His column begins:
Amid the petty bickering, loud rhetoric and sordid attack ads in this year’s primary election campaigns, the death of a giant — Justice Antonin Scalia — suddenly overshadows all of that.
The vacancy created on the Supreme Court makes painfully clear the huge stakes involved when we choose a President of the United States, just one of whose many powers is the power to nominate justices of the Supreme Court.
Read the rest here.
3 Comments
I was curious to read his take on Scalia’s passing too. Tom seems to be missing the train here, but I guess the Trump pill is a bit too bitter to swallow for a lot of long time professional conservatives longing for their hour of reckoning, preferably through a candidate with impeccable credentials from Conservatism Incâ„¢.
His argument is pretty weak, as it is every time he attempts to take on Trump through the classical conservative analysis prism. Buchanan made a great case about Trump poll numbers a few weeks ago, showing how Goldwater and Reagan were polling far, far worse than him without it preventing the latter to win in a landslide in the general.
At this point relying on purely theoretical limits to Trump’s appeal – his reach won’t go larger than that, right? – to bet on his failure is simply wishful thinking. That such a great mind as Tom Sowell isn’t able to grasp it says as much on the difficulties mainstream conservatism has with the ongoing paradigm shift as it explains how much of a circle jerk it has become after failing to actually conserve anything worthy over the last decades.
I’m a bit surprised at Sowell’s decision but maybe the passing of Scalia pushed him, reluctantly, to it. I believe Trump will abandon the Republican party soon and run third party. Before then, he will double cross his backers. Should he reach the WH, I believe he will be the worst XXer of all time.
Mandos’ comment above about “failing to actually conserve anything” is the problem. As a movement, conservatism seems best at reacting, not originating action. That’s a hard place to come from. We seem to constantly be conserving ground the Left has already vacated.
What is to be done? Most likely wait and watch for the Left to descend into internal civil war…which they will. What might trigger such an episode? The FBI and Hillary’s email scandal. As conservative types, we would do best reacting to and then following law enforcement in an event of this magnitude. At this point, a Ted Cruz nominee or even President would be the type to “open the books” on years of our government’s treachery and start answering the public’s suspicions.
From the Daily Caller News Foundation:
“Given the growing evidence that Clinton used the department as a conduit for generating and channeling money — much of it from foreign sources — to the foundation, two questions must be asked: Was Abedin’s SGE status somehow related to such efforts, and were other Clinton aides also designated SGEs and for what purposes? The answers to either of those questions may explain why the State Department is loathe to cough up that two-page list. They may also shed light on why the FBI has a second investigation separate from the probe of Hillary’s email and focused specifically on the foundation.”
The Leviathan moves slowly to protect itself and its own from outsiders, even the FBI. Our State Dept. is as much a threat to our national security as any offshore entity. This segment of the Leviathan has to be taken apart from the inside. The right circumstances and people have to line up. Same with DOJ, EPA etc. For conservative groups to take to the streets in mass protest is to play right into the hands of the Left and its Deep State. After all, public events like that are not our norm. Reference Tea Party and how the Leviathan took them out. If we go that route again, even a little group of say two dozen nicely dressed people on their lunch break with orderly protesting- the next day, the media and the DNC will see Hitler and brown shirts goose stepping down every street in America and as a clincher, it will be stated that by nightfall all the Jews will be murdered.