Seven Conservative Victories

There’s one more thing I wanted to cover from the Republican Party of Texas convention a couple of weeks ago. On Saturday morning Senator Ted Cruz spoke. He detailed a list of seven victories in the first 18 months of the Trump presidency.

Ted Cruz's speech at the Republican Party of Texas Convention,
view from the crowd

If you’ve been reading here long, you know I was not a Trump supporter. I was a Cruz supporter in the primaries. And after that, I believed I had no reason to trust that Trump was telling the truth when he promised to do conservative things. Ted Cruz, I believed, also had many reasons not to trust Trump. He didn’t initially offer his endorsement, but when Trump personally promised to put forth a constitutionalist to replace Justice Scalia, Cruz went ahead and endorsed him and campaigned for him. There may have been additional promises and proofs in their private conversation. I wasn’t privy to those assurances. And I was not willing to give him my vote.

But the way to convert me is with actions in line with the promises. In other words, earn my trust. I’m not quite at the point of promising my vote in the next election; there are still character issues that bother me. But, unlike those with “Trump derangement syndrome,” I do not believe he is the things on this list, in a New York Post piece about the man who refused to serve a customer wearing a MAGA cap:

Darin Hodge, the former manager of the Teahouse in Stanley Park, told Global News he stood by his decision to ask the man to take off the cap, saying the hat represented “racism, bigotry, Islamophobia, misogyny, white supremacy, (and) homophobia.”

I don’t believe there is actual, business-world/real-world evidence that Trump is racist, bigoted, Islamophobic, misogynistic, white supremacist, or homophobic.

He is other things related to character: willing to lie and malign opponents; unfaithful to multiple wives; careless about hyperbole and sometimes unaware of facts; sometimes temperamental and reactionary in responding to criticism. And he is a relative newborn as a conservative. But he is not what he is defined as. There is no need to stand up to either Trump, or his voters, or Republicans, or conservatives based on that list. That is a straw man. It is what is being used to stir people up to a frenzy, but there is no there there.

So, as I was saying, while there may still be reasons not to dive in with my full support just yet, I do very much support President Trump on these victories, as listed by Ted Cruz. I’m willing to cheer and get the word out.

So, here we go, mostly in Senator Cruz’s words:

Number 1: An historic tax cut. In December of last year Republicans managed to come together and pass a tax cut, cutting taxes on Texas farmers, on Texas ranchers, on small businesses, on manufacturers, on families. Cutting taxes across the board. Doubling the standard deductible. Which means, starting next year 90% of Americans will fill out their taxes on a postcard. Personally, I think that should be 100%. We should pass a simple flat tax and abolish the IRS. But 90% is a very good start….

Editorial comment here. I generally cringe at the use of “an” before “historic,” which is not a silent “h.” However, you should know that Cruz did not pronounce the “h” in “historic.” It’s a Houston thing. We put the “h” in Houston, but not in Humble, a suburb directly north of Houston. So it wasn’t actually pretentious when Cruz said “an historic.”

Second major victory: Regulatory reform—across the board, every agency, pulling back, repealing job-killing regulations. If you’re a Texas farmer or rancher, the Waters of the United States Rule, Obama’s oppressive rule, gone.

And I spent 45 minutes with President Trump on Air Force One urging him to pull out of the Paris climate deal, saying this is a disaster for Texas. This kills thousands of jobs across the country. He did it.

The President pulled out of the climate deal on a Thursday. The next morning, Friday morning, he calls me on my cell phone. He said, “Well, Ted, I did it. What do you think?”

And I said, “Mr. President, let me tell you what Heidi told me this morning. When she picked up the Wall Street Journal, she read the headline—it quoted from your speech, where you said, ‘I was elected by the people of Pittsburg, and not the people of Paris.’ Heidi said, ‘That is absolutely right.’” I said, “Mr. President, everyone who hates you is ticked off right now, and everyone who loves you is thrilled.”

He added that those two victories have had a significant result already, which you probably haven’t seen on the 6:00 news:

We’ve seen over 3 million jobs created just in a year and a half. We have the lowest unemployment in almost 20 years. We have the lowest African-American unemployment since we began collecting unemployment data. We have the lowest Hispanic unemployment since we began collecting unemployment data. We have, today, more job openings, more help wanted signs, than we have people actively seeking employment.

Third big victory: We repealed the Obamacare individual mandate. That was a big, big deal. When I led the fight in the Senate to do that, I’ll tell you, back in October nobody thought we had a prayer…. We made the case both privately and publicly. We brought Republicans together, unified the party, and in December of last year all 52 Republicans stood together, and we repealed the Obamacare individual mandate.

That means that 6 ½ million Americans getting fined every year by the IRS because they can’t afford healthcare, including 1 million Texans getting fined every year—all of those fines go away.

Not all of Obamacare is history yet, unfortunately. And the individual mandate penalty isn’t actually lifted until 2019, which means that this year, because we were without insurance for half a year, we’re going to have to use money from our 401K to pay the penalty when the next Tax Day arrives. Still, glad to know that’s ending.

Number four major victory: School choice. A method I introduced on the tax bill, that takes College 529 plan, savings plans, tax advantage plans—incredibly popular across the country—and expands it to include K-12 education, to include public school, private school, parochial school, religious school—up to $10,000 per child per year….

[It’s] the most significant federal school choice legislation that has ever passed Congress. It passed after midnight, nearly 2:00 in the morning, with a 50-50 Senate, and Vice-President Pence breaking the tie. An incredible victory for Texas school children and up to 50 million school children all across the country.

Here’s one that seems even more significant this week, following the retirement of Justice Kennedy:

Number five major victory: Judges. Neil Gorsuch on the US Supreme Court. Principled constitutionalists up and down the federal bench. You know, last year, in 2017, we set a record for confirming the most court of appeals judges in the first term of a president. Right now, today, one eighth of the federal appellate judges in this country were appointed by Donald J. Trump. One out of eight, in just a year and a half to date.

For every one of us that values the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, who values life, who values religious liberty, who values free speech, who values the Second Amendment, it is the judges who are at the crossroads of preserving those rights or taking them away.

I wrote about this next one recently:

Number six. Just a few weeks ago I was blessed to be in Israel for the opening of our embassy in Jerusalem. The embassy opened on the 70^th anniversary of the creation of the modern state of Israel. Seventy years ago David Ben Gurion declared the modern state of Israel in existence. Eleven minutes later Harry S. Truman recognized Israel. I’m embarrassed that it took us eleven minutes….

I’m thankful I was in Jerusalem for the opening. There were Americans there. There were Israelis there. Particularly there were men and women who were holocaust survivors, who were reduced to tears, who simply said, “I never thought I would live long enough to see this.” This is another major victory.

Wait, there’s more!

Number seven: Ending the disastrous Obama Iranian Nuclear deal. The Obama Iran nuclear deal was one of the most catastrophic national security steps ever taken by the United States. We sent literally billions of dollars to the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. We flew in cash—$1.7 Billion dollars in unmarked bills, on pallets in airplanes in the dark of night…. You’d ask… “Who exactly is this person I’m dealing with?” Well, sadly, that person was the president of the United States, and he was sending billions of dollars to an ayatollah who pledged “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!”

And, once again, in the Trump administration there was a vigorous argument, a vigorous debate about what to do. You had major voices of the administration saying stay in the deal. I tell you, I spent hours and hours and hours making the case to the president, making the case to the administration, that this agreement is a disaster. We need to cut off their money. We need to cut them off diplomatically. We need to use every force we have economically, diplomatically, and even militarily to ensure that the ayatollahs never ever, ever get nuclear weapons.

Before he went ahead with his senatorial campaign, which was good stuff, and also his ribbing of late night host Jimmy Kimmel, who was playing him that evening in a one-on-one basketball game (Cruz won, by the way), Cruz offered this summary:

One or two of those would have been big major victories in a year and a half. Three or four of those would have been astonishing. All seven is an incredible testament to delivering results.

I have to admit that’s true.

After the speech and some business, I went to look for my son,
Political Sphere, and his wife. And I came upon the photo ops booth for
Senator Cruz. I snapped this photo of him, with people I don't know,
because I was so close. Then I tried to get in line for a photo,
but they cut it off two people ahead of me. So I called Political Sphere;
they had just gotten their photo taken. I had missed them
by going the wrong way to get to the end of the line. Bad timing.
Anyway, they have a photo with Sen. Cruz, but I haven't seen it yet.

Back in 2016, when Cruz stepped out of the race, my thought was, “There’s the end of our constitutional republic.” I was in mourning. I was horrified at the possibility Hillary Clinton—the worst major candidate in the history of presidential races—could take over our country. But at that point I really had no evidence that a President Trump would be measurably better.

I’m so very glad to be wrong. There is hope. Trust is building. It turns out that tyrannical infrastructure built on executive orders and legislation-by-judiciary crumbles pretty quickly, once someone determinedly moves back toward constitutional law.

Like Samson in the Old Testament, Trump is an unlikely champion for good.

But, as surprising as it seems, in between cringe-worthy tweets and threats of authoritarianism (that truly frighten the real authoritarians), we conservatives are having some major victories. And, if President Trump keeps listening to wise conservative counsel, we’ll keep getting more of these victories.

Collusion

There was a Politico story earlier this week, investigative reporting by Josh Meyer. It hasn’t gotten a lot of attention in regular media, as you might expect from such a big story, probably because it doesn’t portray Obama and his administration in a positive light. I heard of it, instead, from conservative commentators Hugh Hewitt and Ben Shapiro. 

The piece, titled “The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook,” is very long—about 14,500 words, which looks like more than 40 pages, even with a lot of the illustrations removed. I recommend reading it in full, but I’m going to quote just a few bits, enough so I can make a couple of comments about it.

Here’s the intro:

In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States.

Project Cassandra, as it was called, was launched in 2008, under Pres. Bush:

Over the next eight years, agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations and informants to map Hezbollah’s illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.

They followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.

But as Project Cassandra reached higher into the hierarchy of the conspiracy, Obama administration officials threw an increasingly insurmountable series of roadblocks in its way,

Here’s an example of things looking really bad:

Lebanese arms dealer Ali Fayad, a suspected top Hezbollah operative whom agents believed reported to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a key supplier of weapons to Syria and Iraq, was arrested in Prague in the spring of 2014. But for the nearly two years Fayad was in custody, top Obama administration officials declined to apply serious pressure on the Czech government to extradite him to the United States, even as Putin was lobbying aggressively against it.

Fayad, who had been indicted in U.S. courts on charges of planning the murders of U.S. government employees, attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization and attempting to acquire, transfer and use anti-aircraft missiles, was ultimately sent to Beirut. He is now believed by U.S. officials to be back in business, and helping to arm militants in Syria and elsewhere with Russian heavy weapons.

If you can’t see the irony of this situation, Ben Shapiro spells it out this way:

We’re all supposed to believe that President Trump, as a candidate, colluded with the Russian government to “steal” the 2016 election. There’s no serious evidence to that effect, despite a massive FBI investigation, a Congressional investigation, and a special counsel investigation initiated by the Department of Justice.

But there is clear evidence that the Obama administration colluded with the Russian government to free an Islamic terrorist responsible for the deaths of Americans—all in order to appease Iran to pave the way for the Obama administration’s surrender to the burgeoning Iranian nuclear program and Iran’s escalating regional ambitions.

Obama’s team must have their side of the story, right?

[Kevin] Lewis, speaking for the Obama administration, provided a list of eight arrests and prosecutions as proof [that the administration had taken actions against Hezbollah]. He made special note of a February 2016 operation in which European authorities arrested an undisclosed number of alleged members of a special Hezbollah business affairs unit that the DEA says oversees its drug trafficking and other criminal money-making enterprises.

But…

Project Cassandra officials, however, noted that the European arrests occurred after the negotiations with Iran were over, and said the task force initiated the multinational partnerships on its own, after years of seeing their cases shot down by the Justice and State departments and other U.S. agencies.

The Justice Department, they pointed out, never filed corresponding U.S. criminal charges against the suspects arrested in Europe.

Here’s a bit of the history:

Project Cassandra had its origins in a series of investigations launched in the years after the 9/11 attacks which all led, via their own twisted paths, to Hezbollah as a suspected global criminal enterprise.

Hezbollah, according to John Brennan, Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, isn’t just a group of bad guys anymore; they’re an actual party. So we should respect them. But, in reality, that’s a pretty naive assessment:

“Hezbollah operates like the Gambino crime family on steroids, and [Safieddine] is its John Gotti,” said [Jack] Kelly [DEA agent overseeing Hezbollah cases], referring to the infamous “Teflon Don” crime boss who for decades eluded justice. “Whatever Iran needs, Safieddine is in charge of getting it for them.”

The connection you need to understand is this one:

Because Hezbollah’s drug trafficking was bankrolling its Islamic Jihad military wing and joint ventures with Iran, as [David] Asher [expert on illicit finance, sent from the Pentagon to work on Project Cassandra] would later testify before Congress, it represented “the largest material support scheme for terrorism operations” the world had ever seen.

Money Laundering paths, map from here
Red = Used cars bought in US, shipped to West Africa, proceeds to Lebanon
Yellow = Drugs from Colombia and Venezuela are shipped to the US through Mexico, and to Europe via West Africa
Green = Freshly laundered money returned to US to buy used cars

When Kelly couldn’t get the White House to take action on any of the mounds of evidence they’d compiled, he started asking questions:

Kelly said, he ran into one of the unit’s top prosecutors and asked if there was “something going on with the White House that explains why we can’t get a criminal filing.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” the prosecutor replied, according to Kelly. “Right now, we have 50 FBI agents not doing anything because they know their Iran cases aren’t going anywhere,” including investigations around the U.S. into allegedly complicit used-car dealers.

For example:

By the end of 2012, senior officials at the Justice Department’s National Security and Criminal divisions, and at the State Department and National Security Council, had shut down, derailed or delayed numerous other Hezbollah-related cases with little or no explanation, according to Asher, Kelly, Maltz and other current and former participating officials.

Agents discovered “an entire Quds force network” in the U.S., laundering money, moving drugs and illegally smuggling Bell helicopters, night-vision goggles and other items for Iran, Asher said.

“We crashed to indict” the elite Iranian unit, and while some operatives were eventually prosecuted, other critically important indictments “were rejected despite the fact that we had excellent evidence and testifying witnesses,” said Asher, who helped lead the investigation.

So, to summarize, Obama was so intent on making the Iran nuclear deal, that he was willing to sacrifice pretty much anything to get it. And what did the US get in the deal? We got a guarantee that Iran would be facilitated in developing nuclear weapons (in about a decade), we would give them $150 billion for allowing us to lift the sanctions—the lifting of which they have not earned—and, as Senator Ted Cruz said, ahead of the disapproving vote from Congress that Obama ignored,

[I]t will facilitate and accelerate the nation of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. There is no greater threat to the safety and security of America. There is no greater threat to the safety and security of Israel, than a nuclear Iran. I agree with Prime Minister Netanyahu that a nuclear Iran poses an existential threat to the nation of Israel. And let me be clear, when he says existential, he doesn’t mean a bunch of Frenchmen in black berets chain smoking. He means literally going to the very existence of Israel.

There’s a PragerU video on the Iran deal you might want to watch as a refresher:

I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that Obama has done more to harm the United States of America than any president—and arguably more harm than any other American traitor. It is hard to imagine doing worse.

Is it just because he is short-sighted, ignorant, and unwilling to see reality? Or is it intentional? I don’t know. In the end, God knows, and Obama will, in eternity, be held accountable. In the meantime, we live in a perilous world in which all known paths of corruption and collusion feed efforts to annihilate civilization.

There’s a term for this type of collusion used in the Book of Mormon: secret combinations. It means colluding with others, murdering to get power and money. It’s a grave evil. I was reading a section about it just this week, where we see the rise and fall of a civilization in a relatively short book. This is Ether 8, prophesying of our day:

24 Wherefore, the Lord commandeth you, when ye shall see these things come among you that ye shall awake to a sense of your awful situation, because of this secret combination which shall be among you; or wo be unto it, because of the blood of them who have been slain; for they cry from the dust for vengeance upon it, and also upon those who built it up.

25 For it cometh to pass that whoso buildeth it up seeketh to overthrow the freedom of all lands, nations, and countries; and it bringeth to pass the destruction of all people, for it is built up by the devil, who is the father of all lies; even that same liar who beguiled our first parents, yea, even that same liar who hath caused man to commit murder from the beginning; who hath hardened the hearts of men that they have murdered the prophets, and stoned them, and cast them out from the beginning.

The hope is that, if we awake to see our danger, we will turn to God and live. I don’t have a better, or more exact, response to this piece.

Appeasement Doesn't Appease

I’ve watched the negotiations between the Obama administration and Iran, as others, with horror. And puzzlement. 

The negotiations were pointless from the outset. There was stasis before. Sanctions prevented Iran from having the money to pursue its nuclear goals. The Iranian people recognized it was their leadership’s unwillingness to play nice on the world playground that was keeping them down, so they rightly blamed them instead of us. Iran was still pursuing nuclear weapons, but was hindered by worldwide disapproval and pressure.

What did the US have to gain from entering into negotiations? What was so valuable that it was worth guaranteeing Iran would develop nuclear technology—along with weapon delivery technology? At least when a similar ridiculously bad negation led to North Korea getting nukes, it didn’t say, “And, by the way, you’ll want these accessories in order to hit distant targets.”

The “executive agreement” signed last week may go down in history as the worst negotiations between nations in the history of the world. I am not using hyperbole. (Nor am I the only one to think so: read here and here.) We went from being in the positive position that was keeping this rogue nation from getting nuclear technology to guaranteeing that they get it in a decade or sooner, along with capabilities to attack not just nearby nations but the United States, with our apparent approval.

And in exchange we got—and asked for—nothing. Not release of Americans being held captive. Not human rights improvements. Not meaningful inspections of nuclear technology development. In fact, rather than US inspectors getting their own samples of uranium, they will blithely accept samples offered to them by Iranian officials. Trust, but don’t verify.

Why?

Because this president wanted to have as a legacy a nuclear deal with Iran. Not a deal to prevent Iranian nukes, just any random agreement that includes discussion of Iranian nukes. And for no reason, really; it’s just part of his bucket list. And all of us are supposed to be willing to risk our not-too-distant-future world for the sake of his whimsical wish.

He wanted it so obsessively, he and Kerry were obviously desperate to sign, no matter what. Iran sat back, refusing everything that was supposed to be on the table. Death to Israel is still their policy toward our ally; that was OK with the Obama team. Continued nuclear program. Everything. Even the ICBMs that were thrown in at the last minute. They knew Obama and Kerry were desperate enough to accept any terms, under any conditions. And they took advantage. We’re lucky they didn’t think to add in, “Oh, by the way, Alaska now belongs to Russia.”

Here’s one description, by Matthew Continetti:

If the deal favors Iran which it unequivocally does—without so much as closing a nuclear facility, this rogue regime gets cash, legitimacy, and an end to U.N. bans on sales of conventional weapons and ballistic missile technology it is because Obama wanted desperately to pursue the diplomatic option and prove its validity.

Here’s Charles Krauthammer’s reaction:

When you write a column, as did I two weeks ago, headlined “The worst agreement in U.S. diplomatic history,” you don’t expect to revisit the issue. We had hit bottom. Or so I thought. Then on Tuesday the final terms of the Iranian nuclear deal were published. I was wrong.

Who would have imagined we would be giving up the conventional-arms and ballistic-missile embargoes on Iran? In nuclear negotiations?

Victor Davis Hanson, historian and classicist, draws the comparison to the Neville Chamberlain appeasement to Hitler. I think that is a too-kind way of looking at this. But he points out several things we know about appeasement, and how they are likely to play out:

·         First, appeasement always brings short-term jubilation at the expense of long-term security…. A few years from now—after Iran has used its negotiated breathing space to rearm, ratchet up its terrorist operations, and eventually gain a bomb to blackmail its neighbors—the current deal will be deeply regretted.

·         Second, the appeasement of autocrats always pulls the rug out from under domestic reformers and idealists…. Until last week, Iranian dissidents and reformers had blamed the theocracy for earning Iran pariah status abroad and economic ruin at home. Not now.

·         Third, appeasers always wrongly insist that the only alternative to their foolish concessions is war. Just the opposite is true. Time was not on Iran’s side. Teheran was growing desperate for financial and commercial relief from global sanctions and embargoes. In contrast, the world had no such urgency and could have easily waited for a cash-strapped and ostracized Iran to give up on a bomb…. Expect that in five years Iran will be better armed, richer, more confident, more aggressive—and nearly impossible to deter without the use of force.

·         Fourth, beneficiaries grow to hate their appeasers…. Under the rules of appeasement, an aggressor privately has only disdain for compromises that benefit him, and yet feels a weird sort of respect for those who deter him. Expect an emboldened Iran to double down on its anti-Americanism, as it brags about how a weak and decadent Great Satan meekly caved to its demands, which will only grow greater.

·         Fifth, allies are always the big losers in appeasement…. Our apprehensive friends and allies in the Middle East—the Gulf states and Egypt especially—will naturally, for their own protection, expect the same sort of nuclear deal that we accorded our enemy, Iran.  America is for a while longer out of Iranian missile range. Not so the Arab world, Israel, and perhaps southern and eastern Europe.

·         Finally, outside observers of appeasement always make the necessary geostrategic adjustments…. China and Russia will never again see any advantage in joining the West in embargoing and sanctioning a would-be nuclear state—not when such a hard-won common front can become utterly nullified at any moment by a fickle United States. Both powers will grow closer to Iran.

There is a very long list of things this president has done that are detrimental to America. This is beyond Obamacare. This is beyond using the IRS to target his political foes. This is beyond forcing nuns to pay for employees’ abortion-inducing drugs. Although it is hard to believe we live in a world where any of these things could happen in America, this is far worse. This is existential.

Obama calls this an “executive agreement,” rather than a treaty, so that he can bypass Congress. Still, he had promised Congress sixty days to go over the agreement (and disapprove with legislation which he would veto). But he broke his word (no surprise) after just a few days and sent it on to the UN Security Council, which approved it soundly—a clue that it’s a bad idea.

The deal is so clearly bad for America, so clearly the worst negotiation terms ever agreed to by people with free will, but what we do not know for certain is motivation.

It is possible that Obama and cohort Kerry actually believe America is a bad and evil actor on the world stage, and that the only way to be fair, if we can’t deprive ourselves of nuclear weapons, is to let all the other countries have them as well, including the "Death to America" radical enemies. It’s possible that they believe “the right side of history” is to recognize America is in decline and the decline is to be “managed,”—which we might have expected would mean “make the best of the bad situation” rather than “make it so.” They might think they’re the best people to run the ship when it needs to be run into the iceberg. They have expressed things that lead to these conclusions.

Or it’s possible that Obama HATES the very basis for this country—God-given human rights to life, liberty, property and ways of pursuing happiness. He hates the limits written plainly in the Constitution. He hates freedom, prosperity, and civilization. He hates anything that opposes him in whatever he wants to do for whatever reason. He wants America to fall into the dustbin of history. And he loves the evils of force, dictatorship, tyranny in every form—as long as he’s in power to tyrannize others.

Either he is the stupidest negotiator ever to lead a major nation, or he is much more evil than we could have imagined. Or a combination. Either way, he has set in motion arming radical Islamists and has facilitated their worldwide attacks. J’accuse.