RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/06/07/club_for_growth_notches_another_win_137218.html

In baseball, if you get one hit every three times at bat, you’re an All-Star. The odds in politics aren’t much different. But the Club for Growth PAC, the political action committee for the right-leaning free-market advocacy group, is on a bit of a hot streak.

Its most recent win came Tuesday night in Montana, where the group’s favored candidate, State Auditor Matt Rosendale, scored a hard-fought victory in the four-way Republican Senate primary. The Club for Growth PAC, which endorsed Rosendale last July, pumped more than $2 million into the race to help boost Rosendale over former Judge Russ Fagg by a 34 percent to 28 percent margin.

“Not only is Matt Rosendale a staunch fiscal conservative, he is a proven winner who stands an excellent chance of defeating liberal Sen. Jon Tester in the fall,” said Club for Growth President David McIntosh in a statement Tuesday night.

Montana, which President Trump won by 20 percentage points in 2016, is a top target of Republicans this fall. Until recently, however, when Trump ripped Tester on Twitter for statements he made about Dr. Ronnie Jackson, at the time Trump’s embattled nominee for secretary of Veterans Affairs, the race in Montana had largely taken a back seat to Senate battles in West Virginia, Indiana, and Missouri.

The Club for Growth’s success in backing Rosendale comes on the heels of a banner night in last month’s Texas primary runoffs, where three of the four CFG-backed candidates scored wins:

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/06/soros_becomes_the_kiss_of_death_for_his_own_handpicked_da_candidates.html

Is Soros money becoming the kiss of death for candidates who take it? Sure looks like it, based on the miserable poll performance of Soros’s little pawn in the San Diego district attorney’s race.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune:

A political action committee funded by billionaire George Soros that has pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into the campaign of Genevieve Jones-Wright for district attorney canceled all of its planned television advertising Wednesday for the candidate, just six days before voters go to the polls.

The move by the California Justice & Public Safety PAC, confirmed by two local television station managers, is a blow to the Jones-Wright campaign in the run-up to election day. The PAC had been running saturation-level television advertisements for the past several weeks over county airwaves.

The money-yanking is clearly the result of polls showing that Genevieve Jones-Wright, his 30-something handpicked candidate, is failing miserably in the polls against her opponent, Summer Stephan, another leftist who is no prize but doesn’t take Soros money and probably will enforce the law at least some of the time, when there’s no political risk.

A scientific poll conducted by 10News and the San Diego Union-Tribune shows that Stephan has a 45-25 lead over Jones-Wright.

From an uber liberal magazine…this is very instructive because it shows the Dems in breast beating panic mode…rsk

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/05/democrats-are-losing-the-only-fight-that-matters
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/05/democrats-are-losing-the-only-fight-that-matters

Even in an era of historic media fragmentation, Donald Trump dominates our attention universe to the point where he blocks out the sun. Is it any wonder that people don’t have any idea what Democrats stand for?

On the same day this week that President Donald Trump was tweeting about the F.B.I.’s fictional #SPYGATE “scandal” and the special counsel’s “WITCH HUNT” into the Trump campaign’s relationship with Russia—lies that were splashed across the country’s television and mobile screens in short order—Senate Democrats held a photo-op at the most expensive Exxon station on Capitol Hill. Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, was joined by three other suit-wearing Democrats to make the case that Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal would drive up gas prices. It was a definitional middle-class “pocketbook” argument, one that Democrats hope to make part of their 2018 economic message. Schumer, waving a sheaf of paper, stood behind a sign that proclaimed, rather impotently, “Senate Democrats Demand Lower Gas Prices.”

“Senate Democrats look for traction on gas prices,” was the headline of The Hill’s perfunctory write-up of the event. Did you hear anything about it? Most likely you didn’t. Traction, in the Trump era, is a mighty difficult thing to obtain.This is always true for the party out of power, forced to reckon with its ideological cleavages, personality conflicts, and the lack of a singular leader who can compete head-to-head with the bully pulpit of a president. But Trump, our first celebrity president, has made the challenge even more difficult for his foes. We are supposed to be living in a time of historic media fragmentation, when the competition for fickle eyeballs is the chief priority for businesses, media companies, and politicians. Only Trump, an old-school media hound who still cares about things like magazine covers and leathery-faced, 90s-era TV personalities, has figured it out. He dominates our attention universe to the point where he blocks out the sun. It is as depressing as it is remarkable. And it’s no wonder people don’t quite know what Democrats stand for.We inhabit a world of niche interests and platforms and distractions, where everyone is supposedly paying attention to their own thing. Unlike the mass-audience days of I Love Lucy—a show that commanded a remarkable 71 percent of television eyeballs in 1953—today you can happily silo yourself from signals that you don’t care about. Our attention spans are shrinking. Axios reported this week that more than 70 percent of the American population regularly uses another digital device while watching TV. It’s incredibly hard to seize attention in 2018; there’s too much to read and watch, too much to look at. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://amgreatness.com/2018/05/29/why-democrats-depend-upon

The Anti-Defamation League’s map of antisemitic incidents is almost the same as the map of blue states. Liberal Massachusetts, Florida, Pennsylvania, and California are the worst, with up to 400 antisemitic hate crimes. West Virginia, supposedly full of deplorable people, comes in with just two incidents. Idaho, still smeared as a home to white militias, had only five, compared to liberal Connecticut’s 50.

Democrats rely on anti-Jewish voting blocks to win elections. Hispanic immigrants are 30-40 percent antisemitic, three or four times the national average. Blacks are twice the national average, 20-30 percent antisemitic. Our millions of new Muslim immigrants are doubly anti-Semitic, by religion and by the legacy of the Third Reich.

On college campuses, Jew-hatred is everywhere—in course lectures, public programs, hate incidents, and boycotts of Israel. We are not talking about ordinary political discourse. We are talking about claims that Jews are subhuman, rule the world, murder children, that Israel should be a pariah nation, and that Jews should be killed. Anti-Jewish programming is protected by college administrators and paid for with public funds. Millennials have absorbed antisemitic libels in large numbers.

Common antisemitism among the black community is now visible to outsiders, thanks to social media. “Black Woman Destroys White Privilege Myth” is a million-hit YouTube success. It starts out so sensibly. The creator, a small-town Texas Millennial, cheerfully admits black privilege got her into college without the required SAT scores. She forcefully disagrees there is such a thing as white privilege—with one exception:

If you go to work every single day for a 40-hour work week, you are not privileged. If you pay taxes, you are not privileged. You got a mortgage, you got a car payment, you’re not privileged. If you had to apply for your job, you’re not privileged. The real privileged people in our society are the movie makers, the politicians, etc. etc. And all of those people happen to be Jewish. Jewish people have privilege.

I suspect it sounds normal to the black Washington, D.C. council member who posted his own antisemitic Facebook video rant last month about a snowstorm.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/05/bill_kristol_barks_at_the_moon.html

Some #NeverTrumpers won’t quit. Indeed, so chained are they to their hurt pride and delusions, they can’t. Foremost among them is Bill Kristol, former editor of the Weekly Standard.

Speaking at a New Hampshire gathering of businessmen called “Politics and Eggs,” Mr. Kristol asserted that President Trump should be challenged in the 2020 GOP primary. That in and of itself is not a bad idea. Clearing the air between opposing philosophies have value. In this instance, it would come about in two ways. First, it allows the president to expound on his successes and ongoing efforts to MAGA and contrast them with his opponents. On the other side of the coin, as the likes of Jeff Flake, John Kasich, Mitt Romney, or any of the other establishment Republican regulars drone on, they make promises that they either never intend or lack the fortitude to keep. Their schtick is so transparent, so tedious, so yesterday. At least with Trump in the mix, there is great entertainment value when the GOPe try their old boilerplate rhetoric on him face-to-face.

Kristol’s rationale for challenging Trump is from the Far Side. He admits the president’s approval rating is quite high — over 80-percent among Republicans. But Kristol says (hopes) that could change. And anyway, he feels Trump’s success and high approval ratings are only due to good luck. Kristol acknowledges that Trump could actually win the 2020 primary because: “He [Trump] could just get very lucky, that happens in life. People aren’t very good pitchers, but they pitch one very good game.” See, the 2016 election was the one good game Trump had in him. Now he’s spent.

https://pjmedia.com/election/bill-kristol-searches-out-republicans-to-primary-president-trump-in-2020/

Bill Kristol, anti-Trump activist and editor-at-large of The Weekly Standard, set his sights Wednesday on finding a Republican to challenge President Donald Trump in 2020. Kristol attempted to convince New Hampshire activists that primarying a sitting president is possible.

“I have a feeling that we are now entering … a turbulent era, when the character of both parties is up for grabs,” Kristol told activists at Saint Anselm College over breakfast.

The Weekly Standard editor floated five potential #NeverTrump candidates in an interview with BuzzFeed News’s Henry J. Gomez.

Kristol mentioned former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), Defense Secretary James Mattis — all three of whom were on his 2016 wish list — and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. Kristol also praised Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio), whom the Weekly Standard editor visited in Ohio earlier this month. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270260/radical-dems-rising-matthew-vadum

Radical in-your-face left-wing candidates are gaining new electoral momentum in the already radical Democratic Party.

As Townhall’s Matt Vespa opines, far-left candidates have been making “a meal of the establishment, knocking off the more centrist candidates in primaries across the country.”

While Democratic enthusiasm appears to have stalled according to some polling, it was not apparent in [this month’s] primaries. There were historic numbers of Democratic voters turning out in Idaho and Pennsylvania, the latter of which is key in the Left’s road to retaking the House.

May 15 “was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for Democratic moderates,” according to the Washington Post.

The success of very liberal candidates in primaries across four states is causing a new bout of heartburn among party strategists in Washington, who worry about unelectable activists thwarting their drive for the House majority. But it also reflects a broader leftward lurch among Democrats across the country since President Trump took office.

In Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district, Kara Eastman, a social worker who supports “Medicare for All,” unexpectedly picked off former one-term U.S. Rep. Brad Ashford, who had been backed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). Eastman is a walking, talking leftist cliché. She supports hiking taxes, decriminalizing marijuana, and imposing universal background checks on gun purchases.

“I’m tired of hearing Democrats don’t have a backbone, that we don’t stand for anything,” she said in a campaign ad. “That changes now!”

Democrat strategists believe they have an opening in Pennsylvania’s 15th congressional district after the recent resignation of annoying NeverTrumper Rep. Charlie Dent (R) from his seat.

The early Democrat leader in PA-15, local district attorney John Morganelli, was defeated by lawyer Susan Wild, who was backed by EMILY’s List. Morganelli opposes abortion rights and so-called sanctuary cities and said positive things about Trump, which helped to seal his doom.

In Pennsylvania’s 1st congressional district, young Navy veteran Rachel Reddick, was beaten despite an endorsement by EMILY’s List. “Proud progressive” Scott Wallace triumphed over Reddick by attacking her for being a registered Republican up until two years ago. Wallace, the grandson of kooky communist-sympathizer Henry Wallace, one of Franklin Roosevelt’s vice presidents, said in his victory speech, “Together, we can make America sane again.”

Something funny is happening with the much-hyped “blue wave” on the way to the fall midterms. That wave of Democratic candidates that is supposed to sweep away the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives? The one that the press and pundits have been predicting for months? One would almost think the steady narrative of a blue wave is an attempt at psychological warfare by the mainstream media and the Left in hopes of depressing Republican donors and voters into thinking the outcome is a foregone conclusion.

But that narrative is completely detached from reality. The numbers now tell a different story.

Democrats entered 2018 with a double-digit lead in the congressional generic ballot, upwards of 15 points in some polls. Yet somehow in May, their lead in the RealClearPolitics average has shrunk to just four points. In some generic polls, such as the Reuters survey, the Democrats’ lead has disappeared entirely. In fact, in the most recent Reuters’ poll, Republicans are up more than six points generically.

Democrats right now are in a position mirrored almost exactly in May 2014, when they held a one-to-four-point lead on most generic ballots. Remember what happened? Democrats lost 13 seats.

Unmistakably, the dynamics of 2018 are different. President Trump is a volatile and polarizing figure. Moreover, nearly 40 Republican incumbents—including House Speaker Paul Ryan—are retiring. And every race is subject to contingency and local events.

A Tea Party Precedent?
Nevertheless, as we consider the “great and awesome” blue wave in 2018, it’s worth remembering the Tea Party wave of 2010. That year, 85 percent of House incumbents won. Put in perspective, that supposed seismic election was the worst reelection average for House incumbents in the last 40 years. It’s not unusual in most off-year midterms for incumbents to have a 94-98 percent re-election rate. In fact, the average reelection rate for U.S. House incumbents since World War II has been 93 percent.

When President Trump presided over a business roundtable in Cleveland last weekend, it was one of several events he has hosted in the Midwest since Election Day. Trump held a raucous victory rally in Ohio just a few weeks after he won the presidency, and has since made frequent trips to Indiana, Wisconsin, and Michigan: He will visit Elkhart, Indiana on Thursday.

Trump skipped the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last month and instead campaigned in central Michigan.

“I love this state and I love the people of this state,” Trump told the enthusiastic crowd. “You may have heard I was invited to another event tonight, but I’d much rather be in Washington, Michigan than in Washington, D.C. right now, that I can tell you.” (As a lifelong Midwesterner, I have to say that the lifelong Manhattanite knows how to speak to my people.)

The president’s courting of voters in the Heartland is a shrewd political calculation by Team Trump. More than half of the 206 so-called “pivot” counties—areas that twice voted for Obama then switched to Trump in 2016—are located in the Midwest, as are four “pivot” states: Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa. Hillary Clinton won Minnesota by fewer than 50,000 votes; Barack Obama won it by 225,000 votes in 2012.

Over the past decade, Midwestern states have been bleeding blue votes and politicians. With the exception of Minnesota, every single Midwestern state has a Republican governor (even my home state, the basket case Illinois) and Republicans control state houses throughout the Midwest except for Illinois. This once-reliably Democratic region is turning red faster than Elon Musk’s investors and Trump is only part of the reason why.

https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/patrick-morrisey-wins-west-virginia-gop-senate-primary

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey has won the Republican nomination to take on Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin III in November in what’s likely to be one of the most closely watched races in the country.

He took 35 percent of the vote in a six-way GOP primary field, besting Rep. Evan Jenkins and former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship who finished with 29 percent and 20 percent, respectively.

The defeat of Blankenship, a former convict, is a win for national Republicans who spent upward of a million dollars attacking him.