RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/marc-molinaro-underdog-candidate-for-new-york-governor/Is Marc Molinaro an underdog? Or a sacrificial lamb?

Governor Andrew Cuomo has called him a “Trump mini-me” — “anti-woman, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ.”

Marc Molinaro, the Dutchess County executive and Republican candidate for governor of New York, takes this in stride. When I ask him about it, he shrugs and quotes Michelle Obama: “When they go low, we go high.”

Focusing on moral character and personal integrity seems important to Molinaro’s campaign, which is striving against considerable odds to win the governorship in a state that has not sent a Republican to the executive mansion since 2002. But if any Republican can achieve that goal, Molinaro says, he’s the man for the job. He was brought up on food stamps, he says, and had to grow up fast. When I suggest that such government support could have sent him in a Democratic direction, he replies that, on the contrary, it taught him the value of hard work and achievement, the refrains of the Republican playbook: that he needed to take the support he had been given and make something of it, and therefore of himself. Limited government, he says, can be helpful in overcoming poverty and societal hardship — but help is synergistic, and the individual then has to use what he was given to surmount the worst obstacles himself.

He considers himself a pragmatist, a middle-of-the-road Republican who can work with political rivals to, say, make sure the garbage gets picked up. He’s a social moderate — pro-gay-marriage (“I’ve evolved” since voting against it in 2011, he says — “like Barack Obama, like Hillary Clinton, like Andrew Cuomo”) and pro-choice, albeit with restrictions and not for late-term abortions (“there are certain lines I just can’t cross”). He adds that he can build the relationships necessary to work across the aisle, with Democrats including New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, and that he will listen to everyone who disagrees with him — from the left and from the right. He points to Cuomo’s June 2014 remarks that “extreme conservatives . . . have no place in New York” as proof that working across the aisle is something that the current governor simply cannot do.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/top-dem-contender-for-president-cant-name-a-single-accomplishment/

Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calf.) was asked by a radio host to name her top accomplishment since coming to the Senate and all she could come up with is that she sat on committees.

Harris has been prominently mentioned as a potential nominee for president from the Democratic Party.

Podcast host Aminatou Sow asked Harris, “We’re wondering, maybe, if you could talk about what at this point you consider your biggest win, or the thing that when you’re like ‘Wow, when I look back at those 18 months, this is the thing that I want top of the resume,'” Sow said.

Harris answered:

I’ll tell you. Umm. One of the things that I think, for me, is most important is the role that I serve on that various committees that I’m on — umm — which are oversight committees. Let’s be clear. Those committees exist to watch and question what is going on with our government, the United States government. So, I’m on Senate Intelligence, I’m on Homeland Security, I’m on Judiciary and the accomplishment then is for me is a function of what I think my role should be. Often, especially in the last 18 months, has been to try and get at the truth.

Wow. That’s some “top of the resume.”

From that same interview: “And so, the accomplishment is, and the goal is to always make sure that we are being, and the system is being, as transparent as possible, and that, frankly, that the American public has the answers and that we’re being told the truth,” she said. “And when that happens, I feel a sense of accomplishment and when it doesn’t happen, I feel a sense of frustration.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/arizona-republicans-brace-for-a-storm-1533936117

Anyone who’s lived in Arizona is familiar with the summer monsoons that sweep across the desert, bringing a tsunami of sand. The rain can come on suddenly but is usually presaged by hurricane-force gusts carrying dark, thick plumes. Some people say they can sense a storm coming by the electricity in the air.

For Republicans, this year’s midterm elections have that sort of ominous feel. Liberal intensity has been building across the country, fueled by revulsion at Donald Trump. Longtime GOP redoubts are suddenly up for grabs in special elections. Republicans this week appear to have eked out a victory in Ohio’s 12th Congressional District, which the GOP had won in 2016 by more than 35 points.

Arizona, the land of Barry Goldwater, has long leaned right. Between 1952 and 2016, Democrats carried the state in only one presidential election, in 1996. Today Republicans control the governorship, both chambers of the Legislature, both U.S. Senate seats and five of nine House seats. But demographic changes are pulling the electorate leftward, even as Mr. Trump is polarizing voters.

Hispanics make up nearly a third of the state’s population and more than 40% in the two biggest cities, Phoenix and Tucson. Mr. Trump carried Arizona by a mere 3.5 points in 2016, compared with Mitt Romney’s 9-point margin in 2012. Many Republicans and independents in the suburbs are repelled by the president’s abrasive personality and restrictionist immigration policies. Caught in the political maelstrom are Gov. Doug Ducey and Rep. Martha McSally.

Ms. McSally is running for the GOP nomination to succeed Sen. Jeff Flake. A second-term congresswoman from Tucson, she would seem to be a GOP dream candidate: a former Air Force fighter pilot who can return liberal fire. Her military background is a major asset in a state with 1,200 aerospace and defense companies. CONTINUE AT SITE

During a campaign rally in suburban Columbus last Saturday, President Trump invited Rep. Jim Jordan to the stage. “How great is he?” Trump asked the crowd about the Ohio native. The packed school auditorium soon filled with chants, “Speaker of the House! Speaker of the House!”

Trump continued: “What a brave, tough cookie. I don’t want to wrestle him, he’s tough. I think he’s like 128 and one,” Trump said, referring to Jordan’s championship high school wrestling career. But the president—not a stickler for accuracy—was off by a bit. Jordan wrestling record was 150-1.

Jordan took the stage, got a bear hug from the president, and ticked off a long list of Trump’s achievements in office. “Think about this, in 18 months, regulations reduced, taxes lowered, Gorsuch on the court, the economy growing at a record rate, unemployment at its lowest rate in 20 years, Kavanaugh’s on deck on the court, we’re out of that crazy Iran deal, the embassy has gone to Jerusalem, and the hostages have been returned from North Korea.”

Will this mutual admiration society between the president and the congressman help boost Jordan’s chances to become the next speaker of the House?

In a letter to his Republican colleagues last month, Jordan announced he will run to replace outgoing Speaker Paul Ryan if Republicans maintain control of the House after the midterm elections. Jordan will face off against Ryan’s preferred successor, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), and possibly Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.).

The feisty six-term congressman from central Ohio won’t go down without a fight. (His district is adjacent to the district where Republican Troy Balderson narrowly won a special election on Tuesday.) Similar to the president, Jordan is not afraid to speak bluntly or to offend the self-righteous sensibilities of the ruling class. Not only is the 54-year-old father of four a former state wrestling champion and college coach, he goes bare-knuckles against some of the most powerful interests in Washington.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270979/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-model-loses-midwest-daniel-greenfield

“Abdul El-Sayed’s Campaign Is a Test for Leftism in the Midwest,” New York Magazine declared.

That was on Sunday.

On Monday, ThinkProgress called El-Sayed’s campaign one to prove “Democratic socialism can win in the Midwest.”

On Tuesday, socialism and leftism failed the Midwest test.

Bernie Sanders, socialism’s confused grandpa, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, socialism’s new model, had flown out to campaign for El-Sayed’s gubernatorial campaign in Michigan. A Guardian article sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation had dubbed the Muslim socialist candidate, “The New Obama”.

El-Sayed had run on socialized medicine under its current misleading brand of “Medicare for All.” It had proven financially unviable everywhere from Vermont to California. And Michigan’s finances make it an especially terrible candidate for socialized medicine. But socialism is having a moment. Or is it?

Bernie Sanders, Linda Sarsour and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the entire left, couldn’t manage to drag El-Sayed over the finish line in a state with a large Muslim population. And El-Sayed didn’t just lose.

He lost badly.

The media had been trying to build up El-Sayed as another Ocasio-Cortez while repeatedly claiming that there was a tight race. The election showed that there had never actually been much of a competition.

El-Sayed isn’t socialism’s only Midwestern misfire. A few days ago, the New York Times was touting Cori Bush as the woman to pull off Ocasio-Cortez’s playbook in the “heartland”. Like El-Sayed, Cori Bush was running on a $15 minimum wage, “Medicare for All” and free college.

Bush was a Black Lives Matter organizer. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came to campaign for her. Like Cortez, Bush was supposed to beat Rep. Lacy Clay, a CBC hack welded to his seat by identity politics, by applying the same insurgent tactics that had allowed Cortez to beat Rep. Joe Crowley in New York.

Michigan’s Underdog Senate Primary Winner John James Offers A Bright Future For Voters And Republicans
Ignoring the Michigan race as an easy win for an incumbent Democrat is a mistake, with several factors making this a contest to watch.By Margot Clevelandhttp://thefederalist.com/2018/08/08/michigans-underdog-senate-primary-winner-john-james-offers-bright-future-voters-republicans/

Political newcomer John James won Michigan’s Tuesday Republican senatorial primary. The previous underdog finished with a solid 9 percent victory over opponent Sandy Pensler, thanks in part to a late-July endorsement from Donald Trump. Trump also recorded a telephone pitch for James that went out to Republican voters the day before they headed to the polls.

James, who suffers from sparse name recognition, will face Democrat Debbie Stabenow when voters head to the polls in November. Prior to the primary, Stabenow held a nearly 20-point lead in a hypothetical head-to-head contest between the Democrat senator and the political novice, leading national pundits to write off the contest.

RealClearPolitics, for instance, sees the seat staying in Democratic hands because of Republicans’ failure to “come up with a solid challenger.” Even with the increasing focus on the 2018 midterm elections—which will determine control of the Senate for the remainder of President Trump’s first term—Michigan’s Senate battle remains but a blip in the national coverage.

Ignoring the Michigan race, however, is a mistake, with several factors making this a contest to watch. First, beltway observers ignore James’ appeal. Salena Zito, whose on-the-ground, back-roads reporting of election 2018 proved prescient, captured this reality in her profile of the senatorial candidate, “John James Could Be the Future Republicans Have Been Waiting for.”

James is a young, accomplished, determined, devout black man, the kind of new conservative that the Grand Old Party needs to shake up next year’s midterm election cycle. He is at once full of energy, grace, command, and passion.

When this young man tells you he is running on conviction, everything about him tells you he is not a poser. He says: “I am called to a life of service. I want to serve my country and my community and my state. When I would come back from Iraq on leave during the great recession, the economic and societal devastation I saw here in my own state floored me.’”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-and-the-di-spy-1533598269

Donald Trump couldn’t resist commenting on the news that Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein was the target of Chinese spying, but he missed the main point.

“I like Dianne Feinstein, I have to tell you, but I don’t like the fact she had a Chinese spy driving her, and she didn’t know it,” Mr. Trump averred at a Saturday rally in Ohio, adding: “Then she says to me: ‘Well, what did you know about this and that [Russia collusion]?’ I mean, give me a break, c’mon folks.”

But the issue here isn’t what Mrs. Feinstein says about Mr. Trump; it’s what the FBI told Mrs. Feinstein but didn’t tell Mr. Trump.

Foreign countries are always trying to steal U.S. secrets, and they sometimes succeed. In this case Mrs. Feinstein tweeted over the weekend that the FBI approached her five years ago with concerns about an “administrative” staffer in her San Francisco office with “no access to sensitive information.” She said she “learned the facts and made sure the employee left my office immediately.”

This is what the FBI should do, and the question Mr. Trump should ask is why the bureau didn’t treat him as a potential President with the same customary courtesy. The FBI claims it had concerns beginning in spring 2016 that low-level Trump campaign staffers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos were colluding with Russians. Yet rather than give the Trump campaign the usual defensive briefing, the FBI launched an unprecedented counterintelligence investigation into a presidential campaign, running informants against it and obtaining surveillance warrants. The country is still enduring the polarizing fallout from that decision through special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.

For a brief time not long ago, Wisconsin’s political leadership was the power center of the national Republican Party: In 2016, Governor Scott Walker ran for president; Rep. Paul Ryan was the Speaker of the House; and Reince Priebus was the head of the Republican National Committee who then became Donald Trump’s first chief of staff. Trump was the first Republican presidential candidate since 1984 to win the Badger State.

But the state’s hold on the GOP since has loosened. Ryan is retiring from Congress and Priebus only lasted six months at the White House. Walker is running for reelection in what looks to be a close race. And the Republican establishment’s chosen candidate in the August 14 U.S. Senate primary—State Sen. Leah Vukmir—is in a tight battle against a political newcomer who once was a Democrat.

Kevin Nicholson, 40, is an impressive candidate. A father of three, Nicholson is a decorated Marine combat officer who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. After his service, he earned an MBA from Dartmouth and a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard. His war experience and business education changed him from a Democrat to a Republican.

“I’m a conservative today not because I was born one, but because of the experience I earned as a Marine in combat, my experience as a husband and father, my choice to be a Christian, the schools I chose to attend and the decision to pursue the career that I have,” he told the Washington Post in February. That apparently did not sit well with Nicholson’s Democratic parents, who last year donated the maximum amount to his prospective general election opponent, incumbent U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin, after he announced his candidacy.

He also is not very popular with the state’s Republican power players. Ryan and several of his Wisconsin congressional colleagues have endorsed Vukmir. After she won the state party’s endorsement with 75 percent of the vote, Vukmir’s campaign manager said Nicholson should “respect the will of the people that have delivered Gov. Walker and Sen. [Ron] Johnson into office time and time again, and leave the race.”

When audio surfaced of Nicholson lightly criticizing Ryan for not endorsing Trump in the presidential election and having a “light footprint” in the state, Vukmir’s campaign (ridiculously) demanded an apology. Not exactly a winning strategy in a climate where voters are hostile to the commands of the political ruling class.

Recent polls suggest the race is neck-and-neck. An NBC News/Marist poll taken in late July showed Nicholson with a 10-point lead over Vukmir, with one-third of voters undecided. An Emerson College poll shows the race between the two Republicans is in a dead heat. But Nicholson seems to have an edge over Vukmir in a potential race against Baldwin.