RUTHFULLY YOURS

A presidential election many expected to turn on economic issues has made a sharp turn toward foreign policy, a change accelerated by North Korea’s claim this week it had detonated a hydrogen bomb.

On the campaign trail Wednesday, national-security issues dominated, with Republican contenders criticizing what they called weakness in the Obama administration, and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton talking up her experience as the nation’s secretary of state.

North Korea’s nuclear test, which the U.S. and others believe was less powerful than a hydrogen bomb, has raised questions on the campaign trail about the White House’s current policy of “strategic patience” with the regime. It joins the Iran nuclear deal, terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., and escalating tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, as issues testing the candidates’ grasp of global affairs.

“Threats like this are yet another reminder of what’s at stake in this election,” Mrs. Clinton said in a written statement. She condemned North Korea’s nuclear test and detailed her efforts in the Obama administration to tackle this national-security challenge.

“As secretary, I championed the United States’ pivot to the Asia Pacific—including shifting additional military assets to the theater—in part to confront threats like North Korea and to support our allies,” Mrs. Clinton said.

GOP presidential candidates said North Korea’s continued nuclear buildup was evidence that the administration’s policy, which they lay at the feet of both President Barack Obama and Mrs. Clinton, had failed, strengthening their case for installing a Republican in the White House.

Former U.S. Navy Seal officer Dom Raso this week slammed Hillary Clinton and commenced his campaign to educate Americans that she really is a dishonest and fraudulent politician. During his career as a special forces hero, Raso faced some of the world’s worst bad guys in his 12-year career as a Navy SEAL and he’s killed more than his share of enemies.
Several law enforcement counterterrorism operatives have told the Conservative Base’s Jim Kouri that Raso knows what he’s talking about when it comes to protecting lives and property from terrorists, rogue military forces, drug cartel members and other dangerous human beings.
Raso has begun his”truth campaign” by boldly doing what the nation’s journalists have refused to do: Calling Clinton out for her lies, such as when she told an audience how she bravely dodged enemy fire in Bosnia. “in order to make herself appear as courageous as American soldiers.”
Even when it was revealed by dozens of witnesses that Hillary once again uttered yet another one of her whopping lies, the news media treated it as his she simply forgot someone’s name. “I remember landing under sniper fire,” Clinton said. “There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicle to get to our base. It was a moment of great pride for me.”
Dom Raso points out that a videotape proves Mrs. Clinton was greeted warmly with handshakes that day. She tried to blame her lie on a mistake, calling it a “misstatement.” “In my 12-year military career, I never heard an excuse like that from my leadership,” Raso told reporters. “It’s impossible to even imagine that happening.Only someone completely arrogant, ignorant and disrespectful of what happens in war could say something like that,” he concluded.

Next November’s election will decide more than who becomes president. It will establish whether the United States has shifted from its foundational ideals of limited government, personal freedom, citizen autonomy, and a robust foreign policy that serves America’s interests and security, to the European model of quasi-pacifist internationalism abroad, and a centralized, collectivist technocratic rule at home –– exactly what 2400 years of political philosophy has feared is the infrastructure of tyranny.

Barack Obama vowed to “fundamentally transform the United States,” but for all his malign changes and erosion of the Constitutional order, “fundamentally” remains a question-begging adverb. The unique circumstances of his election and re-election ––especially the desperate and misguided yearning for racial reconciliation to be achieved merely by voting –– question whether a critical mass of Americans agrees with that goal. High disapproval numbers in polls of Obamacare, the president’s foreign policy, and the man himself suggest not. But the election of Hillary Clinton would show that despite those opinions, a majority of Americans endorse the progressive Democrats’ agenda.

That agenda has been obvious for at least a century. It is predicated on political scientism, the false idea that human nature, motivation, and behavior, along with social and political order, can be understood “scientifically,” and thus manipulated and guided toward a more egalitarian world –– the “social justice” of so much progressive rhetoric. But such a program requires a technocratic, administrative elite housed in powerful government bureaucracies and agencies, walled off from direct accountability to and scrutiny by the people. The ensuing reduction of political freedom and autonomy necessary for top-down rule is compensated for by redefining political freedom as private hedonism –– the freedom to indulge the appetites, consume products and services, abort unwanted pregnancies, and choose whatever sexual identity one fancies.

I must confess that I’m confused. I still have vivid memories of the tea-party revolution of 2010, when insurgent conservative candidates toppled incumbents and establishment favorites from coast to coast. This was the year of Rand Paul in Kentucky, Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, and Nikki Haley in South Carolina.

Perhaps most momentous of all, it was the year of Marco Rubio, who overcame long odds to beat Charlie Crist, a man who’s since proven himself to be exactly the kind of soulless politician the tea party exists to oppose. Since his election, Rubio has delivered, becoming one of the most consistent and eloquent conservatives in the Senate. My colleague, Jim Geraghty, has outlined his stratospheric ratings from the American Conservative Union, National Rifle Association, National Right to Life, and the Family Research Council.

In fact, Rubio is largely responsible for the single most effective legislative attack on Obamacare, a move that the New York Times bemoaned in a piece last month:

A little-noticed health care provision that Senator Marco Rubio of Florida slipped into a giant spending law last year has tangled up the Obama administration, sent tremors through health insurance markets and rattled confidence in the durability of President Obama’s signature health law.

So for all the Republican talk about dismantling the Affordable Care Act, one Republican presidential hopeful has actually done something toward achieving that goal.

By blocking bailouts of insurance companies, he’s preventing the White House from passing even more of the costs of Obamacare to taxpayers and forcing insurers to live with the true price of the law.

You knew it was coming!

Donald Trump said in an interview that rival Ted Cruz’s Canadian birthplace was a “very precarious” issue that could make the Texas senator vulnerable if he became the Republican presidential nominee.

“Republicans are going to have to ask themselves the question: ‘Do we want a candidate who could be tied up in court for two years?’ That’d be a big problem,” Trump said when asked about the topic.

This is how Donald Trump operates: whenever he’s threatened by someone in the polls, he tries to smear his opponents. He did so with Dr. Ben Carson, calling him pathological, and he now does the same with Ted Cruz by trying to convince voters he isn’t eligible to become president because he wasn’t born in the United States.

Sadly for the billionaire businessman, however, there is one minor problem: in September of last year he admitted that Cruz is eligible:

From what I understand everything is fine. I hear that it [Cruz’s eligibility] was checked out by every attorney, in every which way, and I understand that Ted is in fine shape.

As Mark Levin says: “Oh my.”

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz not only leads in Iowa, but also in California:

A new Field Poll in California finds Ted Cruz has surged ahead of his GOP presidential rivals with 25%, followed by Donald Trump at 23%, Marco Rubio at 13%, Ben Carson at 9%, Rand Paul at 6%, and Jeb Bush at 4%.

And that isn’t the only good news in this poll for Cruz. It also shows that he’s now twice as likely to be GOP voters’ second choice. This means that he will continue to surge if (or when) some of his rivals get out of the race, which they’ll undoubtedly do once they lose (big-time) in Iowa.

Cruz’s surge comes despite relentless attacks from his rivals for the Republican nomination and establishment-friendly columnists like the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin.

And that proves that 2016 will be different from other years. Until this election season, negative attacks from establishmentarians against real conservatives were always successful, which is how moderates like John McCain and Mitt Romney ended up being the Republican nominee. Not anymore. The establishment tried to take out Donald Trump, which only resulted in him rising in the polls. Now they’re going after Cruz, and the results are the same. He’s stronger than ever before and actually seems to be relishing the attacks.

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa – To hear Marco Rubio talk, Congress is an impotent branch of government that needs a full-scale overhaul – and that’s exactly why he’s running for president.

Federal legislators, in Mr. Rubio’s description, are peripheral figures in Washington, people who can have some impact on policy but are not in a position to set it.

“While I’m a senator I can help shape the agenda — only the president can set the agenda,” the Florida senator said to a woman here who asked him during a town hall meeting how she can defend his record of missing Senate votes to her friends. “We’re not going fix America with senators and congressmen. The only way to turn this around is to reverse the damage this president has done to the United States of America.”
Of course, Mr. Rubio’s meager Senate attendance record has been a point of conflict in the Republican presidential primary for months. Rival Jeb Bush criticized him about it during an October debate and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie brought it up in New Hampshire.

Mr. Rubio, who is forgoing a bid for a second Senate term in order to run for president, also endorsed constitutional amendments to instate term limits for federal legislators and judges. But congressmen, he said, will never agree to limit their own tenure.

Last week, the White House hailed Iran for shipping most of its low-enriched uranium stockpile to Russia. Secretary of State John Kerry called it “one of the most significant steps Iran has taken” under the nuclear deal signed this past summer. But the real news happened several days earlier: Even as the administration heaped praise on the mullahs in Tehran, Iranian Revolutionary Guard ships fired unguided rockets near a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Strait of Hormuz.

This provocation is just the latest in a series of dangerous acts committed by Iran that belie President Obama’s rosy promises of putting pressure on Iran for its aggressive actions. As the so-called “Implementation Day” of Obama’s flawed agreement approaches — and the president prepares to give the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism tens of billions of dollars in sanctions relief — it’s important to take stock of Iran’s behavior so far.

Among other things, the deal has greatly harmed relations between the United States and its traditional allies in the Middle East, Israel first and foremost. It has also emboldened Iran, which will receive important financial assistance to fund its regional aggression in places like Yemen, Bahrain, Lebanon, and Syria. In recent days, Iran even allowed the Saudi embassy in Tehran to be ransacked, leading Saudi Arabia to rightfully sever diplomatic relations with Iran.