Showing posts with label 2016. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2016. Show all posts

Saturday, September 20, 2014

Go Away Hillary

Go Away Hillary from Warning Signs by Alan Caruba at Facts-not-Fantasy

Know Caruba's Warning Signs
Other than earning her law degree, name one thing that Hillary Clinton has accomplished on her own. Her accomplishments—slim as they are—have been achieved on the coattails of either Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.

Had she not been the First Lady, would anyone have ever heard of her in the context of high power political posts? The short answer is no. She had traded on her celebrity and name recognition to become a Senator from New York and then, after a failed bid to become the Democratic Party’s candidate for President, accepted the position of Secretary of State.

Obama wanted to make sure she was “inside the tent” during his first term and, following that, her resignation has permitted her to now begin distancing herself from a man that many regard the worst President the nation has ever had.

Let’s back up a moment. Is there a single piece of major legislation during her term as a Senator from January 3, 2001 to January 21, 2009 attributed to her? The answer is no even though she served on important committees that included the budget; armed services; environment and public works; health; education; labor and pensions; and a special committee on aging. No point reviewing her voting record. If her former votes pose a political problem for her now, they will simply be dismissed.

During her four years as Secretary of State, can you name a single treaty that generated any significant media coverage? Again, no, If what political pundits believe and her own book reflects, her views on foreign affairs, strategic objectives and other weighty matters was entirely directed from the Oval Office of the White House. Now, it is true that the Secretary of State’s job is to carry out the President’s foreign policy, but at this point we know he had no consistent or strategic policy other than to ignore the Middle East and make nice with Russia.

As Secretary of State Hillary spent most of the time flying anywhere in the world so as not to be seen that much with Obama, but when the Benghazi consulate was attacked on September 11, 2012, killing our ambassador and three security personnel, what we learned was that she had previously paid little or no attention to the question of its protection at a time when other embassies in Libya were closing their doors to avoid attacks. The picture that emerged following the attack was that of someone simply occupying the office without devoting much time to the management of the State Department.

It’s one thing to allocate management to those in the Department responsible for its vast responsibilities, but the buck still stops at the Secretary’s desk and what we learned following the attack is that she backed up the absurd lies of the President who claimed that it was the result of a video no one had seen and a casual group of men who decided to attack the consulate. On the anniversary of 9/11!!! Questioned about it by a Senate committee, she famously said, “What difference at this time does it make?” It makes a lot of difference when the President and Secretary of State lie to the nation and the world.

After returning to private life following Obama’s reelection Hillary outrageously claimed that she and Bill were “dead broke” when they left the White House. Hillary’s inclination to say stupid things and lie without any need to should be especially troubling should she run for President and, yes, she has been running for a very long time.

In Hillary we have a person who has given little evidence of legislative or management skills who wants to be the first woman President of the United States. It will look good on her resume.

What, in fact, does she have to offer? Just as Obama offered voters the chance to say they had voted for the first black candidate for President, Hillary offers them the chance to say they voted for the first woman President.

That is not reason enough to elect anyone, black, white, man or woman.

We have learned from the Obama experience that his Marxist ideology, attachment to Islam, and disdain for the U.S. military has proven to be a formula for economic and foreign policy disasters. His signature legislation, Obamacare aka the Affordable Patient Care Act, has proven to be the antithesis of his promises that one could keep their own healthcare insurance and doctor if they wanted. It has been an unmitigated failure since a Democratic Party controlled Congress voted it into law in 2009 without a single Republican vote. In 2010 the voters gave political power in the House to the GOP.

Would Hillary allow Obamacare to be repealed if that was passed by Congress? Would she take steps to destroy the Islamic State threat in the Middle East? Or simply said, would she cease to be an extreme liberal masquerading as a moderate or centrist?

Do we want to elect a woman who in early September told a conference in Las Vegas that “Climate change is the most consequential, urgent, sweeping collections of challenges we face. The threat is real, and so is the opportunity…if we make the hard choices.” This is abject idiocy.

I find all the talk of her candidacy at this point to be obscene. It is an insult to the Democratic Party, but then so is Obama. If she is not opposed by primary candidates within the Party or she floats to candidacy simply as a political celebrity, simply as a woman, then the Party deserves to be massively defeated in 2016. We may get an indication of that in the November midterm elections.

I wish Hillary Clinton would simply go away and permit a serious election to occur.

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

An LBJ law for Kentucky?

An 'LBJ Law' for Kentucky? from the files of Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe

Rand Paul, elected to the US Senate in 2010, held himself out as an unconventional,
unorthodox truth-teller who could be relied on to uphold "Kentucky values."

MY POLICY on cake," the ebullient Tory mayor of London, Boris Johnson, once remarked, "is pro having it and pro eating it." Rand Paul, the Kentucky senator and potential GOP presidential aspirant, has hopes of embracing a similar policy on running for office. Kentuckians, to their credit, aren't buying it.

Rand Paul, elected to the US Senate in 2010, held himself out as an unconventional, unorthodox truth-teller who could be relied on to uphold "Kentucky values." Paul was elected to the US Senate in 2010, and he has said clearly that he intends to run for reelection in 2016.

But almost from the moment he took office, he has also shown every sign of wanting to run for president in 2016. And that poses a problem: Kentucky law explicitly bars individuals from running in a regular election for two offices simultaneously: "No candidate's name shall appear on any voting machine or absentee ballot more than once."

As it happens, Paul isn't the only Republican senator contemplating a White House run whose seat is up for reelection in two years. Ohio's Rob Portman and Florida's Marco Rubio are in the same boat, and both have acknowledged plainly that they have to make a choice.

During a visit to Manchester, N.H., last month, Portman ruled out any option of campaigning for president and the Senate at the same time. Under Ohio law, it might be legal to do both, he told RealClearPolitics, "But I wouldn't. I think you need to focus."

As for Rubio, he applauds the election rules in Florida, like those in Kentucky, that bar candidates from appearing on the same ballot for two different offices. "That's the right law," Rubio said in a radio interview in April. "I think, by and large, when you choose to do something as big as that, you've really got to be focused on that and not have an exit strategy."

But the Tea Party star from Kentucky, who blazed onto the national scene denouncing "career politicians" and vowing to uphold "Kentucky values," would rather not have to choose.

Unlike Rubio, Paul isn't praising the wisdom of Kentucky's one-campaign-at-a-time statute. Instead he and his allies have tried assiduously to overturn it. The Washington Times reported in March that Paul was lobbying Kentucky legislators to pass a law clearing the way for him to eat that cake and still have it. The GOP-controlled state Senate complied.

After all, said the majority leader, "Senator Paul is very popular here, and I personally don't want to deny Kentuckians the chance to vote for or against one of their own for the Senate if he's also nominated for the presidency."

But the bill has gone nowhere in the Kentucky House of Representatives, where Democrats rule the roost.

"Our position is that a man who can't decide which office to run for isn't fit for either office," the House speaker has said. "I don't think that bill will ever see the light of day as long as I hold the gavel." Which would explain why Paul has been vigorously raising funds for Republicans running for the Kentucky state legislature. And why some of his political advisers are even making noises about challenging the current law as unconstitutional.

Manipulating state election law to boost a party favorite — especially ahead of a presidential campaign — isn't an innovation. In 1959, Lyndon Johnson got the Texas Legislature to pass just the kind of law Paul has pushing for in Kentucky.

It freed him to run the following year both on the presidential ticket and — just in case — for reelection to the Senate at the same time. Other politicians — among them Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman in 2000, Delaware's Joe Biden in 2008, and Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin in 2012 — have exploited similar "LBJ laws" and done the same thing.

Under Florida's rules, Sen. Marco Rubio must also choose whether to appear on the ballot as a candidate for president or for re-election to the Senate. Unlike Rand Paul, Rubio supports his state's law. But at least Kentucky voters have more self-respect than to let one of their US Senate seats be treated as if it were a high school senior's safety school, to be ditched if a more ambitious option comes through.

Under Florida's rules, Sen. Marco Rubio must also choose
whether to appear on the ballot as a candidate for
president or for re-election to the Senate.
Unlike Rand Paul, Rubio supports his state's law.
According to a recent Bluegrass Poll commissioned by a consortium of Kentucky news media, only 15 percent of state voters would like to see Paul on the ballot for both president and senator in 2016.

Fully two-thirds of respondents say the existing law should not be changed. That sentiment crosses party lines: 54 percent of Republicans, 57 percent of independents, and 78 percent of Democrats oppose an "LBJ law" in Kentucky.

It didn't take long, it seems, for Rand Paul to lose touch with those grassroots "Kentucky values" he was supposedly so attached to.

The candidate who held himself out as unpredictable and unorthodox, the courageous truth-teller who was heralded as different from conventional politicians, is barely halfway through his first term in the Senate, yet already is so hungry for more that he schemes to change ballot rules standing in his way.

Mr. Paul went to Washington, but he's no Jimmy Stewart.