LIBERTARIANS POISED TO ‘SEIZE THE OPPORTUNITY’
Polls and press coverage reveal that Americans have a real hankering for a third party as the presidential election season drags on. The Libertarian Party is happy to fill the bill; the national organization has revamped its website and voter outreach and will stage a splashy convention next month in Florida. Its leading presidential candidates are getting noticed. Gary Johnson, technology entrepreneur John McAfee, and Libertarian Republic founder Austin Petersen made robust showing at an initial Fox Business Network forum last week moderated by primetime host John Stossel, complete with live audience.
It was followed by a second broadcast, this featuring questions from Fox personalities Bill O’Reilly, Eric Bolling, Dana Perino, Juan Williams and Andrew Napolitano. Mr. Stossel, meanwhile, agrees that the Libertarian Party is ramping up its efforts in concert with voter dissatisfaction.
“They sure are,” he tells Inside the Beltway, citing ElectionBettingOdds.com, a website that currently reveals that the inevitable favorites are Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
“Both want to limit our freedom. Hillary wants to micromanage every inch of life, and police the world. Donald wants to punish me for buying things from foreigners, or having the wrong religion. I want to be left mostly free, and all the libertarian candidates want to do that, and all would be better than the major party front-runners,” Mr. Stossel declares.
“As the race heats up, more, now than ever, Americans are looking for someone who represents their beliefs,” the candidate Mr. Petersen, a pro-life Libertarian, tells the Beltway. “In rejecting the major party frontrunners, third parties, such as the Libertarian Party, have an excellent chance to be more relevant than ever, and it is important that we seize this opportunity.”
FOR THE LEXICON
“Soft utopia”
— Term coined by former diplomat and author Todd Huizinga to describes the current state of the European Union.
THE POWER OF TRUMP’S STREAMLINED CAMPAIGN
Presidential rivals have telling numbers beyond polls. Consider that Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton’s campaign spent $51 million on TV and radio ads last month, while her GOP counterpart Donald Trump spent nothing according to Ad Age. But wait. He still managed to garner 72 percent of the broadcast coverage says a new analysis from the Media Research Center. Meanwhile, Mrs. Clinton has seven times as many people on her campaign staff as Mr. Trump, her team operating from an 80,000 square-foot office in Brooklyn.
“Trump’s campaign employs a core team of about a dozen people; his campaign lists 94 people on the payroll nationwide, according to the latest Federal Election Commission filing. Hillary Clinton has 765. Trump has no pollsters, no media coaches, or speech writers. He focus-groups nothing. He buys few ads, and when he does, he likes to write them himself. He also writes his own tweets, his main vehicle for communicating with his supporters. And it was his idea to adopt Ronald Reagan’s slogan ‘make America great again,’” writes New York Magazine correspondent Gabriel Sherman, who recently visited the candidate at his Manhattan campaign headquarters to find them scarcely as big as a campus newspaper office.
“I’m the strategist,” Mr. Trump told the writer.
EUROPEANS WEARY OF A BORDERLESS WORLD
A borderless Europe is falling out of vogue among uneasy Germans, French and Italians who are now unnerved by recent terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels, this according to a new poll published Tuesday. Majorities in the three nations would prefer their governments end “Schengen” — an agreement which allows people to travel within 26 European nations without showing a passport. The Institut Français d’Opinion Publique, a French polling company, found that 66 percent of Germans and 60 percent of Italians were against Schengen. Among the French, the number was 72 percent.
The attacks in Brussels and Paris “stoked the feeling that things have escalated out of control,” research director Jerome Fourquet told Suddeutsche Zeitung, a national newspaper based in Munich. “Before, people always said that an end to Schengen would mean the beginning of the end of the whole EU.”
VOTERS: LIFE STINKS
Public complaints about life in America fuel campaign rhetoric. But these complaints are very real. Dissatisfied, alarmed voters say life isn’t what it used to be, and it’s driving their politics.An extensive new Pew Research Center survey reveals that overall, 46 percent of registered voters say life in America today is worse than it was 50 years ago “for people like them.” The partisan divide here is epic. Among Republicans, 66 percent say life has gotten worse in this country — compared to 28 percent of Democrats.
THE GOP IS HERE TO HELP
Weekend reading? Well, maybe. The Republican National Committee has just launched a helpful guide to the ins and outs, backdoors, side exits and mysteries of the upcoming Republican National Convention in Cleveland, now just 15 weeks away. Find it at ConventionFacts.gop
THE LION’S LEGACY
Many still ponder the untimely passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. A new book offers insight: “Scalia’s Court: A Legacy of Landmark Opinions and Dissents” — edited by Kevin Ring, former counsel to the U.S. Senate’s Constitution Subcommittee — provides a collection of Scalia’s most memorable opinions on free speech, separation of powers, race, religious freedom, the rights of the accused, abortion, and more. These are Scalia’s own words plus significant analysis of his legal reasoning and his lasting impact on American jurisprudence.
Published Monday by Regnery, “Scalia’s Court” is a definitive guide to “the lion of American law” and his legacy as a constitutional patriot. “I don’t worry about my legacy,” Scalia once told an audience at the National Archives. “Just do your job right, and who cares?”
WHAT TO DO AFTER NOV. 6
Yes, there will actually be a presidential election after all the campaign hysteria. But what happens after the big day? That brings us to the National Review’s 2016 Caribbean “Post-Election Cruise,” which departs Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Nov. 13 — bound for the Bahamas, Cayman Islands and other cheerful ports.
“This is not your typical cruise,” the publication advises, boasting of “scintillating seminars” and a late-night smoker with “world-class H. Upmann cigars.”The 25 speakers here include thoughtful luminaries of the conservative variety, among them former Rep. Allen West, syndicated columnist Jonah Goldberg, Commentary Magazine editor John Podhoretz, Americans for Life President Charmaine Yoest and former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy. Curious? Check NRcruise.com for details.
MEGYN’S OTHER OPTIONS
Fox News recently announced it planned to produce a one-hour talk and interview show for primetime host Megyn Kelly, who clashes, from time to time, with Republican front-runner Donald Trump. The analysts are watching.
‘Your contract is up after the election. Have you decided if you’re staying at Fox News?” Variety’s New York bureau chief Ramin Setoodeh asked Ms. Kelly.
“I haven’t,” she replied. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’ve had a great 12 years here, and I really like working for Roger Ailes. I really like my show, and I love my team. But you know, there’s a lot of brain damage that comes from the job. There was probably less brain damage when I worked in the afternoon. I was less well known. I had far less conflict in my life.”
She later added, “I do love covering the news. I just don’t think that’s the perfect thing for me.”
STILL VIGILANT AGAINST GITMO
Yes, there is new Republican legislation meant to counter President Obama’s determination to close the Guantanamo Bay prison facility. Introduced by Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, the “Detaining Terrorists to Protect Americans Act” bars the White House from transferring any detainee to any foreign country, and quashes efforts to close the site or transfer prisoners to jails on these shores. Sen. Tim Scott has quickly signed on as a co-sponsor; the South Carolina lawmaker has pushed back for months over suggestions that Guantanamo prisoners be transferred to a jail in his own state.
“While the Obama administration seems willing to ignore the national safety interests of America with their ongoing actions, I will not,” he says, noting that many other nations are ill equipped to take on Guantanamo prisoners. “Unlike the president, I believe we should not only not be releasing terrorists from Gitmo, but we should be filling it up with captured members of ISIS and other terrorist groups.”
DON’T GROW UP TO BE A POLITICIAN
There’s a survey for everything, including perceptions about careers. And at the moment, the political calling is not a very popular one among Americans. On a list of 30 possible “prestigious” career choices, politician is ranked No. 26 — only outranking stockbroker, video game developer, real estate broker and — in last place — public relations consultant. More telling, the political career ranks dead last on the list as a future profession for children. Only 30 percent of the respondents, in fact, would encourage a child to enter politics.
CHELSEA MOMENTUM
She has stepped up for Hillary Clinton’s campaign: that would be pregnant daughter Chelsea Clinton, who recently hosted a half dozen back-to-back fundraisers in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas. The younger Clinton, who baby is due around June, has told audiences that her obstetrician has approved her travel and appearances, as long as she is not standing up too much. But the expectant mother is also ramping up her own brand of campaign rhetoric, prompting some observers to wonder if she’s considering running for office herself.
“I think that the level of vitriol goes beyond anything that we certainly have seen in contemporary times in this election,” she said during a recent press conference in Milwaukee. “The normalization of hate speech, the racism, the sexism, Islamophobia, the anti-immigrant rhetoric, the homophobia, the rhetoric against worker’s rights, against Americans with disabilities. I mean, the list just goes on and on and on. I mean, this is not our country, these are not our values.”
POLL DU JOUR
69 percent of U.S. college students say campuses should be able to restrict slurs or languages offensive to “certain groups.”
63 percent say campuses should be able to restrict the wearing of costumes that stereotype racial or ethnic groups.
49 percent say it’s legitimate to restrict the press at a protest if participants “believe the press will be unfair to them.”
48 percent say it’s legitimate to restrict the press at a protest because participants “have a right to be left alone.
44 percent say it’s legitimate to restrict the press at a protest if participants “want to tell their own story online or in social media.
Source: A Gallup/Knight Foundation poll of 3.072 U.S. college students conducted Feb. 29 - March 15 and released Tuesday.
Cranky outbursts and calm assessments to jharper@washingtontimes.com
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