Many of the callers to my radio show on Sunday made similar points about Bob Dole: they admired him, but his reach-across-the-aisle stye of politics is the reason America is in this mess.
I'm not sure that's fair. It's true that Dole was not a conservative champion, and when he tried to play the role of firebrand in his 1996 campaign, it felt like he was stretching to do it, so it fell flat.
But the fact is that when the chips were really down, and the question was whether to back Trump or oppose him, Dole bucked the rest of the GOP establishment and defended The Donald.
I think the explanation is simple: Dole understood that the country's politics had shifted dramatically to the left since he left politics. After he lost to Bill Clinton, the Lewinsky impeachment emerged, damaging Clinton's ability to fight for the "third way" politics he had championed and creating a new opening for the left to take control of the Democratic Party. Under Obama's influence, Democrats became more "woke" -- and more anti-American in their outlook.
Dole saw Trump as the antidote to that -- as the only way for American politics to come back to what he, Bob Dole (as Bob Dole would have said), understood.
This week's show will be slightly different from the norm: we'll focus on clips and topics, rather than guests -- and that, hopefully, will mean more input from the callers (unless you are all watching football on opening weekend).
Topics:
- The state of the economy
- The fight against crime
- The midterm election fight
- The struggle for peace between Russia and Ukraine
- The airstrike on the Venezuelan drug cartel
- The attempt to sink Kennedy
- The war in Gaza
- The case against Harvard
- The Trump presidency
Tune in: SiriusXM Patriot 125, 7-10 p.m. ET / 4-7 p.m. PT
Call: 866-957-2874
This week's Torah portion includes several laws about conduct in civic and personal life, the common theme of which is boundaries -- setting bounds to what one may do at home, at work, and even in the battlefield.
One noteworthy passage concerns Amalek, the evil nation that attacked the Children of Israel as they made their Exodus from slavery to freedom. Deuteronomy 25:17-19 commands Jews to obliterate Amalek's memory.
The South African government accused Israel of genocide on the basis of a story about Amalek in the Book of Samuel, in which King Saul was commanded to wipe out the entire evil Amalekite nation.
Because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quoted this week's portion -- "Remember what Amalek did to you" (25:17), the South African government claimed he was commanding soldiers to commit genocide.
It was an absurd and malevolent misreading of the Bible and of Jewish tradition. The commandment, as observed by Jews today, is to remember the evil of Amalek and fight ...
