RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/a-democratic-circus-is-shaping-up-in-the-new-york-tenth-congressional-district-primary/?utm_

“As depressing as politics is, we need to look for any entertainment available. It looks like the Democratic primary in New York’s tenth congressional district will provide as many laughs, groans, pratfalls and surprises as a world-class circus when it comes to town.”

Now that New York’s highest court surprised everyone by tossing out the state’s blatant Democratic gerrymander of its congressional districts, voters can look forward to real competitive races in many of the districts.

A new congressional district that includes Lower Manhattan and the “woke” Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn won’t be competitive in November, but the wide-open Democratic primary will provide a fascinating look at every crazy form of leftism ever catalogued.

The most well-known candidate is former NYC mayor Bill DeBlasio, who left office loathed by even most Democrats, but who’s banking on some people forgetting his two failed terms.

Yuh-Line Niou represents Manhattan’s Chinatown in the state assembly, but is best known for embracing the Black Lives Matter campaign, as when she liked a tweet that contained a photo comparing the attendees at a recent police funeral to Nazi storm troopers.

https://spectatorworld.com/newsletter/what-primary-season-has-taught-us-so-far/

What primary season has taught us so far

It may not feel like it, but we’re only two months into a seven-month-long primary season ahead of this year’s midterms. There are still thirty-seven states in which the voters are yet to have their say on the major parties’ candidates ahead of Election Day. In other words, it’s still early. But with the calendar front-loaded with attention-grabbing showdowns in important states like Georgia, Pennsylvania and Ohio, it’s not too late to tease out some big-picture takeaways. Here are three:

Few reasons for Trump to be cheerful

The least surprising thing about the Republican primaries so far is the lack of a definitive answer to the question of Donald Trump’s influence in the GOP. But brush past the black-and-white, pro- or anti-Trump dichotomy with which so much coverage oversimplifies the state of the modern Republican Party, and you find more reasons for Trump to be worried about his waning influence than evidence of an unassailable position at the head of the party.

The Georgia gubernatorial primary saw one of the biggest villains in the MAGA pantomime cruise to victory. In fact, Brian Kemp’s demolition of Trump’s preferred alternative, former senator David Perdue, was so total as to lose some of its broader political impact. Foregone conclusions just don’t capture the imagination as much as narrow wins. Trump would point to results elsewhere to demonstrate his power: the endorsement of J.D. Vance in Ohio, who saw a swift surge in the polls after he received the former president’s seal of approval shortly before primary day. One footnote to this sign of Trump’s power: Team Vance was confident of a late surge — and a primary win — with or without Trump’s endorsement. Spin, perhaps, or a hint that there is a bit more to the Ohio story than meets the eye.

Elsewhere, things get less clear-cut but no more reassuring for Trump

https://townhall.com/columnists/byronyork/2022/06/01/a-2024-trumpbiden-death-match-n2608031

For all the speculation that goes on around Donald Trump and the 2024 Republican presidential nomination race, it’s possible, even likely, that the more intense battle will be among Democrats. A new poll from Mark Penn, the former Clinton strategist who runs the Harvard-Harris Poll, suggests President Joe Biden’s support among Democrats is significantly weaker than Trump’s support among Republicans. And that could lead to chaos on the Democratic side.

Penn’s question was very simple. To Republicans, he asked, “If the Republican presidential primary for the 2024 election was held today, who would you vote for?” And to Democrats, he asked, “If the Democratic presidential primary for the 2024 election was held today, who would you vote for?”

The results: Forty-one percent of Republicans named Trump, while 12% named Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, 7% named former Vice President Mike Pence, and 4% each named former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Sen. Ted Cruz. There were a few other names lower down — Sen. Marco Rubio, Sen. Tim Scott, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — and a fairly large percentage, 28%, who said they were unsure or would choose someone else.

On the Democratic side, the results were 23% for Biden, while 9% named Vice President Kamala Harris, 8% named Sen. Bernie Sanders, 7% support 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton and 5% back Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Another fairly large number of people, 31%, said they were unsure or named someone else.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/05/do-americans-really-want-an-octogenarian-in-the-oval-office/

Republican primary voters would be forfeiting one of the party’s most effective lines of attack against Biden if they nominated Trump in 2024.

A Harvard–Harris poll released last week asked registered voters: “Do you think Joe Biden is showing he is too old to be President or do you think he is showing he is fit to be president?”

Sixty-two percent of respondents — nearly two-thirds — said they thought Biden was too old, compared with just 38 percent who said they thought he had proved himself fit for the job.

If Biden, at the age of 79, is registering poll numbers like that in 2022, how much more will the issue of his age weigh on the minds of voters should he seek another term in 2024?

Americans will not merely have to be comfortable with the fitness of the man they vote for in 2024 — they will have to confident that he’ll remain fit to serve as president through January 20, 2029, when Biden would be 86 years old. Attacks on Ronald Reagan’s age obviously didn’t hurt him in 1984, but at the end of a second term Biden would be nearly a decade older than Reagan was when he left office at the age of 77.

Voters do not need to play the role of armchair psychiatrist to see that Biden has lost a step. Despite all the attempts in the mainstream media to recast Biden’s troubles speaking as a lifelong battle with a stutter, it is plain to anyone with eyes and ears that the president who now struggles to make it through a speech is not nearly as sharp as the vice president who debated Paul Ryan in 2012.

https://americanmind.org/salvo/permanent-irrelevance/

The California GOP remains committed to its decline.

California Assemblymember Megan Dahle’s election committee transferred $40,500 to the state Republican party on April 22; two days later, the California State Republican Party endorsed her husband, State Senator Brian Dahle, as its candidate for governor. The timing of this transfer gave rise to suspicions that Megan Dahle purchased the party’s endorsement for her husband, but this is just one of many controversies in a state party that has never been more divided or more impotent.

The electorate’s share of Republican voters in California, at 23.9 percent of registered voters, has never been lower. This decline has been unrelenting; from 34.9 percent in 2002 to 34.6 percent in 2006, to 30.1 percent in 2010, to 28.6 percent in 2014, to 25.3 percent in 2018.

The weakness of California’s Republican party is reflected in every metric that matters. Its representation in California’s congressional delegation is 10 out of 53, which at 19 percent does not even reflect voter registration totals. Similar underachievement plagues their showing in the state legislature: Republicans number 19 out of 80 seats in the assembly, and 9 out of 40 seats in the state senate. Of the eight higher state offices—governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, treasurer, controller, superintendent of public instruction, and insurance commissioner—not one is held by a Republican. Every one of these office holders are Democrats. For those Californians who recall that the state was cherry red through the election of George Bush in 1988, this leftward turn is cause for endless regret.

The endorsement of Brian Dahle by the California Republican party might therefore be considered irrelevant. His chances of winning are zero. The decision to endorse Dahle does have consequences, however. The party passed up an unconventional but potentially transformative opportunity to expand its reach by endorsing independent candidate Michael Shellenberger, one of the most interesting political aspirants to emerge in California in many years. A former progressive environmentalist who supports nuclear power and argues that the threat of climate change catastrophe is overstated, Shellenberger has staked out contrarian positions that could have broad appeal to Californians tired of crime, high energy prices, and absurd regulations that inhibit development.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/fbi-november-ballot-lloyd-billingsley/

As the midterm election approaches, the Annual Statistical Transparency Report Regarding the Intelligence Community’s Use of National Security Surveillance Authorities shows why the Federal Bureau of Investigation is also on the ballot.

One of the few to give this document the attention it deserves was historian Matthew Guariglia, a policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and affiliated scholar at the University of California’s Hastings School of Law.

The report “provides statistics and contextual information concerning how the Intelligence Community uses the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act  and certain other national security authorities to accomplish its mission.” The Act authorizes the U.S. government to engage in mass surveillance of foreign targets.

As Guariglia discovered, FISA is “still being abused by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to spy on Americans without a warrant.” This abuse takes place under Section 702, an amendment to FISA.

Between December 2020 and November 2021, Guariglia notes, the FBI potentially queried the data of more than three million Americans without a warrant. Collection of the data, from telecom and internet providers, renders conversations described as “incidental,” but they aren’t. Each intelligence agency’s rules on “targeting” and “minimization,” Guariglia shows, allow access to access to the communications of Americans caught in  the “702 dragnet.”

https://thejewishvoice.com/2022/05/california-republican-goes-full-ilhan-omar-in-anti-semitic-rant/

California’s upcoming primary elections could deliver Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) an unlikely foreign policy ally—Republican Greg Raths, who last week said the “Jewish community” uses money to “control” U.S. politicians.

Raths’s anti-Semitic rant came during a May 20 Orange County Islamic Foundation candidate forum, which saw the Republican claim that U.S. support for Israel is bought and paid for by the “Jewish community.” Raths, who is running against Republican congresswoman Young Kim in California’s 40th Congressional District, also called to “rein in” U.S. foreign aid to Israel, a position he said he is able to support because he hasn’t taken “one dime” from Jewish sources.

“That’s the problem. Israeli PAC in Washington, they got money and they control a lot of these politicians. And the other side, the Palestinians, they don’t have the clout. So these politicians go where the money is, unfortunately,” Raths said. “The Jewish community is very well organized in the United States and they control a lot of politicians. That’s why the foreign aid is so large going to Israel. … The Jewish community has never given me one dime, so I’m not beholden to them at all.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/us-congressman-crist-visits-boca-mosque-linked-joe-kaufman/

CHARLIE CRIST (D-FL DISTRICT 13)

Former Governor of Florida and current US Representative Charlie Crist is running for Governor again, so he is on the campaign trail looking for votes. Unfortunately, one of the constituencies he is seeking support from is the radical Muslim community. In Florida, this group is sizable and politically active. Last month, Congressman Crist found himself at the Islamic Center of Boca Raton (ICBR), a mosque that has substantial links to terror and bigotry. Given his own history, one can surmise that Crist did not just wander into this particular mosque, as he has embraced Muslim extremists in the past. This article was written to expose a dangerous tendency of Crist.

ICBR was founded via the Muslim Student Organization (MSO) at Florida Atlantic University (FAU). It was incorporated in October 1998. The seed money for the building of its mosque – $600,000 – came from the Global Relief Foundation (GRF), an al-Qaeda-related charity that was shut down by the US government in December 2001 and an entity that ICBR had donated nearly $17,000 to, itself.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/05/25/georgia_thwarts_trumps_kingmaker_role__147651.html

In the end, it was much ado about nothing in Georgia except for political grandstanding.

Since the state swung narrowly in Joe Biden’s favor in 2020, Donald Trump vowed to seek revenge. The improbable targets of his ire were Georgia Republicans, specifically Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Although both men had backed the former president in his reelection bid, neither would join Trump in contesting the GOP ticket’s razor-thin loss. Trump recruited newly defeated Republican Sen. David Perdue to challenge Kemp for his seat, appeared in TV ads, and spent millions from his political action committee on Perdue’s behalf. Trump also endorsed Rep. Jody Hice, who challenged Raffensperger.

Millions of words were written and much airtime expended handicapping whether Georgia would show that Trump had molded the Republican Party in his own likeness. It didn’t happen Tuesday night, at least not in Georgia. Kemp maintained his early lead in the polls while earning the endorsement of former Vice President Mike Pence along the way and cruising to an easy victory – as did Raffensperger. Pence, largely written off by the media, looked more prescient, if not instantly relevant. In an appearance with Kemp on the eve of the election, Pence called a vote for Kemp a “deafening message” that the Republican Party is “the party of the future,” stirring new headlines that he is positioning himself for a presidential run in 2024.

In the end, Kemp easily bested Perdue, more than tripling the votes the former senator received and setting up a rematch election against Stacey Abrams, whom he defeated in the 2018 general election.

But Georgia is only one state. Trump has racked up a mixed record in contested primaries so far this year while wading into various contests to settle old scores or establish himself as a kingmaker. J.D. Vance, the Yale law school graduate and venture capitalist turned author, undoubtedly has Trump to thank for his win in Ohio’s GOP Senate primary. Likewise, Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor backed by Trump in Pennsylvania’s GOP Senate race, leads by just under 1,000 votes in a race against hedge fund executive David McCormick, which appears headed for a recount.

In the end, it was much ado about nothing in Georgia except for political grandstanding.