For seven years George Bush has kept this nation free from terrorist attack. For this legacy every single one of us owe him a debt of gratitude. For those seven years as commander-in-chief he demonstrated a focus, a resolve, a constitutional emotional balance, a self-possession that was not disturbed by the most trying of circumstances.
The President’s strength and his dedication to his country were distilled in a 20 minute speech of Jan/10/07 that announced a new initiative designed to win in Iraq. The speech was not greeted with applause. Few within the administration supported what now has become known as "the surge". The Joint Chiefs of Staff were not in favor, nor was Gen Casey, the American commander in Iraq, nor was Centcom commander John Abizaid, nor was Condy Rice, nor was the foreign policy establishment led by the Iraqi Study Group. Yet that day the President wasn’t looking for affirmation. He was not, Clinton–like, directed by the polls. He was focused solely on victory; he decided to spurn public opinion and political pressure and fly by his own lights. He was right. That decision can be regarded as the single greatest of that whole series of decisions that successfully confronted an enemy whose creed is nothing more than an atavistic inheritance of the dark ages. As Charles Krauthammer reminds us, "The surge...effected the most dramatic change in the fortunes of an American war since the summer of 1864."
We are reminded too by Ann Coulter of the western classic "High Noon". The sheriff is about to leave office just when a gang of toughs ride into town. He could leave but he waits to face the killers. All his friends and all the townspeople who supported him during his years of keeping them safe, slowly abandon him. In the end, he walks alone to meet the killers, because someone had to.
In an interview George Bush noted with some pride that he has bequeathed to his successor the kinds of powers and institutions the next president will need to protect Americans. Yet despite this heritage he leaves as an unpopular president. Krauthammer confirms that, "In this respect Bush is much like Truman who developed the sinews of war for a new era (Dept of Def, CIA, NSA), expanded the powers of the presidency, established a new doctrine for active intervention abroad, and ultimately engaged in a war (Korea) that also proved to be highly unpopular." So unpopular that Truman left office disparaged, persecuted by both sides of the aisle as if he were some sort of nefarious character. History has revised that verdict. There is no doubt that Bush will be the subject of a similar reconsideration.
Robert Craven
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
Economics and the Campaign
Near term developments in Afghanistan and Iran are the key to the security of this country, eclipsing all else. Recent domestic events however have trumped this concern in the collective mind of Americans. So be it. Thus the change in the landscape of Wall St triggers a change in the landscape of the campaign, sculpted for the duration by the scythes of the sub-prime crisis.
The economy is not easy for anyone. "Ex-spurts" abound, all chattering away but of course - after the fact. Some economists understand the economy but very few can close the pattern successfully, that is, predict. McCain admitted that he had trouble fathoming these events. We applaud his candor.
The DNC welcomed the sub prime crisis just as the RNC will welcome buoyancy (if that may be the result of the current rescue effort). For weeks Obama has tried to keep voters focused on the economy betting this was his best chance to pull away. Until yesterday at least, one saw nothing but smiles on the faces of short sellers, vulture buyers and Democratic strategists.
It is true that Obama easily evokes race, changes his mind weekly, often sounds like he is lost and is the world’s foremost gaffe machine. It is also true that he has past associations with shady characters. None of this matters now. For the balance of the campaign it is the economic "crisis". However, Obama’s strength is not crisis management. His instinct is to equivocate and temporize. He is not the strong, virile male figure of say a Hank Paulson; he is not a commander as is McCain.
Nor does his leftist background spawn confidence. As David Frum of the AEI reminds us, "Obama is a classic big-city welfare-state politician. He has lots of ideas about how to share wealth created by others - but very few about how to ensure that wealth is created in the first place."
Thus although the DNC was gifted by the failure of Wall St’s instruments-of-the-cosmos, Obama lacks the skills, the instinct to capitalize on what could have been a bonanza. And key to this failure is his vulnerability. For example, in attributing the sub-prime situation to "Bush-McCain" policies Obama conveniently omits the fact that the key policy change underlying the whole breakdown is one he endorsed enthusiastically - the use of public loan guarantees to stimulate private home construction. As Frum again illustrates, "As a state legislator, Obama famously championed ‘public-private partnerships’ to renovate slum housing. Thus he advocated the same approach that just stuck the American taxpayer with liability with tens or hundreds of billions of dollars of Fannie/Freddie obligations."
McCain for his part must stop with the "greed" bit (there is nothing in the Constitution, nothing on state or national books which makes greed unconstitutional or illegal). Issues of judicial activism, earmarks, energy, education, health care, even national security, all key yes but now to play the cameo role. Tell ‘em what he knows and as before don’t fret party affiliation - the fat Fannie & Freddie, the Democrat’s encouragement of reckless activity through these two conduits and the payback, principally through the person of Barney Frank; the near incestuous relationship between regulator and regulated (Fed / Street). For the near term endorse Democrat Paul Volker’s RTC idea - massive government intervention, yes, but it worked before; take a crash course in credit flows and explain that to the masses. Make it easy, make is simple; we are not launching a satellite for goodness sake (and by the way, fire Phil Gramm). The landscape may be changing too fast for more specific proposals this week or next. Fine, capitalize on that - first the main structure, later the accent.
And McCain - recall and then highlight to your listeners the maxim, for us a golden rule - complexity remains, still, the very last refuge of the scoundrel.
Robert Craven
The economy is not easy for anyone. "Ex-spurts" abound, all chattering away but of course - after the fact. Some economists understand the economy but very few can close the pattern successfully, that is, predict. McCain admitted that he had trouble fathoming these events. We applaud his candor.
The DNC welcomed the sub prime crisis just as the RNC will welcome buoyancy (if that may be the result of the current rescue effort). For weeks Obama has tried to keep voters focused on the economy betting this was his best chance to pull away. Until yesterday at least, one saw nothing but smiles on the faces of short sellers, vulture buyers and Democratic strategists.
It is true that Obama easily evokes race, changes his mind weekly, often sounds like he is lost and is the world’s foremost gaffe machine. It is also true that he has past associations with shady characters. None of this matters now. For the balance of the campaign it is the economic "crisis". However, Obama’s strength is not crisis management. His instinct is to equivocate and temporize. He is not the strong, virile male figure of say a Hank Paulson; he is not a commander as is McCain.
Nor does his leftist background spawn confidence. As David Frum of the AEI reminds us, "Obama is a classic big-city welfare-state politician. He has lots of ideas about how to share wealth created by others - but very few about how to ensure that wealth is created in the first place."
Thus although the DNC was gifted by the failure of Wall St’s instruments-of-the-cosmos, Obama lacks the skills, the instinct to capitalize on what could have been a bonanza. And key to this failure is his vulnerability. For example, in attributing the sub-prime situation to "Bush-McCain" policies Obama conveniently omits the fact that the key policy change underlying the whole breakdown is one he endorsed enthusiastically - the use of public loan guarantees to stimulate private home construction. As Frum again illustrates, "As a state legislator, Obama famously championed ‘public-private partnerships’ to renovate slum housing. Thus he advocated the same approach that just stuck the American taxpayer with liability with tens or hundreds of billions of dollars of Fannie/Freddie obligations."
McCain for his part must stop with the "greed" bit (there is nothing in the Constitution, nothing on state or national books which makes greed unconstitutional or illegal). Issues of judicial activism, earmarks, energy, education, health care, even national security, all key yes but now to play the cameo role. Tell ‘em what he knows and as before don’t fret party affiliation - the fat Fannie & Freddie, the Democrat’s encouragement of reckless activity through these two conduits and the payback, principally through the person of Barney Frank; the near incestuous relationship between regulator and regulated (Fed / Street). For the near term endorse Democrat Paul Volker’s RTC idea - massive government intervention, yes, but it worked before; take a crash course in credit flows and explain that to the masses. Make it easy, make is simple; we are not launching a satellite for goodness sake (and by the way, fire Phil Gramm). The landscape may be changing too fast for more specific proposals this week or next. Fine, capitalize on that - first the main structure, later the accent.
And McCain - recall and then highlight to your listeners the maxim, for us a golden rule - complexity remains, still, the very last refuge of the scoundrel.
Robert Craven
Sunday, August 3, 2008
It Might Have Worked
Lack of accomplishment as an academic, then as a state senator and finally as a US senator might seem a bit of a hurdle to most of us if we were to contemplate running for president. But not for Obama and not for his handlers. Why? Because of what the campaign perceives to be a trump card - the application of race (or the preferred half for this purpose) to apply leverage. Sure enough, he’s hard at work: "...what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills, you know." Or, "He’s young and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?" Or even in Berlin, where he tried to highlight that he was the first black American to address an audience there (forgetting Rice and Powell before him).
Obama’s strategy is straightforward - delegitimize any line of attack. That is, no charge against Obama can be made innocent of racial bias. That’s why his lack of qualification is not key, is not a major concern to his campaign. Don’t worry about the normal political back-and-forth; it’s illegitimate; the guy is above criticism.
How exactly did Obama plan to turn his blackness to advantage? From Shelby Steele of the Hoover Institute, "The answer is that one ‘bargains.’ Bargaining is a mask that blacks can wear in America, that enables them to put whites at their ease. Bargainers like Obama make the subliminal promise to whites not to shame them with America’s history of racism on the condition that they will not hold the bargainer’s race against him. And whites love the bargain – and feel affection for the bargainer–because it gives them racial innocence in a society where whites live under constant threat of being stigmatized as racist. Unlike Jackson and Sharpton who intimidated and demanded, Obama instead flatters whites, grants them racial innocence and hopes to ascend on the back of their gratitude."
Sure enough, Obama’s policy positions are nothing but DNC boilerplate. He has not espoused one original or galvanizing political idea. He is unable to say what he means by "change" or "hope" or "the future," and failed to say how he would be "a unifier." He has a track record with a near vacuity of content, BUT, none of this matters! Because as Steele illustrates, "Race... lifts his political campaign to the level of allegory, making it the stuff of a far higher drama than budget deficits or education reform (or even national security we might add). His dark skin...frames the political contest as a morality play. Thus, for whites here is the opportunity to document their deliverance from the shame of their forbearers."
Well, nice try Obama but quite likely your game is up. This strategy will fail on most Americans for the simple reason that it has been over played. As our own Vic Hansen observes, "The voter is now starting to hear serially from Obama about race; they were promised a racially transcendent candidate, but now Obama seems obsessed with identity, either accusing others of racism, or using heritage himself for political advantage. This is a tragic blunder."
Robert Craven
Obama’s strategy is straightforward - delegitimize any line of attack. That is, no charge against Obama can be made innocent of racial bias. That’s why his lack of qualification is not key, is not a major concern to his campaign. Don’t worry about the normal political back-and-forth; it’s illegitimate; the guy is above criticism.
How exactly did Obama plan to turn his blackness to advantage? From Shelby Steele of the Hoover Institute, "The answer is that one ‘bargains.’ Bargaining is a mask that blacks can wear in America, that enables them to put whites at their ease. Bargainers like Obama make the subliminal promise to whites not to shame them with America’s history of racism on the condition that they will not hold the bargainer’s race against him. And whites love the bargain – and feel affection for the bargainer–because it gives them racial innocence in a society where whites live under constant threat of being stigmatized as racist. Unlike Jackson and Sharpton who intimidated and demanded, Obama instead flatters whites, grants them racial innocence and hopes to ascend on the back of their gratitude."
Sure enough, Obama’s policy positions are nothing but DNC boilerplate. He has not espoused one original or galvanizing political idea. He is unable to say what he means by "change" or "hope" or "the future," and failed to say how he would be "a unifier." He has a track record with a near vacuity of content, BUT, none of this matters! Because as Steele illustrates, "Race... lifts his political campaign to the level of allegory, making it the stuff of a far higher drama than budget deficits or education reform (or even national security we might add). His dark skin...frames the political contest as a morality play. Thus, for whites here is the opportunity to document their deliverance from the shame of their forbearers."
Well, nice try Obama but quite likely your game is up. This strategy will fail on most Americans for the simple reason that it has been over played. As our own Vic Hansen observes, "The voter is now starting to hear serially from Obama about race; they were promised a racially transcendent candidate, but now Obama seems obsessed with identity, either accusing others of racism, or using heritage himself for political advantage. This is a tragic blunder."
Robert Craven
Monday, July 28, 2008
Thursday in Berlin - The Second Coming
In his victory speech upon winning his party’s nomination Obama pronounced a great turning point in history - "generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment" - when, among other wonders, "the rise of the oceans will began to slow." As economist Irwin Stelzer noted in his London Telegraph column, "Moses made the waters recede, but he had help. Obama apparently works alone."
Just ask the German youth packaged (with the assist of a rock band) for the Berlin spectacle. Veneration, idiolatry swept the audience, gathering most of the press in its wake. Whoa! It seems only yesterday that Obama was just another Chicago politician whose entire resume was a speech at John Kerry’s convention. As we highlighted in detail in an earlier sketch, he’s a short-term US senator without a single legislative accomplishment, a former Illinois senator who voted "present" nearly 130 times (meaning - not willing to commit), a president of the Harvard Law Review and law professor who never produced one single piece of scholarship, not one memorable article, aside, that is from a biography on his favorite subject - himself.
Germans don’t vote for this office but since Thursday’s sermon, poll results are higher among many of those who will. Have the masses been taken in by this messiah wannabe? No doubt. Obama’s handlers are counting on voter illiteracy as their trump card. Americans are tired of conflict; thus, a warm and fuzzy message fits as it sheds the necessity of hard choices; it is a fit because a whole bunch of Americans are blissfully unaware of the dynamics of foreign affairs, ignorant of US and world history.
But Obama as commander-in-chief? Holly mackerel. In an earlier sketch we put a spotlight on the perfect contest for this office - a real life, hands on, taking-of-the-helm. This was 2006 when McCain, as a member of the Senates Armed Services Committee recommended the "surge" noting that initially this strategy would increase American casualties and hardships but then would bring violence under control. Obama as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee presented his solution in the "Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007 (S. 433) which forbade the surge and demanded that most troops be out of Iraq by the spring of 2008. As our friend Rex Murphy of Canada’s GlobeandMail.com puts it, "Obama offered unqualified, insistent opposition to the Petraeus surge, which turned the war around to the point that some of its most relentless critics now maintain ‘it cannot be lost.’ In other words, on the one definitive issue, post-invasion, on his country’s most important foreign involvement, the one decision the inarticulate and sublimely unhip Texan in the White House made alone, and got right; Obama was perfectly, publicly wrong." Too much.
Thus, by Obama’s European tour his handlers looked to build an image, create a statesman out of nothing, knowing as most of us do that this man is profoundly out of his league in matters of foreign affairs; knowing too that they have a leftist on their hands who thinks that war can be wished away by blaming the US for its enemies’ hatred. The tool: create an illusion, the wonderland of ONE WORLD - how did the rest of us miss that!? - and Obama will become its paladin. For example, Obama’s reference Thursday to why Berlin did not starve in 1948 ("But in the darkest hours, the people of Berlin kept the flame of hope burning. The people of Berlin refused to give up. And on one fall day, hundreds of thousands of Berliners came here, to the Tiergarten, and heard the city’s major implore the world not to give up on freedom.") As the San Joaquin Valley’s own Vic Hansen made note, "With all due respect, I don’t believe the world did anything to save Berlin. The city was kept alive not by ‘the world’ or even the courage of the hungry Berliners, but by the skill and courage of the US Air Force."
Fortunately for Obama, this is the stuff that slips by the masses, most of whom, if not suffering from a case of chronic amnesia, certainly struggle to lay claim to events preceding the last super bowl.
Again from Thursday’s worship we witnessed Obama’s soaring rhetoric, his historical revisionism that, "The two superpowers that faced each other across the wall of this city came too close too often to destroying all we have built and all that we love." (a pause for a visit to the men’s room - I will throw up presently.. Ok, back after a clearing of the system) As Hansen notes, "I would beg to differ again and suggest that a mass-murdering Soviet tyranny came close to destroying the European continent (after wiping out millions of its own people)...and was checked only by an often lone and caricatured US superpower and its nuclear deterrence."
Ongoing we will continue to expose the messiah for what he is, or isn’t.
Robert Craven
Just ask the German youth packaged (with the assist of a rock band) for the Berlin spectacle. Veneration, idiolatry swept the audience, gathering most of the press in its wake. Whoa! It seems only yesterday that Obama was just another Chicago politician whose entire resume was a speech at John Kerry’s convention. As we highlighted in detail in an earlier sketch, he’s a short-term US senator without a single legislative accomplishment, a former Illinois senator who voted "present" nearly 130 times (meaning - not willing to commit), a president of the Harvard Law Review and law professor who never produced one single piece of scholarship, not one memorable article, aside, that is from a biography on his favorite subject - himself.
Germans don’t vote for this office but since Thursday’s sermon, poll results are higher among many of those who will. Have the masses been taken in by this messiah wannabe? No doubt. Obama’s handlers are counting on voter illiteracy as their trump card. Americans are tired of conflict; thus, a warm and fuzzy message fits as it sheds the necessity of hard choices; it is a fit because a whole bunch of Americans are blissfully unaware of the dynamics of foreign affairs, ignorant of US and world history.
But Obama as commander-in-chief? Holly mackerel. In an earlier sketch we put a spotlight on the perfect contest for this office - a real life, hands on, taking-of-the-helm. This was 2006 when McCain, as a member of the Senates Armed Services Committee recommended the "surge" noting that initially this strategy would increase American casualties and hardships but then would bring violence under control. Obama as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee presented his solution in the "Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007 (S. 433) which forbade the surge and demanded that most troops be out of Iraq by the spring of 2008. As our friend Rex Murphy of Canada’s GlobeandMail.com puts it, "Obama offered unqualified, insistent opposition to the Petraeus surge, which turned the war around to the point that some of its most relentless critics now maintain ‘it cannot be lost.’ In other words, on the one definitive issue, post-invasion, on his country’s most important foreign involvement, the one decision the inarticulate and sublimely unhip Texan in the White House made alone, and got right; Obama was perfectly, publicly wrong." Too much.
Thus, by Obama’s European tour his handlers looked to build an image, create a statesman out of nothing, knowing as most of us do that this man is profoundly out of his league in matters of foreign affairs; knowing too that they have a leftist on their hands who thinks that war can be wished away by blaming the US for its enemies’ hatred. The tool: create an illusion, the wonderland of ONE WORLD - how did the rest of us miss that!? - and Obama will become its paladin. For example, Obama’s reference Thursday to why Berlin did not starve in 1948 ("But in the darkest hours, the people of Berlin kept the flame of hope burning. The people of Berlin refused to give up. And on one fall day, hundreds of thousands of Berliners came here, to the Tiergarten, and heard the city’s major implore the world not to give up on freedom.") As the San Joaquin Valley’s own Vic Hansen made note, "With all due respect, I don’t believe the world did anything to save Berlin. The city was kept alive not by ‘the world’ or even the courage of the hungry Berliners, but by the skill and courage of the US Air Force."
Fortunately for Obama, this is the stuff that slips by the masses, most of whom, if not suffering from a case of chronic amnesia, certainly struggle to lay claim to events preceding the last super bowl.
Again from Thursday’s worship we witnessed Obama’s soaring rhetoric, his historical revisionism that, "The two superpowers that faced each other across the wall of this city came too close too often to destroying all we have built and all that we love." (a pause for a visit to the men’s room - I will throw up presently.. Ok, back after a clearing of the system) As Hansen notes, "I would beg to differ again and suggest that a mass-murdering Soviet tyranny came close to destroying the European continent (after wiping out millions of its own people)...and was checked only by an often lone and caricatured US superpower and its nuclear deterrence."
Ongoing we will continue to expose the messiah for what he is, or isn’t.
Robert Craven
Sunday, June 15, 2008
AMNESIA
John F. Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Scoop Jackson, once great leaders of a once great party, could feel nothing if not betrayed by the new Democratic party and its selection of Obama as its candidate for president of the United States.
In the post of Apr/21 we highlighted the transformation from the party JFK said in his inaugural would "pay and price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom," to one which Joe Lieberman illustrates, "grew to see America as the aggressor - a morally bankrupt, imperialist power whose militarism and ‘inordinate fear of communism’ represented the real threat to world peace." The Soviets and their allies were our enemies not because they nursed ambitions of global conquest but because we provoked them, we threatened them.
Naturally our partisan friends won’t admit the same; most simply accept and move lemming-like to November yet the undeniable truth is that the old, respectable Democratic party is gone; it no longer exists and to most of the membership lessons of history are lost with it. What does exist is a party and a philosophy which would gag Harry Truman, a philosophy certainly when directed toward foreign affairs represents a clear and present danger to this country. This new Democratic party believes that the more therapeutic and the more conciliatory, the more diplomatic, the more apologetic, the more sensitive, the more likely we will be safe. This party condemns a man who has kept the nation safe for 7 years by keeping the Islamic medievalists pinned down in Iraq while virtually destroying al-Qaida, yet deifies a man who has accomplished absolutely nothing in his entire life except to give speeches about "change". And countries which adopted a DNC-like stance? What happened to them since Sep/2001? Simply ask the Europeans who were hit repeatedly, who were successfully targeted because they stood for nothing, or certainly nothing they were willing to defend.
A great Democratic secretary of state, Dean Acheson, once warned that, "No people in history have ever survived who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies." A lesson lost on the present DNC leadership, suffering it seems from a severe case of amnesia.
Robert Craven
In the post of Apr/21 we highlighted the transformation from the party JFK said in his inaugural would "pay and price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom," to one which Joe Lieberman illustrates, "grew to see America as the aggressor - a morally bankrupt, imperialist power whose militarism and ‘inordinate fear of communism’ represented the real threat to world peace." The Soviets and their allies were our enemies not because they nursed ambitions of global conquest but because we provoked them, we threatened them.
Naturally our partisan friends won’t admit the same; most simply accept and move lemming-like to November yet the undeniable truth is that the old, respectable Democratic party is gone; it no longer exists and to most of the membership lessons of history are lost with it. What does exist is a party and a philosophy which would gag Harry Truman, a philosophy certainly when directed toward foreign affairs represents a clear and present danger to this country. This new Democratic party believes that the more therapeutic and the more conciliatory, the more diplomatic, the more apologetic, the more sensitive, the more likely we will be safe. This party condemns a man who has kept the nation safe for 7 years by keeping the Islamic medievalists pinned down in Iraq while virtually destroying al-Qaida, yet deifies a man who has accomplished absolutely nothing in his entire life except to give speeches about "change". And countries which adopted a DNC-like stance? What happened to them since Sep/2001? Simply ask the Europeans who were hit repeatedly, who were successfully targeted because they stood for nothing, or certainly nothing they were willing to defend.
A great Democratic secretary of state, Dean Acheson, once warned that, "No people in history have ever survived who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies." A lesson lost on the present DNC leadership, suffering it seems from a severe case of amnesia.
Robert Craven
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
ELECTION UPDATE
ELECTION UPDATE
The Pennsylvania primary exit poll results, the first contest since information regarding Obama’s less-than-flattering past associations has become available, and, the first contest to follow his recent condescending, elitist remarks so consistent with a far-left ideology, perfectly endorse our insight/prediction as highlighted in the post of Apr/21 -- Obama cannot secure the vote of middle class Americans.
Finally, as we noted months ago and as the Clinton camp levered effectively in this recent contest, Obama is profoundly out of his league in matters of national security, the single key consideration is selecting a commander-in-chief.
Democrats will stumble through a primary process that even to them must be an embarrassment, end up selecting Obama as their candidate before August so as not to have the entire spectacle on TV, and then lose in November.
Robert Craven
The Pennsylvania primary exit poll results, the first contest since information regarding Obama’s less-than-flattering past associations has become available, and, the first contest to follow his recent condescending, elitist remarks so consistent with a far-left ideology, perfectly endorse our insight/prediction as highlighted in the post of Apr/21 -- Obama cannot secure the vote of middle class Americans.
Finally, as we noted months ago and as the Clinton camp levered effectively in this recent contest, Obama is profoundly out of his league in matters of national security, the single key consideration is selecting a commander-in-chief.
Democrats will stumble through a primary process that even to them must be an embarrassment, end up selecting Obama as their candidate before August so as not to have the entire spectacle on TV, and then lose in November.
Robert Craven
Monday, April 21, 2008
A PARTY HIJACKED, OR WHY OBAMA WILL LOSE
We have witnessed the death throws of the old, respectable, bread and butter
Democratic party, the party of Truman, FDR, Kennedy and Scoop Jackson. This process began in the late 60's, my view, as a new left arising from the cultural revolution, galvanized by the Vietnam war and the advent of the new left-wing intellectuals’ manifestoes about revolutionary violence, black power and imperialism moved away from Johnson and hijacked the traditional Democratic party mechanism, effectively, as one spokesman put it, "murdering liberalism in its official robes".
This was the beginning of the end. There was a transformation, one from anti-war to anti-American (apologists for Communism, apologists for the Sandinistas, for Castro), from being just critical to almost purely nihilistic in character. Now the party is for the most part lost to Hollywood, to the universities, to the shills for the left in the media, the elitist revisionists and foundations which have an agenda out of touch with the average American, most of whom they never see or wish to see. This of course is what Democratic party elders feared following the McGovern debacle, why they threw grass-roots democracy out the window and instead adopted the so-called Super Delegate system as a way to trump such radically inspired messes in the future (even this system has been hijacked). And this is why a respected life-long Democrat, the Greek scholar Vic Hansen sickened at the sight of Michael Moore perched next to Jimmy Carter at the last Democratic convention, mourning that, "This says it all, the sorry coming together of conspiratorial anti-Americanism and self-righteous appeasement".
And of course this is why Obama’s recent comment in SF about embittered Americans, his refusal to wear the American flag lapel pin, his friendly relationship not just with a Weatherman terrorist but to use his own words, "Marxist professors and structural feminists...," show that his philosophy is no different really from the liberal elitism (and grievance culture) of a Dukakis or a McGovern or Kerry all of whom lost because of a lack of connection with the bread and butter Democrats. Obama’s voting record is perfectly consistent with this far-left ideology. Obama, if the nominee, means failure for the Democrats in November.
Robert Craven
Democratic party, the party of Truman, FDR, Kennedy and Scoop Jackson. This process began in the late 60's, my view, as a new left arising from the cultural revolution, galvanized by the Vietnam war and the advent of the new left-wing intellectuals’ manifestoes about revolutionary violence, black power and imperialism moved away from Johnson and hijacked the traditional Democratic party mechanism, effectively, as one spokesman put it, "murdering liberalism in its official robes".
This was the beginning of the end. There was a transformation, one from anti-war to anti-American (apologists for Communism, apologists for the Sandinistas, for Castro), from being just critical to almost purely nihilistic in character. Now the party is for the most part lost to Hollywood, to the universities, to the shills for the left in the media, the elitist revisionists and foundations which have an agenda out of touch with the average American, most of whom they never see or wish to see. This of course is what Democratic party elders feared following the McGovern debacle, why they threw grass-roots democracy out the window and instead adopted the so-called Super Delegate system as a way to trump such radically inspired messes in the future (even this system has been hijacked). And this is why a respected life-long Democrat, the Greek scholar Vic Hansen sickened at the sight of Michael Moore perched next to Jimmy Carter at the last Democratic convention, mourning that, "This says it all, the sorry coming together of conspiratorial anti-Americanism and self-righteous appeasement".
And of course this is why Obama’s recent comment in SF about embittered Americans, his refusal to wear the American flag lapel pin, his friendly relationship not just with a Weatherman terrorist but to use his own words, "Marxist professors and structural feminists...," show that his philosophy is no different really from the liberal elitism (and grievance culture) of a Dukakis or a McGovern or Kerry all of whom lost because of a lack of connection with the bread and butter Democrats. Obama’s voting record is perfectly consistent with this far-left ideology. Obama, if the nominee, means failure for the Democrats in November.
Robert Craven
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