RUTHFULLY YOURS

It’s about time to vote. It’s now time to get serious about who can win in the general.

It is true that we have a slate of better than average candidates, but Rubio comes across as better than the others for ten reasons.

Since this is turning into a three-way race, I have to contrast Rubio mainly with Cruz and Trump (but some others, too). Here’s why you should vote for Sen. Marco Rubio and not throw away your vote on the other candidates.

1. Rubio has the best chance to deliver Florida.

This reason comes first because we need that state to win electorally. In 2010, he won 48.49% in a three-way race; former Republican turned independent Crist got 29.71, and Democrat Meeks got 20.20%. We already have states like Texas, so we don’t need Cruz. We need Ohio, but I doubt Kasich would run as the V.P. Maybe he would campaign for Rubio. If Rubio’s opponents claim he can’t deliver Florida, then how could Cruz (see the other points below)? And certainly Trump can’t. It’s doubtful he could get even 30% of the N.Y. voters.

2. He speaks Spanish fluently.

At my large, mostly white church in the greater L.A. area, we sometimes sing in Spanish. The lyrics are put up on the screen. This is happening in historically white churches across the Southwest. We like Hispanics in our congregations.

TBN, the world’s largest family of Christian networks, has opened a new network called “Salsa.” Here are the cities into which they broadcast across the nation.

“True” conservatives have a knack for misreading their own country. Will they get caught flat-footed by this inexorable trend line and continue to be shrill and hysterical about Hispanics and their immigrant relatives?

Like it or not, we need someone at this time in our nation’s history to persuade them in Spanish to come over to our side. We don’t need one hundred percent of them – just enough to tip the scales our way.

Rubio can go into the Southwest and Colorado and other markets and give speeches and TV interviews in Spanish, explaining why conservative politics is what the nation needs now. He won’t scare them off.

From my own experience, I know they are persuadable.

In contrast, Cruz barely speaks “Spanglish” and can’t debate or interview on Spanish TV.

Rubio can reassure concerned Hispanic voters in Spanish that Trump’s harsh rhetoric and Cruz’s politically convenient “never” even to legalization don’t represent the best kind of conservatism.

3. His faith seems genuine.

Whichever church he has eventually chosen, his journey seems sincere. He gave a talk before a conference of Iowa ministers, and he spoke as an insider, not an outsider whose religion is politically motivated and convenient (Trump).

Also, he doesn’t get into needless controversies, like tracing the current Middle East conflict all the way back to Jacob and Esau in Genesis (Carson). Surely there are more proximate causes than that. But even if, hypothetically, those two characters were the main cause, this knowledge about them doesn’t lead to solutions today.

4. He outpolls Hillary in a head-to-head matchup.

I don’t trust campaign polls nowadays because the news media gleefully obsesses over Trump, so he gets the most attention, but that linked one at least offers a little perspective.

I swore that I wouldn’t write another column on Donald Trump this month, but the mouthy New York billionaire has forced my hand.

Over the weekend a New York Post headline smacked me in the face: “Trump praises Kim Jong-un’s murderous ascent to power.” I double-checked to make sure it wasn’t the Onion instead. It wasn’t. So I read on.

Here’s part of what Mr. Trump had to say about the North Korean dictator in Iowa on Saturday: “You’ve got to give him credit. He goes in, he takes over, he’s the boss. It’s incredible. He wiped out the uncle, he wiped out this one, that one.”

Machiavelli, who admired Hannibal for his “inhuman cruelty,” would have said it more elegantly, but the sentiment is the same.

This is not the first time Mr. Trump has praised an autocrat, and it probably won’t be the last. In December Vladimir Putin called him a “very bright and talented man.” Informed of this news, Mr. Trump said it was “a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond.”

When a stunned Joe Scarborough, the co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” pressed him about Mr. Putin’s thuggish rule, Mr. Trump shot back, saying: “He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader, you know, unlike what we have in this country.” Mr. Scarborough pressed on: What about the murder of Russian journalists? Mr. Trump: “Well, I think our country does plenty of killing also, Joe.”

Jane Mayer’s bias has long been on display….she is co-author of a hagiography of Anita Hill and a book bashing Clarence Thomas… “Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas”by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson 1994….rsk
Jane Mayer, a New Yorker magazine staff writer and former Washington reporter for this newspaper, introduces “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right” by comparing current-day America to the Gilded Age of the 1890s and bemoaning the ways in which rich people today are trying to “remake America” to advance their interests. Inevitably, she quotes New York Times columnist Paul Krugman: “We are on the road not to just a highly unequal society but a society of an oligarchy. A society of inherited wealth.”

That claim may have a familiar ring. Populists have been deploring the power of the rich since the birth of the republic. In 1907, Teddy Roosevelt railed at “malefactors of great wealth.” His fifth cousin, Franklin, laced his 1933 inaugural speech with a promise to drive the “money changers” out of whatever temples they occupied. The formula works well.

Dark Money

By Jane Mayer

(Doubleday, 449 pages, $29.95)

Ms. Mayer is highly selective about which super-wealthy dabblers in politics she wants to expel. Warren Buffett, whose $62 billion fortune ranks second only to that of Bill Gates ($76 billion), is not one of her targets. Rather she quotes him in support of her thesis, to the effect that the rich are winning the class war. Tom Steyer, the West Coast hedge-fund billionaire environmentalist, gets a bye as well. So does former Google CEO Eric Schmidt ($11 billion), a big campaign contributor to Barack Obama, and Steven Spielberg, who has generously shared from his $3 billion nest egg to aid the goals of Bill and Hillary Clinton. A host of think tanks and political websites depend on liberal deep pockets, but their donors do not figure in “Dark Money.” Politically active, left-of-center oligarchs are apparently wonderful people, not dangerous ones.

Ms. Mayer mainly dislikes foes of big government. Her list of the rich and dangerous begins with figures whose heyday has passed, such as Richard Mellon Scaife and John M. Olin. For decades, their philanthropies supported conservative journals, scholars and think tanks, much as the Bradley Foundation does today, another organization that earns her contempt. But most of “Dark Money” is aimed at just two people, Charles and David Koch

What to make of Senator Ted Cruz? He is a very, very smart man who apparently believes that the median Republican presidential primary voter is very, very dumb. There’s some evidence for that proposition — Donald Trump still leads in the national polls — but Cruz’s strategy rests on the proposition that these voters will enjoy being condescended to. He may very well have chosen the most effective strategy.

Senator Cruz is very much hardwired into the current us-and-them mood of the electorate, Right and Left, and though he is a creature of Princeton and Harvard Law whose household long has been sustained by a Goldman Sachs paycheck, Cruz is keenly interested in giving the impression that there exists a vast cultural chasm between himself, the champion of what some populists like to call “the Real America” — as though Ronald Reagan of Hollywood, J. P. Morgan of Wall Street, and Bill Gates of Harvard weren’t real Americans — and the wicked Washington-based elite. Cruz is an outsider to the extent that a member of an Ivy League eating club (have someone explain it to you) who went on to be a member of the nation’s most prestigious lunch club, the Senate, can be an outsider. He is a Texan, albeit a Texan from the anodyne suburbs of Houston, which could be the suburbs of anywhere. He didn’t grow up baling hay in Muleshoe.

Courting the boob vote, Cruz is campaigning as a boob, a project complicated by the fact that there is a much bigger boob in the race: Donald Trump. Cruz, an affluent Ivy Leaguer, needed to distinguish himself from Trump, a very rich Ivy Leaguer, and what he came up with was: “New York values.” A Republican presidential candidate need not trouble himself too much about New York’s votes in the Electoral College, and Trump himself had used the phrase to characterize his many departures from the traditional conservatism of the Republican party, of which he is a freshly minted member. Cruz, canny politician that he is, never bothered to go into much detail about what is meant by “New York values.” Sneering at them was enough.

Trump says liberal Republican Scott Brown would make a great VP By Ed Straker
Donald Trump says that former senator Scott Brown, one of the most liberal Republicans, would make a great vice president.

Donald Trump said Saturday that Scott Brown would be a vice president straight out of “central casting.”

“You know what? He’s central casting,” Trump replied, nodding. “Look at that guy! He’s central casting! A great guy and a beautiful wife and a great family. So important!”

So who is Scott Brown? First of all, Scott Brown is a big loser. He filled the partial term of Teddy Kennedy and was defeated for re-election in Massachusetts. Then he carpetbagged over to New Hampshire and lost a Senate race there. It’s inconceivable that Trump would call a two-time loser great VP material.

But even more, Scott Brown is extremely liberal:

Brown does not support President Obama’s health care reform plan in its current form as approved by the Democratic-led House and Senate. [But] Brown supported the 2006 Massachusetts health care reform, which requires all residents to have health insurance, with a state-subsidized plan created for those who cannot afford to insure themselves. Brown refers to the currently legalized same-sex marriage in New Hampshire as a settled issue, which he does not wish to change. Brown has said he personally believes marriage is between a man and a woman, but would still oppose a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. He is in favor of civil unions. Brown has stated that Roe v. Wade is settled law and is self-described as pro-choice.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz, unlike pretty much all of his rivals for the Republican nomination for president, has had a disciplined and careful plan for winning.

Other contenders were thrown off course by the emergence of Donald Trump as the clear poll leader nationally and in virtually every state, and seemed unable to handle Trump’s ability to overwhelmingly dominate media coverage of the race while sprinkling in putdowns of the other candidates. Cruz, on the other hand, continued to do what he has done since his election to the Senate in 2012, and with his immediate forays into the early 2016 caucus and primary states in the winter of 2013. His approach has been to stay to the right of every other possible Republican contender, and to claim the leadership role in the conservative base’s war with the party’s establishment and leaders in the House and Senate.

When neurosurgeon Ben Carson became a favorite of evangelicals, Cruz’ strategy to win Iowa based on his own strong ties to evangelicals and conservative voters was in jeopardy. With Trump leading the pack and competitive in Iowa, a Carson victory in that state would have relegated Cruz to third place or worse, and damaged any ability to build on Iowa elsewhere. Cruz seemed to understand from the start that taking on Trump was likely to be a loser for whichever candidate took this approach. So Cruz played nice with Trump, and waited for the evangelicals infatuation with Carson to run its course.

In the closing minutes of Thursday night’s GOP presidential debate in South Carolina, Marco Rubio unleashed a torrent of accusations against Ted Cruz after Cruz slammed his participation in the “Rubio-Schumer amnesty bill.”

“[You] had no fewer than eleven attacks there,” Cruz said, pleading for response time. “I appreciate you dumping your opposition research folder on the debate stage.”

“No, it’s your record,” Rubio shot back.

“At least half of the things Marco said are flat-out false,” Cruz snapped.

Not quite. Most of Rubio’s statements about Cruz’s past positions check out, with a few wild exaggerations tossed into the mix. To the tape . . .

1. “Ted Cruz, you used to say you supported doubling the number of green cards. Now you say that you’re against it.”

In May 2013, Cruz introduced an amendment to double “the overall worldwide green card caps from 675,000 visas per year to 1.35 million per year (not including refugees and asylum-seekers).” Cruz’s current immigration plan only mentions “green cards” in the context of punishing companies that misuse the H-1B visa program.

2. “You used to support a 500 percent increase in the number of guest workers. Now you say that you’re against it.”

Indeed, another amendment Cruz offered in May 2013 would have “immediately increase[d] the H-1B cap by 500 percent from 65,000 to 325,000.” But as a presidential candidate, he has called for suspending “the issuance of all H-1B visas for 180 days to complete a comprehensive investigation and audit of pervasive allegations of abuse of the program” and greatly limiting the circumstances in which companies can hire H-1B visa immigrants.

H-1B visas are for “high-skilled temporary workers,” so Rubio could have been a little more precise in characterizing the “guest workers” in question.

3. “You used to support legalizing people that were here illegally. Now you say you’re against it.”

This point is hotly disputed by Cruz and his campaign. Cruz did introduce an amendment that would establish a path to legalization for those here illegally, but he insists he never actually supported the amendment’s substance, and it was meant as a poison pill. But Cruz spent spring 2013 touting the measure, which would have preserved the larger bill’s path to legal status, but not its path to citizenship.

Dear Reader (including those of you born in Canada),

I guess we should start there. I find this birther stuff to be a lot like women’s prison movies: compelling, entertaining, and totally ridiculous.

Other than the presidency, there’s no place in American life where the distinction between “naturalized” and “natural-born” citizenship matters.

But imagine if it did? Imagine that your American-born mother just happened to give birth to you in Canada or Belize while on vacation. Your American-born mom and dad bring you home days later and raise you exactly as they would have had they been in Cleveland the whole time. Now imagine there are also all sorts of jobs you are barred from having. Not only can you not be president, but you can’t be, say, a chiropodist or an embalmer. Pick your restrictions: You can’t go to certain colleges or you can’t get the best ESPN bundle. Americans born abroad can’t buy basset hounds. Unless you were born here, you can’t get cheese on your hamburger. Whatever. It really doesn’t matter.

If that were the case the Constitution would be amended — either properly or through interpretation — to get rid of this distinction instantly (which means this would have happened centuries before the invention of ESPN, but you get the point).

My point is simple: This issue remains unsettled because it matters so little.

Psephology is a branch of political science which deals with the study and scientific analysis of elections. rsk
“Our expert psephologists tell us that Trump is way ahead in many polls. But as I say, I suspect they are measuring fans, not supporters. The difference is between cheering on a successful mud wrestler and appointing a general to lead the army.Donald Trump is an amusing entertainer whose antics have shone a light on some dark corners that needed illumination. He is a sort of Liberace of Liberalism: a recent supporter of Chuck Schumer, of Nancy Pelosi, of Hillary Clinton, who also (until about ten minutes ago) was as pro-abortion as it is possible to be.”

The consensus seems to be that Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, and Marco Rubio were the only three candidates who emerged standing from the debate last night. Christie got off some good lines as usual, while Ben Carson once again left me wondering what pharmaceutical cocktail he had ingested before mounting the stage, and John Kasich once again made me feel sorry that he had to cope with that species of motor-neuron disease with which he is afflicted.

I also felt a little sorry for Jeb Bush.

He is clearly a competent man whose record as governor of Florida should inspire admiration. Sure, you might disagree with him about this or that — Common Core, for example, or the details of his ideas about immigration — but he is a thoughtful, steady person of good will. He exudes maturity, and it tells us a lot about the texture of our current political situation, I think, that Donald Trump should have been able to score one of his first rhetorical victories of the primary season by charging that Jeb Bush was “low energy.”

The charge stuck, but it was unfair. Jeb is not low energy. He is simply deliberate — a good thing in a statesman.

I say this not because I am a Bush supporter. I’m not, for many reasons. But I think it is worth pausing to acknowledge that he acts with dignity, like an adult. Last night, Chris Christie described Barack Obama as a “petulant child.” That was apt. Obama is notoriously thin-skinned, as are many narcissists, and that combined with his breathtaking incompetence has been a recipe for petulance.

For the last seven years, the nation has suffered under a president who ignores the law and treats the legal process as a political weapon. Yet in the most recent Republican debate, Donald Trump displayed a clownish, similar disregard for the law when he demanded Senator Ted Cruz “get a declaratory judgment” about his eligibility to run for president.

The meritless nature of Trump’s birther controversy was neatly summarized by Susan Carleson in the Washington Times:

As the Supreme Court made clear, there are only two types of American citizenship — citizens at birth, such as Sen. Cruz, and those who become citizens through the naturalization process.

A declaratory judgment is when a judge, in a legitimate contested lawsuit, makes a ruling about which side is correct about a legal controversy.

Trump has some knowledge of this process — because of what he did to Vera Coking.

Vera Coking lived for 30 years in a modest Atlantic City home, until Trump coveted her land. As David Boaz summarizes:

Trump turned to a government agency — the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA) — to take Coking’s property. CRDA offered her $250,000 for the property — one-fourth of what another hotel builder had offered her a decade earlier. When she turned that down, the agency went into court to claim her property under eminent domain so that Trump could pave it and put up a parking lot.

Coking wasn’t the only person who faced a declaratory judgment because Donald Trump wanted the government to take their land for his private benefit. He did the same thing to others in Atlantic City, and proposed the same for an amusement park in Connecticut. Trump still supports the abusive eminent domain practices that took the home of Susette Kelo in New London, Connecticut.