Feb. 12, 2020
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
Bernie takes New Hampshire from Mayor Pete as two-way race emerges, Biden, Warren on the ropes
A two-way race has emerged in the Democratic
presidential nomination as Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), a self-professed
democratic socialist, narrowly defeated former Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-Ind.) in
the all-important New Hampshire primary, 25.7 percent to 24.4 percent. Sen.
Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and former Vice President Joe Biden (D-Del.) were
distant fourth and fifth place showings, putting their campaigns on life
support without wins in the first two contests. This could be their political
swan songs. Now, late-deciding voters in subsequent contests will likely choose
between Sanders and Buttigieg — which is what usually happens. In more than
three-quarters of the years where no incumbent Democrat was running for
president — 1976, 1984, 1988, 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2016 — the nominee had won
either Iowa or New Hampshire. It’s winner’s bias. Iowa and New Hampshire narrow
the field. If you start off losing, and losing badly, then it’s harder to make
a case that your campaign is viable. Do you donate money? Time? Energy? Or do you bet on the candidates who
have a shot? History suggests the latter.
Video: Trump budget cuts $4.4 trillion over decade and balances in 15 years but will Congress cut spending?
Budgets submitted by presidents are usually ignored
by Congress, but the budget submitted by President Donald Trump is a blueprint
for balancing it and bringing the growth of debt to a sustainable level.
Congress needs to curtail spending to more reasonable levels, but will they
listen?
Sprint-T-Mobile merger approval paves the road for 5G
Americans for Limited Government President Rick
Manning: "Thanks to the support of federal courts, along with the Justice
Department and the Federal Communications Commission, the merger of Sprint and
T-Mobile is a done deal. Together, Sprint and T-Mobile will help to bring 5G to
the U.S., combining T-Mobile’s low band spectrum to bring the network
nationwide and rural areas and Sprint’s medium band spectrum in big cities and
densely populated suburbs. This will increase competition in 5G markets versus
Verizon and AT&T, significantly expand high speed Internet access in a vast
majority of rural America and help create good paying American jobs."
U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais: America First Trade Agenda Prevails
“President Trump won the 2016 election promising to
renegotiate outdated trade deals that have outsourced American jobs and capital
to foreign countries, which often have higher trade barriers or weaker labor
and environmental standards than the United States. These unfair advantages
benefit not only adversarial Communist China, with imperial ambitions, but also
the European Union, Mexico, Japan, and other countries the United States counts
as allies… My home state, an auto-manufacturing hub, stands to benefit
immensely from the USMCA, replacing NAFTA, and fulfilling another promise
President Trump made to voters. Our economy is already experiencing remarkable
economic growth, however, because of tax cuts, deregulation, and American
energy production. Wages and incomes are rising. The unemployment rate, fuel
prices, and inflation remain low—disproving the warnings of so many so-called
experts of a coming Armageddon under Donald Trump’s trade agenda.As it turned
out, the time was ripe for change, and it was everyday, normal people in places
like Cleveland and Winchester, Tennessee—not the Ivy League professors who
dismissed them—who had the right idea all along.”
Bernie takes New Hampshire from Mayor Pete as two-way race emerges, Biden, Warren on the ropes
By Robert Romano
A two-way race has emerged in the Democratic presidential nomination as Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), a self-professed democratic socialist, narrowly defeated former Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-Ind.) in the all-important New Hampshire primary, 25.7 percent to 24.4 percent.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and former Vice President Joe Biden (D-Del.) were distant fourth and fifth place showings, putting their campaigns on life support without wins in the first two contests.
This could be their political swan songs.
Now, late-deciding voters in subsequent contests will likely choose between Sanders and Buttigieg — which is what usually happens.
In more than three-quarters of the years where no incumbent Democrat was running for president — 1976, 1984, 1988, 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2016 — the nominee had won either Iowa or New Hampshire.
It’s winner’s bias. Iowa and New Hampshire narrow the field. If you start off losing, and losing badly, then it’s harder to make a case that your campaign is viable.
Do you donate money? Time? Energy? Or do you bet on the candidates who have a shot? History suggests the latter.
There are two notable exceptions. Bill Clinton managed to secure the nomination in 1992 without winning either Iowa or New Hampshire, and so did George McGovern back in 1972.
But the difference is that in 1992, Clinton had a case to make with a strong second place showing in New Hampshire with 25 percent to Paul Tsongas’ 33 percent. Same deal with McGovern in 1972 with a strong second place in New Hampshire with 37 percent to Edmund Muskie’s 46 percent.
The only candidate who might be able to defeat the two-man contest is Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who surprised with a strong third place at 19.8 percent. Biden and Warren have a much harder road, and surely late-deciders in South Carolina are taking note.
Biden’s only handhold remains on the polls, and so the question is whether Biden can leverage his months-long lead in the polls in South Carolina.
The big question is how long will Biden’s lead in those polls last as Sanders and Buttigieg continue to outperform Biden on the campaign trail.
A rich undercurrent is the impeachment saga, which predictably harmed Biden’s prospects by highlighting his role in firing Ukraine’s top prosecutor in 2016 who says he was investigating the corrupt natural gas firm his son worked for and destabilizing the region by pushing Viktor Yanukovych out of power there in 2014.
Impeachment drove up Biden’s negatives early in the process, and it is clearly showing on the campaign trail. Ironically, this might not have been the case had Democrats not impeached Trump.
Democrats interfered in their own campaign and sabotaged their own frontrunner, Biden, who had been leading polls nationally for months uninterrupted. Fox News commentator Sean Hannity called it the “boomerang.” That’s about right.
In the meantime, the close race for the Democratic nomination between Sanders and Buttigieg favors President Donald Trump, who easily won the primary in New Hampshire with 85.5 percent of the vote running relatively unopposed.
Democrats and independents watching who don’t like any of the Democratic candidates will be ripe for the President’s picking as he exploits chaos in the Democratic field.
Who the Democrats choose at this juncture is akin to reading a crystal ball, but in South Carolina and beyond, Sanders’ organization and campaign’s experience may prove determinative as Biden fades.
Or, Biden could be about to mount the greatest political comeback in history. Who knows?
The next thing to watch for are fresh polls from South Carolina and Nevada. Stay tuned.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.
Video: Trump budget cuts $4.4 trillion over decade and balances in 15 years but will Congress cut spending?
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVE9nuMKRug
Sprint-T-Mobile merger approval paves the road for 5G
Feb. 11, 2020, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement praising federal court approval of the Sprint-T-Mobile merger:
"Thanks to the support of federal courts, along with the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission, the merger of Sprint and T-Mobile is a done deal. Together, Sprint and T-Mobile will help to bring 5G to the U.S., combining T-Mobile’s low band spectrum to bring the network nationwide and rural areas and Sprint’s medium band spectrum in big cities and densely populated suburbs. This will increase competition in 5G markets versus Verizon and AT&T, significantly expand high speed Internet access in a vast majority of rural America and help create good paying American jobs."
To view online: https://getliberty.org/2020/02/sprint-t-mobile-merger-approval-paves-the-road-for-5g/
ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured oped from U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.), President Trump’s trade agenda is putting America first:
America First Trade Agenda Prevails
As it turned out, the time was ripe for change, and it was everyday, normal people in places like Cleveland and Winchester, Tennessee—not the Ivy League professors who dismissed them—who had the right idea all along.
President Trump won the 2016 election promising to renegotiate outdated trade deals that have outsourced American jobs and capital to foreign countries, which often have higher trade barriers or weaker labor and environmental standards than the United States. These unfair advantages benefit not only adversarial Communist China, with imperial ambitions, but also the European Union, Mexico, Japan, and other countries the United States counts as allies.
Unlike our own leaders—who seem to be stuck in a post-World War II era mindset where the United States helped to rebuild Europe, Japan, and recovering colonies—leaders abroad understand times have changed. Wealthy and powerful “developing” countries continue to benefit from generous U.S. foreign aid and market access but rarely reciprocate. Instead, in the socialist EU, where rules and regulations strangle domestic innovation, the bureaucracy also weaponizes them against American competition.
While we argue here about whether Google and Amazon are monopolies, no such Internet giants exist in Europe. Like socialists in our own country, EU bureaucrats’ sole means of competition seems to be high taxes and multi-billion-dollar legal penalties, the same mentality that prevents former start-ups like Google and Amazon from starting in the first place. Tariffs on American manufactures and agricultural goods are higher in Europe, and nearly insurmountable in China.
Taking socialism a step further, China’s Communist government massively subsidizes companies in competition with our own, and commands a labor force that’s virtually enslaved. Its government spies and steals to acquire technology its own top-down economy could never develop, and quickly applies those stolen ideas to military purposes. Chinese subsidies, in effect a form of state ownership, target U.S. industries, everything from steel to microchips, critical to our national security.
For many voters, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has been of particular concern, partly because the idea of “open borders” coincided with a surge of illegal immigration from Mexico. The decades-old agreement, just like manufacturing outsourced to China, may have lowered prices for U.S. consumers, but for the millions who have lost their jobs to cheap foreign labor and Chinese trade abuses, lower prices mean little. My constituents in Tennessee prefer paychecks to public assistance.
Despite studies showing the theoretical benefits of free trade, economic and wage growth have been poor in recent decades. Government dependence is up. China’s trade war funds an increasingly assertive military whose main rival is the United States.
But until recently, establishment Washington—Democrats and Republicans alike—insisted the status quo was the best we could do. Donald Trump, a political outsider with a blue-collar attitude, understood what my friends and neighbors understood a long time ago: Our country can no longer afford to be the world’s candy store.
Fortunately, because of the president’s strong leadership, bipartisan agreement has coalesced around some of the most important trade issues confronting Americans. In fact, there has been a sea change in attitudes towards China. Congress has reversed severe cuts to the military under the Obama Administration. We are finally addressing corporate and campus espionage, forced technology transfers, and other problems that have become normal parts of doing business with China.
Farmers in my rural district support the president’s tough negotiations, which have yielded significant victories. Japan lifted a ban on U.S. beef. Argentina is buying more pork. For the first time in five years, China opened its market to American poultry. The recent “Phase One” deal with China increases exports among a range of U.S. products and services, and the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) widens access for U.S. dairy and wheat in Canada, as well as creates more auto-manufacturing jobs here at home.
My home state, an auto-manufacturing hub, stands to benefit immensely from the USMCA, replacing NAFTA, and fulfilling another promise President Trump made to voters. Our economy is already experiencing remarkable economic growth, however, because of tax cuts, deregulation, and American energy production. Wages and incomes are rising. The unemployment rate, fuel prices, and inflation remain low—disproving the warnings of so many so-called experts of a coming Armageddon under Donald Trump’s trade agenda.
As it turned out, the time was ripe for change, and it was everyday, normal people in places like Cleveland and Winchester, Tennessee—not the Ivy League professors who dismissed them—who had the right idea all along.
To view online: https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/02/america-first-trade-agenda-prevails/
