From 52 to 48 With Love

This is sweet.

The Right Wing Sits Shivah

Michelle Malkin urges conservatives to gird their loins.

"There is no time to lick wounds, point fingers, and wallow in post-election mud."

Jeff Flakes blazes a way out of the wilderness.

"I suggest that we return to first principles. "

Tom Delay thinks money is the answer.

"In 2012, Mr. Obama -- whether as an incumbent or a seasoned veteran challenger -- will no doubt raise more than $1 billion for his campaign conglomerate. Conservatism's leading donors must look beyond contributing only to traditional channels like the RNC or campaign committees, and open up to also funding outside organizations that can do what the Democrats' Shadow Party is already doing."

Rich Lowry suggests minimizing social issues in favor of kitchen table concerns.

"The GOP's cultural conservatism is an asset so long as it's not seen as an attempt to distract voters from other issues that they care about, such as the economy. Connecting better on the economy and middle-class pocketbook and quality-of-life issues will go a long way toward alleviating the troubles the GOP had in reaching moderates, suburbanites and even Latinos this year."

Fred Barnes says put on a happy face.

"We've got to be happy warriors," he says. "We've got to stop being the angry white guy party."

The End of the Election

The Republicans are toast.

At nine o'clock, Fox called the election for Obama. Arizona of all places is still too close to call. If McCain's home state goes blue, the Republicans should either hold hands and jump off Camelback Mountain into a deep chasm or go into a more profitable profession such as telemarketing.

I thrilled to the sight of the massive crowds in my old Chicago stomping grounds. This moment could be a turning point for the country, as important as when Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan became president. It is both a mandate for change and a rebuke to one of the worst presidents America has ever had.

The kids in my boys' school voted in the mock elections overwhelmingly for McCain. They're going to have to walk on eggshells to prevent a Republican hissy fit from exploding from their fellow students.

I pondered Karl Rove's characterization that this nation is "center-right". I'm not sure what that even means. It's like saying that the average height of everyone is average-above average. It seems to me that Obama's has expressed ideas that are by now by definition the center, and it is the Republicans that have lost their way. I also think that Obama is smart enough not to make the same mistake that President Clinton made in his first term by trying to unfold a program such as national health care that the nation cannot accept. My guess is that they will want to consolidate and expand their base of power by looking for pragmatic solutions that benefit the majority of Americans, rather than playing to their radical wing.

For better or for worse, however, the Democratic's radical wing doesn't look so radical in view of what has happened in the last eight years. So, I think there will be significant changes, but not the kind of change that appeals to or works for just 50.01 percent of America.

The Tipping Point

Exactly what event or piece of information finally made you decide that you should vote for one candidate over another or against one candidate over another?

Was it something that happened before the race began, such as 9/11 or the Iraq war, or was it something that happened during the race, such as an editorial or the debates?

I'm curious as to how you were finally persuaded or what persuaded you on how to vote.

Responses

Ten Reasons Conservatives Should Vote For Obama

Andrew Sullivan publishes one of my favorite blogs, "The Daily Dish". Sullivan crisply summerizes the epitomological challenge for all citizen-journalists by quoting George Orwell: "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constrant struggle."

Here he delineates the conservative case for voting for Obama.

10. A body blow to racial identity politics. An end to the era of Jesse Jackson in black America.

9. Less debt. Yes, Obama will raise taxes on those earning over a quarter of a million. And he will spend on healthcare, Iraq, Afghanistan and the environment. But so will McCain. He plans more spending on health, the environment and won't touch defense of entitlements. And his refusal to touch taxes means an extra $4 trillion in debt over the massive increase presided over by Bush. And the CBO estimates that McCain's plans will add more to the debt over four years than Obama's. Fiscal conservatives have a clear choice.

8. A return to realism and prudence in foreign policy. Obama has consistently cited the foreign policy of George H. W. Bush as his inspiration. McCain's knee-jerk reaction to the Georgian conflict, his commitment to stay in Iraq indefinitely, and his brinksmanship over Iran's nuclear ambitions make him a far riskier choice for conservatives. The choice between Obama and McCain is like the choice between George H.W. Bush's first term and George W.'s.

7. An ability to understand the difference between listening to generals and delegating foreign policy to them.

6. Temperament. Obama has the coolest, calmest demeanor of any president since Eisenhower. Conservatism values that kind of constancy, especially compared with the hot-headed, irrational impulsiveness of McCain.

5. Faith. Obama's fusion of Christianity and reason, his non-fundamentalist faith, is a critical bridge between the new atheism and the new Christianism.

4. A truce in the culture war. Obama takes us past the debilitating boomer warfare that has raged since the 1960s. Nothing has distorted our politics so gravely; nothing has made a rational politics more elusive.

3. Two words: President Palin.

2. Conservative reform. Until conservatism can get a distance from the big-spending, privacy-busting, debt-ridden, crony-laden, fundamentalist, intolerant, incompetent and arrogant faux conservatism of the Bush-Cheney years, it will never regain a coherent message to actually govern this country again. The survival of conservatism requires a temporary eclipse of today's Republicanism. Losing would be the best thing to happen to conservatism since 1964. Back then, conservatives lost in a landslide for the right reasons. Now, Republicans are losing in a landslide for the wrong reasons.

1. The War Against Islamist terror. The strategy deployed by Bush and Cheney has failed. It has failed to destroy al Qaeda, except in a country, Iraq, where their presence was minimal before the US invasion. It has failed to bring any of the terrorists to justice, instead creating the excrescence of Gitmo, torture, secret sites, and the collapse of America's reputation abroad. It has empowered Iran, allowed al Qaeda to regroup in Pakistan, made the next vast generation of Muslims loathe America, and imperiled our alliances. We need smarter leadership of the war: balancing force with diplomacy, hard power with better p.r., deploying strategy rather than mere tactics, and self-confidence rather than a bunker mentality.

Those conservatives who remain convinced, as I do, that Islamist terror remains the greatest threat to the West cannot risk a perpetuation of the failed Manichean worldview of the past eight years, and cannot risk the possibility of McCain making rash decisions in the middle of a potentially catastrophic global conflict. If you are serious about the war on terror and believe it is a war we have to win, the only serious candidate is Barack Obama.


http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/10/the-top-ten-rea.html

Is Obama God's Choice?

Barbaric Obama, God's choice?

By Marsha WestI have a sign in my office that asks the question: If you were accused of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to prove it?"I am a Christian" Barack Obama proclaims. But is there enough evidence to prove it?.

In 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court granted Americans a constitutional right to destroy human life in the womb. Roe v. Wade is one of the most divisive issues of our time. The high court's decision gave American women the "right to choose" to terminate a human life.The pressing question is, How should Catholics and Protestants think about the issue of abortion? Somewhere around 75% of Americans say they are Christians. So it is reasonable to assume that a large number of "Christians" will go to the polls in November and vote for Sen. Barack Obama. Princeton professor Robert P. George calls Sen. Obama "the most extreme pro-abortion candidate ever to seek the office of President of the United States," and "the most extreme pro-abortion member of the United States Senate." Moreover, Obama is "the most extreme pro-abortion legislator ever to serve in either house of the United States Congress."

http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/mwest/081020

You are horrified at the "butchery" of a child get aborted in the first trimester. Do you have as much horror at a child getting aborted in his 61st trimester-- by dying as a soldier in an unnecessary war in Iraq?

Is Bush a Christian? Is McCain a Christian? Are you a Christian?

I know that Bush, McCain, and you believe you are Christians and sometimes say or do ostensibly "Christian" things-- go to church, pray, and vote Republican. But on what basis should I believe that any of you are Christians, especially when I see so much vileness and hate from folks such as you that has caused so much pain to so many people all over the world?

Based on the evidence that I see, I would say that Obama is indeed God's choice, and you will need to deal to come to terms with that as best as you can.

Predicted: The Obama Landslide

By every metric, the Democrat's presidential campaign looks as if it is headed for the upper deck.

McCain's Plan B: A Race War

"A black man did it."



"A black man did it."

Vulgar Candidates

Some blame the Viet Cong for McCain's short fuse.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpsDIjoI1pY

Hillary also isn't so high toned.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=39329

Hillary's Truth

I watched a PBS documentary last night entitled Bush's War. It was basically a chronology of our five year adventure in Iraq with emphasis on how policy makers drove policy and how it mutated over the years. Overarching the entire conflict has been the issue of veracity-- seeking out the truth and telling the truth, no matter how hard or difficult that process may be. It is this capacity that I believe is the most important quality a president can have as it is the bedrock of a president's wisdom and judgment.

Today, George Bush still retains affection among many Americans. However, simultaneously, most Americans do not consider his view of reality accurate or truthful. The same is true with Hillary, as we see in the redactions of her White House papers and in her account of her Bosnia trip, an itinerary of which we could imagine as follows:

9.05 AM Helicopter lands
9:06 AM Run and dodge bullets.
9:08 AM Stop and smile as eight year old girl reads poem
9:10 AM Run and dodge more bullets

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BfNqhV5hg4

I could forgive a few such incidents like this. Unfortunately, Hillary and Bill both have a well-earned repoutation of dissembling for as long as they have been in the public arena, as Carl Bernstein and Frank Rich remind us.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-bernstein/hillary-clinton-truth-or_b_93523.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/opinion/30rich.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

I'm not sure I want to spend the next four to eight years parsing sentences trying to discern what the truth is in distinction to what her truth is.

Obama's shaky handling of the Reverand Wright controversy has also eroded his credability. But his race speech was impressive, and for once I saw a politician talk as one adult to another, instead of unbundling focus-tested platitudes. He comes across to me as someone who tries to express what he believes as honestly as he can without triagulating or pandering. McCain has also had his moments that fall short of frankness. However, when he told the unemployed in Michican not to expect to see their off-shored jobs returned and when he said that we American may be in Iraq for another 95 years, perhaps hewas being candid, more so than his handlers would have liked. Unfortunately, the serial lies of Bush and his administration is McCain's cross to bear during this election cycle, and it will probably mean his defeat, despite his personal probity.

Issues come and go. But at the end of the day, it's character that matters and it's character that is destiny.

A Distraction of a Distraction

What better way is there to neutralize a distraction than with another distraction?





Perhaps the fog of divisiveness and dirty tricks will lift and we can get back to talking about war and the economy. But, somehow, I doubt it. The former is too much fun.

Is Hillary Toast?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=aGibqe.b3IlY&refer=home

"Polls show the Illinois senator has overcome Clinton's Texas lead, and a win may drive the former first lady and once front-runner out of the race.

"Many Democrats argue that even if the fight goes on, the eventual nominee will be strengthened by a hard-fought battle. And Democrats' desire to end Republican control of the White House will unite the party no matter who prevails, they say.

"Obama has 1,127.5 pledged delegates to Clinton's 1,007.5, according to The Green Papers, a nonpartisan Web site, while NBC News calculates that Obama has 1,194 delegates to Clinton's 1,037. It will take 2,025 delegates to secure the nomination."

Vote For Change

Vote for Obama!

Vote for McCain!

The Empire Strikes Back

Perhaps due to the pre-election polls, I was seduced into believing that Obama would blow away Clinton. I was wrong. However, the race has just begun. And as always, the voters got it right. Both candidates need to be vetted much more. It is looking however to be an Obama-Clinton race, and I suspect that will be the eventual Democratic ticket.

On the Republican side, McCain has prevailed. However, I think his age and objections by many social conservatives especially from the south may make future victories less likely. I suspect Thompson will drop out immediately after the South Carolina primary. Guiliani is expecting to come alive in Florida, but he may have missed the train by that time. I think Huckabee will be on the Republican ticket, but only assuming that Romney is not as well. I don't think that combinaiton will work because of the bad blood between them.

These are exciting times. America is in a time of transition, and anything could happen between now and November.

The Day Hillary Lost

The question of why Hillary Clinton lost in Iowa can be answered by asking when did Hillary lose.

The date: November 1st, 2007. The place: Wellesley College, Massachusetts.

It was not the substance of her remarks. Clinton gave a ho-hum speach to her adoring sisters that women have always had to fight discrimination in career advancement.

It was the fact that Clinton decided to take a premature victory lap on this all-woman's campus. For the first time, I saw that that her authentic soul is one of confrontational radicalism. This surely is surely at odds with the unifying and transcending message that Obama proclaims.

It may well be true her her undergraduate years at this prepared her to "compete in the all boys' club of presidential politics." But Clinton's campaign strategy of assuming that the Democrats will crown her before competing against the Republican nominee has made her to triangulate public policies that most Republicans and Democrats reject. Republicans distrust her war policy and Democrats despise her votes in support of the president's war policy.

Hillary Clinton's drive for power today echos the rhetoric of Hillary Rodham, who addressed Wellesley College in her commencement address in 1969.

"We're not interested in social reconstruction; it's human reconstruction," Hillary said then. "Words have a funny way of trapping our minds on the way to our tongues but there are necessary means even in this multi-media age for attempting to come to grasps with some of the inarticulate maybe even inarticulable things that we're feeling. We are, all of us, exploring a world that none of us even understands and attempting to create within that uncertainty. We're searching for more immediate, ecstatic and penetrating mode of living. And so our questions, our questions about our institutions, about our colleges, about our churches, about our government continue."

The questions surely continue. But what are Hillary's answers? Issues come and go, but during her undergraduate years, Hillary defined the principles that would animate her politics a generation later. To fulfull her Bachelor of Arts degree, Hillary's thesis was “There is Only the Fight.” It praises the work of radical activist Saul Alinsky, a radical who epitomized the politics of personal destruction that she has condemned. The spirit of the times may have shifted so that divisive politics canniot work. Neverthless, I predict Hillary will use these tactics to try to prevail against Obama and others-- mass mobilization, framing the issues and labeling adversaries, working through proxies, and publishing opposition research.

Unlike Obama, who resists defining himself as Jessie Jackson did in terms of race, Clinton continue to define herself in terms of gender. I see that from this blog entry from Ona Keller, a president of the Wellesley College Democrats.

http://bodypolitik.org/2007/11/02/clintons-wellesley-event-full-of-you-go-girl-flavor-but-imports-boys-and-sidelines-girls/

"Patti Solis Doyle, Clinton’s campaign manager, described Clinton as "one strong woman" and observed that “on that stage in Philadelphia, we saw six against one” as Clinton’s “opponents tried a whole host of attacks on Hillary.”

"Clinton’s great pride in Wellesley women was not reflected in the students who stood on the stage behind her. Male students from surrounding schools were imported, while Wellesley students active in the Clinton campaign and the College Democrats were denied seats on stage.

"If Clinton believes that Wellesley prepared her for the tough battles against sexism, why were Y chromosomes featured so prominently behind her at Thursday’s event?"

Ona Keller

XX Chromosome

Let's reflect on these silly and sexist words and consider how emblematic it is of Hillary's desire to be president. That people are merely chromosomes and that Jack, Bill, and Mike are a bunch of Y chromosomes strikes me as a level of reductionism that is dehumanizing to the extreme. Futhermore, that the tough battles against sexism can only be fought by people with a certain kind of anatomy is ignorant and false. It is this kind of divisiveness that is indicative of Hillary Clinton and her campaign to be our next president. And it is why she will not be our next president.

Onward Christian Soldiers

Marching as to war.

http://www.iowacaucusresults.com/

Senator Barack Obama : 37.55%
Senator John Edwards : 29.86%
Senator Hillary Clinton : 29.40%
Governor Bill Richardson : 2.09%
Senator Joe Biden : 0.94%
Uncommitted : 0.13%
Senator Chris Dodd : 0.02%

Precincts Reporting: 1722 of 1781 (Percentages are State Delegate Equivalents.)

I am not amused.

Iowa Caucus Predictions

I'm going out on a limb here by making the following predictions on how the candidates will do in Iowa tomorrow.

The wild card is weather. Bad weather will favor candidates with the deepest pockets and the best organization, such as Romney and Clinton. On the flip side, another wild card is the stock market. Another bad day on the exchange could send voters away from the status quo candidates, such as Romney and Clinton, to the populists, such as Huckabee and Edwards.

Republican

1st Place: Mike Huckabee
2nd Place: Mitt Romney
3rd Place: Fred Thompson
4th Place: John McCain

Democrat

1st Place: Barack Obama
2nd Place: John Edwards
3rd Place: Hillary Clinton
4th Place: Bill Richardson

Anti-GOP Posters and Slogans

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/a-huffpost-project-poste_b_72899.html

The result is three powerful posters that simply but graphically capture the lunacy of the modern GOP. "Here is my thinking," Silverstein told me, "What if we could TiVo the last six-plus years and play them back - without comment -- for the American people, and let them connect the dots? It's not a pretty picture." Silverstein's take away message is uncluttered and direct: "Haven't we had enough? Democrats '08."

Some more comments:

W.RATHFUL WEAKLING
W.OEFUL FAKE
W.ORTHLESS SON
W.ILLFUL LIAR
W.RETCHED FAILURE
W.ARRANTLESS SNOOP
W.ORSE PRESIDENT EVER

SLOGANS

The Pottery Barn Rule
Reality-Based Community Faith-Based Presidency
The CEO President
The One Percent Doctrine
Animal House in the West Wing
I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it.
It is my style. New Orleans Evacuees: This is working very well for them.
Just a goddamned piece of paper.

EVENTS

A blind man in a room full of deaf people.
Office of Special Plans

http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/7756/imagemsq5.jpg