Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, September 8, 2016
The Candidate Who Wasn’t There
William McKinley would be proud. Hillary Clinton has been running the closest thing possible in the modern context to a front-porch campaign. She is happy to have the race all about her opponent, rather than herself. She avoids press conferences, although she has taken to visiting reporters at the back of her campaign plane for some questions. She hasn’t said anything truly memorable that isn’t a gaffe. Her best moment of the campaign, the Democratic convention, featured vivid performances by nearly everyone in her party except her. Hillary is relying on the strength of her organization to hoist her over the finish line, and wants to win the presidency by default.
In a ‘Change’ Year, Sen. Portman Deserves Re-Election
Sen. Rob Portman probably will win a second term, despite the fact that he deserves to. The swarm of young people who gathered on a Saturday morning in this Cincinnati suburb to feast on doughnuts and his gratitude are among the 5,000 volunteer interns, including students from 35 campuses, who have made 3.5 million voter contacts. Portman’s supporters are a forgiving sort, undeterred by his many accomplishments and qualifications that could be disqualifying in this season of populist antagonism toward people who have actually governed. A graduate of Dartmouth and the University of Michigan Law School, Portman was one of President George H.W. Bush’s counselors. After six terms in Congress, Portman became President George W. Bush’s trade representative and, a year later, director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Digital Privacy Shouldn’t Depend on a Law Written in the Time of ‘Stranger Things’
One of the most powerful arguments for limiting the size and scope of government is the inability of politicians and regulators to keep up with the pace of technological change. Case in point: Congress has not updated the rules regulating when and how law enforcement may access stored online data since the time period depicted in Netflix’s 1980s nostalgia-heavy hit, “Stranger Things.” The Electronic Communications Privacy Act was passed in 1986, when data storage was considerably more expensive and primitive. At the time, it was not common for data to be kept online for very long. As such, the ECPA considers emails held online by a third party for more than 180 days to be abandoned and thus open to access by law enforcement without a normal warrant. Sure puts that cluttered inbox in a new light, doesn’t it?
Trump Up, Hillary Down, Obama Out
In most presidential elections, the two candidates spar over issues. The president campaigns for his party’s nominee in hopes of continuing his legacy. Democrats champion liberalism, Republicans conservatism. In numerous press conferences, journalists try to force newsworthy and embarrassing admissions from the two candidates. Not this year. Barack Obama, who less than two years ago dipped to 40 percent in approval rating, is nowhere to be seen. He seems to know that the more he is absent and quiet, the more the public likes the idea rather than the reality of him as president — and his approval rating has risen to 51 percent.
Hillary Clinton Channels Nixon
One wouldn’t think Hillary Clinton and former President Richard Nixon would have a lot in common, but in responding to FBI investigators that she “could not recall any briefing or training by State related to retention of federal records or handling classified information,” Clinton took a page straight out of Nixon’s playbook. In a March 23, 1973 meeting with top aides Bob Haldeman and John Dean to discuss what Dean should say during testimony before a grand jury looking into the Watergate affair, the following exchange took place.
When Malcolm Muggeridge Met Mother Teresa
Pope Francis canonized Mother Teresa on Sunday. She was a celestial figure to many for sweating away in Calcutta, India, with “the poorest of the poor.” By that oft-used term meant the poor for whom a government poverty line would be a luxury. Mother Teresa took in street urchins, the hopelessly sick and the dying — lost souls who were at death’s door. They were the poor that we Americans can hardly imagine. For the most part, one has to travel to the slums of backward countries to encounter them.
Trump at a Black Church in Detroit: What He Should Have Said
Here’s what Donald Trump, at the black church in Detroit, *should* have said: “In the words of Malcolm X, blacks have been ‘political chumps.’ At the time, he said that 80 percent of blacks voted Democratic in hopes of a civil rights bill, but President John Kennedy, in the opinion of a lot of black leaders, dragged his feet so as not to lose the South come re-election time. In the last presidential election, 95 percent of blacks voted Democratic. “I *indict* the Democratic Party for creating family-destroying dependency; deepening unemployment with minimum-wage laws; burdening job creators with excessive taxes and regulations; increasing crime by falsely maligning the police — the overwhelming majority of whom are hardworking, honest public servants of all colors; and for stoking anger by playing the race card for votes.
Growing Confidence
An increasing number of Republicans on Capitol Hill are impressed with Donald Trump’s performance and confident in his ability to run a competitive campaign. I know Senator Lindsey Graham is not a “fan favorite” among our daily readers. Sen. Graham was also among the most vocal Trump critics in the primaries. But the South Carolina senator appears to be changing his tune.
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
Three Prescriptions for a Shorter Campaign
It used to be said that Labor Day was when voters finally turned their focus to the presidential campaign. That may have been true once upon a time, way back in the Mesozoic Era. But who hasn’t had their fill of the 2016 race by now? If you’ve just returned from a long assignment to McMurdo Station in Antarctica, you may be tuning in for the first time to the race for the White House. The rest of us are desperately counting down the days until this endless campaign is over. In a column last week, I suggested that, with sensible reforms, America’s presidential campaigns could be shortened to something more human than the excruciating two-year marathon they’ve become. Here are three that might help.
Do Your Failures Haunt You? Two Strategies to Overcome Them
If you’re alive, then you’ve failed. And if you’re honest, you’ve failed a lot. I know I have. In fact, I’m confident that my failures outnumber my successes by a multiple of many. But the truth is that you and I are not alone. In fact, we are in great company. The greatest athletes, entrepreneurs and even religious leaders will all admit, if they’re honest, that their failures are numerous. Of course, there are many types of failures. There are athletic failures, such as missing the winning shot in the NBA finals. And there are business failures, such as filing bankruptcy when the entrepreneur can no longer satisfy his creditors. There are parental failures, where we may find we have dropped the ball in the raising of our children. And there are personal defeats, where we fail to live up to a standard we set for ourselves. There are moral failures, where one may violate a professional or personal relationship. And there are spiritual failures, where our behavior or choices fall short of the standard established by God Himself.
Muslims Complain About Town’s 9/11 Memorial
A group of New York Muslims has taken offense at a small town’s new memorial honoring those who died in the September 11th, 2001, terrorist attacks. The Islamic Organization of the Southern Tier fired off a letter to city leaders in Owego, alleging that words engraved in the granite memorial would encourage hatred to Muslims. The memorial, which will be dedicated on Saturday, identifies those responsible for the attacks as “Islamic terrorists.” That’s a problem for the Islamic Organization of the Southern Tier, based in nearby Johnson City, NY.
Free Speech
Donald Trump tells reporters, “We’re going to have people sue you like you never got sued before.” Hillary Clinton doesn’t like her opponents funding documentaries that criticize her, so she demands Congress overturn the Supreme Court decision that allows it. The world is full of people who want their enemies to shut up. Some college students get so upset seeing “Trump 2016” chalked on sidewalks that they call the police, demanding the chalkers be punished and their words erased.
Waking Up From Minimum Wage Fairy Tales
The minimum wage persists as a fixture in public policy discussions because the idea remains popular with the general public. In a survey done by Pew Research in 2014, 73 percent favored increasing the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10. Bernie Sanders became a surprisingly popular presidential candidate, promising a federal minimum wage of $15. And now several left-wing organizations are mobilizing to pressure candidates in Senate races to support a $15 national minimum wage.
September Holiday Surprise
Late Friday, at the beginning of the Labor Day weekend, the FBI released some of the notes that agents took during their Fourth of July weekend interview with Hillary Clinton. Do you see the pattern here? Fourth of July. . . Labor Day. . . I can’t wait until Thanksgiving! In recent weeks, lots of people in Washington have been quick to assure us that Director James Comey is an honorable man who would never let politics get in the way of the FBI doing its job. But a Friday night document dump on Labor Day weekend raises serious questions about whether politics has infected his office.
Schlafly’s Death a Reminder That Conservatism Still Matters
Phyllis Schlafly died this week at the age of 92. I had my disagreements with the legendary conservative activist, particularly of late. She died the day before publication of her last book: “The Conservative Case for Trump.” The title alone should offer the reader a hint of at least one of those disagreements. Indeed, the deep family squabble among conservatives over the question of Donald Trump gives Schlafly’s death added poignancy because it played itself out in her own family. When Schlafly endorsed Trump last spring, six members of the board of directors of Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, including her own daughter, tried to have her removed from the organization.
Sicko Terrorist Lynne Stewart: Still Hating Cops
Old age and illness have not dulled the tongue or treasonous soul of convicted jihad-enabling lawyer Lynne Stewart. She’s as vile and violence-promoting as ever. Freed from prison two years ago on “compassionate release” after being diagnosed with advanced breast cancer, the flaming 76-year-old radical is still championing left-wing massacres against the police. And still kicking America in the teeth. The Associated Press reported over the holiday weekend that the mouthy menace remains stubbornly devoted to “armed struggle.”
Hillary’s Email Scandal Takes Down the FBI
For months Americans wondered whether the FBI, led by Director James Comey, would take down the most corrupt woman in the history of American politics, Hillary Clinton. As it turns out, Hillary Clinton took down the FBI. According to new documents from the FBI’s investigation of Clinton, the agency was fully aware that Clinton lied when she said she set up a private server in order to utilize one Blackberry device — she used 13 mobile devices and two phone numbers.
Trump Calls for More High-Skill Immigration
Would he go hard or go soft? That was the mainstream media template for judging Donald Trump’s speech on immigration in Phoenix last Wednesday. The verdict: hard. “How Trump got from Point A to Point A on immigration,” was the headline in the Washington Post’s recap. Similarly, the often-insightful Talking Points Memo blogger Josh Marshall characterized Trump’s discourse as “hate speech.” “Precisely what solution Trump is calling for is almost beside the point.” That’s precisely wrong. Marshall found the Phoenix crowd’s raucous shouts distasteful, and so did I. But a search through Trump’s prepared text and his occasional digressions fails to disclose anything that can be fairly characterized as “hate speech.”
Hillary’s Untrustworthy Temperament
NBC “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd began his pundit-panel segment on Sept. 4 by remarking: “Nobody cares about the damn emails. That’s what Bernie Sanders famously said. I couldn’t believe when I looked at the time stamp, October of 2015. ...We are now at September of 2016. Somebody cares about them.” Apparently the political director at NBC News isn’t in that “somebody” camp. When it comes to Clinton scandals, he has what Donald Trump calls “low energy.”