This weekend was an inflection point in the Republican presidential race — a moment in which some significant part of the GOP establishment came out of denial and realized Donald Trump might well become their party’s nominee.
“The Republican establishment, for the first time, is saying, off the record, this guy can win,” noted Joe Scarborough on MSNBC Monday morning. “I’ve heard that from everybody. I don’t hear anybody saying he can’t win the nomination anymore.”
That doesn’t mean Republicans have made their peace with a Trump victory. On the contrary — some are preparing to do whatever it takes to bring him down. Which could lead to an extraordinary scenario in which GOP stalwarts go to war to destroy their own party’s likely nominee.
Poll: Trump Hits Highest Mark Yet, But Carson Is Close Behind
by CARRIE DANN
Real estate mogul Donald Trump remains the front-runner in the Republican presidential field, while former neurosurgeon Ben Carson holds a close second place, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows.
With the backing of 25 percent of Republican primary voters, Trump is at his highest level of support in the poll since entering the 2016 race. Carson now gets the support of 22 percent of Republican voters, remaining within the margin of error of his first-place rival. Last month, 21 percent of GOP primary voters said Trump was their first choice for the party’s nomination, while 20 percent picked Carson.
by ELIANA JOHNSON October 19, 2015 4:00 AM @ELIANAYJOHNSON
It began as whispers in hushed corners: Could it ever happen? And now, just three months from the Iowa caucuses, members of the Republican establishment are starting to give voice to an increasingly common belief that Donald Trump, once dismissed as joke, a carnival barker, and a circus freak, might very well win the nomination.
“Trump is a serious player for the nomination at this time,” says Ed Rollins, who served as the national campaign director for Reagan’s 1984 reelection and as campaign chairman for Mike Huckabee in 2008. Rollins is not alone in his views.
“Trump has sustained a lead for longer than there are days left” before voting begins in Iowa, says Steve Schmidt, who managed John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. “For a long time,” Schmidt says, “you were talking to people in Washington, and there was a belief that there was an expiration date to this, as if there’s some secret group of people who have the ability to control the process.”
Congressional Democrats are accusing Republicans on the House Select Committee on Benghazi of falsely claiming that Hillary Clinton improperly handled some of the government’s most closely kept secrets, days before the former secretary of State appears before the panel.
An email revealed by committee Republicans earlier this month made it seem as if Clinton received and then forwarded the name of a CIA source as part of a 2011 memo from longtime associate Sidney Blumenthal.
The name of that source “is some of the most protected information in our intelligence community,” committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said at the time, “the release of which could jeopardize not only national security but also human lives.”
According to the committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), however, the CIA told lawmakers this weekend that “they do not consider the information … classified.”
“Specifically, the CIA confirmed that ‘the State Department consulted with the CIA on this production, the CIA reviewed these documents, and the CIA made no redactions to protect classified information,’” Cummings said in a scathing letter to Gowdy.
A State Department official confirmed that Cummings’s letter “describes the situation accurately.” A spokesman with the CIA declined to comment on the matter.
Gowdy insisted that the presence of the name in one of Clinton’s emails is nonetheless damaging, regardless of the CIA’s stance.
Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Democratic presidential candidate
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
16%
said his tax increases would “hit everybody” becuse he would raise the payroll tax to pay for paid family and medical leave.
Sanders said, “I think if you are looking about guaranteeing paid family and medical leave, which every other major country has so that when a mom gives birth she doesn’t have to go back to work in two weeks. Dad or mom can stay home with the kids. That will require a small increase in the payroll tax.”
Stephanopoulos said, “That’s going to hit everybody.”
Budapest (AFP) – Hungary said Monday its shutdown of the border with Croatia had put a stop to the influx of migrants and refugees.
Only 41 people crossed into the EU member state on Sunday, the government said.
“The border closure is working, it has effectively stopped illegal border-crossing,” government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs told reporters in Nagykanizsa, close to the Croatian border.
“The Hungarian government is determined to keep the measures in place as long as is needed,” he said.
“We are continuously monitoring the situation at the Slovenian, Croatian and Serbian borders, and are ready to react to any situation which might develop.”
The figure of 41 represents a new daily record low in 2015 for Hungary, which witnessed up to 10,000 people stream across its borders daily since the summer.
The country has been a key transit point on the western Balkan route used by thousands of people who have fled violence in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Here’s the good news: The chaos and upheaval we see all around us have historical precedents and yet America survived. The bad news: Everything likely will get worse before it gets better again.
That’s my chief takeaway from “Shattered Consensus,”a meticulously argued analysis of the growing disorder. Author James Piereson persuasively makes the case there is an inevitable “revolution” coming because our politics, culture, education, economics and even philanthropy are so polarized that the country can no longer resolve its differences.
To my knowledge, no current book makes more sense about the great unraveling we see in each day’s headlines. Piereson captures and explains the alienation arising from the sense that something important in American life is ending, but that nothing better has emerged to replace it.
The impact is not restricted by our borders. Growing global conflict is related to America’s failure to agree on how we should govern ourselves and relate to the world.
Piereson describes the endgame this way: “The problems will mount to a point of crisis where either they will be addressed through a ‘fourth revolution’ or the polity will begin to disintegrate for lack of fundamental agreement.”
He identifies two previous eras where a general consensus prevailed, and collapsed. Each lasted about as long as an individual’s lifetime, was dominated by a single political party and ended dramatically.
First came the era that stretched from 1800 until slavery and sectionalism led to the Civil War. The second consensus, which he calls the capitalist-industrial era, lasted from the end of the Civil War until the Great Depression.
By MATT APUZZO and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDTOCT. 16, 2015
WASHINGTON — Federal agents were still cataloging the classified information from Hillary Rodham Clinton’s personal email server last week when President Obama went on television and played down the matter.
“I don’t think it posed a national security problem,” Mr. Obama said Sunday on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” He said it was a mistake for Mrs. Clinton to use a private email account when she was secretary of state, but his conclusion was unmistakable: “This is not a situation in which America’s national security was endangered.”
Those statements angered F.B.I. agents who have been working for months to determine whether Ms. Clinton’s email setup had in fact put any of the nation’s secrets at risk, according to current and former law enforcement officials.
Investigators have not reached any conclusions about whether the information on the server had been compromised or whether to recommend charges, according to the law enforcement officials. But to investigators, it sounded as if Mr. Obama had already decided the answers to their questions and cleared anyone involved of wrongdoing.
Former Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) believes that CNN stacked the odds for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) during the Democratic presidential debate on Tuesday.
“Online poll: Was the CNN #DemDebate rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton?” he tweeted Friday, referencing a Daily Caller sampling that shows 98 percent answering “yes.”
Webb’s post follows his insistence late Thursday that CNN moderator Anderson Cooper helped the network’s coverage skew toward Clinton and Sanders.
“I’m going to be very frank, it was rigged in terms of who was going to get the time on the floor by the way that Anderson Cooper was selecting people to supposedly respond to something someone else said,” he said during an address atthe Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.
“It’s very difficult to win a debate when you don’t have the opportunity to speak the same amount of time on issues as the others did,” the long-shot Democratic White House hopeful said.
“It’s a reality that the debate was being portrayed as a showdown between Mrs. Clinton and Bernie, but if you’re going to be invited to participate and people are going to judge whether you, quote, ‘won’ or not, at least you should be able to have the kind of time that’s necessary to discuss the issues that you care about, that you’ve worked on,” Webb added.
EXCLUSIVE: Democratic National Committeewoman says her party is ‘clearing a path’ for Hillary because ‘the women in charge’ want it that way
Female member of the Democratic Party’s controlling body spoke to Daily Mail Online in Las Vegas following Tuesday’s primary debate She rattled off a list of women at the top of the party hierarchy and said two vice chairs helped craft a decision this summer to favor Clinton The committeewoman warned her party could promote Hillary ‘because she’s a woman, and risk having her implode after she’s nominated’ The Democratic National Committee insisted that it ‘runs an impartial primary process, period’ But it has sanctioned just six debates this time around; Democratic presidential candidates had to survive 27 of them in 2007-08 DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz campaigned for Hillary in 2008 when she last ran for the presidency See our full coverage of Hillary Clinton and her presidential bid
By DAVID MARTOSKO, US POLITICAL EDITOR FOR DAILYMAIL.COM IN LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
PUBLISHED: 11:20 EST, 15 October 2015 | UPDATED: 13:47 EST, 15 October 2015
The Democratic National Committee is ‘clearing a path’ for Hillary Clinton to be its presidential nominee because its upper power echelons are populated with women, according to a female committee member who was in Las Vegas for Tuesday’s primary debate.
Speaking on the condition that she isn’t identified, she told Daily Mail Online that the party is in the tank for Clinton, and the women who run the organization decided it ‘early on.’
The committeewoman is supporting one of Hillary’s rivals for the Democratic nomination, and said she spoke freely because she believes the former Secretary of State is benefiting from unfair favoritism inside the party.
Clinton aims to be the first female to occupy the Oval Office, and ‘the party’s female leaders really want to make a woman the next president,’ the committeewoman said, rattling off a list of the women who she said are the ‘real power’ in the organization.
‘I haven’t heard anyone say we should make Hillary undergo a trial by fire,’ she added. ‘To the contrary, the women in charge seem eager, more and more, to have her skate into the general [election].’
‘I have nothing against women in politics,’ she underscored. ‘But it’s not healthy for the party if we get behind a woman because she’s a woman, and risk having her implode after she’s nominated because she isn’t tested enough now.’
Doherty’s Official Endorsement of Trump for President
Today Donald J. Trump announced the endorsement of his presidential candidacy by state Senator Mike Doherty (R-23). Max Pizarro, PolitickerNJ Read more
OCTOBER 15, 2015 LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2015, 6:51 AM
BY DUSTIN RACIOPPI
STATE HOUSE BUREAU |
THE RECORD
Republican support for Governor Christie’s White House bid has dropped by 50 percent in New Jersey over the past two months, while an increasing percentage of the state’s conservatives is backing national front-runner Donald Trump, according to a Rutgers-Eagleton poll released Thursday.
And on Wednesday, Trump announced the endorsement of a Republican state senator, Michael Doherty, who said he thinks the business mogul’s views on foreign affairs can, as Trump’s campaign slogan goes, “make America great again.”
Doherty, a Warren County conservative who has openly clashed with Christie, is among the growing number of New Jersey Republicans and “GOP-leaning” registered voters backing Trump’s nomination for president. The poll reported 32 percent of those voters support Trump, up from 21 percent in August. Those conservative voters also put contenders Dr. Ben Carson and U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas ahead of Christie for the nomination.
In the August poll, Christie had the support of 12 percent of conservative voters in New Jersey. Now that support is down to 5 percent, even with former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who was the national front-runner until Trump entered the race, according to Thursday’s poll.
While support for Bernie Sanders among those in New Jersey’s general Democratic Party establishment is weak compared to support for Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, there is one group that seems to be “feeling the Bern” in New Jersey: Millennials. Alyana Alfaro, PolitickerNJ Read more
Dem debate message summary = More free handouts. They will be voting in droves. We need to get out and vote Trump BIG TIME!”
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has predicted that Tuesdaynight’s first Democratic debate would be a bore — largely because he won’t be on stage. So the billionaire businessman took it upon himself to liven things up — by live-tweeting the event on his Twitter page. Brent Johnson, NJ.com Read more
The Democratic front-runner’s performance was as good as it was dishonest.
Hillary Clinton won. She won because she’s a strong debater. She won because Bernie Sanders is not. She won because the first Democratic presidential debate focused on liberal policies—and not her email scandal or character.
The embattled front-runner won herself a news cycle or two, because she stretched the truth and played to a friendly audience. It won’t always be so.
It took more than an hour before CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Clinton about the covert email system she established as secretary of State in defiance of federal regulations, subverting the Freedom of Information Act, thwarting congressional oversight, and jeopardizing U.S. secrets. And, even then, her chief rival offered Clinton cover.
“What I did was allowed by the State Department,” said the woman who headed the State Department, “but it wasn’t the best choice.” Clinton noted that the GOP-led Benghazi committee—the panel that discovered her rogue email system—is on record trying to undermine her credibility. GOP partisans were partisan, and yet, she dramatically declared, “I’m still standing.”
The Democratic crowd roared. “I think the secretary is right,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a populist threatening Clinton from the left. “The American people are sick and tired of hearing about emails.”
Professional Democrats and the party’s strongest voters are certainly tired of hearing about the email scandal, but it’s not going to go away—not with the FBI investigating whether confidential information was mishandled under Clinton’s system, and not with independent voters losing faith in Clinton’s word.
Character and judgment are gateway political issues. An untrustworthy candidate might check all your policy boxes, might tickle your ideological buttons, and might even grind away long enough to get your vote—but you’re not going to like it.
Vice President Joe Biden trails Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, yet he looks more electable than the former secretary of state against top Republicans.
As Democrats prepare for their first debate Tuesday evening, the latest Fox News national poll finds little movement in the primary. Clinton remains the front-runner among Democratic primary voters (45 percent), with Bernie Sanders (25 percent) and Biden (19 percent) behind her by about 20 percentage points. That’s almost identical to where things stood three weeks ago.
Lincoln Chafee, Larry Lessig, Martin O’Malley, and Jim Webb each receive 1 percent or less.
Biden, who has yet to announce his candidacy, was invited to participate in the debate if he were to make it official; Lessig was not invited.
In hypothetical 2016 matchups with top-tier Republicans, Clinton trails all the Republicans tested. She trails Ben Carson by 11 points and Donald Trump by 5 points. Jeb Bush has a 4-point edge over Clinton, while Carly Fiorina is up by 3 points.
The Democratic Debate: Prepare for an Orgy of Unicorn Farts and Pixie Dust
By: Leon H. Wolf (Diary) | October 13th, 2015 at 04:00 AM
Tonight, the Democrats will have their first Presidential primary debate, although “debate” is something of a misnomer. “Debate” implies that there will be a substantive disagreement in which candidates have different ideas about the direction of the country. However, if you listen to the Democrats talk and check the “issues” section of their campaign websites, you will find that the only real disagreement they have is about exactly how much “free” stuff that the government should give away.
For instance, all the Democrats in the field* believe in “free” college. There is some disagreement amongst the Democrats as to whether only the first two years of college should be free, or whether all four years should be free, or whether college should be free as long as anyone wants to stay in college. They are, however, all in basic agreement that college learning should be considerably more free than it currently is.
They are likewise in agreement that the government should be in the business of forcing your employer to pay you more, which of course is a policy (according to them) that results in you getting more money for “free.” They are likewise uninamous that the illegal immigrants who are currently in this country should be given legal status for “free.” Birth control, including abortion? Likewise, the Democrats are here to argue mostly about who believes it should be “free” with the greatest amount of conviction.
To no one’s surprise, Brian Beutler has already won the award for the most hack-tastic take on the upcoming Democrat debate. Beutler argues, with no apparent sense of irony, that the party whose central organizing tenet is that “there’s always such a thing as a free lunch” is the party of “adults,” as compared to the Republicans. The sole piece of data he mounts in support of this manifestly insane theory is that the Democrat debate is likely to be boring:
Relative to the two Republican presidential primary debates already behind us, Tuesday night’s Democratic primary debate is expected to draw a modest TV audience. Back on January 31, 2008, when candidate Barack Obama was still a political phenom, CNN logged the most-watched presidential primary debate in its history to date, drawing an average of 8.3 million viewers. With the second Republican primary debate last month, the network nearly tripled that.
We surely have Donald Trump to thank for the disparity. Had he sat out the race this year, he would have deprived Fox News and CNN of his singular combination of fame, media savvy, insensitivity, and cringe-inducing combativeness. But even absent Trump, Republican primary debates would probably draw bigger audiences than their Democratic counterparts. It isn’t wrong or biased to say that Democrats make comparatively boring television. But that isn’t a strike against Democrats, either. It’s a reflection of the fact that the Republican Party, unlike the Democratic Party, is dominated by reactionary voters, which makes its candidates prone to saying or doing outrageous things out of a sense of necessity.
Warning: Undefined array key "sfsi_riaIcon_order" in /home/eagle1522/public_html/theridgewoodblog.net/wp-content/plugins/ultimate-social-media-icons/libs/controllers/sfsi_frontpopUp.php on line 165
Warning: Undefined array key "sfsi_inhaIcon_order" in /home/eagle1522/public_html/theridgewoodblog.net/wp-content/plugins/ultimate-social-media-icons/libs/controllers/sfsi_frontpopUp.php on line 166
Warning: Undefined array key "sfsi_mastodonIcon_order" in /home/eagle1522/public_html/theridgewoodblog.net/wp-content/plugins/ultimate-social-media-icons/libs/controllers/sfsi_frontpopUp.php on line 177
