Sorry to Start the Week with the Worst Possible News . . .
I only met Jake Brewer once or twice, and didn't know he worked in the White House. He was just "Mary Katharine Ham's husband" and he seemed like this remarkably cheery guy, a devoted husband and father -- and soon to be a father for a second time. Saturday Jake was killed in an accident at a bike race to raise money for cancer treatment. It's just about as awful as you can imagine. Mary Katharine Ham wrote a brief message about what she, her daughter, and the rest of their family and friends are going through here: This will change us, but with prayer and love and the strength that is their companion, we can hope our heartache is not in vain-- that it will change us and the world in beautiful ways, just as he did. If that sounds too optimistic at this time, it's because it is. But there was no thought too optimistic for Jake, so take it and run with it. I will strive and pray not to feel I was cheated of many years with him, but cherish the gift of the years I had. In a life where nothing is guaranteed, Jake made the absolute, ever-lovin' most of his time with all of us. Her close friend and co-author, Guy Benson, set up a fund for the education of Jake and Mary Katharine's children in that far-off date. If you've enjoyed her appearances on Fox News or her writing at Hot Air or elsewhere, please consider donating. And hug your loved ones a little tighter this week. The Democrats Threw Out the Rulebook for Politics Bingo: Barack Obama has become the transformational president he aspired to be. Among the things he has transformed is the nature of the political compact between the rulers and the ruled in our republic. Before Obama, citizens hoped that their elected leaders would be wise, independent, and disinterested leaders -- but they never really counted on utopian vision. What they banked on was that the people they elected would, at the very least, be self-interested vote-seekers -- so that if voters started punishing politicians for a specific course of action, the politicians would abandon it. The passage of Obamacare broke this arrangement. And the impending passage of the Iran nuclear deal, in the face of voter discontent will cement this new relationship as the norm. In both cases, Democratic law makers went along in processes that were highly irregular (the nuclear option for passage of Obamacare; no treaty ratification with Iran); with initiatives they largely disliked on the merits; that voters demonstrably disliked in polling; and that had (or are likely to have) negative outcomes not just in the real world, but in the political world, too. This sort of power dynamic is new in American politics. Other things are new, too. Such as having the understanding of marriage dating back thousands of years redefined by a single unelected justice. Or having the rule of law downgraded to the level of executive discretion (on Obamacare, on marijuana, on immigration, etc). Or having an economic recovery that, seven years in, still feels like a recession. Or having a stretch of four presidential terms in which you could plausibly argue that at the end of the term the country has been in worse condition than it was at the beginning. My only quibble is that this "the rules no longer apply" approach to politics probably precedes Obama by a little bit. We've seen candidates change their views on an ongoing war before, but in the past, turning on a dime the moment a war becomes unpopular would have been seen as craven and poor leadership. Yet in 2004, we saw candidates running presidential campaigns based on opposing a war that they had voted for less than two years prior. John Kerry, John Edwards, and then Hillary Clinton four years later, all ran anti-war campaigns, all casually discarding any sense that they had any responsibility to finish what they had voted to start. Heck, in 2007, Bill Richardson was pledging to bring back every troop within six months. Do you think ISIS would have formed quicker or slower if the U.S. had pulled out all of its troops in 2008? What Would William F. Buckley Think of the State of the GOP Today? There are many people in the world more familiar with William F. Buckley than I was – I only had the privilege of meeting him once -- but I think this assessment from Rush Limbaugh is likely correct: What Buckley would think of Trump? Probably for lessons there, take a look at what Buckley did to Pat Buchanan. Pat Buchanan had written a couple of columns that were thought by many to be anti-Semitic in his references to Israel and the AIPAC, the lobbying group. And Buckley did write a piece saying that he, after careful thought, did consider Buchanan to be anti-Semitic in those instances. Buckley, of course, succeeded in excommunicating the John Birch Society from the conservative movement and so forth. So my guess is that Buckley would be amused and would get as much out of it as he could, but, at some point, he would probably denounce Trump. But then the question is what would Trump do, you know, after that. (laughing) ADDENDA: Over at Ricochet, ExJon offers us all a much-needed laugh with a tongue-in-cheek description of the "mean streets of Mackinac Island," where two GOP consultants reportedly got into a fistfight last week: We might not have the motorized vehicles or the crime you'll find in big cities like Sault Ste. Marie, Petoskey, or Escanaba. But you'll never forget the distinctive sound of a Mackinac Island drive-by. Clop, clop, clop, clop . . . BANG! . . . clop, clop, clop. It haunts a man, whether he's a lifelong islander or a three-day weekender like Yob. | 
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