Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are encouraged American voters are on the right track as a majority consider the Obama presidency a failure and experts increasingly see a GOP majority coming to the Senate. And they discuss the domestic violence scandal engulfing former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice.
President Obama’s decision to postpone executive action on immigration policy is entirely political and is not only designed to salvage the midterm elections but prevent amnesty from being torpedoed as an issue for years to come, according to Center for Immigration Studies Executive Director Mark Krikorian.
One of the leading activists against what he considers a bipartisan push toward amnesty, Krikorian is also correcting what he sees as Obama’s badly misleading statements about the current state of our southern border and this summer border surge.
Earlier this summer, Obama promised to act unilaterally in response to the illegal influx of young people from Mexico and other Latin American countries. He promised a plan at or shortly after Labor Day.
On Sunday edition of ‘Meet the Press,’ new host Chuck Todd suggested the delay in executive action was designed to help Democrats struggling to hold onto their majority in the U.S. Senate. Obama said “that’s not the reason” but later admitted “the politics did shift mid-summer” because of the attention to the border crisis.
Krikorian says there are two major issues at work and both are clearly political.
“If he were to unilaterally, lawlessly amnesty millions of illegal aliens, which is what he is planning to do, the Democrats would lose the Senate. It would pretty much be guaranteed. It’s already pretty close and that would be like throwing a hand grenade into the election,” said Krikorian, who says there’s an even bigger danger for Obama to act before Election Day than just risking a GOP Senate majority.
“By doing this big amnesty before the election, he would make the midterm elections a referendum on amnesty and increased immigration,” he said.
“By making the election a referendum on his amnesty and immigration plans and losing, (it) sends a message to the public and to politicians that essentially the people have spoken and this is something they don’t want,” said Krikorian, believing lawmakers would then avoid the debate at all costs.
In the ‘Meet the Press” interview, Obama also tried to assure Americans the surge of young people entering the country is now under control and the border in general is secure.
“The number of people apprehended crossing our borders has plummeted of the course of the decade. It’s far lower than it was ten years ago. In terms of these unaccompanied children, we’ve actually, systematically worked through the problem so that the surge in June dropped in July and dropped further in August. It’s now below what it was last year,” said Obama.
Krikorian says there are two major problems with the president’s characterization of this summer’s crisis. He says the latest numbers of young people entering the country illegally are down over the past couple of months but many experts attribute that to people waiting for the weather to cool down so they can avoid crossing deserts in the dead of summer.
Second, he says people need to understand the president’s definition of working through the problem.
“They’ve worked through it by letting tens of thousands of illegal immigrants stay. Supposedly they’re going to have hearings, which they may or may not show up for, hearings that are scheduled now for 2017, 2018, 2019. Do you think some teenager who has a hearing three years from now is actually going to show up and say, ‘OK Sir, you can deport me now?’ It’s complete fantasy.” said Krikorian.
He says the number one reason why there will likely be another surge is because this one was a huge success.
“What they did was wave in tens of thousands of illegal immigrants because they had the opportunity to do so. They very fact that they did that is one more example of this administration’s out-of-control lawlessness,” said Krikorian.
When and if Obama does issue executive orders to change immigration laws, Krikorian expects it to focus on two priorities: legalizing many who are here illegally and loosening the rules on future immigration.
When it comes to addressing those illegally in the U.S., Krikorian says people need to be clear that what this administration will propose is amnesty.
“What the president is suggesting is actually giving work cards, Social Security numbers, drivers’ licenses to illegal aliens. That is amnesty. What they’re talking about is giving it to the parents and siblings of people who got this DREAM Act amnesty, which he lawlessly announced two years ago, and potentially to all illegal aliens who have U.S.-born kids,” said Krikorian.
When it comes to paving the way for easier immigration in the future, Krikorian says the president would once again be violating the constitutional separation of powers.
“It would be the president making up bogus interpretations of immigration law in order to dramatically increase the number of illegal immigrants coming into the United States beyond the one million each year that we already get. You may think that’s a good idea. There are people who do. I don’t, but that’s a plausible decision. But it’s not the president’s decision to make on his own,” said Krikorian.
Despite some progress, Krikorian says now is not the time for any of what Obama is pushing.
“We have so much fixing to do there that the idea we have now done everything we need to do to fix the border and fix the rest of our immigration system is absurd,” he said.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are cautiously optimistic about GOP prospects after a new batch of polling on key Senate races is revealed. They also worry about UK instability if Scotland votes for independence. And they discuss President Obama’s waffling answer when NBC’s Chuck Todd asserts Obama is delaying action on executive amnesty over political concerns.
The battle over the name of the NFL’s Washington Redskins continues to rage. The vast majority of Americans support the team keeping its mascot but many Democratic lawmakers and interest groups have declared it to be racially insensitive and demand that it be changed. The Capitol Steps are here to find common ground. Out guest is Steps co-founder Elaina Newport.
Advancements in gun technology could soon increase safety by responding only to authorized users, but Attorney General Eric Holder is embracing the innovation only as a means of declaring every other firearm illegal.
That’s the contention of Frank Miniter, author of “The Future of the Gun.” Miniter also shared how the media bias surrounding gun issues is perpetuated and why liberals and the media almost always lose the big national debates over guns.
In the book , Miniter explains how we may soon be able to purchase firearms that recognize their owners and only function in their hands. However, he says it’s about to become the latest flash point in the battle over the Second Amendment.
“We’re starting to see electronics embedded into guns. The smart gun controversy is out there, where a gun can actually recognize a user and then not work for someone who’s not authorized through that gun to use it,” said Miniter. “The anti-gun movement wants to make that mandatory. By making it mandatory, it would make every gun available now illegal.”
“Attorney General Eric Holder had a conversation with one of the makers of one of the smart guns, Bill Gentry of Kodiak Arms. Holder was going on about possibly using the government to authorize it and have that sort of control. Bill Gentry said, ‘Wait a minute, Mr. Holder. If you try to mandate my technology, I will burn it down,'” said Miniter. “This is the level that this is separating between gun owners and those who understand this topic and some on the government side who see this as an effort ton control it.”
When this debate erupts, Miniter says he fully expects the mainstream media to dutifully align themselves with the gun control movement. In the book, Miniter interviews longtime Washington Post movie critic Stephen Hunter and CNN co-founder Jim Shepherd. Both men discuss how they changed from endorsing gun control to embracing gun rights. Miniter says Hunter in particular gave him valuable insight into why there is so little balance in coverage of gun issues.
“I asked they think this way and what we should do. He said, ‘There’s a groupthink, especially with young reporters. They believe in consensus. They believe in conformity. Stepping outside that conformity puts an individual by themself. That would take them out of that pack and they wouldn’t get the promotions in the newsroom,'” said Miniter.
Miniter says a stories of Americans using guns to defend themselves from burglars and would-be attackers as they wait for police to arrive would seem to be a compelling case for gun rights, but not in our media.
“That sort of individualism is hard for a consensus reporter who is used to conformity and going along with a group’s values to stomach. [Hunter] said only the most brave can actually look at that and understand it,” said Miniter.
While Democrats have successfully passed gun control legislation in states where they control the legislature and the governors’ offices, gun rights groups prevail the vast majority of the time at the national level. Gun control advocates accuse the lawmakers of being servants of the National Rifle Association (NRA).
Miniter tagged along with an NRA lobbyist working on Capitol Hill. He says the secret of the NRA’s success is not complicated at all.
“Over and over, what I found out is they only have sway because they have about five million NRA members and there’s about a hundred million people in the United States of America that own a firearm and understand it is a practical right. Many of them vote that issue on those means. Congressmen listen when you walk in with that size of a constituency,” said Miniter.
“That’s the power of the NRA. It’s the American people. It’s not some other dark, mysterious thing,” he said.
Another frequent argument from gun control supporters is that only law enforcement should be armed. Miniter says the biggest opponents of that approach are law enforcement officials themselves, noting that many sheriffs in New York, Colorado and Maryland are refusing to enforce new laws they consider an infringement of the people’s right to bear arms.
According to Miniter, police cannot be everywhere and responsible citizens deterring crime through the possession of firearms helps to keep a well-ordered society. He also relayed a conversation with Wicomico County, Maryland Sheriff Mike Lewis, who long ago started the Baltimore Police Department’s drug interdiction movement.
“I asked him, ‘In all those years and all the bad guys you’ve arrested, have you ever arrested a good guy with a gun who used that gun illegally?’ He thought about it a minute and said, ‘Actually, I haven’t. Every single time I’ve arrested somebody that’s been prosecuted and found guilty, they always had that gun illegally,'” said Miniter.
In addition, Miniter says the scant data that exists on gun owners authorized for concealed carry suggests those people are virtually never a problem.
“It’s rare to find someone who has a concealed carry permit using that gun in an illegal way. In fact, there’s some studies that show they actually use them less in crimes than police officers do. Those are small samples, so it’s hard to say that exactly. But that’s how really safe they are,” said Miniter.
Besides defending the track record of lawful gun owners, Miniter says gun restrictions never have the intended effect.
“Those gun bans won’t stop crimes. Rifles are used in less than three percent of murders as it is. An armed citizen just isn’t using those guns that way. It’s the unlawful person, the criminal, who is getting those through very different means. The only way to really fight the crime is to go after the bad guys, not the guns,” he said.
Ultimately, Miniter contends that gun rights spawn more freedom, innovation and ensure that our military and police forces have top of the line weapons. He says that can be seen as early as the American Revolution. Because of high civilian demand for guns, the quality of firearms in the colonies and eventually in the hands of colonial soldiers was vastly superior to those used by the British. In fact, the minutemen could be as accurate from 300 yards as the British were from 75.
“Right there, they started off on the right foot and that connection between freedom and American citizens and our private arms makers and the military and our police has always been a real connection. In fact, most of the firearms used over time and today were first used and made for civilians before it went to the military,” said Miniter.
“This has always been a connection between civilians and the military. Breaking that connection, a lot of special forces and other people have told me, would harm our ability to fight for freedom around the world,” he said.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review discuss the stunning fall of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell after his conviction on eleven corruption counts and how conservatives did a good job of not being knee-jerk defenders in this case. They also cringe as the August jobs report comes in far below expectations. And they rip DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz for suggesting Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has “given women the back of his hand” and that tea party conservatives are “grabbing us by the hair and pulling us back.”
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleased to see Alaska Sen. Mark Begich taking a lot of heat for his controversial campaign ad. They also worry that the decision of the Democratic nominee to leave the Kansas U.S. Senate race could endanger the Republican incumbent. And they slam John Kerry for claiming he is commanded by God to fight climate change, especially on behalf of the Muslims.
Conservatives have facts and logic on their side but will not get anywhere with female voters until those principles are combined with empathy and an explanation of how their ideas would help the lives of individual people, according to former Hewlett-Packard CEO and former U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina.
Fiorina is the founder and head of the Unlocking Potential Project, a group dedicated to grassroots engagement of women on core issues. Her comments come in the wake of a new poll commissioned by right-leaning interest groups Crossroads GPS and American Action Network. The survey showed female voters still are not receptive to the messaging from the Republican Party.
Respondents characterized the GOP as “intolerant,” “lacking in compassion” and “stuck in the past.” A narrow plurality of married women do side with Republicans but single women of all ages prefer the Democrats by roughly a 40-point margin.
Fiorina says conservative women need to engage their friends because the case against continuing down the liberal road should be pretty simple.
“We need to stick with facts and data. The facts are on our side and this why Democrats continue to hurl what I call shameless, baseless propaganda, because they don’t have the facts,” said Fiorina, noting that the record of the Obama presidency has been anything but beneficial to women.
“More women are living in poverty than ever before. Women are bearing the brunt of the results of Obamacare. Women are not losing access to birth control as the Democrats claim, but they are losing access to their doctors. They’re losing access to their hospitals. They’re losing access to procedures that their doctors may be recommending,” said Fiorina.
“It is women and children who are being slaughtered by terrorists. It is women and children who are suffering in addition to soldiers of war. On the question of education, which women care deeply about, it is the teachers unions who are fighting against pay for performance. It is women as parents who lack choices in how to educate their children,” she said.
“I don’t think this is rocket science,” added Fiorina.
Why is the Republican Party having such a difficult time connecting with women? Fiorina sees two key reasons.
“I think the Democrats have very successfully used the ‘War on Women’ rhetoric to play up on women’s fears. They’re doing it again this election cycle. They used it very effectively in 2012. Unfortunately, in 2012, we never pushed back. We allowed Democrats to categorize women as single-issue voters, to categorize women as caring only about reproductive rights,” said Fiorina.
She says the other problem is how the right presents its messaging.
“Women don’t respond well to judgmental kinds of commentary. Women like to be persuaded by other women they know. I think our tone has to be empathetic. I think it has to be non-judgmental. I think we have to engage women in a grassroots effort,” said Fiorina.
The Unlocking Potential Project is focused on getting conservative women to intentionally engage their friends, co-workers and fellow church members in thoughtful discussions of the issues. Fiorina says the 2012 campaign showed that connecting on a personal level is the key to victory.
“In 2012, Mitt Romney won on every issue the exit polling data shows. But he lost by 62 points on the question of ‘cares about someone like me.’ Had he lost that question by 30 points he’d be president,” she said.
Fiorina says one good place to start chipping away at that chasm is to engage women on all the issues they care about.
“We’re not an interest group. We’re a majority of the country. Women care about every issue. They care about job creation. They care about health care. They care about terrorism. They care about security. They care about education, etc. One of the things we need to do is stop talking at high-level policy and start talking in a way that connects to a personal life,” said Fiorina.
She then used the example of taxation and regulation, suggesting an abstract discussion would do little good but for a woman interested in starting her own business, those issues could be intensely personal.
“In some states, it’ll take you 472 days to get through all the regulations and the permits. You might give up. That’s more than a year. If you make it through that process, you’re going to confront a tax code that’s extremely complex, thousands of pages. You might give up again because you can’t afford an accountant and a lawyer. That’s the impact at a personal level of over-taxation and over-regulation. That’s the way we have to speak to women, in a way that connects to their lives and their issues,” said Fiorina.
Fiorina says the perceived lack of personal empathy and the actual lack of an effective ground game are the two biggest impediments for the right in engaging women with conservative ideas. She asserts that the only way for conservatives and Republicans to narrow the gender gap is to change minds one at a time. She says doing the same thing cycle after cycle and hoping for different results is never going to work.
“If our party talks way up in the air, if our party comes across as judgmental, as lacking in empathy, as lacking in understanding of people’s real issues and problems, then we’re going to lose,” said Fiorina.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleasantly surprised at President Obama’s vow to defend any NATO ally against outside aggression. They also shake their heads as President Obama claims he got serious about ISIS after the fall of Mosul in June but his advisers warned him about the threat at least a year earlier. And they shudder as terrorists reportedly get their hands on multiple airliners stuck on the ground in chaos-filled Libya.
Islamic militants purportedly beheaded American journalist Steven Sotloff and are now threatening to kill a British hostage if American air strikes continue, and a former Pentagon official says the ISIS rampage will continue as long as President Obama remains paralyzed by indecision and fails to declare America’s goals with respect to the terrorist army.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) threatened to kill Sotloff in the same video depicting the beheading of American photojournalist James Foley less than two weeks ago. In addition to forcing Sotloff to denounce the U.S. before his murder, the masked executioner condemns the U.S. for the ongoing air campaign and for assisting Kurdish forces in reclaiming the key dam near Mosul.
“You, Obama, have but to gain from your actions but another American citizen. So just as your missiles continue to strike out people, our knife will continue to strike the necks of your people.We take this opportunity to warn those governments that enter this evil alliance of America against the Islamic State to back off and leave our people alone,’ said the ISIS figure, believed by UK intelligence to be former British rapper Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary.
“It’s pretty evident that ISIS has effectively declared war against the United States. We have not taken any decisions that are aimed at decisively defending our interests, our people or our allies abroad. That’s really the whole thing,” said Jed Babbin, who served as a deputy undersecretary of defense in the George H.W. Bush administration.
“People keep bleating about how we don’t have a strategy. Well sure, we don’t, but the reason we don’t have a strategy is President Obama has dithered and blithered for so long. He does not have the decisions made. You need to make the decisions on policy first. You need to decide what your goal is, what you want to have as the result of your actions, before you can have a strategy. He doesn’t do that,” said Babbin, who says Obama’s indecision on this issue is not unique to this week or the past couple of months.
“We have reports that through the president’s daily intelligence brief, he has known and ignored specific intelligence about ISIS for about a year. What does it take to get this guy off his indecision and into the game?” asked Babbin,
ISIS has gobbled vast swaths of land in both Syria and Iraq. Babbin says without decisiveness from Obama, we’ll only see more of the same and the terrorists will be harder to stop.
“The danger to us is going to continue to grow. There are going to be more people trying to come into the United States. Effectively our borders are pretty much open. God forbid, but we may see another big terrorist attack here as a result of not closing the borders and not doing anything really to put ISIS back on its heels,” said Babbin.
What should be the stated goals of U.S. policy and strategy with respect to ISIS? According to Babbin, our objective should be nothing short of its annihilation.
“We should destroy, as best we can, everything ISIS has. As an example, we see B-roll on television all the time of tanks flying the Al Qaeda flag, trucks flying the ISIS and Al Qaeda flags. Every single vehicle that is moving anywhere in Iraq or Syria flying that flag ought to get hit with a 250-pound bomb. That’s the whole point. That’s what you do. That’s what we should do and obviously we’re not doing it,” he said.
Mirroring some homeland security measures recently adopted in Great Britain are also appealing national security steps in Babbin’s mind. He says keeping terrorists out of the country, whether foreign or domestic, is a great idea.
“If you go abroad and you join the army of another nation, and I would argue ISIS or Al Qaeda…under our law you lose your citizenship. Why shouldn’t we be enforcing that? Why shouldn’t we be doing that in a way that prevents these people from coming here and doing to America what they’re trying to do in Iraq and Syria?” said Babbin.
Babbin says despite Obama’s penchant for keeping his finger in the wind, decisions like this are the job of the president and not Congress. In fact, his estimation of the congressional role to play in this crisis is exceedingly low.
“There would be a role for Congress if Congress had not rendered itself irrelevant to pretty much everything that’s going on these days. They could be urging the president on. They could be bringing up the idea of whether we want, for example, a declaration of war against ISIS. They could do things like that. They’re not because they are what they are and they’re not particularly relevant these days,” said Babbin.
Babbin credits the tough, pointed comments of British Prime Minister David Cameron for motivating ISIS to threaten the life of a British hostage in the wake of Sotloff’s death. He says the terrorists may be concluding Obama isn’t even worth their time.
“Because Obama has made himself irrelevant to these things, why should ISIS care about Obama any more than Putin does? He’s taken himself out of the picture,” said Babbin.
