Foreign Affairs Only Trump Can Go to Tehran He’s uniquely positioned to restore the Iran nuclear deal. Credit: Borna_Mirahmadian Following Israel’s assassination of Hamas’s leader, Ismail Haniyeh, the Middle East is on the brink of regional war. The killing occurred in Tehran after Haniyeh attended the inauguration of Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, a moderate who campaigned on reengaging the West. Pezeshkian has been open to negotiating a revival of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the Iran nuclear deal). But Israel’s attack makes that less likely—and raises the odds of the U.S. getting dragged into war with Iran. Strangely, the best bet for improving relations with Tehran and putting the Iran deal back together may be a return to the White House of Donald Trump, the very man who blew up the accord in 2018. To understand why, consider an old American adage. “Only Nixon could go to China” captures a general truth about politics in a polarized democracy. Conservative politicians who pursue liberal policies, and liberal politicians who pursue conservative ones, signal that those policies really are in the national interest. Nixon’s reputation as an anti-communist liberated him to try improving relations with Red China in 1972, since voters could then infer it wasn’t some peacenik aspiration. This dynamic helps explain why President Joe Biden, early in his presidency, failed to revive the JCPOA, which likely would have involved lifting all of Trump’s “maximum pressure” sanctions and removing his designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization. Had Biden freed up funds for the “mad mullahs” and legitimized the IRGC, he would have gotten hammered by the same forces that panned his Afghanistan withdrawal, from which his poll numbers have never recovered. To many voters, these steps would have seemed part of a reckless liberal agenda, and Biden would have seemed weak. Kamala Harris, if elected, would face the same political calculus. Even after the reformist Pezeshkian’s surprise electoral victory, the White House dismissed the idea of negotiations. Asked whether the administration would make diplomatic overtures, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby answered with a curt “no.” Asked to elaborate, Kirby said “it seemed like a pretty easy question to answer” since Iran supports Russia and militant groups across the Middle East. Of course, the whole point of negotiations would be to get Iran to stop doing things America doesn’t like—such as backing Moscow and militants—and start doing things America would like—such as reining in its nuclear program.  The White House has provided a second reason not to negotiate: The real decision-maker in Iran, observed State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, so the election results don’t really matter. It’s true that Khamenei is the Supreme Leader in Iran. But it’s not true that the Iranian president is powerless to alter foreign policy. Paul Pillar—who served from 2000 to 2005 as national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia—writes, “The Iranian president is a power center in his own right and has an influence over a wide range of policy. The ideological orientations of past Iranian presidents, which have ranged from hardliner to reformist, have made visible differences in Tehran’s foreign policy.” The White House didn’t forego diplomacy because Pezeshkian is politically constrained, but because Biden is. But how constrained would Trump be? Pillar doesn’t rule out that “Trump as president may see an opportunity to score political points” by striking the “better deal” that he’s promised. Trump does indeed seem to see things this way. During a recent appearance on the All-In podcast, Trump said that he “would have made a fair deal” with the Iranian regime if he had won re-election. “I had them at a point where you could have negotiated,” Trump boasted. “A child could have made a deal with them. And Biden did nothing.” Evidently, Trump thinks he already seems “tough” enough on Iran and is ready to take a more dovish approach. To make good on his promise to strike a better deal, a future President Trump would need to re-negotiate certain features of the agreement, such as the “sunset provisions” that lift some uranium enrichment restrictions after specified dates. If Trump managed to secure an agreement that was stronger than the one Obama got, he’d demonstrate his deal-making skills and antiwar bona fides.  Khamenei and Pezeshkian may prefer negotiating with Trump than with a Democrat, since a future Republican president would be less likely to undo their efforts. “I voted for you during your election,” Mao joked with Nixon during their famed meeting. “I like rightists.” To which Nixon replied: “In America, at least at this time, those on the right can do what those on the left talk about.” There’s another reason, aside from the “Nixon paradox,” that Trump is uniquely well-positioned to improve relations with Tehran. While neoconservatives see the Islamic Republic as an implacable nemesis, America-First conservatives have supported negotiating with the regime. When the Iran deal was signed in 2015, Patrick Buchanan called it the “singular achievement of the Obama administration in foreign policy.” Three years later, as then-President Trump contemplated withdrawing from the agreement, Buchanan warned that Israel and Saudi Arabia were pushing him to trash the deal because they wanted a U.S.–Iran war. Israel—and the Israel lobby—still fiercely oppose the agreement and would obstruct any effort to salvage it. But Saudi Arabia may be more persuadable these days, following a rapprochement between Riyadh and Tehran brokered last year by Beijing. If Trump, in pursuit of a new deal, further bridged the Sunni–Shia divide by involving Riyadh in negotiations, he’d help stabilize the Middle East. The idea isn’t fanciful. In the All-In podcast, Trump suggested that Iran could one day join the Abraham Accords, the bilateral agreements that he facilitated between Israel and Arab nations. Biden and Harris, reluctant to give Republicans political ammo, would never dream of saying such a thing. By contrast, Trump has consolidated his power over the GOP to a remarkable degree and received no pushback for the bold proposal. No doubt, influential hawks would try to block Trump from reviving the Iran nuclear deal. But that too is a reason for Trump to go to Tehran—few policies would more dramatically distance him from the Beltway War Party that many of his supporters despise. The post Only Trump Can Go to Tehran appeared first on The American Conservative.

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Remy is a rat who dreams of becoming a great chef despite his family’s wishes and the obvious problem of being a rat in a decidedly rodent-phobic profession. When fate places Remy in Paris, he finds himself ideally situated beneath a restaurant made famous by his culinary hero, Auguste Gusteau. Despite the apparent danger, Remy forms an unlikely partnership with Linguini, a young kitchen worker at the restaurant. Together, they create culinary masterpieces, impressing critics and customers alike. The post Ratatouille first appeared on Worth it or Woke.

"You really felt his relationship with God in his playing." The post The artist Patti Smith said “invented” a whole new style of music first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

During the 2020 presidential campaign, then–vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, was adored in the media for being the epitome of a supportive husband. Vox deemed Emhoff a “wife guy extraordinaire” and said he “could be a new role model for men.” Marie Claire ran a profile of him headlined “The Good Husband.” The Washington Post, in an adoring piece, called Harris and Emhoff “a match made in Hollywood” and quoted a professor who described Emhoff’s effort to usher a protester away at his wife’s campaign event “superhero-ish.” Emhoff, so the narrative went, was the antithesis to toxic masculinity. He had set aside his career as a lawyer so that he could support his more successful wife, and he had no problem playing the secondary role. Emhoff embraced this narrative and on numerous occasions spoke out against “toxic masculinity.” In an interview with MSNBC, he said, “There’s too much of toxicity — masculine toxicity — out there, and we’ve kind of confused what it means to be a man, what it means to be masculine.” He asserted that true strength is “how you show your love for people.” Emhoff made it clear that opposing toxic masculinity would be a central focus of his work as first gentleman. “I am going to continue to use this platform every time I get to speak out against this toxic masculinity that is out there,” he said. The media loved Emhoff’s advocacy against toxic masculinity. The Washington Post even went so far as to dub him “the antidote to toxic masculinity.” The Post’s Jonathan Capehart gushed, “In American politics, we are not accustomed to seeing men sacrifice their careers for powerful female spouses…. But as the first man in this role, he is not only shattering perceptions of gender roles; he is also taking a sledgehammer to toxic masculinity.” The narrative of Emhoff as the feminist model of the perfect husband came crashing down this weekend when he acknowledged that he had engaged in an extramarital affair during his prior marriage. He made the acknowledgment via a vaguely worded statement: “During my first marriage, Kerstin and I went through some tough times on account of my actions. I took responsibility, and in the years since, we worked through things as a family and have come out stronger on the other side.” The media also reported — sometimes in an almost reassuring tone — that Harris had known about the affair before marrying him. Emhoff’s admission of the affair came after the Daily Mail reported that he had engaged in an affair with his daughter Ella’s teacher and nanny. At the time, Ella was 10 years old. The nanny became pregnant with Emhoff’s child, the Daily Mail reported. It remains unclear whether the child was aborted or placed for adoption, as Harris’ campaign has not provided an answer. The Daily Mail asserts that the nanny “did not keep the child.” Suddenly, it has been become much more difficult for the Harris campaign to leverage Emhoff’s persona as the perfect feminist husband to enhance perceptions of Harris. This poses a problem for Harris, who already struggles with likability. While Emhoff was previously an effective surrogate who could positively influence opinions of Harris, the scandal now threatens to overshadow all that he does. For example, for Father’s Day 2023, the Biden–Harris administration deployed Emhoff to speak at a roundtable on families. Emhoff touted the administration’s work on families and built good will by explaining that he approaches everything through the lens of a father. He said, “I approach everything I do, whether it was as a lawyer and now as the first second gentleman or the first man ever in a role like this, I approach it as a father and I really tried to look at this through the lens of what a parent would care about.” Today, that message would come across poorly given the decisions Emhoff has made when it comes to his children. Americans may also question Harris’ decision to marry a man who cheated with his kids’ nanny. When coupled with the fact that Harris carried on a public relationship with a legally married man, this could diminish perceptions of her personal judgment. In fact, Harris’ family will now come across as mired in the type of drama that usually afflicts Hollywood celebrities. This will detract from her relatability and make it harder for her to connect with voters. Whereas Harris’ people had previously sought to garner public affection with the idea that Harris and Emhoff were almost like newlyweds in their love for one another, with Emhoff’s son telling the New York Times, “Doug and Kamala together are like almost vomit-inducingly cute and coupley,” their relationship may now only be a negative for the campaign. Perhaps most importantly, the affair will diminish the Harris campaign’s ability to attack former President Donald Trump’s own moral problems, including the allegation that he had an affair with a porn star while his wife was pregnant. With the impregnating-a-nanny story hanging Harris’ head, any such attacks on Trump will not come from a place of moral high ground. The post Doug Emhoff’s Character Problem Could Hurt Kamala’s Campaign appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — After Chevron last month announced its plan to close its San Ramon headquarters and take 2,000 corporate jobs from the San Francisco Bay Area to Houston, CEO Mike Wirth downplayed any political aspects of the move in an interview with Bloomberg Talks: “We’ve had some policy differences with California. But this isn’t a move about politics. It’s a move about what’s good for our company to compete and perform.” There’s no doubt that Houston makes more sense as its headquarters given its role as the “epicenter” of the American oil and refining industry. One can’t blame a corporation for not giving the nation’s most populous state the raspberries given it still operates refineries, oil wells, and retail outlets here and must still deal with the state government. But it’s not a big reach to conclude that California politicians literally chased the company out of state. “Chevron already had slashed new investments in California refining, citing ‘adversarial’ government policies in a state that has some of the most stringent environmental rules in the US,” reported the Mercury News last week. “In January, refining executive Andy Walz warned that the state was playing a ‘dangerous game’ with climate rules that threatened to spike gasoline prices.” Those were mild critiques given the approach Sacramento officials have taken toward the industry. As the Los Angeles Times reported: [T]he move is part of a long, steady exodus of not only Chevron’s operations, but also the larger petroleum industry from California, which in its heyday early last century produced more than one-fifth of the world’s total oil. While California remains the seventh-largest producer of oil among the 50 states, its production of crude has been sliding since the mid-1980s and is now down to only about 2 percent of the U.S. total. This is driven by government policy, not market conditions. According to data from the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. petroleum production and consumption has increased steadily since 1949. Oil imports have dropped significantly since 2005, but our nation’s economy remains heavily reliant on oil use. So is California’s economy. The state “currently gets 50 percent of its total energy from oil and another 34 percent from gas,” per Edward Ring in City Journal. So while the state still depends on fossil fuels, its government — in its zeal to turn California into the worldwide leader in switching to alternative fuels to battle climate change — has decided that it no longer wants the industry within its borders. The state has banned the sale of new internal combustion engine vehicles beginning in 2035. In another attempt to dry up demand for gasoline, California already banned gas-powered garden equipment. Reflecting on this “relentless” attack on the industry, Ring notes that California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a massive lawsuit in 2023 targeting Chevron, six other major oil companies, and the American Petroleum Institute, alleging that it misled the public about the impact of the industry on the climate. “A year before that, in September 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation to ban new oil and gas wells within 3,200 feet of any occupied structure,” he added. That will obviously crush any attempts to expand oil production. Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature have employed overheated rhetoric in its crusade. California’s gasoline prices are much higher than in neighboring states, currently averaging around $1.20 more per gallon than the national average. The reasons are obvious. We impose some of the highest taxes on gasoline. California requires a special environmentally friendly formulation, which reduces supply from other states. And California’s war on refiners has reduced supply as companies limit their investments. Yet California officials have repeatedly blasted the “greed” of the oil companies, as if those companies are somehow greedier here than in, say, Nevada. “[W]e’re ending the oil industry’s days of operating in the shadows,” Newsom boasted after signing a law increasing the transparency of oil company pricing. “California took on Big Oil and won. We’re not only protecting families, we’re also loosening the vice grip Big Oil has had on our politics for the last 100 years.” Newsom created that new oversight agency after failing in his attempt to impose a windfall-profits tax. Courthouse News Service accurately referred to that legislation as a “new tactic in his war on Big Oil.” The governor and Legislature are waging war on oil companies — so they can hardly be surprised if those companies take their jobs and revenues to states that welcome them. It’s an odd tactic, especially in a capital-gains-dependent state facing revenue shortfalls, but so be it. California’s oil and gas industry accounts for 2.1 percent of the state’s gross domestic product and pays more than $40 billion in state and local taxes, according to a 2019 study commissioned by the industry. It’s also a key source of high-paying jobs around Bakersfield and the Central Valley. But none of that matters in the context of this ideological campaign. And this “war” is primarily ideological.  Regarding that nonsensical lawsuit, the state blames the oil companies for every conceivable weather event. “California taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot the bill for billions of dollars in damages — wildfires wiping out entire communities, toxic smoke clogging our air, deadly heat waves, record breaking droughts parching our wells,” Newsom said in a statement supporting the effort. Although officials express concern at high gasoline prices, the California Air Resources Board is currently developing new low-carbon fuel standards that agency officials say will boost per-gallon prices by 52 cents in two years. After they kick in, expect the governor and lawmakers to hold press conferences announcing investigations into oil-company price “gouging.”  Meanwhile, the state continues to underinvest in road and freeway infrastructure in the hopes that Californians will abandon their cars in favor of ebikes and rail lines. So the question isn’t why Chevron is leaving, but why it took so long. Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org. The post Chevron Joins the California Exodus appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Election results from Michigan’s Senate primary race this week were predictable. Democrat Elissa Slotkin and Republican Mike Rogers will face off this November for the state’s soon-to-be vacant Senate seat. But the outcome of the upcoming election isn’t as easy to forecast, though the fates of the Senate and presidential races are bound to be closely linked.  Former Rep. Mike Rogers received Trump’s endorsement in his race against former Rep. Justin Amash, who attempted to rejoin the Republican Party following several failed political enterprises as a card-carrying libertarian — including a short-lived 2020 presidential exploratory committee and a futile offer to serve as Speaker of the House during last year’s leadership chaos. Rogers beat Amash, his closest competition, by 48 points.  On the other side of the ticket, Elissa Slotkin coasted to victory against actor Hill Harper, who, despite playing a doctor on TV, garnered only 24 percent support among Democrats. Slotkin has received support from Sen. Debbie Stabenow, the staunchly liberal senior senator from Michigan who has held her seat since 2001. If Stabenow has her way, her retirement will open a spot for Slotkin, 26 years her junior.  The open Senate seat will likely go to whichever party manages to cinch Michigan’s electoral college votes in the presidential race. It’s hard to imagine a Harris–Rogers voter or a Trump–Slotkin voter. For now, polling remains scattered, with some polls showing a marginal win by Harris while others predict a narrow victory for Trump. Looking to the past, Biden narrowly snagged Michigan in 2020, but Trump won the state in 2016 by an even smaller margin.  But polling between Rogers and Slotkin, early though it may be, indicates tough times ahead for Republicans in the Great Lakes State. Polls throughout recent months show a significant lead for Slotkin over Rogers. Though the presidential race may determine Michigan’s next senator, the opposite very well could be true. While presidential polling remains in flux, Slotkin’s lead could be a bellwether for Republican defeat come November.  Whether or not Michigan is a true purple state remains to be seen. Prior to Trump’s narrow victory in 2016, the state had gone blue since Reagan left office. With the exception of Sen. Spencer Abraham, who served one term from 1995 to 2001, Michigan has been represented by Democrat senators since Carter’s presidency. Republicans remain active and successful in some parts of the state’s political life, but it’s hard to garner sufficient conservative support to counterbalance the Democrat powerhouse of Detroit in statewide elections. (RELATED: Gov. Whitmer Pays Migrants Who Move to Michigan) In addition to the tough fight ahead for Republicans, however, this week’s primary revealed potential pitfalls for the November election. Wayne County, which encompasses the Detroit metropolitan area and is the state’s most populous county with 1.8 million residents, reported results at a lethargic pace this week.  More than two hours after polls closed, less than 1 percent of the expected vote was reported in the congressional primary for the district. At 11 p.m., with no real data to report, ABC News included inane filler in their election night coverage.  “Since Wayne County is taking a while to get their results reported, how about some silly Michigan polling?” wrote Mary Radcliffe, detailing the divide between the 51 percent of Michiganders who prefer “regular hard ice cream” and the 23 percent who like “soft serve ice cream” better. By the time ABC News was calling West Coast primaries, only 9 percent of the Wayne County vote was in. (RELATED: Will the 2024 Election Get Lost in the Mail?) Wayne County has earned a reputation for being “notoriously slow” to report votes following a technical change in reporting. In 2022, the county took days to report votes. Radcliffe forecasted:  This issue may also come into play in November, when Democrats in the state will be relying on the solidly Democratic county to shore up their numbers statewide … In a critical battleground state, this kind of delay could mean the same sort of result we had in 2020, when a final winner in the presidential race wasn’t called until 4 days after the election. Michigan is a key state for either party to win this November, but it may not be immediately clear to which candidate the state’s electoral votes should be directed. And even if victory seems likely for Republicans, there’s bound to be plenty of time for Democrat ballots to emerge in Wayne County. Election results in Michigan have been wrong before, but Trump can’t afford to lose Michigan — and Michigan can’t afford a Slotkin victory. Mary Frances Myler is a contributing editor at The American Spectator. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2022.  READ MORE by Mary Frances Myler:  The Real Gender Gap Is Political Young Believers Are Fueling a Renaissance of Catholic Culture Want to Be a Rebel? Be a Conservative. The post Can Republicans Win in Michigan This November? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

You’ve got to hand it to the Democratic Party. They have a slick operation going. Four years ago, they hatched a plan to circle the wagons around Joe Biden and somehow convinced all the other contenders for the presidential nomination to step aside. Joe, a notably undistinguished but loyal party apparatchik, had great name recognition and seemed safely normal compared to, say, Bernie Sanders. Sure, he was visibly failing even back then, but with COVID as a cover, they could keep Joe in his basement and hide the truth of his condition. As we know all too well, that strategy was successful. And now, in 2024: Round Two of the — what, mysterious, unconventional? — Democratic strategy for selecting a presidential candidate. They pulled the plug on Biden, instantly installed Kamala Harris as their candidate, and have already gone through the motions of nominating her democratically via a virtual vote before the Democratic convention. Unsurprisingly, the polls showed that the odds for the Dems winning the November election improved hugely. What else would you expect from a vibrant, photogenic, lively candidate replacing the listless, semi-coherent man who seems more suited for life in a retirement home than the White House? Ah, but who exactly are “they”? Who has orchestrated these machinations, giving the American people first Biden, now Harris? It must be a small, tightly knit cabal, for large committees are too unwieldy (dare we say, too democratic) to choose presidential candidates so smoothly, quickly, and quietly. I mean, does anyone really think that either Joe Biden or Kamala Harris has in any meaningful way been leading the Democratic Party? No, they are puppets and figureheads, nothing more. I suspect that many of us have a pretty clear sense of who comprises “the cabal” staging these political dramas, but rather than take educated guesses here about who they are, let’s examine what their agenda is. In short, the agenda of the Democratic cabal is to terminate the American Republic as established by our Constitution. The Democrats want power. The Founders sought to protect us from the depredations of unchecked political power. The whole purpose of the Constitution was to place limits on the powers of government and to defend the rights of individuals to live freely and decide how to maximize their well-being under a system of impartial laws. The addition of a Bill of Rights to the Constitution underscored the Founders’ emphasis on rights. That emphasis drew upon the Declaration of Independence, the fundamental principles of which are that each human being is endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that the sole purpose of government is to uphold and protect those rights. If you want further confirmation of the priority of individual rights over government powers, take a look at the 9th and 10th Amendments. The 9th basically states that any right not specifically spelled out in the Constitution is presumed to belong to the people, while the 10th states that any power not explicitly delegated to the government is assumed not to be a legitimate power. A main feature of the design of the Constitution was the separation of powers between three distinct branches of government — the legislative, executive, and judicial. For the past three and a half years, Team Biden has worked overtime to usurp the legislative prerogative of Congress by issuing a flood of regulatory edicts. This tendency is nothing new. For many years, it has been common practice in Washington for unelected bureaucrats in the executive branch to issue 18 or 20 regulations with the force of law for every one actual law passed by Congress. The Supreme Court has attempted to slow this regulatory onslaught in decisions like West Virginia v. EPA in 2022, but Team Biden has been playing whack-a-mole, promulgating regulations with far greater rapidity than the court will ever be able to keep up with. And now, for trying to preserve our constitutional order and defend us from executive supremacy, the Democratic cabal is attacking the Supreme Court, blustering about bogus ethics concerns and threatening to impose term limits. How blatantly anti-constitutional! The Founders deliberately gave lifetime tenure to the Supreme Court to insulate them from popular political passions. The Supremes were never supposed to be popular or well liked. It was their job to throw cold water on any attempt by the other two branches of government to subvert the Constitution and arrogate more power to themselves. The cabal saw that Biden could still throw mud at the Supremes. Having already achieved a large degree of dominance over Congress, neutering the other branch of government — the remaining check on executive power — became the next logical step in the cabal’s strategy to achieve rule by fiat for a Democratic elite. The Dems talk a lot about Donald Trump being a threat to democracy, but their actions speak louder than their words. By hand-picking their figureheads and by their agenda of defying the Constitution to grab ever more power, the Democratic cabal is the true threat to democracy. READ MORE: Behold, Tampon Tim Woke? Nope. Back to Sleep. Hunting Where the Ducks Are The post The Secret Democratic Cabal’s Openly Anti-American Agenda appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Anyone born after 1970 may find it strange to consider a political landscape in which powerful corporations do not have influence over legislation, campaigns, and elections. However, this was actually the case for a considerable portion of our nation’s history. From the so-called Progressive Era that saw the government’s breakdown of previously unfettered monopolies, to the New Deal reforms enacted during the Great Depression, Big Business was not only constrained but was also politically uninvolved. In their book, The Wolves of K Street: The Secret History of How Big Money Took Over Big Government, Brody and Luke Mullins expound the fascinating history of one of the most significant and underreported political transitions in modern American history and the development of modern lobbying. During the early 1970s, a “nearly century-long tradition of relatively evenly matched political debates between the forces of Big Business and the interests of ordinary citizens vanished.” Largely inspired by businessman and future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell and fueled by major lobbying dynasties in both parties, “industry leaders resolved to crush their political adversaries” by dismantling the political leverage of labor unions, environmental groups, and consumer advocates. Thus, James Madison’s vision of competing interests was abandoned. “Instead,” the Mullins write, “during the 1970s, Washington entered a new era: a nearly four-decade-long stretch in which the corporate capitalists of Wall Street, Big Pharma, and Silicon Valley exercised as much control of the political system as did their Gilded Age predecessors — with far less risk of accountability and reform.” The Mullins brothers combine in-depth research and intriguing storytelling to narrate the undertakings of the individuals behind the “pro-business influence-peddling machine by the downtown thoroughfare along which many of the city’s marquee lobbying firms were located, K Street.” The book opens with a prologue on the death of Evan Morris, a Big Pharma lobbyist and one of the “most gifted operators” in Washington, who committed suicide. This sets the tone for the rest of the narrative and reveals the paradoxical contrast between the seemingly idyllic life of golf clubs and Petrus wine and the catastrophes that are reaped when corruption is sowed. Morris began his career as a lobbyist in the early 2000s, more than 30 years after Washington’s powerful lobbying industry adopted corporate America’s interests for its own. He had been the pupil of Tommy Boggs, “[t]he patriarch of the first Democratic lobbying dynasty.” Tommy was the son of Democratic congressman and House Majority Leader Hale Boggs, a southern New Deal Democrat, long-time admirer of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and a man with a strong record of supporting labor unions and legislating on behalf of workers’ interests. Although Tommy never left his father’s party, his work as a lobbyist directly undermined many of Hale’s achievements. Together with Tony Podesta, a lobbyist for Wall Street and Silicon Valley, Boggs helped “unify a previously fractured business advocacy community, ignite an explosion of political spending in Washington, develop close ties to the administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and lead the Democratic Party away from its old friends in organized labor and toward a new set of allies in corporate America.” Democrats are not solely responsible for the development of K Street. The Mullins write about four operators who worked together to form the Republican lobbyist dynasty of the Reagan era: Lee Atwater, Charlie Black, Roger Stone, and Paul Manafort. They explain how the four men were largely responsible for the uprooting of “the nearly half-century-long tradition of New Deal liberalism, and assisting the reorientation of federal policy making around a new set of pro-business ideals.” By the 1990s, corporate America had a strong foothold in both parties and the fate of American politics seemed bleak — that is, for those paying enough attention to the silent neoliberal consensus in Washington. The Mullins write: While Tommy Boggs drew his clout from the old-line establishment of New Deal liberals, this new dynasty of Republican influencers amassed its power through the conservative revolution. In this sense, Black, Manafort, Stone, and Atwater became to Republican Washington what Tommy Boggs was to Democratic Washington. Now, regardless of which party was in power or their political persuasions, anyone with enough money could find a talented lobbyist to help them get what they needed out of our democracy. In subsequent decades, while the two parties pretended to disagree on substantive matters of economic policy, their track record proved to be strikingly similar, especially in the Obama and Bush eras. Disagreements on social and cultural issues were eventually reduced to mere rhetoric, as powerful corporations in Silicon Valley and the entertainment industry became more left-wing than the average American family. As Rachel Bovard wrote in a recent First Things piece, “Conservatives lost the culture war decades ago, and as a result we are living not just under the political but also the corporate and cultural power of left-leaning CEOs, entertainment figures, and political leaders, many of whom do not have children, do not want them, and who adhere to an ideology that is either indifferent to or actively hostile toward traditional family life.” In the last chapter of their book (arguably the most politically relevant section in terms of the upcoming general election), the Mullins concede that “it was the rise of Trump that finally shattered Washington’s pro-business policy consensus.” In the years following his election in 2016, the Republican Party reshaped itself to fit the Trump base, as evidenced by unusual partnerships like those between Republican Sen. Josh Hawley and Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and the increasingly pro-worker policies being advocated by other Republican senators like Marco Rubio (Fla.), Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), and vice presidential nominee JD Vance (Ohio). This is not to say that the Mullins are partisan in their reporting, or even particularly hopeful for the Republican Party’s chances of enacting real change. Quite the contrary. They manage to do what far too many journalists are either unable or unwilling to do these days: They maintain a consistent tone of moral seriousness without descending into petty partisanship. In the concluding pages, the Mullins admit that Big Business will always find a way to insert itself in Washington’s influence-peddling machine, even if it takes a “new set of power brokers and lobbying dynasties to define a new era. New fortunes to be made, new rules to be broken. New stories to be told.” The book ends on a bleak note. As much as one may have cringed or cried during the Jan. 6 riots, the people we saw in the Capitol that day are by no means the “biggest threat to democracy,” as the mainstream media contends. The real threat lies closer to those who were far from the Capitol, watching live news coverage from a comfortable living room. The post The Wolves of K Street: A Real Threat to Democracy appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

One sunny day, I and my traveling companion, Peter Phillip, a German journalist, drove into the U.S. Marine Corps installation at Beirut airport in Peter’s fun-size Suzuki Jeep looking for something to report. It was October 1983, when anybody could drive in unchecked. The Americans had arrived to keep the peace. You saw them catching beneficial rays and cutting the grass and pumping iron, each Leatherneck with his Walkman and not a weapon in sight. Peter and I introduced ourselves to the press officer, a major with a tent of his own, and he said, “Are you here for the cheerleaders?” Before I could ask, “What cheerleaders?”, Peter said yes. “There’s a bird leaving now,” the major said. “Run get on it.” We did. A crewman gave each of us a pair of earmuffs for the noise, and before you could say foreign correspondent, we’d been hoisted a thousand feet over the Shi’ite slums, the Palestinian refugee camps, the Commodore hotel where most of the foreign press slept and drank, and the campus of the university whose president, Malcolm Kerr, father of NBA standout Steve Kerr, would be killed the following year by either Islamic Jihad or Hezbollah, and were zooming over the Mediterranean, where ships of the Sixth Fleet, including the USS New Jersey with her fearsome guns, were strung out like the Revell models I’d put together in boyhood. Peter grinned and shrugged. Down the bird touched on the deck of the helicopter landing ship USS Raleigh. The ship was sitting low in the water, because on her must have been half the sailors of the fleet and many of the Marines from on shore — 4,000 or so young American males packed together like expectant sardines. They clung to the Raleigh’s spars, hung from the bridge, and shinnied halfway to the top of the superstructure where the radar dishes rotated under the Stars and Stripes. A lieutenant took me and Peter in hand. He brought us to the wardroom where the Dallas Cowgirls were mixing with officers and getting their USS Raleigh caps. Most of the ships of the fleet, the lieutenant explained, had sailed from Norfolk more than four months previous. There’d be no shore leave for another month — shore leave, by the way, in Haifa, not Beirut. It seemed like a good idea to have some entertainment for the men before then. Back on deck, I asked a sailor why he’d been sent to the Middle East. “We’re here to keep the sides apart while they reason with each other,” he said. “We’ll have to kick some ass, maybe.” He was from Nebraska. “This show is just going to be one big prick tease,” he forecast. And indeed, when they appeared, the redhead, the brunette, the soul sister, and the five blondes had on virtually nothing and were more perfect than anything Hugh Hefner had dreamed of as a Chicago high schooler. Yet the show wasn’t hot. The young ladies did what they did, they gave it everything they had for 90 minutes, but it wasn’t hot, wasn’t apocalyptic. It was just good clean fun a long way from home. “You men,” said the Black girl into the microphone, “are good-looking, you’re built, and we love what you’re doing for America!” The Raleigh shivered with cheers. The Cowgirls performed a hoedown, slapping rock-hard, silky thighs. They did a cancan. They sang a Pointer Sisters song — “I want to wrap myself around you.” They turned cartwheels under the blades of a chopper. An encore, then another. The show, viewed and enjoyed by some of the 241 Marines who’d be crushed to death in their sleep by an enormous Hezbollah bomb one quiet Sunday morning not long afterwards, couldn’t have been a greater success. Update: Last week, the 60-something Fuad Shukr, a top Hezbollah operative and commander, was killed in an Israeli strike in Beirut. According to Israel, he headed Hezbollah’s rocket development, deployment, and firing program and was responsible for the attack earlier last month in Majdal Shams, a Druze village on the Golan Heights that killed 12 children and wounding dozens more. Some people believe the Israelis make things up. But the New York Times reports that Shukr planned and ordered the bombing of the Marines and for years had had a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head. The paper of record hasn’t said whether Israel will be claiming it. Edward Grossman has reported for TAS, Wall Street Journal, Les temps modernes (Paris), Dagens Nyheter (Stockholm), Asahi Shimbun (Tokyo) and Shefa (Jerusalem). The post Better Late Than Never appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.