Trump Paranoia Trumps Trump Facts

 

There were three articles this past week by two of my favorite reads and that struck me as a tad bit obsessive, so I decided I would be a little obsessive myself and write about Trump again and all too soon. The first item I wish to present are the recent polls showing Hillary Clinton defeating The Donald 50% to 39% with 7% going to the Libertarian Party candidate and the rest to the Green Party. The fact that these two were included in the poll and the Constitution Party was not was indicative of seeking every presumably mainstream viable candidates despite us all knowing that Donald Duck had as good if not better chance than the Libertarian and Green Party candidates of winning the elections, especially this year where more will be pressed to write in a Disney or Peanuts character. Still, it seems somewhat difficult to believe that Hillary Clinton gained nearly 8% points while Donald Trump lost around 3% in a single week, but then again this is an election like few others. The last time anything remotely similar came down the pike the United States elected James K. Polk as their President and that may have had more to do with the opponent’s campaign theme stating, “Who the hell is James K. Polk.” Perhaps there is something to be said for getting your name out before the public even if it is your opponent ridiculing your obscurity. Perhaps if Henry Clay had ran advertisements with his name instead of his opponent’s he would have won the election and nobody would ever have heard of James K. Polk, but he didn’t and so we now know that Polk was the eleventh President of the United States. But enough about then, this is now and we have a completely different problem as both the candidates are well known, maybe a little too well known.

 

James K, Polk and Henry Clay

 

Just a quick aside to those who feel I write too often about Trump and appear to be ignoring Ms. Clinton. Hillary Clinton’s shortfalls and misdeeds are more than well-known and her record stands as it is for better or for worse. Thus far she has not been indicted, but not for lack of trying. Some would claim that much of the effort has been spent finding reasons and ways not to charge her with crimes; many might say far too much effort. The one item which might be of interest is that there are no laws which preclude being President and giving all your State of the Union addresses from the Prison library. Imprisonment does not disqualify one from being elected President and would only prevent them from serving past a few weeks if the Congress brought charges of impeachment and a guilty finding removing her from office. Without an impeachment conviction from Congress there is no reason a President could not serve two terms as President while serving a long term in even Federal Prison, though such would be unlikely.

 

The most echoed complaint about Donald Trump has been his sophomoric attitudes and overindulgence of self-adoration. Then there is the further claim that he tends to go off on tangents and wild exclamations in response to what should be serious answers to serious questions. He takes criticism as if it was an attack on his being and returns as he perceives he has received. All of these are packaged in different orders of severity and then summarily referred to as disqualifying him to hold the office of President. Character faults, ignorance, self-adoration and aloofness are also not disqualifications to the office of President. Actually, there are very few actual qualifications to be President and none of them have much to do with intelligence, education, good character or even literacy. So, no matter how disqualified many of us believe one or the other, if not both, candidates put up by the two major parties may appear to be, let us assure you that both are technically as qualified as one need be to be elected President. So the next time you read a column claiming either candidate is unqualified to be President be assured that you are reading an editorial opinion and not a fact.

 

One of the other favorite reasons which make Trump a poor choice to be President, we have read, is that he will have his finger on the button, or more accurately direct access to a list of launch codes for different scenarios, which in and of themselves would likely take a week of briefings for any normal human being to master, and that would pose too dangerous a position to allow such a shallow and unserious person who seems more drawn to the adulation of the office than the actual performance of the duties to be permitted to access. Luckily, Donald Trump is likely not the buffoon he has been playing thus far on the campaign trail and likely is aware, as are many pundits though they are want to admit, the real campaign as far as some 80% of the voting public are concerned does not begin until the second or third week of April and everything before that is grist for the political mill, and Donald is giving the mill all it can handle. He will not even start spending in earnest as those paying attention now have already decided and picked their preferred poison. This is definitely going to be an election decided in the final two weeks and everything before is trimming hanging in the hall. If Trump is going to become serious as promised, do not expect this new Donald until the end of September as he will give the media a week or two of introductions before refining it for the final push when the election truly will be decided. Trump is not the fool he appears to be playing as you do not even hold on to a fortune as a fool and if half his claims are valid he has done rather well in his investments despite the media concentrating on those that went bust. Ask any true investor and one of their likely favorite quotes comes from Edison who claimed his success came from not allowing failures to deter him but only to show him another thing which would not work.

 

Donald Trump having the access codes for nuclear weapons is not giving a baby dynamite and matches and leaving them in the quarry to play. He is no more prone to starting a nuclear exchange on his Presidential whim than most of us, though there are some who might have doubts about that. Further, after two or three days in office Donald Trump will be disabused of any thoughts that he was just elected to the cushiest job on the planet. Those days will be spent receiving the most serious reality check conceivable as he is briefed by the CIA, Military Intelligence, FBI, NSA and a number of agencies neither he nor we have ever heard of and what he will learn would turn the hair on a peach white. I am fairly sure such reports and truths about the realities in the deepest recesses within our world, which most of us are not privileged to know, unequivocally and in the starkest terms would serve to alter even Donald Trump shaking all he believed he knew about the world in which we reside. Even things deduced by the fiercest news addict would take the wind from Trumps antics and bring him crashing back to be grounded in what is real and presented before him. Add to this the fact that he will have appointed people who are well known for expertise in the workings and situations around the world, people whose worlds most of us would never care to share if we were informed as many of these experts reside in day in and day out. The only two Presidents in since even before World War I who were likely not even the slightest surprised when they received their initial briefings would have been President Dwight David Eisenhower, as he had just finished commanding the allied efforts in Europe and pretty much knew many of the troublesome areas as he was living them, and President George H. W. Bush (the elder), as he had been head of the CIA formerly and Vice-President and probably trusted and included in many of the Presidential briefings thus knew most of what any briefing upon taking office was going to contain. There are very good reasons why the Presidency tends to age the men holding the office so visibly, and these are reasons which most of us would just as well not be made privileged to as it would remove any doubt about the shape of the world and threats held within.

 

There is also the truth that Donald Trump has presented defining core beliefs which are placed on his campaign website though for detractors it is far easier to challenge the Trump buffoonery he has shown the media, especially those in the media seeking to discredit him. Baiting the mainstream media has been one of the games that Donald Trump has played largely for his own amusement as he is just as aware as are we that there would be no pleasing the leftist media pundits and if he were to treat their questions seriously they would likely ask him when he planned to stop beating his wife and if he answered it the headline would read, ‘Trump Beats his Wife,’ or ‘Trump Refuses to Stop Beating Wife.’ That would be the reality of much of the reporting as we have already witnessed; so with these tricksters and gamers out there laying traps for him to fall into, and he has fallen for more than his supporters wish he had forcing them to defend the undefendable, why even treat their ‘interrogatories with any degree of respect and seriousness when all they exist for are for Trump to take them on seriously and then they report the choicest morsels strung together out of context and in an order often expressing the opposite or things never uttered by Donald Trump. We will not even deign to give any examples as doing so would also serve to send our readers into the darker corners of the liberal, leftist media and all its machinations. Suffice it to say, Donald Trump is giving a show for the pure entertainment factor as he realizes the media is trying to game him, so why not play along and game the gamers. Trump has his positions defined, as we linked to above, but that is not what the media wishes to cover or expose to the light of day. Informing the American public that Trump has serious positions, which anybody can go and read for themselves, is not what their coverage is about, theirs is to destroy all veracity and support behind Donald Trump such that their darling, Hillary Clinton, wins the election by hook or by crook come November. This is also why we will witness more and more polls showing Hillary Clinton pulling away eventually predicting a landslide win for Hillary Clinton all in an effort to suppress Trump voters from even going to the polls on election day.

 

Presidential Rivals Not So Different
on Far Too Many Positions

 

It should not surprise anybody with an ounce of integrity who has experienced even the slightest glimpse into how the media operates and the extents the state with all of its power even to include court challenges which even if fought and won would take those proceedings past election day thus accomplishing the goal of hiding true democratic choices openly to the public. The reality is the fix is in that there are but two parties and that the United States has a two party system. Check your Constitution and you will not find anywhere a limit to the number of parties permitted in American political theater. There have been elections thrown to Congress to sort things out as none of the candidates, sometimes more than even just three, reached the required number of electoral votes to become President and the delegates remained locked. Four candidates, Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William H. Crawford and Henry Clay, had originally campaigned for the presidency in 1823-24 and each man had the unyielding support base generally reflected the geographic region from which each came. Further confusing the election of 1823-4 was the fact that all four candidates claimed to represent the same party, the Democratic-Republican Party. Who said there had to be more than one party for controversy and more than a single candidate for the office of the President? Numerous Presidential elections have included more than two parties and others have had one party nominate and run two candidates in order to win differing states with neither candidate strong enough overall. This seldom made any difference as fielding two candidates proved to almost always throw the election to the other party. This in and of itself as well as the destructive antics of people such a Teddy Roosevelt running with his own Bull Moose Party simply because he did not win his party’s nomination which simply weakened his former party’s position splitting their vote and throwing the election to their mutual opposition. Often such splits worked to divide but not conquer as that divide was most apparent on the side of the third party candidate taking votes from their former and natural party leaving their mutual opponent the electoral victory.

 

The finality is this claim that the only fact which supports a Trump receiving anybody’s vote is due to their distaste for Hillary Clinton. This is an insult to the true supporters of Donald Trump though these pundits would also claim that the average Trump supporter is too ignorant or lacking in intelligence to understand that they had been insulted; simply piling on now, aren’t we. What makes the claims against Donald Trump appear to be greater than their support base is directly due to elitist and Republican hierarchy who detest Donald Trump and are ashamed of his candidacy representing their party, a party they believe deserves better than Donald Trump. If these people are pushed, the reality surfaces and we find that these are the very elitists and establishment Republicans who gave the electorate John McCain and Mitt Romney, both wonderful men with lots of talent and capable of being an outstanding President except they are centrist candidates more popular with the party leadership than its people. This is where Trump can claim his right to the nomination as he defeated all the centrist elites’ candidates and the other conservative darlings even once it became evident that the race was finally between two men, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, neither very popular with the Republican upper crust leadership who were left wondering where they went wrong. That has an easy answer, they were fully behind repeating every mistake of the last two elections and the people decided otherwise. One needs look no further than the campaign funding of the candidates. Initially all money was bet on Jeb Bush. He crashed and burned early. Then the money went to Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Ben Carson and others except for Trump. Donald Trump was the red haired, freckled step child nobody wanted left to grow up in a political orphanage but Trump took to the mean streets, like the ones in New York where he was raised. He then proceeded to battle the entire power structure of the Republican Party, the party he was attempting to garner the support for his candidacy for President. Somehow this proved the best path to tread as this was the year of the outsider. Yep, the year of the outsider and the primaries gave us the two main candidates having over 50% negatives for both in polling and two as connected monetarily deeply in the establishment of either party. That was the one truth evident in the 1823-4 elections, when carefully examined there is still only one party which could be called the Democratic-Republican Party even today. The main difference is that the Clintons have always been in the midst of the political mainstream and elites on the left while Donald Trump can actually be viewed as an outsider despite his campaign contributions, which he made often equally to each party, which were pay to play contributions so Donald could always claim he had supported either candidate dependent on his access to whatever approvals his next project will be required. That is the reality of how business need operate in order to not become subservient to either party and especially to their politics.

 

So, what can we say about Donald Trump and the fears he exudes to so many pundits and other commentary of these elections? Much of the fear is simply the media attempting to play on other people’s fears which can be largely traced back to early losses by favorite candidates such a Jeb Bush, likely the candidate with the moneyed support and who was considered, according to the media, to be the established leader which should have read the establishment’s candidate whose sole fear is that they have nothing truly behind them but the moneyed leadership whose sum total is greater in dollars compared to numbers of supporters. Such proved too deep a hole to get oneself extricated no matter what the monetary reserves contained. This was proven time after time where some even threw their hat in the ring supporting others who remained to fight a better fight but each failed until Trump and not-Trump remained the two standing candidates. Candidates other than Donald Trump were no longer gaining supporters as much as they were gaining people desperate to prevent Trump from winning the Republican nomination making him their candidate for President. Even now after the convention and every last ditch efforts having failed are seeking to find some way of placing a favorite son in every state to deny Trump winning in every state where this may become an accomplished reality. What these panicked elitists of the party are missing in their calculations is that if they prevent Trump winning some state all they have accomplished is electing Hillary Clinton as she will win such states handily. So, those opposed to having Hillary Clinton for their President had best find some reason they can latch upon in order to place Donald Trump into the White House. The one advantage this year had brought is both of the party candidates will desire looking truly knowledgeable in most areas desperately seeking any bump they can garner. It still remains to be seen exactly where the youths’ votes will fall at the end of the day. Another crucial area which bears watching, as it will be a vital and necessary component if Donald Trump hopes to be competitive, is the trending of the voting for married women, a demographic to both be voting on Election Day and supporting Trump in sufficient percentages. This one vital demographic is and has been the biggest question mark in the Trump equation, married women, especially those with a college education, and whether they will vote in sufficiently high percentages as well as vote Trump overwhelmingly. Without this demographic a Trump victory appears shaky and in jeopardy. Of course that is if polling is to be believed. Possibly the most manufactured and profoundly wrong segment of the entire election might turn out to be how little polling can be an accurate gauge of public opinions in this new digital world. One poll may prove to be the most accurate of them all are those based on social media, Twitter in particular. We will have to wait and see while keeping in the back of our minds that the pundits have sold Donald Trump nearly every step of the way. They have raised questions on his origins, intelligence, seriousness, knowledgeability, competence, skill set and any other quality which could be used to berate, belittle and otherwise oppose his candidacy and Trump has proven them wrong at every turn. The question now is whether he can do this one more time in November.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Leftist Conspiracy, Israel, Europe, the United States, and Beyond

 

Elections, media hype, political mass rallies, press control, universal currency and world governance are all leftist fronts where the extreme leftists are pushing the implementation of their socialist humanism ideals no matter the cost or the great dangers of potential dire results. The initial target in the West is the redefinition of religion from Judeo-Christian to Secular Socialist Humanism which seeks to establish a new world religion that will serve their aims to make a better world. This has led in many Jewish congregations in the United States and Europe to the redefining of Tikkun Olam from being a form of self-improvement first and having a communal accomplishment of improving each member leading to a more righteous community and thus making a more fair and caring world instead to improving the world which is designed as a socialist paradise where income inequality has been reduced, providing it does not impinge on the level of luxury of the leftists lives who are implementing this new equality of incomes, and the setting of a livable minimum wage instead of an actual simple minimum wage. They often demand that there be green areas set where there can be no building, limits on the heights for buildings and building freezes within cities and at the same time rent controls and affordable housing and rent subsidy housing but usually not near their neighborhoods. They pass completely meaningless nuclear free zone laws despite the fact that there have been absolutely no intentions to construct any such power plants. Sometimes they also pass zoning restrictions against coal or other carbon based power plants despite there being no power generation plants placed or proposed to ever be placed within their neighborhoods. There is a perfect example representing the nuclear free zone concept exists straddling the border between Montgomery County, Maryland and Washington D.C. in the Nuclear Free Tacoma Park which was declared a nuclear-free zone in 1983 by then-mayor Sam Abbott. Unfortunately for the Takoma Park library which had purchased new computers to replace their relics in June of 2012 they realized they had made an unforgivable error, the computers were Hewlett-Packard computers and Hewlett-Packard had been contracted to work on nuclear weapons thus making these computers not kosher for use within their nuclear-free zone. The city council gave the library a waver after a couple of months of severe hand-wringing. Strange but true. Another classical case of leftists hoisted with their own petard.

 

What I have noticed is that more and more as time passes is that leftists will use the world media, which they largely control, and other resources even to the point of populating rallies paid for by leftist groups or even other government agencies under leftist influence or from nations already under leftist control in order to influence elections in other Western nations in order to assist leftist parties to win elections. This has become very evident in the current Israeli elections and has an interesting twist which proves that this has been set-up and planned for quite some time leaving only exactly how deep this conspiracy had reached. First off to get back to the front end of this what very well might be a mad and crazed conspiracy theory we need to get back to the reelection campaign of President Obama. Throughout the campaign there was a theme that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was actively supporting Republican Mitt Romney in an attempt to unseat President Obama by instructing the Jews and supporters of Israel to put Romney into the Presidency because Prime Minister Netanyahu could not get along with President Obama. This little theme kept creeping into the campaign despite repeated denials in interview after interview by Netanyahu. Reality did not interfere with the story as it was just a given that Prime Minister Netanyahu personally could not get along with President Obama no matter how much President Obama gave in to Israel on, how much he worked to protect Israel, often even from herself and specifically from Prime Minister Netanyahu’s own extremist demands and attitudes which will only destroy Israel and lose her all the nations which used to be her friends. Nobody could quite understand this false conspiracy between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Obama.

 

Move back a bit before going on to the Israeli elections in 2013 to the government of Prime Minister Sharon in its post-Likud Kadima mode when the disengagement from Gaza was imminent and it was not until the last possible moment and only after great amounts of needless debate and hemming and hawing before leaving the government. This caused many to question which Netanyahu valued higher, his friendships especially when being called into question and his Zionist views which he claims are so central to his political life. Then came his winning the Prime Ministership in 2009 and his appointing of Ehud Barak as his Minister of Defense which led to some to question how deep Ehud Barak’s influence was being felt in cabinet decisions and how far the fact that Ehud Barak was Bibi’s commander in the IDF. This came to a head when President Obama demanded an extended building freeze beyond the Green Line which ended up being enforced for ten months despite support by the public to resist making such a sacrifice. Then came the elections in 2013 which returned Benyamin Netanyahu to Prime Minister and his first move was to include Tzipi Livni and her new Party’s paltry six mandates and appointed her to be Minister of Justice and made her the lead negotiator with Mahmoud Abbas and the Arab Authority government in Area A of Judea and Samaria. There have been rumors and even some unconfirmed reporting that there was another building freeze put in place to please President Obama and to placate Mahmoud Abbas and company. Now we are entering the last stretch of another election which this time places Tzipi Livni in direct opposition to Prime Minister Netanyahu as she has allied herself with the Labor Party and Yitzhak Hertzog.

 

It seems to be almost a theme in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s political career to have former Likudniks who have drifted, some even fled, away from Likud and the Zionist and right leaning camps to post-Zionist, and in Tzipi Livnis’s case, far leftist camp about as far as one could get from their Likud beginnings as they possibly could. This election has become a three ring circus with every ring and every act being some version of the theme, “Anybody but Bibi.” This has been the theme from Yair Lapid, Tzipi Livni, Yitzhak Hertzog, Zahava Gal-On and who knows how many other party leaders and NGOs. Where this Israeli election has the normal interference from the European Union and numerous European governments but there is a repeat of the Netanyahu opposition in 1999 when President Clinton sent James Carville and company to do everything possible and funded their efforts against Bibi. This election it is President Obama who sent Jeremy Bird and a group called either V15 or V2015 which is organizing as massive a grassroots door knocking army and has virtually unlimited funding as OneVoice which was recently awarded $200,000 for future projects by the United States State Department. This may be the first time that the United States State Department has financed the efforts to unseat a sitting Prime Minister of an ally in his nation’s elections. The efforts being put forth to beat Prime Minister Netanyahu is code-named “Anybody but Bibi” but is all about electing Tzipi Livni and Yitzhak Hertzog and prevent the formation of a Zionist or right wing government. This has gotten to the point where even President Reuven Rivlin has come and spoken of his desire if the election appears to be close and no clear victory is won to bring the two main parties, Labor/Hatnua and Likud together to form a so-called unity government with the intended design to formulate some new manner of electing the Israeli governance which will make it more difficult to topple a government and force the government to function with the elected people rather than holding elections every year to year and a half as so many Parliamentary governance like all those dysfunctional across all of Europe, or that is how it is being sold. All of these different packages are all designed to assure that there not be another Bibi dominated government and to prevent the formation of a Zionist and right wing government which will not cooperate with President Obama which is the result most sought by the leftist interference from the United States and Europe.

 

The really odd thing about the V15/OneVoice campaign theme is based on a simple word, “Change,” just change without the pairing with hope. Maybe the campaign genii from the Obama reelection campaign and also veterans from the 2008 initial election of President Obama using the mantra of “Hope and Change” and the so very rhythmic chanting of, “Yes We Can!” was just too easily recognized so instead they decided to go with something appropriate and simple but definitely unrecognizable, new, fresh and completely original so they came up with, “Change.” No hope included, just change, not even yes we might, just change, but everybody knows the real chant is anyone but Bibi. The V15 people necessarily never mention OneVoice and try not to allude to President Obama or overtly that they are campaigning for Hertzog and Livni, they just stick with the change of government and anybody but Bibi though everybody knows what that means, and it does not mean Deri from Shas, Bennett from Jewish Home or any of the others though most would be acceptable as long as they would not include Bibi in their coalition. But the truth is if you are attempting to defeat Bibi Netanyahu then you are campaigning for Hertzog and Livni. Further, if anyone cares to listen to what Hertzog and Livni were screaming about for the weeks leading up to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s recent addressing of the United States joint session of Congress then you heard their entire campaign platform. Their plan is to repair the relations between Israel and President Obama by dutifully obeying any and everything that President Obama demands from them.

 

This means that they will gladly withdraw all Jewish Israelis from all of Judea and Samaria as well as East Jerusalem and pull back behind the Green Line even without meeting with Mahmoud Abbas. This they will perform so as to allow President Obama to force Abbas to then agree to take the lands and hopefully accept them and agree to end his demands and make peace. Perhaps this is when the hope enters the formulas. Thus far nobody has addressed one little potentially troubling scenario, what happens should Mahmoud Abbas take the now purged lands which have been made Judenrein as he demands and refuse to make peace demanding instead that Israel accept some five-million Arab refugees within their now truncated borders and even then he actually says that he will still not make peace until all the Jews have been removed from his greater Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Is this where the Hopeless Changes would be enforced and Israel made to accept every last Arab claiming to be a refugee regardless of their ancestral history? As I said, nobody has addressed this and I can assure you this will be exactly what will occur should Livni and Hertzog be given the opportunity to form and coalition and they succeed in forming a government predicated on accessing to every wish of President Obama in his mad quest for peace in the Middle East and his winning another Nobel Peace Prize.

 

If this interference in the Israeli election works for the international forces of the socialist extreme leftists then all of the Western nations can expect a full court press to place leftist government into power wherever it proves possible and then the attempt to impose a One World universal currency, a deal that the Russians have been very strongly proposing and supporting and have run into a singular blockade, the Chinese thus far are refusing to accept such a currency and are willing to continue using the dollar as their currency is defined as a set value against the dollar so it behooves them to retain the dollar as the petro-dollar and the reserve currency of the world. If for a moment anyone believes that the making of a universal currency will work please take a long and hard look at Europe and the Euro. The same problems that Greece is facing as their economic plans did not fare well when compared to Germany or any other Euro nation. One cannot have a common currency unless every nation using that currency agrees to centralize their economic governance. That simply means if there is a world currency then there must be a world governance. That is the desire of the leftists and is why they are allying themselves currently with the forces of Islam as they view their militancy as the fastest route to a single governance over the world except the leftists believe they will be able to redefine Islam to transform it into their secular social humanist governance and have overlooked the slightest of problems, the Islamists will be so very busy murdering these very same extreme leftists for their beliefs, especially for their liberal views over women, abortion, same sex marriage, alternate lifestyles, drinking of alcohol and virtually everything else they accept even to the way they dress. The misadventure starts with the election coming within two weeks in Israel, March 17, 2015 to be exact, and if in any way Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is not chosen to form a Zionist coalition, or if he does not choose a Zionist coalition, then there will be endless interference and meddling in every election coming for the foreseeable future.

 

In some manners and ways even should Netanyahu be chosen to form the next government that is far from guaranteeing that he will form the kind of government required from him if Israel is to survive the calamities coming in the next few years. Obeying every dictation out of Washington, the White House in particular, would be a recipe for disaster and could very possibly signal the end of the Jewish People. In some ways it might be better for the survival of the free world and the Jewish People if one of the following were to be chosen though all are a longshot but are probably necessary for Netanyahu to choose in forming his government and the parties and their leaders are Jewish Home and Naftali Bennett, United Torah Judaism and Yaakov Litzman with Moshe Gafni, Yachad – Otzma and Eli Yishai and finally Yisrael Beiteinu and Avigdor Liberman. As things appear currently the polls are showing the race too close to call and in many ways it appears that whichever side between Netanyahu and Livni/Hertzog is given the nod to form a coalition will very probably succeed. Should Netanyahu allow his seeming personal problems with Naftali Bennett force him to refuse to bring Jewish Home in at all then he would be faced with accepting either a unity government which will cause problems and lead to a short-lived governing coalition which could easily be brought down. If the fears that some have expressed that Netanyahu’s Zionist streak may not be as wide or as deeply held as many have been led to believe and that his wavering on that point might cause him to make a unity government to honestly address the election processes and make a new and less fragile manner of governance might mean more to him. Additionally, there have been reports of some difficulties between President Rivlin and Prime Minister Netanyahu which also could come into play. Thankfully we have only a matter of days to scrutinize the elections and then all will be revealed and the die cast and our fates determined.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Can the Republican Party be Saved?

Recently the Republican hierarchy released their report detailing the problems the party is facing and attempting to detail the deficiencies and propose solutions. There were numerous voting blocs where they also found problems. One prime example was their losing the under thirty vote by at least a ratio of three to one. Other such blocs included single women, the less well off, almost the entirety of minority voters, and so forth. From what I saw it was possibly debatable if they even won a majority of the registered Republicans. Ok, I made that up but it was really almost that bad. They also found that they managed to receive fewer votes in every voting group over the results from four years earlier. Somehow the Republicans with candidate Romney were unable to even hold on to the McCain voters as they received fewer votes across the board in this last election. As horrible as this news was it was not as unsettling as the solutions the report provided. The main gist of the offered solution was to move the candidates and campaigns to align them closer to the Democrat message.

My bet is should they pursue this path it will lead to the death of the Republican Party. When the base voters who are the lifeblood of your political party are not getting to the polls your problem is not that you are too far removed from the other party, it is that you are not offering them anything distinctly different from the other party. The solution is not to attempt to be perceived as the Democrat Lite Party but to be the heart and soul Republican Party. Show a difference and celebrate that difference. The Republican Party has not given the feeling that they are proud, confident, or even that they believe in their party. They sound almost apologetic whenever they sound all that different from what the Democrats stand for. If you want a near perfect example of the real problem is that is cursing the Republicans all you need to do is listen to the “old guard” of the GOP during the debates on virtually any legislation where immigration reform is one of the most glaring examples. Another problem is the seeming lack of unity and cooperation between the different factions that make up the Republican Party. Sometimes it appears as if as a whole the Republicans do not stand unified for anything and are without honest and driving principles. We had a perfect example after Rand Paul’s efforts to make a serious protest over the evasiveness and apparent policy which would allow the use of drone strikes on American civilians inside the country’s borders in place of arrests and a trial if the President so deemed necessary with his thirteen hour filibuster and a number of the senior Republican Senators demeaned his efforts on the floor of the Senate. Such disagreements should never be fought out in the public square but should be discussed and resolved within the party. When was the last time you heard one Democrat Senator demean another Democrat on the floor of the Senate? Such would never happen as the Democrats have party discipline and would not stand for parading the party laundry in public.

Another problem the Republican Party needs to work on is simply getting their message out and being heard. Since the mainstream press is actually a willing partner in any Democrat candidate’s campaign, the Republicans have to find a delivery for their message which does not rely on the mainstream press. They definitely need to work on their Internet usage and make more and better use of U-tube, Twitter, Facebook, and all other forms of social media as well as blogs and the new media. There are a good number of conservative bloggers who would be anxious to support getting the republican message out if they only would be included in the campaign planning and get some assistance in coordinating with the candidate. They could offer releases to these bloggers once they had compiled an extensive list. But the most important challenge facing the Republican Party hierarchy and planners is a message around which the membership can rally and be excited over. The current state of the Republican can be summed up in two words, disjointed disarray. Until they can establish something that can be advertised as the Republican core beliefs around which every party candidate tailors their message, the Republican Party will continue to wander leaderless in the political wastelands.

Beyond the Cusp