Erick-Woods Erickson
I have thoughts! Yes, I’m on vacation, but I have thoughts on several issues and I’m here to regale you with them as I start thinking about restarting radio on Tuesday.
Civil War
Trackers try to trip up candidates sometimes. Nikki Haley has been tripped. She could have given a clear and direct answer about the Civil War, but got too clever trying not to trip over the tracker’s trap and got trapped in her trip up instead.
Will it ultimately matter? Maybe not. It’s a slow news week. It has played hard online. It has gotten media attention. But people are on vacation.
It is a lesson to the candidate to be direct. Don’t hide behind “my truth” and don’t try to be more clever than the tracker trying to trip you. Better to be combative and call out what the person is trying to do.
It was a relatively easy question and one the Indian immigrant former Governor of South Carolina should have had the clearest answer for, but did not. That explanations and spin are happening two days later makes clear the answer is not.
Also, I’d suggest the Haley Team cede Iowa to DeSantis and focus on New Hampshire and South Carolina. The campaign pouring more resources into Iowa has freed up Trump resources to attack Haley in New Hampshire.
Chris Christie
Sir, you know I like you. But if your seven figure ad buy doesn’t move the needle shortly, get out. Your voters would go to Haley and in several recent polls, she’s cut the gap between her and Trump so close in New Hampshire that your departure would put her in first place. The underlying data all strongly suggest your voters would go to her. If this really is about stopping Trump, you may not like the method of stopping him, but it would accomplish the goal.
Ron DeSantis
The polling in Iowa for DeSantis has not been great and it is his major stand. That said, his organization remains unrivaled. If he collapses there, it’ll be a sign that his campaign should have never outsourced so much to Never Back Down. Concurrently, he has Governor Reynolds and Bob Vander Plaats on his side and they, together, know how to win Iowa. That win, particularly given the polling, would shake up the race.
Frankly, the Haley campaign deciding to fight harder in Iowa for, what polling suggests would be second place, is also a bad move because if Haley costs DeSantis Iowa, she has sabotaged her own candidacy. Every poll shows DeSantis’s departure from the race helps Trump. Iowa could give DeSantis real momentum. The end of his campaign after Iowa would give all the momentum to Trump.
Spy Balloon
If you haven’t heard, the spy balloon story is far worse than what the Biden Administration told us.
It turns out the spy balloon did not stop transmitting because the military jammed it. It stopped transmitting because the Chinese turned it off when the American public became aware of it.
Now, we’re learning the spy balloon transmitted its communications over American telecom systems using high speed bursts of data.
The Biden Administration lied repeatedly. The press covered for Biden. And now, the week after Christmas, the real story comes out when few are paying attention. Our government handled this extremely incompetently. Also, note the bad news dump this week. Why? Because no one is paying much attention. So now go back to the Haley story and you might see why I’m not sure it has a massive impact.
Trump on the Ballot or Not
Colorado’s Supreme Court has taken Trump off the ballot over January 6th, but the Colorado Secretary of State is leaving him on the ballot until the Supreme Court makes a decision.
Maine’s partisan Democrat Secretary of State has taken Trump off the ballot, again holding the decision for the Supreme Court.
Michigan and California leaders have left him on.
I know there are all sorts of prominent legal scholars who disagree, but then they want to stop Trump through any means necessary and have all the arrogance of the elite to never acknowledge they are wrong. They’ll twist whatever they need to do to stop Trump. I’m reminded of the clip from A Man for All Seasons.
But I continue to believe there are a growing body of flaws in the argument.
First, the plain reading of the 14th Amendment does not contemplate elections of Presidents because no person has ever been elected President of the United States by the people casting a vote for President.
When you vote, you are voting for electors to the Electoral College and they are mentioned in the 14th Amendment, not the President.
Second, at this time, Trump is running to be the nominee of a political party. He is not running to be President of the United States — again, no one gets elected President by a vote of the people.
Third, several states all arriving at different conclusions on party nominee access based on the same incident undermines the electoral processes of the United States, particularly when there has been no finding of guilt of the party involved through a due process hearing.
I don’t think the argument holds up, but it is remarkable how few people are being given the air time to rebut the case. On top of that, the media has decided to credential the argument — the loudest voices with the greatest number of degrees and expertise are given face time to make the case against Trump. But these same people have gotten a host of Supreme Court outcomes wrong because of their ideological biases.
Fourth, ultimately this is about the left using the opportunity to undermine the Supreme Court again and the three progressive Justices should be mindful of that themselves. I assume Justice Kagan is smart enough to understand what is going on.
Lastly, several people have brought up the issue of Abraham Lincoln not appearing on the ballots of several southern states. Go back to my first point. People, back then, chose electors for parties and the Republican Party, badly organized in several southern states, had no names to offer. But even if they did, Lincoln’s name would not be on the ballot because those states were voting for Electoral College members, not actually voting for Presidents.
