What is! What could be!
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Obama continues to try and fund a U.N. Agency that is anti-Semitic with tax dollars! (See 1 below.)
Terrorists can enter America but Americans with normal ties to Israel, look out. (See 1a below.)
Those peaceful Palestinians just like killing. Its in their DNA. (See 1b below.)
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Yin and Yang of Politics by our featured President's Day Speaker, Allen West.(See 2 below.)
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Various articles pertaining to ISIS, America, Assad etc. (See 3, 3a, and 3b below.)
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For those who listened to the latest debate and are interested in one view see 4 below.
As for myself, nothing happened to change my view. Trump remains an uniformed loose cannon and bully type, Cruz self-serving, Rubio too young, Kasich, JEB and Christie more accomplished but each has different drawbacks. Carly is direct and becoming boring. Carson remains a nice person but too "whatever" and Rand remains off my charts but thoughtful.
That said,. I will vote for myself before I vote for Hillarious. Hell, even I am smart enough not to trust The Russians (my own background is Russian), have no foundation, a wife I trust explicitly and no record of accomplishments and claim to have none which means I have not lied my way through life.
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The Fed did as I expected and the market reacted as I expected. (See previous memo.)
Where do we go from here? That is the $64 question and I am less certain about the answer.
I do believe The Fed will be very guarded and will crawl like a crab when it comes to raising rates any time soon. World economies, including our own, are just not strong enough to withstand another raise any time soon. Believing that, I am of the opinion investors will be relieved that The Fed has taking action for two reasons:
a) The Fed needs to have some flexibility should they need to reverse their action so raising rates over the next several years provides them with rate ammunition should they need to begin a reduction and avoid going to a negative structure.
b) Zero rates, if continued, will create their own dangerous distortions and this can lead to a different type of bubble and The Fed must avoid creating bigger problems trying to solve an avowedly difficult one.
I still maintain the market has much to resolve and the overall trend is not unabashedly up but that does not mean individual opportunities are zero. If one takes a long term outlook and is willing to be patient and accept income as a substitute for near term appreciation then AT&T, Merck, Corning and Intel appear to be decent investments and OPKO is a good speculation if you believe Dr. Frost can do it again. At some point one must revisit the commodity sector and a whole host of stocks look interesting such as, Potash, Devon, Schlumberger and Kinder Morgan among others.
I remain fixed when it comes to believing deflation is a greater near term risk than inflation.
Terrorism remains the biggest incalculable risk and it could be aimed at causing consumers to hunker down and/or be directed at creating financial havoc.
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Dick
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1)
Obama administration moves to restore $$ to UN agency accused of anti-Israel bias
Published December 15, 2015
Washington Free Beacon
The Obama administration is waging a quiet effort on Capitol Hill to restore U.S. taxpayer funding for a United Nations organization that has long been accused of having an anti-Israel bias, according to State Department funding requests obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The State Department earlier this month petitioned Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.), a member of the Senate’s appropriations committee, to consider restoring funding to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, otherwise known as UNESCO.
Taxpayer funding to the organization was cut in 2011 after UNESCO accepted Palestine as a member state, a move that violated U.S. law barring the funding of any U.N. group that skirts the peace process by prematurely admitting Palestine as a full member nation.
The cutoff in U.S. contributions, which totaled around $80 million annually, brought UNESCO to the brink of financial collapse and sparked further consideration of actions deemed by critics to be anti-Israel in nature.
In its petition to Leahy, the State Department asks for a funding waiver in the 2016 appropriations bill that would allow the U.S. government to restart yearly payments of $76 million to UNESCO. The administration also is seeking authority to give the organization up to $160 million to help erase outstanding debts.
1a)
1a)
‘A Security Concern Due to Divided Loyalties’
A dentist wants to serve America’s military. But having a mother in Israel can be disqualifying.
When Gershon Pincus turned 60, he decided he wanted to give something back to his country. The Brooklyn-born father of four had maintained a successful private dental practice in New York City for 35 years. As he would later attest in an affidavit, “I can think of no better way to experience the sunset of my career than by using my professional skills as a dentist to assist those who have chosen to serve in the United States military.”
So Dr. Pincus turned to the USAJobs website, found an opening for part-time work at an off-base Naval clinic in Saratoga, N.Y., and applied. By the summer of 2014 he was making a weekly commute of some 400 miles to the clinic from his home in the Far Rockaway neighborhood of Queens. It was routine dentistry at lower pay than he had earned in private practice. But it was the opportunity he had sought to serve.
That October, Dr. Pincus underwent a routine interview to obtain a security clearance for civilian employees. As part of the interview, he made note of his familial connections in Israel. Two of his siblings had moved there in the 1980s, though neither worked for the Israeli government. His elderly mother, now suffering from dementia, had also moved there late in life, so her daughter could help take care of her. And one of Dr. Pincus’s children, Avi, had served briefly in the Israeli army before tragically succumbing to a drug overdose at an early age.
As for Dr. Pincus’s own connections to Israel, they amounted to three visits in the past decade, including one for his father’s funeral. He has no personal friends in Israel, no financial interests or holdings there, and no desire to ever hold an Israeli passport. He calls his mother on a weekly basis, and for a while handled her monthly rent and utilities bills. That’s it. The security investigation concluded: “There is nothing in subject’s background or character that would make him vulnerable to blackmail, extortion, coercion or duress.”
But that wouldn’t be the end of the matter. This March, Dr. Pincus was subjected to an unusual second interview, this time from a contract investigator sent by the Office of Personnel Management. All but one of the questions, sent from OPM headquarters, concerned his potential connections to Israel.
In September, Dr. Pincus’s security clearance was denied, meaning he would not be able to continue doing his dental work. The “Statement of Reasons” provided by the OPM explained why.
“You have weekly telephone contact with your mother and brother in Israel. You added your mother, sister and brother may have contact with neighbors in Israel. Foreign contacts and interests may be a security concern due to divided loyalties or foreign financial interests, may be manipulated or induced to help a foreign person, group, organization or government in a way that is not in U.S. interests, or is vulnerable to pressure or coercion by foreign interests.”
In the lexicon of anti-Jewish slurs, “divided loyalties” has such a notorious history that it’s surprising to see it make its way into a formal government document. Avi Schick, a partner with the Dentons law firm, says that when he first heard that a Naval employee could lose his job just for having relatives in Israel, he was so skeptical that he promised to take the case pro bono if the facts turned out to be true. “And here we are,” he tells me. My own calls to the OPM and the Pentagon were not returned.
The larger question is how common such security-clearance denials are. The Defense Office of Hearings and Appeals maintains a public database of what are known as “Industrial Security Clearance Decisions” dating back to 1996, involving thousands of civilian cases in all. Each of these involves an appeal from an application that was initially denied, and it is reasonable to assume that many rejected candidates never bother with an appeal.
Since the Obama administration came to office, there have been a total of 58 cases in which Israeli ties were a significant factor in the decision. Of these, 36 applicants—an astonishing 62% of the total—lost their appeals and had their clearance applications denied. For comparison, there has been just one case of a French citizen losing an appeal and being denied a clearance, and zero involving British citizens.
It’s true that a statistical analysis alone is not sufficient evidence of systemic prejudice. Then again, as Mr. Schick notes, the process of disqualifying Dr. Pincus “was driven by headquarters personnel” at the OPM, not some rogue agent in the field. It’s also worth adding that the slenderness of the evidence by which Dr. Pincus is being denied his clearance (and thus his job) suggests the level of scrutiny to which any applicant with the slightest Israeli connection is subjected. In one 2014 case, briefly described in the database, a candidate was refused clearance because a sister-in-law serves in the Israeli military.
Mr. Schick has now petitioned Navy Secretary Ray Mabus to review Dr. Pincus’s case. As that review takes place, the most pro-Israel administration in history—as President Obama and his advisers like to brag—might ask why it treats Americans with honest and honorable ties to Israel as potential enemies of state.
1b)A new poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research showed that two-thirds of Palestinians support the stabbing attacks, and that a growing majority supports an armed intifada and rejects the two state solution.
Furthermore, if presidential elections were held today in the West Bank, Hamas would win against President Mahmoud Abbas. On Tuesday, a Palestinian woman with a screwdriver who was planning to carry out an attack was caught in Jerusalem, while a Palestinian construction worker beat an Israeli Jew and his Palestinian co-worker with a hammer. A monthly report released by Israel’s internal security service shows that during the month of November, there have been 326 attacks against Israelis, with 10 fatalities. In total, 22 Israelis have been killed and 252 have been wounded in three months of almost daily stabbings, shootings, and vehicular attacks.
False allegations and incitement to violence have been spread on social media by both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. On Sunday, President Barack Obama said, “Palestinian leaders have to condemn the ongoing attacks [against Israelis] and stop incitement.” However, on Tuesday Abbas called the terror attacks against Israelis a “justified popular uprising.” Abbas has failed to condemn the terror attacks against Israelis and has continued to make inflammatory remarks, while reiterating false accusations that Israel is performing “field executions against defenseless Palestinian civilians, including children.” In October, he accused Israel of actions aimed “at altering or eliminating the Palestinian Christian and Muslim presence in and the identity of the Holy City.” Abbas has also appeared to glorify the violence, declaring, “We welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem…With the help of Allah, every shaheed (martyr) will be in heaven, and every wounded will get his reward.” On Tuesday Hamas boasted that the perpetrator of Monday’s vehicular attack on a crowded bus station was a member of the organization. The head of the terror group, Khaled Mashaal, called on Palestinians to embrace jihad and praised Palestinian stabbers as “the most exalted and the noblest of people.”
Recent reports that Iran is supporting ISIS through its funding of Hamas are a reminder that the Islamic Republic has long backed the powerful jihadist group and its predecessors in a variety of ways.
This may seem surprising given that Iran, the stalwart of the Shi’a Crescent, is currently embroiled in a regional war against the Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq. However, Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, described as one of the “largest and most dynamic intelligence agencies in the Middle East” by the Pentagon’s Irregular Warfare Support Program, has, over the past 20 years, provided financial, material, technological, and other support services to AQI. The man responsible for fostering this unexpected relationship was Imad Mughniyeh. While his name may not carry the same perceived significance as Osama Bin Laden, Mughniyeh commanded a vast international terror network that included Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, Hamas, and a myriad of others, spanning over five continents.
In 2012, the United States Treasury Department exposed the extensive financial ties between Iran and al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the terrorist organization that evolved into ISIS. The generous support Iran afforded ISIS in its formative years was part of a broader alliance that the Islamic Republic established with al-Qaeda over a decade ago.
As AQI metastasized across Iraq and eventually became ISIS, Iran sought to position itself at the vanguard of the global effort against the terrorist group, claiming that it was dedicated to beating back its advances. However, Iran and its clients, particularly Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, have notably failed to dislodge ISIS from any significant territory. Former U.S. military intelligence officer Michael Pregent observed in May that Iran and its allied militias in Iraq did not extend themselves to fight the terror group, and concluded that “Iran needs the threat of ISIS and Sunni jihadist groups to stay in Syria and Iraq in order to become further entrenched in Damascus and Baghdad.” A month later, U.S. officials similarly charged Syria with bombing non-Islamist rebels “in support of ISIL’s advance on Aleppo,” which helped the terror group push back Syrian opposition factions that were fighting Assad’s regime.
Monday’s Ynet report on Iran’s ongoing financial support of Hamas, which the Gaza-based terrorist group partially uses to fund ISIS’s affiliate in the Sinai Peninsula, shed more light on Iran’s strategy of using its proxies to bolster ISIS. Last week, a senior U.S. treasury official revealed that Assad is the biggest purchaser of oil from ISIS. Reports surfaced that Iranian agents were also directly sellingweapons to ISIS in exchange for oil last year.
In November, Secretary of State John Kerry noted that Assad “never bombed” ISIS as it captured Raqqa in eastern Syria, and also highlighted Assad’s oil purchases from ISIS. Last week, David Blair, chief foreign correspondent for The Telegraph, wrote that Assad strategically released a number of Islamists from jail during the early stages of the Syrian conflict, a portion of whom later rose to become commanders of ISIS.
In Iran Is More Deeply Tied To ISIS Than You Think, which was published in the December 2015 issue of The Tower Magazine, Benjamin Decker untangled the complex history behind the alliance between the Islamic Republic and ISIS.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the rise of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the predecessor to the Islamic State, has been well documented; comparably little attention has been given to the group’s global reach. While the Islamic State was born out of Osama Bin Laden’s global jihad against the West, many overlook the importance of another player in the equation – Iran.
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2) The Yin and Yang of Politics
By Allen West
I found a definition of Yin and Yang to be, “In Chinese philosophy, yin and yang (also, yin-yang or yin yang) describes how opposite or contrary forces are actually complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another.” It appears that our 2016 presidential election cycle is early on being defined by that philosophy. The question is, can this media-driven divide be good for the future of our Constitutional Republic?
In 2008 it was all about the “anti-Bush” sentiment in America – heavily fueled by a complicit media. The rallying slogan was “Hope and Change.” Some of us will never forget the statement, “we are the change that we have been waiting for.” Huh? None of this was challenged, but embraced as a historical moment that truly was the Yang to the existing Yin. Amazingly, there were little to no questions about policy; just the simplistic retort that “I will not be like the current president.” Furthermore, any challenge to the issue of a lack of policy proposals and experience in 2008 was met with the Alinsky tactic of personal demonization by way of being castigated as racist. And so in 2008 America replaced the Yin with the Yang and we had a new Yin – progressive socialism.
In 2012, the new slogan became “Forward,” and that was even as we recognized that so many quantitative assessments evidenced we were not going forward. We were certainly not progressing, and that situation continues to today. There were deceptions of jobs report numbers and we know that the economy was suffering under one of the most anemic recoveries in American history. But what was most telling was that we actually believed that we were safer; that Islamic terrorism was quelled. That was because Osama bin Laden had been double-tapped by U.S. Navy SEALS. However, the reality was far from being such. And so another deception took place when on 9-11-12 four Americans were abandoned to die in Benghazi – a place which had been destabilized by a horrific intervention by the current administration. Yet the new Yin, aided by a dedicated media campaign told us it was just a video.
So in 2012 we kept the current Yin.
Today, the situation is completely reversed. There is a new Yang that has risen due to the failures of the current Yin. The new slogan is “Make America Great Again.” This Yang has tapped into the evident weakness of the current Yin and has garnered a solid support base. Funny, this new Yang is not being embraced by the liberal progressive media, but its incessant assaults have enhanced the popularity of this new Yang in many aspects. And why is this happening? Simple: because the media clearly established and continues to establish itself as the protector of the progressive socialist ideal in 2008 and 2012. They have lost their credibility.
However, I would caution America to carefully assess whether this new Yang presents any viable policy solutions – similar to 2008.
My concern is that we Americans are once again being driven by media news cycles and not focusing on the prevailing issues or the future of America. Instead of basing our decisions about the future leadership of America on individual personalities, we must seek out a vision. Sadly, the social culture in America forces us to pay more attention to personas rather that principles. Now, I will be the first to admit that consideration of policy solutions may seem boring, but a base understanding is essential.
We have become more drawn to the person than the ideal. And what is lacking is a representation of the embodiment of that American ideal. Some would say that it does not exist, and God knows there are many who are trying to eradicate it – “we are five days away from fundamentally transforming America.”
What is necessary at this time in the current election cycle is for the American electorate to listen, and not be emotional. How do we restore the free enterprise opportunity society in order to get Americans back to work and productive in their own lanes? How do we develop a strategy to defeat militant Islamic terrorism? What needs to be done to reasonably stem the flow of illegal immigrants into America, secure our sovereign borders, yet also streamline our legal immigration system? How do we repair a healthcare system where individual premiums are rising, the individual mandate tax is increasing, and the level of care is decreasing? How do we advance the idea of parents being in charge of educating their children and being responsible for determining their outcomes – not the government?
The current Yin has done an exceptional job at focusing America on emotional “feeling” oriented issues. The reality is that the American public feels less safe. They know their beloved America, the land of individual economic empowerment, is becoming a breeding ground of collective economic enslavement, wealth transfer to grow the dependency society, a playground for social egalitarianism, and abject weakness.
And so we have the rise of the new Yang, a new slogan, but a lack of defined policy vision. The interconnection of the Yin and Yang of politics in America is that demagoguery has no favorite side. It can appear anywhere and finds a way to feed off the other.
As we close out 2015, enjoy a blessed Hanukkah, have a Merry Christmas, and celebrate a joyous and Happy New Year. May your favorite college football team win its bowl game – unless they are playing mine. But was we enter into a pivotal presidential election season, seek out an American leader, not an American celebrity.
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Iran has taken a lead role in defending the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad and strengthening the Baghdad government in the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS). But that doesn’t mean Iran views the United States as an ally in that war, even if they share a common enemy in ISIS.
Abdullah Ganji, the managing-director of Javan newspaper, which is believed to closely reflect the views of the government and the powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guards, says that U.S. support for ISIS is in fact a way of ensuring Israel’s security and disrupting the Muslim world in the cause of advancing Western interests.
“We believe that the West has been influential in the creation of ISIS for a number of reasons. First to engage Muslims against each other, to waste their energy and in this way Israel’s security would be guaranteed or at least enhanced,” says Ganji. “Secondly, an ugly, violent and homicidal face of Islam is presented to the world. And third, to create an inconvenience for Iran.”
Iran’s relations with the U.S. have been strained since the 1979 Islamic Revolution ousted the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran and negotiations are currently underway between Iran and Western nations, including the U.S., to ensure the Islamic Republic does not produce nuclear weapons.
Ganji went on to say that much of ISIS — its propaganda, structure and weapons — were all the work of the West. “A group that claims to be an Islamic one and has no sensitivity towards occupied Muslim lands in Palestine but is bent on killing Muslims as its first priority, it’s not a movement with roots in Islamic history. Not only many of its weapons but its methods of operation, its propaganda methods and many of its internal structures are Western, that’s why we are distrustful of the roots of ISIS,” he says.
After waiting six months and watching 2,300 U.S. airstrikes against Islamic militants in Syria and Iraq, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Congress doesn’t feel that much pressure to authorize the President to do what he already is doing.
“This is unusual because typically you authorize before actions are taken,” says Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, who will play an outsized role in the war powers debate on Capitol Hill. “In this case, people have been watching for six months and have a lot of questions as to whether they really are committed to dealing with ISIS. So that makes the dynamic here different than probably any authorization in modern history.”
“It’s not like anybody necessarily is going to feel a sense of urgency to act because they know it’s not going to alter the [immediate or current] operations in any way,” Corker told TIME.
The congressional war powers debate is one many members wished to avoid. Democrats, many of whom were elected on getting the U.S. out of wars like Iraq, are especially wary of approving any resolution that would authorize the President to send in troops into another Middle East quagmire. And if Republicans vote to approve what’s known as the authorization for use of military force—or an AUMF—they could open themselves up to criticism if the White House strategy fails.
But starting in late February, a few weeks after the White House sent over its war powers request, Congress will begin the solemn, politically divisive responsibility of debating the use of military action against a brutal enemy that split off from al-Qaeda a year ago. The first step will be to clarify what the role of U.S. troops should be. How long that takes is anyone’s guess.
The detritus left behind in Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan included documents showing the former Al Qaeda leader had concerns about the terrorist organization’s brand. His worry before his death was that the world was no longer seeing the group as an Islamic one, says one senior administration official, but rather a mercenary operation. He had even considered changing Al Qaeda’s name to address the problem.
That revelation has helped to steer the White House as it plotted its response to another extremist threat in the Middle East, the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria. “They are seeking to establish themselves as the vanguard terrorist organization that is at war with the U.S. and the West on behalf of Islam,” says Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser at the White House. “Therefore they need to attract as much attention as they can.”
But President Obama is determined not indulge the ideological frame of his enemy, calling the claim that the United States is at war with Islam an “ugly lie.” Rather the Obama Administration has focused on building a coalition of Islamic states in the gulf, including many Sunni gulf states, to battle against the self-described Caliphate. This effort received a major boost last September, when Obama met with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, a Shiite, and representatives from the Sunni leadership of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Bahrain and Qatar to discuss a united front against ISIS. “That’s when I think we had sensed that the regional balance had shifted to the point where this was the one thing everyone in the region could agree on,” Rhodes says.
But the fight will be a long one, and the danger of ISIS, or its supporters, lashing out against the United States homeland will continue, though it is presently rather different from the threat posed by Al Qaeda. “The threat to the homeland resembles what we have seen in Ottawa and Australia and Paris,” Rhodes continues. That is, “individuals who are either radicalized of their own volition taking up arms to commit those types of acts, or individuals who may have traveled to Iraq and Syria returning to create those kinds of attacks. People with guns or IEDs”—homemade bombs—“carrying out those kinds of attacks. It’s different than 9/11.”
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4)Republican Debate Grades: Trump Actually Won This Time
AP Photo/John Locher
by Ben Shapiro
Tonight’s Republican debate did little to shift the field. After tonight, Donald Trump will remain the frontrunner; Jeb Bush will continue to bring up the rear; John Kasich will continue to be the boil festering on the ass of the American public.
The debate did, however, highlight weaknesses with some of the second-place contenders – all of whom hope to overcome Trump with a bit of luck and a lot of their fellow candidates dropping out.
Without further ado, here are my debate grades. Remember, I don’t give pluses or minuses for purposes of clarity. There’s no grade inflation here.
Donald Trump: A. Yes, dear Trumpian readers, this is the grade you’ve given Trump for every debate. But this time I actually agree. Every debate comes down to moments. Trump had several of them that were simply grand. He looked reasonable in his policy on Libya and Syria – not in small part because the far more fluid Senator
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) agreed with him. He looked hard-core on ISIS – not in small part because Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) didn’t agree with him. He looked tough on immigration. And most of all, he continued to beat Jeb Bush like a redheaded stepchild who dropped his stepdad’s prized Tom Landry-signed football in the outhouse. The exchange that mattered most to Trump came when Jeb said that Trump couldn’t insult his way to the presidency. Au contraire, said Trump: “I’m at 42 and you’re at 3. So far, I’m doing better.” Then he continued, pointing at the middle of the stage, “You started off over here, Jeb. You’re moving over further and further. Pretty soon you’re going to be off the end.”
That’ll leave a mark.
Yes, Trump fudged on the nuclear triad. But nobody outside of Hugh Hewitt and Marco Rubio cares about that.
Ted Cruz: B. Cruz bested Marco Rubio in several exchanges, and he prevented Donald Trump from going off on him. For that, he gets a B. He had a couple of solid lines, particularly when he stated that the Obama administration’s foreign policy had been disastrous not because of incompetence, but because of malicious political correctness. But he seemed unable to distinguish his immigration plans from Rubio’s, and when he was asked directly by Rubio about whether he’d grant citizenship to illegal immigrants, he said he didn’t intend to do so. That’s lawyer-talk for “maybe.” Trump is now outflanking him on the right on immigration. Tonight Cruz looked strong, but Rubio dirtied him.
Marco Rubio: C. The weakest performance of the cycle for Rubio came when he needed his strongest. That’s because he chose to go after Cruz, who looked early as though he had no inclination to attack Rubio. Cruz wants to play conciliator because he wants to avoid playing into his reputation as divisive; Rubio didn’t let him. Rubio attacked him on defense authorization – an unfair charge. He attacked him on immigration, a somewhat fairer charge. He then attacked him on Libya and Syria – and got hammered. Nobody believes at this point that invading Libya was good policy, nor does anyone think that ousting Bashar Assad in Syria is a top priority. Rubio always seems to grasp the issues, but he seemed to be talking around them a lot tonight.
The danger of being the glossiest candidate is that glossy is easily tarnished.
Ben Carson: D. Carson did nothing for himself tonight. He attempted to show some foreign policy chops, but it was too little, too late. He should have fought back strongly against one particularly unfair question from Hewitt, who asked whether he would be okay with civilian casualties in war; he should have pointed out that no one is okay with such casualties, which is why war is hell. He didn’t. Overall, he looked lost. His support will continue to bleed to Cruz in Iowa.
Rand Paul: B. For the first time, Rand showed up to play. Perhaps that was a function of the fact that Cruz has staked out a middle ground on foreign policy between Rand’s isolationism and Rubio’s interventionism. But he did heavy body work to Rubio on both immigration and foreign policy, and he repeatedly brought up Rubio’s weakest resume point, the Gang of 8 immigration reform bill. It hurt Rubio badly. It’s interesting that Paul went after Rubio rather than Cruz, given that Cruz is the most likely candidate to be holding potential Paul voters. But perhaps he figures he’s tried that tack already.
Chris Christie: C. Christie’s getting one-note. If he turns to camera once more in the middle of a substantive discussion and tells us all how we should pay attention to the real issues and stop with all these distractions, somebody’s going to unleash the bucket of Carrie pig blood on him. It was cute the first time. Now it’s just irritating. He wants to come off as brash and plain-spoken, but the rehearsed routine won’t cut it. He may gain some if Rubio loses some of his luster, and he may pick up some of Kasich’s support. That’s his best hope.
John Kasich: Z. John Kasich is the worst, although at least we didn’t hear that his father is a mailman. Kasich’s incessant petulance and ridiculous schoolmarming adds an unwelcome note of annoyance to every debate. The low point: Kasich explaining that some people say his heart is too big. I’m pretty sure people said his mouth was.
Carly Fiorina: D. Fiorina’s dropped off the map. Tonight she tried to swivel to attacking Hillary repeatedly, which was fine. She went off the rails, however, when she couldn’t decide whether she’s the experienced candidate in the race (NOTE TO CARLY: YOU HAVE NEVER HELD ELECTIVE OFFICE) or whether she’s the outsider. And complaining about not being able to speak does age quickly.
Jeb Bush: D. Why is Jeb still here? Other than to be Donald Trump’s punching bag, that is.
So, there you have it. The Cruz vs. Rubio fireworks allowed Trump to slide by on foreign policy – and he handled himself well, talking tough and bluntly. Cruz will likely gain; Rubio will, too, although he performed less well. If Rubio doesn’t, Christie will pick up some of his following.
But Trump remains in front. Tonight, nobody knocked off his crown.
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