Marco Rubio at Nashville Rally: ‘Our Time Has Arrived,’ Silent on Ted Cruz, Donald Trump

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AP

by MICHAEL PATRICK LEAHY21 Feb 20164515

FRANKLIN, Tennessee — A huge crowd of 5,000 welcomed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to his campaign rally here Sunday afternoon, where his 30-minute speech made no mention of the frontrunner, Donald Trump, who beat him by ten points in the South Carolina primary.

He also made no mention of third-place South Carolina finisher, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).

Instead, after criticizing Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Rubio called for unity in the Republican party and the nation. “Each generation has faced its own challenge [in America]. Now our moment has come. Now our time has arrived,” the 44-year-old Rubio declared.

Tennessee is one of several southern states, including Alabama, Georgia, and Texas, which will be holding Presidential preference primaries on Tuesday, March 1, the “SEC Primary” day. Rubio spoke one day after his surprising second place finish in the South Carolina GOP presidential primary.

After noting that it was the biggest crowd in his campaign to date, Rubio said Clinton was unqualified to sit in the Oval Office, then highlighted a positive theme of inclusiveness and “generational transformation” to the audience that stood outside the Embassy Suites Hotel in this affluent suburb of Nashville.

“Hillary Clinton is not qualified to be President of the United States,” he said. “She took intelligence information, sensitive information, and she put it on her email server because she believed that she is above the law.”

“I am convinced that her plan was she was going to win an election and then she would pardon herself,” Rubio said, to laughter from the crowd.

“No one is above the law. That irresponsible behavior disqaulifies her from being President,” Rubio added.

“But she is also disqualified from being Commander-in-Chief,” he continued, adding:

Because on the eleventh of September in the year 2012, four Americans lost their lives in the service of our country in Benghazi. And she know that they lost their lives because of a terrorist attack. And yet, when she spoke to the families of those four Americans, she lied to them.

Rubio said that Clinton told the families, and the country, the attack was caused by “a video,” which she knew not to be true. “I believe that anyone who lies to the families of Americans who lost their lives in the service our country can never be Commander-in-Chief of the United States of America,” Rubio told the crowd, to thunderous applause.

Rubio also took a few swipes at the other Democratic candidate for president, Sen. Bernie Sanders.

“We cannot afford do get this election wrong,” the junior senator from Florida told the crowd.

“If Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton were to win this election, we will have gotten this election terribly wrong, because Bernie Sanders is a Socialist,” he continued.

“Usually, when you say that about someone in politics is a Socialist, they deny it. Bernie Sanders says it in his commercials!” Rubio quipped to waves of laughter from the crowd.

“I don’t understand why you would be a Socialist and run for office in America. There are dozens of countries in the world that are Socialist countries,” Rubio continued.

“If you want to live in a Socialist country, you should move to a Socialist country,” Rubio said of Sanders to rousing cheers from the audience.

After dismissing both of the top Democratic candidates for president, Rubio honed in on his positive message for America, one in which he promised “generational transformation” that will preserve the American dream for future generations.

“Reagan influenced a whole generation by what he believed,” he added, noting that he was only eight-years-old when Ronald Reagan was first elected President 36 years ago in 1980.

Rubio then described the generational battles for the American dream

“Americans are the descendants of go-getters,” he said. 

“Americans are the descendants of people that came here, whether it was two centuries ago or two years ago, because they refused to live in a society that told them they could not be who they wanted to be. America is the descendants of slaves who overcame that horrifying institution to claim their stake to the American dream,” he added.

“America is a nation in which in our veins flows the blood of people who refused to accept the limits imposed on them by a stale and outdated society,” he noted.

“Our greatest days in this country are within our reach,” Rubio noted.

“But we have to take care of business right now. The last eight years have been a very bad time for this country because we have been led by people that have tried to change this country,” Rubio said.

“Barack Obama, when he was elected, he wasn’t just interested in fixing America’s problems. He wanted to make us more like another country. He wanted America to be more like other nations in other parts of the world,” he said.

But as Americans, Rubio added “We don’t want to be like other countries. We want to be the United States of America.”

The theme of unity was key for Rubio. “How do we win this election?” he asked rhetorically. “First, we win it by coming together. If we’re still fighting against each other in October, in September, we are not going to win,” he said.

The consequences of losing to the Democrats will be dire, not just for Republicans, but also for the country, according to Rubio. “Not winning doesn’t just mean the other party’s in charge. Not winning means that all of these policies that have haunted us for eight years, many of them become permanent.

State Senator Jack Johnson (R-Franklin), the Tennessee co-chairman for the Rubio campaign, told the crowd that Tennessee was so important that Rubio had decided to make his first campaign stop after the South Carolina primary in the Volunteer State.

Rubio’s message seemed to be well received by the audience, which appeared to be comprised of Tennesseans who are usually not engaged in the political process, he added.

“He’s a God-fearing man, it seems like, and I like everything I’ve heard so far about him, and what he stands for,” Paul Rodriquez, in his thirties, of Nashville told Breitbart News.

“I’m planning to vote for Marco Rubio because I like what I’ve heard about his politics so far,” Elizabeth Robinson of Nashville, in her twenties, told Breitbart News.

“I’ve looked at several of his debates and campaigns and I just like his stance on a lot of the things about where we need to go as a country and I feel like he’s one of the few people who can really bring us back on the right path. We’ve kind of strayed so far from what this country is intended to be. I’m hoping he wins,” Robinson said.

“I’ve met Marco a couple of times. I’ve been very impressed with him,” Robert  Scott of Franklin, in his fifties, told Breitbart News. “I am a small business person that really believes in the issues that he stands for,” Scott added.

“We’re big Rubio fans. We love his heart. We love his passion, and we’re looking forward to some good changes” Chrissie from Franklin, a mom in her thirties who brought her nine-year old daughter Haley to the event, told Breitbart News.

“I’m here because I believe that Marco Rubio is the only conservative candidate with any hope of defeating Hillary Clinton. So I just made my mind up to vote for him in the Tennessee primary,” Jim Ambrose of Burns, Tennessee, in his fifties, told Breitbart News.

One couple in their sixties, John and Louise Behm, drove the short fifteen miles south from Nashville to Franklin to attend the Rubio event. “We’re here because we think Rubio is the one candidate who, especially on naitional security, can protect our country which is the number one focus, without that we’ll have no country. We embrace his conservative values and we very much want him to be President of the United States,” Louise Boehm told Breitbart News.

“We’re here to see the best guy to run the country. We’ve got a rough job ahead of us. He’s the kind of material we need. I appreciate his experience and knowledge, and his position on the issues, as well as his character,” John Boehm told Breitbart News.

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Ted Cruz and Donald Trump Have Deepest Pockets Ahead of ‘Super Tuesday’

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www.nytimes.com

Ted Cruz is the best financed candidate in the Republican race, beginning February with $13.6 million in cash on hand.By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and SARAH COHENFebruary 21, 2016

A seven-month, $220 million surge of spending on behalf of mainstream Republican candidates has yielded a primary battle dominated by Donald J. Trump and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, two candidates reviled by most of the party’s leading donors.

Now, as they approach a pivotal and expensive stage of the campaign, the two insurgent candidates — who have won the first three contests — appear to be in the best position financially to compete in the 12 states that will vote on “Super Tuesday,” according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission on Saturday.

Mr. Cruz is the best financed candidate in the Republican race, beginning February with $13.6 million in cash on hand. Mr. Trump, a billionaire, has raised millions of dollars from small donors and lent himself millions more, including nearly $5 million in January, a month in which he paid out more than $11.5 million, the most sustained spending of his presidential bid so far.

The outcome is a rebuke to the party’s traditional donor class, which poured record-breaking amounts of money into the race last spring and summer in the hopes of grooming a nominee with broad national appeal and a chance at winning over more Hispanic and other nonwhite voters. Instead, the candidates backed most lavishly by wealthy establishment-leaning Republican donors burned through much of the cash they accumulated last year, beginning the month deeply depleted. Those remaining in the race on Sunday, Gov. John Kasich of Ohio and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, had less than $7 million in cash between them.

Jeb Bush, who entered the race last summer with more money behind him than every other Republican candidate combined, ended his campaign on Saturday with just $2.9 million in the bank and a fourth-place finish in South Carolina, a state the Bush family once considered a political stronghold.

Much of the donor class’s money was spent on a shootout among their favored candidates. Groups backing Mr. Bush, Mr. Rubio, Mr. Kasich and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey devoted almost three-quarters of the money they spent on negative advertising to attacking each other’s candidates rather than either Mr. Trump or Mr. Cruz, according to F.E.C. data. The outside group aligned with Mr. Bush, Right to Rise, spent an astonishing $34 million in January alone, with little impact on Mr. Bush’s own fortunes.

“The establishment G.O.P. is lying to itself. This election at its core is a rejection of their globalist economic agenda and failed immigration policies — and of rule by the donor class,” said Laura Ingraham, the conservative talk-radio host and political activist. “Millions want the party to go in a more populist direction.”

That proposition will be tested in the coming weeks, as Republican donors begin to organize more strategically against Mr. Trump. Our Principles PAC, a group devoted to highlighting Mr. Trump’s past support for Democratic positions like universal health care, higher taxes, abortion rights, is now spending significantly to persuade Republicans that Mr. Trump is not a reliable conservative.

On Saturday, F.E.C. filings revealed that Marlene Ricketts, a prominent Republican donor who previously supported the campaign of Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, provided the group with $3 million in January. Richard Uihlein, a wealthy Chicago-area businessman and conservative patron, also contributed to the group.

Katie Packer, a Republican strategist overseeing Our Principles, said that the group’s ads had helped reduce Mr. Trump’s margin of victory in South Carolina. “Our hope is that the field will winnow and conservatives will coalesce behind a candidate that believes in conservative principles and can unite the party,” Ms. Packer said. “We intend to keep the heat on in Nevada and the March 1 states and as long as it takes for that to occur.”

Mr. Kasich had just $1.4 million on hand at the end of January — virtually dry against the scale of modern presidential campaigns — while Mr. Rubio had $5 million, though both campaigns were expected to capitalize on strong showings in the first two contests. After spending tens of millions of dollars between them, the “super PAC” backing Mr. Kasich reported only $2.4 million in cash on hand, while the group backing Mr. Rubio had $5.6 million.

The disparity between traditional and insurgent candidates was echoed to some extent on the Democratic side, where Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont out-raised Hillary Clinton in January by almost $6.5 million — the first reporting period in which his campaign has taken in more money. Virtually all of that money has come from donors giving small checks.

But Mr. Sanders also spent heavily to win in New Hampshire and fight Mrs. Clinton to a virtual tie in Iowa, dropping $35 million in January, reports filed late on Saturday showed. He ended the month with less than half as much cash on hand as Mrs. Clinton. A “super PAC” backing Mrs. Clinton, Priorities USA Action, also continues to stockpile cash, reporting $45 million in cash on hand at the end of last month. The group took in almost $10 million in January, including $3.5 million from James H. Simons, a retired hedge fund founder from New York.

Both Mr. Kasich and Mr. Rubio are now hoping to take advantage of Mr. Bush’s decision to quit the race, leaving them to divvy up his remaining large donors. Both of them have been heavily dependent on donors making large contributions: Mr. Kasich raised just 17 percent of his contributions from donors giving $200 or less in January, and Mr. Rubio 19 percent.

“South Carolina is the political equivalent of the parting of the Red Sea,” said Theresa Kostrzewa, a Bush fund-raiser in North Carolina, who predicted most of Mr. Bush’s supporters would flow to Mr. Rubio. “Republicans: This is your sign from God.”

Jeff Sadowsky, a spokesman for the pro-Rubio group, Conservative Solutions PAC, said on Saturday that he expected the race to “go on for quite some time.” The group is planning to begin what Mr. Sadowsky described as a “multistate multimillion dollar advertising effort” on Tuesday.

Mr. Kasich’s chief strategist, John Weaver, told reporters on Saturday that Mr. Kasich’s fund-raising had increased “dramatically” since his second-place finish in the New Hampshire primary, but did not specify by how much. And Mr. Kasich faces perhaps the biggest challenge. He is bypassing this week’s Republican caucus in Nevada, and he is counting on strong performances in Michigan, whose primary is March 8, and his home state of Ohio, which votes on March 15. He is not likely to have another attention-grabbing finish before those contests.

“We’re confident we’re going to get enough to run the kind of campaign we need,” Mr. Weaver said after results came in on Saturday. “The days of us being outspent 10-to-1 are over because of what happened tonight.”

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Bad news for Ted Cruz: his eligibility for president is going to court

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Updated by Dara Lind and Jeff Stein on February 18, 2016, 11:22 p.m. ET

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The Circuit Court of Cook County in Chicago has agreed to hear a lawsuit on Sen. Ted Cruz's eligibility for president — virtually ensuring that the issue dominates the news in the runup to the South Carolina primary.

Cruz was born in Canada to a US citizen mother and a noncitizen father. The Constitution requires presidents be "natural-born citizens," but what exactly that requires hasn't been settled in court.

Now, perhaps, it will be. The lawsuit in Illinois aims to resolve the question by challenging Cruz's eligibility for the presidency. It was filed by Lawrence Joyce, an attorney who has told local media that he supports Dr. Ben Carson and has had no connection with the Trump campaign.

"Joyce said his concern is that the eligibility issue lie unresolved during Republican primaries, thus letting the Democrats take Pennsylvpotential Cruz nomination, when it’d be too late," reports the Washington Examiner.

When this question initially came up, the conventional wisdom among constitutional lawyers was that it was a nonissue: Cruz was obviously eligible. But as the debate has heated up among candidates (with Donald Trump, in particular, fanning the flames), it's also begun to heat up among constitutional law scholars.

The issue is actually twofold: whether Ted Cruz should be considered a natural-born citizen, and whether Cruz's own preferred school of constitutional interpretation would see it that way.

The problem: the meaning of "natural-born citizen"

Here is what the Constitution says about who can be president:

FROM OUR SPONSOR - ARTICLE CONTINUES BELONo Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

The problem is the Constitution doesn't define "natural born Citizen." Neither does any current law. And no one has ever brought a court case to decisively settle the question as a matter of US law.

There are three ways someone can be a US citizen. He can be born in the US (regardless of who his parents are). He can be born outside the US to at least one US citizen parent, as long as certain criteria are met. (Those criteria are set by federal law and have been changed over time.) Or he can immigrate here and then successfully apply for citizenship, a process called naturalization.

Everyone agrees that the first category of people are natural-born citizens. Everyone agrees that the third category of people are notnatural-born citizens (regardless of how unfair it might be that immigrants can't be president). But Ted Cruz is in the middle category, and this is where the meaning of "natural born" starts to get fuzzy.

The only definition of "natural born" in US history would include Ted Cruz

Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty ImagesLegal scholar and Ted Cruz tormentor Laurence Tribe.

Because there's never been a court case to explicitly test the question of who counts as a natural-born citizen for the purpose of presidential eligibility, the question is by definition "unsettled." It hasn't been resolved yet. And court opinions that have mentioned the term in passing while ruling on other questions have come to very different opinions about what it means.

But it's a stretch to say, as Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe did, that the scholarship on the question is "completely unsettled." That implies that scholars are totally split on the issue, which isn't exactly the case.

The majority of constitutional law scholars who've written about the meaning of "natural-born citizen" have agreed that if a court were to rule on the question, it ought to rule that someone born outside the US but eligible for citizenship through parents counts as "natural born."

One of the key arguments in favor of this point is that while there is no longer any law defining "natural born," there used to be one — way back in 1790. The Naturalization Act of 1790 explicitly said that "the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural-born citizens."

That term disappeared from immigration law after 1795. While there's at least one scholar who argues that this was intentional, because Congress didn't want that definition to persist, there's no evidence for that. And since Congress didn't come up with an alternate definition, that remains, to this day, the only definition of "natural born" we have.

This isn't a smoking gun. Scholars have looked at English precedents, US judicial decisions, bills, and congressional debates to figure out what the meaning of "natural born" is supposed to be and how (if at all) it's changed over time. But while some scholars have maintained that the evidence supports a narrow meaning of "natural born" — one that wouldn't include Ted Cruz — more of them agree that the evidence supports a broader one.

What would legal scholar Ted Cruz say about the eligibility of candidate Ted Cruz?

One of the constitutional scholars who used to think that the definition of "natural born" ought to include Ted Cruz is Laurence Tribe, who was Cruz's law professor at Harvard. But Tribe is now the leading scholar raising questions about Cruz's eligibility. Trump has taken to citing Tribe approvingly in rallies; Cruz has fired back that Tribe is a liberal professor who is only interested in taking him down.

Why is Tribe raising questions about Cruz's eligibility, even if Tribe thinks Cruz should ultimately be eligible? There are two answers.

The first answer is that Tribe is making a claim about what Ted Cruz ought to believe the Constitution says.

Cruz is a proud supporter of the conservative legal tradition of constitutional originalism: interpreting the Constitution not by what its words ought to mean today, but by what the Founding Fathers meant as they wrote them in 1787. Cruz is arguably the national politician most closely identified with originalism; he's certainly the presidential candidate with the closest ties to the conservative legal movement.

According to Tribe, constitutional originalism defines "natural born" very narrowly, in a way that would exclude Cruz. By extension, Tribe argued in the Boston Globe, any judges Cruz would appoint to the federal bench as president would invalidate his own presidency.

But Tribe clearly doesn't believe this line of argument himself because he is very much not an originalist. And one of the points of his column is that maybe if originalism is such an inflexible theory that it wouldn't allow one of its own biggest supporters to be president, it is generally a bad idea.He points out that the reason the Founding Fathers didn't want immigrants to be president is totally moot today — but so is the idea of a "well-ordered militia." And if originalists like Cruz still support the Second Amendment, Tribe says, they can't wave away the "natural-born citizen" clause.

Originalists disagree about what originalism is and what it says about "natural born"

Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images

While you wouldn't know it from Tribe's piece, there is no one originalist take on what "natural-born citizen" means. The strongest supporters of a narrow definition that would exclude Cruz are generally originalists, but there's a more even split among originalists than there is among constitutional scholars as a whole.

Since the Founding Fathers never actually debated the meaning of "natural-born citizen" when writing the Constitution, originalist scholars have had to turn to other sources to figure out what the common understanding of the phrase would have been at that time. And the answers scholars come to differ depending on which sources they consult.

Some originalists, like Michael Ramsey of the University of San Diego — who fortuitously just finished a paper on this question when the topic came up in the campaign — argue that the Founding Fathers would have understood "natural-born citizen" to mean the same thing "natural-born subject" did in English law at the time.

Over the century before the Revolution, Parliament had passed several bills clarifying that children born abroad to British subjects counted as "natural-born subjects" (this mattered for inheritance reasons). So by the time the Founding Fathers were writing down the Constitution, the broad definition of the term was fairly well established.

Other originalists, like Mary Brigid McManamon of Widener University's Delaware Law School — who recently published a column in the Washington Post arguing that Cruz is ineligible to be president — think that laws passed by Parliament don't count.

To McManamon, the precedent the Founding Fathers used wasn't British law as of 1787, but the English common law tradition (law made by courts rather than legislation). And in the common law, "natural born" didnot apply to children born outside the bounds of the country. That's why Parliament had to pass bills to include such children.

Each of these arguments is far more complicated, of course. (For one thing, some scholars argue that the common law wasn't as uniformly narrow as McManamon says it was.) But the debate among originalists as to what "natural born" means is really a debate among originalists as to what originalism ought to include. Should it include both common law and legislation, or just common law? Does a law passed in 1790 reflect the intent of the Founding Fathers, since so many of them were in Congress when it passed, or does it show that they needed to add something they thought wasn't in the Constitution already?

The truth is that there isn't nearly as much of a gulf between originalism and "living constitutionalism" as there might seem to be. Originalists look to a number of sources to figure out what the Constitution means, just like anyone else does. And even the living constitutionalists who've written about natural-born citizenship care about what the Founding Fathers meant it to mean at the time — that's just not the be-all and endall of their jurisprudence.

This can only be settled in court. But who would nominate a walking court case?

Ultimately, this is, quite literally, an academic debate. As long as no US court has issued a ruling on the question, it wouldn't matter if every legal scholar in America agreed on the hypothetical meaning of "natural born." It would still be legally unsettled.

Congress could at least stick some kind of bandage on the question by passing a "sense of the Congress" resolution — that's what it did in 2008 to affirm the eligibility of John McCain, who landed in the "natural born" gray zone for different reasons from Cruz. But the Senate has made it clear that it intends to do no such thing for Ted Cruz. This probably is less because they don't think Cruz is natural-born than because Senate Republicans really don't like Ted Cruz, but it's a problem for him nonetheless.

That's the other answer to why Tribe is agitating against Ted Cruz. He doesn't believe any court in the country would actually rule that Cruz was ineligible (though, he claims, that's only because Cruz-style originalism isn't the norm). But, he writes, "it’s worth thinking about the legal cloud" hovering over Cruz in the meantime.

The problem for Ted Cruz here isn't so much that a court is likely to rule against him as it is that Republicans might be afraid to support Cruz for the nomination because they're worried his eligibility will become an issue. A court taking up the issue days before the South Carolina primary is pretty much his worst nightmare.

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SALON.COM SURRENDERS "SHE JUST CAN'T WIN"

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Hillary Clinton just can’t win: Democrats need to accept that only Bernie Sanders can defeat the GOP

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In one major poll, Bernie Sanders is now leading Hillary Clinton nationally. In most others, he’s not far behind from the former Secretary of State. Vermont’s Senator already has an “edge over Clinton in matchups with GOP opponents,” dispelling Clinton’s electability myth. In an average of national polls, Bernie Sanders is less  than eight points from Hillary Clinton, after being over 50 points behind in 2015. In addition, there’s only one person capable of challenging a Republican in 2016 without James Comey declaring national security was jeopardized by a private server.

Bernie Sanders is the only Democratic candidate capable of winning the White House in 2016. Please name the last person to win the presidency alongside an ongoing FBI investigation, negative favorability ratings, questions about character linked to continual flip-flops, a dubious money trail of donors, and the genuine contempt of the rival political party. In reality, Clinton is a liability to Democrats, and certainly not the person capable of ensuring liberal Supreme Court nominees and President Obama’s legacy.

The precious and all-knowing polls already show Bernie Sanders defeating Republicans in a general election and Robert Reich has already explained why Sanders can easily win the presidency. In a Huffington Postpiece titled “6 Responses to Bernie Skeptic,” Reich debunks the trusted myth of Clinton supporters and Republicans:

“He’d never beat Trump or Cruz in a general election.”

Wrong. According to the latest polls, Bernie is the strongest Democratic candidate in the general election, defeating both Donald Trump and Ted Cruz in hypothetical matchups. (The latest RealClear Politics averages of all polls shows Bernie beating Trump by a larger margin than Hillary beats Trump, and Bernie beating Cruz while Hillary loses to Cruz.)

“America would never elect a socialist.”

P-l-e-a-s-e. America’s most successful and beloved government programs are social insurance – Social Security and Medicare. A highway is a shared social expenditure, as is the military and public parks and schools. The problem is we now have excessive socialism for the rich (bailouts of Wall Street, subsidies for Big Ag and Big Pharma, monopolization by cable companies and giant health insurers, giant tax-deductible CEO pay packages) – all of which Bernie wants to end or prevent.

As Reich points out in his article, America is already a nation of Democratic-Socialists, but many of us (Democrats and Republicans) simply uphold “excessive socialism for the rich.”

Bernie Sanders, unlike Clinton, defeats Donald Trump in a landslide of  “epic proportions” in a general election and is the antithesis of a Republican. If you don’t believe me, then watch my friend Brian Hanley’sanimated rap videos about Bernie Sanders demolishing Donald Trump.

Most importantly, and something the naysayers should learn, is that Bernie Sanders does better than Clinton against the GOP in a general election.

In addition, American voters don’t trust Hillary Clinton. At what point will critics of Bernie Sanders realize that American voters will never vote for a candidate they don’t trust and don’t like? In October of 2015, I explained in the following YouTube segment why Clinton is unelectable, and in another segment why Clinton must always evolve on key issues.

53.8% of all American voters have an “unfavorable” view of Hillary Clinton.

67% of American voters find Hillary Clinton “not honest and trustworthy,” compared with 59% for Donald Trump. Yes, more people trust Donald Trump.

After all, it’s difficult to trust a politician who completely fabricated a story about being fired upon by snipers. Like POLITIFACT states, “it’s hard to understand how she could err on something so significant as whether she did or didn’t dodge sniper bullets.”

71% of men and 64% of women find Clinton “not honest and trustworthy.”

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74% of Independent voters find Clinton “not honest and trustworthy.”

35% of Democrats find Clinton “not honest and trustworthy.” Yes, even Democrats.

In contrast, Kathy Frankovic of YouGov.com states “Bernie Sanders is the most widely trusted presidential candidate of either party.”

Quinnipiac’s Feb. 18 report states “Sanders has the highest favorability rating of any candidate and the highest scores for honesty and integrity, for caring about voters’ needs and problems and for sharing voters’ values.” Sanders also ties Clinton on “having strong leadership qualities.”

In terms of Clinton’s leadership qualities, they haven’t translated to good judement. If the Clinton campaign expects to build upon President Obama’s accomplishments, then it should first discuss things with a former Obama intelligence official. Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn explains his view of Hillary Clinton’s email scandal in a CNNarticle titled “Former Obama Intel Official: Hillary Clinton Should Drop Out”:

President Barack Obama’s former top military intelligence official said Hillary Clinton should pull out of the presidential race while the FBI investigate her use of a private email server for official government communication while secretary of state.

“If it were me, I would have been out the door and probably in jail,” said Flynn, who decried what he said was a “lack of accountability, frankly, in a person who should have been much more responsible in her actions as the secretary of state of the United States of America.”

“This over-classification excuse is not an excuse,” Flynn said Friday. “If it’s classified, it’s classified.”

Flynn, who headed the Defense Intelligence Agency from July 2012 to August 2014, told Tapper that Clinton “knew better…“

No, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn isn’t part of the GOP. He actually worked for President Obama. If you think the FBI, a former Obama intelligence official, the State Department’s own“internal watchdog,” and all the other elements of this expanded investigation make for a great presidency, then you’re certainly ready for Hillary in 2016.

Yes, a former Obama intelligence official suggests Clinton “drop out” of the presidential race. The FBI’s investigation of Clinton’s emails is“not letting up” and there is no end in sight. Good luck with nationally televised debates against a ruthless opponent like Trump (who will certainly make the email scandal a primary issue of every discussion), if you fear the loss of Supreme Court nominees and the future of our country. It’s doubtful any GOP challenger would gracefully declare, “Enough of the emails.”

Even if you believe Clinton would win a general election, remember that the FBI, or even the State Department, could uncover yet another group of“Top Secret” emails well into Clinton’s first term. The FBI could also urge the Justice Department to take action; even if Clinton wins the presidency. We’ve already seen one Clinton White House defend against scandal.

By the way, can anyone at The Daily Beast, The Daily Banter, or The Daily Hillary Clinton Inevitability Press please explain why Hillary Clinton felt the need to own a private server?

Vermont’s senator will become our next president and it should come as no surprise to people actually paying attention, and not repeating establishment talking points. I’ve been saying this since June 25, 2015, when 730,000 people on Facebook liked my article titled “It’s Official — Bernie Sanders Has Overtaken Hillary Clinton In the Hearts and Minds of Democrats.” True, I was wrong about Iowa, but at least I got the winner right, and I’ll be right about my greatest prediction: On Jan. 20, 2017 Bernie Sanders Will Be Sworn In as America’s 45th President.

More H.A. Goodman.

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EXCLUSIVE - Mom Whose Son Was Tortured to Death by Illegal Endorses Trump, Says 'Pope Doesn’t Care About Me' - Breitbart

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In an exclusive telephone interview with Breitbart News, Laura Wilkerson, whose son was tortured to death by an illegal alien, explained why she cast her early ballot today for GOP frontrunner, Donald Trump.

“Trump will get in there and do something about [immigration]. I believe him. I want someone in there who has said they’ll do it and will do it… So many people stay home because it doesn’t affect them,” Wilkerson said. “And I understand that. I was the same way until [my son] Josh was murdered. But at some point, we have to close the door and deal with who we have here before anyone else comes.”

By contrast to her support for Trump, Wilkerson said that she “gave no consideration to voting Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)… I do not trust him for one second… He does not speak to the victims [of illegal alien crime],” Wilkerson explained. “Obviously, Rubio wants more immigration, no borders. That’s what his backers want and that’s the way he’s going to vote.”

Wilkerson, who described herself as a deeply religious person, defended Trump from the attacks by Pope Francis.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard the Pope say one thing about our families [families who have lost loved ones at the hands of illegal immigrants]. I’m not sure he understands the loss we have felt. Is he just ignoring that? It rubbed me the wrong way,” Wilkerson told Breitbart.

Wilkerson’s 18-year-old son Joshua was tortured to death by a so-called DREAMER — i.e. an illegal immigrant who allegedly came to the country as a minor. Wilkerson said:

I follow Jesus Christ. I still sin sometimes, but I follow Jesus Christ. I am a Christian, and I have sympathy for everyone. I think God asks me to love everyone. He created us all equal, but I do not think God is asking me to help a whole country. I don’t think I can do that. I do not think he wants us to give up our family– because that’s what has happened. It tore my family to shreds. I had a solid, 25-year marriage, and we lost our last child. I had a take-your-kids-to-church-small-bussiness-obeyed-by-all-the-rules family. And this tore it to shreds. There’s nothing about me that’s racist or non-sympathetic. I don’t care who you are, I want to help you, but not at the expense of my own family.

Wilkerson explained that wanting to defend America’s sovereignty and close the border does not make her “not Christian:”

I am a Christian… I know I’ll go to heaven when I die, just like Josh did when he died. The Pope’s comments rubbed me the wrong way. Everyone in religion knows that no one can judge what’s in a man’s heart. That’s one of the very first things you learn in your faith. No man can judge another man. That’s why the Pope’s comments rubbed me the wrong way. I did not like that… I believe we need to do what we can for other people, but not at your own family’s expense. God doesn’t call us to ignore our families. God doesn’t call us to take care of other families first, or help other families at the direct expense of our own… I believe in God, family, country.

Earlier today, Wilkerson says, “I voted for Trump. It was a long, hard decision for me, but I came to the conclusion that it was really the best way for me to go. I usually vote more with religion. It was a hard vote between Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), but I just feel like Donald Trump can get in there and do the things that need to be done quickly.”

Wilkerson made a point of noting that “Cruz was so kind to me when I testified about Josh’s death.” However, Wilkerson proceeded to explain that given her adamant desire to have a federal immigration policy that puts the interests of the American people first, she felt she had to vote Trump: “I realized that, having gotten into the fray of illegal immigration, this [voting for Trump] has to be my stance. It’s such chaos and I just believe that Mr. Trump will get in there and get it done quickly.”

Wilkerson said that she appreciated Trump’s full-throated support for law enforcement and American police officers, Wilkerson said: “I think everybody is starting to hear Trump [talk about immigration]. We know he’s recognizing problems that no one else will say. And I think the police — with the Black Lives Matter movement — feel undervalued, when they should be so overvalued. Our teachers, our policemen, the people who care for our children and our safety should be valued. There’s not one person who won’t call policemen when you need help. [When Josh was murdered], the policemen couldn’t have been any better to us. It was a terrible situation, but they could not have been any better to us.”

In stark contrast to her support for Trump, Wilkerson said she gave no consideration whatsoever to voting for Marco Rubio, pointing out that despite introducing multiple immigration expansion bills, he has not talked to the victims of illegal alien crime.

I gave no consideration to voting Marco Rubio. He was a Tea Party darling, who flipped and did the exact opposite of what he promised to do get elected. I do not trust him for one second. He never said one word to me, even after I testified. He does not speak to the victims [of illegal alien crime].

Wilkerson further explained that she was not surprised that Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) — who has pushed to give citizenship to DREAMers like the illegal immigrant who murdered Wilkerson’s son — endorsed Rubio. She said, “I know why he threw his vote behind Rubio. Gowdy knows that Rubio is going to get in and do what he wants to do– which is open borders. Obviously Rubio wants more immigration, no borders. That’s what his backers want and that’s the way he’s going to vote.”

Wilkerson put forth a challenge to Gowdy and Rubio, who both have pushed for open border immigration policies: “I would tell Trey Gowdy and Marco Rubio, ‘Open your front door to anyone who wants to walk in and out. Open your front door.’”

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Sen. Bernie Sanders Passes Hillary Clinton Faster than Barack Obama Did in 2008

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by MIKE FLYNN18 Feb 201664

A new Fox News poll of the Democrat primary race shows socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) edging past Hillary Clinton for the first time — and at a faster rate than Barack Obama outpaced Clinton in 2008.

The national poll, conducted Monday through Wednesday, shows Sanders with 47 percent support, 3 points higher than Clinton, with 44 percent support.

Just one month ago, Clinton led Sanders by 12 points in the Fox poll. The change in fortunes is due, in part, to Sanders’ landslide victory in New Hampshire and his almost-level outcome in the Iowa caucus.

The most interesting thing about this latest national poll, however, is how quickly Sanders has edged Clinton. In 2008, Barack Obama did not lead a national poll against Clinton until after Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina AND Florida and Michigan had voted.

The first time Obama led a national poll against Clinton was on the eve of Super Tuesday voting in 2008.

In 2008, Super Tuesday was held on February 5th. Twenty-two states and an American territory voted on Super Tuesday. Obama won 12 states, while Clinton captured two and America Samoa.

For the next two weeks, Obama and Clinton traded leads in national polling. After March, Clinton would only recapture the lead in national polling a handful of times.

When Obama first took the lead in national polling in 2008, he had won Iowa and South Carolina. Clinton had won New Hampshire, Nevada and claimed victories in Michigan and Florida. (Because of a dispute over DNC rules, neither candidate campaigned in Michigan or Florida.)

The Clinton and Obama campaigns had also been furiously campaigning ahead of Super Tuesday in 22 states. Again, it was only on the eve of voting in these 22 states, where Obama was poised for victory in a dozen, did he take a lead in a national poll.

The Clinton campaign has tried to argue that the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary aren’t representative of the nation, and Democrat electorate, at large. It has argued that, while Sanders has done well in these early states, Clinton still has the edge for the nomination as voting moves to other contests.

The risk of that argument is that past performance can in fact influence future results. Sanders’ wins, or in the case of Iowa, near win, have made him a more plausible contender for the White House. This is most clear in recent polls in Nevada, which votes on Saturday. In the last few days, Sanders has surged in the Silver State into a tie with Clinton.

At the end of 2015, just about six weeks ago, Clinton had a 23-point lead in Nevada. Clinton’s lead in South Carolina, which votes next Saturday, has also been narrowing in recent days.

Sanders surge to the top of a national poll at this time, then, is simply extraordinary. Nevada and South Carolina haven’t even voted yet and Super Tuesday is still seeks away.

Sanders is simply doing far better than even Barack Obama in 2008. Of course, it could equally be the case that Hillary Clinton is simply that much weaker than she was 8 years ago.

It is certainly fitting to quote Karl Marx here. “History repeats itself,” Marx said. “First as tragedy, second as farce.”

 

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Russian TV Trashed Michelle Obama and Emperor Barry Last Night

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First Lady Michelle Obama leaves the beach club Villa Padierna in Estepona, on August 6, 2010 during her vacation in southern Spain.

On Sunday, Russian TV host Dmitry Kiselyov, who enjoys the largest audience among news programs in Russia, announced in his prime-time program News of the Week the launch of a new documentary, whose goal would be to expose corruption in the US—as opposed to the familiar story in Russian he’s sick and tired of talking about.

“This is not fair—to forget about American corruption,” he declared, “about how they get fat on the money of American taxpayers there.”

The title of the film—Emperor Obama—says it all, but the trailer, lasting more than ten minutes, was shown anyway.

The first victim of attack was the American First Lady.

“The information on our clients is strictly confidential,” says the Villa Padierna hotel manager to a young and beautiful female reporter. “But I can confirm that Michelle Obama really stayed in our hotel. She was our most famous guest. Since then, we named one of our villas after her. Villa Obama has three floors, two bedrooms, one swimming pool and a big living room—here is Villa Obama.”

“On the fourth of August, 2010,” the manager continues, as the beautiful young reporter walks around the luxurious and spacious rooms, “the US President celebrated his 49th birthday, and the very same day his spouse, Michelle Obama, arrived for her vacation in Spain. Here is her room.” Not ceremoniously, the reporter touches the silk sheets and a very rare travertine marble. “Here are the official numbers: for the week starting August 4, 131,000 Americans were fired, losing their incomes and jobs. At that moment, Michelle Obama was on vacation, and the taxpayers were paying $6,000 a night for this hotel suit.”

Then, the First Lady is shown walking outside out in the Spanish heat. “Michelle! Michelle!” thunders the crowd.

Villa Obama in Spain, named after the American First Lady.

The reporter continues:

“Michelle Obama and her 9-year-old daughter Sasha were accompanied by their personnel and secret agents, by 250 specially hired Spanish bodyguards and 68 bodyguards brought from the US. As the American First Lady eats ice cream, the street in Spanish Granada is totally blocked. Ms. Obama flew in on her husband’s airplane—plane number two, a Bowing-747—according to protocol, which transports the American President while plane number one goes through technical maintenance. At $11,000 per hour, Michelle’s flight from Washington DC to the Spanish Malaga cost the US $150,000. The US Air force was sued for Michelle’s unlawful vacation—and for the fifth year, the lawsuit drags on without any resolution.”

Facing the sunset and obviously having had a good time in Spain herself, the reporter doesn’t want to let the topic of Ms. Obama’s vacations finish too quickly:

“The 44th American President goes on vacation twice a year—in the summer and during Christmas. Over the seven years of his presidency, American taxpayers spent between $10,000,000 and $74,000,000 a year on vacations for the first American family. To understand how such unbelievable expenses accumulate, the cost for only the plane and the bodyguards when Mr. Obama flew his family to Hawaii, in 2014, was $5,316,000.”

“Did you hear what happened in Flint, Michigan?” An American analyst steps into the video, “where the whole town was poisoned? Kids, pregnant women… How much money did he spend on his vacations, you say? $74,000,000? But he gave Flint only $5,000,000— $5,000,000 to the poisoned people… as much as the launch of two military drones!”

At this point, the cover of the book by Michelle Malkin “Culture of Corruption” is shown to viewers—providing an idea as to the development of the story awaiting Russian TV viewers on Wednesday night.

‘Culture of Corruption’ by Michelle Malkin.

Every word on the cover is in English, of course. “This book, with a cracked portrait of Obama on its cover, didn’t become a bestseller in the US,” lamented the reporter—ignoring the word ‘BESTSELLER’ written twice across the top.

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