Will the Democratic Party complete its descent into madness this weekend?

As the Democratic National Committee meets in Atlanta to select its next chairman, the frontrunner for the position — extremist Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn. (F, 26%) — represents the leftist radical fringe’s complete takeover of the party. In a survey of DNC members, Ellison leads his nearest rival with nearly twice the support.

Ellison, the first Muslim American elected to Congress, has built a coalition of support across the DNC spectrum. He is the favorite of the Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. (F, 17%) wing of the party while simultaneously garnering the endorsements of progressive icons such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. (F, 18%) and leadership figures like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. (F, 2%).

All this to say, it is clear most of the Democratic Party has abandoned any pretense of operating in the mainstream. Just how radical is Rep. Keith Ellison?

This is a man who:

once compared the 9/11 terror attacks to the Reichstag fire (though later he retracted those remarks) to attack President George W. Bush as a dictator;

previously and repeatedly advocated on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated CAIR;

compared school choice to Jim Crow laws; and, among of things,

holds every radical liberal position on abortion, on amnesty for illegal aliens, on gun control, on environmental statism.

As if his radical positions weren’t enough to disqualify from leadership in a rational party, Ellison’s disturbing ties to radical Islam ought to give his Democratic colleagues pause. But they don’t. Nor does Ellison’s past relationship with the radical Louis Farrakhan, who perpetually makes the most disturbing anti-Semitic comments possible.

“I want to disabuse the Jews today of the false claim that you are the chosen of God — that Israel or Palestine belongs to you,” Farrakhan recently said at a Nation of Islam conference in Detroit, to the applause of the crowd. He continued, saying:

I want to disabuse you of that. I want to make it so clear and I’m going to tell you about your future. You that think you have power to frighten and dominate the peoples of the world. I’m here to announce the end of your time.

Ellison also shares Farrakhan’s anti-Israel sentiments.

“The United States foreign policy in the Middle East is governed by what is good or bad through a country of 7 million people. A region of 350 million all turns on a country of 7 million. Does that make sense?” Ellison said of the state of Israel at private fundraiser in 2010.

Even the liberal Anti-Defamation League has referred to those comments as “disqualifying.” And we’re supposed to believe President Donald Trump is the anti-Semite? As CR’s Jordan Schachtel noted:

We live in a strange world where actual anti-Semites are lecturing non anti-Semites on anti-Semitismhttps://t.co/FhRDbO8KK0

— Jordan Schachtel (@JordanSchachtel) February 21, 2017

And all that is just the beginning of Ellison’s radicalism, as Conservative Review Editor-in-Chief Mark Levin has explained previously:

That the Democratic Party is even permitting Keith Ellison run for leadership is a disgrace. That he is so close to winning that leadership position shows how far gone the Democrats are in kowtowing to the most radical elements of the Left. (For more from the author of “No Room for You, Moderate Dems. DNC on the Verge of Appointing Extremist Ellison as Chair” please click HERE)

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The leading candidate to be the next chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., has said he wants the Democratic Party to come out against the Second Amendment, compared the 9/11 attacks to the Nazi Reichstag fire, and was affiliated with the controversial Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam.

Ellison, the co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and supporter of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders during the Democratic presidential primaries, once said eventual nominee Hillary Clinton would have to prove she’s not a Republican to get his support.

Ellison has been member of Congress since 2007, and has supported other measures that could be unpopular with moderate voters, but are the norm for progressives. Ellison has advocated for a single-payer health care system, a carbon tax, hiking taxes for high earners, and cutting the defense budget.

With Republicans holding the White House along with majorities in the House and Senate, the Democratic Party chairman will be a more prominent public face for the party for at least the next two years.

Former DNC Chairman and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Jaime Harrison, and others are vying for the position.

However, Ellison is clearly the leading candidate, with 40 endorsements for the job from elected officials and state party chairmen, including Sanders, incoming Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer of New York, and outgoing Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

Here are a few things to know about the leading contender for the DNC chairmanship.

‘Sure Wish They Would’ Be Against the Second Amendment

When appearing on “Real Time with Bill Maher” in March 2014, Maher asked Ellison, “Why doesn’t your party come out against the Second Amendment? It’s the problem.”

Ellison responded, “I sure wish they would. I sure wish they would.”

Maher pressed, “Really? Because I never hear anybody in the Democratic Party say that. But they say, ‘I am also a strong supporter.’”

Ellison said, “You have got to check out the Progressive Caucus. We have come out very strong for commonsense gun safety rules.”

Maher pushed further to know what “common sense” meant.

“What it means is that if you want to have grandpa’s shotgun, have it, but get rid of those crazy military-style assault weapons,” Ellison said.

Maher said, “It’s not going to change anything.”

Ellison defended his position, saying, “You can’t solve the problem with just one little thing. You’ve got to make sure that the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] can issue reports on gun killings and handgun violence. You’ve got to make sure that we can get rid of assault weapons. You’ve got to close the loophole at gun shows. You’ve got to do a whole range of things to get us into a sane place. We’ve got 12,000 handgun murders a year.”

Ellison’s office did not provide a formal response for this story, but a prominent Democratic surrogate close to Ellison defended his stance on gun control.

“Keith has called for the reinstatement of the assault weapons ban, a law that prevented dangerous weapons from falling into the hands of violent criminals,” the Ellison associate said.

“We can avoid national tragedies by closing gun show loopholes, banning military-style assault weapons, and fully supporting the implementation of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System,” he added. “A strong national background check system will ensure that violent individuals, domestic abusers, murderers, or the criminally insane are not able to buy guns. Keith also believes in limiting the amount of deadly ammunition that guns can hold in a single magazine because there is no justifiable civilian purpose for firing dozens of rounds without stopping.”

Past Ties to Farrakhan

Going back to his time in law school at the University of Minnesota, Ellison defended the Nation of Islam and its controversial leader Louis Farrakhan.

As a third-year law students at the University of Minnesota Law School in 1989-90, Ellison reportedly wrote for the student newspaper, The Minnesota Daily, using the name Keith Hakim, where he defended Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. He further wrote about reparations for slavery and demand a separate homeland for African-Americans, The Washington Post reported when Ellison was running for the office.

In 1995, he reportedly backed up the Nation of Islam line in organizing a march at the U.S. attorney’s office in Minneapolis to accuse the FBI of conspiring to murder Farrakhan, The Weekly Standard reported.

Ellison first ran for public office in 1998, winning the Democratic nomination for state representative under the name Keith Ellison-Muhammad.

Because of Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic statements, Ellison sought to explain his association when he first ran for Congress in 2006. During the Democratic primary, he wrote a letter to the local chapter of the Jewish Community Relations Council that stated his involvement with the Nation of Islam was only 18 months and surrounded the Million Man March of 1995. He said he wasn’t familiar with the Nation of Islam’s anti-Semitic views.

Later that year, he said that he parted ways with the group when “it became clear to me that their message of empowerment intertwined with more negative messages.”

Ellison forcefully rejects anti-Semitism, the supporter close to the Minnesota congressman told The Daily Signal.

“He has strongly condemned the Nation of Islam and other groups that promote anti-Semitism, intolerance, and bigotry, hosting several briefings and panels about confronting anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, voting to strengthen anti-hate crime legislation, and standing with Jewish government officials against anti-Semitism,” the source close to Ellison said.

9/11 and the Reichstag Fire

The conservative group America Rising PAC showcased a video last week from Ellison delivering a 2007 speech where he said that the 9/11 terrorist attacks was comparable to the Reichstag fire in Germany that helped bring Adolf Hitler to power.

“Remember 9/11. You would never have all this discrimination against religious minorities but for 9/11,” Ellison said. “We had it, but we don’t have it to the degree we have it now. 9/11 is this juggernaut you get in American history. It’s almost like the Reichstag fire. It reminds me of that. You know what I’m talking about?”

Someone in the audience asked, “Who benefited from 9/11?” Ellison responded, “Well, you and I both know. But the thing is, you know, after Reichstag was burned, they blamed the communists for it and then put the leader of that country into a position where basically he could do whatever he wanted.”

(For more from the author of “The Very Liberal Views of the Leading DNC Chairman Contender” please click HERE)

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What a revelatory week this has been for the Democrat Party. From media collusion, to the resignation of the head of the Democrat National Committee on the eve of the convention, the curtain has been pulled back on the inner workings and modus operandi of the DNC.

Just a few days before the convention Julian Assange’s Wikileaks released over 20,000 emails hacked from the DNC. From the publically exposed internal emails what many of us have suspected was verified, that the DNC colludes with the mainstream media on their reporting. As one source described the collusion, “The intimate relationship between the Democratic Party and the media isn’t just a conspiracy theory dreamed up by paranoid conservatives. Turns out, there’s more bias in some newsrooms than there is at a Lois Lerner auditing party. From reporters giving party officials a chance to edit or comment on their stories to outright dictating what questions Democratic officials will be asked on air, the collusion uncovered in the pages of messages is astounding — even for the most cynical media critic.”

Another dubious practice with the mainstream media was also revealed.

Over 15 specific recent examples were exposed of mainstream media “draft sharing” their stories before publication. Draft sharing is a practice of sharing the drafts of stories with sources before the stories are published.

While not illegal, from a reporting standpoint, the practice is unethical, according to journalism experts. Renita Coleman, a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, has said, “It’s been a time-honored code that you don’t show sources stories before they run.” Edward Wasserman, the Knight Chair in Journalism Ethics at Washington and Lee University, said that draft sharing is “hard to square with even the most source-friendly reporting practices.” No wonder the mainstream media sounds and acts like they’re simply the propaganda arm of the DNC.

Another media analyst made the observation, “The Left must know that it can’t win the war of ideas on a level playing field, so it resorts to lying, slander, and outright distortion — in many cases, with the liberal media’s help. Of course, the people most hurt by the press’s bias aren’t conservatives — they’re the American people, who never really get to know the truth about their candidates.”

The leaked emails also proved that the DNC purposefully tilted the political playing field in Hillary Clinton’s favor, sabotaging the Bernie Sanders campaign, much to the chagrin of Sanders’ supporters. The most egregious was denying the Sanders campaign access to the DNC voter database. Most political analysts are now saying had this not been done, Bernie would have won the nomination with the requisite number of delegates from the primaries. The revelations led to the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Shultz as the head of the DNC, on the eve of the convention. An underling gaveled in the first days of the convention.

But true to form for the party of corruption, Shultz was rewarded immediately by the Clinton campaign, by naming her as the honorary chairman of the Clinton campaign. Based on how she was running the DNC, through the lens of the leaked emails, it would appear she had been functioning as a de facto Clinton official all along.

Predictably, Clinton and the DNC blamed the Wikileaks revelations on the “vast right-wing conspiracy.” Mrs. Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook, claimed on ABC’s “This Week” that they were leaked, “by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump.” Mook offered no evidence, of course, which only further invests the Clinton campaign more in their conspiracy theory of a “vast right wing conspiracy.” If anything, the DNC emails prove there’s a “vast left wing conspiracy” of collusion between the party and the mainstream media.

The DNC emails also prove how they take for granted the Hispanic and the black vote. Multiple emails from DNC staffers referred to the “buckets” of voters, based on race. They further prove how they take those voters for granted by claiming that they are the most “brand-loyal” voters for the party. It should be immensely disturbing to those voters that they’re assumed to be so loyal that they are merely blind puppets of the party that panders to their special interests.

Equally disturbing was the pejorative way they are sometimes referenced by the DNC. One staff member, and Obama campaign veteran, Rebecca Christopher, referred to their courtship of Hispanic voters as “taco bowl outreach.” That kind of “branding” should cause all sentient Hispanic voters to rethink their commitment and fealty to the DNC.

As if to not let Jewish voters feel left out, on the first day of the convention, Congressman Hank Johnson (D-GA), compared Israeli settlers on the West Bank to “termites.” Rabbi David Wolpe, writing in Time after the Johnson gaffe, was astounded at the “shockingly limited amount of play in the press,” the statement received. Especially, as Wolpe points out, since the “terminology evokes some of the worst expressions of historical anti-Semitism—those moments in time when Jews were characterized as ‘vermin’ and targeted for ‘extermination.’”

As the New York Observer printed earlier this year, in a pieced titled, “Sooner or Later the DNC will Have to Face Its Corruption Issues,” the DNC has “come under scrutiny throughout the Democratic primaries, from rigging the debate schedule, to inciting a lawsuit from the Sanders campaign over access to voter database files, to colluding with the Clinton campaign through a joint fundraising committee—the Hillary Victory Fund—which was recently accused of violating campaign finance laws. The fund has also been linked to buying the support of superdelegates as the Clinton campaign gets to decide where and how much money goes to state Democratic Parties.” The piece linked much of the corruption to “the fear of retribution” from the DNC and party leaders, which “has been silencing Democrats for way too long.”

Neither of the major parties is immune to the foibles, follies, and imperfections of the individuals either leading or working in them. But the Democrat Party, at least at the national level, appears to be corrupt at its very core, as copiously evidenced by the leaked DNC emails. Perhaps it’s time for all cognitively functional Democrats, especially Hispanics, Jews, and blacks, to rethink their blind party loyalty. (For more from the author of “CORRUPT TO THEIR CORE: Lessons From the DNC” please click HERE)

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