Hillary email Cartoon

Trump isn't shooting blanks: Why National Review's attack may not matter

There’s been lots of chatter over Donald Trump proclaiming at a rally that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue without losing an iota of his support.
I suggest we lower the outrage meter. This is Trump’s in-your-face sense of humor, and one of the reasons that thousands flock to his rallies is that you never know how far he’s going to go in pushing the envelope.
It was not the best joke in an era of mass shootings, to be sure. But everyone gets what Trump was trying to say. No outrageous comment, no media attack, no revelation of a past liberal position seems to shake the loyalty of his fiercest fans.
This was underscored yesterday by new Fox News polls, giving Trump an 11-point lead over Ted Cruz among likely Iowa caucus-goers, and a 17-point edge over Cruz in New Hampshire. Remember when it looked like Cruz had Iowa almost wrapped up?
While it remains to be seen how many Trump supporters actually turn out—43 percent in the Iowa poll would be first-time caucus voters—it’s little wonder that Trump is oozing confidence. He’s not going to worry about verbal missteps. He’s not going to worry about Michael Bloomberg. And he’s not going to worry about National Review.
The magazine’s all-out assault came shortly after I wrapped my Las Vegas interview with Trump. But it underscores how his biggest problem hasn’t been the liberal press but a precinct of the profession that is usually firmly entrenched in the GOP’s corner: the conservative media.
The journalistic coup attempt spearheaded by National Review is so deeply revealing, both of the nature of Trump’s candidacy and a cultural divide on the right.
Trump is not running as a true-blue conservative. That is why media reports of the liberal positions he took and Democrats he befriended in the 1990s, a recent staple of Ted Cruz’s attacks, have failed to dent his armor. He presents an amalgam of positions, from a hard-right stance on illegal immigration to a center-left view on protecting entitlement programs to a liberal appeal to tax hedge-fund guys.
Rich Lowry and the editors of National Review are right: The Donald is not their kind of candidate. He has no interest in that. He is selling an image of strength and success, packaged with plenty of bombast, that transcends the usual litmus-test politics.
When I interviewed Trump in Las Vegas for Sunday’s “Media Buzz,” I asked whether he has, through some kind of weird alchemy, become the establishment candidate, as Cruz says. Trump made no attempt to dispute it, calling the Beltway power brokers “great people” and citing Bob Dole’s criticism of the Texas senator. “I’m a dealmaker,” he said proudly.
By recruiting 22 writers to attack Trump, by calling him an “opportunist” and a “huckster” and a “menace to American conservatism,” National Review is standing up for what it believes. Trump responded in typical fashion, attacking the messenger as a faltering franchise, as he has done with Politico and other media outlets. National Review is “a failing publication that has lost its way,” he said, with its influence “at an all-time low. Sad!” And yes, Trump said the magazine’s founder, William F. Buckley, would be ashamed, despite the fact that Buckley described him in 2000 as a self-regarding demagogue.
My colleague Mercedes Schlapp, who worked in the Bush White House, says most Republican voters don’t read National Review, portraying its editors and writers as living in a bubble. But every movement needs its thinkers to debate and deconstruct its philosophical principles.
No print publication has the influence it once had, and NR has certainly gotten a tsunami of media attention for its assault by recruiting the likes of Bill Kristol, editor of the rival Weekly Standard.
But Trump benefits from a newer and brasher wing of the conservative media, the more populist arena of Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Breitbart and others who may be more in touch with the grass roots than editors who live in Manhattan and Georgetown and attend conferences and cruises.  
National Review provides the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement, but it is also part of a cultural elite that many conservatives believe has let them down. Trump, the street fighter who emerged from a tabloid culture, has no interest, and no particular need, to win over the intellectuals. He is a brawler fighting a populist campaign. They are what George Wallace, in a very different context, once referred to as pointy-heads.
For National Review and its brethren, smaller government and a muscular foreign policy are the essence of why they fight the policy wars. These positions are not what motivate Trump, who often notes that he opposed the Iraq war, championed by the neoconservatives.
This same dynamic is at the heart of his battles with Fox News, where Trump has been pounded by the likes of George Will and Steve Hayes, along with Charles Krauthammer, Jonah Goldberg and Lowry, all associated with National Review.
We saw this same disruption in 2008 when Sarah Palin, who endorsed Trump this week, became the darling of Kristol and other media conservatives. When such commentators as David Brooks, David Frum and Kathleen Parker broke with the orthodoxy and called Palin unqualified to be vice president, they suffered a severe backlash.
Perhaps inevitably, things get personal between journalists and commentators who find themselves on opposite sides of the same movement.
“Some conservatives have made it their business to make excuses for Trump and duly get pats on the head from him. Count us out,” National Review writes.
It may have been a misstep for the magazine to go beyond using its ideological firepower against Trump and organize what looks like a political campaign to block him from winning the nomination.
Trump jokes about shooting people, but he may not need to expend much ammunition on a bunch of opinion folks who make their living with words.

Fox News Poll: Sanders up by 22 points in New Hampshire

Bernie Sanders commands a 22-point lead over Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, according to the latest Fox News Poll.
He tops Clinton by a 56-34 percent margin among likely Democratic primary voters.  That’s an improvement for Sanders from just two weeks ago when he was up by 13 points (50-37 percent).
Martin O’Malley holds steady with three percent support.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE NEW HAMPSHIRE POLL RESULTS
Most Sanders (78 percent) and Clinton supporters (76 percent) have a high degree of vote certainty.
Among just the subgroup of voters who say they will “definitely” vote in the Democratic primary, Sanders leads by 19 points (55-36 percent).
The poll finds Sanders retains his commanding lead among younger voters (+39 points), and also expands his advantage among a key Clinton constituency nationally:  voters over age 45.  He’s up 13-points among this group, while he was ahead by just 4 points earlier this month.
In addition, the Vermont senator has widened his lead among both men and women.  Women back him by 17 points in the new poll (55-38 percent), up from a 7-point edge in early January.  Men favor him by 29 points (was 23 points).
A third of likely Democratic voters in New Hampshire feel “betrayed” by politicians from their party (33 percent).  These folks go overwhelmingly for Sanders:  74-16 percent.
Nearly half of Clinton’s backers would be happy with Sanders as the nominee (46 percent), but only about a third of Sanders’s supporters say they would be satisfied with Clinton (35 percent).
In fact, 19 percent of those backing Sanders say they would stay home in November if Clinton is the nominee.  That's more than double the seven percent of Clinton supporters who say the same about Sanders.
New Hampshire Democrats are most likely to want a nominee who is honest and trustworthy (30 percent) and cares about people like them (25 percent).  Sanders is favored among voters who pick each of these traits.
The Fox News Poll is conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R). The phone poll was conducted January 18-21, 2016, with live interviewers (landline and cellphone).  This New Hampshire poll was among a sample of 801 registered voters selected from a statewide voter file.  Results based on the sample of 400 Democratic primary voters have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus five percentage points.

Fox News Poll: Clinton drops below 50 percent as her lead over Sanders shrinks

Hillary Clinton’s lead in the Democratic primary race has narrowed to its slimmest margin yet.
The front-runner’s support has slipped under 50 percent, and cracks may be appearing in what some called her “firewall” -- the African-American voter bloc.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE NATIONAL POLL RESULTS
Here are the numbers from the latest Fox News national poll:
Forty-nine percent of Democratic primary voters now support Clinton -- down from 54 percent two weeks ago.
Bernie Sanders also drops -- by two points -- to 37 percent. Martin O’Malley, down two ticks as well, gets 1 percent.
Ten percent are undecided -- a sign the race is more fluid than it seemed two weeks ago when only two percent were undecided.
Last June, Clinton held a 46-point lead over Sanders.  Since then, Sanders’s support has grown slowly but steadily, while Clinton’s support has ebbed and recovered once -- and now appears in danger of another reversal.
Clinton’s sagging support is due, at least in part, to erosion among black voters.  While 67 percent support her, that’s down from 78 percent two weeks ago and 84 percent in December.
“This comes against a backdrop of extreme volatility in stock markets and increasing pessimism about the economy,” says Dana Blanton, vice president of public opinion research for Fox News. “For the first time in over three years, more Americans think the economy is getting worse than better.”
A year ago, 53 percent thought the economy was getting better and 36 percent said worse.  Now 46 percent think it’s getting worse and 39 percent better.
Sanders says as president he will, “Break up the big banks, close the tax loopholes, and make them pay their fair share.”  He has criticized Clinton for being too close to Wall Street and in the last Democratic debate said the first difference between them is, “I don’t take money from big banks. I don’t get personal speaking fees from Goldman Sachs.”
The big dividing line among Democrats continues to be age, with Sanders leading by 26 points among those under 45 and Clinton leading by 42 points among those ages 45 and over.
Sanders voters tend to be dissatisfied (69 percent) with the workings of the federal government, while Clinton voters are about as likely to be satisfied (50 percent) as dissatisfied (47 percent).
About one-quarter (27 percent) of Sanders voters will be pleased if Clinton gets the nomination, while one-fifth (19 percent) would be so dissatisfied they’d stay home in November instead of voting for her.
Clinton voters would be more accepting of Sanders as the nominee -- 43 percent say they’d be satisfied with him, while 13 percent of Clinton voters say they probably won’t vote if Bernie is the nominee.
One thing Sanders and Clinton supporters have in common is that they’d rather Joe Biden be the nominee than their candidate’s current opponent.  Half (51 percent) of Clinton supporters and 39 percent of Sanders voters would be satisfied with the vice president as the Democratic nominee.
Honesty (30 percent) is the top quality Democratic primary voters want in their nominee, followed by the right experience (22 percent), caring about people like themselves (17 percent) and the ability to win in November (8 percent).
Among those who say honesty is most important, Sanders leads Clinton by 27 points.
Both Sanders (84 percent) and Clinton (93 percent) supporters overwhelmingly approve of the job Barack Obama is doing as president.  For comparison, 92 percent of Republican front-runner Donald Trump’s supporters disapprove of Obama.
Overall, 45 percent of voters approve and 48 percent disapprove of Obama’s job performance.  This is an improvement from early January when 42 percent approved and 53 percent disapproved.
The Fox News poll is based on landline and cellphone interviews with 1,009 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from January 18-21, 2016.  The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points for all registered voters, and 5 points for the Democratic primary voter sample (375).

Video suggests Clinton shared info that 'would never be on an unclassified system' normally

Sanders soars amid doubts about Clinton's trustworthiness 

 

 

A 2013 video, obtained exclusively by Fox News, raises fresh questions about how Hillary Clinton handled sensitive information at the State Department. 
In the video, veteran diplomat Wendy Sherman reveals that in the interest of speed, Clinton and her aides would share information that "would never be on an unclassified system" normally.
The questions surround a 2013 speech in which Sherman compared the technology differences between serving at the State Department in the administrations of President Bill Clinton and President Obama.
"Now we have BlackBerries, and it has changed the way diplomacy is done," Sherman, who was undersecretary of state at the time, said in the 2013 on-camera remarks. "Things appear on your BlackBerries that would never be on an unclassified system. But you're out traveling, you're trying to negotiate something. You want to communicate with people, it's the fastest way to do it."
Clinton's use of a personal server for her official emails during her time as secretary of state is now being reviewed by the FBI.
The Democratic presidential candidate has maintained she never sent or received information that was marked classified at the time. Questions also have been raised about whether classified emails were hacked by China, Russia, Iran and other nations.
In Sherman's speech to the American Foreign Service Association, she cited as an example Clinton's September 2011 visit to the United Nations General Assembly.
The secretary of state met with Lady Ashton of the European Union and, according to Sherman, the two high officials used their BlackBerries to conduct Middle East peace negotiations.
"So they sat there, as they were having the meeting, with their BlackBerries, transferring language back and forth between them and between their aides to multitask in a quite a new fashion," said Sherman. "To have the meeting and at the same time be working on the Quartet statement."
The Middle East Quartet is involved in facilitating the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and consists of the U.S., the U.N., the E.U., and Russia.
Previous email releases by the State Department of Clinton's official correspondence show that in September 2011, Clinton aide Jake Sullivan forwarded her an email chain on the Quartet statement.
The State Department considered the correspondence sensitive enough that the department deemed some of those emails to now be classified, and officials redacted details before the emails were released to the public.
The conservative super PAC America Rising declared that under National Archives guidelines, the information deemed classified involves "foreign relations or foreign activities of the United States, including confidential sources," so it was born classified when the emails were created.
"Despite her numerous protests, evidence continues to grow showing Secretary Clinton knowingly sent and received classified material using her private email," Jeff Bechdel, communications director for America Rising, said in a written statement. "This new video again puts Clinton on defense, forcing the former Secretary of State to explain why she put U.S. intelligence at risk by exclusively [using] a private email account for government business."
A Clinton aide would not comment on the video, which was revealed as new Fox News polls showed a tightening race between Clinton and Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders. Clinton's once double-digit lead in Iowa has dwindled to just 6 points, while Sanders has opened a 22-point lead in New Hampshire.
The polls also showed that in both Iowa and New Hampshire, Democratic voters said the top quality they want in a candidate is being honest and trustworthy, while experience and electability were less important.

Bernie Sanders Cartoon

Sanders, other 2016 candidates don't exactly welcome a Bloomberg bid

Would Sanders in the White House put you in the poor house?

 

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said Sunday that former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg entering the White House race shows that the wealthy are too “controlling” of American politics, offering perhaps the most critical assessment within the 2016 field of a Bloomberg bid.
“What I have been saying for a long time is that this country is moving away from democracy to oligarchy, that billionaires are the people who are controlling our political life,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Still, Sanders, whose campaign is a champion for the middle class and poor, expressed confidence about winning the presidency in a matchup with billionaire Donald Trump as the Republican nominee and billionaire Bloomberg as a third-party candidate.
“That is not what, to my view, American democracy is supposed to be about -- a contest between billionaires,” the Vermont Independent senator said. “If that takes place, I am confident that we will win it.”
Bloomberg, an Independent and successful businessman, has asked advisers to draft a game plan. And he plans to commission a poll after the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries in early February before deciding on a run, as reported first by The New York Times.
Bloomberg seems to suggest he’d enter the race only if Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton loses the party nomination to Sanders. And he has reportedly told associates that he would spend $1 billion of his own money on the race.
I’m going to relieve him of that and get the nomination so he doesn’t have to,” Clinton said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Trump said on the same show: "I would love to have Michael Bloomberg run. I would love that competition. I think I'd do very well against it."
Also on Sunday, Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio largely dismissed a Bloomberg candidacy.
“Right now, he’s just a public citizen who owns a company,” said Rubio, who implied he has no problem with Bloomberg’s wealth, then retold his personal journey. “I think this is a great country where the son of a bartender and a maid can be running for the same office and have the same opportunity as the son of a millionaire. … I want America to remain that kind of country.”  
GOP candidate Jeb Bush, raised in an affluent family and whose father was president, called Bloomberg a “great mayor,” despite have different political views.
“Look, he’s a good man,” Bush also said on ABC’s “This Week.” “He’s much more liberal than I am, but he’s a good person.”
Bush also predicted that the 73-year-old Bloomberg won’t get into the race unless the general election features the front-running Trump and Sanders, who is second behind Clinton in the Democratic primary race.

Rep. Schiff joins fellow Dems in casting doubt on IG letter on Clinton emails

The top Democrat on the House Select Committee on Intelligence suggested Sunday that congressional Republicans are manipulating the inspector general who recently reported about new “top secret” information found on Hillary Clinton’s private email system.
California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff argued that several Republican committee chairmen are investigating Clinton's use of the private system as secretary of state while “actively campaigning” against her.
"I think the inspector general has to be very careful not to allow himself to be used by one political party against the other in a presidential race,” Schiff told "Fox News Sunday."
He also said that one of the chairmen went to a campaign rally for front-running GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump “and said his purpose is to defeat Hillary Clinton.”
Schiff also repeated the argument about the difficulty in trying to agree on what is top secret information. It was among the most recent efforts by Democrats to downplay or discredit the Jan. 14 letter from Intelligence Committee Inspector General Charles McCullough to top Capitol Hill Republicans.
The unclassified letter states that a recent review by intelligence agencies identified "several dozen" classified emails -- including specific, top-secret intelligence related to so-called "special access programs.”
Since the letter was reported by Fox News, Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon has suggested that McCullough “put two Republican senators up to sending him a letter so that he would have an excuse to resurface the same allegations he made back in the summer that have been discredited.”
And Clinton has suggested the purported super-secret information was perhaps a “New York Times” article about a drone program.
Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, a Republican on Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told “Fox News Sunday” in response: “We're not just talking about a newspaper article.
“It's (about) the conversation that interchanges between staff. This whole Clinton procedure (is) trying to attack the messenger and to say the messenger must be a member of the vast right-wing conspiracy.”
However, he declined to discuss what is in the emails but suggested that what McCullough cited in the letter “would absolutely represent a security threat.”
He also argued that McCullough was nominated for the post by President Obama and confirmed unanimously by a Democratic-controlled Senate.

Fox News Poll: Trump gains in Iowa, still dominates in New Hampshire

With just over a week until the first 2016 election contest, Donald Trump takes the lead in Iowa -- and maintains his big advantage in New Hampshire. 
That’s according to the latest round of Fox News state polls on the Republican presidential nomination contest.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE IOWA POLL RESULTS
CLICK HERE TO READ THE NEW HAMPSHIRE POLL RESULTS
Trump bests Ted Cruz in Iowa and now receives 34 percent support among Republican caucus-goers.  Trump was at 23 percent in the Fox News Poll two weeks ago (January 4-7).
Cruz is second with 23 percent -- down a touch from 27 percent.  Marco Rubio comes in third with 12 percent, down from 15 percent.  No others garner double-digit support.
Among caucus-goers who identify as “very” conservative, Cruz was up by 18 points over Trump earlier this month.  Now they each receive about a third among this group (Cruz 34 percent vs. Trump 33 percent).
There’s been a similar shift among white evangelical Christians.  Cruz’s 14-point advantage is now down to a 2-point edge.
A lot has happened in the intervening two weeks.  Fox Business Network hosted a Republican debate where Trump questioned Cruz’s eligibility to be president, and Cruz attacked Trump’s liberal “New York values.”  On Tuesday, Gov. Terry Branstad urged his fellow Iowans to vote against Cruz because of his opposition to ethanol -- and former Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin endorsed Trump.
Republican pollster Daron Shaw says, “We tend to over-interpret every little thing in a presidential race, but here we actually have solid evidence Trump didn't just win last week in Iowa -- he won it by enough to put some distance between himself and Cruz.”  Shaw conducts the Fox News Poll with Democratic pollster Chris Anderson.
But a lot can change before Iowans caucus February 1.
A third of Republican caucus-goers say they may change their mind (33 percent).  Even one in four Trump supporters says they may ultimately go with another candidate (25 percent).
Cruz tops the list when GOP caucus-goers are asked their second-choice candidate.  When first and second-choice preferences are combined, it’s extremely tight between Trump (48 percent) and Cruz (45 percent).
That’s because 20 percent of Iowa Republican caucus-goers are so negative on Trump they say they would “refuse” to vote for him over the Democrat in November, while fewer say the same of Cruz (11 percent).  Another 14 percent say they would stay home if the nominee is Jeb Bush.
Here’s how the rest of the field stands:  Ben Carson is at 7 percent, Rand Paul is at 6 percent, Bush and Chris Christie each get 4 percent, Mike Huckabee, John Kasich and Rick Santorum tie at 2 percent, and Carly Fiorina gets 1 percent.
More than a third who say they will attend a Republican caucus this year have never gone before (38 percent).  Many of these first-time attendees, 43 percent, are supporting Trump, while 19 percent favor Cruz and 14 percent Rubio.  The poll can’t predict how many from this group will actually show up.
Among just those Republicans who have caucused before, it’s a 3-point race:  Trump 28 percent vs. Cruz 25 percent.  Another 10 percent go for Rubio.
True conservative values is the top characteristic GOP caucus-goers want in their party’s nominee (27 percent), closely followed by telling it like it is (24 percent) and being a strong leader (23 percent).  Those traits outrank nominating someone who can win in November (9 percent) or has the right experience (7 percent).

New Hampshire
Unlike Iowa, there has been little movement in the New Hampshire Republican race. Trump continues to garner more than twice the support of his nearest competitors.
The Fox News poll shows Trump at 31 percent (down 2 points), Cruz at 14 percent (up 2 points) and Rubio at 13 percent (down 2 points).
Kasich is at 9 percent, Bush and Christie each receive 7 percent, Carson and Paul tie at 5 percent, while Fiorina gets 3 percent, and Huckabee 1 percent.
Despite dominating the NH race, Trump also tops the list as the nominee who would make Republicans stay home in November:  26 percent say they would refuse to vote for Trump against the Democrat.  Fifteen percent say the same of Bush, 14 percent feel that way about Cruz, and 12 percent about Rubio.
Over half of likely Republican primary voters in the Granite State say they are certain to vote for their candidate, while 36 percent could still shift their support.
Granite Staters also want slightly different traits in their nominee than their Iowa counterparts.  NH GOP primary voters want a strong leader (27 percent) and someone who tells it like it is (21 percent) more than a nominee who has true conservative values (15 percent), is electable (13 percent), or has the right experience (12 percent).
The Fox News Poll is conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R).  These polls were conducted January 18-21, 2016, by telephone (landline and cellphone) with live interviewers.
The New Hampshire poll was among a sample of 801 registered voters selected from a statewide voter file.  Results based on the sample of 401 Republican primary voters have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus five percentage points.
In Iowa, the poll was among a sample of 801 registered voters selected from a statewide voter file.  Results based on the sample of 378 Republican caucus-goers have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus five percentage points.

On Capitol Hill, Snow cancels House votes on ObamaCare, Iran sanctions

The winter storm that has buried Washington under record-breaking snow has forced Congress to change plans, including the cancellation of key House votes on ObamaCare and Iran sanctions.
The announcement was made Sunday by California GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy, whose duties as House majority leader is to set the chamber’s voting schedule.
As the storm approached late last week, McCarthy cancelled scheduled votes for Monday. But he has now told chamber members not to "expect" votes on Tuesday and Wednesday “due to the severity of the winter storm."
He also said the next scheduled vote is for the night of Feb. 1.
The Senate is still scheduled to return to work Tuesday morning. However, the confirmation vote for John Vazquez to be federal judge in New Jersey has been postponed until Wednesday night.
Roughly 22 inches of snow landed in downtown Washington, according to an unofficial National Weather Service report Sunday.
The walkways that connect the Rotunda and the office buildings on the Capitol grounds are essentially clear, but Washington’s transit system remains closed.
And flights to the surrounding airports are still cancelled, which means many members of Congress cannot return to Capitol Hill until later this week.
The storm and McCarthy’s announcement likely means the House will hold no votes this week because chamber Democrats are holding a retreat in Baltimore on Thursday and Friday, when President Obama is slated to speak.
The House was scheduled to take a re-vote this week on a bill to impose sanctions on Iran. Two weeks ago, the GOP-controlled House briefly passed the bill. But the House then moved to nullify the vote because 137 members missed the roll call.
The House was also scheduled to attempt an override of President Obama's veto of the special budget reconciliation measure that would repealed ObamaCare and defunded Planned Parenthood.
Successful veto overrides require a two-thirds vote in both chambers. That equals roughly 280 to 290 yeas in the House, depending on how many members cast ballots.
The chamber appears nowhere close to that number, but GOP leadership said it will nevertheless forge ahead with the vote.