Why These Might Be The Most Competitive Iowa Caucuses Ever – FiveThirtyEight

Were now less than a week away from the Iowa caucuses, and the contest there can best be described as a four-way race. As of Tuesday morning, former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren were all clustered within about 8 percentage points of each other in our average of the states polls, with Sanders and Biden at 22 percent, Buttigieg at 17 percent and Warren at 14 percent.

Given just how close things are in Iowa, our forecast doesnt give anyone more than a 36 percent chance of winning the caucuses next week. This got us thinking: How unusual is it for the field to have this many candidates within a few points of each other? Answer: Its pretty unusual.

[Our Latest Forecast: Who will win the Iowa caucuses?]

Number of candidates (including the leader) within 10 points of the lead in Iowa a week before the caucuses, in FiveThirtyEights polling averages

Excludes cycles for which we have insufficient polling data.

Source: Polls

Using our forecasts historical Iowa polling averages from the week before the caucuses in each presidential election since 1980, we found that the 2020 contest not only has the largest number of contenders within 10 points of the polling leader, but also is tied for the most candidates polling at or above 15 percent, with one candidate polling just under that threshold. As you can see in this table, while there were three candidates within 10 points of the Iowa leader (counting the leader themselves) in both the 2008 Democratic primary and the 2012 GOP primary, theres never been a primary where four candidates were clustered so tightly until 2020.

This isnt to say the 2008 and 2012 contests werent nail-biters in their own right. In the 2008 Democratic contest, then-Sen. Hillary Clinton was in first, averaging 30 percent in the polls a week before the caucuses, while then-Sen. Barack Obama had 26 percent and former Sen. John Edwards had 22 percent. And four years later in the 2012 GOP race, Rep. Ron Paul and former Gov. Mitt Romney were essentially tied at about 21 percent each, while former House Speaker Newt Gingrich had about 15 percent.

The top Iowa polling average and the number of candidates polling 15 percent a week before the caucuses, in FiveThirtyEights polling averages

Excludes cycles for which we have insufficient polling data.

Source: Polls

But even setting aside that there are more competitive candidates in Iowa this year than ever before, there are two other things that make the 2020 Democratic race in Iowa especially close. First, Sanders, whose Iowa polling average is just a hair ahead of Bidens, isnt polling that high for a front-runner. At 22.6 percent, he has the second-lowest polling average for a leading candidate one week before the caucuses. (Paul sat at 21.5 percent in 2012.) Second, there are three contenders polling above 15 percent, which is tied for the most candidates in any presidential election cycle.

But a fourth candidate, Warren, is just short of the 15 percent mark, so this years caucuses could produce a historic result: Since the start of the modern primary era theres never been a major-party contest in Iowa where more than three candidates won at least 15 percent of the vote statewide. Moreover, since 1992, when the Democratic Party implemented some of the rules that continue to define its nomination races, there has not been a single Democratic primary or caucus in any state or territory in which more than three candidates have won at least 15 percent of the vote statewide. Although Warren has fallen slightly below the 15 percent mark, she also just got an endorsement from the Des Moines Register, which might help her reverse her polling slide in the state. So if Sanders, Biden, Buttigieg and Warren all go on to finish above 15 percent, it would be a first.

However, the Democrats caucus rules could make it tough for four candidates to clear that 15 percent bar. In each precinct, candidates must clear a viability threshold, typically 15 percent of the votes at the caucus site, in order to advance. If they arent able to clear that bar, their backers are asked to realign themselves to candidates who do.

So you could imagine a situation where a candidate polling around 15 percent in Iowa (Buttigieg, Warren) doesnt actually earn 15 percent of the vote statewide next Monday because they fall short of the viability threshold at a number of caucus sites, causing their supporters to move to other candidates and their overall numbers to fall. Yet despite that hurdle, its still plausible that Biden, Buttigieg, Sanders and Warren all have enough second-choice support to end up above 15 percent statewide a New York Times Upshot/Siena College poll of Iowa released on Saturday found that all four candidates surpassed 15 percent when respondents had to choose among just that quartet of candidates. Remember, though, that there are many more candidates in the race. And some of them, especially someone like Sen. Amy Klobuchar, whos polling at just shy of 9 percent in Iowa, could throw an interesting curveball in the realignment process.

Of course, Klobuchar (or another candidate) could also surge here in the last week, throwing a real wrench in our analysis. This kind of surprise, last-minute surge has actually happened before. In 2012, former Sen. Rick Santorum averaged only 7 percent in the polls a week before the Republican caucuses granted, he had been steadily ticking upward in the preceding month yet he not only surpassed 15 percent statewide, he won Iowa by a handful of votes.

Another challenge in our analysis is that some older election cycles just dont have that much data to work with. For example, there were only two polls from the 1996 GOP race that were conducted between one and five weeks before the caucuses. And we dont have a polling average for the 1992 Democratic race because there werent enough polls available, although the 1992 caucuses were also kind of unusual because they werent considered competitive Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin had a massive home-field advantage (he won in a landslide).

But despite those caveats, the data we do have suggests that this years caucuses may be the most competitive and crowded Iowa has ever had. There are more candidates polling within 10 points of the leading contender than in any race since 1980 and a record-tying number of candidates polling above 15 percent, with another just below that mark. Whether one candidate will get a late boom or bust remains to be seen, but with a week to go, no candidate is close to being a clear favorite. That makes for an exciting and potentially unpredictable finish, so get ready for the final sprint.

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Why These Might Be The Most Competitive Iowa Caucuses Ever - FiveThirtyEight

A Million Iraqis Asked Us To Leave We Should Listen – Antiwar.com

You wouldnt know it from US mainstream media reporting, but on Friday an estimated million Iraqis took to the streets to protest the continued US military presence in their country. What little mainstream media coverage the protest received all reported the number of protesters as far less than actually turned out. The Beltway elites are determined that Americans not know or understand just how much our presence in Iraq is not wanted.

The protesters were largely supporters of nationalist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who opposes both US and Iranian presence in Iraq. Protesters held signs demanding that the US military leave Iraq and protest leaders warned of consequences unless the US listen to the Iraqi people.

After President Trumps illegal and foolish assassination of Iranian general Soleimani on Iraqi soil early this month, the Iraqi parliament voted unanimously to cancel the agreement under which the US military remains in Iraq. But when the Iraqi prime minister called up Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to request a timetable for a US withdrawal, Pompeo laughed in his face.

The US government answered the Iraqi parliaments vote with a statement that the US military is a force for good in the Middle East and that because of the continuing fight against ISIS US troops will remain, even where they are not wanted.

How many billions of dollars have we sent to Iraq to help them build their democracy? Yet as soon as a decision of Iraqs elected parliament goes against Washingtons wishes, the US government is no longer so interested in democracy. Do they think the Iraqis dont notice this double-dealing?

The pressure for the US to leave Iraq has been building within the country, but the US government and mainstream media is completely and dangerously ignoring this sentiment. Its one thing to push the neocon propaganda that Iraqis and Iranians would be celebrating in the streets after last months US assassination of Iranian general Soleimani, who was the chief strategist for the anti-ISIS operation over the past five years. Its a completely different thing to believe the propaganda, especially as more than a million Iranians mourned the popular military leader.

The Friday protesters demanded that all US bases in Iraq be closed, all security agreements with the US and with US security companies be ended, and a schedule for the exit of all US forces be announced. Sadr announced that the resistance to the US troop presence in Iraq will halt temporarily if an orderly departure is announced and implemented. Otherwise, he said, the resistance to US troops would be activated.

A million Iraqi protesters chanted no, no to occupation. The Iraqi parliament voted for us to leave. The Iraqi prime minister asked us to leave. Maj. Gen. Alex Grynkewich, the US deputy commander in Iraq and Syria, said last week that US troops in Iraq are more threatened by Shiite militias than ISIS.

So, before more US troops die for nothing in Iraq, why dont we listen to the Iraqi people and just come home? Let the people of the Middle East solve their own problems and lets solve our problems at home.

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

Ron Paul is a former Republican congressman from Texas. He was the 1988 Libertarian Party candidate for president.View all posts by Ron Paul

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A Million Iraqis Asked Us To Leave We Should Listen - Antiwar.com

How Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum have found balance, complement each other, and propel the Boston Celtics – MassLive.com

This season has been one, long, Ron Paul ITS HAPPENING gif for Boston Celtics fans. After years of internet snark over Danny Ainges refusal to trade Jaylen Brown or Jayson Tatum, fans are relishing the opportunity to pull receipts and expose every old take they can find.

Brown and Tatum have validated Ainges patience and are seemingly on the dual path to stardom that was always the backup plan to the Kyrie Irving win-now Celtics. Both have a strong chance at being All-Stars this year, and both are still on their rookie contracts.

Its been an interesting journey to this place. Danny Ainge can certainly take some credit for drafting well. Brad Stevens can run a victory lap for helping to develop them. Obviously each of them has put in incredible hours on their own to take that guidance and build on it. And theres even an element of applying lessons learned last season to avoid repeating mistakes this year.

The combination of foresight, guidance, effort, and luck is culminating in what we see on the court.

When we drafted Jayson we thought having those two versatile wings that could guard a number of different positions and do a number of different things, Brad Stevens said after the win over Cleveland. But also werent exactly the same players, but would be good complements for each other.

This is where the two really do shine, and why two young, 67-ish wings can coexist. Yes, defensively, they are similar. Each can switch and make life hell for opponents with their strength and length. Offensively, though, their games have evolved to fit each others.

I guess we feed off each other, Brown said earlier this season. Kind of different games, kind of opposite, but it makes sense, like Fire and Ice.

Yesterdays game against Cleveland is a great microcosm of this. On the surface, they played very similarly. Both took 20 shots and were 5-for-10 on 3-pointers. Each made three free throws and had two assists.

Look closer and youll see its how they scored those points that highlights how they complement each other.

NBA tracking data, imperfect as it is, shows Tatum taking and making more contested shots than any other Celtic. Brown, meanwhile, was the team leader in uncontested shots and made baskets.

Its part of an overall trend. Tatum tends to take tougher shots. With his length and shot-making ability, hes built for that type of shot profile. Brown, the better athlete of the two, uses his speed and quickness to create separation and space. You can see it in how each approached the mismatches against Cleveland.

Jayson Tatum saw Larry Nance on him and decided he was going to go to the step-back 3-pointer.

Jayson Tatum hits a 3 on Larry Nance

Jaylen Brown got Tristan Thompson on the switch and decided he was going to put it on the floor and attack.

Jaylen Brown drives on Tristan Thompson

Tatum loves isolation scoring. Hes 22nd in the NBA in frequency of isolation attempts. His development is focused on honing those skills, while Browns is understanding how to take advantage. Like Brown said, its fire and ice. Yin and yang.

Two stats sum this up.

The first is how they get their 3-pointers. Brown has made 57 this year, and 52 have come off of assists from others. Tatum has made 74, 47 of which are assisted. Brown almost exclusively relies on spotting up to get his 3s while about a third of Tatums are pull-up shots he creates for himself.

Maximizing these catch-and-shoot opportunities has been a huge reason why Brown is thriving. Kemba Walkers 3s are split just about 50-50, so he, along with Tatum, are creating a lot of offense for themselves. That means defenses are going to focus a lot on them and leave other guys open. Brown is one of the beneficiaries, which brings us to the second statistic.

Walker and Tatum are the two players who assist the most on Browns makes. Walker has fed Brown 37 times, while Tatum has assisted on 25. However, Brown has only assisted on six of Tatums made baskets.

Brown has mastered swimming in the wake of Walker and Tatum, but this isnt a one-way relationship. Browns ability to score when Walker or Tatum are blitzed is part of why teams cant blitz them as often as theyd like. With Brown (and also Gordon Hayward when hes been healthy) on the floor, teams arent really able to send double teams at the hot hand. Until a gravity stat is invented, there wont be a statistical assist for Brown in these situations, but Brown is immensely important here.

Removing the ability for defenses to double team players enhances the abilities of the players who would get double teamed. At the same time, its the willingness of those players to pass it when they do get doubled that helps enhance the abilities of the other players on the floor.

Tatum and Brown are excelling right now because of this dynamic. They are on this roll because they fit this way. As long as they keep this kind of balance, theres no telling how far it can take them.

MORE CELTICS COVERAGE

Jaylen Brown trying not to miss shots, the impending return of Marcus Smart, and 10 things we learned from Boston Celtics vs. Cleveland Cavaliers

What makes Boston Celtics Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum different this year? They carry the team consistently

Boston Celtics Jayson Tatum on Jaylen Brown: Weve been through a lot together

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How Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum have found balance, complement each other, and propel the Boston Celtics - MassLive.com

What it’s like to shoot Cher, Anna Wintour and others at Met Gala – Page Six

At a time when celebrity photography tended to be heavily controlled by studios and handlers, Ron Galella (right) shook up the genre by snapping candid shots of stars out of the spotlight. Essentially, he brought the Italian art of paparazzi portraiture to the US way before TMZ and Stars theyre just like us! were a thing.

Sometimes it got the Bronx native in hot water. Like when Marlon Brando punched him because Galella had been pursuing the actor in Chinatown. The lensman lost a few teeth but got $40,000 in a settlement. Richard Burtons bodyguard also knocked out one of Galellas teeth (he lost that suit), while Elvis Presleys security slashed Rons tires.

When Galella started photographing the Met Gala the annual fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Arts Costume Institute in 1967, he wasnt welcome there, either. Sometimes they barred me from going in and I sneaked into the employee entrance, Galella, 88, told The Post.Nowadays, hes legit. His new book, Costume Galas and Parties, 1967- 2019 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, shares five decades of his outsiders insider perspective. Here are some of his favorite fashion-party photos and the stories behind them.

CHER

Although cigarettes and selfies are now banned inside the Met Gala, Galella caught Cher (far left) puffing away in 1974, while fashion photographer Francesco Scavullo was lighting a smoke for the singer-actress sister, Georganne LaPiere.

Cher is so nice, Galella remembered. A publication in 1976 asked him to get a photo of the performer and her new baby, Elijah Blue, by second husband Gregg Allman. Once again, Galellas fearlessness prevailed.I knew where she lived, Galella said. I buzzed and she said, Come back tomorrow at 5. And I got the picture.

VICTORIA BECKHAM

The former Spice Girl-turned-clothing designer has long played it blas saying she didnt smile in photos for years because she thought fashion people wouldnt take her seriously if she did. It worked on Galella.

I like her because she pouts and hardly ever smiles. Its unusual, said Galella, who shot this photo at the 2006 Met Gala. But Beckham is cooperative. She does like to pose and look into the camera.

DIANE VON FURSTENBURG

Some celebrities chafed at Galellas persistent style. But legendary fashion designer von Furstenberg seen here at a Revlon party in 1990 is a longtime fan.

She told me she loves the photos I have taken of her. I had a book party in 2002 and an exhibit at the Paul Kasmin Gallery and she wanted a picture of herself but wasnt willing to pay for it. I didnt give it to her, said Galella, whose photos can cost up to $2,500.

ANNA WINTOUR AND DIANA VREELAND

Galella says its impossible to compare the two Vogue editors-in-chief, as theyre like apples and oranges. He snapped Wintour (above left), the current editor, at the 1990 Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) awards and caught a rare moment of her letting down her guard. She saw somebody with an outlandish outfit, he said of her sly laugh. I think Anna is glamorous. She is mysterious and aloof.

As for Vreeland, who helmed the magazine from 1963 to 71 and is seen (above right) at the 1976 Met Gala, Diana was the best of all the celebrities. She was so expressive with her hands and gestures, he added.

JACKIE KENNEDY ONASSIS

Galellas most famous obsession was Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, whom he pursued throughout New York City for years leading to a 1972 free-speech trial in which the paparazzo was slapped with a restraining order.

Jackie was my favorite subject. I had to keep 25 feet from her but in the museum I did break it, he recalled of this 1979 shot.

For all of the former first ladys frustration with Galella, he said that she only once covered her face with a bouquet of flowers while he was snapping her.

After four times being caught breaking the restraining order, Galella was fined and ordered not to photograph Jackie or her children any more.

To this day I cannot shoot Caroline, he said. Actually I could, but its a risk. The injunction still is in effect.

DONALD & MELANIA TRUMP

The future president introduced his wife to Galella at the 2010 Met Gala by saying, Hes the photographer who went to court with Jackie [Kennedy Onassis], the lensman recalled.

Now Galella believes that Melania is, without a doubt, the most beautiful first lady ever. Even more beautiful than Jackie, he said. Galella clarifies that Kennedy Onassis appeal, for him, lay largely in her mystique those dark glasses where she could see the outside but you couldnt see her.

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What it's like to shoot Cher, Anna Wintour and others at Met Gala - Page Six

The 2019 Wypipo Awards: End of the Decade Edition – The Root

Image: Elena Scotti (The Root/G-O)

Wed like to welcome you to the fifth annual Wypipo Awards.

After years of whining that the BET Awards, the NAACP Awards and The Root 100 are inherently racist because they are limited to black people, we created these awards. Our founder, Mr. Y.P. Pullwho made his fortune building desalinization plants that take the salt out of white tears and then use them to irrigate kale farmsstarted this annual festival of accolades to honor the fragile and unheralded race of people who barely manage to win the majority of Oscars, Grammys, Emmys, Nobel Prizes and Darwin Awards.

White people hate being left out.

According to them, all exclusively black events are racist. They forget why HBCUs, black Greek-letter organizations and cookouts were invented in the first placebecause white people excluded us. But, in an effort to appease our unsalted brethren and sisters, we impaneled a group of experts on white people that includes:

Instead of focusing on 2019, this years awards will honor the best and whitest from 2010-2019. And no, this is not racist...

Were rooting for everybody white.

Here are the nominees and winners:

White men are now alleging that they are being oppressed because they are white men, even alleging that straight white male has become this centurys n-word. I know it sounds stupid but I refuse to disparage this downtrodden group until I walk a mile in their boat shoes. I humbly offer myself as a victim of the system that allows them to control all three branches of the federal government, 95 percent of Fortune 500 companies, media, finance, school funding, and the criminal justice system. No matter what happens during this harrowing experiment...

I promise not to cry.

Reggie Bushs knee, Pepsis All Colas Matter campaign, Tristan Thompsons reputation, Kris Humphries career, Lamar Odoms Viagra and crack cocktail recipe, black designers creations, Kanyes sanity, and the anonymity of Ray Js penis all suffered from the Kardashian curse.

Ive been trying to hook Khloe up with Stephen A. Smiths larynx, to no avail.

OComeon Mahalia Sarafina Laquisha Dolezal is the child of poor black sharecroppers who marched with Martin Luther Vandross during the Civil War movement of the 1960s. After attending a predominately white college, NBecca began a career in activism by simply declaring she was black, which is the greatest white woman move of all time. Like Angela Davis, Assata Shakur and other black women who fought the system, Dolezal was unjustly jailed for tax fraud.

As she famously said: I freed a thousand slaves. I couldve freed a thousand more if only I had known white people werent slaves.

*Unless, of course, your wife and kids have completed middle school, in which case, youre fine.

Attorney General Bill Barr heads the Department of Justice, despite displaying a clear disdain for justice. And departments. Barr has subverted any and all attempts at holding Trump responsible for breaking the law, just as he did during his previous cabinet position as Master of Whisperers in the Targaryen administration.

This was a great decade for white women. They helped elect a president and then helped stage the largest demonstration in history to protest that election. They criticized Beyoncfor her blackness and not cleaning up behind them but praised Nazi mascot Taylor Swift for saving democracy.

They fought against vaccinations, illegal cookouts and black people lingering in coffee shops. They advocated for their own safety while simultaneously siccing the cops on black people. They yelled the n-word at children and adults alike.

White women have always been the second biggest threat to freedom and equality. If they werent so complicit in upholding the institutions of white supremacy, we could easily dismantle it.

After eight years of an intelligent, scandal-free, capable president who spoke in complete sentences and knew how weather maps work, white people decided that they wanted another person of color in the White House, so they elected the first tangerine president.

But it wasnt just the election that wins, its that white people were genuinely shocked when Donald Trump banned Muslims, kicked out immigrants, spewed hate and ripped the Constitution to shreds after he campaigned on a platform of banning Muslims, kicking out immigrants, hate and ripping the Constitution to shreds

There are no available statistics on whether white people are starting to call the police more often or if they are just caught on camera more frequently. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this was the best year for police calls since the telegraph became popular in the 1830s and police departments across America started receiving morse code text messages about runaway slaves.

Here is every conversation from a black conservative:

The Democratic party has black people fooled and keeps you on the plantation waiting for handouts while your black leaders profit from race-baiting and aborting your babies, unlike white Republicans who race-bait and give handouts to corporations. If only black people would pull up their pants, stop using the n-word, educate themselves and pull themselves up by the bootstraps I bought when I was not listening to rap music and spending my money on Jordans, they could succeed just like the mediocre white boys who listen to rap, bought their way into college and pulled themselves up by their great grandparents bootstraps.

These people arent thinking for themselves. Theyre just infected with so much internalized self-loathing that they believe white people really know whats best for black people and every black person in the world is too dumb to comprehend our needs.

The problem with free thinkers is that, for them, free means white.

Remember when they used to get stitches? This dumpster fire of a presidential administration now has everyone cheering for whistleblowers, anonymous Trump administration officials, wiretaps, porn stars who kiss and tell, Special Counsel investigators, the former head of the FBI, Trumps co-conspirator Michael Cohen and secretly recorded phone calls.

We still dont fuck with Omarosa, though.

The party of Lincoln is now the party of corporate greed, xenophobia, homophobia, inequality and white supremacy.

The vast majority of Asian Americans, Hispanics and black people lean toward the Democratic Party. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) is the only black Republican in the Senate, and Will Hurd, the only black Republican in the House of Representatives announced that he will not seek re-election.

GOP members remain silent on hate crimes, gun violence, income inequality, right-wing extremism, global warming, emoluments and foreign interference in our elections. They have chosen the side of corruption, voter suppression, greed, corporations, pollution and the slow dismantling of the Constitution. They dont give a damn what anyone does to America...

Until someone kneels during the national anthem.

That just burns their Nikes.

Was there even a question?

As I said before:

Like this country, Donald Trump is a mirage. His greatness is a figment of a collective white imagination that envisions a bright, shining star where there is only a dumpster fire.

He is a first-rate con artist. He is a counterfeit, autocratic dullard impersonating a commander in chief. He is every white foot that has ever been placed on a black neck. He is hate personified and incompetence exemplified. He is the imbecilic farce of a white man convinced of his own supremacy.

Yet, he remains.

Like racial resentment. Like the electoral college. Like the two-party system. Like the 53 percent. Like white supremacy and black oppression. Like hate. Like injustice. Like apathy. Like rage. Like us.

Like the masses unrelenting adoration for this beloved, blessed, once-great thing called America.

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The 2019 Wypipo Awards: End of the Decade Edition - The Root

Recreational bowling scoreboard – The Times Herald

Scott Badley, For the Times Herald Published 7:00 a.m. ET Dec. 28, 2019

Bowling scoreboard(Photo: Stock)

LEAGUE HIGHS

BOWL O DROME

Original Sunday Funtimers

Tom Morris 671(235); Jim Wagar 658(268); Brad Ashton 613(244); Jennifer Klein 558(215); Bonnie Harris 529(201); Melissa Winiarski 509(191)

PH Hospital AM

Vic Gregowski 634(232); Andrew Jackson 544; Gary LaVere 526; Kate Hodgins 500(216); Marie Belkiewicz 497(182); Fely Nurenberg 480(180)

Service

Dave Barnum 256

COLONY BOWL

Wednesday Night

John Galvin 752(276); Shane Geer 686(242); Eddie Crampton 659(233); Terry Crampton 547(189); Margy Christy 507(181); Pat Barker 501(220)

PORT HURON LANES

3 B4 1

Cliff Crawford 781(278); Henry Sullivan 733(257); Adam Laming 722(268); Tom Morris 719(276); Dom Cocco 717(268); Kevin Renno 709; Rich Crawford 262; Gary Weiss 258; Jon Crawford 257; Stephanie Freeman 566(211); Rosann Brachel 557(203)

Cowboys & Indians

Jesse Hojnacki 782(290); Cliff Crawford 759; Ray LaVere 749; Blake Symon 733; Chuck Ouellette 726(269); Rodney Reeves 723; Jim Hazelton 719; Jeff Meldrum 712(266); Matt Langolf 687; Bob Pihaylic 684; Matt Gossman 680(266); Jim Creasor 266; Jed Johnston 266; Jaclyn Meldrum 609(235); Jill Friis 590(226); Shawna Lentner 588(215)

Don McIvor Memorial

Mike Gossman 753(259); Chuck Ouellette 750(278); Matt Galanos 716(269); Dale Camphausen 677; Caremy Snellenberger 673(247); Steve Glombowski 672(246); Jerry Beery 246

Friday AM Seniors

DJ Gombos 466(168); Lee Reaume 446(167); Robyn Rossow 421(150); Jim Cristick 553(194); John Szczygiel 531(183); Roger Allen 521(194); Marv Benthem 190; Mark Arnett 182

Friday PM Seniors

Linda Dane 563(232); Nadine LaGruth 495(193); Sharon Bailey 478(191); Veronica Yorke 193; Paul Collins 650(237); Vic Gregowski 639(245); Scott Wagar 634(242); Gordon Harvey 233; Karl Livingston 232

Friday Wanna Bees

Jose Ganhs 755(279); Michael Ganhs 701(268); Mike Basnaw 682; Anthony Thomason 250; Audrey Beery 522(189); Brenda Bruehan 512(213); Annette Thompson 509

Inter City Ladies

Amanda Long 604(215); Shirley Stevens 497(194); Lori Reeves 494(190); Kathleen Smith 493(189)

Monday AM Seniors

Jan Allington 545(176); Maxine Brown 433(149); Eleanor Sweeney 399(141); Jim Cristick 527; John Szczygiel 524; Rich Stone 501(201); Dave Dykstra 191; Otis Watson 190

Monday PM Seniors

Paul Collins 697(248); Rick St Onge 653(239); Vince Sudomir 564(205); Sharon Bailey 505(188); Barb Brown 496(179); Linda Dane 485(195)

Saturday Nite Bridge

Chase Hollis 711(298); Bruce Arnett 678(278); Jim Creasor 667(248); Tammy Forstner 590(221); Samantha Creasor 527(203); Nikki Hollis 520; Jennifer Reynolds 205

Sunday Outcast

Matt Pawlak 775(287); Scott Badley 755(277); Rich Mansfield 641(237); Bob Pihaylic 246; Jim Reid 224; Jessica Badley 598(246); Cindy Badley 530(194); Dawn Judd 487(181); Shirley Stevens 473; Jean Pihaylic 182

Viking 3 Man

Steve Jakubowski 708(248); Mark Chesney 676(253); David Cox 673(277); Ron Fowler 226

Wednesday Night Ladies

Jess Heilig 604(235); Michelle Pelletier 558(201); Sharon Pappas 547(194); Tammy Forstner 192; Kelly Larsen 190

Wednesday PM Seniors

Marie Belkiewicz 553(206); Karen Watzek 544(191); Debbie Alderson 526(190); Jim Hepting 626(226); Terry Mundy 589; Paul Collins 580; Ron Kristick 217; Steve Munerantz 210

STRIKERS ENT CENTER

Monday Night Mixed

Ruth Bauman 580(205); Sherry Pellegrom 548(207); Sue Hill 538(190); Kim Ludwig 190; Ken Swartz 655(239); Pete Serra 650(243); Jon Hartway 562(220)

Saturday Night Live

Ryan Smith 692(243); Scott Whiting 677(247); Chuck Pointer 661; Roger Cunningham 234; Brian Harmon 234; Elayne Gale 558(201); Laurynn Ball 542(204); Amanda Roose 535(202)

Thursday Seniors

Peg Vanantwerp 508(183); Candi Emmi 471; Janet Hope 465(169); Suzanne McCoy 465(180); Ken Swartz 579(225); Mike Marshall 574(212); Phil Dehring 542(219)

Tuesday Seniors

Dave Emmi 676(256); Dave Clay 573(235); Bill Markiewicz 569; Mike Marshall 212; Ray Chappus 212; Candi Emmi 535(188); Peg Vanantwerp 500; Karen Harmon 476(188); Joyce Degrande 193; Rosemary Vandaele 190

Tuesday Night Classic

Adam Digon 750; Tim Firchau 717(279); John Essenmacher 710; Jim Carl 299; Bobby Ritchey 279

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Recreational bowling scoreboard - The Times Herald

Ron Paul: How Congress And The Federal Reserve Stole Christmas OpEd – Eurasia Review

The bickering over impeachment did not stop the president and Congress from coming together last week to avert a government shutdown by passing a 1.4 trillion dollar spending package.

The bipartisan agreement has something for everyone a 22 billion dollars increase to bring total spending on militarism to 738 billion dollars, and a 27 billion dollars increase to bring total spending on domestic programs to 632 billion dollars. It also imposes a national ban on selling tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, to anyone under 21.

The agreement was split into two bills. Both bills were unveiled last Monday afternoon. The bills passed the House on Tuesday, so only the House leadership and the members of the Appropriations Committee (and their staffs) who helped write the over 2,000-page deal had any idea what was in the bills. But most members voted for the spending bills because they were fearful of backlash over another Christmastime government shutdown. House leadership simply waived the rule requiring that all legislation be available at least three days before being voted upon.

The modern practice of funding the government via gigantic omnibus bills that are rushed into law puts the growth of government on autopilot. This practice also gives the president more influence over the budget, violating the spirit, if not the letter, of the Constitutions grant of authority to Congress to appropriate funds, which was intended as a check on executive power.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve continues pumping billions into the repurchasing market. When the Fed began injecting money into the market in September, it said intervention was a temporary measure to address a short-term liquidity shortage. Three months later, the Fed is not only continuing to bail out the repurchasing market, it is preparing for other bailouts. This is further evidence that we are on the verge of another Fed-created economic crisis.

When the crisis hits, the best thing the Fed could do is not to lower interest rates below the levels set by the market. This would allow consumers, businesses, and government to liquidate their debt and restore a sound foundation for future growth. If the Fed did not interfere with the painful but necessary correction, it would only be a short time before a real economic boom commenced.

The Federal Reserve is unlikely to follow this path because of the short-term pain it would cause debt-ridden consumers and, more importantly, the pain it would cause politicians who would be forced to cut spending and/or raise taxes. But continuing to artificially lower interest rates will inevitably result in an economic crisis brought about by a rejection of the dollars world reserve currency status.

The Federal Reserves manipulation of interest rates depreciates the dollars value, enabling the growth of the welfare-warfare state while enriching the insiders who receive the new money before prices rise. The brunt of dollar depreciation is felt by middle- and working-class Americans whose paychecks do not keep up with the rising cost of living.

Inflation is nothing more than a hidden and regressive tax. Auditing and ending the Fed should thus be a top priority of those concerned about rising income inequality and poverty, as well as those dreaming of a Christmas free of 2,000-page omnibus spending bills.

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

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Ron Paul: How Congress And The Federal Reserve Stole Christmas OpEd - Eurasia Review

McCain conservatives are rallying behind Justin Amash – Hot Air

On the surface, it may seem odd for a bunch of McCainites to be rallying behind a man who came to Congress heralded as the next Ron Paul. After all, it was only six-plus years ago that the curmudgeonly maverick lumped Amash with Ron Pauls senator son and Sen. Ted Cruz (RTexas) as wacko birds. (Bravo, Senator. You got us, Amash clapped back.)

But one of the features of our political moment is that anti-Trump activity on the right tends to emanate from two main camps: Libertarians (Amash, Judge Andrew Napolitano, etc.), and neoconservative-style interventionists (Bill Kristol, David Frum), with the second group being considerably larger. A third category, Mormons, is dispersed liberally within the other two.

So it was only a matter of time before the strange bedfellows collaborated more directly. And while its tempting to concoct theories for what these disparate groupings have in common that Trumps base does not, the grim reality for all is that they have been driven to the outer margins of the modern Republican Party.

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Ron Paul: The Real Bombshell Of The Impeachment Hearings OpEd – Eurasia Review

The most shocking thing about the House impeachment hearings to this point is not a smoking gun witness providing irrefutable evidence ofquid pro quo. Its not that President Trump may or may not have asked the Ukrainians to look into business deals between then-Vice President Bidens son and a Ukrainian oligarch.

The most shocking thing to come out of the hearings thus far is confirmation that no matter who is elected President of the United States, the permanent government will not allow a change in our aggressive interventionist foreign policy, particularly when it comes to Russia.

Even more shocking is that neither Republicans nor Democrats are bothered in the slightest!

Take Lt. Colonel Vindman, who earned high praise in the mainstream media. He did not come forth with first-hand evidence that President Trump had committed any high crimes or misdemeanors. He brought a complaint against the President because he was worried that Trump was shifting US policy away from providing offensive weapons to the Ukrainian government!

He didnt think the US president had the right to suspend aid to Ukraine because he supported providing aid to Ukraine.

According to his testimony, Vindmans was concerned over influencers promoting a false narrative of Ukraine inconsistent with the consensus views of the interagency.

Consensus views of the interagency is another word for deep state.

Vindman continued, While my interagency colleagues and I were becoming increasingly optimistic on Ukraines prospects, this alternative narrative undermined US government efforts to expand cooperation with Ukraine.

Let that sink in for a moment: Vindman did not witness any crimes, he just didnt think the elected President of the United States had any right to change US policy toward Ukraine or Russia!

Likewise, his boss on the National Security Council Staff, Fiona Hill, sounded more like she had just stepped out of the 1950s with her heated Cold War rhetoric. Citing the controversial 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment put together by then-CIA director John Brennans hand-picked analysts, she asserted that, President Putin and the Russian security services aim to counter US foreign policy objectives in Europe, including in Ukraine.

And who gets to decide US foreign policy objectives in Europe? Not the US President, according to government bureaucrat Fiona Hill. In fact, Hill told Congress that, If the President, or anyone else, impedes or subverts the national security of the United States in order to further domestic political or personal interests, that is more than worthy of your attention.

Who was Fiona Hills boss? Former National Security Advisor John Bolton, who no doubt agreed that the president has no right to change US foreign policy. Boltons the one who explained that when Trump said US troops would come home it actually meant troops would stay put.

One by one, the parade of witnesses before House Intelligence Committee Chairman Schiff sang from the same songbook. As US Ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland put it, in July and August 2019, we learned that the White House had also suspended security aid to Ukraine. I was adamantly opposed to any suspension of aid, as the Ukrainians needed those funds to fight against Russian aggression.

Meanwhile, both Democrats and Republicans in large majority voted to continue spying on the rest of us by extending the unpatriotic Patriot Act. Authoritarianism is the real bipartisan philosophy in Washington.

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

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Ron Paul: The Real Bombshell Of The Impeachment Hearings OpEd - Eurasia Review

Americans are sick and tired of impeachment and grandstanding & chicanery of both parties Ron Paul – RT

The Democrats are desperately trying to remove President Donald Trump from office or at least win back the presidency in 2020. Yet, all their efforts are seemingly having the opposite effect, former congressman Ron Paul told RT.

Under the present circumstances, the impeachment would be a total negative for the Democrats as it would be squelched in the Senate, even if the Democrat-majority House approves it, Paul said on Tuesday.

More importantly, the whole process is apparently losing steam because people are sick and tired of the latest of many attempts to impeach Trump.

There is less enthusiasm for impeachment now than it was a week or so ago.

Support for Adam Schiff (D-California), who chairs the House Intelligence Committee and is leading the inquiry against Trump, is falling, Paul said. Schiff has seen even some fellow Democrats abandoning his cause, because they simply got tired of all this mess.

Democrats are in a bind on what to do about this, the former congressman from Texas said, adding that if they drag this process further they might eventually end up hurting only themselves. I believe they are losing this argument.

The recent public hearings were a prime example of how the Democratic control over the whole process weakened the partys own positions, according to Paul, because more people are looking at it and saying, It is not quite fair, it is not right.

According to Paul, there is no upside in this process for either Democrats or Republicans, locked as they are in a turf war instead of dealing with real issues that America is facing.

I do not think that we are dealing with those kinds of problems but there is a lot of grandstanding and political chicanery going on between the two political parties.

He believes that Congress and the executive branch would do better to focus on things like foreign policy, which he described as poor.

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Americans are sick and tired of impeachment and grandstanding & chicanery of both parties Ron Paul - RT

Getting Hot Late Is Usually the Key to Winning Iowa – New York Magazine

Iowans want to be inspired. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Among the vast compendium of lore thrown into political discourse by the Iowa Caucuses over the last 40 years or so is this famous slogan from former Democratic congressman Dave Nagle:

There are three rules to success in Iowa Rule No. 1 is: Organize. Rule No. 2 is: Organize. Rule No. 3 is:You get hot at the end.

This last part about the value of peaking at the right moment is good advice for the candidates forming the Big Four in recent polls of likely caucusgoers (Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Joe Biden) and for those bottom-feeders thought by some to have a chance of coming from the back of the pack down the home stretch (notably Amy Klobuchar). But simple as Nagles three rules are, recent Caucus history is a little more complicated than that, since the end at which you need to get hot is defined in different ways by different people. Katie Akin of the Des Moines Register offers a useful rundown on the path to victory on Caucus Night of various recent winning candidates in both parties:

Hillary Clintonstayed at the top of 2015 and 2016Iowa polls, as rivalBernie Sandersclimbed steadily closer. The final poll before the caucus had Clinton just 3 points above Sanders, 45 percent to 42 percent.

Ted Cruzsurged in December, taking first place with 31 percent. No November poll was conducted in 2016. Cruz lost his polling lead in a late-January poll asDonald Trumpclimbed, but more votes went to Cruz on caucus night.

Rick Santorumwas tied for sixth place in November 2011. He shot up in the December poll to 15 percent, though he still lagged behind leaders Ron Paul and Mitt Romney. The late momentum carried through caucus night, when he was virtually tied with Romney for first place and later declared the winner.

Mike Huckabeesurged in the late November 2007 Iowa poll from third place, with 12 percent, to first place, with 29 percent. The poll was published in early December, one month before Huckabee won the caucus with 34.4 percent of the vote.

Barack Obamaled the Iowa poll for the first time in November 2007, with 26 percent of the respondents marking him as their first choice. He widened his lead over opponents Hillary Clinton and John Edwards in the late-December poll, ultimately winning the caucuses by a nearly 8-point margin.

John Kerrywas thirdplace in November 2003, behind Democratic leaders Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt. He leaped to first in a January 2004 poll, from 15 percent to 26 percent, then won the caucus.

These outcomes may not have as much in common as youd think, aside from winning candidates finishing strong which of course they did!

HRC won in a tough grind against one other well-organized candidate in a race that had steadily grown closer as Caucus Night approached (She led Bernie Sanders in the RealClearPolitics polling averages by about 13 points on January 1, by only by 4 points on the eve of the vote). Cruz maintained an organization far superior to Trumps, which made his close second in late polls enough for a win. Santorum spent more time in the state than any other 2012 GOP candidate, and benefited from hard-core ideological voters and the late collapse of support for paper tiger front-runner Newt Gingrich. Huckabee was perfectly positioned for Iowas social-conservative-heavy Republican activists, and was helped by ultimate nominee John McCains refusal to go all in. Barack Obama won by expanding the universe of caucusgoers to include a lot of young voters and independents. And John Kerry successfully did what Kamala Harris has tried to do this year, all but abandoning other states in order to pull off a late Iowa surge.

Nobody in either party has won Iowa without a solid organization and momentum, but the exact timing of when a candidate surges has varied. This question is of particular importance to Pete Buttigieg, whose surge in the November Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa poll resembles that of three recent winners: Cruz, Huckabee, and Obama.

But in that poll, 62 percent of respondents said they could still be persuaded to change candidates before Caucus Night. That should make Team Pete and any subsequent Iowa front-runners nervous.

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Getting Hot Late Is Usually the Key to Winning Iowa - New York Magazine

The Conservative Establishment’s Nightmare Is Only Just Beginning – Washington Monthly

Richard Viguerie, the conservative activist who invented direct-mail marketing, once said that fear and anger are much stronger motivations than support for a cause.

The Republican Party is now finding that out first-hand as its battling a white supremacist insurgency for the hearts and minds of Generation Z.

It wasnt supposed to be this way.

The ranks of the alternative right political movement were decimated in the aftermath of the August 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Many of its top leaders faced arrest, lawsuits, or were banned from online fundraising and social media platforms.

But after two years in the political wilderness, white nationalist activists have managed to regroup thanks to a new effort to attack the highly lucrative right-wing infotainment industry that has sprung up around conservative think tanks, Fox News, and talk radio.

Unlike the original alt-right, which was mostly driven by lone trolls collaborating ad hoc on social networks, the far-right resurgence is being led by a single figure: Nick Fuentes, a 21-year-old YouTube pundit who originally made a name for himself as a host on the Right Side Broadcasting Network. He wasfiredfrom that post in 2017 for saying it was time to killthe globalists at CNNfor allegedly being unfair to President Donald Trump.

Since starting his own YouTube program (called America First after Trumps slogan) shortly after his sacking, Fuentes has amassed a following that is just as dedicated and belligerent as the original alt-right via a re-calibrated message. Rather than using Hitler memes, Germanic sculptures, and mocking religion, Fuentes serves up a steady diet of Christian nationalism and hatred of immigrants, secular people, and Muslims.

Over the past several weeks, Fuentes and his fanswho call themselves Nickers and Groypers after a cartoon toad that serves as their mascot instead of Pepe the Froghave been tapping into conservative Christian anxieties and melding them with concerns that President Donald Trump has failed to deliver on his campaign promises of mass deportations and a big beautiful wall on the Mexican border. Their preferred mechanism of attack has been to overwhelm question-and-answer sessions following the speeches of mainstream conservative figures.

These appearances are typically organized by groups like Turning Point USA, Young Americans for Freedom, and the College Republicans. Their purpose is to recruit young adults into the conservative movement. Its not an easy task, however, as surveys increasingly indicate that socialism and pluralism have more appeal to students than unregulated capitalism and Christian nationalism.

Taking advantage of the fact that conservative college events are often sparsely attended, Groypers have easily mobbed the eventsespecially those of 25-year-old Turning Point founder Charlie Kirkto ask questions designed to embarrass the speakers and question their fealty to the conservative cause. In addition to invoking biblical injunctions against homosexuality, the hecklers have questioned whether the Republican Party can have a long-term future absent a complete stop to legal immigration and some sort of deportation of existing immigrant citizens.

Their crowd manipulation tacticswhich are very similar to practices taught for decades at the conservative Leadership Institutehave succeeded over the past several weeks at embarrassing Kirk, Congressman Dan Crenshaw, a Republican from Texas, and Christian nationalist commentator Matt Walsh. In response, event organizers have often curtailed audience participation.

For the most part, the national press ignored the protests and the burgeoning insurgency until the Groypers employed the same tactics at a Nov. 10 event where Donald Trump Jr. was touting his new book, Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us.

Reports from the scene in Los Angeles indicated that the Groypers comprised about a third of the audience for the event and utterly dominated the proceedings. Even before the presidential son took the stage, Nickers began booing and jeering as an event staffer announced that Don Jr. and his girlfriend, former Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle, would not be taking any questions after their remarks.

The taunts, which also included audience members laughing at inappropriate times in a manner similar to Joaquin Phoenixs Joker character and chants of America First, grew so loud that Don Jr. stopped speaking as he tried to figure out what was going on. Guilfoyle lashed out at the audience, claiming they were not making their parents proud and that they probably couldnt get dates. Eventually, the couple and a silent Kirk exited the stage as the Fuentes fans kept booing.

Since then, the scene has repeated itself at several other events, particularly those of Kirk. He and many other conservative figures have been forced to answer inconvenient questions about various topics including past criticisms of President Trump, transgender rights, and immigration. More often than not, Kirk has faced overwhelming audience jeers and has struggled to respond.

It remains to be seen what the commander-in-chief, who is reportedly extremely sensitive to embarrassment, will think of all this but one thing is clear: the conservative establishments nightmare is just beginning.

Long before Trump came along, conservatives have had a complicated relationship with extremism, both encouraging and shunning it.

William F. Buckley, founder of National Reviewand the most prominent early conservative figure, began his political career denouncing Dwight Eisenhower and atheist professors at Yale. His magazine published several pieces defending Jim Crow and South African apartheid.

Over the years, he often told supporters that they should always support the furthest right candidate that they believed to be electable, setting up a perpetual cycle of GOP candidates who constantly assert that they, alone, are the true conservatives out to save the nation from Republicans in Name Only (RINOs).

In fairness, Buckley strenuously opposed the John Birch Society, a conspiracy group funded by Fred Koch, father of Charles and David Koch, which was highly popular among the conservative grassroots. And National Revieweventually relented and came out against segregation and apartheid.

Former president Ronald Reagan also had a decidedly mixed record on racial matters, spending decades opposing sanctions on South Africa for apartheid and the creation of a national holiday to commemorate Martin Luther King, Jr. but eventually taking liberals positions on the two matters. He was also recently revealed to have privately referred to African United Nations delegates as monkeys who were uncomfortable wearing shoes.

Conservatives were also more than willing to welcome Strom Thurmond, the one-time segregationist senator who broke from the Democratic Party as it began supporting civil rights for African-Americans. Young Americans for Freedom, the group that preceded todays Young Americas Foundation, hailed Thurmond as a Man of Courage in 1964 before he broke with his racist positions.

Many conservatives also had no problem with George Wallace, the Alabama Governor who ran for president on segregationist platforms. Richard Vigueriewho still is raking in the GOP direct-mail money todayhandled Wallaces fund-raising in 1976.

In light of the many ways in which conservative leaders were willing to side with them on particular issues, white nationalists have sought to openly enter Republican politics for decades. Jared Taylor and his American Renaissance magazine were big promoters of Ron Pauls presidential runs. As Ive written previously, many alt-right activists were also strong Paul supporters before branching off to start their own movement. Former Klansman David Duke has repeatedly run as a GOP candidate in his native Louisiana but been rejected by party leaders.

Progressives have long accused Republican strategists of trying to communicate indirect messages of support to white racists through the partys infamous Southern Strategy which succeeded at turning the South away from its decades of loyalty to the Democratic Party. Few GOP strategists have ever been transparent about these efforts, but one who discussed them honestly was Lee Atwater, the widely successful consultant who passed away in 1991.

Ten years before his death, while firmly ensconced within the Reagan White House, Atwater gave an anonymous interview (the audio recording was published posthumously) in which he stated definitively that Republicans used race to appeal to Southerners but did so in an effort to gradually wean them from bigotry in favor of small-government appeals.

According to Atwater, the idea only worked because whites favorable to segregation understood that cutting the government would disproportionately harm African-Americans.

You start out in 1954 by saying, N*****, n*****, n*****, he told interviewer Alexander Lamis, a Case Western Reserve political scientist. By 1968 you cant say n*****that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states rights, and all that stuff, and youre getting so abstract. Now, youre talking about cutting taxes, and all these things youre talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites. We want to cut this, is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than N*****, n*****.

More recently, numerous reports have exposed the role of the late Thomas Hofeller, a redistricting expert who worked for many Republican organizations over the years, in masterminding GOP state legislatures successful attempts to use race as the primary factor in congressional redistricting. Journalists have also exposed Hofellers covert advocacy for a new Census question about citizenship which he believed would suppress Hispanic responses and thereby harm Democrats.

The ascension of Donald Trump from wrestling sideshow to the heights of Republicanism has greatly increased the prominence and power of racists within the party. The 2015 launch of his presidential campaign with portrayals of most Mexicans as rapists and murderers electrified the white nationalists who had formerly supported Ron Pauls quixotic efforts and they began flocking to the billionaire, producing hundreds of thousands of memes and trolling comments in his favor.

White nationalists have always sought to inject their ideas into conservative politics, Fuentes is just the latest person to be doing it, Howard Graves, a researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center told me. Whats different now is that is that they feel emboldened by our commander-in-chief.

Steve Bannon, who eventually became Trumps campaign chairman, very carefully nurtured the online fascists. Referring to them as his killing machine, he threatened to use them as a force against any faction hoping to deny Trump the presidential nomination at a brokered convention. Bannon also boasted that he was fashioning Breitbart News into the platform for the alt-right as his editorial protg Milo Yiannopoulos allowed racist activists to line-edit articles.

Once in office, Trump pandered to extremist supporters in numerous ways including his efforts to ban all Muslims from immigrating to the United States, break up families of unauthorized immigrants, and enact legislation exempting far-right Christians from any law they felt restricted their freedom to discriminate. Most infamously, Trump, acting on Bannons advice, repeatedly claimed that very fine people had attended the fascist-organized Unite the Right rally in support of Confederate memorials.

Recently, Stephen Miller, Trumps top adviser on immigration was revealed to have regularly promoted white nationalist talking points to a Breitbart News reporter. He is one of a number of Trump staffers who have been revealed to have ties to racist groups.

The growing closeness between the extremist right and Republican elites during the Trump era and the recrudescence of white supremacism has prompted several prominent conservative figures to try to take active measures to block the incursion.

Fuentes himself became a target of Turning Point USA after students at Iowa State University invited him to give a speech under the TPUSA banner in March. The event attracted controversy and put Fuentes on the groups radar permanently. Kirks organization further aroused the anger of Nickers in September after it cut ties with one of its social media advocates after she appeared at a private event with Fuentes.

Egged on by Fuentess insults and a pre-existing infiltration campaign of a small alt-right group called the American Identity Movement, far-right young men began crashing TPUSA head Charlie Kirks lavishly funded Culture War college tour events in early October and the Groyper rebellion was born.

As the campaign has gathered steam, Sebastian Gorka, the former Trump national security adviser who now hosts a daily radio program also called America First became the first prominent conservative outside of TPUSA to attack Fuentes as racist. Ben Shapiro, a talk radio host and co-founder of the conservative website Daily Wire, condemned Fuentes as a garbage human being during a lengthy speech to Stanford University students earlier this month.

But the denunciations have done little to curb the insurrection, in part because Republicans have spent 50 years building their entire political edifice around implicit appeals to white Christian identity, granting at least some built-in support to anyone claiming to stand up for far-right Christians.

This lesson was made crystal clear during the 2016 Republican presidential nomination contest when Donald Trump kept amassing support among conservative fundamentalists despite his utterly irreligious demeanor and the many denouncements he faced from religious activists who supported Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). None of that mattered, however, because Trump promised that if he became president, Christianity will have power.

The Christian right has been remarkably effective at maintaining a market and culture of people who are fed hateful messages and that makes it almost inevitable that white nationalists would tap into that, especially during a time when many of those people feel like they are an embattled minority, Graves, the researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center told me.

Fuentes, who identifies as a traditional Catholic and is partially of Hispanic descent, is perfectly able to wrap his arguments in the Christian supremacist argot that has become central to almost all Republican rhetoric. Hes also been careful to disclaim the labelwhite nationalisteven as he has conceded that it could accurately describe his views.

While many in the Nicker Nation are obviously racist, its unclear what percentage of the people whove been disrupting conservative speeches are fully onboard with a white supremacist agenda. In fact, several of the questioners who have challenged establishment Republicans appear to be black or Hispanic.

The idea that minority Republicans would want to support a white nationalist makes little sense until one realizes that Fuentes is fond of using coded language to hide messages intended only for racists, a practice frequently referred to within the alt-right as hiding your power level. (He has slipped up a several times, however, including going on a profane and anti-Semitic rant in August and once joking about racial segregation.)

As might be expected, Fuentess dog whistles are based on more up-to-date references than Atwaters. Several of his fans were confused by them during the Nov. 5 broadcast of his America First show, when he used a coded reference to praise Andrew Anglin, the publisher of the racist Daily Stormer blog, a key figure in the original alt-right who has tried to re-brand himself from a neo-Nazi into a soldier for Christ.

But the sly reference, couched as a shout-out to Daily Wire podcast host Andrew Klavan, confused some of Fuentess viewers.

I know that Andrew Klavan from Daily Wire has been very supportive, Fuentes said in response to a viewer question. And I appreciate that I really do appreciate his support, I think hes very funny, I love what he writes. Hes very funny, very talented writer, Andrew Klavan of Daily Wire. And I appreciate his support, I think its been very helpful. I think Andrew Klavan has been right about this country from the beginning. I think hes been right about thisthe things hes been saying for the past two years, particularly about the right wing has been so true and we are vindicated together, Andrew Klavan from Daily Wire and me.

Not everyone watching the show could hear the dog whistle, however.

Why are you CRINGE shilling for Andrew fake Christian Klavan, a commenter on Fuentess live stream wrote.

Daily Wire? Isnt that Ben S? another wrote, referring to Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro.

Many of the viewers understood the reference, however, correctly pointing out that Fuentes was not actually praising Klavan.

Are you people stupid? Hes obviously talking about Anglin but framing it as Klavan, a third fan replied.

People are soo dumb who actually thinks [sic] hes talking about Andrew Klavan, said another.

For his part, Anglin seems to have understood the reference. He responded to the praise on the Daily Stormer by posting a meme of two men bowing to each other.

Fuentess habit of mostly sticking to standard-issue conservative talking points and masking his more extreme messagesincluding one in which he joked about the Holocaust through a Cookie Monster metaphorhas also led several prominent conservative figures to lend him their support. Michelle Malkin, the Asian-American columnist and former Fox Newscommentator, has repeatedly praised Groypers and Fuentes specifically for advocating against immigration, arguing that endorsing some of their views does not mean endorsing all of them.

Heres my message to the new generation of America Firsters exposing the big lies of the anti-American open borders establishment and its controlled opposition operatives: If I was your mom, Id be proud as hell, she said during a Nov. 14 speech at UCLA. In her remarks, she also condemned Shapiro as creepy and cringe for calling Groypers losers just days earlier.

Alex Jones, the dietary supplement kingpin and radio host, has also expressed support for Fuentes, inviting him twiceonto his InfoWars platform to attack Charlie Kirk. Cassandra Fairbanks, a popular social media personality and writer at the right-wing conspiracy site Gateway Pundit, has also tweeted in support of Malkins position that conservatives should stand up for Fuentess ability to speak, even if they dont like some of his statements. Ali Alexander and Wayne Dupreee, black conservatives who have built a following among Trump fans, have agreed with this sentiment.

The conservative establishments attempts to fight back against the growth of white nationalism have also been weakened by the fact that many of its voters have come to realize that American conservatism as presently constituted is heading for electoral extinction. Exit poll data from 2018 indicates that white Americans were the only racial group in which a majority voted for Republicans, but only by a slim margin. Fifty-four percent of people of European descent said they voted for a GOP House candidate while 44 percent picked a Democratic one. Among Hispanics, 69 percent went Democratic as did 90 percent of African-Americans.

Numeric analysis suggests that it is Republicans anti-government views and practice of white Christian identity politics that are driving voters away. African-American were formerly a Republican voting bloc but that changed after conservatives took over the GOP in the 1960s and forced the party to oppose civil rights and back massive spending cuts. A similar process, much less remarked upon, has happened among Asian-Americans, most of whom consistently voted for Republicans until the 2000 election and George W. Bushs decision to re-brand the GOP as the party for Christians.

As a demographic group, it is difficult to speak generally about Asian-Americans since they come from so many dissimilar countries. But the one generalization that can be made about the fastest-growing racial group is that todays Asian-American population is significantly less Christian than in prior decades. According to the American Religious Identification Survey, 66 percent of Asian-Americans were Christians in 1990. By 2008, this number had declined to just 38 percent.

The decline of Christianity among Asian-Americans has had an impact on their voting habits. In the 2018 election, 77 percent voted for Democratic House candidates.

But even younger whites are turning away from the GOP. In the 2018 election, only 43 percent of European-Americans between 18 and 29 voted for a Republican House candidate. Thats a decline from the 47 percent who voted for Trump in 2016, and the 51 percent who voted Republican in 2012.

Instead of facing the uncomfortable reality that Americans dont like their policies and presentation, most conservatives have simply ignored the partys demographic dilemma, offering insulting platitudes to racial minorities while utterly ignoring the concerns of secular young whites.

Heres how we look into the future, Rep. Dan Crenshaw replied when asked about the GOPs long-term future by a Fuentes supporter at a Nov. 4 event. We dont lie to minorities and tell them that were going to solve all of their problems. We tell them that they are included in this country and that the only colors that matter in this country are the red, white, and bluethat identity politics has no place in this nation.

While the Republican party itself issued an autopsy report after the 2012 election that indicated the party needed to do more to appeal to people who were not white, the documents recommendations were utterly ignored by Trump in his 2016 campaign and ever since then.

With conservative elites unwilling to talk about modifying some of their unpopular policy positions, the resulting vacuum in the conservative discourse has been mostly filled by immigration opponents who have been arguing that the GOP must stop legal and illegal immigration or risk electoral apocalypse. Its a partisan-oriented, proto-white supremacist argument that some of the rights biggest stars have repeated many times.

Fox Newshost Laura Ingraham has been one of its biggest boosters. During her Nov. 6 program she blamed foreign-born people for enabling Democrats to take control of Virginias state government. Last August, she said that the America we know and love doesnt exist any more thanks to demographic changes brought on by legal and illegal immigration.

Her colleague Tucker Carlson has also repeatedly pushed the same line. In December 2017, he claimed that Democrats were using a flood of illegals to force a demographic replacement which would bring them new voters. In July 2018,he asserted that Latin American countries are changing election outcomes here by forcing demographic change on this country. This past April, Carlson warned Democrats were trying to change this country completely and forever through immigration.

The two Fox Newsstars repeated statements about immigration and the GOPs future are eerily similar to ones made by Fuentes. During his November 17 show, he called legal immigration a critical threat to the Republican party that will make us unable to win a national election ever again. This past August, Fuentes argued that both parties were seeking a systematic replacement of the people that constitute the country.

Besides sounding like two of Fox Newss most popular prime-time hosts, Fuentes also has similarities to some of his most vociferous critics in the conservative establishment.

Sebastian Gorka, the former Trump aide and current radio host who first condemned Fuentes, has his own history of accusations of fascist sympathies. Like Fuentes, Gorkahas also called for executing people he believes have betrayed America.

Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro, another one of Fuentess critics, has also made comments very similar to the embattled YouTube star.

While he currently argues that Republicans should not care about increasing non-white immigration levels and slams Fuentes supporters for saying otherwise, Shapiro had a very different stance in a 2014 video in which he argued that granting citizenship to undocumented immigrants was absolute lunacy that would doom the GOP because Hispanics lean left on big government. Three years later, he argued that Stephen Miller, the Trump aide who spread white nationalist material at Breitbart while Shapiro worked there, knows what hes talking about on immigration.

In some cases, Shapiros statements appear to be even more radical than Fuentess expressions.

In 2014, he did an interview with a white nationalist podcast in which he argued that Jewish media executives were trying to wage a war on Christianity. During the conversationwhich was bundled alongside a promotion for a separate interview with white nationalist academic Kevin MacDonaldShapiro repeated several anti-Semitic tropes but directed them only at secular or leftist Jewish people.

There are a lot of Jews in Hollywood who feel the obligationthey have a perverse leftist view of history pushed by the Soviet Union that what really destroyed Europe was Christianity. It was not fascism, it was not communism, it was not leftism, it was Christianity, he told host Lana Lokteff. And therefore, the cure for intolerance is to bash the hell out of Christianity.

There certainly is a war on Christianity, its coming from some people who are secular Jews, its coming from a lot of leftists, he continued. Most Jews in America dont care about Judaism.

Ironically, Red Ice Creations, company which produced the show, is the former employer of Patrick Casey, the leader of the American Identity Movement which has been the boots-on-the-ground in the Groyper insurgency.

In the same broadcast, Shapiro also warned that entertainment studios seeking to condemn racism and sexism and include positive minority characters in their products are actually engaging in an insidious plot to pervert Americans minds as part of a very subtle war on white males in our society.

What they want is they want to destroy the foundations of American society, Shapiro said, speaking of media executives. Theres no question that this is what they want. I mean this has been the case for the left since the 1960s.

Shapiro has also endorsed ethnic cleansing in Israel of Muslims and Christians, writing in 2003 that forcibly removing Palestinians elsewhere is an ugly solution, but it is the only solution in the Middle East. Fuentes does not seem to have ever called for non-violent removal of Americans who are not white but Richard Spencer, one of the alt-rights first figureheads, has. In the years since, however, Shapiro seems to have turned against the idea of ethnic cleansing.

The Daily Wire did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this piece.

While most conservative pundits and activists appear blissfully unaware that their beliefs are generally unpopular, right-wing election consultants have long struggled to overcome this problem in their efforts to obtain winning electoral coalitions. Yet, rather than moderating their positions to appeal to centrists who disagree with conservative ideas on economics, religion, and social policy, they have opted instead to appeal to white religious fundamentalists who are anxious about a country thats become more educated, secular, and tolerant since the 1960s.

Murray Rothbard, one of the most influential figures in early libertarianism who was also heavily involved in GOP politics, described the concept in a shocking and prescient 1992 essay that touted David Duke and Joe McCarthy as the exemplars of an outreach to the rednecks strategy that would build a coalition of racist fundamentalists, business leaders, and anti-government ideologues under a platform of America First. Donald Trump, who employed McCarthys lawyer and repeatedly refused to disavow Duke, only slightly updated the playbook for 2016.

Expanding the Republican political tent to protect and include extremists was profitable for the GOP in the short-term. Among other things, conservatives effective use of religion and race as distractions from unpopular economic policies has enabled them to keep the United States as the only wealthy country in the world without universal health-care for decades.

But the conservative coalitions days are numbered. In the last five presidential elections, the GOP has won the presidential popular vote only once. The white Christian identity politics which Republicans have long offered as an emotional inducement to voters is of no value to the majority of Americans who now want religion out of politics. Young people, meanwhile, are more interested in voting for democratic socialism than worshiping capitalists with Ayn Rand.

Despite its advocates claims of believing in timeless principles, American conservatism is actually a historical anomaly, one made possible by its host countrys geopolitical struggle with the atheistic and communistic Soviet Union. As that struggle fades into the mists of time, so do Republicans electoral victories.

The prudent, and indeed the conservative, approach would be to refashion American conservatism into something decenta Republican Party that would promote efficiency while expanding the social safety net to support families, protect workers from exploitation, reduce immigration by improving life in other countries, and reject religious and racial bigotry while also making some space for people with traditionalist religious views.

In the face of overwhelming evidence that Americans want something different than what theyve been offering, however, the powers-that-be on the right have resorted to gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement to forestall the inevitable.

But now, in addition to facing pressure from the center and the left, conservative elites are now feeling the heat from angry white Christians who have been promised everything for 50 years while receiving very little in return. Nick Fuentes and the Groypers may seem like a social media sideshow now, but in truth, they are only the beginning of a series of troubles that will destroy the Republican Party from within even as its caught within a demographic death spiral.

While the presidents consistent verbal appeals to Christian and white racial grievances was enough to get him the far-rights loyalty in 2016, the serial humiliations of Donald Trump Jr., TPUSA, and their allies demonstrate that the resurgent alt-right wants more and that conservatives disingenuous attempts to portray themselves as free speech absolutists can easily be used against them. David French, a conservative writer and activist who has often been targeted by the alt-right, almost exactly described a year ago what the Groypers are doing today:

Hatred for political correctness has yielded an unhealthy fascination with and admiration for pure defiance. Young voices pride themselves on fearlessness and place attitude over thought in their words and deeds. They troll online and at school to trigger the libs, and nothing triggers the libs more than defiance on matters of race. If the ethos of the defiant Right is never, ever to accede to either a leftist or (what is, arguably, more hated) an establishment or elite conservative critique, then its easy to see how bigots can flourish.

Fuentes has echoed this sentiment in his own way repeatedly, including during the same November 5 episode in which he endorsed a neo-Nazi. In the segment, he vowed to continue embarrassing the conservative establishment, regardless of the impact on Republicans 2020 chances.

Were not asking for anything that is not just and owed to us, he said. Unless and until Charlie Kirk and these others are willing to give us what we deserve, which is a seat at the table in Conservative Inc. or the conservative movement or whatever, they allow us to spread our message in the same marketplace of ideas that they do, then this will continue. And if its a liability then so be it.

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The Conservative Establishment's Nightmare Is Only Just Beginning - Washington Monthly

Texas’ 22nd Congressional District: History of the Seat and a Breakdown of the Current Race – The Texan

In 2020, voters in the suburbs to the south and southeast of Houston will play a pivotal role in shaping the political makeup of Texas congressional delegation.

The election in the states 22nd Congressional District is expected to be a competitive race between the eventual Republican and Democratic nominees, and the primary races for those nominations appear equally competitive.

Currently held by retiring Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX-22), the district covers most of Fort Bend county and some smaller portions of Brazoria and Harris counties.

History of the District

Robert Casey, a Democrat, was elected to the district when it was first created in 1958 and covered more of Harris County.

In the 1970s, some redistricting shuffled the district away from the urban areas of Houston and into the suburban parts of Fort Bend and Brazoria counties.

Casey continued to win elections, though, until he resigned from his position in 1976 to accept an appointment from President Gerald Ford to be the commissioner of the Federal Maritime Commission.

Ron Paul, a Republican who had lost in a challenge to Casey in 1974, won the special election to fill the remainder of Caseys term throughout 1976.

While Paul failed to win the election for the following Congress later in 1976, he won the seat back from Robert Gammage (D) in 1978.

Paul served until 1984, when he retired to run for the U.S. Senate.

At that time, former Texas state representative Tom DeLay (R) won the open seat.

DeLay went on to win several subsequent terms with little opposition and eventually became the House Majority Leader.

After his controversial involvement in the 2003 Texas redistricting and his ties to the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, DeLay resigned from office in June of 2006.

Shelley Sekula-Gibbs (R) won a special election to fill the seat for a brief few months at the end of 2006, but the delay of DeLays resignation prohibited any Republican from being on the ballot for the election of the next term.

Sekula-Gibbs still received 42.8 percent of the vote from write-ins on the ballot, but Nick Lampson (D) won with 50.8 percent.

In 2008, Pete Olson emerged as the Republican nominee in a crowded primary race and then went on to defeat Lampson with 52.4 percent of the vote.

Current Competitiveness

While the seat has been held by a Democrat for only two terms since 1976 and is rated with a Cook Partisan Voting Index of R+10, some such as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) see the tide turning.

In the 2012 presidential election, Mitt Romney carried the seat by a 25.4 percent margin, and in 2016, Donald Trump carried it with a 7.8 percent lead.

In the 2018 Senate election, Ted Cruz led in the district by a narrow 0.6 percent margin.

The decline over time in the margin of victory for Republican candidates in the above races correlates to the decline in the percentage of votes received by Olson.

In 2012, he won the district with 64 percent of the vote. In 2016, that fell to 59.5 percent. In 2018, he won with a narrow 51.4 percent.

In the wake of Olsons retirement announcement in July, the DCCC stated, The simple facts are that Pete Olson is too extreme for Texas and represents an increasingly diverse, Democratic district. With the DCCC and Texas Democrats rising up in Texas 22nd district, clearly D.C. Republicans told Pete Olson that its time to set [sic] aside.

2020 Candidates

Sri Preston Kulkarni, who came close to defeating Olson in 2018, appears to be the leading candidate in the Democratic primary race, having raised $771,000 by the end of the last quarter.

Nyanza Davis Moore and Derrick Reed are two other Democrats in the race who have both raised around $100,000.

In the Republican primary race, the leading candidate has not yet emerged but could be one who has not even made an official announcement yet.

Fort Bend County Sheriff Troy Nehls launched an exploratory committee for the seat until he can make an official announcement without triggering the states resign to run law.

He is expected to make an official announcement sometime during the first week of December.

Nehls significant name ID in the region is likely to boost his chances of winning the primary race.

There are some other notable Republican candidates who could win, though.

Brazoria County Judge and former border patrol agent Greg Hill has received the most individual contributions out of the Republican candidates according to the most recent financial reports about $177,000 in addition to a $40,000 loan.

If its simply about the money, though, another candidate has more to spend.

Businesswoman Kathaleen Wall has put $600,000 of her own money into her campaign.

Wall previously ran for Congress in Texas 2nd Congressional District in 2018. In that race, she spent $6.2 million, but lost in the primary race to Dan Crenshaw.

In addition to Hill and Wall, Felicia Harris Hoss is seeking the Republican nomination and has raised $91,000.

Other Republican candidates include Keli Chevalier, Douglass Haggard, Schell Hammel, Matt Hinton, Dan Mathews, Diana Miller, Clint Morgan, Shandon Phan, Bangar Reddy, Howard Steele, and Joe Walz.

The primary election will be held on March 3, 2020.

If no candidate receives over 50 percent of the vote in either the GOP or Democratic primaries, a runoff election between the two top candidates will be held on May 26, 2020.

Editors Correction: The original version of this article wrongly stated that Rep. Olson had had a stroke and a heart attack. This information has been categorically rejected as false by Rep. Olsons team. In 2009, Rep. Olson had a pacemaker installed for bradycardia (a relatively common condition that can result in a slow heartbeat), but has had no other health issues we are aware of since that point.

Because of this and the inability to further verify our sources claims, we have removed the information from our article.

We first and foremost apologize to Rep. Olson for the mistake and also to our readers for the error.

A free bi-weekly commentary on current events by Konni Burton.

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Texas' 22nd Congressional District: History of the Seat and a Breakdown of the Current Race - The Texan

‘I dont have a facade’: How Kane went from WWE icon to elected office – Yahoo Sports

For two decades, Kane was one of the most recognizable and popular figures in professional wrestling. The hulking, red-clad man was a pivotal character in WWEs heralded Attitude Era in the late 1990s and, more often than not, inspired fear in opponents and fans alike.

After25years in the squared circle, it was time for Kane to take on a newendeavor: introducingthe world to Glenn Jacobs, the man behind the iconic mask and successfully campaigning to bethe next mayor of Knox County, Tennessee.

About four years ago, I literally woke up one day as weird as that sounds and if I say Im going to do something, I have to do it, Jacobs told Yahoo Sports about his decision to run for mayor. The mayor at the time was term-limited, so I was able to run for an open seat. I loved the idea of the mayors position because you have a lot of influence at the local level. An idea and plan started coalescing in my head. I talked with my family, prayed over it and finally decided to do it.

Although Jacobs describes his decision to run for public office as a bit of a whimsical one, the truth is the nearly 7-foot-tall professional wrestler had developed a passion for politics and had been dipping his toes in those waters for a while before he made the call.

I started getting more and more interested in government and politics right when I got out of college and then as I got a little bit older, Jacobs said. I never looked at myself as someone who was going to run for office, but I started to dabble with the idea about 10 years ago. I started paying attention to things more, started to meet people.

Despite being someone who primarily played a heel (bad guy) character on WWE television, Jacobs admits there was some hesitation about further entering the public light, this time as a political candidate. While professional wrestling is one of the most scrutinized forms of entertainment, Jacobs was simply playing a role on television and there is rarely any reference to personal matters or family life in the world of WWE.

Politics, and campaigns in particular, however, are an entirely different beast.

I had initially decided I was never going to do it because unfortunately, elections and politics in general, it can be dark, Jacobs said. Putting your family out there and that sort of thing. For me, I was already somewhat in the public eye, so that wasnt that big of an adjustment as someone who isnt. It is in a different way in WWE. We take our criticism, but in politics, people just want to say things for whatever reason.

Jacobs isnt the first professional wrestler to enter government. Jesse The Body Ventura served as Mayor of Brooklyn Park,Minnesota,in the 1990s and eventually parlayed that into a stintas Minnesota'sgovernor from 1999-2003. Terrence Rhyno Gerin ran for aMichigan state legislative seatin 2016. Former WWE CEO Linda McMahon twice ran fortheU.S. Senatein Connecticutandlaterserved as the head of President Trumps Small Business Administration.

Despite this shared crossover history, Jacobs opted to carve his own path.

People always draw the comparison between me and Jesse Ventura, but were a lot different, our personalities are a lot different, Jacobs said. I have a great amount of respect for Linda McMahon, but I knew my path was going to be different. I had to figure this out on my own.

Jacobs ultimately ran as a Republican, but he is a well-knownlibertarian. Not strictly bound to either of the major political parties, libertarianstraditionally believe in more civil liberties and limiting the size and scope of government at all levels. Jacobss beliefs have led him to support former presidential candidate Ron Paul and his son, KentuckySen. Rand Paul, who wrote one of the forewords for Jacobss new book, Mayor Kane.

Describing himself as a nonconventionalcandidate, rather than running from his past as a WWE star, Jacobs felt he needed to embrace it to a degree.But popularityas a television star alone wouldnt win him electedoffice, soJacobs was adamant about combining his celebrity with political substance.

Cover of Glenn Jacobs's new book, "Mayor Kane." (Photo courtesy of WWE)

Story continues

When the actual campaign started, that was completely different, Jacobs recalled. I had to walk the line between using the wrestling stuff to open doors and get attention, but also have substance so people wouldgo, Oh,the guy is kind of smart, too. I couldnt rely on the wrestling stuff to win the campaign, but we could use it to do some really neat stuff.

WWE was fully on board as well. As Jacobss campaign ramped up, his appearances already somewhat limited became more sporadic. Sincewinning the election in August 2018, Jacobs has made only a handful of appearances on WWE programming.

WWE has been very supportive of me, Jacobs said. One of the first people I spoke to was Vince McMahon because professionally and personally, hes been a very large part of my life. Throughout the campaign, they lessened my travel demands. They worked so hard to accommodate my schedule. Being mayor is my first priority and they worked to make sure it stayed that way. Im very grateful.

WWE star Kane chokeslams Braun Strowman during an episode of "Monday Night Raw." (Photo courtesy of WWE)

In the 15 months since hes been elected, Jacobs has learned the ins and outs of serving the constituents of Knox County. Despite being semi-retired from the ring due to his position, the 52-year-old has managed to draw on his professional experience in both his personal business and his time in WWE to better understand his role as an elected official.

People may think Im the boss of Knox County, but I have to make sure that everybody has a voice, Jacobs said. Im not always going to do what some folks want me to do, but they have to have a voice and I have to be able to hear that concern. Sometimes doing the right thing isnt the most popular thing in politics. In wrestling, you want to do the thing that people are going to want to see the most. In politics, its sometimes the opposite.

The most important thing is still being able to relate to people. I dont like the word'politician,'but the best ones are like Shawn Michaels was in wrestling, theyre the ones who have connections. I dont have a facade, I am who I am, Im just Glenn. Im honest, straightforward and tell it how it is. I want the same thing everyone else does. The emotional connection has to be real and you have to be who you are. The thing that happens to a lot of people in elected office is they forget who they are or were.

While many career politicians aspire for higher office almost immediately, Jacobs right now does not have any plans to pursue a higher post when his term runs out.

Ive had a really good time. I want to do the best job as I can as mayor, Jacobs said. One of my favorite sayings is one that Mike Tysonsaid: Everyone has a plan until you get punched in the mouth. Life just has a way of changing. This is a very important job. Were a community offive hundredthousandpeople, and in our metro area, overa millionpeople. The things that I do and the decisions that I make have some sort of impact on all of those people.

Still, the difficulties of governing hundreds of thousands of people is somehow less daunting than the physical and travel demands of Jacobss former profession. Despite his new position, Jacobs admits hes still a fan and that he does his best to keep up with his former colleagues in WWE.

I want WWE to do well because I still have an interest in the company and in my friends who work there, Jacobs said. Its a difficult job and its not glamorous. I remember one time, Taker and I, we were sitting in a roadside diner in Jefferson City, Missouri, on our way from St. Louis to Kansas City. It was like 2 oclock in the morning and Mark looks at me and goes, Ah, the glamour. I know what those men and women are going through, so I hope it goes really well.

On sale Tuesday, November 26, Mayor Kane is the surprising and inspiring story of how former WWE Champion Glenn "Kane" Jacobs became the mayor of Knox County, Tennessee.

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'I dont have a facade': How Kane went from WWE icon to elected office - Yahoo Sports

What Is Happening With Rand Paul? (2019-11-28) – Biology Reporter

Our team has conducted some comprehensive research on Rand Paul, current as of 2019-11-28. Rand Paul is a politician in Kentucky. Heres their handsome photo:

Twitter activity: As of 2019-11-28, Rand Paul (@RandPaul) has 2578174 Twitter followers, is following 492 people, has tweeted 13302 times, has liked 854 tweets, has uploaded 2975 photos and videos and has been on Twitter since November 2010.

Facebook activity: As of 2019-11-28, Rand Paul has 790,712 likes on their facebook page, 813,080 followers and has been maintaining the page since February 3, 2011. Their page ID is SenatorRandPaul.

How popular is Rand Paul right now? On Google Trends Rand Paul had a popularity ranking of 8 ten days ago, 4 nine days ago, 7 eight days ago, 7 seven days ago, 6 six days ago, 6 five days ago, 6 four days ago, 5 three days ago, 5 two days ago, 3 one day ago and now has a popularity rank of 6. So in the recent past, they were gathering the most attention on 2019-11-16 when they had a rank of 8. If we compare Rand Pauls popularity to three months ago, they had an average popularity of 4.0, whereas now their average popularity over the last ten days is 5.8. so by that measure, Rand Paul is getting more popular! Its worth noting, finally, that Rand Paul never had a rank of 0, indicating people are always searching for them.

And what about how Rand Paul has fared if we consider the entire past 3 months? Our date indicates 2019-11-05 to be their most popular day, when they had a relative rank of 100. Not bad!

We found suggested searches for people looking up Rand Paul include Rand Paul (duh), Rand Paul presidential campaign, 2016, Paul Rand, Libertarianism: A Primer and Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs to Know.

As of 2019-11-28, our research indicates that people searching for Rand Paul are also searching for these related terms: trump, rand paul trump, twitter rand paul, senator rand paul, rand paul the view, rand paul whistleblower, ron paul, donald trump, who is rand paul, rand paul neighbor, mitch mcconnell, rand paul on the view, rand paul book, trump twitter, rand paul height, lindsey graham, paul rand logos, sen rand paul, fox news, donald trump twitter, who is the whistleblower, rand paul father and how tall is rand paul.

We did some more tiring analysis today on the web sentiment regarding Rand Paul, and found a number of recent news articles about them. I may update this post when I have analyzed more of them.

Do you have anything youd like to share on Rand Paul as of 2019-11-28? Let us know in the comments! (And keep it civil)

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What Is Happening With Rand Paul? (2019-11-28) - Biology Reporter

Rev. Ron Moore: Three reasons to be thankful – State-Journal.com

Life is precious. Enjoy it while you have it.

There were 151,000 people who died last night. In case you didnt know that's the daily death rate. However, God saw to it that you made the wakeup list!

I understand that for some people the holidays can be the most depressing time of the year. While everyone around seems to be in a celebratory mood life may be hitting you where it hurts the most (family, finances, friends). Often, when we choose to view things from another perspective, not only can we see the good of a situation, but therein lies a smidget of hope. You have fresh air flowing through your lungs. You are alive. You still have time to get it right. You have hope!

The Bible says this:Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God, our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope (1 Timothy 1:1). Its time to put our hope in the Lord. He loves us with an everlasting love. He will never leave us. He will turn it around.

I no longer use the word friend loosely. Over the years, my wife would warn me about who I called my friend, and she was always right. A real friend will be there when you are at your lowest low. When everyone else may be gossiping, lying and laughing at you, a real friend will stand right beside you.

We all have had individuals that we call friends not do very friendly things to us. Well, guess what? Those people were not really our friends. Here is a word that belongs in the friendship discussion: accountability. True friends hold each other accountable for their actions. True friends dont let each other smoke, drink or sex their life away!

There may be someone right now who honestly has no true friends. May I recommend someone? Listen to what Jesus says: Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord does: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard from my Father I have made known unto you. (John 15:15)

Could you honestly imagine yourself living anywhere else? Some may say some exotic island or perhaps some other place. I know that this part may stir up the hornets nest. I understand that America has some serious issues at hand. Perhaps the most notorious problem at hand is race relations. So I am not naive to what is going on in our country.

Nevertheless, we cant let negative circumstances erode the greatness of our country. The devil hates America because America was founded on the precepts and principles of the Bible. We are a country that has chosen Jesus Christ as our God.

Again, I realize that there are other religions in America. However, America pumps out, through various media outlets, more than 82% of the worlds gospel of Jesus Christ. I am thankful to be living in this country. Let's use our faith and believe God that the problems of our country will change for the better of mankind. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people He has chosen as His own inheritance (Psalm 33:12)

The Rev. Ron Moore Jr. is the associate minister at First Corinthian Baptist Church in Frankfort. Contact him at Revronmoore@gmail.com.

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Ron Paul | Abortion | Pro-Life Profiles

Both the fifth and 14th Amendments create a constitutional right to life for all "persons" as well as a federal duty to protect those lives. Therefore, if the Court were to overturn Roe on the basis that the unborn child is a person, their lives would be protected by the Constitution and this nightmare would be over. However, most legal experts feel that the Court is far more likely to overturn Roe on the basis that abortion is... a "states' rights" matter. That would be an unmitigated disaster for the unborn. We would almost immediately end up with a "patchwork quilt" of abortion laws in which a few states would prohibit abortion altogether, others would allow it in any circumstance, and the vast majority would take some sort of middle path. Given that state lines are freely crossed, this would leave every unborn baby in every state exposed to abortion. It could also guarantee that our great-grandchildren will still be fighting this battle a hundred years from now. when someone claims to be pro-life, he or she is saying that the unborn are persons. After all, there is no other basis upon which to justify the pro-life position. So in light of the Fifth and 14th Amendments, it would be preposterous for the pro-life movement to be working toward a situation where the right-to-life of the unborn is negotiated within the state legislatures. we must always be mindful that until America has a constitutional amendment that affirms the personhood of the unborn from the moment of fertilization, this battle cannot end the Personhood Movement is reminding us of that.

"So if we are ever to have fewer abortions, society must change again. The law will not accomplish that. However, that does not mean that the states shouldnt be allowed to write laws dealing with abortion. Very early pregnancies and victims of rape can be treated with the day after pill, which is nothing more than using birth control pills in a special manner. These very early pregnancies could never be policed, regardless. Such circumstances would be dealt with by each individual making his or her own moral choice." -Ron Paul, Liberty Defined

Ron Paul's legacy is apparent. When politicians run for mayor and they are asked about children being dismembered in the womb they reply that abortion is not a matter of city statute. When politicians run for governor they say abortion is a federal issue. When they run for president they say abortion is a state issue. They pass the buck. Ron Paul style. Paul is teaching a generation of politicians how to pass the buck regarding human rights and the slaughter of the innocent. When Paul makes his moral equivalence argument that just as Roe is invalid, "a federal law banning abortion across all 50 states would be equally invalid," he trivializes the slaughter of millions and shows he has been seduced by legal positivism which is moral relativism in government. Process does not trump principle. Yet Paul undermines the most fundamental moral principles when he claims that abortion is a states' rights issue. There is no right, anywhere, to decriminalize child killing. No constitution can bestow such a "right" and no one and no country nor political subdivision could ever in truth have the right to decriminalize killing children. Because human rights trump states' rights, Ron Paul should not give a false sense of security to a state which legitimizes genocide, suggesting that state should expect to operate free from forceful intervention. To illustrate Paul's bankrupt view of governance, he would have amended the Weimar Constitution to oppose a national ban on concentration camps, and he would have justified this by arguing that such a ban would have been just as invalid as the Holocaust. We urge obstetrician Dr. Ron Paul to humble himself before the greatest Physician, who conceived not only delivery, but reproduction itself. We pray that Paul will acknowledge that process does not trump principle, for no agreement among men could ever justify any part of America tolerating the intentional slaughter of innocent children in the States.

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Ron Paul | Abortion | Pro-Life Profiles

Ron Paul, Author at Antiwar.com Original

Is President Trump about to invade Venezuela? His advisors keep telling us in ever-stronger terms that all options are on the table and that US military intervention to restore Venezuelas constitution may be necessary. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was on the Sunday news programs to claim that President Trump could launch a military attack Continue reading A Nuclear War? Over Venezuela?Russian gun rights activist and graduate exchange student Maria Butina was sentenced to 18 months in prison last week for conspiracy to act as a foreign agent without registering. Her crime was to work to make connections among American gun rights activists in hopes of building up her organization, the Right to Bear Arms, when Continue reading Why is Maria Butina in Prison?Last weeks arrest of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange by the British government on a US extradition order is an attack on all of us. It is an attack on the US Constitution. It is an attack on the free press. It is an attack on free speech. It is an attack on our right to Continue reading Julian Assange: Political PrisonerThis week President Trump admitted what the Washington policy establishment of both parties would rather be kept quiet. Asked why he intervened to block a new round of sanctions on North Korea, he told the media that he believes the people of North Korea have suffered enough. "They are suffering greatly in North Korea And Continue reading Trump Tells the Truth: Sanctions Cause People to SufferLast week Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ordered the last of the US diplomats out of Venezuela, saying their presence was a constraint on US policy toward the country. The wording seemed intended to convey the idea that the US is about to launch military action to place a Washington-backed, self-appointed politician to the presidency. Continue reading Is Trump Really About To Attack Venezuela?President Trumps second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un last week was criticized by both parties in Washington long before Air Force One even touched down in Hanoi. Washingtons political class seemed terrified that the nearly 70 year state of war with North Korea might actually end. In the end the only positive thing Continue reading Did Bolton Blow North Korea?In a fitting legacy for my friend Walter Jones, Jr. who passed away last week, the US House made history by voting in favor of H.J.Res. 37, a resolution Directing the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities in the Republic of Yemen that have not been authorized by Congress. As George ONeill wrote Continue reading Walter Jones and the Vote to End US War on YemenLast weeks bipartisan Senate vote to rebuke President Trump for his decision to remove troops from Syria and Afghanistan unfortunately tells us a lot about what is wrong with Washington, DC. While the two parties loudly bicker about minor issues, when it comes to matters like endless wars overseas they enthusiastically join together. With few Continue reading President Starts a War? Congress Yawns. Threatens to End One? Condemnation!Last week President Trump announced that the United States would no longer recognize Nicholas Maduro as president of Venezuela and would recognize the head of its national assembly, Jose Guaido, as president instead. US thus openly backs regime change. But what has long been a dream of the neocons may well turn out to be Continue reading Trumps Venezuela FiascoIm starting to wonder whether President Trump has any power over US foreign policy at all. Many people believe that the US president is just a figurehead, with actual foreign policy firmly in the hands of the deep state. Trumps latest dramatic U-turn on pulling troops from Syria certainly feeds such theories. When President Trump Continue reading Trumps Neocons Reverse His Syria Withdrawal Plan

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Ron Paul, Author at Antiwar.com Original

Ron Paul: Julian Assange, Political Prisoner OpEd Eurasia …

Last weeks arrest of Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange by the Britishgovernment on a US extradition order is an attack on all of us. It is anattack on the US Constitution. It is an attack on the free press. It isan attack on free speech. It is an attack on our right to know what ourgovernment is doing with our money in our name. Julian Assange is everybit as much a political prisoner as was Cardinal Mindszenty in Hungaryor Nelson Mandela in South Africa.

They, and so many more, were imprisoned because they told the truth about their governments.

Repressivegovernments do not want their citizens to know that they are up to sothey insist on controlling the media. We are taught, at the same time,that we have a free press whose job it is to uncover the corruption inour system so that we can demand our political leaders make some changesor face unemployment. That, we are told, is what makes us differentfrom the totalitarian.

The arrest of Assange is a canary in a coal mine to warn us that something is very wrong with our system.

Whatswrong? The US mainstream media always seems to do the bidding of the USgovernment. That is why they rushed to confirm Washingtons claim thatthe Assange indictment was not in any way about journalism. It was onlyabout hacking government computers!

As the New York Times said inan editorial, sounding like a mouthpiece of the US government, JulianAssange committed an indisputable crime. But was it? As actualjournalist Glenn Greenwald wrote last week, what Julian Assange did in2010, for which he is facing extradition to the US, is no different fromwhat New York Times and other journalists do every day! He attempted tohelp Chelsea Manning shield his identity as he blew the whistle on USgovernment crimes to a publisher. The information in question included avideo showing US military personnel participating in and cheering themurder of Iraqi civilians. Why is it criminal for us to know this?

Thedifference is that what Assange and Manning did embarrassed the USgovernment, which was lying to us that it was liberating Iraq andAfghanistan when it was actually doing the opposite. Mainstreamjournalists publish leaks that help bolster the neocon or other vestednarratives of the different factions of the US government. Thats whythe US media wants to see Assange in prison, or worse: he upset theirapple cart.

The lesson is clear: when you bolster thegovernments narrative you are a brave journalist. When you exposecorruption in government you are a criminal. Do we really want to livein a country where it is illegal to learn that our government is engagedin criminal acts? I thought we had an obligation as an engagedcitizenry to hold our government accountable!

As long as JulianAssange is in prison, we are all in prison. When the government has thepower to tell us what we we allowed to see, hear, and know, we no longerlive in a free society. Julian Assange will be extradited to the US andhe will have dozens of charges piled on. They want him to disappear sothat the next Assange will think twice before informing us of ourgovernments crimes. Are we going to let them steal our freedom?

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

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Ron Paul: Julian Assange, Political Prisoner OpEd Eurasia ...

Inside Ron Paul’s Counter-Convention | Vanity Fair

Last week, thousands of people descended upon Minneapolisthe other Twin Cityfor Ron Paul's Rally for the Republic, a colorful affair heavy on Revolutionary War symbolism. The gathering was meant to serve as a message of revolt to the Republican Party from some of its most disaffected constituents. Just a little more than a cannon's range away from the Xcel Center in St. Paul, where the official R.N.C was taking place, Paul's rally attracted pilgrims from all over the countrysome driving from as far as New York and Alabama, some even walking from Wisconsin, 200 miles awayand ended up having all the energy that the R.N.C. lacked in its halting start. The atmosphere was certainly more informal and the attendees more outr. Compared to the general electorate, Ron Paul believers tend to be disproportionately white and male, but they're also younger and grungier. There's a misfit quality to many of them, and a disagreeable odor to some. Ponytails, mullets, goatees, dreadlocks, and piercings were everywhere. But families also made the trip, a few wearing tricorne hats and other colonial clothing.

The culmination of the rally took place on Tuesday at the Target Center, where a procession of libertarian- and conservative-leaning speakers, including Grover Norquist, Tucker Carlson, and Jesse Ventura, condemned the state of the Republican establishment. ("Socialist" Democrats also took a lashing, though their evilness was so obvious as to warrant less mention.) They also praised Paul's proposals to abolish the Fed, reinstate the gold standard, and immediately withdraw nearly all U.S. troops from abroad. By the time Barry Goldwater Jr. made the grand introduction, 12,000 people had gathered in the arena, and when Paul took the stage he electrified them with a call to action and a hard-hitting denunciation of the Patriot Act, the War on Drugs, national I.D. cards, and executive abuses. Paul is an underrated speaker capable of preacher-like animation, and he was particularly fired up on this night. No fewer than three times did stomping chants of "END THE FED!" break out.Paul is no longer running for president. In fact, when I ask the 73-year-old Texas congressman if he'll ever run for the White House again, he answers, "Oh, I doubt that very much," then adds, "If I was anxious to do that then I would have continued the process, as an independent person or something, because we had a fair amount of momentum." So what was the point of his convention?

The Rally for the Republic was announced back in June, as a way for Paul to make a loud and clear statement to his party as it tried to suppress his and his supporters' views. Paul's campaign said he was not invited to speak at the R.N.C., despite getting 1.2 million votes in the Republican primaries. (Fred Thompson, by comparison, received 286,000 votes and a prime time Tuesday slot.) His followers found themselves cheated at several state conventions when their fellow Republicans bent or broke rules in order to exclude them from the national convention. Clearly, top Republicans had decided that party unity called for keeping troublemakers out of the big tent.

As a result, the G.O.P. may have further incited the Ron Paul revolution. Shortly after the rally was announced, Paul also launched a grass-roots action group called Campaign for Liberty, dedicated to furthering the goals of "individual liberty, constitutional government, sound money, free markets, and a noninterventionist foreign policy." The organization, a 501(c)(4), represents an attempt by Paul to convert the lightning he captured in the primary and convert it into a lasting movement. It will focus on educating and recruiting new leaders at all levels of government, from local precincts on up.

Some 700 activists attended the Campaign for Liberty grass-roots training session on August 31. One trainee told me that three fourths of the people in attendance were either running for office or planning to run for office. It's this level of intense engagement that was perhaps the most striking part of the Rally for the Republic. A goodly number of the Paul supporters I encountered at the concert on Monday night and the blowout on Tuesday told me with calm convictionor slightly unsettling zealthat it was just a matter of time until they sought office, if they weren't running for Congress or state assembly already. And if most didn't have the intellectual capacity of Bill Clinton or the charisma of Ronald Reagan, a few had genuine potential, and most, upon cursory inspection at least, seemed generally free of the conspiracy thinking and fringe lunacy that stalk the edges of Paul's events.

B.J. Lawson may be the most promising example. Thirty-two years old, with the all-American good looks and dimpled chin of a more boyish Aaron Eckhardt, Lawson is a self-identified "Ron Paul Republican" running for Congress in North Carolina's fourth district. He studied engineering at Duke and then received an M.D. before leaving a residency in neurosurgery, also at Duke, to start a company that specializes in delivering clinical information to doctors' wireless devices. His experience as an entrepreneur, he says, led him to start asking questions about our healthcare system, national debt, and other thorny issues.

Lawson faces an uphill battle against 20-year Democratic incumbent David Price but claims his campaign's internal polling gives him reason to be optimistic. (No public polls are available yet.) He has already overcome a challenge by the G.O.P. in his primary. "Honestly, the party establishment worked really hard to get me not to run," he tells me after Monday night's outdoor concert and speech by Paul, whom he introduced. "They actually put up a guy to run against me. A lot of folks thought I was going to get toasted." Pulling out a copy of the Constitution from his coat pocket (he carries one around with him at all times), he says, "We gave away about 10,000 of these things, we had lots of grass-roots support, and we walked away with 71 percent of the [primary] vote." Lawson doesn't call for scrapping the Fed, as Paul does, but he does want to eliminate the income tax, and he shares Paul's opposition to pre-emptive war and nation building. He cites Paul as "definitely my inspiration," explaining, "I'd almost given up hope" before the congressman's presidential bid.

Almost all the Paul activists seeking office for the first time told me they will run again if they come up short this time around. Paul's supporters have both a sense of urgency and the patience to wait until 2012 or beyond to start seeing the fruits of their labor. Many compare their mission to the Goldwater movement, which took years to produce results but eventually left a deep mark on the Republican Party.

Carl Bunce, an affable, talkative 31-year-old Republican with a Kentucky drawl now running for Congress in Nevada's third district, has also been inspired by Paul's example. "If it weren't for Ron Paul," he says, "I'd be sitting on my couch, playing PlayStation or Xbox with my little brother." Nevada's congressional primaries have not yet taken place, and as a newcomer Bunce, who resembles a less obnoxious version of Spencer Pratt, is a distant long shot against Republican incumbent Jon Porter. But he is fearless in criticizing the establishment frontrunner. To him, the Republican Party has become a "country club" of "neocon warmongers," and he takes personal offense at the fact that, as he tells it, elder party figures counseled him to save his money instead of wasting it on a quixotic bid for Congress.

Paul has suffered from a similar lack of respect, even after pulling in more than $6 million in contributions in one day, raising more money from U.S. soldiers and veterans than all the other Republican candidates combined, and drawing as much as 15 percent of the vote away from John McCain in late primaries. Paul owes his very stardom to a defining moment of disrespect during the South Carolina Republican debate in May 2007, when Rudy Giuliani bullied him for suggesting that U.S. foreign policy might have in part motivated 9/11. The anti-war candidate stood his ground with a provocative response about America's meddling in the Middle East and about "blowback"the notion that actions we take abroad have unintended consequences that may harm us down the roadand gained a huge following overnight.

The Republican pollster and strategist Frank Luntz once compared Paul's followers to crabgrass, and that's just one example of the disdain in which they are held by the powers that be in the G.O.P. But is that changing? Paul says that he has been contacted by numerous Republican Congressmen in tight races seeking his endorsement. And The Washington Times reported that the McCain campaign actually negotiated with Paul through the R.N.C. about giving him a speaking slot in exchange for his support and the names of his voter database. (Paul suggests he may make a presidential endorsement later this month and seems to be leaning toward Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party or Libertarian Bob Barr.) Appearing on The Colbert Report on September 4, Paul said he could have spoken at the convention if he'd simply given up everything he believed in. (Colbert's reply: "So, just like everybody else. Listen, you want to play with the big boys, you've got to play along.") The McCain campaign would not elaborate on the negotiations when asked by Vanity Fair about them.

As voters grow increasingly tired of the Republican Party's politics and priorities, its foreign policy, and its handling of the economy, it will have to evolve somehow to regain its footing. Several theories on how this can be accomplished are already being debated among conservatives. Should the G.O.P. start listening to Ron Paul? Reihan Salam, an associate editor at The Atlantic, and co-author of Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream, believes the coalition Paul put together may be too flaky and heterogeneousand, frankly, not Republican enoughto ever be taken seriously by the party. "A lot of that movement has to do with Goldwater rights, libertarian conservatism, a lot of it is Rainbow Coalition, and maybe half of it comes from the far left," says Salam. "It was a very unusual, quirky collection of lots of people who kind of reject the mainstream of American politics. I think the relationship to the mainstream of Republican politics is not really there."

To Ron Paul's supporters, that might make Salam yet another skeptic to disprove. At least these things are certain: The G.O.P. is vulnerable right now. And the opening salvos of "phase two" of the revolution, as Paul's followers call it, have been sounded. In the coming election cycles, we'll see how his armies fare with him still carrying the banner but no longer leading the charge.

Photograph by Keith Bedford/Bloomberg News/Landov

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Inside Ron Paul's Counter-Convention | Vanity Fair