Presumptuous Politics : May 22, 2016

Sunday, May 22, 2016

Trayvon Martin Foundation Cartoons

Conservatives brace for GOP platform battle in Cleveland

What does Trump have in store for the GOP convention?

While Republicans work through their issues with Donald Trump as their standard bearer, the presumptive presidential nominee and conservatives could be headed for a convention showdown over what the party stands for -- and the possibility Trump may try to tweak the party platform in his own image.
And while Trump has made no public moves to do so at this point, that doesn't mean conservative warriors won't be ready in case he does.
“I have one goal now, and it is simple -- to get as many solid, constitutional conservatives to Cleveland and onto the platform and rules committees,” Iowa GOP Rep. Steve King told FoxNews.com.
The platform, in the GOP's own words, is a document outlining "who we are and what we believe." The language can be fiercely contested, and the possibility of such a debate may be driving ex-candidate Ted Cruz's push to ensure his delegate allies go to the convention. King is one of those Cruz delegates who plans to be on the floor, fighting for a conservative platform.
“I have not yet seen a real effort to change the platform. But my point from the beginning is that we have to be prepared,” he said.
Another Cruz supporter, former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, reportedly sent an email asserting it was “imperative that we fill the Rules and Platform Committees with strong conservative voices like yours.”
The concerns reflect the broader tension in the party between Trump and stalwart conservatives not quite convinced he's one of them. Recognizing the need to assuage such concerns, Trump dispatched campaign chairman Paul Manafort to Capitol Hill on Thursday for a series of meetings with Republican Party leaders.
“He suggested that there weren’t going to be any changes to the party platform,” Rep. Scott DesJarlais told BuzzFeed News.
The Tennessee Republican, a Trump endorser, added there “was good two-way dialogue” on issues. Manafort also met with Cruz supporter Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Senate aides.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, who has tried to smooth over tensions in the party over Trump's primary victory, has offered similar assurances the platform will not be substantially changed in July.
"I don't think Donald Trump is interested in rewriting the platform of the Republican Party," he told The Associated Press last week.
The Trump campaign did not respond to questions from FoxNews.com on whether it planned to seek any changes.
But Trump's rhetoric and the party platform adopted in 2012 would appear sharply at odds in some areas.
On trade, for example, the 2012 platform states, “Free Trade Agreements negotiated with friendly democracies since President Reagan’s trailblazing pact with Israel in 1985 facilitated the creation of nearly ten million jobs supported by our exports.”
Trump has blasted trade deals like NAFTA, and just hours after Manafort worked Capitol Hill, Trump said at a fundraiser for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie: " We’re losing $500 billion in trade with China. Who the hell cares if there’s a trade war?"
He rebuffed criticism from “very conservative ideologues,” stressing that he is “a free trader, but I’m only a free trader if we make good deals.”
On entitlements like Medicare, meanwhile, the platform says: “We must restructure the twentieth century entitlement state so the missions of important programs can succeed in the twenty-first century.”
Yet even before he officially jumped in the race, Trump tweeted last May that he was “the first & only potential GOP candidate to state there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid.”
The question is whether Trump tries to make these positions part of the official party mission statement.
“How Donald Trump approaches the debate over the platform will send a very clear message to the grassroots about just how conservative he really is and how serious he is about uniting the party,” said the Heritage Foundation's Lee Edwards, who has attended more than a dozen party conventions.
Edwards said conservatives also “will want to have strongest pro-life plank possible. How [Trump] responds will be a key test about how accommodating he can be on other issues.”
Trump indeed has expressed a willingness to change the platform to include abortion exceptions in the case of rape, incest and the life of the mother.
“Yes, I would. Absolutely, for the three exceptions, I would. I would leave it for the life of the mother, but I would absolutely have the three exceptions,” Trump said during an April appearance on NBC News’ “Today" show.
Like Trump, Republican nominees John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 also stated support for those three exceptions, but neither sought to change the language of the platform.
While delegates will not arrive in Cleveland until July, the process of selecting members of the platform committee and drafting the platform itself is well underway.
According to the party rules, each state nominates two people to serve as members of that committee.
As the convention draws closer, a website and online surveys will be used to gather feedback on the platform, according to convention spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski. The committee members will meet the week of July 11 to complete the drafting, and release the document at the beginning of the convention.
It will eventually be voted on and adopted, in some form.
Michael Barone, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and principal co-author of the annual Almanac of American Politics, suggested most of the document will not be contentious. “While there are real differences and fissures on policy like trade and the direction of American foreign policy, I don’t see all of those becoming matters of debate in the platform. It is a non-binding document,” he said.
The platform may be purely symbolic, but Iowa's King said it represents the belief system of the Republican Party.
"These are principles important to the millions of conservatives who stayed home last election," he said. "[Trump] needs to speak to them."

In year of supposed angry electorate, just one congressional incumbent ousted in primary

In the year of the supposed angry electorate, millions of frustrated voters have put their weight behind the outsider presidential campaigns of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders but continue to back congressional incumbents -- ousting only one so far in hundreds of 2016 primaries contests.
The lone victim was Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Chaka Fattah, but his ouster appeared more about questionable ethics than frustration with Washington insiders. The 11-term congressman is facing a 29-count federal indictment related to racketeering, bribery and mail fraud.
“The year of the outside candidate is a neat, tidy package put out by the media to a certain extent,” David Payne, a Republican strategist and partner at Vox Global, said this week. “But it’s only part of the story. Look at all of the insiders who are picking up 60 percent of the vote.”
Payne argues that House districts have been “so carefully constructed” by state party officials and others to “remain stable” that few primary races are now competitive.
To be sure, members of Congress rarely lose a primary race, in which incumbents (typically) face a challenge from candidates in their own political party.
Over the past three election cycles, just 17 congressional incumbents have been ousted in a primary -- four House members in 2014, five House members and one senator in 2012, and four House members and three senators in the so-called 2010 Tea Party revolution.
With claims to seven upsets in the 2010 primaries, the conservative, grass-roots Tea Party movement will likely have more success than the 2016 electorate in ousting incumbents.
The 2010 defeat of three-term Utah GOP Sen. Bob Bennet, a reliable conservative, by Tea Party-backed Mike Lee indeed rattled the political class.
But the race that now seems to stick with voters and others is the 2014 upset of House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor. The Virginia Republican and member of House leadership was stunningly upset that year by Dave Brat, a first-time candidate with Tea Party support.
The post-script to the race suggests Cantor paid too little attention to his district.
But Beyond getting ousted over so-called “ideological purity,” Capitol Hill lawmakers also often lose primaries amid an ethics scandal, as a result of redistricting, include eight in 2012, or are “accidental candidates” who get elected when, for example, their party’s top candidate unexpectedly drops out.
This year, Trump, a billionaire businessman and first-time candidate, beat more than a dozen Republican lawmakers or former elected officials to become the party’s presumptive presidential nominee.
And Sanders, a self-describe democratic socialist, has kept his insurgent campaign alive in the Democratic primary by portraying front-runner Hillary Clinton as a Washington and Wall Street insider.
Louis Jacobsen -- a columnist for the magazine “Governing” and a senior correspondent for the Tampa Bay Times’ “PolitiFact” -- suggested Friday that if the angry electorate indeed exists, only “big personalities” on the national stage appear capable of getting voters riled and into polling stations.
“I’m not seeing a whole lot of it” in gubernatorial and other state-level races, Jacobsen said.
He argued that congressional districts have become so blue or red over the years that it’s nearly impossible for a challenger to be more conservative or more liberal that a sitting House member. And he suggested that Congress appears “amorphous” among voters, who tend to know more about presidential candidate, which results in more targeted anger.
Such a theory might help explain why Hill lawmakers continue to win 2016 primaries despite have historically low approval ratings.
A recent Gallup survey found just 17 percent of Americans approved of the job Congress is doing. That rating has not exceeded 20 percent since October 2012.
“Voter generally feel (members) aren’t very good,” Jacobsen said.

Progressive blogger 'fired' for Twitter attack on Clinton supporters Tanden, Center for American Progress

Hillary Clinton (r) with President of the Center for American Progress Neera Tanden

An up-and-coming progressive blogger was purportedly fired Friday for his Twitter fight with one of the movement’s most power figures, Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress.
The exchange started when Matt Bruenig, a blogger for the liberal think tank Demo, started tweeting about an unflattering story in The Nation about Bernie Sanders supporters, according to Gawker.
Tanden was a policy adviser for Presidents Bill Clinton and Barak Obama and for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 White House bid.
The Center for American Progress is a research group whose public policy work has for decades shaped the political agenda of progressives and other elected Democrats.
The group’s first president was John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign director and a Bill Clinton chief of staff.
Tanden eventually entered the Twitter exchange Friday between Bruenig and the author of The Nation story, tweeting: “Good to know this stuff isn't just for me!”
Bruenig responded with several caustic tweets including one about Taden’s alleged endorsement of cutting welfare benefits for the poor.
“You don’t get to be president of CAP without starving some poor mothers,” he wrote in one tweet.
In subsequent tweets, Bruenig called Tanden “geriatric” and wrote: “Scumbag Neera uses welfare when she needs it then takes away from others when they need it. Disgusting.”
Tanden has purportedly acknowledged her family having needed welfare. She apparently has never backed welfare reform. But Tanden was a policy adviser in the Clinton administration that reduced welfare benefits in 1996.
Demo told Gawker that the group and Bruenig were “parting ways,” after having “agreed to disagree on the value of the attack mode on Twitter.”
Gawker reports that a source said Bruenig was fired.
Demo made an online apology for Bruenig’s “scumbag” remark and suggested in a press release that his employment was terminated upon learning the extent of his “online harassment of people with whom he disagrees.”
Bruenig has declined to comment.
Tanden purportedly told Gawker in an email: “I find the whole situation unfortunate. Mr. Bruenig has made contributions on the poverty discourse and I wish him well in the future. I would welcome an actual discussion of ideas with him.”

Obama under pressure to address American POWs in visit to Vietnam

May 22, 2016: A Vietnamese couple pass a poster of U.S President Barrack Obama with footnote read "Welcome to our city", hanging in a door front in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Relatives of U.S. military members missing in Vietnam are urging President Obama to press Hanoi on the whereabouts of anyone who may have been killed or captured during the post-World War II conflict.
Vietnam hopes that Obama will agree to lift an arms export embargo so it can better deal with China in the South China Sea dispute, while rights activists want him to hold to account a repressive one-party state seen as treating its critics abysmally during his visit on Monday.
According to The Telegraph, some Americans believe there is still some “unfinished business” to take care of in discovering the unknown fates of more than 1,600 military members who never returned home from the Vietnam War. Relatives of those military members want Vietnam’s help in accounting for those who may have died after being shot down or died as a prisoner of war.
Some others want Obama to seek answers as to whether Vietnam held Americans as prisoners of war after 1973 instead of releasing all the captives as the peace agreement called for. Hanoi has repeatedly insisted that it has provided Washington with its help in discovering the whereabouts of all of its missing personnel and denied that it held prisoners of war after the conflict was over. Just over 1,000 Americans have already been accounted for and had their remains returned, The Telegraph reported.
Even though the last 591 American POWs returned to the U.S. in April 1973, there are still suspicions that the then-North Vietnamese retained some prisoners of war to leverage an aid package with President Richard Nixon that could’ve enticed the end of the war. The theory states that the aid payment failed because of Nixon’s Watergate scandal and the North Vietnamese kept the prisoners.
The theory continues as saying that some American prisoners of war are believed to have been killed or to provide military secrets in exchange for their lives under the Communist rule, according to The Telegraph.
Speculation was also fueled by unconfirmed sightings of American POWs in Vietnam by a Vietnam expat and the findings of a 1993 Senate committee, headed by Secretary of State John Kerry. However, no real proof has ever been offered.
“We acknowledge that there is no proof that US POWs survived, but neither is there proof that all of those who did not return had died,” it concluded. “There is evidence, moreover, that indicates the possibility of survival, at least for a small number, after Operation Homecoming.”
Sen. John McCain, who was a prisoner of war captured by Vietnam, said he received “full access” to the Vietnamese records in the 1990s and didn’t believe there were any surviving American POWs remaining in the Asian nation.
Lt. Morgan Donahue’s plane was shot down over modern-day Laos in 1968 and has never been accounted for, his brother Jeffrey told The Telegraph. Jeffrey Donahue said he believes he was taken by the Vietnamese and was eliminated when they didn’t receive their aid from the Nixon administration.
“The government says he is dead. But I’m absolutely convinced he was still alive at the end of the war. I don’t hold any hope that he is alive now.”
The prisoners of war issue may not be on the series of topics in Obama’s visit to Hanoi. He’s expected to address the Communist nation on China’s threat and the country’s civil rights issues.
Ahead of Obama's visit, in what was seen as a goodwill gesture, Vietnam granted early release from prison to a prominent dissident Catholic priest. The Rev. Nguyen Van Ly has served several long terms in prison or been under house arrest for promoting political and religious freedoms.
Both Washington and international rights groups criticize Vietnam for jailing people who peacefully express their views by using vaguely worded security laws. Hanoi says that only lawbreakers are punished. In March, seven bloggers and activists were sentenced for "abusing democratic freedoms" and "spreading anti-state propaganda."

Clinton to Trayvon Martin Foundation conference: Trump's 'dangerous' pro-gun policies 'way out there'

Hillary Clinton accused Donald Trump of pandering to the gun lobby in a speech to a conference Saturday, organized by the Trayvon Martin Foundation to help families of gun violence victims, warning the audience about a Trump presidency that would put more children “at risk of violence and bigotry.”
Clinton spoke one day after presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said that she “wants to abolish the Second Amendment.”
Donald Trump's gun policies are "not just way out there" but "dangerous" and would make America less safe, Hillary Clinton said Saturday.
"This is someone running to be president of the United States of America — a country facing a gun violence epidemic — and he's talking about more guns in our schools, he's talking about more hatred and division in our streets," the likely Democratic presidential nominee said of her presumptive Republican rival. "That's no way to keep us safe."
Clinton's criticism of the Trump came the day after he slammed her as "Heartless Hillary" for backing restrictions on gun ownership in a speech before the National Rifle Association convention in Louisville, Kentucky. Clinton and Trump are likely to meet in the general election.
The conference was led by Sybrina Fulton, whose 17-year-old son, Trayvon Martin, was fatally shot by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in 2012. She has campaigned with Clinton during the Democratic presidential primaries.
"The reason why I stand with her is because she first stood with me," Fulton said before introducing Clinton to more than 200 people packed inside a hotel banquet room.
Queen Thompson Brown, a Miami mother whose son was the victim of gun violence in 2006 and who has mentored Fulton, said she and others do not want to take away guns from Americans but hope to "promote common sense gun laws."
Clinton praised the courage of Fulton and others who had suffered the loss of loved ones to gun violence or while in police custody.
"We have a moral obligation to protect our children no matter what zip code they live in," she said.
"If you want to imagine what Trump's America will look like, picture more kids at risk of violence and bigotry, picture more anger and fear," she said.
Clinton repeated her pledge to fight the powerful National Rifle Association lobby, saying "we will not be silenced, we will not be intimidated."
The gun rights organization endorsed Trump, even though he had previously supported measures like an assault weapons ban that the NRA vigorously opposes. The group applauded Trump's call for ending "gun-free zones" across the country.
Speaking at a National Rifle Association forum Friday in Louisville, Ky., Trump vowed to preserve Americans’ gun-ownership rights and warned that Clinton, if elected, could curtail such rights with her Supreme Court nominations.
“I would like for Hillary Clinton to put a list together also,” Trump, who recently announced his list of potential nominees, said at the NRA Institute for Legislative Action forum. “I want to see what the list consists of. … It will be day and night. It won’t be good for the people in this room and the country.”
Trump also won the endorsement of the NRA-ILA and said he has a permit to carry a concealed weapon.
“Crooked Hillary is the most anti-gun, anti-Second Amendment candidate,” he also said. “She wants to take your guns away from you, just remember that.”
NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris Cox, who announced the Trump endorsement said in a written statement: "The stakes in this year's presidential election could not be higher for gun owners.
“If Hillary Clinton gets the opportunity to replace Antonin Scalia with an anti-gun Supreme Court justice, we will lose the individual right to keep a gun in the home for self-defense. … So the choice for gun owners in this election is clear. And that choice is Donald Trump.”