“I don’t know who’s reading me, but every now and then I get somebody who has influence calling me a jerk, and it’s like, ‘Yes!’” he remarked over coffee and doughnuts. “Maybe I’ll collect all those tweets and hang them on the wall.”...
Anti-immigration forces “don’t have business, we don’t have the media, we don’t have the presidency, we don’t have the Senate, we don’t have leadership in the House — and we’re still winning,” he said a few days after having failed to torpedo Paul Ryan’s speakerhood. “So why is that happening?”
Kaus pauses. He’s voted for Barack Obama twice, and the place this is leading may make him slightly uncomfortable.
“The answer is that no one is speaking for the actual voter — except, it turns out, for Donald Trump.”
December 14, 2015
"Kaus delights in the pity and disgust he detects from his old friends’ view that he has joined a band of kooks and racists."
Writes Ben Smith in "What The Hell Happened To Mickey Kaus?/How a godfather of Democratic political blogging became obsessed with immigration — and came around to Donald Trump."
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I don't mind a hard line on immigration. I've always been very happy to listen to Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham. Both women are very smart lawyers who know the law. I like them both a lot. My problem with Trump is that he is an ignoramus who doesn't know how to advance the argument in a way that is acceptable to college-educated adults.
The two pieces of information I got from that rambling article were that Superba Food + Bread is "the ugly place in which we find ourselves at the end of 2015" and that an unclean lawyer misquoted his dermatologist:
"Purification varied with the severity of the uncleanness. The most serious to least serious cases in descending order were: skin disease (Lev. 13-14), ...
Kaus understands that what laws your politicians pass is nowhere near as important as who your neighbors are.
Chuck, to which college educated adults do you refer? Those who believe there is a 25% rape rate on college campuses, or those who will attack you for being white, or those who encourage college kids to get in their families' faces over Obamacare during holiday dinners?
I, for one, understand that the vote of the illiterate counts the same as that of the Harvard grad. And sometimes the illiterate knows things the Harvard grad does not, like what the effect of unlimited immigration is on the job prospects of the illiterate.
I've always liked Mickey Kaus -- don't always agree with him, but at least he's interesting, and not dogmatically liberal.
Kaus has a very, very simple formulation about immigration: If we continue to open the floodgates, as the Democrats want (to increase its voter rolls), you will decrease blue-collar wages and employment of many 50-year old, non-college white guys, with all the bad attendant effects.
Nobody can dispute this. In fact, the WSJ Journal and Chamber of Commerce want lower wages, because, theoretically, it will help the bottom line of business. The left wants this, because they actively want to change the ethnic culture of America, want the votes, and don't worry too much on the effect of blue collar, mostly white workers.
So, good for Kaus. And, on this issue, good for Trump. They are making sense and speaking out for a large disfavored group.
Kaus was more interesting when he discussed a wider variety of topics - and when he wasn't just tweeting. I get the sense he's mailing it in. The left will never forgive him for expecting them to make good on their branding of a better life for the poor. Meanwhile the right won't accept him because he's for every government program he can think of.
I bet he's used to sitting alone in that snack shop.
"My problem with Trump is that he is an ignoramus who doesn't know how to advance the argument in a way that is acceptable to college-educated adults."
I learned to read at 3 years old, with a 1965 World Book dictionary.
I was reading at a college level at 10 years old.
I may not have a degree, but my lifelong pursuit of truth and knowledge makes me no less educated, and in many ways more educated, than someone with a college degree. Especially in the social sciences.
To call a man who made a multi-billion dollar company an ignoramus, and suggest he's just some blue-collar knuckle dragger simply because you don't like that he uses simpler words than you...
(Why would you use a bunch of words people won't understand when you can use something else? Who's the stupid one, here?)
See, here's the problem. YOU are the bigot. Not him. You want everyone to kowtow to the college PC way of speech and thinking. When Trump says a simple truth, you know nothing is ever simple, so you think he's stupid. But guess what? Some things ARE simple. The most important things usually are simple, as a matter of fact.
The University PC thought domination cult is in its death throes. It's over, pal.
Basically, you have no clue what you don't know.
TCorn
Nice post. Agree. Trump has brought straight talk to a business (MSM) and a way of life (politics) that are ill equipped to respond or even to really understand.
Now Chuck wants to make a simple issue complicated. Trump does not. We have a border. We have immigration laws. Trump notes (how can this even be considered bold?) that this cannot continue if we are to have a country. Chuck finds this bluntness beneath the "college- educated". LOL
One of the reasons I like what Trump is doing is precisely because he causes the establishment elite to go ballistic. I would never vote for him, but it is great fun watching him tear down the temple.
"See, here's the problem. YOU are the bigot. Not him. You want everyone to kowtow to the college PC way of speech and thinking. When Trump says a simple truth, you know nothing is ever simple, so you think he's stupid. But guess what? Some things ARE simple." Trying to illustrate Chuck's point, I take it. Of course, if Trump takes "Some things ARE simple" as his motto, he's sure to lose AA. I don't think he wants to run that risk. Getting her vote, with coattails and everything, would be yuge.
Mikee I don't expect a college degree to necessarily confer any particular wisdom. How else to explain Lena Dunham (Oberlin)? Not do I have faith in the legal good sense of anybody with a law degree. Because there is Harry Reid. I rest my case.
The problem with Trump is that a college degree isn't even necessary to eviscerate his latest nonsense. High school civics students could explain why a pure religious test for entry (never mind immigration) into the US wouldn't work. Starting with the elemental fact that one's religion is a matter of simple conscience and say-so. It's not on your passport. Trump's religious ban would be too broad, it wouldn't reliably catch terrorists (I wish it were so simple) and it wouldn't last 30 seconds in front of a federal judge.
I really do want the votes of Trump supporters to go to a serious, tough-on-immigration Republican. I just have no patience with humoring stupidity.
To call a man who made a multi-billion dollar company an ignoramus, and suggest he's just some blue-collar knuckle dragger simply because you don't like that he uses simpler words than you...
I agree. I have a number of degrees but have children, two of whom are over credentialed and ignorant about economics.
Common sense used to be the basis of government. Abraham Lincoln was ridiculed at the time as ignorant but he is now considered as one of them by people who know no history. It's interesting to see what has happened to education in this country the past 40 years. I have had children in college most of the time since the 1980s. I have watched this happen and I still don't understand it. The political left went for student deferments to avoid Vietnam and then decided to stay in college forever. I think that is where it came from.
On further reflection, I may be giving Kaus too much credit. It appears the only problem he has with massive immigration is that it lowers American wages. He has not gotten the message from his fellow lefties in academia, that placing the interests of your fellow Americans over those of a bunch of foreigners is racist. Even if the Americans are black.
It seems that I need to supply a more basic and global reply on the immigration subject.
Again, I LIKE THE NOTION OF A MUCH TOUGHER NATIONAL STANCE ON IMMIGRATION. I am against just about all forms of amnesty. I like Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham. I can't think of any two stronger immigration foes.
When did Donald Trump become the only hard-line voice on immigration? I'm interested in immigration hard-liners who might actually have a chance at being President. At some point (long passed by now). Trump went from being an immigration hardliner to being a fool.
I've been reading Kaus since his days at Washington Monthly in the early 80's. To understand Kaus on immigration, just remember the old social democratic dictum that "you can have open immigration or a robust social safety net; you can't have both".
Kaus is an old style liberal who actually sees the American "workin' man" (or woman) as his primary moral constituency. It's an endangered species now, but they used to flourish in the swamplands of the Democratic Party not that many eons ago.
I don't mind a hard line on immigration. I've always been very happy to listen to Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham... My problem with Trump is that he is an ignoramus who doesn't know how to advance the argument in a way that is acceptable to college-educated adults.
Trump is the only one who advances the argument. The rest of the field wants some form of amnesty. Cruz is supposed to be Trump's main competition on the "right," and he wants to double legal immigration (including 5x increase of H1B visas). To the extent we're even discussing a "hard line," it's because Trump forced the issue.
There are millions of illegal immigrants in the US, there are more coming every day, and there are zero realistic plans to deport them, or even stop the flood. Even Trump has a lot more bloviation than policy on the issue, and the man is polling at great disadvantage among the general electorate. This is a strange-looking "victory".
You can certainly limit Muslim immigration in several ways.
One does not have to understand it as "ban Muslims" in some absolutist or impractical way.
That is just a reflex rejection. It is being absurdly literal-minded.
The friendly way to look at it is - "how could I make this work?"
And once you switch to that mode possibilities open.
Some options are to ban travel (any sort of visa) from target countries, with a few easy to implement exceptions - government officials and diplomats, persons with US investments, persons with substantial home-country property, etc. These were the sorts of rules in place for many years vis-a-vis certain countries like the Philippines, when they were trying to prevent visa-overstays rather than terrorists. An ordinary person off the street just couldn't get a visa of any kind.
Also immigration quotas and queue rules can be changed as well. These CAN be discriminatory. For a while there was even a special lottery system designed to prefer Europeans, specifically the Irish. Take all quotas away from specific countries and change the rules on family reunification, etc.
Some of those more-specific rules above would have kept out many of the people involved in San Bernardino, and for that matter the 9/11 conspirators.
If you have a super-cleverly legalistic way to limit entry(remember we aren't even talking about immigration) from countries with high populations of Islamist terror groups, then say so. Don't bloviate about banning all Muslims. You know, Trump was. reading a statement when he put that out. So we know that it wasn't just a slip of the tongue. It was conscious recklessness.
Mickey Kaus is an intellectually honest man in a world and profession (the Media) that doesn't often reward that trait. I disagree with a lot of his positions (he's moderately-to-very liberal on most issues) but I respect him since he backs his opinions up with good arguments, is honest about his biases and beliefs, points out weaknesses in his own (and his allies') positions, and almost always assumes good faith in those he's arguing with. He's much better at that last than his associate Bob Wright, at least as of when I stopped watching Bloggingheads a few years ago.
Kaus' book The End of Equality was a good read--interesting for its ideas throughout and doubly interesting as a time capsule of moderate-liberal thought in the late 80's-early 90's. Buy a copy through the Althouse portal! (I checked it out through my local library several years ago so on a karma basis I need some other folks to make those purchases).
Chuckie
Gosh, you've gone all crazy on us using all caps and not presenting your case in much of a college-educated way. Plus you seem to have no sense of humor and no grasp of hyperbole. Do you honestly think Trump wants to build a wall across our southern border? Do you honestly think Trump believes we would ever restrict Muslims? Why, bless your college educated heart, I think you do.
Well, Chuckster, you should know that almost everyone on the planet excepting frowny faced progs knows that Mr. Trump is exaggerating. See? He is making a point by using a method of argumentation that is as old as discourse itself. You can look it up. No one would be discussing our absurdly lax and irrational immigration laws were it not for Mr. Trumps use of this technique.
In the end, if you don't trust the government to do what they say, then you want to limit, massively, what they can do.
Why he trusts them to do NON-IMMIGRATION things well is baffling, mind you. It seems unlikely that they'd suck so badly in only one field.
Trump pisses off the Democratic establishment and the Republican establishment.
So his candidacy is providing a valuable service.
"High school civics students could explain why a pure religious test for entry (never mind immigration) into the US wouldn't work. Starting with the elemental fact that one's religion is a matter of simple conscience and say-so. It's not on your passport."
It's far simpler than that.
Their culture is incompatible with ours, with separate histories going back thousands of years.
We are fundamentally incompatible. At best, Middle Eastern immigration balkanizes the country. At best.
There is absolutely no reason to do it. Even Merkel admits Multikulti is a sham (In the news today).
See? Simple argument. Yet, effective, because it's a simple matter of "which culture do YOU prefer?"
Michael:
"Well, Chuckster, you should know that almost everyone on the planet excepting frowny faced progs knows that Mr. Trump is exaggerating. See? He is making a point by using a method of argumentation that is as old as discourse itself. You can look it up. No one would be discussing our absurdly lax and irrational immigration laws were it not for Mr. Trumps use of this technique."
It may be a great joke that you are in on, Michael. I expect that about 65% of he country won't be. And that is a problem, if a nominee Trump loses 375 electoral votes.
Trump isn't running for president of the frat, or the Friars' Club. This isn't The Apprentice or Shark Tank or even American Idol.
I want to be candid with all of you and tell you what really scares me. What scares me more than ISIS. What scares me more than Mexican rapists. What really scares me is that together, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will together replace 2/3 of the federal judiciary, and that Hillary Clinton will pick nominees to replace Ginsburg, Breyer and -- God help us -- Scalia.
So to all of you who are hoping to wreck the Republican Party as we know it; who want to piss off the Republican "establishment,"; who hate Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and Paul Ryan; and who think of Republicans and Democrats in much the same terms (one of the terms being 'contempt')...
You want the help of loyal and long-time Republicans in your "campaign"? You want your argument to win the hearts and minds of other Republicans?
Chuck said:
Trump's religious ban would be too broad, it wouldn't reliably catch terrorists (I wish it were so simple) and it wouldn't last 30 seconds in front of a federal judge.
The only way a law can't stand in front of a judge is if it is unconstitutional. So I am assuming that you ware saying that a law banning Muslims, as a class, is unconstitutional.
I keep hearing that but never a discussion of why it would be unconstitutional.
How about an explanation?
remember, we are talking about people who are outside of the US and not citizens.
The McCarren Act is constitutional and still in force. Intended to keep out communists, it could probably be stretched to cover Muslims
The Chinese Exclusion Act was the law until the 1960s when Congress repealed it. Never any question of its constitutionality that I know of.
So why would prohibiting Muslim immigration be unconstitutional. What article/section of the constitution would it violate? I don't think it is even illegal under current law?
Not saying it is a great idea. Just that it is Constitutional and legal.
Ann, you are the go to expert on the Constitution here. OK or not to ban Muslims?
John Henry
Lost in all the hysteria about Trump wanting to permanently bar Muslim immigrants, wanting to put them in concentration camps is that this is not permanent. He was quite clear that it is temporary until Congress can get a handle on things.
I also found it wierd that Chris Matthews thinks Trump wants to 1) Keep Muslims out and 2) put them in concentration camps.
Wouldn't he have to let them in first to put them in concentration camps?
One of the things I love about Trump is how he completely scrambles peoples brains.
John Henry
"If you have a super-cleverly legalistic way to limit entry(remember we aren't even talking about immigration) from countries with high populations of Islamist terror groups, then say so."
I don't, in detail, and neither does Trump. All we know is how it can be (and has been) done before. The DOJ/Homeland Security do know what to do and how to work it. The INS certainly did.
You do NOT need to dive into how to tweak administrative rules - and thats what these are, they dont derive from legislation, most of them, and there is administrative leeway built in to drive battleships through.
In a political speech, that's not what you say.
Its like what the current administration has done with coal. There is no legislation saying that all coal mining and coal-consuming industries are going to be driven to bankruptcy without compensation. No such law could have been passed. But without a single law passed, this is precisely what the DOE and EPA have done.
the Center for Security Policy, put forth a very detailed plan on muslim refugee moratorium,
Chuck - What really scares me is that together, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will together replace 2/3 of the federal judiciary...
Which do you think matters more, the long-term composition of the electorate or the short-term composition of the judiciary?
Chuckie
You are calling something a joke that is a rhetorical technique. As a leftie I know that you are wedded to nuance and the complexity you learned while being college educated but Trump is not joking. As you will learn.
What's amusing is that people who are on the sidelines are giving advice to the guy who just broke through the 40% barrier in the polls.
"You're doing it all wrong" they told Rush Limbaugh as he attracted the biggest, most loyal audience on radio.
A little humility is in order, but that's not one of the things they teach in J-school.
I don’t know what the matter with the hourly worker is. They should get a job as a professor at any university, get paid more and there’s no risk of a layoff.
Replying in reverse order to everything I can think of that is worth replying to...
~ I don't buy this crap about Trump using the campaign as negotiation (rhetoric); setting up tough positions to get a recalcitrant congress to move in his direction and meet somewhere in the middle. You do that after you get elected. And after you help get a Senate with close to 60 votes for your party. Which will never happen with Trump.
~ I sort of think I DO care more about a federal judiciary than about any common notions of the "electorate." More than anybody I know, I view one of the prime functions of the Presidency as nominating the federal judiciary. I doubt that the Founders would have liked my position in that regard. I'm not proud of thinking that way, and I would admit that I am a bit of an extremist on that front. But it is because liberalism in the last 50 years has pushed such an agenda with the federal courts. Culminating with Obergefell.
~ All of the posturing, justification, and other rationales trying to lend some credence to Trump's original notion of keeping all Muslims out of the U.S.; I think you all are making a very good effort. Yes, the media has treated Trump awfully. The media treats all Republicans badly; Trump needs to learn that and be more careful. Of course Trump's plan was only temporary (although he has no idea how long). And of course Trump said nothing about detention/concentration camps. I know that. Yes, the President has great power over immigration but thankfully it isn't absolute. Witness Obama's mini-amnesty getting halted in a Texas federal district court which was affirmed by the Fifth Circuit. The flip side of the same coin.
~ A constitutional challenge would not be the only challenge to a Trump ban on Muslim travel. There'd be international treaty violations alleged, and there may be federal statutory issues in addition. Let me just say this; y'all think that a federal judiciary that was so imbued with legal profession liberalism to judicially legislate gay marriage is going to let a Trump Muslim ban go without objection? Don't kid yourselves. You are talking to a conservative here; one who would like to see a lot more Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter in our immigration policies. You aren't fighting with a Bernie Sanders supporter, or the NYT editorial board.
I just heard something astonishing to me on the Fox News Channel, on Megyn Kelly's program. (Catch her discussion with Steve Hayes tonight! It is critical watching!) Did Donald Trump really join with the liberal media to criticize Justice Scalia's comments during oral arguments in the Fisher case? WTF?!? Just how dumb is Trump? I picture him in his Trump Tower apartment in his boxer shorts watching whatever TV host is not making fun of him, and getting his worldview that way. If Donald Trump -- as a proposed Republican president -- cannot figure out why the media freakout over Scalia's oral argument comments, then he really is too stupid to be left in charge of something like nominating federal judges.
Michael: If you are in fact a "leftie" as you say, I totally get it. Trump is the dream opponent for the Democratic Left. Their perfect Republican hate-object, and a joke to boot. A Republican Party nomination of Trump, you might rightly expect, would be so disastrous that it would hurt the party up and down the ballot, all over the country. I dream of a Bernie Sanders nomination, too. But I am much more realistic.
It's true! Trump really did fall for the liberal claptrap about Justice Scalia in the Fisher arguments:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/13/politics/donald-trump-antonin-scalia-affirmative-action/
Good God, Trump is a stupid man. What is a stronger idiom, than "Shooting from the hip"? It would be nice if Trump merely shot from the hip. I actually think people might be able to at least put a bullet in the right direction, shooting from the hip.
"Shooting himself in the foot" is more like it.
Chuck says: "High school civics students....." Funny thing is they don't teach civics anymore in high school anymore. Lib teachers don't want students to learn about how our government is structured or how it is really supposed to work and what the Constitution and Bill of Rights are really about. They just want them to believe the President can executive action anything he wants done.
I am disgusted by our educational syste, our government and the people running it.
Kaus didn't leave the democratic party on immigration. The democratic party left him.
So to all of you who are hoping to wreck the Republican Party as we know it; who want to piss off the Republican "establishment,"; who hate Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and Paul Ryan; and who think of Republicans and Democrats in much the same terms (one of the terms being 'contempt')...
You want the help of loyal and long-time Republicans in your "campaign"? You want your argument to win the hearts and minds of other Republicans?
Chuck, how often have we been told we have to stand behind THEIR loser of a candidate so the Dems don't win? We HAD to stand behind shit candidate McCain, right?
So, expecting the same out of them is, apparently, too much.
The Establishment has shat on their base for years. It's why Trump is even a thing. 2014 was pivotal. When you run on stopping Obama's illegal amnesty and then surrender a month after you get in office then, no, you have no right to bitch that people don't trust or respect you.
Damikesc: So the anti-establishment Trumpistas have come up with their own colossal loser of a candidate? If "loser" is the key, then what are we supposed to think about Trump?
I am interested iin your harsh criticism of Senator John McCain. What I always liked about McCain (who was certainly not a dynamic campaigner) was that he put the like to everybody outside of the Republican Party who complained that the Party had moved so far to the right, that traditional Republicans would no longer recognize it. Because in fact John McCain was arguably the most significant moderate/compromiser in the Senate.
And who did you like better than McCain in 2008? Rudy Giuliani? (Did Giuliani win a single primary? I think not.) Ron Paul? Mike Huckabee? Sam Brownback? Jim Gilmore? Duncan Hunter? Tom Tancredo? (There's you anti-immigration champion!) Fred Thompson? Tommy Thompson? (Tommy has got to get some love on this site; but of course he couldn't beat the lesbian from Madison in the Senate election, right?) And the other big-name candidate in 2008? It was Mitt Romney.
I still don't get the policy appeal of Trump. If you are worried about candidates who secretly aren't conservative enough, Trump ought to give you nightmares.
I stopped reading Kaus nearly as much once he got immigration-fixated.
It's a shame, because his viewpoints used to be interesting.
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