The Front Page Cover
2016 The truth will set you free
Featuring:
Trump and the American Dream
by Caroline Glick
~~~
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If Dems Don't Win Senate, Thank nObamaCare
Robin Smith: If liar-Hillary Clinton wins the presidency on Nov. 8, her running mate Tim Kaine will provide the tie-breaking vote in the Senate if Democrats win just four seats. Democrats will hold the White House and the Upper Chamber of Congress. But there's a glimmer of hope for the Senate, and, ironically, we can thank Democrats for it.
While Donald Trump beat the entire field of polished résumés, Republicans have a strong field of incumbents and a deep bench of candidates and potential candidates due to the shift of political majorities in the states. The New York Times agrees as it frets, "Democrats find themselves hobbled by less-than-stellar candidates in races that could make the difference in winning a majority."
It's a simple fact that since 2010, from the courthouse to the state houses and to the governors' mansions, voters have placed their trust in Republicans. According to Ballotpedia in 2016, there are 23 states with a "Republican trifecta" comprised of state representatives, state senators and governors. Only seven states have a "Democrat trifecta."
The statement's been made before: Barack nObama has been the greatest thing for the GOP in a long time. Why? nObama's failed policies and lawless approach have originated from a hard-Left view of the role of government — it's the answer to everything! But when the solution doesn't look much better than the problem, that hurts Democrats.
According to The New York Times, "Democrats are mired in their own struggle, as they try to identify future stars who can appeal to a base increasingly insistent on a progressive agenda." Going further, The Cook Political Report's senior editor Jennifer Duffy predicted, "Democrats are going to have their own Tea Party movement in 2018." Why? The rigged primary for liar-Hillary, shutting down Bernie Sanders' passionate crowd.
In the U.S. Senate races, the Democrat field is weak when assessing its recruits and institutional structure to support them.
But the personnel isn't the Democrats' only weakness. Their record of failure during the nObama administration is hard to dismiss.
nObama will soon become the only president to never have a single year of GDP growth of at least 3%. Data will show that the rich got richer and the poor had to get more government hand-outs during the "fundamental transformation" of America. On the foreign policy front, the Middle East is a roiling cauldron of stew featuring beheadings, the rape of children and married women and, oh yeah, the arming of Iran with nuclear weapons.
But one issue alone should serve to solidify voters' movement away from Democrats in these Senate and House races. The predicted and absolute failure of the laughably misnamed "Affordable Care Act," nObama's "signature legislation," has proven, again, that there's never enough money for a government program and there's always a negative consequence to a competing private sector entity.
On March 23, 2010, the flock of Democrats surrounding nObama at his bill-signing ceremony that enacted nObamaCare into law stood with plumage in full show. Today, the birds of that feather are being stuffed into the nests of insurance companies and hospitals that spent millions to lobby for the government takeover of America's health care. Insurers are now reporting hundreds of millions in losses and crying for a taxpayer-funded bailout as they flee the exchanges. Hospitals are wailing for states to expand their Medicaid rolls to prop up their financial losses. Oh, and those oft-forgotten folks called the taxpaying public are seeing their insurance premiums rise annually up to 60%.
Not only have enrollees in the IRS-enforced nObamaCare seen their doctors and their plans change, but their out-of-pocket expenses are skyrocketing. On Saturday, Sen. Lamar Alexander, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, gave the GOP Weekly Address citing the "very near collapse" of the nObamaCare Insurance Exchanges with an "intolerable increase" in premium costs to be administered in 2017.
Will Senate Republicans effectively remind middle class voters that their budgets are busted by health care expenses thanks to the Democrats? Will they win hearts and minds by engaging in policy discussions of portable health savings accounts and price transparency that would drive consumerism in health care? Will the GOP articulate that the working class will be restored through work and personal savings, not government taxes and redistribution?
The quadrennial voting pool has every reason to support Republicans due to their own financial losses during the nObama "recovery," and the prospect of better days ahead with effective policy. ~The Patriot Post
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OPINION IN BRIEF
Mark Hendrickson: "It doesn't require exceptional vision to see that federal finances are on an unsustainable path. Nor is it a mystery why nObama would advocate such fiscal recklessness — politically, it is an election year, and so he will demagogue for votes, and ideologically, nObama is not just a big-government liberal, but his end game (I believe) is to bankrupt federal programs as the trigger event for the federal government nationalizing them. (It worked for Fannie and Freddie, so why not Social Security?) ... Frankly, several generations of Americans have been swindling our youth by saddling them with an unconscionable debt burden, and younger Americans have every right to repudiate that debt. That is a radical assertion, I know, but remember that one of the reasons our founders rose in rebellion against Great Britain was over the principle of taxation without representation. Well, our youth did not have a say or vote in all the spending that has produced the debts that many now expect them to honor. Why should they? Not only did they not vote for it, they were not (in most cases) the beneficiaries of the deficit spending that generated all that debt. ... The only way to avoid bankruptcy is not to spend oneself into it. Whether such fiscal restraint is possible in a democracy is debatable, but we are not in a position to avoid having to deal with this problem. We are trapped in the black hole of debt."
~The Patriot Post
.
IRS Did Not Notify Taxpayers That
Their Identities Were Stolen
by Ali Meyer
{freebeacon.com} ~ The IRS did not notify 1.1 million taxpayers that their identities were stolen, according to a report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration... “In cases of employment-related identity theft, the discrepancy results from the innocent taxpayer’s stolen identity being used by another individual to gain employment,” the inspector general states. “This can cause significant burden to innocent taxpayers, including the incorrect computation of taxes based on income that does not belong to them.” The 1.1 million cases of identity theft that the inspector general found from February 2011 to December 2015 involved so-called Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers that did not match the Social Security numbers that were listed on other documents included with the tax return, such as a W-2...
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The Red Diaper Baby in nObama’s
Red Cover-Up
by Cliff Kincaid
{aim.org} ~ The lack of coverage in 2008 of the embarrassing facts in Barack nObama’s background, especially his deep personal relationship with a Communist by the name of Frank Marshall Davis... stands as a sensational example of how dishonest the national media can be when they are determined to elect somebody. If nObama’s opponent, Senator John McCain (R-AZ), had been linked to a Nazi or a Klansman, the press would have jumped on the story, with endless follow-ups. But the story of nObama’s Communist mentor was suppressed by a journalist for The Washington Post who had all the essential details and could have broken the story wide open. We now know why the potential blockbuster story about nObama’s Communist mentor was deliberately ignored by Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post journalist David Maraniss. He had personal and political conflicts that prevented him from telling the truth about nObama to the American people. Simply put, his parents were Communists, just like Davis. Maraniss, in other words, was a red-diaper baby. The shocking truth can finally be told. His parents, Elliott and Mary Maraniss, along with Davis, were members of the same international conspiracy which had groomed nObama for the presidency, in order to hasten the decline and destruction of the United States... http://www.aim.org/special-report/the-red-diaper-baby-in-obamas-red-cover-up/?utm_source=AIM+-+Special+Report+Email&utm_campaign=email090116&utm_medium=email
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House Republicans plan vote against
nObama's 'ransom' payment to Iran
by Susan Ferrechio
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy
{washingtonexaminer.com} ~ House Republicans will call up legislation in September to fight President nObama's decision to pay Iran $400 million in cash just moments before Iran released four U.S. hostages in January... The nObama administration has said the payment was made to settle a separate dispute over money the U.S. owed Iran for a failed agreement under which Iran was to buy U.S. military equipment. But the timing of the payment, and later admissions that the payment was used as "leverage" to ensure the release of the hostages, left Republicans fuming that nObama orchestrated a ransom payment in violation of U.S. policy. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy didn't say what bill will be called up to protest the payment, but he indicated there would be some legislative response once lawmakers return to work next week... http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/house-republicans-plan-vote-against-obamas-ransom-payment-to-iran/article/2600674
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Now nOBAMA’S Doctor BREAKS HIS
SILENCE on liar-Hillary’s Health
{thepoliticalinsider.com} ~ Millions of Americans are convinced that liar-Hillary Clinton is gravely ill and lying about her health... while the liberal media does everything it can to cover for her and lie about anyone who asks questions. She has coughing fits, can barely stand without help, and has seemingly had seizures in public. Now, Barack nObama’s own personal physician has terrible news for liar-Hillary and her brain-dead fans. This is incredible!... http://www.thepoliticalinsider.com/obamas-doctor-shocking-news-hillary-health-breaking-news/?utm_source=SailThru%26utm_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=TPI%20Newsletter%2009-01-16%20Zephyr%20Headline&utm_term=Zephyr%20SL%20Test%20-%20Zephyr%20Headline
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VICTORY: Sheriff Joe Arpaio Wins…
nObama’s DOJ Horrified
{conservativetribune.com} ~ Despite facing an onslaught of legal attacks aimed at eroding his public image, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio succeeded in winning the Maricopa County Republican primary election this Tuesday... meaning he gets to run for his seventh term in office this November. LifeZette reported that Arpaio won 66 percent of the vote against three other challengers. This seemed like an impressive feat given the witch hunt being waged against him by President Barack nObama’s Department of Justice, which has repeatedly accused him of engaging in racial profiling. In fact, it was only two weeks ago when federal Judge G. Murray Snow recommended the sheriff be charged with criminal contempt for his alleged failure to implement anti-profiling measures... http://conservativetribune.com/sheriff-joe-arpaio-wins/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=PostUp&utm_campaign=ConservativeBrief&utm_content=2016-09-01
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Some U.S. and UK POWs May Still Be Alive in
North Korean Camps, Says UK Paper
by Warren Mass
{thenewamerican.com} ~ Hundreds of American and British prisoners of war held captive by North Korea at the time of the Korean Armistice Agreement in 1953 that ended hostilities were never released and likely suffered years of inhumane treatment in POW camps... An August 23 article in the Daily Star, a British tabloid with a circulation of 424,000, speculated that some of these POWs “could still be alive at the mercy of maniacal Jong-un.” Any POWs held in 1953 would now be at least 80 years old. The Daily Star article cited “top secret documents” that provided evidence of hundreds of soldiers, including British, were “abandoned by governments who wrote them off as missing in action.” The primary document cited in the Daily Star article was a U.S. Air Force memorandum prepared for the director of the CIA on March 16, 1954, by Air Force Chief of Staff Nathan Twining, who later became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The memo stated, in part:...
Shocker! ACLU defends a Christian
by Bob Unruh
{wnd.com} ~ A standard practice in the Lee County, Alabama, driver’s license office is to grant an exemption to a no-hair-covering rule to Muslims for their license photographs... according to a new lawsuit brought by the ACLU and the ACLU of Alabama. But Christians are being denied the same exemption, and that violates the Constitution, a complaint filed this week against Lee County Probate Judge Bill English and Chief Clerk Becky Frayer alleges. The new case explains that a Christian woman who covers her hair in public all the time “as part of her religious practice” was refused the same accommodation that routinely is made available to women if they are Muslim... http://www.wnd.com/2016/09/shocker-aclu-defends-a-christian/
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Clemency: nObama Once Again
Abusing Executive Power
{fixthisnation.com} ~ On Tuesday, President Barack nObama bestowed the gift of freedom on 111 federal prisoners, drawing praise from Democrats and even some conservatives who believe that the over-criminalization of drugs has led to racial injustice in the prison system... With the announcement, the nObama administration broke its own record, bringing their total number of commutations to 673, far more than any previous president. “I thought it was very important for us to send a clear message that we believe in the principles behind criminal justice reform,” nObama said earlier in the month. Whether or not you buy into the theory of over-criminalization is beside the point. This is just like what nObama tried to do with DAPA and DACA. Even if you think that every single illegal immigrant in America should be made a citizen tomorrow, it doesn’t change the fact that the law is the law. Nowhere in the Constitution is it written: The president must uphold and faithfully execute the laws of the United States, except those laws that the president doesn’t like. Those, he may disregard at will...They broke the law you idiot. http://www.fixthisnation.com/conservative-breaking-news/clemency-obama-once-again-abusing-executive-power/
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Secret Side Deals Reduced Iran’s Breakout
Time To Build A Bomb To <5 Months
by Jeff Dunetz
{lidblog.com} ~ On Thursday, The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) published a new report (embedded below) revealing another part of the P5+1 deal kept secret from the American people and their representatives in Congress...The Iranians, who have been publicly humiliating the United States since the nuclear deal was signed, was given secret exemptions to the deal from the U.S. and the other negotiators because they were having problems meeting deadlines. As a result of this side deal along with another one which was discovered in July, Iran’s breakout time to build a bomb is <5 months (the administration promised the P5+1 deal would expand the breakout time to a year). This is a problem because now there is a much shorter time to react if our intelligence or Israel’s, or any of the other enemies of the terrorist regime discovered that Iran was building a nuclear weapon. The decisions of the Joint Commission which oversees the implementation of the agreement, to give Iran the new concessions has not been announced publicly. The nObama administration claims it informed Congress of key Joint Commission decisions on implementation day but in a confidential manner. However, Reuters reported that Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), a vocal critic of the Iran deal and a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, responding to their questions said, “I was not aware nor did I receive any briefing on the exemptions.”...
..
Trump and the American Dream
by Caroline Glick
{truthrevolt.org} ~ According to most polls taken since last month's party conventions, Democratic presidential nominee liar-Hillary Clinton enjoys an insurmountable lead over Republican nominee Donald Trump. Consequently, a number of commentators on both sides of the partisan divide have declared the race over. liar-Clinton, they say, has won.
There are several problems with this conclusion.
First of all, the "official campaign," won't begin until September 26, when liar-Clinton and Trump face off in their first presidential debate. liar-Clinton is not a stellar debater and Trump, a seasoned entertainer excels in these formats.
Second, recent polls indicate that Trump is closing the gap. Whereas until this past week liar-Clinton enjoyed a 6-8 point lead in the polls, in two polls taken this week, her lead had contracted to a mere 1-3 points.
Third, it is quite possible that liar-Clinton's problems have only begun. Her peak popularity may be behind her. Since her nomination, barely a day has passed without another stunning expose of apparently corrupt behavior on the part of liar-Clinton and her closest advisors. This week's AP report that half of liar-Clinton's non-official visitors during her tenure as secretary of state were donors to the liar-Clinton Foundation was merely the latest blow.
The continuous drip of corruption stories will have a corrosive effect on liar-Clinton's support levels. If the revelations to come are as damaging as many have claimed, their impact on liar-Clinton's candidacy may be fatal.
In light of liar-Clinton's weaknesses, Trump's main hurdle for winning the election may very well lie with the NeverTrump movement. That movement encompasses much of the Republican establishment – that is, the political class of centrist elected officials, opinion shapers, former officials and ideologues. Its members have vowed not to vote for Trump even if it means that liar-Clinton wins the White House. The fact that so many prominent Republican voices continue to oppose Trump even after he has been nominated negatively effects his ability to build support among swing voters.
As far as the NeverTrumpsters are concerned, Trump carried out a hostile takeover of their party. The man who discussed his private parts on national television and brutally and personally attacked his opponents may have won more primary votes than any Republican candidate in the past. But he also won the enmity of more members of the party establishment than any other Republican presidential hopeful.
In an interview with CNN in late May, Wall Street Journal columnist and former Jerusalem Post editor Bret Stephens spoke for many in the NeverTrump camp when he said that he wants Trump to be "the biggest loser in presidential history."
Stephens explained, "It's important that Donald Trump and what he represents, this kind of ethnic quote 'conservatism' or populism, be so decisively rebuked that the Republican Party and Republican voters will forever learn their lesson that they cannot nominate a man so manifestly unqualified to be president in any way, shape or form."
In June Stephens told radio host Hugh Hewitt that a Trump presidency would be more devastating for the US than a liar-Clinton presidency. Stephens argued that whereas a liar-Clinton presidency would be "a survivable event" he was unsure that the US could survive a Trump presidency.
He explained, "The United States survives so long as at least one of its major parties is politically and intellectually healthy. I don't think the Republican Party…as the vehicle for modern American conservative ideas, survives with Donald Trump."
This week, the Washington Times published a list of fifty senior Republicans that not only will not support Trump, but have switched sides and are publicly supporting liar-Clinton.
The problem with Stephens' view, which again, is widely shared by the intellectual and political establishment of the party, is that it ignores the cause of Trump's primary victory.
On the eve of his 2008 electoral victory, Barack nObama pledged to "fundamentally transform," America.
He kept his word.
And it is this fundamental transformation and the Republican leadership's failure to stop it that transformed a loud-mouthed, brash billionaire into the Republican nominee. It was this transformation, and the Republican establishment's failure to block it that made it impossible for moderates like Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush to win the Republican primaries in 2016.
Not only has the country been transformed, the Republican electorate has been transformed.
Today America is steeped in crisis. Foreign audiences concentrate on the crisis of American power overseas. Today, due to nObama's decision to prefer his failed attempt at rapprochement with Iran over longtime US allies in the region, the Americans have lost their strategic superiority in the Middle East and are on the way to losing whatever residual influence they still maintain over regional affairs.
Turkey's ground invasion of Syria on Wednesday is a clear sign of the disintegration of America's regional position. While the invasion was ostensibly launched against ISIS, the plain fact is that its main target is the Kurds. That is, NATO member Turkey invaded Syria to take out the US's primary ally in its campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
And the US is providing air cover to the Turkish invaders while abandoning the Kurds.
Every advance the US has made in its campaign against ISIS has been achieved on the backs of the Kurds. And yet, Vice President Joe loose lips-Biden, who was visiting in Ankara the day of the Turkish invasion openly threatened the Kurds. loose lips-Biden said the US will abandon them if they refuse to conform with Turkey's demand that they withdraw to the eastern side of the Euphrates River.
loose lips-Biden's move merely reinforced the growing impression that the US is only dangerous to its allies. The Iranians, for instance responded to the Turkish move by harassing the US destroyer USS Nitze as it traversed the Straits of Hormuz. Rather than sink the Iranian vessels that threatened it, the Nitze responded by shooting off a couple of flares. The State Department then whined about the assault, calling Iran's act of war, "unprofessional."
And the worst part about the US's strategic crack-up is that it is but one of the crises endangering America today.
Economically, the US has been steeped in stagnation for eight years. Largely as a result of overregulation, entrepreneurship is producing almost no new jobs. The housing crisis has not ended. People who purchased homes before 2008 remain stuck with underwater mortgages, doomed to remain in towns with no jobs because they can't afford to sell their homes.
nObamacare has made health care unaffordable for people who have insurance. Co-pays have risen so steeply, that for many insured Americans, medical care is now viewed as a luxury item.
In Rust Belt states, tens of millions of blue collar workers find themselves living in ruined towns. In the past two decades company after company closed their factories, shipped their operations out of the US or went bankrupt to foreign competitors. And their former workers, people who believed in the American Dream, and actually achieved it, now have no dreams and no hope of ever getting back what they lost, much less of seeing their children do better than they did.
The economic crisis has caused deeper crises. First and foremost the US is now in the midst of a crisis of faith. A Pew poll released this week showed that between 2007 and 2014, church attendance declined from 39 to 36 percent over the seven year period. A significant number of non-observant Americans no longer believe in God.
Those numbers themselves are highly inflated. A multiyear study of church attendance data gathered from the majority of churches in the US by sociologists C. Kirk Hadaway and Penny Long Marler and published in 2005 showed that less than half of those who claim to go to church regularly actually do so. Hadaway and Marler assessed that a mere 17.7 percent of Americans go to church on a regular basis. The rest just tell pollsters that they attend because they are embarrassed that they don't attend.
In other words, what the Pew survey shows is not a reduction in religious worship but a shift in values. Today fewer Americans view church attendance as normatively superior to non-attendance.
Loss of faith may well be directly correlated with a diminished view of the value of life. In Appalachia and the Midwest, the economic crisis and the spiritual crisis have also engendered a drug epidemic unprecedented in rural America. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 125 Americans die every day from drug overdoses. That is more than the number of Americans who die in car accidents. The most significant rise in drug addiction rates has occurred in rural America. New Hampshire is the heroin capital of the US.
Just last weekend, 10 people died of heroin overdoses in one rural county. The heroin in question was laced with a tranquilizer generally used on elephants.
This is the American transformation that nObama has brought about. And the suffering and misery it has engendered are the reason that Trump is now the Republican presidential nominee.
Trump is no Billy Sunday. He is not a champion of free trade or social conservativism. He isn't a neoconservative interventionist. Trump is the bar brawler who says things no one else will say. And the people who lack faith in the country's ability to help them, who have lost hope that things that used to work can work again adore him for it.
This brings us to the issue of the lessons that will be learned by Republican voters if Trump loses as the NeverTrumpsters hope and expect.
If Trump loses, his voters will not realize that they were mistaken to believe in him and support him in defiance of their party's intellectual class. They will blame the NeverTrumpsters for the election results and boot them out of the party altogether.
If the Republican Party even exists in 2020 and 2024, its candidates will make Trump look like a moderate.
If Trump wins, on the other hand, while it is true that the NeverTrumpsters will not maintain their unquestioned control over Republican policies, they will likely get a seat at the table and retain some influence.
More importantly, if Trump wins, the US will have a chance of changing back to the country it was before nObama fundamentally transformed it.
liar-Clinton, who like nObama and the NeverTrumpsters scoffs at Trump's dark descriptions of American life today, has pledged to double down on nObama's foreign and domestic policies. Indeed, she even pledged to destroy what's left of the coal industry.
In other words, if liar-Clinton is elected, what Republicans think about illegal immigration and free trade will be irrelevant. America's fundamental transformation will become irreversible.
And America as a whole – not Trump, and not even the NeverTrumpsters – will be the greatest loser of November's election.
There are several problems with this conclusion.
First of all, the "official campaign," won't begin until September 26, when liar-Clinton and Trump face off in their first presidential debate. liar-Clinton is not a stellar debater and Trump, a seasoned entertainer excels in these formats.
Second, recent polls indicate that Trump is closing the gap. Whereas until this past week liar-Clinton enjoyed a 6-8 point lead in the polls, in two polls taken this week, her lead had contracted to a mere 1-3 points.
Third, it is quite possible that liar-Clinton's problems have only begun. Her peak popularity may be behind her. Since her nomination, barely a day has passed without another stunning expose of apparently corrupt behavior on the part of liar-Clinton and her closest advisors. This week's AP report that half of liar-Clinton's non-official visitors during her tenure as secretary of state were donors to the liar-Clinton Foundation was merely the latest blow.
The continuous drip of corruption stories will have a corrosive effect on liar-Clinton's support levels. If the revelations to come are as damaging as many have claimed, their impact on liar-Clinton's candidacy may be fatal.
In light of liar-Clinton's weaknesses, Trump's main hurdle for winning the election may very well lie with the NeverTrump movement. That movement encompasses much of the Republican establishment – that is, the political class of centrist elected officials, opinion shapers, former officials and ideologues. Its members have vowed not to vote for Trump even if it means that liar-Clinton wins the White House. The fact that so many prominent Republican voices continue to oppose Trump even after he has been nominated negatively effects his ability to build support among swing voters.
As far as the NeverTrumpsters are concerned, Trump carried out a hostile takeover of their party. The man who discussed his private parts on national television and brutally and personally attacked his opponents may have won more primary votes than any Republican candidate in the past. But he also won the enmity of more members of the party establishment than any other Republican presidential hopeful.
In an interview with CNN in late May, Wall Street Journal columnist and former Jerusalem Post editor Bret Stephens spoke for many in the NeverTrump camp when he said that he wants Trump to be "the biggest loser in presidential history."
Stephens explained, "It's important that Donald Trump and what he represents, this kind of ethnic quote 'conservatism' or populism, be so decisively rebuked that the Republican Party and Republican voters will forever learn their lesson that they cannot nominate a man so manifestly unqualified to be president in any way, shape or form."
In June Stephens told radio host Hugh Hewitt that a Trump presidency would be more devastating for the US than a liar-Clinton presidency. Stephens argued that whereas a liar-Clinton presidency would be "a survivable event" he was unsure that the US could survive a Trump presidency.
He explained, "The United States survives so long as at least one of its major parties is politically and intellectually healthy. I don't think the Republican Party…as the vehicle for modern American conservative ideas, survives with Donald Trump."
This week, the Washington Times published a list of fifty senior Republicans that not only will not support Trump, but have switched sides and are publicly supporting liar-Clinton.
The problem with Stephens' view, which again, is widely shared by the intellectual and political establishment of the party, is that it ignores the cause of Trump's primary victory.
On the eve of his 2008 electoral victory, Barack nObama pledged to "fundamentally transform," America.
He kept his word.
And it is this fundamental transformation and the Republican leadership's failure to stop it that transformed a loud-mouthed, brash billionaire into the Republican nominee. It was this transformation, and the Republican establishment's failure to block it that made it impossible for moderates like Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush to win the Republican primaries in 2016.
Not only has the country been transformed, the Republican electorate has been transformed.
Today America is steeped in crisis. Foreign audiences concentrate on the crisis of American power overseas. Today, due to nObama's decision to prefer his failed attempt at rapprochement with Iran over longtime US allies in the region, the Americans have lost their strategic superiority in the Middle East and are on the way to losing whatever residual influence they still maintain over regional affairs.
Turkey's ground invasion of Syria on Wednesday is a clear sign of the disintegration of America's regional position. While the invasion was ostensibly launched against ISIS, the plain fact is that its main target is the Kurds. That is, NATO member Turkey invaded Syria to take out the US's primary ally in its campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
And the US is providing air cover to the Turkish invaders while abandoning the Kurds.
Every advance the US has made in its campaign against ISIS has been achieved on the backs of the Kurds. And yet, Vice President Joe loose lips-Biden, who was visiting in Ankara the day of the Turkish invasion openly threatened the Kurds. loose lips-Biden said the US will abandon them if they refuse to conform with Turkey's demand that they withdraw to the eastern side of the Euphrates River.
loose lips-Biden's move merely reinforced the growing impression that the US is only dangerous to its allies. The Iranians, for instance responded to the Turkish move by harassing the US destroyer USS Nitze as it traversed the Straits of Hormuz. Rather than sink the Iranian vessels that threatened it, the Nitze responded by shooting off a couple of flares. The State Department then whined about the assault, calling Iran's act of war, "unprofessional."
And the worst part about the US's strategic crack-up is that it is but one of the crises endangering America today.
Economically, the US has been steeped in stagnation for eight years. Largely as a result of overregulation, entrepreneurship is producing almost no new jobs. The housing crisis has not ended. People who purchased homes before 2008 remain stuck with underwater mortgages, doomed to remain in towns with no jobs because they can't afford to sell their homes.
nObamacare has made health care unaffordable for people who have insurance. Co-pays have risen so steeply, that for many insured Americans, medical care is now viewed as a luxury item.
In Rust Belt states, tens of millions of blue collar workers find themselves living in ruined towns. In the past two decades company after company closed their factories, shipped their operations out of the US or went bankrupt to foreign competitors. And their former workers, people who believed in the American Dream, and actually achieved it, now have no dreams and no hope of ever getting back what they lost, much less of seeing their children do better than they did.
The economic crisis has caused deeper crises. First and foremost the US is now in the midst of a crisis of faith. A Pew poll released this week showed that between 2007 and 2014, church attendance declined from 39 to 36 percent over the seven year period. A significant number of non-observant Americans no longer believe in God.
Those numbers themselves are highly inflated. A multiyear study of church attendance data gathered from the majority of churches in the US by sociologists C. Kirk Hadaway and Penny Long Marler and published in 2005 showed that less than half of those who claim to go to church regularly actually do so. Hadaway and Marler assessed that a mere 17.7 percent of Americans go to church on a regular basis. The rest just tell pollsters that they attend because they are embarrassed that they don't attend.
In other words, what the Pew survey shows is not a reduction in religious worship but a shift in values. Today fewer Americans view church attendance as normatively superior to non-attendance.
Loss of faith may well be directly correlated with a diminished view of the value of life. In Appalachia and the Midwest, the economic crisis and the spiritual crisis have also engendered a drug epidemic unprecedented in rural America. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 125 Americans die every day from drug overdoses. That is more than the number of Americans who die in car accidents. The most significant rise in drug addiction rates has occurred in rural America. New Hampshire is the heroin capital of the US.
Just last weekend, 10 people died of heroin overdoses in one rural county. The heroin in question was laced with a tranquilizer generally used on elephants.
This is the American transformation that nObama has brought about. And the suffering and misery it has engendered are the reason that Trump is now the Republican presidential nominee.
Trump is no Billy Sunday. He is not a champion of free trade or social conservativism. He isn't a neoconservative interventionist. Trump is the bar brawler who says things no one else will say. And the people who lack faith in the country's ability to help them, who have lost hope that things that used to work can work again adore him for it.
This brings us to the issue of the lessons that will be learned by Republican voters if Trump loses as the NeverTrumpsters hope and expect.
If Trump loses, his voters will not realize that they were mistaken to believe in him and support him in defiance of their party's intellectual class. They will blame the NeverTrumpsters for the election results and boot them out of the party altogether.
If the Republican Party even exists in 2020 and 2024, its candidates will make Trump look like a moderate.
If Trump wins, on the other hand, while it is true that the NeverTrumpsters will not maintain their unquestioned control over Republican policies, they will likely get a seat at the table and retain some influence.
More importantly, if Trump wins, the US will have a chance of changing back to the country it was before nObama fundamentally transformed it.
liar-Clinton, who like nObama and the NeverTrumpsters scoffs at Trump's dark descriptions of American life today, has pledged to double down on nObama's foreign and domestic policies. Indeed, she even pledged to destroy what's left of the coal industry.
In other words, if liar-Clinton is elected, what Republicans think about illegal immigration and free trade will be irrelevant. America's fundamental transformation will become irreversible.
And America as a whole – not Trump, and not even the NeverTrumpsters – will be the greatest loser of November's election.
http://www.truthrevolt.org/commentary/glick-trump-and-american-dream
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