“It all comes together when I check the Power Line blog today”

That’s Rush Limbaugh this morning, giving a nice shout out to my post yesterday on “The Machiavellian Trump.” Here’s a bit of the transcript:

So last night I got an email from a buddy who had an observation, and I had been thinking about it, too, but it was not in the front of my mind, the top of my mind consciousness. But it’s a random thought that I’d had over and again a couple, three times, and basically what this email was: “Rush, can you explain something to me?  Why is it that Donald Trump is not rewarding his biggest supporters with positions of substance and power in his administration?  Why is Donald Trump, say, ignoring Rudy and ignoring the Newtster and ignoring others and in fact spending all this time with people who did not support him?”

Like Romney is the name that came to mind.  And as I say, I had had that fleeting thought myself.  It was more an observation, not a question.  It was just something I had observed.  I was thinking about it last night to prepare myself to discuss it with you today.  And it’s amazing how things happen.  Because in the process of doing show prep today, I encountered a post by our old buddy Steven Hayward at Power Line.

From here Rush does a very nice job of developing the point much further than I did, starting with a shrewd notice that it is too simplistic to regard Machiavelli only as a teacher of evil. And rather than quote the dense translated prose, Rush paraphrased the teaching skillfully. Like this:

And Machiavelli didn’t theorize, he stated that the prince is much better served by putting opponents, people who opposed him in positions of power because they must, in order to secure and save and operate in those positions of power with approval, they must perform by action their duties in unquestioned loyalty to the prince. Whereas if the prince goes out and finds the people who were his most vocal supporters from the get-go and puts them in positions of power, the odds are they’re never going to be happy because they’re always going to think they should have had more.

Rush could have been a graduate student! Thank goodness he wasn’t.

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