Tennessee Congressional Candidate Wants To Make America White Again

[From article]

An independent candidate for Congress has posted a campaign sign in Tennessee that says “Make America White Again.”
Rick Tyler, who is running as an independent, says he put the sign up along US Highway 411 near Benton. He told WRCB-TV that he doesn’t hate “people of color,” but wants to return to an earlier time “when there were no break-ins; no violent crime; no mass immigration.”
He also posted a sign with an image of the White House surrounded by Confederate flags.
Tyler is one of three independent candidates running for the seat now held by Chuck Fleischmann, a Republican, who faces both Republican and Democratic contenders.
The primary election is Aug. 4.

http://nypost.com/2016/06/22/a-candidate-for-congress-wants-to-make-america-white-again/

A candidate for Congress wants to ‘Make America White Again’
By Associated Press
New York Post
June 22, 2016 | 2:24pm

George Will Indicates He Is Unlike Edmund Burke, I.e., Not A Populist

Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

[From article]
Today we are being treated to the sight of conservative George Will of the Washington Post, denouncing Donald Trump to the bitter end. Mr. Will is the WaPo's nod to Madisonian democracy, which feels safe enough to the lefties of the WaPo – because who is going to bring James Madison back to life today?
Mr. Will is there like a gold ormulu clock on the mantelpiece, to show the intellectual diversity of the WaPo. He writes and speaks in whole sentences, but secretly, my hero George Will is a member of the Whig Party, the founding elite of the United States.
Now, I admire Mr. Will as one kind of true conservative, believe it or not. But he is not a Burkean conservative, because Edmund Burke (1729-1797) was actually a populist intellectual.
Burke believed in the intuitive wisdom and good sense of ordinary people. I'm afraid that Mr. Will sneers at popular conservatives because they are...well, popular. Like GOP winner Donald Trump, who talks the earthy language of Queens, New York.


Donald Trump

Trump is attractive to voters who are sick and tired of being preached at and lied to by our mis-educated elites. Trump is not as intellectual as Ted Cruz. Intellectuals are good for Supreme Court justices, and Cruz knows his constitutional law.
But Trump understands and likes people, which is not the same thing.
Conservatives have long been divided between intuitive people and intellectuals. Thomas Jefferson was an intellectual. Andrew Jackson was an intuitive conservative.
Abe Lincoln was a very rare politician who had a liking and appreciation for everyday people but could still make eloquent speeches that educated Americans could love. Ben Franklin was also able to bridge popularity and intellect. But Alexander Hamilton famously said, "The People? Sir, the People is a Great Beast!"
In some way George Will is more of a Hamiltonian. Nothing wrong with that, but Mr. Will consistently fails to understand the Donald Trumps of this world. Ronald Reagan and Harry Truman had sound intuitions about people. Woodrow Wilson was an intellectual.
In truth, Trump understands sophisticated ideas also, and he can talk in complete sentences. We can see that as he is making his "pivot" to more conventional politics. But Mr. Trump loves to outrage the Hamiltonians in Washington, D.C., who are still freaked out by the prospect of a practical person getting a chance.
Burke was an Irishman who served in the British Parliament, a life history that might explain his hatred for tyranny and his love and respect for human intuition. Ireland in his time was miserably poor, generally uneducated, and badly exploited by English landlords, but still rich in human talent. Burke empathized with the poor and powerless, but he also admired the decency and good sense of most people.



In Burke's time, throngs of impoverished Irish fled to Britain, America, Australia, India and New Zealand, which is why so many American politicians have Irish roots.
Burke supported the American Revolution, because he saw the Constitution as an extension of British rights and freedoms, earned over the centuries in power struggles against tyrants. But the key to Burke was his faith in the good judgment of everyday people.
That's what he wrote about in his most famous paragraph, comparing the grasshoppers of the chattering classes to the mass of ordinary people, "reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak."
His advice was not to pay much attention to screaming headlines, but to put your trust in the intuitive good sense of the people.
Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field.
Trump is a practical man. George Will is a classic intellectual. They don't need to fight each other, because a viable world needs both kinds of people.
But maybe it's time for conservative intellectuals to stop sulking and get with the program. Worse things than Trump have happened to this country – like the last seven years of Obama, or (heaven forefend!) the next eight years of Hillary.
Today we have a choice, not an echo.
You may not love the choice, but consider the alternative.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/05/george_will_takes_on_edmund_burke.html

May 6, 2016
George Will Takes On Edmund Burke
By James Lewis

Trump, Clinton Most Despised Candidates in History

Photo: AP; UPI
[From article]

No presidential candidate in polling history has been as hated by voters as Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are now.
But a review of the last eight presidential elections reveals that the most hated candidate in the spring almost always ends up winning in November.
This year’s top candidates have smashed all records for voter disdain. Clinton is “strongly disliked” by 37 percent of voters, topping the 32 percent who couldn’t stand George W. Bush in 2004.
And the disapproval of Trump has never before been seen in presidential politics, with 53 percent rating him “strongly unfavorable.”
The numbers were crunched by FiveThirtyEight, which released a set of charts comparing the “strongly unfavorable” ratings of presidential candidates stretching back to 1984.
Blame the huge disapproval numbers on a polarized electorate and the celebrity status of the front-runners.
But such negative numbers at this stage do not spell ballot-box doom.
Over the last 32 years, all but one of the major candidates who had a strong-disapproval rating higher than his opponent during primary season went on to win the popular vote.
[. . .]

While Trump might take heart from this historical lesson, he shouldn’t go measuring the Oval Office curtains just yet. There’s another set of numbers to take into account.

It’s net favorability — or the difference between the number of those who strongly disapprove and strongly approve of the candidate.
Since 1996, the candidate with the higher net strong-favorability number at this stage of the campaign has gone on to win the election.
Trump and Clinton set records here, too: both have the lowest net favorability numbers ever measured. Clinton’s minus-20 would be by far the lowest in history — if not for Trump’s, which is even worse at minus-41.

http://nypost.com/2016/05/08/trump-and-clinton-are-the-most-despised-candidates-in-history/

Trump and Clinton are the most despised candidates in history
By Mary Kay Linge
New York Post
May 8, 2016 | 2:47am

http://nyp.st/1Xf4SQa

Trump Could Never Get The Nomination. Oh Wait!

[From article]
A guy just won the Republican nomination for president by spending no money, hiring no pollsters, running virtually no TV ads, and just saying what he truly believed no matter how many times people told him he couldn’t say that.
I always hoped I’d see this once before I died. It’s like to going to Mecca, for Americans. Pay attention, because it’s the last time we’re going to see it in our lifetimes.
For those of you not yet on the Trump Train, I know you don’t want to vote for Hillary, but all the pundits have been trying to convince you that Trump’s a complete fraud. (That was between their smug assurances that he wouldn’t make it out of Iowa.)
It’s odd. When Trump launched his campaign by talking about Mexican rapists and the wall, his critics hysterically denounced him, rushing to TV to say he did NOT represent the Republican Party! Only after it became resoundingly clear that large majorities of Americans agreed with Trump did his critics try a new tack: He doesn’t believe it!
That’s what my friend Andy McCarthy at the now-defunct National Review wrote recently. I had to spend the weekend figuring out how to attack a friend without saying, “This is the most retarded argument I’ve ever read.”
[. . .]
Trump told Newsmax that Mitt Romney “had a crazy policy of self-deportation which was maniacal,” adding, “He lost all of the Latino vote … he lost everybody who is inspired to come into this country.”
It is strange that Trump would denounce “self-deportation,” which is like a chocolate sundae compared to his own plans for illegals.
[. . .]

So is Trump lying about his signature issue, immigration? The countervailing evidence to that 2012 pop-off is:
— Nine months of Trump soaring to the top of the polls and slaying all comers by talking about how he’s going to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it;
— His never, ever, ever backing down on the wall, sanctuary cities, anchor babies, suspending Muslim immigration, etc., etc., despite unprecedented attacks from both the liberal and “conservative” media;
— The fact that he talks about immigration at every single one of his massive rallies and always gets the biggest, most sustained standing ovations when he mentions the wall;
— The blizzard of tweets he sent out in 2013 denouncing Rubio’s amnesty bill as it was sailing through the Senate, supported by the entire liberal media, Rupert Murdoch, Fox News, most of talk radio, and every other GOP candidate for president this year, including, for a while, Ted Cruz (whose job was to know about bills being voted on in the Senate, unlike a Manhattan developer);
— Trump’s one and only policy guy is the magnificent Stephen Miller, who was Sen. Jeff Sessions’ main immigration guy.
[. . .]
Maybe 50 years of Trump’s talking about the working class was all a clever ruse leading to this one shining moment when he would trick Americans into voting for him, so he could sell us out, like any other candidate would.
On the other hand, maybe he’s changed his mind about that 2012 remark.
I’m bitter and cynical enough on immigration that I don’t trust anyone not to betray us. But if there was ever a candidate we could believe will build a wall and stop the mass importation of the Third World, it’s Trump.

http://humanevents.com/2016/05/04/and-then-there-was-the-one/?utm_source=coulterdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

And Then There Was The One

Ann Coulter

Wednesday May 4, 2016 2:21 PM

State Political Parties Make Their Own Rules

[From article]
This cycle has seen the rise of Donald Trump, a candidate who doesn't fit the central casting mold. He is unusual and bold, brash and unapologetic in his statements. Yet he is not without precedent. We are witnessing the rebirth of the populists, nothing more.
The political structure with which most of us are familiar is in truth a relatively new thing. People think of primaries as full-blown elections. They are not. The word that appropriately precedes "primaries" is "party." These are party primaries, designed by political parties to choose the candidate behind whom the party intends to coalesce support for the real election – the general election.
For most of our nation's history, primaries were not the method of choice for determining nominees.
[. . .]
Parties can choose their nominees in whatever methods that state chooses – with a party primary election, a caucus or convention, or, as done in Colorado, with a decision by party leadership. As long as the established rules are followed, these choices are the business of the party, not the general public, who gets their say in November.
This is one of the reasons our founding fathers eschewed party structures, hoping instead for ideological constructs based on merit and competence, not on membership. In other words, they wanted the best candidate to emerge from among many by virtue of having been lifted above the others by a groundswell of public support.
[. . .]



There are those who believe that each of us should be empowered to make his own decisions – for good or ill – finding our path to success or failure depending on our own efforts. Government exists to ensure we have that freedom by protecting the rights with which we entered this world from infringement by those who would "stack the deck" through corruption rather than merit.
The other side views individuals as messy pieces within a larger collective. Individual liberty must be suborned to collective goals, as determined by a central group of planners, who presumably know better than you how your life ought to be lived. To these, government exists to establish the definitions of success and then ensure that people receive it equally.
Of course, these myopic "Solomons" never assign such restrictions to themselves, as that would be far too limiting for them to achieve their utopian goals, which thankfully makes them easier to spot, as their neon hypocrisy shines like a "vacancy" sign on a lonely nighttime highway.
[. . .]
Whenever we resort to absolutes to make sense of a circumstance that are anything but absolute, we are setting ourselves up to be either proven wrong in an embarrassingly public way or proven right at the cost of losing close friends and associates.
There is very little in this life that is all of one thing and none of another – and nothing illustrates this more than politics, where little is ever as it seems anyway.
The parties make their rules and choose their methods for determining a nominee. One candidate making more effective use of those rules isn't "cheating" or "stealing"; he is merely making more effective use of the rules, just as their opponent might've.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/04/what_we_sow_in_spring_we_shall_reap_in_fall.html

April 20, 2016
What We Sow in Spring, We Shall Reap in Fall
By Joe Herring

Cruz Makes Up "The Rules" As He Needs Them

[From article]
Does anyone remember the whole taking over the capitol thing? How they nearly recalled a sitting governor a few years ago? Remember the protesters fighting with cops, rounds of arrests in the rotunda, the drum circles and chanting? How about the midnight raids on citizens for supporting the “Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill”?
[. . .]
Another misconception sweeping the nation is that when state Republican parties disregard the voters and give all their delegates to Cruz, they are merely following THE RULES, and Trump is an idiot for not knowing THE RULES.
That’s what the Colorado GOP did, what the Tennessee and Louisiana parties are trying to do — and what many other states may do, all under the careful tutelage of Tracy Flick Cruz.
[. . .]
I keep asking someone to send me a copy of THE RULES that direct state parties to ignore the voters and pick their own slate of delegates, but no one can cite such a rule. So I read through “The Rules of the Republican Party” myself — and guess what? There’s no rule instructing state parties to ignore the voters!
[. . .]
The state parties are given a lot of discretion, so Cruz harasses and cajoles the local party until it awards all the state’s delegates to him. Trump keeps winning elections, and Cruz keeps winning sneaky procedural victories.
[. . .]



It’s as if Cruz and Trump are playing different sports: Trump keeps belting home runs, while Cruz is berating the umpire until he calls a balk, then prances to home base, telling everyone he hit a grand slam.
True, there’s no rule explicitly disallowing a state party from rigging the delegate selection. There’s also no rule explicitly disallowing a state party from giving all its delegates to Kim Kardashian.
[. . .]
Cruz is Tracy Flick in “Election.” He believes he deserves to win, God chose him to win — and if he starts to lose, well, then he’ll cheat. Victory goes to the pushy.
Dear Lord Jesus, I do not often speak with you and ask for things, but now, I really must insist that you help me win the election tomorrow because I deserve it and Donald Trump doesn’t, as you well know.
Imagine what nightmare a Cruz presidency would be! This is now the second time Cruz has forced me to research something his supporters were lying about — the last time was on Cruz’s alleged eligibility to be president, despite being born in Canada. (He’s not a “natural born citizen,” but I enjoyed reading all those Supreme Court opinions!)

http://humanevents.com/2016/04/13/ted-cruz-tracy-flick-with-a-dck/?utm_source=coulterdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

Ted Cruz: Tracy Flick With A D*ck

Ann Coulter

Wednesday Apr 13, 2016 3:48 PM

Cruz GOP Playing Three Card Monte With Primaries and Delegates

[From article]
Donald Trump has brought out the largest crowds in the history of primaries. He has won the most victories, the most delegates, the most votes. He is poised to sweep three of the five largest states in the nation — New York, Pennsylvania and California.
If he does, and the nomination is taken from him, the Republican Party will be seen by the American people as a glorified Chinese tong.
Last week, Ted Cruz swept 34 delegates at the Colorado party convention. Attendees were not allowed to vote on whom they wanted as the party’s nominee.
This weekend, Cruz shut out Trump in Wyoming the same way.
What does this tell us? Cruz has a better “ground game.” His operatives work the system better. Ted Cruz is the king of small ball.
But having gone head-to-head in some 30 primaries and caucuses, Cruz has fallen millions of votes behind Trump, and will fall millions further behind after New York, Pennsylvania and California.
Cruz will soon join John Kasich in being mathematically eliminated from winning the nomination on the first ballot. His fallback strategy is to keep Trump just short of the 1,237 votes needed for victory on the first ballot, and then steal the nomination on the second.
How? Poaching and pilfering. In state after state, he is getting Cruz loyalists elected as Trump delegates. After casting an obligatory vote for Trump on the first ballot, the turncoats will go over the hill and vote for Cruz on the second ballot.
Faithless delegates are preparing to switch to give Ted Cruz a nomination that he could not persuade Republican voters to confer upon him.
Like the 1919 World Series, the fix is in.
[. . .]
This political race ranks among the most exciting in American history. Seventeen Republicans entered the lists last summer in what party officials hailed as “the strongest Republican field since 1980.”
Then Trump came down the escalator, took them on, and bested them all. Can Republican Party elites think they will be celebrated if they substitute their wants for the will of the voters?
A Cruz nomination would be like taking the gold medal away from the man who won it, and handing it to a runner-up.
[. . .]
Indeed, Trump’s victories, and the energies he has unleashed, are due, not only to his outsized persona but to his issues.
People believe Trump will secure the borders, halt the invasion, embrace tariff and trade policies to reduce imports, and restart the production of goods, Made in the USA, by and for Americans.
[. . .]
To either ignore the clear instructions of its electorate, or renounce their chosen messenger, would be for the Republican Party to forfeit its future, and cling to a discredited and dead past.

http://buchanan.org/blog/gop-risking-suicide-125128

Is the GOP Risking Suicide?
Monday - April 18, 2016 at 10:03 pm
Patrick J. Buchanan

Trump Protesters Are Criminals

[From article]
According to the U.S. news media, Donald Trump is a dangerous extremist whose rhetoric is inciting violence at his rallies. The protestors are innocent as lambs, gentle people who are being violently assaulted by Trump supporters. Trump's jack-booted white-trash constituency is mercilessly punching and kicking anyone who dares to object to his inhumane racist and xenophobic policies.
This moralistic fairy tale is utter nonsense. It is the exact opposite of the truth. As Trump himself has pointed out, these "protestors" are more aptly described as "disruptors." Their intent is not to exercise their own First Amendment rights but to silence people they disagree with.
Trump's rallies across the U.S. have attracted tens of thousands of people. Before they were intentionally disrupted, these gatherings were entirely peaceful. Trump's supporters are not "white trash." On the contrary, they're the very salt of the earth: the law-abiding and hard-working people who pay their taxes and make this country work. These people want nothing more than to be left alone and participate peacefully in the democratic process of self-governance.
[. . .]
In North Carolina last March 9, an elderly white Trump supporter struck a young black man being escorted out of a Trump rally by law enforcement. The video recording of this incident has been shown more times than the Rodney King beating. One night, NBC news literally replayed it three times within fifteen seconds. The implication is that Trump is guilty by association. This is an absurd logical fallacy. A man is not guilty by association. And if we are to judge Mr. Trump by the behavior of his supporters, why choose the one person who became violent? Would it not be more reasonable to base our assessment on the tens of thousands of people who remained peaceful?
Who would have thought such a bad man could win so many elections? Mr. Trump's detractors have run through the entire English lexicon of insulting epithets. Perhaps they implicate themselves by protesting too much. If Mr. Trump suffers from any fault, it is a refusal to function as a punching bag. Some consider this to be a sterling virtue in a Presidential candidate.
if people want to oppose Donald Trump's candidacy they have a thousand ways to do so. Instead of disrupting Trump's rallies, they could hold their own rallies (would anyone attend?). They could write editorials, letters to the editor, and make comments on the internet. They could march up-and-down on the street holding up signs denouncing Trump. They might even try (gasp) voting. Everyone in our society has a multitude of ways of freely expressing themselves.
But the protestors do not want to merely express themselves. They want to impose their political views by force. If they don't like what you're saying, they're going to shut you down and shut you up. In Phoenix last March 19, protestors blocked a major highway leading to a Trump rally. This was not a peaceful or lawful act. It was a forceful way of stopping people who merely wanted to peacefully assemble and work for democratic change. Not only were Trump's supporters affected, so was anyone who happened to be traveling on that highway. This included people with medical emergencies desperately trying to reach a hospital.
The political season is just warming up. We have witnessed the beginning of the violence, not the end. So let's be entirely clear about what is happening here. The people who are disrupting Donald Trump's rallies are not merely a threat to the Trump campaign. They are thugs and criminals who are endangering everyone's right to free expression and democratic governance.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/03/trump_protestors_are_thugs_and_criminals.html

March 30, 2016
Trump Protestors are Thugs and Criminals
By David Deming

Dropouts From Presidential Race. Where Are They Now?

Left to right. Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal, Scott Walker.

[From article]
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal spends much of his time these days driving his children to sporting events. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley plays guitar sing-alongs with college students. And Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker presented a proclamation at the World Dairy Expo to the 2015 "Cow of the Year".
Leaving the national spotlight can be a pride-swallowing experience for politicians who have grown accustomed to being in constant demand as guests on nationally televised Sunday shows. Some never recover their relevancy, and it can take them months or even years to adjust to their diminished statuses.
[. . .]
They've spent, in some cases decades, traveling back and forth between D.C. and their home district, constantly reminding their donors and constituents of what they've done for them, he said.
But unless a politician can find a compelling way to talk about ideas and the future he has a shelf-life in the media of about 18 months after leaving office, Tyler says.
[. . .]
But Tyler says Gingrich quickly became master at remaining relevant. He hasn't fallen into the politician's trap of hanging on to his past achievements, which limits a former politician s appeal to cable TV bookers and public speaking agencies.
"He doesn't sit there saying, 'when we passed the Contract for America... '. Even though that s a huge part of his legacy," Tyler said of Gingrich. "He's always been able to stay interesting It s sort of scary [that]... there are very few politicians or former politicians who are successful at this."
Staying relevant is a challenge for former campaign operatives, too, after their boss drops out of a presidential race.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/candidates-who-have-dropped-out-of-race-face-long-hard-fall/ar-BBqWWkG?ocid=spartanntp

Candidates who have dropped out of race face long, hard fall
Jonathan Swan
March 26, 2016

Camille Paglia Changed Her Mind About Trump

[From article]

Nevertheless, Trump’s fearless candor and brash energy feel like a great gust of fresh air, sweeping the tedious clichés and constant guilt-tripping of political correctness out to sea. Unlike Hillary Clinton, whose every word and policy statement on the campaign trail are spoon-fed to her by a giant paid staff and army of shadowy advisors, Trump is his own man, with a steely “damn the torpedoes” attitude. He has a swaggering retro machismo that will give hives to the Steinem cabal. He lives large, with the urban flash and bling of a Frank Sinatra. But Trump is a workaholic who doesn’t drink and who has an interesting penchant for sophisticated, strong-willed European women. As for a debasement of the presidency by Trump’s slanging matches about penis size, that sorry process was initiated by a Democrat, Bill Clinton, who chatted about his underwear on TV, let Hollywood pals jump up and down on the bed in the Lincoln Bedroom, and played lewd cigar games with an intern in the White House offices.
Primary voters nationwide are clearly responding to Trump’s brand of classic can-do American moxie. There has been a sense of weary paralysis in our increasingly Byzantine and monstrously wasteful government bureaucracies. Putting a bottom-line businessman with executive experience into the White House has probably been long overdue. If Mitt Romney had boldly talked business more (and chosen a woman VP), he would have won the last election. Although the rampant Hitler and Mussolini analogies to Trump are wildly exaggerated–he has no organized fascist brigades at his beck and call—there is reason for worry about his impatient authoritarian tendencies. We have had more than enough of Obama’s constitutionally questionable executive orders. It remains to be seen whether Trump’s mastery of a hyper-personalized art of the deal will work in the sluggish, murky, incestuously intertwined power realms of Washington.

http://www.salon.com/2016/03/10/i_was_wrong_about_donald_trump_camille_paglia_on_the_gop_front_runners_refreshing_candor_and_his_impetuousness_too/

THURSDAY, MAR 10, 2016 06:01 AM EST
I was wrong about Donald Trump: Camille Paglia on the GOP front-runner’s refreshing candor (and his impetuousness, too)
Yes, he remains thin-skinned and easily riled. But his fearlessness and brash energy also seem necessary and rare
CAMILLE PAGLIA

Four Candidates For President of The United States

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?

An appealing fact about Mr. Trump is he does not run a slick packaged campaign. He makes mistakes as real people do. But he also shows spine unlike the cuttlefish who run the government in DC. He is not a product of Harvard or Yale, another good sign.

[From article]
These four rivers all flow to a dark, gloomy place. The camps rallying behind Sanders, Clinton, Cruz, and Trump are largely composed of contemptible, vile human beings, because that's America these days.
One must recall that God is great and merciful. He's seen nations collapse into the vices of vanity and dissipation before. This election is happening in the worldly realm, which is thankfully not the eternal kingdom. God has a plan that we can't figure out by watching CNN.
[. . .]
Many people like the thought of overturning a corrupt and sclerotic government system but when confronted with the possibility of actually overturning that system, they curl up under their covers, shaking with fear, and cry out for the dysfunctional ghosts of bygone dark ages to come and protect them. Perhaps most Americans have Stockholm syndrome or haven't read Alexis de Tocqueville, or both – they are like the Romans of Cicero's time, who can survive neither the disease nor the cure.
The problem, of course, isn't Hillary or Bernie or Ted or Trump – it's we. Our national culture has deteriorated, and we Americans have become shockingly horrible people: fat, selfish, bitter, weak, lazy, fake, and mean. No tribe of malcontents ever deserved someone like Donald J. Trump more than we do, to tell us each day what losers we are. It will be a new kind of ordeal. Maybe it will be good for us. Maybe it won't.
Ted, Bernie, and Hillary will be just as lousy as we expect them to be. Trump will be lousy in new and unexpected ways. We're all floating down the river in our handbaskets toward a dark, gloomy place, but the case can be made for picking the one handbasket that isn't like the others.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/03/four_handbaskets_headed_for_hades.html

March 31, 2016
Four Handbaskets Headed for Hades
By Robert Oscar Lopez

Trump and Cruz Can Prevent Establishment Taking Control of Party Convention

Trump and Cruz Can Control Republican Convention

[From article]
The Wisconsin primary could be an axle-breaking speed bump on Donald Trump’s road to the nomination.
Ted Cruz, now the last hope to derail Trump of a desperate Beltway elite that lately loathed him, has taken the lead in the Badger State.
Millions in attack ads are being dumped on the Donald’s head by super PACs of GOP candidates, past and present. Gov. Scott Walker has endorsed Cruz. Conservative talk radio is piling on Trump.
And the Donald just had the worst two weeks of his campaign.
[. . .]
New to elective politics, Trump is less familiar with the ideological and issues terrain than those who live there. But the outrage of the elites is all fakery.
Democrats do not care a hoot about the right to life of unborn babies, even unto the ninth month of pregnancy. And the Republican establishment is grabbing any stick to beat Trump, not because he threatens the rights of women, but because he threatens them.
The establishment’s problem is that Trump refuses to take the saddle. Again and again, he has defied the dictates of political correctness that they designed to stifle debate and demonize dissent.
Trump has gotten away with his insubordination and shown, with his crowds, votes, and victories, that millions of alienated Americans detest the Washington establishment and relish his defiance.
Trump has denounced the trade treaties, from NAFTA to GATT to the WTO and MFN for China, that have de-industrialized America, imperil our sovereignty and independence, and cost millions of good jobs.
[. . .]



The unstated premise of the Trump campaign is that some among the Fortune 500 companies are engaged in economic treason against America.
No wonder they hate him.
As for Trump’s call for an “America First” foreign policy, it threatens the rice bowls of those for whom imperial interventions are the reason for their existence.
[. . .]
Yet, a loss in Wisconsin would make Trump’s climb to a first-ballot nomination steeper.
Still, if Trump goes to Cleveland, having won the most votes, the most states and the most delegates, stealing the nomination from him would split the party worse than in 1964.
The GOP could be looking at a 1912, when ex-President Theodore Roosevelt, who won the most contested primaries, was rejected in favor of President Taft. Teddy walked out, ran on the “Bull Moose” ticket, beat Taft in the popular vote, and Woodrow Wilson was elected.
[. . .]
If the nomination is taken from Trump, who will be 70 in June, he has nothing to lose. And as “Julius Caesar” reminds us, “such men are dangerous.”
Trump and Cruz, though bitter enemies, are both despised by the establishment. Yet both have a mutual interest: insuring that one of them, and only one of them, wins the nomination. No one else.
If the nomination is taken from Trump, who will be 70 in June, he has nothing to lose. And as “Julius Caesar” reminds us, “such men are dangerous.”
Trump and Cruz, though bitter enemies, are both despised by the establishment. Yet both have a mutual interest: insuring that one of them, and only one of them, wins the nomination. No one else.
[. . .]
All Trump and Cruz need do is instruct their delegates to vote to retain Rule 40 from the 2012 convention. Rule 40 declares that no candidate can be placed in nomination who has failed to win a majority of the delegates in eight states.
Trump has already hit that mark. Cruz almost surely will. But no establishment favorite has a chance of reaching it.
With Cruz and Trump delegates voting to retain Rule 40, they can guarantee no Beltway favorite walks out of Cleveland as the nominee — and that Ted Cruz or Donald Trump does.
No matter who wins in Cleveland, the establishment must lose.

http://buchanan.org/blog/lock-establishment-cleveland-125077

Lock Out the Establishment in Cleveland!
Thursday - March 31, 2016 at 8:09 pm
Patrick J. Buchanan

Smearing Presidential Candidates' Wives Historically Normal

Clockwise from top left: Heidi Cruz, Melania Trump, Mary Todd Lincoln and Dolley Madison.

Photo: Clockwise from top left: Getty Images; AP; Getty Images; Getty Images

[From article]
A super PAC supporting Ted Cruz kicked things off by tweeting an old photo of Donald Trump’s wife, during her modeling days, lying naked on a fur rug. Trump threatened to “spill the beans” on Cruz’s wife, Heidi, and retweeted an image mocking her appearance.
[. . .]
While a bit shocking, it isn’t really a new low for presidential races. Politics has always been a dirty business for male candidates’ wives, going all the way back to the country’s early days.
[. . .]
“It was terrible what these [earlier politicians] were doing to each other,” says Cormac O’Brien, author of “Secret Lives of the First Ladies.” “There was a tradition in politics for a long time of spreading half-truths and lies. People would be shocked by how bad it was.”
According to National First Ladies’ Library historian Carl Anthony, the first smear campaign aimed at a first lady came way back in 1808.
Federalist candidate Charles C. Pinckney “circulated the tale that the Democratic-Republican candidate James Madison had made wife Dolley Madison sexually available to the widowed incumbent President Thomas Jefferson for his endorsement, turning her into, well, a political whore,” Anthony wrote on his Web site.
[. . .]
Mary Todd Lincoln became a particularly polarizing figure due to her Southern roots. She was from slave-holding Kentucky, and her family fought for the Confederacy, leading those above the Mason-Dixon to question her loyalty and those below to call her a traitor.
[. . .]
Frances Cleveland, who married incumbent president Grover Cleveland in 1886, was the victim of rumors she was cheating on her husband after she appeared at the theater one night with a male escort. There were also whispers Grover beat her.
[. . .]
in 1896, opponents of William McKinley spread tales that there was something mentally off with his wife, Ida, and that she was insane and confined to an institution. In truth, she had epilepsy.
[. . .]
Considering our nation’s long, dirty political history, it’s no surprise that Cruz’s supporters and Trump consider wives fair game.
Of course, should Hillary Clinton win the election, First Hubby Bill is likely to get it worse than any first lady ever did.

http://nypost.com/2016/03/27/the-ugly-history-of-smearing-presidential-candidates-wives/

Smearing presidential candidates’ wives is totally normal
By Reed Tucker
New York Post
March 27, 2016 | 5:12am

Perfectionist Cannot Vote For Trump or Clinton

[From article]
There is no question that a large segment of American society rightfully feels forgotten and manipulated by the so-called Ruling Class. Their anger and frustration is justified. However, it is morally wrong and unethical to play upon those sentiments and thus manipulate his followers while he offers only platitudes and vague assurances that he will make America great again. This strategy is a clear indicator that his quest for the presidency is solely a matter of self-aggrandizement.
[. . .]
Donald Trump is not a conservative. He is in reality, per his own pronouncements, a Progressive at home with populist rhetoric. He never discusses the Constitution or limiting the leviathan that is the federal government, which is choking the life out of this nation. Rather he intends to make government work “better” as he expands the imperial presidency begun by Barack Obama. His economic policies of high tariffs, quasi-central planning and expanded social spending will further cripple the nation and continue the downward spiral in the standard of living for all, but a select few, Americans.
[. . .]
Today the president of the United States wields enormous power. Whether it is the IRS, the EPA, the NSA, the Justice Department or an alphabet soup of other agencies, the government has grown tentacles that can smother any American at any time. Donald Trump has openly declared war on First Amendment freedom of the speech and has spent much of his adult life terrorizing others he considered disloyal or insufficiently acquiescent by either physical threats or unleashing the legal system as a machine of intimidation. If president, what would he do with so much power at his disposal?
[. . .]
It now appears that 2016 will be another sequel as a plurality of primary voters, the elites of both parties and the media may well foist a near clinical narcissist, Donald Trump, and a pathological liar, Hillary Clinton, on the electorate. If I must face that Hobson’s choice, I will not vote in the presidential contest focusing instead on congressional and down ballot candidates.
I cannot vote for someone that strikes fear in my heart. I cannot, with my vote, place the fate of this nation and generations yet unborn in the hands of Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. My conscience, forged in the rubble of World War II, will not allow me to do so.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/03/why_i_cannot_vote_for_donald_trump_or_hillary_clinton.html

March 21, 2016
Why I Cannot Vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton
By Steve McCann

Thomas Sowell Questions Ability of Political Candidates to Avoid National Disaster

[From article]
The worst political blunder of all time, according to scientist Freeman Dyson, was the decision of the emperor of China in 1433 to cut off his country from the outside world. In the wake of that decision, China lost its position in the forefront of human achievements and fell behind, over the centuries, to become a Third World country.
Before the end of this month, the United States of America may break that record for the worst political blunder of all time. Professor Dyson attributed the Chinese emperor’s blunder to “powerful people pursuing partisan squabbles and neglecting the long-range interests of the empire.” That can be our path to disaster as well.
After the results of “Super Tuesday,” we find ourselves with front-runners in their respective parties who each could, as President of the United States, take the decline of America under the Obama administration, even further down, to a point of no return.
As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was in charge of the foreign policy that destroyed governments in Egypt and Libya that were no threat to America’s interests or allies, and plunged both countries into a turmoil from which only Egypt managed to rescue itself, while Libya has become another hotbed of terrorist activity.
Yet Secretary Clinton is running on her “experience” — even though it is an experience of unmitigated disasters for America, around the world. Her e-mail scandals and lies are important mainly as symptoms of her utter disregard of anything other than her own financial and political interests.
[. . .]
What prevents the anti-Trump majority from coming together in support of one candidate who can defeat Trump? Only the kinds of narrow political squabbles that ruined China.
Senator Ted Cruz has the best track record against Trump, having beaten him in three states, even with the majority vote split among several candidates. But the Republican establishment would prefer Senator Marco Rubio,
[. . .]
Perhaps most important of all, there are signs that — if push comes to shove — the Republican establishment would prefer Trump himself to Ted Cruz.
Why? Because, despite Trump’s reckless rhetoric and shallow reasoning, he is a deal-maker
[. . .]
Senator Cruz, on the other hand, has repeatedly defied the Republican leadership in the Senate. Whatever the merits or lack of merits of his actions in particular cases, he has clearly shown himself not to be one of those who go along to get along.
[. . .]
But politicians do not always do things that make sense for the country, whether in 15th century China or 21st century America. But we will know the answer to that question by the end of this month. And generations yet unborn may have to live with the consequences of that answer.

http://spectator.org/articles/65671/last-chance-america-part-ii

A FURTHER PERSPECTIVE
LAST CHANCE FOR AMERICA? PART II
Why not rally ’round Sen. Cruz?
By Thomas Sowell

3.2.16

Revealing Those Who Booed Trump At SC Candidate Panel

[From article]
WYFF TV in Greenville reports:
Thousands of people are trying to go to the GOP presidential debate at the Peace Center in Greenville.
It would take a venue that is 11 times the size of the Peace Center to hold everyone who tried to get a ticket through the lottery system.
[. . .]
CBS gets blamed:
"If we had not had it at the Peace Center we probably would have had more people come, but the Peace Center is the venue that CBS chose,” said Chad Groover, chairman of the Greenville County Republican party.
So you see, they had no choice:
Groover said supporters who work hard for the party will be rewarded tickets.
“Work hard” also can mean "donating money."
Groover said the Republican National Committee gives a lot of tickets to supporters. He said more are then allocated for the state party to distribute among the county chairs.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/02/so_who_was_booing_trump_in_saturdays_debate.html

February 14, 2016
So who was booing Trump in Saturday’s debate?
By Thomas Lifson

Young Voters Love Bernie, Here's Why

[From article]
The primary impetus for Bernie's support among the young is that he promises a vague "future to believe in," which translates into even more of the Moon than most liberal politicians promise. Free is good when you want stuff you can't afford. As one young Sanders supporter griped when interviewed, "why should I have to pay for my college education?"
Perhaps the next question he will ask is, "Why should I bother working, when I can't have the kind of job I want?" Countless unemployed or underemployed young people – and they are, indeed, uncounted – have already opted to exit the job market, at least for a while. Many of them are college graduates whose inability to find meaningful employment could be one of the strongest arguments against imposing even higher taxes on Americans in order to provide free college tuition.
[. . .]
They buy into the class warfare rhetoric that ripples through Socialist Sanders's sermons, expunging government of the blame for societal failures by placing that blame on the expensively clothed shoulders of the super-rich.
Liberals have always preached that money pumped into problems solves them.
[. . .]
An oddball like Sanders doesn't materialize as a political icon overnight. [. . .] His surprising candidacy would have been impossible a generation ago, when most Americans were taught to think differently…or for themselves. Nor were most young people's dedication to political candidates as intense as it is now. Technology is a great enabler in that pursuit.
But the major political impact on millennials has been wielded by liberals who dominate the faculties and administrative strongholds of college campuses across America.
[. . .]
Universities have become training venues for the art of marches, protests, political skulduggery, and general rabble-rousing. Unlike previous generations, millennials acquire the moxie to hustle off to rallies or hunker down in protest in cities they don't even know. One wonders how they get the resources to do this when they picture their lives in America as circumscribed and grossly unfair.
The left-wing college lesson plans begin with an assumption that it is okay to wage war on perceived rights violations here at home, but not overseas. We must stay out of other countries' problems, especially militarily, but we must accept the fallout of those problems when they show up at our borders. The crucible of liberal indoctrination is a fear of those who are not of like mind. Obama and Clinton, for example, both talk of Republicans as a great threat to America. "It's not who we are."
So liberal academicians have, in effect, provided a vital run-up to the viability of a Bernie Sanders. [. . .] and his dream of making the United States of America more like Sweden.
[. . .]
Millennials are a dominant power in the United States. In 2013, they represented one-third of the total population.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/02/a_political_maydecember_romance.html

February 7, 2016
A Political May-December Romance?
By Doris O'Brien

Bernie and Donald, From The Outerboroughs

[From article]
Elites, right and left, are not pleased with the wisdom of crowds. And if we are totally honest, Donald and Bernie are not the real worry for the establishment. The real threat to traditional elites comes from the people -- the voter folks with real jobs who pay taxes. Cooking the media books along with primary poll picks, the jackass class and media brass see their sinecures and monopolies at risk in 2016.
[. . .]
if polls are omens, the true opponents in 2016 primary race feature the usual suspects against the usual chumps. Only this time out, the American lumpen proletariat seems to have had it with media spinners and party puppet masters.
In this, Trump and Sanders are brothers by other mothers, two outsiders bucking the same system, a bull and a bear squaring off in a cage match of their own making. Wow! Who would have thought that American politics might be transformative, interesting -- and entertaining?
[. . .]



Both are outsider animals. Both are calling for revolution. Both are running against the Beltway bandits. Both are New Yorkers, Queens and Brooklyn boys. Turns out those New York values, whatever they are, are an asset not a liability. [. . .] Trump nor Sanders are breeding lawyers. Indeed, both frontrunners are normal family men of a sort.
Both attract large enthusiastic crowds. Neither has much of a following among the media, party hacks, feminists, special pleaders, Islamists, cold warriors, moneyed interests, the legal profession, or race hustlers. Both seem to be inclined to fix things on the home front before they try to mend the dysfunctional world. Both also agree that Hillary shouldn’t get a third term in the White House. And neither Trump nor Sanders, quite frankly, seems to give a damn about what George Will, Rich Lowry, Nina Totenberg, or Chris Matthews thinks America should be.
Nonetheless, we are led to believe that both Trump and Sanders would be disasters. Really? Compared to whom? Surely not a Bush, an Obama, or another Clinton. America has had three doses of Bush, two draughts of Clinton, and now two too much of Obama. At home, the country is still burdened with debt, deficit, and flirts annually with default.
[. . .]
After seven seasons of inertia, fiscal incontinence, and yes, serial foreign policy disasters, a lottery might have picked better presidential timber than either of the two American political parties. So why not have the people pick a commander-in-chief 2016? Almost anyone should do better than the usual suspects.
Hillary Clinton might be the perfect example of all that’s wrong with American politics in both major parties. Primarily, Ms. Clinton wouldn’t know the truth if it bit her [. . .] Whatever the subject -- Arkansas shenanigans, bimbo eruptions, human rights for women, wall street donors, speaking fees, Benghazi, Islamists, immigrants, and now “private” email servers -- Hillary provides no candor or adult explanations save happy talk.
The Clintons are royalty in an American shyster cult where truth and justice are a function what you can get away with. America needs another pair of lawyers in the Oval Office like Brazil needs more mosquitoes before the Olympics.
Indeed, Mrs. Clinton believes that America is stupid enough to put another empty symbol in the White House. She is a passenger on Bill’s and now Barack’s coattails. Hillary is coasting too, for the most part, on her vagina, just as Barack Obama ran primarily on melanin and Jeb Bush now runs for dynasty.
[. . .]
Believe what you will about Bernie Sanders. He’s not Bill Clinton’s wife. Say what you will about Donald Trump too. He’s nobody’s bitch either.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/02/donald_and_bernie_the_outer_borough_brothers.html

February 2, 2016
Donald and Bernie: The Outer Borough Brothers
By G. Murphy Donovan

Remarkable Standards For Candidates For President

Dumbed down voters leads to dumbed down candidates.

[From article]
At a recent rally in New Hampshire, former president Clinton spoke of his wife Hillary: “I spent a lot of time thinking about this. I do not believe in my lifetime anybody has run for this job at a moment of great importance who was better qualified by knowledge, experience, and temperament to do what needs to be done now to restore prosperity, to deal with these human issues, to make us as safe as possible. Thank you very much [short video].”
Okay, but why believe him? After all, the former president has a record of lying, even under oath in a grand jury. Perhaps Bill’s just trying to get himself back in the White House. And I’d like to remind the former president that he was alive in 1946. So his “lifetime” includes the runs for president of Truman, Eisenhower, JFK, and Reagan. Hillary’s more qualified than those guys?
[. . .]
“The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant.” (And getting elected president doesn’t mean one is fit to be president, Mr. President.)
Another Obama quote from that same article is germane to our issue of what are the essentials, the “right stuff,” for being president: “I have strengths and I have weaknesses, like every president, like every person. I do think one of my strengths is temperament.”
Is that a fact? Does Obama have the correct temperament for the presidency? When Bill Clinton spoke in New Hampshire about his wife, he stressed the word “temperament.” So, what exactly is the ideal presidential temperament?
One important aspect of temperament is the ability and willingness to be collegial. [. . .] Together, we’re smarter.
[. . .]
Senator McCain had just presented a very respectful call to revisit certain issues in the healthcare legislation that would become ObamaCare, and finished his comments saying, “I thank you, Mr. President.” Obama responded thus: “Let me just make this point, John, because we’re not campaigning anymore; the election’s over.” Some might have wished that McCain had responded in kind: Yes, Barry, I know, and I can’t explain the electorate’s bad judgment.
[. . .]
There was nothing in Sen. McCain’s comments that was unreasonable, but the president couldn’t resist putting McCain in his place. What would possess someone to be so rude to a genuine American patriot? Was it that Sen. McCain wouldn’t let Obama cut him off: “Can I just finish, please?” Maybe that ticked off our little princeling. (You can watch McCain’s entire presentation by starting at the 2:21:10 mark of this C-SPAN video, or you can watch just the end, or this split-screen version positioned at Obama’s snark.)
[. . .]
Obama’s belief in his own pet ideas is so absolute that he is even comfortable overriding the best advice of his generals. Obama seems not to have an ability to work with others; it’s all “my way or the highway.” But there’s no need for collegiality if you already know everything. In “The Confident Ignorance of Barack Obama,” Thomas Sowell writes:
As Professor Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago Law School has pointed out, Obama made no effort to take part in the marketplace of ideas with other faculty members when he was teaching a law course there. What would be the point, if he already knew the truth and knew that they were wrong? [Italics added.]
The main objective of “political animals” like Obama and the Clintons is to get elected; it’s not to fix a broken America, nor to protect her. There are people who govern and there are people who campaign; Obama and the Clintons are the latter.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/01/the_right_stuff_for_the_presidency.html

February 2, 2016
The ‘Right Stuff’ for the Presidency
By Jon N. Hall

Exasperated Voters and Taxpayers Grasping At Outsiders

Carly Fiorina

[From article]
Everyone seems to agree that the system doesn’t work anymore. It’s broken and no one knows how to fix it. However, this election season is different because the debate on the two fringes is not about how to fix the system, but rather if we should fix it at all.
It is a perplexing problem. After all, the system has worked quite well over the decades. It has given us prosperity and freedom; abundance and entertainment. Even considering the present state of affairs, things could be much worse from a political and economic perspective. And yet there is discontent.
The discontent comes from the fact that the cooperative structures of our union are breaking down.
[. . .]


Donald J. Trump, right, and Dr. Ben Carson

From the beginning, our republic developed a system that has functioned much the same way as a farm co-op, in which membership conferred many legitimate benefits, with distributed risks, voting privileges, few liabilities, and plenty of fun and recreational opportunities. There are certain internal contradictions within the system that are hard to balance but the idea is that everyone must get along if we are to prosper.
To deal with these internal tensions, the founders of our national co-op started out with a few general rules that keep it going. They insisted upon a vague moral code that keeps everyone honest. They imposed upon themselves a certain amount of self-discipline and hard work to keep things running.
The system worked fine until many people started breaking the co-op rules, denying the moral code and resenting the call for discipline. To deal with mounting chaos and disorder, those in our co-op system enacted more rules to keep order -- many more rules -- so many, in fact, that it made it almost impossible for anyone to get things done. At the same time, they watered down the moral code and discipline with a stifling system of political correctness that accommodates the prevailing moral laxity and suffocates any dissent. Unsurprisingly, people aren’t getting along anymore.
As a result, people are frustrated and angry. The co-op that used to be a kind of materialistic paradise has now become a straightjacket. The co-op is, so to speak, not paying out dividends but causing anxiety, depression, and stress.


US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

Voters are now looking for simple anti-establishment solutions saying: “Down with the system! Get us out of here! We don’t care how! Just get us out of here!”
It is a strange paradox because frustrated voters are not rejecting the prosperous society they once enjoyed under the co-op system. They may disagree a bit on the version they want. Some will tend more toward the moralistic fifties while others will favor the socialism dreamed of in the promiscuous sixties. However, they all want the old co-op back -- but without the system of rules, codes, and discipline needed to sustain it.
Added to this surreal scenario is the fact that voters feel that society is falling apart around them
[. . .]
They cheer on all who seek to break down the few remaining structures that keep a semblance of order in society.
The discontent is such that many are thinking:
[. . .]
if we wish hard enough, someone can give us back our co-op dividends without any of the co-op’s hateful rules!
[. . .]
We need to see that it is not only the system, but we ourselves who are broken -- morally, politically and economically. We blame the overburdened system and not our disorders that created it. If we are to return to order, we must address these causes not just their effects. We should not risk everything on the desperation of one last hurrah.

John Horvat II is a scholar, researcher, educator, international speaker, and author of the book Return to Order, as well as the author of hundreds of published articles. He lives in Spring Grove, Pennsylvania where he is the vice president of the American Society For the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/02/is_this_election_a_last_hurrah.html

February 6, 2016
Is This Election a Last Hurrah?
By John Horvat II