’08 Election

10 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

john edwards and the angry left

it’s becoming a trend for republicans and democrats alike: trying to win the favor of influential bloggers.  there’s certainly nothing wrong with that.  a successful outreach program could not only get your candidate positive press in the blogosphere, but it could also net your guy or gal some already plugged-in local activists willing to assist on the grassroots level. the danger in hiring bloggers, as john edwards has now discovered, is that bloggers have a virtual paper trail, and everything they had previously written is out there for the world to see. pandagon’s amanda marcotte wrote some pretty offensive stuff on her blog, and the responsibility for those posts rests with her, not john edwards.

candidates can only control those they employ. that said, before john edwards’s campaign staff hired ms. marcotte, i would have expected that they would have looked at her previous posts and fully vetted her work before she got the job. if they didn’t, it’s fair to accuse the edwards campaign (at the very least) of negligence. she was hired to represent the edwards campaign and put in charge of his campaign blog. surely they must have known that hiring someone who has written some controversial things in the past could be problematic for the campaign, even if the hire temporarily gained the favor of the angry left bloggers.

i am unconvinced that ms. marcotte would have written anything controversial as an official member of the edwards team. if she had written something controversial in that capacity,  then it would definitely be something that could damage edwards’ campaign. the edwards campaign, as far as i’m aware, hasn’t officially fired her yet. politically i think that it would be a smart move. 

however, they have a right to hire any blogger they want to hire, and if they are willing to deal with the fallout, why should it matter to us on the right? why are we giving edwards advice?  it’s almost like we are trying to save him from himself.  that’s really not our job.  let him make his own choices and deal with the consequences of those choices.  get out of his way and watch the show.

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Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

another left turn

our pal dennis kucinich now has company in the dark horse category of democratic presidential candidates.  we know very little about kucinich except that he’s a socialist nut with a gorgeous wife, and he is also someone who favors immediate withdrawal of our troops from iraq. we know even less about fellow dark horse candidate former senator mike gravel. that’s why he faces even longer odds than kucinich (if that’s even possible). so why does this guy deserve a whole post?  i think that some of his ideas are interesting, and even though i disagree with some of those ideas, i think they are worth discussing. i’m also fascinated by his willingness to call out pretty much every democrat who voted for the iraq war right in front of them at the DNC winter meeting.

here’s part of what he said(any italics are mine):

History teaches us that nations fail when leaders fail their people. The decision to invade Iraq without provocation and fraudulently sold to the American people, by a President consumed with messianic purpose, sadly confirms this lesson of history.

The Democrats controlled the Senate on October 11, 2002 and provided political cover for George Bush to invade Iraq. The Senate leadership could have refused to even take up the resolution, or a few Senators who opposed it could have mounted a filibuster.

But the fear of opposing a popular warrior President on the eve of a mid-term election prevailed. Political calculations trumped morality, and the Middle East was set ablaze. The Democrats lost in the election anyway, but the American people lost even more. It was Politics as Usual.

Given the extreme importance of any decision to go to war, and I am anguished to say this, it’s my opinion that anyone who voted for the war on October 11––based on what President Bush represented––is not qualified to hold the office of President.

he’s partially right. the senate leadership could have done more to stop the iraq war from happening. they didn’t do so, because they also believed that saddam was a threat. they had every reason to think so. hillary even did her own research and came to the same conclusion her husband and president bush did — that regime change was necessary in iraq. political calculation wasn’t the motive for the democrats when they let the president invade iraq.  it is the motive for democrats calling for immediate withdrawal from iraq (like dennis kucinich and mike gravel for example). there is another contest going on with all these candidates…who will win the favor of the netroots? how else do you explain this incredible shift to the left by many of these democratic candidates?

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2 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

another WHO? candidate

governor bill richardson of new mexico thinks he wants to be president of this country, and so he’s going exploring with his committee.

why not bill richardson for president?

i’m serious. i really am. he’s certainly got the right kind of experience for the job. besides being the governor of new mexico, his resume includes a stint as a former congressman, as well as a UN ambassador and an Energy Department secretary. that’s a quality mix of foreign and domestic policy experience. i will leave it to policy wonks smarter than myself to determine his effectiveness at said positions, but it’s not a bad place to start for a candidate. a factor certainly not lost on governor richardson is that he would also be a candidate who could get significant support from the same pool of voters that obama could possibly draw from. minorities would have several choices of who to support on the democratic side. he’s a relative unknown to most of america, and that will be a major hurdle to overcome with the three major players (hillary, barack obama, and john edwards).

another daunting challenge for him would be fundraising, especially in a competition with so many big dogs clamoring for every last bone. somehow i just don’t see how richardson can get enough money to make himself a contender.

governor richardson is a quality addition to the democratic presidential race, even with the obstacles he faces. only time will tell whether he has the charisma and the political savvy to take some ground from the frontrunners. i hope he does.

(i’m not endorsing any democrats and do not intend to…i just think they should take a serious look at this guy before rejecting him as their candidate.)

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Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Republicans

follow the yellow brick road

the road to oz sure is getting crowded. on the democrat side so far we have edwards, obama, kucinich, dodd, (maybe richardson), and a few others. lining up for the republicans so far we have giuliani, romney, mccain, duncan hunter, possibly mike huckabee, possibly newt gingrich, and TBA(to be announced). i’m yawning. you can’t see it, but trust me, it’s happening.

saturday we had two more entrants in the political sweepstakes that the presidency of the United States has become.

senator sam brownback (who?) (r-ks) is now in:

My family and I are taking the first steps on the yellow brick road to the White House…

give him points for originality and a clever kansas reference. social conservatives will find much to like about senator brownback on issues of concern to them. it should also please a few people that he opposes the president’s iraq troop surge. is he too far right to gain support of the rest of the republican party who may not take such a hard line on abortion, gay marriage, embryonic stem cell research, and other such cultural issues? maybe. he does support amnesty for illegals, which isn’t a very popular position to hold in today’s republican party. the bottom line for me is that i want someone who can beat hillary. i just don’t think brownback is that guy.

senator rodham also let slip the worst-kept secret in DC relating to her future plans:

I’m in. And I’m in to win.

Today I am announcing that I will form an exploratory committee to run for president.

And I want you to join me not just for the campaign but for a conversation about the future of our country — about the bold but practical changes we need to overcome six years of Bush administration failures.

I am going to take this conversation directly to the people of America, and I’m starting by inviting all of you to join me in a series of web chats over the next few days.

the great hillary wants to chat with us mortals. she is even allowing one lucky soul to have the chance to write a guest post at her new campaign blog. i am so tempted to write something, but i will leave it to more talented bloggers than myself to take advantage of this priceless opportunity. does she really want to know what the average american thinks? i guess we will find out.

just a word of advice to john edwards and barack obama…watch out for the flying monkeys.

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4 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

amusing

there is so much depressing hard news out there that should be ignored, so that we can focus on something a little more entertaining to those on the right – bashing john kerry.

jonah goldberg:

Don’t let John Kerry run again.

Yes, yes, it’s true: I am biased. I have never been kind to the Brahmin Lurch. After his “botched” joke suggesting that American troops are uneducated losers, I wrote that Kerry “is an awful politician, a human toothache with the charisma of a 19th-century Oxford Latin tutor.” In response, countless readers wrote in to complain that I’d been unfair to Latin tutors.

But balancing out my personal animosity is my professional self-interest. As a conservative columnist, there is nothing I should want more than to see Kerry whack his forehead against the concrete wall of history one more time. Why? Because attacking Kerry is always good copy. And, if my North Star were the GOP’s good fortune, I would light a candle every night at my Lee Atwater shrine in prayer that the Kerry baloney leap once more into the grinder.

After all, he’s the most beatable of Democrats. His political instincts are duller than a prison-cafeteria spork. And never in my lifetime have we seen a presidential candidate with a more thumbless grasp of the way average Americans talk or live…

not bad. read it all here.

even better is the follow-up to that column by mark steyn:

I agree with Jonah’s column on the general ghastliness of the Botoxicated Brahmin, but it’s hard not to see that the Goldberg disparagers also have a point. If Kerry was so unlikeable, why was it so close? If Karl’s Rovebot laboratory had spent years constructing the perfect candidate to run against, it would have looked pretty much like John F Kerry – a vain thin-skinned self-regarding tone-deaf francophile insecure not-quite-blue-blood incoherent anti-war war-hero from a Swiss finishing school with nothing to show for 20 years in the Senate other than getting wrong every foreign policy question of the day and so alien to the habits of his electorate he’s unable to engage in as routine a photo op as eating a hot dog without looking like a Grand Duchess dropping in on the village idiot’s hovel.

ouch. because i know a few democrats (and actually like them), i hope for their sake that kerry gives up any idea that he has of running for president in ’08. it won’t be as close next time if kerry should surprise everybody(including me) and win the democratic nomination. i don’t think that the democrats have anything to worry about here, although i do see a leadership void with the current ’08 candidates that needs to be filled by somebody. who will it be?

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Posted on '08 Election

another question for senator biden

why isn’t biden promoting HIS iraq plan(pdf) now that the dems are in charge? if he really believes that it would work, this would give him a major edge over all the other democratic presidential candidates. kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it? the question for the ’08 contenders should be how they would deal with external threats to our country and what steps they would take to ensure the safety and security of this nation. i’m looking for someone who takes this seriously, understands the nature of the enemy we face, and can sell their strategy for the war on terror…which will not be over when president bush leaves office.biden has the most experience of the dem candidates on foreign policy (and in running for president), but he hasn’t proven that he has any staying power or the charisma that kerry lacked. is he more likable than kerry? well, yes…but that wouldn’t take much. do we really want another east coast liberal as the democratic nominee? maybe the conventional wisdom is overrated in this case. even though i am skeptical about biden’s chances, i still think he would be the smartest pick from the current field of democratic candidates.

take a look at these candidates. hillary is not as strong as the media wants her to be. obama-mania will fade at some point. people will soon remember why they rejected john edwards the first time. kucinich and sharpton (if he should decide to run) will provide some laughs, but not much else. there could be others jumping into the pool, but at the end, it won’t matter much.

this is not to suggest that the republican field has a much stronger group of candidates. there’s something to dislike in all the frontrunners and there are serious questions about each one. for some reason, conservatives hate mccain. right resume, wrong messenger. giuliani is far from a social conservative, but he can claim some successes from his tenure as “america’s mayor” and his leadership after 9/11. he also has previously supported a guest worker program for illegal immigrants, which will earn him no points with the “no amnesty” crowd, and has argued for providing city services for them while mayor of new york city. then there’s romney, who may or may not persuade conservatives that he is conservative enough for them, and he’s a mormon on top of that. i still contend that the question of romney’s conservatism will be more important to republican base voters than his religion. the only reason that his conservatism or lack of it should matter is that the next president could get to make a few judicial nominations, including the supreme court, and it would irk social conservatives if he nominated someone who was pro-choice.

as for the second and third tier possibilities, the most you can say for them is that they definitely are more conservative than the top three contenders (who have actually announced that they are running). what these gentlemen might want to keep in mind is that while you can generate buzz by being single-issue candidates, it would help to be more well-rounded for a presidential run. i like what i have heard from sam brownback and mike huckabee. however, i don’t know whether they could get enough name recognition to be serious contenders. same goes for duncan hunter, although he might be the strongest candidate on this level.

then there’s always the possibility of newt….what will he do? he will have a great deal of influence on the outcome of the ’08 election, even if he decides not to run.

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Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

questions for the next election

from the economist:

The race will be about policy substance above and beyond the backdrop formed by the drama of Iraq. Both parties are confronted with deep questions about their identities. The Republicans have to deal with the consequences of George Bush’s big-government big-foreign-policy conservatism. Should they return to the anti-government policies of Mr Gingrich and his fellow radicals? Or to the “realist” foreign policy of Mr Bush senior? The party will probably have candidates willing to offer vigorous answers to all these questions, from Newt himself to long-standing advocates of realpolitik such as Chuck Hagel, a senator from Nebraska. It will also have candidates who are willing to offer unexpected variations on traditional themes. Mr Giuliani is a hawk on terrorism but a liberal on social issues; Mr McCain has developed an idiosyncratic variety of reform Republicanism.

The Democrats confront equally urgent questions. Should they return to Bill Clinton’s centrist policies? Or do they need to listen to the left? The former first lady will make a formidable champion of Clintonism. But the centre of gravity in her party has shifted dramatically leftwards—the relentless growth in inequality has put a question mark against Mr Clinton’s support for globalisation, and the debacle in Iraq has strengthened the party’s pacifist wing.

yes to anti-government. i guess those brits will just have to call me a radical. there’s no shame in denouncing the welfare state that has made state and federal governments enablers of the lazy. yes, i realize that there are exceptions where government assistance is necessary, but once a bureaucracy is created, it never gets smaller. hurricane katrina taught us a painful lesson — that it will not always be possible to depend on government to take care of us in an emergency situation, no matter which party is running it. the will to confront the enemies we face and to always be vigilant in defending america’s freedoms begins and ends with the american people, not with our government. the united states government can do more than it is doing to protect us, but there will never be any guarantees that there will not be another terrorist attack on US soil.

(that is…unless you assume the opposite of pat robertson’s predictions)

no to realist foreign policy. it didn’t work for bush 41. it won’t work now. oh yeah…and james baker isn’t a genius.

do we want a return to clintonism? was it really all that great the first time we saw it? if we really want to see something similar, then the country will have to kick out the democrats again so we can watch hillary compromise with the new republican congress. that would be fun. no, i’m done watching the clinton approach to foreign and domestic policy. 8 years of that was quite enough, thanks. i think the democrats should try someone new. i still haven’t seen the can’t miss candidate in the democratic field so far.

i think it would be a mistake for the democrats to embrace the far left. that’s never a great strategy to win general elections.

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10 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals, Republicans

just take the field

things aren’t going so well for senator rodham in her possible bid to be our next president. is it possible that she would decide that ’08 is not her year after all? well…no. just because a few polls haven’t gone her way, that doesn’t automatically translate into votes or a nomination for any of the other contenders. that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t take those contenders seriously. there is reason to believe that democrats are not so thrilled about a hillary candidacy, and they are looking for someone else to support in ’08. have they found that someone else in senator barack obama? maybe their savior could be mr. “two americas”.

john edwards and barack obama could pose a threat to hillary’s chances if they can present themselves as that someone else, and perhaps even a more electable someone else. they certainly have the capacity to raise ridiculous amounts of money. edwards is still relatively popular, even though he couldn’t seem to deliver his own state to kerry in ’04. obama has come out of relative obscurity (to the non-political folks at least) to become the next big thing in candidates. i’m always skeptical of that tag because that phrase is used too frequently to have any significant meaning. obama should be wary of all the hype, because eventually the honeymoon will be over and people will start to ask serious questions about his record and whether he has the right experience to hold the highest office in the land.

have we found a worthy democratic nominee in this group? the democrats will get the opportunity to decide that later on this year.

for unabashed mockery of john edwards that you would never find on this blog, enjoy wonkette and scrappleface.

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Posted on '08 Election, Conservatives, Republicans

good point

ramesh ponnuru on romney and the abortion question:

I think we ought to be unsentimental about this question. Those of us who favor Romney’s position on sanctity-of-life issues ought to care less about its sincerity than about its stability. We ought to care about whether he will abandon the position, that is, not whether he truly believes it. Pro-lifers would win very few votes in Congress if every representative voted his conscience, after all. Presumably a politician is more likely to stick with a position if he deeply believes it; but it is too facile to say that having flipped before, a politician will flop again.

As a test case, I offer the first President Bush. He converted from pro-choice to pro-life, and many questioned his sincerity since the conversion dovetailed so perfectly with his political needs. I myself think that he genuinely became a moderate pro-lifer: But does the answer really matter? He was a steady friend of pro-lifers during his administration, vetoing one pro-abortion bill after another.

If a politician can’t project sincerity even when he is insincere—or worse, can’t do it when he really is sincere—then he is probably in the wrong business. The suspicious timing of Romney’s change of mind may end up dooming his candidacy. But in that case, the most likely beneficiary is John McCain, the sincerity of whose own pro-life convictions has been questioned, and we will have to answer the same questions about him.

if pro-lifers want to support a romney candidacy, that’s really the question we need to ask — whether romney’s current position on abortion will change if he is elected. his earlier interviews weren’t helpful in determining the answer to this. i think that that his apparent change of heart is genuine, but i can certainly understand why many social conservatives aren’t convinced.

dean barnett offers a similar defense of romney’s past record here.

social conservatives will never get everything they want. we have had some of the most socially conservative presidents and some of the most liberal-friendly oval office occupants. what has been gained by the social conservatives as a result of their endorsement of certain candidates? abortion is still legal, gay marriage now exists in several states, and congress couldn’t make any progress on that flag-burning amendment. isn’t it possible that the president of the united states might not have the ability to make any major changes, no matter what his personal beliefs may be on these issues?

the same is true for mitt romney. he was lucky to accomplish as much as he did in massachusetts with the opposition he had.

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Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

be careful what you wish for

i will never completely understand why being the president of the united states is such a desirable job. yeah, sure, you get a cool jet to fly around in, and there are quite a few other great perks, but ultimately it’s your job to figure out what to do about iraq. let’s not forget about north korea, china, russia, and iran, other countries we need to keep an eye on. the next president of this country gets to deal with all that, plus he or she will have to figure out how to pass any of their wonderful proposals through congress, while enduring daily abuse by the press and the blogosphere. yep…that’s a job i really want.

of course, if a candidate successfully navigates the gauntlet — that is, the rough-and-tumble campaign for the nomination of their party– and then wins the general election, that does deserve some kind of reward. not every potential candidate has this ability. does obama have it? that is yet to be determined. he hasn’t faced a serious challenge of the type that he will face if he goes head to head with hillary clinton in a fight to be the democrats’ presidential candidate in ’08.

barack obama’s appeal is not so much about who he is, but it is also about who he is not. he’s the anti-hillary. he’s a fresh face with none of the political baggage that she carries. he looks like such a charming guy, and speaks to people from the heart, and it could be easy to forget that his record on social issues isn’t much different from senator clinton’s. democrats aren’t that sold on hillary, and they are actively looking for other alternatives. john fund makes that point here.

i think that the honeymoon will be over for obama when people start to take a harder look at his record, because what they will find out is that there is more to the guy than his positive press clippings and fawning media coverage.

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