More European nations in trouble. “The debt crisis in Europe escalated sharply Friday as investors dumped Spanish and Portuguese bonds in panicked selling, substantially heightening the prospect that one or both countries may need to join troubled Ireland and Greece in soliciting international bailouts.”
More evidence that the IRS is targeting the hawkish pro-Israel group Z Street. Wouldn’t it be front-page news if J Street were asked if it supported Iran sanctions?
More reason to doubt that the Obami have a clue about what to do about North Korea. The State Department’s PJ Crowley tweets “SecClinton talked with Chinese FM Yang today and encouraged Beijing to make clear that North Korea’s behavior is unacceptable.” Is “unacceptable” really the strongest they can do? Or is “unacceptable” (as in “A nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable”) just diplomat-speak for “We’re sorry to see X happen.”
More criticism of Obama’s approach to Egypt. “The president and his secretary of state have brought up democracy and human rights in private conversations with Egyptian leaders but shied away from them in public. They have failed to make any connection between Mr. Mubarak’s domestic repression and the more than $1 billion in U.S. aid Egypt receives every year, much of it directed to the military. They have not supported efforts in Congress to pass legislation or even nonbinding resolutions linking bilateral relations to political reform.”
More defensiveness from Sarah Palin. Not helpful for a presidential contender. Dead-on for a conservative community organizer.
More nonsense from Tom Friedman. No, Tom, too much texting by American kids is not a bigger problem than North Korean nukes. Another example of not-very-smart liberal punditry.
More problems for Rahm Emanuel. “Through an odd chain of events, Mr. Halpin, a 59-year-old industrial real-estate developer here, has become the face of a movement to force Mr. Emanuel out of the race to become Chicago’s next mayor. A lawsuit filed with the Chicago Board of Election Commissions Friday by a Chicago attorney on behalf of two city residents charges that Mr. Emanuel, the former chief of staff to President Barack Obama, is ineligible to run because he lost his Chicago residency when he rented his home to Mr. Halpin in 2009.” Really, wasn’t the entire race an excuse to get off the sinking White House ship?
More evidence that the GM bailout was no success for the taxpayers. The union? Well, that’s another story. “General Motors Co.’s recent stock offering was staged to start paying back the government for its $50 billion bailout, but one group made out much better than the taxpayers or other investors: the company’s union. Thanks to a generous share of GM stock obtained in the company’s 2009 bankruptcy settlement, the United Auto Workers is well on its way to recouping the billions of dollars GM owed it — putting it far ahead of taxpayers who have recouped only about 30 percent of their investment and further still ahead of investors in the old GM who have received nothing.”
McCain was potentially the strongest Republican candidate and even though I, on balance had something of a preference for Romney I continued to hold that view throug October. I’m still pretty certain that Romney would have lost, perhaps by as large a margin as McCain. However, I am absolutely confident that he would have made a much more coherent, forceful and credible economic argument than McCain and this would have offset the latter’s other advantges and resulted in Romney doing no wrose.
Clearly foolish to focus on the MSM. You have to address issues you can control. Still, there is no doubt that reasonable scrutiny of the Democratic ticket by the MSM would have yeilded at least something close to a tie and perhaps even a narrow McCain win.
Only Mitt Romney benefits by trashing Sarah Palin and making her seem naive or worse. Romney staffers used exactly the same smears and ‘leaks’ against his opponent Shannon O’Brian in Massachusetts. We know becuase we have seen with our own eyes that Romney is a shameless, spineless flip-flopper who:
Mitt said that “Roe v Wade was correctly decided and is settled law,” now he’s supposedly pro-life
Mitt said “I am more pro-gay than Ted Kennedy,” but now he attacks gays in every speech, much more extreme than Palin who has shown empathy and has boasted of having gay friends and family.
Mitt raised taxes by $700,000,000 but he ordered that these increases be called “fees” instead of taxes.
Mitt denounced Reagan in a Massachusetts debate with Ted Kennedy, now he claims to be a Reagan Republican.
Mitt Romney is a scumbag, there’s no other word that fits, and the Democrats will eat his flip-flopping Ken Doll CEO lunch with relish.
doesn’t look like the GOP have learned much from 06 amd 08 massive historical losses. rearranging deck chairs won’t save the ship.
people don’t want war. the GOP does. change one side of the equation and you have a party. until then you can count on kansas and kentucky and not much else.
Lester: I think you could be wrong. The expectations that Obama has built up cannot possibly be met. Except, perhaps by a real Messiah…
FWIW, lester the GOP lost the last election over the economy and political incompetance rather than “war”. Indeed, had “war” been the principal or even a principal issue the election would at the very least have been much much closer if not an outright loss. To the extent that “war” caused GOP losses in 2006 it was in large part in the failure of prosecution rather than initiation. The Bush administration deserved a reprimand but Bush drew the correct lessons and has now given the country a chance to actually win in Iraq and in the larger conflict.
In the end the choice is often between war and surrender. Those who think they can surrender and maintain either a functioning free market economy or what might pass for a funcctioning welfare state are headed for severe disappointment.
#4: Good Lord! I had thought the demon rat had gobbled up the least one!
The Left will want to blame the GOP loss on everything they want to see done away with.
Thus we’ll see a string of articles about how the GOP lost because of social conservatism, or the religious right, or the war, or a strong stance against international terrorism, or their general resistance to illegal immigration. . .
And all of that is wrong of course, but if the media, and the Left in general can convince the blue-bloods in charge right now that such archaic conservatism is not popular, we’ll simply get more of the same faux conservatives such as this last campaign gave us – Romney, Huckster, Giuliani, et al.
Conservative ideas win, liberal ideas couched in populist rhetoric, delivered by “centrist” Republicans lose every time.
Oh yeah, instead of taking the McCain/Palin sticker off of my truck, I simply sliced off McCain’s name and web address.
Looks cool. A nice blue sticker with the little star-sparkle design and Palin’s name.
I’m a registered libertarian, but I appreciate Palin’s stand for traditional values. Whether or not she would eventually pass the free-market economics test is yet to be seen, but for now it’ll be fun to tweak people with my little creation.
#10- Libertarian, traditional values, and Palin is a triple contradiction in terms. Libertarians don’t care who people marry, for example. Libertarians do not believe the state has a right to intrude in people’s bedrooms or medical decisions. Libertarians do not believe it is ok to spend billions on Alaska bridges, which Plain supported, libertarians do not support the government taking contracts away from business, which is what Palin did when she took the pipeline away from Exxon and gave it to TransCanada.
Maybe you don’t know what libertarian means, maybe you’re just another neanderthal social conservative embarrassed by McCain’s loss?
That one might catch on.
Jennifer,
I don’t think you are looking at the MSM bias issue in terms of a key ramification. If Republicans don’t clearly and directly address the MSM bias issue, who is going to want to run as a Republican?
One of the problems in my state this election was that we had no Republican candidate for state attorney general nor for some state representative positions.
The local media coverage of Republican candidates is slanted negative. Democrats get positive coverage, even their problems are slanted positive. Republican personal problems are headlined. Not so with Democratic personal problems.
I can’t blame Republicans for not running candidates for some of our state offices. I wouldn’t want to subject myself and my family to the negative and sometimes withering coverage they all.
Media bias is a crucial issue because of its personal as well as political impact. If not addressed clearly and directly, there will have fewer and fewer Republican candidates.
“The Washington Post fesses up that they were in the tank for Barack Obama. Shouldn’t people be fired for two years of biased coverage?”
NOW they tell us?? Of course, now that their candidate has won they are trying to do some “mea culpa” to recuperate their readership. Rehab. Yeah right. They did with their eyes wide open and withstood the drop in readership until their guy got in. They had purpose and so they planned it.
All the columns and interviews now looking saying yes, our “beloved readers” and right and try to look for sympathy and forgiveness are baloney; big time.
Here you have also Newsweek’s editors Jon Meacham and Evan Thomas of Newsweek w/Charlie Rose… Newsweek: they never stop trashing Hillary then Palin and McCain while shmefully shilling for Obama. And now they say that Obama’ cult of personality is “slightly creepy and manipulative” :
http://www.floppingaces.net/2008/11/06/newsweek-editors-obama-a-creepy-deeply-manipulative-creature/
They knew this all along and waited just enough…. Disgustingly dishonest.
Jennifer:
“As bad as the media bias was, I think it is incorrect to ascribe John McCain’s loss to the MSM. ”
No, one cannot blame/ascribe the media for his lose; but without the media Barack Obama
would not have won. You can ascribe Obama’s win to the media applauding and bowing to the
Obama’s marketing.
For G’s sake everyone in my town now has the “new” O bumper stickers saying “Obama: Thank You!”
It IS creepy…
” I take some comfort in this interview with Rahm Emanuel.” Yes, me too; except for 2 things
(1) it is still not clear what the called “tax-cut for middle class families” means–per Obama, Biden and Co. pre-election means the “cut” will be balanced with an increase on anyone making 100K? Perhaps 70K ?
(2) In that article Emmanuel is attributed to have said that “as an example of Republicans losing their way, he cited the Terri Schiavo episode in 2005, where President Bush and the Republican-controlled congress intervened in a case involving a brain-damaged woman’s feeding tube.”
Doesn’t Emmanuel know that Obama was one of the very few Dems that voted on this losing and invasive measure for Congress???
#11: With this kind of intelligent pitch, no wonder it can’t sell anything.
cavalier- believe that if you want. the polls say otherwise.
On the bumper sticker – some people don’t care about the leftover McCain-Palin stuff, and aren’t willing to wait for Obama to stumble in office:
http://www.discountbookdistributors.com/youcankeepthechangepalin2012bumpersticker2-pack-1.aspx
Premature, certainly, but I bet it sells pretty well – and will fly out of the warehouse if and when Obama stumbles badly. Bet a few Reaganites are already clicking.
“Media bias is a crucial issue because of its personal as well as political impact. If not addressed clearly and directly, there will have fewer and fewer Republican candidates.”
I agree that media bias is crucial. However, the problem is: how to deal with it. On one hand, cozy up where it’s possible (ie, Palin grants interview with Oprah, etc); frontal attack (attempted during the recent campaign); or ignore the old media, adopt the young (ie, web, talk radio, etc. and don’t put Palin on the Couric show!)
The good thing is that the Old MSM seems to be failing, with the best example being the NYT stock price. It will be very important for the web and radio to take advantage of this weakness, and present a better alternative.
Remember Jon Stewart and SNL, though. These outlets have been extremely influential during the election. It should be obvious that Conservatives should look to young and cool people for its future… for example, that young AfricanAmerican fellow on youtube. During his rap, he said something that truly resonates: Republicans like rich people, soooo they want MORE rich people. Democrats like poor people, and sooo they want MORE poor people! And y’know, that is very very true.
Media bias helped McCain get elected. Look at his coverage in the early primaries. Media bias definately was a problem in the general election. Now will we learn what class work Obama did at Columbia, what his true relationship is with Tony Rezko, what he knows of the Broadway Bank, how Carrathers and Hilliard shaped his Education view, and what are his true feelings about Israel.
Just a few people looked into these things. No one in the MSM.
#17- j’existe pour épater les Russes
Hmmmm.
“Hard to quibble with this: “But some number of voters seem to be engaging in truly magical thinking about what is possible from a president. What happens when they get a $500 increase in the child tax credit and military operations in Pakistan instead of fairyland?””
Funny thing now about that.
For the last 5+ years we’ve had lefties screaming “chickenhawk” at conservatives who, for whatever reason, weren’t currently serving in the US military. The reasoning being that since we voted for someone who promoted war then we needed to “step on up and sign up”.
Soooooo. Now that Obama, a liberal Democrat, is advocating war in Afghanistan now it’s time for liberal Democrats to “step on up and sign up” or else be screamed at as being a -chickenhawk-.
What I will find amusing is the sophistry used to avoid admitting this.
#22: Takes a better patte than that, p’ticon. Bulgarian, in any case.
We know about Tony Rezko. He channeled money from a Syria “businessman” through his wife to pay for at least $6000 for the Obamas’ mansion.
We know about Bill Ayers. He provided a job and salary for three years for someone with no educational experience to head a major education project.
We know about Rev. Wright. He was mentor and for 20 years chosen spiritual leader for the Obamas.
But these things don’t register with Obama the way they would with another candidate. Ayers, because he is on the left, does not register in the same way “Winter Soldier” did not register wtih Kerry–until the independent Swift Boat book brought it up. And Rezko and Wright, because of Obama’s race.
I think the GOP has to once again relearn the big lesson taught in the campaign. The MSM is a dishonest broker of information committed always to the more liberal candidate in either party. As they discover to feigned amazement that nobody knows the blank screen in the Oval Office, the MSM will warm back up to McCain and the other members of the Kennedy wing of the Republican party.The media must be battled as much as the Democratic party, and its role as arbiter must be delegitimized. The ground has already been prepared. 77% of the voters thought the media was biased in the past campaign. The Bush recognized the MSM as just another special interest group, but its general incompetence and incoherence didn’t allow it to act on the fact.