Smoky Mountains Sunrise
Showing posts with label 2016 Presidential Election. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2016 Presidential Election. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Pat Buchanan: What Trump Has Wrought


By Patrick J. Buchanan

As Wisconsinites head for the polls, our Beltway elites are almost giddy. For they foresee a Badger State bashing for Donald Trump, breaking his momentum toward the Republican nomination.

Should the Donald fall short of the delegates needed to win on the first ballot, 1,237, there is growing certitude that he will be stopped. First by Ted Cruz; then, perhaps, by someone acceptable to the establishment, which always likes to have two of its own in the race.

But this city of self-delusion should realize there is no going back for America. For, whatever his stumbles of the last two weeks, Trump has helped to unleash the mightiest force of the 21st century: nationalism.

Transnationalism and globalism are moribund.

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Donald Trump's Full Speech at the AIPAC Policy Conference

This may be the first prepared speech I have heard Donald Trump give.  And it was well prepared, well delivered and reasserts the vital and unbreakable alliance between the United States and its ally in the Middle East.  After eight years of pressure, abuse and disrespect toward the State of Israel from the Obama administration and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, will Jewish Americans, like other groups are doing, finally break their blind allegiance to the Democrat Party?  One can hope and pray.
 


Friday, March 18, 2016

Pat Buchanan: Suicide of the GOP — or Rebirth?



By Patrick Buchanan

“If his poll numbers hold, Trump will be there six months from now when the Sweet 16 is cut to the Final Four, and he will likely be in the finals.”

My prediction, in July of 2015, looks pretty good right now.

Herewith, a second prediction. Republican wailing over his prospective nomination aside, Donald Trump could beat Hillary Clinton like a drum in November.

Indeed, only the fear that Trump can win explains the hysteria in this city.

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Pat Buchanan: Brownshirts & Republican Wimps



By Patrick J. Buchanan

Friday evening’s Donald Trump rally in Chicago was broken up by a foul-mouthed mob that infiltrated the hall and forced the cancelation of the event to prevent violence and bloodshed.

Brownshirt tactics worked. The mob, triumphant, rejoiced.

And the reaction of Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and John Kasich?

All three Republican rivals blamed — Donald Trump.

Monday, March 14, 2016

The Hollow Man

From HotGas.Net



For 26 years, Rush Lim­baugh has insisted that con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues, clearly and pas­sion­ately artic­u­lated, will win every time.  By con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues Rush meant:  God, coun­try, fam­ily, com­mu­nity, lib­erty, indi­vid­u­al­ism, per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity, lim­ited gov­ern­ment, and free mar­kets.  Rea­gan was the model, and the promise:  it had hap­pened once, and could hap­pen again.

Eas­ier said than done.

Year after year, can­di­date after can­di­date mouthed the plat­i­tudes, and botched the exe­cu­tion.  They could over­come nei­ther the oppo­si­tion, their own estab­lish­ment, or per­sonal foibles.  Yet year after year, fail­ure after fail­ure, Rush kept the faith, exhort­ing, cajol­ing, com­fort­ing, and dream­ing of the per­fect can­di­date.

In 2012, that can­di­date arrived on the national scene; and in 2016 he ran for Pres­i­dent.  Bril­liant, artic­u­late, prin­ci­pled, and tough, Ted Cruz couldn’t have been more per­fect had Lim­baugh molded him out of clay.  Unlike the breath­less ingénue Marco Rubio, who is so scripted you can see the hand in his back, Cruz was the real deal.  Seem­ingly impreg­nable, Cruz over­came tremen­dous oppo­si­tion, and sev­eral of his own mis­steps, to become a for­mi­da­ble chal­lenge to the cur­rent front-runner, Don­ald Trump.

Saturday, March 12, 2016

Paul Mulshine: With His Craven Comments on Donald Trump in Chicago, Ted Cruz Went Over the Line


The Ides of March was the Roman term for the 15th day of the month. This year it falls on Tuesday, which is the date of the Republican presidential primary elections in five states.

It was on the Ides of March, of course, that Julius Caesar was famously stabbed in the back.

Ted Cruz is trying a new twist on that these days.

He just shot himself in the foot – which isn't easy when your foot is in your mouth.

I don't know who advised the Ted to take the side of those Chicago protesters against the Donald, but whoever it was should be canned like a ham.

Read more at The Star Ledger >>


Friday, March 11, 2016

Pat Buchanan: The Sea Island Conspiracy



By Patrick J. Buchanan

Over the long weekend before the Mississippi and Michigan primaries, the sky above Sea Island was black with corporate jets.

Apple’s Tim Cook, Google’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, Napster’s Sean Parker, Tesla Motors’ Elon Musk, and other members of the super-rich were jetting in to the exclusive Georgia resort, ostensibly to participate in the annual World Forum of the American Enterprise Institute.

Among the advertised topics of discussion: “Millennials: How Much Do They Matter and What Do They Want?”

That was the cover story.

Thursday, March 10, 2016

Conservative Catholic Elites Oppose Trump… as He Rides Catholic Vote to Victory in Michigan

Much ink has already been spilled trying to parse Donald Trump’s appeal to evangelicals. Are they “Trumpvangelicals” more concerned with “immigration, Islamophobia, and guns” than abortion and gay marriage? Or just bad evangelicals? Or are they Appalachian rednecks, the descendants of the Scots-Irish who colonized the southern highlands with a distinct cultural folkway that combined a fierce distrust of central authority with the worship of charismatic leaders, seething xenophobia, a penchant for retributive justice, and, in the words of David Hackett Fischer, an “intense hostility to organized churches and established clergy … and an abiding interest in religion.”

My vote is with the latter. Trump’s appeal to evangelicals is more folkway than religious. But as the last couple of election cycles have demonstrated, the evangelical vote doesn’t deliver the general election. If it did, we would have Mitt Romney in the White House. But the Catholic vote does. And now the conservative Catholic cabal that teamed up with evangelical power brokers to deliver us George W. Bush, and tried to shove Romney down the nation’s throat, is in a full-fledged panic that white, Catholic, working-class voters might throw their support behind Donald Trump and upset their neocon apple cart.

In “An Appeal to Our Fellow Catholics” published in the National Review, “natural rights” proponent Robert P. George and Pope John Paul II biographer George Weigel lament that the Republican Party, which has been a flawed but “serviceable” vehicle for “promoting causes at the center of Catholic social concern in the United States,” is about to be hijacked by one Donald J. Trump.

Read more at Religion Dispatches >>

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Pat Buchanan: The Oligarchs’ Super-PAC Anti-Trump Savagery



By Patrick J. Buchanan

Narrow victories in the Kentucky caucuses and the Louisiana primary, the largest states decided on Saturday, have moved Donald Trump one step nearer to the nomination.

Primaries in Michigan, Mississippi and Idaho on March 8, and in Florida, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri and North Carolina on March 15, may prove decisive. If Marco Rubio does not win his home state of Florida, he is cooked, as is Gov. John Kasich if he does not win Ohio.

Ted Cruz already looks to be the last man between Trump and a GOP nomination that has gone, in the last seven elections, to George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney.

All five of those nominees since 1988 seem appalled by Trump’s triumphs, and only slightly less so by the Cruz alternative.

Not in memory has the leadership of a party been so out of touch. The Republican rank and file are in revolt, not only against the failures of their fathers but the policies of their present rulers.

Friday, March 4, 2016

Pat Buchanan: An Establishment in Panic



By Patrick J. Buchanan

Donald Trump “appeals to racism.”

“[F]rom the beginning … his campaign has profited from voter prejudice and hatred” and represents an “authoritarian assault upon democracy.”

If Speaker Paul Ryan wishes to be “on the right side of history … he must condemn Mr. Trump clearly and comprehensively. The same goes for every other Republican leader.”

“Maybe that would split the (Republican) party,” but, “No job is worth the moral stain that would come from embracing (Trump). No party is worth saving at the expense of the country.”

If Republican leaders wish to be regarded as moral, every one of them must renounce Trump, even if it means destroying their party.

Who has laid down this moral mandate? The Holy Father in Rome?

Lou Dobbs: Romney, Paul Ryan Are Despicable ‘Twosome from Hell’ Betraying the GOP



Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Pat Buchanan: Is a New GOP Being Born?


By Patrick Buchanan

The first four Republican contests — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada — produced record turnouts.

While the prospect of routing Hillary Clinton and recapturing the White House brought out the true believers, it was Donald Trump’s name on the ballot and his calls for economic patriotism, border security, and an end to imperial wars that brought out the throngs.

The crowds that continue to come out for his appearances and the vast audiences he has attracted to GOP debates testify to his drawing power.

Moreover, Trump has now been endorsed by Gov. Chris Christie, ex-chairman of the Republican Governors Association, and Sen. Jeff Sessions, one of the most respected conservatives on Capitol Hill.

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Amid Trump Surge, Nearly 20,000 Mass. Voters Quit Democratic Party

London Lucia, left, who says her grandmother is a cousin of Donald Trump, cheers during a rally for the presidential candidate outside Springfield City Hall, Sunday, February 28, 2016. Staff photo by Angela Rowlings.


Nearly 20,000 Bay State Democrats have fled the party this winter, with thousands doing so to join the Republican ranks, according to the state’s top elections official.

Secretary of State William Galvin said more than 16,300 Democrats have shed their party affiliation and become independent voters since Jan. 1, while nearly 3,500 more shifted to the MassGOP ahead of tomorrow’s “Super Tuesday” presidential primary.

Galvin called both “significant” changes that dwarf similar shifts ahead of other primary votes, including in 2000, when some Democrats flocked from the party in order to cast a vote for Sen. John McCain in the GOP primary.

The primary reason? Galvin said his “guess” is simple: “The Trump phenomenon,” a reference to GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, who polls show enjoying a massive lead over rivals Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and others among Massachusetts Republican voters.

Read more at The Boston Herald >>

Friday, February 26, 2016

Pat Buchanan: The Donald’s Odds Against Hillary



By Patrick J. Buchanan

In a Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump race – which, the Beltway keening aside, seems the probable outcome of the primaries – what are the odds the GOP can take the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court?

If Republicans can unite, not bad, not bad at all.

Undeniably, Democrats open with a strong hand.

There is that famed “blue wall,” those 18 states and D.C. with a combined 242 electoral votes, just 28 shy of victory, that have gone Democratic in every presidential election since 1988.

Friday, February 12, 2016

'Imagine If You Can'

10,000 Attend Trump Rally at Clemson University in South Carolina

Imagine a Republican presidential candidate whose message rings so clearly with Truth and resonates so broadly and deeply with the American people, that he could carry Massachusetts and New York along with South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas!

Read more at Overtime Politics >>


Saturday, February 6, 2016

Boyd D. Cathey: Why I Support Donald Trump and Not Ted Cruz

Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock.com

By Boyd D. Cathey

Recently, I was asked by a friend who likes Ted Cruz, why I support Donald Trump and not the Texas senator among the Republican candidates running for president. In partial response to that question, let me set down briefly my thoughts.
I think it is important to begin with a review of some essential history, a brief exploration of the evolution of what is now called “Movement Conservatism” and its symbiotic relationship to the modern Republican Party. Understanding this background is critical to comprehending what has happened and is happening, politically and culturally, to what remains of the American republic in 2016. The transformation of the intellectual brain trust for the Republican Party has fundamentally affected and influenced the successive evolution of the positions the Republican Party has taken over the past fifty years.
Before discussing this history, I think it is necessary that we recall that the GOP Establishment, in fact, never gave up its virtual control of the party structure, despite Ronald Reagan. And since Reagan’s departure it has controlled the party apparatus completely and uninterruptedly. Even under President Reagan, as a dear friend who worked in the White House in 1981 once remarked to me: “Reagan let the Bush establishment people control appointments, and their strategy was ‘Let Reagan speak like Reagan, but we will control appointments and policy’. And basically that is what happened.”
It was my mentor and friend, the late Dr. Russell Kirk, whose volume The Conservative Mind actually initiated what became the older, scholarly “conservatism” in the 1950s. “Conservatism,” as Kirk explained it, encompassed an inherent distrust of liberal democracy, staunch opposition to egalitarianism, and an extreme reluctance to commit the United States to global “crusades” to impose American “values” on “unenlightened” countries around the world. Conservatives should celebrate local traditions, customs, and the inherited legacies of other peoples, and not attempt to destroy them. America, Kirk insisted, was not founded on a democratic, hegemonic ideology, but as an expression and continuation of European traditions and strong localist, familial and religious belief. Indeed, Kirk authored a profound biography of Senator Robert Taft, “Mr. Conservative,” who embodied those principles.

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Pat Buchanan: The Remainderman

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Donald Trump won more votes in the Iowa caucuses than any Republican candidate in history.

Impressive, except Ted Cruz set the new all-time record.

And Marco Rubio exceeded all expectations by taking 23 percent.

Cruz won Tea Party types, Evangelicals, and the hard right.

Trump won the populists and nationalists who want the borders secure, no amnesty, and no more trade deals that enable rival powers like China to disembowel American industries.