Monthly Archives: August 2016

Op-Eds

#NeverNeverTrump: What’s Evan McMullin Really After?

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Better For Trump

For months, voices from the #NeverTrump movement have confidently promised Americans a fifth credible presidential candidate, an alternative not only to Donald Trump but to Democratic pick Hillary Clinton, Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party standard-bearer Jill Stein.

Echoing those promises, a shadowy group calling itself “Better For America,” funded by Mitt Romney associate John Kingston III, has been doing prep work for that unnamed candidate.

On August 8 the suspense, such as it was, came to an end. The candidate is David Evan McMullin, a name unfamiliar to voters but well-known on Capitol Hill. Starting as an adviser to congressional Republicans on national security issues, he rose to the position of GOP House policy chief. Now he’s running for president.

Why? The conventional wisdom says that he’s there to keep Trump out of the White House — even at the cost of a Hillary Clinton presidency —  by giving anti-Trump Republican voters somewhere else to go.

I think the conventional wisdom is wrong. When we look at what McMullin and Better For America are up to, and where, two far more likely reasons leap into focus. Those reasons are:

First, to help Trump get elected, but with plausible deniability so that the GOP wins the White House without #NeverTrump leaders having to lose face by kissing the ring (“we did our best but he won anyway, guess we have to live with it”).

Secondly, to ensure that Libertarian Gary Johnson doesn’t become the first independent or third party presidential candidate to carry a state since George Wallace won Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia in 1968.

McMullin is custom-made for Utah — a native, a Mormon and a graduate of Brigham Young. Better for America seems focused on promoting him there. The organization also made a seemingly unsuccessful  ballot access attempt in New Mexico.

Johnson is the former two-term Republican governor of blue New Mexico. He’s going toe-to-toe with Trump and Clinton in Utah’s polls and endorsements contest. If he’s going to win anywhere, it will be in New Mexico or Utah.

The most likely purpose of the McMullin campaign is to fragment the anti-Trump vote in New Mexico, Utah and perhaps other states, allowing Trump to win those states with smaller pluralities than he’d need in a race with fewer significant opponents — and to contain the threat of a third party breakout that might carry over into, and expand in, future elections.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Op-Eds

Police Violence: Peace Isn’t The Priority

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Korryn Gaines and son
Korryn Gaines and her son (photo widely distributed, allegedly from Facebook)

Precisely how did Korryn Gaines die? We don’t know, and probably never will.

The Baltimore County, Maryland Police Department admits that one of its officers shot her dead on August 1. In fact, the department admits that the officer shot first and that Gaines then returned fire in self-defense and defense of her five-year-old son (no, the department does not use those terms) before being gunned down.

The police also admit that before forcing their way into Gaines’s apartment and killing her, they went out of their way to ensure  their actions would be hidden from public view. The department contacted two social media services, Facebook and Instagram, asking that Gaines’s accounts be disabled so as to cut off her photo and video streams of what was happening. To their everlasting shame, the two firms complied with the request.

So we don’t know what happened. But we have a pretty good idea what happens next: The Baltimore County Police Department will “investigate” itself and announce that it has cleared itself and the unidentified officer who killed Gaines (he or she is currently on paid vacation, aka “administrative leave,” until the “investigation” is over) of any wrongdoing.

Baltimore County police chief James Johnson  characterizes his department’s desire for “peace” as the overriding priority justifying the concealment operation. Social media contacts needed to be stopped from urging her “not to comply with negotiators’ request that she surrender peacefully,” he says. “For hours, we pleaded with her to end this peacefully.”

Let’s dispense with the risible claim that “peace” was the priority here. Had that been the case, Johnson could have just called it a night and directed his officers to get in their cars and drive away.  Problem solved. Easy, peace-y.

If the priority was not “peace,” then what was it?

Officer safety? No.  Sending an officer into an apartment occupied by an armed woman isn’t very safe for the officer at all.

Public safety? No. At least one police officer fired multiple rounds — firing first, remember? — in an apartment building. Those rounds were probably 9mm, 10mm or .45 caliber rounds which could have penetrated walls (Gaines was allegedly armed with a 12-gauge shotgun, a much safer weapon for people on the other side of a wall).

The Baltimore County Police Department’s number one priority, their overriding concern, wasn’t peace, or officer safety, or public safety. It was — as has become the case with many American police departments, much of the time —  successful exercise of authority at any price.

That’s why the Baltimore County PD covered up the details of their killing of the ninth American woman of color to die at police hands this year. Just like a cat in a litter box.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Op-Eds

$400 Million: The Partial Price of Peace?

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Hundreds (RGBStock)

When the US government sends $400 million in cash, stacked on pallets, to Iran on the same day the Iranian government releases four imprisoned Americans, it looks an awful lot like ransom.

On the other hand, when the US government decides to keep $400 million sent to it by the Iranian government pursuant to an arms deal  for 35 years without ever shipping the arms, it looks an awful lot like stealing.

And when the US government reaches a settlement to finally pay back that money with interest, it looks an awful lot like  justice.

Yes, the simultaneity of payment and release looks pretty damning on both ends.

On the other hand, it seems very understandable from both ends.

The Iranians have had good reason to distrust the US government for more than 60 years, ever since the US overthrew their elected government and saddled them with a US-approved dictator, then stole their money when they overthrew that dictator.  As often as the US has screwed them, why would they trust the US to repay them absent some kind of leverage?

President Obama, on the other hand, wanted to secure the return of those prisoners, and he seems to genuinely want to improve US relations with Iran after more than three decades of cold (and sometimes not so cold) war.  Coughing up cash that the US owed to Iran anyway probably looked like a good way to make progress on both of those fronts.

Yeah, I guess it looks kind of bad. But you know, I don’t have any heartburn over it. And I find it hard to give much credence to Republican temper tantrums over the whole thing.

I don’t recall Republicans complaining about the Iranians timing their release of hostages from the US embassy in Tehran to coincide with the inauguration of a Republican president (some people even believe that that Republican’s running mate negotiated a secret deal with the Iranians to stretch the matter and create that coincidence).

I do recall Republicans defending that same president when he was discovered to have traded arms to — not to merely have returned money to, but to have intentionally armed — Iran in return for assistance in achieving the release of American hostages held in Lebanon by Iran’s Hezbollah allies.

It seems to me that all is well here, election year partisan bluster notwithstanding. Peace gets messy now and again, but it beats the alternative.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY