RUTHFULLY YOURS

Saturday night’s Republican debate could have made all the difference for any one of the candidates. Instead, it didn’t make any difference at all, not for any of them. The men at the top of the polls didn’t stand out, so nothing’s changed there. Yet the men at the bottom all stood out – all of them did about as well as they could have hoped – and each turned in his best performance to date. This means that none of them gained an advantage over his fellow low-polling contenders.

This means that the status quo will not be rocked, and the New Hampshire primary will turn out about the way the polls predicted.

The media, in the immediate aftermath of the debate, didn’t think so – but they are wrong.

The big “headline” from the debate was the media’s assumption that people would care about Marco Rubio’s repetition of the point he was trying to make – but they won’t care, because it is irrelevant to the voting public. It’s the kind of debating point that the media likes to jump on, but voters tend to ignore. As my wife said, “when you’re trying to make a point and nobody seems to be listening, you repeat yourself.” In other words, “it was no big deal.”

But in tracking the news coverage after the debate, ABC, Politico, Fox and others were almost identical in their comments – even similar in their examples from the past of why it would matter.

One commentator compared Rubio’s repetition moment to the Reagan-Carter Debate moment when the Great Communicator said, “there you go again.” That was a decisive moment, but only because the two men were in a head-to-head battle for the Presidency, and this was the only debate between the President and his rival. However, in New Hampshire, it was a “debate” among seven men, each trying to score points.

Another commentator compared the repetition to that moment in the vice presidential debate in 1988 when Dan Quayle struggled to explain what a man as young and inexperienced as he was would do if he suddenly became President. In frustration, he eventually cited JFK, to which Democrat Lloyd Benston said, “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.” Everyone agreed that Benston won the debate – but lost the election. However, once again, this was the final head-to-head debate between two men running for the same office, rather than seven men trying to stand out from the crowd.

Even gross louts can be conservative….rsk

During Saturday’s Republican presidential candidate debate in New Hampshire, Donald Trump was asked:

Mr. Trump, you’ve heard the argument from many of the candidates on this stage that you’re not a true conservative. Tell the voters watching tonight why you are.

He replied:

Well, I think I am, and to me, I view the word conservative as a derivative of the word “conserve.” We want to conserve our money. We want to conserve our wealth. We want to conserve. We want to be smart. We want to be smart where we go, where we spend, how we spend. We want to conserve our country. We want to save our country. And we have people that have no idea how to do that, and they are not doing it, and it’s a very important word and it’s something I believe in very, very strongly.

Trump gave a general definition of conservative, which is valid. But there are more specific definitions as well. A political conservative is one who believes in a limited role for government, a strict construction of the constitution, fiscal discipline, rule of law and free enterprise. Social conservatives support the traditional family and oppose abortion, pornography, sexual promiscuity and redefinition of marriage. One can be politically conservative without being socially conservative and vice versa. We are not experts on social conservatism, but we do know something about economics, so we will examine whether Trump is a political conservative.

Hillary Clinton’s emails “do reveal classified methods, they do reveal classified sources, and they do reveal human assets,” a member of the House Intelligence Committee, Chris Stewart of Utah, told Fox News last week. That raises some pressing questions about the former secretary of state’s communications through her unprotected private email server:

Which foreign intelligence agencies tried to hack the computer server in the basement of the Clinton suburban home? Did any succeed? And if so, how did these countries use the hacked information against the U. S.?

The State Department last week confirmed that at least 22 of Mrs. Clinton’s 1,600 classified emails include information that is “top secret” or an even higher level of classification, known as “special access programs.” The latter applies to communications for which “the vulnerability of, or threat to, specific information is exceptional,” such as the names of sources and undercover officers.

Americans won’t see these highly sensitive emails, which were likely read in real time by intelligence agents from China, Russia and Iran. But one was described to NBC, which reported that it referred to an undercover CIA officer as a State Department official with the word “State” in scare quotes, signaling to readers the officer was not really a diplomat.

Mrs. Clinton asserted in last week’s Democratic presidential debate that she is “100% confident” she won’t be charged with a crime. She ignored the issue of hacking by foreign agents and complained about “retroactive classifications.” Yet she signed the standard nondisclosure agreement acknowledging her responsibility to keep classified information secret whether “marked or unmarked.” In one of her emails, she responded to a complaint that staffers were having trouble sending a secure fax by writing: “If they can’t, turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure.”

Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders in December introduced a sweeping renewable-energy plan that would, among other things, require tens of thousands of new wind turbines. Sen. Sanders’s “people before polluters” proposal may help rally his followers, but it won’t be so well received in rural America, where resistance to wind farms has been building. Nowhere is the backlash stronger than in Mr. Sanders’s state.

On Jan. 5, Vermont state Sens. John S. Rodgers and Robert Starr, both Democrats, introduced a bill (S. 210) that would ban wind projects above 500 kilowatts (an average industrial wind turbine has a capacity of 1.5 megawatts or more). Twenty-four co-sponsors filed an identical bill in Vermont’s lower chamber on Jan. 20.

Mr. Rodgers called the growing resistance to wind projects “a rebellion” at a news conference in Montpelier, the state capital. “I know of no place in the state where we can place industrial wind turbines without creating an unacceptable level of damage to our environment and our people.”

Wind-generated electricity in the U.S. has more than tripled since 2008, but opposition to the gigantic turbines, which can stand more than 500 feet, has been growing. In Vermont several protesters were arrested in 2011 and 2012 while trying to stop work on a wind project built on top of Lowell Mountain.

In March 2015 the Northeastern Vermont Development Association, a regional planning commission that covers 21% of the state’s land area, voted unanimously in favor of a resolution that said “no further development of industrial-scale wind turbines should take place in the Northeast Kingdom.”

Manchester, N.H. — Marco Rubio’s momentum just hit a brick wall in the Granite State.

In the home stretch of a New Hampshire primary famous for its last-minute voting swings, the Florida senator stumbled during Saturday night’s debate while under attack from Chris Christie and Jeb Bush. Both candidates will find themselves on the ropes if they can’t finish strong here Tuesday, and they ganged up on their chief rival early, questioning his readiness for the White House. Rubio appeared rattled by the onslaught, repeating the same talking point three times in a heavily scrutinized sequence that was easily his worst of the entire debate season.

Each of Iowa’s top-three finishers — Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Donald Trump, returning to center stage after he skipped last week’s debate — had cause to believe they would be in the crosshairs of their opponents as the night began. But with Trump viewed as the clear front-runner to win New Hampshire, and Cruz courting a narrower slice of conservative voters in the state, it was Rubio who absorbed the most damaging blows as both Christie and Bush tried to stave off electoral extinction.

Polls have shown Rubio, Christie, Bush, and John Kasich competing for the same sprawling class of center-right voters in New Hampshire. Rubio had been surging coming into the debate, and seemed to be achieving some separation from the pack thanks to his stronger-than-expected third-place finish in Iowa. But a rocky performance at St. Anselm’s College may have opened the door for his rivals to halt his climb.

In the latest debate, Donald Trump made it clear, once again, that not only he is not conservative, but he has absolutely no idea what conservatism is.

When asked to define conservative, Trump, who usually gives expansive answers, managed to speak for less than 30 seconds before running out of ammo. His answer was that “Conservatism means … to conserve … your wealth”.

That’s not what conservatism is. A two-year transfer student into Wharton College (with an uncle in MIT) should be able to give a better answer than that. Marco Rubio, perspiring like a fire hydrant, nonetheless came closer to the mark with his canned answer to the same question: “Conservatism means limited government, free enterprise, and a strong national defense.” And he (or whoever prepared him with that answer) is right. Conservatism is about advocating the liberty of the individual and preventing the government from encroaching on it. Conservatism is about protecting private property rights and giving businesses the opportunity to grow without the stranglehold of regulation. It’s also about protecting our country with a strong national defense. And, although it didn’t occur to Marco or his debate prep team, it’s also about adhering to what’s in the Constitution.

But Donald Trump didn’t raise any of these points.

But this will not hurt him, because Trump’s supporters, by and large, are not conservatives. It seems as if a reason that he underperformed in Iowa was that he was competing with Marco Rubio for presumably more moderate voters, and when Marco Rubio surged, it was at Trump’s expense.

The failure of Canada’s majority Conservative government to win re-election on October 17, 2015 should serve as an object lesson to the Republican establishment in the United States. Among a number of reasons for the debacle, the abandonment or weakening of first principles in the name of pragmatic and ideological compromise was a major factor leading to the Conservative defeat.

The Tories attempted to cater to non-conservative voters, to appeal to a broad constituency, to be liked, to be moderate, by softening the party’s message and gutting many of its programs. Perhaps most obviously, they drew back from significantly defunding and at least partially privatizing our deep-left state-supported national broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The CBC is a cultural Marxist production that never met a Conservative policy it liked. It sees its mandate as constantly attacking every Conservative idea or piece of legislation while propagandizing on behalf of multiculturalism; Islam as a religion of peace; anti-Zionism; and radical movements such as Occupy Wall Street, Idle No More, and #BlackLivesMatter. It sided with Canada’s two socialist parties, the Liberals and the New Democratic Party (NDP). But aside from legislating a small reduction in the CBC’s operating budget, the Conservatives allowed the “MotherCorp” to continue shilling for the opposition. Afraid of giving its foes something to be offended by, the Conservative government funded its own demise.

No less catastrophic, the Conservatives failed to pass legislation to radically protect free speech across the country – legislation that would outrank our provincial kangaroo courts, known as Human Rights Commissions, whose mandate has been to prosecute individual citizens and groups on the flimsy grounds of “hate speech.” Aside from the fact that leaving these provincial tribunals in place did not garner a single bit of support or sympathy from the social justice totalitarians, this signal failure guarantees that open discussions essential to Canada’s future as a robust democracy – especially conversations about mass immigration, Islamic terrorism, and the relation between the two – will continue to be curtailed by the left-leaning proponents of censorship in the name of social “harmony.” Such conversations are also, not incidentally, essential to the survival of a genuine Conservative party.

I predict that nothing–not the trendiest public-relations firms or the most credentialed drama coaches–will stop the American public from voting against Ms. Hillary because of that voice!

So many issues, so little time, which is why I am studiously avoiding any issues about Hillary other than that voice!

I am definitely not going into the terminal dishonesty thing, you know, when she told the American public, and also the parents of the murdered victims in Benghazi, that the four patriots who lost their lives to a savage Islamic attack was because of an anti-Islam video; that Wall St. and specifically Goldman-Sachs is not donating to her campaign and that, according to Dick Morris, FEC reports say that Hillary has received $21.4 million from the financial and insurance industry—almost 15 percent of the total $157.8 million she raised, and she’s still trolling them for big money.”

How about that she won a smashing victory in Iowa (by six coin tosses that magically landed in her favor)? Dozens of websites have catalogued Hillary’s lies, starting decades ago with her debut on the political scene. Also here and here and don’t miss this one. Not going there.

I’m definitely not going into the incompetence thing, the colossal failure of her secretly-conducted socialized-medicine initiative as First Lady, her stunning lack of accomplishments in the U.S. Senate, or, most damning, the dangerous state of the entire world under her tenure as Secretary of State, which has resulted in a chaotic, devolving Europe, saturated in Islamic-terrorism; a catastrophic Middle East, also inundated with Islamic terrorism; and the mysterious loss of six-billion dollars! Uh uh, not going there.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) got another endorsement from a former presidential contender today as former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal declared his support for the third-place Iowa finisher.

“We have a lot of great candidates running — a lot of my friends are running,” Jindal told Fox News this evening. “The reality is these are very dangerous times. This president has weakened our standing on the foreign stage. Our enemies don’t fear us, our friends don’t trust us. Marco has been consistent about strengthening America’s foreign policy… Marco has consistently stood up to the threat of ISIS and radical Islam.”

Jindal stressed that despite his friendships with other candidates as well as Rubio, “I do think Marco is best positioned.”

“This election is about the future. I’m an ideas guy. We have got to turn the page on the Obama administration. I offered details policies through America Next on how we rebuild our economy. Marco is doing that as well,” he said, referencing his think tank.

“This is the most important election of our lifetime. We’ve got growing dependence on government. We’ve got more and more debt being piled on our children’s backs. Marco can unify our party,” Jindal continued. “His optimistic message is bringing voters from across the party lines, from across different demographic groups. He can unify our party and he can win this election in November. We cannot afford four more years of this president’s disastrous policies. I think he is a principled conservative. I think he is the right guy to lead us forward.”