This piece from John Daniel Davidson at The Federalist starts off reasonably well, and then degenerates into a screed that's as unhinged as anything to come from AOC:
"And free markets, although fine in theory, have in practice served as a permission slip for massive corporations to hollow out America’s industrial base and ship jobs overseas, enriching the upper and managerial classes while everyone else struggles."
Oh really. What free markets?
Conservatives whine impotently, and their so-called representatives do nothing to stop the academic takeover of the means of production (which is what fascism, then socialism, then communism are, in practice) while they mismanage a thriving economy that took centuries to build straight into the ground. But somehow this is "free markets."
"Instead, we need to recognize that the conservative movement has failed. It is dead; we have seen it die. The fusionism of the Cold War era, when libertarians and social conservatives made common cause against communism, is finished. So too is the GOP establishment whose first priority was always corporate welfare at the expense of everything else."
This is true. But who endlessly, and I do mean endlessly, voted the GOP establishment into power? And who endlessly rationalized it for them? Looking at you, John Daniel Davidson, and the rest of the trash GOP pundit class.
"As I wrote in these pages nearly two years ago, we have to stop thinking of ourselves as conservatives and start thinking of ourselves, and our movement, as restorationist and counterrevolutionary. In a very real sense, we have to re-found our country, and to do that we will have to seize power from the left — and use it."
Great. So John Daniel Davidson wants to replace (somehow) a deeply corrupt power structure with another power structure that will somehow not become deeply corrupt if we all pray to Jesus hard enough (not explicitly stated in this piece, but seems to be his take in general). I suppose there's a first time for everything, but it's not exactly insane to ask why a strategy that has failed every time it's been tried in the history of the human race will succeed this time.
https://thefederalist.com/2024/04/26/conservatisms-three-legged-stool-has-no-legs-left/
Don’t worry!
His “very smart people” are totally right about things this time when it comes to trade.
There is zero - I repeat, zero - moral difference between the people who pushed for "experimenting" with lockdowns because "we have to do something!" and the people who push for "experimenting" with trade wars because "we have to do something!"
Musk is out.
Musk put himself in a corner where he can't rip into Trump and he has to play nice probably at least through the midterms, but just look at the guy's face and watch him refuse to give a straight answer here. He put a lot on the line with endorsing Trump and starting DOGE, and Trump absolutely stabbed him in the back. Trump's supporters will blame congress, but Trump has very openly and loudly endorsed all of the DOGE-defying moves that congress has made, and has viciously attacked the one congressman (Thomas Massie) who has stood against it.
The reason is simple: Trump cares about trophies. Cutting the budget is not a trophy. DOGE trying to take a chainsaw to government was a trophy, but as soon as DOGE became more of Musk's than Trump's trophy, Trump stopped caring about it because congress offered him a Big, Beautiful Bill as a trophy instead. Just like the FBI offered the opportunity to build a Big, Beautiful new headquarters building for them (Trump loves buildings!). ...
As comedy slowly slides into unfunny wokeness hell, the last comedian standing (assuming he doesn't drop dead first, I mean just look at the guy; he's a trainwreck) will be Doug Stanhope. He closed out his recent special "The Dying of the Last Breed" with this bit on how important it is that we be able to make fun of anything. Because making fun.
Language warning, duh.
Preliminary Q2 numbers for Argentina are in. This is still subject to adjustment but so far their preliminaries have been pretty accurate under the Milei administration.
Slashing spending works. Trump and Bessent are very optimistically projecting economic growth of 3% doing the opposite of what Milei is doing to deliver 7.6% - and climbing!
