Although liberal commentators are painting a bit of a different picture this morning, I would suggest that from the national standpoint, the outcomes of the two most-followed primary contests decided yesterday went about as well for Republicans as they could have hoped.

First, Arizona:  although Democrats will be running an electable centrist Democrat, Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, for Sen. Jeff Flake’s Senate seat, Rep. Martha McSally’s defeat of two avid Trumpians (Kelli Ward and former Sheriff Joe Arpaio) gives the Republicans a chance to avoid what would have been almost a certain defeat in November.  Arizona still leans Republican.  Ms. McSally seemingly provides centrists and those Republican right-moderates more comfortable with John McCain and Jeff Flake than they are with President Trump – who would either have stayed home or felt compelled to vote for Ms. Sinema over either Ms. Ward or Mr. Arpaio — a reason to stay in the Republican camp.

Next Florida:  its Governorship race is, in and of itself, less important on the national scale, but Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson is also up for re-election and might need as much help as he can get from the Democratic Gubernatorial candidate.  Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum’s upset of the more-centrist Gwen Graham wouldn’t, at this remove, seem to be what Democrats nationally would have preferred.  Mayor Gillum, while impressive (I saw him interviewed this morning) and clearly pursuing a strategy of focusing on Florida state issues rather than on President Trump, is both African-American and the farthest left of the Democratic candidates; some pundits have suggested that he won the nomination due in part to backing from Sen. Bernie Sanders’ “organization.”  Rep. Rick DeSantis, who won the Republican nomination, has wrapped himself in the President’s mantle.  It would again seem to me that in a state with certain deep conservative pockets and a significant senior demographic, centrists that might have leaned toward the moderate Ms. Graham due to their unease with Mr. Trump will now be driven back toward Mr. DeSantis due to their fear of what Mr. Gillum’s proposed policies might do to their pocketbooks.  (What can only be fairly considered race bating has already started; this morning, Mr. Santis reportedly told Fox News that Floridians shouldn’t “monkey this up” by choosing Mr. Gillum’s agenda.)  Florida’s poor and minority populations seem likely to heavily favor Mr. Gillum, but it remains to see how many turn out (and how many of those that do are able to vote; it could be a GEICO commercial:  “If you’re a Republican, you disenfranchise as many poor and non-white voters as you can … it’s what you do.”)

Two observations:

First, I would suggest that Sen. Sanders’ organization’s push for the farthest-left candidate in certain races (Mr. Gillum; Randy Bryce, the Democrat running for Speaker Paul Ryan’s seat in Wisconsin’s first congressional district — despite Mr. Bryce’s multiple past arrests including one for drunken driving and allegations that he had failed to make child support payments in a timely fashion — over a middle-aged female teacher with a cleaner resume) indicates either that he’s oblivious to the fact that the average voter is more conservative than he is, or that he’s more interested in making a stand on principle than he is in winning – a time-honored Democratic Party recipe for … defeat.  For someone that has expressed such antipathy for Mr. Trump and his policies, Mr. Sanders is arguably backing candidates that could cause centrists and right-moderates to turn to candidates that will, in the end, support the President and his agenda.

All that said:  I would submit that it can be fairly inferred that the prevailing sentiment against Mr. Trump is very deep in Arizona if Ms. Sinema wins, and/or in Florida if Mr. Gillum wins …

After Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan announced his intent to retire from Congress this past April, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell issued a statement intended to praise Mr. Ryan, saying in part, “Paul’s speakership has yielded one signature accomplishment after another for his conference, his constituents in Wisconsin’s 1^st Congressional District, and the American people [my emphasis].”

While one can agree or dispute Sen. McConnell’s characterization of Mr. Ryan’s tenure as one of “accomplishment,” it seems to me that the order in which he placed Mr. Ryan’s constituencies was entirely accurate — and (unwittingly) more indictment than tribute.

By all accounts, Mr. Ryan is an upbeat, pleasant man of probity.  His intelligence and grasp of policy detail are legendary.  Even those that vigorously disagree with him on substantive issues like and praise him personally.  Yet, it is hard, as Mr. Ryan’s tenure draws to a close, not to characterize his record as, at best, one of accommodation and enablement, and at worst, one of hypocrisy and timidity.

Any review of Mr. Ryan’s record demonstrates that the issue of greatest concern to him throughout his career has been the ever-growing federal debt.  An internet search yields such a number of the Speaker’s declarations on the issue that if all were recorded here, WordPress would need another couple of servers to hold them.  A brief sampling:

• In March of 2010:

“This debt crisis coming to our country. The wall and tidal wave of debt that is befalling our nation. Medicare and Social Security go bankrupt within ten years, we have a debt that is looming so high that in the last year of President Obama’s budget just the interest payments on our debt is $916 billion dollars.”

• And again, urging a need for fiscal restraint in March, 2013:

“Our debt is already bigger than our economy.”

These are understandable sentiments; a number of thoughtful commentators have suggested that our burgeoning debt may be not only our most important domestic policy issue but also our most dangerous foreign policy challenge.  However, anyone looking at the dates of these and his like comments will note that they all were made while Barack Obama was in the White House.

• In 2001, Mr. Ryan voted for President Bush’s tax cuts [to be fair, at the time of the vote, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) was projecting a significant federal budget surplus into the future].
• In the summer of 2003, he voted for President Bush’s second round of tax cuts. If truly a deficit hawk, he accommodated to his party’s political interests.
• In the early winter of 2003, he voted for Medicare Part D. If truly a deficit hawk, he accommodated to his party’s political interests.
• According to news accounts, he voted at least five times to raise the federal debt ceiling during the Bush presidency. Good policy, but I’ve seen no indication that he sounded any alarm in those years — as contrasted with the struggles on this issue during the Obama presidency.

If I understand the reporting correctly, the CBO concluded in 2012 that the Bush Tax Cuts and Medicare Part D were the cause of about 30% of the then-current national debt.  No matter how one feels about the substance of these measures, it was apparent by the time that President Trump took office that the Bush laws had significantly added to the deficits that Mr. Ryan never tired of railing about.  Mr. Ryan nevertheless ushered through the House both a tax cut and a budget deal – which USA Today reported that he called the “biggest accomplishments” of his Speakership — that the CBO estimated in April would add $1.6 trillion to the deficit during the next decade … and more if the individual tax cuts (set to expire in 2026) are extended.  This estimate could not have come as a surprise; when Trump tax plan details surfaced in the spring of 2017, The Wall Street Journal reported that “not one respondent” in a University of Chicago poll of leading academic economists thought that the plan would pay for itself.

In the final analysis, the Speaker was more interested in obtaining perceived short term political gain for the members of his House Republican caucus than in America’s long term fiscal stability.  The measures he championed placed the entitlements that millions of Americans need and will need on even shakier ground than they were before.  He instead chose to accommodate his members.  A fact is a fact.

It’s difficult not to conclude that the dichotomy between Rep. Ryan’s words and actions is more evidence of political careerism and opportunism than fervently-held policy beliefs.  Even so, I am less troubled by his inconsistency on fiscal issues than by his failure of moral Constitutional leadership.  However, recognizing that this is a blog rather than an endless Word document, it’s time to call a halt.  More in Part II …

Having just brought the site to the attention of a lot of family and friends, I intended the next post to be on some weighty public affairs topic that retirees have time to ponder.  However, a good friend called my attention to a piece that George Will just did in The Washington Post on Vice President Mike Pence:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-no-longer-the-worst-person-in-government/2018/05/09/10e59eba-52f1-11e8-a551-5b648abe29ef_story.html?utm_term=.d028269e0169

Mr. Will’s piece is, at bottom, a visceral lament at the disintegration of the traditional Republican Party, but he does it through a blistering denunciation of the Vice President’s slavish behavior toward and in support of the President.  Although I love words, Mr. Will’s use of “oleaginous,” “toadyism,” “obsequiousness,” and “lickspittle” all in the introductory paragraph took some doing ;).   (For those that remember William F. Buckley, Jr., I’m wondering whether even he ever used “oleaginous”).

As for the Republican Party, Mr. Will’s despair arises from what is apparent to all:  for good or ill, the party’s traditionalists have abdicated to the President and the party’s populists.  (In a future post, we’ll make Noise addressing whether the party’s traditionalists and populists actually even constitute one coherent organization any longer, and the ramifications of that).

As to Mr. Pence, I made Noise last January on the Vice President’s kowtowing toward the President, supposing that Mr. Pence understands that, as with any Vice President, his primary duty is to ready himself to be President, and speculating that given the hyper-partisan circumstances existing in our country today, he and his intimates had spent time calculating whether he will better be able to smoothly ascend to the presidency “if the time comes” by now adhering closely to the President or by putting some daylight between them.  (He is the one member of the Administration that the President can’t fire for disloyalty.)  I concluded that he had decided that if he needs to assume power, the transition will be smoother if he now clings to the President.

Mr. Will’s venting of spleen was undoubtedly emotionally satisfying, and to a certain extent aligns with my own sentiments; however, neither of us has the responsibility of being one step away from the Presidency.  Here’s hoping that Mr. Pence and his team have indeed carefully considered the factors involved if he has to assume the presidency, and have chosen the wisest course by having him so fawningly support the President.  As time passes, I confess that I’m giving less credence to the approach he’s adopted.  Americans like a President to be strong.  Nobody of any political stripe will follow a bootlicker [perhaps the only word of the type that Mr. Will didn’t use  ;)].

As the liberal talking heads yammer on about the latest twists and turns in the Stormy Daniels tale brought about by Rudy Giuliani’s recent utterances, and muse whether Mr. Giuliani’s statements expose President Trump to or help exonerate him from charges that he violated campaign finance laws, I find that … I don’t care.  I would suggest that Mr. Trump’s media critics don’t yet realize that with regard to this aspect of the ongoing Trump Saga, the President, by accident or design (a phrase I use a lot regarding the President’s actions), has out-maneuvered them.

Although I strive to maintain civility while making Noise, certain facts are … facts.  These are three:  Mr. Trump is an admitted philanderer, takes endless liberties with truth, and exults in boorish behavior.  An additional fact so true that it has become cliché:  the vast majority of his followers – who themselves try to be faithful, truthful, and mannerly – don’t approve of his behaviors, but excuse them because they support his themes.

With all the back-and-forth regarding Ms. Daniels, Mr. Trump has acclimated us to their tryst.  I suspect that if you asked an upstanding elderly Evangelical Grandmother, after she’d had a sip of Southern Comfort, whether she thought that the President had a relationship with Ms. Daniels, she’d say, “Of course he did, dear.”  The Rubicon of public perception on Mr. Trump’s amorous forays was probably crossed with the Access Hollywood tape, but the various threads of the Daniels affair have trickled in at a pace that has anaesthetized us such that any charges against the President arising from it will be disregarded as ticky-tack fouls.  I confess that I don’t consider this type of campaign finance violation, even if established, to be sufficient standing alone to warrant his removal from office.  (I further confess that I am disappointed that my own standards have apparently degraded such that I feel so.)

[An aside:  one person for whom the Daniels affair is certainly relevant is Mrs. Trump.  Unless she is more dedicated to the President than her public body language makes it appear, if advising her I would suggest that she seek competent divorce counsel to determine whether she can legally and effectively indicate to the President that she is going to very publicly leave him unless he (1) now deposits a very tidy sum in an individual account in her name, (2) tears up whatever prenuptial agreement the couple has, and (3) executes a new agreement providing that if they ever enter divorce proceedings, the deposited sum would not be taken into account in the property settlement and (most importantly) that he would not contest her right to sole custody of their son.]

I would offer that except for Ms. Trump, we as a people should not allow the circumstances involved in Mr. Trump’s amorous peccadillos to become entangled with matters that would warrant his removal from office if appropriately established:  use of his position to obstruct justice; knowing collaboration (directly, or through knowledge of collaborative activities by members of his campaign team) with agents of the Russian government to affect the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election; or commission of crimes before he was in office that can be used by the Russian government to influence his conduct of the presidency (e.g., the laundering of money for Russian interests in violation of then-existing U.S. sanctions).

Until the fruits of the Mueller investigation are brought to the public, we wait.  But let’s have a little less Stormy.  Please.

Yesterday I heard Michael Steele, the former R.N.C. Chair, comment that the President’s behavior in the last weeks indicates that he doesn’t care who his political opponents are – Democrats or Republicans — and that keeping the House in Republican hands is not his interest.  Given Mr. Steele’s comment, I can’t resist posting excerpts from a letter I wrote in September, 2017   [maybe I should have been a pundit  😉 ]  : 

I wonder if the President – whether or not he consciously realizes it – really cares whether he achieves any substantive legislative goals (save, perhaps, a change in the tax code that puts money in his and his family’s pockets).  He clearly has come to realize that his supporters love him because of what he is and says – as [some] have said, the symbolic middle finger to the elites and establishment – not for what he does.

As a uniquely-skilled showman that seemingly craves adulation even more than money, the President clearly understands that any good show needs struggle and an antagonist.  This has and will enable him to rail against Congress – no matter which party controls it – “for failing to get things done.” Change of control of either or both Houses of Congress will be devastating to people like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, but – aside from impeachment concerns — will the President really care?  It will simply allow him to make Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi his antagonists – to blame them for the fact nothing is getting done to help his supporters.

Ms. Hicks’ departure has made me reflect on her in a way that I hadn’t when I posted the last piece.  Given her continuous close physical proximity to the President from the beginning of the campaign through now, and her obvious great affection for him (and his for her), any evidence she would present regarding his activities would seemingly have great weight with a jury.  Since Ms. Hicks is younger than my youngest child, it would be my advice to her not only as a lawyer but also as a father:  You’re 29.  You’ll likely live 50 years after the President dies.  Don’t let this ruin your life as Monica Lewinsky’s life has been irreparably harmed.  Tell Mueller’s people everything you know.  You certainly seem likely to be characterized as a witness to, rather than an actor in, whatever went on, so if you play it straight, you will probably walk away from this with no legal ramifications and plenty of opportunities.  If you don’t, there’s a better than even chance you’ll end up bitterly regretting it for the rest of your life …