GARDNERVILLE, Nev. (AP) — In a western battleground state that could decide which party controls the U.S. Senate, Republican Adam Laxalt has early on targeted those who feel angered and afraid, telling them the stakes of next year’s race against Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto are no less than existential.
From rural towns to Las Vegas, people he’s met campaigning ask: “What in the world has happened to this country? And so fast,” he said Sunday in Gardnerville, near where cattle lined the highway. “We have a role to play in saving the whole country with this race.”
Since launching his campaign with a good-versus-evil, “Star Wars”-themed ad titled “The Good Guys,” Laxalt has railed against Democrats and an unholy trinity he says is working in parallel to “radically transform” the United States — the media, Hollywood and Big Tech.
The high stakes messaging mirrors early campaigns in rust belt battlegrounds like Ohio,Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and hints at a national Republican strategy focused on drawing stark contrasts with Democrats on cultural issues.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/10/virginias-hated-dominion-energy-monopoly-secretly-daniel-greenfield/
The Virginia energy monopoly has been accused of using its lobbyists to run a shadow government. It’s unique in that it’s widely hated not only by conservatives, but by leftists. Conservatives have warned that its ‘greeniness’ will cause massive blackouts while leftists hate it for the usual environmentalist reasons. The last time Terry McAuliffe was booed by leftists on his way out for his ties to Dominion Energy.
It was bad enough that the Washington Post ran an op-ed accusing Terry McAuliffe of betraying Virginia.
Dominion Energy was supposed to stay out of the governor’s race. But considering McAuliffe’s history, what were the odds of that?
McAuliffe has said from the outset of the 2021 race that he would not accept Dominion contributions, a pledge he also made during his unsuccessful 2009 gubernatorial run.
During his successful 2013 bid, though, Dominion donated $75,000 to McAuliffe’s campaign and another $50,000 to his inaugural committee.
Hala Ayala, the Democratic nominee for Virginia lieutenant governor, also swore off Dominion support this year, but later accepted six-figure sums from the company. “People change their minds all the time,” she said of the shift.
The money is in.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/10/16/2022_the_year_of_the_maga_outsiders_146575.html
With Donald Trump out of office, Democrats and their media allies posit that the America First movement is waning. The stellar abundance of proud outsider candidates running for office in 2022 dispels that notion. Like Trump himself, these new outsiders come from beyond the world of politics. They bring the lessons and vigor of careers in the military and business to the world of politics.
Arizona
In the race to replace Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, one Republican challenger stands out: Blake Masters. The successful COO of Thiel Capital, Masters takes a clear-eyed stance on migration and sovereignty. He vows to oppose all amnesty efforts for illegal aliens, and supports hiring even more Border Patrol agents even as President Biden tries to punish federal employees who are just doing their jobs.
Masters doesn’t shy away from discussing the clear possibility of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, pointing out that a combination of factors, from COVID-related lockdown measures to direct interference by Big Tech CEOs played a role in determining the outcome. On this topic in particular, Masters contrasts sharply with the current Republican frontrunner, Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who repeatedly insisted that there was no voter fraud in Arizona in 2020.
Despite having never run for office before, Masters raised over $1 million in the third quarter of 2021, far more than any of his competitors. Brnovich, by contrast, raised around $600,000. This advantage will be aided by the $10 million Saving Arizona PAC, supported by his mentor Peter Thiel, the only Silicon Valley mogul brave enough to openly support the America First movement. Come next autumn, only Masters will command the resources to successful challenge Mark Kelly’s massive financial operation.
Ohio
With the retirement of Sen. Rob Portman, the Buckeye State has a chance to finally elect a true America First populist nationalist. Within a crowded GOP primary field, outsider J.D. Vance is the candidate most clearly espousing working-class values.
Vance has also never run for office before, but his seminal autobiography, “Hillbilly Elegy,” perfectly captured the travails of the declining working class in Appalachia and the Rust Belt. Though non-political, this book exposed the trauma inflicted upon Americans who once formed the backbone of U.S. industrial might. Vance focused on the communities hollowed out by the offshoring of jobs, the rise of the welfare state, and the plague of opioids and other drugs pouring through porous borders.
Like Blake Masters, Vance is supported in his Senate bid by Peter Thiel. Other prominent voices on the right have recognized Vance’s power, including Tucker Carlson and Turning Point Action, the 501(c)(4) arm of Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, the largest and most influential conservative student group in the country.
Pennsylvania
The MAGA movement finds widespread support among military veterans. Among these heroes is decorated U.S. Army combat veteran Sean Parnell, who came on the radar of populists during his near-upset of Democratic Rep. Conor Lamb in 2020. Despite narrowly losing, Parnell proved his mettle to Trump supporters and delivered a rousing speech to the 2020 Republican National Convention.
Now, he’s running for the U.S. Senate seat of retiring incumbent Pat Toomey. Parnell (pictured) naturally prioritizes our military and our veterans in his campaign platform. But also stands for election integrity and border security.
Armed with a Trump endorsement, he is the favorite to win the nomination. Polling overwhelmingly indicates that Parnell has the strongest chance of keeping the seat red as the only Republican who would beat the top two candidates for the Democratic nomination: Conor Lamb and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman.
Washington state
Another military veteran outsider candidate is former Green Beret Joe Kent, in the state’s 3rd Congressional District. Kent is challenging establishment Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler, one of the 10 Republicans in the House to vote in favor of the second sham impeachment of President Trump. Not only did she support the Democrats’ last-ditch witch hunt against an outgoing president, but she also actively bad-mouthed Trump, repeating Democrats’ claims that he supported the breaching of the Capitol.
Joe Kent intrinsically understands the failures of the entrenched political establishment: His wife, Shannon, was killed by ISIS fighters in Syria in January of 2019, roughly one month after President Trump initially ordered the withdrawal of American forces from the region. Kent says that his wife’s death was directly the result of the establishment defying Trump’s orders and delaying the withdrawal in pursuit of their interventionist agenda.
He, too, has earned a Trump’s endorsement.
The odds favor a Republican wave in 2022. But this upcoming election is not merely about defeating the radical Democrats and stopping Joe Biden’s dreadful agenda. This plebiscite will also determine whether the GOP evolves into an America First party for the middle class, energized by populist nationalism. These four outsider candidates embrace their vital roles in that transformation.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/575201-yang-says-he-has-left-democratic-party
Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang announced his departure from the Democratic Party today, describing the experience as “strangely emotional.”
Yang announced in a statement on his website that he was opting to change his registration to become an independent voter.
“Breaking up with the Democratic Party feels like the right thing to do because I believe I can have a greater impact this way,” Yang said.
Yang also acknowledged his experiences with thousands of Democrats during his previous presidential and mayoral bids.
“At first, many didn’t know what to make of the odd Asian candidate talking about giving everyone money. But over time I established deep relationships with some of the local leaders who have worked in party politics for years,” he said of the experience.
Yang added that he was “confident that no longer being a Democrat is the right thing.”
https://spectatorworld.com/topic/terry-mcauliffe-faith-experts/
Terry McAuliffe, Virginia’s former governor and Democratic power broker, is seeking to return to his old job in 2021. Polls show him narrowly ahead of his Republican opponent, Glenn Youngkin, by a one- to four-point margin.
That is by no means a safe distance for McAuliffe in a state that is widely understood to reflect national sentiment. Virginia’s 2021 gubernatorial race, one year ahead of the congressional midterms, will be the first major contest held in the blazing light of Biden’s constitutional bonfire.
Many Americans believe that the government is absconding with their rights and liberties, and high on the list of stolen articles is their right to have some say in the education of their children. School boards in almost every state have been visited by throngs of citizens outraged over the imposition of curricula infused with the 1619 Project, critical race theory, the diversity-equity-inclusion agenda and other approaches that characterize the country as systemically racist. Many of those parents are also unhappy over their schools’ embrace of transgenderism and aggressive mask mandates.
Virginia has been no exception. Fairfax and Loudoun county school districts are frontline battlegrounds in the fight over curricula. Videos of parent rebellions and the heavy-handed responses of school boards have racked up millions of hits. Fairfax and Loudoun are adjacent in the metropolitan DC area. They are part of must-win Northern Virginia if McAuliffe is to prevail over Youngkin.
All of which makes McAuliffe’s remarks during a gubernatorial debate in Fairfax County on Tuesday a wonder to behold. He declared, ‘I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach’. He gave this answer in response to a question about how state and local school districts should respond to parental concerns about transgender policy.
McAuliffe swaddled his anti-parent declaration in soothing assurances: ‘Locals [meaning school boards] have an input on such an important issue.’ ‘I want every child in Virginia to get a quality education.’ ‘No matter the color of your skin or who you love, I believe you should get a great quality education.’
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/rino-studies-lloyd-billingsley/
With aid from the postal service, illegal voters, and an audit-proof print-your-own-ballot scheme, Gavin Newsom remains at the helm in California. This outcome invites a look back at 2003, when Californians succeeded in replacing a Democrat governor, and what that might mean going forward.
Under Gray Davis, a former assemblyman and state controller, bands were adopting names such as “The Rolling Blackouts.” On October 7, 2003, 55.4 percent of Californians opted to remove Davis and replace him with actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. With 48.58 percent of the vote, he prevailed over more than 100 candidates, including actor Gary Coleman, Arianna Huffington, and pornographer Larry Flint.
The triumphant Schwarzenegger posed with a broom and promised to clean house. He declared war on government employee unions and promised to “blow up the boxes”—the maze of boards and commissions that serve as soft landing spots for washed-up politicians. For the “Governator,” it was just another acting job.
The star of Conan the Barbarian, The Terminator, and Kindergarten Cop quickly abandoned reform and became a strategic ally of left-wing Democrats. Like Harry Tasker’s terrorist foes in True Lies, they were “all bad.”
After Bay Area voters booted State Senator Carole Migden, known for verbally abusing her own staff, Schwarzenegger appointed the Democrat to the waste-management board at $132,000 a year. The Governator, a self-described fiscal conservative, was also a pal of Democrat insider Robert Klein, the wealthy real-estate developer who created the California Housing Finance Agency (CHFA) in 1973. Klein was the backer of the 2004 Proposition 71, which sought $3 billion for embryonic stem cell research.
https://freebeacon.com/columns/fall-guys/
President Joe Biden practically begged a group of moderate Democrats visiting him in the Oval Office Wednesday to say how much money they are willing to spend on the massive “Build Back Better” reconciliation bill making its way through Congress. According to Politico‘s Playbook, he didn’t get an answer.
The 11 moderates, including Senator Joe Manchin and congresswoman Stephanie Murphy, insisted that Democrats agree first on how much revenue they will raise in taxes before settling on a price tag on a bill that would transform energy, health care, higher education, pre-K, and paid leave. A disappointed Biden assigned the moderates homework: Come up with something that will stop Progressive House members from killing the separate, $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package that already has passed the Senate and is scheduled for a September 27 House vote.
Best of luck. In another meeting Wednesday, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, who heads the Congressional Progressive Caucus, pulled a Wendy Sherman and broke into tears while pleading that the reconciliation bill include an immigration amnesty (the Senate parliamentarian has said it can’t). Jayapal urged Biden to delay Monday’s vote or be prepared for Progressives to nix the infrastructure deal. Biden didn’t give in, but he did leave open the possibility that the vote won’t take place on September 27 as planned.
Yet any postponement would create new problems for the White House. House moderates have pledged to sink the reconciliation bill if they don’t get to vote for infrastructure first. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi can afford to lose only three votes. And the Senate is tied, with Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema still cagey about what they want to do. And oh, by the way, Congress needs to fund the government before September 30 and raise the debt ceiling before mid-October. Is your head hurting yet?
Democrats have run smack into political reality, and it isn’t pretty. They spent months convincing themselves that a presidential election decided by 42,000 votes in three states, a tied Senate, and a 220-212 House (with 3 vacancies) is the same as FDR’s and LBJ’s supermajorities. Now they are just figuring out that the coalition that put them into office doesn’t agree on much of anything besides the idea that Donald Trump shouldn’t be in the White House.
Now the autumn of 2021 is turning into a reckoning for a Democratic Party that wanted to leverage a squeaker election into fundamental change. Like their predecessors in 1993 and in 2009, frontline House Democrats have to decide whether supporting a liberal agenda is worse for their careers than denying a president of their own party a legislative win. Either way, they lose.
Chance, guile, and missteps put the Democrats in this position. They hardly could believe their luck when Trump’s sour grapes cost the GOP two winnable seats in Georgia and handed Vice President Harris the tie-breaking vote in the Senate. What they forgot was that full control of government is a mixed blessing: Your partisans expect the sun, moon, and stars, while independents have no one else to blame when things go wrong. A Republican Senate might have given Biden a foil, and a reason to govern as the centrist he pretended to be during the campaign. Instead, he has no wiggle room. Thanks, Trump.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/nancy-pelosi-goes-for-broke-house-spending-bill-democrats-senators-joe-manchin-kyrsten-sinema-11632690894?mod=opinion_lead_pos3
Can Nancy Pelosi bull-rush her few House moderates and Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema ? That seems to be her strategy this week as she prepares to jam a $3.5 trillion (really $5 trillion) tax and spending bill through Congress.
Mr. Manchin recently wrote in our pages that he favors a “strategic pause” on the spending bill to assess its economic impact and take more time to debate specific policies. Sounds sensible. But Speaker Pelosi doesn’t do pauses, especially in what she views as her legacy project to turn the U.S. into a European entitlement state.
She keeps moving on the spending bill she calls “transformative” to appease her left flank. The Budget Committee marked it up this weekend. She’s hoping this movement will be enough to pass the Senate infrastructure bill through the House this week. Her expectation is that passing that bill will be enough to buy off the swing-district Democrats to sign up for her entitlement project. These Democrats haven’t shown any backbone to date, so it’s a reasonable bet.
The bigger imponderable is whether she and President Biden can bludgeon hesitant Senators into submission. Mrs. Pelosi promised her caucus any bill will be pre-negotiated with the Senate before a vote. But she may have to break that pledge, and many House Democrats have already taken votes in committee that could end their political careers in 2022.
For Mrs. Pelosi, legislative success on her terms is all that matters. The party’s fate in 2022 is incidental, since she’s likely to retire and once entitlements are in place she figures Republicans will lack the fortitude to repeal them. The Speaker will keep marching even if it breaks her own majority.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/09/democrats-cant-hide-their-israel-problem/#slide-1
Stripping funding for Iron Dome only makes sense if the goal is to help Hamas become more efficient at killing civilians.
F or the past decade or so, top Democrats have been desperately trying to downplay the increasing size and influence of the anti-Israel wing of the party. But it keeps getting harder to hide what’s happening. This week provided yet another stark reminder when a group of progressives banded together to force House speaker Nancy Pelosi to rip $1 billion for Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system out of a spending bill meant to avert a government shutdown. It’s hard to overstate what a radical turn this is for the party.
Iron Dome has been an enormously successful shield that has allowed Israel to protect its people by shooting down rockets that Palestinian terrorist groups indiscriminately fire at civilians. By limiting Israeli casualties, the system also protects Palestinian civilians. That is, were the rocket attacks more deadly, Israel would have no choice but to launch a more aggressive military campaign — and likely a ground invasion in Gaza — which would mean the loss of more lives on both sides.
But the life-saving system comes at a cost. Each time Israel intercepts a rocket, it is estimated to cost between $50,000 and $80,000. When Palestinians pursue a saturation-bombing strategy and fire thousands of rockets all over Israel, as they did in May, the price tag of defending civilians can quickly add up, so the system requires constant funding.
There is of course a principled stand one could take against foreign aid in general, or against sending more money overseas at a time when the U.S. is facing historic debt. But progressives are not making any sort of consistent argument against foreign aid and have zero concern for the national debt. If current plans being pushed by progressives pass, then Democrats will have authorized $6 trillion in new spending within the first year of Joe Biden’s presidency. That’s 6,000 times $1 billion.
Can You Be a Progressive and Support Israel? A Conversation with Bronx Democrat Ritchie Torres. Bari Weiss
By Ruth King (Edit) on May 19th, 2021
https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/can-you-be-a-progressive-and-support?token=
Ritchie Torres is a freshman congressman representing New York’s 15th district. He grew up in a public housing project in the Bronx, brought up by a single mother who raised him, his sister, and his twin brother on minimum wage. Upon his swearing-in, Ritchie became the first openly gay Afro-Latin American member of Congress. He is a staunch progressive, and has been vocal about improving public housing, advocating for LGBT businesses, and addressing child poverty.
He is also an outspoken supporter of Israel, a position that 10 years ago wouldn’t have been notable, but in today’s progressive wing of the Democratic Party has made him a curiosity — sort of like a Trumper who doesn’t want a recount.
Rep. Torres’s position on Israel has made him a target on social media, where he has been smeared as a supporter of ethnic cleansing and genocide. It has also opened him up to criticism from his colleagues.
To me, he looks a bit like a single man standing alone against a cultural tsunami. Does he feel that way? I called Rep. Torres yesterday to find out.
Our interview has been edited for length and clarity.
BW: Last week you said: “I am here to affirm, as a member of Congress — one who intends to be here for a long time — that I have an unwavering commitment to both the sovereignty and security of Israel as a Jewish state.” That kind of statement used to be par for the course for Democratic politicians. That no longer seems to me to be the case. What happened?
RT: It feels like we are living through a tectonic shift. We’re increasingly living in a world where support for Israel as a Jewish state, support for the American Israeli relationship, support even for a two state solution, is becoming heresy. And BDS is in danger of becoming orthodoxy, particularly within progressive circles.
BW: Why has that view become heretical? How did we get to this point?
Continue reading →
DAVID’S SLINGSHOT DPS, NATIONAL NEWS USA & OPINION Comments turned off
‘Truth,’ as Well as Israel, Is ‘Under Siege’ From Hamas, Declares NY Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres in Solidarity Speech
By Ruth King (Edit) on May 14th, 2021
https://www.algemeiner.com/2021/05/13/truth-as-well-as-israel-is-under-siege-from-hamas-declares-ny-democratic-rep-ritchie-torres-in-solidarity-speech/
Progressive Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York has delivered an impassioned defense of the State of Israel in the face of the escalating military threat from Hamas.
Speaking to a virtual UJA event on Wednesday night, the 33-year-old East Bronx native — whose 15th district includes the South Bronx and borders that of fellow Democrat and frequent Israel critic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — restated his “unwavering commitment to both the sovereignty and security of Israel as a Jewish State.”
Torres remarked that “what is under siege is not only Israel.”
He continued: “What is under siege is the truth itself. Circulating on social media is a vicious lie — a lie that deceptively reframes the terrorism of Hamas as self-defense and deceptively reframes the self-defense of Israel as terrorism. Increasingly, we seem to live in an Orwellian universe where the truth no longer matters.”
Torres — who has at times faced criticism from colleagues on the left of the Democratic Party because of his stalwart backing for Israel — then noted that “support for Israel, especially in moments like these, is not for the faint-hearted.”
Continue reading →
ELECTIONS Comments turned off
Rep. Elect Ritchie Torres, a Progressive Democrat, Rips AOC’s Israel Hating ‘Squad’
By Ruth King (Edit) on December 23rd, 2020
https://www.tuskerdaily.com/rep-elect-ritchie-torres-a-progressive-democrat-rips-aocs-israel-hating-squad/
Ritchie Torres may be a progressive Democrat, but he won’t be signing up with AOC and her band of mental midget misfits which Nancy Pelosi nicknamed the ‘Squad’.
Ritchie Torres, is going to Washington next month to represent the South Bronx in Congress.
But despite his being a Bernie Sanders loving Progressive Democrat, he says you won’t see him paling around with Democratic Socialists like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib anytime soon.
Torres,32, cited his strong support for Israel as a primary distinction between ‘the Squad’ and true progressives like himself.
“I came to observe that there are activists who have a visceral hatred for Israel as though it were the root of all evil.
The act of singling out Israel as BDS [the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement] has done is the definition of discrimination.”
Torres, who has served on the New York City Council since 2013, says he was moved by trips to Israel in 2015 and 2017.
