RUTHFULLY YOURS

Russ Ramsland is a Tea Party leader and a Harvard MBA who has built businesses and created jobs in countless fields including oil & gas, communications and real estate right here in Texas. He is a native of West Texas and a long-time resident of Dallas who currently lives in Texas’s 32nd congressional district. This is the same district that Congressman Pete Sessions, the chairman of the House Rules Committee and a former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee currently represents. Russ is running against Rep. Pete Sessions because as he states “our so-called representatives, some of whom have been in Washington almost 20 years, are no longer representing our values and priorities. Washington is no longer listening to us,” Ramsland states.

As a principled constitutional conservative, Ramsland is in the same place as Katrina Pierson was two years ago, challenging incumbent Rep. Pete Sessions in the Republican primary. Sessions won a seat in Congress in 1996. He now chairs the powerful House Rules Committee, which shapes legislation and decides how bills are debated and amended on the floor. Pete Sessions is considered by some pundits to be a loyal establishment-type Republican, a Republican in Name Only (RINO) to be precise.

Ramsland says, “The voters of the 32nd district want to secure the border and enforce our immigration laws, replace Obamacare with free market healthcare reforms and return control of education to Texas and to parents. I am running because I believe that they should have an opportunity to be represented by someone who wants the same things.”

The question on everyone’s mind is: can Rep. Sessions be defeated? Can Mr. Ramsland dethrone the heavyweight, deep-pocketed Republican Pete Sessions with deep pockets? Russ says yes. It has been done before here in Texas when Ted Cruz defeated the wealthy and powerful establishment-backed David Dewhurst in the 2012 GOP primary and went on to win the nomination in a runoff.

Whether you believe that there were nefarious motives behind the advancement of inaccurate information about the Carson campaign by Cruz ground operatives in Iowa or not, one thing is certain, true and undeniable. The leading candidates for the Republican Party’s nomination for President of the United States are feeding on each other. By doing so, they have effectively created an “emotional division” between the voters of the Right. To prove this out all one has to do is spend some time on social media threads related to the topic. Phrases like “Cruz haters,” “Carson’s a whiner” and “Trump is an idiot” are myriad. So, too, is the Conservative rank-and-file’s sudden acceptance of CNN as a credible, non-biased news source.

This election cycle the best that the Democrats can offer is a throwback hippie Socialist and the most disingenuous and opportunistic politician in recent history. The prospects of one of these improbably political creatures reaching the White House relies exclusively on the Republicans finding a way to shoot themselves in the foot; damaging each other so extensively in the primaries that the bleeding continues into the General Election. On the heels of eight years of Progressive rule and their disastrous policies for our economy and national security; in light of myriad scandals and a possible indictment hounding the DNC frontrunner, Republicans should have been able to nominate a potato chip and won in November.

Enter the politics of division. Enter opportunistic political tactics ala the Chicago machine. Enter the type of politics that each and every one of the Republican candidates says they abhor; that each says they will excommunicate from the lexicon of American politics should they be elected to the presidency.

Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders at a campaign rally at Great Bay Community College in Portsmouth, N.H. on Sunday. (Photo: Hunter Walker/Yahoo News)

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Many women who showed up at a presidential campaign rally for Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., at Great Bay Community College on Sunday said they were insulted and “offended” by supporters of Hillary Clinton who have suggested it is somehow anti-feminist to back Sanders instead of Clinton’s quest to become the first female president.

Jane Sanders, the senator’s wife, had a succinct response when Yahoo News asked her opinion of those who suggest it’s sexist to support Sanders instead of Clinton.

“I think it’s ridiculous. He’s the…” she began before trailing off. “It’s crazy.”

Cokie Giles, a registered nurse from Bangor, Maine, who traveled to neighboring New Hampshire for the rally, said she does not appreciate being “herded along just because I’m a woman.”

“Well, I don’t want to think that I have to vote for a woman, being a woman, because there’s a woman running. They have to be who I would look at as … my best choice,” Giles said. “I’m not trashing Hillary. I’m just saying Bernie is the better of the choices. And I will get a chance to vote for a female president. I would like to see a female president, and there’s plenty out there that I would be very happy to do.”

Two high profile feminist Clinton supporters, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and women’s rights activist Gloria Steinem, have made headlines with recent comments about female Sanders supporters.

Gov. Christie’s Strange Relationship with Radical Islam

http://www.investigativeproject.org/2506/gov-christie-strange-relationship-with-radical#

Four Islamists on Gov. Christie’s Muslim Outreach Committee Despite each of their links to Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood, Christie trusted Islamists to be part of his advisory committee.

http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/four-islamists-gov-christies-muslim-outreach-committee#

Once Embraced by Chris Christie, New Jersey’s Muslims Feel Betrayed

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/03/nyregion/new-jersey-muslims-feel-sense-of-betrayal-by-christie.html?_r=0

The invitation arrived by email, bearing the seal of the State of New Jersey and the name of its new governor, Chris Christie. It asked a select group of Muslim leaders to break the daily Ramadan fast at Mr. Christie’s home, and began with a traditional Muslim salutation.“Assalamu Alaikum (Peace be with you),” the greeting, from summer 2010, read. “Wishing you a happy and blessed Ramadan.”

With the gathering, at an evening meal known as Iftar, Mr. Christie opened what Muslim leaders recall as a period of exceptional warmth between the state’s sizable Muslim community and a prominent Republican. The governor became a fierce defender of local Muslims, rebuking his party in forceful terms for its hostility to a proposed Islamic center in Manhattan, and denouncing what he called “the crazies” on the right for attacking a Muslim lawyer Mr. Christie had selected for a judgeship.

But as he campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination half a decade later, Mr. Christie’s ties to Muslim leaders in New Jersey have grown deeply strained. The governor has recast himself as a relentless warrior against terrorism, with little patience for what he calls “politically correct” national security policy. Among some community leaders, who saw Mr. Christie as a rare Republican who rejected alarmist, broad-brush rhetoric about Islam, a sense of betrayal has set in.

Sometimes you outsmart yourself. After re-watching the excruciating Rubio-Christie exchange (embedded in David’s post), I can’t help but think that Marco Rubio outsmarted himself – or at least locked in on the wrong part of Chris Christie’s commentary and, in the heat of the moment, couldn’t let go.

In the post-mortem, it has been noted repeatedly that Christie attacked Rubio as an unaccomplished, programmed candidate. But Rubio’s alleged insufficiencies were only one part of Christie’s argument. The other, the actual premise of Christie’s critique, was the analogy of Rubio to Obama.

Christie contends that the Obama who ran for president in 2008 was an unaccomplished, hyper-programmed, first-term senator who was utterly unprepared to be president. That, according to Christie, has caused seven years of amateur-hour governance. To elect Rubio, he thus concludes, would be to invite another disastrous presidency led by an untested young man who would be in way over his head.

This analogy to Obama, rather than Rubio’s own alleged failings, was the part of Christie’s case that Rubio seized on. To some extent, this is understandable: Rubio is on surer footing talking about Obama than about his own record of accomplishment, the best known aspect of which is pushing through the senate, in collusion with Obama, a bipartisan immigration bill that is anathema to the GOP base (but, by the way, would have been fine with GOP “moderates” like Christie).

Yet Rubio also had an important point: Christie’s premise is dead wrong. Obama has not steered the Titanic into an iceberg because he is an unprepared, untested amateur. He has done it quite deliberately, at times masterfully, because Obama believes in the policies that constitute the iceberg. He is a movement leftist with a transformational agenda and an Alinskyite’s understanding of the extortionate uses of power. Authoritarian rule, government-controlled health care, open borders, runaway spending, Islamist sympathies, crony-capitalist green energy – these are not initiatives Obama stumbled into because he was unprepared. Obama has studiously taken the country where he wants it to go. And he has rolled over the old experienced hands to do it – so much for amateur hour.

Will he, or won’t he? That is, will Michael Bloomberg decide on an independent run for the Presidency, will Democrats tap him, or will he stay home? A decision must be made reasonably soon, if he wants to get on the ballot in all fifty states. A couple of weeks ago the New York Times published a front page article, “Bloomberg, Sensing an Opening, Revisits a Potential White House Run.” They noted he had tasked his advisors with determining the merits of an independent candidacy.

Mr. Bloomberg, a three-term Mayor of the City of New York, is said to be motivated by the possibility (remote as it may seem) of voters having a Hobson’s choice in November: Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump. Mrs. Clinton assured him there was no reason for him to harness up. She would be the Democrat nominee. Republicans remained silent. They know that an independent run by Mr. Bloomberg would do more harm to the Democrat contender than the Republican. Mr. Bloomberg ran for Mayor as a Republican and is now an Independent. But he had been a life-long Democrat. It is where his sympathies lie.

History is replete with third parties, from the Anti-Masonics and Free-Soilers during the first half of the 19th Century to the American Independent and Reform Parties in the second half of the 20th Century. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln was the first man to run for President as a Republican, effectively making him a third party candidate. He won against three others, garnering 39.6% of the popular vote. But apart from Lincoln, over the past 150 years no third party candidate has ever won 30% of the popular vote. Theodore Roosevelt, as the Bull Moose candidate in 1912, came closest, garnering 27.4 percent. Eighty years later, Ross Perot received 19% when he ran on the Reform Party in 1992, but he received no Electoral College votes. Third party candidates Robert LaFollette got 16% in 1924 and George Wallace, 10% in 1968.

The morning after Marco Rubio’s bad debate, a crowd of perhaps 550 packed into a high school cafeteria to see the candidate in the flesh. Outside, the Democratic PAC American Bridge sent two guys dressed up as robots to capitalize on Rubio’s failure last night.

The crowd seems receptive, but not jubilant. It seems like it’s split about equally between people who are supporting the candidate and people who are shopping. And Rubio opens by referring to his debate misstep. He doesn’t make a joke out of it, though. He tries to make a larger point, doubling-down and unpacking what he was saying. Here’s the passage, in full:

Right now, after last night’s debate—oh you said the same thing three or four times. Well I’m going to say it again: The reason why these things are in trouble is because Barack Obama is the first president, at least in my lifetime, that wants to change the country. Change the country. Not fix it. Not fix its problems. He wants to make it a different kind of country. He wants to make it like other countries around the world. I don’t understand that. People come here to get away from those countries. When is the last time you read about a boatload of American refugees washing up on the shores of another country? If you want to live in another country, move to another country.

These things he’s done to America are not accidents. Obamacare is a disaster, but it’s not an accident. It is an effort to take over your healthcare. The undermining of the Second Amendment is not an accident. It is because if they could—if he could get away with it—he would ban guns. He doesn’t even want there to be a Second Amendment. He’ll never admit it, but that’s how you get a president that when he was running for president, talked about people clinging to their guns and to their religion.

As much as I despise John Kasich’s notion that the president is some sort of national father, there is some historical precedent for the idea: Consider the nature of the monument they built to George Washington. Some people demand that a president not only share their values but act as a vessel of them, serving as a kind of moral mascot for the country or even a personification of it.

Not me. I just want to know what I can use him for.

Which brings us to Senator Marco Rubio. Some conservatives, including some whose opinions I respect, simply cannot forgive Rubio for his attempt to forge a bipartisan immigration deal with the so-called Gang of Eight. To be sure, the Gang of Eight bill was a bad one: Bad enough that Rubio later said if an identical bill were brought up in the future, he’d vote against it. But it isn’t just the bill: Some conservatives are mad that Rubio would attempt to cooperate with Democrats at all, that he’d be in the same room with Chuck Schumer. These are the conservatives who need their candidate to personify something, rather than to be of use.

I think Rubio could prove very useful.

Rubio was of course wildly wrong in that immigration debate, and he was pretty sneaky, too, as Mark Krikorian has argued. But if your worry is that President Rubio is going to sign an amnesty bill in March of 2017, you should worry about something else: Barring some dramatic and unforeseeable development, there’s going to be a Republican House next year, it’s going to be a conservative one backed up by a lot of conservatives in the Senate, and our hypothetical President Rubio is never going to sign that amnesty bill because Congress isn’t ever going to send it to him, even if he were so inclined – which I don’t think he is.

How did Rubio get it so wrong on immigration? Or, more precisely, why? You have to understand the job he was interviewing for – which wasn’t president.

Despite his “does not compute” glitch Saturday night (which will likely dog him for the rest of his career, like Rick Perry’s “oops” and Dan Quayle’s “you’re no Jack Kennedy” moment), Marco Rubio is still a live contender for the nomination. So it remains important to explain why I think his immigration record disqualifies him from being the 2016 nominee.

Many conservatives who admire Rubio’s genuine political talent agree that his shilling for Chuck Schumer’s Gang of Eight bill was bad. But they offer two reasons that this should not be an impediment to his being the Republican presidential nominee. First, they say, Rubio has learned his lesson and, second, he’s quite solid on many other issues. Both parts of this defense warrant examination: Has Rubio truly changed his spots on immigration? And is immigration simply one issue among many, so that Rubio’s deviation there is outweighed by his fidelity on others?

As to the first question: There’s every reason to suspect Rubio is merely an election-year immigration hawk. A devastating 14-page indictment of Rubio’s immigration record, prepared by Eagle Forum (html and pdf), lays out his duplicity in painful detail. Early in his career, anti-borders groups were delighted with Rubio’s conduct in the Florida legislature; the head of one of them, NALEO, said, “He, as speaker, kept many of those [immigration-control bills] from coming up to a vote. We were very proud of his work as speaker of the House.”

Then, when Rubio ran for the Senate, he turned into a hawk. As CNN’s greatest-hits clip at last month’s debate showed, Rubio said the following, among other things, during his 2010 campaign: “Earned path to citizenship is basically code for amnesty, it’s what they call it. . . . It is unfair to people who have legally entered this country to create an alternative pathway for individuals who entered illegally and knowingly did so.” This hawkishness on immigration was an important reason for his upset victory over Charlie Crist.