RUTHFULLY YOURS

How anyone who watched last night’s debate could continue to support Donald Trump is a mystery. The man is a bundle of character flaws, large and small. His behavior betrays his megalomania, his narcissism, and his venal, childish hostility to anyone who dares to disagree with him. He lies so often his opponents on the debate stage could not begin to counter them all.

This man should never, never become the president of the United States. He has never matured beyond the lower elementary school age, and given today’s tyranny of political correctness that regulates how even toddlers in pre-school must conduct themselves and restrict their speech, Mr. Trump would very likely be expelled from any pre-school in the country, let alone a high school or university. The man is the worst America has to offer, an example of the gross deterioration of our national culture.

That this man has a following is a permanent black mark on our nation. Support for “The Donald” relegates us to just a few degrees separate from those who celebrated Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Juan Perón, or any other tyrant who came to power via a cult of personality, no matter how warped his character. Has our educational system failed so badly that we have been brought to our knees by an obvious charlatan? Have we become a reality show nation? It seems that we have indeed. We elected Obama twice; Trump would be the natural successor to Obama’s duplicity and disdain for our founding document. It is a safe bet that Trump has never read the Constitution and has not a clue how profound it is.

Many Americans shook their heads in 2008 wondering how in the world President Obama was elected when he had told us plainly that he wanted to “fundamentally transform” our country. Then, the perplexity increased when he was reelected in 2012 long after his radical policies and disdain for the Constitution were abundantly evident. Unbelievably, after suffering through the effrontery of the Obama Administration’s arrogance and his flaunting of executive actions instead of bipartisanship, the nation is now enthralled with Donald Trump’s bombastic, flamboyant, but empty promises – based solely on his ability to capitalize on the public’s anger and to manipulate people’s fears, rather than specific policy proposals or potential for effective constitutional governance — to come in and liberate us from the overweening government bureaucrats with their endless thirst for control and restore America’s greatness. The Washington Post summarized the situation by claiming that Donald Trump is giving the establishment (on both Capitol Hill and K Street) the “middle finger” and “his supporters love it.” One analyst likened Trump to a parasite eating up the host; another called him America’s “Fatal Attraction.”

Clearly, Donald Trump is a brash, arrogant bully with a “yuuge” ego who sees things in black and white, winners and losers. Trump offends sensibilities with unpresidential behavior, crudities and bad manners, along with insults and accusations of lying against other candidates. Still, the more obnoxious he has become, the better his ratings. He has tapped into middle-America’s need for a “straight-up guy” who’ll “tell things like they are” without any consideration for how he offends the PC crowd. The public has had enough of politicians who talk out of “both sides of their mouths” to say one thing to the voters during election campaigns while planning to do another. At this point, the public doesn’t believe any politician; they want an outsider. They’ll take the crudity because it least it’s an authentic expression of their frustration and anger.

During Thursday night’s CNN-hosted Republican debate in Houston, Texas, candidate Marco Rubio finally took on leading contender Donald Trump, face-to-face, about Israel. Referring to Trump’s statements that he would be a “neutral broker” between Israel and the Palestinians, Rubio argued, “The Palestinians are not a real estate deal, Donald.”

“A deal is a deal,” Trump replied.

“A deal is not a deal when you’re dealing with terrorists,” Rubio said.

This is what Rubio knows in a nutshell — something the Obama administration has ignored for the past seven years, and not only in relation to the Palestinian Authority. It is a key reason, though by no means an exclusive one, for getting the Democrats out of the White House and State Department.

Rubio has been consistent about his grasp of why Israel and America are both the globe’s good guys and natural allies.

At a rally on Wednesday night, in the lead-up to the final debate before Super Tuesday on March 1, Rubio was inspired and inspiring on this point.

“We’re going to have a policy of moral clarity,” he said. “I’ll give you a perfect example — Israel. Israel is the only pro-American free-enterprise democracy in the entire Middle East. I’ll put it to you this way: If there were more Israels in the Middle East — more pro-American, free-enterprise democracies — the world would be so much safer.”

He also attacked the UN for being “obsessed” with the Jewish state. “Every week, they’ve got new resolutions condemning Israel,” he said, using this to illustrate the “new face of anti-Semitism in the world.”

As for the Palestinians, Rubio said, “They teach little kids — five-year-olds — that it’s a glorious thing to kill Jews.”

Indeed, he emphasized, “The Palestinians don’t want a deal, [and] they’ve already said, ‘We want to destroy Israel.’ So what are you going to negotiate? The rate of the destruction? The date of the destruction? We will not be an impartial advocate when it comes to the issue of Israel. When I’m president, we’re going to take sides. We are going to be on Israel’s side.”

Even before Rubio announced he would be running for America’s highest office, however, he made impassioned speeches on Israel’s behalf.

FORT WORTH — Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Friday received the high-profile endorsement of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), a stunning blow to the four remaining GOP White House hopefuls who are urgently working to obstruct the billionaire’s path to the nomination.

“I’ve gotten to know all the people on that stage, and there is no one who is better prepared to provide America with the strong leadership that it needs, both at home and around the world, than Donald Trump,” Christie said during a news conference with Trump here in Fort Worth.

The surprise endorsement comes as the Trump campaign continues its muscular charge toward the Republican nomination, bolstered by double-digit leads in national polls. A strong showing in the March 1 “Super Tuesday” primaries, when 11 states will cast ballots in the GOP race, could dramatically expand Trump’s delegate lead.

I have probably interviewed New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie more times for more hours than any journalist outside New Jersey. I’ve known him since he started running for governor in 2008. You can understand my shock then when a man who claimed to be serious about public service, who ran on concrete policies and a serious national security platform and who seemed genuinely concerned about an unqualified person becoming president would embrace a know-nothing buffoon like Donald Trump.

Whether damning Trump for ignorance about Vladimir Putin, ridiculing Trump’s idea to ban Muslims coming into the United States or disparaging his other goofy ideas and lack of presidential temperament, Christie made clear that Trump was unfit to be commander in chief. Christie posed as the serious grown-up in this race on national security. That was the essence of his case to the American people.

In fact, after months and months of careful coaching by outside foreign policy experts, his initial gaffes (e.g. “occupied territories” was how he referred to the West Bank) stopped and he became proficient on national security. One former adviser told me he “absolutely” would never have helped Christie had he known he would endorse Trump. He said of Christie’s endorsement, “It’s an absolute disgrace.” It is exactly that, because Christie knows better.

It is deeply sad he would then sweep away months of high-minded speeches to enable a man he knows to be unfit for the presidency to attain that office at a time of such urgency. I wrote recently that Trump’s rise was enabled by many people just “doing their jobs” — the mainstream media, talk show hosts, backbenchers in Congress, etc. But none will be as morally culpable as Christie if Trump succeeds. Why? Because he knows better, and because the threat — and it is a threat — of Trump as commander in chief, or anyone else unfit for that job, was a central motivation for Christie’s run.

How on earth did this happen? Some, like Robert Kagan, think it is solely the result of a prolonged self-poisoning of the Republican Party. A number of shrewd writers—David Frum, Tucker Carlson, Ben Domenech, Charles Murray, and Joel Kotkin being among the best—have probed deeper. Not surprisingly, they are all some flavor of conservative. On the liberal (or, as they say now, progressive) end of the spectrum the reaction has been chiefly one of smugness (“well, that’s what the Republicans are, we knew it all along”), schadenfreude (“pass the popcorn”), and chicken-counting (“now we can get a head start on Hillary’s first Inaugural”). Their insouciance will be stripped away if Trump becomes the nominee and turns his cunning, ferocity, and charm on an inept, boring politician trailing scandals as old as dubious investments with a 1,000 percent return and as fresh as a homebrew email server. He might lose. He might, however, very well tear her to pieces. Clearly, he relishes the prospect, because he despises the politicians he has bought over the years.
The conservative analysts offer a number of arguments—a shifting class structure, liberal overreach in social policy, existential anxiety about the advent of a robot-driven economy, the stagnation since the Great Recession, and more. They note (as most liberal commentators have yet to do) Trump’s formidable political skills, including a visceral instinct for detecting and exploiting vulnerability that has been the hallmark of many an authoritarian ruler. These insights are all to the point, but they do not capture one key element.Moral rot.
Politicians have, since ancient Greece, lied, pandered, and whored. They have taken bribes, connived, and perjured themselves. But in recent times—in the United States, at any rate—there has never been any politician quite as openly debased and debauched as Donald Trump. Truman and Nixon could be vulgar, but they kept the cuss words for private use. Presidents have chewed out journalists, but which of them would have suggested that an elegant and intelligent woman asking a reasonable question was dripping menstrual blood? LBJ, Kennedy, and Clinton could all treat women as commodities to be used for their pleasure, but none went on the radio with the likes of Howard Stern to discuss the women they had bedded and the finer points of their anatomies. All politicians like the sound of their own names, but Roosevelt named the greatest dam in the United States after his defeated predecessor, Herbert Hoover. Can one doubt what Trump would have christened it?

Republicans

Ben Carson

Carson may be a brilliant surgeon and a really nice guy but he is not presidential material. Carson has only 4 delegates and is unlikely to get any more. He will only be relevant in a closely contested convention where he could try and swing his delegate to a particular candidate.

John Kasich

If Economic policy where the only concern I had, Kasich would get my vote. He has proven his ability to handle economic policy.

His social policies are to Fundamentalist for me.

Even after the debates, I am not sure where he stands on foreign policy issues. Being called to give advice to the President after the 9/11 attacks doesn’t answer the question.

Donald Trump

Trump comes across as rather shallow and bombastic, like a school yard bully. His personal attacks are wearing rather thin. Even if they are 100% true it doesn’t say why we should vote for him.

He can build a wall but, despite his claims, he can’t make Mexico pay for it. Realistically, he is not going to be able to deport 11 million people. I find his idea that we should let Russia and ISIS fight it out is not different than Obama’s “lead from behind” or Rand Paul’s isolationism.

Trump’s (and others’) insistence that the Iraq war was fraudulent and a mistake really bothers me. Years ago, Jerry Gordon put me in touch with Tierney, the UNSCOM inspector. Tierney made it very clear to me that WMD’s were present and we all know that Saddam used them to kill about 5,000 in Halabja. About a year ago, the New York Times showed pictures of depots filled with gas weapons. Most important of all, Khadafy of Libya gave up his nuclear and chemical weapons programs because of the fall of Saddam.

Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio

Of the choices we have, Cruz and Rubio are my picks. I haven’t decided which of the two is best. I am afraid that their splitting the vote means Trump gets nominated.

Democrats

Hillary Clinton

There are a lot of things we know about Clinton such as the emails, the Russian uranium deal and Benghazi. Whether of not there is a vast right wing conspiracy we know they happened. What her supporters haven’t done is tell me why we should vote for her.

We know on foreign policy her experience has not yielded a more peaceful world or a safer U.S.

Just the other day, she reiterated her support for a two state solution even though the Palestinians have rejected a two state solution that gave them virtually everything they supposedly want. Palestinian terrorism, including teaching infants to “grow up and blow up”, is pretty much dopwnp;layed and blamed on Israel.++

Bernie Sanders

I look around and see socialism at work and it doesn’t work.

We contribute to unemployment insurance, Social Security and Medicare. That is not socialism.

Yes, we do need some policies that could be considered socialism like medical care and welfare for the indigent.

Countries that have been or have become capitalistic have done well. Point out Greece as an example of failed socialism gets a response of “Swedeen”.

As for foreign policy, there seems to be no difference between Sanders and Obama.

Conclusion

No matter who I want, the choice is collective. I only hope the people choose wisely. Unfortunately, there is little discussion across party lines and the press is too partisan and not objective enough. I fear for the future.

Jan Mel Poller

An exchange on the BBC after the Nevada caucuses had given Donald Trump 46 percent of the vote said it all. A perfectly pleasant BBC interviewer asked a political consultant (as best I recall): “Well, at present they’re voting for him,” he said.

Good heavens, so they are. Not fellows wearing three-piece suits in Washington, the consultant added, but people who think of themselves as Republicans or as conservatives in towns and cities across America.

Now, that might not continue. It’s always an error to suppose that the future will be nothing more than a continuation of the present. Extrapolating current trends gets both economists and political pundits into big trouble. Besides, Trump is a phenomenon, like a comet, and sometimes they just cross the sky and disappear in a welcome blaze, like, for instance, a tax-returns scandal. Even without that, he has high negatives in national polls, which means there’s a real risk of his being denied the nomination or imploding after getting it.

On the other hand, it’s equally mistaken to assume that everyone not voting for Trump is consciously voting against him, in a way that isn’t true in the case of other candidates. In reality, it’s very unlikely that if either Rubio or Cruz dropped out, his votes would transfer en masse to the remaining one. That’s a general truth of politics, but it also seems to be confirmed by the evidence of current polls that Trump is making inroads into all sorts of voter categories where no Republican has gone lately. Trump’s boast of this progress doesn’t automatically refute it.

To reduce any tension (and also to enable us to concentrate on questions more important even than the horse race), let me declare my hand. Though I’m not enthusiastic about any of the candidates — after Reagan and Thatcher, anyone else is a letdown — my sympathies are with Ted Cruz, for the pedestrian reason that I agree with him more on most issues than with the other candidates. If he were to be eliminated, I would almost certainly prefer Trump to Rubio (for reasons that will emerge later). And though it’s just possible that I would endorse a worthy third-party conservative if nominee Trump were shown to be even more of an unguided missile than hitherto, I cannot see myself casting a vote for Hillary Clinton — not least because, as a British citizen with a green card, I don’t have a vote to cast.

Surprise! Donald Trump is a rank hypocrite on immigration. Per the New York Times:

Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach describes itself as “one of the most highly regarded private clubs in the world,” and it is not just the very-well-to-do who want to get in.

Since 2010, nearly 300 United States residents have applied or been referred for jobs as waiters, waitresses, cooks and housekeepers there. But according to federal records, only 17 have been hired.

In all but a handful of cases, Mar-a-Lago sought to fill the jobs with hundreds of foreign guest workers from Romania and other countries.

In his quest for the Republican presidential nomination, Mr. Trump has stoked his crowds by promising to bring back jobs that have been snatched by illegal immigrants or outsourced by corporations, and voters worried about immigration have been his strongest backers.

But he has also pursued more than 500 visas for foreign workers at Mar-a-Lago since 2010, according to the United States Department of Labor, while hundreds of domestic applicants failed to get the same jobs.

Or, put another way, Trump has deliberately chosen to hire foreign workers to fill those jobs that “Americans just won’t do.” 17 out of 300? That’s 5.6 percent. 17 out of 500? That’s 3.4 percent. Bad!

So what’s Trump’s excuse? That’s he’s a businessman and that these are the realities on the ground? That, I’m afraid, won’t wash. When Disney behaved like this, there was a loud and sustained outcry from . . . well, no less than Donald Trump himself. In an interview with Breitbart, Trump argued that Disney should be forced to rehire any Americans it had overlooked or replaced. Trump also said this:

If I am President, I will not issue any H-1B visas to companies that replace American workers and my Department of Justice will pursue action against them.

After his smashing back-to-back victories in the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries and the Nevada caucuses, going into next week’s Super Tuesday contests in 12 states, Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump looks increasingly unbeatable.

What accounts for the billionaire populist’s success? And if Trump does become the next US president, what sort of leader will the former reality television star be? Trump is popular because he has a rare ability to channel the deep-seated frustrations that much of the American public harbors toward its political and cultural elites.

Trump’s presidential bid isn’t based on specific, defined economic or foreign policy platforms or plans. Indeed, it isn’t clear that he even has any.

Trump’s campaign is based on his capacity to resonate two deeply felt frustrations harbored by a large cross-section of American citizens.

As The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger explained recently, a very large group of Americans is frustrated – or enraged – by the intellectual and social terror exercised upon them by the commissars of political correctness.

Trump’s support levels rise each time he says something “politically incorrect.” His candidacy took off last summer when he promised to build a wall along the Mexican border. It rose again last November when, following the Islamic massacre in Paris, he said that if elected he will ban Muslim immigration to the US.

The many millions of Americans who are sick of being called racist, chauvinist, homophobic, privileged or extremist every time they breathe feel that in Trump they have found their voice.

Then there is that gnawing sense that under Obama, America has been transformed from history’s greatest winner into history’s biggest sucker.

Trump’s continuous exposition on his superhuman deal-making talents speaks to this fear.

Trump’s ability to viscerally connect to the deep-seated concerns of American voters and assuage them frees him from the normal campaign requirement of developing plans to accomplish his campaign promises.

Trump’s supporters don’t care that his economic policies contradict one another. They don’t care that his foreign policy declarations are a muddle of contradictions.