This is the video that made Brandon Straka love Donald Trump – and start the #WalkAway movement.

https://youtu.be/Tab5vvo0TJw

Straka writes:

I walked away from the Democratic Party in 2017. But I couldn’t even consider becoming a Republican or embracing Donald Trump. I went on a long journey of unraveling the lies that I had been fed by the liberal media. The more I researched the more I began to like Trump. And then I found this … and that’s when I knew I LOVED Trump.

(Hat-tip to our commenter Zerothruster)

So the Democrats won the House yesterday.

A bad thing.

Or not so bad?

Apparently there is a bright side, even a very bright side, and conservative commentators are looking on it.

John Hinderaker writes (in part) at PowerLIne:

One striking feature of this year’s elections was the absence of a policy agenda from the Democrats. The party’s young upstarts are open socialists; otherwise, what platform did Democrats run on? Hating Republicans, basically, along with scaremongering on health care.

Nancy Pelosi won’t be able to get much done in the House, but she probably doesn’t intend to achieve anything other than harassment of the President through investigations and, perhaps, articles of impeachment. The Democrats are already talking about subpoenaing President Trump’s tax returns. Happily, from Pelosi’s perspective, such petty harassment seems to be all her base wants. But it doesn’t shape up as a recipe for long-term electoral success. …

Come to the silver lining!  Show us the silver lining!

The Democrats’ takeover of the House offers a possible silver lining. When President Trump signed the bloated omnibus spending bill in March, he said he was doing so because it increased spending on military preparedness, which was needed. But he vowed that he would never sign another spending bill like it. Few took Trump seriously, but I am not sure why not. He has a good record of doing what he says he intends to do.

It would be hard for Trump to veto an omnibus spending bill cobbled together by Republican majorities in both houses. The story line would be that the Republicans can’t get their act together. But if the Democratic House and Republican Senate pass compromise spending bills, Trump can assert fiscal responsibility by vetoing them. The battle then becomes Trump vs. Pelosi, and the increasingly addled Pelosi is an ideal foil. So maybe a Democratic House will give President Trump an opportunity to address what so far has been the Achilles heel of his administration, unconstrained spending and deficits.

Maybe.

The big consolations are that the Republicans still have the Senate – even a bit more securely – and President Trump has the power of veto.

But silver should not be wasted on a lining.

Now, just before the mid-term election in November, 2018, the enthusiasm for Donald Trump’s leadership seems to be greater than ever, to judge by the size of his rallies, the rapturous applause that greets him and his every statement. People wait through the night to get into a stadium where he is to speak the following night. Tens of thousands get in, more tens of thousands watch him on screens and listen to him outside. Though the weather is cold. Though the mainstream media tell voters that he is as bad as the worst dictator who has ever lived, this generous, unaffected, extremely capable businessman, with a star’s charisma and all the right values, has won the love and trust of at least half the American people.

And thousands are walking away from the Democratic Party, discovering, probably to their surprise, that they are Trump supporters. They have formed a movement called #WalkAway, founded and led by Brandon Straka.

Brandon Straka

How the revelation that Trump Is Right came to this former Democrat, Jani Allan records at the Epoch Times:

When you are a gay, strikingly handsome cosmetologist, hairdresser, singer, and a theater actor in New York City, chances are you’re also a Democrat.

On the night that Trump won the presidential election, Brandon Straka wept; there are pictures of him crying.

He said:

I was devastated. I still believed the media! … They told us that Trump was a racist, a bigot, and a homophobe. I thought he would harm black, Jewish, and gay people; he was “dog-whistling” to hate groups. We were told that hate crimes were spiking and that Vice President Mike Pence was going to advocate conversion therapy for gays. …

The Democratic party was my tribe.

Then he began to notice a discrepancy between what the media said and what was actually happening.

A friend showed him a compilation video of the media trashing Trump. …

I saw all the moments that were replayed by the mainstream media. Remarks taken out of context. Black people edited out of audience shots. Endless fodder for the Trump-haters. Then the Charlottesville rally happened. I had had my eyes opened to how dishonest the media is and how they manipulate people’s behavior and then, they twist the narrative again. At Charlottesville, I saw clearly that Antifa are the aggressors. They become violent, but the media never denounce the violence of the left. More recently, there was the Kavanaugh lynching. There is no level to which the left will not stoop. [To them] the ends justify the means.”

Last year he wrote, produced, and sang Resist: A Rock Revolution. What began as a demi-opera — something written by a liberal devastated by Trump’s election — grew into Straka’s personal journey to conservatism. …

A friend warned him about speaking out.

Which made him all the more determined to speak out.

There is a reason it’s called the silent majority. There are reasons people don’t speak out and say, “Something is very wrong here.” They are afraid of being shunned by their friends, losing work, being considered crazy because they are no longer part of the hive-mind. Look what they did to Kanye West when he went to the White House. I wish I could reach out to him! But it just needs one person to speak up, one person to say, “The emperor isn’t wearing any clothes.”

Straka speaks as though slightly amazed …

Then, one day, I was jogging in Central Park and it came to me in a flash. I am not going to be silent! As a gay man, especially, I am going to be the unsilent minority.

That’s when  he decided to do the #WalkAway Campaign and make a video to launch it.

I wrote the script in 20 minutes. It was as if there was a printer in my mind. After I finished, I thought, “Everybody needs to hear this! … I’m an actor and a singer. I am good at setting a stage and telling a story. …”

A friend pointed the camera at him. This is what he said:

Once upon a time I was a liberal, but the Left has devolved into intolerant, inflexible, illogical, hateful, misguided, ill-informed, un-American, hypocritical, menacing, callous, ignorant, narrow-minded and, at times, blatantly fascistic behavior and rhetoric. Liberalism has been co-opted and absorbed by the very characteristics it claims to fight against. The Left has allowed themselves to become hypnotized by false narratives and conclusions perpetuated by social-justice warriors who misrepresent and misconstrue facts, evidence, and events, to confirm their own biases that everyone who does not comply with their prejudicial conclusions and follow their orders is a racist, a bigot, a Nazi, a white supremacist, homophobic, Islamophobic, xenophobic, misogynistic, and alt-right extremist. 

It was May 26 when he posted the video, which he edited himself, on social media.  

Five months later, Straka has more than 97,000 followers on Twitter, and his Facebook video has been viewed a million times.  

The movement has been endorsed by Sarah Palin, Dinesh D’Souza, Tomi Lahren, Roseanne Barr, and Robert “Buzz” Patterson (who walked away after serving as the senior military aide to President Bill Clinton). 

Straka has become a cynosure of attention. … People like Candace Owens, from the conservative advocacy group Turning Point USA, are contacting him.

I didn’t think when I released my video I would be celebrating at a fancy hotel wearing an “I Love Trump” top hat and tuxedo.

Then this happened, to Straka’s immense delight:

On Oct. 27, he received a tweet from the president himself:

#Walkaway. Walkaway from the Democrat Party movement marches today in D.C. Congratulations to Brandon Straka for starting something very special. 

On Saturday October 27, 2018, “Straka and his ‘unsilent minority’ took the #WalkAway movement to Washington” and he led a march of thousands. 

The event was totally ignored by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, ABC’s Joy Behar, and the late night comedians. In fact, apart from Fox and the New York Post, none of the mainstream media covered the event.

Still, everyone [who knew about it] agreed that the #WalkAway from the Democratic Party D.C. march was a “YUGE” success.

So what lies ahead for Straka? That is, apart from his newfound political clout.

He said:

I want to make documentaries about American culture … I want to make it cool to be a patriot and an American.

Which can only mean an American who honors and will defend the Constitution. A citizen of the Constitutional Republic of the United States.

Americans are bound into a nation by the Constitution. Nothing else.

The fastest way to reduce a nation from free to unfree is for its government to take charge of its health.

It may also be a reliable way to shrink the nation. Countries with national health services also have low fertility rates.

It’s a pleasant enough state of affairs for some members of the medical profession in such countries in this twilight of the West. True, the underpaid general practitioners are worked half to death, but obstetricians and pediatricians take early retirement, and geriatricians take long vacations from their stints of duty on the death panels. Undertakers buy stately homes.

If central government takes over health care in America, nothing will be different. Just bigger. To treat the only large demographics, young adults and the able-bodied middle-aged – in other words, those who escaped the abortionist’s scissors and are not yet old enough to be denied all curative measures – the inflictors of medical care will need large accommodations.

Justin Haskins discusses the prospect of a US national health service at Townhall :

Until recently, only the far left of the Democratic Party openly called for … socialized medicine. Few remember that when the Democrats last had control of the House of Representatives, in 2010, most Democrats chose to reject pushing for a single-payer health care model, despite the fact they had control of both houses of Congress and the White House. Even then-President Barack Obama, a longtime supporter of enacting a single-payer scheme, told members of his party that it would be better, at least temporarily, to pursue a more moderate course.

Fast-forward to 2018. Emboldened by Sen. Bernie Sanders’s success in pushing his “Medicare for All” single-payer model while running for president in 2016, many congressional Democrats have radically changed their tune. Not only has single-payer health care become one of the defining issues for Democrats today, in many respects, it seems as though it’s the party’s only issue … other than calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump, of course.

This phenomenon isn’t limited to federal elections. Many gubernatorial candidates are saying it’s time for government to take over the health care marketplace. For instance, in “purple” Florida, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, the Democrats’ choice to recapture Florida’s governorship, has been a vocal supporter of Sanders’s single-payer scheme, although he admits it would be difficult for Florida to enact single-payer on its own.

But while the cries for socialized medicine have grown louder in the United States, across the pond, England’s national health care program, the National Health Service, is facing huge difficulties liberals in America don’t want you to know about.

Earlier in October, reports emerged that the National Health Service’s forthcoming 10-year plan will include a policy change that will make group appointments with primary care doctors the “default” option for those with long-term health problems. Under the new model, patients will be expected to meet with doctors in groups of 15 to save money and time. …

During these group primary care visits, which will reportedly last about two hours each, patients will be expected to share their health care concerns as they would normally in more traditional one-on-one appointments.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: Who would ever want to discuss sex, obesity, hemorrhoids, or any other deeply personal health care problem in front of a group of 14 other strangers—or, even worse, neighbors? But fear not! The government masterminds in England have a solution: Groups will be formed based on common health problems, such as diabetes and erectile dysfunction, because, you know, all people with diabetes and erectile dysfunction are basically the same. And to ensure no one in the group discusses the ailments of others when the group primary care session ends, each person will be required to sign a confidentiality agreement pledging not to share what they heard with people who weren’t present for the appointment.

It’s astonishing the faith politicians and bureaucrats have in pieces of paper! They believe a sheet or two can forestall every peril from gossip to war.

I can’t think of a more bizarre and insulting way to treat patients suffering from serious and sometimes embarrassing diseases than to force them to discuss their problems in front of a group of their peers, but this is the sort of thing that happens when the good of collective matters more than the rights of the individual.

This isn’t the only controversy facing the NHS, either. For several years, critics of the health care system have complained that it’s wildly underfunded and, as a result, suffering from long wait times for patients. …

No one denies the United States has plenty of health care problems of its own, and the Obamacare model imposed on Americans by the Democrats in 2010 has only made things significantly worse. But the solutions to those flaws in our current system can’t be found in the government-controlled systems of Canada or Europe because government almost always creates more problems than it solves …

This isn’t revolutionary thinking. Why would we put the same people who can’t operate the Postal Service, Amtrak, or the DMV in charge of the health care system?

The Dems’ proposal for an American national health service requires a wage decrease for doctors. Do the proposers understand that they may be launching a doctor shortage?

Will the American ill-paid doctors see people with similar conditions in batches of 15? As the population here is much bigger than in Britain, they may need to see them in batches of, say, 50. Row after row of examination tables in examination halls where the naked patients lie, hearing each other groan, seeing palsy shake each other’s few last grey hairs, or how youth has grown specter thin, and where but to think is to be full of sorrow and leaden-eyed despairs. (Not original. Quoting John Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale.)

Started by one man, Brandon Straka, #WalkAway has become a political movement, growing bigger and stronger by the hour.

On Saturday October 27, 2018, thousands of people marched to show they were leaving the Democratic Party.

Here they are:

https://youtu.be/855UcvZxOkE

After the massacre of 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue last Saturday by a Trump-hating anti-Semite, for which Democrats and their lapdog media choose to blame President Trump (the most pro-Semitic, pro-Israel president ever), a Jewish correspondent, Alexander Firestone, wrote this to us, not in direct comment on the murders, but on the movement that is truly promoting violence and anti-Semitism:-

In recent years the Democratic Party has become a criminal organization. It “achieved” that goal during the Obama administration with a thoroughly corrupt “Justice” Department first under Eric Holder and then Loretta Lynch, an equally corrupt and perverse State Department first under John Kerry and then Hillary Clinton, a wholly corrupt Veterans Administration, IRS, Census Bureau, and even Department of Energy. There are probably more, but I don’t have details. Most egregious was the State Department that relentlessly pursued a policy of enabling and encouraging a murderous theocratic regime in Iran dedicated to the destruction of Israel. For the execrable Joe Biden to open his mouth about anything involving Jews is vile and obscene. There really is no limit to the hypocrisy of Democrats. One can start with the four witches; Maxine Waters, Elizabeth Warren, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, and Nancy Pelosi, and work one’s way to Obama, Bill Clinton, Al Sharpton, DNC vice-chair Keith Ellison’s fanatically anti-Semitic friend Louis Farrakhan all on stage together. You’ve seen the photograph. That picture should be plastered on every billboard in America.

Regarding Bernie Sanders, much of the Democratic Party has embraced his so-called “Democratic Socialist” program. There ain’t no such animal. All socialism is National Socialism.

The media refuse to print the fact that in the late sixties Bernie Sanders and his wife were card-carrying members of the CPUSA; still passionately Stalinist long after the death of Stalin. It is possible they left the Communist Party sometime after that, but if so, I never heard of it.

Operationally, it all comes down to what happens on Tuesday, November 6. If the Democrats can claim a plausible victory either in the house or senate, then they will be encouraged to continue down this path of psychotic Leftism. That must not happen. To make the sane who may be still among them realize that this road leads only to disaster for them, Democrats must suffer horrendous losses. Nothing less will suffice. Therefore, we must encourage everyone we know to vote against all Democrats; no matter the office, the opposition or any other factors. Nothing else matters except defeating Democrats; any and all Democrats. I would go so far as to say that voting for any Democrat at any level in this election is a mortal sin.

A sin against humanity, yes.

Also to be accused is the Women’s Movement led by the Hamas agent, Linda Sarsour, which is supported without a blush by the Democrats – for whom far too many Jewish voters still cast their votes.

So America “needs” to have a woman leader?

And she “should” preferably be black?

Your sex and race are not in themselves qualifications or disqualifications for leadership.

But intelligence is a qualification for it. So is political acumen. So are strength of character, determination to defend the Constitution, steadfast commitment to freedom and patriotism, competence, and the power to communicate. Especially if they are all present in one person.

They are all present in Candace Owens.

Candace Owens

And Candace Owens is calling for an exit of black voters from “the Democrat party”: 

When I uploaded my first video onto YouTube one year ago, I entitled it “Mom, Dad, I’m a Conservative.”

It was a two-minute satirical stab at the social exiling that many Americans face when they announce their conservatism to friends and family.

Soon thereafter I would discover that for black Americans, the punishment that awaits is far worse than any social exile: it is a full-court social lynching.

Search the name of any prominent black conservative and peruse the words written by liberal journalists:

Dr. Ben Carson is a “porch monkey”

Larry Elder is but an “Uncle Tom”

Kanye West is “in the sunken place”

Clarence Thomas is “a womanizer”

I have been branded a self-hating black, Nazi-sympathizer and rather astonishingly — a white supremacist.

The underlying sentiments are clear; black people are meant to think and act within the confines of what white liberals deem acceptable.

But while in the past the threat of slander has worked to lag the spreading of black conservatism, over this last year, I have observed something of the opposite effect.

In fact, what many have misdiagnosed as political tension between two ideologically disparate groups is actually something far greater, far more deep-rooted, and much more likely to alter the trajectory of this country as we know it.

Across America, black people are beginning to question political orthodoxy. We have been quietly building an ecosystem of free thinkers and at long last, the intellectual dam is breaking.

This unique moment will come to be known as BLEXIT: the black exit from the Democrat party. …

BLEXIT is a national movement of minorities that have awakened to the truth. It is for those who have taken an objective look at our decades-long allegiance to the left and asked ourselves “what do we have to show for it?” …

Beyond anything else, BLEXIT is a chant of freedom. It is a chorus of voices from across the country whose hearts are exploding with the realization that we are more than the color of our skin.

We are also more than a voting bloc.

We are Americans first and foremost and we will work to piece back together our broken communities — absent overreaching government structures, absent hand-outs, and alongside our American brothers and sisters.

The tides are shifting. New leaders are emerging to help steer open minds into the uncharted possibilities of our futures.

We need all of America to join us in this fight. No matter your skin color, we need you to take up metaphorical arms against the Democrat party. First, visit our website, BLEXIT.com, where you will find the hard truths about the bigoted racism within the Democrat party. Second, spread the word. Your voice matters to those who are looking to make an “exit” from the bondage of the Democrat party. Finally, stand for truth. This battle will be one of the most consequential culture wars in American history. Your support is needed to allow us to arm the next generation with the facts they need to be free.

The “Democrat party”, moving ever more to the Left and becoming ever more aligned with the worldwide socialist movement, presents itself as – even perhaps believes itself to be – characterized by concern for the underdog. The Party of Compassion. 

Socialism always advertised itself as a movement for the raising and empowerment, the “liberation”, of the oppressed: of the “workers of the world”, said Karl Marx; of the “outcasts and outsiders, the exploited and persecuted of other races and colors, the unemployed and unemployable”, said Herbert Marcuse, theorist of the New Left; of “the wretched of the earth”, said Frantz Fanon; of “women”, said the feminists; of “homosexuals” said some Leftists and later many; of “blacks”, they said in some places at some times and all of them eventually.

Blacks were not always classed by the prophets of the Left as worthy of liberation. Karl Marx was a fierce racist, despising blacks and Jews (though or because he was Jewish), and agreeing with Friedrich Engels that the Slavs should be wiped off the face of the earth. (See for instance here and here.)

In South Africa, in the early 20th century, the motto of the Communist Party was: “Workers of the world unite and fight for a white South Africa”. Then, in 1928, the Comintern decreed that the South African case must no longer be subjected to “class analysis”, but instead to “race analysis”, so the blacks replaced the white workers in the tender concern of Stalin’s Kremlin.

In the real world, the extreme oppression of all classes, both sexes, and all races by the self-proclaimed Parties of Compassion wherever they came to power – in Russia, China, Cambodia, North Korea, Cuba – has repeatedly and invariably demonstrated that the Left is actually characterized by hypocrisy.

And intense, dumb, unexamined, class snobbery.

Connoisseurs of irony can particularly savor the treatment meted out by the Left, and all the politically compassionate, to a genuine working-class rebel leader now that one such has finally arisen in Britain to defend young girls exploited and oppressed by Muslim immigrants. Yes, young girls and boys persecuted by rapists of other races and colors coming from the countries where the wretched of the earth proliferate. He is called Tommy Robinson. They look down on him. They not only call him a “neo-Nazi”, “bigot”, and “racist” – though he is none of those things – but also an “oik”, which means a person of low class, an uncouth person. It is an expression of sheer snobbery.

And what do the Leftists and their sympathizers who rage against President Trump hold against him? They say he is “vulgar”, that he has bad taste, that he is not of their class. Right – the  Latin word “vulgus” means the common people. Although he is rich and the rich are the upper class of America, they say he lacks the necessary refinement of the socially superior.

It wasn’t the compassionate snobs but the workers of America who voted for Donald Trump to be president. And very many who were poor before he came to power are now in well-paying jobs.

And it is a black woman who is leading the movement she calls BLEXIT, whereby the blacks of America, in numbers yet to be counted, will take their votes away from the Democrat party and give them instead to the Party of Trump.

There really are millions of Americans who want to be cared for by government like little children.They will vote in November 2018 for Democratic Socialist Party candidates who promise to give them free health care, free college education, free housing heated and lighted by solar energy, free abortions, a guaranteed minimum income, and free humiliation if you are a white male.

But no freedom.

Few will have the governing power, the parental power. Only a dozen or so non-white dominatrices.

The Mothers.

Female (or self-identified as female) persons who want to organize and control everyone.

They might include Kamala Harris and Maxine Waters, but not Nancy Pelosi or Elizabeth Warren. Sorry, you last two ladies, but you are too white, too Caucasian, even if you have a tiny bit of something darker in your DNA.

The Mothers will open the southern border of the United States and invite the populations of Central and South America to come and live here.

Matthew Boyle writes at Breitbart:

As the Democrats drift further leftward into openly embracing socialism, House Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) warns the political battle ahead of the midterm elections just two weeks from now is no longer a traditional partisan battle. Instead it is one where the country must confront and reject extreme ideas from the left.

McCarthy said:

The debate today is different than the one we had before with Republicans versus Democrats on the size of what government can be … It’s no longer Republicans versus the Democrats, it’s America versus socialism. The movement in this Democratic Party [is] toward clear socialism, that’s what they’re doing on healthcare – government-run, it’s all government telling you what to do and when to do it instead of unshackling and unleashing the great powers of liberty and freedom.

With the latest caravan of thousands of prospective illegal aliens streaming from Central America through Mexico to the U.S. border right now, McCarthy said, people in the United States “should be upset because in Congress we had put a bill on the floor for immigration reform that would deal with this and end catch-and-release and not one Democrat voted for it”.

McCarthy has put forward legislation that would fully fund President Donald Trump’s planned border wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.

“It’s very simple,” McCarthy said of his bill, which is titled Build the Wall, Enforce the Law, and would fully fund the border wall and include enforcement measures like Kate’s Law and blocking sanctuary cities among others.

It would fully fund the wall. You’re watching individuals try to come and just cross the Rio Grande, and not have any wall there and just move across. But what it also does is say “enforce the law”. Think about the MS-13 gang members that will be a part of this caravan, or those who are smuggling [the opioid] fentanyl. This increases the ability to send them back, a bill that we voted on before, but it also deals with sanctuary cities who are a magnet for bringing people in and I just heard a report where they were interviewing some people in the caravan and they have been deported three, four, five times and now they’re coming back through. We know what happens there, with Kate’s Law we need it and why we need it, but then it also goes through and makes sure we’re supporting ICE. If anyone has not been to the border and spent some time with Border Patrol, you don’t understand the challenge that you have when you have a lawless society and no protection along that southern border. That’s why I put the bill in …

McCarthy predicted the midterm election is very much, in addition to a bigger picture battle of ideas between those who believe in America and those who believe in socialism, a referendum on immigration policy.

He has been blocked particularly by Nancy Pelosi, who still has some power of influence though she seems to be rapidly losing her marbles.

There has never been a more clear contrast for two weeks from now. Think of this: If the Democrats … take the majority inside Congress, Nancy Pelosi will become the Speaker. Look at just two of the bills that I put on the floor recently. One, going through and supporting ICE. More than 170 Democrats voted against that or voted “present”. Or what about what we’re finding in these very liberal-controlled cities like San Francisco that allows illegals to vote in their school board races? Well, I put condemning that on the floor a resolution, 140 Democrats voted against condemning it or “present”. This is the city, and the person who represents this city is Nancy Pelosi, she would become Speaker. So what would she try to do with the rest of our election laws throughout? There is encouragement [from Democrats] of who’s coming through in this caravan, of making this happen. I mean, here we had a bill that was put on the floor that would deal with our security along the border but also fix our immigration system but not one Democrat would vote for it because Pelosi would not allow them to even though it was a common sense bill that actually put us in a new place for this country. This is what the contrast is about in just two weeks. …

The Democratic Socialists believe that almost all the migrants slogging towards the US border will vote for them. Eventually. Or even immediately and illegally in the forthcoming November elections if they make it here in time.

About that, they may be right.

There is an old maxim among conservatives: everything government does, it does badly.

The very opposite can be said of the present head of the US federal government: everything President Trump does, he does well.

(We say “does”, not “says”. He lacks the gift of eloquence – and it doesn’t matter. He’s better without it. Instead of being a great orator, he’s a great communicator.)

For one thing – the most important thing – President Trump has made America prosperous again.

From Investor’s Business Daily:

How extraordinary is this job boom? The government says that the number of jobs available has never been higher. There were 7.14 million jobs in August ready to be filled, an increase from July’s 7.1 million, which was also a record. This is the best time in decades to be seeking a job, even if you’re unemployed.

That’s the easily drawn conclusion from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover (JOLTs) report, which is important but gets much less attention than the monthly payroll jobs and unemployment numbers.

The JOLTs data say many things about our economy right now.

For one thing, economic growth is blazing hot. August was the fifth month in a row in which the number of jobs exceeded the official number of unemployed. The 7.14 million of open jobs in August exceeded the number of unemployed, now at 5.96 million, by about 1.2 million. That’s never happened in the history of the series, which dates back to the end of 2000. Moreover, the number of new hires, at 5.78 million, is also a record.

So let that sink in for a moment: We now have more jobs than unemployed people to fill them. …

Wages are starting to rise, along with productivity. …

If current torrid job growth continues, businesses will have to pay productive workers more, or suffer slower growth and perhaps market share erosion as a result. So, absent major changes in economic conditions, higher wages are coming.

Which leads to our final point, made many times before, but which bears repeating: Rising wages do not cause inflation. This is a categorical mistake that has somehow become a part of many of the world’s economic models. …

All of this is happening because of the tax cuts and deregulation put in place by President Donald Trump. … Once again this magic elixir worked to bestir a seemingly stagnated economy. How much longer will it be until supply-side ideas that clearly work get the respect they deserve? And how much longer will it be until Keynesian ideas that clearly don’t work get relegated to the junk pile where they belong?

So let wages rise. And don’t expect us to join the inevitable sudden “economic” consensus that rising wages will require the Fed to hit the economy’s brakes with a series of punitive rate hikes. That would be yet another in a long line of mistakes by the nation’s central bank.

And the president is warning against it.

From Breitbart:

President Trump said … the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates too quickly, a move he blamed on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.

My biggest threat is the Fed. Because the Fed is raising rates too fast. And it’s independent, so I don’t speak to them. But I’m not happy with what he’s [Powell’s] doing. Because it’s going too fast.

[And he] cited “very low” inflation numbers.

Thanks, Mr. President!

Down with the Fed!

Has the Kavanaugh affair united the Republican Party behind President Trump?

And if so, will it now defeat the ever more berserk Left?

Of the Republican reaction to the tactics of the Democrats opposing the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court, Gavin Wax writes at Western Journal:

The silver lining in this disgusting spectacle is a unified GOP moving forward with the singular goal of crushing the left. The line in the sand has been drawn, and there is no turning back. Even the most stubborn Trump haters of the right see that now. The Kavanaugh hearing will be a seminal movement in this fractured era of politics, and if the GOP can muster the courage to get ferocious with their contemptible enemies, it can be the turning point toward Making America Great Again.

He sees the affair as a vindication of President Trump’s leadership. It’s not only the Kavanaugh victory that proves the Trumpian way is the right way, but it provides the moment for full realization:

Anyone watching intently during the Obama years could see what was forming on the left, but it has reached critical mass due to Trump’s meteoric success. People who do not closely follow politics are seeing what the left is really all about aside from that flowery veneer of tolerance and diversity. The average blue-collar supporter of Trump has their eyes wide open, never to be closed again. This is a once-in-a-lifetime moment that we have to capitalize upon while there is still time.

“No turning back” for the GOP?  Never again will the average blue-collar worker believe the Democratic Party serves his interests?  Never again will the Republicans allow the Left an inch if by any means they can be stopped?

Well, it still depends on whether Republicans can “muster the courage to get ferocious”.

The writer hopes that “the most stubborn Trump haters of the right” see now how good is President Trump’s leadership is.

He hopes that certain Republican commentators who were against Donald Trump’s presidency have been brought by the Kavanaugh affair to see the light. They ought to have been, but he is not certain that they were:

Commentators like Erick Erickson, David French and John Podhoretz have to be realizing that Trump’s approach is vindicated. They can bemoan Trump for swatting the hornet’s nest and stirring up the left, but the communist threat is coming to destroy the lives of anyone who is to the right of Karl Marx. If you are white, Christian, conservative or a male (just one of these attributes is enough), they will target you and your family with a heinous smear campaign, and that will just be the beginning. Trumpism is currently the only viable alternative to the Orwellian machinations of the left.

How many  Congressional Republicans formerly antagonistic to, or unenthusiastic about, Donald Trump have come round to his side because of the Kavanaugh affair?

A new eclectic coalition of surprising allies has coalesced around the president.

The most vociferous defender of Kavanaugh during Thursday’s hearings was arguably South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham. Graham ran for president in 2016 largely as a wet blanket attempting to cool the Trump revolution but has come around in years since. Trump has also been able to hatch out solid working relationships with Mitch McConnell, Orrin Hatch, Rand Paul, Tom Cotton, and Mark Meadows — an interesting cross-section of political leaders. …. A coalition that seemed inconceivable just last year.

Some have been left behind — like now deceased former Sen. John McCain whose vendetta with Trump became personal, soon-to-be-gone Sens. Bob Corker and Jeff Flake who staked their careers on opposing Trump’s rise in the GOP, and Reps. Justin Amash and Walter Jones who went from constitutional heroes to pariahs over their stubborn opposition to the president — but the overwhelming consensus of the Republican Party is firmly behind Trump. Kavanaugh’s railroading has only strengthened Trump’s power over his constituency, and this party unity will be needed for what is to come.

If Kavanaugh’s confirmation was the convincing achievement, still it must be noted that Kavanaugh was not himself unwanted by Never Trumpers. The victory was not exactly a victory for Trumpism as such. Kavanaugh was “an establishment supported candidate”. 

In what may have been a fortuitous coincidence or was perhaps another example of 4-D chess, Trump picked an establishment supported candidate in Brett Kavanaugh as his second proposed Supreme Court nominee.

In fact, some Trump supporters did not consider Kavanaugh conservative enough:

Although some of Trump’s die-hard supporters were tepid on the pick at first, the attacks from the left quickly solidified him into a hero.

But –

He had the full-fledged support of the NeverTrump right from the outset because of his closeness to President George W. Bush …

So let’s enquire: what do Never Trumpers on the Right themselves have to say about warming to the president’s leadership?

What is the National Review saying?

The editor-in-chief of National Review, Rich Lowry, does not count himself a Never Trumper; but his colleagues, Ramesh Ponnuru, Jonah Goldberg, Bill Kristol and Stephen Hayes, firmly and sternly do.

Or have done.

Until now? Until the victory of President Trump, the Senate Republicans, and the new Supreme Court Justice himself, won the fierce and prolonged battle to get Justice Kavanaugh’s appointment confirmed?

It seems there has been a change of mind.

Significantly, the authorship of this National Review article is attributed to “The Editors”:

After one of the most intense political fights of the last two decades, Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has become Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh of the United States Supreme Court. This is a good thing for the integrity of our Constitution, for elementary American norms, and for the long-term health of our political institutions.

Justice Kavanaugh has demonstrated throughout his career a firm adherence to a constitutionalist jurisprudence; indeed, that was the root of the opposition to him. He will undoubtedly stay true to this approach, which has guided him during his years on the D.C. Circuit and is evident in black-and-white in his hundreds of opinions. All of this was pushed to the side, though, in the final frenzy to destroy and defeat him. …

Judge Kavanaugh was not “on trial” in a formal sense. But that fact in no way undermines the practices and norms that mark formal trials. Presumption of innocence and an insistence on corroborating evidence are integral parts of our system because they work. Had the Democratic party prevailed in its attempt to set them aside, the precedent would have been disastrous. …

Throughout this saga, the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee maintained that their job was to investigate credible charges of wrongdoing and to determine whether they could be verified. Shamefully, their counterparts exhibited no such interest. It was unclear whether Judge Kavanaugh’s record was being examined for rape or for rudeness, for drinking or for defensiveness, for temperament or for truth. At times the lack of focus took on a Stalinist quality: “He did it,” Kavanaugh’s accusers insisted day in, day out, “but even if he didn’t, the vehemence with which he denied it is itself disqualifying.”

It is a testament to the fortitude of the Republican party that these conceits were rejected in the end. Donald Trump had the good sense to pick Kavanaugh, and then the determination to stick by him. …

In America we do not sacrifice individuals on the altar of collective guilt, and we do not entertain that illiberal alchemy by which “nobody can corroborate this” becomes “he did it and must pay”. When the Senate met yesterday to put a bow on this squalid affair, there remained as much evidence for Judge Kavanaugh’s unfitness as there had been on the day was nominated: none. To have rejected him despite this, [Senator Susan] Collins observed, would be to have abandoned “fundamental legal principles”.

The Senate refused to do so. The Justice prevailed, and so did justice.

The praise of Donald Trump for his “good sense” in picking Brett Kavanaugh, and his “determination” in sticking to his choice, does imply that “The Editors” of National Review, as a body, now approve of the president.

What then lies ahead?

Back to Gavin Wax who writes that “Trumpism is the only way forward”:

What is left of the Buckleyites thought that they and the “sane voices in the room” on the left could sweep this Trump embarrassment under the rug and head back to the politics of the past. That delusion is no longer tenable. The inmates run the asylum on the left, and every denizen must submit to every ridiculous trope regarding gender, sex, race, etc. or face the social consequences. Because groupthink is their default preset, nobody can speak up against this institutional insanity without getting cannibalized by the jackals. …

But –

The left is never going to capitulate. They have gone too far to stop now. They will only escalate things drastically from this point forward. They will repeat any lie — no matter how absurd, cruel or disgusting it may be — to stop Trump and his supporters. Anyone who believes in the Constitution, the rule of law, due process, and the presumption of innocence is a racist Nazi guilty of sexual assault. This is the future that we will live in if the left is successful, and it is probably worse than what Orwell envisioned in “1984″.

Remember, the left has many institutional advantages that are difficult to overcome. The demographic realities are on their side. The cultural downslide has already reached epidemic proportions. We cannot expect another Trump to come along and move things forward if he is ultimately stopped. This may be our final stand, and we have to move ever more boldly as a result. Trump has taught us that we have to be willing to fight as ruthlessly as the left in order to win.

If the Republican Party now fully accepts President Trump’s leadership; if Republicans at last have the stomach for a fight, or better still an appetite for it; if they engage the fight and if they win it, then the Kavanaugh hearing will have been “a seminal movement in this fractured era of politics” and a turning-point.

Now for the ferocious battle.