Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America get a kick out of the disunity on full display during the Democrats’ “Unity Tour,” as Bernie Sanders focuses on big government economic policies and the party leadership is still about identity politics. They also hammer Howard Dean for incorrectly citing three Supreme Court cases in arguing Ann Coulter’s speeches are not protected by the Constitution. And Jim pays tribute to his late National Review colleague, Kate O’Beirne.
Liberal groupthink is nothing new on college campuses but resorting to violence and intimidation to stifle views contrary to the progressive orthodoxy is a dangerous escalation, according to a prominent scholar who was recently targeted by an angry mob of students and warns free speech is under fierce assault in the United States.
Earlier this month, the Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald experienced the hostility first-hand, while visiting the west coast, first at UCLA and then at Claremont-McKenna College. Her visit to Claremont-McKenna was the most harrowing, with protesters blocking access to the auditorium where Mac Donald was to give her presentation. Organizers then tried to have her speak via video access before the event was finally cancelled over security concerns.
“The day before Claremont-McKenna, I had an effort to storm the stage. That was at UCLA. At Claremont-McKenna was a blockade around the building where I was supposed to speak to prevent anyone from entering to be able to listen to me in person and interact with me. That’s certainly the most extreme that I’ve experienced,” said Mac Donald.
Protesters targeted Mac Donald in response to her book “The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe,” accusing her of being a racist and a fascist.
This is the latest in a series of campus unrest as a result of a speaker who does not subscribe to standard liberal views. Riots broke out at the University of California at Berkeley when Milo Yiannapoulos was scheduled to speak. A professor at Middlebury College in Vermont suffered a concussion while trying to protect American Enterprise Institute scholar Dr. Charles Murray.
Mac Donald says the intolerance of the left is reaching new heights.
“I had a direct experience of how a student body reacts to a non-conforming opinion. It basically reacts like an immune system does, surrounding the alien virus with corpuscles to try to expel it from the body politic,” said Mac Donald.
“There is no an increasing insistence that everybody hew to the same line and that line is something very, very dangerous for the future of America. It hold that this country is rife with oppression, that minorities in particular are the victim of non-stop bigotry and anybody who dares propose facts to the contrary is simply not to be tolerated,” said Mac Donald.
Colleges are often billed as the place to explore and compare different ideas, yet administrators seem to do little or nothing to punish students who stoke violence or prevent the exercise of free speech.
Mac Donald is not surprised.
“College administrators are reluctant to discipline students for clear violations of their rules for fear of alienating the parents, alienating the student darlings. That’s a purely economic self-interest explanation for the passivity of administrators in the face of this,” said Mac Donald.
But she sees another factor at work as well.
“The campus bureaucracies are being colonized now by people of the left who believe in identity politics and have a stake in students thinking of themselves as victims because that necessitates, allegedly, an ever-growing student service and diversity bureaucracy,” said Mac Donald.
One of the great ironies of this campus groupthink for Mac Donald is the insistence the students are fighting fascism by forbidding alternative viewpoints to be expressed.
“I’m amazed anybody has the sheer gall to label themselves anti-fascist, who then says [they] are shutting down me, or Charles Murray or Ann Coulter and nobody else gets to hear that person without anybody taking a vote. I mean it is the very definition of at least soft totalitarianism,” said Mac Donald.
Mac Donald says liberal academics are succeeding in their mission to groom the next generation to consider only the ideas of the far-left.
“The brainwashing is very effective. Students are told that the police are racist and that mass incarceration is a reality aimed at re-enslaving blacks. If you’re hit with that enough, you do start to believe it,” said Mac Donald.
As intimidation and violence becomes more common on campus, where does this kind of development ultimately lead our society?
“It ends badly,” said Mac Donald. “These students graduate. They take levers of power in government, in corporate HR departments. They are absolutely committed to the view that America is profoundly racist, sexist, mysogynist, you name it. They will put in policies to support that view,” said Mac Donald.
But in addition to the impact on the culture and the workplace, Mac Donald fears for the future of free speech.
“Traditionally, America has had the greatest degree of freedom of speech of any western, industrialized country. There’s much stronger speech codes in Europe. I think we could be moving in that direction and that means less and less possibility for correcting the errors that guide so many members of the cultural and political elite,” said Mac Donald.
The Virginia congressman who defeated his own party’s House Majority leader three years ago is hailing President Trump’s speech as a “total conservative tour de force” but says Republicans must resist the temptation to embrace Obamacare-lite and truly embrace repeal and reform.
Trump’s speech Tuesday night to a Joint Session of Congress highlighted a number of conservative priorities. It received acclaim for both style and substance. Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., was thoroughly impressed.
“He hit it out of the park. It was just a total conservative tour de force across all the issues and it was all upbeat. It just gave everybody hope,” said Brat. “When MSNBC can’t say anything negative, you know you had a good speech.”
Brat hailed Trump for pushing tax cuts as part of overall tax reform and for lifting the regulatory burden from families and businesses. While politicians and pundits alike suspect tax reform cannot happen this year, Brat says Trump has a way of motivating people that the so-called experts may not understand.
“This city has a way of delaying and letting the special interests take over. Trump is the one guy who can light a fire and make sure that does not happen,” said Brat.
One of Trump’s most forceful demands was for Congress to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. But how that can be done is becoming increasingly contentious inside the GOP.
Last week, a leaked memo of a Republican replacement plan set off fierce debate as the more conservative members of the House and Senate balked at replacing health care subsidies with refundable tax credits.
Brat also revealed that the debate over tax credits is playing out only in the wake of the leaked memo because GOP lawmakers haven’t assembled to work through a replacement bill.
“We’ve never even had a show of hands for , ‘Hey, which way do you want to go on this? That’s part of the problem with this town. Our conference needs to be more transparent and represent the will of the people,” said Brat.
“We all ran to represent the will of the people. We all ran for six years on repeal of Obamacare. So when you say repeal of Obamacare, I think the average person means repeal of Obamacare, right? If we end up putting Obamacare-lite in its place, our base is going to be furious. The average small businessperson is going to be furious,” said Brat.
Brat reminds citizens and lawmakers how we got into the current predicament with respect to Obamacare.
“The insurance guys walked into the White House eight years ago looking at their shoes. They were going to get 18 million new customers, but they knew they were setting up a non-free market death spiral system,” said Brat.
He says Republicans can’t leave the American people effectively headed down the very same road.
“Having taught economics for 20 years, you’ve got to get the system right. That’s what some of us are very worried about, that’s we’re going to do an Obamacare-lite. Then our team is going to own that product. That will be a disaster,” said Brat.
“We’ll just do the same thing and call it (something) different, but you keep the insurance regulations. You keep the implicit mandates. The tax credits will turn into a new entitlement. And then we’re also getting rid of the health care deductions in the piece that was leaked on Politico,” said Brat.
Pointing out that entitlement spending is set to engulf the entire federal budget within a decade, Brat says responsible lawmakers cannot create another entitlement through the tax credits.
“We do not want to provide another federally-run entitlement program. The others are all insolvent, right, Medicare, Social Security. Everything the feds touch is insolvent,” said Brat, who points out Trump will need to fend off the growth of mandatory spending, either through entitlement reform or pushing tax reform that spawns major economic growth and tax revenues.
Brat says the most obvious priority in replacing Obamacare needs to be lowering the costs.
“Everybody’s paying attention to who’s covered and whether everybody’s covered, but we’re ignoring the cost of 300 million Americans,” said Brat. “If you can half the cost, then the money we’re spending goes twice as far just on simple math.”
In the meantime, Brat urges the public to see through the slanted media coverage on repeal and replace. The congressman points out bronze plan deductibles are now averaging $12,000 per year while premiums increase roughly 20-25 percent per year.
“Then the press calls and they say, ‘Hey, can you assure us that every single person is going to be just as well off or have gold-plated health care?’ I’m like, ‘You’re missing the thesis. Obamacare is in a death spiral, according to the heads of Humana and Aetna,'” said Brat.
“The entire system is collapsing under it’s own weight. About five million people lost their plans due to Obamacare. Where’s the reporting on there? The reporting is just in the realm of fake news at times and they’re acting like the Republicans are in charge of the disaster that just happened over the past eight years,” said Brat.
Despite his frustrations with the media and a lack of communication within GOP ranks, Brat is still optimistic repeal and replace will happen and that it will be done right.
“The car’s in the ditch. Now we’ve got to pull it out, get some free market principles going and I think we have plenty of time to get it right,” said Brat.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America found a lot to like in Pres. Trump’s speech, from conservative principles to powerful moments to a calm but determined delivery. They also point areas where Trump is embracing big government: including infrastructure, family leave, and health reform. And they have fun with the very awkward Democratic response.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America discuss the almost unanimous praise of Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster to be Pres. Trump’s new national security adviser. They also discuss how the free speech debate ought to be less about Milo and more about liberals bent on destroying the careers of anyone they disagree with politically. And Jim mulls Singapore-style caning for whoever defaced three monuments in Washington over Presidents’ Day weekend.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America offer a champagne toast to the military and space heroism of John Glenn. They are surprised to see a massive jump in economic optimism since Trump’s election. They shudder as free speech is trampled in the Netherlands. And they unload on Hillary Clinton after she claims fake news is having a major impact on the nation.
