Cruz, Trump, Iowa and New Hampshire and a divided GOP

The American Presidential election is getting uglier.  I am not talking about the Democrats – not a single one of their candidates can be considered in any way attractive.

No, I am referring to the Republicans. 

We will see, within the next few weeks, a falling-off of some of the hopefuls.  Who will remain comes down to how they do in Iowa and New Hampshire, I strongly suspect.

My thoughts are that Trump, Cruz and Rubio, possibly also Bush, will survive the major blood-letting that will follow New Hampshire but then what?

Trump is the leader in a number of primary states but not overwhelmingly so.  When the cull starts, to which candidate will that drop-out’s supporters go?  I am not sure that these will be anything other than evenly split amongst the three or four remaining and so we may end-up with a floor vote at the National Convention because no candidate has sufficient delegates to gain the nomination.  We’ll see.

My support is for Cruz.  I admire his consistency and his policies and the fact that, though in Washington, he is not of Washington, the same way that Rubio is.  Trump has the momentum but I believe his lack of substance will start to be compared to Obama.  Good oratory but how will he deliver.  Making deals in business is not the same as in politics.  Also Trump has flip-flopped so many times, that will become more and more of a concern.  That and his support for liberal Democrat policies and candidates in the past will start to negatively resonate with heartland Republicans.

The attack ads phenomenon against Trump will escalate, as the field thins.  His hob-nobbing with leading Democrats and their supporters, will become more and more of an issue, I predict.  As will his previous speeches, which will come under much greater scrutiny.

This scrutiny will not just be from his GOP opponents.  The liberal media are lapping him up, at the moment.  They see him as a useful fool who will dispose of the highly credible Cruz but if he starts to move towards being the nominated candidate, watch them circle like sharks and devour him.  They won’t let him upset the coronation of Queen Hillary.  They will tear into his bankruptcies and his property deals, his business partners and so on.  He has a lot of baggage on which they can feast!

Trump’s recent escapades with the FoxNews debate speak to an arrogance that will start to toll against him.  We know that the American media has the rarely found affliction of being spineless, toothless and brainless, all at the same time, however, even they will start to tire of the ever-more extreme statements and antics of Trump.  They won’t stand in solidarity with Megyn Kelly – that’s a given – but they will, I suspect, start to scale back the coverage or find ways to provoke ever-more outrageous comments from Trump.   Trump’s arrogance and crude behaviour will be his downfall (or at least I hope it will).

I am not an American but of all those that I know, not one would mock those that are afflicted with a physical disability, as Trump has done.  While some of them probably support Trump, I am sure they are embarrassed by his ducking-out of the last debate.  Who knows?  Maybe he had advance knowledge that video clips of past speeches would be played and so his flip-flopping would be there for all to clearly see. 

Incidentally, Trump made much of his rival event being in aid of veteran charities.  One of those that was said to be a beneficiary is called Wounded Warriors.  According to a recent ABC News investigation, this charity manages, through lavish internal expenditure and generous executive salary packages, to devote just over 60% of funds raised, to its veteran beneficiaries.  This as compared to other veteran charities which spend north of 90% of the money they raise, on the people for whom they raise it.   Still, it’s the thought that counts, I suppose.

The Twittersphere was alive, earlier today, with speculation about the sexual orientation of Marco Rubio.  Very strong suggestions that he is or was a homosexual.  That won’t bother many, especially in the media, but it will disturb the heartland GOP.  It will be interesting to see how this story runs.

Coming at the end of eight years of Obama mis-rule , with failed domestic and international policies, a weak economy , greater race division and an unanswered terrorist threat and so on, this should be a great year for the GOP.  That Hillary Clinton, with e-mail gate and Benghazi still hanging over her, is still being spoken of as the likely winner of the Presidential race, is very, very worrying.    Hillary should be in prison awaiting trial not in the race for the White House!  And yet, at the moment, the GOP is in a state of undeclared war. 

The GOP establishment don’t like Cruz.  He has upset them too many times.  Ruling elites, of whatever hue, don’t like principled politicians.  Politicians that you can trust to not be bought and to stand and do the duty they were elected to do, worry the GOP establishment – how can such politicians be controlled?  Of course, they can’t.  So now GOPe has to work against Cruz and start to open-up to Trump, while secretly hoping that Rubio starts to move the needle in the upcoming primaries and Trump starts top falter.  It is a dangerous game that they are playing. 

The Tea Party wing of the GOP, recognise in Ted Cruz, a candidate who will do what he says he is going to do.  The Tea Party are very active and energised.  Ally them with the Trump supports who will defect as he starts to lose ground and GOP has a winning combination.  People that are angry, people that are focused and people that will get out the vote.

Iowans and New Hampshire voters – you know what to do and who to do it for!

News review November 11

Football punishment
The English Football Association has fined West Ham and Chelsea, £40,000 and £50,000 for 'failing to control their players' during their recent encounter.

Seriously?  These amounts are utterly meaningless to clubs of their size.  Also, there is no punishment for the causers of the loss of control - the players!

Surely all of the players, should each be fined - something substantial, say £100,00 each - and they should all have a yellow card assigned- something that adds up and leads, if repeated,  to a 3 match ban.  I do mean all.  The whole team, not just those that get involved in the melee.

As for the clubs, make the punishment meaningful.  An instant deduction of 3 points and, of 9 points if they are a repeat offender.  I can't help but think that this would concentrate the minds.  Points and league positions equate to serious money and money-making opportunities.

While we are on the subject.  If the manager/coach is punished, then again, the club should have points deducted.

In English football, today, monetary punishments are useless.  It's points that matter!

Refugees again
European and African leaders are meeting in Malta, to discuss the problem of economic migrants that are currently flooding into Europe.

We can expect the usual claptrap about developing Africa so that people will stay in their home country, etc., followed by European throwing money, Africa's way.

However, as in the past, this will be totally irrelevant and won't solve the problem.

African economic migrants want to come to Europe because their economic prospects, in Europe, are better.  Some will claim that this is because of European welfare programmes.  This then becomes a useful foil for pro-immigration liberals to attack and use against immigration controls, by screaming 'racist'!  Whatever the truth, the migrants come because they will have a better economic life in Europe than they would have in Africa.

The only real solution is to close the door.  And seal it!  In practise this would mean returning all of these immigrants to their home country.  All of them.  Returned.  No half measures - all of them, returned.  We have to turn back the flood at the source.   To let these people know that they simply cannot come in.  That, if they do make it to our shores, then each and every one of them, each and every time, will be returned from whence they came.  And, to keep on sending them back.

Any half-measures or anything less than complete repatriation means that Europe may as well do a 'Merkel' and just tell all of Africa to come on over.

US GOP Debate
The latest debate has taken place.  I didn't see the TV show but there is dispute over who performed well and who didn't.

From what I can gather:

Ben Carson was fairly quite but escaped unscathed, with no mud, about his memoir mis-rememberings.

Donald Trump was noisy as always and found to be severely wanting on his foreign policy platform and ridiculed for his plans to repatriate 11 million illegal immigrants.

Ted Cruz, when he got the chance to speak on any subject, seems to have 'knocked it out of the park' and showed not just his very strong debating skills but also the depth of his policy proposals.

Rand Paul and Marco Rubio also seem to have performed well, though Paul's isolationist stance is, rightly, unpopular.

The others?  Well Kasich behaved boorishly and interrupted a lot, Bush got a couple of good hits in but no killer quotes.  Fiorina showed competence but at times seems fixated on Trump's anti-female slip-ups.

Overall,  Cruz and Rubio looked and sounded like winners and of course Trump and Carson are still there but we should soon start  ti see the others, falling away.m  As they do, we can expect Trump's shortcomings to become ever more apparent.  

America's bureaucrats
I can't believe I am alone in being outraged that senior bureaucrats that are supposed to serve the American people, can 'take the fifth' and, then continue in their well-paid roles.

John Koskinen, the current Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service,  has 'taken the fifth' while testifying to Congress concerning the wholesale shenanigans that went on, under the earlier Commissioner, Lois Lerner.

Think about that.  He is employed by the US government.  Congress, on behalf of the US taxpayer, exercises oversight of, among other agencies, the IRS.  Congress is there to make sure that the IRS carries out its work in accordance with the wishes of, and on behalf of, the US taxpayer.  Yet, when Congress want to question the head of the IRS, he is able to 'take the fifth' and he still gets to keep his job!!  Can anyone imagine being able to do that in the private sector?

" Tom, I want to speak to you about the performance of your department"  "Sir" responds Tom, "I refuse to answer your questions on the grounds of potential self-incrimination"  "Oh!", says Tom's boss,  "okay then, let's move on".

If these bureaucrats were doing a great job, you could maybe feel some sympathy at them having to face, what might possibly be politically inspired questioning.  However, many, at the top simply aren't.  Look at the Environmental Protection Agency, that polluted the Colorado River.  Look at the Veterans Administration, that continues to mistreat and intentionally delay treatment to America's veterans.  Look at the IRS, that targeted organisations that were anti-Obama.  Look at the Justice Department that went after General Petraeus for having classified documents on a personal computer but has done nothing, about Hillary Clinton's use of, and then wiping cleaning of, a personal e-mail server.  The list goes on and on and the 'tone from the top' is so inappropriate that it is no wonder that these agencies are so out of control.




  

Today's news

A departure for me as I will offer brief(ish) comments on current stories in the news rather than my normal lengthier piece.

David Cameron and the EU
It seems like Cameron has decided to get a little serious with his negotiations for Britain's continued membership of the European Union.  He is apparently going to tell our EU partners that if he can't get what he wants, for Britain, then he will campaign for Britain's exit, the so called Brexit.

Before you jump up an exclaim 'about time!' consider that Cameron isn't really asking for much.  And his partners will hold firm on their core desire for 'ever closer union' and pull Britain further and further into their orbit.  This is what the Euro-elite want.  Not the people of Europe, or more accurately the European Union (note to the BBC Europe and the European Union are not same thing) but for those folks, democracy is an over-rated luxury.

If Cameron really wants to demonstrate that he means business, here is a tip.   Have the UK Civil Service start a process of planning for Brexit.  I can't think of a better way of showing that you mean business, than showing you are prepared for all outcomes.  Have Civil Servants start negotiations with the UK's key trading partners - those outside the EU.  Start with China and India and then other Commonwealth countries.  The upcoming Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, in Malta, would be the perfect launchpad!  Develop and publish the replacement for the Common Agriculture Policy.  Same for the Fisheries policy.  Start to withdraw from cooperation on the ludicrous European Union Foreign Service.

Does anyone think that this won't concentrate the minds of the EU bureaucrats and the so-called political masters.

Obama and Keystone
So Obama decided to pay back his big financial sponsor - Warren Buffet.  This was entirely predictable.  Buffet's Burlington Northern Santa Fe railway is booking an alleged $2 billion a year in profits from transporting oil, at $30 a barrel from Canada to the southern US versus the $10 a barrel that it would cost to send it down via the Keystone XL pipeline.

The US Presidential race

As a non-US voter, can I say - enough already.

Let's start with the Democrats - surely this can only be seen as a fight between Clinton and Saunders?  I appreciate that this is a most unpalatable choice but let's get real.  Without Biden, there is no one else.  Unless of course, some of the RINOs show their true colours, and change parties?  Jeb, Marco?
So will the other Democrat candidates please leave the stage.  Then we can have 'looney-Left tunes' Saunders slug it out with the not so much Teflon coated as media-untouchable Hillary.   Then we just might see the Dems and their media supporters having to choose between the spend like crazy Saunders and the make no hostages to the future Clinton.  Things might get interesting!

Now the Republicans.

'Elephant in the room time' - make that elephants.  Jeb, Marco, Kasich and the others, except for Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and Ben Carson, need to leave the field.  George Dubya needs to take his brother to one side and say 'save your money and give it up'!

The GOP needs to focus on the real candidates.
Carson may have been wounded by the latest revelations concerning West Point, or he may brush past that.  To me it sounds like the media trying to make a story out of next to nothing - so Carson bragged a little, haven't we all?

Trump will I think, start to fade.  He has done the GOP a great service by daring to say things that some others, like the ones who should now bow out, have steered away from.   While he is a populist, I think that he has to have something more substantial in his policy pocket than just being anti-immigration.  Plus he has had past cosy relationships with the Dems.

That just leaves Ted Cruz.  Most say that he is by far the best qualified, intellectually but perhaps more importantly, he has displayed a rare consistency in his following truly Republican policies.  Some say that this tars him with a Tea Party brush but he would be the most formidable opponent against Hillary.  Who knows, if he chose Trump as his running mate, then he might get some of that Donald magic!

Refugees 
Too late for me to say too much, tonight, I will come back on this tomorrow.  I sense that this issue will still be in the news!

Have a good night!

2015 - Prospects and ....

I couldn't think of a word for the other aspect of what we face in 2015 but maybe by the end of this we will have it.

Prospects first then.

The new US Congress convenes in January and has a Republican majority in both houses.  I think that has the prospect of being a good thing.  The newly elected members will join incumbents but critically, these 'newbies' will bring with them a clear mandate from the electorate.  Change is needed in Washington.  That means that Congress needs to clean-up its act.  Less 'pork-barrel' politics and more 'American' policies.  Policies that will start to restore America in the eyes of its friends and its foes.

'American' policies?  Well that means no amnesty for a start.  It is 'American' to emigrate to the USA via legal routes not by hopping over the border accompanied by disease-ridden narco-gang members and others who believe that laws are meant for someone else.

So, no Amnesty and a clear statement to the Department of Homeland Security - Congress will de-fund you if you do not secure the border - that's the Southern border, in case you don't know which one.  Congress will de-fund HS if you don't start deporting, in significant numbers all of those illegal immigrants that entered the US during 2014 and then work backwards, year by year.  Who knows?  In the process you may well come across some Al Qaeda  or ISIS terrorists, on the way.  It's a pretty safe bet that some used the chaos that Obama created on the border, to infiltrate the country.

Again, no Amnesty.  Can't say it often enough.

Obamacare will really kick-in in 2015 and it is the duty of Congress to start the process of repeal and then accelerate so that this is done by the end of 2015 and America enters the 2016 election year with a clear choice between Democrats (who voted the ACA through without even reading it!) and want to reinstate it and with Republicans who oppose such socialistic but more importantly unworkable legislation.

Spending has to be reduced.  The people get it but clearly Speaker John Boehner doesn't.  Obama  has always been a lost cause.  Indeed, the same can be said of all Democrats.  Margaret Thatcher once said 'the trouble with Socialists is that eventually they run out of other people's money to spend' and that is where today, America finds itself.  So as well as spending needing to be drastically reduced, Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell must be replaced.  Rep. Trey Gowdy and Senator Ted Cruz or Senator Mike Lee would seem to be candidates that best represent the views of the Republican voters.

Spending reductions are also a prospect for British voters - though, (and this is where that .... creeps in) there is every prospect that the parties in the upcoming General Election will fall over themselves to offer money Britain doesn't have and hasn't earned as electoral bribes.  They don't call it 'pork-barrel' in the UK but the result is the same - unaffordable spending fueled by debt.

A gloomy prospect (there's that ...... again) is that the Scottish Nationalists (SNP)  may hold the balance of power and strike an underhand deal with Labour surrounding yet more transfer of powers to the devolved Scottish Parliament.  It is unbelievable but no less true that the SNP who so solidly lost the Scottish Indpendence Referendum now face the prospect of being the major Scottish influence at Westminster.  It says everything about Labour and their woeful leader, Ed Miliband, that we come to this pass.

Incidentally, while we are on the subject of the SNP, how on earth can they possibly be in the ascendancy when they made such huge play about an independent Scotland's prospects but all based on oil at the 'conservatively' set price of $113/bbl.  Oil is currently half that price and all commentators see oil at greater than $100 no time in the near future!

With Labour and the SNP squeezing on one side the Conservatives face the grim prospect of losing power as they are also being assailed from UKIP.  I think that the electorate distrust the Conservatives on Europe and I can't help but have a sneaking suspicion that the Conservatives wouldn't mind losing the election so that the question of an EU referendum becomes someone elses responsibility/headache.

If the Conservatives do regain power, it will likely be to lead a minority government.  That though doesn't preclude the greatest prospect which is deep and meaningful cuts in UK public spending.  This is long overdue and I sense would receive strong support from the working population, if it was properly presented showing the choice between further indebtedness and future impoverishment and an affordable future for Britain and its children.

Back to prospects and  for the first time in a long time,  Europe and immigration will likely be 'front and centre' in the UK General Election and there is every prospect that contra-opinions to those of the metropolitan elite and to the ruling bureaucracy (the real rulers) will  be heard and perhaps a reasoned debate might ensue - we can but hope!

Of course, an easy prospect for the UK is that the key issue will be the economy and its prospects.  These will surely be enhanced if the austerity policies of the Conservatives, however anemic they have so far been, are preferred to those of the profligate debt-fueled spending proposed by Labour.

So, Prospects and .... abound and the above are just a foretaste but we need the following - and by we, I mean not just the USA and the UK, I mean the 'West' needs the following:

US Republicans to follow the electorate given mandate - no amnesty, reduce America's deficit (debt is perhaps too much to ask for), secure the border and start to repair relations with America's natural allies.  The latter will mean abandoning some of Obama's newly close Islamic allies but so be it.

UK Conservatives go forward on an economic plan founded upon lower taxes and much lower public spending.  Also be clear on Europe, if the UK can't get what it wants from a renegotiation, then we will leave.  It is asinine to go into a renegotiation of terms saying that even if the UK doesn't get what it wants, then the Conservatives will still campaign for continued membership.  Oh and one of those things has to be reduced immigration and zero, nada, zilch welfare benefits for any non-Britons.

So, no amnesty, spending cuts and then we can forget about those ........