Will the GOP be the party of the brash statements without the ability to back them up or the party of proven conservative principles that are upheld even at personal expense? Will we be the party that blames everyone else for our troubles like the Democrats or do we believe in personal responsibility and addressing our flaws? Are we a party led by a man who looks at the court system as the place where he sues and gets sued or a man who has fought at the Supreme Court to protect the rights of Americans?
I’ve written ad nauseam about the weaknesses of Donald Trump and the strengths of Ted Cruz, so we’re going to keep it simple with this short post. Donald Trump is a salesman. Ted Cruz is a statesman. Knowing the difference is arguably the most important political distinction you’ll make in your life.
Any other year, these would be simple questions to answer. The crossroads that the Republican Party now finds itself at will not only determine whether or not the GOP will thrive but also whether or not America will survive. This is it. This is our time. Don’t blow it.
The visual nature of social media means that from time to time we will be sharing messages that should resonate for our audience. To see more of them, which are great for sharing on social media, simply click on the Messages category.
For the last several months, I’ve attempted to make intelligent, evidence-driven arguments for Republicans voters to stop supporting Donald Trump and to start supporting Ted Cruz. I’ve accepted the low-information mentality that drives Trump’s support, but I am now starting to realize that in many cases it’s based upon willful ignorance rather than actual naivety.
If you believe that his response to Jake Tapper’s questions on Sunday were anything other than an unwillingness to denounce his base of white supremacists on one of the most watched news shows on television, you’ve been too engulfed by his liberal Pied Piper spell to hear reason.
A real conservative was once given the same type of endorsement. He didn’t embrace them. In fact, Ronald Reagan flat out insulted to Ku Klux Klan in 1984.
”Those of us in public life can only resent the use of our names by those who seek political recognition for the repugnant doctrines of hate they espouse.
”The politics of racial hatred and religious bigotry practiced by the Klan and others have no place in this country, and are destructive of the values for which America has always stood.”
The saddest part is that Trump’s supporters are either buying into the untenable claim that his earpiece wasn’t working or they’re okay with his reluctant, belated disavowing. The excuses on social media are idiotic and repugnant. Please do not call yourself a conservative if you support this man. Ronald Reagan was a conservative. Donald Trump is a fraud.
As far as mainstream media and the Republican Establishment are concerned, Donald Trump has already won the nomination. Many realize that this isn’t as certain as they’re playing it to be, but the agenda requires that they act like it’s a foregone conclusion. Otherwise, voters might actually believe that he can be beaten, in which case Ted Cruz may still be around after the SEC Primary.
That’s the last thing they want to see happen.
The polls will say that he doesn’t have a chance. What the polls don’t take into account is that the late deciders are seeing three things play out if they’re paying close enough attention:
Donald Trump is unhinging himself at every opportunity. From his failure to acknowledge that he knew who David Duke was on Sunday despite talking about him on Friday to his upcoming fraud trial that will derail his aspirations in the general election, many voters who were strongly considering him will change their minds at the last minute.
Marco Rubio’s candidacy is looking more and more like a ploy to secure the nomination for Trump. Voters are realizing this and seeing Cruz as the only viable anti-Trump.
Ted Cruz is being vindicated left and right about the lies that Trump fabricated. Moreover, his position in Texas will give him an instant leg up in the delegate count. If he can get Oklahoma and other states in line as the trends show, he can come out of Super Tuesday with big wins and tons of momentum.
With everything finally coming together for Cruz, the mainstream media and their Republican Establishment handlers are doing everything they can to keep the narrative focused on the eventuality of Trump’s nomination. He’s both the media’s and the Establishment’s boy, though for different reasons.
The media looks at him as the only chance their Democratic cronies have of winning the general election. All other GOP candidates poll ahead of Hillary Clinton. Trump has lost to here in 14 of the last 16 head-to-head polls and they were taken before his KKK missteps and before the focus turned to his Trump University fraud. The Establishment realizes that it’s either Cruz or Trump and they’ll take the malleable, controllable Trump over the one guy who has shown very clearly that they cannot control.
If the media and the Republican Establishment have their way, those who would vote for Ted Cruz out of support or because he’s the only candidate that can stop Donald Trump will stay home out of futility. They want you to believe your vote doesn’t count. We will find out soon if they were right.
The country and the world hasn’t been in such a precarious situation as the one we’re in now. Two terms for Barack Obama has brought this nation to the brink. We must have a strong leader who can bring conservative Christian values back to the White House and return us to the proper path that we’ve strayed from since Ronald Reagan left office.
Just as Daniel prayed for his nation as detailed in the Bible, so too must Americans pray for the only viable candidate remaining who can pull us away from the edge of the precipice. Whether you like Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, or John Kasich, there’s only one GOP candidate who has an actual pathway to defeat Donald Trump for the GOP nomination. That man is Ted Cruz.
We are instructed to pray daily for God’s Will to be done in earth as it is in Heaven. If you prefer to pray generally, so be it. If you are willing to ask for favor, then it is our firm belief that Ted Cruz is the viable candidate who can lead this country from a Constitutional perspective and through a Biblical worldview. Cruz has not made his living off of the sins of others; the more that people gamble away their savings or spend time in Trump’s casino strip clubs, the more money he makes. Cruz has openly asked for God’s forgiveness and praises Him for blessings. Trump has openly admitted that he does not. Cruz is unashamed of saying the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. The one time that Trump has ever mentioned Jesus Christ publicly was in one of his books and it was done so in a negative connotation.
There’s no need to try to convince anyone of Cruz’s positives or Trump’s negatives. Either you see the truth or you’ve fallen for Trump’s Pied Piper song. However, if you’re one of the millions of Americans who are against a Trump nomination or Presidency, now is the time to hit your knees and pray for Ted Cruz. The other candidates no longer have a chance of beating Trump. Cruz’s chances are fading quickly; if he does poorly during Tuesday’s “SEC Primaries,” Trump is, for all intents and purposes, locked in as the GOP nominee.
If you are a believer who holds to the Biblical worldview and you’re against the concept of Donald Trump being the GOP nominee, we humbly ask that you say a prayer today for Ted Cruz. Now more than ever, America needs deliverance. May God’s Will be done.
As Donald Trump’s policies (other than immigration) continue to migrate further and further to the left, we’re witnessing a double-whammy against conservatism. It’s the type of unfathomable circumstance that will have conspiracy theorists postulating that Trump was a double agent for the Democrats all along.
The double-whammy manifests in two scenarios that seemed extremely unlikely a few months ago. The first one is obvious: a Democratic victory in November. With the weakest Democratic candidates possible following a disastrous Democratic Presidency under Barack Obama, this should have been the biggest GOP landslide since 1984. Instead we’re seeing the one scenario play out in which the Democrats can actually win: a Trump nomination.
The second unlikely scenario is less obvious. Those who are following the sentiment of the country in general and the GOP in particularly can see that true conservatism is being massacred from the inside. Trump is introducing his Republican supporters to ideas that would have been obtuse to them last year but that are now suddenly acceptable because Trump says it is. For example, the idea that we should abandon free trade and go with the Bernie Sanders ideology of fair trade through tariffs and the disavowing of a free market economy would have been ludicrous to Republicans before Trump. Now, we’re seeing more alleged “conservatives” embracing the idea behind the guise of bringing back jobs. It’s an insane concept that Republicans would want to embrace the Sanders/Trump perspective on trade, but that’s exactly what’s happening.
Much of this is being driven by a false assumption. The anger towards the GOP Establishment and the broken promises they made to take control of the House and the Senate are being chalked up erroneously to blame the conservatives. This is silly, of course, because the conservatives in Congress are the ones trying to oppose the Establishment on these issues. Trump has changed that narrative and batched every Republican together as being part of the problem. At a time when we need more conservatives in Congress and a solid conservative in the White House, Trump has sold the notion that conservatism has been part of the problem all along. This argument only works on those who haven’t been paying attention in recent years, but unfortunately that group accounts for the majority of Americans.
Then, there’s Ted Cruz. Unlike most of his supporters, I’m not one to claim that he’s the perfect candidate. Then again, unlike many Republicans, I’m not one who believed that Ronald Reagan was a perfect President. Both Cruz and Reagan represent a belief that the Constitution must be defended as the backbone for our country’s greatness. Trump’s perspective is that he has better ideas than the ones that have made this country great for two centuries. It’s offensive to anyone who’s actually researching his proposals and realizing that they’re dangerous reinterpretations of liberalism framed into Republican talking points.
For example, let’s look at healthcare. The Republican talking point that will make his supporters cheer is that he’s going to repeal Obamacare. The liberal reinterpretation is that he plans on offering healthcare to everyone and that the government’s going to pay for it. He pulls at voters’ heartstrings by saying that “we can’t let people die in the streets.” Unfortunately, this is utterly ridiculous. Americans have a right to emergency care with or without Obamacare, Trumpcare, or any form of socialized healthcare. What Trump supports goes squarely against excellent plans proposed by Cruz and Ben Carson, but his supporters are falling for the liberal perspective instead of seeing the real solutions to make our healthcare system the best in the world.
Now more than ever, this country needs conservatism to make a comeback. It needs a strong Constitutional perspective in order to reverse the damage that has occurred over the last 28 years and particularly the catastrophic measures that have been implemented in the last seven. Voters have great reasons to be angry. Democratic liberalism and moderate Republican deal-making have sent this country down a dark path that leads to oblivion. It is only through embracing strong conservative principles that this country has any chance of returning to glory and realizing the greatness that we haven’t experienced since the 1980s.
The “SEC Primaries” on Super Tuesday represent one of two things: a turning point in the election cycle that can bring us back from the brink of liberal disaster or an abandonment of conservatism that will yield a liberal Trump Presidency or (more likely) an even more liberal Clinton Presidency. Some will say that Marco Rubio is conservative and can do much of the same that Cruz can do, but voting for him may be even worse than voting for Trump. It’s not that he’s worse than Trump, but his path to the nomination can only happen through a contested convention. He is going to have zero wins in March, including in his home state of Florida, and cannot mathematically beat Trump or Cruz in delegates. If he stays in and pushes this election cycle all the way to the convention, the party will be irreversibly splintered. At least with Trump we’ll only lose. With Rubio’s contested convention, we’ll be destroyed.
Nearly everything that Cruz has done since entering into public service as squarely aligned with the Reagan principles that defeated the USSR, that reinvigorated the strongest economy in the world, and that helped us maintain the values of conservatism that are proven to effectively make the country prosper.
Trump’s anti-Reagan policies will push the country over the liberal edge we were led to by Obama. We won’t have to build a wall because nobody would be foolish enough to enter the shell of a country that Trump/Clinton liberalism will create. Only Ted Cruz’s Reaganesque conservatism can return this country to greatness. Trump’s sales pitch won’t hold up to reality.
The Republican Establishment’s plan to “win” the nomination for Marco Rubio is so obtuse that every GOP voter should be rebuking the attempt. Only Ted Cruz or Donald Trump have paths to win the nomination outright. Rubio’s plan is a contested convention which will yield the same results in November as a Trump nomination. If he’s nominated in this manner, the Democrats will win just like they would if Trump is the nominee.
Here’s how the contested convention works. For a candidate to win the nomination, they have to come into the convention with 1,237 delegates pledged to them. When this happens (as it almost always does), the convention is more of a rally. It’s a formality. It’s a way for the party to highlight some speakers, announce some of their platform positions for the election, give some love to potential future candidates (see Barack Obama’s Democratic convention speech in 2004), and generally rail on the Democrats.
In a contested convention, nobody has the delegates to win outright. After the first votes are cast, either someone is nominated or nobody is. When nobody is nominated, the second and subsequent votes are “free.” Most states allow their delegates to be “brokered” towards the candidate of their choice. In such a scenario, the Republican Establishment’s thinking is that the “smart people” will migrate towards Rubio since he’s the Establishment’s “chosen one.”
Here are the two biggest problems with this (and there are several). If Rubio gets the nomination in this fashion, the Democrats will rightfully point out that he’s a candidate who couldn’t even get his own party’s voters to support him. This will be a blow, but not as big as the other glaring problem with this scenario: Republican revolt. The vast majority of Trump’s supporters and a good chunk of Cruz’s supporters will be too angry to support Rubio. Some will begrudgingly vote along party lines just to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House, but many will simply stay home in November.
Don’t get me started on the likelihood that Trump will go third-party if he’s robbed of the nomination at the convention.
It’s the only thing the Republican Establishment has in their pocket to prevent Cruz (because they hate him) or Trump (because he’d lose) from getting the nomination. Their endemic shortsightedness has them believing that they can survive if they can get Rubio into the nomination even when he loses in November. What they apparently don’t understand is that this is their final stand, period. Their lies have been exposed and many of the conservatives of America will fight to bring proper governance back to the party and the country.
The Democrats want one of two things: a Trump nomination or a contested convention. Both would ensure their victory in November. At this point, the only possible way for the Republicans to win the White House is to nominate Ted Cruz whether you like him or not.
Mainstream media and Republican Establishment bias strongly favor Marco Rubio. There are articles coming out that have this race somehow situated between Rubio and Donald Trump, as if Ted Cruz isn’t in the equation. This is the type of Saul Alinsky propaganda that’s designed to discourage and misinform voters with one of two end goals: a Trump nomination or a brokered convention. Either would result in a Democratic victory in November.
From the media’s perspective, they’re foaming at the mouth at the opportunity to have Donald Trump being their Democratic cronies’ opponent. For the Republican Establishment, it’s the same broken mentality of denial that we haven’t seen since 1980 when they tried to pull the same tricks on Ronald Reagan. Since Reagan left office, they’ve maintained an iron grip on the GOP nomination process, but this year they have no control. That’s not stopping them from throwing up a hail mary and hoping that Rubio comes down with the ball in the final moments of the game. The problem with this mentality is that they’re down by three touchdowns; even if they can prop up Rubio, he has no pathway to the nomination.
Those who are with the Establishment in holding out hope for a brokered convention should realize that, paradoxically, they should still be supporting Cruz at least simultaneously if not wholeheartedly. With the SEC Primary, Cruz is the only candidate positioned to prevent Trump from getting the delegates required to win the nomination outright. Even if someone is opposed to both Trump and Cruz, their attacks should go squarely towards Trump. Taking down Cruz will not help Rubio get his contested convention. If Cruz doesn’t stop Trump from getting enough delegates, nobody will.
This has been clear since New Hampshire, but now that Rubio is so far behind in Florida it’s even more clear. Rubio was my original choice with Cruz as my third choice behind Ben Carson, but now that the race is shaping up to be Trump’s to lose, we have to be pragmatic about this. Supporting and voting for Rubio will not do anything to keep Trump out of the nomination or the Democrats out of the White House.
A vote for Marco Rubio is a vote for Donald Trump. There’s no universe in which Marco Rubio can go through the entire month of March without winning a single state, including his home state, and somehow win the nomination. Ted Cruz is the only anti-Trump vote that counts.
The most recent attack against Donald Trump focuses around his refusal to denounce the endorsements of white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and others. These attacks seem viable to logical, faithful, discerning voters… and therein lies the problem.
We’ve known for a long time based upon their support of the liberal, unprincipled Trump that his supporters are not logical, faithful, or discerning. Of course Trump won’t condemn the endorsements of anyone and is willing to claim ignorance about such organizations. He knows that they represent a large part of his base, the same base that would never support a Cuban- or African-American.
This should be no surprise to anyone:
Let’s state with 100% certainty that Donald Trump knows who David Duke is. He’s been in the news referring to Trump for a few days now. He is synonymous with the KKK and has been in the public eye for decades. If, for some reason, you still believe that Trump doesn’t know who David Duke is, let’s look back two days before the interview when Trump apparently knew exactly who he was.
It’s either a baldfaced lie or a major senior moment. Either should worry voters.
With all of that said, there’s absolutely no reason why we should be pointing any of this out. It won’t work! Most Trump supporters already know he embraces the white supremacy movement and those who do not know are too wrapped up in his authoritarian daddy-issues sales pitch to notice.
If there was any doubt that he would get obliterated in the general election, this alone should make most people realize he will only win 8 states regardless of which weak Democratic opponent comes his way. It will be brought up over and over again by the Democrats and they will gather more information to prove with zero doubt that he’s a closet white supremacist. A Trump nomination is a general election bloodbath.
The bottom line is this: those who oppose the KKK but support Trump are too lost in his sales pitch to hear anything but what they want to hear. The rest of his supporters approve of the KKK (albeit quietly for some). Exposing this truth about him is non-starter.
A large portion of Donald Trump’s supporters are anit-Establishment. They are tired of the failures in Washington DC that have given us obtuse governance, the worse economic conditions that the country has seen since Jimmy Carter, and a changing American landscape that promotes political correction over common sense. Sadly, the majority of his supporters have not taken a close enough look at his proposed policies or personal history that clearly reveal he’s as embedded in the Establishment as the Bush’s or Clintons and he’s a bigger part of the Establishment than candidates like Ted Cruz (who we support) and Bernie Sanders (who we oppose).
What makes someone part of the Establishment? Before we can answer that, we have to understand what the nebulous “Establishment” really is. First, it’s important to understand that the “Establishment” has no party affiliations. There are subsets – the Republican Establishment, the Democratic Establishment, K-Street, mainstream media moduls, and several smaller categories make up what is commonly referred to as simply “The Establishment.” The different subsets often fight each other, but at the end of the day they come together to make deals.
The second thing to remember is that the Establishment and the cronyism that drives it is comprised mostly of people who are not politicians. People like George Soros, the Kock Brothers, Karl Rove, and a slew of lobbyists make up a larger portion of the Establishment than actual elected officials. In fact, an argument can be made that the bulk of the actual power brokers setting policy for the Establishment have addresses in New York City, Chicago, and Silicon Valley, not Washington DC.
Third, the primary capital of the Establishment is not money. Power and influence are much more important than cold hard cash. This is one of the reasons it’s so humorous when Trump says that he’s not controlled by the Establishment because he’s rich. The truth is that he is more involved in controlling and being controlled than some of the other candidates, most notably Cruz and Sanders.
Lastly, being part of the Establishment does not mean going to secret New World Order meetings or taking bribes from lobbyists. Some who are part of the Establishment aren’t even fully aware of their part because it’s never explicitly stated. A perfect example of this is the Gang of Eight. Marco Rubio ran as a Tea Party candidate to get elected to the Senate on a platform that was squarely against amnesty. In his first year as a Senator, his potential was noticed by Establishment insiders John McCain and Chuck Schumer. They approached him. They convinced him that it would be politically expedient for him to work with them. They groomed him. Then, the set him out to demonstrate his Establishment chops in pushing the bill forward. He (probably) wasn’t told that he was joining a shrouded organization of power brokers that run the country and the world. He was told that to achieve his ambition of becoming President, he needed to establish himself as a dealmaker, a person who could bridge the gaps between conservatives and moderates as well as between Republicans and Democrats.
That’s how the Establishment is built. There’s (probably) no secret handshake or black and gold membership card. They (probably) don’t sacrifice goats before a moon god or drink the blood of snakes. They sell the dream of cooperation and they tell their recruits that this is how things get done in Washington DC. If they buy into the pitch (and most do) then they’re indoctrinated over time to the ways of the world. If they don’t buy into it, they’re shunned by their colleagues, forced to stand alone for keeping their campaign promises, and have jokes made about how they could be murdered.
With those four things understood, let’s look at the traits that we can recognize in a Presidential candidate when they are beholden to the Establishment:
Deal Making: Why did Congress give President Obama the budget he requested in the omnibus bill? The Establishment made it happen. Why did so many oppose the Iran Deal, yet it was allowed to creep under a veto-proof dissent? The Establishment cut a deal. Why does Obamacare still exist? The Establishment caved to dealmaking.
Money is NOT the Currency: Corruption as the local, city, county, and sometimes even state level is often driven by greed. Politicians at the lower levels can be bought. At the higher levels, bribes are not made with cash. They’re made with influence. They’re made through power. Yes, there is a campaign contribution component that goes into control of Congressman and Senators, but Presidents aren’t bribed this way. They operate based upon an agenda and the highest currency for them is the influence and power associated with the Establishment itself. Again, this is why it’s ludicrous when Trump points to Cruz’s loan from Goldman Sachs (which was smaller than loans they gave to Trump, by the way) as an example that he’s bought. Does Trump really believe that Cruz’s loan officer is going to call him in the Oval Office and demand that he veto a bill on banking regulations? Of course he doesn’t believe it, but he knows his supporters are ignorant to the ways of political influence.
There’s a Difference Between Campaign Ideology and Establishment Reality: If someone campaigns as very pro-life, does the Establishment walk away from them? Of course not. Being pro-life is a great campaign ideology for Republicans just as being pro-choice is a great campaign ideology for Democrats. What the Establishment knows is that Presidents have no power over Roe v. Wade, so it’s a non-issue to them. They look at a candidate’s relevant policies such as their tax plan, defense perspectives, and immigration proposals to determine whether or no they’re going to play a pro-Establishment role or anti-Establishment role. For Trump, the border issue is the only component of his policies that has kept him from being wholeheartedly embraced as the Establishment candidate. It’s not that they fear border control or touchback amnesty. They simply fear that he can’t win the general election because of it. If he was a little lighter on his immigration plan, he’d be their ideal candidate.
Moderate Consensus-Building is Their Favorite Attribute: There’s a reason that those who rush to the “mushy middle” are the best Establishment politicians. Their willingness to be moderate means that they’re less likely to be ideologically sound at the core. The most misunderstood part of the Establishment mentality is that their agenda is not truly moderate. In many cases, it’s extreme on both ends. The omnibus bill is a perfect example. In it, out-of-control budgets for both left-wing and right-wing programs were extended or expanded. This is the single more important binding force between Republicans and Democrats in the Establishment. The left wants to spend money on their issues. The right wants to spend money on their issues. The binding force is the shared goal of expanding the government so they can get their ways. For both sides to win requires humongous omnibus bills that fund all of the spending that both sides want. This more than anything else is why the country is in the declining shape that it’s in.
Now that we have the four Establishment criteria, let’s see whether or not Trump fits that mold. We know that Trump is the dealmaker that the Establishment loves. We know that he doesn’t need money and even if a candidate does need money, they rarely (if ever) use it as a control factor over a President. Those are the two blatant calling cards for Trump’s presence within the Establishment.
The third is trickier. We already discussed that the Establishment worries about Trump’s conservative immigration proposal. It has been the stumbling block that has kept them from embracing him thus far, but that sentiment is changing in some wings of the Establishment for two reasons. First and most importantly, they’re realizing that building a wall and deporting people isn’t the general election boogeyman they have believed it to be for decades. Now that they have a major candidate running on that platform and not failing miserably as a result, they’re scratching their heads and conceding that it might not be as bad as they’ve always felt it would be. Second, many are starting to believe that it would never happen if he’s elected, anyway. This is something that an Executive Order cannot accomplish, so they’ll need Congress to fund it. They’re undecided whether or not they will, but at this point it doesn’t really matter. Point three was the stumbling block but it appears to be getting leveled off. Now, we can expect more Establishment endorsements as a result.
The last component is the most important. It’s the clearest indicator that Donald Trump is, indeed, already part of the Establishment and has been for decades. While conservatives view his rapid and constant changes in philosophies and ideologies as proof that he has not core, the Establishment views it as a bonus. He’s switched from Republican to Democrat and back again so many times on issues without repercussions that the Establishment is seeing a potential juggernaut in Trump IF he can win the general election (more on that shortly). The one calling card he’s leaving within every policy proposal he details is that he’s a big government moderate who will allow both sides to spend freely just like the last four Presidents did. This is imperative for garnering the Establishment’s support and it was best represented in a handful of sentences by, strangely enough, Jimmy Carter.
Electability
This is the conundrum. It’s the last piece of the puzzle that will they’re trying to understand before making him the Establishment candidate. On one hand, he’s very clearly the least electable GOP candidate. On the other hand, he’s an enigma that has taken conventional wisdom about the primaries and mangled them into an unrecognizable pulp.
Most still believe that it can’t happen. They listen to him, chat with the media, and meet with power brokers who mostly believe that he would be destroyed in the general election. That doesn’t mean that there’s a consensus, though, and we are going to see more Establishment types breaking ranks in the coming weeks to endorse him.
Their best bet from the Karl Rove strategy camp is to push for a contested convention. If Trump or Cruz can’t win enough delegates to win the nomination outright, they believe that the delegates who are free to vote for whoever they want following the first failed ballot will shift to Rubio. It’s a terrible move, of course, because anyone other than the frontrunner who comes out of the convention as the nominee will be destroyed in the general election. That’s the state of affairs in American politics today.
The reason that Trump’s policies are becoming more liberal every day is to alert the Establishment that he’s secretly their guy. Expect more Chris Christies and Paul LePages to come out as moderate Establishment endorsements. By April, you’ll see Democrats endorsing him, at which point his transformation back to a full-blown liberal will be complete.
It’s bad enough that most of Donald Trump’s supporters have never actually looked at the liberal policies he proposes. It goes to a whole other level that he has made it clear multiple times that he doesn’t respect the people who are willing to follow him, but he knows they’ll follow him no matter what he says or does. He’s not a fool. He’s brilliant. It’s his supporters who are the fools.
The visual nature of social media means that from time to time we will be sharing messages that should resonate for our audience. To see more of them, which are great for sharing on social media, simply click on the Messages category.
Anyone who has read this site knows that we’re no fans of mainstream media. However, we’re also very big fans of the Constitutional 1st Amendment protections given to the press that allows us to gain knowledge about important issues. With Donald Trump threatening to make it easier for libel lawsuits against the media, we’re seeing one of the most dangerous roads that he has proposed travelling.
At a rally in Texas, he said he’s “going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.”
Again, we have been very critical of the majority of mainstream media outlets, but we have the right to be critical just as they have the right to do the things that force us to be critical. That’s one of the most important protections we have as a country in knowing that the news media does not have to operate in fear of retribution from the government or other powerful entities. Other countries have demonstrate that when we limit the freedom of the press, the ones who benefit are the very people that the press can expose.
Libel is bad. People can be hurt when news outlets spread falsehoods that can damage people. However, expanding any form of the law beyond its current Constitutional alignment is the first step towards quashing the free speech that Americans have embraced for two centuries. For someone who claims to be opposed to political correctness, an attack on the 1st Amendment is absolutely unacceptable.
It’s the first step down a very slippery slope that this country simply cannot afford.
Keep in mind that there are already protections in place for public figures that are working extremely well. If a publication publishes a negative piece with the intention of malice, they can and should be sued. How much looser does it have to get to appease Trump’s nefarious goals? Does he want to eliminate the malice portion and make it to where negative pieces cannot be written at all? Is he going to force a burden of proof that would make it next to impossible to expose corruption in a timely manner? Who is he trying to protect if not himself?
By limiting the power of the press to expose his actions, Trump is essentially establishing a barrier between the people and the truths that they want to hear. Any conservative who values the Constitution must oppose Trump’s liberal policy proposals. Even Obama never went this far. Trump is a disaster.
After six decades of shifting political views based upon whatever suits him at the time, Donald Trump’s confusion over his own perspectives on issues is really starting to show. Whether it’s a flip-flop, a lie, or just a senior moment, it’s clear that his adamant opposition to intervention in Libya today is not how he felt during the time period in question.
Buzzfeed has discovered one of Trump’s videos where he’s promoting the invasion of Libya. It’s a standard Trump strategy of go in, kill the bad guys, take the oil. This is contrary to what he said during the last GOP debate when he said that he wasn’t in favor of going into Libya and that he never discussed the subject. Not only did he discuss it, but he said the exact opposite of what he’s saying now.
Here’s where it gets strange. I’m going to put it in bullet format so readers can keep it all straight.
Today, he says that we shouldn’t have gone into Libya to overthrow Qaddafi.
Today, he says we’d be better off if we sat on a beach and did nothing.
The reality is that we didn’t invade Libya. In essence, we did what he says we should have done.
This is in conflict with what he said in 2011 when it was all going down. Back then, he chastised the government for not going into Libya.
If that’s confusing, here it is broken down into a Tweet:
#Trump condemns himself on #Libya: He's opposed to doing what we didn't do, but back then he wanted us to do what he opposes now. #SCPrimary
Okay, if that didn’t help, here are the videos. The first is a comparison of what he said at the debate and what he said when everything was happening. Then, there’s one of his other videos where he condemns the US government for not going in to take the oil. In essence, he wanted us to go in but we didn’t in 2011. Now, he’s angry about us going in when we didn’t. It’s as if he’s mad today about what he thought we should have done back then, but didn’t.
Only Trump can get away with chastising his own recommendations and somehow spinning it as if he’s not a complete cluster. If there’s a chance for a President to come in and make Obama’s disastrous Presidency actually look decent, it will be Trump’s.
The people of Florida know Marco Rubio the best and less than 1 in 4 Republicans are voting for him there. That’s the bad news. The good news from the Rubio camp is that a different poll shows him down by a mere 7%. Yes, he’s down. 7%. In Florida.
Again, that’s the good news. The bad news is that a more recent poll shows him down by 16% with Ted Cruz catching up. In Florida. His home state. The one that was supposed to be his first victory. If it slips away (and it would take a miracle for it not to slip away), then Marco Rubio, the Republican Establishment darling who is racking up endorsements from political insiders across the country, could finish the first two months of the nomination process without a single victory.
At this pace, his goal of a brokered convention won’t even be achievable since Trump or Cruz will likely have enough delegates to win outright.
Meanwhile, the Establishment’s mainstream media puppets at Fox News and the Wall Street Journal are doing everything they can to spin this in his favor. They were granted a glorious pre-weekend distraction after Rubio clobbered frontrunner Donald Trump during the CNN GOP Debate in Houston. He scored some major points, but as most analysts are pointing out, it’s probably too little too late to earn him an actual victory in any of the “SEC Primary” states coming up on Tuesday.
Here are some of the defensive Tweets coming from the campaign and their advisers:
Media needs to chill. The FL Q poll #'s are way wrong. We are going to win Florida. Period. Take it to the bank.
His campaign, the Republican Establishment, and Fox News can spin it any way they want, but the spin doesn’t negate the fact that when Rubio loses his home state, he cannot be allowed to be the nominee. The Democrats will eat him alive over it.
Marco Rubio had a good night. I found myself rooting for him during some exchanges and was impressed with his debate preparation and change in style. Something was off, though. He was scoring points with cheers, but his best moments weren’t actually substantive. He landed some good shots on Donald Trump, then grinned like…
That was it! He was relishing in his attacks. He was having fun, and while it came across very nicely at times, it also betrayed a reality about him that I’d never noticed before. He’s petulant. He’s a child and was getting his jollies from being one of the little kids popping the schoolyard bully in the cheek.
I know what a lot of you are thinking. Many have characterized him in similar fashion in the past, but I never bought into it. Any time a candidate is young, critics pull out the “child” insults. For the first time, I finally saw that play out as his immaturity reigned. This is a problem. We’re not talking about a whippersnapper running for Congress. This is a 44-year-old lifetime politician who wants to be the leader of the free world.
By contrast, Barack Obama was 47 when he took office and Ted Cruz would be inaugurated at 46. Both have youth on their side but they were never seen as gloating schoolboys. Rubio did. His best moments were when he was repeating his Polish workers talking point before grinning at the audience for approval.
It was his biggest pro. It was also a glaring con.
What most saw was an aggressive Rubio hitting in his hour of desperation and scoring nicely. What I saw was a good performance that made him seem like he’d make a decent Vice President. He’s not ready for Oval Office.
For the last six months or so, I’ve been wholeheartedly supporting Ted Cruz for President. I looked closely at Donald Trump, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio. I even came close at one point in August to backing Ben Carson. After extensive research, I concluded that Cruz had the proper combination of traits to propel him to the top of my list.
I’m not a Governor, Senator, or elected official of any kind. I don’t have a TV show, radio program, podcast, or high-volume website. I’ve never been a movie star nor have I ever played one on television. I’m just an American with a family, bills to pay, and a Bible to read. My endorsement is utterly meaningless because this article will only be seen by a few thousand people.
That’s the point. That’s why I have to write this.
To understand why, we have to understand what people like me do not represent. Some of this may sound insulting to those who support other candidates, but if you read it through a lens of honesty and discernment, you’ll realize that I’m not attacking others out of pettiness. These perceptions are based upon experiences I’ve had through months of near-complete immersion in the political vetting process.
Since I’m not a power broker or politician beholden to the ubiquitous but nebulous Republican Establishment, my endorsement does not stand up to the clout of Governor Nikki Haley, Senator Bob Dole, or Governor Mitt Romney. Their endorsements and others for Rubio represent the push for the status quo.
Since I studiously research commentaries and respected opinions on every major candidate’s tax, immigration, foreign relations, and government reduction plans, my endorsement is not the same as the ones coming from adoring Trump supporters who fawn over every insult and eat up his actions voraciously. I’m aware that he supports government-mandated healthcare, unsustainable entitlements, affirmative action, and touchback amnesty. This awareness differentiates me from his supporters.
I refuse to take any politician at his word. Some might say I have government trust issues. Some would be right. As such, I don’t fall into the category of major celebrity endorsements who hear something they like and Tweet out their support before heading to the next party. My trust issues kick in when Donald Trump says he loves the Bible because his actions and clear lack of understanding of its doctrines demonstrate otherwise. As for Rubio, it’s ironic that he was one of the catalysts for my trust issues. I heard him say that he had never and would never support amnesty. I heard him say that a “path to citizenship” was code for amnesty. Then I watched as he pressed for a path to citizenship. That all of this happened in under two years justifies the trust issues I have with politicians in general and Rubio in particular. Therefore, I do not represent those who trust politicians easily or blindly.
Since 2010, the people have delivered on their duty to elect Republicans to the House and Senate. Since 2010, the House and Senate have failed in their duty to stand in the way of President Obama’s destructive path. Like Trump supporters, I’m very angry with how the Republican Establishment has squandered the power that we’ve given them. Unlike Trump supporters, I’m not wanting to add to the problem by electing another master contestant in DC’s version of Let’s Make a Deal. I want someone who will not make deals for the sake of deals but who will stay true to the principles outlined in the Constitution and mandated by the people. If that makes me a Calvin Coolidge conservative, so be it. I do not represent the “hope and change” endorsements that require action at all times even if those actions have negative consequences. Sometimes, the best action is to stop others from acting.
Now that we’ve established why my endorsement is not like the endorsements that the other two major GOP candidates are getting, it’s time to understand why I’m endorsing Ted Cruz in the first place. It’s difficult for me because I do not make endorsements easily. I firmly believe that everyone should support a candidate, but one should only endorse when they are all-in. For me to be all-in, a candidate must have:
True conservative ideologies
Effective governing skills
A Biblical worldview
A history of fulfilled promises
Sounds easy, right? If all a candidate needs to do is meet four requirements, surely I’ve endorsed several candidates over the years. In truth, I tried. I really wanted to, but there has always been one or two requirements that weren’t met. I wanted to endorse Newt Gingrich in 2012, but he missed a bit on requirement 4 and was questionable on requirement 3. I wanted to endorse Rudy Giuliani in 2008, but he missed on requirement 1 and 3. I’ve come close on several Senators and dozens of Congressmen over the years, but nearly all of them missed on requirement 4. In fact, Marco Rubio came very close in 2010 because I believed him, but thankfully I waited to see if he would meet requirement 4 since he had very little history in the Florida House despite being in politics for over a decade at that point. Then, with Gang of Eight, he failed on requirements 1, 2, and 4.
I could take it all the way back to my days with College Republicans in the 90s, but I’ll cut to the chase. I’ve supported dozens of candidates over the last two decades. I’ve never endorsed any of them until now. Ted Cruz is the first candidate who has true conservative ideologies, who has demonstrated very effective governing skills, who maintains a Biblical worldview, and who has a history of fulfilling his promises.
Today, a random guy spent time writing a lengthy endorsement that very few people will actually read. Why? Because in the digital age, this is how the grassroots works. It doesn’t take celebrity status or political clout to make a point. We the People can have a voice, too.
There are literally dozens of examples of Donald Trump’s poor business decisions. Those alone shouldn’t be grounds to not vote for the guy; everybody makes mistakes and rich people have the cushion in order to make those mistakes more often. However, there are three prime examples in Trump’s history that should terrify prospective voters.
In real estate, he’s a giant. That’s not saying much considering he was born into a $400 million real estate empire, but we’ll still credit him for those successes. In entertainment, he’s brilliant. He’s clearly demonstrated a penchant for making a television audience love what he’s doing and saying. Once we get outside of his comfort zones, the mistakes mount up. Considering he’s asking America to trust his judgment on issues that he knows absolutely nothing about, it’s in his adventures in other areas that he knew nothing about that we should able to discern our future.
Trump University: The Scam
To many of the students that paid as much as $35,000 to learn how to get rich quick from a man who was born rich, the “university” that Trump built and promoted turned out to be fraudulent. They were made promises and their class action lawsuits claim that he promises weren’t kept… not even close.
This will have an affect on his ability to campaign, but he hopes that he’ll have the GOP nomination locked up before anyone looks very closely at what he’s done. He should be pleased to note that most of his fawning mainstream media cronies are sweeping the story under the rug.
Thankfully, not all of them.
And while he's ducking & dodging on tax returns, maybe Trump should also be asked about his upcoming fraud trial?https://t.co/UF5X3zu36c
Of all his failures, this one might be the one that hits closest to home with the current Presidential campaign. Stop me if you’ve heard this one:
“A successful business man wants to take his experience to an endeavor that he really knows very little about. He isn’t worried and earns support by telling people, ‘believe me, I’ll make this industry great again.’ He has ideas that sound exciting and different from what the industry has been doing for years. Unfortunately, his inexperience proves disastrous as his leadership fails, his ideas flop, and his goals crumble. In less than three years, he abandoned the sinking ship and licked his wounds by returning to real estate and entertainment.”
Running an airline is complex, but it’s not even in the same league as running the country. His failures at Trump Air are a precursor for what we can expect if he sits in the Oval Office.
One of the responses that Trump has when asked how he can get on-the-job-training on complex geopolitical issues is that he’ll hire smart people. Unfortunately, his history of hiring the right people is shady at best and downright ignorant at worst. Case in point: Trump Mortgage.
"It's a great time to start a mortgage company… who knows about financing better than I do?" I can't take it https://t.co/J8LE84wyKS
When Donald Trump convinced the other USFL owners to abandon the successful direction they were heading, some worried that he was leading them down a dark path. They bought into his sales pitch, tried to move the USFL to a fall season, and followed his lead to get rich by suing the NFL.
Trump’s lawsuit was technically a success because he won. Of course, the judgment on his behalf forced the NFL to pay $3.00. In case you think you’re reading that wrong, the NFL was forced to pay Trump 300 pennies (plus interest!) in his lawsuit. The USFL fell apart a year later and nearly everyone blamed Trump for taking something that was doing well and tanking it in record time.
Donald Trump is great at real estate and entertainment. Every time he tries to take his brand and leadership style to other endeavors, his failures are epic and the carnage that is left is spectacular. As the GOP nominee, he will destroy the party. If he somehow makes it to the White House, he will destroy this country. It’s just in his nature.
Donald Trump lies. Everyone but his supporters realizes this. The latest lie is that his tax returns are “too complex” to release in a timely manner. His supporters are buying into it because he’s rich and his tax returns probably fill a room, right? It’s arguably the dumbest thing his supporters have bought into since his claim that Mexico is going to pay for the wall.
That’s simply not how tax returns work. It doesn’t matter how rich you are or how many businesses you own. An individual’s tax returns, once completed, are placed in files both digitally and in paper backups. The difference between how average Joe America keeps his tax returns and how Donald J. Trump keeps his is that Trump’s team of accountants make certain that everything is in order, quickly retrievable, and readily available to send to the government or to any of the dozen Wall Street bankers that need them in order to loan him money for his hotels and casinos.
Filing the taxes for Donald Trump is definitely a complex process, but nobody’s asking for his current filings. We’re asking for his tax returns, something that anyone of his fiscal stature files away properly. In fact, he can probably supply his tax returns faster than your average American because he’s accustomed to releasing them regularly. As he has stated, he’s audited every year. More importantly, he takes out very large loans on a regular basis. When borrowing huge sums of money from an entity like Deutsche Bank, which he did three times in recent years, he has to supply his tax returns. When requested, he releases them instantly.
As Mitt Romnney, a rich man who released his own taxes for his 2012 Presidential run, pointed out yesterday, “The fact that he’s so aggressive in avoiding any discussion of his taxes… suggests there’s something in there he doesn’t want us to see.”
There is absolutely, positively something in his tax returns that he doesn’t want anyone to see. Otherwise, he wouldn’t make such a blatant lie about them being too complex to release quickly. He would just release them and defend his tax decisions like Romney did. It didn’t destroy Romney’s nomination when he released them in January, 2012, so why does Trump think his taxes are too dangerous to his campaign to release before it’s too late for Republican voters? It’s conspicuous that he says he’ll “consider” releasing them in a “couple of months.” The nomination will be locked up by the time he “considers” releasing them.
When Deutsche Bank needed his tax returns for any of his three huge loans in 2011 and 2012, he supplied them the same day. When We the People ask for them, suddenly they’re too complex. It’s a blatant lie. We will find out on March 1 if voters are as gullible as he hopes.
Donald Trump refuses to release his tax returns for at least a couple of months. By the time he does, IF he does, it will be after he secures the nomination. His excuse is that it takes time because they’re “complex.” Considering that past returns are a matter of record that are filed and can be transmitted in minutes, his hope is that you’re too stupid to find this peculiar.
We’re not talking about his current tax returns. That would be a complex undertaking since they’re likely “in progress.” However, last year’s and previous returns must be kept in quick and easy transfer mode at all times because he’s an active developer. His returns have likely been transmitted and examined dozens of times over the last few years in order for him to receive the types of loans that he’s accustomed to receiving on a regular basis.
There is something in them that he doesn’t want anyone to know. There is absolutely, positively no reason for him to hide them from the public otherwise. He talks about his wealth at every campaign event. What has he done that would be so damaging to his campaign that he refuses to release them?
It’s sad that Mitt Romney was the first major figure to bring it up. His own tax returns were delayed for a while when he ran in 2012, so his credibility on the issue is limited. Will anyone else call out the obvious? Will a reporter or one of his competitors have the gumption to demand his returns? What about a citizen group or voter watchdog? Why is nobody making a fuss about this? Is his networth far below his claims? Are his charitable activities minimal as many have speculated? Is he hiding investments in Mexico or China by using his private taxes rather than his companies’ public disclosure sources? As Romney says, there’s likely a bombshell or two in his returns. There’s no other reason for him to be so adamant about hiding them from voters.
Any discerning voter would demand for his returns to be released and scrutinized before voting for him. His reputation of straight talk is at risk, but he’s laying down a very thick smokescreen of excuses as to why he can’t release them. Unfortunately, at least one of them is a lie; if his past returns were so complex that he couldn’t release them easily, he wouldn’t be in business today. We’re looking at lies on top of lies but apparently nobody’s willing to confront him on it.
We are going to find out just how gullible the Republican voters are on March 1. We know there is a 100% certainty he’s hiding something in his tax returns that would derail his campaign. Otherwise, he would have released them already. Wake up America. You can’t be stupid enough to vote for this diabolical man.
The question that’s being asked is how Donald Trump has been able to secure such a large portion of the evangelical vote. The real question is whether or not Trump’s supporters who claim to be evangelicals are actually just lukewarm Christians. True evangelicals would have to supersede their own faith with secular desires in order to promote a self-proclaimed unrepentant man as their leader.
Here are some points that true evangelicals should consider about Donald Trump:
His hotels lease space for strip clubs, promote casino gambling, and thrive on debauchery and fornication. The more that his patrons sin, the better off he is.
Lust is present in everyone, but Trump has made a show of not only embracing his lusts but of encouraging his followers to do the same. He has bragged in his books and on interviews about having sex with married women and is thrice divorced himself.
He never mentions Jesus Christ. Even President Obama invoked our Lord and Savior’s name, as did every President in the modern era. Trump is the only GOP candidate who refuses to even utter the words, let alone declare His Glory or praise His Sacrifice.
He stated in an interview that he believes he has never asked for forgiveness, that when he does something wrong he just “tries to do better.” This has been underplayed but represents an extremely dangerous doctrine for someone who is supposed to be leading this country back from the brink.
There are plenty of other indicators that he is the exact opposite of what an evangelical should support in its leaders, but those four are the most prominent. How can true evangelicals that believe in the centrality of the born again experience for receiving salvation idolize a man who clearly does not hold to the same doctrine? There are three primary arguments that are made by Trump’s “evangelical” supporters:
“His faith is separate from his leadership abilities.” This goes against everything that Bible teaches. While kings are not priests (with the exception of Melchizedek and Jesus Christ), the righteous leaders who can bring their country towards prosperity have been invariably beholden to their faith as they make decisions for their nation. Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan were arguably the most faith-based American Presidents of the last century and are conspicuously the two best (though Coolidge is obviously underrated).
“He claims to be a Christian and who are we to judge?” We are to know them by their fruits. Trump’s fruits have been to wholeheartedly embrace sin and deny repentance for his whole life. He only started mentioning God and the Bible during stump speeches in order to give evangelicals an excuse to support him. We do not judge him as a man but we can and certainly should judge his fruits when deciding whether or not to vote for him.
“Separation of church and state is the law of the land.” There’s no need to go into the history of the doctrine that was originally established to maintain the sanctity of the church as a separate entity from government even if it has been shifted in recent years to keep Christianity out of as many aspects of American life as possible. You either understand that or you don’t. What we can discuss about this is that no GOP candidate is promoting an unconstitutional shift towards a theocracy. Just like Reagan and Coolidge (and most other Presidents), the faith that allows for guidance from the Holy Spirit is what has made this country great. We have enjoyed prosperity as a gift from God, but the protective hand that has been over our Presidents has started lifting in recent years. Trump is as secular if not more so in his ideologies than President Obama. Nobody knows God’s plan, but we do know His doctrines and judgments. Trump may represent the true end to our protection as a nation.
Everyone is a sinner. Not everyone makes money on promoting sin. Donald Trump’s success has been based upon catering to the sinful nature. The more people sin at his hotels’ strip clubs, casinos, and nefarious business ventures, the more money he makes. How any “evangelical” can support his liberal agenda and pro-sin narrative is a question that they will all have to answer at the end.
The mainstream media and even a handful of conservative media types are starting to spread the narrative that the Republican nominee will be Donald Trump but that Marco Rubio is the one who can stop him. This is by far the most ludicrous notion, so much so that I question the judgment of a handful of people I respect. Rubio has neither the math nor the path to defeat Trump. Ted Cruz is the only GOP candidate with a chance.
As many have speculated, it may be too late if there’s not a major shakeup before the “SEC Primaries” coming up on March 1. By major shakeup, I’m not referring to the obvious need for Ben Carson and John Kasich to drop out. I mean that everyone other than Trump and Cruz need to drop out. Some are saying that it’s Rubio who should be going head-to-head, but even that doesn’t make any sense if you look at the facts logically:
If all but Cruz drop out, the majority of the orphan supporters will rally around Cruz, giving him the voter advantage over Trump.
If all but Rubio drop out, Kasich’s supporters would favor Rubio but Cruz’s and Carson’s supporters would be split with Trump, allowing him to maintain a voter advantage over Rubio.
In the states where Cruz is ahead of Rubio in the upcoming Super Tuesday, he is either beating Trump or within striking distance.
In the states where Rubio is ahead of Cruz in the upcoming Super Tuesday, Trump has a huge lead. Rubio doesn’t lead in a single state.
Cruz represents a start conservative contrast to Trump on most issues other than immigration. Rubio represents a similar ideology with Trump other than immigration.
In other election years, it would be reversed. Texas is normally much later in the cycle and Florida is earlier. It’s reversed this year, giving Cruz the proper path to beating Trump. Even if everyone drops out and if Cruz were to join with Rubio as his running mate, it would be challenging for the Gang of Eight Senator to lead the ticket and pick up states. In fact, there’s a very good chance that he could emerge be competing on March 2nd having lost fifteen consecutive contests without a single win.
If the anti-Trump vote coalesces around Cruz, he will win the nomination. If it attempts to coalesce around Rubio, the best they can hope for is a brokered convention which would splinter the party and guarantee a Democratic general election victory regardless of the nominee on either side.
Here’s the sad truth: the modern day Republican Establishment is more concerned about maintaining the status quo and their bipartisan establishment (little e) stranglehold over government than promoting the core platform of the Republican party or the conservative movement that drives the the party’s grassroots.
This is important to understand, but to truly comprehend what it means, you have to see it for what it is. Thankfully, there is very little effort made by the Establishment (big E) to hide their agenda. We see it in Congress as they continually give President Obama every budget his heart desires despite controlling the House and Senate. We see it in their unwillingness to make an real stand against the liberal policies that go against their stated public principles but that actually benefit them on the back end with their big government tendencies.
To the Republican Establishment, conservatism is not an embraceable ideology but simply a part of their campaign sales pitches. The majority of Establishment candidates have no intention of keeping their more conservative campaign promises; Marco Rubio’s Gang of Eight is the shining example of campaigning one way, governing the exact opposite way. They defend their trepidation and flip-flopping with a slew of canned responses:
They will hide behind futility: “We’re personally pro-life but the law of the land is Roe v. Wade so they can’t do anything about it.”
They will hide behind bipartisan deal-making: “We didn’t want to give President Obama everything he desired in the budget but it was the only way we could keep the government from shutting down, but boy did we get a good deal for the military… we really stuck it to them!”
They’ll hide behind falsehoods: “We don’t want to send too many ideologically sound bills to the White House to get vetoed because it makes us look bad.”
They’ll hide behind fear: “If we support a balanced budget amendment, then poor people will die from our inability to take care of them.”
They thrive on the status quo. They embrace an agenda that is more moderate than their campaign platforms because it’s the agenda that they truly believe will keep the country going. I’m not claiming that they’re greedy, evil elitists (not all of them, at least) like many pundits suggest. They’re simply misguided into believing that the delicate nature of our country’s economy and foreign relationships cannot handle the major conservative shakeups that we haven’t seen since Ronald Reagan. They don’t agree with everything that has been happening in Washington DC for three decades, but they find it preferable to the massive repercussions that they and the country would endure if true conservative principles were applied to the leadership structure of the country.
They fear extremes. They like the mushy middle. It’s safer for them as individuals, for their ubiquitous influences on everything private and public, and for the country itself. On this last point, I wholeheartedly disagree. Their desire to keep the status quo is what will allow for the next major devastation to occur, whether economic or through outside factors such as terrorism or war.
The biggest mistake that Republicans can make, whether conservative or moderate, is to believe that the Republican Establishment is more interested in maintaining the sanctity of the Republican Party than maintaining the Establishment. The second biggest mistake that Republicans can make is to believe that the Republican Establishment is nebulous; people and entities like Paul Ryan, Karl Rove, Sheldon Adelson, Mitch McConnell, Fox News, Reince Priebus, the Koch brothers, John McCain, the Bush family, and the Wall Street Journal might not agree on everything, but they all have an allegiance to the status quo that supersedes any outward support for conservative principles.
They’re only conservative when the ideologies don’t get in the way of their goals and they’re only Republican in that the tendencies of most Republicans are not contrary to their ever-so-slightly-right-leaning establishment agenda.
Why is this such an important distinction? To understand why Donald Trump was not halted before it became essentially too late, we have to realize that he represents a pseudo-shakeup. He’s running on an anti-establishment platform with rhetoric that galvanizes his base, but the policy proposals he’s offering are understood by the true power brokers in the Republican Establishment as falling into one of three categories:
Aligned with their own: maintain entitlements, increase government spending, enhance federal control
Not achievable: get Mexico to pay for a wall
Harmless: repeal Obamacare and replace it with socialized medicine
There’s a reason why real conservatives like Mark Levin, Ben Shapiro, and Brent Bozell III are adamantly against Trump while most in the Establishment are in “wait and see” mode. They’re opposed, but they see in Trump enough Establishment leanings to realize that he won’t change the status quo as much as his campaign rhetoric claims.
Most of the these “message” posts will include a lengthy description of what they represent to America and the conservative and/or Christian movement. This one is best left by itself. Either you see that Donald Trump is a disaster of a Commander-in-Chief waiting to happen or you don’t.
The visual nature of social media means that from time to time we will be sharing messages that should resonate for our audience. To see more of them, which are great for sharing on social media, simply click on the Messages category.
We’re right on the edge. Doomsday prognosticators have been talking of economic collapse, radical Islamic terrorists, new world order, global warming, and whatever the boogeyman of the moment is. The difference with this particular prediction is that it’s not based upon signs or wonders. We know with a certainty that Donald J. Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, will rip apart the fabric of the Republican party and either push America towards disaster by allowing a Democratic victory or he’ll systematically do it himself.
Donald Trump is a liberal. I’m not talking about his suspicious and improbably shift on nearly every issue that he held for six decades. I’m suggesting that if you look at his current stances on healthcare, the economy, trade, affirmative action, taxes, and touchback amnesty are either moderate at best or outright left-wing at worst.
His platform will take the party to the left, an absurdity considering that we’ve been leaning more to the right for the last six years. That’s the least of our problems. Because of his polarizing nature, he is turning off many conservatives. Those who voted for John McCain or Mitt Romney as the lesser of two evils will have a harder time supporting Trump. There will be splintering; many will jump from the GOP ship if Trump is its leader. They will migrate to more conservative small parties and as a result the unity of the GOP will be demolished.
As far as the general election, he would likely lose. I’m not going to try to convince anyone about that; either you see it or you don’t. Even if he’s able to defeat the Democrats, he will carry on the big government mentality that we’ve had for 28 years and that we’ve seen acutely displayed for the last seven.
I apologize for cutting this short, but I can’t finish this article the way that it needs to be finished. This truly is a distressing situation. It makes me physically sick just thinking about it.
Rumors are flying. Perhaps they’re complete fabrications. Perhaps they’re just wishful thinking. I’m going to go ahead and call it a done deal, not because I believe it really is but because I sincerely hope it’s on the table. Between Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, whichever comes in lower in Nevada will become the other candidate’s running mate before the “SEC Primaries” on March 1.
I called for the Volton ticket after Trump handily won South Carolina. I don’t like it, but it’s much more acceptable than a Trump nomination.
This wouldn’t be unprecedented even if the circumstances are. The brokered ticket in 1980 was made when the Republican Establishment promised to fight Reagan all the way through the convention unless he accepted George H. W. Bush as his running mate and promised to support him for President in 1988. It saved Reagan heartache and campaign money and gave the Establishment the consolation prize rather than leaving them with nothing.
For 2016, it’s not money or heartache that’s at stake. It’s the survival of the Republican Party and the future of America. Donald Trump is an existential threat to both. If he’s allowed to cruise through next Tuesday’s slew of primaries with big victories, he’s likely unstoppable. Combining the #2 and #3 choices to form a consensus makes the most sense.
There’s a caveat. What if Trump breaks his vow and runs 3rd party? At that point, we’ll know with an absolute certainty that his goal has always been to help his ultimate cronies, the Clintons, get back into the White House. We’ll know that he worked out some sort of deal to either become the nominee and get destroyed by Hillary Clinton or to become the destroyer of the Republican race by running third party. There’s no other scenario that could be in play if that’s the case.
When we view it through that lens of clarity, it’s easy to see that the game has been rigged from the start and Trump was Clinton’s ultimate pansy all along.
I’d love to see Cruz win the nomination outright. I’d accept Rubio if he takes Cruz as his running mate. Otherwise, we’re all lost anyway and it’s time to start preparing for a rocky road ahead.
One of Ronald Reagan’s greatest moments early in his Presidency was when he made the unpopular and incredibly difficult decision to fire all of the air traffic controllers. His enemies pointed to it as the end of his Presidential career right when it was getting started. Even many of his supporters scratched their heads and cringed over the repercussions that were certain to arise from crippling our air travel network in such a way.
Reagan demonstrated in one move that values and principles must supersede the fear of repercussions. If something is right, then the way will be found to handle it properly even if it means temporary hardships. Like cutting away a cancer, the initial effect is pain and suffering but the long term effects can be extension of life and a stronger living experience.
Even before being elected, Ted Cruz demonstrated on the eve of the Nevada caucus that values and principles outweigh the political backlash that is certain to come out after firing his campaigns most visible adviser, Rick Tyler. The communications director has been responsible for many flaps that have been at least partially forgivable, including the Ben Carson dropout rumors during the Iowa caucus, because he’s attempted to do the right thing most of the time… at least that’s what we and Cruz were led to believe. After posting a lie about Marco Rubio’s perspective on the Bible, enough was enough. Cruz acted decisively even though he was well aware it would hurt his campaign on Tuesday.
Why not wait until after the caucus? Why not do it in a more subtle way like every other campaign shakeup that every candidate has had? Cruz knew that this couldn’t go on. More importantly, he knew that he needed to send a message, just as Reagan did when he fired the air traffic controllers, that his leadership will not work in the shadows, his campaign will not use dirty tactics, and his Presidency will be upfront and principled even if others refuse to play by the same rules.
This will be painted as a negative by the mainstream media and his competitors as it should be. We do our best to make good decisions about the people we surround ourselves with but everyone has experienced a betrayal of trust at some point in their lives. Cruz’s betrayal came at the hands of the man who was charged with keeping his campaign’s communications positive, transparent, and truthful. When it became clear that it wasn’t going to happen that way, Cruz acted. Short term, it will hurt his campaign. Long term, it demonstrates the type of leadership that this country so desperately needs.
The true test of a leader isn’t how they handle success, but how they handle adversity. In handling Rick Tyler the way that Reagan likely would have, Cruz has proven once again that he has what it takes to be a great President.
The debate about Marco Rubio’s stance on immigration has always centered around his involvement with the Gang of Eight immigration bill in 2013. Today, things are different and many voters are taking that at face value which is their prerogative. However, what’s more disturbing about Rubio is how quickly he absolutely abandoned the promises he made on the campaign trail for the sake of political expediency.
In an election cycle that has every GOP candidate lying about the others, trust has been brought up as an important factor. As voters, we can’t put too much weight on whether they’re lying about each other since they’re all doing it. However, we should put a lot of focus on when the candidates are lying to “We the People.” In this regard, Rubio’s complete disregard of the promises that earned him a spot in the Senate takes the cake.
This wasn’t a subtle shift over time on an unimportant subject. He completely disregarded his campaign promises as a Tea Party candidate and lurched to the left. He thought it would help him in his eventual run for the Presidency. There are enough lies in the world of politics. There’s no need to compound the issue by betraying the promises that got him where he is. What does that say about the promises he’s making today on the campaign trail?
To get elected, Marco Rubio swore against ever supporting amnesty. Once elected, he turned right around a year later and embraced it. Politicians are allowed to change their minds, but this type of rapid-fire promise-breaking should terrify Republican voters.
Perhaps it’s best summed up by this headline that was written while everything was happening in the Senate with Rubio:
Marco Rubio: I Was Against Amnesty Before I Was For It But I'm Against It Again https://t.co/YcEjumi8Q4
They almost had me. As a conservative, I do whatever I can to keep away from the hooks of the Republican Establishment and their incessant drumbeat of rhetoric (often heard on Fox News or seen on the Wall Street Journal) that claims Marco Rubio is the best alternative to Donald Trump.
I almost bought into it. With strong endorsements rolling in, I started to think that he might actually be the best bet. Thankfully, common sense and history kicked in and gave me the clarity I needed to see the truth. “They” are trying to destroy Ted Cruz because “they” fear him more than anyone else.
There are several different entities that are encompassed by the word “they” in this case. All of them have the same goal but different motives:
Donald Trump fears Ted Cruz because he’s the only one who seems mostly unshaken by Trump’s use of Saul Alinski’s Rule #5. He’s not immune as was seen in his loss in South Carolina, but he’s resistant. Also, Cruz is the only other candidate that can win some of the “SEC Primary” states on March 1.
The Republican Establishment fears Ted Cruz because, as Rush Limbaugh put it, he’s the “closest to Ronald Reagan” that we’ve seen in our lifetime. What many seem to have forgotten is that the Republican Establishment hated Reagan and his unabashedly conservative ideas. A Cruz Presidency represents a greater threat to their power than a Democratic President and is much more threatening than a Trump nomination.
The Democrats fear Ted Cruz because he can beat Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders while Trump cannot. They’re attacking Cruz much more than the GOP frontrunner because they want Trump to win the nomination. Cruz… not so much.
Marco Rubio fears Ted Cruz because he’s the guy that can prevent Rubio from getting his brokered convention. Trump can’t stop it. Cruz could. Since Rubio has no mathematical path to the nomination, his best hope is a brokered convention which, of course, would splinter and potentially destroy the Republican Party. It’s a risk he’s willing to take.
Mainstream Media fears Ted Cruz because he can beat their Democratic sweethearts and because he would turn off the Trump coverage moneytrain they’ve been riding for months.
By barely beating Cruz for second place in South Carolina despite having endorsements from the state’s three most powerful members of the Republican Establishment, Rubio’s handlers have been able to start the spin campaign to paint him as the best chance against Trump. This is a powerful argument because many of us are so fearful of a Trump nomination that we’d vote for Arnold Schwarzenegger if we thought he could take Trump down. It’s compelling and an easy sales pitch… except for the fact that it isn’t true.
Rubio has the power to take down Cruz, but against Trump he simply doesn’t have the right mixture of traits and talents to keep Trump from getting enough delegates to win the nomination outright. Here’s what he would need:
Conservative Bona Fides: If Rubio is pushed past Cruz, Trump will start yelling “Gang of Eight! Gang of Eight!” He’ll paint Rubio as an Obama liberal and Rubio will not be able to counter with misdirection the way he’s countered Cruz.
Money: While we can assume that Jeb Bush dropping out will mean a lot more money for Rubio, he’s still far behind Cruz and Trump in the money game. That’s a problem that may be resolved, but until it is we have to assume that he’s still being forced to run lean.
Wins in the South: He won’t win Nevada. He won’t win the majority of the March 1 “SEC Primary” states. He could go through the first 15 primaries and caucuses without a single victory. That’s not a challenger for Trump. That’s a bloodbath if he’s the last alternative standing.
Cruz, on the other hand, has all of the components he needs to beat Donald Trump.
The narrative that the media is attempting to paint is very tricky. Be discerning. Use logic. Look at the facts. Make your decision. If you don’t support Trump, the only candidate that can beat him is Cruz.
