RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-politically-obsessed-and-the-rest-of-us-1535564601

The Tuesday winners in Florida’s gubernatorial primary elections will offer Sunshine State voters a stark philosophical choice. Conservative Rep. Ron DeSantis (R) will face Sandernista Andrew Gillum, the mayor of Tallahassee.

But Floridians and voters elsewhere may not have much interest in such choices. Pollster Scott Rasmussen writes today:

For many obsessed with politics, the upcoming midterm elections are perceived as a fight between good and evil that will determine the fate of the nation… Most Americans (54%) don’t fit into that narrative. Just 27% Strongly Disapprove of the president and believe things would be better if Hillary Clinton had been elected. On the other side, 19% Strongly Approve of the president and believe things would be worse if Hillary Clinton was living in the White House today. The rest have more mixed views.

This eight-point advantage among committed voters is the reason that Democrats are expected to do well in the midterm elections this November. In the House of Representatives, likely outcomes range from Democrats falling just short of winning control to a Big Blue Wave earning a significant majority.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/martha-mcsally-easily-bests-arpaio-and-ward-in-arizona-senate-primary/

Representative Martha McSally (R., Ariz.) handily beat state senator Kelli Ward and former Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio with more than 50 percent of the vote in the Arizona Republican Senate primary on Tuesday night.

McSally, a former Air Force colonel, was widely considered the establishment favorite and Republicans’ best chance for victory in the upcoming general election.

The candidacies of Arpaio, the outspoken anti-immigration activist pardoned by President Trump earlier this year, and Ward, who courted controversy by appearing on conspiracy-mongering Internet programs such as Alex Jones’s Infowars, represented a swing toward the far-right populism of the Trump era.

In an effort to avoid the selection of a candidate considered toxic among the general electorate, out-of-state GOP groups donated heavily to McSally’s campaign. DefendArizona, a PAC established by establishment Republicans specifically to prevent a populist insurgency, spent more than $4 million to ensure her victory.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2018/08/28/arizona-us-senate-primary-election-results-2018-ward-arpaio-mcsally-sinema-abboud/1047696002/

U.S. Rep. Martha McSally, a two-term congresswoman from Tucson, defeated her Republican rivals, former state Sen. Kelli Ward of Lake Havasu City and former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Fountain Hills, according to unofficial results from the Secretary of State.

Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, who has served three terms and is from Phoenix, also defeated her rival, Deedra Abboud, a progressive activist and attorney from Scottsdale.

The Associated Press called the races for McSally and Sinema.

President Donald Trump, whose presence has loomed over the Senate race, congratulated McSally in a late-night tweet while bashing U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Arizona, who announced his retirement last fall.

“Martha McSally, running in the Arizona Primary for U.S. Senate, was endorsed by rejected Senator Jeff Flake….and turned it down — a first! Now Martha, a great U.S. Military fighter jet pilot and highly respected member of Congress,WINS BIG. Congratulations, and on to November!”

With McSally and Sinema the apparent nominees, Arizona voters are on track to elect their first woman senator.

Either party has a good chance of winning, analysts say, worrying Republicans while giving Democrats credible hope of gaining a statewide foothold. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/1968-democratic-convention-riots-modern-party-established/

The riots that night set a political pattern that Democrats are still following today.

Fifty years ago tonight, a great American political party was murdered by its own children and closest friends.

The party in question was the Democratic party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and JFK, which perished during the riots in Grant Park, Chicago, on the night of Aug. 28, 1968, in the midst of the party’s national convention.

Its children in this case were the rioters from the anti–Vietnam War Left. After killing off the traditional liberal Democratic party they despised, they would go on to take over the corpse and make it the host of America’s radical Left, from Jerry Brown to Bernie Sanders — with George McGovern, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama as their front men.

The friends who joined in the kill were the mainstream media. Their coverage of the riots, that night and later, would make the SDS demonstrators and their violent cohorts — the predecessors of today’s antifa — into martyrs of “police brutality” and Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley’s “Gestapo tactics,” as one Democratic senator from Connecticut put it in a speech to the convention that night, when they had in fact been — like today’s antifa — the deliberate instigators of mayhem and bloodshed. Starting that night the New York Times, the Washington Post, and ABC and CBS News would become the enablers of America’s radical Left, even at its most violent — and in the process cut themselves off from the millions of ordinary working Americans who had made the Democratic party their political home.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/crusade-and-jihad-review-conquest-and-conquerors-1535311504

JACKSONVILLE, Fla.—For months after Republican Adam Putnam entered the Florida gubernatorial race, he seemed almost unbeatable. He had a record of government experience and political success, a trove of endorsements, robust fundraising and a solid lead in most polls over his principal rival, GOP Rep. Ron DeSantis.

Then Mr. DeSantis, a vocal defender of President Trump, picked up the president’s endorsement in June, touted it in a new ad, and appeared with Mr. Trump at a campaign rally in Tampa. Mr. DeSantis shot to the lead in the polls.

“The fallout from the president’s visit to Florida was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen,” said Mr. Putnam, the state agriculture commissioner, who has worked ever since to catch up in advance of Florida’s Aug. 28 primary election.

After more than two decades of tension within the GOP between a restive base and its traditional establishment, Trumpism, the archetypal grass-roots movement, is winning.

With the 2018 primaries about to end, all but two of the 37 Republicans Mr. Trump has endorsed for House, Senate and governor during their primary campaigns have won. Mr. Trump has abandoned or undercut the party’s traditional commitment to free trade, fiscal conservatism and a hawkish foreign policy.

Mr. Trump’s most vocal GOP critics in elective office have been defeated in primaries, announced their retirement or gone quiet. No critic was more forceful than Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who died Saturday.

House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, once a rising star of the party and free-market conservatism, is retiring. Of the 33 House and Senate Republicans quitting Capitol Hill in 2018—not including those running for higher office—just two supported Mr. Trump in 2016 before he became the presumptive nominee. At least five of them didn’t endorse Mr. Trump after he won the nomination.

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/the-progressive-twittersphere-turns-against-socialist-it-girl/

Occasionally I like to take a dive in the deep end of progressive lunacy. That’s when I click over… not to Slate… not even to Salon… but to Jezebel.

The outrage du jour: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted something nice about John McCain after he died on Saturday.

Can you imagine?

From the headline, you might guess that you’re about to read a fair-minded examination of the unhinged response to Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet. It reads, “These 3,600 Comments Are None Too Pleased With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s John McCain Tweet.”

But of course this is Jezebel, so there’s going to be nothing fair-minded about it at all. Or even simply, uh, minded.

So what did AOC tweet to raise such a stink? Just that “John McCain’s legacy represents an unparalleled example of human decency and American service. As an intern, I learned a lot about the power of humanity in government through his deep friendship with Sen. Kennedy. He meant so much, to so many. My prayers are with his family.” It’s the kind of generic condolence sent by any decent human being, and it’s the first sign I’ve seen that the New York socialist might actually be one.

But that’s not good enough for Jezebel or 3,600 Twitter jerks. Although to be fair, the first bit of Whitney Kimball’s Jezebel tract tried really hard to at least appear even-handed. She wrote:

There’s a heaping pile of “wtfs” and trash GIFs in here, but the intermittent critiques mainly pinpoint her choice to praise McCain’s political record rather than offering a simple condolence. “I still support you, and I’m sure most of the people criticizing you also do as well, but it is disappointing for you to lay praise on such an awful man. You could have just sympathized for his family, said nothing etc.,” one follower tweeted. Others accuse her of pandering and drifting from her own hardline principles, while defenders and conservatives jumped in to attack the critics for vitriol.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/leah-vukmir-wisconsin-republican-senate-candidate-underdog/

https://leahvukmir.com/-Leah Vukmir is a nurse, military mom, and conservative with a proven record of reform.

Leah Vukmir just survived one of the toughest GOP primaries of the cycle. Now, she’s aiming to upset incumbent Democratic senator Tammy Baldwin in November.

Don’t count Leah Vukmir out yet.

While many political observers have written off the U.S. Senate race in Wisconsin as unwinnable for the GOP, Vukmir, a Republican state senator, has already pulled off a big victory in a tight primary earlier this month — and she intends to give incumbent Democrat Tammy Baldwin a real challenge between now and November.

Vukmir, a Wisconsin state senator since 2010, has already weathered one of the toughest Republican primaries this cycle, defeating Marine Corps veteran Kevin Nicholson for the GOP nod last Tuesday.

President Trump, who eked out a marginal victory in Wisconsin in November 2016, declined to endorse either of the primary candidates. That left Nicholson — a businessman and former Democrat who billed himself as a political outsider in the mold of Trump — to build the core of his support from conservative groups outside the state. Heavy hitters such as the Club for Growth, FreedomWorks, and Tea Party Patriots backed him enthusiastically, and his fundraising numbers showed it.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/26/trump-approva

In one survey mostly conducted before those developments, 46 percent of American voters approved of Trump’s job performance.
In an additional survey conducted entirely afterward, 44 percent approved, a decline that fell within the margin of error.

Felony convictions and guilty pleas by two close associates had little initial effect on President Donald Trump’s political standing, and Republicans remain in an uphill fight to keep control of Congress.

Those are the findings of new NBC News/Wall Street Journal polls, conducted both before and after bombshell legal developments in the federal investigations of Trump and his campaign. In one survey mostly conducted before those developments, 46 percent of American voters approved of Trump’s job performance; in an additional survey conducted entirely afterward, 44 percent approved, a decline that fell within the margin of error.

At the same time, Democrats held an 8 percentage point national lead over Republicans in the race for the House. Their 50 percent to 42 percent advantage puts Trump’s political adversaries in a promising position to gain the 23 seats they need for a House majority approaching the final two months of the mid-term election campaign.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/08/26/th

He has a firm handshake and a confident smile. He is already planning his congressional run with his staff and advisors, but for now he will have to do with being the student government president and then a local politician. He is well versed in the conventional platitudes of political rhetoric, but also has an uncanny ability to tell you exactly what you want to hear. You can never really tell who he is or what he believes, but you’re still going to end up voting for him. After all, he is “the candidate.”

Growing up on a steady diet of “The West Wing” and Fox News, the candidate spent years perfecting his political persona. By the time he reached college, he had developed a false sense of modesty to mask his otherwise off-putting unbridled ambition. He’ll skillfully deflect questions about his political aspirations and will always deny that he wants to run for office. He’ll explain that politics is a dirty business that requires tremendous levels of personal sacrifice. Why would he put himself through all of that if he didn’t have to? But… of course… he has to. It’s his duty to work in public service—after all, he’s the only person who can fix all of the problems that we have. So, can he count on your vote?

Much to the candidate’s chagrin, there is an age requirement to run for national office. And so, he settles in for his runs at student and local government. Realizing that conservatives are social pariahs on campus, he cultivates his image as a well-meaning pragmatic practitioner who won’t drag ideology into his decision making. He works hard to solve the practical problems that affect average students on a day-to-day basis and he runs one hell of a ground game on campus. And because of this, everyone knows him. And though many know that he’s a conservative, he doesn’t make it central to his identity. Instead, he makes it easy for liberals to excuse away his political affiliation. “Oh, he’s from a small town in a rural state… he’ll come around eventually.” “Oh, he means well and he is so devoted to his religion… besides, look at his dreamy eyes.”