Category Archives: national news

national news, political news

GOP walks tightrope with Trump at top of ballot

Republican hopeful Kelly Ayotte, former Attorney General of the State of New Hampshire, of Nashua, at a debate at Franklin Pierce University in Rindge, N.H., Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2010. The Republican hopefuls are running for the United States Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H. (AP Photo/Cheryl Senter)

You’ve heard the phrase, no doubt, of “a distinction without a difference.”

How does a politician “support” another politician without “endorsing” that individual?

This is one of the myriad dilemmas facing Republican pols across the nation as the party gets ready to nominate a certifiable huckster as its next nominee for president of the United States.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/08/us/politics/trump-endorsements-congress-republicans-gop.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

I refer to Donald J. Trump as the huckster.

Some leading Republican politicians, though, are seeking to hedge their bets in occasionally awkward manners.

Consider the statement of U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, the GOP senator from New Hampshire, who said she can “support” Trump but cannot “endorse” him.

Ayotte is facing a potentially difficult re-election effort as Democrats likely will send Gov. Jean Shaheen against her. Ayotte can’t take the full plunge by endorsing Trump but, by golly, she’s going to support him.

A distinction without a difference?

It looks that way to me.

Other leading Republicans are walking away from Trump. Still others are offering tepid support. Sure, some have endorsed the hotel mogul and reality TV celebrity; former campaign foes New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who once called Trump “unfit” for the presidency, and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who once called Trump a “cancer on conservatism” have endorsed him.

It’s the Ayotte caveat, though, that I find most intriguing.

I’ve been watching politics for nearly 40 years. I studied political science in college. I became engaged in the presidential election process starting around 1968, when I shook Sen. Robert Kennedy’s hand at a chance meeting one week before an assassin robbed us all of a chance to see if RFK could be elected president.

This truly is the first time I’ve witnessed such intraparty reticence to clutch the coattails of the presumed party presidential nominee.

But it’s there. It’s real.

Sure, Trump has appealed to millions of Americans who claim to be “angry” with politics as usual. This clown “tells it like it is,” supporters tell us, while they ignore — or laugh off — the abject crassness of his rhetoric and the tastelessness of his insults.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, another former primary campaign foe, said it well: “I just really believe that the Republican Party has been conned here, and this guy is not a reliable conservative Republican.”

Just today, on “Meet the Press,” Trump said he would consider raising taxes on wealthy Americans, which by my way of thinking runs utterly counter to standard Republican Party tax principles.

This is the problem facing Republicans across the country as they ponder their own political futures. How do they run with someone who says whatever pops into his head?

Or do they seek to split hairs as finely as they can by “supporting” him without “endorsing” him?

It is tough to be a Republican these days.

 

national news, political news

Palin illustrates GOP affliction

2 Comments

5-sarah-palin

You might be wondering: Just how messed up is today’s Republican Party?

I might have an example to share with you.

The former half-term Alaska governor, Sarah Palin, said she’s going to work to defeat House Speaker Paul Ryan in Wisconsin’s upcoming Republican primary.

Why would the 2008 GOP vice-presidential nominee do such a thing? Because the speaker says he cannot “yet” support the probable 2016 GOP presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump.

Palin has endorsed Trump. Ryan has so far declined. It’s not clear that he ever will. Why do you suppose the speaker is withholding his support?

My guess is that Trump isn’t a “real Republican,” that he doesn’t adhere sufficiently to basic Republican principles to suit the speaker.

Palin calls herself a true-blue Republican. But she’s backing Trump. Now she wants to work against a fellow true GOP believer, Ryan.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/08/politics/sarah-palin-paul-ryan-paul-nehlen-endorsement/index.html

As near as most of us can tell, the only principle to which Trump holds dear is to himself. I believe that’s why he’s been labeled a narcissist.

Sure, it’s appealing to a lot of Republican “base” voters who like how Trump “tells it like it is.” Someone, though, has to explain to me what “it” really is.

Trump and Ryan plan to meet this week, as I understand it. Will they settle their differences? Don’t look for a kumbaya moment after their meeting.

As for Palin, I guess she’s trying to make herself relevant yet again by seeking to defeat the nation’s most powerful Republican politician.

What she is managing to do, though, is demonstrate — as if it needed further demonstration in the context of this year’s presidential primary season — how dysfunctional this once-great political party has become.

 

national news, political news, religious news

Once again: Constitution is a secular document

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Tom DeLay knows his audience and he speaks their language.

In this case, the former U.S. House majority leader was speaking a couple of years ago on a religious program hosted by John Hagee Ministries.

If only, though, he would speak accurately about the very founding of this great republic.

Host Matt Hagee asked DeLay where he thought the nation had gone wrong. DeLay’s response was, shall we say, more than little off the mark.

http://www.rawstory.com/2014/02/tom-delay-people-keep-forgetting-that-god-wrote-the-constitution/#.VTt_WhZmKvw.facebook

“I think we got off the track when we allowed our government to become a secular government,” DeLay explained. “When we stopped realizing that God created this nation, that he wrote the Constitution, that it’s based on biblical principles.”

Well …

Where do we begin?

We’ve had a “secular government” since its very founding. The Constitution — as I’ve noted in this blog before — contains precisely two religious references. That would be in Article VI, which declares that there should be “no religious test” for anyone seeking election to public office; and in the First Amendment, where the founders declared there would be “no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

That’s it, folks.

The founders knew precisely what they were doing when they omitted any other religious references in the Constitution. They intended for the government to be free of religious pressure or coercion.

I happen to be totally OK with that.

DeLay, though, sought to parse the Constitution differently when he told the Hagee Ministries audience about how God “wrote the Constitution.”

This gets to the debate that continues to this day. Indeed, it’s been going on virtually since the United States of America emerged from its revolution.

The Rawstory item showed up on my Facebook feed today I suppose as a reminder that this national debate likely never will go away.

Can’t we just accept the notion that the founders built a government framework that would be free of religion, but which allowed each of us to worship as we see fit?

That happens to be — in my humble view — one of the true-blue beauties of a secular government.

national news, political news

Now, here’s a political dilemma

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My dictionary defines “conundrum” most succinctly.

“A riddle; a dilemma.”

By that definition, the Republican Party is facing a classic conundrum with its presumptive nominee for president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.

Do the conservative purists who run he party want to stick with their guy — who they detest — and watch him lead the party to a potentially historic defeat? Or do they look for an alternative, a true believer, to run as an independent candidate and then assure that historic loss?

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/278941-third-party-push-gaining-steam

The Hill reports that the third-party push is “gaining steam” within the ranks of the GOP.

The publication says the push got some added juice when House Speaker Paul Ryan said he cannot support Trump’s nomination. At least not yet. Trump’s got to “unify” the party, Ryan said.

Frankly, I don’t care which way the GOP goes as it struggles with this, um, dilemma.

Were the party brass to ask me, though, I’d possibly advise them to back their guy. Stand by their nominee and then set out to rebuild the party once the ballots are counted in November.

The Republican Party as many of us have known and respected — if not loved — appears to be drawing its final breaths.

It’s no longer even the party of Ronald Reagan, let alone the party of Abraham Lincoln. It’s the party of Trump. Think about that for a moment.

A man with zero government experience — at any level — is about to become the party’s nominee for president of the United States. By almost every calculation imaginable, he is patently unfit for the office he seeks. Qualifications? He possesses none of them.

The fitness level, though, is even more frightening.

Either way the party goes, from my perspective — and factoring in my own bias — the GOP is headed for the political boneyard. A third-party/independent bid by a true believer merely seals the party’s fate.

I’ve long favored a robust two-party system. I like having two healthy parties argue policy differences in public. I’ve grown used to divided government, but prefer it to actually work, to function productively. We haven’t seen much productivity in the past eight or 10 years.

And, yes, Democrats bear some responsibility for the stalemate as well.

Maybe once the smoke clears from the upcoming election, we’ll find a Republican Party ready to reach out and re-engage in the act of governing.

local news, national news, political news

Why the soft-shoe on Trump, congressman?

Thornberry_9

Mac Thornberry is going to be re-elected to the U.S. House of Representatives this fall.

The veteran Republican lawmaker is going to win big. He’d win big even if he had a Democratic opponent. He has represented one of the House’s most reliably Republican congressional districts — the 13th — since 1995.

Why, then, does he waffle on whether he intends to “support” or “endorse” the pending GOP presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump?

http://amarillo.com/news/latest-news/2016-05-05/thornberry-evades-endorsement-urges-voters-watch

He came back to the Texas Panhandle congressional district this week and fielded some questions about whether he intends to endorse Trump.

Thornberry didn’t commit to it.

C’mon, Mac! You’re in zero danger of losing your House seat. Step into it, man.

The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee is playing his cards much too carefully. If he were in any jeopardy, I might understand some reluctance to offer an endorsement.

Instead, he said something about endorsements carrying little weight — and even less so in this election cycle.

Well, tell that to former Gov. Rick Perry, who has announced his endorsement of Trump. For that matter, tell it to other former Trump opponents who’ve gone the other direction by refusing to endorse because they think so little of the presumptive nominee.

So, you might be wondering: Why try to speak for the congressman? Why not let him make up his own mind?

He works for me. He’s my congressman. I believe all his constituents — his bosses — have the right to hold him accountable for issues such as who he plans to endorse to become the next head of state, head of government and commander in chief of the greatest military machine on Earth.

national news, political news

Remember that GOP pledge of support?

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump looks at a signed pledge during a news conference in Trump Tower, Thursday, Sept. 3, 2015 in New York. Trump ruled out the prospect of a third-party White House bid and vowed to support the Republican Party's nominee, whoever it may be. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham says he won’t vote for, or support, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush echoes that view. Bush says Trump is unfit for the presidency and won’t get his vote.

These two men have something in common apart from their mutual distrust and loathing of the guy who beat them in the GOP presidential primary.

They both signed the “pledge” to support the Republican presidential nominee — no matter who he or she is.

Didn’t former New York Gov. George Pataki say just recently that he won’t support Trump?

To be sure, we need to hear from a lot of other former Republican candidates. Sen. Ted Cruz signed the pledge. His running mate — for all of nine days — Carly Fiorina signed it, too. The last candidate to drop out, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, also has made his feelings quite clear about Trump: He can’t stand him, either — and, oh yes, he signed the pledge, too.

Ben Carson’s already on board with Trump. So is former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

We need to hear from the rest of the once-huge field.

This is why such phony pledges get candidates in trouble.

I happen to respect Sen. Graham and Gov. Bush very much. I believe they’re standing on a principle. They do not want their party represented by a huckster, which is what they’ve determined Trump to be.

Interestingly, the only GOP candidate to refused initially to sign the pledge was Donald Trump, who later signed it … and then recanted his pledge.

Still, the others did put their names on that pledge.

I guess Graham and Bush can take it all back. Politicians do it all the time.

national news, political news, State news

Political alliances are shifting … rapidly

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Rick Perry once called Donald J. Trump a “cancer on conservatism.”

He then backed fellow Texan Ted Cruz, who — before bowing out of the Republican presidential campaign this past week — called Trump a “pathological liar.”

Now the former Texas governor has endorsed Trump.

I guess the “cancer” has been cured.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/05/05/perry-endorses-trump-president/

According to the Texas Tribune, Perry then offered up the obvious: “‘He is not a perfect man,’ Perry told (CNN). ‘But what I do believe is that he loves this country and he will surround himself with capable, experienced people and he will listen to them.'”

There you go. Yesterday’s cancer becomes today’s panacea.

This is part of what makes politics such a maddening thing to witness.

Opponents are capable of saying the most horrific things about each other. Then, when opportunity knocks, they bury hatchets — and not in each other’s skulls — and make nice as if nothing ever happened.

That’s what Perry seems to have done here. He also told CNN that he “wouldn’t say ‘no'” to Trump if the reality TV celebrity/real estate mogul/presumptive GOP presidential nominee offers a spot on the ticket this fall.

For his part, Trump now says he’s going to stick with a true-blue Republican as his running mate. He wants someone with political experience. He’s also said something about selecting someone with legislative experience.

Former Gov. Perry is a real Republican. He’s got loads of political know-how, although he has been unable to take the success he enjoyed in Texas beyond the state’s borders. The legislative background is a bit sparse, as he didn’t serve all that long in the Texas Legislature before aspiring to statewide office.

It appears, to me at least, that his willingness to endorse Trump after tearing the bark off of him before bowing out of the race himself, that he’s putting party loyalty first.

As the Tribune reports: “Trump, Perry told CNN, ‘is one of the most talented people who has ever run for the president I have ever seen.'”

Trump might have been a “cancer,” but he’s got talent.

Go figure.

 

national news, political news

Hatred won’t end just because we demand it

malia

Leona Allen has written a terrific blog post for the Dallas Morning News.

Sadly, though, it won’t accomplish what she has demanded: an end to the racist epithets aimed at the family of Barack and Michelle Obama.

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2016/05/enough-of-this-racist-and-insensitive-tripe-about-the-obamas-interracial-marriage-from-trump.html/

Allen has taken appropriate note of the hateful reaction from those who commented on Malia Obama — the older of the Obamas’ two daughters — deciding to take a year off before entering Harvard University. She writes: “Instead of celebrating the kid’s hard work, anonymous trolls took it upon themselves to disparage her with racist epithets.”

Fox News took down the comments after its website was filled with comments from the racist haters who took time to disparage Malia’s accomplishment.

The president’s policies are open to criticism, as are the policies of all presidents. It goes with the territory. They all know their public policy record is fair game.

What is not fair game, though, is the hate that is thrown at public officials — and their families.

We’ve seen far more than enough of it for the past nearly eight years. As Allen notes, the Obamas have done an admirable job of maintaining their dignity in public in the face of the comments that have been hurled at them.

If only the blogger’s demand to cease and desist the hatred would be met.

Of course, the Obamas are the only targets of the hatred. The blog notes that others have taken aim at interracial couples. Allen noted that U.S. Sen. John McCain’s son, Jack, is married to an African-American woman and has lashed out at the haters simply by posting pictures of himself and his wife on social media.

We’ve all heard about the “toxic” political atmosphere in Washington.

Many of us salute the progress we’ve made in the realm of race relations.

This latest spasm of hatred aimed at an accomplished young woman who happens to be the daughter of the president of the United States only shows us how far we have to go.

 

International news, military news, national news, political news

Trump to get access to top-secret info

Protection Lock

Since 1952, the custom has been to give major-party presidential nominees access to top-secret security briefing material.

The idea has been to keep these individuals in the loop on pressing issues involving the safety of the nation. The 2012 nominee, Mitt Romney, got the information from the Obama administration as he ran against Barack Obama; four years earlier, the Bush administration provided the briefings to Sens. Obama and John McCain while they ran against each other. That’s been the norm dating back to the days of the Truman administration.

Consider, then, that in just a few weeks the next Republican Party presidential nominee is going to receive these briefings and will be privy to some highly sensitive material.

Yes, that means Donald J. Trump is going to peek under the national security tent and know much of what the president and his military and intelligence staffers know about the dangers that threaten us.

I am not sure what is more frightening: the material to which Trump will have access or that he’ll actually be given that information in the first place.

This is the guy who this past year told “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd that he derives his national security “expertise” by watching “the shows” on Sunday morning, meaning the news talk shows presented on several of the broadcast and cable news networks.

Trump most recently said that former GOP rival Ted Cruz’s father might have been complicit in the murder of President Kennedy. His source for that disclosure? The National Enquirer.

The real estate mogul also said he wouldn’t have any problems with South Korea and (gulp!) Japan developing nuclear arsenals to deter the idiot/madman who runs North Korea.

President Obama will make the final call on the classification level of the information to be disseminated to the major-party nominees. There’s no law that mandates any of this. It’s strictly a judgment call. The president cannot let one nominee see more than the other, however, which means that Trump and probable Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton will get the same information.

I mentioned all this briefly last night to my wife, that Trump is going to get these national security briefings the moment he becomes the GOP presidential nominee.

Her response? “Oh … my.”

Exactly, my dear.

 

national news, political news

GOP’s presumed nominee is looking for love

ryan

Donald J. Trump has a problem.

Actually, he has quite a few.

One of them is the lack of love coming his way from the so-called Republican Party “establishment” he must have if he has a chance of becoming the next president of the United States.

Get a load of this: U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan — the nation’s most powerful Republican — has said he cannot support his party’s presumed presidential nominee.

Why? He doesn’t represent the kinds of values Ryan wants him to represent. Trump is showing zero ability to unify the party, which also must happen if he intends to sidle into the Oval Office next January.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/donald-trump-paul-ryan-jab-at-each-other-deepening-fracture-in-gop/ar-BBsHgXZ?ocid=spartandhp

Trump is at odds with GOP orthodoxy on things such as trade, entitlement spending and foreign policy.

So, how does the nominee-in-waiting earn the speaker’s support? How does he pivot in the correct direction? Does a sudden change in philosophy — as if Trump actually has one — suggest insincerity? What’s more, does the speaker’s about-face look equally phony?

The Republican Party is about to nominate someone with the highest negative ratings in memory. The negative vibe is coming from within the very party Trump wants to represent in the fall campaign against the Democrats.

Here’s the best part: Trump now says he doesn’t support Ryan’s agenda. Someone needs to remind the presumptive nominee that the speaker of the House arguably wields at least as much power as the president of the United States.

Does he need proof of that? He ought to ask the man who occupies the Oval Office at the moment.

As the Chicago Tribune reports: “Whether Ryan’s conditions will be met by Trump remain to be seen. The businessman has shown only modest interest in hewing to party norms, and many observers do not expect him to do so now.”

There, folks, lies the problem that confronts the next GOP presidential nominee.