Republican Convention Prime Time Special!
Have tongue, will shine shoes.– I was seeing the red headline at the top of my internet homepage all morning in Korea, alerting me to “live coverage” of the Republican National Convention, available at the touch of a “click here.” Finally, quite late in the morning, which I presume means near the end of the evening’s fermented festivities in Milwaukee, morbid curiosity got the better of me — why do we do these things to ourselves? — and I clicked “here.” Almost instantaneously, I was teleported into a large auditorium, where the first thing I saw was Sarah Huckabee Sanders on a stage in a red dress, followed immediately by the image of Donald Trump in his guest of honor seat, with white gauze on one ear and the man who previously called him “America’s Hitler” on the other.
Then came the audio. From Ms. Huckabee, I heard these words (as best as I can recall): “…No one did anything. But our president took me aside, looked me in the eye, and said, ‘Sarah, you’re smart…'”
I immediately clicked “there” and instantaneously got myself back to the safety of my Korean office before the clammy hagiography ramped itself up to full vomit mode. Exactly twenty words, my full quota of idol worship for the week, doctor’s orders. My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken America?
How Democracies Perish.– Oh, and the thing I wrote about yesterday while still sort of hoping that I would have to delete the post or apologize for jumping the gun based on early media reports, has turned out, sadly, to be quite true. Donald Trump has chosen as his vice presidential running mate the only contender on his short list who is opposed to Ukraine’s defense of its sovereignty on principle, and indeed one of the few prominent members of the Republican alt-right (i.e., the GOP establishment today) who is even more openly cheering for Vladimir Putin’s complete victory in Ukraine than Trump is.
I know, I know: “Russia Hoax.” Just keep saying that, and somehow it may start to sound true for you. And of course Trump won in 2020 because he has never lost anything, ever. And he loves America dearly — except its constitution, its defining concept of limited government, its historical role as this age’s steward of civilization and bulwark of freedom, its innate antipathy toward all dictators and strongmen, and the uniquely moderate and unifying traditions of its political life.
Insert name here.– In the hours immediately after Vance was selected as Trump’s vice populist running mate, I mused aloud, though only for my wife’s ears, that I assumed that the entire Republican mainstream media had already long-since prepared its official statements in response to the VP announcement, requiring only the insertion of the appropriate name in the blank, all of these statements carrying the same basic message, namely, “This running mate solidifies the ticket, widens the voter base, is a proven and true conservative, and is sure to win over anyone on our side who was still dragging his feet about voting for Trump again.” Sure enough, proving my not-so-difficult prediction correct, all I have heard from the various usual suspects I have bothered to sample in the past twenty-four hours, from Kremlin spokesperson Tucker Carlson to Ben “I’m-richer-than-you-are-and-don’t-care-about-all-that-Reagan-era-nonsense-anyway” Shapiro, is exactly the message and tone I was expecting, in spite of the actual man who was chosen fitting exactly none of those talking points. Vance was clearly selected for being the option least likely to say or do anything to moderate Trump’s extremes or resist his anti-constitutional inanities in any way (i.e., the anti-Pence), has policy and rhetorical appeal exclusively to the already-locked-in cult of Trump, has far less real political and elected experience and a thinner track record than Barack Obama did in 2008, and is firmly on the side of the progressive populist faction that has suffocated or subverted whatever was left of the constitutionalist, pro-economic liberty, anti-collectivist, and anti-tariff strain of the GOP grassroots.
But Senator Vance was an editor of the Yale Law Journal, and as little Benny spews in his 45rpm-played-at-78rpm way, between showing various recent TV clips of Vance reciting pro-Trump talking points like a bland robot, he is “super smart, he is super super smart,” “a super, super smart person,” and “so articulate at articulating things.” I don’t remember Shapiro being quite as overwhelmed by, let alone so super, super articulate at articulating, the intelligence indicated by Senator Obama’s experience as president of the Harvard Law Review, but of course Shapiro was much younger then, and still trying to look at least as conservative as the online writers he was cribbing from. Times have changed, and so, by pragmatic necessity, have the identities of the prominent Republican bloggers that Shapiro is presumably cribbing from now.