4th Earl of Buckinghamshire
Joined December 2022
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Okay, here's my contribution.
Children's fantasy is completely outside my wheelhouse, and teen romantic angst isn't much better. But a final dramatic clash? That I can do.
#malfoid
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He’s alive. Harry Potter’s alive. The knowledge rings through Dracaena like a bell. He died in the Forbidden Forest, she’d heard them all say it, seen the body displayed at the gate of Hogwarts. But now somehow… He’s alive. He’s alive!
She can barely see him, all the way at the far end of the Great Hall, shouting back and forth at the Dark Lord. But she knows him, has known him for seven years: His form, his voice, his tangled hair. He’s alive.
Her father is holding her by her wrist, his grip vise-like, dragging her back as she writhes and strains against him. “Let go,” she cries brokenly, “Let me go, father, I have to—"
“Stop it, Dracaena,” he hisses, his face contorted with fear. “Be silent! If the Dark Lord hears—"
“Lucius,” Narcissa says, soft but clear. She puts her hand over his. “Let her go.”
She meets Dracaena’s eyes, and her own glisten with unshed tears.
Lucius stares at his wife bewildered. For the first time in her life, Dracaena sees her father entirely at a loss.
He lets her go.
Dracaena turns and runs, a blur of faces staring at her, Hogwarts students and teachers, a brief glimpse of Hermione and Ron wide-eyed, and ahead of her she sees them: Harry grim-faced and desperate, the Dark Lord brandishing the Elder Wand as his red eyes glitter.
Two voices ring through the hall:
“Avada Kedavra!
“Expelliarmus!”
Green light collides with red in a blazing flare, and the meeting point moves toward Harry, the power of Voldemort’s curse overwhelming…
Dracaena screams aloud, somehow moving even faster; her feet do not even feel the floorboards of the Great Hall. She hurls herself forward, reaching out desperately… and her wand intercepts the clashing spells.
The wand snaps, unicorn hair burned away in an instant. The disrupted spells erupt in a shockwave, knocking Harry and Voldemort to the ground. The floor slams into Dracaena like a hammer and she writhes half-stunned, the fingers of her wand-hand aching bone-deep.
Voldemort struggles to rise, Death Eaters crowding forward to try to help him.
Harry scrambles to Dracaena’s side, putting one arm around her waist and pulling her to her feet. His face is frantic, streaked with soot and tears. “Dracaena… What… What are you doing... Why are you here?"
She meets his gaze and all her fears rise up, all the misery and despair of the last two years choking her, the scar on her neck burning with remembered pain.
Voldemort is on his feet, waving back his followers with furious dismissal.
Dracaena shuts her eyes and forces the words out, barely a whisper. “I love you, Harry Potter. You’re… you’re my life.”
When she dares look at him again, his face is a sunrise. She feels a pulse of joy so intense it is like pain.
“Traitor,” Voldemort hisses. “I knew the Malfoys could not be trusted.” He raises the Elder Wand overhead. “You choose Potter, here at the end? You can die with him.”
Harry turns to face the Dark Lord, still clutching Dracaena to him, and she wraps her own arm around his waist and sets her wand-hand over his. They share a last look. “Together,” Harry says, and she nods.
Voldemort’s wand snaps forward once more. “Avada Kedavra!”
Harry and Dracaena answer in two voices made one: “Expelliarmus!”
The magic collides again, flaring white light. Veldomort grins as the meeting-point edges toward them…
The color of their shared spell changes, becoming a twining spiral of emerald green and sunlit gold. The flare of the clashing magics stops in place… and then begins moving toward the Dark Lord.
Voldemort’s gloating triumph gives way to confusion, then to fear. His voice rises in a shriek. “What is this magic?”
Love, Harry. Love is the most powerful magic of all.
Voldemort never heard Dumbledore’s words. But if he ever had, he would not have understood them.
The clashing spells reach the Elder Wand, and it shatters. Voldemort lets out a single scream, a cry of negation and despair, before his own killing curse washes over him.
Harry and Dracaena drops to their knees, gasping for breath, slumping against each other. There is a long silence in the Great Hall, and then a rising tumult: Cheering, sobbing, babbling cries. Dracaena glimpses teachers and students rushing forward, the Death Eaters cowering in surrender, Ron and Hermoine running toward their friend.
Harry sees none of it; he is looking only at her. He drops his wand and his hands come up, cradling her face gently, as though it might break.
“Dracaena, I…” He coughs and swallows, blinks his eyes clear. “I love you, Dracaena. I… I always have.”
She catches his head and pulls him to her, and he kisses her like a drowning man seeking air.
Adayasmr takes on the patronus scene in the Battle of Hogwarts.
I swear he keeps getting BETTER with each video. Incredible stuff.
When JD Vance said stuff like this, all the ConInc'ers and Dead Consensus "influencers" like the Loesches and Joel Berry started screaming Vance was a "socialist" and the same as Bernie Sanders.
Will they say the same about DeSantis? Or will he get a pass because Not Vance?
Ron DeSantis explains why the GOP "screaming socialism" doesn't work anymore:
"Young people have a very positive view of socialism compared to capitalism. The question is, why is that? Some of it is the education in our universities. But I think a big part of that is, what they're comparing is not free enterprise versus socialism. What they're comparing is how government gets involved in business, and you have crony capitalism. The best kind of indirect supporters of socialism are some of these corporatist republicans who propagate these crony policies. The average person is seeing that and saying, 'Wait a minute, you're trying to bend the government to funnel benefits to this corporation or that industry. What about having a competitive market? ... Young people really aren't seeing that. They're seeing just a handful of companies that have an outsized influence on our economy and on our society"
See, this is the DeSantis I was rooting for in 2023.
Where’s this guy been?
Romney attacked me during Covid as an “authoritarian” who was “more dangerous than Trump.”
This was during the time when I used my power to protect people from the largest incursion against liberty in our lifetime — restrictions and mandates that Romney supported.
Blocking local governments from imposing covid mandates/restrictions is not being an “authoritarian”; it is liberating people from government overreach by city and county officials. Florida is better for our efforts, and the country would not have been liberated had we not led.
Claiming to be “severely conservative” and then smearing the one guy who delivered the conservative wish list across the spectrum shows him to be a phony.
Better than Obama but he would have given us managed decline that accepted the assumptions of the left and bowed to criticisms of the legacy media.
Damn, he really pulled out all the stops on this one production-wise.
A lovely capstone to one of the very best Malfoid creations!
Yep.
People started warning about Thune and the Senate demoralizing the base all the way back in winter.
What do you think were the 2 main reasons the GOP got crushed in the Mid-terms?
My top two reasons:
1. The Iran war (a big mistake in my opinion) - and the related increase in gas/diesel prices and inflation.
2. Thune and his RINOs thoroughly demoralized the Republican base with their total inaction for 2 yrs.
Damn, this song broke me.
All his stuff is good. I generally prefer the comedic songs, but this one... Brilliant and heartbreaking.
youtube.com/watch?v=WkO6SJdh…
Yeah, Yoram's dead-on here.
A lot of us older conservatives, myself included, didn't want to admit how widespread and bitter the reaction was. Especially given how toxic and insane the Dems are. "Surely they won't vote Dem just over gas prices, that's ridiculous."
Well... maybe we were the ridiculous ones.
I'm very much middle-class but I live in a small town with low cost-of-living overall. I do well enough that the higher gas prices were only a minor inconvenience, and that doubtless warped my perception of people for whom the price-spike had much more impact and who became deeply upset and disillusioned.
1. Ted Cruz has now joined JD Vance and Ron DeSantis in forcefully criticizing the Iran war and refocusing our attention on the economic circumstances of working class Americans.
2. That’s basically the entire field of Republican candidates for President.
3. And guess what? Anyone else who wants a real shot at being the Republican nominee is going to have to adopt pretty much the same approach.
4. This dynamic has been clearly visible since April, when the Trump administration tacked toward peace talks with Iran in an attempt to save the elections.
5. That was seven months ago. For seven months, we’ve been watching the administration struggling to extract itself from the trap of an ongoing war that the voters didn’t want.
6. The attempt failed—and the voters went to the ballot box on November 3 feeling disgusted, alienated, and betrayed by the Republican Party.
7. Maybe the scale of the voters’ repudiation of the GOP is surprising. But the dynamic that brought about this result is *exactly* the same one that we’ve been watching and talking about for seven months.
8. Maybe you didn’t know that a bitter and alienated public was what the administration was dealing with? Maybe you didn’t know that this was why these hopeless talks with the Iranians were taking place?
9. But if you didn’t know this was the main thing happening in U.S. electoral politics heading into the midterms, it seems like you should be asking yourself: *Why* didn’t I know? How did it happen that I was so completely cut off from political reality in America?
10. And if you’re in an especially introspective mood, you might also ask yourself: How did I behave when people tried to tell me what was happening? Did I try to understand what they were seeing? Or did I just attack anyone who was trying to explain reality to me?
—end for now—
Some thoughts, now that I've had 48 hours to calm down...
1. The speed and severity of the backlash against the Iran war -- whose costs, economic and otherwise, were far lower than past conflicts -- means the era of such large-scale actions is over, probably for a long time. Interventionists/neocons screaming "we didn't do it hard enough" are whistling into the wind.
2. @chriswithans has been arguing since last year that Trump might be the last strongly pro-Israel President for the foreseeable future. The election would seem to confirm this.
3. The Dead Consensus/neocon Right -- people like Dana Loesch -- just witnessed the final death of their faction as anything politically relevant to the future. They're currently in denial. Ditto the RINO establishment.
4. The next two years (and maybe more, but let's pray not) is going to be an absolute circus at best. Brace yourselves.
Once again:
The Dead Consensus/neocon Right just witnessed the final death of their faction as anything politically relevant to the future. They're currently in denial. Ditto the RINO establishment.
xitter.gq/jimgeraghty/status/211…
Yes, yes, Tucker Carlson's crank podcast that is watched mostly by foreigners is why something like a third of independents and at least a fifth of GOP voters switched to Dem...
Good Lord, do these people even listen to themselves?
"tariffs or the war, but not both"
I think this has wisdom.
The tariffs upset some specific groups of people but didn't produce a general collapse of support the way Iran did.
Fascinating post, JD pulling no punches here.
And I’m thinking Trump must have seen the same data, hence negotiating an end to US military aid to Israel.
I didn’t want to believe GOP voters would go massively Dem over the Iran war and a moderate rise in gas prices.
I was wrong.
One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up.
So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us."
Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.
There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true.
But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone.
Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were:
1) End the war
2) Focus on cost of living/inflation
3) Put America First
4) Change our relationship to Israel
Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.)
In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you.
The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.
If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest.
But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.
I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.
“won’t change much”
As many have noted: Part of why the GOP has recurring trouble with normie/squish voters is because those voters have no idea how crazy the Dems really are.
Just watched an interview with a “moderate Republican” in Texas who voted for Talarico because he thinks Paxton is “too corrupt for my tastes”. Which is fine, whatever. I can’t stand Talarico, but Paxton is no all-star.
But then the reporter asked him if it was just Talarico and he said “No, I mostly voted Democrat.”
“Including for Governor?”
“Yep. I voted for Hinojosa.”
“And what do you think will be different in Texas electing all these Democrats?”
“I don’t think it will be all that different. This was mostly about how I’m feeling about national politics.”
🤨
Voting for change in state leadership, while thinking it won’t change anything. And doing it because you don’t like what is happening at the national level.