ARRA News Service
News Blog for social, fiscal & national security conservatives who believe in God, family & the USA. Upholding the rights granted by God & guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, traditional family values, "republican" principles / ideals, transparent & limited "smaller" government, free markets, lower taxes, due process of law, liberty & individual freedom. Content approval rests with the ARRA News Service Editor. Opinions are those of the authors. While varied positions are reported, beliefs & principles remain fixed. No revenue is generated for or by this "Blog" - no paid ads - no payments for articles. Fair Use Doctrine is posted & used.
Blogger/Editor/Founder: Bill Smith, Ph.D. [aka: OzarkGuru & 2010 AFP National Blogger of the Year]
Contact: editor@arranewsservice.com (Pub. Since July, 2006)
    Home Page
   

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. -- Plato (429-347 BC)

Thursday, September 17, 2015

Most Important Political Facts of the Week: Sept. 17, 2015

by Ron Martin, Contributing Author: Most important political fact of the week: Trump won. “Huge.” Which is more than a little disconcerting, since he also showed a complete lack of the knowledge required to conduct American foreign policy.

Nevertheless, win he did. In the (admittedly unscientific) Drudge poll, at the time of this writing Trump has 52.47% — and more importantly, a whopping 325,847 votes – to his nearest rival (Carly Fiorina’s) 21.48% (and 133,392). To properly appreciate those numbers, “inevitable front-runner” Jeb Bush has 1.23%, for a total vote count of 7,637.

Someone will inevitably email me to say that Trump has rigged the poll, ala Ron Paul. Well maybe. But if he has, why can’t Jeb Bush find more than 7,637 people to do the same? (For the answer to that, read my column from July 25).

While answering that question, it might be worth noting that the “Paulbots” have abandoned Rand Paul (4.3%, 26,772). But more noteworthy still is the rise of a very particular outsider, Carly Fiorina. Anyone who watched her last night knows that she was as shockingly specific – on every topic under Heaven – as The Donald was vague. She got the best of her exchange with Trump over her time at HP, and was dominant while ladylike much of the night. She will be a real threat to Ben Carson’s number two status going forward.

Without belaboring points you can read elsewhere, it is important to state that Ted Cruz had an excellent night: he was by far the most statesmanlike of the group, the most conservative on all points, and no less in command of detail than Fiorina. Chris Christie had a great night too: if we had more of these debates he might rise over time (as did Newt). Mike Huckabee was stellar on abortion and religious liberty, but just couldn’t ever break through. Those who’ve written off Walker are likely right. Those who’ve written off Rubio got a surprise last night. And those who’ve pumped Kasich got exactly what Kasich has been delivering for 25 years: the reincarnation of Bob Dole and John McCain.

So how did Donald Trump win? Well, blame it on the Republican Establishment, who are getting a “heaping helping” of irony, to wit, our second most important political fact of the week: more debates are better.

The conventional wisdom says the opposite, but as is so often the case, the conventional wisdom is wrong. Detractors say 2011’s Republican debates became a reality show, but they miss the point that such truth as there is in that complaint is actually good: we got to know the candidates, we got to know their styles and their positions, we got to see how they work with and against one another over time.

If your only aim is to cynically package an inauthentic, contrived product, more scrutiny may well be “a disaster.” But if you want the public to make an intelligent choice about who should lead them, if you want to see if whether a “known quantity” – such as Rick Perry last time – is really as known as we think, more debates matter. And anyway, today authentic trumps packaged every time.

The unspoken but actual complaint of the Republican Establishment is that the process just described kept Mitt Romney – their chosen one – on his toes for a whole year. He had to actually say things that weren’t soundbites, and he had to face real rivals who otherwise could have been dismissed because they had no money. Newt Gingrich ultimately became the choice of the people – scandalous! – and only lost when Romney was able to outspend him 5-1 in Florida. Without the debates, he’d have gotten three votes.

More debates meant less Establishment control. So they took over the process and rigged it for Jeb Bush.

I-rony. None of their calculations included a Donald Trump. Trump cannot be outspent, and the only way to beat him is to get him to show himself unqualified. He flirted with it briefly last night, with his unprovoked swipe at Rand Paul at the outset, and with the juvenile back-and-forth that followed. But he recovered, and that’s that, because most likely, there won’t be enough additional debates between now and January to trip him up.

The establishment can never conceive of its own defeat (other than its pretty consistent defeat come November), and so it cannot imagine primary debates as a meaningful vetting process. But the rest of us can. Frontrunners rose and fell last time because they tended not to handle their status well. This time, in a process designed to ensure Jeb Bush could coast to victory on a sea of money, a fine mind and decent presence, he is now faced with harsh realities: vastly less money than the frontrunner, twice as many opponents as he imagined possible, and no way to stand out from the crowd.

The only beneficiary of this is the man who needs to be made to stand and deliver once a week from now until Iowa. As our British cousins would say, the Establishment was too clever by half. And that’s why Donald Trump, having survived a foreign policy debate he should have lost, is very likely to be the next President of the United States.

But what about the Democrats, you ask? And that brings us to our third most important political fact of the week: a Washington Post-ABC poll finds that Hillary is down 29 points among women.

Yes, you heard that correctly. In eight weeks, the inevitable first female President is down from 71% to 42% among Democrat women, in a poll conducted by two liberal news organs.

It’s not quite time to put a fork in her. But it’s hard to see how she rights herself. And with Sanders now ahead in both Iowa and New Hampshire and Biden waiting in the wings, this year could get a lot more interesting yet.

Finally, the most important political fact of the millennium is that, on this day in 1787, 39 brilliant men signed the biggest breakthrough in human governance in all of time to this point, the United States Constitution.

The left is increasingly open in its hatred for that document and its framers. But the left’s intelligentsia opposes it because it makes the sort of radical nationalizations Clement Atlee imposed virtually impossible; and the left’s rank and file opposes it because they’ve been told to, without benefit of meaningful civics teaching that could help them form an independent opinion. No one explains, for instance, how the Founders were supposed to craft a document that the states would ratify that abolished slavery; likewise, no one explains how drafting a document no one would ratify would have helped anything or anyone.

What is certain is that the U.S. Constitution created an order in which liberty could prevail, in which self-governance could exist without threat of the tyranny of the majority, in which states and localities could govern themselves without the stultifying one-size-fits-all authoritarianism of empire. It also gave us an orderly manner of amendment, so that changing times could be accommodated: when, for instance, the view of the majority of the Founders prevailed, slavery was indeed abolished. And to be quite honest, most of the amendments enacted this past century have done more to harm than to help: the Founders got most things right not just for their time but for all time, at least so far.

It is to the Founders that we may attribute much of what has been called American Exceptionalism. They created a system that properly took account of man’s corruption, and at every point balanced men and institutions against one another so that they would have to cooperate, could never dominate. The result has been more liberty, innovation and human flourishing than anywhere or at any time in the history of the world.

God willing, we are only just beginning.
----------------
Rod D. Martin, writes at RodMartn.org, and is founder and CEO of The Martin Organization, a technology entrepreneur, venture capitalist, author and conservative activist from Destin, Florida. He serves and has been an advisor to numerous organizations and is Past President of the National Federation Republican Assemblies.

Tags: Rod Martin, political facts, CNN GOP Debate, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, United States Constitution To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Posted by Bill Smith at 3:00 PM - Post Link

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home


View U.S. National Debt

Don't miss anything!
Subscribe to the
ARRA News Service
It's FREE & No Ads!

You will receive a verification email
& must validate you subscribed!

You Then Receive One Email Each AM
With Prior Days Articles / Toons / More


Also, Join & leave conservative posts & comments on
Facebook.com/ARRANewsService


Recent Posts:
Personal Tweets by the editor:
Dr. Bill - OzarkGuru - @arra
#Christian Conservative; Retired USAF & Grad Professor. Constitution NRA ProLife schoolchoice fairtax - Editor ARRA NEWS SERVICE. THANKS FOR FOLLOWING!

Action Links!
State Upper & Lower House Members
State Attorney Generals
State Governors
The White House
US House of Representatives
US Senators
GrassFire
NumbersUSA
Ballotpedia

Facebook Accts - Dr. Bill Smith
Pages:
ARRA News Service
Arkansans Against Big Government
Alley-White Am. Legion #52
Catholics & Protestants United Against Discrimination
End Taxpayer Funding of NPR
Overturn Roe V. Wade
Prolife Soldiers
Project Wildfire 4 Life
Republican Liberty Caucus of Arkansas
The Gold Standard
US Atty Gen Loretta Lynch, aka Eric Holder, Must Go
Veterans for Sarah Palin
Why Vote for Hillary (Satire)
FB Groups:
Arkansas For Sarah Palin
Arkansas Conservative Caucus
Arkansas County Tea Party
Arkansans' Discussion Group on National Issues
Blogs for Borders
Conservative Solutions
Conservative Voices
Defend Marriage -- Arkansas
FairTax
FairTax Nation
Arkansas for FairTax
Friends of the TEA Party in Arkansas
Freedom Roundtable
Pro-Life Rocks - Arkansas
Republican Network
Republican Liberty Caucus of AR
Reject the U.N.

Patriots
Exchange
Links

Request Via
Article Comment

Links to ARRA News
A Patriotic Nurse
Agora Associates
a12iggymom's Blog
America, You Asked For It!
America's Best Choice
ARRA News Twitter
As The Crackerhead Crumbles
Blogs For Borders
Blogs for Palin
Blow the Trumpet Ministry
Boot Berryism
Cap'n Bob & the Damsel
Chicago Ray Report - Obama Regime Report
Chuck Baldwin - links
Common Cents
Conservative Voices
Diana's Corner
Greater Fitchburg For Life
Lasting Liberty Blog
Liberal Isn't Amy
Marathon Pundit
Patriot's Corner
Right on Issues that Matter
Right Reason
Rocking on the Right Side
Saber Point
Saline Watchdog
Sultan Knish
The Blue Eye View
The Born Again Americans
TEA Party Cartoons
The Foxhole | Unapologetic Patriot
The Liberty Republican
The O Word
The Path to Tyranny Blog
The Real Polichick
The War on Guns
TOTUS
Twitter @ARRA
Underground Notes
Warning Signs
Women's Prayer & Action
WyBlog

Editor's Managed Twitter Accounts
Twitter Dr. Bill Smith @arra
Twitter Arkansas @GOPNetwork
Twitter @BootBerryism
Twitter @SovereignAllies
Twitter @FairTaxNation

Editor's Recommended Orgs
Accuracy in Media (AIM)
American Action Forum (AAF)
American Committment
American Culture & Faith Institute
American Enterprise Institute
American Family Business Institute
Americans for Limited Government
Americans for Prosperity
Americans for Tax Reform
American Security Council Fdn
AR Faith & Ethics Council
Arkansas Policy Foundation
Ayn Rand Institute
Bill of Rights Institute
Campaign for Working Families
CATO Institute
Center for Individual Freedom
Center for Immigration Studies
Center for Just Society
Center for Freedom & Prosperity
Citizens Against Gov't Waste
Citizens in Charge Foundstion
Coalition for the Future American Worker
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Concerned Veterans for America
Concerned Women for America
Declaration of Am. Renewal
Eagle Forum
FairTax
Family Research Council
Family Security Matters
Franklin Center for Gov't & Public Integrity
Freedom Works
Gingrich Productions
Global Incident Map
Great Americans
Gold Standard 2012 Project
Gun Owners of America (GOA)
Heritage Action for America
David Horowitz Freedom Center
Institute For Justice
Institute for Truth in Accounting
Intercollegiate Studies Institute
Judicial Watch
Less Government
Media Reseach Center
National Center for Policy Analysis
National Right To Work Foundation
National Rifle Association (NRA)
National Rifle Association (NRA-ILA)
News Busters
O'Bluejacket's Patriotic Flicks
OathKeepers
Open Secrets
Presidential Prayer Team
Religious Freedom Coalition
Renew America
Ron Paul Institute
State Policy Network
Tax Foundation
Tax Policy Center
The Club for Growth
The Federalist
The Gold Standard Now
The Heritage Foundation
The Leadership Institute
Truth in Accounting
Union Facts



Blogs For Borders

Reject the United Nations

Presidential Prayer Team

Thousands of Deadly Islamic Terror Attacks Since 9/11


FairTax Nation on FaceBook
Friends of Israel - Stand with Israel
Blog Feeds
Syndicated - Get the ARRA News Service feed Syndicated!
ARRA Blog Feed

Add to Google Reader or Homepage

Add to The Free Dictionary

Powered by Blogger


  • To Exchange Links - Email: editor@arranewsservice.com!
  • Comments by contributing authors or other sources do not necessarily reflect the position the editor, other contributing authors, sources, readers, or commenters. No contributors, or editors are paid for articles, images, cartoons, etc. While having reported on and promoting principles & beleifs beliefs of other organizations, this blog/site is soley controlled and supported by the editor. This site/blog does not advertise for money or services nor does it solicit funding for its support.
  • Fair Use: This site/blog may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available to advance understanding of political, human rights, economic, democracy, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as provided for in section Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 of the US Copyright Law. Per said section, the material on this site/blog is distributed without profit to readers to view for the expressed purpose of viewing the included information for research, educational, or satirical purposes. Any person/entity seeking to use copyrighted material shared on this site/blog for purposes that go beyond "fair use," must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
  • © 2006 - 2020 ARRA News Service
Creative Commons License
Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.