Jonathan V. Last, of the Weekly Standard, wonders why would anyone trust Donald Trump’s Supreme Court promises:

Pretty much the only reason conservatives have for supporting Donald Trump is the Supreme Court. “Think of SCOTUS!” is a superficially compelling argument. But only superficially.

For starters, conservatives have no reason–none–to believe that Trump would appoint a conservative justice. I point you here to Ramesh Ponnuru’s depressingly compelling assessment of Trump’s views of the high court:

Trump’s word is meaningless. He stiffs creditors and contractors. He lies about matters small and large: about having told Republicans to hold their convention in Ohio, about letters he supposedly received from the NFL and about having opposed the Iraq war from the start. Trump isn’t even trustworthy on his signature issue of immigration: He flip-flopped twice in one day during the campaign about whether high-skilled immigrants should be kept out as a threat to American jobs or welcomed as a boon to our economy.

Why would he keep his word on the courts? He doesn’t care about the Constitution or the proper role of judges. When he talks about the Constitution, it’s glibly and dismissively. When it’s suggested that the Constitution might pose an obstacle to his plans, he says it “doesn’t give us the right to commit suicide.” He knows almost nothing about the law: He can’t tell the difference between a judicial opinion and a bill.

The few times he has taken an interest in constitutional issues, he has been on the other side from most conservatives. He thinks the government should have broad power to take people’s property and give it to developers; they don’t. He has used courts as a weapon to silence critics, and thinks it should be easier to use them that way. Most conservatives find that record and that idea appalling. If President Trump asks his aides to find him a judge who agrees with him on these issues, they will start by scrapping his list.

The next part of “Remember the SCOTUS!” insists that Republican senators–the same group of sell-out, RINO elites that are always being blamed for Trump’s rise–will somehow discover the backbone to force Trump into picking a conservative. What in the history of Trump’s relationship with institutional Republicans might lead one to believe that they, the GOP, could bend Trump to their will? Search me.

Last week David Frum wondered if the dynamic might not run the other way, actually: “Isn’t it more likely that President Trump will choose his judicial nominees to spite Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell than to please them?”

After watching Trump attack Paul Ryan, Kelly Ayotte, and John McCain last week, the answer to this question has got to be–at least–maybe?

And here’s Ponnuru again, gaming out a much more plausible scenario for what Trump might do:

To get a conservative on the Supreme Court would require a President Trump to wage an ideological war with Senate Democrats, even though he says he would prefer to be a dealmaker, and even though that war would turn on issues for which he has never in his life shown the slightest concern. Instead of making good on his promise, he could cut a deal with the Democrats. His nominee could then win confirmation with the support of most Democrats, moderate Republicans, and some conservative Republicans who will want to be on the same side as Trump.

Read the whole thing.

Publius Tex argues that it would be awfully hard.

Trump has run for the presidency several times, only capturing a nomination because President Barack Obama paved his path via eight straight years of mendacity, dishonesty, verbal trickery, and deceit. Nothing means anything anymore, so it’s impossible to hold Trump to account for anything at all.

Hillary Clinton lost the nomination last time around to a smooth-talking rookie, despite her claim to be the Smartest Woman in the World. This time she struggled to put away an avowed Communist who possesses all the personal charm of a tapeworm.

Visually, both are terrible on TV. Trump has the worst hair ever. Hillary has the worst voice ever. He has permanent bed head. She sounds like a screech owl with hemorrhoids. …

Whichever one wins, a majority of the nation will despise them. And their voting base will be, at best, indifferent once the shine of victory wears off five minutes after inauguration.

Trump lets his mouth get so far ahead of his brain that he’s likely to troll his way into a war. Hillary Clinton beat him to that, though, with her insane intervention in Libya — an actual war that has created a terrorism Dante’s Inferno.

Trump is a serial philanderer who, until this current run for president, bragged about all the women he bedded while he was married. Hillary is the enabler of a serial philanderer and probable rapist who, when her cheating husband ran for and was president, ran operations on the taxpayer’s dime to destroy his mistresses and victims.

Trump is known for the “art of the deal,” an art that as often as not comes down to using bankruptcy laws to screw his partners and investors while he keeps getting paid. Hillary takes Mandarin opacity to glorious new extremes. From hiding subpoenaed law firm records to lying about why Americans died in Benghazi with their corpses behind her and their grieving families in front of her, she is a heartless ghoul and a cover-up artist without peer.

Trump gets himself into trouble by trolling the media and Hillary over her illegal email server and dangerous mishandling of classified information. But Hillary actually used the illegal server, with the obvious intent of skirting freedom of information laws so she could hide her doings and the operations of the Clinton criminal Foundation from the public — which might ask about all that — and the media, which we all know never, ever will.

Trump’s core argument for being president comes down to a string of absurdities. He’ll make Mexico pay for a wall to be built in the middle of a river, he’ll fix everything that’s bad (but don’t ask him for a plan!), and he’ll wipe out terrorists while being resolutely anti-war.

Hillary’s core argument comes down to “First Woman President Yay!” atop a party that now thinks gender is entirely fluid and not biological, and “competency!” which does not extend to how she actually performed in every job she has ever had, as she has always performed miserably. She was a lousy senator. She was a terrifying secretary of State. She would be a horrible president.

These are two awful people who could only beat each other. Their respective ascents are evidence that the nation has gone morally bankrupt. They are evidence that character does not matter.

But … could we do worse?

No. We could not.

Well, maybe if we pulled two convicts out of maximum security prison and nominated them. But convicted felons might have a contrition that lifelong scofflaws like Trump and Hillary will never know.

Otherwise, adjusting for the Kim Jong Un’s of the world … no, America. We could not do worse.

Read the whole thing.

Newsthump:

Donald Trump pledges to replace Constitution with the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition.

The United States Constitution will be modified to include the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition, according to a policy document leaked from the Donald Trump campaign.

The news emerged after it became clear Trump’s campaign website would not allow supporters to cancel reoccurring donations, a move covered under Rule 239 as “Never be afraid to mislabel a product”.

Trump, who believes he is running for the position of ‘Grand Nagus’ of the United States, has a personal motto of “A man is only worth the sum of his possessions”, which is his favourite of the rules. …

Many supporters of Donald Trump already appear to be using at least the first three of the five stages of acquisition – infatuation, obsession, justification, appropriation and resale – to explain backing their candidate.

Read the whole thing.

Jonah Goldberg looks on sadly as some Republicans continue to delude themselves with the fantasy that Trump can stop the insane, embarrassing, election-losing behavior and become presidential.

The battered-spouse establishment can’t come to grips with the fact that they’re being played for suckers or that they are actually enabling Trump. I half expect Reince to come out with a black eye and tell everyone that he walked into a door at Trump tower. “I shouldn’t have been so clumsy.”

And I get it. When something is too terrible to contemplate, there’s a natural human tendency to avoid contemplating it. But when a grizzly bear is eating your face, saying “He can change” is not the best response.

Not least because Trump can’t change. He can’t change any more than a one-armed southpaw can suddenly pitch right-handed. Within days of the supposed Pence-pivot, Trump got worse:

In the time since he accepted the nomination Trump has, among other things: revived a crackpot theory on Ted Cruz’s father and the JFK assassination; suggested his adopted party is filled with people who don’t want to help others; invited Russia to influence the U.S. presidential election; smeared the parents of a fallen U.S. Army captain; trashed a retired four-star general; and appeared not to know that Russia had annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014.

…

And then, just this morning, Trump ate a live hamster on national TV.

Okay, I made that last one up, but you get the point. The Trump you see is the only Trump you’ll get.

I’d love to see a mash-up of Hannibal Lecter channeling Marcus Aurelius as he talked to Reince Priebus.

Hannibal Lecter: First principles, Reince. Simplicity. Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each particular thing ask: What is it in itself? What is its nature? What does he do, this man you seek?

Reince Priebus: He wins primaries? He controls the news cycle? He insults people?

Hannibal Lecter​: No. That is incidental. What is the first and principal thing he does? What needs does he serve by doing these things?

Reince Priebus​: Anger, um, social acceptance, and, huh, sexual frustrations, sir. . .

Hannibal Lecter​: No! He covets. That is his nature. He covets attention and respect and he confuses one for the other .

. . .

It’s important to keep in mind that Trump knows he has to promise things he cannot deliver just to keep everyone on the hook. He’s a bit like a pimp in this regard (actually he’s like a pimp in a lot of ways: gaudy, loud, self-absorbed, fond of gold and red velvet — but we’ll stay on point). He tells those counting on him that he can be better.

On March 9, he told Sean Hannity:

“At the right time, I will be so presidential that you’ll call me and you’ll say, ‘Donald, you have to stop that.’ (LAUGHTER) But you know what? It is true, and I think you understand: When they attack me, I have to attack back. I’m a counter-puncher. When they attack me, if I don’t attack back — You know, the press could say, ‘Oh, he should act more presidential.’ And then like a couple of days ago, I gave a speech, they said, ‘That was so presidential.’ I can be presidential. But when you’re being attacked and when you attack back, they say it’s not presidential.”

This is pimp talk. This notion that he can’t let any insult go un-answered is the lizard-brain logic of the streets and the prison yard. “Honey britches, I gotta save face. I can’t let no one trash-talk me or my name won’t mean sh*t out there.”

I want to put forward a challenge to everyone still clinging to the he-can-change, pie-in-the-sky, free-beer-tomorrow, Godot’s-bus-is-just-running-late, he-can-change fantasy. Pick a date. Any date between now and Election Day. I want you to commit to the idea that if he hasn’t changed by that day, he never will. And on that day, you need to accept that he is the same cheeto-dusted smatterer some of us saw from Day 1. Then, ask yourself: “What should we do now?”

Read the whole thing, it’s excellent.

Mona Charen does not mince any words concerning Donald Trump and his GOP enablers.

Martha Bayles reminds us in the Claremont Review of Books of two barrels — one contains sewage, the other wine. If you pour a cup of wine into the sewage, it’s still sewage. But if you pour a cup of sewage into the wine, it is no longer wine but sewage.

Trump is a pathogen. A man who heedlessly promotes conspiracy theories (vaccines cause autism, Obama was born in Kenya, Bush lied us into war in Iraq, Rafael Cruz was caught up in the JFK assassination), is either not fully sane or at least indifferent to the demoralizing effect that such lies have on our social cohesion. A man whose confidence is so shaky that he must attest to his own intelligence, malign even the most insignificant critic, scapegoat minorities, and threaten the free press is to be pitied, maybe, but not trusted with power. He is very, very comfortable stoking mobs and threatening violence. His warning that there would be riots in Cleveland if he failed to get the nomination — to cite just one of the thousands of ways he has transgressed basic norms this year — ought to cite just one of the thousands of ways he has transgressed basic norms this year — ought to have been enough to activate the antibodies of a healthy electorate.

Every single Republican with influence, from the local sheriff to the speaker of the House, at every stage of this process, should have stood up on his hind legs and denounced this fraud (where are his tax returns, again?), condemned his ugly methods, and scorned his flood of lies. Every Republican should have lined up for Judge Curiel. Chris Christie’s endorsement was the first tablespoon of sewage. Jeff Sessions’s was the second. The list of defilers is too long to itemize now. RIP GOP.

Read the whole thing.

Peggy Noonan contends that Trump persuaded Americans this week that he’s crazy.

I think this week marked a certain coming to terms with where the election is going. Politics is about trends and tendencies. The trends for Donald Trump are not good, and he tends not to change.

All the damage done to him this week was self-inflicted. The arrows he’s taken are arrows he shot. We have in seven days witnessed his undignified and ungrateful reaction to a Gold Star family; the odd moment with the crying baby; the one-on-one interviews, which are starting to look like something he does in the grip of a compulsion, in which Mr. Trump expresses himself thoughtlessly, carelessly, on such issues as Russia, Ukraine and sexual harassment; the relitigating of his vulgar Megyn Kelly comments from a year ago; and, as his fortunes fell, his statement that he “would not be surprised” if the November election were “rigged.” Subject to an unprecedented assault by a sitting president who called him intellectually and characterologically unfit for the presidency, Mr Trump fired back—at Paul Ryan and John McCain.

The mad scatterbrained-ness of it was captured in a Washington Post interview with Philip Rucker in which five times by my count—again, the compulsion—Mr. Trump departed the meat of the interview to turn his head and stare at the television. On seeing himself on the screen: “Lot of energy. We got a lot of energy.” Minutes later: “Look at this. It’s all Trump all day long. That’s why their ratings are through the roof.” He’s all about screens, like a toddler hooked on iPad.

Mr. Trump spent all his time doing these things instead of doing his job: making the case for his policies, expanding on his stands, and taking the battle to Hillary Clinton.

By the middle of the week the Republican National Committee was reported to be frustrated, party leaders alarmed, donors enraged. There was talk of an “intervention.”

Here is a truth of life. When you act as if you’re insane, people are liable to think you’re insane. That’s what happened this week. People started to become convinced he was nuts, a total flake.

Read the whole thing.

Steve Hayward offers the first nine of a proposed Lutheran 95 Theses about the 2016 Election:

1) If Republicans had nominated one of their conventional candidates, that nominee would be running 10 points ahead of Hillary.

2) If Democrats had nominated someone plausible other than Hillary, that nominee would be leading Trump by 15 points or more. (Hillary is up almost 10 in the current polls.)

3) Republicans nominated the only candidate who could possibly lose to Hillary Clinton.

4) Democrats nominated the only person who could possibly lose to Donald Trump.

5) Is there any way Captain Kirk could reprogram our electoral computer to avoid this political Kobayashi-Maru Scenario? (Classical reference. . .)

Whole thing.

Hat tip to Bird Dog.

Matt Latimer is worried that, having insulted war heroes, firefighters and babies, Trump may be running out of people to offend. He has some suggestions.

Hat tip to Bird Dog.