Showing posts with label The Wall Street Journal. Show all posts

Oct 23, 2015

Rove on Trump: Dunking the donald

The Donald’s Missing Details

Who would be eligible for TrumpCare? What will the border wall cost? He doesn’t say.

KARL ROVE

Oct. 21, 2015 6:42 p.m. ET

Having led the polls for three months, Donald Trump has shown he’s no flash in the pan. Voters and the media should therefore treat him as a traditional front-runner, examine his temperament and require him to go beyond sound bites.

A governing agenda is essential to win the White House. Candidates must demonstrate mastery of the issues and cannot wing it. Platitudes don’t cut it for swing voters. Inquiring minds might like to hear Mr. Trump explain what specifically he would do as president.

He has said that he would deport the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S., and in two years or less, thanks to “really good management.” But what exactly is Mr. Trump’s plan to arrest, detain and deport—with all the litigation that entails—15,000 people a day? That’s roughly 10 times the number of daily arrests in the U.S. for violent crime. How will Mr. Trump round up these people in a way that is, as he promises, “very humane” and “very nice”? And how many tens of billions will this cost?

Mr. Trump says he will then “expedite” the return of “the good ones” and proclaims that he doesn’t mind “having a big beautiful door” in his border wall to hasten their return. Question: Wouldn’t it be more practical to identify the “good” illegal immigrants first, to thereby avoid the cost of deporting them merely to expedite their return? Wouldn’t it be easier to determine who qualifies as “good” before deportation?

Then there’s the billionaire hotelier’s pledge to build that wall on the southern border. Mr. Trump has neither said how much it would cost nor dealt with practical considerations. For example, would Mr. Trump build a wall along the 1,254 miles where the Rio Grande separates Texas and Mexico? Would he wall off Lake Amistad and Falcon Lake, two reservoirs straddling the border where Americans go fishing and boating? What would he say to Texas officials who, instead of a wall along most of the Rio Grande border, would prefer to spend money on more Border Patrol agents, air assets and technology?

He is similarly vague on health care. In a Sept. 27 interview on “60 Minutes,” he said health care should be a universal, government-provided right. “Everybody’s got to be covered,” he said. “I don’t care if it costs me votes or not.” When the interviewer asked how, and who would pay for it, Mr. Trump answered, “I would make a deal with existing hospitals to take care of people,” and pledged that “the government’s gonna pay for it.” During the Aug. 6 GOP debate Mr. Trump praised socialized medical systems elsewhere. “As far as single payer, it works in Canada,” he said. “It works incredibly well in Scotland.”

So how would TrumpCare operate? How many Americans would be eligible? What would it cost? It isn’t enough for Mr. Trump to go on “60 Minutes” and claim, “They can have their doctors, they can have plans, they can have everything.” Americans have heard empty promises before. They want an actual proposal that works.

There are already huge gaps between what Mr. Trump says and reality. For instance, he has complained about “hedge fund guys that are making a lot of money that aren’t paying anything” in taxes. Yet when he released his tax plan, he proposed dropping the top rate on hedge fund fees to 25% from 39.6%. True, the plan would raise taxes on their performance bonuses to 25% from 23.8%. But the result would be a generous tax cut provided to people Mr. Trump claims pay no taxes despite “making a hell of a lot of money.”

What about entitlements? “I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican,” Mr. Trump says. “And I’m not going to cut Medicare.” But the Social Security Trust Fund will go bankrupt by 2034, and the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will be exhausted in 2030. The only way the next president can save these entitlements is to reform them and help America avoid a debt crisis.

Mr. Trump has proven he can do outrageous. But soon Mr. Trump must demonstrate that which he has so far avoided: substance.

Republicans, too, face a test: Will the party choose a nominee with a conservative agenda or one reflecting populist anger? The two are hardly the same. Conservative principles provide a winning path to the White House. Populist outrage alone will end in defeat. In three months, Republican primary voters will begin deciding which they want. A good start would be to demand more from The Donald.

Mr. Rove helped organize the political-action committee American Crossroads and is the author of “The Triumph of William McKinley: Why the 1896 Election Still Matters,” out in November from Simon & Schuster.

copied from wsj.com

Sep 17, 2015

Karl Rove Talks About His Beautiful Doggie Girl and True Love for Democrats or Republicans

Border Collie (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

English: Tri color border collie (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

BC_eye.jpg, Border Collie exhibiting "Collie Eye" to stare down sheep (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Blue merle Border Collie pup at 15 weeks starting to use the eye. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Karl Rove
August 27, 2015

Farewell To A Border Collie Underdog

Nan taught compassion, patience and habits of acceptance. And she loved herding goats.

Beautiful, sweet Nan passed away Saturday. Our border collie was diagnosed with cancer in February and given a month. They could operate, the veterinarians said, but it would buy her only weeks and her quality of life would be poor. So we prepared ourselves as best we could and tried to make her last remaining days comfortable.

Instead, we had Nan for almost half a year more than we expected—and for all but a few moments, she was herself: energetic, demanding, loving and life-affirming. Mercifully, when the end came, it came quickly. The last thing we wanted was for her to suffer.

Nan was the runt of her litter. The breeder didn’t even offer her up for inspection since she had lost her tail as a puppy, cut off on a barbed wire fence.

But there was something about that pup. Maybe true underdogs have special appeal. The first few weeks, she sat under the furniture and wouldn’t come out. But after a while, she allowed herself to be petted, then took to jumping onto the bed every night and making her personality’s full force felt.

Nan took a special interest in regularly walking us, insisting on long ambles twice a day for our health. I was expected to use the long, plastic Chuckit with the scoop-end to throw balls to keep my arms limber, which Nan encouraged by retrieving most of the balls.

She demanded squeaky ones, not regular tennis balls, so she could mock me, biting the ball to make noise, then dropping it before snatching it as I went to pick it up.

Nan was something of a survivalist. Fearing a shortage of squeaky balls, she hid a large number of them in the high grass along our walks. Neighbors took to leaving in our mailbox the balls they’d found in their bushes.

Of course, border collies are working dogs. They need employment. So Nan loved our little ranch near Blanco, Texas. There she could herd goats, cows, donkeys and horses. The first three tolerated her; the horses did not. They took umbrage that an animal so small presumed to try to boss around animals so large. But she did.

Her favorites were goats, especially the baby ones. They appreciated leadership and came to associate Nan’s arrival with the appearance of food. Blessed be Nan from whom all pellets come! That was because Nan always accompanied the ranch foreman, Jorge Pichardo, riding shotgun in the four-wheeler or running along side the truck when he fed the animals and inspected the fences. At the ranch, she wouldn’t swim in the pool, but would jump in a water trough to cool off.

Things were different in town. The farm dog became a city slicker, sleeping in one of her two comfy beds when she wasn’t trying to carve out part of ours. She would remove herself to the one in the big closet when she didn’t fancy the late-night movie we were watching, but she preferred the one in the bedroom under her portrait by a certain former president.

No matter how busy she was, Nan was happy to present her belly, back, head or neck to be scratched. She particularly enjoyed the brain massage, a vigorous head-rub accompanied by neck-scratching.

Nan followed other great dogs that I have known. When I was at the White House, I honored Harry Truman’s dictum that if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog. I had two—the ever-loyal Daisy and the whip-smart Gracie. Both passed a few years ago, but even now I feel a twinge when I see dogs that look like my old pals.

Nearly half of all American households are blessed with a dog. Dogs teach compassion and patience, both by what they give and what they require. They encourage habits of acceptance: They are who they are, and we must adapt. We learn true unconditional love from them. And given their lives’ relative briefness, they remind us that we must be grateful for each moment we are given.

“Heaven goes by favor,” Mark Twain once said, for “if it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.” RIP, sweet Nan.
A version of this article appeared August 27, 2015, in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline Farewell To A Border Collie Underdog and online at WSJ.com.

Sweet Nan

copied from rove.com

Thank you, Karl Rove, for taking time to share your very wonderful thoughts about your border collie.........so very, very sorry for your loss......cl.......the ronnie re.

Numbers Expert Karl Rove Talks The Presidential Debate and Winning The Big Race

By Karl Rove
September 17, 2015

The Real GOP Race Has Barely Started

At this point in 2011, Rick Perry was on top—and three others led without winning, too.

The difficulty with a Thursday column after a Wednesday presidential debate is that the newspaper is put to bed hours before the debate starts. But here are a few observations about the GOP contest that don’t depend on how specific candidates fared in their second face-off.

The race is likely to swirl unpredictably for some time to come. On this day in 2011, Texas Gov. Rick Perry led the presidential field with 29.9% in the Real Clear Politics average of polls. Still in the future were the periods during which Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum were each the front-runner. Mitt Romney, the eventual nominee, didn’t grab the lead in the polls for good until Feb. 28, 2012. Several people on stage last night probably moved their numbers—for good or ill—with their debate performances.

Remember, too, that in 2012 the Iowa caucuses were held on Jan. 3. Next year, the caucuses take place on Feb. 1. That makes movement even more likely: 63% of Republicans believe it is too early to make up their minds, according to a Sept. 13 New York Times/CBS News poll.

Conventional wisdom has been that nothing front-runner Donald Trump says hurts him. But there are signs that the contrast between Mr. Trump’s abrasive style and Ben Carson’s soft-spoken demeanor is having an effect. Mr. Trump’s support seems to have topped out, rising only three points, to 27% from 24% in the past two months, according to the New York Times/CBS poll. Perhaps Mr. Trump’s pungent insults are having a cumulative and corrosive effect.

Support for Mr. Carson, meanwhile, rose 17 points, to 23% from 6%. This jump came even though Mr. Carson had a lackluster first debate performance—though his thoughtful closing remarks alone may have caused voters to pay more attention to him.

The danger for Mr. Trump is that his campaign is built around his poll numbers. He obsesses about them in his speeches and gets testy when journalists point out negative ones, like recent Marist/MSNBC/Telemundo poll showing that 70% of Latinos view him negatively. What happens if he loses the lead?

There is also likely to be more volatility as voters become increasingly interested in whether candidates have credible plans to achieve their goals. After the glitter of campaign announcements fades, the time for substance arrives.

If the past is any guide, voters will be increasingly preoccupied with the deeply personal and complex question of whether a candidate is qualified to be president. Especially in the early states, party activists are becoming serious about determining which candidates have the temperament, character and vision to provide effective leadership in the Oval Office.

All of this comes when trust in government is at a historical low. Last year when Gallupasked Americans how much confidence they had in Washington, more than half said “not very much” or “none at all.” Americans are more skeptical of the federal government now than they were even in 2008, during the financial crisis, or in 1976, two years after Watergate. The presidential candidates successful in those years were relatively untested “outsiders”—one-term Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter and then-first-term Sen. Barack Obama.

Fifty-six percent of Americans want the next president to have experience in the political system, while only 40% want someone from outside the political establishment, according to a Sept. 10 Washington Post/ABC poll. Republicans, however, favor an outsider 58% to 36%. They are so infuriated with the political class that they want a candidate who will throw a brick through Washington’s window.

This points to the challenge for Republican hopefuls who have held office: They need to show that they have effectively challenged the political status quo. Having served outside Washington, governors should have an easier time at this than senators.

There will be four more debates—one a month—before the Iowa caucuses, then three debates in February. Until then, the only thing we know for sure is that the race will be determined by how the candidates conduct themselves. That would be true in any political year; it’s triply true in this unusually volatile era, when many of the usual rules don’t apply. The candidates—and all the rest of us—should buckle our seat belts. We’re in for quite a ride.

A version of this article appeared September 18, 2015, in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline The Real GOP Race Has Barely Started and online at WSJ.com.

copied from rove.com

Karl Rove shares his thoughts about the passing of his very beautiful and loved doggie girl:

http://www.rove.com/articles/602