Will the Republican Party Tell the GOP Base to Go Pound Sand?

posted by Kurt Schlicter at Townhall

Who needs those icky rank-and-file Republican voters who ring the doorbells, make the calls, and write the checks? Not the Republican Party! At least that’s what some at the top of the party pyramid think. Some of this elite cabal is utterly disregarding what amounts to the base’s effective unanimity that current GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel needs to go away. After three terms of ignominious failure, she is pushing for a fourth go ‘round as the Republican National Committee (RNC) head honcho and, incredibly, a declining but still significant portion of the 168 committee members who will elect the new RNC Chair at a swank Cali retreat on January 27, 2023, are still behind her. Re-electing Ronna would be a raised middle finger to the base, prompting the base to return the favor. And the base has a lot more middle fingers.

I am backing super-lawyer and long-time RNC member Harmeet Dhillon. We need new blood. We need new ideas and energy. I say we need Harmeet – smart, savvy, and ready for reform. But we also need to make a statement that the GOP is going to hold its leaders accountable for failure not matter how much the party poohbahs want to avoid it. How do we fix this crumbling culture if we refuse to fix ourselves?

What is this elitist love of failure combined with a steadfast determination to ignore the will of the actual voters? It’s inexplicable – perhaps it is some form of insanity, with insanity being defined as doing the same thing again and again expecting a different result. Or perhaps they have a good faith belief that after five failed elections in a row Ronna is going to snap her losing streak, though she has not bothered to explain how she proposes to do that or what changes she intends to make. Of course, she does not intend to make any changes, but she will not tell us that because she won’t talk to us. While appearing with Steve Bannon, she explained that she has no intention of bothering to make her case to the GOP base. Instead, she insisted, she would focus her campaign on the 168 committee members.

Hear that, GOP base? You plebes should go cool your jets, wait for your betters to make their decision, and then obey. The woman who wants your blood, sweat and (far too many) tears – as well as your hard-earned cash – doesn’t want your input.

Well, we’ve got some input, and it’s sure not going to be a check made out to the RNC.

Let’s be clear – there is no dispute that the base wants Ronna run out of town. My own unscientific polls – well, they are at least as scientific as climate change – of the kind of GOP stalwarts who make up my Twitter readership have been devastating. On December 5, 2022, Ronna managed to secure a big .6% (!) of the 5,992 respondents. On December 17, 2022, she got a hefty 1.1%(!) out of 4,957 voters. I guess that’s an improvement. She’s gone from totally rejected to statistically insignificantly less totally rejected.

An average of .85% support – ouch. Here are a few things more popular than Ronna McDaniel:

-    Toe fungus

-    Rage Against the Machine

-    That perverted colonel who is into puppy sex play

-    A perverted colonel who is into puppy sex play who also has toe fungus and likes Rage Against the Machine

Again, Ronna is not bothering to make her case to you, and why would she?  She does not have a case to make. What is the case for Ronna McDaniel IV: Electric Loserroo?

-    She’s a nice person

-    She wants to be Chair again

-    She needs a job

-    She tried hard

-    You should not switch horses in midstream

As a lawyer, this is the kind of case that we what we refer to as “a total loser.” Nice person? Don’t care. Buy a dog. Wants to be Chair again? I want a pony. Needs a job? McDonalds is hiring. You know she’ll land a cushy gig with the Eagle Forum for Families, Eagles, and America. She tried hard? What, is that exceptional? Is that above and beyond? And we should not switch horses in midstream? When should we switch? Now is the longest possible time until an election – if not now, when?

There is no case for Ronna. Yet she still has support. Why?

Because she is friends with a lot of the voting members? Loyalty is good, but shouldn’t that loyalty be to the party, not a person? Because a lot of people like the way business is done at the GOP – with emphasis on “business?” Harmeet has made clear she’ll audit the RNC’s (shaky and sketchy) books and crack down on consultant grifting. That’s got to make the consultant class quake. Because if the rubes block her, then the rubes will get the idea that they matter? Sadly, that seems to be a big part of it.

You have gotten uppity, serfs. How dare you think you matter?

But the base does matter, and the consequences of rejecting the base will be devastating to a party that’s already reeling. What happens if the RNC goes ahead and moons us? If you wanted to find a better way to crush morale, dry up the volunteer pool, and freeze small-dollar donations, tell the base to pound sand and double down on a five-time loser. All the obnoxious texts in the world dunning people for a few bucks is not going to help. 

They want you to take what you are given and like it. They want you to knock and dial and write checks, but they don’t want you to have a say. And that’s unacceptable.

The good news is that they can hear you. They do hear you. RNC members are fleeing the sinking ship. Ronna’s support is slipping away. It’s less significant than it was before Harmeet got in and challenged her – inertia was her friend – but now there is a choice, and those 168 people purporting to represent us must choose. The RNC committee members are feeling the heat – heat you can increase by reaching out, politely, by finding the three reps from your state at www.HireHarmeet.com and sending them an email telling them what you want.

Do not sit this out, people. You matter. And the election for the RNC Chair will tell us if the Republican Party agrees.

Choose wisely, RNC.

X22, And we Know, and more- December 22

 

For those in the path of that blizzard that's coming, be careful out there.

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Are Universities Doomed? ~ VDH

Elite university degrees certify very little. 

And the secret is out.

by Victor Davis Hanson for American Greatness

In a famous exchange in the The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway wrote: “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”

“Gradually” and “suddenly” applies to higher education’s implosion. 

During the 1990s “culture wars” universities were warned that their chronic tuition hikes above the rate of inflation were unsustainable. 

Their growing manipulation of blanket federal student loan guarantees, and part-time faculty and graduate teaching assistants always was suicidal. 

Left-wing indoctrination, administrative bloat, obsessions with racial preferences, arcane, jargon-filled research, and campus-wide intolerance of diverse thought short-changed students, further alienated the public—and often enraged alumni.

Over the last 30 years, enrollments in the humanities and history crashed. So did tenure-track faculty positions. Some $1.7 trillion in federally backed student loans have only greenlighted inflated tuition—and masked the contagion of political indoctrination and watered-down courses. 

 But “gradually” imploding has now become “suddenly.” Zoom courses, a declining pool of students, and soaring costs all prompt the public to question the college experience altogether. 

Nationwide undergraduate enrollment has dropped by more than 650,000 students in a single year—or over 4 percent alone from spring 2021 to 2022, and some 14 percent in the last decade. Yet the U.S. population still increases by about 2 million people a year.

Men account for about 71 percent of the current shortfall of students. Women number almost 60 percent of all college students—an all-time high. 

Monotonous professors hector students about “toxic masculinity,” as “gender” studies proliferate. If the plan was to drive males off campus, universities have succeeded beyond their wildest expectations. 

The number of history majors has collapsed by 50 percent in just the last 20 years. Tenured history positions have declined by one-third to half at major state universities. 

In the last decade alone, English majors across the nation’s universities have fallen by a third.

At Yale University, administrative positions have soared over 150 percent in the last two decades. But the number of professors increased by just 10 percent. In a new low/high, Stanford recently enrolled 16,937 undergraduate and graduate students, but lists 15,750 administrative staff—in near one-to-one fashion.

In the past, such costly praetorian bloat would have sparked a faculty rebellion. Not now. The new six-figure salaried “diversity, equity, and inclusion” commissars are feared and exempt from criticism.

Since 2020, the old proportional-representation admissions quotas have expanded into weird “reparatory” admissions. Purported “marginalized populations” have often been admitted at levels greater than percentages in the general population. 

Consequently, “problematic” standardized tests are damned as biased and antithetical to “diversity.” 

To accommodate radical diversity reengineering, the only demographic deemed expendable are white males. Their plunging numbers on campus, especially from the working class, are now much less than their percentages in the general population—regardless of grades or test scores. 

At Yale, the class of 2026 is listed as 50 percent white and 55 percent female. Fourteen percent were admitted as “legacies.” In sum, qualified but poor white males without privilege or connections seem mostly excluded. 

Stanford’s published 2025 class profile claims a student body of “23 percent white.” Fewer than half of the class is male. Stanford mysteriously does not release the numbers of those successfully admitted without SAT tests—but recently conceded it rejects about 70 percent of those with perfect SAT scores.

In fact, universities are quietly junking test score requirements. Ironically, these time-honored standardized tests were originally designed to offer those from underprivileged backgrounds, or less competitive high schools, a meritocratic pathway into elite schools. 

At Cornell, students push for pass/fail courses only and the abolition of all grades. At the New School in New York, students demand that everyone receives “A” grades. Dean’s lists and class and school rankings are equally suspect as counterrevolutionary. Even as courses are watered down, entitled students still assume that their admission must automatically guarantee graduation—or else!

Skeptical American employers, to remain globally competitive, will likely soon administer their own hiring tests. They already suspect that prestigious university degrees are hollow and certify very little.

Traditional colleges will seize the moment and expand by sticking to meritocratic criteria as proof of the competency of their prized graduates. 

Private and online venues will also fill a national need to teach Western civilization and humanities courses—by non-woke faculty who do not institutionalize bias. 

More students will continue to seek vocational training alternatives. Some will get their degrees online for a fraction of the cost. 

Alumni will either curb giving, put further restrictions on their gifting, or disconnect. 

Eventually, even elite schools will lose their current veneer of prestige. Their costly cattle brands will be synonymous with equality-of-result, overpriced indoctrination echo chambers, where therapy replaced singular rigor and their tarnished degrees become irrelevant. 

How ironic that universities are rushing to erode meritocratic standards—history’s answer to the age-old, pre-civilizational bane of tribal, racial, class, elite, and insider prejudices and bias that eventually ensure poverty and ruin for all.

GOP Can’t Be Successful Until Mitch McConnell Is Gone

Republican voters are desperately concerned about the country and are looking for bold and persuasive leadership instead of comfort with a few small, intermittent successes.

posted by Mollie Hemingway at The Federalist

Comments Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made on Tuesday show why he has become the single biggest obstacle to GOP success.

The Kentucky Republican claimed giving more money to Ukraine is “the No. 1 priority for the United States right now, according to most Republicans.” The new $1.7 trillion Democrat spending bill he enthusiastically supports would give Ukraine another roughly $45 billion in assistance, bringing the total over the past eight months to more than $100 billion, a staggering figure even if it weren’t happening during a time of inflation, looming recession, and other serious domestic problems.

The comment about Republican priorities is so false as to be completely delusional. Among the many concerns Republican voters have with Washington, D.C., a failure to give even more money to Ukraine simply does not rank.

A large coalition of conservative groups, including the Heritage Foundation and the Conservative Partnership Institute, publicly opposed ramming through more Ukraine support during the lame-duck session before Republicans take over control of the House on Jan. 3, 2023. Strong pluralities and majorities of Republicans have told pollsters they want decreases, not increases, in foreign spending and global military involvement.

Many Republican voters support helping Ukraine fight Russia’s unjust invasion, but it is absolutely nowhere near their top issue, contrary to McConnell’s false claim. It ranked higher as a priority before American taxpayers gave Ukraine more than was given to their war effort by nearly every other country in the world combined. But even at the height of support for the effort, before it turned into a massive proxy war with an unclear relationship to the U.S. national interest, it was not the top issue for Republicans, coming behind the economy and the U.S. border.

A majority of Americans polled a few months ago said more money should be given to Ukraine only after wealthy European countries match what Americans have already sent — something nowhere near happening.

Republicans care deeply about borders and national sovereignty, but they rank the protection of their own open border far above the protection of the borders of other countries. It is worth remembering that the longest government shutdown in U.S. history occurred in 2019 over a fight between Congress and President Donald Trump over whether to commit a relatively paltry $5 billion to protect our country’s southern border, which Congress had refused to fund.

About that $1.7 Trillion Spending Package

Another comment from McConnell also shocked Republicans. Of the $1.7 trillion left-wing spending spree McConnell is working so hard to help Democrats pass, he said, unbelievably, that he was “pretty proud of the fact that with a Democratic president, Democratic House, and Democratic Senate, we were able to achieve through this omnibus spending bill essentially all of our priorities.” As an indication of how deeply sick and broken and unserious the Senate is, no one had even begun to read the lengthy bill, which was put forward just hours before votes began.

The American people voted for Republicans to take over control of the House of Representatives, and House Republicans had begged McConnell to push for a smaller, short-term bill to keep the government funded while also giving them a rare opportunity to weigh in on Biden’s policy goals. McConnell allies dismissed House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy and other House members who tried to persuade Republican senators not to support Democrats’ spending frenzy.

Budgets are policy documents, and the only leverage Republicans have is to wait a few weeks for when they will have a much stronger hand to weigh in on every issue that matters. By ramming through the $1.7 trillion package during the lame-duck session, Republicans will have significantly less ability over the next year to fight against Democrats’ destruction of rule of law in the Department of Justice, the failure to protect American borders, the destruction of the military, and Democrat collusion with Big Tech to suppress conservatives and their ideas.

The spending bill McConnell asserted was good for all of his priorities rewards the FBI with brand new headquarters and ups the funding for the DOJ to enable it to go after even more of its political opponents while protecting its political allies.

It’s perhaps worth remembering that during the 2020 Georgia runoff campaign, McConnell blocked efforts to increase funding for Americans who had their businesses and jobs shut down by government mandate during the response to Covid-19. Spending is not a problem for him, so long as the right people receive the funds.

Republicans Need a Leader Who Shares Their Goals

What support McConnell has from Republicans largely comes from doing his job well when it comes to judicial nominations. I myself co-wrote a book on the topic. He is rightly praised for his work in getting conservative judges and justices confirmed and for stopping one liberal judicial nominee, Merrick Garland. It is not praiseworthy, however, that he encouraged President Trump to nominate Garland as attorney general and voted to confirm him when President Biden did nominate him.

It is noteworthy that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has matched McConnell’s record on judges, and with far less fanfare from his allies. Perhaps Democrats demand more of their leaders than competence at only a few aspects of their job. That Schumer is capable of doing what McConnell has done shows it’s not a particularly unique skill set.

McConnell allies also like to say McConnell is good at stopping Democrat legislation. Indeed, McConnell did contribute to what few successes there were in the last two years, such as stopping the poorly named Equality Act. Certainly, he played small ball well enough to keep Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona from voting to get rid of the filibuster. Again, whatever frustration Republican voters have with McConnell should not keep them from acknowledging these limited successes.

However, Republican voters are desperately concerned about the country and are looking for bold and persuasive leadership instead of comfort with a few small, intermittent successes. They also seek leaders who don’t hate them. Frustration with McConnell’s well-known and long-established disdain for Republican voters is becoming a serious problem.

The politically toxic McConnell has continuously ranked as the country’s least popular politician, well behind Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. He is so disliked by Americans that he is underwater by an average of 35.3 points in polls gauging his favorability.

Unfortunately for Republicans, he has been the top elected Republican in the country for the last two years, a period marked mostly by inexcusable impotence, fecklessness, and muddled messaging from the GOP.

Rather than present a coherent and persuasive vision of what Republican control of the Senate might look like, or even demonstrating consistent opposition to Democrat policies, too often McConnell overtly or covertly helped Democrats pass their signature policy goals. He had his deputy Sen. John Cornyn negotiate a bill to restrict Second Amendment rights. He notoriously and embarrassingly caved on a promise to help Democrats get huge numbers to pass their CHIPS subsidy, giving Biden a huge win he could celebrate with Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo two weeks before the midterm elections.

McConnell also famously trashed Republican candidates and the voters who selected them, refused to advocate strenuously for the candidates, and failed to develop or pursue a persuasive message to Americans for voting to give Republicans control of the Senate.

When Democrats poured $75 million — not even counting the outside spending — into defending Mark Kelly’s Senate seat in Arizona, McConnell left Republican challenger Blake Masters high and dry. Masters had only $9 million. Instead, McConnell interfered in Alaska’s Senate race even though the top two contenders were both Republican. He gave his valuable cash to weak Republican Lisa Murkowski, the candidate who did not even win the Alaska Republican Party’s endorsement! Murkowski is known for not voting to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, among other notable decisions.

After the disappointing midterm loss, McConnell blamed others. He also allowed a dozen Republican senators to vote for a bill that would enable assaults on Republican voters who, on religious grounds, oppose redefining marriage.

So long as Mitch McConnell is the top elected Republican in D.C., eagerly trashing Republican voters, vociferously advocating for Democrat policy goals, pushing $1.7 trillion Democrat spending packages, and weakly fighting for whatever Republican goals he can be bothered to pursue, Republicans have a major problem. This is beyond obvious.

Everyone outside D.C. knows this even if few inside D.C. are willing to acknowledge it. Until they do, the Republican Party will continue to suffer.

Josh Hawley Makes Fun of Porn, and Too-Online Liberals Go Berserk

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

Josh Hawley recently appeared at America Fest 2022 (a Turning Point USA conference), and he made a comment that has too-online liberals going berserk.

While speaking, Hawley committed the unthinkable wrong, and you may want to sit down for this, of making fun of pornography. He even suggested that men (gasp!) ask real-life women out on dates in lieu of sitting in front of their computer screens doing things I’m not going to type out here.

That got Aaron Rupar mini-me Acyn’s attention, and he quickly posted a clip meant to mock Hawley. He made a second response as well that he quickly deleted. The internet is forever, though.

Hawley’s suggestion that porn isn’t superior to having a real relationship had people melting down in the replies.

To so many (on the left, specifically), it is unfathomable that a person could simply be in a loving, monogamous relationship. In this case, Hawley’s wife is objectively attractive, Harvard-educated, and has argued successfully before the Supreme Court. I’m pretty sure he’s happy with his situation. And still, trolls who have probably never touched a real woman that isn’t their mother can’t help but be triggered that Hawley might prefer that to having a detrimental porn addiction.

Get it? If you don’t take in hours of videos of people you don’t know having sex, you must be gay. Absolutely hilarious!

I find this entire thing sad. Porn addiction is an epidemic in the United States, to the point where it’s unquantifiable how many people and relationships it has destroyed. Whether we are talking about the women involved behind the camera, many of which are trafficked and/or feel like they have no choice, or those who partake in it, the damage can be severe.

That’s especially true for men, millions of which have no ability to connect with an actual woman because their view of sex and feminity has been so warped. I get that some conservatives take the libertarian position on this. Let’s just say that I disagree. I think things that are profoundly harmful to the health of society should be called out for what they are.

People are broken, and pretending that their brokenness is fine will only lead them into further despair. It’s easy for someone to play tough guy on the internet about this stuff. It’s a whole different thing when they are alone, consumed by loneliness they are too embarrassed to admit to. Men need to be told the truth, and the truth is that porn addictions will destroy them.

Kari Lake Legal Team Finds 42.5 Percent of Ballots Examined Were Invalid

Bob Hoge reporting for RedState 

Arizona Republican Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s legal team said Wednesday that a review of 113 randomly chosen ballots cast in the November election found that 48—or 42.5 percent—were invalid because they were “19-inch ballots produced on 20-inch paper.” It’s kind of hard to contemplate that in such a high-tech world, ridiculous errors like this could still happen. You can’t get the ballot size right? Come on.

Lake lost to Democrat Secretary of State Katie Hobbs in the November election by less than 18,000 votes out of a total of over 2.5 million cast.

As we reported, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson on Monday threw out eight of the ten claims in Lake’s December 9 lawsuit but allowed two to stand. The claims allege an intentional plot by officials to manipulate the election in favor of Hobbs. Thompson ordered a two-day trial which started Wednesday.

Azcentral describes the two remaining charges:

That a Maricopa County elections official intentionally caused ballot-on-demand printers to malfunction on Election Day, and that enough “identifiable” votes were lost to cost her the election.

That employees at Runbeck Election Services, the county’s ballot contractor, illegally added ballots of family members and that any failure by the county to maintain a proper chain of custody “was both intentional and did in fact result in a changed outcome.”

The incorrectly-sized ballots created havoc, Lake argued, and the errors were not accidental:

As RedState’s Jennifer Oliver O’Connell reported, Lake spoke at the Turning Point USA AmFest convention last weekend, and was enthusiastic about her legal chances:

Yesterday, we got great news–we’re taking these bastards to trial.

And I’m so excited. You know I ran against our own version of Joe Biden here, Katie Hobbs. Basement Hobbs. She ducked out on the debate, but she can’t duck out from taking the stand in our trial. She will have to take the stand. Katie Hobbs is gonna have to put her hand on the Bible and swear to tell the truth. That might be hard. That might be hard. And so is Stephen Richer, they’re going to have to swear to tell the truth. And I just want to remind them that perjury is a felony.

However, it does not appear as if Hobbs will actually take the stand, as Lake’s attorneys announced later that they had withdrawn their subpoena for her to testify.

The trial has adjourned for the day, but not before we got to see Maricopa County Elections Director Scott Jarrett act like the irregularities at the polls in November were no big deal:

This story is developing, and we will continue to keep you updated. In the meantime, couldn’t a child do better than this?