Giuliani on guns: unconvincing but irrelevant
In my mind, the gun issue for Giuliani is — like Romney’s abortion stance — about authenticity, not policy:
At one point, he came close to disavowing a lawsuit against gunmakers that he initiated while mayor of New York.
The 2000 lawsuit sought to hold gunmakers liable for shootings with illegal guns (the case, by chance, was heard this week in a federal appeals court). At the time, Giuliani called it an “aggressive step towards restoring accountability to an industry that profits from the suffering of others.”
Yesterday, Giuliani backed away from the lawsuit, saying he might not uphold it if he were a judge.
No one is going to ratchet up gun control in America any time soon. The Democrats tried that in 1993, got burned in 1994 and have never forgotten it. You don’t lose a sitting Speaker of the House in an NRA district without feeling the pain. The Dems have gone underground on that issue ever since. Don’t look for a president of either party to chance it. It thus differs from other hot-button base issues, like immigration amnesty, where Bush was in a position to alienate the base in a close battle.
The NRA may go to the mattresses on this just to prove they can, to maintain their aura of political potency. But I seriously don’t think the policy implications are there, now or any time in the near future.
Hillary’s slander pander
Clinton voted against a symbolic Senate measure condemning MoveOn.org’s slander of General Patreaus. More pandering to the Hard Left fringe.
MoveOn’s “General Betray Us” ad, the resolution states, “impugns the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all the members of the United States Armed Forces.”
Clinton and Dodd voted against it, and can prepare for some Netroots love. Also, at this point there’s nobody stirring on the right in the primary, though you can expect to hear about this piece of symbolic politics in the general, if Hillary’s the nominee.
Biden and Obama were absent.
A Sister Souljah moment that wasn’t
Richard Cohen, a reliable but generally thoughtful liberal, is disappointed at Hillary’s caving on the MoveOn.org slam on General Patraeus. Hillary of all people — whose husband Bill made a defining break with his Sister Souljah moment in 1992, in which he repudiated that grotesque racist comments of a hip hop queen, and thereby solidified his credentials at the center — should have known better.
Here’s what Cohen has to say:
The MoveOn.org ad was the moment for Clinton to rise above hackdom. It was a moment for her to insist that the business of politics, not to mention governing, is made even uglier and more difficult when people who merely differ with one another resort to insult. It was a moment for her to say that an Army general, under orders and attempting to fulfill a mission, should not be so casually trashed - especially since she herself has been on the other side of the Iraq war issue and said things she must now regret. And it was a moment for her to trot out her favorite phrase and use it, not in her own defense for once, but in defense of someone else. That moment is gone now - maybe because for Hillary Clinton it never arrived in the first place.
Intriguingly, the MoveOn add was less a challenge to the Republicans or the General than it was to the Democratic candidates. It was a gauntlet thrown down by the Hard Left to the Democratic field, and none but Joe Biden had the guts to brush it aside.
Don’t taze me bro
How do you respond to this?
John Kerry gets verbally attacked by a very frustrated supporter who wants to know why he didn’t attempt a coup in 2004. The guy actually begins to accuse Kerry of some kind of conspiracy involving Yale’s Skull and Bones Society and Bush and Kerry. Then the student gets arrested by cops, who end up tazering the dude. Democracy in action. Viewer discretion advised.
[Update: apparently it’s more complicated than it looked. Learn more — lots more –here.]
Romney vs. Ahmadinejad
Mitt not only talks the talk. He walks the walk. As governor, he ordered state agencies, including police, not to provide any services to the former president of Iran when he visited as a “dignitary” at Harvard. Again, he’s getting tough on the creeps:
“If President Ahmadinejad sets foot in the United States, he should be handed an indictment under the Genocide Convention,” Romney added, reiterating his point. He also urged the U.N. to revoke any speaking invitation.
Romney routinely talks about the threat the United States faced from “radical jihadists,” and he has staked out a hard-line position against Iran in particular.
In January, he called for economic sanctions against the Central Asian nation “at least as severe” as those imposed on South Africa during its apartheid era, aiming to isolate the country and convince it to give up its pursuit of a nuclear weapon.
What’s remarkable about what Romney is saying here is how unremarkable it ought to be. Here we have a country that fuels terror throughout the region. Indeed, it is the engine of terror, with it’s fingerprints all over Lebanon, Iraq and Gaza. It’s governing regime has publicly declared it’s intention to destroy the state of Israel, and is pursuing nuclear weapons with glee and abandon.
Yet it remains worthy of note when a presidential candidate suggests they should get the South Africa treatment from the civilized world?
This is news?
INDIANOLA, Iowa, Sept. 16 — Appearing Sunday at a mini-Democratic convention of sorts in a field, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton declared that if she is elected she will not wait until her inauguration to begin acting as president.
Duh. In 1993, she hardly waited till her husband’s inauguration to begin acting as president.
The Constitution is clear
Doug Kendall in Slate has a point. The language of the Constitution is crystal clear that the voters of California are not to change the method of selecting electors without the approval of the legislature, as are the precedents surrounding that language:
Some of the Constitution’s provisions are famously elusive. But “the Legislature thereof” is not one of them. In the 1920 case Hawke v. Smith, the Supreme Court ruled that a ballot initiative could not be used to undo a state legislature’s decision to ratify the Constitution’s 18th Amendment. The court found that the term legislatures is “plain, and admits no doubt in its interpretation.” Justice William Day wrote, “The framers of the Constitution clearly understood and carefully used the terms in which that instrument referred to the action of the legislatures of the states. When they intended that direct action by the people be had they were no less accurate in the use of apt phraseology to carry out such purpose.”
I’d be interested to know if Mr. Kendall is equally emphatic about the obvious unconstitutionality of the plan to give D.C. House representation. If so, bully for him. I’m all for strict construction, but I’m suspicious of selective strict construction.
Rorschach test
Here’s a quick inkblot test. I give you two phrases, you tell me what comes to mind: “give a village challenge” and “rich donors.” Don’t know about you, but I immediately thought “Hillary Clinton,” combining “takes a village” and “Norman Hsu/Mark Rich.” Here’s the headline:
‘Give a village’ challenge to rich donors
Turns out it wasn’t some new way of combining Hillary’s faux social activism with her genuine campaign cash drive. It’s actually a project that gives specific badly needed things to poor communities in India and Africa.
Rudy hits Hillary’s hypocrisy
That’s a plan?
Picking on Obama’s foreign policy follies is like shooting fish in a barrel. Take this beaut, for example:
In a speech Wednesday, Obama offered his most detailed plan yet for getting troops out of Iraq, calling for the withdrawal of at least one of the 20 brigades (each made up of about 3,500 soldiers) in Iraq every month starting now, with all combat troops out by the end of next year.
I always thought a plan meant some sense of objective and a strategery for getting there. If his objective is to get the troops out, come what may, why straggle them out like that? Where is the logic of that arbitrary figure? What is the objective of those lingering behind?
At what point in this “plan” are the remaining troops simply inadequate to do anything but guard the airport for the next brigade waiting for his absurd schedule? And at what point is the sectarian genocide throughout the country we have left behind so terrifying that we begin pumping troops back in, as we recoil in shame at what we have done?
Joe Biden has a plan: partition the country and build sustainable self-governing sections. Obama’s proposal is not a plan at all. It’s an arbitrary number that bears no connection to any objective, strategy or any reality or contingency.
I used to think Obama was simply naive and inexperienced. I am increasingly convinced that he is dangerously and irredeemably shallow and unfit.
Rudy calls out Hillary’s suspended disbelief
Got $65K? NYTimes is running a Fall Sale:
A conservative group, Freedom’s Watch, which supports Bush’s Iraq war strategy, also plans a print ad in the Times and has demanded the same $65,000 (€46,772) rate that the liberal group paid for its full-page ad. Giuliani is getting the same rate.
Hillary, who sat in the committee room circulating jr. high school notes with her pals looking for “good bites” and “best questions,” tipped her hand with her absurd suspension of disbelief, motivated by her deep concern for pancakes. Rudy’s not amused:
Hillary’s passionate about pancakes
Great post here on Newsday about Hillary’s dust-up with the General:
In the Slate/Yahoo/Huffington Post “mashup” with presidential candidates, moderator Charlie Rose asked Hillary whether she was questioning Petraeus’ veracity when she told him his testimony required a “willing suspension of disbelief.”
Her response, which was basically no, began this way: “No, what I said was meant to convey my very strong feeling that no matter how flat the pancake, there’s always two sides.”
We do agree that pancakes have two sides. But, has anybody ever heard that particular analogy before? And does anybody have any idea what it’s supposed to mean, in the context?
As one of the readers there commented, it sounds like a waffle. But I’m still working with the pancake. Do thick pancakes have more obvious dual sides? What does flatness have to do with two-sidedness? And what does any of this have to do with General Patraeus?
Her comment sounds like one of those inscrutable New Yorker cartoons: “Cartoons are like gossamer and one doesn’t dissect gossamer.”
Broder: Romney’s strategy is clear
A remarkable piece by David Broder on Romney. Remarkable in that it doesn’t mention, or even allude to, the man’s faith. That may be a first. The absence was so notable I felt compelled to remedy it here.
The Romney strategy has been pretty clear for quite some time: win in NH & Iowa, and vault to the fore on that basis. Could work, but the compression of the timetable makes it tougher.
Broder nails the underlying weakness of the Romney effort [aside from his, uh, religion], namely the doubling back from the left positions used to get elected in Massachusetts. I’ve long argued that the man should have moved to Michigan, where such contortions would not have been necessary, and where his father’s legacy would have severed him well.
Broder concludes his assessment,
Many events could upset this scenario. But the methodical, business-like Romney campaign has had a clear strategy — and, unlike Thompson, a stable, professional management team. For them, January — not February — is the decisive month.
In the end, everything rests on Romney himself — and that is as it should be when the presidency is at stake.
Thompson is toast
If not in the primary, then in the general. But he seems certain to fail in the primary as well. I suggested earlier that he’s a sweet old grandpa who’s losing it. George Will seems to agree:
Sean Hannity, who is no Torquemada conducting inquisitions of conservatives, asked Thompson: “When you look at the other current crop of candidates — Republicans — where is the distinction between your positions and what you view as theirs?” Thompson replied: “Well, to tell you the truth, I haven’t spent a whole lot of time going into the details of their positions.”
He also is unfamiliar with the details of his own positions. Consider his confusion the next day when talk radio host Laura Ingraham asked him about something he ardently supported — the McCain-Feingold expansion of government regulation of political speech. His rambling, incoherent explanation was just clear enough to be alarming about what he believes, misremembers and does not know.
Just another case of the delusional pull of the presidency on the ambitious mind. This man has no business in the field. He doesn’t know why he’s there, and he doesn’t have the energy to figure it out.
In this field, he can only play the role of the spoiler, most likely crowding up the space on the right, allowing either McCain to resurge or Giuliani to hold.
[Apropos of nothing: Ron Paul is still irrelevant. I just wanted to throw that out to taunt all the Ron Paul trolls who spend their day on Google looking for places to express their man love.]
Bereft of ideas, devoid of substance
Any ideas about best questions?
Good bites.
[This pic is not photoshopped. HT: Doug Ross, via Don Surber.]
Thompson’s needs work driving to the basket
Don Surber points out that Fred Thompson is likely right that a backlash against rigid anti-smoking enforcement by the Al Qaeda thugs helped tip people against them. This was part of a larger picture of attempted extremism rejected by the populace.
Surber cites a news report in which a reporter and the audience apparently were scratching their heads about what Thompson was up to with the anecdote. Surber concludes,
Obviously, Thompson’s problem is he is better briefed and better read than the reporters covering him.
I’ll agree part way on that, but I’m going to push back a bit. The job of the speaker [or writer, or rhetorician of any sort] is to bring their point home for the audience. Diffusely making an complex analogy that has merit but failing to bring it home forcefully for the audience is like a basketball player who goes gently for a layup in a situation that calls for a muscular slam. It’s no excuse to say the ball was on target: your job was to force it home.
I remain unconvinced and worried that Thompson may lack that skill and instinct.
Mitt’s keystone cops
If you’re going to do this, you’d better know how to do it right. A key Romney supporter is apparently caught with his pants down running an anti-Thompson website titled phoneyfred.com, since removed:
The Web site was hosted by a company called BlueHost, based in Orem, Utah. Until late yesterday afternoon, a search at that company’s site for PhoneyFred.org returned the following message: “Domain phoneyfred.org is still attached to your politicalnetroots.com account as Addon.” The address http:/
/ www.politicalnetroots.com brings up the home page for Under the Power Lines, which lists Tompkins as “partner, consultant,” along with Terry Sullivan and Wesley Donehue. The PhoneyFred site, Tompkins’s own Web site and many of his other clients’ sites are all hosted on the same BlueHost server.
One of the many ironies is that it attacked Fred for having been prochoice. Pot and kettle, Mitt?
If you’re going to pull a stunt like this, one might start by learning how to hide the source?
Romney’s trust fund albatross
Huckabee is trying to exploit Romney’s wealth against him. Running kind of a populist campaign to capture the same Buchannan insurgents who took out George Bush in New Hampshire in 1992:
“The economy looks good when you measure it in macro terms,” Huckabee said Thursday during a stopover in Washington, “but a lot of families are struggling just to reach the next step on the ladder.” Having grown up in a family where “you finished everything on your plate, because you never wasted a thing,” Huckabee said that he empathizes with the anxiety of “people who have no trust fund, no safety net to fall back on.”
He didn’t have to name Romney as the “trust fund” candidate in the race. The former venture capitalist’s wealth has been well publicized. All Huckabee has to say is “I’ve walked the aisles at Wal-Mart” to make his class consciousness evident.
This is a tough one. On the one hand, I have no sympathy with class warriors, and one can legitimately argue that the vast majority of Romney’s wealth came from remarkable skill and hard work.
On the other hand, I was in Massachusetts when he ran in 1994, and I never forgot the interview his wife did in which she claimed to sympathize with the economically challenged because when she and Mitt were in college things were so tight … they had to sell some of their stock. [I know, it sounds like a punchline, but I am not making it up.]
So do Mitt & Co. understand the average Joe? Can he connect with him? I’m skeptical on both counts. Does this matter. I’m afraid it does.
The WaPo headline reads,
Rove Replacement Seen as Highly Partisan Go-Getter
I guess the conciliatory slug turned down the job?
Voldemort in a new body
David Broder on the meaning of a Hillary Clinton presidency:
But one thing is absolutely clear. Her marriage is the central fact in her life, and this partnership of Bill and Hillary Clinton is indissoluble. She cannot function without him, and he would not have been president without her. If she becomes president, he will play as central a role in her presidency as she did in his. And that is something the country will have to ponder.
For many, Hillary must be viewed as a way as symbolically undoing the Bush presidency, just as the election of Bush II in 2000 avenged his father’s defeat of 1992.
The other rest of the country must be scratching its head, trying to figure out how the impeached Perjurer in Chief is again on the verge of returning to the West Wing. What does it take to put a stake through this guy?
