January 22, 2024

Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.

 

Joe Biden’s legacy of disastrous failure comes home to roost with Houthi terrorist attacks on Suez trade route

By Rick Manning

Joe Biden’s presidency started with a series of blunders ranging from creating the current illegal immigrant crisis through his immediate rollback of former President Donald Trump’s successful border security policies to rejoining the Paris Climate Accords and revoking the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. But perhaps the most dangerous policy change Biden made was his decision to remove the Houthi rebels in Yemen from the U.S. foreign terrorist list, as that group now threatens much of the world’s supply chain through missile attacks on cargo shipping using the Suez Canal.

The Houthis are Iranian proxies who control land within Yemen that sits near the Gulf of Aden (southern) entrance to the Red Sea which the Suez Canal connects to the Mediterranean. Completed in 1869, the Suez Canal has been one of the most important trade and naval routes for more than 150 years, yet Biden’s choice to open cash flows for the Houthi rebels has put it in jeopardy.

And it wasn’t only the decision to end the Houthis’ terrorist designation (which the Biden administration partially restored in the past two weeks) but early in his administration, Biden also dropped U.S. financial sanctions against Iran, allowing the world’s largest sponsor of terrorism to gain access to more than $100 billion in oil and other revenues.  

Biden’s disastrous Iran-favoring Middle East policy also authorized Iran to access another $6 billion in assets weeks before their Hamas proxies’ attack on Israeli civilians resulted in 1,200 deaths on October 7. Subsequently as many as 20,000 people have died as a direct result of the attack with military action in Gaza likely for the foreseeable future.

Cargo ships carrying Saudi oil and containers of Chinese and Indian made goods use Suez Canal route to get their products to Europe and the Americas.   Many of those cargo transport companies, like the shipping colossus Maersk, are choosing to avoid the short-cut and go around Africa to move goods around the globe.

When former President Trump identified the Houthis as a “foreign terrorist group” denying them access to capital around the world, many Boomers and Gen Xers immediately wondered what happened to the Blowfish.

It wasn’t until we got the current mindless blowhard in the White House that we discovered that the Houthis were no joke as they had the capacity to shut down one of the major chokepoints for trade in the world.

Of course, the current occupant of the White House’s Iranian appeasement policy has also resulted in the Iranian navy seeking to disrupt cargo traffic at the Straits of Hormuz through which a great deal of Middle Eastern oil flows.

Unfortunately, Biden’s Iranian and its terrorist proxies’ partnership may go down in history as his biggest blunder of all. This is likely true even with the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal which left $80 billion of U.S. military equipment in the hands of the Taliban terrorists who are shipping it around the world, Biden’s green agenda which is seeking to systematically convert our nation’s automobile fleet to electric vehicles which don’t work in cold weather, his attack on expanding the electricity generation, and his open borders immigration policy.

Joe Biden’s presidential wreckage will be difficult to fix, but creating the capacity for an Islamo-fascist Iran to effectively blockade the export of much of the Middle Eastern oil upon which the world depends puts us at the brink of a war which could possibly be more destructive than World War II.

World War I was started by a Serbian killing the Archduke of Austria. World War II became more likely by the Hitler enabling British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s policies which emboldened Hitler to advance his plans to take Europe as his own. Let’s hope World War III is not started due to an American president’s enabling a terrorist regime and its proxies to run amok in the world’s powder keg.

Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government. 

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/01/joe-bidens-legacy-of-disastrous-failure-comes-home-to-roost-with-houthi-terrorist-attacks-on-suez-trade-route/ 

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Trump widens lead in New Hampshire primary polls after DeSantis withdraws from GOP presidential race

By Robert Romano

As Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis withdrew from the presidential race on Jan. 21, leaving a two-way race between former President Donald Trump and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley for the Republican nomination, new polling out shows a significant jump in favor of Trump in the New Hampshire primary scheduled for Jan. 23.

In the latest Boston Globe-Suffolk poll taken Jan. 20 and Jan. 21, Trump’s support in New Hampshire rose to 57 percent and Haley at 38 percent. And an Insider Advantage poll taken Jan. 21 showed Trump up to 62 percent to Haley’s 35 percent.

If Trump wins in New Hampshire, as appears likely — Trump has led 95 percent of the polls taken in New Hampshire this cycle, according to RealClearPolling.com and is leading with an average of 54 percent of Haley’s 37 percent — he will be the first Republican in a competitive race to sweep Iowa and New Hampshire. Usually, in a competitive nominating process without a sitting president running, the two states deliver opposing results.

Instead, Trump appears to be displaying all the elements of the incumbency advantage that may be proving to be insurmountable.

Assuming the polling is correct in New Hampshire, as it was in Iowa, only South Carolina, the state Haley governed, remains as an early state that could catapult her to the nomination. 

In the modern nominating process, only Bill Clinton in 1992 and Joe Biden in 2020 came back after back-to-back losses in Iowa and New Hampshire to go on to become their party’s nominee. No Republican has ever achieved the feat.

But looking forward, South Carolina might prove to be even more difficult for Haley than New Hampshire. There, before DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy had dropped out of the race, Trump was averaging 52 percent in the South Carolina polls, leading 100 percent of them this cycle, according to RealClearPolling.com, with Haley only averaging 25 percent.

That makes New Hampshire Haley’s best shot at propelling her campaign forward. Whereas Clinton and Biden were able to overcome relatively weak challengers in 1992 and 2020, Trump as a former president has advantages that are becoming obvious in the primary process.

In fact, it is very rare for a former president to seek his party's nomination in modern history. You have to go back to Theodore Roosevelt's run in 1912. But when you look at the outcome, where Roosevelt gets more votes than incumbent President William Howard Taft in both the primary and the general election, it underscores that a former president's advantage can even trump the sitting president's. 

In the modern context, and in hindsight, especially if Trump sweeps the primaries, it might highlight the futility of not having supported him in the first place, particularly when the Biden Justice Department was making moves to raid Mar a Lago and to indict him on specious political charges, which poses an existential threat not just to Trump, but to the GOP more broadly. 

While arguments can be made for testing Trump in the primary, a good question looking towards 2028 might be whether some of these candidates have become permanently damaged politically in the GOP primary electorate by standing against Trump. 

In the meantime, New Hampshire looms as potentially the last stand for the anti-Trump contingent of the Republican primaries — a Haley win in New Hampshire would be a shock at this point and certainly make the 2024 GOP race very interesting, even if it were to ultimately go to Trump anyway — but even if Trump wins in New Hampshire, the process might eke on to South Carolina before its seemingly inevitable conclusion. Stay tuned.

Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation. 

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/01/trump-widens-lead-in-new-hampshire-primary-polls-after-desantis-withdraws-from-gop-presidential-race/ 

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