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David Warren says our election season could be worse, we could be bored to death with Canadian elections.
The prospect of a Canadian general election leaves me, and I would guess most of my countrymen, bored. Now, boredom comes in slightly different flavours, and I will admit that the emotions associated with betrayal enter into mine. But it is like the vanilla in the ice cream; one is so used to it.
We have about five parties representing five slightly different grades of vanilla. The Tories perhaps anger me the most, because they promise chocolate chips, and don’t deliver. Well, maybe a couple of chocolate chips, but the irritation value of the false packaging more than compensates for them.
The chocolate chips in my analogy correspond to the “faith and freedom” values that are baldly presented in any Republican manifesto, and more timidly even in Democrat ones, in the republic to our south. …
John Fund with notes on Sarah’s Surge.
… In fact, since 1968, no Republican has done worse on Election Day than he was doing in major polls taken around Labor Day. On that basis, Mr. Obama should worry that Mr. McCain has now tied him or is leading in current polls.
Willie Brown too in his SF Chronicle blog.
The Democrats are in trouble. Sarah Palin has totally changed the dynamics of this campaign.
Period.
Palin’s speech to the GOP National Convention on Wednesday has set it up so that the Republicans are now on offense and Democrats are on defense. And we don’t do well on defense.
Suddenly, Palin and John McCain are the mavericks and Barack Obama and Joe Biden are the status quo, in a year when you don’t want to be seen as defending the status quo.
From taxes to oil drilling, Democrats are now going to have to start explaining their positions. …
Mark Steyn popped up for a few Corner posts.
A couple of Piper Palin videos.
One of the very good speeches last week that was overlooked in the Palin madness was the one by Rudy. Jay Nordlinger introduces us to it in a Corner post.
… 19. My friend and colleague, the sagacious Rick Brookhiser, not long ago said this: “Rudy is a liberal who hates liberals. John McCain is a conservative who hates conservatives.” There’s a lot of truth in that. Only Rudy is not all that liberal. And I wonder how conservative he would have been, or would be, in an office outside New York City (where he was plenty conservative — on crime, most prominently and crucially).
20. This man gave one of the most engaging, rollicking, and fun — yes, fun — speeches I can remember hearing. That’s if you’re a partisan Republican, of course. And even if you’re not — you might have gotten some sort of kick out of it.
Way to go, Rudy G. And, following Mike Bloomberg: Can’t you run for mayor again? You don’t want your gains reversed by some Dinkinsian Democrat, do you?
Here’s the written version of Rudy’s speech. The You Tube version follows in Pickings (WORD and PDF).
… Look at just one example in a lifetime of principled stands — John McCain’s support for the troop surge in Iraq. The Democratic Party had given up on Iraq. And I believe, ladies and gentlemen, that when they gave up on Iraq they were giving up on America. The Democratic leader in the Senate said so: “America has lost.”
Well, if America lost, who won? Al Qaida? Bin Laden? In the single biggest policy decision of this election, John McCain got it right and Barack Obama got it wrong.
If Barack Obama had been President, there would have been no troop surge and our troops would have been withdrawn in defeat.
Senator McCain was the candidate most associated with the surge. And it was unpopular.
What do you think most other candidates would have done in that situation? They would have acted in their own self-interest by changing their position.
How many times have we seen Barack Obama do that?Obama was going to take public financing for his campaign, until he didn’t.
Obama was against wiretapping before he voted for it.
When speaking to a pro-Israel group, Obama favored an undivided Jerusalem. Until the very next day when he changed his mind.
I hope for his sake, Joe Biden got that VP thing in writing. …
Podhoretz, and Rubin posts from Contentions.
… The meme that Sarah Palin is some uncouth, unaccomplished and unqualified hick is crumbling under the weight of actual facts. The Washington Post editors have the blow-by-blow on her role in renegotiating a natural gas pipeline in Alaska. The editors observe that:
while her style has been minutely analyzed, very little commentary has focused on one of the few substantive claims she made about her brief tenure as governor of Alaska: that she “fought to bring about the largest private-sector infrastructure project in North American history . . . a nearly $40 billion natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence.” Is Ms. Palin right about the importance of the pipeline and her role in moving it forward? Ms. Palin is indeed correct about the need to tap the 35 trillion cubic feet of natural gas under Alaska’s North Slope, the same region whose oil made the state wealthy but which has begun to run dry.
And it is not just that she had the right idea — it is that she overrode a plan of the incumbent Republican governor, a plan championed by Senator Ted Stevens and Vice President Dick Cheney, and threw the project open to bidding. The Post editors conclude:
Meanwhile, BP and Conoco Phillips have announced plans to build a pipeline of their own without the state’s backing — a sign that the political and economic wrangling over this immense and risky project is far from over. But it is also a sign that Ms. Palin’s outflanking of the oil companies injected some competition and urgency into a process that was previously stalled. Perhaps her Democratic opponent for the governorship in 2006, who campaigned on similar ideas, would have achieved these results. Nevertheless, Ms. Palin actually did.
This raises several issues. First, is there a single item in Barack Obama’s record that compares to this? Nothing comes to mind. Little wonder that the Democrats want to stop talking abut Palin. It turns out she is an accomplished person with demonstrable skills and good judgment. …
And Abe Greenwald.
Barack Obama’s slip-up, in which he referred to “my Muslim faith,” is interesting for a few reasons. Obama’s critics residing in various anti-Muslim fever swamps are harping on it as evidence of Obama being a closet Muslim–he’s not and that’s not what’s interesting.
Obama’s slip of the tongue demonstrates three things. First, he’s getting rattled. While Obama is a bit gaffe-prone, his gaffes are usually political misinterpretation or naïve reactions to world events. (In truth, his gaffes are usually more serious than this, and perhaps not really gaffes at all, but genuine errors in judgment.) That the master of mellifluous oratory would get tripped up on a word shows that he’s off his game. …
WSJ Op-ed on possible auto bail-out.
It was only a matter of time, unfortunately. And now that Michigan is an election-year swing state and Detroit’s auto makers are posting sales declines topping 20% each month, the time has arrived. The issue of a government bailout for General Motors, Ford and Chrysler is moving to center stage.
Barack Obama has said yes to this proposal early on, and last week John McCain climbed on board. So much for change and fighting pork-barrel spending. We’re moving beyond moral hazard here, folks, and into a moral quagmire. At least the Chrysler bailout of 1980 was structured so that taxpayers could reap a reward for taking a financial risk on the company’s future. That’s not what’s happening now. …
Interesting piece from Bob Novak on his brain tumor.
The main reason I am writing this column is that many people have asked me how I first realized I was suffering from a brain tumor and what I have done about it.
But I also want to relate the reaction to my disease, mostly compassionate, that belies Washington’s reputation.
The first sign that I was in trouble came on Wednesday, July 23, when my 2004 black Corvette struck a pedestrian on 18th Street in downtown Washington while I was on my way to my office.
I did not realize I had hit anyone until a shirt-sleeved young man on a bicycle, whom I incorrectly thought to be a bicycle messenger, jumped in front of my car to block the way. In fact, he was David A. Bono, a partner in the high-end law firm Harkins Cunningham. The bicyclist was shouting at me that I could not just hit people and then drive away. That was the first I knew about the accident. Mr. Bono called the police, and a patrolman soon arrived.
After I said I had no idea I had hit anyone until they flagged me down and informed me, Mr. Bono told The Washington Post, “I would not believe that.” Fortunately, the investigating officer, P. Garcia, was a policeman who listened and apparently believed me. While Mr. Bono and other bystanders were taking on aspects of a mob, shouting “hit-and-run,” Officer Garcia issued a right-of-way infraction against me, costing me $50, instead of a hit-and-run violation that would have been a felony. …