By DEXTER DUGGAN
How’s this for climate change that conservatives can believe in?
A changing political climate heated up by Donald Trump’s blustery winds, leaving polarized political bears futilely pawing the air. The ice jam starts to break up below their feet frozen in immobility. Things start to shift.
For a change, we’ll be able to see big steps taken right in front of us instead of only promised at the end of that rainbow over the horizon?
Whether or not Trump himself is eclipsed by events, his challenge to the establishment has ruptured rigid patterns and opened the opportunity for the public to get somewhere if lawmakers are forced to reanimate their frosted-over political cryonics.
Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.), who impressively looks like a handsome movie senator but depressingly acts like an ineffective, anti-Trump real one, announced on September 26 he wouldn’t seek re-election next year.
Tennessee stalwart GOP Cong. Marsha Blackburn quickly said she was running for that Senate seat, proclaimed her support for Trump, and straightforwardly stood up for unborn babies and blasted Planned Parenthood. The real deal, not a pallid imitation.
Corker made his surrender announcement the same day that Alabama’s Republican establishment-blessed Sen. Luther Strange was being toppled in a GOP runoff by conservative hero and former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore.
Complicating the Alabama picture, both ineffective Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) and Trump backed Strange, strange bedfellows indeed. Regardless of why Trump agreed with McConnell on this candidate choice, many Alabama voters said they picked Moore instead as being a better guy than the establishment’s Strange to support the president’s agenda.
So Trump wasn’t a magician who mesmerized dazzled voters to swallow his orders; he was a novice politician with potential whom voters had chosen to fight for their own goals when the establishment didn’t care.
Meanwhile, it was fitting that the Democratic Party of Death kept committing suicide. Moore’s Democratic opponent for the December 12 special election to fill Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ old Alabama Senate seat is a robot named Doug Jones, mechanically repeating the Dems’ sure-death pro-abortion script.
Asked about his abortion stand by NBC’s Chuck Todd on September 27, such as whether he’d support no abortions after 20 weeks, Jones callously indicated he favors no restrictions.
Jones rushed to add, however, that once the baby is born alive, then he’ll defend her life. “I want to make sure people understand that once a baby is born, I’m going to be there for that child, that’s where I become a right-to-lifer.”
Are voters somehow supposed to admire Jones if he approves throwing her in the trash if she was ripped apart five minutes before birth, but golly, sign her up for all her government benefits if she makes it to nine months and one hour? And this is a Democrat running in conservative Alabama, not midtown New York Times-drenched Manhattan.
Once the baby is big enough to put on her own boxing gloves, Jones will fight right alongside her. What a knightly hero.
In light of Democrats’ declining power, some media friendly to them have gone so far as to suggest they really need to be nicer to the forgotten working class that Trump successfully appealed to. But it’ll be an amazing day at the abortuary before these media dare admit their beloved massive abortion is a larger negative factor and repellent to most voters.
Announcing her Senate candidacy, Tennessee’s Blackburn was unafraid to attack abortion giant Planned Parenthood for selling aborted babies’ body parts. But, as might be expected from a social-media biggie, Twitter banned the reference to body parts as “inflammatory.” Just tell the truth about the industrialization of abortion slaughter and get silenced.
However, Americans pushed back and Twitter decided to reverse this censorship. Blackburn told Fox News: “I think what has happened, the American people rose up. They are sick and tired of the liberal elites and the liberal media telling them what they’re going to listen to, and what is going to be pushed forward and broadcast and what is not, and in this example it was Twitter.”
Unconstitutionally imposed massive abortion would have ended long ago if abortion-loving dominant media instead would have exposed its horrors to the public and explained there was no valid legal basis for the U.S Supreme Court to have mandated it nationally way back in 1973.
Blackburn, also criticizing the Senate’s inability to get its work done, said she supports Trump. The Politico site reported: “Blackburn called the Senate she is running to join ‘totally dysfunctional’ and said she stands ‘with the president of the United States,’ perhaps a subtle dig at Corker, who has grown increasingly vocal in his criticism of President Donald Trump in recent weeks.”
Corker and Trump engaged in a remarkable hissing match, with the Tennessee GOP senator going so far as to accuse the president of setting the U.S. on the path to World War III. It’s as old as cobwebs for a loudmouth Democrat to accuse a Republican president of having a nuclear itch, but this strongly illustrated the degree of resentment against Trump by the old guard even in his own corral.
Trump’s former White House chief strategist, tough conservative Steve Bannon, called on Corker to resign immediately.
Bannon also announced a war on all incumbent GOP U.S. senators running for re-election next year except for Sen. Ted Cruz, of Texas, “a good man.”
Asked by Fox News’ Sean Hannity about this war on the GOP establishment up for election, Bannon replied, “A hundred percent. We are declaring war on the Republican establishment that does not back the agenda that Donald Trump ran on. . . . And that is an agenda that we know that backs the working men and women of this country.”
Later in the interview Bannon said the task wouldn’t be easy, but would succeed. “It took us a long time to get here. There’s no magic wand we can wave and drain the swamp. . . . I hate to tell people, you’re going to have to work. But you know what? The grit, determination, and courage of the American working men and women — we are going to win.”
One of those Senate incumbents is shaky first-term Jeff Flake, of Arizona, being challenged in next year’s GOP primary by pro-Trump conservative Kelli Ward, a physician and former Arizona state senator.
Ward was scheduled to join national talk-radio host Laura Ingraham, an early Trump backer, making an October 17 stop in Scottsdale, Ariz., on the signing tour for Ingraham’s new pro-Trump book, Billionaire at the Barricades. Ingraham has endorsed Ward, who is far ahead of Flake in early polls.
The Hill political site reported on October 11 that Ward raised $690,000 in the third quarter of 2017, nearly doubling what she raised in the first six months, putting her at just over $1 million so far for 2017, with her cash reserves at more than $250,000.
A fund-raiser in Scottsdale for Flake, a strong critic of Trump, welcomed a supportive visit by Sen. Marco Rubio, of Florida, on October 9, with Flake reportedly raising $1.1 million in the third quarter. Breitbart News reported on October 10 that Rubio’s office didn’t respond to its question of why the Floridian endorsed Flake.
Apparently trying to win conservatives’ approval, the open-borders Flake recently spoke up on the Senate floor in defense of Notre Dame law professor Amy Barrett, a Trump federal judicial nominee, who came under strong criticism from Senate Democrats for being a Catholic.
The Weekly Standard site quoted Flake on October 2: “Liberal groups have been relentless in their opposition to Dr. Barrett, mischaracterizing her record to paint her as some fringe ideologue, waiting to take orders from the Pope or others in clergy on how to decide cases. In the United States it doesn’t matter where you worship when you are being considered for a federal office. And that is as it should be.”
The Wanderer asked Arizona conservative GOP activist Rob Haney what he thought of Bannon’s plans for war with the Republican establishment. Haney has complained that Trump can’t succeed as long as RINOs and Democrats block his program in Congress.
“Bannon’s strategy to defeat . . . RINOs in the primary is the only way to address the betraying GOP swamp creatures,” Haney said. “The attack must come from outside the party structure because that hierarchy is not neutral. The elites of the GOP syndicate have a steel grip on the party structure, which exists to protect the power of incumbency rather than to advance core principles.” He added:
“Previous attempts to clear the swamp have had very limited success. The Tea Party efforts were led by no-name political amateurs without organization or financial backing. Bannon has everything the Tea Party lacked, and he has a Trump-motivated Republican base. His expertise adds credibility to the effort to take out our Manchurian-candidate incumbents — which did not exist in previous attempts.
“Our Constitution and laws mean absolutely nothing without politicians and judges of character to protect and enforce those documents. Our system of government has failed not because of our documents but because of our leaders,” Haney continued.
“Trump’s election has shown that there is significant voter disaffection. However, the voters are not blaming Trump for his agenda’s legislative failures. Congress is where they are directing their wrath. Bannon’s plan is the best shot at Making America Great Again. If he is not already in your prayers, add him now,” he said.
“Trump Forces”
Also, The Wanderer asked conservative GOP consultant Constantin Querard if he thought there’s enough voter disaffection to make Bannon’s threats credible.
“I suppose it’s possible,” Querard replied. “There are only eight GOP senators up (for re-election), an unusually small number. Take out Cruz and that leaves seven. Corker is retiring, (Dean) Heller (Nev.) and Flake already have primaries, so that only leaves four races. Could he recruit four candidates who might get excited about their chances, with Bannon being the one recruiting them? I’d say he could.
“Would they all be serious candidates who represent serious challenges to (Orrin) Hatch (Utah), (Deb) Fischer (Neb.), Roger Wicker (Miss.), and (John) Barrasso (Wyo.)? Probably not,” Querard said, adding:
“Barrasso in particular could be tough because Wyoming is small enough that everyone knows each other. That level of intimacy offers an extra layer of protection to incumbents, and the candidate he’s rumored to be shopping from Wyoming would have to move to Wyoming to run. Not sure that would go over very well.”
As to a political party throwing its weight behind an incumbent facing a challenge, Querard said that the National Republican Senatorial Committee “is proactively an incumbent-protection agency, going so far as to threaten consultants like me if we do business to help challengers. ‘Work with so-and-so and you’ll never get any work from the NRSC again.’
“You do need to distinguish between President Trump and ‘Trump forces’ that are supporters of his but not official agents of his,” Querard said. “If Steve Bannon weighs in on a race, it is not the same thing as the president doing so. Groups that are affiliated with or supportive of presidents get involved in primaries on a regular basis, so there isn’t any unusual in that.
“The president himself endorsing a challenger over an incumbent is far more unusual, especially with so much important legislation ahead and such a small margin to work with,” he said.
“The Democrats are not inclined to help Trump with anything. Their liberal base is very fired up these days and they’re looking for their own primaries, so a Democrat senator who works with Trump on tax reform or immigration puts him/herself in harm’s way,” Querard said.
“That means for most things, Trump can only afford to lose two GOP senators. If he loses three, the legislation dies.
“That’s why Trump going after incumbents would be both unusual and detrimental to his legislative agenda. I assume his calculation is that these senators are unlikely to be helpful in any case, and Congress will be blamed for any failures in 2018, not him,” he said.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress