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Polls

Voters Say National Security More Important Than Refugee Asylum

Syrian-Refugees-Reuters

Migrants arrive at the main station in Munich, Germany September 5, 2015. (PHOTO: REUTERS/MICHAEL DALDER)

Secretary of State John Kerry announced over the weekend that the Obama administration will increase the number of worldwide refugees the U.S. accepts each year to 100,000 by 2017, up from 70,000 in response to the Syrian refugee crisis. However, according to a new survey, roughly half of American voters don’t want to take in any refugees, at all, let alone 100,000.

A Rasmussen Reports survey released Tuesday finds 49% of likely voters say no to any and all alleged Syrian refugees, while 20% said they would only support taking in 10,000 total. Still, 50% said they were opposed to the idea of allowing 10,000 to come to the U.S. in a poll conducted immediately after the president’s first announcement, and just 36% supported it.

The results are unsurprisingly when you consider 72% of voters feel that giving thousands of Syrian refugees asylum poses a national security risk to America, which includes 47% who are “Very Concerned.” On the flip side, just 27% don’t share this concern, but that includes just 10% who are “Not At All Concerned.” Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Republicans say they don’t want any refugees from the Middle East relocated to the U.S., which is a view shared by 48% of voters not affiliated with either party and even 40% of Democrats. In fact, few voters in the president’s party want any more than 25,000 new refugees allowed in.

Majorities of voters of all party affiliations are concerned about the national security threat that arises from bringing in Middle Eastern refugees, but Republicans have the strongest concern.

The former group clearly have reason to be concerned, as the Obama administration has flat-out admitted they have no capacity to vet the so-called refugees before they enter the country, and the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL) has repeatedly threatened to use the crisis as an opportunity to implement a trojan horse-like strategy to land terror cells and radical muslim fighters in the U.S. to carry out an open order for terror.

As of this week, just one 21-year old man from Morocco has been arrested on suspicion of being an Islamic State recruiter. However, the German authorities who apprehended the man at a refugee center near Stuttgart admitted he was only on the radar because he already had a European arrest warrant, which was issued by Spanish authorities. He was using a fake ID to pose as an asylum seeker, according to The New Observer, who reported this was the first time German authorities have arrested a terror suspect masquerading as an asylum seeker.

Yet, European Union ministers agreed Tuesday on a plan to resettle approximately 120,000 refugees from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa among member nations. American voters say “knock yourself out,” but want America to have nothing to do with the international scheme.

According to a new survey, roughly half

Policy

Well-Meaning Leftists (Including Pope Francis) Place Too Much Value on Intention Over Results

Pope-Visit-USA-Obama

U.S. President Barack Obama, left, shakes hands with Pope Francis, right, during their meeting at the Vatican March 27, 2014. (PHOTO: REUTERS/KEVIN LAMARQUE)

The biggest mistake of well-meaning leftists is that they place too much value on good intentions and don’t seem to care nearly as much about good results. Pope Francis is an example of this unfortunate tendency. His concern for the poor presumably is genuine, but he puts ideology above evidence when he argues against capitalism and in favor of coercive government.

Here are some passages from a CNN report on the Pope’s bias.

Pope Francis makes his first official visit to the United States this week. There’s a lot of angst about what he might say, especially when he addresses Congress Thursday morning. …He’ll probably discuss American capitalism’s flaws, a theme he has hit on since the 1990s. Pope Francis wrote a book in 1998 with an entire chapter focused on “the limits of capitalism.” …Francis argued that…capitalism lacks morals and promotes selfish behavior. …He has been especially critical of how capitalism has increased inequality… He’s tweeted: “inequality is the root of all evil.” …he’s a major critic of greed and excessive wealth. …”Capitalism has been the cause of many sufferings…”

Wow, I almost don’t know how to respond. So many bad ideas crammed in so few words. If you want to know why Pope Francis is wrong about capitalism and human well-being, these videos narrated by Don Boudreaux and Deirdre McCloskey will explain how free markets have generated unimaginable prosperity for ordinary people.

But the Pope isn’t just wrong on facts. He’s also wrong on morality. This video by Walter Williams explains why voluntary exchange in a free-market system is far more ethical than a regime based on government coercion.

[brid video=”15977″ player=”1929″ title=”Is Capitalism Moral”]

Very well stated. And I especially like how Walter explains that markets are a positive-sum game, whereas government-coerced redistribution is (at best) a zero-sum game. Professor Williams wasn’t specifically seeking to counter the muddled economic views of Pope Francis, but others have taken up that challenge. Writing for the Washington Post, George Will specifically addresses the Pope’s moral preening.

Pope Francis embodies sanctity but comes trailing clouds of sanctimony. With a convert’s indiscriminate zeal, he embraces ideas impeccably fashionable, demonstrably false and deeply reactionary. They would devastate the poor on whose behalf he purports to speak… Francis deplores “compulsive consumerism,” a sin to which the 1.3 billion persons without even electricity can only aspire.

He specifically explains that people with genuine concern for the poor should celebrate industrialization and utilization of natural resources.

Poverty has probably decreased more in the past two centuries than in the preceding three millennia because of industrialization powered by fossil fuels. Only economic growth has ever produced broad amelioration of poverty, and since growth began in the late 18th century, it has depended on such fuels. …The capitalist commerce that Francis disdains is the reason the portion of the planet’s population living in “absolute poverty” ($1.25 a day) declined from 53 percent to 17 percent in three decades after 1981.

So, why doesn’t Pope Francis understand economics? Perhaps because he learned the wrong lesson from his nation’s disastrous experiment with an especially corrupt and cronyist version of statism.

Francis grew up around the rancid political culture of Peronist populism, the sterile redistributionism that has reduced his Argentina from the world’s 14th highest per-capita gross domestic product in 1900 to 63rd today. Francis’s agenda for the planet — “global regulatory norms” — would globalize Argentina’s downward mobility.

Amen (no pun intended). George Will is right that Argentina is not a good role model. And he’s even more right about the dangers of “global norms” that inevitably would pressure all nations to impose equally bad levels of taxation and regulation. Returning to the economic views of Pope Francis, the BBC asked for my thoughts back in 2013 and everything I said still applies today.

[brid video=”15981″ player=”1929″ title=”CATO Economist Dan Mitchell on BBC Discussing Pope Francis Capitalism and the Poor”]

P.S. Let’s close by taking a look at a few examples of how the world is getting better thanks to capitalism. We’ll start with an example of how China’s modest shift toward markets has generated huge reductions in poverty (h/t: Cato Institute).

https://twitter.com/CatoInstitute/status/639672511471427584/photo/1

Now let’s look at how a wealthier society is also a safer society (h/t: David Frum).

https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/643062707705499648/photo/1

Or how about this remarkable measure of higher living standards (h/t: Mark Perry).

https://twitter.com/Mark_J_Perry/status/614797782247936000/photo/1

Here’s an amazing chart showing how something as basic as light used to be a luxury good but now is astoundingly inexpensive for the masses (h/t: Max Roser).

https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/612309197062021120/photo/1

These are just a few random examples of how free markets, when not overly stifled by government, can produce amazing things for ordinary people. We may not notice the results from one year to the next, but the results are remarkable when we examine data over longer periods of time. And if our specific goal is to help the poor, there’s no question that economic growth is far more effective than government dependency. Which is why I’ve explained that it’s better to be a poor person in a capitalist jurisdiction.

I’d much rather be a poor person in a jurisdiction such as Hong Kong or Singapore rather than in a “compassionate” country such as France. France might give me lots of handouts, but I’d remain poor. In a free-market society, by contrast, I could climb out of poverty.

P.P.S. Methinks Pope Francis would benefit from a discussion with Libertarian Jesus.

The problem with well-meaning Leftists, including Pope

Video

“Media Coverage of Republican Candidates “Downright Sad,” and They Better Stop Answering Loaded Questions”

Host Bill O’Reilly said Monday night in his Talking Points on “The O’Reilly Factor” that the media questioning Dr. Ben Carson on muslim presidents “is stupid.”

“It is downright sad,” O’Reilly said of the bias media coverage of the 2016 presidential election cycle. “Here’s a bulletin. Unlike many muslim countries, we have free speech in America,” O’Reilly said. “And Carson’s opinion shouldn’t disqualify him from anything.”

Carson said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he “would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation” because Islam is not consistent with core values and American principles, which were built upon and drawn from the Judaeo-Christian faiths. Carson, a Christian and now retired brilliant child neurosurgeon, is not backing down from his comment.

“All of this PC fog has shrouded important issues,” O’Reilly said, citing a report released by the U.S. Census Bureau last week that showed that median household income, adjusted for inflation, is nearly $1300 lower today than it was when Obama took office. “That means only one thing. President Obama’s economic policies have failed. Democrats will never admit that, but facts are stubborn things.”

“The liberal media largely ignores the facts. Instead trumping up dopey stuff about muslims.”

O’Reilly also rattled off the various foreign policy failures, the most recent of which being a report showing the Obama administration spent $500 million to train a whopping 4 or 5 Syrian fighters to combat the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL). “But the national liberal media aren’t going to cover that because it makes the liberal president look bad.”

This country is devolving quickly, and it has nothing to do with a phony war on women, muslim presidents, or global warming. It has everything to do with staggering incompetence,” O’Reilly added. “The muslim line of questioning is stupid.”

Host Bill O'Reilly said Monday night in

Opinion

Donald Trump

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a town hall event Thursday, Sept. 17, 2015, in Rochester, N.H. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Once again the media are hyping an issue that has nothing to do with the problems confronting this nation. Shame on them for trying to manufacture a controversy — again — about President Obama’s faith.

During a town hall event for Donald Trump in Rochester, New Hampshire, Thursday night, a questioner said that Obama is a Muslim and that “he’s not even an American.”
Democrats, the media and some Republicans pounced on Trump for not condemning the questioner. For all the media’s obsession over it since, you’d think Trump himself called Obama the 12th imam. They are badgering every other candidate to repudiate Trump and affirm that Obama is a wonderful Christian.

This manufactured diversion is one reason Trump is so popular. The critics think they can finish Trump (and others who won’t denounce him) with political correctness — his lack of which has helped catapult him to the top.

Why do the irreligious media believe they can credibly lecture anyone about faith? Why should they take umbrage at a lone questioner’s calling Obama a Muslim? They act as though calling someone a Muslim is slander per se. By their lights, it ought to be a compliment.

If they believed that Obama is a Bible-believing Christian, they’d be hammering him themselves. And if his religion is so important to them, why didn’t they probe it when it would have mattered — the 2008 campaign? Oh, that’s right. They were too busy denying the spiritual bond with his pastor-mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

I watched the video of the questioner, and I think Trump tried to just laugh off the man’s comments without making a statement either way. He did seem to agree that we should look into the alleged jihadi training camps, but that’s about it.

That wasn’t enough for the media, which insist that Trump should have eviscerated the fellow. But let me ask you: If someone challenges Obama’s faith, are we required to say we believe he is a Christian even if we doubt it? Can’t we just politely ignore the matter and move on?

I see no point in raising Obama’s Christianity anymore, but the media are forcing it. Forgive me for not falling all over myself to affirm Obama’s Christianity. It’s true we can’t know for sure what’s in a person’s heart, but we can observe his statements and behavior. Obama’s assertions mean little to me these days. He emphatically asserted not too long ago that he believed marriage should be between a man and a woman. He told us we could keep our doctors and insurance plans when he knew that wouldn’t be true. This is not a man with a track record of authenticity. And he is not a person who has shown any allegiance to Christian values.

For 20 years, he attended Wright’s church, where black liberation theology and anti-Americanism were preached with abandon. It shouldn’t shock you — as I’ve said before — that Wright’s church was more race- and Marxist-oriented than Christ-centered.

Additionally, throughout his presidency, Obama has gone out of his way to belittle Christianity. He demeaned “bitter” Midwesterners who “cling to guns or religion.” He mocked Scripture by saying: “Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith.” It’s hard for me to believe that any God-fearing person would ridicule God’s Word like this.

Obama likened the Christian Crusades to present-day Islamic terrorism. He trampled the conscience rights of Christians when he forced employers to provide abortion-inducing drugs under their Obamacare health plans. He invited a host of anti-traditional Catholics to the White House to meet Pope Francis. He paved the way for the Supreme Court’s fiat legalizing same-sex marriage, knowing that it would lead to further assaults on Christians’ religious liberty.

He has taken Christmas themes out of White House Christmas cards, has removed references to religion from his Thanksgiving speeches, has omitted “the Creator” when quoting from the Declaration of Independence, supports abortion on demand and protects the abortion factory Planned Parenthood. His administration has sought funding for all kinds of sexual education but not those reflecting traditional values.

Obama has also shown preferential treatment toward Islam, from apologies for the U.S. military’s accidental burning of Qurans to blocking Middle Eastern Christians’ access to the White House, effusively praising Islam and overstating its role in America’s heritage, supporting the building of a mosque at ground zero, refusing to attribute terrorist attacks to radical Islam, rewriting government documents to remove terms potentially offensive to Muslims, such as “jihad” and “radical Islam,” turning NASA into a Muslim outreach effort, labeling the Fort Hood shootings “workplace violence,” and so much more.

If you want to see whether Obama embraces the precepts of the Christian faith, research the many curious statements he’s made on the subject.

In the end, though, the question is not whether Obama is a Christian — he’s perfectly free not to be one — but whether Trump or others should be forced to condemn those who question Obama’s faith even if they, too, doubt it. I don’t believe for a second that the media and Democrats are the slightest bit offended about allegations concerning Obama’s faith. They don’t care about his faith. They are just trying to make Trump look like a mean-spirited, racist kook — nothing more, nothing less. Thank goodness he didn’t take the bait.

The media manufactured diversion over Obama's faith

Opinion

Pope-Francis-Raul-Castro

Cuban President Raul Castro gestures as he leaves a private meeting with Pope Francis on Sunday (PHOTO: CNS)

Pope Francis has created political controversy, both inside and outside the Catholic Church, by blaming capitalism for many of the problems of the poor. We can no doubt expect more of the same during his visit to the United States.

Pope Francis is part of a larger trend of the rise of the political left among Catholic intellectuals. He is, in a sense, the culmination of that trend.

There has long been a political left among Catholics, as among other Americans. Often they were part of the pragmatic left, as in the many old Irish-run, big city political machines that dispensed benefits to the poor in exchange for their votes, as somewhat romantically depicted in the movie classic, “The Last Hurrah.”

But there has also been a more ideological left. Where the Communists had their official newspaper, “The Daily Worker,” there was also “The Catholic Worker” published by Dorothy Day.

A landmark in the evolution of the ideological left among Catholics was a publication in the 1980s, by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, titled “Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy.”

Although this publication was said to be based on Catholic teachings, one of its principal contributors, Archbishop Rembert Weakland, said: “I think we should be up front and say that really we took this from the Enlightenment era.”

The specifics of the Bishops’ Pastoral Letter reflect far more of the secular Enlightenment of the 18th century than of Catholic traditions. Archbishop Weakland admitted that such an Enlightenment figure as Thomas Paine “is now coming back through a strange channel.”

Strange indeed. Paine rejected the teachings of “any church that I know of,” including “the Roman church.” He said: “My own mind is my own church.” Nor was Paine unusual among the leading figures of the 18th century Enlightenment.

To base social or moral principles on the philosophy of the 18th century Enlightenment, and then call the result “Catholic teachings” suggests something like bait-and-switch advertising.

But, putting aside religious or philosophical questions, we have more than two centuries of historical evidence of what has actually happened as the ideas of people like those Enlightenment figures were put into practice in the real world — beginning with the French Revolution and its disastrous aftermath.

Both the authors of the Bishops’ Pastoral Letter in the 1980s, and Pope Francis today, blithely throw around the phrase “the poor,” and blame poverty on what other people are doing or not doing to or for “the poor.”

Any serious look at the history of human beings over the millennia shows that the species began in poverty. It is not poverty, but prosperity, that needs explaining. Poverty is automatic, but prosperity requires many things — none of which is equally distributed around the world or even within a given society.

Geographic settings are radically different, both among nations and within nations. So are demographic differences, with some nations and groups having a median age over 40 and others having a median age under 20. This means that some groups have several times as much adult work experience as others. Cultures are also radically different in many ways.

As distinguished economic historian David S. Landes put it, “The world has never been a level playing field.” But which has a better track record of helping the less fortunate — fighting for a bigger slice of the economic pie, or producing a bigger pie?

In 1900, only 3 percent of American homes had electric lights but more than 99 percent had them before the end of the century. Infant mortality rates were 165 per thousand in 1900 and 7 per thousand by 1997. By 2001, most Americans living below the official poverty line had central air conditioning, a motor vehicle, cable television with multiple TV sets, and other amenities.

A scholar specializing in the study of Latin America said that the official poverty level in the United States is the upper middle class in Mexico. The much criticized market economy of the United States has done far more for the poor than the ideology of the left.

Pope Francis’ own native Argentina was once among the leading economies of the world, before it was ruined by the kind of ideological notions he is now promoting around the world.

Pope Francis has created political controversy, both

Opinion

obamacare-obama-lie

President Obama depicted in front of an American flag in reference to his signature healthcare law, ObamaCare.

The morning of the recent Republican debate, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that the number of uninsured Americans in 2014 had dropped by about 9 million from the year before. This was thanks, of course, to the Affordable Care Act.

So it did cross one’s mind that at least one of the Republican presidential candidates might lend a kind word to ObamaCare. After all, some of the largest gains in health coverage were among moderate-income families, a group including much of the Republican base.

A futile hope. Not even Govs. John Kasich of Ohio and Chris Christie of New Jersey — who, to their credit, had accepted the law’s expansion of Medicaid coverage in their states — offered a shred of praise. Instead we heard vows to basically blow it up, the main difference being the number of dynamite sticks to use.

Grudging appreciation for Obamacare has also extended to significant parts of the Democratic base. In the 2012 election, many Democratic candidates actually avoided discussing it. You see, a flood of anti-Obamacare propaganda — which Democrats had neglected to counter — caused support for the program to swoon in the polls.

The new Census Bureau numbers show that African-Americans and Latinos have enjoyed an especially sharp rise in health coverage under Obamacare. And that makes it painful to contemplate these groups’ dismal turnout in the 2014 midterm elections.

Back then, the newly won guaranteed health coverage was under grave threat. Republicans had tried to repeal Obamacare dozens of times. Had a case before the U.S. Supreme Court gone badly, the program could well have been destroyed.

You’d think that low-income Americans would have marched to the polls waving Obamacare flags. Problem was their so-called advocates had moved on to immigration and income inequality and saw the elections as an occasion to blame Democrats for what they held was inadequate progress. They forgot there was something precious to defend — and that Obamacare was a huge advance against said inequality.

Nowadays, Hillary Clinton not only is waving the flag but has hired a brass brand to march behind it. We await the details of her proposals for improving the program. Same goes for Joe Biden, should he choose to run.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent seeking the Democratic nomination, gives Obamacare two cheers but not enough credit. In a recent CNN interview, he said he wants a “Medicare-for-all single-payer health care system.”

Expanding Medicare to everyone happens to be a super idea. But we must note that Medicare is not single-payer. It is a multi-payer program combining government and private coverage. As such, Medicare is more like the top-ranked French and German health care systems than it is the good, but not-as-good, Canadian single-payer program.

Because Medicare has strong public support, Medicare for all can be imagined. It would be a very hard political sell, however. Recall that Democrats couldn’t even get the “public option” past Congress. That was to be a government-run health plan to compete on the new insurance exchanges with the private ones.

Sanders’ own Vermont tried but failed to put together a modified single-payer health plan. If Vermont can’t do single-payer…

Suffice it to say, it would take a master politician to get a greatly expanded Medicare passed in this country. A master politician Sanders is not. But may his vision live on.

Happily, Obamacare now seems safe. Its imperfections well-documented, it remains a work in progress. But whoever is the next president should be grateful to have a universal health care program on which to build.

It did cross one's mind that at

Politics

Scott-Walker-Chamber

FILE – In this Sept. 10, 2015 file photo, Republican presidential candidate, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker speaks in Eureka, Ill. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman, File)

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, once a top candidate in the Republican presidential race, confirmed Monday that he is suspending his campaign. The decision came as a surprise to even Walker’s larger donors, as the man who only a few short months back was considered the Iowa caucus frontrunner told supporters earlier Monday he was fighting and laying it all on the line in the Hawkeye State.

Immediately after the decision to suspend the campaign was reported, fellow 2016 candidate Dr. Ben Carson, said Walker was “an outstanding leader with a strong record of fighting for conservative principles.”

“I wish him the very best,” said Carson, who is currently polling behind frontrunner Donald Trump.

However, the same cannot be said for some of Walker’s most staunchest political opponents. AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka released another brief statement, which played off of his unapologetic comments following the governor’s announcement.

“Scott Walker is still a disgrace, just no longer national.”

Walker needed a big showing and performance going into the second Republican debate hosted by CNN at the Reagan Library, as he began to see his position in the polls precipitate dramatically over the summer, and the campaign struggled to gain traction. PPD’s senior political analyst Richard D. Baris issued a stern warning to Walker in the days before the debate.

“If the Wisconsin governor chooses to ignore it, he will do so at his campaign’s peril. Walker, who was the odds-on favorite in the Iowa caucus up until July, gave a performance in the first debate in Ohio that might have seemed sufficient in an average primary election cycle,” Baris wrote. “But Election 2016 has been anything but average. He simply cannot afford to repeat his prior mistakes–or, the candidate who PPD’s election projection model views to be one of the strongest–will sink into permanent irrelevance.”

But, even though he told Fox News before last Wednesday’s debate at the Reagan Library that he planned to “be aggressive” and show the kind of “passion” that made him the first and only governor in U.S. history to survive a recall election, he didn’t deliver. In fact, Baris says he foolishly chose to use his precious time to attack Trump, rather than convey his message, saying to Trump “we don’t need an apprentice in the White House … we have one right now.”

“He needed to hit it out of the park, fight for his time, and let the supporters he has lost to Carson and Trump know he was still in the fight,” Baris said. “But he instead chose to listen to the typical GOP establishment consulting class. He isn’t the first one to make this mistake, and he won’t be the last.”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who also chose to attack Trump rather than convey his message, suspended his campaign on Sept. 11 ahead of the second debate. Perry was polling below the top ten, which would have meant a second showing on the second-tier stage. With the exit of Walker and Perry, there are now 15 major candidates remaining in the race for the Republican nomination.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Cubs-owning Ricketts family, one of the largest sources of campaign backing for Walker, has reportedly not yet decided who they will support with Walker out of the race. Joe and Marlene Ricketts gave $5 million to Walker’s super PAC, and their son Todd was announced as a campaign finance chair in July.

“No decision has been made,” according to a source close to the campaign. “The Ricketts had previously given money to several other of the campaigns including Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio and Chris Christie, to name a few, and they have great respect for the other candidates, but they wanted to support Scott Walker, they supported his record, they thought he had a good path.”

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, once a top

Editorials

Carly-Fiorina-CNN-GOP-Debate-AP

Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina makes a point during the CNN Republican presidential debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum Sept. 16, 2015, in Simi Valley, Calif. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Following what was an impressive performance at the second Republican debate hosted by CNN, former Hewlitt-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina has caught the attention of network and cable news mediates and pundits. More importantly, for any presidential hopeful, Fiorina has caught the attention of Republican primary voters looking for an alternative to the party establishment and status quo, as well.

In the first three post-debate polls–Morning Consult, CBS/NYT and CNN/Opinion Research–Fiorina saw a +7, +4 and +12 rise in support, respectively. In the PPD Post Republican Debate Poll, Fiorina gained the most in terms of support and second-most in terms of likability, though there was a bit of danger for her buried inside the numbers.

“Despite Fiorina having an overall great night,” noted PPD’s senior political analyst Richard D. Baris, “she exposed a not-so likable side of herself in a few of the exchanges that didn’t sit too well with some of the panelists.”

However, having a stoic or even hardened personality isn’t the primary reason Republican primary voters should proceed with extreme caution as it relates to Carly Fiorina. While we are extremely impressed with her personal story, which includes starting her career as a secretary and ending it as the first woman to lead a Fortune 50 business, the idea that GOP voters looking for a conservative outsider should support her campaign with this cycle’s field of candidates, is an oxymoron.

Further, if voters who are otherwise inclined to support Donald Trump are looking for an alternative outsider, as the media have painted Fiorina to be, they would be sadly mistaken.Why? Because Carly Fiorina is neither a conservative nor an outsider, by any wild stretch of the imagination. And, while Donald Trump’s conservatism can be honestly challenged and debated, Fiorina’s history as an establishment candidate and long-history as an establishment go-to spokesperson, cannot be debate.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane, shall we?

In 2010, Carly Fiorina also ran for U.S. Senate in California as a political outsider and made her very debatable career at HP a centerpiece of her campaign. In reality, Chuck DeVore was the grassroots outsider with all the big-name conservative support (save for Sarah Palin, see more on that debacle here), while Fiorina landed the coveted endorsements of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and the rest of the establishment-riddled National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Though most remember Fiorina won the party nomination, they obviously forget that she was trailing as late as May. She defeated DeVore and former Rep. Tom Campbell by playing the gender card on the former and accusing (unjustly) the latter of being anti-Semitic (oh, and a demon-sheep, no kidding). For a party that claims to despise the politics of race, identity and class, they sure seem quick to warm up to a candidate who repeatedly checks off two out of three.

Worth noting, her support from Sen. McCain conveniently followed her not-so outsider support for Sen. McCain during his failed bid for the presidency. Speaking of which, in a recently resurfaced video from 2008–that will undoubtedly be recycled if she is the GOP nominee–Fiorina felt compelled to admit she had “such great admiration and empathy for Hillary Clinton.”

That’s all well and good, but she said so simply because she is a woman and, further, took a Democrat-like offense to the attacks on Hillary, which she contributed to her simply being a woman.

In 2009, Fiorina told reporters that she agreed with the confirmation of now Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and that she “does not believe in litmus tests” for judges appointed on the high court. That puts her at odds with all but seven Republican senators who had voted against Sotomayor’s confirmation, and inline with Sen. Graham. In 2010, Erick Erickson of Red State criticized Fiorina for what he called her “liberal views,” including but not limited to her support for Justice Sotomayor:

From her praise of Jesse Jackson, to her playing the race and gender cards against DeVore, to her support for the Wall Street bailouts, to her qualified support for the Obama stimulus, to her past support for taxation of sales on the Internet, to her waffling on immigration, to her support for Sonia Sotomayor, to her Master’s thesis advocating greater federal control of local education, to her past support for weakening California’s Proposition 13, to her statement to the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board that Roe v. Wade is “a decided issue,” Carly Fiorina’s oft-repeated claim to be a “lifelong conservative” was only plausible in the universe of NRSC staffers who recruited her in the first place.

Fioria also said Kentucky clerk Kim Davis should resign if refused to issue “gay marriage” licenses, though purports to be pro-traditional marriage; supported federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research for “extra” embyros, though now rails against Planned Parenthood using sensationalized, pre-planned talking points to get a break out moment on the debate stage; agreed with the politically-motivated indictment of six Baltimore police officers, though claims to be pro-police; supported the California Dream ACT, though now claims we must secure the border first; and supported the business potential-killing cap-and-trade bill, though now repeatedly says a leader’s primary job is to “unlock the potential in others” and laments how we are destroying more small businesses each year than we are creating for the first time in U.S. history.

And on, and on, and on. Shall we continue? Don’t worry, we will. But, at least for now, these are the top reasons why Carly Fiorina is neither an outsider, nor a conservative.

While we are extremely impressed with her

Policy

Hillary-Clinton-Bernie-Sanders

Vermont socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, left, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, right. (Photo: AP)

In a perverse way, I admire leftists who openly express their desire for bigger government and less liberty. That’s why I (sort of) applauded when Matthew Yglesias wrote in favor of confiscatory tax rates while admitting the government wouldn’t generate any revenue. And I gave Katrina vanden Heuvel credit for openly admitting her desire to redefine “freedom” so that it means a claim on other people’s income and property.

Both are proposing horrible policy, of course, but at least they’re honest about their goals and motivations. Unlike politicians, they’re not trying to disguise their intentions behind poll-tested platitudes.

We can now add another person to our list of honest leftists. The new leader of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom, Jeremy Corbyn, is a British version of Bernie Sanders, except he really is a socialist who believes in government ownership and control of business. And the chief economic adviser to Corbyn is Richard Murphy.

And, as reported by the U.K.-based Sun, Mr. Murphy openly says everyone’s income belongs to government.

Chartered accountant Richard Murphy, 57, is the brains behind the “Corbynomics” strategy of renationalisation, higher taxes and printing millions of pounds in “new” money. …his bizarre ideas have already sparked fears among Britain’s top economic experts… One of Murphy’s strategies was revealed in August 2014… The dad-of-two claimed taxpayers’ money was NOT their own – and was instead the state’s “rightful property”. Murphy said: “I would suggest that we don’t as such pay taxes. The funds that they represent are, I suggest, in fact the property of the state.”

To be fair, sometimes people mangle their words. To cite one hypothetical example, accidentally omitting a  word like “not” might totally change the meaning of a sentence and give a journalist an opportunity to make a speaker look foolish. So, maybe Mr. Murphy didn’t really mean to say that the government has first claim on everyone’s income.

But if you continue reading, it becomes apparent that he really does believe that government is daddy and the rest of us are children who may be lucky enough to get some allowance.

“…if we give the state the power to define what we can own, how we can own it and, to a very large degree, what we can do with it – and we do – then I would argue that we also give the state the right to say that some part of what we earn or own is actually its rightful property and that we have no choice but pay that tax owed as the quid pro quo of the benefit we enjoy from living in community. Murphy went on: “Well let me inform you that there is no such thing as ‘taxpayers’ money’: it is the government’s money to do what it will with in accordance with the mandate it has been given and for which it will have to account.

Wow, this truly gives us a window into the soul of statism.

Though let’s be fair to Murphy. He’s simply stating that untrammeled majoritarianism is a moral basis for public policy, even if it means 51 percent of the population ravages 49 percent of the population. And that’s an accurate description of how economic policy works in the United States ever since the Supreme Court decided to toss out the Constitution’s limits on the power of the federal government.

Moreover, Murphy’s view is basically reflected inthe “tax expenditure” concept used in Washington and the “state aid” concept in the European Union. None of this justifies Murphy’s poisonous ideology. Instead, I’m simply making the grim point that statists already have achieved some of their goals. But maybe it will be easier to counter further attacks on economic liberty now that Murphy has openly said what his side wants.

P.S. There are two types of honest leftists. Richard Murphy, like Matt Yglesias and Katrina vanden Heuvel, are honest in that they openly state what they really believe, even when it exposes their radical agenda.

Some other folks on the left have a better type of honesty. They’re willing to admit when there is a contradiction between statist ideology and real-world results. Just look at what Justin Cronin and Jeffrey Goldberg wrote about gun control and what Nicholas Kristof wrote about government-created dependency.

Unlike U.S. leftists, U.K. Labour Party leader

Video

[brid video=”15931″ player=”1929″ title=”Carly Fiorina in 2008 “I Have Such Great Admiration and Empathy for Hillary Clinton””]

A video from 2008 has surfaced showing Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina praising Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, stating that she has “great admiration” for her because of her achievements as a woman.

In the 2008 video, Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, announces her support for then-Republican presidential candidate John McCain, but simultaneously praises Clinton out of her desire to “empower women.”

“This is why perhaps I have such great admiration and empathy for Hillary Clinton,” Fiorina says in the video. “I have great admiration for her because I know what it takes in some small measure to do what she has done. She is obviously incredibly intelligent, focused, tough, determined, empathetic of all the tens of millions of people that she was trying to represent in her quest to become the first woman president of the United States.”

“And as a woman, I take great pride in the fact that Hillary Clinton ran for president,” she continues. “And I also watched with a lot of empathy as I saw how she was scrutinized, characterized, talked about as a woman.”

A 2008 video has surfaced showing Republican

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