RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-florida-ron-desantis-2024-primary-d277a175?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

“Florida is a model of successful GOP governance, and Republicans should be arguing they can do the same for the country if voters put them in charge of Washington. Instead Mr. Trump is borrowing lefty tropes and sources and making the same kinds of attacks on Florida that President Biden would. Who needs Democrats with Mr. Trump around? He is proving again that he has no fixed policy principles. If he somehow wins a second term in the White House, it will be unmoored from anything but personal loyalty to Mr. Trump.”

The funniest part about Mr. Trump’s effort to claim Florida is a dump? He still lives there. If he’s really miserable, why not relocate to one of his homes in New York or New Jersey?

He’s a New Yorker by birth and branding, but President Trump officially moved to Florida in 2019, a decision that made financial sense. Manhattan residents now face a top income tax of 14.8%, plus a top estate tax of 16%. Florida has neither. But as the 2024 primaries near, Mr. Trump has suddenly decided it’s in his interest to claim that Florida is really a high-tax hellhole.

Mr. Trump knows that Gov. Ron DeSantis could be a formidable rival, and Mr. Trump will apparently say anything to trash him. On Friday Mr. Trump issued a statement on “The Real Ron DeSantis Playbook,” which starts with a quote from spokesman Steven Cheung: “The real DeSantis record is one of misery and despair. He has left a wake of destruction all across Florida.” Which is no doubt why the Governor was re-elected last year with 59.4% of the vote.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-second-term-mistake-23dd7cbe?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

The White House is whispering that next week President Biden will announce his intention to run for a second term, though the polls say that even most Democrats hope he doesn’t. The public understands what Mr. Biden apparently won’t admit: that electing an octogenarian in obvious decline for another four years could be an historic mistake.

No doubt it’s hard to walk away from the Oval Office after working for five decades to get there. Flying Marine One home for the weekends beats Amtrak. The chance to pull the levers of power is intoxicating, and that’s also true for the advisers who have pushed him in such a sharply progressive direction in his first term. They know Mr. Biden will lead wherever they want him to go.

But asking the country to elect a man who is 80 years old and whose second term would end when he is 86 is a risky act that borders on selfish. It’s impossible to know Mr. Biden’s real physical and mental state because the White House goes to great lengths to hide it. But his decline is clear to anyone who isn’t willfully blind. He rarely holds a press conference, and his words are as scripted as possible to avoid embarrassing stumbles that he nonetheless continues to make.

Different people age at different rates, but the risk of an accelerated decline for Mr. Biden is considerable. The chance that he could serve a full second term is hardly assured.

This means Americans could be voting for his running mate to take over in a second term, which as of now would be Vice President Kamala Harris. Mr. Biden would be running on a vow to serve a complete term that he knows he might not be able to keep. At the very least, he owes the country more than a Rose Garden repeat of his Wilmington basement campaign strategy from 2020.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/21/trump-team-unloads-on-desantis-using-left-wing-sources-claiming-his-record-in-florida-is-one-of-misery-and-des

Former President Donald Trump ramped up his attacks against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Friday, releasing a campaign statement claiming the popular governor’s record in the Sunshine State is “one of misery and despair.”  In a press release titled “The Real Ron DeSantis Playbook,” Trump provided a long list of reasons why Florida “continues to tumble into complete and total delinquency and destruction,” and argued that it has become one of the least affordable states to work, raise kids, and retire.

“The real DeSantis record is one of misery and despair,” campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said. “He has left a wake of destruction all across Florida and people are hurting because he has spent more time playing public relations games instead of actually doing the hard-work needed to improve the lives of the people he represents.”

On his social media platform Truth Social, Trump on Friday also shared a number of polls showing him far ahead of all of his potential GOP competitors.

The attacks come amid speculation that DeSantis is planning to launch a 2024 run for president in the coming weeks.

According to Florida Voice reporter Brendon Leslie, the Trump campaign sourced far-left Florida blogger Jason Garcia for its anti-DeSantis talking points. Garcia regularly trashes the conservative governor from the left on his Substack and on social media.

The Trump Campaign linked to a Substack post from Garcia who argued the governor raised taxes by more than $1 billion during his first term, although Garcia went on to note that the governor cut taxes by “more than $4 billion overall.”

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2023/04/21/just-when-dem-debates-would-have-been-interesting-dnc-says-there-will-be-no-debates-n1689234

Well, this is disappointing news. The Washington Post reported Thursday that “the national Democratic Party has said it will support Biden’s reelection, and it has no plans to sponsor primary debates.” It’s understandable: the Dems have a president, of sorts, and so they’re counting on the power of incumbency to help their superannuated kleptocrat get over the top again. However, it’s also immensely disappointing, because after years and years of Democratic presidential debates being dreary displays of candidates trying to out-socialist one another, 2024 Democratic primary debates would have actually had something to offer.

Biden has two challengers, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson. When Kennedy announced his candidacy on Wednesday, USA Today reported that RFK immediately had the “support of 14% of voters who backed President Joe Biden in 2020,” according to a USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll. Williamson had 5%, and another 13% were undecided. USA Today noted that “that is surprising strength for a candidate who has a famous political name but is now known mostly as the champion of a debunked conspiracy theory blaming childhood vaccines for autism.”

USA Today’s confident use of the word “debunked,” however, can’t mask a growing suspicion among an increasing number of Americans that the authorities aren’t being honest with us. The COVID vaccine debacle, with what was originally touted as a single shot that would protect you from a deadly disease becoming multiple shots and boosters that carried side effects that were often worse than COVID itself, only fueled that suspicion. So the establishment media’s confidence that voters will dismiss Robert F. Kennedy Jr. because they dislike this vaccine skepticism may be whistling in the dark.

Kennedy also said something extremely interesting in his announcement that he was running: “My mission over the next 18 months of this campaign and throughout my presidency, will be to end the corrupt merger of state and corporate power that is threatening now – threatening now – to impose a new kind of corporate feudalism in our country.” Well, yes, and no one else is talking with this kind of clarity and consistency about the kind of collusion that we saw in the Twitter Files between the massive corporations and the government. Not even Donald Trump.

https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/20/pity-the-reporters-assigned-to-the-ron-desantis-beat/

To get a sense of how hard reporters in Washington are struggling to kneecap Ron DeSantis ahead of his expected presidential campaign, consider that they’ve rolled in Chris Christie to attack the Florida governor.

Was no one else available? Perhaps a Republican who people outside of D.C. remember?

Politico on Thursday published a tedious interview with Christie, who, for non-historians, was once the governor of New Jersey, and gave him XXL space to share his thoughts on how inadequate DeSantis is as a challenger to Donald Trump for the Republican nomination. Earlier this week, the news site Semafor hosted Christie for a live-stream interview, during which he criticized DeSantis for his efforts to strip Disney of its weird status allowing it to function in Florida as a separate civic entity.

Christie has not worked as an elected official in more than five years. When he ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, his support among primary voters maxed out at less than 5 percent. Even Marco Rubio, the person who, to this day, Christie brags about supposedly knocking out of the race, managed to get up to 20 percent. (The debate moment that he’s credited with securing Rubio’s doom was humiliatingly referred to as a “kamikaze” mission.) And let’s not forget Christie’s most notable contribution of late — apologizing over and over again for almost dying from Covid. He literally went on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” gave an interview to The New York Times, and wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal to lecture everyone about how “wrong” it was for him to attend a White House event without a face mask. He’s that pathetic.

There are few people less relevant in general, let alone relating to the 2024 presidential election, than Chris Christie. But the media need something to report regarding DeSantis, and they’re otherwise left describing his sustained popularity in Florida or turning out another inconsequential article quoting random Democrats and unnamed Republicans who don’t like him.

Tough choice for reporters in Washington.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2023/04/14/mike-pompeo-announces-2024-presidential-run-n2621998

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo decided whether to enter the race for the 2024 White House. 

On Friday, Pompeo announced that he would not run for president against former President Trump during an interview on “Special Report.”

The Republican said that he and his wife pondered the decision for a few months but ultimately decided it was not the right time for their family. 

“I have made a decision,” Pompeo said. “We have prayerfully concluded we are not going to join the race in 2024. While we care deeply about America and the issues I’ve been talking about for the past year and a half and frankly for decades matter an awful lot, this isn’t our moment.”

Pompeo was asked if his former boss, a top contender for the GOP nomination, had any weight on his decision, which he denied but took a few digs at him.

“I think Americans are thirsting for people making arguments, not just tweets. I think they’re looking for someone who can clearly articulate their vision for what parents ought to be doing to help their kids be successful in schools and how we take back crime from our streets and cities,” Pompeo said while speaking to Fox News. “I don’t know if that will end up being President Trump that the American people choose or if that’s who our party will choose to be its nominee. But I’m hopeful it will be those debates about real arguments, things that really matter.”

However, he insisted that he still plans to support the Republican nominee no matter who it may be. 

In recent months, Pompeo had traveled to a series of early-voting states as his potential run was expected. But, in a statement, he didn’t rule out the idea of never running, saying more opportunities would come about.

“There remain many more opportunities for which the timing might be more fitting as presidential leadership becomes even more necessary,” Pompeo said. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tim-scott-presidential-primary-gop-south-carolina-conservatism-2c4b2cce?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

One regrettable reality of today’s politics is that a left-right condominium is preaching that America is a failed experiment. All the more reason to welcome GOP Sen. Tim Scott as a presidential candidate running on better days ahead and a “new American sunrise.” The question is whether he can refine his aspirational politics into a credible agenda for national renewal.

“I know America is a land of opportunity, not a land of oppression,” the 57-year-old from South Carolina said in a three-minute video released this week. “I know it because I’ve lived it.” Mr. Scott was raised by a single mother in poverty. “I was that hopeless kid in America,” he said in a 2020 speech.

But he graduated from college and started his own business, and he credits his success in large part to the support of his Christian mother and a local Chick-fil-A franchisee who took an interest in him. Many voters will see the better angels of America’s nature in this story.

Mr. Scott has been a Senator for a decade, which isn’t an asset in an era when most of the country dislikes Washington. But he has been largely a constructive force, as Senators go. He helped build the GOP coalition for tax reform in 2017, and he rightly says the Tax Cut and Jobs Act built “the most inclusive economy” in recent U.S. memory, with record low unemployment for black and Hispanic Americans.

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/wp-admin/post-new.php

There is little doubt in people’s minds that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of former President Donald Trump is politically motivated. Polls show that 60 percent of Americans believe it to be the case, including 70 percent of independent voters, and even 30 percent of Democrats. 

Bragg has so far failed to reveal any legal merit to his prosecution, especially since he bumped the charges from misdemeanors to felonies. Incidentally, his tenure as district attorney has been marred with a staggering 22 percent increase in crime, partly due to his decision to downgrade 52 percent of felony charges to misdemeanors.

The double standards employed in this case are clear as day and the public relations repercussions of Bragg’s actions did nothing but favor Trump’s bid for his party’s nomination for the presidential election next year. In the 48 hours following his arraignment in a New York City court, the Trump campaign took in more than $5 million in donations, while the great majority of the Republican Party rallied behind the former president, including some of his prospective competitors in the primaries.

Needless to say, Bragg’s rationale in pursuing such a reckless line of action deserves scrutiny. The general consensus in the media is that he is catering to a more radical segment of New York liberal voters. He hopes to shore up support, especially given his dismal record on the job.

As a campaign strategist, however, I am currently observing a masterclass in subversive campaigning on the part of the Democrats, not very dissimilar in logic to the approach they adopted during the last midterm elections, pulling an upset when they managed to tame the expected “red wave.”

Observers were baffled as to why the Democrats’ campaign talking points veered from vital issues of the day, including the poor state of the economy and the Biden Administration’s humiliating foreign policy choices, in favor of seemingly secondary subjects such as gender politics and abortion rights.

It turned out that some strategists in their campaign were thinking outside the box and figured that they were unable to convince Republicans to switch camps or independents to vote for a party that is clearly mismanaging the country. They could, however, prioritize consolidating their own voters, guaranteeing high voter turnout and commitment, particularly in swing states.

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3940807-ron-desantis-the-next-scott-walker/

“After listening to Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin as he has traveled the country preparing his campaign for president, which officially begins on Monday, admiring voters most often describe him as ‘authentic,’ ‘real’ and ‘approachable,” Mr. Walker’s advisers say.” 

That’s the opening paragraph of a July 2015 New York Times story following Scott Walker’s announcement of a presidential run. The hype for Walker was palpable. Here we had a young governor who had won three gubernatorial elections in the swing state of Wisconsin with tons of momentum seeking the GOP nomination. As a result, Walker was leading in a Monmouth University poll at the time over Donald Trump 22 percent to 13 percent in a crowded field. 

But a funny thing happened on the way to the nomination: Walker disappeared among the 17 other candidates seeking to represent the GOP. Within two months of his announcement, he had gone from frontrunner to near the bottom of the polls, capturing just 2 percent support in a September 2015 ABC News/Washington Post poll nationally and 3 percent in a Quinnipiac poll among Iowans. 

Many point to Walker’s careful approach, low-key manner and lackluster debate performances for his downfall. As ABC News noted after one debate:

“Walker’s performance came across to many observers as overly cautious and scripted. Sticking closely to his talking points throughout, Walker spoke quickly when it was his turn and didn’t use up all the time he was allotted. To the extent that Google search data offers insight into how voters responded to candidates’ debate performance, Walker’s name was one of the least searched during the debate.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/04/10/can-anyone-beat-biden-or-trump-in-2024-primaries-ii-tipp-poll/

It’s April but, with just 10 months to go, the clock is ticking down to January when the first two states (Iowa and New Hampshire) pick their favorites for president. The clear favorite for the Democrats is President Joe Biden, and for Republicans, former President Donald Trump. But neither contender can take their lead for granted, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

Look at the Democrats, for example. Biden is favored by 39% of Democrats and Democrat-leaning voters. That’s a four-point drop from 43% in March, according to the April online I&I/TIPP Poll of 662 Democrats/independents who lean Democrat, taken from March 29-31.
The poll has a +/-4.0 percentage percentage point margin of error.

Who’s No. 2? Well, it’s not a person. It’s “Not sure/Someone else,” which received 11% of the responses. The only other “challenger” within even sniffing distance of double digits is Michelle Obama, at 8%, the same reading as March.

What about Vice President Kamala Harris? Unable to reverse her flagging popularity, she actually fell in the latest poll, from 9% backing in March to just 7% in April.

Only Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has increased his tally, going from 3% support to 5% in April, a gain that’s still within the margin of error.