Lyin’ Ted Cruz: a Trojan Horse

Art credit: 123rf.com

Diana West is the author of The Death of the Grown-Up, a book I found provocative and persuasive (and alarming). The other day, she looked at the amicus brief filed by Senators opposing Pres. Obama's Executive amnesty (see earlier CTPP blog here, spotlighting Sen. Portman’s absence from the roster of Senators) and headlined her report:

Lyin' Ted: Fighting the Executive Amnesty His Finance Committee Point Man Champions

From Sen. Cruz’s website, The Headline:

Sen. Cruz Joins Amicus Brief in Supreme Court Case

Challenging Obama’s Unconstitutional Executive Amnesty

‘CONGRESS HAS NEVER GIVEN THE EXECUTIVE UNCHECKED DISCRETION

TO REWRITE FEDERAL IMMIGRATION POLICY’

Here’s some of Diana West’s commentary:

This is rich? This is chuptzpah? This is "mental"?

It's all of the above.

Ted Cruz, the man who will tell a different story to different audiences without the slightest decreasing of his furrowed brows, has just signed an amicus brief with 42 other GOP senators challenging Obama's November 2014 executive amnesty.

That would be the same executive amnesty that Houston global immigration superlawyer Charles C. Foster publicly supports. And that would be the same Charles C. Foster, profiled here, with whom Ted Cruz worked to craft Candidate Bush 43's immigration program in 2000; and whom Cruz recently called up to invite onto his presidential campaign finance committee as a fundraiser. 

Foster obliged, bringing the balance of the ex-Bush finance committee with him to Team Cruz.

This campaign seemingly of cross purposes is worth a serious double take. It's as if a candidate was championing Israel while a Hamas supporter was raising money for him; or passing himself off as an immigration patriot while some open-to-no-borders enthusiast was bundling bucks for the cause.

Sorry to say, this Cleveland Tea Party person cannot go along with Tea Party Patriots’ endorsement of Ted Cruz. He is indeed a Trojan Horse. 

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Party planner

art credit: www.freerepublic.com

GOPe to “We The People” Part 2: 

Drop Dead

(Part 1 is here). 

TheWashington Examiner (probably the most user-UNfriendly website) reports that RNC Chairman Reince Priebus told pro-Cruz Charlie Sykes on WTMJ 620 Radio Tuesday that “the party” is choosing the nominee:

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus cautioned supporters of Donald Trump who vocally disapprove of the GOP's delegate allocation and selection process.

"By the way, this is a nomination for the Republican Party," Priebus told 620 WTMJ in Wisconsin. "If you don't like the party, then sit down. The party is choosing a nominee."

Priebus said he does not think Trump will run as a third-party candidate, and added that he expects all remaining Republican candidates to support the party's nominee.

As far as the Republican Party elite are concerned, your vote does not count.

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Sen. Rob Portman does not oppose Obama’s executive amnesty

art credit: politicususa.com

From Caroline May at Breitbart Big Government:

Many Senate Republicans are offering their support to the 26 states challenging the president’s executive amnesty programs. They’re filing an amicus brief to the Supreme Court arguing Obama’s November 2014 unilateral actions are in violation of the “spirit” of immigration law and a threat to the separation of powers.

“Given that the Executive has asserted that the acts challenged here are not even subject to judicial review, what is at stake in this matter is nothing less than an effort to supplant Congress’s constitutional power to ‘establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.’ Such an action stands in stark contravention to federal law and to the constitutional principle of the separation of powers,” the Senators’ brief reads.

It adds, “There is little doubt that the Executive adopted the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (‘DAPA’) program as part of an explicit effort to circumvent the legislative process.”

Led by Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), 43 GOP senators signed on to the brief. The names of 11 senators were noticeably absent from the list, many of whom are up for reelection in relatively tough November races, including Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) (R-CO), Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). . . .

Repeat. Sen.Rob Portman is up for reelection this November.

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Brokered Convention? More rumors?

Cartoon credit: theocddiaries.com

Charlie Spieringat Breitbart Big Government reports

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus is, again, shutting down rumors that Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) will emerge as a consensus candidate at the Republican convention in July, asserting on CNN’s State of the Union that this is very unlikely to happen.

“If anything like that were to happen, which I think is highly, highly unlikely, I think our candidate is someone who’s running, OK? That’s pretty obvious,” he said during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper.

The RNC chairman, a close friend of Ryan, praised the speaker as someone who “doesn’t seek out these things” and was not interested.

“He doesn’t want to do it. And I know Paul very well,” Priebus insisted.

. . .

Ryan himself dismissed the idea during an interview with Hugh Hewitt this morning, urging his backers to stop floating his name for consideration.

If nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve.

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Politics, free speech, and rent-a-mobs

art credit: www.blazingcatfur.ca

After the Trump rally was cancelled in Chicago a few weeks ago, Tiffany Gabbay reported at Truth Revolt: 

. . . The greater issue here is the psychosis currently gripping media, celebrity, and even fellow conservatives when it comes to the topic of Donald Trump.

This is dangerous ground on which to tread and reminds me of the knee-jerk reactions leftists had in crying "Racist!" anytime a person opposed Barack Obama on the basis of substance. So now Trump can be smeared as Hitler in much the same way, and anyone who supports him can be shamed as a person who "would have helped Hitler carry out the Holocaust." 

And this is part of what led to the riotous protests at the Trump rally in Chicago.

Does Donald Trump bear responsibility for the way he carries himself? Yes. But the media, along with the #NeverTrump crowd, conveniently leave out context and incite even more animus than was there to begin with. 

During several Trump rallies, aggressive -- not peaceful -- protesters have showed up to heckle Trump, his supporters, and attempted to disrupt these gatherings. Trump was reacting not to peaceful protesters, but to rabble rousers. Were some of the things he said in response to these agitators presidential? Perhaps not. But context in reporting and refraining from comparing Trump to Hitler on every news broadcast and print article would have been essential to quelling the rising tensions.

The truth is that those who protested Trump in Chicago are the same kind of people who needed no provocation at all to riot in Ferguson and in Baltimore and just about every other time and place in which they've tried to shut down free speech with aggression and militancy. This is the real fascism on display, not Trump. 

Conservatives, including other GOP candidates, who dislike Trump and wish to distance themselves from his rhetoric should think twice before embarking on the slippery slope of blaming Trump for the thuggery that occurred in Chicago on Friday. They should also look to their role in fanning the flames with every Trump-Hitler reference they make. This is not a road we want to go down. And if we do, there might not be a way of turning back. 

Think again about the violent protesting that resulted in Trump cancelling his March 11 rally in Chicago. One Twitter message reads:

Protesters celebrate chanting "We stopped Trump."

These protesters are not protesting just Trump, they are protesting free speech. And some of them, who knows how many, are bought and paid for.  Here is one of the ads in Craig’s List, posted on March 8 showing the hiring of the rent-a-mob protesters. Other reports on rent-a-mobs are here and here. 

Notice that one of the states listed at the end of the ad is Ohio. Hmm. Mid-July. Cleveland. Republican National Convention.

Fasten your safety belts. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

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Your tax dollars at work

at credit: www.telegraph.com.uk

From today’s Press Release from Judicial Watch:

Judicial Watch announced today that it has obtained records from the Department of the Air Force revealing the Obama family 2015 Christmas vacation to Honolulu, Hawaii, cost the taxpayers $3,590,313.60 in flight expenses alone. According to the Air Force records, the Obamas used both Air Force One and a Boeing C-32A, the military equivalent of a Boeing 757, which was apparently use to transport the First Lady.

Judicial Watch also has obtained records from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security revealing that President Obama’s four trips to New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Palm City, Florida in 2014 and 2015 cost taxpayers at least $286,416.64 for Secret Service travel and accommodations.  The Obama trips to New York and Los Angeles were solely for fundraising events. In Chicago, the president campaigned for Rahm Emanuel. The Palm City trip was a golf outing with no official activities.

Judicial Watch has previously reported the flight expenses of the New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and Palm City trips.

The records obtained by Judicial Watch for the Obama family’s 2015 Honolulu Christmas vacation reveal the following flight expenses totaling $3,590,313.60:

• Air Force One, at $180,118 per hour for 18.2 hours – totaling $3,278,147.60
• A Boeing C-32A, at $15,846 per hour for 19.7 hours – totaling $312,166

 More infuriating details are here.

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Lyin’ media

Art credit: bnp.org.uk

Media bias is everywhere. And this morning, when reading about the misdemeanor charge of assault against Corey Lewandowski, Trump's campaign manager, in Florida (an incident involving Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields on March 8 -- over a couple of weeks ago -- that was shown to be a nothing-burger), and then looking at the video that shows that nothing happened to warrant the charge, you just knew it was going to be bad for Trump.

Did we expect non-stop crawls on CNN and Fox, keeping viewer attention on the charge of assault? Turned on the TV to flip between the two stations. Yup. Wall-to-wall crawls. The report in the crawl was technically correct -  a charge WAS filed against Trump’s campaign manager. And that’s all that was needed to get the lyin’ media coverage. Never mind that the charge is baseless.

And here is what will probably happen, if they run true to form. The lyin’ media will run the headline as long as they can (and they've been including shots of the stop-action video that would make it APPEAR that there was some basis in fact for the charge, when in fact, there is no “there” there, as Gertrude Stein would have said). And maybe in a few days, or in a week or two, the charge will be quietly dropped, and if the lyin’ media covers it at all, they will bury it. 

And that’s the technique. Burn that impression into the viewer’s mind for a few days, and you’ve done the job. No matter whether it’s false, retracted, or withdrawn. Damage is done.

The tactic today got the lyin’ media a twofer: it shoved the Ted Cruz "Cuban Mistress Crisis" off to the side, and it threw mud at the Trump campaign.

Video is at Gateway Pundit, among other places.

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