David Henderson shares a fond memory of the late Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ).
David Bahnsen busts the myth that the MAGA right is filled with principled libertarians.
Wall Street Journal columnist Gerard Baker, I’m sure, speaks for many sensible people. A slice:
I’ve never been a victim of Trump derangement syndrome. Yes, I’ve found much that is repellent in the man’s character and rhetoric. But whatever his shortcomings, it seemed clear to me by 2016 that the country had, through years of bipartisan failure and the transformative effects of a malign cultural revolution, reached a point where radical change was needed. I was open to the idea that jarring disruption of the political order—perhaps necessarily delivered by a jarring figure—might be the only way to reassert the sovereignty of a disenfranchised people, restore the primacy of American interests against globalized progressivism, and reclaim our traditional civilizational values.
Even after Jan. 6, 2021, removed any doubt about the threat Donald Trump might pose to our constitutional norms and rules, I thought the institutions of the U.S. would be strong enough (as they were then) to constrain his worst instincts and intentions. And by November 2024, after four years of a Democratic presidency had revived the prospect of a restoration of the progressive left’s crippling hegemony, the risks he posed seemed smaller than theirs.
But I am sorry to have to report that I have now self-diagnosed with a virulent form of TDS. Not one malady but three: as my condition has steadily progressed over the last year from Trump disappointment syndrome through Trump disillusionment syndrome to a full-blown case of Trump dismay syndrome.
Dismay seems to me the only natural response to the way the Republican Party has blown one of the great opportunities in political history in less than the time it takes to graduate from community college. When Mr. Trump won in 2024, becoming only the second Republican since 1988 to receive a plurality of the popular vote, he had a real chance to establish a new governing order, perhaps even to break the generation-long deadlock in partisanship.
He didn’t have to do anything especially risky. The opportunity was to use his victory—and a Republican Congress—to do things that would command significant majorities among Americans: take control of the border, alleviate the pressure on working Americans from rising prices, roll back the woke authoritarian takeover of governing and cultural institutions, and keep the U.S. military out of costly, ineffective foreign interventions so we could focus on confronting with our broad network of allies the great strategic threats of the next 20 years.
How’m I doin’? as another controversial, larger than life New Yorker used to ask.
Thanks to a self-indulgent tariff fixation based on a profound misunderstanding of international economics, an insouciance about public finances that has widened the deficit, and a reckless military adventure that has choked off global energy supplies, inflation and interest rates are higher than they were in November 2024. Instead of a hands-off approach to the economy that would have generated noninflationary growth owing to the AI investment boom, we now have gasoline prices 30% higher than they were two years ago, diesel 60% higher, and the average mortgage rate nearly a percentage point higher, adding more than $2,000 a year to a typical home buyer’s interest cost.
The war that has done so much harm to Americans’ finances is doing far more harm to our military capacity and our strategic interests. The president has alienated everyone in the world who could be helpful to us (perhaps excepting Israel) and emboldened and even embraced every country in the world that threatens us: China, Russia, North Korea.
A signal achievement has been getting control of the border and removing some of the people who have no legal right to be here. But even with this proper and overwhelmingly popular policy, the administration has managed to harm the country and the GOP’s standing. The unnecessarily cruel and indiscriminate approach has caught many in its dragnet who shouldn’t be treated that way and is fundamentally un-American. The political effect has been to devastate support for the GOP among Hispanics, more than reversing the gains Mr. Trump had made with the fastest-growing ethnic population in the country.
Further dismaying is the caesarism of the past two years: the grotesque self-enrichment, the self-satisfying prosecutorial pursuit of political enemies, the endless projects of self-grandiosity—the ballroom, the Kennedy Center and the Memorial Arch. Not to mention the buffoonish symbolic acts that substitute for actual thought and policy: the Gulf of America, Lake America, New America, the 51st state.
When presidencies fail, when political parties’ fortunes collapse, it’s often the result of circumstances and decisions beyond their control: an unforeseen global crisis, a recession caused by exogenous economic forces, the sentiment that it’s time for a change after a relatively successful period in office.
None of that applies to the looming Republican calamity. Instead, it will be the result of presidential hubris, vanity, recklessness and the wider party’s abdication of accountability. Instead of seizing an unrivaled opportunity to shift America off the path of progressive endangerment, the GOP risks handing it back to the Democrats and their own obsessions.
A diesel self-embargo is a bad idea for many of the same reason Republicans criticized Joe Biden’s “pause” on new liquefied natural gas exports. The U.S. is the world’s largest exporter of diesel, selling about 1.5 million barrels abroad a day, mostly from the Gulf Coast. Proponents of a ban say this would increase U.S. supply and thus push down prices.
But there’s not enough pipeline capacity to move the diesel in the Gulf Coast that is normally exported to the Northeast and California, or for that matter to significantly boost flows to the Midwest. A ban on exports would increase global diesel prices, which would smack Americans living in coastal areas that rely on imports.
Diesel would pile up in Gulf Coast storage, prompting refineries to reduce run rates. That would lower the production of gasoline and jet fuel, whose prices would rise. Limiting exports would also signal the U.S. is an unreliable trade partner and might prompt allies to diversify diesel supply, perhaps by buying more from China. If Democrats win the White House in 2028, they’ll use GOP support for a diesel export ban to justify reinstating the Biden LNG embargo.
Americans are feeling the squeeze of higher fuel prices, and the pain is especially acute for farmers who use diesel to power equipment. Diesel prices have surged amid supply disruptions from the Iran war, and Russia’s new ban on diesel exports.
But if Republicans want to reduce diesel prices fast, they’d suspend or scrap the renewable fuel standard (aka ethanol mandate). The biofuel blending requirements add between 30 and 40 cents to every gallon of diesel. Refineries have to blend increasing amounts of biofuels into products or buy regulatory credits to comply with quotas.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) doesn’t think food from some restaurant chains tastes as good as it used to. To address that, she wants to restrict the rights of private equity firms to buy restaurant chains. The senator is forgetting the check that already exists: consumer sovereignty.
