Obama Used His Pen and Phone to Endanger America; Trump Can Use Both to Protect Us

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Obama has unilaterally remade this country without the consent of Congress and has induced social transformation without representation. The good news is that a newly elected President Trump can shut down those edicts with the stroke of a pen, especially as it relates to immigration and refugee resettlement. And unlike Obama’s imperial abuse of executive orders, Trump would actually be following the spirit and letter of immigration statutes duly passed by Congress in doing so. He has a mandate to shut off refugee resettlement from the Middle East and can act upon it on day one of his administration.

In general, immigration statutes were crafted to give the president broad latitude to ratchet down immigration as needed, but not to expand it beyond the baseline law. Obama has blatantly violated immigration law by refusing to enforce these statutes and by creating numerous programs that never existed in the first place or exceeded statutory authority.

One area of frustration for conservatives in Congress has been the refugee crisis. As we’ve noted before, while the 1980 Refugee Act was sold to the public as a way of granting Congress and the states more input, it left the door open for a president who doesn’t respect his nation’s concerns to unilaterally bring in as many refugees as he desires. As I warned in September, Obama is front-loading refugee resettlement to lock in as many refugees for fiscal year 2017, even after he leaves office.

According to the State Department’s refugee database, Obama has brought in 15,125 refugees in just the first six weeks of this fiscal year alone. On an annualized basis, that is a pace not seen since the inception of the modern program in 1980, even surpassing the early ‘90s when we admitted record numbers of refugees following the collapse of the Soviet Union. And unlike those coming the former Soviet Union who yearned for democracy, this influx is primarily from parts of the Middle East that not only represent a security threat, but experience has demonstrated is hard to Americanize. Those admitted so far this year include 1,940 from Syria, 1,960 from Somalia, and 1,870 from Iraq. While individuals admitted in small quantities can be assimilated, the lesson of Europe and our growing Middle Eastern immigration over the past decade has proven that importing large quantities from a culture of Sharia is suicide of a nation.

Also, notice how 20 years after the collapse of Somalia, we are still bringing in thousands of refugees every year — even topping the amount from Syria? Just this week, the first Somalis in the Minneapolis ISIS cell were sentenced on terrorism charges and the federal judge presiding over the case warned that there is a broader problem. “This community needs to understand there is a jihadist cell in this community. Its tentacles spread out,” said Judge Michael Davis during the sentencing hearing on Wednesday.

We must not wait until next fiscal year or for Congress to act in order to slow down this dangerous social transformation. Trump ran unambiguously on stopping refugees from the Middle East and the good news is that he can now use the unilateral executive authority for the right purposes. The same way Obama was able to increase refugee resettlement to 110,000 without Congress, Trump can set that number at 0. At the very least, he can immediately suspend the refugee program from countries with a dominant culture of radical Islamism, such as Syria, Somalia, and Iraq.

Also, under § 212(f) of Immigration and Nationality Act, “whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.”

This power is universal, enforceable at the will of the president, and applies any time for any circumstance. In the coming days, I plan to outline other ways Trump can unilaterally protect American interests on immigration under existing authority. Obviously, for major transformational changes, it would be advisable to seek a permanent solution from Congress. But as it relates to refugee resettlement from the Middle East during a time of war, the voters expect Trump to fulfill his promise immediately and exercise his authority to its fullest extent.

As I outline in Stolen Sovereignty, Trump should call upon Congress to permanently reform the program so that the American people won’t be at the mercy of future Democrat presidents. Congress should set the Refugee Admissions Program to automatically sunset at least every other fiscal year so that by default there is no refugee resettlement unless Congress renews the program. Also, the House should immediately pass Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa. (C, 77%) bill permanently requiring states to affirmatively ratify refugee resettlement before HHS can settle any refugees in their respective jurisdictions.

There are many policy initiatives that require much debate and circumspection before rushing to pass them. Shutting down refugee resettlement and preventing America from following in the footsteps of Europe is not one of them. Time is of the essence. Fortunately, Donald Trump is about to inherit Obama’s mighty pen and magic phone to promote American sovereignty. Except, this time the law will be on his side. (For more from the author of “Obama Used His Pen and Phone to Endanger America; Trump Can Use Both to Protect Us” please click HERE)

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Have Evangelicals Lost Their Credibility by Voting for Trump?

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I find it ironic that the same people who have mocked us for years as hypocrites, bigots, haters, homophobes, transphobes, and worse now tell us that we have lost our moral credibility by voting for Trump.

It is true that there are Christian leaders in other nations who feel that we (meaning, in particular, white evangelicals) have compromised our moral witness by voting for Trump in such overwhelming numbers (81 percent of white evangelicals voted for him). And it is true that it is difficult to reconcile our historic mantra of “character matters” with a vote for Trump, unless we are counting on his imminent moral transformation, which is certainly a risky way to vote.

Considering, then, that Trump would have been the last person on a list of candidates that evangelicals would have drawn up — actually, he would not have made the list at all — it’s easy to see how the world could think that we have sold our souls to the devil in some kind of desperate effort to regain power.

But for people to chastise us and say that we have forfeited our moral credibility in the eyes of our critics is to forget that, in the eyes of those critics, we had no moral credibility to lose.

Some of this, no doubt, was our own fault, since much of the evangelical church has, indeed, been hypocritical, with rampant no-fault divorce in our midst, with a plague of pornography in our pews, and with more leadership scandals (both financial and sexual) than we can count. Why should the world take our moral witness seriously?

But that is not the only reason we have been despised. To the contrary, a major reason that the world hates us is because of our moral stands and our refusal to capitulate to the culture, as a result of which we are likened to Hitler and the Nazis, to ISIS and the Taliban, to the KKK and other hate groups. This is all because we refuse to celebrate the redefinition of marriage or affirm the latest gender identity fad. (And should I mention what pro-abortion feminists think of evangelicals, especially male evangelicals?)

So, when I hear our critics call us hypocrites for voting for Trump (and again, I speak here primarily of white evangelicals), I have to laugh and say, “I thought we already were hypocrites!”

And I can only wonder what these same critics would have said if we had elected Ted Cruz, a staunch, once-married, Bible-quoting evangelical, as our candidate? They would probably be accusing us of setting up secret internment camps for all non-church attending Americans as we stealthily planned to take over the society. Can you even imagine what their accusations would be?

Some Did Lose Credibility

All that being said, as I have stated before, I do believe that some of us did lose credibility by the way in which we backed Trump, giving him a free pass for the very infractions for which we were ready to condemn Bill Clinton, overlooking his ugly attacks on others, and forgetting that the president and first lady are, in many ways, exemplars for the population.

Writing in 1998, Bill Bennett explained the danger of embracing the pro-Bill Clinton arguments that his private conduct was of no concern to the nation:

These arguments define us down; they assume a lower common denominator of behavior and leadership than we Americans ought to accept. And if we do accept it, we will have committed an unthinking act of moral and intellectual disarmament. In the realm of American ideals and the great tradition of public debate, the high ground will have been lost. And when we need to rely again on this high ground — as surely we will need to — we will find it drained of its compelling moral power. In that sense, then, the arguments invoked by Bill Clinton and his defenders represent an assault on American ideals, even if you assume the president did nothing improper. So the arguments need to be challenged. (The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals)

Character, then, does matter, and if we evangelicals did sacrifice character on the altar of political expediency, then we have further damaged our witness in the eyes of a watching world, some of which still expects moral goodness from the church.

That being said, it is clear that a large number of evangelicals who voted for Donald Trump did so for highly moral reasons, including protecting the unborn and standing up for religious freedoms. Are these not moral, Christian causes?

The High Moral Reasons for a Trump Vote

As explained by Jonathan Van Maren, “Many of my non-Christian and liberal friends find it bewildering that both evangelicals and Catholics voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump, a thrice-married casino operator infamous for his vulgar trash talk. I want to take a moment to explain to them directly why most Christians voted for him anyways. It’s simple, really: Christians voted for Donald Trump because they felt that the threat a de facto third Obama term posed to Christian communities was an existential one.”

He continued, “The attacks on Christians from the highest levels of government have been relentless now for nearly a decade. Obama wants to force Christian churches and schools to accept the most radical and most recent version of gender ideology, and he is willing to issue executive decrees on the issue to force the less enlightened to get in line. Christian concerns are dismissed out of hand as ‘transphobia.’” And note that Van Maren had not yet mentioned Hillary Clinton, of whom he had much to say.

Where then do we stand today? With regard to our most hostile critics, as long as we uphold our biblical values, we will be reviled and condemned. That it is to expected. With regard to those outside the church who still think that Christians should live moral lives and care for the needy, let us step higher and demonstrate the life-changing power of the gospel.

With regard to our relationship with the president, we must conduct ourselves with integrity and honor, serving as a moral compass to our president rather than his tool. In that way, we will serve both God and the society. (For more from the author of “Have Evangelicals Lost Their Credibility by Voting for Trump?” please click HERE)

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It’s Time to Call out the Left’s Hypocrisy

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Please allow me a moment to vent. I assure you that it will be controlled venting, without vitriol, hyperbole or vindictiveness. But venting it will be. Shall we call it holy venting? Perhaps it will also reflect some of the holy frustration in your own heart.

But first, some caveats.

I do understand why many Americans are deeply upset with Donald Trump’s election, and up until election day, I said that I respected those who could not vote for him, urging them instead not to vote for Hillary.

I have also spoken with Mexican Americans and African Americans who have shared their concerns with me, and seeing the world through their eyes, I understand their fears. (Of course, I’ve read many comments from Muslim Americans that express their concerns too.)

What, exactly, will the president’s immigration policy look like, and what, exactly, does he mean by being a “law and order” candidate? And why is it that so many far-right groups both here and abroad are excited about his victory?

I have also heard from enough concerned women, some very close to me, to recognize just how offensive his comments and attitudes have been and to see why they can’t fathom how a God-fearing Christian could vote for him.

And I understand why his high-level appointment of Steve Bannon is so controversial, despite the apparently exaggerated nature of many of the concerns. Is this the way to unify the nation? But having said all that (as a representative sampling of major caveats), I am sick and tired of left-wing hypocrisy, and it needs to be called out.

Let’s focus first on the demonstrations.

Protesters on Cue and Without a Clue

I agree that people have a legal right to demonstrate (but not break the law), and it’s understandable that people are frustrated. But a lot of what’s happening is simply the immature reaction of those who don’t know how to lose or to accept responsibility for why they lost. Get over it.

Ironically (but not unexpectedly), we’re learning that many of those protesting didn’t even vote, so they’re blocking traffic and setting things on fire because of their own lack of participation. Rather than shouting profanities in the streets, they should be looking in the mirror.

Pollster Frank Luntz tweeted, “I saw a Trump protester with a sign on the subway… He said he was 19 … I asked him if he voted, and he said no.” And a report from Portland, Oregon indicated that, “more than half of the anti-Trump protesters arrested in Portland didn’t vote, according to state election records.” What do you know!

And right on cue, race-baiters and responsibility-evaders have raised their heads, claiming that, “The Electoral College Is an Instrument of White Supremacy and Sexism.” A group of civil rights leaders has also stated that, “while racial voter suppression was widespread, voter suppression was generational as well. Millennials, as a multiracial demographic, also were targeted by strict ID laws and poll closings affecting millions of youth, college and high school students, as well as young professionals.”

Seriously? You mean to tell me that is why millennials, along with blacks and Hispanics, did not turn out in the expected numbers? It had nothing to do with lack of enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton? As for “strict ID laws,” give me a break. It’s outrageous that voter ID is not universally required, and there are more than enough examples of voter fraud coming to the surface every day. And it is nothing less than absurd to claim that early poll closings particularly affected “millions of youth, college and high school students, as well as young professionals,” as if they of all people can’t make it to the polls on time while older professionals and non-students can.

This is nothing less than the victim mentality that is destroying the left.

As for the left-wing mantra that “love trumps hate,” David Jaroslav aptly remarked, “Love trumping hate involves a lot more assault & arson than I expected.” Indeed! (Jarsolav’s remarks were tweeted by Ben Shapiro.)

So, go ahead and protest, but please don’t call it love. And quit playing the blame game.

What Happened to Respecting the Process?

How about the left’s selective outrage with respecting the election process and the rule of law? The outcry against Donald Trump was shrill when he said that he could not guarantee in advance that he would accept the outcome of the elections for fear that things would be rigged.

Yet now, in the aftermath of those elections, government officials as high as Chicago’s mayor, Rahm Emmanuel, and the Los Angeles police chief, Charlie Beck, have stated that they will defy the order of the president to deport illegals from their city should such an order be made — and Trump has most recently stated that he is referring to illegals who have committed crimes here.

Yet Emmanuel emphasized that, “Chicago will always be a sanctuary city,” while Beck said, “We are not going to engage in law enforcement activities solely based on somebody’s immigration status. We are not going to work in conjunction with Homeland Security on deportation efforts. That is not our job, nor will I make it our job.” There might be nuances to what these men are saying, but again, it’s the issue of hypocrisy.

Just imagine how the left-wing media would be responding had Hillary been elected and a Republican mayor or police chief declared that they would not heed her directives. If they were men, they would have certainly been branded sexist, and the media outrage would be extreme.

Screaming Over Bannon, Silence About Ellison

And since I mentioned Steve Bannon earlier, let’s compare the left-wing media’s almost hysterical reaction to his appointment as Trump’s chief strategist — as if Trump had appointed a neo-Nazi to that position — to that same media’s lack of strong reaction to the possible appointing of Muslim congressman Keith Ellison to the DNC chair. Fox reported that, “Democratic leaders are scrambling to unite behind a candidate for the party’s chairmanship — and have landed for now on a Louis Farrakhan-linked congressman who once called for Dick Cheney’s impeachment and compared George W. Bush to Hitler.”

Apparently, these charges are of little or no concern, but the charge that Bannon is a racist or anti-Semite — a charge vigorously disputed by a Catholic priest, an Orthodox rabbi, and a Harvard professor, among others — is worthy of outrage. Why the glaring double standard? And how many in-depth investigative reports did you hear about Hillary Clinton’s right-hand woman, Huma Abedin, and her alleged connections to radical Islam?

Just imagine if Bannon had the same baggage as did Ellison or Huma. The left-wing media would have even more of a field day. (Again, I’m neither defending Bannon nor accusing Ellison or Huma; I’m addressing the left’s inconsistency and hypocrisy.)

And on and on it goes, with example after example of extreme left-wing hypocrisy. But I’d best stop here rather than belabor the point. And the truth be told, that felt good.

Perhaps you feel better as well? (For more from the author of “It’s Time to Call out the Left’s Hypocrisy” please click HERE)

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Everyone, Take a Chill Pill: Trump Is Neither Satan or the Savior

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As the reality of President-elect Trump sets in, emotions continue to run high. Riots are rocking big cities such as Portland, Seattle, and San Jose. Hillary supporters are screaming “Not my president!” on Twitter. And the calls for “healing” and “togetherness” from Barack Obama and Clinton herself are being roundly rejected.

I have gay friends who believe that Trump is gunning for them and say they don’t feel safe. They worry that he will roll back gay marriage and anti-discrimination laws and think that he has a personal vendetta against them. Meanwhile, I have friends on the Right who are gleefully gloating that Trump will change everything, that he’s overthrown the political establishment, and that things like illegal immigration and Obamacare might as well be history.

Let’s all take a step back and remind ourselves that we still have a government of more than one person, with legislative and judicial processes that have to be followed.

Yes, it’s true that Republicans will control both the House and Senate as well as the presidency. United government can be a scary thing, especially if you want the government to do as little as possible, as I do. But Republicans hold only a narrow majority in the Senate — either 51 or 52 seats, depending on how Louisiana goes. This is well short of the 60-vote majority that is needed to stop a Democratic filibuster. And while it is possible that Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. (F, 40%) will employ the so-called “nuclear option” to pass legislation with a simple majority, we have to remember that there are still plenty of moderate Republican senators. It’s not going to be easy for McConnell to muster even a simple majority to pass anything as controversial as Social Security reform or even a repeal of Obamacare.

I spent years working with an advocacy organization trying to get Republican legislators to stand up to Obama and push back against the Democratic agenda. I think most people in America would be surprised to learn how difficult that task was. It’s easy to think of lawmakers as being motivated by ideology: If they have the chance to do something, they will.

In my experience, this is true only for a very small minority. Much more pressing is the fear of losing re-election. The next election is always only two years away, and this is a fact that is never far from the mind of most lawmakers. They will avoid taking big risks, resorting to the age-old adage “Now is not the time.”

And speaking of the nuclear option, I can only assume that the people who think Trump will bring about the nuclear holocaust just don’t understand how government works. The president can’t just launch a nuclear missile whenever he feels like it. There are other people involved in that decision, people with enough foreign policy experience and common sense to know that mutually assured destruction is not a desirable outcome.

The main thing Trump might — and could — do on his own initiative would be slow down and roll back some executive branch regulations, from the EPA, Health and Human Services, and other agencies. That would be great, but don’t expect Obamacare to get repealed in its entirety tomorrow, Trump fans. It’s something we should push for, to be sure, but we have to remember that the political optics of “taking away people’s health insurance” has given Republicans cold feet before, and it will do so again.

It’s worth remembering that there is a difference between campaign rhetoric and actually governing. Since the election, Trump has already walked back his campaign promises to prosecute Hillary Clinton and overturn the gay marriage decision. He has even started to waver on his famous border wall, rolling out an immigration plan that doesn’t look too dissimilar from Barack Obama’s. It’s foolish to believe anything a politician says on the campaign trail, much less to believe it so strongly that you’re willing to riot over it.

The president is not a dictator. Not yet, anyway. A Trump presidency will see some changes in the country, but not so much as to make it unrecognizable. We will not wake up the day after inauguration to either a right-wing capitalist utopia or a pre-enlightenment land of death camps and intolerance. Trump will govern as other presidents have governed, fighting some good fights, exceeding his authority in some places, and generally accomplishing less than anyone hoped or feared. I don’t begrudge anyone their celebrations; I don’t begrudge anyone their mourning. But a little dose of reality never hurt anyone. (For more from the author of “Everyone, Take a Chill Pill: Trump Is Neither Satan or the Savior” please click HERE)

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Dear Dejected Hillary Supporters, Stop Trying to Make the Electoral College About Slavery!

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Adding to the ever-growing list of scapegoats for Hillary Clinton’s presidential election loss to Donald Trump, mainstream and leftist voices have now turned their harangues and calumnies toward the Electoral College.

Now that the mewls of “Hillary won the popular vote” have been exhausted, her apologists are going after the institution of the Electoral College (and, by association, the Constitution), with more and more tying its historic heritage to slavery. These attacks on the function of the college are not only inaccurate, they ignore the complexity, nuance, and statesmanship necessary to even have a constitution in the first place.

In the days following Clinton’s loss, Vox was one of the first notable outlets to scapegoat the Electoral College, due to the fact that slavery existed during the birth of the U.S. Constitution. In an interview with Professor Akhil Reed Amar of Yale, they hammer the point that the college simply existed to protect the institution of slavery.

PBS Newshour cites another professor at a Canadian university, who says most would be “disgusted” at the true origins and relationship between the Electoral College and the institution of slavery. All the while, he cites a speech that James Madison gave at the Constitutional Convention in which Madison called the disparity of suffrage between states a “serious problem.” (It is also worth noting that an editor’s note indicates that the article’s author initially got the winner of the 1800 election wrong.)

Elsewhere, Slate — in typical fashion — simply asserts that the institution is an “instrument of white supremacy” akin to “mass incarceration.”

Finally, news broke Tuesday that Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. (F, 4%) has introduced a bill to abolish the Electoral College, calling the process “an outdated, undemocratic system,” that unfairly robbed Hillary Clinton of the presidency.

This is a shocking response to the fact that the Electoral College does and did exactly what it was supposed to do. As CR’s Rob Eno recently explained, the electoral vote guards against the tyranny of the dense population centers over the rest of the country (as it did Nov. 8). When numbers from Boxer’s home state of California alone are removed from the total tallies, Trump not only wins the Electoral College, but a sizeable chunk of the popular vote as well. Put simply, we live in a federal republic, not Mob-rule-istan.

In a recent column at The Wall Street Journal, Hillsdale College President Dr. Larry Arnn explains flawlessly:

The Constitution is paradoxical most of all about power, which it grants and withholds, bestows and limits, aggregates and divides, liberates and restrains. Elections are staggered, so as to distribute them across time. The founding document also divides power across space; the people grant a share of their natural authority to the federal government, but another share to the states where they live.

…

We forget that it is a historical rarity to have an executive strong enough to do the job but still responsible to the people he governs. The laws in the U.S. have worked that miracle for longer than anywhere else. Remember that the Electoral College helps establish the ground upon which the American people must talk with each other, while ensuring that they are not ruled as colonies from a bunch of blue capitals, nor from a bunch of red ones.

But this is only half the problem with progressives’ recent detractions from the document. The rest lies with trying to slander the Electoral College because of an historical relationship with slavery.

Probably the best explanation of this complexity came from a professor who told me that the founders and the framers were incapable of freeing the slaves at that time because they were barely capable of freeing themselves.

Yes, thanks to the complex nature of slavery and the early republic and the impossibility of creating a document that would be unanimously ratified in Virginia, South Carolina, New York Massachusetts, and Maine, (for a better understanding of these, I recommend a viewing of the movie “1776”; it takes just under 2.5 hours and there’s singing. Easy day.) it is impossible to say that it is not connected. But to slander the college on this connection alone is fallacious and reductionist, ignoring the manifold concerns that were addressed in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.

Simply because the college coexisted in a document with slavery does not mean that it was specifically designed to preserve and protect the institution. What about the concerns of smaller, non-slaveholding states like Connecticut and others — which also feared that large town centers would eventually overshadow their representation in the Union? What of the urban/rural divides that decided the election this cycle?

In other words, if you’re going to slander and throw out the Electoral College simply because of its proximity to those compromises, you may as well dismantle our entire federal order and bulldoze every monument to every person present at the Constitutional Convention. History, especially in these contexts, is far more complex than you want it be.

Slavery was indeed our country’s original sin — one in atonement for which we fought a long and bloody Civil War that nearly destroyed our Union. Its relationship to our founding documents is as shameful as it is complex. But rather than throwing babies out with the bathwater, it would do us well as a people to recognize these complexities rather than reducing them to the fallacy of the day.

In other words, those upset by 2016’s results would do better to just admit that they want to change the game that their candidate lost, rather than reaching for justifications to slander the rulebook. (For more from the author of “Dear Dejected Hillary Supporters, Stop Trying to Make the Electoral College About Slavery!” please click HERE)

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GOP Didn’t Need to Suppress Democratic Voters. A Lot of Them Deserted Hillary Clinton

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The left, mainstream media, pundits and almost every poll were certain Hillary Clinton was going to win the election. Ultimately, a “Chinese monkey king” ended up doing a better job predicting the election results than the experts. What did they miss, and why did they miss it? Why did so many voters desert Clinton and vote for Trump?

Many on the left cling to the idea that Clinton lost due to voter suppression of minority voters — despite the millions George Soros funneled into organizations to combat this allegation from occurring. A writer for Salon wrote a lengthy piece rambling on and on about how the GOP kept minorities from voting, but without any direct evidence that this had happened. The logic in this article and others is: The Democrat should get the most minority votes; Clinton got fewer votes from minorities than she should have gotten; therefore someone must be keeping minorities from voting for Clinton.

But that isn’t the reason.

Why Trump? Why Not Clinton?

First, the mainstream assumed that Trump was a racist and that he would draw an even lower percent of black and Latino voters than Republicans usually get. In fact, a larger share of blacks, Latinos and Asian-Americans voted for Trump than had voted for Romney. The only Republican candidate to do better with those three groups was George W. Bush in his first election in 2000 and his reelection in 2004.

Revealingly, Trump received about the same share of the white vote than Romney did four years ago, yet it now appears he received about the same or slightly fewer votes than Romney did then.

Second, exit polls reveal that key Democratic constituencies failed to show up to vote for Clinton. She received fewer votes from blacks, Latinos, Asians, Millennials and lower income voters than nearly every observer expected. Younger blacks didn’t think Clinton indicated enough support for Black Lives Matter or criminal justice reforms. Additionally, she didn’t have the star power Obama had as the first black president.

For example, Clinton lost some of the traditional support for Democratic candidates from lower middle class and working class voters. Only 52 percent of voters making $50,000 or less annually voted for her, down from 60 percent for Obama. Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) recognized during the race that Clinton was in trouble in Michigan. She observed that middle class voters were discouraged that their economic situation had gotten worse, not better, under Obama.

Similarly, millennials were disgruntled by Clinton’s lack of ethics, especially the way her campaign created the caricature of “Bernie Bros” as racist and sexist. They had favored Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary and disliked her ties to Wall Street and her interventionist foreign policy.

Some Millennials voted instead for third-party candidates, bolstering Libertarian Gary Johnson to 3 percent of the vote, an increase from his 1 percent in 2012. Johnson and the other third-party candidate, Green Party’s Jill Stein, took enough of the vote away from Clinton in four swing states to tip the race to Trump. Ironically, Clinton’s husband may have the won election as president in 1992 due to third-party candidate Ross Perot taking away votes from George H.W. Bush.

The Conclusion

The evidence suggests that a lot of minority voters accepted Trump’s message and broke away from the Democratic party. Enough voters in groups the Democrats expected to hold voted Republican to give the election — and the crucial battleground states — to Trump.

Ironically, part of Clinton’s problem is the narrative she and the left created about white racism. Clinton seems to have lost some of the black vote because she didn’t embrace the radical Black Lives Matter agenda enough. The left has manufactured such absurd levels of racist accusations that it’s backfiring on them, hurting Democrats who don’t breathlessly push the spin.

As long as the left ignores the real reasons Clinton lost, they can expect another loss in 2020. (For more from the author of “GOP Didn’t Need to Suppress Democratic Voters. A Lot of Them Deserted Hillary Clinton” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Is Donald Trump’s Fed Criticism Just Bluster, or Will We See Reform?

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President-elect Donald Trump has drawn criticism for launching a series of undisguised attacks on the Federal Reserve Bank of America, and its chairman, Janet Yellen. It’s unbecoming, critics say, for a politician to drag a stately, independent institution down in the mud, especially when it was designed to rise above the everyday considerations of politics. Trump has been critical of Yellen for failing to raise interest rates more quickly, and has accused her of using her post to try to aid Hillary Clinton in the election, a strategy which, if true, obviously failed to work.

The Fed is important, because it is responsible for controlling the money supply which, among other things, affects interest rates and inflation across the whole country. It has been argued by some, myself included, that the Fed’s overly loose monetary policy has prolonged the effects of the Great Recession, by distorting the monetary signals on which investors make their decisions. Trump’s attack is a little more blunt than that kind of analysis, but he is not wrong to go after the Fed. In fact, he should probably be doing more.

Of course, the idea that the Fed has ever really been independent of politics is a ridiculous fiction, designed to insulate the Board of Governors from accountability for their decisions. The president gets to appoint the Fed chairman, and that decision will always be motivated by political as well as policy concerns. Furthermore, it’s ridiculous to assume that the members of Board are somehow immune to their own political biases. Just as the Supreme Court, an institution supposedly isolated from politics, takes into account which way the political winds are blowing, so do the decision makers at the Fed. Donald Trump recognizes that. Although the precise nature of his attacks may be overblown and hyperbolic, there is no doubt that the Federal Reserve plays a key role in what the nation’s economy looks like, and that has an effect on electoral politics.

Where Trump would do better, however, is to focus his attacks on monetary policy itself. While I don’t expect him to be the heir of Ron Paul, whose trenchant criticisms of the Federal Reserve brought monetary policy to the forefront of the national debate in a way unseen since the days of bimetallism, Trump is right that keeping interest rates artificially low is bad policy, and should be stopped. He may lack the theoretical rigor of the Austrian school to explain how low interest rates create faulty investments, setting up a monetary bubble that must sooner or later burst, or how quantitative easing devalues the currency and hits all Americans with the hidden tax of inflation, but he has business acumen at least to know that we can’t solve our problems by printing more money, forever and ever without limit.

Janet Yellen should be worried. Donald Trump is not going to end the Fed, as Ron Paul promised to do, but with any luck, he will oust her and replace her with someone less committed to monetary expansionism. It’s true that the chairman doesn’t unilaterally make policy decisions, but a strong voice calling for a more responsible approach could at the very least be influential in setting the tone for the bank. And who knows? We may even get that full Federal Reserve audit that Rand Paul introduces every year.

It may fly in the face of tradition for a president-elect to so vocally go after a “independent” agency, but if so it’s a tradition that badly needs rethinking. Monetary policy is too important to be left to bankers, much less ones who are unaccountable to the public. (For more from the author of “Is Donald Trump’s Fed Criticism Just Bluster, or Will We See Reform?” please click HERE)

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Weakness, Failure, Cronyism, Idiocy: The GOP Is Back in DC

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In case you thought Republicans would be emboldened to crush the liberal agenda and focus on their mandate, think again. Given the Republican agenda in just the first 48 hours back in Washington after the election, they’d do themselves and the country a favor by abolishing the lame-duck session.

Same failed leaders

Today, House leadership rammed through leadership elections before incoming freshmen even knew where to find the bathrooms and ensured that all the existing honchos were re-elected. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc. (F, 51%) was re-elected as Speaker, Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. (F, 35%) as Majority Leaders, Steve Scalise, R-La. (D, 62%) as Whip, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash. (F, 41%) as Conference Chair. Conservatives even lost the lower tier leadership races. Rep. Steve Stivers, R-Ohio (F, 32%) was elected as chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRSC) over a more conservative opponent, Rep. Roger Williams, R-Texas (C, 79%). A man who voted more with the Democrats will now be in charge of recruiting candidates for the GOP majority. The same people with the same failed modus operandi and the same broken political barometer will be leading the GOP’s governing agenda in the House. (Ditto for the Senate.)

As Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va. (A, 100%) wrote so convincingly, leadership elections should have been postponed until there is a clear direction as to the 100-day agenda of each leader. Why not give the freshmen more time to acquaint themselves with the candidates? Why the rush?

A weak agenda rooted in defensiveness

And what do we mean by the same failed modus operandi and a broken political barometer, one which tells them a winning issue is a loser and a losing issue is a winner?

Look no further than this week’s agenda:

As CR already reported, the very first act of the GOP House after the election was to create a new government board designed to market products of the concrete industry. The cost is paid for by levying what is essentially a tax that will be passed on to consumers. The federal government is basically running a 501(c)(6) business association for the masonry industry. This is the worst type of crony capitalism, expansion of government, and market social engineering that every Republican campaigned to end.

What else is on the GOP agenda?

H. Res. 780 — “A resolution urging respect for the constitution of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the democratic transition of power in 2016.” How about a resolution urging the respect of our Constitution and Republicans demonstrating a commitment to taking power back from the judiciary and the executive? How about passing a resolution committing to Article I in the next Congress and demonstrating that this Congress will somehow be different? And on the subject of Congo, why are we taking in so many refugees from there?

H.R. 5332 — Women, Peace, and Security Act — “A bill to ensure that the United States promotes the meaningful participation of women in mediation and negotiations processes seeking to prevent, mitigate, or resolve violent conflict.” This bill was introduced by Rep. Kristi Noem, R-S.D. (F, 42%), who is erroneously regarded as a conservative by many commentators and is now planning to run for governor in South Dakota. This is the sort of pathetic identity politics that has been so soundly repudiated by this election.

Imagine what Republicans could spend their time on if they truly wanted to signal that they’ve changed their ways. They could pass a resolution blocking Obama from bringing in 1,800 migrants that even Australia rejected. Or, they could address the border surge. But no, banality reigns supreme.

While Democrats spend every waking hour plotting to advance the liberal agenda and marginalize conservatives, Republicans spend every waking hour focusing on random special interests, bills that can’t be messaged to their constituents, and avoiding contentious issues and important reforms, even when they are electoral winners. That is the GOP modus operandi that will sadly continue unless the people around Trump force them to change.

A return to earmarks?

One of the only fiscal reforms that conservatives have secured in recent years was the abolition of earmarks. The problem with earmarks is not the relatively small cost of the expenditure, but that the practice is used to buy off members in support of terrible legislation. As I told Breitbart.com, it is the magic grease and force multiplier to get a majority of members to support any bad policy.

Yet tomorrow, when the House GOP Conference formally adopts its rules package for the next Congress, a group of big spenders will push for a vote on restoring earmarks. Reps. John Culberson, R-Texas (F, 54%), Mike Rogers, R-Ala. (F, 54%), and Tom Rooney, R-Fla. (F, 58%) plan to call a vote to restore earmarks. Paul Ryan would be wise to deny them a vote like he does when he blocks many conservative initiatives.

What is further disturbing on the fiscal front is that RINO Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J. (F, 29%) is slated to take over as chairman of the Appropriations Committee with porker-in-chief Hal Rogers, R-Ky. (F, 30%) term-limited out of office. Republicans will be inheriting $20 trillion debt, which is a tremendous drag on the economy in addition to being a liability on our children. It would have been a nice opportunity for Republicans to demonstrate that they will not repeat the mistakes of the Bush years by appointing a fiscal hawk as chair of the check-writing committee. Instead, they will choose someone with a 29 percent Liberty Score®.

Conservatives must not hope for change. They must ensure change.

The first step to forcing change is to mitigate any more harm. Congress should extend the FY 2017 budget CR to next April — when hopefully an invigorated majority will finally pass conservative priorities. After that, they should short circuit the lame-duck session and get out of town.

Over the December break, conservatives should build support for immediate and complete repeal of Obamacare when Congress convenes in January and have a repeal bill ready for Donald Trump the minute he returns from the inaugural ball.

Amazingly, Paul Ryan opened the conference meeting today with the following declaration!

Actually, meet the new boss … same as the old boss.

If Ryan wants us to believe this is a new governing majority, he must prove it. (For more from the author of “Weakness, Failure, Cronyism, Idiocy: The GOP Is Back in DC” please click HERE)

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Protecting President Trump Won’t Be Easy. A Former Secret Service Agent Explains Why

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The most difficult task I ever grappled with was learning how to effectively secure the life of the president of the United States as a Secret Service agent in the Presidential Protective Division.

Mastering presidential security is a herculean task which requires seasoned, presidential lead advance agents to master logistics, security, diplomacy, and constantly evolving technology. It takes a typical Secret Service agent approximately seven to ten years of investigative field work before they are even eligible for consideration for appointment to the Presidential Protective Division, and very few agents are selected. In many children’s sport leagues, and on many of our college campuses, everyone gets a trophy for participating. But, not in the Secret Service, where only the best of the best are selected to protect the president. A Secret Service agent friend of mine once described the journey from an agent’s hiring to the Presidential Protective Division as “the world’s longest job interview,” and he was correct.

With the inauguration right around the corner, President-elect Trump’s Secret Service detail will have to grapple with the following obstacles:

1. The inauguration

I was one of the advance agents from the Presidential Protective Division tasked with designing and implementing the security planning for Barack Obama’s January, 2009 inauguration. I was also assigned to the 2005 inauguration of George W. Bush in a support capacity. Sadly, both the 2001 and 2005 Bush inaugurals were marred by protests, egg throwing, arrests, and a number of attempts to disrupt the inaugural motorcade route. And, although these protestors clearly had the right to protest, they did not have the right to throw objects and disrupt the security plan. It’s not a partisan talking-point but a harsh reality that many on the far-left have embraced the politics of destruction and violence as a strategic political weapon. The Barack Obama 2009 inauguration saw almost none of this type of activity with only isolated misconduct incidents and infamous logistics failures such as the “Purple Tunnel of Doom” disaster. I derive absolutely no pleasure in telling you that the far-left presents more challenges to the security planners at a Republican event than the Right does at a Democrat event but, history doesn’t tell tall tales.

Protesting is, thankfully, a constitutionally protected activity, but it does suck up security assets like a manpower vacuum because the threat of any protest turning violent requires that the protests be monitored and, as recent history has unquestionably shown us, many Trump protestors are only a hair trigger away from turning violent at a rally. The Secret Service is going to have to deal with this reality and build their security plan around what will assuredlybe significant protest activity on Inauguration Day.

2. Social media threats

President-elect Trump wasn’t the first political candidate to use social media as a force multiplier, but he was the first to do so by adding a personal touch to such an enormous and attentive social media audience. The media made Donald Trump’s tweets the focus of legions of news stories and drew a corresponding amount of attention to Trump’s account, amplifying his audience and, paradoxically, enabling him to use those social media platforms to get his message out and bypass traditional media gatekeepers. I don’t know what President-elect Trump’s future plans are with regard to social media but I would be surprised if he abandoned his signature communication vehicle.

If he continues to tweet, albeit with the understanding that the tweets now carry the weight of presidential communications, they will likely elicit some furious feedback from his political enemies. Unfortunately, many of the responses to his social media posts will be threats. All of these threats will have to be “run out” (investigated) as we used to say in the Secret Service. This is going to cause an unprecedented drain on the Secret Service’s very limited protective intelligence assets (the agents who investigate threats to Secret Service protectees). Although I am now, and will always be, a vocal supporter of limited government, there is simply no way to squeeze twenty pounds of presidential threat investigations into a five pound investigative bag. The agents needed to investigate this potential tidal wave of threats will have to be taken away from criminal investigative assignments. It may be a good time to have a bigger conversation about scrapping some of the Secret Service’s current tasks and re-prioritizing protection, major events, and protective intelligence.

3. Technology and weapons

The Secret Service culture is heavily resistant to change, especially regarding new technology. Another former agent friend of mine summed it up with the quip “the Secret Service: Yesterday’s technology-tomorrow.” The Secret Service is still using decades-old manpower hour management programs and it still requires its agents to waste hours of precious time each month on unnecessary paperwork and bureaucratic hoop-jumping. Applying an outsider’s business perspective, in the model of a President-elect Trump, to this process could clean this mess up quickly and free up Secret Service agents to do their jobs, not making multiple photocopies of a time and attendance report.

Secondly, the Secret Service MUST update its weapons capabilities to reflect the evolving threat of a small arms tactical assault from a terror group. Rank-and-file agents have been complaining about the Secret Service’s insufficient weapons capabilities for years, and the transition to 5.56 from the 9mm sub-machinegun took way too long. Every Secret Service agent assigned to a protective mission — from those temporarily assigned as post-standers, to the agents permanently assigned to the president — should be equipped with the necessary weapons and training to be able to defend themselves and the president from this evolving terror threat. And while the Secret Service’s main mission is to evacuate the president, not to engage in wild-west-type gun fights, they must have the ability to stave off a prolonged tactical assault by a small group of well-armed and suicidal terrorists who will only be stopped by applying an equal amount of force.

Donald Trump ran a different kind of campaign, with a different kind of political strategy. This is going to require a different kind of approach to keeping him safe. God bless those involved in the effort. (For more from the author of “Protecting President Trump Won’t Be Easy. A Former Secret Service Agent Explains Why” please click HERE)

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A LEFTIST’S GUIDE TO ANTI-TRUMP PROTESTS: Chapter 12 — How to Wear Your Protest Safety Pin

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Now that the Soros-funded radicals are using safety pins to signify their disrespect for the Constitution, our summer intern @BiffSpackle offers these helpful fashion tips:

161114-safety-pin-protest

(For more from the author of “A LEFTIST’S GUIDE TO ANTI-TRUMP PROTESTS: Chapter 12 — How to Wear Your Protest Safety Pin” please click HERE)

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