Secretary of State: Trump Skips Two Experienced Diplomats, Picks Russia-Loving CEO

Trump has made some excellent choices for his Cabinet so far. Nikki Haley for U.N. Ambassador? Awesome. Betsy DeVos for Education Secretary? Superb. James Mattis for Defense Secretary? Stellar. And just this week, word came that he will choose former Texas governor Rick Perry as Energy Secretary, another great choice to flesh out an already qualified and conservative circle of advisers.

And then, just as we’re all becoming slightly giddy at just how well the new Cabinet is shaping up, Trump goes and picks ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson to lead the State Department.

In short, Tillerson is a bad choice and should be denied Senate confirmation. Bad for conservatives, who were hoping for a full-spectrum constitutional conservative and instead get a man who supports a carbon tax and whose company has given money to Planned Parenthood. And bad for America, who needs someone who will boldly stand for American interests and human rights around the world, and will instead be offered someone who was awarded the Russian Order of Friendship and opposes Western sanctions over the invasion of Crimea.

And by getting the nomination, Tillerson beat out both Mitt Romney and John Bolton, two men who would have been trusted to deal forcefully with both Russia and other American adversaries around the world.

Several Republican senators have already hinted that they will oppose Tillerson during Senate confirmation proceedings. The Left, too, will almost certainly oppose him based on his resume as a “Big Oil CEO”, but this is one of the rare instances where the goals of Right and Left are the same, despite their differing reasons.

Rex Tillerson should get a fair hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, once the nomination is made official, as should all presidential nominees. But in the end, he should never be allowed inside the State Department in any official capacity.

Changes Since 1992: West Virginia

Last week, I wrote about the rapid changes the state of Arkansas has undergone over the last two decades, shifting from a state in which Democrats could be expected to win virtually every statewide office, usually by double digits, into what is practically a different state altogether today—one in which Republicans now hold every statewide office, control a supermajority in the state legislature, and the GOP presidential candidate won 61% of the vote.

There is only one other state that has experienced a shift comparable to Arkansas’ over the same twenty-year period, and in the same direction. In the 1992 election, West Virginia voted for Bill Clinton by double digits, and Democrats had complete control of the Congressional delegation and nearly every other major elected office. Two decades later, similar to what happened in Arkansas, the roles of the two major parties in the state were reversed, and Republicans are now well on their way to becoming the dominant party.

The shift is still occurring at a different pace than that of Arkansas—Democrat Joe Manchin, who is pro-life, favors gun rights, and supports a constitutional Balanced Budget Amendment, won reelection to the Senate in 2012, and this year Democrat Jim Justice narrowly won a hard-fought gubernatorial race—while Donald Trump was carrying the state by more than forty points. But taken together, there is perhaps no better example of how Democrats have abandoned their former base of white, working class voters since Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign than the twin states of Arkansas and West Virginia.

Looking at the shift in presidential results, the similarity between Arkansas and West Virginia is immediately apparent—and even more notable in the case of the latter, which unlike Arkansas has had no major public figure run for president in recent elections.

1992	1996	2000	2004	2008	2012	2016
Clinton +13.0	Clinton +14.3	Bush +6.3	Bush +12.9	McCain +13.1	Romney +26.8	Trump +42.2

I want to head off the inevitable racism argument, which many people would use to explain both West Virginia and Arkansas, which saw some of the most dramatic surges toward Republicans during the Obama years. But even a cursory look at the topline results show such arguments are full of holes. Why, then, was there such a large shift toward Republicans in 2000, despite all-white tickets on both sides? Why did McCain, running in 2008 against the man who would become the first black president, have a margin of victory in West Virginia almost identical to that of George W. Bush in 2004? Why did Trump, running against a white woman, best Mitt Romney’s showing against that same black president by sixteen points?

The answer, watered down in the interest of space, is that in states like Arkansas and West Virginia there are essentially two Democratic parties—the national, liberal party, which runs people like John Kerry and Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for president; and the more conservative state party, of which people like Senator Joe Manchin and incoming governor Jim Justice are a part. The state party can get away with nominating people who are, while not Tea Party Republicans, significantly to the right of the national party, and more to the middle of the political spectrum overall. They establish themselves as trusted, independent voices.

But ticket-splitting has also become more rare over time, which is why there is often a lag time between when a state begins voting for the opposite party in national and statewide elections, but eventually the two indicators will begin to line up once more. Democrats can still win the governorship in West Virginia—but they have to fight for it now. The right Democrat can still win a Senate seat in the state—but it is becoming increasingly difficult for even a moderate Democrat to win. Secretary of State Natalie Tennant ran for an open Senate seat in 2014 with this ad as a hallmark of her campaign—and still lost to Republican Shelley Moore Capito by twenty-seven points. In 1992, Democrats controlled the State House of Representatives 79-21. Republicans now control it 63-37.

The national Democratic Party has so fully embraced its liberal, anti-coal, regulatory image that voters in once reliably blue states are beginning to reflexively vote against anyone who has even a whiff of association with them. And if Democrats are going to change, they’d better hurry before voters’ opinions are baked in for a generation or more. The clock is ticking in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. In Arkansas and West Virginia, it may already be too late.

Changes Since 1992: Arkansas

This is the first of what will be a semi-regular series over the next few weeks, detailing the changes in party power in certain states since the 1992 elections.

“I was born in a little town called Hope, Arkansas,” begins an ad for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. The ad, like much of the campaign, played up Clinton’s history as a working-class Southerner and popular governor. In the end, Clinton won Arkansas by over seventeen points in the 1992 election, and by 16.9% in 1996.

Two decades later, his wife would lose the state, where she had been First Lady for a combined twelve years, by over twenty-six points.

Arkansas’ swing from a Democratic stronghold to reliably Republican has been one of the most dramatic in the country over the past several decades, in either direction. The South as a whole has been trending toward the GOP since at least the 1960’s, but Arkansas is unique. It still saw reasonably close races at the presidential level through 2000, had a Democratic governor and two Democratic Senators as recently as 2010, and only gave Republicans narrow control of the state legislature in 2012, for the first time since Reconstruction.

Just look at the swing in presidential results in the state, from 1992 to 2016:

1992	1996	2000	2004	2008	2012	2016
Clinton +17.7	Clinton +16.9	Bush +5.4	Bush +9.7	McCain +19.1	Romney +23.7	Trump +26.6

But of the equation is of course the rapid shift of the South as a whole toward Republicans, a shift which has essentially been finalized during the Bush and Obama years. In that sense, Arkansas is a microcosm of the entire region.

But even compared to election results from neighboring states over the same time period, the rate of change in Arkansas is staggering. Bill Clinton won Kentucky by three points in 1992 and less than one in 1996; four years later, the state went for George W. Bush by double digits and never looked back. Clinton lost Mississippi to the Republican nominee in both 1992 and 1996; in 2000, Bush won by seventeen points there and the Republican margin of victory has stayed fairly constant ever since. But the GOP’s growth in Arkansas shows no sign of slowing down or stabilizing.

Clinton’s status as a “favorite son” in 1992 and 1996 certainly account for some of these noted shifts. But one would think that at least some of those benefits would rub off on his wife, perhaps causing her to lose by a smaller margin. Instead, she did several points worse than Barack Obama, himself wildly unpopular in the Natural State.

And the rapid shift toward Republicans is glaringly obvious in far more than just presidential contests. Below are three more sets of election results for the state, since 1992: U.S. Senate, U.S. House, and Governor. With all of them, the shifts are rapid and stunning.

Arkansas Senate Seat, Class 2:

1996	2002	2008	2014
Hutchinson +5.4	Pryor +7.8	Pryor +59.0	Cotton +17.0

Arkansas Senate Seat, Class 3:

1992	1998	2004	2010	2016
Bumpers +20.4	Lincoln +12.9	Lincoln +12.0	Boozman +21.1	Boozman +23.6

Party Composition of U.S. House Delegation, Arkansas:

1992	1994	1996	1998	2000	2002	2004
Split (2-2)	Split (2-2)	Split (2-2)	Split (2-2)	Democrats (3-1)	Democrats (3-1)	Democrats (3-1)

2006	2008	2010	2012	2014	2016
Democrats (3-1)	Democrats (3-1)	Republicans (3-1)	Republicans (4-0)	Republicans (4-0)	Republicans (4-0)

Arkansas Governor:

1994	1998	2002	2006	2010	2014
Tucker +19.2	Huckabee +21.1	Huckabee +7.0	Beebe +14.3	Beebe +30.9	Hutchinson +13.9

A special irony for Republicans to enjoy is the fact that Asa Hutchinson, the state’s current governor, is a former U.S. Representative who in 1998 was key in prosecuting the case for the impeachment of then-President Bill Clinton—an Arkansas native and former governor. A microcosm of how dramatically the state has changed over the past twenty years.

I didn’t include full charts showing shifts in state attorney general and state legislature races, in the interest of space, but they tell the same story—an 88-11 margin in favor of Democrats in the state House following the 1992 elections, compared to a 73-27 Republican majority after the 2016 elections.

And, if the recent past is any indication, the best days for Arkansas Republicans may still be ahead.

The Next Round of Cabinet Picks Begins

The Trump transition team has officially announced that Georgia Rep. Tom Price will be the nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services.

This is another solid pick for conservatives, coming off other recent announcements such as Nikki Haley for U.N. ambassador and Jeff Sessions for Attorney General. Rep. Price has been a leading opponent of Obamacare in the House, and has authored several potential replacement bills of his own. He is also apparently the first medical doctor to hold the position of HHS Secretary since George H. W. Bush nominated Louis Wade Sullivan for the post, who served from 1989 to 1993. So far, Trump’s Cabinet is shaping up to be better than anything many of us in #NeverTrump dared imagine.

Trump has apparently also chosen Elaine Chao for Secretary of Transportation. Chao was Labor Secretary under George W. Bush, Assistant Transportation Secretary under George H. W. Bush, and is married to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Unlike Price, Sessions, or Haley, she is more of a safe pick—qualified but low-key, and not likely to earn much in the way of either determined opposition or lavish praise from conservatives. Still, she is a solid choice for the job.

Less comforting is the continued drama surrounding Trump’s choice for Secretary of State. Mitt Romney is apparently still a top contender, along with Rudy Giuliani and now—apparently—former General and CIA Director David Petraeus. Romney would be a strong choice, Giuliani less so; over the course of the campaign, the latter has shown himself to be more of a sycophant than the kind of determined leader many Americans remember from 9/11, and his business dealings in numerous countries, much like Trump’s, raise serious questions about conflicts of interests.

Petraeus would also be a bad choice, but for different reasons. The presence of yet another former general in a high-ranking administration position, following the selection of Michael Flynn for national security advisor and rumored selection of James Mattis for Defense Secretary, is slightly concerning. I have no doubt that all three are good men who love their country, and would do nothing to harm it. But it still sets a worrying precedent, and degrades the fundamental American principle of having the military overseen by a civilian government.

But worse is Petraeus’ conviction for the mishandling of classified information. We just finished an election where it should have become abundantly clear that having a secretary of state who mishandles classified information is a very bad thing. It is true that Petraeus has displayed far more remorse for his actions than Hillary Clinton ever has. But he has also proven himself to be an unreliable keeper of state secrets. And his selection would display the highest level of hypocrisy on the part of Trump and his inner circle.

If yesterday’s meeting with Petraeus was simply to get advice from a respected former general and CIA director, I’m all for it. But Petraeus should have no official role in the incoming administration, let alone be given the top diplomatic post in the country.

Rebuilding The Party (Part 2)

This is part two of a discussion I began on Tuesday, regarding rebuilding the Republican Party in the Age of Trump. Part one can be found here.

As I wrote on Tuesday, essentially the results of the 2016 election offer problems and opportunities for both parties. The Democrats are looking at significant short-term problems (exacerbated by an extremely unfavorable Senate map for the 2018 midterms), but could also leverage their newfound status as the opposition party into long-term gains, much as Republicans have during the Obama years. Republicans, meanwhile, are strengthened in the short term, but this outward unity could backfire if not handled properly—again, similar to the lessons learned by Democrats during Obama’s presidency.

But what will this newly resurgent Republican Party look like with Donald Trump at the helm? And will it remain the party of choice for conservatives?

The short answer is that we simply won’t know the answers to either question for months, perhaps years, yet. Only a week after becoming the president-elect, Trump still hasn’t named any members of his incoming Cabinet, although many of the top names reportedly under consideration (now including Ted Cruz for Attorney General and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach for DHS Secretary) are promising. And the fact that the Heritage Foundation is apparently playing an outsized role in the vetting of names and setting of proposed policy for the transition is encouraging, as well.

And if we have learned anything from this election, it is to always be careful in predicting the future.

During the election, of course, the was ample evidence to suggest that a Trump administration would be just as liberal as a Clinton administration, from his past statements to muddled answers on everything from abortion to immigration. That evidence has been exhaustively noted both here and elsewhere, and there’s no reason to rehash it again now.

Since the election, there have been both good signs and bad—the aforementioned names reportedly under consideration one the one hand, and the possibility of big new spending projects such as a major infrastructure bill on the other—with the result that overall, we have about as clear a picture of the incoming Trump administration as we did during the primaries. Actions, as they say, speak louder than words, and the first concrete actions Trump will take (aside from naming Mike Pence as his running mate) will be the announcement of the incoming Cabinet.

The most important thing Trump could do to prove all of his fiercest conservative critics wrong one more time, would be to extend an olive branch and a welcoming hand to those same critics. The news that people such as Cruz are under consideration for a Cabinet position—and, as I write this, word that Trump could meet with Mitt Romney this weekend—is already more than many of us expected or dared to hope for. But again, this is all just rumor and speculation until decisions actually start being made.

Until then, all we on the outside can do is watch and hope for the best. This could go down as either one of the best presidencies for conservatism, or one of the worst.

This, Too, Shall Pass

It seems as if this election has lasted a lifetime. I can barely remember a time in politics before Donald Trump. As an example, go back and watch the YouTube videos of Mitt Romney and Barack Obama at the 2012 Al Smith dinner, and compare their remarks to those of Clinton and Trump last week. Jarring, isn’t it?

But no matter how depressing, terrifying, or apocalyptic this election season might seem, remember: It is only a moment in time, and nothing lasts forever. Speaking in 1859, Abraham Lincoln said,

“It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!”

We are almost to the end, of this season at least. There are only eleven more days until Election Day, when Hillary Clinton will likely be elected the 45^th President. After that, of course, the next phase, the hard work, begins. Conservatives across the country will need to help rebuild the Republican Party, if it can be rebuilt, and return it to its roots. We will need to push back the forces of Trumpism within the movement. And we will need to do all of this while opposing the far-Left agenda of Hillary Clinton.

But we will be able to start the process of rebuilding, of repairing the damage left by Trump’s nomination. And, I pray, with a defeat of significant magnitude Trump and his loyalists will be mortally weakened, and the alt-right will crawl back into obscurity. Either way, the extreme vitriol and division of this campaign season will be over. The divisions over fiscal cliffs and government shutdowns seem like simpler times.

This, too, shall pass.

The Stupidity of Nominating A Businessman Like Trump

Notice the qualifier in the title. Ordinarily having a president with business experience would be of great benefit to the country; it’s one of the qualities that would have made Mitt Romney such a good president (of course, the Democrats managed to turn one of his greatest strengths against him). But Donald Trump, though he appeals to many people who generally call for “running government like a business”, is not a businessman in the same league as Romney.

Simply put, Romney was successful at business. Trump was not. Though the Clinton camp is making much of the fact that Trump’s leaked 1995 tax returns suggest that he may have paid no income tax for up to eighteen years, the greater emphasis should actually be on the phenomenon that would have made that possible in the first place—namely, his billion-dollar loss.

Trump in the 1990’s was on the brink of financial ruin, as detailed in The Choice 2016 and summarized by John Fund at National Review. Trump survived, Fund says, only by “shifting from real-estate deals to licensing his well-known name.” Not exactly the mark of a successful businessman, or a promising sign for those eager for business acumen in the Oval Office.

The fact is that Trump is just not a good businessman, as has been adequately documented throughout 2016—from his massive business gambles and losses in the 90’s to his four bankruptcies. Not only does he have absolutely no experience in government—there’s a reason every single president has either been a general or had previous political experience—but he’s been monumentally bad at his signature enterprise.

The only thing he’s really been good at has been reality TV and branding. And it’s really not an option for America to escape debt and budget deficits through licensing deals.

The Russian Threat

It’s like something out of a dystopian, Cold War-era novel—two major American presidential candidates, either of whom have a realistic chance at becoming the leader of the free world, and both are indebted to Russia.

On one side, there is Donald Trump, a candidate who seems unable to go more than a few weeks at a time without heaping lavish praise upon Vladimir Putin as a “strong leader”, praise that may in fact be the most consistent policy issue of the entire campaign. And the lovefest goes beyond mere words—the hiring of former campaign chairman Paul Manafort being the most notable example. Manafort, of course, had extraordinarily close ties to pro-Russian elements in Ukraine, and worked closely with pro-Russian former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych for a decade. Other ties between Russia and Trump exist, as well, including evidence that Russia has significant investments in the Trump Organization—something confirmed by Donald Trump, Jr. in 2008. And, of course, Trump’s frequent questioning of the importance of the NATO alliance.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton attempts to portray herself as the Mitt Romney of the 2016 election, calling out Trump on his Russian ties and openly discussing the likely role Russian hackers had in the DNC leak from earlier this summer. But she herself has a multitude of troublingly close ties to the Kremlin, if never going so far as to openly praise Putin himself. She has been an active participant in Barack Obama’s open appeasement of Russia over much of the past eight years, from the Russian “reset” to the toothless response to the Russian seizure of Crimea and intervention in eastern Ukraine.

Moreover, shady connections between the State Department, the Clinton Foundation, and Russia in the Uranium One deal, as well as other instances, discredit Clinton as being any sort of strong voice against Putin’s continued powermongering.

The simple fact is that in this bizarre election, a little more than two decades after the end of the Cold War, both major party candidates will likely seek to further appease Russia if elected. It is a certainty that Putin will attempt to further expand his influence in the Middle East, sow further discord in Ukraine, and tighten his grip on Crimea, and neither Trump nor Clinton will effectively challenge him on those scores. Should Putin, emboldened, begin to look further abroad, to say the NATO allied Baltic nations, there is no guarantee that either Trump or Clinton would stand firmly with our allies there as well. In this respect, both will only continue and expand on the Obama legacy.

Why Did No Major Independent Candidate Emerge?

One of the enduring mysteries in a campaign season full of them: Why, in a year when both major parties nominated candidates who are both historically unpopular with the general electorate, did no major independent candidate emerge, à la Ross Perot in 1992 or 1996?

Sure, we’ll get our fair share of third-party and independent candidates on the ballot: Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, Evan McMullin… But none of those command high name recognition, a particularly unique campaign platform, or the massive financial resources needed to wage a successful presidential campaign. Two of those, Johnson and Stein, are retreads from the 2012 election, doing far better this time around merely as the unwitting beneficiaries of widespread animosity toward the two major-party candidates. And Evan McMullin, while a decent man who would make a good president, is hardly a household name, even in intensely political households.

After it became clear that Donald Trump had a reasonably good chance at winning the nomination, the narrative turned from “Will Trump run as an independent?” to “Will someone run as an independent against Trump?” For a while, the answer looked like it would be yes—and someone well-known at that, a sitting or former governor or Senator (Gary Johnson, a Libertarian who last held elected office over a decade ago, doesn’t count). Rumors flew that Mitt Romney would enter the race, or Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, or John Kasich.

But no one ever did.

Many of the reasons why lie with the prospective candidates themselves, and are impossible to guess at fully. But running for president is a demanding task, even when supported by the full resources and infrastructure of a major national party. Running as an independent, and building a national ground operation and fundraising infrastructure from scratch, is doubly difficult. And, for any Republicans who were current officeholders—or who hoped to seek office again in the future—following through with an independent bid almost certainly doomed from the beginning would have seemed to be a career-ending move.

Considering all that, it seems to me that there would have been only one Republican who could have reasonably embarked on a serious independent bid for the Presidency, without risk of political suicide, and who would have had a reasonable chance at success to boot—Mitt Romney.

Having run for president twice already, once as the Republican nominee, he would have already had built-in name recognition. Being retired from public office would have meant that he needn’t have worried about any potential sanctions from the RNC down the line. He would have been able to build, through his high name recognition and multitude of contacts, a national infrastructure in relatively short order. And he would have had a realistic chance at winning, or at the very least getting on the debate stage—a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted in May showed Romney receiving 22% of the vote nationally, with Clinton at 37% and Trump at 35%.

As to why he ultimately chose not to run, only Romney himself can answer that, but I assume it was basically the same reasoning that led him to pass on running in the primaries last year—he had had enough of running for President, believed it simply wasn’t meant to be, and wished to give other, younger candidates an opportunity. Whatever the reasoning, though, his passing on an independent run exacerbated the trend of major national figures turning down the chance of running against Trump in the general election—and likely deprived the #NeverTrump movement of its one real chance to actually win the election.

Evan McMullin and Write-In Presidential Candidates

In case you haven’t yet heard, former CIA officer and House Republican policy director Evan McMullin has launched an independent campaign for President.

I’ll just go ahead and state the obvious—McMullin doesn’t have a chance of winning the election. Filing deadlines for ballot access will have already passed in roughly half the country by the end of the week, and even if he wanted to mount a legal challenge to those deadlines his campaign would be spending a crucial part of the election bogged down in court. The most likely result will be that he will be waging a write-in campaign in the majority of the country, a tactic that almost never ends well.

(There are exceptions—Lisa Murkowski won reelection as Alaska’s senior Senator in 2010 through a write-in campaign after losing the Republican primary, but she was already an incumbent with high name recognition. Almost no one had heard of McMullin before Monday. If an independent effort by a first-time candidate with no name recognition was to have a chance of influencing the election, it would have had to begin months ago.)

In addition, he has yet to earn any high-profile endorsements or significant financial backing. If people like Mitt Romney, Ted Cruz, or the Koch brothers were to become seriously involved with the campaign, McMullin might begin earning more votes and making a bigger impact, but until something changes that looks unlikely.

This isn’t to say that any vote for McMullin is automatically a vote wasted because he can’t win—although Gary Johnson has a better chance of making an impact on the race, he has almost as little a chance of winning. This election, every voter needs to chart their own course and follow their conscience. And I’m sure McMullin has better principles and character than either Trump or Clinton (not, admittedly, a very high bar).

But when a candidate will likely only secure ballot access in a handful of states, has no significant backing, and enters the race only three months before Election Day, the question needs to be asked: Why does this candidate deserve my vote more than one of the third party candidates already on the ballot, or even one of the countless other possibilities for write-in candidates? Is this a serious effort to win, or just the addition of one more name to the nearly infinite list of choices to write in?

Of course, circumstances can always change. But for now, despite my issues with him, I’m sticking with Gary Johnson.

Mitt Romney, Donald Trump, and Hypocrisy

In 2012, during a primary debate, Mitt Romney offered Rick Perry a $10,000 bet regarding Romney’s former support of an individual mandate for health insurance. Romney was promptly lambasted by many Republican primary voters favoring another candidate, who felt the comment underscored his reputation as an out-of-touch millionaire, who had nothing in common with ordinary Americans. Nominating him would only underscore the contrast many Democrats were seeking, of a greedy businessman versus a humble defender of ordinary people.

Fast forward to 2016. Many of the same people who wasted no time in criticizing Romney for his $10,000 bet spent much of this primary season defending Donald Trump for saying he had a “small loan” from his father of one million dollars, and for attempting to use state power of eminent domain to tear down a widow’s house and build a limousine parking lot in its place. Many of the same people who were concerned about the electability argument when it came to Mitt Romney, and how it would look for the GOP to nominate a millionaire for president, have decided to nominate a billionaire instead.

Many who endlessly fretted about Mitt Romney’s wealth and electability now support Donald Trump. Many who ridiculed the fevered cult of personality around Barack Obama now openly worship at the Altar of Trump. The hypocrisy of the Trump true believers knows no bounds.