Democrats and National Security

The latest Gallup poll found that, for the first time since they started asking in 2002, Democrats "will do a better job than the Republican Party of protecting the country from security threats, 47% vs. 42%."

Hillary immediately disproved this silly notion by coming out against torture even in the so-called "ticking bomb" scenario. What is especially juicy about this is the fact that not only does it put her and Slick Willy on different sides of the issue (as if that's never happened before), it also contradicts statements she's made previously. So she was for torture before she was against it, or to frame it another way, she was for drastic measures in unforgiving situations for the sake of national security before she was against them. Ladies and gentlemen, the party the American people trust on national security. Cue the Churchill: "the greatest argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter."

So what caused the change of heart? Knowing Hillzilla, most likely a poll. But more specifically, she's probably decided that leading in the polls isn't sufficient when the left wing hates you - case in point, the DailyKos diary entitled "Why It's So Important that Hillary be defeated" which has garnered over 1,200 comments (if you choose to visit, please remember to disinfect your browser. It may otherwise become progressive and start demanding union hours or similar follies.).

It's also possible that Hillary's looking for a bomb in New York, if only to end the recent suffering (dare we say torture?) of Mets fans, who have lost ten out of the last fourteen and four in a row.

[[I'm not even going to bother apologizing for my lengthy absence. Also, I amuse myself when I can link to Gallup, Politico, and ESPN in a post, as well as cite Churchill.]

Canadian MP Comes to US For Cancer Treatment

Apparently Canadian Liberal MP needed cancer treatment, but rather than stay in her single-payer healthcare paradise, she came to the US for treatment. The story's relatively inane, just stating that she came down to the Lower 48 for treatment. What I find particularly interesting are the comments below the article - plenty of Canadians grousing about their luck with health care and wishing they had some US-style medicine. Huh.

Things Going Down Hill For GOP in Senate Races

The last twenty-four hours haven't been especially kind to Republican hopes of retaking (or at least maintaining the status quo) in the Senate, with former Governor Mark Warner announcing that he'll run in Virginia and former Governor Jeanne Shaheen saying she'll do the same in New Hampshire. Both remain popular despite having vacated the governor's mansions years ago. Warner's running for an open seat (vacated by the retiring John Warner), while Shaheen is challenging incumbent Republican John Sununu. Sununu's one of the last vestiges of the New Hampshire GOP, which was more than decimated last year, losing control of both chambers of the state house. Granite State voters were especially peeved by Iraq, but I think their libertarianism is also offended by moralizing Republicans in thrall to the Religious Right.

This same factor is also hurting the GOP in Mountain West states, where a long libertarian traditional has become detached from the Republican Party. Wayne Allard (R-CO)'s retirement announcement means that Democrats have another shot at a pickup out there, and it's probably better than 50-50 they succeed. Assuming Larry Craig actually resigns, Idaho isn't in play, but if he stays in office, Democrats may have a shot there as well. All in all, not shaping up to be a good cycle for the GOP.

Last One Out, Turn Off the Lights

It's been a rough couple of weeks for the White House: Rove announced his departure (today, perhaps?), Gonzales stepped down, and now Tony Snow will do the same in two weeks time.

Last one out, turn off the lights.


Oh and Larry Craig may step down today as well.

This Larry Craig Kerfuffle

You have to give it up to Idaho Senator Larry Craig. Having recently been accused of being gay, he trots out the wife, denies the story, and goes on with his life. He then allegedly engages in lewd behavior/propositions an undercover cop in Minneapolis-St. Paul airport.

Now it turns into a firestorm, with Mitt Romney, whom the Senator supported, calling his behavior "disgusting," and comparing it to Bill Clinton and Mark Foley. That is, of course, an entirely unfair comparison, given that we know, thanks to the little blue dress, the real nature of Clinton and Lewinsky's relationship, and thanks to instant message records, the explicit nature of Foley's advances to pages. However this is entirely different - Craig wasn't in a position of power over the fellow in the next stall, the cop presumably was of age, and it didn't happen in Craig's office. Ed Morrissey does a far better job of dissecting this than I, so be sure to read it.

But let's turn to the political side of things: Craig is up for reelection next year, and hasn't yet indicated whether or not he'll run again. Democrats are licking their chops, but this is a state that Bush won with 68% of the vote in '04, and which hasn't sent a Democrat to Washington since 1994. If Craig chooses to step down, the state's Republican governor will appoint another Republican to fill out his term, maintaining the balance of power. Even if more salacious tales come out (such as the one about Craig in a Union Station bathroom), it's entirely unclear whether or not the Democrats could find a viable candidate to run against him or his successor. Right now, as with Vitter in Louisiana, this doesn't look to change the political calculus - let's hope it stays that way.

Obama: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back?

Barack Obama's presidential bid has hit some speed bumps lately, most stemming from the fact that the candidate himself is a relative novice, his senate campaign against Allan Keyes hardly providing a real test. Now I think he's hit another landmine, at least as far as the base was concerned.

Obama named names of Republicans that he could work with - a show of bipartisanship that isn't likely to win friends among the moonbats, to whom all Republicans (with perhaps the sole exception of Ron Paul) are devils incarnate - a whopping three in all. The lucky trio? Senators John Warner (VA), Dick Lugar (IN), and Tom Coburn (OK). The first two have led the charge, or perhaps more appropriately the retreat, among Republicans arguing for a troop draw-down in Iraq. So that's two steps forward - he names two anti-war Republicans he can work with (both of whom are also considered deeply knowledgeable), thus partially appeasing the base while appearing moderate to the base.

Coburn's a different ballgame. Even I think the man's a little bit nuts, but to the foaming-at-the-mouth Democratic base, he is Lucifer. Coburn is vehemently pro-life, objecting to abortions even in the case of rape; he is also strongly anti-gay. And he hasn't flinched on the war. That's a trio of things that are going to get the base riled up, and the fact that Obama can work with him means that to many on the Left, he can't be their man. I'm just waiting for the fallout.

Michael Vick, A True Virginian?

So argues US News's Michael Barone, citing as evidence David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed, a book which I recently had recommended to me by a professor. One might almost call Barone sympathetic to Vick's legal troubles, noting that "we seem to consider fox hunting acceptable but have an almost universal feeling that dogfighting is not. Michael Vick, it seems, may have been born in the wrong century." This may be part of the sentiment fueling those polls in which whites have far less sympathy for Vick than blacks do; although a more likely explanation is simple racial solidarity.

Hastert to Retire

So far only the Sun Times has picked it up, perhaps because everyone knew it was coming and thus it's hardly newsworthy, but former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert is expected to announce tommorow that he's not going to seek reelection.

Rove Out

In the biggest news of the day, White House evil genius in residence Karl Rove has announced that he'll be resigning his post as Deputy Chief of Staff at the end of August. I'll be posting more on this as the day progresses, but for the time being I think it's safe to say that he chose to leave and wasn't pushed out - this is the Bush White House, after all, where loyalty between the chief and the tribe is the foremost virtue. He says he won't get involved in any presidential campaign, so it remains to be seen what he'll do with his retirement (no doubt write a book).

Oh and in the linked article (and also in a worthwhile interview with WSJ's Paul Gigot), Rove foresees a brighter future for the Republicans, with them holding the White House, the President's approval rating rising, and the situation in Iraq improving.

"Ideological Agitprop"

Or so runs Brendan Nyhan's assessment of one of Kos-founder Markos Moulitsas's (many) logically fallacious arguments this morning on Meet the Press. I haven't watched his "debate" with DLC Chair/Archenemy Harold Ford just yet, but given the arrogance of his column in yesterday's WaPo, I'm not sure I can stomach it. His overall argument is that the DLC is bad, that the netroots are good, and that Americans are all a bunch of peacenik socialists in denial. [The state of journalism is reflected in the fact that pompous clowns such as him get inches on the op-ed page of a "respectable" rag like the Post]

UPDATE: I'm not going to bother embedding it, but Allahpundit has had some fun with today's debate, interspersing it with clips from an interview with Kos at last weekend's YearlyKos; watch it here. And he just sounds condescending, in the worst stereotype of a liberal.

Ames Straw Poll

I didn't bother blogging during the event (largely because the outcome was a foregone conclusion), but yesterday was the heralded Ames Straw Poll. Amid the barbecue and Iowa-style pageantry, there were the politics. It was assumed that Mitt Romney would win easily, but the real question was how the rest of the field would shake out - whether a second tier candidate could have the sort of showing to catapult him into the first tier; whether any of the non-participating candidates (Giuliani, McCain, Fred Thompson) could still finish well without any overt campaigning.

Once the 14,302 ballots were tallied, the winner was no surprise. However, Romney took only 31.5% of the vote, far less than some had expected he'd get (and it would have been declared a major victory had he taken a true majority), but a win's a win, right? Second-place finisher Mike Huckabee's showing (18.1%) was quite respectable, especially given that Ames was more or less make-or-break for the former Arkansas governor.

The event's conservatism is evidenced in the support for Kansas Senator Sam Brownback and Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo (15.3% and 13.7% respectively); its weirdness in its 1,305 (9.1%) for votes for Texas Rep. Ron Paul. Chris Cilizza was apparently live-blogging from the event, and most of his commentary is worth reading (no independent links, just check out the Fix).

Oh and for what it's worth, Ames just claimed its first victim - Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson dropped out, his sixth-place finish sealing his fate. Not that it makes a big difference, just that it won't confuse people when Fred Thompson jumps in next month.

A Free-Styling Marine

This is why I love YouTube, and why I have the utmost respect for the men and women who defend this country.

4th Circuit Court Moving to the Middle

Some of the US circuit courts have distinct ideological flavors; the 9th has always been the ultra-liberal court, and until recently the 4th has been a more conservative one (and one that often hears cases involved with detainees and the War on Terror). Unfortunately, as the Washington Post chronicles, that may soon change. Of the fifteen seats, Republicans and Democrats both hold five - and the remaining five are vacant. It should go without saying that this isn't a reassuring development, that while Bush has been slow to provide nominations for those vacancies, it's unlikely that a Democratic president will be so lax. It should also go without saying that five nominees chosen by the same party have the potential to alter the ideological temperament of a court for years if not decades to come. This may be the endgame quietly sought by Senate Democrats as they have stonewalled so many Bush appointees over the last few years, and if so it appears to be working.

Many have called Bush's appointees to the Supreme Court his greatest legacy, but he will tarnish that legacy if he allows lower courts to drift away from conservative principles.
(h/t Bench Memos)

When Will Democrats Lash Out?

Yesterday's troubled markets (which, many analysts believe, will continue for a while) is partially the product of two prominent Democratic bogeymen: those "evil" sub-prime lenders and globalization. The mortgages offered by those sub-prime lenders have essentially been bundled and transformed into securities, sold around the world and thus transferring their risk around the world. This is why BNP Paribas halted withdrawals from a trio of funds yesterday, claiming that because of upheaval on the US credit market, they couldn't properly value the funds.

I haven't exactly scoured the web looking for it just yet, but I imagine that some Democrats will connect these dots and start brandishing their pitchforks in the near future. What they can do about it remains to be seen.

Lessons Learned Too Well

Ion Pacepa was head of Romanian intelligence until he fled to the United States in 1978. In today's Journal, he notes that Democratic bashing of the president has its inglorious roots in Soviet practice. Certainly worthwhile.

Book Review: An Army at Dawn

Over the years, I've read extensively about the Second World War from all sides, but especially from our own American perspective. As such, I was rather familiar with America's first act in the European Theater of Operations, Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa in November of 1942. This of course led to months of brutal fighting, before all Axis forces on the southern Mediterranean littoral were defeated in May of the following year. But even with all of my reading, I'd never encountered so magisterial a chronicle of those brutal months as Rick Atkinson's An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa , 1942-1943.

Even with the widespread popularity of the war, thanks to prolific and gifted authors such as the late Stephen Ambrose and individual efforts such as Brokaw's Greatest Generation and Bradley's Flags of Our Fathers, I feel that I wasn't alone in my relative ignorance of this first campaign, unique in the annals of the war. I think this ignorance stems largely from the same success of authors such as Ambrose, whose focus was almost exclusively on the last eleven months of the war, from Normandy to the Elbe. Atkinson, a former writer for the Post, has thus performed a great service in producing a tome both incredibly insightful and nuanced without losing sight of the overarching strategic campaign, all spun in eminently readable prose that often borders on the lyrical.

And it's certainly a story worth telling. Because of that same bias that limits the reading public's understanding of the conflict to its final phase, we often unknowingly digest a fallacious story of an American Leviathan, inexorably freeing Europe and crushing Nazism. Atkinson paints a radically different picture, one in which US troops were woefully inadequate and leadership too often incompetent. Operation Torch could have been a disaster in the mold of Dieppe had the landings been opposed by the Germans; instead Vichy French forces put up an inconsistent resistance that varied from the spirited to the nonexistent. But even once firmly ashore, green troops and officers made poor decisions and failed to exploit opportunities, lengthening the campaign by months and forcing troops to endure brutal fighting in horrific weather and over inhospitable terrain. Meanwhile at the highest levels of command, things were hardly improved as US and British generals, in stark contrast to the warm relations between the "cousins" so often depicted, were mutually distrustful, with the British having little regard for the Americans' martial abilities. These unfortunate elements fed into unnecessary carnage, most notably the bloodbath at Kasserine Pass (perhaps the best-known battle of the North African theater thanks to its cameo in Patton).

Thus Atkinson suggests that the final, overwhelming Allied victory - a quarter-million prisoners taken, several of the most storied German formations utterly destroyed, Rommel's fighting spirit broken - was almost in spite of itself. Sheer weight of numbers, an American ability to make good losses of men and materiel in the face of German shortages, played a significant role in that outcome. But so too did the fact that the same uncertain soldiers who blundered ashore on November 8th were by the end hardened veterans, capable of beating the Germans at their own game, though even then commanders too often flung the lives of their men away.

Also of note are those commanders that Atkinson brings to life. He skillfully depicts Eisenhower's evolution through the campaign, beginning with a commander few Americans would recognize as the victorious Ike; he also confirms the common conceptions of others, especially Montgomery (arrogant and insufferable) and Patton (vainglorious).

Thankfully, Atkinson didn't craft An Army at Dawn as a stand-alone work. Rather, it's the first of a trilogy he calls the Liberation Trilogy. The second volume, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944, is due out this autumn; I for one am eagerly anticipating its release.

Searching for Lost Puppies Is Morally Corrupt

Or so say the Iranians. Of course this is the same country who, in a classic case of projection, accused the Israelis of having a "horrific human rights record." Things like arresting kids looking for the lost family pet, you mean?

More Arlen Specter

Two recent themes (that Arlen Specter may not be as crazy as once thought, and that nothing in Washington really dies) converge: Arlen Specter says immigration still has 'momentum.' Enough, he thinks, to pass a measure legalizing illegals without giving them citizenship. I couldn't disagree more vehemently - whatever momentum immigration as an issue maintains is in the opposite direction: at a minimum, Americans want the border secured before anything more is even discussed. Why Congress hasn't gotten the message (and $3 billion more in funding for that purpose is only a step in the right direction) is beyond me.

More Fox = More Conservatives?

That's the suggestion of some new research cited by Brendan Nyhan. It's not exactly a seismic shift, but it's no doubt enough to rile the Left. What amuses me is that the researchers have also authored a chapter in a forthcoming volume entitled "The Political Impact of Media Bias." Thus perpetrating the myth that only Fox is biased, and that the rest of the media is so well balanced.

Too bad we can't do some people the benefit of taking away NBC/CBS/ABC/MSNBC/CNN and studying what that does to their voting patterns (and their brain waves).

Feinstein's Vote for Justice?

As I'd previously noted, Democratic opposition to judicial nominee Leslie Southwick was appearing both absurd and insurmountable; it didn't look like the impeccably-credentialed Iraq veteran would ever make it to the Senate floor, that Democrats would keep him bottled in Judiciary.

Then Dianne Feinstein did something inexplicable: she voted honestly, refusing to kowtow to the loons in her party. And boy oh boy, the loons are angry - especially the members of the Congressional Black Caucus. The bloggers over at Bench Memos have sampled some of the venom, including one pundit who slanderously labeled Southwick both "archconservative" and "neoconfederate." BM also highlights an interesting article from the SF Chronicle, which reports the threats of retaliation from Feinstein's left (hard as it is to believe that such a place exists).

So let's review: a judge with impeccable credentials (including the highest marks from the left-leaning ABA) squeaks through the Judiciary Committee on a largely party-line vote, despite strident opposition from a coalition of left-wing interest groups. I think we call that obstructionism. Now my question is this: how many Democratic Senators will bow to that pressure and try and scuttle this nomination? Will they be dumb enough to filibuster? Do they understand that by no stretch of the imagination (and their reality is more fantastical than anything else) can Southwick be maligned as a judicial extremist? This'll be interesting to watch. It's also endlessly amusing that Democrats continue to fuel the flames of judiciary battles, one of the few topics which still excites the Republican base.