Beltway establishment goes full Panem on Trumps
According to the left, this photo of Ivanka Trump and her son is “making a mockery of women”, and so justifies the attacks on her and her family.
I have not enjoyed becoming a Trump defender. But on Tuesday nights when I choose what to write about for Wednesday, the most important issue that isn’t being (to my mind) addressed well in the establishment press is usually one that favors Trump, because the left and the press are so much in lockstep today that they’re either not thinking about the consequences of what they’re asking for, or they’re actively looking to turn Washington DC into a real-world Capitol of Panem.
So when Donald Trump chose to call out Nordstrom on Twitter for dropping his daughter’s business from their stores, and Kellyanne Conway plugged Ivanka Trump’s brand, I thought this might be a chance to change that. I don’t even agree with many of Ivanka Trump’s influence on her father: she seems to be an advocate of government interference.
But what I immediately noticed is that the establishment media’s articles don’t really talk about the ethics of Trump’s reactions to the left’s attacks on his daughter. The headlines read “ethics violation” but the articles are all about the fine points of legal landmines. Or, worse, just accusations being thrown by the establishment left, but presented as if they were non-partisan.
Ethics are often about situations. What may be unethical in one situation isn’t in response to another. Self-defense, for example, is not unethical, even though killing is. And the media is not examining what led up to these statements by Donald Trump and Kellyanne Conway defending Trump’s daughter.
If the left weren’t dead-set on making everything political and every opponent worth attacking, this would be an easier call to make, and an obvious one. If the left hadn’t been trying to make buying Ivanka Trump’s products a political decision before Trump and Conway made their statements, this would also be an obvious call to make. But they are, through an organized Grab Your Wallet campaign to attack Donald Trump through his family. From harassing his daughter during flight, to harassing stores, such as Nordstrom’s, into dropping her business’s products, the left has chosen to politicize not just the President, but the President’s family.
Not only are they trying to keep business owners like Donald Trump out of politics by forcing them to give up the family business, they’re trying to force the families of business owners to also give up their own businesses. The purpose seems to be less about ethics than about maintaining the political class by discouraging non-politicians from temporarily going into politics.
As I wrote earlier, the founders did not think people should give up their family business to go into politics, because they expected political service to be temporary. Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison didn’t give up their businesses to go into politics. They gave up politics and returned to their businesses.
The left has specifically chosen these examples because they’re most effective against non-politicians. They want to keep non-politicians out of politics by threatening the families of non-politicians. When the non-politician responds to defend their family member, the left cries “ethics violation”.
But the ethics violation was turning politics into a full-time profession in the first place—and worse, one that’s expected to be hereditary. A hypothetical President Clinton wouldn’t have to worry about these tactics; her daughter’s business is politics, running the Clinton Foundation. The same is true throughout the political establishment: family members are groomed to also go into politics.
Trump broke the beltway’s class ceiling, and the election of Trump has caused the establishment left to go full Panem: no one should be allowed into the Capitol except the establishment and their hand-picked courtiers. Everyone else will be attacked, their families will be attacked, and their friends will be attacked.
We don’t need to make it harder for non-politicians to go into politics, we need to make it harder for politician to become a hereditary class.
In response to The Bureaucracy Event Horizon: Government bureaucracy is the ultimate broken window.
Ivanka Trump
- The Claws Out For Ivanka Trump Show Liberal Love For Women Is A Sham: D.C. McAllister at The Federalist
- “The same goes for all the stores that are pulling or downplaying her clothing line—Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, T.J. Maxx, and Marshalls. Ivanka was shocked, of course. Why would they boycott her clothing line just because of her dad’s politics? Aren’t women supposed to be treated independently, separate from their male relatives?” (Memeorandum thread) (Hat tip to Ed Driscoll at Instapundit)
- Ivanka Trump Knows What It Means to Be a Modern Millenial: Jonathan Van Meter at Vogue
- “Full-speed at work and hands-on at home, Ivanka Trump knows what it means to be a modern millennial—the exact demographic she wants to dress.”
- Piers Morgan on American Left: They Make Me Puke With Their Stinking Hypocrisy: Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit
- “Nordstrom is the latest department store to cancel Ivanka Trump’s fashion line after complaints from the organized liberal mob. The decision was made after the far left “Grab Your Wallet” campaign harassed the company for months.” (Memeorandum thread)
- Progressives, Nordstrom, And The Moronic Crusade Against Ivanka Trump: Katie Pavlich at Townhall
- “At the 2016 RNC Convention, Ivanka gave a speech full of arguments often made by feminists (and Hillary Clinton!) about women in the workplace. At the time, liberal women praised her words and urged her to move over the Democrat ticket.” (Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit)
politics
- Obama’s Ethics Chief Demands White House Report to Him On Kellyanne Conway: streiff at RedState
- “You have a guy, apparently who is a law unto himself, at the Office of Government Ethics. He’s an Obama appointee and an Obama political donor. Shortly after Trump was elected he jumped into the limelight by directing the Office of Government Ethics to use its official Twitter account to send out a series of tweets poking fun at Trump. Then he was complaining about not being able to complete a ethics review of Trump’s nominees before their confirmation hearings when the law makes no such requirement. It looked like he was much more interested in providing oppo research to Senate Democrats than any real interest in ethics.”
- Should people dismantle their life’s work, to enter politics?
- With someone from outside the political class breaking into the White House, the political class is looking to build some border walls of their own.
- Why The Resistance Is The Best Thing That’s Happened To Donald Trump: David Harsanyi at The Federalist
- “I imagine many Republicans would happily hand over the scalp of more Michael Flynns if it meant creating a more stable and experienced administration. But they also understand that people who treat DeVos like a bigger threat to the republic than Steve Bannon will never be placated. Those who spend weeks after the election acting like the Electoral College was some kind trick pulled on the country are not interested in ‘rule of law.’ They’re interested in Democrats.” (Memeorandum thread)
More beltway border walls
- Toward a permanent political class
- If politics has become so complicated that only a political class can manage it, then Democracy is dead. Citizens should not be allowed to become politicians, nor should they be allowed to vote for which politicians take office.
- Corpseman resurrected: correcting Betsy DeVos
- The left has once again decided that the way those people speak is ignorant, and that those people are too stupid to hold public office.
- Should people dismantle their life’s work, to enter politics?
- With someone from outside the political class breaking into the White House, the political class is looking to build some border walls of their own.
More ethics
- Should people dismantle their life’s work, to enter politics?
- With someone from outside the political class breaking into the White House, the political class is looking to build some border walls of their own.
- Truly principled politicians don’t split the baby
- Too often in politics, we pretend that the principled act is to cut the baby in half. Governor Sarah Palin refuses that compromise. Her ambitions for success were for the success of reform in Alaska. She did what she needed to do to ensure that those reforms survive.
More war on women
- The Destruction of Title IX
- If you put the government in charge of a desert, in fifty years you’ll have a shortage of sand. If you put the government in charge of protecting women, in fifty years you’ll have government-sponsored violence against women.
- Dr. Frank N. Furter: the left’s answer to transgender bathrooms
- The left thinks transgenders are murderous, cannialistic rapists. And they approve.
- Hillary Clinton and husband accused of sexual assault
- Between them, Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her husband, William, stand accused of sexual harassment or assault against at least eight women, and have paid settlements of at least $850,000.