Thanks again to Pirate’s Cove, Bacon Time and The Other McCain for the Rule Five links!

Robert Stacy McCain has some interesting thoughts on the President’s responses to demands for a “conversation” on guns.  Excerpt:

I admit to some mild anxiety over Trump going wobbly regarding guns. Then I read Surber:

President Trump is playing Democrats again. They want to make gun control an issue. He said, OK, and took control of the gun control debate. The debate will be on his terms and in his language. That is power positioning.

The mopes at the Post and Matt Drudge thought they could divide President Trump from his supporters with the report on the NRA warning the president on guns.

I knew in an instant what was happening. I knew Democrats would lose because President Trump never engages the enemy without first winning the battle. I also knew the president, a busy man, had outsourced the terms of the Democrat surrender to the NRA.

Whatever deal is made will have the NRA’s approval.

I knew because of the First Squeal Rule. Whenever decisions are made privately, the loser is the one who goes public first in an effort to save face.I see a lot of musing on how President Trump is so adept at playing 3-D chess with his political opponents, who are legion.  But I don’t think it’s 3-D chess as much as the South Park version of roshambo; they kick him square in the nuts, he kicks them back square in the nuts twice as hard.

It’s a curious thing, though; one wonders if the quoted Surber is really correct.  The Overton Window has shifted quite a bit; President Trump is, politically, a 1980’s moderate Democrat on many policy issues.  As a New Yorker he doesn’t really have a personal investment in the Second Amendment.  He talks strongly on protecting our Second Amendment and has so far been strong on the subject, but I’m wondering how strong he’ll stick of Congressional Republicans start going wobbly.

The NRA has screwed its courage to the sticking-point on this issue.  But will the President?  That remains to be seen.