Everyday Americans have probably heard the distinguished senator from New Jersey’s nickname — “Spartacus.” He earned the moniker after faking a confidential information release during the recent U.S. Supreme Court nomination hearing for Brett Kavanaugh. He was one of the few who knew the documents had been declassified, and cried out that this might be “My Spartacus Moment” or some such tomfoolery. His potential ejection from the Senate was nothing but a scam.
Sen. Cory Booker has a reputation for such antics in the U.S. Senate, and has become something of a national laughingstock. Still, he’s running a campaign to earn the Democratic Party’s nomination for President of the United States, and voters may want to take his bid seriously.
The 49-year-old senator has already begun to rehabilitate his reputation with the mainstream media. They won’t be throwing him under the bus for any of his past indiscretions, and he looks more voter-friendly than some radicals running against him. That’s why people should know these five things before the media gives him a political makeover.
#1: Booker Is More Native American Than Elizabeth Warren
After flunking a DNA test, liberal Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has been on what seems like a never-ending apology tour. Most recently, it was recently discovered that she listed herself as an American Indian for the Texas State Bar. The phony claim is just the latest and has many calling for her to drop her presidential bid. That being said, Booker fared much better on his ancestry test.
Sen. Booker appeared on an episode of “Finding Your Roots.” He took the ancestry test administered by Henry Louis Gates, and the results concluded he was 47 percent African, 45 percent European, and 7 percent Native American. His competitor for the Democratic nomination tested below the average American despite her false claims.
“I am descended from slaves and slave owners. I have Native American blood and am also the great-great-great grandson of a white man who fought in the Creek War of 1836, in which Native Americans were forcibly removed from their land,” Booker wrote in his book. “I am the great-great-grandson of many slaves, and I am also the great-great-grandson of a corporal who fought in the Confederate Army and was captured by Union troops.”
#2: Booker May Be Secretly Against Big Government
When the now-U.S. senator ran for City Council in Newark, N.J., he was all about free markets. In fact, he gave a speech at the Manhattan Institute that would send Sens. Warren, Bernie Sanders and the other socialists on the warpath. His speech described the government as incompetent and dysfunctional at best.
“There (were) about three different slums controlled by some very nefarious individuals who pocketed many, many millions of dollars from federal programs and put little into the building,” Booker said. “Even worse than that, I started to have a lot of aggression and animosity toward the city because it was doing nothing about one of the boldest drug trades I had ever seen, and nothing about code violations that were so obvious that you could walk into people’s homes and look at holes through their floors. No one seemed to be doing anything about it.”
#3: Booker Once Supported School Choice
During his early political years as a City Councilman and later Mayor of Newark, Booker advocated for the use of school vouchers as a way to better educate children.
“I have always been, up until maybe four or five years ago, a strong advocate for the old-fashioned way of educating children. I supported public schools only. Even charter schools made me a little uncomfortable when I first heard about them,” Booker said. “But after four or five years of working in inner-city Newark, I began to rethink my situation, rethink my philosophy, rethink my views on public education, simply because of the realities I saw around me. Being outcome-focused started to change my view in favor of options like charter schools, contract schools, and, yes, vouchers.”
He even boasted that Newark was a top choice-friendly city as recently as 2016. Those views are not going to earn him any votes with national and state teacher unions come 2020. That may be why he pivoted and abandoned the policy.
#4: Booker Is A Tax-And-Spend Democrat
Although the esteemed senator likes to tout his achievements for bringing in businesses while he was mayor of Newark, one of the items that stain his record is taxes. He hit the city with an onerous 8.3 percent property tax hike as the first order of business. He followed that with a massive 16 percent hike in 2010. Making matters worse, the city did its property revaluations just three years later which saw values double or triple. While business and homeowner wallets got stung, Booker doled out a sweet $100 million tax credit to Panasonic. Ouch!
#5: A Moderate Cometh
Despite Sen. Booker’s common Democrat habits and positions, he has deftly positioned himself as a moderate choice in a field of socialist zealots. He’s not calling for the eradication of the private health insurance system like Sen. Kamala Harris is. He may want to raise taxes, but not by 70 percent on high earners that Sen. Warren is pushing for. However, being the so-called “moderate” choice in a field of Stalinists and Marxists is a lot like being a semi-deadly viper in a pit of rattlesnakes — they all bite, and they’ll all kill you.
~ Liberty Planet
