Posted on Republicans

trust no one

We can now take offshore drilling off of the table as an issue Republicans and John McCain can use to hammer the Democrats in the general election.  Any serious attempt to address our energy costs by adding offshore drilling to the mix has been sabotaged by five Republicans, including my other senator Lindsey Graham.  Hope they are proud of themselves for their bipartisan compromise with the Democrats, because it came at a huge price.  The base will be angry about this, and it will hurt McCain.  My guess is that we will still fall in line behind McCain, because that’s the only way to stop Barack Obama.

Here’s how this happened:

And so, last Friday, in stumbled Sens. Lindsey Graham, John Thune, Saxby Chambliss, Bob Corker and Johnny Isakson — alongside five Senate Democrats. This “Gang of 10” announced a “sweeping” and “bipartisan” energy plan to break Washington’s energy “stalemate.” What they did was throw every vulnerable Democrat, and Mr. Obama, a life preserver.

That’s because the plan is a Democratic giveaway. New production on offshore federal lands is left to state legislatures, and then in only four coastal states. The regulatory hurdles are huge. And the bill bars drilling within 50 miles of the coast — putting off limits some of the most productive areas. Alaska’s oil-rich Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is still a no-go.

The highlight is instead $84 billion in tax credits, subsidies and federal handouts for alternative fuels and renewables. The Gang of 10 intends to pay for all this in part by raising taxes on . . . oil companies! The Sierra Club couldn’t have penned it better. And so the Republican Five has potentially given antidrilling Democrats the political cover they need to neutralize energy through November.

Heck of a job, Senators.  Keep up the good work.  Don’t think we will forget this after November.

Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals, Republicans

dnc math

So if 1.3 million dollars in contributions from big oil means that John McCain is “in the pocket of big oil”, then what does Barack’s $400,000 from big oil mean?  Apparently nothing if you’re the DNC or the average Democrat.  Jake Tapper also mentions that employees of big oil individually have given slightly more money to Obama than to McCain.  But that doesn’t matter either because big oil money is only bad if the recipient is a Republican.  I challenge the Democrats to provide examples of McCain writing policy to support the interests of big oil.  I don’t think they have any.  McCain even voted against President Bush’s big energy bill, because he said that it provided too much in the way of corporate tax breaks for the oil/gas industry.   It’s much easier to connect Bush/Cheney to big oil than it is to make the same claim about John McCain.

And if Barack Obama is so concerned about taking money from big oil, then maybe he should return all the contributions that he has received from them.  He also might want to explain why he voted for Bush’s energy bill if it’s not just because of its support for alternative energy sources.

Senator McCain has responded to this criticism by Senator Obama by saying this:

I think Senator Obama might be a little bit confused. Yesterday, he accused me of having President Bush’s policies on energy. That’s odd because he voted for the President’s energy bill and I voted against it. I voted against it, had $2.8 billion in corporate welfare to Big Oil companies, and they’re already making record profits, as you know. Senator Obama voted for that bill and its Big Oil giveaways. I know he hasn’t been in the Senate that long, but even in the real world, voting for something means you support it and voting against something means you oppose it.

Exactly right.  The Senate vote on the energy bill wasn’t even close.  Obama could have voted against it without much political fallout, because it would have passed without his vote.  Does the DNC really want to go through the list of Dems who have received fat corporate contributions from big oil (or from big ethanol)?  Fair is fair.  They can list all the Republicans “in the pocket” of big oil, and we can make our own list of Dems, and then let the American people decide whose hands are clean here.  The answer is neither party.  But this is a very shallow case to make against McCain.  The only reason this would matter is if he were like Ted Stevens and he had designated earmarks or wrote legislation for his own financial benefit.  He’s not and he hasn’t.  So let’s move on to the next contrived grievance, ok?

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

mccain is jealous

Maureen Dowd, New York Times columnist and self-appointed expert on human behavior, says that’s the reason McCain has been acting so mean toward poor Barack Obama and hitting him with those frivolous ads.

She says:

Now John McCain is pea-green with envy. That’s the only explanation for why a man who prides himself on honor, a man who vowed not to take the low road in the campaign, having been mugged by W. and Rove in South Carolina in 2000, is engaging in a festival of juvenilia.

The Arizona senator who built his reputation on being a brave proponent of big solutions is running a schoolyard campaign about tire gauges and Paris Hilton, childishly accusing his opponent of being too serious, too popular and not patriotic enough.

Sure.  That’s it.  McCain is jealous of Barack Obama, and wishes he were as popular as the Senator from Illinois.  That’s not quite it…but she’s in the neighborhood.  McCain is resentful of Obama, just the way he was of Mitt Romney during the Republican primary.  McCain thinks that he is entitled to the presidency because he has earned it, and he doesn’t view Obama as worthy of the job.  He seems to believe that Senator Obama doesn’t deserve to be that close to becoming President of the United States without a long record of public service or a military record.  Senator McCain has struggled through a few fierce political battles in addition to his well-publicized captivity in Vietnam.  The press has now turned their backs on him in favor of Senator Obama.  Conservatives are agnostic about his candidacy, even though they are aware of the risks of embracing any other alternative choice.

It’s hard being John McCain.  He has lost the media love.  His opponent is popular and has drawn quite a few large crowds.  In addition to that, the Republican brand has been badly damaged by scandal and mismanagement in Congress, and he must run against them and the sitting Republican president.  Tough environment.  No wonder McCain is a little frustrated with Barack Obama and the media circus surrounding him.

Some of his ads were better than others.  I wasn’t thrilled with the ‘celeb’ ad, but it asked the right question: Is Barack Obama ready to lead?  That’s the area of the sharpest contrast with McCain, and even with the flawed execution of that message, people are starting to understand Barack’s limitations as a candidate.  Why else would this race be too close to call in early August?

Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals, Republicans

the one

Sometimes Barack unknowingly descends into self-parody, and all John McCain and my fellow Republicans are trying to do is to help him set more realistic expectations for himself.  The reason many of McCain’s ads are about Barack is because that’s the decision the voters are making here — whether Senator Obama is ready to lead and whether he has the best solutions for the country.    That’s the question McCain is asking in this ad, and in the ‘celeb’ ad.  John McCain has gone out of his way to avoid anything that could even remotely be considered racist or anything playing into the stereotype of folks who still believe that Obama is a Muslim.  If Senator Obama really wants us to stop talking about his race, then he should stop bringing it up.

I know there are some random people who want our main objection to Barack to be about that, or about the rumor that he is secretly a scary Muslim, but this has never been the position of the McCain campaign.  McCain has thrown people under his bus for just using Barack’s middle name.  How can Senator Obama honestly say that all this talk is McCain’s fault?  I think the senator needs to get a thicker skin, or he will never survive 4-8 years in the White House.

2 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Republicans

frum’s unconventional idea

David Frum wrote an article last week for Opinion Journal that is worthy of discussion regarding the party conventions of the Democrats and Republicans  — he suggests that they would be more useful and interesting if we got rid of the media circus and the two major presidential candidates.

He says:

But what if the journalists were absent? Not because they were banned, but because they did not bother to show up?

Party conventions could then discover a new purpose as showcases for emerging talent. With the candidate speaking in front of Mount Rushmore or wherever, the party’s next generation and second-tier figures could regain the convention microphones that have been progressively removed from them over the past three decades.

Sitting governors could be given platforms to detail their records in their states. Promising younger officials could participate in panel discussions and debates — and take questions from party members across the country. Right now, the parties are too busy staging a show for the whole country to tolerate any risk that some second-tier political figure might bore the audience or stumble into some off-message mistake. But with the press voluntarily absent and the voting public’s attention fixed elsewhere, mistakes would become less disastrous.

There is one main reason why I believe this could be a good idea.  I can’t speak for the Democratic side of things, but the Republican farm team has been stuck in Single A ball.  We haven’t done enough development of promising local talent, and rising regional stars like Governors Jindal and Palin need more exposure to the rest of the party as well as bulking up their resumes / achievements for future stardom.  That’s why we are stuck with the presidential / vice presidential prospects we have.   There aren’t many quality conservative prospects out there who are willing to take on the challenge of running for president. If we start now with our recruiting and training process, maybe in 4-8 years we will have someone that conservatives AND the rest of the party can support. It’s alarming how much better the Democrats have become at recruiting good young talent in local races to take seats from the Republican incumbents.  We need to match and exceed their efforts to keep our party competitive for the long term.

It’s a shame this would never happen, because the media loves having something big to talk about, and the two political parties don’t have much of an incentive to avoid all the free publicity gained by these televised events.  It would be too much of a risk for the parties and the media to take, and we know how risk-adverse they both are — but maybe we can find alternative ways to achieve the same objectives.

4 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

the ‘s’ word

Investor’s Business Daily is brave enough to go there — calling Barack Obama’s Global Poverty Act suspiciously similar to a government redistribution of US taxpayer wealth.  Well, technically they use the ‘s’ word.  Socialism. That’s a heavy charge, and it’s one that needs to be backed up with specific examples.  This op-ed makes a convincing case that the Global Poverty Act could qualify as a socialist proposal.

While I know that one example of bad policy wouldn’t brand someone like Barack with the socialist label, it’s troubling that this Global Poverty Act would redistribute our wealth to those in other countries.  We wouldn’t even benefit from all this increased spending, unless international good will can be bought with this high price.  That premise is highly questionable.  If the world’s affection can be bought with enough foreign aid money, we should have the receipt for it already.

Here’s how Investor’s Business Daily first described this bill:

Obama’s costly, dangerous and altogether bad bill (S. 2433), which could come up in the Senate any day, is called the Global Poverty Act. It would commit U.S. taxpayers to spend 0.7% of our gross domestic product on foreign handouts, which is at least $30 billion over and above the exorbitant and wasted sums we already give away overseas.

The bipartisan bill would require the president “to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to further the U.S. foreign policy objective of promoting the reduction of global poverty, the elimination of extreme global poverty and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by one-half the proportion of people worldwide, between 1990 and 2015, who live on less than $1 per day.”

To say that the United States government has far exceeded its Consititutional mandate would be understating the case.  Charity shouldn’t (and doesn’t) begin and end with the federal government.  Americans are generous people.  Through non-profit charitable organizations and our own churches, we are reaching out to people here in this country and around the world, and it’s having an impact.  This shouldn’t be a role of the federal government.  That’s the flaw in this legislation — requiring United States taxpayers to subsidize some mandate thrown down by the U.N. and the international community.  The financial obligation of the federal government should be first and foremost to the citizens of the United States — not to the world community or the U.N.

Continue reading →

1 Comment Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

barack and michelle’s excellent adventure

If you want to read Barack’s Berlin speech, go here.  No average citizen of the world gets to make that speech.  I can’t call Chancellor Merkel and book time to speak to the people of Germany in a historic place.  So it’s somewhat disingenuous of Obama to insist that he has this opportunity to speak in Berlin and that it has nothing to do with being a candidate for President. There are a few problems with what Obama had to say,  but the bigger problem I have is with his whole European tour.   The Obama campaign is taking a huge risk by keeping their candidate off of the domestic campaign trail to meet with all of these world leaders and to press the flesh with his European fans and his buddies in the media.  No doubt there is huge press that goes with a world tour, as well as much adulation from foreigners because they know he won’t be a “cowboy” like George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan.  But is this the way to win an American election?

Greatness and legacy are not borrowed by copying phrases or words.  They are earned, and Barack has done nothing to claim the mantle of either Ronald Reagan or JFK.  That’s why the comparison of Barack’s speech to similar speeches made by these two men is inaccurate.  Both Reagan and JFK said stuff that was unpopular at the time, and didn’t apologize for it.  When was the last time Barack said something unpopular that he hasn’t apologized for?   He doesn’t admit mistakes very often. (Does this sound like anyone the left has consistently hammered the past 7 years or so?)  Most importantly, both men had been elected by the people of the United States to speak on their behalf and to shape the foreign policy of this country.    Barack Obama has no such mandate from us.  He hasn’t been elected yet, and he and his advisors would do well to remember this.

For the must-read of the weekend, check out Gerard Baker’s absolute skewering and mockery of Barack Obama.  It’s hilarious.

4 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Conservatives, Republicans

demint to obama: you’ve got mail

Have I mentioned lately how much I love Senator DeMint?

Senator Jim DeMint writes to Obama requesting hearings on Afghanistan(pdf here — h/t Sister Toldjah):

Dear Senator Obama,

In the coming days, I understand you will travel to Afghanistan for the first time and visit with a few of our European partners.  Like my travels to these regions, I trust this trip will afford you a unique opportunity to see the facts on the ground firsthand and witness the work of our brave men and women who sacrifice so much to secure our freedom.

In February, I had the privilege of visiting and talking with our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.  These brave Americans serve their country with incredible passion, pride and courage.  As you know, NATO’s International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) plays an integral part in the current operations and reconstruction of Afghanistan.

There are concerns about the imbalance between some European nations, their level of commitment to the fight in Afghanistan, and caveats these nations place on their forces in theater.  I trust you will become well acquainted with these issues.  The Bush Administration has worked hard to maintain and increase the level of forces our European allies have committed to the fight.

However, despite these successes, I am concerned our Subcommittee has not held any hearings on these issues over the last two years.  With oversight of NATO relations and its role in Afghanistan, I believe it is time for us to focus closely on these issues. As Ranking Member of your Subcommittee on European Affairs, I would welcome a chance to hold a hearing on NATO’s mission in Afghanistan upon your return.

The success of Afghanistan is critical to the future of NATO and vital to our efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban.  As the situation in Afghanistan grows more tense, it is time for us to hold a hearing on the mission there. I look forward to working with you to schedule this hearing.

While it’s nice to see that Senator Obama recognizes the importance of sending more troops in to stabilize Afghanistan, it’s also fair to point out that he hasn’t exactly made Afghanistan a top priority until now. Senator DeMint draws attention to this without being nasty about it, and the indirect reply to DeMint’s letter is that his letter was “politically motivated“.   If DeMint is on McCain’s VP shortlist, that’s news to all of us.  (I wish that this was true, but it’s probably not.)  He raises a legitimate question and Obama should give a straight answer to it.  I can buy the argument that Obama’s subcommittee might not be the most appropriate venue for Afghanistan hearings, but why not just say that, instead of taking a shot at DeMint?

Senator Joe Biden attempts to rescue Obama by pointing that out, and he is unsuccessful. As Sister Toldjah points out in her post,  Senator Biden’s defense of Obama falls flat because Biden himself had previously criticized Obama for not holding hearings on Afghanistan. Oops.

Biden does deserve some credit here — he has been consistent in requesting a “surge” of troops for Afghanistan.  That’s one thing that the press release quoted by Politico brings into sharp focus.  I’m surprised that Joe Biden hasn’t brought this up very often.  Why are Barack Obama and the rest of the Democrats so convinced that adding additional military personnel in Afghanistan would achieve the desired objective?  After all, they aren’t even sure that that the Bush-Petraeus-McCain strategy of sending additional troops worked in Iraq.  Afghanistan is far less stable than Iraq.  Might they want to focus more on the all-important political objectives before sending in the brute force?  It’s a puzzler.

9 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Republicans

bad advice

Republicans would be wise to ignore the advice of Dick Morris, who sometimes appears to be a sleeper agent for the opposition. When he’s wrong about something — such as the Condi-Hillary matchup he wrote a book about — he is SPECTACULARLY wrong.  He tries to make the case against Mitt Romney as a VP choice, and this part makes some degree of sense to me.  But the alternatives he presents are completely unacceptable to conservatives — including Mike Huckabee.  Morris thinks that he understands what conservatives want, when in fact he is absolutely clueless about that.   He continues to hype Colin Powell, Condi Rice, and Joe Lieberman as VP choices, presumably because this demonstrates McCain’s bipartisanship or something.  This would only serve to remind conservatives of something we see as a McCain weakness. Yeah…that’s a winner of an idea.

All of these options would be more of a mistake than choosing Mitt Romney.    He says that choosing Powell or Rice would give the choice a “WOW” factor.  “WOW” factors are just as overrated as most of Morris’ advice.  If McCain really cares about what conservatives want (and there isn’t much indication that he does), then he needs to look outside of Morris’ preferred circle of VP options, and disregard most of the media’s shortlist as well.

Who’s my pick?  If we rule out Palin and Jindal (and we have to, since they aren’t credible as the next in line to the Presidency just yet),  I have to echo the suggestion of some other conservative blogs and throw former Congresscritter and FNC guest host John Kasich into the mix.   If we must pick someone from Ohio, why not someone most conservatives already know from TV?  He’s a solid fiscal conservative and an effective defender of our worldview, and I would love to see him mix it up with Obama’s VP pick.  That debate would be very watchable.  Picking a relative unknown like Rob Portman doesn’t deliver Ohio for McCain.  Not that picking Kasich would necessarily accomplish that, but it certainly would have more of Morris’ famed “WOW” factor for conservatives than a Portman pick would.

I’m pessimistic about McCain’s inclination to pick someone who thrills conservatives, but I can settle for his choice — as long as he ignores Dick Morris’ picks and doesn’t pick his BFF Lindsey Graham.  Nobody really knows what McCain will do with his VP pick, so the best approach right now is to ignore most of the speculation, and wait to see what happens.

1 Comment Posted on Random Musings

republican socialism?

Bet you haven’t heard that term before.

Why does it seem to me that all Washington ever seems to talk about these days is bailouts? Bailout Freddie Mac. Bailout Fannie Mae. Bailout Wall Street. Bailout homeowners. Is it possible in America today that no one is allowed to fail?

You know, Phil Gramm was right. We are a nation of whiners. No one wants to believe that failure is an option anymore. Whatever happened to personal responsibility? Or learning from your mistakes? Or going through transformative difficulties that just might change your life and your behavior? But it seems like failure is off the board nowadays and that it’s government’s job to rescue everybody.

Whatever happened to the philosophy of Friedrich Hayek, the great free-market economist and Nobel Prize winner, who said the great thing about capitalism is the freedom to succeed beyond your wildest dreams, but that there is also the freedom to fail? I believe Hayek once argued that if he had to choose between success and failure, failure is more important in terms of preserving the free-market system.

Of course, the great thing about America is that you can fail many times, pick yourself up, keep on trying, and then succeed beyond your wildest dreams. But this whole process is being subverted by the political attitude that no one must ever be allowed to fail. I don’t like it. It’s socialism, isn’t it? Perhaps it’s big-government socialism. Or maybe it’s corporate socialism. Or maybe (with Fan and Fred) it’s Republican socialism.

No, I guess it’s really bipartisan socialism.

Larry Kudlow

I’m with him.  Failure’s a part of the process — for the free market and for all of us as individuals.    We learn from setbacks, and so does private industry.  Businesses like Radio Shack that were originally computer and electronic parts stores have now become places where you can buy cell phones and iPod accessories.  They adapted and changed their product lineup to respond to the demands of the free market.  When government interferes in this adjustment process by subsidizing or bailing out private industry, there’s less incentive to adjust and change what’s not working.

In the case of Fannie and Freddie, the government must step in here, because the results of letting it fail would be disastrous for the economy.  But this is a bad precedent to set, and I hope that this is where the federal government finally draws the line.