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U.S. ELECTION 2016: CRUZ’S POLICIES AND ISRAEL-ADVOCACY REFRESHING COMPARED TO TRUMP’S FLAMBOYANCE & CLINTON’S PATRONIZING

 

Why the Conventional Wisdom Has Been All Wrong This Election Season: Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, Nov. 5, 2015 — The current presidential campaign is blowing up lots of political myths.

That Level of Hatefulness: Sarah Honig, Jerusalem Post, Oct. 1, 2015 — The hijinks and tomfoolery of America’s presidential election season suffice to confound the minds of the diminishing numbers of Americans who remain unfashionably focused on issues.

A Fresh Approach to American Foreign Policy – and US-Israel Relations: Caroline Glick, Breaking Israel News, Oct. 27, 2015 — US Senator Ted Cruz, the conservative Republican firebrand from Texas, is running for president.

People are Criticizing My Dad, Jim Webb, For Killing a Man. Here’s What They’re Missing.: Jim Webb, Washington Post, Oct. 15, 2015— If you watched the Democratic presidential debate on Tuesda

y night, you probably heard the closing comment by my father, Jim Webb.

 

On Topic Links

 

Netanyahu to Washington Think Tank: US-Israel Alliance Pivotal for Future of the World (VIDEO): Algemeiner, Nov. 10, 2015

Has Hillary Already Secured the Nomination?: Charles Krauthammer, National Review, Oct. 15, 2015  

Even Hillary Clinton’s Fans Don’t Believe a Thing She Says: Jonah Goldberg New York Post, Oct. 9, 2015

Can Republicans Follow George W. Bush's Response to Anti-Muslim Rhetoric?: Arit John, Bloomberg, Sept. 22, 2015

                                                                             

 

WHY THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM HAS

BEEN ALL WRONG THIS ELECTION SEASON

Victor Davis Hanson

                                                National Review, Nov. 5, 2015

 

The current presidential campaign is blowing up lots of political myths. For years, the conventional lament was that the “wrong” Bush had run for president in 2000. George W. Bush was supposedly tongue-tied. He was said to be polarizing. He was derided as too much the twangy, conservative Texas Christian. If only his younger, softer-spoken brother, then–Florida governor Jeb Bush, had run instead! So the myth went.

 

Jeb was said to be far more bipartisan and judicious. Jeb, not W., was deemed by many to be the more likable and more competent descendent of their father, former president George H. W. Bush. The 2015 debates now remind us how false that comparison was. W. may have been more controversial, but he was decisive, unshakeable, charismatic, and connected with crowds in a way the bookish, distracted, and “low-energy” Jeb has not been so far.

 

For four months, pundits wrote off the flamboyant Donald Trump for his brash name-calling, political inexperience, bombast, over-the-top narcissism — and even his wild, dyed, combed-over hair. But the wheeler-dealer Trump only rose in the polls each time pundits wrote his epitaph. Why? Trump’s candidacy was largely created by underestimated popular outrage over the federal government’s politically motivated refusal to enforce immigration law. That issue divides elites, who are not so much affected by their own open-borders advocacy, from the middle classes, who certainly are.

 

Trump saw that angry divide and so far has brilliantly capitalized on it. Illegal immigration sent the Trump candidacy from nowhere to front-runner status — in much the same way that uncontrolled borders have all but imploded the once-popular German chancellor Angela Merkel. After Barack Obama’s two successful presidential elections, liberal and supposedly far more inclusive Democrats declared themselves the only party that looks like the new multiracial America. Republicans, in contrast, were written off as mostly old white fogies — has-beens bitterly clinging to their fading prior privilege.

 

The campaign has exploded that myth too. The Republican field is far more diverse, although the candidates see their ethnicity as incidental rather than essential, in bumper-sticker fashion, to their personas. The candidates include the young (44-year-old Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, and Marco Rubio), the ethnically diverse (Cruz, Jindal, Rubio, and Ben Carson), and successful outsiders who do not have political backgrounds (Carson, Trump, and Carly Fiorina).

 

In contrast, the Democratic candidates appear far older, are all white, and are all political has-beens. Multimillionaire Hillary Clinton alone boasts of her female status (in a way her Republican counterpart, Fiorina, does not). But Hillary is neither young nor a fresh outsider. She represents half of a tired Clinton dynasty, whose old-boy network of Wall Street/Washington-insider, big-money politics goes back well into the last century. President Obama polls poorly, especially among conservatives. His team often hints that racism is the culprit. But the meteoric candidacy of Carson, an arch-conservative African American who in some states is outpolling front-runner Trump, illustrates that Obama’s divisive left-wing agendas, along with his failed economic and foreign policies, are what finally turned off over half the country — not his race.

 

Media bias is usually dismissed as the whine of conservative crybabies. But anyone who saw last week’s CNBC debate noticed the embarrassing difference between the interviewers’ treatment of Republicans and how CNN had conducted its Democratic debate earlier last month. Suddenly, an emboldened media gave up all pretense of objectivity in a brash way not seen since 2012, when presidential-debate moderator Candy Crowley jumped in to help Obama’s floundering defense after Romney had criticized the administration’s handling of the Benghazi attack.

 

Hostile CNBC moderators grilled Republicans with “gotcha” questions along the lines of, “How long have you been beating your wife?” In contrast, CNN moderators in the Democratic debate created a love fest between front-runners Clinton and Bernie Sanders — and mostly ignored the back-of-the-pack candidates.

Usually an impartial media is not so crude in its liberal bias. But this time, the prejudices were so flagrant that they finally boomeranged on a discredited CNBC, whose moderators limped home from the debate licking their self-inflicted wounds.

 

Conventional wisdom also stated that governors make far better candidates — and presidents — than do senators. Supposedly, they are not Washington insiders, have executive experience and actually ran something. But so far there is not a single former or sitting governor among the front-runners of either party. In fact, the most successful past or present governors — Bush, Jindal, Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee, John Kasich, George Pataki, Rick Perry, Scott Walker, and Martin O’Malley — struggle in the polls or have already quit the race.

 

Perhaps give-and-take governors have to make compromises and sound namby-pamby in the debates and on the stump. Senators and outsiders do and talk as they please, and seem more savvy about the media — and about raising big money. The campaign has just started, and already past wisdom is proving to be ignorance — with more debunking to come.

                                                                       

Contents

   

THAT LEVEL OF HATEFULNESS

Sarah Honig                                             

Jerusalem Post, Oct. 1, 2015

 

The hijinks and tomfoolery of America’s presidential election season suffice to confound the minds of the diminishing numbers of Americans who remain unfashionably focused on issues. The raucous monkeyshines parading as the democratic process in action surely stupefy outsiders. These shenanigans really shouldn’t preoccupy Israelis and it’s altogether not our place to pass judgment. Still, sometimes it’s awfully hard to keep our distance and our cool in the face of hypocrisy that cries to High Heaven.

 

Moreover, opinion-molders in the Land of the Free prefer to keep their news-consumers politically correct and suitably uninformed. Hence, odds are that most of the minority of eligible primary voters and caucus participants (who actually play a role in the democratic process) won’t connect the dots.

 

For example, it’s more than unlikely that many will put into context Hillary Clinton’s jibe at Donald Trump’s failure to dissociate himself from unsavory comments by others within his earshot. Clinton informed all … in her… (w)armish demeanor that she was “appalled” that Trump didn’t chide an audience member at a New Hampshire campaign event for claiming President Barack Obama was a Muslim and “not even an American.” “Not only was it out of bounds, it was untrue,” intoned Hillary in an interview with CNN, but “he should have from the beginning corrected that kind of rhetoric, that level of hatefulness.”

 

From the high moral ground she then called on Trump to “stop this descent into the kind of hateful, mean spirited, divisive rhetoric that we have seen too much of.” Trump, she asserted ought to apologize for not reacting to the “prejudice and the “discriminatory” sentiments. She then opined that the questioner who stirred the pot would in all likelihood not attend any of her rallies. She keeps better company and per force attracts a superior crowd.

 

“But if that person would have been at my event, I would have called him out on it,” Clinton declaimed. “And I would have said from the very beginning that has no place in a political discussion like the one we are trying to have here. And not only it is out of place and wrong, it is totally factually untrue and quite impugning the integrity of the President.”

 

Hillary is a fine one to talk. Was she quick to dissociate herself from inflammatory rhetoric sounded in her presence and in circumstances where mishearing was far less probable than in the New Hampshire town hall meeting? Did she express her stern disapproval – even a faint hint thereof – of far more incendiary oratory? Did she make the slightest effort to “stop this descent into the kind of hateful, mean spirited, divisive rhetoric that we have seen too much of?” Did she apologize for not reacting to the “prejudice” and the “discriminatory” sentiments sounded around her? Heck no! Never! The incident, which makes the Trump controversy pale into near-imperceptibility by comparison, took place on November 11, 1999 – back when Hillary was first lady. Significantly, it triggered no remorse and never generated controversy. Hillary is apparently not bound by the rules of conduct she requires of Trump.

 

With much fanfare Hillary visited Gaza then and was graciously greeted by Yasser Arafat’s wife, Suha, who spiritedly launched into a blood-libel diatribe which didn’t seem in the least to perturb the righteous Hillary.

It also serves to note that none of this could in any shape or form be laid at the door of Benjamin Netanyahu’s demonic disrepute. Israel’s then-prime minister was Ehud Barak, whose electoral campaign was enthusiastically aided and abetted by Hillary’s own hubby, in blatant and zealous violation of Israel’s own domestic democratic processes.

 

But contrary to conventional wisdom, it never really matters much who’s in power in Jerusalem. Israel is always the regional bogeyman. And so back in the good old days of Post-Oslo Labor rule, America’s first lady, patronizing and basking in ultra-liberal smugness, smiled contentedly as Suha railed in fake indignation: “Our people have been subjected to the daily and extensive use of poisonous gas by the Israeli forces, which has led to an increase in cancer cases among women and children.”

 

No way could Hillary claim to have gotten the wrong end of the stick or not to have heard every nuance. She listened via headphones to a simultaneous translation of Suha’s prepared script, accusing the Jewish state – in the genuine medieval Judeophobic well-poisoning tradition – of resorting to all manner of noxious machinations to kill Arab women and tots (as distinct presumably from adult Arab males). Among its other sins, Hillary’s hostess charged, Israel deliberately contaminated with lethal toxins 80% of the water (not 79% or 81%) consumed by Palestinian females and infants. Diabolic Israel evidently managed to brew deadly concoctions that targeted gender- specific victims as well as the underage ones.

 

Hillary listened to the entire long-drawn-out calumny without a hint of displeasure. Indeed she nodded approval from time to time and, when Suha concluded, Hillary embraced her warmly and planted affectionate kisses on her cheek. Imagine Hillary’s indignation had Trump embraced and kissed the offensive New Hampshire questioner! But Hillary appears exempt from the need to denounce defamation and demonization. She is held to different standards than those she demands of Trump.

 

Thus, the uninitiated onlooker may be forgiven for having assumed that Suha actually listed irrefutable grievances and that her claims won at least the tacit corroboration of her American guest. Significantly, even after the bizarre scene ended, Clinton never bothered to dispel that impression. This, however, should have come as no shocker to anyone familiar with her record. Going back to the earliest stirrings of Hillary’s public-life debut, she treated the PLO as a hip revolutionary liberation movement, rather than as spearheading an Arab war to destroy the beleaguered Jewish state. When she chaired the New World Foundation in the Eighties, she funneled finances to PLO subsidiaries. In 1998 she preceded Bill Clinton in unabashed advocacy of a Palestinian state.

 

As secretary of state, she rushed to appoint an American ambassador to Syria after a five-year vacancy. Is it then any surprise that Hillary heaped effusive praises on Damascus despot Bashar Assad just as he began slaughtering his own people? As the misnamed Arab Spring started to devastate Syria, America’s then-top diplomat authoritatively informed her lessers that Assad was a “reformer.” And at that same juncture – just as the Mideast became awash with reactionary Islamic-supremacist takeovers (cheered by her along with the rest of the beguiled Free World as democratic uprisings), Secretary of State Clinton had chosen – of all priorities – to berate Israel’s treatment of women.

 

For those who forget the momentous triggers for her lecturing, we were then in the grips of yet another of our perennial peculiar-cum-artificial kerfuffles. That one involved gender-segregated haredi bus lines. Clinton harped on it with undisguised relish. She had certainly imbibed scraps of disjointed and tendentious information on our much-hyped idiosyncratic in-house quarrels. Yet our boisterous debate, more than all else, attests to the vibrancy of our civil liberties rather than to their demise, as she disingenuously contended in her slanted monologue at the Brookings Institute’s Saban Center as 2011 drew to a close.

 

Clinton seized the opportunity at the time to liken Israel to Iran after harping on eccentric hullabaloos at the extreme-most fringes of our society, making them look like the mainstream. She omitted mention that the mainstream is diametrically different. That in itself constituted rank distortion while the comparison to Iran was knowingly spiteful chutzpah. She never apologized for resorting to it…

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]

                                                                       

Contents

   

A FRESH APPROACH TO AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY – AND US-ISRAEL RELATIONS

                                       Caroline Glick                                    

                                                Breaking Israel News, Oct. 27, 2015

 

US Senator Ted Cruz, the conservative Republican firebrand from Texas, is running for president. Up until a few weeks ago, his candidacy was met with indifference as the media and political operatives all dismissed the viability of his candidacy. But that is beginning to change. The voices arguing that Cruz, the favorite of Tea Party fiscal conservatives and Evangelical Christians may have what it takes to win the Republican nomination have multiplied.

 

Since arriving in Washington four years ago, Cruz has arguably been Israel’s most avid defender in the Senate. During Operation Protective Edge in July 2014, Cruz used his authority as a member of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee to force the Obama administration to end the Federal Aviation Commission’s ban on US flights to Ben-Gurion Airport. Cruz announced at the time that he would put a hold on all State Department appointments until the administration justified the flight ban. Rather than defend its position, the administration restored flights to Israel after 36 hours.

 

Last summer Cruz led the national opposition to US President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. He brought thousands of activists to the Capitol to participate in a rally he organized calling for Congress to vote down the deal. Rather than use the rally as a means to promote himself, Cruz invited Republican front-runner real estate developer Donald Trump to join him at the rally. Trump’s participation ensured that the event received wide coverage from the national media.

 

I interviewed Cruz by telephone from the campaign trail earlier this week about his views on the purpose of American foreign policy, US-Israel relations, the Iran nuclear deal and the Palestinian conflict with Israel. The transcript of our conversation follows.

 

Sen. Cruz, you have managed to anger the two foreign policy wings of your party – the neoconservatives and the isolationists – with your foreign policy positions. How would you describe the rationale behind your foreign policy positions?

 

Cruz: I believe American foreign policy should be driven by the vital national security interests of our nation. The most central failing of the Obama-Clinton foreign policy is it fails to look to America’s national security interests. And as a result, we have undermined our friendships and alliances across the globe, and we have allowed our enemies to grow stronger in the face of weakness and appeasement.

 

How does the US alliance with Israel align with that view? A lot of Americans argue that by supporting Israel the US has diminished its capacity to form alliances with the Arab world.

 

Nobody who understands the reality of foreign policy believes that. That is the view of the Obama administration and the far Left. I think America’s alliance with Israel is overwhelmingly in our national security interest. Israel shares the same democratic values. It has been a tremendously important ally to America in a very troubled region of the world. The military assistance that America provides Israel yields enormous national security benefits to America. There are some politicians who characterize the United States military aid to Israel as somehow a form of assistance rather than a mutually beneficial military alliance. I think that stems from a misunderstanding of the fundamental dynamics…

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]

                                                                       

Contents                                                                            

   

PEOPLE ARE CRITICIZING MY DAD, JIM WEBB, FOR KILLING A MAN. HERE’S WHAT THEY’RE MISSING.                     Jim Webb                                                        

Washington Post, Oct. 15, 2015

 

If you watched the Democratic presidential debate on Tuesday night, you probably heard the closing comment by my father, Jim Webb. Without hesitation he answered that the enemy he was ‘most proud of’ was the Vietnamese soldier who wounded him with a hand grenade. He then added that “…he isn’t around anymore.”

 

While there were those in the media and around the country who were a bit stunned, and perhaps even put off by this answer, my fellow veterans and I were not. If anything, his blunt (and perhaps a bit brutal) honesty was much appreciated, and further endeared him to us as a candidate. We veterans are also more likely to have a fuller picture of my father’s record.  He’s the man who gave us the post-9/11 GI Bill. We also know him as a highly decorated combat veteran who earned the Navy Cross for the entire episode surrounding that grenade, not just the snippet that has been focused on.

 

As a Marine infantryman myself, I have experienced the complex emotions of combat. On the one hand, you may not even see the face of an individual who fires a round so close to your head that your ears ring, or blows up the improvised explosive device next to your vehicle that potentially kills or maims your friends. On the other, there’s an intensely personal reaction. After all, this isn’t a person who is besting you in a debate about gun control, or some other social policy, over a beer.  This is a person whose intent is to end your life, and that is as clear cut an enemy as you can think of.  Additionally, many, if not most, of the veterans I have talked to have read the Navy Cross citation that chronicles the incident surrounding my father. For those unfamiliar, it states:

 

    ….Observing the grenade land dangerously close to his companion, First Lieutenant Webb simultaneously fired his weapon at the enemy, pushed the Marine away from the grenade, and shielded him from the explosion with his own body.….

 

We who know the complexities of combat understand the character displayed in the above sentence.  When put into the proper context, it is clearly far more than the sound bite being dissected by political pundits. In fact, seeing the reaction to my father’s story in recent days has highlighted for me the almost stunning level of ignorance that the general public has about war. CNN introduced him as a “war hero,” and yet people were surprised and even uncomfortable when they were given a glimpse of what that might have entailed.

 

Yes, the man who threw the grenade isn’t around anymore, but more importantly the man who my father shielded with his own body lived to see another day. As a Marine and as a leader, that is the important part. To me and many other veterans, we have a sea of presidential candidates who seemingly have only personal interests in mind.  Yet here is a leader who has not only endured war, but demonstrated that he is willing to sacrifice his life for his people. Is that really something to be sneered at?

 

This country has been at war for almost 15 years, and as I think about the ridicule leveled at my father in the past 24 hours, I can’t help but imagine what these same people must think about the service of my own generation. In their eyes, did we simply spend some kind of twisted ‘semester abroad’ in a place with plenty of sand, but no ocean? Or conversely, do they ignorantly dismiss our experiences, as they have my father, as those of cold callous killers?

 

                                                                           

On Topic

 

Netanyahu to Washington Think Tank: US-Israel Alliance Pivotal for Future of the World (VIDEO): Algemeiner, Nov. 10, 2015—The US-Israel alliance is “pivotal for the future of world,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told an audience at the Washington, DC think tank American Enterprise Institute on Monday.

Has Hillary Already Secured the Nomination?: Charles Krauthammer, National Review, Oct. 15, 2015 — I repeat: Unless she’s indicted, Hillary Clinton will win the Democratic nomination. I wrote that six weeks ago, amid fevered dreams of a Clinton collapse and a Joe Biden rescue. That those were a mirage is all the more obvious after Tuesday’s debate. The reason, then as now, is simple: Clinton has no competition.

Even Hillary Clinton’s Fans Don’t Believe a Thing She Says: Jonah Goldberg New York Post, Oct. 9, 2015— Hillary Clinton revealed on Wednesday that she opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, providing just the latest evidence that she is little more than political ambition wrapped in a pantsuit.

Can Republicans Follow George W. Bush's Response to Anti-Muslim Rhetoric?: Arit John, Bloomberg, Sept. 22, 2015 — A flurry of anti-Muslim rhetoric on the presidential campaign trail has put Republican candidates in the hot seat about Islam's role in American life and politics.

 

 

 

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