Trump reestablishes the momentum in USA Today poll, in first by 10 points ahead of Carson and Fiorina

A crack in the Trump facade

Donald Trump, quoted here:

“I’m a practical person,” Trump said. "If I see things aren’t going well, like for instance there are people right now in the Republican party who are not doing well I don’t think it’s going to change for many of them, at some point you have to get out. Right now, I’m leading every poll I get the biggest crowds by far. I had 20,000 in Dallas I had 35,000 people in Mobile, Alabama, you know so far it’s looking good…So I will go and if for some reason I think it’s not going to work, I’ll go back to my business.”

Libertarian impotence: Purple PAC suspends raising money for Rand Paul but has spent next to nothing on him all year

Amazing but true.

Reported here:

“I don’t want to raise money for a futile crusade,” [Ed Crane of Cato fame] said. “I still hope to raise money for him, but not until I see a concerted effort to get back to the roots that got him where he was for a while.” . . .

Sergio Gor, a spokesman for Mr. Paul’s campaign, said, “It is untruthful for a story to say that this super PAC stopped supporting Sen. Paul, when in fact they don’t seem to have lifted a finger in the first place.”

The group spent less than $8,000 in the first half of the year.

Purple PAC raised $1.2 million in the first half of the year, $1 million of which came from Jeff Yass, owner of the trading firm Susquehanna Partners. Mr. Crane said he had not consulted with Mr. Yass on his decision to suspend fundraising. The super PAC currently has $1.4 million on hand, which it won’t spend until Mr. Crane feels more positively about Mr. Paul’s campaign, he said.

Neocon insanity: Krauthammer blows a gasket, says Russia trying to expand hegemony in Syria

Oh yeah, like Syria is somehow Ukraine. The USSR is alive and well, but only in the fevered minds of the neoconservatives.

Here:

"This isn't about the Russians taking on ISIS; this is about the Russians taking over Syria and keeping Assad as a client in place."

Ah, no Charles. This is about a pro-Christian autocrat rescuing an autocrat who used to protect Christians before the Obama policy to disorganize the Middle Eastern community resulted in Christians getting their heads cut off and their communities destroyed.

We should be thanking the Russians, not trying to bury them.

The Tax Foundation says Trump tax plan will blow up the deficit, reducing revenues to 12% of GDP

From Alan Cole, here:

"Looking at these rates, collectively, note that Mr. Trump is frequently cutting rates in half, and sometimes cutting them by even more than that. Taken together, these rate reductions are enough—by my estimates—to reduce tax collections from about 18 percent of GDP to about 12 percent. Under rates as low as these, economic growth—moderate or otherwise—cannot restore federal revenues to current-law levels.

"Tax cuts can do a great deal of good; each of the provisions I outlined above could help a lot of people lead better lives. However, the reductions in federal revenue need to be acknowledged, and likely mitigated through substantial cuts in spending, in order to make this plan feasible."

Larry Kudlow really likes the Donald Trump 15% corporate tax plan, saying he never thought he'd see it

Here:

'Kudlow, who hosts his own syndicated radio show, has long championed a 15 percent corporate tax rate, but "I never thought I'd see a candidate do it. "It'll give us a gigantic advantage. Bring capital and businesses to the U.S., make us the most hospitable place to invest — and that's what Donald Trump has done."'

Zogby poll on September 20th had Trump out front with 33%

Reported here at Forbes:

Trump 33%

Carson 13%

Bush 9%

Fiorina 7%

Cruz 5%

Rubio 4%

Paul 4%

Kasich 4%

Christie 3%

Walker 2%

Huckabee 2%

Ipsos/Reuters poll of core political approval as of September 24th has Trump in the lead with 30%

Seen here:

"After the Wednesday Republican debate, Donald Trump continues to hold the support of 30% of Republicans in our tracking poll, down 5% from last week. Ben Carson remains in 2nd at 18% among Republicans. Jeb Bush is in 3rd with 10%. Carly Fiorina has made significant gains, currently at 8% among Republicans, up from 2% before the debate."

Vladimir Putin tells Obama he's brought nothing but violence, poverty and social disaster to the Middle East

Marco Rubio was for in-state tuition for illegals before he was against it in October 2011

CBS News claims Trump keeps the EITC

Here.

For the current 5-year period 2012-2016 the Joint Committee on Taxation has previously estimated the annual cost of the Earned Income Tax Credit to be about $64 billion.

That's actually less costly than the food stamp program was in 2014: $74.2 billion.

Keeping the EITC means keeping what amounts to a welfare program, but one which rewards only those who work. The transfer payments to such individuals basically rebate the Social Security taxes they pay even though they generally make too little to pay much in the way of federal income taxes, if they pay any at all.

Trump's claim that his plan will be revenue neutral is already taking incoming because of things like this.

Of course we don't know what spending Trump plans to cut. He might go really big and call for shuttering some cabinet level departments entirely. The Department of Education, for example, costs $77.4 billion.

Sean Trende spells out the achievements of John Boehner

Sean Trende notes that:

• federal expenditures on a quarterly basis flatlined beginning in early 2011, right when Republicans took control of the House under Boehner, largely because of sequestration won in the debt ceiling showdown that year despite controlling only one chamber of Congress, "no small feat";

• even "more impressive" was the fiscal cliff deal brokered by John Boehner in late 2012, making the Bush tax cuts permanent, again with control of only the House of Representatives;

• Boehner "managed to kill" the immigration bill that came out of Mitch McConnell's US Senate, despite "substantial internal pressures" all around to pass it.

Much more at the link.

The Detroit News says GOP malcontents weakened John Boehner's hand in dealing with Obama

Rep. Justin Amash, MI-3, a ringleader of the malcontents

Here:

Boehner has been no pushover for the Obama administration. He has staked out tough, rational positions on issues important to conservatives. But his hand has been weakened in negotiating with the White House because he has lacked the full support of such a large portion of his caucus, those members who feel symbolic fights over principle are more important than long-term victories.

Joe Nocera says Trump will be out before Iowa

In The New York Times here.

Washington Examiner has the rare proper assessment of Speaker John Boehner, faced with the unique challenge of a president disloyal to the constitution

Here:

"[R]ight wingers give him an undeservedly bad rap. As a Republican speaker with a Democratic president, he never had a chance to do several of the things they clamored for him to do. Sometimes his most critical Republican colleagues' demands that he get rid of Obamacare or, more recently, defund Planned Parenthood, have suggested a fundamental failure to grasp the mechanics of the system of government in which they work.

"Boehner was not in a position to enact a sweeping, positive agenda. It could not have progressed through the narrowly divided Senate, let alone [have] overridden President Obama's inevitable veto.

"The best accomplishments Boehner could hope for were mostly defensive and negative. The beginning of the his speakership marked the end of Obama's legislative agenda, although sadly the president took this as a cue to exceed his proper powers and bypass Congress, governing by fiat. ...

"Boehner did his job well, and with the sort of patience that conservatives may not appreciate until he is gone."

Trump's tax plan released to the public today is ambitious and pro-growth

The Trump tax plan can be reviewed here.

Notable features include exemption from federal income taxation entirely for up to about 73 million households who make up to either $25,000 individually or $50,000 jointly.

This is in the spirit of the original income tax law, which for its first few years, that is until the demands of World War I and the bureaucratic state came into play, taxed the incomes of no one except the very wealthiest.

It is unclear whether the plan retains the child tax credit or the earned income tax credit, two programs which effectively transfer welfare to lower income families who pay no income tax anyway and who receive through these two vehicles what is effectively a rebate of Social Security taxes they pay as employees, eliminating its regressivity.

For the rest there are just three tax brackets of 10%, 20% and 25%, kicking in at joint incomes up to $100K, up to $300K and beyond $300K. Presumably, but not stated, short term capital gains are taxed at these ordinary rates. Long term capital gains tax rates are 0% up to $100K of joint income, then 15% and 20% up to $300K and beyond $300K of joint income.

Business taxes are slashed to 15% no matter the size, which is YUGE for American competitiveness.

The AMT is eliminated entirely, along with the marriage penalty and . . . the death tax. It's going to be unbelievable!

Deductions are capped for the richest Americans, but deductions for charity and mortgage interest are retained.

We'll see what the dynamic scorers will have to say about it for revenues, as time goes by.

And they say liberals have a death wish: Why Republicans fail

Republicans fail because instead of attacking Democrats, they would rather attack and eat their own.

And it's not like both sides in the Party haven't done this, or that conservatives don't have a case against the leadership. The long history of establishment attacks against conservatives goes back to the George Romney failure to endorse Goldwater in 1964, book-ended most recently by the Mitt Romney campaign's vicious attack of the totally hapless Todd Akin of Missouri, a mere pimple on the butt of the elephant. The kinder gentler conservatism of the Bush clan was, after all, a repudiation of the Reagan era. Kinder and gentler it wasn't, nor conservative.

Pressuring their own Speaker of the House John Boehner to resign last week, however, marks a new low in the history of Republican politics. And this morning Laura Ingraham is endorsing the "frenzy" to get rid of the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell. People caught up in this have more in common with the Jacobin Club than they do with the men who prevented the revolution against the rights of Englishmen in 1776.

Conservatives now find themselves in the ignoble position of doing the job the voters didn't do in 2014. And they say liberals have a death wish. 

What goes around comes around, but for the faction which drapes itself in the US Constitution there is nothing conservative, or wise, about any of this. Conservatives should ask themselves whether the citizens of the state of Kentucky and Ohio are entitled to the representation they have or not. And if not, then why are conservatives entitled to theirs?

NBC/WSJ poll pulls Trump back to earth, still first in Real Clear Politics poll average with 23.4%, 6.4 ahead of Carson

Trump in the middle of summer was +4 in the NBC/WSJ poll

Trump starts autumn at +1 in the NBC/WSJ poll

Trump's poll average hasn't changed much in the last eight weeks, indicating he's stopped persuading people to join him, while the average spread of his lead has dropped by 39% in the interim. This is because support is firming for candidates below him. 

While the names have changed in second and third, the level of support has improved for the person in second by 33% and remained more or less the same for the person in third over the period. Ben Carson is the most benefited, going from fifth to second, even as Fiorina rocketed up 1060% to take third, replacing Walker who dropped out.

Similarly the persons occupying fourth and fifth have improved their levels of support on average by 42%, but their names have changed, too. Marco Rubio in fourth has improved his support by 85% over the period, but Jeb Bush is the most hurt, going from second to fifth.

Ted Cruz is notably stuck in sixth in both snapshots, with the same average of support. He's persuading no one, either, except maybe so-called values voters to shift their votes around, unaware that they are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Ted Cruz' true calling is stand-up comedy: The president of China is in town, meeting with the world's most powerful communist

The Don and Ted Show: "You're fired!" "No I'm NOT!"

Seen here:

"And today, the president of China, President Xi, is in town. Media all over the world are reporting on this historic meeting of the world's most powerful communist... And the President of China."

The endorsement of Ted Cruz by so-called values voters means little, except for Ben Carson and Donald Trump

From the story at The Hill, here:

Sen. Ted Cruz won the Values Voter Summit straw poll for the third year in a row on Saturday, a strong showing of support from evangelical voters for his 2016 presidential bid. The firebrand Texas senator won a whopping 35 percent in the poll of summit-goers, ahead of runner-up Ben Carson’s 18 percent. That margin is significantly wider than last year, where he edged out Carson by just 5 percentage points. Former Gov. Mike Huckabee (Ark.) took third with 14 percent, followed by Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) with 13 percent. Real estate magnate Donald Trump finished a distant fifth with 5 percent.

So "values voters" have finally figured out one thing: Ben Carson's values may be traditional, but they are rooted in a crackpot religion which was born of a failed prediction of the end of the world in 1844.

Now if they could only figure that out about their own religion.

What's happening here is that the evangelical base is clearly choosing a Southern Baptist over a Seventh-day Adventist, and distancing itself dramatically from the mainline Protestant in the race, Donald Trump.

Meanwhile Ted Cruz isn't going to be the nominee, not as long as he garners just 27% of the support enjoyed by the frontrunner.