COULD TED CRUZ END UP AS THE ESTABLISHMENT CANDIDATE?

Have you looked inside the latest CNN poll? You’ll find a very interesting number — namely, that Jeb Bush’s approval-disapproval numbers sit at a devastating 35-57.

That doesn’t look like the inevitability we’ve been sold by his surrogates, does it?

What seems quite apparent so far is the GOP establishment, and the Chamber of Commerce crowd who forced Mitt Romney down the throats of an unenthusiastic Republican electorate four years ago, cannot produce a nominee in this cycle. Each poll which gives a majority of the vote to candidates of some stripe of insurgency — Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul — makes that clear.

And while the establishment is in poor enough odor, its problems are magnified by the awful performance of candidates acceptable to it. Bush has made one inexplicable gaffe after another amid a campaign seemingly designed to alienate Republican voters in hopes of attracting Democrats and independents. Scott Walker has managed to couple a stellar record of governance with a stunningly vacant message; his campaign advisors are guilty of pronounced malpractice. John Kasich coupled religious sanctimony on Medicaid expansion with #BlackLivesMatter pandering on the way to five percent in the polls, and this has been characterized as success. Chris Christie appears destined to be out of the race by Labor Day. And Marco Rubio, despite a terrific performance at the debate in Cleveland, simply has not been able to generate any traction.

In a 17-person field, what’s most important is survival. One must demonstrate the ability to stay relevant from one news cycle to the next regardless of what the latest poll says, and one must be able to do so without running out of money. In a field so diffuse, generating lasting momentum is nearly impossible — particularly amid the phenomenon of Trump’s stealing the oxygen from the room.

Who has the funds for real staying power? Obviously Trump does — he’s able to self-finance a campaign and as the front-runner, his fundraising will come easy. And certainly Bush has ample resources for a war of attrition, though his donor base so far is relatively small and mostly limited to the same people who bankrolled his father and brother. But beyond Trump and Bush, the most well-heeled candidate in the race is Ted Cruz — with a wide donor base and a sizable war chest for the long haul.

Here’s a theory to ponder: after the first round of dropouts, in which Rick Perry’s impending demise is joined by several others — Christie, George Pataki, Lindsey Graham, Jim Gilmore, perhaps Bobby Jindal — the likely beneficiary will be the candidate best suited to pull their voters.

And for many, that could be Cruz. Cruz has regional strength in Texas and Louisiana, which could translate into his picking up Perry and Jindal supporters. Despite his clashes with Graham in the Senate, Cruz’ calls for a muscular foreign policy could appeal to the several dozen supporters the South Carolinian has amassed. Those of Christie’s supporters who came to him for his combative style might look to Cruz rather than Trump.

And then after the second round of dropouts, Cruz could gain even more support. Particularly should Paul leave the race; if he isn’t gaining ground, at some point he’s going to have to consider whether his smartest play won’t be to return to Kentucky to defend his Senate seat, and Cruz is a friend and partner in many cases (though for Paul so is Mitch McConnell, which makes for an interesting conflict). Should Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum drop out, none of the others has put in more work to attract the social conservatives they represent than Cruz.

By this point, we might be close to the March 1 “Super Tuesday” primaries, most of which will take place in Deep South states where Cruz has trained his focus toward developing strength. He’s been outshone by Trump in most of them to date, but Cruz is building more organization in those states than any other candidate.

We could see a situation where Trump is ahead on the strength of his performance in the early states and still leads in the polls, though he might have commenced fading in the face of the various challenges befalling a presidential candidate and the terror gripping the party of having to nominate a bull-in-a-China-shop like the real estate magnate has not subsided. But while the establishment might believe Trump is beatable, they could be without candidates to beat him.

And at that juncture, the unthinkable might become inevitable; namely, that the RINO/Chamber of Commerce GOP establishment might well see Ted Cruz as their only hope to stop Donald Trump from getting the Republican nomination.

Rubio and Walker were supposed to be the “fusion” candidates in the race. They were supposed to be the campaigns capable of bridging the gap between the establishment and the Tea Party. Cruz was supposed to be an impossibility because he’s too conservative. But as the race has developed, the GOP electorate is even more anti-establishment and hard-core conservative than anyone expected, and that’s why non-politicians who are unafraid to use what the mainstream media calls “divisive” rhetoric have prospered. It turns out that a little “divisive” rhetoric is actually interesting to the voters. Cruz has been happy to let fly with pointed discussions of serious issues all along, and he’s putting himself in position to be more than acceptable to Trump’s and Carson’s voters should they fail to secure the nomination.

The continued self-destruction of Hillary Clinton, and the inability of the Democrats to find a plausible alternative amid a devastated bench, only makes the moderate/establishment narrative less compelling. The weaker Clinton and the Democrats look, the more tempting it will be to nominate the most conservative candidate possible. The opportunity could be that good to undo the damage of the Obama years.

I’m not making the case that Cruz is the man to unite the Republican Party’s warring clans…yet. What I am saying is, as Al Hunt noticed earlier this week, Cruz is positioning himself very strategically. And if the anti-establishment sentiment among the voters on the GOP side continues alongside sluggish performances by Bush and the other moderates, it’s not impossible that he could have the RINO crowd begging him to save them from Trump.

Via: The American Spectator

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Obama’s Chairman of the Joint Chief nominee: Russia is an ‘existential threat’ to the United States

In the 2012 presidential debate between the congenitally smarmy and clownish Barack Obama and the hapless and fearful of offending Mitt Romney, Barack Obama leveled this charge against Romney:

OBAMA: Governor Romney, I’m glad that you recognize that Al Qaida is a threat, because a few months ago when you were asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not Al Qaida; you said Russia, in the 1980s, they’re now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War’s been over for 20 years

But Governor, when it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s.

Obama was wrong then. But if he had been right, then the testimony of his own nominee to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine General Joe Dunford would have provided damning appraisal on the fecklessness of Obama’s foreign policy:

During his confirmation hearing Thursday morning, President Barack Obama’s pick to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Joe Dunford, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Vladimir Putin’s Russia ranked No.1.

Moscow’s behavior is “nothing short of alarming,” the general said, adding that “Russia presents the greatest threat to our national security” and “could pose an existential threat to the United States.”

If Chief Justice John Roberts is reading this, we’re using a dictionary where this is found:

An existential threat is a threat to something’s survival.

One of the critical geo-political errors made by George H. W. Bush was treating Russia, the successor state to the USSR, as some sort of pet Yorkie that could be made to perform tricks rather than a nuclear-armed kleptocracy ruled by, as George Patton would have said, ‘recently civilized Mongolian bandits.’ George Bush was getting the formula right when he left office. He had looked into Putin’s soul and beheld a seething, effervescing puddle of hate and corruption.

China may be our most dangerous adversary. Iran is the one most likely to do something really ugly. But Russia is the only nation in the world that has set out to pick a fight with the United States for no other reason than Putin needs a permanent enemy to fight in order to remain in power. This was obvious in 2009. It is staggeringly obvious today.

So Obama owes the nation answers to several question.

Via: Red State

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Confederate Flag Sets off Debate in GOP 2016 Class

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney called for the immediate removal of the Confederate battle flag from outside the South Carolina Statehouse, scrambling the 2016 Republican presidential contenders into staking a position on a contentious cultural issue.
Some still steered clear from the sensitive debate, even after the shooting deaths of nine people in a historic African-American church in Charleston further exposed the raw emotions about the flying the flag.

Many see the Confederate flag as "a symbol of racial hatred," the GOP's 2012 presidential nominee tweeted on Saturday. "Remove it now to honor #Charleston victims."

Romney joins President Barack Obama and civil rights leaders in calling for the flag to come down as the nation grapples with Wednesday's murders. The man charged with the crimes, Dylann Storm Roof, held the Confederate flag in a photograph on a website and displayed the flags of defeated white-supremacist governments in Africa on his Facebook page.

So far, most of the Republican Party's leading 2016 presidential contenders have been silent on flying the Stars and Bars.

South Carolina was the last state to fly the Confederate battle flag from its Capitol dome. A compromise in 2000 moved the flag to a 30-foot flagpole elsewhere on Statehouse grounds, where it has been flying at full staff.

The debate holds political risks for Republicans eager to win over South Carolina conservatives who support the display of the battle flag on public grounds. The state will host the nation's third presidential primary contest in February, a critical step in the 2016 race.

Via: Newsmax

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Dems confront past failures on gun control

DEMS CONFRONT PAST FAILURES ON GUN CONTROL

“When I ran in 2008, I in fact did not say I would fix it. I said we could fix it.” –President Obama at a Beverly Hills fundraiser discussing the mass murder at a Charleston, S.C. church.
The only really clear mandate after President Obama’s 2012 re-election was to not be Mitt Romney. Obama had won more in spite of his policies than because of them, but had successfully convinced voters that Romney was too risky a pick.

After the grindingest grind of an election in presidential political history, Obama had won another term of what, exactly? Endless battles with the GOP House on taxes and spending? Foreign policy headaches? More scorched earth fights protecting ObamaCare? Blech.

But at that very moment, a meteor crashed into American public life: The senseless slaughter of 20 children and six educators at a Connecticut elementary school less than two weeks before Christmas. A fatherless, mentally ill 20-year-old had killed his mother, stolen her guns and laid waste to a group of students at a nearby school, all aged 6 and 7.

Obama wept in private and shed tears in public, as most parents must have. He also found new purpose for the second term of his presidency. Two days after the murders, Obama would make a mighty vow: “In the coming weeks, I will use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens … in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this.”

Via: Fox News

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MSNBC PANELIST: HILLARY ‘NOT MITT ROMNEY,’ HUMBLE ORIGIN MAKE CLINTONS SUITED TO REP MIDDLE CLASS

On Saturday’s “Up with Steve Kornacki” on MSNBC, network regular Angela Rye, the CEO and principal of IMPACT Strategies, argued that despite the massive amount in earnings Bill and Hillary Clinton have compiled over the years in speaking fees, they still will be able to related to middle class values.

“I think part of this is we really do have to remember where these people came from,” Rye said. “Hillary Clinton is not Mitt Romney. This is a women who as soon as she finished law school worked for Marian Wright Edelman for the children’s defense fund. This is someone who fought for health care when it wasn’t a popular notion, and even now arguably not so popular with Jeb Bush’s Apple watch app idea. But I think that even still, we’re talking still about folks who are not that far off from representing middle class values, middle class people and folks who are striving to get into the middle class.”

“I do agree with you that they have epically failed in talking about their financial situation,” Rye continued. “And I hope that as time goes on they’re very clear about how to speak about this.”

Via: Breitbart

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FULL TEXT: Mitt Romney Response to State of the Union Address

(Editor's Note: Mitt Romney is the only GOP Presidential candidate to deliver a speech responding to the State of the Union address.  It is reprinted in full below.)

From MittRomney.com

Mitt Romney today delivered prebuttal remarks to President Obama’s State of the Union Address in Tampa, Florida. The following remarks were prepared for delivery.

Thank you. It’s good to be in the Sunshine State. It breaks my heart to visit plants like this one.
In 2008, this plant closed because of the economic downturn. In a normal recovery under strong leadership, it could now be full of workers.

Here in Florida, people used to wake up and look forward to a hard day’s work and a good, honest wage. The money they earned helped support families and build communities. Today too many factory floors are silent, warehouses are deserted, corporate offices are empty, and real estate endeavors are abandoned. Floridians are struggling to find a job, keep a home, and raise a family.
As I’ve traveled across America, I’ve heard similar stories in virtually every corner of this country. High unemployment and record home foreclosures. Debt that’s too high and opportunities that are too few. This is the real state of our union. But you won’t hear stories like these in President Obama’s address tonight. The unemployed don’t get invitations to sit with the First Lady.

Instead, tonight, the President will do what he does best. He will give a nice speech with a lot of memorable phrases. But he won’t give you the hard numbers.

Like 9.9 – that’s the unemployment rate in this state.

Or 25 percent – that’s the percentage of foreclosed homes in America that are right here in Florida.

Or $15 trillion – that’s the size of our national debt.

Instead, tonight, President Obama will make the opening argument in his campaign against a “Do Nothing Congress.” But, we shouldn’t forget that for two years, this President had a Congress that could do everything he wanted.

With huge Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, President Obama was free to pursue any policy he pleased.

Did he fix the economy?

Did he tackle the housing crisis?

Did he get Americans back to work?

Via: Hawaii Free Press

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ObamaCare’s Attack on the Elderly

The president’s macabre new year’s gift: paying hospitals not to treat seniors

In October of 2012, the Daily Mail exposed the highly disturbing realities of the Liverpool Pathway (LCP), the series of guidelines for treating terminally ill patientsdeveloped for Britain’s National Health Service (NHS).

The most egregious of those realities concerned cash incentives paid to hospitals to ensure a certain percentage of hospital patients would be put on the regime. As healthcare expert Besty McCaughey reveals, a similar horror show is occurring on this side of the Atlantic, courtesy of ObamaCare. Beginning the the same time the LCP scandal was being exposed, the Obama administration began awarding hospitals bonus points for spending the least amount of money on elderly patients. Even worse, the idea was sold to the elderly as a good thing during the 2012 presidential election campaign.

During that campaign, Obama promised seniors that $716 billion in Medicare cuts over the next decade, used to fund the $1.9 trillion in new healthcare spending that expanded Medicaid and created the healthcare exchanges, wouldn’t affect them. When Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney ran an ad attacking the cuts,Obama spokeswoman Lis Smith called it hypocritical. ‘The savings his ad attacks do not cut a single guaranteed Medicare benefit,’ she declared.

Via: Canada Free Press

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Pelosi: Obamacare will be ‘glorious’

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Monday defended Obamacare amid fellow Democrats’ concerns, saying that while the politics may be tricky right now, eventually having voted for the health care law will be a boon.

“We’ll ride this out,” the California Democrat said on a conference call with reporters.

Some Democrats, particularly in the Senate, are worried about facing voters having backed the health law, which has seen a rocky rollout and is costing millions of Americans their health plans — even as it is aided millions of others to sign up or get on their parents’ plans.

“It’s worth the trouble, it’s going to be a glorious thing,” Mrs. Pelosi said.

Still, she said when it comes to voters, she believes they will not have the health law at the front of their minds when they head to the polls less than a year from now for midterm congressional elections.

She signaled that Democrats are likely to reprise the income inequality message President Obama used successfully against GOP nominee Mitt Romney last year.

“I think the election is going to be, as all elections are, about the economy and what is the initiative that is going forth from the administration, from the Democrats, to make a distinction as to who benefits from a fair and just economy,” Mrs. Pelosi said.

Via: Washington Times

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Obama has shown how a future GOP president can gut Obamacare

 I owe Mitt Romney an apology.

During the 2012 Republican presidential primary season, I repeatedly criticized Romney — and personally challenged him during his editorial board meeting with the Washington Examiner — for promising that if elected, on day one of his presidency, he would grant Obamacare waivers to all 50 states.

As I reported, under the text of the law, the ability to offer waivers to states was subject to many restrictions and wouldn’t even be an option until 2017, four years after his hypothetical swearing in.

Though I still believe I was right about what the statute said, as it turns out, I was being old-fashioned by taking the letter of the law so literally.

Having watched President Obama and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius over the past several months unilaterally alter or outright ignore major portions of the law, I now believe that a future Republican president would have greater latitude to gut Obamacare than I once thought possible.

The changes instituted by the Obama administration in response to implementation snags have ranged from perfectly legal areas of administrative discretion stemming from the vast regulatory powers granted to the HHS secretary under Obamacare, to more creative interpretations of that discretion, to Obama simply choosing to ignore parts of the law that became inconvenient.

Obama has turned his signature legislative accomplishment into a constantly evolving wikilaw, with editing privileges restricted to himself and a few administration officials.

He’s largely been able to get away with it due to the difficulties posed by gaining standing in court for legal challenges.

Via: Washington Examiner

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Karl Rove: GOP in Better Position than This Point in 2010 Midterm Cycle

Former GOP strategist and Fox News Channel contributor Karl Rove joined Fox News Channel host Bill O’Reilly on Wednesday evening where he said that the implementation of the Affordable Care Act has had a beneficial effect on the Republican Party’s chances of making gains in the 2014 midterms. Looking at recent polling data, Rove claimed that the GOP is in a better position at this point in the election cycle than they were in 2010. 

“As of today the Real Clear Politics average is 43 percent Republican, 42 percent Democrat,” Rove said of the average of a number of generic congressional ballot results. “One month ago, it was 40 percent Republican, 47 percent Democrat. So, it’s not just the CNN poll.”

“Let’s take a look at thought at 2010,” he continued. “A year out, the Democrats led 47 percent to 42 percent. By Election Day of 2010, it was 52% to 45%, a 7 point advantage for the Republicans.”

RELATED: Christopher: CNN Reports on the ‘Silver Lining’ for Obamacare in Latest Poll

“At this point, one year out from the election, the Republicans were down 5,” Rove observed. “Today, they are up one in the average.”

He said that, given that the Democrats are defending Senate seats in seven states that Mitt Romney won in 2012, Republican prospects for retaking the Congress look possible if not probable.

Rove said that this reversal of political fortunes from the government shutdown is entirely due to the Affordable Care Act’s implementation and it’s only going to get worse. However, even if the ACA were unfolding well and it was a popular program, Democrats would still have obstacles to overcome ahead of the 2014 midterms.

“The economy is not particularly good,” Rove said. “The president’s ratings are low. All of these things combined to point towards a lower number for the Democrats and a higher number for the Republicans next year.”

Via: Mediaite.com

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Poll: If voters had known they’d lose insurance, Romney would have won

If voters had been aware last year that they might lose their health-care plans when Obamacare went into effect, Republican President Mitt Romney would be sitting in the White House today, according to a poll released Friday.

A Wilson Perkins Allen Opinion Research survey conducted from Nov. 18-20 asked voters who supported President Barack Obama in 2012: “As you may know, millions of Americans have lost their insurance plans despite President Obama’s promise that, quote, ‘if you like your plan, you can keep it.’ If you knew in 2012 that this promise was not true, would you still have voted for Barack Obama?”

In response, 23 percent said they would not have voted to re-elect Obama, while 72 percent said they would still have voted for him. The largest number of defections were among female voters ages 18-54, 31 percent of whom said they would not have supported the president.

An ABC/Washington Post poll released earlier this week found that if they had a do-over, Romney would win 49 percent to 45 percent. The difference is within the margin of error of 3.5 percentage points, but Obama polls a lower percentage of the vote today than he did in November 2012.

A generic ballot question on the poll found likely voters favoring Republicans for 2014: 39 percent of independents said they would vote for the unspecified Republican candidate over the unspecified Democratic candidate, compared to 30 percent who said they would vote for the Democrat.

Eight percent of Democrats said they would vote Republican, compared to just four percent of Republicans who said they would vote Democrat.

The poll surveyed 801 likely voters with live phone interviews and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

The sample of 2012 Obama voters was 384 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.

Via: Daily Caller

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Allen West: Obama Regime A Complete Fraud; What Is Fake; What Is Real?

(Nov. 22, 2013) — Former congressman Allen West has stated in a column published on Friday that “Every day we get more evidence that the Obama administration is a complete fraud and will go down as the largest fraud ever perpetrated against the American people.”

Allen B. West served one term in Congress from 2010 to 2012 and was allegedly defeated by contender Patrick Murphy. A lawsuit was filed by TruetheVote challenging the results of that election which has moved forward in federal court.

West was reminding his readers that when the unemployment rate was reported to have dipped from 8.1% to 7.8% 30 days before the presidential election, he had said that the numbers could not be accurate.  “There’s simply no way possible that unemployment numbers could have dropped that much in one month when the new jobs numbers were dismal and the workforce participation rate continued to drop,” West wrote, responding to an articlein The New York Post earlier in the week which claimed that employees at the U.S. Census Bureau have manipulated employment statistics beginning at least in 2010 to include the report issued a month before the election.

The mainstream media was quick to denounce the claim as inaccurate or vaguely-sourced.  In a follow-up article, author John Crudele stood by his claim and stated that “The House Oversight Committee and the Inspector General of the Census Bureau are now looking into these charges.”

In an interview with Megyn Kelly, Rep. Jason Chaffetz said that if the numbers were manipulated to show a lower unemployment rate than should have been reported, it could have impacted the results of the election, which Barack Obama allegedly won by about 3,000,000 votes over challenger Mitt Romney.

Via: Before It's News

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Romney: Christie 'Could Easily Become Our Nominee and Save Our Party’

(CNSNews.com) - Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who lost the 2012 election to President Barack Obama, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he believed New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie could “easily” become the GOP presidential nominee in 2016 and “save our party.”

Christie most recently made national news when he decided to drop a legal challenge to rulings in New Jersey state courts that declared same-sex marriage legal there. And not long before that, he changed his position on the question of whether illegal aliens should get in-state tuition rates at New Jersey state colleges. Now he backs legislation that would give that privilege to illegal aliens.

These two moves won Christie a recent article from the Los Angeles Times that described him as having "staked his place near the political middle ground."

Romney’s statement that Christie could “save our party” came even as Time Magazine’s website published an excerpt from the upcoming book “Double Down: Game Change 2012” by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, that was featured above the masthead on the Drudge Report, and that describes a Republican vice presidential vetting process that resulted in Romney himself deciding not choosing Christie as his vice presidential running mate.

Via: CNS News

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