It took two ballots, but Mike Huckabee beat out Mitt Romney in the West Virginia caucus. Both candidates spoke there and Romney did his usual expert organizing. Is this a sign of things to come? Well, this is what news hounds ask during Election Day afternoon when no other returns are available. To put it in context: McCain lost in the first round and his voters switched over to Romney. The Huckabee-McCain alliance finally amounts to something. And the impact of talk radio is evidently, as far as I can tell, nil in West Virginia.
Contentions
13 Responses to “Huckabee Beats Romney In West Virginia”
May 2013
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"My Negro Problem-and Ours" at 50
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The Spirit of '75?
Algis ValiunasAn audacious, and wrong, argument about the American Revolution.
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In Praise of Sheryl Sandberg
Christine RosenThe controversial Facebook executive's book is exactly the right kind of self-help.
Fiction
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Onto a Good Thing
Joseph Epstein
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The Bureaucrat-Driven Life
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Bork's Watergate
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Dear Prudence
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Whose Accomplishments?
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George Saunders, Anti-Minimalist
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A Chekhov in Training
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Taking Obama's Foreign Policy Seriously
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Life will be unnecessarily dull if we can’t season it every now and then with a probative comment on the foibles of the Obama administration, of which it appears there will be many. But we conservatives will almost certainly be confined to the sidelines for a while, and if we just sit back and watch with a suspension of horror, the unfolding drama may be very entertaining.
History appears to be on a course that will give us another chance very soon. May we take this break to think things through so we do it better next time.
“If we aren’t willing to show it for President Bush as he leaves office, what basis will we have to demand it for President Obama when he takes over?” — Susan Estrich
The difference is one of giving the benefit of the doubt to an incoming president vs. reacting to the track record and egregious shortcomings of an incompetent who left our nation in financial and reputational ruin, waged war on our most basic values, left two wars begun on his watch unfinished, let an American city drown, and refused to take responsibility for any of it. That’s a false equivalence. If Obama were to fail so completely, he would deserve contempt too. Further, feigning respect for Bush buys Obama nothing. Just read Jennifer Rubin or Abe Greenwald on any day of the week. Obama hasn’t yet taken office and they’re already treating him with contempt. Bush is a symbol of conservatism’s bankruptcy. Deal with it. You’ll be wearing him around your necks for as long as you draw air.
“One hopes that the unbridled nastiness and anger, which the Left cultivated for its own strategic ends, isn’t taken up on the Right.”
But you’re the mistress of NeoConism which consists of nastiness and anger towards “liberals”,and you hope that you stop what you do????????
One hopes that the unbridled nastiness and anger, which the Left cultivated for its own strategic ends, isn’t taken up on the Right.
I’m sorry, what? Rush Limbaugh? Impeaching a president over oral sex in the late 90′s? I suppose those examples — the tip of the iceburg, really — aren’t nasty though, right?
Flipping channels last evening, there was some sort of animated show saying good-bye to the President. It was crude and everything that one would expect from the “entertainment capital” of the world. Hitting the ‘guide’ button, there was a brief description of what it was and I took a brief notice that Jeanne Garafalo was one of the voices.
I’m tempted to ask how the hell anyone ever greenlighted this POS, but run it did. I saw 1/2 of a segment with Bush, Cheney, Kerry, and Sean Connery. What a load of crap.
I don’t think anything will change and that Linda Chavez’s observations on another post reinforce the double standard most of us face.
To some degree, the Republicans may be willing to lay back to watch the catfight between the Obama circle and the Democrats in Congress.
Let an American city drown. What a bunch of bull. Last I recall several Midwest cities “drowned’ and the President didn’t show up to console them. One wonders why New Orleans garnered such sympathy when several Mississippi and Texas cities suffered much the same fate. And if I also recall, the reason the city of New Orleans suffered such a tragedy was due not to the storm but the failings of man to build a better levee system.
And if your analysis is anything, Art, we still haven’t finished the job of Bosnia which was started under Clinton’s term. And left our nation in financial ruin? One wonders when the Left will start blaming THE GOVERNMENT (well, any government except BUSH’S) for the many failures that are now taking place in the government now.
And how many HATE OBAMA posts do you see on this website or any of the respectable conservative websites? That’s right – none. However on your side the HuffPo and DailyKos has become regular vehicles of liberal insight where everyone – EVERYONE – spew such hatred that rivals only what the KKK reserves for minorities.
And tas, you need to brush up on your history. Clinton wasn’t impeached for the sexual act, but for the act of lying under oath. Rush Limbaugh at least analyzes the news, but your Rachel Maddow says a hateful thing almost every other word.
But to those on the inside looking out can’t see what those on the outside looking in see.
I can take the hatred and bile coming from the left. But as a lifelong republican in the “old whig” mold of Hayek I am totally fed up with the premature writing of off Bush on this site and National Review as well. I agree more with Krauthammer that Bush will untimately be remembered as a very good to great president for his accomplishments. In my view he has been a great president. I note that the last Gallop poll had his approval among republicans at 75%. I guess they didn’t include the “chattering classes”
Would Hayek have been pleased with Bush’s economic measures on balance, including those in 2008?
I don’t see much evidence the Right are spoiling for a fight, goodness, the GOP Senators are not even showing up for the Cabinet hearings. I did not vote for Obama, but wish him the best. Where are all these conservatives wanting to fight. Kristol and Brooks maybe? Ha.
It’s fascinating that even with the victory of their candidate and the imminent departure of their enemy, those who disagree with and dislike George W. Bush cannot muster any generosity to the current President of the United States.
They might reflect that Obama himself has asked for improved civility, and if that is not enough, they might consider it in the self-interest of their desire that Obama proceed with his presidency with as much cooperation as possible.
Those of us who voted for Bush and still respect him are watching how Obama’s supporters treat Bush on his way out. Speaking for myself, it won’t determine how I respond to Obama’s presidency, but it will be a factor.
The left is insane and always will be.
“One hopes that the unbridled nastiness and anger, which the Left cultivated for its own strategic ends”
“the left” meaning all of america outside the beltway
Memories really are short on the left (or perhaps the commentators on this site are impoverished adolescents) but my financial records, which are not all that atypical around here, show a significantly greater portfolio loss in the last few months of Clinton than in the last few of Bush, and the NASDAQ reflects that. Not that things are good now, but they were bloody awful then, and the Clinton folks – that supertalented group whose services we shall now enjoy again – managed to destroy our portfolios without the help of an international financial crisis. But those were the good old days, right?
And while Mr. Clinton was not impeached for sexual impropriety, he did establish a whole new paradigm. Until then most of us thought that senior executives caught sexually exploiting barely post-teen interns would be impelled (or forced) to resign. We were even misled into the belief that women’s rights organizations would object, strenuously, to such behavior. Who knew that sexual exploitation was only a problem if the perpetrator was Republican?
Wasn’t it great to have such a competent and principled person in the oval office before that evil George Bush can along?
For #12 “The left is insane and always will be.”
Right you are!
The neocons are the true heirs to Leon Trotsky. Because their move from the Left to a pseudo-right was insincere, one would expect to find a whole range of issues where the neocons retain leftist instincts and remain true to their Trotskyite heritage. Indeed this is the case.
The fact that neoconservatism is an ideology which is materialistic in nature and internationalist in focus (with its talk of “global democracy” and “global markets”) makes it obvious that the fundamental underpinnings of the Marxist Left are alive and well among the scribblers of Commentary and The Weekly Standard.
Neo-conservatism is a term almost exclusively used by the enemies of America’s liberation of Iraq. There is no ‘neo-conservative’ movement in the United States. When there was one, it was made up of former Democrats who embraced the welfare state but supported Ronald Reagan’s Cold War policies against the Soviet bloc. Today ‘neo-conservatism’ identifies those who believe in an aggressive policy against radical Islam and the global terrorists.
–David Horowitz, Wikipedia on Neoconservatism
#16 Trotskyism to Anachronism: The Neoconservative Revolution
by John B Judis
“The other important influence on neoconservatives was the legacy of Trotksyism–a point that other historians and journalists have made about neoconservatism but that eludes Ehrman. Many of the founders of neoconservatism, including The Public Interest founder Irving Kristol and coeditor Nathan Glazer, Sidney Hook, and Albert Wohlstetter, were either members of or close to the Trotskyist left in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Younger neoconservatives, including Penn Kemble, Joshua Muravchik, and Carl Gershman, came through the Socialist Party at a time when former Trotskyist Max Schachtman was still a commanding figure.
What both the older and younger neoconservatives absorbed from their socialist past was an idealistic concept of internationalism. Trotskyists believed that Stalin, in trying to build socialism in one country rather than through world revolution, had created a degenerate workers’ state instead of a genuine dictatorship of the proletariat. In the framework of international communism, the Trotskyists were rabid internationalists rather than realists and nationalists. In 1939, as a result of the Nazi?Soviet pact, the Trotskyist movement split, with one faction under James Burnham and Max Schachtman declaring itself opposed equally to German Nazism and Soviet communism. Under the influence of an Italian Trotskyist, Bruno Rizzi, Burnham and Schachtman envisaged the Nazi and Soviet bureaucrats and American managers as part of a new class. While Burnham broke with the left and became an editor at National Review, Schachtman remained.
The neoconservatives who went through the Trotskyist and socialist movements came to see foreign policy as a crusade, the goal of which was first global socialism, then social democracy, and finally democratic capitalism. They never saw foreign policy in terms of national interest or balance of power. Neoconservatism was a kind of inverted Trotskyism, which sought to “export democracy,” in Muravchik’s words, in the same way that Trotsky originally envisaged exporting socialism. It saw its adversaries on the left as members or representatives of a public sector–based new class.”
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19950701fareviewessay5058/john-b-judis/trotskyism-to-anachronism-the-neoconservative-revolution.html
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#4: Eisburg, Weissberg, wazza difference? Dem all neocons, raht?
Oy friggin’ vey! Now Judis we get as the authority on the 20th-century history of the left in the United States! Wheelless is even sadder than the “impoverished adolescents” diagnosed above.
My goodness! This entry certainly brought out the moonbat trolls. They don’t seem to understand the post at all, as evidenced by their hate filled orgy of Bush effigy burning.
Ungracious and thuggish to the end. I guess this is what the Left mean by a “classless” society!
Bob Miller
We will never know, will we. When Hayek wrote Road to Serfdom he confronted a very different set of problems than has Bush. I will say this. Hayek would certainly have applauded Bush’s action against the Islamic jihad even though for sound reasons a president of the United States can not, with 1.4 billion Muslims in the world, be totally frank about Islam. Hayek would understand that most “serfs” today live in Islamic countries. Hayek would have applauded Bush’s tax cut in 2001 which got us through some very tough economic times. On the bank bail out Hayek may well have understood the need for it. Hayek would not have suspected that Bush, Bernacke or Paulson were secret socialists or of having socialist leanings. Hayek stated he was not a conservative but he was no libertarian either. On the big bugaboo of the right, compasionate conservatism, He wrote in his book “The Constitution of Liberty” that it is consistent with his views that it is appropriate for western democracies to have social programs such as social security and unemployment insurance for the needy. He was concerned about having only a government program with no choice. He would have applauded Bush’ attempt to partially privatize part of social security, in which Bush was abandoned by his own party. I believe Hayek would have favored Bush’s Medicare part D which provided choice to participants.
Richard Jansen
mick- obama is president. ron paul and pat buchanan have sold about a billion books. YOU are the troll. jennifer rubin, michael totten, Jpod = trolls
#22 Lester -They cannot be trolls on their own site!
LOL -
It is my view the Bush’s most controversial act, the invasion of Iraq, will in a few short years be accepted as one of the greatest foreign policy triumphs in the history of the United States.
For this reason I accept Krauthammer’s prediction.
23 – that’s true.
You know what’s really nasty? The hundreds of thousands of Iraqi corpses Bush is leaving in his wake. Dry your crocodile tears, Rubin.
Hurf, there were horrendous mistakes made by the Bush administration in the aftermath of the collapse of the Iraqi army. The unncecessary death and maimings of coalition soldiers and Iraqis- caused by such actions as the dismantling of the Iraqi army, the failure to strike at Syria or Iran as jihadis and armies flowed into Iraq- will be a lasting stain on Bush’s record.
But don’t kid yourself about what the fate of hundreds of thousands or millions of Iraqis would have been if Saddam remained in power, to be followed after his demise by his sadistic sons.
Think of the thousands who were rotting in jail, the torture chambers, the rape rooms.
And think of what would have happened if any group of Iraqis rebelled again. In the wake of the Shiite upraising after the Gulf War, there were wholesale slaughter of Shiites.\And let’s not forget the hunger and malnutrition caused when Saddam and his buddies from all over the world, enabled by the U.N., perverted the Oil for Food program to their own ends.
The hundreds of thousands of Iraqi corpses Bush is leaving in his wake.
Please provide a source for this claim.
I can’t understand why Leftists, as exemplified by the various troll postings above, are such lousy winners. No matter how much high-minded sanctimony you wrap it in, petty vindictiveness still shows through.
The hypocrisy of the left, with their fake concern for the environment, has been well illustrated by the whole Iraq story. Watch Werner Herzog’s “Lessons of Darkness”. Did we ever hear the enviro-left rise up in rage when Saddam’s vandals torched the Kuwaiti oilfields? Did they nod their heads in satisfaction when he was pulled from his gopher hole? Of course not. Anyone that opposes capitalism and the free market is a hero to the left.
I find it interesting that there is always a hope that the Republicans do not stoop to the same level as the Dims.
I say give them what they earned.
Some Dim in an earlier post, and I am not going to bother to go back to see who, said they were sliming the President not because of presumption, but for his actions. I suppose this person must be about 7 years old and has no memory of the early Bush days, not to say years.
The Left will continue to attack Bush for years. It’s part of the group-think that makes the Left so frightening. The same approach was taken towards Reagan throughout the 90s.
To add to the hypocracy, the Left will then claim that they were, and continue to be, nice to Bush. They will do this in order to help demonize any criticism of Obama as “beyond acceptable norms.”
The Left is hysterical. And predictable. And utterly incapable of any insight into their own prejudices. The nonsense jargon spewed by the trolls on this site establish beyond any doubt their hysteria and lack of insight.
“…the unbridled nastiness and anger, which the Left cultivated for its own strategic ends…”. While the left out left certainly had its own agenda and strategy, it id difficult to underestimate the extent to which anger and hate are epistemological principles. The ideas one has in mind when one is in a rage are taken to be more authentic and true than those which one reaches through dispassionate reflection. While there is plenty of anger and thunder on the right, it seems unlikely that it will be directed at the Obama presidency, at least for the next two years. Why? The right has much more to gain from being respectful and approving of Obama, if not his policies. An aggressive and hostile attitude towards Obama will only strengthen the bond with his supporters. But the right will attack, relentlessly, the MSM. It will be a two pronged attack. One part will be mocking the MSM for it’s belated recognition that the problems the President has to deal will are real unlike …(well google search Y2Kyoto). The second prong will attack the MSM for failing to really comprehend rightful criticism of the policies of the Dems.
There seems to be a failure by the left to understand that if they can’t stand the heat they should stay out of the kitchen.
“The Left will continue to attack Bush for years.”
and win elections by doing so.
Hmm. Maybe the media’s unseemly contempt is related to the following approval ratings:
NBC/Wall Street Journal: 27%
USA Today/Gallup: 34%/29% (Jan./Dec.)
CNN/Opinion Research: 27%
ABC Washington Post: 30%
Fox/Opinion Dynamics: 30%
CBS: 24%
Associated Press: 28%
Yeah, Commentarians, I know how hard it is to realize that the American public loathes the running sore that calls itself George W. Bush, who did his very best to ruin the country he claimed to serve.
Trust me, Commentarians, the names George W. Bush will live in infamy. You can, and doubtlessly will, sit there are imagine that he’s hated only by the “usual suspects,” but all this will tell me is that you people don’t get out much. Your rotten president is loathed throughout the land, from top to bottom.
It’s disappointing to see how many people like John Hartman feel such a passionate hate for George Bush they can’t even break outside of their emotions to understand what’s going on in the world today. But the fact is people who believe George Bush “did his very best to ruin the country” are indeed a minority, as evidenced by the new poll showing that 74% of Americans believe George Bush is a good person. People like Hartman don’t understand what approval ratings really measure, and most of them aren’t aware that approval ratings of Congress are just as low partly as a consequence of the challenges we currently face.
It’ll be awhile before history can render an objective judgment, but I agree with those of you who speculate Bush will be remembered as a hero for the courageous stand he took in Iraq and Afghanistan, and depending on how long it takes the economy to bounce back, his management of our economy is more likely to be his Achilles heel.
John Hartland,
You are welcome to use the polls as you wish. I assume that means you relegate Harry S. Truman, who left office with an approval rating of 22%, to the “loathesome running sore” category as well.
‘S fine with us. We’ll take Truman and Bush.