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POLITICS

ELECTIONS, POLITICS Comments turned off

Here Comes the New York Gerrymander The new Governor says she’ll help Democrats carve up the state.

By on August 26th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/here-comes-the-new-york-gerrymander-kathy-hochul-democrats-11629928462?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s moderate reputation may not last long. In her first day in the office vacated by Andrew Cuomo, Ms. Hochul promised to help gerrymander the Empire State to the benefit of Democrats in Washington, D.C.

The New York Times asked Ms. Hochul in an interview, “Do you plan to use your influence to help Democrats expand the House majority through the redistricting process?” Nice leading question. She answered: “Yes. I am also the leader of the New York State Democratic Party. I embrace that. I have a responsibility to lead this party, as well as the government.”

She added, in response to the next question, that “I have to help make sure there are more Democrats there to help Joe Biden get his agenda through the Senate.”

By a 15-point margin, New Yorkers in 2014 passed a constitutional amendment creating a bipartisan commission to take the lead on redistricting. The commission is slated to publish an outline of its first proposal by Sept. 15.

Yet after Democrats took control of both chambers of the New York Legislature in 2018, they began to look for ways to undermine the new commission. Another redistricting amendment on the ballot this November would do precisely that. It would implement complicated rule changes in the redistricting process ahead of the 2022 elections, but the main objective is to reduce GOP leverage.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

American Politics Reaches Its ‘Worse Than Trump’ Phase By Charles C. W. Cooke

By on August 10th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/08/american-politics-reaches-its-worse-than-trump-phase/

After four years spent painting Trump as a unique threat to the nation, progressive pundits have begun moving on to new villains.

D elivering into the political ether a line that had hitherto been reserved to satirists, MSNBC’s Dean Obeidallah proposed on Tuesday that Florida governor Ron DeSantis is “more dangerous than Trump.” “Former President Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to our nation, at least, if you support our democratic republic,” Obeidallah wrote. “But DeSantis is more dangerous.”

That was quick.

The proximate cause of Dean Obeidallah’s ire is that Ron DeSantis isn’t setting the same masking rules for children as Dean Obeidallah would if Dean Obeidallah were the governor of Florida. Given that the CDC lists a national child-hospitalization rate of 0.5 per million — which, as the Wall Street Journal notes, “would amount to roughly 25 patients,” not all of whom are even “in the hospital for Covid” — I strongly disagree with Obeidallah’s assessment. But I’m aware that the details aren’t really the point here: This is simply how Democrats begin to talk about Republican candidates whom they believe are capable of winning a national election. When such candidates reach office, they’re Hitler. When they’ve left office, they’re bad, but not as bad as the ones in office. And when they’re dead, they’re the sort of Republicans whom the living ones should be more like — yes, even if, when they were alive, they, too, were deemed to be Hitler. The assertion that “DeSantis is worse than Trump” was inevitable from the moment Trump lost the 2020 presidential election.

One of the main reasons it proved so difficult to convince primary voters that Trump was bad news in 2015 was that those voters had been told the same scary things about almost every Republican candidate since Eisenhower. Barry Goldwater was an extremist who was going to kill us all. Ronald Reagan was an extremist who was going to kill us all. So was George W. Bush. So were John McCain and Mitt Romney. So, even, were the host of primary opponents Trump faced in 2015 — many of whom were cast by mainstream writers such as Jonathan Chait, Matt Yglesias, Eugene Robinson, and Paul Krugman as being less desirable candidates than Trump himself. As it turned out, many of the criticisms that the American Left leveled against Trump were correct. In the vast majority of cases, however, that’s not why they were leveled; they were leveled because they’re always leveled, irrespective of the justification for leveling them.

This being so, it should not be a great surprise that progressives are busy trying to cast DeSantis as “Trump 2.0” — nor, indeed, that they hope to cast anyone who has ever interacted with the 45th president as a troglodyte insurrectionist. But there is no reason for the rest of us to fall for it.

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Good Omens For 2022 — For Now Will Republicans take advantage of the signs of doom for the Dems?Bruce Thornton

By on July 8th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/good-omens-2022-now-bruce-thornton/

The midterms are over a year-and-a-half away, which is a life-time in politics. But the Biden administration’s egregious incompetence and political tin ear are good omens for Republican chances of taking back the House and even the Senate.

Let’s start with the chaos at the border, and out-of-control and illegal immigration, one of the issues that helped Donald Trump win in 2016. The progressives want us to believe that the xenophobia and racism of the “deplorables” and “bitter clingers” accounted for Trump’s success. But quasi-open borders and sanctuary cities that protect felons and gangster are unpopular with most voters, including Latinos and blacks who bear the lethal cost of policies promoted by tony cognitive elites who don’t have to pay for their juvenile idealism.

Once the crisis exploded, Kamala Harris––or “Que mala” as she was called in El Paso––worsened the optics of the disorder: coyotes and cartel human traffickers getting rich; children penned up in “cages,” to use the Dems’ hyperbole; endless throngs in the hundreds of thousands streaming over the Rio Grande in broad delight, and being welcomed ashore by border agents. And her uncontrollable cackle and obvious lack of preparation reinforced the administration’s fecklessness.

And who can forget Kamala’s lame “root causes” rationalizations for conditions created by Biden’s reversal of all Trump’s policies that had the border under control? Guatemala’s president set the record straight when he fingered Biden’s irresponsible statement that the U.S. would “reunite families,” and his virtue-signaling rhetoric that accompanied his repudiation of Trump’s policies like the “Remain in Mexico” protocol for asylum seekers. If the Republicans are smart, the copious dramatic videos from this disaster will be broadcast 24/7.

Next, the Dems and the politicized DOJ have attacked states like Arizona and Georgia that are cleaning up their election laws to restore electoral integrity. Arizona’s reforms have been vindicated by the Supreme Court, which makes AG Merritt Garland’s witch-hunt pretty much DOA. The dishonest “voter suppression” rationale, one predicated on the insulting claim that blacks are too incompetence to secure photo I.D.s or find a polling place, is not convincing anybody beyond the hard-core Democrat constiuency of race-hustlers and electoral fraudsters. Most ordinary citizens outside the blue-state progressive silos want their votes to count, instead of being cancelled by fake ballots.

No more convincing are the desperate rationales for the steep increases in violent crime ever since George Floyd’s death while in police custody last May rationalized big-city mayors’ pull-back of their police forces, allowing BLM and their Antifa black-shirts to run wild for months. Worse, many Democrat mayors and politicians endorsed BLM’s “defund the police” demands, which created the Ferguson Effect on steroids. No surprise that cops have been retiring in droves, and gun-thugs are taking over public spaces. Finally, not content with their policy blunders, the Dems are trying to sell voters on the idea that Republicans’ have been defunding the police because they’re resisting Biden’s print-tax-and-spend bills. Voters aren’t going to fall for the old Marxist (Groucho and Karl) principle, “Who are you gonna believe, me or your own lying eyes?”

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British Jews Repudiated the Labor Party. Will American Jews Do the Same with the Anti-Semitism in the Democrat Party? By Rabbi Aryeh Spero

By on July 6th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/07/will_american_jews_follow_their_british_cousins_in_repudiating_jewhatred.html

There was an editorial last week in The Free Beacon positing that due to anti-Semitism within its ranks, the Democrat party will mimic the electoral defeat of England’s Labor Party, which is similarly plagued by anti-Semitism.  The Ilhan Omar–Ocasio-Cortez–Tlaib trio, as well as many members of various Democrat congressional caucuses, are open enemies of Israel’s existence and redolent with anti-Semitic pejoratives.  The Beacon’s theory is that just as Jeremy Corbyn’s Labor Party was shunned by Jews and many in the public, thereby losing the last election to the Tories, so will Democrats lose to Republicans in 2022.  Nancy Pelosi in the House and Chuck Schumer in the Senate, though themselves not anti-Semitic or anti-Israel, continue to allow this anti-Semitism in their party, and Pelosi goes farther by publicly and proudly embracing the Squad and especially Omar.

The Beacon should have given its supposition a bit more scrutiny, for there is a big difference between the repudiation of the Labor Party in England and the situation here with the Democrat party.  In Britain, virtually every Jew, Jewish organization, and Jewish politician spoke against the anti-Semitism and severe anti-Israelism happening within the Labor Party.  Their disgust was across the board, and many Jewish Laborites spoke of leaving the Labor Party…and did.  The entire Jewish community was alarmed by what was happening and growing within Labor’s ranks and leadership, spotlighted it as the anti-Semitic party, and worked hard for Labor’s defeat.

In contrast, here in America, we do not hear or see the majority of Jews repudiating the Democrat party.  Not at all!  The Democrats have lost basically none of their previous 70% Jewish support.  If one removes the Orthodox support for Republicans, the Jewish Democrat support is as high as 80%.  Nor has any of the Jewish politicians threatened to leave the Democrat party.  In fact, a dozen or so Jewish congressmen have joined and led others to further tighten Joe Biden’s grip over Israel, and many Jewish Democrat politicians continue to defend Ilhan Omar and whitewash everything she says, calling her critics Islamophobes.  And while some Jewish organizations have criticized Omar herself, none of the major establishment organizations has made any condemnation of the Democrat party per se, as was done against Labor by England’s Jewish organizations.  Dismayingly, non-Orthodox American Jews continue to stand solidly behind the Democrat party today, just as they did last Nov. 3 and many years previous.

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The Congressional Black Caucus Is Blocking A Black Republican From Joining The Group Kadia Goba

By on June 11th, 2021

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kadiagoba/byron-donalds-congressional-black-caucus-membership

Rep. Byron Donalds, who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s election win, hasn’t heard back from the powerful CBC.

The Congressional Black Caucus is blocking membership to Rep. Byron Donalds, a Republican from Florida who has tried to join the organization, a source familiar with the CBC’s plans told BuzzFeed News.

It’s been six months since the members who won election in 2020 were inducted into the CBC, a powerful and nominally nonpartisan group of Black lawmakers in Congress. Donalds, who won election for the first time last year, has not been included in that group.

The Florida representative’s office said Donalds has talked to at least three members of the CBC about joining the group, whose members are now at the forefront of police reform talks and responsible for highlighting the racial inequities around COVID-19. He’s not received an answer and the likelihood of that happening a quarter way into the 117th Congress looks bleak.

“Congressman Donalds has expressed interest in joining the CBC, but has yet to receive an official invitation,” said a Donalds aide. “If given, he’d gladly accept.” The CBC did not respond to questions about the status of Donalds’ membership, or why he was not being let in.

The snub highlights the divide between Democrats and their Republican counterparts since Jan. 6, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol during the certification of Joe Biden’s presidency.

Some Democrats have refused to partner with Republicans on legislation since the mob attack, especially if they voted against accepting the election results. Donalds was one of the Republicans who voted to deny Biden’s win.

The caucus has a history with Black Republican members of Congress. Sen. Tim Scott, arguably the most powerful Black Republican lawmaker right now, declined an invitation from the group in 2010 when he was first elected to Congress as a member of the House of Representatives.

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Of martyrs and manipulators: Liz Cheney’s pointless spectacle By Keith Naughton

By on May 26th, 2021

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/554951-of-martyrs-and-manipulators-liz-cheneys-pointless-spectacle

In American political life there is always a certain group of people who love the idea of martyrdom — not actual physical death (that might hurt), but electoral death: the “I’d rather be right than win” crowd. Rarely do these wannabe martyrs achieve real martyrdom, i.e., become heroes around whose memory millions rally. Instead, they mostly are forgotten, losers.

Which brings us to Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.).

In years past, the third-ranking member of minority party leadership would be a barely noticed presence at the periphery of national politics. But, in a time where Donald Trump is the litmus test for everything, any Republican who will publicly criticize Trump is an instant folk-hero — even pro-life, anti-tax, anti-regulation, pro-interventionist politicians. If you hate Trump, anything is possible.

Cheney’s martyrdom was well-planned. She purposefully agitated her colleagues. There are no reports she actually worked the GOP caucus, canvassing and counting heads. Cheney didn’t fight back, she planned to lose.

The reality is that Liz Cheney should not be in Republican leadership — and not because only Trump acolytes belong. The neocon politics of Cheney (and her father) is not just in eclipse, it’s practically dead. There is hardly any constituency in Republican politics for it.

The truly principled move for Cheney would have been to resign from leadership and not put her colleagues through the public relations meat grinder. After all, being in leadership means you have to at least generally represent the rest of the caucus. Cheney can still serve the voters of Wyoming as a rank-and-file member, retain her seniority and serve as a ranking member of committees (and be in line for a chairmanship if partisan control flips in 2022). She can even complain about Trump anytime and anywhere she wants.

But staging her own ersatz crucifixion opened the door to her own martyrdom and the avalanche of fawning publicity she craves. Too bad her time in the sun probably won’t last nor have much — if any — effect on Trump. 

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Fake Outrage Over Cheney ‘Ouster’; Dems ‘Ousted’ Bernie Twice Hypocrisy, thy name is Democrat. Larry Elder

By on May 24th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/fake-outrage-over-cheney-ouster-dems-ousted-bernie-larry-elder/

House Republican leadership removed Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., from her leadership position, a position her indignant liberal defenders likely did not even know existed until days ago. Cheney became Republican roadkill when she not only voted to impeach then-President Donald Trump but also became a vocal critic of his alleged “big lie” about the 2020 election.

Cue the fake outrage by Democrats and the media.

A CNN headline read in part: “Ousted Cheney Warns Direction of the Party is ‘Dangerous.'” MSNBC wrote, “The GOP infighting reached a turning point after Republicans ousted Congresswoman Liz Cheney from her leadership position.”

PBS wrote, “In less than 20 minutes behind closed doors, House Republicans made their allegiance to former President Donald Trump clear by ousting … Cheney.”

The Washington Post said Cheney’s removal from leadership “offered the clearest sign yet of how far Republicans are willing to go to support or tolerate Trump’s lies about the election as well the degree to which many members are trying to rewrite the history of Jan. 6 to erase the former president’s culpability.” Never mind that for four years and counting, Hillary Clinton has referred to the 2016 election as “stolen” and then-President Trump as “illegitimate.” Two-thirds of Democrats believe that in 2016, the Russians changed vote tallies to defeat Clinton, despite the exhaustive Senate report that found zero evidence that the Russians succeeded in changing a single vote tally.

Bear in mind we were talking about Cheney, the daughter and ideological soul mate of the former Vice President Dick Cheney, who was labeled a “neocon” and loathed by the left. MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan praised Liz Cheney for “her stance against her own party,” but added: “But what about the argument that Liz Cheney herself isn’t a stranger to, quote/unquote, big lies? She backed the Iraq war. She denied Bush-era torture.” So, the left’s newfound love for Liz Cheney is, well, complicated. Note also that Cheney’s replacement has a more moderate voting record, a change that, in normal times, would please the average liberal.

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On a Party-Line Vote, House Democrats Reject Sanctions on Overseas Hamas Supporters By Jim Geraghty

By on May 20th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/on-a-party-line-vote-house-democrats-reject-sanctions-on-overseas-hamas-supporters/?utm_

Another sterling moment in American legislative history: “Democrats blocked a bid to bring the Palestinian International Terrorism Support Prevention Act up for consideration in a 217-209 vote along party lines. The bill, introduced by Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., would impose sanctions on foreign entities known to have provided financial assistance to Hamas, among other measures.” The same bill passed the House unanimously in 2019, but was not taken up for a vote in the Senate. The U.S. currently has sanctions against Hamas itself and some limits on business dealings with the Palestinian Authority.

Still, there’s some evidence that Democrats who took this stance, opposing sanctions against Hamas supporters, are simply listening to their base. A new Trafalgar Group survey indicates that 38.5 percent of self-identified Democrats blame Israel for the current violence, 15.5 percent blame Hamas, about 6 percent each blame Iran and the Palestinian Authority, and 34.4 percent aren’t sure.

Meanwhile, 12.5 percent of self-identified Republicans blame Israel for the current violence, 42.5 percent blame Hamas, 14.6 percent blame Iran, 10.5 percent blame the Palestinian Authority, and 19.8 percent aren’t sure.

The Mast proposal forced Democrats’ hand. They could either take this action, and offer the potential of a genuine financial squeeze on Hamas, boxing in the Biden administration. Or the Democrats could look soft against a group launching rockets into civilian areas. (Maybe those Democrats saw an old photo of a Hamas rally and thought it was just Robert Byrd and Ralph Northam.)

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The Democrats Have a Kamala Harris Problem By Charles C. W. Cooke

By on May 20th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/the-democrats-have-a-kamala-harris-problem/

It seems indisputable that the Democratic Party has a real interest in Harris being more popular than she is.

A mericans have never much liked Kamala Harris. Despite being theoretically well-placed to dominate the 2020 Democratic primary, she dropped out of the race in December of 2019 with just 3 percent support nationally and about 7 percent support in her home state of California. Now holding the vice presidency, Harris remains impressively unbeloved. Per a recent YouGov poll, her net approval rating is ten points underwater among all voters and 25 points underwater among independents, 44 percent of whom say they have a “very unfavorable” opinion. For a vice president to engender such feelings — especially at this stage in the cycle — is unusual, to say the least.

Still, that Harris is unpopular should come as no great surprise, given that she somehow manages to combine into a single package a transparent insincerity, an unvarnished authoritarianism, and a tendency toward precisely the sort of self-satisfied progressivism that helped the Republicans to limit their losses at the last general election. If her apologists wish to, they can pretend that the reaction Harris yields is “gendered” or “systemic” or “inequitable” or whatever other bastardized academic term is fashionable this week, and they should feel free to knock themselves out doing so. Deep down, though, they must know that America isn’t the problem here. The problem is that Harris is a phony. It remains the case that, throughout her entire public career, almost nobody has looked at Kamala Harris and thought, “Yes, she’s the person we need to lead us.” Sure, she’s won a couple of elections. But even in deep blue California, she has struggled. Her 2010 victory in the attorney general’s race was decided by just 74,000 votes out of more than 9.6 million cast, and ended up being so close that it took three weeks before the result was finally clear. There is a reason that, having been picked as Biden’s running mate, Harris was quickly shoved offstage.

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Republican Royalty Has Been Dethroned Now they need to get out of the way. Don Feder

By on May 19th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/republican-royalty-has-been-dethroned-don-feder/

“Republican royalists are vestiges of a bygone era, living in exile, warmed by memories of a time when they were relevant. They need to be reminded of the adage – “Lead, follow or get out of the way.” Since they can’t lead and refuse to follow, that would leave exiting, stage left.”

The last few weeks have not been a happy time for the royalty which once ruled the Republican Party.

Liz Cheney lost her leadership role in the House Republican Conference. Mitt Romney was not met with overwhelming acclaim at the Utah Republican Convention. And former President George W. Bush did an interview which again demonstrated his irrelevance to both his party and the country.

The GOP’s royal families – the Bushes, Romneys and Cheneys — view the party as their patrimony. Romney is the son of a governor who ran for president in 1964.

Founded by Senator Prescott Bush, the Bush dynasty has included congressmen, governors and two presidents. Liz Cheney is the daughter of a vice president.

The Republican royalty despise Donald Trump. He may have Mar-a-Lago, but he’s not a member of their country club.

They feel that they and those like them should rule the realm. Trump has succeeded in touching the hearts of Middle Americans in ways they never could. Try to imagine Mitt Happens packing in 50,000 at a rally, or Bikers for Romney. Okay, you can stop laughing now.

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