RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

White supremacist David Duke told his listeners the day after the Nevada caucuses that it was a “historic day… maybe the day that turned the tide” not only for the the GOP nomination as “things are more and more encouraging that Donald Trump could be the president.”

The onetime grand wizard of Louisiana’s Ku Klux Klan — who served in Louisiana’s legislature and mounted unsuccessful campaigns for other offices including Congress and the governor’s mansion — lauded Trump’s front-runner status as the “most insurgent campaign in recent history.”

“He’s gotten the same kind of votes that I’ve gotten… he’s gotten the same kind of votes as George Wallace,” Duke said in the audio first reported by Buzzfeed.

“When he takes on immigration, the open borders, he’s really taking on the Jewish establishment.”

Railing against “Jewish control of America,” Duke said Trump “doesn’t take this on straight, anyway,” but “he definitely came out” on related issues such as fair trade and “stop the immigration.”

“I was the first Republican to make an issue against affirmative action… that was one of my planks and platforms. Donald Trump hasn’t taken that on straightforwardly, but he’s done it peripherally by showing that Black Lives Matter is really about racism against whites. That’s the message that he’s saying,” he added.

Voting for Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) or Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and “voting against Donald Trump at this point is really treason to your heritage,” Duke told his listeners. “Now, I’m not saying I endorse everything about Trump, in fact I haven’t formally endorsed him, but I do support his candidacy and I support voting for him as a strategic action. I hope he does everything we hope he will do.”

“I don’t know if he will or not, but we know his candidacy is an insurgency that is waking up millions of Americans and I’m telling you it’s your job now to get active. Get off your duff, get off your rear end that’s getting fatter and fatter for many of you every day … call Donald Trump’s headquarters, volunteer… you’re going to meet people there who have the same kind of mindset.”

Duke encouraged Trump volunteers to “educate” others, particularly telling evangelicals that supporting Jews is “absolutely like supporting the enemies of Jesus Christ.”

…..As I consider the rise of Donald Trump, and how he has sucked most of the air out of the constitutionalist movement, I can’t stop thinking about it. Trump’s supporters remind me of my eleven-year-old self, so excited about their incredible triumph that they have blinded themselves to the obvious. However, as the circumstances of their delusion are much more serious and less benign than my childhood touchdown, there is nothing kind about refraining from asking them an awkward question or three.

So today, addressing myself to any Trump supporters who are not already lost to the irrational anger he feeds on — please don’t scream about “righteous anger,” as if I don’t know the difference between justice and wrath — I pose three simple questions:

(1) Don’t you get the strange feeling that this has all been suspiciously easy?

Consider the fates of all previous GOP candidates to run against the party elite. Remember Herman Cain the creepy philanderer? Michele Bachmann the hysterical religious fanatic? Rick Santorum the Catholic extremist who was going to outlaw birth control and lock all women in the kitchen? And of course Ronald Reagan, the rare success story who taught the insiders a lesson they have never forgotten about the need for a unified strategy to nip all serious challenges in the bud?

But forget about the past; today we have Ted Cruz, the maniacal government-hating crusader and despicable liar whom everybody hates, who is owned by Goldman Sachs, and who may not even be an American!

In light of this consistent pattern of preemptive assault from the “left” and “right” against all anti-establishment GOP candidates, isn’t it odd that Trump, who has been the obvious frontrunner in the primaries since last summer, and who presents as inviting a target for a media takedown effort as any candidate has ever presented, has been given a pass? In fact, he’s been given much better than a pass. Aside from the nonstop free advertising he is getting as celebrity of the year, the most overtly leftist news network, MSNBC, has actively helped to create an aura of inevitability around him, and to demean his opponents. Meanwhile, has there been even one serious attempt on any twenty-four hour news network to dredge up and pursue any kind of scandal, ugly rumor, old girlfriends, shady business associates, anything at all that might undermine his campaign?

As for the “conservative media,” in the fall of 2011, Matt Drudge and Ann Coulter put all their weight behind the establishment’s preferred candidate, Mitt Romney. And over the past several months, those same two bigwigs have invested all their savings in Trump stock. Four years ago, Rush Limbaugh pussy-footed (that means walking like a kitten, by the way) around Romney throughout the primaries; this time he seems to be walking even more gingerly around his golf buddy Trump, defending him as an anti-establishment champion, and even half-excusing his “Bush allowed 9/11 to happen” bluster in South Carolina as “strategy.”

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-circus-inside-the-greatest-political-show-on-earth-review-winning-is-what-matters-1456439178

Rarely does a grandiose claim feel as apt as the one in the subtitle of this series. Undeniably, the current primaries and virtually everything else connected with the American presidential election of 2016 have made for the most riveting, not to mention embittering, political spectacle in memory, and we’re still only at the beginning stages. All the more reason to treasure an enterprise that preserves the small details as “The Circus” does—brief moments that capture the flavor of this race, the light as well as the dark, the faces of Americans rapturous with enthusiasm or etched with doubt as they listen to candidates come to ask for their vote in the crucial primaries.
The creators of “Circus”—veteran political strategist Mark McKinnon and Bloomberg Politics managing editors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann—focus their documentary efforts on what goes on backstage during the arduous primaries battles, but there’s no stinting on the extravaganzas taking place on the public stages themselves. At a Pensacola, Fla., rally packed with Donald Trump fans, where the candidate takes a shot at Ted Cruz—“You can’t win if you’re born in Canada’’—and alludes to “Crazy Bernie,” then predicts “I think I’m gonna win in Iowa” (he didn’t), the crowd roars its ecstasy, a tremendous din. The filmmakers, who deliver snippets of commentary, note Mr. Trump’s obvious rock-star appeal—a power, one says, that you can’t buy.

But there’s another rock star of sorts on the campaign trail: Bernie Sanders, whose wife, Jane, is a constant presence at his side and far more talkative than her husband, who isn’t prone to sharing much beyond his political message. He’s shown a noteworthy fastidiousness when questioned, for instance, about his religious heritage: American Jews whose parents emigrated from Poland don’t usually describe their parents, as Mr. Sanders tellingly does, as “Polish immigrants.” READ MORE AT SITE

http://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-and-clintons-email-probe-1456448102

Attorney General Loretta Lynch this week tried to assure House Republicans about the impartiality of her department’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s State Department emails by noting that it would be handled by career government officials. This claim could stand a little parsing.

The probe into her possible mishandling of classified information “is being handled by career independent law enforcement agents—FBI agents—as well as the career independent attorneys in the Department of Justice,” Ms. Lynch said Wednesday. “They follow the evidence, they look at the law and they’ll make a recommendation to me when the time is appropriate,” adding that the probe is being “conducted as every other case.”

That’s what they always say, and it is nice to think so. But there’s reason to doubt given the example of Justice’s investigation into the IRS targeting of conservative groups before the 2012 election. To lead that probe, then Attorney General Eric Holder appointed Barbara Bosserman, a trial attorney in the department’s Civil Rights Division.

Ms. Bosserman’s appointment was curious given that her area of expertise is civil rights, not tax law. She had also donated $6,100 to President Obama’s campaigns and the Obama Victory Fund in 2008 and 2012. That’s no small donation on a career employee’s salary and suggests some serious political loyalty. READ MORE AT SITE