RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2024/10/08/vance-shows-the-power-of-a-silver-tongue/

J.D. Vance was my number one draft pick for vice president, and his complete slaughter of Tim Walz at the debate last week only reassured me of my choice.

Vance is a breath of fresh air for many, including conservatives still harboring misgivings about Donald Trump. Vance is appealing because he has qualities that used to be more familiar in politics and lately have become rare, as most offices have become less competitive and the American people have become less engaged in the process.

Most important of these qualities, Vance is a “good talker,” and this used to be a prerequisite to being an effective politician. By this, I mean he was articulate, organized, calm, and friendly. He also was steeped in detailed policy knowledge, avoided rhetorical traps, calmly and politely objected to the biased moderators’ fake fact-checking, and generally did circles around Walz.

Walz was tongue-tied, looked nervous, and rarely made his points in an articulate way. Even though Kamala Harris and Walz have had longer careers in public life, Vance is everything they are not.

There has not really been a skilled debater on the presidential stage since Bill Clinton. We have instead been burdened by a parade of tin-eared, rhetorical failures. Neither George W. Bush nor Al Gore were compelling speakers, nor were John McCain or John Kerry. Stilted, stammering, and just generally unsmooth and unmemorable describes them all.

Obama had a deserved reputation as a good speaker, and he was certainly more skilled than most of his peers, but all of his words were completely vaporous and forgettable. What the hell was the “audacity of hope?” Also, while Obama was a decent orator when he had a teleprompter and a good speechwriter, he was not particularly memorable on the debate stage or when speaking extemporaneously.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/10/08/kamala-the-tax-cutter-ii-tipp-poll-finds-trump-losing-the-messaging-battle-with-harris/

Of all the results from the latest I&I/TIPP poll, the most unsettling has to be that voters think Kamala Harris is at least as much of a fiscal and economic conservative as Donald Trump.

Our latest poll, taken of 997 likely voters, finds that more voters say they trust Harris (who’s already announced $4 trillion in tax hikes) than Trump to cut taxes by a 48%-45% margin. Among the crucial independent voters, the margin is even greater – 49% to 36%.

That’s not all.

More trust Harris to bring about energy independence, 48%-47%.

Trump is essentially tied with Harris on growing the economy (49%-48%), but he’s far behind with independents on this critical issue, with half saying they trust Harris to grow the economy and just 42% trusting Trump.

Harris is tied with Trump on cutting spending and fixing inflation. But among independents, she leads on the former, 44%-33%, and the latter by a 47%-39% margin.

Two other areas where Trump leads – lowering the national debt (46%-44%) and reducing crime (48%-46%) – are well within the poll’s margin of error.

The only two issues on which Trump holds a clear advantage over Harris are national security (50%-45%) and securing the border (54%-41%).

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/10/07/trump-vs-harris-still-knotted-up-but-voters-prefer-trump-policies-on-key-election-issues-ii-tipp-poll/

ith less than a month to go before the election, who has the edge in the presidential race, Democrat Kamala Harris or Republican Donald Trump? Disappointing as it might be to both sides, the race remains too close to call. But Trump has a solid lead when it comes to voter trust in dealing with the nation’s most serious issues, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

First, the big question we’ve asked each month since beginning our presidential poll: “If the presidential election were held today, and the following were the candidates, for whom would you vote?”

In the national online poll of 997 likely voters taken from Oct. 2-4, former President Trump garnered 46% support while Vice President Harris received 49% in a head-to-head matchup. Another 1% of those responding said “other” and 4% said “not sure.” The poll’s margin of error of +/-3.2 percentage points means the race remains a statistical tossup.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-10-5-bias-of-debate-moderators-in-their-own-words

Usually, I don’t waste much time watching the presidential or vice-presidential debates; but on Tuesday I watched most of the vice-presidential debate between J.D. Vance and Tim Walz. I applaud Vance on a skilled performance. But I particularly want to comment today on the overt hostility that Vance faced from the moderators, which is unfortunately typical of the hostility of the corporate media toward all Republican candidates.

If you watched some or all of the debate, you probably came away with a general impression of the moderators attempting to help Walz; but without a transcript it is difficult to remember specifics. Fortunately, CBS has produced a transcript of the debate. So I thought it might be informative to go through the transcript and compile some of the more absurd efforts of the moderators to give a boost to Walz. The moderators in this instance were Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan of CBS. What becomes noticeable when you do this is the extent to which the moderators insert into their questions contested, or even clearly false, Democratic Party talking points as if they were uncontested facts.

The second topic of questioning in the debate, introduced by moderator O’Donnell, was stated to be “Hurricane Helene,” which she used as a proxy for supposed climate change. Here is the text of the introductory question:

Let’s turn now to Hurricane Helene. The storm could become one of the deadliest on record. More than 160 people are dead and hundreds more are missing. Scientists say climate change makes these hurricanes larger, stronger and more deadly because of the historic rainfall. Senator Vance, according to CBS News polling, seven in ten Americans and more than 60% of Republicans under the age of 45 favor the U.S. taking steps to try and reduce climate change. Senator, what responsibility would the Trump administration have to try and reduce the impact of climate change?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/why-the-slow-collapse-of-harris-walz-wont-stop-before-election-day/ar-AA1rK1tZ

Ohio Sen. JD Vance, as anticipated, easily won the vice-presidential debate Tuesday, October 1, on demeanor, facts, and analysis. But in fairness to a sometimes herky-jerky and nervous Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, he had the harder task of defending the temporary pseudo-conservative make-over of Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris. 

His additional burdens were her co-culpability for the last three-and-a-half-years of the Biden disaster, and her unwillingness to implement her supposedly “change” agenda in the last months of her vice-presidential tenure. 

The CBS News moderators, Nora O’Donnell, and, especially, Margaret Brennan, also as expected, ganged up on Vance. They had learned nothing, and forgotten nothing from the last disastrous, and biased debate moderators.  

The two moderators shamelessly broke their own rules by fact-checking (wrongly and solely) Vance. They ignored questions of the administration’s tardy responses to Hurricane Helene, the Ukraine war, the recent Trump assassination attempts, or crime, while only briefly touching on Iran and a Middle East on the brink of total war. Instead, they concentrated, as also expected, on climate change, abortion, healthcare and childcare.  

All were issues they thought might more easily embarrass Vance. And, of course, as also expected, the two ended the debate pressing Vance on January 6. And yet Vance again parried easily and won decisively. In doing so, he dispelled the smear that he was somehow “mean,” when, in fact, he proved calm and magnanimous as he methodically dissected Walz.

The nation perhaps learned that a confident Trump selected him to articulate his MAGA positions, and perhaps in a manner superior to Trump’s own.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/10/liz-cheney-hurts-her-own-cause/

Her shift from arguing that Kamala Harris is a grave threat to our country to actively campaigning for Harris is the kind of thing that breeds cynicism.

As is invariably the case when a conservative of any stripe elects to publicly endorse a Democrat, Liz Cheney’s decision to actively campaign in support of Kamala Harris’s presidential candidacy has yielded a host of emotional paeans, a crush of sycophantic encomia, and a flock of confident-if-hollow assertions that, because she has now been endorsed by a scattering of right-wingers, the Democrats have at long last responded to the threat of Donald Trump by engaging in “Republican outreach.” I must report, alas, that all of these reactions are unsound. Insofar as Cheney’s wholehearted recommendation is likely to have any material effect on our present predicament, it will be to increase the supply of distrust in the political class, and thus to make our underlying problems worse. This, as the kids these days like to say, ain’t it.

I do not begrudge Liz Cheney her decision to endorse Kamala Harris. I do not question her sincerity in doing so, either. If, as she claims, Cheney believes that Donald Trump has not merely disqualified himself from consideration but represents a tangible threat to the U.S. Constitution, then the course she has chosen is the rational one. My issue is with Cheney’s strategic judgment. In the past, Cheney has described Harris as a “radical liberal” who “sounds just like Karl Marx”; as an outré ideologue who wants to reserve “absentee ballots for al-Qaeda”; and as an extremist who “would raise taxes, take away guns & health insurance, and explode the size and power of the federal gov’t,” and “recreate America in the image of what’s happening on the streets of Portland & Seattle.” Logically, there is nothing that prevents Cheney from continuing to believe all of these things while voting for Harris nevertheless. Cheney has already said that, “because of the danger that Donald Trump poses,” she “will be voting for Kamala Harris,” and, while it is not my own, this position is wholly defensible. But, by actively campaigning with Harris, Cheney has both undercut her authority and hurt the very cause that she is trying to serve.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/cnn-say-a-whole-lot-of-scandals-happened-in-minnesota-government-under-tim-walz/

Today’s pleasant surprise for the Trump campaign and everyone who’s not a fan of Tim Walz: A bit more than a month before Election Day, CNN does a long, detailed, and damning report about the scandals in Minnesota’s state government while Tim Walz has been governor:

A CNN review of audits – and the responses they prompted – as well as interviews with statewide politicians and pundits, found that Walz has been a hands-off leader when it comes to seeking accountability for episodes of fraud and mismanagement on his watch. What’s more, some state agencies headed by his appointees have responded defensively in recent months to the audits – a dynamic that Randall, who has worked in the department for 26 years, has found surprising.

Randall told a local media outlet this summer that the responses of some agencies to her audits have had a “shoot the messenger” feel of late. CNN reviewed more than a dozen reports from her office that held specific agencies responsible for allowing fraud, waste or mismanagement on their watch during the Walz administration. 

Some addressed high-profile scandals such as the pandemic fraud allegations and a troubled light-rail project – whose genesis predates Walz but is currently monitored by 17 Walz appointees – that has suffered from more than $1.5 billion in cost overruns. Randall’s office faulted that agency last year for a lack of transparency about rising costs and failure to ensure contractors’ ballooning price tags were justified. Others found holes in safeguards to waste or raised more targeted conflict-of-interest concerns, such as a state Department of Public Safety employee who received payments from the recipient of a grant that the employee oversees.

Randall told CNN that she knows of no personnel changes linked to any audit by her office since 2019, when Walz was sworn in.

Critics say that is on Walz, now the Democratic candidate for vice president.

CNN notes that not only have these scandals occurred on Walz’s watch, there’s little to no sign that Walz and his administration took much action to discipline those responsible:

Willie Jett, a member of Walz’s cabinet, seemed to feed into this perception when being grilled by state lawmakers this summer on the alleged meals-for-needy-kids scam, which revolved around a now-defunct nonprofit called Feeding Our Future.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/a-confident-j-d-vance-keeps-tim-walz-on-his-heels-in-first-and-only-vice-presidential-debate/

Ohio Senator J. D. Vance turned in a confident and controlled debate performance Tuesday night, seemingly making a stronger case for the reelection of his running mate, former president Donald Trump, than Trump himself has in either of his two debates this year.

Vance kept Democrat Tim Walz on his heels for most of the night, arguing that the country was safer, and more prosperous during Trump’s first term in office than it’s been under nearly four years with Kamala Harris as vice president. He swatted away Walz’s contention that Harris has plans to fix the border crisis and strengthen the economy, saying that as vice president she “ought to do them now.”

Walz, who has mostly avoided the media spotlight since he was tapped by Harris, appeared nervous when the bout began, stumbling over his words and taking long pauses to collect himself. Vance, by contrast, seemed poised after sitting for near daily interviews with adversarial journalists.

Defying the media’s arch-conservative caricature, Vance was compassionate to women who are facing unplanned pregnancies, and suggested that his Republican Party needs “to do so much better of a job at earning the American people’s trust back” on the issue of abortion.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/kamalas-fear-of-the-media/

Fear. If you are afraid to engage the media, how can you be expected to engage with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Jinping Xi, Iran’s leaders, or North Korea’s Kim Jong Un?

Vice President Kamala Harris has been reluctant and has refused to hold a news conference in more than 66 days or give any one-on-one interviews with members of the national press, even before becoming the Democratic nominee for president.

President Joe Biden is Harris’s role model. He is another person who did not fully engage the media. Biden held the fewest news conferences than any modern-day president; facetiously, he ran his campaign in 2020 from his basement allegedly due to COVID.

So, why change? It has worked thus far. The liberal media is “OK” with that, apparently.

You can count on one hand in four years (and have fingers left over) the times Biden has had one-on-one meetings with Putin, Xi, Kim or any other American adversary. And how has that worked out? The world is in chaos.

In contrast, former President John F. Kennedy went eyeball to eyeball with Russia’s President Nikita Khrushchev over 60 years ago. Kennedy had news conferences and interviews with the press regularly. He forced Russia to remove its missiles from Cuba. Former Presidents Ronald Reagan and H.W. Bush met with Russian leaders and won the Cold War. Peace through strength.

Biden-Harris? Well, no. Either they do not like being challenged by adversaries (even the press), or they cannot respond to questions with their true feelings. Former President Donald Trump has never had that problem.