DeSantis replies to Trump

 "Check the scoreboard."

Follow this link:  https://fb.watch/gPF0Y6cq5P/

Fellow Republicans, dump Trump. Please.

If he decides to run for president—as he might (or might not) announce soon—he’ll lose. Not just his own race, but also other GOP candidates up and down the ticket.

 

The evidence is in: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis shellacked Charlie Crist and Republicans swept statewide offices for the first time since post-Civil War Reconstruction era, in spite of former President Donald Trump’s shenanigans. In fact, Trump’s effort to discredit DeSantis might even have helped the Republican governor win his second term.

 

Recall how Trump’s endorsement was supposed to be the gold plating of Republican candidates. Well, it helped some of them win the party’s primary election, but not the generation election. According to Sky News Data and ForensicsUnit, Trump officially endorsed 174 of the 430 Republican House candidates. It concluded: “…[I]nitial analysis of their results suggests he didn’t help them very much. Counties with candidates backed by Trump increased Republican vote share by an average of 2.1 percentage points compared with the 2020 election, far less than the 8 percentage points gained by the Republicans in counties where he didn't announce support.” [Emphasis added.]

 

Perhaps not the kiss of death. Yet: Many voters approve of Trump policies, but not Trump. DeSantis’ policies and actions mirrored Trump’s policies, all done without the loathsome Trump’s active backing.  In fact, all done despite Trump’s transparent determination to eliminate DeSantis as a possible competitor in the 2024 presidential election.

 

There’s Trump’s reference to DeSantis as Ron "DeSanctimonious."  Great, just what we Republicans need—a destructive intraparty battle that will ensure a Democratic victory. Even more, there’s Trump’s ominous warning that he would bring up the governor’s “not very flattering” past is he decides to run. 

 

He told Fox News: “I think if he runs, he could hurt himself very badly. I really believe he could hurt himself badly. I think he would be making a mistake, I think the base would not like it — I don’t think it would be good for the party….I would tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering — I know more about him than anybody — other than, perhaps, his wife."

 

Typical of a candidate who typically called his fellow Republicans stupid names in the 2016 primary and demanded that Georgia GOP Gov. Brian Kemp t resign. Yes, Trump is very, very popular with some of my Republican friends. But I’ve argued that while Trump will have an excited and supportive base, it’s far from enough to win the moderate and independent vote that any candidate of either party must have to win.

 

Like DeSantis did. 

Related:  Donald Trump is an albatross around the Republican neck: The former president had a bad night while Ron DeSantis is rising

News flash: Liberals are routinely dragged out of bed and killed!

As reported in a major daily newspaper:

"When liberals are being routinely dragged out of their beds at night and killed in the street, decent Americans awaiting their turn will ruefully remember Paul Pelosi"

That's right, routinely. Like a dreaded press gang, hordes of conservatives are descending in the dark on the homes of liberals, knocking down the doors, grabbing who's ever inside, and dragging them out to be shot, lynched or stoned. Think Ku Klux Klan. 

You might think that I'm making that quote up, but I read it in the Chicago Sun-Times in a column written by Neil Steinberg. The headline is "GOP cheers a ghastly crime: Republicans laugh off responsibility for Paul Pelosi being assaulted in his home."

I couldn't find any examples of liberals getting murdered on Google, but you know how those conservatives control the media, so I'm certain that these horrors have been censored. The attack on Pelosi somehow managed to escape the censors. 

But what's worse about all this, wrote Steinberg, is: "The haunting part [of the Pelosi attack] is the reaction after. The gales of GOP laughter, mingled with the lies they immediately, reflexively formed to shrug off responsibility for crime."

Guilty. I gathered (conspired) in secret last night with crazed Republicans to have an uproarious time mocking liberals/Democrats/progressives for whining about Pelosi getting clobbered in the noggin.

Steinberg, a former colleague when I was working at the Sun-Times, surely must be engaging in hyperbole--an exaggeration not meant to be taken seriously but to make a point. As a columnist, I'm sure I've done the same. But...accusing an entire class of people of murder?

I'm not in the business of comparing acts of violence committed by one side against the other. I'll leave that to the Daily Caller, which  has compiled a list  of attacks made against conservatives. There's the assassin who was planning to attack Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. And more. Both sides have their share of lunatics. Like the white supremacist who drove his car into a peaceful demonstration in Charlottesville, killing one and injuring 35. Nor do I have any defense for Donald Trump Jr. (Jerk Jr.) and stupid Instagram post mocking the attack.

President Joe Biden warned last night about the "threat to democracy" posed by Republicans who don't agree with him. It was yet again another splitting attempt to gain votes (I don't see how, but his handlers apparently think so). 

Please, no more. From any side.

In this light I recommend this Wall Street Journal editorial that suggests what Biden should have said if he truly--as he has endlessly said--wants to unite the nation. Here's a sample:

“My fellow Americans, I’ve mentioned the MAGA threat. But to preserve democracy, it will take the efforts and honesty of both political parties. And we Democrats need to acknowledge that most Republicans feel as strongly and sincerely about fair elections as we do. After the 2020 election, hundreds of Republicans were the most important obstacle to Trump’s false claims of a stolen election."

He should have mentioned, for example, the heroism of former Vice President Mike Pence who refused to participate in Donald Trump's harebrained and dangerous attempt to prevent the transfer power to Biden. 

I guess it would have been too much to hope for. Just as it is too much to hope that Trump would leave the stage, quietly.

Musk's takeover of Twitter energizes battalions of Chicken Lickens, Ducky Luckies, Henny Pennys, Goosey Looseys and Turkey Lurkies

 "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" The left is reliving the folk tale with Elon Musk's buyout of Twitter. 

For some, quitting Twitter is a moral choice because good people can't contribute to evil by posting or even reading those posts. "Those posts" of course mean not just the whacky and extremists on the far right, but also just about anyone who disagrees with the woke pledges of allegiance. That means people who legitimately disagreed with Dr. Fauci's stream of misinformation and had the science to back up their disagreement.

Mostly Republicans, I should add.

High and mighty, the left would, if it could, drive Twitter out of business because it is in the hands of someone who is a free speech advocate. They don't see the problem of saying that they can and ought to make the judgment of what speech is allowed while saying that Musk or his appointees have no such right or ability.

As if to signal anti-left times to come, they point to how Musk has fired the top executives and is taking a closer look at the business plan. But that kind of complaint is just more evidence of the left's naivety. I don't know how many takeovers, senior management changes (e.g. publisher, editor-in-chief, etc.) had been made by new owners at the Chicago Sun-Times while I worked there. Same thing as I worked for The Signal Companies when it was taken over by Allied Chemical. As a PR director, I was one of the first to go.

The masters of irony are so, so upset by a multi-billionaire taking over a company, but not so much when the company adheres to woke dogma. Never mind the billionaires who a spending million on their left and far-left causes.

Are they so dense that they can't see the irony? Or do they see it but are so committed to their party and ideology that they can't be honest enough to admit it?