If there’s anyone secretly cheering for Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Governor John Kasich (R-Ohio) to stay in the race, it is probably Donald Trump. While I certainly appreciate persistence and determination, there’s no question that this morning’s headlines would have been dramatically different had Rubio and Kasich exited the race. By all accounts, the two men at the bottom of the GOP ticket are what’s keeping the billionaire afloat, splitting the ballots just enough to let Trump squeak by his biggest rival: Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

“This is a very minor victory in the great scheme of things,” RedState’s Caleb Howe explained. “You can argue about momentum or the psychology of winning states, but when it comes to the numbers, this was not in any way a sweep or message or mandate for Donald Trump. It is, however, increasingly obvious that Marco Rubio and John Kasich are not on any path that remotely leads to victory.” Of course, some of the media will tell you that Tuesday’s results helped cinch the nomination for Donald, when even he knows that Rubio and Kasich are sparing him from a fierce head-to-head with Cruz. Take Idaho, where Cruz beat Trump 45-28 percent. If Rubio had bowed out of that one state, the night would have belonged to the Texas senator.

As Daniel Horowitz breaks it down in one of the best analyses of the day, “Rubio got only 17 percent in Idaho and missed the delegate threshold, but [he] easily blocked Cruz from winning 50 percent and making Idaho winner-take-all. Cruz came just 4.5 percent within the 50-percent mark. This made the difference between Cruz netting 32 delegates over Trump and winning the night and netting just six delegates. When coupled with Rubio playing spoiler in Texas and other states only to come up empty himself, Cruz would now be in the [overall] lead if not for Rubio playing in states he could not win delegates.”

In Mississippi, where Trump was predicted to trounce Cruz, the gap closed to just nine points — 47-36 percent. (At 9 percent and 5 percent, Kasich and Rubio were footnotes, neither winning a single delegate.) Once again, we witnessed the importance of the last debate in Mississippi, where the voters in Mississippi who picked their candidate last month broke 64 percent for Trump. The others, who chose in the last couple of weeks, split evenly between the two. In Michigan, where Cruz was expected to come in third, he surged to second – upsetting Kasich who joked that he’d spent so much time in the state recently that he might have to start paying taxes there. Even more telling? Cruz spent roughly $2,000 in the state (less than Jeb Bush paid for a single vote in Iowa!). By night’s end, Ted edged out Kasich by 8,000 votes, dealing a huge blow to the Buckeye. And tainting Trump’s victory, half of Michigan voters think the front-runner is dishonest — hardly a ringing endorsement. Where Trump excelled was Hawaii, one of the few closed primaries where he’s finished first. Still, Donald continues to underperform in places where only Republicans are eligible to vote in GOP primaries.

Overall, the landscape hasn’t changed much. For Trump, [Tuesday] night’s wins only resulted in a 13-delegate net gain on Cruz, leaving the two men about 100 apart (446 to 347). The real story is the story that might have been if Rubio and Kasich had stepped aside and let the two leaders compete. Right now, Trump is only ahead because it’s a crowded field. According to NBC’s latest poll, Cruz would have the clear advantage with Trump alone, beating him 57 to 40 percent in a head-to-head. Nationally, even with Rubio and Kasich peeling off votes, Trump is at 30 percent to Cruz’s 27 percent. But perhaps most importantly, Trump trails nine points where it counts: in a contest with Secretary Hillary Clinton.

Maybe that’s why the Texas senator is seeing a boost in endorsements too. [Wednesday] morning, former opponent Carly Fiorina jumped into the Cruz camp with a powerful speech in Miami about the GOP finally having a candidate not afraid to challenge the status quo. Governors Rick Perry, Phil Bryant (R-Miss.), even Jeb Bush’s brother, Neil, are fanning the Cruz momentum. By this time next week, the race could look a lot different. So to those of you gearing up to vote, I encourage you: don’t look at the polls in your state — look at the principles of your candidate. Then go out there and vote your values. (FRCA’s Presidential Voter Guide can help.)

Originally published here.

Obama’s Compartment of Justice

The Justice Department is finally defending religious liberty! I know what you’re thinking: an administration who routinely orders people to violate their beliefs is hardly qualified to protect yours. But not so fast, Christians. This program is for Muslims who the DOJ thinks have been unfairly targeted for their faith. The Obama administration thinks it’s time to rally around the Islamists whose image took a hit after the terrorists attacks on San Bernardino, World Trade Center, and Pentagon.

“Too many Muslim Americans and those perceived as Muslim suffer a backlash of violence and discrimination,” said Civil Rights Division chief Vanita Gupta, who launched the effort this week. “We see criminal threats against mosques; harassment in schools; and even reports of violence [directed at] Muslim Americans…” Under the new initiative, schools will be a special focus, as will DOJ’s expanded power to “investigate and prosecute complaints, lead community outreach, and develop guidance for federal prosecutors.”

CNSNews.com broke the story this morning, which is bound to be as controversial as the agency itself. This is, after all, the same DOJ that said it doesn’t have the resources to vet Syrian refugees. Now, suddenly, it has countless dollars to spend on the religious liberty of Muslims (while systematically denying it to American Christians)? Well, the Justice Department is right about one thing. There is a religious freedom crisis in our country. But it has more to do with the persecution of Bible-believing Christians than a population whose radical factions have waged jihad on U.S. soil. Recognizing the Department’s abysmal record protecting non-Muslims, Gupta claimed the program would “benefit [everyone] of every background and every religion.”

That’s hard to believe, considering that the same agency hasn’t lifted a finger to defend the civil rights of people who aren’t just being insulted — but fired, bankrupted, harassed, and threatened for their conservative Christian beliefs. The president can’t even bring himself to criticize the mass murder of Middle East Christians as “genocide,” but he’ll give favored status to a group whose factions do more to oppress people’s civil rights than any other? Even for this administration, that’s a new low.

Originally published here.

Libs Try to Batter Texas Bakery

Owning a bakery is a dangerous business these days. Just ask Edie and David Delorme. The Texas couple became the latest victims of the “tolerant Left,” when they politely declined a same-sex wedding cake order. Despite offering the couple a list of area bakers who would make the cake, the pair went on a rampage in the local media, smearing Kern’s Bake Shop and triggering a violent backlash. For the couple, who lost their 19-year-old daughter in car accident last year, the threats against their son hit particularly close to home. “[T]hey threatened to burn our house down and violate him with a broken beer bottle,” Edie told TheBlaze. “That was probably the worst.”

Phone calls have been so vile that the Delormes sent their younger daughter to stay with relatives. Now, David says, when they get profane calls or fake orders, “We just say, ‘You have a nice day.’ Scripture requires us to turn the other cheek, so that’s what we do.” As for their customers, it’s nothing personal. “We want to make that cake the most perfect for them, exactly what they wanted … we really pour ourselves into it, and we take delight in seeing their joy in what we were able to create for them,” she said. “That cake is used to celebrate a union. We just don’t feel like we’re supposed to take part in the celebration of that union, because it’s a violation of our faith.”

Unfortunately, the Delormes have quite a bit of company in the baking community with Aaron and Melissa Klein, Jack Phillips, Victoria Childress, Daniel and Amy McArthur, David and Lily Stockton, and others whose freedoms were trampled in a phony attempt to affirm others’. That’s the problem when politicians like Governor John Kasich (R-Ohio), who say, “[W]e need to learn to respect each other and be a little bit more tolerant for one another. And at the end of the day, don’t go to court. Can’t we have common sense in America? That’s the way it used to be… I’d rather people figure this out without having to put another law on the books and have more arguments in this country.”

Conservatives are more than willing to “figure it out” by respecting other people’s views. But the reality is (and dozens of Free to Believe cases prove), homosexual activists are not interested in co-existence. Their goal is complete and utter subjugation, using the punitive power of government. And no matter how you slice it, that’s not freedom.

Originally published here.