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In an appearance on the so-called “pancakes and politics” town hall series from New Hampshire and broadcasted on NBC’s “Today,” Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump dismissed recent polling that suggested he had fallen behind in the early primary state of Iowa.
Trump told NBC’s Matt Lauer that he considered those polls to be outliers and that he still draws huge crowds in the Hawkeye state.
“I don’t believe I have fallen behind,” he replied. “It was one poll, a second poll, small poll and I was in Iowa three days ago,” Trumps said. “We had a town hall that was packed. There were thousands of people standing outside.”
Trump took aim at The Des Moines Register, which conducted one of the polls that showed Trump falling from his summer highs, and he went on to reiterated he considers himself to be the front-runner.
“The Des Moines Register is a terrible paper as far as I’m concerned,” he explained. “It really is. Very liberal paper, by the way. I believe — and I’ve been winning in Iowa. And by the way, I have other polls in Iowa that say I am winning. This is two small polls. And all over the country, I am winning by massive numbers. But I will say I think I’m winning in Iowa. I think I’m doing really well with evangelicals, with Tea Party, with everything else. We’ll see what happens — but that was the only on where I had a slight not lead.”
http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/10/26/trump-i-dont-believe-im-r...
**Written by Doug Powers
Remember the former IRS official who pleaded the Fifth multiple times after the agency admitted targeting of conservative groups? Yeah, the woman who helped coordinate the targeting did nothing at all illegal, according to the DOJ:
The Justice Department notified members of Congress on Friday that it is closing its two-year investigation into whether the IRS improperly targeted tea party and other conservative groups.
There will be no charges against former IRS official Lois Lerner or anyone else at the agency, the Justice Department said in a letter.
The probe found “substantial evidence of mismanagement, poor judgment and institutional inertia leading to the belief by many tax-exempt applicants that the IRS targeted them based on their political viewpoints. But poor management is not a crime.”
“Poor management is not a crime” should be the Obama administration’s armorial motto.
If you’re keeping score at home, here’s the number of people in this administration who have been held accountable for anything:
http://michellemalkin.com/2015/10/23/friday-injustice-dump-doj-is-c...
October 27, 2015, 08:00 am
By Jesse Byrnes
Donald Trump early Tuesday attacked a surging Ben Carson on abortion, suggesting the retired neurosurgeon has "an unusual stance" on the divisive topic.
"Ben, he was pro-abortion not so long ago, as everybody has told me," Trump said. "And all of a sudden he's so hard on abortion under no circumstances, virtually."
"That's an unusual stance," said Trump, who has said he is in favor of abortion exceptions in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the mother arises.
Trump, who described himself in 1999 as "very pro-choice," has gone after Carson on the topic before, but is hitting the issue again as Carson surges in recent polling.
Carson surpassed Trump in the early voting state of Iowa in several polls released in the past week, and a New York Times/CBS News poll released Tuesday found him edging out the real estate tycoon nationally. Carson leads Trump by more than 20 points among evangelicals, according to that new poll.
Trump, who will appear alongside him Wednesday night at the next GOP debate, suggested Tuesday that Carson will face intense scrutiny now that he is viewed as a front-runner.
"And they'll look at lots of other things, including what happened in hospitals and what he was working on," Trump said on MSNBC.
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/258181-trump...
By Jordan Fabian - 10/27/15 12:01 AM EDT
Seeking to build support for a bipartisan criminal justice overhaul, President Obama will speak to a group of police chiefs on Tuesday in his hometown of Chicago.
But Obama also plans to wade into the politically divisive issue of gun control during his speech to the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
Obama is seeking to capitalize on bipartisan momentum behind reducing the nation's large prison population, which could hand him a major legislative victory during his final 15 months in office.
The president and Democrats argue mass incarceration has ripped apart families across the country, especially in communities of color. Republicans have emphasized the high cost of imprisoning nonviolent drug offenders.
Obama asked Congress this summer to send him a criminal justice reform bill by year's end. That effort took a step forward last week, when the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced a proposal that would reduce certain mandatory minimum sentences.
The legislation still faces a long road to passage -- the House and Senate must vote on it. But if it reaches Obama's desk, it would be a significant achievement given partisan divisions in Congress that have been deepened by election-year politics.
At the same time, Obama has vented his frustration at lawmakers for failing to pass new restrictions on gun sales following a series of mass shootings that have cast a cloud over his presidency.
The White House is aware of the symbolism of speaking out on the issue in Chicago, where gun violence has reached record levels. The city had experienced 2,300 shootings this year as of the end of September, up by 400 at the same point in 2014. Homicides have jumped by 21 percent.
"The problem of gun violence is all too familiar to our nation’s police officers and is a critical threat to public safety and their safety," the White House official said.
Obama said he would not be afraid to "politicize" the issue of mass shootings earlier this month after a gunman killed ten people at an Oregon community college.
The president pushed for a package of new gun laws following the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which included expanded background checks and bans on assault weapons.
But the effort collapsed in the face of opposition from gun-rights groups, such as the National Rifle Association, and Republicans in Congress who are united in the view that new gun laws would violate Americans' Second Amendment rights. Obama is now weighing executive actions to impose new background check requirements on certain gun sellers.
GOP lawmakers point out gun violence continues to plague Chicago despite having some of the strictest gun laws in the country.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Monday the Windy City is a "good illustration" of why there needs to be a uniform approach to gun control.
"It’s too easy for those with bad intentions to just cross the city line or cross the county line to go and make a handgun purchase that they’re prevented from making in some other jurisdictions," he said. "Chicago ends up being a pretty good illustration for why those kinds of national laws are important to the safety of communities all across the country."
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/258174-obama-to-push-for...
By Scott Wong and Megan R. Wilson - 10/27/15 06:00 AM EDT
Paul Ryan has been at the center of Washington politics for more than two decades, but his inner circle is small, close-knit and guarded.
With the Wisconsin Republican set to ascend to the Speaker’s office on Thursday, there’s been a scramble to identify Ryan’s closest friends in Congress and his most trusted advisers off Capitol Hill.
His wife, Janna, a former Hill staffer and lobbyist, is probably his most trusted counselor; she played a key role in Ryan’s deliberations this month over whether to leave his dream job as Ways and Means Committee chairman and take a leadership post he claims he never wanted in the first place.
On Sunday, Ryan made his first official move as incoming Speaker, tapping Washington lobbyist and Hill leadership veteran David Hoppe as his chief of staff.
The self-described policy wonk is expected to fill out his team in the coming days, bringing on staffers from the Ways and Means Committee and Ryan’s congressional office, as well as other friends and allies he’s worked with since arriving in Washington as a lowly aide in 1992.
“He’ll be strong on policy, but who can he bring in to work the politics of the conference?” asked a senior House GOP aide. “Hoppe is a good first step, but he will need a lot more operators to be successful.”
Lawmakers
Most nights of the week, outgoing Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) — the merlot-sipping, cigarette-smoking Speaker for nearly the past five years — could be found at the Barracks Row mainstay Trattoria Alberto with his close lawmaker buddies, former Rep. Tom Latham (R-Iowa), former Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) and Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.).
But Ryan doesn’t regularly appear around town with the same crew. Instead, the Ways and Means Committee chairman counts several fellow chairmen — in particular, Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.) and Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) — as among his closest colleagues on the Hill.
Price was Ryan’s deputy when the latter was Budget Committee chairman — a period when Ryan authored several GOP fiscal blueprints that called for trillions in spending cuts and controversial reforms to Medicare.
Earlier this month, Ryan endorsed Price over Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) and GOP Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) in the majority leader’s race. That race was called off after Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) unexpectedly bowed out of the race for Speaker, but Scalise and McMorris Rodgers will now be two of Ryan’s top lieutenants.
Ryan is also close to two of his Badger State GOP colleagues, former Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner and Rep. Sean Duffy, a former state prosecutor and reality TV star.
GOP Reps. Kevin Brady (Texas), Devin Nunes (Calif.) and Pat Tiberi (Ohio) are vying to replace Ryan as chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means panel. But Ryan is a close friend of all three men, making it tough for him to endorse in the race for one of the most prized gavels.
“Paul Ryan is viewed as a fair, even-handed person,” said Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who dropped his own bid for Speaker after Ryan jumped in the race. “He doesn’t have some mysterious go-to group. I believe he will lean on the committees and the process will be better for it.”
Capitol Hill staffers
Ryan’s pick for chief of staff, Squire Patton Boggs lobbyist David Hoppe, was well received around Washington. A top aide to then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), Hoppe would become the first person in modern history to serve as chief of staff to both the top leader in the House and the Senate.
“Dave is wise, so people should have confidence in his judgment,” said former Senate GOP Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), for whom Hoppe also served as chief of staff.
None of the other posts in the Speaker’s office are firmed up. But another longtime confidante, Joyce Meyer, the Ways and Means staff director who has been with Ryan since he was elected to Congress in 1998, may take a role as Ryan’s liaison to House members, said a GOP source. Like Hoppe, Meyer also hails from Wisconsin, as does Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, a close friend of Ryan’s.
Other top Ryan aides include Andrew Speth, chief of staff to his congressional office and an Iraq War veteran, and Kevin Seifert, a former Ryan campaign manager and spokesman who’s now the nine-term congressman’s D.C. office chief of staff.
Ways and Means Communications Director Brendan Buck, a former Boehner press secretary, is well positioned to lead Ryan’s communications operation. He connected with Ryan in 2012, serving as his press secretary after Mitt Romney tapped Ryan as his running mate.
Other Ryan aides include Matt Hoffmann, Ryan’s health staff director who also has Romney connections; Ted McGann, who specializes on entitlements and graduated from Ryan’s alma mater, Miami University of Ohio; and Austin Smythe, described as a “budget guru” who just last week was tasked with briefing chiefs of staff about the reconciliation process and why a full ObamaCare repeal could not be done.
Off the Hill, Ryan often seeks advice from Dan Senor, a foreign policy adviser to the Romney/Ryan campaign; Yuval Levin, the conservative founding editor of National Affairs; and Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics & Public Policy Center.
K Street
While Ryan has logged 17 years as the representative of Wisconsin’s 1st District, there are only three former Ryan aides who have become registered lobbyists — Paul Eiting at America’s Health Insurance Plans; Peter Fotos of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America; and Brendon Weiss, an in-house lobbyist for Intercontinental Exchange, Inc.
The Midwestern lawmaker’s closest friendships on K Street, however, date back decades.
In 1995, Ryan served as a legislative director for Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback (R), who has gone on to become governor of the state. Many of his associates date back to those days, including Brownback’s former chief of staff, Tim McGivern, who is now at Ogilvy Government Relations.
Former Brownback aide Howard Waltzman, a partner at Mayer Brown; Goldman Sachs in-house lobbyist Michael Thompson; Daniel Mattoon, former deputy chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee; and former Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.) are other trusted friends on K Street.
Others who have worked closely with Ryan include Stephen Pinkos at American Continental Group; Brett Loper, a former Boehner aide now at American Express; Darren Willcox at W Strategies; Brian Conklin, an in-house lobbyist at insurance company USAA; and Rob Collins and Mike Ference at S-3 Group, both of whom worked for former Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.).
Before Congress, Ryan had served as an aide at the conservative think tank Empower America, whose co-founders William Bennett and the late Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.) became two of Ryan’s most important early mentors.
Bennett, former President Ronald Reagan’s Education secretary, appeared on stage with Ryan last year at Reagan’s Presidential Library as Ryan promoted his new book, “The Way Forward.”
Empower America later morphed into the Tea Party-aligned FreedomWorks.
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/258166-inside-paul-ryans-brain-trust
Contrary to Republican establishment propaganda, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is not reliably conservative. He has strayed so far from the conservative mainstream that his recent voting record alone ought to instantly disqualify him from consideration as the next speaker of the House.
He is the wrong man at the wrong time. If Ryan ends up wielding the speaker's gavel, the low-intensity civil war bubbling in the Grand Old Party may quickly go nuclear.
And the fact that Ryan wants to make veteran Beltway lobbyist David Hoppe his chief of staff in the speaker's office should concern conservatives. Ryan describes his fellow Wisconsinite as "a foot soldier in the conservative movement," but Hoppe also reportedly "has a record of working across the aisle" when working across the aisle means working against conservatives. As the Washington Examiner reports:
He currently serves as a senior advisor to the Bipartisan Policy Center, a nonprofit founded by former Senate Majority Leaders Howard Baker and Bob Dole, both Republicans, and Tom Daschle and George Mitchell, both Democrats, in 2007 to foster cooperation between congressional Democrats and Republicans.
Well, that's one way of putting it.
The Bipartisan Policy Center is a think-tank that leans left. (In fairness, it is not as radical as John Podesta's Center for American Progress or the downright kooky Institute for Policy Studies.) BPC's star attractions, former Sens. Daschle and Mitchell, are obvious left-wingers; Baker, who passed away last year, did serve in the Reagan White House but only after losing to the Gipper; and George H.W. Bush in the 1980 primaries and the retired 92-year-old Dole weren’t exactly “severe” conservatives, as Mitt Romney might put it. In other words, there are currently no inspirational conservative figureheads to look up to at this so-called bipartisan think-tank.
BPC president and co-founder Jason Grumet is an Ivy Leaguer who served as a senior advisor on energy and environmental issues for Obama's 2008 campaign. The month before Obama trounced John McCain, Grumet bragged that the would-be administration "would initiate those rulemakings" needed to classify carbon dioxide, the gas essential to plant life that you breathe out of your lungs, as a dangerous pollutant in need of a crackdown.
BPC, which in 2005 hailed the advent of carbon emissions trading as "the auspicious intersection of climate change science and business imperative," is underwritten by the Joyce Foundation. Barack Obama used to serve on Joyce's board, and the foundation funded the so-called school reform initiatives of unrepentant terrorist and Obama buddy Bill Ayers. BPC is also funded by well-endowed pillars of the left-wing philanthropic establishment, including the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (the MacArthur "Genius Award" people), the Rockefeller Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Carnegie Corp. of New York, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation.
Suffice it to say that having someone like Hoppe as Ryan's chief enforcer isn't something that should comfort conservatives.
Students of politics know that Ryan has long benefited from his reputation as a conservative, but the question that needs to be asked is, conservative compared to what? In recent years, at least, his reputation has been undeserved. Ryan is a conservative only in the dual sense that he supports the status quo and that his policy objectives and votes in the House of Representatives are to the right of the overwhelmingly left-wing and radical left-wing members of the media-entertainment-academia complex.
When it comes to actually doing things instead of just flapping one's lips, Ryan is somewhere between a liberal and a mushy moderate. In choosing a successor to John Boehner (R-Ohio), it is essential that Ryan be judged by his actual deeds, not just by his public image.
Whether Ryan is a RINO depends on where you sit. As a colleague reminds me daily – no, make that hourly – the RINO epithet is not primarily an ideological descriptor. A "Republican In Name Only" is first and foremost a self-identified Republican who refuses to fight. For example, no serious person would argue that Rudy Giuliani, who is out of step with most Republicans on abortion and gun control, is a RINO. Rudy, who is willing to take the fight to his adversaries, is about as tough as they come.
Ryan is certainly no wimp. He definitely has a lot of fight in him. But on issues of importance, he's regularly working against conservative goals.
Plenty of pundits have succumbed to Ryan's undeniable charms, swearing up and down that Mitt Romney's 2012 running mate is a red-blooded conservative. For example, RINO thought leader Peter Wehner of Commentary, lambastes as "ludicrous" the assertion that Ryan is not conservative:
Ryan is among the most articulate and effective conservatives in American politics. On issue after issue – taxes, health care, school choice, abortion, the Second Amendment, welfare, defense spending, and more – Ryan is undeniably conservative. Moreover, the budgets Representative Ryan has produced are the most ambitious and far-reaching efforts to re-limit government that any Republican has ever produced.
And in the areas where Ryan is supposed to be a heretic – including free trade and immigration – Ryan is where Ronald Reagan was. It’s Ryan who represents Reagan-style conservatism, not his critics.
It is undeniably true that Ryan is very conservative, but only by Beltway standards. In the real America outside Washington, D.C., you have to do something to advance conservative policies to be a real conservative. Being a conservative de facto is more important than being a conservative de jure. Deeds matter more than words.
As for Ryan supposedly inheriting the mantle of Reaganism, Wehner proffers a slippery argument, invoking "presentism," which in this case consists of applying the standards of today to the political realities Reagan faced upon taking office in 1981. Reagan was every bit as populist and radical and opposed to big business and crony capitalism as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and the holdouts in the congressional Freedom Caucus who aren't endorsing Ryan for speaker – and even more reviled by the Republican Party's establishment at the time. Reagan attacked the country club wing of the party and secured only a tiny handful of endorsements from GOP officeholders.
In other words, it doesn't necessarily matter where Reagan "was" when he was president. Things were different back then. Reagan even admitted he got tricked into supporting an immigration amnesty. And back in the sixties, when Reagan was governor of California, he did some things that didn't please conservatives. But Reagan's fabulously successful movement was the precursor of today's Tea Party movement, and it must be viewed in the context of his time.
It is certainly true that Ryan talks a good game. He's a strong communicator and a good debater, and unlike Democrats, he actually understands math and is not waging a scorched-earth war against it. At times his rhetoric can be inspiring. He comes across as a really good guy – and he probably really is one. He seems like a solid conservative, at least on the surface.
But as conservative Republicans are painfully aware, talk is cheap. Believing in and advocating the right ideas aren't enough, especially in this Obama-created era of moral darkness and relativism.
Fighting for the right ideas is a key distinction between conservative Republicans and Republicans In Name Only. RINOs won't fight for the conservative beliefs they claim to hold, so they become experts at lying. To remain in power, they have to be adept at fooling the party's base into believing they are serious, committed conservatives. They get away with it most of the time because even among the better-informed members of the base, not too many assiduously track how lawmakers vote.
RINOs excel at paying lip service to conservative stances. When pressed, they rain down a blizzard of excuses for why Republicans can't do the right thing: we don't have the majority we need; we don't have the super-majority we need; we don't have both houses of Congress; we don't have the White House; we don't have the Supreme Court; and so on. And then there are the whispered and unspoken excuses of the cowardly: we don't want to be called racist or mean or the Party of No, and we don't want to alienate women or Latinos or blacks or illegal aliens who will be voters one day.
If Paul Ryan isn't a RINO, he at least has some powerful RINO tendencies.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/10/paul_ryan_a_poor_ch...
GOP leaders in Congress are preparing to rush through a two-year budget that would leave President Barack Obama with roughly $40 billion in extra domestic spending, plus an unfettered ability to attack undefended conservative causes via his regulations and management directives.
Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL) has confirmed to Breitbart News through a spokeswoman that he is running for Speaker of the House against Ways and Means Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).
House Ways and Means Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and his friends have scheduled a Speakership election victory party for Thursday evening, even though he has not yet won the floor vote.
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