RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-moral-equivalence-of-political-karens/

EXCERPT:

“Problem-solving,” then, bespeaks the influence of progressive technocracy, rule by credentialed elites. In times of crisis like war, “working across the aisle” and “bipartisanship” make sense. But in legislating peace-time policies, such cooperation can empower malign bills, like last December’s $1.85 trillion omnibus spending bill that threw more fuel onto the feckless spending and debt bonfire. This fiscal atrocity was a bipartisan, “reach across the aisle” disaster, with

18 Republican Senators and nine House Republican members voting for the bill.

Protecting our unalienable rights and freedoms is the purpose of federal power, whereas “solving problems,” with few exceptions, should be the purview of states, communities, and civil society.

Finally, the understandable “pox on both your houses” sentiment frequently involves a specious moral equivalence. We can sympathize with the dying Mercutio’s curse on both the Montagues and Capulets, but Romeo and Tybalt are not morally equivalent. Romeo was impulsive and naïve, but Tybalt was a vicious bully and a thug.

So too with No Labels’ moral equivalence between the two parties, or especially between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, which is the rationale for fielding a third-party candidate. But the metric for judging between parties and candidates is not decorum or “problem-solving,” but freedom: Which candidate and party is the champion and defender of ordered liberty, and the Constitution’s institutional bulwarks against tyranny? Which respects the freedom of individuals, families, the states, and civil society to direct and manage their lives without the heavy hand of a technocratic Leviathan and its bureaucratic minions interfering and imposing their ideological preferences?

In the end, there’s only one choice––between freedom and tyranny. Everything else is the duplicitous distractions of political guildsmen and lupine opportunists.

https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/10/why-has-election-day-turned-into-election-month/

A case challenging North Dakota’s 13 extra election days is about helping to bring confidence back to elections nationwide.

Remember when Election Day used to be an actual day? You’d gather with your family and friends to find out who the next president was going to be. It was a time to celebrate our republic as Americans went to have their voices heard at the ballot box. The Public Interest Legal Foundation, of which I am president, is fighting in federal court to restore the “day” in Election Day.

We filed a federal lawsuit in North Dakota to enforce federal law and stop the state from accepting ballots up to 13 days after Election Day. We allege that North Dakota’s law allowing the election to drag on for almost two extra weeks conflicts with federal law.

This case doesn’t claim that anyone stole the North Dakota election. Indeed, North Dakota is only involved in the case because it is one of the most extreme states in accepting ballots weeks after the election.

The case challenging North Dakota’s 13 extra election days is about helping to bring confidence back to elections nationwide. It’s time Election Day means Election Day again.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-iowa-ron-desantis-yucca-mountain-renewable-fuel-standard-2024-presidential-primary-gop-6796e888?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

President Trump is leading the GOP’s primary polls by 30 points, but maybe he’s more worried about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis than he lets on. The Iowa State Fair is still a month away, but step right up to Mr. Trump’s political booth, ladies and gentlemen of the primary electorate, and he will tell you whatever he thinks you want to hear.

“I fought for Iowa ethanol like no President in history and ethanol, period, like no President,” Mr. Trump said in Council Bluffs. “Every Iowan also needs to know that Ron DeSantis totally despises Iowa ethanol and ethanol generally.” In Congress, Mr. DeSantis supported ending the Renewable Fuel Standard, or RFS. Mr. Trump called this “his vicious plan to annihilate the Iowa farming industry,” while saying that Mr. DeSantis wants to “outsource every American farming job to a foreign country.”

On Saturday the panderama was in Las Vegas. “DeSanctimonious voted to fund Yucca Mountain as a dumping ground for nuclear waste,” Mr. Trump said. “That’s not just a little area. That stuff, it’s all over the place. What a mess.” As if that were too subtle, Mr. Trump added: “If you don’t mind nuclear waste dumped in your backyard, I suggest you vote for Ron DeSanctimonious.”

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/07/10/the-desantis-campaign-aint-dead-heres-why-n1709545

It’s hard to go on social media and not find someone pronouncing the DeSantis campaign as being dead in the water. I’ve seen enough posts desperately making the argument that he GOP primary was over long before it began, and anything other than crowning Trump the victor before a single debate is even held or a single vote cast is met with a chorus of mockery. I should know as I get plenty of hate mail for pointing out that DeSantis has plenty of time to eclipse Trump.

It’s not just the liberal media that seems to thrive on the narrative that DeSantis is choking. One of the common narratives is that his campaign launch was a disaster, even though the launch brought in record-breaking haul of $8.2 million in campaign donations  in the first 24 hours following the announcement. Clearly, there is a considerable base of individuals who believe in his leadership and policy agenda.

Last week, the DeSantis campaign released its first quarter fundraising numbers, and they showed he raised a whopping $20 million since launching his campaign on May 24.  The campaign noted it was the “largest first-quarter filing from any non-incumbent Republican candidate in more than a decade,” and that it even “bests the $18.3 million former president and quasi-incumbent Donald Trump’s campaign raised during his first two fundraising quarters as a candidate ($3.8 in Q4 2022 and $14.5 in Q1 2023).”

Nevertheless the narrative continues. On Fox News on Sunday, host Maria Bartiromo implied DeSantis is dying politically, and asked him outright, “[W]hat’s going on with your campaign? There was a lot of optimism about you running for president earlier in the year.” Then she cited some media headlines about his supposedly lackluster campaign.

“Maria, these are narratives. The media does not want me to be the nominee,” DeSantis explained. “I think that’s very clear. Why? Because they know I’ll beat Biden but even more importantly, they know that I will actually deliver on all these things. We will stop the invasion at the border. We will take on the drug cartels. We will curtail the administrative state. We will get spending under control. We will do all the things that they don’t want to see done and so they are going to continue doing the type of narrative. I can tell you we understand that this is a state-by-state process.”

 Mitt Romney, the current U.S. Senator from Utah, recently made a rather confident assertion in an interview with Politico: “I’m convinced that if I run, I win.” To many, such a statement may seem quite arrogant. However, upon further examination of both his 2018 election results and his support from members of the Republican Party leadership, it is not unreasonable for Senator Romney to be so sure about his prospects for re-election in 2024.

https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/07/house-republican-bill-would-keep-foreign-nationals-from-voting-in-u-s-federal-elections/

Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., introduced legislation earlier this week ensuring that only eligible U.S. citizens are able to vote in federal elections.

Titled the “NO VOTE for Non-Citizens Act of 2023,” the proposed bill includes amendments to the 1993 National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and 2002 Help America Vote Act that seek to clarify states’ authority in maintaining federal voter registration lists and establish that federal election funding cannot be “used to support States that permit non-citizens to cast ballots in any election.”

Under the NVRA, states are required to “ensur[e] the maintenance of an accurate and current voter registration roll for elections for Federal office.” The current version of the law, however, only refers to “eligible voters” and does not include a provision about citizenship requirements.

While the Constitution and federal law stipulate that only U.S. citizens can vote in federal elections, several Democrat-led cities in states such as Maryland and California have adopted measures in recent years permitting the practice for their respective municipal elections. In October, for instance, Washington, D.C. passed legislation granting foreign nationals the ability to vote in the district’s local elections. House Republicans’ efforts to revoke the law have been blocked by Senate Democrats.

“Since the Constitution prohibits non-citizens from voting in Federal elections, such ineligible persons must not be permitted to be placed on Federal voter registration lists,” the NO VOTE for Non-Citizens Act reads.

In order to ensure noncitizens aren’t voting in federal elections, Griffith’s bill includes a provision requiring states that permit localities to allow noncitizen voting in their respective elections to place such non-citizens on a voter registration list “separate from the official list of eligible voters with respect to registrants who are citizens of the United States.”

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/07/04/rfk-jr-vs-the-democratic-elites/

He still bears the name of the US Democratic Party’s most famous and revered family. But that hasn’t stopped the Democratic elites and liberal media from relentlessly attacking Robert F Kennedy Jr.

Since RFK Jr – son of Robert F Kennedy and nephew of President John F Kennedy – announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination in April, he has principally been attacked for his anti-vaccine views, including his belief in the long-discredited idea that the MMR vaccine causes autism.

As a result, Kennedy has been called a conspiracy theorist, a spreader of disinformation and a kook. The New York Times says he is ‘shaking Americans’ faith in science’. A Democratic representative and adviser to Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has called Kennedy’s views ‘dangerous’. The condemnation has been relentless.

Last month, a vaccine expert, Dr Peter Hotez, declined an invitation to debate Kennedy on Joe Rogan’s podcast. He said that it would be fruitless to debate a committed anti-vaxxer like RFK Jr. The liberal media have generally sided with Hotez. As one pundit put it, ‘vaccine science isn’t up for debate’.

Some outlets have gone as far as censoring Kennedy’s views. In a recent interview, ABC News cut out his comments about the Covid vaccines. Last month, YouTube removed his interview with Jordan Peterson, citing its ‘vaccine misinformation policy’.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/06/29/inevitable-suppression-awaits-the-rfk-jr-movement/

On the surface, there seem to be plenty of reasons as to why the Right should support, directly or tacitly, the quixotic bid of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for President of the United States. The hopelessness of his campaign might be the biggest one.

The Enemy of My Enemy?

Many conservative commentators suggest that RFK Jr. is worth supporting because he represents a more “conservative” brand of Democrat than any presidential candidate since Jim Webb in 2016.

And indeed, on a handful of cultural touchstone issues, the son of the late senator and would-be president of the same name does seem to agree with the Right: Most prominently, he has been critical of efforts to mandate COVID-19 vaccines. He also has spoken out against the rise of transgenderism. And he has engaged with such free-thinkers of the Internet as Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson, which in turn have led to him getting censored by Big Tech, an achievement often limited exclusively to conservatives.

Furthermore, his status as the latest standard-bearer of the outsider Democratic candidate waging a one-man war against the party machine also will naturally draw a lot of conservative sympathy, if not support, due to the Right’s universal opposition to Joe Biden. The previous symbol of this resistance to the Democrat Party elite was Bernie Sanders, who also had the race for the nomination rigged against him not once, but twice.

But, ironically, the aging socialist senator from Vermont was probably more ideologically aligned with President Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden – or Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for that matter. Sanders, for his many flaws, was nearly in complete agreement with Trump when it came to trade and tariffs, as both were opposed to such free trade deals as NAFTA and TPP. They shared a similar outlook on foreign policy, in favor of non-interventionism. And, once upon a time, Sanders was just as critical of open borders and mass immigration as Trump was.

Kennedy, by contrast, harbors views that are just as dangerous as Sanders’, if not even more so. He once advocated for passing a law that would “punish” anyone who doesn’t accept the pseudo-scientific belief that is global warming. He tows the party line on many other issues too, including his pro-choice stance when it comes to the ongoing abortion battle.

And, for a man who claims to be in complete opposition to the Deep State, JFK’s nephew once eagerly parroted all of the same DNC talking points when it came to the “Russian collusion” conspiracy theory against Trump, thus propping up one of the biggest Deep State lies of all time.

RFK’s Pyrrhic Victories

If conservatives shouldn’t support RFK Jr. based on his politics or ideology, then perhaps they’d be better off supporting the idea of his campaign rather than what he actually stands for: Giving Biden a political black eye ahead of the 2024 general election.

https://thehill.com/opinion/4069137-feehery-is-democrats-mr-perfectly-fine-a-reelection-disaster/

When Democrats settled on Joe Biden as their candidate in 2020, they seemed to think he would be perfectly fine. He wasn’t completely crazy, he seemed moderate, he was happy enough to hide away in his basement to make the campaign all about President Trump, and he had enough experience in Washington to go along the established order that the nabobs of the capital city prefer.

But like Taylor Swift pointed out in her 2008 hit song, sometimes Mr. Perfectly Fine turns out to be a disaster. Or as one friend of mine likes to put it, everything is fine until it is not fine.

Biden has had some bad breaks in his life, and we should acknowledge the tragedy that he has had to endure up front. But when it comes to politics, Biden has been far luckier than good.

He is prone to wide exaggerations about his own life experiences and has a penchant for at times stealing the words of another. He often says things that have no possibility of being true. Because voters seemingly grade on a curve, Biden’s gift for gab and Irish charm has carried him to a position of power that just about nobody saw in his future. That includes his former boss, President Obama, who talked him out of running in 2016 and who made clear to anybody who would listen that he didn’t think Biden was up to the job.

Biden has a habit of making exactly the wrong decisions. On international issues, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said of Biden, “he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

From his vaccine mandates to his mask mandates, from his reckless spending plans that helped to spur inflation to his embrace of the defund the police crowd, from his doubling down on the climate change hysteria to his confusing rhetoric on Ukraine before the conflict started, Biden has consistently made bad situations immeasurably worse.

Three things are now confronting Biden as he seeks reelection, outside his less than stellar performance. First, his age. Second, very real questions about how he got elected in the first place. Third, his corrupt business deals with his son, Hunter.

Biden’s geriatric bearing has long concerned voters, and it frequently is one of most cited reasons why voters voice discomfort with his reelection. He was old when he ran for vice president. He will be the oldest president by close to a decade should he win reelection and serve out his second term. And despite the aviator sunglasses and cool sports car, Biden is not a young old man. The voters notice and they don’t like it.