The Patriot Post® · Wednesday Short Cuts

Upright: “Many, perhaps most people who vote Republican don’t do so because of tax rates or trade agreements or Kelo or Ex-Im or even abortion or guns. Rather, it is nationalism — understood as the political expression of the emotion of patriotism — that’s the substructure of support for the Right, the policy specifics about taxes and the rest being the superstructure. Voters who don’t particularly care about the three-legged stool of conservatism voted Republican anyway because they were one-nation patriots and the Democrats had become the party of post-Americanism and balkanization. This is the real source of the revulsion at Obama — it’s not his father’s race and it’s not really even Obamacare and the other outrages of this administration, outrageous as they are. It’s his post-Americanism, which combines his citizen-of-the-world pretensions with an aggressive campaign of deconstructing the American people.” —Mark Krikorian

For the record: “[T]he media’s general lack of interest in Clinton scandals also shows that most journalists have a ‘temperament’ problem. They present themselves to the public as ornery, nonpartisan watchdogs, but in reality they’re the aggressively obsequious partisans that swoon over Clinton when she buys a burrito. Is it any wonder that trust in the media is so low?” —L. Brent Bozell & Tim Graham

Art of the deal: “[Hillary Clinton] has 33,000 emails that she deleted. When is she going to release her emails? Let her release her emails and I will release my tax returns immediately.” —Donald Trump

A vast right-wing conspiracy: “I believe I have created so many jobs in the conspiracy theory machine factory, because honestly, [Republicans] never quit.” —Hillary Clinton

Belly laugh of the week: “They even went after my foundation last week. Now that was really funny. I was sort of Robin Hood, except I didn’t rob anybody. I just asked people with money to give it to people who didn’t have money.” —Bill Clinton (He must mean giving money to Hillary, who, after all, was “dead broke” when the foundation kicked off.)

And last… “Late Friday, at the beginning of the Labor Day weekend, the FBI released some of the notes that agents took during their Fourth of July weekend interview with Hillary Clinton. Do you see the pattern here? Fourth of July… Labor Day… I can’t wait until Thanksgiving!” —Gary Bauer