Politics

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Confessions of the Secret Suburban Trump moms: Ohio

Suburban women are understood to be one of the most crucial demographic groups in the presidential election on November 3. Many pollsters currently predict that President Donald Trump will lose due to his unpopularity with that category of voters. But have the Democrats really reclaimed the suburbs? Or are there more likely Republican voters than the polls suggest? The Spectator tracked down a series of so-called ‘closet Trump’ voters, women from the suburbs who would never publicly voice their support for the President for fear of recrimination in their social circles. These are their stories. Columbus, Ohio I am a conservative Republican woman and my Christian faith is the foundation of my family. My faith is constantly under attack by Democrats.

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Justice for Generation X

Long before her Senate confirmation hearings, we knew Judge Amy Coney Barrett was smart. A Supreme Court clerkship and prolific career in the legal academy added up to someone uncommonly capable of hard work. That she is Catholic with seven kids — the ‘dogma lives loudly in her’, to borrow Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s immortal slur — is well known. What we didn’t expect was the hearing’s greatest surprise: Judge Barrett is normal.That is no minor relief in an America that increasingly seems a little unhinged. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse came to the Senate floor bearing an incomprehensible series of partially hand-scrawled charts, like a conspiracy theorist storming a town hall.

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The rise of the left-wing language police

This week, after many hours of questioning during the Senate hearings deciding her nomination, Judge Amy Coney Barrett used the term ‘sexual preference’ in passing. Her hearings had been so staid and her performance so even-keeled that the use of the term became a huge deal as no other excitement was forthcoming. This despite the fact that her point was she would not discriminate against anyone on the basis of their orientation.‘If it is your view that sexual orientation is merely a preference...then the LGBTQ community should be rightly concerned whether you would uphold their constitutional right to marry,’ Sen. Mazie Hirono admonished.Until Coney Barrett said it, few had a problem with the term.

Battle for the boomers

This year’s presidential election may see a new pattern that may prove disastrous for the GOP. Former vice president Joe Biden appears on track to win an impressive share of the oldest voters, without losing support among the young.The relationship between age and political party preference is not linear, but for many election cycles older voters have been, on average, more Republican than younger voters. According to exit polls, in 2016 voters age 65 and older gave Donald Trump 52 percent of their votes. In 2012, Mitt Romney won 56 percent of this cohort.The correlation between age and vote choice gives the Democrats a compelling narrative.

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Oh, there’s Hunter…

Res ipse loquitur. What a card Joe Biden is. Here he is to Fox News a year ago: 'I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.' Ha, ha, ha. Peter Schweizer exploded that bald faced lie in his film Riding the Dragon and elsewhere. And just today the New York Post prints an email captured from Hunter Biden’s computer. It’s from a Ukrainian businessman named Vadym Pozharskyi, who in 2015 was an adviser to Burisma, the shady Ukrainian energy company on whose board Hunter sat. Hunter had no experience in the energy sector. But his dad was vice president of the United States and apparently that was worth the $50,000 per month that Hunter collected in fees.

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The Barrett hearings show the Democrats have wised up since Kavanaugh

There was nothing original about Amy Coney Barrett’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee other than her incessant professions of her fidelity to an originalist approach to the American Constitution. Originalism is a convenient smokescreen for conservatives to act as what they claim not to be — judicial activists, ascribing their own views to the founders. But to acknowledge this would be to land Barrett in a host of difficulties. For the likes of Barrett, originalist theory is the judicial equivalent of an SDI shield. She wielded it well. Throughout, she dutifully supplied answers that were none at all. She has no ‘agenda’. She has no view on whether a president can delay an election. Voter intimidation at the polls? Once again, she punted. After Sen.

‘No fair basis’ for canceling presidential debate, says Scott Atlas

White House coronavirus task force member Dr Scott Atlas said during a Tuesday interview with The Spectator there was 'no fair basis' for canceling this week's presidential debate between President Trump and Joe Biden following the President's coronavirus diagnosis. 'The debate absolutely should have been able to continue. Honestly, I think there is no fair basis for canceling that debate — none,' Atlas said. Trump and Biden were scheduled to meet for the second time on the debate stage on Thursday in a town-hall style event moderated by Steve Scully. The Commission on Presidential Debates announced last week, without agreement between the two campaigns, that the debate would be conducted virtually due to health concerns raised by the President contracting the virus.

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Donald Trump is a medieval king

What the hell are we all going to talk about when he’s gone? That’s the barely disguised fear of wonks and analysts, journos and spinners, cultural critics and columnists, podcasters and Don Lemon. What will we all do when Trump loses by a landslide next month? Calm down, lower the volume? Take a Thai beach vacation? Write about something other than Donald J. Trump? This has been a golden era for pundits and commentators. You’re never five seconds away from a Trump take. (Sometimes I write four before breakfast then a dozen after lunch — if each take was a downed martini I’d have severe alcohol poisoning by dinner.) All by himself, Trump is what Tom Cruise, in Top Gun, called ‘a target rich environment’.

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Scott Atlas blasts critics of Trump’s comeback rally

Dr Scott Atlas, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, is slamming critics who deemed President Trump's comeback rally in Florida unsafe, alleging that they have an 'agenda' separate from health concerns. Atlas, who is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, told The Spectator in an interview Tuesday that the President met the standard of care necessary to be cleared for public events. According to the Center for Disease Control, individuals who have COVID-19 may be around others if it has been 10 days since their symptoms first appeared and if they have gone 24 hours with no fever without the use of fever-reducing medication.

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The GOP’s Faustian bargain with Trump pays off

I don’t know who is going to win the election. I write this on the fourth anniversary of the Billy Bush Access Hollywood tape. At the time House Speaker Paul Ryan set the tone for the GOP leadership’s response by condemning Trump’s comments: ‘I am sickened by what I heard today. Women are to be championed and revered, not objectified. I hope Mr Trump treats this situation with the seriousness it deserves and works to demonstrate to the country that he has greater respect for women than this clip suggests.’ Ryan concluded his statement by withdrawing from an event the next day with Trump in Wisconsin. Mitch McConnell followed: ‘These comments are repugnant, and unacceptable in any circumstance.

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Do you want a Trump or Biden economy?

It would be great if the President was an icon of virtue and goodness, but he isn’t. As much as my Democratic friends want to parse otherwise, neither was Bill Clinton, but we overlooked Clinton’s repugnancy because we loved his booming economy. When you strip away the media noise, the fundamental question is: do you want a Trump or Biden economy in 2021 and beyond? Thankfully, both men have records in leading the country so the question isn’t a speculative one. Additionally, given that the states are experiencing dramatically different post-pandemic economic recoveries, we can see what a Trump economy is doing under conservative leadership and policies compared to what a Biden economy is doing under progressive leadership and policies.

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Bad Kshama: meet Seattle’s worst socialist

Seattle In Max Frisch’s 1953 absurdist play The Fire Raisers, a well-off family in an unnamed town invites a man they suspect of being an arsonist to sleep in their home. A second such guest then appears, and before long the family’s attic is piled high with drums of gasoline. The man of the house gradually realizes that he has two active pyromaniacs under his roof, but believes that by displaying kindness, he will make his house immune to them. In the last scene of the play, the original arsonist asks for a box of matches and, again wishing to appear generous, his host gives him one. You can guess the rest. Somehow I’m put in mind of Frisch’s morality tale when examining the unresisted rise of the 46-year-old Seattle socialist politician Kshama Sawant.

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Confessions of the Secret Suburban Trump Moms: Arizona

Suburban women are understood to be one of the most crucial demographic groups in the presidential election on November 3. Many pollsters currently predict that President Donald Trump will lose due to his unpopularity with that category of voters. But have the Democrats really reclaimed the suburbs? Or are there more likely Republican voters than the polls suggest? The Spectator tracked down a series of so-called ‘closet Trump’ voters, women from the suburbs who would never publicly voice their support for the President for fear of recrimination in their social circles. These are their stories.ArizonaI voted for Trump in 2016, and I absolutely cannot wait to vote for him again in 2020. The President has lived up to every expectation I had of him.

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How to lose the abortion debate

The abortion movement is facing a long overdue reckoning — and it's not the right’s fault. Trump’s anti-abortion assault may be powerful, but it's not why many pro-choice advocates are now questioning their morality.Trump’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett is the culmination of his administration's four-year attack on the pro-choice camp. Trump is the first sitting president to attend the annual March For Life, sign the Born Alive Executive Order and block Planned Parenthood funds. His bold stand should ignite pro-choice defiance and bolster the pro-choice camp. So why are so many in it doubting their view of abortion?The problem comes from within the movement itself: the abortion lobby let radical, extreme voices take center-stage.

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The Democratic art of magical thinking

I should clear up one thing straight away. I do not believe that Joe Biden is guilty of magical thinking. Magical thinking, though specious, is a form of thinking. It is a truth universally acknowledged that Joe Biden is not guilty of thinking of any kind, ergo, Joe Biden is not guilty of magical thinking. Quod erat demonstrandum. But Biden’s supporters? Well, that is another matter altogether. There you see a wild efflorescence of magical thinking. What is magical thinking? It is the irrational belief, rampant among primitive peoples and those exposed to too many woke college seminars, that our thoughts influence or ‘constitute’ reality.

COVID-positive president won’t debate online

The droplets had barely settled after Wednesday’s vice presidential debate when next week’s head-to-head between Donald Trump and Joe Biden was thrown into doubt.The Commission on Presidential Debates announced a change in format this morning, switching the October 15 debate to a virtual event ‘in order to protect the health and safety of all involved’. Trump currently has COVID-19 and no one on his campaign will tell us when his last negative test was before his diagnosis. The Commission’s concern is understandable.But not so fast. Reacting to the Commission’s change during an appearance on Fox Business, the President declared he would no longer participate. ‘I’m not gonna waste my time on a personal debate.

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Did the VP debate change a single mind?

The vice presidential debate was a predictable clash between two solid professionals, each with plenty of debate experience. Both said what they came to say, and not one jot more. Both evaded several hard questions, such as how they would handle changes in abortion laws, if the Supreme Court rules force some changes. 'I'm glad you asked about baseball, Susan, because the American people love sports. And the sport they really love is football. That's what's on their mind now.' That's how they answered questions. If they had a prepared answer about football, that's the answer they gave. That meant Pence never explained how a second Trump term would handle pre-existing medical conditions and Harris never renounced a court-packing scheme.

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The 2020 vice presidential debate — live blog

8:15 p.m. ET — Matt McDonald: Hello and welcome to The Spectator’s live blog for the vice presidential debate in Salt Lake City, Utah, between Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris. Along with six of my Spectator comrades, I’ll be offering commentary, analysis and jokes (much more my pace), on whatever unfolds on the University of Utah campus tonight. While the pair may offer a more sober affair than Trump and Biden did last week, Cockburn has knocked up a drinking game so you don’t have to join them. I have a six-pack of Carib, let’s get started. 8:16 p.m. ET — Freddy Gray: Vice presidential debates are not that interesting, as a rule. But 2020 is very weird and different and tonight does feel as if it should produce something unusual.

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Here’s what to expect from VP Pence at tonight’s debate

Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris will square off in Wednesday night's vice presidential debate in Salt Lake City, Utah. Pence soundly won his 2016 vice presidential debate against Clinton running mate Tim Kaine, and based on his level of preparation, he will be equally formidable on tonight's stage. Chief of Staff to the Vice President Marc Short told reporters during a press call this afternoon that Pence has been prepping for the debate for six to eight weeks, partially with the help of former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who played the role of Kaine during practice rounds for the 2016 debate. Short indicated that several other individuals have also been stepping in to imitate Sen. Harris this time around.

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The hostages’ president

President Trump has tweeted that, among other things he’s best at, he is ‘the greatest hostage negotiator in the history of the United States’. He was supposedly quoting his special envoy for hostages, but then there was no record of the envoy ever voicing this precise opinion, so it was really just the usual Trump boasting. But that doesn’t mean he’s wrong. Trump really does seem to care about hostages. He certainly likes the Oval Office photo ops with Americans he’s helped to free, bathing in their gratitude and nodding along to the stream of compliments that such visits guarantee. He seems willing to do a deal with almost anyone, even ‘shithole countries’.

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