RUTHFULLY YOURS

Most days, there is little reason to feel any sympathy for my son, whose birth date on each of his twin passports, American and Australian, testify that he has the bloom of youth about his twentysomething cheeks, stands to enjoy a long, interesting life and, as our latest Prime Minister would put it, is blessed to have come of age in this, the most exciting time to be alive. Being also agile — a gifted short-stop who can pitch a baseball at 90mph — and innovative to boot, especially in winkling money out of his father’s wallet, the fruit of my loins might very well represent the sort of ideal citizen of whom Mr Turnbull dreams after gliding past the Nolans and Drysdales to place his supremely gifted head upon the Lodge’s lovely new pillows.

Just now, after this morning’s telephone conversation, Junior has the benefit of both my sympathy and advice that he stop at the nearest bar and a order something strong and bracing, preferably in double measure. He lives in New York, you see, where unlike Australia the nanny-staters have not yet banned the stiffer-than-average libation. Given the New Hampshire primaries results, Junior might as well enjoy one of the US’s civilised decencies.

“Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump!” he exclaimed, “a fruitcake socialist and a land shark! That’s the best this country can put up for the White House.” Speaking as an Australian, he continued, “Americans are mad as cut snakes.” I reminded him that his mother, a Brooklyn gal, is reasonably sane most of the time, and that he had to take at least some small measure of blame on his own shoulders. Weren’t you telling me only the other week, I reminded him, that Trump’s bull-in-a-china-shop campaign was knocking the Republicans’ moribund leadership for six and that this was a good thing?

Switching to his American persona, he responded that, yes, he had said that, but never expected the property developer “to hit a home run”. Trump would cause a bit of damage — a bit of good, too, if you subscribe to the view that complacency needs to be ruffled from time to time — but then fade away, as tends to be the case with the flash-in-the-pan mavericks of American politics. Ross Perot and John Anderson would be waiting to greet him from atop that pile of ambitious and delusional discards. That was Junior’s theory anyway.

This is something that happened a couple of days ago, but I didn’t want to write about it for reasons of privacy you will understand.

Once in a while — well, at least this once for me — when you are traveling around the country covering presidential campaigns, you have an experience that makes the big-time grandeur of presidential politics oddly and touchingly personal.

When, relatively at the last moment, the folks at PJ Media asked me to continue on from Iowa to New Hampshire, having been in the Granite State for previous primaries, I knew Manchester would be the center of the action. I want online and, not surprisingly, the entire city was booked. Looking for someplace relatively close, I stumbled on a Holiday Inn Express in a place called Merrimack, not far from Manchester and known for its outlet mall. The hotel had a 4.7 rating on Trip Advisor, so I quickly reserved a room.

The day I arrived, I sensed something was up when I bumped into Senator Tim Scott in the elevator. I knew he was backing Marco Rubio. Was Marco actually staying in this hotel? I knew the Florida senator slightly. We had been introduced in the Senate last summer and I had interviewed him for PJ Media at Joni Ernst’s Roast & Ride in Iowa some months ago. I also sent him and Senator Cruz a series of foreign policy questions for PJM that they both answered.

I was further partial to Rubio, as some readers have noted, because I admired those foreign policy views and thought he was well positioned to beat Hillary, Bernie or whomever (Jerry Brown?) the Democrats would put up. I wasn’t as disturbed as some by his role in the amnesty question, though I don’t think those who enter the country illegally should ever be allowed to vote.

Sure enough, I saw Rubio’s campaign bus parked behind some snowy trees at the back of the hotel parking lot, but didn’t think that much of it as I went about my business, checking out the candidates at their campaign stops and then joining the media mash-up at the debate.

There, of course, I watched Chris Christie butcher a befuddled Rubio with his accusations of scripted answers that have been repeated, we could say ad nauseum, in the media. In an instant, I realized that Marco’s momentum from his surprise finish in Iowa, that many were saying would propel him to being the competitor to Trump, had been derailed by the New Jersey governor.

To be honest, I was depressed by it, but still went the next day to Rubio’s Super Bowl party, which was very well attended. (They had to change to a larger venue.) Marco gave an upbeat speech — maybe he wasn’t so wounded — and told the crowd to enjoy themselves, he wasn’t staying to watch the game.

As I was saying at the dawn of this day:

1) Trump;
2) Kasich;
3) Rubio;
4) Bush;
5) Cruz.

Number One and Two were correct, and at this hour Numbers Three, Four and Five are all jostling together at 11 per cent, but with Cruz third and Rubio fifth. On the Democrat side I noted the midnight vote tallies from Dixville Notch, Hart’s Location and Millsfield:

Sanders 17
Clinton 9

And I suggested that that spread might “hold throughout the day”. It pretty much did: Bernie 60 per cent, Hillary 38 per cent. And in the northern and western counties of New Hampshire, Mrs Clinton got seriously Berned. Coos County: Sanders 63 per cent, Clinton 35. Grafton: Sanders 65, Clinton 34. Sullivan: Sanders 68, Clinton 30. Carroll: 63, Clinton 36. It took older, moneyed women in the prosperous south-east corner to push Hillary up to 39 per cent. That’s really her only constituency: liberal women over 65 making 200 grand a year.

On the Republican side, Trump won yuge: 35 per cent in a nine-man race, and more than twice as many votes as the second-placed Kasich. On the latter, I wrote three weeks ago:

On the “moderate” side of the GOP, the thinking since debate season began is that Rubio is the alternative to Bush, and Christie is the alternative to Rubio. But it could be that Kasich is the alternative to all three of them.

And so it proved. Good for Kasich. But a nightmare for the GOP’s Donor-Industrial Complex: Trump has the populist lane, Cruz the conservative, and both are reviled by the so-called “establishment”. All New Hampshire had to do was sort out the so-called “moderate” lane by anointing Rubio, and, in a three-way race, he’d eliminate the Trump-Cruz problem. That was the theory.

El Rushbo is showing why he is the top talk show host in America once again. During Monday’s radio show Rush Limbaugh didn’t make fun of Marco Rubio for saying that President Barack Obama is doing what he does on purpose.

During Saturday’s debate in New Hampshire, Rubio repeated a variation of the same line several times: “Anyone who believes that Barack Obama isn’t doing what he is doing on purpose doesn’t understand what we are dealing with here,” Rubio said.

The repetition was mocked during the debate by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and since then by others, but on Monday, Limbaugh was asking why others were not parroting Rubio’s line.

“This is really, really important,” Limbaugh said. “There are only two people that I’m aware of that are making a consistent point of this. Rubio, actually, is atop of this. Rubio and Cruz are the only two in the entire Republican field. Carly Fiorina may have said something like this occasionally. With Rubio, it’s a theme. With Cruz, it’s close to a theme. And the real question is: Why do the other Republicans in the field disagree?”

If you are a woman, you don’t get to pick which presidential candidate to support based on his or her stances on the issues like men do — you have to support Hillary because she’s a woman like you are.

Think that sounds sexist? Well, it is. In fact, it’s some of the most idiotic pieces anti-woman garbage I’ve ever heard — which is why it’s so sad that it’s coming from Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright, both of whom are widely considered to be feminist icons.

On HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, Steinem said that women “get more activist as they grow older. And when you’re younger, you think: ‘Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie.’”

First of all, there are approximately 9 million reasons to support Bernie over Hillary if you’re a liberal woman. Bernie has a long, consistent record of supporting the things that liberal voters consider important — like fighting for LGBT rights and against Wall Street — while Hillary has a record of supporting whatever the hell happens to be politically convenient at the time.

Now, Steinem eventually sort of apologized by saying that she “misspoke” and actually wasn’t trying to say that “young women aren’t serious in their politics.”

First of all, that’s crap. Saying that young women decide who to vote for based on how to get boys absolutely is saying that they “aren’t serious in their politics.” It can’t be interpreted any other way.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has warned young women that if they do not vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, they are traitors to their sex. At a Saturday New Hampshire rally for Clinton, Albright repeated her tagline, with a beaming Hillary looking on:”There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”

Albright is not alone in attempting to motivate young women to support Clinton. Feminist icon Gloria Steinem also backed Clinton, and recently insinuated that young women only support rival Bernie Sanders because “the boys are with Bernie.” Steinem has since attempted to dial back the accusation, explaining on Facebook that her words were “misinterpreted as implying young women aren’t serious in their politics.”

The Iowa caucus entrance-poll results show women favored Clinton over Sanders, 53 percent to 42 percent. But young voters under the age of 30 overwhelmingly picked Sanders, 84 percent to 14 percent. A recent Marist poll found 76 percent of likely Democratic voters in New Hampshire under the age of 30 supporting Sanders, including a 29-point lead among women under age 45.

Clinton has convinced high-profile millennial women such as Demi Lovato, Katy Perry, Lena Dunham, and Kim Kardashian to stump for her, in an effort to court young women. When Albright delivered her line, Clinton burst into joyous laughter. There is, however, no word yet on what circle of hell is reserved for women who don’t vote for Carly Fiorina.

Just the thing to propel her into the New Hampshire primary tomorrow:

In a letter disclosed Monday in a federal court filing, the FBI confirms one of the world’s worst-kept secrets: It is looking into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

Why say this at all, since it was widely known to be true? Because in August in response to a judge’s direction, the State Department asked the FBI for information about what it was up to. Sorry, the FBI said at the time, we can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any investigation.

Now, in a letter dated February 2 and filed in court Monday, the FBI’s general counsel, James Baker, notes that in public statements and congressional testimony, the FBI “has acknowledged generally that it is working on matters related to former Secretary Clinton’s use of a private email server.”

Baker says the FBI has not, however, “publicly acknowledged the specific focus, scope or potential targets of any such proceedings.” He ends the one-paragraph letter by saying that the FBI cannot say more “without adversely affecting on-going law enforcement efforts.”

The letter was filed in one of the Freedom of Information Act cases brought against the State Department over access to documents from Hillary Clinton’s time as secretary of state. This one was filed by Judicial Watch.

Russ Ramsland is a Tea Party leader and a Harvard MBA who has built businesses and created jobs in countless fields including oil & gas, communications and real estate right here in Texas. He is a native of West Texas and a long-time resident of Dallas who currently lives in Texas’s 32nd congressional district. This is the same district that Congressman Pete Sessions, the chairman of the House Rules Committee and a former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee currently represents. Russ is running against Rep. Pete Sessions because as he states “our so-called representatives, some of whom have been in Washington almost 20 years, are no longer representing our values and priorities. Washington is no longer listening to us,” Ramsland states.

As a principled constitutional conservative, Ramsland is in the same place as Katrina Pierson was two years ago, challenging incumbent Rep. Pete Sessions in the Republican primary. Sessions won a seat in Congress in 1996. He now chairs the powerful House Rules Committee, which shapes legislation and decides how bills are debated and amended on the floor. Pete Sessions is considered by some pundits to be a loyal establishment-type Republican, a Republican in Name Only (RINO) to be precise.

Ramsland says, “The voters of the 32nd district want to secure the border and enforce our immigration laws, replace Obamacare with free market healthcare reforms and return control of education to Texas and to parents. I am running because I believe that they should have an opportunity to be represented by someone who wants the same things.”

The question on everyone’s mind is: can Rep. Sessions be defeated? Can Mr. Ramsland dethrone the heavyweight, deep-pocketed Republican Pete Sessions with deep pockets? Russ says yes. It has been done before here in Texas when Ted Cruz defeated the wealthy and powerful establishment-backed David Dewhurst in the 2012 GOP primary and went on to win the nomination in a runoff.

Whether you believe that there were nefarious motives behind the advancement of inaccurate information about the Carson campaign by Cruz ground operatives in Iowa or not, one thing is certain, true and undeniable. The leading candidates for the Republican Party’s nomination for President of the United States are feeding on each other. By doing so, they have effectively created an “emotional division” between the voters of the Right. To prove this out all one has to do is spend some time on social media threads related to the topic. Phrases like “Cruz haters,” “Carson’s a whiner” and “Trump is an idiot” are myriad. So, too, is the Conservative rank-and-file’s sudden acceptance of CNN as a credible, non-biased news source.

This election cycle the best that the Democrats can offer is a throwback hippie Socialist and the most disingenuous and opportunistic politician in recent history. The prospects of one of these improbably political creatures reaching the White House relies exclusively on the Republicans finding a way to shoot themselves in the foot; damaging each other so extensively in the primaries that the bleeding continues into the General Election. On the heels of eight years of Progressive rule and their disastrous policies for our economy and national security; in light of myriad scandals and a possible indictment hounding the DNC frontrunner, Republicans should have been able to nominate a potato chip and won in November.

Enter the politics of division. Enter opportunistic political tactics ala the Chicago machine. Enter the type of politics that each and every one of the Republican candidates says they abhor; that each says they will excommunicate from the lexicon of American politics should they be elected to the presidency.

Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders at a campaign rally at Great Bay Community College in Portsmouth, N.H. on Sunday. (Photo: Hunter Walker/Yahoo News)

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Many women who showed up at a presidential campaign rally for Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., at Great Bay Community College on Sunday said they were insulted and “offended” by supporters of Hillary Clinton who have suggested it is somehow anti-feminist to back Sanders instead of Clinton’s quest to become the first female president.

Jane Sanders, the senator’s wife, had a succinct response when Yahoo News asked her opinion of those who suggest it’s sexist to support Sanders instead of Clinton.

“I think it’s ridiculous. He’s the…” she began before trailing off. “It’s crazy.”

Cokie Giles, a registered nurse from Bangor, Maine, who traveled to neighboring New Hampshire for the rally, said she does not appreciate being “herded along just because I’m a woman.”

“Well, I don’t want to think that I have to vote for a woman, being a woman, because there’s a woman running. They have to be who I would look at as … my best choice,” Giles said. “I’m not trashing Hillary. I’m just saying Bernie is the better of the choices. And I will get a chance to vote for a female president. I would like to see a female president, and there’s plenty out there that I would be very happy to do.”

Two high profile feminist Clinton supporters, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and women’s rights activist Gloria Steinem, have made headlines with recent comments about female Sanders supporters.