Print This E-mail This

ShareThis

Comments (0)

Ed Morrissey, Hot Air.com

 

According to the New York Post, internal polling by both Democrats and Republicans show Barack Obama beginning to fade in New York. Once considered an unassailable bastion for Democrats, the Empire State has narrowed to a potential catastrophe for them, all the way down the ticket. Polls out today will show a significant gain for John McCain, and a nightmare for Obama:

BOOSTED by the selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate, Republican John McCain has experienced a surge of support among women in heavily Democratic New York state - where he has closed the gap with Barack Obama, new private polls show.

 

The internal Republican and Democratic polls, details of which were provided to The Post, have stunned members of both parties - and produced deep worries among Democrats.… Read article.

 

Austin Hill, Townhall.com

 

Much has been written in the past two days about Gibson’s condescending attitude towards Governor Palin, as well as his questioning her about “the Bush doctrine” - - complete with his refusal to clarify what he was implying with the term “Bush doctrine,” as though the term implies one precise, easily defined concept (it does not). Within the past twenty-four hours, it has also been discovered that the complete transcript of Gibson’s interview does not match up with the edited video that ABC News aired, and it appears that edits were made so as to make Governor Palin seem more aggressive towards Russia than she actually was.

 

Why hasn’t Gibson’s line of questioning been applied universally, to other candidates? In particular, why hasn’t Barack Obama ever been asked similar, if not the same questions? Read article.

 

Brent Baker, NewsBusters.org

 

In portions of Charles Gibson's third interview with Sarah Palin aired on Friday's 20/20 and Nightline, but not earlier on World News, Gibson demanded to know why she and John McCain “keep saying” Barack Obama will raise taxes when he says he won't, followed up her wish that Roe v Wade be overturned by -- in a question left out of the ABCNews.com transcript -- contending “it's a critical issue for so many women. You believe women should not have that choice?” and after Palin expressed support for gun rights, he asserted “we spend billions of dollars a year every year treating people who are victims of gun violence” and pleaded, as if more gun control is the only solution: “Nothing we can do about that?”

 

As the two sat in Palin's Wasilla home, Gibson scolded her and McCain:

 

Why do you both keep saying that Obama is going to raise people's taxes? It's been pretty clear what he intends. He's talked about middle-class tax cuts, extending Bush tax cuts on everything but people who own or earn more than $250,000 a year -- cuts taxes on over 91 percent of the country. Why do you keep saying he's going to raise people's taxes? Read article.

Jeff Jacoby, The Boston Globe.com

 

All through the spring and summer, opinion polls tracked a growing confidence that Barack Obama could handle the economy better than John McCain. Just before the Democratic convention in August, Gallup had Obama leading McCain on the economy, 54-38 -- a 16-point margin. But now Obama's lead has nearly vanished. Gallup's latest numbers, released Sept. 10, show the candidates nearly tied. Just 48 percent say Obama would be more adept at superintending the economy; 45 percent choose McCain. Read article. SEE CHART.

Craig Miyamoto, Geocities.com

 

To paraphrase some sage advice, "keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer." If your business or organization ever becomes a target of radical activists, it will be extremely helpful to know what strategies of attack will used against you. Short of having spies infiltrate their organization - a practice that is sure to be found out and exposed to your discredit - it would help to study their methods.

 

Known as the "father of modern American radicalism," Saul D. Alinsky (1909-1972) developed strategies and tactics that take the enormous, unfocused emotional energy of grassroots groups and transform it into effective anti-government and anti-corporate activism. Activist organizations teach his ideas widely taught today as a set of model behaviors, and they use these principles to create an emotional commitment to victory - no matter what.

 

Grassroots pressure on large organizations is reality, and there is every indication that it will grow. Because the conflicts manifest in high-profile public debate and often-panicked decision-making, studying Alinsky's rules will help organizations develop counteractive strategies that can level the playing field.

 

Governments and corporations have inherent weaknesses. And, time and again, they repeat mistakes that other large organizations have made, even repeating their OWN mistakes. Alinsky's out-of-print book - "Rules for Radicals" - illustrates why opposition groups take on large organizations with utter glee, and why these governments and corporations fail to win. Read article.

 

Jonathan Tobin, JWR.com

 

One of the most intriguing episodes of American political history, and one with particular resonance for observers of this year's presidential race, took place at the Democratic National Convention in 1896.

 

At that time, the Democrats were split between supporters of the policies of outgoing conservative incumbent President Grover Cleveland and the party's left wing, known to history as the Populists.

 

During the course of the platform debate, a little-known former congressman from Nebraska named William Jennings Bryan ascended the podium and made the radical argument for dropping the gold standard and substituting it with a system in which the currency would also be pegged to the value of silver. This foolish policy was favored by farmers because they believed devaluing the dollar would benefit debtors in a depressed economy.

 

THE 'CROSS OF GOLD'

The 36-year-old Bryan was a political nobody when he started what would come to be known as the "Cross of Gold" speech. When he concluded with a dramatic warning to the eastern business establishment that it would not be allowed to "crucify" mankind "upon a cross of gold," he had changed the face of American politics. Read article.

 

David Kahane, NRO.com

 

Our story focuses on “Barry,” an idealistic young progressive whose promise is spotted by the Chicago media/mayoral/organized crime ring known as the “Axelrod of Evil.” He’s plucked out of the obscurity of rabble-rousing — excuse me! I mean “community organizing” — and packed off to Harvard where, thanks to his rare empathic powers and near-sociopathic need to be loved, he rises to become the editor of The Harvard Law Review, although he never actually has to write anything. The idea is to leave no paper trail, no record, so that his handlers can unload the young phenom on an unsuspecting world when the moment is just right.

 

Then, of course, the Lady arrives.

 

Sarah is just as unknown as Barry was, but she’s twice as tough. And, man, does she pack a punch. In fact, she decks him with her first love-tap and down goes Barry, keister to canvas. The Axelrod of Evil is shouting from his corner to stay away from her, to keep backpedaling, dance with her but not to trade punches with her. It’s the classic boxer vs. the puncher story!

 

But Barry won’t listen (it’s his fatal flaw). Everybody else fell down, so why not her? And is he not a man? He takes a few wild swings, but she won’t stand still and let him hit her. Between rounds, sputtering and spitting teeth, he doesn’t register what his wily old trainer, now reveals: that all his fights were fixed. Read article.

 

Steven F. Hayward, Weekly Standard.com

 

Lurking just below the surface of the second-guessing about Sarah Palin's fitness to be president is the serious question of whether we still believe in the American people's capacity for self-government, what we mean when we affirm that all American citizens are equal, and whether we tacitly believe there are distinct classes of citizens and that American government at the highest levels is an elite occupation.

 

It is incomplete to view the controversy over Palin's suitability for high office just in ideological or cultural terms, as most of the commentary has done. Doubts about Palin have come not just from the left but from across the political spectrum, some of them from conservatives like David Frum, Charles Krauthammer, and George Will. Nor is this a new question. To the contrary, Palin's ascent revives issues and arguments about self-government that raged at the time of the American founding and before. Indeed, the basic problems of the few and the many, and the sources of wisdom and virtue in politics, stretch back to antiquity.

 

American political thought since its earliest days has been ambiguous or conflicted about the existence and character of a "natural aristocracy" of governing talent. If the ghosts of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams are watching the storm over Palin, they must surely be revisiting their famous dialogue about America's governing class. Adams's widely misunderstood argument that there should perhaps be an explicit recognition and provision for an aristocratic class finds its reprise in the snobbery that greeted Palin's arrival on the scene.

 

The issue is not whether the establishment would let such a person as Palin cross the bar into the certified political class, but whether regular citizens of this republic have the skill and ability to control the levers of government without having first joined the certified political class. But this begs an even more troublesome question: If we implicitly think uncertified citizens are unfit for the highest offices, why do we trust those same citizens to select our highest officers through free elections? Read article.

 

Arnold Ahlert, Political Mavens.com

 

 Hundreds of angry people in this small town outside Milwaukee taunted reporters and TV crews traveling with Sen. John McCain on Friday, chanting “Be fair!” and pointing fingers at a pack of journalists as they booed loudly.”–Washington Times, Sept 5th.

 

Isolated incident? Don’t bet on it. Americans are disgusted with the Fourth Estate, maybe more so now than at any other time in modern history. And despite what many people in the field believe, from network executives in corporate suites to reporters in the hinterlands, the anger “we the people” are demonstrating is not merely about politics. The people in Wisconsin weren’t shouting, “stop beating up on John McCain or Sarah Palin.” They shouted two words: “be fair.”

 

Reality: journalistic integrity is dead. It was killed by one of the oldest truisms of humanity: power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

 

It is almost impossible to remember a time when the mainstream media functioned the way it was intended to function: as an IMPARTIAL OBSERVER of news. For many of today’s “journalists”–suffused with a self-aggrandizing sense of “social justice”–maintaining observer status has left them wanting. They are no longer content merely to report the news. They now feel a compulsion to create it, and shape it to their liking. Read article.

 

Thomas L. Friedman, NY Times.com

 

Somebody needs to tell Obama that if he wants the chance to calmly answer the phone at 3 a.m. in the White House, he is going to need to start slamming down some phones at 3 p.m. along the campaign trail. I like much of what he has to say, especially about energy, but I don’t think people are feeling it in their guts, and I am a big believer that voters don’t listen through their ears. They listen through their stomachs.

 

If you as a politician connect with voters on a gut level, they will follow you anywhere and not fret about the details. If you don’t connect with them on a gut level, you can’t show them enough details. Obama early on, and particularly with young people, connected on a gut level like no other politician since Ronald Reagan.

 

But in recent weeks, I feel as though he has lost that gut connection. I thought his convention speech contained no memorable lines or uplifting visions. It never got me out of my seat. Forget trashing McCain’s ideas. If Obama wants to rally his base, he has to be more passionate about his own ideas. Read article.

 

Herbert E. Meyer, American Thinker.com

 

In every war there is one decisive battle. This battle doesn't end the war; a great deal of hard fighting lies ahead. But in retrospect it's the moment when one side's ultimate victory -- and the other side's ultimate defeat -- were sealed. In our Civil War this decisive battle was Gettysburg. In World War II, it was Midway.

 

Unexpectedly -- perhaps even astonishingly -- this year's presidential campaign is shaping up as the decisive battle in the Culture War that's been tearing apart our country for decades.

 

On one side are the Traditionalists. We believe that church and State should be separate, but that religion should remain at the center of life. We are a Judeo-Christian culture, which means we consider those ten things on a tablet to be commandments, not suggestions.

 

On the other side of this culture war are the Left-Wing Liberals. They are uncomfortable with our traditions, with the inevitable inequalities of our free-market economy, and with our military power. They dislike our values, our morality, and our unabashed displays of patriotism.

 

By choosing Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate -- and by staking his own claim to the presidency on "Country First" more than on any specific policy initiative -- John McCain has thrown the switch and put us Traditionalists onto the offense.

 

In the coming weeks we're going to hear a lot from these four candidates and their surrogates about the war, the economy, energy, healthcare, border control, immigration, and all the other issues that confront us. And we'll be talking and arguing about these issues among ourselves - at the dinner table, with our colleagues at work, with our friends and neighbors at barbeques and at the kids' ball games.

 

But this election isn't really about these issues. This election is about who we are. Read article.

 

Fred Thompson, Townhall.com

 

In my convention speech, I tried to tap into a sentiment already established in the public mind. I talked about John McCain’s remarkable and heroic record as a POW. But I also talked about the John McCain that I got to know while sitting in the desk next to his on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

 

Citing any senator’s record, however impressive, may or may not electrify convention delegates. But it was my way of laying down a marker on behalf of a theory I have about both conventions and campaigns in general. Even amid a convention’s staged bedlam and overly hortatory speeches, voters do pick up information that develops into lasting impressions that count for something on Election Day.

 

The pundits and the political class sometimes underestimate the extent to which the public, in its subliminal but thorough way, collects data and makes informed electoral decisions. In a broader sense, voters carry into the polling booth this ultimate question about presidential candidates: “Who do I trust to make the right decision?” Read article.

Dan Senor, Online WSJ.com

 

On Sunday's "Meet the Press," Sen. Joseph Biden made a series of stunning arguments in defense of his plan for segregation of Iraq along ethnic and sectarian lines. When Mr. Biden first announced his partition plan in May 2006, Iraqi leaders and U.S. officials understood it to mean the establishment of strong Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish regional administrations. The Biden plan would have also begun a phased redeployment of U.S. troops in 2006 and withdrawn most of them by the end of 2007.

 

Despite deep resistance from the Iraqi government, Mr. Biden tried to turn his plan into U.S. policy, introducing a nonbinding Senate resolution that called for its implementation. But his effort completely backfired in Baghdad. The proposal ended up unifying all the disparate Iraqi factions in opposition.

 

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who called on the Iraqi parliament to meet and formally reject the Biden plan, immediately went on Iraqi television with a blistering statement: "[Biden] should stand by Iraq to solidify its unity and its sovereignty . . . [He] shouldn't be proposing its division. That could be a disaster not just for Iraq but for the region."

 

On "Meet the Press" Mr. Biden dismissed Mr. Maliki's objections because the Iraqi prime minister's "popularity is very much in question." Based on what? Read article.

Fouad Ajami, Online WSJ.com

 

The candidacy of Barack Obama seems to have lost some of its luster of late, and I suspect this has something to do with large questions many Americans still harbor about his view of the dangerous world around us. Those questions were not stilled by the choice of Joe Biden as his running mate.

 

The Obama candidacy must be judged on its own merits, and it can be reckoned as the sharpest break yet with the national consensus over American foreign policy after World War II. This is not only a matter of Sen. Obama's own sensibility; the break with the consensus over American exceptionalism and America's claims and burdens abroad is the choice of the activists and elites of the Democratic Party who propelled Mr. Obama's rise.

 

Though the staging in Denver was the obligatory attempt to present the Obama Democrats as men and women of the political center, the Illinois senator and his devotees are disaffected with American power. Read article.

 

Vincent Gioia, Vincetn Gioia's Blog.com

 

The other day I posited to a discussion group the possibility that Democrats might replace Joe Biden as Barack Obama’s running mate and no one thought that was a possibility. Of course this still may not happen but Democrats are not above throwing anyone under the bus if they think it will help their election prospects. After all, there is precedent for this at the state and national levels.

 

Now we come to Senator Joe Biden, Obama’s uninspired choice to complete the Democrat ticket for November. Biden is supposed to fill the foreign policy void in Obama’s resume. As ridiculous as this may sound, is this not an admission that Obama’s lack of expertise in this area would compel him to allow Biden to make decisions about international problems?

 

But the problem more risky to Joe Biden’s career as a prospective Vive President on the Obama ticket is Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Since Sarah has used up the oxygen in the campaign trail, there is no room for the niceties of “good old boy” politics on the Democrat side. It could very well dawn on the Democrats that helping Obama make calls on issues like Iran, Israel and Russia is not as important as winning the election. If this happens then Joe Biden is history on the national ticket and he can continue to ride the train from his Delaware home to the Senate chambers instead of to the Vice President’s office. Read article.

 

Col. Bob Pappas, USMC, Ret, Gulf1.com

 

If it weren't serious it would make good late night humor to observe how the media constantly reviles the President who they fallaciously equate to Senator McCain, while waving palm branches for Obama.

 

I like Obama as a person; he's charming, charismatic, personable, but far and away too politically left for my inclinations. On the other hand there is Senator McCain who I have earlier stated is not my favorite person, but who in my opinion is a real gift sent from God to successfully lead this nation against both foreign and domestic enemies at this crucial time in the Nation's history.

 

There is no doubt that he is an imperfect man, but so was King David, and has chosen an imperfect woman who wears lipstick to figuratively distinguish her from a pit bull. Of the candidates, McCain is the one who understands best the horrors of war. He hates war; and he hates worse the prospect of another "9/11." Some Europeans and all U.S. liberals just don't get it.

 

The central question today is, does the U.S. remain and finish the job that it began in 2003, or does it abandon the millions of newly liberated peoples and squander the sacrifices of American lives and treasure in favor of partisan political fodder at home? Read article.

 

Andrew G. Bostom, American Thinker.com

 

During an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News which aired Sunday September 7, 2009, Barack Obama bemoaned what he claimed were insidious Republican attempts to "promulgate," falsely, his "Muslim connections." Senator Obama then made a minor gaffe (at ~ 2 minutes 50 seconds, here), in his half-hearted exculpation of Senator McCain: "John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith."

 

Stephanopoulos, who earlier defended McCain against Obama's general anti-Republican allegations, then corrected Obama's misstatement with instantaneous, politically-correct alacrity, reminding the Democratic Presidential nominee, "...[you meant] your Christian faith." And certainly the full context of the discussion makes clear Obama was not in any way acknowledging some personal embrace of Islam, when he responded, "What I meant to say, he [McCain] hasn't suggested that I am Muslim."

 

But the self-aggrieved, whining tone of Senator Obama's interview struck me as particularly inappropriate occurring just four days prior to his scheduled appearance with Senator McCain at Ground Zero, in lower Manhattan. Read article.

 

Victor Davis Hanson, Townhall.com

 

The media went hysterical over Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska and Republican nominee for vice president. She may have appeared to the public as an independent, capable professional woman, but to a particular elite she couldn't possibly be a real feminist or even a serious candidate. And that raises questions about what is -- and what is not -- feminism.

 

Feminism grew out of the 1960s to address sexual inequality. At an early age, I was mentored on most feminist arguments by my late mother. She graduated from Stanford Law School in the 1940s but then was offered only a single job as a legal secretary. Instead, she went back home to raise three children with my father, a teacher and farmer, and only returned to legal work in her 40s. She was eventually named a California superior court judge and, later, a state appellate court justice.

 

Hers was a common and compelling feminist argument of the times, and went something like this: Women should receive equal pay for equal work, and not be considered mere appendages of their husbands. Childrearing -- if properly practiced as a joint enterprise -- did not preclude women from pursuing careers. A woman's worth was not to be necessarily judged by having either too many or too few children, given the privacy of such decisions and the co-responsibility of male partners. Read article.