RUTHFULLY YOURS

The day before Thanksgiving in New York, I bumped into a Trump adviser who actually knows what is going on inside Trump Tower, as opposed to rumors inhabiting the media such as this Tuesday headline: “Trump’s Team Frays Over Romney.” The message I got was different: “It’s going to be fine. It’s going to be just fine.”

In the seven days since Thanksgiving, President-elect Trump has named the respected schools reformer Betsy DeVos from Michigan as Secretary of Education. Rep. Tom Price of Georgia, the chairman of the House Budget Committee and a committed reformer of ObamaCare, is Secretary of Health and Human Services. Elaine Chao, who was George W. Bush’s reformist Labor Secretary for eight years, is the new Secretary of Transportation.

Two businessmen will enter the cabinet. Former Goldman Sachs banker Steven Mnuchin is Treasury Secretary and Wilbur Ross, an investor in distressed industries, will be Commerce Secretary.

Going deeper into the policy weeds, Mr. Trump selected Indiana Medicaid reformer Seema Verma to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid. The main Supreme Court adviser visiting Trump Tower has been Leonard Leo, executive vice president of the Federalist Society.

Bob Woodson, one of this generation’s smartest and most productive black conservatives, has been in to discuss with Mr. Trump how to make good on his campaign promise to champion the inner cities.

If instead of these individuals, the visitors to Trump Tower had been the alt-right activists of so many progressive night sweats, it would have been reported across the New York Times’ front page and on CNN round the clock, as if Godzilla and Mothra were trundling up Fifth Avenue.

Instead, the Trump transition has been talking to and appointing some of the most accomplished and serious individuals in Republican and conservative politics. Donald Trump isn’t pulling rabbits out of a hat. Somebody at team Trump has a first-rate Rolodex.

More #winning:

From the earliest days of his campaign, Donald J. Trump made keeping manufacturing jobs in the United States his signature economic issue, and the decision by Carrier, the big air-conditioner company, to move over 2,000 of them from Indiana to Mexico was a tailor-made talking point for him on the stump.

On Thursday, Mr. Trump and Mike Pence, Indiana’s governor and the vice president-elect, plan to appear at Carrier’s Indianapolis factory to announce a deal with the company to keep roughly 1,000 jobs in the state, according to officials with the transition team as well as Carrier.

Mr. Trump will be hard-pressed to alter the economic forces that have hammered the Rust Belt for decades, but forcing Carrier and its parent company, United Technologies, to reverse course is a powerful tactical strike that will hearten his followers even before he takes office.

“I’m ready for him to come,” said Robin Maynard, a 24-year veteran of Carrier who builds high-efficiency furnaces and earns almost $24 an hour as a team leader. “Now I can put my daughter through college without having to look for another job.”

This was one of those campaign promises the How Not to Do It Left assured us would be impossible to keep. But the Circumlocution Office failed. Leave it to the New York Times to put a “progressive” spin on the decision, and compare Trump, favorably if indirectly, to Bernie Sanders:

It also signals that Mr. Trump is a different kind of Republican, willing to take on Big Business, at least in individual cases.

And just as only a confirmed anti-Communist like Richard Nixon could go to China, so only a businessman like Mr. Trump could take on corporate America without being called a Bernie Sanders-style socialist. If Barack Obama had tried the same maneuver, he’d probably have drawn criticism for intervening in the free market.

The Muslim terrorist group Islamic State has claimed responsibility for U.S. green card holder Abdul Razak Ali Artan’s brutal car-and-machete attack at Ohio State University.

On Monday morning 18-year-old Artan drove his car through a crowd of pedestrians at OSU’s Columbus campus. He exited the vehicle and then began hacking away at people with his knife. A police officer at the scene shot and killed him. Media reports indicated 12 people were injured in the attack but none suffered life-threatening injuries. Columbus Police Chief Kim Jacobs promptly said “I think we have to consider that it is” a terrorist attack.

Sure enough, on Tuesday Islamic State claimed responsibility for the terrorist assault. The group’s Amaq News Agency stated the OSU attack was perpetrated by a “soldier of the Islamic State.”

Artan did in fact follow the express directives of Islamic State. In September 2014 the group issued this order to its followers:

So O muwahhid, do not let this battle pass you by wherever you may be. You must strike the soldiers, patrons, and troops of the tawaghit. Strike their police, security, and intelligence members, as well as their treacherous agents. Destroy their beds. Embitter their lives for them and busy them with themselves. If you can kill a disbelieving American or European — especially the spiteful and filthy French — or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however it may be….If you are not able to find an IED or a bullet, then single out the disbelieving American, Frenchman, or any of their allies. Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car, or throw him down from a high place, or choke him, or poison him….

On Facebook, Artan referenced jihadist mastermind Anwar al-Awlaki and wrote: “I am sick and tired of seeing my fellow Muslim brothers and sisters being killed and tortured EVERYWHERE. … I can’t take it anymore. America! Stop interfering with other countries … [if] you want us Muslims to stop carrying lone wolf attacks.”

As soon as details about Artan began trickling out it was obvious to anyone not wearing politically correct blinders that the attack was an act of Islamic terrorism. KARE11.com reported “Artan was a Somali refugee and Ohio State student who left his homeland with his family in 2007. They lived in Pakistan before coming to the U.S., where Artan became a permanent resident in 2014.”

Somalia and Pakistan are “two epicenters of the global jihad,” writes Robert Spencer. If President-elect Donald Trump’s proposal to place a temporary moratorium on immigration from jihadist-friendly countries had been in effect “Monday’s jihad attack at Ohio State University would never have happened,” he adds.

Under President Obama, Somali refugee resettlement has surged by an astounding 250 percent. As Jim Stinson writes at LifeZette:

Somalia is an overwhelmingly Muslim nation. Over 99 percent of Somalians are Muslim, according to Pennsylvania State University. Mass Muslim migration to Western nations in recent years has generated major concerns about cultural assimilation, vetting procedures, and, ultimately, instances of radicalization and violence.

Thanksgiving Day elicited several calls for “unity” and “healing,” following a divisive and bitterly fought presidential election. Several pundits referenced Abraham Lincoln’s wish “to heal the wounds of the nation,” which he articulated in the speech instituting Thanksgiving Day in 1863. Donald Trump said in his Thanksgiving address, “It’s my prayer that on this Thanksgiving, we begin to heal our divisions and move forward as one country, strengthened by shared purpose and very, very common resolve.”

Nice sentiments all, and one hopes they are merely feel-good rhetoric typical of holidays. For as comforting as they are for some, they reflect a misunderstanding of our political order and the foundational ideas behind the Constitution. Except in times of war or other national crises, “national unity” and “healing divisions” frightened the Founders, for “unity” historically has been the precondition of tyranny.

The Founders knew that the thirteen Colonies were diverse in their interests, religions, regions, folkways, and cultures. Modern diversicrats have long peddled the notion that Revolutionary era Americans were all “white males” unified and defined by the same interests and beliefs. Such superficial racial categories were politically important mainly when the issue was race-based slavery. But the peoples who created the United States were otherwise not so shallow and simplistic. They realized that confessional, regional, economic, and class divisions were more significant and potentially dangerous, for they are often zero-sum in their pursuit and practice, and can lead to fragmentation and violence. The Civil War was the gruesome proof that this fear was justified.

Moreover, the diversity of “interests and passions” could never be eradicated, for it reflected a flawed human nature vulnerable to ambition, greed, and the desire for power. James Madison called the political instruments of this diversity “factions,” which were “sown in the nature of man.” Hence the “checks and balances” and “divided powers” of the Constitution were the solution to the danger of a faction becoming too powerful and inciting political disorder and threats to freedom. In addition to the mixed federal government, federalism, which acknowledged the sovereign powers of the states that created the federal government, would be another check on factionalism. Clashing interests and concerns would be adjudicated by state governments, which would be more familiar with local conditions and interests, and thus better placed to create policies more suited to them.

Most important, the thirteen sovereign state governments would be a check on the aggrandizement of power by any combination of factions whether elite or populist. Given the variety of state interests, Madison writes, this diversity would grant a “greater security afforded by a greater variety of parties, against the event of any party being able to outnumber and oppress the rest.” This diversity would also impose “greater obstacles opposed to the concert and accomplishment of the secret wishes of an unjust and interested majority.” Hence such attempts to acquire a critical mass of power “will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other states” because of “the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of [the nation].” Thus liberty will be preserved, and diversity protected by creating in the states numerous diverse alternatives for citizens who find any particular state hostile to their interests or beliefs.

No sooner did President-elect Donald Trump name his pick for attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions, than allegations of racism began to fly. A writer at the website Slate lamented the Alabama senator’s “long history of racist words and bigoted deeds.” A headline at Salon called Messrs. Trump and Sessions “two peas in a racist pod.” Nonsense. The charge that Mr. Sessions is a latent racist is belied by a long trail of evidence, strewn with cocaine, through the country of Colombia.

The accusations stem from Mr. Sessions’s unsuccessful nomination for a federal judgeship in 1986. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted down that nomination after hearing testimony about remarks Mr. Sessions had purportedly made in the early 1980s that were deemed racially insensitive. Throughout three intervening decades of public life, Mr. Sessions hasn’t evinced an iota of racial animus. Yet Democrats are clucking that the now-ancient incidents—disputed even then as taken wholly out of context—should disqualify Mr. Sessions from being attorney general.

What should be far more relevant is a conversation Mr. Sessions had, and a legislative course he pursued, after being elected to the Senate in 1996. My small part of that story begins two years later on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.

In 1998 I arrived in Mobile, Ala., to write editorials for the daily Register newspaper—and I held my own private doubts about Sen. Sessions. As a self-styled “Jack Kemp Republican” determined to expel vestigial racism from the conservative movement, I had been a founding board member of the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism. That was a group formed in 1989 to end the then-ascendant political career of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. I was thus naturally wary of Sen. Sessions, who supposedly had told a joke making light of the Klan’s evils.

On my first reporting trip for the Register to Washington, D.C., I requested interviews with both of Alabama’s senators. The timing was bad—lawmakers were in session—but Mr. Sessions’s press aide said the senator was eager to talk. I was instructed to meet him, between votes, on the Capitol steps.

Long story short, Sen. Sessions was on a mission. He wanted somebody, anybody, to write about the importance of American policy toward Colombia. That U.S. ally was at risk of being toppled by the narco-financed, communist guerrillas known by the acronym FARC.

It was a subject far from my interests. But Mr. Sessions put the stakes in memorable context. The senator can be a discursive speaker, but he kept returning to a central contention: FARC-allied drug lords were responsible for much of the cocaine that polluted the American streets. As a former federal prosecutor, he was concerned about the violent crime accompanying the cocaine scourge.

He spoke about addicts and criminals not with vilification, but with compassion. “You’ve got these poor guys in the inner city,” I remember him saying. “Nobody provided them much of an education; they can’t find a job; and somebody tells them they can get high for relatively cheap by smoking these crack rocks. They get addicted and they do something terrible and end up in jail and their lives get ruined. We’ve gotta help our Colombian allies defeat these drug lords at the source, where they grow this stuff. It’s just ruining all these lives.”

It was this same train of thought—compassion for the users of crack cocaine—that led Sen. Sessions to introduce the Drug Sentencing Reform Act in 2001. The law at the time punished crack cocaine 100 times more harshly than powdered cocaine. Mr. Sessions specifically argued that this created unfair racial disparities, since crack was the drug of poor inner cities, while powder was favored by white Wall Streeters. Such compassion for black addicts is far from a hallmark of someone motivated by racial animus. CONTINUE AT SITE

After taking white working-class voters for granted in November, the Democratic Party seems poised to do the same for Jews – and that could have important implications for the already troubled U.S.-Israeli relationship.

Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who lead the party’s progressive wing, are backing Rep. Keith Ellison, an African-American Muslim with a long history of anti-Semitic leanings and anti-Israeli positions, as the party’s next chairman. So too is the incoming Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, who is considered one of Israel’s strongest Democratic backers.

Ellison’s bid and high-level backing reflect the party’s increasing leftward drift on Israel-related issues, in which one-sided views about the Jewish state – particularly related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – are far more acceptable as mainstream Democratic positions than a decade ago.That raises two major questions for the U.S.-Israeli relationship:

First, will a future Democratic president and Congress provide the party’s traditional support for Israel that dates to President Harry Truman’s recognition of the Jewish state just 11 minutes after it was created – support that now includes America’s generous military aid, its intelligence sharing and its protection from anti-Israel resolutions at the morally challenged United Nations?

Second, will U.S. support for Israel remain a bipartisan issue, or will it increasingly fall victim to partisan politics – with Republicans aligning themselves forcefully with Jerusalem while Democrats take a balanced approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and broader Arab-Israeli relations?

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/442535/print

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After the Democratic equality-of-opportunity agenda was largely realized (Social Security, Medicare, overtime, a 40-hour work week, disability insurance, civil rights, etc.), the next-generation equality-of-result effort has largely failed.

What is left of Democratic ideology is identity politics and assorted dead-end green movements as conservation has become radical environmentalism and fairness under the law is now unapologetic redistributionism. The 2016 campaign and the frenzied reaction to the result are reminders that the Left is no longer serious about formulating and advancing a practical agenda. In sum, for now it is reduced to a party of gatecrashers.

The Podesta archive, when coupled with the pay-for-play Clinton Foundation, summed up the liberal ideology: progressive platitudes as cover for an elite’s pursuit of power and influence. Examine a coastal Democratic establishmentarian, and there is little discernable difference in his lifestyle, income, or material tastes from those conservatives (usually poorer) whom he accuses of all sorts of politically incorrect behaviors. Self-righteous outrage is a Democratic selling point and a wise career move for journalists, academics, bureaucrats, and politicians.

Without an ideology that even remotely matched the life she led, Hillary Clinton could only run a campaign without consistent positions. She flipped on the Keystone pipeline and trade agreements. She refuted the entire 1990s Clinton economic and social agenda. Indeed, her positions of 2008 — anti–gay marriage, border enforcement, and rural populism — were the very positions that she smeared others for embracing in 2016. In 2008, Clinton damned Obama for his “clingers” speech; in 2016, she trumped him with her deplorables and irredeemables.

She both derided Wall Street and was enriched by it. Her 2008 brief flirtation with the white working classes as a modern Annie Oakley came full circle in 2016, with exultant promises to put coal miners out of work. In the end, Hillary had no ideology other than getting even richer by leveraging the office of secretary of state and pandering to identity politics in hopes that record numbers of women and minorities would vote for a 68-year-old white multimillionaire, much as they had voted for Barack Obama. The more she talked of the LGBT or Latino communities, apparently the more we were to think that the Clintons had subverted their offices and reputations to grift a $150 million personal fortune for the underprivileged.

One of the reasons Trump won without commensurate money, organization, ground game, big-name endorsements, establishment unity, conservative media encouragement, and despite a campaign of gaffes and opposition-planted IEDS, was that half the country felt it would not have survived four more years of the cynicism of left-wing politics. In other words, voters got tired of being accused of thought crimes from a party led by wealthy people who made them poorer while adding insult to injury.