The American Spectator

The Tin Ear Republicans Don't Need

Posted by J. Peter Freire on 12.27.08 @ 1:44PM

On Wednesday this little gem from RNC chair candidate Chip Saltsman made it into my email account, in addition to being delivered to all kinds of Republican committeepeople.

Attached to it, apparently, was a copy of a 41-track CD including the Paul Shanklin hit "Barack The Magic Negro" and the "Star Spanglish Banner." These songs had originally premiered on Rush Limbaugh's show, the former satirizing an L.A. Times column that more earnestly held the same name.

While Saltsman is defending the CD as just a joke, it doesn't quite stand up to his answer to question number 8 on the Republican committeeman Morton Blackwell's questionnaire:

The fact is that Hispanics, African-Americans, Asian and Jewish voters and many other minorities have ideological bonds with Republicans but have often felt uncomfortable within the confines of our party. Protecting marriage between one man and one woman is but one example. Strong support of Israel by Republican officials is another. Party leaders must effectively communicate with and sincerely listen to these groups. By action and deed, we must convince minority voters to trust the Republican Party again. We must take the members-only sign off the clubhouse door and throw out the welcome mat. The party of Abraham Lincoln can do no less.

This shows a level of tin-eared politicking that is surprising for a man who wants to head the Republican ship. By his own account, he recognizes that this is the year that Republicans need to focus on winning back minority votes. It is part of his candidacy. And he has punctuated that agenda with a racially insensitive anti-political correctness song that's fine for a radio show host who knows how to stir the pot, but probably not fine for the future chairman of the Republican National Committee.

Saltsman, who is the former chair of the Tennessee Republican Party, already has a few enemies in his own state. He recently got an unfriendly mention in a Nashville paper. Concerning a possible governor's race in Tennessee, the Nashville Scene reports that Bill Frist is being tapped only by those who might benefit from it:

"He has a political future. The question is how best to advance that future," says one GOP source. "The people around him who are encouraging him to run are the folks, frankly, who have a lot to gain themselves if he does it."

High on that list are developers and fundraisers Reese and Steve Smith, and Chip Saltsman, onetime minion of disgraced Gov. Don Sundquist. Saltsman would like to run Frist's campaign, become deputy governor, then parlay that job into lucrative PR/lobbying contracts, just like those who came before him. (See Dave Cooley, Peaches Simpkins and Tom Ingram.)

Neither portrait is very flattering. On the one hand, he's got a tin ear, on the other hand, he has a reputation for self-dealing. The latter is not unusual to hear about *any* of the candidates, frankly. The former, however, is a big liability.

UPDATE: Mike Allen wonders why there's been no response from GOP operatives on this. The ones I've spoken to are all pretty upset about it and see nothing funny. Some tell me they've contacted Saltsman and asked him to make a public apology. Mike Huckabee and Bill Frist, who've been campaigning for Saltsman by making calls, haven't made any statements about this.

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Try Net Zero

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 12.27.08 @ 12:46PM

I'm intrigued by Charles Krauthammer's proposal for a "net-zero gas tax" in the latest Weekly Standard. Basically, he proposes an increase in the gas tax now, while energy prices are low, to decrease U.S. consumption. But to avoid hitting cash-strapped drivers in the midst of a recession, he'd directly offset the gas-tax hike with a reduction in payroll taxes. Krauthammer argues it would promote energy independence without overtaxing or fattening the government's revenue take.

It sounds more politically feasible than, say, imposing carbon taxes on energy consumers to pay for low taxes on investment. But I have a few questions. While U.S. consumption obviously has a major impact on world oil prices, we don't in fact get most of our oil from our "geopolitical adversaries" -- many of our allies do. To what extent will this really promote our energy independence and our geopolitical goals? Second, when President Bush proposed carving personal accounts out of Social Security he was accused of diverting much-needed revenue from the retirement program. The revenues at stake here are much smaller and the Social Security trust fund is an accounting fiction in any event, but at least Bush was offsetting the diverted revenue with personal accounts and progressive benefit reductions. Won't there be an objection along these lines to Krauthammer's plan?

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The Professor's Lament

Posted by Hunter Baker on 12.27.08 @ 9:19AM

This semester was my first one teaching in addition to working as a university administrator.  Rarely have I longed for a Christmas break like I did for this one. 

Teaching brings up emotions that are difficult to describe.  You have so much invested in the students.  Do they show respect?  Are they listening?  What's going on behind those laptop screens?  Can they be helped to understand what it is to form a legitimate research question or to argue persuasively for some point of view?

And then there is the grading.  Some papers and exams are profoundly gratifying.  Others are incredibly frustrating.  You feel as though their writers simply occupied space in the room and learned nothing.

But enough about my thoughts.  What moved me to post was this beauty by Joseph Knippenberg (a friend and mentor of mine).  Here's a sample:

We have a technologically-induced short attention span. We like, and can have, our information in short, easily digested bursts, soundbites, if you will. These are not arguments, but at most quips or wisecracks. They almost have to be short because they are placed in a context where there are many competitors for the audience's time and attention. What's more, because we have the capacity to accompany them (and compete with them) with video and audio, it's relatively easy for the words and arguments to be overwhelmed by the images. Stated another way, our multimedia age privileges images and the emotions they evoke over arguments that are more likely to appeal to reason or to provoke a reasonable response.

I'm going to throw myself against the tide this semester.  I'll be teaching an intro to political science survey where I intend to have the students leave the laptops shut and to read through Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Mill, Locke, and many others with me.  We will find the passages that are jewels and dwell upon them.  I'm praying lots of lights will come on.

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topics: Education

Obama's Media Free Ride

Posted by Robert Stacy McCain on 12.26.08 @ 1:37PM

How long will the media continue its gushing adoration of Barack Obama? This is the question raised by the adulatory prose of The Washington Post's Eli Saslow:

Between workouts during his Hawaii vacation this week, he was photographed looking like the paradigm of a new kind of presidential fitness, one geared less toward preventing heart attacks than winning swimsuit competitions. The sun glinted off chiseled pectorals sculpted during four weightlifting sessions each week, and a body toned by regular treadmill runs and basketball games.

Such "reporting" ought to make Saslow a laughingstock among the hard-bitten cynics of the Washington press corps, because Obama's gym enthusiasm is not really "a new kind of presidential fitness." President Bush is ferociously fit, his mountain-bike sessions notoriously grueling. Bush doesn't make a habit of going around shirtless with the sun glinting off his pecs, but a couch potato, he ain't.

At some point, hagiographic treatment of Obama will end, if only because of market saturation. In 2008, Obama was featured on the cover of Time 14 times, and 11 times on the cover of Newsweek. and if the coverage wasn't always as schoolgirl-giddy as Saslow's, it was overwhelmingly positive. The news-consuming public will eventually tire of worshipful profile features and stenographic accounts of Team Obama's talking points.

The press corps' credibility and self-respect is at stake, when Obama feels no compunction about chiding the Chicago Tribune's John McCormick that he will "waste his question" by asking about the Blagojevich scandal. And when the transition team's self-exculpatory report about l'affaire Blagojevich elicits chortles from the Los Angeles Times -- "Obama team probe of Obama team finds no Obama team impropriety" -- it becomes clear that some journalists are tired of seeing Obama getting a free ride from their peers.

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Nat "King" Cole

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 12.25.08 @ 2:51PM

Scarcely anyone does Christmas songs better. He's been dead since early 1965, but it's a tradition that lives on.

Merry Christmas. And remember our fellow Americans in harm's way who can't be with their families.

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E.J. Dionne: Christians Do Weird Things

Posted by J. Peter Freire on 12.25.08 @ 11:16AM

E.J. Dionne's new book is all about "taking back" faith from the feverish mouths of the right. Aside from the obvious silliness that comes of asserting that one can really "hijack" an entire religion, Dionne in a TNR op-ed makes a wonderful point about Christians working at an organization called "Catholic Relief":

..[W]hat's striking is that the faith of its employees is inherent in what they do, not something they wear on their sleeves. McGarry says his co-workers are not in the field to preach Christianity, even if the fact they are there bears witness to their faith.

He then notes something that makes me curious:

McGarry says his co-workers are not in the field to preach Christianity, even if the fact they are there bears witness to their faith. Indeed, in most Afghan villages, seeking converts among Muslims would be highly dangerous. The group consciously avoids preaching the Gospel, and its Afghan staff is overwhelmingly Muslim.

This pretty much flies in the face of what he later complains about:

It is strange how a faith that traces its origins to a stable, preaches love and demands good works is so often invoked to condemn, to divide and to denounce.

Never mind that he lumps Catholics, Fundamentalists, and Unitarians together. (I'm not expressing a preference, but there are real things that divide these denominations.) A number of Christian organizations go out of their way to employ and work with people of other faiths without proselytizing. (Let's put aside the weird assertion that there's value in not telling other people what you believe can help them.) I wonder if we looked over the number of Muslim organizations that do this in Christian countries, versus the number of Christian organizations that do the same in Muslim countries, how those numbers would add up?

I don't know this, so I'm putting this as a question to readers. I'm sure that there are Muslim organizations that do this. I just don't know which. But I do chafe at the idea that a religion sells itself short when it "condemns, divides, and denounces." A shepherd that allows his flock to wander off and lose itself isn't much of a shepherd.

But then again, that doesn't conform to Dionne's stereotype.

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Christmas Morning

Posted by J. Peter Freire on 12.25.08 @ 9:57AM

I'm seated at my desk at the family homestead in Connecticut, where I'm being polite and waiting for my parents to wake up so we can celebrate the birth of the Baby Santa. It's partially my fault they're sleeping in, as I was the one who insisted we all stay up late last night and watch a little bit of a movie.

Every year, I think about how lucky I am that I even get to come home. Some people's parents move once the kids leave the house. Some people have lost their parents. Me, I think about my Spanish father. His father died while away at sea, at the time my grandmother was giving birth. My dad left Spain and then came to Argentina with his still devastated mother who never quite got over the pain of loss. They landed in Buenos Aires and lived in poverty, but he worked his way through school and helped to support her. He got into medical school, and ultimately moved to the United States to do his residency.

I can't imagine what it must have been like to spend these holidays alone in a strange land, a family spread out over two continents and knowing they can't afford the phone calls. There were some who went out of their way for him and had him along. But sometimes that makes you feel even more alone because you're presented with an image of what you're missing.

It's possible that in the scheme of things, that experience helps someone understand why it's important to have a family, why it's important to populate your life with people you truly love. You think about how you never want your own children to experience what you have experienced. It also gives you a moment to think about what kind of family you want to have. Any idiot can have children -- in fact, many idiots do this all the time -- but not everyone can have a family. Here my dad succeeded. No more lonely winter nights. No more mornings silent.

I'm lucky. I know he knows he's lucky. But we also both know luck has nothing to do with it. It likely has more to do with the grace and blessing similar to those which guided a miracle over 2,000 years ago in a place far away. That's better than luck because it holds the promise of steady guidance rather than sheer chance. I pray it stays with us, and I'm joyful it likely will.

I hope your day is as merry as ours. Merry Christmas.

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Dept. of It Won't Work

Posted by Robert Stacy McCain on 12.24.08 @ 9:23PM

Obama's job-creation scheme doesn't function as basic arithmetic:

There are currently about 10 million unemployed workers in the U.S. . . . "If we write a check for $75,000 to each of the unemployed, we won't have anyone 'unemployed,'" said former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. . . . The Obama administration’s goal of creating 3 million new jobs by January 2011 will run smack into "the natural demographic flow, which will add 3.2 million people to the workforce" in the same time period, O'Neill said. In effect, "we are going to spend $750 billion, the number of unemployed will rise and the (unemployment) rate will go down slightly." O'Neill did the math so you don't have to. Each job "will cost $250,000, which doesn't suggest much labor intensity for the dollars spent," he said. "It makes me wonder if any of the planners or commentators are good at arithmetic."

Repeat after me: It won't work.

(Cross-posted at The Other McCain.)

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Christmas in D.C.

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 12.24.08 @ 3:35PM

Family is the most important reason I leave Washington for Christmas, but not the only one. Aside from the Christmas decorations downtown, the festive spirit is lacking.

Case in point: A few days ago I was in a D.C. watering hole. A trio of middle-aged Georgetown women came in after having seen the movie Frost/Nixon. After one drink, they began arguing over the U.S. response to Russia's invasion of Georgia. Neither side of the argument was well represented -- think a bad caricature of Fox News versus a bad caricature of NPR's "All Things Considered." The pro-Georgia woman kept screaming something about being a Slav and how we rightfully own foreign countries in a way that the KGB does not. The pro-Russia woman apparently thought a bratwurst was a vegetable, which limits my confidence in her ability to sort out the sovereignty of nations.

Before too long, the discussion became heated. "Your opinion is offensive to me! Shut up, Grace, just shut up!" The other woman, perhaps channeling 1950s pop, replied, "You don't own me!" The first woman proceeded to shriek obscenities at the second and told her to find a new ride home. The bartender interceded, saying he'd had enough of this nonsense and asked the loudest of these "ladies" to leave.

As the woman stormed out, she turned to the manager and told him that the other women were having a nervous breakdown. "Well, they weren't the ones yelling," he informed her. "F--k you!" she screamed at him. (Assume the missing word is "firetruck" if that is more in keeping with your holiday spirit.) "Merry Christmas," he replied cheerfully.

Merry Christmas, indeed.

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Re: Merry Jewish Christmas

Posted by Philip Klein on 12.24.08 @ 12:07PM

For what it's worth, this Jew is currently listening to Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas.

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Merry Jewish Christmas!

Posted by Robert Stacy McCain on 12.24.08 @ 11:12AM

My friend Marty Beckerman calls attention to an ironic skirmish in the "War on Christmas":

"Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" caused a stir at a New Hanover County school. A parent complained about the song's religious reference and got it pulled from her child's kindergarten Christmas show at Murrayville Elementary School. The song was pulled "because it had the word Christmas in it," said Rick Holliday, assistant school superintendent. A Jewish mother, who didn't want her name published, objected to what she called "religious overtones" in the song. So the principal agreed to pull it from the program.

Irony? "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" was written by a Jew, Johnny Marks, who also wrote "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day," "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," and "A Holly Jolly Christmas." As Beckerman notes, Jewish songwriters also wrote or co-wrote such holiday standards as:

• "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire)"  -- Mel Torme and Bob Wells, both Jewish;
• "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" -- co-written by J. Fred Coots, Jewish;
• "Silver Bells" -- Ray Evans and Jay Livingston, both Jewish;
• It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" -- co-written by George Wyle, Jewish;
• "Sleigh Ride" -- co-written by Mitchell Parish, Jewish;
• "Let It Snow" -- Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne, both Jewish; and
• "White Christmas" -- Irving Berlin, Jewish.

Of course, none of these songs is as important as the original Jewish contribution to Christmas, but if the "religious overtones" of Johnny Marks' innocuous song are enough to shut down a kindergarten Christmas show, let's not risk an ACLU lawsuit by mentioning that whole Bethlehem-and-the-manger trip.

More thoughts on Christmas music here.

UPDATE: Roger Simon e-mails:

Very good.. but you forgot about Phil Spector's Christmas Album.... now that's my kind of Jew.

Forgot? Who could ever forget Darlene Love and the Wall of Sound behind "Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)"?

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Teixeira Time

Posted by Philip Klein on 12.24.08 @ 9:46AM

"Maybe the Yankees should bail out the auto industry," a bitter Mets fan friend of mine quipped after the Yankees signed Mark Teixeira to a $180 million contract, bringing their off season spending spree to $423.5 million when you include the deals for pitchers C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett.

I'm a long-time Yankee fan who misses the teams of the late 1990s not only because they won four World Series, but because I enjoyed rooting for them. Those were true teams -- aided by a high payroll, no doubt -- but composed of guys like Bernie Williams, Tino Martinez, Paul O'Neill, Scott Brosius, etc. These guys functioned beautifully as a team, combining great pitching, solid defense, and incredible clutch hitting. But after their devastating loss to the Diamondbacks in 2001, they abandoned the idea of building a true team, and instead began to go after whatever superstars were free agents or on the trading block -- like Giambi and A-Rod -- and it's just never been the same for Yankees fans. I find it hard to root for A-Rod, because, whatever his numbers during the regular season, he plays the game without passion, and always chokes in October. Give me a Brosius any day of the week.

So, as I take a look at this year's off-season acquisitions by the Yankees, I'm anticipating that these superstars will either get injured, or have their production seriously curtailed in the new Yankee stadium. And there's a good chance they'll blow it in October -- if they make it there.

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Re: Sarah Can Wait

Posted by Robert Stacy McCain on 12.23.08 @ 5:57PM

Hate to belabor a point, but Allahpundit has now posted on the topic of Sarah Palin's assertion that the McCain campaign mishandled her media strategy, a point seconded in a U.S. News report. Allah says:

I doubt it would have made a difference in the election — although it might have made a difference in her credibility with independents now.

This goes to the point I made in my column today about the "gap between the perception and reality of Sarah Palin." To the extent she is now perceived as an airhead or a lightweight, that perception is in large measure a function of a failed media strategy devised by the McCain campaign. She now has to "backfill" to counter that perception, for which Team Maverick is largely to blame. I mean, really, how could Palin possibly have done worse on CNN than Tucker Bounds?

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Obama's New Kind of Transparency

Posted by Philip Klein on 12.23.08 @ 3:01PM

Turns out the most transparent President-elect in history will release his transition team's report on contacts his staff had with Blagojevich at 4:30 p.m. on the day before Christmas Eve while he's in vacation in Hawaii, and he won't take any questions on the matter.

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Waiting for Sarah

Posted by Philip Klein on 12.23.08 @ 2:07PM

Back when Barack Obama began publicly flirting with the idea of running in the fall of 2008, I wrestled with both sides of the argument, and noted that the downside of not running would be the Matt Leinart (not striking while the iron is hot) syndrome. So I don't necessarily disagree with Stacy, though I think challenging Lisa Murkowski in 2010, while it would be a risk, would have upside in terms of staying in the national spotlight via the Senate and gaining more understanding of policy, should she wait until 2016. But whenever she runs, she'd have to do the following to become a viable conservative leader:

-- Show that she's a conservative on more than social issues and gun rights, and actually convey an appreciation for conservative economic philosophy (empty platitudes about "putting government back on the side of the people" that could easily be uttered by John Edwards, do not count).

-- Get through a tough interview without embarassing herself.

-- Display a grasp of important foreign and domestic issues.

-- Demonstrate governing competence and accomplishments (without having to lie about the "Bridge to Nowhere" or exaggerate her record as Mayor of Wassila).

If she can do that by 2012 and combine it with her star power, she'll be a great asset to the conservative cause. Otherwise, let's hold off on the Reagan and Thatcher comparisons.

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Scapegoating Mike Duncan

Posted by John Tabin on 12.23.08 @ 2:05PM

Michael Patrick Leahy really, really doesn't like RNC Chairman Mike Duncan. His post calling for Duncan to drop out of the Chairmanship race has kicked up some controversy, mainly over whether his namecheck of the Top Conservatives On Twitter project is inappropriate, but it's worth noting that, quite apart from that tempest in a #TCOT (thanks, Jim), Leahy's argument against Duncan is pretty silly. Basically, citing the 2008 election results, Leahy concludes that Duncan's leadership has been "disastrously inept."

I really wonder what Leahy thinks that a different RNC leader would have done to change the election results. The rap on Duncan is that he's too low-key, doesn't do enough media, and isn't embracing cutting edge technology. But it's not as if he's ceded ground to his DNC counterpart on the media front; there was a time when Howard Dean, because he's so unpopular, was practically in hiding. Does anyone really think that the GOP would have done better at the polls if only they had a slicker leader to go on the Sunday morning shows -- or, even more preposterously, if they had a bigger footprint on Twitter and Facebook? (The RNC's behind-the-scenes blogger outreach operation was and is very good, by the way, and the RNC does have a Twitter feed even if Duncan's campaign for re-election as chairman doesn't.)

The one big decision the party chairmen had to make this year was how to set the rules for the primary schedule. Duncan handled that issue a whole lot better than Dean did. It didn't particularly matter; the McCain campaign failed to capitalize on the headstart they had while the Democrats got locked in an endless primary season. Which underscores the point that there's only so much a party chairman can do to win elections.

If you think the RNC could be doing a better job of embracing Web 2.0, fine. If you think the RNC needs a more visible chairman, fine. (The idea that occasionally gets bandied about of splitting the chairmanship into a National Chairman to manage the party day-to-day and a General Chairman to be the party's public face makes a certain amount of sense to me.) But Leahy's vehement insistence that Duncan shares a large amount of the blame for the GOP's electoral fortunes -- which were well on their way south before he became chairman in 2007 -- is really unfair.

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Can Sarah Wait?

Posted by Robert Stacy McCain on 12.23.08 @ 12:45PM

Timing is (almost) everything in politics, which is why I find myself in disagreement with John O'Sullivan, Philip Klein and Jennifer Rubin over the question of whether Sarah Palin can afford to skip the 2012 presidential campaign.

As I said in a comment on Phil's post, Jack Kemp might have been president if he had been willing to challenge Bush 41 in either the 1988 or '92 primaries, but instead waited until '96, by which time his star had faded. I would also cite the case of Bill Clinton, who was smart to launch a bid for the Democratic primary in 1991, when Bush 41 looked unbeatable, thus allowing Clinton to run against a relatively weak primary field. For that matter, when Barack Obama announced in January 2007 he would challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, a lot of people (including me) thought he was nuts.

If Obama has a successful two-term presidency -- almost by definition, including national health care -- I don't see where there's much point in conservatives caring who wins the White House in 2016. The only real hope for the preservation of economic freedom is for the Obama presidency to be a one-term political debacle of Carteresque proportions, followed by a Republican president with the kind of political charm necessary to push for real free-market reforms.

Sorry to be so obstinate about this, and granting all caveats about Palin's shortcomings, I really think she needs to be in a full-immersion cram course to be ready to announce by January 2011. Otherwise, it may be too late for her -- and too late for freedom. As Palin herself put it, "Don't let me miss an open door."

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Take A Look At These Schmucks...

Posted by Philip Klein on 12.23.08 @ 11:44AM

...and then ask yourself whether they'll ever want to make peace with Israel.

AP photo via the Jerusalem Post. 

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Deregulation the Democrats Favor

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 12.23.08 @ 11:11AM

Many fans of the current labor secretary had hoped that at least her reforms aimed at union transparency and oversight might survive in some form during a Democratic administration. Not if Hilda Solis has anything to say about it.

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Free Markets As Dead As Communism

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 12.23.08 @ 10:55AM

Expect to hear a lot more of this in the year ahead, and not just from such noted economic thinkers as Arianna Huffington: "The collapse of Communism as a political system sounded the death knell for Marxism as an ideology. But while laissez-faire capitalism has been a monumental failure in practice, and soundly defeated at the polls, the ideology is still alive and kicking." Ms. Huffington isn't done yet, concluding, "It's time to relegate free market fundamentalists to the same standing as Marxist ideologues: intellectual curiosities occasionally trotted out as relics of a failed philosophy."

No mention of the Federal Reserve's role in creating the bubble, artificially low interest rates, Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, the Community Reinvestment Act, corporate welfare and crony capitalism, the increasing socialization of risk and growing federal role in the economy via the bailouts, the increases in spending and regulation that occurred even under the Republicans, or mark-to-market accounting. All of that is just "blame shifting." Of course, no one argues that China's economic growth over the past 20 years has breathed new life into communism. Why? Because we all know that the Chinese Communist Party no longer practices what can be called communism where it really counts for the economy. Similarly, it is foolish to call what the Republicans have delivered "laissez-faire capitalism" unless the term has no meaning besides a mixed economy run by the GOP. Whatever the failings of mainstream conservative economics -- and there have been some -- the truly laissez-faire Austrian school of economics was more accurate in its predictions about the current crisis than Huffington's allies in Congress.

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Re: Palin and Thatcher

Posted by Philip Klein on 12.23.08 @ 10:37AM

I think Palin has a long way to go. 

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Palin and Thatcher

Posted by Robert Stacy McCain on 12.23.08 @ 10:10AM

Don't laugh, says John O'Sullivan:

I know Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher is a friend of mine. And as a matter of fact, Margaret Thatcher and Sarah Palin have a great deal in common. . . .
She has obvious intelligence, drive, serious moral character, and a Reaganesque likability. Her likely Republican rivals such as Bobby Jindal and Mitt Romney, not to mention Barack Obama, have most of these same qualities too. But she shares with Mrs. Thatcher a very rare charisma. . . .
If conservative intellectuals, Republican operatives and McCain "handlers" can't see it, then so much the worse for them.

The whole thing is worth reading, but I disagree with O'Sullivan's assessment that Palin has "probably eight years" to prepare for the presidency. I am certain that Obama won't be able to fix the economy. That failure will render him politically vulnerable in 2012. If Palin doesn't take that shot, she may not get another shot. That means Palin really has only two years to get ready, since the jump-off time will be December 2010 for the 2012 campaign.

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No Wit, No Will

Posted by Philip Klein on 12.23.08 @ 9:32AM

I didn't get around to reading it until today, but Mark Helprin has a sobering but worthwhile piece on how both parties have failed us on national security -- the Bush administration through incompetent execution of two wars, and the Democrats by failing to recognize the seriousness of the terrorist threat.  "In short, the Right should have had the wit to fight, and the Left should have had the will to fight," Helprin wrote. "Both failed. The country is exhausted, divided, and improperly protected, and will remain so if the new president and administration are merely another face of the same sterile duality."

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The Stealth Senate Candidate

Posted by Philip Klein on 12.23.08 @ 8:50AM

The fairy tale princess Senate candidate won't make any financial disclosures. Apparently, that's just not how they roll in the magical land of Kennedy.

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Who's Afraid of the C-Word?

Posted by Robert Stacy McCain on 12.23.08 @ 8:00AM

Washington Times columnist Pete Parisi examines The Holiday That Dare Not Speak Its Name:

Beginning with Black Friday, so named because it's supposedly the day on which retailers finally make it into the black for the year, retailers' sales brochures have been bedecked with Christmas iconography - red ribbons and bows, tree ornaments, strings of lights, mistletoe and holly, Santas and the like - but with few exceptions (given due credit below), none have had banner headlines proclaiming Christmas as the reason for the buying season they were so desperately encouraging.
At J.C. Penney, it was an "After Thanksgiving furniture and mattress sale," Sears touted a catchall "Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving sale," and at Lowe's, the home-repair and hardware chain, it was "Let's Holiday" - as if holiday were a verb. Office Depot similarly turned "gift" into a verb: "Gift smarter. The holiday gifts they really want." Not to be outdone, Old Navy proclaimed an "Extravaganza humongous honkin' 3-day BIG weekend sale."

It's not totally Grinchy out there. Pete finds that two chains -- Kohl's and Rite-Aid -- consistently use "Christmas" in their ads. Read the whole thing.

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MRC's Notable Quotables

Posted by Robert Stacy McCain on 12.23.08 @ 7:34AM

The Media Research Center has announced its 2008 Notable Quotable Awards, with Quote of the Year going to -- who else? -- Chris Matthews:

The competition was probably toughest for the Obamagasm Award, won by Nancy Gibbs of Time magazine for this foray into disinterested objectivity:

Some princes are born in palaces. Some are born in mangers. But a few are born in the imagination, out of scraps of history and hope....

Gibbs beat out David Gergen -- CNN's idea of a Republican -- who said of Obama's Denver convention speech that "it was less a speech than a symphony. . . . a masterpiece."

There's much, much more, including:

• The reporter who admitted that his "knees quaked" when he was assigned to cover Obama, because he "wondered if I could do the campaign justice."
• The reporter who called T. Boone Pickens' sponsorship of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth "an ugly chapter in American political history."
• The Pummeling Palin Award, where Chris Matthews had to be inventive to beat out Joy Behar's assertion that Sarah Palin is "very mean to animals, this woman."

. . . and don't miss this hard-hitting interview by Brian Williams, which rated only runner-up for the "Let Us Fluff Your Pillow Award":

Brian should demand a recount!

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Unhealthy Meals for the Health Department

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 12.23.08 @ 7:08AM

It looks like some health departments should investigate closer to home. Of course, this could happen to anybody. But something about the story just seems so... government.

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Marriage, Barney Frank, and Rick Warren

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 12.22.08 @ 7:32PM

You don't see those three topics linked together every day, do you? I'll wade into this controversy again after Christmas, but in the meantime Peter Wehner has a post with which I mostly agree.

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Re: This May Be Yglesias's Blog

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 12.22.08 @ 6:58PM

Notice: J.P. Freire's opinions are strictly his own and do not necessarily reflect those held by W. James Antle III. (And vice versa, I'm sure he'd happily add!)

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This May Be Yglesias's Blog, But Not Really

Posted by J. Peter Freire on 12.22.08 @ 6:30PM

Matthew Yglesias, as is his wont, criticizes the Third Way:

Third Way is a neat organization ... And they do a lot of clever messaging stuff that a lot of candidates find very useful. But their domestic policy agenda is hyper-timid incrementalist bullshit. There are a variety of issues that they have nothing whatsoever to say on, and what policy ideas they do have are laughable in comparison to the scale of the problems they allegedly address. ... Third Way isn’t really a “public policy think tank” at all, it’s a messaging and political tactics outfit. ... [P]ersonnel on his policy teams — including the more ideologically moderate members — [don't] stand for anything that’s remotely as weak a brew as the stuff Third Way puts out. And yet, Third Way loves Barack Obama and says he’s a moderate just like them. Which is great. ... At the very same time Obama is disappointing progressive supporters on a number of fronts, he’s also bringing moderates on board for things that are way more ambitious than anything they were endorsing two or three years ago.

And then the chill of authority sweeps into the room. Jennifer Palmieri, the acting CEO of Center for American Progress Action Fund, immediately posts on Yglesias's blog that while they may be paying the blogger's rent for the blogging he does for them, his blog in no way represents the editorial stance of his employer:

Most readers know that the views expressed on Matt’s blog are his own and don’t always reflect the views of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Such is the case with regard to Matt’s comments about Third Way. Our institution has partnered with Third Way on a number of important projects - including a homeland security transition project - and have a great deal of respect for their critical thinking and excellent work product. They are key leaders in the progressive movement and we look forward to working with them in the future.

In other words, "Continue saying whatever you want, but we'll reserve the right to jump onto your platform that we sought to profit from and issue our own statements that clarify where you stand vis a vis our editorial line." It would make sense to me if this were a large publication (or even a small one). But if your whole shtick as an organization is supporting certain coalition-y type work, wouldn't a blogger's desire to do his own editorial stuff get in the way of that?

Perhaps it's that Yglesias's agenda reflects that of CAP overall, so it's cool. But one hopes that CAP has a clear policy on when they're going to hijack the blog in order to distance themselves from the blogger who they pay to run it. (I'm still trying to wrap my head around this.) And one also hopes that Palmieri realizes how perfectly silly she sounded -- she could have discretely sent an email off to Third Way explaining the same thing. But then again, who ever does anything discretely? Let's just attract attention by asserting authority!

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All The Fake That's Fit to Print

Posted by Robert Stacy McCain on 12.22.08 @ 6:14PM

This morning, the New York Times published a letter from the mayor of Paris, France:

With all the respect and admiration I have for Ms. Kennedy's late father, I find her bid in very poor taste, and . . . in my opinion she has no qualification whatsoever to bid for Senator Clinton's seat. . . .
The Kennedy era is long gone, and I guess that New York has plenty of more qualified candidates to fill the shoes of Hillary Clinton. Can we speak of American decline?

Bertrand Delanoë

Then, this afternoon, the Times published a correction:

Early this morning, we posted a letter that carried the name of Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris, sharply criticizing Caroline Kennedy.
This letter was a fake. It should not have been published.
Doing so violated both our standards and our procedures in publishing signed letters from our readers.
We have already expressed our regrets to Mr. Delanoë's office and we are now doing the same to you, our readers.

Can we speak of New York Times decline?

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Monday Cartoon

Posted by J. Peter Freire on 12.22.08 @ 3:54PM

Exclusive for AmSpec readers. From a cartoonist whose work I've been ogling for a while, Yogi Love:

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Moving On to Health Care

Posted by Philip Klein on 12.22.08 @ 11:48AM

I received the following email the other day:

Dear MoveOn member,

Hundreds of thousands of us nominated and voted, and now the results are in—we know where to focus MoveOn's efforts for the next year.

We asked you to vote for your three top goals, but after looking at the results, it's clear that four rose above and beyond the rest. 

Here's how it worked out, in descending order:

1. Universal Health Care

2. Economic Recovery and Job Creation

3. Build a Green Economy and Stop Climate Change

4. End the War in Iraq

The full results are here. 

It's pretty telling that within the confines of the far left, health care has leapfrogged over Iraq as the most important priority. I've been telling people that for all the talk about Barack Obama disappointing progressives, if he gets universal health care done, he could nuke Iran and still be a hero of liberals. 

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Sarah Palin Agrees With Me

Posted by Robert Stacy McCain on 12.22.08 @ 11:18AM

Throughout the fall, I repeatedly criticized the John McCain campaign for sequestering Sarah Palin from reporters. Palin -- named "Conservative of the Year" by Human Events -- agrees in an interview with John Gizzi:

'The biggest mistake made was that I could have called more shots on this: the opportunities that were not seized to speak to more Americans via media. I was not allowed to do very many interviews, and the interviews that I did were not necessarily those I would have chosen. But I was so thankful to have the opportunity to run with John McCain that I was not going to argue with the strategy decisions that some of his people were making regarding the media contacts?
But if I would have been in charge, I would have wanted to speak to more reporters because that's how you get your message out to the electorate. (Emphasis added.)

If Palin had been allowed to hold press conferences with the reporters covering her on the campaign trail, rather than thrown into high-stakes one-on-one interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric, it might have made a world of difference in how she was perceived. Palin, a former journalist, knows more about media than most of the Republican "media experts."

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Will Ferret Man Return As Well

Posted by Philip Klein on 12.22.08 @ 10:33AM

The NY Times reports:

Rudolph W. Giuliani  the former mayor of New York City and a Republican presidential candidate, had been in negotiations with Westwood One for Mr. O’Reilly’s time slot, according to two people with knowledge of the talks who spoke on the condition of anonymity because a deal was not struck.

If it ever did pan out and it were anything like his old talk radio show, Rush Limbaugh would have some competition. 

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The Constitution and Rule of Law or Big Government: You Decide!

Posted by Shawn Macomber on 12.22.08 @ 9:35AM

George Will is making sense.

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Fear and Loathing

Posted by Nicole Russell on 12.21.08 @ 3:29PM

is really starting to take hold for many Minnesotans right about now. For what I believe is the first time this election, Team Franken is actually predicting a win by a pretty specific amount of votes, between 35-50. Before, they were just saying they would win because that's what campaigns do. Now, they're acting, at least, pretty sure about this (though of course it's not final and Coleman is still claiming victory too).

Allahpundit at Hot Air:

How can Franken predict victory when there are still 5,000 withdrawn challenges to count? Because: (a) the Star-Tribune's readers have been looking at and voting on those challenges for weeks and their polling puts him 40 votes ahead when all's said and done; and (b) per Nate Silver's latest analysis, Team Franken's signaled in the past that it knows there aren't enough Coleman votes in its own withdrawn challenges to put Coleman over the top. (If that sounds confusing, read Silver and it'll make sense.)

Nate Silver has all the nitty gritty details here.

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An Incredible Journey

Posted by Jay D. Homnick on 12.21.08 @ 3:06PM

In this season, we can remind ourselves of the power of individual determination, timely compassion, human potential and the continuing danger of tyranny. This is the incredible story of an Ethiopian Jew who started walking barefoot to the Holy Land and is today a member of the Knesset.

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Attention, Palin Haters

Posted by Robert Stacy McCain on 12.21.08 @ 12:17PM

One of my problems with the "Blame Sarah First" crowd that has scapegoated Sarah Palin for John McCain's defeat is that they are targeting the only Republican who's generated a strong grassroots following in recent memory. Name any other potential GOP presidential candidate for 2012 -- Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Bobby Jindal -- who has anything like Team Sarah:

Now, more than a month since the political spotlight has turned away from the failed GOP ticket and the running mate who rallied so many conservatives, some of those whom Palin drew to the political arena are seeking to keep a conversation going. This includes TeamSarah.org, a social networking site launched in September. . . .
TeamSarah.org -- boasting more than 60,000 members and hoping to top 100,000 by Inauguration Day -- was started in part by a mother of five, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, an antiabortion group that promotes the involvement of women in politics. She and Jane Abraham, chairwoman of the group's board, started the site as a place for followers to network and promote Palin.

Team Sarah is the sort of spontaneous Tocquevillean activism that the conservative movement has been woefully lacking lately, and there is no other candidate for 2012 who has anything like it. Any Republican opponent of Palin would have to defeat this rapidly-growing grassroots army in order to take the nomination. And what, pray tell, is the political benefit to the GOP of extinguishing the only genuine enthusiasm in the party?

Sneer at "populism" all you want, David Brooks, but your argument is not with me, it's with those thousands who stood in the cold Pennyslvania wind to see Sarah Palin.

(Cross-posted at The Other McCain.)

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