Morning Briefing: Let Them All Debate

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Let Them All Debate Scott Walker has exited the stage. Rick Perry has exited the stage. In the Real Clear Politics average, there are now 14 candidates who register in the polls in terms of the Republican nomination. It is time to put them all on stage. Unfortunately, the CNBC-GOP debate has further shrunk the stage using a 3% metric, instead of a top ten metric. But CNBC is going to round up anyone at 2.5% or higher. That is entirely artificial and designed to make CNBC look good by not precluding from the stage Huckabee, Christie, and Paul who've been at the other debates. At this point, we have 14 candidates who are being detected with support in the polls. It is time to put them all on the stage together. We deserve to hear from Mike Huckabee. We deserve to hear from Chris Christie. We deserve to hear from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) 88% — all of whom are now below 3% in the averages. Read More

All Good Things . . . The cat is now completely out of the bag, so I might as well fess up. I am leaving at the end of this year. June 3rd was my 40th birthday and also my 10th year on the payroll as Editor-in-Chief of RedState. I emailed the corporate overlords that day and told them it was time to start planning a transition. Frankly, I wanted to be done the week after the RedState Gathering, but they asked me to stay till the end of the year and I agreed. But all good things must come to an end and I arrived this year in June at a time ready to make another leap of faith. Read More

I Have Big Shoes to Fill Sir Isaac Newton once quipped, "If I have seen farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants who came before me." I am (obviously) no Sir Isaac Newton, but as I prepare to take over the reigns of RedState, I have to acknowledge that this website wouldn't exist as anything resembling the entity it currently is without the gigantic efforts of Erick Erickson. I will be eternally grateful for everything he has done for me and for this site. . . My hope is to carry on his legacy by building on what he has largely been responsible for creating, and honoring his vision for a site that holds Republicans accountable for their sins as much as Democrats. I will continue to live and work here from my home in Nashville – far away from the corruption of the Beltway, so that I can continue to hurl flaming stones at it, when necessary. Here at RedState, we will strive to grow the site while maintaining the honest candor towards both parties that we have always had. I have some big shoes to fill as Managing Editor, and all of us who write here at RedState will have to step up our game – a challenge for which we are prepared. We hope you will join us as we strive to take RedState to the next level together. Read More Sponsored

Obama Cries 'No Mas' in Syria Over the week end I posted on what I see to be the real Russian strategy in Syria: use highly provocative actions and statements to create a narrative that Russia is the dominant power and America is on the decline. This strategy is working because Obama apparently lives in a universe where everyone is working together to achieve what is good rather than the universe the rest of us inhabit. . . As one looks back over the history of the Obama administration the word "half-assed" just explodes out. From Obama's creation of ISIS by his precipitous withdrawal to Iraq to the boneheaded Arab Spring fiasco to the benighted attempt to push Bashar Assad from power one is hard pressed to find anything that Obama has 'done well'. The degree to which he is out of touch is revealed in the bizarre statement that we are trying to "get the parties on the ground to agree to live together in some fashion." Most of us thought our mission in Syria was to "degrade and destroy" ISIS. When did getting along with ISIS and al-Qaeda become our goals? Read More

NY Times on How Mass Shooters Got Firearms Exposes Gun Grabber Myths Of the 14, two involved people with "criminal histories." Jaylen Fryberg used his father Raymond's gun to kill 4 classmates at his high school in Washington. Raymond Fryberg had a permanent domestic violence order of protection against him and it should have disqualified him from legally purchasing a firearm, yet the order was never entered into the system. In the case of Dylann Roof, he should have been barred because he admitted using drugs, but the FBI examiner who did his background check did not get the police report. With respect to mental health, none of the people with problems were adjudicated by a court to fit the standard of somebody who should be denied a firearm. Read More

Sponsored Hillary Will Grab Your Guns, With or Without Congress' Help Hillary Clinton is terrible at being a politician. Back in 2008, Barack Obama realized that he needed to avoid alienating blue collar rust belt workers in order to win the general election, and he knew that many of them were concerned about his well earned reputation as a gun grabber. Rather than risk alienating his voting base by trying to sound like he wasn't opposed to guns, he instead made the argument that it wasn't politically possible for him to take anyone's guns even if he wanted to. This, of course, turned out to be a lie, as Obama tried to do quite a bit to take away guns even without a single vote in Congress. But at least Obama had the political sense to know that he needed to say that Congress acted as a backstop to any gun grabbing impulses he might have. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, is showing the same tin ear that has her running scared from Bernie Sanders, of all people . . . Read More

The Freedom From Religion Foundation: America's Islamic State The Islamic State, when not torturing and murdering its neighbors, has been destroying religious monuments and artifacts, particularly focusing on artifacts of Baal worship, and other pre-Islamic architecture. Sounds crazy right? But here at home we've got the Freedom From Religion Foundation, seeking to destroy all religious monuments it deems heretical. And nobody seems ready to stop them. It's not that they want equality of all views. They mourn the booing of a 'humanist' and celebrate the "Freethought" ideology, even as they oppose Christian prayer, protest the Pope, and seek to tear down paintings, websites, and sculptures. Tell me the difference between the IS and FFRF on this? You can't, because there isn't one. Both are anti-cultural organizations, representing a fringe that seeks to tear down anything that offends their ideologies. Read More

Empress Hillary Would Close Down Congress (VIDEO) Hillary Clinton gave an interview to the Today Show today during a town hall in New Hampshire in which she touched on, among other things, the email controversy. Clearly, Hillary believes that McCarthy's offhand comment has given her free reign to go on the offensive about the email controversy, because she unleashed what can only be fairly described as an unhinged rant about the entire episode that was full of flat-out delusions and bug-eyed anger. There's an awful lot of crazy to unpack in a single 45 second answer, but let's start with the fact that Hillary Clinton seems to think that the President has the authority to "shut down" Congressional Committees. As Senator Clinton was so fond of pointing out when she was in Congress and the President was a Republican, Congress is a co-equal branch of government and the President has absolutely no say in how it conducts its own business. I am at a loss as to how Hillary Clinton thinks she would "shut down" a Congressional committee investigation if she were the President. Read More

I have a Concern about Jason Chaffetz If Chaffetz was so willing and eager to play lapdog for leadership, how would he behave as Speaker. It is very clear that Chaffetz repeatedly takes the side of leadership. He was not one of those who dared to defy Boehner privately or publicly at the beginning of 2015. He relies on his frequent Fox News appearances to claim conservatives love him. I'm more than a bit concerned that Chaffetz as Speaker may, like Boehner, decide he is one of us and therefore does not have to listen to us. That, after all, is what ultimately undid Boehner. But Chaffetz would be able to buy himself time and use Fox News appearance street cred to run roughshod over conservatives. Read More Sponsored

Sincerely yours, Leon Wolf Managing Editor, RedState