Jonathan, the fact that the Luntz focus group went so wild for Herman Cain is really a sign of the disastrous quality of this debate tonight. Picking him is in essence like picking “none of the above”—as the least credible person on the stage, with no record of actually securing any public support in an election, Cain is a novelty act. The fact that the novelty act may have “won” gives one a sense of how unimpressive the session was. And how unimpressive the field is: This is no different from the fact that a significant number of Republicans was expressing support last week for Donald Trump.

The real question is whether Tim Pawlenty did well enough to interest the big-dollar givers and bundlers he needs to help his campaign start to build momentum. It’s possible he did, but far from certain.

Editor’s note: All of the live-blog posts from the Republican debate in Greenville, South Carolina, are collected here for easier reading.

Luntz’s Focus Group Liked the Pizza Man

Frank Luntz’s focus group on FOX News is going nuts about Herman Cain. More proof that focus groups are ridiculous.

Jonathan S. Tobin 05.05.2011 – 10:37 PM

Tough Choices, but Doable

Gary Johnson says our country faces “tough choices that are doable.” What does that even mean? Can you do a choice?

D. G. Myers 05.05.2011 – 10:30 PM

Herman Cain Announces that God Is Blessing America

Now I know who I’m voting for.

D. G. Myers 05.05.2011 – 10:28 PM

Palin

She might as well run.

John Podhoretz 05.05.2011 – 10:27 PM

Oh, Good—the Obligatory Reality TV Question

Gary Johnson says he would not crawl on his hands and knees like Sarah Palin. “I’ve run thirty marathons,” he boasts modestly. “What are you running away from?” Bret Baier asks him with a straight face.

D. G. Myers 05.05.2011 – 10:27 PM

Bachmann Eclipses Ron Paul Just by Not Showing Up

“Has Michelle Bachmann eclipsed you?” Shannon Bream asks Ron Paul. “She isn’t here tonight,” he quips. His fans go nuts.

D. G. Myers 05.05.2011 – 10:25 PM

The Missing Candidates

FOX is getting even with the candidates who didn’t show up by asking the losers who did to comment about them. That’ll teach ’em.

Jonathan S. Tobin 05.05.2011 – 10:23 PM

Regrets

I can’t believe I passed up the reruns of NCIS on USA for this.

D. G. Myers 05.05.2011 – 10:22 PM

The Winner of the Debate…

…is Fox News. The questions have been spectacularly good—quick, sharp, to the point, well-prepared. Bret Baier is a terrific moderator. The breakout is Shannon Bream, who gives the lie to the idea that the women of Fox News are dumb blondes.

John Podhoretz 05.05.2011 – 10:22 PM

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The South Carolina debate was not a good show for the Republicans. The only one of the candidates that came across as credible was Tim Pawlenty. But even he seems as if he’s a work in progress. The bottom line here is that the Republican candidates who weren’t there have to be encouraged. Unfortunately for the GOP, so are the Democrats.

Senior Online Editor Jonathan S. Tobin and other members of the Contentions team will be live blogging the Republican presidential debate in South Carolina. So join us at 9 pm Eastern time as we break down the first formal debate between some of the GOP contenders.

Alana, the State Department has released a transcript of Secretary of State Clinton’s remarks earlier today in Italy. She was asked whether the Fatah-Hamas agreement closes the door on peace talks with Israel and at what point the U.S. reconsiders aid to the Palestinian Authority. Here is the text of her response:

[W]e are waiting to see the details. We obviously are aware of the announcement in Cairo yesterday. There are many steps that have yet to be undertaken in order to implement the agreement. And we are going to be carefully assessing what this actually means, because there are a number of different potential meanings to it, both on paper and in practice.

We’ve made it very clear that we cannot support any government that consists of Hamas unless and until Hamas adopts the Quartet principles. And the Quartet principles have been well known to everyone for a number of years. So we’re going to wait and make our assessment as we actually see what unfolds from this moment on. [Emphasis added].

Earlier today, New York Times reporter Ethan Bronner held a 30-minute interview with Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader. Bronner’s report may assist Secretary Clinton in her assessment: 

“The whole world knows what Hamas thinks and what our principles are,” Mr. Meshal said in an interview in his Cairo hotel suite.” . . .  

He defined [the common national agenda] as “a Palestinian state in the 1967 lines with Jerusalem as its capital, without any settlements or settlers, not an inch of land swaps and respecting the right of return” of Palestinian refugees to Israel itself.

Asked if a deal honoring those principles would produce an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Mr. Meshal said, “I don’t want to talk about that.”

If she needs more information to complete her assessment, Clinton might ask for a copy of the annexes to the Fatah-Hamas agreement. According to Bronner’s report: 

Asked what had changed in recent months that allowed the long-delayed pact to go through, he said that both Fatah and the new Egyptian government had agreed, for the first time, to Hamas’s adding annexes to the agreement reflecting its views. He declined to elaborate on the contents of those additional items.

Perhaps the famously “transparent” Palestinian Authority should publish the annex, so we can determine for ourselves if there are a number of different meanings to it.

The policy differences among the likely candidates for the GOP presidential nomination will be, I think, relatively narrow (the exceptions are among the marginal candidates like Ron Paul). There will be differences in emphasis, of course, but the philosophical differences will mostly be marginal. Which means that there may be more emphasis than usual on style and approach.

Some potential candidates, like Michele Bachmann, believe they stand out from the rest of the field because they are, in Bachmann’s words, “fighters.” What we need, some prominent conservatives argue, is “combativeness” — and in making their case they cite the founders.

Countenance and style, then, will be a big issue in the forthcoming campaign – and we can in fact learn quite a lot by using the founders, and particularly the debate about the Constitution, as a reference point. Read More

While Americans spontaneously erupted with applause and expressions of glee when the news of Osama bin Laden’s death was announced, Europeans are more than indifferent. They are downright appalled at the unabashed patriotism of Americans and their desire to see their country triumph over its deadly foes. That’s the sense one gets from a lengthy report by the New York Times’s Steven Erlanger.

The piece is filled with Euro self-righteousness, especially from journalists and politicians. But perhaps the most honest evaluation of this lamentable trend comes from Nichole Bacharan, a scholar of the United States at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris, who believes the hit on bin Laden will lead to a revival of the sort of anti-Americanism that Barack Obama’s election was supposed to quash. Bacharan told Erlanger:

“Whatever happens, we need to prove we are different or better, that we are so much more refined and delicate and have such a respect for the law,” she said, characterizing the European stance. “It’s very silly.”

It’s true that European snobbery is silly. But the factors underlying the Euro unwillingness to treat the battle with Islamist terrorism as a fight to the death are anything but a laughing matter. As Erlanger notes, the Europeans are genuinely afraid of the Islamic world, something that may have a great deal to do with the growing and increasingly assertive Muslim populations in Western European countries.

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He placed a wreath at Ground Zero, met with 9/11 firefighters, and vowed that “when we say ‘we will never forget,’ we mean what we say.” But it seems like the president did overlook one detail—putting names on the invitations to 9/11 families.

The administration apparently sent out form-letter invitations to 50 hand-picked relatives of 9/11 victims, which began “Dear 9/11 family member.” At least one family has turned down the request, saying that they felt the letter was impersonal.

“If this form letter was the invitation, it was kinda lame,” said John Vigiano, who lost two heroic sons—one a firefighter and the other a police officer—in the attack. “I’m honored the president of the United States is coming to New York,” he said. “[But] to me it’s just going to be a photo op.”

The form-letter does seem a bit lame, especially since the family members were chosen beforehand. It shouldn’t have been difficult for the White House to type out 50 names on stationary. This isn’t something that will dampen the good-will New Yorkers have toward Obama, but it is an unfortunate mistake. It’s the first time Obama has been to pay his respects at Ground Zero since taking office, and this flub does make him come off as detached.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget what the left-wing lobby J Street is all about. The group likes to pose as the most ardent advocate of peace in the Middle East. But J Street doesn’t have a greater desire for peace than the overwhelming majority of Israel’s voters who have rejected the policies the group advocates. J Street’s true purpose remains being the Obama administration’s loyal Jewish lapdog.

Interviewed in today’s Jerusalem Post, J Street leader Jeremy Ben-Ami seems to be reading out of the administration playbook when he says we should not condemn the new Hamas-Fatah coalition out of hand but should wait and see what will happen. This is, of course, more or less, the same line being followed by the White House and the State Department as they struggle to find a way to salvage their relationship with the Palestinian Authority.

But the idea that there is really much of a mystery about the nature of the new Palestinian Authority is absurd. Hamas remains what it has always been, an Islamist terrorist organization whose goal is to destroy the state of Israel and kill its Jewish population. Rather than make it easier for Fatah to make peace with Israel as some hopelessly delusional observers contend, Palestinian unity means there is no chance that the PA will give up demands for the right of return or make any other compromise that is a prerequisite for peace.

Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are hoping the Palestinians will give them some sort of an excuse to keep funneling the U.S. aid that keeps the PA afloat in patronage money. The problem is that it is a clear violation of U.S. law for any funds to go to any entity that engages in terrorism. So J Street’s role in the coming weeks, like that of the equally feckless National Jewish Democratic Council, will be to lobby Congress to keep the money flowing to the PA even though it is fatally compromised by the presence of Hamas in its ranks. This won’t promote peace but it will serve the administration’s interests as it seeks room to maneuver around both the law and the irate demands of members of Congress of both parties who are rightly demanding that Obama put the PA on notice that the pact with Hamas is a deal breaker.

Rationalizing indirect aid for a group that began the week in mourning for Osama bin Laden is not exactly what comes to mind when you think of an organization that calls itself “pro-Israel and pro-peace.” But if serves the interests of the administration, then you can bet that’s what J Street will be doing.

While some of the declared candidates are getting ready for their first close-up in South Carolina tonight, one of the principal undeclared candidates is getting plenty of attention on his own. As we noted yesterday, Mitch Daniels was at the American Enterprise Institute displaying his wonkishness in a speech about education reform. He then went to the left-leaning Arab-American Institute’s annual dinner to pick up an award in recognition of his Syrian heritage. The day before he toddled up to New York to have lunch, among other things, with a gathering of pundits including some liberals.

While at times it has been it difficult to get a fix on whether Daniels is serious about running, that lunch would appear to be something of a tipoff that he is ready to take the plunge. It’s hard to believe that a Republican governor of Indiana with no interest in the presidency would bother breaking bread with a group consisting of conservatives like Peggy Noonan and Ramesh Ponnuru and liberals like George Stephanapoulos, Michael Kinsley, and Josh Marshall. Hendrik Hertzberg wrote about the meeting in the New Yorker, and the upshot is that Daniels came across as a liberal’s idea of a conservative. Judging Daniels on the basis of anything Hertzberg would say is obviously unfair. Every conservative statement that Daniels uttered was interpreted as being said unenthusiastically. That the personable Daniels came across well is not surprising, but the assertion that he is the only Republican candidate who isn’t crazy says more about Hertzberg than the governor.

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Fox News reported yesterday that U.S. officials are worried tail remnants of the downed top-secret stealth helicopter at Osama bin Laden’s compound could become a security risk, especially if certain parts fall into the hands of China. But the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Buck McKeon (R–Calif.) said today that the military hasn’t expressed concern over the abandoned parts, nor is he aware of any efforts to retrieve the tail.

“My understanding is from the admiral that briefed us, was that there wasn’t much left of it,” McKeon said today at the Heritage Foundation. The SEALs who raided the compound “blew it up,” he added. “I don’t know that there are any efforts to retrieve any of it.”

If the Pakistani government decided to voluntarily return it “that would be great,” McKeon said. But he added that he “got no sense from the military that they had any concern about it. They felt that they blew it up. They didn’t seem concerned about what was left.”

Some bloggers have also pointed out the potential risks of leaving the tail at the compound. But if the Navy SEALs used up precious minutes during the raid to destroy the copter, are we really supposed to believe they’d make the error of leaving parts intact that could be a security risk? It was obviously of utmost importance to demolish the aircraft, and it sounds as if they finished the job.

While it would be a great gesture for the Pakistani government to return the abandoned tail voluntarily, that scenario seems wildly far-fetched based on the events of the last few days. And from McKeon’s statements, it doesn’t seem that the government is going to push hard to retrieve them—we have more pressing issues to deal with in regards to Pakistan, anyway.

The Washington Post has just posted a riveting, detailed, infuriating, and heartbreaking account of the life and crimes of Bradley Manning, accused of having stolen 250,000 confidential U.S. cables and given them to Wikileaks. Ellen Nakashima is the author, and it reminds one of the glory days of newspaper profiles. What I took away from it is this: Youthful self-righteousness can be one of the most dangerous and nihilistic forces on earth.

There has been some disappointment after President George W. Bush turned down President Obama’s invitation to join him at Ground Zero today, but at the Washington Post, Jen Rubin believes Bush made the right choice:

Well, sometimes history needs some help and stories need to be told by those who were there. But in not appearing at Ground Zero, Bush shows uncommon grace. . . . And he also shows supreme confidence that his decisions were the right ones and that fair-minded people in the future will appreciate this. Grace and confidence. Are there any other qualities that better define the 43rd president?

I couldn’t agree more. The New York Daily News is reporting that Bush was “rubbed the wrong way” because President Obama has “withheld credit from people Bush believes deserved it.” Perhaps so, but there may be more to the story. Leaders sometimes have a difficult time knowing when to step out of the spotlight (see: Bush’s predecessor). Bush’s presence at Ground Zero could have helped bring closure for the country, but there was also a possibility that it could have ended up overshadowing the significance of the moment. Or maybe he was concerned that his attendance would bring back memories of the bitter divisiveness over counterterrorism policy that marked the end of his time in office. Or maybe he just wanted to leave all of the glory to Obama.

Whatever Bush’s reason, the killing of Osama bin Laden couldn’t have taken place without the policies put in place while Bush was in office. Bush played his role in the war on terror, and now he’s content to let Obama play his. Declining the invitation was a first-class move, and as Jen writes, it’s a real illustration of 43’s confidence and grace.

As Jonathan wrote, the City University of New York board of trustees has voted to block an honorary degree for anti-Israel playwright Tony Kushner at John Jay College. The decision is sparking a major backlash, with Kushner issuing a ranting letter and calling the incident “incredibly ugly.”

But the fight doesn’t look like it’s ending anytime soon. The faculty senate, which originally nominated Kushner for the honor, has just sent out a letter calling on the executive committee of the board of trustees to go around the vote and basically approve the degree by fiat:

I ask you to please consider the values of our University and its reputation as well as your relationship to the faculty of CUNY and especially to its students, who are being denied the signal honor of having Mr. Tony Kushner join them as a member of John Jay’s graduating class of 2011.

The letter is signed by Karen Kaplowitz, an English professor and president of the John Jay faculty senate. Because the CUNY trustees executive committee acts on behalf of the entire board between meetings, and the next meeting isn’t scheduled until after commencement in June, the committee would be able to override the vote if it so chooses.

This is obviously a last-ditch effort by the faculty senate, since the board reportedly voted unanimously to table the honorary degree. Kushner has also declared that he wouldn’t accept the degree now even if it were offered. But the fact that the faculty senate is still attempting to push the issue indicates that they’re going to keep beating this drum for awhile.

Senior Online Editor Jonathan S. Tobin and other members of the Contentions team will be live blogging the Republican presidential debate in South Carolina. So join us at 9 pm as we break down the first formal debate between some of the GOP contenders.

When he delivered the keynote address at the National Rifle Association’s annual convention in Pittsburgh last Saturday, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee committed a “revealing Holocaust gaffe.” Or so, at least, says Michelle Goldberg of The Daily Beast. Huckabee apparently stumbled in “likening the United States’ fiscal future to the Nazi genocide.”

The Anti-Defamation League immediately demanded an apology. In a prepared statement, Abraham Foxman said:

It is highly inappropriate to use America’s mounting debt crisis as another occasion to invoke Nazis and the Holocaust, particularly on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, a time dedicated to memorializing, not trivializing, the six million Jews and millions of others who perished at the hands of the Nazis.

Huckabee’s analogy was “casual and wildly inappropriate,” M. J. Rosenberg agreed at the TPM Café.

A Southern Baptist preacher like Huckabee ought never to be permitted to speak about the Holocaust, I suppose—except that in Pittsburgh he said nothing like what he is accused of saying. Rather than watching the full-length video of the speech, his critics may have depended upon the Associated Press report of Huckabee’s speech, reprinted in several daily newspapers, which left the mistaken impression that the former governor and political commentator had somehow compared the failure to reduce our national debt to the nothing that was done by the nations of the world to prevent or stop the Holocaust.

Huckabee said nothing of the sort.

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In Paris earlier today Secretary of State Hillary Clinton finally weighed in on the unity deal between Hamas and Fatah, which was officially signed in Cairo yesterday. And not only did she refuse to say whether the Obama administration would support congressional efforts to cut aid to the Palestinian Authority, she also refused to rule out future negotiations with a Palestinian government that embraces the Islamist terrorist organization:

A day after the main Palestinian factions signed a unity agreement in Cairo, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton strikingly refused on Thursday to rule out further negotiations with a Palestinian side that included Hamas, the militant Islamic group that runs Gaza and is defined by many in the West as a terrorist organization. But she reiterated the Obama administration’s call for Hamas to accept basic conditions that included renouncing violence and recognizing Israel’s right to exist.

Yeah, about that “recognizing Israel’s right to exist” thing—that’s been going pretty well lately, right?

So now the U.S. isn’t ruling out negotiating with terrorists. To do so, however, would not only grant legitimacy to Hamas, but also undermine the peace efforts between Israel and the PA. This is the same Obama administration that demanded an Israeli settlement freeze as a prerequisite for negotiations, but now seems willing to consider collaborating with the same terror organization that recently fired a heat-guided missile at an Israeli school bus.

But who knows? The administration also seemed poised to allow a UN resolution condemning Israel to pass, before stepping in and vetoing it at the last minute—while also using the occasion to rail against “the folly and illegitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity.” So maybe this is just part of a similar act.

There has probably been no artist in the last generation that has been has feted, praised, and petted as the playwright Tony Kushner. Over the course of the last two decades, Kushner has been honored in every possible venue. His Angels in America may not be the most overrated play in the history of the modern American theater. But replete with visions of Communist spy Ethel Rosenberg, whose innocence is falsely proclaimed in the piece, Angels was the perfect play for the liberal chattering classes of the 1980s and 1990s. Ever since then Kushner has assumed the role of a latter-day Eugene O’Neill.

Yesterday, however, Kushner found out that there is at least one group in New York impervious to his dubious charms: the Board of Trustees of the City University of New York. CUNY’s John Jay College of Criminal Law was set to hand over to Kushner another honorary degree to add to his impressive collection of such honors. But after an impassioned presentation by trustee Jeffrey S. Weisenfeld at a public meeting on May 2, the board voted to rescind the honor and a shocked Kushner is crying foul.

Why did CUNY choose to back away from Kushner? To anyone who had followed his career of anti-Israel activism the answer was easy. The university of the largest Jewish city in the world rightly considered it inappropriate to honor a man who was a declared enemy of Zionism and the State of Israel.

The curious thing about this controversy is that rather than merely answer his CUNY critics with the contempt he generally uses to address pro-Israel and Zionist foes, Kushner is pretending that he has been wrongly accused. In a three-page letter to the CUNY board, he complained that he had been slandered and viciously attacked. He was not a “marginal extremist,” he protested. Why, he has enjoyed a “long and happy affiliation with such organizations as the 92nd Street Y, The Jewish Museum and the Upper West Side JCC.” And he has been honored with fifteen honorary degrees, including one from Brandeis University!

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Most pundits don’t give Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann much of a chance to win the Republican presidential nomination. The Tea Party favorite and critic of Gore Vidal is seen by the party establishment as too flaky and far populist to win over mainstream GOP voters next year. But those who are dismissing her as a possible president shouldn’t scoff too loudly. Rather than communing with Beltway experts to ponder her strategy, Bachmann’s is looking to a higher power to help her put together a campaign team.

In an interview with Dan Cella of Financial Issues Stewardship Ministries, a Christian group whose goal is to help people to “be responsible stewards of God’s money,” Bachmann asked the viewers of the show to pray for her and “Ask that the Lord will give us a special anointing on how to put our team together, who those team people will be, that he would bring those people to us.”

The clip was picked up by Politico (you can view it on YouTube here), and posted on the Internet by a liberal group called “Right Wing Watch.” One atheist commenter about the video—clearly not a Bachmann fan—wrote that since he believed God didn’t exist, the candidate’s prayers meant that Bachmann campaign would also fail to materialize. But that seems like a poor bet for any atheist looking to disprove the existence of the Almighty. After all, if Bachmann does actually run, will that qualify as tangible proof of a living God?

But the snickers of intellectuals or the party establishment about this kind of talk should not blind us to her appeal. Whatever they might think of Bachmann, most Americans see nothing wrong with a candidate who is open about their religiosity. Moreover Bachmann’s comments illustrate the tack that she might take in the coming campaign. If one discounts the possibility that Sarah Palin or Mike Huckabee will run, Bachmann is perfectly positioned to be the Christian conservative candidate as well as the favorite of the Tea Party’s populist insurgents. Given the impressive track record of Christian conservatives in the Iowa caucuses—Huckabee won them in 2008—and given her standing as a native of the state, Bachmann’s chances there should not be discounted. Especially if the LORD puts together a good team for her.