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John Podhoretz acquiesces with the McConnell move.
… It is, of course, a guessing game, trying to figure out who would be blamed for bad stuff. But peddling the “narrative” in which the GOP gets blamed for irresponsible and unreasonable negotiating tactics has a long history of working for Democrats. McConnell’s sense that seeming to be recalcitrant about raising the debt ceiling is more perilous than the alternative is sound pessimistic politics, which takes into account that very danger. He could be wrong. I could be wrong. But even Bill Kristol’s creative three-option plan doesn’t get to the question of the PR damage. That Obama might come to seem like a sane person in a sea of crazies may be galling to all of us who know he bears a great deal of responsibility for the severity of the current debt-ceiling crisis, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen exactly that way.
More from Podhoretz. Seems the president is handing out more of his Netanyahu treatments.
Word is that President Obama either stormed out of budget talks today or left abruptly or spoke sharply and ended the meeting—or something. The Democrats say they’ve put $1.7 trillion in cuts on the table, and all they want is some new revenue. The Republicans say those cuts aren’t real and they’re not going to be suckered into agreeing that the cuts are real. Watching from the outside, liberals believe the White House and think that Republicans are, at best, insane and at worst, cravenly negotiating in bad faith. Watching from the outside, conservatives believe Obama has demonstrated unseriousness and petulance because he is bluffing and he is having his bluff called and he feels cornered and is lashing out.
How can these people make a deal? They can’t, not on anything substantive. And so, in the end, the much-reviled McConnell option or something very close to it—some series of temporary debt-ceiling increases that take us past Election 2012—will almost certainly be what happens.
Joel Kotkin sees the 2012 GOP opportunity.
… Some Republicans, like former Bush aide Ryan Streeter, understand this opportunity. Streeter argues for the GOP to become more economically populist approach. He calls for an “aspiration agenda” based on policies to spark private sector economic growth and a wide range of entrepreneurial ventures. To succeed, the GOP needs a viable alternative to middle and working class voters who are losing faith in Obama-style crony capitalism but who do not want to replace it with policies focused on enhancing the bottom-lines of the top 1% of the population.
Yet at a time when people are worried primarily about paying their bills and prospects for their children, many Republicans seem determined to campaign on social fundamentalism, something that is already distressingly evident in the Iowa primary race. This may have worked in the past, in generally more prosperous times. Right now what sane person thinks gay marriage is the biggest issue facing the nation?
Neither right-wing ideology nor mindless support for corporate needs constitute a winning strategy in a nation plagued by a sense that the system works only for the rich and well-connected. Only by focusing on working and middle class concerns can the GOP permanently separate the people from the party which pretends to represent them.
Tony Blankley makes a case for restoration.
Some people can spot a slight in every compliment while others — the happy ones — find a compliment in every slight. So last week, as a free-market, low-tax, constitutional conservative, I happily found an apparently unintended compliment from the liberal New Republic.
It is not often that I agree with the central attack line of my sometimes media sparring partner, the New Republics’ Ed Kilgore. But in his attempt at a hit piece last week on Michele Bachmann and her stand for “constitutional conservatism” — what he thinks is an effective attack on us constitutional conservatives — I take as a badge of honor.
Putting aside his reflexive accusations against us conservatives that we are secret segregationists (making that hoary, false charge against conservatives has become an inherent part of the moral squalor of contemporary liberalism) his basic charge is that those of us who consider ourselves constitutional conservatives are really constitutional restorationists. What we really want, he charges, is the radical policy of returning to the pre-1930s view of the Constitution with its strict interpretation of the federal government’s limited powers, the originist view of individual and property rights and the removal of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation. He also charges us with wanting to return to pre-Keynesian economic policies.
Well, yes. Guilty as charged m’Lord. …
New York Magazine has a good piece that explains commercial fishing regulations.
Back in the middle aughts, I took a job fishing on a commercial dragger out of Montauk. I was running a tab at a local pub when in walked a fisherman I knew. He was looking to fill out the crew for a trip leaving the following day and knew I’d been making noises about wanting to give offshore commercial fishing a try. I joined the crew as resident greenhorn, and the fisher, who knew of my eco-boy proclivities, warned me that we would be throwing back a lot of fish on the trip—the “bycatch”—and not just low-value “trash” fish, either. My friend explained that owing to the regulations we were compelled to abide, there would be fish coming onto the deck that were out of season, that we did not have permits for, and that we would have no choice but to throw back or we’d risk crippling fines at the dock, should fish cops from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation greet us at trip’s end to check the fish hold. The fisherman’s admonition was, “You’re going to see a lot of stuff out there that’ll knock you back on your heels, but there’s not much we can do about it. Do your job, shut your mouth, collect your money.”
While concerned consumers fret over which fish are correct to order at their favorite seafood restaurant, heading to websites maintained by groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund for guidance on the “eco-best” and “eco-worst” fish to purchase, the truth about commercial fishing in the United States is that a regulatory framework designed to limit overfishing results in vast numbers of fish per year being scooped up on boats and dumped right back off, dead, never consumed by any human. Concerned about “endangered” bluefin tuna? Tell it to the tuna long-liners who’ve had to cut loose untold numbers of dead bluefins in recent years, owing to the restrictions that come with winding up on the endangered-species list. A recent bycatch-reduction report issued by the National Marine Fisheries Services says that “bycatch is considered to be one of the greatest threats to the sustainability of the marine environment, and bycatch affects practically every species in the ocean.”
On this early-spring trip, the quarry would be whiting, a commercial food fish that goes into lots of frozen-fish products—fish sticks and fish cakes and the like. The crew mustered on the dock at twilight, cast off the lines, and started to sail out to the edge of the continental shelf. At daybreak, the crew dropped the net into the Atlantic for our first “dip.” We towed the net for a couple of hours before “hauling back,” and that air of anticipation you apprehend on Deadliest Catch as the crab pots come up was exactly the sentiment on deck as the gears groaned under the stress of what would be a cod end bulging with fish. …
National Journal article helps you understand why Jon Huntsman should have stayed home.
… The Republican Party has nominated plenty of moderates in the post-Reagan era, including George H.W. Bush (1988), Bob Dole (1996) and John McCain (2008). One could even argue that the current GOP front-runner, Mitt Romney, fits in that category.
There’s nothing in Huntsman’s record or resume that would make it impossible for him to win the Republican nomination. All candidates have serious vulnerabilities in the primaries, including his rivals.
The challenge is how a candidate overcomes such weaknesses. Those who adapt and grow tend to do well. But all signs suggest that Huntsman has not only failed to highlight his conservative bona fides, he is doubling down on his vulnerabilities.
The biggest problem with Huntsman’s campaign isn’t his centrist ideology; it’s his campaign’s tactics. Huntsman has decided to ignore the fundamental rule of politics—a campaign is about contrasting your record against those of your opponents. Instead of taking on President Obama, he’s praised Obama’s good intentions and avoided outlining many areas of disagreement. He’s run to the left of the president on Afghanistan, calling for faster and deeper troop withdrawals. And at a time when voters are hungry for solutions, he offered a platitude-filled kickoff speech that barely touched on the economic problems that Americans want solved.
This is a Republican Party that wants head-on confrontation with Obama, but Huntsman is selling détente and civility. It’s an electorate that wants a candidate who identifies with the struggles that Americans are dealing with. Instead, his introductory campaign video focused on his love of motocross—an image of recreation at a time when the country is facing major economic pain. Huntsman is also courting independents in the New Hampshire primary, whom he assumes are in the mold of Michael Bloomberg but are as disaffected as any group out there. (In the latest July Granite State poll, 61 percent of independents said the nation was headed in the wrong direction, with a 47 percent plurality disapproving of Obama.) …
WSJ has historian Andrew Roberts review a new book on Truman’s bomb decision. At the end of World War II, our kill ratio when fighting Japanese was 10 to 1. If 500,000 Americans would be killed invading Japan and the ratio held, 5,000,000 Japanese would be killed if Truman failed to use the bomb. Roberts did not make this argument and there is no indication it exists in the book. The War is Pickerhead’s wheelhouse, so just saying Truman saved Japanese lives using the bomb.
In the last few weeks of the Truman administration in 1953, the president attended a dinner at the British embassy in Washington in honor of Winston Churchill, who had recently been returned to the prime minister’s post. At one point in the dinner, Churchill posed a question to Truman: Would he have an answer ready when the two men stood before Saint Peter and had to account for their role in dropping atomic bombs on Japan? The scene is described in “The Most Controversial Decision” by the Rev. Wilson Miscamble, who notes that President Truman understandably didn’t much appreciate this line of conversation. The subject was swiftly changed, but if Truman ever did have to offer up an explanation at the Heavenly Gates, it could hardly have been more persuasive or succinct than the one rendered in this quite superb little book.
At the time when the atomic bombs were dropped in August 1945, Truman’s decision was anything but controversial—it was supported by almost everyone on the Allied side, since the attacks had brought to an immediate end a war that had cost the lives of more than 50 million people. It was only after the war was safely won that the morality of killing 140,000 Japanese in Hiroshima and a further 74,000 in Nagasaki started to be questioned. An article in the New Yorker in 1946 touched off the second-guessing, followed by an avalanche of criticism in the 1960s. The “it wasn’t necessary” crowd has kept up a steady drumbeat ever since …