Not one but two Latin American nations chose new presidents on Sunday – and as Hugo Chavez and his cronies continue their attempt to flex their muscles, these elections are becoming increasingly more important in terms of U.S. foreign policy.
Strangely,while the two nations chose very different men, the new leaders coincidentally share a nickname. In Honduras, the voters chose a conservative former rancher – Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo – while Uruguayans selected a 74 year old leftist ex-guerilla – Jose “Pepe” Mujica.
So, what can we expect from the two Pepes?
In Honduras, one hopes that Pepe Lobo represents a return to normalcy. In addition to swinging the country solidly to the right, Lobo’s election should mark the end of ex-president Manual Zelaya’s claim to be the legitimate president of the country. For one, Zelaya’s term is now expired under the constitution. Second, the country will now be led by a freely and fairly elected president, not appointed interim leader Roberto Micheletti. Third, any claim that the new authorities rigged this election should be assuaged by the fact that Lobo will represent a partisan power shift away from Micheletti. Lobo is from the conservative National Party, and he thumped Elvin Santos, the candidate of Micheletti’s (and Zelaya’s) Liberal Party. If Micheletti and his allies had rigged the election, Santos would be president-elect. All in all, this is a huge victory, and the only downside is that conservative bloggers in the U.S. now have to trade in their “Support Micheletti” widgets for “Viva Lobo!” widgets.
Meanwhile, in Uruguay, the situation is quite different. Pepe Mujica stormed to victory in a runoff, taking 51% of the vote against 44% for free-market former president Luis Alberto Lacalle. I wrote about Mujica during the first round of these elections, and I stand by my position. Yes, he says he will model himself after Brazil’s moderate socialist Lula, and yes he is somewhat bound by Uruguay’s stable partisan democracy. But in all frankness, you are never going to convince me that it is safe to hand over a country to the former commander of a bloody Maoist guerrilla rebellion – especially Uruguay’s Tupamaro rebels, who specialized in bank robberies and kidnappings. Despite his supposed moderation, Mujica has not been shy about praising Chavez - and considering his advanced age, I could cite an old maxim about old dogs and new tricks. This guy will drive Uruguay further to the left, and we can only hope the Uruguay’s established governmental system prevents him from going too far.
One sidenote – I will say that I appreciate Mujica’s wise-guy rhetoric. As per this quote from an AFP article
When center-right former president Jorge Battle suggested that the Tupamaros movement had links to a recently uncovered weapons cache, Mujica gave a characteristically blunt response.
“I’m going to send him a bottle of Viagra so he can amuse himself with more useful things than saying this kind of crap,” he said.
Either way, I think that those of us who stand for liberty should have a clear position on the election of the two Pepes – Lobo Si! Mujica No!
It’s no secret that during the 2007-08 primaries, I was Huckabee’s biggest (or at least most vocal) critic on this blog. It’s also true that I would was not planning on supporting him the next time around either. I was willing to give him another shot. I wasn’t going to back him in the upcoming primaries, but I was considering leaving him alone. Heck, I was on record here just last month stating that he was the frontrunner for 2012.
Believe it or not, I ‘m not going to bash him now with anywhere near the intensity that I did during the primaries. That being said… the news of the last few days only reinforces my own belief that Mike Huckabee will never be the President. He should not be the nominee in 2012. He should not be the VP nominee in 2012. His name should not be anywhere near a ballot in 2012 other than maybe a run for the office of Assistant Secretary for the Sunday School Teachers Union or something of that nature.
He is not Presidential material. End of Story.
After Joe Carter and I had some rather fun exchanges during the last primary, I now find myself in complete agreement with him, or he has come around to my point of view. Like Carter, I don’t think any of the old gang from 2008 will be the nominee. To be honest, I don’t like any of the candidates that are being prominently mentioned so far. I just don’t think Huckabee has the necessary make up to be a good Commander in Chief.
He acts like a candidate, but he has the heart and mindset of a preacher. I sincerely do not mean any disrespect in that, but it is what it is. Carter said:
Ironically, what makes Huckabee such an appealing Presidential candidate—his empathy for all people and genuine belief in the individual—is also the trait that will prevent him from ever reaching the White House. His experiences and intuitions that served him well as a minister of the gospel were not always applicable in of governor of a state. The unfortunate reality is that for politicians, unlike pastors, there are limits to compassion.
Though the amount of support he recieved sometimes bewildered me, I always understood why many people found Governor to be an appealing candidate. It wasn’t just his unassuming nature and the ease in which he was able to communicate, but the man has unmatched credentials on issues of life and faith. Not even his most viril opponent will deny that.
I don’t hold anyone’s personal faith against them. However, I am extremely skeptical that a man of the cloth would make a successful president, and to be honest, I would have trouble voting for them. It’s not because I am anti-religion, nor am I an athiest like Alex (no disrespect intended), but when I say that I do not think a reverend or a minister would make a good president, it’s because I have always held the opinion that Joe finally seems to realize:
His naivete about how his actions would be judged was compounded by his own belief in the nobleness of his motives. Huckabee was—and likely remains—a true believer in the concept of restorative justice. Like many politicians who latch onto ideas that support their worldview, however, he was enthusiastic about the general theory while failing to grasp the nuances of its application.
Judging from the records, the governor also seemed to put a lot of weight on conversion stories—a common trait among evangelicals, who believe the gospel is sufficient for restoration and redemption of character. The opinion of clergy appears to have carried a great deal of weight in the decision-making process.
I respect Mike Huckabee as a man of faith , but that faith does not qualify him to be the President of the United States, nor does it excuse the fact that he has a long history of commutations and pardons that leaves one scratching their head:
If you believe that the Clintons possess near mystical powers to control an entire state, then you might find this way of thinking persuasive. I do not. Yet I’m convinced that had it not been for abject hatred of the Clintons many of these cases would never have been considered worthy of the governor’s attention.
But while this may partially explain the reason these cases came to the governor’s desk, it doesn’t explain why Huckabee supported them. Huckabee, a savvy politician, was fully aware of both the power and limitations of the Clinton network. He possessed an exceedingly realistic view of their abilities and flaws. Unfortunately, he often had a blind spot that prevented him from seeing his own limitation.
The truth is that I do not see how a man of his make up would be able to make sound decisions in a position of absolute power. His instinctive nature relies to much on his personal faith, and while that does not disqualify him from being POTUS, it does raise the question of whether or not he would be able to make the tough decisions that might not line up directly with his spiritual faith, and that frightens me, as an American.
I personally don’t care whether he believes the Earth is 7,000 years old or 4.54 billion years old. I personally don’t care if he believes the dinosaurs really existed or if those fossils were just left over from the Garden of Eden. I personally don’t care if he believes that God created the world in seven days or 7 billion years. None of those ideas really matter when it comes to being the leader of the free world. What I do care about is whether he would be able to make a sound judgement that went against his own religious ideals were it the right thing to do.
Many of the kings who reigned in Ancient Israel were ultimately corrupted by their own political power, and in my view, that is one of the greatest lessons of the Bible.
David Schmidt has done a good job explaining Huck’s decision while Governor of Arkansas. In addition to this, it should be noted that the sentencing judge’s successor urged a reduction in sentence.
So, this does beg a question when Ed Morrissey suggests that Huckabee should have listened to wiser men. Like the sentencing judge or the parole board that actually released Clemmons unanimously? Or perhaps Huckabee should have travelled forward in time nine years to get the Monday Morning quarterback advise of certain bloggers.
The name of “Willie Horton” has been floated quite a bit. I think that those who are dropping the Horton reference don’t understand what was outrageous about Horton. Horton wasn’t granted clemency, he was a convicted murderer serving in jail who was out on furlough. Think about it. The issue wasn’t that somebody got parole, rather it was that they established a program in Massachusetts where they let a killer who couldn’t get a parole out on a Weekend pass. That was just pure liberal nuttiness.
What are we talking about in this instance? We’re talking about a parole of someone who had been convicted at a young age and was defensible based on the information that they had at the time. In addition, Huckabee didn’t let the killer go, he merely gave the parole board the ability to do it, which they did unanimously. This was a basic parole process that as happened as a result of reccomendations Governor Huckabee received. Plus, there were many errors on the way that we’ve discussed earlier. The singular focus on Huckabee is political by political folks.
This isn’t Willie Horton. As much as his opponents might wish it to be, it’s simply not that.
It really is a pity that the BBC does not allow embedding – because this video MUST GO VIRAL.
If you’re not familiar with Baroness Warsi of Dewsbury (a.k.a. Sayeeda Warsi), she is Conservative Member of the British House of Lords and a member of David Cameron’s “shadow cabinet”. She is also recognized by the Equality and Human Rights Comission as Britain’s most influential Muslim Woman – which makes her stand against jihadis today all the more powerful.
Earlier today, the Baroness was pelted with eggs by protesters who accused her of unfaithfulness to Islam as a result of her support for the War in Afghanistan and her lack of support for Sharia Law. Instead of doing what most politicians would do (hide behind bodyguards and run away) she immediately confronted the jihadi thugs who threw the eggs and engaged them in a shouting match. After dispensing with the egg throwing lowlifes, and while still wiping the egg out of her hair, she turned her attention to the rolling BBC cameras and blasted the radicals and their ideology on behalf of all sane British Muslims:
Baroness Warsi told the BBC that the men were “idiots who did not represent the majority of British Muslims”.
She said these type of protesters “bring Muslims into huge disrepute”.
“I stood up to this group and said I challenge your views,” she told BBC News.
“They just weren’t prepared to listen. They shouted. I said if you want to have this debate, listen.”
She continued her walkabout with a police escort.
If only more Muslims had the Baroness’ courage, pehaps fewer Nidal Hasans would slip thorugh the cracks. If you haven’t watched the video linked above, please do so, and then send it out to your email list, tweet it out to your tweeps, and link it up on Facebook.
Baroness Warsi of Dewsbury is a heroine and deserves to be lauded as such.
This is definitely a great day for international news – two posts already and I haven’t even gotten to my planned column for today (which will be on Uruguay and Honduras).
I’ll just leave this here…
Before a defense of any kind of religious discrimination, one ought to make all of the necessary disclaimers: of course I oppose government-sponsored discrimination, and I certainly would not support the kind of absurd treatment described by Steven Reinhart in his piece featured below. That being said, there is a legitimate case to be made for judging any candidate for office by his religious convictions.
In late 2007, Mitt Romney made his somewhat-famous speech on religion, where he spoke the following words:
“Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.”
Similarly, Romney has stated: “I believe in my Mormon faith and I endeavor to live by it…my faith is the faith of my fathers. I will be true to them and to my beliefs.”
If freedom requires religion, if his Mormon faith sustains his life and he will be true to those practices, then I’m at an utter loss as to why we should ignore Romney’s religious beliefs when evaluating his fitness for the White House.
We ask plenty of questions of any Evangelical Christian candidate: what do his beliefs about the nature of God, the nature of the cosmos, and the meaning of man’s life mean for his potential tenure in office? But for whatever reason, these questions are looked at as unnecessarily piercing and prejudiced when asked of a member of a minority faith.
When Sarah Palin gave her fumbling answer about Israel’s settlements, several commentators jumped on her faith, wondering whether she subscribed to the bizarre but potent sect of modern Christianity that believes in the imminence of the End Times. Will anyone ask Mitt Romney about the oddities of the dogma of the Mormon Church? There are plenty of Mormon doctrines that may strike people as a bit odd — and rightly so. It is established in the church that the devout can reach the upper echelons of heaven and eventually become gods themselves, able to create their own universes and govern them as they see fit (all while supervised by the One True God). Why is it that when I bring this up to Romney fans, I am dismissed as a bigot?
As an atheist, I both understand and accept that in a predominantly Christian society, my thoughts on religion are necessarily going to open me up to questions. If I were to ever run for office (don’t count on that, by the way), I would not expect my supporters would try to ward off any questions about my atheism with the victim-card of discrimination. One’s philosophy of religion contributes profoundly to his worldview and thus is a completely valid criterion by which to partially evaluate a candidate’s fitness for office.
I view all religions as equally bizarre and irrational. But mainstream Christianity is often adopted as a cultural guise, meant for purposes of assimilation with the majority. Probe most self-described Christians and you’ll find plenty of deviation from standard dogma. Devotion to Mormonism, which is completely outside of the American mainstream, requires a certain level of commitment. To what extent will Romney’s faith influence his decision-making? I ask that question of devoted Evangelicals and judge them accordingly, and I will do the same of a Mormon. And I am not going to apologize for that.
Talk to Alex Knepper at apkkib@aol.com
Senator Jim Demint earlier this year said that the Health-Care Bill would be Obama’s Waterloo. I only partially agree with him. He’s right that it will ultimately bring an end to his reign, but the Waterloo analogy doesn’t begin to capture the scope of the defeat. At the battle of Waterloo, Napoleon, who like Obama was thought to be a genius, was defeated by conscripts of the combined armies who fought to protect their own nation states. During this era of warfare, armies fought in formations on either side of the “battle field” training their weapons on the opposing army’s soldiers, and firing volley after volley until their opponents had either been killed or had broken ranks and fled leaving a bloody battle field strewn with dead and dying men. The Midterm elections in 2010 won’t resemble that at all. It won’t be near that pretty.
A better analogy might be Custer’s annihilation by Sitting Bull at the Little Bighorn. The Democrats, as did Custer, will be fighting against the guerrilla tactics of the indigenous tribes: Custer the Sioux and Cheyenne; the Democrats the Tea Party Patriots and other conservatives who feel as the Indians did that their way of life is being taken from them. Custer and the Democratic Leadership both underestimated the strength of their opponents and overestimated their own resources, counting heavily on reinforcements that in Custer’s case didn’t and in the Democrat’s case won’t arrive. The real distinction between the two battles is that when Napoleon and his army were defeated at Waterloo he was merely banished to the isle of Saint Helena, while Custer and his troops were massacred by Sitting Bull and his warrior braves. They weren’t given a Political time out. They were wiped off the map, and that is what is in store for the Democrats in 2010.
The big turn out at the polls that wasn’t, by Obama’s reinforcements, proves that they won’t fight for any one but him and he isn’t running in 2010. They didn’t turn out in the Battle for Virginia and were also no-shows in the fight for the NJ Governorship. That’s the problem with troops who are lead by the force of charismatic personality and not motivated by principal. The Democratic warriors fight only for an extra ration, while the Tea Party Patriots and Conservatives are fighting to protect their way of life.
There will be no Decisive Battle as there was at Waterloo and in the National Elections of 2008. Instead there will be, just as in the battle of the Little Big Horn, a series of smaller skirmishes. The battle fields will be the State and Congressional Districts; the battle will be fought by the voters who reside there, many of whom have changed sides in the past year. The voters who had sought hope and change in 2008 have now gotten a taste of that change and found it not to be the sweet taste of liberal progressivism they were promised, but rather the bitter taste of socialism and have lost all hope in The One. They’ve come to reject the promise of higher taxes on nearly everything and the greater government involvement in almost every aspect of their daily life.
The Democrats who will have been the Majority party for 4 years come next November’s election will by then own the economy, along with at least one automaker and it’s financial arm, the two mortgage giants Fannie and Freddie, several banks, the insurance company AIG and possibly a newspaper company or two. If they get their way with the health care bill, you can add your doctor’s office and the local Hospital to a growing list of wards of the government.
To quote the Democrats very own savage pundit James Carville, “It’s the Economy Stupid!” In the mid terms it’s always the economy and a recession that was caused by bad government policies to begin with won’t be cured by equally bad, but different government polices. With an unemployment rate that tops 10% and is rising, it won’t be flesh wounds they’ll be tending come November, it will be scalpings. Here’s hoping that the government run health-care program they covet has plenty of sutures in the ready.
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-Dave Cribbin is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer.
Joe Carter, Huckabee’s former Director of Rapid Response for the 2008 campaign has written an excellent editorial on why the former Arkansas Governor will never be President.
This seemed especially true on the issue of clemency, commutations, and pardons. Few people understood the difference between these legal terms or the way in which Arkansas’ legal system required an unusual level of involvement in these matters by the governor’s office. It took me several weeks—and many late-night reading sessions—to even begin to grasp the complexity of the issues enough to form my own judgment about the prudence of the decisions.
After reviewing hundreds of cases and interviewing numerous people involved in the process, I concluded to my own satisfaction that the governor’s actions and judgment were generally defensible. Yet there remained about a half-dozen situations in which even after reviewing all of the information I was unpersuaded that justice had been served. Although I was sympathetic with some of the justifications offered for making the decisions, I found them inadequate for a number of reasons.
For example, in a number of the cases—and almost always in the most controversial requests for commutation—there was sense that the petitioners were attempting to redress injustices committed by the “Clinton machine.” The disdain for Bill and Hillary Clinton and their associates that peaked among conservatives in the early 1990s remains palpable among Republicans in Arkansas. Many of the petitioners and supporters of the commutations and pardons were truly convinced that they were simply rectifying injustices committed by the former Democratic governor and his cronies. (This was especially true in the infamous Wayne DuMond case where the victim was a second cousin of Bill Clinton.)
If you believe that the Clintons possess near mystical powers to control an entire state, then you might find this way of thinking persuasive. I do not. Yet I’m convinced that had it not been for abject hatred of the Clinton’s many of these cases would never have been considered worthy of the governor’s attention.
But while this may partially explain the reason these cases came to the governor’s desk, it doesn’t explain why Huckabee supported them. Huckabee, a savvy politician, was fully aware of both the power and limitations of the Clinton network. He possessed an exceedingly realistic view of their abilities and flaws. Unfortunately, he often had a blind spot that prevented him from seeing his own limitation.
For instance, the politically prudent tactic would have been to simply refuse to grant any leniency—ever. Other governors with their sights set on higher offices had learned that doing nothing—even to correct obvious instances of injustice—was unlikely to cause any long-term political damage. Keeping an innocent man in prison is less harmful to an ambitious politician than freeing someone who may commit other crimes.
Huckabee would certainly discover this political reality the hard way. Initially, I chalked it up solely to extraordinary political courage. Later, I tempered this view when I realized that this courage was mixed with a large dose of cluelessness. The governor seemed genuinely surprised that he was held responsible for the criminal acts committed by those whose sentences he had commuted as governor. It was as if he believed that simply having noble intentions and a willingness to make tough decisions would provide political cover. The notion that he should be accountable for future crimes committed by these men seemed as foreign to him as the idea that he should refuse all leniency.
His naivete about how his actions would be judged was compounded by his own belief in the nobleness of his motives. Huckabee was—and likely remains—a true believer in the concept of restorative justice. Like many politicians who latch onto ideas that support their worldview, however, he was enthusiastic about the general theory while failing to grasp the nuances of its application.
—–
Ironically, what makes Huckabee such an appealing Presidential candidate—his empathy for all people and genuine belief in the individual—is also the trait that will prevent him from ever reaching the White House. His experiences and intuitions that served him well as a minister of the gospel were not always applicable in of governor of a state. The unfortunate reality is that for politicians, unlike pastors, there are limits to compassion.
Read the post in its entirety.
H/T: Ed Morrissey
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Kristofer Lorelli can be contacted at lorville@rogers.com, on Facebook and Twitter/Kris_Lorelli
Let me first start by saying that the killing of the four police officers in the state of Washington was a revolting and horrific act. Our deepest thoughts and prayers are with all those who are grieving and we trust that justice will be swift and strong.
The following are the details connecting Clemmons and Huckabee:
In light of what appears to be Clemmons killing of 4 officers, would anybody want this guy to ever be free to do that? No.
Is it excessive to sentence a person to a 108 year sentence for a series of robberies committed as a 16-year -old youth? I think so. You may disagree.
Did Huckabee know that Clemmons was going to apparently kill four police officers 9 years after his parole from prison? No.
The question in regards to Huckabee is whether he showed negligent judgment in commuting the sentence of Clemmons.
It is my opinion that Huckabee did not show a serious lack of judgment for allowing Clemmons sentence to be reduced to 47.5 years when considering that these were his first series of robberies and were committed at the age of 16.
We can’t blame Huckabee for a decision that he made without knowledge of future crimes although we can blame him for poor judgment based on what he already knew. Based on that, I think his judgment was within the bounds of reason. You may differ in your opinion and you are welcome to do that.
Download official Arkansas court and clemency documents behind this post at:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2009/11/30/2010388798.pdf
DISCLOSURE: I like Huckabee. I have met him a few times and have found him warm and consistent. I also am a leader of a grassroots group called HucksArmy that supported Huckabee in 2008 and helps advocate for conservatives and common-sense government. While this association may make you think that I only want to defend Huckabee because I like him, I encourage you to make your judgement based on the soundness of this post and not who I am.
UPDATE: Huckabee addresses this personally:
UPDATE II: Prosecutors lodged no objection to Huckabee’s sentence reduction for Clemmons
Saw this one today and just had to post it.
SOFIA (Reuters) – Bulgarian villagers have named their home-made rakia brandy “Borisovka,” playing on the name of Prime Minister Boiko Borisov to thank him for stopping parliament from raising taxes on alcohol.
Last month, the Balkan country’s new center-right government abandoned plans to raise alcohol taxes after public anger that this would threaten a centuries-old tradition of making wine and rakia at home.
But the parliament’s budget commission later proposed a hike from 2010 and parliament was due to approve the increase on Wednesday when Borisov, a firefighter by training with a black belt in karate, stepped in and asked deputies to scrap the plan.
To express their gratitude, the villagers of Kapatovo, 170 km (100 miles) south of Sofia, decided to call their 2009 rakia “Borisovka,” emulating Russian vodka brand “Putinka” that plays on the name of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Nice to know that at least one European leader has his head screwed on straight when it comes to allowing the free market to do it’s thing. So, I figure I’ll offer a toast to Prime Minister Boiko Borisov – and I’m wondering how hard it would be to obtain a bottle of genuine Borisovka rakia.
16. (ASKED OF LEANED REPUBLICANS) If the 2012 Republican presidential primary or caucus in your state were being held today, for whom would you vote?
Sarah Palin 17
Mike Huckabee 10
Mitt Romney 9
John McCain 7
Newt Gingrich 2
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11. (ASKED OF LEANED REPUBLICANS) Thinking about Republican leaders today – which one person best reflects the core values of the Republican Party?
Sarah Palin 18
John McCain 13
Mike Huckabee 7
Mitt Romney 6
Newt Gingrich 4
This Washington Post poll was conducted by telephone November 19-23, 2009, among a random national sample of 1,306 adults, including additional interviews with randomly-selected Republicans and Republican-leaning nonpartisans for a total GOP sub-sample of 804. Interview were conducted on both conventional and cellular phones. The results from the full survey have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points; four points for the sample of 485 Republicans and five points for the sample of 319 GOP-leaning nonpartisans. Sampling, data collection and tabulation by TNS of Horsham, Pa. Note: if no designation on trend line, row is “Lean Reps,” which includes both self-identified Republicans and nonpartisans who lean toward the Republican Party.
H/T: Tommy Boy
Update:
Among Republican women and independent women who lean Republican:
Palin 23%
Romney 8%
Huckabee 6%
McCain 6%
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Kristofer Lorelli can be contacted at lorville@rogers.com, on Facebook and Twitter/Kris_Lorelli
To blame Huckabee for the Washington shooting is politics, pure and simple. There’s a reason why Huckabee blamed the justice system rather than saying its all his fault as reported by the Seattle Times:
After his release, Clemmons remained on parole. Soon after, he found trouble again. In March 2001, he was accused of violating his parole by committing aggravated robbery and theft, according to the Democrat-Gazette.
He was returned to prison on a parole violation. But in what appears to have been a mistake, he wasn’t served with the arrest warrants until leaving prison three years later.
Clemmons’ attorney argued that the charges should be dismissed because too much time had passed. Prosecutors thereafter dropped the charges.
On top of that, he was released by a judge in Washington before the shooting. Now one could reasonably say the Washington state prosecutors and the judge made a huge error in releasing the guy.
But before you blame Huckabee, you have to look at the incompetent prosecutors in Arkansas who after the release failed basic procedural requirements and ended up letting the guy go.
Look, the usual suspects are out (Huckabashers all), just like a season from Casablanca, but the blame Huckabee effort is unseemly, and it verges on morbid politics.
It was 10:10 on Sunday evening, and I decided to see what the leading news stories were on CNN’s and Fox’s respective websites. Having seen Yahoo News’ top story being about Tiger Woods’ car accident the other day, I suspected I knew what the answer was. Turns out, I was right. The stories were in spots designed to get major, first–or-second-glance attention.
Now, to be fair, Fox and CNN also had big stories about the police shooting (both), a woman who is helping women get mammograms (CNN), a story about AIDS guidelines (Fox) and Fox had its required “Support a Republican” story about Senator Lugar (R-IN) and his thoughts about delaying health care reform until ”next year, the same way we put cap and trade and climate change, and talk now about the essentials: the war and money.” However, Fox had the Woods “story” on its top four list on its site, and CNN had it first on its “Latest News” list. (Oddly enough, MSNBC had the Woods “story” listed as third in its Sports section, and I actually missed it the first two times I scanned the page. MSNBC’s main section covered the police shootings, the economy, Afghanistan, Detroit’s economic needs, where investors are focusing this week and the Steelers-Ravens game. Not too bad for a liberal rag of a “news” source.)
Money drives news, as it should- news needs money to survive, after all- but once again our news is showing just how misplaced American priorities and dollars are. Stories that cover Honduras, Afghanistan, Iraq, Russia, China, the recession, the police shootings, health care reform efforts and other important news should be at the top of the list the vast majority of the time. Instead, they are pushed aside by non-news and entertainment.
This is an old rant, and says nothing new (except that MSNBC actually did a good job at something). Should those of us who care keep hammering at America’s lack of real world knowledge and news awareness, or are we wasting our time? Will we as a nation pull our heads out of *the clouds* and at least try to be aware of the world around us? Please?
Chairman Steele’s self-defense over Scozzafavagate was that he would not be a Chairman that dictates to the grassroots. This was the correct answer to communicate to the party at large, except for the fact that the candidate in NY-23 was not selected by the grassroots. Regardless, Steele appeared to support the leadership style of Ronald Reagan, not Ed Gillespie, which is exactly the change our party requires at the senior level.
On the heels of this statement by Chairman Steele, word spread through out the party that a 1994-style agenda or set of principles would be developed prior to the 2010 elections. 1994 proved that a unified slate of candidates with a pragmatic agenda developed from the grassroots, focused on reforming government and raising the ethical standards of elected officials can lead to a mid-term election victory. The Contract with America succeeded for two reasons.
As information began to leak out about set of principals (purity resolutions) that our Chairman Steele and our leadership was developing, I was surprised at the lack of analysis from the rightosphere. This initiative was in fact not another Contract with America, but appeared to have more to do with avoiding further embarrassment for our Chairman, by ending the internal party civil war that is mostly fought during primary contests.
1) It will allow the leadership in D.C. to control the nomination processes, by interpreting and rejecting the ideological positions of candidates, not through free votes at the district level. A potential candidate can be falsely flagged as being ideologically impure, if an insider opposed to the candidate has a vendetta or is only looking to bring allies to D.C.
2) The resolutions say nothing about the expectations of conduct we should demand from our elected officials once they enter office. Unlike the CWA, the 2010 purity resolutions fail to demand that new Congressmen and Congresswoman remain loyal to voters, not the institutions they govern or the lobbyists who snake around their private clubs and dinner parties.
The soon-to-be approved resolutions will lead to a shift of power from the grassroots to the GOP’s central authority in Washington. Since Chairman Steele has been so willing to capitulate to the public rants of another insider, Erick Erickson, I could not help but wonder if these resolutions were developed by Erickson himself? Anti-grassroots, draconian and ideologically in line with the typical voter….IN BIBB COUNTY, who else other than EE would suggest developing resolutions that will be used by Washington insiders to determine who is a candidate for our party.
Since EE and Chairman Steele are such huge supporters of Sarah Palin, I should remind them the a majority of elected Republican officials who represented the State of Alaska (in D.C. and in Juneau) in the early 2000′s once used an unofficial purity test against Sarah Palin, before and after her election as Governor. Palin was called a socialist (because she favored competition instead of a monopolies), anti-corporate (because she would not go along with the criminal GOP establishment and the lobbyists who paid them off) and pro-homosexual (because she refused to sign a bill that would have stripped health care benefits from gays, lesbians and transgender folk).
My only guess is that the resolutions are a knee-jerk reaction to the joke that was the nominating process in NY-23. This of course happens all over the country in dozens of districts (I’ve seen it first hand), with NY-23 only bringing the issue to the forefront, when the local party bosses waved their corrupt hands over a candidate with ties to ACORN (these party bosses obviously do not watch Fox news or read conservative blogs).
Would a more appropriate solution not be to redirect the power away from local party bosses to the grassroots, not Washington?
To jump start on my New Years resolution of balancing out my criticism of others with constructive feedback, I decided to do what EE (possibly) did and offer my own suggestions to Chairman Steele for the purity resolutions, not in order of priority;
Do you have any suggestions for our leadership?
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Kristofer Lorelli can be contacted at lorville@rogers.com, on Facebook and Twitter/Kris_Lorelli
I said on another thread that I wanted to see how Mike Huckabee played this tragedy. He has just made his first move. Here is his statement on HuckPac in its entirety:
The senseless and savage execution of police officers in Washington State has saddened the nation, and early reports indicate that a person of interest is a repeat offender who once lived in Arkansas and was wanted on outstanding warrants here and in Washington State. The murder of any individual is a profound tragedy, but the murder of a police officer is the worst of all murders in that it is an assault on every citizen and the laws we live within.Should he be found to be responsible for this horrible tragedy, it will be the result of a series of failures in the criminal justice system in both Arkansas and Washington State.This commutation made him parole eligible and he was then paroled by the parole board once they determined he met the conditions at that time. He was arrested later for parole violation and taken back to prison to serve his full term, but prosecutors dropped the charges that would have held him. It appears that he has continued to have a string of criminal and psychotic behavior but was not kept incarcerated by either state. This is a horrible and tragic event and if found and convicted the offender should be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. Our thoughts and prayers are and should be with the families of those honorable, brave, and heroic police officers.
Reading it through, I can’t help but notice two things:
First, it places blame on “the criminal justice system” in two states. He specifically calls out parole boards and prosecutors for dropping the ball. Second, nowhere is there any mention of a Governor commuting the sentence of the “person of interest” over the objections of the prosecutors. The man would still be in prison if that Governor hadn’t signed that piece of paper over the objections of nearly everybody involved.
Four families are without their brothers, husbands, sons, and/or fathers tonight because it looks like Huckabee let someone out that should have stayed incarcerated — and all he can do is CYA? I had been hoping that we had left Mike “Who, me?” Huckabee behind last year and had moved on, but it appears he is still with us.
Huckabee is likely praying very hard tonight that the “person of interest” being sought is innocent of the crime. Otherwise this is going to be a tumble from which it will be difficult for him to recover.
This will cause more concerns over Governor Huckabee’s judgement and his unwillingness to listen to the people he hired to protect innocent lives.
“Maurice Clemmons, the 37-year-old Tacoma man being sought for questioning in the killing of four Lakewood police officers this morning, has a long criminal record punctuated by violence, erratic behavior and concerns about his mental health.
Nine years ago, then-Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee granted clemency to Clemmons, commuting his lengthy prison sentence over the protestations of prosecutors.”
Why the priority was to protect an individual that sexually exploits children may become an issue in 2012.
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Update 1: The shooter was accused of sex crimes after Governor Huckabee commuted his sentence. Although expect more information (like his psych evaluation) to be released.
Update 2: MSM reads R412′s Twitter, but does not provide a H/T
Update 3: Palin makes public statement
“While in Washington State today my heart goes out to the WA police officers gunned down so tragically&senslessly. God comfort the families.”
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Kristofer Lorelli can be contacted at lorville@rogers.com, on Facebook and Twitter/Kris_Lorelli
This just appeared on Politico:
Mike Huckabee, the former Republican governor from Arkansas who has his own Fox show told Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday” that a 2012 presidential bid is “less than likely” and depends on whether Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News, keeps liking his show.“The reason I wouldn’t is that this Fox gig I’ve got is really wonderful, ” he said, talking about whether or not he would get in the race given that he is a GOP front runner according to most recent polls. “Jumping into the pool, you gotta make sure there is some water in it.”
I called it back in July. This is what I said back then:
I thought long and hard before putting Mike here (under the “Not Running” category). A few months ago I would have said, “Of course he is running”. I can’t say that anymore. He seems to be getting more and more comfortable with his TV show. It is certainly a popular one. More and more Fox affiliates pick it up. Now a successful media spot does not necessarily preclude a Presidential Run. Ronald Reagan had a long time radio show, too, but it always seemed a means to an end for him – a temporary post on his way up. Huckabee, on the other hand, seems to be really thriving there. It’s his baby. Will he give it up for the long hours, the hotels, the airports, the building up and running the campaign organization, the countless hands to shake of people you’ve never met and never will again, the constant scrutiny by unfriendly eyes waiting for the least little slip to use against you, the never-ending strategy meetings, and the endless rounds of banquet dinners that all taste the same? He has been there, done that. If he is smart, he won’t go back if he has something better; and he is, and he does.
I hope all my prognostications turn out as well, especially the one about Obama being a one-term President.
Gary Johnson’s Our America PAC has released a series of videos where he elaborates on his positions on the issues:
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Kristofer Lorelli can be contacted at lorville@rogers.com, on Facebook and Twitter/Kris_Lorelli
In the 1960s and 1970s, the political class in this country was operating under the Narrative of the time. The Narrative is the underlying assumption against the backdrop of which that the elites function. It transcends political parties and provides the Establishment with its directional core. Regardless of what the voters actually want or think they want, the Establishment ensures that it continues to operate under the Narrative, because everybody knows that the Narrative is right, and that the folks are wrong.
At that time, the Narrative was the one that had been developed after World War II. It went something like this: in order to achieve long-term peace and prosperity for America, the U.S. must maintain a strong, active welfare state at home, must fund it through highly progressive taxation, must enact cultural change from the top down when necessary for societal advancement, and must contain Communism through an endless series of small wars throughout the world. The Establishment believed that these policies would ensure that America would be able to co-exist with Communism and would continue to progress as a society, the hallmark of which was a strong middle class.
But then something interesting happened. The folks on the ground started challenging the Narrative. They didn’t think things were working out as planned. At first, only a few things went awry. The Vietnam conflict took a lot longer than expected, and didn’t seem to be accomplishing anything. Then the Supreme Court decided to end the national debate over abortion by enshrining it in the Constitution. Then the economy started to collapse, and remained collapsed, while inflation began to increase. And so on and so forth. And ultimately, Americans began to wonder whether the Narrative was correct. And because the political class refused to listen, with Democrats like Johnson and Republicans like Nixon both operating under the Narrative, a variety of anti-establishment movements sprang up, some on the left, others on the right, and yet others in the center. Let’s call these folks the Disaffecteds.
The Disaffecteds of the era were not natural allies. They were in many cases adversaries. But they all had one thing in common: they knew the Narrative was incorrect. On the right, the Disaffecteds consisted of folks who refused to believe that government had to continue to grow, that taxes had to remain high, and that Communism couldn’t be destroyed. On the left, the Disaffecteds were largely opposed to endless war. In the center, the Disaffecteds wanted both an end to Vietnam and to Communism overall, as well as lower taxes without losing their New Deal safety net, and the end of the ever-increasing nanny state. Even though the anti-war McGovernites and the anti-Communism Goldwaterites had little love lost between them, both essentially agreed that the Narrative was wrong about Communism, and that containment was a foolish policy that had to be replaced.
But the political class didn’t listen. They liked the Narrative. The Narrative made sense to them. So the Disaffecteds began to vote with their feet. They threw the Democrats out, and then they threw the Republicans out. Nothing changed. So they began to pack the primaries. The right-wing Disaffecteds nominated Goldwater. The left-wing Disaffecteds nominated McGovern. Jimmy Carter came out of nowhere to win the nomination in 1976 thanks to the Disaffecteds. And Ronald Reagan became the president who toppled the Narrative once and for all, ushering in a new Narrative and ending the post-war consensus on American domestic and foreign policy.
Today, we have a new Narrative, and new Disaffecteds, and probably a new revolution in the works that will topple the Narrative, though that revolution may take awhile and could come from either party. I laid out the Narrative in an earlier post. The Narrative that the political class is currently operating under goes something like this: in order to achieve peace and prosperty in America, the U.S. must maintain strong entitlements at home, must fund these by running deficits so that taxes remain low, must maintain a strong partnership with the nation’s large economic interests, must increase imports and immigration to ensure a supply of cheap goods and cheap labor, and must contain jihadism through an endless series of small wars. This is the Narrative. The Clintonites accepted it. The Bushies accepted it. Obama accepts it. There’s just one problem: the folks aren’t buying it.
I’ve already described the Disaffecteds on today’s right and center. There are the Palinites, the Paulites, the Beckians, the Dobbsians, and the radical middle. None are natural allies but all agree that the Narrative must change. But now tremors are coming from the left, as Disaffecteds appear to be popping up in Obama’s own party that agree that the Democratic Establishment is buying into the Narrative and that this must stop. So who are these left-wing Disaffecteds?
Exhibit 1: Howard Dean. The former liberal presidential candidate slams ObamaCare and suggests that Republicans are right about it! According to Ed Morrissey, “Dean insisted that the current efforts did nothing to control costs, and amounted to nothing more than a bailout for the insurance companies.” This is in direct opposition to the Narrative, which says that the bailouts are good for America, and that protecting and strengthening our major economic players (like trial lawyers, the big insurers, and big pharma) will benefit us all. Even though Dean and Beck disagree about which way to take health care reform (Dean wants a strong public option of course; Beck probably wouldn’t mind being able to shop for insurance across state lines), both agree that the Narrative is incorrect.
Exhibit 2: Huff Puff ‘n Stuff. Arianna Huffington derides the Administration’s efforts on the economy and asks why Obama didn’t, oh, I don’t know, cut the payroll tax or taxes on small businesses to stimulate the economy. Arianna has apparently forgotten that the Narrative suggests that big business and big government are what makes this country work, all financed by debt, hence the need for the stimulus and the bailouts.
Exhibit 3: Andrew Sullivan. Okay, I know he’s not technically on the left, but he is an Obama supporter, and he blames Obama’s establishmentarianism for his sinking poll numbers. Says Andrew:
Now wait will Gitmo remains open through the middle of next year, finanical re-regulation gets gutted by Geithner, gays keep being fired from the military, unemployment plateaus at 12 percent, and more troops are sent to Afghanistan even as withdrawal from Iraq is postponed because they cannot even agree on an election date or terms despite months and months of negotiations.
Of course, there’s a very very long way to go. And if health reform passes, unemployment begins to drop before next November, some movement occurs on Iran, and troops come home from Iraq in larger numbers … anything can happen.
Notice that the things that Andrew says that the Disaffected Left wants are a) very similar to the things that many of the Disaffecteds in the center and on the right want and b) all challenge the Narrative of the political class. Opposition to endless war in the Middle East is shared by the radical middle and the Paulites, and while not shared by the rest of the Disaffected Right, the Palinites and Beckians have no love for the U.N., the Dobbsians want less immigration, and both are opposed to amnesty, i.e., all of the Disaffecteds are opposed to ever-increasing internationalism in one way or another, one of the major components of the Narrative. The Disaffected Left, says Andrew, is against Geithner’s economic policy, but so are all of the other Disaffecteds, and the Disaffecteds on the right like Beck have been the harshest and loudest critics of the bailouts.
Ultimately, what’s happening is that the folks at the grassroots of all political stripes are starting to suspect that the Narrative is a false one, and that boundless-internationalism-plus-corporatist-government-plus-infinite-debt does not peace and prosperity make. Today’s Disaffecteds don’t like one another any more than did the McGovernites and the Goldwaterites. And the direction they each want to take the country is very different. But all agree that the Establishment has it wrong. As such, I suspect that a series of anti-establishment candidates will do quite well over the next few election cycles, wresting the party nominations away from the elites, probably starting with the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. I also think we may see some interesting third-party candidates in the coming years. It may take awhile, but Americans have given up on the Narrative, and they will eventually force the Establishment to go along with them. The exact form of this revolution, and the revolutionary politician who will make this happen — our era’s Reagan — are yet to be identified.
I hate to lob bombs here, let alone confuse my readers even more, but alas, the recent string of Palin interviews has been a remarkable let-down.
As someone who was ready to give Sarah Palin a second chance after her wonderful speech delivered in Hong Kong, I must say that I am walking away with little to be hopeful about after watching the batch of Going Rogue interviews. The book itself was only partially revealing; some issues were conspicuously glossed over — her shotgun wedding, for instance — while some genuinely had light shed on them (such as the early campaign press release about Bristol’s pregnancy). But then there were the endless interviews. Has the former governor taken time to train her impulses and gain some depth on the issues? This list, which goes in order from the least-cringe-worthy remarks to the most, should reveal why I have been highly disappointed by her recent showing. She is not anywhere near ready to take on President Obama.
10. “Obama’s got it all back-asswards.”
This wasn’t folksiness. It’s just dumb.
Remarking upon Obama’s economic policies, Palin stated: “Those are back-assward ways of trying to fix the economy.” Interviewer Barbara Walters replied: “You certainly have a way with words.”
The Politico had the story.
9. “My critics are lonely and need prayer.”
This just drips with bitterness. Try to imagine Ronald Reagan whining like this.
“These are probably some lonely people, some shallow people…and we need to pray for these people…”
David Frum is in Palin’s prayers.
Read all about this one here.
8. “The ‘lame-stream media’ is out to get me.”
I have a natural aversion to self-styled victims. Especially for a woman who’s supposed to be such a fighter, this is embarrassing.
Speaking to Sean Hannity on his radio show, Palin remarked that “some on the left, that lamestream media, they’re contradicting what I wrote in the book…Yeah, lamestream…They are contradicting those facts that I laid out regarding what Reagan had to say.”
Speaking of Reagan, he used a much more potent weapon than whining to defuse the bombs laid by his critics: humor.
The Politico covered this one.
7. “If you don’t agree with me by now, then I’m not even going to try to win you over.”
This was not the sign of a woman sure of her convictions. It was the sign of a politician who doesn’t know how to communicate with the public. Even conceding that there’s a good forty percent of the public who would never credit Palin with any smarts at all even if she penned the new Nicomachean Ethics tomorrow, there are certain things that an aspiring president just does not say — and one of them is “screw you.”
Palin’s remark to Greta van Susteren was this: “Well, for instance, the book is a good tool to get – hey, read the book, and if you still don’t like the positions that I take or if you don’t like who I am after reading the book, unfiltered through the media, then so be it. You know, I’m never going to win you over…I’m not going to try.”
David Frum — through me, through Aron Goldman — covered this the other day.
6. “The Newsweek cover was sexist!”
One thing that Sarah Palin has done extraordinarily well is reveal the latent PC nonsense in the right-wing base. The former crusaders against political correctness are now crying sexism at every turn.
Palin wrote on her Facebook: “The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now. If anyone can learn anything from it: it shows why you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, gender, or color of skin.”
Live by the sword, die by the sword, madam! If Palin looked like Helen Thomas, she would never have been on the McCain ticket. Moreover, there is no double-standard. I know that it’s a ‘DC elitist’ magazine, but…
5. “I would consider Glenn Beck for VP.”
No comment.
4. “Let’s primary Lindsey Graham!”
Is she serious?
About center-right South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, Palin told Rich Lowry of the National Review: “His constituents may want to send him a message to say ‘shore it up’ and come back to some more commonsense, conservative ideals.”
3. “Israel’s settlements are required due to…population growth!”
There are many good geopolitical and philosophical justifications for Israel’s settlements. This preposterous explanation is not one of them. Here is what Palin said:
I disagree with the Obama administration on that. I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon because the population of Israel is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead. And I don’t think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand.
That is an answer given by someone who literally has no idea what she is talking about.
The Jerusalem Post picks this apart here.
2. “India and Pakistan need to stop fightin’, ya know?”
A shockingly embarrassing BS answer. In full, the exchange with Greta van Susteren about India and Pakistan went like this:
SARAH PALIN: Geez, well, with India, we have to make sure that we’re working closely with India, the largest democracy in the world, such a strategic partner of ours. We have to make sure that India and Pakistan know that, Hey, the last thing that this world needs is conflict between these two countries. That’s the last thing that we need. In fact, they both need to understand that each other are not the problem, the Taliban is the problem.
OK, so her remarks are: conflict is bad. “Hey, the last thing that this world needs is conflict between these two countries. That’s the last thing that we need.” A little late for that.
1. “Has Katie Couric learned anything about Alaska yet?”
Ms. Palin can’t seem to decide whether she wants to concede that her interview was truly disastrous or whether Katie Couric was out to get her. Regardless, I don’t think that she understands that an interview with a candidate for the vice-presidency is not an exchange of ideas involving what the newscaster thinks about the candidate’s home state!
Talk to Alex Knepper at apkkib@aol.com
I’m neither a neo-conservative nor a Wilsonian democrat but I’m inclined to say that the war on terror has been a success.
As it see it there are three answers you can give to whether we’ve won or not.
(1) Yes.
(2) No.
(3) Too Early to Tell.
Cautious as I am I’d be inclined to answer (3) but I think that’s selling our accomplishments short.
We’ve disrupted and degraded terrorist networks. This greatly improves our odds of stopping the big dramatic attacks that we all remember and mourn from 2001.
We’ve set Iraq on the path to rejoining the rest of the Arab world, no longer a pariah led by a brutal expansionist dictator. Iraq isn’t likely to be a real democracy but that’s hardly worrying given that no other Arab nation is a real democracy either. Are we going to undertake to remake the whole Middle East through invasion?
If not we ought to be very pleased with the situation in Iraq. As nationalist sentiments gel we have a good chance of having Iraq act as a barrier to Iranian aggression.
And in case we forget we’ve also seen positive change in Libya as a result of our anti-terror actions.
Meanwhile in Afghanistan we’ve overturned a government that was complicit in attacking us. While victory here is less striking than in Iraq it is no less certain.
Whatever the outcome in Afghanistan we’ve limited the reach and power of the terrorists who used Afghanistan as their base.
We’ve also largely won the public relations war. While Muslims generally still distrust and dislike us, they also have begun to distrust and dislike terrorists.
At the end of the day, it seems very clear that the terrorist goal of an Islamic Caliphate is now even more unlikely.
With all these accomplishments I don’t think it hasty to say that the War on Terrorism begun in late 2001 with all its flaws and all its tragedies is already a success.
For everything that is going wrong for America, John McCain must share the blame, along with the ignorant, incompetent, petty-mindedly vengeful, Alinsky-marinated Chicago clique now in the White House.
Barack Obama was not presidential material, and some of us – some tens of millions of us in all probability – believe he won the election because John McCain let him win. Not intentionally, but foolishly.
This was how he did it. The voters were kept ignorant about Obama by the deliberate choice of those whose job it was to inform them. McCain, and McCain alone, was in a position to bypass the highly partisan media and tell the country, every time he stood before the TV cameras and addressed tens of millions of attentive ears, just whom Obama’s political faction consisted of: subversives, such as, most prominently, the America-hating terrorist-supporting Jeremiah Wright, pastoral leader of thousands, and the actual terrorist Bill Ayers, ‘educator’ (read indoctrinator) of generations of children.
But McCain chose not to do it.
Why he chose not to do it must remain forever among the darkest of dark mysteries to those who suppose he had a reason. Only those of us see the light who believe that McCain – undoubted hero and patriot that he is, man of extraordinary courage and endurance – was simply not savvy enough to play the cards he held, and was surrounded by advisers who were also not good at thinking, or just didn’t think.
An innumerable portion of us among the tens of millions knew from the moment McCain was chosen as the Republican candidate (instead of the eminently electable Mitt Romney) – yes, from that very second – that the election was lost. It was then that our hearts sank, not to rise again on the helium of hope until very recently. (The hope, expressed at vast tea-parties, is that Obama can yet be stopped from steering the ship of state on to the rocks.)
The one person in his campaign who could and did think, had all the political astuteness necessary to use the ammunition available to win the fight, was Sarah Palin.
In her book, Going Rogue, she relates how she wanted to raise the damning facts about Obama but was ‘told to sit down and shut up’. Eventually she was reluctantly allowed by ‘headquarters’ to touch on his ‘associations with questionable characters’ but only in the form of a ‘sound bite written into a rally speech’, about Obama ‘palling around with terrorists’ (pages 306-307). One gathers that her will in this matter, as in others, was snaffled and curbed almost to impotence. She does not blame McCain, she is consistently respectful of him, but after reading her account we can and should blame him.
Slight and mild as the little stabbing sound-bite was, ‘the left went nuts, accusing me of lowdown rhetoric unworthy of presidential politics’. (Remember the cruel, lowdown, untrue things the left said about her that they must have deemed worthy of presidential politics?)
But of course the opposition reacted like that. The little stab went home. They knew her reference was potent against them. They feared that if it were made much of, if it were to be emphasized, repeated, insisted upon, their candidate was sunk.
So did McCain read the signs aright and follow up the small victory? Not he. It was always, it seems, more important to McCain to be perceived as a gentleman than that he should win the election for his party, its principles, and its policies. May he long bask in a complacent gentlemanliness as the country endures the consequences of his choice!
His whole organization aided him in making it. ‘Although,’ Palin writes, ‘it was headquarters that had issued the sound bite, the folks there did little more than duck’ when the left reacted with its whining and insolent abuse.
If Palin had been allowed to say whatever she knew needed to be said, or even better if she had been the one to plan the tactics of the campaign, it is possible that McCain would have won. He would most likely not have made a good president, but he couldn’t be as bad as Obama.
If Palin were ever to run her own campaign, signs are she would know how to do it. The autobiographer of Going Rogue emerges from the pages as not only competent, commonsensical, brave, honest, strong, unselfish, knowing her own worth without vanity, but also a born leader, a conservative who understands and shares the values that made America great, and a natural politician who at the same time is a person of integrity. A very rare phenomenon!
The Republican party should appreciate that her exceptional abilities are gifts to it, assets to be grateful for, and should help her make the most of them.
Jillian Becker is editor-in-chief of The Atheist Conservative
Sarah Palin has become the fourth politician to make it to #1 on the USA Today best seller list (the other three are Colin Powell and the Clintons). Going Rogue is #1 on the NY Times non-fiction hardcover best seller list as well.
Sarah makes history as the first even elected Republican official and conservative to achieve this accomplishment.
H/T: Tommy Boy
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Kristofer Lorelli can be contacted at lorville@rogers.com, on Facebook and Twitter/Kris_Lorelli
In response to a question yesterday from KLTV (East Texas) about what should change in US policy, Huckabee gives a little insight into what he thinks the American people want:
I think most people just want government to quit spending everything that they possibly can spend. Borrowing way off into the future.
People in American know they can’t go out and spend this year for Christmas money that they don’t have. They can’t borrow it if they can’t pay it back. But the government is doing exactly that. They are spending money that they don’t have. They are going to have to take from us and they are borrowing money that they can never pay back. And I’m just so concerned that people in Washington seem to be disconnected with common-sense and reality. You cannot spend and spend and spend and spend and leave small business owners with anything less than going out of business and that’s where we get out job. It’s just got to turn.
On criticizing Obama:
Well I think we have to be careful to distinguish criticism of the President’s policies, which are legitimate and frankly I think we ought to be criticizing his policies but we don’t have to make them personal.
Huckabee on whether he will run in 2012:
Hard to say. A lot of it will depend on how things turn out in the next election cycle. Frankly I’m loving what I’m going right now with my television show on the weekend and radio everyday but I don’t rule anything out [emphasis added]. I just will wait and see what things look like a year from now.
You can watch the raw video of this interview here.
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Disclosure: David Schmidt is the Director of HucksArmy and reachable at david.schmidt@evercor.com, or on Facebook and Twitter
There are many aspects of the U.S. presidential campaigns which could be importantly improved. In the last cycle of 2008, I joined with former Speaker Newt Gingrich and others in an appeal to reform the presidential debates. Although none of our reforms were accepted in the 2008 format, the debate moderator often intervened to produce more back-and-forth discussion by the candidates, something we had especially called for. I hope that, at this very early point in the planning for the 2012 debates, the producers and the candidates will consider formalizing this and other changes in the debate format.
There is another issue which I would like to raise this early in the process. It is the issue of the timing of the naming of the vice presidential candidate. In the 2012 race, of course, the Democratic side already has its vice presidential nominee, the current Vice President Joe Biden. So my suggestions would apply this time only to the Republicans, but I mean them to apply to both parties when there is not an incumbent vice president running for re-election.
The problem, as I see it, is that the nominees of each party wait until a few days before their respective conventions before announcing their vice presidential choice. More often than not in recent years, this has produced problems for both parties.
Until the television, and now internet, age, of course, this procedure seemed to work relatively well. Presidential nominees generally chose safe and often obscure candidates for reasons of geographical, ideological and other political reasons, but the vice presidential office itself seemed less important than it does today, and vice presidents traditionally suffered silently in the shadow of the president who selected them. After World War II, and the death of four-term President Roosevelt, however, the public and the media took increasing interest in the office. President Harry Truman had become vice president when Roosevelt made a last-minute change in 1944, replacing incumbent Vice President Henry Wallace. Two months after the 1945 inauguration, Roosevelt died and the “unknown” Truman was the leader of the nation and the free world. History indicates that was a fortuitous result (especially in light of Wallace’s radical and unstable views), but subsequent choices were often problematic, either in the presidential campaign itself or later.
Truman’s choice of Alben Barkley was relatively harmless, but there was little indication that he was really prepared to assume the presidency. Dwight Eisenhower’s choice of Richard Nixon faced a scandal soon after his name was announced, but he survived it with his famous “Checkers” speech. Although Nixon later was elected president, and accomplished some important things in foreign policy, he finally had to resign his office because of Watergate. Nixon’s own vice president, Spiro Agnew, had taken bribes as an official in Maryland, but this did not come out until years later, and he, too, had to resign. 1964 GOP nominee Barry Goldwater chose Congressman William Miller for his veep, but he was unknown and little help to the GOP campaign against President Lyndon Johnson and his popular veep choice of Hubert Humphrey. In 1972, Democrat George McGovern’s vice presidential choice, Thomas Eagleton, was revealed to have had mental treatment soon after being named, and finally had to resign only days before the Democratic convention. In 1976, both nominees chose already nationally-known running mates, Bob Dole and Walter Mondale without any problems. In 1980, Ronald Reagan did the same with George H. W. Bush, but in 1984, Mondale now his party’s presidential nominee selected Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman candidate, but there were problems with her husband’s finances, and this affected the Democratic ticket adversely. In 1988, George H.W. Bush, now his party’s presidential nominee, picked an unknown Indiana senator Dan Quayle, and was immediately criticized for the choice. Although Quayle’s treatment by the media was often unfair, and he did not excel in his campaign appearances, the ticket won. But in 1992, Democratic nominee Bill Clinton chose well-known Al Gore to be his running mate and defeated Bush-Quayle. In 1996, former GOP veep nominee Bob Dole became a presidential nominee, and picked the familiar figure of Jack Kemp as his running mate. In 2000, George W. Bush selected experienced but relatively unknown former Congressman Dick Cheney for veep, and Democratic nominee selected Joe Lieberman. Since the final result was the closest in history, and the most controversial, it could be argued that, among other factors, the vice presidential choices determined the outcome (although it must be noted that Gore-Lieberman won the popular vote by more than half a million votes).
Walter Mondale had assumed a significant new role as vice president in 1980, and this continued with both Vice Presidents Al Gore and Dick Cheney. Vice presidential nominees (and vice presidents) frequently become presidential nominees. Today, the candidates for vice president are rightfully examined almost as closely as the presidential candidates.
In 2004, Democratic nominee John Kerry chose his senate colleague and major opponent, John Edwards to be his running mate. As with Spiro Agnew, an existing scandal involving Edwards did not become known during the campaign, nor during the 2008 election when Edwards ran again for president, but the scandal did come out later and has destroyed his political career. Sarah Palin was John McCain’s choice in 2008, and like Dan Quayle was often treated unfairly by the press. She was named at the last-minute, and most of her problems in the campaign arose from her inexperience on the national stage.
My point is that naming a vice presidential choice a week or two, or a few days, before a presidential convention carries unnecessary risk. Interestingly, it was Ronald Reagan in 1976, fighting a close contest with President Gerald Ford, who came up with a better approach. He did it for short-term political reasons. Trailing Ford early in the primaries, Reagan chose Pennsylvania Senator Richard Schweiker to be on his ticket long before the traditional time, and during the primary season. Although he ultimately lost to Ford, the strategy helped Reagan.
In short, I am suggesting that the presidential candidates for both parties name their vice presidential choices early in the campaign. This gives the public and the media plenty of time for vetting the candidate, and avoids last-minute political problems that have often plagued presidential campaigns. It has the added benefit of enabling the presidential and vice presidential nominees to get to know one another, and to find the best way the vice presidential nominee can help in the final part of the campaign against the opposing party. A third benefit is that it gives the vice presidential nominee valuable national campaign experience.There is little downside to this new procedure, even as the old way, with Google-type searches and a myriad of blogs, is increasingly fraught with the political danger.
-Barry Casselman is one of the deans of U.S. presidential campaign commentary and analysis, and has written on the subject since 1972. He contributes regularly to many U.S. political and public policy publications, and writes a syndicated column and blog for the Preludium News Service at barrycasselman.com.
Gov. Jindal talks health care solutions on Fox News:
Is Eric Cantor eyeing a 2012 run?
While he might not admit it, Culpeper’s congressman could be one of the GOP’s best hopes.
It’s three years until the next presidential election, yet it’s never too early to gaze into our crystal ball. Let’s speculate as to which Republican might oppose Barack Obama — we’ll
assume he’s running for a second term — in 2012.John McCain is yesterday’s news. So is Mitt Romney. Golden boy Bobby Jindal shot himself in the foot. Sarah Palin? She’s become a sideshow who has splintered the party. Is
there anyone else?With no heir apparent, it’s shaping up to be another wide open field for the GOP, leaving the opportunity for someone like Eric Cantor to make a serious run — if he so decides — at
the world’s most important elected office.Wait a minute, you say. Isn’t Cantor Culpeper’s congressman? The next president coming from Culpeper? Come on!
Consider this: Cantor is one of the GOP’s rising stars. He’s the minority whip in the U.S. House, giving him considerable power. And if the GOP regains the House in 2010, his stock
will rise even more.Cantor is scandal-free and has done nothing to soil his image on the national scale. He keeps getting more face time on national news shows, and he’s even been spoofed a few
times on Saturday Night Live. He’s Jewish and his wife is a Democrat, two factors that could be spun quite nicely by GOP strategists. (Transparency note: Cantor’s wife, Diana,
serves on the board of trustees for the Star-Exponent’s parent company, Media General.)To be fair, Cantor has downplayed the rumors he might run for president — but doesn’t every politician at some point? Still, don’t be surprised if you see him take a shot at the Oval
Office, whether in 2012 or some point down the road.
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Kristofer Lorelli can be contacted at lorville@rogers.com, on Facebook and Twitter/Kris_Lorelli
I was going to let the whole topic drop given that Alex and I appeared to be largely arguing over labels and semantics, and there are far more interesting things to argue about. But given that someone in the MSM is now echoing my theory that the moment is right for the rebirth of the Old Right, I’ve decided to revisit the whole idea.
Over at the Daily Beast, Lee Siegel, who appears to be a liberal commentator, issues Cassandra-like warnings to his fellow leftists to look out for the dreaded PaleoCon giant that’s about to rear its head! Says Siegel:
The Hollywood-averse Republicans are becoming contemporary masters of celebrity in the realm of politics. Sarah Palin, Beck, and Dobbs are imperfect, incremental steps toward the perfect Republican candidate. Even Obama’s eloquence is no match for their breathtakingly expressive one-dimensionality.
…
Neither Palin nor Dobbs has any type of political future—the former because of her ignorance and thin skin, the latter because of his bigot’s baggage. But if you surround Dobbs’ brain with Palin’s sensual warmth, add Beck’s acting skills, top it all off with the moderate-seeming polish of a Mitt Romney, and then throw in a dash of the new Newt Gingrich’s “ideas” and “skepticism” and “detachment,” you’ll have something like the populist Frankenstein that will, tragically, come to dominate American politics.
The decent populist sentiment that warily elected Obama is moving on, and it is becoming less and less decent as it hunts for his successor. The Democrats had better start learning what Ayn Rand knew, despite her foolish solipsism. They need to stand firm on simply stated principles. They need, in other words, to borrow celebrity’s idiom without its shallowness, to get heroically one-dimensional, and to start governing from the gut.
This is essentially what I said the other day, but with a much more welcoming tone of course, as I’d prefer to see the country re-embrace at least some of the principles of classical or small-c conservatism, including thrift, federalism, realism, and so forth. But Siegel and I are basically presenting the same idea in different ways. We both see the emergence of disparate groups of disaffected voters that are very angry, very energetic, and that have little in common other than a sort of modified version of classical conservatism. So you’ve got the Paulites, who are paleos on international affairs and who want devolution of power to the individual so that they can legalize everything. You’ve got the Dobbsians, who are paleos on immigration. You’ve got the Palinites, who want devolution of power to states and localities and who are otherwise movement conservatives. You’ve got the Beckians, who are like the Palinites, but with a paleo-esque suspicion of the coziness between large economic interests and government. And you’ve got the radical middle, which is increasingly skeptical of nation building and trade and shares the same concerns as the aforementioned groups, but just wants them addressed in a more moderate tone with lots of Newt-style solutions. Oh, and by the way, all of these groups hate the national debt. So essentially you’ve got a ready-made center-paleo-right majority in this country given the current climate, and all it lacks is a presidential candidate who can thread all of its factions together, all of which are disinclined to get along.
The fact that this is where all the energy is right now shouldn’t be surprising, as voters are essentially blaming the political assumptions of the last 15 years for our current problems. The Clinton-Bush premise was that if the US became more active in the world, developed economic and political relationships with the rest of the globe, opened its borders, kept taxes and regulations low (relative to the pre-Reagan era), maintained a strong relationship with Wall Street, and managed efficiently a strong federal government that called the shots on things like public education, the best possible society would be created. That’s because, said the Clintonites and the Bushies, America would get cheap goods and cheap labor from abroad, would end threats to our security by democratizing our adversaries, and would maintain healthy economic growth at home with a business/government partnership that essentially gave people the tools they needed to succeed and made it as easy as possible to do business, which would create jobs for everybody. It all seemed to make sense at the time. And it may yet be vindicated. But given the bleak outlook that exists today, it shouldn’t be surprising that internationalism, the federal government, and the nation’s large economic interests are getting the blame for our present situation.
Moreover, the election of a member of the Old Left as President of the United States in 2008, and the installation of a fellow PaleoLiberal as Speaker of the House, presiding over a Democratic supermajority in Congress, has ensured that big government and deficits and debt will join the pantheon of culprits to be rounded up and judged guilty by American voters. The Democratic government’s attempts to balloon an already unsustainable national debt once again awakened the sleeping giant of the radical middle, activated by Ross Perot in 1992, and again by the attempt to nationalize health care in 1993, a mistake that Democrats repeated this year, ensuring that the next revolution at the ballot box will be a conservative one, as the Independents who voted for Democrats in 2006 and 2008 will go largely for Republicans in 2010.
So given that all the energy in the room is on the side of less internationalism, less federal power, less government debt, more distance between Washington and Wall Street, and a general desire for the elites/the powerful/special interests/whatever to get their comeuppance, it shouldn’t be surprising that many are predicting the emergence of a leader that, while not exactly a hard PaleoCon in the mold of Tom Tancredo, is at least more of a product of classical conservatism than of any of the other recent philosophies that have dominated American politics. No one is suggesting that Ron Paul or Lou Dobbs, both pseudo-paleos, are going to be president. But as Siegel suggested, a candidate with distinctly classical conservative sympathies, but who could express them in a temperate, constructive way, could probably unite the disaffecteds under a common banner and take the country. As of now, such a candidate doesn’t exist. But 2012 is still three years away.
Thanks to Aron Goldman for tipping me off to this.
From Palin’s interview with Greta:
VAN SUSTEREN: How — I mean, you haven’t said you’re going to run. And I’m not going to (INAUDIBLE) but I mean, in the back of your mind, you must think, How can I reach the people who don’t agree with me?
PALIN: Yes.
VAN SUSTEREN: OK? I mean, it’s easy to reach the people that agree with you. How do you reach the people who are a little farther to the left and way far to the left from you?
PALIN: I think that those people are going to start seeing that the direction of our country right now has got to change. And whether they agree with me personally on my values or the — some of the issues that I really grabbed hold of and tried to progress with — whether they agree with that or not, I think what they’re going to agree with is that we have to build a stronger nation economically and in terms of national security.
And the things that I’m standing for, they’re such common sense measures that have to be undertaken in order to get there for America with national security, with the economy. I think they’re going to be agreeing with that. But I’m never going to please everyone. There’s no — there’s no need to even try to please everyone. Some people will — if it comes from me, they’ll automatically not like what the idea is or what the position is.
VAN SUSTEREN: So how do you win over the people that don’t — I mean, who may have that sort of kneejerk reaction, if you want to — if you want to talk to them, if you want to reach them, at least have them consider what you have to say?
PALIN: Well, for instance, the book is a good tool to get — hey, read the book, and if you still don’t like the positions that I take or if you don’t like who I am after reading the book, unfiltered through the media, then so be it. You know, I’m never going to win you over. But at least give me a shot there in trying to figure out who I am, what my record is, what my accomplishments are and what I represent.
And then, Greta, if I can’t please them, I can’t please them. I’m not going to try. I’m not going to change who I am or compromise my positions, my values, in order to placate or to try to get some demographic or some group of people on board with me if they just don’t get it.
Utterly stunning. Is she serious?
A manifesto, Going Rogue was not. But there you have it. If you don’t agree with her now, you’ll never agree with her.
43%’s her ceiling, then?
Thanksgiving is over, and now it is but a few short weeks before Christmas once again arrives. I want a very simple gift from all of our candidates for Congress and the presidency: big, fat moratorium on Ronald Reagan hagiography.
It’s time to cap off this ubiquitous “As Ronald Reagan put it, ‘a shining city on a hill’” stuff. It’s time to end the bromides of “as Reagan showed us, cutting taxes gets us out of a recession,” and “we have to get back to our Reaganite principles,” and “I really miss Reagan right now.” Sarah Palin has been particularly egregious on this count, as of late; anyone who has read Going Rogue or watched any of her recent interviews can testify to this. It’s annoying, and worse than that, it’s not helpful.
Jeb Bush put it well when he said that we need to move beyond Reagan. It’s not that Ronald Reagan wasn’t an exemplary president, and it’s not that he doesn’t provide us with a lot of timeless wisdom about how to win. It’s rather that we’re not living in the 1980′s, that we don’t face the problems of the 1980′s, and moreover, that the Reagan we all are discussing is really not the Reagan that existed. If we’re going to talk about him, we ought also talk about the man who authorized the selling of arms to the ayatollahs, ran up deficits, granted amnesty to illegal immigrants, and withdrew from Lebanon prematurely. On the wrong day, he may not have passed the purity test.
As a young person, the legacy of Reagan speaks to me only in an abstract way. I wasn’t even born yet when Ronald Reagan was president. I’m nineteen years old. I only even remember the second half of the George W. Bush presidency with any experiential clarity — and that’s as someone who was a political junkie by age fifteen. Most people don’t even start paying attention to politics until their twenties. A person who was came of age in the Reagan presidency is now inching upon age forty. It’s a testament to how leaderless we’ve been that we have to pull up the name of a man who’s been out of office for two decades to serve as a figurehead.
If we want to honor Reagan’s legacy, let’s replicate what made him so successful by standing up to the problems of our own day with our own leaders and our own solutions. If we move beyond Reagan, then we’ll have truly honored him.
Talk to Alex Knepper at apkkib@aol.com
Recently, I became a member of the American Spectator’s Young Writer’s Program. Despite not having submitted a single piece in the few weeks since I have officially joined, Jim Antle, Associate Editor of the magazine, was kind enough to invite me to the annual Robert L. Bartley Gala Dinner this past Thursday. After the rough week I had, it was a very refreshing and enjoyable event. I saw a couple of buddies I hadn’t caught up with in a while, spoke to an acquaintance I hadn’t seen in over a year and my date was both classy- as is her norm- and elegantly stunning.
It was here that I had two great philosophies planted in my head by two of the speakers of the evening. The first, The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger, recipient of the 2009 Barbara Olson Award, was related to how one should write opinion pieces. The other, by keynote speaker Representative Mike Pence (R-IN), was one of a philosophy about the American Revolution and what it means to America.
I’ll share the writing philosophy first. In short, Henninger shared how he had written an opinion piece for the Journal and Bartley improved it by adding just one paragraph at the end. Bartley explained his change by saying that one should always end on a positive note in writing opinion pieces. To paraphrase Henninger quoting Bartley, to end on a down note is to put yourself out of opinion-writing.
This lesson is timely because, as a young writer deeply in the political minority who sees many policies and attitudes I disagree with, I’m often critical of those in power, whether they be Democrats, Republicans, conservatives or liberals; whether they are in governmental positions or media positions; or even whether the issue I am writing on is important or just a “piffle,” as one of my friends has commented on two of my recent pieces. Being critical is crucial to do, of course, to hold those in power accountable- even if my influence is miniscule- but it must be balanced out with noticing the positive. My mother, an extraordinarily positive and uplifting person, always brings out the best in even the worst people, which is why she has so many more friends than almost anyone else I know. I have often wondered if I have been overly critical in my writing lately, and so Henninger’s comments really struck home with me. After all, positive people and attitudes bring out the positive in other people, as Malcolm Gladwell so aptly pointed out in The Tipping Point.
The Mike Pence point is also very important, but on a much deeper level. He spoke of John Adams, our second president, and what he said in 1818 about the Revolution and what it meant to America. Instead of talking about the fighting that took place in our Revolution, instead of talking about the ideas of taxation or representation, Pence said the following: "According to our second President, the real American Revolution was a revolution of self reliance and independence, casting off dependency on the crown, in the hearts and minds of the American people. It was a rejection of the spirit of dependence in favor of a society of free and independent people.” This statement strikes at the core of what it means to be a conservative: to throw off the yoke of oppressive dependence on a government entity and make certain that the American people- and, by extension, the world’s citizens as a whole- have the opportunity for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The Adams statement struck me powerfully, and I think it is one conservatives should take to heart. Our Revolution was about representation, taxes, the forces sheltering of soldiers and many other things. However, it was really about the overall oppressive dependence of the British government. Let us keep that in mind as we continue to fight the day-to-day workings of a liberal Congress. While we should protest in large numbers, write letters to the editor of our local, state and national newspapers, donate money to our favored candidates on all levels of government and write on blogs, we should never take our eye off that simple goal of conservatism: “rejection of the spirit of dependence.” If we get so caught up in the small things we stand to lose the larger fight. For example, we have the 2010 mid-term elections in less than a year, which will be a great turnaround point for America if we make it so, and the 2012 presidential election after that, which can be another light on the horizon- Jimmy Carter beget Ronald Reagan, after all, and Mitt Romney is working hard to become our next president.
In both the short and long-term, given what is going on in this country and around the world, it is important that we step up to the plate and say we will tell our elected government officials what to do, not the other way around. We have a terrible health care bill going through the Senate right now that includes high income taxes, a public option and under-the-table funding for abortion. Cap-and-trade legislation is likely dead, but it is still on the table. President Obama’s foreign policy, frankly, leaves much to be desired- ignoring democracy-supporting protests in Iran, supporting undemocratic actions in Honduras, snubbing the Dalai Lama to suck up to Communist and human rights-violator China and not putting promised missile defenses in Poland, among other mishaps- and our budget deficit is monstrous. However, if we are always optimistic, even in criticism, and keep our eye on the goal of a federal government staying within its proper sphere, perhaps America can stay as that “shining city upon a hill.” Personally, I think the world depends on it.
FYI: Pence’s remarks can be seen in full here.
