FrontPage ^ | January 31, 2017 | Daniel Greenfield
How Hillary May Give President Trump a Second Term The Clintons aren’t done damaging the Democrats. January 31, 2017 Daniel Greenfield Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.
When all the campaign booze was downed and the last “I’m With Her” balloons were popped, bleary Democrat hacks rose from stained couches to try and explain the election to the rest of their party.
Two explanations made the rounds like the last champagne bottle for a victory that never came.
Hillary was a bad candidate. Her shady financial dealings made her untrustworthy. The more she tried to appeal to everyone, the less she appealed to anyone. She was better at hitting up big donors at glitzy parties than at interacting with working class voters. And the huge campaign machine they financed was no substitute for voter excitement.
Hillary was a historic candidate who would be sitting in the Oval Office right now if it hadn’t been for the FBI and the Russians. President Trump is illegitimate and must be impeached. Hillary was not defeated by her flaws. Instead she was a wonderful leader who was stymied by a rigged election.
The first explanation was championed by the Sandernistas of the far left. Their case was straightforward. Hillary lost because she was a bad candidate. Bernie would have won. The Democrats needed to move forward by burying Hillary’s machine and replacing it with the even more radical Bernie left.
But the Clinton machine had no interest in being buried.
The Clintons are not just two greedy politicians. They’re a brand and an industry. The huge sums of money they raised went to subsidize a whole network of loyalists. And then there were the many friends who had gotten jobs based on the strength of their connections to Clintonworld.
It wasn’t just about the S.S. Hillary sinking into the cold waters of Chesapeake Bay. Hillary’s defeat endangered the positions of all her friends who had schemed, plotted and broken the rules to get her this far; the leaders of Democrat outfits in states across the country, bundlers who threw a lot of other people’s money into a giant hole and lobbyists who got by on the strength of their Clinton connections.
That $1.2 billion campaign cost was the tip of the iceberg. Billions had been plowed into Clintonworld.
They couldn’t and wouldn’t accept the blame for backing a bad candidate. So they lied. They insisted that she hadn’t lost. Hillary had been illegitimately denied the White House by a vast conspiracy.
A vast conspiracy involving the FBI, the Russians, the Electoral College and voter suppression.
The conspiracy has been examined and debated in detail. The motive for manufacturing this conspiracy has not. Its obvious goal is to delegitimize President Trump, but it also allows Hillary and her people to evade responsibility for their disastrous defeat. And that is why it really exists.
The Clintons have done enormous damage to their party. And they aren’t done wrecking it yet.
The conspiracy theory quickly became how Democrats explained Hillary’s defeat. And it was the radical left that was in the unusual position of having to argue against a conspiracy theory. Some on the radical left had their own ties to Russia. Others, like Michael Moore, who had predicted that the neglect of the working class would lead to Trump’s victory, saw the Democrats going down a dead end.
But the radical left had radicalized the Democrats. And radicals are suckers for conspiracy theories. Political extremism had pulled the party into paranoid fever swamps in which anything was possible. The media’s biased reporting and bad polls made Trump’s victory seem as if it should never have happened.
It was easy to go on listening to the same media outlets and believing that it really didn’t happen.
Denial took over. Time and money were wasted on insane and pointless recounts, harassment of Electors and finally attempts to block certification of the results. Democrats who believed that these were plans, instead of scams that had no chance of working, emerged from working frantically for the impossible even more convinced that Hillary had been robbed and the election had been rigged.
The left’s greatest weakness is an inability to accept responsibility and learn from its mistakes. Its economic, political and racial theories are already conspiracy theories that assign the blame for social injustice to millions of people based on their income or race. It demands absolute power for its leaders while refusing to admit that human beings are flawed and, regardless of ideology, will abuse power.
If its members could do that, they would be much more likely to become conservatives.
And so the real beneficiaries of this attack on our political system were the Clintons and their people.
Despite the outward show of bipartisanship, Bill Clinton has been pushing the conspiracy theory in private conversations. And Hillary and her people maintain a strategic ambiguity in all things.
Meanwhile David Brock, the most malicious figure in Clintonworld, has put together a blueprint calling for the impeachment of Trump. If Hillary were to make a very unlikely third try at the White House that would be about the only way to build a narrative in which she has anything resembling a chance.
The current Clinton objective is to assert control over the “autopsy” of their defeat. The Clintons are willing to let Obama have the activist clout of the OFA. They realize that their non-profit empire is on shaky ground. But they want to be able to write their own obituary. If they can do that, then they can set the terms for their political comeback and keep at least some of Clintonworld alive.
The Clintons may never run for public office again. But they know the value of shifting the blame.
When the Dems seized on a conspiracy theory to explain President Bush’s victory, they redeemed Gore. And Gore was able to make a comeback and amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars. The Clintons are already very rich. But they could always be even richer. They need the Dems to see Hillary as a courageous candidate with an important message who, like Gore, was beaten in a rigged election.
Then the Clintons can move on to the next stage of their grifting enterprise.
Gore’s personal fortune came at a high cost to his party. Instead of understanding why Bush won, Dems descended into conspiracy theories about Florida and the Supreme Court. They dismissed President Bush as an idiot who couldn’t possibly have won on his own. And so they lost to him a second time.
If Democrats insist on believing that Trump only won because of FBI Director Comey and the Russians, they will be just as unready to face him in the next election as they were in this one.
And the real Hillary legacy may be that she will have handed Trump not just one election, but two.
Wednesday, February 1, 2017
Why Liberals Should Back Neil Gorsuch
NYT ^ | NEAL K. KATYA JAN. 31, 2017
I am hard-pressed to think of one thing President Trump has done right in the last 11 days since his inauguration. Until Tuesday, when he nominated an extraordinary judge and man, Neil Gorsuch, to be a justice on the Supreme Court.
The nomination comes at a fraught moment. The new administration’s executive actions on immigration have led to chaos everywhere from the nation’s airports to the Department of Justice. They have raised justified concern about whether the new administration will follow the law. More than ever, public confidence in our system of government depends on the impartiality and independence of the courts.
There is a very difficult question about whether there should be a vote on President Trump’s nominee at all, given the Republican Senate’s history-breaking record of obstruction on Judge Merrick B. Garland — perhaps the most qualified nominee ever for the high court. But if the Senate is to confirm anyone, Judge Gorsuch, who sits on the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver, should be at the top of the list.
I am hard-pressed to think of one thing President Trump has done right in the last 11 days since his inauguration. Until Tuesday, when he nominated an extraordinary judge and man, Neil Gorsuch, to be a justice on the Supreme Court.
The nomination comes at a fraught moment. The new administration’s executive actions on immigration have led to chaos everywhere from the nation’s airports to the Department of Justice. They have raised justified concern about whether the new administration will follow the law. More than ever, public confidence in our system of government depends on the impartiality and independence of the courts.
There is a very difficult question about whether there should be a vote on President Trump’s nominee at all, given the Republican Senate’s history-breaking record of obstruction on Judge Merrick B. Garland — perhaps the most qualified nominee ever for the high court. But if the Senate is to confirm anyone, Judge Gorsuch, who sits on the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver, should be at the top of the list.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Poll: Public Overwhelmingly Supports Trump Push to Limit Migration
breitbart.com ^ | 31 Jan 2017
Donald Trump’s pro-American immigration reform is getting strong majority support from the public, despite the left’s portrayal of the policy as hateful and incompetent, and despite Democratic voters’ determination to obstruct the new president. Reuters commissioned the poll and then tried to hide the resulting good news for Trump under a misleading headline, “Exclusive: Only a third of Americans think Trump’s travel ban will make them more safe.”
But the most direct question in the poll showed a seven-point advantage for Trump’s policy, of 48 support to 41 percent opposition.
Donald Trump’s pro-American immigration reform is getting strong majority support from the public, despite the left’s portrayal of the policy as hateful and incompetent, and despite Democratic voters’ determination to obstruct the new president. Reuters commissioned the poll and then tried to hide the resulting good news for Trump under a misleading headline, “Exclusive: Only a third of Americans think Trump’s travel ban will make them more safe.”
But the most direct question in the poll showed a seven-point advantage for Trump’s policy, of 48 support to 41 percent opposition.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Democrats are digging their own grave — and boosting Trump at the same time!
nypost ^
Let’s agree that President Trump’s travel ban on visitors from seven nations was a sensible idea hobbled by flaws, especially regarding green-card holders and dual citizens. Let’s also agree we haven’t seen a rollout this clumsy since the debut of ObamaCare, which was far more serious because it penalized millions of Americans while Trump’s order inconvenienced hundreds of foreign nationals.
Still, we can assume, based on past performance, that Trump will learn from the mistakes. His fierce determination to be a successful president cannot coexist with rookie blunders.
But what about the other players in the drama? Can we say the media will now correct its excess of bile and cover Trump as a legitimate president and not as an invasive species?
No, no, no. On the contrary, we must say that Trump aide Steve Bannon was on target when he called the Washington media “the opposition party.”
Don’t take his word for it. Stick a toe into the toxic sludge that passes for straight-news coverage in The Washington Post, The New York Times and others.
Look for the use of tell words like “Muslim ban” to describe an executive order that is no such thing. Look for hero worship of protesters, immigrants, refugees, lawyers rushing to the barricades and congressional critics.
Look, too, at the Twitter feeds of editors and reporters from those papers and the major networks. You’ll see their embrace of everything anti-Trump, further evidence they are part of a movement to obstruct the president, not cover him.
Let’s agree that President Trump’s travel ban on visitors from seven nations was a sensible idea hobbled by flaws, especially regarding green-card holders and dual citizens. Let’s also agree we haven’t seen a rollout this clumsy since the debut of ObamaCare, which was far more serious because it penalized millions of Americans while Trump’s order inconvenienced hundreds of foreign nationals.
Still, we can assume, based on past performance, that Trump will learn from the mistakes. His fierce determination to be a successful president cannot coexist with rookie blunders.
But what about the other players in the drama? Can we say the media will now correct its excess of bile and cover Trump as a legitimate president and not as an invasive species?
No, no, no. On the contrary, we must say that Trump aide Steve Bannon was on target when he called the Washington media “the opposition party.”
Don’t take his word for it. Stick a toe into the toxic sludge that passes for straight-news coverage in The Washington Post, The New York Times and others.
Look for the use of tell words like “Muslim ban” to describe an executive order that is no such thing. Look for hero worship of protesters, immigrants, refugees, lawyers rushing to the barricades and congressional critics.
Look, too, at the Twitter feeds of editors and reporters from those papers and the major networks. You’ll see their embrace of everything anti-Trump, further evidence they are part of a movement to obstruct the president, not cover him.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Pelosi Confronted by Mother of Illegal-Immigrant Victim (gives nonsensical response)
YouTube ^
CNN host Jake Tapper called on Laura for an audience question about sanctuary cities. Laura shared how her son had been "tortured," "tied up like an animal," and set on fire by an illegal immigrant in 2010.
"I am not a one-story mother. This happens every day because there are no laws enforcing the border," Laura said. "How do you reconcile in your head about allowing people to disavow the law?"
"The second part of my question is this: if you need to go home tonight and line up your babies as you say, and your grandbabies, which one of them could you look in their eyes today, and tell them that they're expendable for another foreign person to have a nicer life? Which one would you look to say, you, my child, are expendable for someone else to come over here and not follow the law."
Stay abreast of the latest developments from nation's capital and beyond with curated News Alerts from the Washington Examiner news desk and delivered to your inbox.
Pelosi was visibly thrown off by the blunt question and expressed her condolences to Laura.
"I commend you for sharing your story. I can't even imagine," Pelosi said.
"You can't," Laura shot back.
====
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/pelosi-asked-at-town-hall-which-of-her-kids-is-expendable/article/2613564
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Mw5OUtbUo8
CNN host Jake Tapper called on Laura for an audience question about sanctuary cities. Laura shared how her son had been "tortured," "tied up like an animal," and set on fire by an illegal immigrant in 2010.
"I am not a one-story mother. This happens every day because there are no laws enforcing the border," Laura said. "How do you reconcile in your head about allowing people to disavow the law?"
"The second part of my question is this: if you need to go home tonight and line up your babies as you say, and your grandbabies, which one of them could you look in their eyes today, and tell them that they're expendable for another foreign person to have a nicer life? Which one would you look to say, you, my child, are expendable for someone else to come over here and not follow the law."
Stay abreast of the latest developments from nation's capital and beyond with curated News Alerts from the Washington Examiner news desk and delivered to your inbox.
Pelosi was visibly thrown off by the blunt question and expressed her condolences to Laura.
"I commend you for sharing your story. I can't even imagine," Pelosi said.
"You can't," Laura shot back.
====
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/pelosi-asked-at-town-hall-which-of-her-kids-is-expendable/article/2613564
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Mw5OUtbUo8
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
The Democrats' New Opposition Strategy: Obstruction!
Investor's Business Daily ^ | Staff
Politics: President Trump's selection for the Supreme Court won't get a fair hearing from the Democrats. No, that's not an opinion. The Democrats themselves say so. The GOP better get ready — this is what they'll face for the next four years.
As of late Tuesday, no one knew who would be Trump's pick for the high court. But, heck, it really didn't matter.
Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley made clear it doesn't matter who it is: If it's not President Obama's earlier pick, Judge Merrick Garland, he'll filibuster.
"This is a stolen seat," said Merkley, who has the distinction of being wrong both on his reading of the law and on the Congress' own rules. "This is the first time a Senate majority has stolen a seat. We will use every lever in our power to stop this."
And he made clear he's not alone in some kind of quixotic quest. "A very large number of my colleagues will be opposed," he said.
Then there's the case of the nominations of Dr. Tim Price as Health and Human Services secretary and Steve Mnuchin as the next Treasury secretary. They were scheduled to be approved Tuesday by the Senate Finance Committee and sent to the floor or a vote so that President Trump could get his government up and running.
But the Democrats didn't show. Literally.
Politics: President Trump's selection for the Supreme Court won't get a fair hearing from the Democrats. No, that's not an opinion. The Democrats themselves say so. The GOP better get ready — this is what they'll face for the next four years.
As of late Tuesday, no one knew who would be Trump's pick for the high court. But, heck, it really didn't matter.
Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley made clear it doesn't matter who it is: If it's not President Obama's earlier pick, Judge Merrick Garland, he'll filibuster.
"This is a stolen seat," said Merkley, who has the distinction of being wrong both on his reading of the law and on the Congress' own rules. "This is the first time a Senate majority has stolen a seat. We will use every lever in our power to stop this."
And he made clear he's not alone in some kind of quixotic quest. "A very large number of my colleagues will be opposed," he said.
Then there's the case of the nominations of Dr. Tim Price as Health and Human Services secretary and Steve Mnuchin as the next Treasury secretary. They were scheduled to be approved Tuesday by the Senate Finance Committee and sent to the floor or a vote so that President Trump could get his government up and running.
But the Democrats didn't show. Literally.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
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