Exclusive: Thursday, May 22

by PRESIDENTIAL WATCH May 22, 2008

New GOP: Freedom Vs. "Biggies"

Bruce Kesler, Democracy-Project.com

Conservatives and Republican loyalists bemoan failing to find sufficient traction among voters to retain three formerly safe seats in Congress. There's a real split between their reasons. Conservatives say it's a lack of conservatism among Republicans. Republican loyalists say it is a lack of conservative cooperation with the necessities of governing a split electorate.

Both are correct, and wrong.

The failure, on both their parts, is a lack of ideas - indeed of a basic principle -- that both unify and appeal outside of their tight circles. The principle, from which both have strayed, is freedom. Not just political rights, but basic individual freedom. Political rights emerge from and reflect individual freedom, not the other way around.

Conservatives and Republicans are amazed that someone as shallow and extreme as Barack Obama is on his way to the Democrat nomination for president. They shouldn't be. The Republican nominee, and conservative default, John McCain, is in his own way as shallow - often taking public positions on major domestic issues that stem from emotion and crumble under facts and experience. His opponents will stress these during the election, and those in the Republican camp have little with which to defend his record. His sole strong credential - pro-American foreign and defense policies - is insufficient in itself, and is now also under attack by those who try to undermine it. Read article.

How to Enrage a Democrat

Review & Outlook, Online WSJ.com

If nothing else, we now know what it takes to make a Democrat go nuts. One word: "appeasement."

Notwithstanding that President Bush named no names in his speech to Israel's Knesset on Thursday, Barack Obama instantly called it a "false political attack." On him, of course.

To House Speaker Nancy Pelosi it was "beneath the dignity of the office of the President."

"Offensive and outrageous," thundered Hillary Clinton from somewhere in South Dakota, followed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: "reckless and irresponsible." When the party's top four Democrats come roaring out of the blocks in unison, something has hit a nerve.

Forget the complaint that Mr. Bush used a Hitler analogy. It's the here and now that has these Democrats upset. The fuse that set them off is any suggestion inside the context of a live presidential campaign that the Democrats are soft on national security.

This has been a particular Democratic vulnerability since at least the George McGovern campaign in 1972. The most famous and destructive image from a Democratic presidential campaign the past 25 years was the helmeted Governor Michael Dukakis in a tank. In 2004, John Kerry tried to run on his biography as a Vietnam vet. Didn't work.

Read article.

Primary Vicissitudes - An unconventional 2008 election season.

Michael Barone, NRO.com

What makes this presidential election different from all other presidential elections? And different from what we expected when the year began?

First, neither party's presumptive nominee was chosen by massive support from primary voters, as John Kerry was in 2004, George W. Bush in 2000, or Bill Clinton in 1992.

That may not seem obvious in the case of John McCain, who effectively clinched the Republican nomination on Super Tuesday, Feb. 5. But look at the numbers: In January, McCain won New Hampshire 37 percent to 32 percent, South Carolina 33 to 30 percent, and Florida 36 to 31 percent. On Super Tuesday, he won more than 50 percent only in states that were essentially uncontested: Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey. He won Missouri by only 33 percent to 32 percent and California by only 42 percent to 35 percent, but won big delegate margins because of Republicans' winner-take-all rules.

McCain's strategy from July 2007 was to count on the other Republican candidates' strategies to fail. That was risky. But it worked. Republicans have accepted his victory because they're temperamentally inclined to fall in line and because it became obvious that he was the candidate with the best chance to win in the fall. But McCain was not really a consensus choice. Read article.

Military Culture, Pragmatism Shape McCain

Linda Feldman, CS Monitor.com

John McCain's military experience and Senate record show a presidential candidate who values integrity and getting things done.

John McCain once called it the worst thing that ever happened to him - worse, even, than his 5-1/2 years in a Hanoi prison.

"It" is the so-called Keating Five scandal of 1989, in which Senator McCain of Arizona and four other senators were accused of corruption, nearly destroying his political career and reputation. For three years, as McCain fought to clear his name, he "alternated between anger and depression, the resilience his Vietnamese captors failed to beat out of him only fitfully evident," writes McCain biographer Robert Timberg.

But how could any experience on Capitol Hill have come close to the torture and extended isolation he was subjected to in North Vietnam?

"In this case, it was his integrity that was being not just challenged, but challenged in a way that people believed that he had . not acted with honor," Mr. Timberg says in an interview. "That's a very big deal with him." Read article.

An Early October Surprise

JR Dieckmann, Great American Journal.com

Is it any coincidence that in this year of 2008 we face perhaps the most important presidential elections in our history, and in the same year, a doubling of gas prices has occurred? It would be a stretch of the imagination, or as Mrs. Clinton would say - "a suspension of disbelief" to believe that these two issues are not connected.

Do you remember back in 2004, there was a lot of talk about a George Soros "October surprise" which was intended to collapse the stock market and bring down the economy just before the election? This disaster, had it happened, would all have been blamed on George W. Bush and his tax cuts, to benefit the Democrats in the November election.

Soros himself is quoted as saying he would give his entire fortune if it would ensure the defeat of Bush. It is not just Bush whom Soros opposes, but any Republican in the White House that he cannot manipulate to advance his own liberal-socialist agenda.

During the 2004 election cycle, Soros gave $3 million to the Center for American Progress and $5 million to MoveOn.org. Another $10 million of Soros money went to America Coming Together. Millions more were funneled through Soros' activist groups masquerading as "charity organizations," which ended up in pro-Democrat campaigns.

After the reelection of George W. Bush, Soros and other rich liberals backed a new fundraising group called Democracy Alliance whose purpose is to support the goals of the Democrat party. In all, Soros spent $25 million in his attempt to cause the defeat of George W. Bush. Read article.

Hillary's Fight Club - Why She Keeps on Going

Jonah Goldberg, NY Post.com

She can't win. The pundits say it. The polls say it. The math says it. It's even the word on the street. If Huggy Bear from "Starsky and Hutch" were around, he'd say it's time to stick a fork in her.

So why does she keep going?

One theory is psychological, almost Aesopian. Hillary Clinton - like her husband - is a creature who follows her nature. Scorpions must sting. Ants must save food for winter. Clintons must fight.

Bill Clinton illustrated Clinton grit when he confronted Newt Gingrich during the government shutdown of the mid-'90s. "Do you know who I am?" Clinton said to Gingrich. "I'm the big rubber clown doll you had as a kid, and every time you hit it, it bounces back. That's me - the harder you hit me, the faster I come back up."

"That was not bravado," writes Commentary's John Podhoretz, author of a book about Hillary Clinton titled "Can She Be Stopped?"

"It was a warning, and an accurate one. The Clintons are without shame, and therefore we all believe they are without honor and cannot possibly imagine themselves as heroes. But Bill very much believed, and believes, that he is a hero because he would not allow himself to be defeated, no matter what - and that part of his eventual victory would be that he could use the virulence of his foes to his advantage." Read article.

Hillary Clinton is one sorry sight on her way to defeat

Michael Goodwin, JWR.com

She once described herself as "the most famous person you know very little about." But as she careens across the country in a desperate attempt to rescue her campaign, America is coming to know Hillary Clinton all too well.

The tenacity that even critics praised suddenly looks tawdry. The persistence against impossible odds appears anything but noble. Long after the party is over, Clinton's refusal to go home is taking on the trappings of a sad spectacle.

Her inability to accept defeat is not, it seems clear, about public service or even politics. It is merely personal.

With Barack Obama on a glide path to the Democratic nomination - he has insurmountable leads in delegates and popular votes - Clinton's cringe-inducing performance is doing what her harshest critics never could. It has ripped away any pretense that she actually stands for something.

The conventional portrait of her as an unflinching, devoted partisan has been proven wrong. Partisanship, it turns out, was just another fig leaf hiding a singular allegiance. Read article.

The Clinton Chorus

George Will, Townhall.com

Women, we are told by some people who say they know them, are not amused. Women, or at least those whose consciousnesses have been properly raised, supposedly think that the impatience being expressed about the protracted futility of Hillary Clinton's campaign is disrespectful. They say that if the roles were reversed -- if Barack Obama's delegate arithmetic were as hopeless as hers -- people would not be so insensitive as to try to hurry a man off the stage.

But they would. And some people, claiming to speak for African-Americans, would be explaining that African-Americans find it all disrespectful. In identity politics, ritualized indignation about imagined affronts is highly choreographed and hence predictable.

In America, however, nothing ages as fast as novelty, and efforts to encourage Clinton to pack it in are heartening evidence that the novelty has worn off: The female candidate is like all other candidates. This is what equality looks like -- life as an equal opportunity dispenser of disappointments.

Some of Clinton's supporters seem to be cultivating, for a purpose, a permutation of the entitlement mentality that many voters thought they discerned in her candidacy and found off-putting. She seemed to feel entitled to the Democrats' nomination, and having been denied it, she may feel really entitled to be Obama's running mate. But for him, choosing her would be even more dangerous than Bosnian sniper fire. She would solve none of his problems, and would create others. Read article.

Obama vs. The Right to Life

The Editors, National Catholic Register.com

Obama not only opposes the right to life, his opposition is his highest priority. "The first thing I'd do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act," he told Planned Parenthood last July. That would make America more friendly to the abortion industry than any other country in the world.

America's Creed

The idea that there is a creed at the heart of America was best expressed by Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address. "Four score and seven years ago," he said, "our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." He called the Civil War a test as to whether "any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure."

But, like a reverse Lincoln, a new man from Illinois seeks the presidency, one who is engaged in a battle against the proposition that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with the right to life. Read article.

The Republican Health-Care Surrender

Dick Armey, Online WSJ.com

Hillary Clinton's presidential aspirations may have died in North Carolina last week, but her most famous bad idea is alive and well in Washington, D.C. With likely increases in Democrat ranks in the House and Senate, and a Democrat (possibly) in the White House, plan on a big fight in 2009 over who - you or the federal government - will control your family's health-care decisions.

We won this fight last time around. One of the GOP's shining moments was our principled opposition to HillaryCare in 1994. The first lady's overreach helped lay the groundwork for the Republican takeover of Congress that November.

We may not be so lucky next time. While the Democratic Party appears unified under the banner of big-government health care, the GOP seems conflicted and running scared. This is a classic case of Republicans being afraid that the public will not understand good policy reforms.

I believe the American people will reward innovative, principled leadership on health care. A rational, conservative solution to rising health-care costs gets the government and other third parties out of our health-care business. Both our families and the GOP can win by expanding Health Savings Accounts, by allowing people to buy insurance across state lines, by doing away with tax policies that encourage third-party payment systems, and by embracing health-care price disclosure.

I have always argued that when we act like us, we win. We proved that in 1994. And when we act like them, we lose. Republicans proved that in 2006. Which GOP will show up on health-care reform is yet to be seen. Read article.

More Whining From Obama

Rick Moran, Right Wing Nuthouse.com

Just what office is Barack Obama running for? Commander in Chief? Or perhaps Keeper of the Constant Whine? Or maybe Lord High Commissioner of the Bitch?

To Obama, it's always something. Bush challenges his foreign policy positions and he whines about a "political attack" rather than responding." McCain rightly points out that Obama has absolutely zero foreign policy experience (except that advanced course in foreign relations he took when he was 8 years old and living in Indonesia - or whatever Obama's claim to superior experience is this week) and the candidate weeps like an 11 year old girl, complaining about McCain using the "old politics" to diss him.

Now Obama is whining about not being able to win in Kentucky on Tuesday. First, he blames Fox News (?). Then he fingers an email campaign in the state against him. Finally, he lamely explains that he just doesn't have the time to sit down face to face with the good folks from Kentucky and work his magic spell on them.

It is his carping and whining about Fox news doing him in as far as Kentucky is concerned that really takes the cake. It couldn't be that you are hugely unpopular in the state now, could it senator? And yeah, go ahead and play the race card - we fully expect it by now and look forward to you wearing it out in the general election - but the fact is senator it's not so much that there aren't racists in Kentucky; there are. It's just that there are hundreds of thousands of more people who think you are too inexperienced, too liberal, too much of an elitist, and too dangerously naive to vote for you. Read article.

As Clinton chances wane, old slights come due: Some prominent Democrats recall past grievances

Susan Milligan, Boston.com

When Democratic superdelegate Jim Cooper, a Tennessee congressman, pondered the choice between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, his thoughts wandered back to 1993. That year, Clinton was trying to change the nation's health system, and Cooper, a moderate Democrat, had a bipartisan healthcare bill of his own that, unlike Clinton's proposal, did not require employers to provide health coverage.

The president's wife, Cooper recalled, was determined to stop her fellow Democrat. "She set up a war room in the White House to defeat me," he said.

For Clinton, holding one of the most famous names in Democratic politics has had both advantages and disadvantages as she has sought to persuade superdelegates to make her the nominee.

But the reality of the Clintons' relationship with fellow Democrats was always more complicated. As even some Clinton supporters concede, there are many superdelegates who have had issues with the Clintons. Read article.