RUTHFULLY YOURS

Donald Trump has recovered from a post-debate dip to post his highest national average, 27.2 percent, since the month between the first and second GOP debates. This includes his single highest national poll result, 32 percent in the most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, since his 33 percent in the early September edition of that same poll.

Trump’s demographic-support trends remain steady. He does better among non-college graduates than among college grads; among men than among women; among moderates and liberals than among conservatives; and among independents than among Republicans. His support remains unusually similar across all factions, however, making him the least factional of any GOP front runner in the modern era.

Trump’s state average support also remains high, although the smaller number of state-level polls means this week’s average is not directly comparable to the averages from weeks two and three. Seven state-level polls, including three of New Hampshire, have been released since last week. Including the average from the three New Hampshire polls, Trump’s state average is now 34.1 percent. The states polled, however, include only 54 of the nation’s 435 congressional districts, down from the over 130 CDs included in the state averages from prior weeks.

Hillary Clinton has done Trey Gowdy an enormous favor. In anticipation of her testimony on Thursday before the Benghazi select committee he chairs, and with a lot of Republican help, she has framed the committee as a partisan political witch-hunt obsessed with dashing her presidential ambitions.

To regain credibility, all Gowdy needs to do is demonstrate that it is not. Meaning: all Gowdy needs to do is focus on why the United States had its officials stationed in Benghazi, one of the world’s most dangerous places for Americans.

What mission was so essential that it was necessary to keep Americans on-site when the jihadist threat had become so intense that other nations and organizations were pulling their people out?

These questions implicate disastrous policy that was, very much, bipartisan policy: (a) withdrawing American support for the Qaddafi regime that our government was funding and allied with against jihadist terror; (b) switching sides to aid and arm the jihadist-rife “rebels” who opposed Qaddafi; (c) waging a war under false pretenses – i.e., working for Qaddafi’s ouster, without congressional authorization, under the guise of a U.N. mandate that only permitted the protection of civilians; and (d) transitioning from support of Libyan jihadists to support for Syrian jihadists – i.e., transitioning from the policy that has left Libya a failed state with a growing ISIS and al Qaeda foot print, to a policy that contributed to the ascendancy of ISIS – by among other things, abetting the shipment of weapons from Libya to Syria.

Let me get this straight. Two weeks ago Donald Trump said we shouldn’t have gone into Afghanistan, that it was a “terrible mistake” and now he says he was misunderstood?

Uhuh.

Sounds remarkably like the same dude who mixed up Hamas and Hezbollah and claimed he was hearing the word Kurds when Hugh Hewitt was asking him about the Quds force. Or the know-nothing who sloughed off his lack of knowledge of terror leader names because, he insisted, they’d be gone before he took office, when the likes of Hasan Nasrallah have been around for decades. Fool me once, as they say…

Anyway, here’s CNN on the subject. Yes, I know it’s CNN but read the transcript:

Donald Trump claimed Wednesday that he has consistently supported the decision to invade Afghanistan and that his earlier comment calling the war there a “terrible mistake” was a result of him misunderstanding the question he was asked.

Marco Rubio titled his autobiography An American Son. It’s a good read. It’s apparently his own work, and it reflects well on him. I read a couple of Kasich’s books, Every Other Monday and Stand for Something, and all I learned is that Kasich’s a golf nut who has learned some incredibly important things about life on the golf course.

Rubio is a family candidate. His paternal grandfather quit school for work at eight, was orphaned at fourteen, and in middle age was widowed with seven children between four and sixteen. They were left on their own while he scratched out a miserable living on the streets of Havana, with Marco’s father and Aunt Georgina getting their own jobs at nine.

The maternal grandfather was the son of middling Spanish immigrants to Cuba, and was able to get an education only because polio left him partially disabled. This man, Pedro Victor Garcia, is responsible for the political education of Marco Rubio. In 1980 Marco was nine, living in Las Vegas, and took an interest in the Kennedy-Carter fight for the Democratic nomination. His grandfather — Papa — quickly set him right. While his parents were at work, Marco sat at the feet of this Cuban immigrant, listening in Spanish, learning the virtues of free market capitalism, Ronald Reagan, and the United States of America. Papa believed in the great man theory of history, and assured his grandson that Reagan was a great man who would destroy the communists. Marco decided he believed in the great man theory as well, and dreamed of being one himself, leading an exile army back to Cuba to overthrow the Castros.