2020 Presidential Election
January 4, 2022 — Paul Mirengoff
Democrats and their mainstream media allies express dismay, if not alarm, over a poll that shows 58 percent of Republicans don’t believe Joe Biden was elected legitimately. However, Byron York points out that in the Fall of 2017, the same pollster found that 67 percent of Democrats said Trump was not legitimately elected. Given the drumbeat of unfounded claims by mainstream media outlets of Russian collusion in the election of
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January 1, 2022 — Scott Johnson
New York Post columnist Miranda Devine has committed the story of the laptop from hell to book form. Published on November 30, the book is Laptop from Hell: Hunter Biden, Big Tech, and the Dirty Secrets the President Tried to Hide. The story is familiar to Power Line readers, yet in Devine’s telling it comes infuriatingly to life — an almost unbelievable story of censorship and suppression in the land
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December 9, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Julie Fancelli, the subject of a Washington Post drive-by attack, has contributed millions of dollars to charity through a family foundation. She also contributes generously to conservative political candidates. In late December of last year, she made substantial contributions to groups sponsoring and promoting the January 6 protest rally in Washington, D.C. The money apparently was used to pay travel and hotel expenses for some of the pro-Trump protesters. Fancelli
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December 2, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Earlier this week, I wrote about how Chris Christie ripped his former ally Donald Trump for not delivering on key agenda items as president. I agreed generally with Christie’s complaint, but noted that, as Trump’s term went on and he replaced some of his early appointees, the delivery improved. I suggested several possible explanations for why Trump got off to a slow start, but omitted an important one — Chris
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November 24, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, I observed that Sen. Mark Kelly is “underwater” in Arizona. Polls show that more Arizonans disapprove of his performance in the Senate than approve of it. And Kelly is up for reelection (or defeat) in less than a year. In passing, I noted that early polling among Republicans puts Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich well out in front of other GOP Senate hopefuls in the state. He is the
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November 20, 2021 — Scott Johnson
The Clinton presidential campaign’s fabrication of the Russia hoax is the dirtiest trick in American political history. Beginning with Glenn Simpson/Fusion GPS and the Perkins Coie law firm, it enlisted co-conspirators in the Obama Department of Justice, the FBI, and the mainstream media. The principals are not only still at large, they have achieved high office, wealth, riches, and Pulitzer Prizes. They will never be brought to justice. They won’t
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November 4, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
But at least he is working. Federal authorities today arrested Igor Danchenko, an “analyst” who in 2016 gathered leads about possible links between Donald Trump and Russia for Democratic-funded opposition research. Danchenko was what Christopher Steele, who put the phony dossier together, has described as his “primary sub-source.” Gathering leads for opposition research can be a nasty business but, without more, it’s not a crime. However, lying to federal authorities
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October 13, 2021 — Scott Johnson
The alliance of the Democratic Party with the mainstream media and Big Tech serves to suppress politically inconvenient news and promote fake news such as the Shamala space video. What is Hunter Biden good for? The story of Hunter Biden and his laptop can serve as a useful case study. His story certainly makes for his highest and best use (not that there is a lot of competition in that
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October 11, 2021 — Scott Johnson
I take it that Paul Mirengoff has been given to understand that this morning’s Claremont Institute statement errs insofar as it bears on the Federalist Society’s treatment of John Eastman. Paul comments at the bottom of my post incorporating Claremont’s statement that “earlier this year, Eastman did speak at a [Federalist Society] chapter event at Arizona State University — this despite pressure from the administration there not to allow him
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October 11, 2021 — Scott Johnson
The Claremont Institute has recently come under attack over the role of John Eastman in events following the presidential election. The institute has just issued issued the statement below signed by President Ryan Williams and Chairman Tom Klingenstein (the links below are in the original). * * * * * The Claremont Institute does not normally comment on the work of its scholars. But a recent combined disinformation, de-platforming, and
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October 10, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Steve has mentioned the bar complaint filed against John Eastman for the legal advice he provided in support of Donald Trump’s effort to stop Joe Biden from becoming president. Christian Adams has written what I consider a powerful takedown of this attempt to punish Eastman for providing legal advice that anti-Trumpers disagree with on a subject they are passionate about. A similar thing is happening to Jeff Clark, the former
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October 8, 2021 — Steven Hayward
As I survey the current scene, I’m inclined to take the long view, which goes all the way back to Watergate. One of the ignored subtexts of Watergate is that a part of the fury behind the drive to get Nixon is that Nixon had made clear after his 1972 landslide his determination to challenge directly the power of the permanent bureaucracy, and thereby the power base of the Democratic
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October 5, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Of the Democratic presidential contenders in 2019-20 who made it past the early days of the campaign, I thought Andrew Yang was the most interesting and the only one with any appeal. Pete Buttigieg seemed interesting for a minute. Then I realized that he’s just a standard leftist who happens to prefer having sex with other guys and speaks a lot of languages. Tulsi Gabbard was interesting, especially when she
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October 3, 2021 — Scott Johnson
My friend Bruce Sanborn was chairman of the Claremont Institute for something like 20 years, if not more. That is a wild guess — Bruce is traveling in Croatia or I would have the exact number for you. Bruce recruited Tom Klingenstein to the board and stepped down upon the accession of Tom to the chairmanship a few years back. Over that approximately 20-year period, Bruce and I attended the
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September 27, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
At a rally in Georgia, Donald Trump said that having Stacey Abrams as governor of that state “might well be better” than having Republican incumbent Brian Kemp in that position. (See the end of this post for the full context.) For Trump, Kemp’s refusal to go all-in on unsubstantiated claims of outcome-determinative election fraud counts for more in deciding who should govern Georgia than Abrams’ beyond-the-pale leftism. As always, Donald
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September 4, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
At this time last year, the Wuhan coronavirus was claiming around 1,000 American lives per day. It seemed to me that, absent a sudden and sharp decline in that number, Joe Biden would be our next president. It must have seemed that way to Biden and his top advisers, as well. During presidential debates that occurred a little less than a year ago, Biden ripped Trump for his handling of
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August 23, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
In August 2020, more than 130 self-described Republican national security officials endorsed Joe Biden for president. They proclaimed: We believe Joe Biden has the character, experience, and temperament to lead this nation. We believe he will restore the dignity of the presidency, bring Americans together, reassert America’s role as a global leader, and inspire our nation to live up to its ideals. I found this gang underwhelming. More impressive was
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