The R4’12 staff was asked to gaze into their crystal balls and tell us what they saw in store for us in 2009. Their predictions are printed below…
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Alex Knepper:

Netanyahu becomes Prime Minister of Israel. Israel strikes Iran late in the year. Everyone gets really, really angry at Israel for screwing up the non-existent “diplomatic process,” while sane people everywhere breathe a sigh of relief.

Sarah Palin shocks me by says something insightful, Ron Paul shocks no one by saying something crazy.

Unemployment reaches double-digits, President Obama’s response is a massive expansion of government works — and therefore government employment. Socialism creeps ever closer.

Fred Thompson wakes up, asks who won the election.

Michael Steele becomes RNC Chairman, mostly based upon his star power.

Kristofer Lorelli challenges Todd Palin to a dogsledding race to win Sarah’s love; the surprise winner is Mitt Romney, as he is the ultimate sledder on Race42012. Romney gets the girl, Lorelli’s dreams are shattered.

Rod Blagojevich is thrown out of the governor’s mansion, a Republican wins the next gubernatorial election.

Rudy Giuliani is thrown out of the Playboy Mansion, still wins the next gubernatorial election.

Caroline Kennedy is not appointed the next senator from New York. A seatholder is chosen, instead. Kennedy explains that she’d much prefer to run in 2010, anyway, where she can take her message directly to the voters.

Fox News and MSNBC combine forces for the ultimate in bipartisan news. Hannity and Colmes is replaced by O’Reilly and Olbermann. Alex smiles, then wakes up.

Barack Obama’s popularity does not wane, while the far-right plank of the party continues to charge down the hill, refusing to reform, instead choosing to complain about the unfairness of it all.

Alex Knepper will write lots of brilliant things. Lots and lots of brilliant things. Adam Graham offers the head of Huckabee as tribute, Alex explains that he is a compassionate conservative and does not care for tribute.

Adam Graham:

Several posts will be made this year on Race42012 that will attempt to bring the Republican Party together into unity, respect, and understanding by telling the other factions in the party the way it’s going to be.

Caroline Kennedy will not be the next Senator from New York.

The RNC Chairman’s race will be won through a series of backroom deals and will be decided on the 4th ballot. In a surprise compromise, Mike Duncan will be elected General Chairman (day to day leader of the GOP) and Michael Steele will be the National Chairman (public face of the party.)

Rob Blagojevich will be gone from office by the 1st of April.

Bob McConnell will be elected Governor of Virginia.

Michael Bloomberg will be re-elected Mayor of New York, proving you don’t need a political party to have a political machine.

The Stimulus Package will pass Congress and one week after it’s passed, it will be discovered that the bill includes regulations to abolish the BCS system and require college football to have a playoff.

The unemployment rate will hit 9% by New Years day, 2010.

The Cabinet appointee who will face the most scrutiny: Eric Holder.

There will be no Senate vote on the Freedom of Choice Act or on the Employer’s Free Choice Act.

The Obama White House will blunder with Health Care reform, trying to move too quickly and too fast to get something through, but will instead force the bill into the congressional meat grinder. By the end of the year, health care reform will still be in Congress and will be three times the length of whatever legislation Obama originally submitted.

Benjamin Netanyahu will be elected Prime Minister of Israel and will be a thorn in the side of Secretary of State Clinton.

The Minnesota Vikings defeat the Indianapolis Colts, 26-23 to win the Super Bowl.

The Texas Longhorns win the NCAA Championship

The Phillies will finish 3rd in the NL East, while the D-Rays win the Wild Card, The Red Sox will not make the playoffs and the World Series will come down to the Cleveland Indians and the New York Mets. Indians in 6.

Heath Ledger will win Best Supporting Actor for his role as the Joker. The Dark Knight will win a couple minor Oscars, but will not take home an award for Best Picture or Best Director.

G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra will bomb so bad that there will be no sequel.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine: will deal a death blow to the X-Men franchise.

Star Trek will be a surprisingly successful reboot that will revive the Trek Franchise and earn $250 million at the box office.

Obama’s approval rating by the end of the year: 46%

Mike “Gamecock” Devine:

-Cock-a-doodle-do! Our pre-Election Day sabbatical aka “retirement is over just in time for 2009 clairvoyance.

Last year we predicted the launch of the FNC “Huckabee” show; that neither Huckabee nor McCain would be addressed as “President-Elect; that the Congressional moratorium on offshore oil drilling would expire and that the Celtics would play the Lakers in the NBA Finals.

In 2009, FNC will launch a new show hosted by Michael Steele; Congress will re-institute oil drilling restrictions and the Celtics will face the Suns in the NBA finals.

Ken Blackwell will be elected RNC chair.

Unemployment will top 10%; inflation will top 6%; the prime rate will top 5%; and regular unleaded will top $2.20/gallon.

The Roberts-Alito court will reverse at least two O’Connor Establishment Clause precedents; limit punitive damage awards in tobacco cases; deny liability in “light” cigarette cases; and President Obama will be caught on film puffing on a Kool outside the Oval Office.

Unions will not see “card check” enacted into law.

Neither comprehensive health care reform nor cap and trade legislation will be passed during the Hundred Days.

Obama first promised to create 2 million jobs in two years, then said he would create or “save” three million. Currently, over 154 million Americans are employed. We do not believe that even the disastrous policies of Obama and the Democrats will force more than 151 million out of work. At the end of 2009 and even 2010, more than three million jobs will have been “saved”.

Rahm Emmanuel will not be Chief of Staff past the date of December 31, 2009.

Obama will scale back his promised tax cuts in the First Hundred Days, but the Oceans will be lower after the First 300 Days

Oklahoma will beat Florida in the BCS Bowl.

The Carolina Panthers will defeat the Colts in the Super Bowl.

Tar Heels win March Madness.

Suns play Celtics in NBA Finals.

Yankees do not play in the World Series.

Hillary persuades Turkey and Syria to withdraw from Iraqi Kurdistan.

Rooster never misses a dawn.

Michael Stubel:

New York Governor David Paterson will play it safe and tap Andrew Cuomo to fill Hillary’s Clinton vacant Senate seat. Paterson figured that Caroline Kennedy would not be ready on day one.

Illinois Governor (is there truly any leadership in that state?) Rod Blagojevich will be impeached and deemed unfit to govern by the Illinois legislature. Removed from office, Blagojevich will be heard yelling “I will fight, I will fight, I will fight – until I take my last breath!” as he leaves the capitol building.

Domestic oil prices will continue their unusual downward trend, before increasing as the weather turns warmer, causing Americans to prioritize energy independence yet again. Then prices will drop and the calls for action will dwindle. In other words, we’ll get nowhere on the issue.

Mike Duncan retains his RNC Chairmanship, despite a heavy challenge from Michael Steele. The party’s prospects for a conservative renewal take a hit as the interventionist policies of Bush, Paulson, Pelosi, and Reid become a trusted practice.

The sour experiences of Lebanon fresh in their mind, Israel will tread more cautiously in Gaza. Massive air strikes will continue to pound the Strip, but the resilience of Hamas will discourage thoughts of a ground assault. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livini and opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu will forge a coalition government, following deadlocked parlimentary elections in February.

The Philadelphia Eagles- yes, those 9-6-1 Birds- will defeat the Pittsburgh Steelers 24-13 in Super Bowl XLIII. Donovan McNabb will be named MVP.

Tensions between India and Pakistan will escalate into cross-border clashes in the wake of the Mumbai terrorist attack. The new front will divert Pakistani resources away from their troubled northwestern region, largely resigning the tribal areas to Al-Qaeda and other militants.

In Afghanistan, emboldened insurgents will battle American and NATO forces on the doorstep of Kabul, before being driven back by a Iraq-style surge of U.S. troops. The legend of General David Petraeus grows.

Receiving actionable and solid intelligence for the first time in years, President Obama will give the green light on a special forces operation across the Pakistan border. Osama Bin Laden is captured and brought to justice.

David Cameron’s Conservative Party wins control of the British Parliament in an extremely tight race over Gordon Brown and his Labour Party.

Unemployment reaches 8 percent, but the most grim forecasts do not come to pass. The deficit balloons, but consumer confidence slowly rebounds as the credit market thaws.

Somewhere in America- pick a state- a Democratic governor will face a stunning scandal

More sports: Penn State upsets USC in the Rose Bowl, Florida takes the BCS title over Oklahoma, the San Jose Sharks win the Stanley Cup, Kobe’s Lakers defeat LeBron’s Cav’s in the NBA Finals, and the Chicago Cubs finally win a World Series (yes, I am crazy).

Matt Coulter:

Rod Blagojevich will hold on to the Governor’s mansion as long as he can, until the legislature finally removes him as the embarrassment he is. The entire time he will proclaim his innocence and tell the voters of Illinois that this is nothing more than a distraction from the pressing issues of the state. A Democrat will still win the Governorship in the next election.

Rahm Emmanuel will stay on as Obama’s Chief of Staff, despite being dirtied in the Blagojevich scandal. The MSM and a vast majority of the country will not care.

Barack Obama will not move to repeal the Bush tax cuts, evoking loud cries of anguish from the lefty blogosphere but sighs of relief from practical, level-headed liberals (yes, there are a few out there). In the political irony of the year, Obama will cite the worsening economy as the main reason for this move.

Barack will move to get some sort of universal health care program in place, despite the fact that it will cause the federal deficit to balloon by exorbitant amounts. Early estimations of how much the program will cost will be shown to be less than a third of the actual cost once the program is in place (which probably won’t be until 2010 or 2011).

The Congress and Obama will fail to pass another $700 billion bailout bill because the Republicans, emboldened by being in the minority once again, will refuse to provide token votes for political cover. The Democrats in turn will blame the worsening economy on the GOP, a soundbite the MSM will parrot dozens of times throughout the year.

In a move that shows why the Republicans will be the minority party for some time to come, Mike Duncan retains his leadership at the RNC. Fundraising numbers continue to decline, recruitment efforts continue to slow, and the GOP lose even more seats in both the House and the Senate in 2010 — because in 2010, Americans will be excited at the prospect of a bettering economy and at the prospect of the new health care program just put in place (before anyone has time to realize how poorly it actually works and how much it actually costs).

The tribal areas in Pakistan continue to spiral out of control, and the push for more soldiers into Afghanistan will only serve to strengthen the Taliban leadership in those areas as more and more terrorist soldiers flee to those hills where Americans aren’t allowed to go – thanks to the old and the new Pakistani government. Osama bin Laden remains safe there as well; Americans largely forget about the War on Terror.

In more news that no one will report, America (and what’s left of the other coalition troops) will hand over the 13th and 14th provinces to Iraqi control, leaving only four provinces remaining when Obama begins troop “redeployment” out of Iraq. Without the presence of Americans, insurgents claim those four provinces and use them for a base of terror across the rest of the country.

Gas prices will begin their necessary rise once again as Americans begin to drive more because of the lower prices and as OPEC tries to put the squeeze on the US (and other non-OPEC countries follow suit). American voters will continue to remain in the dark about simple economic principles such as supply and demand. Prices in 2009 will reach $2.25-$2.50 a gallon.

Unemployment reaches 8.5%, then in the last months of the year begins a very slight downward move as the economy begins to right itself. Nothing is learned from the current economic crisis except the false lessons of the need for more government intervention in the free markets, and so the US heads down a track toward an even bigger economic crisis sometime in the next couple decades.

Obama’s approval rating will begin to slip from the artificially high 70% currently down to around a still impressive 55-60%. The GOP will continue to look foolish by attacking Obama instead of presenting new, fresh ideas on how to solve the country’s problems.

The Super Bowl will be Manning vs. Manning as the surprisingly strong Colts, despite many key players being out with injuries, make their way past San Diego in a high scoring affair, defeat Pittsburgh handily as the Colts offense picks apart the D and holds the Steelers’ anemic offense in single digits, and Baltimore in a close game that comes down to the fourth quarter. The Giants will rally to defeat Philadelphia and narrowly beat Carolina in an offensive shootout. The Colts will then upset the Giants in Superbowl 43, 41-37.

Kristofer Lorelli:

Harry Reid is ousted as Senate majority leader.

The Fairness Doctrine passes House and Senate.

The U.S. Dollar falls below 50 cents against the Euro.

Aron Goldman:

January 19, 2009: President Bush uses his last day in office to issue pardons to Scooter Libby and Plaxico Burress. The heads of Keith Olbermann and Michael Bloomberg spontaneously combust.

February 1, 2009: Adam Vinatieri’s 47-yard field goal in double overtime gives NFL MVP Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts their second Super Bowl victory in three years. A distraught Donovan McNabb is inconsolable after taking a knee to end the first overtime; certain his Eagles had just played to a tie, securing diamond rings and a Lombardi trophy of their own.

April 20, 2009: On his 89th birthday, associate justice John Paul Stevens announces his retirement. President Obama, livid over Secretary of State Clinton’s defiant support for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s continued occupation of northern Gaza, tosses Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book in the trash, and determines that Hillary will ultimately cause him the least amount of grief from the Supreme Court.

May 5, 2009: President Obama guarantees the Hispanic vote for the Democrats for the remainder of the 21st Century by issuing an Executive Order that makes Spanish our nation’s official language. ¡Sí, Se Puede!

June 3, 2009: Citing a stagnant economy, the WNBA suspends its operations for the 2009 season. Millions of sports fans across America rejoice.

July 4, 2009: President Obama finally makes good on his claim to have visited 57 states by granting statehood to the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam, Israel and Iraq. Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann and Nancy Pfotenhauer hold a joint press conference denouncing the expansion as “an insult to the real, pro-America parts of the country.”

September 6, 2009: Ex-con Michael Vick returns to the NFL as a running back for the Oakland Raiders, rushing for 275 yards against the Chiefs. The next day, Vick is mauled by a pit bull in a park, losing two fingers on his throwing hand and half his left foot. (Cue John Lennon’s “Instant Karma”)

October 31, 2009: After sweeping the Chicago White Sox in the ALCS and the Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series, the New York Yankees are reminded by President Obama that “when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” In an unprecedented act, Obama issues Executive Order 13512, ‘redistributing’ A-Rod, Jeter, Burnett and Sabathia to Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Seattle and San Diego, respectively.

November 25, 2009: President Obama deems the foundering New York Times “too important an institution to fail.”

We’ll say good-bye in 2009 to Billy Graham, Ted Kennedy, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Amy Winehouse won’t have to worry about going back to rehab.

Kavon W. Nikrad:

Violence in the Middle East escalates to a level not seen in nearly four-decades.

By year’s end, a Russia-Ukraine military conflict will appear inevitable.

As the proverbial “cherry on top”, China takes its saber-rattling over Taiwan to a new level.

Obama’s diminished approval rating comes from his handling of foreign affairs and international crises, not domestic ones.

Neither Card Check, The Fairness Doctrine, nor comprehensive health care reform are enacted into law. Comprehensive Immigration reform does pass both houses of Congress and is signed into law.

Unemployment approaches, but does not surpass, ten-percent.

By December, Republicans will be fairly impressed by candidate recruitment for the 2010 Midterms.

I will continue to be amused and befuddled by predictions and declarations regarding the recovery of the American Economy in light of a moribund housing market, skyrocketing government spending, and the specter of future capital gains tax increases.

At least one other American industry -which is not yet on the radar – will collapse and request a multi-billion dollar bailout.

Mike Duncan is re-elected as RNC Chair.

It will be clear to everyone but the willfully ignorant what we have known for some time: Newt Gingrich will be a candidate for President of the United States in 2012.

By December or 2009, the top tier of the Republican 2012 nomination race will be perceived as including Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and Newt Gingrich.

The Tennessee Titans are destroyed in their opening playoff game.

The New York Jets and Brett Favre part ways. Favre makes overtures to other teams and finds few takers.

The New York Giants will face the Indianapolis Colts in a historic brother vs. brother “game for the ages.” The Giants will top the Colts in a high-scoring, close contest.

The Detroit Lions select Oklahoma QB Sam Bradford with the first pick in the NFL Draft. The St. Louis Rams select QB Matthew Stafford of Georgia with the #2 overall pick. A team uses a low 1st Round selection on Florida QB Tim Tebow.

Sean Penn wins the Academy Award for Best Actor, “Milk” wins for Best Picture, Meryl Streep wins the Academy Award for her performance in “Doubt”, and Health Ledger wins Best Supporting Actor for “The Dark Knight.”

Note: R4’12 readers are encouraged to share their own 2009 predictions in the comments.

Just wanted to wish everyone a safe, and happy New Years. Following up on DaveG’s disclaimer, I have not abandoned the site nor my responsibilities to the masses either. I’m just taking a nice vacation (while actually doing some research on a topic I want to explore in the near future before Obama takes office) and this downtime has provided me with some much needed RnR from politics after spending most of the last two years actively blogging here. I hope everyone has a safe and enjoyable evening.

Some members of the RNC want to take an extraordinary action against President Bush and Republican leaders in Congress:

Republican Party officials say they will try next month to pass a resolution accusing President Bush and congressional Republican leaders of embracing “socialism,” underscoring deep dissension within the party at the end of Mr. Bush’s administration.

Those pushing the resolution, which will come before the Republican National Committee at its January meeting, say elected leaders need to be reminded of core principles. They said the RNC must take the dramatic step of wading into policy debates, which traditionally have been left to lawmakers.

“We can’t be a party of small government, free markets and low taxes while supporting bailouts and nationalizing industries, which lead to big government, socialism and high taxes at the expense of individual liberty and freedoms,” said Solomon Yue, an Oregon member and co-sponsor of a resolution that criticizes the U.S. government bailouts of the financial and auto industries. Republican National Committee Vice Chairman James Bopp Jr. wrote the resolution and asked the rest of the 168 voting members to sign it.

“The resolution also opposes President-elect Obama’s proposed public works program and supports conservative alternatives,” while encouraging the RNC “to engage in vigorous public policy debates consistent with our party platform,” said Mr. Bopp, a leading attorney for pro-life groups who has also challenged the campaign finance legislation that Mr. Bush signed.

It’s the political equivalent of the black spot from Treasure Island, a clear denouncement of a President by his own party. It would be a humiliating censure for President Bush, but I think it’s got to be done. If the GOP is to rebuild its brand, it’s got to find someway to extricate itself from the bailout position of Bush, Boehner, and McConnell.  Of course, Bush still has some lieutenants and lackeys who are there because of his good graces and they may put up a good fight, but with Bush weakened as he is, I think this has got at least a 50-50 shot.

The Politico reports that the “Barack: The Magic Negro” CD controversy may have helped Saltsman. I’m skeptical, but they have several members of the RNC offering a defense of sorts:

“When I heard about the story I had to figure out what was going on for myself,” said Mark Ellis, the chairman of the Maine Republican Party. “When I found out what this was about I had to ask, ‘boy, what’s the big deal here?’ because there wasn’t any.”

Alabama Republican committeeman Paul Reynolds said the fact the Saltsman sent him a CD with the song on it “didn’t bother me one bit.”

“Chip probably could have thought it through a bit more, but he was doing everyone a favor by giving us a gift,” he said. “This is just people looking for something to make an issue of.”

“I don’t think he intended it as any kind of racial slur. I think he intended it as a humor gift,” Oklahoma GOP committeewoman Carolyn McClarty added. “I think it was innocently done by Chip.”

Maybe, the Politico knows something it’s not reporting, but none of these statements seem like overwhelming votes of confidence for Saltsman. I could be wrong, but I just don’t see any way Saltsman pulls this out or survives past the second ballot.  However, this flap has clearly been a boon to Ken Blackwell:

As a result of his position, a source close to the race said that at least 12 uncommitted committee members have contacted Blackwell to thank him for his support for Saltsman and have expressed anger toward Duncan and Anuzis “for throwing a good Republican under the bus.”

12 is a little less than 1/7th of what Blackwell needs to claim the Chairmanship.  And let there be no doubt, this has wounded Saul Anuzis and Chairman Mike Duncan:

“Those are two guys who just eliminated themselves from this race for jumping all over Chip on this,” one committee member told Politico. “Mike Duncan is a nice guy, but he screwed up big time by pandering to the national press on this…”

In calls to committee members in recent days, both Saltsman and Blackwell have been reminding Republicans of how both Duncan and Anuzis reacted to the story.

“I wasn’t angered by what Mike had said, it was just revealing to me how each one responded,” said Ellis of Maine, who as an uncommitted member received calls from all six candidates Monday. “Their responses were kind of a surprise to me because I saw it as something that was not an issue, something that was manufactured from outside the committee.”

This process of electing a chairman is micropolitics. It doesn’t really matter what the bloggers think or the opinion of outside political leaders. What matters is what’s going on with the 168 members of the RNC and this is an issue that both Saltsman and Blackwell see as pay dirt, because Duncan’s response came off poorly with members of the Commitee.  Whatever damage occurred to Saltsman, rather than adding to that damage, Duncan’s statement wounded his own campaign. Rather than coming off as strong and in charge, he came off as a weak panderer to his fellow Committeeman.

Newspaper Ad in Illinois

Chip Saltsman sent a CD by Paul Shanklin that was a compilation of parodies, many of which appeared on the Rush Limbaugh program including the Limbaugh favorite, “Barack: The Magic Negro.”

Numerous myths are floating around about this. This is not a CD that Saltsman “compiled” as one news report said as if Saltsman burned the CD of his favorite songs. “Barack: The Magic Negro” was not even the title track of Paul Shanklin’s CD. It was smack in the middle of the CD at Track 16.

Paul Shanklin didn’t coin the term “Magic Negro.” It was African American writer David Ehrenstein, writing for the LA Times who first referred to Obama as a “Magic Negro” in March 2007 and suggested he was a less authentic Black person than Al Sharpton or Snoop Dogg. Saltsman has correctly pointed out that Ehrenstein’s original piece was not criticized. The song is not so much a riff on Obama as it is Ehrenstein’s column and Al Sharpton. Paul Shanklin pushed the envelope of satire a tad too far, but it’s not “Birth of the Nation” or anything near the racial severity it’s being made out to be.

That said, Saltsman is most likely done as a serious contender for RNC Chairman. He may remain in to save face or to be a power broker in the final outcome, but he will not win. While Saltsman has some crackerjack ideas for improving the Republican Party, the hits he’s taken over the past couple of days from within the party have been too hard for him to hope of gathering enough support to lead the Republican Party. Most members are the RNC are not going to want to spend the next two years explaining this issue.

There are many knaves and losers in this affair, and only one winner. So let’s break down:

Knaves:

Whoever leaked this story: Saltsman didn’t post Shanklin’s song on his website. He sent the CD out to 168 members of the RNC. That means someone who was a recipient of the CD went to the press about it. We would not be talking about this had someone not leaked the CD.

The results of the story: putting Republican Party members at each other’s throats. Many members of the huge Rush Limbaugh audience were not feeling happy with the GOP and this doesn’t help. In addition, RNC members need to be able to be free to express their opinions. With knowledge that a blabbermouth is in the room, expect people to be guarded and meetings of the RNC to more closely resemble episodes of Babylon 5 than a real working political party.

In order to score points against Saltsman (or one of Saltsman’s former clients), whoever leaked this story: created several news cycles of bad PR for the party, put different factions of the party at odds, and have hindered the effectiveness of the RNC. Heck of a job, Mister or Miss Slash and Burn. Hope you’re proud of yourself, wherever you are.

Mike Duncan and Saul Anuzis: The incumbent RNC Chairman screamed outrage” at the top of his lungs, as did Saul Anuzis. Declared Duncan, “I am shocked and appalled that anyone would think this is appropriate as it clearly does not move us in the right direction.

Shocked and appalled? Which is worse? That Saltsman sent out a CD with the song on it privately to 168 members of the RNC, or that the biggest conservative talk show in America has played the song, about 1,000 times? Either Duncan is so incredibly out of touch with the grassroots of the party that neither he nor anyone on his staff with good sense knows what’s happening on the Rush Limbaugh program, or he’s saved his outrage for now like a good hypocrite. Take your pick, or maybe it’s a combination of both.

As for Saul Anuzis, he said, “Just as important, anything that paints the GOP as being motivated in our criticism of President-elect Obama by anything other than a difference in philosophy does a disservice to our party.” Only the title of the CD paints this picture. While others haven’t listened to the song, Anuzis, as someone who actually has a copy of the CD, really has no excuse for not knowing what the song’s about. And again, where was this outrage when this was playing non-stop on Rush.

Losers:

Chip Saltsman:

Some would put Saltsman in the knave category. Everyone who does this seems to think that they would have known Track 16 of 41 would ignite into a national controversy. While there were clearly safer gifts than the Shanklin CD, like bath towels, Saltsman thought he’d go for something the political types would enjoy.

However, whether deserved or not, Saltsman is done as a viable candidate for RNC Chairman. The Shanklin CD will follow him wherever he goes and will be a story whenever he joins a campaign for anywhere between a few hours and a day.

Conservative Satire

My brother has often told me that conservatives need an answer to the Daily Show, a satirical counterpunch to Jon Stewart. This story is an illustration of why that is unlikely to happen. While I’ll admit that Shanklin’s parody was beyond the pale, the decision of some on the right to act as if he burned a cross on an African American’s lawn illustrates why there’s a satire deficit. Those who attempt satire on the right are either idiots who think being offensive for its own sake is hilarious, or they’re so banal in their satire they offend no one and entertain no one.

Satirists on the left can get away with far more on the right even with their own side. On Obama’s visit to Germany, Jon Stewart remarked that seeing hundreds of thousands of screaming Germans cheering for a Charismatic leader “gives me goosesteps-I mean goosebumps.” Try making that type of joke on the right and you’ll be drowned in press releases from conservatives calling for you to be imprisoned.

Conservatives need to develop some sense of proportionality. Until then, expect people on the right to be afflicted by lame things such as the “Half Hour Newshour”

Winner:

Ken Blackwell. Ken Blackwell issued the following statement on this matter:

“Unfortunately, there is hypersensitivity in the press regarding matters of race. This is in large measure due to President-Elect Obama being the first African-American elected president. I don’t think any of the concerns that have been expressed in the media about any of the other candidates for RNC chairman should disqualify them. When looked at in the proper context, these concerns are minimal. All of my competitors for this leadership post are fine people.”

Matt Lewis over at AOL suggests that Blackwell’s move is a stroke of political genius:

First, it is important to note that only 168 RNC Members get to cast votes, and presumably, many of them are conservatives who will view Duncan’s statement as pandering to the politically correct crowd. Some of them may have been supporting Saltsman or Dawson, after all, as well. They will object to Duncan’s criticism, and possibly view it as appeasement…

Lastly, and ironically, it may prove the point that the GOP desperately needs an African-American to serve as the face of the GOP as we go head-to-head against the first African-American President in U.S. History. After all, Blackwell was able to get away with defending Saltsman, whereas a white candidate may not have been able to do the same.… Having known Blackwell a bit, I can tell you that this move was consistent with his core beliefs. He has never played the race card — or the “reverse” race card — even when it would have helped him — and I do believe he views this as having been an instance of, “hypersensitivity.”

Having said that, coming to Saltsman’s defense will likely also prove to be a brilliant political stroke which may propel him to the head of the RNC.

 

Lewis is right. And I think there’s another reason Blackwell may be helped. Whoever gets elected RNC Chairman will need to lead the whole party. The type of response Duncan and Anuzis has issued will make it very hard for them to unite the party and will lead to them being sniped at in talk-radio-land and looked on with a great amount of distrust among the base. Blackwell’s statement is graceful and avoids picking a fight. The vote for Chairman will require a majority support, which means that if Saltsman and Katon Dawson are trailing after the first ballot, their support will end up going elsewhere, and Blackwell’s set himself up to be the recipient of that support.

Bottom line: Saltsman’s loss is Blackwell’s gain. I was skeptical of Blackwell’s candidacy, but his savvy response coupled with numerous recent endorsements from members of the RNC indicates that Blackwell has become a top tier candidate.

Let me begin this post with a disclaimer. I am alive and well here in the Commonwealth of Virginia. I have not abandoned the site nor my loyal fans (all three of them) nor my ornery yet lovable critics. My posting has been light, if not non-existent, due to a number of factors, not the least of which being my need to detox from politics after the last three years. Also, quite frankly, it’s really hard for a guy like me to get excited about the race for 2012 right now, especially since I feel increasingly alienated from the Republican Party and, while I know I’m not a Democrat, it feels somewhat liberating to be able to stop apologizing for policies I never advocated and for things I don’t believe in. It’s nice to be able to step back and call both parties on their crap, opining that while Republicans got what they deserved last November, President-elect Obama certainly doesn’t deserve to be deified before he actually signs a single piece of legislation or gets a single Executive Branch nominee through the Senate or takes the freakin’ Oath of Office.

Onto the subject of the post. I think we can all agree that Gov. Sarah Palin and her family ought to be congratulated on the new addition to her family: her first grandchild. But for secular folks who attempted to participate in Republican politics this past election season, this news brings with it the memories of old wounds. When Bristol Palin’s pregnancy was revealed to the nation last summer, many right-of-center pundits, including Yours Truly, reacted with something less than boundless enthusiasm at the news. Many of us were concerned with what this said about Gov. Palin’s worldview, especially concerning contraception, gender equality, and the like. The response from the Republican base was short and sweet: anyone who questioned either Gov. Palin’s most recent pregnancy or Bristol Palin’s pregnancy was a godless heathen who hated the Palins because they refrain from killing their children.

But this couldn’t be farther from the truth. I can’t imagine that more than a handful of Americans could be found who believe that the two most recent additions to the Palin family should have been extinguished before they took their respective first breaths. There are probably plenty of Americans who feel that the Palin women should have been legally allowed to terminate their respective pregnancies had they chosen to do so, but I can’t imagine that anyone, particularly anyone open to voting Republican, hates Gov. Palin because she and her daughter didn’t kill their babies. That’s not what this is about. This is about the refusal of the religious Republican base to acknowledge that secular Americans have developed a values system that works as well, if not better, than their own. That admission, you see, would force them to question their entire worldview. Which is why it’s easier just to believe that Palin skeptics hate babies.

One of the most interesting things about the Bristol debate in the summer and fall was that those of us who don’t believe that there’s any evidence that whatever deity may or may not exist has a problem with premarital sex or making babies out of wedlock were the same folks most harshly admonishing Gov. Palin for her parenting skills, and the young Bristol for her decision-making skills, that led to a baby being created out of wedlock. Strikingly, the individuals who seemed most sympathetic to the Palins’ plight were the very people who believed that God had been displeased by the whole ordeal. But there’s little mystery here. Secularists, who are empirical and who believe that morality and values must be discerned through the application of reason to facts and observations, are often the least tolerant of unplanned pregnancy due to the negative impact it has on the lives of those involved. Those of us who made hay over Bristol’s pregnancy were simply thinking of her, and her boyfriend, and the rest of her family. Will Bristol still be able to go to college? Will she be able to pursue the career of which she has always dreamed? Will she and the child’s father have a happy marriage? Are they even ready for marriage? Can the family afford another member? These are the sorts of questions that we instinctively asked. That doesn’t mean that we wanted Bristol Palin to go out and kill her child. It does mean that we wondered whether Bristol Palin becoming pregnant despite the aforementioned consequences was the result of a worldview held by the Palins that included such things as an opposition to contraception, a belief that higher education wasn’t important for women, etc, beliefs that could and would have an impact on public policy if Sarah Palin at any point became President of the United States.

The religious Republican base, however, imputed the worst motives to secular Americans. Perhaps they should actually look at the divorce rates and illegitimacy rates of Secular America before making such judgments. But they rarely do, because admitting that a coherent, functioning values system can be built on rational decision-making based on self-interest would mean that moral codes derived from revealed truth are unnecessary for a civilized society. Therefore, the success of secularists must be ignored and dismissed as the result of a selfish refusal to follow the divine plan to marry, the use of unnatural contraception, and the presence of abortion mills. Meanwhile, high divorce rates and teen pregnancy are considered the pinnacle of morality, a simple reminder of our flawed nature due to man’s fall.

Politics shouldn’t be about religious beliefs. There always have been, and probably always will be, folks who believe that morality isn’t possible without revealed instruction from a non-human intelligence. That’s their right in a free and pluralistic society. But when Americans who don’t hold such views are basically relegated to the periphery of a party they once identified with and were inclined to vote for, that party doesn’t expand, it contracts. It doesn’t operate from a position of strength and confidence, but from one of weakness and fear. And while Republicans didn’t lose the race for 2008 because of social issues, the key to a Republican comeback most certainly isn’t the continued transformation of the Republican Party into a fundamentalist religious organization. What’s needed is more open dialogue and less name-calling, more conversation and less excommunication.

The Carolina Panthers win ugly, but as 12-4 NFC South champions with a first round play-off bye, the key word in the opening phrase is “win.”

In his Inaugural address in late September, newly elected as the first President of the U.S. Economy, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson declared that the $700B TARP bill was needed to save the banking system and unclog its new loan issuing arteries. The bill was titled the “Troubled Asset Relief Program” and Paulson’s testimony urging its passage promised funds would be used to buy up bad mortgages, but the actual terms of the bill endowed the Treasury Secretary with near plenary powers and absolute discretion to preserve the economy (as if that were possible).

Yours truly was “commissioned” at the time to cover the financial meltdown and Paulson Panic Prevention Plan, and after much research and analysis that would fill a small Caroline Kennedy size book, I came out narrowly against the passage of the TARP/PPPP.

I favored a more narrowly focused plan favored by Steve Forbes and others supply side stimulus that would have also included suspension of mark-to-market accounting rules and the repeal of the criminalization of risk-taking capitalism/small business destruction Act a/k/a Sarbanes-Oxley. My four columns written in the wake of the crisis and soon after passage of TARP from September 18-October 9 may be found here at page 4 of my archives.

Since then, Paulson actually heeded some of my advice, i.e. to take action that would maximize the likelihood that new loans would be issued rather than rescue bad mortgages. What Paulson decided to do was to buy equity in Banks, which shores up there balance sheets, which capital forms the basis for new loans at a 10/1 ration, generally.

As an aside, let be debunk the notion that the banks can or even should, report to Congress how they have spent the “TARP” money. Money is fungible. The money transferred is equity money that is part of the total capital of the banks and meant to be so. This is not a case akin to the commingling of personal versus business funds by a small business owner trying to protect assets from a divorce property settlement.

Congress should have thought of this before they passed TARP and, quite frankly, the maintenance of privacy in the banks’ private transactions helps to prevent another socialism/nationalization line.

Also, since the September 2008 Econ-911, Vice-President of the U.S. Economy/Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke has produced an alphabet soup of loan guarantee programs which, together with TARP’s $350B spent so far with the AIG and other “bailouts” added together, add up to possibly upwards of $7 Trillion in U.S. taxpayer funds at risk. Most experts believe most of this money is not at risk, but most do fear the inflationary effect of same once the recession ends. Bernanke, a student of the Great Depression, apparently thinks he can finesse the situation. God help us.

But back to the PPPP, which was devised because banks were unwilling to make loans to other banks in mid-September. The housing recession was in its 11th month and very few mortgages were being re-financed much less new loans issued.

Fast-forward to late December: The banking system did not fail. Bank to bank loans are being made. Mortgages are being refinanced at very high volume since a drop in interest rates in November.

Could all of the above been accomplished absent any action by government in September? No

But could it have been accomplished with a plan differing in kind and scope than the one Paulson and Bernanke have wrought? Probably.

No doubt that PPPP prevented panic in an arbitrary way.

But judging their actions by the stated goals, their way has “worked”, given a narrow definition of “worked.”

I have argued that the American people were in for hard times for the next year or two, at least, in my previous articles (see above links) and so, did not expect for investors to come off their strike due to the FED and TARP. For that, I think we will have to pay the piper for past excess and pass a supply-side stimulus plan.

Therefore, my purpose in this column is a narrow defense of Paulson and Bernanke on the accomplishment of the stated goals thus far. My own business has picked up, given that much of my work is tied to loan turn downs. For that I am thankful.

But for the un-clogged bank loan arteries to flow in greater volume after all the re-fis by sterling credit risks, investors willing and able to apply for loans will be required. For that to happen will require turning the American people loose to bail themselves out, and, unfortunately, much damage control by government gurus to undo the dame they did that led to the need for TARP/FED and from the “cure” of TARP/FED itself.

For now though, like the Panthers, they have “won ugly,” but, unlike Carolina, they don’t get a “bye.”

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

For the love of God, someone put this woman out of her misery. She’s in over her head in a way that we haven’t seen in, well, about a couple of months. Others have spoken extensively about the problems inherent in the entitlement mentality that Ms. Kennedy clearly subscribes to, but the case against her best comes from her own, you know, lips. In an interview with the New York Times, the socialite-cum-candidate-for-you-know-public-office didn’t have a lot to, um, say:

“I’m really coming into this as somebody who isn’t, you know, part of the system, who obviously, you know, stands for the values of, you know, the Democratic Party[.]”

…

“I know how important it is to, you know, to be my own person. And, you know, and that would be obviously true with my relationship with the mayor.”

…

“Andrew is, you know, highly qualified for this job,” she said. “He’s doing a, you know, a great job as attorney general, and we’ve spoken throughout this process.”

…

“You know, I think, you know, we’re sort of, uh, sharing some of this experience. And um, as I’ve said, he was a friend, a family member, and um so, and uh obviously, he’s, you know, he’s also had an impressive career in public office.”

You know?

…[W]hen asked how she might differ with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg or with Governor Paterson, who has sole authority to make the Senate appointment, she demurred.

“I’m not going to talk about my disagreements with him,” she said. “You’ll find out over time.”

If you want to know what she stands for, why don’t you just appoint her already? Gosh. Don’t you know who she is?

Ms. Kennedy would not say…whether she supported proposals to abolish tenure for teachers and offer them merit pay instead.

“To pick out the most controversial one as a stand-alone thing, I don’t think that’s really the way to go about this,” Ms. Kennedy said. “People can vote; it’ll be really interesting to see what happens. There’s a lot of experimentation going on in the country that we should pay attention to.”

Huh? Okay, well, how would you vote, Ms. Kennedy? Yes, there’s a lot of experimentation going around. Have you been paying attention to any of it? What do you think of it? Isn’t this your supposed area of specialty?

One of the main assets she could bring to the Senate, Ms. Kennedy suggested, was her celebrity itself. It would be useful, she said, in bringing attention to New York’s needs and fighting for a bigger share of federal stimulus money.

She may have a point. If she’s appointed to this — which she probably will be: is Governor Paterson, a legacy officeholder himself, really going to mortify a Kennedy? — it will only confirm that, in politics, nothing quite beats being born with the right last name.

She said she employed one household worker as well as a personal assistant — though she said she had far more experience managing people at the Department of Education. “Building a staff is something that I would have no trouble doing,” she said.

Oh, good grief.

…[W]hen asked Saturday morning to describe the moment she decided to seek the Senate seat, Ms. Kennedy seemed irritated by the question and said she couldn’t recall.

“Have you guys ever thought about writing for, like, a woman’s magazine or something?” she asked the reporters. “I thought you were the crack political team.”

Huh?

—

OK, so here’s what we know about Ms. Kennedy: she supports gay marriage (why?), opposes vouchers (why?), supports an undivided capital in Jerusalem (why?), opposes NAFTA (why?), and wants to bring people together (oh boy!). It’s not too harsh to say that a higher level of scrutiny needs to be applied to Kennedy: she is seeking this office with a preposterously low level of experience, has never been particularly attentive to New York politics, has never written much about politics in a way that doesn’t merely employ platitudes, and has lived a life of luxury, floating along on her family name. It’s not like she’s used to her family name to make herself a paragon of accomplishment through the channels that she’s been offered, which is at least something that we can say about, say, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. She’s just lounged around as a socialite, editor of a few books, and sometimes-public advocate. So when she comes to the table asking for a Senate seat, she deserves a lot of probing into her thoughts. This isn’t a time for fooling around: we face the threats of a depression, a nuclear Iran, and an ongoing war against radical Islam. We need serious professionals, not a celebrity.

New article from the AP: Israel assault on Hamas kills more than 200.

Picture captions:

“A Palestinian man reacts over the body of a member of the security forces of Hamas at the site of …”

“A Palestinian woman cries during a protest in Damascus, Syria on Saturday Dec. 27, 2008 against an..”

“A Palestinian man reacts over the bodies of members of the security forces of Hamas at the site of…”

“A Palestinian man reacts over the body of a member of the security forces of Hamas at the site of …”

“A Palestinian man gestures for help as security force officers loyal to Hamas are seen in the back…”

“A Palestinian girl wounded in an Israeli missile strike is carried into the emergency area at Shifa…”

“Palestinian children and a man wounded in Israeli missile strikes are seen in the emergency area at…”

All perfectly factual. And all perfectly selective.

This is what Israel does, to the AP: it makes women cry. It creates dead bodies. It wounds. The way that the article is written makes it perfectly clear that the US and Israel stand alone in accepting this horrible, unjustified barbarism, too: “moderate” Arab regimes were “embarrassed” by these Israeli brutes, who are trying to screw up the “peace process,” as were, the implication is clear, the civilized world–sans the US. Israel’s justification for the bombing is given, of course–works of bias are seldom out-and-out with the slant–but it’s abundantly clear that the reader is supposed to think that its only accomplishment was to kill a bunch of innocent people.  Implication: it’s Israel’s fault that the “peace process” isn’t working.

The piece ends in a quote from the US about Hamas’ (actual) indiscriminate killing that’s surely meant by the authors, Ibrahim Barzak and Amy Teibel, to be ironic, given the rest of the article’s tone.

This is the sort of subtle press bias that people need to be alert for.

EDIT: The Daily Mail is even worse, but it’s a UK paper, so I think that the focus on the AP was right.

EDIT: Reuters is much better than the AP and the Daily Mail.

—

Alex Knepper can be contacted at apkkib@aol.com.

Democrats and, especially fellow republicans in the Palmetto State may wish they could “join Elizabeth” to avoid this chief executive’s wrath.

Originally published by Mike gamecock DeVine as Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Of course, I am referring to South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (pictured above) as a reverse Fred Sanford (pictured below with Lamont), who, when backed into a corner by his lies, resorted to fake heart attacks for sympathy as he shouted at the sky to his late wife, “Elizabeth, I’m comin’ to join ya!”

By contrast, Governor Sanford regularly exposes the Republican majority in his state for their incompetence and love for bigger government. For conservatives, he shows us how we should seize opportunities, even at Christmas:

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Three of South Carolina’s leading Republican lawmakers slammed Gov. Mark Sanford on Monday for his reluctance to accept federal money that would keep unemployment benefits for the state’s jobless from drying up at the end of the year.

“I’ve been in the Senate 28 years,” Sen. Hugh Leatherman, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement. “Never have I seen a more heartless and cruel act by a governor. … I call upon him to end this reign of emotional trauma and request the loans.”

In the interest of full disclosure when I read the above and the whole AP article, I began my research intending to slam Sanford as the “flake” I often referred to him as when he refused federal dollars for projects in his coastal congressional district, when he served in the House years ago.

I was a Democrat then, but even now am not a big opponent of earmarks given their paltry sum as opposed to massive budget busting entitlements; the usefulness of earmarks for bargaining on larger issues; and my selfishness for my, relatively-speaking, poor native state. My ambivalence for Sanford on the latter was increased by his recent WSJ eschewings of bailouts for states.

But after reading Sanford (and Gov. Perry of Texas) above, and especially his unfiltered by the Associated drive-by Press strategy explanation below, I have changed my mind and now see his actions as fitting into my proposed strategy for the GOP to stop being the Stupid Party and seize opportunities to expose liberalism that hurts liberty and business:

In simplest form, our state is running out of money to pay unemployment benefits, and our office has been drawn into the debate because it’s up to us to request a band-aid loan of sorts so that these checks can continue being issued.

Here are my reservations:

A loan without reforming our unemployment benefits system will mean one thing down the road — a tax increase on businesses. According to the non-partisan Tax Foundation, our state is roughly in the middle of the pack on our business tax climate, except when it comes to unemployment taxes — where we rank ninth-highest in the country, our least business-friendly tax ranking.

So we have simply asked for two things before we sign off on the loan.
One, we’re calling for an independent audit of the ESC.

Since beginning to highlight this issue, we’ve had a number of former ESC employees raise issues to us about the operations of the agency. For example, in order to be eligible for benefits, a person needs to be “actively seeking employment.” We’ve been told that some interpret that to mean making just one phone call in a week to qualify as “seeking employment.” In a 40-hour work week, it doesn’t seem like one five-minute phone call should qualify you as looking for work.

We’ve also been told that some companies are essentially taking advantage of the system, and use the unemployment benefits as a sort of taxpayer-funded furlough. These are the kinds of things an audit could uncover, and in the process help avert a tax increase.

Two, we’re asking for better information sharing from the ESC.

We’ve heard that one of the reasons data can’t be shared effectively is because the agency is operating on a cumbersome, inefficient, and decades-old mainframe computer system. Yet rather than use recent funding increases to upgrade that system to better-serve the people of this state, the money was instead spent on new construction of facilities. I’m a firm believer in fixing what you have before you take on new commitments, but unfortunately too many in government don’t seem to feel that way.

The Governor then asks voters to call their state legislators demanding action. It is a shame that these fiscal matters come up at the end of the year when people are distracted by Christmas holidays that legislators can hide behind and appeal to for sympathy.

We think Sanford’s strategy is to use the need for the federal unemployment compensation loan to try and force conservative reforms and that he will, in the end, not let the unemployed miss a check, so we applaud his strategy and wish that more elected republicans across the nation and in Washington, D.C. would seize opportunities when voters are attentive.

Opportunities are coming during the weeks in January when Congress will be preparing that “sign on Day One” stimulus bill as well as more fundamental “reform” called “stimulus” during the First Hundred Days.

The GOP must be diligent to forge alliances with amenable democrats in the House and use the filibuster in the Senate, to force energy and health care legislation into hearings and/or other delays that We the People can use to shoot down socialism like we did illegal immigrant amnesty in 2007.

[Links above flesh out my proposed strategy to try and seize opportunities and split the Democrats in an economic crisis environment in which we must not be seen merely as Dr. No offering “only” a Supply-Side stimulus. I think such a stimulus of tax cuts and regulation cuts is the fastest way out of the current recession, which will be long no matter what, but just think that we have to have more of a strategy than supply-side. Obama may well resort to supply-side later, when his Keynesianism doesn’t work any better for him that it didn’t for Hoover, FDR, LBJ and Carter, but for now, we need to be savvy in how we respond to specific proposals, like public works and pre-packaged bankruptcies (see link above).]

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

This is my second installment in my Political Genius series, and its theme is every bit as important as the first. Savvy politicians understand that elections hinge on contrasting visions of the world. At a certain level, me-tooism breaks down, and voters return to initial tendencies. If there’s a reasonably popular incumbent administration, then me-tooism from the challengers simply serves to return the incumbent party to power. It doesn’t matter if you agree, broadly, with your opponent’s policies. A contrast must be drawn. If a member of the “incumbent” or “establishment” party is seeking election, the challenge of drawing contrasts becomes more complicated, but the same basic principles are at work. What are these principles?

First, it is futile to draw contrasts on insignificant issues. Republicans in Democratic districts/states/countries or Democrats in Republican districts/states/countries, often ignore this principle. These candidates assume that, because their public is broadly deposed to the other party, they are better off with me-tooism on the significant issues, while promising better stewardship on a few minor issues. This me-tooism is often most harmful to these sorts of candidates, because it allows voters to be complacent, and the complacent voter is deadly to candidates in hostile environments.

In 1950, running in relatively Democratic California (though not necessarily at the Presidential level), a Congressman Nixon pitched his entire Senatorial campaign to California Democrats. It is odd to recognize that fact, historically, given the partisan lore surrounding the campaign, but the legend has it mostly wrong. Nixon, perhaps, waged a dirty campaign, but it was only passingly partisan. Instead he drew big contrasts that were tacitly designed to paint his opponent as too extreme even for rational Democrats. He went after her on communism, not balanced budgets. Had he attempted to run a campaign, in deference to the relatively Democratic electorate, of me-tooism, he would have lost handily. Instead, he won the largest victory of any Republican Senator in the country. This doesn’t mean that Republicans in blue states should run as rock-ribbed conservatives, but it does mean that big contrasts are necessary to break an electorate out of their default pattern. Nixon didn’t move to the right, he moved his opponents to the left.

But, truthfully the traditional left and right labels do not necessarily apply to this sort of “draw contrasts” strategy. The Republican approach in the late 40′s and early 50′s- to demure on involvement in Europe, while blasting the Democratic establishment for being insufficiently hawkish/engaged in the Pacific- was neither “conservative” nor “liberal” in the traditional sense. It was simply different and it- with certain modifications when Eisenhower and Nixon became the Republican standard-bearers- ultimately bore fruit. The Republican Vietnam approach leading up to 68′- to blast the Democrats for being insufficiently hawkish, while simultaneously promising to bring a swift peace- was similarly ambiguous ideologically. Obama’s attacks on Republican Iraq policy, from the left, and his attacks on Republican Afghanistan policy, from the right, also straddled this line. To be sure, these folks were helped along by political currents outside their control (the unpopular Korean War in the early 50′s, the unpopular Vietnam War in the late 60′s, the unpopular Iraq War now), but that’s sort of the point. The opposition party gained traction, because they drew contrasts on big issues and, in so doing, were able to persuade a skeptical country to change horses.

Second, politicians can engage in occasional disingenuous contrasts. Privately, FDR approved of many of the measures Hoover had taken to end the Great Depression. Indeed, FDR still held some lingering admiration for the Great Engineer- the man who, in the mid-twenties, was mentioned as a possible ticket companion- from when their paths had crossed during World War I. And Roosevelt had been a leading advocate for state action to end the Depression, prior to his 1932′ run. None of this stopped him from attacking Hoover as ineffectual-failing to bring to bear the full might of the federal government- and out of touch. Nixon, in a rather courageous move for him, had gone to the mat to support the Marshall Plan, and he generally supported the big elements of Democratic foreign policy prior to 51′ or so (Truman’s decision to engage in Greece, for instance). None of this stopped him from using the Cold War as a bludgeon against his Democratic opponents.

Third, contrasts must be framed in ways the public can understand. In the mythology of the the 32′ campaign, and in the rhetoric FDR used at the time, Hoover was dedicated to a laissez fare economic system, which no longer worked, and which was particularly cold-hearted. This is a serious distortion and undoubtedly Hoover’s predecessor, Coolidge, would have been surprised to discover that Hoover’s massive interventions post 29′ were “laissez fare”. But, had FDR told the truth- that Hoover was doing quite alot to try to end the depression, and FDR simply wanted to do something mildly different in key respects- he would have had a less compelling narrative. Voters may have seen his program as a distinction without a difference. In 76′ and again in 80′, Reagan hammered the detente foreign policy as ineffectual. This was a gross oversimplification; detente had been the foreign policy of the US for 30+ years, and was quite effective at times. Reagan knew this well enough, and as his subsequent foreign policy showed, he agreed with many aspects of the policy. But, he needed to attack detente, in general, in order to distinguish his foreign policy in a way the public could comprehend. Splitting hairs confuses voters. Occasionally you may want voters confused (when you’re trying to bridge some sort of chasm, for instance), but you want them quite alert when contrasts are drawn. Or, again, they revert to apathy.

To bring all this into more concrete terms, let’s take a look at the 2008 campaign. McCain was facing an electorate that wanted to vote Democratic and, simultaneously, an electorate that viewed all Republicans as part of the establishment. In order to gain traction, McCain NEEDED to draw big contrasts with Obama, and with Bush, on important issues. He attempted to draw contrasts with Obama, especially on foreign policy, but they weren’t big contrasts. An electorate concerned about the economy wasn’t going to abandon their default setting (which in 2008, was Democratic), because McCain and Obama differed on Iraq. This is a classic example of drawing contrasts on insignificant issues. In comparison, McCain made some genuine progress, on the energy issue, with “drill, baby, drill”. This was, for McCain anyway, a disingenuous maneuver given that he’d opposed offshore drilling previously, but it also addressed a big issue (at the time), and did so in way that oversimplified each side’s position, in an attempt to make the differences clearer to the public.

The issue ultimately failed to deliver for Republicans, because with the economic collapse, it ceased to be a big issue. Most of the campaign went along like this, with McCain and Obama either mimicking each other on big issues, or with McCain attempting to draw contrasts on small issues (pork-barrel spending, for instance). And Mac almost never drew any meaningful contrasts with Bush. Indeed, there was perhaps only one moment in the campaign, where McCain had a chance to draw a big contrast with both Bush and Obama: the first bailout bill. Had McCain opposed the bailout, and had Obama and Bush supported it, we would have seen a substantially different race. Arguably the bailout was needed, and it’s possible that McCain opposition would have scared Democrats away, so perhaps there are honorable justifications for McCain’s decision. But, from a political perspective, it was disastrous; he me-tooed Obama and Bush, on the single most important issues in the election, and he paid for it, when the electorate simply voted their default position. A political genius would have seen this opportunity, and broke with Bush and Obama.

The Arkansas Times highlights a bright shining future star for the GOP:

“My life pretty much changed overnight.”

That’s how native Arkansan Princella Smith describes speaking at the 2004 Republican National Convention at the age of 20.

She got to the stage by winning a speech contest sponsored by MTV called “Stand Up and Holla,” and soon found herself thrust into the national spotlight as a rising star of the GOP.

Looking at her record, it’s no surprise that Smith has climbed the Republican ranks so quickly. Between her junior and senior year at Wynne High School, Smith was elected governor of Girls State, a summer leadership program sponsored by the American Legion. She then took on internships with then-Gov. Mike Huckabee and then-Lt. Gov. Win Rockefeller. She worked as the e-campaign director in Maryland Republican Michael Steele’s bid for the Senate in 2006, and now works as the chief spokesperson for American Solutions in Washington, D.C., an organization started by Newt Gingrich.

Like Steele, Smith is both African-American and Republican, an unusual combination. Since most African-Americans are Democrats, Smith said she is constantly asked why she’s a Republican — a question she’s sick of.

“I’m very tired of it, but I always answer it, anyway,” Smith said. “What a lot of people don’t understand is when they ask me that question it’s actually kind of racist. I mean, you look at me, and you immediately think that I think a certain way, but they don’t know anything about my background.”

But Smith, a minister’s daughter who grew up in rural Arkansas, did answer the question: “I’m a firm believer in individualism and small government. I believe that people should be able to choose what kind of schools they put their kids in. I think people should be able to invest in private accounts for Social Security. I believe that taxes should be low, and that national security should be a top priority.”

Later on in the article, Smith talks about her ambitions:

When asked about a political future in Arkansas, Smith doesn’t dodge the question.

“My heart is always in Arkansas. So naturally, if I had the opportunity to come back and run, or do anything of a public service nature to help Arkansas, then that would be an honor and I would love to do it,” she said. “I would even go so far as to say that I would love to be a representative from the First District one day, and possibly a governor.” Given her record thus far, she’ll probably follow through.

The question with Smith is “when” not “if.” She’s too young to challenge Blanche Lincoln. A challenge to Congressman Marion Berry (D-Ar.) would be interesting. While Smith would be unlikely to win, a Congressional race can be a good way for someone to cut their teeth in preparation for a run for higher office (Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all ran unsuccessful House campaigns.)

If Smith does decide to focus on a political career, Arkansas is a prime place to do it. It is one of the few Southern States that remains overwhelmingly Democratic at the State and Local level. While in Presidential races, it’s been a Red State, it’s a great target to flip from Blue to Red at the State level. I’ll be keeping an eye on Princella Smith as a key future leader of the GOP in the South.

Aloha: Purpose driven Fitzmas and an Un-gay New Year

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report for submission at Examiner.com.

As Barack Obama dreams of a white-washed “Fitzmas” in Hawaii to replace White Christmas nightmares in Chicago, a mainstream Washington liberal echoes gay hate against traditional marriage Christians.

It seems Hope and Change is still best sought in the resurrected Christ that was born in a manger this date nearly two millennia ago. Merry Christmas!

Purpose Driven Unhappy New Year for Gay activists

With only 29 shopping days left until Christmas, this column documented the vicious hatred of many gay activists towards those against same-sex marriage in the wake of the passage of Proposition 8 in California restoring the exclusivity of traditional marriage in the Golden State. Christians, and especially Mormons, were physically harassed and their property destroyed in numerous incidents in the Golden State and around the country.

We found the story ironic given the drive-by media meme that it is Christians that are the haters for merely wanting to preserve the 5000-year old marriage definition as between one man and one woman; that black and Latino Obama voters were the ones that put Prop 8 over the top; and that the gay activists tactics made a mockery of their self-comparison with Martin Luther King, Jr. and his dignified, Holy Scripture driven, non-violent Civil Rights Movement.

We also went out of our way to recognize the fact that the over-whelming majority of gays do not support the extreme acts we reported, and we still acknowledge that fact.

So, it was with some discomfort that we read a gay-rights driven denunciation of the President-Elect’s choice of main-stream evangelical, Southern Baptist pastor Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life (second in all-time book sales to The Holy Bible) to deliver the invocation prayer at his Inauguration, by a mainstream Washington liberal. Richard Cohen describes his gay sister’s cancellation of an Inaugural party due to the selection of Warren and then states:

I can understand Obama’s desire to embrace constituencies that have rejected him. Evangelicals are in that category and Warren is an important evangelical leader with whom, Obama said, “we’re not going to agree on every single issue.” He went on to say, “We can disagree without being disagreeable and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans.” Sounds nice.

But what we do not “hold in common” is the dehumanization of homosexuals. What we do not hold in common is the belief that gays are perverts who have chosen their sexual orientation on some sort of whim. What we do not hold in common is the exaltation of ignorance that has led and will lead to discrimination and violence.

Finally, what we do not hold in common is the categorization of a civil rights issue — the rights of gays to be treated equally — as some sort of cranky cultural difference. For that we need moral leadership, which, on this occasion, Obama has failed to provide. For some people, that’s nothing to celebrate.

There you have it. Americans, simply by opposing same-sex marriage: “de-humanize” homosexuals; believe they are all perverts; “exalt” ignorance and thus, aid and abet violence against them; and deny gays and lesbian their “civil rights.”

Nothing can make the New Year be happy for those with such notions. The irony is that, clearly, despite Obama’s protestations, our next President favors same-sex marriage. He is for all sorts of hate crimes, domestic partnerships and other legislation based on sexual preference. And, he opposed Proposition 8 which was designed to overturn an activist court ruling that made same-sex marriage legal.

But, the Cohen’s of the world that foment hatred of Christians with the lie that it is we that are intolerant, can’t even abide a prayer from someone that merely wants to tolerate a 5000 year old institutional definition that made civilization possible.

Pastor Warren has made clear that he and his church loves gays and has acted upon that love. Cohen does make some good points about Obama’s religious history in the column, so I do recommend reading the whole thing.

Merry white-washed Fitzmas

Prior to Christmas, our only comment on U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitgerald’s charges of vacant Obama senate seat selling by the President-Elect’s fellow democrat and Governor, Rod Blagojevich, was to suggest that the silence of Obama’s designate for Chief of Staff (COS) was deafening and that he would likely not serve one day as COS.

The din of Rahm Emanuel’s muteness continues in public, but given impending subpoenas, it appears same will end in private, if only to plead the Fifth. Given that he was the main public face of the pretentious “Office of the President-Elect” complete with the Tar Heel blue transmogrification of the Presidential seal and given that public faces include lips that need to move, we look forward to the naming a new COS-designate before MLK Day.

But the larger issues of this matter, and especially Obama’s attempt to white-wash the whole thing with a Christmas Eve’s eve dump of “internal investigation” findings, convince us that this viscerally more understandable scandal will make Clinton’s Whitewater seem pale and shallow by comparison.

We note the lack of outrage from Mr. Cool in a circumstance that cries out for righteous indignation. His Governor, Blagojevich (who is constitutionally empowered to choose the next junior senator from the Land of Lincoln) is trying to sell the seat he held. He withdrew the name of his preferred pick for his appointed successor, right before Lawyer Fitz announced the charges, arguably before Blago had actually committed a crime. Coincidence? Did Fitzgerald fear that Obama would soon incriminate himself speaking on behalf of his long-time assisstant, Valerie Jarrett?

We find that Obama didn’t tell us he had spoken to Blago about this matter, only to correct it after investigating himself? He changed pronouns from “I” to “we’ in an early vague news conference, famous for how few questions he would take, followed by one in which he instructed reporters not to “waste” questions.

Before Election Day, we suggested dangers citing the “Chicago Way” and how one would get “A Piece of the Action,” should that way come to The District.

Honolulu is as far as you can get from Chicago and still be in the USA, but when he says Aloha on his way back to the Lower Forty-Eight, Fitzmas may not yet be over.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

For those of you who celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, Merry Christmas! (Happy Christmas for those of you in the UK). Here‘s a video that Christians may enjoy.

For those of you who celebrated the Festival of Dedication earlier this month, Happy Hanukkah! (Christians may like to know that Hanukkah is recorded in John 10:22-23).

For those of you who celebrated Ramadan earlier this month, Happy Ramadan! (Ooops! Actually it was on September 1st)

For those of you celebrating an Afro-centric winter holiday, Happy Kwanzaa! (BTW my 5th grade Science teacher back at East Salisbury Elementary School, Mr. Everett, was the brother of the inventor of Kwanzaa).

For those of you celebrating a nondescript secular Winter Holiday, Happy Festivus Xmas December 25th!

And Happy New Year to all.

Merry Christmas, from Owen and I.

 

Remember…

OK, I’ll bite:

Somewhere, someplace in time, mankind developed a remarkable tenacity to believe that if they repeat something long enough, it will become true. That if enough people adhere to the belief, live by it, and denounce all detractors as heretics, that the belief becomes legitimized. Religions of yore, corrupt political philosophies, and the ever-present cult of personality. Witness an example of the latter in the post right below mine. In the latest slap in the face from the Palinbots to poor Margaret Thatcher, a brilliant woman and deserving of her Iron Lady title, John O’Sullivan has decided to use a fun series of non-sequiturs, appeals to emotion, and revisionist history that are just plain dumb in order to give me, a ‘detractor’ something to ‘grind my axe on,’ as Greg Alterton put it. If I can’t see that Sarah Palin is potentially a Margaret Thatcher, then so much the worse for me, says O’Sullivan.

Why should I believe that Palin has it in her to be another Thatcher? What, because she’s a woman and a conservative? Are we this desperate for woman leaders that we’re naming every one that we see Our Thatcher? I see nothing whatsoever of Thatcher’s leadership skills or ability to persuade. Let’s remember that Margaret Thatcher earned her Iron Lady title. She sort of valiantly fought Communism and led a massive conservative revival. What exactly has Sarah Palin done to earn such a comparison (Kristofer favors it; maybe he’d like to share)? She’s got a long, long way to go before she’ll have accomplished anything more than just pissing off a bunch of liberals. Yes, I realize that it’s fun to piss off liberals, but if we’re to become a party that exists only to make the other side irritated, then count me out.

O’Sullivan seems to acknowledge this, but seems utterly convinced that Palin’s got it in her to be just that sort of revolutionary leader. Based on..? The best that O’Sullivan seems to come up with is “Well, don’t count her out, after all! She’s got eight years to brush up!” Well, sure, I guess so. But that tacitly acknowledges that she wasn’t ready this year, that she was a poor VP choice, and that we have other, more deserving candidates waiting in the wings for 2012. He wants to gloss over this, though, making his own arbitrary list of Palin’s “four big moments,” which included her first speech, her convention speech, her debate with Biden, and her SNL appearance. “She rose to all four of them. That’s the mark of a star.” Um, yes, I suppose she “rose to the occasion” on SNL and two speeches that she didn’t write. And, sure she turned in a fairly decent, though perfectly unspectacular, debate performance. But let’s grant this to O’Sullivan and play on his terms: they were all great. But what’s he omitting? The horrific Gibson and Couric interviews, the national punchline that she became post-Tina Fey, the Putin-also-rearing-his-also-head-also nonsense about Russia, and the abysmal way in which Troopergate and $150,000-gate were handled.

So stop projecting. She ain’t no Thatcher. When she shows me why she’s ready to be another Thatcher, then I’ll jump on board with Palin. I’d love nothing more than for her to prove me wrong and come back as Palin 2.0 four years from now. But in the meantime, sorry: I can’t play this game where we bestow nice titles upon every conservative woman and minority that comes into the party.

This is for all the Palin-bashers here.  The last Palin-related post was early-early this morning.  Something new to grind your axes on.  Merry Christmas. – Greg.

Conservative Snobs Are Wrong About Palin
I know Maggie Thatcher. The two women have a lot in common.

By JOHN O’SULLIVAN

Being listed in fourth place for Time magazine’s “Person of the Year,” as Sarah Palin was for 2008, sounds a little like being awarded the Order of Purity (Fourth Class). But it testifies to something important.

Though regularly pronounced sick, dying, dead, cremated and scattered at sea, Mrs. Palin is still amazingly around. She has survived more media assassination attempts than Fidel Castro has survived real ones (Cuban official figure: 638). In her case, one particular method of assassination is especially popular — namely, the desperate assertion that, in addition to her other handicaps, she is “no Margaret Thatcher.”

Very few express this view in a calm or considered manner. Some employ profanity. Most claim to be conservative admirers of Mrs. Thatcher. Others admit they had always disliked the former British prime minister until someone compared her to “Sarracuda” — at which point they suddenly realized Mrs. Thatcher must have been absolutely brilliant (at least by comparison).

Inevitably, Lloyd Bentsen’s famous put-down of Dan Quayle in the 1988 vice-presidential debate is resurrected, such as by Paul Waugh (in the London Evening Standard) and Marie Cocco (in the Washington Post): “Newsflash! Governor, You’re No Maggie Thatcher,” sneered Mr. Waugh. Added Ms. Coco, “now we know Sarah Palin is no Margaret Thatcher — and no Dan Quayle either!”

Jolly, rib-tickling stuff. But, as it happens, I know Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher is a friend of mine. And as a matter of fact, Margaret Thatcher and Sarah Palin have a great deal in common.

They are far from identical; they rose in different political systems requiring different skills. As a parliamentarian, Mrs. Thatcher needed forensic and debating skills which her training in Oxford politics and as a tax lawyer gave her. Mrs. Palin is a good speaker, but she needs to hone her debating tactics if she is to match those of the Iron Lady.

On the other hand, Mrs. Palin rose in state politics to jobs requiring executive ability. Her successful conduct of the negotiations with Canada, Canadian provinces and American states over the Alaska pipeline was a larger executive task than anything handled by Mrs. Thatcher until she entered the Cabinet and, arguably, until she became prime minister.

Mrs. Thatcher’s most senior position until then had been education secretary in the government of Edward Heath where, as she conceded in her memoirs, she lacked real executive power. Her political influence within that government was so small that it took 17 months for her to get an interview with him. Even then, a considerate civil servant assured Heath that others would be present to make the meeting less “boring.” Her main political legacy from that job was the vitriolic slogan, “Margaret Thatcher, Milk-Snatcher,” thrown at her by the left because of a budgetary decision she had opposed to charge some children for school meals and milk. It was the single most famous thing about her when she defeated Heath for the Tory leadership in 1975.

At this point she became almost as “controversial” as Sarah Palin. Heath, for example, made it plain privately that he would not serve under her. And Sir Ian Gilmour, an intellectual leader of the Tory “wets,” privately dismissed her as a “Daily Telegraph woman.” There is no precise equivalent in American English, but “narrow, repressed suburbanite” catches the sense.

Mrs. Thatcher attracted such abuse for two reasons. First, she was seen by the chattering classes as representing a blend of provincial conservative values and market economics — Middle England as it has come to be called — against their own metropolitan liberalism. They thought this blend was an economic dead-end in a modern complex society and a political retreat into futile nostalgia. Of course, they failed to notice that their modern complex society was splintering under their statist burdens even as they denounced her extremism.

Second, Margaret Thatcher was not yet Margaret Thatcher. She had not won the 1979 election, recovered the Falklands, reformed trade union law, defeated the miners, and helped destroy Soviet communism peacefully.

Things like that change your mind about a girl. But they also take time, during which she had to turn her instinctive beliefs into intellectually coherent policies against opposition inside and outside her own party. Like Mrs. Palin this year, Mrs. Thatcher knew there were serious gaps in her knowledge, especially of foreign affairs. She recruited experts who shared her general outlook (such as Robert Conquest and Hugh Thomas) to tutor her on these things. Even so she often seemed very alone in the Tory high command.

As a parliamentary sketch writer for the Daily Telegraph (and a not very repressed suburbanite), I watched Mrs. Thatcher’s progress as opposition leader. She had been a good performer in less exalted positions. But initially she faltered. Against the smooth, condescending Prime Minister James Callaghan in particular she had a hard time. In contrast to his chuckling baritone she sounded shrill when she attacked. But she lowered her tone (vocally not morally), took lessons in presentation from (among others) Laurence Olivier, and prepared diligently for every debate and Question Time.

I can still recall her breakthrough performance in a July 1977 debate on the Labour government’s collapsing economy. She dominated the House of Commons so wittily that the next day the Daily Mail’s acerbic correspondent, Andrew Alexander, began his report: “If Mrs. Thatcher were a racehorse, she would have been tested for drugs yesterday.” She was now on the way to becoming the world-historical figure who today is the gold standard of conservative statesmanship.

Mrs. Palin has a long way to go to match this. Circumstances may never give her the chance to do so. Even if she gets that chance, she may lack Mrs. Thatcher’s depths of courage, firmness and stamina — we only ever know such things in retrospect.

But she has plenty of time, probably eight years, to analyze America’s problems, recruit her own expert advice, and develop conservative solutions to them. She has obvious intelligence, drive, serious moral character, and a Reaganesque likability. Her likely Republican rivals such as Bobby Jindal and Mitt Romney, not to mention Barack Obama, have most of these same qualities too. But she shares with Mrs. Thatcher a very rare charisma. As Ronnie Millar, the latter’s speechwriter and a successful playwright, used to say in theatrical tones: She may be depressed, ill-dressed and having a bad hair day, but when the curtain rises, out onto the stage she steps looking like a billion dollars. That’s the mark of a star, dear boy. They rise to the big occasions.

Mrs. Palin had four big occasions in the late, doomed Republican campaign: her introduction by John McCain in Ohio, her speech at the GOP convention, her vice-presidential debate with Sen. Joe Biden, and her appearance on Saturday Night Live. With minimal preparation, she rose to all four of them. That’s the mark of star.

If conservative intellectuals, Republican operatives and McCain “handlers” can’t see it, then so much the worse for them.

Mr. O’Sullivan is executive editor of Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty in Prague, and a former special adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. His book, “The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister” (Regnery), has just been published in paperback.

Inspired by Alex, I’ve decided to write a political series of my own, though mine won’t deal with mutually agreed upon political principles (a worthy project), but with political genius, or lack thereof. How do certain politicians out-maneuver their opponents, rise to stardom, and dominate the national stage? What lessons did they learn that other, less successful, politicians missed? And how can we recognize a political genius when we see one? I have a broad framework in mind for this series, but I won’t be as specific as Alex was, at the outset. Instead, I’ll write about my principles of political genius, as they come to me, but I hope in a reasonably coherent and organized way. Politicians like to think of themselves as statesmen of great importance, but it’s simply a fact of political life that the vast majority of politicians will never be known by even a meaningful fraction of the American public. This is true even of politicians who’ve attained some of the nation’s highest offices.

Can you, savvy political observer though you are, name even half of the nation’s Governors or Senators? Could you name even 40 members of the House? Because of this relative anonymity, politicians who aspire to higher office must find a way to raise their profile. Grasping emerging issues can accomplish this powerfully. Now let’s be clear on our terms here: an emerging issue is not necessarily an issue that you’re profoundly concerned about. Often, emerging issues seem comparatively unimportant to savvy contemporaries, and entirely overblown in hindsight. This is irrelevant to our political genius. He does not yet have the power to create the new emerging issues, and must content himself with attempting to shape the debate about events that predate his influence. Emerging issues also aren’t emerged issues. It does no good to become a half-hearted proponent of oil drilling (as McCain was), at the 11th hour, and after others have made the movement famous. Savvy politicians are pro-active, and they engage on issues before they pop in the public consciousness.

Recall Nixon in 46′ maneuvering his way onto the disreputable, but soon to be powerful, House on Un-American Activities Committee. Two years later, Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers brought anti-communism to a fever pitch, and Nixon was in the center of the storm. Two years after that, McCarthy’s infamous speech made red-hunting the movement of a decade. Nixon took control of the issue, before it officially popped, and cast himself into the stratosphere in the process. Or think about Roosevelt touring New York farms in the late twenties, giving him insight into the real world effects of a Depression Hoover never quite understood. Emerging issues can also be of shorter duration. Reagan grasping the Panama Canal issue in 76′, to bludgeon Ford. Nixon advocating an expansion of the Korean War in 49′ and early 50′, to paint Truman as soft on Communism, and take advantage of the MacArthur dust-up. The politician who follows his own priorities, as events overtake him, is sure to find success an ill-fitting garment.

[Originally published by TMR Legal Editor, Mike "gamecock" DeVine as Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com which original column contains all links to supportive references.]

As we promised on Sunday when we revealed, for the purpose of full disclosure, our New Year’s Eve, 2007 predictions for 2008, below are our post-mortems. Today, we also announce that Cockstradamus will end his retirement before the end of the year after a Sabbatical since October.

2008 predictions of Mike DeVine, aka Gamecock aka Cockstradamus, followed by explanations:

1 – Southerners and Christians (including Catholics and Evangelicals) astound the Left by failing to establish the first theocratic “impose our views” State in the United States. Instead, judges in Massachusetts establish a Secular Darwinist, Man-Made Global Warming Church theocracy in the Bay State, joining the non-Christian theocratic City-State in San Francisco. Christians whose churches were invaded and taken over for group orgies with Mayoral consent in the City by the Bay are welcomed with open arms by the ecumenical Muslim-Chaldean coalition in Baghdad.

We were basically right on this one. (1-0)

2 – Pakistan fails to devolve into anarchy.

Still hanging on here, but its too close for comfort. (2-0)

3 – The Taliban fails to take over Afghanistan.

Rooster still right. (3-0)

4 – The MSM fails to report the above and continues to refuse to report the US victory over al Qaeda in Iraq.

Our Foghorn Leghorns have flushed this out on several occasions. We have basically won the War in Iraq proper and against al Qaeda. (4-0)

5 – Chelsea Clinton continues press blackout of nine year old reporters from Scholastic America and expands same to include ten-year olds from Nickelodeon.

Even though this was a fairly obscure 2007 story leading into 2008, we still got it right. (5-0)

6 – Bill Clinton finally utters Hillary’s name at a campaign stop in Chicago on February 4, 2008; loses his voice and suffers a myocardial infarction soon thereafter; is hospitalized at University of Chicago Medical Center; and is served with summons charging him with the crime of bigamy and assault and battery with a stogie by a Nurse Ratched.

We are glad we missed on this one but still request prayer for the former president walking around like The Picture of Dorian Gray. (5-1)

7 – Colts defeat Redskins in Super Bowl.

What year was that? OK, Gamecock is better at sports than Cockstradamus, and this year the owner of the alter ego will handle sports. (5-2)

8 – LSU defeats Ohio State for mythical BCS college football championship. Refuses Appalachian State challenge.

We didn’t know that LSU had already scheduled the Mountaineers before they trounced the Buckeyes. (6-3)

9 – Lakers defeat Celtics for NBA championship.

Ok, we missed the winner, but we picked both finalists months away. (8-4)

10 – Neither Huckabee nor McCain will win SC GOP primary.

McCain’s military and democrat support in a crowded field in which both Romney and Rudy stopped campaigning too soon…(9-5)

11 – Obama wins Democratic Party nomination.

We would remind that we picked this before the Iowa Caucus. (10-5)

12 – Obama loses election to the GOP nominee. Oops (10-6)

13 – Mike Gamecock DeVine is vilified for refusing to predict who the GOP nominee, and next President of the United States, will be.

Unmerciful persecution of our human owner…(11-6)

14 – Neither Huckabee nor McCain will be referred to as President-elect during 2008.

What an oracle! (13-6)

[We also predicted the ending of the oil drilling moratorium even by Democrats, as well, but are not including it given that the President-Elect threatens to re-impose same. Call your congressmen!]

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Some conservatives have been somewhat annoyed by McCain’s lackluster defense of Sarah Palin. In an interview with the Tucson Citizen, McCain goes much further than he has prior interviews:

Q; Sarah Palin went around telling people that Obama palled around with terrorists. Why weren’t you able to control what was coming out of her mouth?

A: First of all, he did. The second point is in political campaigns, sometimes there are very rough things said and done. And I resent enormously some of the things that were said about me.

And what I most resent was John Lewis, a man that I admired and respected and have written about, accusing me and Sarah Palin of being racist. And Sen. Obama refusing to repudiate that. John Lewis associated Gov. Palin and me with the bombing of a church in Birmingham. That’s not acceptable. And in the debate I asked and challenged Sen. Obama to repudiate those remarks by John Lewis and he wouldn’t.

So if you want to review all of the injuries and statements and comments that were made, I would be glad to do that. Overall, it was a very honorable campaign.

I am proud of Sarah Palin. I am proud of the way she ignited our party. I am proud of her family. I am proud of her reform agenda. I could not be more proud and happy with the selection of Sarah Palin.

But I resent enormously these allegations that Sarah Palin was, quote, unqualified and many of the other things that were said about her and that she was subjected to. It really was painful for me to observe that.

I really believe she will be a big factor in the future of our party.

I’m sorry about me being harsh about me controlling Sarah Palin, but it is a little bit of a sore subject with me when I don’t think she deserved some of the criticism she got from people who didn’t even know her or hadn’t had any contact with her.

And I think that she is a wonderful person and one that I appreciate and admire and have grown to respect more and more over time.