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73% of Americans Want Democrats to Dump Nancy Pelosi, According to Recent Poll

 

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 12:41 PM PT — Fri. August 10, 2018

According to recent poll, registered voters do not want Nancy Pelosi to remain as the Democrat leader in the House of Representatives.
The American Barometer poll — released Thursday by The Hill — shows 73-percent of those surveyed say the Democrats need to dump Pelosi.
The poll also found Democrats are almost evenly split when asked whether Pelosi should remain in party leadership, while 79-percent of independents said Democrats need to find a new leader.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

While Republicans overwhelmingly support Pelosi’s ouster, pollsters say there’s more to the midterms than campaigning against Pelosi.
“Nancy Pelosi is the minority leader, Donald Trump is the president, Ryan is the Speaker of the House, McConnell is the majority leader — running against Nancy Pelosi is like running against George W. Bush in 2010, which Democrats tried to do, it didn’t work,” stated republican pollster Jim Hobart.
Pelosi, who has been in Congress for more than 30-years, has been the Democrats leader in the lower chamber since 2002.
Despite a growing number of Democrat congressional candidates opposing her leadership, Pelosi said she will run for speaker if her party takes back the House.

Anti-Russian hysteria isn't in America's national interest

Anti-Russian hysteria appears to be replacing calm calculations of our national interest as the basis for U.S. foreign policy toward Russia – and that’s a big mistake.
The hatred and fear of all things Russian has reached a fever pitch in America today. Indeed, so powerful are the emotions and concerns over Moscow’s interference with the 2016 presidential election that many have asserted that America must aggressively wage a Second Cold War until Russian President Vladimir Putin is forced from power.
One consequence of this anti-Russian feeling came Wednesday, when the Trump administration announced it will impose new economic sanctions on Russia in response to Moscow’s use of a nerve agent to try to kill former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who now live in England. The two survived the attack.
The new sanctions were prompted by a 1991 law that requires the U.S. to act against countries responsible for a chemical or biological weapons attack.
The sanctions will go into effect on about Aug. 22. They will bar U.S. companies from selling technology and other items with national security implications to companies funded or owned by the Russian government, affecting 70 percent of the Russian economy.
America and our European allies previously expelled 100 Russian diplomats over the poisonings and applied an earlier round of sanctions. But there is a very important difference in the new U.S. economic sanctions against Russia from earlier sanctions that are still in force.
While the new sanctions include many items already banned under the earlier ones, they also include a provision that requires Moscow to give “reliable assurances” that it will no longer use chemical and biological weapons – and allow international inspections to verify this.
If Russia refuses to provide these assurances and allow inspections, nearly all U.S. trade with Russia will be cut off. This would include banning Russia’s flagship airline Aeroflot from flying to America. And there is talk that other countries would face sanctions for doing business with Russia as well.
Drastic action like this is sure to worsen U.S.-Russian relations and make it harder to avoid the kind of escalation spirals and war-scares witnessed during the first Cold War.
The fact of Russian interference in America’s 2016 elections cannot be denied. However, regardless of what the probe of that interference by Special Counsel Robert Mueller concludes, the fact remains that Russia is a nuclear power that the U.S. is currently locked in a fierce political struggle with, including several proxy wars.
Putin is a geopolitical rival and a very clever tactician. He's not a friend of America, but he's not an immediate national security threat who must be destroyed at all costs either. His regime is distasteful, but so was the Soviet Union, Mao Zedong's China, and Vietnam – each of which America had to eventually learn to live with.
Ultimately, America still needs a clear-headed policy towards Russia that properly assesses the threat from Moscow and the risks of various responses. Washington's policy must be based on American interests and not on a blind desire to cause as much harm to Russia as possible. The catch with nuclear powers is to deter them while also making sure to never put them in too tight of a corner.
Therefore, it is perfectly reasonable for America to argue that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) should refocus on defending against Russia. Washington should also refuse to tolerate election interference by Moscow, while also trying to de-escalate tensions.
The hard lesson learned from Europe's endless holy and civil wars – in which nations tried to impose their ways of life and political systems on each other – is that countries shouldn't interfere in each other's domestic affairs. That is how wars get started.
The Cold War and mutually-assured-destruction taught the world not to go too far when playing chicken. No matter how outraged Americans are over recent events, these are vital lessons no one can afford to forget.
Moscow’s actions, including the seizure of Crimea from Ukraine and the Skripal poisoning, necessitated a response from Washington. The question is how far does America go and how well do these latest sanctions advance U.S. interests?
Recognition of both American and Russian core interests of sovereignty and security are important because it helps each great power avoid triggering the other's red lines. This is also why NATO’s expansion to include Montenegro is a bad strategy and ignores the historical role of the Balkans as a tinderbox.
At his recent summit with President Putin in Helsinki, President Trump should have insisted that he will always pursue America's interests and that if they happen to overlap with Russia, then both countries will try and work together. This could mean cooperation on anti-terrorism, improving communication between both militaries to avoid any accidents, and taking another look at arms control agreements such as extending the New Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty.
All the while, despite President Trump dragging his feet on imposing previous sanctions, his administration has generally implemented policies against Russia’s interests.
Sanctions are still in place. President Trump hasn’t tried to exert his full force to browbeat Congress into lifting those sanctions. He has, for all his bluster, so far reinforced America’s commitment to NATO and hasn’t ordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces in Europe.
The Trump administration expelled 60 Russian diplomats over the poisoning of the Skripals. In Syria, U.S. airstrikes killed 200 unofficial Russian forces fighting American-backed rebels.
Finally, America is still training Ukrainian soldiers to resist Russia. And President Trump authorized the delivery of Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine – something President Obama never did.
Russia isn’t as powerful or stable as China. It is a weak, struggling former empire with an economy smaller than Italy’s and only slightly bigger than South Korea’s. Moscow is not a threat that requires Washington to push back on every front and admit every single former Soviet satellite nation into NATO.
Diplomacy and grand strategy are about the pursuit of the national interest – about what is best for America. This means being realistic about threats and correctly seeing alliances, such as NATO, as a tool to advance the national interests of security and prosperity. Wise leaders match means to national ends and do not act out of anger. Fools confuse means for ends and will take action simply out of spite.
This is why NATO cannot endlessly expand and also why America needs to harden its election infrastructure and tell Russia that both countries must respect each other’s domestic affairs and sovereignty. This is also why it is unclear what imposing more sanctions is meant to accomplish beyond punishment.
New sanctions will weaken Russia and could distract Putin from near-term military adventurism, but will also make it harder for him to back down overall. Sanctions will also hurt any effort to get the Russians to cooperate with the U.S. on arms control or Iran.
Sanctions are better used as a threat to deter action, rather than as a punishment of unclear duration that is only imposed after another country has done something America doesn’t like.

Russia is a country that needs to be told not to mess with American elections again. It is also a nation that the United States needs to grudgingly live with because it has nuclear weapons.
It is possible to warn off Moscow from harming U.S. interests or from using biochemical weapons in NATO countries, while also concluding that relations with Russia must not deteriorate further. The catch is having a Congress and president who will work together to make this a priority.
John Dale Grover is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a writer for Young Voices. He is also currently a graduate student at George Mason University’s School of Conflict Analysis and Resolution. His articles have appeared in Forbes, The National Interest, and Real Clear Defense.

Kansas Gov. Colyer hires lawyer for contested GOP primary

Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer dug in for a legal fight over this past week’s Republican gubernatorial primary, hiring an outside lawyer for the vote-counting process with Secretary of State Kris Kobach leading the incumbent by less than a tenth of a percentage point.
The Colyer campaign has hired Todd Graves, a Kansas City attorney who works on election law.
“Governor Colyer is confident that Todd Graves’ experience as a U.S. Attorney and, in particular, his expertise in election law will be a valuable asset as we navigate this process,” Kendall Marr, a spokesperson for Mr. Colyer, wrote in an email.
Mr. Colyer has ramped up pressure on Mr. Kobach as election officials continue to review the vote count and tally the remaining ballots. Mr. Colyer in a letter Thursday asked Mr. Kobach to recuse himself from advising county election officials on the matter, saying it had come to his attention that Mr. Kobach was making statements that “may serve to suppress the vote.”
Mr. Kobach, who was endorsed by President Trump, formally recused himself Friday from his duties as secretary of state until the end of the primary process and designated assistant secretary of state Erick Rucker to fulfill his election responsibilities—a move that the Colyer campaign said was still insufficient. Mr. Kobach declined Mr. Colyer’s request to transfer responsibility for the election to the Kansas attorney general.

Newt Gingrich: The Trump Republican Party is arising out of a political revolution

The biggest takeaway message from Tuesday’s primaries and the Ohio special election is that the Republican Party is becoming President Trump’s party.
In fact, the degree to which pro-Trump Republicans prevailed is the fifth major achievement of the Trump presidency so far.
First, the president and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., placed a record number of conservative, constitutionally minded judges on the federal bench.
Second, President Trump moved power out of Washington and liberated businesses to accelerate economic growth through his historic deregulation effort.
Third, the president succeeded in working with congressional Republicans to pass a massive tax cut that has created jobs and grown the economy much faster than any of the elites thought possible.
Fourth, the president began to rebuild the American military after the Obama administration spent eight years deliberately undermining it.
Now President Trump has begun to grow a Trump Republican Party. The examples from Tuesday are striking, but this growth started earlier. In primary after primary, President Trump has proved to be a decisive voice.
I saw this firsthand in Georgia, when his endorsement of Secretary of State Brian Kemp turned what was expected to be a close primary race into a one-sided victory for the Trump candidate. Similarly, on Tuesday the Trump-endorsed candidates won GOP nominations.
This is a very important long-term development because it means that in 2019 and beyond the president will have a Republican Party substantially more favorable to his policies. It also means that the never-Trumpers will gradually decline into a less noisy, less relevant part of American politics.
The never-Trumpers are like the Bourbon monarchy, which “had learned nothing and forgotten nothing” (an apocryphal quote from Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord describing the Bourbons’ behavior after the abdication of Napoleon). Because of their inability to change, the Bourbons gradually disappeared as the French Republics created new patterns.
This shrinking and then disappearing process is nothing new.
When former President Theodore Roosevelt left the Republican Party in 1912, he took a generation of progressives with him. The conservatives consolidated their grip on the Republican Party, and many of the progressives became Franklin Delano Roosevelt Democrats.
Likewise, when President Franklin Roosevelt turned out to be much more liberal than expected, his close friend and ally Al Smith – the former governor of New York and Democratic presidential nominee of 1928 – started supporting Republicans in opposition of the New Deal.
In more recent times, President Ronald Reagan dominated the GOP in the 1980s and dissenters like Sen. Bob Packwood or Oregon, who started off skeptical, came on board. Packwood was convinced to lead the tax reform fight.
Similarly, loyal Democrats like former Sens. Zell Miller of Georgia and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut found the increasing radicalism of the left so unacceptable that they became very pro-Republican. Miller endorsed President George W. Bush at the 2004 Republic National Convention and Lieberman seriously considered running as the vice presidential candidate with Sen. John McCain of Arizona in 2008.
In addition to dominating the primaries, President Trump proved to be very effective in turning out the Republican vote in the Ohio special election. There were a lot of Washington’s so-called experts questioning whether he would help or hurt turnout. While there are still provisional and absentee ballots to count to finalize the result, the results so far indicate that the Republican vote surged in the days leading up to the election and the GOP nominee leads in the current vote count.
The warning to Democrats and the media for the November elections should be pretty direct: If President Trump spends September and October defining the election on his terms, the outcome in November might be as shocking to the left as 2016’s was.
The most amazing thing about the Trump effect is how efficient it is.
Simple tweets have helped nominate the GOP candidates for governor and congressional seats in state after state. With this kind of economy of effort, it is no wonder President Trump is doing so many things in parallel.
In the process, the president is growing a Trump Republican Party that will turn the never-Trumpers into a fossilized remnant of bitter-enders that attract smaller and smaller audiences who pay less and less attention.
In short, this is what a political revolution looks like.
Newt Gingrich is a Fox News contributor. A Republican, he was speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. Follow him on Twitter @NewtGingrich. His latest book is "Trump’s America: The Truth About Our Nation’s Great Comeback.”

Why I Stopped Watching Football Cartoons

North Korea threatens to stall denuclearization in warning to US

North Korea on Thursday threatened to stall the denuclearization of its missile program if the U.S. continues to abide by an "outdated acting script" amid Washington's calls to enforce sanctions against the regime.
A statement from the nation's Foreign Ministry said that following President Trump's June summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the North has worked to improve relations between the two countries and "make active contributions to peace, security, and prosperity on the Korean Peninsula and over the world."
The foreign ministry said that despite their efforts to work with the U.S. — by stopping their missile launches and nuclear tests — America continues to insist on "denuclearization first," and continues to encourage international sanctions against the North.
U.S. officials, according to North Korea, "are making baseless allegations against us and making desperate attempts at intensifying the international sanctions," against what they believe to be Trump's intentions to better relations between the two countries.
"As long as the U.S. denies even the basic decorum for its dialogue partner and clings to the outdated acting script which the previous administrations have all tried and failed, one cannot expect any progress in the implementation of the DPRK-U.S. joint statement including the denuclearization," the statement read.
The North noted that they returned remains of U.S. soldiers who fought in the Korean War to the U.S. last week.
The foreign ministry said actions taken by the U.S. equate to "throwing cold water" over their efforts, calling it an "indeed foolish act that amounts to waiting to see a boiled egg hatch out."
At Trump and Kim's historic summit, the two signed a document stating that Pyongyang would work toward "complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."
But, following the meeting, U.S. intelligence officials said they believed North Korea was "deceiving" the U.S., saying the regime was bolstering production for nuclear weapons at "multiple secret sites" in recent months.

Ben Shapiro, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spar after he offers $10,000 to debate her democratic socialist beliefs

Ben Shapiro wants to have a discussion with Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro challenged democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to a debate, offering to donate $10,000 to her campaign if she accepted -- but it triggered a sparring match online.
Shapiro initially tweeted a video on Wednesday in which he mocked Democratic National Committee chairperson Tom Perez for calling Ocasio-Cortez, a New York congressional candidate, the “future of the Democratic Party,” before issuing his challenge.
“Miss Ocasio-Cortez, I’m really excited that you’ve been elevated to that position and I would love to have a real conversation with you about the issues. You’ve noted that you think Republicans are afraid to debate you or talk to you or discuss the issues with you,” Shapiro said.
“Not only am I eager to discuss the issues with you, I’m willing to offer $10,000 to your campaign, today, for you to come on our Sunday special,” he continued. “We can have an hour long conversation about all the topics under the sun, really probe your belief system.”
Shapiro said he would also debate Ocasio-Cortez for charity.
“However you want to do it, I am more than willing to talk to you,” Shapiro said. “Let’s make this happen.”
Shapiro, Daily Wire editor-in-chief, said that he wants to make “America a more civil and interesting place,” and feels a conversation with Ocasio-Cortez could do just that.
Thursday night, Ocasio-Cortez compared Shapiro's offer to "catcalling" on Twitter.
"Just like catcalling, I don’t owe a response to unsolicited requests from men with bad intentions," she wrote. "And also like catcalling, for some reason they feel entitled to one."
Shapiro responded: "Discussion and debate are not 'bad intentions.' Slandering someone as a sexist catcaller without reason or evidence does demonstrate cowardice and bad intent, however."
Ocasio-Cortez’s unanticipated victory over veteran Rep. Joe Crowley in the Democratic primary over Crowley's New York seat put her in a national spotlight earlier this year.
Ocasio-Cortez lit up social media on Wednesday night when she appeared on CNN’s “Cuomo Prime Time” and stumbled when discussing Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the House minority leader. 
“This is painful. It’s Miss South Carolina on maps bad,” Shapiro tweeted in response to her interview.
Donald Trump Jr. captioned video of her interview with, “OMG this is insane and yet the liberal campaign to make her the rockstar face of the left will continue ... let’s face it, I guess they don’t have much else.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s talk with Cuomo isn’t her first media appearance to whip up criticism since her upset victory over Crowley. She has struggled to explain how many of her platforms -- such as Medicare for all and a federal jobs guarantee -- would be funded.
Still, she has emerged as a liberal darling since bursting onto the scene – though not everyone is a fan.
Comedian Lewis Black, who also considers himself a socialist, told The Daily Beast in a recent interview that Ocasio-Cortez isn't the answer. 
“The one thing I’ve learned in my lifetime is that we’ve got to get to the middle before we start pushing things in other directions. We’ve gotta get to the middle, and they have to sit down and decide how to do things,” Black said when asked if Ocasio-Cortez provides a “glimmer of hope.”