February 5, 2015

Click on WORD or PDF for full content

WORD

PDF

Seth Mandel posts on Scott Walker’s refusal to allow the Dem/Media coalition to set the terms of the debate.

… The lesson, as I interpret it, is that the press and the Democrats speak the same language. That’s not surprising; the mainstream press, especially during national elections, functions as a messaging office for the Democrats. Because of this, they just assume that in order to be a serious presidential candidate you have to be like them, like the Democrats.

Walker doesn’t agree. And he’s been extraordinarily successful of late by not agreeing.

Part of the media’s terrible coverage of national politics is the reliance on the personal: it matters to them who is saying it more than what is said. Romney got tagged as uncaring because he’s rich. But the classic conservative policies don’t reek of plutocracy when coming from the new crop of Republican stars, many of whom came from modest beginnings or are the children of immigrants, or both. Walker doesn’t even have a college degree, which itself is incomprehensible to modern Democrats, who are elitist and credentialist and genuinely don’t know what life is like in much of the country.

And neither does the media. Which is how someone like Walker could be so successful and still blindside the national press, who would struggle to find Wisconsin on a map. And it’s why Walker is a threat to other high-profile Republicans who have accepted the Democratic/media framing of the issues in order to make a national pitch. Only one of them can be right.

 

 

Jonah Goldberg says Walker is the “vanilla candidate.”

Vanilla is the most popular ice-cream flavor in America, not because it is the best (that would be coffee) but because it is the least objectionable. Put another way, vanilla is the most acceptable to the most people; it’s not many people’s favorite, but nobody hates it.

And that’s why Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is the vanilla candidate.

A new Des Moines Register poll hasWalker in first place — narrowly — among likely Republican caucus-goers. With Mitt Romney included in the poll, Walker was the respondents’ first choice with 15 percentage points. Kentucky senator Rand Paul was second with 14 percentage points and Romney third with 13. With Romney out, Walker rose to 16 percentage points and Paul to 15. First place in a tightly packed field is better than any of the alternatives, but it’s not that big a deal this far out.

The big deal is the vanilla factor (which sounds like a terribly boring spy novel). According to the Register story that accompanied the poll, 51 percent of caucus-goers want an “anti-establishment candidate without a lot of ties to Washington or Wall Street who would change the way things are done and challenge conventional thinking.” Meanwhile, 43 percent prefer a more establishment figure “with executive experience who understands business and how to execute ideas.”

Walker is in the golden spot. He can, like Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day listening to Andie MacDowell explain the perfect man, reply “that’s me” to almost everything Republicans say they want. Executive experience? Challenge conventional thinking? Anti-establishment fighter? “Me, me, me.”

Respondents looking for an establishment candidate said Romney was their first choice. Those preferring an outsider said Paul was their first choice. But both groups said their second choice was a big scoop of Walker. …

 

 

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel provides background of Scott Walker’s upbringing as a pastor’s son.

… Llew Walker had only some 90 people in weekly worship, but he made ambitious plans for his flock, enlarging the building with a renovation and installing the first indoor baptismal tank.

“Rev. Walker has in fact been a shepherd,” reads a history of the church written in 1976 toward the end of his tenure. “…We try to say ‘thank you’ but words are inadequate.”

Since then, the church building has changed little. With the hymn “Amazing Grace” rising from the organ on a recent Sunday, it was easy to imagine what the simple services would have been like in the Walkers’ time here.

“‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved,” the congregation sang.

Scott Walker learned the words of faith here, language that he commands with ease today.

“First off, I want to thank God,” Walker said in his November re-election speech. “I want to thank God for his abundant grace and mercy. Win or lose, it is more than sufficient for each and every one of us.”

Today, Scott Walker’s church, Meadowbrook in Wauwatosa, is large, evangelical and nondenominational.

The American Baptist faith of his youth is traditional but not sharply conservative, treating the Bible as the inspired word of God but also ordaining women and serving communion to other Christian visitors.

The son learned from his pastor father how to be at ease around people and keep them at ease around him. To parishioner Betty Balsley, Llew Walker and his family were as unpretentious and “common as an old shoe.” …

 

 

Turning our attention to Netanyahu’s visit, Jonathan Tobin says it is the administration that has politicized the Iran debate.

… Up until Obama entered the White House, opposition to Iran and support for sanctions was a matter of bipartisan consensus. Though his rhetoric about stopping Iran has always been good, the president has opposed virtually every sanctions bill that has been proposed, including some that he now brags about having brought Iran to the table. An overwhelming majority of both Houses of Congress comprising members of both parties have supported increased sanctions on Iran for the past two years. The only consistent opponent has been the president. It is he who has sought to make sanctions a partisan issue by leaning on Democrats to oppose the measure out of loyalty to him. He has also stooped to exploit the resentment many Democrats feel toward Speaker Boehner as a reason to back his stand on Iran. Though Dermer may have erred by not consulting with the White House about Boehner’s invitation, the decision to turn this into a major kerfuffle is purely a product of administration politics, not an understandable desire on the part of the Israelis to aid those backing sanctions.

Let’s also note the hypocrisy of many of his critics. The same people crying foul about Dermer and Netanyahu didn’t protest when British Prime Minister David Cameron lobbied members of the Senate on behalf of Obama’s stand on Iran. Some of those veteran American diplomats who are piling on are also guilty of having very short memories. One of the key witnesses against Dermer in the Times article is former State Department official Daniel Kurtzer who said it was unheard of for a diplomat to go behind the back of a country’s government and work with its domestic opponents. But Kurtzer and the rest of the peace processers who worked for a number of administrations over the last 25 years have been guilty of doing just that whenever a Likud prime minister was in power. Both Presidents Clinton and Obama have worked tirelessly to undermine and defeat Netanyahu throughout his three terms in office in ways that Dermer and his boss would never dream of trying to do to Obama.

Say what you will about the mess that Dermer and Netanyahu find themselves in and for which they bear some responsibility. But the prime minister’s scheduled speech has become a diplomatic cause célèbre due to the partisan political games being played by the White House, not the Israelis. It is Obama that is undermining the U.S.-Israel alliance by seeking to appease Iran, not the efforts of Dermer to rally Americans behind a stand that is in the best interests of both countries.

 

 

Peter Wehner calls him the anti-Israel president. 

I wanted to add to Jonathan’s post on President Obama and Israel, but perhaps sharpen some points just a bit.

The Obama administration is unusually petty and sophomoric. The attacks leveled against Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, are part of a troubling pattern in which officials in the Israeli government–including and especially Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu–are vilified.

No world leader has been treated by President Obama and his administration with the contempt they have shown Prime Minister Netanyahu–from this snub in 2010 to being called a “coward” and “chickens*** prime minister” by senior administration officials.

But the problem goes much deeper than a personality clash. President Obama is, quite simply, anti-Israel. In every conceivable situation and circumstance, the president and his aides give the benefit of the doubt not to Israel but to its enemies. This despite the fact that Israel is among America’s longest and best allies, democratic, lawful, takes exquisite steps to prevent civilian deaths in nations committed to destroying it, and has made extraordinary sacrifices for peace. No matter; the pressure that’s applied is always applied most against Israel–even when, as in last year’s conflict with Hamas, Israel was the victim of lethal attacks.

This is morally shameful. In a world filled with despotic leaders and sadistic and ruthless regimes–North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Eritrea, Sudan, Somalia, and on and on–which nation alone does Mr. Obama become “enraged” at? Which is the object of his disdain? Which provokes his white-hot anger?

Answer: Israel. Has it struck you, as it has struck me, that with every other nation, including the most repressive and anti-American on earth, Mr. Obama is careful never to give offense, to always extend the olive branch, and to treat their leaders with unusual deference and respect? Except for the Jewish State of Israel. It always seems to be in the Obama crosshair. …

 

 

It’s not just the GOP.  Grown-up Dems are busy rebuking the administration’s foreign follies. Jackson Diehl of WaPo has the story. Mr Diehl is Deputy Editorial Page Editor of the Post

For more than two years, a breach has been opening between President Obama and the foreign policy establishment of the Democratic Party. Last week, as Russia pressed a new offensive in Ukraine and the Senate debated sanctions on Iran, it cracked open a little wider.

First came the introduction in the Senate, and lopsided passage by the Banking Committee, of a bill that would place new sanctions on Iran if no agreement limits its nuclear program by June. Though fiercely opposed by Obama, the measure, co-sponsored by Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.), the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, had won the express support of 13 other Democratic senators by the end of the week. A letter signed by Menendez plus nine of them pledged to delay a final floor vote until March 24, the deadline set by the administration for finalizing the framework of a ­bargain.

While that postponement avoided an immediate confrontation with Obama, the larger message of the senators was clear: They are “deeply skeptical,” said the letter, that Obama will obtain adequate concessions from Tehran — despite what has been an increasingly single-minded diplomatic push.

At week’s end came another de facto vote of no confidence: a report by eight foreign policy luminaries, due to be formally released Monday, saying the president should “immediately change” his policy of refusing to supply Ukraine with weapons to defend its besieged eastern provinces. “Washington,” it said bluntly, has “not devoted sufficient attention to the threat posed by Russia and its implications for Western security. This must change.”

This rebuke was signed by Michèle Flournoy, the deputy defense secretary in Obama’s first term; Ivo Daalder, his first-term NATO ambassador; and Strobe Talbott, a former deputy secretary of state who is president of the deep-blue Brookings Institution. …

 

 

Andrew Malcolm ends our week with late night humor.

SNL: President Obama has threatened that Israeli Prime Ministers Netanyahu will pay ‘a price’ for agreeing to speak to a joint session of Congress on Iran next month. Which brings the number of countries threatening Israel up to an even all of them.

Fallon: A new helicopter service called Gotham Air now offers cheap trips from Manhattan to JFK or Newark airports for just $99. ‘Cause if there’s two words I trust together in the same sentence, it’s “cheap” and “helicopter.”

Conan: Last week Chris Christie and Mitt Romney met for dinner. Afterwards, Romney said, “It’s the first time I couldn’t afford to pick up the check.” …