Investigating...

On Facebook this morning I saw a Clarice Feldman post indicating that a woman named Kim Fritts was the campaign manager for Jeb Bush, CEO of Uranium One, and CEO of the Podesta Group! Curiosity aroused, I went to Google. I found confirmation on Facebook that she is CEO of the Podesta Group in a post dated August 26, 2015 with this photo of her.


On June 15, 2015 Catherine Ho reported in the Washington Post,

Kimberley Fritts, chief executive of lobby shop Podesta Group, worked for Jeb Bush during his first gubernatorial campaign in 1994, and is continuing her support this time around through fundraising and recruiting members of Congress to support the former Florida governor’s efforts in their states.

“Last week we rolled out a number of endorsements with the Florida delegation,” she said. “We think it’s been going well.” Fritts flew to Miami this morning to meet with members of Bush’s team, and will head back to D.C. later today.

Kristina Wong reported in Breitbart on 10-30-17,

Podesta is handing over full operational and control to the firm’s CEO Kimberley Fritts, according to the report. Fritts and a senior group of the Podesta team will be launching a new firm in the next one or two days, a move reportedly in the works for the past several months.

Read more here.

Here I learned that she was the Southern Political Director of the Republican National Committee in 1993.

Charles Lewis mentions her in this post at The Center for Public Integrity dated 8-30-2000.

The intermeshing of public and private sectors has, of course, been an endemic problem in Washington for years, and the social and professional interaction between the media business and the government that regulates it is, not surprisingly, quite extensive. For example, Podesta & Associates, also known as Podesta.com, is the outside lobbying firm representing the widest array of media behemoths. Since 1996, the company has received $1.5 million as the Washington representative for Viacom, Time Warner and NBC. It is headed by Tony Podesta, whose brother John happens to be the White House chief of staff. Twenty-three members of its staff of 33 formerly worked on Capitol Hill, for either party. One of them, Kimberley Fritts, is the daughter of the president of the National Association of Broadcasters.

NAB thrives on congressional ties
No media organization spends more money lobbying or has more people covering Washington than the National Association of Broadcasters, which has spent $16.9 million to persuade government officials since 1996. NAB President Eddie Fritts was a college classmate and is a close friend of Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, and on occasion, this relationship has been immensely helpful to the broadcasters. There are 20 registered lobbyists at the NAB, seven of whom came through the revolving door from congressional staffs, the FCC and the Federal Trade Commission. Until recently, their ranks included Kimberly Tauzin, daughter of Billy Tauzin.

Media corporations have spared no expense in Washington, hiring all of the “usual suspects” kind of big-name lobbyists: former Republican Party chairman Haley Barbour (CBS); Patton Boggs Tommy Boggs, son of long-deceased House Majority Leader Hale Boggs and U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Lindy Boggs, and brother of ABC News correspondent Cokie Roberts, (National Cable Television Association; Magazine Publishers of America); former Reagan White House chief of staff Ken Duberstein (Comcast, National Cable TV Association, Time Warner); former Nixon White House aide Tom Korologos (Cox Communications Corporation); former Carter White House aide Anne Wexler (Comcast, Univision Communications Inc.); and former FCC chairman Richard Wiley (CBS). After all, from copyright issues to broadband access to media ownership rules, billions of dollars were at stake for the transforming media industry.

So far I have not seen anything to indicate Kimberley was ever CEO of Uranium One. I will continue to investigate.

Have Cruz, Rubio, and Kasich joined with Jeb Bush in a plan to stop Trump?

Erick Erickson believes Rubio, Cruz, and Kasich have joined forces in a plan to stop Trump. I hope he is right.

Let’s review shall we.

Jeb Bush has a private meeting with Kasich, Cruz, and Rubio.

Cruz’s campaign, after a lot of bluster about going all in in Florida admits it was all a head fake. They had one event scheduled for today with Sean Hannity in Orlando that was previously scheduled and will be nationally focused, not Florida focused. Then Cruz is bailing on Florida. For the Rubio folks complaining, I’m told the campaign did try to make adjustments, but couldn’t for reasons not in the campaign’s control.

Cruz’s campaign takes down its Florida ads. The Cruz Super PACs follow suit allegedly — at least some of them have signaled they too are getting out.

Marco Rubio revs up his Florida presence and is nowhere to be found in Illinois, Missouri, and North Carolina.

The Cruz campaign redirects all its resources to those three states, with Cruz rallies, ad buys, GOTV etc.

Now Rubio’s spokesman goes on national television and says Rubio supporters should vote for John Kasich in Ohio.

Kasich is going all in in Ohio and ceding Illinois, Missouri, and North Carolina to Cruz. In fact, Kasich suddenly has no events in Illinois, and only one event in Pennsylvania after the Ohio primary.

In other words, Kasich is now only campaigning in Ohio; Rubio is only campaigning in Florida; and Cruz is avoiding events in Florida and Ohio.

There is clearly a plan to stop Trump.

Now National Review is coming out with an endorsement of Cruz.

Standing up to Trump

Alpha versus beta

Compare this photo of Trump with the previous post about Jeb Bush.
Now tell me a beta male can do as well as an alpha male in a 2016 presidential contest.

"They're kicking me out the door!"

GOP race goes South

I would think that Ted Cruz is feeling good about his third place finish in New Hampshire. Did you know that he spent just $600,000 there, compared to the $36,000,000 spent by Jeb Bush and $15,000,000 spent by Marco Rubio?

Will Bush and Rubio now go after each other in a South Carolina bloodbath? If Rubio knocks out Bush, who will take on Donald Trump?

I will miss Christie, Paul, and Fiorina in the next debates.

Airtime

Allah Pundit writes at Hot Air,

Something to think about: Why should Trump’s polling be considered so impressive given the phenomenal advantage he’s had over the rest of the field in his access to media, not just on Fox but among outlets across the spectrum? Jeb Bush’s critics have been goofing on him for nearly a year because he hasn’t been able to translate the staggering amount of money his Super PAC started with into any poll momentum. His dad’s rich friends gave him $100 million to buy the nomination and he’s still in single digits. Trump, however, has been given the equivalent of untold millions in free advertising over the past six months from media outlets willing, for the sake of ratings, to grant him as much airtime as he likes, and his polling isn’t wildly different today from where it was when he first surged into the lead last summer. On any given morning, Trump could call in to CNN and get 10-20 minutes to talk about whatever he wants; someone like Cruz or Rubio is lucky to get one four-minute carefully structured interview segment by comparison. Trump was at 25.8 percent in Iowa on September 2 in RCP’s poll average and, until just this past week when he started to inch up, he was still at 26-27 percent there in mid-January. If Jeb deserves heat for not using his fundraising windfall to build up his numbers, why doesn’t Trump deserve heat for not using his media windfall to do the same? Where would Ted Cruz be today if the media gave him as much airtime as it gives Trump?

Read more here.

How a beta male responds to an alpha male

Donald Trump describes Jeb Bush as "scared, low energy."


Jeb Bush finally responded:

Will Trump do to Hillary what he has done to Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Rick Perry and Scott Walker?and

Ross Kaminsky, though not a fan of Donald Trump's presidential campaign, writes at Spectator.org.,

The Donald has a remarkable ability to break through conventional restrictions on acceptable political conversation and to make people think about issues in ways opponents call “extreme” but which resonate among much of the American public. Beyond his base, he is having this effect, whether for good or for ill, on millions of Americans who would not consider voting for Mr. Trump in a general election.

...A large part of Trump’s appeal is his willingness to say things that other politicians won’t say. In that willingness he comes across to many, especially the lightly informed, as a noble truth-teller. And even for those who would not vote for an arrogant often-wrong blowhard, Trump nevertheless plants in their minds toxic seeds that have roughly the same effect on his opponents’ favorability ratings that Roundup has on the weeds in your lawn.

He’s done it to Jeb Bush, he’s done it to Ben Carson, he did it early on to Rick Perry and then to Scott Walker — feats that he isn’t shy to remind us about. And now his aim has turned toward Hillary Clinton. Unless she is some sort of GMP (Genetically Modified Politician) who is immune to political Roundup, she should be very worried.

In Saturday’s Democratic presidential debate (the timing says a lot about whether the DNC actually wants anybody watching), Hillary Clinton claimed that Donald Trump “is becoming ISIS’s best recruiter” and that “they are going to people showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists.”

Even the liberal-leaning Politifact.com rated Clinton’s claim as false, concluding that “Clinton has turned speculative left-of-center rhetoric into fact” and that “evidence does not exist” to support her slanderous accusation.

As NBC’s Chuck Todd put it on Sunday, “no fact checker has been able to back up her claim on that.”

...The more Trump can convince moderate and independent voters that Hillary’s strongest arguments for herself are somewhere between irrelevant and disqualifying, the harder it becomes for her to carry those swing voters who now determine American elections.

Read more here.

Some thoughts about Tuesday's debate

At National Review, some Jonah Goldberg thoughts about Tuesday's debate:

The whole rationale for Trump’s candidacy was based on exploiting animosity towards the “establishment.” Jeb represents the establishment for lots of people, fairly or not. If Jeb bows out, that would give a lot of Trump supporters a victory and an excuse to look elsewhere. I hate saying candidates should drop out before the first ballot is cast, but at the very least, if Bush does poorly in Iowa and New Hampshire, he should hang it up. The sooner Trump can’t claim he’s the alternative to the “establishment,” the sooner more people will look at alternatives to Trump.

I think Cruz got the better of Rubio in the debate, but Rubio accomplished what he wanted: igniting an upsurge of Cruz skepticism. People aren’t talking about Rubio’s continued support for a path to citizenship (after enforcement). They’re talking about Cruz’s credibility on the issue. It was akin to sacrificing a couple pawns to get a castle. After all, people already knew about Rubio’s vulnerabilities on immigration. But this conversation about Cruz is new, at least in public.

Cruz has worked assiduously to create a brand as the purist in the race. He’s had a lot of help from his friends in talk radio and elsewhere. To listen to his supporters -- and Cruz himself -- Republican animosity towards Cruz can be explained as wagon-circling by the “Washington cartel.” Cruz is the principled man in a dirty town, according to this story.

No doubt there’s some truth to this version. But not everyone subscribes to it. There are a lot of very conservative and principled politicians and activists who don’t like or support Cruz -- and not because they’re “RINOs.” They see him as a calculating politician willing to set the house on fire for his own political self-interest, not for the party or the cause.

The charge that he was lying about his immigration amendment in order to cram in a poison pill against amnesty may or may not be persuasive, but it is not the kind of explanation that helps maintain his brand. (And, I suspect, he will have a similar problem down the road if/when Donald Trump finally jumps the shark and Cruz has to explain that he never really meant that “Donald is great” he was just saying it for strategic reasons.)

Wherever you come down on the Story of Ted (I think both versions have merit), as a political matter, it does not help Ted Cruz to have people debating whether his purism stems from strategic calculation rather than conviction.

Goldberg on Trump:

His comments this morning celebrating Vladimir Putin as a “leader” even though he kills journalists and political opponents, were exactly what you’d expect from someone who only cares about strength, power, popularity, and “winning.”

Read more here.

Waiting to be appreciated

Peggy Noonan writes in the Wall Street Journal,

...It was said of Scott Walker that the great question was whether he had the heft and ability to go national. The same should have been asked of Jeb. He had never been a national candidate, only a governor. Reporters thought he was national because he was part of a national family.

He was playing from an old playbook—he means to show people his heart, hopes to run joyously. But it’s 2015, we’re in crisis; they don’t care about your heart and joy, they care about your brains, guts and toughness. The expectations he faced were unrealistically high. He was painted as the front-runner. Reporters thought with his record, and a brother and father as president, he must be the front-runner, the kind of guy the GOP would fall in line for. But there’s no falling in line this year. He spent his first months staking out his position not as a creative, original chief executive of a major state—which he was—but as a pol raising shock-and-awe money and giving listless, unfocused interviews in which he slouched and shrugged. There was a sense he was waiting to be appreciated.

I speak of his candidacy in the past tense, which is rude though I don’t mean it rudely. It’s just hard to see how this can work. By hard I mean, for me, impossible.

Rubio destroys Bush, or rather, Bush destroys himself

Jonathan Last opines in the Weekly Standard,

The Bush hit on Rubio was obviously premeditated, so it wasn’t gaffe or a mistake. It was a revealing measure of his political talent and judgment. Let’s count the ways in which it was strategically ill-conceived and tactically incompetent:
Jeb Bush

1) He attacked Rubio not from a position of strength, but of weakness. “I’m a constituent and you’re not doing your job for me” is the personal complaint of a whiner. He looked like a disgruntled employee, not a leader.

2) He attacked Rubio on grounds of procedure and not substance. However important they might be, no one actually cares about voting absentee rates—the same way they don’t care about filibuster rules or the nuclear option. To think that this was the angle to blow up Rubio is insane.

3) As I said, Bush’s attack was almost certainly a pre-meditated set piece. Yet he didn’t have the political sense to see that Rubio was in a very good frame coming off of an answer where he beat the snot out of the moderators. Bush had no ability to read the scene and understand that it would have been better in that moment not to take the shot. He had a plan, so he robotically stuck to it.

4) On top of all of that, Bush didn’t understand that Rubio’s biggest concern at this point is being slotted as a tool of the establishment. Getting attacked by the establishment guy is the best luck Rubio could wish for. The only thing Bush accomplished is helping Rubio cross over, which will lift him in the polls, which will increase the donor pressure on Bush to drop out.

In sum: Bush’s attack on Rubio was both a tactical and strategic failure. His campaign is cooked.

Will this be the end of Jeb Bush's candidacy?

Rush Limbaugh reported this morning that a woman named Lauren Batchelder is a Jeb Bush plant. Batchelder questioned Donald Trump yesterday, using the Democrats' War on Women theme to try to portray Donald Trump as anti-women. Is Rush right that she is a plant for Jeb Bush, or is she merely a Jeb Bush supporter who did this on her own? How can it be proved that Bush planted her to ask the questions? Conservative Tree House writes this morning,

During an appearance at a Jon Huntsman “No Labels” event, a female audience member named Lauren Batchelder played the role of a female antagonist toward candidate Donald Trump.

However, Ms. Batchelder is not just an average audience member. She’s a paid political operative of the GOP and a paid staff member of Team Jeb Bush:

Of course, Ms Batchelder quickly began scrubbing her social media history trying to hide who she works for. Almost all of her Twitter history is now deleted, but not before much of it was able to be captured. Several other profiles remain available:



Within minutes of her scripted performance at the event, the producers of CNN were quickly editing soundbites and framing a narrative. That story was pushed into the media stream within hours. CNN’s Jeanne Moos was the delivery vehicle for the a hit piece.

Here’s the CNN narrative as presented yesterday:

However, as previously noted, it didn’t take long to discover that Lauren Batchelder was not just an ordinary audience member, she is actually a current staffer for Senator Kelly Ayotte and also working in New Hampshire on behalf of the Jeb Bush 2016 campaign.

Batchelder’s LinkedIn profile shows she is a Jeb Bush For President 2016 staffer.

Of course, Ms Batchelder quickly began scrubbing her social media history trying to hide who she works for. Almost all of her Twitter history is now deleted, but not before much of it was able to be captured. Several other profiles remain available:



The 2016 plan is similar in many ways to how Mitt Romney was able to win the nomination in 2012. If you remove Donald Trump – Ben Carson becomes Herman Cain, Ted Cruz becomes Newt Gingrich and Jeb Bush replaces Mitt Romney.

Read more here.

It is not going to be Jeb

Dick Morris explains why Jeb Bush will not win the GOP nomination.

That’ll be $100 million, payable in unmarked bills.

Chateau Heartiste opines that Jeb Bush and John Kasich are beta to the bone. He cites some examples: (referring to Jeb as "Jabe)

Any man with a T level over 3 is sickened by these displays of supplication in the men presuming to be his leader. Humans have a strong instinctual revulsion to being ruled over by sniveling curs.

No CH reader should be surprised about Jabe’s choice of wife. The reason for that mismatch is clear, and it has nothing to do with Jabe’s looks, money, or status. Jabe didn’t choose Columba.

He settled for her.

Because he had to.

Because any babe who turns heads would feel Jabe’s betatude instantly. And it would repel her.

No-game-having Jabe Bush. There’s your 100 million dollar betaboy wundergaloot.

PS John Kasich’s answer to what he would preferred to be called by the secret service — “Unit 2” — is almost as sickeningly beta as Jabe’s sucking up to cool kid Trump. Beta male schlubs LOVE saying stuff like this: “I’m Unit 2 because as my wife constantly tells me, she’s Unit 1 in our marriage. haha aren’t I a funny charmer?” No you are not Kasich. You are a shell entity. And that’s why Trump has ten times the support from women that you do.

PPS This election cycle is turning into a clinic on the efficacy and truth of Game. It’s so very clarifying. I hope everyone is taking notes.

PPPS Before anyone asks, this is the sooper secret highly classified CH “alpha up” advice I would have given to Jabe if he ever finds himself in these situations that trigger his microbetaness.

“Jabe, you awkwardly towering lump of wet dough, if Trump sticks his hand out for a low high five, don’t promptly accept his invitation. Look at his hand for a beat, then make a fist and “fist bump” his palm while saying “rock”. Smirk like your life depended on it. And for fuck’s sake, don’t validate Trump by saying ‘that was a good one!’ You sound like such a toolbag when you say stuff like that.”

Thank you, that’ll be $100 million, payable in unmarked bills.

Read more here.

Jeb Bush to step in Hillary's worn-down heels?

At The American Thinker Clarice Feldman has a suggestion:

If the Democrats want someone who supports open borders, there’s one person who consistently has been for them -- Jeb Bush -- and I bet that everyone not part of the GOP establishment would be happy to see him step into Hillary’s worn-down heels.

Read more here.

Hat tip Christopher Buckley

Ramifications of ideology

Victor Davis Hanson writes,

We don’t know how many illegal immigrants are in the United States, only that the proverbial figure of “11 million” exists in amber since the last century, and despite massive influxes each year. So there is no way to ascertain either the size of the pool of illegal immigrants or how many have committed crimes. Rounding up every illegal alien and immediately deporting them is not feasible, but that does not mean that over one million with criminal records could not be returned to their home countries as undesirables.

...Some states report a fourth to a third of their murders are likely committed by illegal aliens. That cohort makes up over 25% of federal prisoners.

...Make Mexico Pay?

Sending Mexico a bill, or charging tariffs on trade, to finish the wall as penance for its cynical manipulation of American magnanimity is childish and unnecessary. Instead, we should look at some $40-50 billion that are sent as remittances home to Central America and Mexico each year, largely by illegal aliens themselves. Such a staggering sum might represent on average a $200-500 a month expense per illegal alien, a disposable sum that at best suggests existential poverty may not necessarily haunt every illegal alien resident, and at worse might remind us that government subsidies are sometimes used to free up income to send out of the country. Imagine if $40-50 billion were instead infused into the U.S. health care and legal systems for the indigent.

All the government would have to do, in the manner that most nations abroad already do, would be to impose a federal surcharge on all remittances by any sender who could not provide a U.S. passport to substantiate the transaction. At a 10% rate, billions could be raised ($4-5 billion a year?), and applied to the completion of the border fence. Within four or five years, the cost ($20 billion?) could be easily met by those whose illegality prompted the wall to be built.

Anchor Babies? ...In a practical sense, anyone who lives in an area with a large population of illegal aliens knows that it is a common tact for pregnant foreign nationals to deliberately plan on giving birth in the U.S., both to ensure citizenship for their children, and to create a proverbial anchor, by which they can either obtain legal residency for themselves or cite familial humanitarian claims later on if deportation suddenly looms. Is that not a means of circumventing and subverting the law by avoiding an application for legal green-card resident status? If “anchor baby” is a pejorative term, what then is the politically correct expression for that real fact?

Euphemisms...Breaking federal law is not a neutral matter of being without documents, but simply deliberately choosing never to obtain them at all. Alien (“not of this locale”) is not a pejorative term, but recognizes that Mexico and the United States are two different legal entities. Oddly, what is an offensive noun is La Raza (“the race”), racial chauvinism at its worse. Raza has a terrible history of modern usage in fascist Franco’s Spain and Mussolini’s Italy, and has disappeared from popular accepted usage in both countries. Raza was brought back into contemporary American parlance by racial separatists, particularly in the 1960s. Mrs. Clinton just spoke at the National Council of La Raza, and yet has been vocal about accusing others of polarizing the debate through charged language. That is absurd.

Absurd? ...Elites have branded Trump’s immigration proposals as absurd, especially the inflated rhetoric about a wall, and good and bad people. His idea of mass deportations en masse is unworkable, but not an argument against weeding out criminals and those without work histories in the United States.

Jeb Bush implied that elements of illegal immigration are an act of love. Perhaps that is true for millions of illegal aliens, who work hard and for little pay, and usually do not violate further state and federal laws. I see them every day.

But not all foreign nationals from Mexico and Central America do that.

One would accept Bush’s blanket generalization only if he had the clout or capital to be exempt from the ramifications of his own ideology. When a car zoomed into the barnyard last night and tossed out a brood of puppies (twice now in one month), and when last week a man threw wet garbage from his pickup next to my mailbox (full of Spanish language magazines, diapers, and used baby clothes), and when last month someone stole my pickup (found by police abandoned and damaged in a Fresno alleyway, with Mexican beer, food, and Spanish-language ads inside), and when two weeks ago a non-English speaker came in the driveway looking for trailers of prostitution (caravanas) down the road, I felt that they all had expressed little love for animals, the environment, or young women, or for that matter themselves — or me.

In other words, I sensed no act of love.

Read more here.

How the Clinton machine works

Walter Russell Mead writes at The American Interest,

Whether the Clintons understood this from the beginning, or whether they just pursued opportunities without understanding how it would all add up, they’ve discovered a new way to yoke money and power onto a self-sustaining machine. There seem to be four pillars for this new kind of edifice.

First, there are the unintended consequences of the dysfunctional campaign finance “reforms” over the past thirty years that gutted traditional party organizations while empowering billionaires. Both the Democratic and Republican parties are, institutionally speaking, mere shadows of their former selves. Today, every politician is a freelance operator, accumulating bundlers and backers. Those contacts are power, and power is at least partly heritable. Being part of a political dynasty matters more when parties matter less. Look at Jeb Bush, who, according to the AP, has received about half of his financial backing from people who supported his father and brother.

Expect to see more family firms like the Bushes and the Clintons going into politics. Daddy’s rolodex is a useful thing to have.

Second, there is the synergy created by the intersection of the Power Couple and the Twenty-second Amendment, which limited Presidents to two terms. Term-limited Presidents have a hard time convincing donors that further gifts will result in future benefits. This is a problem the Clintons do not have.

Hillary Clinton is the first person who can convince power brokers that she’s ready to make the transition from FLOTUS to POTUS. In former times, women were not considered serious political leaders in the United States; some wives followed their husbands into politics, but the husband, unless dead, remained at the head of the firm. Nobody thought that Lurleen Wallace was the most important politician in the Alabama Governor’s mansion. But in the 21st century, women can be wives and formidable officeholders as well. Nobody doubts that Hillary will be wearing the pantsuit if the Clintons go back to the White House.

In an age when access to money hinges on celebrity and familiarity, having two star politicians in the same family can make a big difference. The Twenty-second Amendment, adopted after Franklin D. Roosevelt smashed the third term taboo dating back to the time of George Washington, limits Presidents to two terms. But when you have a Power Couple like the Clintons, that gives you four terms in which you can dominate national life. What the Clintons have figured out is that a successful Power Couple can stay at the top of national life for decades—two terms for the first member, an interregnum of unspecified length followed, hopefully, but two terms for the second member, by which time the torch may have passed to a new generation. The Twenty-second Amendment was written to prevent the centralization of political power that would come if a powerful and popular President used his (or her) time in office to use patronage and power to build a machine that would keep the President in office indefinitely. The Clintons have found a workaround, and as a result they have changed the way political power works in the United States.

Third, the Foundation vehicle allows the Clintons to attract enormous sums of money from foreign as well as domestic donors. Unlike ordinary politicians, the Clintons can take money from foreign individuals, states and firms without breaking US laws. They can even sidestep much if not all of the odium that comes from running an American campaign with foreign money. Raising money to fight breast cancer in Botswana is a much more creditable activity than taking political contributions from an African mining company with a dubious reputation. Moreover, one can actually fight breast cancer in Botswana, or at least make moves in that direction, in ways that strengthen the network at home. The network of feminist political activists and operatives includes many people one can credibly hire to administer such a project. This is honest graft at work: one hires someone who is a reasonably qualified administrator for the program, but who is also plugged into the network of activists and operatives needed to keep the permanent campaign up and running. One can also spread the money around: the Clinton Foundation can make grants to other like minded non-profits, providing good jobs to loyal supporters.

Patronage in the service of doing good, that can effectively and legally use foreign donations in ways that build a powerful domestic political force: this might not be up there with the discovery of fire or the wheel as an invention that changes history, but it is not an insignificant contribution to the art of American governance.

At a time when globalization and the explosion of non-American wealth has changed the dynamics of wealth and power everywhere, the Clintons have built a machine that facilitates the integration of global power into American politics.

Fourth, the Clintons have captured the power of networks. Like Facebook, the Clinton network is powerful because almost everyone is part of it. Since 1992, when the Clintons stormed out of Arkansas to take the White House, they have been at the center of world power and fame. Everybody who is anybody knows them or knows of them. They can introduce anybody to anybody; they can put together the most star-studded guest list for any purpose. The power of celebrity gives them the ability to publicize and glamorize almost anything; there are powerful reasons to be part of the network that includes virtually everyone in the media, in government, in finance, in business or academia that anyone wants to know or do business with.

Opposition is the price of power, and from the “Bimbo eruptions” through Whitewater on up to Servergate, the Clintons have weathered their share of storms. As public awareness of their new political business model sinks in, expect the criticism to rise. This is partly because there is something genuinely innovative and therefore debatable in the way the Clintons acquire and hold power, and partly because Americans have a long history of disliking the institutions and intermediaries who make our system work. There was nothing the Founding Fathers hated more than political parties, but the kind of republic they wanted to build simply could not function without them. All right thinking Americans united in the 19th century to deplore the malign influence of corrupt big city political machines, but it is hard to think how else the tens of millions of immigrants streaming into those cities from all over the world could have learned to govern themselves and begin the process of integration into American life. Everybody hates lobbies and lobbyists, but it is hard to think of any other system that would allow the worlds of government and business to interact in ways that are in fact necessary for the smooth working of the economy on which all of us depend.

The postmodern political machine that the Clintons have built will stoke outrage for much the same reasons. Many find something deeply repellent in the ways that the new machine facilitates the integration of global and American politics and lobbying. Many will denounce the self-interested mingling of charity and political power-broking; others will gasp at the depth and degree of conflict of interest that a system like this inevitably entails. All these problems are real, and the Clintons, whatever their virtues, have never been at their best when it comes to disentangling the public good and their political interests. But the integrated global economy of the 21st century does need new forms of political organization that were lacking in earlier times. In an era when traditional political party institutions have been so dramatically undermined, the United States still needs organizations who keep its political life on something like an even keel. (The alternative to Clintonian machine politics might just be successive rounds of disorganized Trumpian populism. Would that really be an improvement?)

The most searching questions about the Clinton machine may not have to do with its structure or its propensity for institutionalizing and channeling power, but about the purposes to which all this power is put. In part because of its deep roots in 20th-century liberal Democratic politics, the Clinton machine is deeply entangled with interest groups and lobbies who want to perpetuate blue model governance even as the economic realities that empower the machine are no longer consistent with blue model methods. Bill Clinton’s presidency advertised itself as a quest for a new kind of politics (“The era of big government is over”); Secretary Clinton seems more attuned to the ideas that, more than twenty years ago, her husband said it was time to leave behind.

It is much too early to know if Secretary Clinton will get the nomination, much less win the general election. If anything, her position looks weaker today than it did six months ago. Even the power of a great political machine cannot (yet?) deliver electoral victory on a national scale. Barack Obama (who seems increasingly interested in setting up a rival postmodern machine when his own presidency comes to an end) can tell us about that. In the old days, machine politicians had a hard time winning national campaigns; people out in the less corrupted (or, if you prefer, less sophisticated) flyover states aren’t always happy about big city politicians with big city connections.

The future of the machine is also open to question. If Secretary Clinton fails to win the election and a third try doesn’t seem either likely or feasible, the machine loses one of its most valuable assets: the connection to future political power. Will the donations continue to flow in that case, or will the machine gradually lose coherence and strength? Can Chelsea Clinton carry the machine into a new era, and does she want to? Will the partnership, often under stress, between Hillary and Bill be strong enough to fuel the machine if the return to the White House fails to occur?

The Clintons have built something new and important, if not necessarily durable or good. They have changed, at least for a time, the way power works in the United States and even in the world. They have built a new kind of institution for a different time. Politicians and power brokers all over the world are paying attention; expect many more efforts to create postmodern political machines in a time when the key institutions of governance and organization are increasingly out of date and out of tune.

Read more here.

Do you go with the sane man with the loony position, or the loony man with the sane position?

Mark Steyn talks briefly with Hugh Hewitt about Donald Trump and Jeb Bush:

MS: I think the way to look on it, Hugh, is like this – you've been quite critical of him. You can say "Oh, this guy is an out-of-control lunatic buffoon" but actually–

HH: I never said that. Let the record be clear.

MS: No, no, no. I know you've never said that, but a lot of people have. But what he's saying is actually quite sane - whereas if you think of the so-called sane candidates like Jeb Bush, when he talks about illegal immigration as an "act of love", he may be a sane man, but what he's saying is far loonier than what Donald Trump is saying. If you got a loony with the sane position versus a sane man with a loony position bet on the loony with a sane position.

Trump's cover story interview with the Hollywood Reporter

Janice Min writes at The Hollywood Reporter that Donald Trump

admires Ronald Reagan, and a bust of the late commander in chief in his office is a business award with Trump's name on it. If the 40th president was "The Great Communicator," Trump, who rose to prominence not as an actor but by playing himself on TV, is the 21st century version: The Great Entertainer. And right now, it is working.

You voted for Reagan, right?

I did. I was friendly with him.

Is he your model?

No, he's not a model. I didn't like NAFTA [NAFTA was signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1993, but Reagan first proposed a "North American accord" in a 1979 speech, and a precursor to NAFTA was signed by the U.S. and Canada in 1988.], I didn't like some of the economic policies. But he was a man that I respected and liked, and he liked me.

But he also could broach moderates, conservatives, Democrats.

He did. Well, he was a Democrat with a liberal bent as a younger man. And then he became a conservative Republican. He had a great way about him. A great sense of dignity. And he was a wonderful father for the country in a sense. He had a great feel for what the country represents.

...Obviously, the power of your celebrity and brand means something.

If I weren't a successful person, it wouldn't work as well. Voters have great confidence in me because I really have been successful. I have an income of over $400 million a year. I don't need anybody's money. I was offered $5 million last week by a lobbyist to put in the campaign. I said, "No, I don't need it." He said, "What do you mean, 'I don't need it?' " I said I don't need it. This is a guy that I know well, a good lobbyist, a tough cookie. He's not giving to me because he thinks I have the most beautiful hair he's ever seen. He's giving to me because when he has one of his companies in trouble or needs something, they want to call me and say, "Hey, Don, how you doing? Remember me?" I don't need that stuff. Whereas Jeb Bush, with $114 million that he raised [so far this year], and Hillary with the $60 million [CBS News reports she raised $47 million in the campaign's first quarter] and everyone else with the money they raised, they're going to be called upon, and they're going to have to do those things like little puppets. So people do respect that about me. I don't need it.

Do you think Bloomberg will support you?

I don't know. He is a friend of mine, he likes me. I saved him on the big project in the Bronx [Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point], which was taking years. It's been under construction for 25 years, and I got it built in 11 months, got it open [in April]. We are on the opposite side of the spectrum on guns. So for that reason alone perhaps he wouldn't.

Whose side are you on in Deflategate — Tom Brady or Roger Goodell?

Tom Brady. Tom is an unbelievable guy. He's a very good friend of mine. I have his number right here someplace. Whatever. Here, look, he just called me. (He holds up a Post-it that says "Tom Brady's New Cell #.")

If you're Jeb Bush, how would you compete against Donald Trump?

Jeb is a very nice person, but he is very low energy. And you need a person with great energy, enthusiasm and brainpower to straighten out our country. Our country is a mess in almost every way.

Eventually, HBO will do a movie about this election. Who should play you?

Somebody really, really handsome. That's the only thing that matters. I don't care if he can act well. He's got to be really, really good-looking. OK?

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