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Froma Harrop

Rising to the bait is a fishing term. Anglers lure fish hiding in the deep by positioning bait on or near the surface. Fish that rise to the bait usually end up on someones dinner plate.

Conservative groups routinely try this technique on college liberals. Their lure is an inflammatory right-wing speaker. The catch comes in duping liberals to act badly as censors of free speech or, even better, violently. The protesters provide free entertainment on Fox News Channel, and the broader public sees them as spoiled college kids. Its painful to watch.

Why else would Berkeley College Republicans invite the likes of Milo Yiannopoulos to speak on their famously left-leaning University of California campus? A publicity freak trafficking in racist slurs, Yiannopoulos is currently best known for advocating sex between men and boys.

Taking their cue in a play their enemies wrote, the offended ones made a big deal out of this cartoonish character. The cameras caught protesters, some wearing masks, in full rampage. They trashed the campus before heading off into downtown Berkeley to smash some windows. (By the way, who exactly were these people hiding their identities?)

Over at the State University of New York at Buffalo, agitated students all but shut down a speech by Robert Spencer, an alleged Islamophobe. Spencers claim to fame is his controversial Jihad Watch website.

Behind many such speaking engagements is a group called Young Americas Foundation. And behind Young Americas Foundation are the Koch brothers, Richard and Helen DeVos, and other very rich financiers of the right. Their agenda relies on discrediting anyone to their left.

Frankly, I dont care enough about Ann Coulter to even dislike her. Her political shock act ran its course long ago, and being ignored is probably her greatest fear. But the left seems determined to revive her career.

Coulters scheduled speech at Berkeley was canceled after protests raised security concerns. It should surprise no one that the foundation was picking up her $20,000 speaking fee. College Republicans and the foundation are now suing Berkeley for allegedly violating Coulters First Amendment rights.

What should smart lefties do? Three things.

One is develop a very thick skin. Many of you are unable to distinguish between merely provocative and totally offensive. You can simplify by dropping such distinctions. Both kinds of speech are protected. If right-wingers choose to invite promoters of disgusting views, let them own it.

Two is to understand this about the opinion business: Success can come from drawing a positive response or a negative one. Failure is no response. Thus, the most effective way to block an obvious attempt to bait you is to swim away. Dont petition. Dont attend. Dont enrich those who make a livelihood out of getting under your skin.

Wit, meanwhile, makes for a great offense. As the writers at Saturday Night Live have taught us, mockery is a more fearsome weapon than raw rage.

Three, when campus conservatives book speakers custom-designed to enrage you, try this clever tactic: Host a sensible conservative to give a talk at the same time. The growing ranks of anti-Trump conservatives offer a pool of highly promising candidates.

Such speakers would draw audience and attention away from the flamethrower across campus. Finding common ground is good for the civic culture, and joining forces enhances power. Importantly, you would come off as open-minded and also be open-minded. Wed all do well to listen more to opinions contrary to our own.

Resist the flashing lures. The choice for campus liberals comes down to this: Either you frustrate those who would provoke you or you become their dinner.

Froma Harrop is a columnist for Creators.com. Email: fharrop@gmail.com

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Harrop: Three things campus liberals should do with right-wing speakers - The Columbian

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Posted: May 27, 2017 12:01 AM

"We are living in an interminable succession of absurdities imposed by the myopic logic of short-term thinking." -- Jacques Cousteau

Facts dont care about your feelings. Ben Shapiro

Like a crack addict who cant seem to think about anything other than his next fix, liberals cant seem to think about anything but spewing their emotions at the world. They may be reflexively saying something that makes them feel compassionate, outraged, sensitive or angry, but liberals usually seem to be caught in the grip of some strong emotion.

Of course, it goes without saying that emotion unmoored from logic produces a lot of warped views, but it also mires a person in short term thinking.if you could even call it that. Because when youre emotional, most of the time youre not thinking; youre reacting based on your feels. This is where a lot of liberals live 24 x 7 and so, its not shocking that their behavior is so thoughtless.

Take rock star Katy Perrys reaction to the Manchester bombing, "No barriers, no borders, we all just need to coexist. So, what does co-existing with radical Islamic terrorists who want to kill you mean? Is Katy Perry going to invite ISIS terrorists from Syria to bomb her next concert?

Can you imagine how bizarre the typical liberal reaction to terrorism must seem to the terrorists?

Terrorist: We want to kill you in the name of Allah because were good Muslims!

Liberal: No, youre not. Thats not what you believe.

Terrorist: Yes, it is.

Liberal: No, noyoure oppressed and probably upset about global warming.

Terrorist: Wait, what?

Liberal: Lets all co-exist!

Terrorist: How did you miss the entire, We want to kill you in the name of Allah thing? What is wrong with you?

Then there are the Trump Administration leaks. Undoubtedly, some of the leaks inside the Trump Administration are coming from his staff, but others appear to be coming from the deep state. In other words, Democratic holdovers in the government bureaucracy are leaking information to the press in order to attempt to sabotage a rival political party. Obviously, these leakers are so consumed with their hatred for Trump that they feel politically motivated leaks are justifiable. Except whats going to almost inevitably happen once a Democrat gets back into office? Republicans in the deep state are now going to leak things in an attempt to embarrass him.

Liberals are so overwrought with emotion that they dont get the idea that theyre setting precedents when they do these sort of things. Its like the shock and surprise they experienced when they used the nuclear option to keep Republicans from blocking Barack Obamas cabinet appointments, only to find that it also meant they couldnt stop Trumps cabinet appointments. Wait, you mean that applies to liberals, too? Yes, and those leaks? The next Democrat President is likely to be undermined in exactly the same way.

Look at the liberal threats and violence at universities that have become a regular occurrence. At worst, liberals riot when people they disagree with speak on college campuses and at best, they make threats and do everything they can to rob conservative speakers of their First Amendment rights. Liberals are so supportive of this kind of thing that the police in liberal cities or on liberal campuses refuse to stop the rioting or disruptions.

In other words, conservatives no longer get the same protection from the police. Even illegal aliens are treated better by the police on campuses controlled by liberals. So, when thats the case, is anyone surprised to see that someone like Based Stick Man was warmly received by conservatives for breaking a stick over a violent ANTIFA protestors head? It wouldnt surprise me if we start seeing armed gangs of conservatives policing marches to protect other people on the Right from armed gangs of liberals since the Left has convinced the police not to do it. This is the world liberals are creating with their short term thinking: one where both sides of the political argument will have armed factions at political rallies. How healthy does that sound for the country?

Liberals do the same thing on the deficit. Supporting that program makes me feel good! Spend somebody elses money on it and I dont like thinking about the debt; so just ignore that.

They did it with Obamacare. They lied about the bill, assumed no one would recognize they were misled to when the bill became law and cared nothing about creating an expensive new entitlement program when the country is drowning in debt.

They get upset that Trump actually told NATO that if were going to be in a military alliance, then the nations involved will have to spend enough on their militaries so that they field an effective military force. How dare Trump try to make NATO useful again!

Theyre so blinded by their emotions that theyll even rank Hillary Clinton as the 6th most beautiful woman on the planet. Seriously.

It is impossible to competently govern a nation based on pure emotion and short term thinking. Additionally as a practical matter, its impossible to cut a deal with people whose entire rationale for doing things is, A celebrity told me what I should believe and now I have to do it or I heard a sad story yesterday; so everything has changed. At some point, liberals have to engage in some long term thinking that goes beyond, As long as were in charge, everything we do is okay, or our country is going to get dragged down the tubes along with them.

Obama-Appointed Federal Judge Tosses Benghazi Families'Lawsuit Against Hillary Clinton

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How Liberal Short-Term Thinking Is Destroying America - Townhall

OTTAWA Even before Conservatives began counting the ballots, the ruling Liberals set out to frame the new Opposition leader as a far-right extremist.

Only trouble was, the relentless barrage of email missives from Liberal headquarters in the days and hours leading up to Saturday's vote were aimed largely at Maxime Bernier, the front-runner and presumed winner of the marathon Conservative leadership race.

Tory party members may have thought they'd nipped that strategy in the bud when, on the 13th and final ballot, they opted by the thinnest of margins for an ostensibly safer choice: the cherubic, genial, bland Andrew Scheer, former Speaker of the House of Commons.

But the outcome hasn't substantially changed the governing party's narrative.

"If you look at it, at the end of the day it was a contest between the far-right social Conservatives and the far-right economic Conservatives and the far-right social Conservatives won the day," summed up Quebec Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez.

Liberals had been salivating at the prospect of taking on Bernier in the 2019 election, an unabashed libertarian who would, they warned, dismantle universal health care, abandon Canadian farmers by scrapping supply management and slash government programs by over one third.

Someone, moreover, who had voted Yes to Quebec independence in the 1995 referendum and had been booted from Stephen Harper's cabinet for leaving confidential cabinet documents at the home of a girlfriend with one-time connections to biker gangs.

Scheer does not present quite as tantalizing a target, Liberals privately admit. Unlike Bernier, he represents no radical change from the Harper era, he doesn't challenge Conservative orthodoxy and he enjoys considerable caucus support, which should make it easier to unite the troops behind him.

Still, he's not a moderate or a progressive in the vein of fifth-place finisher Michael Chong or A-listers like Peter MacKay and James Moore who didn't run, any of whom the Liberals believe might have presented more problems for the governing party.

And Liberals believe they have plenty of ammunition against Scheer, starting with the fact that he owes his squeaker victory over Bernier largely to the support of social conservatives who want to re-open divisive debates about abortion and same-sex marriage.

Scheer, a social conservative himself, insists he wants to focus on the issues that unite Conservatives, not divide them. But Rodriguez predicted he won't have much choice.

"He won because of the social conservative wing of the party so he will be under pressure to reopen those debates," Rodriguez said.

And then there's Scheer's own record when it comes to abortion rights, gay rights or, most recently, a transgender rights bill.

"Make no mistake about it, this is somebody who has voted against every single civil rights advancement in the last 25 years," said Toronto Liberal MP Adam Vaughan.

Worse, in Vaughan's view, Scheer is now promoting a new brand of social conservatism with his promise to cut off funding to universities that fail to protect free speech by allowing student protests to shut down things like pro-life events or pro-Israel guest speakers.

"He's somebody who wants to be in charge of the thought police," Vaughan scoffed.

"Academic freedom and the ability for universities to self-govern are as fundamental to the function of democracy as just about every other component of the democratic system. You cannot have free and open debate if you're being told who should talk and who shouldn't talk."

In addition to the social conservative wedge the Liberals intend to drive, they accuse Scheer of wanting to roll back the Trudeau government's middle-class tax cut, reward the wealthiest one per cent and forsake any plan to combat climate change.

In one respect, they think Scheer's narrow win over Bernier may have been a blessing in disguise, at least when it comes to Liberal fortunes in Quebec. While Bernier's opposition to supply management cost him support in his home province, he likely would have fared better in Quebec in a general election than Scheer.

"It's going to be a challenge for (Scheer) in Quebec," said Rodriguez. "Nobody knows him."

Moreover, he said Scheer is "so much to the right on social issues than where Quebecers are ... Those discussions (on abortion and same-sex marriage) are in the past for us."

There might be another bonus for the government in Scheer's upset. As a former Speaker who repeatedly called for decorum in the Commons, he may be less inclined to obstruct the Liberal agenda, which the Conservatives have been doing almost non-stop since January.

"I hope they're more constructive," said Rodriguez, the Liberal whip. "They can't be less than what they were, blocking, playing all kinds of games on a daily basis."

Continued here:
Liberals waste no time branding Scheer as social conservative extremist - Times Colonist

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Liberals find President Trump's corruption, ignorance, atrocious judgment, and authoritarian instincts self-evidently appalling, just as they are instinctually disgusted by the undisguised cruelty of the administration's proposed federal budget and the health-care bill passed by the Republican majority in the House. That's my reaction, too.

But too many liberals also assume that this reaction will be automatically shared by everyone, if only the facts are presented to them.

This assumption is false. It's an outgrowth of the deeply rooted liberal belief in progress. Most liberals really do believe, sometimes deep down but often right on the surface, that they are bound to prevail, inevitably, in the fullness of time, and quite likely very soon, just around the corner, despite minor setbacks like the election of Donald Trump.

This isn't an empirical claim. It's a confession of faith one that liberals desperately need to rein in and check if they hope to make gains in upcoming election cycles.

But that is unlikely to happen if liberals keep listening to the likes of political scientist Ruy Teixeira.

No personal offense to Teixeira intended. He's clearly very smart, and he seems like a nice guy. But he's also the co-author of The Emerging Democratic Majority, the 2002 book that did more than any other to convince liberals that the future would be theirs if only they waited for it to land in their laps. Demography is destiny, after all, and demographic groups that vote Democratic (mainly minorities) are growing while those that vote Republican (mostly whites) are shrinking. The result? A future that's bound to belong to liberals.

It would be one thing if the inevitable Democratic triumph appeared merely to be stalled or if Teixeira responded to recent discouraging election results by changing his incorrigibly optimistic tune. But neither is the case. The "emerging Democratic majority" hasn't just been delayed; it's been reversed at every level of government (federal, state, local), with the party left (as one prominent pundit put it in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 election) a "smoking pile of rubble." (The premises of the original demographic thesis have also been called into question.)

As for rethinking, Teixeira shows no signs of backing down from his happy talk. Back in April, he took to Vox to spell out "7 reasons why today's left should be optimistic." (Reason #5: "The left's coalition is growing while the right's is declining.") And now he's back to tell us that, according to polls, liberalism is "surging." (Vox should consider embedding an audio player queued up with "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning" the next time Teixeira files a piece, to put readers in the proper mood.)

Do some polls show liberal gains since the election that delivered the White House to Trump? Yes, they do. And it's certainly possible that the full-court dysfunction, putrid odor of scandal, and outright brutality on flamboyant display in Republican Washington might be enough all on its own to deliver power to Democrats across the country in 2018 and 2020.

But nothing at all in recent political history gives liberals reason to think that they'll benefit by complacently waiting around for the other party to self-destruct. Because his optimism inspires such complacency, Teixeira is a dangerous man for Democrats to have around.

Consider the disaster of the Hillary Clinton campaign. The candidate and her team were thrilled to be facing Trump in the general election. What a gift! Clinton's opponent was so self-evidently awful that she might not even have to campaign that hard!

How do we know that this was their reaction? Because Clinton didn't campaign that hard! From the end of July (just after the Democratic convention) until the eve of the first debate on Sept. 26, Clinton stayed largely out of the public eye. And in the crucial last six weeks of the campaign, she devoted an inordinate (utterly unprecedented) amount of time, energy, and resources to highlighting Trump's extremely well-known dreadful behavior (which was already receiving wall-to-wall coverage in the media).

What she didn't do was articulate a compelling contrary vision of her own that would respond more positively and productively than Trump himself to the discontent that propelled him to his party's nomination (and also fired the surprisingly formidable primary campaign of Bernie Sanders). She thought standing there, pointing, and looking appalled at the Republican candidate would be sufficient.

It wasn't then. It isn't now. And it won't be in the future.

What liberals need is not optimism, which can easily breed arrogance and cockiness as much as complacency. They need passion (fueled by anger at Republicans), a compelling alternative vision of the country's future, and a commitment to persuading voters to support it. And they need to press the fight, relentlessly, at all levels of government.

Hearing from Teixeira and other Panglossian pundits that the effort is bound to prevail can make for a nice pep talk, but it's also likely to make liberals less hungry, less focused on the need to fight for every square inch of ideological territory against a ruthless opponent.

If a Democratic majority really is going to emerge, liberals will need to work for it, hard. Telling them they're bound to enjoy the fruits of victory no matter what they do runs the considerable risk of sabotaging that very outcome. Which is a very good reason to avoid telling them any such thing.

Originally posted here:
The foolish complacency of optimistic liberals - The Week Magazine

Democrat Rob Quist / Getty Images

BY: Andrew Kugle May 26, 2017 10:00 am

After the Republican candidate won Montana's special election on Thursday, liberals took to social media to express their disbelief and anger at the outcome.

Republican Greg Gianforte beat Democrat Rob Quist in a special election forMontana's lone at-large House seat. The office was vacated by former Rep. Ryan Zinke (R., Mont.), who left to become interior secretary.

The election gained national attention when Gianforte was charged with assault after reportedly body-slammingGuardian reporter Ben Jacobs, one day before the election. The altercation occurred when Jacobs tried to ask Gianforte about the CBO score of the Republicans' health care bill. Witnesses of the altercation said Gianforte grabbed Jacobs by the neck and threw him to the floor, where he continued to hit Jacobs. Gianforte was charged with assault.

Gianfortereleased a statement about the incident, alleging that Jacobs was aggressive. But after Gianforte declaredvictory, he apologized for his actions.

"When you make a mistake, you have to own up to it,"Gianforte said during his victory party. "That's the Montana way. Last night I made a mistake and I took an action that I can't take back and I'm not proud of what happened. I should not have responded in the way that I did and for that I am sorry. Ishould not have treated that reporter that way and for that I am sorry Mr. Ben Jacobs."

Liberals on social media reacted to the news that Gianforte won despite being charged with assault.

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Liberals React to Dem Loss in Montana - Washington Free Beacon