No Truce With Kings

As I’ve said several times in the last few months: pay attention to the down ticket and forget about the presidency this year. (Clinton’s election being a foregone conclusion, IMO.)

Here’s another voice making a very similar point.

Help us Divided Government; You’re our only hope!

People, one thing I know for sure is that I really really don’t want either of the two leading fools running for president to have any chance to enact their policy agenda.

It’s currently popular to argue that voters are ignorant and biased, but hell, so are the candidates!

So as my title indicates, I’m making a plea for our good friend Divided Government to save us yet again.

If you are so messed up that you are gonna vote for HRC, then please please please vote Republican in your congressional race(s) (House and maybe Senate).

If you are so moronic that you are gonna vote for Trump, then it’s kind of your moral duty to vote Democrat in the congressional races.

My own preference would be for HRC to be prez but the republicans continue to hold both legislative branches. Her brand of lawlessness I think is more amenable to congressional checks than the Trumpster’s.

If you vote for Gary Johnson (and if I vote, that’s who I’ll vote for), please please please vote for the party that you think is going to lose the presidency when you vote for congress!

So that’s it. Pretty simple. You don’t need a lot of information. If you somehow conquer your gag reflex and make it to the polls, split your ballot.

To repeat myself: vote Libertarian for the presidency to help the L.P. achieve political status. (It needs 5% of the popular vote.) Then vote for all the limited government Representatives and Senators that you’re allowed to.

As it happens, I was out with a small group of people last evening and one of them started talking about the importance of the down-ticket races to the agreement of several others. I wasn’t part of that conversation; I only overheard it. But I was glad I had overheard it.

Go, gridlock! And in that vein, David Harsanyi writes:

Only Gridlock Can Save America Now
Divided government is better.

When Republicans lost the presidential election back at the Republican National Convention in July, many elected GOPers feigned support for the Party’s doomed nominee in an effort to placate the base and hold their majority in Congress. After watching Donald Trump’s Access Hollywood tape (honestly, does anyone believe this is the last, or most odious, of the October surprises?), some of these candidates have decided the gambit wasn’t worth it.

So naturally, Trump has targeted down-ballot races in his own party—people like House Speaker Paul Ryan and Sen. John McCain. As it turns out, cult leaders are less concerned about the long-term philosophical aims of your political party than they are about your personal loyalty and subservience.

But if the prospects of a Hillary Clinton presidency are truly as apocalyptic as I’m told, shouldn’t Republicans be appalled that their nominee is undermining the only institution in Washington, D.C., that has the power to stop her agenda, should he lose the race? After all, it wasn’t Ryan who coaxed Trump into vulgarity on a hot mic.

I hear this absurd myth every day: “Well, what’s the difference? These cowardly Republicans have given President Obama everything he wanted!”

Elsewhere, I’ve gone into great detail, debunking the idea that Congress has enabled Obama’s agenda in toto—a belief that is pervasive among Trump supporters. In reality, a GOP Congress spent eight years doing the opposite. Not only did it block dozens of progressive initiatives and reforms but it often sued the president for abusing his executive power (and won a host of cases).

These presidential overreaches, incidentally, were necessitated by the GOP’s effective “obstructionism”—which is just another way of describing the manifestation of a divided nation’s will.

Of course this Republican Congress is infuriating. It often fails. It often folds. It creates unrealistic expectations. It struggles to find compelling arguments that appeal to its base. It picks mediocre candidates and is often paralyzed by risk-aversion.

Yet it’s also true that an uncompromising legislative branch stymied an uncompromising ideologue in the White House. I note the former with admiration because, despite the assertions of our political class, the most crucial task of those elected to Congress isn’t to pass minimum-wage laws but to check the power of the executive branch. They did it better than most. […]