Topic: Democratic Party

ObamaCare and Political Insanity

Peter Wehner 01.03.2011 - 2:18 PM

Soon after the 112th Congress convenes Wednesday, Republicans in the House plan to make good on a campaign promise that helped vault many new members to victory: voting to repeal President Obama’s health care overhaul.

The vote, which Republican leaders pledged would occur before the president’s State of the Union address later this month, is intended both to appeal to the Tea-Party-influenced factions of the House Republican base and to emphasize the muscle of the new party in power. But it could also produce an unintended consequence: a chance for Democrats once again to try their case in support of the health care overhaul before the American public.

Democrats, who in many cases looked on the law as a rabid beast best avoided in the fall elections, are reversing course, gearing up for a coordinated all-out effort to preserve and defend it. Under the law, they say, consumers are already receiving tangible benefits that Republicans would snatch away.

The story goes on to report this:

Representative Robert E. Andrews, Democrat of New Jersey, challenged the Republicans to bring it on. “We will respond by pointing out the impact of repeal on people’s lives,” Mr. Andrews said. “On women with cancer who could be denied insurance because of a pre-existing condition. On senior citizens who would lose the help they are receiving to pay for prescriptions.”

Democrats argue that repeal would increase the number of uninsured; put insurers back in control of health insurance, allowing them to increase premiums at will; and lead to explosive growth in the federal budget deficit.

It’s hard to know if Democrats are serious about pursuing this course. If so, they are heading down a perilous political path. Here’s why: the more the public learns about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the more they dislike it — and they dislike it plenty right now.

In addition, the thinking that continues to animate many Democrats — namely, that the only reason Obama’s health-care overhaul isn’t wildly popular is because of a “communications problem” by the White House and congressional Democrats — is wholly in error.

The problem is that ObamaCare is a monstrous, incoherent piece of legislation that is/will (among other things) increase premiums, force millions of people off their existing coverage (which many of them are happy with), and increase, not decrease, the federal-budget deficit. It will harm, not improve, our health-care system. In almost every respect, it compounds rather than ameliorates our problems.

If Democrats want to relitigate ObamaCare, they will find a Republican Party plenty eager to join them.

It’s been said that the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. With that definition in mind, it is fair to say that on health care at least, the Democratic Party’s strategy is bordering on insanity. If Mr. Obama and his party want the political debate of 2011 to center on health care, they will pay a huge political price for it.

Afternoon Commentary

Alana Goodman 12.24.2010 - 12:54 PM

With the Democratic party’s major losses in the midterm elections, there were predictions that President Obama wouldn’t win re-election in 2012. But during the lame-duck session, the president has managed to attain practically all of his legislative goals and undergo a remarkable political recuperation. Charles Krauthammer discusses the administration’s “new start” today in the Washington Post.

Tea Partiers have developed a reputation as self-interested individuals who oppose taxes because they don’t want to spread their wealth around. But according to AEI president Arthur Brooks, Americans who oppose wealth redistribution actually tend to be more generous when it comes to giving to charity than citizens who are in favor of government income leveling: “When it comes to voluntarily spreading their own wealth around, a distinct ‘charity gap’ opens up between Americans who are for and against government income leveling. Your intuition might tell you that people who favor government redistribution care most about the less fortunate and would give more to charity. Initially, this was my own assumption. But the data tell a different story.”

Amir Taheri writes that a battle is brewing in Iran, as thousands of workers continue to strike in protest of the government’s cuts in food and gas subsidies. “[F]or the first time, the message of independent trade unionists appears to be finding some resonance among Iran’s working people at large,” writes Taheri, noting growing public anger over rising energy prices and food shortages, increased political activism among young labor-rights leaders and the impact of international sanctions on private businesses.

During the height of the Park 51 controversy last summer, many New Yorkers were angered by Mayor Bloomberg’s vocal support for the mosque leaders. Newly released emails now reveal that Bloomberg aides actually provided political assistance to Park 51 coordinators Feisal Abdul Rauf and his wife Daisy Khan.

The rape allegations against Julian Assange have prompted some feminists in the U.S. to call for a broader definition of what constitutes rape. In Reason magazine, Cathy Young argues these revisions would be problematic: “Earlier generations of feminists argued that rape should be treated the same as any other violent crime: The victim should not be subjected to special standards of resistance or chastity. These days, the demand for special treatment is so blatant that some activists openly support abolishing the presumption of innocence for rape cases and requiring the accused to prove consent[.]”

The Extremism of E.J. Dionne Jr.

Peter Wehner 12.16.2010 - 9:23 AM

E.J. Dionne Jr. has a column registering his concerns about the “No Labels” group. But he isn’t entirely critical. Dionne makes it clear that there are some things he’s sympathetic to, including this:

The No Labelers are also right to be repulsed by the replacement of real argument with a vicious brand of name-calling. When a president of the United States is attacked simultaneously as an “extreme liberal liar” and a “Nazi,” there is a sick irrationality at work in our discourse.

It’s perhaps worth noting that during the Bush presidency, when George W. Bush was slandered by leading members of the Democratic Party as a “moral coward” (Vice President Al Gore), as a “loser” and a “liar” who had “betrayed his country” (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid), and who “Week after week after week after week … told lie after lie after lie after lie” (Senator Edward Kennedy), Dionne, in an amazing feat of self-control, held his outrage in abeyance. Back then, it was not “sick irrationality at work in our discourse”; it was just the normal, good-spirited back and forth of American politics. And if E.J. has written a column reprimanding the loathsome Representative Alan Grayson for his vicious brand of name-calling, I missed it. (Grayson dubbed his opponent Daniel Webster “Taliban Dan” in a deeply dishonest ad. He has also said, “If you get sick, America, the Republican health-care plan is this: Die quickly.” And for good measure, Grayson has compared Republicans to “knuckle-dragging Neanderthals” and Nazis burning the Reichstag.)

In any event, in his column Dionne goes on to assure us that “I am still devoted to moderation.” Of course he is. But what’s really troubling him are those right-wing extremist Republicans and conservatives. Moderation, you see, is “very much alive on the center-left and among Democrats” — but it is “so dead in the Republican Party and on the right.” The No Labelers can yet be a constructive force, Dionne instructs us, “if they remind us of how extreme the right has become and help broker an alliance between the center and the left, the only coalition that can realistically stop an ever more zealous brand of conservatism.”

E.J. faces a bit of a problem, of course. The GOP he deems to be so radical, so zealous, and so outside the mainstream is barely a month removed from a historically successful midterm election. Republicans picked up more House seats (63) than in any election since 1938 and have not enjoyed this much power in state capitals since the 1920s. In addition, Americans, by a greater than 2-to-1 margin, self-identify as conservative rather than liberal. Public trust in government is at record lows; so is the approval rating for the Democratically controlled Congress. And the signature domestic initiative of the Obama presidency, health-care reform, is quite unpopular and falling short of virtually every promise its advocates made on its behalf. Read More

The Bracing Realism of Richard Holbrooke

Max Boot 12.14.2010 - 9:21 AM

Richard Holbrooke was, as the obits have it, a “giant of diplomacy.” Indeed, he has a claim to being one of the most influential diplomats in American history who never became secretary of state — a job he should have been given by President Clinton. He is edged out by George Kennan in the annals of American diplomatic history, but his achievement in hammering out the 1995 Dayton Accords ending the war in Bosnia is as impressive as any feat of negotiations in the post–World War II era.

He was much less successful in his latest job as the administration’s chief “AfPak” envoy. Why is that? Part of the reason was his mistake in alienating Hamid Karzai; an American envoy’s job is to talk tough behind the scenes but to preserve relations with an important allied head of state. Holbrooke, inexplicably, failed to do that. But most of the blame does not accrue to Holbrooke. The problem was that in Bosnia, the skillful use of force had set the conditions for diplomatic success — something that has not yet occurred in Afghanistan.

By the time Holbrooke was called upon to negotiate an end to the Bosnian fighting, the combatants had been exhausted and Serbian attempts at aggrandizement had been stymied, first by a Croatian offensive, then by NATO bombing. They were ready to cut a deal. Not so the Taliban and their sponsors in Islamabad. General David Petraeus has only now launched in earnest the military operations necessary to frustrate Taliban designs and compel elements of the group to negotiate or face annihilation. Without the effective use of force, not even a diplomat as supremely skilled as Holbrooke could achieve success.

A personal note: I knew Holbrooke slightly and liked him. I realize he had a reputation in Washington for being abrasive and egotistical; that reputation probably cost him the secretary of state job that he coveted and had earned. But effective diplomats can’t afford to be shrinking violets. Sure, Holbrooke had an outsize personality, but so did Dean Acheson, Henry Kissinger, and other diplomatic superstars. Like them, Holbrooke also had enormous reservoirs of intelligence , savvy, and learning. And like them, he was a skilled writer; his memoir of the Dayton peace process was a classic. One of many regrets about his premature passing is that the world will be denied his memoirs.

He was a liberal but a tough-minded one — one of the last prominent hawks in the Democratic Party. He was, in short, a “neo-liberal,” which isn’t so far removed from a “neo-conservative,” a label that I teased him with and that he naturally resisted. The country as a whole will miss him, and so in particular will the Democratic Party, which could use more of his bracing realism in its counsels.

“I’m Going to Take Off”

John Podhoretz 12.12.2010 - 11:14 AM

That’s what Barack Obama said on Friday when he ceded the podium in the White House briefing room to Bill Clinton. In the New York Post today, I analyze this rather singular moment:

The event gobsmacked the political class. On Twitter, ABC News political director Amy E. Walter wrote, “Obama just ceded the podium to Clinton. This. Is. Awesome.” Christina Bellantoni of the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call used the same punctuation trope: “This is Un. Real.”

Washington froze in wonder at this momentary trip into the past. The sheer strangeness of the sight of Clinton alone at that podium crystallized the sense that the American political system (or more specifically, the Democratic party) had spun out of control over the course of the week.

You can read the whole thing here.

This Is What Happens When You Get Engulfed by a Wave

John Podhoretz 12.09.2010 - 4:30 PM

Today on Capitol Hill, the Democratic Party appears to have gone somewhat insane. The House Democratic Caucus voted to oppose the tax-cut deal struck between Barack Obama and Senate Republicans; it’s a non-binding vote, but an embarrassing one for the president. It’s not nuts — the bill is obviously problematic for liberals — but its practical political effect is negligible, and it seems more like a tantrum than anything else. Roll Call even reports that someone at the meeting shouted “—- the president”; imagine if such a thing had been reported out of a Republican caucus meeting.

In the Senate, a complicated procedural maneuver to pass the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” failed, apparently due to as-yet incomprehensible machinations by Majority Leader Harry Reid, who had some deal struck with moderate Republican Susan Collins that he decided to renege on and hold a vote anyway. Nobody understood what was happening, the vote (not to repeal, but to end debate) failed, and Collins voted with Reid anyway.

There was more chaos relating to other legislation as well. Meanwhile, Obama press spokesman Robert Gibbs told Democrats that if they have better ideas, they should make like The Price Is Right and “come on down.”

The machinery of the Democratic Party in Washington is in desperate need of overhaul. The November 2 tsunami shorted everything out.

The Divide Between Obama and His Base Widens

Peter Wehner 12.07.2010 - 11:15 AM

Count me among those who believe the agreement by President Obama to extend the Bush tax cuts to be a huge substantive (and political) victory for the GOP. There is, I think, one fact above all others that places things in their proper perspective: arguably the most liberal president in American history, still with huge majorities in the House and Senate, agreed to extend tax cuts that he and his party have been hammering for the better part of a decade.

The tectonic plates shifted yesterday — and they shifted as a result of the epic midterm election. After two years of activist government unseen since the middle part of the 1960s, things are going in the opposite direction.

The president knows it, and he’s clearly unhappy about it. Mr. Obama was clearly annoyed with the deal he felt forced to sign, going out of his way to express his distaste for allowing tax cuts to go to high-wage earners. And of course, there was the requisite Obama vanity and self-conceit. The lack of a deal on tax cuts would “be a chilling prospect for the American people whose taxes are currently scheduled to go up on January 1st because of arrangements that were made back in 2001 and 2003 under the Bush tax cuts,” Obama informed us. “I am not willing to let that happen. … I’m not willing to let working families across this country become collateral damage for political warfare here in Washington. And I’m not willing to let our economy slip backwards just as we’re pulling ourselves out of this devastating recession.”

Leave it to Barack the Great to once again hover high above politics as usual, the adult among the clamoring children, the voice of reason against the unruly political mob.

The president’s remarks were clearly aimed at his liberal base, which is terribly unhappy with him (see these stories here and here ). In fact, according to the Hill, “House Democrats signaled Monday they will fight the tax-cut deal President Obama announced a day earlier with Republicans.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in a post on Twitter, made clear her unhappiness with the tax deal.

This is very dangerous territory Mr. Obama is now in. He hasn’t done nearly enough to win back the confidence of independents — but he’s done more than enough to outrage his political base. We might even have the extraordinary situation of Speaker Pelosi leading the campaign to defeat a deal blessed by the president.

Obama set astronomical expectations when he ran, and so the disappointment among his core supporters is especially acute. Some on the left are eager to distance themselves from what they perceive to be a failing presidency. And we are in the midst of the weakest recovery since the government started keeping unemployment statistics. The Obama presidency is battered and adrift right now. The man who was supposed to revivify liberalism and the Democratic Party is overseeing their partial collapse. It is an amazing thing to witness.

The Sky Isn’t Falling for Democrats. It Fell.

Peter Wehner 12.03.2010 - 2:54 PM

Here’s Mark Halperin’s analysis of the Democratic Party:

Is it hyperbolic to say the Democratic Party is in the midst of a nervous breakdown? I have been covering national politics since 1988, and I don’t remember a situation quite like this. The signs of a crack-up are everywhere.

Halperin devotes the rest of his piece to explaining why “Thursday seemed to have donkeys melting down all over the place.”

I should add that for months and months, Halperin’s colleague Joe Klein gleefully mocked those writing for CONTENTIONS (most especially yours truly) for predicting that “the sky is falling” (a phrase Klein used endlessly) for Obama and Democrats. That is because we predicted long before the election — based on perfectly easy-to-read-and-analyze polling data — that Democrats were going to be routed. And in fact they were.

It turns out that the sky really did fall — and the man who portrayed himself as the professional among amateurs, the grizzled political reporter who has seen everything and heard everything, was really quite wrong on almost everything.

Flotsam and Jetsam

Jennifer Rubin 11.26.2010 - 7:14 AM

This isn’t going to win over the critics who say she lacks political judgment. “Sarah Palin dismissed Barbara Bush’s recent criticism as a matter of class privilege. … ‘I don’t want to concede that we have to get used to this kind of thing, because i don’t think the majority of Americans want to put up with the blue-bloods — and i want to say it with all due respect because I love the Bushes — the blue bloods who want to pick and chose their winners instead of allowing competition’ … Palin also suggested that the Bushes upper-class status had contributed to ‘the economic policies that were in place that got us into these economic woeful times.’” Whatever you think of Bush 41, this isn’t what a presidential candidate should sound like.

This is going to give “strategic patience” (otherwise known as paralysis) a bad name. “North Korea’s latest round of saber rattling leaves a politically weakened President Obama with several unpalatable options for dealing with the unstable nuclear power. The North Korean shelling of a South Korean island follows the revelation of a new centrifuge plant that could eventually allow the North to add to its nuclear stockpile. Both developments suggest the Obama administration’s policy of’ ‘strategic patience’ with North Korea is having little impact on the regime, which is focused on the transition of power from Kim Jong-il to his son, Kim Jong-un.”

This isn’t going to help the White House scare the Senate into a ratification vote: Jamie Fly writes: “New START is a rather meaningless arms-control agreement notable more for what it fails to do than what it achieves. … There remains serious criticism of New START’s merits on the right, and it is troubling that the administration is attempting to argue that Republicans such as Sen. Jon Kyl are interested only in killing the treaty. Kyl and a majority of his colleagues are just asking for more time to explore their concerns about the treaty and continue discussions with administration officials about funding levels for modernization of the U.S. nuclear stockpile. From the rhetoric of the administration and its surrogates, one would believe that if New START is not ratified by the end of the year, nuclear weapons will suddenly fall into the hands of terrorists.”

This is a sign that no one is going to bat for Joe Miller. “Former Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman had some unsolicited advice for fellow Republican Joe Miller: It’s time to quit.”

This verdict isn’t going to provoke much sympathy from conservatives. Tom DeLay is the type of pol the Tea Party despises, and his politics is the sort Republican lawmakers need to repudiate.

This wasn’t going to happen with Obama’s “smart diplomacy”: “When North Korea tested a nuclear device last year, China issued bland criticism and urged Pyongyang to resume diplomacy. After a South Korean navy ship was sunk, most likely by a North Korean torpedo, Beijing sent its sympathies but called the evidence inconclusive. Now that North Korea has unleashed an artillery barrage on a South Korean island that killed four people — including two civilians — and raised tensions in the heavily armed region, Beijing again appears unwilling to rein in its neighbor.”

This lame duck session isn’t going to be what the Dems had hoped. “Not so long ago, the great fear was that the Democratic Party would return from its midterm drubbing to jam all manner of odious legislation through a lame duck session of Congress. We may need to put that in the ‘wasted worry’ category.”

Liberal Jews for New START

Jennifer Rubin 11.24.2010 - 9:18 AM

The Obama administration’s struggle to push forward on ratification of New START is becoming more wacky by the day. Now it has roused Jewish groups with a bizarre linkage argument:

While the White House continues to negotiate with Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) in an attempt to convince him to allow a vote on the New START treaty this year, it is also undertaking a massive effort behind the scenes to rally foreign governments and non-governmental organizations to support the treaty’s ratification and put public pressure on Republicans to yield.

As part of that effort, the White House has been in contact with pro-Israel and pro-Jewish organizations, encouraging them to be vocal about their support for the New START treaty, and warning them that the failure of the treaty could have negative implications for the drive to halt Iran’s nuclear program.

This would make more sense, I suppose, if we hadn’t “paid” for reset in so many other ways (e.g., silence on human rights abuses) or if Russia had been more helpful on Iran (refraining from helping to build and activate the Bushehr plant). But the ever-gullible liberal Jewish groups are more than happy to accommodate: “Over the last three days, three major pro-Israel organizations issued strong statements of support for New START: the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and the American Council for World Jewry (ACWJ).”

Who’s missing from this? AIPAC, the largest and most prominent Jewish group when it comes to influencing Congress. AIPAC has wisely decided not to fritter away its credibility on an issue that has nothing to do with Israel. Nor is the Israeli government, already risking its credibility with the planes-for-a-freeze gambit, about to facilitate this maneuver:

“We have no position on the treaty. We are staying above the political discussion in Washington,” one Israeli official told The Cable. The official could not confirm rumors we’ve heard that the administration asked Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren to speak out, but that Oren declined. Recently, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has been strengthening ties with Russia, even saying in September, “Our views on many challenges of today are close or identical.”

Playing the Jewish card tells us two things. First, most liberal Jews and the organizations that reflect their views are a long way from breaking the “sick addiction” to this president and to the Democratic Party more generally. And second, the Obama administration is frantic to pass the treaty and pass it now. The more it tries, the more the GOP senators with real concerns may wonder: why the rush? Why shouldn’t the new senators get a chance to weigh in?

Denying Reality Again

Peter Wehner 11.23.2010 - 5:26 PM

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell is often an intelligent voice for the Democratic Party. But when asked why key races were lost in his state in the 2010 midterm election, Rendell said, “Well, because people don’t always vote on the logical reasons. Emotion drives voters, particularly when they have reason to be angry and frustrated.”

All that’s missing is the reference to clinging to guns and religion.

Governor Rendell is repeating one of the two or three most common excuses made by Democrats when explaining the titanic losses they incurred a few weeks ago: reason gave way to passion, logic to emotion, common sense to fear. President Obama has tried this explanation out on us, and so have others. It doesn’t get any more persuasive with repetition. Democrats still seem unable to accept the fact that their policies are failing and that voters are holding them accountable. Perhaps one day soon it will dawn on at least a few of them what happened and why. And the wise ones will learn from it rather than deny reality.

In the meantime, they sound silly and out of touch. (h/t therightscoop.com)

Will Obama Move Beyond MoveOn.org?

Peter Wehner 11.23.2010 - 4:37 PM

As I continue to document the left’s unhappiness with President Obama, here’s another example to add to the list — a widely distributed e-mail letter to MoveOn.org members from MoveOn organizer Nita Chaudhary that says, in part, this:

Remember Barack Obama in 2008? The guy who refused to go along with a “dumb war” and said, “In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.”

I miss that guy. Imagine if someone told you in 2008 that Barack Obama was actually thinking about signing legislation to extend the Bush tax giveaways for the rich. I wouldn’t have believed it.

Now more than ever, we need the Barack Obama we elected in 2008—the smart, tough, hopeful progressive champion who inspired millions of us—to stand up and say “no” to a millionaire bailout.

Right now, with the change we all fought for hanging in the balance, President Obama needs to hear from those of us who supported him the most.

The e-mail goes on to ask MoveOn members to record a video message “from the heart” to tell President Obama to go to the mat to stop any extension of the “millionaire tax giveaways” and to “bring back the progressive fighter we all knew and supported in 2008.”

President Obama cannot win re-election without winning back independents, who fled the Democratic Party in massive numbers in the 2010 election. And Obama cannot win back independents without going crosswise of liberal groups like MoveOn. Unless Obama has a political death wish, then, a divorce with portions of his base eventually has to occur. But boy, is it going to be ugly. And if Obama succeeds in alienating his base without winning back the middle, his presidency will collapse.

These are difficult days for the Obama White House. The road back to political recovery isn’t obvious, and it won’t be easy.

Democrats’ Tax Dilemma

Jennifer Rubin 11.21.2010 - 9:10 AM

Where are we on an extension of the Bush tax cuts? It’s hard to know, given that the Democrats have no game plan at this point:

Obama favors renewing the tax cuts only for those at or below those level, saying the nation cannot afford to renew them for wealthier Americans.

Despite a number of options — including renewing all tax cuts or only those for the middle class or tying any extension to a renewal of jobless benefits — there is no indication a consensus is near.

“How the hell should we know when we will figure this out?” said a senior Senate Democratic aide. “This is the Democratic Party,” long known for internal struggles and diverse views.

The lack of agreement is, at bottom, a sign of the mistrust that now characterizes the relationship between Obama and what is left of his Democratic allies in the House and Senate:

“A lot of our guys, the progressives, don’t want to extend these tax cuts for anyone,” said a senior House Democratic aide. “They never liked them in the first place.” The aide said some Democrats are now wary of Obama, who convinced them to overhaul the U.S. healthcare system — a landmark achievement that backfired and hurt them with voters. “Our guys aren’t sure what comes next. Will Obama help them in 2012, or will just be focused on getting himself re-elected?” the aide said.

The liberal pro-tax-hike Democrats can posture all they like, but they don’t seem to have the votes to soak the rich. Sen. Joe Lieberman, the perennial voice of sanity in the Senate, patiently explains to his colleagues that although they might want to raise taxes on the “rich” — investors, small businesses, employers — the fact remains that “the votes are not there to do that.”

Oh, in that case, they might simply kick the can down the road and let the GOP extend all the Bush tax cuts. Well, that wouldn’t make much sense, allowing their opponents to claim credit for keeping voters’ taxes from going up. But these days, the Dems seem to specialize in not making much sense. So don’t bet against their doing just that.

Here’s the “Civil War” the Press Has Been Looking For

Jennifer Rubin 11.19.2010 - 1:16 PM

The civil war between Tea Partiers and establishment Republicans never really emerged. Candidates won and lost in primaries, the old guard agreed with the new on earmarks, and all the elected and re-elected GOP senators and House members are on board with key elements of the conservative agenda (extend the Bush tax cuts, refudiate ObamaCare, cut spending, etc.). However, the Dems are another story. This report will amuse Republicans and, frankly, shock a lot of readers who imagined that Obama had retained some level of respect in his own party:

Senate Democrats — including typically mild-mannered Bill Nelson of Florida — lit into President Barack Obama during an unusually tense air-clearing caucus session on Thursday, senators and staffers told POLITICO.

Nelson told colleagues Obama’s unpopularity has become a serious liability for Democrats in his state and blamed the president for creating a toxic political environment for Democrats nationwide, according to two Democrats familiar with his remarks. …

In interviews after the marathon three hour meeting, several senators and senior aides told POLITICO that Nelson was just one of several senators to express anger at White House missteps – and air deep concerns about their own political fates if Obama and the Democratic Party leadership can’t turn things around by 2012.

Added one veteran senator: “It was the most frank exchange of views I’ve ever seen.”

“Frank” is one way to put it. Another way of putting it is that Obama has lost his luster and the respect and trust of his party. Democrats are alarmed, and rightly so, that this president is in over his head.

The solution is simple for those who want to survive: make common cause with Republicans to roll back the Obama agenda, cut taxes, and restore business confidence. On foreign policy, urge resoluteness on Afghanistan, military action if needed to disarm the mullahs, and an end to smart silly diplomacy in the Middle East and elsewhere. In other words, they should fend for themselves, and in the process do what is right on the merits. They might survive the 2012 election, even if Obama does not.

Should Obama Take Soros’s Threat Seriously?

Jonathan S. Tobin 11.18.2010 - 2:23 PM

The billionaire funder of everything left-wing may be the puppet-master source of all evil to Glenn Beck and his fans, but the White House may be thinking of George Soros as more of a pain in the rear end than anything else today. Yesterday Soros spoke to a private session of wealthy lefty donors at the Democracy Alliance, a group that funnels money into various liberal causes. According to Politico, Soros merely declared, “Obama shouldn’t compromise” with the Republicans. But according to the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein, Soros was a bit more blunt than that in his off-the-record remarks. According to Stein, Soros told his audience “We have just lost this election, we need to draw a line. And if this president can’t do what we need, it is time to start looking somewhere else.”

That sounds like a direct threat that Soros and the rest of the assembled lefty moneybags would fund a primary challenge to Obama unless he toes the line on liberal doctrine. Soros later denied that’s what he meant, but his remarks were a warning shot fired over the presidential bow.

Should Obama take the threat seriously? Soros and the rest of the crew at Democracy Alliance have the financial power to mobilize the leftist grass roots that can make the difference in any Democratic primary. If they can find a credible liberal who had the guts to run to Obama’s left on issues like a demand for an immediate U.S. pullout from Afghanistan (remember, Obama won the Democratic presidential nomination running as an anti-war candidate) or the president’s failure to ram through an even more leftist version of health care, then Obama would be in for a fight. But the idea that we are on the eve of a massive left-wing revolt against Obama in the coming year is probably more a Republican fantasy than anything else.

First, while Obama will never satisfy the hard left, the chances that he will emulate Bill Clinton and shift to the center in 2011 are slim and none. Obama’s arrogant and unrepentant view of the elections make it more likely that he will take Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel’s advice and govern largely by executive fiat in the coming months than he will make nice with the GOP, let alone steal Republicans’ thunder by signing conservative bills and claiming credit for them as Clinton did. Other than Afghanistan, which Obama may defuse as a liberal issue by starting his bugout of the country as promised in 2011, there may not be much room to the president’s left to run on in 2012.

Second, for all the big talk on the left about holding Obama’s feet to the fire and the dangers that a challenge to the incumbent presents for the White House, as John pointed out in his article in the December issue of COMMENTARY, he is still the first African-American president and, as such, has a certain immunity to criticism from Democrats that an ordinary chief executive would not have. The Moveon.org crowd’s influence cannot be underestimated, but the African-American voting bloc is still just as, if not far more, powerful in Democratic primaries. Moreover, the backlash against any white liberal who dares to challenge Obama — a move certain to be characterized by blacks as a stab in the presidential back — may be a greater deterrent to potential candidates than any of Soros’s admonitions directed at Obama. Even a fearless independent such as Russ Feingold would have to think twice about becoming the man most hated by African-Americans.

Thus, while Obama has plenty to worry about in the next two years, especially if the economy does not recover, he still has the whip hand over his party’s left. Despite the unhealthy obsession that some on the right have about the unsavory billionaire, Soros really isn’t the puppet master of the Democratic Party, let alone someone who has the power to manipulate the American political system the way he did some foreign currencies. The man to watch on the left is still Barack Obama, not George Soros.

Flotsam and Jetsam

Jennifer Rubin 11.16.2010 - 8:00 AM

“Refudiate” is the word of the year? You betcha.

Word has it they are rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic advisers at the White House. “Call it a shakeup or call it a natural turnover halfway through the term, but the White House is preparing for significant change throughout its top ranks. Much of the movement, though, will involve new posts for longtime aides to President Barack Obama.”

Words, words. You didn’t really take the State Department seriously, did you? “Mideast peace talks may not reach fruition before their initial September 2011 deadline, a U.S. State Department official said on Monday, citing recent negotiations deadlock over Israel’s refusal to extend its moratorium on settlement building as one reason for the delay. Speaking prior to September’s relaunch of direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley said that the administration thought it could negotiate an agreement ‘within a one-year time frame.’”

“Fortunate” is not the word most of us have in mind. Donna Brazile waxes lyrical: “This week, visitors entering Washington’s Union Station are greeted by a work of art — a two-story, red open-toed lady’s dress shoe. It reminds me of Cinderella’s lost glass slipper. I thought to myself, if someone is looking for the woman big enough to fill this, they need look no further than Nancy Pelosi. The nation is fortunate, not to mention the Democratic Party and the president, that Ms. Pelosi will be re-elected Democratic leader for the next Congress, because we are surely entering one of the nation’s most difficult eras.”

Rep. Paul Ryan doesn’t mince words: ”Congress should act now to prevent across-the-board tax increases from hitting nearly all Americans on Jan. 1. Sustained job creation and economic growth are urgently needed — higher tax rates are not. The failure to take decisive action on this issue further heightens the uncertainty holding our economy back.” Is there any Republican better able to explain conservative economic positions better than he? I haven’t found him/her yet.

Words of advice for Sen. Joe Lieberman. “‘He’d probably be best off running as a Republican as far as getting re-elected,’ said [John] Droney [a Lieberman ally and former chairman of the Connecticut Democratic Party], who stays in regular contact with Lieberman and encouraged him to run as an Independent in 2006. ‘I’d recommend him doing it now.”

You have to love the word choice. A “giveaway” is when people get to keep their own money. “Reps. Raúl Grijalva (Ariz.) and Lynn Woolsey (Calif.), co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said extending the tax breaks for those earning more than $250,000 a year represents ‘a giveaway’ to wealthy Americans that would saddle the country in unnecessary debt.”

The Bush Brothers and the Freedom Agenda

Jennifer Rubin 11.15.2010 - 9:00 AM

State of the Union has become the most interesting and best hosted Sunday talk show. Unlike ABC, CNN went for a down-the-middle, no-nonsense interviewer in Candy Crowley. Crowley is able to extract real news — in part because she listens to the answers and asks effective follow-ups. Sunday was no exception. She sat down with George W. Bush and then with Jeb Bush as well.

The newsiest tidbit was Jeb’s apparent openness to a presidential run — but not in 2012:

GEORGE W. BUSH: … I urged [Jeb] to seriously consider running for president, because I think he’d be a great president. But he’s chosen not to run this time, and I finally have believed him.

CROWLEY: See? So you’re getting some place. And you noticed “this time.”

JEB BUSH: You know what? You never say never about anything. I answer the questions forthrightly about 2012.

But just as interesting was the reminder that the so-called “freedom agenda” was central to Bush’s presidency (in obvious contrast to Obama’s). Asked about the war in Afghanistan, Bush answered:

GEORGE W. BUSH: Well, there’s — first of all, Afghanistan was the site where extremists were able to find a safe haven to attack.

CROWLEY: But they’re mostly gone at this point in Afghanistan.

GEORGE W. BUSH: I wouldn’t make that assumption. Oh, in Afghanistan, yes, but it’s not to say they couldn’t come back if a regime that was welcoming them would give them safe haven again.

I would say that, put yourself in the position of a young girl in Afghanistan, and realize that her life will be incredibly brutalized and/or thwarted by people like the Taliban. And the fundamental question, is it worth it? That’s the question we’ve got to ask. Does it matter to our own national security, or does it matter to our conscience that women will be mistreated? I argue it does. And I understand it’s difficult.

On Iraq he sounded a similar theme: “I think somebody’s going to look back some day and say thank goodness the United States believed in the universality of freedom and liberated 25 million and gave the Iraqis a chance to have their own free — free society.”

Also evident is the devotion of both the Bush brothers to immigration reform:

JEB BUSH: Rick Scott got a majority of the Hispanic vote in Florida. We elected two Hispanic governors, Susana Martinez and Brian Sandoval. There were congressmen and women elected of Hispanic origin.

I think the problem is not just a West Coast problem, but it is a big-time California problem. And I think part of it relates to tone.

If you’re watching TV, and someone is kind of legitimately angry that we can’t control our border, and sending signals that it’s them and us, and, by the way, you’re not “us,” you’re “them,” it doesn’t matter what else people turn out. If they’re not — feel like they’re welcome, they’re not going to listen to the message.

CROWLEY: And how does the Republican Party sort of reach out on that? Because immigration reform, you tried.

GEORGE W. BUSH: I did. And I believe the best way to secure the border is to have a comprehensive approach, and said so during an Oval Office address.

The language got carried away though. I mean, people — the issue kind of spiraled out of control and sent bad signals.

I think the Republican Party can attract Latinos through good education policy, good small business policy, good policy toward our veterans. And there have been times when Latinos have voted Republican and times when they haven’t. And so we always need to learn from the past and be sensitive about the future. …

JEB BUSH: Yes. And at the same time, Latino, or Hispanic, as we call people of Hispanic origin in Florida, Hispanics want the border controlled. A great nation has to control its border for national security purposes, for all sorts of purposes. And so I don’t know anybody that says, yes, let’s just open up our border to create chaos.

So, once the border is controlled, and people view it that way, and there’s a perception, it’s benchmarked, and people say yes, then I think you’re going to find that there is common ground to change our immigration policy to help us grow faster as a nation and to welcome people that work hard and play by the rules to create prosperity for us.

None of the brothers got credit from the left for their efforts on immigration reform, while many on the right continue to savage the notion of comprehensive immigration reform — even the Bush formulation (border security first).

Likewise, Bush’s foreign policy was vilified by the Democratic party, which from FDR through JFK was in favor of a freedom-promoting foreign policy. But that’s a faint memory now. Bush’s emphasis on democracy promotion and human rights was the subject of such disdain, that it has taken the current administration two years to drop its aversion to even discussing these topics.

The Crowley interview is a timely reminder that Republicans should be wary of a cramped, batten-down-the-hatches form of conservatism. The political saleability of modern conservatism and its success domestically and overseas are not based solely, or even primarily, on an oppositional agenda (no to spending, no to foreign commitments, no to immigrants). Rather it is the quintessential freedom agenda — free markets, pro-growth policies, a robust assertion of American power and interests oversees, a beacon for and defender of victims of despotism, and a big tent GOP. As the Republicans ready themselves for the 2012 primary, they should not forget that limited government is not an end unto itself, but rather a necessary condition for our freedom and prosperity. Whether on defense spending, immigration, or the war against Islamic terror, conservatives would do well to keep that in mind.

Netanyahu Isn’t the One Playing Politics on Iran

Jonathan S. Tobin 11.11.2010 - 4:52 PM

Israeli leaders are often rightly warned to avoid the temptation to tiptoe into the muddy waters of American partisan politics. That is a lesson that current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu learned during his first term in office during the 1990s, when he answered the antipathy of the Clinton administration by cozying up to the Republicans. Though Clinton had done everything but go door to door asking Israeli voters to back Shimon Peres and Labor instead of Netanyahu and Likud in Israel’s 1996 parliamentary election, Netanyahu’s clear preference for the GOP was a mistake that did Israel no good and Clinton little harm.

That is the sort of mistake that Netanyahu has avoided since coming back to the prime minister’s office in 2009. Though President Obama has picked fights with Israel as he sought to distance the United States from its ally in a futile bid for popularity in the Muslim world and treated Netanyahu abominably, the prime minister has wisely never voiced a single complaint and has frustrated those in the White House who foolishly thought they could unseat him. But these rope-a-dope tactics are not only frustrating for the Obami. They are driving some Israeli left-wingers crazy, too.

That’s the spirit of a piece published yesterday at Politico by Alon Pinkas, Israel’s former consul general in New York City. He accuses Netanyahu of violating the unwritten rule prohibiting prime ministers from partisan activities here. What’s his evidence? The speech Netanyahu gave to the General Assembly of North American Jewish Federations in which he called for the assertion of a threat of force to respond to the nuclear threat from Iran. Netanyahu said that while he hoped that sanctions would work to convince Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions, a credible threat of force must be on the table. Since U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates soon responded that sanctions are working (a position that no serious person actually believes), Pinkas concludes that Netanyahu violated a tradition of non-partisanship. After that, he goes on to switch gears and then rehearse the arguments often heard from Jewish Democrats that even raising the issue of support for Israel in U.S. elections is somehow not kosher.

Such arguments are nonsense.

First, worrying about Iran has never been the sole preserve of the Republicans. For example, a certain Democratic presidential candidate named Barack Obama made a number of pledges that he would never allow Iran to go nuclear on his watch. Many Democrats as well as Republicans have sounded the alarm about Iran as Obama spent his first year in office pursuing a feckless policy of “engagement” with the ayatollahs and then watched in dismay as he spent his second year assembling a coalition that could only muster support for tepid sanctions that have made no impression on the Iranians.

But what his piece illustrates is that it is Pinkas who is playing American party politics, not Netanyahu. By decrying the claim of some Republicans that some Democrats have been unsupportive of Israel, all Pinkas is doing is demonstrating that he dislikes the GOP and sympathizes with the Democrats. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if that’s how he feels, then perhaps he should move here, become a citizen, and get a vote. (Oddly enough, a few years ago Pinkas actually made a bid to become the head of the American Jewish Congress and almost got the job, until it was learned that it was a violation of Israeli law for a diplomat to take such a position so soon after leaving his post. Eventually, even the members of that moribund organization realized that the idea of an unemployed Israeli diplomat becoming the head of an American group was ridiculous.)

Contrary to Pinkas’s assertion, accountability is the one thing all friends of Israel should welcome. If either a Democrat or a Republican takes stances that are unhelpful to Israel, he or she ought to pay a political price at the ballot box. Taking the issue of support for Israel off the table does nothing to encourage politicians of either party to make good on their campaign promises to defend the Jewish state.

By expressing the justified concerns of Israelis about the existential threat facing their country from Iran, Netanyahu was doing exactly what he should be doing. By injecting himself into party squabbles here on behalf of his friends in the Democratic Party and by attempting to undermine his prime minister’s mission with a false allegation of partisanship, Pinkas demonstrated how out of touch he is with the realities of both Israeli and American politics.

Retreat from Retreat?

Jennifer Rubin 11.11.2010 - 10:53 AM

We are told that the administration is to “tweak” its message on Afghanistan. But it sounds more like it is throwing in the towel on the most wrongheaded aspect of its Afghanistan policy:

In a move away from President Obama’s deadline of July 2011 for the start of an American drawdown from Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all cited 2014 this week as the key date for handing over the defense of Afghanistan to the Afghans themselves. Implicit in their message, delivered at a security and diplomatic conference in Australia, was that the United States would be fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan for at least four more years.

That’s no tweak; it’s an acknowledgment that a deadline devised by political hacks for partisan purposes (i.e., to keep the base from freaking out) is being discarded. About time. As always, no Obama maneuver can forgo dissembling: “There’s not really any change, but what we’re trying to do is to get past that July 2011 obsession so that people can see what the president’s strategy really entails,’ a senior administration official said Wednesday.” That obsession was the president’s, who last emphasized it from the Oval Office in a prime-time speech.

One of those aforementioned hacks is running for mayor of Chicago, and the other is about to depart for the 2012 campaign. More important, the liberal base has already absorbed the midterm losses and won’t have another chance to wreak havoc on Obama until 2012. So now the White House can do it right:

The message shift is effectively a victory for the military, which has long said that the July 2011 deadline undermined its mission by making Afghans reluctant to work with troops perceived to be leaving shortly. “They say you’ll leave in 2011 and the Taliban will chop their heads off,” Cpl. Lisa Gardner, a Marine based in Helmand Province, told a reporter this past spring. This summer Gen. James T. Conway, then the Marine Corps’s commandant, went so far as to say that the deadline “was probably giving our enemy sustenance.”

Last year the White House insisted on the July deadline to inject a sense of urgency into the Afghans to get their security in order — military officials acknowledge that it has partly worked — but also to quiet critics in the Democratic Party upset about Mr. Obama’s escalation of the war and his decision to order 30,000 more troops to the country.

Don’t get me wrong. The decision is the correct one. But this is pathetic. Obama didn’t have the political courage to do what was plainly in our strategic interests, with men on the field of battle, when he feared electoral consequences. Only when the coast is clear can he do the right thing. How completely not-Bush.

Charm Offensive Ends as Obama Panders to Muslim World

Jonathan S. Tobin 11.09.2010 - 1:00 PM

One week after a midterm election in which his party suffered a historic defeat, it is still unclear whether President Obama will adjust his policies to deal with the voters’ unease over his administration’s record. But one change is already apparent. After several months of pursuing a charm offensive with American Jews and supporters of Israel, Obama has reverted to a stance that caused many Jewish Democrats such unease earlier this year: bashing Israel for asserting the right of Jews to live in Jerusalem.

Obama chose to use his visit to his former home in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, as the venue for comments directly criticizing Israel for approving the building of 1,000 new housing units in the Har Homa section of Jerusalem. The State Department spokesman had previously criticized the plan, but this is clearly an attempt to escalate the dispute with Israel from a pro forma disagreement — the United States has never recognized the city’s unification in 1967 — into a major battle with the Jewish state.

Back in the spring, Obama had seized upon an innocuous announcement of housing starts in an established Jewish neighborhood in a part of Jerusalem that had been occupied by Jordan from 1949 to 1967 that was issued during a visit to Israel by Vice President Biden, claiming it was an “insult” to the United States. The ensuing argument and attempts at the public humiliation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did nothing to advance the peace process. Even if the Palestinians were to reverse their repeated refusals to make peace and accept a state in the West Bank, Gaza, and a portion of Jerusalem (an offer that Israel has made more than once in the past decade), there is no possibility that those areas where Jewish neighborhoods now exist (and where over 250,000 Jews live) would be turned over to the Palestinians. His dispute with Netanyahu had the effect of forcing the Palestinian Authority to harden its stance on Jerusalem, thus making an accord even more unlikely.

Obama’s stance on Jerusalem was unprecedented in U.S.-Israel relations: although the United States had never recognized Israel’s annexation of the eastern part of the city in 1967, it had also never treated the building of Jewish neighborhoods there as a point of dispute between the two countries in this manner. However, Obama soon understood that not only had he not undermined Netanyahu (whose defense of Jewish rights was popular among Israelis), but he was also alienating part of his own political base: American Jews. While some in the administration had initially listened to the siren song of J Street, which falsely claimed that most American Jews would applaud a policy of pressure on Israel, it soon became clear that Obama’s stance was hurting the Democratic Party. The result of this realization was a furious effort to charm American Jews and supporters of Israel. The attacks on Netanyahu ceased, and the administration was soon issuing statements that noted the obvious about the stalled talks: the Palestinians were the ones who weren’t serious about peace. Read More

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