The Reasons Jeb Bush Does Not Inspire Conservatives

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Photo: Jerry Wolford/Polaris/Newscom

Photo: Jerry Wolford/Polaris/Newscom

By Genevieve Wood

I had promised myself I wasn’t going to write about 2016 until at least Jan. 1, 2015. So much for that.

Jeb Bush announced today via Facebook that he has “decided to actively explore” a presidential run and will launch a leadership PAC early next year to help him “facilitate conversations with citizens across America.”

That’s as close as any potential GOP presidential candidate has come yet to saying, “I’m in.”

But before everyone starts dusting off their old Bush and Clinton paraphernalia for a rematch of the families in 2016, let’s consider that while Democrats may have a weak bench of candidates this go round, the same is not true for the GOP.

For the first time in a very long time, the Republican Party has not one, not two, but several would-be candidates, at both the state and national level, who are not only “viable,” but also conservative. And it’s the latter ingredient that many today question about Jeb Bush.

The GOP has not one, not two, but several would-be candidates who are not only “viable” but also conservative.

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Jeb Bush’s Common Core Problem

By Kelsey Harkness

Jeb Bush has long advocated for all 50 states to adopt Common Core national standards.

Now that the former Florida governor has all but confirmed his plans to run for president in 2016, the issue threatens to overshadow his likely campaign.

Bush’s name, matched with consistently high polling numbers among potential 2016 Republican candidates, makes landing a seat in the Oval Office feasible. But in order to reach the general election—to perhaps take on Hillary Clinton—Bush must first overcome concerns about Common Core with conservative primary voters.

Bush’s longstanding support for Common Core is no secret: Over a year ago, Frederick M. Hess, an education expert at the American Enterprise Institute, predicted that if he decided to run for president, “Common Core could be his Romneycare.”

What is Common Core?

Common Core standards were created by the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers, and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The goal, supported by the Obama administration, was to increase education standards in America.

Among conservatives, however, the issue one of the most controversial. Several politicians have flip-flopped on the issue, pulling their support or even abandoning the standards in their states.

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Americans' Support for Second Amendment on the Rise

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Credit - TPNN

Credit – TPNN

On Monday, America will mark the two-year anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. As Americans watched in horror as news developed on the horrific killing, they reacted in different ways; some held their children tighter and wondered how a young man could be so deranged, so cruel.

Others clamored for stricter gun laws in the wake of the violence and were egged-on by a gruesome, vulture-esque liberal media that continually denounced our Second Amendment rights as the cause of this carnage.

However, while there was a brief surge in calls for gun rights, the federal government was unable to deliver even a single gun control measure. Some states were able to sufficiently capitalize on national sorrow and ram-through state measures, but for the most part, America held strong against the onslaught of opportunistic gun-grabbing measures…

Almost two years after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Americans’ support for gun rights is rising.

By a margin of 52 percent to 46 percent, Americans say protecting the rights of gun owners is more important than gun control, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center released Wednesday. It is the first time Pew found more support for gun ownership than gun control in more than two decades of surveys on the issue.

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‘I’m Not Done': Obama Swaggers His Way Into 2015

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th (1)This time eight years ago, Barack Obama and his staff were in the final stages of preparing to launch a presidential campaign. So was pretty much everyone else. The midterms were done; the opposition party had ridden a wave to a wipe-out.

The political world was already looking past President George W. Bush. Obama was leading the charge.

On Friday, Obama stood at the podium at the White House and dared anyone to try the same with him.

“Interesting stuff happens in the fourth quarter. And I’m looking forward to it,” Obama said, at the outset of the 2014 wrap-up press conference at the White House, as he promised a year that would be heavy on outreach to Congress but also moving forward on his own — protecting health care and financial regulations, and pushing forward on immigration reform.

Or, as he put it in the subject line of the email that went out from his old political group Organizing for Action as the press conference wrapped up: “I’m not done.”

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Census: 30% Of U.S. Population Growth Will Be Immigrants, 78 Million By 2060

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606x404-86521702cf6b74dd27f707debacedbeaBy Paul Bedard.

Immigration into the United States will continue at a historic pace for the next several decades, bringing the total number of foreign-born citizens to 78 million by 2060, according to the Census Bureau.

In a new series of new projections released this month, the Census said that the growth of immigrants in the United States will surge 81 percent from the current 43 million.

That will feed the massive growth of the nation overall. Census projected that the United States will have a population of 416 million by 2060, a massive 30 percent growth spurt.

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Report: All Net Jobs Growth Since 2007 Has Gone to Immigrants

By Ryan Lovelace.

All of the net gains in in jobs since 2007 have gone to immigrants — both legal and illegal — according to a new report from the Center for Immigration Studies, meaning that fewer native-born Americans are working today than were at the end of 2007.

From November 2007 through November 2014, the number of employed native-born Americans has decreased more than 1.45 million, while the number of employed immigrants has risen by more than 2 million (as the immigrant population grew rapidly, too), according to data compiled by the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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Shocking Photo Reveals Where Kim Jong-un Got Idea To Target, Intimidate Filmmakers

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Breitbart California editor Joel Pollack makes an excellent point. For a dictatorship that likes to use what limited resources it has to test launch missiles to intimidate its neighbors, where did Kim Jong-un get the relatively silly idea to use his dictatorial powers to target a satirical movie? Oh yeah.

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Obama Caves To Castro: Cuban Communist Leader Lectures Obama For 30 Minutes

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

By Michael Warren.

Barack Obama apologized to Cuban president Raul Castro during their phone conversation after the American commander in chief’s opening remarks. Speaking to reporters at his final White House press briefing of 2014 Friday afternoon, Obama gave more details about his phone call with the communist leader of Cuba earlier this week before the announcement of a change in U.S. policy on the Caribbean island nation.

Obama began the phone call with Castro with what he described as 15 minutes of opening comments. It was the first conversation between the heads of state in both countries since 1961.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Scott McKiernan / Newscom

Photo Credit: Scott McKiernan / Newscom

Why We Isolated Cuba for 53 Years

By Lee Edwards.

Contrary to what President Obama has asserted, U.S. sanctions have worked. Communist Cuba is so economically weak it cannot export Marxism-Leninism as in the past, and pro-democracy advocates have become emboldened.

For more than five decades, presidents, Democratic and Republican, politically isolated and economically sanctioned Communist Cuba for the best of reasons. Here are four of them:

1. Cuba has been a communist prison since Fidel Castro came to power. From 1959 through the late 1990s, more than 100,000 Cubans were placed in forced labor camps, prisons and other places of incarceration. Between 15,000 and 17,000 people were shot. Castro justified his reign of terror with these words: “The revolution is all; everything else is nothing.”

2. Communist Cuba exported Marxism-Leninism throughout Latin America, in Colombia, Guatemala, Venezuela and especially Nicaragua, which was taken over by the Marxist Sandinistas in the late 1970s. Another target was the small island nation of Grenada, which was to function as the third leg of a communist triangle of Cuba, Grenada and Nicaragua. President Reagan foiled the communists’ plans by freeing Grenada from a pro-Moscow radical regime. As a Venezuelan communist leader explained, the Cuban revolution was like a “detonator.”

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Holder: Dressing Transgendered Is A Civil Right

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

On Thursday, US Attorney General Eric Holder announced a new interpretation of the Civil Rights Act meant to prevent employers from discriminating against people who claim the status of a transgendered person.

Holder announced in a memo that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination on the basis of sex, also applies to the transgendered.

“This important shift will ensure that the protections of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 are extended to those who suffer discrimination based on gender identity, including transgender status,” Holder said in the announcement. “This will help to foster fair and consistent treatment for all claimants. And it reaffirms the Justice Department’s commitment to protecting the civil rights of all Americans.”

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Not Just Tolls: EZ Pass Keeping An Eye On Speeders

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Photo Credit: Daniel Hulshizer, AP

Photo Credit: Daniel Hulshizer, AP

Warning to motorists: Don’t speed in the toll lanes. EZ Pass is watching.

Several states, including New York, Maryland and Pennsylvania, say they monitor speeds through the fast pass toll lanes and will suspend your E-Z Pass for multiple speeding violations.

In all, five of the 15 E-Z Pass states have some kind of rules on the books for breaking the speed limit in the convenience lanes.

“You can lose your E-Z Pass privileges if you speed through E-Z Pass lanes,” says Dan Weiller, director of communications for the New York State Thruway Authority. “You get a couple of warnings. We don’t have the power to give a ticket, but we do have to power to revoke your E-Z Pass, which we will.”

He and tolling officials in several other states say the issue is the safety of human toll collectors. “At most toll barriers, we have a mix of E-Z Pass lanes and standard toll lanes,” Weiller says.

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North Korea Planned Attacks on US Nuclear Plants

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Credit - AP

Credit – AP

North Korea dispatched covert commando teams to the United States in the 1990s to attack nuclear power plants and major cities in a conflict, according to a declassified Defense Intelligence Agency report.

The DIA report, dated Sept. 13, 2004, reveals that five units of covert commandos were trained for the attacks inside the country.

According to the report, the “Reconnaissance Bureau, North Korea, had agents in place to attack American nuclear power plants.”

The document states that the North Korean Ministry of People’s Armed Forces, the ministry in charge of the military, “established five liaison offices in the early 1990s, to train and infiltrate operatives into the United States to attack nuclear power plants and major cities in case of hostilities.”

“One of the driving forces behind the establishment of the units and infiltration of operatives was the slow progress in developing a multi-stage ballistic missile.”

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GOP Will Have Largest House Majority Since Before FDR

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Credit - Townhall.com

Credit – Townhall.com

On Wednesday, the Associated Press called the outstanding race for congress in Arizona’s 2nd Congressional district. Rep. Ron Barber (D-AZ), a former aide to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and her successor in office, was narrowly defeated by Republican Martha McSally.

With McSally’s victory, the 2014 midterm elections have officially concluded. At the start of the 114th Congress, Republicans will enjoy their largest majority in the House of Representatives since prior to the Great Depression and the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt with 247 members. The last time the GOP enjoyed that large of a majority was the 71st Congress in 1929 and 1930.

In the Senate, the GOP will be in an almost equally unparalleled position of power.

“Republicans will control 54 out of 100 seats,” The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake noted. “That’s tied for their fourth-highest number of seats since that same 1929-30 Congress, but the larger three were majorities of 55 seats — i.e. only one more seat.”

Combined with the GOP’s dominance at the state legislative level (Republicans control 56 percent of seats in the legislatures, the highest number since 1920), and the party’s control of 31 of 50 gubernatorial mansions, the Republican Party will be in the strongest position it has seen since prior to the popularization of Democratic progressivism.

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