Political Irony

© Jim Morin

Donald Trump claims he hires the “best and brightest”, but often the record shows otherwise, unless what they are best at included being a con artist.

And even if it were true, do we really want a president who is the delegator in chief? That sounds like the job done by Dubya, who pretty much delegated most things to his vice president.

To his credit, the look on Trumps’ face during Sarah Palin’s endorsement seem to say that he couldn’t understand a thing she said.

UPDATE: A reader sent me this link to The Shovel, which is Australia’s answer to The Onion. The title says it all: Palin Brings Much-Needed Intellectual Rigour To Trump Campaign.

While the Republican presidential candidates have been talking up a storm about how they would bomb the Islamic State (IS/ISIS/ISIL) back to the stone age and that Obama is too weak, Obama has been quietly, effectively doing something about the Islamic State. He’s been cutting off their sources of income.

First we blew up their oil refineries, tankers and trucks that were being used by IS to sell oil on the black market. Then we found and bombed the building that had been serving as their bank, destroying millions of dollars in cash.

Why has it taken so long? Because we were being careful to limit civilian casualties. No point in helping IS radicalize even more jihadists or foreign donors.

And that’s the whole point. Carpet bombing IS like the GOP chicken hawks want to do would only create sympathy for IS from Muslims around the world, which would result in them sending more money and fighters to IS. After all, the 9/11 attacks (carried out mainly with box cutters) didn’t require that much money. Overreacting to IS would just make the situation worse; overreacting to 9/11 by attacking Iraq was what made creation of IS possible in the first place. Using nuclear weapons against them (making the sand glow) would be one of the stupidest things we could do.

So is Obama’s strategy working? It appears to be working very well. A leaked document from IS (along with other corroborating reports) contains this revealing passage:

On account of the exceptional circumstances the Islamic State is facing, it has been decided to reduce the salaries that are paid to all mujahideen by half, and it is not allowed for anyone to be exempted from this decision, whatever his position.

Other evidence is that IS has lost 25% of its territory from their peak a year and a half ago. And controlling land is vitally important to IS, as they can’t have a caliphate without territory.

The downside of all this is that as IS loses territory and money, it will make them more likely to commit terrorist attacks abroad in a desperate effort to get us to overreact. Will we be fooled again?

The Republican presidential race might have reached a tipping point. Up until now, the GOP establishment has been primarily ignoring Donald Trump – hoping he will go away – or occasionally taking pot shots at him. To their dismay, these shots have completely (and unsurprisingly) backfired, mainly because the environment of anger, racism, and incivility that feeds Trump’s popularity was largely created by the Republican establishment themselves (with the limitless help of Fox News).

But suddenly, the GOP establishment seems to be embracing Trump and even promoting him! What could make Trump so abruptly appealing? After all, Trump is still Trump (and might even be getting worse). How did this happen?

Two things. First, the Republicans have run out of establishment alternatives to Trump. After Jeb Bush bit the dust, their last hope was Marco Rubio, but they have come to the realization that Rubio doesn’t have the cajones to stop Trump. Instead, the race has already narrowed to two people. Secondly, and most important, as the Huffington Post puts it, “The GOP Establishment Has Found The One Thing That Can Make Donald Trump Palatable: Ted Cruz“.

Cruz has already done tremendous damage to the Republican party, including forcing a costly and unpopular government shutdown and pissing off almost everyone in Washington. His support is limited to the most hard-core right-wing evangelicals, and he doesn’t even try to appeal to other Republicans, let alone the independents who typically decide presidential elections. In fact, he delights in attacking everyone, wearing their hatred of him as a badge of honor. And on top of all that, Cruz isn’t even a very good evangelical.

Plus there is the question of whether Cruz is even eligible to be president.

The GOP establishment has come the realization that Cruz could be the bomb (or perhaps straw) that destroys the Republican party. As Bob Dole put it on Wednesday, it would be “cataclysmic” if Cruz wins the primary. “If he’s the nominee, we’re going to have wholesale losses in Congress and state offices and governors and legislatures.”

The same day, former Senate majority leader Trent Lott said that he would prefer Trump over Cruz. The day before that, the governor of the all-important state of Iowa, Terry Branstad (the longest serving governor in the country), broke his neutrality to encourage Republican caucus goers to vote against Cruz. And then, out of the blue, Sarah Palin endorsed Trump.

Ted Cruz represents an existential threat. While Trump – despite the fact that he is racist, sexist, even fascist – is all bluster. Perhaps the GOP is hoping that the voters won’t take him seriously.

Indeed, so what if Trump loses to Clinton? As one anonymous GOP establishment figure put it, “I’m rooting for Hillary. She can’t win a mandate, so we hold the House and don’t get slaughtered in the Senate. We will have a great midterm in 2018 running against her. We are a great opposition party.” They figure that they can distance themselves from Trump more easily, limiting the collateral damage.

As another anonymous GOP activist put it, there is a “feeling that with Trump, it’s easier for House and Senate candidates to separate themselves from the top of the ticket versus a fellow senator and particularly one who is running a hard-right campaign with no apparent desire to do outreach to independents and minorities.”

And that is how Donald Trump became the darling of the Republican establishment overnight.

During Sunday night’s Democratic debate, the Republican National Committee did something unusual. They sent out four real-time emails to reporters defending Bernie Sanders against attacks from Hillary Clinton.

One of the emails defended Sanders’ single-payer health care plan. Another offered a rebuttal to Clinton’s attack on Sanders over gun control. A third defended Sanders’ argument that Clinton is too close to Wall Street and the pharmaceutical industry.

In addition, the chief strategist and spokesman for the RNC spent much of the evening live tweeting pro-Sanders commentary, even using the hashtag #FeelTheBern. At one point, he even chided Sanders for his poor response to a debate question and added “come on we are trying to help u“.

After the debate was over, a Republican PAC promoted the narrative that Sanders won the debate. And Karl Rove’s American Crossroads started attacking Clinton as a “Wall Street insider”.

Since when did the RNC develop a crush on democratic socialist Bernie Sanders?

Are they just trying to pick their opponent in the general election? After all, Republican presidential candidate John Kasich said last week “We’re going to win every state if Bernie Sanders is the nominee.”

Even if Hillary retains her lock on the Democratic nomination, bolstering her main challenger will force her to use up campaign money too early, and may push her to the left, which the GOP could use against her in the general election.

Like most Republican candidates, Marco Rubio condemned Obama’s negotiated release of prisoners from Iran, just like they condemned the nuclear deal that Obama negotiated to lift sanctions against Iran in exchange for Iran giving up their nuclear weapons ambitions.

Iran released five prisoners, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, who was convicted of espionage. In exchange, the US gave clemency to seven Iranians imprisoned or charged, not because of spying or even terrorism, but with sanctions violations.

The Republicans claim that the US citizens released by Iran were not prisoners, but were hostages, innocent of the charges used to imprison them. Rezaian’s situation was complicated by the fact that he holds dual US-Iranian citizenship. Iran does not recognize dual citizenship, so he was tried as an Iranian.

Of course, we will never know if Rezaian was actually spying for the US government. Personally, I don’t think so. However, the US has a long history of using journalists as spies, so it wouldn’t surprise me much.

But Rubio wasn’t content to just condemn Obama’s actions (it is typically a requirement to condemn Obama for anything he does). He had to take it one step further into irony.

Rubio claimed that Obama was weak, and that he (Rubio) would have negotiated with Iran the way Ronald Reagan did.

I guess Rubio is hoping that nobody will remember that Reagan (with Oliver North) sold arms to Iran (which was illegal trading with the enemy) in exchange for releasing US prisoners. Not content with one act of treason, Reagan and North then turned around and used the proceeds from the arms sale to Iran to illegally fund the right-wing Contra rebels who were trying to overthrow the democratically elected left-wing Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Reagan repeatedly lied about this, and later in a TV address to the nation even admitted he had lied. It was a huge scandal for Reagan, and was certainly grounds for impeachment (seems far worse than lying about sleeping with an intern). Not to mention a huge blow for America’s reputation.

But Rubio is holding up Reagan as an example of how to negotiate with Iran.

What’s next? Would Rubio like to overthrow the government of Iran and install a dictator, like we did with the coup in 1953 that installed the Shah of Iran and caused all the enmity between us?