RUTHFULLY YOURS

Reprinted from Breitbart.com.

The conservatives who have declared war on the primary victor are displaying a myopia that could be deadly in November when Trump will lead Republicans against a party that has divided the country, destroyed its borders, empowered its enemies and put 93 million Americans into dependency on the state. This reckless disregard for consequences is matched only by a blindness to what has made Trump the presumptive nominee. When he entered the Republican primaries a year ago Trump was given no chance of surviving even the first contest let alone becoming the Republican nominee. That was the view of all the experts, and especially those experts with the best records of prediction.

Trump – who had never held political office and had no experience in any political job – faced a field of sixteen tested political leaders, including nine governors and five senators from major states. Most of his political opponents were conservatives. During the primaries several hundred million dollars were spent in negative campaign ads – nastier and more personal than in any Republican primary in memory. At least 60,000 of those ads were aimed at Trump, attacking him as a fraud, a corporate predator, a not-so-closet liberal, an ally of Hillary Clinton, indistinguishable from Barack Obama, an ignoramus, and too crass to be president (Bill Clinton anyone?).

These negative ads were directed at Republican primary voters, a constituency well to the right of the party. These primary voters are a constituency that may be said to represent the heart of the conservative movement in America, and are generally more politically engaged and informed than most Republican voters. Trump won their support. He won by millions of votes – more votes from this conservative heartland than any Republican in primary history. To describe Trump as ignorant – as so many beltway intellectuals have – is merely to privilege book knowledge over real world knowledge, not an especially wise way to judge political leaders.

A chorus of detractors has attempted to dismiss Trump’s political victory as representing a mere plurality of primary voters, but how many candidates have won outright majorities among a field of seventeen, or five or even three? When the Republican primary contest was actually reduced to three, Trump beat the “true conservative,” Ted Cruz, with more than fifty percent of the votes. He did this in blue states and red states, and in virtually all precincts and among all Republican demographics. He clinched the nomination by beating Cruz with an outright majority in conservative Indiana.

In opposing the clear choice of the Republican primary electorate the “Never Trump” crowd is simply displaying their contempt for the most politically active Republican voters. This contempt was dramatically displayed during a CNN segment with Trump’s spokeswoman, Katrina Pierson, and Bill Kristol, the self-appointed guru of a Third Party movement whose only result can be to split the Republican ticket and provide Hillary with her best shot at the presidency. Pierson urged Kristol to help unify the Party behind its presumptive nominee. Kristol grinned and answered her: “You want leaders to become followers.” Could there be a more arrogant response? By what authority does Bill Kristol regard himself as a leader? Trump has the confidence of millions of highly committed and generally conservative Republican voters. That makes him a leader. Who does Bill Kristol lead except a coterie of inside-the-beltway foreign policy interventionists, who supported the fiasco in Libya that opened the door to al-Qaeda and ISIS?

I have made my disdain for Trump loud and clear…..but….he won. He did not win by intimidation…there were no New Black Panthers standing thuggishly at the polls, as there were in 2008 and 2012. There were no votes cast by dead people as there were in 2008 and 2012. His victory was fair and square. I would urge conservative pundits and legislators that more good can be done by accepting the fact, and offering advice, foreign and domestic policy insights, and measured support. Nothing will be gained by becoming outlier conservatives with no input or influence. There are gifted and principled conservative legislators and pundits who can counsel Trump. They should do so.

It’s quite simple Hillary is worse.

And I have two words of advice for Sarah Palin, the Republican Barbara Boxer, ….just shut up! It is better to be presumed an idiot than to speak and remove all doubt. rsk

David Horowitz and Victor Davis Hanson nail it in the following columns.

Some of my fellow Republicans have declared they will never, under any circumstances, vote for Donald Trump. They are pessimistic about the party’s chances in November and seem more motivated by long-term considerations. They think devotion to the “anybody but Trump” movement is a principled and courageous stance that will help preserve a remnant of the conservative movement and its credibility, which can then serve as a foundation for renewal.

I sympathize with this perspective, but I am planning to vote for Donald Trump. Why? Because the stakes for my country, not merely my party, are simply too high.

I was one of the earliest and loudest critics of Mr. Trump. I mocked his appearance, demeanor, ideology and ego in the strongest language I have ever used to publicly criticize anyone in politics. I worked harder than most, with little apparent effect, to stop his ascendancy. I have not experienced a sudden epiphany and am not here to detail an evolution in my perspective.

I believe this presidential election cycle favors Republicans, due more to President Obama’s shortcomings than to any of our virtues or cleverness. I also believe that Donald Trump will have the hardest time of any of the Republican candidates in winning. He has stubbornly stuck to the same outlandish behavior and tactics that have served him so well to date. Mr. Trump continues to have the last laugh at the expense of his critics and competitors, myself included.

I think electing Donald Trump would be the second-worst thing we could do this November, better only than electing Hillary Clinton to serve as the third term for the Obama administration’s radical policies. I am not pretending that Mr. Trump has suddenly become a conservative champion or even a reliable Republican: He is completely unpredictable. The problem is that Hillary is predictably liberal.

There will be none of her husband’s triangulation. Republicans are fooling themselves if they think this President Clinton would sign into law policies like Nafta, the crime bill, welfare reform, or the deficit reduction packages that marked Bill’s tenure. While Bill felt compelled to confront Sister Souljah—and less directly Jesse Jackson—to appeal to moderate voters, Hillary is more responsive to pressure from Black Lives Matter and the far left. I have no idea what Mr. Trump might do, while Mrs. Clinton is predictable. Both are scary, the former less so.

The next president will make a critical appointment to the Supreme Court, who will cast the tiebreaking vote in important cases that will set precedents for years to come. Issues like the sanctity of innocent human life, constitutional protections for religious liberty and Second Amendment rights, and limits on the unelected federal bureaucracy hang in the balance. CONTINUE AT SITE

The party has nominated someone who cannot win and should not be president of the United States. We anticipate a landslide defeat, and then a struggle to take the party back from his team and his supporters and win the following presidential election. Meanwhile, we need to figure out how to conduct ourselves.

No, not Donald Trump and the Republican party today. George McGovern and the Democratic party in 1972. I was in those days a law student and active supporter of Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson, whose staff I joined when I got out of school. Jackson, who served in Congress from 1941 until his death in 1983, ran for president twice—in 1972 and 1976—and led the foreign policy hardliners in his party.

Watching conservative Republicans writhe in anguish over Trump, it’s worth looking back at what Jackson and the foreign policy hawks who surrounded and supported him—and detested McGovern and McGovernism—did back then.

Jackson’s biographer, Robert Kaufman, describes the time well in Henry M. Jackson: A Life in Politics (2000):

Jackson regarded McGovern’s impending triumph [at the Dem­ocratic Convention in Miami Beach, in July 1972] as an unmitigated disaster for the party. .  .  . [H]‌e stoutly resisted the inevitability of the McGovern candidacy by all means at his disposal right up until the Democrats nominated McGovern in July.

Supporters of Jackson and Hum­phrey, southerners, and organized labor had banded together in an abortive effort called “Anybody But McGovern.” .  .  . Even when Muskie and Hum­phrey formally bowed out, Henry Jackson would not. He received 536 votes for the nomination on the convention floor. I. W. Abel, head of the United Steelworkers of America, nominated him. Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia seconded the nomination.

So here’s a first lesson: Do not allow the Republican convention to be a coronation wherein Trump and Trumpism are unchallenged. There’s no reason others who won many delegates, from Rubio to Cruz to Kasich, should not have their names put in nomination. The party needs to be reminded that there are deep divisions, and Trump needs to be reminded of how many in the party oppose and even fear his nomination.

It’s been my great good fortune to know many patriotic Americans, a goodly number but by no means all of them conservatives, who are now supporters of Donald Trump. Similarly, many of my friends and allies in the conservative movement are immovably #NeverTrump. There is significant infighting between these camps. How can it be that people for whom the national interest remains paramount find themselves at loggerheads, after fighting shoulder to shoulder for decades against anti-Americanism and cultural decline?

The occasion for posing this question is my close encounter with the intensity of the rupture. Yesterday, I published on the Corner a post in support of exploring an independent candidacy for the presidency, a bid that could provide a credible alternative to both Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, and Hillary Clinton, who is certain to be the Democrats’ standard-bearer. What was most baffling about the negative reaction I got from some friends, colleagues, and readers — ranging from disappointment to white-hot anger — is that we are in basic agreement about priorities. It’s not like we’re not playing for the same team anymore. The bitter disagreement is about how to achieve the main objective.

And what is the objective? At this point, it is to prevent Hillary Clinton from becoming president of the United States. For most of us — those who reluctantly realize we must confront the strong possibility of defeat — there is also a corollary: to minimize the amount of damage Mrs. Clinton could do if she wins.

Interestingly, few of my pro-Trump correspondents see the objective as electing Trump for the good that he would do for the country. The case for Trump is that elections, as the estimable John Bolton put it in a recent interview, present a “binary choice.” The main attraction of Trump, for those who are attracted, is the belief that he stands the best chance of defeating Clinton.

While Trump has his fans, he troubles most conservatives — to put it mildly. That is because records matter more than late-life conversions, proclaimed with varying amounts of conviction and coherence. On his record, Donald Trump is a left-wing Democrat, whose newfangled conservatism is suspect. He is a deal-maker, whose positions, regardless of the fervor with which they are announced, are best understood as the start of a negotiation — endlessly elastic.

That said, the two principal objections of my correspondents are: (a) Clinton’s election would be assured by an independent bid — which many refer to as a “third party” candidacy, even though what I’ve endorsed is a run by an independent Republican (the distinction is significant for reasons I’ll get to); and (b) an independent bid is just a scheme to sneak a GOP-establishment operative into the White House against the will of the voters, who overwhelmingly rejected the establishment in the primaries.

These are the two objections I anticipated in my post. All I can do is elaborate on what I’ve said.

First, I would support only an independent bid that has a decent chance to succeed — either in getting the 270 electoral votes needed to win or, more likely, denying that Electoral College majority to any candidate, which would throw the election into the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. There, Clinton would stand the least chance of winning. If an independent bid lacked the capacity to compete realistically with the major parties, or lacked a candidate who could attract a competitive coalition, I would throw up my hands and vote for Trump. I am not trying to spare myself or anyone else the stark choice of Trump v. Clinton if that’s what we are realistically down to. I do not need a third option as a symbolic gesture so I can con myself into believing I haven’t helped elect Hillary. (In fact, I live in New Jersey, which will vote for the Democrat regardless of whom I vote for, or whether I vote at all.)

RELATED: What Chance Would a Third-Party Candidate Have?

Chances are that Donald Trump and his foreign policy crowd have not been reading The American Thinker. I would rather believe that Trump & Co. are just endowed with common sense and a genuine concern for the American interest. This also happens to be in the best interest of most people in the world — except for the jihad war crowd.

American Thinker and like-minded people have been yelling into the storm for almost eight years now, but we can’t take credit for Trump’s common sense in foreign affairs. Good sense guided American policy long before the Rise of the One.

The great exception to ordinary common sense has been Obama himself.

Donald Trump has been attacked as a populist lowbrow, but he has just given a foreign policy speech that makes more sense than any blowhard fantasy coming from the left. The Don didn’t promise to roll back the rising oceans, like King Canute, but instead he presented sensible policy goals to get us out of the swamp.

Trump is promising to be pro-American, in contrast to Obama’s fantasy policies that ended up killing hundreds of thousands of people abroad for no discernible reason at all. Obama bombed Libya for no stated reason except the obvious lie that we were going to stop genocide. Instead, things got much worse, and today Libya is still entangled in an avoidable civil war.

But the biggest, most desperately needed step has already been taken by Trump, even before the election.

Donald Trump has named the enemy in the Jihad War. He calls it “radical Islam.” That’s good enough, because it labels the war theology of jihad as the real enemy. We do not hate Muslims. We hate their indoctrination into a pre-medieval desert theology that makes war on infidels a first duty for every believer.

Shortly before the May 3 Indiana primary, a video of a Donald Trump supporter accosting Ted Cruz went viral. Surrounded by a throng of Trump fans shouting “career politicians have killed America,” the Texas senator tried to engage the man in a mock debate—without much success. Mr. Cruz made several attempts to discuss Mr. Trump’s record, then finally gave up and told the man that Mr. Trump “is playing you for a chump,” adding: “Ask yourself . . . why the mainstream media wants Donald Trump so desperately to be the Republican nominee?” The Trump supporter—whose favored candidate reportedly has enjoyed $2 billion in free media coverage—replied: “They’ve backed you every chance they get.”

Episodes like that, combined with Mr. Trump’s romp through the Republican presidential primary season, have shaken many people’s faith in the American electorate. But what if Trump voters, however uninformed, are still making a rational decision by backing him?
That is the contrarian argument advanced by political scientist Samuel L. Popkin of the University of California, San Diego, who has studied public opinion and elections for half a century. A native of Superior, Wis., the 73-year-old Mr. Popkin has also served as a consultant for the presidential campaigns of George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Mr. Popkin is perhaps best known for applying the rational-choice theory of economics to voting.

His seminal 1991 book “The Reasoning Voter” argues that voters are public investors who “expend effort voting in the expectation of gaining future satisfaction.” They “combine, in an economical way, learning and information from past experiences, daily life, the media, and political campaigns” to make reasoned judgments about politicians.

One of Mr. Popkin’s favorite examples of how “low-information voters” use “cues” to form logical conclusions is Gerald Ford’s eating an unshucked tamale, which signaled to many Latino voters that the president didn’t understand their culture. History repeated as farce this week when Mr. Trump on Cinco de Mayo tweeted a photo of himself eating a taco bowl: “The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics!”

Mr. Popkin, who was in New York City visiting family, sat down to talk on Wednesday afternoon, interpreting the often bizarre-seeming Republican primary season by using his political theory of low-information rational voting. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.clarionproject.org/print/analysis/clinton-and-trump-where-do-they-stand-islamism
With Trump and Clinton the de facto nominees, it is time for voters to begin weighing the national security policies of each candidate.

Donald Trump is the all-but-declared Republican presidential nominee and Hillary Clinton on the cusp of winning the Democratic nomination. It is time for voters to begin weighing the national security consequences of each candidate’s potential administration.

You can read our full profiles of the candidates’ positions related to Islamist extremism by clicking here for Donald Trump and here for Hillary Clinton. Below is a summary of six policy areas where they differ:

Defining the Threat

Trump defines the enemy as “radical Islam.” Clinton defines it variably as “jihadism,” “radical Jihadism” “Islamists who are jihadists.”

Defeating the Ideology

Trump said in his foreign policy speech that “containing the spread of radical Islam must be a major foreign policy goal of the United States.” His policy proposals include a vague commitment to use the U.S. military more aggressively, deterring terrorists by killing their families, closing down the most radical mosques and banning Muslim immigration into the U.S. until the homeland is secure and an effective vetting process is established.

Trump is adamantly opposed to democracy-promotion and overthrowing regimes; instead, he favors alliances with authoritarian rulers who cooperate on counter-terrorism. He says, “our goal must be to defeat terrorists and promote stability, not radical change.”

He criticizes Clinton for supporting the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Bashar Assad in Syria. However, a reputable senior foreign policy adviser to Trump, Dr. Walid Phares, is an expert on combating the Islamist ideology and believes in promoting human rights and civil society.

Clinton’s national security platform calls for “defeating ISIS and global terrorism and the ideologies that drive it.” Her strategy emphasizes civil society and a foreign policy that promotes freedom, women’s rights, free markets, democracy and human rights, all if which she believes are necessary in order to “empower moderates and marginalize extremists.”

Clinton says the U.S. needs an “overarching strategy” to defeat the ideology like the U.S. used to win the Cold War. Clinton wants the State Department to better “tell our story” overseas by confronting anti-American propaganda via public engagement.

Clinton’s speech on foreign policy and ISIS also includes confronting state sponsors of extremism like Qatar and Saudi Arabia and identifying “the specific neighborhoods and villages, the prisons and schools, where recruitment happens in clusters, like the neighborhood in Brussels where the Paris attacks were planned.”

Maybe it should be a verb: To be Guccifered. Though maybe, in Hillary Clinton’s case, it would be better phrased as a crime. As in: “They got her on a Guccifer.”

Guccifer is the nom de Internet of the Romanian hacker Marcel Lehel Lazar. Few people realize it, but the Eastern European anti-hero is why the world knows that Hillary Clinton maintained a private email server while secretary of state. This week he may have made Mrs. Clinton’s road to the White House a lot rougher.

It’s a case study in why governments have rules about online security. Guccifer’s specialty was hacking top officials and their relatives—with an eye toward mayhem and humiliation. He hacked the account of Dorothy Bush Koch and circulated photos of her father, former President George H.W. Bush, in the hospital. He hacked years of Colin Powell’s correspondence, including personal financial information. He went after FBI and Secret Service agents, senators and the wealthy.

In March of 2013, Guccifer released hacked AOL email correspondence of Clinton crony Sidney Blumenthal, revealing numerous memos he’d sent to Hillary while she was the nation’s top diplomat. Mr. Blumenthal had sent these notes to Mrs. Clinton at a private, nongovernmental email address. Security experts tut-tutted about the risks, though the assumption was that Mrs. Clinton used the private account for the occasional interaction with friends or political operatives. It wasn’t until early 2015 that the nation found out Hillary was using the home-brew server to conduct every bit of her state business.

But that timing is by the by. What matters is that Guccifer knew, at least by March of 2013, that the third-highest official in the executive branch of the most powerful nation of the world was using a private server. Does anyone think a man devoted to hacking politicians and Federal Reserve bankers would ignore that opportunity?

In interviews from his federal jail cell this week (he was arrested in 2014 and extradited to the U.S. earlier this year), Guccifer claimed to have easily and repeatedly hacked Mrs. Clinton’s server. “It was like an open orchid on the Internet,” he told NBC News. “There were hundreds of folders.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Though Donald Trump has wondered aloud why most Jews voted for President Barack Obama – and why they are likely to cast ballots for presumed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton – he is more “puzzled than furious,” his executive vice president and chief legal officer said on Wednesday, in the immediate aftermath of the withdrawal from the GOP race of remaining rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich.

Jason Greenblatt, an Orthodox Jewish real estate lawyer from Teaneck, New Jersey — who has been working for “The Donald” for the past two decades – made this comment during an hour-long interview with The Algemeiner at Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan.

Making it clear at the outset that the views he was expressing were his own and assessments of his employer’s, Greenblatt – whom Trump “appointed” as his Israel adviser during a press conference last month with members of the Jewish media — gave The Algemeiner an overview of what the United States, American Jews and Israel can expect if his boss wins the White House in November.

The Algemeiner: Pro-Israel conservatives are worried that Trump’s “America First” pronouncements indicate a tendency toward isolationism. Are they right to be concerned?

Greenblatt: I don’t think he’s an isolationist. His concept of putting America first is more in keeping with his whole slogan, “Make America Great.”

He needs to create more jobs here; he needs to secure our borders; he needs to prevent terrorism at home. But at the same time, though he views America’s role in the world as a very important one, he does not want to shoulder the burden himself – meaning that the US has been paying for the defense of so many countries that are not supporting their share of the cost. So it’s not as though he’s saying he’s going to put a wall around the whole country; he’s just saying that others have to pay their share.