While many Americans were focused on Washington this week, I was paying special attention to Fort Bend County, Texas. What took place in that Houston suburb may reveal more about the 2020 election than the impeachment trial in the Senate does.
Fort Bend held a special runoff election to fill a vacant state House seat left open by the resignation of the Republican incumbent, who took a job with the University of Texas. Sensing an opening, state and national Democrats decided a win in House District 28 would give them a head start on flipping the nine seats they’d need to control the Texas House and boost their efforts to overturn GOP state legislative majorities from Arizona to Florida, Wisconsin to Pennsylvania and a dozen states in between.
The reason for this intense Democratic interest in state politics is redistricting.Democrats saw how Republican state legislative majorities affected the composition of the U.S. House after the 2010 census. Democrats want to do in more states what they did back then in drawing congressional lines favorable to their party in California, Illinois, Maryland and other blue bastions. The 2020 census gives them the opportunity, but only if they control at least one chamber of a state’s legislature.
Democrats, eager to set the tone for 2020, piled into the race with money, endorsements, technology, lists and volunteers to help Elizabeth Markowitz defeat her Republican opponent. Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Mike Bloomberg all endorsed Ms. Markowitz. Mr. Bloomberg even carved out time from his presidential campaign to go door-to-door with her. Former presidential candidates Julián Castro and Robert Francis O’Rourke also canvassed neighborhoods, Mr. O’Rourke so frequently that it looked as if he was trying to establish residency.
Calling the race “the most important election (yet) in 2020,” the former El Paso congressman said a victory could help turn Texas blue and “build momentum” in the state for the eventual Democratic presidential nominee.
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee echoed Mr. O’Rourke’s enthusiasm, saying that flipping the district would be “earth-shattering.” The Texas House Democratic Campaign Committee called the race “a dead heat” in the campaign’s final week.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder, chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said if Ms. Markowitz was elected, she’d be “a key voice in fixing our broken political system.” His praise was accompanied by $50,000 in contributions, part of the nearly $1.3 million from national and state Democratic groups. More than 70% of Ms. Markowitz’s contributors were from outside Texas, and more than 94% from outside her district, according to Texas Ethics Commission campaign reports.
All these hopes of a Democratic victory were shattered Tuesday. In the biggest turnout in history for a Texas House special runoff, Republican Gary Gates walloped Ms. Markowitz 58% to 42%. His 16-point margin of victory was more than twice the Republican incumbent’s in 2018 and larger than the district margins for President Trump in 2016 (10 points) and Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018 (three).
Georgetown Law students shamed the university last semester when they exercised a heckler’s veto against a Trump Administration official. Now they’re claiming that disciplining those who disrupted the event “would have a chilling effect on free speech and expression across campus.”
The controversy began last fall when Georgetown Law invited Kevin McAleenan, then the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, to speak on immigration law and policy. Hundreds of law students signed a petition accusing Mr. McAleenan of implementing a “white nationalist-inspired” agenda and demanding his disinvitation. When the event proceeded anyway, student protesters prevented Mr. McAleenan from speaking.
Georgetown’s speech and expression policy states that students can face discipline for “disrupting events to prohibit other students from hearing the views of an invited speaker,” but the law school won’t say whether the hecklers were punished.
Instead the law school has convened an advisory committee to consider, among other things, the “response to disruptive protests during an event, and follow-up disciplinary or other administrative actions,” the school said in a statement. Georgetown University Law Center Dean William Treanor also asked the committee to consider whether there should be “any constraints on which outside speakers may be invited to speak on the Law Center campus,” the co-chairs wrote in an email to students.
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, and I’m Jan Jekielek. In this episode, we’ll sit down with Diana West, a journalist and author of “The Red Thread: A Search for Ideological Drivers Inside the Anti-Trump Conspiracy.”This article by Karl Rove lists the numerous times Obama’s dubious tactics as president were never criticized by Democrats. One way to stop the Democrats at the senate trial, is to compare all the questionable tactics that Obama did as president to what they are alleging Trump has done. Nancy
Hypocrisy is common in Washington, but impeachment is bringing out more than its fair share. That’s true of some Republicans, and the mainstream media devotes countless hours to it. What gets much less attention is the hypocrisy of the party that to which most journalists are sympathetic: the Democrats.
Take Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. On Tuesday he demanded the Senate call witnesses, claiming they’re required for a “fair trial” and slamming Republican opposition as a “coverup.” But the GOP position is exactly what Mr. Schumer’s was during President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial in 1999. Back then he said it “doesn’t make sense” for the Senate to call witnesses.
More important than hypocrisy about the process of impeachment is hypocrisy about the substance. Removing a president is the most draconian act Congress can take. It ill serves America if the party opposed to the president uses impeachment as a political weapon to tarnish his standing and weaken him for the next election.
When considering the Democrats’ high-minded arguments, ask yourself: What if Hillary Clinton won in 2016? After she took office, it would have been revealed that her campaign hired the opposition-research firm Fusion GPS, which assigned Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence official, to reach out to Russian counterparts to solicit dirt on Donald Trump. Recall that the since-discredited dossier Mr. Steele peddled to the media in the fall of 2016 was made up of unsubstantiated rumors from former Russian agents.
It’s naive to believe the Kremlin was unaware that Mr. Steele asked Moscow pals for dirt on Mr. Trump. Those spies are retired, but they rely on Vladimir Putin for their pension checks. Who among congressional Democrats would now be calling for Mrs. Clinton’s removal if she were in the Oval Office? I doubt any. I’ve searched in vain for Democratic criticism for her soliciting foreign involvement in the 2016 election—the principal charge of their impeachment case against President Trump.
Furthermore, while Democrats say Mr. Trump should be removed for seeking a quid pro quo—a Ukrainian investigation of Joe and Hunter Biden in return for U.S. military aid—what about President Barack Obama’s March 2012 open-mic moment? At a summit in Seoul, he asked Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to tell his boss, then-Prime Minister Putin, that “on all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space. . . . This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.” In other words, if Mr. Putin didn’t create problems during Mr. Obama’s re-election fight with Mitt Romney, Mr. Obama would show “flexibility” on missile defense and other important issues of national security and foreign policy after the election. Again, crickets when it comes to Democratic criticism.
EDITORIAL – The ongoing attacks by the political establishment on President Donald Trump –which began even before he was elected – are without parallel in history. The savagery, frenzy, and outright hysteria displayed by the President’s enemies within the Democrat Party, the media, and the various power centers of the globalist elites have no prior precedent.
This President has been spied on, lied about, made the subject of phony foreign dossiers, insulted, ridiculed, scorned, mocked and threatened. We have witnessed Hollyweird celebrities advocate for blowing up the White House, demand the President be beaten, jailed or even assassinated, and his children tortured and sexually abused.
We have seen politicians in Washington try to convict the President of non-existent crimes, investigate him and his family members for everything from tax returns to guests at his hotels, project on to him crimes that they themselves have committed, and seed his Administration with leakers and double-agents.
No other President in American history has been treated in such a shameful manner. Not Lincoln. Not FDR. Not Nixon. Not Reagan.
What is it about this President that has roused such demons in his political foes? What is it about this President that drives his opponents to the brink of insanity? What is it about this President that so terrifies and terrorizes the Pelosis, Schiffs, Schumers and the George Soroses?
Is it simply that he is not part of the club, a brash outsider with a different style? Is it merely because he’s outspoken and tramples on political correctness? Is it because he’s sometimes unpresidential in his demeanor ( at least in their minds )?
Not at all. After all, aren’t these the same folks who loved Bill Clinton whose extracurricular activities involved cigars and staining blue dresses in the Oval Office?
The following is an abridged version of a talk delivered at Hillsdale College on October 2, 2019, during the College’s 175th anniversary gala. Videos of this and other speeches delivered during the gala are available at fourpillars.hillsdale.edu.
Today many condemn the idea of nationalism by connecting it to race hatred (e.g., white nationalism). But historically, the modern nation-state has proven uniquely suitable to preserving individual rights. The American nation in particular was successful in uniting individuals of different races, ethnic backgrounds, and creeds into one people based on shared principles, a unique physical space, and a common national story. Our nation is the best example in human history of positive nationalism.
The key to this benign nationalism is American citizenship, based on an understanding of American exceptionalism and formed by the American melting pot. But today, our citizenship is eroding and, along with it, American nationalism in the positive sense is disappearing.
American citizenship is eroding in three ways.
First, we are blurring the line between mere residents and citizens. We have between 45-50 million non-native-born residents in the U.S. today—the largest absolute number we’ve ever had. There’s no legal problem with the 30 million of them who have green cards or have acquired citizenship—although even 30 million is a challenge for the American melting pot to assimilate and integrate.
But we also have, according to a recent Yale and MIT study, about 20 million people who are here illegally. In regard to them, the classical ingredients of American citizenship—the right to leave or enter the country as one pleases, for example, or to vote in elections, or to reside here as long as one pleases—are being blurred.
I wonder how many people were aware of this.I came across this 30 minute video that was recorded at the Family Leadership Summitin August, 2013, two years before he announced he was running for the presidency.Trump’s message six years ago remains the same today….C-SPAN VIDEOSpeech: Donald Trump Delivers a Speech in Ames, IA – August 10, 2013
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