuff.”¹  Part of this, I believe, is a way of distinguishing himself and his policy(ies) from George W. Bush’s policy in Iraq.  We certainly know the stupid stuff of George W. Bush’s policies in Iraq: invading without a plan for what to do next; the 3½ years it took to figure out things weren’t going well; etc.  I would argue, however (actually, I have already argued), that what happened in Iraq since we left in 2011 can’t be blamed on George W. Bush.  He wasn’t in charge then.  It is entirely possible that, if we had had a president with a different point of view and different priorities than President Obama, things in Iraq could be a lot different today.²

Which brings me to the point of this post: President Obama’s policy in Syria.  In an effort to “don’t do stupid stuff,” his policy in Syria has pretty much been to not do anything at all.  And when he has done something, it has usually been late and half-hearted.  It is almost as if he is so concerned about doing something stupid, that he is afraid to do anything. 

Hillary Clinton: The Paranoia of Richard Nixon – Without the Political Ability

[UPDATE (3/1/16 9:15 am): I probably overdid this post.  See my follow-up post on Tuesday, March 1, for what I hope is a somewhat more nuanced view.]

Depending on what happens next Tuesday in the so-called SEC primary, aka Super Tuesday, Hillary Clinton may finally be on the road to the Democratic nomination for president.  Even if she succeeds, however, it will mostly be a comment on how long it took her, not on how well she did.

When I look at Hillary Clinton, the one defining characteristic of her campaign¹ is paranoia.  As I commented before, it was probably paranoia about what she calls the “vast right-wing conspiracy” that led her to set up the separate email system that is dogging her campaign and causing her to dissemble as to why she set it up and what was actually on it.

Even though she continues to say that she never got anything on her private server that was “marked classified” (which is a lot less than she originally said), does anybody really believe her?  And even it happens to be true, it seems more likely that it was because people took the confidentiality markings off things before they sent them to her or because things weren’t properly marked, than because the information wasn’t confidential in the first place.

I Have Too Much Respect for My Country and Myself to Vote for Donald Trump

I recently read A Passion for Leadership by former Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.  I am now reading an unusual little book, Run Mitch, Run, about the decision process Mitch Daniels, and some friends, went through as Mr. Daniels considered running for president in 2012.  Reading those two books (and Mitch Daniel’s prior book, Keeping the Republic, which he wrote in 2011 and I read a couple of years ago), you just cannot help but be impressed by the quality of these two people.  Smart.  Honorable.  Decent.  Worthy of respect.  People you would have no problem trusting to lead your country.  And people you would follow if they did.¹

Then you look at the man apparently leading the race for the Republican presidential nomination this year, Donald Trump.  Of the many words that could be used to describe Donald Trump, honorable, decent and worthy of respect do not make the list.  Maybe smart does, but it is the kind of smart that is looking out for itself, not for other people or for the country.

How Can You Have a Ceasefire When People Aren’t Going to Cease Firing?

And when they get to decide who they are going to fire at?

Secretary of State John Kerry has been pushing for a ceasefire in Syria and he now claims to have one.  Except that nobody has to cease firing at ISIS and the Nusra Front.  Plus Syria has said that it will continue firing at “other terrorist groups connected to” ISIS and the Nusra Front, whatever that means.  Also, Russia has said, since it moved into Syria last October, that it is attacking ISIS, except it isn’t.  It has been hitting the moderate rebel groups that we were supposedly supporting, and we have apparently done nothing about it.

I appreciate that John Kerrey is trying, but a ceasefire where nobody ceases firing and people get to pick who they keep firing at, isn’t a ceasefire.  Except for anybody naïve enough to comply with it.

The Passing of Justice Scalia and the Importance of November 2016

A short comment (more when I get back):

The passing of Justice of Antonin Scalia yesterday emphasizes the importance of the presidential election in November – and the need to elect a Republican.  I previously talked about the importance of electing a Republican to protect our rights under the First Amendment.  Similarly, consider that, if the request for a stay in the case of Chamber of Commerce v. EPA , i.e., the case involving the EPA's new Clean Power Plan, had come before the Supreme Court next week, instead of this past week, the stay would not have been granted, and the Obama administration’s rules would have been in force for years before the Supreme Court had to chance to consider the case (not unlike what happened in Michigan v. EPA). 

And when I say we need to elect a Republican, I mean a Republican.  Not Donald Trump – because nobody has an idea who he would appoint to the Supreme Court or why.

Break

I'm taking a short break.  I'll be back shortly after pitchers and catchers report (which is February 19).

NATO Is Gearing Up to Meet Russia’s New Style Threats. This Is Big.

While everybody is focusing on New Hampshire, a very important meeting of NATO defense ministers is scheduled for Brussels tomorrow. Julian Barnes reports in The Wall Street Journal:

“The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is developing a new strategy to speed decision-making and improve its response to the kind of unconventional warfare the West says Russia has used in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. …

A new hybrid warfare playbook would attempt to lay out the kind of assistance the alliance would provide should a member state come under outside pressure from Russia or another country.  Such support could include sending cyber experts to help respond to computer hacking attacks, communication specialists to counter propaganda or even the deployment of NATO’s rapid reaction spearhead force. …

We Know the Problems With the Emails Hillary Clinton Kept. What About the Ones She Deleted?

As more and more questions arise with respect to all of the confidential information that was on Hillary Clinton’s personal email server, it might be useful to remember the original question regarding Secretary Clinton’s emails: What did she delete before she turned her emails over to the State Department and the server itself over to the Justice Department?

While Secretary Clinton has assured us that only personal emails were deleted, given the recent revelations, a couple of new questions arise with respect to those deleted emails.  First, given that Secretary Clinton initially told us there was no secret information in her emails, and we now find out that there was, even if it was not literally marked confidential, can we believe her assurance that only personal emails were deleted?