Posted on 01/20/2016 10:09:44 AM PST by Kaslin
If you are among those voters who think that America's 2016 presidential election has become the laughingstock of the world, you are not alone.
There was a time when our elections were civilized and dignified, and the candidates stuck to the issues and were respectful of one another as they traded blows in the political arena.
But this election will go down as one of the craziest in American political history, where all the campaign rules are broken, the electorate is more divided than ever, the really big issues aren't being addressed and the top candidates are behaving like schoolchildren.
Remember when Dwight Eisenhower declared that "I will go to Korea," to end that bloody, all-but-forgotten war? Or when former California governor Ronald Reagan repelled President Jimmy Carter's attack in a debate by simply saying, "There you go again"?
Fast-forward to the present day and you have Republican front-runner Donald Trump, a clownish, former reality TV star, insulting his way closer to the nomination, as members of Parliament debated whether to ban him from Great Britain.
During the three-hour debate, in response to a petition signed by nearly 600,000 Brits, Trump was ignominiously called a "buffoon," a "demagogue," a "joke," a "fool" and an "idiot."
Labour Party member Jack Dromey argued that "Donald Trump is free to be a fool. But he is not free to be a dangerous fool in Britain."
The issue was triggered by the bombastic billionaire's proposal last month to ban all Muslims from entering the United States.
Trump has a habit of often making things up, as he apparently did last year when he said he saw "thousands and thousands" of Muslims in New Jersey cheering when New York's twin towers were destroyed on 9/11. There was no evidence this ever occurred, and Trump hasn't provided any, ridiculing the award-winning New York Times reporter who covered Trump's story and expressed doubts over its authenticity.
More recently, Trump alleged that areas of London populated by Muslim radicals were off-limits to police. Members of Parliament offered during their debate to take him on a tour of the city to prove that was not true.
Other allies are worried about other over-the-top GOP candidates, like freshman Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who has called for "carpet bombing" terrorist locations, even if they lie within civilian-populated urban areas.
The contest for the Democratic presidential nomination, between former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who calls himself a "democratic socialist, is growing nastier, too.
Their race is neck-and-neck in New Hampshire and Iowa, with both of them re-arguing who is to blame for the financial collapse that led to the 2008 recession.
"Senator Sanders, you're the only one on this stage that voted to deregulate the financial market in 2000 ... which (was) one of the main causes of the collapse in '08," Clinton said during Sunday night's debate on NBC.
She was referring to Sanders' vote to deregulate the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. What Clinton did not say was that her husband, President Bill Clinton, signed the bill into law.
Sanders, a demagogue if ever there were one, is going around the country blaming Wall Street for the subprime mortgage collapse and the Great Recession that followed.
That's not who economist Peter J. Wallison, one of the 10 members of the government's Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, blames.
In a bitter dissent from the commission's 2011 majority report, he blamed powerful members of Congress who pushed "affordable loans" legislation on the mortgage industry that allowed millions of Americans with shaky finances to buy homes they could not afford, with little or no money down.
A housing bubble may happen again, Wallison said in a 2014 New York Times op-ed column. "According to the American Enterprise Institute's National Mortgage Risk Index data set for October 2013, about half of those getting mortgages to buy homes -- not to refinance -- put 5 percent or less down," he said.
Democrats in Congress were responsible for this costly calamity. Lawmakers like former Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and former Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts plunged the economy into a recession with no-down-payment loans.
And in the wake of that economic catastrophe, they are coming up with new ways to bankrupt our country. Consider Sanders' big-spending socialist agenda that, among other things, wants to see "Medicare for All." His single-payer plan would cost a whopping $1.38 trillion a year, according to his campaign documents. The money would come from premiums paid by employers and families, and higher income tax rates.
Sanders' socialist war cry is targeting millionaires and billionaires, major corporations and big businesses, and investors who provide the capital needed to expand businesses, create new start-up firms and good-paying jobs.
But his proposed tax increases won't stop there. He says some middle-class families will pay "slightly more" in taxes, too. His agenda will irreparably hurt our country. It will destroy jobs, shrink incomes and weaken our nation at every level.
The job market remains anemic, especially for college graduates. For millions of us, wages are flat. Retail sales, the economy's most important barometer, fell last month at the height of the Christmas season. What does that tell you?
And now the voters are facing, among the presidential front-runners, the scariest candidate lineup in many years.
shocked that this was written at Townhall.
Deriding trump and cruz.
never took them for a rino outlet.
is there ONE site that is consistently conservative with all of its articles.
Trump alleged that areas of London populated by Muslim radicals were off-limits to police. Members of Parliament offered during their debate to take him on a tour of the city to prove that was not true.
Can you say, Potemkin Village?
Charlotte Hubbell-Clinton-Mezvinsky’s grandma.
What a sweetheart!
If you already have, thank you.
Oh sure. World politics is in GREAT shape! Boy Trudeaux in Canada. Some leftist jerk whose name I forget elected in the land of Oz. And aren’t Germany, Norway, France, England, et al., doing a great job with Muslim invaders. Or there’s those Commies in South America. Or the little fellow with all the medals in North Korea.
And this jerk thinks Trump looks bad in comparison?
He writes this line and has the audacity to complain about the candidates? Hypocrite. Shrill, whiny GOPe hypocrite.
Best. Election. Ever.
I was respectful of Daniel Moynihan, and many others in his day, but it has been a long time since prominent democrats at the national level merited respect. Obama is shockingly evil, and anyone who supports him is unworthy of respect or of civil dialog.
The idea of Obamacare - mandatory purchase of a private product - is offensive. The idea of punishing the free exercise of religion is disgusting. The idea of infringing on our God-given individual right to keep and bear arms is revolting. The idea of rewarding criminals who entered our country illegally by presenting them with citizenship is lawless and un-American. The idea of running up our national debt, a burden on our children and grandchildren, from $11T to $19T in the first seven years under the druggie, is simply reprehensible. I will not treat those who support such ideas as if they were worthy of respect.
Maybe, maybe not.
Lambro lost me right there. Look up Trump's original statement. It was prefaced with "Until we can get a handle on the situation . . ." or, IOW, figuring out how to tell the Muslims who mean us harm from those who don't. We can't, because we are too damn afraid of profiling and political correctness.
Singapore, just to name one example, is not and has far less per capita trouble with Muslims being 15% of their population than we do with 1% . . . because we are too damn afraid of political correctness.
“Best. Election. Ever.”
Definitely is for sure. However, because of our country’s protracted and horrific predicament, we now get to witness the unprecedented bitterness of candidate supporters go nuclear. Something tells me that if Trump wins there will be very few attempts to mend strained relationships.
You want this election cycle explained? Listen to Rush Limbaugh’s show today.
I must say we have some of the most clownish and embarrassing candidates in our nations history: Bernie, Hillary, Jeb! Kasich, Trump.....these people are just crying out to be made fun of.
There was a time when our elections were civilized and dignified, and the candidates stuck to the issues and were respectful of one another as they traded blows in the political arena.
Lambro seems to be historically ignorant. I give you Burr and Hamilton. Let me know when the dueling starts.
Sorry DL but you are imagining a world that never existed. This is utter nonsense to anyone who has been in politics for decades. Our elections now MIRROR what is SOP for most European elections.
i’m one of the few that like both.
dont like seeing either misrepresented.
if trump is the man, he has to CRUSH sanders because sanders is @#$@#$ insane communist.
his tax policies are INSANE!!!!
58 percent, even on investments, for those that are “rich”
i.e. 250k or more.
in NYC i made 80k doing simple graphics work because it was easy money and i’m lazy.
250k is not hard to make in the city. and he will take more than half of that, before sales tax, water tax, cellphone tax, heating tax, electricity tax, tax on used cars, am i leaving anything out? oh, 60 cent per gallon gas tax.
i know in most of the country, 250k is an awful lot. not when a house is 1 million or more
I like both as well and would love to see them run on the same ticket.
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