…  is bewildered by the Trump phenomenon.

Trump is not our ideal presidential candidate, but if he is voted into the presidency, we will understand why.

It is easy to see why the entrenched, corrupt, political aristocracy of either political party should fear the challenge of Donald Trump.

But there is a special reason why Democrats fear him.

The Democratic Party has become a socialist party. And the immediate menace threatening socialism in the US, is Trump.  

Rachel Marsden writes at Townhall:

Greece is the birthplace of Western civilization.

But that was a very different Greece!

It’s also the birthplace of the kind of crisis that threatens every Western nation neglecting to pay attention to what’s happening here [in Greece].

[One gets a sense] from talking to people that crisis is the new normal, and that many are adapting to a situation that should have long ago led to revolt.

People here don’t revolt, they simply move. The eurozone’s provisions for the free movement of people allows Greek citizens that opportunity. The unemployment rate in Greece as of November was 24.6 percent. In other words, of the people who are still bothering to look for work, a quarter of them can’t find any. So what do they do? The younger ones leave for other countries to seek employment or training. Others stay and live with family or rely on government support and hope that things eventually turn around.

While globalization allows Greeks to escape if they so choose, it has also been the catalyst for the country’s problems.

Greece was doing just fine [in a dull socialist sort of way -ed] when its governmental and societal institutions operated in a vacuum and there was nothing competing with them. The state was the largest employer, people could retire with a pension as early as age 50, unions held incredible power, and everything was controlled by a nepotistic establishment elite.

But then the world got smaller due to technology and trade, borders became less of an obstacle, and the economic engine of this massive welfare state expatriated itself. Thousands of Greek companies have moved to Bulgaria and elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Greece is on the front line of an influx of migrants fleeing from the war-torn Middle East, adding more social welfare cases to an already overburdened system.

Even among all these concerns, there was another preoccupation that kept coming up among people I met: Donald Trump. Many Greeks don’t know what to make of him or his popularity in America.

Nor do they have a very accurate grasp of his positions.

One gentleman insisted repeatedly that Trump “likes war”, despite the Republican front-runner’s overwhelmingly non-interventionist foreign policy positions.

Another kept repeating that Trump is “dangerous”, referring to his direct manner of speech. What’s dangerous, I explained, is when only platitudes are allowed in public discourse, even as things fall apart.

Trump-style tough talk is the flashing sign at the exit ramp to Disasterville. Diplomatic niceties are a luxury that go by the wayside when the voting public is fed up. And if there isn’t a Trump-style leader to champion those frustrations in an acceptably democratic context, then populist movements of the sort that we’ve seen in Europe recently fill that gap. …

But Trump represents something far more important that seems to escape everyone here: the interests of the individual over those of the establishment.

In discussions about Greece’s problems, very rarely are the concepts of personal power and individual responsibility ever evoked, but these concepts might be the only hope of establishing long-term viability for this country.

Granted, this would require a massive cultural shift, coupled with a complete revamping of the country’s institutions. Greeks would have to be taught at a young age about entrepreneurship and the freedom to create and innovate on their own – and Greek government would have to clear the path for them to do that. There has to be a change in the national mindset, and it must start with the government itself. Rather than feeling obligated to support citizens from cradle to grave, Greek leadership should grant citizens more responsibility for taking care of themselves.

Growth isn’t going to come from some kind of national or European directive that’s shoved down people’s throats by the political class. The individual is the unit that generates value.

Why hasn’t this been taught here? It may be that the system is so entrenched that no one has considered the alternative as an option. It may also be that the concept of individual self-sufficiency would dilute the power of the ruling elites. It’s no wonder, then, that many Greeks consider entrepreneur Donald Trump’s brand of independence to be so dangerous.

… and equally corrupt trade unions.

Bill Whittle tells the sad, infuriating, true story:

With all the excitement over who will be the next president, the man in the office is getting little or no attention, even from his toadies in the media.

Victor Davis Hanson turns his thoughts to him, and sees him as the lamest of lame ducks.

He writes at PJ Media:

President Obama is boxed in a state of paralysis — more so than typical lame-duck presidents.

His hard-left politics have insidiously eroded the Democratic Party, which has lost both houses of Congress and the vast majority of the state legislatures, state elected offices, and governorships. Obama has redefined the black vote, as a necessary, no-margin-of-error 95% bloc majority to offset his similar creation of an increasingly monolithic 65% bloc white vote. We are no longer individual voters, but, in Chicago-politics style, merely faceless “Latinos”, “Asians”, “African-Americans”, “gays”, “women”, and now “whites”. 

Obama issues a new initiative — and the nation snoozes. He wastes the day on the golf links — and the nation snoozes. He smear his critics, invites a rapper to the White House whose latest album cover has a dead white judge lying in front of the White House — and the nation snoozes. He cozies up to America’s enemies and snubs our friends — and the nation snoozes. For the nth time, he blusters about closing down Guantanamo — and the nation snoozes. He opens the border even wider to welcome in more illegal aliens and future constituents — and the nation snoozes. Lame duckestry means not even being able to wake up your opponents.

There is so far no Obama legacy, except the creation of Donald Trump, a $20 trillion debt and zero interest rates …

Almost every major bureaucracy is awash in scandal or charges of incompetence. The common theme of the disasters at the GSA, EPA, ICE, IRS, NASA, Secret Service, and VA is ideological subversion and ingrained hostility to meritocracy. Would anyone be surprised that another government official pled the 5^th, created fake email personas, resigned at 5 PM on a Friday afternoon, declared a foremost mission Muslim outreach, or withheld subpoenaed documents?

Obamacare, borne of rank partisanship and serial mendacity, can survive until 2017 only by bailouts and executive-order manipulations. We now call health care affordable by ignoring the new astronomical deductibles: we pay premiums of $6,000 a year and forget that an annual $4,000 “deductible” ensures no one thinks the real cost is $10,000. Is that a small price to pay to ensure granny has contraceptive coverage?

Americans shrug that Obama has left the world abroad a far scarier place. Libya has been destroyed. We can see in Iraq what Obama would have done to South Korea had he been in Eisenhower’s shoes. Syria’s death toll is nearing Saddam Hussein’s. We gave up our golden special relationship with Israel for one of dross with an Islamist and roundly disliked Turkey that, logically, now dislikes us.

What was astonishing about Obama’s empty red lines that finished off any lingering sense of U.S. credibility and deterrence in the Middle East was that after issuing such threats and then ignoring them, Obama then blamed the UN and the U.S. Congress for setting them!

But then again, he blamed congressional Republicans for opposing the Iran deal and compared House members to Iranian theocrat hardliners, in a way his team earlier had compared them to suicide bombers. …

In a tragic sort of way, Obama has reminded us how savage is human nature, by demonstrating that a vicious thug like Putin won more of an amoral world’s respect for his savagery than a whining Obama earned pity for his diffidence.

While the Middle East is aflame, China is marking out new atolls to control, like toll pirates of the 17^th century, European-Asian sea traffic. Russia is eyeing neighbors, unsure only whether gratuitously embarrassing Obama is worth the hassle of another annexation. Is the solution to global tensions really a trip to Cuba or shutting down Guantanamo by executive order? When Castro soon harangues Obama in Havana for his country’ sins, will he, as he did after Daniel Ortega’s April 2009 dressing down in Trinidad, sheepishly reply with, “I’m grateful that President Castro did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old”?

Obama cannot address the massive debt he has run up. He cannot address entitlement reform. He has neither the imagination to offer solutions, nor the disposition to share accomplishment with any other than himself — even if he had the political clout to compromise and reach consensus.

For the next nine months the Obama presidency will be mostly teeth-gnashing and petulance. He will offer executive orders and do his best to incite division and rancor from a somnolent public, the more the better to please his hard-core base, and to pave the way for a lucrative (and iconic) post-presidency among leftwing foundations, universities, non-profits, foreign governments, sports, Hollywood, Goldman Sachs progressives, and the media.

But at least Obama … transformed racial relations? Not really. Perhaps no single individual has done more to erode racial reconciliation than did Barack Obama. The racialism of the 2008 campaign — the nativist clingers of Pennsylvania, his “typical white person” grandmother who did so much to ensure his own upper-middle-class prep-school existence, the savage anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism of consigliore Rev. “audacity of hope” Wright, the childish calls to “get in their faces” and “bring a gun to a knife fight” – really was the foundation for the next eight years of Trayvon Martin as the lost Obama son, the Ferguson mythologies, racism explains all opposition to Obama, the beer summit, “punish our enemies”, and Eric Holder’s “nation of cowards” and “my people”. 

Obama’s racial legacy is the strange phenomenon of whiny, wealthy black elites — whether a Skip Gates, Spike Lee, Melissa Harris-Perry, Will Smith, or Chris Rock — acting hurt and oppressed if rewards to elites such as themselves are not doled out on the basis of racial percentages. … America is now supposed to work on a strict 13 percent racial spoils system, everywhere except in non-disparate impact professional sports or federal employment. …

Cairo-speech mythohistories pass for foreign policy. Euphemisms about terrorism only empower radical Islam. The mythologies of Ferguson are canonized at the UN. All that can be said for all this and more is that our enemies were put off guard and confused that a president of the United States seemed so intent on deprecating his own country and traditions, and thus could think Obama’s sermonizing might really be some elaborate hoax, con, or Trojan Horse.

Nothing in the last eight years is sustainable or can be emulated.

Race relations will change after Obama for the simple reason that if they were to continue on his segregationist trajectory we would quite soon end up like Bosnia or Beirut.

Fiscal policy will change, because if we followed Obama’s all “by his lonesome” Bank of China credit-card binge borrowing of another $10 trillion in the next eight years, the country would implode.

Monetary policy will change because eight more years of zero interest would wipe out the age-old idea of the wisdom of saving money altogether. Government policy will change because the bureaucracy cannot endure legions of more Lois Lerners, Lisa Jacksons, Kathleen Sebeliuses, Hilda Solises, or Eric Holders.

Health care will change after Obama, because if Obamacare were to persist, the entire country would turn to cash-only concierge medicine.

Foreign policy will change after Obama, because to persist with his policies would lead to four or five major theater wars, a nuclear Middle East, Russia in the Baltic states, and Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan as client states of China.

Immigration will change, because to follow Obama’s open borders policy is to arbitrarily declare federal law null and void, and to establish the roots of a new third world country, neither American nor Mexican, along the border, but inside the United States.

The media will change after Obama because it is about to be enshrined as an embarrassing government Ministry of Truth. It cannot again proclaim that the next president is the smartest person in the history of the presidency, a veritable god, a wizard that can lower the seas and cool the planet or send tingles down our legs or make us wish to press our pants just like the commander in chief. At some point, journalists will get back to sniping that the next president should know that there are not 57 states, that “corpseman” is not the proper pronunciation, that the trilled politically correct name for the Falklands is not the Maldives, and that presidents do not normally make fun of the Special Olympics.

We are witnessing the lamest of the lame-duck presidencies, with the power neither to act nor inspire — nor even to shock or surprise. 

Former Governor Mike Huckabee told Fox News that Donald Trump’s success represents a peaceful “overthrow of the government” and that the Republican establishment should be glad it’s being achieved with “ballots, not bullets”. He added that the Trump phenomenon was a “political revolution in the Republican Party and in the country”. 

THAT IS THE POINT

After Obama, and the utter failure of a Republican-majority Congress to oppose the evil that he has done, a political revolution is necessary, and Donald Trump – with all his faults that two of our readers insist on pointing out to us over and over again – has emerged as the leader of it.  

Joan Swirsky writes at Canada Free Press:

Sure enough, presidential candidate Donald J. Trump racked up impressive statistics in his Fox News debate tonight, effectively trouncing the competition that included Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

Once again, however, Fox’s Megyn “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” Kelly ambushed Mr. Trump by falsely stating that the Better Business Bureau had given Trump University a D-minus rating, when in fact it’s rating is, as Trump asserted, an A! …

(Sorry about the small print. Efforts to make it bigger have failed.)

The same trouncing happened last week when Trump’s victories in the primaries garnered him the lion’s share of electoral votes by winning Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, and Virginia, which, according to Philip Bump of The Washington Post, “no Republican has ever won going back to 1960”.

Both pundits and pollsters attributed the massive turn-outs to Mr. Trump’s having excited, inspired and therefore mobilized the electorate — in some cases well over 100% increase above the 2012 midterms. In one instance, Mr. Trump beat Sen. Cruz by 450,000 votes; in another he beat Sen. Rubio by over a million votes! …  Trump had “significant support across educational, ideological, age and income classifications”.

In his victory speech last week, looking and sounding presidential, Mr. Trump accurately proclaimed: “We have expanded the Republican Party.”

This ought to have been music to the ears of Republicans everywhere, especially “establishment” types who constantly seek to attract influential voting blocs comprised of African-Americans, Hispanics, and young people, all of whom — mysteriously, incomprehensibly, self-destructively — have huddled under the Democrat tent for decades, gaining not a micrometer of progress in their personal lives, wages, schools, crime rates, the pathetic list is endless. Trump, only nine months into being a politician, has accomplished this incredible feat. But the more he succeeds, the more the Grand Poobahs of the Grand Old Party, as well as the media (both right and left), have devolved into what appears to be a clinical state of hysteria.

Think about this. Barack Obama’s record violates every principle and value that Republicans and Conservatives claim they stand for … and yet those same Republicans and Conservatives — in full control of the Senate and House — have been notably absent in mustering up anything more than mild rebuke to counter Mr. Obama’s assaults on our country. But to them, Trump is the real threat!

That’s what the frenzied GOP, media, and also-rans are trying to do, figuratively closing any openings in what they believe is their own personal Ship of State now that the threatening weather called Donald Trump is upon them. …

Ironic, isn’t it. If any entity deserves a comeuppance, it is the very arrogant, go-along-to-get-along, ineffectual, leftist-whipped, emasculated, cave-to-Obama, bow-to-the-lobbyists, accommodate-the-Arab-lobby establishment! Impotent? Emasculated? Yes, money and power are mighty motivators, but it is a tacit acknowledgment of their own sissified selves that is now spurring Trump’s critics into action.

And they’re trying their damnedest! On March 2, a gaggle of Republican national security leaders — no doubt many of them members of the globalist Council on Foreign Relations whose animating raison d’être would be threatened by a Trump presidency — wrote an open letter to Trump expressing their “united opposition” to his candidacy. They don’t like his “vision of American influence and power in the world … advocacy for aggressively waging trade wars … rhetoric that undercuts the seriousness of combating Islamic radicalism … insistence that Mexico will fund a wall on the southern border…,” on and on. Comical, isn’t it, that everything they’ve failed to address with any seriousness or success compels them to slam the guy who promises to address those issues and succeed.

On March 3, 22 Republicans declared that they would not vote for Trump.

August writers like the Wall St. Journal’s Bret Stephens have been apoplectic about Trump for months,sparing no slur or invective. Author and military historian Max Boot has dug deep into his assault repertoire to make sure no insult has gone unhurled. And the usually dazzling Andrew C. McCarthy at National Review Online is simply unable to contain his hostility to Trump’s candidacy, just as most of the other writers at NRO have jumped on the anti-Trump bandwagon. And that’s not to omit the florid hysteria emanating from com.

We have often quoted Bret Stephens and Andrew C. McCarthy with admiration and respect – and will again – but they fail to understand what is happening in the country.

On March 4, desperate anti-Trump operatives pimped out good ole patsy Mitt Romney to go before a teleprompter and read the words written for him by an anti-Trump operative. …

But no one forgot that Romney, a lifelong liberal, lost both senatorial and presidential elections and that the last image of him — etched indelibly in the American public’s consciousness — was of him debating his rival for the presidency, Barack Obama, and simply folding like a cheap suit!

Romney — who The Wall St. Journal called “a flawed messenger” — didn’t look or sound like he had dementia, so it’s strange indeed that he barely mentioned the endorsement Trump gave him for his campaign for president, and the lavish praise he heaped upon Trump.

Romney’s hit job evoked the following 22-word, devastating and well-deserved tweet from Trump: “Looks like two-time failed candidate Mitt Romney is going to be telling Republicans how to get elected. Not a good messenger!”

All of the abovementioned people — and dozens I haven’t named — are growing frustrated that their old tricks of marginalizing and finally destroying the target in question haven’t worked. They long to emulate the JournOlist of 2007, when over 400 members of the leftist media colluded to quash any and every criticism or fact-based doubt about Mr. Obama’s Constitutional eligibility to hold office, to intimidate any critic into silence.

To this day, has anyone seen even one of Barack Obama’s college transcripts, his marriage license, a doctor’s evaluation? Now it’s the Republicans — actually those cocktail-swigging “conservatives” who routinely cozy up to the lobbyists they’re beholden to — who have gotten together to defeat Trump. These feckless so-called leaders decided that their target, a self-funded former liberal, was worth more of their negative, insult-laden literary output and passionate commentary than the Marxist-driven, jihadist-defending, anti-Constitutional, anti-American regime in power.

If you ever wonder how this could happen, why Republicans and self-described Conservatives could rebel so ferociously against a candidate who promises to strengthen our military, bring jobs and industry back to America, seal our borders against the onslaught of illegal aliens, and make America great again, wonder no more.

FOLLOW THE MONEY

Doesn’t it always come down to money? Money leads to power and influence and control, all of which politicians — that too-often pliable and buyable species — lust for. It’s not only the ephemeral day-to-day power they fear losing, it’s the entire network they’re enmeshed in, which involves all the treaties and deals and “arrangements” they’ve signed onto and the pelf it promises to keep on yielding. (For Exhibit No. 1, see The Clinton Foundation and the mountain of cash it reaps.)

Imagine their fear of a president who actually cuts the pork, actually strikes deals that don’t line his own pockets, actually exposes the bad deals that have been made by the bad players in Washington, D.C. Imagine what Trump will learn about the massive under-the-table, self-serving deals that were made in the Iran deal and others.

The same lust for power applies to media moguls whose wealth is not limited to TV stations and newspapers but to the very deals made by government and on Wall St. No one knows this better than Mr. Trump, the author of the mega-bestseller, The Art of the Deal. That’s why his critics are so terrified. They pretend to be offended by the kind of comment or gesture that they themselves express routinely. But they’re really afraid of being in the presence of someone who is utterly immune to either their blandishments or strong-arm tactics. …

As Mark Cunningham wrote in theNew York Post: “All the noise about Donald Trump’s ‘hostile takeover’ of the Republican Party misses a key point: Such takeovers only succeed when existing management has failed massively. And that’s true of both the GOP and the conservative movement. Trump’s a disrupter but most of the fire aimed his way is just shooting the messenger.”

Monica Crowley, editor of online opinion at The Washington Times, explains that the “emotionally fragile Republican ruling class” deluded themselves into thinking that Mr. Trump couldn’t possibly win. “Then actual voting began. And the first-timer, the brash anti-politician, began racking up resounding victories …”

In addition, Crowley writes: “Like his style or not, Trump is an in-your-face guy. Voters want that kind of guy taking it to President Obama’s record, to Hillary Clinton … and to the unbridled, destructive leftism that has rendered America virtually unrecognizable.”

And, I might add, taking it to the wimps in the GOP!

Woolly animals. Children love them. Grown-ups give them to children to cuddle. And learn to care for real animals.

Except in Islam. Muslim grown-ups give them to children so they can learn to saw their heads off. Preparing them to do the same to real people.

A great new movement, a grassroots rebellion, has arisen in America. Those who realize this, and understand why, have no trouble seeing Donald Trump as president of the United States after the disastrous, almost ruinous, deeply depressing presidency of Barack Hussein Obama.

Conrad Black understands it. He writes at the National Post, of which he was formerly a proprietor:

Donald Trump polled extensively last year and confirmed his suspicion that between 30 and 40 per cent of American adults, cutting across all ethnic, geographic, and demographic lines, were angry, fearful and ashamed at the ineptitude of their federal government.

Americans, Trump rightly concluded, could not abide a continuation in office of those in both parties who had given them decades of shabby and incompetent government: stagnant family incomes, the worst recession in 80 years, stupid wars that cost scores of thousands of casualties and trillions of dollars and generated a humanitarian disaster, serial foreign policy humiliations, and particularly the absence of a border to prevent the entry of unlimited numbers of unskilled migrants, and trade deals that seemed only to import unemployment with often defective goods. I was one of those who thought at the outset that Trump was giving it a shot, and that if it didn’t fly it would at least be a good brand-building exercise. …

Americans, unlike most nationalities, are not accustomed to their government being incompetent and embarrassing. History could be ransacked without unearthing the slightest precedent or parallel for the rise of America in two long lifetimes (1783-1945) from two and a half million colonists to a place of power and influence and prestige greater than any nation has ever possessed — everywhere victorious and respected, with an atomic monopoly and half the economic product of the world. Forty-five years later, their only rival had collapsed like a soufflé without the two Superpowers exchanging a shot between them. International Communism and the Soviet Union disintegrated and America was alone, at the summit of the world.

And then it turned into a nation of idiots, incapable of doing anything except conduct military operations against primitive countries. The objective performance of the latter Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama administrations, and the Gingrich, Reid-Pelosi, and Boehner-led congresses, and most of the courts, have for these 25 years been shameful and as unprecedented in American history as the swift rise of America was in the history of the world. The people turned out rascals and got worse rascals.

We would not be so hard on Newt Gingrich. He’s been saying sensible things about Trump.

Donald Trump’s research revealed that the people wanted someone who was not complicit in these failures and who had built and run something. Washington, Jackson, the Harrisons, Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and others had risen as military heroes, though some of them had had some political exposure. Jefferson and Wilson were known as intellectuals, Madison as chief author of the Constitution, and Monroe and John Quincy Adams as international statesmen. What is called for now is a clean and decisive break from the personalities and techniques of the recent past. Donald Trump doesn’t remind anyone of the presidents just mentioned, but he elicited a surge of public support by a novel, almost Vaudeville, routine as an educated billionaire denouncing the political leadership of the country in Archie Bunker blue-collar terms.

Last (Super) Tuesday, he completed the preliminary takeover of the Republican Party.He demonstrated his hold on the angry, the fearful, and the ashamed by passing the double test: he had held no elective office, but he was a worldly man who knew how to make the system work  and rebuild American strength and public contentment. All the other candidates in both parties were vieux jeu, passé. Only a few of the governors (Bush, Christie, and Kasich) had run anything successfully, none of them had built anything, and all were up to their eyeballs in the sleazy American political system — long reduced to a garish and corrupt log-rolling game of spin-artists, lobbyists, and influence-peddlers. Bernie Sanders gets a pass, but he is an undischarged Marxist, and while many of his attacks on the incumbent system and personnel have merit, his policy prescriptions are unacceptable to 90 per cent of Americans.

It was clear on Tuesday night that Trump’s insurrection had recruited the Republican centre and pushed his opponents to the fringes. The conservative intellectuals, including my friends and editors at National Review, as well as Commentary, the Weekly Standard, and some of the think tanks, attacked Trump as inadequately conservative. They are correct — he isn’t particularly conservative, and favours universal medical care, as much as possible in private-sector plans, but a stronger safety net for those who can’t afford health care, and retention of federal assistance to Planned Parenthood except in matters of abortion. Traditional, quasi-Bushian moderate Republican opponents and liberals  were reduced to calling him an extremist — claiming he was a racist, a “neo-fascist” said Bob Woodward, America’s greatest mythmaker and (albeit bloodless) Watergate assassin, and a “Caesarist” by the normally sane Ross Douthat in The New York Times. (He was confusing the triumphs of the early Caesars with the debauchery of the later Caligula and Nero and the earlier bread and circuses of the Gracchi, but it is all bunk.)

John Robson [a columnist and editorial writer for the National Post], took his place in this queue on Monday, claiming Trump was squandering an inherited fortune (he has multiplied it), and concluding that Trump is “a loathsome idiot”.  The sleaziest dirty tricks campaigner of modern American history, Ted Cruz, claimed Trump was in league with gangsters.

We would not be that hard on Ted Cruz.

On Tuesday night, Cruz ran strongly in his home state of Texas but his support is now confined exclusively to Bible-thumping, M16-toting corn-cobbers and woolhats, and he has no traction outside the southwest and perhaps Alaska. The orthodox Republican candidate, Marco Rubio, is now a Chiclet-smiled, motor-mouth loser, having first been exposed as such by Chris Christie (the New Jersey governor who could have won the nomination and election four years ago and is now running for the vice-presidential nomination with Trump). Rubio should bite the dust in Florida next week. On Super Tuesday evening Donald Trump made the turn from rabble-rouser to nominee-presumptive. The only early campaign excess he has to walk back is the nonsense that all the 11 million illegal migrants will be removed, and then many will be readmitted. Of course the selection process must occur before they are evicted, not after.

Even the formidable and adversarial journalist Megyn Kelly acknowledged that he looked and sounded like a president. He spoke fluently and in sentences and without bombast or excessive self-importance. He is placed exactly where he needs to be for the election, after Hillary Clinton finishes her escapade on the left to fend off the unfeasible candidacy of Bernie Sanders. (This is if she is not indicted for her misuse of official emails — Obama is nasty enough to have her charged, and almost all prosecutions of prominent people in the U.S. are political, but she is now all that stands between Donald Trump and the White House, but is almost a paper tigress.) Trump sharply raised the Republican vote totals and the fact that he carried 49 per cent of the Republican voters in Massachusetts, a state with almost no extremists in it, indicates how wide his appeal has become.

Obama may well be “nasty enough” to have Hillary charged, but is he law-abiding enough?

Hillary Clinton was, as Trump described her when she unwisely accused him of being a sexist, a facilitator of sexism; simultaneously the feminist in chief and First (Wronged) Lady, as spouse of America’s premier sexist. She was elected in a rotten borough for the Democrats in New York State, and was a nondescript secretary of state. She has been caught in innumerable falsehoods and her conduct in the entire Benghazi affair (the terrorist murder of a U.S. ambassador) was reprehensible. Her indictment for various breaches of national security and possible perjury is regularly demanded by former attorney general Michael Mukasey and other worthies. …

All these and more failures, as well as unseemly activities with the Clinton Foundation, will be mercilessly pounded on in the campaign. Donald Trump will not simulate the languorous defeatism of the senior Bush or Mitt Romney, or the blunderbuss shortcomings of Bob Dole and John McCain. (Romney’s savage attack on Trump on Thursday served to remind Republicans of how he squandered a winnable election in 2012 and faced in all four directions on every major issue.)

It really is incomprehensible why Mitt Romney laid himself open, with his vituperative attack on Trump, to an obvious blow in retaliation; that he failed miserably when he was a Republican nominee for the presidency. Any opinion of his on any candidate could only remind everyone of his failure. He figuratively lay down in front of Trump and begged, “Kick me!”  Which Trump obligingly did – though not too hard.

Eight years ago, it was time to break the colour barrier at the White House. Now it is time to clean the Augean Stable. Donald Trump has his infelicities, though not those that malicious opponents or people like John Robson, who simply haven’t thought it through, allege. But he seems to have become the man whom the great office of president of the United States now seeks. He is far from a Lincolnian figure, but after his astonishing rise it would be a mistake to underestimate him.

We prefer him not to be a “Lincolnian figure”.

But we like Conrad Black’s turn of phrase when he says that “the great office of president of the United States now seeks” Donald Trump. 

Certainly an enormous number of Americans want to place him in that office. Which might be the same thing.

The Christian Churches are doing nothing to save Christians from the persecution, enslavement, torture and murder they are being subjected to by Muslims in North Africa and the Middle East. Sometimes deprecating statements are made by church authorities. But the atrocities continue, and the Christian powers remain passive.

What is wrong with Christianity?

The answer to that question is easy to see here. We quote almost the whole article. All emphases in bold are ours.

Factually, the account of what is happening to Christians in Asia and Africa is accurate. It is the response to the facts that concern us.

Responding in Christ to Islamist Violence Against Christians and Other Minorities in the Middle East

Wednesday, March 02, 2016

Introductory Note 

For the past decade, mainline Protestant churches have largely failed to speak up on behalf of Christians (and other minorities) in the Middle East. Below is the text of a model resolution that members of these churches can rework and submit to the national assemblies of their churches. This text, attempts to address the issue of Triumphalist Islam in an irenic, authoritative and comprehensive manner. It follows the model of resolutions used by the General Synod of the United Church of Christ.

Please feel free to distribute this text as you see fit.

Theological Rationale

“If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”

– 1 Corinthians, 12: 26-27

“For God did not give us a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-control.” –  2 Timothy 1:7

“If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God.” –  1 John 4:15

Christ summons us to partake of His life, His suffering, His death and resurrection. As part of this summons, Christ calls us to stand in solidarity with our fellow Christians during their times of trial. He calls for us pray for and end to the oppression they endure and to actively struggle against it.

Wherever and whenever anyone suffers for the same [sic. name?] of Christ, we are called to witness to both the injustice they endure and to the steadfastness they exhibit: the injustice suffered by Christians thwarts the will of God; Christian steadfastness in the face of this injustice brings glory to God.

Christ also calls us to proclaim liberty to the captives, whether their captivity is the result of physical or spiritual oppression. (Luke 4:18) He also calls us to proclaim justice to the nations (Matthew 12:15).

Background: The Roots and History of anti-Christian Violence in Muslim-Majority Environments 

The Body of Christ is under attack in Muslim-majority countries throughout the world, particularly in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Christians are being killed, imprisoned, held for ransom, forcibly converted and sold into slavery as part of an ongoing campaign of oppression and ethnic cleansing that began in the early part of the last decade. Christians are not the only targets of this campaign. Other religious minorities such as the Yazidis in Iraq and adherents of the Bahai faith in Iran are also subject to atrocities. Muslims are also the victims of oppression perpetrated by their fellow Muslims.

The overriding impulse behind these acts of aggression is an ideology of Muslim supremacy that holds that Islamic doctrine and jurisprudence should rule every aspect of life in Muslim-majority countries. This ideology causes the life of non-Muslims to be devalued and sets the stage for violence against religious and ethnic minorities (and dissident Muslims) in Muslim-majority countries.

Violence perpetrated against non-Muslims, and the ideas used to justify it, are not new phenomenon [sic], but date back to Islam’s founding. The mistreatment of non-Muslims in Muslim-majority environments and the oppression of apostates has been a persistent aspect of the Muslim faith since its founding in Seventh Century A.D.

The Curse of Dhimmitude

Under Shariah, or Islamic law, which was codified in the years after Muhammad’s death, Christians and Jews were accorded a second class status which in the modern era has been described as dhimmitude. Dhimmitude is derived from the word “dhimmi” which is itself derived from the Arabic word “dhimma” which describes a pact that was thrust upon Christians and Jews who wished to maintain their faith practices when the countries they lived in came under Muslim rule.

As part of this dhimma pact, non-Muslims agreed to pay a special tax for the privilege of practicing their faith in a Muslim jurisdiction. Oftentimes, this tax was collected in a ceremony that included a ritualistic blow to the head or the neck to remind dhimmis that they were paying for the privilege of keeping their head on their shoulders. The goal was to humiliate non-Muslims into submission.

Other rules associated with dhimmitude varied from one location to another but they included a prohibition of building homes or houses of worship higher than that of their Muslim neighbors.

Dhimmis were also prohibited from riding horses, and were deprived of the right to defend themselves against Muslims when physically attacked. Public displays of religious symbols (such as the ringing of church bells or singing of hymns) was prohibited. In some instances, Jews and Christians were required to wear a colored patch indicating their religious identity.

Dhimmi testimony was not accepted in Muslim courts, rendering them vulnerable to mistreatment and oppression. Criticizing Islam or agitating for one’s liberty and equality was out of the question. The first line of enforcement for these rules was the leaders of the dhimmi communities themselves. Jewish and Christian leaders were obligated to make sure that the people in their communities did not get out of line and obeyed these rules.

The ultimate goal of these rules was to demean and humiliate non-Muslims and to encourage them to convert to Islam. These rules also had the tendency of making non-Muslims low cost, no-cost targets of violence and oppression.

If a dhimmi or dhimmi community agitated for its rights or appealed to help from outsiders, they abrogated the right to claim protection from the authorities under the dhimma pact, and as a result, rendered themselves legitimate targets of jihad. This happened a number of times under the Ottoman Empire.

For example, when the Ottoman Empire abolished dhimma laws in 1860, Muslims in Damascus murdered 5,000 Christians because they were no longer behaving in a submissive manner toward the Muslim neighbors. Men were killed and women and children were raped and abducted; some escaped these fates by converting to Islam.

Similar massacres took place in what is now known as modern-day Turkey in the 1870s, 1890s when thousands of Armenian, Greeks, and Assyrian Christians were murdered in response to European interventions on behalf of the rights of Christians in the Ottoman Empire. 

The Armenian Genocide, which resulted in the death of 1.5 million Armenians (and thousands of Greeks and Assyrians) between 1915 and 1922, was, in part, a response to the efforts of Armenians to achieve freedom and equality in a Muslim-majority environment. …

Living as a dhimmi has political consequences … In the latter half of the 20^th Century, Christian populations in the Middle East protected themselves by supporting brutal dictators who would protect them from the violence and hostility directed at them by their Muslim neighbors in exchange for support. Oftentimes Christians would serve as spokespeople and advocates for regimes to the West.

This strategy was particularly evident in Iraq, where Christians supported the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein and in Syria, where Christians supported the Assad regime, which brutally repressed the Sunni majority in that country. Egypt’s Coptic minority was also a bulwark of support for the Mubarak regime in Egypt, because it kept radical Sunnis, known as Salafists, out of power.

This was not a strategy available to all religious minorities. Adherents of the Bahai faith for example, are brutally repressed in Iran with no chance of obtaining help from the theocratic government in Iran. Christians are brutally mistreated in Iran as well, especially those who seek to convert their countrymen to the Christian faith.

It must be remembered that Christians in the Middle East are being oppressed in their homelands. Their existence pre-dates the arrival of Islam by centuries. They are not interlopers.

It should also be noted that Muslims are also victims of oppression in Muslim-majority countries. Where Sunnis are the majority, they oppress Shiites and vice versa. Ahmadiyya Muslims, who are regarded as heretics and apostates, are oppressed in Pakistan.

Shariah, or Islamic law establishes a system of structural violence that renders non-Muslims, dissident Muslims and women, legitimate targets of oppression.

In an effort to prevent discussion of the impact of dhimmitude and Shariah as a human rights issue Islamic organizations and leaders have worked to silence criticism of Islam through a variety of means. In particular, they asked the United Nations to promote blasphemy laws and statues that prohibit the defamation of religion. Such laws are already in force in Muslim-majority countries, making it dangerous to discuss issues of human rights under Islam.

Recent History 

Anti-Christian violence in Muslim-majority countries faded from the world’s consciousness in the decades after the Armenian Genocide.

Things began to change with the 2003 removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq when Christians in that country found themselves without a protector and subject to terrible acts of violence. Churches have been bombed, clergy kidnapped and murdered, and lay Christians have been regularly killed. Christians used to number approximately 1.5 million in Iraq. Credible estimates indicate there are less than 300,000 Christians in the country today.

Christians in Syria found themselves vulnerable to similar acts of violence as president Bashar al-Assad lost control of large sections of the country as a result of a civil war that began in 2011 and rages to this day.

Coptic Christians were also subjected to terrible attacks beginning toward the end of Hosni Mubarak’s tenure as president of Egypt, which came to an end in 2011. Fortunately, the situation for Christians in Egypt has improved substantially under the leadership of Egyptian President Abdel Fatah Sisi who has taken a tough line with the Muslim Brotherhood, which was removed from power in 2013, but the hostility and violence directed at Copts in their homeland remains a problem.

The recent kidnappings of hundreds of young women in Nigeria by the Islamist organization Boko Haram and multiple massacres of Coptic Christians by ISIS in Libya demonstrates that radical Islam threatens Christians in North Africa. Violent attacks against Christians in Pakistan indicate that it is a problem in Asia as well.

Something must be said and something must be done about this rising tide of Islamist violence.

Signs of Hope

We must acknowledge unequivocally that not every Muslim adheres to the notion of supremacy over non-Muslims; to fail to do so would be false witness. There are some resources within Islamic tradition that can be used to justify a more tolerant and peaceful attitude toward non-Muslims. For example, there is a passage in the Koran that states “there is no compulsion in religion.” Unfortunately, many Muslim scholars assert that this passage and others like it, which came early in Mohammad’s career, were superseded, or abrogated by a number of other passages (which came later in Mohammad’s life) that call for the violent oppression of non-Muslims and the execution of people who would leave the faith.

Nevertheless, some Muslim intellectuals appeal to these earlier passages to convince their co-religionists to refrain from acts of violence against their non-Muslim neighbors, but they are not in the majority. This is a consequence of a decision made by Muslim scholars to close the “door of interpretation” or (bab al-itjihad) in the 11^th Century. Writing in 111 Questions on Islam, Samir Khali Samir, S.J. reports that as a result that once this door was closed, it was “no longer possible to interpret the text.” He continues, “Hence today, even the mere attempt to understand its meaning in a certain context is regarded as a desire to challenge it. And it is a true tragedy for the Islamic world…”

Moreover, Samir writes that in modern times, “efforts have been made” to interpret the Koran in context, but that they have “almost always [been] in vain.” He continues: “The weight of the tradition and, above all, the fear of questioning the acquired security of the text have created a taboo: The Qur’an cannot be interpreted, nor can it be critically rethought.”

Still, there are signs of hope.

Recently, Egyptian President Abdel Fatah Sisi spoke to scholars at Cairo’s Al Azhar University, the most important center of learning for Sunni Muslims in the world. He told the scholars “We must revolutionize our religion” adding that by embracing the ideas it does, “the Islamic nation is being torn apart, destroyed, and is heading to perdition. We ourselves are bringing it to perdition.” That Sisi made such a speech at Al Azhar, which has traditionally been a source of Islamic supremacism is remarkable. It remains to be seen if scholars at the school will take up Sisi’s challenge.

One group of Muslims in the United States, the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD), has worked to promote discussion of the topics delineated above. In a recently published statement, AIFD has condemned the push to create “Islamic” states where non-Muslims are oppressed. The organization has also called on Muslims to “promote reforms where necessary, including an honest and critical reinterpretation of scripture and shariah law used by Islamists to justify violence and oppression.”

The AIFD also declares “Neither jihadism nor Islamism permit the equality of all humans irrespective of their race or religion and should therefore be rejected.”

Hopefully, Muslims in the Middle East will start to address these issues, sparking the “revolution” within Islam that Egyptian President Sisi was calling for when he spoke to scholars at Al Azhar in Cairo.

We must remember that Islam does not have a monopoly on religious violence. Christians have struggled with their faith’s historical hostility toward the Jewish people, which has had catastrophic consequences. They have also confronted the role their faith played in the destruction and oppression of indigenous peoples throughout the world. 

The fact that we as Christians are not without sin does not preclude us from lifting up our voices about the mistreatment of our fellow Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities in Muslim-majority countries throughout the world. 

To remain silent at a time such as this would only add to our sin. 

We must pray, we must discern, we must act.

Resolution: A Call to Prayer, Discernment, and Action 

WHEREAS violence against Christians and other religious minorities in Muslim-majority environments is threatening the destruction of people groups in the Middle East; and

WHEREAS massacres, kidnappings and the enslavement of Christians and Yazidis in Syria and Iraq has reached epidemic proportions; and

WHEREAS violence against Copts in Egypt remains a threat and the murder of Copts in Libya has become an undeniable outrage; and

WHEREAS this violence is not a new phenomenon, but has its roots in Islamic doctrine, jurisprudence and tradition dating back centuries; and

WHEREAS Shariah law as it is applied in Muslim countries throughout the world represents an undeniable manifestation of structural violence and a defamation of the name of God; and

WHEREAS dhimmitude renders non-Muslims low cost, no cost targets of violence; and

WHEREAS some Muslim leaders have attempted to place discussion of these problems beyond the pale of acceptable discourse by promoting the passage of laws that prohibit “blasphemy” and the “defmation of religion;” and

WHEREAS a growing number of Muslim leaders and intellectuals are struggling to re-open the “door of interpretation;”

WE WITNESS AND LAMENT the ongoing destruction of Christian communities in the Middle East, the region of our faith’s birth, and the oppression of our Brothers and Sisters in North Africa and Asia; and

WE PROCLAIM that as Christians we are called to pray on behalf of those who are dying for the name of Christ and that we are called to speak up for the principles of religious freedom; and

WE RESPOND to this call by condemning violence against people of all faiths throughout the world and by standing in solidarity with the victims of Islamist violence wherever it takes place; and

WE PRAY for the violence against Christians and other religious minorities to end; and

WE PRAY that God manifest His presence the decisions of political leaders of all faiths and countries as they confront the rising tide of Islamist violence throughout the world; and

WE PRAY that world leaders of all faiths and ideologies be given the wisdom, the strength and confidence to stem the violence through the application of justice, mercy, and restraint; and

WE PLEDGE to educate ourselves, our congregations, our neighbors, and our community leaders about Shariah law, its impact on Muslims, non-Muslims and women and to discern and counteract the impact of dhimmitude on our fellow Christians; and

WE PRAY that Muslim leaders acknowledge the rights of their followers to convert to other faiths and work to encourage their followers to acknowledge the dignity of women, for they too are created in the image of God; and

WE PLEDGE to work for the safety of religious targeted communities throughout the world; and

WE PROCLAIM Christ’s liberty to the captives of religious violence and oppression, whether they be its victims or perpetrators. We are glad to see principled Muslims confront Islam’s legacy of hostility and violence against non-believers. We pray that their numbers may grow and that their efforts become more effective; and

WE ACKNOWLEDGE violence and sin perpetrated by Christians throughout history; and

WE PLEDGE to not let our guilt over these events to be used to silence us over the mistreatment of our co-religionists and other victims of religious violence in Muslim-majority countries; and

WE PRAY that God will embolden the faith of our fellow believers, soften the hearts of their tormentors and enliven the intellects and consciences of those who have been bystanders to this violence for far too long.

posted by Dexter Van Zile, Wednesday, March 02, 2016

So what is the “action” these Christians are resolving to take? 

To “witness and lament”.

To proclaim “Christ’s liberty”. 

To acknowledge Christian violence and sin. 

To pray.

To pray especially for the Muslims to change their beliefs and the actions they take because of those beliefs. This frail hope … no, this baseless, entirely chimerical hope is their plan of action. “Whereas” the cruel treatment and mass murder of their fellow Christians is proceeding unabated to their certain knowledge, they will “act” by praying for the Muslims to change their beliefs and their ways!

The worst place among all the killing fields where the Christian populations are being depleted, the very worst country for Christians at the mercy of Muslims, is Nigeria. They mention only the abduction and enslavement of one group of young girls. But there is much more that should be known to the world. According to a report titled Global Terrorism Index 2015, published last November by the Institue for Economics & Peace, the affiliate of ISIS in Nigeria, Boko Haram, killed 6,644 Christians. Many were babies and small children. A favorite way of killing them among the Muslim savages is by throwing them onto fires. See our post, Why Muslims are butchering Christians in Nigeria, February 24, 2014.

A Christian child burnt alive by Muslims in Nigeria 

A particularly appalling fact is that Boko Haram was protected by Obama’s State Department during the time that Hillary Clinton was in office as Secretary of State; and the Obama administration actively interfered in Nigerian elections to get their preferred candidate into power. See our post, Obama’s Nigerian candidate wins, April 6, 2015. 

Because the churches used violence evilly in the past, these Christians are reluctant now to use it at all – or so their text implies, acknowledging Christian “violence and sin”.

Fact is, the Christian powers INTEND TO CONTINUE TO DO NOTHING to rescue or avenge the Christian victims of Islam. They will not lift a finger, let alone launch armies, to stop the slaughter, the torture, the enslavement, the terrorizing, the elimination of whole communities of their co-religionists. A large portion of Christendom itself!

Except of course pray, and proclaim, and pray, and confess, and pray, and witness, and pray, and lament, and pray, and endure …

Truly, Islam and Christianity suit each other perfectly!

More Christian children burnt alive by Muslims in Nigeria

Let’s laugh while we may.

When Islam rules the West, everyone will believe this or else:

We have had three emails about the article we quoted yesterday (see the post immediately below). Two of the three agreed with it.

We quote what Alexander Firestone wrote, with his permission:

This is a very impressive article and is almost certainly a correct analysis.

When Obama was first elected in 2008 both House and Senate went democratic with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid running the show there. That situation allowed passage of Obamacare among other vile things. Two years later both houses went Republican with John Boehner elected as speaker.

Rank-and-file republicans expected John Boehner to be the principal voice of the opposition to Obama’s lunatic ideas and policies. That was his job. But he did nothing. No one ever heard his voice. I defy anyone to name a single issue or a single bill in which Boehner told the White House to go to hell and got it thru. 

Six years utterly wasted and Obama more-or-less given a blank check.

That’s what’s wrong with the Republican establishment.

For six years the Republican Party establishment did nothing to oppose the systematic dismantling of this country by the Obama administration, from the “reset” with the former Soviet Union to the abandonment of Poland, the Czech Republic, the UK, NATO, the Ukraine, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, India, et al.; to the attempted embrace of Iran, China and North Korea; to the disasters of Libya, Iraq and Syria; to the abandonment of American Veterans thru the corrupt VA; to insane quantitative easing; to multi-trillion dollar deficits, and the transfer of trillions of dollars from American savers to banks and Wall Street operators; to IRS scandals and the corruption of the Justice Department under Holder and now Lynch; to the systematic dismantling of the US Navy; to the release of hundreds of terrorists from Gitmo to resume their activities unimpeded, etc., etc. The list can be expanded ad nauseam if not ad infinitum.

Did anyone hear even a squeak from Boehner?

No. And that’s why the Republican establishment has been thoroughly discredited in the eyes of the rank-and-file, blue collar workers (both democrat and republican), conservatives with and without religious or social agendas, and the millions of hard-working Americans who feel betrayed by our elites.

Yes, the Obama administration and the liberals are the enemies of this country, but the supposed opposition did nothing to oppose any of this because, as this article makes clear, they were paid off by the left to just go along.

That’s why the Trump phenomenon is so impressive and so very important.

Now it is the personalities that matter. Specific issues, programs, etc., have become irrelevant. Quoting some old speech by Trump, or Cruz or even Hillary is of no importance and will change nothing.

Hillary is corruption incarnate.

Trump is the anti-corrupt Washington candidate, and he owns that role.

That’s what it all boils down to. All else has become irrelevant, and one is morally obligated to come down on one side or the other. There are NO other options. Carping at something Trump once said doesn’t help at all.

We concur. The enormous popularity of Trump is a rebellion against the deep corruption in the centers of power.

It is a sign of the health of America.

The Republican establishment is appalled at the prospect of their nominee being Donald Trump.

What might they do about it?

Kevin Rex Heine writes (in part only – so please follow the link and read the whole thing) at RIGHTMI.com

To say that the 2016 Republican Presidential Campaign has become interesting since June of last year is a bit of an understatement, to say the least. An out-of-the-blue “chaos injection” on June 16th (that FOX News polling saw coming as early as March 31st, but no one else picked up on until late May) became the nationally-recognized front runner not five weeks later, completely leapfrogging the “heir apparent” (who promptly went into a freefall, and has now exited the campaign). Because of this chaos injection, one candidate, who was until that point considered to be irrelevant, leapfrogged to become the national runner-up about five and a half weeks later (and was the national front-runner for three days in November), and two young guns are now openly tussling for second place nationally, neither of whom were supposed to have a realistic chance to begin with.

As should have been expected, the thorough derailing of the coronation train for the republican heir apparent makes the professional political establishment very unhappy, and, of course, they’re hell-bent on doing something about that. But the reason that all of their scrambling is increasingly ineffective is that they don’t seem to really understand the causa provocare of the outsider’s challenge, perhaps because they really don’t understand the degree to which the typical voter is disgusted with the political status quo in America, or why. Thus, predictably, the flailing increasingly exposes them for who they are and what they intend, which conversely makes the outsider’s job that much easier. …

Beginning with congressional leadership action in late 2013, carrying through the 2014 national and state party decisions to modify the primary calendar and delegate allocation and binding rubrics, and concluding with the state legislative actions in early 2015 to set the 2016 primary calendar into law, the roadmap was set to secure the nomination for one John Ellis Bush, and accomplish it knowing that their hand-picked candidate would only rarely poll outside the 15% to 20% range of popular support until after the “game day” primary on March 15th (Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio). Anticipating viable “outsider” challenges from Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Scott Walker, and even Rick Perry (Ben Carson, Bobby Jindal, and Rick Santorum being considered either irrelevant or improbable, and Donald Trump completely unanticipated), the split-and-fracture strategy was implemented, and augmented by compromising from within the four anticipated challengers (a sabotage job that only Cruz seems to have recovered from).

Thus, with every single intel tripwire triggering in the exact order and construct needed to validate the hypothesis, the 2016 presidential cycle was looking to be a colossal exercise in futility for the grassroots activists and main street voters, as the coronation trains to Cleveland (republican) and Philadelphia (democrat) were designed to produce a very specific general election match-up (Bush vs. Clinton), which would be a win for the professional political establishment and deep pocket financiers regardless of the November outcome. And then . . .

… The one and only reason that Cruz has no path to nomination, absent Trump, is because the RNC/GOPe “roadmap to Cleveland” was specifically and explicitly designed to prevent Cruz (along with Perry, Walker, Paul, and Carson) from ever securing enough delegates to become the nominee, or enough delegation majorities to force a floor fight over the nomination. The roadmap was designed to produce exactly one predetermined result (with a backup option in the event that ¡Yeb! failed to gain traction), and lock it down on the first ballot in Cleveland. The one and only reason that both Cruz and Carson are still in the mix is that, eight months ago, Trump came in and proceeded to singlehandedly shred the establishment roadmap, and systematically demolish two years of meticulous backroom planning.

Accepting these truths also means accepting the reality that Cruz has exactly two options if he wants any post-convention relevance: (a) Do whatever is necessary to mend fences with both Carson and Trump, and position himself to provide constitutionally-sound policy advice to Trump post-convention, and perhaps even post-election. (b) Broker some behind-the-scenes deal with Rubio, and position himself to become Rubio’s running mate (or Rubio to become his), on the assumption that a combined Rubio-Kasich-Cruz effort can force a contested convention. …

Given that Donald Trump had floated the idea of campaigning for POTUS before (1988, 2004, and 2012), as well as for Governor of New York (2006 and 2014), one could forgive the professional political establishment, deep pocket financiers, and corporate media talking heads for not taking the guy seriously on Wednesday, March 18th, 2015, when he launched his exploratory committee for the republican POTUS nomination. But in the thirteen weeks between then and the Tuesday, June 16th, formal announcement of his candidacy (“I am officially running for president of the United States.”), Trump did things that he wouldn’t do if this were a mere publicity stunt – stock divestitures, disconnecting conflicts of interest, and escrowing certain real estate sources of income. Yeah, he’s serious about this, and because he isn’t owned by either Wall Street, or K Street, or the RNC/GOPe party apparatus, by the time that the professional political establishment, deep pocket financiers, and corporate media talking heads actually figured out that “The Donald” was, in fact, quite serious about his stated intentions . . .

The timing of Trump’s entry into the campaign was, I believe, intended to take advantage of the entire RNC/GOPe 2016 primary construct, once it was locked into place, in a way that allows him to use the rules changes against the very people those changes were designed to benefit, effectively hoisting them on their own petard. Should Trump secure a majority of the convention voting delegates (Rule # 40(d)), and a majority of the delegations of at least eight states severally (Rule # 40(b)), then, according to Rule # 16(a), which binds delegates to the outcome of their statewide (or district-specific) popular vote on at least the first ballot at convention, one Donald John Trump, Senior, becomes the nominee of the Party of Reagan. Game, set, and match to Trump, and there is absolutely nothing that can be done about it . . . on paper.

Trump was also savvy enough to know what he was walking into … brilliantly [exposing the weakness of] the road map during a presser last August (full video here). Yet, since his entry, he has spoken the truth both to the powerful and the common on trade reform, immigration reform, foreign policy failures, tax reform, and veterans’ issues (among many others). In doing so, he has forced the other candidates, on both sides of the aisle, to respond by engaging in serious discussions on those very same issues. He also had the stones to go after George W. Bush regarding 9/11 and Iraq, which is supposed to be sacred ground to “republicans” … And that wall on our southern border? Notice that neither Felipe Calderon nor Vincente Fox are questioning whether the wall should be built, but only that Mexico will not be paying for it (a distinction that the press is somehow overlooking). Yet, there’s something that neither of them wants us to know about, which likely provides a means (in addition to renegotiating trade agreements and impounding the foreign aid) to raise enough money – at Mexico’s expense – to pay for the wall. …

But –

Just because the game may soon be all but over on paper doesn’t mean that the powers that be are going to quit, no siree! The uni-party globalists are aware that a Trump win ultimately means that their hands will be forcibly pried from the public trough, and they don’t care for reversing the decline of America that not only they, but also their philosophical ancestors, have been engineering for a shade over a century. The prospect of a nominee, and in all likelihood a president, who isn’t owned by them (therefore doesn’t answer to them), has detailed insider knowledge of what needs to be done to restore America to greatness (plus openly “America first” in his thinking), and is well aware of what they’re up to, has them quite concerned. And those of us who’re paying attention are seeing the indicators that they’re preparing to reach deep into their bag of dirty tricks.

Students of history may recall the “Republican Disunity” 1964 campaign ad run by Lyndon Johnson, which focused on public remarks from republican governors Nelson Rockefeller (New York), William Scranton (Pennsylvania), and George Romney (Michigan), said remarks calling the credibility of republican senator and presidential nominee Barry Goldwater (Arizona) into question, and saying in effect that Goldwater’s nomination and election would essentially end the Republican Party. This was the ad that ultimately gestated the principle now known as Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment.

(Which was, “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.”)

More recently, in the 2014 U. S. Senate primary runoff in Mississippi, the National Republican Senatorial Committee pulled out all the stops to defend one of the establishment’s own (Thad Cochran) against an insurgency challenger (Chris McDaniel). Recall that McDaniel won the initial matchup on June 3rd, but because he finished 1,719 votes short of an outright majority, a runoff election took place three weeks later. During those three weeks, racist attack ads, paid for by prominent republican senators and Karl Rove’s super PAC motivated black democrats to show up and boost Cochran to a 7,667-vote runoff win. (Apparently, a little vote buying didn’t seem to hurt, either.)

Now, while you’re thinking about Goldwater and McDaniel, allow me to also remind you of Christine O’Donnell, Joe Miller, and Ken Cuccinelli, each of whom upset an entrenched establishment insider in their primaries, and each of whom was subsequently and openly betrayed by the Republican Party in the general campaign. These five names should suffice to remind you that the RNC/GOPe will not hesitate to burn down their own house, as long as they retain their seat at the public trough. And yes, that means that the professional power brokers and deep pocket financiers will have no problem with a Hillary win this year, because they will still have the access that they crave, and the damage to liberty and the republic be damned.

The signals were already being sent late last year, that the professional political establishment was preparing to lay the groundwork for one of two options, either (a) force a contested convention, so as to block Trump’s nomination on the convention floor and insert a more suitable option, or (b) field an independent general election candidate – à la George Wallace – who can potentially pull enough states to force an Amendment XII Electoral College deadlock, and throw the election to the House of Representatives. Option A requires the candidates already in the field to be able to, individually or collectively, hold Trump below the 1,237 delegates needed for nomination majority; option B requires someone acceptable to the RNC/GOPe, who could credibly conduct an independent campaign against both Trump and Clinton.

Do you think it a coincidence that now – after convincing wins in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada (and a credible second-place finish in Iowa) – that the attacks on Trump start to ratchet up in volume, intensity, and viciousness, attack ads that will be using paid acting talent in an attempt to force Trump to respond, and take him off his message? Do you think it ironic that the Isolate-Ridicule-Marginalize strategy includes last cycle’s news, who has been conspicuous by his heretofore silence, suddenly weighing in to state his absolute certainty that there must be some sort of bombshell hiding in Trump’s tax returns? Do you find it curious that there is now intel that the deep pocket financiers have already developed a contingency plan in the event that neither Rubio nor Kasich have gained any traction by March 15th? Does it surprise you at all that the person currently envisioned as the savior of the RNC/GOPe professional political establishment [Mitt Romney], is not in the current field of candidates?

And you can bet that Donald Trump is well aware of what the power brokers and financiers are up to, as he made subtly clear at a Mississippi rally roughly two months ago. Even better, we now have the probability that a certain former chairman of the Republican Governors Association [Chris Christie], previously thought to be a part of the plan to grease the skids for a JEB nomination, may in fact have been a Trump mole the entire time. That hypothesis, if true, would explain much.

If this analysis is right, Donald Trump, far from being the oafish clown so many are making him out to be, is extraordinarily smart, highly politically astute .

Thus far, he has outfoxed them all.

(Hat-tip for the Heine article to Sonya Kantor)