Mick Hartley

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Against Trump

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Well yes, every word of that on Trump – and see also in the NYT, where John Kelly, the White House former chief of staff, says that Trump would rule like a dictator and meets the definition of a fascist – but it's an unfortunate effect of a two-way contest like this that he feels the need to praise Kamala Harris in such fulsome terms. To my mind she's a lacklustre performer with little going on behind that smile and the vacuous soundbites, and it's a disgrace that the Democrats are running with such a weak candidate. Of course that pales next to the Republican disgrace of sticking with Trump, but still…

Bret Stephens, as quoted by Jerry Coyne, admitting that he'll vote for Harris – but very reluctantly:

I really would rather have just sat out Election Day. But Jan. 6 and election denialism are unforgivable. And as my friend Richard North Patterson likes to say, “Donald Trump is literally bleeping crazy.” And what crazy brings in its wake is JD Vance, whom I find worse than Trump, because he’s just as cynical but twice as bright. And what it also brings in its wake is Tucker Carlson and the Hitler defenders he likes to platform….

It’s a 99.999 percent vote against Trump and a 0.001 percent vote for Harris….

If the G.O.P. had nominated Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis or Doug Burgum, I’d be voting Republican. Probably even Tim Scott: That’s how reluctant I was to vote for her.

I fear that Harris is every bit as vacuous behind the scenes as she seems to be on the public stage. I fear she will be tested early by a foreign adversary and stumble badly, whether it’s in stopping Iran from building a nuclear weapon or China from blockading Taiwan or Russia from seizing a portion of a Baltic country. I fear she will capitulate too easily to her party’s left flank, especially when it comes to identity politics, economic policy or polarizing cultural issues. I fear she’ll have no domestic policy ideas that don’t involve mindlessly expanding the role of government. I fear she’ll surround herself with mediocre advisers, like her embarrassingly bad veep pick. I fear she won’t muster the political will to curb mass migration. And I fear that a failed Harris presidency will do more to turbocharge the far-right in this country than to diminish it…

Yep. It's a grim choice.

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4 responses to “Against Trump”

  1. Graham Avatar
    Graham

    From the consideration of the middle east alone, Colonel Richard Kemp reaches the opposite conclusion: https://youtu.be/q2boUhUINaY?si=fxVxq2sy4w5wxj2B
    (And also feels Biden should be court-martialled.)

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  2. Mick H Avatar
    Mick H

    Well yes, I don’t particularly disagree with his views on Biden, in Afghanistan and Israel, but no, never Trump. On Ukraine alone…

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  3. Graham Avatar
    Graham

    I agree a Trump victory is probably not what I’d want if I were Ukrainian (though it was Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan which green lit Putin’s invasion of Ukraine), nor probably if I were American, however the West’s ‘strategy’ – as far as it has one, with respect to Ukraine has been to give it just enough assistance to be able to defend itself but not enough to drive the Russians out of its country, thereby guaranteeing an ongoing war, ultimately leading to the ceding of Ukrainian territory.
    Colonel Kemp’s prediction (around 56 mins) is that a Harris presidency will continue the Obama-Biden policy of appeasing, funding and strengthening Iran to serve as a counterweight to the Sunni – Saudi Arabia block, which will then somehow achieve equilibrium, allowing the US to shift focus to the threat of China. As the Iranian regime is driven by three core objectives – the supremacy of Shia Islam; the destruction of the United States; and the destruction of Israel – the policy makes no sense and guarantees continuing war across the middle east also, in Kemp’s opinion, particularly frightening as the Iranian regime is only perhaps a year away from a nuclear capability. He believes the only option to arrest that process is a Trump victory, however unpleasant that may be in other ways.
    If the stakes were different and the Iranian issue were not in play, ‘never Trump’ might make more sense, but unfortunately that’s not the world we live in.

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  4. Mick H Avatar
    Mick H

    Yes, I tend to agree with what Kemp says – particularly about the nonsensical appeasement of Iran started under Obama.
    There’s still the chance that Israel might deal with that problem…https://mickhartley.typepad.com/blog/2024/10/the-iran-delay.html

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