RUTHFULLY YOURS

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are the same candidate. They’re both leftist radicals with degrees in political science who held back some of their more radical ideas to pursue political office. In the two years that they served together in the Senate, they voted the same way 93 percent of the time.

They’re also political opportunists. Bernie Sanders, no less than Hillary, reinvented his political views, including his allegiance to Socialism, numerous times over the years. Sanders moderated his positions on everything from gun control to Israel when it helped his political career. He’s now modifying plenty of positions all over again in order to appeal to new and different voters.

Bernie Sanders is no more authentic than Hillary Clinton and she is no less radical than he is. Both her attempts to appear mainstream and his efforts to seem radical are political poses that they deploy to bring in money and support from major blocs within the Democratic Party. Underneath the theater, Hillary Clinton is a longtime Alinsky fan while Bernie Sanders stumbles trying to update his views with the current obsessions of the radical left on everything from immigration to gun control to race.

The real struggle isn’t over beliefs, but over tactics.

While Hillary Clinton and her allies are attacking Bernie Sanders over his radical backing for Single Payer, in 1993, she told her husband that “managed competition“ was a “crock” and that “single-payer” was necessary. Hillary had proposed her own version of “Medicare for All” and when asked if it would be a backdoor for single payer, said, “What are we afraid of? Let’s see where the competition leads us.”

Here’s How He Would Defend America Against Threats from the Middle East, Russia and China, According to His Chief National Security Advisor Dr. Victoria Coates

You might not think that the national security and foreign policy advisor for one of the leading 2016 presidential candidates would have the pedigree of a University of Pennsylvania art history Ph.D. specializing in Italian renaissance studies, and a former consulting curator title at the Cleveland Museum of Art. But then you haven’t met Dr. Victoria Coates, the self-described Renaissance woman and the chief articulator and defender of Cruz’s Jeane Kirkpatrick-inspired philosophy that has vexed many across the Republican political spectrum to date.
During an in-depth interview with Dr. Coates on her new book, David’s Sling: A History of Democracy in Ten Works of Art, we had the chance to pick the brain of Cruz’s national security consigliere on topics including:

The principles that underlie the “Cruz Doctrine”
Dr. Coates’ challenge to Cruz’s critics in the GOP foreign policy Establishment
What “winning” in the Middle East would look like for America under a President Cruz
The single greatest underestimated or ignored threat to America’s national interest

Ben Weingarten: Who are some of the individuals, or what are some of the works that have had the greatest influence on your worldview as it relates to foreign policy and national security, and by extension the worldview of Senator Cruz?

Reagan and Kirkpatrick (Wikipedia)
Dr. Victoria Coates: Well certainly in terms of David’s Sling, it’s in many ways a cautionary tale about how one chooses to understand the development of democracy, and how it can be spread. I mean because certainly this tells us it is a trial-and-error process, it takes a long time and it can’t be taken for granted. So certainly that’s how it has informed my worldview. For Senator Cruz, I know he looks very much for models of success, which sounds very simple, but it’s amazing to me how many people will look at failed models and sort of “try, try again,” using tactics that have not been particularly successful. So he looks at a President like Ronald Reagan, which is very popular to do, but it’s very hard to actually imitate the Reagan model because you have to make a number of very difficult choices, you have to set your priorities clearly, and you have to just stay focused on them like a laser. And so as he looks at our challenges today, he would see Reagans’ and [Jeane] Kirkpatricks’ and Fred Iklés’ interactions with the Soviet Union as a great model: That you don’t pretend that you can domesticate them; you don’t pretend that they are suddenly going to become your friend; but rather that they are a terrible threat that has to be fought every time they poke their heads up. And that does not mean necessarily invading, but it does mean being extremely mindful of America’s interests.
“[Senator Cruz] would see Reagans’ and [Jeane] Kirkpatricks’ and Fred Iklés’ interactions with the Soviet Union as a great model”
Ben Weingarten: Do you view Islamic supremacism as the analogue — although obviously differing in some ways — to the ideology and forces of the Soviet Union?
Dr. Victoria Coates: Certainly in terms of being an existential threat, it was interesting over Christmas the [Iranian] Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini came out with a little-noticed statement about how he felt Iran was locked in a “civilizational struggle” with the West. Now, I’m not in the business of destroying anybody else’s civilization, but I am in the business of protecting my own. And when somebody says they’re out to destroy it, I think we should probably pay some attention. And so, it’s not as you said, directly analogous to Soviet totalitarianism, but it could only be a matter of time. And so I think we need to organize the way we think about this in terms of protecting and celebrating both our culture, our allies because I think we are a tremendously powerful force for good around the world, and so that’s something I’d like to perpetuate.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) today recalled “the good old days” when Donald Trump “did a fundraiser or two for me.”

Reid was asked outside a closed policy luncheon on Capitol Hill today about Trump’s compliments.

“I’ve always had a good relationship with Nancy Pelosi. I’ve never had a problem. Reid will be gone,” Trump told MSNBC yesterday, in reference to the Nevada senator’s impending retirement. “I always had a decent relationship with Reid, although lately, obviosuly, I haven’t been dealing with him so he’ll actually use my name as the ultimate — you know, as the ultimate of the billionaires in terms of, you know, people you don’t want.”

“But I always had a great relationship with Harry Reid,” Trump continued. “And frankly, if I weren’t running for office I would be able to deal with her or Reid or anybody. But I think I’d be able to get along very well with Nancy Pelosi and just about everybody. Hey, look, I think I’ll be able to get along well with Chuck Schumer. I was always very good with Schumer. I was close to Schumer in many ways.”

Since Trump began his presidential run, Reid has slammed many of the real-estate mogul’s statements on topics like immigration and Muslims from the Senate floor.

Today, Reid noted, “We’ve gotten along fine.”

Congressman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) said on The Hugh Hewitt Show Monday that the Select Committee on Benghazi will be issuing a report “sooner rather than later” and predicted that the part of the report that people will find “the most eye-opening” deals with how military assets were positioned on the night of the attacks, and why they sat idle “for hours and hours and hours.”

The investigation has been organized around what Chairman Gowdy calls the “three tranches”: What happened before, during, and after the Benghazi attacks.

Why was security at the Benghazi diplomatic and CIA compounds inadequate? Why did the U.S. military fail to respond? And why did the administration initially describe the attack as a spontaneous demonstration over a YouTube video, rather than a pre-planned terrorist attack?

Gowdy told Hewitt that people will be most surprised by what the committee discovered regarding what happened during the attacks, and noted that those findings were somehow missed by the other committees. Asked if he had yet seen “13 Hours,” the movie about Benghazi currently in theaters, Gowdy answered that he had not.

“We have one more book author to interview, and I realize I’m old-fashioned, and a lot of people could see the movie and still do a fair job of questioning one of the book authors. But it is important to me that I have his testimony in mind as opposed to what I may have seen in a movie theater,” Gowdy explained.

Hillary Clinton’s email excuses fell apart under public scrutiny many months ago, but that hasn’t stopped her from repeating the same failed excuses over and over again on the campaign trail. When asked to explain her ever-changing email story during an editorial board interview with the Quad-City Times in Iowa yesterday, she floundered badly.

One of the board members reminded her that last summer, she described her decision to use a private, insecure email system while secretary of state as “an error in judgment,” but on Monday during CNN’s town hall, she refused to call her home-brew server an “error in judgment” because [as she claims] she did nothing wrong.

Hillary’s answer was pretty stunning: “Well — you know — look, I just think it was a mistake because it’s caused all this uproar and commotion.”

In other words, the reason her unique email arrangement was a mistake is not that she mishandled classified information (making it easier to hack into, possibly even exposing intelligence assets on the ground) but because it got her in trouble.

Sarah Palin rallied for Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) in his 2014 quest for Congress.

Now, the freshman senator has pledged to do everything he can to ensure that Palin’s pick for the GOP presidential nomination is defeated.

Sasse is campaigning with both of his upper chamber colleagues, Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), in the hope that one of them can defeat The Donald.

The Nebraska senator told MSNBC this morning that he’s campaigning against Trump because “I’m pro-Constitution and I want to make America great again.”

“And the best way to do that is by uniting around the things that bring us together and that’s not one guy’s ego, that’s a system of laws and limited government,” Sasse said. “So if being pro-Constitution makes me anti-Mr. Trump, I think that’s his problem.”

“The guy talks constantly about how he’ll get everything done alone. He said recently that if he’s elected president he’ll be able to do whatever he wants. That’s pretty much what the American Revolution was about. We already have one party in this country that’s gone post-constitutional. We don’t need another one.”