Evan McMullin Does Not Like Donald Trump
And says so in the New York Times::
On July 7, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, met privately with House Republicans near the Capitol. I was present as chief policy director of the House Republican Conference. Mr. Trump’s purpose was to persuade the representatives to unite around him, a pitch he delivered in a subdued version of his stream-of-consciousness style. A congresswoman asked him about his plans to protect Article I of the Constitution, which assigns all federal lawmaking power to Congress.
Mr. Trump interrupted her to declare his commitment to the Constitution — even to parts of it that do not exist, such as “Article XII.” Shock swept through the room as Mr. Trump confirmed one of our chief concerns about him: He lacked a basic knowledge of the Constitution.
There is still deeper cause for concern. Mr. Trump’s erroneous proclamation also suggested that he lacked even an interest in the Constitution. Worse, his campaign rhetoric had demonstrated authoritarian tendencies.
He had questioned judicial independence, threatened the freedom of the press, called for violating Muslims’ equal protection under the law, promised the use of torture and attacked Americans based on their gender, race and religion. He had also undermined critical democratic norms including peaceful debate and transitions of power, commitment to truth, freedom from foreign interference and abstention from the use of executive power for political retribution.
There is little indication that anything has changed since Election Day. Last week, Mr. Trump commented on Twitter that flag-burning should be punished by jailing and revocation of citizenship. As someone who has served this country, I carry no brief for flag-burners, but I defend their free-speech right to protest — a right guaranteed under the First Amendment. Although I suspect that Mr. Trump’s chief purpose was to provoke his opponents, his action was consistent with the authoritarian playbook he uses.
Mr. Trump also recently inflated his election performance, claiming — without evidence — that he “won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” This, too, is nothing new. Authoritarians often exaggerate their popular support to increase the perception of their legitimacy. But the deeper objective is to weaken the democratic institutions that limit their power. Eroding confidence in voting, elections and representative bodies gives them a freer hand to wield more power.
I agree with McMullin about virtually everything he says (although I suspect Trump may be right about the illegals voting). But he’s likely to have people throwing rotten fruit at him, figuratively. His timing is poor. People just got through voting for Donald Trump, and there is a sort of era of good feelings and hope. Whether the hope is well-grounded or not, it’s what people seem to be feeling.
McMullin ends with a call for a new “civil engagement”:
We need a new era of civic engagement that will reawaken us to the cause of liberty and equality. That engagement must extend to ensuring that our elected representatives uphold the Constitution, in deed and discourse — even if doing so puts them at odds with their party.
Regardless of your feelings about Donald Trump, the call for civic engagement is a good idea. Promoting liberty, the free market, and the Constitution is what true conservatives should focus on.
Ding.
Patterico (115b1f) — 12/5/2016 @ 8:26 amHe burns as many strawmen, where to begin?
narciso (d1f714) — 12/5/2016 @ 8:29 amWhat’s the matter, Evan, have you gone through all your campaign money already?
Fred Beloit (12281a) — 12/5/2016 @ 8:31 amVery ungenerous, but typical.
Colonel Haiku (1fcc64) — 12/5/2016 @ 8:34 amEggamuffin…
Colonel Haiku (1fcc64) — 12/5/2016 @ 8:35 amEvan McMullin is stupid and disgusting this is why he doesn’t have any friends
happyfeet (a037ad) — 12/5/2016 @ 8:43 amGreetings:
and that inquisitive congresswoman was exactly where for the last seven years or so. Someone take that shovel away from the lady.
11B40 (6abb5c) — 12/5/2016 @ 8:49 amI mean you could coherently raise those objections, but it wouldn’t get published in Carlos slims.
narciso (d1f714) — 12/5/2016 @ 8:50 amplus he has a stupid charlie brown head
happyfeet (a037ad) — 12/5/2016 @ 8:51 amI thought for instance, he was overbroad on the Muslim immigration question, although frank gaffney got no points for subtlety,
narciso (d1f714) — 12/5/2016 @ 8:57 amWe know Carlos slims view of civic engagement’ shut up we won’
narciso (d1f714) — 12/5/2016 @ 9:04 amHappy, he doubles as Reince Priebus, borrowing a merkin for the scalp in that role. I dare you to call a meeting between Priebus and McMullin, it will always get cancelled/rescheduled.
urbanleftbehind (5eecdb) — 12/5/2016 @ 9:20 amNo that would be Dr evil and/or rick Wilson, ever seen them tigether
narciso (d1f714) — 12/5/2016 @ 9:26 amAt the beginning? I’m curious as to which statement you feel was an unfair representation of Trump’s past views and/or rhetoric?
BTW I agree the timing of this seems poor, but after discussing similar misgivings with a coworker about the Carrier deal and Trump’s 35% tweet from yesterday it appears most people don’t have a good answer as to when it would be appropriate to call out the would-be emperor for his lack of fashion sense.
Sean (1d5074) — 12/5/2016 @ 10:55 amQuestioned judicial independence for one.
narciso (d1f714) — 12/5/2016 @ 10:58 amWhere’s McMullin been for the past 8 years while Obama and the left have taken a giant dump on the Constitution?
NJRob (ba17c0) — 12/5/2016 @ 11:30 amThreatened the freedom of the press, for another, only the rizzotto tray carriers.
narciso (d1f714) — 12/5/2016 @ 11:32 amreince has faded into the woodwork not unlike the cucaracha and the defeated stenchpig herself
happyfeet (a037ad) — 12/5/2016 @ 11:43 amArticle XII is the abortion article. Everyone know that!
Kevin M (25bbee) — 12/5/2016 @ 12:11 pmPeople just got through voting for Donald Trump, and there is a sort of era of good feelings and hope.
I think it’s more a time for reconciliation and deciding what to do with this power they’ve been granted. Obama had a similar situation and screwed up mightily. I would hope that most legislation comes from Congress, or at least from Trump’s brain trust, and not so much from Trump himself.
Trump should do what he does in his business — wait for the little people to set everything up, then smile for the cameras as he signs everything.
Kevin M (25bbee) — 12/5/2016 @ 12:16 pmIt wouldn’t hurt to have the FBI sample CA’s voting rolls and compare voters to identity documents.
Kevin M (25bbee) — 12/5/2016 @ 12:18 pmI wonder if there is massive fraud whether they could arrest the officials responsible for conspiracy to commit voting fraud.
Kevin M (25bbee) — 12/5/2016 @ 12:19 pmEvan who?
shipwreckedcrew (56b591) — 12/5/2016 @ 12:22 pmI missed this op-ed yesterday because it ran, one column wide, along the left side of the Op-ed page.
Some of what Evan McMullin says isn’t really right – particularly that bit about Trump mentioning
“Article” XII of the United states constitution. That seems to have been misunderstood. Anyone who’s seen a copy of the constitution surely has noticed that the constitutional amendments are often styled Articles.
It shows a lack of understanding to really claim that that means Donald Trump is totally ignorant of what is in the U.S. constitution. It does show that Donald Trump is not strongly aware of what the constitution says or where it says it * – in fact when he said that Donald Trump was even indicating that he had no idea what the constitution said – he pulled that number out of the air.
But that doesn’t mean he intends to, or is thinking of deliberately violating the constitution, or that there is a danger of him violating it, or that it is his intention to violate it, or attempting to exceed his powers, at least more than previous presidents did.
Donald Trump in fact has pulled back from some proposals because they were against the constitution, or precedents, like the Muslim ban, which could have seemed to include U.S. citizens, and he later went back even further because of the impracticality of the idea.
I also don’t think that Donald Trump is claiming that he is the ultimate arbiter of anything, and if he is, it will be very very easy to handle that. There is no support for that anywhere among the public. And on the flag burning punishment, his people have already said that that was only a “there outta be a law” type of statement, of the type people even make about Supreme Court decisions. (now it is kind of authoritarian, although Donald Trump probably thinks it would show he is patriotic and/or tough to want to have such strong consequences for the act of burning an American flag.)
I don’t think that what Trump is doing is all that harmful, because it’s almost all theory. And I don’t think there’s any concerted plan behind any of this, beyond Trump trying to increase his popularity among uneducated people.
I think that’s why he sometimes makes these ignorant sounding quotes or tweets. Because he knows what the law and the facts are after a while.
People shouldn’t read too much into them. It’s annoying maybe, but that’s just about it. He tends to back down when he is clearly wrong. He’s not pitting the uneducated people against the educated ones – because he’s very interested in educated people liking him too, because he has to work with them, and he needs and wants their respect, more than the others, who will have just about no contact with him. If you’re ignorant, you will hardly know he’s even president, and certainly nothing much about what he’s doing.
It’s all “boob bait for the bubbas.”
And he’s not really undermining the constitution, even if he seems to be taking some baby steps in that direction. He is undermining respect for conventional wisdom in places, but maybe it could use a little undermining and needs a robust defense.
Not too much – we often don’t know why established procedures and laws are the way they are, but that doesn’t mean they shold be casually put aside. Some general conservatism is a very, very good thing to have. Zero-based law and rights and policy is not a good idea. At least people should be wary. (and blindly getting rid of regulations is also not such a good idea)
Evan McMullin is right though – we should have more people become familiar in greater detail with the constitution.
* Maybe other presidents have been not too well informed about the details of the constitution, but they didn’t evince a little contempt, like Trump did in the form of citing a random artivle – and they didn’t jump out and say things without knowing them. Donald Trump also said he was surprised that there were no legal rules for a president about conflict of interest. It’s his way of never studying anything until it really matters.
Sammy Finkelman (96f386) — 12/6/2016 @ 7:27 am21. Kevin M (25bbee) — 12/5/2016 @ 12:18 pm
It doesn’t have to be the FBI doing the audit, and the voting rolls don’t need to be compared to documents but to reality, unless you are also trying to see how many voters would be stopped by any such requirements.
To get honest reporting, people should be offered immunity if they confess to anything – and their confession should be checked to, in case it is false.
It’s not just checking the eligibility of real people – it’s also possible to have the invention of totally fake people or double voting. And, of course, people filling out absentee ballots for other people, some of whom may even be dead.
Sammy Finkelman (96f386) — 12/6/2016 @ 7:33 am22. Kevin M (25bbee) — 12/5/2016 @ 12:19 pm
It depends on what kind of fraud there is.
In the case of California, if there is any, it is ongoing, and goes back years and decades. There was no greater vote for Donald Trump than Barack Obama in Democratic areas – Hillary’s extra votes over what Obama got in 2012 came in Republican areas where people voted down ballot for Republicans.
The rebuttal in the New York Times is written a little bit too quickly and carelessly, but is still retty good. The New York Times did not realize that Donald Trump never made the claim that there was extra voting by ineligible people in California compared to 2012. But if it was planned, it would be. Except it wouldn’t in California, because the electoral votes of California were practically assured. In Nevada, maybe, you might have some extra ineligible voting, athough Hillary’s victory there is attributed to banking early votes. But in any case, cheating in Nevada wouldn’t affect the national popular vote very much.
The article says that the Trump campign brought out two bits of “proof’ after Donald Trump came out with that tweet.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/28/upshot/serious-voter-fraud-um-no.html
But in the first case it says, in the first place, if the survey was accurate, and 6.4% of noncitizens voted in the 2008 (and we’ll assume) also the 2016 election, that would not add 2 million votes, and in the second place the survey results which give you the 6.4% figure almost certainly consist entirely of survey error.
The sample seems to have sought, first of all, to only include citizens. So it had a very low proportion of non-citizens to begin with. (the article doesn’t say so, but that’s implied)
It was a panel survey that followed people from election to election. It had maybe about 20,000 or it could be 30,000 people in it. People were asked if they were citizens or not and also if they voted. Not one person who was surveyed both in 2010 and 2012 said they were noncitizens and voted in both years. The other things the article says are unclear, except it says the 6.4% figure is based upon 21 people in the suurvey who said they were both not citizens and voted (which would mean the total number of people who claimed not to be citizens was 328, which would be 1.64% of 20,000.) Only 85 people reported being non-citizens both in 2010 and 2012 and none of them reported voting.
Here is the original newspaper report about that survey:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/10/24/could-non-citizens-decide-the-november-election/?tid=a_inl
This attempts to tear about the conclusions about non-citizen voting:
http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/cces/news/perils-cherry-picking-low-frequency-events-large-sample-surveys
The New York Times points out that whenever something is low frequency it is very hard to get an estimate by surveys. (what they don’t say is that also applies to any survey that would ask people if they were homosexuals or if they had been raped)
The real percentage and number of non-citizen voters may be whatever it is, but those 21 people probably all misunderstood the question, or misunderstood or forgot what the right way was to answer the question, or were heard or recorded inaccurately by the survey taker, or if it was online, pressed the wrong button. And we can add, maybe lied on a whim or with malice aforethought.
The second piece of proof is about people who remain registered to vote after they have moved or died, which is not the same thing as non-citizen voting, and also would not affect elections unless somebody stuffs the ballot box late on the night of Election Day, being careful not to “vote” anybody who really voted. In Chicago they used to know that the dead people at least would not vote, and so could prepare in advance, and they had to because they had to sign them in and ddin’t have much time to reprt the results.
Family members may do this also with absentee ballots but that should be distributed in rough proportion to eligible voters, (unless you say people on one side were much more likely to be dishonest than people on the other side, which is possible but even so you at least have to devide the number of invalid votes cast by at least 2 to get how much the maregin is affected, and the number of ineligible votes cast is itself which is much lower than the number of no longer valid registrations.)
Sammy Finkelman (96f386) — 12/6/2016 @ 8:37 amThere’s an Op-ed piece in the New York Times today by a Texas elector who says he is not going to vote for Donald Trump.
Most of his reassons pre-date the election, and even sound canned.
The only thing post election seems to be this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/opinion/why-i-will-not-cast-my-electoral-vote-for-donald-trump.html
Sammy Finkelman (96f386) — 12/6/2016 @ 9:09 amPlus maybe this is also post-election, since he was appointed national security adviser only later:
The New York Times had worse revelations, like when he was Director of the DIA, right after Benghazi, he tried to get all the people working for him to say – said it was their duty to find proof – that Iran (!?) was behind it.
(That was probably not a hunch, but based on one or more bits of disnformation. Iran did schedule some demntstrations about the video after the fact, but it also happened in other countries. I would suspect Iran collected money for that.)
Sammy Finkelman (96f386) — 12/6/2016 @ 9:11 amOn that note, I wouldnt mind if 30 to 35 electors punked out, just to make him sweat. Bad thing would be – if the states are called upon alphabetically – Wisconsin’s electors probably put him over the top, and would empower RinseRepeat and P90X even more.
urbanleftbehind (5eecdb) — 12/6/2016 @ 9:14 amYes that came from one analyst josh manning, like the larochite staffer who alleged sorts of thing against the office of special plans
narciso (d1f714) — 12/6/2016 @ 9:15 amWhat came from Josh Manning?
Sammy Finkelman (96f386) — 12/6/2016 @ 9:20 amThe claim they wanted to pin it on Iran, Ken Zimmerman does think irannis around everything, pointing out the supposition of one for deep station chief, John maguire
narciso (d1f714) — 12/6/2016 @ 9:28 amIf he wants civil engagement from others, he should use it himself. Calling out the just-elected president of your own party using the campaign rhetoric of his defeated opponent from the other party is not civil. Nor loyal, nor helpful towards furthering your party’s goals.
Cugel (d485a4) — 12/8/2016 @ 9:43 pm