Judge Jeanine One on One w/ Donald Trump 6/4/16 FULL Special Interview, Fox News via YouTube, June 4, 2016
Archive for the ‘Republican Party’ category
Kristol’s Betrayal gets Serious
May 30, 2016Kristol’s Betrayal gets Serious, Front Page Magazine, David Horowitz, May 30, 2016
Reprinted from Breitbart.
Over the Memorial Day Weekend, Bill Kristol doubled down on his betrayal of this country with a pair of tweets:
“Just a heads up over this holiday weekend: There will be an independent candidate–an impressive one, with a strong team and a real chance.”
“Those accused of betraying GOP by opposing Trump can take heart from P. Henry 251 years ago today: ‘If this be treason, make the most of it!’”
This fatuous invocation of an American patriot to justify the betrayal typifies the arrogant disregard for political realities shared by all those involved in a defection that could produce even greater disasters than the Obama era’s 400,000 deaths by jihad and 20 million refugees across the Middle East.
A week earlier a Never Trump diatribe appeared in National Review, written by Charles Murray. To summarize why “Trump is unfit outside the normal parameters” to be president, Murray cited these words by NY Times columnist David Brooks:
Donald Trump is epically unprepared to be president. He has no realistic policies, no advisers, no capacity to learn. His vast narcissism makes him a closed fortress. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and he’s uninterested in finding out. He insults the office Abraham Lincoln once occupied by running for it with less preparation than most of us would undertake to buy a sofa. . . . He is a childish man running for a job that requires maturity. He is an insecure boasting little boy whose desires were somehow arrested at age 12.
This is a perfect instance of “Trump derangement syndrome,” the underlying animus that motivates Kristol and his destructive cohorts. Dismissing Trump as an ignoramus and a stunted twelve-year old is the stuff of schoolyard put-downs, not a serious critique of someone with Trump’s considerable achievements. Yet this is typical of Trump’s diehard opponents on the right.Is Trump more unprepared than Barack Obama whose qualification for the presidency was a lifetime career as a leftwing agitator? And how did that work out? Despite the lacunae in his executive resume, Obama is now regarded as “one of the most consequential presidents in American history” by reasonably qualified experts.
Can Trump be reasonably criticized, and is he something of a loose cannon? Of course he can, and yes he is. But criticisms that focus exclusively on the candidate miss the larger reality of this election, which is not merely a contest between two candidates but a clash between two parties and constituencies with radically differing views of what this country is and should be about, and even more importantly about the threats we face and how to deal with them.
Obama’s most consequential domestic legislation is the Affordable Care Act, which he had no part in writing. It was the work of leftwing think tanks and the congressional Democrats. So it will be with Trump, which is why all the blather about his vagueness or impracticality on policy issues is beside the point. Will he build a wall the length of the Mexican border? Probably not. But will he secure the border? Probably so. Will a Democrat – whether Hillary, Bernie or Joe Biden, secure our borders and stop the flow of illegals, criminals and terrorists? Certainly not. In addition to their decades long war for amnesties and open boarders, Democrats are responsible for the more than 350 “Sanctuary Cities” that openly defy federal law and provide safe havens for those same illegals, criminals and terrorists.
Open borders, Sanctuary Cities, importing unvetted Muslim refugees from the Middle East are but the tip of the iceberg in assessing the threat that the Democratic Party and its candidate (whoever it is) pose to America’s national security. For twenty-three years since the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, the Democratic Party has been the party of appeasement and retreat in the holy war that fanatical Muslims have declared on us. The first bombing of the World Trade Center misfired but still killed 6 people and wounded 1,000 others. Clinton never visited the site while his administration insisted on treating it as a criminal act by individuals who needed to be tried in criminal courts, an attitude that would culminate in Barack Obama’s refusal to recognize that we were in a war at all, and certainly not one with fanatical Muslims. To a man and woman the Democratic Party’s elected officials continue to participate in and support this denial.
Following the first World Trade Center bombing, there were three more devastating attacks on American assets by al-Qaeda’s barbarians during the Clinton administration, with no response and no change of mind towards the nature of the threat. There were also massive security breaches, including the theft by Communist China of America’s nuclear arsenal and the publishing of all our hitherto classified data from America’s nuclear weapons tests. Clinton’s leftist Secretary of Energy published the reports for the world to see, as she put it, “to end the bomb-building culture.
Following the 9/11 attacks the Bush administration focused on Afghanistan, which had provided al-Qaeda with a base to attack us, and Iraq, which had violated 16 Security Council resolutions designed to enforce the Gulf War truce, which Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein had repeatedly violated and prevent him from reviving the massive chemical and nuclear weapons programs we had destroyed. In 1998 Saddam threw the U.N. weapons inspectors out of Iraq, a further violation of the Gulf War truce and a clear sign of his determination to revive his weapons programs. Embroiled in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Clinton fired 451 cruise missiles into Iraq, a pointless response that was correctly seen by critics at the time as an attempt to deflect attention from his appearance before the grand jury looking into his personal disorders.
The Bush administration put 200,000 troops on Iraq’s borders, which prompted Saddam Hussein to re-admit the inspectors, but then to throw obstacles in their path. Bush went before the UN and secured a 17th Security Council resolution, unanimously passed, in the form of an ultimatum to Saddam to destroy any weapons of mass destruction he possessed and provide proof that he had done so. Bush also went to Congress and got an authorization for the use of force from Senate but not House Democrats. The ultimatum date came and went, and to prevent the word of the United States and the commitment of 200,000 troops from meaning nothing, Bush proceeded to invade Iraq. But before he did so he gave Saddam the option to quit the country in which case the invasion would be called off. A simpler measure would have been to assassinate Saddam, since he was the Iraq problem. But thanks to a law passed by the post-Watergate Democrats the CIA is prevented from assassinating foreign leaders, which made the invasion necessary.
Within three months of the invasion, with American troops still in harms’ way. The Democrats who had authorized the use of force and spoken in favor of the removal of Saddam turned against the war and began a five-year campaign to sabotage it. The Democrats reversal – and betrayal of our men and women in arms – was triggered by a presidential primary in which a leftwing candidate, Howard Dean, was running away with the Democratic nomination. This betrayal prevented us from pursuing Saddam’s generals and chemical weapons into Syria, and bringing Assad to heel. Bush managed to rescue the war effort and defeat al-Qaeda on the battlefield through the “surge” that Democrats opposed. But then Obama took charge and implemented, the Democrats’ America-is- guilty platform of appeasement and retreat, creating a power vacuum in Iraq and Syria that ISIS quickly filled. At the same time, the Democrats have systematically taken down our military which is now at its lowest levels since World War II.
This is the issue that defines the coming election. A party in denial about the Muslim holy war against America and its allies, whose basic instinct is to weaken America’s defenses and enable her enemies, is opposed by a party that wants to rebuild America’s strength, secure our borders and put the safety of our people first.
The Kristol attack on the Republican Party and its candidate Donald Trump, is an attack on all Americans, and needs to be seen in that light.
But is Trump nasty enough?
May 25, 2016But is Trump nasty enough? American Thinker, James Lewis, May 25, 2016
Donald Trump, we are assured by the first two big pages of Google when you search for “Trump news,” is the meanest, nastiest, most racist (etc., etc.) son of a bachelor to come down the pike in many a long year. Our angelic media cultists are shocked, shocked by… (etc., ad nauseam). The GOPe has battled heroically to protect us from this beast, but the idiot voters out in the boonies (etc., etc., you remember the rest). So here we are, stuck with a nominal Republican who actually fights. Forty million ticked-off voters are backing him, and they don’t care about niceties. Being nice got this country into the ungodly mess we have today. The other word for “nice” is “gimme da money, sucker!”
I didn’t like it when Trump insulted Carly Fiorina in the debates, and I hope that backstage he has apologized to her. But it’s pretty clear why he performed his spectacular war dance in the debates. It’s not Jeb Bush who was the big target. It’s the embedded Washington power cult, both nominal parties, the Permanent Government now grown fat and lazy with trillions of dollars regardless of performance, the corrupt city machines in Chicago and New York, which are now state and regional political machines, the Senioriate in Congress — people with enough seniority to laugh at passing presidents — the radical Lefties Obama has planted as delayed-action bombs in the bureaucracy to explode in future “leaks” and “exclusives” for their pals at the New York Times, the Soros money-power cult that finances and directs the Democratic radical base, tens of thousands of lobbyists who have welcomed the Muslim Brotherhood and similar sweethearts to their moneyed ranks, and the NYT-WaPo Organs of Propaganda who put old Soviet apparatchiks to shame.
Question: Are the real power brokers in DC sufficiently scared yet to listen to fed-up voters?
Probably not. Right now if the Don dropped his famous line “You’re Fired!” nothing would happen. Nothing.
The Donald drove our old, beloved National Review into spectacular hysterics, where it is still stuck, trying to figure out how to climb down from its tall tree without looking ridiculous. Still, a hoo-hah may turn out to be useful, since any comfy power cult can use a good purgative every few years. It’s been too long since Bill Buckley graced its pages. Those terrified old moths flying out after the Donald’s O-kaze (Japanese great wind) are already settling down on more peaceful pools in the swamp.
The big, big question is whether anything can shake our deeply dysfunctional establishment, which actually welcomed the Nazi-era Muslim Broederbund with open arms, including Muslim Sister Huma and her hubbie the exhibitionist. The Ikhwan feeds Muslim terrorism, and has ever since 1929. Its high point was the assassination of Anwar Sadat, the greatest Arab peacemaker of the 20th century. Now the Brotherhood has its tentacles deep into the Clintons (witness Sister Huma and Hillary), as well as in Turkey, which has just announced that Überfuehrer Erdogan is taking dictatorial power in the only Muslim nation that managed to keep a modern, tolerant state alive for fifty years. Just to demonstrate the new power of neo-Ottomanism, Erdogan ordered his US-equipped air force to shoot down an annoying Sukhoi-24 (from behind, violating agreed-on flight rules), and killed the surviving pilot who ejected and was parachuting down. Putin was trying to embarrass Erdogan by exposing criminal collusion between Turkey and the demonic followers of ISIS, an obvious collusion that has been ignored by Barack Hussein Obama and NATO. So Erdogan shot down the Russian jet that was getting too close to his own ISIS-oil smuggling operation. Now the Russians have backed off Erdogan, who is stilling getting billions of dollars of Iraqi oil stolen by the Islamic State, when it isn’t massacring Christian children for their parents’ religion.
None of this, none, should be happening. The greatest moral and strategic failure of the West since the Cold War has been to collude in the rise of Jihad. Not just tolerate. Not just retreat, but actively collude in a criminal movement by any definition of international humanitarian law. In the aftermath of World War II and the Nuremberg Trials, the West uniformly agreed that genocide was about as evil as evil gets. Terrorism was clearly understood as deliberate murder and mayhem directed at innocent non-combatants purely for political gain. Armies wore uniforms and insignia that clearly identified them as combatants, and therefore more likely to be targeted than innocent bystanders. Von Clausewitz had nothing but contempt for the irregular Cossacks who hid in the general population in the wake of national armies, to rape, loot and kill non-combatants. War is the worst thing people do to each other except for ISIS-type outright sadistic killing of the most innocent for the sake Allah and his bloodthirsty priesthood.
Post-WWII rules of combat emerged against the fresh history of the Rape of Nanking and the Holocaust. With the crumbling of the Soviet Empire it looked as if domestic mass-murder might also be almost universally condemned. Millions of people expressed noble intentions. Now we can see that the Rad-Left/Jihad alliance was already being planted in the 1960s and 1970s, according to Admiral James Lyons and others. The United Nations lost every last shred of decency when the genocidal Sudan was elevated to the Human Rights Commission of the General Assembly, and Kofi Annan literally stood by and did nothing during the Rwanda genocide.
Nobody knows these days how to define “terrorism,” but before the rise of the Left/Jihad Axis of Evil, the meaning of terrorism was clear enough. Terrorism is murder, plain and simple, deliberate murder against civilians, regardless of age, gender and all the rest. Every civilized nation has incorporated post-WWII definitions of criminal murder of civilians in its codes of military justice. The Dutch Army has punished its own soldiers who stood by during the Srebrenica massacres and did nothing. The United States, Britain, Israel, and a few other countries enforce rules of decency in combat.
But the United Nations has surrendered completely to the dark side, singling out Israel and favoring Jihad. According to the “authoritative” ulema of Saudi Arabia, the ruling priesthood, ISIS is doing nothing un-Islamic. The Ayatollahs of Iran advocate nuclear genocide every single day, and we just found out that the White House used a thirtyish English Lit major to lie to a compliant media about the contemptible US-Iran deal. But he is just a scapegoat. American collusion with genocide-promoting Ayatollahs comes from the top, and dontcha forget it.
Of course Anti-American hatred is rife at the Jihad-controlled UN and the massively corrupt EU, all busily revising the truth to make the 7th century war theology look normal.
These are the defining events of the Obama era. They are not incidental side effects. They are completely intentional, and the once-proud city of Washington, DC, is now completely degraded, morally and even in matters of national survival. George Washington was an intensely, even an obsessively moral man, a man who kept a diary to track his own faults, where he fell short of his own ideals. It was not an unusual habit in the founding generation of the United States. Everybody knew about political, sexual, and moral corruption, because they could see it in plain sight in France, England, Ireland and the rest. The Founders knew all about the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. They understood history and they understood politics, because they understood human nature. But in spite of their intimate knowledge of the worst things that people can do, they had higher hopes for the New World.
Donald Trump is fighting to become the new broom in the fetid swamps of DC. His voters don’t care much about nice manners, maybe because they know or suspect the Augean stables that need cleaning. They are right on the facts and right on the moral issues. They are placing their hopes in Trump, who is a mere human being, no more and no less.
It will take more than one person to make things better. Trump has been quietly telling the truth about taboo subjects like Jihad and the puritanical strictures of PC. The newsies are predictably fainting in horror, or pretending to. But morally they are fluff, blowing with the winds of fashion, from day to day. Total lightweights, every single one. The web-based media are both freer and more morally serious.
Trump is a serious guy, I believe, since he has been talking about the same policies in the same words since 1988. He has been consistently close to the mainstream of conservative thought, on almost all the things that matter. The media obsessed with trying to destroy him, and he has survived so far. (Without help from National Review and The Weekly Standard).
The liberal attacks will never stop. If they ever do, it will mean that Trump is finished. This is a fight, and it will remain contentious as long as the Left controls the corporate media. Get used to it. Flags and parades come long after the war is over, if ever.
But Trump has the right enemies.
It will take a lot of people, working together to rescue the country and the culture, to make a difference.
Abraham Lincoln’s generals kept losing battles to Robert E. Lee’s more agile forces in the first part of the Civil War. Finally, in despair, Lincoln asked “Where can I find a general who fill fight?” The answer was Ulysses S. Grant, who was not a perfect human being.
American voters have been asking the same question.
Now we have a general who will fight.
He’s not just a pretty face. In fact, he’s not even a pretty face.
But he’s got a good sense of humor, and so far he’s beaten a lot of the competition.
At some point, if he succeeds, he will need a lot of support from people who share the same basic values. Many voters are skeptical, which is the right thing to be.
But this is the best chance we’ve had in many years. If Trump is good enough — not perfect, just good enough — he will need a lot of help.
It’s up to you.
Trump, Ryan and the Islam Problem
May 16, 2016Trump, Ryan and the Islam Problem, PJ Media, Roger L. Simon, May 15, 2016
One of the main areas of contention between Donald Trump and Paul Ryan is the question of Muslim immigration. In early December, when Trump first made his proposal (now a “suggestion”) to stop all such immigration until we “understood what was going on,” one of the first to react in high dudgeon was Ryan, who declared: “This is not conservatism.”
He was applauded for his four-word pronouncement by those “conservatives” at the Washington Post, who called his response “near-perfect.” Actually, to me it seemed morally narcissistic and had little to with conservatism, pro or con. Ryan wanted to disassociate himself as quickly as possible from the ugly and seemingly racist Trump.
But let’s look more closely at what the speaker said during that response:
When we voted to pause the refugee program a few weeks ago, I made very clear at the time: there would not be a religious test. There would be a security test. And that is because freedom of religion is a fundamental Constitutional principle. It’s a founding principle of this country.
Aside from the obvious — if people are fighting and killing you in the name of a religion, how do you ignore the “religious test” — what about that “security test”? Is it really happening or are people slipping into the country by various means, including an open border, with no test whatsoever? What about reports of an ISIS camp eight miles from El Paso?
And, perhaps more importantly, did that “pause” Ryan voted for actually take place in any meaningful way? According to the New York Post a “surge operation” bringing Syrian refugees to America was already in operation this past April. By “surge operation,” Gina Kassem — regional refugee coordinator in Amman — told reporters, it was meant the resettlement process that normally took 18 to 24 months would be sped up to 3 months. (Some pause!) And the figure of 10,000 refugees that has often been proffered by the administration was a minimum, not a maximum.
What is the maximum and how will they be vetted? And just how do you “vet” during a “surge”? Is that what Ryan really meant by a “security test”? I doubt it, but Trump should ask him at their next reconciliation meeting. As they say, Paul’s got some “xplainin” to do.
Now this isn’t a simple question. The Syrian people have suffered mightily at the hands of various psychotic despots, secular and religious. Trump has called for supporting more extensive refugee camps in the region, an idea that makes more sense than bringing them here. (He has also called for the Gulf states to pay for them — good luck with that.)
The main point is that this is a significant campaign issue and intelligent solutions have to be discussed. Trump has put Rudy Giuliani in charge of studying this from his side, an excellent choice.
There may be a short-term fix, but there won’t be a short-term answer. This is a very long-term problem, the longest one we have, dwarfing the deficit and everything else — civilizational, really. Will we be America or will we go the way of Europe and turn semi-Islamic like France in Houellebecq’s novel?
It wouldn’t be hard. We have been living under an administration that has been an enabler of Islamism. Obama has chosen to ally himself with Islamists like Turkey’s Erdogan, Egypt’s Morsi and, most stunningly, Iran’s Khamenei, while abjuring Egypt’s al-Sisi, who seeks to reform Islam. Go figure.
On top of all that — it’s hard to believe this — there are reports our administration was colluding with Russia in an attempt to get Israel to give back the Golan Heights to Syria in some putative peace settlement. Syria? Needless to say, Mr. Netanyahu was not amused.
In any case, on the immediate question of Muslim immigration, Trump may have sounded excessive and even been excessive. That’s his technique — he likes to get our attention, then negotiate. But in this particular negotiation (not, for example, on entitlements) the basic talking points — and the American people — are on Donald’s side. Ryan should listen.
Bill Kristol: Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew,
May 16, 2016Bill Kristol: Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew, Front Page Magazine, David Horowitz, May 16, 2016
Reprinted from Breitbart.
While millions of Republican primary voters have chosen Donald Trump as the party’s nominee, Bill Kristol and a small but well-heeled group of Washington insiders are preparing a third party effort to block Trump’s path to the White House. Their plan is to run a candidate who could win three states and enough votes in the electoral college to deny both parties the needed majority. This would throw the election into the House of Representatives, which would then elect a candidate the Kristol group found acceptable. The fact that this would nullify the largest vote ever registered for a Republican primary candidate, the fact that it would jeopardize the Republican majorities in both the House and Senate, and more than likely make Hillary Clinton president apparently doesn’t faze Kristol and company at all. This is to give elitism a bad name.
One would think that the Trump opponents would have substantial reasons for pursuing such a destructive course. But examination of their expressed reasons shows that one would be wrong. Their chief justification for opposing Trump is that he is not a “constitutional conservative” and in fact is “without principles” and therefore dangerous. The evidence offered is that he has supported Democrats in the past, and changed his positions on important issues. Yet in seeking a candidate to carry their standard the Kristol group has approached billionaire investor Mark Cuban a figure uncannily similar to Trump. During the presidential election year 2012, the Hollywood Reporter noted that, “in February, billionaire sports and media mogul Mark Cuban was seen hugging Barack Obama at a $30,000-a-plate fundraiser for the president’s re-election bid.” Cuban was also a visible campaigner for Obama four years earlier. A fan of Obamacare, Cuban wrote a column forHuffington Post just before the 2012 election titled, “I would vote for Gov. Romney if he were a Democrat.” Now it is true that Mark Cuban eventually had second thoughts about Obama, and perhaps even about Democrats. But what these facts show is that Kristol and his allies are willing to elect anyone but Trump and have even fewer principles than the man they hate.
A second charge against Trump is that his character is so bad (worse than Hillary’s or Bill’s?) that no right-thinking Republican could regard him as White House worthy. “I just don’t think he has the character to be president of the United States,” Kristol declared in a recent interview. “It’s beyond any particular issue I disagree with him on, or who he picks as VP or something. The man in the last five days has embraced Mike Tyson, the endorsement of a convicted rapist in Indiana…. He likes toughness, Donald Trump, that’s great, he likes rapists.” This would be fairly damning if the facts were as black and white as Kristol presents them. But as anyone familiar with the sports world would know, Mike Tyson had a dramatic change of heart following his release from prison – rejected the life he had led, repented his past, and committed himself to a course of humility and service to others.
Here is an online news summary of the transformation: “Former boxing champ Mike Tyson has dedicated the rest of his life to caring for others – because he considers himself a ‘pig’ who has ‘wasted’ so many years of his life.” Tyson himself toldDetails Magazine: “The first stage of my life was just a whole bunch of selfishness. Just a whole bunch of gifts to myself and people who didn’t necessarily deserve it. Now I’m 44, and I realize that my whole life is just a f**king waste. ‘Greatest man on the planet’? I wasn’t half the man I thought I was.” In an autobiographical best-seller, Tyson also conducted a searing self-examination, which was condensed into a one-man Broadway performance and HBO special. Whatever one thinks of Mike Tyson before or after his conviction, one has to concede that he has made a serious self-inventory and changed the way he sees himself and others. If Kristol were serious about the politics of winning elections rather than merely pontificating about them, he would have known these facts and also recognized that Tyson is an icon to an important segment of the voting population – one that is more likely than not to offer sincere repenters a second chance. Electorally speaking, Trump’s ability to win the endorsement of an African American sports champion is no small achievement. Nor is it an isolated one. Trump has also been endorsed by Adrien Broner, a world boxing champion in four weight classes, who is also African-American.
In addition to alleging that Trump is lacking in principles and character, Kristol claims that the Republican candidate is a crackpot conspiracy theorist, a disqualifying trait. Kristol’s evidence is a remark Trump made on the eve of the Indiana primary suggesting that Ted Cruz’s father might have something to hide about his alleged acquaintance with Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. Wrote Kristol: “Calling in to Fox and Friends, Donald Trump, as Politico summarized it, ‘alleged that Ted Cruz’s father was with John F. Kennedy’s assassin shortly before he murdered the president, parroting aNational Enquirer story claiming that Rafael Cruz was pictured with Lee Harvey Oswald handing out pro-Fidel Castro pamphlets in New Orleans in 1963.’” The liberal writers at Politico can perhaps be forgiven for reporting that the Enquireronly claimed that Oswald and the senior Cruz were pictured together. The Enquirer actually published the picture.
“Here’s Trump in his own crazed words,” Kristol continues: [Trump:] “His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Kennedy’s being — you know, shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous. What is this, right prior to his being shot, and nobody even brings it up. They don’t even talk about that. That was reported, and nobody talks about it. I mean, what was he doing — what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting? It’s horrible.’” Comments Kristol: “What’s horrible is a leading presidential candidate trading in crackpot conspiracy theories.”
So it might be if Trump were actually putting forward a conspiracy theory. But what we have here, obviously, is not a theorybut some Trumpian campaign mischief – not dissimilar in form to his earlier suggestion that because Ted Cruz was born in Canada he might not be able to actually run for president even if he were to win the nomination. These were both campaign tricks – dirty tricks if you like – to throw a rival off balance and gain an advantage. Were they dirtier than publishing nude photographs of Trump’s wife during the Utah primary, or publishing a false story that Ben Carson was quitting the race on the eve of the Iowa primary, as the Cruz campaign did? Do they justify sabotaging a Republican run for the presidency and potentially electing Hillary Clinton?
Kristol is aware that his strategy risks electing an Obama loyalist, and attempts to neutralize the objection by claiming that Trump is himself an Obama clone whose policies would be no different: “[T]here is a president whose policies Donald Trump’s would in fact resemble: Barack Obama. No intervention against dictators? Check. No action to prevent mass slaughter? Check. Another reset with Putin’s Russia to break what Trump calls the ‘cycle of hostility’…? Check. ‘Getting out of the nation-building business, and instead focusing on creating stability in the world?’ Check! Trump’s agenda turns out to be Obama’s all-too-familiar agenda of national retreat masked by a rhetoric of America First bellicosity.”
This is pretty shabby stuff. Contrary to Kristol, far from being a non-interventionist, Obama conducted two interventions against dictators in Egypt and Libya with disastrous consequences. The intervention in Libya, which Kristol supported, has created two million refugees, hundreds of thousands of corpses and a terrorist state. One might suppose that a little re-thinking of interventionism would be in order. Trump’s readiness to rethink interventionism is hardly the same as Obama’s strategy of retreat and surrender. Contrary to Kristol’s assertion, Trump is not opposed to all interventions against dictators. He has promised to do what it takes to destroy ISIS, which includes bombing its oil facilities and destroying its headquarters, and is obviously only possible with interventions in Syria and Iraq. Destroying ISIS would also be an action to prevent mass slaughter, despite Kristol groundless claim. As for Trump proposing “another re-set with Putin’s Russia,” there was no re-set with Russia under Obama. Attempting a serious re-set – a re-set from strength – would seem reasonable and prudent, and would hardly be a repeat of Obama’s policies. It would be just the opposite.
“Getting out of the nation-building business and instead focusing on creating stability in the world” is hardly an Obama policy, as Kristol suggests. Obama’s intervention in Eygpt, put the Muslim Brotherhood in power; when the Egyptian military then overthrew the Brotherhood, Obama sided with the Brotherhood and alienated the most important power in the Middle East. These acts, together with Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq and waffling in Syria, created a power vacuum that spreadinstability throughout the region. “Avoiding nation-building, while focusing on creating stability” is a foreign policy any true constitutional conservative would support. Unless that conservative was driven by an irrational hatred of Trump. Finally, Trump’s promise to put American interests first and restore respect for America through rebuilding American strength can only be described as a “national retreat” by a very unprincipled – and careless – individual.
All these dishonesties and flim-flam excuses pale by comparison with the consequences Kristol and his “Never Trump” cohorts are willing to risk by splitting the Republican vote. Obama has provided America’s mortal enemy, Iran, with a path to nuclear weapons, $150 billion dollars, and the freedom to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles to deliver the lethal payloads. Trump has promised to abandon the Iran deal, while Hillary Clinton and all but a handful of Democrats have supported this treachery from start to finish. Kristol is now one of their allies. I am a Jew who has never been to Israel and has never been a Zionist in the sense of believing that Jews can rid themselves of Jew hatred by having their own nation state. But half of world Jewry now lives in Israel, and the enemies whom Obama and Hillary have empowered – Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah, ISIS and Hamas – have openly sworn to exterminate the Jews. I am also an American (and an American first), whose country is threatened with destruction by the same enemies. To weaken the only party that stands between the Jews and their annihilation, and between America and the forces intent on destroying her, is a political miscalculation so great and a betrayal so profound as to not be easily forgiven.
Donald Trump, Bill Whittle and Republican Principles
May 11, 2016Donald Trump, Bill Whittle and Republican Principles, Dan Miller’s Blog, May 11, 2016
(The views expressed in this post are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
In 2012, after Mitt Romney lost the presidential election, Bill Whittle delivered an address on Republican principles. The Timid Republican Party has substantially ignored those principles and is not guided by them. Party candidates nevertheless continue to mouth them at election time. Perhaps they understand what the voters want and recite their fealty to get their votes. Once safely in office, they revert to ignoring those same principles.
During the current Republican nomination process, the Establishment has chastised Donald Trump for not being a “real” Republican and not adhering to Republican principles — the principles which they themselves ignore, by which he abides and by which as our President he will continue to abide. As they cringe at his refusal to mince words and to be politically correct, they seem uncomfortable with his wealth and his decision to finance his own primary campaign. Trump is very comfortable with being rich and is rightfully proud of what he has been able to do because of it — including not being subservient to wealthy donors and donor collectives to which Establishment members are themselves subservient.
While watching the video, please ponder what Trump would say — and do — as our candidate and then as our President.
It strikes me that Trump and Whittle care more about “Republican principles” than do members of the Republican Establishment. Trump is substantially more likely to support and adhere to those principles than the Party Establishment has, and than any candidate it would prefer has or would. In recent months, the “unwashed vulgarian” Republican masses have shown that they do as well. They are right.
Clueless Republicans Don’t Realize It’s the Democrats Who Have the Problem
May 11, 2016Clueless Republicans Don’t Realize It’s the Democrats Who Have the Problem, PJ Media, Roger L. Simon, May 10, 2016
I’m a bit perplexed with the continued resistance of so many of my right-wing brothers and sisters to Donald Trump. If it’s just his brash style and vulgar taste, his preference for glittery gold over brushed nickel or flat black for his bathroom fixtures, I could understand it. I’m a flat black guy myself. But it’s so much more than that.
The latest “betrayal” is that Trump admitted his tax plan was negotiable Imagine that—a tax plan being negotiated between the administration and Congress! Never heard of that before…. oh, wait.
Never mind that the Trump plan, even negotiated, would be considerably lower than just about any on offer and well within the parameters of conventional GOP proposals. (Now be honest—who would you rather have negotiating for you, Donald Trump or Paul Ryan? Who do you think would get a better result?) Nevertheless The Donald, in the opinion of the cognoscenti, once more has shown himself to be a feckless character not worthy of support—and the Republican gulf widens.
Or so we’re supposed to believe, even though he has the nomination completely nailed down, signed, sealed and delivered, everything but set in bronze.
Meanwhile, to almost everyone’s surprise, the Democrats are still fighting, their internal enmity growing as Comrade Bernie wins primary after primary, sometimes by large majorities, and Lady Hillary clings to her super delegates like a three-year-old to a blanket. What happens if she loses California? According to West Virginia exit polls, a full third of Democratic primary voters are ready to defect to Trump. In the latest poll of swing states, Donald is already ahead of Clinton in Ohio and neck-and-neck in Florida and Pennsylvania. And the big show is just getting started.
It is the Democrats, not the Republicans, that have the problem, but you wouldn’t know it if you watched, say, The Kelly File or had your Internet perpetually wired to National Review or The Weekly Standard, where the writing is as elegant as the thinking, these days, is often fuzzy. The Democrats are fighting a real war of ideas, disreputable though those ideas may be, while the Republicans fight a status war among themselves, a battle over control, not, except in the margins, over ideology.
Am I wrong? Remind me again where Trump, at least currently, is not a conservative? Taxes, check. Deficit, check. Immigration, check. Sanctuary cities, check. Strong defense, check. Supreme Court, check. Veterans, check. Common core, check. Iran deal, check. Israel, check. Healthcare, check. Pro-life, check…. Oh, yes, Planned Parenthood. He thinks the part of that operation that treats cervical cancer is okay. What a sin.
But…but…but… he has those whacky ideas on NATO and nuclear weapons and trade.
Are they so whacky? Other nations maybe should pay the part of NATO they contracted to. And the Japanese and South Koreans themselves have been talking about building nukes. Wouldn’t you after eight years of Obama? And then trade, who would doubt it could have been negotiated better, considering how our foreign policy deals have been negotiated?
And of course there’s the matter of Muslim immigration. He wants that restricted for now. So do most Americans, according to polls. Again, this is the opening point of a negotiation. Who knows where it will end? But no one, other than the extreme left, would like to see the Syrian refugees pouring in. Trump will have the public on his side in preventing it.
As I said, the real problem is with the Democrats. They are the ones in true disarray and are likely to remain so through their convention. This is a huge gift to the Republicans if they can only suck it up, shelve their egos, get together and take advantage of it. It doesn’t matter whether you are a neocon, a social con, a libertarian, a financial con or just a plain con. Ideology is so last year. (Well not completely, but it doesn’t have to be on the front burner all the time, does it?) Just do it.
The Republican Party Died Long Before Trump
May 9, 2016The Republican Party Died Long Before Trump, American Thinker, Brian C. Joondeph, May 9, 2016
(The Republican Establishment, not the Republican Party, is dead. The party is on a path leading in the direction its voters, rather than the Bush Dynasty, Romney, et al want it to go. That’s a good thing. — DM)
Donald Trump all but clinched the Republican Party nomination after his decisive win in Indiana. The post mortems have begun. Blame, recrimination, and threats, particularly from those who failed to secure the nomination for themselves or their favored candidate.
The headline of the week has been the death of the Grand Old Party. The Atlantic proclaimed, “The Day the Republican Party Died.” Perhaps Don McLean can be plucked from the shelves of the Rock and Roll Museum, dusted off, and tasked with writing a new song. “The three men I admired most, Jeb, Ted, and Mitt, caught the last #NeverTrump train for the coast.” Mr. McLean can work on the rhyming bit.
“RIP, GOP” wrote the Boston Globe. As did the NY Daily News, pronouncing the GOP dead in 2016. You get the idea. Did the Republican Party truly drop dead on the first Tuesday of May 2016? Or has the party suffered a long, terminal illness, sustained by extraordinary life support measures for the past few years, only to have Republican voters finally pull the plug during this election cycle?
I contend that the Republican Party was diagnosed with a terminal disease way back in 1988, almost thirty years ago. One might argue that when Ronald Reagan, on his last day in office, boarded his “last train for the coast”, was the day the GOP’s “music died.”
Think of other chronic medical diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, or cancer. The mind or body slowly fail, not typically in a linear fashion, but always in a long term unrelenting downward trajectory. There are improvements along the way, providing hope to those afflicted and their loved ones, but the hope is short lived, and the disease, despite a short pause, picks up where it left off.
The first sign of illness post Reagan was George HW Bush, in his acceptance speech at the RNC convention, calling for “a kinder and gentler nation.” Kinder and gentler than what? Obviously a repudiation of Reagan’s brand of conservatism, which candidate Bush once called “voodoo economics.” Perhaps HW looked back on eight years of Reagan and said to himself, “Bad news on the doorstep, I couldn’t take one more step.”
Next was George HW Bush’s famous pledge, “Read my lips. No new taxes.” Right out of the Republican Party playbook. Music to conservative ears. Cancer in remission. Until he turned his back on his pledge and raised taxes. Kicking the Republican Party in the teeth.
This paved the way for eight years of Bill and Hillary Clinton. “While the king was looking down, the jester stole his thorny crown.” King George HW Bush looked down with contempt at the Republican base and Bubba the jester not only stole the crown, but used Bush’s “no new taxes” words against him in the 1992 presidential campaign.
The patient was not dead however. Signs of life appeared as Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America in 1994 infused the GOP with lifesaving doses of “accountability, responsibility, and opportunity.“ New life, GOP control of Congress, and hope that the demise of the Republican Party had been arrested.
Enter a new era for the Republican Party in 2002 with George W Bush and his promise of “compassionate conservatism.” Just as with his father before him, more compassionate than what? Reagan’s conservatism? Newt’s Contract with America? Did this help or hurt the Republican Party?
“I went down to the sacred store, where I’d heard the music years before. But the man there said the music wouldn’t play.” Republicans heard the music of Reagan years before but Bush proclaimed the song was over. No conservative was George W Bush. Foolhardy and misguided military follies in the Middle East. Expansion of the federal education bureaucracy with Ted Kennedy via No Child Left Behind. Medicare Part D expansion increasing government control of healthcare. Promotion of open borders via amnesty. And a massive increase in government spending.
Enough to make voters wonder whether President George W Bush was a Republican or a Democrat. Republican voters “sang dirges in the dark,” staying home in 2006, handing Congress back to the Democrats. Quite the legacy for Bush and another turn for the worse in the health of the GOP.
In 2008, “a generation lost in space” saw the Republican Party on life support and voted for President Hope and Change. And change is what we got. But not for the better. In 2010 the GOP cancer went into remission, again in 2014, with two landslide midterm elections handing control of the House and Senate back to Republicans.
Was this the road to recovery for the Republican Party or just a brief pause in the GOP death rattle? Republican voters asked their party “for some happy news, but she just smiled and turned away.” The GOP-controlled Congress turned abruptly from its campaign promises. Spending continues unabated. Obamacare and Planned Parenthood remain fully funded. The IRS remains unpunished. Executive amnesty proceeds according to Obama’s wishes. Iran got its nuke deal. Endless executive orders mocking the separation of powers. Everything playing out as if Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi were still in charge.
The EKG showed the Republican Party with a flat line, no pulse, no blood pressure, and no brain activity. “The day the music died.”
Along came Donald Trump. Not a conservative. Not even a politician. But a pragmatist able to identify the disease killing the Republican Party, offering a brash, politically incorrect, yet popular set of solutions for injecting life back into the party. Sixteen other candidates, all extremely accomplished in their own right, methodically destroyed and removed from the nomination race. The media and the GOP elites unable to respond or stop the Trump train. “No angel born in Hell could break that Satan’s spell.”
The candidates and the entire Republican establishment were perplexed and frustrated. “Oh and as I watched him on the stage, my hands were clenched in fists of rage.” They said #NeverTrump and promised to either vote for Hillary Clinton or sit out the presidential election entirely. The same party elites who told us to hold our noses and vote for McCain and Romney for the sake of “party unity” are now kicking sand and running home with all of their toys.
Yet they blame Donald Trump for the demise of the Republican Party, not realizing that all Trump did was act as the coroner, examining the GOP corpse, declaring it dead, and signing the death certificate. The Republican Party elites are, “Them good ole boys drinking whiskey and rye, singin’ this’ll be the day that I die.” Not realizing that they died decades ago.
The “Never Trump” Pouters
May 9, 2016The “Never Trump” Pouters, Front Page Magazine, David Horowitz, May 8, 2016
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 say this as someone who has written three books supporting the intervention in Iraq and who thinks Trump is dead wrong on this issue. However I also understand that the Bush administration did not defend the war the Democrats sabotaged, allowing its critics to turn it into a bad war in the eyes of the American people. Consequently, Trump’s attack on the intervention is a smart political move that will allow him to win over many Democrat, Independent and even conservative voters who think Iraq was a mistake and do not appreciate the necessity of that war or the tragedy of the Democrats’ opposition to it. You can’t reverse historical judgments in election year sound bites. Understanding this, instinctively or otherwise, makes Trump politically smarter than his Washington detractors.
Conservatives like Kristol claim to oppose Trump on principles but then turn to Mitt Romney for a Third Party run. This is the same Mitt Romney who as governor of Massachusetts was the father of Obamacare but ran against Obamacare in 2012. So much for principles.
“True conservatives” claim the Constitution as their bible. But, as everybody knows, the first principle of that document is tnat the people are sovereign. The people’s voice, expressed at the ballot box, determines who leads. The “Never Trump” conservatives don’t respect this principle. What other conclusion can be drawn from their arrogant repudiation of a candidate whose authority derives from the expressed will of the people? 
The Never Trump elites claim the voters are fools because Trump is “utterly unfit to be president by temperament, values and policy preferences.” This is the phrase used by Eliot A. Cohen a former Defense and State Department official in the Bush 41 and Bush 43 administrations. It is a sentiment common to most anti-Trump commentators.
But what can it possibly mean? During the first Republican debate, in front of a television audience of 17 million people, Jeb Bush took a pledge saying he would support whoever eventually won the Republican primaries. But as soon as the winner was declared, Bush reneged on his promise. Is telling the truth a presidential value? Or do the anti-Trumpers make allowances for politicians they support, cutting them slack that permits them to lie or change their minds when it is convenient to do so?
The anti-Trump crowd seems most concerned about the personal insults that Trump used successfully to defeat his formidable and more experienced rivals. Perhaps they are forgetting the hundred million dollars worth of personal insults and attacks that were directed at Rubio and Trump by Bush’s PAC, which the candidate himself never repudiated. Is it their view what is presidential is to have surrogates do your dirty work, while pretending to be innocent of the deed?
Trump has attempted to repair most of the insults he delivered by praising Cruz and Rubio and explaining that he was harsh on Bush because it was a competition and harsh things were being said about him in 60,000 negative ads. Moreover he would consider some of the rivals he had previously bruised to be his running mate. Trump has shown a magnanimity in victory that his antagonists are unable to show in defeat. I would call that presidential.
What about those policy preferences that allegedly disqualify Trump? In his original statement on immigration Trump should have said this. “I love Mexicans. I employ thousands of Mexicans. I want them to come here but I want them to come herelegally. If America has no borders we have no country. Here’s the problem: Millions of Mexicans are not coming here legally. Among the illegals being smuggled across our borders are 550,000 criminals who have committed rape, murder, robbery and felonies. This has to stop, and I’m going to stop it. I’m going to build a wall, and I’m going to make Mexico pay for it.
Unfortunately when Trump said words to this effect, he said them backwards. He began by saying Mexico is not sending its best people here, but sending rapists, murderers, drug dealers. It was only after that he said they are also sending good people. I love Mexicans. I employ thousands of Mexicans. I want them to come here, but legally.
Now it’s understandable that Democrats bent on sabotaging our borders should twist his words and make him sound like an anti-Mexican nativist. That’s what Democrats do. But it’s disgraceful when Republicans echo them. Similarly, Donald Trump is not against free trade, but wants the so-called free trade to be fair. Neither is Trump in favor of banning Muslim immigration. He wants a moratorium on Muslim immigration until a screening system is put in place so that we don’t simply open our doors to Muslims from a Taliban and al-Qaeda supporting nation like Pakistan who belong to a terrorist mosques and lie about their home addresses like the San Bernardino shooter. Every conservative should support that, and no conservative should join Democrats in lying about Trump’s position and calling it a permanent ban on Muslims.
Will Trump live up to the conservative promises he has made? Will he build the wall, and defend this country, and give his best effort to putting America’s interests first and making America great again? If you believe that Donald Trump takes the Trump name seriously, and wants to create a monument to his family and himself, it’s a good bet he will try to do just that. And Hillary won’t. She’ll do the opposite. And that is as much certainty about political outcomes as anyone in this life can expect.
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