Good morning and welcome. Today is Tuesday, Feb, 10, 2026. Glad you could make it again. Almost 20 degrees warmer last night than the night before, and a high of 45 around here. Good, maybe I can get these pipes thawed out.
60: St. Paul is thought to have been shipwrecked at Malta.
1098: Crusaders defeat Prince Ridwan of Aleppo at Antioch.
1720: Edmond Halley is appointed as the second Astronomer Royal at the Greenwich Observatory.
1846: Beginning of the Mormon march to the western U.S.
1855: U.S. citizenship laws amended; all children of U.S. parents born abroad granted U.S. citizenship.
1860: Johannes Brahms' orchestral music piece "Serenade No. 2 in A" premieres in Hamburg.
1863: First U.S. fire extinguisher patent granted to Alanson Crane of Virginia.
1916: Military conscription begins in Britain (WWI).
1939: Stagecoach, directed by John Ford, starring Claire Trevor and John Wayne, premieres in Miami. (Funny; I was just watching that last night.)
1940: "In The Mood" by Glenn Miller hits #1.
1940: The first Tom and Jerry cartoon, "Puss Gets the Boot," is created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and released in theaters by MGM.
1942: Glenn Miller and his Orchestra are awarded the first-ever gold record for selling 1 million copies of "Chattanooga Choo Choo."
1948: American composer Leroy Anderson completes his orchestral work “Sleigh Ride,” which becomes a worldwide holiday favorite.
1961: Niagara Falls hydroelectric project begins producing power.
1968: "Spooky" by Classics IV hits #3.
1971: A&M's Ode Records releases Tapestry, the second album by singer-songwriter Carole King, which won four Grammy Awards,
1978: Warner Bros. Records releases the debut album of American rock band Van Halen.
1996: IBM chess-playing computer Deep Blue becomes the first computer to win a game of chess against a reigning human chess champion, Garry Kasparov.
Birthdays today include: American journalist William Allen White, Russian novelist Boris Pasternak (Doctor Zhivago), Jimmy Durante, UK Prime Minister Harold MacMillan, Chick Webb, Lon Chaney, Jr, Robert Wagner, Don Wilson (The Ventures), Roberta Flack, Mark Spitz, George Stephanopoulos, and Glenn Beck.
* * *
For many years now, in fact, since Ronald Reagan left office, I have watched the GOP establishment struggling to amputate the GOP rank and file, who have always and invariably been more conservative than the party leadership. That delta has increased over the years and is now a major point of contention as we approach the midterms.
In looking at the Senate, and from a historical perspective, examples of this group would include Sens. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, John Curtis, Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, and John Thune.
In terms of supposedly conservative publications, I would suggest that the Bulwark and National Review are the biggest problems. These are all people who claim to be conservative, and yet fight tooth and nail against the man who has (in spite of their tooth and nail opposition), moved the conservative football farther forward and more effectively than anyone since Reagan. That, of course, is Donald J Trump.
As a matter of history, there is a reason why the GOP rank and file handed Bob Dole, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Jeb Bush their backsides, the first three because the GOP voters sat on their hands on Election Day. Jeb Bush didn’t even make it past the primaries, in spite of, or more likely because, he was the choice of the establishment. All of that because in the minds of the voters, every one of these was not conservative, but rather at best they were squishy centrists. McCain particularly proved that by saying we had nothing to fear from a Barack Obama presidency. (Man, there's a claim that didn't age well!)
Then we have the Cheney family, whose offspring, despite claiming to be conservative, endorsed Kamala Harris in the most recent cycle. Sorry, but that’s not a move I can reconcile with the “conservative’ claim. She went on to prove that in spades when she went hip deep with the so-called J6 show trial. Her moves were all about one thing: the elimination of Trump from the field, and thereby the ascendancy of the establishment GOP, even at the cost of allowing the Democrats to further THEIR goals. She got primaried out on that basis. The GOP establishment still hasn’t received that message. Ya know, it's almost like her voters didn't like the turncoat act.
Then again, this is nothing new for the GOP establishment, which, you may recall, wasn’t overly thrilled with Reagan, either. Remember also that the GOP establishment went well out of its way to detach the GOP from Reagan and the lessons he taught us. Spent two decades doing it, thankfully with less than full success. If, in fact, the effort had been successful, the GOP as a party would no longer exist except on paper.
About a year and a half ago, HotAir’s David Strom suggested:
What seems to be going on is a universal dissatisfaction with how the ruling elite have been running things, and with good reason. Whether it is conservatives, liberals, or "moderates," the ruling elite has been committed to policies that have eroded the power of individuals and vastly increased the power of the state.
Moreover, Western governments have made abundantly clear that their commitment has been to a form of trans-nationalism that has grown increasingly unpopular. As borders have opened up throughout the West, citizens have grown restless as crime has skyrocketed, economic growth has slowed, and national cultures have been diluted.
Trump's election in 2016 was the first and most obvious example of a trend that is now cresting, and his loss in 2020 by a razor-thin and disputed margin was driven at least partially by the chaos caused by pandemic policies and the riots of 2020. As we can see from the polls showing people's retrospective regret for electing Biden, people liked Trump's policies prior to 2020 and long for a return to the status quo ante 2020.
Well, yes. I saw that at the time. Commented on it, too. Indeed, I wrote before Donald Trump took the nomination for his first term that the GOP rank and file was about to “go nuclear on the GOP leadership”. And what can we possibly call the rejection of Dole, Romney, McCain, and Bush the lesser than the nomination and election of Donald Trump over the choice and the loud protests of the GOP establishment?
Strom does a very good job of identifying the core issue:
What is driving all this is a populist revolt against an elite that has been sacrificing ordinary citizens in favor of trans-nationalism--a bureaucratic order that ignores the needs and desires of citizens in favor of a bland, technocratic universalism that substitutes statist welfare policies for citizen-driven choice.
Really! I mean, who would have thought that policies which had illegals sleeping in luxury hotels and getting free healthcare and food, paid for by our tax dollars, while our own citizens, and particularly our veterans, sleep on the streets, without food or medical care, wouldn’t be wildly popular? [/sarcasm]
Clearly, the trans-nationalists, including both the Democrats and their fellow travelers in the establishment GOP, pose a larger threat to this country than do the excesses of the actual conservatives within the GOP rank and file. Trump and his supporters identified that right away back in the early 2000’s.
So now along comes the Bulwark and NRO, both of whom have shown support for the trans-nationalists. Most recently, NRO has come out against the deportations that the vast majority of voters have stated flatly they want, and that the Trump administration has gone about performing. I point to the recent polling data on the subject:
Even CNN polls prove Americans WANT EVERY ILLEGAL DEPORTED no matter what Dems scream!
— Bill Mitchell (@mitchellvii) January 26, 2026
Fresh data: NYT 55%, Marquette 64%, CBS 57%, ABC 56% say deport ALL here illegally. Nearly 90% back shipping out the criminals. Trump promised mass deportations and we elected him to do it.… pic.twitter.com/0WlAZEuweR
Say as you will about CNN, I will be quite likely to agree, but when even they are forced by their own polling as well as that of others to admit that the people want what Trump is doing, it should probably be taken seriously. That same data also indicates that NRO and the Bulwark are very seriously reality-deprived. That’s a situation I called out 20 years ago, and my perception on the matter has not changed. Indeed, that gap has widened.
The problems we face today are not going to be solved by another establishment critter in the mold of a McCain, a Romney, a Bush, or a McConnell gaining the White House. Nor will they be solved by handing more power to the establishment of either party by way of congressional seats. The real inconvenient truth for the anti-Trump establishment types is that they are as responsible as the moronic Democrats are, for the problems we face today, and have a history of being the biggest roadblock to the Trump agenda… You remember, the one we voted for in landslide numbers.
I submit to you that the GOP will never recover from the damage caused by its own establishment critters if they don’t go away. And frankly, you’re never going to make that happen if you don’t stop playing nice with the establishments of both parties. Kurt Schlichter called it well back in 2022, directing his comments toward the establishment GOP:
Your problem is that you live on forever in a world that no longer exists, if it ever did. You live in a world where there are norms. You live in a world of rules and guardrails, where the institutions are at least nominally neutral and where we all share some basic premises that provide common ground. But we don't. They hate America. They hate believing Christians and Jews. They hate the idea of free speech, freedom of religion, the right to due process, and not killing babies three seconds before they poke their heads out. They think kids should be mutilated to conform to gender delusions. They want us normals disarmed, disenfranchised, and, more often than you softies will admit, deceased.
You both want to run in 2024, but you think it's still 2005, and you both talk like a pre-failure Weekly Standard article about "empowerment" and "opportunity." Buzzwords like that are worse than meaningless in an environment where our basic liberties are under constant assault by these communist b@$+@rds. There's a war on and you people want to sing Kumbaya. That's why you cannot be allowed anywhere near the levers of power in 2024.
I mentioned Mitch McConnell, above. It should be noted that he was actively working against MAGA candidates in hopes of stopping President Trump. This is the GOP establishment trying to protect itself. We need to keep that history in mind as we approach the mid-term elections, because frankly, the situation hasn’t changed much. Consider the stonewall efforts of a small cadre of establishment GOP types who have been feverishly blocking Trump and his (our) agenda at every chance where their fingerprints are not going to be detected on the murder weapon. McConnell is on his way to the exit, and that is to happen in 2027... (Thank your stars for that one) but until he goes, he's trying to set up the continuance of the GOP establishment and blocking the choice of the voters. .
Ace, in his response to Schlichter, says it quite succinctly when he points out the GOP establishment:
They do want to fight. It's just that they want to fight actual conservatives.
Todd Starnes called all this out in August of 2022:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell just said the quiet part out loud -- he's throwing Trump-endorsed Republican candidates under the campaign bus.
“I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate. Senate races are just different — they're statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome,” he said last week in Kentucky. “Right now, we have a 50-50 Senate and a 50-50 country, but I think when all is said and done this fall, we’re likely to have an extremely close Senate, either our side up slightly or their side up slightly.”
I suspect it's a calculation on McConnell's part that if Trump's candidates lose, it will end a 2024 presidential race. It’s despicable, but it’s exactly what we’ve come to expect from the Establishment wing of the party.
Here it is, folks: As a country, we cannot afford to have such people in power going forward. The approval ratings for the Dems are in the toilet, but there's still the RINOs in our own midst to deal with, using what power they have left to stop us getting what we voted for, and what will save our country.
As we move into the midterms, we need to go to the mat for MAGA because, as they have demonstrated clearly time and again, the establishment GOP and the Democrats will do no less to stop us.
As always, your comments are very welcome.
Thought for the day: Killing time is the most effective way of letting time kill US.
I'll see you here tomorrow. Bring a friend.
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