RUTHFULLY YOURS

Donald Trump has unleashed an unprecedented deluge of small-dollar donations for the GOP, one that Republican Party elders have dreamed about finding for much of the past decade as they’ve watched a succession of Democrats — Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders and, to a lesser extent, Hillary Clinton — develop formidable fundraising operations $5, $10 and $20 at a time.

Trump has been actively soliciting cash for only a few months, but when he reveals his campaign’s financials later this week they will show he has crushed the total haul from small-dollar donors to the past two Republican nominees, John McCain and Mitt Romney — during the entirety of their campaigns.

All told, Trump is approaching, or may have already passed, $100 million from donors who have given $200 or less, according to an analysis of available Federal Election Commission filings, the campaign’s public statements and people familiar with his fundraising operation. It is a threshold no other Republican has ever achieved in a single campaign. And Trump has done so less than three months after signing his first email solicitation for donors on June 21 — a staggering speed to collect such a vast sum.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said a senior Republican operative who has worked closely with the campaign’s small-dollar fundraising operation. “He’s the Republican Obama in terms of online fundraising.”

Clinton counted 2.3 million donors as of the end of August, the result of decades of campaigning, a previous presidential bid and allies who painstakingly built her an email file of supporters even before she formally announced her second run. But Trump had zoomed to 2.1 million donors in the past three months alone, his campaign has said.

The question now is what the gusher means for the GOP. The Republican National Committee, through a deal struck with Trump in May, is getting 20 percent of the proceeds from its small-donor operation for Trump plus access to this invaluable new donor and email file. But can Trump’s candidacy help close the Republican Party’s small-donor divide in one fell swoop? Will these donors — 2.1 million and counting — give to other Republicans? Will they drag the Republican Party in Trump’s direction for years to come? Or, if he loses, will they simply vanish?

Eleven days ago Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gave a revolutionary speech in Cleveland about public education that should have changed the face of American politics forever. Unfortunately few people know about this compassionate blueprint for desperately needed change. That is because the Sept. 8 address came the day after Trump’s strong performance at the Commander In Chief Forum hosted by Matt Lauer. Pundits’ tongues were still wagging furiously over what happened at that event as the thought that Trump could actually win in November began to sink in.

But it’s not just the fault of talking heads and the rest of the mainstream media. Trump did himself no favors during what was touted as a major speech focusing on education and lifting up America’s inner cities. Instead of diving right in, he devoted the first 18 minutes to attacks on Hillary Clinton over national security issues and the war on the Islamic State that had nothing to do with America’s inner cities and the decades that corrupt big city Democrats have spent oppressing inner-city children.

In short Trump’s revolutionary call to arms against the public school monopoly was effectively buried by the candidate’s lack of discipline. Consequently, few people are aware of Trump’s unprecedented proposal for a $130 billion plan to bail poor inner-city kids out of schools that don’t teach them, who are thus condemned to lives of grinding poverty.

The speech that unveiled a modern-day Marshall Plan to rescue poor kids in low-income neighborhoods from failing public schools barely caused a ripple. But if the lives of the poor in our inner cities are to change, Americans need to know about Trump’s plan.

What’s especially refreshing about the Trump proposal is that it is not half-hearted or drawn up in a way to placate Democrats, who now are not going to relinquish their control of the failed urban public school system. Republican politicians have in the past advocated relatively timid, innocuous-sounding school choice proposals but Trump’s plan is a blazing thunderbolt hurled at the education establishment that puts previous school choice proposals to shame.

Trump’s plan, which he laid out at Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy, an inner-city charter school, drives home the point that Democrats are the true enemies of inner-city residents. They have a monopoly control of America’s major inner cities that goes back 50 to 100 years. Democrats want poor blacks and other inner-city inhabitants to stay exactly where they are – and keep on voting Democrat until the end of time.

Everyone with eyes knows that the urban public school system in America is a travesty. Over decades the Left took a basically good system that churned out good citizens, entrepreneurs, and employees, and transformed it into a jobs program for adults, especially Democratic Party supporters and labor bosses. It amounts to a gigantic partisan slush fund that everyone who pays taxes in America is forced to support. And no matter how much money gets spent, things never seem to improve.

On Jan. 27, 2011, Clinton Foundation Chief Operating Officer Laura Graham sent an email to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff Cheryl Mills, voicing concern about a rumor. Ms. Graham had heard that Foggy Bottom was thinking about revoking the U.S. visa of Haitian Prime Minister Jean Max Bellerive. “Wjc will be v unhappy if that’s the case,” Ms. Graham warned Ms. Mills, using the initials of the former president.

Ms. Graham, who was also chief of staff to Mr. Clinton at the foundation, had other reasons to worry: “I’m also staying at [Mr. Bellerive’s] house fyi so exposure in general and this weekend in particular for wjc on this.”

So Clinton Foundation staff was hobnobbing with a powerful Haitian politician and using connections at the State Department to try to influence U.S. policy decisions involving that same politician. That’s unethical and it is also contrary to what Mrs. Clinton promised when she went before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January 2009 as president-elect Barack Obama’s secretary of state nominee.

Back then she boasted that the foundation and the incoming administration “decided to go beyond what the law and the ethics rules call for to address even the appearance of conflict” of interest with a “memorandum of understanding” to “address potential concerns” and ensure transparency.

Now a string of State Department emails from January 2011—made public through a Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, request by Citizens United—demonstrates that Mrs. Clinton’s State Department did not separate itself from the Clinton Foundation but instead collaborated with it.

In her Jan. 27 email Ms. Graham also offered advice: “Nor do I think u need remove his visa. Not sure what it gets u. Remove elizabeth’s and prevals people,” she wrote, referring to the wife of Haitian President Rene Preval and his staff.

The next publicly available email from Ms. Mills to Ms. Graham reads, “You also should consider the message it sends to others that you stay at his house.” Ms. Graham shot back that she had “discussed staying at his house w both u and wjc long ago and was told good strategic value.” CONTINUE AT SITE

If Donald Trump knew that promoting school choice would cause such a ruckus on the left, maybe he’d have weighed in sooner. The Republican nominee has found a winning issue by pitching a plan to “provide school choice to every disadvantaged student in America.” Amen.

During a visit to the Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy, Mr. Trump proposed a $20 billion block grant for states by redirecting federal education money to support charter schools and vouchers. He also endorsed merit pay for teachers and said he’d support local candidates who champion school choice.

Most of the $50 billion or so that the federal government spends on K-12 education is targeted to particular programs like teacher training, and rural and STEM education. About $14 billion in Title I funds are earmarked for disadvantaged students. However, this money doesn’t follow kids to private schools, and states often shortchange charter schools.

Mr. Trump wants to let states use federal funds to boost voucher awards, so parents rather than governments get to choose where the money goes. As he noted in Cleveland, “there is no failed policy more in need of urgent change than our government-run education monopoly.” Judging by the panicky reaction on the left, you’d think he’d proposed eliminating public education.

Hillary Clinton said his block-grant plan would “decimate public schools across America.” Yet $20 billion is merely 3% of what states spend on K-12 education each year and less than the increase in school spending in California since 2012. By the way, charters are public schools—freed of union control. CONTINUE AT SITE

According to Hillary Clinton’s campaign talking points, she wanted to “power through” her pneumonia; but after that “overheating episode” on September 11 it “seemed like the smart thing to do” to take some downtime. According to Politico.com, which obtained the document, “those phrases, projecting strength, prudence, and vigor, were among the six bullet-pointed talking points about Clinton’s health the campaign distributed to its army of outside surrogates Tuesday morning.” They were part of the “Daily Message Guidance” from her Brooklyn headquarters:

To anyone who knows Hillary, it does not come as much of a surprise that even when she’s under the weather, she would want to power through her normal schedule . . . This is the Hillary Clinton America saw as secretary of state: someone who traveled the world at a breakneck pace, tirelessly representing America abroad . . . [She] has more than met the standard set four years ago by President Obama and Mitt Romney in terms of disclosing details about her health.

The implications of this episode for the potential commander-in-chief are dire. When faced with a sudden challenge (in this case pneumonia diagnosed on September 9, assuming that was indeed the real problem), an able strategist will make an assessment that will consider likely costs and benefits of any given course of action. To “power through” was an irrational decision discretely made by Mrs. Clinton, without prior consultation with her advisors (who were apparently kept in the dark) and contrary to expert advice (her doctor had advised immediate rest). It was a high-risk course which reflected Mrs. Clinton’s preference for the possibility of strategically perilous outcome (her Sunday collapse and the ensuing legitimization of questions about her health) rather than the acceptance of tactical defeat which would have entailed payment of limited price (full disclosure of the facts of the case, taking a few days off right away).

There are numerous parallels in history, mostly alarming or outright disastrous. Two will suffice to illustrate the problem. “Powering through” is the secular, New Age-motivational equivalent of “God will provide,” which was Philip II’s standard response to the warnings that Spain was overextended in its military-political commitments—against England, France, the Netherlands, the Ottomans. Towards the end of his reign, to pleas from the Cortes of Castille that the burden was no longer bearable, he replied that “they should and must put their trust in me… [T]hey are never, on any pretext, to come to me with such a suggestion again.” But in the end it turned out that God was not Spanish, and therefore Spain was doomed to failure. His messianic imperialism prompted him to power through against reason and prudence, and after 1588, for all the money and men deployed, “and for all the prayers and devotions offered, the strategic miracles ceased.”

Rosenthal is outraged: “This district is literally Ground Zero and our representative supported the Iran Deal? Is no one paying attention?

More Jews live in New York’s tenth congressional district than in any other district in the United States. Philip J. Rosenthal – the kind of guy who could easily be a character on television’s The Big Bang Theory – wants its citizens to elect him as their representative.

Jerry Nadler, however, has been representing that area of New York, first in Albany beginning in 1977, and for the past 14 years in Washington, D.C.

So ma’neesh tanah ha this year ha zeh? Nadler voted for the Iran Deal, that’s why.

And if you don’t recall, the Iran Deal was the one issue behind which nearly all of the organizational Jewish world united against. The Iran Nuclear Deal which many Americans, especially Jews, and most especially Jewish New Yorkers, realized at the time was a deal only for Iran but a disaster for the safety of the United States, Israel and much of the West.

And yet, thumbing his nose at his constituents, Cong. Jerrold Nadler came out in support of the disastrous Iran Deal. Many folks in his district felt badly betrayed by Nadler. Some saw him as bowing to the wishes of the Democratic administration while ignoring their wishes and their safety. Nadler was the only Jewish member of the New York delegation who came out in favor of the deal.

Into the breach now steps Philip J. Rosenthal, a shiny example of a Bronx boy made and does good.

Rosenthal grew up facing a train yard and across the street from Bronx High School of Science, from which he graduated (“salutatorian, my father would want me to tell you,” he says.) Rosenthal went on to graduate from Yale University with a degree in Physics, “summa cum laude, phi beta kappa,” he says, sheepishly, again hearing his father’s voice echoing in his head).

Where next? The California Institute of Technology, where Rosenthal studied string theory and cosmology, garnering both a master’s degree and a PhD. Ouch.

If Hillary Clinton loses in November, two reasons will be Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson and Green-party nominee Jill Stein. Almost every national polls shows Hillary doing worse when the two third-party candidates are added to the mix. Even Johnson, perhaps because he is emphasizing his “social tolerance” more than his “fiscal conservatism,” is hurting Hillary more than he’s harming Donald Trump.

Stein’s impact on the race is clear. Polls show the Massachusetts physician winning between 3 percent and 5 percent of the vote, with strong appeal to former Bernie Sanders voters and leftists of all stripes. On the ballot in 44 states this fall, she is this year’s Ralph Nader, who polled 2.7 percent nationwide as the Green party’s standard-bearer in 2000. It’s generally assumed he cost Al Gore the electoral votes of Florida — and thus the election.

The impact of Gary Johnson, a former governor of New Mexico, is more nuanced. Traditionally, people voting Libertarian are dismissed as “Republicans who like to have fun,” i.e., as right-wingers with liberal social views. But Johnson’s appeal is much broader than the million or so people who usually vote Libertarian in presidential contests. Nationally, Johnson polls between 5 percent (in a YouGov poll) and 13 percent (Quinnipiac) of the vote, scoring particularly well in Western states and among young people. He will appear on the ballot in all 50 states.

In the New York Times/CBS News poll released Thursday this week, Trump and Clinton are tied at 42 percent each among likely voters. Johnson captures 8 percent of the vote and Stein 4 percent. But among voters younger than 30, Clinton has 48 percent, Trump 29 percent, and 21 percent plan to vote for Johnson or Stein or not vote at all. That level of non-support for the Democratic candidate among young people is a warning signal for Clinton. By comparison, Barack Obama won 60 percent of their votes in 2012.

Some polls show Johnson doing far better with young voters than he does in the NYT/CBS poll. A Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday showed that among Millennials, Hillary is winning 31 percent, 29 percent favor Johnson, 26 percent pick Trump, and 15 percent choose Stein.

Clinton’s problem with young voters is that while few of them can remember the relative prosperity of Bill Clinton’s presidency, many of them associate her with a corrupt, dysfunctional political system. Stanley Greenberg, a pollster who worked for Bill Clinton, told the Los Angeles Times this summer, “They think she’s a typical politician . . . aligned with the elites . . . aligned with the big money and Wall Street.”

I don’t want to identify with anything Pat Buchanan does or says or thinks…he is a nasty anti-Semite and the worst of old guard conservatives…. Read Andy McCarthy, Victor Davis Hanson, and Bruce Thornton for the cream of the crop of those who choose Trump for the right reasons…..rsk
A few days ago David Limbaugh, a widely-syndicated Republican commentator (and Rush’s less fiery younger brother) posted a commentary intended to deescalate the tensions between Trump’s supporters and the “never-Trumpers.” Limbaugh defines himself as a “reluctant Trumper,” who decided to support the Donald as the lesser of two evils after his preferred candidate Ted Cruz stumbled in the primaries. Limbaugh does not hide his dislike for Trump’s free-wheeling rhetoric and believes that the GOP nominee’s critics on the right may be fully justified in doubting his “genuine commitment to conservative policies.”

Despite these doubts, Limbaugh endorses Trump for reasons that one also hears from Sean Hannity, Pat Buchanan, Jerry Falwell, Jr., Larry Elder, and yours truly. Trump has “many incentives to implement our [conservative] policies,” while Hillary Clinton has absolutely none. He is also, not incidentally, bestowing on the Republican Party a large working class constituency; and even among racial minorities, he is doing at least as well, and in the case of prospective black voters, better than his GOP centrist predecessors, Mitt Romney and John McCain. Moreover, it is hard not to see Trump’s focusing on the problems of illegals and sanctuary cities as anything other than a “conservative” issue. That remains the case even if most of his primary competitors and certainly the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal might wish those issues had never been brought into the primaries.

Although Limbaugh dutifully provides the reasons that someone claiming to be on the right should vote for Trump, he still can’t resist extolling the never-Trumpers. (Although they’re not my buddies, they may be his.) These supposedly principled conservatives deeply believe that “the best chance of saving the nation in the long run is to avoid elevating Trump to president and leader of the party because he could forever destroy conservatism and the Republican brand.” Although Limbaugh concedes that some establishment Republicans may be found among these noble idealists, most of the never-Trumpers “shared our frustration” about where the party was headed in the hands of unprincipled operators. Limbaugh closes his remarks with this statement: “I respect the never-Trumpers and will not presume to judge them as abandoning the nation’s best interests.”

It is of course possible to be so principled that one refuses to settle for politicians who don’t entirely live up to one’s ideals. About ten years ago I addressed a club named for the great conservative Republican of an earlier era Robert A. Taft. During my interaction with members I found that some of them would only vote for a leader who patterned himself on the organization’s namesake. Although I continue to refer to myself as a “Taft Republican,” I thought some of the young people I spoke with held unrealistically high expectations.

But in the case of the never-Trumpers, I would never make this criticism. Here we are dealing mostly with GOP shills who four years ago were drooling on cue over Mitt Romney and who four years earlier were gilding the lily for John McCain. What exactly were the high “conservative” principles that these candidates of the never-Trumpers articulated that Trump has failed to express? Indeed Trump has raised social issues that Romney and McCain, who were hailed as “conservatives” refused to even touch on the campaign trail. Unlike them, he has promised to appoint “conservatives” to federal judgeships and to protect the religious liberty of devout Christians, who have been beaten from pillar to post by Obama and who are not likely to be treated any better under a Clinton presidency.