RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/columns/paula-bolyard/2023/05/22/desantis-may-not-be-topping-the-polls-yet-but-floridians-are-enjoying-a-lot-of-winning-n1697280

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to enter the presidential race this week, ending months of speculation about his future plans.

For reasons perhaps known only to him, former President Trump has decided to let DeSantis live rent-free in his head, spending hours and hours on social media attacking the Florida governor while virtually ignoring the real enemy—Joe Biden. (If you don’t believe me, go check out Trump’s Truth Social account. Where is the criticism of the Biden administration?)

And it’s not just social media. Trump’s Super PAC is spending an unprecedented amount of money on attacking DeSantis and not Biden.

Don’t miss that last bit: Trump’s SuperPAC dropped “$2.8M on attack ads, bringing their anti-DeSantis spend to $15.3M and blowing past the $15M MAGA, Inc. spent on all 2022 midterm races.” [Emphasis added]

In other words, Trump has spent more money attacking a fellow Republican than he did trying to win back a Senate majority for the Republicans.

https://hotair.com/headlines/2023/05/21/ice-cube-suggesting-blacks-leave-the-dem-party-n552199

Rapper and Hollywood actor Ice Cube has called on black Americans to reconsider voting for the Democrat Party because “nothing has changed.”

Ice Cube, whose real name is O’Shea Jackson, appeared on Full Send Podcast with hosts Kyle Forgeard and Steiny Steinberg, where he voiced his political views and criticisms of the Democrat Party.

Ice Cube has been working to bridge the gap between politicians and grassroots movements with projects like “Contract with Black America.”

In 2020, the rapper faced backlash for working with then-President Trump on his plan for black Americans.

Ice Cube defended working with Trump at the time, tweeting, “Every side is the Darkside for us here in America. They’re all the same until something changes for us. They all lie, and they all cheat, but we can’t afford not to negotiate with whoever is in power, or our condition in this country will never change. Our justice is bipartisan.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/05/another_mistake_in_new_york_nearly_a_million_registered_voters_become_democrats.html

An upstate New York printing company on a no-bid contract mailed out voter registration cards to New York’s Nassau County voters ahead of the June 27 primary — and somehow, everyone who got one is now a registered Democrat.

That’s weird stuff given that 60% of the registered voters in that county are Republican. Well, now they are all Democrats, at least until “corrected” registration cards can be mailed out.

Hey, just a flub, they’re saying. Nothing to see here, move along.

According to the New York Post:

An upstate printer has once again screwed up downstate election materials, this time by mailing registration cards to Nassau County’s nearly 1 million voters — identifying them all as Democrats.

“It’s a terrible error. People are upset. People are angry. There is a lot of confusion,” GOP County Executive Bruce Blakeman seethed at a Tuesday press conference.

Democrats make up about 40 percent of the county’s 972,000 voters, according to state Board of Election records from February.

Blakeman, though, who runs the Republicans, is a piece of work.

He can be heard dismissing his own party voters’ concerns as emotionalism and assuring everyone else that there’s nothing to see here, just a little printer error that doesn’t involve elected officials (who gave that company its no-bid contract):

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/robert-kennedy-jr-names-dennis-kucinich-2024-campaign-manager-rcna85177

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has chosen former Rep. Dennis Kucinich to manage his 2024 presidential campaign, uniting the two famously idiosyncratic political figures in a long-shot attempt to defeat President Joe Biden in the Democratic primary campaign.

Kucinich, known for his own quixotic presidential campaigns, told NBC News he has been friendly with Kennedy for over 30 years, so joining his campaign “was an easy decision.”

“We’re looking at a campaign that could change America,” Kucinich said, calling Kennedy “everything the American people would want in a president and more.”

Kucinich’s political career has faded in recent years, but during his 16 years representing Ohio in Congress and two presidential bids in 2004 and 2008, he developed a reputation as a firebrand anti-war progressive who was willing to take on his own party, at one cautioning fellow Democratic members of Congress that any president who launches a military attack without congressional approval could face impeachment after then-President Barack Obama launched airstrikes in Libya.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/chris-queen/2023/05/17/daniel-cameron-runs-away-with-kentucky-gop-gubernatorial-primary-n1696091

If the Republican Party is full of racists and white supremacists, as some Democrats are fond of saying, somebody may want to tell Daniel Cameron. On Tuesday night, Cameron, the state’s current attorney general, ran away with the Republican primary for governor, emerging triumphant from a crowded field.

Cameron just so happens to be black, which goes to prove Democrats wrong again. He’s also the state’s first black gubernatorial nominee from either party.

The attorney general won with 48% of the vote, which means that, since Kentucky’s primary system awards the win to the candidate who gets the most votes with or without a majority, Cameron proceeds to the general election without a runoff.

The Associated Press reports that Cameron pointed out in his victory speech how historic his win is, stating that his campaign goal is to “embody the promise of America, that if you work hard and if you stand on principle, anything is possible.”

Cameron’s win was so decisive that counting the votes was quick and easy, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/05/17/even-amid-trumps-legal-troubles-his-lead-widens-ii-tipp/

Former President Donald Trump has been much in the media in recent weeks, but not all or even most of the coverage has been favorable. Even so, he has stretched his lead against a field of potential Republican challengers significantly over the past month. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden’s lead against the Democratic field remains essentially the same, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

In the online poll, taken from May 3-5, we asked 703 Democrats and those leaning Democrat, and 469 Republicans and those leaning Republican who their preferred candidate would be. The margin of error for the Democratic sample was +/- 4.0 percentage points, and the Republican sample was +/- 5.0 percentage points.

The ever-controversial former president’s lead hasn’t disappeared or even diminished in recent weeks, despite being charged with numerous crimes.

In the most recent poll reading, Trump stands at 55% support, up from 47% in April and 51% in March. His nearest challenger, Ron DeSantis, claims 17% of the GOP’s voters, down from 23% in April and 21% in March.

Do the math: Trump has extended his lead over the popular Florida governor to 38 percentage points, versus 24 percentage points last month and 28 percentage points in March.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/desantis-legislative-record-florida-2024-education-crime-abortion-fa175ac2?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has a reputation as a cultural brawler, ready and willing to throw a right hook at Mickey Mouse, the College Board, the national press. To many GOP voters, it’s part of his appeal. But as Mr. DeSantis readies a 2024 presidential campaign, what deserves to get more attention is the agenda he recently helped usher through Tallahassee.

Mr. DeSantis is blessed with Republican supermajorities in both chambers of the Legislature, so he can’t claim total credit. Some planks of his platform are controversial among conservatives, and others could prove politically unpalatable to a national electorate. Yet there’s no denying that Mr. DeSantis gets things done. “The way we run the government, I think, is no daily drama, focus on the big picture, and put points on the board,” he once said.

Here’s an assessment of what the Governor has been touting lately:

• Taxes and spending: Florida has no income tax, but it does have a 6% sales tax, and there are new exemptions for such “family-focused” items as “diapers, wipes, children’s clothing, cribs, and strollers.” The state’s latest $117 billion budget is up about 6%, which is far from tight-fisted, and Mr. DeSantis’s office is boasting about $1 billion for Everglades restoration and water protection. But the state fisc is sound because revenue is flush from rapid economic growth.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/05/vivek_in_iowa.html

The NYT hates Vivek Ramaswamy. What could be a better recommendation?

If elected President, Vivek Ramaswamy would be historic.  He would be the first Jesuit high school graduate elected to the highest office in the land.  (See what I did there?)

Since this author and the candidate were both beneficiaries of a Jesuit high school education, I asked him how this influenced him.  He gave me a fascinating answer.

The Jesuits speak of magis; Latin for more.  Vivek said that he learned that magis means striving to do more and to be better.  As a country, we have ideals but we will fall short.  But both personally, and as a country, we continue to keep seeking perfection.

Vivek is not Christian, but he believes in God.  He became pro-life at his Jesuit high school.  One of the Jesuit’s precepts is to see God in all things.  Vivek put it this way, “God resides in all of us.”

My other question was about a negative New York Times story about him this week.  He said he’s not a whiner and was somewhat glad for the attention.  He expects to take hits during the campaign as part of the vetting process.

The main thrust of the NYT piece was that the president doesn’t have the executive power to take certain actions such as abolishing the Department of Education.  We know that.  But that claim is shorthand for the direction Vivek would take.

He deviated from his stump speech after an impressive recitation of part of the Declaration of Independence by a group of young people.  It was a brilliant impromptu riff.  Vivek’s favorite president is Thomas Jefferson.  No surprise there as they are both Renaissance men.

Jefferson’s original draft used the words “we hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable.”  Ben Franklin changed it to “we hold these truths to be self-evident.”  I know that this is accurate.

Vivek’s point was that what our country was founded on was not at all self-evident at the time.  The rest of the world was mostly under authoritarian rule.  We were a new beginning.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/05/12/trump_desantis_descend_on_iowa_longshots_have_never_left_149225.html

The mutual combatants in the Republican Party’s most consequential rivalry find themselves in the same theater of action Saturday. Playing to type, populist anti-hero as Donald Trump is the anticipated headliner at a sure-to-be-raucous rally in Des Moines, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is set to speak at a Sioux City fundraiser.

It’s not the head-to-head confrontation many Republicans are anticipating, but Saturday’s near miss highlights the different strategies being employed by the two men who currently stand at the top of the class of 2024 GOP presidential contenders. Both have visited Iowa once in the past month – DeSantis attended a panel in Davenport to promote his memoir, and Trump for a speech on education policy two days later – but Saturday will mark the first time the two have competed simultaneously in the first state to choose convention delegates.

It’s not quite the triumphant return their respective loyalists had hoped for. Each man will take the stage Saturday amid significant shifts in the political landscape – and his own political fortunes.

When Trump visited Iowa in March, DeSantis seemed to be his main worry, barely outpacing the Florida governor in a buzz-worthy favorability poll by the Des Moines Register. Trump arrives in the state Saturday under different circumstances: first, a criminal indictment in New York City that has, if anything, united Republicans; but second, this week’s $5 million jury verdict in a civil case brought by a woman who says Trump once assaulted her in a New York department store dressing room three decades ago.

Nonetheless, DeSantis has watched as polls show him losing touch with the frontrunner. Neither the governor’s extended book tour, nor a recent global sojourn designed to demonstrate foreign policy chops have prevented him from sliding in the polls. Meanwhile, after DeSantis all but declared a victory in his culture war forays against the Disney Co. last month in Davenport, the high-profile skirmish has spun into a protracted bout of legal tit-for-tat that’s reportedly sown doubt among key potential GOP donors.

https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/11/house-republicans-highlight-the-importance-of-protecting-political-speech-in-u-s-elections/

Republicans on the Committee on House Administration held a hearing Thursday highlighting the importance of political speech and Americans’ confidence in U.S. elections.

“Our Founding Fathers enshrined the First Amendment in the Constitution. Unfortunately, in our highly politicized, political culture, and climate, the First Amendment has been under attack through the use of misinformation czars and cancel culture,” said Chair and Wisconsin GOP Rep. Bryan Steil. “As a result, many Americans have grown concerned that their voices will be suppressed or that their beliefs will be weaponized against them.”

As an example, Steil cited the IRS’s targeting of conservative organizations during the Obama administration. About 10 years ago, it was revealed the IRS intentionally delayed applications for “tax-exempt status from right-of-center organizations” leading up to the 2012 election. Numbering in the hundreds, these groups were “improperly subjected to baseless investigations, invasive and improper demands about their donors, and lengthy delays in processing routine paperwork.”

The Department of Justice ultimately settled with dozens of these groups over the scandal in 2017.

In order to uphold the First Amendment and boost voter confidence in elections, Steil said he is focused on introducing the American Confidence in Elections Act (ACE Act), which he claims is a “federalist approach” to increasing integrity and confidence in elections. According to Steil, the bill would “prohibit the IRS and any other federal agency from asking for an organization’s donor list, creating ad-hoc standards, and applying them to ideologically opposed groups.”