The bigotry comes out
When it comes to potential Republican presidential candidates, when you're at the top of any poll, you become the target of the politics of personal destruction by Democrats and Big Media. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has topped several recent polls as a favorite for the 2016 nomination, so the long knives have come out.
Taegan Goddard, who refers to himself as an unbiased journalist at Political Wire, pegged his attack to Walker's Christian faith, making light of the governor's statement -- similar to ones that candidates in both parties, including Barack Obama, have made for years -- that he's waiting for "God's calling" to signal a run. In turn, the writer asked the governor's office to provide "a copy/transcript of all communications with God, the Lord, Christ, Jesus or any other form of deity."
Told there were none, he then tweeted, "Gov. Scott Walker's office was unable to provide any transcripts of his conversations with God."
Such bigotry is not new but has ramped up against, particularly, Republicans and Christians, over the past six years. Naturally, when Goddard was asked by Breitbart if he'd ever mocked Democrats who claimed to have sought God's guidance, he did not respond.
Parting shot
If you can't get your way, change the rules. That was departing U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's thought last week about the threshold for prosecuting federal hate crimes.
"It's certainly something that I'm going to want to talk about before I leave," he said.
Holder's remarks came just days after his Justice Department said it would not pursue a case against George Zimmerman in the 2012 Florida shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin and before it reportedly will announce it also will not pursue a case against Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson, who shot 18-year-old Michael Brown in 2014.
If a Justice Department, led by probably the most race-conscious attorney general in history, cannot prosecute those crimes, either the threshold is too high, or could it be that the evidence doesn't point to such a prosecution?
"Well, I think that if we adjust those standards," Holder said, "we can make the federal government a better backstop, make us more a part of the process in an appropriate way to reassure the American people that decisions are made by people who are really disinterested, and I think that if we make those adjustments, we will have that capacity,"
He also suggested, in an interview with Politico, "there have been times when I thought [racial animus was] at least a piece" of why his tenure was marked by pushback from Congress.
We want more of this?
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, fresh from a recent meeting with President Barack Obama and the National Governors Association, heaped praise on the president for the "booming" economic strides the country has made.
Virginians, among others, are still waiting for those strides. In the most recent measurement by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, personal income growth in Virginia -- despite a relatively low unemployment rate of 4.8 percent -- ranged between 0.7 and 0.9 percent.
"[I]nstead of fighting for Virginians and acting in our best interest as governor," said Disruptor Fund chairman Pete Snyder, a former Virginia lieutenant governor candidate, "Terry still wants to be a partisan mouthpiece for the DNC and a cheerleader for the very policies that have cratered our economy."
Other Democratic governors at the conference were more realistic, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper admitting "most importantly the wages still haven't started rising."
But McAuliffe, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, was so enthused he suggested Hillary Clinton follow the same path in 2016.
"She should embrace the Obama economic policies that have moved the country forward, absolutely," he said.
One strike against Bush
Since far left MSNBC host Chris Matthews suggested on his "Hardball" show that former Florida Republican Gov. Jeb Bush would be "the Hillary [Clinton] people's worst nightmare" in the 2016 presidential race, the GOP electorate might think about skipping away from him.
As evidenced in at least the last two presidential elections, left-leaning media types have said if Republicans want to have a shot at the presidency, they should nominate moderate candidates. Indeed, that's what they did in the last two elections -- John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 -- and lost both times.
Matthews, once a middle-of-the-road commentator but now on the fringe left, said if Bush wins the nomination, "the middle is in play."
The middle was in play in 2012, too, and the GOP won it easily, but still lost the election.
When it comes down to it, it would probably be better if someone other than Matthews selects the Republican nominee.