RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://victorhanson.com/nikki-haleys-strategies/

Nikki Haley just lost the New Hampshire primary by 11 percent.

She had earlier come in third in the recent Iowa caucuses behind Ron DeSantis.

But DeSantis, not she, dropped out of the race. He then endorsed front-runner Donald Trump.

By contrast, Haley confidently announced that at last there was a two-person, head-to-head race. So she confidently headed to New Hampshire.

Her subtext was that if she did not win the upcoming two-person primaries, she would come in “second” rather than “last.”

Her supporters outspent all the candidates in Iowa and would do so again in New Hampshire. Haley consolidated the Never-Trump voters, won Independents and cross-over Democrats, and garnered millions from the donor class exasperated at the thought of a third Trump candidacy.

Moreover, nearly half of those who voted in the Republican primary were not themselves Republicans. New Hampshire was the most Haley-friendly primary in the entire campaign season.

Yet after coming in last in the three-person Iowa race with 19 percent of the vote, she still lost by 11 points in a New England state more reflective of a traditional Romney or Bush voter than of a Trump supporter.

Trump has now won the first two primaries by large majorities. As he reminds us, no Republican in recent history has lost the nomination after winning Iowa and New Hampshire.

So what is Haley’s strategy ahead?

In the short term, she will cede to Trump the Nevada caucuses and focus on her home state of South Carolina.

But then what?

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2024/01/24/report-barack-obama-is-telling-joe-biden-to-quit-2024-race-n4925803

Earlier this month, we learned that Barack Obama advised Joe Biden on how to beef up his reelection campaign. Now, he appears to have given up all hope for Biden’s struggling campaign.

The former president and other allies of Biden’s have advised him “to quit the 2024 race to save America and the Democratic Party,” according to a report from RadarOnline.

“Insiders snitched that tensions between the two presidents recently exploded after irate Obama rushed to a secret meeting and confronted Biden about his fading chances to fend off surging Republican candidate Donald Trump in the upcoming November election,” explains the report.

Incredibly, Joe seems almost oblivious to the lack of excitement about his campaign and cratering approval ratings. Recent polls show a scant 38 percent of American’s approve of his performance with a whopping 58 percent holding a negative opinion of his work.

Meanwhile, Trump, 77, has seized a lead in some national polls despite being under indictment on 91 charges and openly declaring he wants to be a dictator.

In desperation, sources said Obama bellowed at bumbling Biden to go on the attack — and make sure trusted aides are constantly by his side on the campaign trail to keep them from committing the disastrous gaffes that have defined his presidency.

“The Obamas are convinced Joe’s lost his grip,” an insider confided. “He looks more feeble and clueless every day, and they know he’s lost the confidence of the public.”

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/america/2024/01/and-then-there-were-two/

The news that Ron DeSantis had thrown in the towel — “suspended my campaign” in the  losers’ parlance of this and every year’s presidential races — broke early in the afternoon, too late, and no doubt by design, for the talking heads of the networks’ Sunday morning pundits to seize the moment and gloat about their prescience in expecting it all along. True, after Iowa and running a poor third in the state polls before New Hampshire’s primary on Tuesday (Wednesday in Australia), bailing out right now made sense for a faltering, cash-strapped candidate. But grim reality is not what aspirants to the Oval Office generally recognise, so often clinging in hope and self-deceit to their ambitions long after the ebb tide of support has left them on the beach. Think here of George Bush the Elder harrying Ronald Reagan in 1980 or, 28 years later on the other side of the aisle, Hillary Clinton refusing to concede until very late in the game that Obama had her whipped. In 2016, she had her own zombie challenger in Bernie Sanders, who terrier-like refused to let go despite knowing for a lead-pipe cinch that the Clinton machine had rigged the Democrats’ selection process to leave him with no chance whatsoever. Politicians in America are much easier to kill than their ambitions.

And that’s what makes the promptness of DeSantis’ decision both remarkable and his candidacy worth mourning. A year ago, there was an air of inevitability about him. Here was the governor of a booming state who represented so much of what Trump voters liked, indeed loved and still do. DeSantis had taken on the teachers unions and beaten them, picked a winning fight with Disney, Florida’s largest employer, and who extolled family values while pinning back the Mouse Factory’s big woke ears. He had served in the Navy – electorally a big plus, especially in the South and Flyover States — which Trump could not match, having waltzed away from military service in the Vietnam years on heels purportedly afflicted with incapacitating bone spurs. DeSantis had the record, the achievements and none of Trump’s personal and legal baggage.

The big-bucks donors — take that to mean corporate money — discerned a winner, set aside their reservations about a governor who gave Disney a good kicking and opened their wallets. That pundits and bookies alike rated him the early frontrunner was only to be expected.

https://thespectator.com/politics/ron-desantis-crashed-burned-trump/

“Many are called, but few are chosen.” That verse from Matthew (22:14) certainly applies to presidential aspirants. The latest to be called but not chosen is Ron DeSantis, who ended his campaign Sunday. Technically, he “suspended” the campaign, but that was simply to comply with campaign finance laws. In practice, the run is over. 

The campaign was a brief, unsuccessful effort by a candidate who began with high promise, based on his success as Florida governor. He won that office, just barely, in 2018 after a decisive endorsement from Donald Trump. He was reelected overwhelmingly in 2022 against a well-regarded Democratic opponent. In five years, he turned a state that had been purple for decades — remember Bush versus Gore in 2000 — into a reliably red one, fueled by a strong economy and an influx of people from high-tax, high-regulation states in the Northeast.  

DeSantis didn’t accomplish any of that with middle-of-the-road policies or watered-down compromises. He pursued a tough-minded conservative agenda on schools, taxes, public health and more. He defied Washington to reopen schools and the economy during Covid, producing a sharp recovery without worse health outcomes. Other Republican governors followed suit. He enacted school choice legislation and, more controversially, signed a six-week ban on abortions after the Supreme Court returned those decisions to the states (the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade).  

Those policies and their demonstrable success were red meat for a red base. No one doubted he would be a strong conservative voice in the White House, willing to resist the pressure of Washington insiders and national media, doubts the base clearly has about Nikki Haley. Thanks to those policies and his success in Florida, he began with more than enough funds to make his case to voters.  

He decided to make that case on the most favorable ground, Iowa, where Republicans share DeSantis’s values. He finished a distant second in the caucuses there and failed to win a single one of the state’s ninety-nine counties. He was trailing so badly in the New Hampshire primaries that he effectively withdrew from them. South Carolina was next up — and he was trailing badly there

Ron DeSantis dropped out of the presidential race Sunday afternoon and endorsed former president Donald Trump, announcing the suspension of an embattled campaign that began with a bungled launch on Twitter Spaces with a video posted to the same platform just two days before the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary.

DeSantis acknowledged in the video announcement Sunday afternoon that he no longer had a “clear path to victory” in 2024, but emphasized that his political career is just beginning. “While this campaign has ended, the mission continues. Down here in Florida, we will continue to show the country how to lead,” the governor said. Coinciding with the video announcement, DeSantis canceled a meet-and-greet event with voters originally scheduled for 5 P.M. in Manchester, New Hampshire.

DeSantis’s departure comes after his allies had spent days making calls to top donors asking whether the candidate should drop out ahead of the New Hampshire primary, as first reported by National Review. The bundler page on the campaign’s finance website was no longer working earlier that day, which signaled the campaign, NR reported earlier Sunday, which signaled that a drop-out announcement was imminent.

DeSantis had put all his eggs in the Iowa basket, which won him some key endorsements from Governor Kim Reynolds and influential evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats. But given that DeSantis and his allied PACs invested heavily in Iowa to the exclusion of New Hampshire, Trump’s roughly 30-point defeat proved a fatal blow to a campaign that was already on life support.

While DeSantis initially publicly claimed he punched his ticket out of Iowa and was staying in the race, the pro-DeSantis PAC Never Back Down was hit by layoffs last week and the campaign had canceled scheduled media appearances in recent days.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/get-ready-for-the-nevertrump-follies-on-steroids/

This election year marks the eighth anniversary of unhinged NeverTrump invective, and Trump Derangement Syndrome swamp-fevers. Just as mothers in England during the Napoleonic Wars frightened their wayward children with threats of “Boney” coming to get them, the Dems are revving up Trump’s “threats to our democracy,” “autocratic” ambitions, and schemes to take away our freedom and unalienable rights. Arguments ad Hitlerum soon will be flying fast and thick, and the slavish corporate media have loaded up on “big lies” and sharpened their poison pens.

If you think 2016-23 was bad, this year the Democrats are desperate for many reasons: their catatonic candidate, his son Hunter’s white-trash sleazy vices and international grifting, multiple policy failures at home and abroad, and underwater polls numbers––for 76% of voters Biden is “too old to effectively serve another term.” All these problems will abet the Democrats’ patent lies, suborning of federal agencies and courts, fake horror stories about the January 6 “insurrection,” and shameless projections of their own autocratic inclinations and lust for power onto their political opponents.

This last Dem bad habit is particularly mendacious and dripping with hypocrisy. In last week’s January 6 anniversary speech at Valley Forge, Biden read, “Democracy means having the freedom to speak your mind.” But Donald Trump is “willing to sacrifice our democracy, put himself in power.”

What better example of the brazen shamelessness that Adolf Hitler said typifies the “big lie”? The “grossly impudent lie” and “colossal untruths” are so preposterous that listeners “would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” We all know which faction censors speech, shouts down speakers, punishes dissidents with personal and professional “cancellation” and smears, and keeps an index librorum prohibitorum cataloguing which thoughts, ideas, persons, and words cannot be written or spoken.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/01/17/corruption-charges-still-loom-as-major-barrier-to-biden-reelection-in-2024-ii-tipp-poll/

Much of the discussion over whether President Joe Biden will drop out of the 2024 presidential race centers on his increasingly obvious age-related issues. But a potentially more serious problem awaits Biden, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll suggests: Strong evidence that he illegally profited from public office while vice president under former President Barack Obama.

At 81 years of age and with painful difficulties handling his official duties, Biden’s waning mental acuity has become a serious issue. But while age and a record low approval rating are major impediments to Biden’s reelection, the pile of evidence amassed in Congress’ investigation into Biden’s and son Hunter’s legally questionable business dealings could prove lethal to his presidency.

I&I/TIPP posed the following question to U.S. voters in August of 2023: “A congressional
committee claims it has strong evidence that President Biden and his family took millions of
dollars in bribes from foreign nations. If those claims turn out to be true, President Biden
should:”

Voters were given a choice of possible answers: “Resign immediately,” “Be impeached and
removed from office,” “Be allowed to finish his term in office, but not run again,” “Run again in
2024, regardless of the findings,” and “Not sure.”

A strong majority of 67% in our poll suggested that President Joe Biden should either be
impeached (43%) or resign immediately (24%) if the charges prove true. Just 15% said Biden
should “Be allowed to finish his term in office, but not run again,” and another 8% said “Run
again in 2024, regardless of the findings.” One in six (17%) weren’t sure.

The most recent I&I/TIPP national online poll was taken from Jan. 3-5 included 1,401 adults,
with a +/-2.6 percentage-point margin of error.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/01/illinois_citizens_group_files_formal_complaint_with_state_board_of_elections.html

A couple from Illinois, Jodie and Ken Zitko, have formed a group of concerned citizens who have been analyzing the Illinois state voter database.  They have found serious irregularities, detailed in a formal complaint filed with Bernadette Matthews, director of the Illinois State Board of Elections on December 21.

Here are some of their findings after almost 2,000 hours of analysis.  

There were over 300,000 votes from the 2020 election missing or deleted from the Illinois voter data prior to the conclusion of the federal retention period of 22 months.  
Over a four-year period, Illinois population decreased by 150,000, while the voter roll increased by 650,000.  
Over 2.5 million people had votes cast prior to their registration dates.  
More than 230,000 registrations show seemingly Illegal or illogical registration dates.  
There are more than 4 million apparent registration violations out of 8.9 million registrations.

This couple is not your ordinary pair of election sleuths.  Ken has been an MSSQL Data Analyst, DBA, and architect for 28 years, working with Fortune 50 companies, and Jodie has been working with “People Data” and analytics since the mid-’90s in large enterprise environments.  She’s a “subject matter expert” in integrated workplace management systems.  

They were able to view a copy of the Illinois State Board of Elections voter roll while working for a candidate for the U.S. Senate.  The couple also did an informal study of Illinois voting history, which began when they decided to check their own records.  They were shocked to find that their history showed votes cast in three midterm elections when they had never voted in a midterm election.  Ken did vote in the 2008 presidential election, but there was no indication of a vote.  

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/ramaswamy-drops-out-of-presidential-race-endorses-trump/?utm_source=onesignal&utm_medium=push&utm_campaign=article

Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy announced Monday night that he is suspending his presidential campaign after a lackluster showing in the Iowa caucuses.

In a speech announcing his exit from the race, Ramaswamy endorsed former president Donald Trump, who was projected to have won the caucuses by a strong margin, according to the Associated Press and other media outlets.

With an estimated 95 percent of votes counted, Trump was winning with 51 percent of the vote, followed by Florida governor Ron DeSantis in second at 21.2 percent and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley in third with 19.1 percent. Ramaswamy was in a distant fourth at 7.7 percent.

“There’s no path for me to be the next president, absent things that we don’t want to see happen in this country,” Ramaswamy told his supporters. “And I think that I am very worried for our country. I think we are skating on thin ice as a nation.”