Hat tip to Peter Robinson.

The Hill:

Trump: Republicans ‘have no choice’ but to vote for me.

Donald Trump said Thursday that Republicans wary of his campaign have little choice but to vote for him anyway.

“If you really like Donald Trump, that’s great, but if you don’t, you have to vote for me anyway. You know why? Supreme Court judges, Supreme Court judges,” Trump said at a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

“Have no choice, sorry, sorry, sorry. You have no choice,” Trump continued, calling the late Justice Antonin Scalia a “great guy” and acknowledging tied decisions at the Supreme Court after his death.

In the first place, I do not believe that Donald Trump has any real conservative convictions, and I don’t believe his promises are worth any more than his payment agreements with local New Jersey contractors. Once he’s in office, he can do anything he pleases, and what Trump will do is whatever he thinks is good for Trump.

Supreme Court seats are also not the be all and end all of everything. We had a majority of Republican appointees and Chief Justice Roberts changed his vote once and saved Obamacare twice.

The fact is Donald Trump is not only unqualified to be president, insofar as he has any positions, his positions (Nativism, Protectionism, Isolationism) constitute reprehensible and long-refuted debris from the rubbish-pile of American political history. Know-Nothing-ism Redivivus has nothing to do with Conservatism or the traditional positions of the Republican Party.

Trump is a repulsive personality. He is vulgar and a bully, and he gives constant evidence of being afflicted with a very serious personality disorder. Faced with criticism or opposition, he behaves like an ill-mannered 8-year-old rather than a serious adult. My own opinion is that there is something really wrong with the judgement of anyone who would promote the contemporary equivalent of Caligula to the chief magistracy of the Republic.

I’m afraid that Hillary Clinton is not an acceptable alternative. Hillary is a crook and a cynical democrat demagogue allied with the radical left. She, too, has some kind of disordered personality, and a record of bad judgement.

The fact is we are simply screwed this year. There is no major party choice to vote for. It’s happened before. The first presidential election I was eligible to vote, the personally-repulsive, China-recognizing, EPA-creating, non-conservative Richard Nixon was running against George McGovern who was representing the Anti-Vietnam War socialist radical left. I voted tongue-in-cheek for John Schmidtz, a Bircher congressman who talked about the Illumati Conspiracy.

We are going to have a bad four years however this comes out. I’ll grant you that there is a certain charm to the idea of electing Trump. Putting Trump in the White House would be a lot like stuffing a disgruntled water snake into a thoroughly-disliked high school Biology teacher’s desk drawer. But this is our country we’re talking about, not high school. Human lives, the fate of the free world, and the Constitution are at stake. We’re probably better off really if (ugh!) Hillary wins. That way, we take our lumps for another four years, and elect a qualified genuine conservative in 2020 after Hillary makes a major mess and the chickens really come home to roost. But I will not be voting for her either.

My Yale classmate Charles Lipson (now teaching law at Chicago) admires the slickness of Slick Willie over at the Huffington Post.

Bill Clinton’s convention speech was a tour de force. He had a difficult task to accomplish, or rather, several difficult tasks, and he performed them as well as any politician could.

His overriding task was to humanize Hillary and reintroduce her to America, for the 37th time. He spent much of his speech doing that, sharing anecdotes of Hillary as a student, a loving daughter from a good Midwestern family, a young woman willing to take chances, and a new mother raising Chelsea—all while working on important policy issues in Arkansas. He subtly depicted her as the leader in their marriage, or at least an equal partner, suggesting he knew how to become a “First Husband” and was ready for the role. He spoke of their meeting in the Yale Law Library, falling in love, giving birth to Chelsea, raising her, and taking her to college, becoming empty nesters.

In short, Bill Clinton depicted a real person in a real marriage. It is widely assumed, of course, that their marriage is a sham, filled with his cheating and her cold fury, held together only by their political ambitions. As Dennis Miller once put it, “Bill and Hillary’s marriage couldn’t have been any more about convenience than if they’d installed a Slim Jim rack and Slurpee machine at the base of their bed.” Bill’s speech was a long, brilliantly-crafted and perfectly-delivered effort to paint over that image and present a new one. …

In sum, he painted a portrait of someone who deserves to be elected, if you believe the portrait. But do you?

Bill’s whole speech led up to that question, and he did not leave it hanging. Using the Tom Sawyer approach he has honed over decades, he asked it directly. He said that he had just described a person who was very different from the person Republicans described last week. That means one of them is real, one’s a cartoon. The question is, which picture is the real Hillary? He answered that question in his quietest, most sincere tones, biting his lip and inviting empathy.

It was the work of a master salesman. He brought the buyers into the showroom, showed them a “great buy, exactly what you need” and pointed out all the bells and whistles. But he cannot close the deal himself. He’s not running; Hillary is, and she lacks Bill’s rhetorical gifts and zest for campaigning. He loves to touch the flesh; she recoils from it. She is a grating, hectoring speaker and a far less effective campaigner than Bill Clinton (or Donald Trump). Now that Bill has primed the customers, the big question is “Can Hillary close the deal?”

Read the whole thing.

Liberal democrat Maureen Dowd is not exactly thrilled with her party’s impending nominee. Hey! why should we be the only ones with a crappy, hideously undesirable candidate?

[T]he email transgression is not a one off. It’s part of a long pattern of ethical slipping and sliding, obsessive secrecy and paranoia, and collateral damage.

Comey’s verdict that Hillary was “negligent” was met with sighs rather than shock. We know who Hillary and Bill are now. We’ve been held hostage to their predilections and braided intrigues for a long time. (On the Hill, Comey refused to confirm or deny that he’s investigating the Clinton Foundation, with its unseemly tangle of donors and people doing business with State.)

We’re resigned to the Clintons focusing on their viability and disregarding the consequences of their heedless actions on others. They’re always offering a Faustian deal. This year’s election bargain: Put up with our iniquities or get Trump’s short fingers on the nuclear button.

Now she’s complaining. I don’t exactly remember, but I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that Maureen Dowd was a staunch MoveOn.org supporter, back when Republicans were trying to bring Bill to justice.

Golf Buddies

Erick Erickson has endorsed my own theory.

During the eleven years I ran RedState, I worked to actively squash a lot of conspiracy theories. …

My friend Donald Rumsfeld once said that there really are no conspiracies out there because no one can keep a secret. I tend to think he is right.

But there is one conspiracy theory I’m starting to embrace. I’m really coming to believe that Donald Trump is a Bill and Hillary Clinton operation to get Hillary Clinton elected.

A Republican candidate running for office would spend this entire week attacking Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information.

Instead, Trump has attacked Republicans and praised Saddam Hussein.

A Republican candidate running for office would spend lots of time in swing states. Instead, Trump is focused on New York and Scotland.

A Republican candidate, when asked by the New York Times about serving if elected, would mock the reporter and make it clear how he will serve instead of play golf like Barack Obama. Instead, Trump would not commit to actually serving.

Donald Trump managed to get the Republican nomination in a very crowded field by galvanizing only 33% of the Republican vote, a good bit of which was not even Republican, but disaffected, pissed off voters coming into the GOP to support Trump.

Even after all the other candidates dropped out, Trump could not even clear 44% support in the primary.

Trump ran a primary campaign playing to the worst fears and prejudices of a certain set of Americans and was able to consolidate them against 17 other candidates.

Having spent an entire primary on offense, Trump has not spent a single day doing anything other than defense.

I am beginning to believe Trump is a Clinton operation designed to get Hillary elected. Trump is, after all, the only Republican who ran who was a Clinton donor. He is also the only Republican running who called Bill Clinton to discuss running before he even got into the race.

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February 25, “What If?”

It would take a miracle effectuated by a political genius of the first water to make Hillary electable, especially in this unfavorable year. The Republican presidential nominee in 2016 has the key to the Oval Office in his pocket as long as he is normally presentable and can walk and talk.

Maybe Hillary can win after all, though, because it just so happens that she is married to a political genius of the first water. …

if I were Bill, how on earth could I possibly cause the unamiable, unattractive, scandal-infested, mean old Hillary to win in this most unfavorable year?

Well, what if… what if that slick old Bill actually did think up a way? How could he do it? Well, there is one way, after all. Just suppose it was possible for Bill Clinton to hijack the GOP nomination.

Suppose Bill Clinton figured out the sole, solitary possible way that he could shove a big, fat monkey wrench into the Republican Party’s Presidential Election Campaign’s works.

Let’s say, for instance, that Old Bill knew another feller, that he had a buddy, a good friend, not in politics actually, but a fellow in some respects kind of like himself, brash, shameless, fond of the ladies, appetitive, hugely out-going, and larger-than-life. Bill’s friend, like himself, would be a wealthy and successful person, a celebrity, a performer, and a chap vigorously able to go after what he wants free of ethical inhibitions.

One can picture Bill sitting down with his pal Donald, and saying, “Donald, old boy, I need you to do Hillary and me a solid. The good news is that the whole thing is going to be one of the greatest larks of all time, and together we are going to make history. This is really going to be a hoot! If it works, you get all the billions of dollars of federal contracts, leases, and subsidies you can use, and Hillary will appoint you ambassador to the Court of St. James. If it fails, sheeeit! you get to be president. This is a no-lose operation.”

And then Bill (behind the scenes) masterminds The Donald’s campaign, knocking out one legitimate GOP candidate after another with shameless insults, abuse, and outright baldfaced lies.

Donald gets the nomination, but it could be that Bill has a plan in mind to sink the Trump campaign right about the end of next September. Photographs of Donald (like Berlusconi) in the sack with some underage girls just happen to fall into the hands of intrepid NY Times reporters in the nick of time. The GOP campaign sinks suddenly in scandal, while Donald smiles over the stories of his sexual prowess, and Hillary coasts in after all.

What if?

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May 31: “What Happens When the Dog Catches the Car?”:

Suppose it was slightly more complicated:

Donald Trump, last year, is unhappy with the Obama Administration’s mishandling of the economy, foreign policy embarrassments, and the general atmosphere of American decline. He also doesn’t like the Republican emphasis on conservative ideas and he has no sympathy with the rarified idealism of Bush-era Wilsonian Foreign Policy activism. The idea of running in the Republican primaries as a protest candidate has occurred to him.

He would get to ventilate his personal opinions, throw his weight around, and have an impact. Hell, he might win a state or two somewhere. He’d have himself a place in the History books, and as a former presidential candidate he would have a bit more influence and enjoy more respect when he did his business deals. Come to think of it, he would probably even get a little more tail. The aroma of political power does things to chicks.

Trump is reluctant, though, to alienate his pals the Clintons, so he decides to talk it over with Bill. Trump assures Bill that he means Hillary no actual harm, but as Bill thinks about all this, his grin gets wider and wider. Trump running may not really injure Hillary one bit, but it sure could make an unholy mess of the Republican race.

Bill Clinton advises Trump to be himself, and to come out loudly with all the nationalist, protectionist, working-class-hero kind of BS that Jim Webb was peddling in that book of his. What Bill is proposing is, in essence, that Trump should run as a democrat in Republican clothing. The campaign will be all democrat class warfare and promises of special government interventions for Trump’s voters, all served up under a nice Republican sauce made up of flag-waving patriotism.

Obviously, all of this turned out to match the temper of the times, the mood of the low-information voter, perfectly. No one could have predicted that it would sell quite so well, not Bill Clinton, not The Donald himself.

Aren’t all you Trump supporters going to feel dumb, when this is finally confirmed?

Red State explains how the Justice Department two-step worked:

James Comey was facing a revolt among his professional staff. If the case were sent to Lynch for adjudication, which is the usual process, the story would be that the FBI had “cleared” Clinton and therefore Justice was closing the case. In this case, Comey knew that one or more of his senior people, in order to defend the FBI, would either walk (unlikely because no one has principles that are going to cost them a six-figure income) or leak like a sieve (highly likely). This would make Comey the bad guy. It would make him corrupt to the core instead of merely the feckless p***y he’s has been revealed to be.

Unable to go for prosecution, because that would have required integrity, and fully aware that taking a pass on the case would make her unemployable as anything other than a punchline in political jokes for the next generation, she needed to unload this particular ticking time bomb. Unfortunately, she had no real reason to recuse herself from the process as her department was overseeing the case.

Enter the “chance meeting.” Last week this looked like one of the most boneheaded moves ever made by an attorney general. It turned out to be an inspired bit of political theater. This enabled Bill Clinton to throw his old friend a lifeline. By meeting informally and in near secrecy with Clinton, Lynch suddenly had a reason to essentially recuse herself from the case by “accepting the FBI’s recommendation.” …

By deferring to the FBI recommendation, Lynch has pinned the bull’s-eye firmly on Comey and his senior leadership.

Thus we have the FBI Director rendering a scathing public indictment of Hillary Clinton is every particular of the case. In fact, he goes out of his way to demolish everything she has said. And then he, Pontius Pilate-like, walks away leaving the American founding concept of the rule of law in utter shambles.

#MORETRUSTEDTHANHILLARY