Roger Kimball

Do the Republicans have a secret weapon they can deploy in the midterms? In fact, I think they have two weapons, one sort-of-secret, the other out in the open but somehow not quite recognized.  “That’s good,” you say, if (faute de mieux) you want the Republicans to win. Midterms, we’ve been told ad nauseam, almost always favor the party out of power. I believe that the last time the incumbent party won in the midterms was in 2002 when George W. Bush, riding the tailwind of public sentiment following the September 11 attacks by our Muslim friends, picked up eight House seats. Many of the most noteworthy Democrat candidates hail from la-la land At the moment, all the polls have the Dems leading by a comfortable margin.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is on a roll. Docket his consistently robust responses to Hamas, Iran and NATO for future delectation. On July 13, he wrote a brilliant op-ed for the Wall Street Journal titled “Why We’re Dismantling the International Criminal Court.” Then, on July 20, the State Department released “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism,” a 64-page report detailing Cuba’s 40-year effort to infiltrate susceptible groups in the United States. As a prefatory summary notes, Cuba’s campaign was less about politics or economics than, at bottom, “a revolution against western civilization itself – waged, in part, via the novel and insidious method of persuading the children of the West to turn against their own inheritance.

David Axelrod, Barack Hussein Obama’s chief strategist, was clearly worried about Donald Trump’s prime time speech about election integrity last night. Hyperventilating on X Tuesday, he warned that “If @POTUS really trots out Pulte, Patel and a crew of political apparatchiks posing as intel experts... to announce they've uncovered ‘evidence’ of foul play in 2020, it’ll only heighten fears that he'll claim an ‘emergency’ down the line and claim extraordinary fed power over elections. If so – and there are plenty of other signs of manipulation brewing – the most important battles of the midterms may be in the courts.” Let’s begin by considering Axelrod’s rhetoric.

The philosopher David Hume warned us not to mistake “constant conjunction” for causation. It’s good advice, though it is not the sort of universal disturbance in the force that some philosophers, eager to jettison old certitudes, believe it to be. Hume himself eventually rejected that “pretended skepticism” as a juvenile affectation. Like the rest of us, he recognized that reasoning from induction, from observed realities, introduces us to that great guide in the cognitive adventure of life – probability. Don’t let the appearance of a black swan down under disturb you: good mental hygiene and faith in the soundness of inductive reasoning go together. I indulge in this preliminary expectoration (apologies to Søren Kierkegaard) because I arrived in London on June 22.

What’s the one thing that every pundit and certified member of the Fourth Estate knows? Why, it’s that MAGA is finished.  How many stories have we been treated to about “the fracturing of MAGA?” NPR knows it, Politico intuited it, Salon bet on it and the New Republic salivated over it. “Trump’s MAGA Base Splits Dramatically,” that anti-Trump orifice recently crowed, “New Poll Shows Donald Trump’s support continues to drop.” Then of course there is the New York Times, which has predicted and rejoiced in the death of MAGA again and again. That is – that was – the narrative. What is the reality? Yesterday’s primaries tell a very different, in fact a contradictory story.

This column is about the relation between rhetoric and reality, with special reference to political violence and security. Everyone reading this knows that the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was rudely interrupted by a crazed gunman. The marksman in question was Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old Cal Tech grad from Torrance, California. I say that he was “crazed” because, shirtless but armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and knives, he charged the entrance to the ballroom of the Hilton Hotel in Washington, DC. Inside were some 2,600 people, including President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance and several cabinet members. Outside were who-knows-how-many armed Secret Service agents and local police officers. Not great odds for Allen.

Donald and Melania Trump entered the hall at 8:16 to cheers and applause. “Hail to the Chief” was followed by presentation of the colors and the National Anthem.  We had a brief introduction from Weijia Jiang, this year’s president of the White House Correspondents Association, followed by dinner. Two questions hovered in the background. One, how would President Trump treat the press? And two, would he, as had many presidents in the past at this event, treat the audience to a little self-deprecating humor? “Donald Trump” and  “self-deprecation” are not words you often hear together, but who knows?  The President is also a master communicator who reads his audience well.   We never found out.

“Negotiations.” Are you heartened or dismayed by that word? Those who remember or who have read up on the seemingly interminable Paris Peace Talks designed to bring an end to the Vietnam War have reason to be dubious. A negotiation, if it is to be successful, requires that both sides be candid and in earnest. The Vietnamese were not candid participants. They stalled. They prevaricated. They acted out. It seems that the Iranians are hoping to reprise that melodrama. They will be profoundly disappointed. On the second weekend in April, Vice President J.D. Vance, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met some 70 Iranian representatives in Islamabad to hammer out a peace deal.