“Just Being A Strong Conservative Doesn’t Help The Party”: Cruz And Rubio Engage In Battle For Nevada Mormons
Deep divisions among Nevada Republicans over a $1 billion tax increase pushed by the state’s Republican governor are helping to shape the battle between Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas to win this state’s presidential caucuses — the first nominating contest in the West.
Rubio’s backers are eagerly eyeing Nevada as they look for an early-voting state the candidate could win. Although Rubio is widely seen as one of the leading contenders for the GOP nomination, the early primary states mostly look unpromising for him.
Cruz, by contrast, leads the polls in Iowa, which holds the first contest of the season on Feb. 1, and is well-positioned in several other conservative states that hold early contests.
With the stakes high here, the two freshman senators are vying to gain the support of a key voting bloc within the state’s GOP — members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who mostly lined up behind fellow Mormon Mitt Romney in the last two election cycles.
Mormons make up only about 4 percent of the state’s population, but their influence in Nevada’s Republican caucuses is much greater. In 2008 and 2012, members of the church accounted for nearly a quarter of Republican caucusgoers, entrance polls showed.
Both Cruz and Rubio — who attended an LDS church in Las Vegas in his youth — have enlisted politically prominent members of the church, and now the fault line on taxes that split the state’s Republicans this spring and summer has come to the forefront.
Rubio’s side includes prominent backers of the tax increase, aimed at expanding the state’s budget for schools, which Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval pushed through the GOP-controlled Legislature in May and June. The tax hike, the largest in state history, was strongly opposed by a large portion of the Republicans in the Legislature.
Also among Rubio’s backers is Bruce Woodbury, a Mormon and former Clark County commissioner who is so admired in southern Nevada that the I-215 beltway around Las Vegas is named after him.
Four years ago, Woodbury appeared in radio advertisements urging supporters to vote for Romney. He plans a similar effort this cycle for Rubio, working alongside the campaign’s state director, Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchison — another prominent Mormon — to build support ahead of the Feb. 23 caucuses.
“An essential factor is winning the election in November,” Woodbury said after a recent Rubio rally in a hotel ballroom a short drive from the Las Vegas Strip. “He has all the essentials: a powerful life story, he’s moderate — he can appeal to all segments of the electorate.”
His son, Boulder City Mayor Rod Woodbury, and two City Council members — all church members — also back Rubio.
Among the leaders of the opposition to the tax increase was Assemblyman Ira Hansen, a Republican who represents Sparks, just east of Reno. Hansen, also a Mormon church member, is now part of Cruz’s state leadership team.
“You see it at the national level and here: Cruz folks are much more conservative than Rubio’s,” said Hansen. “When it comes to social issues, when it comes to tax increases, if you’re a conservative — a true conservative — then Ted Cruz is your candidate.
“I think that Mormons and just Republicans in general want a true conservative who will stand for conservative values in Washington, D.C.,” he said.
Hansen says Rubio’s past support of bipartisan immigration reform, which included a path to citizenship for those in the country illegally, is also a negative for him in the state’s caucuses. It’s an issue on which Cruz has repeatedly assailed Rubio, saying that the Florida senator supports “amnesty” for those who have violated immigration laws.
Rubio’s campaign has two field offices in the state — one in Las Vegas, the other in Reno — and nearly a dozen paid staffers. The Cruz campaign has a similar infrastructure.
Cruz has enlisted Paul Workman, a former bishop in the Mormon church and a member of Romney’s 2012 Nevada finance committee, who says his job is to make sure LDS members know about Cruz’s record as a conservative.
Cruz “talks about his faith with confidence and how it guides him,” Workman said. “There’s a real openness to other faiths that he has. It appeals to me and I’m sure other Mormons as well.”
At a recent religious round table in Las Vegas hosted by the Cruz campaign, Workman spoke with evangelical Christian pastor Rafael Cruz, the Texas senator’s father. The two talked about Mormon doctrine — of salvation, atonement and family — and how to appeal to LDS voters. Workman says he was impressed by the elder Cruz’s knowledge of Mormonism, which he says will help bolster the senator’s LDS support.
Rubio supporters, however, say Cruz’s brand of staunch conservatism will not help the party win in November.
Heidi Wixom, a mother of six, lives a few blocks from a Mormon church in her eastside Las Vegas neighborhood. After rallying behind Romney in the last two elections, she remained torn for much of the summer and fall about which candidate to back. Electability in November was vital in her decision to support Rubio, she said.
“Just being a strong conservative doesn’t help the party,” she said. “You have to have shown you can work alongside Democrats; even if right now that doesn’t seem ideal, it will pay off in the general election.”
By: Kurtis Lee, The National Memo, January 2, 2015
“Below Par”: Donald Trump’s Ardent Courtship Of Bill And Hillary Clinton
Nobody should be surprised that the Washington press corps, perennially obsessed with Bill Clinton’s real and imagined private life, would seize upon any chance to revisit that favorite topic, especially if that means mimicking Donald Trump. They’ve never quite gotten over the departure in disgrace of their favorite pornographer, the former independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr.
What the political press mostly fails to explore is the overall absurdity of Trump’s new Bill-bashing gambit. They may wonder aloud how a misogynist bully can accuse anyone else of “sexism” or “abusing women,” but if Trump got the same treatment as Clinton, the media would remind us every day of his vile attacks on Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, his distasteful remarks about his suppressed desire to “date” his daughter Ivanka, and his alleged battering and marital rape of his former wife Ivana.
Like so much of Trump’s loud talk, his disparaging remarks about Bill and Hillary Clinton have scant credibility, at least to anyone who knows anything about him. Whatever he claims to think of them now, he has spent years sucking up to the Clintons in the most abject way. His one-sided courtship of the former First Family goes well beyond Trump’s ridiculous insistence that they attend his wedding to his third wife in Florida.
Although he now claims to deplore Bill Clinton’s misbehavior, Trump awarded the former president a free membership at his Trump National Golf Club, just a few miles from the Clinton home in Westchester County. Still a member to this day, Clinton has long enjoyed all kinds of special privileges at the club, where he maintains a locker in a special VIP section near those of former Yankees manager Joe Torre and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Not only has Trump boasted repeatedly about Clinton’s membership and displayed pictures of them together, but on Clinton’s 65th birthday a few years ago, he cleared the course so that the Clintons, including Chelsea and her husband, could play a leisurely foursome there.
Gullible wing-nuts who admire Trump and hate Clinton won’t like hearing any of these facts, of course. But the impeccably far-right Washington Free Beacon told the story not so long ago, illustrating it with fun photos. (Evidently the Beacon story was designed as a “racist” smear of Clinton, but that fizzled.)
This silly episode illustrates once more why only the very dimmest Americans believe that Trump “tells it like it is” and “says what he really thinks.”
By: Joe Conason, Editor in Chief, Editor’s Blog, Featured Post, The National Memo, January 2, 2015
“Bill Cosby, Tamir Rice, And The Power Of Prosecutors”: The Discretion Of A Single Unaccountable Prosecutor
What do Bill Cosby and Tamir Rice’s have in common? Their cases reveal the immense power of prosecutors.
Consider the fact that in 2005, Andrea Constand told police that Bill Cosby gave her drugs and sexually assaulted her. Why wasn’t he charged? The prosecutor didn’t think there was enough evidence.
Ten years later, Cosby is charged. Why? Partly because of new bits of evidence—Cosby’s admission that he sometimes gave women drugs in order to have sex with them, and at least 50 other accusations against him. But mostly, because now there’s a different prosecutor, Kevin Steele.
These are judgment calls, in 2005 and 2015.
Now consider the cases of Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner. None of the police officers responsible for their deaths were ever charged—not convicted—charged. In all three cases, prosecutors practically told grand juries not to indict.
In Ferguson, Robert McCulloch decided to simply present all the evidence to the grand jury, rather than make a case against Officer Darren Wilson. In Staten Island, Darren Donovan, a Republican with extensive ties to the police department, failed to secure an indictment against Daniel Pantaleo, whose chokehold led to Eric Garner’s death. And most recently, in Cleveland, Tim McGinty stated openly that he didn’t believe anyone should be charged in the shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice.
Set aside, for the moment, the facts of these cases. What’s striking in all of them is that county prosecutors and district attorneys, singlehandedly and without oversight, decide the fates of the accused. More judgment calls, unreviewed and unreviewable.
True, there is some oversight: most of these prosecutors are elected. If voters don’t like how they’re doing (or not doing) their jobs, they can vote them out of office. Indeed, in the case of Bill Cosby, then-D.A. Bruce Castor’s decision not to indict in 2005 became an issue in his election battle with Kevin Steele this year.
But is this really “oversight”? As The Daily Beast reported last September, voters often know next to nothing about the candidates running for positions as prosecutors or judges. Turnout is extremely low, especially in off years. And when voters are paying attention, they are bamboozled by the only campaign message that seems to work: “tough on crime.”
This year, for example, Steele ran on his “98 percent conviction rate” and “tough sentences for sexual predators.”
That’s what people want, right? They see prosecutors as agents of the criminal justice system, and everyone wants less crime.
This leads to two perverse incentives for prosecutors. First, they have an incentive to over-charge criminal defendants and secure convictions more than justice. Second, they have an incentive not to charge police officers, who after all are fighting crime every day, and with whom they work closely on a daily basis.
In principle, if Officers Pantaleo, Wilson, and Loehmann violated the law, then they are criminals. But in practice, they are policemen, and perceived as the opposite of criminals. Voters who want to get tough on crime do not want to get tough on cops.
So not only is there no meaningful oversight of prosecutors, but the oversight that does exist is skewed to specific outcomes and behaviors, not impartiality and performance.
Now back to Cosby. If you pay close attention to what Steele said this week, you’ll notice that he went out of his way to mention the new evidence that has come to light in the last twelve months. “A prosecutor’s job is to follow the evidence wherever it leads and whenever it comes to light,” he said, announcing the arrest.
In part, this was to explain the nearly twelve-year gap between the crime and the charge. But in large part, it was to explain why Cosby is being charged in 2015, but wasn’t in 2005.
And what is that new evidence? Only what is known as “habit evidence”: that Cosby admitted to drugging and having sex with other women. But not Constand—however ludicrous it may seem, Cosby’s position is that she consented.
Is habit evidence really enough to reopen a closed case and file charges? Again, that’s another judgment call. Like Judge Robreno’s decision to unseal the damning deposition records, Steele’s decision was basically up to him.
Of course, Steele chose to make it an election issue as well. He’d look foolish if, having just accused Bruce Castor of doing nothing, he did nothing too. But again, that was Steele’s decision. Just as prosecuting “America’s Dad” in 2005 might have made Castor look bad, prosecuting America’s Rapist in 2015 makes Steele look good.
We imagine that district attorneys and other prosecutors are motivated by truth, justice, and the American way. But in fact, they are elected officials who paint in broad strokes for a mostly-ignorant public; who, unlike judges, cannot be held accountable for their misconduct by oversight boards; and who exercise discretion so broad that the disposition of justice often lies entirely within their judgment.
Finally, of course, Tamir Rice and Bill Cosby have more in common than under-zealous prosecutors: both African American males, one quite young and one quite old, operating in a system in which 95 percent of prosecutors are white and local police forces are 88 percent white.
For decades, Cosby was protected by his wealth, celebrity, class, and connections, particularly at Temple University. But he is the exception, not the rule. Black men comprise 6 percent of the U.S. population, but 35 percent of the prison population. They receive sentences roughly 10 percent more severe than white defendants convicted of identical crimes. And when they are perceived to be older than they are, bigger than they are, more dangerous than they are, or more violent than they are, their 88 percent-white police officers and 95 percent-white-prosecutors exercise “discretion” in remarkably similar ways.
The United States is the only country in the world that elects prosecutors based on sloganeering and then holds them to no standard other than majority whim. After nearly 12 years, Bill Cosby has indeed been charged with a crime. But only because a prosecutor decided to do so—this time.
By: Jay Michaelson, The Daily Beast, January 1, 2016
“Another ‘Trump’s In Trouble’ Story”: Even Trump’s Former Campaign Aide Doesn’t Think He’ll Win The Nomination
The end of the year brings another entry into the Trump won’t win oeuvre (of which I am not only a connoisseur but also contributor). The interesting twist is that the latest warning storms ahead for the tyrant of Trump Tower come from a (possibly disgruntled) former campaign aide.
Former Trump aide Sam Nunberg, who started consulting with Trump in 2011, joined him full time in 2014 and got sacked shortly after Trump got into the race because of a series of racist Facebook posts, shared his concerns about the Trump trajectory with The Daily Beast’s Tim Mak.
Falling poll numbers in the first key states, a lack so far of reserved advertising, a low net favorability and underperformance in the college-educated voting bloc that dominates the early presidential contests – all these contribute to a darkening forecast for the Trump campaign, Nunberg argued.
The way Nunberg sees it, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz will cruise in Iowa and the long-heralded (including here) coalescing of the establishment behind Marco Rubio will occur in time for the Florida senator to win that primary.
If Trump loses Iowa and New Hampshire, he’ll stumble into South Carolina. “Once Cruz wins Iowa, and if he beats Trump in New Hampshire, which he very well could, Cruz would win South Carolina, from a momentum perspective,” Nunberg predicted.
If this scenario plays out, Nunberg doesn’t “see a pathway to the nomination – he certainly wouldn’t be the frontrunner anymore, and his numbers will start to fall.”
It’s an intriguing scenario. Certainly the conventional wisdom – and polling – have lined up behind the idea of a Cruz Iowa victory. The New Hampshire case isn’t quite so strong given that Trump still has a comfortable lead there. Of course the caveat is that even now, a little more than a month before the first ballots are cast, polls are not necessarily reliable. As FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver has noted, something like 40 percent of Iowa voters and half of New Hampshire voters decide who they’re supporting in the last week before they go to the polls.
Nunberg told Mak that his decision to speak out was the result of a concern that Trump may not be getting a clear picture of his impending doom. But there are indications that he may be getting the message. For one thing, the veiled suggestion that Ted Cruz is an inauthentic evangelical because he’s from Cuba has returned to Trump’s stump speech (because God only knows that Donald Trump is a true evangelical). At the same time, Trump’s Iowa organization is ramping up, per the Wall Street Journal. And the retired reality TV star has started saying that he’s actually going to spend money on television ads in the new year.
At the same time Rubio’s rivals for the establishment mantel have started gunning for him, with both a pro-Jeb Bush super PAC and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie slamming the Floridian for absenteeism. I suppose it makes sense for the various traditional candidates to want to wipe each other out in an attempt to get a solo shot at Trump and/or Cruz, but The Donald’s free pass continues to amaze.
By: Robert Schlesinger, Managing Editor for Opinion, U.S. News & World Report, December 30, 2015
“Privilege, Pathology And Power”: What Happens To A Nation That Gives Ever-Growing Political Power To The Super Rich?
Wealth can be bad for your soul. That’s not just a hoary piece of folk wisdom; it’s a conclusion from serious social science, confirmed by statistical analysis and experiment. The affluent are, on average, less likely to exhibit empathy, less likely to respect norms and even laws, more likely to cheat, than those occupying lower rungs on the economic ladder.
And it’s obvious, even if we don’t have statistical confirmation, that extreme wealth can do extreme spiritual damage. Take someone whose personality might have been merely disagreeable under normal circumstances, and give him the kind of wealth that lets him surround himself with sycophants and usually get whatever he wants. It’s not hard to see how he could become almost pathologically self-regarding and unconcerned with others.
So what happens to a nation that gives ever-growing political power to the superrich?
Modern America is a society in which a growing share of income and wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small number of people, and these people have huge political influence — in the early stages of the 2016 presidential campaign, around half the contributions came from fewer than 200 wealthy families. The usual concern about this march toward oligarchy is that the interests and policy preferences of the very rich are quite different from those of the population at large, and that is surely the biggest problem.
But it’s also true that those empowered by money-driven politics include a disproportionate number of spoiled egomaniacs. Which brings me to the current election cycle.
The most obvious illustration of the point I’ve been making is the man now leading the Republican field. Donald Trump would probably have been a blowhard and a bully whatever his social station. But his billions have insulated him from the external checks that limit most people’s ability to act out their narcissistic tendencies; nobody has ever been in a position to tell him, “You’re fired!” And the result is the face you keep seeing on your TV.
But Mr. Trump isn’t the only awesomely self-centered billionaire playing an outsized role in the 2016 campaign.
There have been some interesting news reports lately about Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas gambling magnate. Mr. Adelson has been involved in some fairly complex court proceedings, which revolve around claims of misconduct in his operations in Macau, including links to organized crime and prostitution. Given his business, this may not be all that surprising. What was surprising was his behavior in court, where he refused to answer routine questions and argued with the judge, Elizabeth Gonzales. That, as she rightly pointed out, isn’t something witnesses get to do.
Then Mr. Adelson bought Nevada’s largest newspaper. As the sale was being finalized, reporters at the paper were told to drop everything and start monitoring all activity of three judges, including Ms. Gonzales. And while the paper never published any results from that investigation, an attack on Judge Gonzales, with what looks like a fictitious byline, did appear in a small Connecticut newspaper owned by one of Mr. Adelson’s associates.
O.K., but why do we care? Because Mr. Adelson’s political spending has made him a huge player in Republican politics — so much so that reporters routinely talk about the “Adelson primary,” in which candidates trek to Las Vegas to pay obeisance.
Are there other cases? Yes indeed, even if the egomania doesn’t rise to Adelson levels. I find myself thinking, for example, of the hedge-fund billionaire Paul Singer, another big power in the G.O.P., who published an investor’s letter declaring that inflation was running rampant — he could tell from the prices of Hamptons real estate and high-end art. Economists got some laughs out of the incident, but think of the self-absorption required to write something like that without realizing how it would sound to non-billionaires.
Or think of the various billionaires who, a few years ago, were declaring with straight faces, and no sign of self-awareness, that President Obama was holding back the economy by suggesting that some businesspeople had misbehaved. You see, he was hurting their feelings.
Just to be clear, the biggest reason to oppose the power of money in politics is the way it lets the wealthy rig the system and distort policy priorities. And the biggest reason billionaires hate Mr. Obama is what he did to their taxes, not their feelings. The fact that some of those buying influence are also horrible people is secondary.
But it’s not trivial. Oligarchy, rule by the few, also tends to become rule by the monstrously self-centered. Narcisstocracy? Jerkigarchy? Anyway, it’s an ugly spectacle, and it’s probably going to get even uglier over the course of the year ahead.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, January 1, 2016
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 