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May 27, 2008

Exclusive: Tuesday, May 27

Presidential Watch

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Democrats Not Fit to Lead the Nation

David Horowitz, NewsMax.com

Criticism of government policy is essential to a democracy. But in the last five years the Democratic Party has crossed the line from criticism of war policy to fundamental sabotage of the war itself, a position no American party has taken until now.

Starting in July 2003, just three months into the war in Iraq, the Democratic National Committee ran a national TV ad whose message was: "Read his lips: President Bush Deceives the American People." This was the beginning of a five-year, unrelenting campaign to persuade Americans and their allies that "Bush lied, people died," that the war was "unnecessary" and "Iraq was no threat."

In other words, for five years, the leaders of the Democratic Party have been telling Americans, America's allies, and America's enemies that their country was an aggressor nation, which had violated international law, and was in effect the "bad guy" in the war with the Saddam Hussein regime.

The first principle of psychological warfare campaigns is to destroy the moral character of the opposing commander in chief and discredit his nation's cause. Yet this is a perfect summary of the campaign that has been waged for the length of this war by the entire Democratic Party leadership, Joe Lieberman being an honorable exception who was driven out of his party as a result. Read article.

Democrats and Our Enemies

Joseph Liebermann, Online WSJ.com

How did the Democratic Party get here? How did the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy drift so far from the foreign policy and national security principles and policies that were at the core of its identity and its purpose?

Beginning in the 1940s, the Democratic Party was forced to confront two of the most dangerous enemies our nation has ever faced: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In response, Democrats under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy forged and conducted a foreign policy that was principled, internationalist, strong and successful.

This was the Democratic Party that I grew up in - a party that was unhesitatingly and proudly pro-American, a party that was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders. It was a party that understood that either the American people stood united with free nations and freedom fighters against the forces of totalitarianism, or that we would fall divided.

This was the Democratic Party of Harry Truman, who pledged that "it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."

And this was the Democratic Party of John F. Kennedy, who promised in his inaugural address that the United States would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom."

This worldview began to come apart in the late 1960s, around the war in Vietnam. In its place, a very different view of the world took root in the Democratic Party. Read article.

As Isolated POW, McCain Didn't Learn Correct Liberal Lessons from Vietnam

Clay Waters, Times Watch.org

Matt Bai, a major contributing writer for the Times Sunday Magazine, denigrated John McCain's service in Vietnam in his big cover profile, "The McCain Doctrines," suggesting his five years spent isolated in a POW camp meant he didn't learn the correct liberal lessons from the Vietnam War, resulting in his support for the Iraq War.

While the Times found Sen. John Kerry's service in Vietnam gave him credibility on his opposition to the Iraq War, McCain's five years spent isolated in a POW camp has evidently cursed him with a narrow perspective of America, right or wrong. Explaining why McCain still supports the Iraq War, Bai wrote:

Among his fellow combat veterans in the Senate, past and present, he is the only one who has continued to champion the war in Iraq; by contrast, Kerry, Webb and Hagel have emerged in the years since the invasion as unsparing critics of American involvement there. (In a new book, Hagel, who voiced deep concerns about Iraq even as he voted for the war resolution in 2002, predicts that the war will turn out to be "the most dangerous and costly foreign-policy debacle in our nation's history.") This divide among old allies may be the inevitable result of a protracted war that has cleaved plenty of American households and friendships. But it may also be that the war is revealing underlying fractures among the Senate's Vietnam coalition. Read article.

John McCain wants to bring British-style political grillings to Capitol Hill

Christopher Hitchens, Slate.com

In the near-universal sarcastic mirth that accompanied the rolling-out of Sen. John McCain's somewhat utopian speech in Columbus, Ohio, on May 15, the quixotic nature of his foreign-policy ambitions was generally stressed. As a consequence, one of his smaller and more realistic and achievable domestic proposals seems to have been overlooked. "I will ask Congress," said the presumptive Republican nominee, "to grant me the privilege of coming before both houses to take questions, and address criticism, much the same as the prime minister of Great Britain appears regularly before the House of Commons."

This is a reformist proposal with quite a long and interesting pedigree, and it speaks well, I think, of the man proposing it. In Gore Vidal's Lincoln, the president is described sternly rejecting a request from the other side of the aisle that he make regular visits to Capitol Hill to report on the progress of the war. It was perhaps not the most propitious time for the embattled and divided United States to embrace the British system, and for a while the idea lapsed. Rep. Estes Kefauver, D-Tenn., revived the scheme in the mid-1940s, and when Walter Mondale was a Democratic senator in the mid-'70s, he also put forward the idea of a regular parliamentary-style grilling of the chief executive. (Picture this happening to Richard Nixon, let alone to Gerald Ford.) Read article.

Think Globally, Act Locally

Rich Galen, Townhall.com

In every town and in every neighborhood of every city at 10 AM every weekday morning the judge, the real estate broker, the banker, the owner of the department store and the guy who owns the factory on the outskirts of town get together to discuss and/or solve the issues of the day.

"Let Newt Gingrich (R-GA) and Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Mullfave Republican Conference Chairman Adam Putnam (R-FL) and the rest of the leadership worry about the grand theories of this election," I said. "Your responsibility is to be in touch with your District office and know what those guys at the 10 O'clock coffee klatch are whining about."

The saying, "all politics is local" is attributed to former Speaker Tip O'Neill (D-MA). Even if someone else said it first, it is still an enormously powerful driver. Or should be.

The three-straight losses by House Republicans in open seats, which had previously been held by the GOP proves the point. Read article.

Obama and the Jews

Bret Stephens, Online WSJ.com

America's Jews account for a mere 2% of the U.S. population. But they have voted the Democratic ticket by margins averaging 78% over the past four election cycles, and their votes are potentially decisive in swing states like Florida and Pennsylvania. They also contribute an estimated half of all donations given to national Democratic candidates.

So whatever his actual convictions, it is a matter of ordinary political prudence that Barack Obama "get right with the Jews." Since Jews tend to be about as liberal as the Illinois senator on most domestic issues, what this really means is that he get right with Israel.

And so he has.

Over his campaign's port side have gone pastor Jeremiah Wright ("Every time you say 'Israel' Negroes get awfully quiet on you because they [sic] scared: Don't be scared; don't be scared"); former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski ("I think what the Israelis are doing today [2006] for example in Lebanon is in effect - maybe not in intent - the killing of hostages"); and former Clinton administration diplomat Robert Malley (an advocate and practitioner of talks with Hamas). Read article.

Avoiding a Republican Rout in November

William Rusher, Townhall.com

As matters stand, the Republican Party is facing an historic shellacking in November.

In part, this is just the usual yin and yang of partisan politics. The GOP has held the presidency for nearly eight years, and controlled Congress for six of them (until ousted by the Democrats in 2006). In a two-party system like ours, when the usual gripes against the party in power build up, what is there for the voters to do but throw the rascals out and install their opponents in their place?

On top of that, President Bush is ending eight years in office, and the inevitable accumulation of complaints against him is also telling against the Republicans in Congress.

But in addition to these virtually unavoidable disadvantages, Bush is saddled with the blame for an unpopular war in Iraq, and here at home the economy is widely alleged to be in poor shape. So you will look high and low before finding a professional politician, in either party, who privately expects a Republican victory this fall -- either in the presidential election or in Congress. Realistically speaking, can anything be done about this? Read article.

A Real Republican Contract For November

Bruce Kesler, Democracy-Project.com

Yesterday I wrote about the need for conservatives and loyalist Republicans to emphasize and act upon the unifying and appealing principle of individual freedoms.

But, that won't do us much good in time for November's expected walloping in the Congress. According to able and caring observer Mark Tapscott, neither will Karl Rove's prescription for talk about "contrasts." As Tapscott says:

[T]he GOP can talk till they are blue in the face between now and November about "contrasts" with the Democrats BUT NOBODY BELIEVES THEM ANYMORE. The day is long gone when Republicans can talk their way back into the majority.

Tapscott recommends a drastic pledge in order for Republicans to have any credibility in time for November. That congressional Republicans will take the pledge is likely incredible, which just demonstrates how deep the hole in to which they've dug themselves, and us who depended upon them. Read article.

A flirtation with Chicken Little

Wesley Pruden, Washington Times.com

This is no time for John McCain to be John McCain. The Republican nominee-to-be, who flirted with the idea of joining John Kerry on the Democratic ticket four years ago, now wants to be Al Gore.

Campaigning in Oregon, he told an audience in Portland - which rivals San Francisco as the most self-consciously politically correct city in America - that he's a true believer in Al's "cap-and-trade" solution to global warming. (Thousands cheered when Barack Obama suggested that if they don't listen to him they might not get enough to eat.) The global-warming fanatics no longer call it global warming. Now it's "climate change," which will enable the doomcriers to sing their song uninterrupted the next time the globe leaves the warming cycle to enter the cooling cycle.

Congress, John McCain says, should require companies to reduce their contributions of greenhouse gasses to the earthly atmosphere, and enable them to sell pollution rights to other companies with emission troubles and a greater need to pollute. The shrewdest polluters will quickly figure out how to make a mint with their industrial flatulence.

John McCain is our most fearless pol, having earned his reputation for valor and courage the hard way, but the weather frightens him. Read article.

Real 'elitism' resentment is about IQ, not income

Chris Satullo, Philly.com

The chatter about whether Barack Obama is an elitist, and what it'll cost him in November, tends to focus on the wrong "I" word.

The charge of elitism, wielded so devastatingly by conservative politicians for 40 years, is not so much about income. It's about intelligence.

It is about intellectual snobbery, more than economic class.

Liberal Democrats tend not to get this point. If they did, they wouldn't get bushwhacked so regularly at election time.

Hillary Clinton's wanton use of the elitist riff against Obama is breathtaking on several counts. One is the spectacle of Ms. Democrat doing the Republicans' dirty work for them.

It's like race car driver Tony Stewart having his crew tune up Kyle Busch's car right before the Daytona 500. Another is the sight of this daughter of Wellesley and Yale Law masquerading as a shot-and-beer gal. Read article.

GOP: Get Back

Cal Thomas, Townhall.com

The Republican Party is in distress. Doomsayers are everywhere. Republican National Committee Chairman Robert M. Duncan complains that conservative, pro-life, pro-gun Democrats won three special elections by stealing GOP issues.

"We can't let the Democrats take our issues," Duncan told the New York Times. "We can't let them pretend to be conservatives and co-opt the middle and win these elections. We have to get the attention of our incumbents and candidates and make sure they understand this."

Democrats didn't steal your issues, sir. You abandoned them. Your party discarded them. Democrats simply engaged in dumpster harvesting.

Unable to win by labeling Democrats "liberals," Republicans don't know what to do. Labeling worked before. Why isn't it working now? The answer is that it only works in combination with superior ideas, which you then contrast to those of your "liberal" opponent. You can't do that credibly unless you have embraced those ideas and sought to implement them. Read article.

For Obama, McCain, a Shortlist on Running Mates

Albert R. Hunt, Bloomberg.com

Over the past 50 years, 17 men and one woman have been chosen by the major parties to run for the vice presidency of the U.S. Only one -- Lyndon Johnson in 1960 -- demonstrably affected the outcome of the presidential race.

This is worth remembering as the nation enters the quadrennial feeding frenzy over completing the tickets. It's a big decision for Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama and will send important signals; it probably won't make much difference on Nov. 4.

``People vote for president, not vice president,'' says Stu Spencer, who directed the campaigns of Gerald Ford in 1976 and Ronald Reagan in 1980.

``The politics of picking a vice president are constantly overstated,'' adds Richard Moe, who was Vice President Walter Mondale's chief of staff and now heads the National Trust for Historic Preservation. ``But the decision does tell us much about how that person will tend to govern and what his values are.''

As Moe and Spencer acknowledge, that doesn't mean there aren't political considerations, including comfort levels and contributions that a No. 2 person can make to the tone and effectiveness of a campaign. This is why two of the most oft- speculated possibilities -- Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side and Condoleezza Rice for the Republicans -- wouldn't work. Read article.

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