Category Archives: political news

national news, political news

Trump, Pence: clash of egos

trump-and-pence

Mike Pence wouldn’t like being associated with this politician, but I’m going to offer it anyway.

The late George McGovern — a liberal icon and one of my favorite pols — once stated that a politician’s most necessary trait is to possess a huge ego.

You’ve got to think highly of yourself in order to achieve success in the political world, McGovern declared.

Thus, it is that memory of a former presidential candidate’s observation, that brings me to the present day.

Gov. Pence himself is a successful politician: service in the U.S. Congress and as Indiana governor.

His rollout Saturday as Donald J. Trump’s vice-presidential running mate, though, makes me wonder: Is Pence’s ego going to suffer grievous injury because of the behavior and spotlight-hogging style of the Republican Party’s presidential nominee?

Those of you who watched Trump prattle on for nearly 30 minutes Saturday about himself, his business success, his defeat of 16 other GOP candidates, and his record-setting vote totals in the GOP primaries had to have wondered what Pence might have been thinking as he waited — patiently, I presume — in the wings.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/17/us/politics/mike-pence-donald-trump.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Then came the introduction. Trump and Pence shook hands, Trump patted his running mate on the arm, then walked off the stage. Political tradition dictates that the candidate at the top of the ticket introduces the running mate and then stands dutifully behind the No. 2 guy and leads the applause when he delivers the appropriate punch lines.

Tradition, however, is the last thing that Trump wants to follow.

And that brings me to this final point.

Mike Pence is as traditional a politician as one can find. He’s a doctrinaire conservative Republican. He believes in free trade (which Trump opposes), he is anti-abortion (which Trump has supported), he is loyal to his party (which Trump has characterized as being part of a “rigged system”).

He also possesses — if Sen. McGovern’s wisdom is correct — the kind of ego that all politicians need to be successful.

There can be zero denying Trump’s h-u-u-u-u-g-e ego.

Those of us who are interested in these things are going wait with some anticipation to see whether these two men can settle their apparent — and in some cases obvious — differences in style … and public policy.

national news, political news

Getting ready for a pile of negativity

Clinton-and-Trump

I am steeling myself for what I know is coming.

The election of the next president of the United States is going to be an ugly, nasty affair.

It’s a function, I suppose, of anger among the electorate. I am having difficulty processing the reasons why folks are so angry.

My larger sense, though, is that the negativity will be fueled by quality of the two major-party nominees.

Republican Donald J. Trump will be nominated first. This coming week in Cleveland, delegates will gather to send this fellow off to do battle with the Democratic nominee.

Hillary Rodham Clinton will receive the Democrats’ nomination.

Both of these individuals will pack a large load of negative baggage onto the campaign trail. Trump’s unfavorable rating is the 70 percent range; Clinton’s is in the high 50s, low 60s.

So, with little to commend these folks’ positive attributes, they and their campaigns are likely to resort to extreme negativity to tell us all why the other candidate is so repugnant.

I came of age in the late 1960s. I remember a time when the nation was torn to shreds by political unrest. The Vietnam War was going badly. My first political hero, Robert F. Kennedy, was gunned down while he campaigned for the presidency … two months after an assassin killed Martin Luther King Jr. The year was 1968 and it will go down as the most tumultuous year of the final half of the 20th century.

RFK used to consider politics to be a “noble profession” and I bought into it. My belief in its nobility, though, has taken plenty of hits over the years. Money has corrupted the system. We keep seeing the same faces and hearing the same voices every four years.

And that brings us to this campaign.

Are the major-party candidates driven by their grand vision? Will they offer us chapter-and-verse dissertations on why they represent the very best of Americans?

I am not holding my breath.

If my fears prove to be true — that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will drive voters to stay home rather than having their voices heard at the ballot box — then we can lay a good chunk of the blame at the negativity we will have heard.

Let’s all get ready for what we know is coming.

national news, political news

Mike Pence: ‘attack dog’

pence

Commentators all over the country are saying essentially the same thing about Mike Pence, the Republican vice-presidential nominee-to-be.

He will assume the role of presidential nominee Donald J. Trump’s “attack dog.”

That has me scratching my noggin.

Does that mean Trump actually needs someone now to take the fight to Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Democrats? Hasn’t the GOP candidate done a good job of that already, all by himself?

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/mike-pence-radio-show-225661

Pence said all the right things this morning when Trump trotted him out and introduced him as his running mate. He cited two reasons for accepting this challenge, the second of which was that Hillary Rodham Clinton shouldn’t ever become president of the United States. With that he received the biggest applause he would get from the crowd assembled inside the meeting room.

Pence will be an attack dog, but my strong hunch is that his attacks are going to look mighty tame compared to what Trump has launched already throughout this campaign.

Look what Trump did to every one of his Republican rivals? He was able to hang labels on several of them. He pilloried some of them with insults. For good measure, he tossed out some innuendo — such as when he implied that Sen. Ted Cruz’s father might have been complicit in President Kennedy’s murder.

Did it bother his ardent fans? Oh, no. It endeared him to them.

Gov. Mike Pence’s attack dog role will represent a “doubling down” of a strategy that Donald Trump has employed already with astonishing success.

national news, political news

Trump talks about ‘Trump’ while introducing Gov. Pence

pence-and-trump1

I watched Donald J. Trump make his big announcement this morning.

He stood before a row of Old Glories to introduce Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his Republican Party vice-presidential running mate.

I sat there, in front of my TV. I waited. And waited. And waited some more. I waited for Trump to stop talking about himself — often in the third person — and waited for him to say something good about the guy with whom he’ll run for the White House.

The presumptive GOP nominee prattled on and on for nearly 30 minutes, boasting about his primary victory over a huge field of candidates.

He railed against Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton. He talked about how free trade is bad for America, about how NAFTA has siphoned jobs from the United States to Mexico.

Then he got around to introducing Pence, who then delivered a fairly straightforward pasting of Clinton and the Democrats. He also said a few nice words about Trump, who he called a “good man.”

Pence, by the way, voted in favor of NAFTA and CAFTA while he served in the House of Representatives. The two candidates are going to have to come to an understanding on trade policy, yes?

Mike Pence’s big day turned out to be, oh, Donald Trump’s big day.

Is that a surprise? Heavens no!

The commentators who opined about the Pence roll-out noted something quite interesting: Sen. John McCain of Arizona spoke for 7 minutes while introducing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in 2008; former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney spoke for about 10 minutes before unveiling Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin in 2012.

McCain and Romney spent their entire time talking about their running mates. That moment was about them, not the men at the top of their tickets.

Trump didn’t do it that way.

Naturally!

International news, national news, political news

Trump, Pence ignore a key element in ISIS’s creation

pence trump

Did I hear this correctly?

That Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama are responsible for the horror that the Islamic State is bringing to the world? Did Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump assert such a thing today? And did I hear his vice-presidential running mate, Mike Pence, echo such rubbish?

I believe that’s the case.

So, I think it’s time to set the record straight. Wish me luck.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/trump-pence-vp-225652

The responsibility for ISIS belongs primarily with former President George W. Bush, who in March 2003 decided to topple Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq. We invaded Iraq with phony “evidence” that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. We got him and his Sunni government tossed out.

Oh, and what happened then?

A whole lot of Sunni Muslims became angry with our invasion and decided to strike back at the Iraqi government.

The Islamic State then came into being.

For Trump and Pence and other vocal critics of President Obama and Hillary Clinton to suggest that their policies have given rise to ISIS is a malicious lie.

The president inherited the troubles brought about by the Iraq War. They didn’t create them.

What can we expect, though. A presidential campaign is going to produce vastly overheated rhetoric from both sides.

Trump, with his penchant for attaching epithets such as “Lyin’ Ted” on his foes, is sure to hurl far more than his fair share of lies at Hillary Clinton.

He and his running mate did so again today.

national news, political news

Pence announcement: not by the book

mike-pence

Donald J. Trump continues to toss aside political tradition as he awaits his nomination as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate.

His selection of Indiana Gov. Mike Pence to run with him as the VP nominee offers a glowing example of an unconventional selection process.

Trump went to Indiana to visit with Pence and his family.

He then apparently decided to select Pence.

He flew Pence to New York on his private plane to make an announcement, which was to occur Friday morning at 11 at Trump Tower.

Trump then “postponed” the announcement — during which he would “introduce” Pence to the political world — in the wake of the horrific terrorist attack in Nice, France. He would make that announcement the next day.

Then, at 11 a.m. Friday, Trump sent out a tweet announcing that — yep! — Pence is his guy. The tweet, therefore, did precisely what Trump said he was postponing out of deference to the horror in France.

Oh, and then it was reported that he didn’t inform New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich — the two other finalists — that he had decided on Pence. Christie and Newt, thus, were left — to borrow a phrase — to twist in the wind.

It also has been reported that Trump wavered a bit once the word leaked that Pence would get the call, but that Trump didn’t want to upset members of his family who apparently talked him into selecting Pence.

Get ready, Republicans. You wanted unconventional when most of you voted for this guy.

national news, political news, State news

What will Cruz tell Texas delegates?

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Inquiring minds, it’s been said more than once, want to know.

They want to know just what U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is going to tell Texas delegates to the Republican National Convention when he stands before them.

You see, the man dubbed “Lyin’ Ted” by the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, is still stinging over his loss of the GOP primary battle. Trump hung that epithet on Cruz and also said some outrageous things about Cruz’s father — and his campaign also mistreated Cruz’s wife in a terribly cruel fashion.

Cruz won the Texas primary back in March.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/07/15/cruz-ryan-among-speakers-texas-delegates-cleveland/

I’m having difficulty imagining the junior U.S. senator telling those delegates it’s all right for them to back Trump now that their guy — Cruz — is out of the race.

Indeed, Cruz himself hasn’t endorsed Trump and I am doubting an endorsement will be forthcoming.

How does Cruz offer his unconditional support to someone who suggested that his own father might have been complicit in the murder of President John F. Kennedy? And how does he back the man whose campaign put that ghastly tweet out that showed Heidi Cruz, the senator’s wife, making some kind of sour-grapy face?

I am no political fan of Sen. Cruz. I don’t want him anywhere near the Oval Office any more than I want Trump to take a seat there.

A part of me wishes I could be the proverbial fly on the wall when Cruz stands before the Texas convention delegates to tell them what he thinks of the guy their party is about to nominate for president of the United States of America.

Hey, he might just tell them: Y’all are on your own.

national news, political news

Big week looms for Republican Party

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I’m not yet sure how much of the Republican National Convention I’m going to watch.

Keynote speech? Sure. Except I don’t know who’s giving it.

Presidential nominee acceptance speech? Absolutely, if only to see if Donald J. Trump veers too wildly off script.

This I do know: The Party of Lincoln/Reagan is going to become the Party of Trump.

God help ’em.

I’m still trying to figure out how the Republican Party establishment plans to speak glowingly of the man they’re about to nominate for the presidency of the United States. He has spent the bulk of the primary season hurling insults in every direction, including at the Republican Party brass! Political memories often become surprisingly short, but they also have this way of retaining insults for an amazingly long time.

Which leads me to believe that the establishment types are going to have little time on the podium during the four-day event in Cleveland.

It’ll be left to the assorted celebrities who’ve lined up behind Trump’s insurgent candidacy. He’s been crowing all along how he doesn’t “need” the power brokers who run the GOP. We’re about to learn whether his boasting will come true.

Just suppose, too, that absent any public service record that the Trumpkins can tout, what will be left for them to say from the convention podium.

Oh! I think I know. They’re going to unsheathe the long knives and plunge them into the Democratic nominee, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

She will be portrayed as the daughter of Satan. They’re plan — in the words of the late GOP chairman Lee Atwater — “peel the bark” off the Democrats’ presidential candidate.

Yes, indeed. Given that the Republicans are going first in this year’s political nominating convention cycle, they’ll get to set the tone for the campaign for the White House.

Rest assured, Democrats have their own burdens to bear with Clinton. So, they’ll be loaded to the teeth when they convene their convention in Philadelphia right after the Republicans adjourn their convention in Cleveland.

Get ready, folks, for a heck of a wild ride beginning next week.

national news, political news

Gov. Pence is Trump’s go-to guy

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They’ve spilled the beans.

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence will be announced as Donald J. Trump’s running mate on the eve of the Republican National Convention.

Inspiring choice? Not really. Trump has gone the “safe” route. Meaning he has selected someone who poses zero threat of upstaging the presumptive GOP presidential nominee. He is solidly conservative. He’s a former member of Congress who reportedly has a lot of friends on both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill.

Trump might win Indiana this fall, which until the 2008 election — when Barack Obama won the state over John McCain — has been one of the most reliably Republican states north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Pence, though, doesn’t represent anything resembling a “new direction” for his party.

Let’s remember that as governor, Pence signed a bill into law that allows businesses to discriminate against gay people. He called it a “religious freedom bill.” He vowed to “fix” the bill, but in reality he did hardly anything to change it.

That’s how the Republican Party wants to present itself, as the party that sanctions discrimination against people based on their sexual orientation.

Of course, no one knows precisely what Trump believes about such things. His mind seems to change almost hourly. I guess now he opposes equal rights for gay people. What, though, will be his response to tough questions about the issue as they arise during the fall election campaign?

Trump had planned to announce his selection of Pence on Friday morning. He delayed the announcement in light of the terror attack tonight in Nice, France.

Whenever it comes, perhaps over the weekend or quite early next week, do not expect a huge roar of approval — even from hard-core Republicans. You see, Pence’s role in the campaign likely hasn’t yet been defined.

Something tells me that Gov. Pence’s campaign role will depend on that h-u-u-u-u-g-e ego that belongs to the man at the top of the GOP ticket.

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Justice Ginsburg seeks to make it right

BBuiRBp

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg now says she regrets those negative things she said about Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump.

Does she no longer believe what she said? Hardly. She just regrets saying those things out loud.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/us-supreme-court-justice-ginsburg-apologizes-for-trump-remarks/ar-BBukt9C?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

I’m going to give the Supreme Court justice high marks for saying she plans to be “more circumspect” in the future.

She had said Trump’s election as president would be disastrous for the country and joked she might move to New Zealand if Trump is elected.

I am one of those who have said she shouldn’t have made those statements. It is true that there’s nothing written or codified about what Supreme Court justices can say. It’s been a long-standing tradition that justices steer clear of partisan politics.

Ginsburg lost control of her verbal steering wheel when she popped off about Trump, who not surprisingly responded in his typically crude manner, suggesting the justice had lost some of her mental acuity. He demanded her resignation.

As Reuters reported: “On reflection, my recent remarks in response to press inquiries were ill-advised and I regret making them,” she said in a statement issued by the court. “Judges should avoid commenting on a candidate for public office. In the future I will be more circumspect,” Ginsburg added.

That’s good enough for me. Is it good enough for her critics? I’m thinking umm … no.