Newspaper Page Text
The ADVANCE, January 24, 2024/Page 6A
Stye Aiiuancg
OPINIONS
“I honor the man who is willing to sink
Half his repute for the freedom to think,
And when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,
Will risk t’other half for the freedom to speak.”
-James Russell Lowell
editorials
Why Donald Trump Won
the GOP Nomination
By Ben Shapiro
Donald Trump is
the presumptive Re
publican nominee for
president after a
dominant perfor
mance in the Iowa
caucuses — a perfor
mance in which he
earned over 50% of
the vote and left his
closest competitors
in the dust. Trump
currently leads in the polls in New Hamp
shire, South Carolina and every other pri
mary state.
Get ready for “Trump vs. Biden II:
Electric Boogaloo.”
The big question, of course, is why?
Why does Trump retain such a grip on the
Republican imagination after losing the
2020 election, contributing heavily to the
loss of two Republican Senate seats in
Georgia in 2021, and contributing heavily
to the loss of the Senate in 2022 with his
spate of bizarre primary picks? Why should
Trump, who spends much of every day ful
minating about his upcoming legal cases,
have the upper hand against Republicans
without such baggage? Why does Trump,
who is certainly no conservative ideologue,
live so large in the imagination of conserva
tives?
There are several reasons.
Primarily, Trump is lucky in his ene
mies.
To be more precise, Trump’s very pres
ence on the political stage — and his vic
tory over Hillary Clinton in 2016 — drove
his enemies out of their minds. Those ene
mies determined that any and all means
were appropriate for undermining his presi
dency and his 2020 reelection bid: from
Russian collusion nonsense to multiple im
peachments, from nodding at historically
damaging riots to blaming him for a pan
demic, from changing the voting rules to
lying about and then shutting down the
dissemination of the Hunter Biden laptop
story, anything was on the table. So when
Trump claimed in the post-2020 election
landscape that he had been robbed of vic
tory, that contention rang true, even if his
contentions about outright voter fraud re
mained unproven.
Trump has been the title character of
“Trump: The Series” since 2015. In the
end, the chances that Americans would al
low a recasting before his reelection effort
were always low. But those chances shrank
to zero the moment Trump’s enemies wea-
ponized the legal system against him.
When Trump’s enemies, in the after-
math of Joe Biden’s election win, continued
to come after Trump using the legal system,
Trump argued that he was a stand-in for
conservatives everywhere, who feel that
they are targeted for destruction by Ameri
ca’s most powerful institutions. That argu
ment had major purchase: by polling data,
Trump’s bump to the top of the Republican
2024 heap came not with his reelection an
nouncement, but with the announcement
in March 2023 that he would be indicted in
Manhattan on specious charges of cam
paign finance violation. The drumbeat of
new legal charges against him, dropped ev
erywhere from Florida to Washington,
D.C., to Georgia, simply added fuel to the
fire.
Perhaps even that legal news could have
been turned against Trump in a primary
race. But there was one more factor Trump
needed: He needed Joe Biden to be so ter
rible at his job, so outright awful, that
Trump would suddenly look competitive.
The electability argument — the argument
that Trump’s losing record since 2016
would continue into 2024 — collapsed for
Trump’s Republican opponents as Biden’s
approval rating sank into the 30s. Republi
cans’ hearts were with Trump; now their
heads could be with him, too.
And so Trump is the presumptive nom
inee.
The only question is whether he will
reenter the White House in January 2025.
And that question, ironically, will be an
swered less by Trump than by Biden.
Trump’s campaign will be relatively quiet:
He’ll be relegated to courtrooms and Truth-
Social; there will be no debates. Which
means that 2024 could easily be a referen
dum on Biden’s presidency. And if that hap
pens, Trump will have capped the most re
markable political comeback since Richard
Nixon won the White House in 1968.
Ben Shapiro, 39, is a graduate of UCLA and
Harvard Law School, host of "The Ben Shapiro
Show," and co-founder of Daily Wire+. He is a
three-time New York Times bestselling author; his
latest book is "The Authoritarian Moment: How
The Left Weaponized America's Institutions
Against Dissent." To find out more about Ben
Shapiro and read features by other Creators
Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the
Creators Syndicate website at www.creators,
com.
COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM
A “Revoltin’ Development”
Revolting!
There was a char
acter on a radio show
that used a catch-
phrase that spread
across the country,
and you could hear it
ever day.
“Whata revoltin'
development dis is,”
was spoken by actor
William Bendix as Brooklyn native “Chester
Riley” on “Life of Riley.”
Chester often acted on bad advice from
another character but was played by Bendix
as a bumbling, lovable, hard-working guy
but not generously gifted. He worked as a
riveter in an aircraft plant.
The show began in the waning days of
WWII, into the early 1950's on radio, then
moved on to television.
Like many situation comedies, most of
the action and motivation originated with
one of the supporting characters.
One of the best developed and funny
characters on radio was “Digger’O'Dell,
“The Friendly Undertaker.” His humor was
often subtle, requiring a moment to get the
punch line.
O'Dell was once quoted as saying he
loved to walk beside the pond listening to
the frogs croak. Or, as he was departing a
scene, “Cheerio, I must be shoveling off.”
That phrase by Riley came to mind
while rolling down the highway in a misty
rain and the driver-side wiper blade came
apart. There was nothing to do but lean over
to the clean side until I could clear the high
way.
All I could do was wait out the rain.
There must be maintenance recommen
dations to keep blades supple and wiping
without streaking. Once a wiper blade hard
ens or begins to separate, it starts scrubbing
and stuttering along, gouging a permanent
scratch on the windshield.
Windshield wiper blades are not com
plicated, but there are all kinds of things that
can go wrong with a windshield wiper such
as tension. The blade has to exert some pres
sure against the glass to wipe it clear of water.
Blades have to be clean of debris and road
gunk that can accumulate in the grooves.
Modern cars are engineered so that it is
increasingly difficult for an owner to change
his own oil. If you are depending upon a
shop to service your car, ask them to check
the wipers.
Most auto parts stores will install blades
they sell to you.
We use a chemical water solution on our
vehicles which causes rain to bead up and
slide off. It is applied as a liquid and has to be
buffed into a shine.
An added benefit is that bugs don't stick
to the windshield. It has to be re-applied, but
it isn't rocket science.
I'm better at keeping up with the condi
tion of wiper blades since having to sit out
that afternoon rain, and it was a “revoltin'
development.”
joenphillips@yahoo.com
Fulton County DA
Suddenly Finds Herself
in a Big Mess
Shades of
Laurel and
Hardy. When
something went
awry in one of
their slapstick
movies, Oliver
Hardy would
declare to hap
less Stan Laurel,
“This is a fine
mess you’ve
gotten us into.” This would certainly
apply to Fulton County district attor
ney Fani Willis, and unlike Laurel and
Hardy, who managed to extricate
themselves from said mess before the
end of the movie, Willis’s mess isn’t go
ing away. In fact, it is getting messier.
For reasons that make no sense
other than political self-aggrandize
ment, Willis took it upon herself to
begin an investigation and indictment
of former president Donald Trump
and eighteen others on racketeering,
conspiracy and other charges regarding
potential 2020 election interference.
I am not a Donald Trump fan, but
I think the effort is and has been a
waste of taxpayer dollars and that any
perceived electoral misdeeds on the
part of the former president and his
supporters should be the responsibility
of federal authorities, not Fulton
County. Willis should be concentrating
on the huge backlog of pending felony
cases awaiting trial. Leave Trump and
his posse to the Feds.
It has been a mess from the begin
ning. The first indication was when
Willis subpoenaed Georgia’s current
Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, one of 16 Trump
electors who signed on to an “unoffi
cial electorate certificate” in an effort to
undo the Electoral College vote in the
2020 election. This, after she had held
a fundraiser for Jones’ Democratic op
ponent before the election and had
donated money to his primary cam
paign.
Fulton Superior Court Judge Rob
ert McBurney, who oversaw the special
grand jury proceedings, criticized Wil
lis and called it a “What are you think
ing moment,” and added, “The optics
are horrific.” And the political inepti
tude striking.
Fani Willis now finds herself in a
mess worse than anything Laurel and
Hardy could have dreamed up. A mo
tion filed by attorney Ashleigh Mer
chant, representing Mike Roman, one
of Donald Trump’s co defendants in the
case, accuses Willis of engaging in an
“improper, clandestine personal rela
tionship” with a married private attor
ney, Nathan Wade, who she had hired
as a “special prosecutor.”
Fulton County records show Wil
lis has paid Wade $654,000 since Janu
ary 2022, far more than other attorneys
on the case. Merchant says she has no
proof that Wade has ever tried a felony
RICO case. The other two special
prosecutors are Anna Cross, a former
DeKalb County assistant district attor
ney who has handled dozens of felony
cases, and John Floyd, considered an
By Dick Yarbrough
expert on state RICO prosecutions and
who helped draft the law. Together,
they billed $116,000, less than a quar
ter of what Wade was paid.
Merchant’s motion, which runs 38
pages, alleges among other things that
Willis and Wade began a romantic rela
tionship prior to her hiring him and
that Wade funded lavish vacations for
the two of them with money he was
paid for his work on the election inter
ference case.
The mess keeps getting messier.
On the same day Merchant filed her
motion, Willis was served with a sub
poena by representatives of Nathan
Wade’s wife, Joycelyn, to testify in the
Wades’ divorce case. As it stands now,
the records of the divorce action have
been sealed in Cobb County and a
number of news outlets, including the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the New
York Times, Washington Post, and CNN
are asking that the records be unsealed.
Willis has been trying to quash the
subpoena seeking her testimony in the
divorce proceedings. Why? Does she
have anything to hide?
Fulton County Superior Court
Judge Scott McAfee, who is overseeing
the election interference case against
former president Trump and the oth
ers, has set a hearing for Feb. 15 and
has given the Fulton County District
Attorney’s Office a Feb. 2 deadline to
file a written response to the allega
tions made by Mike Roman and his le
gal team.
Rather than provide taxpayers
with answers as to the accusations and
taking the opportunity to prove her ac
cusers wrong, Willis has chosen in
stead to play the race card. She has de
clared all of this is because she is a
Black woman. Joycelyn Wade, Nathan
Wade’s ex, is a Black woman, too. This
Please see Yarbrough page 8A
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