Aug. 28, 2024

Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.

Time for Never Trumpers to Drop their Conservative Charade

By Rick Manning

Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party nominee, is the most liberal nominee for president in history.

She has ardently supported Medicare for All, also known as a complete federal government takeover of health care, even though she has tried to walk it back in this election cycle. Philosophically, self-proclaimed conservatives have argued vehemently against this policy and the experience of Covid should have given the practical reasons to back the rhetoric.

She is on record as opposing hydraulic fracturing and the Biden-Harris energy policy is one that makes the country more dependent upon electricity generation while ending the most reliable sources to generate electricity. With the  key Electoral College state Pennsylvania being a major economic beneficiary of fracking Harris now claims to be against banning the process. GOP “leaders” claim to oppose the Green New Deal destruction of fossil fuels generation, and pretend to understand that reliance on unreliable sources of energy puts our nation at risk.

She has proposed price controls on food as a solution to inflation. You can’t find a single conservative leader in America who believes that the government can do a better job of pricing commodities than the market, and that food price controls don’t mean food shortages. Not even the Washington Post thinks this emphasis on price “gouging” is a good idea.

Kamala Harris is an abortion extremist who as the California Attorney General raided the home of an independent journalist who uncovered an elaborate business venture by Planned Parenthood to market and sell baby body parts from aborted children.  Kamala Harris did not prosecute Planned Parenthood, but the journalist who uncovered and videotaped the sickening practice of selling off body parts as if aborted children were human parts manufacturers.

On taxes, she has embraced taxing unrealized capital gains. An example of an unrealized capital gain would be to impose a tax on a homeowner on any appreciation of the value of their home even though that money is only a paper gain and not in their bank account. 

Also, the Tax Foundation found that Harris’ pledge to end the Trump tax cuts will mean a tax increase for most Americans. In fact, the bottom half of taxpayers would have their average tax rate raised to 4 percent from the current 3.4 percent.  Married couples with two children making a joint income of $85,000 a year would see their taxes go up by $1,661 a year, the equivalent of almost 2 percent of their entire pre-tax salary for the year.    

And of course, the Biden border Czarina Harris has seen 10 million illegals encountered at the border since she was given stewardship of the border crisis by President Biden. Note that this does not include the estimated 2 million illegals who got away after being observed by the Border Patrol. It is so bad that Harris is trying to deny any part in the Biden border fiasco, but not even Google can make the news clips of her appointment go away.

It is really hard to find a screwball, California idea that Harris hasn’t supported, including banning gasoline powered cars, which the Biden-Harris administration would put out of business by 2037, two years after California banned them.

All of this does not even include the Biden-Harris weaponization of the Justice Department and intelligence agencies against their political opponents, the on-going censorship and manipulation of social media platforms to promote the left’s political agenda, or her adamant opposition to the Second Amendment. In fact, it is hard to find a part of the Constitution that Harris actually supports.

Given the above, any person who endorses Kamala Harris for president can no longer call themselves a conservative in any way, shape or form. They are not. They are massive government enablers unable to get over the fact that Donald Trump defeated them in a primary election in 2016 and again in the primary of 2024.  

The question that the Liz Cheneys of the world need to answer is whether they were lying when they claimed to be pro-life, support free markets, lower taxes, less federal government control, gun rights, energy independence and the basic freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution.

Even those with the worst cases of Trump Derangement Syndrome should be able to look at the policies of Kamala Harris and reject them outright. Those with the worst cases have the option of voting third party – maybe the pot party (err, the Libertarian Party) is high enough to earn your vote. But endorsing Kamala Harris is admitting that everything you said was important no longer matters, and that you support the likely final stage of the fundamental transformation of America because … Donald Trump.

I can no longer take those seriously who have embraced the New Age Harris who rejects constitutional governance in her musings about being unburdened by the past

The very soul of America is at stake, and there is no room in the fight to preserve the freedoms enshrined in the Constitution and the ideal that all are created equal endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights for those who would sacrifice our fundamental liberties because they don’t like mean tweets. Now, more than ever, in the words of Ronald Reagan, this is our time for choosing.

The author is president of Americans for Limited Government.

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/08/time-for-never-trumpers-to-drop-their-conservative-charade/  

Polls: With RFK, Jr. Out Of Battleground States And After DNC, Kamala Harris Still Can’t Get Above 50 Percent Nationally

By Robert Romano

Vice President Kamala Harris is not cracking 50 percent in the popular vote in three national polls taken in the aftermath of Robert Kennedy, Jr. suspending his campaign in battleground states and endorsing former President Donald Trump and Harris holding her nominating convention.

In the Yahoo! News-YouGov poll taken Aug. 22 to Aug. 26, which covers the period, Harris only leads Trump 47 percent to 46 percent.

And in the Morning Consult poll taken Aug. 23 to Aug. 25, Harris leads Trump 48 percent to 44 percent. 

And in the Economist-YouGov poll, Harris only leads Trump 47 to 45 percent. 

Republicans are no strangers in recent elections to trailing the popular vote. In 2000 and 2016, George W. Bush and Donald Trump won the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote, and in 2020, Trump once again trailed the popular vote but lost narrowly by 43,000 votes in three swing states, Wisconsin (23,000), Arizona (10,000) and Georgia (10,000). 

In fact, Democrats have lost five elections despite winning the popular vote in U.S. history, 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016. It may not seem like a lot but with just 59 presidential elections in U.S. history, it has happened about 8.4 percent of the time. Whereas no Republican has ever lost the Electoral College while winning the popular vote. 

Could the same thing happen in 2024? One indicator might be Harris’ failure to crack 50 percent in the recent polling. In both 2000 and 2016, both Al Gore, with 48.4 percent, and Hillary Clinton, with 48.2 percent, failed to get above 50 percent in the popular vote amid a combination of third-party candidates being on the ballot and the election itself being close, and simultaneously, failed to get a majority of the Electoral College. 

The same was true in 1824 and 1888, when Andrew Jackson and Grover Cleveland failed to get above 50 percent, respectively, and also lost the Electoral College. The exception is 1876 when Samuel Tilden did receive 50.9 percent of the popular vote to Rutherford B. Hayes’ 47.9 percent.

So, in four out of five or 80 percent of the cases where the Democrat won the popular vote but still lost the election, the candidate failed to get above 50 percent nationally. In every instance, there were third-party candidates who made getting a majority impossible. 

Certainly, there are plenty of times when Democrats have won both the popular vote and the Electoral College, while still receiving less than 50 percent of the vote: James Polk in 1844, James Buchanan in 1856, Grover Cleveland in 1892, Woodrow Wilson in 1912 and 1916, Harry Truman in 1948, John Kennedy in 1960 and Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. In everyone of those instances, again, third-party candidates played a significant role. 

So, in nine out of those 13 cases, winning the popular vote albeit with less than 50 percent was good enough for Democrats to win the Electoral College, too. It’s a 69 percent win rate for Democrats historically. 

Still, 31 percent is still a highly significant chance that if Harris fails to get above 50 percent in the popular vote, she might in fact lose the election. 

Therefore, 50 percent or higher in national polling could be highly significant in 2024 and should be paid attention to, especially if the third-party candidates — the remaining are Jill Stein and Cornell West — theoretically pull more votes from Harris than they do Trump. 

Whereas, one of Kennedy’s stated rationales for withdrawing from the race was that his campaign based on polling felt he would hurt Trump more than Harris without any real path to victory for himself.

But even with Kennedy out, with Stein and West still in, it could be third party candidates who stand out as protest votes against one or both of the major parties who end up being one of the determining factors in the presidential election, this time with victory potentially being spoiled for Democrats and Harris and in favor of Trump — again. Stay tuned.

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

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/08/polls-with-rfk-jr-out-of-battleground-states-and-after-dnc-kamala-harris-still-cant-get-above-50-percent-nationally/