Vin Suprynowicz

The American Left appears to have gone mad — and the Mainstream Press is gleefully helping paddle their canoe toward the cataract.

Donald Trump has failings, no doubt -– his greatest, from their point of view, being his tendency to point at them and their Politically Correct absurdities like the little boy in the fairy tale, exclaiming, “But the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes!”

(They hate that.)

Though that’s nearly equaled, in their catalogue of insufferable evil, by the fact that he’s so boisterously . . . COMMON, that he won’t even PRETEND to be some reserved, patrician, intellectual type, like Sumner Wells or Dean Acheson or Cyrus Vance or, I don’t know, one of the Udalls maybe, someone who can wear a tweed jacket and puff a pipe and look DIGNIFIED and keep his MOUTH SHUT, for Christ’s sake.

I can no longer even count the over-the-top charges: Mr. Trump is a Russian spy, being blackmailed by Vladimir Putin over a secret videotape in which Mr. Trump enjoys being urinated upon by Russian whores; Donald Trump wants to bring back slavery (not making any of this stuff up, for “bringing back slavery” see: http://www.breitbart.com/video/2017/02/25/michelle-bernard-on-trump-presidency-you-cant-help-but-think-slavery-is-coming-back/ ); he wants to rape or “grab the pussy” of every plump and aging chanteuse in Hollywood along with those of a large number of gray-haired East Coast doyens who until recently were presumably fantasizing about nighttime visits by aliens with anal probes.

Hell, a former New York Democrat whose favorite son-in-law is an Orthodox Jew, whose favorite daughter converted to Judaism to marry said character, whose GRANDCHILDREN are thus presumably Jewish, who’s been praised by the government of Israel as the best friend they ever expect to see in the White House (certainly an improvement over the recent crypto-Muslim), Mr. Trump now is even reviled as “anti-Semitic.”

It’s like some kind of grown-up game of Pin-the-Tail-On-the-Donkey. Cover your eyes, reach into the hat, and see which one of Hillary’s “deplorable” epithets YOU get to throw.

Trump is a pragmatic populist, for heaven’s sake -– not a term I would generally use FAVORABLY. The man probably doesn’t know Ludwig von Mises from Orville Redenbacher. This is NOT the radical free-market Libertarian who’s going to slash the federal government to 10 percent of its current size, repeal the income tax, close the BATF, the EPA, the BLM and the DEA, blow up the Federal Reserve and start issuing gold- or silver-based currency.

Well, maybe I can still hold out hope re. the ATF and the EPA. But in real life, Trump is not likely to do ANY of those things. So what‘s all this “Damien has grown up and the anti-Christ now prowls the halls of the White House” stuff? Hasn’t it occurred to these characters that people tire fairly quickly of boys crying wolf? What are they going to have left if he actually DOES something?

686 Days to staff up. SIX HUNDRED AND EIGHTY SIX DAYS

Donald Trump’s efficacy will probably be most effectively curtailed not by the Democrats, who will discover that jumping up on chairs and shrieking “It’s a mouse!” has limited pragmatic value, but by the wimpy, not-really-all-that-conservative, go-along congressional REPUBLICANS.

In this administration’s first five weeks, despite a solid Republican majority, the U.S. Senate has approved only the first 14 crucial — and routine! — Trump cabinet appointments. At the present rate of Democratic obstruction, it’s now estimated the U.S. Senate would require 686 working weekdays to confirm the first 549 routine senior federal appointees that President Trump needs in place just to run the executive branch.

In other words — given the way the Senate takes vacations — this job (normally accomplished in a couple of weeks as a routine courtesy to any incoming president, since it’s required before he can GET TO WORK) won’t be finished before the end of Trump’s first term.

Yes, the Democrats are causing this -– insisting on their 30 hours each to accuse every appointee of being an agent of either the Russians or ExxonMobil, whichever evokes the most squeals of (simulated) horror. But Republican Mitch McConnell is supposed to be IN CHARGE. He can’t suspend the rules? He can’t submit 10 nominees at a time, leaving the New York and California leftists to divide their 30 hours 10 ways?

These numbers mean Mr. Trump won’t have his routine management team in place EVER, even if the Senate does nothing else (like, I don’t know, debate or enact an occasional piece of LEGISLATION?) for the next four years. This is with a REPUBLICAN Senate! And it’s not clear if that “549” number includes the 120 vacant federal judgeships.

(Alfred Regnery of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund lays out the math here: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/02/25/exclusive-regnery-anti-trump-democrats-best-allies-are-senate-republicans/ .)

One doubts this can really prevail, indefinitely. Must we really wait two years for the remnant Democratic Party, which now seems to stand for nothing but abortion, Sharia Law, and inviting more Muslim jihadists to “Come on over and blow us up!”, to get its head handed to it in November, 2018?

I for one am ready to see Mr. Trump speak softly, while his loyal troopers execute the legal/political version of the Night of the Long Knives.

You’re telling me that among those who now offer Trump no quarter, who have declared this a political “fight to the death” without even the traditional “100-day honeymoon,” there are no leading Washington politicians and career bureaucrats whose decades of “What you gonna do about it?” arrogance have left them in jeopardy of being led away in manacles for pedophilia and sex trafficking, for running bribe-hustling “non-profit foundations” in violation of the Internal Revenue code, for accepting payoffs from foreign powers and plain old bribes of the more usual sort, for repeat violations of the Espionage Act?

They’re obviously terrified of a new sheriff for SOME reason. And they certainly can’t contend they deserve to be cut some slack, at this point, as a “professional courtesy.”

NOT GONNA GET RID OF SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. NOT GONNA DO IT.

Mr. Trump is scheduled to address a joint session of Congress, Tuesday. In recent decades, this mandated “report” (which few still call the “State of the Union” address) has become little more than a laundry list of proposed legislation, much of it added to the list to please this or that special interest (can we hear it for the Alaskan salmon-canning subsidies? Yay!), while anyone who’s examined the congressional calendar knows a Congress working 24 hours a day wouldn’t be likely to pass half the stuff on these wish lists.

I’m sure Mr. Trump’s staff can provide him with an admirable laundry list -– though former House Speaker John Boehner is almost certainly correct when he warns the Republican Congress won’t REALLY repeal Obamacare, since they’re of course not REALLY enamored enough of the free market to just bar the state legislatures from loading up private health insurance policies with mandated bells and whistles (abortion coverage, coverage for sex-change operations), make insurance policies “portable” by allowing us to shop across state lines and making sure you and I can get the same breaks currently granted to “employer-based groups,” and otherwise stand aside.

( http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/john-boehner-obamacare-republicans-235303 .)

No! People want “free medical care,” dammit, and they’re going to get something more or less on the old Soviet model, good and hard – Medicaid for everybody! — just “wrapped up in a conservative box,” as Mr. Boehner puts it.

(Both Mr. Trump and congressional leaders say they want to “keep the part” where the would-be insured can’t be turned down for a pre-existing condition. This sounds lovely, but you literally can’t “insure” against the risk that you’ll contract a disease you’ve already got, any more than a ship owner can buy marine “insurance” on a ship that’s already sunk. At that point you can still sell some kind of “pre-paid medical coverage,” but it’s not “insurance.” It all becomes a game of mirrors dependent on taxpayer subsidies, and any such scheme has to go bankrupt, eventually.)

But as for “speaking softly,” if the White House were to ask me (well, they did, actually, in a form-letter kind of way, which is what got me thinking), I’d suggest Mr. Trump say:

TALK ABOUT THE PENDULUM

“Our plans should not be frightening to anyone — except to law-breakers and terrorists. What’s happening in America today is that the pendulum is swinging back from the extreme, toward moderation.

“There are some on the Far Left, and some in the permanent bureaucratic class, who don’t want this change. They like their power just the way it is. They never go out across this country to see families struggling to get along on low-wage, part-time jobs. The idea that the American people could go to the polls and tell them they’d gone too far — way too far — makes them very angry. So they’re making up some pretty scary stuff. Stuff that’s not true.

“And far too many in the press, who still haven’t gotten over the fact that they threw away all their professional ethics to whore for the wrong side last November, even slipping her the questions for the debates, are willing and happy to carry those scary stories to our doorsteps, and into our living rooms. Because they don’t want the American people to be allowed to think for themselves, or decide for themselves, either.

“They say I hate the press. Actually, I’m waiting for many in the press to remember that America counts on them -– needs them — to be balanced and responsible, to report the good along with the bad, to report what we’re accomplishing.

“It’s time to take a deep breath. I was a Democrat for many years. I’ve run successful businesses in this country for many years. I want my grandchildren -– who happen to be Jewish -– to live in the greatest and cleanest and most prosperous and most free nation on earth, with great opportunities for everyone.

“Other politicians have foundations that accepted tens of millions of dollars from foreign powers. Not me. I haven’t been influenced by any foreign power. Others take their money; I don’t.

“No one is going to shut down our sewage treatment plants. No one is going to bring back slavery; no one is going to bring back segregated lunch counters; no one is going to tell women they can’t do any job they’re able to do, for equal pay. That’s ridiculous. I won’t allow it. No one in our other two branches of government will allow it.

“We’re also going to make sure our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters can continue to live among us without fear.

“But when Washington tells every public school in the country to change the rules on who should use the boys and girls rooms, to let boy wrestlers compete in girls’ wrestling matches and shower in the girls’ locker room, that’s extreme. That’s going too far. The American people say ‘Enough.’ The pendulum has to swing back toward common sense.

“When the past administration refused to acknowledge that Americans were being massacred by the score right here in our country by radical Islamic terrorists — when it refused to enforce the immigration laws — that’s extreme. That was going too far. Time for the pendulum to swing back toward common sense.

“Those who wanted open borders and amnesty promised, back in 1986, that if President Reagan would grant amnesty to three million illegal aliens, they’d seal the border and the problem would never come back. President Reagan, who was a kind-hearted and a good man, granted that amnesty.

“But the Open Borders people lied to him. They didn’t seal the border like they promised, did they? Now they say we have 12 million MORE illegal aliens here, although it could be 20 million, no one really knows. And now they shriek that if we enforce the law and deport any of those illegal aliens – ANY of them – that’s “racist.” They say if we vet people very carefully who want to come into this country from countries that sponsor terrorism, that would be “racist.”

“What do they want? They want open borders, low wages, more Americans out of work, more amnesty that didn’t work the last time . . . and thousands more Americans murdered by illegal alien gang members and radical Islamic terrorists. I won’t allow it. The people in our other two branches of government won’t allow it.

“The Open Borders people lied. And now they’re lying again. Every country in the world controls who can enter and live there. That’s not ‘racism.’ And this latest experiment of Germany and France and Denmark and Sweden in admitting millions of refugees from Northern Africa and the Mideast -– refugees who aren’t working, who aren’t assimilating, who are committing way more than their share of serious, vicious crimes -– rape and murder — isn’t working out well. What’s happening there should be a serious warning to us.

“The majority of legal immigrants WANT our immigration laws enforced. Did you know that? The majority of Americans who are of Hispanic descent WANT our immigration laws enforced. The Legacy Media don’t tell you that, do they?

“The job of our immigration officers is a lot harder, now that it’s been left undone for so many years. But we’re going to do our job, and enforce the laws — laws enacted by moderate Democrats and Republicans, working together, over many years. The congressmen and senators who enacted our immigration laws are not racists. Enforcing our common-sense immigration laws is not racist. The pendulum swings back from the extreme, back toward common sense, and moderation.

“The radicals are out of luck on immigration, and they’re going to find they’re out of luck on jobs and trade and low wages, too. With the help of this Congress . . .”

Oh, you know. Insert laundry list here.

But as Michael Goodwin of the New York Post points out, “The idea that Trump must go mild has been a staple of the punditocracy since he announced his candidacy. That it still holds such a prominent place in his second month in the Oval Office reveals what slow learners media liberals are. Although completely wrong about the mindset of voters from start to finish, they remain steadfast in their certainty that Trump needs a personality transplant to satisfy the public. . . .

“What they mean is that they won’t accept him as legitimate until he plays by their rules,” notes Mr. Goodwin ( http://nypost.com/2017/02/26/trumps-state-of-the-union-speech-is-going-to-be-wild/ ), who has called Donald Trump “the most unlikely revolutionary ever to stalk western civilization,” champion of “a rising up of people who felt shunned, betrayed and left behind,” who “called themselves ‘deplorables and irredeemables,’ turning Hillary Clinton’s slurs into a rallying cry as they threw off the yoke of the old political order and trusted the nation to a true outsider.”

The collapsing Legacy Media “see themselves as Washington’s gatekeepers, entitled to deference from newcomers, with the added requirement that Republican presidents approach on bended knee,” Mr. Goodwin wrote, Sunday. “They use the hysterical reaction of their fellow Democrats as a bludgeon to demand that Trump conform to the progressive catechism. . . . Trump must compromise his policies and talk in the politically correct ways that signal sensitivity. You know, decry income inequality or, even better, apologize for winning the election. . . .”

Lots of luck, concludes Mr. Goodwin, who recently referred to President Trump’s speaking style as “a bull in search of a china shop.”

“We should not underestimate Trump’s determination or his strategy for success. Business taught him and politics reinforced that lowering your sights too soon is a losing proposition. . . . He will compromise if he must at the end. Now he will go full speed ahead, guns blazing. So bring the popcorn and buckle up.”

Maybe even some Orville Redenbacher.