Chip Roy Explains What the Speaker Fight Is About

The Republican Party found itself in chaos on Tuesday when Rep. Kevin McCarthy failed to receive enough votes to secure the House Speaker position. McCarthy told reporters the party is still ‘unified,’ but after tense meetings on Tuesday, Rep. Chip Roy tells Glenn some conservative members of Congress are hardening their anti-McCarthy stance. So what’s going on, and why is it VITAL the correct Republican gets the job? Rep. Chip Roy describes why the battle for the House Speaker position is about ending the D.C. swamp and ultimately about protecting the American people.

Rewriting Lincolnian History (Dinesh D’Souza) UPDATED

Both Google and Wikipedia attempt to hide the fact that Lincoln was a Republican by listing him as a member of the “National Union Party.” Is it true that Lincoln left the Republican Party to join some other party?

Now, I don’t know if this has changed within days… but Wiki is on their history [in this example] pretty well (graphic links to Wiki’s article on Abraham Lincoln, and the text is from their article on The National Union Party):

The National Union Party was the temporary name used by the Republican Party and elements of other parties for the national ticket in the 1864 presidential election that was held during the Civil War. For the most part, state Republican parties did not change their name.[1] The temporary name was used to attract War Democrats and border states, Unconditional Unionists and Unionist Party members who would not vote for the Republican Party. The party nominated incumbent Republican President Abraham Lincoln and for Vice President Democrat Andrew Johnson, who were elected in an electoral landslide.

[1] Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., ed. History of U.S. Political Parties: vol II: 1860–1910 (1973) 2:1287.

(WIKI)

Google however doesn’t “CYA” with the “(Republican)” after The National Union Party like Wiki:

And here is a more humorous… although more true look at what our kids are being taught about Lincoln:

Michigan State Sen. Aric Nesbitt – Ballot Fraud

State Sen. Aric Nesbitt, R-Lawton (MI) speaks with Todd Herman (filling in for Rush Limbaugh) about what his wife and friend saw as they went down to a counting center. Many videos of removal of GOP lawyers/ballot watchers for simple questions (YT: Detroit Election Workers Cheer As Republican Lawyer Is Escorted Out Of Polling Place | Republican lawyer being escorted out in Michigan), or, not letting GOP volunteers in when most counters were Democrat (NATIONAL FILE). At any rate, this was a good interview.

RNC Ad Focuses On “How The Left Views Us”

POWERLINE notes of the original video (which you can watch the linked story at said website):

  • This is the kind of thing that insures President Trump will be re-elected in November–or would, if anyone watched CNN. It is hard to imagine a less attractive 80 seconds of television. What is it about liberals (and formerly conservative never-Trumpers like Rick Wilson) that makes them so smug and self-satisfied? Especially given that, as in this case, they are generally people of so little accomplishment.

I posted previously on Rick Wilson… who is supposedly a Republican… definitely in name only: “Rick “Darker Than a Latte” Wilson” — at any rate, the RNC capitalized on this narrative that all us Trump supporters are idiots:

PJ-MEDIA hopes the MSM keeps it up:

Personally, I hope all of the Democratic candidates, as well as their flying monkeys in the MSM, keep on labeling all Trump supporters as stupid racists. These too-smart-for-the-room Dems and Never Trumpers (redundant, I know) are completely clueless about the fact that their behavior is minting new Trump voters every day.

There were probably more than a few of the new voters at the president’s rally in New Jersey Tuesday night:

People in a union-dominated blue state began lining up in frigid temperatures two days early for that rally.

Who knew New Jersey had so many drawling yokels?

TO WIT,

BLACKSPHERE notes the following:

With 175,000 tickets requested, the mayor is preparing for thousands of visitors. Also, he’s added additional security since there will be Leftists protesting the president.

But the people in the area are excited.

“It’s just history in the making for the generation ahead of me,” said Selena Wollk, of Northeast Philadelphia. “And it’s just a once in a lifetime event.”

“New Jersey has been a blue state for a long time,”‘ said Ed Talmo, of Vernon. “I think just by the turnout hours and days before the event, it just shows his presence is really wanted in New Jersey.”

Ticket numbers came courtesy of the president’s daughter-in-law, Lara. She reported on a radio show that over 175,000 tickets were requested–a record even for President Trump.

While many people won’t get inside the venue, they will still play a part in history. And there will be a giant television monitor set up for overflow, so people can see the president in the likely event they can’t get inside.

“This is like being in Disneyland for Trump supporters,” said Justin Mack, of Guttenberg. “This is like being Christmas, 5 years old. This is the best day of my life.”

While Duke Lea was the first arrival, aerial video from sister station WPVI-TV showed people still gathering, some with tents and others with lawn chairs, as early as 6 a.m. Monday….

In early 2010 I posted this audio from Dennis Prager regarding how the Left views Republicans…

MORE:

Harry Reid and the End of the Liberal Mind Dennis Prager

The highest-ranking Democrat in America, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, described the Senate bill making English the national language of the American people as “racist.” And the New York Times editorial page labeled the bill “xenophobic.”

Welcome to the thoughtless world of contemporary liberalism. Beginning in the 1960s, liberalism, once the home of many deep thinkers, began to substitute feeling for thought and descended into superficiality.

One-word put-downs of opponents’ ideas and motives were substituted for thoughtful rebuttal. Though liberals regard themselves as intellectual — their views, after all, are those of nearly all university professors — liberal thought has almost died. Instead of feeling the need to thoughtfully consider an idea, most liberal minds today work on automatic. One-word reactions to most issues are the liberal norm.

This is easy to demonstrate….

….Here is a list of terms liberals apply to virtually every idea or action with which they differ:The "Sweep Under the Rug" Argument

  • Racist
  • Sexist
  • Homophobic
  • Islamophobic
  • Imperialist
  • Bigoted
  • Intolerant

And here is the list of one-word descriptions of what liberals are for:

  • Peace
  • Fairness
  • Tolerance
  • The poor
  • The disenfranchised
  • The environment

These two lists serve contemporary liberals in at least three ways.

First, they attack the motives of non-liberals and thereby morally dismiss the non-liberal person.

Second, these words make it easy to be a liberal — essentially all one needs to do is to memorize this brief list and apply the right term to any idea or policy. That is one reason young people are more likely to be liberal — they have not had the time or inclination to think issues through, but they know they oppose racism, imperialism and bigotry, and that they are for peace, tolerance and the environment.

Third, they make the liberal feel good about himself — by opposing conservative ideas and policies, he is automatically opposing racism, bigotry, imperialism, etc.

Examples could fill a book.

Harry Reid, as noted above, supplied a classic one. Instead of grappling with the enormously significant question of how to maintain American identity and values with tens of millions of non-Americans coming into America, the Democratic leader and others on the Left simply label attempts to keep English as a unifying language as “racist.”

Another classic example of liberal non-thought was the reaction to former Harvard University President Lawrence Summers’ mere question about whether the female and male brains were wired differently. Again, instead of grappling with the issue, Harvard and other liberals merely dismissed Summers as “sexist.”

A third example is the use of the term “racist” to end debate about race-based affirmative action or even to describe a Capitol police officer who stops a black congresswoman who has no ID badge.

“Phobic” is the current one-word favorite among liberal dismissals of ideological opponents. It combines instant moral dismissal with instant psychological analysis. If you do not support society redefining marriage to include members of the same sex you are “homophobic” — and further thought is unnecessary. If you articulate a concern about the moral state of Islam today, you are “Islamophobic” — and again further thought is unnecessary. And if you seek to retain English as America’s unifying language, you are not only racist, you are, as the New York Times editorial describes you, “xenophobic” and “Latinophobic,” the latest phobia uncovered by the Left.

There is a steep price paid for the liberal one-wording of complex ideas — the decline of liberal thought. But with more and more Americans graduating college and therefore taught the liberal list of one-word reactions instead of critical thinking, many liberals do not see any pressing need to think through issues. They therefore do not believe they have paid any price at all.

But American society is paying a steep price. Every car that has a bumper sticker declaring “War is not the answer” powerfully testifies to the intellectual decline of the well educated and to the devolution of “liberal thought” into an oxymoron.

Liberal Professor Says Insulating Liberal Students To Opposing Views Hurts Them

A liberal professor interviewed in INDOCTRINATE U explains that insulating students by teaching from one ideological viewpoint harms students who are liberal and retards their ability to properly defend and coherently explain their views in the real world — i.e., outside the classroom. This excerpt is taken from two parts Part 1 is HERE, and Part 2 is HERE.

Has Trump Changed the Republican Party?

Larry Elder does a great job at bringing the information of a GALLOP POLL. Perception of the Party has changed essentially not at all. Good short segment.

The Silver Lining Mid-Term Election (UPDATED)

Mind you this is after reading some articles and listening to talk radio and dissenting callers expressing their opinion. BUT RUSH LIMBAUGH is the boss of this! First of all, I wish to say, if the 45-people who left Congress for a variety of reasons did so in part because they believed the media in their “Blue Wave” supposition. Obviously many of these Republicans included ideas of their dislike of Trump, or that they were in leading positions and do not want to be “demoted,” but instead transition into the private sector, as well as spend time with family, also reading the tea-leaves about the “blue wave” (etc., etc.). And so, with the amount of GOP incumbent calling it quits for a variety of reasons, the Democrats won the amount of seats they did this election. They would have won MUCH less if these Republicans stuck through another couple years to the 2020 election. Here are some examples that show just how bad this first mid-term is for the party in power:

  • The most House seats ever lost by a president’s party in power was Obama in 2010. He lost 63. Next was Bill Clinton in 1994. He lost 52. In 1958, Eisenhower lost 48, as did Ford and Nixon in 1974. They lost 48. Lyndon Johnson in ’66, lost 47. Harry Truman in ’46 lost 45 seats. George W. Bush in 2006 lost 30. In 1950, Harry Truman lost 29. Reagan, in ’82, lost 26 seats, and in 2016 Trump is at 26 or 27 — and those are New York Times records. (RUSH LIMBAUGH)
  • UPDATE: More LIKE 37 seats.

So, my point is that what the GOP lost in the House yesterday, is FAR better than recent democrats as an example. AND, not only that, if the Republicans who left stuck around, the Democrats would have won less in the House. So to lose the amount we did was with thanks to Trump and keeping a natural cycle to a minimum. Very few midterm Presidents have added to the Senate during their tenure.

And WHY did Trump deem it important to spend time on the campaign trail for Senate races and not the House races? Because the Senate is where judges are confirmed — the Senate. So if say, Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies or retires, Trump/Mitch McConnell could nominate another Justice via a Senate with more Republicans who are more conservative than their predecessors. [UPDATE, and on cue]

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was seriously injured in a Wednesday evening fall in her chambers at the U.S. Supreme Court.

The health of the 85-year-old justice and progressive favorite is much-watched, lest a sudden change of events give President Donald Trump a third appointment to the high court.

“Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg fell in her office at the Court last evening,” the Supreme Court public information office said Thursday morning. “She went home, but after experiencing discomfort overnight, went to George Washington University Hospital early this morning. Tests showed that she fractured three ribs on her left side and she was admitted for observation and treatment. Updates will be provided as they become available.”

The injury precluded Ginsburg from attending Thursday morning’s ceremonial investiture of Justice Brett Kavanaugh

(THE DAILY CALLER)

But they also confirm judges for the lower courts as well as the Circuit Courts (who are very Left leaning). So we should confirm at least two-a-month for 2-years. Four of the 13 federal appeals courts currently have more Republican:

With the Republican-led Senate rapidly considering and confirming many of his judicial nominees, Trump already has appointed 26 appeals court judges. That is more than any other president in the first two years of a presidency, according to Russell Wheeler, a scholar at the Brookings Institution think tank, although he points out that there are more appellate judges now than in the past.

Trump’s Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, appointed 55 in eight years as president.

Only four of the 13 federal appeals courts currently have more Republican-appointed judges than Democratic selections.

The two appellate courts closest to shifting to Republican-appointed majorities are the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Trump already has made three appointments to the 11th Circuit, leaving it with a 6-6 split between Democratic and Republican appointees. The 3rd Circuit, to which Trump has made one appointment, now has a 7-5 Democratic-appointee majority, with two vacancies for Trump to fill.

[….]

here are currently 13 appeals court vacancies, six of them with pending nominees picked by Trump, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

Both the 11th Circuit and 3rd Circuit have major cases pending in which Trump appointees could make their mark.

An 11th Circuit three-judge panel on July 25 revived a civil rights lawsuit challenging the state of Alabama’s move to prevent the city of Birmingham from increasing the minimum wage. Alabama has asked for a rehearing, which would be heard by the entire 12-judge 11th Circuit if the request is granted.

In the 3rd Circuit, the Trump administration has appealed a lower court decision blocking the Justice Department from cutting off grants to Philadelphia over so-called sanctuary city policies limiting local cooperation with federal authorities on immigration enforcement….

This is Yuuuge. The courts will have Constitutionalists influencing the Courts for generations.

OTHER “Silver Linings”?

Battleground-State Dems Who Opposed Kavanaugh All Defeated

Incumbent Senate Democrats in battleground states who opposed the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination appeared to have paid a price on Election Day, with senators Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Indiana’s Joe Donnelly, Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Florida’s Bill Nelson all suffering defeat.

In fact, every Democrat incumbent who opposed Kavanaugh in states rated “toss up” by Fox News lost their race. In contrast, the lone Democrat who voted for Kavanaugh, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, won his race.

“Every Dem Senator in a competitive race who voted against Kavanaugh lost,” tweeted Tom Bevan, Co-founder of RealClearPolitics. Fox News polling offered evidence the Kavanaugh issue was a major problem for those battleground incumbent Democrats.

A Fox News poll from early October, just before the Kavanaugh confirmation vote, found 34 percent of North Dakotans said they would be less likely to vote for Heitkamp if she voted against Kavanaugh, with just 17 percent saying it would make them more likely to vote for her….

The Far-Left Scorecard

Josh Kraushaar compiled what he calls the progressive scorecard from last night. Note that it includes only seriously contested races. (Bernie Sanders won, as did the 29 year-old airhead from New York with the hyphenated name):

  • Arizona governor: Garcia loses
  • Florida governor: Gillum loses
  • Georgia governor: Abrams loses
  • Maryland governor: Jealous loses
  • Texas senator: O’Rourke loses
  • California 45th: Porter trails
  • Nebraska 2nd: Eastman loses
  • Pennsylvania 1st: Wallace loses
  • Virginia 5th: Cockburn loses

Dave Weigel adds three more to the scorecard:

  • Indiana 9th: Liz Watson loses
  • New York 24th: Dana Balter loses
  • Wisconsin 1st: Randy Bryce loses

This covers almost every region of the country. America isn’t quite ready for socialism yet.

Trump campaigned for 11-Senate people… 9 won.

Biggest Loser At Midterms? Barack Obama

But then there were the midterm campaigns that weren’t gimmes, some very high profile, and high media-exposure ones: Joe Donnelly of Indiana for Senate. Bill Nelson of Florida for Senate. Andrew Gillum of Florida for governor. Stacey Abrams of Georgia for governor.

Those were the ones Obama went hoarse campaigning for, yelling and waving his arms, voice cracking, speeches described as fiery, telling voters to vote for these guys or die. With Gillum in particular, racial appeals were a factor and Obama’s presence was supposed to help. Gillum had a big media buildup about being a first black governor of Florida as an argument to draw votes, and he later cried racism to fend off corruption allegations. Adding Obama to campaign was obviously part of the appeal. This time, the race-politics identity card simply failed.

And Obama? What did he get? Zilch. Zip. Zero. Nada. The voters rather noticibly rejected the ex-president’s appeal for votes. Been there, done that.

A prized and coveted Obama endorsement, or campaign stop, obviously isn’t the election winner in a tight race it used to be. In fact, with these midterms, when it matters, Obama’s a bust. The lesson here that Democrats will surely notice is that it’s largely useless. …

My contention is that the crazies in the Democrat Party may end up helping Trump and Republicans come 2020.


“Democrats couldn’t stop Trump, but they could slow him down and make life miserable for him,” said Brad Bannon, a Democratic strategist. “Subpoenas would be flying from Capitol Hill towards the White House as fast as they can print them out.” (THE HILL)

MSNBC’s Geist: Trump Would Welcome Impeachment Probe: Kavanaugh x 1000

Geist described his theory as “counterintuitive,” but it actually makes perfect sense. Imagine the spectacle of frothing Dems at House hearings, of rabid Dem members fighting for TV time to air their overwrought accusations. What better thing to ramp up the Republican base? 

As Willie said, this would be Kavanaugh times 1,000. And as most concur this morning, it was the Kavanaugh hearings that were largely responsible for galvanizing the GOP, leading to an expansion of the Republican Senate majority. Imagine what that spectacle, times 1,000, would do to create a wave of broken-glass Republicans in 2020.

WILLIE GEIST: Here’s a counterintuitive thought: President Trump would like nothing more than an impeachment investigation. Because it’s not going anywhere in the Senate, it’s dead, it’s a Republican-controlled Senate. And it’s the Kavanaugh situation multiplied times a thousand, which is Democratic overreach, and Donald Trump looks like the victim in the whole thing. He does not mind an impeachment investigation. 

Unhinged Party, 2018 (Updated)

The well produced ad opens with Senator Bernie Sanders saying, “a few years ago, ideas that we talked about were thought to be fringe ideas, radical ideas, extremist ideas — those ideas are now mainstream,” over footage of graffiti that reads “revolution or death” and Kathy Griffin holding President Trump’s severed head. (GATEWAY PUNDIT)

Who is really glorifying violence against people with other political views? Many in the entertainment and news media, as well as many Democrats, have tragically been destroying fair political discourse by glorifying violence against Trump supporters.

WND has more (see also, GATEWAY PUNDIT):

A writer for the popular progressive news website Splinter is warning supporters of President Trump that if they have a problem with the heckling of administration officials in public places, they haven’t seen anything yet.

“Do you think that being asked to leave a restaurant, or having your meal interrupted, or being called by the public is bad? My fascism-enabling friends, this is only the beginning,” writes Splinter senior writer Hamilton Nolan.

Pointing to history, he writes that the U.S. “had thousands of domestic bombings per year in the early 1970s.”

“This is what happens when citizens decide en masse that their political system is corrupt, racist, and unresponsive,” says Nolan.

“The people out of power have only just begun to flex their dissatisfaction. The day will come, sooner that you all think, when Trump administration officials will look back fondly on the time when all they had to worry about was getting hollered at at a Mexican restaurant.”

The Inconvenient Truth About the Republican Party

When you think of the Republican Party, what comes to mind? If you’re like many Americans, you may associate the GOP with racism, sexism, and general inequality. It’s a commonly pushed narrative by left-leaning media and academia, but as former Vanderbilt Professor of Political Science Carol Swain explains, the Republican Party was actually responsible for nearly every advancement for minorities and women in U.S. history—and remains the champion of equality to this day. (See her other two videos on my “RACIAL MYTHS PAGE.” Dr. Swain is also a main person interviewed in the documentary, INDOCTRINATE U)

We Are All Going To Die

GAY PATRIOT notes the rhetoric in our Democrat Left:

Hysterically shrieking “Republican tax cuts are going to kill us all!” is the official position of the Democrat Party.

[….]

PATRIOT LISTS SOME EXAMPLES

[….]

But don’t forget, Global Warming is also going to kill us all. And repealing Obamacare is going to kill us all. Changes to the school lunch program are going to kill our children so they won’t even live long enough to commit suicide as transgender teenagers.  Even the slightest cuts to the size and scope of the Federal Bureaucracy, that’s going to kill us all, you betcha. And concealed carry reciprocity is surely going to kill us all.

But, hey, it’s better than being sent to Mike Pence’s Electrocution Death Camps.

The Media Complex and Democratic Rhetoric Helping The GOP

Here are two examples of CNN’s Alisyn Camerota trying to fish out some negativity towards Trump. One with a panel of persons regarding Trump’s Charlottesville response. The other a Goldstar mom after the “call indecent“…

(Above) CNN featured a panel of six Trump supporters (three men, three women) Wednesday morning and despite host Alisyn Camerota’s surprise, they all defended the president and expressed their distrust of the media. (DAILY CALLER)

(Above) That’s the thing about Gold Star families. It’s not about politics to them. They just want their brave relative to be remembered.  They don’t all need a call. They don’t all even care about that. Alisyn Camerota really needs to get it together. This is like the millionth time she has had someone on TV with the goal of bashing Trump and it has backfired. (AMERICAN NEWS)

Here is another example similar to the above that is the reason more-and-more people are going to vote GOP next Presidential election. The Democratic (DNC) Chairman Tom Perez said the following:

  • “We have the most dangerous president in American history and one of the most reactionary Congresses in American history,” (YAHOO NEWS)

All these posts by people from the Left on social media, leaders in the Democrat Party, and the Media Complex, calling into question motives of regular people — as they relegate any disagreement as based in white supremacy, racism, bigotry, or some phobia… all they are doing is chasing people to the GOP.

My suggestion to the media and others is to do what former former NPR CEO Ken Stern did (NEW YORK POST)… get out of the New York, D.C. bubble and know the audience you are speaking of.

Most reporters and editors are liberal — a now dated Pew Research Center poll found that liberals outnumber conservatives in the media by some 5 to 1, and that comports with my own anecdotal experience at National Public Radio. When you are liberal, and everyone else around you is as well, it is easy to fall into groupthink on what stories are important, what sources are legitimate and what the narrative of the day will be.

This may seem like an unusual admission from someone who once ran NPR, but it is borne of recent experience. Spurred by a fear that red and blue America were drifting irrevocably apart, I decided to venture out from my overwhelmingly Democratic neighborhood and engage Republicans where they live, work and pray. For an entire year, I embedded myself with the other side, standing in pit row at a NASCAR race, hanging out at Tea Party meetings and sitting in on Steve Bannon’s radio show. I found an America far different from the one depicted in the press and imagined by presidents (“cling to guns or religion”) and presidential candidates (“basket of deplorables”) alike.

I spent many Sundays in evangelical churches and hung out with 15,000 evangelical youth at the Urbana conference. I wasn’t sure what to expect among thousands of college-age evangelicals, but I certainly didn’t expect the intense discussion of racial equity and refugee issues — how to help them, not how to keep them out — but that is what I got.

At Urbana, I met dozens of people who were dedicating their lives to the mission, spreading the good news of Jesus, of course, but doing so through a life of charity and compassion for others: staffing remote hospitals, building homes for the homeless and, in one case, flying a “powered parachute” over miles of uninhabited jungle in the western Congo to bring a little bit of entertainment, education and relief to some of the remotest villages you could imagine. It was all inspiring — and a little foolhardy, if you ask me about the safety of a powered parachute — but it left me with a very different impression of a community that was previously known to me only through Jerry Falwell and the movie “Footloose.”

Early this year, I drove west from Houston to Gonzales, Texas, to try my hand at pig hunting. It was my first time with a gun, and the noticeably concerned owner of the ranch at first banished me to a solitary spot on the grounds. Here, he said, the pigs would come to me and I could not pose a danger to anyone else. It was a nice spot indeed but did not make for much of a story, so I wandered off into the woods, hopefully protected by my Day-Glo hunting vest.

I eventually joined up with a family from Georgia. The group included the grandfather, Paps, and the father, CJ, but it was young Isaac, all of 8 years old, who took on the task of tutoring me in the ways of the hunt. He did a fine job, but we encountered few pigs (and killed none) in our morning walkabout. In the afternoon, with the Georgians heading home, I linked up with a group of friends from Houston who belied the demographic stereotyping of the hunt; collectively we were the equivalent of a bad bar joke: a Hispanic ex-soldier, a young black family man, a Serbian immigrant and a Jew from DC.

None of my new hunting partners fit the lazy caricature of the angry NRA member. Rather, they saw guns as both a shared sport and as a necessary means to protect their families during uncertain times. In truth, the only one who was even modestly angry was me, and that only had to do with my terrible ineptness as a hunter. In the end though, I did bag a pig, or at least my new friends were willing to award me a kill, so that we could all glory together in the fraternity of the hunt.

I also spent time in depressed areas of Kentucky and Ohio with workers who felt that their concerns had long fallen on deaf ears and were looking for every opportunity to protest a government and political and media establishment that had left them behind. I drank late into the night at the Royal Oaks Bar in Youngstown and met workers who had been out of the mills for almost two decades and had suffered the interlocking plagues of unemployment, opioid addiction and declining health. They mourned the passing of the old days, when factory jobs were plentiful, lucrative and honored and lamented the destruction and decay of their communities, their livelihoods and their families. To a man (and sometimes a woman), they looked at media and saw stories that did not reflect the world that they knew or the fears that they had.

Over the course of this past year, I have tried to consume media as they do and understand it as a partisan player. It is not so hard to do. Take guns. Gun control and gun rights is one of our most divisive issues, and there are legitimate points on both sides. But media is obsessed with the gun-control side and gives only scant, mostly negative, recognition to the gun-rights sides…..

[….]

….None of this justifies the attacks from President Trump, which are terribly inappropriate coming from the head of government. At the same time, the media should acknowledge its own failings in reflecting only their part of America. You can’t cover America from the Acela corridor, and the media need to get out and be part of the conversations that take place in churches and community centers and town halls.

I did that, and loved it, though I REGRET WAITING UNTIL WELL AFTER I LEFT NPR TO DO SO. I am skeptical that many will do so, since the current situation in an odd way works for Trump, who gets to rile his base, and for the media, which has grown an audience on the back of Washington dysfunction. In the end, they are both short-term winners. It is the public that is the long-term loser.

(READ IT ALL)

Mitch McConnell Funds GOP Attacks on Conservatives

This is the CONSERVATIVE REVIEW article Mark Levin is reading from:

….According to FEC data, accessed Monday, outside groups have spent nearly $10 million to either support Strange’s candidacy directly, or oppose Moore’s.  McConnell’s leadership PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF) is responsible for the lion’s share of that spending. The SLF has spent just over $2 million to bolster Strange and nearly $4.5 million, mostly in negative advertising, opposing Moore. That’s over $6.5 million on a race that is, by all appearances, a loss.

Strange’s latest FEC filing, covering activity up to Sept. 6, 2017, showed that of the $4.46 million Strange had either raised or loaned his campaign, over 28 percent came from political action committees. That means that in addition to the nearly $10 million in outside spending, the K Street lobbying class has dumped almost $1.3 million in PAC donations into Strange’s campaign to ensure the status quo in Washington. 

Moore, on the other hand has only benefited from a total of $1.35 million spent on his behalf, or to oppose Strange, and had raised — as of his FEC filing covering activity up to Sept. 6 — only $1.42 million, of which only $5,000 was from political action committees.

The most notable independent expenditures on behalf of Moore come from the Great America Alliance and Great America PAC organizations that are run by pro-Trump individuals. Together, in breaking with the president, those organizations have spent just over $170,000 to help Moore. The Senate Conservatives Fund and Senate Conservatives Action have spent just over $900,000 to bolster Moore, in the final stages of the campaign.

Last wee, Breitbart reported that Drew Messer, a senior adviser to the Moore campaign, estimated that $30 million had been spent by Strange and McConnell’s allies against Moore. The data shown here is what was publicly available as of Monday via the FEC.   

Surely by using his network’s resources to vastly outspend those supporting Roy Moore, McConnell believes that Strange would fare better against the Democratic candidate Doug Jones. According to an Emerson College poll (PDF) released on Monday, that is not the case. Emerson found Moore with a 52 percent to 30 percent advantage over Jones, while Strange fared worse at 49 percent to 36 percent.

In addition to the $6.5 million spent for Strange and against Roy Moore, McConnell’s leadership PAC spent $2.4 million against conservative House member Mo Brooks leading up to the August primary. That’s a total of around $9 million that McConnell has spent on this campaign to prop up Strange. ….