P.M. Carpenter

Fox

OK, just one more poll. This one is from Marist, rated A.

Even worse for Trump, Fox News is happy to broadcast it.

The changing American character

More polling results, these from a Wall Street Journal/University of Chicago survey (unrated by 538). And the results are near shocking.

In 1998, when the Journal first asked if patriotism and religion were "very important" to respondents, 70% said patriotism was, and 62% said religion. Today, only 38% of respondents said patriotism was very important to them, and 39% said religion.

It seems the U.S. is well on its way to European faith, for which Americans can thank Trumpian evangelical Christians, the Platonic Ideal of hypocritical callousness. As for patriotism, see below, remarks on Trump and U.S. degeneration.

This particular result is less shocking than it is easily discernible: "Tolerance for others, deemed very important by 80% of Americans as recently as four years ago, has fallen to 58% since then."

My explanation for that finding would be the following. Four years ago, only the vast anti-Trump crowd had good reason to be intolerant: Trumpers, put simply, are intolerable. Now, with the far-leftist-radical-socialist-Marxist Joe Biden in the White House, the Trumpers are more irrationally intolerant than ever toward sane, sensible, sober Americans. And so the nation has undergone a dramatic upswing in overall intolerance.

The pollster, Bill McInturff, tried to make sense of the numbers, telling the Journal that "perhaps the toll of our political division, Covid and the lowest economic confidence in decades is having a startling effect on our core values."

The Journal adds that since its first polling of traditional American values, "A number of events have shaken and in some ways fractured the nation...; among them the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the financial crisis of 2008 and subsequent economic downturn and the rise" of Trump. 

I would place the weightiest emphasis on Americans' misunderstanding, or misperception, of the economy — it's doing much better than the public appreciates — and the utter rot that Trump has introduced into political life. His continuing, pervasive presence on the national stage is as embarrassing to conscientious Americans as it is degrading before the world.

My assertion about Trump's toxic influence on the nation's psyche is more than opinion. It's a statistical truism. Observes the Journal: "The share who said other countries are better than the U.S. rose to 27%, up from 19% when the same question was asked in 2016."

Should Trump make back it back to the White House, that current percentage will rise to at least 50%. 

The effect of an AR-15 bullet fired into the human body

At about 00:01:20, a demonstration begins on the difference in lethal impact between a bullet from a handgun and one from an AR-15 assault rifle, the weapon of choice of mass shooters because: "We see a lot more disruption," or rather, destruction.

DeSantis beats Trump, 39%-39%

The latest results from the Republican polling firm Public Opinion Strategies (B+), yet to be publicly released, show DeSantis leading Trump in an Iowa head-to-head matchup, 45%-37%.

In honor of the 1968 Harvard Crimson headline — "Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29" — DeSantis is even with Trump in New Hampshire, 39%-39%.

The significance of the poll, whose 21-23 March findings were published by Axios, is rather obvious: National polls conducted in roughly the same period still misleadingly show Trump leading the Florida governor by significant percentages, such as Reuters/Ipsos, 44-30; Monmouth, 44-36; and Harvard-Harris, 50-24. 

Again, DeSantis's most looming threat and Trump's greatest advantage is a contest outside just the two of them. Once declared candidates Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy are thrown into the mix, DeSantis slips to a tie with Trump in Iowa, and he loses to Trump in New Hampshire by double digits. 

Axios notes that in the favorability/unfavorability category, DeSantis unsurprisingly does better than Trump. In Iowa, the governor's rating is 81%-11%; Trump's is 74%-24%, and in New Hampshire, the governor rates 77%-15% favorable/unfavorable; Trump, 69%-29%.

These numbers square with Public Opinion's comparison polling of the two men's temperament, in which Trump — the all-time heaviest favorite to be a total jackass — is the clear loser. In Iowa, 68% of Republicans see DeSantis as having the better temperament; in New Hampshire, 71%.  

Axios adds this baffling note: "There was one warning sign for DeSantis in the polling: Many Republican voters didn't see him as the 'best candidate to defeat Joe Biden'.... In New Hampshire, only 48% viewed DeSantis as the better candidate to defeat Biden, while 46% thought Trump was more electable. In Iowa, 54% viewed DeSantis as more electable, compared to 44% for Trump." 

In sum, 1) national polls are meaningless, only state-by-state polls matter; 2) Trump's boasts of being far ahead are baloney; 3) DeSantis has to pray that his early state-by-state frontrunner status doesn't doom him, Scott Walker-style; 4) a candidate field populated by >2 is a lethal horror for DeSantis; 5) the governor must hope that minor candidates bail from the race immediately after Iowa (assuming their funding takes them even that far); 6) Trump is vulnerable in the temperament column, from which even codfish DeSantis can profit; and 7), looking into spring, and somewhat playing off #6, DeSantis would be well advised to pound Trump on his personality disorders, insisting that they have entangled him in an unelectable, legal nightmare.     

Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that the Republican presidential primary fight is going to be one helluva lot of fun. 

America's most scandalous obscenity goes on, and on

Writes The Tennessean about merely this latest in a long, long line of national obscenities: 

The horrible task of counting began before noon.

How many children and staff members had gone into Covenant School on Monday morning, and how many had come out alive after the gunshots?

Frantic administrators and teachers, tearful parents and first responders hurried to get that count finished. Parents were routed to nearby Woodmont Baptist Church waiting, hopefully, to be reunited with their children.

And they waited.

In fear. In shock. In anger. They waited for more understanding in a situation where none would be forthcoming.

Although we cannot fathom the fear, shock and anger of parents who lost their child in the Nashville school shooting — I have lost a son, but to addiction, not murder — we all feel those emotions. The shock will abate, but the anger continues.

For we are also doing nothing about mass shootings. By "we" I mean, of course, Republican politicians. One could hear, yesterday, the despair and hopelessness in President Biden's voice as he called for Congress to move on his assault rifle legislation — which is as dead as GOP integrity and political ethics.

On Twitter yesterday afternoon I saw the vulgar, despicable harpy Marjorie Taylor Greene offering — you guessed it — her "prayers" to the families of wantonly slain children. Prayers and nothing more.

I single out Greene unfairly. For her entire, despicable party is in agreement with her. It's willing to trade the gunshot bodies of nine-year-olds for mere votes.  

"They waited for more understanding in a situation where none would be forthcoming." Such is our national motto in the realm of America's gun violence.

I wonder who he has in mind?

You have to be fearless, because he will come back — and right at you. And that means you need to think about who’s got the skill to do that, and who’s got the guts to do that, because it’s not going to end nicely.

—Chris Christie, speaking with Politico

There's another one for Ron DeSantis to worry about. 

Trump and "the most shameful, corrupt and depraved chapters in all of American history." How true.

I enjoy rewatching old movies. I never tire of them. I watch them for the six elements of basic plots in all their wondrous, sometimes even magical nuance and finesse. It seems TrumpWorld also enjoys rewatching the near-cinematic tragi-comedy of its eponymous hero — except he possesses only one storyline: vindictiveness. 

Morbidly they never tire of watching the same dreck erupting from this sad, small man. Over the weekend he was in Texas, vomiting it up again. As the Waco Tribune-Herald headlined the pitiable extravaganza, "Trump draws thousands to Waco rally, sticks with familiar themes."

In reality there was only the one. 

Under the Biden administration, which has done more for the American people on singular days than Trump failed to do in four years, the United States is becoming a "banana republic," said the wannabe generalissimo. Behind him were signs with the words "Witch Hunt."

Because according to the publicly documented mobster, he's the victim of the justice system's "weaponization," which he called the "central issue of our time"; in the real world — the one far outside TrumpWorld — it's the centrality of a phantom phenomenon. 

"The abuses of power that we’re currently witnessing at all levels of government will go down as among the most shameful, corrupt and depraved chapters in all of American history," said Trump. "They couldn’t get it done in Washington, so they said, 'Let’s use local offices,'" he continued, in reference to the Manhattan district attorney's probable felony indictment, backed up by a solid paper trail. 

He hideously distorted, again, the outcome of past investigations. He said they had found nothing nefarious, which "probably makes me the most innocent man in the history of our country." Never mind that Special Counsel Robert Mueller, for one, found multiple instances of Trump's obstruction of justice and several unmistakable ties to Russian intelligence.  

And rare is the year in which a former president faces three separate criminal indictments from two separate prosecutors. Mere happenstance?    

Trump's messianic response: "They’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you." Because they've heard this burlesque umpteen times, TrumpWorld believes it. He is somehow the victim, notwithstanding that he vindictively calls New York's black district attorney an "animal" and prophesies "death and destruction" if he's charged.

Of his principal primary opponent, Ron DeSantis, Trump said "He’s dropping like a rock." This particular rock has buoyancy, however. He also persevered in alleging that America's greatest enemy is neither China nor Russia, but ourselves, via our elected officeholders who happen to differ from Trump in any way, to any degree.  

The Texas Tribune summarized Trump's "performance" as "incendiary," what with him "vowing to be the MAGA movement’s 'retribution.'" (He also "vowed to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine within a day of beginning his next administration." Okay, that's not vindictiveness. Just imbecility.)

The Tribune wrote that he "positioned himself as the sole protector of American values, painting a grim future if he is denied a second four-year term." The crowd ate it up. They "roared in approval," for instance, when Trump essentially pledged to keep first graders from reading Harvard Law Review articles on critical race theory.  

Said one gentleman from Comanche, Tex., to the Tribune: "Trump is the man for the hour. He’s the only man who can take on Washington in the times that we live in. Trump needs to dredge out the swamp with a bulldozer." 

With extreme prejudice and intense vindictiveness. Which is the old movie we'd be forced to rewatch if this hateful buffoon ever again possesses the power to turn out America's lights. We will have theatrically entered "the most shameful, corrupt and depraved chapters in all of American history."

The paradox of fanaticism

From The New Yorker, a never-truer headline and its subtext:

"How Christian Is Christian Nationalism?

"Many Americans who advocate it have little interest in religion and an aversion to American culture as it currently exists."

This equates with the 1950 study of hyperpatriotic nationalists who have little interest in the nation's welfare and possess a certifiable aversion to American government, the very government they simultaneously claim to uphold as the world's greatest.

 

We can call both the paradox of fanaticism, extremism, and the foulest sort of insincerity.      

It's always the voters, not the politicians

Writes The Atlantic's Helen Lewis:

DeSantis is a politician who preaches freedom while suspending elected officials who offend him, banning classroom discussions he doesn’t like, carrying out hostile takeovers of state universities, and obstructing the release of public records whenever he can. And somehow Florida, a state that bills itself as the home of the ornery and the resistant, the obstinate and the can’t-be-trodden-on, the libertarian and the government-skeptic, has fallen for the most keenly authoritarian governor in the United States....

It is no coincidence that the two leading contenders for the Republican nomination both have their base in Florida. In one corner, you have Donald Trump, who retired, sulking, from the presidency to his "Winter White House” at Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach....

In the other corner stands the state’s current governor, Ron DeSantis, raised in the Gulf Coast town of Dunedin, a man desperately trying to conceal his attendance at the elite institutions of Harvard and Yale under lashings of bronzer and highly choreographed outrages.

And yet Lewis's article, at bottom, has little to do with DeSantis or Trump. "Nothing is more damning of the modern Republican Party," she continues, "than the fact that DeSantis needs to flaunt his authoritarianism, anti-intellectualism, and casual cruelty to court its base." 

The damned — as well as those whom they would drag with them — are the roughly 74 million Americans who comprise the Republican Party and, in part, the state of Florida. As Lewis points out, DeSantis must flaunt his authoritarianism, anti-intellectualism and cruelty because the 74 million demand that he do so. 

For all the abuse we non-74 heap on DeSantis and Trump, it's not really they who are attempting to bring America so low. It is us, too broadly speaking. If it were not, DeSantis would, at best, be a minor state rep in Florida, and Trump would be nothing more by now that a third-rate real-estate huckster in prison.     

Netanyahu and Trump, two aspiring authoritarians

I can't help but think that Bibi and his far-right party were inspired by Trump and the Republicans. And if Bibi is successful in remaking Israeli governance in his own image, Trump, should he retake the White House, will be inspired by Bibi to remake America's.

"An act of madness" is how a former Netanyahu ally and opposition member framed the hard right's legislative push to subvert the Israeli Supreme Court's power of judicial review. The prime minister, said the lawmaker, "is determined to drive Israel into the abyss" — by which he meant a ruthless break from democracy to authoritarianism.

Israel's defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said on Saturday that "the rift within our society" and over the Supreme Court bill "is widening and penetrating the Israel Defense Forces," which is "a clear and immediate and tangible danger to the security of the state." Sunday, Netanyahu fired Gallant for his honesty.

Popular reaction to that prime ministerial act of madness may have pushed Bibi over the edge of reconsideration. Although parliament is proceeding with plans for a final vote on the Court bill today, and though the NY Times reports that Netanyahu's decision to fire Gallant "appeared an unmistakable signal" that he, too, intends to proceed, he's expected to deliver another speech today; he is "considering ... whether to delay."  

Gallant's sacking set off merely the latest of mass protests. In Tel Aviv, protesters blocked a highway and set fire to major roads. In Jerusalem, they marched to Netanyahu's private residence — having broken through police barricades — and then angrily gathered at Parliament. Israel's top universities have announced they're closing down "for the immediate future." In New York, Israel’s consul-general resigned. The country's largest union might announce a general strike today in cooperation with businesses. And the Biden administration has just about had it with Bibi, as have several European governments.

"There comes a time in the history of a people or a person or an organization when you have to stand up and be counted," said Daniel Chamovitz​​, president of Ben-Gurion University. "With what’s happened in Israel over the past three months, and definitely over the past three hours, we decided that the time had come for us to make a stand." Aviv Bushinsky, who was chief of staff for Bibi when he was finance minister, said his "view is that he lost control. He didn’t perceive that there would be such objection in the streets and the world."

And so Netanyahu may back down. Would the same popular pressure arise in the U.S. should Trump retake the presidency and recommence his authoritarian maneuverings — in large part, like Bibi, to evade accountability for past criminal acts? Both men are in legal trouble and looking for ways out, with the conspiring aid of their parties.

Israelis seem determined to prohibit such a power grab. About Americans, I'm not so sure. As E.J. Dionne wrote in his latest column: "There is a madness running through our nation’s public life [and] our country seems nearly powerless to counteract it" (italics mine). Our greatest danger is not only severe polarization, but one in which the hard-right minority is muscular, risk-taking and shameless while the vast middle appears indifferent, ambivalent or cowered.  

A bizarre piece on Ron DeSantis and "press groupthink"

Perhaps Josh Marshall (Talking Points Memo) was just having a bad brain day and thus got carried away with a favored bugaboo. I can't say. What I can say is that his identical lede and ensuing wrapup are criticisms not of legitimate "press groupthink," as Josh so heatedly asserts, but mere flurries of his imagination. His opening:      

"NBC just moved this story: RON DESANTIS’ DONORS AND ALLIES QUESTION IF HE’S READY FOR 2024. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that this is becoming an example of the kind of press groupthink we often, very rightly, view with disdain."

And his concluding line:

"I do think he’s going to get chewed up by [the political] process. But don’t forget this is also journalistic group think and conventional wisdom in action."

Four NBC reporters interviewed "more than 20 GOP strategists, politicians and donors" about DeSantis's troubles, which began with his flippant remark about the Russia-Ukraine war being a "territorial dispute." There's no question of a growing neurosis among those Republican donors and strategists who bivouacked early in DeSantis's camp. And their nervousness now doubles as "conventional wisdom." Indeed I would wonder about the competence of these donors and operatives if they laughed at the conventional-ness of the thinking that reigns. Hence this is one "example" of "disdained" conventional wisdom that, in fact, merits no disdain.  

But why and how did Marshall go further and conceive such wisdom as but another example of  "press groupthink"? I'm no card-carrying defender of the political press, but a story on a blazingly obvious political development strikes me not as cliquish conformism.

That phenomenon arrived in a huge herd in 2019 and 2020, hauling Joe Biden with it — not on the herd's shoulders, but under its hooves. Even before Iowa and New Hampshire, the political press was writing him off. Alternatively, I was writing that Biden would, as a matter of predictable fact, be the Democratic nominee — which I continued writing even after Iowa and New Hampshire, when the press uniformly had poor Joe dead and buried. My posts were snickered at and derided as foolish; I was written off as some sort of Biden hack, when all I was doing was reading the coming, turnaround effect of South Carolina.  

That was groupthink, by both the press and most of the Democratic rank and file. What Marshall points out is not.           

Who would win a Sino-US war?

Foreign Policy submits the argument that it's more useful to ask how to prevent a war between the People's Republic of China and the United States, since the latter, most likely at a minimum, would lose two aircraft carriers, each with 5,000 servicemembers aboard, as many as 500 planes and, along with Taiwan, "suffer a horrendous rain of Chinese ballistic missiles." To U.S. submarines, China would lose its fleet off Taiwan's coast and watch most of its invasion force sink into the Strait. 

The magazine ventures no victorious balance sheet, just the roughest of previews of a war's cost. But Foreign Policy's question — how to prevent such a massive conflagration in the first place — is one of diplomacy and politics, while ours is a military query. What follows is a survey of several informed opinions — necessarily opinions only, I should add, since no one, of course, has "the" answer.

One is offered by the nonpartisan Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a Washington-based think tank. It notes that a war would have more "nationalistic and emotional" appeal to the Chinese, thus the PRC would be likely to "[risk] more to achieve its ends." The U.S. would attempt to balance or outweigh China's natural, geopolitical advantages by enhancing its asymmetric tactics, for instance, by using "anti-access/area denial tactics against Chinese warships and interdict Chinese shipping."

The U.S. would pressure its allies to provide bases as well as forces in the region. But European involvement "seems unlikely," writes QIRS. "Even France and Great Britain, which possess Europe’s most substantial military forces, are ill-equipped to play a significant role in a Pacific conflict." More probable is they would agree to "impose economic sanctions, cooperate in cyberwarfare, apply diplomatic pressure, and offer logistical support."

The institute concludes that a U.S. defeat is possible, if not likely. It observes that recent U.S. wargames "have generally shown Beijing as the victor." And if not that, then an "indecisive and thus lengthy war." Meanwhile, Taiwan's industry would be "devastated," other countries precariously would be pressured to choose sides, and global commerce would be "[swept] ... from the seas."

If, however, the U.S. were to pull out a victory, continues the QIRS,  it "would likely be only temporary." Because the Chinese would be unlikely to accept a permanent loss. "Geography, nationalism, and interest would impel a defeated PRC ... to reorganize and rearm for a future rematch." Would the U.S. persist in spending hundreds of billions a year "to guarantee not America’s safety, but perpetually police Asia thousands of miles away"? The question virtually answers itself. 

Mostly unexamined in this post is what the QIRS says, understandably, is the greatest peril of Sino-U.S. hostilities: that of a nuclear war. Reiterates the institute: "No Chinese government could afford to lose, leaving Washington dominant along its border." But I, for one, continue to think that a nuclear conflict between superpowers is out of the question — as it is in the Russia-Ukraine war — since neither side is suicidal. 

The Brookings Institution’s Michael O'Hanlon disagrees, arguing that "neither Beijing nor Washington would accept defeat in a limited engagement." Hence escalation from conventional warfare is a real possibility, with the conflict expanding "horizontally to other regions and vertically" — by which he means nuclear. "It literally could become the worst catastrophe in the history of warfare."

Returning to a conventional war scenario, the American Enterprise Institute is rather gloomy about a U.S. victory. Writes the institute with a stress on the political angle of a military conflict, it's rather implausible that the Chinese Communist Party, "always mindful of its precarious domestic legitimacy," would accept defeat. This, then, could pose a replay of modern military history, which the AEI characterizes as one of long rather than short wars.

Writing for Mind Matters, Robert Marks, of the Walter Bradley Center for Natural & Artificial Intelligence, leads off by quoting some U.S. brass. Says Air Force Gen. Mike Minihan, "I hope I am wrong. My gut tells me we will fight [China] in 2025." About that, says U.S. Army Gen. Jack Keane, we are underprepared: “China has more ships, more planes, and more missiles." 

Marks writes that others are pessimistic about the U.S.'s chances of victory. Bryan Clark of the Hudson Institute notes that "Despite all the calls to boost production, the U.S. military will be short of key missiles for at least two years. It needs ways to win with what it has now." And Brandon Tseng, the co-founder of an AI firm, describes the U.S.'s technological preparedness for war "with some chilling similes": "China’s military is Netflix; the U.S. military is Blockbuster"; "China is Amazon; the U.S. is Barnes & Noble"; "China is Tesla; the U.S. is General Motors." I'm no authority on military technology, but I'll hazard that Mr. Tseng's similes are dramatically overblown.

Perhaps the most even-handed analysis comes from U.S. Admiral James Stavridis, writing for Nekkei Asia (in 2021). "I would say slight advantage China in terms of pure numbers of platforms both sea and air, with the U.S. having higher quality of assets. geographically and logistically."  

Although China has "a great advantage" as a resident in the South and East China seas, the U.S. and its allies "are bigger, richer and have stronger militaries, so an advantage for Washington." But, warns Stavridis, "the gap is closing." Like Brandon Tseng, the admiral sees military technology as the "most important" factor. On this he writes: "In the key areas of undersea silencing of submarines, numbers of military satellites in space, offensive and defensive cyber tools and unmanned vehicles, the U.S. still has the lead. But China is closing fast, especially in artificial intelligence, hypersonic cruise missiles, cyber and the emerging field of quantum computing."

Last we come to Adm. Stavridis's "Bottom line: If I were the admiral commanding the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command — the leader for all American military forces in the Pacific and Indian oceans — I would still want the U.S. hand of cards to play. But as the Duke of Wellington said of the Battle of Waterloo, a fight with China would be a 'near-run thing.' And over the next decade, that gap will close and -- if the U.S. does not respond -- will favor China."

The one element to be kept in mind when reading assorted analyses of a Sino-U.S. war is what I'd call opinion-motivation, which others call a hidden agenda. And some are not so hidden. The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft has been criticized by neoconservatives, perhaps not unfairly, for being an isolationist throwback to the 1920s and '30s. The American Enterprise Institute desires more military spending. And techno-gurus always want fancier gadgets.

But as a retired admiral with a PhD and in law and diplomacy from The Fletcher School at Tufts University, James Stavridis is out of the war business. As such, his analysis seems properly detached from any personal motivations. I suppose his concluding remark — that the "gap will close ... if the U.S. does not respond" — could be read as a call for huge increases in military spending. I read it as nothing more than a dispassionate, objective summary.

Thus, if Gen. Minihan — "My gut tells me we will fight [China] in 2025," well into the gap-closing decade  — is somewhere close to on-target, then Adm. Stavridis's summary becomes: The U.S. loses.

Trump makes it clear this time: He wants violence

I know it's painful, but to know what Trump is really up to, you must read his "Truth." And yeah, true indeed is that he is now explicitly calling for violence. 

I say explicitly, since "as they tell us to be peaceful!" is as implicitly subtle as an Alex Jones broadcast.

Trump was no doubt offended and just plain put out by Kevin McCarthy's comments about how the lunatic fringe of roughly 74 million Americans should react to the Manhattan district attorney's arrest of the foremost loon: "I don't think people should protest this ... Nobody should harm one another ... I do not believe there should be any violence," said he.

A real party pooper, McCarthy is. For days, Trump had been inciting the nutter crowd to do serious injury to somebody, anybody, in violent objection to the rule of law. But he sort of danced around the whole concept of a J6 redux. Then comes do-gooder Kevin with his goo-goo gibberish about no carnage — not even a protest.

Thus Trump was compelled to redouble his revolting efforts by  s-p-e-l-l-i-n-g  i-t  o-u-t  for the earnestly minded, ethically pliable and easily swayed: an all-caps, "They tell us to be peaceful!"

If Trump is indicted, and if protests follow, and if those protests are violent, I should hope that "radical left Bragg" adds a charge of incitement to riot to Donald's rap sheet. For his Truth Social post is of no difference from his incitement of January 6th.      

***

Update: Sometime between 1 a.m. and 2 am. today, Trump also posted that "death & destruction" could follow in the wake of "such a false charge" filed by the Manhattan district attorney, a "degenerate psychopath." 

Let us, as Richard Nixon always put it, be "perfectly clear" about this. Speaking of degenerate psychopaths, Trump is willing, even eager to see people die if he's arraigned on a charge for which he'd never do so much as a day's time in jail.

Ron DeSantis on the Russia-Ukraine war: round 2, no better than round 1

Ron DeSantis often appears to be an anthropomorphic contraption on automatic pilot; a preprogrammed, robotic pol virtually indistinguishable from his future primary opponent. Observers of this rather bizarre, counterproductive political phenomenon have been asking why any Republican voter would switch from Trump to DeSantis if DeSantis is but a cyborg copy of Trump. It's a damn good question.

The governor's recent #MeToo maneuver of impersonating the former, isolationist president on the Russia-Ukraine war instantly plunged him into hot water. Members of his own party were, shall we say, displeased that DeSantis said, "While the U.S. has many vital national interests ... becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them."

If his statement had been syntactically incomprehensible, it could have come from Trump. Downgrading a 150,000-troop invasion to a "territorial dispute" and thrusting a mammoth European ground war beyond allied America's national interests was the kind of imbecility usually reserved for the foulest, most ignorant swindler to have ever darkened the White House.    

But DeSantis, it is clear, becomes apoplectic upon suspecting the base might see him in conflict with the colossal imbecility they have come to love and so deeply admire. And so he apes whatever the big gorilla says. As he did last week on the Russia-Ukraine war. Yet DeSantis also wants desparately to be the darling of Republican leaders such as Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio and the party's other Grand Wizards of older-school orthodoxy.  

Thus in another Piers Morgan interview this week, as reported by the Associated Press, DeSantis, um, clarified (with near-Trumpian syntax this time):     

"What I’m referring to is where the fighting is going on now, which is that eastern border region Donbas, and then Crimea, and you have a situation where Russia has had that. I don’t think legitimately, but they had. There’s a lot of ethnic Russians there. So, that’s some difficult fighting, and that’s what I was referring to, and so it wasn’t that I thought Russia had a right to that, and so if I should have made that more clear, I could have done it."

More lucidly, DeSantis added that Vladimir Putin is a "war criminal" and "Obviously, Russia invaded — that was wrong. They invaded Crimea and took that in 2014 — that was wrong." He also insisted that his earlier comments — about which Trump correctly said, "[He's just] following what I am saying" — had been "mischaracterized." They hadn't. 

At least in the AP's reporting, omitted in the interview was any recognition on DeSantis's part that the Russia-Ukraine war lies squarely within America's national interests. And so for this and all the other reporting on his having "walked back" his remarks, his reverse ambulation was but a baby step. On the much larger point, DeSantis is still copying Trump. Which means he is still just as dangerous.

"Vicious monsters" and "animals" - the GOP's S.O.P. rhetoric

"If standards were in visible decline on his own person and in his own house, they were in full route in the world at large," wrote the unparalleled humorist Peter De Vries of his protagonist, Charles Swallow, in The Tents of Wickedness.

On rereading that line yesterday, it struck me as perfectly apropos of the Republican Party's visible decline. Its "house," like De Vries's world, is in full route.

In a fatuous perversity led by Rep. Jim Jordan, the lower chamber is demanding to see all the documented evidence in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's criminal case against Donald Trump. Such an unprecedented molestation of a local affair's grand jury secrecy laws tells you all you need to know about "small-government" Republicans.    

For his part, Trump has called the black district attorney's probe a "WITCH HUNT" carried out by "ANIMALS." A cross-burning Ku Kluxer could not be more obvious in his choice of words.

Did we hear any thundering objections to Trump's heinous rhetoric by House Republicans? Not even a peep. Nor has the self-righteous GOP condemned Trump's characterization of the FBI and Justice Department as "vicious monsters."

Here, I'm compelled to remind you that Donald Trump is a former president of the United States. And Jim Jordan is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. When Newt Gingrich, in the 1990s, encouraged his colleagues to assault Democrats as unpatriotic and the like, did even he imagine that the very highest strata of Republicanism would become so vile?    

The GOP attack on the "weaponized" Justice Department is especially worrisome. It's aimed at delegitimizing justice itself, much as Trump's similarly authoritarian friend, Bibi Netanyahu, is doing to the rule of law in Israel. Both men are willing to permanently dismantle the enforcement of laws to save their own butts from prosecution.

For criminals, this is understandable. What's astonishing is that their parties are willing, full-scale co-conspirators.  

Purely for temporary political benefit. "All of these steps are about planting the seeds for a potential impeachment of [Attorney General Merrick] Garland in 2024 during the campaign, which would be their ultimate demonstration that the investigation, and indictment of Trump, were all about partisanship," says Charles Tiefer, a law professor and former congressional counselor. 

Adds presidential historian Lindsay Chervinsky: "The [Justice] department is being given a role that it was never really designed to have — defending American democracy," which is undergirded by the rule of law. And it's being undermined by Trump, Jordan and virtually the entire, authentically monstrous Republican Party.

Who at any time could have ever guessed that the Party of Lincoln would come to this?