RUTHFULLY YOURS

Hillary Clinton has never won an honest election. And she isn’t about to start trying to win one now.

Her favorite kind of race is rigged. Deeply unpopular and deemed untrustworthy by huge numbers of voters, she plans to win by panicking Republicans into abandoning Trump to “save” themselves.

Hillary is an insider and her weapon of choice is the media. The weapon has a limited impact on the average Republican voter, but has a great deal of impact on the establishment Republicans who are her targets. Their weaknesses are position and respectability. From the very beginning some establishment Republicans preferred to see Hillary win to maintain the status quo.

For some that meant the policy status quo in which illegal alien amnesty, mass immigration, support for the Muslim Brotherhood and nation-building remained the deranged staples of GOP policy. For others it was about maintaining their privileged positions and access to power regardless of how badly they lost.

But a much larger wing of the party was uncertain about whether Trump could or should win. It was this demographic which Hillary’s people have been hammering with widespread coverage of defections by establishment types. The campaign’s goal has been to convince them that Trump is doomed and that his victory might even be more dangerous than a win for Hillary.

Hillary’s strategy is to split the Republican Party. Cut off the head from the body. Convince the establishment to starve Trump of resources while rallying Republican candidates to disavow him. Pit elements of the GOP against each other while Hillary cakewalks to victory and then inherits a conflicted and broken Republican Party incapable of presenting a coherent opposition to her agenda.

It’s a good plan. And only Republicans can let it happen.

Hillary Clinton did not want to face an actual opponent in the Democratic primaries. She does not want to face Donald Trump or anybody else with a national profile and name recognition in an election.

That’s what worked for her in New York. It’s the strategy she’s hoping will work for her one more time.

Short of diving head-first from atop his eponymous tower, Donald J. Trump seems unable to satisfy the Never Trump crowd.

Perhaps the most aggravating thing about Trump’s mortal enemies on the right — many of whom I have known and admired for decades — is that they refuse to take “yes” for an answer.

Mitt Romney, Senator Ted Cruz, columnist George Will, and others complain that Trump is a non-conservative, crypto-Democrat — Hillary Clinton with orange hair.

No doubt, Trump’s trade policies violate conservative doctrine on the free exchange of goods and services across borders. Still, it was good to hear Trump say on Monday, “Trade has big benefits, and I am in favor of trade. But I want great trade deals for our country that create more jobs and higher wages for American workers. Isolation is not an option, only great and well-crafted trade deals are.”

Also, Trump’s frequent inability to mute his internal monologue maddens even his most avid supporters.

However, on policy issues and political judgments, Trump has done the Right thing — only to hear catcalls from the very conservatives who should welcome his major strides in their direction.

Start with Trump’s most important choice: his pick for vice president.

As the person who would serve a breath from the presidency, Trump could have tapped a blowhard governor who barely has improved the Garden State. Thankfully, Chris Christie remains trapped in Trenton. Trump could have recruited Senator Bob Corker (R., Tenn.), a milquetoast moderate whose convoluted legislative strategy against President Obama’s dreadful nuclear deal with Iran made it virtually unstoppable.

Instead, Trump selected Governor Mike Pence. The Indiana Republican was the Right’s True North in Congress. He earned a 99 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union. This darling of the pro-market Club for Growth repeatedly cut taxes as governor and resuscitated the Hoosier State’s economy. This socially conservative economic libertarian unites the GOP’s twin wings.

Recognizing that the Supreme Court has devolved into America’s election-free über-legislature, Trump unveiled eleven prospective justices. The conservative Heritage Foundation recommended several of these stalwart constitutionalists. They all are affiliated with the Federalist Society, the Vatican of rightist jurisprudence. Confirming his originalist intent, Trump said Tuesday on Hannity that he wants nominees “as close to Justice Scalia as we can get.”

Trump’s foes moaned that he had raised too few donations to battle the magnificently funded Duchess of Chappaqua. And then, in July, Trump collected a competitive $80 million, averaging $69 per contribution, versus Clinton’s $90 million, averaging $44.

Trump on Monday calmly delivered a serious, focused speech to the Detroit Economic Club. With the very significant exception of its trade-policy language, Trump’s address could have been written by Bill Kristol, Charles Murray, or any other conservative thinker now sticking red-hot needles into his Donald Trump voodoo doll. Declaring “We will Make America Grow Again,” Trump passionately tied Clinton’s left-wing faith to Detroit’s (and America’s) economic disease and then prescribed nearly every major conservative economic reform.

Yes, Donald Trump has muddied the issue of possible voter fraud in the November election with his comment that the only way Hillary Clinton can win Pennsylvania is by way of stolen votes. There doesn’t seem to be an issue that Trump can’t handle without hyperbole and exaggeration.

But the media pile-on that Trump has experienced over his call for election observers to monitor the polls in Pennsylvania is unfair. The Los Angeles Times claimed that his remarks calling for poll monitors in Pennsylvania had “strong racial overtones,” even though he never mentioned race. “The comments raised the specter of confrontations on Election Day in precincts with many minority voters,” the Times reported. Other commentators rebutted Trump by repeating spurious claims that voter fraud is extremely rare.

Savvy Pennsylvania politicos have begged to differ. Chris Matthews, the liberal MSNBC host who comes from Pennsylvania, vehemently opposes requiring ID at polling places. But he agrees that voter fraud is a Philadelphia tradition. In 2011, on his show Hardball, he explained a common scheme:

People call up, see if you voted or you’re not going to vote. Then all of a sudden somebody does come and vote for you. This is an old strategy in big-city politics. . . . I know all about it in North Philly — it’s what went on, and I believe it still goes on.

Philadelphia has a long reputation of fixing elections as a means of controlling patronage and municipal contracts. Voter intimidation also has occurred. In the 1960s, cops would routinely hassle black voters trying to vote. But intimidation can take many forms. In 2012, two members of the radical New Black Panther Party used nightsticks and racial epithets in an effort to scare white voters away from a Philadelphia polling place. The Obama administration ended up dropping almost all of the charges in the case against the Panthers.

The election is still weeks away but you wouldn’t know it from the various and sundry MSM toadies out-mugging each other on TV crowing that Hillary Clinton has already been elected queen of the universe. After all, the polls prove it. Science, baby, science!

Clumsy moves on the chessboard? Wishful thinking pushed to delusional levels? Smoke-and-mirrors? All of the above?

Suppose for the sake of argument that Hillary Clinton loses the election. Where does she go from there? Frankly, nowhere. She will not run for office again for the simple reason that the party will only be too happy to forget all about the Clintons and would refuse to support Hillary for any elected office, not even town clerk in Yonkers.

No matter what MSM clowns tell you, Clinton is a lipstick-on-a-pig candidate. Any other Democrat (never mind Republican) with such a pathetic resume would never even be considered as the party’s standard bearer. Any other Democrat would have been slapped silly by FBI Director Comey and offed to jail in an orange pants suit.

So, were she to lose the election, Hillary Clinton would have to “settle” for hard cash. The tons of it flowing into the slush fund known as the Clinton Foundation would then be used to support a life style of the rich and famous for the would-be-queen of the universe and her elderly consort nearing decrepitude.

On second thought, maybe not. Who, after all, would be foolish enough to continue kicking in big bucks so Queen Hillary can gallivant around the world, Bubba in tow to sample more nubile “assistants”? The pay-for-play option, including Bill’s hefty speaking fees, would vanish five minutes after Trump is declared president.

Throughout this campaign season, Democrats have feigned confusion about why disaffected Republicans have not embraced Hillary Clinton, given Donald Trump’s character defects. But the K-12 education plank in the Democratic Party platform does a lot to explain the hesitance. The party’s promises seem designed to satisfy teachers unions rather than to appeal to ordinary Democrats, much less opposition moderates.

Democrats say that they will “recognize and honor all the professionals who work in public schools,” including “teachers, education support professionals, and specialized staff,” suggesting that every teacher does a terrific job. The party also promises that it will “end the test-and-punish version of accountability.” Only charter schools seem to need more scrutiny: The platform includes a full paragraph of ideas to regulate them.

Democrats nationwide seem to have a different view. Like Republicans, Democrats have a positive view of most teachers, but their confidence does not extend to all of them. Democrats and Republicans both think that nearly 60% of teachers in their local schools are either excellent or good, and another quarter at least satisfactory. But Democrats find up to 15% of teachers unsatisfactory. It doesn’t seem like rank-and-file Democrats are ready to honor all teachers and simply trust them.

These are some of the data Education Next reveals in a survey to be published next week. Over the course of May and June our publication surveyed 700 teachers and 3,500 other Americans. The results demonstrate how out of touch the Democratic Party has become on education.

In contrast with platform-committee Democrats, 80% of rank-and-file adherents who took a position on the issue said they backed the federal requirement that “all students be tested in math and reading each year,” with only 20% disagreeing. Republicans had similar responses: 74% and 26%, respectively.

As for punishing and rewarding teachers, 57% of Democrats nationwide said they supported “basing part of the salaries of teachers on how much their students learn.” Fifty-nine percent said teacher tenure should be eliminated.

For their platform, party insiders voted to “support enabling parents to opt their children out of standardized tests.” But Democrats nationwide do not share this view. When asked whether they favored “letting parents decide whether to have their children take state math and reading tests,” 71% of Democrats said they did not. So did 69% of Republicans.

Democrats in Philadelphia also suggested that they “will end the school-to-prison pipeline by opposing discipline policies which disproportionately affect African-Americans and Latinos.” But 61% of Democrats around the country oppose federal policies that “prevent schools from expelling and suspending black and Hispanic students at higher rates than other students.” So do 86% of Republicans, and a majority of both African-American and Hispanic respondents who take a side.

Democratic honchos qualify their support for charter schools by asserting that they “should not replace or destabilize traditional public schools”—not a good sign since it is impossible for charters to enroll more students without contraction elsewhere. But when Democrats nationwide were asked whether they supported “the formation of charter schools,” 58% of those with a position said yes, as did 74% of Republicans. CONTINUE AT SITE

This column appeared before the conventions but cogently explains the fault lines of polling….rsk

Gabriel Sanchez is Professor of Political Science and Executive Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy at the University of New Mexico. He is also a Principal at the research and polling firm Latino Decisions.

Alan Abramowitz is the Alben W. Barkley Professor of Political Science at Emory University

In 2012, national polls in October suggested the presidential race was a virtual tie. The Real Clear Politics polling average gave Barack Obama a slight 0.7 point lead over Mitt Romney, but he actually won by almost 4 points. Of the final 11 national polls released in 2012, as reported on Real Clear Politics, 7 were a tie or had Romney ahead, while only 4 had Obama ahead.

Why were so many of the polls wrong? In part, because they failed to capture how minorities would vote. Unfortunately, some pollsters may be making the same mistakes in 2016 — and thereby underestimating Hillary Clinton’s lead in the polls.

In 2012, many polls underestimated how many minorities would vote and how many would vote for Obama. For example, a Politico poll released the morning of Election Day said the race was tied at 47 percent each for Obama and Romney. The poll said that 62 percent of Latinos supported Obama, while the exit polls reported 71 percent, and Latino Decisions reported 75 percent. Among the “another race” category, which is mostly comprised of Asian Americans, Politico reported that 47 percent supported Obama, while the exit polls reported 73 percent, and an Asian American Decisions exit poll reported 72 percent.

And Politico was not alone. A Monmouth/Survey USA poll, which had Romney leading by 3 points, suggested that Obama would barely win Latinos, 48 percent to 42 percent.

This problem was known before election day. In the fall of 2012, Mark Blumenthal asked “Is The Gallup Poll Favoring Mitt Romney By Undersampling Minority Voters?” which came after a series of blog posts by Alan Abramowitz, one of which asked “Is Gallup Heading for Another Big Miss?” As Nate Cohn has recently pointed out, it is difficult to know the “correct” percent of voters that are white vs. non-white. Nevertheless, many 2012 polls underestimated Obama’s share of the vote by under-representing minorities’ share of the electorate and underestimating their support for Obama.

Now, in 2016, it looks like many pollsters didn’t learn much from 2012.

Several polls suffer from flaws in how they sample Latinos. While large bilingual polls of Latino voters from outlets such as Latino Decisions and Univision/Washington Post have reported very little support for Donald Trump, other national polls that interview Latinos only in English show that 29 percent to 37 percent of Latinos will support Trump — better even than Romney fared. These polls also show Trump doing as well or better among Asian-Americans, compared to Romney. Some polls even estimate that 20 percent to 25 percent of blacks support Trump.

Here is one example from a Survey USA poll conducted on behalf of The Guardian, which gave Clinton a 3-point lead over Trump (39 percent vs. 36 percent). The sample of the poll was 74 percent white. However, a comprehensive analysis of census data and growth rates by Ruy Teixeira and William Frey estimates that less than 70 percentgof voters in the 2016 cycle will be white. If we adjust the racial composition of this poll to reflect the Teixeira and Frey’s estimates, Clinton’s margin grows to almost 5 points (see here).

The Survey USA poll is also arguably underestimating support for Hillary Clinton among three different groups of minority voters:
•Asian-Americans. In this poll, Clinton leads 48-29 among Asian-Americans. However, a recent national survey of Asian American registered voters conducted in six different languages found that just 10 percent planned to vote for Donald Trump.

I can’t decide what’s more infuriating: Those e-mails suggesting inappropriate links between Hillary Clinton’s State Department and the Clinton Foundation, or her campaign’s explanation of those e-mails suggesting that they think I’m a total, complete moron.

At the same time that Cheryl Mills was working as chief of staff in the secretary of state’s office, she was also conducting interviews for the secretary of state’s foundation. That is a textbook example of a situation that, at the very least, looks like someone using her public resources for personal gain. Any reasonable person can recognize that.

But the Clinton campaign — apparently hoping that voters completely lack critical-thinking skills – has released a statement in response insisting that all suspicions are completely ridiculous, that Mills was just doing “volunteer work for a charitable foundation,” and that “the idea that this poses a conflict of interest is absurd.”

That’s right . . . Mills was just doing it for fun! She was just like, “Hey I’ve got some time off . . . you know what my favorite thing to do in the whole world is? Watch TV? Drink wine? Nahhhhh, I want to go interview potential candidates for the Clinton Foundation! And she definitely chose that specific foundation solely because it was so great and fun, and definitely not because it was one that was run by her boss. How “absurd” to think that someone spending her free time doing work for her boss’ foundation might possibly indicate she was receiving anything from her boss for doing so. In fact, I’m sure they never even talked about it! And if you think otherwise, then you are the one who is being “absurd!”

Does anyone else hear how ridiculous that sounds?

When Hillary Clinton took office as secretary of state, she and her foundation agreed to conduct their affairs in a way that would not “create conflicts or the appearance of conflicts for Senator Clinton as Secretary of State.” Got that? Not even the appearance of conflict — and regardless of what you think about what actually happened, you still can’t deny that this is a situation where that “appearance” is definitely, glaringly, blatantly present.

Of course, Hillary Clinton knows all of this, and she knew it at the time. She’s a career politician. Not only was she well aware of how it would look, but she also knew enough about political media to have predicted that people would find out about it when she ran for president. But guess what? She did it anyway, which suggests that she believes that she doesn’t have to worry about what she does or how it will look. She just does what she thinks is best for herself, no matter how glaringly inappropriate, because she is confident that no matter what, she will never, ever have to suffer any real consequences for her behavior.

What’s even worse is that this attitude is par for the course for the Clintons. Whether it’s this kind of shady business with her slush fund foundation, or her husband Bill having a private chat with Loretta Lynch as the Department of Justice was deciding whether or not to indict her, it’s clear that the Clintons are so confident in their total power that they are certain they will never, ever have to answer for anything.

Investigations and indictments aside, we already know that the way Hillary Clinton conducted herself as secretary of state was dishonest, inadequate, and fueled by her own self-interest. Scandal surrounds this woman, and for her campaign to claim that it’s “absurd” — not even understandable but incorrect, but actually “absurd” — to be suspicious about the objectively suspicious behavior of a woman with an objectively suspicious track record is, objectively, insulting.

— Katherine Timpf is a reporter for National Review Online.

The media’s outrage over the latest thing Trump said is not just bias, it’s ridiculous hypocrisy. After all much of the time Democrats have said the same things that Trump did. Including Dems like Hillary.

Trump called Obama and Hillary the founders of ISIS. The media swarmed. It’s apparently inappropriate to use such a figure of speech. Except that they had no problem with it when Hillary Clinton called Trump an ISIS recruiter.

“We have seen how Donald Trump is being used to essentially be a recruiter for more people to join the cause of terrorism,” Hillary insisted on CNN.

Her campaign and the media blamed Trump for ISIS terror attacks.

Then in an interview with Business Insider, she quoted Hayden’s claim that Trump was a recruiting sergeant for ISIS.

“I think it was said just this week that the way Donald Trump talks about terrorism and his very insulting language towards Muslims is making him the ‘recruiting sergeant’ for ISIS.”

The media had no problem with this. Its problem with Trump’s founder comments has nothing to do with anything objective, but is entirely a function of their bias.

The one percent of the one percent.

Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, released their tax returns on Friday.

For a person who left the White House “dead broke and deeply in debt” (in spite of stealing White House furniture and artwork), the Clintons have done very well in the succeeding years. For fiscal 2015, they reported an income over $10.6 million, significantly down from the $28.5 million they earned in 2014.

Yeah, running for president doesn’t leave people time for other income-generating activities. Either way, they are the 1% of the 1%!

Slightly over a third of their income went for income taxes, while another 10% went to charity. How thoughtful! How generous! Not really! Actually, how selfish!

Of the the $1,042,000 the Clintons gave to charity as listed on their return, $1 million of that went to the Clinton Family Foundation. The other $42,000 went to Desert Classic Charities.

In other words, the Clintons donated – tax-free, no less! – to themselves. The Saudis, the Algerians, and other wealthy and not so wealthy Muslim human rights-abusing countries and prominent Wall Street firms and individuals associated with them also donated to the Clinton Family Foundation.

Not that the donors expected any favors or such, of course – they just are as generous and concerned about the less fortunate as the Clintons. Yeah.

Oh, and not so by the way, and I know this will come as a shock, shock, shock!, the Desert Classic Charities partners with the Clinton Family Foundation. Boom!

Desert Classic Charities, the local non-profit entity that has organized the Humana Challenge in partnership with the Clinton Foundation (formerly the Bob Hope Classic) for 53 years, today presented 40 Coachella Valley charities with more than $2 million in donations[.]

And as for the Clinton Foundation itself, well, it has been called a “giant slush fund,” with such high overhead and such little charity that it was placed on a watch list by a charity watchdog group last year.

The Clinton family’s mega-charity took in more than $140 million in grants and pledges in 2013 but spent just $9 million on direct aid.

The group spent the bulk of its windfall on administration, travel, and salaries and bonuses, with the fattest payouts going to family friends. (snip)

In all, the group reported $84.6 million in “functional expenses” on its 2013 tax return and had more than $64 million left over — money the organization has said represents pledges rather than actual cash on hand. (snip)

None of the Clintons is on the payroll, but they do enjoy first-class flights paid for by the foundation. (snip)

According to tax returns for 2015 released by the Clinton campaign, 96% of the candidate’s charitable donations went to the Clinton Foundation.

Daily Caller:

The documents show that the power couple earned $10,745,378 last year, mostly on income earned from giving public speeches.

Of that, they gave just over a million to charity. But the contributions can hardly be seen as altruistic, since the money flowed back to an entity they control.

The other $42,000 contribution was to Desert Classic Charities. That group hosts an annual PGA golf event. Doug Band, a Clinton Foundation adviser and Bill Clinton’s longtime assistant, was on the board of directors of that organization through 2014, according to its IRS filings.

Desert Classic Charities effectively returned that donation back into the Clinton orbit. Its 2015 tax filing shows that it contributed $700,000 to the Clinton Foundation for work on obesity programs. The group handed out $1.6 million in grants that whole year.

The Clinton Foundation dispenses contracts to Clinton cronies like Doug Band while also paying for the non-political travel of the Clintons and staffers. It’s all perfectly legal — and disgustingly unethical. The Foundation is used as a slush fund that enriches friends of the Clintons while allowing foreign businesses and governments to purchase influence.

I doubt this story will get much play beyond the conservative net. It might cast Hillary in a bad light, and we can’t have that when the press now sees that it has a holy quest to keep Donald Trump from winning. CONTINUE AT SITE