Erick Erickson's Blog, page 2

Congratulations Governor Haley

I am surprising the front page writers by sneaking over here for this, because this seems like the most appropriate place.

In 2009, we had our first RedState Gathering in Atlanta, GA. One of the people we invited was a South Carolina General Assembly member named Nikki Haley. She had launched a long-shot bid to be Governor of South Carolina. Moe Lane noticed her campaign and suggested/demanded I invite her. That year we had Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Nikki Haley all on stage. They all dazzled the crowd.

What impressed us all about Nikki Haley was her commitment to fighting her own party in the name of transparency and good government. The South Carolina good old boy network hated her and they were hell bent on defeating her.

In December of 2009, Nikki called me two weeks before Christmas. She was just about out of money and needed help. I put up an all call on the front page of RedState and money started pouring into her campaign account. Her campaign manager finally called me and told me that while he did not want us to stop, his candidate was so distracted watching money come in that she wouldn’t leave her computer.

Nikki Haley made it to a runoff and she invited me to stand on the steps of the South Carolina State Capitol to introduce her at a rally where Sarah Palin endorsed her. She went on to win that runoff, despite all sorts of nastiness thrown at her.

For six years, Governor Nikki Haley has overseen a state exploding with growth and opportunity. She has relied on the private sector and incentivized private investment in the state. She doubled down on government ethics and transparency, ensuring the state legislature openly and honestly budgeted and legislated. Through it all, she has cried over her state in tragedy, stood firm in the face of storms, and led its citizens past their past as she lowered the Confederate flag from Capitol grounds.

A few weeks ago, Governor Haley and her daughter sneaked into the State Capitol before anyone else could and raised the Clemson flag in honor of the National Football Championship. It was a fitting end to her tenure in office. She will now go on to the United Nations as our new ambassador.

Nikki Haley was the only person besides those of us at RedState to attend every RedState Gathering. She was as committed to us as we have been to her. I am proud to call her my friend. Though I may not be here any longer, I am delighted that RedState continues to champion Governor Ambassador Haley and happy, at The Resurgent, to join that cause.

God speed, Ambassador Haley.

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It’s Me! I’m Here. Come See Me in Denver.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I’m back!!!

I’m back for a special purpose. I’ve intentionally wanted to stay a way a while just to let Leon stretch his legs. I cannot tell you how proud I am of him and the team at RedState. They have established their own identity and the site continues to grow despite the claims of the Trumpkins.

But here’s the thing. I committed, before I left, to this year’s RedState Gathering. Frankly, we are a band of happy warriors who are more and more against the odds and the voices of the world. We actually need each other these days and while an online community is good, an offline face to face gathering is better.

So I hope that you might join me in Denver, CO this August for the RedState Gathering. It will be my last hurrah with RedState and it comes at a rather dark hour for conservatism where none of us can afford to sit on the sidelines and none of us should find ourselves isolated and alone with the wolves at our door.

Denver is a fun city and the RedState Gathering promises to be the best yet. Finally, this year, we will have a fully operational and united front from the Salem team, with great talent, good panels, and you may even see me on stage talking politics with a famous Democrat for good measure.

Seriously guys — we are a family and families need reunions. So many feel so overwhelmed right now, but there is hope. It’s time to get the band back together. We will in Denver this August. Register now.

The post It’s Me! I’m Here. Come See Me in Denver. appeared first on RedState.

You Will Be Made to Care

Promoted from the diaries.

Here in the diaries at RedState, several years ago, I had an encounter with a reader who penned a diary that he did not care about gay marriage as it would never affect him.

I told him, coining a phrase it seems, that he would be made to care. “You will be made to care” became the phrase that explains what the left has been doing in America these past few years. If you do not agree with their cultural assault, you will be made to care or driven from polite society.

After much encouragement and outright demands, I finally decided to write You Will Be Made to Care. The book documents incident after incident in America of Christians having their lives and businesses ruined because they took a stand based on their faith against contraception or gay marriage or transgenderism. Some were thrown out of school. Others lost their businesses and careers. Some lost their retirement savings.

I wanted to raise awareness on this issue. If you are interested, you can order the book at YouWillBeMadeToCare.com.

Here is the first part of Chapter 1:

Kelvin Cochran always dreamed of becoming a firefighter. But Kelvin did more than dream. He rose to the pinnacle of his profession—serving as America’s Fire Chief—before being blindsided by the city of Atlanta, which abruptly terminated his employment in 2015. Kelvin Cochran was fired for having the audacity to write a book about his Christian beliefs.

Chief Cochran’s decorated career began humbly in Shreveport, Louisiana, where he grew up in a family that was abandoned by their father when Kelvin was quite young. His mother and five brothers and sisters survived on welfare and food stamps, living in a government project, and Kelvin recalls times when his mother would have the children fill every pot and jug with water, knowing the water company would soon cut their family off. They had to light their home with candles when they could afford no electricity. And by the end of each month, his mother had only enough money to buy mayonnaise and bread. The six children would eat mayonnaise on toast for breakfast, mayonnaise sandwiches for lunch, and mayonnaise sandwiches again for dinner. If they wanted something sweet to drink, they had to make do with a couple teaspoons of sugar in a glass of water. “Poverty,” Chief Cochran recalls, “was a terrible thing.”

After church one Sunday afternoon, the family heard sirens in the alley outside their house. When Kelvin opened the door, he saw a big red Shreveport Fire Department truck. The house where the firefighters were battling to douse the flames belonged to Miss Katie across the street.

Seeing them in action that day sparked Kelvin’s imagination: “When I saw those firefighters, I was smitten. All I ever thought about growing up from that point forward was being a firefighter, escaping from poverty, and wanting to have a family, because I realized how terrible it was not to have a daddy at home.” When he shared his dream with grownups, they told him that “your dreams will come true if you go to school, treat other people like you want to be treated, respect authority, and have faith in God.”

Those core principles, grounded in his Christian beliefs, guided Kelvin Cochran as his “childhood-dream-come-true-fairy-tale-career” took off. In 1981 he became the first African-American firefighter on the Shreveport Fire Department. He was promoted to captain in just four years. He became an assistant Chief of Training after ten years and Fire Chief of the Shreveport Fire Department after just eighteen years of service. Cochran served faithfully in that role until he was recruited by Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin to serve as Fire Chief for the largest city in the southeastern United States.

As fire chief for the city of Atlanta, Cochran oversaw more than 1,100 personnel serving in thirty-six fire stations across the city. Managing a budget of about $140 million, including the Atlanta airport, he was responsible for fire and rescue, field operations, and any emergencies that were not law enforcement–related. His duties included overseeing:

Aircraft rescue firefighting at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, the busiest airport in the world
Special operations such as high-rise and waterway rescue

Hazardous Materials response teams—as three major interstates intersect in downtown Atlanta.

Cochran was entrusted with tremendous responsibility, and he served with such distinction in Atlanta that he came to the attention of someone in Washington—newly inaugurated President Barack Obama.

When the president nominated him to serve his country as the United States Fire Administrator within the Department of Homeland Security in August of 2009, Chief Cochran answered the call to serve his country. In short, he became the nation’s Fire Chief, overseeing the training of our nation’s firefighters, educating for fire prevention, establishing a national deployment strategy for natural disasters or terrorist attacks, and coordinating the response of firefighters in the event of national emergencies with FEMA.

Throughout his meteoric rise, it was Kelvin Cochran’s Christian faith that motivated him to serve and to excel.

From an early age, Kelvin’s strong and prayerful mother followed the biblical instruction to “train up a child in the way he should go.” As a young father, Cochran became active in his local church, serving as a deacon, teaching children in Sunday School and leading other men to become better fathers and husbands. Cochran embraced the Christian doctrine of vocation and sought to glorify God through service to his fellow citizens. His faith guided him all the way to our nation’s capital and the pinnacle of his profession.

After just ten months in Washington, D.C., Cochran got a visit from Mayor Kasim Reed of Atlanta, recruiting him to return to his previous position. In fact, he “begged”—the mayor’s own word—the chief to return to lead the city’s fire and safety efforts.

Cochran returned to Atlanta in June of 2010 and continued to serve the city with distinction. After a winter storm paralyzed the city in January 2014, the mayor enlisted Cochran’s expertise to coordinate emergency disaster response as Incident Commander. And a few weeks later, with Cochran in the lead, the city weathered a second winter storm— with dramatically better results.

Under Kelvin Cochran’s leadership, the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department celebrated as the Insurance Services Office raised “Atlanta’s Public Protection Classification (PPC) rating to Class 1, indicating an exemplary ability to respond to fires.” The department also retained accreditation with the Commission on Fire Accreditation International (CFAI), an achievement earned by only two hundred fire departments in the world. Atlanta Fire Rescue was called “a model for innovative public fire protection practices,” by the CFAI commission chair. In fact, the Atlanta department experienced success story after success story with Cochran at the helm until—suddenly, a week before Thanksgiving 2014— everything changed.

All of Cochran’s career success became irrelevant when he was targeted by gay activists who claimed that his Christian beliefs—the very ones that motivated him to serve with excellence for thirty-four years—now disqualified him from doing his job keeping Atlanta safe.

I’ll be documenting more over at The Resurgent.

The post You Will Be Made to Care appeared first on RedState.

Ted Cruz as “Too Conservative to Win” and the Goldwater Talking Point

“History doesn’t repeat itself. The media does. So too does a Republican Establishment that has seen all its more winnable moderates from Dole to McCain to Romney lose.”

The media typically begins any Presidential campaign with comparisons to Harry Truman. The Reagan re-election in 1984 had the comparison. The Bush re-election in 1992 had the comparison. The Clinton re-election in 1996 had the comparison. Humorously, the off year election of 2002 used the Truman comparison too, as did 2004.

The media does this not only because a lot of them are lazy and not only because a lot of them talk with each other at beltway soirees where they infect each other with their various often contrived narratives and talking points, but also because they really do want to help put the election in some historic context.

The media likes the Truman analogy and I am actually surprised it has not already gotten play. But we have not yet crossed over into 2016 yet and the voting is still more than a month away. Give it time.

But there is something else the media does — and typically does because of a leftward bias, a reliance on both establishment Republicans in Washington as their chief GOP sources and their Democratic friends as Democratic sources— they compare the Republican Primary to 1964.

Every conservative candidate must withstand the “Is he Barry Goldwater” question. Never mind that Barry Goldwater has been tried repeatedly by the Democrats and the only person it ever worked against was Barry Goldwater. Likewise, to really appreciate Barry Goldwater’s loss you must ask the question the media and many Establishment Republicans hope you’ll never ask yourself, i.e. was the country really going to vote out John F. Kennedy’s Vice President less than a year after Kennedy’s assassination?

The Democrats and Establishment Republicans are all now starting to talk about Barry Goldwater as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) goes up in the polls. Let’s get into the way back machine and take look at the news as it existed on the campaign trail of 1979 and 1980.

“Is defeat probable for GOP if Reagan wins nomination?” blared the headline of the Christian Science Monitor on March 5, 1980. That was just the start of it.

“Can conservative Ronald Reagan possibly attract enough independent and Democratic votes to win in November?” wrote Richard J. Cattani in that Christian Science Monitor article. He continued,

“Reagan is the opponent of choice for Carter,” says I. A. Lewis, director of the Los Angeles Times Poll, a point on which most analysts agree. “But Reagan can reach across and cause mischief in the Democratic constituency,” Mr. Lewis says. “Reagan appeals to blue collar, working-class voters. He can win Democratic votes.””Carter could beat Reagan more easily than he could Bush or Baker,” Mr. Lewis says. “A moderate Republican would appeal to moderate Democrats, while upper-income Republicans might defect from Reagan to the Demcorats. Ford is of course, the strongest in the polls against Carter. But if he became a candidate, he could sink the same way Kennedy did after he declared.”Elections analyst Richard Scammon, who thinks a candidate must command the political center to win the presidency, gives neither Reagan nor Ford much chance.

The Christian Science Monitor led the field for the month of March with a number of overwrought “analyses” on just how vulnerable Ronald Reagan was as a far right extremist.

Five days after Cattani’s article, Newsweek’s Dennis A. Williams penned “The GOP’s Hamlet”. Parroting talking points that the McCain campaign could have given in 2008 or the Huntsman camp in 2012 or the Kasich/Christie/Bush camp this year, Williams wrote

The talk of another Ford candidacy — only three months after he formally removed himself from a string of primaries — betrayed an air of alarm on the part of many middle-road Republicans. Faced with Bush’s unexpected slide in New Hampshire and Howard Baker’s chronically weak campaign, GOP centrists — Ford among them — saw in Reagan’s resurgence the potential for another Goldwater debacle. Ford, by contrast, was an ideologically safe, fondly remembered party loyalist who very nearly beat Jimmy Carter in 1976. Gallup polls last month showed Ford leading Reagan — and trailing Carter by a narrower margin than any other GOP contender in general-election trial heats. “Jerry Ford,” argues one former aide, “is the only politician around who neutralizes Carter’s positives” — solid character and Presidential stature — “and accentuates his negatives” — primarily an inflation rate 10 points higher than when Ford left office. Thus, even though the odds are long, the hour late and the scenario strewn with ifs, Ford remains the panic-button choice of many in his party and the Republican most feared by Carter strategists.

And there it was — the Goldwater Talking Point. Only useful against Barry Goldwater, it became the media template for the “far-right” candidate who could not win over the American public because of his “far-right” extremism. The moderate candidate was “most feared” by the Democrat. Surely the GOP would not be suicidal enough to go with Reagan.

Building off the Goldwater Talking Point, George Esper of the Associated Press wrote up a press conference from moderate, soon to be third party candidate, John Anderson on March 21, 1980.

“I cannot believe that the Republican Party will condemn itself to the kind of lopsided electoral contest that took place in 1964,” Anderson told a regional meeting of business people in Stamford.It was one of his strongest statements against Reagan. He referred to the 1964 presidential election when the Republican candidate — Sen. Barry Goldwater, like Reagan, a conservative — was swamped in a landslide victory by Lyndon B. Johnson. “I am afraid that the nomination of Mr. Reagan will only ensure the re-election of Mr. Carter and further ensure the continuing economic disaster that we have suffered now for three years,” the Illinois congressman said.”I cannot believe that with the mounting problems America faces,” he said, “the voters in November will have a choice only between the economic policies of Ronald Reagan and those of Jimmy Carter.”

On the same day, the Canadian Globe and Mail’s Lawrenece Martin called Reagan “Ronald ‘send-in-the-Marines’ Reagan . . . whose appeal to [independents], at best, is limited.”

All of these articles were in March of 1980, around the time Reagan clearly was locking up the nomination. Back in 1979, they were just as predictable.

As early as January 29, 1979, in an article by Peter Goldman and Eleanor Clift in Newsweek entitled “The Politics of Austerity,” we learned this interesting nugget:

[I]t remains a measure of the stresses between Carter and the Democratic left that his people anticipate more trouble with his renomination than his re-election. Their winter-book bet for the Republican nomination is Ronald Reagan, and they consider him beatable, so long as Carter monopolizes the center – “just 80 per cent of the people,” says Jordan – and isolates Reagan on the outer right.

The left and media began immediately building up the concerns about Reagan being too far right.

On June 23, 1979, Barry Sussman in the Washington Post wrote, “Reagan has not picked up substantial support from party activists who represent either strong moderate or small liberal elements of the party, the poll indicates. Many appear to be concerned about some of Reagan’s followers – “arch-conservative kooks,” one poll respondent called them.”

Then, in an echo of criticisms from conservatives today, Newsweek kicked off on October 1, 1979, with “The Leading Man” by Tom Mathews. In the article, Mathews suggests one of Reagan’s problems is surprisingly that he is too moderate for some, but is still too far right for most.

And before staking out his position on SALT last week — for genuine arms control, against any one-way street favoring the Soviet Union — he consulted Albert Wohlstetter, an academic expert on national-defense and security issues who has Democratic ties. “He wants to get the best advice he can whether these people support him or not,” says issues adviser Martin Anderson.All this has led to some grumbling among righter-than-thou Republicans that Reagan may be sacrificing his ideological purity to his White House ambitions, a charge he angrily denies. His strategists quivered rather ambiguously last week when The New York Times reported that his latest position on SALT II was “moderately worded.” “If The New York times says he’s softening his image we can’t control that,” said Lake. “It might even help in the East, but over-all it could hurt.” And the truth seemed to be that Reagan intended to shift as little as possible. “Anyone who wants to moderate him is going to have a tough time,” said former aide Lyn Nofziger, who dropped from the Reagan campaign after losing a squabble over campaign assignments and policy issues. “They have taken a little of the hardness out of the hard line — but that’s a long way from moving him to the left.”

As an aside, the same Newsweek article notes that Reagan was in favor of a Chrysler bankruptcy instead of a bailout — a position many Republican donors were uncomfortable with just as they are today uncomfortable with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)‘s position on bank bailouts.

On November 16, 1979, Walter R. Mears wrote an AP News Analysis for the Associated Press in which he wrote, “Last time, one of Reagan’s problems was to dispel the suggestion that he was too far right, too extreme a conservative, for the nomination or the presidency. When that came up, as it often did, Reagan would recite his record as a candidate and as governor of California. When Ford called him too far right, Reagan replied that the president twice had tried to recruit him for Cabinet positions.”

The Economist followed a few days later on November 24, 1979, explicitly drawing the Goldwater-Reagan connection.

Ever since 1964, when he made a rousing speech at the Republican convention that nominated Senator Barry Goldwater for president, Mr Reagan has been the darling of the Republican right. . . .If Mr Reagan does not lose the Republican nomination, present opinion polls suggest that he will lose to either Senator Kennedy or President Carter next November. The latest Gallup poll shows Mr Reagan trailing the senator by 16 percentage points, and Mr Carter by six. The Republican party’s minority status among registered voters also puts Mr Reagan at a disadvantage.

But the Economist also did what frequently happens with the “far-right” candidate — they gave a wink-wink to the supposedly “far-right” voters suggesting they should back away from their extremist candidate because he really isn’t that extreme. “Even though he practised conventional, middle-of-the-road politics as governor of California from 1967 to 1975, his political language had a hard right edge,” the Economist’s reporter wrote. So he’s far-right, but even the far-right shouldn’t trust him because his record is really that of a moderate — or something like that. Haven’t you heard Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) secretly recorded in New York?!

The “far-right” theme continued all the way to the 1980 convention and the election.On July 12, 1980, Haynes Johnson, writing in the Washington Post, began his profile of the Republican Convention this way:

Gone are the conflicts between progressive and conservative wings, between East and Midwest, of the past.Absent are the personal clashes — Taft and Eisenhower, Goldwater and Rockefeller — that marked other conventions. The Grand Old Party that has emerged out of those disputes is smaller and ideologically purer than ever — and it stands enthusiastically behind its conservative choice, Ronald Reagan.

And yet the nagging doubts intrude. They love Reagan, all right, but they can’t quite shake their worries about him. If the delegates could speak directly to their candidate in one voice now, the message would be clear — “Don’t blow it!”

They don’t want Reagan to renounce his conservative principles, but they are concerned he will be perceived by voters as too right.

“Temper your ideology with pragmatism– up to a point,” is the way one delegate offers advice to the certain GOP standard-bearer. “Don’t depend totally on the right-wing groups. Be sensibly conservative.”

Mirroring some of the journalistic excesses of coverage today, Johnson continued, “And in a day when political party differences have blurred or become nonexistent in the eyes of many Americans, and in face of the continuing rise of independent voters, these Republicans cling to their convictions.”

And then Johnson delved into responses given to the Post, which are eerily similar to those of today.

“Do not compromise in order to get votes,” says a California delegate another very conservative one.

“Continue to shoot from the hip,” remarks a West Virginian, who has stood behind Reagan in the past as well as now.

But such views do not dominate the responses given The Post. What comes over is a desire — and an appeal — that Reagan be cautious in his actions, tempered in his words, and conciliatory in his approach.

Uniting the party, moderating the views of the more extreme members of the GOP, paying heed to wider range of national opinion, expanding the circle of his advisers to include a better ideological mix — these are the major concerns expressed.

The pattern is quite striking. The rhetoric and reporting mirror the fight the GOP is having today.

In 1964, the United States was engaged in a political campaign in the middle of heightened national security tensions with the Soviet Union. In 1964, the Cold War had escalated, President Kennedy had been assassinated, and Lyndon Johnson was trying to scale back the nuclear arms race. Using a series of ads, including the famous daisy ad and the even more direct ice cream ad, Johnson portrayed Goldwater as someone who would ignite a nuclear holocaust.

In 1980, while the media rushed to the Goldwater talking point and considered Reagan too “far-right” to beat Jimmy Carter, the nation found itself in an economic mess and on the losing side of several national security matters. It was very hard to characterize Reagan as too far right for a country craving new policies to get it out of its economic mess, out of gas lines, and to get our hostages out of Iran. Voters wanted a change from Jimmy Carter.

Carter’s campaign eventually had to drop the “he’s too radical” approach and instead do what Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)‘s opponents are presently doing to him in a one-two punch of “he’s the second coming of that loser Goldwater” — claiming Reagan (and now Cruz) actually accomplished nothing. They tried to destroy the idea of California as a paradise, which in 1980 was a place millions were flocking to in search of work. In fact, in that advertisement one of the lines was “[Reagan] said he cut spending, but he never really did.”

It did not work. Neither the Goldwater narrative nor the “he sucked as Governor” narrative worked for Carter because, quite simply, the public had given up on him.

The greatest lesson to take away now is that the media is going to again fixate on Goldwater from 1964, and they will probably mostly ignore the most historically relevant election points — Carter in 1980 and George H. W. Bush in 1992.

History doesn’t repeat itself. The media does. So too does a Republican Establishment that has seen all its more winnable moderates from Dole to McCain to Romney lose. But Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is just like Barry Goldwater supposedly.

The post Ted Cruz as “Too Conservative to Win” and the Goldwater Talking Point appeared first on RedState.

I’m Filling in for Rush Limbaugh Today

Just a reminder that I’m in filling in for Rush today from noon to 3pm ET.

The post I’m Filling in for Rush Limbaugh Today appeared first on RedState.

Marco Rubio’s Path to Victory

Dan McLaughlin has a very convincing look at how Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) waits out Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)‘s early wins. As we move in the calendar, we get to more moderate states, and Rubio’s odds go up.

What we have to consider, however, is voter psychology. Voters get tired, they want to go with a winner, and the “inevitability” factor helps any candidate who racks up early wins. If Cruz wins Iowa, South Carolina, and then has big wins in the SEC primaries — primaries that are mostly proportional and a commanding Cruz performance could boost him even with proportionality — Cruz would begin to look more inevitable and the drumbeat of consolidation and Vice Presidential deal making would begin.

Relatedly, this Politico story on New Hampshire is a must read if only because Rubio could potentially score an early win there. Rubio has continued to sustain himself there. Despite steady press coverage of Chris Christie surging there, it is worth noting that Christie has largely camped out in New Hampshire and Rubio, who is not a prolific visitor to New Hampshire, is still doing better and still going up in the polls.

Rubio, it should be noted, has beaten Chris Christie in four of the last five polls in New Hampshire, but you’d never know it from press coverage. Then again, since his election in New Jersey, Chris Christie has always gotten disproportionate media coverage with the media cheering on a Christie run for the Presidency going back to his very first election.

Rubio, Bush, Kasich, and Christie are all ganging up on each other there. Cruz is largely leaving them to New Hampshire while he looks ahead to South Carolina, the SEC primary, and even, perhaps surprisingly, Florida and Nevada. Both of those states should be prime Rubio ground.

I still think Rubio can pull off a win in New Hampshire.

We’re already seeing consolidation happening in the Congress. Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO), and Rep. Mia Love (R-UT) are leading Republicans toward Rubio. If Kasich, Bush, and Christie got out and rallied to Rubio and then he bounced into Nevada and Florida with a win in Florida and a solid second or first in Nevada, Rubio has a message and destroys Cruz’s inevitability.

Rubio can then legitimately make the claim that the GOP can’t just do well in the South, drive a media narrative (that a media who hates Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) will gladly push) that the SEC Primary was a stacked deck in favor of Cruz because it included Texas, and build the case to wait.

The longer voters are willing to wait, the longer Rubio has a shot at winning the whole thing. Why? Because as Dan McLaughlin notes, the states that come after Florida trend more moderate. Rubio, building a coalition of establishment types, a good showing of conservatives, and others will start picking up significant steam.

But this all comes back to New Hampshire.

If Rubio fizzles in Iowa, unable to get third there, and then fizzles in New Hampshire, he starts to slow down significantly as voters and the press look to see who did better than Rubio in New Hampshire. If it is Chris Christie, we’re going to hear a lot about him as we head to South Carolina. And because of Christie’s terrible gun views, the south is going to consolidate even more quickly to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). That makes it harder for Rubio to regain any momentum.

Like with Rudy Giuliani, when a candidate says he has a new and novel path to victory that does not include wins in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina and sees prime GOP country coming before Florida ever votes, the burden is on him to prove he has a real path to victory.

If anyone does, it is Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). The guy is a natural and he has a team in place that includes Terry Sullivan, who helped Jim DeMint. So there could be a South Carolina surprise there. But he needs to win in New Hampshire for the media to carry any water on his viability. Then Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) can be the slow moving tortoise to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)‘s hare. Cruz racks up early conservative Southern states, and Rubio waits and consolidates.

The post Marco Rubio’s Path to Victory appeared first on RedState.

Matt Bai is the Latest Member of the Circle of Jerks to Get Donald Trump Wrong

If the Circle of Jerks who make up the DC-NYC political reporter class were around for the birth of Jesus, they’d write pieces about how the dregs of society showed up, but no rich people did. The media would be on to a new story by the time the Magi showed up. By the tie Herod started slaughtering every male child under two, the Circle of Jerks would be doing stories on the emotional toll the deaths were causing to the soldiers doing the killings and doing profiles of families who escaped with enough descriptives that Herod could hunt them down and kill those kids too.

Eventually, they’d write analyses of the birth and ponder how it was really in some way about the media, not Jesus. I can hear it now.

Then the Angel of the allegedly imaginary sky god appeared and instructed us to take notes. “Do not fear for I bring tidings of good joy for all the people,” the Angel said. Then a host of angels began to sing. We talked to Joshua of Bethlehem about how the noise kept him up. We also concluded that the angels were relying on the press pool to get out their story. If it were not for us the imaginary sky god would not have been able to convey his story and the post-birth fetus might not have been bothered in the manger. Be sure to read the smart piece in the Jerusalem Times by crack reporter Judas on sanitation conditions in Bethlehem inns and mangers.

Pool Report 2:13-17

That is what the Circle of Jerks does when it covers Donald Trump. Matt Bai is just the latest to analyze the rise of Donald Trump and conclude it has everything to do with …well… Matt Bai and the media.

It’s clear that those of us who cover politics have only a limited understanding of how powerful and pervasive an antipathy now exists toward us in some sizable quarter of the electorate, and how deftly it can be used. The media that created Trump is now at his mercy, and he didn’t have to kill anyone to get here.

The whole piece reads like the blind men studying the elephant and each one concludes the elephant is something different. To be sure, antipathy toward the press has something to do with Trump’s rise, but the antipathy for the press is much more a product of antipathy for an existing social order among the political elite. The Circle of Jerks are just the ones who sit in a circle and write about it.

But Bai leaves out the whores, prostitutes, and pimps called politicians and lobbyists who have really created Trump. That the Circle of Jerks services and gets serviced by these politicians and lobbyists makes them part of the problem, but only part, not the whole thing.

Donald Trumps’ rise is first and foremost about the broken promises of the Republican Party. The party promised to seal the border and did not. The party promised not to support amnesty then tried to get it passed. The party promised to restrain Barack Obama, then handed him a blank check and hid behind judges to fight for them.

Concurrently, the public has seen Barack Obama stretch the constitutional bounds of the Presidency; squander our good will around the world, behave like a what Ralph Peters called him toward Russia, China, ISIS, and so much more; and otherwise degrade the standing of the nation while pitting American against American.

On top of that, and this is where Bai and the Circle of Jerks comes in, everyone who coddles the Circle of Jerks gets fawning treatment and those who do not look or sound like the Circle of Jerks gets excoriated. On top of that, though Barack Obama treats the Circle of Jerks like a turd on his shoe, they still get on their knees in front of him.

When candidates run for office, including Donald Trump who registered “Make America Great Again” shortly after Romney’s 2012 loss, they spend time developing a strategy. That strategy employs tactics to implement the strategy.

The strategy is the overall approach and the tactics are the day to day movements to affect the strategy. Donald Trump’s strategy is to play up voter antipathy towards failures of both sides in propping up a status quo where more and more Americans believe folks in Washington are rewarding themselves and friends while the rest of America gets the shaft.

The day to day tactics Trump is employing require him to pick public fights with those who his campaign sees as Washington elite. That elite include the press who, because they’re a Circle of Jerks, will fall all over themselves for a ratings explosion. Trump is merely taking advantage of that and can get on television shows just by picking up a phone. He does not even need to be on camera.

But it has nothing to do with the media itself. The media is just one sideshow and tactic in the overall Trump strategy. Were the press not giving Trump so much free air time, then he probably would run advertisements. Right now he does not have to. But were he to, it would not change things. It would just deny Matt Bai and so many others in the press a column on how it is all about them.

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Merry Christmas

“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!’” Luke 2:13-14 (ESV)

“We had walked in the garden with the king then, after exile, could do it no more till then. God had come back and it was time to sing songs of joy across the heavens.”

Have you ever wondered what that angel song sounded like? Were the angels singing the sound of Beethoven’s Ninth with booming drums and crescendo surrounded by deep bass voices elevated by sopranos and altos? Or was it a concerto styled like Mozart or a lullaby from Brahms? Was it other worldly? Did it lift the souls or send chills down the spines of the shepherds who had to be told, “Fear not, for behold I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.”

Was the heavenly host composed of a choir? Was there a solo, were there instruments, did it sound like something we would know or appreciate? Maybe it was otherworldly. Perhaps it was relatable to the music of the day and would be something else entirely were it to happen today. Created in the image of God, mankind has a sense of aesthetic. We can tell when something is good or bad. I do not mean like a dog who likes the beef and carrot food, but not the chicken and rice food. I mean we know intrinsically that something, though it may not be to our personal taste, is beautiful and glorious. Music is one of those things.

The Heavenly Host sang. They related great joy and a miracle through a song in the heavens appreciable to the ears of mankind. We do not know the rhythm and meter. We do not know if there were soloists or instruments. We do not know how long it lasted. But we know the angels sang with great joy over the restoration of Immanuel. We had walked in the garden with the king then, after exile, could do it no more till then. God had come back and it was time to sing songs of joy across the heavens.

There is so much we do not know about the angels’ sound and song. But we know they celebrated and it was cause for joy and peace. We know they appeared first to shepherds, a class of people so low that their testimony was not even allowed in courts. We know those shepherds were told the joy was for all the people. We know too what they found — a baby in a manger wrapped in cloths. This was the king of kings, the Prince of Peace, the Everlasting Father on whose shoulders the government would rest.

Christmas can be a time of darkness for many. People get overwhelmed with burdens and worries and fears. They worry about the right gift or if they can give gifts at all. They worry about making ends meet, the tax bill due, the health of loved ones, and so many other worries that like the angels’ song we may not know all the details, but we know enough to know those burdens exist.

Commercialism and secularism make this a time of year of purchase and lights and elves on shelves when what it really is about is a baby who came to give great joy for all the people. We do not know how the angels sounded except we know they sounded filled with joy. So should we all be this Christmas season. For unto us a child is born who can take up your burdens and fill you with peace.

From all of us here at RedState to all of you, we wish you a very Merry Christmas!

— Erick-Woods Erickson

The Gospel of John 1:1-18

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’ ”) For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.

The Gospel of Luke 2:1-20

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to his own town to register.

So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

“Glory to God in the highest,

and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.”When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

The Gospel of Matthew 1:18 – 2:12

Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:

Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,

and they shall call his name Immanuel

(which means, God with us). When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.

Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him; and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet:

“And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,

are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;

for from you shall come a ruler

who will shepherd my people Israel.”

Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and worship him.” After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.

The post Merry Christmas appeared first on RedState.

The Christmas Eve Show

I believe in the Doctrine of Vocation. It is a Christian doctrine that means I am supposed to glorify God in all that I do. Every year for Christmas Eve I do a show on WSB Radio, the nation’s most listened to news/talk station. I do a deep dive into the meaning of Christmas and the theology behind this baby born to die.

If you are traveling and need something to listen to, I offer you this. Merry Christmas.

The post The Christmas Eve Show appeared first on RedState.

Cruz, Rubio, and Looking The Other Way

“What all of the people attacking Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) fail to understand is that the outsiders are showing more grace to their own than the insiders are showing to their own.”

I have no idea who on the Cruz campaign keeps telling Cruz to go on Fox this week, but I think he has not done himself many favors. Most every email I’ve gotten or tweet I’ve seen has used the words “disaster” or “awkward” about each of the appearances.

He needs to slow down on this one.

But while Cruz’s critics are piling on him over immigration they are ignoring what a lot of other conservatives are noticing.

Cruz changed his campaign schedule to be in Washington to vote against the omnibus spending bill. Rubio, who made it a campaign issue, did not.

If Cruz’s interviews were a disaster or awkward, Rubio’s statement that not showing up to vote was the same as voting against it was just as bad. It was also very Obama-like, considering how often Obama just showed up and voted present.

Both men were thrown off their games this week. The deep humor in it is that, contrary to spin, it was each man throwing himself off his game. Rubio was confident if he gave a great oration people would ignore him not actually going to fight the legislation he said needed to be fought. Cruz thought if he went on Fox and rhetorically danced, it would go over well.

The reality is that neither side will care what their guy did. But the reality is also that despite the spin and echo chamber on Twitter and with a lot of the talking heads on Fox, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) actually hurts himself more. Why? All Cruz has to do is say (1) 9/11 changed things relating to the recently uncovered memo and (2) I was not part of the Rubio-Schumer Gang of Eight.

Rubio must explain why declaring something must be fought and not going to fight it is the same as voting against him in the face of Chris Christie surging forward in New Hampshire and now, I’m told, Iowa.

What all of the people attacking Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) fail to understand is that the outsiders are showing more grace to their own than the insiders are showing to their own. Jeb flubs, so they pass him up. Rubio flubs, so they flirt with Christie. Cruz did something that would have made illegal people legal but not citizens? “Well, he wasn’t part of the Schumer-Rubio Gang of Eight,” rationalize his supporters.

The normal rules aren’t just not applying to Trump. They’re not applying to anyone. Usually the establishment types circle the wagons while the conservatives eat their own. Because the Establishment is so fearful of a Trump win, they are not circling the wagons. Rubio pledging to fight then pulling an Obama does not help him at a time people are giving Chris Christie another look. The outsiders, however, will give Cruz a pass.

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