RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/08/30/for_both_parties_1998_midterms_offer_a_lesson_for_18_137939.html

There are many similarities between the 1998 midterm election and this one 20 years later. As philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” For both parties, the parallel situations — and pitfalls to possibly avoid – are worth studying.

Two decades ago, as is the case today, the president was being dogged by a special prosecutor and talk of impeachment was in the air, even as Americans enjoyed the benefits of a growing economy.

Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich built up expectations of a red wave in which the GOP would pick up between 10 to 40 seats, based heavily on Bill Clinton’s burgeoning scandals. In the end, however, Republicans lost five seats, narrowing their already slim majority to a 223-211 advantage. This was the first midterm since 1932 when the party controlling the White House added seats in the House. For several reasons, including the poor election results, Gingrich resigned from Congress less than a week after the election. By December 1998, the House Republicans went forward with the impeachment of Clinton and the Senate tried him on obstruction of justice and perjury charges.

The analogy is not exact since Republicans now control both houses of Congress and the presidency. But a key lesson from the 1998 election is that impeaching the president was not a decisive issue with most voters, one way or the other. In that booming economic climate, Clinton’s inappropriate behavior with a White House intern was secondary. Republicans who pushed scandal as a rationale for earning votes instead of a platform of ideas were misreading the public mood. And if anyone should have known better, it was that group of GOP members in Congress: What had propelled them into the majority in 1994 was a 10-point plan Gingrich had pushed called the “Contract With America.”

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2018/08/29/democrats-just-confirmed-lots-of-trumps-judges-so-they-could-skip-town/23512171/

Senate Democrats just gave a huge gift to President Donald Trump: They agreed to expedite votes on 15 of his nominees to lifetime federal court seats because they wanted to go home.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) had lined up votes for all those district court nominees last week. Normally, Senate rules require up to 30 hours of waiting time for each nominee ― something Democrats typically take advantage of to delay action on confirming Trump judges. But Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) cut a deal with McConnell on Tuesday to bypass the wait times and let them all get through.

Why? So Democrats could get back to campaigning and focusing on winning re-election in November. The Senate is now out of session until next Tuesday.

Of the 15 nominees, six were confirmed by voice votes on Tuesday. Another one was confirmed on a recorded vote. The remaining eight will get quick votes next week.

It’s a major win for Trump and McConnell, whose No. 1 priority is filling up federal courts with conservative judges ― many of whom are incredibly anti-abortion, anti–LGBTQ rights and anti–voting rights. Trump has gotten 26 circuit court judges confirmed, more than any other president at this point in his term. Another way of putting it: 1 in 7 U.S. circuit court seats is now filled by a judge nominated by Trump.

Add that Trump put Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court and is poised to get another justice through, Brett Kavanaugh, and you’ve got a president drastically reshaping the nation’s courts for generations.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/ron-desanctis-monkey-this-up/

On Fox News this morning, the newly minted Republican candidate for governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, praised his Democratic opponent, Andrew Gillum, said Gillum needs to be taken seriously, and attacked his agenda as a potential radical departure from the Florida status quo that is working well. What did the media and the left hear? Racism.

Here is what DeSantis said:

Florida elections are always competitive, and this is a guy who, although he’s much too liberal for Florida, I think he’s got huge problems with how he’s governed Tallahassee, he is an articulate spokesman for those far-left views, and he’s a charismatic candidate. I watched those Democrat debates, and none of that is my cup of tea, but he performed better than those other people there. So we’ve got to work hard to make sure that we continue Florida going in a good direction, let’s build off the success we’ve had on Governor Scott, the last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases and bankrupting the state. That’s not going to work.

The offending word, of course, is monkey, used in a common expression as a verb meaning to mess something up. I’m sure if DeSantis had it to say over again, he’d simply say “mess it up,” not because there’s anything wrong with the way he put it, but because our political culture is so insane. There was nothing racist in content or intent in his statement and this episode says more about DeSantis’s detractors than him.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-politically-obsessed-and-the-rest-of-us-1535564601

The Tuesday winners in Florida’s gubernatorial primary elections will offer Sunshine State voters a stark philosophical choice. Conservative Rep. Ron DeSantis (R) will face Sandernista Andrew Gillum, the mayor of Tallahassee.

But Floridians and voters elsewhere may not have much interest in such choices. Pollster Scott Rasmussen writes today:

For many obsessed with politics, the upcoming midterm elections are perceived as a fight between good and evil that will determine the fate of the nation… Most Americans (54%) don’t fit into that narrative. Just 27% Strongly Disapprove of the president and believe things would be better if Hillary Clinton had been elected. On the other side, 19% Strongly Approve of the president and believe things would be worse if Hillary Clinton was living in the White House today. The rest have more mixed views.

This eight-point advantage among committed voters is the reason that Democrats are expected to do well in the midterm elections this November. In the House of Representatives, likely outcomes range from Democrats falling just short of winning control to a Big Blue Wave earning a significant majority.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/martha-mcsally-easily-bests-arpaio-and-ward-in-arizona-senate-primary/

Representative Martha McSally (R., Ariz.) handily beat state senator Kelli Ward and former Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio with more than 50 percent of the vote in the Arizona Republican Senate primary on Tuesday night.

McSally, a former Air Force colonel, was widely considered the establishment favorite and Republicans’ best chance for victory in the upcoming general election.

The candidacies of Arpaio, the outspoken anti-immigration activist pardoned by President Trump earlier this year, and Ward, who courted controversy by appearing on conspiracy-mongering Internet programs such as Alex Jones’s Infowars, represented a swing toward the far-right populism of the Trump era.

In an effort to avoid the selection of a candidate considered toxic among the general electorate, out-of-state GOP groups donated heavily to McSally’s campaign. DefendArizona, a PAC established by establishment Republicans specifically to prevent a populist insurgency, spent more than $4 million to ensure her victory.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2018/08/28/arizona-us-senate-primary-election-results-2018-ward-arpaio-mcsally-sinema-abboud/1047696002/

U.S. Rep. Martha McSally, a two-term congresswoman from Tucson, defeated her Republican rivals, former state Sen. Kelli Ward of Lake Havasu City and former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Fountain Hills, according to unofficial results from the Secretary of State.

Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, who has served three terms and is from Phoenix, also defeated her rival, Deedra Abboud, a progressive activist and attorney from Scottsdale.

The Associated Press called the races for McSally and Sinema.

President Donald Trump, whose presence has loomed over the Senate race, congratulated McSally in a late-night tweet while bashing U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Arizona, who announced his retirement last fall.

“Martha McSally, running in the Arizona Primary for U.S. Senate, was endorsed by rejected Senator Jeff Flake….and turned it down — a first! Now Martha, a great U.S. Military fighter jet pilot and highly respected member of Congress,WINS BIG. Congratulations, and on to November!”

With McSally and Sinema the apparent nominees, Arizona voters are on track to elect their first woman senator.

Either party has a good chance of winning, analysts say, worrying Republicans while giving Democrats credible hope of gaining a statewide foothold. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/1968-democratic-convention-riots-modern-party-established/

The riots that night set a political pattern that Democrats are still following today.

Fifty years ago tonight, a great American political party was murdered by its own children and closest friends.

The party in question was the Democratic party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and JFK, which perished during the riots in Grant Park, Chicago, on the night of Aug. 28, 1968, in the midst of the party’s national convention.

Its children in this case were the rioters from the anti–Vietnam War Left. After killing off the traditional liberal Democratic party they despised, they would go on to take over the corpse and make it the host of America’s radical Left, from Jerry Brown to Bernie Sanders — with George McGovern, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama as their front men.

The friends who joined in the kill were the mainstream media. Their coverage of the riots, that night and later, would make the SDS demonstrators and their violent cohorts — the predecessors of today’s antifa — into martyrs of “police brutality” and Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley’s “Gestapo tactics,” as one Democratic senator from Connecticut put it in a speech to the convention that night, when they had in fact been — like today’s antifa — the deliberate instigators of mayhem and bloodshed. Starting that night the New York Times, the Washington Post, and ABC and CBS News would become the enablers of America’s radical Left, even at its most violent — and in the process cut themselves off from the millions of ordinary working Americans who had made the Democratic party their political home.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/crusade-and-jihad-review-conquest-and-conquerors-1535311504

JACKSONVILLE, Fla.—For months after Republican Adam Putnam entered the Florida gubernatorial race, he seemed almost unbeatable. He had a record of government experience and political success, a trove of endorsements, robust fundraising and a solid lead in most polls over his principal rival, GOP Rep. Ron DeSantis.

Then Mr. DeSantis, a vocal defender of President Trump, picked up the president’s endorsement in June, touted it in a new ad, and appeared with Mr. Trump at a campaign rally in Tampa. Mr. DeSantis shot to the lead in the polls.

“The fallout from the president’s visit to Florida was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen,” said Mr. Putnam, the state agriculture commissioner, who has worked ever since to catch up in advance of Florida’s Aug. 28 primary election.

After more than two decades of tension within the GOP between a restive base and its traditional establishment, Trumpism, the archetypal grass-roots movement, is winning.

With the 2018 primaries about to end, all but two of the 37 Republicans Mr. Trump has endorsed for House, Senate and governor during their primary campaigns have won. Mr. Trump has abandoned or undercut the party’s traditional commitment to free trade, fiscal conservatism and a hawkish foreign policy.

Mr. Trump’s most vocal GOP critics in elective office have been defeated in primaries, announced their retirement or gone quiet. No critic was more forceful than Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who died Saturday.

House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, once a rising star of the party and free-market conservatism, is retiring. Of the 33 House and Senate Republicans quitting Capitol Hill in 2018—not including those running for higher office—just two supported Mr. Trump in 2016 before he became the presumptive nominee. At least five of them didn’t endorse Mr. Trump after he won the nomination.

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/the-progressive-twittersphere-turns-against-socialist-it-girl/

Occasionally I like to take a dive in the deep end of progressive lunacy. That’s when I click over… not to Slate… not even to Salon… but to Jezebel.

The outrage du jour: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted something nice about John McCain after he died on Saturday.

Can you imagine?

From the headline, you might guess that you’re about to read a fair-minded examination of the unhinged response to Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet. It reads, “These 3,600 Comments Are None Too Pleased With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s John McCain Tweet.”

But of course this is Jezebel, so there’s going to be nothing fair-minded about it at all. Or even simply, uh, minded.

So what did AOC tweet to raise such a stink? Just that “John McCain’s legacy represents an unparalleled example of human decency and American service. As an intern, I learned a lot about the power of humanity in government through his deep friendship with Sen. Kennedy. He meant so much, to so many. My prayers are with his family.” It’s the kind of generic condolence sent by any decent human being, and it’s the first sign I’ve seen that the New York socialist might actually be one.

But that’s not good enough for Jezebel or 3,600 Twitter jerks. Although to be fair, the first bit of Whitney Kimball’s Jezebel tract tried really hard to at least appear even-handed. She wrote:

There’s a heaping pile of “wtfs” and trash GIFs in here, but the intermittent critiques mainly pinpoint her choice to praise McCain’s political record rather than offering a simple condolence. “I still support you, and I’m sure most of the people criticizing you also do as well, but it is disappointing for you to lay praise on such an awful man. You could have just sympathized for his family, said nothing etc.,” one follower tweeted. Others accuse her of pandering and drifting from her own hardline principles, while defenders and conservatives jumped in to attack the critics for vitriol.