Trump vs Bernie

The elite of both the Elephants and the Donkeys are struggling to regain control of their respective political parties.

Drawing on their "deep" understanding of such things, both party's elite assured people last fall that come January, Trump and Bernie would not be serious contenders for the presidency of the United States.

Now, leaders in both parties have been reduced to scrambling to get control of what they were being paid to control in the first place---the political process in America.

And the highly compensated---7 figure income consultants...are cleaning out the offices. Or soon will be.

Some thoughts on Trump and Bernie.

Late yesterday we learned that a jury in Texas has cleared Planned Parenthood and indicted those who took the videos of PP leaders selling aborted baby parts. 

In 2012, Charles Murray, a well known author and conservative intellectual, wrote a book titled, "Coming Apart" in which he tells the story of Fishtown, a white, working class Philadelphia neighborhood.

Before 1970, Murray says, the community and its people had jobs, family and purpose.

He notes, "By the 1990s, the religious affiliation had worn thin. Marriage was becoming rarer in 1970, but 81% of families with children under age 18 were still headed by married couples. Over the next ten years, that figure dropped to 67%."

It has continued to drop.

Murray writes, "Low-skilled men were beginning to become irrelevant thanks to all the economic and social progress."

I would add "so-called progress."

The Left had the answer, Murray says, but Fishtowners were not interested. "Pride prevents them from taking advantage of social services. For them to accept such services might be to admit that they're not all they claim to be."

When Murray's book was released in 2012, the New York Times published an article that began: "For some decades now, a popular conservative narrative of modern America has gone something like this: Our center-right nation, devout, and industrious, is ruled by a politically liberal elite that disdains family, despises religion and celebrates indolence with government hand-outs."

That indeed describes the rule of Barack Obama.

The NYT says in their 2012 article, "Today it feeds the political frustrations of the Tea Party movement."

Murray notes, and rightly so, that during these times many voters dropped out of two-party politics.

He notes Reagan brought them back into the fold; and so did Ross Perot to a much lessor degree.

That's true, and I would add Romney pushed them away.

The NY Times suggests that Murray, in his book, flips the script by claiming the "white working class is no longer a part of the virtuous silent majority. Instead, beginning in the 1960s, it has become increasingly alienated from what Murray calls 'the founding virtues' of civic life." Our nation is coming apart at the seems, Murray warns---"not ethnic seams, but seams of class."

Timothy Carney, writing for the Washington Examiner yesterday, reminded his readers of Murray's book in pointing out that when South Carolina Republican Governor Nikki Haley scolded Trump and warned against listening to the "angriest voices" on the political scene, Trump responded, "I will gladly wear the mantle of anger. I'm angry because our country is in a mess."

Bernie Sanders is seen by some as the "grumpy old man" who has yelled himself into first place in the upcoming Iowa and New Hampshire polls over what was once considered to be "inevitable Hillary."

Bernie has risen because he is saying Washington insiders "are rigging the game" and Hillary is one of them. And America knows she is.

They also knows she tells lies. This generation knows what lies are, but don't know much about socialism, but it doesn't matter. They're mad. And they are with Bernie.

Pessimism and anger are found among most who attend a Trump rally or a Bernie rally.

"Feeling the Bern" is more than a slogan for these kids.

Fueling the anger/pessimism is a seemingly clueless President Obama who keeps telling the press, "Everything is awesome."

In his recent State of the Union address, the president said, "Anyone claiming that America's economy is in decline is peddling fiction."

While he cites data that shows GDP is growing, the stock market is up, the housing market has recovered, etc., all that is irrelevant to many in America.

His stats are meaningless to millions because it doesn't touch their lives in any tangible way.

The lengthy Washington Examiner article and the New York Times article reflect the thinking of others writing in various publications this week.

The pundits are puzzled. This is not how they drew up the political game plan for 2016.

Pat Caddell, a noted Democratic pollster who has worked for Democrats from Jimmy Carter to present day leaders in their Party for more than 40 years, says everything has changed in both parties.

He told Breitbart News Sunday that the 2016 election is about "revolt" more than about values and ideas, and the so-called "expert consultants in Washington DC are not going to be able to put the genie back in the bottle."---It's over as we have known it.

He says the Republican Party people were totally unprepared for what is happening---"The system is on the verge of coming apart," he says.

Caddell noted that the only 2 Republican candidates who have not hired or surrounded themselves with national Republican candidates are Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Conversely, Scott Walker surrounded himself with DC and Republican Party consultants, and within weeks, they destroyed his candidacy.

The remaining candidates have relied on their in-house GOP consultants, spent millions of dollars and slowly drifted toward the bottom in the polls. "They are relying," he says, "on outdated messaging and strategies."

Caddell says consultant Mike Murphy has spent millions of dollars taking Jeb Bush from 17% in the polls to 4%.

I don't agree with some of what Charles Murray says in his book, but completely agree that America's problem is not "ethnic" as thinkers on the Right and charlatans on the Left would have us believe.

I agree with Caddell that it is in part about insurgency. People are angry and fed up with the establishment in both political parties.

Obama and the so-called Progressive Left have indeed created and nurtured class warfare and racial conflict.

But it's deeper and different than that.

While the point of Murray's book and that of the New York Times article about the book are really not suggesting today's chaos is primarily a result of the loss of "founding virtues" of civic life, I believe that is exactly what it is.

The past 2 generations who have been educated and indoctrinated in our government run public school system to believe that there is no absolute truth, have now taken their place in real life.

There are no moral absolutes---morality and virtue is relative to your own evolving truth---Christianity and the Bible is a mere crutch for those who need it and an impediment to true social progress for all of us---at least in the mind of the Progressive.

The "no God, no absolutes" ideology has led us into the darkest times in recent history.

It has stolen the hope and vision of a nation, without which people perish.

In the darkness of our times, absent a moral compass, millions are allowing anger and pessimism to lead them.

The far Left Progressives have indeed broken the spirit of many Americans, created a welfare system that enslaves rather than frees people, and stolen the vision upon which America was founded.

Proverbs 11:14 is clear. "Where there is no vision, the people perish."

Perhaps it is even more clear than we realize. The word translated "vision" means vision. But in a broader sense it includes the concept of "guidance" or "informed" vision. The New King James reads, "Where there is no counsel the people fall..."

But it must be the right kind of counsel. The political parties are discovering this---so must the Christian church.

While political consultants are giving some very unwise, confused counsel, so are some in the church.

Men's counsel is failing miserably.

We must seek God's counsel.

I personally believe that God is moving in America. We must seek God, be faithful, be active and trust Him.

I believe things may become "more" chaotic before they become less so.

I received a letter from one of our radio listeners yesterday that said, "God is crystal clear in His Word that He establishes leaders (Daniel 2:21; 4:17; Romans 13:1). "Wicked leaders because of a nation's sins and rejection of Him."

"If you are correct," the letter continues, "in believing God is moving in this nation, I believe it will only occur if true believers humble themselves, repent...and turn back to God."

"Thank you for calling believers to stand against sin and to fervently pray for God's forgiveness," he writes.

Be Prayerful. Be Discerning. Be Faithful. Be Blessed.