Hugh Hewitt's done an about-face on Donald Trump, and it's spectacular!
At WaPo, "Clinton’s the real risk. If we want to stop her, we can’t dump Trump":
With his undisciplined comments about federal district Judge Gonzalo Curiel the week before the attack in Orlando, Trump was losing ground and the confidence of many Republicans who have reluctantly backed him. But if he sticks with the tone and the focus of Monday’s speech, Republicans will stay with him. Despite endless talk of a mutiny within the GOP, if Trump can forcefully expose the weak leadership and serial failures of Obama and Clinton in the fight against terrorism — the central issue of our time — he will not only consolidate support, he will make any talk of an intra-party coup obsolete. On Monday, as he did throughout the primaries, Trump spoke to the Republican base and the undecided middle in a way no other candidate has.More at that top link.
When Trump said, “I will be meeting with the NRA” to “discuss how to ensure Americans have the means to protect themselves in this age of terror,” liberals may have blanched, but conservatives cheered. When he said, “I refuse to be politically correct,” he returned to the theme that powered him to the top of GOP polls. Promising to provide “our intelligence community, law enforcement and military with the tools they need to prevent terrorist attacks,” Trump sent the message that Clinton cannot, and will not, to a country demanding security.
It’s not just that voters give him a polling edge on national-security issues, it’s that this week he finally returned to what so many voters liked about him in the first place. He’s not a policy wonk, and he’s not an orator in the mold of Abraham Lincoln. But more than any other right-of-center politician, he relishes aggressively championing Republicans’ national-security priorities.
With Monday’s speech, a bookend to his strong words on religious liberty at Friday’s Faith & Freedom Coalition forum, Trump has returned to a winning message and walled off the assorted “never Trump” holdouts trying to upend his nomination. Although there’s been talk in recent weeks of implementing new rules at the Republican convention in Cleveland that would allow party leaders to replace Trump — talk that I’ve entertained — the appetite for that sort of drastic measure is gone. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) want no part of a coup, so there won’t be one. Yes, party rules allow for last minute rules changes and tricky procedural maneuvers. But for Republicans to root for a coup at this point would be more than just futile, it could be completely self-defeating. No Ryan, no McConnell, no mutiny. Period.
Despite reservations, Ryan, McConnell and others have judged the cost of trying to make a change at the top of the GOP ticket to be higher than the cost of betting that Trump will ultimately see that his path to the White House is a return to big themes — not small arguments and inflammatory rhetoric. They understand that Republicans have to stick with Trump if they want to avoid capitulating to Clinton, who has demonstrated again and again that she is unfit to lead — and, that at this stage, Trump alone can run successfully against her. If Ryan and McConnell have wagered wrong, we’ll soon know. But events of the past few days suggest that they are right.
Clinton can’t respond effectively to Trump’s blunt assessment of terrorist threats because Americans know that her positions over the years — on Egypt, Iraq, Syria and especially Libya — have directly contributed to the dangers we face.
Trump is positioned to make the case that Clinton’s cavalier approach to State Department email security has compromised her ability to combat terrorism, particularly if, according to new reports, she discussed sensitive operations, such as planned drone strikes, via non-secure communications. He is positioned to make the case that, according to former CIA deputy director Michael Morell, our adversaries’ intelligence services could “have everything on any unclassified network that the government uses,” including hers — meaning that anyone who sent her anything may have been compromised as well.
Trump will make sure that the Clintons’ serial scandals: the Clinton foundation’s questionable dealings, the appointment of an unqualified Clinton ally to the International Security Advisory Board and obscene multimillion-dollar payments made to former president Bill Clinton as “honorary chancellor” of for-profit Laureate International Universities, are never far from voters’ minds. Add in the latest revelation of the Russians’ hack of the Democratic National Committee’s computers, and the public’s concern over the former secretary’s at-home server skyrockets.
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