ResCon1

The Republican Party is Getting Its Comeuppance in the 2022 Senate and House Races

The Republican Party is Getting Its Comeuppance in the 2022 Senate and House Races

By John R Guardiano on September 5, 2022

By highlighting former President Trump, the GOP is getting what it deserves: unanticipated and unprecedented defeats in a midterm election it otherwise should sweep convincingly.

We see it every day in American politics. Politicians, activists, journalists, and political parties do things that are wrong, misguided, condemnable, and contemptible, and for that, they pay a steep price.

They get what they deserve. They get their just deserts. They get their comeuppance. And here at ResCon1, we are gonna call them out, starting with…

The Republican Party—for putting Donald Trump back on the ballot, making him the issue in the 2022 Senate and House races, and diverting attention away from Joe Biden and his disastrous record as President.

Their comeuppance: Six months ago, there was widespread talk of a “red wave” or even a “red tsunami,” with the GOP poised to take decisive control of the House and a comfortable majority in the Senate.

“One of the most ironclad rules in American politics is that the president’s party loses ground in midterm elections. Almost no president is immune,” reports FiveThirtyEight.

Except, perhaps, for Joe Biden, who is benefiting from the Republicans’ boneheaded decision to make Trump the centerpiece of their campaign. Consequently, and unsurprisingly, the GOP is trailing in key Senate races and has given the Dems a plausible, albeit still long-shot, chance of keeping their House majority.

But even if the Republicans take the House, they likely will do so now with a slim majority that may prove more politically troublesome than it’s worth.

“Must-pass bills to prevent government shutdowns and address a looming debt ceiling crisis could create massive headaches for Republican leaders” if they have only a slim House majority, CNN warns.

“The involvement of former President Donald Trump makes 2022 different than almost any other midterm” election, notes FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver.

“Trump is on the ballot this fall in every key Senate race and in almost every top-tier gubernatorial contest,” admits The Dispatch’s Chris Stirewalt. “That makes 2022 a referendum on Trump at least as much as it is about President Biden.”

Unfortunately for the GOP, this does not bode well for November:

The Republicans are “getting killed in money, they’re getting killed in some of these contests when it comes to fundamentals,” Jessica Taylor told The Dispatch. (Taylor is the Senate and governors editor for the Cook Political Report.)

“There is a reason Democrats are eager to keep Trump at the center of the conversation,” observes conservative pundit Ben Shapiro.

“Half of independents say Trump is a major factor in their vote, and they’re breaking 4-1 for the Democrats. Republicans shouldn’t play that game. If they do, they’re cruising for a bruising.”

Exactly. The GOP is getting what it deserves. It’s getting its just deserts. It’s getting its comeuppance.

Feature photo credit: Former President Donald Trump, courtesy of Business Insider.

Why Pro-Lifers Should Embrace the Far-Left Dobbs Dissent

Why Pro-Lifers Should Embrace the Far-Left Dobbs Dissent

By John R Guardiano on June 26, 2022

It provides the rationale for reading into the Constitution a right to life for the unborn.

In its landmark Dobbs v. Jackson decision overruling Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that the Constitution “neither outlaws abortion nor legalizes abortion… The Constitution is therefore neither pro-life nor pro-choice.”

That’s the decision of the Court today. However, one of the ironies of history may be that, 25 or 50 years from now, a new Supreme Court might cite the left-wing dissent in Dobbs to find that the Constitution implicitly prohibits abortion as a violation of the the unborn child’s Constitutional right to life, which is protected under the 14th Amendment.

That may sound farfetched, but not if you take the Dobbs dissent seriously—and not if you realize that new currents in conservative jurisprudence—Adrian Vermeule’s common good Constitutionalism, for instance—are moving beyond originalism to achieve a more results-oriented approach to judging.

The ‘Living Constitution.’ In Dobbs, the Court noted that there is no specific or enumerated right to abortion. Nor is there an implicit or unenumerated right to abortion. Why? Because, as the Court points out, abortion is neither “deeply rooted in [our] history and tradition” nor “essential to this nation’s ‘scheme of ordered liberty.'”

In fact,

until the latter part of the 20th century, there was no support in American law for a constitutional right to obtain an abortion. No state constitutional provision had recognized such a right…

By the time the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, three-quarters of the States had made abortion a crime at any stage of pregnancy. This consensus endured until the day Roe was decided.

The left-wing Dobbs dissenters don’t dispute these facts. Instead, they argue that the Constitution is a living document that evolves to reflect changing societal norms and expectations.

The Framers (both in 1788 and 1868) understood that the world changes. So they did not define rights by reference to the specific practices existing at the time.

The Framers defined rights in general terms, to permit future evolution in their scope and meaning. And over the course of our history, this Court has taken up the Framers’ invitation. It has kept true to the Framers’ principles by applying them in new ways, responsive to new societal understandings and conditions.

The Constitutional Right to Life. Yes, indeed, the world changes! And what if it changes in a more conservative direction, toward an understanding that the unborn child is a person wholly deserving of Constitutional protections, including that most basic Constitutional protection: the right to life?

What, then, is to stop a more results-oriented Court, with a majority of “common good Constitutionalists,” from finding this right in the Constitution?

After all, as the left-wing Dobbs dissenters observe, rights evolve in their scope and meaning, and the Court has an obligation to apply key Constitutional principles “in new ways [that are] responsive to new societal understandings and conditions.”

Advances in medical science continue to elucidate the humanity of the unborn. And surely, the history of America is one of increasing inclusion and the expansion of rights to previously marginalized members of our community.

Blacks, women, gays, the unborn—all have been recognized as members of the American family worthy of Constitutional and civil rights protection.

The Court has seen to it that Constitutional justice was done for blacks, women, and gays; it has yet to get there for the unborn, but it will in time. And the far-left Dobbs dissenters have shown us the way.

Feature photo credit, courtesy of CNN, (L-R): Far-left Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan have shown exactly how a future Supreme Court can read into the Constitution a new right to life for the unborn.

Biden’s Meek Response Jeopardizes the Safety of Supreme Court Justices

Biden’s Meek Response Jeopardizes the Safety of Supreme Court Justices

By John R Guardiano on May 9, 2022

To prevent a violent calamity, the President needs to demand that thuggish left-wing protesters stand down or be prosecuted.

If one or more of our Supreme Court Justices is attacked, injured, or God-forbid, assassinated, it will be because President Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and Congressional Democrats failed to forthrightly condemn, while sometimes implicitly encouraging, the thuggish behavior of “progressive” agitators, who have targeted the Court’s conservative justices for harassment and intimidation.

That may sound harsh and hyperbolic, but unfortunately—and alarmingly—it is true.

As we noted yesterday, far-left radicals have published the home addresses of six “extremist justices” whom they have placed in their political crosshairs. And Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer have raised nary a peep of concern, let alone outrage and condemnation.

Meek Words. Oh, to be sure, after being criticized for not condemning the thuggish protesters, Biden finally and belatedly sent out his press secretary, Jen Paski, to issue a meek, pro forma call for “peaceful protests.”

But as The Dispatch’s Stephens Hayes points out, this was a box-checking exercise— “putting out a statement to put out a statement.” Notably absent was a clear, full-throated denunciation of the agitators’ intimations of threats and violence.

And make no mistake: that’s what we’re dealing with. As National Review’s Rich Lowry observes:

These weren’t run-of-the-mill protests. No one doubts that demonstrations have an important role in showing popular support for, or passion around, a given cause. No, these protests were—and were meant to be—threatening.

There’s no reason to go to the homes of the justices unless it is to send the message that people outraged by their prospective decision know where they and their families live. In other words, to the justice who dares say that Roe and Casey have no constitutional basis: Beware.

“We hate to say this,” warns the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, “but some abortion fanatic could decide to commit an act of violence to stop a 5-4 ruling. It’s an awful thought, but we live in fanatical times.”

Political Violence. Indeed, and that’s what makes these threats so ominous and real: that, in recent years, we have seen venomous leftists violently assault Constitutional officeholders.

Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), for instance, was badly beaten up outside of his home in a wholly unprovoked, violent assault by an angry left-wing partisan. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) suffered life-threatening injuries during a Congressional baseball game after a man with a pathological hatred of Republicans opened fire on him and other GOP lawmakers.

The Senate, consequently, has approved a measure that provides security for the families of all nine justices. “The risk is real,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told CBS News.

Yet instead of recognizing this risk and confronting this threat, Speaker Pelosi has championed the thuggish protesters for “channel[ing] their righteous anger into meaningful action: [by] planning to march and mobilize and make their voices heard.”

This is the same Nancy Pelosi who has hyperventilated incessantly about the “threat to our democracy” from the “January 6 insurrection.”

The January 6 riot was bad and President Trump should ave been been impeached and convicted because of it, but it was no insurrection, and our democracy was never in jeopardy.

The legitimacy of the Supreme Court, by contrast, is being viciously attacked and, as a result, the lives of several Supreme Court justices are now in jeopardy.

President Biden needs to step up and speak out before it’s too late—before some left-wing goon decides to take it upon himself to “save democracy” from five or six “extremist justices.”

Speaking out against these fascist agitators is the right thing to do—especially for a president who promised, in his Inaugural Address, to bring us together to “fight the common foes we face: anger, resentment, hatred, extremism, lawlessness, violence…

“I ask every American to join me in this cause,” Mr. Biden declared, because “we have learned again that democracy is precious. Democracy is fragile.”

Yes, it is. Which is why, at this particular moment in our nation’s history, we need presidential leadership: to help avert a violent calamity that would destroy the people’s faith in our institutions and rub raw the wounds of division.

Yet the President is missing in action. If Mr. Biden meant what he said in his Inaugural Address, then he will speak out now—clearly, forcefully, and with conviction—and insist that the thuggish left-wing agitators stand down or be prosecuted.

History is calling and the fate of our democracy is at stake.

Feature photo credit: Screenshot of radical agitators protesting outside the home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, courtesy of a tweet from Douglas K. Blair.

Threats Against the Supreme Court Show Biden Democrats Are Hypocrites and Frauds

Threats Against the Supreme Court Show Biden Democrats Are Hypocrites and Frauds

By John R Guardiano on May 8, 2022

By Biden’s illogic, the assault on the Capitol was an assault on democracy, but the assault on the Supreme Court is the essence of democracy.

Political hypocrisy is nothing new, but President Biden and Congressional Democrats have been especially two-faced, and on things that really matter, such as assaults on our political institutions and the integrity of our democracy.

Biden, of course, came into office promising to restore “unity.”

“We can see each other not as adversaries but as neighbors,” he piously intoned in his Inaugural Address. “We can treat each other with dignity and respect.

We can join forces, stop the shouting, and lower the temperature. For without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury. No progress, only exhausting outrage.

True words these. Yet when, this past week, “progressive” Democrats launched a brazen assault on the Supreme Court for its apparent decision to overturn a false and fabricated Constitutional right to abortion, Biden was silent and accommodating of the political arsonists and assailants.

Here, bitterness, fury, and exhausting outrage are understandable and completely permissible. And, far from lowering the temperature, we instead should turn up the heat until our entire Constitutional order (or at least the judiciary) burns to the ground.

Targeting the Justices. Think I’m exaggerating? Think again. Angry, “progressive” agitators have published the home addresses of six “extremist justices” whom they have targeted for harassment.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has charged the Court with composing a “monstrous draft decision” that “assaults” the Constitution.

“We gotta be a menace to our enemies, and our enemies is anybody that’s attacking our reproductive freedom.,” declared one angry protester.

As a result of this incendiary rhetoric, notes the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, “a violent act by a fanatic can’t be ruled out… Federal law,” it adds, “makes it a crime to threaten federal judges, and that includes threats of vigilantism.”

But instead of calling for calm and understanding, the President has been solicitous of the “progressive” or radical left. “The president’s view,” explained White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki

is that there’s a lot of passion, a lot of fear, a lot of sadness from many, many people across this country about what they saw in that leaked document [aka the draft Supreme Court opinion].

We obviously want people’s privacy to be respected. We want people to protest peacefully if they want to protest. That is certainly what the president’s view would be.

January 6 Riot. Of course, President Trump, too, made the obligatory, pro forma nod to a “peaceful protest” January 6, 2021.

And of course, Mr. Biden and Congressional Democrats never called for understanding the passion, fear, and sadness of the January 6 protesters who instigated a riot on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.

Instead, they have said ad nauseam that the January 6 riot—which, by their definition, includes the events that led up to January 6—was an “insurrection” that “threatened our democracy.”

In other words, the assault on the Capitol was an assault on democracy, but the assault on the Supreme Court is the essence of democracy. Heads we win; tails our political opponents lose.

Everybody’s equal but some are more equal than others. Some are worthy and some are, as Hillary Clinton infamously put it during the 2016 presidential campaign, “deplorable” and unworthy.

Feature photo credit: Screenshot of President Biden speaking to reporters, May 3, 2022, courtesy of CNBC.

Why Does the West Embrace Ukraine, but Not Syria, Iraq, or Afghanistan?

Why Does the West Embrace Ukraine, but Not Syria, Iraq, or Afghanistan?

By John R Guardiano on April 9, 2022

Politics and culture, not race and ethnicity, explain why we in the West feel a real sense of kinship with Ukrainians.

Does racism or ethnocentrism explain why we in the West identify with Ukrainians to a far greater extent than we ever did Syrians, Afghans, or Iraqis? That’s what many commentators would have us believe.

“We care more about Ukraine because the victims are white,” declares Newsweek columnist Michael Shank.

“The alarm about a European, or civilized, or First World nation being invaded is a [racist] dog whistle to tell us we should care because they are like us,” argues Nikole-Hannah-Jones, founder of the hugely influential 1619 Project.

‘The coverage of Ukraine has revealed a pretty radical disparity in how human Ukrainians look and feel to Western media compared to their browner and blacker counterparts,” adds MSNBC host Joy Reed.

The Racial Prism. Of course, it is not surprising that American and European leftists have fabricated a racial angle through which to view Russia’s war on Ukraine and thereby bash the West.

The Left, after all, has a deep-seated antipathy for the West and has long used racism, real and imagined, as a cudgel to try and delegitimize the West.

As usual, though, they are wrong, because they conflate race and ethnicity with politics and culture. They mistake a distinctive Western outlook or attitude with a determinative racial identity.

But the truth is that the West is not defined by race; it is multiethnic and multiracial; and it includes people of all hues, complexions, and colors.

True, most Westerners are caucasian and Christian, and the determinative political and cultural ideas that gave rise to the West originated in Christian Europe.

But that does not mean—and historically, it has not meant—that only European Christians can be Westerners or Western in their outlook.

To the contrary: Israel, Japan and South Korea, for instance, must now be considered part of the West; and these countries have relatively few Christians and few Europeans. But their commitment to liberal democracy and democratic civic engagement places them squarely in the Western camp.

America, likewise, cannot be well understood or appreciated without acknowledging the important contributions to our nation’s history made by Jews and African Americans.

And so, while it is undeniably true that we in the West identify with Ukrainians to a far greater extent than we ever did Syrians, Afghans, or Iraqis, the reason for this has nothing to do with race and ethnicity and everything to do with politics and culture.

Indeed, it is not because Ukrainians “look like us,” but rather because they think and act like us, that we feel a sense of kinship with them.

Ukraine, after all, clearly yearns to be part of the West—something that could never be said about Syria, Iraq, or Afghanistan.

That’s why Ukraine seeks membership in the European Union and NATO. And that’s why even Russian-speaking parts of Eastern Ukraine are manifestly anti-Russian and reject Putin’s attempt to subjugate their country within a new Russian empire.

Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, likewise, speaks in Churchillian tones, invokes Shakespeare, and cites critical milestones in American and Western history—Pearl Harbor, 9/11, World War II, Dunkirk, the Holocaust…

Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. No political leader in Syria, Iraq, or Afghanistan ever spoke so movingly or so compellingly, or in with such fluency in the Western political and cultural lexicon.

And whereas Afghan President Ashram Ghani fled Afghanistan as the Taliban descended upon Kabul, Zelensky refused to leave Kyiv when the Russians invaded.

In other words, there are very clear and obvious reasons why we in the West feel a real sense of kinship with the people of Ukraine, and these reasons have absolutely nothing to do with race and ethnicity.

Instead, what we in the West identify with is the Ukrainians’ fighting spirit, their desire for freedom and independence, their will to win, and their desire to become part of our political and cultural patrimony.

Indeed, if the Ukrainians were all black or brown, African or Middle Eastern, and exhibited precisely the same Western outlook and behavior, we would feel the same sense of kinship with them that we do now.

Our bond with Ukraine has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Ukrainians “look like us” (meaning caucasian Americans and caucasian Europeans). This is a truly ludicrous and farcical notion that defies the empirical evidence which shows otherwise.

What draws us to Ukraine is the country’s political idealism, the Ukrainians’ manifest commitment to liberal democracy and civic engagement, and their overall (Western) cultural outlook. Race and ethnicity are obviously irrelevant.

Feature photo credit: The stark differences between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (L) and former Afghan President Ashram Ghani (R) go a long way toward explaining why the West has embraced Ukraine much more so than Afghanistan. Courtesy of Khaama Press.