RUTHFULLY YOURS

Hillary Clinton has taken to attacking Bernie Sanders in the wake of polls showing the Vermont socialist is beating her in Iowa and New Hampshire. The fascinating question is how much Bernie’s comeback is related to his message, and how much to the continuing doubts about Mrs. Clinton’s honesty and thus her ability to win in November.

The former Secretary of State wants voters to believe that her private email server scandal is old news, but every month brings new evidence that she put state secrets at risk in order to hide her emails from the public. The slow public release of new emails commanded by a judge, combined with an expanding FBI probe, may be making Democratic voters wonder if they should nominate such an ethically challenged nominee.

The latest cache hit Friday when the State Department released 1,262 more of Mrs. Clinton’s emails. That dump contained another 66 emails deemed classified, which means State has now discovered some 1,340 instances of the nation’s top diplomat handling sensitive material on an unsecure server—including spy satellite information and the name of at least one confidential CIA source. Given that we know Mrs. Clinton’s server was the target of attempted hacks, this is grossly negligent behavior.

One subplot of the Republican presidential-nomination battle has been an increasingly vicious and personal contest between two first-term senators, both of Cuban descent and separated by just a few months in age.

Florida senator Marco Rubio (44) and Texas senator Ted Cruz (45) are both men of superhuman ambition who have put their personal advancement over virtually everything else, including, many would argue, loyalty, wealth, and family. Both were at least thinking about running for president from the time they arrived in the Senate. Their talent and their years-long focus on reaching the White House are reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s, and it’s entirely possible that the only thing standing between each and it, aside from another Clinton, is the other.

“You interview hundreds of candidates and a few stand out, and Rubio and Cruz stood out,” says Chris Chocola, the former president of the Club for Growth, the free-market group that endorsed both Rubio and Cruz in their Senate primaries. “They knew what they believed, they knew why they believed it, and they could articulate those beliefs.”

Their ascent to the top tier of the presidential field, where they have been trading barbs, is, for conservatives, a mark of astonishing success. Cruz is now viewed as the most conservative viable candidate, while Rubio is widely considered the most viable establishment choice (although he still has major competition from Chris Christie, among others). Yet this is a simplistic and somewhat misleading way to look at a prospective match-up between the two. Rubio was born of the tea-party movement and, during his Senate race, drove the liberal Charlie Crist out of the Republican party. That he is now considered a part of the Washington establishment says a lot about the transformation of the Republican party in the Obama era. “It’s a tremendous testament to what conservatives have been able to achieve,” says Mike Needham, the CEO of Heritage Action for America, a leading conservative-activist group.

Take this as yet another sign that Hillary Clinton’s campaign is in deeper trouble than anyone thought possible:

MoveOn is endorsing Bernie Sanders for president after the liberal challenger to Hillary Clinton won 78 percent of votes cast by its membership.

Ilya Sheyman, MoveOn Political Action’s executive director, lauded Sanders for his run-away win and promised to help turn out voters in the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire, where the group has 43,000 members and 30,000 members respectively.

Sheyman explained:

This is a massive vote in favor of Bernie Sanders, showing that grassroots progressives across the country are excited and inspired by his message and track record of standing up to big money and corporate interests to reclaim our democracy for the American people.

That’s bad news for Hillary Clinton, but what makes this even worse is that MoveOn will actively and energetically campaign for Sanders. Sheyman:

Multiple explanations exist for Donald Trump’s popularity, but one stands out above all: his willingness to violate that taboos of Political Correctness and speak the unvarnished truth on such hot button topics as immigration and Islam. Nearly all Americans are angry at being lied to and having to watch themselves as if they lived in Stasi-run East Germany. Who wants to risk ending a career by admitting that some groups are more crime-prone or intelligent than others? Or announcing that men are naturally better suited to combat than women and having this self-evident pronouncement treated as an embarrassing gaffe that requires immediate groveling and begging forgiveness? In a nutshell, Trump is unafraid to speak truth about the overly sensitive, easily offended groups protected by the mendacious “establishment.” Now, at last, millions of potential voters long starved for honesty have a champion.

As Trump refuses to fold, it is inevitable that his rivals (and perhaps the Democratic nominee) will grasp the benefit of similarly embracing this anti-PC view. We can already see hints of this copycat strategy in the new “tough” Jeb Bush commercials.

But while it is all too easy to be anti-PC in the abstract, the proof of a candidate’s seriousness can only be displayed in the specifics. With that in mind, let me propose a five-question test to assess a candidate’s aversion to PC that could, in principle, devastate a political career. Destroying careers is not, however, our aim; rather, the goal is to calibrate the sincerity of those who condemn PC on the cheap. We do not expect perfect frankness; more important is how they hem and haw and run for cover when asked “offensive” questions.

WASHINGTON—South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley accused President Barack Obama Tuesday of falling “far short of his soaring words” while also cautioning her own party not to fall for its own populist rhetoric.

Those twin themes dominated Mrs. Haley’s rebuttal to Mr. Obama’s final State of the Union address, with the Republican governor faulting the president for “the squeeze of an economy too weak to raise income levels” and warning her own party against following the anti-immigration rhetoric that has propelled Donald Trump to the lead in GOP presidential election polls.
More on the State of the Union

“During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices,” she said, without mentioning Mr. Trump or other 2016 candidates by name. “We must resist that temptation.”

Instead, she said Republicans should focus on bringing prosperity back to America. If a Republican is elected president, “taxes would be lower for working families, and we’d put the brakes on runaway spending and debt.”

Mrs. Haley, who has occasionally been mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate, said Republicans share blame with Democrats for the nation’s polarized political culture.

“We need to be honest with each other, and with ourselves: while Democrats in Washington bear much responsibility for the problems facing America today, they do not bear it alone,” she said. “There is more than enough blame to go around.”

The revival of terrorism as a prominent fear is also laying bare divisions between the two political parties over what issues should top the government’s priority list, with Republicans citing national security and Democrats remaining focused on the economy and gun violence.
The differences mark a change from the past two presidential campaigns, in which both parties were most concerned with economic growth.
Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey data show how different the concerns of one party’s primary voters are from the other’s. In December polling, GOP primary voters overwhelmingly said national security and terrorism were the top issue for the federal government to address. Some 58% of GOP voters cited it, compared with only 26% of Democrats.
Democratic primary voters instead named the economy and jobs as the top issue for the government to address, with 33% citing it.
The parties’ differing views of the government’s top priority were reflected in other ways: Republican primary voters were more concerned than were Democrats with being the victim of a terrorist attack, 30% to 23%. Democratic primary voters, by contrast, were more concerned than their GOP counterparts of being a victim of gun violence, 37% to 18%.

The results suggest the violence in San Bernardino, Paris, Charleston and elsewhere left Republicans primary voters seeing an enhanced threat from terrorism from abroad, while Democratic primary voters worry about long-running domestic gun violence.
Another difference surfaced in how to respond to the growth of terrorism and to other world events. Among Democratic primary voters, 66% said the country needs to focus more on solving problems at home and agreed with the statement that “America cannot be the world’s policeman.’’

The FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of private email as secretary of state has expanded to look at whether the possible “intersection” of Clinton Foundation work and State Department business may have violated public corruption laws, three intelligence sources not authorized to speak on the record told Fox News.
This new investigative track is in addition to the focus on classified material found on Clinton’s personal server.
“The agents are investigating the possible intersection of Clinton Foundation donations, the dispensation of State Department contracts and whether regular processes were followed,” one source said.

Clinton, speaking to the Des Moines Register, on Monday pushed back on the details of a second investigative track. According to reporter Jennifer Jacobs, Clinton said Monday she has heard nothing from the FBI.

While her lapdogs in the news media claim Hillary Clinton has changed her negative attitudes about the military and law enforcement, she has once again pandered to minority voters by attacking American police officers by comparing them with ISIS terrorists, according to officials with the National Association of Chiefs of Police. (See videos below.)

The Democrat’s presidential heir apparent Hillary Clinton participated in a Townhall event on Monday for Univision’s afilliated network Fusion where she answered questions about white privilege and terrorism. Hillary Clinton said “white terrorism” and “police violence” are just as big a threat today to blacks and Latinos as are the Islamist terrorist groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Question: “The danger of ISIS is clearly a major threat to American safety, but personally, I know many minorities who are much more concerned with racist attacks at the local level than radical Islamists, so just — question to put it plainly since often, issues of race are tiptoed, do you believe that white terrorism and extremism is as much a threat to some in this country as something like ISIS?”

Clinton’s Answer: “Yes, I believe there are all kinds of underground movements and efforts in our country that try to use violence or assert beliefs that I find often lead to violence,” Clinton said before outright accusing some police officers of being terrorists. I think that when you have police violence that terrorized communities, that doesn’t show the respect that you’re supposed to have from respecting people in your authority, that can feel, also, terrorizing.”

During the 2012 election, Mitt Romney gained a reputation as a man who was too nice to hit Barack Obama hard. The most glaring instance of this reluctance came on September 12, 2012, when the news broke that Benghazi had come under attack. Romney refused to go to the jugular. Later, it was reported that the Romney camp spiked an ad by the RNC attacking Obama on the events of that night. Anything Romney had to say about Obama’s incompetence (or even whereabouts that night) in a debate was effectively neutered. Candy Crowley’s interjection during the second presidential debate was simply the cherry on top.

Romney was too relaxed a candidate to get in the dirt and get bloody. His campaign’s preference for focusing on his policies and personal principles may have been noble, but his refusal to fight rough with Obama left voters with the impression that he was weak.

That impression was reinforced by Romney’s refusal to defend himself against Obama’s attacks. His campaign never really countered Team Chicago’s claim that he had given a woman cancer, nor did it effectively argue against the suggestion that as president he would delight in executing Big Bird live on PBS.

The Obama campaign was unrelenting against Romney. And in all likelihood, Clinton’s campaign against the GOP nominee will be just as ruthless. If Republicans do not learn to counter Democratic criticism — and hard — 2016 may yield the same result as did 2012 and 2008.

At present, there is little indication that the current crop of Republicans has learned the lesson of the past two elections. At last weekend’s Kemp Forum in Columbia, S.C., several GOP candidates were asked about former president Bill Clinton’s past behavior — specifically, about allegations of sexual assault. Alarmingly, their answers were uniformly weak.

As we near the end of the pre-season in this election cycle, voters in the early states are starting to look closely at the candidates for the first time. Over the past few days, I’ve tried to get a sense of what those who are really paying attention are hearing the candidates say. As far as possible, I’ve aimed to avoid the filters through which we political junkies have been following the race for months. So I have spent some time listening to the stump speeches that the major candidates have been delivering in the last couple of weeks in the early states. C-SPAN makes it easy. Most voters don’t attend campaign events and hear complete speeches from the contenders, but in the earliest primary states they can – and do. And these speeches are in any case a good indication of how candidates understand themselves and their message at this stage.

The most striking thing that emerges from listening to these speeches one after another is that the theme of this election year so far for Republicans is the question of the establishment and the public. That’s not surprising. But how candidates are taking up the question did surprise me. The natural way to think about the subject — a kind of generic populist template — is that our governing elite in general and the Republican establishment in particular are awfully strong and are oppressing the public in some way. But that’s not really how most Republican contenders are talking about the issue. More often, at least implicitly, their subject is not the strength but the weakness of the establishment, even if they don’t quite put it that way. All of them describe the hollowing out and decay of America’s elite, its core institutions, and its political leadership. And some of the key differences between the candidates become a little clearer when we see them as differences in how they would approach that serious problem.