Joe Biden is continuing to dodge potshots from his own Party members for the same reason that so many people do these days: he wasn’t born yesterday, and so not every thought he expresses matches whatever rigid PC standards just got announced five minutes ago.
This week’s blow-up was over Biden’s lament about partisan rancor preventing anyone in Washington from compromising to get anything accomplished, and how he would work across the aisle if elected. At a fundraiser Tuesday, Biden recalled being in the Senate in the 1970s, when his colleagues included Sens. James Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia, who were segregationists (FYI: they were also both Democrats, so it wasn’t “working across the aisle” then.)
Biden said, “At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn’t agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished. But today, you look at the other side and you’re the enemy. Not the opposition, the enemy. We don't talk to each other anymore.”
For this perfectly reasonable and refreshingly adult statement, Biden received furious criticism from younger, more leftist Democrats such as Cory Booker, who demanded he apologize – a demand that Joe rather admirably refused, as you can see at the link.
The attacks on Biden implied that he was excusing racism, which he didn’t do at all. He made it clear that he vehemently disagreed with those Senators' views on that issue. But those men held power in the Senate, and he needed to work with them to get anything accomplished. So he set the differences aside in order to get their support for things that it was possible to get passed.
This is how politics works. When I was Governor of Arkansas, I had a nearly 90% Democratic legislature. That means I didn't have the luxury of dealing only with people who were exactly like me. I had to work with people with whom I had little in common politically, to strike deals and make compromises in order to win enough votes to get my agenda passed. And if I say so myself, I was surprisingly successful. I suppose I could have taken the Obama route and just ignored the legislature and tried to impose my agenda by executive order. But I have a feeling that would have gone over in Arkansas like a tofu log for Thanksgiving dinner.
The attacks on Biden for simply stating the obvious (in politics, you sometimes have to work with people you disagree with if you want to accomplish anything) are very illustrative of what the modern Democratic Party has become: the party of 100% pure, USDA-certified, judgmental intolerance. If you do not now, and at every moment in history before now, agree with their current views (even if they change on an hourly basis), then you are a non-person and they consider it a thought-crime even to talk to you. I’m amazed they didn’t just come right out and declare that accomplishing things is racist.
This isn’t just in politics. You can see it anywhere that current leftists have power. Did you express a conservative thought on a social media site? BANNED! Do you question the wisdom of your college professor who preaches the toxic failed doctrine of socialism? SILENCED AND POSSIBLY PUNCHED IN THE FACE! Are you a comedian who makes jokes about leftists? YOUR SHOW IS CANCELED! Do you believe in the sanctity of human life in the womb? YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO BE A JUDGE! (That one actually came from a candidate for President!) Do you wish not to be forced to violate your religious beliefs by participating in same-sex marriages? FINED AND SUED INTO BANKRUPTCY! Did you wear a MAGA cap in public? SPIT ON AND SUCKER-PUNCHED!
Joe Biden already allowed pressure from the left to make him flip-flop on supporting the Hyde Amendment. Personally, I would rather lose an election than win it by renouncing my belief in the sanctity of life and the fundamental wrongness of forcing Americans who believe that abortion is the murder of innocent pre-born children to pay for it. If Joe can live with that compromise, it’s on his conscience.
But I can’t help wondering if seeing his own party members’ outraged fury over something as basic as saying he’d be willing to work with people he’d disagreed with to get good things done might make him start to think about what his Party has degenerated into and whether he really wants to become the leader and face of something that stands for rabid intolerance, anger, hatred and censorship. Maybe he thinks he can show them the error of their ways and turn them back toward classical liberalism again. If so, I wish him the best of luck, but he’ll have to start by no longer jettisoning his principles at the first angry screech from the Peanut Gallery.
If not, then he should ask himself this: What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world (or at least the White House) and lose his soul?
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I must admit that it’s both hilarious and surreal to have so many “experts” claiming to know what my daughter Sarah plans to do next when I’ve told you that not even I know for sure. For instance, Politico claimed she’s “extremely serious” about running for Governor of Arkansas and is already laying the groundwork. It’s a job she’d be great at, I’m sure, but what sources does Politico have that are better than mine? Their story is attributed to a source described as “one of the people who has talked to” her. Well, that’s it: I guess they have me beat!
https://www.westernjournal.com/sarah-sanders-extremely-serious-running-governor-report/
Politico also notes that Sarah has “made some contacts that could serve as the foundation for a political career” in Arkansas. Wow, there’s some breaking news for you!
For Politico and everyone else who wants to know what Sarah is really thinking and what her future plans might be, be sure to watch this weekend’s edition of “Huckabee” on TBN. Somehow, I’ve managed to land an exclusive interview, which I believe will be the only interview she gives to any media outlet between now and the time when she leaves the White House. That’s this Saturday at 8 and 11 p.m. EST, 7 and 10 CST, only on TBN. To locate your local TBN affiliate, visit us online at https://www.tbn.org/programs/huckabee
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Travel can be very educational, and I can’t think of anyone who could benefit more from an educational trip than Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Luckily, she suddenly finds herself on the receiving end of several invitations to travel and broaden her understanding of the world prior to 2018.
This week, she raised a firestorm on social media by declaring that our centers on the border that house illegal migrants are “concentration camps.” To make it clear that she was indeed comparing our detention of foreigners who voluntarily entered our nation illegally to the forced imprisonment, torture and extermination of six million Jewish citizens under the Nazis, she even pointedly used the phrase “Never again,” which is the Jewish people’s sacred vow to never allow anything like the Holocaust to be repeated.
AOC tried to deflect the predictable outrage by sneering that “shrieking Republicans” don’t know the difference between a “concentration camp” and a “death camp.” Which is rich coming from someone who doesn’t know the difference between a detention camp for illegal aliens who are free to go home at any time and a Nazi concentration camp full of Jewish prisoners. I suspect it is she who is unfamiliar with what “concentration” means, in virtually any context.
Anyway, after the story came out, I noted that I have visited actual concentration camps on numerous solemn occasions and would welcome her to join me the next time I visit Auschwitz or the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site (note that it's called a “concentration camp,” even though 41,500 people were murdered there), or even just Yad Vashem, the world memorial to Holocaust survivors in Israel. That might help her understand what the concentration camps really were and why it is so offensive to make flippant Holocaust comparisons for cheap political advantage.
(Incidentally, Yad Vashem had some educational comments for AOC as well):
Well, she now has another invitation to travel, this time to one of our detention centers.
Border Patrol agent Art Del Cueto, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, was so disgusted at being compared to a Nazi concentration camp guard that he invited AOC to come down to the border, see the catastrophe that her party’s policies have wrought, and take a personal tour of a detention center. She can see for herself that there are no gas chambers, firing squads, mass graves, rounding up of citizens to imprison them against their will, or working people to death from forced labor and starvation.
If travel broadens one, the combination of those two trips could really open her eyes up wide.
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This is a great article for armchair political pundits. A lot of media figures are baffled because Democrats tell pollsters they don’t want a Presidential candidate who’s over 70, but their top three poll leaders (Biden, Sanders and Warren) are all septuagenarians (for Democrats under 30, that means they’re in their 70s.)
Warren Henry at The Federalist has a thought-provoking theory that makes a lot of sense: the Democrats’ problem isn’t that they’re led by old people, it’s that their young people are a bunch of far-left socialists. That radicalism is precisely why there are hardly any Democrats between 40 and 70 who are both qualified and electable.
Like many of the Democrats’ problems, this is traceable to the Obama era. Henry notes that during Obama’s eight years in office, “the Democrats lost more than 1,030 seats in state legislatures, governor’s mansions, and Congress.” That’s an entire generation of young, mid-level Democrats who might have moved up but were instead wiped out. It hollowed out the middle of the party like a donut hole. Obama hastened the trend by lurching left, turning from a candidate who ran as a moderate Christian uniter to embracing same-sex marriage, Black Lives Matter, forcing nuns to pay for abortion drugs and unconstitutionally making unpopular laws and treaties by executive order. That left only the old holdovers like Biden, Sanders and Pelosi and a rising young generation that's much farther left than the general population, even to the point of openly embracing socialism and other positions that Democrats used to avoid, or at least were smart enough not to endorse during election seasons.
The Democrats’ leftwing extremism cost their middle-aged moderates their offices, but didn’t replace them with anyone who could win a general election. So now, their candidates are split between elder, elder statesmen of the Party like Biden and Warren and a gaggle of far-left, laughably unqualified young squirts like Pete Buttigieg and “Beto” O’Rourke. Some young leftists, like AOC, are even targeting the few remaining centrists in safe districts with leftward primary challengers, in a move that will make it even harder in the future to find a Democrat who’s acceptable to a majority of American voters and isn’t older than Methuselah.
There’s much more detail, so read the full article. But it’s possible that the 2020 election may be shaping up as a rerun of 1972’s Nixon vs. McGovern race. The Republican was absolutely reviled by the media and all pop culture “influencers.” But the Democrats let the young radicals take over their convention. An older, more experienced candidate prevailed, but he was much more liberal than the general electorate, and McGovern later admitted he’d been pressured to go further left than even he was comfortable with.
On Election Day, the reviled, maligned ogre of the media, Nixon, carried the “Silent Majority” and won 49 states in a 61% landslide. Liberals were famously stunned and baffled as to how it could have possibly happened when nobody they knew voted for him.
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I’m sure you’ve heard about the attempted mass shooting at the Earl Cabell Federal Building in downtown Dallas Monday. The shooter picked the wrong target: he barely got off some shots at the front of the building before the many armed officers and federal agents on the scene started firing back. He ran and later died of his wounds, so he was the only casualty of his attempted assault.
But here is something remarkable that you might not have heard about or seen:
Dallas Morning News photographer Tom Fox happened to be waiting outside the courthouse for a trial to begin when all the drama suddenly went down. Thinking fast and without regard for his own safety, he grabbed an incredible photo of the shooter that captured the panic in his eyes when he realized what a deadly mistake he’d made. This is an unprecedented look directly into the eyes of a would-be mass shooter at the very moment when he realizes it’s all gone south and this is the end.
Permalink: https://www.mikehuckabee.com/2019/6/evening-edition-june-20
"American Spies"
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