RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/president-trump-bulldozes-republican-leaders-should-not-force-loaylty/The President cows his critics, but he should be careful how much loyalty he demands.

Inside the Republican party, President Trump is riding high and his critics seem to be running scared. He enjoys sky-high approval ratings from voters who identify with the GOP, and his Republican critics are paying a price for crossing him.

On Tuesday, the day that voters went to the polls in South Carolina, Trump slammed GOP representative Mark Sanford and urged Republicans to vote for his rival in the congressional race in the state’s first district:

The tweet almost certainly played a role in Sanford’s defeat. Next month, Representative Martha Roby of Alabama faces a run-off at least in part because she criticized Trump two years ago during the 2016 campaign. Trump’s ire at Arizona senator Jeff Flake probably played a role in Flake’s plummeting poll numbers and his decision last year to retire after one term.

Sanford ruefully told NBC’s Meet the Press that while he supported the president’s legislative agenda about 90 percent of the time, it wasn’t enough for some primary voters who demanded personal loyalty to Trump. His defeat will make it harder for his congressional colleagues to call Trump out, he said, whether it’s on trade or on his twist-and-turn foreign policy. “From an electoral sense, people are running for cover because they don’t want to be on the losing side of a presidential tweet,” Sanford told host Chuck Todd. “And from a popular standpoint, it’s almost a Faustian bargain: I’ll pander to you if you pander to me.”

That mutual dependency has smoothed over a lot of rough spots in President Trump’s relationship with GOP lawmakers. But on Tuesday, Trump will meet with House Republicans in an effort to push for his immigration policy. Some worry that Trump will threaten to undermine those who oppose him.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/06/democrats_need_antisemites_to_win.html

The Democrat Party’s power depends on Jew-haters. Democrat politicians and their media elite pander and promote anti-Semitism for two reasons. It is a key part of the identity politics of the left, and since Obama’s transformative impact on his own party, the left is calling the tune on Democrat leadership, policy, and getting out the vote. The other reason is naked power. The Democrat Party can’t win with only the votes of decent people. They need the haters, so they’re fine with the hate.

We are talking about Democrats from top to bottom, regular Democrats — leadership, elected officials, donors, voters. We are talking about the Democrats’ indispensable voting blocs: blacks, Hispanic immigrants, feminists, gay activists, campus millennials, our growing Muslim population. Every Democratic demographic except white suburban women is stuffed with anti-Semites.

As the left wing takes over the Democratic levers of power, they are bringing anti-Jewish bigotry into the mainstream. Leftists embrace anti-Semitism on principle. The principle is intersectionality. While all whites and heterosexuals are attacked as oppressors, Jews are called out for special targeting, even progressive Jews.

The Collegefix.com reports:

Politically progressive Jews are also being ostracized by like-minded peers “because of their support, or even just presumed support, for Israel,” the report says: “Jewish students report being rejected from progressive social justice activities such as pro-choice rallies, anti-rape demonstrations, Black Lives Matter events and racial justice conferences.”

This is not about compassion for Arabs. Swastika graffiti on campuses calls for death to Israel. It calls for all Jews to be killed. Progressive attacks on Israel morphs into old-fashioned anti-Semitism: Jews murder children, secretly run things, are subhuman creatures, are pariahs.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/midterm-elections-trump-may-not-drive-voters-to-democrats/
Voters also dislike the Left’s nonstop focus on impeachment and ‘resistance.’

Five months before the midterm elections, predictions that Democrats will ride a “blue wave” to forcefully sweep away GOP control of the House of Representatives have become hopes that a high tide can still bring them a bare majority of 218 seats.

Last week, political analyst Larry Sabato found 211 House seats at least leaning to the Republicans, 198 at least leaning to the Democrats, and 26 toss-ups. If the toss-ups break evenly, Democrats would gain 17 seats, but the GOP would still have a 224-to-211 House majority. What has changed to give Republicans a better-than-fighting chance to hold on?

One explanation is the economy, which may improve President Trump’s approval ratings and affect how voters plan to vote in November. In June 2016, only 32 percent of Americans rated the economy as “good” or “excellent.” Today 62 percent do. The growth rate for President Obama’s last year in office was only 1.6 percent; growth projections for the second quarter of 2018 are north of 4 percent. The stock market is up 25 percent since Trump’s inauguration. Midterm elections that have occurred in a cycle featuring clear economic growth, such as those in 1998 and 1978, have seen the party that occupies the White House doing much better than in years when the economy was struggling.

Nonetheless, President Trump’s drama-prone leadership seems to be contributing to his less-than-stellar polling numbers, which are still upside down. But his favorability ratings have improved. His job approval was only 37 percent in December. The average of polls monitored by RealClearPolitics now has him at just under 43 percent approval, his highest in more than a year. Along with that improvement, Republicans now are only about five to seven points behind in polls that ask voters which party they want to control Congress. That is significantly below the 12.5 percentage point lead that Democrats had in June 2006, the last year they took back control of the House.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270395/brotherhood-linked-congressman-running-be-ag-matthew-vadum
Just for the record, Ellison who represents District 5 in Minnesota, got an 8+ from the Arab American Association, for his anti-Israel bias and votes…..rsk

Brotherhood-linked Congressman Keith Ellison is giving up his ultra-safe seat in the U.S. House of Representatives to run for the post of attorney general of Minnesota, a risky move in a state that isn’t as radically left-wing as his home district.

The primary election is Aug. 14.

Ellison, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) deputy chairman who essentially endorsed the violent anarchists and communists of the subversive Antifa movement, claims he wants to be the North Star State’s top lawyer to litigate away in a quest for justice.

“It was attorneys general who led the fight against [President Trump’s so-called] Muslim ban,” Ellison said after filing his paperwork on the final day allowed. “I want to be a part of that fight.”

“As Attorney General, I will push for equal rights under the law, for commonsense gun safety laws, and for criminal justice reform that ends unjust policies and creates a pathway for Minnesotans to reenter as contributing members of society.”

“No one — not even a President — is above the law,” he wrote in a statement. Minnesotans “need a fighter on their side,” he added, calling himself the “People’s Lawyer.”

But the term “People’s Lawyer” has a special meaning for left-wing radicals.

The Left likes to refer to some of its legal heroes like Sixties icon William Kunstler as “People’s Lawyers.” It’s not what you might think.

A “People’s Lawyer” – the phrase is always capitalized – is a crusading, small-c communist attorney who devotes his life to using the legal system to fundamentally transform America. As such it is a profoundly antisocial, un-American concept, so, naturally, it is embraced by the communist-dominated National Lawyers Guild (NLG).

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/06/07/club_for_growth_notches_another_win_137218.html

In baseball, if you get one hit every three times at bat, you’re an All-Star. The odds in politics aren’t much different. But the Club for Growth PAC, the political action committee for the right-leaning free-market advocacy group, is on a bit of a hot streak.

Its most recent win came Tuesday night in Montana, where the group’s favored candidate, State Auditor Matt Rosendale, scored a hard-fought victory in the four-way Republican Senate primary. The Club for Growth PAC, which endorsed Rosendale last July, pumped more than $2 million into the race to help boost Rosendale over former Judge Russ Fagg by a 34 percent to 28 percent margin.

“Not only is Matt Rosendale a staunch fiscal conservative, he is a proven winner who stands an excellent chance of defeating liberal Sen. Jon Tester in the fall,” said Club for Growth President David McIntosh in a statement Tuesday night.

Montana, which President Trump won by 20 percentage points in 2016, is a top target of Republicans this fall. Until recently, however, when Trump ripped Tester on Twitter for statements he made about Dr. Ronnie Jackson, at the time Trump’s embattled nominee for secretary of Veterans Affairs, the race in Montana had largely taken a back seat to Senate battles in West Virginia, Indiana, and Missouri.

The Club for Growth’s success in backing Rosendale comes on the heels of a banner night in last month’s Texas primary runoffs, where three of the four CFG-backed candidates scored wins:

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/06/soros_becomes_the_kiss_of_death_for_his_own_handpicked_da_candidates.html

Is Soros money becoming the kiss of death for candidates who take it? Sure looks like it, based on the miserable poll performance of Soros’s little pawn in the San Diego district attorney’s race.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune:

A political action committee funded by billionaire George Soros that has pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into the campaign of Genevieve Jones-Wright for district attorney canceled all of its planned television advertising Wednesday for the candidate, just six days before voters go to the polls.

The move by the California Justice & Public Safety PAC, confirmed by two local television station managers, is a blow to the Jones-Wright campaign in the run-up to election day. The PAC had been running saturation-level television advertisements for the past several weeks over county airwaves.

The money-yanking is clearly the result of polls showing that Genevieve Jones-Wright, his 30-something handpicked candidate, is failing miserably in the polls against her opponent, Summer Stephan, another leftist who is no prize but doesn’t take Soros money and probably will enforce the law at least some of the time, when there’s no political risk.

A scientific poll conducted by 10News and the San Diego Union-Tribune shows that Stephan has a 45-25 lead over Jones-Wright.

From an uber liberal magazine…this is very instructive because it shows the Dems in breast beating panic mode…rsk

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/05/democrats-are-losing-the-only-fight-that-matters
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/05/democrats-are-losing-the-only-fight-that-matters

Even in an era of historic media fragmentation, Donald Trump dominates our attention universe to the point where he blocks out the sun. Is it any wonder that people don’t have any idea what Democrats stand for?

On the same day this week that President Donald Trump was tweeting about the F.B.I.’s fictional #SPYGATE “scandal” and the special counsel’s “WITCH HUNT” into the Trump campaign’s relationship with Russia—lies that were splashed across the country’s television and mobile screens in short order—Senate Democrats held a photo-op at the most expensive Exxon station on Capitol Hill. Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, was joined by three other suit-wearing Democrats to make the case that Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal would drive up gas prices. It was a definitional middle-class “pocketbook” argument, one that Democrats hope to make part of their 2018 economic message. Schumer, waving a sheaf of paper, stood behind a sign that proclaimed, rather impotently, “Senate Democrats Demand Lower Gas Prices.”

“Senate Democrats look for traction on gas prices,” was the headline of The Hill’s perfunctory write-up of the event. Did you hear anything about it? Most likely you didn’t. Traction, in the Trump era, is a mighty difficult thing to obtain.This is always true for the party out of power, forced to reckon with its ideological cleavages, personality conflicts, and the lack of a singular leader who can compete head-to-head with the bully pulpit of a president. But Trump, our first celebrity president, has made the challenge even more difficult for his foes. We are supposed to be living in a time of historic media fragmentation, when the competition for fickle eyeballs is the chief priority for businesses, media companies, and politicians. Only Trump, an old-school media hound who still cares about things like magazine covers and leathery-faced, 90s-era TV personalities, has figured it out. He dominates our attention universe to the point where he blocks out the sun. It is as depressing as it is remarkable. And it’s no wonder people don’t quite know what Democrats stand for.We inhabit a world of niche interests and platforms and distractions, where everyone is supposedly paying attention to their own thing. Unlike the mass-audience days of I Love Lucy—a show that commanded a remarkable 71 percent of television eyeballs in 1953—today you can happily silo yourself from signals that you don’t care about. Our attention spans are shrinking. Axios reported this week that more than 70 percent of the American population regularly uses another digital device while watching TV. It’s incredibly hard to seize attention in 2018; there’s too much to read and watch, too much to look at. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://amgreatness.com/2018/05/29/why-democrats-depend-upon

The Anti-Defamation League’s map of antisemitic incidents is almost the same as the map of blue states. Liberal Massachusetts, Florida, Pennsylvania, and California are the worst, with up to 400 antisemitic hate crimes. West Virginia, supposedly full of deplorable people, comes in with just two incidents. Idaho, still smeared as a home to white militias, had only five, compared to liberal Connecticut’s 50.

Democrats rely on anti-Jewish voting blocks to win elections. Hispanic immigrants are 30-40 percent antisemitic, three or four times the national average. Blacks are twice the national average, 20-30 percent antisemitic. Our millions of new Muslim immigrants are doubly anti-Semitic, by religion and by the legacy of the Third Reich.

On college campuses, Jew-hatred is everywhere—in course lectures, public programs, hate incidents, and boycotts of Israel. We are not talking about ordinary political discourse. We are talking about claims that Jews are subhuman, rule the world, murder children, that Israel should be a pariah nation, and that Jews should be killed. Anti-Jewish programming is protected by college administrators and paid for with public funds. Millennials have absorbed antisemitic libels in large numbers.

Common antisemitism among the black community is now visible to outsiders, thanks to social media. “Black Woman Destroys White Privilege Myth” is a million-hit YouTube success. It starts out so sensibly. The creator, a small-town Texas Millennial, cheerfully admits black privilege got her into college without the required SAT scores. She forcefully disagrees there is such a thing as white privilege—with one exception:

If you go to work every single day for a 40-hour work week, you are not privileged. If you pay taxes, you are not privileged. You got a mortgage, you got a car payment, you’re not privileged. If you had to apply for your job, you’re not privileged. The real privileged people in our society are the movie makers, the politicians, etc. etc. And all of those people happen to be Jewish. Jewish people have privilege.

I suspect it sounds normal to the black Washington, D.C. council member who posted his own antisemitic Facebook video rant last month about a snowstorm.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/05/bill_kristol_barks_at_the_moon.html

Some #NeverTrumpers won’t quit. Indeed, so chained are they to their hurt pride and delusions, they can’t. Foremost among them is Bill Kristol, former editor of the Weekly Standard.

Speaking at a New Hampshire gathering of businessmen called “Politics and Eggs,” Mr. Kristol asserted that President Trump should be challenged in the 2020 GOP primary. That in and of itself is not a bad idea. Clearing the air between opposing philosophies have value. In this instance, it would come about in two ways. First, it allows the president to expound on his successes and ongoing efforts to MAGA and contrast them with his opponents. On the other side of the coin, as the likes of Jeff Flake, John Kasich, Mitt Romney, or any of the other establishment Republican regulars drone on, they make promises that they either never intend or lack the fortitude to keep. Their schtick is so transparent, so tedious, so yesterday. At least with Trump in the mix, there is great entertainment value when the GOPe try their old boilerplate rhetoric on him face-to-face.

Kristol’s rationale for challenging Trump is from the Far Side. He admits the president’s approval rating is quite high — over 80-percent among Republicans. But Kristol says (hopes) that could change. And anyway, he feels Trump’s success and high approval ratings are only due to good luck. Kristol acknowledges that Trump could actually win the 2020 primary because: “He [Trump] could just get very lucky, that happens in life. People aren’t very good pitchers, but they pitch one very good game.” See, the 2016 election was the one good game Trump had in him. Now he’s spent.

https://pjmedia.com/election/bill-kristol-searches-out-republicans-to-primary-president-trump-in-2020/

Bill Kristol, anti-Trump activist and editor-at-large of The Weekly Standard, set his sights Wednesday on finding a Republican to challenge President Donald Trump in 2020. Kristol attempted to convince New Hampshire activists that primarying a sitting president is possible.

“I have a feeling that we are now entering … a turbulent era, when the character of both parties is up for grabs,” Kristol told activists at Saint Anselm College over breakfast.

The Weekly Standard editor floated five potential #NeverTrump candidates in an interview with BuzzFeed News’s Henry J. Gomez.

Kristol mentioned former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), Defense Secretary James Mattis — all three of whom were on his 2016 wish list — and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. Kristol also praised Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio), whom the Weekly Standard editor visited in Ohio earlier this month. CONTINUE AT SITE