Impromptus

Dirty tricksters, &c.

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Famous, or infamous, dirty trickster Dick Tuck at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, Calif., August 13, 2000 (Bob Riha, Jr. / Getty Images)
On Dick Tuck, Donald Trump, Nancy Mace, Christopher Columbus, Ronald Reagan, and more

When I think of dirty tricks — in the field of politics — I think of two names: “Dick Tuck” and “Donald Segretti.” Aren’t they great names? I mean, don’t they fit dirty tricksters? Especially “Dick Tuck”? When you say “Dick Tuck, dirty trickster,” you have a lot of “d” and “k” sounds.

Dick Tuck was an anti-Nixon dirty trickster, for the Dems. Donald Segretti was Nixon’s dirty trickster. I will give you an example of a Tuck trick. In ’68, Nixon’s slogan was “Nixon’s the One.” So Tuck would have heavily pregnant black women going around with signs or T-shirts that said “Nixon’s the One.”

(Get it? The father.)

Well, they don’t make dirty tricksters like they used to. Or do they? Lately, Donald Trump has been calling Nikki Haley a “birdbrain.” Sample: “MAGA, or I, will never go for Birdbrain Nikki Haley.” Later in that post, he said, “Birdbrain doesn’t have the TALENT or TEMPERAMENT to do the job. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”


More in Donald Trump

And the Trump people did this:

Lame, I would say.

For an article on the matter, go here.

By the way, it occurs to me: Both Nixon and Tuck were “Tricky Dick”s.

• A headline: “Many GOP anti-Trumpers are throwing in the towel.” Interesting article. But I’ll tell you a secret — an open secret: Those “GOP anti-Trumpers” aren’t all that anti-Trump. They will support him, or defend him, when they “have” to, trust me.

• “Trump Criticizes Netanyahu and Israeli Intelligence in Florida Speech.” The subheading of that article reads, “The attacks were a major focus of Mr. Trump’s remarks to a crowd of superfans in his home state, which has a significant number of Jewish voters.”

To the best of my recollection, Trump has gotten crosswise of his “base” only once — when he praised or encouraged vaccination against COVID-19. They booed him when he said he had received a booster shot.

Could Trump’s remarks about Israel have an effect? That would be something.

• This was interesting: “Republican Group Running Anti-Trump Ads Finds Little Is Working.” The article begins,

A well-funded group of anti-Trump conservatives has sent its donors a remarkably candid memo that reveals how resilient former President Donald J. Trump has been against millions of dollars of negative ads the group deployed against him in two early-voting states.

Some more:

. . . in the memo . . . the head of Win It Back PAC, David McIntosh, acknowledges to donors that after extensive testing of more than 40 anti-Trump television ads, “all attempts to undermine his conservative credentials on specific issues were ineffective.”

The memo will provide little reassurance to the rest of the field of Mr. Trump’s Republican rivals that there is any elusive message out there that can work to deflate his support.

A little more:

“Even when you show video to Republican primary voters — with complete context — of President Trump saying something otherwise objectionable to primary voters, they find a way to rationalize and dismiss it,” Mr. McIntosh states in the “key learnings” section of the memo.

“Every traditional postproduction ad attacking President Trump either backfired or produced no impact on his ballot support and favorability,” Mr. McIntosh adds. “This includes ads that primarily feature video of him saying liberal or stupid comments from his own mouth.”

Comports with everything we have seen over the last several years.

• Do you think this pastor was out of line? Could it get him crosswise of the base?

• I will give you an example of performative populism — although “performative populism” is somewhat redundant, because populism depends heavily on style. Mode. Mode of speech and mode of conduct. (Although, to be sure, it includes protectionism and other policies.)

Anyway, quite a performance from the lovely Ms. Mace:

• If this is true, it is good, good news: “Blue cities rethink their embrace of progressive drug policies.” (Article here.)

• In my Impromptus on Wednesday, I brought up the winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman. They are both American (with the former Hungarian-born). They won for work that “enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19,” to quote the relevant committee in Stockholm.

(Talk about gettin’ crosswise of the base.)

I direct your attention to a piece by Scott Lincicome: “Could Today’s Katalin Karikó Come to America?” The answer is not happy (for some of us).

(Karikó’s family mixes science and sports. As I mentioned on Wednesday, her daughter, Susan Francia, has won two Olympic gold medals, in rowing.)

• Jeff Jacoby has written a brave column, I think: here. It is hard to change your mind, and then report it. Especially when your change of mind gives “the other side” a “win.” When your change of mind gives aid and comfort to the enemy.

Jeff’s column is headed “I used to defend Columbus as ‘magnificent.’ I don’t anymore.” He has learned a lot more about the Great Explorer, and First American, than he used to know. And so have I. I will take Jeff’s column to heart.

All my life, I have loathed the anti-Columbus people. I loathe “Fall Weekend” instead of “Columbus Day Weekend,” etc. “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.” All of that. When I hear negative things about Columbus, I grow defensive.

But that is immature. And Jeff Jacoby is mature (setting a good example).

• In New York, there is a bar & grille with an emphasis on seafood. I am pretty tolerant of puns — but . . . I just can’t . . .

• A white Aston Martin, sittin’ pretty on an unpretty street:

• In Cleveland, I spotted this fellow:

Lajos Kossuth is generally regarded as the father of Hungarian democracy. He lived from 1802 to 1894. Goodness — that’s almost the whole of the 19th century. I have often quoted him when writing about peace, a very interesting and slippery subject. “I am a man of peace — God knows how I love peace. But I hope I shall never be such a coward as to mistake oppression for peace.”

In a column last week, I showed a picture of Robert Burns in Milwaukee — I mean a statue, not the poet himself:

I have not traversed the entire world, heaven knows, but I’ve gotten around a bit, and I have the impression that, in America, there are more monuments to foreigners than there are anywhere else. That stands to reason — because of the kind of country we are.

Just this week, I was quoting Reagan, speaking before the United Nations:

America is committed to the world because so much of the world is inside America. After all, only a few miles from this very room is our Statue of Liberty, past which life began anew for millions, where the peoples from nearly every country in this hall joined to build these United States.

The blood of each nation courses through the American vein and feeds the spirit that compels us to involve ourselves in the fate of this good earth.

This fellow stands a few blocks from me:

That’s Verdi. And this other fellow stands a few blocks the other way:

That’s Dante. Couple of Eye-talians, who made a big splash in this world, enriching all mankind, and earning immortality.

Well, I’d better go. Have a good weekend, y’all.

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