A month removed from his presidential campaign, Mitt Romney is back on the airwaves. Last night, Romney told Fox News that he would be “honored” to serve as John McCain’s vice-presidential nominee-a suggestion that has to leave just about anyone who followed the Republican nomination battle utterly perplexed.
After all, by all appearances, Romney and McCain detest each other, with the vitriol increasing as the two emerged as leading candidates in the run-up to Super Tuesday. Romney expended much of his personal wealth on attack ads, seeking to paint McCain as liberal. Meanwhile, McCain accused Romney of flip-flopping on key political positions, referring to him as the “candidate of change” during the New Hampshire debate. For those who have wondered how Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton could possibly coexist on the same ticket given their own heated nomination contest, a McCain-Romney ticket should be no less of a head-scratcher.
Of course, the obvious choice for McCain’s running mate is Mike Huckabee. During the nomination contest, Huckabee emerged as the consensus conservative candidate, assuming the place that was to be filled by Fred Thompson (remember him?) and directly challenging the original argument for Romney’s candidacy. Then, as the campaigns approached Super Tuesday, Huckabee teamed with McCain against Romney: Huckabee defended McCain against Romney’s barbs, while McCain urged his supporters in West Virginia to back Huckabee–critically thwarting an early Super Tuesday victory for Romney. Most importantly, Huckabee extended his campaign despite nearly impossible odds of victory, affording McCain the opportunity to appeal to voters in key states, including Virginia and Ohio.
Or, if McCain desires to maintain the moderate flavor of his campaign, Florida Governor Charlie Crist is another strong option. Crist is viewed as a truly moderate Republican and as an environmentalist, and his endorsement of McCain was viewed as critical to McCain’s defeat of Romney in the January 29th primary. Moreover, his nomination would boost the Republicans’ odds of maintaining Florida’s red-state status, given Crist’s incredible 71% approval rating.
Ultimately, the Democrats’ decision regarding whether they will re-run primary elections in Florida and Michigan should determine whether McCain chooses Crist or Huckabee. Indeed, if the DNC fails to seat Floridian delegates at the convention, McCain would hardly need Crist to win Florida, and his attention might therefore turn to solidifying the conservative base via Huckabee. Meanwhile, previous bad blood would require McCain and Romney to defend their partnership, which would become a total distraction.
Well done Colonel Kemp. First time for a long time. I have felt vaguely proud to be British. And thanks Noah for that. As for the BBC – it’s become a cesspit of Marxist/Pro Muslim propaganda.
The colonel is the biggest liar !!! He says that Hamas is ‘trained by Iran to use civilians as human shields’. Where is his documentation???
I have NEVER read any reports of Hamas pushing civilians ahead of them in battle, never! So when the colonel and the rest of the western media say Hamas is using human shields they are just saying Hamas fighters fire from behind buildings. I though soldiers generally fire from behind buildings, not in open fields, am I wrong?
On the other hand, the IDF often round up civilian hostages and push them ahead of them in battle.
Here’s one reference:
http://www.btselem.org/english/Human_Shields/Timeline_of_Events.asp
The colonel keeps lying. He says that Israel ‘seriously investigates all charges of targeting civilians’. Yes, they SAY they investigate but almost always nothings comes from these ‘serious’ investigations. Its almost always we did nothing wrong.s
Its time for the world to get the facts straight. Israel has been using terrorism for 60 years and their apologists have confused the issue for many years, but people are beginning to wake up.
Often, Palestinians will fire a weapon and then run for cover. The IDF then comes in and accuse the house occupants of supporting the gunman when the people have no idea of what happened. Then the IDF gives the people 5 minutes to leave before the bulldozers go to work. Thousands of houses have been demolished with many casualties when the people refuse to leave.
After leaving Gaza, the IDF will just bomb a place to pieces when they think a gunman was near there.
Israel practices terrorism, pure and simple.
Thank you Richard Kemp. I was very impressed by the interview.
How ironic, that a blogger named Big Picture accuses a military expert on evidence, and then rants without any citation one paragraph later. hmmm.
That B’tselem link was chock full of facts!!!
Big Picture, little d!@#.
It’s always like that with Jew haters.
The anchor was mildly adversarial, not obsessed with barbarity. She was concerned about civilian deaths but did not harangue her guest. Quite English, and appropriate for the female of the species.
Big Picture simply doesn’t get the big picture here and hides behing his own shield– a highly literal understanding of the term ‘human shield.” His seventh paragraph actually ends up describing pretty well one of the mechanisms by which Hamas uses the civilian population as shields : “Often, the Palestinians will fire a weapon and then run for cover…..the IDF then comes in and accuses the house occupants….”
Agree with Seth Halpern: She was, especially for the species, unususally restrained.
bad skin. typical brit
Maybe. to: #8 lester.
But at least his brain isn’t as rancid as yours.
I was struck not just by the restrained wording of the interviewer’s questions, but by the fact that she allowed Colonel Kemp to keep speaking and finish his thoughts.
How often does that happen on ANY of the American news show interviews? Even when an interview subject is spouting the most idiotically obvious leftist talking point — as opposed to actually answering the original question — I get just as mad at O’Reilly and Hannity as I do at Matthews and Olbermann for interrupting their guests. It’s just uncivilized to act like a human lawnmower during editorial comment and interview segments.
My experience with British TV has been that it yields its share of that particular barbarity. But it’s nice to see at least a minimum of courtesy and restraint, as in this clip.
Big pix, this has gone too far. First the ALL CAPS, and then the triple exclam !!! You’ve crossed a red line, my friend.
I never thought I would see something like that on BBC. It gives me renewed hope–especially after reading posts from creeps like BIG PICTURE–to know that there remain some in Europe, like Colonel Kemp, who are willing to speak the simple truth.
It’s just Hartland again. If not I offer my apology, but we have seen this game before. First Hartland comes on and makes an incessant contribution. Then when he/she stops getting the necessary reaction a seeming new comer with a different screen name comes on and makes a similarly energetic contribution with slight variations in style but the same general point of view. Unless there is a group of them like that cult in the movie Cobra, that is.
Ian – it might be Hartland, but it might not; anti-semitism is growing fast and becoming increasingly fashionable on the left. They deny hotly that they’re anti-semitic (of course), but you’d have to have your head up your a…um, in a peculiar location to think they aren’t.
I agree that was a great interview. But I saw nothing at all wrong with the interviewer’s questions or manner. She was civil and asked good questions. I think the Colonel was well treated.
Though her questioning is from the POV of “aren’t the Israelis causing all the trouble”, the BBC news anchor is polite, unlike the crazed US MSM. Anyway, he’s great & I’m glad BBC put him on & let him speak without interruption & sneers. I too wonder if the Col. will be invited back.
To All,
Wow, I point out some facts and you all get bend out of shape. One said that I crossed the line. Why is that? I thought right wing people believe in free speech?
Well, I am not here to trade insults, so I will ask you all this question:
Say, you are an elderly Arab whose home is now occupied by a Russian immigrant . Would you as an elderly Arab who is not allowed to return to your old home accept a peace that promises no more Israeli shelling and promises that you get IMF funds to rebuild on land that is 1/10 the size of your original land and which is criss cross by Israeli roads??? Would you accept?
Adam , in another track, said yes, because he sees this conflict as all due to the fault of the Arabs. So would you accept such a peace?
Irony, schmuck, irony. You get it? Yes, and all six old Arabs who fit your description are welcomed home.
Big Picture:
I do not believe you are Jonny Hartland. Something about the way you use language tells me English is not your first language. Or perhaps you are just not well educated. I actually think you are Muslim, maybe an Arab. No matter, it is not who you are that is the issue, though it is a fun guessing game. It is rather what you write, and have written since you arrived on the scene. IN this post, you drag out the tired script of the Arab that lost his home to a Russian Jewish immigrant. You’re off a few years. The Russian Jews did not populate Israel in any great numbers until the 1980s. Why don’t we stick with the generic European Holocaust survivor, or perhaps we can talk about the 600,000 or so Jews from Arab countries that were chased out after 1948. In either event, the events which you describe happened long ago. I don’t see the millions of Germans who were chased out of eastern Europe, the USSR or the Sudetanland clamoring to return to their “old home.” What about the millions that were transferred when Pakistan was ripped from India’s belly? Indians aren’t blowing themselves up in protest or to effect “change.” Why are the Palestinian Arabs so pathetic that they alone of the millions of dispossessed people of the late 20th Century cannot adapt to the world as it is now, not as they wish it were if they had been but a bit more capable in 1948? Riddle me that, genius.
Gord,
It certainly is possible that a Russian immigrant bought a house from an early Zionist immigrant who occupied the old Arab’s home.
Look, I know most of you know the real history but spin the facts to make yourselves feel comfortable. You think I am Muslim? I thought Muslims can only write: “Death to the Jews”.
Why assume anything beyond the facts and logic I present. I knew some Muslim students in college and Jewish students as well. I was interested in the debates on the ME. I was open to the arguments from both side. Yet, the Jewish arguments somehow seemed forced or something. I studied the histories and was dismayed to find the Jewish arguments not only are forced but often are distortions, and outright lies. One example is the “Land without a people for a people without a land”. This argument has been debunked years ago, and yet people here still use in in a spun fashion. I am really tired of deceptive people conning otherwise decent people into mindless Israel supporters.
I already talked about the Arab refugees on another track but I will repeat. It is a shame that these are in the camps about so many decades. So you ask why don’t the rich Arabs re-settle them? OK, why don’t Israel re-settle them??? Why can a new Russian immigrant get free allowance, free housing and found jobs when the old Arab cannot go back to his home?
The Arab are weak militarily so leaving the refugees is their way of making people like you face the deadly truth: These people had homes, the Jews took them over and they want justice.
So what is your answer about the predicament for the old Arab? If you were him would you accept a peace settlement with Israel?
I would like to briefly suggest another way of thinking about the Jewish right to Israel–different from, but not meant to supplant the more “orthodox” ones that focus on the Balfour Declaration, 1948 UN Partition agreement, etc.
Once even a few Jewish immigrants came to Palestine at the end of the 19th century, regardless of their intentions, they had a right to be there (unless you want to find the root of the problem in the very fact of the first Jews from Europe setting foot on the soil ruled by the Ottomans–who had a right to accept them, didn’t they?); having a right to be there, they had a right to defend themselves; having a right to defend themselves, and being unable to rely upon the state to do so, they had a right to organize themselves, politically and militarily; having a right to organize themselves they had a right to seek allies and various legal and political supports for their presence. Finally, having thereby established themselves as a community historically distinct from the other communities in the land, they had a right to secure their own future as an autonomous community, capable of defending itself and fighting and/or dealing with other communities. Once we accept these basic “natural” rights, we don’t need the Bible, Balfour, or anything else to defend Israeli Jews’ right to their land–we could, if we so wish, regret that other paths toward the establishment of Jewish autonomy weren’t discovered, but such regrets would always bring us back to the foundational reason for that failure: the absolute refusal of the Arabs, in and out of Palestine, to grant a single one of these rights at any point along the historical trajectory. And there we remain today.
Please, please, please, start moderating the comments on this site. The virulent jew hatred here is not informative in any way. And it’s driving readers away. Healthy debate is one thing, but this is nauseating. I’ve been a regular reader of Contentions for a long time. I don’t think I can stomach it anymore.
My impression of British television interviewers is that their supposed aggressiveness is more theatrical convention than journalistic probing. Typically, they ask “confrontational” questions that essentially summarize the interviewee’s opponents’ talking points in a completely predictable way, and then allow the interviewee to rebut the question’s challenge at length. The interviewer gets to look tough, the interviewee gets to stay on message, and the viewer gets to feel as though he or she has just witnessed some serious journalism.
For example, I’ve seen Melanie Phillips interviewed on the BBC alongside some Islamist shill, and it followed the same pattern:
Interviewer to Islamist shill: Aren’t you just defending terrorism blah blah blah?
Islamist shill: (Recites rehearsed defense of his position)
Interviewer to Melanie Phillips: Doesn’t (Islamist shill) have a point, and aren’t you advocating ethnic stereotyping blah blah blah?
Melanie Phillips: (Recites latest column about the Islamist threat)
Interviewer: Thank you both very much.
To Adam,
Your post is a perfect example of the forced arguments from your side. You are saying this: Jews rightfully bought land- they rightfully can defend their homes-they can rightfully join into a community- they can expand community-they can declare themselves an independent nation and rightfully defend the new nation.
Even if I allow everything you say, the reality does not match hardly your scenario at all. NO, the Jews did not buy all the land. The early immigrants bought the land and there is no problems with that. The later Zionist zealots took the land away by force. Today, the Palestinians have only a small fraction of what they originally owned, and even that fraction is being gobbled up by new settlements everyday. If Israel is really for peace, and knowing that the settlements would have to go with peace, the unremitting settlement activity is proof of Israel’s real intentions: they want more land.
But in the eyes of the law of any civilized nation your scenario is some pipe dream. Yes, you can buy land in Canada, the US, Mexico and other countries, for example. But you are not allowed to form your own exclusive community with self defense, nor are you allowed to declare your community an independent nation. Try it and die.
I’m not the internet police. But several months back JH changed his screen name to someone that posted comments very much like BP, and ultimately admitted it. In fact he had two separate screen names and he was able to seem just a bit less fulsome in his other guises to the point where people were convinced that they were arguing with a different person. You do have to admire that type of dedication to your craft. Anyway JH ruined it for other trolls because I used to be a made to order sucker for an argument and now I refuse to waste my time.
” … It is a shame that these are in the camps about so many decades. So you ask why don’t the rich Arabs re-settle them? OK, why don’t Israel re-settle them???….”
Google UNRWA.
Pretty much everything you’ve said is a mirror image of the truth, and also is a rehash of talking points from every anti-Israel screed I have read for the past 15 years, in blogs, forums, debates, dialogues, you name it. I spend a lot of time on internet boards doggedly deconstructing these misconceptions, but it’s very late in the evening, maybe someone else will do the honors tonight.
Canada, Mexico and other civilized countries will defend me as an individual, so I won’t have to organize for self-defense. If those states were incapable of doing so, they would also be incapable of preventing me from organizing for self-defense. That marks the history of the Jewish settlers in Palestine up until 1948–who did have some measure of recognition from the British between 1917 and 1947, and were in no position to take land by force. The land they did take was in the midst of a war forced upon them by those who refused to recognize any rights they might have as a community and who certainly couldn’t be trusted to protect them as individuals.
Dear Big Picture:
You offered this scenario: “Say, you are an elderly Arab whose home is now occupied by a Russian immigrant”
Strangely enough, I am a Pole in similar circumstances! Eastern Poland is entirely occupied by Russia and Belarus. Our family land is gone, I have no hope of getting it back, ever. Do you suggest I start murdering Russian kids in response, and call it “resistance”? Or am I expected to be more civilized than a Palestinian?
Anyway, I have a fair solution for your old Arab. Find the home of an old Jew, thrown out by Arabs. The middle east is full of them- what happened to all the Jews of Libya, we wonder? Settle the old Arab in the home of the old Jew. Call it done.
Herring Eater
To Herring Eater,
Certainly what happened in Eastern Europe was not right. Talk to Roosevelt and Stalin. They somehow think that for the sacrifice of millions of Red Army troops, Eastern Europe goes to Russian control. That people do not do more is the Russian nuclear bomb and lack of Jewish numbers in Poland.
Yet, for all the military deterrence of Israel, the Arabs want their homes back. So we see what a strong emotional issue it is with them. Certainly more than you since you are not willing to fight for your old home from Poland. So part of the problem lies with you and not with the Arabs.
You keep saying that Jews were kicked out of the Arab countries. Do you have prove? I ask another post about this but there was no response. The poster was not able to prove that there were these national decrees to boot out the Jews. If Arab neighbors kicked them out, I would be surprised. Why would good neighbors for hundreds of years suddenly turn on each other.
Well, what I do know was that Israel encouraged the Jews to leave and many did. So it was mostly a choice that Israel wanted to happen. On the other hand the Arabs id not want to be booted out from their homes by Jewish terror.
To Adam,
Get back to the drawing board.
If your side is so moral, why the need to use such contorted logic and the need to get back to the drawing board?
I would worry more about your side–their self-destructive practices, driven by vengeful thinking like that you display here, will guarantee several more generations of misery for their own people. What you don’t seem to realize is that even if you are right, defeat in war (not to mention economic failure, cultrual decline in a barbaric death cult, etc.) constitutes an argument in itself–one that needs to be taken into account.
One of the problems with trolls, or let’s be kind, people with a single agenda who want to leave their footprints on every thread no matter the subject, is that they wind up getting the thread off topic.
Mr. P made a simple point: an infantile BBC correspondent (a simple truism, today, alas) starts at a baseline of Israeli “barbarism” (dog bites man). Unfair & unbalanced.
Up to a point, Lord Copper. Dan S (#23) has summed it up quite well. It’s a kabuki dance with each side playing his/her part. So here, while I agree with Mr. P’s point about the preconceived notions of the press, BBC did get an articulate spokesman for a position opposite its Revealed Truth position &, while the BBC questioner was not listening, being obviously intent in following her rehearsed questions come what may, she did let the spokesman speak his mind & present his position without any interruption & without theatrical eyebrow raising. (Man bites dog?)
With Fox News, “balance” in political matters is to have a Republican hack repeat the Republican party line (oh, & buy my book) & then have a Democrat hack repeat the Democrat party line (oh, & buy my book). Comfortably boring.
With the MSM, the routine is usually skewed (unbalanced) by having some phony trimmer like David Gergen as the “Republican”. And a Republican with a PhD is referred to as “Mr./Mrs.” & a Dem as “Doctor”, even if his/her Doctorate is in Phys Ed. (Not that there’s anything wrong about Phys Ed!) Annoyingly boring.
In an ideal world, Mr. P….
To Adam,
You say that my side is driven by vengeful thinking. If you were on my side what would you do ???
I would be interested in your opinion.
Right now, even though your side does not have the moral high ground, it does not apologize at all but keeps in engaging in house demolitions, massive “retaliations”, and nonstop settlement activity. How should my side think ??? Should we think of loving these Zionists while they are demolishing Palestinian houses?