Plumber Joe and Barack Obama: The Full Video

This is an excellent video showing the full conversation between “Joe the Plumber” and Barack Obama.  Obama is clearly off script here, because he lets it slip that his tax plan is really to “spread the wealth around” (translation: income redistribution).

Close to 40% of Americans pay no income tax!  So how can someone who pays nothing, get a tax cut?  Answer: They can’t!  It’s really pretty simple.  If you don’t pay taxes, you can’t get a tax cut!

The Wall Street Journal published a fine article this week explaining how Barack Obama plans to give a “tax cut” to 95% of Americans.  It has to do with redefining what a “tax cut” is.  A Barack Obama “tax cut” to someone who doesn’t pay any taxes turns out to be a check from the government.  Call it what you want….welfare, income redistribution, etcetera….but it’s no tax cut.

When you take money from one group and give it to another, it’s called income redistribution and it isn’t American.  Where is the federal government given power to redistribute income?  How do they get to determine how much each person is entitled to?  Why does Barack Obama get to decide what is enough? “$250,000 a year is enough for you, so I’m going to take it from you and give it to someone else.”  I guess the American dream only goes up to $250,000 a year now.

Barack Obama plans to redistribute income and wealth in this country via the tax code and has no business becoming our next president.

The reason I was not impressed by Palin’s debate performance is simple.  It’s not that she was bad.  She was okay.  She read her talking points fine.  She was not a great deal less substantive than Biden, who certainly stumbled more.

I think what it is is the fact that I’ve simply lost all faith in Palin’s ability.  Her debate performance didn’t change my mind, and apparently didn’t change anybody else’s either.

So now the McCain team is going on the attack, because there is very little else they can do with only four weeks left.  I don’t blame them.  This is probably the only move they can make at this point.  But I wish they wouldn’t.

When this election finally turned out to be an Obama v McCain election, I was pretty excited.  The Obama/Clinton battle had been fierce, ugly, and I thought the Clinton’s played dirtier.  In fact, I remember saying to myself that the Democratic contest would surely be uglier than the final contest between Obama and McCain, as I could not imagine McCain taking the low road.  Ever.

I guess I was wrong.  Watching McCain lately is painful.  He sneers, jeers, rolls his eyes, makes sardonic comments about his rival.  Sucker punch after sucker punch.  It’s politics, sure, but it’s not what I expected out of John McCain.  And Palin is more attack dog than leader.  The debate, with her folksy charm and her colloquialisms does not shore up my faith in her.  On the contrary it simply reaffirms my belief that McCain has stabbed us national security types in the back in order to get a larger piece of the female vote.

Well surely, McCain, you could have found a more qualified, knowledgeable (and dare I say intelligent?) candidate to run alongside?  As it stands, I feel abandoned by the candidate I thought would exercise strong judgment in his quest to keep America safe, strong, and competitive.

Conservatives are quick to discount racism in this current race.  Claims that Obama is the victim of racism, and that this systemic racism is hurting his poll numbers, are thrown out as conspiracy theories–as though America has somehow moved, en masse, beyond the age of racism.

I beg to differ.

While there may be some truth to the conservative claims that racism is not a part of the campaign–and while the Obama campaign should not use the race card as an excuse of any kind–there is more often than not an emotional, over-the-top quality to these accusations from the Right, as though any mention of racism condemns all conservatives, which is absurd.  Conservatives by and large are not racist, just as Americans by and large are not racist.  That does not mean racism doesn’t exist, however.  Obama may very well be justified in saying that racism, should he lose, played a major part in his defeat.  Similarly, Hillary Clinton was correct in her assertion that sexism played a role in her loss.  Sexism and racism are not remnants of a dark and distant past.  Things have improved, but not so much as we’d like to believe.

For instance, my wife and I, along with our daughter and my in-laws all went to dinner at a small Mexican cafe the other night.  My father-in-law brought along one of his friends, a car mechanic.  They had been working on rebuilding an old VW bug, and showed up late.  My daughter is getting her molars, and as such was in a foul mood.

In any case, we ordered, began eating, and inevitably the conversation turned to the elections.  My wife is a definite Obama supporter.  My in-laws, life-long Republicans who have never voted Democrat, are both leaning toward Obama.  See?  There are, in fact, Republicans for Obama or “Obamacons”.  They feel very disillusioned with the current administration, and, like me, with the McCain campaign and the man himself.  My mother-in-law has been a long-time fan of John McCain, but she says she barely recognizes candidate McCain.  I, too, have been a long-time fan of John McCain.

We’re all Arizonans.  We know McCain.  We’ve all voted for him.  He spoke at our local college graduation.  But this guy campaigning for President is like a stranger to us.  I’ve staunchly supported McCain until the last couple of weeks, when I realized what a foolish, reckless choice Palin was for the GOP ticket.  I feel absolutely slapped in the face by the Palin choice.

And I said as much at dinner when we were discussing the Friday debate and the upcoming VP debate.  Predictions around the table: Palin will tank, but Biden will come across as a sexist ass.  No winners.  Only losers.  Kind of like most of the debates this year.

In any case, my father-in-law’s friend finally spoke up when I said I was disturbed by Palin, and said, basically that Obama also has very little experience.

True, I said, but picking Palin betrays McCain’s commitment to national security.  It puts to lie everything he stands for, because she just isn’t ready to be President.

Well, says he, neither is Obama.

Okay, I say, but he seems to at least understand, to grasp the fundamentals of geopolitics better than Palin, who can barely get her words into coherent sentences.  Whether he’s right is one thing, but at least he seems to understand.

McCain will keep our country safer, my father-in-law’s friend says.  We’ve got nothing without our freedom.

Now this is an old line, commonly brought up when Republicans want to defeat Democrats–with the Dems perceived as weak on defense–so weak, even, that we might lose our very freedom if we should elect them.  Of course, this has never happened though there were times during the late 1970’s that the very embodiment of Democratic foreign policy ineptness came to pass–but it seems to be the perpetual threat associated with electing any and all Democrats.  I personally think Obama will take a Clintonian foreign policy approach–plenty hawkish, though perhaps not right away.  Circumstance, I believe, will force his hand.  My friend, columnist Bill Harrison predicts Obama will throw his base under the bus within two years when, he believes, the GOP will retake the Congress.

But certainly Obama is not as experienced or as knowledgeable as McCain.  McCain has an impressive, encyclopedic understanding of our relationship to other nations.

And up until the Palin pick, he displayed excellent judgment, too.  Now I’m back to undecided.

But not the gentleman at the table, who then launched into a little speech about Obama only ever having worked in the Black community for Black people and how that’s all he’d do as President, only ever doing anything to help them.

Them.

This, to me, is racism.  Plain and simple.  This is before the campaign got really ugly, too, prior to the latest Ayers attack ads.  .Maybe I’m sensitive to it because I have black friends, or because my siblings are adopted from Korea and have been subjected to racism often throughout their lives.  My father-in-law’s friend didn’t complain about any white candidates who have, more than likely, spent most of their careers around white people, helping white people and their agenda.  That’s not an issue.  But Obama having worked in a community that was Black seems to be enough to disqualify him as President.

So of course what ends up happening is my wife and the mechanic get into a big debate.  To my wife, Obama has been the more honorable of the two.  To the mechanic, Obama is a liar and a cheat.  To him Fox News is the only honest news station.  CNN, he says, which my wife and I watch, lies.

As a professed moderate, a defense conservative, a social liberal, I have to say this: All politicians lie, and all media is biased.  Including CNN and Fox.  Including McCain and Obama.  I mean, I’m an environmentalist but I don’t believe in global warming.  I’m a free-market guy, but I believe in smart oversight.  I prefer low taxes when and if possible, but I think some brand of universal health care is ethically and morally essential.  With this many conflicting beliefs and ideologies, I find very few pols or media outlets that reflect MY worldview.  It’s pretty easy for most of us to see that these people and organizations have agendas.  It’s harder when they reflect our own agenda so perfectly.

Now, my wife is no fool politically.  She’s sick and tired of the Daily Show because she thinks it’s far too liberally biased.  Then again, she can’t stand most of what she watches on Fox because it’s too conservative.  So the mechanic claiming that she was naive and that he subscribed not to any ideology but to “the truth” was laughable at best.  When anyone claims ownership of “the truth” you can bet that the debate has little distance left in it, little breath.

So here we are with a guy who claims Obama’s entire agenda is based on helping Black people and only Black people; who thinks Palin is perfectly ready to step in and take over; and who thinks Fox News is speaking the Truth.

If I were talking to an Obama supporter who believed McCain was an evil neocon, that MSNBC was the Truth and Keith Olbermann the harbinger of said truth, and who thought that Global Warming was the number one issue in the race (and that war could be solved through loving more and dancing in the streets) I would be just as perturbed.

These extremists do nothing for us.  I want more passion to come from the center.  I believe in using logic to determine what’s best for this country.  Not scripture, not unwavering ideology, not racism or homophobia, not emotive hatred of war or the unreasonable anti-logic of the hardcore green-movement and their scare tactics.  When you peel back the agenda, the fear-mongering, the irrationale of one ideology or the other, you start to see that there are reasons for everything.

There are legitimate reasons to worry over an Obama presidency and legitimate reasons to worry over a McCain presidency.  It has become less and less clear which is more worrisome after the VP’s were chosen.  At this point I feel like neither candidate brings much to the table.

One thing that will most certainly play a role in this election is racism.  That’s just a fact, and it’s obvious when you begin talking with people.  Agism will also factor in.  It does for me.  I think McCain could die in office.  The likelihood is higher due to his age.

For me, that means a Palin presidency, and I’m not sure I can vote for that possibility.  I’m not sure conservatism benefits from that possibility.

Good lord, McCain, it would appear, is suspending his campaign, and canceling the Friday debate:

It has become clear that no consensus has developed to support the Administration’s proposal.  I do not believe that the plan on the table will pass as it currently stands, and we are running out of time.

Tomorrow morning, I will suspend my campaign and return to Washington after speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative.  I have spoken to Senator Obama and informed him of my decision and have asked him to join me.

I am calling on the President to convene a meeting with the leadership from both houses of Congress, including Senator Obama and myself.  It is time for both parties to come together to solve this problem.

We must meet as Americans, not as Democrats or Republicans, and we must meet until this crisis is resolved.  I am directing my campaign to work with the Obama campaign and the commission on presidential debates to delay Friday night’s debate until we have taken action to address this crisis.

I think this is either utterly absurd, or a sign that the McCain camp is doing badly.  I’d like to see this as an actual call for bi-partisanship, but I just don’t think so.

Writes Michael Crowley:

A few insta-reactions:

–Having thrown a Hail Mary with the Sarah Palin pick and feeling he scored a touchdown (although that’s certainly debatable), he may have concluded that risk-taking works for him. He’s always known the fundamentals of the race were against him and would require some out-of-the-box thinking.

–He was losing control of the campaign narrative. The Palin surge/convention bounce is nearly kaput. Obama seems to be tied or ahead in Virginia and Florida is back in play. Today’s WashPost poll showed McCain nine points down and distrusted on the economy. The media’s interest this week is in Rick Davis’s lobbying and Sarah Palin’s comical photo-ops. Things could hardly get much worse.

–Steve Schmidt’s philosophy seems to be that it’s always better to be on the offensive, and this certainly counts as that. As Ben Smith puts it, Obama’s choice–come to DC on McCain’s terms or dismiss this as a stunt?–”is not an easy or obvious one.”

Andrew Sullivan asks if the campaign is collapsing.

MSNBC reports that:

According to the source, McCain wants to create a “political free zone” until a deal is reached on legislation for a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry.

What to think, what to think.  It feels gimmicky, though I understand the real concern here of financial collapse…And now what will Obama do?  This puts him in a tricky position.  I was looking forward to the debate, I must admit, and while I know that we have to fix this financial crisis, not debating it seems like a mistake, or a dodge from McCain.

So let’s talk about this comic.

Essentially the above comic assumes that all liberals, all leftists, etc. must be hand-in-hand on all these things, which is utterly ludicrous.

But it’s just a comic.

When it comes to being green, I say let’s pump more money into the mythical 100mpg vehicles, and let’s build more rail, more mass transit, and new urbanist cities–walkable cities. But let’s still drill where we can. Let’s not start depending too much on places like Nigeria, who care not at all for the environment or worker’s rights, or safety standards. Let’s drill ourselves, with our higher standards.

Then let’s build some more top-notch technology. Let’s put our tax dollars to work getting more students into science programs, hi-tech degrees, all that. I’m not worried about jobs floating overseas, so long as we’re making sure that we have the money invested in our students, so that new, better, hi-end jobs can replace older, out-dated jobs that migrate elsewhere.

I see this as a larger vision, and it will take a visionary leader to achieve any of it (and this is just a morsel of the many things we need to do aside from whine and moan over global warming and so forth). I think Obama has it. He has vision, and that is a critical factor.

Palin, on the other hand, has religion. I’m not against religion, per say, but the sort that Palin seems at home with is not the vision I want for America–one in which science is defunded, education takes a back seat, and so on and so forth.

I could give a damn about her grandbaby to be. I just don’t like the vision of America that she holds dear. I think we can do so much better.

~cross-posted at LeftHawk

“Imagine there’s no countries/it isn’t hard to do/nothing to kill or die for/and no religion too/imagine all the people/living life in peace.”
- John Lennon, Imagine

With the American Democratic Party’s formal consummation of its dalliance with the Fresh Prince of Thin Air, we had anticipated at least some airing of the lamentations of regret typically following such ill-advised intercourse. Hearing little to none, we are compelled to re-examine the cultural circumstances which make it possible for a farce such as this to come to pass.

Though much discussed, the Obama ascendancy still baffles: the party of Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy has turned the keys over to a very junior Senator whose scant voting record is the furthest left of any in the Senate. Really? It has been called “the audacity of hope.” We call it merely, audacity; that strain of defiant, reckless, irresponsible audacity one expects from a sixteen year old, not from a national institution that – at one time anyway – was of significant weight and consequence.

(more…)

Looks like the buzz over the Obama for America seal has generated some legitimate uproar, and the Obama campaign is poised to retire it altogether.

The LA Times writes:

Widely mocked (here, here and here, to cite but a few of the items that wryly took note it), the intrepid Marc Ambinder of TheAtlantic.com reports that the insignia will be consigned to some closet to gather dust.

He writes: “I’m told that Obama recognizes that it was a silly mistake, that the universal reaction at (his Chicago headquarters) was, “Boy, was that dumb.’ “

Some things, I guess, were just never meant to be.

(more…)

Mr. Obama is asking something of Americans. He is asking them to believe, to hope, to take a leap of Faith. Indeed, I fear Barack Obama is askign a great deal more of Americans then they realize. The Junior Senator from Illinois has practically no political record by which he can be judged, and whose record so far has been frighteningly liberal; is affiliated with organizations whose political and racial beliefs are extreme to say the least, including Kenyan extremists; has offered up no substantial evidence of his ability to govern; and has replaced practical goals with lofty, slogan-filled, oratorically brilliant rhetoric.

(more…)

By Julian Krasta

Now that the Democrats have, at long last, selected their nominee, “We” need to remind ourselves of long-standing facts concerning those persons we elected to public office. More importantly, the presidential candidates need to hear from us.

The United States is hovering closer to the thin edge of the wedge, because too large a percentage of the men and women we voted to represent our best interests – and those who will yet finagle to win our votes – are preoccupied in grudge matches for supremacy within their club quarters.

(more…)

First there was Rev. Wright with his “God Damn America” speech. Now we have a Catholic Priest, Father Pfleger, which is kind of a fun name to say out loud, mocking Clinton and white people in general.

The Georgetown Blog notes:

During his sermon, Father Pfleger mocked Hillary Clinton’s tears before the New Hampshire primary. He opines that she cried because she felt “entitled” because she is white “and there’s a black man stealing my show.” Father Pfleger apologized late Thursday for the remarks, saying his sermon was “inconsistent with Senator Obama’s life and message.”

Though after now two religious leaders at one very racist Church saying very anti-white things, you start to wonder if Obama’s message isn’t really more along the same lines, just better disguised. Indeed, Obama is a slick character, and who would honestly be surprised if his message wasn’t merely camouflaged beneath his hope & change rhetoric? (more…)

Ron Paul has absolutely no chance in a million years of becoming the next President of the United States of America. None. I site, as my source for this wild claim, the fact that he has not won a single state primary. Add to this the fact that his popularity is more a media infatuation with a certain inexplicable fervor unique to his supporters, and you basically can see how Ron Paul has built his castle out of sand. The realities of politics in America will wash the campaign into the wide oceans of time and memory. (more…)

Yesterday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe former JFK speechwriter Ted Sorensen joined former LBJ speechwriter Doris Kearns Goodwin for a discussion of the similarities between Barack Obama and John F. Kennedy. For those less mindful of their history one could only sense that any such comparisons the two made favorably of Obama with Kennedy would redound to the former’s benefit. Such should not be the case.

During Kennedy’s run for president against Dwight Eisenhower’s vice president Richard Nixon in order for the young Massachusetts senator to prove his bona fides on foreign policy as a Cold Warrior he resorted to playing what might rightfully be called the first lie about WMDs in US history. That was, of course, the so-called “missile gap” between the United States and Soviet Union in which Kennedy accused the Eisenhower administration of allowing the United States to fall behind the Soviets. Kennedy knew this accusation was untrue but he also knew that Nixon, as an administration member, could not use the intelligence gathered by the CIA through U-2 overflights to prove that Kennedy was lying about this crucial issue.

Now yesterday Sorensen and Goodwin went to great lengths to talk about how Kennedy’s muscular and shrewd diplomacy paid dividends during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 in convincing Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev to remove Soviet missiles from Cuba and allowing Khruschev to save face at the same time by having the U.S. remove obsolete US missiles from Turkey. All of that is true as far as it goes. What goes unsaid, of course, is that the existence of the Cuban Missile Crisis in the first place owes its existence to Kennedy’s reckless fecklessness in the abortive Bay of Pigs Operation against Castro a short time before wherein the young president inherited a flawed plan hatched by the CIA and Cuban exiles to topple Castro. Kennedy signed off on this mission but after it began got cold feet and refused to commit US airpower to support it and the mission failed. To this very day Democrats have not recovered from damage done to the party’s reputation over that incident with Cuban-Americans. And it was Kennedy’s poor performance in that episode that was to embolden Khruschev to begin shipping missiles to Cuba precipitating the latter crisis as the Soviet dictator, based on Kennedy’s past performance, was convinced he could get away with it.

Upon entering the White House, Jack Kennedy was trying to prove his mettle as a tough guy and it backfired on him and nearly resulted in the closest that the USSR and the U.S. ever came to war during that “thirteen days in October” 1962 when the world held its breath. In some of his more strident comments such as “if Pakistan can’t or won’t act in the Frontier Tribal Areas we will unilaterally if necessary” Barack Obama echoes some of the same reckless statements. The example of another young president should dampen the enthusiasm some of Sen. Obama’s supporters might feel for comparisons of their man with an earlier U.S. Senator trying to become president of the United States.

~read more from Bill Harrison.…

The latest dust up between eventual general election opponents Barack Obama and John McCain came today in which John McCain characterized remarks made by Obama. I will recount them here to set the stage for my analysis:

Obama said on Sunday in Pendleton, Oregon:

“Iran, Cuba, Venezuela — these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don’t pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying, `We’re going to wipe you off the planet.’”

John McCain characterized what Obama said like this on Monday in Chicago:

“Such a statement betrays the depth of Senator Obama’s inexperience and reckless judgment. These are very serious deficiencies for an American president to possess,”

McCain further said of Iran regarding its threat to America vis-a-vis Obama’s comparison to the Soviet Union:

McCain listed the dangers he sees from Iran: It provides deadly explosive devices used to kill U.S. soldiers in Iraq, sponsors terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East and is committed to Israel’s destruction.

John McCain’s attempt to show Barack Obama as a naife because Obama does not see Iran and the Soviet Union as equal threats falls on its face from the start. Iran is not a world superpower. Iran does not have a military that is within the same tier as the United States military. Iran does not have missile silos with nuclear ICBMs targeting American cities simply awaiting the word to level them. In short, Iran is not an opponent capable of making war with the United States symmetrically and this is the distinction that John McCain fails to make.

On balance, most of the conflicts of the 21st century will not resemble those of the 20th century. They will differ just as the set piece battles and Napoleonic tactics of the 19th century advanced into the apex of 20th century war theory: maneuver warfare as opposed to static battle lines. That apex is reflected by the United States military today in its armor that carries great firepower while being able to move fast enough to outflank an opponent and a paratrooper force that is the envy of all nations, able to deploy anywhere in the world in a few dozen hours. The great majority of conflicts in this century will be of the asymmetrical kind. Barack Obama understands this and John McCain, it seems, does not.

It is apropos that this message be delivered in a place like Newsvine because the Internet is the primary driving force behind the change in how wars are fought just as the internal combustion engine was the primary driving force in changing how wars were fought in the 20th century. Enemies like Iran learned late last century after observing the United States fight wars that decentralization was its best option when confronting America. It was not a large army that drove the American Marines out of Beirut, it was a single suicidal member of Hezbollah.

Iran is likely our most troublesome enemy in the short term, but it is not because they resemble the Soviet Union in the least. It is because they have cultivated amorphous armies and terrorist cells across the world that it can call on to act or that are preset to act if Iran is attacked. The Iraq War only extended Iran’s reach, putting a Shiite government into power in Iraq which has allowed several powerful Shiite militias to spring into existence, two of which are al-Sadr’s group and the Badr militia. Destroying Iran is not an exercise which would be difficult if America were so disposed, dealing with the aftermath of the terrorist minefield that Iran laid to protect itself would be. Therefore, more is to be gained through diplomacy than through a standoff because diplomacy is a much craftier answer to asymmetrical warfare than brute force and it appears that McCain favors brute force while Obama favors diplomacy and, failing that, brute force.

Also fundamentally misunderstood by McCain and better understood by Obama is the threat that China presents in the long term. I believe this is a result of the generational gap between the two candidates. China is, without a doubt, the greatest asymmetrical threat that the United States will face this century. It has proved this over and over again through its satellite destroyer test that demonstrated its capability to wipe out the system that the United States military relies on (the Global Positioning System) to guide its bombs, its soldiers and its warships.

It proved that it could jam a powerful commercial computer network when Chinese hackers attacked CNN’s network because it did not like the coverage CNN gave regarding the Free Tibet protesters and the Olympic flame. China has official (black hat) hackers and unofficial (gray hat) hackers that both take direction from the Chinese government that could mobilize China’s computing power and sheer population volume to bombard and possibly take down essential defense networks that are used to relay orders to American military units. China is also the leader when it comes to espionage (corporate and military) against the United States government and American companies. This network was put on display recently when China chose to (unwisely in my opinion) use their embassies and registered college student organizations for Chinese students to organize pro-China rallies to counter the Free Tibet protesters in San Francisco.

These student organizations have been an engine for both corporate and military espionage as the students make contact with the Chinese government through the organizations and then, after graduation, go on to be employed by American defense contractors or other companies that have valuable technological developments that the Chinese government wants to obtain and disseminate to the People’s Liberation Army (which is then incorporated into Chinese arms manufacturing) or to one of China’s many industries who seek to compete on the global market with American companies in terms of quality. This is, admittedly, a cloud that is on the horizon but it is a cloud that is gathering and, in approximately 20 years, will settle over our country and will need to be weathered.

Whether it be on Iran’s asymmetrical terrorist warfare or China’s asymmetrical computer warfare and corporate & military espionage, I firmly believe that Barack Obama’s mindset and advisers far outclass John McCain’s mindset and advisers. To maintain our advantage over our direct enemies and current competitors that could turn into direct enemies in the future, we have to have a forward-looking view. McCain, to use a term from military history, wants to fight the last war. Obama’s newness is to our advantage because it gives him a view that is conducive to innovation and spurs him to envision the next war and be prepared to fight it.

Tuesday’s election results highlighted challenges for both Democrats and Republicans.

Republicans received a hard shot in Mississippi. Greg Davis (for whom I campaigned and who was a well-qualified candidate) narrowly lost a special congressional election in a district President George W. Bush carried four years ago with 62% of the vote. Democrats pulled off the win by smartly nominating a conservative, Travis Childers, from a rural swing part of the district who disavowed Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and hit Mr. Davis from the right.

This blow to the GOP came after two other special congressional election losses in recent months. Republicans lost former House Speaker Denny Hastert’s Illinois seat and Rep. Richard Baker’s Louisiana seat.

Both of those losses can be attributed to bad candidates. But that only shows the GOP can’t take “safe” seats for granted when Democrats run conservatives who distance themselves from their national party leaders. The string of defeats should cure Republicans of the habit of simply shouting “liberal! liberal! liberal!” in hopes of winning an election. They need to press a reform agenda full of sharp contrasts with the Democrats.

Why is it tough sledding for Republicans? Public revulsion at GOP scandals was a large factor in the party’s 2006 congressional defeat. Some brand damage remains, as does the downward pull of the president’s approval ratings. But the principal elements are the Iraq war and a struggling economy.

Gallup’s 2007 report found that fewer voters identify themselves as Republicans now than at any point in the past 20 years – despite the fact that less than a fifth of Americans agree with Mr. Obama’s call to rapidly withdraw from Iraq. And while many Americans are concerned about the economy, most are satisfied with their own finances.

As Republican ranks declined, the number of independents and Democrats grew. Has the bottom been reached? It’s too early to know. But Americans are acknowledging progress in Iraq, economists are suggesting the economy will be in better shape this fall, and a recent ABC/Washington Post poll found GOP identification rising.

What is clear is that John McCain and Republicans will prevail only if they convince voters that there are profound consequences at stake in Iraq, and that more and better jobs will follow from the GOP’s approach of lowering taxes, opening trade, and ending earmarks and other pro-growth policies.

Republicans also face challenges with the young (whose opposition to the war and attraction to Mr. Obama have made them Democrats) and Hispanics (the fastest-growing part of the electorate). A recent survey offers some encouraging news. Mr. McCain is polling as high as 41% with Hispanics – close to President Bush’s 44% in 2004.

Democrats shouldn’t be complacent after Tuesday. Their problems start with Mr. Obama’s 41-point loss to Hillary Clinton in West Virginia. Mr. Obama lost the primary because the rejection of him by blue-collar voters is hardening. The last Democrat to win the presidency without carrying the Mountain State was Woodrow Wilson in 1916.

Barely half of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters in Indiana, North Carolina and West Virginia say they’re ready to support Mr. Obama against Mr. McCain today. Without solid support from these voters, Mr. Obama will be in trouble in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, West Virginia, Wisconsin and other battlegrounds.

So far, Mr. Obama owes his success to elites captivated by his personality. But in the general election, most folks will care more about a candidate’s philosophy and stand on the issues. And what’s considered mainstream values in a general election is different than in a primary.

Mr. Obama knows this, which is why he peppered his North Carolina primary night speech with culturally conservative language. And it is also why he is reaching out to Jewish voters.

Mr. Obama leads Mr. McCain 61%-32% among Jews. John Kerry won the Jewish vote 74%-25% in 2004. A weak performance for Mr. Obama could make it harder to win Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio or Florida. It could even put New Jersey in play.

Then there are the record low congressional approval ratings. No Congress has fallen as far and as fast as the Nancy Pelosi/Harry Reid-led House and Senate. Unlike President Bush, congressional Democrats will be on the ballot this fall, and can do little to improve their lackluster record before then. It must also be disconcerting for Ms. Pelosi that the Democrats’ winning formula has meant conceding ground on guns, prayer, partial-birth abortion and other issues that matter to social conservatives.

Both parties face major challenges and have little time to alter the dynamics of the election to their advantage. Recognizing underlying problems and correcting them within a matter of a couple of months is one of the supreme challenges in politics. Whichever party does that fast and well will benefit come November.

This article first appeared on the Wall Street Journal Opinion Page.  Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

I read this list over at Little Green Footballs today.  It’s a pretty good breakdown of the many less-than-above-board affiliations Mr. Obama has with some pretty anti-Israel characters around the country, including professors, pastors, and advisers.  As much as I’d like to believe that Obama will bring change that is good for America, I think he’ll be more of a foreign policy disaster than anything else.

So read the list and judge for yourself.  Do we really want someone with this sort of character-judgment in the white house?  Carter was bad enough, do we really need another Jimmy?

Here’s a quick run-down of some of Barack Obama’s questionable and disturbing associations:

* Rabidly anti-Israel Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi. The Obamas were regular dinner guests at Khalidi’s Hyde Park home for years.

* Terrorist sympathizer Ali Abunimah, who runs the viciously anti-Israel web site Electronic Intifada.

* Unrepentant Weather Underground terrorists William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.

* Reverend Jeremiah Wright. What more needs to be said?

* Anti-Israel foreign policy adviser Samantha Power — fired after calling Hillary Clinton a “monster.”

* Anti-Israel foreign policy adviser Robert Malley — fired when it was revealed he has been holding talks with Hamas.

* Hatem El-Hady, former official of the Hamas-linked charity Kindhearts, closed by the Justice Department. El-Hady’s web page suddenly vanished from the Obama campaign site with no explanation, after being exposed by LGF and others.

* Tony Rezko — a Chicago fixer currently in a whole lot of legal trouble.

There are more, I know; this is just off the top of my head.

I have never witnessed a presidential election in which a major candidate had this many skeletons in his closet.

~by Lisaed

I find myself wondering lately what it must be like to be one of those all powerful “persuadable” voters. I’m charming. I’m conservative. I’m not persuadable. While I may not be an ardent supporter of John McCain I am an ardent supporter of all those wanting to keep Barack Obama out of the White House. In other words, I’m not as passionate about putting a republican in the White House this time round as I am about keeping the likely democratic nominee out.

It’s no surprise that I say to you I was never one of those republicans who were o.k. with the prospect of a President Obama. I was never going to be one of those Obamicans Barack likes to think will flock to him come November. In short, I never liked Barack Obama. I didn’t like him before we heard the “God Damn America” rantings from the Reverend Wright. I didn’t like him before his elitist comments about small town Americans. But what about those persuadable voters? Are they like me at all? Do they find they like Barack Obama less and less the more they learn about this this relatively unknown candidate for President? I hope so because one thing on which we can all agree is it’s those persuadable voters - those who have not yet made up their minds - some of them democrats, some of them republicans, most of them independents who will determine the next leader of the free world.

I’d like to be inside the mind of a persuadable voter. Do they ever cringe like I do when they watch Barack Obama? Going back about eight long weeks ago as I watched what was still the “walk on water” pre-Reverend Wright version of Barack Obama speaking to emotionally charged enormous crowds complete with crying and fainting women he didn’t inspire within me hope. No it was something much different that I felt. I felt angry. I was angry that democratic primary voters were so enamored with this guy whose gift for oratory blinded them to the fact they were all too willing to place a just barely U.S. Senator basically a back bencher from the Illinois State Senate in the White House. The more cool the more calm the more collected Barack Obama was in front of these crowds of thousands the more uncomfortable I became watching this man preach from his pulpit to the masses. The Obama Campaign must have sensed my discomfort cause by Texas they were going for smaller venues where they could limit crowd sizes to just a couple thousand.

Did persuadable voters laugh (not with him but at him) like I did when I heard that score? A 37.….a 37? Real men can bowl and if they can’t they fake it. Even I can shoot better than a 37 and I count as one of my most embarrassing moments an incident in a bowling alley circa 1988. Did persuadable voters think Obama looked silly dancing alongside Ellen Degeneres on her show? So much for stereotypes. The point of all this is Obama is far less comfortable when forced to step down from his pulpit and walk amongst the little people. His body language alone confirms this as it did on his recent appearance on “The View” where he sat fidgeting on the couch like a school child anxious for recess. If Obama can’t sit still next to Joy Behar what will he do when sitting alongside Ahmadinejad in one of those without conditions meetings he wants to have with leaders of rogue nations?

Were persuadable voters shocked and appalled last Friday as I was when I heard those shameful comments Barack Obama made about small town Americans?

“But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Were persuadable voters disappointed with the great orator who instead of apologizing tried to explain away his ill conceived remarks by blaming the government for the bitterness he believes small town Americans feel…..the bitterness Obama believes is the impetus behind their faith in God and their support for second amendment rights as well as their disdain for things like illegal immigration. Did those persuadable voters buy his promise that a vote for him would help alleviate that bitterness because this new messiah could solve all their problems with big government?

“”And so they pray and they count on each other and they count on their families. You know this in your own lives, and what we need is a government that is actually paying attention. Government that is fighting for working people day in and day out making sure that we are trying to allow them to live out the American dream.”

I know I’m a proud republican who believes strongly in the politics of personal responsibility, but were persuadable voters swallowing Obama’s kool-aid that it is from the hand of the government and the government alone that Americans can live the American dream? My goodness his remarks smacked of socialism.

Lastly I wonder do persuadable voters believe that Barack Obama shares their values? I’m not so sure because since the Reverend Wright scandal I’ve seen Obama views the world too often through the lens of color - he sees the grievances of black people and the bitterness of lower class white people. And so I’m left to wonder if his untraditional life story allows him to see and even understand the shared values of all Americans. After I heard his Philadelphia speech on race I looked at my husband and said I think I know now what it must have felt like to live in 1964 America. That speech did not inspire within me hope but once again anger because I believed in that speech Obama focused too much on where this country still has work to do and not enough on the very real progress that has indeed been made in race relations in America.

Obama likes to tell us about the audacity of hope and yet so often when I listen to him I see him pointing to our shortcomings, to our anger, to our bitterness, to our despair. Obama presents himself as the change candidate who inspires hope among the masses but more and more lately I’m feeling that Obama’s politics of hope are nothing but a farce because what Obama is truly preaching is nothing short of the politics of a liberal elitist with socialist tendencies. Did he think we wouldn’t catch on because he is black? We’re an equal opportunity country and I guess the lesson learned is that black people in America can aspire to be snobby liberals too and I wonder now if armed with this new knowledge about Barack Obama if persuadable voters are really so persuadable after all.

Presidential hopeful John McCain visited the rocket-battered Israeli city of Sderot today. He was accompanied by Senators Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham.

John McCain has a much deeper understanding of the current and historical Israeli/Palestine conflict than the current President. His friendship with Mr. Lieberman is also a good sign, as Lieberman (who is Jewish) is a staunch supporter of Israel.

Very promising, Mr. McCain stated that:

“I support Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”

He also spoke on Iran’s involvement in the region, assuring Israel that Iran was not merely an Israeli problem, stating that:

The combination of terror, nuclear capability and irresponsible leadership is a danger to the entire world. Even the region’s Arab states fear Iran, and they need to say so out loud.

While far from the most “conservative” GOP choice, McCain is a solid backer of Israel and the War on Terror. While Mrs. Clinton is also known for her support of Israel, and Mr. Obama claims to be, McCain is far more educated and involved in the Zionist struggle, and will prove to be the candidate that Iran and the many terrorist organizations funded by Iran will fear the most, should he be elected.

 from Frankly Speaking
With the primaries all but over, the next question is who will be the running mates for Obama or Clinton, and John McCain.

The candidates will tell us that their Vice-Presidential running mate will be selected purely on the basis of who is most capable to assume the role of president. It’s the right thing to say.

But it’s a bunch of baloney. The selection, as always, will be based on strategy, mainly according to owed political favors and who can better help them get elected, qualifications be damned.

George Herbert Walker Bush certainly didn’t think Dan Quayle was the best man in the land to sit one heartbeat away from the Oval Office. He selected Quayle based on region, popularity polls and Quayle’s youth and good looks.

John F. Kennedy despised Lyndon Johnson, but it made political sense to bring on the man who came in second place at the convention, and who hailed from a southern state to, uh, balance the ticket.

Was Spiro Agnew the best Richard Nixon could do? Doubtful. Walter Mondale balanced Jimmy Carter’s deep south ticket by representing the northern mid-west. Eight years later, Mondale parlayed his presidential by selecting am eastern state woman (Rep. Geraldine Ferraro) for a running mate, hoping to garner the female vote. She had but four years experience in the House.

Of them all, Ronald Reagan seems to have selected a running mate based on experience and capacity to handle the job, That being George H.W. Bush.

It’s always been my belief that Dick Cheney was predetermined for our current president by the Republican power structure long before the nomination process was over in 2000. Cheney was selected, in my opinion, to be the strength behind the president.

In this coming election, I believe we will see a new criteria. Ethnicity, race and gender will play a bigger role than what region of the country he or she lives in. Experience and capability will likely play a secondary role to election strategy.

If Hillary becomes the Democratic nominee, she’ll want to counter McCain’s southwest appeal, by selecting an Hispanic male from the same region. It would be suicide to pick another female. My guess: Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who is half Spanish and does bring a host of experience to the ticket.

If Barack Obama becomes the nominee, he’ll certainly select a left wing liberal, but he’ll be ever careful of not selecting another ethnic minority. Strategically, that would be too risky. He certainly has the black vote. A woman, especially one from the same state as his Republican opponent would make sense, especially after defeating a woman, thus I predict Governor Janet Napolitano of Arizona would be on Obama’s ticket. After all, she did endorse him over Hillary.

Then, there’s Senator John McCain. It all depends on the Hillary versus Barack outcome. If he runs against Hillary, I think he’ll select a conservative woman, much like Christine Todd Whitman, former governor of New Jersey. Or Senator Elizabeth Dole, from North Carolina, popular wife of war hero and Senator, Bob Dole.

If he is opposed by Barack Obama, I would expect him to search for a dynamic black to counter the minority vote, such as Colin Powell, who always said he would not run for president. However, he never said anything about not running for Vice-President. Condi Rice is another possibility, but I think the two of them were at odds concerning the Iraq war. Minorities aside, looking east to New York state where popular ex-governor, George Pataki would make a lot of sense.

Let’s just hope, whoever becomes the next Vice-President, he or she is fully able to handle the job. Considering some of the past choices, it’s cause for worry.

What say you?

Can we trust Obama to be a strong supporter of Israel?  This is a good question, no matter how you look at it.  Maybe Obama is Christian, and perhaps he never got sucked into Islam, but he certainly has Islamic sympathies.  Like many liberals here and in the EU, Obama has convinced himself that the Palestinians are somehow the victims of Israeli hostility and that a peaceful co-existence can be possible only if Israel continues to make concessions to the Arabs.

This “can’t we all just get along” belief may be nothing more than naivety, true, and I have a hard time believing that Mr. Obama has any ill-will toward Israel–I simply believe he has an inexperienced view of the Middle-East crisis and a too-liberal perspective on the hard facts about Islamism.

Nevertheless, speaking to Haaretz Obama spoke in no uncertain terms about his support for Israel in the years ahead.  So, once again, we are faced with the oratorical and rhetorical skills, left wondering about reality.  After all, what can we base our judgments of Obama on?  He is a rookie Senator.  He has practically no foreign affairs credentials.  Through what lens can we view this man, now poised to take leadership of the country?

This is the fear I feel when imagining an Obama presidency.  I don’t know what to expect, and beyond the Rhetoric of Hope, nobody else does either, not even his rabid supporters…