Leftists Claim Trump 20% Behind Lefties in Popular Polls…IS IT TRUE?

The Conservative Majority and Polls

By Bruce Walker at  American Thinker:

Gallup on January 8 published a poll that showed that conservatives outnumber liberals in America.  The most resilient political fact over the last half-century is the clear majority of Americans who identify themselves as “conservative” rather than “liberal.”  Even California has a conservative advantage, according to some polls.  Even CNN exit polls in the 2018 election all show the same thing.

Every single major poll in the last fifty years has shown that conservatives outnumber liberals.  What is bizarre about these data is that not only do liberals passionately reject this idea, but so do conservatives, who have become both cynical and depressed and are just as eager to join liberals in rejecting the idea that America is a conservative nation.

The two most conservative presidents of the last century – Calvin Coolidge (Reagan’s favorite president) and Ronald Reagan – were enormous electoral successes.  Reagan defeated incumbent Jimmy Carter by an overwhelming majority of the popular vote and by carrying 44 states, including all of the ten biggest.  When Reagan ran for re-election, he carried 49 states, and a shift of one tenth of one percent would have given Reagan all fifty.

Coolidge carried almost twice the popular vote of the Democrat nominee, Davis, and although the Solid South gave Davis about one quarter of the electoral votes, the landslide was still dramatic:  Coolidge carried the states outside the South, with more than two-to-one landslides in most states.  Had Coolidge run for re-election in 1928, he would have likely won by a margin of the popular vote unequaled in the history of our two-party system.

A review of polling data in 2018 shows the same conservative majority.  None of the polling organizations is conservative, and all of them are, in fact, pretty clearly hostile to conservatives.  CNN did exit polling in the 2018 election, and here are some unexpected findings of the conservative-liberal split in America.

Nationally, CNN found that conservatives outnumber liberals by 36% to 27%.   Consider the CNN breakdown in states where Republicans lost key Senate races in 2018: Nevada, 35% conservative and 25% liberal; Montana, 42% conservative and 20% liberal; Ohio, 39% conservative and 21% liberal; Arizona, 40% conservative and 22% liberal…and so on.  Republicans consistently won fewer votes than the conservative advantage in the state would have provided.

Survey USA shows that conservatives nationally outnumber liberals by 26% to 21% in America.  This is consistent with state polls, which routinely show conservatives as more potent in states than electoral results would suggest.

Indeed, if Republicans won those states and congressional districts in which conservatives outnumbered Democrats, they would have a clear and solid majority in Congress and easy presidential victories.  Republicans ought to embrace this and make each race one of conservatives against liberals – but Republicans shy away from this and are encouraged to do so by conservatives who simply do not believe that they are the ideological majority in America.

What makes this even more bizarre is that the most prestigious polling organization, Gallup, goes to extraordinary lengths to hide conservative strength.  Consider the last Gallup Poll of ideological strength by state.  The title is “Conservative Leaning States Drop from 44 to 39,” but this excludes 14 states that, according to Gallup, are neither “Conservative” nor “Liberal.”  What is the bottom line?  Thirty-nine states are conservative; nine are liberal; and two states, Delaware and Hawaii, have an equal number of conservatives and liberals.  What is the most liberal “state”?  Surprise!  That “state” is the District of Columbia.

This deliberate underplaying and even ignoring the conservative majority in America is something I have been writing about for eleven years at the America Thinker.  There is no real explanation for conservative strength except that it is true.   Nor is there an explanation for Gallup totally ignoring its own findings ten years ago, which showed that every single state of the nation had conservatives outnumbering liberals.  That ought to be a huge news story, but Gallup tacitly ignored its own scoop.

Why, then, do conservatives not run America?  Begin with the only polity in America that has an overwhelming leftist majority: the federal capital.  Then consider the Orwellian monopoly of professors on college campuses.  Polls as early as 1962 have shown that only a small percentage of professors are not liberals.

The left wins by intimidation and by spiking all information that contradicts its dull, dim catechism.  The fact of a resilient conservative majority – a fact produced by news outlets that despise conservatism – ought to give us courage and confidence, but that comes only when we believe in ourselves and the attractiveness of our cause.

Gallup on January 8 published a poll that showed that conservatives outnumber liberals in America.  The most resilient political fact over the last half-century is the clear majority of Americans who identify themselves as “conservative” rather than “liberal.”  Even California has a conservative advantage, according to some polls.  Even CNN exit polls in the 2018 election all show the same thing.

 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/01/the_conservative_majority_and_polls.html

Leftist Der Spiegel Trump Haters Play Political Nazi along with Pelosi’s Dems

TRUMP HATRED–OR IS IT AMERICA HATRED?–GERMAN STYLE

by  John Hinderaker  at PowerLine:

We wrote here about how Der Spiegel, Europe’s largest news magazine, made a fool of itself by publishing an entirely fictional article about Fergus Falls, Minnesota, and the “Trump voters” who live there. While the extent to which that article was fiction may have been unintended, its anti-Trump–and anti-American–tenor was not. Now, Der Spiegel has published a hit piece on Richard Grenell, the U.S. Ambassador to Germany. Like the residents of Fergus Falls, Grenell is collateral damage. The real enemy is…well, you be the judge.

Der Spiegel begins rather bizarrely with a denunciation of Tucker Carlson:

Tucker Carlson’s worldview doesn’t come across as particularly complex. It can be summed up in three words: Foreigners threaten America. That’s all that’s needed for good ratings.

His show on the right-wing Fox News channel is among the most successful political shows on American cable TV. The mouthpiece of the American neo-Nazis, the Daily Stormer, has described him as “literally our greatest ally.” His most prominent viewer is Donald Trump.

Got that? Trump is a Nazi! It’s an authoritative characterization, coming from the land of the actual Nazis.

Ambassador Grenell appeared on Carlson’s show and talked about the German government’s refugee policy:

The ambassador made it clear in just a few sentences how little he thought of the chancellor’s refugee policy. “There was no plan in place,” he said, “so the policy really fell apart.” He claimed that anyone calling for secure borders in Germany today faces an “overreaction.” The discourse, he said, is largely being controlled by “elites in Berlin” and he argued that anyone who speaks openly about the issue runs the risk of being portrayed as being part of the “radical far-right” by the German media.

All of that is more or less indisputably true. What’s the point?

Grenell’s TV interview was a thinly veiled call for a change of government in Berlin.

Oh, please. But appearing on Carlson’s show is only the beginning. Now we get to Grenell’s conduct as ambassador:

Many previous U.S. ambassadors were major political and social figures in the capital, enjoying excellent connections to the Chancellery and federal ministries, and playing host to the most powerful and influential personalities in Germany.

… Grenell has taken a different path. On the day he took up his post, he tweeted that “German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately.” Martin Schulz, the former head of the center-left Social Democratic Party, compared his behavior to that of “a right-wing extremist colonial officer.”

Huh? That is wacky even by the debased standards of American political discourse.

Four weeks later in Breitbart, the main organ of the pro-Trump, right-wing “alt-right” movement, Grenell essentially called for regime change. “I absolutely want to empower other conservatives throughout Europe,” he said.

Which, obviously, is not a “call for regime change.”

Now we get to what may be Der Spiegel’s principal grievance:

In the week before Christmas, Grenell wrote a letter to DER SPIEGEL about the Relotius case, in which longtime DER SPIEGEL journalist Claas Relotius was revealed to have invented reporting for several of his stories, including about the United States. Grenell was justifiably angry, but he didn’t stop there. He accused DER SPIEGEL of anti-Americanism, writing that the United States was clearly “targeted by institutional bias.”

This was the Fergus Falls, Minnesota story, and Grenell’s characterization of it is entirely fair. See my linked post above.

DER SPIEGEL editors and reporters, he argued, had regularly published reports “which could have been proven untrue if they had checked the facts with the Embassy first.” He also wrote that “unfortunately, it is common practice for Spiegel reporters to not even call us before writing.”

To which the magazine responds by complaining that Grenell declined to be interviewed for the article at hand. It is easy to understand why, but this is entertaining:

On Thursday, the embassy answered a list of questions with a written statement: “All seven of your questions are based on fabricated stories that are not true. Every one of the questions assumes something that is false. Konstantin von Hammerstein uses the same tactics as Claas Relotius by pushing a false narrative with anonymous sources.”

Heh. It would be fun to see the questions! The magazine was undeterred, of course, and published its article based on interviews with enemies of Grenell, President Trump, and, perhaps, the U.S.:

Almost all of these [anonymous] sources paint an unflattering portrait of the ambassador, one remarkably similar to Donald Trump, the man who sent him to Berlin. A majority of them describe Grenell as a vain, narcissistic person who dishes out aggressively, but can barely handle criticism. His brash demeanor, some claim, hides a deep insecurity, and they say he thirsts for the approval of others. After one of his appearances, we were told, he asked almost shyly how he had done.

Got that? Grenell is just like Trump! (Other than the gay part, of course.) He is vain, narcissistic and brash–so much so that after a speech, he asks “shyly,” how did I do? How brash can you get?

Der Spiegel tells us that all the best Germans can’t stand Grenell:

Anyone who doesn’t absolutely need to meet Grenell avoids it. “I have no interest in people who are going through Europe with a wrecking ball,” says former Green Party co-chair Cem Özdemir. He is one of several prominent politicians who keep their contact to the American ambassador to a minimum.

Nothing like going to a former head of the Green Party for an objective view of a Republican ambassador. There is much, much more, including an unfavorable contrast between Grenell and his predecessor, Barack Obama’s ambassador Philip Murphy–now the Governor of New Jersey–who, according to Der Spiegel, was beloved by German politicians and bureaucrats. It is easy to understand why. The ambassador of a president who has no intention of advancing his country’s interests can only be popular.

Der Spiegel concludes by denouncing Grenell for being photographed with members of the Alternative For Germany, a new, immigration-skeptic party that won 94 seats in Germany’s most recent election. That is, I suppose, the acid test: those who want border enforcement favor national sovereignty, an inconvenient obstacle to the ambitions of the international New Class. The real target of Der Spiegel’s ire, I think, is anyone who stands in the way of the rapacious New Class, of which its editors and reporters are members. American voters–especially those whom Der Spiegel libeled in its Fergus Falls fantasy–are high on the enemies list.

 

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/01/trump-hatred-or-is-it-america-hatred-german-style.php

When FBI Bigshots Went Fascist in 2017

NYT REVEALS FBI RETALIATED AGAINST TRUMP FOR COMEY FIRING

…

by Mollie Hemingway  at the Federalist:

…

A Friday expose from the New York Times reveals that the FBI investigation of Trump for alleged treason was little more than retaliation against the president for lawfully firing an incompetent and ethically challenged FBI director.

In a Friday night news dump, the New York Times revealed the FBI’s surprisingly flimsy justification for launching a retaliatory investigation into President Donald Trump, their chief adversary during their recent troubled era.

Admitting there is no actual evidence for their probe into whether Trump “worked for the Russians,” FBI officials instead cited their foreign policy differences with him, his lawful firing of bungling FBI Director James Comey, and alarm that he accurately revealed to the American public that he was told he wasn’t under investigation by the FBI, when they preferred to hide that fact.

The news was treated as a bombshell, and it was, but not for the reasons many thought. It wasn’t news that the FBI had launched the investigation. Just last month, CNN reported that top FBI officials opened an investigation into Trump after the lawful firing of Comey because Trump “needed to be reined in,” a shocking admission of abuse of power by our nation’s top law enforcement agency.

The Washington Post reported Mueller was looking into whether Trump obstructed the Russia investigation by insisting he was innocent of the outlandish charges selectively leaked by government officials to compliant media. Perhaps because such an obstruction investigation was immediately condemned as scandalous political overreach, that aspect was downplayed while Mueller engaged in a limitless “Russia” probe that has rung up countless Trump affiliates for process crimes unrelated to treasonous collusion with Russia to steal the 2016 election, and spun off various investigations having nothing to do with Russia in any way.

The latest Times report does provide more detail than these earlier reports, however, and none of it makes the FBI look good. In fact, it provides evidence of a usurpation of constitutional authority to determine foreign policy that belongs not with a politically unaccountable FBI but with the citizens’ elected president. More on that in a bit.

Criminalizing Foreign Policy Differences

Using leaked information and testimony from various former governmental officials, we learn that the FBI opened its aggressive, norm-breaking, and unconstitutionalinvestigation, supposedly into whether Trump “worked for the Russians,” after he fired Comey and revealed how the agency was playing games with their spurious “Russia” probe.

The Saturday New York Times article appeared on page one, above the fold, with the almost laughable headline “F.B.I. Investigated if Trump Worked for the Russians.” The online version of the story was headlined “F.B.I. Opened Inquiry Into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia.” Nine paragraphs into the story, the reporters admit that there is and was literally “no evidence” to support the idea Trump worked for Russia.

The top of the article, however, immediately presented the FBI-friendly interpretation of the agency’s motivations as fact — without evidence and despite strong evidence to the contrary — saying the FBI began its investigation because they were “so concerned by the president’s behavior” rather than saying it was because they were “so concerned he’d continue to expose their behavior” or “so concerned he’d hold them accountable for their political investigations.”

The article accepts FBI spin that arguing for better relations with the nuclear-armed Russia “constituted a possible threat to national security” that could only be explained if Trump was “knowingly working for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow’s influence.” Because FBI officials personally opposed Trump’s foreign policy, and that of the tens of millions of Americans who voted for him, the FBI was “suspicious” of him, we’re told. The reporters admit the reckless decision by FBI officials was “an aggressive move” that disturbs many former law enforcement officials.

The FBI never had a good reason to investigate Trump, according to information in the article, but even the justifications they use are erroneous. For example, all three items mentioned here are inaccurately framed and presented:

Mr. Trump had caught the attention of F.B.I. counterintelligence agents when he called on Russia during a campaign news conference in July 2016 to hack into the emails of his opponent, Hillary Clinton. Mr. Trump had refused to criticize Russia on the campaign trail, praising President Vladimir V. Putin. And investigators had watched with alarm as the Republican Party softened its convention platform on the Ukraine crisis in a way that seemed to benefit Russia.

First, Trump never called on Russia to hack Clinton, despite repeated media claims to the contrary. Clinton had already destroyed her server, along with 30,000 emails she claimed were about yoga, while she was under investigation for mishandling classified information. Trump was highlighting that tons of hackers could have already accessed her insecure server when it still existed and, if they had, those emails should be released so that Americans would know what foreign governments undoubtedly already did. It was a way to highlight her reckless handling of classified information and the global security concerns of that.

Second, having a foreign policy different from those who seek conflict with Russia is neither a problem nor any of the FBI’s business. In fact, it’s a big part of why the American people voted for Trump. The American people get to determine who sets foreign policy, and they do so through elections. The FBI does not get to set foreign policy by running criminal and counterintelligence investigations to punish those who step outside their preferred approach. They have no constitutional authority to do that.

Third, even if the Republican Party had changed its convention platform regarding Ukraine, which it had not, that is also neither a problem nor any of the FBI’s business. It’s shocking and scandalous that the FBI thinks it should criminalize foreign policy disputes.

The FBI argues, without evidence, that the president needed to be investigated as a threat to national security. Keep in mind that the FBI did not act this way during the previous administration, when many of Barack Obama’s detractors argued his foreign policy was a threat to national security. They didn’t investigate collusion with Iran, or the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars in cash to the regime. Neither did they do such things with any previous president.

It’s good that they didn’t, because Article II of the U.S. Constitution gives the authority to determine foreign policy to the president, not the director or acting director of the FBI. Harvard law professor and former Comey deputy Jack Goldsmith expands on this:

One danger in the what the FBI apparently did is that it implies that the unelected domestic intelligence bureaucracy holds itself as the ultimate arbiter—over and above the elected president who is the constitutional face of U.S. intelligence and national security authority—about what actions do and don’t serve the national security interests of the United States.

Criminalizing Lawful Hiring And Firing Decisions

The article says that the FBI was, unbelievably, discussing whether they could go after Trump because he asked if Comey was loyal. It does not mention that Comey promised his loyalty or the context of Trump’s question, which was rampant leaking by the FBI, Comey’s blackmail attempt before Trump was inaugurated, and obvious game-playing against him and his administration with the Russia probe.

The FBI ultimately decided to act when Trump told the truth and revealed some of their game-playing with the Russia probe. He wanted to send a letter to Comey in which he thanked Comey for telling him he was not a subject of the Russia investigation. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein wanted him to hide that fact.

Rosenstein, it’s worth remembering, wrote the memo explaining why Comey was so bad at his job, a view that was completely confirmed by the inspector general’s report on the Clinton email probe. When Trump fired Comey, in part for his incompetent handling of political investigations such as those mentioned in Rosenstein’s memo, Rosenstein used that as the predicate to launch what became the special counsel investigation against Trump.

In any case, Trump told Rosenstein to tell the truth even if he wanted to keep it hidden. Rosenstein refused, irritating Trump, according to the New York Times. Trump told the truth to the American public — which Comey was later forced to admit under oath — that Comey had told him three times he was not under investigation.

According to the New York Times, by not going along with the FBI’s game — privately admitting to Trump that he wasn’t under investigation while publicly suggesting otherwise or leaking numerous snippets of information, selectively curated and framed to suggest he was — the FBI grew concerned that he was a Russian agent. Readers would be forgiven for thinking that makes no sense whatsoever and that it’s more plausible they were concerned their behavior against Trump would be exposed.

Their other justification for targeting their political foe was that Trump publicly flat-out said he didn’t like the game Comey was playing with the Russia investigation. They decided, we’re told, to interpret, or pretend to interpret, this as obstruction.

‘I was going to fire Comey knowing there was no good time to do it,’ he said. ‘And in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself — I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story. It’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should’ve won.’

Mr. Trump’s aides have said that a fuller examination of his comments demonstrates that he did not fire Mr. Comey to end the Russia inquiry. ‘I might even lengthen out the investigation, but I have to do the right thing for the American people,’ Mr. Trump added. ‘He’s the wrong man for that position.’

Angered by Trump’s critique of Comey’s double-dealing regarding the Russia probe, the FBI retaliated with an investigation.

While it’s not mentioned in the article, hours after Comey was fired, top FBI officials and paramours Lisa Page and Peter Strzok texted about the need to open a “case” against Trump they’d already been discussing in a “formal, chargeable way” and that it had to be done “while Andy is acting.” The texts also mention “Bill”–believed to be FBI counterintelligence head Bill Priestap–being in on the plot.

“Andy” is then-deputy director Andrew McCabe, who took over the bureau until Christopher Wray was confirmed as director in August 2017. McCabe was later fired for repeatedly lying under oath about just one of many of his rampant leaks to friendly reporters and is reportedly under criminal investigation by a federal grand jury. Strzok was also fired for his behavior, Page resigned, and Priestap announced his retirement last month. It is unclear which officials in the Department of Justice authorized the unconstitutional investigation into the president as a national security threat because he didn’t share their foreign policy views.

It was important for this group to launch the official investigation into Trump while McCabe was acting director because they reasonably understood it wouldn’t happen if an FBI director outside their control took over the agency. The opening of an investigation followed a pattern of shocking behavior by the FBI, including Comey telling Trump that there was information floating around about an alleged videotape showing prostitutes urinating on a bed while he watched (there is zero evidence that such a videotape exists or that the alleged event it memorialized ever took place).

Government officials leaked the fact of that briefing to CNN almost immediately, one of the key moments that got the outlandish Russia conspiracy story started. Even Comey admitted that his behavior looked a lot like a blackmail or extortion attempt, which he strenuously denied it was. The move backfired because Trump immediately realized the FBI was playing games. McCabe also launched an investigation of former attorney general Jeff Sessions, before Sessions recused himself from holding the FBI accountable for their handling of the Russia probe.

In sum, the framing of this New York Times article is either poorly conceived or outright disingenuous at every turn. Using the completely lawful and constitutional firing of the bumbling Comey as pretext for opening a criminal investigation into the president is a grand abuse of power by the FBI. Attempting to overtake the authority to determine U.S. foreign policy from the lawfully determined president of the United States is a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

For one of the nation’s largest newspapers to suggest that this makes the president — and not the FBI — look bad actually validates two of Trump’s biggest complaints: the media are hopelessly biased, and there really is a “deep state” out to to overturn the 2016 election.

 

http://thefederalist.com/2019/01/14/nyt-reveals-fbi-retaliated-against-trump-for-comey-firing/#.XDyD0qdFYeU.twitter