Since The Very #Principled #NeverTrumpers Never Talk About the Downside of Electing Their Preferred Candidate Hillary Clinton, I'll Talk About It A Bit

I always had a secret respect for Rosanne Barr's politics. No, not her actual politics -- I thought they were daft.

But the respect was due to her talking about things that actually mattered, even if her prescriptions about those things was completely wrong and harmful.

I contrast her to the typical lifestyle liberal who is economically well-off enough not to have to care about things like OSHA and unions. I don't support unions, don't get me wrong. (Well, I would if they were properly constructed and limited instead of being artificially-government-empowered organizations for graft.)

But rather than talking about the typical lifestyle liberal's litany of very airy abstract concerns -- global warming, gay marriage and gay wedding cakes, pronoun "misgendering" etc. -- she was talking about improving the financial circumstances of the lower classes.

Now, again, her prescriptions were entirely wrong. But at least she was talking about something that mattered a bit more than not at all.

I find this sort of thing going on with the GOP's very-proud-to-have-a-very-basic-college-degree class. All they want to talk about is airy abstraction like the "health of the party" and "political philosophy."

They don't seem to give a shit that the entire midwest is being de-instrustrialized, the working classes being immiserated by the remorseless importation of low-skilled Replacement Workers.

The actual working classes of this country are being decimated partly by natural market forces (and that's fine, if regrettable) and partly by intentional government policy (and that's not so fine).

Nor do they seem to want to talk about the tangible consequences of a Hillary presidency. They just want to talk about "recapturing the party" and "renewing the party" and that kind of airy facile nonsense that is only of interest to someone who is financially well-off enough to be largely immune from the maladministration of government.

I don't begrudge them their apparent exalted financial situation due to being fortunate enough -- or, let's be fair, having worked hard enough -- to not really care about average median income stagnation or the fact that the US has the lowest labor participation rate since the bomb that was the Carter Economy of the late 1970s.

It can't be held against them that they are prosperous -- prosperity is to be celebrated. (Though find a Republican besides Donald Trump who has the simple courage to utter such an inoffensive statement.)

But what can be held against them is their utter parochialism and proviciniality, in which they take their own experience to be that of all other citizens and/or cynically ignore all citizens whose financial status puts them in a more precarious position than they themselves occupy.

So, for all the people dishonestly campaigning for Hillary without admitting it (in order to keep on track in their real first priority -- career advancement), here are some of the consequences that "Saving the Party by Giving the White House to Hillary for Four or Eight Years" will have on people whose salaries are not guaranteed by deep-pocketed donors.

1. The Supreme Court Shifts Unalterably to the Hard Left for a Generation.

Scalia's dead, Ruth Bader Ginsberg is ancient, Clarence Thomas is getting long in the tooth, Anthony Kennedy's old, Steven Breyer is old.

The only youthful justices are Roberts -- and you know, you can always count on him on a tough vote -- Alito, Kagan, and Sotomayor.

It's those last four who will be on the court in eight years -- everyone else is going to be replaced in the next four or eight years.

Keep this one in mind: it has a big impact on some of the points that follow.

2. Obamacare Will Be Patched Up by an Illegal, Unauthorized Executive-Action Slush Fund.

As you know, Obamacare is in its death spiral. As predicted, it is not taking in as much money as it is spending out.

There are only two solutions to this:

1. Raise the prices of Obamacare, but this is not a solution, as the prices are already too high and raising prices will only expedite the death spiral, or

2. Illegally divert general taxpayer funds to shore up Obamacare, by executive actions increasing and extending "risk corridors" and other such workarounds.

That's all illegal, you say. Well, Health and Human Services has already illegally diverted Three Billion Dollars to this illegal cause already, and no one's going to jail for that.

Now you say: That is so illegal the Supreme Court will knock down any executive orders spending money that Congress hasn't authorized.

Will they?

See point one and note that Elena Kagan was part of the team that designed and sold Obamacare to Congress.

Also note that the Court, whenever it likes, can read into an act's preamble -- something something "for the purpose of making health care available to all" something something -- an explicit (they will claim) authorization to use whatever means are necessary to keep the the law "working the way it was intended to."

Remember, the law plainly did not authorize subsidies for exchanges created by the federal government, but the Supreme Court, led by Roberts, said that they would read the law as authorizing such subsidies because without such a Judicial Edit, the purposes of the law would be thwarted.

You sure the Court isn't willing to do some more Judicial Editing?

Especially once it's stacked and jacked with Young Turk liberals who will be serving Democrat presidents for 40 years?

3. An Increase in the Tempo and Illegality of "Dear Colleague" Letters Issued by the Justice Department's Office of Civil Rights.

As you're no doubt aware, the Office of Civil Rights pressured colleges into instituting Rape Kangaroo Courts through a "Dear Colleague" letter that essentially threatened to cut off their federal funding if they did not strictly enforce the OCR's new reading of Title IX.

You may also be aware that the Office of Civil Rights imposed a new directive on colleges to read Title IX -- which formally speaks of protecting women and girls -- as also protecting Transgenders, including male-to-"female" transgenders, who are not women or girls.

What authority did they have to do this? None at all. But the courts did not stop them.

Increasingly, the federal government is enacting laws it could never actually enact through constitutional means by simply threatening to withdraw funds if targeted organizations do not obey the de facto law they are now illegally announcing, and then relying on the indulgence of the courts to make it all look street-legal.

This will not only continue under Hillary Clinton -- it will accelerate.

Again, see Point One.

Also note this: Every bizarre idea you see pushed by the left becomes the accepted law of the land within two to three years.

Before the left began demanding Christians bake them bake cakes, the idea of such a thing was insane, and anyone who argued that the gay marriage law would wind up compelling people to participate in gay marriages was ridiculed as a paranoid conspiracy theorist.

Yet two years later, those paranoid conspiracy theories became the law of the land.

Right now we're seeing various localities make it a crime to "misgender" people.

You think Hillary's government is going to stay out of that racket? Or do you think it's likely that some more Dear Colleague letters will issue and that will become the law of the land in two or three years?

Never forget, the left must continue picking fights with the right in order to keep its voters voting. Even if everyone on the right accepts gay marriage, but adds "But you can't force churces to participate," what do you think the left's next move is?

The left must now begin agitating to force churches to perform gay marriage. For if they don't -- if they simply leave the policy as it is -- then what can they offer their supporters? How can they differentiate themselves from the right (who, in this hypothetical, accepts gay marriage except in the churches)?

The logic of the left -- to always be the aggressors in the culture wars and always spit venom and hatred at those who oppose their new social engineering initiatives -- demands they always move forward, like sharks.

I laugh when I see National Review or other "conservative" magazines still bothering to pretend they oppose this. Still getting clicks for the latest outrage they can point to from the left, from the wacky college campuses.

Meanwhile, they're actively campaigning for more of it, to empower this regime, to encourage it, to expand it.

You're signing up for four to eight more years of unending social aggression from the left, discarding your one chance to actually do a god-damn thing about it, so just spare me your make-pretend, this-should-get-us-easy-clicks ginned up outrage about it.

Apparently your preferred method of opposing unconstitutional government coercion is to just keep churning out clickbait snark about it. Because that's been working like gangbusters so far.

I will add the rest of the list later. I think one through three is enough for the first half of a post.

posted by Ace at 03:12 PM

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