Thursday, February 25, 2016
Absent Donald Trump steals Texas town hall spotlight
Donald Trump skipped a Republican presidential town hall in Texas hosted Wednesday night by Fox News nemesis Megyn Kelly, but still made his presence felt by bashing his GOP rivals on Twitter.
“Ted Cruz is lying again. Polls are showing that I do beat Hillary Clinton head to head,” the billionaire tweeted while the Texas senator was onstage.
Trump then proceeded to re-post several tweets from fans that blasted other GOP hopefuls, whom he trounced in the Nevada caucuses Tuesday night.
“A vote for @tedcruz or @marcorubio is a vote for corruption, special interests and lobbyists. Trump for POTUS!” one of the retweets read.
Earlier this week, Trump’s camp said he couldn’t make the “Face-to-Face” event at the Queensbury Theater in Houston because of a “conflicting campaign conflict,” Kelly said.
“They were very polite and cordial,” added a smiling Kelly, with whom Trump has feuded.
Cruz and Ben Carson appeared onstage at the town hall, fielding questions from Kelly and an audience of Texas voters. Marco Rubio and John Kasich took questions via satellite.
Donald Trump to Skip Fox News' Town Hall Event With Megyn Kelly
All of the other major GOP candidates are attending the event.
Donald Trump will not be a part of the Fox News town hall hosted by Megyn Kelly on Wednesday.The GOP presidential frontrunner had a prior commitment that could not be changed on short notice, according to a Trump campaign spokeswoman.
"The campaign has a previous engagement in Virginia and then New York, which could not be rescheduled," Trump spokesperson Hope Hicks said in an email to The Hollywood Reporter. "Given this was just proposed at the last minute, it was not possible to change our plans in order to attend."
The two-hour voter summit taking place in Houston, The Kelly File: Face to Face With Candidates, will feature the four additional remaining Republican candidates, according to Fox News. Those men are Dr. Ben Carson, Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. Marco Rubio and Gov. John Kasich, who will join the event via remote. Audience members will pose questions to the candidates who will be onstage one at a time, according to the network.
Trump has been critical of Kelly in the past and was vocal about his opposition to her moderating the second Fox News debate because he claimed she was biased against him. He ended up skipping that event. However, his campaign said Monday he "looks forward to participating in the next Fox News debate," which will be held March 3 in Detroit.
Trump currently has two victories under his belt so far this campaign season. The billionaire businessman finished first in both New Hampshire and South Carolina. He came in second to Cruz in Iowa during the first caucus of the season.
Lynch confirms career Justice Department attorneys involved in Clinton email probe
Attorney General Loretta Lynch confirmed to Congress Wednesday that career Justice Department attorneys are working with FBI agents on the criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email practices and the handling of classified material.
Legal experts say the assignment of career Justice Department attorneys to the case shows the FBI probe has progressed beyond the initial referral, or "matured," giving agents access to the U.S. government’s full investigative tool box, including subpoena power for individuals, business or phone records, as well as witnesses.
The Associated Press reported earlier this month that career lawyers were involved, but Lynch's comments are the most expansive to Congress.
"If the FBI makes the case that Hillary Clinton mishandled classified information and put America's security at risk, will you prosecute the case?” Republican Congressman John Carter asked Lynch during a budget hearing.
"Do you know of any efforts underway to undermine the FBI's investigation? And please look the American people in the eye and tell us what your position is as you are the chief prosecutor of the United States," Carter pressed.
Lynch replied, "...that matter is being handled by career independent law enforcement agents, FBI agents as well as the career independent attorneys in the Department of Justice. They follow the evidence, they look at the law and they'll make a recommendation to me when the time is appropriate,"
She confirmed that the FBI criminal investigation is ongoing, and no recommendation or referral on possible charges had been made to her.
"I am not able to comment about the specific investigation at this time. But what I will say is again that this will be conducted as every other case. And we will review all the facts and all the evidence and come to an independent conclusion as to how to best handle it. And I'm also aware of no efforts to undermine our review or investigation into this matter at all."
The White House has been criticized for its public comments, including those of President Obama, that the transmission of classified information on Clinton's unsecured, personal server did not jeopardize national security.
Last month, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Clinton was not the target of the FBI probe, and it was not "trending" towards Clinton.
During congressional testimony in December, FBI Director James Comey was asked by Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas, “Does the President get briefings on ongoing investigations by the FBI like this?” Comey replied, “No.”
National Security Defense attorney Edward MacMahon, who routinely handles classified information as part of his case work, said "Lynch appears to be sending a message that there is no need for a special prosecutor because she has assigned career Justice Department lawyers, and not political appointees, to work with FBI agents on the Clinton matter."
MacMahon who recently represented CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, who was convicted of leaking intelligence to a New York Times reporter and is now serving a three- and-a-half-year prison sentence, said the pairing of FBI agents and Justice Department attorneys generally reflects the fact that the investigation has moved beyond an initial inquiry.
“As a general matter, a U.S. attorney is assigned as an FBI investigation progresses. The partnership with the U.S. attorney allows the FBI to use the investigation tools of the U.S. government, including subpoenas for evidence, business or phone records, as well as witnesses. And you need (a) U.S. attorney to convene a grand jury.”
It is not publicly known whether any of those actions have been taken. But an intelligence source close to the FBI probe said the career professionals at the bureau "will be angry and walk off if no indictment recommendation is followed through."
At least 1,730 Clinton emails contain classified information, and the rest held by the State Department must be released by the end of the month based on a federal court imposed timetable.
One of the newly declassified 2012 emails sent four days after the Benghazi terrorist attack, includes highly sensitive information about the evacuation of Americans from Tunisia.
The email included a rare redaction for intelligence called the B 1.4 (g) exception which pertains to “vulnerabilities or capabilities” to “national security including defense against transnational terrorism.”
The email chain was forwarded, on Sept. 16, 2012 at 8:12 a.m, from Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills' government account to Clinton’s unsecured personal server. One of the emails early in the chain was sent by Denis McDonough, then Deputy National Security adviser. His address is redacted citing “unwarranted invasion of personal privacy” and could also be a private account because other government accounts on the email chain are not redacted.
Obama reportedly considering Nevada Gov. Sandoval for Supreme Court nomination
President Obama reportedly is considering nominating Nevada Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval to the Supreme Court to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
The nomination of a Republican would be seen as an attempt by Obama to break the Senate GOP blockade of any of his choices. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said his 54-member GOP caucus is opposed to holding confirmation hearings or vote on Obama's pick, insisting that the choice rests with the next president.
The White House's consideration of Sandoval was first reported by The Washington Post and the Associated Press. The Post reported that Senate Republicans reaffirmed their vow to not consider any Obama nominee, regardless of party affiliation.
"This is not about the personality," Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, told the paper. McConnel said in a statement to the Post that whoever replaces Scalia "will be determined by whoever wins the presidency in the fall."
Mari St. Martin, Sandoval's communications director, said Wednesday that the governor hasn't been contacted by the White House.
"Neither Gov. Sandoval nor his staff has been contacted by or talked to the Obama administration regarding any potential vetting for the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court," she said.
Sandoval met with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., on Monday in Washington while he was in town for a meeting of the National Governors Association.
Before Sandoval, 52, became the state's first Hispanic governor, he was the state's first Hispanic federal judge. He supports abortion, a position that might assuage some Democrats nervous about the nomination of a Republican. But liberal groups swiftly came out against the idea.
"Nominating Sandoval to the Supreme Court would not only prevent grassroots organizations like Democracy for America from supporting the president in this nomination fight, it could lead us to actively encouraging Senate Democrats to oppose his appointment," said Democracy for America.
Limited to two terms, Sandoval's final term as governor expires in early 2019. He announced last year that he would not seek Reid's seat, in this November's election, a race in which Sandoval would have been a strong favorite.
"My heart is here. My heart is in my job," Sandoval said at the time.
On Wednesday, Obama laid out his wish list for a Supreme Court nominee, writing in a post on "SCOTUSblog" that his ideal nominee should "approach decisions without any particular ideology or agenda, but rather a commitment to impartial justice, a respect for precedent, and a determination to faithfully apply the law to the facts at hand."
Obama also wrote that an ideal high court judge should view the law "not only as an intellectual exercise, but also grasps the way it affects the daily reality of people’s lives in a big, complicated democracy, and in rapidly changing times," a possible rebuttal against Scalia's doctrine of constitutional originalism.
A White House official told Fox News Wednesday that an invitation has been extended to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, for a consultative meeting on filling the vacancy. Grassley's office said he has received the invitation and it is "under consideration."
Rubio and Cruz say they'll stop Trump, Kasich and Carson vow to stay in race at Fox forum
Donald Trump's Republican rivals tried to present themselves Wednesday night as the ideal candidates to block the real estate billionaire's path to the GOP nomination and then beat Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton in the general election.
Speaking at a special forum in Houston hosted by Fox News' Megyn Kelly, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz called on Republican voters Wednesday to unite around his campaign, saying that his was "the only campaign that can beat Donald [and] has beat Donald," a reference to his win in last month's Iowa caucuses.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson shrugged off calls for them to quit the race, with Kasich saying he would beat Trump in a head-to-head contest.
At one point, Kasich sparred with Kelly, who said Republicans "see you, even though they like you, struggling to get above bottom rung [and] question whether you're stealing votes from candidates who could actually win."
"I'm husbanding my resources," Kasich responded. "The people calling for me to get out are the people who are inside the Beltway ... I'm certainly not listening to a bunch of lobbyist insiders."
However, Kasich said that Trump would likely keep his run of victories going over the next couple of weeks, but claimed that the Republican Party's proportional system of delegate allocation would keep his campaign viable.
Carson noted that only a small fraction of the current delegates had been awarded through the first four contests, saying "We have a long way to go." Carson later encouraged an audience questioner to "stop listening to the pundits and listen for yourself. Look at the candidates running ... and you can see how consistent they are."
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who has finished second in each of the last two nominating contests, acknowledged that Trump was "the frontrunner and I'm the underdog, but I've been an underdog my entire life." Rubio added that his campaign "would not allow the conservative movement to be defined by a nominee who isn't a conservative."
Rubio also took a shot at Trump, though he did not mention that candidate's name, for his remarks on Muslims.
"When you're president, you have an enormous megaphone," Rubio said, "You get to set the tone and agenda for the entire country. We already have a president that's incredibly divisive. We should not be pitting and dividing Americans against each other."
The forum was held six days before a dozen states hold primaries and caucuses as part of Super Tuesday, during which 595 delegates will be awarded.
"I think he's got a fairly low ceiling," Cruz said of Trump, who won Tuesday's Nevada Republican caucuses for this third straight convincing victory. "In the head-to-head polls, Donald consistently loses to [Democratic frontrunner] Hillary [Clinton]. I consistently beat Hillary."
"And if Donald does win the general election, who knows what the heck he'll do as president?" Cruz asked.
Cruz reserved his strongest language for Planned Parenthood, which he referred to as a "criminal enterprise" and the reason "millions of young boys and girls have never breathed a breath of fresh air."
He repeated his vow to order a Justice Department investigation of the healthcare provider "on day one" of his presidency and took another shot at Trump for saying that Planned Parenthood "does do wonderful things" during a debate in South Carolina earlier this month.
"There are a lot of things Donald has said that I disagree with," Cruz said, "and that is very near the top."
Carson got one of the biggest reactions of the evening when he explained his comment earlier this week that President Barack Obama was "raised white."
"He was raised by his white grandma in Hawaii in a very affluent area [with] a private school [education] and spent his formative years in Indonesia with his white mother," Carson said. "Now, if that's a typical black experience ..." as the audience broke out laughing.
Carson went on to call the media firestorm over his remarks "ridiculous analysis" designed "to ridicule me and divide wedges."
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Republicans vow no vote, hearing on Obama Supreme Court pick
Though some GOP lawmakers appeared to waver in recent days in their opposition to considering a nominee, party leaders largely united Tuesday.
First, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said his party will not permit a vote. Then, every GOP member of the Senate Judiciary Committee penned a letter pledging not to even hold a hearing until the next president is sworn into office.
"[W]e wish to inform you of our intention to exercise our constitutional authority to withhold consent on any nominee to the Supreme Court submitted by this President to fill Justice Scalia’s vacancy,” they wrote in the letter to McConnell.
“Because our decision is based on constitutional principle and born of a necessity to protect the will of the American people, this Committee will not hold hearings on any Supreme Court nominee until after our next President is sworn in on January 20, 2017.”
When Republicans might ease their opposition is unclear. While the Judiciary Committee members want to wait until January, McConnell said Republicans won’t permit a vote on a nominee but would “revisit the matter” after November.
While McConnell acknowledged Obama can nominate a replacement, he said Republicans have a right to nix it -- and indicated he was also inclined to refuse a courtesy meeting with a nominee.
“Presidents have a right to nominate just as the Senate has its constitutional right to provide or withhold consent," the Majority Leader said in a speech on the Senate floor. "In this case, the Senate will withhold it."
“No hearing, no vote,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. told reporters after a meeting with McConnell.
"We believe the American people need to decide who is going to make this appointment rather than a lame-duck president," said Texas Sen. John Cornyn, also a member of the committee.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest called the Republicans' stance "unprecedented" but seemed to hold out hope that the Senate could hold hearings, pointing to a handful of lawmakers he said had expressed a willingness.
Democrats would appear to have few options. One of them, though, is for Democrats to try to force a floor vote on a nominee. It would still take 60 votes, however, to even proceed down that path, a steep climb considering Democrats have just 46 seats.
Republicans were fueled in part Tuesday by past remarks from Democrats who appeared to take a similar stance.
In McConnell's speech, the GOP Senate leader cited a 1992 speech by Vice President Joe Biden, who was then a Delaware senator, in which he said “once the political season is underway and it is, action on a Supreme Court nomination must be put off until after the election campaign is over.”
Although Biden was talking only hypothetically and there was no vacancy in 1992, Republicans have pointed to the speech as evidence of Democrats’ hypocrisy, and accused Biden of changing his tune depending on which party occupies the White House.
Scalia’s death on Feb. 13 has sparked a major political firestorm over whether Obama’s nominee for the seat on the court should even be considered with Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. accusing McConnell of taking his cue from Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Donald Trump – who told a debate audience the chamber should “delay, delay, delay.”
Nevada entrance polls show Trump winner among Hispanics
Hispanic voters in Nevada solidly backed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Tuesday night's Nevada caucuses, Fox News entrance polls showed.
Despite Trump's hardline stance on immigration, especially illegal immigration, entrance polls found that the billionaire was supported by 45 percent of Hispanic voters. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio was supported by 28 percent of Hispanic voters, while Texas Sen. Ted Cruz garnered 18 percent of the Hispanic vote.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich earned 4 percent of the Hispanic vote, while retired neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson received 3 percent.
"You know what I really am happy about, because I've been saying it for a long time," Trump told supporters in his victory speech early Wednesday. "46 percent with the Hispanics ... number one with Hispanics!"
Despite the impressive-seeming result, Hispanic voters only made up 8 percent of Republican caucus-goers in Nevada. By contrast, 19 percent of caucus-goers in Saturday's Democratic contest were Hispanic.
The Fox News entrance poll was comprised of surveys of 1,573 Republican voters at 25 precincts across Nevada.
Federal court ruling could pave way for Clinton subpoena in email case
A federal court ruled on Tuesday that a watchdog group could request testimony from Hillary Clinton’s State Department aides in connection with her private email server, a decision that could eventually lead to a subpoena for Hillary Clinton.
D.C. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan granted a motion for discovery filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group that is suing the U.S. State Department for records related to Clinton’s time as secretary of state.
Judicial Watch is seeking information about whether Clinton and her aides intentionally dodged public records laws by using a private email server. The organization said it would ask to depose former State Department officials as part of the discovery process.
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, called the judge’s decision “a major victory for the public’s right to know the truth about Hillary Clinton’s email system.” He also said it may eventually be necessary for Clinton to testify.
“Our proposed discovery, which will require court approval, will include testimony of current and former officials of the State Department,” said Fitton. “While Mrs. Clinton’s testimony may not be required initially, it may happen that her testimony is necessary for the Court to resolve the legal issues about her unprecedented email practices.”
Trump wins Nevada GOP Caucus
Donald Trump dominated once again Tuesday night, scoring what Fox News projects to be a convincing victory in the Nevada Republican Caucus — a third straight win that builds upon his momentum heading into Super Tuesday and delivers a sharp warning to his rivals and the party establishment that time may be running out to slow his march to the nomination.
The battle was still under way for second place. Incoming returns show Florida Sen. Marco Rubio holding an edge over Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, but it was too early to call.
With 94 percent of precincts reporting, Trump led with 45 percent, followed by Rubio at 23 percent and Cruz at 21 percent.
Far behind are retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
Before a cheering crowd of supporters in Las Vegas, Trump teased those who predicted he wouldn’t do well in this contest and others.
“Now we’re winning, winning, winning,” Trump said. “Soon, the country is going to start winning, winning, winning.”
This is the third win in a row for Trump, who earlier this month won South Carolina and New Hampshire -- after placing second in Iowa. His winning streak gives him significant momentum as he heads into Super Tuesday next week, the biggest prize of the campaign so far.
More than a dozen states hold primaries or caucuses that day, awarding nearly 600 delegates – or more than four times the number that have been awarded in the first four states combined.
Entrance polls in Nevada showed Trump was buoyed in the state by support from a range of groups, including Hispanics and evangelicals. And he dominated among caucus-goers saying they prefer an outsider.
As Trump builds his base, Rubio and Cruz are still fighting to cut into Trump's lead, with diminishing opportunities to do so.
Rubio has enjoyed some momentum after his second-place finish Saturday in the South Carolina primary. But even as he wins over endorsements from "establishment" figures, the Florida senator has yet to notch his first election victory, raising continuing doubts over whether he could be a successful Trump alternative.
He did get one high-powered vote on Tuesday, though -- a spokeswoman said Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval cast his ballot for Rubio.
Cruz, meanwhile, is trying to shake doubts about his campaign and recover after a tough stretch where his campaign repeatedly was accused of "dirty tricks" -- and he fired his top spokesman over one of the incidents.
Cruz, at his watch party in Vegas, maintained he’s still the best candidate to go up against Trump – and the Democratic nominee. In a knock at Rubio, he noted only two candidates, him and Trump, have won one of the first three contests and said voters will have a “clear choice” next Tuesday.
“One week from today will be the most important night of this campaign,” Cruz said.
Cruz won the Iowa caucuses, but has struggled to follow that up since. He finished third in South Carolina, despite an electorate full of the kind of evangelical voters who thus far have carried his campaign.
Trump charged into Nevada with unrelenting attacks on Cruz’s character.
"There's something wrong with this guy," Trump said at a Las Vegas rally Monday night. On Tuesday, he called Cruz a "soft, weak, little baby" who lies.
Polls had shown him leading in the state, but polling in the state is sparse and the contest is often unpredictable. Mitt Romney won the last two GOP caucuses in Nevada.
Nevada’s voting took place in schools, community centers and places of worship across the state. There were some reports of long lines and even caucus volunteers wearing campaign attire – specifically pro-Trump.
But state Republican officials said it’s “not against the rules for volunteers to wear candidate gear.” Further, one GOP official told reporters looking at complaints on Twitter to “take a deep breath,” saying the state was looking at high turnout and enthusiasm.
The caucus marked the first Republican election in the West, and the fourth of the campaign.
Trump's rivals concede they are running out of time to take him on. The election calendar suggests that if the New York billionaire's rivals don't slow him by mid-March, they may not ever. Trump swept all of South Carolina's 50 delegates, giving him a total of 67 compared to Cruz and Rubio who had 11 and 10, respectively, heading into Nevada.
Nevada’s 30 delegates will be awarded to candidates in proportion to their share of the statewide vote so long as they earn at least 3.33 percent.
Rubio and Cruz have been laying into each other viciously in recent days, an indication they know Trump can be slowed only if one of them is eliminated.
Rubio -- who finished third in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire -- had already left Nevada, preferring to campaign in Minnesota and Michigan. In recent days, he has also picked up support from such Republican establishment heavyweights as Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis and Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch.
"We have incredible room to grow," Rubio told reporters during a Monday night news conference on his campaign plane.
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
Cruz fires top campaign spokesman over Rubio Bible video
Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz said Monday he’s fired campaign communications director Rick Tyler, after his top spokesman promoted a video that wrongly depicted Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as trash-talking the Bible.
The Texas senator announced that he's asked for the resignation at a press conference Monday afternoon.
“We are not a campaign that is going to question the faith of another candidate. Even if it was true, our campaign should not have sent it. That’s why I’ve asked for Rick Tyler’s resignation,” Cruz said in Nevada, ahead of the state's GOP caucuses on Tuesday. “The standards of conduct in this campaign have been made absolutely clear.”
Tyler originally had linked to a story showing a video of Rubio walking by a Cruz staffer and Cruz’s father Rafael, who were reading the Bible in a hotel lobby. The original subtitles on the video showed Rubio saying to the staffer, “Got a good book there, not many answers in it.”
But after Tyler linked to the story, Rubio communications director Alex Conant tweeted out the same video with what he says are the correct subtitles -- and they tell a very different story.
In them, Rubio actually says of the Bible, “All the answers are in there.”
Conant called the move “another dirty trick” by the Cruz campaign.
Cruz on Monday said it was a “grave error in judgment” – but at the same time accused Rubio of exploiting the controversy for political advantage and to distract from his own record.
“We are going to stay focused on issues and substance and record,” he said.
Donald Trump, meanwhile, delighted in the news, taking to Twitter to slam the “dirty tricks”
“Ted Cruz has now apologized to Marco Rubio and Ben Carson for fraud and dirty tricks. No wonder he has lost Evangelical support!” Trump tweeted.
Rubio also had criticized the Cruz campaign last week for using a doctored image of Rubio supposedly shaking hands with President Obama. This, after the Cruz campaign also faced accusations of spreading false rumors on Iowa caucus night that Ben Carson was dropping out -- when in fact Carson had only announced he was going to Florida to pick up some fresh clothes.
Cruz has described the Iowa caucus incident as a simple mistake, blaming it on a media report regarding Carson's travel plans.
Tyler, meanwhile, told Fox News earlier Monday that he made a mistake.
"I posted in haste, I should not have done it," Tyler told Fox News' Martha MacCallum. "It was a mistake and I would not knowingly post something I knew to be false."
Tyler also apologized Sunday on Facebook, noting the Cruz staffer in the video said Rubio made a “friendly and appropriate remark.” (The source of the original report, The Daily Pennsylvanian, has nevertheless stuck by its original transcript of Rubio's remarks.)
Tyler is a long-time political strategist. He served as spokesman for Newt Gingrich for 12 years, and also worked on political campaigns for former Rep. Ron Paul and former Rep. Todd Akin.
Georgia Supreme Court hears KKK bid to 'Adopt-A-Highway'
Does the Ku Klux Klan have a constitutional right to "adopt a highway"?
That question was at the center of a high-profile battle Monday before the Georgia Supreme Court, where the Klan is challenging the state's refusal to let it participate in the popular Adopt-A-Highway program.
The hate group, with the American Civil Liberties Union by its side, is casting its bid as a free speech issue.
“The government cannot be a censor of free speech,” Alan Berger, an attorney for the International Keystone Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, said.
But the Georgia Department of Transportation has resisted the KKK's efforts ever since 2012 to join the program.
For its part, GDOT maintains it should be allowed to exclude certain groups from the program -- and stands by its claim that the KKK’s “long rooted history of civil disturbance” would “cause a significant public concern.”
Monday’s arguments centered around Georgia's claim of so-called sovereign immunity – a legal doctrine that shields the state from civil suit or criminal prosecution. The state had appealed a lower court decision by Judge Shawn LaGrua, who ruled Georgia was not protected against the KKK suit because the group claimed the discrimination involved a violation of its constitutional rights.
“The state denied the application, not because of safety hazard or some other compelling government interest, but because the state disagrees with what the KKK represents,” Maya Dillard Smith, executive director of the ACLU of Georgia, told FoxNews.com. “It is precisely this kind of government action the Constitution prohibits.”
While Smith admits that many people who hear about the case have a “visceral reaction” to it, she warns its outcome could have a dangerous ripple effect.
“What may seem as chipping away only at the KKK’s free speech right, will, in fact, open Pandora’s box and create legal precedent that justifies curtailing the free speech rights of religious evangelicals, abortion protestors and even Black Lives Matter supporters and opponents,” she said.
A judgment is not expected for a couple of months, Berger told FoxNews.com following Monday's oral arguments. In the meantime, GDOT has suspended Adopt-a-Highway applications.
This isn’t the first time a state has gone rounds with the white supremacist group.
In 1994, Missouri tried to block the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan from participating in its Adopt-A-Highway program.
The group -- which excludes anyone who is black, Jewish, Mexican or Asian -- had requested a half-mile section of road on Interstate 55, one of the routes that had been used to bus black students to school as part of desegregation efforts near St. Louis.
The state denied the KKK’s request.
In that case, lawyers for the state unsuccessfully argued that it had a right to control its own speech and that allowing the Klan to participate would violate the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s ban on racial discrimination in federally funded programs.
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case, thereby forcing the state to allow the group to take part in its “Adopt-A-Highway” program. However, the state later kicked the group out, saying it failed to do its job and pick up the litter on its adopted stretch of highway.
In 2009, the National Socialist movement, a neo-Nazi group, tried to adopt another stretch of road in Missouri. In response, officials renamed the part of the highway after Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a man had who fled Nazi Germany and later became a popular civil rights advocate.
In 2005, two green signs popped up on a rural road in Oregon that seemed to suggest the American Nazi Party was participating in that state’s Adopt-A-Highway program. Complaints poured in after the signs were featured on a local newscast. One sign was even vandalized.
In an email to The Spokesman-Review, the group’s leader Rocky Suhayda denied involvement in the program, saying the group “would never pick up garbage along a highway in this toilet-bowl of a country.”
Consultants reaped windfall from failed Bush campaign
When Donald Trump pointed the finger at Jeb Bush at the last debate and claimed he’s got nothing to show for the millions his campaign has spent, he wasn’t kidding.
A review of how Bush and his allies spent over $125 million in his failed campaign shows the main thing to come out of it was a lot of consultants and local TV stations made a lot of money.
A Washington Post review of Bush spending shows more than 95 percent of the advertising budget – from his campaign and the separate super PAC, Right to Rise – went to consulting firms Oath Strategies and Revolution Agency. The more than $100 million budget largely went straight to buying up air time on local TV stations, but the consultants themselves reportedly would have pocketed several million dollars in commissions and fees along the way.
The rest of the money, according to the Post review, went to polling, legal fees, and other areas. For all that, he won just four delegates – or roughly $31 million per delegate. He drew just 3 percent of the vote in Iowa; 11 percent in New Hampshire; and 8 percent in South Carolina.
The Post also puts the spotlight on Mike Murphy, who ran the pro-Bush super PAC – suggesting his influence could account for why so much money was poured into advertising. Murphy, it turns out, is a founding partner of Revolution Agency. He also previously served as a top adviser to Bush’s 1998 and 2002 gubernatorial campaigns.
The super PAC was expected to be a dominant factor in shaping the narrative for the 2016 GOP fight but in the end, Right to Rise fell short of its expectations. Bush, the former Florida governor, dropped out of the race after a disappointing South Carolina finish on Saturday.
The drop-out comes after Republican front-runner Trump made a point of calling Bush out on his lavish spending during the most recent South Carolina debate.
"In New Hampshire, I spent $3 million. Jeb Bush spent $44 million. He came in five, and I came in No. 1," Trump said.
But the get-rich campaign cycle isn’t limited to Bush.
So far, presidential campaigns reportedly have spent $400 million on consulting services – about three times as much as they did in the 2012 campaign cycle.
The bulk of Ben Carson’s spending has been on consulting firms specializing in fundraising, including email solicitations and data analytics. More than $15 million has been paid to three consultants: TMA Direct, InfoCision and Eleventy Marketing Group.
Ted Cruz paid $4.75 million to Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm started by Robert Mercer, the same man who gave a pro-Cruz super PAC Keep the Promise $11 million.
Biden argued against weighing Supreme Court nomination during 1992 campaign
Senate Republican leaders Monday seized on comments made by Vice President Joe Biden 24 years ago, when the then-senator from Delaware said the Senate should not consider a Supreme Court nominee during an election year.
"Once the political season is underway and it is, action on a Supreme Court nomination must be put off until after the election campaign is over," Biden said in June 1992 on the Senate floor, according to a C-SPAN recording of his remarks.
 
Biden was referring to a hypothetical situation, since the Senate was not considering a nominee at the time of his remarks. But the sudden death of Justice Antonin Scalia earlier this month has left a precarious 4-4 ideological balance between right- and left-leaning justices as they consider cases on abortion, voting rights, Obama's health care law and other polarizing issues.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., reiterated the stance he took hours after Scalia's death that the next president should select a court nominee. He said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, whose statements have wavered, agreed with him.
But separately, McConnell's press office and Grassley in a floor speech went further and cited the 1992 Biden remarks. Grassley called the comments "The Biden Rules" and said the vice president "knows what the Senate should do."
Biden defended himself in a written statement, saying that in his 1992 speech he said the Senate and White House should cooperate "to ensure the court functions as the founding fathers intended." He said under his long-time leadership of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the chamber considered nine Supreme Court nominees "and the current Senate has a constitutional duty to do the same."
Both sides have spent days unearthing comments members of the other party made about court nominations years ago under presidents of different parties when the political circumstances were reversed.
McConnell's assertion that the president elected this November should nominate the replacement has drawn support from nearly all Republicans and irate, solid opposition from Democrats. Yet as the two parties girded for what promises to be a months-long battle, some cracks have appeared on the GOP side.
Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill. — who faces a difficult re-election race this year in a Democratic-leaning state — distributed an opinion column he'd written for the Chicago Sun-Times saying he looks forward to Obama selecting a nominee.
"I also recognize my duty as a senator to either vote in support or opposition to that nominee following a fair and thorough hearing along with a complete and transparent release of all requested information," Kirk wrote.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she favored Judiciary Committee hearings "so that there can be an in-depth vetting of the nominee and his or her views." Several other GOP senators said they'd defer to a decision by Grassley about holding hearings, including Sens. Richard Burr, R-N.C., Rob Portman, R-Ohio and Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who face re-election contests in November.
Obama is expected to announce his nomination in coming weeks. GOP senators will gather on Tuesday for the first time since Scalia's death to discuss their path forward.
Monday, February 22, 2016
Southbound, Clinton aims to build delegate edge over Sanders
COLUMBIA, S.C. – The election calendar may have Democrats voting next in South Carolina, but Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are eyeing bigger prizes in March, a month that will determine whether the Vermont senator can keep pace in the White House race.
Clinton shook off some of the anxieties shadowing her campaign with a solid victory in Saturday's Nevada caucuses.
The results offered a glimpse of her strength with black voters. They are a crucial group in South Carolina, which holds its primary this coming Saturday, and in other Southern states with contests on March 1, Super Tuesday.
Sanders has yet to prove he can consistently expand his base of support beyond white liberals and young voters. His campaign cited progress with Latinos in Nevada, but his advisers are clear-eyed about the challenges on Super Tuesday.
They are mapping out plans to stay close to Clinton in the delegate count until the race turns to friendlier territory later in March.
"Because we can do the long game, once we get past March 1, the calendar changes dramatically," said Jeff Weaver, Sanders' campaign manager. "It's frontloaded for her, but we have the ability to stay in the long game."
More than half the 2,383 delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination will be determined in the 28 states that hold primaries and caucuses in March.
Clinton and Sanders should have enough money to stay in the race for weeks afterward, but the delegate tally at the end of the month could make the results inevitable.
For Sanders, strong showings in March are more important because of Clinton's lead with superdelegates -- the party leaders who can support any candidates regardless of how their states vote.
Clinton has captured the support of 451 superdelegates compared with Sanders' 19.
Underpinning Clinton's strategy are the painful lessons of her 2008 primary loss to Barack Obama.
Clinton's campaign failed to account for the Democratic Party's system of allocating delegates proportionally in voting contests, then watched superdelegates, who can shift their allegiances, move toward Obama as the campaign stretched late into the spring.
Under the proportional system, avoiding overwhelming losses that can dramatically shift the delegate totals is almost as important as outright victories.
"Other than Vermont, I don't see a single state where Hillary Clinton is going to lose in a blowout. I see a lot of states where Hillary Clinton will probably win by a lot and that equals real delegate yield," said David Plouffe, the architect of Obama's 2008 campaign and a Clinton supporter.
"I know that's not sexy, but I think that's how the Clinton campaign has structured their campaign this time after some of the lessons from eight years ago."
Few observers had foreseen Sanders as a serious threat to Clinton. But he has energized young people, working-class voters and liberals with his impassioned calls for breaking up big Wall Street banks and making tuition at public colleges and universities free.
"I think the more people know our record, the better we do," Sanders said Sunday on CBS' "Face The Nation."
Sanders' prolific online fundraising has given him staying power and he has pledged to take his campaign into the Democratic convention in July.
While Sanders outraised Clinton in January, a new fundraising report showed he went on a spending spree at the start of the year and ended last month with about $15 million in available cash -- less than half of Clinton's cash on hand.
That's enough to stay competitive and Sanders' team is eying delegates in March 1 states such as Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma and his home state.
He also hopes to flex his muscles in two other states with contests that day, Colorado and Virginia, and help him make the case that he is more electable than Clinton.
Sanders' campaign has cited entrance polls of Nevada caucus-goers showing him doing better than Clinton among Latino voters.
But the high margin of error in the polls makes it impossible to say with confidence whether either candidate held a lead among the group.
While Sanders was campaigning in South Carolina on Sunday, he planned to be in Massachusetts for a college rally and campaign in Norfolk, Virginia, on Tuesday.
Clinton also was spending time in Super Tuesday states. She flew from Nevada on Saturday to Texas, a huge delegate prize, for a late-night rally in Houston. She planned to raise money in California on the week and then campaign in South Carolina.
Beyond Super Tuesday, Clinton and Sanders are looking ahead to the March 15 contests in Florida, Illinois, Missouri and Ohio. Big wins in those states for either candidate would put the nomination within sight.
Clinton's support among black voters could pay dividends because of the way Democrats award high-performing congressional districts with a greater share of delegates.
Many of the most delegate-rich states have large minority populations, including Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Illinois and Florida, giving Clinton an inside track to accumulate delegates in March.
After South Carolina, can anybody take on Trump?
Donald Trump on Sunday expressed measured optimism about winning the nomination, compared to his bravado after his overnight South Carolina victory, saying he could “always be stopped.”
The front-running Trump won 33 percent of the vote in the Republican South Carolina primary, roughly 11 percent ahead of challengers Sens. Marco Rubio, of Florida, and Ted Cruz, of Texas.
The win is Trump’s second in the first three, early-state contests and now focuses the debate on whether any the four other remaining candidates can stop him, in part by taking the support for Jeb Bush, who suspended his campaign after a disappointing fourth-place finish on Saturday in South Carolina.
“I guess you can always be stopped,” Trump told “Fox News Sunday.” “I have very good competition. … They are very talented people.”
In his South Carolina victory speech, Trump said, “Let’s put this thing away.”
To be sure, Trump appears to be in a good position. Every Republican presidential candidate who has won New Hampshire and South Carolina has taken the party nomination. And he appears to have strong support in the Deep South as the primary season swings into the region next month.
Trump notably held a rally this summer in Mobile, Ala. that attracted an estimated 30,000 people.
Rubio and Cruz remain confident they can eventually get more votes as the GOP field continues to narrow, then overtake Trump.
The eventual winner will face either Democrat Bernie Sanders or front-runner Hillary Clinton, who on Saturday night won her party’s Nevada caucus over Sanders 53-to-47 percent.
She defeated Sanders in Iowa, but lost to him in New Hampshire.
Rubio told “Fox News Sunday” that he has a “real sense of optimism” after South Carolina. However, Rubio said he is not trying to get other candidates, specifically Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who finished fifth in South Carolina, to drop out, which could give Rubio even more of the so-called establishment vote now that Bush is out.
“The sooner we coalesce, the better we can do as a party,” he said. “It’s going to happen one way or another.”
Cruz told ABC’s “This Week” that Trump is a “formidable candidate” but polls show a majority of voters don’t think he can beat Clinton.
“You cannot come from him at the left,” Cruz said of his primary strategy. “You have to have a true conservative” to win.
Clinton’s Nevada win came just a week-and-a-half after she lost to Sanders by double-digits in New Hampshire.
"To everyone who turned out in every corner of Nevada with determination and heart: This is your win. Thank you," Clinton tweeted after the race was called.
The media's firewall against Donald Trump: The voters must be dummies or racists
Just when it seemed the media were starting to accept
Donald Trump’s front-runner status after South Carolina, we had a
newspaper throwing a temper tantrum.
New York’s Daily News, ticked off at the outcome, blamed the voters with this front-page screamer: “CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES.”
In other words, TABLOID TO VOTERS: YOU’RE ALL LOSERS.
And the lead of the story was just as insulting: “The piggish voters of South Carolina gobbled up the slop that Donald Trump served up Saturday — handing the bloodthirsty billionaire his second straight Republican presidential primary win.”
I know the News, which is becoming a sad parody, despises Trump, having depicted him as a clown and, during his dustup with the Pope, the “ANTICHRIST.”
But that doesn’t seem much different than the Huffington Post reacting to Donald Trump’s first primary victory with a red-letter headline: “NH GOES RACIST SEXIST XENOPHOBIC.”
And it illustrates how, when it comes to Trump, some in the media are moving from denial to anger.
I wonder if a New York Times piece on the eve of the South Carolina primary is a more polite and sophisticated way of getting at the same point—that the voters are to blame for making a lousy decision.
The Times has on-the-record quotes to back up its story line, but the underlying assumption is that Trump is just bad news:
“Republicans in South Carolina have in recent years raced ahead of the national party in presenting an inclusive face to voters.”
But in the face of this admirable progress comes a likely Trump victory: “For party leaders and mainstream voters here, it may come as a kind of deflating climax…
“His results in the two early-voting states so far have alarmed more traditional Republicans, who fear that a Trump nomination would solidify for nonwhite voters an image of Republicans as an angry and intolerant party…
“The fear among Republican leaders here is that a smashing victory for Mr. Trump would say more about the party, and about the state, potentially undermining South Carolina’s image as a more welcoming place that is no longer defined by figures like Strom Thurmond.”
Got it? The Palmetto State is now a “welcoming place,” but for Trump to win the primary would make South Carolina look like it was back in Thurmond’s segregationist era.
As Trump has continued to gain strength, he’s attracting a different kind of bad press, which tries to blame others—the culture, the media, the Republican Party—for what these critics see as the awful phenomenon that is The Donald.
Slate, in the process of slamming MSNBC’s town hall with Trump, complains that “the media’s coverage of Trump has been soft, insufficient, and without substance” because it has failed to deal with “months of bigoted comments and almost pathological dishonesty.”
“It’s that the media’s relationship with Trump should worry Hillary Clinton, assuming each of them vanquishes their primary opponents. I would have said six months ago, perhaps naïvely, that a blatantly bigoted candidate would face such a sustained media firestorm (especially in liberal precincts) that he would be incapable of getting elected. That’s not yet the case. Indeed, there are no signs that the media’s sick, interminable honeymoon with Trump will come to an end anytime soon.”
Think about that. Trump is a bigoted and pathological liar, so any coverage that doesn’t portray him that way, or confront him with his many sins, is embarrassingly anemic.
National Review Editor Rich Lowry, a fierce Trump critic, says in Politico that Trump is defining decorum down:
“We’ve grown used to how Trump has treated Jeb Bush in the debates, but that doesn’t make it any less appalling a breach of political norms or basic decency.
The faces he makes while Bush talks, the constant interrupting, the petty put-downs — all of this would have been thought unworthy of the lowest political guttersnipe but have become an accepted part of the landscape thanks to Donald J. Trump…
“The key to Trump’s strength, which buttresses all his outrageousness, is that his supporters want someone to blow up the system. So there's almost nothing he can say or do that will discredit him in their eyes, and the least destructive scenario for his defeat — Trump blows himself up — will take some doing on his part.
“It’s all very entertaining — but so are demolition derbies.”
Now there’s an eye-catching metaphor.
National Review’s David French says both Trump and Bernie Sanders have risen from “the wreckage of a broken culture”:
“The conservative culture we do have is still a celebrity culture, and Donald Trump has taken it by storm.
“The secret of his continued dominance is that he does anger bigger and better than anyone else, and his fans are willing to forgive or even cheer any transgression against conservative principle or simple good taste as a result. All manner of cruelty and lies can be justified by fury at the Left, by rage at the ‘GOPe,’ or by the cry of ‘the other side does it.’
“Conservative leaders who were used to being the angriest and least politically correct people in the room now find themselves in the uncomfortable position of saying ‘no’ — of saying that some things shouldn’t be said and some ideas are genuinely offensive.”
Back to the left, Salon paints Trump as a Frankenstein created by a pathetic GOP:
“What makes Trump unique isn’t his shameless sophistry or his crass rhetoric; he simply does what most politicians – especially on the right – have always done, only better and without limits. He knows his supporters – a majority of whom are old and white – don’t care about policies (many of them have been voting against their own interests for years anyway), and so he goes straight to their sense of identity. Of course he can’t make Mexico pay for a wall, but promising to do so assuages their fears of a country in which white people will, eventually, be a minority. If they cared about their jobs, that rage would be directed at the corporations that shipped them overseas, not the brown people coming here to park cars and pick fruit…
“The GOP now consists mostly of old and angry white people who are rejecting a world they don’t like or understand. The nativism and hysteria animating Trump’s campaign has been at the center of Republican politics for a long time – Trump is simply capitalizing on it.”
Old angry white guys, blatant bigotry, confederacy of dunces. Not much attempt here to discern why Trump has won the first two primary states—and giving him more ammunition that the press treats him unfairly.
Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz.
New York’s Daily News, ticked off at the outcome, blamed the voters with this front-page screamer: “CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES.”
In other words, TABLOID TO VOTERS: YOU’RE ALL LOSERS.
And the lead of the story was just as insulting: “The piggish voters of South Carolina gobbled up the slop that Donald Trump served up Saturday — handing the bloodthirsty billionaire his second straight Republican presidential primary win.”
I know the News, which is becoming a sad parody, despises Trump, having depicted him as a clown and, during his dustup with the Pope, the “ANTICHRIST.”
But that doesn’t seem much different than the Huffington Post reacting to Donald Trump’s first primary victory with a red-letter headline: “NH GOES RACIST SEXIST XENOPHOBIC.”
And it illustrates how, when it comes to Trump, some in the media are moving from denial to anger.
I wonder if a New York Times piece on the eve of the South Carolina primary is a more polite and sophisticated way of getting at the same point—that the voters are to blame for making a lousy decision.
The Times has on-the-record quotes to back up its story line, but the underlying assumption is that Trump is just bad news:
“Republicans in South Carolina have in recent years raced ahead of the national party in presenting an inclusive face to voters.”
But in the face of this admirable progress comes a likely Trump victory: “For party leaders and mainstream voters here, it may come as a kind of deflating climax…
“His results in the two early-voting states so far have alarmed more traditional Republicans, who fear that a Trump nomination would solidify for nonwhite voters an image of Republicans as an angry and intolerant party…
“The fear among Republican leaders here is that a smashing victory for Mr. Trump would say more about the party, and about the state, potentially undermining South Carolina’s image as a more welcoming place that is no longer defined by figures like Strom Thurmond.”
Got it? The Palmetto State is now a “welcoming place,” but for Trump to win the primary would make South Carolina look like it was back in Thurmond’s segregationist era.
As Trump has continued to gain strength, he’s attracting a different kind of bad press, which tries to blame others—the culture, the media, the Republican Party—for what these critics see as the awful phenomenon that is The Donald.
Slate, in the process of slamming MSNBC’s town hall with Trump, complains that “the media’s coverage of Trump has been soft, insufficient, and without substance” because it has failed to deal with “months of bigoted comments and almost pathological dishonesty.”
“It’s that the media’s relationship with Trump should worry Hillary Clinton, assuming each of them vanquishes their primary opponents. I would have said six months ago, perhaps naïvely, that a blatantly bigoted candidate would face such a sustained media firestorm (especially in liberal precincts) that he would be incapable of getting elected. That’s not yet the case. Indeed, there are no signs that the media’s sick, interminable honeymoon with Trump will come to an end anytime soon.”
Think about that. Trump is a bigoted and pathological liar, so any coverage that doesn’t portray him that way, or confront him with his many sins, is embarrassingly anemic.
National Review Editor Rich Lowry, a fierce Trump critic, says in Politico that Trump is defining decorum down:
“We’ve grown used to how Trump has treated Jeb Bush in the debates, but that doesn’t make it any less appalling a breach of political norms or basic decency.
The faces he makes while Bush talks, the constant interrupting, the petty put-downs — all of this would have been thought unworthy of the lowest political guttersnipe but have become an accepted part of the landscape thanks to Donald J. Trump…
“The key to Trump’s strength, which buttresses all his outrageousness, is that his supporters want someone to blow up the system. So there's almost nothing he can say or do that will discredit him in their eyes, and the least destructive scenario for his defeat — Trump blows himself up — will take some doing on his part.
“It’s all very entertaining — but so are demolition derbies.”
Now there’s an eye-catching metaphor.
National Review’s David French says both Trump and Bernie Sanders have risen from “the wreckage of a broken culture”:
“The conservative culture we do have is still a celebrity culture, and Donald Trump has taken it by storm.
“The secret of his continued dominance is that he does anger bigger and better than anyone else, and his fans are willing to forgive or even cheer any transgression against conservative principle or simple good taste as a result. All manner of cruelty and lies can be justified by fury at the Left, by rage at the ‘GOPe,’ or by the cry of ‘the other side does it.’
“Conservative leaders who were used to being the angriest and least politically correct people in the room now find themselves in the uncomfortable position of saying ‘no’ — of saying that some things shouldn’t be said and some ideas are genuinely offensive.”
Back to the left, Salon paints Trump as a Frankenstein created by a pathetic GOP:
“What makes Trump unique isn’t his shameless sophistry or his crass rhetoric; he simply does what most politicians – especially on the right – have always done, only better and without limits. He knows his supporters – a majority of whom are old and white – don’t care about policies (many of them have been voting against their own interests for years anyway), and so he goes straight to their sense of identity. Of course he can’t make Mexico pay for a wall, but promising to do so assuages their fears of a country in which white people will, eventually, be a minority. If they cared about their jobs, that rage would be directed at the corporations that shipped them overseas, not the brown people coming here to park cars and pick fruit…
“The GOP now consists mostly of old and angry white people who are rejecting a world they don’t like or understand. The nativism and hysteria animating Trump’s campaign has been at the center of Republican politics for a long time – Trump is simply capitalizing on it.”
Old angry white guys, blatant bigotry, confederacy of dunces. Not much attempt here to discern why Trump has won the first two primary states—and giving him more ammunition that the press treats him unfairly.
Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz.
Donald Trump muses about Marco Rubio's eligibility to run for president
Marco Rubio has joined Ted Cruz in Donald Trump’s crosshairs.
Fresh off his Saturday win in the South Carolina Republican primary, Trump said Sunday he didn’t know whether Rubio, a Florida senator who finished second, was eligible to run for president and that “the lawyers have to determine that.”
“I don’t know,” Trump told George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week.” “I really – I’ve never looked at it, George. I honestly have never looked at it. As somebody said, he’s not. And I retweeted it. I have 14 million people between Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and I retweet things, and we start dialogue and it’s very interesting.”
Rubio brushed aside Trump’s assertions later on “This Week.”
“This is a pattern,” Rubio said. “This is a game he plays. He says something that’s edgy and outrageous and then the media flocks and covers that. And then no one else can get any coverage on anything else.
“And that worked where there were 15 people running for president. It’s not going to work anymore. I’m going to spend zero time on his interpretation of the Constitution with regards to eligibility.”
Trump was questioned on the issue after he retweeted a supporter Saturday who made the allegation and linked to a video from the Powdered Wig Society, a conservative news and commentary website. That video features an unidentified woman claiming someone can only be a “natural-born citizen” if the person’s father was a U.S. citizen.
The Constitution states only a “natural-born citizen” can be president, though it does not explicitly define that phrase.
Rubio, whose parents came to the U.S. from Cuba in the 1950s, was born in Florida in 1971. His parents were not U.S. citizens at the time.
Trump’s musings about Rubio’s eligibility is comparable to how his similar feud began with Cruz, a Texas senator, though that argument has since intensified.
Trump has argued that Cruz, who finished third in South Carolina, may not be a “natural-born citizen” because he was born in Canada, even though his mother was a U.S. citizen at the time of Cruz’s birth.
Numerous legal scholars have said both Cruz and Rubio are considered “natural-born citizens,” though Trump has said other experts disagree.
“I mean, let people make their own determination,” Trump said Sunday.
Similar questions of eligibility dogged previous Republican contenders such as John McCain in 2008, George Romney in 1968 and Barry Goldwater in 1964. McCain was born in Panama, Romney was born in Mexico and Goldwater was born in Arizona before it became an official U.S. state.
Sunday, February 21, 2016
America, we could be looking at a Trump, Clinton contest
For the first time in months, it wasn’t just a big night for political outsiders.
After a virtual tie in Iowa and a blowout in New Hampshire, Hilary Clinton needed to show that she could turn out voters, that her message was resonating and that there was an end – or at least a pause – in Bernie Sanders’s momentum.
In Saturday’s Nevada caucus she certainly showed that.
With polls showing a tightening race in the past few days after she led by over 25 points just six weeks ago, it was possible that Sanders could’ve pulled this out. But the Clinton “firewall” of African-American voters was out in full force as they voted for her three-to-one -- an excellent sign as she heads to South Carolina where over 50 percent of the electorate is black and she is heavily favored to win.
No one has doubted the strength of Sanders’s message focusing on the rigged economy, reining in Wall Street, offering universal health care and tuition free college with liberal voters. Saturday in Nevada the Vermont senator still won with those who identified themselves as liberal and voters under 45 who went for Sanders three- to-one. He also far surpassed expectations with Latinos, showing that his message can resonate with minority voters.
But Clinton won handedly with moderates, which adds to the argument that she’s more electable come November. And she won, critically, with women – a voting bloc that she has been rapidly losing over the last few months. This is especially significant after the comments by Madeleine Albright and Gloria Steinem just two weeks ago that exposed a large gulf in the way that younger women look at feminism – and Clinton herself – as compared to women of Clinton’s generation.
Furthermore, Clinton showed that she has figured out a winning formula for how to be associated with Obama successfully: she won over 75 percent of voters who want to continue his policies. This also certainly helps her to keep the black vote as we go through the primaries.
Sanders isn’t stopping anytime soon, but Saturday really couldn't have gone better for Clinton.
And the same could be said for Donald Trump who won the South Carolina primary decisively.
Hot off a feud with the pope and a few polls showing his lead under 10 points in South Carolina and even narrowing nationally, there was talk that Trump would win, but not by as much as had been projected.
But the South Carolina voters had something else in mind.
Trump won with retirees, military personnel and veterans and Evangelicals amongst other groups.
We must consider how astounding it is that Ted Cruz couldn’t win in a state like South Carolina with such a large born-again Christian voter base. And that of the entire field of GOP candidates – including Cruz and Carson, two devout Christians – that Jerry Falwell, Jr. endorsed Trump.
Or that Trump could go after President George W. Bush in a state where Bush has over 80 percent favorability and who campaigned for his brother on President’s Day and not be hurt whatsoever.
Saturday night also brought the news that Jeb Bush, once the frontrunner, has dropped out of the race. The question now is if the establishment will finally accept that Trump is on the path to become the Republican nominee. The rest of the primary states are much more favorable to Trump than New Hampshire and South Carolina, where he won handedly.
We could very well be seeing a Trump/Clinton general election match-up.
Now won’t that be fun?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
-
Tit for Tat ? ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) — A statue of abolitionist Frederick Douglass was ripped from its base in Rochester on the an...
-
NEW YORK (AP) — As New York City faced one of its darkest days with the death toll from the coronavirus surging past 4,000 — more th...