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Mark Steyn has a short on Egypt.
… Amidst all this flowering of democracy, you’ll notice that it’s only the pro-American dictatorships on the ropes: In Libya and Syria, Gaddafy and Assad sleep soundly in their beds. On the other hand, if you were either of the two King Abdullahs, in Jordan or Saudi Arabia, and you looked at the Obama Administration’s very public abandonment of their Cairo strongman, what would you conclude about the value of being an American ally? For the last three weeks, the superpower has sent the consistent message to the world that (as Bernard Lewis feared some years ago) America is harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend.
Mark Thiessen, in WaPo, writes on how the Egyptian people were lost to us.
The extraordinary scenes in Cairo this past weekend brought back memories of similar scenes on the streets of Warsaw, Prague and Berlin two decades ago. Yet there is one crucial difference between then and now. Unlike the crowds that brought down Marxist regimes in Central Europe, the crowds that brought down the Mubarak regime in Egypt do not believe America stood with them in their struggle for freedom – and many believe we stood against them.
When the protests first erupted, ordinary Egyptians appeared to hope – almost to expect – that once they rose up to demand their freedom, America could not help but stand with them. Instead, they heard President Obama’s handpicked envoy, Frank Wisner, declare that Hosni Mubarak “must stay in office” to oversee the changes he had ordered. They heard Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declare the United States backed “the transition process announced by the Egyptian government” (which then consisted of Mubarak staying in power until September). And they waited in vain for Obama himself to speak out clearly and align America with the democratic revolution they had set in motion. Soon their hopes gave way to disappointment and eventually anger. Demonstrators began carrying signs that declared “Shame on you Obama!” and showed Mubarak depicted as Obama in his iconic “hope” image – with a caption that read “No You Can’t.” …
IBD editors have no illusions about Egypt.
Romantics in Western media expect “democracy” to flower from the anti-Mubarak rioting in Cairo. But polling shows Egyptians actually seek strict Islamic rule.
According to a major survey conducted last year by the Pew Research Center, adults in Egypt don’t crave Western-style democracy, as pundits have blithely trumpeted throughout coverage of the unrest.
Far from it, the vast majority of them want a larger role for Islam in government. This includes making barbaric punishments, such as stoning adulterers and executing apostates, the law of their country. With the ouster of their secular, pro-American leader, they may get their wish. …
Many are the comments on the new budget. Andrew Sullivan is falling out of love.
… In this budget, in his refusal to do anything concrete to tackle the looming entitlement debt, in his failure to address the generational injustice, in his blithe indifference to the increasing danger of default, he has betrayed those of us who took him to be a serious president prepared to put the good of the country before his short term political interests. Like his State of the Union, this budget is good short term politics but such a massive pile of fiscal bullshit it makes it perfectly clear that Obama is kicking this vital issue down the road. …
Craig Pirrong of Streetwise Professor has budget thoughts.
… This is not a remotely serious proposal. I don’t know what color the sky is on the planet where this was formulated, but it ain’t the same as what I see out my window. There is no recognition whatsoever of the existential fiscal situation the country now faces. ”What, me worry?” doesn’t even come close to describing this. No spending restraint whatsoever. Projections of large tax increases and large revenue increases that will never–never–be realized.
The budget is chock-full of silliness, like a vast increase in funding for the Department of Education. (Motto: “There’s No Problem We Can’t Make Worse With More Money!”) Or especially the high speed rail boondoggle. ”High” is right. The only thing that is missing in the administration salesmanship of this turkey is Robert Preston returning from the dead to perform a reprise of his role as the Music Man. This is a con of the first order.
Apparently, the administration is attempting to reincarnate the budget showdown of 1995, in which Clinton regained his political balance by forcing a budget battle with the Gingrich-led Republicans. …
Abe Greenwald in Contentions;
Barack Obama, the post-everything visionary who vowed to deliver us from a suffocating political past, is in fact a dinosaur. The fossilized evidence has revealed itself over the past two years. So deep in the layers of political history is the 44th president lodged that even Palestinian leaders have moved on from the grievances he cites. So overtaken by the times is he that European heads of state dismiss his economics as yesterday’s errors. Indeed, Obama is so plainly out of step with the challenges of today that he has bowed out of the present altogether and redirected our attention to an impossible and therapeutic “future.”
We have exited politics and entered prophecy. The president’s budget reflects this. It is a spending plan for an alternate universe. …
Jennifer Rubin is next.
… It (The budget) also reveals, as many of us suspected, that Obama’s posturing during the lame duck session and the hiring of some new staff in the White House did not represent a fundamental shift in the White House’s agenda or philosophy. The Obama team is composed of people who think government spending creates prosperity, who have no fear that tax hikes will choke off economic growth, and who believe the electorate won’t notice or care that Obama has rejected the 2010 midterm message.
Obama in presenting his budget and revealing the philosophy to which he stubbornly clings has conceded the huge middle of the political spectrum to the Republicans. The Republicans now have the opportunity to cement their gains with independent voters and to rekindle the same excitement in the base that helped the party take 63 seats in the House and 6 Senate seats. If the Republicans play this smartly — a big if — they have the chance to lead and to make substantial gains in 2012.
Jennifer also comments on Tuesday’s presser.
… His most egregious departure from reality came not on the budget, but on Egypt. He proclaimed: “History will end up recording that at every juncture in the situation in Egypt that we were on the right side of history.” This is preposterous to anyone but the most determined Obama sycophant. He did virtually nothing to push Hosni Mubarak toward reform for two years, and once the protests began the White House became a muddle of multiple voices, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggesting at points that Mubarak wasn’t and shouldn’t go anywhere. The administration never publicly called for Mubarak’s departure. In short, the Obama team followed and did not lead; its support for regime change was in doubt throughout the process. Unfortunately, Obama wasn’t asked if he had been on the right side of history in June 2009 when he largely ignored the Green Movement’s uprising.
Obama and his advisers seem to have convinced themselves that most problems are a matter of “messaging” or “communication.” But when Obama communicates a flawed message or misrepresents facts, he compounds his own difficulties, making it that much more difficult for his allies to defend him and all the more easy for opponents to demonstrate that he’s not leading on the crucial issues of the day.
Robert Samuelson can not believe anybody could seriously advocate for high speed rail.
Vice President Biden, an avowed friend of good government, is giving it a bad name. With great fanfare, he went to Philadelphia last week to announce that the Obama administration proposes spending $53 billion over six years to construct a “national high-speed rail system.” Translation: The administration would pay states $53 billion to build rail networks that would then lose money – lots – thereby aggravating the budget squeezes of the states or federal government, depending on which covered the deficits.
There’s something wildly irresponsible about the national government undermining states’ already poor long-term budget prospects by plying them with grants that provide short-term jobs. Worse, the rail proposal casts doubt on the administration’s commitment to reducing huge budget deficits. The president’s 2012 budget is due Monday. How can it subdue deficits if it keeps proposing big spending programs?
High-speed rail would definitely be big. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has estimated the administration’s ultimate goal – bringing high-speed rail to 80 percent of the population – could cost $500 billion over 25 years. For this stupendous sum, there would be scant public benefits. Precisely the opposite. Rail subsidies would threaten funding for more pressing public needs: schools, police, defense. …
Thomas Sowell thinks the GOP can learn a lot from Rocky Marciano.
Rocky Marciano was the only heavyweight champion who never lost a single fight in his whole career– and, at the time, he seemed the least likely fighter to do that. In many a boxing match, he was battered, bruised and bleeding.
One of the reasons Marciano took so much punishment in the ring was that he had shorter arms than most other heavyweights. It was easier for others to hit him than for him to hit them.
In a sense, Republicans today are in a similar position in the political arena. With most of the media heavily tilted toward the Democrats, Republicans are going to get hit far more often than they are going to get in their own punches.
The difference is that Rocky Marciano understood from the beginning that he was going to get hit more often, and prepared himself for that kind of fight. His strategy was to concentrate on developing punches powerful enough to nullify his opponents’ greater number of punches.
Republicans take the opposite approach from that of Rocky Marciano– and often with opposite results. That may be why they managed to lose both houses of Congress and the White House in recent years, in a country where there are millions more people who call themselves conservatives than there are who call themselves liberals. …
Toby Harnden looks at the large GOP field for 2012 and likes the chaos.
… The Grand Old Party has a tradition of selecting the next guy in line, the runner up from the previous contest. That hasn’t exactly worked out well in recent years. President George Bush Snr was a one-term president who raised taxes. Bob Dole was trounced by Bill Clinton in 1996 and John McCain, another flawed candidate, was overwhelmed by Obama in 2008.
The open contest this time, and the relatively level playing field – no anointed sons or incumbent vice-presidents – will ensure that the 2012 Republican choice will be more meritocratic than usual.
Amongst conservatives, there is a palpable sense that America is facing a fiscal crisis and that Obama must be stopped at all costs if the US is not to succumb to European-style big government.
That may be an exaggerated fear but few would disagree that there will be a lot at stake in 2012. At the moment, Obama looks strong but he is eminently beatable because of high unemployment and the fact that most of the country opposes his policies, if not him.
In these circumstances, a long, deliberative process to select Obama’s challenger can only benefit Republicans and the country. Competition is good in baseball and business – and politics too.