 Dear Weekend Jolter, The candidate helped along in his improbable 2016 victory by his opponent's own hubris has entered the next phase in his hoped-for comeback by following in her footsteps — and skipping Wisconsin. Euripides couldn't have scripted it better. But the irony is only tragic — for Donald Trump — if he loses. The Republican front-runner's decision to sit out Wednesday's kickoff debate and let the undercard cast scrap was made primarily because of his lofty position in the polls. As Rich Lowry writes, the GOP presidential race in some ways resembles an incumbent president's effort to manage his marginal challengers. Trump's 40-point leads make him look, and evidently feel, indomitable — potentially more secure in his position in the party than the incumbent president should feel in his. Indeed, the debate in Milwaukee had the feel of a rowdy House subcommittee meeting about a bill that's never going to pass. The disagreements were pointed at times, the enmity toward one candidate in particular profound — and theoretical. The primary campaign, moreover, has the feel of a race that's never going to launch, in part because its front-runner is campaigning as the candidate who isn't there. Trump, aside from skipping this week's, has indicated he doesn't plan to do any debates. His stop at the Iowa State Fair lasted all of about 45 minutes. Brittany Bernstein and Jeff Blehar did the yeoman's work of reviewing his 2024 campaign appearances to date and counted a paltry number in comparison to his opponents'. Brittany reports Trump has held fewer than 40 campaign events since entering in November, "and just 17 of those events have been in the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina." Contrast that with Ron DeSantis (78 campaign stops in early primary states) or Nikki Haley (88) or Vivek Ramaswamy (105). This infrequency may become more noticeable as he's pulled from the campaign trail and into various courtrooms (and jails) in the months ahead. As Jeff observes, it is all so arrogant and high-handed, and yet "it is also a perfectly intelligent, sound strategy. . . . Trump is playing a 'prevent defense' for at least one manifestly obvious reason: because he is, at this point, lapping the field in all polls." But just as the sense of inevitability harmed Hillary Clinton, twice, the new basement campaign could harm Trump. Rich writes, in arguing that the GOP race is not as "over" as it looks: The cockiness could well be justified, but a sense of inevitability can be a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it disheartens the opposition and communicates strength; on the other, it can fade into a high-handed sense of taking the voters for granted.
Charles C. W. Cooke seconds that notion: In 2023, Trump is cutting an arrogant, lazy, bored figure, whose lackluster vapor-campaign seems to have more in common with 2016 Hillary Clinton and 2020 Joe Biden than with his 2016 effort.
Whether this hurts him is a question, at least in part, for his challengers to resolve. Their conundrum is a maddening one: How to compete against a candidate who not only isn't there but seems to be politically impervious to cannonballs' worth of bad headlines and who, in the minds of many campaign strategists, cannot be reproached too severely for fear of alienating his soft supporters? (Natan Ehrenreich gets into that challenge here.) Wednesday's debate showed the candidates scattering into starkly different camps in their approach. While Ramaswamy continued to gush only praise for Trump, and Chris Christie was characteristically unequivocal in his disdain for the man, Mike Pence and Haley were appropriately firm and forceful. DeSantis struggled, initially deflecting the question of whether Pence did the right thing on January 6, and later conceding "Mike did his duty." The candidates don't need to go the full Christie, but, as NR's editorial states, Republican voters won't move on from Trump "if none of Trump's rivals ask them to." Phil Klein urges DeSantis to stop campaigning with an “abundance of caution” and worrying about whom he’ll upset. And Noah Rothman offers a specific suggestion for candidates at these debates — home in on how the former president's legal woes will take him off the trail. The message looks something like this: Unfair and undesirable though it may be, Donald Trump is not here for you because he cannot be here for you. Yes, he has avoided this stage in part because the polls have convinced him that he can take your votes for granted. But the former president is going to have to spend most of the next year of his life devoting his attention to things other than the future of our party and our country. Get used to it.
In other news . . . NAME. RANK. LINK. EDITORIALS The demagoguery is getting old: Vivek Ramaswamy's Cynical Crusade Credit where credit's due: The Japan–South Korea Alliance Is a Breakthrough for Biden More from NR's editorial on the debate: The Trumpless Debate ARTICLES Noah Rothman: It Was Ramaswamy's Night, but Not in a Good Way Noah Rothman: When Falling out of a Window Is Just Too Subtle John Barrasso: Biden's Anti-Nuclear Move Fits His Anti-American Energy Agenda Zach Kessel: Bill Barr Lays Out War on Terror Playbook for Decimating Mexican Drug Cartels Dan McLaughlin: Donald Trump Still Isn't Ineligible to Run in 2024 Ryan Mills: Democratic Caucus Chair Imposes Strict Identity Requirements for Leaders, Says Choosing on Merit 'Absurd' Jack Fowler: James Buckley, American Statesman Jim Geraghty: What It's Like to Cross into Ukraine Charles C. W. Cooke: Biden's Twisted Idea of Empathy Brittany Bernstein: Ramaswamy Paid Wikipedia Editor to Delete Reference to Harvard Vaccine Scientist 'Mentor' Days before Announcing Campaign Jimmy Quinn: Heritage's Top Defense Expert to Exit over Ukraine Stance Caroline Downey: 'They Lied by Omission': Female Detransitioner Sues Doctors Who Enabled Her Teen Gender Transition Andrew McCarthy: Why the Fani Willis Case Is Ill-Conceived CAPITAL MATTERS More on the political (and economic) situation in Argentina, from Patrick Horan: Dollarization Might Be Just What Argentina Needs Dominic Pino, with some industrial-policy lessons: What We Can Learn from China's Electric-Vehicle Graveyards LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW. Never mind the bollocks, here's Armond White's review of John Lydon's new album: PiL's Album of the Year — Post-Disenfranchisement Brian Allen digs into a juicy dispute at the Orlando Museum of Art: Temps Soar in Orlando as Museum Sues Over Fake Basquiats FROM THE NEW, SEPTEMBER 11, 2023, ISSUE OF NR Seth Cropsey: Sea Change Dan McLaughlin: Kim Reynolds Shows Her Work Haley Strack: On Uranium Mining, a Monumental Error SOMETHING TO TAKE YOUR MIND OFF THE BACK-TO-SCHOOL TO-DO LIST A mine is a terrible thing to waste. Haley Strack shows us why, traveling to Arizona to visit the depths of a uranium mine on the heels of President Biden's decision to declare a national monument in the state, effectively banning new such projects on the land. From the opening of her magazine piece: Before my visit to Energy Fuels' Pinyon Plain uranium mine this summer, I looked it up on a map, where it appeared as a dot in Arizona's vast Kaibab National Forest. In person, it wasn't much more than that. Aside from the rig itself, the operation is just a rock mound, a plastic-lined dirt pit, an office, and an engineering building. It wasn't long after I arrived that I donned diggers and a hard hat and traveled 1,200 feet down into the earth. I walked through the mine's tunnels, watching miners section off and drill into rock for the element needed to power nuclear reactors. President Biden also made a mine-related visit to Arizona in August, but he needed no diggers or hard hat. The purpose of his trip was to declare a national monument, a designation that will ban new mining projects on almost 1 million acres of uranium-rich land. Pinyon Plain will continue to operate under the company's valid existing rights, but the many other known uranium deposits in the area are now off-limits. Pinyon Plain certainly didn't match images in the popular imagination of dangerous mining operations, with hazardous-waste bins and radiation-warning signs and exhausted miners with dirty faces. There are even roadside camping spots less than two miles away. Uranium mining nonetheless gets a bad rap. The race for resources during the Cold War led to underregulated mining projects that harmed people and the environment. Miners often died of lung cancer from radioactive radon gas that collected in mineshafts; waste rock was often dumped above ground, letting radioactive dust contaminate the surrounding land and groundwater. Mines are now properly ventilated to protect miners against exposure to harmful gas, and there are limits on the amount of ventilated radon gas a mine can release. Despite these heightened regulations, many people still think that uranium mines are big, bad operations. Energy Fuels wants to prove otherwise to anyone who will listen, Matthew Germansen, a geologist and the company's assistant superintendent, told me. Pinyon Plain mines breccia-pipe uranium deposits, which are natural, cylindrical geological formations mineralized with copper, silver, gold, and uranium ore. The almost 40-year-old mine site is only 17 acres in size. Energy Fuels Nuclear first submitted a claim for the mine in 1984. The company disbanded in 1997, but in 2006 its senior management team founded Energy Fuels Resources, which now controls the mine. . . . America imports most of its uranium from Kazakhstan, Canada, Russia, and Australia. Biden has in fact raised concerns about outsourcing the uranium supply to other countries. He says he wants both clean energy (to be viable, clean energy has to include nuclear, which requires uranium) and less reliance on Russian uranium. Why, then, would Biden prevent the extraction of uranium from some of the richest deposits in our own country? In surveys, most respondents have said they support a national monument near the Grand Canyon. But the questions are usually misleading. A study used to justify mining bans in the area is touted by the Grand Canyon Trust, an activist group. According to the study, 77 percent of those surveyed said they supported "protecting the Grand Canyon from uranium mining." And it will come as no surprise that 97 percent supported "protecting Arizona's clean water supply." Activist groups have claimed for 30 years, without evidence, that mining taints the water and threatens natural landmarks (for instance, asserting that mining potholes will litter the Grand Canyon area). It's understandable that the public might have fears, particularly Native American tribes: After the Cold War, hundreds of uranium mines were abandoned on reservations. Now, however, the Grand Canyon itself is a protected area of 1.2 million acres, and each of Arizona's uranium deposits takes up only 15–20 acres maximum. That land is carefully reclaimed after the mining process is finished. For mining companies, Germansen said, it's no easy feat to win public trust. They have to assume that people view them as guilty until proven innocent. Since the opening of the mine in 1984, environmental groups and Native American tribes have tried relentlessly to invalidate it.
Our own Jim Geraghty has been traveling in and around Ukraine this week to give readers a better picture of what it's like on the ground, and of the stakes. You can catch up on his dispatches here. Here he is describing what it was like to cross into the war-torn nation: It was Monday afternoon, but we were on a deadline. All across Ukraine, a curfew goes into effect at midnight. The purpose is to give authorities a time when no one should be on the streets — making it easier to pick out saboteurs and anyone else up to no good — and to move around military units and equipment without any concern that people walking the streets will see it and post some picture on social media. My traveling companions said that if we're on the street after curfew, the police would let us off with a stern warning, because we're Westerners. For a Ukrainian, the consequences are more serious. Lviv is a bit more than an hour from the border. Our hopes of having a lot of time in the city were dashed; this wait was going to take hours. For a while, we hoped we would qualify for the much shorter "tax free" line, but a short conversation with a border-patrol officer made it clear that we didn't. We took our place in line, and my companions discussed whether we should take our chances on driving to some other border checkpoint, where the lines could be better, or the lines could be worse. There have been horror stories of people waiting 13 or 14 hours to get through. But the guy at the front of the line told us he'd only waited two hours. I didn't tell many people about this trip to Ukraine before I left; those I did tell usually expressed some concern about staying safe in the country currently being invaded by the Russian army. If only they knew how difficult it would be just to get into Ukraine. After about an hour and a half, we received an indicator of what might be making the day's wait so bad; a handful of policemen started manning positions along the shoulder of the highway. One shooed people back into their cars, and we complied. One of my traveling companions surmised the policeman was carrying an FB-PM-63 RAK submachine gun, a serious bit of firepower. We started to wonder if this was a presidential escort, and that our arrival had coincided with Zelensky coming back into Ukraine. There are a lot of border checkpoints, but this one was particularly close to the airport he uses, and he was just in the Netherlands. Another considerable stretch of time passed, but at least now, we had the police to watch, periodically changing their positions and pressing their earpieces against their ears. In addition to the submachine gun, one cop carried a small sign with a red dot in the center, which I presumed was for stopping traffic but really made it look like he was prepared for a spontaneous ping-pong game. And then, on the other shoulder, the caravan arrived — first a police car, then nine huge tractor-trailer trucks with their cargo under a tarp. This, presumably, was some sort of particularly valuable and sensitive military equipment being moved from Poland to Ukraine. After the nine Optimus Prime-style tractor-trailers, a few more police cars sped past our left side. Those police vehicles were followed by black sedans with flashing blue lights on the dashboard and rear-view mirror, the kinds of vehicles that back in the states I would have guessed were U.S. Secret Service. One of them was a Mercedes-Benz, and the men inside were wearing balaclavas and masks. Can we say for certain we saw Zelensky's motorcade yesterday? No, but there aren't that many VIPs who would warrant that kind of security, and we know the president had just returned from northern Europe, and at the airport behind us, we had seen the massive Dutch Air Force plane. Alas, after that excitement it was back to waiting. When crossing from Poland to Ukraine, you go through the entire process twice, once on the Polish side, once on the Ukrainian side. One delay stretched into another, and because of an issue with the car, we had to transfer to a bus to get to Lviv. It was considerably later than expected — after 10 p.m. local time, with that curfew deadline creeping closer — when we got on the road to Lviv.
On a related note, the Heritage Foundation dug in this past week on their anti-Ukraine-aid stance. You can read up here on their peculiar line of argument. Jimmy Quinn reports that the overall shift for the once-hawkish think tank has led to a prominent departure: The Heritage Foundation's top expert on defense policy is stepping down from his post as the storied conservative think tank rolls out a public-messaging campaign that attacks continued U.S. assistance to Ukraine for allegedly holding up disaster relief funding that could be distributed to Americans. Thomas Spoehr, the director of the think tank's Center for National Defense, has submitted his resignation, sources familiar with his decision say. Those sources also told National Review that a recent op-ed by Heritage president Kevin Roberts, which claimed that the White House's recent spending request effectively holds disaster-relief money hostage to additional Ukraine assistance, was the final straw for Spoehr, a traditional conservative hawk who has long been frustrated with Heritage's position on the conflict. Spoehr, whose final day at Heritage will be September 1, declined to comment. In a statement today, Victoria Coates, Heritage's vice president for national security and foreign policy, expressed appreciation for Spoehr's contributions to Heritage. "We are grateful to Gen. Spoehr for his years of dedicated service to the Heritage Foundation and to our country. Tom is dedicated to strengthening America's security and has tackled pressing problems such as rebuilding military culture, NDAA priorities, and Heritage's Index of Military Strength," she told NR. "We wish him the best in his future endeavors." Once a bastion of hawkish, Reagan-style foreign policy, Heritage has over the past year and a half executed a pivot toward what its top executives bill as a third-way foreign policy that is neither interventionist nor isolationist, roiling the conservative policy world.
Ryan Mills reports on a curious development in South Carolina, where the chairman of the Democratic LGBTQ caucus set strict gender/race identity requirements for certain leadership positions. His interview with that chairman is revealing: At least one South Carolina Democrat says the restrictions stink; they have "nothing to do with merit," they limit opportunities, and they take the party's obsession with identity politics to a "whole new level." It is not clear that under [Caesar] Valentine's rules an otherwise qualified non-trans black man over 35 would have qualified for any of the vice-chair positions. About a quarter of South Carolina's population is black, one of the highest in the country, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. "Their efforts at 'inclusivity' have veered into Orwellian territory in that they are trying to engineer a council without taking individuality or true democracy into account," the Democrat critic told National Review in an email, requesting anonymity to avoid losing friends and being canceled by the party. "The level of pandering to tiny minority groups has gotten so extreme that the party, in this email, seems to be pitting these tiny groups against each other. This is not merely representation of demographic groups — it is an odd game." Valentine told National Review that the complainant was "stupid," an "idiot," and probably a "racist and they don't know it," or "they probably do know it and they just don't care." "Picking somebody based on their merit, or whatever, is patently absurd in America today, because it is not possible, because meritocracy is not real," Valentine said. "This is a fact. It is not real. People get picked for who they know, how much money they have, that kind of thing."
Shout-Outs Abigail Anthony, at the Free Press: I Wasn't Hysterical. I Was Sick. Salena Zito, at the Washington Examiner: GOP facing headwinds in Wisconsin after years of running the tables Jennifer Kabbany, at the College Fix: Alumni group reaching '50,000 Cornellians' publishes free speech demands for alma mater CODA I wanted to use this space to give a shout to a local group I saw over the weekend, Radiohead Jazz Project, which is what it sounds like, and very cool — but I can't find videos of their music on the dang internets. It turns out, though, they're not the only ones who had the idea to render Radiohead as jazz. Another ensemble going by the same name (a group of Lawrence University students) has several covers online, including "Everything in Its Right Place." It just works, which could explain why the other RJP also does this song. YouTube, it should come as no surprise, contains much more in this spirit. Here are some students out of Miami doing "Paranoid Android." Enjoy, and thanks for reading. | 
Comments
Post a Comment