Columnist.
A new ABC News/Washington Post poll is raising eyebrows for its results, which are critical of both front-runners. In the GOP contest, the poll found Trump leading with 34%, followed by Cruz 25%, Rubio 18% and Kasich 13%. In head-to-head match-ups, Cruz beats Trump 54% to 41%. Marco Rubio also beats Trump but by a closer 51%-to-45% margin. The difference is the intensity of support for Ted Cruz among conservatives and evangelicals. Cruz carries "very conservative" Republicans by 26 points and evangelical voters by 33 points. Rubio's margins are 15 and 13 points respectively.
Democrats went to the polls over the weekend in Kansas, Louisiana, Maine and Nebraska. Bernie Sanders won three states, while Hillary Clinton won only Louisiana. But Clinton's crushing win in the Bayou State (71% to 23%) offset her losses elsewhere. Clinton and Sanders essentially split the delegates up for grabs — 64 for Sanders and 62 for Clinton. In the race for the Democrat presidential nomination, Clinton leads the overall delegate count 1,130 to 499.
Late [Wednesday] evening, it was reported that the FBI granted immunity to Bryan Pagliano, the former State Department employee who set up former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private email server that she used for official government business. According to the latest release of her emails, more than 2,000 messages on her private server contained classified information.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be the Democrat nominee for president this November. Hillary Clinton has won more than twice as many delegates than Bernie Sanders — 1,034 to 408. The "Bern" has been controlled and is beginning to go out. The Republican contest is more fluid. It was Donald Trump's night [Tuesday] night, but his win was not as overwhelming as pundits had predicted 48 hours earlier. There were many suggestions that Trump might even carry Texas and shutout the other contenders. That did not happen.
If you thought this election season could not get any crazier, think again. There are persistent rumors in Washington about a potential third and even a fourth party candidacy. Let me explain. Should Clinton and Trump win their nominations, Michael Bloomberg is expected to jump into the race as an independent candidate. But lately, there have been credible reports that a more traditional conservative may also mount an independent general election campaign in order to appeal to center-right voters turned off by Donald Trump.
As was widely predicted, Hillary Clinton won Saturday's Democrat primary in South Carolina. What no one predicted was the lopsided result: Clinton 74%, Sanders 26%. Clinton's victory was impressive. She carried every single county. According to exit polls, she won every major demographic except one: Millennials or voters under 30. And she crushed Sanders with black voters: 86% to 14%. If there was a weakness with Clinton's win, it would be turnout: Democrat turnout was way down — off by 16% compared to 2008. In contrast, GOP primary turnout set a record.
The gloves came off at [Thursday] night's Republican debate in Houston, Texas. Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio were eager to knock Donald Trump off his perch as the GOP frontrunner. While I am glad they had a spirited debate, I really don't think it helps when everyone talks at the same time.
All across America, abortion clinics are closing at a record pace. According to a new Bloomberg analysis, more than 160 abortion mills have shut down since 2011, while just 21 have opened. Planned Parenthood took a big hit: "Of all the facilities in the nation that closed or stopped performing [abortions], about a third were operated by Planned Parenthood." The primary cause for the closures was the success of state-level pro-life initiatives. "State regulations that make it too expensive or logistically impossible for facilities to remain in business drove more than a quarter of the closings," the report notes.
We reported yesterday that Senator Charles Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was holding firm in his opposition to hearings for any Obama nominee to the Supreme Court. In fact, Grassley invoked the so-called "Biden Rule." (In 1992 then-Judiciary Committee chairman Senator Joe Biden warned President George H.W. Bush against making any nominations to the Supreme Court in the election year.) Late [Tuesday] afternoon, the Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee announced that they had unanimously agreed that there would be no hearings on any Obama nominees to the Supreme Court this year.
Oh, if only we had a president who cared as much about veterans as he does about the comfort of enemy combatants. Speaking at a White House press conference [Tuesday] morning, President Obama announced that the Pentagon was submitting a formal plan to Congress to close the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. "I am absolutely committed to closing the detention facility at Guantanamo," Obama declared. And he vowed to "make the case for doing so as long as I hold this office." So what does the president propose we do with the terrorists currently held there? He wants to release some to other countries, even though, if history is any guide, many of them will return to the battlefield to wage jihad against us.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won the Nevada Democrat caucuses Saturday by a larger than expected margin of 53% to 47%. Two recent polls showed Clinton and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders were tied in Nevada, and the Sanders campaign desperately wanted to prove that New Hampshire wasn't an aberration. But it just wasn't in the cards. Reports suggest Clinton got a big boost from behind-the-scenes efforts orchestrated by Senator Harry Reid, who got a number of unions off the sidelines at the last minute.
The body of Justice Antonin Scalia was brought [Friday] morning to the Supreme Court, where it will lie in repose until his funeral [today]. My heart breaks for his wife, Maureen, their nine children and 36 grandchildren. It is difficult to imagine the Supreme Court without him. He was the court's conservative anchor for almost 30 years.
The death of Justice Antonin Scalia is creating chaos on Capitol Hill. [Yesterday's] Washington Post reports, "Senate Republicans clashed Wednesday over how to battle President Obama's expected Supreme Court nomination." In addition, the White House is refusing to rule out a recess appointment. If Obama makes a recess appointment, the Republican leadership will have no one to blame but itself. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, backed up by a unanimous Supreme Court decision, has full authority to decide when or if the Senate goes into recess. By the way, Senate Democrats once went on the record in opposition to recess appointments of Supreme Court justices.
In all the huge headlines of recent days, an event took place in Indianapolis that went largely unnoticed here in Washington, D.C., and in many other places. But it was a big deal to the 2,100 men and women and their families who were directly affected. Carrier, the air conditioning manufacturer and a division of United Technologies, called its workers into a meeting to announce that two plants were being shuttered and their jobs were being sent to Mexico.
Over the course of the past year, whenever people asked who would be the next president, I often said it was hard to answer that question because the election would be determined by headlines we haven't yet seen. We know, for example, that the headlines from the Paris and San Bernardino attacks significantly impacted the Republican presidential primary.
Police in Columbus, Ohio, need some help. Here's the situation: [Thursday] a man walked into a restaurant named Nazareth, owned by an Israeli Christian. The man asked to speak to the owner, who wasn't there, so he left. About 30 minutes later, he came back, only this time he had a machete. He began attacking the customers, systematically working his way through the restaurant.
The winnowing process continues. The GOP race that began with more than a dozen credible candidates is now down to just a handful of serious contenders. [Wednesday], New Jersey Governor Chris Christie suspended his campaign. Christie's no nonsense style was an appealing quality, but the blunt spoken former prosecutor got trumped by Donald Trump. Christie bet it all on a strong showing in New Hampshire and he came up short. Later in the afternoon, former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina also dropped out of the race. I will miss her in the campaign. She was excellent in the debates but those strong performances just didn't translate into votes.
With few exceptions, the results essentially mirrored the polls. Trump has consistently led the New Hampshire polls since July. Recent polls indicating a surge for Ohio Governor John Kasich were spot on. Here's my analysis...
President Obama submitted his final budget to Congress [Tuesday]. Speaking to reporters at the White House, Obama declared, "The budget that we are releasing today reflects my priorities." That's certainly a true statement. It is a jaw-dropping $4.1 trillion manifesto of higher taxes, more spending and bigger government. It is a blueprint for national bankruptcy. Just consider this analysis from the Associated Press: "Obama's budget would increase taxes by $2.6 trillion over the coming decade, nearly double the $1.4 trillion in new taxes Obama sought and failed to achieve in last year's budget... Even with the increased taxes, Obama's budget projects sharply higher deficits in coming years, totaling $9.8 trillion over the next decade."
The radical pro-abortion group NARAL is, once again, doing its best to prove that the left denies the basic science of biology. Doritos aired an amusing Super Bowl ad showing a husband eating the famous nacho chips during his wife's ultrasound. Frustrated with her husband's inattentiveness, she has the expected reaction. But when her husband starts waving a chip around, the baby in utero starts following it. She wants one! ... That was too much for NARAL, which tweeted its condemnation of Doritos for "using #antichoice tactic of humanizing fetuses." What exactly does NARAL think a fetus is? Fetus is Latin for "bearing young," "offspring" or "young while still in the womb," all of which means human unborn baby.
