California, Leading from Behind

By Victor Davis Hanson

Thursday, December 31, 2015

California has given us three new truths about government.

One, the higher that taxes rise, the worse state services become.

Two, the worse a natural disaster hits, the more the state contributes to its havoc.

And three, the more existential the problem, the more the state ignores it.

California somehow has managed to have the fourth-highest gas taxes in the nation, yet its roads are rated 44th among the 50 states. Nearly 70 percent of California roads are considered to be in poor or mediocre condition by the state senate. In response, the state legislature naturally wants to raise gas taxes, with one proposal calling for an increase of 12 cents per gallon, which would give California the highest gas taxes in the nation.

Because oil prices have crashed, state bureaucrats apparently believe that the public won’t notice the tax increase in their fill-up costs – even though special California fuel mandates already help make gas prices 25 percent higher than the national average.

Consider California’s upside-down logic.

The state wanted to discourage driving and promote hybrid vehicles by upping taxes on carbon fuels. It worked, though it cost the public dearly. People drove less and bought more fuel-efficient cars. But now, because less gas is burned, fewer taxes are collected. So the state wants to reward motorists for their green sacrifices by raising their taxes even higher to make up for missing revenue. If state motorists drive even less and cram into two-seat commuter cars, will California further reward them with even higher gas taxes?

Notice what the state does not consider.

Are highway bureaucracies such as the California Department of Transportation run efficiently? The nonpartisan state Legislative Analyst’s Office recently reported waste and inefficiency in Caltrans, citing a staggering 3,500 unnecessary Caltrans employees, and declaring the agency more inefficient than other states’ transportation bureaucracies.

If California motorists are driving far fewer miles, shouldn’t roads wear out more slowly – and additional taxes not need to be raised for repairs? Could state revenues that have been diverted to the high-speed rail boondoggle instead be used for road repairs?

And how can a state with the highest number of poor people in the nation – 23 percent of Californians are below the accepted poverty line, according to the Census Bureau – ensure that its gas prices will be the highest in the nation?

California may be transitioning out of a devastating four-year drought. But the state at least should have taken advantage of that record stretch of dry, sunny weather to rush construction of new dams, reservoirs, and canals to trap more rain and snowmelt. It never did. Despite talk of raising the height of Shasta Dam, as planned decades ago, or creating new reservoirs and San Francisco delta tunnels, nothing happened. Such projects are mired in endless environmental and cultural lawsuits.

Farmers want back their contracted surface water that environmentalists successfully went to court to divert to the sea. Greens want even more scarce water let out to the ocean to realize their dreams of the sort of rivers that ran through the state in the 19th century. But both agendas rely on more stored water.

Once the storms resume in normal fashion, millions of acre-feet of precious water will be lost to sea due to an antiquated storage system.

Only in California can government manage to turn both dry and wet years to its disadvantage.

There is a growing state epidemic of obesity. More than 30 percent of California children are overweight, and the rate is even higher among children from low-income families ages two to five.

Nearly one in three Californians over age 34 who are hospitalized for any cause are found to suffer from diabetes. That lifestyle- and weight-related disease generally hits the poor and the Latino population even harder.

The epidemic is reflected in record costs for the state Medi-Cal health-insurance program that covers about one-third of California’s nearly 40 million residents. Medi-Cal costs have recently skyrocketed to $74 billion a year. That staggering figure is about half the size of the entire state budget. Had the federal government not kicked in more than $50 billion to fund rising Medi-Cal costs, California would now be broke. 

Given that California has the highest number of undocumented immigrants in the nation, and that well over half arrive from Mexico, where 70 percent of the population is overweight and nearly 33 percent are obese (the highest obesity rate in the world among heavily populated countries), the state should be in crisis mode. If state government insists on policies that encourage undocumented immigrants to settle in California, and allows so-called sanctuary cities to ignore federal immigration law, it should at least have a massive health-information and outreach campaign – given that Type 2 diabetes is almost always a preventable disease.

Meanwhile, the state health-care system is in near collapse, and millions of California residents are sick and dying from a mostly avoidable disease.

California government, however, serves one purpose.

It always reminds America what not to do.

Why Would Anyone Want a Firearm?

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Thursday, December 31, 2015

Of all the ill-considered tropes that are trotted out in anger during our ongoing debate over gun control, perhaps the most irritating is the claim that the Constitution may indeed protect firearms, but it says “nothing at all about bullets.”

On its face, this is flatly incorrect. Quite deliberately, the Bill of Rights is worded so as to shield categories and not specifics, which is why the First Amendment protects the “press” and not “ink”; why the Fourth covers “papers” and “effects” instead of listing every item that might be worn about one’s person; and why the Fifth insists broadly that one may not be deprived of “life, liberty, or property” and leaves the language there. The “right of the people” that is mentioned in the Second Amendment is not “to keep and bear guns” or “to keep and bear ammunition” but “to keep and bear arms,” which, per Black’s Law Dictionary, was understood in the 18th century to include the “musket and bayonet”; “sabre, holster pistols, and carbine”; an array of “side arms”; and any accoutrements necessary for their operation. To propose that a government could restrict access to ammunition without gutting the Second Amendment is akin to proposing that a government could ban churches without hollowing out the First. If a free people are to enjoy their liberties without encumbrance, the prerequisite tools must be let well alone.

Without doubt, the vast majority of those who offer up the “But bullets!” talking point are doing little more than repeating memes that they have encountered. Yet at the root of their provocation is a serious misconception that needs to be seriously reckoned with. In most of the world’s countries, firearms are regulated in much the same way as are, say, cars, radios, and lawnmowers: as everyday tools whose utility can be evaluated without prejudice. In the United States, by contrast, the government’s hands are tied tight. To those who are unfamiliar with the contours of Anglo-American history, this can be understandably confusing. “Why,” we often hear it asked, “would the architects of the Constitution put a public policy question into the national charter? Do we really have to stick with a regulatory scheme that originated before the invention of the light bulb?”

The answer to this question is a simple one: “Yes.” Why? Because, our contemporary rhetorical habits notwithstanding, the right to keep and bear arms is not so much a right in and of itself as an auxiliary mechanism that protects the real unalienable right underneath: that of self-defense. By placing a prohibition on strict gun control into the Constitution, the Founders did not accidentally insert a matter of quotidian rulemaking into a statement of foundational law; rather, they sought to secure a fundamental liberty whose explicit recognition was the price of the state’s construction. To understand this, I’d venture, is to understand immediately why the people of these United States remain so doggedly attached to their weapons. At bottom, the salient question during any gun-control debate is less “Do you think people should be allowed to have rifles?” and more “Do you think you should be permitted to take care of your own security?”

A five-foot-tall, 110-pound woman is in a certain sense “armed” if she has a kitchen knife or a baseball bat at her disposal. But if the six-foot-four, 250-pound man who has broken into her apartment has one, too, she is not likely to overwhelm him. If that same woman has a nine-millimeter Glock, however? Well, then there is a good chance of her walking out unharmed. From the perspective of our petite woman, there is really no way for the state to endorse her right to defend herself if it deprives her of the tools she needs for the job.

In the sixth century, the Byzantine emperor Justinian compiled the monumental Digest of Roman Law, cataloguing the laws that had developed over centuries of Roman jurisprudence — among which was this rule of thumb: “That which someone does for the safety of his body, let it be regarded as having been done legally.” When it comes to the police and the armed forces, this principle is widely acknowledged, which is why most nations are happy to let their cops walk around with semi-automatic handguns and an array of advanced tactical gear. Within the civilian context, however, the same idea has become strangely controversial. Think of how often you hear Second Amendment advocates being asked with irritation why they “need” a particular firearm. Think, too, of how infrequently gun controllers focus on keeping weapons out of the hands of ne’er-do-wells rather than on limiting the efficacy of those available to the good guys. This makes no sense whatsoever. If a 15-round magazine and a one-shot-per-trigger-pull sidearm are necessary to give a trained police officer a fighting chance against a man who wishes him harm, there is no good reason that my sister shouldn’t have them, too.

As it happens, exactly this parity is presumed by America’s founding documents. The Declaration of Independence establishes that all men are born in possession of certain unchallengeable rights, and that among them are “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This phrase, as with so many promulgated during the revolutionary era, is lightly adapted from John Locke, the English Enlightenment intellectual on whose philosophical presumptions the United States was in large part built. Inter alia, Locke held that every individual has a right to control and to defend his body, and that any government that attempted to deny that right was by necessity unjust. “Self defense,” Locke wrote in his Two Treatises of Government, “is a part of the law of nature” and in consequence cannot be “denied the community, even against the king himself.” In Locke’s view, this principle could be applied both on an individual level — against, say, intruders and other attackers — and on a collective level, against governments that turn tyrannical. Crucially, unlike Rousseau, Locke and his ideological heirs did not consider the establishment of the state to be a justification for the restriction of this principle.

To peruse the explanatory strictures of the Founders’ era is to discover just how seriously the right to protect oneself was taken in the early Anglo-American world. Writing in his 1768 Commentaries on the Laws of England, the great jurist William Blackstone contended that “self-defence” was “justly called the primary law of nature” and confirmed the Lockean contention that it could not be “taken away by the law of society.” In most instances, Blackstone observed, injuries inflicted by one citizen on another could wait to be mediated by the “future process of law.” But if those “injuries [are] accompanied with force . . . it is impossible to say, to what wanton lengths of rapine or cruelty outrages of this sort might be carried, unless it were permitted a man immediately to oppose one violence with another.”

These conceptions were carried over wholesale into the American colonies and cherished long after independence had been won. In Federalist No. 28, Alexander Hamilton affirmed the importance of the “original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government” and conceded that, in extreme circumstances, it may even be asserted legitimately “against the usurpations of the national rulers.” This conceit was explicitly established in New Hampshire’s constitution of 1784, which, astonishingly enough, included an enumerated right to revolution: “The doctrine of nonresistance against arbitrary power, and oppression,” its signatories acknowledged, “is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.” Similar statements were subsequently added to the charters of Kentucky, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Texas, and Tennessee.

For almost all of American history, this idea remained uncontroversial. When, in the early 19th century, certain large cities took it upon themselves to establish police forces, they presented their initiatives as complementary to, not in lieu of, the status quo. Likewise, when the architects of Reconstruction wondered aloud how free blacks would defend themselves against the hostile white majority, their first instinct, to paraphrase Yale law professor Akhil Reed Amar, was to make minutemen out of freedmen. Today, the Supreme Court continues to affirm the right to defend oneself, refusing to hand that task over exclusively to the armed agents of the state, even in the age of the standing army and militarized police departments. Despite progressivism’s endless march, the spirit of John Locke is alive and well.

But not, alas, omnipresent. Unfortunately, it has become commonplace over the last few decades to hear opponents of the right to keep and bear arms recite aggregate statistics as their case against individual liberties. A particularly egregious example of this came with Colorado’s post-Aurora gun-control debate, during which a state legislator named Evie Hudak casually informed a female survivor of rape that, mathematically speaking, she was more likely to hurt herself with her concealed firearm than to forestall another attack. “Actually, statistics are not on your side even if you had a gun,” Hudak told the stunned hearing. “Chances are that if you had had a gun, then he would have been able to get that from you and possibly use it against you.”

This approach is entirely inconsistent with America’s founding ideals. If it is the case that free people have the right to defend themselves regardless of whether they are likely to prevail, then what their elected representatives think of their endeavors is irrelevant. To take any other approach is to strip from mankind what the great American jurist Henry St. George Tucker, echoing Blackstone, termed the “first law of nature,” and to do so in the name of unwarranted superintendence.

That those who would engage in such supervision do so with good intentions is neither here nor there. When, in their infinite wisdom, the legislators of New Jersey passed the draconian permitting requirements that have led to their constituents’ waiting months for the chance to buy a gun, they presumably believed that they were striking a strong blow for public safety. In truth, however, they were overstepping their legitimate bounds and condemning a handful of American citizens to ignominious death. One such citizen, a diminutive woman named Carol Bowne, found this out firsthand in June of this year, when, having waited long beyond the statutory processing window, she watched her stalker of an ex-boyfriend come into her driveway with a knife and stab her to death. “Who does not see that self-defense is a duty superior to every precept?” asked Montesquieu in his magisterial Spirit of the Laws. Judging by our present debate, the answer to this question is “Too many.”

Hillary Clinton Is Not a Feminist

By Katherine Timpf

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Since Hillary announced that her husband would be joining her on the campaign trail, people have been debating whether or not it’s fair for the GOP to attack Bill’s sexual misdeeds in order to indirectly attack her.

This makes sense. After all, we’re talking about a guy who has been accused of the sexual assault of more than ten women. Think about it: How is her appointing him really any different than if she’d appointed Bill Cosby?

But here’s the thing: The real issue isn’t whether or not to attack Bill to indirectly attack Hillary — it’s about directly attacking Hillary for how she herself treated the women involved.

Hillary Clinton claims to be pro-women, yet has actively worked to ruin lives of so many of them. She’s running on a “feminist platform” — she’s even dared to say that sexual-assault survivors have a “right to be believed” — despite the fact that what she did to the women who accused Bill went far beyond not believing them.

She attacked them.

When allegations of sexual misconduct emerged during Bill’s 1992 presidential run, she’s reported to have said “Who is going to find out? These women are trash. Nobody’s going to believe them.” Multiple people also report that she called the women “sluts” and “whores” — you know, for daring to be raped. A private investigator named Ivan Duda claims that, after Bill lost his second governor’s race, Hillary told him: “I want you to get rid of all these b****** he’s seeing . . . I want you to give me the names and addresses and phone numbers, and we can get them under control.” 

And there are multiple reports of her and her detectives doing just that. Kathleen Willey — whom Bill allegedly sexually assaulted in 1993 — claims that detectives hired by Hillary threatened her and her children and even killed her cat. Juanita Broaddrick, who accused Bill of raping her in 1978, reports that she was also threatened by Hillary.

Oh, and let’s not forget — she had no problem blaming the (very true) allegations that Bill was having an affair with Lewinsky on a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” Anything to save a man’s career, amirite?

Does this woman sound “feminist” to you?

The sheer number of accusations against her (there are actually far too many for me to have included all of them in this article) should make anyone worth their marbles at least question Hillary’s claim that she’s an “advocate for women.” After all, this is not just a single report; it’s consistent, repeated pattern of despicable behavior.

Sure, some of the claims (like the cat murder) may sound outlandish — and there’s no doubt that many feminist activists would point this out to defend their hero. Keep in mind, however, that going by their modern’ mantra that “all accusers have a right to be believed,” they’d actually have to automatically believe all of them. What’s more: Their ideology would also dictate that even Bill’s so-called “consensual” affairs would be reason enough to not support him.

In the ’90s, Hillary was able to allegedly refer to the 22-year-old intern who agreed to a sexual relationship with her boss — the president — as a “narcissistic loony toon.” In fact, even when asked, she’s refused to deny that she said it.

These days, however, many feminists believe that a sexual relationship between a subordinate and a superior could never be considered entirely consensual. Certainly, a sexual relationship between the most powerful man in the world and a young intern would fall into this category. In fact, the same power-relationship principle could also apply to the affairs Bill had while he governor of Arkansas — like the one with Gennifer Flowers (whom Hillary called “trailer trash”) and the one with former Miss Arkansas Sally Perdue (who reports that the Clinton Machine threatened to physically harm her if she didn’t keep her mouth shut.)

Make no mistake: There is absolutely nothing feminist about Hillary Rodham Clinton. It’s clear as can be, but for some reason, people are choosing not to see it.

“Feminist” activist Lena Dunham — who has said that “any man who takes advantage of a woman sickens” her and has criticized people for not being harder on R. Kelly despite the sexual assault allegations he’s faced — will be campaigning for Hillary Clinton. So basically, people who listen to “Remix to Ignition” bother her, but not someone who not only remains married to an alleged serial rapist but also reportedly worked to ruin his accusers for the sake of his career.

Some people, thankfully, have begun to notice this hypocrisy. Last month, a reporter asked Hillary if her comment that all sexual assault survivors had a “right to be believed” meant that we should also believe Broaddrick, Willey and Paula Jones (who sued Bill for sexual harrassment in 1994).

Hillary’s answer: “Everybody should be believed at first until they are disbelieved based on evidence.”

Um. Just one problem: There is absolutely no evidence disproving the stories of Broaddrick, Willey or Jones, and you would think that “feminists” would stand with them and the others against Hillary — but it seems they’re too caught up in the hype of a potential female president to do anything but support her.

But I’m not. I’m a woman; I support women — and that’s exactly why I could never support Hillary Clinton.

Marco Rubio Is the Solid Conservative Who Can Beat Hillary

By Deroy Murdock

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

If current trends continue, Republican primary voters will give themselves a warm “stick it to the man” feeling by defying Mitch McConnell, the Bush family, and the greater GOP establishment and nominating Donald Trump for president. They have endured years of policy disappointments and ideological betrayals by Washington Republicans; it’s hard to blame them.

There’s just one problem: Once this fight-the-power euphoria has ebbed, Trump would face the Democratic nominee, most likely Hillary Clinton. Fairly or unfairly, she will pound the Manhattan real-estate mogul as a mean, insensitive, sexist, and possibly racist multi-billionaire “who doesn’t care about people like you.” Clinton, the Democrats, and their butlers and maids in the old-guard media will tar Trump as Mitt Romney with more money and less warmth.

Indeed, Clinton would smash Trump 50 percent to 40, according to a December 14 NBC/Wall Street Journal survey of 1,000 adults (margin of error: +/- 3.4 percent). A December 16–17 Fox News survey of 1,013 registered voters finds Clinton thumping Trump by 11 points – 49 percent to 38 (MOE: +/- 3.0 percent). A December 22 Quinnipiac University poll found that 50 percent of 1,140 registered voters surveyed would be “embarrassed to have Donald Trump as President.” Only 35 percent said this of Hillary Clinton. (MOE: +/- 2.9 percent).

With his coattails drenched in Crisco, Trump most likely would see Republican senators, congressmen, state-level candidates, and even local contenders slip down the general-election ticket and slide to defeat.

Memo to GOP primary voters: Breathe deep the gathering doom.

Rather than engineer a Hillary Clinton landslide, Republican voters should nominate a stalwart, quick-witted conservative whose immigrant roots and modest means make him a far more elusive target for Clinton’s slings and arrows.

In fact, Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) is the only GOP contender who consistently defeats Hillary Clinton in head-to-head heats. In the NBC/WSJ survey, he beats Clinton 48 percent to 45. The Fox poll put the attractive, savvy, severely well-spoken Rubio at 45 percent and Clinton at 43. Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) loses to Clinton in the NBC/WSJ match-up, 43 percent to 48, while he ties her at 45 points in Fox’s contest.

(As this article was being edited, a December 22–23 Rasmussen Survey emerged in which 37 percent of 1,000 likely voters said they would support Clinton for president, and 36 percent would back Trump. While this is a much better showing for Trump, he still comes out behind Clinton and far from 50 percent, with 22 percent of respondents behind other candidates, and 5 percent undecided – MOE: +/- 3 percent. Even in this survey, Trump remains in a frightfully precarious position.)

Rubio’s humble roots and modest circumstances may be his most powerful defense against Clinton. As the son of a bartender and hotel maid, Rubio, who has lived check to check, speaks from an economic position that is much more typical than Clinton’s. She and her husband, after all, declared $140 million in income between 2007 and 2014. These funds have come mainly from selling books and giving speeches, sometimes before organizations that then scored federal favors while Hillary was secretary of state.

Unlike Trump, Rubio is vaccinated against the class-warfare virus that Democrats routinely deploy to infect and kill Republican presidential nominees. In fact, it would be hilarious for Hillary to paint Rubio as a coal-hearted plutocrat. Her $25 million household income for 2014 puts her in the top 0.1 percent of tax filers.   

Equally comical is the fact that some on the right denounce Rubio as the GOP establishment’s Plan B, now that Jeb Bush has fizzled. One Miami-based conservative activist dismisses Rubio as “white Republican Obama.”

How absurd. Rubio is not Bob Dole with palm trees. And if Rubio is a “moderate,” as Cruz claims, then John McCain is Ho Chi Minh.

How soon we forget: Marco Rubio was a tea-party pinup in 2010 and was endorsed by the devoutly anti-establishment Club for Growth. Far from developing Potomac fever and growing a  RINO horn, Rubio has maintained a very impressive voting record. The American Conservative Union gave Rubio a 96 rating (out of 100) for 2014 and 98 across his Senate career. Heritage Action handed Rubio a 94 last year and 91 lifetime. The equivalent Club for Growth numbers are 92 and 93.

Even better, these sparkling right-wing credentials do not prevent Rubio from working and playing well enough with others to enact necessary legislation.

• Rubio co-sponsored, with Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D., N.H.),  the Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Act of 2015. This new law limits the Iranian-backed terrorist group’s access to global financial markets and punishes banks that serve this band of anti-American, anti-Israeli killers. These radical Islamist murderers denounced Rubio’s law as “a new crime by American institutions against our people and nation.”

• Rubio torpedoed Obama’s planned bailout of his health-insurance cronies who lose money on the Obamacare exchanges. So far, this has saved taxpayers some $2.5 billion and prevented insurers from socializing their Obamacare losses. Consequently, mega-insurers UnitedHealthCare and Cigna have fallen out of love with Obamacare and may flee Obama’s blessed exchanges as soon as 2017. Rubio’s low-key amendment to the 2014 omnibus federal spending bill looks like the thumbtack that slowly will give Obamacare a flat tire.

Cruz “forced a shutdown over it,” the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin recalled. “Every GOP presidential candidate vows to repeal it. But only Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) can claim to have done something tangible to hobble, maybe permanently, Obamacare.”

• In light of the Department of Veteran Affairs’ appalling and deadly neglect of those who have worn America’s uniform, Rubio sponsored, shepherded, and ultimately passed legislation to make it easier for the VA secretary to fire incompetent and corrupt bureaucrats whose sloth actually has killed sick veterans as they awaited medical care. Before Rubio’s measure was signed into law, he had to overcome Bernie Sanders’s objections on the Senate floor. The Vermont socialist tried in vain to sink Rubio’s proposal and, thus, protect the job security of VA workers.

• Rubio and Democrats Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Bill Nelson of Florida were original sponsors of the Venezuela Defense of Human Rights and Civil Society Act of 2014. Enacted that December, this law condemns and tightens sanctions on Nicolás Maduro’s Castroite tyranny.

Ted Cruz is also a Tea Party/Club for Growth–approved hero with sky-high conservative scores that should cheer those groups. (ACU: 100 for 2014, 100 lifetime; Heritage Action: 100 and 98; Club for Growth: 92 and 96.) Alas, Cruz’s go-it-alone style has limited his effectiveness as a lawmaker who can pass legislation. Cruz’s Senate website cites just one piece of legislation that he has guided into law: a 2014 statute that would bar entry visas to U.N. ambassadors who have committed espionage or terrorism against the United States or threaten U.S. national security.

Also telling: Among those who work closely with both of these men, three Republican senators have endorsed Rubio – Montana’s Steve Daines, Colorado’s Cory Gardner, and Idaho’s James Risch. In contrast, none of Cruz’s Senate colleagues recommends him for president.

Rubio has raised suspicions for initially co-sponsoring comprehensive immigration reform, nicknamed “amnesty.” However, Rubio abandoned the bill once it metastasized into a 1,198-page monstrosity.

“We must begin by acknowledging that, considering our recent experience with massive pieces of legislation, achieving comprehensive reform of anything in a single bill is simply not realistic,” Rubio wrote in his book American Dreams. Instead, Rubio now calls for a “sequential and piecemeal” approach “with a series of bills that build upon one another until ultimately we have put in place the kind of immigration system our nation needs.”

Rubio lately has highlighted a Cruz-sponsored amendment that would have given illegal immigrants legal status although not placed them on a path to citizenship.

Cruz said at a May 2013 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, “If the objective is to pass commonsense immigration reform that secures the borders, that improves legal immigration, and that allows those here illegally to come out of the shadows, then we should look for areas of bipartisan agreement and compromise to come together.” He echoed this sentiment the next month when, on the Senate floor, he advocated “finding a middle ground that would fix the problem and also allow for those 11 million people who are here illegally a legal status with citizenship off the table. I believe that is the compromise that can pass.”

While he opposes amnesty, Cruz clearly has favored making illegal aliens legal and introduced legislation to do just that. Between the respective, black-and-white poles of “Citizenship – Now!” and “Amnesty – Never!” Cruz occupies a cozy gray area.

On another key issue, Rubio’s tax plan cuts personal-income-tax rates, although the top bracket should be lower than 35 percent. If elected, Rubio should cut rates as deeply as possible and abandon his proposal for costly per-child tax credits and other pro-family social engineering. Rubio should remember his plan’s highly limited appeal to America’s roughly 70 million childless adults. He also is intelligent enough to understand the supply-side fundamentals at play here. Presumably a President Rubio could be persuaded to push his plan even further. His corporate-tax cut (from 35 percent to 25) and his tax rates on capital gains, dividends, and death – 0 percent – are steps in the right direction.

Conversely, Rubio’s support for sugar subsidies is inexcusable. Never mind his status as a senator from Florida. The sooner Rubio jettisons this destructive statist boondoggle, the better.

Rubio can and should make these modest improvements to his platform. He is a conservative leader on virtually everything else. Not insignificantly, he represents an uber-swing state with 29 Electoral College votes. Reliably Republican Texas almost certainly will deliver its 38 Electoral votes to the GOP nominee, whether or not his name is Ted Cruz.

Marco Rubio is the man to send Hillary back to Chappaqua and stick a fork in the Clintons – once and for all. That result should give furious Republicans an even stronger headrush than watching Donald Trump stampede through the GOP establishment’s china shop – en route to a running of the Republican bulls, right into the electoral abattoir.