“Rick Santorum had one job to do in his appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Thursday. He failed.
The former Pennsylvania senator, who dropped his presidential bid Wednesday, told co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski he is supporting Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign because the Florida senator is someone “who can work together with people.” But Santorum struggled to name one accomplishment Rubio has had in the Senate.”
—————————
He couldn’t name any, because Rubio doesn’t have any.
“A measure that would ban the use of Sharia Law in South Carolina court rooms is working its way through the State House.
Sharia Law, also known as International Law, is closely tied to Islam. It covers an entire way of life, but one rule under Sharia Law is if someone is caught stealing, they would have their hand cut off as punishment.”
“Democratic Representative James Smith, who opposes the measure, says Limehouse’s bill plays on people’s hates, fears and prejudices.
“By passing this, they are making South Carolina less safe. They are making the case for Isis- they are doing exactly what Isis wants to happen, which is to create a religious war,” said Smith.
“Sometimes we create what’s happening- what we see a problem going overseas, we can be a cause of it because we’re taking sides,” said Adly.
Adly says in countries like Saudi Arabia where Sharia Law is embraced, the crime rate is low because those of the Islamic faith know the punishment could be fatal.
“The Sharia Law works there,” said Adly, “So why would we not bring it to America if you really care for America? When you want to stop or be against the Sharia law, you are saying we don’t want muslims to be muslims.”
The reigning idiocy of the current political season is the incessant tossing around of “establishment,” an epithet now descending into meaninglessness. Its most recent abuse is by Donald Trump supporters rationalizing his Iowa defeat with the following consolation: If you tally up Trump and Ted Cruz (and throw in Ben Carson), a whopping 60 percent of the vote is anti-establishment!
So what? The threat to the GOP posed by the Trump insurgency is not that he’s anti-establishment. It’s that he’s not conservative. Trump winning the nomination would convulse the Republican Party, fracture the conservative movement and undermine the GOP’s identity and role as the country’s conservative party.
There’s nothing wrong with challenging the so-called establishment. Parties, like other institutions, can grow fat and soft and corrupt. If by establishment you mean the careerists, the lobbyists and the sold-out cynics, a good poke, even a major purge, is well-deserved.
That’s not the problem with Trump. The problem is his, shall we say, eclectic populism. Cruz may be anti-establishment but he’s a principled conservative, while Trump has no coherent political philosophy, no core beliefs, at all. Trump offers barstool eruptions and whatever contradictory “idea” pops into his head at the time, such as “humane” mass deportation, followed by mass amnesty when the immigrants are returned to the United States. …
… But whatever the piques and preferences of various “establishment” party leaders, there’s no denying that either Rubio or Cruz would retain the GOP’s fundamental ideological identity. Trump would not. Getting thumped in Iowa does not mean that Trump is done. He’s on favorable ground in New Hampshire and leads in practically every other state. But he’s in for a long fight.
What Iowa confirms is that whatever beating the “establishment” takes during this campaign, Republicans are choosing conservatism over Trumpian populism by 2 to 1. Which means their chances of survival as the party of Reagan are very good.
________________________________________________
“You take a guy like Cruz, people are liking the Cruz — they think he’s for the free market, and [in reality] he’s owned by Goldman Sachs. I mean, he and Hillary have more in common than we would have with either Cruz or Trump or any of them so I just don’t think there is much picking,” Paul said of the Texas senator on Fox Business’ “Varney & Company” on Friday.
Surprisingly, the elder Paul seemed more attracted to the views of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is giving Hillary Clinton a run for her money in the Democratic primary …
____________________________________________________
… Of course, polls are just snapshots, and there is no guarantee that Rubio won’t stumble in the weeks and months to come. The New Hampshire primary is fraught with danger for Rubio, largely because Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, and John Kasich are so desperate to do him harm.
Right to Rise, the super PAC backing Jeb Bush, has spent millions deriding him as an unprincipled political weather vane. Christie has been even more aggressive over the past few days, mocking Rubio as “the boy in the bubble” and portraying him as an extremist on abortion, previewing an attack that Democrats are certain to use if he emerges as the GOP nominee. Liberal commentators like Dana Milbank of the Washington Post have been no less disdainful, seeing Rubio’s refusal to mix it up with Trump as a sign of cowardice rather than a marker of discipline and a desire to remain focused on his own more optimistic message.
Are Rubio’s critics right? Is he a chameleon, someone who will abandon his convictions in pursuit of his political ambitions? That’s a bit harsh, but there’s some truth to the notion that Rubio has a knack for being all things to all people. It’s Rubio’s chameleonlike nature that makes him the Republican candidate who’s best positioned to win a general election and to meaningfully advance conservative objectives once in office. The irony is that it’s also what makes Rubio so vulnerable in the Republican primaries. …
…. It happens that I hold Rubio in high regard, for his intellect, his empathy, and his understanding of modern, urban, 21st-century America. Like me, Rubio is a second-generation American, a man whose love of his country is profoundly shaped by his immigrant parents. But I can absolutely see why many conservatives can’t quite trust the junior senator from Florida, and why he has a long road ahead if he wants to earn that trust.
____________________________________
So what has Rubio not messed up in six years in the Senate. Think how much better off we would be if no new laws had been passed under Little Bush and Obama. As Reagan used to say, “Don’t just do something, stand there.”
To understand Rubio, one must appreciate that he sees himself not simply as an ideological vessel but as an evangelizer, a politician who wants to win converts to conservatism. In one of the more uplifting passages of the speech he delivered right after the Iowa caucuses, Rubio promised “to take our message to the people who are struggling paycheck to paycheck [and] to the students living under the burden of student loan.” These are the very same voters who rejected Mitt Romney and John McCain in large numbers. Now, Rubio wants to enlist them in the conservative cause.
This is by far the most compelling argument for the Rubio campaign—that unlike most of his rivals for the GOP nomination, he knows how to sell conservatism to nonconservatives. It doesn’t hurt that Rubio is a convert himself, a liberal firebrand as a youth who once marched in union picket lines with his father. Quite unusually for a Republican presidential candidate, Rubio also cut his teeth in local politics in a lower-middle-class, overwhelmingly Latino suburb of one of America’s biggest cities. …
______________________________________________
I think the conservative movement has lacked a persuasive voice for years — someone who can more winsomely present conservative principles in a way that makes sense to those not on the “inside.”
But, yes, his record is thin. He’s young and inexperienced. And that’s a valid criticism that needs to be weighed.
But there is no “perfect” candidate, it’s a matter of deciding priorities and voting for someone on the best information you have in terms of what’s important in the next leader.
And then praying you voted wisely. 🙂
Our choices will be different largely because of the qualities that we, as conservative individuals, consider important will be different.
… There are reasons a conservative voter might prefer Cruz to Rubio. Cruz has demonstrated a willingness to challenge the calcified structures of the establishment and to continue doing so despite scorn heaped on him not only from the New York Times but also from fellow Republicans. It’s a necessary quality for a president who would serve as a disrupter of the broken status quo in Washington. Rubio may have it, and in his advocacy of entitlement reform we’ve seen hints of it. But with Cruz, we know.
There are reasons a conservative voter might prefer Rubio to Cruz. Rubio has a personal appeal—likability—Cruz lacks. When Cruz addresses voters, he’s often self-indulgent and always melodramatic. He speaks as if he’s there to bestow knowledge on the audience, and he’s frequently the hero of his own story. Rubio is nearly the opposite. When he speaks, there’s a genuine sense that he’s in awe of the country and his place in it. His paeans to American greatness seem heartfelt even the twentieth time you’ve heard them. All of this would seem to make him more electable in the general election.
Regardless, if either Cruz or Rubio is sworn in on January 20, 2017, the country will have its most conservative president since Ronald Reagan.
_____________________________
Wandering Views 
So what has Rubio accomplished in his 6 years as a Senator? Good Question.
The answer? Not much, unless you count his failed Gang of 8 amnesty bill as an accomplishment.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/rick-santorum-marco-rubio-senate-record-218723
“Rick Santorum had one job to do in his appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Thursday. He failed.
The former Pennsylvania senator, who dropped his presidential bid Wednesday, told co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski he is supporting Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign because the Florida senator is someone “who can work together with people.” But Santorum struggled to name one accomplishment Rubio has had in the Senate.”
—————————
He couldn’t name any, because Rubio doesn’t have any.
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Huh. Oddly enough, the “separation of church and state” crowd, i e Democrats seem fine with Sharia law in the US.
http://wach.com/news/local/debate-over-sharia-law-finds-its-way-to-sc-state-house
“A measure that would ban the use of Sharia Law in South Carolina court rooms is working its way through the State House.
Sharia Law, also known as International Law, is closely tied to Islam. It covers an entire way of life, but one rule under Sharia Law is if someone is caught stealing, they would have their hand cut off as punishment.”
“Democratic Representative James Smith, who opposes the measure, says Limehouse’s bill plays on people’s hates, fears and prejudices.
“By passing this, they are making South Carolina less safe. They are making the case for Isis- they are doing exactly what Isis wants to happen, which is to create a religious war,” said Smith.
“Sometimes we create what’s happening- what we see a problem going overseas, we can be a cause of it because we’re taking sides,” said Adly.
Adly says in countries like Saudi Arabia where Sharia Law is embraced, the crime rate is low because those of the Islamic faith know the punishment could be fatal.
“The Sharia Law works there,” said Adly, “So why would we not bring it to America if you really care for America? When you want to stop or be against the Sharia law, you are saying we don’t want muslims to be muslims.”
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Good, that means he has not increased the gov’t/
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Krauthammer’s latest
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-establishment-nonsense/2016/02/04/7b7dbff0-cb6c-11e5-88ff-e2d1b4289c2f_story.html
______________________________________________
The reigning idiocy of the current political season is the incessant tossing around of “establishment,” an epithet now descending into meaninglessness. Its most recent abuse is by Donald Trump supporters rationalizing his Iowa defeat with the following consolation: If you tally up Trump and Ted Cruz (and throw in Ben Carson), a whopping 60 percent of the vote is anti-establishment!
So what? The threat to the GOP posed by the Trump insurgency is not that he’s anti-establishment. It’s that he’s not conservative. Trump winning the nomination would convulse the Republican Party, fracture the conservative movement and undermine the GOP’s identity and role as the country’s conservative party.
There’s nothing wrong with challenging the so-called establishment. Parties, like other institutions, can grow fat and soft and corrupt. If by establishment you mean the careerists, the lobbyists and the sold-out cynics, a good poke, even a major purge, is well-deserved.
That’s not the problem with Trump. The problem is his, shall we say, eclectic populism. Cruz may be anti-establishment but he’s a principled conservative, while Trump has no coherent political philosophy, no core beliefs, at all. Trump offers barstool eruptions and whatever contradictory “idea” pops into his head at the time, such as “humane” mass deportation, followed by mass amnesty when the immigrants are returned to the United States. …
… But whatever the piques and preferences of various “establishment” party leaders, there’s no denying that either Rubio or Cruz would retain the GOP’s fundamental ideological identity. Trump would not. Getting thumped in Iowa does not mean that Trump is done. He’s on favorable ground in New Hampshire and leads in practically every other state. But he’s in for a long fight.
What Iowa confirms is that whatever beating the “establishment” takes during this campaign, Republicans are choosing conservatism over Trumpian populism by 2 to 1. Which means their chances of survival as the party of Reagan are very good.
________________________________________________
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And Ron Paul’s latest. Crazy
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/ron-paul-ted-cruz-libertarian-218822
________________________________________________
“You take a guy like Cruz, people are liking the Cruz — they think he’s for the free market, and [in reality] he’s owned by Goldman Sachs. I mean, he and Hillary have more in common than we would have with either Cruz or Trump or any of them so I just don’t think there is much picking,” Paul said of the Texas senator on Fox Business’ “Varney & Company” on Friday.
Surprisingly, the elder Paul seemed more attracted to the views of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is giving Hillary Clinton a run for her money in the Democratic primary …
____________________________________________________
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Someone tweeted this is a pretty fair look at Rubio’s strengths and weaknesses, but I’ve only scanned part of it.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/02/marco_rubio_was_a_tea_party_darling_now_conservatives_think_he_s_a_rino.single.html
___________________________________
… Of course, polls are just snapshots, and there is no guarantee that Rubio won’t stumble in the weeks and months to come. The New Hampshire primary is fraught with danger for Rubio, largely because Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, and John Kasich are so desperate to do him harm.
Right to Rise, the super PAC backing Jeb Bush, has spent millions deriding him as an unprincipled political weather vane. Christie has been even more aggressive over the past few days, mocking Rubio as “the boy in the bubble” and portraying him as an extremist on abortion, previewing an attack that Democrats are certain to use if he emerges as the GOP nominee. Liberal commentators like Dana Milbank of the Washington Post have been no less disdainful, seeing Rubio’s refusal to mix it up with Trump as a sign of cowardice rather than a marker of discipline and a desire to remain focused on his own more optimistic message.
Are Rubio’s critics right? Is he a chameleon, someone who will abandon his convictions in pursuit of his political ambitions? That’s a bit harsh, but there’s some truth to the notion that Rubio has a knack for being all things to all people. It’s Rubio’s chameleonlike nature that makes him the Republican candidate who’s best positioned to win a general election and to meaningfully advance conservative objectives once in office. The irony is that it’s also what makes Rubio so vulnerable in the Republican primaries. …
…. It happens that I hold Rubio in high regard, for his intellect, his empathy, and his understanding of modern, urban, 21st-century America. Like me, Rubio is a second-generation American, a man whose love of his country is profoundly shaped by his immigrant parents. But I can absolutely see why many conservatives can’t quite trust the junior senator from Florida, and why he has a long road ahead if he wants to earn that trust.
____________________________________
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I sent that on to my reading of politics condenser.
LikeLiked by 1 person
So what has Rubio not messed up in six years in the Senate. Think how much better off we would be if no new laws had been passed under Little Bush and Obama. As Reagan used to say, “Don’t just do something, stand there.”
LikeLiked by 2 people
More from the Slate article:
_________________________________________
To understand Rubio, one must appreciate that he sees himself not simply as an ideological vessel but as an evangelizer, a politician who wants to win converts to conservatism. In one of the more uplifting passages of the speech he delivered right after the Iowa caucuses, Rubio promised “to take our message to the people who are struggling paycheck to paycheck [and] to the students living under the burden of student loan.” These are the very same voters who rejected Mitt Romney and John McCain in large numbers. Now, Rubio wants to enlist them in the conservative cause.
This is by far the most compelling argument for the Rubio campaign—that unlike most of his rivals for the GOP nomination, he knows how to sell conservatism to nonconservatives. It doesn’t hurt that Rubio is a convert himself, a liberal firebrand as a youth who once marched in union picket lines with his father. Quite unusually for a Republican presidential candidate, Rubio also cut his teeth in local politics in a lower-middle-class, overwhelmingly Latino suburb of one of America’s biggest cities. …
______________________________________________
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think the conservative movement has lacked a persuasive voice for years — someone who can more winsomely present conservative principles in a way that makes sense to those not on the “inside.”
But, yes, his record is thin. He’s young and inexperienced. And that’s a valid criticism that needs to be weighed.
But there is no “perfect” candidate, it’s a matter of deciding priorities and voting for someone on the best information you have in terms of what’s important in the next leader.
And then praying you voted wisely. 🙂
Our choices will be different largely because of the qualities that we, as conservative individuals, consider important will be different.
There are no guarantees in any of this.
LikeLike
From Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/the-real-shape-of-the-race/article/2000939
__________________________
… There are reasons a conservative voter might prefer Cruz to Rubio. Cruz has demonstrated a willingness to challenge the calcified structures of the establishment and to continue doing so despite scorn heaped on him not only from the New York Times but also from fellow Republicans. It’s a necessary quality for a president who would serve as a disrupter of the broken status quo in Washington. Rubio may have it, and in his advocacy of entitlement reform we’ve seen hints of it. But with Cruz, we know.
There are reasons a conservative voter might prefer Rubio to Cruz. Rubio has a personal appeal—likability—Cruz lacks. When Cruz addresses voters, he’s often self-indulgent and always melodramatic. He speaks as if he’s there to bestow knowledge on the audience, and he’s frequently the hero of his own story. Rubio is nearly the opposite. When he speaks, there’s a genuine sense that he’s in awe of the country and his place in it. His paeans to American greatness seem heartfelt even the twentieth time you’ve heard them. All of this would seem to make him more electable in the general election.
Regardless, if either Cruz or Rubio is sworn in on January 20, 2017, the country will have its most conservative president since Ronald Reagan.
_____________________________
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