Wednesday, March 23, 2016
To: Friends & Supporters
From: Gary L. Bauer
Results: The Democrats
Senator Bernie Sanders notched two wins last night. He won Idaho 78% to 21% and carried Utah by an even larger margin — 80% to 20%. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton carried Arizona 58% to 40%.
The delegate allocation from the three states slightly favored Sanders — 57 to 51. But he is still a long way from catching Mrs. Clinton. In the total delegate count for the Democrat nomination, Hillary Clinton has 1,681 delegates (71% of the total needed to win the nomination) to 937 for Senator Sanders.
Democrats will go to the polls in three more states this Saturday — Alaska, Hawaii and Washington.
Results: The Republicans
Republicans got a split decision from yesterday’s results in Arizona and Utah. Donald Trump carried Arizona with 47%, followed by Ted Cruz (25%) and John Kasich (10%).
Senator Cruz crushed his competition in Utah, taking 69% of the vote. Gov. Kasich finished second with 17%, while Trump was third with 14%.
In the delegate race, Donald Trump leads with 739 delegates — 60% of the total needed to secure the nomination. Cruz has 465, while Kasich has 143.
Yesterday’s split decision means the deal is not yet sealed and the battle will likely continue. North Dakota votes next on April 1st, followed by Wisconsin on April 5th.
Looking forward to the general election, a new Quinnipiac poll finds Hillary Clinton leading Senator Cruz by three points, within the poll’s margin of error. She leads Donald Trump by six points.
In other campaign news, Senator Ted Cruz picked up the endorsement of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.
Meanwhile, a new poll by Monmouth University asks Republican voters about the prospect of a contested convention — where no candidate arrives with the necessary number of delegates to secure the nomination outright. A clear majority — 54% — said the nomination should go to the candidate with the most votes in the primaries and caucuses. Only 34% said the nomination should go to someone else.
How To Respond
Responding to the Islamist attacks in Brussels yesterday, Senator Ted Cruz said that law enforcement in this country should more closely monitor Muslim neighborhoods for signs of extremism. What might seem like common sense to many was greeted with ridicule and derision by many left-wing activists and their media allies. Cruz’s comment was labeled “incendiary,” “un-American,” “dangerous” and “racism-fueled xenophobia.”
Some even suggested that American Muslims are not like those in Europe. One commentator dared Senator Cruz to “name one community, one city where we have a large group of radicalized Muslims.” How about Minneapolis?
The first question we should be asking is, “In which communities do we have radicalized mosques?” There are many. Mosques built with Saudi money often have imams trained in radical Islamic theology.
It is amazing how far we have drifted since 9/11. We used waterboarding after 9/11 and it saved lives. Now elite opinion insists that waterboarding is beyond the pale. But beyond that, we have drifted so far from a wartime mentality that we can’t even get an iPhone opened.
After the San Bernardino attack, we learned that there was a monitoring program in place that might have prevented that attack. But the Obama Administration shut it down over fears of profiling.
There were plenty of warnings about the Fort Hood shooter, Nidal Hasan. But our military leaders were too worried about their careers, too afraid of left-wing political orthodoxy to do anything about it.
Who in the government was fired after the Fort Hood attack? Who was fired after the Boston Marathon bombing? Who was fired after the Chattanooga shooting? Who was fired after San Bernardino?
Here’s the bottom line: There is no price to be paid if the government fails to stop an attack. But anyone who dares to suggest steps that might prevent terrorist attacks is likely to pay a heavy price in public scorn and ridicule.
Belgium’s 9/11
Belgium is a relatively small European nation with a population of 11 million people. The United States has roughly 30 times Belgium’s population. Comparing the casualties proportionally to our respective populations would be like the U.S. suffering more than 900 people dead and 6,000 wounded.
My point is this: Yesterday’s attack in Brussels, the headquarters of NATO, was Belgium’s 9/11. And that event warranted only 51 seconds of Barack Obama’s time yesterday. After a brief press conference in Havana, the president took in a baseball game. He even did the wave with Raul Castro.
This is not evidence of Obama being tone deaf or frivolous. He is a very serious man. This is his approach to Islamic terror — ignore it as an inconvenient distraction.
As he told ESPN yesterday, “You want to be respectful and understand the gravity of the situation. But the whole premise of terrorism is to try to disrupt people’s ordinary lives.”
Major terrorist attacks be damned. Nothing is going to stop Obama from going to that ball game! How respectful and understanding is that? By the way, at least a dozen Americans were injured in the attacks.
When our enemies strike us or our allies, Obama’s life should be disrupted by planning how to strike back!
Yucking it up with a communist dictator on a day of such tragedy fits Obama’s pattern. After the Benghazi attacks, Obama made a brief statement and then flew off for a fundraiser.
Obama dismissed ISIS as a “junior varsity team.” After the Charlie Hebdo attacks, world leaders streamed to Paris to march arm-in-arm. But not Obama. This is a deliberate effort to downplay and ignore the threat of radical Islamic terrorism.
Bankrupting Nuns
There is one kind of “religious extremism” Obama is all in on fighting — slapping down the beliefs of Christians who take their faith seriously.
Yesterday in Cuba, he legitimized a regime that routinely throws Christians in jail. Today, his lawyers are arguing before the Supreme Court that the Little Sisters of the Poor, if they remain faithful to Catholic teaching, should be bankrupted, even though they serve constituents the president claims to care about.
This is the administration that took years to determine that ISIS was committing genocide against Christians. Obama referred to people who “cling” to their Bibles in a derogatory way. Yesterday the president commented on how much Cuba and America have in common. Hostility to Christianity is one trait his administration and Castro’s seem to share.
Purim
Jews throughout the world are celebrating Purim today. It is the story of Queen Esther, who broke protocol and saved the Jewish people in Persia from a plot to annihilate them.
Just as it did so many centuries ago, Israel is once again facing an existential threat from modern day Persia (Iran), whose leader routinely promises a second Holocaust and the annihilation of Israel.
To all of our Jewish friends and supporters, Chag Purim Sameach!
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