RUTHFULLY YOURS

Republicans

Ben Carson

Carson may be a brilliant surgeon and a really nice guy but he is not presidential material. Carson has only 4 delegates and is unlikely to get any more. He will only be relevant in a closely contested convention where he could try and swing his delegate to a particular candidate.

John Kasich

If Economic policy where the only concern I had, Kasich would get my vote. He has proven his ability to handle economic policy.

His social policies are to Fundamentalist for me.

Even after the debates, I am not sure where he stands on foreign policy issues. Being called to give advice to the President after the 9/11 attacks doesn’t answer the question.

Donald Trump

Trump comes across as rather shallow and bombastic, like a school yard bully. His personal attacks are wearing rather thin. Even if they are 100% true it doesn’t say why we should vote for him.

He can build a wall but, despite his claims, he can’t make Mexico pay for it. Realistically, he is not going to be able to deport 11 million people. I find his idea that we should let Russia and ISIS fight it out is not different than Obama’s “lead from behind” or Rand Paul’s isolationism.

Trump’s (and others’) insistence that the Iraq war was fraudulent and a mistake really bothers me. Years ago, Jerry Gordon put me in touch with Tierney, the UNSCOM inspector. Tierney made it very clear to me that WMD’s were present and we all know that Saddam used them to kill about 5,000 in Halabja. About a year ago, the New York Times showed pictures of depots filled with gas weapons. Most important of all, Khadafy of Libya gave up his nuclear and chemical weapons programs because of the fall of Saddam.

Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio

Of the choices we have, Cruz and Rubio are my picks. I haven’t decided which of the two is best. I am afraid that their splitting the vote means Trump gets nominated.

Democrats

Hillary Clinton

There are a lot of things we know about Clinton such as the emails, the Russian uranium deal and Benghazi. Whether of not there is a vast right wing conspiracy we know they happened. What her supporters haven’t done is tell me why we should vote for her.

We know on foreign policy her experience has not yielded a more peaceful world or a safer U.S.

Just the other day, she reiterated her support for a two state solution even though the Palestinians have rejected a two state solution that gave them virtually everything they supposedly want. Palestinian terrorism, including teaching infants to “grow up and blow up”, is pretty much dopwnp;layed and blamed on Israel.++

Bernie Sanders

I look around and see socialism at work and it doesn’t work.

We contribute to unemployment insurance, Social Security and Medicare. That is not socialism.

Yes, we do need some policies that could be considered socialism like medical care and welfare for the indigent.

Countries that have been or have become capitalistic have done well. Point out Greece as an example of failed socialism gets a response of “Swedeen”.

As for foreign policy, there seems to be no difference between Sanders and Obama.

Conclusion

No matter who I want, the choice is collective. I only hope the people choose wisely. Unfortunately, there is little discussion across party lines and the press is too partisan and not objective enough. I fear for the future.

Jan Mel Poller

An exchange on the BBC after the Nevada caucuses had given Donald Trump 46 percent of the vote said it all. A perfectly pleasant BBC interviewer asked a political consultant (as best I recall): “Well, at present they’re voting for him,” he said.

Good heavens, so they are. Not fellows wearing three-piece suits in Washington, the consultant added, but people who think of themselves as Republicans or as conservatives in towns and cities across America.

Now, that might not continue. It’s always an error to suppose that the future will be nothing more than a continuation of the present. Extrapolating current trends gets both economists and political pundits into big trouble. Besides, Trump is a phenomenon, like a comet, and sometimes they just cross the sky and disappear in a welcome blaze, like, for instance, a tax-returns scandal. Even without that, he has high negatives in national polls, which means there’s a real risk of his being denied the nomination or imploding after getting it.

On the other hand, it’s equally mistaken to assume that everyone not voting for Trump is consciously voting against him, in a way that isn’t true in the case of other candidates. In reality, it’s very unlikely that if either Rubio or Cruz dropped out, his votes would transfer en masse to the remaining one. That’s a general truth of politics, but it also seems to be confirmed by the evidence of current polls that Trump is making inroads into all sorts of voter categories where no Republican has gone lately. Trump’s boast of this progress doesn’t automatically refute it.

To reduce any tension (and also to enable us to concentrate on questions more important even than the horse race), let me declare my hand. Though I’m not enthusiastic about any of the candidates — after Reagan and Thatcher, anyone else is a letdown — my sympathies are with Ted Cruz, for the pedestrian reason that I agree with him more on most issues than with the other candidates. If he were to be eliminated, I would almost certainly prefer Trump to Rubio (for reasons that will emerge later). And though it’s just possible that I would endorse a worthy third-party conservative if nominee Trump were shown to be even more of an unguided missile than hitherto, I cannot see myself casting a vote for Hillary Clinton — not least because, as a British citizen with a green card, I don’t have a vote to cast.

Surprise! Donald Trump is a rank hypocrite on immigration. Per the New York Times:

Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach describes itself as “one of the most highly regarded private clubs in the world,” and it is not just the very-well-to-do who want to get in.

Since 2010, nearly 300 United States residents have applied or been referred for jobs as waiters, waitresses, cooks and housekeepers there. But according to federal records, only 17 have been hired.

In all but a handful of cases, Mar-a-Lago sought to fill the jobs with hundreds of foreign guest workers from Romania and other countries.

In his quest for the Republican presidential nomination, Mr. Trump has stoked his crowds by promising to bring back jobs that have been snatched by illegal immigrants or outsourced by corporations, and voters worried about immigration have been his strongest backers.

But he has also pursued more than 500 visas for foreign workers at Mar-a-Lago since 2010, according to the United States Department of Labor, while hundreds of domestic applicants failed to get the same jobs.

Or, put another way, Trump has deliberately chosen to hire foreign workers to fill those jobs that “Americans just won’t do.” 17 out of 300? That’s 5.6 percent. 17 out of 500? That’s 3.4 percent. Bad!

So what’s Trump’s excuse? That’s he’s a businessman and that these are the realities on the ground? That, I’m afraid, won’t wash. When Disney behaved like this, there was a loud and sustained outcry from . . . well, no less than Donald Trump himself. In an interview with Breitbart, Trump argued that Disney should be forced to rehire any Americans it had overlooked or replaced. Trump also said this:

If I am President, I will not issue any H-1B visas to companies that replace American workers and my Department of Justice will pursue action against them.

After his smashing back-to-back victories in the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries and the Nevada caucuses, going into next week’s Super Tuesday contests in 12 states, Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump looks increasingly unbeatable.

What accounts for the billionaire populist’s success? And if Trump does become the next US president, what sort of leader will the former reality television star be? Trump is popular because he has a rare ability to channel the deep-seated frustrations that much of the American public harbors toward its political and cultural elites.

Trump’s presidential bid isn’t based on specific, defined economic or foreign policy platforms or plans. Indeed, it isn’t clear that he even has any.

Trump’s campaign is based on his capacity to resonate two deeply felt frustrations harbored by a large cross-section of American citizens.

As The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger explained recently, a very large group of Americans is frustrated – or enraged – by the intellectual and social terror exercised upon them by the commissars of political correctness.

Trump’s support levels rise each time he says something “politically incorrect.” His candidacy took off last summer when he promised to build a wall along the Mexican border. It rose again last November when, following the Islamic massacre in Paris, he said that if elected he will ban Muslim immigration to the US.

The many millions of Americans who are sick of being called racist, chauvinist, homophobic, privileged or extremist every time they breathe feel that in Trump they have found their voice.

Then there is that gnawing sense that under Obama, America has been transformed from history’s greatest winner into history’s biggest sucker.

Trump’s continuous exposition on his superhuman deal-making talents speaks to this fear.

Trump’s ability to viscerally connect to the deep-seated concerns of American voters and assuage them frees him from the normal campaign requirement of developing plans to accomplish his campaign promises.

Trump’s supporters don’t care that his economic policies contradict one another. They don’t care that his foreign policy declarations are a muddle of contradictions.