Subject: H4A News Clips 5.24.15
From: Alexandria Phillips <[email-masked]>
To: Alexandria Phillips <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 24 May 2015 10:38:53 -0400
List-Id: <hrcrapid.googlegroups.com>

*H4A Press Clips*

*May 24, 2015*

SUMMARY OF TODAY’S NEWS

Hillary Clinton took questions for reporters Friday for the second time in
a week, commenting on the State Department’s disclosure of emails related
to the 2012 attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.
Mrs. Clinton has been publicly calling for the release of her emails by the
State Department, and said on Friday that she’d like them to be released
even faster.

On Thursday, the campaign announced its big kick-off rally, where Clinton
will address supporters with a big-picture speech about her candidacy and
her vision for the future.

SUMMARY OF TODAY’S
NEWS.......................................................................
1

TODAY’S KEY
STORIES...................................................................................
2

*Hillary Clinton Takes Questions Again and Addresses Emails* // NYT // Jess
Bidgood - May 23, 2015                2

*On policy, Clinton plays it safe* // Politico // Annie Karni - May 23,
2015........................................ 4

*Hillary Clinton in Seacoast: 'I want to be small business president'*
//Seacoast Online // Erik Hawkins - May 23,
2015...........................................................................................................................................
7

*Hillary Clinton's Surprisingly Effective Campaign* // The Atlantic //
Peter Beinart - May 22, 2015... 9

SOCIAL
MEDIA...............................................................................................
11

*The New York Times (5/23/15; 1:07PM):* Breaking News: Ireland Becomes
First Country to Legalize Gay Marriage by Popular
Vote.........................................................................................................................
11

HRC NATIONAL
COVERAGE.........................................................................
11

*Va. Democrats hope to use Clinton mojo to improve their own position* //
WaPo // By Rachel Weiner – May 24,
2015..........................................................................................................................................
11

*The Real Democratic Primary: Hillary Versus the Media* // The New Republic
// Suzy Khimm -May 22, 2015 13

*Clinton’s NH appearance draws ardent supporters, curious onlookers* //
Concord Monitor //Casey McDermott - May 23,
2015.............................................................................................................................
16

*Hillary Clinton says more emails will be released* // Boston Globe //
Chris Cassidy -May 23, 2015. 18

*Question foreshadows Hillary Clinton’s biggest fear* // Boston Globe //
Joe Battenfield - May 23, 2015             20

*Hillary Clinton responds to released emails while in N.H.* // WHDH //
Byron Barnett - May 23, 2015               21

*What the resurfacing of Sidney Blumenthal says about Hillary Clinton*
//Vox // Jonathan Allen - May 23,
2015................................................................................................................................................
22

*Why Less Competition Is Hurtful to Hillary* // Real Clear Politics //
Andrew Kohut - May 23, 2015 24

*Miss Uncongeniality* // Free Beacon // Matthew Continetti - May 23,
2015.................................. 25

*Silda Wall Spitzer hosts Hillary fundraiser* // Politico // Annie Karni -
May 23, 2015..................... 28

*Hillary Clinton to Hold Fund-Raiser Hosted by Spitzer’s Ex-Wife* // NYT //
Maggie Haberman - My 23, 2015 28

OTHER DEMOCRATS NATIONAL
COVERAGE............................................ 30

*Elizabeth Warren and Democrats should be down with TPP* // WaPo//
Johnathan Capehart  - May 23, 2015  30

*7 ways Bernie Sanders could transform America* // Salon // Mathrew Rozsa -
May 23, 2015........... 32

*Kaine’s quest for war legitimacy* // WaPo // George F Wil - lMay 23,
2015..................................... 35

*Democrats' Vanishing Future* // National Journal // Josh Kraushaar - May
21, 2015..................... 37

GOP................................................................................................................
39

*Ben Carson wins SRLC straw poll* // Politico //Alex Isenstadt - May 23,
2015................................ 39

*Chris Christie: The strong, loud type* // CBS News // John Dickerson - May
22, 2015..................... 41

*A Rubio campaign blueprint, for all the world to see* // WaPo // Dan Balz
- May 23, 105............... 43

*Rick Santorum’s got a point: Nothing helps poll numbers like winning* //
WaPo // Philip Bump - May 23,
2015................................................................................................................................................
45

*Kasich May Miss Cut in Ohio Debate* // RCP // Rebecca Berg - May 22,
2015................................ 46

*Ten Is Too Few* // Weekly Standard // Jay Cost - June 1,
2015..................................................... 48

*Reform Conservatism Is An Answer To The Wrong Question* // The Federalist
// Robert Tracinski - May 22,
2015................................................................................................................................................
50

*The power grab that destroyed American politics: How Newt Gingrich created
our modern dysfunction* // Salon // Paul Rosenberg  - May 23,
2015..................................................................................................
52

*“The party of white people”: How the Tea Party took over the GOP, armed
with all the wrong lessons from history* // Salon // David Sehat - May 23,
2015.......................................................................................
58

TOP
NEWS.....................................................................................................
63

DOMESTIC..................................................................................................
63

*After Senate vote, NSA prepares to shut down phone tracking program* //
LAT // Brian Bennett and Lisa Mascaro - May 23,
2015...........................................................................................................................
63

*McConnell's NSA gambit fails* // The Hill // Jordain Carney and Julian
Hattem - May 23, 2015..... 66

*States quietly consider ObamaCare exchange mergers* // The Hill // Sarah
Ferris - May 23, 2015.. 68

INTERNATIONAL.......................................................................................
72

*Ireland legalizes gay marriage in historic vote* // USA Today // Kim
Hjelmgaard - May 23, 2015.... 72

*ISIS Gains Momentum With Palmyra, Assad Squeezed on Multiple Fronts* //
NBC News // Cassandra Vinograd - May 23,
2015.............................................................................................................................
74

*39 die in Mexico police shootout with suspected cartel members* // LAT //
Deborah Bonello -May 23, 2015    76

OPINIONS/EDITORIALS/BLOGS..................................................................
77

*Weary of Relativity* // NYT // Frank Bruni - May 23,
2015............................................................ 77

*Echoes of Iraq war sound in 2016 presidential race* // LAT // Mark Z.
Barabak - May 23, 2015....... 80

*Obama has a strategy for fighting ISIS -- one that isn't working* // LAT
// Doyle McManus - May 23, 2015        82

*Is the Ex-Im Bank Doomed?* // NYT // Joe Nocera - May 22,
2015................................................ 84

*End Ex-Im Bank, the government's Enron* // Washington Examiner // Rep.
Bill Flores and Senator Mike Kee - May 21,
2015.............................................................................................................................
86

*Banks as Felons, or Criminality Lite* // NYT // Editorial Board - May 22,
2015.............................. 88

*Why Obamacare makes me optimistic about US politics* // Vox // Ezra Klein
- May 22, 2015........ 89

*The Islamic State is entirely a creation of Obama’s policies* // WaPo //
Ed Rogers - May 22, 2015.. 93

*The Art of Avoiding War* // The Atlantic // Robert D. Kaplan - May 23,
2015................................. 94

*The Notorious R.B.G*. // National Journal // Editorial Board - May 22.
2015................................. 96

TODAY’S KEY STORIES

Hillary Clinton Takes Questions Again and Addresses Emails
<http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/05/22/hillary-clinton-takes-questions-again-and-addresses-emails/>
// NYT // Jess Bidgood - May 23, 2015

Hillary Rodham Clinton took questions for reporters Friday for the second
time in a week, commenting on the State Department’s disclosure of emails
related to the 2012 attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi,
Libya.

“I’m glad the emails are starting to come out,” Mrs. Clinton said at a
campaign event in Hampton, N.H. “This is something that I’ve asked to be
done, as you know, for a long time. And those releases are beginning. I
want people to be able to see all of them.”

The State Department made public 296 emails related to the attacks, which
had been stored on Mrs. Clinton’s private email server. Republicans have
attacked Mrs. Clinton’s use of personal email during the time she was
secretary of state, suggested she was trying to hide her correspondence.

Mrs. Clinton has been publicly calling for the release of her emails by the
State Department, and said on Friday that she’d like them to be released
even faster. She noted that one of the emails was just declared classified.
The email, forwarded to her by her deputy chief of staff, Jake Sullivan,
involved reports of arrests in Libya of possible suspects in the attack,
and was not considered classified at the time.

At the event in New Hampshire, Mrs. Clinton said, “I’m aware that the FBI
has asked that a portion of one email be held back. That happens in the
process of Freedom of Information Act responses. But that doesn’t change
the fact that all of the information in the emails was handled
appropriately.”

Mrs. Clinton made the remarks at the Smuttynose Brewing Company, where she
led a round-table discussion on American small businesses.

As the event wound down, reporters crowded around Ms. Clinton when she
posed for selfies with those in attendance. And then, to the surprise of
some who have grown accustomed to Ms. Clinton keeping her distance from the
press in her nascent campaign, she took questions.

In response to a question about Iraq, Mrs. Clinton said she agrees with
American military strategy there and she did not allude to recent victories
by the Islamic State in Ramadi, Iraq, and Palmyra, Syria.

“I basically agree with the policy that we are currently following, and
that is American air support is available, American intelligence and
surveillance is available, American trainers are trying to undo the damage
that was done to the Iraqi army by former Prime Minister Maliki,” Mrs.
Clinton said. She added, “There is no role whatsoever for American soldiers
on the ground to go back other than in the capacity as trainers and
advisers.”

And she had a curt response to a question about whether Americans trust her
on Benghazi:

“I’m going to let Americans decide that,” said Mrs. Clinton, before aides
whisked her away.

The emails siphoned attention from the intended theme of the day. During
her small-business roundtable, which lasted about an hour, Mrs. Clinton
discussed economic opportunities for the middle class, declaring at one
point, “I want to be the small business president.”

Mrs. Clinton also used the event to highlight her support for the
Export-Import bank, which guarantees loans for American exports and which
faces opposition from congressional Republicans – including some of the
presidential candidates – as it nears a deadline for reauthorization.

“It is wrong that Republicans in Congress are now trying to cut off this
vital lifeline for American small businesses,” said Mrs. Clinton. “It’s
wrong that candidates for president who really should know better are
jumping on this bandwagon.”

She also, briefly, seemed to lose track of where she was. “Here in
Washington, we know that, unfortunately, the deck is still being stacked
for those at the top,” Mrs. Clinton said.

Mrs. Clinton has a long history in New Hampshire — she won the 2008 primary
here before going on to lose the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama —
and some audience members arrived here carrying relics from trips Mrs.
Clinton made to the state in the 1990’s during her husband’s candidacy and
presidency.

David Schwartz, an 58-year-old attorney, had in his pocket a photograph of
himself and Mrs. Clinton that he said was taken by Bill Clinton when he was
a presidential candidate in 1992. Mr. Schwartz, who works with lenders, is
a Republican, but said he would consider supporting Mrs. Clinton because
the issue of small business loans is important to him.

Mr. Schwartz compared his photograph to a framed one held by Lincoln
Soldati, 66, a defense lawyer. The image showed Mr. Soldati in conversation
with Mrs. Clinton when she paid a visit to the University of New Hampshire
at some point in the 1990s, and he said he was thrilled that she has
returned.

“I don’t believe there’s ever been anybody running for president that is
more qualified than she is,” said Mr. Soldati, who is a Democrat.

On policy, Clinton plays it safe
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/on-policy-clinton-plays-it-safe-118236.html?hp=c3_3>
// Politico // Annie Karni - May 23, 2015

HAMPTON, N.H. — Hillary Clinton’s approach to policy, so far, has been as
risk-averse as her media strategy.

On the trail, she prefers the safe haven of the controlled roundtable
setting, and for the most part avoids taking questions from the press. And
when it comes to the issues she wants to talk about, Clinton sticks with
those that are either so broadly popular as to present no threat to her
brand or general-election prospects, or so small-bore as to carry little
chance of backlash.

On Friday in New Hampshire, Clinton spoke with a passionate, progressive
voice, pounding away at Republicans for “jumping on the bandwagon” to kill
the Export-Import Bank, whose authorization in Congress is set to expire
June 30. It was a safe call, to say the least: House Democrats support the
bank. Moderate Democrats such as Sen. Chuck Schumer support the bank. A
liberal like Sen. Elizabeth Warren? She’s pro-bank, too.

“It is wrong that Republicans in Congress are now trying to cut off this
vital lifeline for American small businesses,” said Clinton, at the
SmuttyNose Brewery in Hampton. Republicans, she said, would threaten the
livelihoods of American workers rather than “stand up to the Tea Party and
talk radio. It’s wrong, it’s embarrassing.”

Weighing in forcefully on an issue where her outlook matches that of the
majority of her party was right in line with Clinton’s posture on many
policy issues during this first phase of her campaign.

In her month and a half on the trail, Clinton has spoken in broad terms
that give her the appearance of sometimes channeling Sen. Elizabeth Warren
and championing the left — in the case of her appearance at SmuttyNose
Brewery, sticking up for small businesses and bashing the GOP.

She sounds like she’s wrapping her arms around the progressive wing of her
party while alienating few. She uses rhetoric that sounds Warren-esque
(“The deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top”) while being
vague about details of how precisely she would address the problem.

One Democratic strategist described Clinton’s positioning as a “head fake,
making the general audience of the left think she’s one of them.”

The risk is that Clinton plays into the stereotype that she is a cautious
and poll-driven politician more inclined to appease rather than lead. In an
op-ed in the Portsmouth Herald Friday, Sen. Marco Rubio knocked Clinton for
playing it safe and feeling no pressure to “offer new ideas.”

Clinton campaign advisers, meanwhile, argue that her positioning is not a
strategy at all, but rather a sincere reflection of her record of fighting
for the middle-class.

“The campaign is built on that record and consistent with the values
Hillary Clinton has always championed,” spokesman Jesse Ferguson said.
“It’s not about left or right, it’s about the values Hillary Clinton
believes in and the fight she is continuing to wage.”

But the issues her advisers cite tend to be broadly accepted Democratic
chestnuts. Clinton has said same-sex marriage should be a constitutional
right; the minimum wage should be raised; the Supreme Court’s Citizens
United decision should be overturned to remove big money out of politics;
community college should be free; police departments should be equipped
with body cameras; what works in Obamacare should be extended and the high
cost of prescription drugs should be lowered; paid family leave should be
instituted; effective treatment should be provided for those who suffer
from mental health and substance abuse problems.

Some of her stances, such as that on same-sex marriage, represent an
evolution from where she has been in the past. But overall, Clinton has not
supported progressive positions where she would have to stick her neck out
from where the majority of her party is.

Moderate Democrats have taken note. “She’s being smart by checking the
boxes on progressive issues that have wide appeal across the party, but
keeping her general election powder dry by not going too far to the left,”
said Jonathan Cowan, president of Third Way, a think tank started by former
Clinton administration staffers.

Nonetheless, she’s succeeded in giving the impression of moving to the left.

The right-wing America Rising PAC has already accused Clinton of “staking
out far-left positions that are outside of the mainstream of most
Americans.” Even some of her biggest donors claim they see a shift.

“I think she is moving a little bit to the left and I think that’s fine,”
hedge fund manager Marc Lasry, who recently hosted a fundraiser for
Clinton, said in a television interview with Bloomberg. “People who are
giving money to her understand that.”

But supporting universal pre-k and reforming student loans are hardly bold
positions for Democrats in 2015 — instead, Democratic strategists argued,
they act as liberal stalking horse issues that allow a candidate to appear
boldly progressive while risking little.

A real sign that Clinton was tacking left would be a call for a
single-payer healthcare system, or a promise to break the country’s large
banks, or returning to a higher income-tax rate on everyone making more
than $1 million a year. Clinton is unlikely to take those positions, and so
far has not offered those kinds of specifics.

Indeed, as Vox.com’s Jonathan Allen pointed out, 91 percent of voters said
they favored police officers wearing body cameras, according to a Pew poll
from last year. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll from April showed that 58
percent of respondents favor legalizing same-sex marriage. And 57 percent
of voters support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who
live in this country, according to a CBS/New York Times poll from earlier
this month.

On those issues that could be potentially costly to her — like weighing in
on President Obama’s trade deal or the Keystone XL Pipeline— Clinton has
notably refused to weigh in.

“Her strategy: alienate no one,” said Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf.
“Give the left of the Party no reason to criticize. Rhetoric works better
than detail. Rhetoric you can change or edit. Details are difficult to
erase.”

Details, such as how much she would like to raise the minimum wage, have
yet to be shared. Even on immigration, where Clinton surprised many of the
immigration activists who in the past had protested her speeches, some are
still waiting eagerly for specifics. Clinton has yet to outline how,
legally, she would be able to institute any policy that would go beyond
where Obama went with an executive action to let millions more undocumented
immigrants gain protections and work permits.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton eyes her chocolate peanut
butter fudge ice cream Friday during a stop at Moo's Place in Derry, N.H.
AP Photo

“Everything we hear now is words on the campaign trail, but the proof is in
the pudding,” said Javier Valdes, co-executive director of Make the Road
Action Fund. “We appreciate that she’s pushing the envelope. But the
details will matter. We’re happy to hear that she’s taking that stance but
we need to hear a little bit more.”

The hope, Democrats said, is that Clinton will soon add specifics to the
outlines of policy she has only traced so far.

On Thursday, the campaign announced its big kick-off rally, where Clinton
will address thousands of supporters with a big-picture speech about her
candidacy and her vision for the future.

Hillary Clinton in Seacoast: 'I want to be small business president'
<http://www.seacoastonline.com/article/20150522/NEWS/150529667/101098/NEWS>
//Seacoast Online // Erik Hawkins - May 23, 2015

HAMPTON — Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, a former first
lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state, began her day in the Seacoast
Friday at Smuttynose Brewery, playing to the crowd of small business
leaders gathered for the occasion.

"I want to be the small business president," Clinton said. "Let's make
'middle class' mean something again."

Before she sat down at the forum, Clinton took a 20-minute tour of the
brewery with owner Peter Egleston. Clinton called the brewery "impressive."

When Egleston noted his beer is served even in Dublin, Ireland, Clinton
said, “It’s a small world story.”

Clinton received a warm reception in the crowded warehouse stacked high
with kegs as the strains of Miles Davis played and she joined Egleston and
Joanne Francis, owners of Smuttynose Brewing, along with five other area
business owners for a discussion on making small businesses successful.

Clinton's remarks were brief. She said although the national economy is
"out of the ditch," the country still has to "stand up and get running
again."

Clinton said small business owners' hard work and investments should pay
off, and they should feel secure in saving for their children's college and
their own retirement.

"The big businesses have a lot of advantages that you don't," she said.

Clinton also called for regulations to be loosened on community banks to
ease lending to small businesses.

Francis, the brewery's co-owner, said it had been a "white-knuckle ride"
securing loans and other money to start the brewery and open a new
operations facility in 2014. "It was terrifying, to be honest with you,"
Francis said.

Panelist Charlie Cullen, of The Provident Bank, in his closing words with
Clinton asked her to "please soften (the Dodd-Frank bill) just a little
bit," then added, "I think now it's time for a Smutty!"

There were a few eyebrows raised when, while standing in front of
prominently placed Smuttynose signs, Clinton began a remark by saying,
"Here in Washington ..." The apparent gaffe went unremarked on at the time,
though it began circulating quickly online through social media and news
reports.

After greeting supporters and taking several brief questions from the
press, Clinton departed for Exeter's Water Street Bookstore, for a
grassroots organizing meeting.

When asked about the recent release of her State Department emails, Clinton
said she was glad the emails from her controversial private server were
being released, albeit slowly.

"It has been my request from the beginning that they release as many as
possible," she said. "I also understand that there is a protocol being
followed."

When asked her position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership currently being
negotiated by President Obama, which has drawn criticism from the political
left and perceived to be conceived in secrecy, Clinton was not prepared to
take a firm stand.

"I have some concerns about protecting American workers and a level playing
field, as well as currency manipulation ... as I've said before, though, I
will make up my mind — I will judge this when I see exactly what's in it,"
she said.

Clinton also said regarding the conflict in Iraq and the setbacks in the
fight against Islamic State militants that, "at the end of the thought
process, this has to be fought and won by the Iraqis. There is no role
whatsoever for American troops on the ground beyond training the Iraqis."

At Water Street Bookstore in downtown Exeter, Clinton joined owner and town
Selectman Dan Chartrand, along with other local Democratic activists and
representatives including state Reps. Alexis Simpson and Marcia Moody,
Selectwoman Nancy Belanger and Selectwoman Julie Gilman to continue her
discussion of concerns facing small businesses.

Water Street filled quickly with supporters, including a group of Phillips
Exeter Academy students, who said they were missing a scheduled sports
photo in order to catch a glimpse of Clinton. Across the street, a handful
of Clinton opponents gathered for a brief time holding signs that read,
"Clinton Lied. Four heroes died," and Tea Party slogans, but appeared to
disperse quickly.

Chartrand said after the event that Clinton's message about expanding
access to capital for small business owners resonated strongly with him,
and that although he only truly became politically active in 2012, he was
"now a canvasser, through and through."

"I've fallen in love with campaigning," he said.

"What I love specifically is that she has a real focus in her economic plan
for leveling the playing field for small businesses and community banks,"
he added. "That's a huge part of the reason I'm supporting her."

Hillary Clinton's Surprisingly Effective Campaign
<http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/05/hillary-clintons-2016-campaign/393872/?utm_source=SFTwitter>
// The Atlantic // Peter Beinart - May 22, 2015

Hillary Clinton has been an official candidate for president for five
weeks, and she still hasn’t done the thing most candidates do on day one:
given a speech laying out her vision for America. Nor is she planning on
doing so anytime soon. Politico reports that Hillary’s “why I’m running for
president,” speech, initially scheduled for May, has now been delayed until
June, or even later.

There’s a reason for that: The speech is unlikely to be very good. Soaring
rhetoric and grand themes have never been Hillary’s strengths. That’s one
reason so many liberals found her so much less inspirational than Barack
Obama in 2008. And it’s a problem with deep roots. In his biography, A
Woman in Charge, Carl Bernstein describes Hillary, then in law school,
struggling to articulate her generation’s perspective in an address to the
League of Women Voters. “If she was speaking about a clearly defined
subject,” Bernstein writes, “her thoughts would be well organized, finely
articulated, and delivered in almost perfect outline form. But before the
League audience, she again and again lapsed into sweeping abstractions.”

Team Clinton appears to understand this. And so it has done something
shrewd. Instead of talking vision, Hillary is talking policy, which she
does really well.

The Many Measures of Hillary Clinton

If Hillary’s struggles with vision go back a long time, so does her passion
for wonkery. As a student government leader at Wellesley, Bernstein notes,
Hillary developed “a better system for the return of library books” and
“studied every aspect of the Wellesley curriculum in developing a
successful plan to reduce the number of required courses.” In 1993, she
took time off from a vacation in Hawaii to grill local officials about the
state’s healthcare system. In his excellent book on Hillary’s 2000 Senate
race, Michael Tomasky observes that, “In the entire campaign, she had
exactly one truly inspiring moment” but that, “over time it became evident
to all but the most cynical that she actually cared about utility rates.”

Hillary’s handlers have played to this strength. On April 29, she devoted
the first major speech of her campaign not to her vision for America, but
to something more specific: race and crime. She began with a graphic and
harrowing description of the young black men recently killed by police:

Walter Scott shot in the back in Charleston, South Carolina. Unarmed. In
debt. And terrified of spending more time in jail for child support
payments he couldn’t afford. Tamir Rice shot in a park in Cleveland, Ohio.
Unarmed and just 12 years old. Eric Garner choked to death after being
stopped for selling cigarettes on the streets of this city. And now Freddie
Gray. His spine nearly severed while in police custody.

She recounted advocating for prisoners while director the University of
Arkansas’ legal-aid clinic. She noted the parallels between race and class,
observing that life expectancy is declining not only for many African
Americans, but also for white women without high-school degrees. And she
made the crucial point that because government currently treats drug
addiction and psychiatric disorders primarily as criminal rather than
public-health problems, “our prisons and our jails are now our mental
health institutions.”

The speech was not merely substantive. It was authentic. It showcased the
real Hillary Clinton: A woman who, whatever her faults, hates injustice and
knows what she’s talking about when it comes to government.

A week later in Las Vegas, Hillary gave another impressive speech, this one
on immigration. In a media environment where “pro” and “anti” immigration
often refers merely to how many people America lets in, Hillary turned the
conversation to how America treats immigrants once we do. First, she talked
movingly about her childhood memories of the migrant farm workers who
worked in the fields around Chicago. Then she attacked the idea, common in
“pro-immigration” Republican circles, that America should legalize
undocumented immigrants without allowing them citizenship. “Today not a
single Republican candidate, announced or potential, is clearly and
consistently supporting a path to citizenship,” she declared. “Not one.
When they talk about “legal status,” that’s code for “second-class status.”
America, Hillary insisted, must see the undocumented not merely as workers,
but as human beings.

Sooner or later, Hillary will have to move from policy to philosophy. It
may be a rocky transition. And if the Republicans nominate Marco Rubio
(which at this point looks like a decent bet), she will face a candidate
who interweaves personal biography and national aspiration better than she
does. But if Hillary stumbles, these opening weeks of her campaign may
offer a template for how she regains her footing. She’s at her best talking
about America not abstractly, but concretely. She’s most inspiring when
talking not about what she believes, but about what she wants to do. And
she most effectively humanizes herself by being true to who she is:
knowledgeable, passionate, and vaguely obsessive about making government
work. Against Rubio, or any other likely Republican challenger, that
identity should provide an excellent contrast.

SOCIAL MEDIA

The New York Times (5/23/15; 1:07PM):
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/24/world/europe/ireland-gay-marriage-referendum.html?smid=tw-bna>
Breaking News: Ireland Becomes First Country to Legalize Gay Marriage by
Popular Vote

HRC NATIONAL COVERAGE

Va. Democrats hope to use Clinton mojo to improve their own position
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/2015/05/23/d564d62a-ff5c-11e4-805c-c3f407e5a9e9_story.html>
// WaPo // By Rachel Weiner – May 24, 2015

Hillary Rodham Clinton needs Virginia Democrats next year. But they need
her now.

In what is expected to be a heavily competitive presidential battleground
in 2016, Democrats have a more pressing challenge this fall: trying to gain
control of one of the state legislature’s two Republican-held chambers.

Democrats are within one seat of taking the state Senate. But low turnout
in off-year elections tends to favor Republicans, and there is little
evidence so far that voters are engaging with unusual enthusiasm.

That’s one reason organizers think a little Clinton excitement could help.

That dynamic was on full display on a recent weeknight night in Arlington,
when a couple of hundred Clinton enthusiasts gathered at a second-floor
sports bar for one of the first campaign meetings in the state.

“Hillary is all about building up the Democratic Party,” Susan Johnson told
the crowd, many of whom knew each other from previous campaigns. “What she
wants us to do is make sure our Democratic candidates in the state Senate,
in the House of Delegates, get elected.”

Ginning up grass-roots excitement during off-year state elections helps
Clinton, too, by starting to build the organization she’ll need to win the
battleground state next year and earning favor with Democrats who might
think she is taking her nomination for granted.

Johnson, a elementary school teacher turned full-time political activist,
is the one paid Clinton staffer in the state. Since the Clinton campaign
launched in mid-April, Johnson has been working to build up a network of
volunteers aimed at sustaining momentum until the real staff comes in.
She’s held similar events in Annandale and Richmond. Three more are
scheduled for Newport News, Ashburn and Roanoke.

Clinton is “extremely supportive of us in Virginia to take this
opportunity, while we’re building the grass roots for her, applying that
grass roots immediately and getting Dems elected this year,” Johnson said.

A visit by Clinton in June is being promoted heavily as a chance to refill
depleted state party coffers. Democrats are expecting so large a crowd that
the annual Jefferson-Jackson event is no longer being called a “dinner” —
the party hopes for so many attendees that a sit-down meal would be
challenging.

A spokesman said Clinton will “earn every vote” in Virginia’s primary and
is “committed to strengthening Virginia Democrats so they win elections
across the board in this year and beyond.”

Democratic control of the state Senate would be a boon for a close friend
of Clinton’s, too: Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D). It would give the governor a
bulwark against the Republican-dominated House in his final two years in
office. It would show his clout as a Democratic leader on the national
stage. And it would help build momentum in crucial areas of the state for
Clinton, whose campaign he chaired in 2008.

“The best way you can help Hillary is to help elect Democrats to the state
Senate,” said Brian Zuzenak, who leads the governor’s political action
committee.

The Democrats’ path to that mutual victory won’t be easy, though they need
to take only one Republican seat to create an even split in the Senate.
(That would give Democratic Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam the power to break any
tie votes.) Republicans are already mobilizing.

“We’re expecting our targeted races to make thousands of voter contacts
each week now, and if they’re not we’re having some real heart-to-heart
conversations with them,” said Republican Senate Caucus Chairman Ryan T.
McDougle (Hanover).

In only one of the districts Democrats are hoping to flip have they
consistently won the past few statewide elections. That seat is held by
retiring Sen. John C. Watkins (R-Powhatan). Watkins represents both
Democratic Richmond voters who Clinton will be looking to turn out in
droves and ¬Republican-leaning suburban areas where she will need to be
competitive.

Other top Democratic targets may be harder to win, but they are in swing
territory that will be critical in 2016 — Loudoun and Prince William
counties, Hampton Roads.

Arlington is now solidly Democratic, but it’s where some of the party’s
most dedicated and well-connected members are based.

Northern Virginia is “the top of the swing, the base of the tsunami that’s
going to roll down south and turn the entire state blue,” Johnson told the
crowd to cheers.

But the cheering was far more muted when she turned to this year’s races.
How many eager Clinton volunteers will turn out, as she urged, at the
“awesome parade” in Falls Church on Memorial Day?

Democrats hope many of them will be like Arman Azad, a voluble 17-year-old
who can’t yet vote but has been volunteering for Democrats for years. He
took the Metro from Tysons Corner to Arlington by himself and quickly
gravitated toward the few other teenagers in a room of 20-to-50-something
professionals.

Azad got involved with the Arlington County Democratic Committee when he
was looking for a school community service project. Soon he was a convert,
trudging through the snow to help elect state Sen. Jennifer T. Wexton
(Loudoun) in a hotly contested special election last year.

Growing up, he says, “I always perceived Virginia as this conservative
Southern state.” When he started paying attention to politics, gay marriage
was banned in the state and the government was embroiled in controversy
over transvaginal ultrasounds for women seeking abortions.

Now, the marriage ban has been overturned in court after the state attorney
general refused to defend it.

“It’s just a seismic shift,” Azad said. “It’s kind of cool to be part of
that transition.”

Some friends, he said, agree that progressive political activism is now
“cool.” Others are persuaded that it will look good on their college
applications.

Maurice Champagne, 34, is way past college. He just finished graduate
school. When he saw Clinton’s announcement video, he laughed, because the
first story was his own. Like the woman in the video, his mother moved from
Pittsburgh to Falls Church so he could go to a school where a 7-year-old
wouldn’t get jumped in the halls.

He volunteered for the Obama campaign in 2008 but was too busy with his
dissertation in 2012. The Clinton event Tuesday was his “first step to get
back into the real world.”

Asked whether he would keep volunteering from now through 2016, however, he
was skeptical.

“Until I find a job,” he said.

The Real Democratic Primary: Hillary Versus the Media
<http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121884/hillary-clinton-vs-media-real-democratic-primary>
// The New Republic // Suzy Khimm -May 22, 2015

Beth Lilly, 29, remembers the first time she felt like the media was doing
Hillary Clinton wrong: It was in 1992, when she was just about six years
old, and remembers that people weren’t happy about Hillary’s chocolate-chip
cookie recipe.

The incident was actually one of the most infamous moments of the 1992
campaign. “I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but
what I decided to do was fulfill my profession,” Hillary said. The comment
prompted a media firestorm—and an invitation from “Family Circle” magazine
to pit her cookie recipe against Barbara Bush’s. “The press coverage was
just so absurd,” recalls Lilly, who’s now a policy attorney in Washington,
D.C.

It was Lilly’s very first memory of Hillary. Twenty-three years later,
Lilly sees the Hillary pile-on is happening yet again, and she’ll be there
to support her. “So her foundation took money. It’s kind of what
foundations do,” she tells me at a recent happy hour for Clinton supporters
in Arlington, Virginia.

To the irritation of her biggest devotees, the controversial donations to
the Clinton Foundation—and the efforts to tie them to Hillary's
policymaking at the State Department—have loomed over the early weeks of
her official campaign. Jack Bardo, a young Democratic activist from
Arlington, believes “the media is missing the mark” by focusing on such
issues. “I wasn’t surprised—that’s what you’d expect in this media
landscape,” says Bardo, who supported Clinton in the 2008 primary.

The lack of competition in the Democratic primary has left Hillary’s most
ardent supporters with the strange task of having someone to root for,
without having someone to root against. Her Republican opponents are a
distant challenge; the other Democratic candidates are mere speed bumps in
the polls. Instead, the most visible threat to Hillary is her own public
image, leaving her early supporters with the dual mission of ginning up
enthusiasm for her campaign—and pointing fingers at the media for trying to
drag her down.

Just a few Metro stops from the White House, the northern Virginia corner
of Hillaryland is particularly well suited to the task of flacking for
Clinton, full of political junkies, yellow-dog Democrats, media-savvy
consultants, grad students, wannabe Hillary campaign staffers, and other
ambitious professionals who are old enough to have grown up with Hillary
but too young to have been burned out on anti-Clinton mudslinging.

Nate Maeur, 29, remembers seeing Hillary for the first time on TV when he
was young. She was advocating for children’s rights in Africa. “I remember
being glued to the TV as a really little kid, watching her, almost being
entranced by what she was saying, what she believed in, because it was
exactly what my mother was saying,” says Maeur, who runs a workforce
development organization. “I’m surprised I didn’t confuse my mom for her,
and say—‘Oh, there’s Mom right there.’”

For Clinton’s younger supporters—many of whom, like Maeur, were Barack
Obama campaign volunteers—their memories of the scandals and
pseudo-scandals of the Clinton years are hazy at best, filtered through the
soft focus of childhood. In sharper relief for them are the accomplishments
that Hillary has racked up since then—U.S. senator, 2008 candidate,
secretary of state—which her young Arlington supporters quickly rattled off
when asked why they were backing her. “She’s going down in history whether
people like it or not,” says Renzo Olivari, 19, a political science major
at James Madison University who hopes to run for office one day. He was
still in middle school during the 2008 campaign but remembers watching her
speeches at age 12 and getting “emotionally invested” in the Clinton
campaign even then.

In Clinton, young supporters see someone who’s risen up through the
political establishment on her own merits: the ultimate Washington success
story. What they missed earlier in the ‘90s was what Josh Marshall
describes as the “Vince Foster moment” that the Clintons had to overcome
first:

For those of you not familiar with Vince Foster, his tragic suicide or the
years-long right-wing clown show it kicked off, it is probably best
described as the '90s version of Benghazi...It's never enough for the
Clintons' perennial critics to be satisfied with potential conflicts of
interest or arguably unseemly behavior. It's got to be more. It always has
to be more. There have to be high crimes, dead people, corrupt schemes. And
if they don't materialize, they need to be made up. Both because there is
an organized partisan apparatus aimed at perpetuating them and because
there is a right-wing audience that requires a constant diet of
hyperventilating outrage from which to find nourishment.

Hillary’s older supporters remember those days all too well and are quick
to point out the larger machinations of the anti-Clinton apparatus. “You
think of all this dirt that gets thrown out at her every day. There are
what, 30 organizations that have been founded to throw crap at her?” says
Allida Black, 63, a historian and long-time Hillary supporter who
co-founded the Ready for Hillary SuperPAC.

The Clinton Foundation story is almost perfectly designed to polarize
Clinton’s supporters and opponents along traditional lines. Critics say
donations from foreign governments and business interests with a stake in
administration policy raise conflict-of-interest questions, but even the
conservative author leading the charge on the issue, Peter Schweizer,
acknowledges there’s no “direct evidence” linking Clinton to any specific
quid pro quo deal. Whether you believe there’s more to the story than just
bad “optics” mostly depends on whether you see it as merely the latest in a
long line of trumped-up Clinton scandals that didn’t pan out or the newest
example of those ruthless and corrupt Clintons flouting the rules for
personal gain.

But like many of Hillary’s young supporters gathered in Arlington, Olivari
doesn’t blame Republicans or a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” Instead, he
faults the media itself for driving the controversy over the Clinton
Foundation, the Libya intervention, and Clinton’s use of her personal email
at the State Department. (The New York Times broke the story on her
personal email, going off a tip from an unidentified source.)  “The
media—they’re bringing these allegations and these scandals up to see if
anyone else in the Democratic side will emerge as a strong candidate and
they can go head to head,” says Olivari, who hopes to run for office one
day. He adds: “That sells, if you put that out, it sells. It’s them trying
to tailor the election to their own needs, rather than what the election
is.”

Hillary herself has been keeping the media at an arm’s length, taking only
a handful of questions from the press in the early weeks of the campaign.
And that control—otherwise known as campaign “discipline”—has even extended
to the upstairs bar in Arlington where her early supporters gathered on
Tuesday. I try to talk to Nalini Pande, a health policy consultant who had
organized the happy hour in Arlington as a more casual alternative to the
traditional house party. But a Clinton grassroots organizer in Virginia
offers herself up for comment instead.

Obama’s own campaign had a similarly defensive attitude toward the media,
but also pioneered new ways to bring his own message directly to supporters
without the press. And that’s ultimately what the Clinton campaign is
trying to draw on as well: Growing its own grassroots network of
support—online and on the ground—that doesn’t need external news outlets to
carry her message. And ultimately, the need for that ground-level
enthusiasm that will be a far biggest obstacle for Clinton to overcome than
Clinton Foundation-palooza.

The Clinton campaign has been organizing similar grassroots events with
paid staffers in all 50 states. It’s building not only a base of volunteers
for Hillary’s campaign, but also a way to push back against the barrage of
negative attention in the media that Clinton’s early supporters are so
frustrated with. “Every day I meet people who are so happy about this in a
way that’s different,” says Black. “This is what you want to get done, not
about what you’re against.” After everyone goes home, Pande keeps the
cheering squad alive on Twitter: “So excited that the Hillary Happy Hour I
planned in Arlington,VA had an awesome turnout! It looked like we had about
200 people!#Hillary2016.”

Clinton’s NH appearance draws ardent supporters, curious onlookers
<http://www.concordmonitor.com/news/politics/17004898-95/clintons-nh-appearance-draws-ardent-supporters-curious-onlookers>
// Concord Monitor //Casey McDermott - May 23, 2015

The windows were papered over from the inside, and on the door of the Water
Street Bookstore in the middle of Exeter, a sign informed customers: “We
are closed from 12-3 p.m. today due to a private event. We apologize for
the inconvenience!”

For those who hadn’t seen the candidate arrive firsthand, these clues — and
the steadily growing crowd of onlookers waiting on the sidewalk outside of
the bookstore — were enough to attract dozens and dozens more as the
afternoon wore on.

“Hillary Clinton is inside the bookstore,” one young woman, who waited well
over an hour outside of the store yesterday afternoon, assured a friend on
the other end of her cell phone. “I’m not kidding . . . I’m sure it’s
Hillary Clinton, dude.”

Indeed, dudes, Clinton was there inside greeting an audience of about 50
supporters — taking questions and signing books before eventually emerging
to an enthusiastic group. It was her second stop on her second trip to New
Hampshire in her second bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, and
one that attracted the largest audience of onlookers of any of the events
she’s held so far this year.

Earlier in the day, Clinton toured Smuttynose Brewery in Hampton and hosted
a roundtable to talk about the challenges facing small businesses. Later in
the day, her schedule included a stop for ice cream at Moo’s Place in Derry
and more time spent in private events with supporters.

Inside the bookstore, the group included a mix of those invited by the
campaign and by the owner. Outside, the group was even more varied: plenty
of ardent supporters, others who were somewhat supportive but not entirely
sold on Clinton’s latest bid for the White House, some students from nearby
Phillips Exeter Academy, and lots who wanted to meet (or, at the very
least, take a picture of) the presidential candidate. One woman held a
handmade sign that declared, “We (heart) Hillary!”; another man held a
less-enthusiastic sign that played off of Clinton’s supporters’ “Ready for
Hillary” rallying cry, “I’m Ready for Oligarchy.”

Two of the students who were waiting outside, Ariana Patsaros and Nicole
Don, will be voting in their first presidential election next year. Both 18
years old, they were drawn to the chance to see the candidate up-close —
but they held different sentiments toward Clinton.

Patsaros, who said she’s been active in her school’s Democratic Club, was
already a big fan and is hoping to soon intern with the candidate. She only
arrived about 15 minutes before Clinton exited the store, but she still
lucked out with a good spot.

“Some tall person let me in front of him, and I ended up getting a selfie
with her,” she said, adding, “She’s my idol, to be honest. I’m so glad that
I had this opportunity.”

Don, meanwhile, is still making up her mind. She said she’s socially
liberal, but economically more conservative, and she’s paying close
attention to candidates’ foreign policy positions.

“I’m torn,” Don said after the event, as the crowd had mostly disappeared
and the street returned to normal. “Still torn.”

Unlike her friend, she didn’t get a chance to see Clinton up-close. She
picked a spot on the other side of the store, and the candidate was farther
out of view.

“I know it’s totally random what happened,” Don said. “Still, it hits you
in the gut when you wait an hour and a half.”

Laura Lunardo was passing through town when it seemed like things were
buzzing outside of the bookstore. The Exeter resident didn’t stick around
with the rest of the crowd, but she said she would have liked to see more
face-to-face interaction from Clinton on the campaign trail.

“I think there should be more public events. I think she needs to be
accessible, and people want to hear some answers,” said Lunardo, who hasn’t
yet committed to Clinton but tends to lean toward Democratic candidates.
“People who hate her are going to hate her. People who want to try and
support her, just tell us what’s going on. And the reporters, let the
reporters talk to you.”

Martha Kies was picking up her daughter, Solveig, at school up the street
when she saw the gathering on the sidewalk. Luckily for the two of them,
they managed to get a place right next to a Secret Service officer and had
a prime spot to wave to Clinton when she left the store. Kies, who also
leans Democrat, said she’s still “waiting to hear a bit more” before making
her mind up on who to support for the 2016 presidential race. In any case,
she thought it would be great for her young daughter to see the candidate
up close.

“If she wins she’ll be the first woman to win,” Kies said. “So we talked
about that. It’s exciting for young girls to see that possibility.”

Overall, Kies was grateful to have the chance to see Clinton. Still, she
said, “It would have been great to have her talk, rather than just sort of
make an appearance” outside before leaving.

One of those inside the store with Clinton was Nancy Richards-Stower, whose
long history of campaign work in New Hampshire includes an active role in
Bill Clinton’s 1992 bid for president. Earlier in the day, Richards-Stower
was stationed at the bottom of the hill at Smuttynose Brewery — balancing a
giant “Hillary” campaign sign against a tree while holding another handmade
sign supporting her.

As she waited to give the candidate a warm welcome ahead of the brewery
tour, Richards-Stower said there’s no question in her mind about supporting
Clinton this time around.

“They’re issue people,” she said of the Clintons, recalling how impressed
she was with Hillary during her time campaigning for her husband two
decades ago. “They’re issue people and loyal friends, and that’s what I
love.”

Now, as Clinton takes on another campaign of her own, Richards-Stower said
she doesn’t think the focus on roundtables and private events, over more
public ones, will be a problem in the long run.

“There’s being president, and there’s being a campaigner. So which do you
care more about — that she’s going to be a fabulous president or a fabulous
campaigner?” she said. “This is her opportunity — it sounds so trite, but
it’s true — to really hear what the struggles are of the normal person. And
you can’t get that if you’re standing in front of a thousand people in a
big auditorium. You have to get that in a small group. Now, how does
Hillary Clinton get to be in a small group? It has to be organized.”

Hillary Clinton says more emails will be released
<http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/us_politics/2015/05/hillary_clinton_says_more_emails_will_be_released>
// Boston Globe // Chris Cassidy -May 23, 2015

HAMPTON, N.H. — Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton said she wants more
of her private emails as secretary of state to come out faster as she faced
the press yesterday just minutes after the State Department released nearly
300 of her messages, many of them on the Benghazi attack.

“I’m glad the emails are starting to come out,” Clinton told reporters.
“This is something I’ve asked to be done for a long time. Those releases
are beginning. I want people to be able to see all of them.”

Among the highlights of the 896-page email treasure-trove:

• One of her emails about the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attack was upgraded
from unclassified to “secret” with 23 words of a November 2012 message
redacted at the FBI’s request.

• Clinton appears to mistakenly refer to one of the Benghazi attack victims
as “Chris Smith,” though it’s unclear whether she’s referring to diplomat
Sean Smith or Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens — who both died. The email
asks whether the State Department should announce the death that night or
in the morning.

• Clinton asked to “pls print” an article called “Benghazi Was Obama’s 3AM
Call,” a headline referencing Clinton’s famous attack ad against then-Sen.
Barack Obama during the 2008 Democratic primary.

• As Clinton recovered from health issues, including a concussion that
forced her to miss a congressional hearing, she wrote to two State
Department officials attending in her place: “I’ll be nursing my cracked
head and cheering you on as you ‘remain calm and carry on!’ ” In a
follow-up email, she wrote: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger (as I
have rationalized for years), so just survive and you’ll have triumphed!”

Clinton hardly seemed defensive about the emails yesterday.

“I would just like to see it expedited so we can get more of them out more
completely,” she said.

Clinton held a tightly controlled small business roundtable at the
Smuttynose Brewery and answered five questions from the mob of reporters —
but none from the 50 people gathered at the invitation-only event.

Arrows printed on paper were hung up to guide Clinton through her brewery
tour, and an event organizer repeatedly ordered a Herald reporter to push
back to arbitrary places on the warehouse floor to prevent any unplanned
interaction between the candidate and a member of the press.

“I wouldn’t want you to jump out at her,” one of the organizers warned.

Afterward, Clinton spoke to campaign supporters in Exeter and Amherst, and
stopped at Moo’s Place in Derry, where she greeted customers and ordered a
“kiddie”-size chocolate peanut butter and fudge sundae with a cow-shaped
cookie on top.

“Most excellent,” Clinton declared. “One of my most favorite things.”

Question foreshadows Hillary Clinton’s biggest fear
<http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/columnists/joe_battenfeld/2015/05/battenfeld_question_foreshadows_hillary_clinton_s>
// Boston Globe // Joe Battenfield - May 23, 2015

Only once did Hillary Clinton’s armor show signs of cracking — just enough
to reveal a glimpse into what her cruise control campaign fears the most.

On the floor of a New Hampshire brewery, surrounded by kegs and cases of
porter and IPA, Clinton easily batted away media questions until this one
got through:

“Many Americans don’t believe you’ve told the truth about Benghazi ...”

Clinton didn’t wait for the finish to shoot back: “Well, I’m going to let
the Americans decide that.”

Just one word, “Americans,” but the annoyance was audible. Clinton, of
course, already knows voters will pick her. A remnant from the arrogant
White House days.

But here’s the problem: If Clinton is so sure voters are behind her, why is
she mostly avoiding them in her visits to New Hampshire? Not a single town
hall meeting with unscreened questions.

Clinton is just mailing it in right now, and she really doesn’t have to do
much more.

During her visit to Smuttynose Brewery, where the general public was kept
far away by campaign aides and Secret Service, Clinton didn’t even have to
demand “equal pay for women.” One of the invited guests at the “small
business” roundtable, Smuttynose co-owner Joanne Francis, did it for her.

The other co-owner of the brewery, Peter Egelston, who sat on the other
side of Clinton, is a stalwart Democratic donor, records show. And FYI,
Hillary, he lives in Maine, not New Hampshire.

It’s not uncommon for candidates to pack their events with ringers, but all
the others have subjected themselves to sometimes unpleasant questions at
town hall meetings.

Not Clinton, yet. She did make a quick stop for ice cream yesterday, posing
for photos. And she’s finally starting to answer questions from the press —
yesterday mostly national reporters who know her. She walked over to NBC’s
Andrea Mitchell first.

But on those new revelations that she used her private server for emails in
the aftermath of Benghazi, Clinton stuck to script. She wants the State
Department to release those gosh darn emails as quickly as possible, of
course.

Those answers won’t suffice when the campaign gets more heated and more
details about the emails surface. That’s not even counting potentially more
damaging questions about donations to the Clinton Foundation and Hillary
and Bill raking in huge corporate paychecks for speeches.

Republicans will get their chance soon in debates to hone their attacks on
Clinton, and the most skilled one will probably get the nomination.

And luckily, “Americans” who aren’t in the tank will eventually get their
chance. And savvy Granite Staters will probably want to know one thing from
Hillary Clinton.

Just what are you afraid of?

Hillary Clinton responds to released emails while in N.H.
<http://www.whdh.com/story/29136472/hillary-clinton-responds-to-released-emails-while-in-nh>
// WHDH // Byron Barnett - May 23, 2015

EXETER, N.H. (WHDH) -

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton received information on
her private email server that has now been classified about the deadly
attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi.

The email in question, forwarded to Clinton by her deputy chief of staff
Jake Sullivan, relates to reports of arrests in Libya of possible suspects
in the attack.

The information was not classified at the time the email was sent but was
upgraded from "unclassified" to "secret" on Friday at the request of the
FBI, according to State Department officials. They said 23 words of the
Nov. 18, 2012, message were redacted from the day's release of 296 emails
totaling 896 pages to protect information that could damage foreign
relations.

Because the information was not classified at the time the email was sent,
no laws were violated, but Friday's redaction shows that Clinton received
sensitive information on her unsecured personal server.

No other redactions were made to the collection of Benghazi-related emails
for classification reasons, the officials said. They added that the Justice
Department had not raised classification concerns about the now-redacted 1
1/2 lines when the documents were turned over to the special House
committee looking into the Benghazi attack in February. The committee
retains a complete copy of the email, the officials said.

It is at the end of a chain of communication that originated with Bill
Roebuck, the then-director of the Office of Maghreb Affairs, that pointed
out that Libyan police had arrested several people who might have
connections to the attack. The redacted portion appears to relate to who
provided the information about the alleged suspects to the Libyans. A total
of five lines related to the source of the information were affected, but
only the 23 words were deleted because the FBI deemed them to be classified.

Roebuck's email was sent to a number of senior officials, including the
former assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs, Elizabeth
Jones, who then sent it to Sullivan with the comment: "This is preliminary,
but very interesting. FBI in Tripoli is fully involved."

Sullivan then forwarded the email to Clinton with the comment: "FYI."

There was no immediate indication that Clinton herself forwarded the email.

While touring the Smuttynose Brewery in Hampton, New Hampshire, the main
focus of Clinton's visit was promoting small businesses. She addresses the
State Department releasing her emails and said she was "glad" the emails
are beginning to come out.

"I'm aware that the FBI has asked that a portion of one email be held
back," said Clinton. "That happens in the process of Freedom of Information
Act responses. But that doesn't change the fact that all the information in
the emails was handled appropriately."

Clinton participated in a roundtable discussion at the brewery, where she
said she wants to be the "small business president." She also criticized
the Republican presidential candidates for supporting measures to cut
government funding that helps small businesses.

What the resurfacing of Sidney Blumenthal says about Hillary Clinton
<http://www.vox.com/2015/5/23/8647727/the-resurfacing-of-sidney-blumenthal>
//Vox // Jonathan Allen - May 23, 2015

Old Clinton hands don't fade away. They always resurface.

That's the case with Sidney Blumenthal, the Clinton scandal veteran and
purveyor of opposition research who turned up in a trove of Hillary Clinton
e-mails at the center of the House Benghazi Committee's investigation into
the attack that killed four Americans in Libya in 2012.

As the New York Times first reported, Blumenthal sent Clinton a big batch
of memos about the situation on the ground, many of which she forwarded to
other State Department officials and many of which were deemed off-base by
the agency's own experts. According to the Times, Blumenthal was, at the
same time, advising associates who were trying to win business from the
transitional Libyan government Clinton had helped install by pushing for a
coalition war to oust Qadhafi.

His pet theories included a warning that the Al Qaeda affiliate in North
Africa would use American weapons to retaliate against the U.S. for the
raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

The emails, which were released Friday as part of a larger disclosure by
the State Department, don't provide much texture to Clinton's
decision-making on Libya or how she assessed the situation in Benghazi in
real time. The real question is what was in the emails Clinton destroyed
after determining unilaterally that they did not deal with government
business. But the emails released by State do show that Blumenthal, who had
no connection to the U.S. government, acted as an unofficial adviser to
Clinton on Libya — and that she sent her own aides to chase down his leads,
no matter how implausible.

More saint than sinner

Blumenthal's ability to access her when she was secretary of State is a
reminder that it's damn near impossible to be ex-communicated from
Clinton's orbit, especially if one has been bloodied defending her and her
family in Washington's political wars.

Even after President Obama promised to let Clinton pick her own team at
State, the White House drew a line at hiring Blumenthal. That's because
they suspected him of peddling the nastiest "opposition research" about
Obama during the 2008 Democratic primary.

But he's seen much more as a saint than a sinner in a Clinton world that
values loyalty above all other traits. That's why his proximity to Clinton
didn't come as a shock to people in her inner circle.

He was among her most ardent and vicious defenders during the Clinton White
House years. Back then, his aggressive tactics included digging into
reporters and was frequently accused of pushing negative storylines about
officials who investigated Bill Clinton. As a former reporter, he could be
counted on to have a view of how to manipulate the press, and, in the
emails released Friday, he appeared to take credit for placing a story by
Craig Unger in Salon in an email to Clinton.

He's a walking reminder of the bloodsport politics that defined the
Clintons in the 1990s.

Longtime Clinton advisers say one her great strengths and weaknesses is
that she seldom casts anyone aside. That means she gathers information from
a vast array of sources. But it also means political players like
Blumenthal who have burned through their good will with many other
Washington figures can still gain influence through her.

Blumenthal, who wrote a book about his years as a White House defender
called "The Clinton Wars," stands out because he's well known in Washington
and because he was e-mailing Clinton about Libya and Benghazi, the very
topics at the center of Republican inquiries into Clinton.

The State Department

Some of the dozens of emails Blumenthal sent Clinton on Libya and the
Benghazi attack.

But former advisers frequently send Clinton long memos on all manner of
issues, from politics and communication to policy. She likes to absorb it
all. In that way, and perhaps only in that way, her communication with
Blumenthal is orthodox for Clinton. And there's nothing wrong, per se, with
him sending her memos. That said, she kept her longtime adviser working for
her, against the will of the Obama White House, while he worked for the
Clinton Foundation.

Why Clinton won't cast him aside now

Now, there's even more reason for her to hold Blumenthal close: He will
appear before the Benghazi Committee. If she cut him loose, he might be
less inclined to keep her best interests at heart when testifying.

Clinton gave him a vote of confidence during a Tuesday press conference.

"He has been a friend of mine for a long time. He sent me unsolicited
e-mails which I passed on in some instances," she said. "When you're in the
public eye, when you're in an official position, I think you do have to
work to make sure you're not caught in the bubble and you only hear from a
certain small group of people. And I'm going to keep talking to my old
friends, whoever they are."

Why Less Competition Is Hurtful to Hillary
<http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/05/23/why_less_competition_is_hurtful_to_hillary_126684.html>
// Real Clear Politics // Andrew Kohut - May 23, 2015

It is increasingly clear that Hillary Clinton will have to overcome a
number of serious voter concerns about her to win the presidency. These
challenges have been complicated by the unprecedented position in modern
times of not having a real challenger from within her own party.

Though the latest polls continue to show her leading the modest field of
announced and potential Democratic candidates, they also show significant
declines in her favorability rating and concerns about her honesty and
trustworthiness. One of the most troubling findings for her in recent
national surveys is that while she leads most Republican candidates in
head-to-head match-ups, she runs about even with Sen. Rand Paul and is not
that far ahead of several others.

Her strategic problem is that, absent a strong Democratic challenger to
duke it out with, questions about various Hillary controversies, her age
and the “Bill factor” will hang there to be resolved in the general
election against a Republican candidate who has been on the road addressing
his or her own image weaknesses.

Meanwhile, the press, which would ordinarily be covering a full set of
Democratic candidates, has and will continue to turn its undivided
attention to Hillary. And that has a downside. Note, for example, recent
criticisms over Clinton not taking press questions for 21 days, getting
speaking fees from lobbying groups, the income she and Bill have earned in
recent years, and so on. While media attention is a positive for a
candidate, being its almost sole focus on the Democratic side has not been
easy.

And this could well serve to demoralize Democratic voters. There are
already signs of that in the national polls. The Pew Research Center found
Democrats far less engaged in the presidential race than they were eight
years ago, while Republicans are not.  A March survey found just 58 percent
of Democrats saying they had given a lot or some thought to the
presidential candidates, compared to 71 percent back in 2007. There was no
significant falloff in Republican campaign interest.

Indeed, according to the latest Pew survey, Republicans are more positive
about the GOP field than they were at nearly comparable points in the past
two presidential campaigns: 57 percent rate it excellent or good. In
contrast, fewer Democrats (54 percent) are positive about the current group
of candidates than felt the same way in September 2007 (64 percent). Not
surprisingly, then, an April Gallup poll found 54 percent of Democrats
saying  a number of strong candidates competing for the nomination would be
better for the party, while only 40 percent thought it would be better for
a single strong candidate to emerge early.

In the end, Hillary’s problems are not with Democrats, who will ultimately
back her if she is the nominee, but with the broader electorate. And recent
polls showed the impact of the latest round of Clinton controversies.

Gallup found her unfavorable rating climbing steadily—from 39 percent in
March to 46 percent in mid-May—which virtually matches her unfavorable
rating in Pew’s May survey (47 percent). And the April Wall Street
Journal/NBC poll added that 50 percent of its respondents gave her a
negative rating when it comes to being “honest and straightforward.”

The good news for Hillary is that she recovers well. Her favorable ratings
have dipped into the 40s in the Gallup rating on a number of occasions over
the past 20 years, only to strongly recover into the 60s for significant
periods of time. And while voters worry about her honesty, they give her a
positive rating for being knowledgeable and having the experience to handle
the presidency (51 percent, according to WSJ/NBC) and having strong
leadership qualities (65 percent, CBS/New York Times).

From this vantage point, Clinton would be well served at this stage by
having other Democratic candidates to absorb some of the torrent of press
scrutiny to which she has been subjected. On the Republican side, only Jeb
Bush has received anything close to the same focus. At this pace, one can
only wonder about the condition of her public image when she starts to take
on the Republican nominee.

Miss Uncongeniality <http://freebeacon.com/columns/miss-uncongeniality/> //
Free Beacon // Matthew Continetti - May 23, 2015

There it was—the classic Hillary charm. Close to a month had passed since
the Democratic frontrunner answered questions from the press. So this week,
when reporters were invited to gawk at the spectacle of Clinton sitting
with “everyday Iowans,” Ed Henry of Fox wanted to know: Would the former
secretary of state take a moment to respond to inquiries from
non-stage-managed reporters?

Before Henry was able even to finish his sentence, however, Clinton
interrupted him, tut-tutting his impertinent shouting and raising her hand,
empress-like, to quell her subject. After a few seconds of talking over
each other Clinton must have realized that she had to give Henry an answer.
Whereupon she said, slowly and sarcastically: “I might. I’ll have to ponder
it.” What a kidder.

After the photo-op was over, Clinton did take six questions from
reporters—raising the total number of media questions she has answered
since announcing her candidacy in April to a whopping 26. She committed no
gaffes, but unleashed the full blizzard of Clintonian misdirection,
omission, dodging, bogus sentimentality, false confidence, and aw-shucks
populism. Voting for the Iraq war was a “mistake,” like the kind you make
on a test; she and Bill are lucky people (that’s one way of describing
them); Charlotte needs to be able to grow up in an America where every
little boy and girl has the chance to go from public office to a
foreign-funded slush fund; and family courtier and dirty trickster Sid
Blumenthal is just an “old friend” who sent her emails about Libya, where
he had business dealings, so that she could get out of her “bubble.”

Not much for an enterprising reporter to go on. And for all we know, the
ice caps will have melted before Clinton submits to more questions. It’s
part of her strategy: limiting press availabilities also lessens the
chances of another “dead broke” moment, of giving answers that raise more
questions. Clinton is busy—raising money, positioning herself on the left
to thwart a liberal insurgent, doting on Iowa so as not to repeat her
defeat there in 2008. Talking to reporters would be a distraction or,
worse, an error. Everyone knows who she is. And interviews leave exposed
the most vulnerable part of her campaign: herself. Nor is it like she
doesn’t have anything to hide. She has a whole lot to hide: her record, her
emails, her charity, her brothers, and her friends. Why risk it?

This strategy of press avoidance worked for Clinton pal Terry McAuliffe in
2013 when he was elected governor of Virginia. McAuliffe rarely if ever
spoke to reporters, and instead visited with carefully selected businesses
and interest groups and sob stories to whom he would nod sympathetically
and explain, in the vaguest of ways, how he would make the commonwealth a
better, more progressive place. McAuliffe’s campaign manager was Robby
Mook, who now performs the same job for Clinton. The lesson he must have
drawn from his Virginia experience was that the press, at best, is a
nuisance and irrelevant to the outcome of an election. Strategic
communications, lots of money, television advertising that defines one’s
opponent as extreme, and the Democratic “coalition of the ascendant” are
enough to win.

At least it’s enough to win Virginia in a—surprisingly close—off-year
election. But treating the press with contempt may not work at the
presidential level. On the contrary: It could backfire. Not because voters
care about how the press is being treated; they don’t. But because the
media are exactly that: the medium through which a candidate is presented
to the public. Disturb the medium, tic off its individual components, and
the presentation may begin to change.

Slowly and subtly, a candidate may find herself shown to be inaccessible,
aloof, conniving, manipulative, privileged, elusive, dishonest. The
questions she faces might grow more hostile; the investigations into her
wealth might widen; interest in her husband’s friendship with Jeffrey
“Lolita Express” Epstein might sharpen. The message she wants to
communicate could be displaced by a media-driven caricature.

Republicans know what I’m talking about. They live with it every day:
rising stars that go into eclipse, hidden behind media cartoons. Dan
Quayle, Clarence Thomas, Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz. The latest
target is Tom Cotton—see how a Harvard-educated combat veteran is being
labeled an amateur, out of his depth, disruptive because of his efforts to
stop the nuclear deal with Iran. Our media are fickle, sensationalistic,
anxious, insecure, and petty. They’re surprising me with their tough
coverage of the Clinton Foundation. Imagine what might happen if Hillary
really begins to annoy them.

The assumption has been that the mainstream press will guard Clinton like
they did Obama in 2008—avoid damaging lines of inquiry, play up the gender
angle just as they played up the racial one. I don’t see it happening yet,
however. Clinton can’t be happy with the way her candidacy has been
portrayed in the media, from her speaking fees to her email server to the
family foundation. You can’t ascribe this treatment to the conservative
press alone—though we’ve happily played our part.

Since Bill first became president the Clintons have held a suspicious
attitude toward the media, an attitude the media seem to have reflected
back at them. Obama was new, cool, postmodern, suave; Clinton is old, a
grandmother, clumsy, a millionaire many times over who has been one of the
most famous people in the world for more than two decades. She has none of
Obama’s edge, his antiwar bona fides, the quasi-mystical importance his
followers bestowed on him. No one would have written a story about Obama
like the one McClatchy wrote about Hillary on Thursday: “Clinton
campaigning in a bubble, largely isolated from real people.” That’s why she
has Sid.

The press will no doubt take a different approach once the Republicans
choose a nominee, who can then be written off as primitive or corrupt or
inexperienced or stupid. I’m not expecting a revolution here, a paradigm
shift in the way the media establishment conducts itself. But I am
surprised at the way in which Hillary and her supporters dismiss media
complaints as extraneous. Bad press hurts campaigns—ask Al Gore, John
Kerry, or Mitt Romney. It can hurt Hillary Clinton too. Saturday Night Live
is already portraying her as a power-mad robot; think of the damage that
could do to perceptions of her over time. And there’s plenty of time.

By not talking to the press Clinton has made a strategic choice, as valid
as any other. But it may be the wrong choice—in fact it probably is the
wrong choice, because most of the choices Hillary Clinton has made since
2006 have been bad. She lost the Democratic nomination, she was the top
foreign policy official for a president who is widely seen to have bungled
foreign policy, she joined the ethically murky Clinton Foundation and gave
high-paying speeches to business groups despite knowing she’d soon be
running for president.

It’s the same lack of judgment and mismanagement that would cause her to
vote for Iraq, then oppose the surge, then support the troop withdrawal; to
do Obama’s bidding on Russia, Israel, Iran, Libya; to keep up the pen pal
correspondence with Blumenthal; to act unlike any presidential candidate in
recent memory. Maybe I’m dreaming, but the press could respond by taking
someone who’s likable enough—and making her not likable at all.

Silda Wall Spitzer hosts Hillary fundraiser
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/silda-wall-spitzer-hosts-hillary-fundraiser-118239.html>
// Politico // Annie Karni - May 23, 2015

Call it the wronged political wives club.

Former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s ex-wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, is
hosting a $2,700-a-head fundraiser for Hillary Clinton on June 1 in
Manhattan, from 12 to 2 p.m., billed as “a conversation with Hillary
Clinton.”

In 2008, Silda Wall Spitzer drew notice for standing stoically by her
husband’s side when he resigned from office after it was revealed that he
was caught up in a prostitution ring scandal.

The “Hillstarter” event is notable as the former governor — who ran
unsuccessfully for New York City comptroller in 2013 and now oversees his
family’s real estate firm — has ties to Team Martin O’Malley. O’Malley, the
former governor of Maryland, is expected to announce his candidacy for
president on May 30 in Baltimore, Md., and Spitzer has been in a long-term,
committed relationship with O’Malley’s spokeswoman, Lis Smith, for close to
two years. But Spitzer is now said to be completely out of politics and not
expected to donate to either Democratic candidate.

Silda Wall Spitzer has kept a low profile since her divorce from the former
governor was finalized last year, when she reportedly received a $7.5
million payout, including the former couple’s Fifth Avenue home. She has
been a stalwart Clinton supporter, giving $5,000 to the independent Ready
for Hillary super PAC in 2013.

On the same day as the Manhattan event, Clinton is also scheduled to hit up
a fundraiser in Queens, N.Y. and a fundraiser at the home of longtime
supporters Mindy and Jay Jacobs in Laurel Hollow, N.Y., according to a copy
of the email invitation obtained by POLITICO.

On June 5, Clinton will attend a fundraiser at the home of philanthropists
Carolyn and Malcolm Wiener in Greenwich, Conn.

Hillary Clinton to Hold Fund-Raiser Hosted by Spitzer’s Ex-Wife
<http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/05/23/hillary-clinton-to-hold-fund-raiser-hosted-by-spitzers-ex-wife/>
// NYT // Maggie Haberman - My 23, 2015

Hillary Rodham Clinton will hold a string of fund-raisers on June 1,
including one hosted by the ex-wife of Eliot Spitzer, the former governor
of New York who resigned amid scandal in 2008.

The event for Mrs. Clinton, one of three New York-based events that day,
will be hosted by Silda Wall, according to the invitation.

The hosts of Mrs. Clinton’s fund-raisers this cycle haven’t been
particularly noteworthy — most have been longtime supporters, and Ms. Wall
is no exception. But Ms. Wall is also the ex-wife of Mr. Spitzer, who
resigned after he was caught up in an investigation into a prostitution
ring.

Mr. Spitzer is in a long-term relationship with Lis Smith, a well-known
Democratic operative who is also a longtime spokeswoman for Martin
O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland who is expected to begin his 2016
presidential campaign on May 30. The fund-raising event was first reported
by Politico.

Some of Mrs. Clinton’s allies still recall with frustration the Democratic
presidential primary debate in October 2007 in Philadelphia, when she
stumbled over a question about a plan by Mr. Spitzer to allow driver’s
licenses for unauthorized immigrants. That stumble was seen as contributing
to her downward spiral in the polls. Mr. O’Malley has frequently talked
about his support for such driver’s licenses.

Mr. O’Malley is seen as a potential vessel for more left-leaning Democrats
looking for a challenge to Mrs. Clinton within the party. He has been
ratcheting up his populist oratory, drawing comparisons to Senator
Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a vocal proponent of curtailing Wall
Street excesses.

Yet that language is also very similar to how Mr. Spitzer carved out a role
on the national stage; he became known as the “sheriff of Wall Street” when
he was the New York attorney general. Mr. O’Malley has hired Jimmy Siegel,
a Madison Avenue ad-maker whose first political campaign was Mr. Spitzer’s
run for governor in 2006, and who subsequently worked for Mrs. Clinton’s
2008 campaign.

Mr. O’Malley’s aides, meanwhile, have grown sharper in drawing a
generational contrast with Mrs. Clinton, who will be 69 on Election Day
2016.

Mr. O’Malley, 52, was a strong supporter of Mrs. Clinton in her 2008
presidential campaign. But in recent days, his aides have signaled that
they will point to him as a more future-looking candidate than she is.

Asked about the fact that some Maryland elected officials, such as Senator
Ben Cardin, have been backing Mrs. Clinton, and her team’s aggressive
efforts to corral support in Mr. O’Malley’s home state, one of Mr.
O’Malley’s aides, Haley Morris, gave a statement to the Baltimore Sun that
used the word “old” twice.

“The establishment backing the establishment is the oldest story in
politics,” Ms. Morris said. “If Governor O’Malley runs for president, he’ll
bring new leadership — not old-guard establishment thinking — to the race.”

Mrs. Clinton is holding more than a dozen fund-raisers in different cities
ahead of her June 13 campaign kickoff rally.

OTHER DEMOCRATS NATIONAL COVERAGE

Elizabeth Warren and Democrats should be down with TPP
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/05/23/warren-and-democrats-should-be-down-with-tpp/>
// WaPo// Johnathan Capehart  - May 23, 2015

Now that the Senate has passed a Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) bill that
would fast-track passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal,
the action moves to the House where my hope for cooler Democratic heads
will surely be dashed. And we will have Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)
partially to thank for it. The leader of the progressive wing of the
Democratic Party has whipped into a frenzy members of Congress who insist
on fighting the last war.

Warren was dead set against TPA, which is basically a broad,
congressionally approved outline that sets the parameters for the TPP that
President Obama is negotiating with 11 other nations. Her steadfast
opposition to TPP on behalf of American workers who believe global trade
shipped their jobs overseas is understandable. I just wish Warren were
telling the truth.

During an interview with Peter Cook of Bloomberg News on May 19, Warren
trod her usual path to slam a trade deal she strongly believes is
detrimental to the American people. “We’re being asked to grease the skids
for a deal that’s basically done but is being held in secret until after
this vote,” Warren said in a double-play diss of TPA and TPP. Here’s the
thing: nothing’s secret.

Yes, it is secret from you and me. As Ruth Marcus correctly explained,
“This is not secrecy for secrecy’s sake; it’s secrecy for the sake of
negotiating advantage. Exposing U.S. bargaining positions or the offers of
foreign counterparts to public view before the agreement is completed would
undermine the outcome.” But TPP is not secret to Warren. She has read it.

“Have you been able to read the deal,” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow asked Warren
during an April interview. “Yes,” Warren replied. She went on to explain
that any member of Congress can do so. That is true. The voluminous and
changing deal sits in a basement room in the Capitol where members and
staff with security clearances can read it. Any member of Congress who
wants to be briefed on the emerging agreement or ask questions about what
they are reading can call the offices of the United States Trade
Representative (USTR). According to the folks at USTR, there have been more
than 1,700 in-person briefings on the deal. In fact, Ambassador Michael
Froman, who is the USTR, has personally briefed Warren on various aspects
of TPP.

Now, about Warren’s assertion that TPA “grease[s] the skids for a deal that
is basically done.” She used that phrase six times in the 10-minute
Bloomberg interview. And she makes it sound like Congress has no and has
had no input whatsoever into TPP. Not true. Warren conveniently neglects to
mention that every proposal in the deal is and has been previewed with
Congress. Or that members of Congress can offer and have offered proposals
of their own to USTR.

Again, the concerns about the effect another trade deal will have on the
American worker are real. The opposition roaring out of the House Democrats
is understandable. After 21 years, the bitter aftertaste of the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) remains. Shuttered factories and the
lost jobs that ensued led many Americans, Democrats and Republicans, to
turn inwards to protect their livelihoods. That’s why Rep. Marcy Kaptur
(D-Ohio) said in a statement last month that past trade deals “put the
American Dream out of reach for countless working families.” Even the
president acknowledges that “past trade deals haven’t always lived up to
their promise.”

United States Trade Representative Michael Froman (Andrew Harnik/The
Washington Post)

But as I read and do my own reporting on TPP, I keep coming back to a
reported conversation between Obama and the late Apple maestro Steve Jobs.
According to the New York Times, at a 2011 dinner in Silicon Valley, the
president asked Jobs why iPhones couldn’t be made in the United States?

Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he said,
according to another dinner guest.

Froman told me the United States has three options with regard to TPP. The
first option is the status quo. That’s the state of play we have now where
“those jobs aren’t coming back,” as Jobs said. It’s also a state of play
where large companies may see greater benefits to moving operations abroad
and smaller ones face a hill too steep to export. And let’s not even talk
about the existing trade deals between some of our biggest trading partners
that put U.S. firms at a competitive disadvantage.

The second option is implementing TPP. Froman and the administration have
argued consistently that unprecedented labor requirements (minimum wage,
the right to collective bargaining) and environmental standards
(protections for endangered wildlife and oceans) would “level the playing
field” for American workers to compete with their counterparts in what
would be the largest free-trade zone in the world.  “With open markets
there, you give U.S. companies an incentive to keep manufacturing here and
ship goods overseas,” Froman said.

The third option, Froman said, was for the U.S. to sit back and let China
set the rules in the region with its own trade deals with nations in the
region. China would love nothing more than for TPP to fail. According to a
story from MarketWatch, China’s State Council is “panicky” over the trade
deal. The report points out that the Council believes, “Implementation of
the TPP will ‘further impair China’s price advantage in the exports of
industrial products and affect Chinese companies’ expansion’ abroad….”

“They are working to carve up the market,” Froman told me. “Would you
rather a world where the Chinese set the rules of the road or we set the
rules of the road?” The latter option is unacceptable. With its polluted
air and controlled economy that has a seemingly endless supply of
controlled workers, Beijing couldn’t care less about labor, the environment
or any of the other values forming the foundation of TPP. In addition, the
geopolitical benefit of the deal is a stronger U.S. presence in the region
as a counterweight to China.

No trade deal is perfect. The U.S. won’t get everything it wants in the
negotiations, but it’s getting pretty darned close. And the people’s
representatives in Congress have and have always had the ability to see and
shape the forthcoming agreement. Once completed, its terms will be seen by
all and debated at the Capitol. That’s as it should be. But this nation
cannot pretend the world and the global economy haven’t changed since 1994.
And Democrats cannot pretend that a progressive president who has
championed the cause of the middle class and who they have supported for
the last six years would negotiate “a bad deal” that further put American
workers at risk.

The House needs to pass TPA so that TPP can be completed and move towards
final passage.  It’s not “greasing the skids.” In the 21st century global
economy, it’s a necessity.

7 ways Bernie Sanders could transform America
<http://www.salon.com/2015/05/23/7_ways_bernie_sanders_could_transform_america_partner/>
// Salon // Mathrew Rozsa - May 23, 2015

Say what you will about the presidential candidacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders
(D-Vt.), but if nothing else, it has certainly introduced some interesting
ideas into America’s political debate. Considering that the most recent
polls show Hillary Clinton with a nearly five-to-one lead over her nearest
rival, this can only be viewed as a positive thing.

As Reddit‘s favorite politician, Bernie Sanders has enormous influence on
our political discourse, and his recent policies have been making huge
headlines on the Internet. Here are seven ways in which our national
discussion on a wide range of issues could be transformed by the Sanders
campaign.

1) Guaranteeing free college

In a press conference on Monday, Sanders advocated that the government fund
tuition at four-year public colleges and universities through a so-called
Robin Hood tax on Wall Street, one that would set a 50 cent tax on every
$100 of stock trades on stock sales, as well as lesser amounts on other
financial transactions.

More from The Daily Dot: “This death metal band fronted by a parrot is real
and it’s amazing”

While Sanders’ critics are expected to denounce the plan as socialistic,
the Vermont Senator is quick to point out that similar proposals are
already in effect and successful elsewhere. “Countries like Germany,
Denmark, Sweden, and many more are providing free or inexpensive higher
education for their young people,” Sanders points out. “They understand how
important it is to be investing in their youth. We should be doing the
same.”

Although Obama promised free community college for students who qualify,
Bernie Sanders’ proposed policy shows that with America’s burgeoning debt
crisis, we need to go even further.

2) Addressing income inequality

In an interview with the Associated Press confirming his presidential run,
Sanders cited America’s growing income inequality as one of the chief
motivators behind his campaign, a well-timed stance given the recent
#FightFor15 on Twitter.

“What we have seen is that while the average person is working longer hours
for lower wages, we have seen a huge increase in income and wealth
inequality, which is now reaching obscene levels,” Sanders argued. “This is
a rigged economy, which works for the rich and the powerful, and is not
working for ordinary Americans.”

Sanders has proposed a number of reforms to solve this problem, from
legislation that would close corporate tax loopholes to raising the minimum
wage above $7.25 an hour, a rate Sanders describes as a “starvation wage.”
For the working poor, getting by continues to be a daily struggle, and
Sanders is fighting to change that.

ADVERTISEMENT

3) Regulating Wall Street

If you think Sanders’ free college plan has Wall Street concerned, you can
only imagine how they feel about Sanders’ proposed bill for breaking up
banks that are considered “too big to fail.” In fact, polls show 58 percent
of likely voters agreewith his basic argument that “if an institution is
too big to fail, it is too big to exist,” indicating that merely denouncing
Sanders as a radical won’t necessarily work for this measure.

What’s more, banking lobbyists are concerned that anti-bank sentiment
within the Democratic grassroots could push Clinton to the left on this
issue. “The prospects of it becoming law are nil,” reported one banking
lobbyist to the Hill. “But we care about whether this impacts Hillary and
whether she’ll try to pander to the far left.”

More from The Daily Dot: “‘The Crow’ is recasting its supervillain as a
woman”

But for the millions who continue to be affected by the 2008 crash and the
effects of the American banking bubble on our Great Recession, it’s not
just about pushing Hillary to the left. It’s about pushing America forward.

4) Legalizing marijuana

Although Sanders told Time magazine that he doesn’t consider marijuana
legalization to be “one of the major issues facing this country,” his
sympathies on the subject are pretty clear.

“If you are a Wall Street executive who engaged in reckless and illegal
behavior which helped crash the economy leading to massive unemployment and
human suffering, your bank may have to pay a fine but nothing happens to
you,” heexplained in an AMA session on Reddit. “If you’re a kid smoking
marijuana or snorting cocaine, you may end up in jail for years.”

He also supports increased use of medical marijuana and takes pride in the
fact that no one was arrested for marijuana possession or use when he was
mayor of Burlington, Vt. Given the negative impact of three decades of the
War on Drugs on incarcerating urban residents at disproportionate rates,
particularly black men, this is a policy that is long overdue.

Although Hillary has vowed to fight the prison-industrial complex, Sanders
shows he’s already ready to take the first steps.

5) Fighting free trade

There is another issue in which Bernie Sanders may push Clinton to the
left: free trade.

Although hardly a trending topic, Sanders is a longstanding opponent of
international trade agreements like NAFTA that he believes work against the
interests of average American laborers. His current target is the
Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is being pushed by the Obama
administration despite the fact that its provisions have not been made
public.

“It is incomprehensible to me that the leaders of major corporate interests
who stand to gain enormous financial benefits from this agreement are
actively involved in the writing of the TPP,” Sanders wrote in a letter to
the Obama White House, “while, at the same time, the elected officials of
this country, representing the American people, have little or no knowledge
as to what is in it.”

6) Confronting climate change

Sanders’ has made no secret of his contempt for global warming deniers. To
embarrass anti-science Republicans, he introduced a “sense of Congress”
resolution in January that simply acknowledged man-made climate change was
real and needed to be addressed. By voting in favor of the measure,
Congress would do little more than place itself  “in agreement with the
opinion of virtually the entire worldwide scientific community.”

More from The Daily Dot: “People are freaking out over this photo of a
woman being walked around on a leash”

Although the amendment was tabled by a mostly party-line vote of 56-42,
Sanders’ reputation as an unwavering advocate of pro-environmental policies
when dealing with climate change hasn’t gone unnoticed. Climate Hawks Vote,
a super PAC dedicated to addressing global warming, ranked Sanders as the
number-one climate leader in the Senate.

7) Criticizing Israel

If elected in 2016, Sanders would be America’s first Jewish president, and
that makes his willingness to criticize Israel all the more significant.
During a town hall event last year, Sanders got into a shouting match with
constituents who were angered by his statement that Israel “overreacted” in
its military campaign against Hamas and was “terribly, terribly wrong” for
bombing UN facilities.

His stance on Israel could hardly be described as blindly pro-Palestinian,
however. In the same town hall meeting, he acknowledged that Israel was in
a tricky situation because Hamas was firing rockets from populated areas,
but he has no love for Israel’s right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, distinguishing himself as the first Senator to openly refuse to
attend Netanyahu’s speech to Congress.

Regardless of whether one agrees with Sanders’ views on these issues, the
odds are still far greater than not that he won’t receive the Democratic
nomination next year. In addition to being on the far left in his own
party, Sanders is a septuagenarian from a minority background who hails
from one of America’s smallest states.

At the same time, he is still giving voice to a series of positions that
deserve a more prominent place in our political debate. When all is said
and done, this can only be a good thing.

Kaine’s quest for war legitimacy
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/tim-kaines-lonely-quest-for-war-legitimacy/2015/05/22/60daf46a-ffde-11e4-805c-c3f407e5a9e9_story.html>
// WaPo // George F Wil - lMay 23, 2015

The Revolutionary War and the Civil War ended in Virginia, which was
involved, by the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon, in the beginning of today’s
war with radical Islam. Now a senator from Virginia is determined that
today’s war shall not continue indefinitely without the legitimacy
conferred by congressional involvement congruent with the Constitution’s
text and history.

Tim Kaine, former Richmond mayor, former Virginia governor and former
national chairman of the Democratic Party, represents the distressingly
small minority of legislators interested in crafting an authorization for
use of military force (AUMF). This is easier vowed than accomplished.

George F. Will writes a twice-weekly column on politics and domestic and
foreign affairs. He began his column with The Post in 1974, and he received
the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1977. He is also a contributor to FOX
News’ daytime and primetime programming.

Kaine’s interest in Congress’s role in the making of war quickened in
October 2002, when President George W. Bush, on the eve of midterm
elections, sought an AUMF regarding Iraq, even though the invasion was not
imminent. The University of Virginia’s Miller Center released the report of
the National War Powers Commission , co-chaired by former secretaries of
state James Baker and Warren Christopher. It recommended a new codification
of the allocation of war powers between the president and Congress.

On Sept. 7, President Obama said he was going “on the offensive” against
the Islamic State. In August, he had gone beyond the protection of
threatened consular staff at Irbil, an emergency presidential
responsibility requiring no congressional authorization. When, however, he
unilaterally undertook, also in August, military action to protect a dam
about 80 miles from Irbil, Congress, with the lassitude of an uninvolved
spectator, did not express itself. Instead, it recessed unusually early,
seven weeks before the 2014 elections.

Such dereliction of duty, Kaine says, is as unacceptable as pretending that
the AUMF of Sept. 18, 2001, suffices to regulate presidential war-making
discretion in the current context. Lacking both temporal and geographic
limits, it authorized force “against those nations, organizations, or
persons” who “planned, authorized, committed, or aided” the 9/11 attacks
“or harbored such organizations or persons.” The Islamic State did not
exist then and today is a hostile rival to al-Qaeda. Even while the twin
towers and Pentagon still smoldered, Congress rightly rejected language
authorizing force “to deter and pre-empt any future” terrorism or
aggression.

While now claiming to need no authorization beyond that of 2001, Obama
suggests an AUMF that would permit military action against the Islamic
State and “associated forces,” which would include any group, anywhere,
seeking a charisma injection by claiming adherence to the Islamic State.

Because the definitions of today’s enemy and the nature of today’s war are
blurry, perhaps any new AUMF must be extremely elastic. Sen. Marco Rubio
(R-Fla.) suggests one authorizing “whatever steps are necessary to defeat
ISIS. Period.” To at least partially immunize the future from today’s
paralyzing ambiguities about the executive’s and legislature’s respective
war-making responsibilities, Kaine and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) propose
legislation essentially incorporating the National War Powers Commission
recommendations, as follows:

Unless Congress declares war or otherwise authorizes any “significant armed
conflict” (“lasting more than a week”), it must, within 30 days of the
beginning of such a conflict, vote on a joint resolution of approval. This
protects presidential power by reversing the presumption of the 1973 War
Powers Resolution that inaction by Congress suffices to establish
congressional disapproval.

The Kaine-McCain legislation would, however, constrain presidents by
institutionalizing consultation: The joint resolution would be proposed by
a permanent Joint Congressional Consultative Committee made up of the House
speaker and Senate majority leader, the minority leaders of both bodies and
the chairs and ranking members of the four most germane committees of both
(Armed Services, Foreign Relations, Intelligence and Appropriations).

Demographic and geographic factors have driven Kaine’s interest in foreign
and military policies. When he was born in 1958, 1 in 100 Virginians was
foreign-born; today, 1 in 9 is. From its south, with the world’s largest
naval base (Norfolk), to its north, with Quantico (where Marine Corps
officers train) and the Pentagon and associated military contractors,
Virginia is, he says, “the most militarily connected state.”

As Obama’s war strategy collapses, he should welcome company during his
stumble through the gathering darkness. As always, however, his arrogance
precludes collaboration with Congress. And Congress, knowing that governing
involves choosing, which always involves making someone unhappy, is happy
to leave governing to him.

When Kaine began running for the Senate, he says he was warned that he
would join “the unhappiness caucus” composed of senators who previously had
experienced the pleasure of exercising executive power. He is, however,
finding satisfaction, of sorts, reminding the national legislature that the
fault is not in the stars but in itself that, regarding the most solemn
business, it is an underling.

Democrats' Vanishing Future
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/against-the-grain/democrats-vanishing-future-20150521>
// National Journal // Josh Kraushaar - May 21, 2015

One of the most underappreciated stories in recent years is the
deterioration of the Democratic bench under President Obama's tenure in
office. The party has become much more ideologically homogenous, losing
most of its moderate wing as a result of the last two disastrous midterm
elections. By one new catch-all measure, a party-strength index introduced
by RealClearPolitics analysts Sean Trende and David Byler, Democrats are in
their worst position since 1928. That dynamic has manifested itself in the
Democratic presidential contest, where the bench is so barren that a flawed
Hillary Clinton is barreling to an uncontested nomination.

But less attention has been paid to how the shrinking number of Democratic
officeholders in the House and in statewide offices is affecting the
party's Senate races. It's awfully unusual to see how dependent Democrats
are in relying on former losing candidates as their standard-bearers in
2016. Wisconsin's Russ Feingold, Pennsylvania's Joe Sestak, Indiana's Baron
Hill, and Ohio's Ted Strickland all ran underwhelming campaigns in losing
office in 2010—and are looking to return to politics six years later. Party
officials are courting former Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina to make a
comeback bid, despite mediocre favorability ratings and the fact that she
lost a race just months ago that most had expected her to win. All told,
more than half of the Democrats' Senate challengers in 2016 are comeback
candidates.

On one hand, most of these candidates are the best choices Democrats have.
Feingold and Strickland are running ahead of GOP Sens. Ron Johnson and Rob
Portman in recent polls. Hill and Hagan boast proven crossover appeal in
GOP-leaning states that would be challenging pickups. Their presence in the
race gives the party a fighting chance to retake the Senate.

But look more closely, and the reliance on former failures is a direct
result of the party having no one else to turn to. If the brand-name
challengers didn't run, the roster of up-and-coming prospects in the
respective states is short. They're also facing an ominous historical
reality that only two defeated senators have successfully returned to the
upper chamber in the last six decades. As political analyst Stu Rothenberg
put it, they're asking "voters to rehire them for a job from which they
were fired." Senate Democrats are relying on these repeat candidates for
the exact same reason that Democrats are comfortable with anointing Hillary
Clinton for their presidential nomination: There aren't any better
alternatives.

For a portrait of the Democrats' slim pickings, just look at the political
breakdown in three of the most consequential battleground states.
Republicans hold 12 of Ohio's 16 House seats, and all six of their
statewide offices. In Wisconsin, Republicans hold a majority of the state's
eight House seats and four of five statewide partisan offices. In
Pennsylvania, 13 of the 18 representatives are Republicans, though
Democrats hold all the statewide offices. (One major caveat: Kathleen Kane,
the Democrats' once-hyped attorney general in the state, is under criminal
investigation and has become a political punchline.) These are all
Democratic-friendly states that Obama carried twice.

If Strickland didn't run, the party's hopes against Portman would lie in
the hands of 30-year-old Cincinnati Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld, who would
make unexpected history as one of the nation's youngest senators with a
victory. (Sittenfeld is still mounting a long-shot primary campaign against
Strickland.) Without Feingold in Wisconsin, the party's only logical option
would be Rep. Ron Kind, who has regularly passed up opportunities for a
promotion. Former Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett already lost to Gov. Scott
Walker twice, and businesswoman Mary Burke disappointed as a first-time
gubernatorial candidate last year. And despite the Democratic
establishment's publicized carping over Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania, the
list of alternatives is equally underwhelming: His only current intra-party
opposition is from the mayor of Allentown.

In the more conservative states, the drop-off between favored recruits and
alternatives is even more stark. Hagan would be a flawed nominee in North
Carolina, but there's no one else waiting in the wings. The strongest
Democratic politician, Attorney General Roy Cooper, is running for governor
instead. And in Indiana, the bench is so thin that even the GOP's embattled
governor, Mike Pence, isn't facing formidable opposition. Hill, who lost
congressional reelection campaigns in both 2004 and 2010, is not expected
to face serious primary competition in the race to succeed retiring GOP
Sen. Dan Coats.

Even in the two swing states where the party landed young, up-and-coming
recruits to run, their options were awfully limited. In Florida,
32-year-old Rep. Patrick Murphy is one of only five House Democrats to
represent a district that Mitt Romney carried in 2012—and his centrism has
made him one of the most compelling candidates for higher office. The
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee quickly rallied behind his
campaign (in part to squelch potential opposition from firebrand
congressman Alan Grayson). But if Murphy didn't run, the alternatives would
have been limited: freshman Rep. Gwen Graham and polarizing Democratic
National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz being the most logical
alternatives.

In Nevada, Democrats boast one of their strongest challengers in former
state Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, vying to become the first
Latina ever elected to the Senate. But her ascension is due, in part, to
the fact that other talented officeholders lost in the 2014 statewide
wipeout. Democratic lieutenant-governor nominee Lucy Flores, hyped by MSNBC
as a "potential superstar," lost by 26 points to her GOP opponent. Former
Secretary of State Ross Miller, another fast-rising pol, badly lost his bid
for attorney general against a nondescript Republican. By simply taking a
break from politics, Cortez Masto avoided the wave and kept her prospects
alive for 2016.

This isn't an assessment of Democratic chances for a Senate majority in
2017; it's a glaring warning for the party's longer-term health. If Clinton
can't extend the Democrats' presidential winning streak—a fundamental
challenge, regardless of the political environment—the party's barren bench
will cause even more alarm for the next presidential campaign. And if the
Democrats' core constituencies don't show up for midterm elections—an
outlook that's rapidly becoming conventional wisdom—Democrats have serious
challenges in 2018 as well. It's why The New Yorker's liberal writer John
Cassidy warned that a Clinton loss next year could "assign [Republicans] a
position of dominance."

By focusing on how the electorate's rapid change would hand Democrats a
clear advantage in presidential races, Obama's advisers overlooked how the
base-stroking moves would play in the states. Their optimistic view of the
future has been adopted by Clinton, who has been running to the left even
without serious primary competition.

But without a future generation of leaders able to compellingly carry the
liberal message, there's little guarantee that changing demographics will
secure the party's destiny. The irony of the 2016 Senate races is that
Democrats are betting on the past, running veteran politicians to win them
back the majority—with Clinton at the top of the ticket. If that formula
doesn't work, the rebuilding process will be long and arduous.

GOP

Ben Carson wins SRLC straw poll
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/carson-wins-srlc-straw-poll-118248.html?hp=t1_r>
// Politico //Alex Isenstadt - May 23, 2015

OKLAHOMA CITY — Ben Carson won the straw poll at the Southern Republican
Leadership Conference Saturday, demonstrating his popularity among
conservative activists at one of the party’s traditional presidential
cattle call events.

Carson, a former surgeon who formally launched his underdog campaign this
month with an appeal to the GOP’s tea party wing, finished first with 25
percent. He was followed by Scott Walker, who received 20 percent, and Ted
Cruz at 16 percent. Chris Christie and Rick Perry tied at 5 percent, with
Jeb Bush narrowly behind. Marco Rubio tied with Bobby Jindal and Rand Paul
at 4 percent.

Story Continued Below

The straw poll victory doesn’t necessarily represent a breakthrough for
Carson. Carson and Cruz, both middle-of-the-pack candidates in the early
2016 polls, mounted serious efforts to win the straw poll but most
candidates did not compete. They hoped it would give them badly needed
momentum as they compete against a sprawling field of better known and
better funded rivals. Four years ago here, Mitt Romney notched a narrow,
one-vote win over Ron Paul.

The announcement of the results brought an end to a three-day event that
has become a mainstay of the party’s nominating contest. It drew 2,000 or
so activists from around the South, organizers said, with 958 casting votes
in the straw poll. It also drew many of the 2016 Republican hopefuls, all
of whom used 25-minute speeches at the downtown Cox Convention Center to
throw out red meat to the conservatives gathered.

Rubio and Cruz, who were originally scheduled to make appearances, had to
cancel as a result of the ongoing negotiations in Washington over renewal
of the Patriot Act.

The three front-runners for the party’s nomination — Bush, Walker, and
Rubio — did not have a major presence in the halls. Privately, their
advisers said they saw little point in investing time and resources in
winning a contest without any electoral implications. None wanted to be
seen as seriously competing for a straw poll, which would have little
upside and could result in an embarrassing loss.

Cruz and Carson, however, decided to participate in a big way. Both
candidates had supporters who manned booths, where they passed out
literature, took down information from prospective supporters, and
encouraged them to cast votes in the straw poll. Carson backers, wearing
blue “I’m with Ben” stickers, crowded the halls and invited attendees to
take pictures with a life-size cardboard cut-out of the candidate.

“He has a large contingency here,” Steve Fair, Oklahoma’s Republican
national committeeman, said of Carson.

For Cruz — who was initially slated to be the keynote speaker at a Friday
night dinner but had his father, Rafael, substitute for him — the
organizing surrounding the straw poll was nearly a month in the making.
Weeks ago, his top advisers developed a projection of which activists would
be most likely to attend the conference and set out to contact them. The
campaign would end up calling about 2,000 people throughout Oklahoma,
northwest Louisiana, North Texas, and western Arkansas — all areas likely
to be heavily represented at the event — and encouraged them to come and
register their support for the Texas senator.

The cost of the effort was low — Cruz’s advisers estimate they spent only
around $1,800 — but they saw a return in competing. By doing so, they made
contact with thousands of conservatives across the South, a constituency
that could be inclined to support the Texas senator. Several of Cruz’s top
aides spent the conference roaming the halls and talking to activists and
party leaders in hopes of increasing his support.

Republicans are grappling with a similar discussion over whether to compete
in the Iowa Straw Poll in August, a traditional measuring stick that has
been seen as an early barometer of a candidate’s strength in the critical
first-caucus state. Earlier this month, Bush said that he wouldn’t be
competing, saying that it’s not relevant. Mike Huckabee also announced
earlier in the week that he would skip the Iowa Straw Poll. Walker, the
current front-runner in Iowa, has yet to say whether he will participate.
For both, a loss in the Iowa event — which carries more political cachet
than the SRLC poll — would be seen as a black eye.

The SRLC represents one of the party’s major events of the pre-primary
season, bringing together activists from the most reliably Republican
region in the nation. The 2016 hopefuls who trekked to Oklahoma City, a hub
for oil and gas interests, came to speak but also to court influential
local political leaders and donors with private meetings. Walker, Bush and
Rick Santorum all organized get-togethers in the Devon Tower, the 50-story
skyscraper that towers above the city. Christie, meanwhile, held an event
for a super PAC that’s been set up to to support his anticipated candidacy.

Some Southern leaders are looking to increase the region’s influence in the
nominating process by altering the primary calendar. A number of states,
including Alabama, Texas, and Virginia, have announced plans to hold their
contests on March 1 and create an “SEC primary,” a reference to the NCAA
Southeastern conference. In recent presidential election years, Southern
states had their primaries on different dates.

As the conference wrapped up on Saturday, a number of candidates were
expected to formally launch their campaigns in the coming days. Santorum is
set to launch his bid next week in Pennsylvania, with Perry and Lindsey
Graham the week after. Christie, Bush and Walker, meanwhile, are expected
to formally launch their candidacies later in the summer.

Chris Christie: The strong, loud type
<http://www.cbsnews.com/news/chris-christie-the-strong-loud-type/> // CBS
News // John Dickerson - May 22, 2015

OKLAHOMA CITY--Chris Christie doesn't give speeches so much as engage in
performance art. How he speaks is as much a part of his message as what he
says. At the Southern Republican Leadership Conference on Friday, after
explaining his plan to manage the growth of entitlements, the New Jersey
governor said he knows that Social Security is a "third rail of American
politics," but that's why he's meddling with it. "I just grabbed it and
hugged it, everybody, because that's what leadership is."

Every Republican candidate has a strong suit he thinks will get him to the
presidency. Sen. Marco Rubio says he represents the future, Sen. Ted Cruz
says he's the purest conservative, Sen. Rand Paul is Mr. Liberty, former
Gov. Rick Perry is running on his Texas record, and former Florida Gov. Jeb
Bush is positioning himself to be the general election candidate.
Christie's route to relevance will be based on the show he puts on for
voters.

Christie faces a steep hill to climb with Republicans. In the latest CBS
News poll, 42 percent of Republicans said they would never vote for him.
That's higher than any other candidate. What makes matters worse is that
Christie is among the most well-known candidates in the field. That means
unlike Gov. Scott Walker, who is still making a first impression with many
primary-goers, voters already have opinions about Christie.

As Mom told us, it's hard to get a second chance to make a first
impression. Christie is trying a variety of gambits anyway, including
informing voters about his record, using the word conservative a lot, and
unveiling policy proposals. But all of it is less important than the way he
conveys the information.

Christie starts his remarks in his typical stump speech by talking about
his bluntness, the product of his Irish and Italian parents. He tells the
story of his mother, who instructed bluntness and truth-telling from an
early age. This could be defensiveness--Jeb Bush starts by talking about
his father and brother to clear the air, proclaims his love of family but
also his independence, and moves on--but Christie has designed his speech
and his entire performance around this bluntness. "I didn't run for
governor of New Jersey to be elected prom king," said Christie in New
Hampshire last month. "I'm not looking to be the most popular guy in the
world. I'm looking to be the most respected one."

The message isn't just what you see is what you get, but what you see is
what you want. On no issue is this clearer than national security, where
Christie, like all Republican candidates, is preaching strength as the
antidote to the weakness President Obama has shown. When Christie makes his
strength pitch, it's not about his plan for destroying ISIS, restoring U.S.
influence in Asia, or countering Vladimir Putin with a stronger NATO. It's
about how he talks. "People say lots of different things about me, but they
never say that I'm misunderstood, and they never say that I'm unclear. And
no one around the world will doubt the resolve of the American people,
doubt our strength ... because I will say it directly, whether I'm saying
it to a friend or an adversary." In the strength in foreign policy contest,
Christie hopes that showing is better than telling.

Will Christie's rhetorical feats of strength work? It was working on some
of the members of the audience who listened to him on Friday. "I wasn't
fond of him when I came into the room, and he changed my opinion," said Ben
Ross, 67, of Oklahoma City. "I didn't like the way he responded to the
tragedy of Hurricane Sandy. That hit me the wrong way, but these wounds
healed, based on what he said." Dane Trout of western Oklahoma stood
outside the convention hall after Bush spoke and compared the two men:
"Chris Christie had further to go with me than Jeb Bush, and he did that."

Christie's performance is pleasing to the crowd in a party craving strength
after the Obama years, but the question is whether any of the conversions
he performed on voters are permanent. If so, those grim poll numbers can be
improved. Then he's got to find a way to get himself in front of every
possible voter he can.

At the end of his strong-man act, Christie returned to the story of his
mother. On her deathbed she told him that because they had been frank with
each other their whole lives, there was nothing left to say, and he should
go back to work. Strong
stuff.

A Rubio campaign blueprint, for all the world to see
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-rubio-campaign-blueprint-for-all-the-world-to-see/2015/05/23/6711c5ba-00ca-11e5-8b6c-0dcce21e223d_story.html?postshare=5011432402631991>
// WaPo // Dan Balz - May 23, 105

It isn’t often that a presidential campaign blueprint comes packaged
between covers and available in bookstores and online for all to see. But
that’s the inescapable conclusion from looking through the pages of the
book entitled, “2016 and Beyond,” by Republican pollster Whit Ayres.

Ayres is one of his party’s leading analysts. He also happens to be the
pollster for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). The new book is subtitled, “How
Republicans Can Elect a President in the New America.” If not exactly the
strategy memo for a Rubio campaign, it’s a good proxy.

Dan Balz is Chief Correspondent at The Washington Post. He has served as
the paper’s National Editor, Political Editor, White House correspondent
and Southwest correspondent.

Ayres’s demographic analysis looks at the issue of a changing America from
the perspective of the growing minority population (and his party’s
weaknesses there) and the majority white population (and his party’s
strengths and limitations there). His argument is straightforward: To win
the White House, Republicans must systematically improve their performance
among minorities while maintaining or even improving their support among
white voters.

In an electorate in which the white share of the vote was 72 percent,
President Obama won reelection in 2012 despite losing the white vote by a
bigger margin than any winning Democrat in the past. The white share of the
electorate in 2016 will be a point or two smaller.

Based on estimates of the composition of the 2016 electorate, if the next
GOP nominee wins the same share of the white vote as Mitt Romney won in
2012 (59 percent), he or she would need to win 30 percent of the nonwhite
vote. Set against recent history, that is a daunting obstacle. Romney won
only 17 percent of nonwhite voters in 2012. John McCain won 19 percent in
2008. George W. Bush won 26 percent in 2004.

Sen. Marco Rubio, who's running for president in 2016, is known for his
stances on immigration and tax reform. Here's the Florida Republican's take
on Obamacare, the Islamic State and more, in his own words.

Put another way, if the 2016 nominee gets no better than Romney’s 17
percent of the nonwhite vote, he or she would need 65 percent of the white
vote to win, a level achieved in modern times only by Ronald Reagan in his
1984 landslide. Bush’s 2004 winning formula — 26 percent of the nonwhite
vote and 58 percent of the white vote — would be a losing formula in 2016,
given population changes.

Ayres also points out that the GOP’s support among whites is not evenly
distributed across the country. He notes that Romney won “overwhelming
margins” among whites in conservative southern states, but won fewer than
half the white vote in northern states such as Maine, Vermont, Iowa, New
Hampshire and Oregon. More importantly, Romney won fewer white votes than
he needed in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

To Ayres, this isn’t an either-or choice for the GOP. As he puts it, “For
Republicans to become competitive again in presidential elections,
Republican candidates must perform better among whites, especially in the
overwhelmingly white states of the upper Midwest, and much better among
minorities.”

The coming Republican nomination contest will test the appeal of the
candidates with both groups of voters. Is there any one candidate who can
raise the share of the nonwhite vote and attract more white votes in the
Midwest?

When I put that question to Ayres, he said yes, with this caveat: “If that
candidate can relate to people who are struggling economically and relate
to people who have been disadvantaged by a remarkably changing economy.”

Ayres addresses immigration at length, seeking to debunk those in his party
who say Hispanics will always vote overwhelmingly for Democrats or those
who say there are more than enough white voters who stayed home in 2012 to
make up the deficit by which Romney lost.

He lists any number of GOP candidates who have won significant portions of
Hispanic voters in state races and includes an interesting table that shows
that, even if all the “missing white voters” had turned out in 2012, and
Romney had won them all, “he still would have lost the election.”

Much of Ayres’s book is an examination of public opinion on a range of
issues. His conclusion is that, on the key issue of the role and size of
government, the country is center-right, not center-left. On debt and
deficit, he argues that a Republican candidate is on solid ground talking
about both, as long as he or she doesn’t make it all about the numbers and
instead links it to policies to stimulate more economic growth.

He sees cultural hot buttons of abortion and same-sex marriage as
separable. On abortion, he argues that Americans are and will remain “torn
about the morality” of the issue and sees no particular downside for the
GOP to remain the antiabortion party, as long as candidates talk about it
with sensitivity.

On same sex marriage, he concludes that the political debate is over, that
public opinion has made a decisive shift. But he acknowledges that changing
the party’s position will be wrenchingly difficult and sketches out some
do’s and don’ts for those opposed, including not advocating federal
intervention to overturn same-sex marriages adopted through referendums or
legislative action.

Ayres urges Republicans to set aside their satisfaction over their big
victories in 2010 and 2014 and focus on the reasons they have fallen short
in the past two presidential campaigns. He reminds them that deepening
their hold on state and local offices in red states is no indicator of
their presidential prospects.

In one example, he looks at the dominance of the Republican Party at the
state level in states that Romney won in 2012. The party holds between 53
percent and 87 percent of the state senate seats in those places, according
to Ayres’s calculations. Some Republicans, he argues, look at those numbers
and say, what’s the problem? But Ayres notes that those states still leave
the Republicans short of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the
presidency.

Ayres said he wrote and published the book before Rubio made a final
decision to run for president and said he hoped it would be a blueprint not
just for Rubio but for any of the candidates running in 2016. What the
party needs, he said, is a candidate who will prompt people who have not
voted for the Republicans in the past to consider doing so in 2016 rather
than one who offers modifications in message.

“It’s more a matter of not nominating a candidate who looks like the same
old, same old, but who looks like a fresh start for the party century,” he
said in a phone interview Friday. “It’s bigger than this position or that
position. Republicans have got to nominate a transformational candidate
because the country has changed more than most of us realized, even in the
last 12 years.”

Rubio will choose to run as he sees fit, but the similarities between what
he already is saying and doing and what Ayres lays out in his book are
striking. The interest in a Rubio candidacy clearly exists within the party
for the reasons Ayres outlines. But there is a large leap from the pages of
a pollster’s book to the rigors of a presidential campaign. Ayres has
offered the road map. Now comes the road test of whether the candidate can
deliver.

Rick Santorum’s got a point: Nothing helps poll numbers like winning
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/05/22/rick-santorums-got-a-point-nothing-helps-poll-numbers-like-winning/>
// WaPo // Philip Bump - May 23, 2015

When Fox News announced on Wednesday that it would limit participation in
the first debate of the Republican calendar to the top 10 candidates in
national polling, it was instantaneously obvious that there would be
friction.

And sure enough, within 24 hours Rick Santorum (who would not make the
top-ten cut, if it were today) offered a complaint. But a good one.

"In January of 2012," he said at a conference in Oklahoma, "I was at 4
percent in the national polls, and I won the Iowa caucuses. I don't know if
I was last in the polls, but I was pretty close to last."

He was not last in polls. He was indeed close to last -- at least in Real
Clear Politics' polling average.

2012 was different in a lot of ways. (For example, Santorum would have been
included in a debate using Fox's rules at that point.) But the more
interesting point is: Look what happened to his poll numbers afterward.
Within days, he shot up over 15 percent support, and never fell below that
level again. Later in the campaign, though, his numbers jumped again --
this time after winning majorities in the Colorado and Minnesota primaries.

From Jan. 3, the date of the Iowa caucus, to March 3, the last contest
before Super Tuesday, the winner of each contest went into the next one
doing better in the polls.

That makes sense, certainly. Losing candidates drop out and support moves
around, for one thing. But also, people gravitate toward candidates they
think might actually win. Before Iowa, most people probably wouldn't have
included Santorum. Afterward, they would.

Santorum's immediate point was, expand the universe of participants in the
debates, because you never know. But he actually did more to undermine his
point. Santorum was in all of the debates and still only polled at 4
percent. The debates didn't do much. It took winning to actually make his
mark on those numbers.

Kasich May Miss Cut in Ohio Debate
<http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/05/22/dear_john__fox_may_ask_you_to_sit_this_one_out.html>
// RCP // Rebecca Berg - May 22, 2015

The 10-candidate cap set by Fox News for the first Republican debate has
raised the awkward possibility that a state’s sitting governor could be
excluded from a forum held on his home turf.

The Aug. 6 debate will be in Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena, the same
venue that will host the Republican National Convention in July 2016. But
only the candidates who rank in the top 10 in national polling will be
invited to the Fox News forum, the network announced Wednesday — meaning
Ohio Gov. John Kasich might not make the cut.

In public, Kasich’s allies are expressing confidence that he will meet the
threshold come August.

“We believe that if Gov. Kasich decides to run, he will be on the stage in
Cleveland,” said Chris Schrimpf, a spokesman for the Ohio Republican Party.

But Kasich, who is thought to be laying the groundwork for a campaign,
although he has not announced his candidacy, currently scores just 2
percent in the RealClearPolitics national polling average, putting him
outside of the top 10 candidates.

Now, behind the scenes, it is his political team’s “top focus to try and
get him in the debate,” said a Republican operative with ties to Kasich.

“It would just be flat-out embarrassing if he didn't meet the top 10
threshold in his home state," the operative said.

That objective poses an unusual strategic challenge. Normally, candidates
focus their spending during the primary solely on winning the key states on
the path to the party’s nomination. But national polls can be influenced by
purchasing ads on national television — and candidates on the bubble for
debates will need to decide whether to splurge on that advertising.

Kasich is not the only candidate who may face this dilemma: Texas Gov. Rick
Perry, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly
Fiorina, former New York Gov. George Pataki, former Sen. Rick Santorum and
Sen. Lindsey Graham could also be vying for the tenth slot come August.

But the stakes are perhaps more personal for Kasich, who lobbied hard to
bring the Republican National Convention to Cleveland — and now might be
blocked from debating in the very venue that will later host the convention.

In spite of the potential awkwardness and the obstacles the debate format
will present to lower-tier candidates, the Republican National Committee
has nevertheless thrown its full weight behind Fox’s decision.

“We support and respect the decision Fox has made, which will match the
greatest number of candidates we have ever had on a debate stage,” RNC
Chairman Reince Priebus said after Fox announced its criteria.

The RNC decided it would leave it to each debate’s host to decide the
threshold candidates must meet to participate, meaning each debate will be
handled differently. While Fox News will limit its August debate stage to
10 candidates, CNN will divide its September primary debate into two
stages: the first for the top 10 candidates and the second for the
remainder.

“They asked for input and ideas,” said Steve Duprey, a New Hampshire
committeeman and chairman of the RNC’s 2016 debate committee. “Our input
was to make the debates as inclusive as you can.”

Although Kasich has not yet commented publicly on the Fox News debate
configuration, other Republican candidates who might be left out have begun
to make noise

Santorum, who barely registered in national polling at the start of the
2012 Republican primary contest, but went on to place second to Mitt
Romney, told the National Journal on Thursday that the debate thresholds
are "arbitrary" and "not legitimate."

“Hopefully they put it out there and they're going to listen to what the
comments are, and factor those in, and determine what is the right way,”
Santorum said.

In a conciliatory gesture, Fox News host Greta Van Susteren invited those
candidates who do not make the network’s debate to appear on her show that
same evening.

But then, Kasich would give up his a home-field advantage for a smaller
stage — an outcome his team will be working to avoid.

Ten Is Too Few
<http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/ten-too-few_952527.html> // Weekly
Standard // Jay Cost - June 1, 2015

Last week, Fox News announced its guidelines for the first debate among
presidential contenders endorsed by the Republican National Committee
(RNC). The network plans to invite the top 10 candidates, with the ranking
determined by an average of the five most recent national opinion polls
before the August 6 event. This is similar to the approach it has taken in
previous cycles.

Following historical precedent is often smart. In addition, using a
hard-and-fast metric, like a candidate’s poll position, is better than
subjective criteria to determine whether a candidate is “serious.”

However, Fox has adopted the wrong approach, and the RNC is wrong to
endorse it. Several problems stand out:

* The “margin of error” in polling does not disappear when one averages
polls together. For instance, five polls with 750 respondents apiece would
still yield a margin of error of about 1.5 points. That may not seem like
much, but it could be trouble early in the cycle. What if the candidate in
10th place is polling at 4 percent on average, while the 11th-place
candidate is at 3.5 percent? Statistically speaking, there is no difference
between the two, yet one would be included while the other would be left
out.

* Polls have been misbehaving of late. They were wildly wrong in Britain
and Israel, and they were wide of the mark in our 2014 midterms. Worse,
there has been evidence of what Harry Enten of FiveThirtyEight calls
“herding”: pollsters producing results that closely mimic one another, but
not what is happening in the real world.

*  Polls simply do not tell us very much so early in the cycle. Voters are
hardly paying attention, which means their opinions can be arbitrary and
easily changed. We saw this in both the 2008 and 2012 GOP nomination
battles, where the primary debates rapidly moved public opinion. Why should
pre-debate polls carry any weight?

*  There is no meaningful separation between the candidates yet. The Real
Clear Politics polling average has Jeb Bush in first place, with 15
percent, and John Kasich in 11th place, at 2 percent. A 13-point gap is
insubstantial in the early days of a presidential campaign cycle. Just ask
President Barack Obama. At one point in 2007, he trailed Hillary Clinton by
26 points in the RCP average.

*  It is not the business of Fox News or the RNC to determine the range of
acceptable choices for Republican voters. If this were a typical cycle,
with maybe a half-dozen serious candidates, a threshold such as this would
make sense. It is the only way to exclude obviously nonserious or fringe
candidates. But this is not a typical cycle. If we used the current RCP
polling averages, the proposed threshold would exclude John Kasich, Carly
Fiorina, Bobby Jindal, and Lindsey Graham from the first debate. These are
all serious candidates—two sitting governors, a sitting senator, and a
former Fortune 500 CEO. Moreover, the RNC has talked a good game about how
to grow the party. Does it make sense to exclude a woman, the son of
immigrants from India, and the governor of a must-win purple state? Neither
Fox News nor the RNC should take it upon itself to decide that such
candidates are unworthy of consideration. That task is best left to the
voters.

There is no doubt that the RNC faces a logistical challenge with these
debates. It is simply not practical to include more than 10 candidates in a
single session (and even 10 will be a stretch). However, excluding serious
candidates based on statistically meaningless poll positions so early in
the cycle is a terrible solution.

There has to be a better way. For instance, CNN intends to have two
debates, one with “first tier” candidates, and another with “second tier”
candidates pulling in at least 1 percent apiece. But this approach still
creates an arbitrary and meaningless distinction between who participates
in which debate.

Both Fox and CNN should hold more two (or even three) debates, with the
candidates divided up by some random selection, including all candidates
who meet some basic threshold like 1 percent in the polls or a minimum sum
of money raised. It makes sense to apply more stringent criteria later in
the cycle; however, there should be a maximally inclusive approach in the
early days of the campaign, without discrimination between candidate
“tiers.”

The GOP electorate would surely appreciate this. A recent Pew poll found
that Republicans are more excited about this field than their choices in
the previous two cycles. It is an easy bet that primary voters would
eagerly watch multiple debates.

In fact, the RNC should insist on inclusion. The only way to produce the
best candidate to defeat Hillary Clinton is to examine all the credible
contenders carefully. This means they all should be included in the
debates, even if this means two or three-tiered debates in the early going.

Reform Conservatism Is An Answer To The Wrong Question
<http://thefederalist.com/2015/05/22/reform-conservatism-is-an-answer-to-the-wrong-question/>
// The Federalist // Robert Tracinski - May 22, 2015

In less than a year, the agenda of the Republican Party will be pretty much
fixed by the selection of its presidential nominee, whose policies we will
all feel pressured to get behind, because they will probably be better than
the prospect of Hillary Clinton selling the Oval Office furniture to the
highest bidder.

So there is a certain urgency for those who are fighting over what that
agenda should be. Hence the renewed push by those who call themselves
“reform conservatives.” An examination of their agenda featuring The
Federalists‘s Ben Domenech led to an insightful roundtable from some of our
contributors. I talked with Ben about it yesterday on the Federalist Radio
Hour, and we covered a lot of interesting ground, including the curious way
that “reform conservatives” feel like a bunch of think-tank elites trying
to draft a populist platform. This explains some of the disconnect between
the ambitious goal of making the agenda of the right more appealing to the
common man—and the result, which is a laundry list of technical policy
tweaks.

What struck me most of all is that “reform conservatism” looks a lot like a
rebranding of neoconservatism—not the neoconservative foreign policy that
everyone has been talking about for the past decade, but the
neoconservative domestic policy.

I remember way back in 1993 opening the editorial page of the Wall Street
Journal—we read things on paper back then—and seeing an op-ed by Irving
Kristol (which seems to be reprinted here) calling for “a conservative
welfare state.” His starting point was that it was going to be impossible
ever to roll back the welfare state and the middle-class entitlements: “the
welfare state is with us, for better or worse.” So we might as well make it
for better by redesigning “a welfare state consistent with the basic moral
principles of our civilization and…our nation.”

In practice, this meant that the “conservative welfare state” should
provide greater incentives for the moral values conservatives like, such as
work and marriage, and  it should be made more efficient by introducing
“free-market” elements, which usually ends up meaning some form of vouchers
or tax credits in place of a centrally administered welfare program. This
is pretty much what the “reform conservatives” are offering now as if it
were a new idea.

More to the point, this doesn’t really count as a reform of conservatism or
of the Republican agenda. Offering more efficient and responsible
management of the welfare state is the Republican agenda of the past thirty
years. That isn’t a reform. That’s what needs reforming.

Offering more efficient and responsible management of the welfare state is
the Republican agenda of the past thirty years. That isn’t a reform. That’s
what needs reforming.

The key premise of this non-reforming “reform conservatism” is the idea
that it’s impossible to really touch the welfare state. We might be able to
alter its incentives and improve its clanking machinery, but only if we
loudly assure everyone that we love it and want to keep it forever.

And there’s the problem. Not only is this defeatist at its core, abandoning
the cause of small government at the outset, but it fails to address the
most important problem facing the country.

“Reform conservatism” is an answer to the question: how can we promote the
goal of freedom and small government—without posing any outright challenge
to the welfare state? The answer: you can’t. All you can do is tinker
around the edges of Leviathan. And ultimately, it won’t make much
difference, because it will all be overwelmed in the coming disaster.

America’s real problem is that we have entrenched a set of middle-class
entitlements that are about to yawn wide open and swallow the economy.
They’ve already swallowed the federal budget. Non-defense discretionary
spending—the stuff left over after entitlements and the military—has been
whittled down to insignificance and is about to disappear altogether.
Defense spending is still quite large, but not much larger than the
deficit. What this means is that most of the money the federal government
actually raises in taxes is immediately spent on entitlements, and we have
to borrow huge sums of money to pay for anything else.

America’s real problem is that we have entrenched a set of middle-class
entitlements that are about to yawn wide open and swallow the economy.

It’s only going to get worse as the Baby Boomers age and drop out of the
workforce at the same time that they massively increase the load on Social
Security and Medicare. Greece is the harbinger of our future, as we hurtle
toward the point when we’ve borrowed so much money—and need to keep on
borrowing, just to keep cutting the entitlement checks—that it becomes
doubtful we can ever pay it all back. Then our creditors start to clamp
down and the whole house of cards collapses.

So tinkering on the edges isn’t an adequate response. The question we need
to be asking is not: how can we reform the welfare state without
challenging it? The question is: how can we convince the American people to
start rolling back the welfare state? How can we wean the nation off
entitlements?

How we can do that is a big topic, and I don’t pretend to have any easy
answers. But it is at least the right question to ask.

It’s also true that this might not give us much guidance for how to win
elections in the short term. But that’s not what this discussion is
supposed to be about, is it? It’s not about the crude opportunism of
“rebranding” the GOP for the next election cycle. It’s about finding a
long-term agenda that can help the right define and achieve its goals.
“Reform conservatism” looks to me like a great plan for rearranging deck
chairs on the Titanic. What we need is a plan to show everyone the iceberg,
point to the clear waters in the other direction, and turn the boat around.

The question is: how can we convince the American people to start rolling
back the welfare state?

More broadly, we need a program that would achieve the real, fundamental
moral reform this country needs: a rediscovery of personal responsibility,
private initiative, and self-reliance. Do you know how you encourage
individuals to take the reins of their own lives and make their way in the
world, instead of sitting back and waiting for a government handout? You
let them do it.

The defeatism is really quite astonishing. We are a people who crossed
mountains and cultivated prairies, who built farms and steamships and steel
mills, who created astonishing new technologies that altered every aspect
of life. That’s the story of two centuries of our history. By contrast, the
cradle-to-grave welfare state is an upstart experiment that only really
took hold in the last thirty to fifty years. Yet we’re supposed to act as
if that is the permanent, unchangeable, immovable part of our society—while
the American as builder, creator, and self-made man is a vision that no
longer has any power to stir the soul.

I think that’s a short-range, self-defeating approach. It doesn’t really
reform anything, and the only thing it conserves is the welfare state.

The power grab that destroyed American politics: How Newt Gingrich created
our modern dysfunction
<http://www.salon.com/2015/05/23/the_power_grab_that_destroyed_american_politics_how_newt_gingrich_created_our_modern_dysfunction/>
// Salon // Paul Rosenberg  - May 23, 2015

In rolling out his proposal for a progressive agenda, New York Mayor Bill
de Blasio has repeatedly referenced Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with
America.” On one level that makes sense, since the “Contract with America”
is arguably the only example most people can think of where a national
political platform of sorts did not come from a presidential campaign. It
also played a significant—though sometimes poorly understood—role in
altering the trajectory of American politics, and thus it makes sense to
reference it when setting out to alter that trajectory again.

A lot of what people remember about the Contract just isn’t so, and a lot
of what was so is forgotten. It was not a conservative document so much as
it was a targeted GOP play for the support of Ross Perot voters (as
described in the book “Three’s a Crowd: The Dynamic of Third Parties, Ross
Perot, and the Republican Resurgence” by Ronald Rapoport and Walter Stone),
and despite its poll-driven nature (touted by Gingrich at the time), its
late release indicated it was less a play for broad political support than
it was for shaping elite political discourse after an election Republicans
knew they would win. At its core, it was the very essence of political
gamesmanship, even as it paraded itself as a populist attack on the
establishment.

In contrast, de Blasio’s agenda clearly is a progressive document, and
brings together a range of similarly themed aspirations to create a fairer,
more inclusive future. His 13 points are organized under three broad
headings,“Lift the Floor for Working People,” including points like raising
the federal minimum wage to $15/hour and passing comprehensive immigration
reform; “Support Working Families,” including passing national paid sick
leave and paid family leave, and making Pre-K, after-school programs and
childcare universal; and “Tax Fairness” including closing the carried
interest loophole and ending tax breaks for companies that ship jobs
overseas.

Aside from referencing Gingrich’s Contract, other statements de Blasio has
made reinforce a very different picture of the core political processes as
well as the end goal that he has in mind, as Amanda Terkel reported:

“Obviously the Washington dynamics are broken for all intents and purposes,
and history has shown us that a lot of the greatest success I think we’ve
ever seen in the history of American government, in terms of dealing with
economic crisis, is the New Deal,” he said. “That arrived largely from
actions that were already started at the state and local level and were
developed into national policies. I think we’re in a similar paradigm right
now. The local level is way ahead of the federal level in terms of
addressing these issues.”

While de Blasio’s intention is continue and expand the New Deal heritage,
Gingrich was opposed to it. Yet, he did nothing to change the basic
structure of American political attitudes, which embody broad support for
maintaining or expanding social spending programs in practice, even while
fitfully deploring it in theory—a “schizoid” state first documented by
Lloyd Free and Hadley Cantril in their 1967 book, “The Political Beliefs of
Americans.” They found that two-thirds of the population qualified as
operationally liberal, supporting an activist federal government when asked
about specific programs or responsibilities, while half the population
qualified as ideological conservatives, based on questions about government
interference and individual initiative. Half of all ideological
conservatives even qualified also as operational liberals. For all the
effort he expended, Gingrich did nothing to change this basic situation.
What he did do was to significantly aggravate this disconnect, intensifying
America’s political dysfunction.

The story surrounding how that happened is best told by Rapoport and Stone
in “Three’s a Crowd.” They find a direct relationship between Perot vote
share in 1992 and the chances of a GOP House pickup two years later. “Only
2.2 percent of Democratic districts where Perot received 10 percent or less
of the district vote flipped to the Republicans in 1994, while 42 percent
of Democratic districts where Perot ran most strongly in 1992 switched to
the GOP,” they write. How much did this matter? A lot: “Had Perot won the
same popular vote [in 1992] as he captured in 1996 (8.4 percent, less than
half of what he actually received in 1992), we estimate that the
Republicans would have picked up about twenty-nine seats over what they
held in 1992, leaving Democratic control intact.” That’s only three seats
more than the average number of seats lost by the president’s party between
1946 and 1990—a negligible difference. Thus, Perot’s 1992 showing was
absolutely crucial to GOP success in 1994—the “Contract with America” was
merely the primary means for tapping into that potential.

Looking back to 1992, Perot’s affinity with the Democrats appeared
stronger, once Clinton was nominated. He even withdrew from the race for a
time. After the election, however, Clinton alienated Perot and his
supporters, most dramatically by pushing through NAFTA, with Vice President
Gore publicly debating Perot on NAFTA and treating him disdainfully in the
process. Despite the fact that more Republicans than Democrats voted for
NAFTA (with Gingrich playing a key role), Clinton’s leadership was key, and
the disrespect shown to Perot personally was emotionally most resonant. At
the same time Clinton/Gore were treating Perot with contempt, Republicans
were viewing him like a gold mine:

As the dynamic of third parties suggests, after Perot identified and
mobilized a large constituency, both major parties bid for its support in
subsequent elections. The Republicans, as the party out of power in both
houses of Congress and the presidency, had the greater opportunity and
incentive to appeal aggressively to the Perot constituency. Beginning with
the February 1993 Republican post-election retreat, a group of Republican
leaders, spearheaded by Newt Gingrich and John Kasich, established close
ties with Perot and his UWSA organizations. Despite initial reluctance from
other party leaders, including Bob Dole and Haley Barbour, Gingrich and his
colleagues brought the Republican Party into line behind a Perot-base
strategy. Most impressive in this effort was the Contract with America,
which reflected both the form of Perot’s checklist for candidates at the
end of his book “United We Stand America” and many of the same issue
priorities of Perot and his supporters, while ignoring issues—such as
abortion and free trade—where differences between the GOP base and the
Perot movement were sharp.

Although there were some real affinities between Republicans and Perot
voters, three sharp differences are particularly illuminating in terms of
fundamental deceptions that the Contract embodied. Each involves a matter
of principle for Perot voters, which Gingrich and the Republicans adopted
purely as matter of political expediency—and even then, not too
convincingly. First was the call for term limits. As the minority party,
out of power for four decades, it was an easy call for Republicans to adopt
this Perot position, except when it came down to actual cases, as reported
at the time:

And for some GOP incumbents the contract presents awkward contradictions.
Gingrich, for instance, finds himself advocating that no House member be
allowed to serve more than six terms–even as he runs for his ninth.

Asked to explain the apparent double-standard on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on
Sunday, he declined to say directly whether he would step down if the
term-limits proposal became a reality.

“The notion that everybody who’s for something has to offer to commit
suicide in order for you to think they’re sincere, I think is fairly
outrageous,” Gingrich said.

There was a similar strategic logic to adopting the Perot call for a
balanced budget. It was, after all, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush who
had exploded the deficit like never before, so why not stick a Democratic
president with the job of fixing their mess? Especially since it would mean
getting Democrats to do Republican’s dirty work for them? (Which some had
seen as the point all along.) In this case, the hypocrisy wasn’t quite so
self-evident in advance. That would come after Clinton left office, and
George W. Bush quickly plunged the government deeply into deficits once
again.

The third point was the matter of congressional reform, two items in
particular: the first to “cut the number of House committees, and cut
committee staff by one-third,” and the second to limit the terms of all
committee chairs. While Perot supporters saw such measures in terms of
making Congress more accountable to the people, Republicans had a much more
clear-eyed view of things: it would make Congress more dependent on
special-interest lobbyists, who would become significantly more important
in the process of drafting legislation.

But for Gingrich personally, there was an additional payoff: it got rid of
knowledgeable congressional staffers who readily saw through his grandiose
BS. As I’ve noted before, this has been pointed out by Bruce Bartlett, a
top economic adviser to presidents Reagan and Bush I, in a piece titled
“Gingrich and the Destruction of Congressional Expertise,” where he
explained:

He [Gingrich] has always considered himself to be the smartest guy in the
room and long chafed at being corrected by experts when he cooked up some
new plan, over which he may have expended 30 seconds of thought, to
completely upend and remake the health, tax or education systems.

Because Mr Gingrich does know more than most politicians, the main
obstacles to his grandiose schemes have always been Congress’ professional
staff members, many among the leading authorities anywhere in their areas
of expertise.

To remove this obstacle, Mr Gingrich did everything in his power to
dismantle Congressional institutions that employed people with the
knowledge, training and experience to know a harebrained idea when they saw
it. When he became speaker in 1995, Mr Gingrich moved quickly to slash the
budgets and staff of the House committees, which employed thousands of
professionals with long and deep institutional memories….

In addition to decimating committee budgets, he also abolished two really
useful Congressional agencies, the Office of Technology Assessment and the
Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. The former brought
high-level scientific expertise to bear on legislative issues and the
latter gave state and local governments an important voice in Congressional
deliberations.”

Of course, the GOP had decades of no-nothing history before Newt Gingrich
came along. But his evisceration of congressional expertise was something
without parallel in American history. Regrettably, when the Democrats did
briefly regain control of the House, they did nothing significant to
reverse the damage Gingrich had done. The kind of expertise that Gingrich
eliminated is precisely what America needs to make sound policy
decisions—on everything from WMDs in Iraq to climate change, financial
regulation, community-based policing and drug policy reform. In its
absence, we’ve had an endless parade of committees investigating Benghazi,
and various other forms of clownish behavior.

Such is the extreme end result of the Contract with America. As I said
above, Gingrich did nothing to change the basic structure of American
political attitudes, the “schizoid” state described by Free and Cantril.
Instead, he merely aggravated the schizoid disconnect. But even with that
disconnect, landslide majorities still support robust social spending—the
exact opposite of what our political classes have decided on. Where
Gingrich aimed to confound the majority will, de Blasio aims to liberate
it, by bringing together existing movements and synergizing their power to
restore what still remains the dominant popular political outlook in the
nation at large—a belief that government should be an instrument of the
popular will, enabling us to achieve together what we cannot achieve on our
own.

While this view has been present throughout our history, it achieved its
modern formulation during the New Deal, and knowledge of this is reflected
in de Blasio’s core understanding of what he’s up to, as refected in Amanda
Terkel’s reporting cited above. It’s reflected in de Blasio’s timing as
well. As already noted, Gingrich’s Contract was unveiled less than two
months before the 1994 election, on Sept. 27, leaving no opportunity to
forge any organic popular foundation. But de Blasio’s announcement provides
an 18-month lead time, plenty of time to build support, dialogue, revise,
and forge alliances for post-electoral action.

In contrast to the Contract’s evolution as a carefully calculated political
document, de Blasio’s 13-point agenda is much more driven by the actual
content of the proposals and movements it seeks to encompass. Salon’s Joan
Walsh was certainly right to call attention to key missing pieces:

De Blasio was flanked by big placards supporting debt-free college and
expanding Social Security, two demands that have rocketed to the top of the
progressive agenda thanks to strong movements behind them. But those issues
haven’t yet officially made the 13-point list. A bigger omission was any
mention of criminal justice reform.

If, like Gingrich’s Contract, de Blasio’s lead time were less than two
months, this could prove fatal. But an 18-month lead time allows for these
omissions to be addressed via a much more organic process of consultation.
The greater challenge will be shaping a cohesive narrative whole. As Walsh
also noted, the logic of de Blasio’s agenda is supported by a more detailed
analysis in the Roosevelt Institute report “Rewriting the Rules of the
American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity,” advancing
the arguments that “Inequality is not inevitable: it is a choice we make
with the rules we create to structure our economy.” And this bedrock
insight—that the economy is a structured human creation, which can be
reshaped by structuring it differently—is the foundation on which the
struggle for America’s future needs to be waged.

There is nothing particularly new or radical in this view. Almost 240 years
ago, in “The Wealth of Nations,” Adam Smith did not blindly assume that the
“invisible hand” of the market automatically produced the best outcome, as
many mistakenly believe. Smith was quite aware that markets reflect the
rules built into them, which in turn reflect underlying power. Hence, he
wrote: “Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences
between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters.
When the regulation, therefore, is in favour of the workmen, it is always
just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favour of the
masters.”

Yet, the free market fantasy of a primordial pristine state has a powerful
hold on the American imagination, and it plays a key role in shaping the
views of ideological conservatives, which brings us back to “The Political
Beliefs of Americans” again. In the last section of their book, Free and
Cantril noted that “the principles according to which the majority of
Americans actually behave politically have not yet been adequately
formulated in modern terms,” and argued that “it is only because the
American system has demonstrated such flexibility and such a capacity to
accommodate to new situations that this schizoid state has not more
seriously impeded the operation and direction of government.”

Two points are worth making here. The first is that what they wrote in 1967
has remained true ever since. Decades of polling, particularly the
“attitudinal measures” in the General Social Survey, show slow cyclical
variations, but no overall erosion of these attitudes. As noted above,
broad support remains for maintaining or expanding social spending
programs, even among conservatives, and Gingrich’s Contract did not destroy
that support.

The second point is that what Gingrich did do was to significantly impair
the American system’s flexibility and capacity to accommodate to new
situations. Although Gingrich’s narrow power-grabbing agenda quickly
failed, and he left Congress only a few years later, the heightened
impairment to the system’s flexibility and adaptability lived on,
furthering the negative consequences of the underlying schizoid state.
Things have now reached such a crisis state that even the most basic,
broadly supported, non-ideological forms of government spending are being
crippled: spending on infrastructure, education and scientific research,
spending that even the wealthiest Americans support.

Free and Cantril also said:

There is little doubt that the time has come for a restatement of American
ideology to bring it in line with what the great majority of people want
and approve. Such a statement, with the right symbols incorporated, would
focus people’s wants, hopes, and beliefs, and provide a guide and platform
to enable the American people to implement their political desires in a
more intelligent, direct, and consistent manner.

Something along these lines is the long-term task that progressives have
before us. Building movements, and drawing them together—as de Blasio and
others are working hard to do—are necessary precursors. But for the long
haul, we will need to go even deeper than Free and Cantril imagined, even
changing the language we use to talk about economy—as the rule-governed
human creation it actually is, not as something natural that’s best left
alone—as cognitive linguist Anat Shenker-Osorio explains in her book “Don’t
Buy It: The Trouble with Talking Nonsense about the Economy” (my review
here). Ultimately, what’s needed is a fundamental reorientation in how we
see ourselves as a people and a country, as well as how we see the economy.
We need a new, inclusive vision, and a language that reflects the fact that
America is what we make it, together: E pluribus unum.

“The party of white people”: How the Tea Party took over the GOP, armed
with all the wrong lessons from history
<http://www.salon.com/2015/05/23/the_party_of_white_people_how_the_tea_party_took_over_the_gop_armed_with_all_the_wrong_lessons_from_history/>
// Salon // David Sehat - May 23, 2015

There was an emerging disagreement among conservatives, one that grew out
of differing dispositions, if not principle. The Tea Party movement
possessed an almost centrifugal force in which ideas gravitated from the
center to the margins. On the anti-intellectual fringe, the narrative about
the Founders was taken up by absolutists and paranoids who supported
citizen militias and the like. Yet even those not on the fringe supported
the radical rhetoric. It was, in some sense, built into the movement. The
logic of their argument—that conservatives were losing the country, that it
had fatally departed from the Founders’ intentions, that the republican
experiment required periodic revolutions to renew old values—suggested that
extreme and uncompromising measures were necessary to restore the nation to
the old ways.

The Republican leadership, by contrast, was made up of realists. Though
establishment politicians had used similar revolutionary rhetoric often
enough—since at least the time of Ronald Reagan—when it came to governing
they recognized the limits of their power and the importance of incremental
change. But with the Tea Party revolution, the rhetoric became harder to
control. The conservative base had slipped its leash. The new Tea Party
activists, who rejected incremental change as part of the same old pattern
that slouched toward tyranny, had begun speaking of revolution in sometimes
the most literal sense.

As early as August 2009, David Frum, a speechwriter for George W. Bush,
warned that conservatives were playing with fire. “All this hysterical and
provocative talk invites, incites, and prepares a prefabricated
justification for violence,” he wrote during the angry summer recess. “It’s
not enough for conservatives to repudiate violence, as some are belatedly
beginning to do. We have to tone down the militant and accusatory rhetoric.”

His warning turned out to be tragically prescient two days after the 2011
legislative session began, when Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot
in the head at a constituent event in Arizona. All told, nineteen people
were shot. Six of them died, including a federal judge who was present.
Reporters quickly discovered that Giffords had been on Sarah Palin’s target
list. The police had been called when a man dropped a gun at one of her
summer events in the infamous 2009 summer recess. And she had been one of
the representatives to receive police protection after her affirmative vote
on Obamacare. In retrospect, it was clear that she had been in danger for
some time. Now she lay in a medically induced coma with the surgeons
uncertain about the extent of her injuries.

Some commentators wondered if perhaps the Republicans had foolishly tried
to ride the Tea Party tiger. It had been clear for some time that the Tea
Party combined legitimate outrage over Democratic policies with more
disreputable elements that tended toward extreme directions, a dialectic
that the conservative columnist Matthew Continetti called “the two faces of
the Tea Party.” One side sought to repair various “deformities” in American
politics. The other, according to Continetti, was “ready to scrap the whole
thing and restore a lost Eden.” One side was reformist. The other was
revolutionary. One was responsible. The other was dangerous. It was really
important, Continetti believed, to encourage the one side and suppress the
other.

But when Continetti first began worrying about how to separate the
responsible side from the reactionaries, other commentators had argued that
it was impossible to draw such a line. Over at the National Review, Jonah
Goldberg suggested that these two faces were actually marching in lockstep,
as they had always done. Like Goldwater and Reagan in an earlier era, the
two sides were really differing dispositions. One was more strident. The
other was sunnier. One sometimes drifted into apocalyptic pronouncements.
The other maintained a more realistic position while offering the hope of
change. But both shared a policy vision, he argued, and both rejected the
twentieth-century welfare state as a betrayal of the Founders’ idea of
self-reliance. If the strident faction seemed to be ascendant at the
moment, as it had since 2009, Goldberg was not particularly worried. Tea
Party zeal would only catalyze conservative momentum that could eventually
be channeled toward legislative success.

But after the shooting, things looked different. With Giffords lying in a
coma and half a dozen people dead, it became much more important to
distinguish the hysterical faction from the responsible one. Republican
leaders would need to contain the more unruly components of the Tea Party
revolution, while nevertheless harnessing its energy to accomplish
Republican purposes.

Unfortunately for the Republican leadership, the Tea Party seemed barely
interested in governance. Tea Partiers wanted, above all else, a
confrontation with the president regardless of the wisdom of the conflict.
And because the 2010 freshman class was so large, Speaker John Boehner did
not have a functional majority to pass bills without Tea Party support.
That dynamic made Republican attempts to convert the posture of rage into
actual policy initiatives difficult if not impossible.

The problems began straightaway. By early spring, it became apparent that
the U.S. debt ceiling would need to be raised, a regular occurrence since
the spiraling debts under the George W. Bush administration, now
exacerbated by the Great Recession and the Democrats’ stimulus package to
combat it. Republican leaders decided that they would resist all increases
to the debt ceiling until they received sufficient concessions that would,
they hoped, force a fundamental change in course.

The tactic was not new. Fights over the debt ceiling had been occasional
going back to the exploding deficits of the Reagan administration. But what
was new was the unbending posture of the Tea Party. In the past, when the
opposition party threatened not to raise it, there was no real risk that
the ceiling would not be raised. Refusing to do so was simply a way of
extracting concessions. Everyone understood that actually going through
with the obstruction would put the U.S. government into default—not a live
option.

But what the Tea Party–led Republicans demanded—a massive cut to spending
that would increase over time, a balanced-budget amendment that would
permanently limit spending in the future, and the promise that these
aggressive cuts would somehow balance the budget rather than creating
recession and larger budget deficits—was unprecedented. There was no way
that Obama could give even half of what the Tea Party faction demanded. So
what would otherwise have been a routine maneuver in public credit of the
United States. The Tea Party threatened to burn down the house in order to
“save” it.

As the standoff lasted through the summer, many old-guard Republicans began
to grow nervous. Even those not known for their moderation began to appeal
to the Tea Party faction for a sense of perspective. Under the headline
“Ideals vs. Realities,” the conservative pundit Thomas Sowell reminded his
allies that they needed to keep in mind the course of the Founders in the
American Revolution. Just as George Washington retreated from British
troops to find a more strategic ground, Sowell argued, so the Tea Party
might find a different place than the debt limit to begin the quest for
smaller government.

But the Tea Party members remained firm. They were engaged in a revolution,
and a revolution demanded, above all else, extreme commitment. They would
continue to the bitter end. As former House majority leader Dick Armey had
said at a Tea Party rally, they needed to follow the Founders and the
Constitution without thought or equivocation—“This ain’t no thinkin’
thing,” he said.

Once the Treasury commenced extraordinary measures to put off default, more
business-minded Republicans became frantic. The Wall Street Journal
published an editorial denouncing the self-destructive extremism of the Tea
Party faction under the title “The GOP’s Reality Test.” The editorial board
was now convinced that the Republican Party had been taken over by a bunch
of lunatics who were unhinged from the actualities of economics and
governance.

The future was now clear. The Tea Party movement was determined to follow
their vision, even if it was self-stultifying. They professed to want to
shrink government to unleash the capitalist system and they argued that not
raising the debt ceiling would be a first step. But a default would have
plunged the nation’s economy back into recession, which would have lowered
tax receipts and massively increased the debt. And the default would have
further raised the cost of borrowing, which would then further increase the
debt. So not raising the debt ceiling as a first step in stopping the debt
cycle would have, in fact, massively increased the deficit, added
enormously to the debt, and thrown the nation’s economy into chaos.

As the radicalism of the new freshman class became apparent, Sam Tanenhaus
of the New York Times wondered if perhaps the Tea Party could learn from
Jefferson, their idol. Jefferson was the originator of the antistatist
tradition in American politics. He had invented many of the rhetorical
postures that the Tea Party now adopted. But like the Tea Party, Jefferson
had found his ideology and his posturing challenged by reality, as had many
anti-statist politicians who crusaded to shrink government. In fact, by the
measurement of actually accomplishing their goals in office, Tanenhaus
wrote, “Jefferson and his heirs have been abject failures.” But by learning
once in office and by adjusting to the realities before him, Tanenhaus
believed, Jefferson succeeded in governance.

Could the Tea Party do the same? The answer was no. Unlike Jefferson, who
proved to be supple in adjusting his ideology to reality, the Tea Party
faction was determined to remain consistent to the bitter end. Their
failure was not merely one of political thought, but grew instead out of an
intellectual and rhetorical style that substituted paranoid sloganeering
for actual policy analysis. Tea Partiers assumed, as Reagan, Goldwater, and
others before them had done, going all the way back to Jefferson, that
principles and values naturally cohered without trade-offs. Those
principles had been handed down from the Founders, were betrayed at some
point in the past, and now needed to be reapplied or else the people would
find themselves under a federal despot. Given those stakes, the niceties of
economics, the actual numbers by which decisions are made, and the policy
considerations that guide choices and trade-offs were all beside the point.
Total resistance was the only option.

It would be a long next few years.

SECESSION IS AN AMERICAN PRINCIPLE

“Is the Tea Party Over?” the columnist Bill Keller asked hopefully at the
start of the 2012 election season. After the near miss with the default,
Keller was not alone in wishing for a reprieve. But it was not to be.

Because of Republican gerrymandering after the 2010 election, the party
leadership could not abandon the Tea Party radicals. Since many
conservatives were in safe seats, the only credible challenge that they
could face would be from the right. To ignore the Tea Party faction or to
sideline their political interests would only cause a challenge to the
seat. “You have to kowtow to the Tea Party,” a spokesman for Richard G.
Lugar of Indiana said, summarizing the view of many Republican politicians.
And because of the Tea Party’s unbending radicalism, the Republican Party
was, in effect, being driven by its most extreme faction.

The resulting environment was not hospitable to moderate Republicans,
especially coming up on a presidential election cycle. After seeing the
radicalism of the moment, many viable Republican governors decided to sit
out the 2012 race. Navigating the way through a Republican primary required
too many bows to Tea Party orthodoxy and an almost willful detachment from
basic budgetary math. As Jacob Weisberg observed, the new Republican
orthodoxy expected all candidates “to hold the incoherent view that the
budget should be balanced immediately, taxes cut dramatically, and the
major categories of spending (the military, Social Security, Medicare) left
largely intact.” “There is no way to make these numbers add up,” Weisberg
concluded, a fact that had been pointed out numerous times by nonpartisan
sources. But the Tea Party required the incoherent litmus test
nevertheless, which had the effect of winnowing the field.

As more responsible Republican governors bowed out of the race, the
resulting crowd of candidates was filled with minor and often eccentric
figures who hewed to Tea Party orthodoxy. The primary season itself
unfolded with an unseemly chaos. Each Tea Party–supported candidate—Michele
Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum—took a turn
in the lead before making a gaff, losing a crucial primary, or exposing his
or her basic ignorance of public affairs. At that point, a new candidate
would begin to rise to the top.

Tea Partiers remained cool to Romney, even after it became apparent that he
was to be the nominee. To energize the base, Romney decided to add some Tea
Party flair to the ticket, choosing as his running mate Paul Ryan, a Tea
Party darling and architect of the 2012 Republican budget that, among other
things, promised to convert Medicare into a voucher system and to cut taxes
(again) on the wealthy. Ryan had strengthened his already robust Tea Party
credibility when he rehearsed the standard-issue Tea Party rhetoric during
his 2011 Republican response to Obama’s State of the Union address. Warning
that the nation was “reaching a tipping point,” Ryan called the nation back
to its anchor “in the wisdom of the founders; in the spirit of the
Declaration of Independence; and in the words of the American Constitution.”

Ryan seemed the perfect choice. But it turned out that the Tea Party and
the American electorate had begun to diverge. Although Ryan’s place on the
ticket energized Tea Party conservatives, in a time of economic stagnation
the Tea Party rhetoric did not sell with the wider public. The Romney-Ryan
ticket was stuck in the mud, unable to pull ahead in what many Republicans
had anticipated would be an easy contest. After the late-summer
conventions, polling suggested a close race. But some pollsters, most
notably Nate Silver of the New York Times, were predicting Obama’s
reelection.

Still, many conservatives went into election night expecting to win. “I
just finished writing a victory speech,” Romney told reporters on his
campaign plane. And a concession speech? “I’ve only written one speech at
this point,” Romney said.

Yet as the election returns came in, it became apparent how out of touch
Republicans had become. Obama won in decisive fashion, 332 electoral votes
to Romney’s 206. Even more disturb-ing—at least for Republicans—was the
demographic composition of those who voted from Romney versus those who
voted for Obama. Romney lost nearly every important demographic with one
exception: 88 percent of Romney voters were white. In a nation that was
turning increasingly brown, those numbers suggested crisis.

Watching the agony unfold, Sam Tanenhaus, one of the keenest of political
observers, came to a disturbing conclusion: the Tea Party–led GOP was
headed to the most extreme Jeffersonian position, that of John C. Calhoun
prior to the Civil War. According to Tanenhaus, Calhoun’s position had been
built into the conservative movement from the beginning. At William F.
Buckley’s National Review, for example, Calhoun was “the Ur-theorist of a
burgeoning but outnumbered conservative movement, ‘the principal
philosopher of the losing side.’ ” Through the fervent embrace of such
early conservatives, Calhoun’s views on federal power and the Tenth
Amendment became central in the emergence of the newly conservative
politics.

But problems had begun to set in by the 1990s and only intensified during
the Bush administration. Although Bush was reelected, it had become obvious
that the Jeffersonian-Calhounian rhetoric ceased to mobilize the electorate
in the same way as the nation became less white and as conservative policy
goals failed to pan out. By 2009, the conservative movement hit crisis. “In
retreat,” Tanenhaus argued, “the nullifying spirit has been revived as a
form of governance—or, more accurately, anti-governance.” Led by the Tea
Party, Republicans stumbled into a series of unwinnable fights over the
budget, the debt ceiling, and Obamacare, each justified, according to
Tanenhaus, “not as a practical attempt to find a better answer, but as a
‘Constitutional’ demand for restoration of the nation to its hallowed prior
self.”

But now that approach had come to its logical endpoint after the 2012
election. The Jeffersonian argument about maintaining founding principles
had degenerated into a Calhounian vision of state-sponsored nullification
and retrenchment. “Denial has always been the basis of a nullifying
politics,” Tanenhaus believed, but after the election it was obvious that
“modernity could not be nullified.”

How would Republicans now respond? They could either abandon their form of
antigovernance—with its genuflections toward the Founders, its simplistic
solutions to complex problems, and its general tendency toward obstruction.
Or the party would remain, Tanenhaus predicted, “the party of white people.”

TOP NEWS

DOMESTIC

After Senate vote, NSA prepares to shut down phone tracking program
<http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-nsa-tracking-program-20150523-story.html#page=1>
// LAT // Brian Bennett and Lisa Mascaro - May 23, 2015

Hours after the Senate balked at reauthorizing the bulk collection of U.S.
telephone records, the National Security Agency began shutting a
controversial program Saturday that senior intelligence and law enforcement
officials say is vital to track terrorists in the United States.

The Senate had debated into early predawn hours Saturday but failed to
reach a deal to reform the program or extend its life beyond May 31, when
the law used to authorize it is set to expire. Lawmakers then left on a
weeklong recess, vowing to return at the end of it to try again in a rare
Sunday session.

Administration officials said later that they had to start the lengthy
procedure of winding down the counter-terrorism program in anticipation
that Congress failed to act and a full shutdown was required.

“That process has begun,” an administration official said Saturday.

Intelligence officials warned of a precipitous gap in data collected if
Congress did not come up with a plan before May 31 to either expand the
NSA's authority — which is unlikely — or‎ replace the program in an orderly
way over several mo‎nths.

The start of the wind-down process‎ marks the most significant step the
Obama administration has taken to limit the data collection since former
NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents in 2013 showing the
government was siphoning and holding millions of so-called toll records of
domestic phone calls.‎

The data include the number dialed, duration, date and time for most
telephone calls made by Americans. The information is then searched for
connections to the phone numbers of known or suspected terrorists. About
300 such searches were made in 2014.

Opponents of the program, including presidential candidate Sen. ‎Rand Paul
(R-Ky.) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), are concerned that the massive
database could invite abuse by future administrations that want to probe
how citizens are connected to each other, stifle dissent or crack down on
political enemies.

“The Bill of Rights is worth losing sleep over,” Paul wrote on Twitter on
Friday night after he sent the Senate into overdrive by running the clock
on procedural steps. “Continuing to filibuster against NSA bulk
surveillance.”

Paul won praise from his supporters for his unrelenting stand against the
surveillance program. Two Republican lawmakers from the House came to the
late night Senate session to support the Kentucky senator. But elsewhere in
the Capitol, his maneuver drew grumbles from fellow senators in his party
who viewed it as a campaign stunt.

The program, which relies on siphoning data directly from phone companies
into U.S. databases, is complex and requires several days to shut down,
officials said. Intelligence officials said they had to start taking steps
now in order to stay within the bounds of the law, particularly after a
federal circuit court ruling this month found the NSA program to be
illegal. The decision invalidated the legal analysis of the Patriot Act
that NSA lawyers used for years to justify large-scale collection and
storage of call records. ‎

The standoff in Congress also puts in jeopardy some lesser-known parts in
the Patriot Act, which was passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks.

One of them allows the FBI to collect business records, such as credit card
and banking data, for use in terrorism investigations. Another authorizes
“roving wiretaps,” which permit the FBI to eavesdrop on every phone used by
a suspected terrorist without seeking separate court warrants for each one.

And another helps the FBI track a “lone wolf,” an individual suspected of
planning a terrorist attack, even if he or she has no known link to a
terrorist group. If the provisions lapse, the FBI could continue using the
“roving wiretap” and “lone wolf” authorities in existing cases only.

“We better be ready next Sunday afternoon to prevent the country from being
endangered by the total expiration of the program,” Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said as he left the Capitol.

Senators had rejected two bills that would have continued the program,
including one overwhelmingly approved by the House and backed by the White
House that would put limits on the government’s ability to acquire phone
data.

The House bill gave the NSA six months to shift from collecting and holding
the raw call data itself on government servers to a program that requested
the records from telephone companies on a case-by-case basis. It fell just
three votes short of advancing. Many view it as the most viable compromise.

Proposals from McConnell to continue the program as is, with no reforms,
for as little as one extra day, also fell short.

Paul objected to those measures, as did two Democrats, a further sign of
bipartisan opposition to extending the program without changes. Paul, who
has made shutting down the NSA program a focus of his presidential bid,
engaged in a 10½-hour talk-a-thon this week to delay proceedings.

“It’s not about making a point, it’s about trying to end bulk collection,”
Paul said. The debate has been difficult for Congress, and especially
McConnell, the Republican leader who backs Paul for president but disagrees
with his fellow home-state senator on this issue.

In a sign of the growing political consensus for changes, Senate Republican
leaders had reversed course earlier Friday and signaled that upon returning
from the holiday recess they were willing to consider legislation to reform
how the NSA searches U.S. telephone records.

Legislation promised by Sen. Richard M. Burr (R-N.C.), chairman of the
Senate Intelligence Committee, is expected to include many elements of the
House-passed USA Freedom Act, which would impose limits on the NSA
surveillance program.

Fearful of allowing a counter-terrorism program to close on their watch,
some senators suggested an agreement could still be reached before May 31.
“We don’t want a dark period,” Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.), a member of the
Intelligence Committee, said before lawmakers adjourned.

Others expressed hope that if record collection were interrupted, the
impact on the NSA would not be dire.

“What would happen during that time period, they just wouldn't be scraping
data, but they still would be carrying out other parts of the program,”
said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee.

But more hawkish lawmakers oppose elements of the compromise approach. They
want to keep the program in place as is until they are certain the
alternative methods being pushed by privacy advocates will work.

“The way you determine it doesn’t work is when the bomb goes off, and all
of a sudden people say, ‘Hey, it didn’t work,’” Coats said. “That’s why
holding it at current level is, we think, necessary until it’s proven that,
yes, we can do this.”

Administration officials are urging Congress to act quickly and
comprehensively. A stopgap measure to extend the program past May 31 would
not satisfy the court order, they say, and thus would not stop the
dismantling of the phone record collection effort.

McConnell's NSA gambit fails
<http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/243018-mcconnells-nsa-gambit-fails> //
The Hill // Jordain Carney and Julian Hattem - May 23, 2015

Mitch McConnell staged an epic gamble over U.S. spying powers — and lost.

The Republican leader pledged to keep senators in Washington through the
weekend to finish work on expiring provisions of the Patriot Act, but Sen.
Rand Paul (R-Ky.) called his bluff.

Instead, when the smoke cleared in the early hours of Saturday morning, the
2016 presidential contender was the one with bragging rights.

The battle between the two Kentucky Republicans spilled over on the Senate
floor, with Paul using procedural tactics to force the chamber into an
early Saturday vote. He then used his leverage to kill off McConnell’s
repeated attempts to reauthorize the expiring National Security Agency
(NSA) programs — first for two months, then for eight days, then for five,
then three, then two.

McConnell and the Republican leadership team had appeared confident even
into Friday evening that they could kill the House-passed USA Freedom Act.
They had planned to force the Senate into accepting a “clean”
reauthorization of the provisions — set to expire at the end of the month —
at least for a short while.

But Paul and other opponents of the “clean” renewal held firm, forcing
McConnell to kick the can and adjourn the Senate without a clear path
forward on how to prevent a shutdown of the NSA programs.

Leaving the Capitol, Republicans seemed confused on what their leader’s
next steps would be.

“That's a really good question,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said, when asked
what would change between Saturday and when senators return to Washington
for a rare Sunday session on May 31.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) seemed equally unsure if Paul would accept a
deal before returning to Washington.

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. They march to a different drum,”
the Armed Services Committee chairman said, adding that he was sure Paul’s
tactics were “a great revenue raiser.”

Even Paul himself appeared non-committal on whether or not he would accept
a deal.

“We'll see,” he told reporters as he left the Capitol. "It depends,
sometimes things change as deadlines approach."

The junior senator from Kentucky wants votes on two amendments, and said
that he didn’t understand why McConnell wouldn't let them pass by a simple
majority threshold.

Supporters of the USA Freedom Act appeared bolstered by the amount of
support the House-passed legislation received, coming three votes shy of
the 60 needed to overcome a procedural hurdle.

Lee said he suspects McConnell will try to work out a deal over the recess,
adding that “I hope that whatever that is, is going to be built on… the
House-passed USA Freedom Act.”

Sen. Ted Cruz, who is competing against Paul for his party’s presidential
nomination, said he was “hopeful” that McConnell would see the light on the
reform bill, which passed the lower chamber in an overwhelming 338-88 vote.

"Sometimes the Senate takes some time for debate and consideration,” the
Texas Republican said. “I think we'll take a week and come back and cooler
heads will prevail."

Cruz, while acknowledging that he disagreed with Paul, refused to criticize
his hardball tactics, saying that he’s “a big fan” of the libertarian
favorite.

McConnell didn’t respond to a barrage of questions from reporters as he
left the Capitol, and has given no sign of what his next step would be.

McConnell and Paul have been allies of late. Paul endorsed McConnell last
year in his reelection bid, and McConnell is backing Paul's White House run.

But the Republican leader appeared to be caught off guard by his fellow
Kentuckian’s resolve, and had previously brushed aside Paul’s filibuster
threat.

“Well, ya know, everybody threatens to filibuster. We’ll see what happens,”
McConnell told ABC’s “This Week.” “This is the security of the country
we’re talking about here. This is no small matter. We see it on display on
almost a weekly basis.”

Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), the Republican whip, suggested that Republicans
would be able to find a way out of the current standstill, telling
reporters after the votes that, "yeah, we'll fix it. I am confident."

Even with path to a deal unclear, the spy brawl had one clear winner —
Paul's political ambitions.

He has staked much of his presidential campaign on his civil libertarian
bone fides. The stalemate, as well as his filibuster earlier this week, has
helped him, and his presidential campaign, dominate the media this week.

Paul showed no sign early Saturday morning of letting go of that spotlight.

“The Senate has refused to reauthorize bulk data collection. I am proud to
have stood up for the Bill of Rights,” he tweeted from his campaign’s
account on Saturday. “But our fight is not over.”

“The Senate will return one week from Sunday,” he added. “With your help we
can end illegal NSA spying once and for all.”

But he also flatly rejected that his hardline on the Patriot Act provisions
was part of a campaign stunt, telling reporters, “I think people don’t
really question my sincerity.”

States quietly consider ObamaCare exchange mergers
<http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/242885-exclusive-states-consider-obamacare-mergers>
// The Hill // Sarah Ferris - May 23, 2015

A number of states are quietly considering merging their healthcare
exchanges under ObamaCare amid big questions about their cost and viability.

Many of the 13 state-run ObamaCare exchanges are worried about how they’ll
survive once federal dollars supporting them run dry next year.

Others are contemplating creating multi-state exchanges as a contingency
plan for a looming Supreme Court ruling expected next month that could
prevent people from getting subsidies to buy ObamaCare on the federal
exchange.

The idea is still only in the infancy stage. It’s unclear whether a
California-Oregon or New York-Connecticut health exchange is on the horizon.

But a shared marketplace — an option buried in a little-known clause of the
Affordable Care Act — has become an increasingly attractive option for
states desperate to slash costs. If state exchanges are not financially
self-sufficient by 2016, they will be forced to join the federal system,
HealthCare.gov.

“What is happening is states are figuring out the money is running out,”
said Jim Wadleigh, the director of Connecticut’s exchange, hailed as one of
the most successful in the country. “At the end of 2016, everyone has to be
self-sustaining.”

Other states are being driven to consider the idea by the King v. Burwell
case, in which the Supreme Court will decide whether subsidies are allowed
in states that didn’t set up their own health exchanges.

If the court rules against the Obama administration, millions of people in
states across the country will lose subsidies.

Some of those states could be interested in joining with other states that
have their own ObamaCare exchanges.

“It’s absolutely being driven by the court case,” said Joel Ario, the
former director of the federal government’s Office of Health Insurance
Exchanges.

Most Republican state leaders have avoided talking about how they would
respond to a decision against the use of subsidies on the federal exchange.
Behind the scenes, however, many are anxiously contacting states that run
their own exchanges.

“In the last seven business days, I’ve probably had seven to 10 states
contact me about contingency plans,” Wadleigh said, though he declined to
disclose the names of states he’s been talking to. “You can imagine the
political backlash that would be if the names got out.”

Wadleigh, who became the CEO of Connecticut’s exchange last fall, said he
has been in conversations with many states — some using the federal
exchange and some running their own exchanges — about possible partnerships.

“Clearly, we can’t sell the code, which was paid for by federal dollars,
but what we can do is have collaborations like joining exchanges, if that’s
feasible,” Wadleigh said.

His office met recently with officials from Vermont and Rhode Island to
talk about ways to collaborate. A few weeks earlier, the directors of all
state marketplaces met in Denver to discuss ways to share services.

That same group will come together again in late July at a conference
hosted by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

By most accounts, creating a multi-state marketplace would be a logistical
nightmare.

It’s unlikely that states could ever merge the full responsibilities of a
marketplace, such as regulating plans and managing risk pools.

But even with a simpler model, like a shared call center or website
platform, there are big questions about how states could share those costs
and duties.

Jennifer Tolbert, a state health expert with the Kaiser Family Foundation,
said “one of the trickiest issues” would be determining a governing
structure for multi-state exchanges.

“I don’t know how that would be resolved,” she said.

These hurdles have been big enough to thwart multiple states from moving
forward with their plans. Delaware, Maryland and West Virginia, which
commissioned a study on the option in June 2013, have all dropped the idea.

What is more feasible, experts believe, is a technology-sharing system,
where multiple states all hire the same private contractor. States could
also create a regional call center or outreach team.

"There’s lot of states that are trying to crack this sustainability
problem, and there have been times when they’ve talked about regional
solutions, but it's really been very early on in those discussions," said
Pat Kelly, the director of Idaho's health exchange, Your Health Idaho.

He said sharing some services, particularly technology, could bring big
benefits to states, though his own state couldn't do so because it used
federal dollars for the contract.

“Is it possible and is it a good idea? Absolutely,” he said. “Every time
you can share the costs, it’s going to be more efficient.”

Eventually, it could also involve states that are already on the federal
exchange, though that kind of transition would likely take years, said
Ario, who has served as the state insurance commissioner for both Oregon
and Pennsylvania.

“I think if King goes against the government, there will be a flurry of
activity,” added Ario, who is now the managing director at Manatt Health
Solutions. “Otherwise, it will be more of a gradual transition.”

He said it could be possible for states in some regions — like the Great
Plains, where the politics and populations are similar — to leave
HealthCare.gov in favor of their own, more autonomous system.

“You can imagine an SEC exchange,” he said, referring to states
participating in the Southeastern Conference college football league.
“Maybe they could run an exchange really well.”

The idea is becoming more attractive as more and more states are facing
dwindling budgets.

Already, Oregon and Nevada have been forced to scrap their own systems and
move to the federal exchange. Hawaii is now nearing a shutdown of its
program after lawmakers rejected a last-ditch $10 million funding request.

The costs of running Vermont’s ObamaCare exchange are expected to rise to
$200 million this year, while California has made major cutbacks after
seeing lower-than-expected enrollment figures. Its latest budget, released
last week, scales down the budget for advertising, outreach budget and
technology services.

For all states, technology is the biggest cost item and the biggest barrier
for states to set up their own exchanges.

The Obama administration, which has given $5 billion in grants to help
launch exchanges, has already pushed back the deadline for state
marketplaces. Exchanges were initially told to be self-sufficient by 2015.

Still, while forming larger exchanges could make financial sense for the
states, it could risk a political backlash.

The state-based exchanges were included in the Affordable Care Act to calm
fears that the law would lead to a new, national system for obtaining
insurance similar to a “public option.”

Kevin Counihan, the CEO of HealthCare.gov, said earlier this month that he
has been encouraging to share “best practices” among state marketplaces
that are struggling.

“Our role is to do everything we can ... to help those states succeed,”
Counihan told a group at the Health Insurance Exchange Summit earlier this
month.

Wadleigh, who will speak at the CMS-sponsored July conference, said
officials have been “very supportive” about his discussions with other
states, including multi-state partnerships.

A spokesperson from the CMS declined to answer questions about the
exchanges.

INTERNATIONAL

Ireland legalizes gay marriage in historic vote
<https://news.google.com/news?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&siidp=6655b841ba66baf70966bd2ff85a4b65f6c8&ict=ln>
// USA Today // Kim Hjelmgaard - May 23, 2015

DUBLIN — Ireland became the first country Saturday to legalize same-sex
marriage by national referendum, a result that highlights the dramatic pace
at which this traditionally conservative Catholic nation has changed in
recent times.

Just 22 years after decriminalizing homosexuality, 62.1% of voters approved
the measure changing the nation's constitution to allow gay marriage,
according to official results by Ireland's referendum commission. National
turnout in Friday's poll was 60.5% of 3.2 million eligible voters.

"With today's vote we have disclosed who we are: a generous, compassionate,
bold and joyful people," Prime Minister Enda Kenny said, welcoming the
outcome Saturday, according to the Associated Press.

Emily Neenan, a physics student at the Dublin Institute for Advanced
Studies, was holding a large rainbow-colored umbrella in the forecourt at
Dublin Castle, where "Yes" supporters gathered to celebrate outside the
Irish government complex.

"I am absolutely thrilled and I didn't think it would pass with such a
resounding yes," she said. "Even in more traditional rural areas, it looks
like we have done a lot better than we thought we would."

As Neenan spoke on an unseasonably warm and sunny day in Ireland, an
occasional cheer rose up from the crowd as Irish politicians who
spearheaded the "Yes" campaign passed close by on their way to be
interviewed by Ireland's domestic broadcasters.

"You know, it's about time Ireland did this," she said. "It's time Irish
society better understands what it looks like, and needs."

Before official results were released, both sides confirmed the outcome
earlier Saturday as votes were tallied.

"We're the first country in the world to enshrine marriage equality in our
constitution and do so by popular mandate," Leo Varadkar, Ireland's health
minister who revealed he was gay during the campaign, told state
broadcaster RTE. "That makes us a beacon, a light to the rest of the world
of liberty and equality. It's a very proud day to be Irish."

David Quinn, the director of the conservative Iona Institute, a leading
figure behind the "No" campaign, tweeted: "Congratulations to the 'Yes'
side. Well done. #MarRef."

Quinn said Friday that the movement to secure equal marriage rights for
same-sex couples in Ireland appeared to be insurmountable. For months,
polls indicated the majority of Irish voters were in favor of the change.

But in the days leading up to the vote, Ireland's government — which
supports the measure — warned that attitudes may have been hardening and
that victory wasn't certain.

Campaigners on both sides said the high turnout, buoyed by strong
engagement from younger members of the electorate as well as the many Irish
expatriates who returned home to cast their votes, contributed to the "Yes"
result.

The referendum is seen as an especially complex one for Ireland, where
about 85% of the population still identify as Roman Catholic even though
church attendance has been steadily declining for a few decades. The
church's moral authority has been questioned in the wake of a series of
sexual abuse scandals and coverups involving children.

The country has been slow to follow a path of social liberalization that
has taken root across Europe. Except in cases where a mother's life is
perceived to be in danger, abortion is still illegal in Ireland. A
prohibition on divorce was repealed only in 1996 following a national
referendum.

Dublin's storied pubs were fuller than usual Saturday, and reverie spilled
out onto streets all across the capital. Many were carrying balloons, flags
and other accessories highlighting an issue that for some in that gay and
lesbian community seemed almost too good to be true.

"It's an incredible day that even two years ago we could not have dared to
imagine," said Panti Bliss, a well-known Irish transvestite who appeared at
a rally at Dublin Castle.

"I think (outsiders) are still hung up on the idea that Ireland is some
sort of very conservative country ruled by the Catholic Church," Panti,
whose real name is Rory O'Neill, told journalists.

Around the world, 18 countries have approved gay marriage nationwide, the
majority of them in Europe. Others, such as the United States and Mexico,
have approved it in certain regions. In the United States, 37 states have
approved gay marriage and the Supreme Court is currently weighing the issue.

"This is a joyous day for Ireland and for LGBT people and our allies
everywhere," Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD, a U.S.-based
gay-advocacy group, said in a statement. "We are thankful for the
leadership of the Irish people, and we hope that many countries, including
the United States, follow suit by extending marriage to all their citizens."

Visitors to St. Patrick's Cathedral — founded in 1191 to honor Ireland's
patron saint — in central Dublin on Saturday afternoon appeared mostly
wrapped up in their appreciation of the building's impressive stonewall
facades.

"It is good that Ireland is approving this legislation," said Michael
Lendhofer, a tourist visiting from Hanover, in northwestern Germany.

"But I also think that there are some things about the gay community that I
don't agree with. For example, I think they should be more private," he
said, without elaborating.

ISIS Gains Momentum With Palmyra, Assad Squeezed on Multiple Fronts
<http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/analysis-isis-gains-momentum-palmyra-assad-squeezed-multiple-fronts-n363066>
// NBC News // Cassandra Vinograd - May 23, 2015

ISIS' conquest of the ancient city of Palmyra marked the latest in a series
of setbacks for the Syrian regime, but analysts say not to count out
President Bashar Assad just yet.

This week's capture of the so-called "Venice of the Sands" and its
Roman-era ruins marked what appeared to be the first time ISIS directly
seized a city from Syrian military and allied forces.

French President Francois Hollande said the fall of Palmyra showed Assad
was significantly diminished and called for a new push to broker a deal for
his ouster.

"With a regime that is clearly weakened, and with a Bashar Assad who cannot
be the future of Syria, we must build a new Syria which can be rid,
naturally, of the regime and Bashar Assad but also, above all, of the
terrorists," he said Friday.

NBC News reported in December that ISIS and Assad's forces were mostly
ignoring each other on the battlefield, focused on eliminating smaller
rivals ahead of a possible final showdown.

The Assad regime was focused on stamping out the moderate and weaker
opposition — and knew ISIS was doing so too. Now both are starting to
engage in a "much more concerted way" because "there isn't much of a
moderate left," according to Matthew Henman, head of IHS Jane's Terrorism
and Insurgency Center.

However, there is still one large, well-funded and well-armed obstacle
acting as a thorn in both sides: the Army of Fatah, a coalition which
includes the al Qaeda-linked Nusra front and recently seized control of
Idlib from pro-government forces.

Analysts say the Army of Fatah also poses a longterm threat to ISIS as a
competitor. Rumors are rife that the coalition is receiving funding from a
variety of external actors — Saudi Arabia, Turkey and even Qatar — and
Assad has had to rely on Hezbollah fighters for help in the Qalamoun
Mountains to beat back the rebels.

"The Assad government now is being squeezed between these two groups who
are still competing with each other," Henman said.

In a rare public appearance earlier this month, Assad downplayed recent
setbacks in Idlib as a normal part of any war.

"Psychological defeat is the final defeat and we are not worried," the
Syrian leader said at the time, explaining that amid his army's relentless
war there were occasions when the fighters had to "retreat back when the
situation warrants."

With other Islamist groups like the Army of Fatah taking the fight directly
to the Assad regime — particularly in the northwest of the country —ISIS
has "clearly felt a need to respond to that," according to Henman.

Seizing Palmyra looks like a solid way of doing so: It put ISIS back in the
headlines as a force capable of snatching territory away from Assad and
positioned the group along a key highway network well-situated for further
gains.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Friday that ISIS
had seized the last border crossing between Syria and Iraq controlled by
Assad's forces, situated in Homs province. The monitoring group also has
said with the capture of Palmyra, ISIS now controls more than half of all
Syrian territory.

That doesn't mean that ISIS necessarily outsmarted pro-government forces
for Palmyra, according to analysts. Instead, it appears that ISIS found a
way to "take advantage of the situation," Henman said.

"The opportunity was right to strike at Palmyra … while the government is
very busy elsewhere fighting," he added.

Analysts said that while the Assad regime certainly is facing a number of
challenges — including an overstretched military — it would be premature to
interpret Palmyra's fall as a sign of its impending collapse.

Failing to put up a big fight for Palmyra actually could have even been a
strategic move on Assad's part, according to Ayham Kamel, the Eurasia
Group's Middle East & North Africa director.

While previously the regime tried to maintain at least nominal control in
each of Syria's provinces, Kamel said the losses of Palmyra and Idlib show
that "the former strategy is no longer working."

He said that with fights on so many fronts it simply has become
"unsustainable" for the military to devote equal resources in all locations
— quite possibly forcing the regime to literally pick its battles.

"Palmyra is a national treasure but it is not key to the regime's fate," he
explained. Instead, the regime might be calculating that troops are needed
elsewhere in more strategic locations for long-term viability.

While the regime is "definitely" weaker than six months ago, it's not
necessarily weaker than two months ago, Kamel said.

"We've seen very clearly that in the war, the pendulum sways in both
directions," he added. "The current balance of power on the ground is not
necessarily permanent."

39 die in Mexico police shootout with suspected cartel members
<http://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-three-bodies-found-in-mexico-20150522-story.html?track=lat-pick>
// LAT // Deborah Bonello -May 23, 2015

gunfight between Mexican police and suspected criminals in the
cartel-dominated western state of Michoacan left at least 39 people dead
Friday, according to authorities and news reports.

The firefight occurred in Tanhuato on Michoacan’s border with Jalisco
state. The region has seen intense drug-related violence in recent months,
at least in part because of the approaching midterm elections June 7.

Controversial former top cop shot in Mexico's Ciudad Juarez

Controversial former top cop shot in Mexico's Ciudad Juarez

Early reports Friday suggested that the Jalisco New Generation cartel,
Mexico’s fastest growing criminal group, might have been behind the attack
in Tanhuato. Details about who died in the gunfight were not immediately
available.

Tension between the Jalisco New Generation cartel and the Mexican
government has been high since members of the cartel shot down a police
helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade early this month, killing six
soldiers. The army was in pursuit of a cartel convoy when the copter was
downed.

After the attack, the national security commissioner, Monte Alejandro
Rubio, told Mexico’s Televisa network that “the full force of the Mexican
state will be felt in the state of Jalisco.”

In early April, Jalisco New Generation ambushed and killed 15 members of
the federal police, the largest death count in an attack on state forces
here since 2010.

Tanhuato is minutes from Yurecuaro, where a political candidate was fatally
shot last week during a campaign event. The slaying of Enrique Hernandez of
the left-leaning Movement for National Regeneration, or Morena, party
prompted authorities to reinforce security along the state line between
Michoacan and Jalisco, which also forms part of a region known as Tierra
Caliente, or hotlands.

Tierra Caliente is a center of drug production and trafficking in Mexico
and has been a focus in President Enrique Peña Nieto’s security strategy.
Civilians began to rise up in arms there about two years ago to defend
themselves against the criminal groups that kill, kidnap and extort money
from residents.

On Thursday, three bodies were found near Chilapa in Guerrero state, where
at least 16 people went missing this month when the town was taken over by
armed, masked men for five days.

The bodies were not immediately identified, but the leader of the federal
police, Enrique Galindo, on Friday made his second trip to Chilapa to speak
to the families of the missing.

The Mexican government has moved quickly over the last few days in an
attempt to take control of the situation. Peña Nieto and his administration
want to avoid a new scandal involving mass disappearances after
international condemnation last year over the abduction of 43 college
students.

The students vanished in September after being detained by local police in
the city of Iguala,about a three-hour drive from Chilapa. The federal
government initially gave jurisdiction for the incident to Guerrero’s state
government, for which it was heavily criticized.

Since then, clandestine graves containing about 100 bodies have been
discovered in the hills around Iguala; the remains of only one of the
students have been identified.

OPINIONS/EDITORIALS/BLOGS

Weary of Relativity
<http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/05/24/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-weary-of-relativity.html?referrer=&_r=0>
// NYT // Frank Bruni - May 23, 2015

SAY anything critical about a person or an organization and brace for this
pushback: At least he, she or it isn’t as bad as someone or something else.

Sure, the Roman Catholic Church hasn’t done right by women. But those
Mormons have more to answer for!

Yes, there are college presidents with excessive salaries. But next to the
football and basketball coaches on many campuses, they’re practically monks!

Set the bar low enough and all blame is deflected, all shame expunged.
Choose the right points of reference and behold the alchemy: naughty deeds
into humdrum conformity. Excess into restraint. Sinners into saints.

Arkansas into Elysium.

I mention Arkansas because of a classic bit of deflection performed last
month by one of its senators, Tom Cotton. He was rationalizing a so-called
religious freedom bill that would have permitted the state’s merchants to
deny services to people based on their sexual orientation. And he said that
it was important to “have a sense of perspective.”

“In Iran,” he noted, “they hang you for the crime of being gay.”

I see. If you’re not hauling homosexuals to the gallows or stoning them,
you’re ahead of the game, and maybe even in the running for a humanitarian
medal.

Like I said, you can set the bar anywhere you want.

And you can justify almost anything by pointing fingers at people who are
acting likewise or less nobly.

Naturally, this brings us to the current presidential campaign.

Earlier this month Hillary Clinton not only made peace with the “super
PACs” that will be panhandling on her behalf, but also signaled that she’d
do her vigorous part to round up donations for one of them, Priorities USA.

She did this despite much high-minded talk previously about taming the
influence of money in politics.

She did this without the public hand-wringing of Barack Obama when he
reluctantly embraced his super PAC, which happened at a later point in his
2012 re-election effort.

She did this because Jeb Bush and other potential Republican rivals were
either doing or poised to do this.

And she did this, no doubt, because of the Koch brothers and their
political network’s stated goal of raising and spending nearly $1 billion
on behalf of Republicans during this election cycle. For Democrats, “the
Koch brothers” is at once a wholly legitimate motivation and an all-purpose
exoneration, a boogeyman both real and handy, permitting all manner of
mischief by everybody else. True, I’m vacuuming up money like an Electrolux
on Adderall. But in a Koch-ian context, I’m a sputtering Dustbuster.

Democrats tell themselves that they have a ways to go before they sink as
low as Republicans do. Republicans tell themselves that none of their
machinations rival the venal braid of conflicting interests and overlapping
agendas in the Clintons’ messy world.

The Clintons tell themselves that their assiduous enrichment since the end
of Bill’s presidency still doesn’t put them in a league with the fat cats
whom they’ve met and mingled with, and that they earned their wealth rather
than inheriting or shortchanging shareholders for it.

Other politicians tell themselves that if the Clintons are lapping at the
trough so rapaciously, surely they’re entitled to some love and lucre of
their own.

When it comes to money, almost everybody looks up — not down or sideways —
to determine how he or she is doing and what he or she might be owed.
There’s always someone higher on the ladder and getting a whole lot more,
always someone who establishes a definition of greed that you fall
flatteringly short of.

One titan’s bonanza becomes the next titan’s yardstick, and the pay of the
nation’s top executives spirals ever further out of control.

In the warped context of their compensation packages, the $8.5 million that
Richard Levin, the former president of Yale University, received as an
“additional retirement benefit” after he strode out the door in 2013
probably struck some of the enablers who gave it to him — and perhaps Levin
himself — as unremarkable.

Never mind that Yale is a nonprofit institution or that the values of
higher education are supposed to diverge from those of Wall Street. Now Lee
Bollinger, the current president of Columbia, can feel modest about the
nearly $3.4 million package that he received for one recent year.

THAT magnitude of compensation didn’t dissuade him from musing last week
about how completely content he and his wife were back when their apartment
hosted roaches and dinner was Lipton noodle soup. He recalled that distant
past in remarks to graduating seniors, whom he urged, without any evident
irony, to address “persisting inequalities, especially of wealth.”

And if Bollinger can feel modest, Drew Faust, the president of Harvard, can
feel positively ascetic: She makes less than a third of what he does. Of
course she supplements that by sitting on the corporate board of Staples,
an arrangement that some Harvard students and faculty have understandably
questioned and quibbled with.

Then there’s the moral jujitsu that American voters have become especially
adept at in these polarized times. Many of them unreservedly exalt their
party’s emissary — and inoculate him or her from disparagement — simply
because he or she represents the alternative to someone from the other
side. Being the lesser of evils is confused with being virtuous, though
it’s a far, far cry from that.

President Obama stumbles or falls and is pardoned by all-or-nothing
partisans on the grounds that he’s not George W. Bush. Those same partisans
wave off any naysaying about his foreign policy by bringing up the invasion
of Iraq. And the bungled rollout of Obamacare? A mere wisp of inconvenience
in comparison with the botched response to Hurricane Katrina. Everything’s
relative.

Except it’s not.

There are standards to which government, religion and higher education
should be held. There are examples that politicians and principled
businesspeople should endeavor to set, regardless of whether their peers
are making that effort. There’s right and wrong, not just better or worse.

And there’s a word for recognizing and rising to that: leadership. We could
use more of it.

Echoes of Iraq war sound in 2016 presidential race
<http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-iraq-war-politics-analysis-20150519-story.html?track=lat-pick>
// LAT // Mark Z. Barabak - May 23, 2015

Every war casts a long shadow, from the heroism of the Greatest Generation
to the dark ambiguities of Vietnam. It was inevitable, then, that the 2016
presidential candidates would be confronted with the war in Iraq.

Twelve years on, the broad questions raised by the invasion — about trust
in Washington and its leaders, about faith in dubious overseas alliances,
about the best ways to fight terrorism and how to bring peace to the Middle
East, if that's even possible — have not gone away.

If anything, the politics have grown more fraught for members of both
parties.

Kentucky Republican Rand Paul seized the Senate floor Wednesday for a 101/2
-hour speech aimed at ending the domestic surveillance program that grew
out of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — part of President George
W. Bush's justification for war.

The accusations of government overreach have been a centerpiece of Paul's
presidential bid and made him a champion to privacy advocates and the
libertarian-minded. But it also sets him against Republicans eager to
portray the freshman lawmaker as feckless and too quick to drop the
nation's guard.

In a mocking speech, New Jersey's Republican Gov. Chris Christie laced into
those he called “civil liberties extremists,” who he said were trying to
convince Americans “there's a government spook listening in every time you
pick up the phone or Skype with your grandkids.”

“They want you to think that if we weakened our capabilities, the rest of
the world would love us more,” Christie told a New Hampshire audience on
Monday. “Let me be clear: All these fears are exaggerated and ridiculous.”

The challenge for candidates like Christie and others in the GOP field is
to sound tough — certainly tougher than President Obama is perceived —
without appearing belligerent or too eager, as some now fault Bush, to go
to war.

Familial ties make that balance all the more acute for his brother, Jeb
Bush, should he emerge as the Republican nominee, which is why his
ham-handed performance last week — seemingly for the Iraq war before he was
against it — was so unexpected and potentially damaging.

The former Florida governor spent days calibrating and recalibrating a
series of statements before flatly declaring that, in retrospect, the
invasion should never have occurred. “Knowing what we know now, I would not
have engaged,” Bush said. “I would not have invaded Iraq.”

The question could not, or at least should not, have caught him by
surprise, raising doubts about Bush's campaign faculties after a years-long
layoff; several GOP rivals were quick to align themselves with popular
sentiment, saying they would never have gone to war given the knowledge
they possess today.

“I don't know how that was a hard question,” said former Pennsylvania Sen.
Rick Santorum, turning the knife.

Bush, however, was not alone among Republicans. On Sunday, in a convoluted
Fox News interview, it was Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's turn to weave and
stumble about the issue, defending President Bush's decision to invade
Iraq, given his thinking at the time, while suggesting it was a mistake he
would not wish to repeat.

For the Democratic candidates, familiar divisions surrounding the war have
also begun to emerge.

Some on the left have never forgiven the party's favorite, Hillary Rodham
Clinton, for backing the war as a United States senator in 2002, and they
are once more calling her judgment into question. The former New York
lawmaker and secretary of State has expressed regret for her vote many
times since, including again this week.

Clinton's sole announced challenger, independent Vermont Sen. Bernie
Sanders, said in an interview during a March swing through Iowa, a state
with a broad pacifist streak: “I think the war in the Mideast, how we got
into it and how we're going to address the current problems, are issues
that every American should be concerned about.” He opposed the Iraq war, he
tells audiences, from the start.

Since 2003, when the Iraq war began, every presidential campaign has been
shaped to some degree by the U.S. invasion, its faulty pretense — weapons
of mass destruction that were never found — and the war's vexing aftermath.

President Bush might not have been reelected in a close 2004 race but for
voters' reluctance to replace him in the throes of the conflict.

His successor, President Obama, would probably not be in office today had
his antiwar position not given him the traction in 2008 to take on Clinton,
who was then — as now — the overwhelming favorite for the Democratic
nomination.

But politically it is no longer as simple as being for or against the Iraq
invasion.

After the withdrawal of U.S. troops under Obama, after the drawing of red
lines in Syria and the violent birth of the terrorist group Islamic State,
critics can no longer blame Bush for all that torments the region.

“In 2008 and 2012 there was only one narrative, and that benefited
Democrats,” said Peter Feaver, a Duke University expert on war and public
opinion.

“In 2016 there is another narrative, which says President Obama inherited
an Iraq that was stable and headed on a trajectory to success and then,
through choices of his own, destabilized the situation and so bears
responsibility for what happened,” said Feaver, who served on the National
Security Council in Bush's second term.

Ultimately, though, the debate comes back to Bush and his decision to send
U.S. troops to topple dictator Saddam Hussein, a move he said would leave
the world a better, safer place.

“It's a generational pivot point,” said Matthew Dowd, a onetime member of
Bush's inner political circle, who was chief strategist for the president's
2004 reelection campaign before souring on the war in Iraq.

At a cost of $2 trillion and more than 4,000 American lives, the war's
legacy “affects everything,” Dowd said. “What do we do in Syria? What are
we willing to do in Iran? How do we pay to fix our railroads and pay for
our kids' college loans?”

“All of this stuff ripples,” he said, and will be debated by presidential
candidates for many years to come.

Obama has a strategy for fighting ISIS -- one that isn't working
<http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0524-mcmanus-isis-strategy-20150524-column.html?track=lat-pick>
// LAT // Doyle McManus - May 23, 2015

Obama administration critics often charge that the president has no
strategy in the war against Islamic State, but that's not true.

Eight months ago, after Islamic State's army swept across northern Iraq,
President Obama's national security aides drew up a plan to reverse the
militants' gains. It began with airstrikes, to stop their advance. It also
included a series of steps to enable Iraq to defeat the invaders without
using U.S. combat troops.

First, the United States planned to push Nouri Maliki, the stubborn Shiite
prime minister, out of office. Then it would help a new government rebuild
the country's security forces, set up a "national guard" of local militia
units, and arm Sunni tribesmen who wanted to fight Islamic State. Once
those steps were underway, a strengthened Iraqi army would march north and
retake Mosul, the country's second-largest city.

So Obama does have a strategy — but for the most part it hasn't worked.

U.S. pressure helped shove Maliki out of the prime minister's office last
fall, but his successor, Haider Abadi, hasn't succeeded in making most of
the other changes the administration sought.

Some 3,000 American military advisors are in Iraq, but they couldn't
prevent Iraqi army units from abandoning the western city of Ramadi to
Islamic State last week.

Abadi's government drafted a law to set up the national guard, which would
allow Sunni military units to defend Sunni provinces, but Shiite
politicians have blocked the bill in parliament.

As for arming the Sunni tribes, U.S. officials say the Iraqi government has
budgeted money and weapons for 8,000 fighters in Anbar, the largest Sunni
province — but most of the aid hasn't been delivered. "The weapons have all
been approved," a U.S. official said last week. "We just have to get them
to the site and get them to the guys."

And the Iraqi recapture of Mosul, which some officials rashly predicted
could happen this spring? It's been postponed several times — most recently
because aides have concluded that retaking Ramadi must come first.

U.S. officials say the Iraqi government has budgeted money and weapons for
8,000 fighters in Anbar, the largest Sunni province -- but most of the aid
hasn't been delivered.

-

Obama's reaction to these reversals has been to counsel patience, reaffirm
faith in his strategy — and blame the Iraqis. "If the Iraqis themselves are
not willing or capable to arrive at the political accommodations necessary
to govern, if they are not willing to fight for the security of their
country, we cannot do that for them," he told Jeffrey Goldberg of the
Atlantic magazine last week.

A large portion of the blame clearly does belong in Baghdad — especially to
the Shiite factions that have blocked Abadi's attempts to do more.

But plenty of pro-American Iraqis and Americans who have spent time in the
country believe the Obama administration could do more, too — without
putting U.S. troops in ground combat.

"America can help," Rafi Issawi, a moderate Sunni leader and former deputy
prime minister, said during a visit to Washington this month. He called on
the Obama administration to set up "joint committees" in Sunni provinces to
get aid and weapons flowing. "Direct financing from the American side
encouraged people to defeat Al Qaeda in 2006 and 2007," he noted.

"The administration's strategy is a good strategy — but it only gets done
if you actually do it," Ryan C. Crocker, the former U.S. ambassador in
Baghdad, told me. "There hasn't been enough political engagement at the top
level. Where are the visits [to Iraq] by the secretary of State and the
secretary of Defense? Where are the phone calls from the president? It's
not happening."

Crocker said he met with Iraqi politicians in exile last week — "guys who
usually want to kill each other" — and heard a common refrain: "Where is
America?"

"They're all realistic; they understand we are not going to do boots on the
ground," he said. "But they all think we can do more than we're doing now."

Part of the problem, he warned, is that Abadi is under increasing criticism
from both sides, Sunni and Shiite. "He's being seen as weak — and in Iraq,
weakness is death," he said.

What more could the United States do? There are several options, some
already under consideration by the administration, officials say.

The United States could send more advisors and trainers to Iraq to expand
the relatively small force already there and allow them to work with more
Iraqi units, or even accompany Iraqi forces onto the battlefield.

Although the administration has already increased military aid to the Iraqi
army, it could be tougher in demanding that Baghdad's defense ministry
implement its promises to arm Sunni forces before more aid arrives.

The U.S. could also consider arming Sunni forces directly. That step,
however, could undermine Abadi and accelerate Iraq's division into
sectarian camps.

Finally, Obama probably needs to take steps to bolster Abadi — which could
include more economic aid and even a symbolic visit or two.

If Iraqi attitudes don't change, the war against Islamic State won't be
won. And Iraqi attitudes don't appear likely to change without more
pressure from the United States — whether it comes from Obama or, 20 months
from now, his unlucky successor.

Is the Ex-Im Bank Doomed?
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/23/opinion/joe-nocera-is-the-ex-im-bank-doomed.html>
// NYT // Joe Nocera - May 22, 2015

It’s looking pretty grim for the Export-Import Bank of the United States.

Over the last few months, the bank, which extends loans and government
guarantees to help American companies export their goods and thus create
jobs, has been under intense assault from conservative Republicans opposed
to its very existence. Almost every day I get at least one email blast from
a conservative think tank denouncing the bank for its “crony capitalism”
and “corporate welfare.”

Conservative economists keep pounding away at their belief that, in
macroeconomic terms, the Ex-Im Bank’s job creation is illusory; whatever
jobs might be gained when one company starts exporting are lost at another
company, they say. Most of the Republican presidential candidates are
falling all over themselves to declare their opposition to the agency,
which is set to die unless Congress reauthorizes it by June 30.

In the House of Representatives, Jeb Hensarling, the Texas Republican who
is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee — and is an
implacable foe of the bank — has made it plain that he is eager to see the
bank die, casting the issue as one of free markets versus “business
interests.” He has made no moves to introduce a reauthorization bill.

In the Senate, Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, who is also against
the bank, has grudgingly agreed to allow a vote on a reauthorization
amendment, which supporters hope to attach to a future must-pass bill that
would then go to the House.

But don’t get your hopes up. “Just because the Senate votes on a piece of
crap doesn’t mean we have to vote for it,” retorted Representative Mick
Mulvaney, a House Republican from South Carolina, according to Roll Call, a
newspaper on Capitol Hill. In a news conference this week, Hensarling said
that “the momentum is in our favor.” He’s right.

There are dozens of countries that have so-called export credit agencies
like the Ex-Im Bank. They all do the same thing. They help finance some of
their country’s exports. Some countries, like China, use a variety of other
techniques to push their exports. Guess how many of those countries are
following America’s lead in trying to wind down that assistance? You
guessed it: none. On the contrary, they’re rather enjoying watching the
U.S. cut off its nose to spite its face.

The conservative opposition is rooted in ideology, of course. Conservatives
argue, for instance, that the government has no business guaranteeing loans
if the private sector isn’t willing to make them. But this defies reality.
In the real world, there are plenty of perfectly good loans that the
private sector won’t make. Small companies that want to expand abroad have
a terrible time getting loans. Big companies often need a government
guarantee just to compete for a major contract. After the financial crisis,
the Ex-Im Bank increased its financings precisely because the banks were
gun-shy. Now that the private sector is making more loans, the agency has
backed off.

Another conservative argument I’ve heard recently is that the big companies
that use guarantees from the Ex-Im Bank, such as Boeing, General Electric
and Caterpillar, have years of back orders, so they can afford to lose a
little business if the agency dies. “Boeing has a backlog of $441 billion
in back orders,” said Diane Katz of the Heritage Foundation. (It’s now up
to $495 billion, according to Boeing.) “They can’t keep up with all the
work.” She can’t really mean to say that it’s O.K. if Boeing, America’s
largest manufacturing exporter, loses business, can she?

Nocera: "Over the last half-dozen years, Republicans have done many things
that have hurt the American economy and the American worker,...

For goodness' sake! This continent's colonization was founded on government
assistance. How have fiscal conservatives become so short...

Mr. Nocera asks and answers the key question we should all be worried
about: "Guess how many of those countries are following America’s...

A third argument is the macroeconomic one: that ultimately the Ex-Im Bank
does not create net new jobs. “Whenever you subsidize a U.S. company, you
are ignoring the fact that other U.S. companies could have made that same
sale” without the subsidy, said Daniel Ikenson, the director of trade
policy studies at the Cato Institute and a leading proponent of this theory.

But I wonder. Reuters this week reported that General Electric will lose a
$350 million deal to build locomotives for Angola without the Ex-Im Bank’s
assistance. The winner won’t be another American company, though; it will
be a Chinese company, which will have export credit financing. The Times
wrote about another G.E. deal, this one a $668 million public water
project, done in partnership with a second company, that relied on Ex-Im
loan guarantees. Without the bank, the second phase of the project will
again be lost to a Chinese rival. The Wall Street Journal recently told the
story of Air Tractor, “a maker of crop-dusting and firefighting aircraft in
the rural West Texas town of Olney” that will lose a quarter of its
business without the Ex-Im Bank. How is that a good thing?

Over the last half-dozen years, Republicans have done many things that have
hurt the American economy and the American worker, including the
debt-ceiling crisis of a few years ago. If they succeed in eliminating the
Ex-Im Bank, you’ll be able to add that to the list.

End Ex-Im Bank, the government's Enron
<http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/end-ex-im-the-governments-enron/article/2564796>
// Washington Examiner // Rep. Bill Flores and Senator Mike Kee - May 21,
2015

Congress has a choice to make, with a deadline of June 30. It can either
renew the authorization of the Export-Import Bank — a taxpayer-backed
credit agency that picks winners and losers in the marketplace — or let it
expire and begin the bank's orderly winding-down.

As conservatives, we believe that one of Congress' top responsibilities is
to protect taxpayers from corruption, waste and mismanagement. That is why
we support letting Ex-Im expire. Congressional oversight has revealed that
the bank is broken, ignores opportunities for reform and proves a financial
liability to American taxpayers.

Originally, Ex-Im was conceived to help small American businesses compete
with the Soviet Union. It has evolved from a Cold War relic to become a
prime example of the perils of Washington's "government knows best"
philosophy.

The bureaucrats who run the bank believe that government can outwit markets
and help some businesses at the expense of others. We know, however, that
America can compete in a modern global economy without interference from
bureaucrats. In fact, the best thing Washington can do to help our economy
thrive is to enact common-sense tax reforms, unleash America's energy
production and lower the barriers for international trade.

Past, present and potential future presidential candidates will fill
political talk shows Sunday.

The Senate will instead reconvene in an unusual Sunday session next week to
try again.

Unfortunately, Ex-Im is more than an outdated agency — it is fundamentally
broken. And it should come as no surprise that when such an agency wields
the heavy hand of governmental power, mismanagement, misconduct and
corruption become the norm. It is a modern day "Enron" of the federal
government.

Take, for instance, the case of former Ex-Im official Johnny Gutierrez, who
pleaded guilty just last month to accepting nearly $79,000 in bribes. On 19
separate occasions between 2006-13, Gutierrez accepted cash in return for
recommending the bank approve certain unqualified loan applications.

This example is not isolated. At a recent congressional hearing on Ex-Im,
House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, pointed out that
Ex-Im has seen an overall increase in criminal charges since President
Obama appointed Chairman Fred Hochberg to head it six years ago. According
to the chairman, the supposedly small bank's rap sheet is impressive:
"Sixty-five matters have been referred to prosecution, 31 arrest warrants,
85 indictments, 48 criminal judgments, decades of combined prison time, a
quarter of billion in fines, restitution and forfeiture."

Those numbers may soon rise even higher — at the same hearing, Ex-Im's
inspector general testified that there are at least 31 open fraud
investigations involving Ex-Im that could lead to future indictments.

Ex-Im's employee misconduct is a symptom of a larger problem. The bank has
simply proven itself incapable of reform. Congress, the General
Accountability Office and the bank's own inspector general have made
numerous recommendations to "fix" Ex-Im, which its officials have boldly
ignored. After years of repeated warnings, the bank has made clear that
they have no interest in changing their troubling and irresponsible
practices — and they are putting taxpayers at risk in the process.

According to Ex-Im's IG, the bank does not subject borrowers to the same
level of scrutiny that private lenders do, and it has no robust and
systematic process for keeping an eye on borrowers. The standards for
underwriting loans are also decentralized and potentially subjective, as
well. In 2010, the Bank's board of directors authorized certain officials
to approve loan applications under $10 million, raising concern that the
bank was no longer doing its due diligence or applying a uniform standard
for loan approval. The IG recommended Ex-Im improve its credit underwriting
process, but there is no indication these changes have been implemented.

Ex-Im has also ignored recommendations to manage its risk, as wise private
investors do, by diversifying its portfolio geographically and by sector.
As a result, its portfolio is too heavily concentrated in a handful of
industries. If a sector of the economy heavily subsidized by Ex-Im — like
aerospace, for example — were to suffer, taxpayers could be on the hook for
billions of dollars in bad loans.

We have paid for such bad decisions before. The painful lessons of Fannie
Mae and Freddie Mac should not go unheeded. Congress made it clear that
Ex-Im needs to reform the way it does business, but Ex-Im has made it clear
it will not change. Ex-Im is at risk of becoming another Enron — that
legendary corporate example of mismanagement and misconduct, which itself
once benefited from Ex-Im financing.

The government should not be in the banking business to begin with, but a
government bank that defies the government's elected representatives is
even more inappropriate. We are both determined to let Ex-Im begin what
will likely be a 20-year process of winding down its operations in order to
protect taxpayers and pave the way for a freer, more prosperous economic
future.

Banks as Felons, or Criminality Lite
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/23/opinion/banks-as-felons-or-criminality-lite.html?ref=opinion&_r=0>
// NYT // Editorial Board - May 22, 2015

As of this week, Citicorp, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays and Royal Bank of
Scotland are felons, having pleaded guilty on Wednesday to criminal charges
of conspiring to rig the value of the world’s currencies. According to the
Justice Department, the lengthy and lucrative conspiracy enabled the banks
to pad their profits without regard to fairness, the law or the public good.

Besides the criminal label, however, nothing much has changed for the
banks. And that means nothing much has changed for the public. There is no
meaningful accountability in the plea deals and, by extension, no
meaningful deterrence from future wrongdoing. In a memo to employees this
week, the chief executive of Citi, Michael Corbat, called the criminal
behavior “an embarrassment” — not the word most people would use to
describe a felony but an apt one in light of the fact that the plea deals
are essentially a spanking, nothing more.

As a rule, a felony plea carries more painful consequences. For example, a
publicly traded company that is guilty of a crime is supposed to lose
privileges granted by the Securities and Exchange Commission to quickly
raise and trade money in the capital markets. But in this instance, the
plea deals were not completed until the S.E.C. gave official assurance that
the banks could keep operating the same as always, despite their criminal
misconduct. (One S.E.C. commissioner, Kara Stein, issued a scathing dissent
from the agency’s decision to excuse the banks.)

Barclays was one of the banks that pleaded guilty to federal crimes in a
currency manipulation case. Credit Mike Segar/Reuters

Also, a guilty plea is usually a prelude to further action, not the
“resolution” of a case, as the Justice Department has called the plea deals
with the banks.

To properly determine accountability for criminal conspiracy in the
currency cases, prosecutors should now investigate low-level employees in
the crime — traders, say — and then use information gleaned from them to
push the investigation up as far as the evidence leads. No one has thus far
been named or charged. Nor has there been any explanation of how such
lengthy and lucrative criminal conduct could have gone unsuspected and
undetected by supervisors, managers and executives. The plea deals leave
open the possibility of further investigation, but the prosecutors’ light
touch with the banks makes it doubtful they will follow through.

An argument has been made that the S.E.C. was right not to revoke the
banks’ capital-market privileges because doing so might disrupt the
economy. That is debatable. What is not debatable is that bringing criminal
charges against individuals and even sending some of them to jail would not
disrupt the economy. To the contrary, holding individuals accountable is
all the more important in instances of wrongdoing by banks that, for
whatever reason, have been exempted from the full legal consequences of
their criminal behavior.

If I walk into the local bank, demanding the teller hand over X dollars, I
would immediately get tackled and hauled off to jail. If I used...

Bribes become acceptable when they have enough 0s.

We all know exactly where the NYSE floor is. Nothing is stopping private
citizens from waiting outside and putting the fear of god into...

The plea deals mimic previous civil settlements. In all, the banks will pay
fines totaling about $9 billion, assessed by the Justice Department as well
as state, federal and foreign regulators. That seems like a sweet deal for
a scam that lasted for at least five years, from the end of 2007 to the
beginning of 2013, during which the banks’ revenue from foreign exchange
was some $85 billion.

The banks will also be placed on “corporate probation” for three years,
which will be overseen by the court and require regular reporting to the
authorities as well as the cessation of all criminal activity. And the
banks are also required to notify customers and counterparties that may
have been directly affected by the banks’ manipulation of the currency
markets.

The Justice Department intended the criminal pleas to look tough. Instead,
they reflect at bottom the same prosecutorial indulgence that has plagued
the pursuit of the banks in the many financial scandals of recent years.

Why Obamacare makes me optimistic about US politics
<http://www.vox.com/2015/3/24/8275345/Obamacare-politics-polls> // Vox //
Ezra Klein - May 22, 2015

Five years after its passage, Obamacare stands as a monument to much that's
wrong with American politics. But it also, increasingly, is evidence of
much that's right with it, too.

First, the bad news. Obama isn't just as bitterly polarizing as ever — it's
also as confusing as ever. The media has covered the law and its
implementation more thoroughly than perhaps any other law in recent
American history. But according to a national poll conducted by PerryUndem
for Vox, only 18 percent of Americans say they know enough about what's in
the Affordable Care Act. And it's not clear that more information would do
much good: only 19 percent of Americans think what they hear in the news
about Obamacare is even "mostly true."

Much of what Americans know about Obamacare is simply wrong. A plurality,
for instance, think the law is costing more than originally estimated. Only
5 percent know it's actually costing quite a bit less:

The result is that opinions on the law are pretty much the same as the day
it passed: 83 percent of Americans say their view of Obamacare hasn't
shifted over the past five years.

But the good news is, well, really good. Obamacare's premiums are much
cheaper than anyone expected, and a new study by the Kaiser Family
Foundation shows most enrollees are happy with their health insurance,
happy with the value they're getting for their money, and happy with their
choice of doctors and hospitals:

In total, a new Rand study estimates that Obamacare has gotten 16.9 million
people insured. And all this is happening amidst the most profound slowdown
in national health-care costs in decades.

More information won't save American politics

Obamacare is an example of a depressing fact of American politics: more
information doesn't change minds.

Social scientists have tested this again and again. The more information
partisans get, the deeper their disagreements become. When it comes to
politics, people reason backward from their conclusions. Politics makes
smart people stupid.

Consider how much we've learned about Obamacare in the past five years —
and how few elected officials have changed their minds about it. We know
how many people it's covering and how much its premiums are costing and how
badly Healthcare.gov was designed and how high the deductibles are and how
narrow the networks are becoming and how happy people are with their
insurance.

Yet no congressional Democrats have watched Obamacare's progression and
turned against the law. No congressional Republicans have noticed the law
covering tens of millions of people with cheaper-than-expected premiums and
decided maybe it's not such a disaster after all.

If anything, the opposite has happened. In a last-ditch effort to wound
Obamacare by wrecking it in Republican states, conservatives have begun
developing a bizarro-Earth history of the law — one in which Congress built
federal exchanges for the sole purpose of ruining insurance markets in
recalcitrant states. Five years later, it is not just opinions on
Obamacare's worth that have diverged. The two sides can't even agree on
what the law says or the history of how it was passed.

Among these elites, the problem is not too little information, nor too
little trust in the information. It is too much information that confirms
their priors, and too much trust in arguments and "facts" that suit their
ends. But the result is much the same. If Americans sometimes seem to
disagree on Obamacare because they know too little, Washington's bitter
divide is the result of knowing too much.

This is a good place to stop for a moment and be clear about my priors,
though they are already quite obvious: I think the evidence is, at this
point, overwhelmingly on the side of the law. Obamacare is nowhere near
perfect, but it's doing pretty much what it said it would do, at a lower
cost than anyone thought. The law can and should be improved, but the
simple fact is that the federal government is covering millions of
previously uninsured Americans and spending less on health care with
Obamacare than it expected in 2010 to spend without Obamacare. That's
remarkable.

Some readers might see my side of this argument as convincing. Some might
see it as deluded. In some ways, that's the point. My counterparts and I
are drowning in Obamacare data and are no closer to agreement than we were
five years ago. More information is just giving both sides more ways to
confirm what they already believe.

Washington can't reason. But it can govern.

The state of the Obamacare debate is depressing. But the state of the law
is encouraging across pretty much every metric you can find.

Despite a terrible start — the mess that was Healthcare.gov will be used to
scare public administration students for generations to come — the law is
working pretty well.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that Obamacare will cut the ranks
of the uninsured by 17 million in 2015 — and will cost more than $100
billion less than originally thought. Enrollees are quite happy with their
coverage. And, nationally, America's health-care spending is growing more
slowly than it has since the 1960s — a trend Obamacare can't take full
credit for, but that it hasn't interrupted and is likely helping along.

Obamacare's biggest problem is that the Supreme Court let states opt out of
the Medicaid expansion — and dozens did.

But a few years in, a majority of states have signed up, and even the
reddest locales are slowly but surely coming around. Right now, Kansas and
Utah are thinking about joining Obamacare's Medicaid expansion even while
Obama remains in office. It's a pretty safe bet that once Obama leaves, and
some of the polarization around his signature law leaves with him, all or
nearly all states will eventually participate in the law.

And this is, more broadly, the bright spot for American politics as a
whole. Even as it is often irrational for elected officials to look at the
facts and come to a conclusion that puts them at odds with their party, it
is rational for them, when in power, to come to conclusions that will help
them govern well.

This was evident even when the Democratic Party first passed and
implemented Obamacare. The law was unpopular by the time it passed — and
one reason was that Democrats had actually made it fiscally responsible
legislation, adding hundreds of billions in spending cuts and tax
increases. Healthcare.gov was a mess on the day it launched, but the White
House fixed it quickly — even as some liberals downplayed the severity of
technical problems, the Obama administration knew its legacy depended on
the law actually working.

This is true across policies. Democrats may broadly support tax increases,
but Democratic presidents worry about the distortionary effects of high
taxes. Republicans may want to drown the government in a bathtub, but they
know better than to get voters too wet. That isn't to say either party
governs perfectly, or even always rationally. But governing has feedback
loops that press releases don't. Parties that want to stay in power — and
they all do – have an incentive to do a good job.

In that way, voters discipline the system even if they don't know much
about individual policies, and even if they don't regularly update their
opinions on how various laws are working. Most people aren't experts on
politics, but they are experts on their lives and the lives of their loved
ones. If the economy is tanking, or their health insurance is being yanked
away, or their cousin was just wounded in an unnecessary war, they
eventually punish the politicians they think responsible.

It's not a perfect system — sometimes elected officials end up paying for
the sins of their predecessors, or can pass legislation where the bill will
be sent to their successors — but it's better than we sometimes give it
credit for.

For all the rhetoric, imagine what would happen to, say, President Jeb Bush
if he sought to uproot Obamacare entirely. Tens of millions of Americans
would lose their health insurance overnight. Any search for a coherent
replacement would spark a brutal political war within the Republican Party.
Republicans would suddenly be on the wrong end of the "if you like your
health care, you can keep it" promise. Remember that for all the energy
congressional Republicans spent in the 1990s trying to cut Medicare, Bush's
brother, once in the White House, ended up massively expanding it. The
incentives of governing are very different from the incentives of
politicking.

The Islamic State is entirely a creation of Obama’s policies
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/05/22/the-insiders-the-islamic-state-is-entirely-a-creation-of-obamas-policies/>
// WaPo // Ed Rogers - May 22, 2015

As reported by Robert Costa in The Washington Post, Republicans are blaming
the president not only for allowing the Islamic State to develop as a
terrorist organization in the first place, but also for failing to
effectively combat the group as it has grown. Yet there appears to be some
objection to Republicans calling President Obama out on his lack of a
foreign policy strategy. Well, yeah. The Islamic State is 100 percent a
creation of Obama’s policies. Plain and simple.

Iraq security forces withdraw from Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's Anbar
province, 115 kilometers (70 miles) west of Baghdad, Sunday, May 17, 2015.
Suicide car bomb attacks killed over 10 members of Iraqi security forces
Sunday in Ramadi, which now is largely held by the Islamic State group,
authorities said. Last week, the militants swept through Ramadi, seizing
the main government headquarters and other key parts of the city. It marked
a major setback for the Iraqi government's efforts to drive the militants
out of areas they seized last year.

By his own admission, Obama announced the “end” of the Iraq war, standing
in front of returning troops at Fort Bragg, N.C., on Dec. 14, 2011. In that
speech, he said the United States was leaving behind “a sovereign, stable,
and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government.” There was no
Islamic State threat at that time. Fast forward to this month, when the
president said in an interview with the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg the day
after Ramadi, Iraq, fell to Islamic State fighters that, “No, I don’t think
we’re losing.” I wonder what this administration thinks “losing” looks
like? This isn’t a “technical setback.” The losses in Iraq and the
splintering of Syria are a direct result of at least three key Obama
decisions.

First, Obama let the sectarian Nouri al-Maliki form a government in Iraq,
even after Maliki failed to win the Iraqi parliamentary elections in 2010.
Second, Obama folded in 2011 and did not ensure that an American fighting
force remained in Iraq. Third, Obama refused to identify and groom an
allied force fighting against President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. To be
clear, Obama is completely to blame for the Islamic State — the “JV team,”
in his words — and its rapid consolidation of territory in western Iraq and
through half of Syria. We are paying the price for the president’s
dithering and his refusal to cultivate and equip an allied force that could
shape events inside Syria and western Iraq. As your Insider said on May 18,
“A ‘Sunni-stan’ is being created in front of our eyes.”

And since all Insiders readers know that bad gets worse, we can assume the
march of the Islamic State will continue unless the president acknowledges
some new realities. That doesn’t seem likely, as White House Press
Secretary Josh Earnest is incredibly still claiming that the Obama
administration’s strategy against the Islamic State is “overall” a success.
So there is virtually no chance the president will acknowledge that the
borders of the nation called Iraq, ruled from Baghdad, no longer exist; or
that the nation called Syria, with its current borders, will not continue
to be ruled from Damascus.

Anyway, I have always accused this White House of lacking insight and being
incapable of being self-aware — much less self-critical — so despite the
urgent nature of world events, the prospect of a wholesale revision of our
foreign policy objectives and policies is unlikely.

This lack of insight — the denial, delusion and downright, jaw-dropping
inability to deal with the world as it is — was on display Wednesday during
Obama’s remarks at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy commencement ceremony.
Given the realities of America’s decline and retreat from the global stage
and the growing threats to our country, the president thought the most
important thing he could say to a U.S. military force was, “Climate change
constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our
national security … And so we need to act — and we need to act now.”

Since the president has been wrong about almost everything else concerning
our national security, perhaps he’s wrong about the threat he sees in
global warming. These are serious matters, but it’s hard not to ridicule
what the president said at the academy. Perhaps if global warming persists
at the pace the president desires, maybe it could actually improve
America’s strategic positioning. Maybe global warming will work to
America’s advantage since Obama cannot. Maybe global warming will cause the
islands China is creating to flood. Maybe warm weather will strain the air
conditioners in the North Korean laboratories where scientists are
miniaturizing nuclear weapons. Maybe another Russian sinkhole will open up
and swallow Vladimir Putin, making it impossible for him to continue to
humiliate the president. Maybe a drought will somehow inhibit the Islamic
State and keep it from murdering the few allies we still have in the Middle
East.

Anyway, the Republican voices seeking to replace Obama need to speak with
urgency so that the rest of the world will take notice. Even if Obama
continues to be a befuddled pushover on the world stage, perhaps their
forceful statements — combined with those of our GOP congressional leaders
— will send the message that our enemies and competitors should temper
their ambitions because a new sheriff is only 20 months away.

The Art of Avoiding War
<http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/06/the-art-of-avoiding-war/392060/>
// The Atlantic // Robert D. Kaplan - May 23, 2015

The Scythians were nomadic horsemen who dominated a vast realm of the
Pontic steppe north of the Black Sea, in present-day Ukraine and southern
Russia, from the seventh century to the third century b.c. Unlike other
ancient peoples who left not a trace, the Scythians continued to haunt and
terrify long after they were gone. Herodotus recorded that they “ravaged
the whole of Asia. They not only took tribute from each people, but also
made raids and pillaged everything these peoples had.” Napoleon, on
witnessing the Russians’ willingness to burn down their own capital rather
than hand it over to his army, reputedly said: “They are Scythians!”

The more chilling moral for modern audiences involves not the Scythians’
cruelty, but rather their tactics against the invading Persian army of
Darius, early in the sixth century b.c. As Darius’s infantry marched east
near the Sea of Azov, hoping to meet the Scythian war bands in a decisive
battle, the Scythians kept withdrawing into the immense reaches of their
territory. Darius was perplexed, and sent the Scythian king, Idanthyrsus, a
challenge: If you think yourself stronger, stand and fight; if not, submit.

Idanthyrsus replied that since his people had neither cities nor cultivated
land for an enemy to destroy, they had nothing to defend, and thus no
reason to give battle. Instead, his men harassed and skirmished with
Persian foraging parties, then quickly withdrew, over and over again. Each
time, small groups of Persian cavalry fled in disorder, while the main body
of Darius’s army weakened as it marched farther and farther away from its
base and supply lines. Darius ultimately retreated from Scythia,
essentially defeated, without ever having had the chance to fight.

Killing the enemy is easy, in other words; it is finding him that is
difficult. This is as true today as ever; the landscape of war is now
vaster and emptier of combatants than it was during the set-piece battles
of the Industrial Age. Related lessons: don’t go hunting ghosts, and don’t
get too deep into a situation where your civilizational advantage is of
little help. Or, as the Chinese sage of early antiquity Sun Tzu famously
said, “The side that knows when to fight and when not will take the
victory. There are roadways not to be traveled, armies not to be attacked,
walled cities not to be assaulted.” A case in point comes from the
ill-fated Sicilian Expedition of the late fifth century b.c., chronicled by
Thucydides, in which Athens sent a small force to far-off Sicily in support
of allies there, only to be drawn deeper and deeper into the conflict,
until the prestige of its whole maritime empire became dependent upon
victory. Thucydides’s story is especially poignant in the wake of Vietnam
and Iraq. With the Athenians, as with Darius, one is astonished by how the
obsession with honor and reputation can lead a great power toward a bad
fate. The image of Darius’s army marching into nowhere on an inhospitable
steppe, in search of an enemy that never quite appears, is so powerful that
it goes beyond mere symbolism.

Your enemy will not meet you on your own terms, only on his. That is why
asymmetric warfare is as old as history. When fleeting insurgents planted
car bombs and harassed marines and soldiers in the warrens of Iraqi towns,
they were Scythians. When the Chinese harass the Filipino navy and make
territorial claims with fishing boats, coast-guard vessels, and oil rigs,
all while avoiding any confrontation with U.S. warships, they are
Scythians. And when the warriors of the Islamic State arm themselves with
knives and video cameras, they, too, are Scythians. Largely because of
these Scythians, the United States has only limited ability to determine
the outcome of many conflicts, despite being a superpower. America is
learning an ironic truth of empire: you endure by not fighting every
battle. In the first century A.D., Tiberius preserved Rome by not
interfering in bloody internecine conflicts beyond its northern frontier.
Instead, he practiced strategic patience as he watched the carnage. He
understood the limits of Roman power.

The United States does not chase after war bands in Yemen as Darius did in
Scythia, but occasionally it kills individuals from the air. The fact that
it uses drones is proof not of American strength, but of American
limitations. The Obama administration must recognize these limitations, and
not allow, for example, the country to be drawn deeper into the conflict in
Syria. If the U.S. helps topple the dictator Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday,
then what will it do on Thursday, when it finds that it has helped midwife
to power a Sunni jihadist regime, or on Friday, when ethnic cleansing of
the Shia-trending Alawites commences? Perhaps this is a battle that, as Sun
Tzu might conclude, should not be fought. But Assad has killed many tens of
thousands, maybe more, and he is being supported by the Iranians! True, but
remember that emotion, however righteous, can be the enemy of analysis.

So how can the U.S. avoid Darius’s fate? How can it avoid being undone by
pride, while still fulfilling its moral responsibility as a great power? It
should use proxies wherever it can find them, even among adversaries. If
the Iranian-backed Houthis are willing to fight al‑Qaeda in Yemen, why
should Americans be opposed? And if the Iranians ignite a new phase of
sectarian war in Iraq, let that be their own undoing, as they themselves
fail to understand the lesson of the Scythians. While the Middle East
implodes through years of low-intensity conflict among groups of Scythians,
let Turkey, Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Iran jostle toward an uneasy
balance of power, and the U.S. remain a half step removed—caution, after
all, is not the same as capitulation. Finally, let the U.S. return to its
roots as a maritime power in Asia and a defender on land in Europe, where
there are fewer Scythians, and more ordinary villains. Scythians are the
nemesis of missionary nations, nations that obey no limits. Certainly
America should reach, but not—like Darius—overreach.

The Notorious R.B.G
<http://www.nationalreview.com/article/418787/notorious-rbg-editors>. //
National Journal // Editorial Board - May 22. 2015

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s more florid admirers sometimes refer to her
as “The Notorious R.B.G.,” as though notoriety, which she seems intent on
courting, were a virtue for a justice of the Supreme Court. On the matter
of same-sex marriage, Justice Ginsburg long ago stopped behaving like a
judge and started behaving like a member of a political campaign. She
talked up the prospects of same-sex marriage earlier this year — Bloomberg
headlined the story, not inaccurately, “Ruth Bader Ginsburg Thinks
Americans Are Ready for Gay Marriage” — and declared that Americans’
acceptance of a federal redefinition of family life, should five of nine
Supreme Court justices demand it, “would not take a large adjustment.”
Other than the jettisoning of state marriage laws and a few thousand years
of social evolution, that is. Ginsburg is a bit of a freelance advocate of
Democratic policies and priorities, having praised, among other things, the
so-called Affordable Care Act, the constitutionally questionable provisions
of which she voted to uphold.

Likewise, her public call for Congress to undo the effects of the Lilly
Ledbetter case and her implausible, poorly reasoned dissent in the Hobby
Lobby case speak to political rather than legal priorities.

Justice Ginsburg’s bare political activism is unseemly, a reminder that the
Court, like any other institution, is corruptible. Last week she presided
at a same-sex wedding, not her first — the two gentlemen strolled down the
aisle to the accompaniment of “Mr. Sandman” — during which, the New York
Times reports, she put a theatrical weight upon the word “Constitution,”
with a “sly look and special emphasis,” as Maureen Dowd put it. And that,
of course, is one of the questions before the Supreme Court: whether the
14th Amendment, unbeknownst to its 19th-century architects, has all along
contained within it a provision mandating the nationwide enshrinement of
same-sex marriage as a matter of fundamental rights. “Bring me a dream,”
indeed.

But Justice Ginsburg’s admirers are not troubled by that — far from it, in
fact: They want what they want, and their conception of government is that
it exists to give them what they want. Principle? Limitation? Separation of
powers? For the infantile, nothing is able to stand against the great “I
want.”

Justice Ginsburg might be expected to have a more sophisticated
understanding of the architecture of our constitutional order. That she
does not is both an intellectual and a moral indictment of Justice
Ginsburg, and an indictment by extension of her sycophants in the press and
the legal establishment. It is further evidence that there is something
other than the law at work in the rulings of the Supreme Court, indeed that
the law may be considered an obstacle by justices seeking to satisfy
political appetites. And this appears to be especially the case when it
comes to same-sex marriage, an issue where legal reasoning has consistently
taken a back seat to political advocacy. If this really were a legal
proceeding, subject to standard principles of recusal, Justice Ginsburg’s
open support for one side of the litigation would create a moral obligation
for her to recuse herself. But an honest interpretation of the 14th
Amendment is not what is going on, and Justice Ginsburg’s own comments are
evidence of it: Whether the country is “ready” for same-sex marriage is, of
course, irrelevant to whether it is a constitutional command. This is a
ward-heeler’s approach to the Constitution. She really should be notorious.

*Alexandria Phillips*

*Press Assistant | Communications*

Hillary for America | www.hillaryclinton.com

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