Libertarian Leanings

Abject terror of the lefty fems

Columnists Gail Collins and the forever cute Maureen Dowd carry on in a longstanding New York Times tradition, made famous by Walter Duranty, of ignoring news that doesn't fit their deeply treasured fantasies.  Specifically, the two lefty fems argue that the only candidate on either presidential ticket that has ever been chief executive of anything... lacks experience. 

Both accuse John McCain of picking Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for his running mate only because she is a woman who would attract disaffected Hillary supporters. Collins prays that it won't work.

The idea that women are going to race off to vote for any candidate with the same internal plumbing is both offensive and historically wrong. When the sexes have parted company in modern elections, it’s generally been because women are more likely to be Democrats, and more concerned about protecting the social safety net. “The gender gap traditionally has been determined by party preference, not by the gender of the candidate,” said Ruth Mandel of the Eagleton Institute of Politics.

Therein lies Governor Palin's problem winning over the disaffected Collins.  Palin is not a Democrat and is not, in Collins' conjecture, "concerned about protecting the social safety net." The gender gap is a party preference thing, and Hillary is the preference among women who are Democrats.  No gender bias there?  Governor Palin will undoubtedly attract Republican women.  Might she also attract some Democrats as well?  Collins denies the possibility.

This year, Hillary Clinton took things to a whole new level. She didn’t run for president as a symbol but as the best-prepared candidate in the Democratic pack. Whether you liked her or not, she convinced the nation that women could be qualified to both run the country and be commander in chief. That was an enormous breakthrough, and Palin’s nomination feels, in comparison, like a step back.

How odd that Ms. Collins would think the selection of a sitting governor, elected in her own right while opposed by the state's Republican establishment, could be considered a step back.  Compare her rise to Hillary's, who was First Lady, and who won her New York senate seat on the strength of name recognition garnered as the wife of Bill.  For Collins name recognition wins out over accomplishment.

If she’s only on the ticket to try to get disaffected Clinton supporters to cross over, it’s a bad choice. Joe Biden may already be practicing his drop-dead line for the vice-presidential debate: “I know Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton is a friend of mine, and governor, you’re no Hillary Clinton.”

Won't that be memorable line -- if Biden is fool enough to try it.  And he might.  Collins was fool enough to write it, no doubt thinking, what a clever finish to her column. 

But the queen of clever is the ditsy Maureen Dowd who begins her vacuous column this way.

The guilty pleasure I miss most when I’m out slogging on the campaign trail is the chance to sprawl on the chaise and watch a vacuously spunky and generically sassy chick flick.

Dowd then proceeds slog through her own invented but tiresome chick flick in fantasy -- while no doubt stifling herself at its hilarity.  The relentlessly cutesy Down distills the governor's life down to a paragraph.

Palinistas, as they are called, love Sarah’s spunky, relentlessly quirky “Northern Exposure” story from being a Miss Alaska runner-up, and winning Miss Congeniality, to being mayor and hockey mom in Wasilla, a rural Alaskan town of 6,715, to being governor for two years to being the first woman ever to run on a national Republican ticket.

And then she asks, "Why do men only pick women as running mates when they need a Hail Mary pass? It’s a little insulting."  The vacuous Dowd seems to think John McCain is in need of a Hail Mary.  This year's historic Democratic National Convention is history.  At its conclusion Barack Obama holds a narrow 3-point lead over John McCain, according to Rasmussen.  The Republican National Convention in Minneapolis hasn't even started yet.  And here's what should be even more troubling for Democrats.

-- A year ago Democrats were planning on riding opposition to the highly unpopular war in Iraq right into the White House, but voters tell us now they trust McCain over Obama on national security issues 52% to 41%.

The time for a Hail Mary hasn't arrived, but when it does I predict it won't be the McCain campaign that heaves one.  The Obama camp will have its hands full trying to convince voters that the most vocal proponent of the wildly successful Iraq strategy known as the surge, is somehow wrong about national defense.  Here's another problem for the Obama camp.  With his entire two years in the U.S. Senate spent almost exclusively campaigning for president, Obama he's going to try to argue that Palin's two years as Governor of Alaska have not given her experience.  Fortune Magazine gives us a flavor of those two years.

Once in office, Palin took an aggressive stance toward the oil companies. Her nickname from high-school basketball, "Sarah Barracuda," was resurrected in the press. Early in her term, she shocked oil lobbyists when she was so bold as to not show up when Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson came to Juneau to meet with her. Palin, after scrapping Murkowski's deal, would not give Big Oil the terms they wanted, yet insisted that the companies still had an obligation under their lease to deliver gas to whatever pipeline Alaska built. She invited the oil companies to place open bids to build a pipeline, but they refused. A bid by TransCanada, North America's largest pipeline builder, was approved by the legislature in August.

Shoots holes in Ditsy Dowd's chick flick fantasy, doesn't it.  Let's imagine Joe Biden resurrecting Lloyd Bentsen's 15 minutes of fame by claiming that he knows Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin is no Hillary Clinton.  As it was then, the correct response is, "Damn right."  Sarah Palin has her own set of accomplishments that stand up well when compared to anything that either Barack Obama or Joe Biden have ever accomplished.  Gail Collins and Maureen Dowd simply can't bear to look.

From the Democratic National Convention -- Bounce!

It's the onset of the Democratic National Convention and Rasmussen reports a bounce in the polls!

The Democratic National Convention has begun and the poll numbers are bouncing, but not in the direction that most people anticipated.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows Barack Obama attracting 44% of the vote while John McCain also earns 44%. When "leaners" are included, it’s still tied with Obama at 46% and McCain at 46%. Yesterday, with leaners, Obama had a three-point advantage over McCain.

Recently, Democratice candidate Barack Obama has shown a most regrettable Carter-esque approach to foreign policy, which doesn't stack up all that well against Republican John McCain.  It's quite possible that Obama could turn out to be a very McGovern-esque candidate as more and more voters get to know him.

Biden's poor judgment

From Michael Rubin in the Washington Post:

Bush has been a polarizing figure, but most senators realize that partisanship should never trump national security. In early 2007, evidence mounted that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps was planning terrorist activities in Iraq. An August 2007 National Intelligence Estimate found that "Iran has been intensifying aspects of its lethal support for select groups of Iraqi Shia militants" and that "Explosively formed penetrator (EFP) attacks have risen dramatically." The next month, the Senate considered a bipartisan amendment to designate the Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization, an important step to aid nonviolent efforts to deny it funds and financing. Biden was one of only 22 senators to vote against it. "I voted against the amendment to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization because I don't trust this administration," he said. Distrust of the U.S. president is the nature of politics, but skepticism about foreign dictators and their Brown Shirts is the backbone of judgment.

Can Biden be such a partisan fool?  All together now, "Yes he can!"

Who started it?

Michael Totten reports from Tbilisi, Georgia.

TBILISI, GEORGIA – Virtually everyone believes Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili foolishly provoked a Russian invasion on August 7, 2008, when he sent troops into the breakaway district of South Ossetia. “The warfare began Aug. 7 when Georgia launched a barrage targeting South Ossetia,” the Associated Press reported over the weekend in typical fashion.

Virtually everyone is wrong. Georgia didn't start it on August 7, nor on any other date. The South Ossetian militia started it on August 6 when its fighters fired on Georgian peacekeepers and Georgian villages with weapons banned by the agreement hammered out between the two sides in 1994. At the same time, the Russian military sent its invasion force bearing down on Georgia from the north side of the Caucasus Mountains on the Russian side of the border through the Roki tunnel and into Georgia. This happened before Saakashvili sent additional troops to South Ossetia and allegedly started the war.

Obama and the Jewish vote

A column by Abraham Katsman and Kory Bardash appearing in today's Jerusalem Post explores Obama's Carter-esque reflexes.  That infamous hypothetical 3:00am phone call came in when Russia invaded Georgia.  Reactions from candidates Obama and McCain are telling.

How the candidates handled that call and reacted to the crisis may have a major impact on the upcoming US presidential election. Their reactions to the Russian invasion continue to be dissected for clues as to their respective instincts in international crises and understanding aggression, and the polls have since moved in McCain's direction. But perhaps overlooked is this effect: the ricochet from Obama's limp reaction may guarantee him a very poor showing specifically among Jews and pro-Israel voters.

Obama's pro-Israel support is already precarious. Between his years of embracing radical friends and institutions, his perceived softness toward anti-Semitic despots Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmidenijad, his internationalist deference to the foreign policies of the UN and Arabist European governments, and his refusal to condemn the Palestinian Authority's terror incitement and participation while simultaneously advocating Israeli concessions, pro-Israel voters are already wary of the prospect of an Obama administration. His statements in response to the Russia/Georgia crisis may serve as nails in the coffin containing his hopes for a strong pro-Israel vote.

Here was Obama's entire prepared statement, made eight hours after the reports of the Russian invasion hit the newswires:

"I strongly condemn the outbreak of violence in Georgia, and urge an immediate end to armed conflict. Now is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint, and to avoid an escalation to full scale war. Georgia's territorial integrity must be respected. All sides should enter into direct talks on behalf of stability in Georgia, and the United States, the United Nations Security Council, and the international community should fully support a peaceful resolution to this crisis."

Not a word about Russian aggression--violence was apparently a spontaneous "outbreak." Both sides are urged equally to show "restraint"-both aggressor and victim alike. Talk about "evenhanded" - only missing was a reference to the "cycle of violence" to make this statement indistinguishable from something Kofi Annan would say about Arab attacks on Israel.

McCain being McCain, his reaction was not what you would call "evenhanded."

Obama's staff was even worse. Instead of chastising Russia for invading and bombing civilians, his team criticized... McCain. Susan Rice, Obama's top foreign policy advisor (in line to become his National Security Advisor), went on Hardball to suggest McCain himself was responsible for some of the escalation of violence, accusing McCain of "shooting from the hip" and claiming McCain's "very aggressive, very belligerent statement" may have "complicated the situation."

Ignoring Obama's political baiting, McCain advocated a muscular response, proposing specific diplomatic and economic consequences for Russia. Interestingly, though Obama claims to model himself after JFK and even invoked his memory in his recent Berlin speech, it was McCain who made an "Ich bin ein Berliner" statement:

... [T]he thoughts and prayers and support of the American people are with that brave little nation as they struggle today for their freedom and independence. I know I speak for every American when I say to [Saakashvili], "Today, we are all Georgians."

McCain pledges solidarity with the Georgians.  Obama parrots the usual solidarity of Democrats with the UN.  It's not hard to imagine an Obama presidency equaling the very worst of what we endured during the Carter years.  (Emphasis in the original above.)

It's not just Obama

Judgment is going a big topic at the presidential nominating conventions over the next couple of weeks.  It begins today with the Democrats administering CPR to a story they've been instrumental in force feeding to the American public over the last several years.  That's the one where our current Commander-in-Chief has incredibly poor judgment.  You know the drill.  Iraq -- the worst foreign policy disaster in history.  That's the theme Democrats will try to hammer home throughout their national convention to argue the urgency for "Change We Can Believe In." 

This change we're all supposed to believe in is Barack Obama.  His is the judgment we can trust, so they will say.  He opposed the war at its outset when support for the war was at its height.  But then he opposed the troop surge when there was hardly any support for it anywhere.  Unfortunately for Obama, those decisions don't look so good in hindsight.  Noemie Emery wonders how that's going to work as it becomes apparent to more and more people just how wrong Obama has been.  Will change according to Barack the anointed be change that anybody can believe in it?

As Dickerson notes, that's not all he got wrong--he's been mistaken in nearly everything he said on Iraq since he came to the Senate. He claimed that the Anbar Awakening took place as a result of the Democrats' congressional victories, but it began in September 2006, two months before the voting took place. He opposed not only the troop surge, but the strategic changes that took place along with it, that did so much to enable the victory. He said the American military had nothing to do with the Anbar Awakening or with the retreat of the Sadr militia, something denied by the military and by the Iraqi Sunnis themselves. He was also wrong in his predictions of what would occur. "In January 2007, Obama claimed that the Iraqi government would make no hard choices if the United States stayed," wrote Dickerson, noting however that "they have made hard choices," such as Maliki's decision to attack and defeat Sadr and his Mahdi Army. This of course casts doubt on the senator's current projections. "If Obama was wrong about the tactical gains that would be made by the new strategy, and wrong about how the Iraqi political leaders will react, can his larger theory about how Iraqis will respond to a troop pullout remain intact?"

But it's not just Obama whose judgment has been abysmal.  In the most arrogant way possible, the entire Democratic party has showboated the most horrendous judgment imaginable.  Oddly enough Hillary Clinton has been the occasional exception, because for a while she did actually defend her Senate vote in favor of war with Iraq.  Unfortunately for Hillary she didn't stick to her guns.  Political expediencies of her primary battles against Obama forced her to apologize for her vote, to hew to the party line in a desperate bid to be the candidate in November. She lost anyway. 

When Bush doubled down with the surge in early 2007, Democrats placed a huge bet on failure and sat back to enjoy and cash in their winnings. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Harry Reid released a joint letter that said a surge would be useless; Senators Joe Biden and Chuck Hagel introduced a resolution opposing the buildup; votes of no confidence followed in rapid succession. "We are going to pick up seats as a result of this war," Reid exulted. Democrats in the Senate spent much of their time forcing a series of votes designed to get their opponents on record as backing the war and the president. In June 2007, Reid declared the war lost.

By the end of that summer, disturbed by some hint that better news might be coming, Democrats tried a preemptive strike on the testimony to Congress of General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. "Dead flat wrong," Biden pronounced their assessment, before it had even been delivered. Rahm Emanuel predicted a report deserving of a "Nobel Prize for creative statistics or the Pulitzer for fiction." Hillary Clinton said the reports of improvement in Iraq required a "willing suspension of disbelief." Signs of success gave Democrats the vapors. In the face of an optimistic report from General Jack Keane, one of the principal authors of the surge strategy, Representative Nancy Boyda of Kansas became so unnerved that she fled from the hearing. "There was only so much that you could take until we in fact had to leave the room for a while," she said.

It will be fascinating to see who can take what in the coming weeks.  But look what has become of the Democratic party line. 

The country portrayed for the last four years by the press and the Democrats as Vietnam-in-the-Desert is doing much better, what with al Qaeda on the run, the Sunnis and Shias coming together, the Shia militias largely defeated, and the war itself looking more or less .  .  . won.

"The combat phase finally is ending," trilled the Associated Press, which had been warning of doom only weeks earlier. "The United States is now winning the war that two years ago had seemed lost. .  .  . People are expressing a new confidence in their security forces. .  .  . Parks are filled every weekend with families playing."

There has been an extraordinary disconnect between what has actually happened in Iraq and the Democrats' rhetoric.  That contradiction has been masked for months because of a reluctance in much of the media to admit how utterly wrong they have been.  But if you think it will continue to go unnoticed by the rest of America after the Democratic National Convention comes to an end, think again.  That's when it's going to be the Republicans turn and the Republican maverick who heads the ticket has had no qualms, ever, when it comes to saying what he thinks about Iraq, and what he thinks about the judgment of our leading Democrats.

John McCain sits across the table from the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal, fielding questions on everything from taxes to torture to terror. He's asked what surprised him the most about the behavior House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid with regard to Iraq. His answer -- "their lack of patriotism" -- is of the characteristically impolitic kind that often defines his personality.

McCain is not a soft target for Democrats.  There is hardly anybody in the country who doesn't know by now that he can't get his arms up over his shoulders because of the torture he endured in a North Vietnamese prison camp in the service of his country.  The Democrats know it.  And they know that not only are they unable accuse McCain of any unpatriotic sentiments, their their usual posture of righteous indignation will be no defense when he accuses them.  If they call him on it, McCain is more likely than not to look them straight in the eye and say it again.

The horrendous show of poor judgment by the entire Democratic leadership will be on display in prime time, and their only defense against this will be to fall back to their usual tactic -- an all out attack on the character of John McCain.  It would help them if a Republican scandal were to crop up.  Unfortunately for them, the McCain scandal that their allies at the New York Times had hoped to promote back in February gained no traction with the public.  Instead, it actually energized support for the Senator from Arizona.  I expect they'll be a bit reluctant to go the McCain scandal route again.

The only thing left is to demonize by charging that John McCain is cruel and mean spirited at heart.  Over the years they've gotten a lot of mileage out of the "mean spirited" charge, but it may have gotten a little too much wear.  I mean, low taxes are mean spirited in the mind of a Democrat.  But there's something different going on here.  John McCain has been heartless and cruel enough to say true things about the Democrats, and he's got the facts and the political courage to back up what he says.  Their only option is to try to make John McCain look worse than they are.  Good luck with that.  But long shot that it is, I expect the Democrats to launch a massive effort to paint McCain as a nasty, nasty man at heart.

Russia redefined

According to this FINANCIAL story, the Georgian conflict with Russia is all about the oil.  The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which was completed in 2005, carries 1.2 million barrels of crude per day from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean.  Stretching from Azerbaijan through Georgia, it passes very closely to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi.

According to Alter Net, the BTC pipeline passes some of the most unsettled areas of the world, including Chechnya and Georgia's two breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. With this in mind, the Clinton and Bush administrations provided Georgia with hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid, making it the leading recipient of U.S. arms and equipment in the former Soviet space.

All of this, needless to say, was viewed in Moscow with immense resentment. Not only was the United States helping to create a new security risk on its southern borders, but, more importantly, was frustrating its drive to secure control over the transportation of Caspian energy to Europe. Ever since Vladimir Putin assumed the presidency in 2000, Moscow has sought to use its pivotal role in the supply of oil and natural gas to Western Europe and the former Soviet republics as a source both of financial wealth and political advantage. It mainly relies on Russia's own energy resources for this purpose, but also seeks to dominate the delivery of oil and gas from the Caspian states to the West, Aljazeera reports.

The McCain surge

The Washington Times reports that John McCain favored a troop surge in Iraq well before rise of the insurgency, but it wasn't until December of 2006 that he was finally able to persuade George Bush to send in more troops.

For much of his 3 1/2-year advocacy for the surge - an attempt to persuade the president to adopt a strategy that his commanders said was unnecessary, that Democrats in Congress angrily opposed and that Mr. McCain's Republican colleagues bitterly resented - the former Navy pilot was an army of one.

But after Republicans lost control of Congress in November 2006, Mr. McCain gained leverage in his argument with a president who was soon to face an empowered majority of Democrats and a Republican panicked by the idea that the election was a mandate on Iraq.

Soon the architects of the failing strategy in Iraq - the generals and their civilian superiors - would be banished, and a dissenting general who had sought an increase in troops and a new counterinsurgency strategy would take charge of the war in Iraq.

The president, with no acknowledgement then of Mr. McCain's arguments, would adopt the senator's plan. Democrats who predicted the failure of what they mockingly called "the McCain surge" would fall silent when the 20,000-troop increase led to a dramatic reduction of violence, falling to a low of just 11 troops killed in July.

"They don't call it that anymore," Sen. Lindsey Graham said, smiling in triumph.

The South Carolina Republican, an early convert to the McCain cause who observed much of the senator's backdoor efforts, is unabashed in his praise for his longtime friend, blinking back a tear as he recalls trips he took to Iraq with his colleague.

"Without John McCain, there would never have been the surge," he said emphatically.

Mr. McCain's views contrast sharply with those of his Democratic rival in the November election. Sen. Barack Obama, a freshman senator from Illinois, joined his party's elders to oppose the surge, even after military leaders agreed that it was necessary, and now only grudgingly acknowledges the success of the surge.

Mr. McCain, who would not be interviewed for the Washington Times story, refuses to take credit for the surge saying that success belongs to the troops.  Until very recently Mr. Obama refused to admit that the surge was a success.

Poland embraces the missile deal

Claiming that a U.S. plan to base defensive missiles in Poland would upset the military balance in Europe, Russia has threatened to redirect its missiles at Poland.  But according to The FINANCIAL, it was Russia's invasion of Georgia that pushed Poland over the edge and into the deal with the U.S. to deploy the defensive missiles.

Before the conflict in Georgia there was a reasonable amount of popular opposition in Poland to the missile defense deal, but new surveys show that for the first time a majority of Poles support it, with 65% expressing fear of Russia, BBC reports.

The United States and Poland finally reached agreement on the deal last week, after Russia sent forces into Georgia, a move that has alarmed former Soviet satellite states like Poland. The talks between the United States and Poland had been deadlocked for months, but the Russian military intervention in Georgia appears to have given both sides a final push to get the deal done.

The Dream Ticket

This has to be one of the weirdest veepstakes recommendations in decades.

What Obama needs is a vice presidential candidate who is NOT a professional politician, but someone who is well-known and beloved by people across the political spectrum; someone who, like Obama, spoke out against the war; someone who has a good and generous heart, who will be cheered by the rest of the world; someone whom we've known and loved and admired all our lives and who has dedicated her life to public service and to the greater good for all.

That person, Caroline, is you.

I cannot think of a more winning ticket than one that reads: "OBAMA-KENNEDY."

It would certainly be my Democratic Dream Ticket.  But then, I'm a Republican.