Here is your Morning Brief for the morning of March 4, 2014. Give me your feedback below and tune in to The Chad Hasty Show for these and many more topics from 8:30 to 11am. Remember, you can listen online at KFYO.com or on your iPhone/Android with the radioPup App.

David McNew, Getty Images
David McNew, Getty Images
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Election Day

It's Election Day in the Texas Primaries. From 7am to 7pm, voters will head to the polls to cast their ballots in a number of races. KFYO will have all the election coverage you can handle tonight from 7pm to 11pm.

If you haven't voted yet, that probably means you are still undecided on a few different races. I encourage you to check out our Candidate Interview Guide for many of the interviews we have had on KFYO. You can also reference KFYO's Vote Center Location Guide to know where you can cast your ballot.

Today on my show I will a number of candidates who are looking for your vote. Appearing on today's show will be candidate for Texas Governor Greg Abbott, candidate for Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian, 3 of the candidate for Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, Todd Staples, and Jerry Patterson will join me, candidate for Attorney General Dan Branch, Agriculture Commissioner candidate Eric Opiela, and incumbent candidate for U.S. Senate John Cornyn.

As I've said before, only vote if you are informed. Don't just go and vote for names that sound familiar. Know who you support and why. Don't buy into the argument that everyone has to vote. I hope that my show has been able to provide you with the information you need to make a smart and informed vote today if you haven't cast a ballot.

Hillary, 2016, and Ukraine

Does Hillary Clinton have Ukraine problem for 2016? POLITICO seems to think so.

As a freshman U.S. senator in 2002, Hillary Clinton reveled in the freedom of her new position outside the White House.

Being first lady “is more of a vicarious responsibility in that you are, like everyone in the White House, there because of one person, the president,” she told the Washington Post at the time. In the Senate, “there’s a lot more opportunity to express my own opinions, to work through what I would do and how I would do it.”

Twelve years later, Clinton is inextricably tied to another administration over which she yielded only partial influence. And as President Barack Obama grapples to resolve the expanding crisis in Ukraine, the situation underscores Clinton’s dilemma as she looks toward a potential presidential run in 2016: Separating from the White House is a very difficult proposition, if it’s possible at all.

As Secretary of State through Obama’s first term, Clinton was in many ways the face of the administration’s “reset” policy with Russia, an effort to establish a new relationship that focused heavily on fostering the relationship with then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

The administration’s allies argue that some positives emerged from the reset, and that trouble began with Vladmir Putin’s returned to the Russian presidency in 2012. Skeptics of the “reset” believe Putin never actually left the stage.

Either way, the conflict is another instance in which Clinton is tethered to the administration’s decisions heading into 2016 – moreso than any other Democrat with the possible exception of Vice President Joe Biden, who would be a heavy underdog against Clinton.

“Whenever you run for office, you’ve got pluses and minuses based on your background – [if] you say, ‘Well elect me because I was Governor of X,’ people are going to look at what you did as governor,” said Lawrence Korb, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, the top liberal think tank in Washington.

On health care, energy policy, NSA spying and the economy, Clinton will face questions about her role in formulating the policy or her current level of support for it.

It is to Clinton’s advantage that voters generally don’t determine national elections based strictly on foreign policy issues – the economy is likelier to play a deciding role in 2016 than what is happening in Ukraine. What’s more, there’s dwindling public appetite for U.S. intervention abroad, and, barring a seismic development, voters don’t appear particularly engaged in this conflict.

Few Democrats have wanted to issue lengthy statements on a suggested course of action with Russia, as the president deals with a shifting set of problems in Ukraine. In a speech at a health care forum in Florida last week as the conflict was unfolding, Clinton said she was still talking to some of her former governmental colleagues and predicted Putin would “look seriously” at consolidating his country’s position in eastern Ukraine.

Putin “sits as the absolute authority now in Russia and it is quite reminiscent of the kind of authority exercised in the past by Russian leaders, by the czars and their successor Communist leaders,” she said, according to CNN. She added that it was imperative for the U.S. to back a “unified Ukraine.”

Still, as the runaway favorite for her party’s nomination, Clinton will have to provide further answers if she runs.

“I think Russia is the single most substantive issue that she failed at from conception to implementation,” argued political-risk expert Ian Bremmer, of the Eurasia Group.

“The view of the United States of Russia is that the Russians just don’t matter that much,” Bremmer said. “There was a real belief in the White House that you could work with Medvedev, Putin was the problem but Medvedev was in chaarge …. that was a real misread.”

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), one of his party’s most hawkish voices, singled out Clinton for criticism on a policy that stemmed from Obama.

“Of course she got it wrong,” McCain told the Daily Beast. “She believed that somehow there would be a reset with a guy who was a KGB colonel who always had ambitions to restore the Russian empire. That’s what this is all about.”

Not only will Clinton have to answer for her failure on Russia, but let's not forget her role in Benghazi. The media loves to ignore what happened that night in Benghazi, but Clinton played a vital role and should be held accountable. Did the buck stop with her on Russia and Libya? No, but she played a huge role in the failure of American foreign policy.

Other Top Stories:

These and many more topics coming up on today’s edition of The Chad Hasty Show. Tune in mornings 8:30-11am on News/Talk 790 KFYO, streaming online at kfyo.com, and now on your iPhone and Android device with the radioPup App. All guest interviews can be heard online in our podcast section after the show at kfyo.com.

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