Category Archives: The Nation

Graham: no ‘containment’ of nuclear Iran

36 Replies

This came in while I was out at lunch:

Graham Introduces Resolution Ruling Out ‘Containment’ Strategy of Nuclear-Armed Iran

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) today introduced a resolution that puts the Senate on record as ruling out a strategy of containment for a nuclear-armed Iran.  The bipartisan resolution currently has 27 Senate cosponsors.

“I’m very pleased the Senate will speak with a strong, unified voice that a nuclear-armed Iran is an unacceptable option for our own national security and the security of our allies throughout the world,” said Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.  “My resolution will afford every Senator the opportunity to speak on this issue and I expect a strong bipartisan vote in support.  Having a political consensus between the White House and Congress that a nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable is a giant step forward in sending an important message at a critical time.”

The Graham resolution:

·         Strongly rejects any policy that fails to prevent the Iranian government from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability and would settle for future efforts to “contain” a nuclear weapons capable Iran.

·         Urges President Obama to reaffirm the unacceptability of an Iran with nuclear-weapons capability and oppose any policy that would rely on containment as an option in response to the Iranian nuclear threat.

·         Urges continued and increasing economic and diplomatic pressure on Iran until they agree to the full and sustained suspension of all uranium enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, complete cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on all outstanding questions related to their nuclear activities including implementation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Additional Protocol, and the verified end of their ballistic missile programs.

“It’s obvious to most people that once Iran obtains nuclear capability others in the region will respond in kind,” said Graham.  “A nuclear-armed Iran also makes it exponentially more likely this information could fall into the hands of terrorist organizations.”

“I believe, to some extent, sanctions are working and believe they can be successful in helping turn around Iran’s nuclear ambitions,” said Graham.  “However it is imperative the Russian and Chinese assist the international community in changing Iranian behavior.

“Finally, as President Obama said in his State of the Union address, ‘All options must remain on the table’ when it comes to stopping Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” concluded Graham.

Co-sponsors of the Graham resolution include: Senators John Boozman (R-Arkansas), Scott Brown (R-Massachusetts), Bob Casey (D-Pennsylvania), Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia), Dan Coats (R-Indiana), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Chris Coons (D-Delaware), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Dean Heller (R-Nevada), John Hoeven (R-North Dakota), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Connecticut), Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey), John McCain (R-Arizona), Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri), Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland), Bill Nelson (D-Florida), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Mark Pryor (D-Arkansas), James E. Risch (R-Idaho),Marco Rubio (R-Florida), and Chuck Schumer (D-New York).

#####

That’s a pretty good list of sponsors he’s got. And like Graham, I, too, endorse what the president said in the SOTU.

‘Dear Patriot:’ Santorum moves to capitalize on his surge in the polls

8 Replies

Earlier today, I got this email from the Santorum campaign:

Dear Patriot,

This is where we wanted to be. We have planned and strategized in preparation for this very moment. We have demonstrated that we can unite Conservatives and win states- even states that Mitt Romney won four years ago.

Now, according to a new poll from Public Policy Polling, I am LEADING Mitt Romney nationwide by a double digit margin.

Here are the results:

  • Santorum 38%
  • Romney: 23%
  • Gingrich 17%
  • Paul 13%

We know this race has seesawed back and forth so we don’t expect for a moment that Romney and his allies in the liberal media are going to let us stay there.

But this does confirm what we already knew: we are picking up momentum and are in the right place to take advantage of it. We have a strategy that has produced victories and can win us the Republican nomination. And we need to keep it going.

Will you help us?

This poll comes on the heels of three huge wins last week in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri. Conservatives across the country are coming together and uniting behind this campaign.

Everything is going our direction for the moment, but that’s the very reason we can’t let up–the Romney campaign is starting to get desperate. Governor Romney does not have a consistent record of conservatism that he can run on. Because of that, he can’t talk about his story and will instead spend tens of millions of dollars in negative, dishonest, personal attacks on my record and my character.

I saw what Mitt Romney did to Newt Gingrich after he lost South Carolina. Romney is right now making plans to do the same thing to me in Michigan–carpet bomb the state with dishonest ads.  We need to be ready so we can fight back!

That’s not going to be good enough to defeat President Obama. The GOP standard bearer must convey a clear vision of Reagan Conservatism to the American people if we are going to win this election. Running an inauthentic, Massachusetts moderate is not going to fire up conservatives, and it’s not going to appeal to independents. We can’t do it if we’re going to defeat President Obama.

Every four years, people say, “This is the most important election of our lifetime.” I think that’s true this year, but I’ll go even farther than that: this is the most important election in American history.

President Obama’s vision for this country is to fundamentally change us from a free market, capitalist system to a Republic in the mold of the faded, decrepit Republics of Western Europe. We simply cannot allow four more years of this.

We are winning elections and the polls are all trending our way. I am going to win the Republican Nomination for President and defeat Barack Obama. But it’s not going to happen without your help, right now. Not tomorrow, not next week. Right now.

Let’s get it done!

For America,

Rick Santorum
Conservative Republican for President

Like Mitt Romney really needed this today…

23 Replies

Elie Wiesel, seen in a file photo with an area man.

If we’re not having a Kulturkampf in one direction, it’s coming at us from another:

Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor who has devoted his life to combating intolerance, says Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney “should speak to his own church and say they should stop” performing posthumous proxy baptisms on Jews.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner spoke to The Huffington Post Tuesday soon after HuffPost reported that according to a formerly-Mormon researcher, Helen Radkey, some members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had submitted Wiesel’s name to a restricted genealogy website as “ready” for posthumous proxy baptism. Radkey found that the name of Wiesel had been submitted to the database for the deceased, from which a separate process for proxy baptism could be initiated. Radkey also said that the names of Wiesel’s deceased father and maternal grandfather had been submitted to the site…

To which I can only say, Proxy baptism? Really? That doesn’t sound kosher to me, somehow.

Anyway, the Mormons are saying they didn’t really “baptize” Wiesel, even though his name pops up in their records. Nor did they intend to sorta, kinda baptize Simon Wiesenthal’s parents:

SALT LAKE CITY — Mormon church leaders apologized to the family of Holocaust survivor and Jewish rights advocate Simon Wiesenthal after his parents were posthumously baptized, a controversial ritual that Mormons believe allows deceased people a way to the afterlife but offends members of many other religions.

Wiesenthal died in 2005 after surviving the Nazi death camps and spending his life documenting Holocaust crimes and hunting down perpetrators who remained at large. Jews are particularly offended by an attempt to alter the religion of Holocaust victims, who were murdered because of their religion, and the baptism of Holocaust survivors was supposed to have been barred by a 1995 agreement…

The church immediately apologized, saying it was the actions of an individual member of church — whom they did not name — that led to the submission of Wiesenthal’s name…

Hey, it could happen to anybody, right? Right?

I don’t want to cast any aspersions, but this seems kind of… out there. I mean, we baptize babies who don’t know what’s going on, but dead people? Dead people who are not of your persuasion?

Santorum catching up to Romney in national poll

10 Replies

OK, so now it’s hard to dismiss Rick Santorum’s victories as just isolated anomalies here and there.

A new New York Times/CBS News poll has him catching up to the erstwhile front-runner nationally:

After his surprise triple victories in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri, Rick Santorum has begun soaring among Republican primary voters, erasing Mitt Romney’s lead in the race for the party’s presidential nomination.

A New York Times/CBS News poll released Tuesday morning showed Mr. Santorum surging among Republican primary voters nationwide, lifted by support among conservatives, evangelical Christians and Tea Party supporters.

In the new poll, 30 percent of Republican primary voters say they support Mr. Santorum, compared with 27 percent for Mr. Romney. While Mr. Santorum’s lead is essentially a tie with Mr. Romney because it is within the margin of sampling error, it reflects a significant jump for him from earlier polls.

The two other major candidates are further behind, at 12 percent for Ron Paul and 10 percent for Newt Gingrich. Mr. Gingrich’s numbers have fallen sharply since his win in South Carolina on Jan. 21…

Newt who?

And of course, therein lies the cautionary tale for Santorum. Several weeks back (starting the week before the SC primary), we saw Gingrich catching up to Romney in national polls.

All Romney can say in defense of his status is that he is always the guy the other people are talking about catching.

So what do you think? Is this real, or just another one of these whack-a-mole upsurges of the “not-Romney” flavor of the week?

Yo, parties: Neither of you holds a monopoly on Truth, OK?

14 Replies

Today’s news from OFA, which stands for Obama For America (but always makes me think of that thing that Greeks say when they party):

OBAMA FOR AMERICA LAUNCHES THE TRUTH TEAM TO PROMOTE THE PRESIDENT’S ACHIEVEMENTS AND HOLD REPUBLICANS ACCOUNTABLE

Chicago, IL – Today, Obama for America announced the launch of the Truth Team, a new national effort by President Obama supporters online and on the ground to promote the President’s achievements, respond to attacks on his record and hold the eventual Republican nominee accountable.  More than a million people took action as part of the Fight the Smears initiative during the 2008 campaign; the goal of the Truth Team is to double that number, reaching two million grassroots supporters who will communicate the President’s record and fight back against attacks before the Democratic National Convention this fall.

Beginning today with events across the country and continuing through the election, the Truth Team will engage grassroots supporters to spread the truth about the President’s record and respond to Republican attacks.  The program will be housed at BarackObama.com/TruthTeam, with individual websites –KeepingHisWord.com, KeepingGOPHonest.com, and AttackWatch.com – serving as quick, comprehensive resources to help set the record straight.  Designed to put responsibility for spreading the truth in the hands of the President’s supporters, the websites contain videos and information on the President’s record, and fact checks on Republican claims about the President and themselves.  The sites also contain tools for sharing materials via Facebook, Twitter and email, and empowers supporters to take further action by volunteering, writing letters to the editor, sending postcards to undecided voters with information about the President’s record, and more.  The goal is to ensure that when Republicans attack President Obama’s record, grassroots supporters can take ownership of the campaign and share the facts with the undecided voters in their lives.

Republican Super PACs have committed to spend a half billion dollars on negative ads to defeat the President.  But from the start, the Obama for America campaign has relied on grassroots supporters to spread the truth, and today’s announcement builds on and expands that effort.

Truth Teams will be announced today in many states including Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina and Wisconsin with events being held in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia.  National supporters including the National Education Association (NEA), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) and the United Steelworkers Union (USW) will be participating in this effort.

To find out more about the Truth Team, please visit: Barackobama.com/TruthTeam

I really, really don’t like this kind of stuff. Yes, tell your story; argue your case. But I detest this “truth squad” nonsense that both parties have engaged in since at least the ’80s. It says “our party is the source of truth” and “the other party speaks nothing but lies” and must be “held accountable” them. This stuff oozes from the core of the rottenest assumptions that underlie hyperpartisanship.

I expect better than this from the president. The Republicans have been painting him already (with very thin justification) as having gone back on his promise to rise above such things. The best way to give the lie to what they’re saying is to avoid stuff like this. He is rightly held to a higher standard, because he set the standard himself.

My first memory of encountering this sort of thing was in 1988, at the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. Then-Gov. Carroll Campbell and other Republicans took turns holding press conferences at an off-site location in the city, and they called it “truth-squading.” This year, we saw practically daily press availabilities held by the Dems in an effort to grab some of the attention being devoted to the Republican primary here in SC.

Not that the Obama people aren’t providing true information, often in reply to some pretty silly nonsense on the other side. But that is often the case. I remember when Campbell appeared in Atlanta, the point was made (either by him or by Tucker Eskew or someone, I forget) that he took almost no security with him, while Lt. Gov. Nick Theodore had taken a small army with him to the convention. Which was true. You should have seen their communications center in the hotel.

But the thing that really gets me is this “truth” rhetoric that they wrap it in.

Yes, I realize each side believes that what it has to say IS the truth, while the others sit on a throne of lies. But they’re both wrong. They need to cut back on the hubris, and those of us in the middle would be more inclined to listen.

This is what I was warning about, people

50 Replies

It was Tuesday when I warned that the unnecessarily-fanned flames of several Culture War flashpoints threatened to make this into the kind of presidential election I detest — one that consists entirely of yelling about social issues (about which no one changes anyone else’s minds, which makes them ideal tools for infuriating the base and raising money to keep the pointless partisan strife going), rather than talking about issues more central to the job of president, such as foreign affairs, national security and the economy.

Now, it seems the MSM is catching up with me. This AP story was on the front page of The State this morning:

WASHINGTON — All of a sudden, abortion, contraception and gay marriage are at the center of American political discourse, with the struggling — though improving — economy pushed to the background.

Social issues don’t typically dominate the discussion in shaky economies. But they do raise emotions important to factors like voter turnout. And they can be key tools for political candidates clamoring for attention, campaign cash or just a change of subject in an election year.

“The public is reacting to what it’s hearing about,” said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center. In a political season, he said, “when the red meat is thrown out there, the politicians are going to go after it.”…

Precisely. And on the front page of The Wall Street Journal, also this morning:

In a year where the economy was supposed to dominate the November elections, the contraception backlash showed that social issues could have a powerful influence on the race. Republicans used the controversy to paint Mr. Obama as assailing religious rights—and adding another black mark against the 2010 health overhaul that spawned the policy….

Yep. That’s what I’ve been on about.

In any case, you were warned of it here first. And of course, the 137 comments on my previous post (so far) are indicative that even smart people, such as you, my readers, can’t resist rising to such bait. What hope do we have that the rest of the country will let it go, and allow us to return to more relevant (to the job of president) issues?

The state of political argument today

2 Replies

Tim brought up this hilarious classic in an earlier comment. I grabbed it and edited it down in order to share this one thought with you without your having to watch the whole thing. (If you DO want to watch the whole thing, here it is.)

I was particularly struck by this line of Michael Palin’s:

An argument is a collective series of statements to establish a definite proposition.

But of course, our national politics today consist entirely of contradiction. If the fellow in the other party says it, it must be contradicted — and never, never engaged. Because polarization is the end it itself. No one is trying to achieve a new understanding by setting competing positions alongside each other and advancing a synthesis. It’s about saying “no, it isn’t” back and forth.

That’s the sort of thing I was on about back here. And on the Kulturkampf post as well.

Just in case you weren’t quite totally fed up with Congress yet

17 Replies

The Washington Post has done an analysis of congressional earmarks, and found the following:

Thirty-three members of Congress have steered more than $300 million in earmarks and other spending provisions to dozens of public projects that are next to or near the lawmakers’ own property, according to a Washington Post investigation. Under the ethics rules Congress has written for itself, this is both legal and undisclosed.

In the first review of its kind, The Post analyzed public records on the holdings of all 535 members and compared them with earmarks members had sought for pet projects, most of them since 2008. The process uncovered appropriations for work in close proximity to commercial and residential real estate owned by the lawmakers or their family members. The review also found 16 lawmakers who sent tax dollars to companies, colleges or community programs where their spouses, children or parents work as salaried employees or serve on boards.

None of the 33 were from South Carolina, although when you first look at the map, it appears that there is a mug shot looming over our state. But it’s just some guy named Jack Kingston from Georgia.

Not that the Post claims to have caught all the potential conflicts. It invites readers to help:

What do you know?

Help us disclose the undisclosed.

Do you have any specific information about earmarks in which current members of Congress may have had a personal financial interest? Or do you have any tips on undisclosed financial conflicts that could help us create a more complete financial portrait of Congress?

Please submit your info in the box below; all replies will be handled with confidentiality.

Now that I’ve reported this, what do I think about it? I think… I’m still ambivalent about earmarks. I can occasionally get stirred up about them. Unlike members of Congress, I’d prefer that with rare exceptions, projects be prioritized by disinterested bureaucrats, based on criteria that are as objective as possible. But it also seems within the legitimate constitutional purview of Congress to direct spending as specifically as it likes, and sometimes a specific local project actually does have national importance. Charleston harbor, for instance. The Hoover Dam.

As for the cases reported here… well, they get into that fuzzy area that I’ve always had a problem with. The area where “ethics” is defined in terms of appearances, rather than right or wrong.

It occurs to me that, since members of Congress are certainly most likely to advocate projects in their own districts — something that is not inherently wrong, even though it has enormous potential for skewing national priorities — that a certain percentage of such projects will be “near” their own property. What percentage? Well…

If 33 have been caught doing so (and as I said, there are likely to be more), that means just over 6 percent of the 535 members of Congress may have considered self-interest in seeking these earmarks. I say “may” because this is very fuzzy territory. I expect that some element of venality entered the decision-making processes of some of these members. But all, or even most, of the accused 6 percent? I don’t know, but I doubt it.

Take that Jack Kingston guy. He sought beach renourishment money, and he owns a beach house about 900 feet from the beach. Set aside whether you think federal money should be spent pumping sand onto beaches. Is it unusual for members of Congress to help local officials get financing for such projects, whether they own beach property or not? No, it isn’t.

And that brings us to the problem of earmarks overall. Most of the time, it’s a highly flawed way to set spending priorities. But do I think this story is a major “gotcha” on Congress? No. But it will play that way. What’s Congress approval rating down to now? 13 percent? It may go a fractional bit lower, as a result of this story.

Not that it should. 84 percent disapproval seems like enough calumny heaped about these elected heads.

Post poll shows Obama pulling ahead of Romney

5 Replies

The matchup shows President Obama being favored over Mitt Romney, 52 percent to 43 percent. Most troublesome for Republicans, I would think, is this passage from the WashPost story:

Overall, 55 percent of those who are closely following the campaign say they disapprove of what the GOP candidates have been saying. By better than 2 to 1, Americans say the more they learn about Romney, the less they like him. Even among Republicans, as many offer negative as positive assessments of him on this question. Judgments about former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who denounced Romney on Saturday night in Nevada, are about 3 to 1 negative.

Meanwhile, the president’s recent remarks are better reviewed. Among the roughly 6 in 10 Americans who heard or read about the president’s State of the Union address, 57 percent say they approve of most of what he laid out….

Post: Why should troops die in Afghanistan this year if we’re leaving next year?

17 Replies

The Washington Post had a thought-provoking editorial this morning. Excerpts:

On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta floated an entirely different plan: an end to most U.S. and NATO combat operations in Afghanistan by the second half of 2013, a year earlier than expected, and a substantial cut in the previously planned size of the Afghan armed forces. So much for “fight.” Though Mr. Panetta didn’t say so, this strategy implies another big U.S. troop reduction in 2013, beyond the pullout of about one-third of troops already planned for this year. U.S. commanders have lobbied to keep the troop strength steady from this coming autumn until the end of 2014 — the current endpoint for the NATO military commitment.

The new timetable may sound good to voters when Mr. Obama touts it on the presidential campaign trail. But how will the Taliban, and its backers in Pakistan, interpret it? Before negotiations even begin, the administration has unilaterally and radically reduced the opposing force the Taliban can expect to face 18 months from now. Will Taliban leader Mohammad Omar have reason to make significant concessions between now and then? More likely, the extremist Islamic movement and an increasingly hostile Pakistani military establishment will conclude that the United States is desperate to get its troops out of Afghanistan, as quickly as possible — whether or not the Afghan government and constitution survive….

But if President Obama has decided to pursue that course, there’s an inevitable next question. If the goal of a stable and democratic Afghanistan is to be subordinated — if timetables are to be accelerated, regardless of conditions — why should U.S. ground troops fight and die this year?

That’s always the question, when timetables are given for withdrawal: If we’re going to withdraw at a certain time regardless of conditions, what’s the point of fighting now?

It’s a brutally tough question whether you come at it from the direction of a hawk or a dove.

SC Democrats tout latest employment figures, give Obama the credit

52 Replies

Rep. James Smith, Mayor Steve Benjamin and Councilwoman Tameika Devine gathered at Main and Gervais today to celebrate the latest employment figures.

Here’s a quote from the release that summoned me to the windswept presser (sorry about the sound quality):

When the President took office, we were losing more than 700,000 jobs a month. The economy was spiraling out of control, and the economic security of millions of middle-class Americans was vanishing. Now, the private sector has added more than 3.7 million jobs, the American auto industry and the more than 1.4 million jobs it supports were saved, and manufacturing is creating jobs for the first time since the 1990s. But the President didn’t just address the immediate crisis and stop there.  He began to lay a foundation for a stronger economy across the country so such a collapse can never happen again.

This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and we have a lot more to do if we’re going to continue the trend we’ve seen for the last two years. That’s why the President has outlined a vision for an America built to last.  It’s a blueprint based on American manufacturing, American energy, skills for American workers and a renewal of the American values that made our nation’s middle class the envy of the world – values like fairness and opportunity.

Mitt Romney and Republicans in South Carolina don’t share this vision.  He doesn’t think we should invest in our workers, our students or American industries like carmakers and clean energy. He doesn’t think that we should be rewarding companies only when they bring jobs back to states all across the country, not when they send them overseas. And just as baffling, Romney and the Republicans don’t even admit that this reversal and recovery is happening.

Today, Democrats are embracing the fact that in January, unemployment plummeted to its lowest point in three years. Here’s a copy of the chart they’re standing next to. Meanwhile, some of their detractors are saying that a record number of people dropped out of the workforce that same month.

So I guess you pick the stats of your choice, according to your predilections.

For my part, I told James after the event, all I know is that Obama was inaugurated, and six weeks later, I was laid off. I guess that makes me a tough audience. 😉

But seriously, folks, whoever can claim credit, I’m glad to see promising signs, and look forward to when everybody’s doing as well as they did before 2008.

U.S. health care is already ‘socialized’

58 Replies

I found this piece from Slate interesting:

At the end of 2011, the remarkable innovator Donald Berwick was forced to resign as the recess-appointed head of Medicare and Medicaid, a casualty of Republican-led opposition to his confirmation. An outspoken fan of the United Kingdom’s single-payer system, Berwick was portrayed by critics as a socialist who once commented that “excellent health care is by definition redistributional.” In 2010, for example, Republican leaders of the Senate Finance Committee grilled him about whether he “still distrusted the free market” and made it his goal to “make health care rationing the new normal.”

The furor over Berwick reflects a broader, fundamental disagreement over the nature of health insurance. Should it be “social” insurance, with which financial risk is leveled between those who are ill and healthy, so the carefree twentysomething and diabetic elderly man pay equally into the system? Or would it be better structured as “actuarial” insurance, where those expected to consume more shell out more, just as those who drive flashy, expensive cars or rack up speeding tickets pay higher auto insurance rates? If your view is the former, you generally support the notion of a single-payer system, as Berwick and many Democrats do. On the other hand, if you see health insurance as actuarial, you favor tiered premiums depending on age and pre-existing conditions, and tend to like health savings accounts, as many Republicans do. This dispute is central to continuing political wrangling over the 2010 health reform legislation, the main provisions of which are scheduled to take effect in a few years.

But Americans made their choice clear long before Barack Obama ever signed the law—and they picked social insurance. The issue today isn’t whether we should redistribute health care dollars. We do, arguably to the same degree that every other country does. Systems with national health insurance systems explicitly redistribute money before patients get in car accidents, discover cancer, or develop heart disease. Here we do it in secret after illness occurs. We create the illusion of actuarial insurance, when the truth is that all major American health care institutions have been socialized for decades…

Any rational health insurance system distributes risk, and cost, so that everyone pays a reasonable amount to cover the needs of the few who are sick or injured at a given moment.

And I’ll never understand why people object to putting the whole country in the same risk pool, thereby spreading cost and risk as thinly as possible.

But that’s ideologues for you. They’d rather call something names than think about how much more sensible it would be.

South Carolina is now an electoral outlier

35 Replies

On Monday, Bobby Harrell was talking about taking legislative steps to try to ensure South Carolina’s status as the first-in-the-South presidential primary (for both parties, not just the GOP).

But nine days earlier, SC GOP primary voters opted to undermine the best excuse for the Republican national committee, at least, to give South Carolina precedence. For the first time since 1980, they went out of their way to support a candidate who would NOT be the eventual nominee.

So why should anyone care what South Carolina thinks four years from now?

I, for one, will miss all the attention when it drifts away. I like it when the world is paying attention to us for something other than making jackasses of ourselves. I like the buzz. I like South Carolinians having a chance to affect grand events. And yes, I enjoy doing the national and international media interviews. Most importantly, who’s going to pay for me to take a mid-winter break in Key West when nobody cares any more what SC thinks?

I certainly wish my fellow SC voters had taken a moment to think about these things before they capriciously wasted their votes on Newt Gingrich on Jan. 21. But no, they were intent on throwing it all away.

For a moment there, it did look as though Floridians would accept the SC judgment as an early clue to the new direction, but then they woke up and said to themselves, “Wait a minute… this is Newt Gingrich! And we’re not South Carolina. We don’t go off on wild hairs, firing on Fort Sumter and voting for bombastic egoists…”

And they settled down and did what South Carolina usually settles down and does, but didn’t this time: Picked the safe choice, the obvious choice, the guy whose turn it is. They put Mitt Romney back on his inevitability path, and did so decisively.

And already out there, they’re forgetting South Carolina. I can feel it… The next time they pay attention to us, it will be Jon Stewart making fun of us again. And in the unlikely event that Mitt Romney is elected president, he’ll feel less grateful to South Carolina than Barack Obama does (the incumbent at least had an important primary victory here).

We’re drifting… drifting… into irrelevance…

Sigh…

Newt admits he was wrong… OK, who are you, and what have you done with our Newt Gingrich?

13 Replies

All right, technically it wasn’t Newt himself who made the admission, but his “camp.” But until he leaps forward to call his campaign people liars, I’m taking it as an admission from Newt.

Here’s what CNN is reporting:

(CNN) – Newt Gingrich’s campaign admitted Wednesday night the former House speaker was inaccurate when he claimed his team offered several witnesses to ABC News to refute statements made by Gingrich’s second wife in a controversial interview aired last week.

CNN Chief National Correspondent John King reported the campaign said it only recommended Gingrich’s two daughters from his first marriage, who wrote a letter discouraging ABC to release the interview…

R.C. Hammond, the campaign’s press secretary, told CNN the only people the campaign offered to ABC were the speaker’s two daughters, Jackie Cushman and Kathy Gingrich Lubbers, who make regular appearances for their father on the campaign trail…

How satisfying it must have been for John King to report that story, eh?

By the way, in case you have trouble keeping the relationships straight, these are his daughters by his first marriage. The one making the allegations was his second wife.

Oh, and ABC reported what they had to say the same day as running the ex-wife interview, which was also the same day that Newt unfairly and untruthfully lambasted ABC.

This is a job for… SEAL Team Six, the closest thing to superheroes that real life offers

11 Replies

They’re not the Justice League of America, or even the Avengers (although the name sometimes fits). They don’t wear colorful tights. But SEAL Team Six is the closest thing we’re likely to see in real life to a band of superheroes.

First bin Laden, now this:

KHARTOUM, Sudan — American Navy Seals swooped into Somalia early on Wednesday and rescued two aid workers, an American woman and a Danish man, after a shootout with Somali gunmen who had been holding them captive in a sweltering desert hide-out for months.

Under a cloak of darkness, the Seals parachuted in, stormed the hide-out, killed nine gunmen and then whisked the aid workers into waiting helicopters, Pentagon officials said. The Seals were from the same elite Navy commando unit — Seal Team Six — that secretly entered Pakistan to kill Osama Bin Laden in May, senior American officials said, though the rescue mission in Somalia was carried out by a different assault team within the unit…

I'm pretty sure this is NOT what SEAL Team Six looks like...

They just keep doing these amazing things that no one else seems able to do anymore, outside of the IDF and Mossad, and what have they done that seemed quasi-superhuman since the raid on Entebbe?

You know what else? We don’t know their identities. They could be named Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne, for all we know.

OK, I’ll stop with the riffing on the superhero thing. But I like that we don’t know who they are. It allows us to see them as an extensions of all of us, however unheroic most of us may be.

The fact that they’re out there, doing this stuff without any personal fame, makes us think that The Onion was wrong: Steve Jobs was NOT “The Last American Who Knew What the F___ He Was Doing.”

Very good to know.

Only one dark lining in this silver cloud: Ron Paul might get the notion that with these guys active, we can just do away with the rest of our military, and still be fine. And the idea could catch on…

Ghosts of SOTU speeches past

41 Replies

An outfit called Bankrupting America sent out this video last night before the State of the Union address. I didn’t get around to seeing it until today. As the release promises, “The video highlights 3 decades of State of the Union presidential promises on fiscal discipline.”

There’s also a fact sheet that goes with it.

I find being part of a long, ongoing tradition to be very reassuring, don’t you? See, it doesn’t matter whether they’re Democrats or Republicans — presidents are all pretty much alike. People don’t change. Makes us feel… solid,  grounded.

I would say, though, that one of those presidents actually did something about it: Bill Clinton. The video doesn’t mention that. But the fact sheet dismisses it this way: “Despite two years of on-budget surpluses, deficit spending in other years added to the debt.”

Oh, the video also assumes that the only way to reduce the deficit, and the debt, is by reducing spending. Raising taxes, and simply growing the economy to increase revenues, are not considered. In case you didn’t notice that.

Mitt defends media from Newt. So I guess it’s true: Romney IS a RINO

4 Replies

What other explanation could there be for siding with the godless news media against a fellow Republican. Oh, Mitt… I’m glad Spiro Agnew isn’t alive to see this…

Now you see, that was mockery — what I just did, in my headline and lede. The Politico item I’m about to quote is headlined, “Mitt Romney mocks Newt Gingrich’s attacks on media.” But what follows doesn’t support that. It’s more like “criticizes” or “corrects” or, perhaps most accurately, “takes exception to.” At least going by the words. Maybe he said them in a snarky way. Maybe I need to see the video…

In any case, here’s what he said:

“It’s very easy to talk down a moderator. The moderator asks a question and has to sit by and take whatever you send to them,” Romney said on Fox News. “And Speaker Gingrich has been wonderful at attacking the moderators and attacking the media. That’s always a very favorite response for the home crowd.”…

But the former Massachusetts suggested that being on the offense against the media doesn’t equate to the more important skill of being able to take on other rivals in the presidential field.

“It’s very different to have candidates go against candidates, and that’s something I’ll be doing against President [Barack] Obama if I get the chance to be our nominee, that this guy has been a failure for the American people, he has not gotten people back to work, internationally he shrunk the power of our military. He has to be a guy who we replace from the White House,” he said.

Graham or DeMint? Or, to put it another way, Reagan or Ron Paul? Whither goest the GOP in the world?

40 Replies

Charleston’s City Paper records another skirmish in the internecine battle between Republicans over America’s role in the world:

After the Republican presidential debate in Myrtle Beach last week, Sen. Lindsey Graham said on Fox News, “I hope people in the country understand that we’re Ronald Reagan Republicans in South Carolina. We believe in peace through strength and we’re not isolationists.”

In an interview the next day, Graham’s fellow South Carolinian Sen. Jim DeMint said on Fox Business,”If we spread ourselves too thin around the world we’re not going to be able to defend the homeland, particularly with the level of debt that we have right now. It’s foolish for us to think that we can have military bases all over the world, spend billions of dollars when we’re going broke back home. It just isn’t going to happen.”

Austerity may be a bad word to Graham when it comes to Pentagon spending, but for DeMint it’s the very definition of conservatism. When Republicans like DeMint and his Senate ally Rand Paul say that Pentagon spending cuts must happen, Republicans like Graham and his Senate ally John McCain call such actions “isolationist.” When Paul was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010, McCain said he was worried about the “rise of isolationism” in the GOP. When Paul later led the charge against President Barack Obama’s military intervention in Libya, both Graham and McCain trotted out the isolationist label again…

I’m sure you don’t have to ask where I stand.

Translate, please: Is that some sort of threat?

28 Replies

So what do you think this other former speaker is saying about Newt Gingrich when she says, “There is something I know.”

Taegan Goddard over at Political Wire says, “It doesn’t seem like Pelosi is bluffing” when she says that.

But it seems to me it could be read two ways:

  1. She’s saying there’s a deep, dark secret, yet unknown except by her, that will do in Newt in a fall campaign.
  2. She’s simply emphasizing that, based on what is already widely known — especially among those who served with him — she knows that he won’t be president.

Which do you think it is? Or is it something else? Or nothing?

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney says he sure wishes he knew what that secret was. I’ll be he does.

And Gingrich’s reaction is pure Newt:

She lives in a San Francisco environment of very strange fantasies and very strange understandings of reality. I have no idea what’s in Nancy Pelosi’s head. If she knows something, I have a simple challenge: Spit it out.

“Eisenhower of our generation” visits Columbia

21 Replies

Some guy who needs a haircut, the general in mufti, and our senior senator./photo by Christy Cox

Gen. David Petraeus, now of the CIA, spoke today in Columbia, at the Riley Institute’s David Wilkins Awards for Excellence in Legislative and Civic Leadership luncheon.

Rep. James Smith and former Blue Cross CEO Ed Sellers were the recipients. It was James (a.k.a. Capt. Smith) who, in his acceptance speech, called Petraeus “the Eisenhower of our generation.” I concur. There’s no general officer in recent years who combines Ike’s strategic vision, diplomatic skill and leadership qualities to the extent that Gen. Petraeus does.

For his part, Petraeus praised not only James and Ed, but the troops he has felt privileged to lead before joining Central Intelligence. He called them “our new greatest generation.”

Those who serve certainly deserve that sobriquet. The difference is that they are only a tiny sliver of an actual generation, unlike the one that overcame the Depression and beat Hitler and Tojo.

Which only underlines how much the rest of us owe to them, each of them, from the commanding general to the lowliest buck private.