When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you,
till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer,
never give up then,
for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Tweet of the Day
Isn't it time that Know Nothing crackpot media Conservative in Name Only hacks like Coulter and Ingraham shut the hell up?
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) January 13, 2016
@AlexNowrasteh I distinguish between conservatives and right-wing authoritarians. I think Ingraham is referencing the welfare state,
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) January 13, 2016
@AlexNowrasteh You're right. It's just I've seen so many anti-immigrants cite Friedman's line about getting rid of the welfare state first.
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) January 13, 2016
Cherokee Lizzie and other anti-bank Dems filibustered against transparency of Fed operations. Only Sanders & Baldwin pic.twitter.com/zpjEZfOclJ
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) January 13, 2016
What the hell is wrong with @realDonaldTrump? When Megyn Kelly said she can't be wooed, he says,"Who the hell wants to woo her?" Real men.
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) January 13, 2016
@realDonaldTrump is just frustrated that he can't manipulate Megyn Kelly or other women with brains into being one of his gullible cultists.
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) January 13, 2016
@Jeff_Jacoby Trump gets about 42% of the GOP moderate vote. A lot is driven by economic illiteracy and insecurity stoked by media CINO's.
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) January 14, 2016
@Jeff_Jacoby Lincoln wanted nothing to do with the Know Nothings of his day. How sad it is for nearly two-thirds of his party to do so.
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) January 14, 2016
@Jeff_Jacoby You are not the only "dissident conservative". The cheerful optimism of Reagan's pro-liberty conservatism has been forgotten.
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) January 14, 2016
Hall of Shame: Democrats Filibuster Audit the Fed
On Economic Freedom For Small Bakers
Discrimination Against Church-Affiliated Private Schools
Heritage Foundation Fact Checks the SOTU
Rand Paul on Hillary Clinton and Benghazi
Political Potpourri
The latest Iowa poll in the seesaw between Cruz and Trump has Cruz up by 3; Rubio and Carson trail about 10 points back. A minor surprise; Rand Paul is at 5 to take #5.
I've been discussing who benefits from the others dropping out. The following blurb comes from Kristol of The Weekly Standard in a recent email (note TWS is more of a conservative magazine and keep in mind Trump gets about 42% of the moderate vote):
First we gave you a choice among the six candidates whom we viewed as having a reasonable shot at the nomination. A couple of you wrote in to express continued loyalty to and hopes for Ben Carson or Carly Fiorina (which is fine), but here's how the rest of you came down:
Marco Rubio 37%
Ted Cruz 35%
Donald Trump 15%
Chris Christie 7%
John Kasich 3%
Jeb Bush 3%
Then we asked you to chose among the three most likely finalists, and the results were:
Rubio 48%
Cruz 37%
Trump 15%
What this shows is that virtually all the Christie/Kasich/Bush vote went to Rubio--which tends to confirm the judgment that Rubio would really benefit from the three governors getting knocked out sooner rather than later.
Then we substituted Christie for Rubio, and asked for your choices:
Cruz 51%
Christie 33%
Trump 16%.
This suggests that Rubio will prove a stronger competitor than Christie (and presumably the other governors as well) in what's being called (somewhat inaccurately) the "establishment" lane.
And finally we asked for your choice between Rubio and Cruz:
Rubio 51%
Cruz 49%.
In other words, three-quarters of the Trump vote (see the second question) went to Cruz, a quarter to Rubio.Political Cartoon
So no great surprises here. Absent Trump, we'd probably be having one heck of a race between Rubio and Cruz--two 40-something Cuban-American first-term senators competing for the GOP nomination, a total break from the Republican pattern of the last half century of Nixon/ Ford/ Reagan/ Bush/ Dole/ Bush/ McCain/ Romney. Of course having Trump in the mix makes the situation even more unprecedented. It's really hard to know, therefore, whether history has anything to teach us about the outcome this year.
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| Courtesy of Gary McCoy via Townhall |
Gordon Lightfoot, "If You Could Read My Mind". One of the greatest songs ever recorded.
