RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://spectator.org/the-state-of-the-shutdown/
Dem SOTU stunt signals their growing desperation.

Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have much in common with the character Fortunato in Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Cask of Amontillado.” Having been lured into a political oubliette and chained to a wall, they are now being systematically immured by a man upon whom they have heaped countless insults. Like Poe’s ill-fated character, they hadn’t sobered up enough from their recent successes to realize that their antagonist was leading them into a trap when he declared in front of the cameras during their December White House meeting, “I am proud to shut down the government for border security.”

Stumbling blindly along with Trump down the murky path to the shutdown, they had no clue they would now find themselves desperately attempting to put a halt to the President’s State of the Union address. This pathetic maneuver reveals the damage they incurred pursuant to Trump’s recent Oval Office speech, which they made worse by their comically inept rebuttal. The damage has now reached the point where Pelosi and Schumer are facing growing revolts in their own conference, particularly among freshman Democrats in the House, over their refusal to even negotiate with the President. Breitbart reports:

House Majority Whip Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Pelosi’s second-in-command, says that Democrats are unified in their opposition to negotiating with President Trump on the wall.… But a quick look around the Democrat conference to see what rank-and-file Democrats are saying about their leadership — Pelosi and Hoyer on the House side, and Schumer and Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin on the Senate side — proves that Hoyer’s claim of unity is simply untrue.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272583/cracks-democrats-wall-opposition-matthew-vadum

Some Democrat lawmakers are losing their will to fight on in the ongoing stalemate with President Trump over border wall funding that has partially shuttered the federal government since before Christmas.

The GOP-controlled House of Representatives voted 217 to 185 on Dec. 20 for a spending bill with $5.7 billion for the wall. The measure floundered in the Senate and the partial shutdown began Dec. 22. The Senate remains in Republican hands but the House is now controlled by Democrats.

The president’s negotiations with Democrats over the $5 billion needed to begin construction of the border wall have gone nowhere largely because of Democrat intransigence –leadership in the House refuses even to meet with the president at the White House—and the federal government continues to be partially shut down for lack of appropriated funds. Although pressure on Trump has been growing, the president has vowed to keep the shutdown going as long as it takes to secure funding for the wall.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who barely won the House speakership after an internal party revolt, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), vow to prevent Trump from securing any funding for a wall along the nation’s multi-state border with Mexico.

Pelosi’s lieutenant, House Majority Whip Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), said Democrats are solid in their opposition to negotiating with the president on the wall. “We are totally united — totally,” Hoyer reportedly said.

But that claim of unity is nonsense, according to Matthew Boyle of Breitbart News.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/01/16/take-this

In the annals of American political showboating, it’s tough to top the annual circus called the State of the Union message. Mandated by the Constitution—and at first delivered to Congress in written form—it has metastasized since the Wilson Administration into a full-blown political rally, celebrating not the party in power, but the president of the United States personally. Once a year, at the invitation of the Speaker of the House, he commands the attention not only of the Congress, but also members of the Supreme Court. It’s the nearest thing we have to a monarchical moment: all pomp and damn little circumstance, offering a president the chance to reel off, at stupefying length, a laundry list of policy prescriptions that have almost no chance ever of being realized. In short, the hot air that keeps the Capitol dome inflated doesn’t get much hotter than this.

This year, however, may be different. In their ongoing tug-of-war over the partial government shutdown, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has decided to stick her thumb in the eye of President Donald Trump and, citing security concerns, has asked him to delay his scheduled January 29 State of the Union address until the government re-opens or, alternatively, send it up the Hill in writing, as every president from George Washington to William Howard Taft did.

What a good idea.

The key to understanding what the SOTU was meant to address in the first place can be found in its Article II constitutional wording, which states that the president “shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” Accordingly, early presidents concentrated on the nuts-and-bolts of government, including budget requests, the general economy, and other mundane matters.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/01/16/trumps-re-election

What are Donald Trump’s chances for re-election in 2020?

If history is any guide, pretty good.

In early 1994, Bill Clinton’s approval rating after two years in office hovered around a dismal 40 percent. The first midterm elections of the Clinton presidency were an utter disaster.

A new generation of younger, more conservative Republicans led by firebrand Newt Gingrich and his “Contract with America” gave Republicans a majority in the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. Republicans also picked up eight Senate seats in 1994 to take majority control of both houses of Congress.

It was no wonder that Republicans thought the 1996 presidential election would be a Republican shoo-in. But Republicans nominated 73-year-old Senate leader Bob Dole, a sober but otherwise uninspired Washington fixture.

By September of 1996, “comeback kid” Clinton had a Gallup approval rating of 60 percent. Dole was crushed in an Electoral College landslide.

Barack Obama was given a similarly dismal prognosis after the 2010 midterms, when Democrats lost 63 House seats and six Senate seats. Republicans regained majority control of the House, though Democrats clung to a narrow majority in the Senate. At the time, Obama had an approval rating in the mid-40s.

Republicans once again figured Obama would be a one-term president. Yet they nominated a Dole-like candidate in the 2012 election. Republican nominee Mitt Romney had little appeal to Republicans’ conservative base and was easily caricatured by the left as an out-of-touch elite.