Archive for the ‘2016 elections’ category

Will Anti-Trump Republicans Elect Hillary?

June 11, 2016

Will Anti-Trump Republicans Elect Hillary? Power Line, John Hinderaker, June 11, 2016

Yesterday on CNN, Mitt Romney ruled out supporting Donald Trump on grounds of character. Romney called Trump a racist, referring repeatedly to “trickle-down racism,” by which I take it he means racism inspired in future generations by a racist president. When asked at the end of the interview by Wolf Blitzer whether he thinks Trump is a racist, Romney wouldn’t quite say that, but instead responded that Trump’s “comments, time and again, appeal to the racist tendency that exists in some people.” Here is the video; it is only about a minute and a half:

I find the willingness of Republican leaders to allege that Trump is a racist disheartening, if not shocking. We expect that kind of calumny from the Democrats; they accuse pretty much all of their opponents of being racists. (Has Romney forgotten that the Democrats called him a racist, over and over, during the 2012 election? If you have forgotten too, just Google “Mitt Romney racist.”)

Romney’s Exhibit A as evidence of Trump’s racism were his comments about the Trump University judge, which have been discussed ad nauseam. But, while Trump’s attack on Judge Curiel may have been stupid, it wasn’t racist. He merely agreed with liberals that a person of Mexican descent may be biased against Trump because of his position on immigration. What is wrong with that? Ann Coulter’s epic rant is correct:

The entire media — and most of the GOP — have spent 10 months telling us that Mexicans in the United States are going to HATE Trump for saying he’ll build a wall. Now they’re outraged that Trump thinks one Mexican hates him for saying he’ll build a wall.

What else has Trump done that could arguably be racist? His proposed ban on Islamic immigrants is often cited, but that is silly since Islam isn’t a race. Moreover, if he would improve how he articulates his proposal–it isn’t feasible to ban Muslims from immigrating to the U.S., but it would be easy to suspend immigration from majority-Muslim countries, except for refugees from religious persecution–it would be good policy, in my opinion. Likewise, it is absurd to argue that Trump’s stated intention to carry out his constitutional duty by enforcing the immigration laws is racist–yet that claim is frequently made.

Trump has been in the public eye for decades. He has made plenty of enemies and, like any famous, arrogant person, he has lots of detractors. Yet to my knowledge, no one who actually knows Trump or has dealt with him calls him a racist or bigot of any other stripe. Unlike Hillary Clinton, he has never been heard to call anyone a “f****** Jew bastard.”

By endorsing the Democrats’ baseless attacks on Trump, Mitt Romney is doing a terrible disservice, not just to the Republican Party, but to the United States of America.

Cartoons of the Day

June 11, 2016

H/t Power Line

Trump FP dangerous

 

Election choice

 

Glass ceiling

 

Glass ceiling truth

 

Paula Jones

 

Job fair

 

H/t Vermont Loon Watch

Sit Heel

Exclusive — Donald Trump Plans To Continue GOP Legacy Of Leading On Women’s, Civil Rights Against Racist, Sexist Democrats

June 10, 2016

Exclusive — Donald Trump Plans To Continue GOP Legacy Of Leading On Women’s, Civil Rights Against Racist, Sexist Democrats, BreitbartMatthew Boyle, June 10, 2016

donald-trump-supporters-rally-associated-press-640x480AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president of the United States, tells Breitbart News he plans to continue the rich GOP tradition of standing up for women’s and civil rights in the face of opposition from Democrats.

He also says he plans to help the Republican Party, which led the way on ending slavery, the Civil Rights movement and women’s suffrage and women’s rights—among other big picture moral leadership causes in American history—take more credit for its victories for women’s and civil rights while fighting Democrats who opposed those measures.

“You’re right—100 percent,” Trump told Breitbart News when asked about how the Republican Party led the way on ending slavery, the Civil Rights movement and women’s suffrage.

On Tuesday night, when now presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton assumed the leadership of that party, she whitewashed the Democratic Party’s history of racism, sexism, support for slavery and long history of standing against civil rights for all in America. In fact, as the first woman to win the presidential nomination of a major political party in America, Clinton attempted to align herself with the Seneca Falls convention of 1848, the first ever women’s rights convention organized in large part by Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

“Tonight’s victory is not about one person,” Clinton said in her speech accepting her role as the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee.

It belongs to generations of women and men who struggled and sacrificed and made this moment possible. In our country, it started right here in New York, a place called Seneca Falls, in 1848. When a small but determined group of women, and men, came together with the idea that women deserved equal rights, and they set it forth in something called the Declaration of Sentiments, and it was the first time in human history that that kind of declaration occurred.

Clinton did not mention Cady Stanton, or the fact that the women’s rights leader went on to become one of the nation’s first Republicans. In fact, Stanton’s husband Henry Brewster Stanton—a journalist and a New York State senator—was one of the nation’s leading voices for the abolition of slavery and helped found the Republican Party in New York back in 1856.

Later in the speech, Clinton took a shot at Trump, arguing that he wanted to send America backward—that his trademark campaign phrase “Make America Great Again” was code for taking the country back before all people had civil rights.

“Donald Trump is temperamentally unfit to be president and commander-in-chief,” Clinton said. “And he’s not just trying to build a wall between America and Mexico – he’s trying to wall off Americans from each other. When he says, ‘Let’s make America great again,’ that is code for, ‘Let’s take America backwards.’ Back to a time when opportunity and dignity were reserved for some, not all, promising his supporters an economy he cannot recreate.”

Never mind the fact that her own husband, former President Bill Clinton, used the phrase“Make America Great Again” multiple times back in the 1990s—a phrase first popularized by former President Ronald Reagan, who used the campaign slogan in his own successful 1980 White House bid—but Clinton is forgetting the history of her own political party. Clinton’s success is built out of a Democratic Party that rose to and clutched onto power by actively suppressing equal rights of not just women, but minorities as well.

Abraham Lincoln, the president who signed the Emancipation Proclamation abolishing slavery then led the country through the Civil War preserving the Union until his assassination, was a Republican. The general public often forgets how influential the Republican Party was in ending slavery—Democrats wanted to continue slavery, while Lincoln’s Republicans wanted to end it—and if it weren’t for the GOP, slavery would not have ended and the Union itself may have fallen apart.

“Some may not realize that the modern Republican Party owes its origin to the fight over slavery nearly two centuries ago,” CNN’s Tom Foreman wrote back in 2012.

In the tumultuous mid-1800s, right before the Civil War, some political activists were concerned about keeping slavery from spreading into new western territories, and they saw no way to stop it through existing political powers: the Democrats and the Whigs (the pro-Congress party of the mid 1800s that largely destroyed itself in the 1852 elections in a battle over slavery). So they formed a new party, taking the name ‘Republicans’ in a salute to earlier American politicians.

As Republicans led the battle against slavery, in 1861 the party’s first U.S. president—Abraham Lincoln—was elected.

“Soon after, slavery fell,” Foreman wrote.

The Whig party disappeared. And the Republicans began a long steady rise in power. Even back then, the party liked to talk about fiscal responsibility — immigration, religion — and the need for a strong business climate. All of this spurred a sympathetic Chicago newspaper to call the Republicans the Grand Old Party, or the GOP.

Republicans have led the way on every major civil rights movement in American history—ending slavery was hardly the only one. What is now the Party of Trump also led the way in granting women the right to vote. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a leader in the women’s rights movement in the 19th Century, was a Republican, as was Susan B. Anthony. So were many of the others involved in the effort. In fact, it was Republicans who led the effort for decades that eventually saw passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—which granted women the right vote.

“Most educated Americans vaguely remember that the amendment granting women the right to vote was passed by Congress in 1919 and ratified by the states in 1920,” the American Spectator’s David Catron wrote back in 2012.

But the number of people who know anything about the forty-year legislative war that preceded that victory is smaller than the audience of MSNBC. That war began in 1878, when a California Republican named A.A. Sargent introduced the 19th Amendment only to see it voted down by a Democrat-controlled Congress. It finally ended four decades later, when the Republicans won landslide victories in the House and the Senate, giving them the power to pass the amendment despite continued opposition from most elected Democrats — including President Woodrow Wilson, to whom the suffragettes frequently referred as “Kaiser Wilson.”

Catron continued by noting that Republicans in Utah—Mormons—granted women the right to vote back in 1870. Then, for years afterwards, Republicans—facing objections from Democrats—over and over again introduced the 19th Amendment for ratification in Congress. Meanwhile, Republican states granted women the right to vote in many other places.

“Meanwhile, the Republicans continued to introduce the 19th Amendment in Congress every year, but the Democrats were able to keep it bottled up in various committees for another decade before allowing either chamber to vote on it,” Catron wrote.

In 1887 it finally reached the floor of the Senate. Once again, however, it was defeated by a vote of 34 to 16. After this setback, advocates of women’s suffrage opted to put pressure on Congress by convincing various state legislatures to pass bills giving women the vote. This met with some success. By the turn of the century a variety of Republican-controlled states, including Wyoming, Colorado, and Idaho, had granted women suffrage. During the first ten years of the new century, several other states gave women the vote, including Washington and California.

Eventually, Democrats relented and Republicans succeeded in granting women’s suffrage nationally.

“Congress, however, didn’t deign to vote on the issue again until 1914, when it was once again defeated by Senate Democrats,” Catron added.

It was subsequently brought up for a vote in January of 1915 in the House, where it went down by a vote of 204 to 174. Nonetheless, the Republicans continued to push even after it was defeated yet again in early 1918. The big break for 19th Amendment came when President Wilson, a true Democrat, violated his most solemn campaign promise. Having pledged to keep the United States out of the European conflict that had been raging since 1914, he decided to enter the war anyway. This set the stage for the 1918 midterm elections in which voter outrage swept the Republicans into power in both the House and the Senate. This finally placed the GOP in a position to pass the amendment despite Democrat opposition.

Later in the 20th Century of course, during the Civil Rights Movement, Democrats again stood against equal rights for all Americans regardless of race or gender. Writing in the Guardian of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act back in 2013, Harry Enten detailed how the Democratic Party opposed civil rights efforts while Republicans backed them.

“80% of Republicans in the House and Senate voted for the bill. Less than 70% of Democrats did,” Enten wrote. “Indeed, Minority Leader Republican Everett Dirksen led the fight to end the filibuster. Meanwhile, Democrats such as Richard Russell of Georgia and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina tried as hard as they could to sustain a filibuster.”

In fact, a PBS special on “The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow” detailed how systemic racism was embedded into the very fabric of what has now become Hillary Clinton’s Democratic Party.

“The Democratic Party identified itself as the ‘white man’s party’ and demonized the Republican Party as being ‘Negro dominated,’ even though whites were in control,” the PBS special writes on its website of the post-Civil War Democrats. “Determined to re-capture the South, Southern Democrats ‘redeemed’ state after state — sometimes peacefully, other times by fraud and violence. By 1877, when Reconstruction was officially over, the Democratic Party controlled every Southern state.”

The PBS special goes on even further to detail how even Northern Democrats tolerated the overt discrimination and racism from their Southern brethren so as to keep their coalition of power together. “The South remained a one-party region until the Civil Rights movement began in the 1960s. Northern Democrats, most of whom had prejudicial attitudes towards blacks, offered no challenge to the discriminatory policies of the Southern Democrats,” PBS writes.

A deeper more than 30-page report from the American Civil Rights Union (ACRU)—called “The Truth About Jim Crow”—details how the Democratic Party was integral to the development of such laws.

“Jim Crow’s political purpose was to keep the white population in power, and the Democratic Party thought of itself as the white man’s party,” one part of the more than 10-page-long section on how the Democratic Party pushed Jim Crow laws reads. “A chronological look at the Jim Crow era will illustrate how Democrats created and exploited Jim Crow.”

The report goes on to detail how it was Republicans who ended Jim Crow laws.

Trump, in his latest exclusive interview with Breitbart News, said that Clinton’s rewriting of her Democratic Party’s sordid history on these important narratives is more proof that she is just playing the woman card and the race card for pure political gain—and in opposition of the facts. He also believes that Republicans need to do more to take credit for the party’s leading role in the women’s rights, Civil Rights and slavery abolition movements—all movements the Democrats, the party of Clinton, originally fought against intensely.

“The Democrats have always played that card,” Trump said. “The Republicans have not taken enough credit for what’s taken place. They’ve never taken enough credit for what’s taken place.”

Trump told Breitbart News that he plans to win support across the country despite anyone’s particular race, and aims to seek support from Hispanics and African Americans and white voters alike—and men and women—using the same message delivered to each of them the same way, equally: Jobs and economic opportunity for all. Meanwhile, Clinton, of course, is going to use these race and gender issues to divide Americans into separate classes based on gender and skin color.

“I plan to help Hispanics and African Americans because I’m going to bring jobs back to the country,” Trump said.

She doesn’t know how. I’m going to rebuild the infrastructure of the country, she wouldn’t know where to start. That’s why a lot of the unions, the head people, they routinely endorse the Democrats. Routinely. And they’re having a hard time. Because while they’re dying to endorse the Democrats because that’s where their head people have their lunch and dinner, their membership wants to endorse Trump. Look at the Teamsters. The people within the Teamsters want Trump. They haven’t endorsed yet, and the reason they haven’t endorsed yet is because everybody in the Teamsters wants Trump. The reason they want Trump is because I’m going to rebuild the infrastructure of the country and that’s good for them. It appeals across the lines to people that have small businesses and contracting companies that are not unionized.

When asked about how—when those self-appointed leaders in the African American and Hispanic communities will certainly further the Democratic Party’s agenda and undermine the GOP’s efforts, facts be damned—he plans to get his message out to the actual voters, Trump said it is simple.

“I think that’s been my whole message up to this point,” Trump said. “I’m going to continue to hit it very hard. But I think it’s been very much my own message up to this point, jobs, good trade deals. Last night I talked about it. Great trade deals.”

There are some early signs that Trump—using his unique style of mixing interesting campaigning with his celebrity appeal—might be able to cut through the clutter and reach voters in African American and Hispanic communities that have for years now been outside the GOP’s grasp, despite the Democratic Party’s dark history on civil and women’s rights matters.

As noted by Fox News Latino, Trump’s support among Hispanics is spiking fast according to new data from analytics firm CulturIntel. In fact, he is almost equal with Clinton.

“Based on big data analysis over the last 30 days as of June 1st, Trump reports 37 percent of Hispanic positive sentiment versus 41 percent for Clinton,” CulturIntel writes in the report. “Surprisingly, the candidates tie in negative sentiment across Hispanics at 38 percent; discounting the fact that Latinos default as Democrats or are completely turned off by Trump’s off-color comments. After all, over 50 percent of Latinos identify as political independents.”

Meanwhile, as Gateway Pundit notes in a new report as well based off this and other data, Trump could be on par to win 25 percent of the black vote. It would, the report detailed, lead to a landslide victory for Trump in November. It would also be the first time since 1960, when Richard Nixon failed to beat John F. Kennedy for the presidency before coming back eight years later to win in 1968, that a Republican won such a big percentage of the non-white vote. With black unemployment rates double what they are for whites, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, if Trump hammers his jobs message—and corrects the record on Democrats versus Republicans when it comes to civil rights—maybe he could cut into a significant portion of the black electorate.

On top of all of this, as Breitbart News previously reported in an earlier part of this interview, Trump is also zoning in one place where failed 2012 GOP presidential former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney did not succeed: proving to voters he cares about them.

He said in this interview that he believes that to run the country, a president must “manage with heart”—a sign that he is appealing to the significant portion of the electorate that looks for a president who cares about people like them, qualifications be damned.

While Trump paints Clinton as “Heartless Hillary,” his second nickname for who he also calls “Crooked Hillary,” he could be growing the GOP tent and expanding the electorate based off key analytics that establishment Republicans in Washington, D.C., hellbent on amnesty for illegal aliens and jailbreak style “criminal justice reform” crime bills have completely missed.

Right Angle: Is Hillary Bat-Guano Crazy?

June 8, 2016

Right Angle: Is Hillary Bat-Guano Crazy? Bill Whittle Channel via YouTube, June 7, 2016

The Donald and The La Raza Judge

June 7, 2016

The Donald and The La Raza Judge, TownhallPat Buchanan, June 7, 2016

(I seem to recall members of La Raza (“The Race”) protesting violently at recent Trump rallies. However, it would probably have been better had Trump filed a motion with the court asking the judge to recuse himself. — DM)

Trump judge

Before the lynching of The Donald proceeds, what exactly was it he said about that Hispanic judge?

Stated succinctly, Donald Trump said U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over a class-action suit against Trump University, is sticking it to him. And the judge’s bias is likely rooted in the fact that he is of Mexican descent.

Can there be any defense of a statement so horrific?

Just this. First, Trump has a perfect right to be angry about the judge’s rulings and to question his motives. Second, there are grounds for believing Trump is right.

On May 27, Curiel, at the request of The Washington Post, made public plaintiff accusations against Trump University — that the whole thing was a scam. The Post, which Bob Woodward tells us has 20 reporters digging for dirt in Trump’s past, had a field day.

And who is Curiel?

An appointee of President Obama, he has for years been associated with the La Raza Lawyers Association of San Diego, which supports pro-illegal immigrant organizations.

Set aside the folly of letting Clinton surrogates like the Post distract him from the message he should be delivering, what did Trump do to be smeared by a bipartisan media mob as a “racist”?

He attacked the independence of the judiciary, we are told.

But Presidents Jefferson and Jackson attacked the Supreme Court, and FDR, fed up with New Deal programs being struck down, tried to “pack the court” by raising the number of justices to 15 if necessary.

Abraham Lincoln leveled “that eminent tribunal” in his first inaugural, and once considered arresting Chief Justice Roger Taney.

The conservative movement was propelled by attacks on the Warren Court. In the ’50s and ’60s, “Impeach Earl Warren!” was plastered on billboards and bumper stickers all across God’s country.

The judiciary is independent, but that does not mean that federal judges are exempt from the same robust criticism as presidents or members of Congress.

Obama himself attacked the Citizens United decision in a State of the Union address, with the justices sitting right in front of him.

But Trump’s real hanging offense was that he brought up the judge’s ancestry, as the son of Mexican immigrants, implying that he was something of a judicial version of Univision’s Jorge Ramos.

Apparently, it is now not only politically incorrect, but, in Newt Gingrich’s term, “inexcusable,” to bring up the religious, racial or ethnic background of a judge, or suggest this might influence his actions on the bench.

But these things matter.

Does Newt think that when LBJ appointed Thurgood Marshall, ex-head of the NAACP, to the Supreme Court, he did not think Marshall would bring his unique experience as a black man and civil rights leader to the bench?

Surely, that was among the reasons Marshall was appointed.

When Obama named Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, a woman of Puerto Rican descent who went through college on affirmative action scholarships, did Obama think this would not influence her decision when it came to whether or not to abolish affirmative action?

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” Sotomayor said in a speech at Berkeley law school and in other forums.

Translation: Ethnicity matters, and my Latina background helps guide my decisions.

All of us are products of our family, faith, race and ethnic group. And the suggestion in these attacks on Trump that judges and justices always rise about such irrelevant considerations, and decide solely on the merits, is naive nonsense.

There are reasons why defense lawyers seek “changes of venue” and avoid the courtrooms of “hanging judges.”

When Obama reflexively called Sgt. Crowley “stupid” after Crowley’s 2009 encounter with that black professor at Harvard, and said of Trayvon Martin, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” was he not speaking as an African-American, as well as a president?

Pressed by John Dickerson on CBS, Trump said it’s “possible” a Muslim judge might be biased against him as well.

Another “inexcusable” outrage.

But does anyone think that if Obama appointed a Muslim to the Supreme Court, the LGBT community would not be demanding of all Democratic Senators that they receive assurances that the Muslim judge’s religious views on homosexuality would never affect his court decisions, before they voted to put him on the bench?

When Richard Nixon appointed Judge Clement Haynsworth to the Supreme Court, it was partly because he was a distinguished jurist of South Carolina ancestry. And the Democrats who tore Haynsworth to pieces did so because they feared he would not repudiate his Southern heritage and any and all ideas and beliefs associated with it.

To many liberals, all white Southern males are citizens under eternal suspicion of being racists. The most depressing thing about this episode is to see Republicans rushing to stomp on Trump, to show the left how well they have mastered their liberal catechism.

WAPO Columnist: Let’s Gang Up on Trump!

June 6, 2016

WAPO Columnist: Let’s Gang Up on Trump!, Power LineJohn Hinderaker, June 6, 2016

The Washington Post’s media columnist, Margaret Sullivan, who is also a former Public Editor of the New York Times, has an idea that she claims is novel, but may sound familiar to Republicans: news outlets should coordinate their efforts to defeat Donald Trump! It really is an extraordinary column:

Media outlets have given the likely Republican presidential nominee something like $2 billion worth of free exposure and, in many cases, let him get away with blatant falsehoods — even about something as basic as whether he did or didn’t support the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Maybe I missed it, but I don’t recall liberal columnists objecting to Trump’s free publicity during the primary season, when it helped him defeat Republicans who would have been stronger general election candidates.

Fairness is of utmost importance, no doubt, whether the reporting is on Trump, Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. But what, exactly, does it mean in campaign coverage? It should mean keeping an open mind, not bringing preconceived ideas to one’s reporting, and listening seriously to candidates’ explanations.

It should never mean false equivalency, where equal time and emphasis are given to candidates or dissembling is allowed to go unchallenged. …

News outlets ought to rethink the purpose of their campaign coverage. It’s not to be equally nice to all candidates. It’s to provide Americans with the hard information they need to decide who is fit to lead the country.

In other words, the job of a reporter is to help win the election for Hillary Clinton. It isn’t long before this conclusion becomes explicit:

There have been encouraging moments: CNN’s Jake Tapper pushing Trump hard for clarity on an endorsement from former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Fox’s Megyn Kelly (before she went all fan-girl) asking a searing question about Trump’s treatment of women in a Republican debate. The Times’s investigation into Trump’s hiring of foreign workers at his Florida club, Mar-a-Lago. The Post’s reporters pushing so hard for answers on Twitter about claimed charitable contributions to veterans that Trump found it necessary to hold a news conference.

We need much more of this in every medium. Every day, in every news cycle.

Every day, every news cycle, in every medium: beat up on Trump!

Rather than promoting the same treatment for each candidate, how about this: rigorous and sustained truth-telling in the public’s interest. Citizens deserve some fairness, too.

Don’t treat Trump the same way you would treat a Democrat!

It’s time for tough follow-up questions, time for TV news to pick up on some of the hard-hitting reporting being done elsewhere, and maybe — radical notion alert! — it’s even time for news organizations to get together and prepare to defend themselves.

So news organizations should form a cabal to smear Donald Trump. But, hey, it’s self-defense!

That won’t come naturally to these highly competitive outfits, but given the assault on press rights that surely would come with a Trump presidency, strength in numbers is a far better idea than providing even-handed, nonconfrontational coverage.

What is the “assault on press rights” that “surely” would accompany a Trump presidency? It’s hard to say. Maybe she is referring to Trump’s desire to liberalize defamation law, or maybe she imagines there is a press right not to be contradicted. In any event, it’s not every day you see a journalist come out openly against “even-handed coverage,” while advocating ganging up on a disfavored politician, i.e., “strength in numbers.” We always knew that this is how liberals think, but it is unusual to see one of them put it in writing.

FULL MEASURE Episode 36: June 5, 2016 (P2) – Gingrich on Trump

June 6, 2016

FULL MEASURE Episode 36: June 5, 2016 (P2) – Gingrich on Trump, via YouTube, June 6, 2016

Hillary Clinton and The New Nixonians

June 6, 2016

Hillary Clinton and The New Nixonians, Jonathan Turley’s Blog, Jonathan Turley, June 6, 2016

220px-richard_nixon

 

Hillary 1

Below is my column in USA Today on the striking similarities between Richard Nixon and Hillary Clinton, particularly with regard to the staffers surrounding them. Both tended to blame others about being, to paraphrase Nixon, “kicked around.” However, there are deeper and rather disturbing patterns emerging that are shared by the two leaders in my view.

It has taken almost 50 years, but the Democrats have finally found their inner Nixon. Make no mistake about it: Hillary Clinton is the most Nixonian figure in the post-Watergate period. Indeed, Democrats appear to have reached the type of moral compromise that Nixon waited, unsuccessfully, for Republicans to accept: Some 71% of Democrats want Clinton to run even if indicted.

While Obama could be criticized for embracing Nixon’s imperial presidency model, his personality could not be more different from his predecessor. Clinton however is the whole Nixonian package. On a policy level, her predilection for using executive and military power is even coupled with praise for (and from) Nixon’s secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. However, it is on a personality level that the comparison is so striking and so unnerving. Clinton, like Nixon, is known to be both secretive and evasive. She seems to have a compulsive resistance to simply acknowledging conflicting facts or changes in position. She only makes admissions against interest when there is no alternative to acknowledging the truth in a controversy.

Clinton’s history of changing positions and spinning facts is now legendary. Indeed, a video entitled “Hillary Clinton lying for 13 minutes straight” has become an Internet sensation with millions of viewers. Polls show Clinton with record lows for her perceived honesty and trustworthiness. (In fairness, Trump fares little better). Clinton seems entirely comfortable denying facially true facts. For example, she spent much of a year assuring the public that she was fully cooperating with investigators into her use of an unsecure server for her communications as secretary of State. Indeed, she used her claimed cooperation as the reason that she would not answer more questions. When the State Department Inspector General issued its highly critical report on the scandal, many were shocked to learn that Clinton not only refused to speak at all with investigators but so did her top aides. Where Clinton repeatedly said that her use was allowed by the State Department, the report said that the rule was clearly violated, she never received approval for such a security breach and that a personal server would never have been accepted.

Of course, politicians are not known for their allegiance to the truth, and Clinton may be a standout in that group, but she is hardly unique among her peers. However, that tendency is often checked by a staff that forces politicians to recognize reality and even the truth of controversy.

The problem is that Clinton has surrounded herself with aides who have demonstrated an unflagging loyalty and veneration. Take Huma Abedin, perhaps her most influential aide. Abedin described her first meeting on the “Call Your Girlfriend” podcast: “She walked by and she shook my hand and our eyes connected, and I just remember having this moment where I thought; ‘Wow, this is amazing. And … it just inspired me. You know, I still remember the look on her face. And it’s funny, and she would probably be so annoyed that I say this, but I remember thinking; ‘Oh my God, she’s so beautiful and she’s so little!’”

Adebin’s breathless account is similar to communications of other aides who fawn in emails to Clinton over her speeches, dress and demeanor. In the released emails, former National Security Council adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall asked that an aide pass along her praise of Clinton’s performance at a hearing:

“If you get a chance — please tell HRC that she was a ROCK STAR yesterday. Everything about her ‘performance’ was what makes her unique, beloved, and destined for even more greatness. She sets a standard that lesser mortals can only dream of emulating.”

(In 2014, Sherwood-Randall was made the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy.) Emails from other close aides like Lanny Davis and Sidney Blumenthal show the same level of constant stroking and exaltation.

It is certainly true that Washington’s powerful have always attracted a circle of sycophants. Indeed, the most powerful figures often seem to need continual stroking from underlings and there can be a race to the bottom as aides outdo each other in their adoring rhetoric.

What is so concerning is that Clinton seems to invite such expressions of absolute loyalty and reverence. The question is whether there is a John Dean willing to walk into her office and tell her of a cancer growing within the White House. After years of scandals and investigations, Clinton has distilled a team down to the truest believers who have little difficulty repeating truth-defying spins or refusing to cooperate with investigators.

Indeed, recently, top Clinton aides took the notable step of agreeing to be represented by the same lawyers in both the criminal and civil investigations into the email scandal. That is a move that can greatly assure a more uniform account in the testimony of Clinton aides. It is also a move that rejects potential conflicts between aides in both their recollections and interests. In the most recent depositions, that joint counsel instructed key aide Cheryl Mills to simply refuse to answer most of the questions about the reasons and arrangements made for the use of a personal server at the State Department. So far Clinton’s top aides have remained a uniform front.

It is hard not to think of Nixon aides like John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman in the “palace guard” surrounding Nixon. They should be a cautionary tale for all of these aides. Ehrlichman would later look back and marvel at the loss of his own sense of self and independence: “I, in effect, abdicated my moral judgments and turned them over to somebody else.”

My greatest concern is not that a President Clinton will continue a pattern of false statements but that her aides will gradually forget the difference between what is true and what is not.

Judge Jeanine One on One w/ Donald Trump 6/4/16 FULL Special Interview

June 5, 2016

Judge Jeanine One on One w/ Donald Trump 6/4/16 FULL Special Interview, Fox News via YouTube, June 4, 2016

America’s Biggest Losers: The Right’s Commentariat

June 5, 2016

 America’s Biggest Losers: The Right’s Commentariat, American ThinkerClarice Feldman. June 5, 2016

(If the Trump Hater’s Club prevails, the biggest losers will be the American people. — DM)

It’s looking to be a long hot summer, full of violence against Trump supporters, exposure of Clinton wrongdoing, and continued loathsome behavior by the president, academics, and the media. To its shame, at this crucial juncture many of the once-respected members of the right’s commentariat are failing their readers and proving to be America’s biggest losers.

Space constraints prevent me from detailing all the wrongdoing of Hillary Clinton and her aides and allies, but here are just some turned up this week.

Breitbart reports that it is now clear that Hillary shared the names of covert U.S. intelligence figures on her unprotected server, which had been targeted by “Russia-linked hacker attempts”, jeopardizing their lives and operations. (Compare and contrast her behavior with that of Lewis Libby and the difference in the politicized responses of this administration with Bush’s. Or even with this administration’s response to clear lawbreaking as opposed to scurrilous, baseless claims in the prior administration.)

When Bush commuted the sentence of Libby, who had not leaked the name of a covert agent — and actually he should have pardoned him altogether but failed to — Hillary was quick on the draw:

“This commutation sends the clear signal that in this administration, cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice.” Clip and save this should she be indicted and pardoned on far worse conduct — actually being the source of the leak of real covert agents.

The scandals continue to involve the Clinton Family Foundation as well the emails. As Don Surber observes, however, “Press scrutiny — applies to Republicans, not Democrats.”

The [Clinton] foundation’s latest Form 990 shows that as of December 31, 2014, Hillary and Bill and Chelsea and their hedge fund son-in-law sat on $439,505,295 in assets. That’s pretty good for a “non-profit.”

In 2014, they received $24,313,685 in contributions and $113,957,283 in grants, including government grants.

That $439 million in assets is 17 times larger than that $25 million hedge fund that son-in-law ran into the ground by hedging on Greek debt. That $439 million represents a hefty investment fee for some person or company lucky enough to land the account.

The foundation spent $248,221,698 in 2014:

$95,887,139 on salaries and benefits.

$20,786,529 on travel.

$17,249,876 on professional and consulting services.

$14,200,147 on conferences and events.

$14,196,240 on UNITAID commodities expense

$13,519,824 on meetings and training

Et cetera. Oh and $33,692,599 was spent on direct program expenditures. Sure, this is all legal, but as a charity, this is not on the up and up. The Clintons used this as a way to launder foreign donations (which would be illegal if they were campaign donations) to finance her campaign in absentia.

Compare this to the Trump Foundation, whose latest Form 990 covered the year 2012.

Income: $1,259,851 (all from Trump)

Disbursements: $1,712,089

Expenses: $5,305.

Assets: $1,717,293.

Short. Simple. No staff. No travel. No consulting services. No conferences. No meetings. No training. It’s just, here is the money, here are the charities I want to give to, and here is the audit (which cost $5,305).

Hillary, as we know, is a master of the art of projection — attributing her own misdeeds to her opponents. This week she used a suit against Trump University by Attorney General Eric Schneiderman as a talking point. But there’s a far bigger scandal he’s ignoring — CGI University, “a shady joint venture of Laureate and the Clinton Global Initiative”.

The Laureate Education went private in August 2007, in a multi billion dollar, risky, hugely leveraged transaction, closed in the last gasp of the bubble. The leveraged buyout was completed around August 2007 for approximately $3 billion in debt plus equity. The driving force behind the deal is of Friend of Bill (FOB) hedge fund king Steven Cohen, a poster child for bad hedge fund behavior.

[snip]

After the deal closed, the schools had great financial difficulties and these capital suppliers grew concerned. Bill Clinton’s pals were feeling squeezed as a profitable exit seemed less and less likely.

To dress the deal up in 2010, Bill Clinton was brought in to serve as “Chancellor,” a part-time position for which he was collecting $16 million through early 2015. This extraordinary compensation was never properly disclosed until 2015. Many of those on the hook paid Bill and Hillary big fees for speeches as well. Bill Clinton was thus collecting from both Laureate equity and debt suppliers. The Laureate CEO, Doug Becker, is involved as a Clinton backer, Clinton Global Initiative and Clinton Foundation donor and involved in the International Youth Foundation, a recipient of favors and money from the Clinton-led Department of State. [emphasis added]

Incredibly, in 2013 the International Finance Corporation announced a record setting $150 million investment in Laureate at a time when its financial condition was rocky at best. Clinton’s involvement sealed the deal. Then the Clinton Global Initiative and Clinton Foundation entered into a joint venture with Laureate to create CGI-University. Yet none of these related party disclosures are included in any of the Clinton Foundation or Clinton Global Initiative filings for relevant periods (starting in 2008 or so).

New York State law requires specific approvals for an entity to hold itself out as being a university. In this case CGI (a fraud) created CGI University (a fraud) in league with Laureate, a fraud.

There’s also a private suit against Trump University in California where Trump’s criticism of the judge handling the case has drawn press rebuke. Of course, that ignores Obama and Hillary’s attacks on judges, as James Taranto notes with examples.

As a rule, a show of public disrespect for judicial authority is a foolish litigation strategy. It worked for Obama with Chief Justice Roberts because, like Mr. Clinton before him, he had virtually all Democrats and most of the media cheering him on. Criticism of a Democratic president for traducing democratic norms is inevitably discounted for partisanship. President Hillary Clinton would get away with it for the same reason.

And I must add to this review by Taranto mention of the inappropriate and unprecedented dressing down Obama gave the Supreme Court justices at a State of the Union Address where they were powerless to respond. This was a display of unpresidential and inappropriate behavior, which I do not recall getting much in the way of media censure.

I stopped watching television years ago, but if you still do and don’t have amnesia, you might remember this video example Andrew Klavan links to comparing Dana Bash’s reaction to the press denouement on the charge Trump hadn’t donated to veterans organizations when he had and her attack on Major Garrett for asking a deservedly tough question of Obama on the Iran deal about which he was flat-out lying. She made clear that tough questioning of a Democratic president on false claims is over the top but fake claims against a Republican candidate are just what the press’s job is. This is why nobody who can think with any degree of discernment pays TV news much mind.

In any event, in the private suit against Trump University, Trump has a point. The judge is clearly biased and the suit is — pardon the expression — trumped up.

To quote Facebook poster Jennifer Verner about the judge (an activist in MALDEF who appointed to represent the plaintiffs law firms which contributed almost $700,000 to Clinton’s campaign directly and through speaking fees):

So it took me about 10 minutes on the INTERNET to find that the California La Raza Lawyers Association lists MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund) as an affiliate group, and that MALDEF is one of the organizations that have been actively protesting Donald Trump. Lazy Jerks at CNN need to get their facts straight. The La Raza judge needs to go, not because he’s Hispanic, but because his political activity leads to a conflict of interest.”

From the California La Raza Lawyers Association. Look up which groups have been organizing the protests at the Trump rallies. Notice MALDEF? Oops.

Using the courts with the help of partisan prosecutors and judges to beset and discredit their opponents is a standard Democratic trick. It works so often because the folks more interested in keeping their white togas spotless will not ally themselves with a colleague or party official charged with wrongdoing no matter how preposterous and biased the charges. (See the cases against Lewis Libby, Senator Ted Stevens, Congressman Tom DeLay, and Senator Rick Perry.)

This vicious, no-holds-barred Clinton campaign will continue on to November, and what makes it worse is that while we can count on the major media to continue to front for his opponents, hiding their gaffes and wrongdoing and exaggerating his, some people who should be Trump’s allies are joining in the fight against him.

Bill Kristol has put forth National Review writer David French (who in January said he’d vote for Trump if Trump got the nomination) as his third-party choice.

Daniel J. Flynn at the Spectator responded:

What he lacks in experience he lacks in money and name recognition. David French enjoys a level of popularity above Eddie Spanish but somewhat below Jimmy the Greek. Even among National Review’s stable of writers, French ranks, at least in terms of reader familiarity, as something of a b-lister — not appearing, for instance, in the list of the magazine’s “notable” contributors at Wikipedia.

[snip]

Mistaking the views of a cliquish community inside a 64-mile band of clogged roadway for popular sentiment in the country outside of it, beltway conservatives inflate their influence. They imagine themselves as shaping the opinions of conservatives and quadrennially playing Republican kingmaker. So, imagine the terror of witnessing the rise of a candidate who not only stood them up at their annual CPAC gathering but dared call their bluff on immigration and challenged the orthodoxy of a busybody foreign policy that made the last Republican president and his party terribly unpopular. If nothing else, Trump’s success screams “the emperor has no clothes” at the ruling clique that rules in the way the D&D dungeonmaster imagines he does. French’s failure would further emphasize their impotence.

In sum, whatever else French is, he’s this year’s Admiral Stockdale — a nice man being thrown into the ring without training in boxing or gloves.

Others have gone further and said they’d vote for Hillary over Trump. This, even as the evidence of her corruption, incompetence, and lack of regard for either the rule of law or national security become impossible to ignore.

Oddly enough, these right wing critics did not get behind Ted Cruz in the primaries when it became a two-man race and Cruz was clearly the most conservative of the two choices. My friend “Ignatz Ratzkywatzky” responds to those of the commentariat who assert they are backing French or even Hillary because of their deeply held “principles”:

Is it actually a principle if its result is electing someone diametrically opposed to and intent on destroying those things that the principled person supposedly believes in?

Sounds more like a conceit to me.

Sounds like it to me, too.

Mickey Kaus, a Democrat, has long argued that immigration and open borders were big issues that needed to be addressed. He faults the right for failing to do so:

If they’d stood up to the Democrats — harnessing some of that GOP grassroots anger they knew was out there! — they could eventually have cut a different sort of deal, one that guaranteed enforcement as a precondition for any discussion of legalization, but that did offer eventual legalization to immigration-oriented Latino voters. Why didn’t they do that? ** Answer: Because Amnesty First reform wasn’t just a practical sop to an ethnic voting bloc. It’s what the GOP business elite actually wanted — i.e., a steady flow of eager, wage-restraining workers for the foreseeable future.*** Maybe this is also the reason why the allegedly hard-nosed elite actually believed all the polls ginned up by Latino activist groups (most prominently an outfit called Latino Decisions) designed to show that they really had to cave on immigration fast or else their party was doomed.

Some are even going so far as to suggest that at least one big Republican donor active in the gay rights movement is behind opposition to Cruz and Trump for failing to support his gay rights stance. If so, I think they are making a big mistake and are America’s biggest losers. The right’s commentariat failed over the past eight years to convince voters of their positions and are now doubling down with no real economic consequences to themselves. Perhaps they are already drafting emails and letters dated January 2017 begging for more contributions in order to “fight” Hillary. They seem to be well insulated from the costs the base has borne as a result of their ineffectiveness. And now they are adding “feckless” and “conceited” to any honest description of their work.

As for me — should that horrible-to-contemplate prospect of a Hillary victory come to pass, I will toss the begging letters of these losers into the trash.