RUTHFULLY YOURS

Bernie Sanders has no chance to win the Democratic presidential nomination, but the breathtaking details of the climate-change plan he released this week are still worth noting. They show where the Democratic Party is headed.

The Vermont Senator calls climate change “the single greatest threat facing our planet,” and he seems to mean it. He is proposing a 40% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030, and an 80% reduction by 2050, which is significantly more than the up-to 28% cut by 2025 that President Obama has pledged at the Paris climate confab.

To reach this developing world level of CO2 emissions, Mr. Sanders would: impose an unspecified carbon tax; ban all offshore drilling and fossil-fuel leases on federal lands; stop “dirty pipeline” projects; ban natural gas and oil exports; force states to ban fracking; ban mountaintop coal mining; impose a new fuel-efficiency standard of 65 miles per gallon by 2025; spend “massive” federal dollars on subsidies for wind, solar, geothermal, biofuels, home-efficiency programs and energy storage; federally underwrite electric-car charging stations, high-speed passenger and cargo rail, a smart grid, and clean-energy job training; shut down the nuclear industry; and provide “clean energy funding” to the rest of the world.

Quite a lead, actually.

Ted Cruz commands the top spot in the latest Monmouth University Poll of likely Iowa Republican caucusgoers – his first lead in any early state poll of the 2016 cycle. Donald Trump and Marco Rubio are within a few percentage points of one another for second place. The poll also found that an influential House member’s recent endorsement is only one factor behind Cruz’s rise, which has come primarily at Ben Carson’s expense.

Ted Cruz earns 24% support when likely caucusgoers are asked who they will support in the Republican contest. This marks a clear lead over Donald Trump (19%), Marco Rubio (17%), and Ben

Carson (13%). Jeb Bush stands at 6% and Rand Paul is at 4%, while Carly Fiorina and John Kasich earn 3% each. None of the other six candidates tested in the poll draws more than 2% support.

Carson’s fade is happening almost as quickly as his rise. He has cratered by 19 points in just a couple of months, as his mostly social conservative support realizes that Cruz is the more polished and electable choice, despite what moderate Republicans and establishment types would have people believe.

It’s a mystery what the rationale in Camp Jeb! is these days. He is mired at six or seven percent in Iowa and New Hampshire polls, and the only candidate above him whose fade he might benefit from is Rubio’s. That doesn’t seem a likely scenario.

We are living in a time of great dissensus, when political arguments are not merely rife but emotionally and verbally, if not actually, violent. People who are certain of the urgency of climate change often treat doubters as if they were hopelessly stupid flat-worlders. People who oppose abortion tend to consider those who feel otherwise as little less than murderers. Run down the list of the leading issues—and an issue, recall, is a subject still in the flux of controversy—and one discovers similarly tempestuous reactions, pro and con, everywhere.

Not that I am without my own political views. The English historian A.J.P. Taylor once claimed to have “extreme views, weakly held.” My own position is moderate views, extremely held. Whenever the subject of politics comes up in one or another of my social circles, I always jump in to offer a label warning: “I have never lost a political argument,” I say, adding, “which would be more impressive if I didn’t have to admit that neither have I ever won one.” As Jonathan Swift averred, one cannot hope to reason people out of those things they haven’t been reasoned into, which often enough includes politics.

Ted Cruz Is the One Candidate Who Can Face down Washington — And Win
To protect American national security we must first understand what threatens American national security. We must grasp who our enemies are, what animates them, and how they work together — despite their internecine rivalries — to destroy us from without and within. We must stop trying to define “true Islam” and start restoring our own principles as our guide: liberty, equality of opportunity, the rule of law, and peace through strength.

The vast majority of Americans still believe in these principles. It is Washington that has lost faith. It is Washington that looks at liberty’s enemies and sees friends; that looks at anti-Western Islamic supremacists and sees “moderates” it can play ball with; that looks at lawbreakers and tut-tuts that “the system is broken.”

Reinvigorating American principles will require taming Washington. It calls for restoring the Constitution as a vital limit on government, not a relic . . . or an obstacle.

Ted Cruz gets this. Many Republicans talk the talk — we hear it in every election season, right up until it is time to stop campaigning and start governing. Senator Cruz walks the walk. That is why I believe he should be the next president of the United States.

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

During a recent interview, Sen. Lindsey Graham, a serial supporter of policies that have empowered Islamic supremacists, had the gall to say that Sen. Ted Cruz, “has done more to allow ISIL to gain a foothold in Syria than any senator other than Rand Paul.”

Let us leave aside the gratuitous attack on Sen. Paul.

Sen. Graham in no fewer than three situations has supported policies that have aided, abetted and/or enabled jihadists, including ISIS:

Libya: Back in 2011, Graham was among the Republicans arguing ardently for the overthrow of perhaps the one thing keeping the lid on the bubbling cesspool of jihadism beneath the surface, Muammar Qaddafi. In voicing his belief that Qaddafi had to go, Graham also expressed that he had “no concern about al Qaeda running Libya.” The so-called “rebels” America armed in overthrowing Qaddafi consisted in large part of al Qaeda-linked jihadists, as we would find out in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. Today, ISIS is constructing a “retreat zone” in Libya merely a few hundreds miles from mainland Europe, while varying jihadist forces vie for control of the remnants of the country. The massive arms stockpiles unleashed after the fall of Qaddafi would be transported to jihadist-dominated Syrian opposition forces, which we will come to in a minute.

A funny thing is happening on the way to the GOP meltdown.

According to the latest Quinnipiac poll, the two most popular and broadly acceptable candidates in the field are perhaps the most talented and most reliably conservative. Oh, and by the way, they are Hispanics in their 40s.

Donald Trump is still leading the polls and has demonstrated a staying power that has confounded his critics, but Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are now beginning to stand out in the rest of the field, clustering with Ben Carson in effectively a three-way tie for second place nationally.

According to the latest Quinnipiac poll, Rubio is at 66 percent to 8 percent favorable/unfavorable, while Cruz is at 65 percent to 9 percent, for the highest net favorable ratings in the race, 58 percent and 56 percent, respectively. Only 5 percent of Republicans say they wouldn’t consider voting for Rubio, and 6 percent say that of Cruz, the lowest numbers in the field (Trump and Jeb Bush are unacceptable to the most Republicans, at 26 percent and 21 percent, respectively).

In the aftermath of Paris and before San Bernardino, Hillary Clinton articulated the forced catechism of the Left: “Let’s be clear: Islam is not our adversary. Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.”

What happens when a major political party becomes so wedded to political correctness that it feels constrained to deny reality? Clinton could hardly have chosen a less opportune moment to squeeze her eyes shut about the threat of Islamic extremism — a threat that is glaringly, blazingly obvious.

The first part of what Mrs. Clinton said was true. Islam is not our adversary. There are an estimated 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, and if all of them were violent extremists, we’d have a planet drowning in blood. Most Muslims are peaceful. Beyond that, they practice charity, care for the sick, and encourage good works.

But there is a fever sweeping the Muslim world that has infected a significant minority of Muslims — and because Muslims are so numerous, that minority amounts to hundreds of millions. It began in the 1920s with the Muslim Brotherhood. Its Shiite incarnation has captured the government of Iran. Saudi oil money has facilitated its spread to places such as Pakistan and Afghanistan. President Obama, deluded from the get-go that our enemy was not Islamic extremism, but merely “al-Qaeda,” stood by while the Islamic extremists in Iraq and Syria morphed into a new entity called ISIS. Obama never saw it coming because he was determined to believe, with Mrs. Clinton and other Democrats, that terrorism has nothing to do with Islam.

Full transcript further below — immediately below some quotes on key issues.

On Obama and the Palestinians:

“Just weeks ago, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas began a speech to a UN body by asking, quote, ‘For how long will this protracted Israeli occupation of our land last? After 67 years, how long?’

“As we all know, sixty-seven years ago was 1948, the year of Israel’s creation. So the man who is supposed to be Israel’s “partner for peace” has just said that all of Israel is illegitimate and that the Jewish state is an “occupation” of someone else’s land.

“Now, this isn’t unusual rhetoric from a Palestinian leader – but what matters is that it should have provoked a harsh condemnation from the United States. But our president said nothing. By his silence, our government emboldened those who seek Israel’s destruction and made itself a bystander to a poisonous lie.

“Similarly, over the past three months of Palestinian terror attacks, our administration refused over and over again to do anything more than call on both sides for restraint – as if there were no difference between aggression and self-defense.”

On EU labeling of Israeli products:

“Or consider the European Union’s recent approval of a new trade rule that requires special labeling of products produced in what the EU considers “Israeli-occupied territories.” The goal of this is to encourage Europeans to boycott goods from Israel. The rule applies to no other country – not to Russia, which invaded Georgia and Ukraine, nor China, which occupies Tibet. The EU is singling out only Israel.

“Let’s take a step back and realize what this means. Discriminatory laws that apply only to Jews are now being written into European law for the first time in more than half a century.

“I believe we need a president who is not afraid to call this out for what it is: anti-Semitism. I will be that president.”

On the movement to boycott Israel:

“I will also speak out against anti-Semitism here in America.

“One important example is the movement that calls itself ‘BDS’ – for boycott, divest, and sanction. This coalition of the radical left thinks it has discovered a clever, politically correct way to advocate Israel’s destruction. BDS couches hatred in the language of human rights and social justice.

“But the movement reeks of hypocrisy. Boycotters do not seek to punish Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Syria, or Russia – all actual human rights violators. Their campaign is aimed only at Israel. They make wild, false accusations in the hopes of inciting so much hatred of the Jewish state, especially on our campuses, that eventually support for Israel will become politically taboo.

“As president, I will call on university presidents, administrators, religious leaders, and professors to speak out with clarity and force on this issue – the same way they speak out against racism and other forms of bigotry. I will make clear that calling for the destruction of Israel is the same as calling for the death of Jews.”