"Kristi Noem and Vivek Ramaswamy Are CPAC’s Choices for Trump’s Running Mate."

 The NYT reports.

Of course, Trump won the straw poll for President. It was 95% to 5%.

I watched most of Trump's speech to CPAC. You can watch here (start at 1:59:00):

UPDATE, 6:48 pm CST: Trump is about to make his victory speech in South Carolina.

"At the most famous annual gathering of America's conservatives, the chairs are empty, the energy is low—and everyone seems a little bit defensive about it."

"The Sad, Desolate Scenes of CPAC 2023" (The New Republic).

ADDED: Watch Trump's speech here.

I tried to watch Trump's CPAC speech. I'll just read the transcript and blog it, beginning at the place where I clicked it off and said "It's a white power speech."

The video is embedded in the previous post, along with some comments from last night's open thread. I watched a little, thought Trump looked a lot better than usual, theorized that he'd used that classic beauty trick to reduce puffiness, then clicked it off when he said:

Year after year, leaders have stood on this stage to discuss what we can do together to protect our heritage, to promote our culture, and to defend our freedom.

Here's what I said out loud (to my audience of one): "That's a dog whistle. White power." Questioned, I said, "heritage... culture... freedom..." Even freedom? "Yes, in context with our heritage, our culture, and then our freedom. Our freedom."

I switched to the transcript (here, at Vox). I'll live-blog my reading of it, with excerpts and commentary. Trump forefronts his judicial appointments, presumably because this is the place where he can claim and successfully vaunt* conservative credentials:

We have confirmed a record number, so important, of circuit court judges and we’re going to be putting in a lot more. And they will interpret the law as written and we have confirmed an incredible new Supreme Court justice, a great man, Neil Gorsuch. Right. 

He admits no doubt here. Conservative = doing it right = Gorsuch. I won't slow this post down to lawprofsplain what's specious about all that.

Trump himself swiftly moves on to his second-best accomplishment, taxes:

We have passed massive, biggest in history, tax cuts and reforms. I don’t use the word reform...

I didn't just say what I said.

"Got to watch the entire CPAC speech on CSPAN tonight. Trump was in his prime and relaxed with his friends."

"How anyone honestly still hates him after this year of being an authentic leader and brilliant at communicating truth to us is a mystery," wrote traditionalguy (in last night's Cactus & Mushroom Café).

Here's the speech (which I haven't watched, not yet anyway):



Grackle responds:

It is fear. They know he is systematically ending their game. It must be difficult to contemplate obscurity after so long on top.

I would like President Trump to tweet (favorably) about Jordan Peterson and Scott Adams. Both Peterson and Scott are NOT “conservatives.” Both extremes of the political spectrum (radical Left, radical Right) are condemned by them. Neither of them are “ideological” in any classical sense of the word.

Scott is a self-professed casual classical liberal who favors socialized healthcare and is merely an explainer of the Trump phenomenon and who provides some useful analytical tools to help those who are interested to understand Trump.

Peterson is a bona fide intellectual who at the moment is attacked by the Left and is thus mostly concerned with them but who has no love of the radical Right. This is not immediately evident since the radical Right is mostly leaving him alone and he doesn’t have to respond to them. Peterson, for instance, is conservative on sex and pornography. He advises never to have sex on the first date (or second or third, for that matter), to be cautious with new encounters and to ignore pornography which he believes is dangerously soul-killing. Keep in mind that the man is a practicing clinical psychologist, as well as a university professor.

A tweet from Trump regarding either of them would detonate the usual ideological Leftist shitstorm and that is good. The more of these shitstorms Trump can generate the better because they serve to reveal the true nature of the neo-Marxist Left – which is most of the MSM, educators, intellectuals and Democrats and which is arbitrary, totalitarian and anti-intellectual.

And Trump himself is anti-ideology. Trump is a slightly right of center pragmatist. And he is pulling the Right more toward the middle of the spectrum – which is also good because the radical Right (alt-rightists and white supremacists), while small at the moment, could grow quickly into a larger movement, which would be very bad. If most of the Right is near the center of the spectrum it would marginalize the radical Right. Eventually I believe Trump will also pull the Left more toward the center. This is where I want the bulk of the political class to be – near the middle.

The only things I think that can stop Trump now is assassination (which I worry about constantly) and an unpopular war, which I doubt will happen.

CPAC wants nothing but distance between itself and Dinesh D’Souza.

Via Mediaite: