Friday, November 10, 2017

op ed review 11/12



Tuesday was not a good night for Republicans, or conservatism broadly. Democrats elected governors in Virginia and New Jersey, but these were states that Trump lost. The more worrying result from Virginia though had to be what happened in the Virginia House of Delegates, a body that has been controlled by a substantial Republican majority since 2000. There, Republicans fell left and right. Trump Republicans, establishment Republicans and everyone in between. The former bulletproof majority was erased in a single election, leaving the body deadlocked between 50 members of each party.
Lessons learned from Virginia,  New Jersey governor´s races

In Washington State, Democrats won a key state Senate race that puts them back in charge of both legislative chambers for the first time in five years. More than $8.7 million had been spent on the campaigns as of this week, with more than half coming from third-party groups.  This happened despite Republican Jinyoung Lee Englund winning the endorsement of the Seattle Times.

Despite the chaos, Trump has managed to push the most conservative agenda in a generation
Trump to deport 300,000 "temporary" refugees
Reporters are doing their best to ruin a so-far successful twelve day trip through Asia by President Donald Trump. The media has repeatedly lied about him and trying to bait him at press conferences.
The Chinese government played the U.S. national anthem while broadcasting -for the first time ever- to their own country: the welcoming ceremony of a state visit by a U.S. President and First Lady at the Grand Hall of the People’s Republic of China. You would think this would be a historic moment that should garner U.S. media attention. You might think that, but you would be wrong.
Trump 6 year old granddaughter charms the Chinese by singing in Mandarin.
82% of Trump voters would vote for him again.

Atheist immigrant sues government for having ´So Help Me God´ in citizenship oath
Hundreds of illegal immigrants descended upon the Hart Senate building to protest the Trump administration’s decision to rescind DACA.

???? Bowe Bergdahl pleaded guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. On Nov. 3, a military judge ruled Bergdahl would not serve any jail time but be dishonorably discharged.  Now he may be entitled to hundreds of thousands of dollars in pay that accumulated over five years while he was in Taliban captivity.

Democratic pollster and former Clinton ally Doug Schoen believes the scandals surrounding Hillary Clinton warrant a special prosecutor.

Republican Senator Rand Paul assaulted by his socialist neighbor.  Paul’s injuries were initially described as “minor,” but it turned out to be five broken ribs with lung contusions and facial injuries as well. The neighbor blind-sided the senator while he was mowing his lawn. (how many senators mow their own lawn?)
Imagine if lefty Senator Elizabeth Warren had been violently assaulted by an arch-conservative. Think journalists would mention that point? Well, they didn’t when the situation was reversed and Rand Paul was attacked over the weekend by a “liberal” “socialist.”

Favorable views of the Democratic Party hit the lowest point in 25 years.  Republicans numbers are even lower.
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COLUMN OF THE WEEK
Investor’s Business Daily  11/9

No question about it, the GOP took a real shellacking in Tuesday's off-year vote, losing key elections in Virginia, New York and New Jersey. Republicans have been put on notice for 2018: Do your job, or go home.

Democrats ran what was for them a smart but unprincipled, bare-knuckled campaign. They smeared moderate Republicans as racists and white-power advocates, while largely avoiding making their campaigns about issues. It worked: They won 16 seats in the Virginia legislature and the state's governorship, re-elected a failed socialist mayor in New York, and took back New Jersey's gubernatorial mansion from departing Republican Chris Christie.

It was such a victory that even Hillary Clinton (!) claimed partial credit for it, with her tweeting that her PAC funded many of the winners. Joe Biden also got in on the action, claiming "nearly every candidate I endorsed won." So yes, even though it was an off-year election with mostly state and local control at stake, it was a big day for the Democrats.

Even so, don't think this was so much a Democratic victory as a Republican defeat.  Republicans, quite frankly, have failed to deliver on signal promises they made in 2016 — promises that were taken seriously by voters and even many moderate Democrats — that led to Donald Trump's stunning win over Hillary Clinton and Republicans maintaining control of both houses of Congress.

To nearly everyone's surprise, they have reprised their act from 2003 to 2007, the last time they controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress. They had a chance then to do a lot of good, moving on entitlement reform, cutting spending, doing free-market reforms for health care, and even undoing the Clinton-era regulations that led to the housing meltdown and financial crisis. Apart from passing tax cuts in 2003, they did none of the other things that voters hoped they would do.

President Obama was personally popular, but after he made ObamaCare and the Dodd-Frank financial reforms his priorities during his first two years, Democrats lost big across the country. First they lost the House. Then they lost election after election in state after state. By one count, Democrats under Obama lost 1,042 state and federal elected posts, including congressional and state legislative seats, gubernatorial posts, and even the presidency.

That was a big wake-up call for the Democrats. Assessing the Democrats' electoral damage last November, Rep. Tim Ryan, the moderate Ohio Democrat who failed in his bid to win the House minority leader post, summed it up pretty well: "We're not even a national party at this point. We have some support on the coasts, but we've lost the support of middle America, and we've got to make some changes. So I'm pulling the fire alarm here, because the house is on fire."

On Tuesday, Democrats squelched the fire, at least a bit.

Republicans would do well not to discount their losses and to get serious about being a party of power. They made big promises, as we said, on ObamaCare and taxes. As of yet, they've delivered on neither. A number of Republicans in recent weeks have announced they will be retiring next year. Just Wednesday, two more— twelve-term Rep. Frank LoBiondo of New Jersey and conservative seven-term Rep. Ted Poe of Texas — announced they'll join the GOP exodus.

Unfortunately, disgruntled Republican voters may be taking the wrong lessons from their drubbing. A poll by Rasmussen taken on Tuesday found "Republicans (43%) are more likely than Democrats (36%) and voters not affiliated with either major political party (31%) to regard today's elections as a referendum on Trump."

We see it the other way. Unlike Congress, Trump has delivered as much as possible on his biggest promises. He put a solid conservative on the Supreme Court, performed a record regulatory rollback at the federal level, pulled the U.S. out of the costly Paris Climate Agreement, pushed Congress to reform our absurd tax code, and used his executive power to curb some of ObamaCare's worst excesses.

Oh, yes, and after eight years of excuses by the previous White House tenant, Trump has ISIS on the ropes, nearly completely defeated and no longer holding significant amounts of territory. He's also facing down the North Korean and Iranian nuclear threats, two big cans that both Republican and Democratic presidents have kicked down the road for decades. And Trump has done this all in a year.

Meanwhile, congressional Republicans have been a disappointment. They've promised to get rid of ObamaCare and to reform taxes. While those should be slam dunks, they've so far failed to do either, although tax reform of some sort now seems highly likely.

The implied argument of the Republicans has been, "Wait until the 2018 election is over; then we'll really be freed up to do great things." Well, guess what. If Tuesday's any guide, 2018 might not keep Republicans in power. The Democrats look like they're getting their electoral mojo back. For Republicans, it's time to be bold or go home.


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OTHER COLUMNS
“The Virginia electorate has been changing year after year, and moving further to the left. Approximately 40% of Northern Virginia residents are foreign-born. The current governor and the governor-elect restored voting rights to convicted felons. That added at least 156,000 potential new voters to the rolls who overwhelmingly vote Democrat.”
           -Gary Bauer

“The Democrats paid a law firm (Perkins Coie), which paid a private investigations firm (Fusion GPS), which in turn paid a spy (Christopher Steele), and Steele paid Russian government officials for dirt on Trump. … The attorney-client privilege is intended to ensure that people are completely truthful with their attorneys. It is not supposed to be a shelter for any sordid, and possibly illegal, behavior by liberals.”
     -Ann Coulter
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LEFTIST WATCH
Leftist groups set November 4th as the date of a national uprising to overthrow the Trump administration and liberate the entire country from capitalist-patriarchal-white supremacist domination. It was supposed to develop into open civil war between the progressive forces and the forces of reaction, with the outcome undoubtedly that guaranteed by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Castro, and company…And then the 4th rolled around and… nothing. Three hundred marchers in Times Square. A few dozen in the Bay Area. A scattering of others here and there… But apart from that… bupkus…..the People’s Revolution was a complete washout. A bust.
Venezuela is getting ridiculous. How much lower can socialism drag that once-prosperous place? Venezuelans have eaten their pets and raided zoos for dinner; now, Telemundo reports (via Breitbart) that thousands of Venezuelan girls are turning to prostitution out of desperation:

Confederate statues are being removed, but Washington DC Council takes step towards placing a statue of disgraced mayor Marion Barry, who was caught in a crack bust in 1990.

The California chapter of the NAACP calls for getting rid of the national anthem because it’s “racist.”

How Leftism Makes Us Stupid

Marxism: One hundred years is a long time, certainly long enough to know whether something works. In the case of communism, now passing its 100th year as a political system, it´s safe to say it has had its chance and now ranks as one of the greatest disasters of all humankind.
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GLOBALONEY
If truth-in-advertising laws were properly enforced, any company that labeled a battery-powered car as "zero emissions" would be guilty of breaking the law.
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ARTICLES
It’s no surprise that Ralph Northam defeated Ed Gillespie. I was surprised, though, that the race wasn’t close, and I think most analysts were surprised that Northam won so comfortably (by at least 8 points, it looks like). With hindsight we can say that this was a race between two uninspiring candidates who needed, somehow, to inspire support. Northam inspired support because of raw hatred for President Trump. Gillespie tried to inspire it by taking a hard line on immigration (sanctuary cities) and crime. Apparently, to no avail.

The Church of Trump Derangement Syndrome. It took Christianity centuries to take over the Roman Empire. In a mere 365 days, the Church of TDS has become the official state religion for half the country — the media, academia, the Deep State and the Democrat party, but I repeat myself.

“It's hard to exaggerate the media praise heaped on Air Force Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria after his impassioned speech against racism went viral at the end of September. Silveria, superintendent of the Air Force Academy, spoke after five black cadet candidates at the academy's prep school found racial slurs written on message boards outside their rooms.  It was also a media opportunity to denounce Trump.  Whoops! The cadet candidate who reported the racial slurs has admitted that he was behind the whole thing. It was all a hoax. The young man, who is black, has left the academy. Crickets from the media.

Must read. “Thoughts and Prayers for Anti-Gun Freaks Grieving Over Death of The Narrative”

Donna Brazile pulls the pin on the Seth Rich grenade.

WISE WORDS
“To model our political system upon speculations of lasting tranquility, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.”
            -Alexander Hamilton

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