By Craig Andresen – The National Patriot and Right Side Patriots on americanpbn.com

Well NOW, let’s take a few moments here to get a clear picture of the campaign for 2016…a snapshot…a moment in time, frozen so as to really take stock of the current situation.

Shall we?

Dr. Ben Carson is whining, Donald Trump is threatening law suits, Sanders is blubbering that Clinton isn’t enough of a socialist to deserve the liberal/socialist nomination, Clinton is doing her level best to ignore the mountains of evidence that will lead to her indictment, several candidates have dropped out of the race, others that should…haven’t and Jeb Bush’s donors…many of them…want their money back.

I’ve been to a three ring circus before and while this whole thing does bear some resemblance, I believe it comes closer to being a three ring FREAK show.

First of all…Dr. Ben Carson. Before the Ted Cruz campaign sent out an email, reporting exactly what had been delivered via CNN, you were polling in fourth place at 9% of the Iowa vote. WHILE that false report was out there…you were polling at 9% of the Iowa vote and AFTER it had been retracted but while the Cruz camp was still asking your supporters to caucus with Cruz…you FINISHED the night with 9.31% of the vote.

Please explain for everyone exactly how devastating the Cruz camp email was to your final tally.

Then there’s Donald Trump who is threatening to sue anybody he thinks is responsible for his second place finish in Iowa. He claims he’s going to sue Cruz because of the caucus night email. He’s going to sue Cruz for the prior week’s mailer. He’s going to sue Cruz for being born. Hell…I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he threatens to sue Cruz because the rhyming campaign slogan…”Choose Cruz” comes across more positive than the rhyming slogan…”Dump Trump” does.

And now..

.Trump is sticking up for CARSON??? Trump is the very person who compared Dr. Carson to a PEDOPHILE earlier in the race during a 90 minute tirade.

Oh, yes he did… “It’s in the book that he’s got a pathological temper. That’s a big problem because you don’t cure that … as an example: child molesting. You don’t cure these people. You don’t cure a child molester. There’s no cure for it. Pathological, there’s no cure for that.”

Both these guys, Carson and Trump have used their whining over their less than stellar performance in Iowa to distract the press and voters in New Hampshire from asking either of them any questions which would require answers of substance and specifics regarding their plans to deal with world and domestic situations we all face, because neither of them have the ability to provide either substance or specifics and…expecting to enter the messy world of politics while keep one’s gleaming white lab coat pristine is a lot like wallowing about in a pig sty expecting not to get some of it on you. You can’t always have it your way, like you do as the head of a corporation and threaten to level law suits when it DOESN’T go your way, and if you roll around in a pig sty, you ARE going to get some of it on you.

Now then…Sanders and Clinton…

Bernie…Hillary is every bit the socialist you are it’s just that she hasn’t come out of the socialist closet as you have. You both want to hike up everybody’s taxes, you both want to erase income inequality by making everybody equally poor, you both seem to think the government should be everybody’s nanny and you both want a single payer healthcare system. By the way, your real competition in regard to that last one is Donald Trump, who ALSO wants a single payer system that will ALSO have to be paid for by a massive tax hike and all THREE of your plans WILL add multiple TRILLIONS of dollars to our national debt.

Come to think of it…all three…Bernie, Hillary and Donald have backed nearly every single Obama policy and it matters little between them who wins what…as all three would simply continue as Obama’s third term should any of the three win in November.

Both want open borders, both want free college, both want to destroy the upper class, both want to flood our streets and cities with Syrian refujihadis, both want to extend sanctuary cities, both want to punish success on a personal and business level, both want to reward the welfare class, both want to further slash our military, both intend to spend your money like drunken sailors and both believe that the government should control every aspect of your life.

Socialism has been tried 187 times around the world, it has a success rate of zero and these two yahoos are arguing over who is the biggest socialist. It’s no wonder that the democratic Iowa caucus came down to a series of coin tosses and if you look at the Iowa socialist final tally one can easily see why socialism fails…Clinton got 50% of their vote…Sanders got 50% of their vote…and Martin O’Malley got 1% of their vote.

50+50+1 does not equal 100 but both Clinton and Sanders are proponents of common core.

What we have here, between Sanders and Clinton, are two socialists trying to out socialism each other but what voters need to realize is that Margret Thatcher was 100% correct… “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

Jeb Bush has had plenty of people donate their money to his campaign so that Jeb could spread the word regarding his plans, his strategy and his vision for how to lead our nation and recover from the last 7 plus years of the Obama regime but now, many of those donors want their money back. Why? Because Jeb has spent the bulk of it on ads attacking Marco Rubio rather than on sharing any vision or plans related to our nation’s future.

Jeb got a whopping 2.8% of the vote in Iowa which is about exactly where his campaign has been mired from the word go. ALL he has done is attack Rubio and it obviously isn’t working. In fact, it’s backfiring. Behind the scenes, Jeb is talking about staying in just to ruin Rubio’s chances but also, behind the scenes, some of Jeb’s biggest supporters are talking about doing exactly what one of them, Brian Ballard, already did…jump ship and go to work for Marco Rubio’s campaign.

Next Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary will likely be the last straw for a good many of Bush’s backers. If he does in New Hampshire what he did in Iowa… they will jump ship with most of them cutting their checks for Rubio.

Speaking of Marco Rubio…

The sole target of Jeb’s one man vendetta has been piling up some more strong endorsements after Iowa. Senator Tim Scott added HIS name to the list of Rubio supporters as did Sen. Pat Toomey, Rep. Glenn Thompson, Rep. Lynn Westmoreland and former Senator and 2016 rival, Rick Santorum.

Not to be outdone in the endorsement category, Donald Trump has been the recipient of a major endorsement himself. Trump reeled in the coveted Jimmy Carter endorsement.

Carter was at Britain’s House of Lords a couple of days ago, and when asked who he would endorse, Carter responded, “I think I would choose Trump, which may surprise some of you. The reason is, Trump has proven already he’s completely malleable. I don’t think he has any fixed [positions] he’d go the White House and fight for. On the other hand, Ted Cruz is not malleable. He has far-right wing policies he’d pursue if he became president.”

Ummm…so Jimmy Carter, the second worst president in American history is endorsing Trump over Cruz because…Cruz has set principles and is not wishy-washy while Trump IS wishy-washy and has no set principles that HE would fight for? THAT’S…an ENDORSEMENT?

Carter also doesn’t believe that his choice, on the Republican side, will make it as far as the White House as he told the Atlanta Journal Constitution… “When people actually get ready to put on a ballot, ‘This is the person I want to lead me for the next four or eight years,’ I think they’ll have a little different opinion.”

The only candidate liable to benefit from Jimmy Carter’s endorsement of Donald Trump is Ted Cruz who seems to have a pretty apt grasp of Trump’s condition at this point. According to Cruz, Donald Trump is “throwing a trumper tantrum” and “with Trump in charge, Americans might wake up and find he’s nuked Denmark.”

Carter isn’t the only one to endorse Trump over the last few days…so too did Bernie Sanders who did so because HE believes Trump would be the easiest to beat in November….and recent polling indicates that Sanders is right, holding a 13 point margin of victory should it come down to the socialist vs the Donald.

I also suspect that is the real reason behind Carter’s endorsement of Trump as well because, according to polling data, Trump would lose to either Hillary or Bernie in November.

While Cruz has apologized for his camp’s failure to get the word to people on the ground once it was revealed that the ‘Carson’s dropping out’ CNN report was false, thus accepting responsibility for the mistake he, himself had nothing to do with, Cruz’s earlier mailer that has both Carson’s and Trump’s panties all wadded up was nothing more than a tried and true strategy employed, in Iowa, before. There was nothing illegal or fraudulent about it. In fact, it was resourceful and available. Note too, that when used in the past, by candidates representing both parties…nobody in Iowa cried foul.

Trump just can’t handle not winning and now he’s blaming Ted Cruz, for of all things…Obamacare. Trump says Cruz is ultimately responsible FOR Obamacare. Why? Because, well before Obamacare, Cruz voted to confirm John Roberts to the Supreme Court.

Trump, like Cruz says, is melting down.

Trump hasn’t been able to derail Cruz on the whole birther argument. In fact, just a few days ago, an Illinois court proclaimed that Cruz IS a natural born citizen and perfectly eligible to run for and hold the office of president. Trump hasn’t gotten any traction from any of the other arguments he’s tried to make against Cruz either, including allegations that Cruz is “owned” by Wall Street banks, over 1.43 million dollars in loans. THAT from a guy who has benefitted from HUNDREDS of millions of dollars in loans from Wall Street banks AND over 150 million dollars of George Soros’ money.

Now Trump has grown so desperate, so despondent over not winning in Iowa that he’s trying to accuse Ted Cruz of being behind OBAMACARE?

But Cruz isn’t the only candidate suffering the slings and bent arrows of outrageous fortune hunters this past week. Chris Christi, whose poll numbers are directly in line with his vote tally in Iowa, around 2%, called Marco Rubio, “the boy in the bubble” and said, “This isn’t the most controlled candidate we’ve seen in this race at all. His handlers handle him all the time. We need to take him out of that controlled atmosphere because, believe me, it won’t be controlled against Hillary Clinton this fall.” Christi also attempted to dismiss Rubio as “a puppet.”

And Jeb Bush took out a full page ad in the Union-Leader, one of New Hampshire’s biggest newspapers…not to state his platform or go into significant, substantive detail regarding his plans for dealing with domestic or world issues…he took out the ad to bash Rubio and describe him as, “not ready to serve as commander in chief.”

Here’s your reality check…

A presidential campaign should be about each candidate’s vision for the future of our nation…not about their own aspirations. It should be about campaigning against those from the other side of the aisle rather than leveling personal attacks against those on your own side of the aisle. A presidential campaign should be about exposing opposing party’s candidates and their misguided notions of how our country should be run and not about exposing your own insecurities by whining, threatening to sue trying to smear those in your own party. If your idea are better than theirs, if your plans for the future of the nation are better than theirs, if your approach to the issues we all, as Americans face, then by all means…express them however…

If all you’ve got, if the only tools in your tool box are baseless ad hominem attacks rendered from a case of sour grapes because of your own inability to connect with voters because you lack substance on the issues that matter to the voters…it’s time to pack in your campaign and get out of the race.

Neither Trump, Carson nor Bush have ever had any substance to their campaigns whatsoever and Christi’s take on the issues has never clicked with national voting audiences. None of the four have anything to add to this campaign other than further, baseless attacks against those who DO have substance and who ARE clicking with voters and it is high time all four take their sour grapes and go home.

We are a nation facing critical issues at home and abroad. Over the last 7 plus years, our enemies have been emboldened while our allies have lost trust in us. Our economy is stagnant, regulations are choking our businesses, taxes, including Obamacare, are stifling both business and economic growth and true leadership is sorely missing while government continues to grow unchecked.

Our nation needs a leader of substance, not a bloviater of ad hominem rhetoric and I will get into that…on Monday, right here in The National Patriot.