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Bill Kristol – Enough with the Reagan nostalgia.
Conservative editorialists, radio hosts, and bloggers are unhappy. They don’t like the Republican presidential field, and many of them have been heaping opprobrium on the various GOP candidates with astonishing vigor.
For example: John McCain–with a lifetime American Conservative Union rating of 82.3–is allegedly in no way a conservative. And, though the most favorably viewed of all the candidates right now, both among Republicans and the electorate as a whole, he would allegedly destroy the Republican party if nominated.
Or take Mike Huckabee. He was a well-regarded and successful governor of Arkansas, reelected twice, the second time with 40 percent of the black vote. He’s come from an asterisk to second in the national GOP polls with no money and no establishment support. Yet he is supposedly a buffoon and political naïf. He’s been staunchly pro-life and pro-gun and is consistently supported by the most conservative primary voters–but he is, we’re told, no conservative either.
Or Mitt Romney. He’s a man of considerable accomplishments, respected by many who have worked with and for him in various endeavors. He took conservative positions on social issues as governor of Massachusetts, and parlayed a one-term governorship of a blue state into a first-tier position in the Republican race. But he, too, we’re told, is deserving of no respect. And though he’s embraced conservative policies and seems likely to be steadfast in pursuing them–he’s no conservative either.
One could go on. And it’s true the Republican candidates are not unproblematic. But they are so far performing more credibly than much of the conservative commentariat. Beyond the normal human frailties that affect all of us, including undoubtedly the commentators at this journal, there is one error that is distorting much conservative discussion of the presidential race. It’s -Reagan nostalgia.
It’s foolish to wait for another Ronald Reagan. But not just because his political gifts are rare. There’s a particular way in which Reagan was exceptional that many of us fail to appreciate: He was the only president of the last century who came to the office as the leader of an ideological movement.
Reagan gave “The Speech” in October 1964, inherited the leadership of the conservative movement after Goldwater’s loss, defeated a moderate establishment Republican two years later to win the GOP nomination for governor of California, and then defeated the Democratic incumbent. He remained in a sense the leader of conservatives nationally while serving two terms as governor, ran unsuccessfully against Gerald Ford in 1976, and won the presidency in 1980. He was a conservative first and a politician second, a National Review and Human Events reader first and an elected official second.
This is exceedingly unusual. The normal American president is a politician, with semicoherent ideological views, who sometimes becomes a vehicle for an ideological movement. …
Hugh Hewitt counts delegates.
Ann Coulter weighs in on the GOP race.
Unluckily for McCain, snowstorms in Michigan suppressed the turnout among Democratic “Independents” who planned to screw up the Republican primary by voting for our worst candidate. Democrats are notoriously unreliable voters in bad weather. Instead of putting on galoshes and going to the polls, they sit on their porches waiting for FEMA to rescue them.
In contrast to Michigan’s foul weather, New Hampshire was balmy on primary day, allowing McCain’s base — Democrats — to come out and vote for him.
Assuming any actual Republicans are voting for McCain — or for liberals’ new favorite candidate for us, Mike Huckabee — this column is for you.
I’ve been casually taking swipes at Mitt Romney for the past year based on the assumption that, in the end, Republicans would choose him as our nominee. My thinking was that Romney would be our nominee because he is manifestly the best candidate.
I had no idea that Republican voters in Iowa and New Hampshire planned to do absolutely zero research on the candidates and vote on the basis of random impulses.
Dear Republicans: Please do one-tenth as much research before casting a vote in a presidential election as you do before buying a new car.
One clue that Romney is our strongest candidate is the fact that Democrats keep viciously attacking him while expressing their deep respect for Mike Huckabee and John McCain.
This point was already extensively covered in Chapter 1 of “How To Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)”: Never take advice from your political enemies. …
Carl Hiaasen writes on the FL primary.
It wasn’t so long ago that Florida’s primary seemed doomed to irrelevancy, thanks to the meat-heads in the Legislature who moved up the vote to Jan. 29.
What a clever idea, they said, leap-frogging ahead of all those other big states!
To no one’s surprise but their own, this enthusiasm failed to rub off on the Democratic and Republican leaderships. As punishment for breaking the rules, Florida’s GOP was stripped of half its delegates to the nominating convention, while the state Democratic party forfeited the whole slate.
Thus, the stage was set for a pretend primary, a largely pointless beauty contest in which even the media showed only a half-hearted interest.
Floridians from the Panhandle to the Keys breathed a secret sigh of relief. Having had a bellyful of the political limelight — and ridicule — in 2000, we were thrilled at the prospect of being ignored this time, at least until November.
Yet now, with the primary only nine days away, the threat of actual significance has raised its head, minus the comb-over, in the person of Rudy Giuliani.
For reasons difficult to fathom, the former mayor (and self-proclaimed savior) of New York has chosen to bank his presidential ambitions on a victory in Florida, which is full of people who bailed out of New York as soon as they could afford to. …
The Captain posts on the FL contest too.
… Given Florida’s status as the first fully closed primary, this will provide a bellwether for Republicans going into Super Tuesday. McCain won two states with help from crossover voters, but with Rudy in the race, Rudy could dilute enough support from other candidates to give McCain an opportunity to win.
I’d guess that Rudy wins Florida. It’s tailor-made for him, with plenty of Northeastern retirees and an active Cuban-American base that wants to see hard-nosed policy rather than moderation. If that happens, we can forget clarification, and Super Tuesday becomes a delegate hunt, pure and simple, with everyone viable and a brokered convention more and more likely. If McCain wins Florida, it turns into a two-man race, with Romney becoming the improbable conservative standard-bearer.
And on the Hillary Papers uncovered by Judicial Watch.
After last week’s release by Judicial Watch of internal documents of Hillary Clinton’s Health Care Task Force, many of us waited to see the national news media cover their disturbing contents. No surprisingly, none of them did so. Despite the proposals to use smears against critics of the government and to turn the DNC into a domestic espionage unit for the White House against its opponents, the mainstream news media has shown little interest in even noting the fact that this evidence appeared in a microscopic sample of the three million documents that have been blocked from public scrutiny. …
The Captain also posts on Obama’s discovery that Bill Clinton lies. Who knew?
I guess you know this means war. Fans of Bugs Bunny will recognize that line, but fans of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama may not enjoy it as much as Republicans will over the next few weeks. In an interview that will air on ABC’s Good Morning America today, Obama makes it clear that he will not stand silently while Bill makes arguments that could politely be called factually deficient (via Memeorandum):
“You know the former president, who I think all of us have a lot of regard for, has taken his advocacy on behalf of his wife to a level that I think is pretty troubling,” Obama said. “He continues to make statements that are not supported by the facts — whether it’s about my record of opposition to the war in Iraq or our approach to organizing in Las Vegas. …
Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter covers some Dems’ unhappiness with Bill.
Prominent Democrats are upset with the aggressive role that Bill Clinton is playing in the 2008 campaign, a role they believe is inappropriate for a former president and the titular head of the Democratic Party. In recent weeks, Sen. Edward Kennedy and Rep. Rahm Emanuel, both currently neutral in the Democratic contest, have told their old friend heatedly on the phone that he needs to change his tone and stop attacking Sen. Barack Obama, according to two sources familiar with the conversations who asked for anonymity because of their sensitive nature. Clinton, Kennedy and Emanuel all declined to comment. …
Power Line’s send-off of State’s Nicholas Burns.
Among the numerous items on Burns’s resignation, only Andrew McCarthy’s Corner post recalls Burns’s defense of Yasser Arafat on the occasion of one of Rudy Giuliani’s great moments in office. As mayor of New York City Giuliani ejected Yasser Arafat from Lincoln Center when he crashed a private event held in connection with the UN’s fiftieth anniversary. In the face of the Clinton administration’s criticism of him for his action, Mayor Giuliani responded:
[T]he Mayor, explaining his decision yesterday, called Mr. Arafat a murderer and terrorist, and said he was not impressed by the fact that Mr. Arafat had twice been invited to the White House to sign the Middle East peace accords, or that he shared the Nobel Peace Prize.
“I would not invite Yasir Arafat to anything, anywhere, anytime, anyplace,” Mr. Giuliani said at a news conference yesterday. “I don’t forget.”
As McCarthy notes, Burns spoke up on Arafat’s behalf: …
Fred Dicker, NY Post’s Albany chief interviewed by WSJ.
… Mr. Dicker uncovered a particularly colorful moment soon after Mr. Spitzer’s inauguration. In a January 2007 telephone call, Republican State Assemblyman and minority leader Jim Tedisco complained to Mr. Spitzer that he had been shut out of discussions on a new ethics law. According to Mr. Dicker’s report, Mr. Spitzer then screamed into the phone, “Listen, I’m a [bleeping] steamroller, and I’ll roll over you and anybody else.” Continuing his telephonic tirade, Mr. Spitzer shouted, “I’ve done more in three weeks than any governor has done in the history of the state.”
Mr. Dicker broke the story, and public perceptions of the new governor began to shift. “A few times in my career I’ve had some sit-down moments, when I hear something so incredible that even I can’t believe it,” says Mr. Dicker. “And I’m prepared to believe almost anything around here.”
Looking back almost a year later, Mr. Dicker adds, “I’m still amazed by it. The governor almost seems kind of proud of it. It was consistent with what was being alleged about Attorney General Eliot Spitzer . . . when Spitzer was in the AG’s office. The claim was that he was browbeating, menacing, bullying people and I think a lot of people were skeptical without seeing proof of it. Here was the governor himself, describing himself as a [bleeping] steamroller.”
Mr. Spitzer is not the first pol to find out that when it comes to media scrutiny, New York City can feel like Triple-A ball compared to Mr. Dicker’s Albany. Mr. Dicker sits in an office adorned with a mock New York Post with the headline, “Dicker Quits — Cuomo Declares Holiday.” The dummy front page hangs on his wall next to an actual front page with a picture of a sprawling Mr. Dicker. A state official, so incensed by Mr. Dicker’s aggressive questioning, had just thrown him to the floor of a statehouse hallway.
A ’60s radical who led chapters of the fringe Students for a Democratic Society in college and graduate school, Mr. Dicker long ago abandoned left-wing politics. He remains an idealist. Though raised in the Bronx, his passion now is the upstate. And he’s had it with rich governors based in Manhattan and Westchester who occasionally venture north when duty requires it. He displays a zero-tolerance policy for corruption. …
Samizdata notes the left has a new way to keep Africans poor. Saying;
… Thank you for trying to offer us high quality, low cost agricultural products. However I am sorry but we would prefer it if you remain dependent on tax funded handouts from First World governments and their anointed NGOs. …
BBC has “nanny state” news.
A Cornish village drama group has had to register a toy gun with the police to comply with health and safety rules. Carnon Downs drama group in Cornwall have also had to keep their plastic cutlasses and wooden swords locked up for the play, Robinson Crusoe. Producers of the show called the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) rules “farcical”.
A spokesman for the HSE said the rules were designed to make risks “sensibly managed”. The climax of the show is a fight in which actors use replica 4ft long plastic cutlasses. There is also a toy gun which produces a flag saying “Bang”. The directors contacted police after receiving advice from the HSE and the National Operatic and Dramatic Association.