Conservative Thought

James Kirchick’s piece on Politico today noted the seemingly coordinated criticism of McCain’s military record by Obama supporters or surrogates: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0708/11463.html

I can’t believe that this is, as Kirchick suggests, something being done at the behest of the campaign. Why on earth would Obama, leading in every poll, change the message of the campaign to personal attacks which just happen to highlight McCain’s greatest strength? Which leads me to my next question, what the hell is going on here? Is there any explaining this, or is this just an unfortunate coincidence? I would expect the McCain camp to try and keep this going for as long as possible.

In other news, the energy crisis has started to emerge, along with the economy and the war, as the big issue of the campaign. Unfortunately there are no easy answers. McCain wants to drill more, but, as the Dems point out, the oil companies haven’t even drilled on what they have yet and it takes an awfully long time to dig wells and start extraction. Obama wants to impose a ‘windfall profits’ tax. Nevermind that the whole scheme of windfall profits is essentially to treat society’s most productive members as criminals, the tax would just be passed along to consumers anyway. Nuclear energy is an option the candidates seem to agree on, Obama’s position is still unclear, but Nuclear plants don’t spring up over night and nobody wants the waste dumped in their state.

I hear they have oil in Iraq, exploitive imperialism anyone? Yes, I am kidding.

This past Tuesday the Boston Celtics finally got done playing Ronald Reagan to the Los Angeles Lakers Walter Mondale. For the week and a half that the series lasted the Celtics did everything right. They played tougher defense, they competed with a higher level of intensity, they executed their offense better, they hit the big shots, and their fans provided an atmosphere in which losing was probably impossible. The series has already been dissected too many times and every angle has probably been covered. Nevertheless, as a long suffering Celtics fan, I feel obliged to share the moments I will remember from these NBA finals and at least try to explain what made this team so special and why this championship is by far the most satisfying of the several that Boston teams have won recently.

1. Paul Pierce’s First Three After Getting Hurt in Game 1
Boston was buzzing with anticipation for game 1. A wild playoff ride was now guaranteed to culminate with a dramatic finals series against the hated Lakers. Three quarters into the first game the wheels started to fall off the wagon. Kobe was being Kobe, Ray Allen still appeared to be 2 parts expiring contract and 1 part washed up all star, the Lakers had a small lead and looked poised to steal game 1. Then Pierce went down and it was all over. The Celtics were going to be robbed of the moment they had worked for all year long.
Anyone who has watched Paul Pierce for these last ten years knew he would have to be killed to be kept off that court. He was coming back. The question was would he be effective at all, or would he just be a liability jeopardizing the rest of his career by playing with a serious injury? When he put up that first three pointer all the air went out of the arena. The entire series hung in the balance. When it rattled home off the back rim the place exploded. Pierce’s reaction was priceless, he turned back towards the celtics basket and calmly nodded his head as if to say “C’mon, after ten years of pain you thought I was gonna miss this? We’re gonna be just fine” The next trip down the floor he hit another three for good measure. Celtics go on to win game 1. Paul Pierce guarantees his number will be retired. Great moment.

2. Ray Allen Clinches Game 4 By Torching Sasha Vujacic
If you watch the NBA, and you aren’t a Lakers fan, you hate Sasha Vujacic. He is a pesky in your face defender who flops and whines. His hair is obnoxious. He celebrates by taunting opposing players. He is Ivan Drago without the steroids. With the clock winding down and the Lakers trailing by two in desperate need of a stop Sasha found himself one on one with Ray Allen. Allen had had a brutal playoffs but had found his stroke again in Game 2 of the Finals and had been playing at the top of his game. Ray Allen is the exact opposite of Vujacic. For the roughly 150 years that he has been in the league he has been nothing but a class act. He works hard on defense, never flops, hits big shots, and plays the game the right way.
It seemed fitting that the biggest moment of the most important game of the series came down to these two guys, one on one. Allen took the shot clock all the way down before blowing past Sasha for a game clinching layup. Vujacic didn’t even move his feet. He took a lazy swipe at the ball from behind then watched and yelled as Allen went up to finish the play. He spent the next tv time out pouting on the the bench. As Allen walked past him back up the floor to the celtics bench he didn’t even look at him. No trash talking, just a well earned fist pump and a satisfied grin. Good Guys 3, Bad Guys 1, Vujacic Exposed. I hope that moment haunts his nightmares for the rest of his career.

3. Boston Crowd Chants “Your Not Jordan” to Kobe in Game 6
Kobe Bryant is a very good player. He’s also a dirtbag. He had the whole cheating on his wife thing a couple years back. He whined all off-season about how he wanted to be traded. He has never won anything without Shaq and for some reason commentators still insisted on comparing him to Michael Jordan who was (gulp) the greatest player of all time (apologies to Russell and Bird, I just damned myself to Celtics purgatory for at least a century after I die). Nevertheless, despite the wild comparisons and the promises of a Lakers romp by many experts, the Celtics had finished off the Lakers with the 4th quarter still to come in game 6. As Kobe found himself at the free throw line with the Lakers trailing by approximately a million points the Boston crowd reminded Kobe why Jordan was the greatest, he never lost in the finals, and he always came up big when his team needed him the most. As chants of “Your Not Jordan” rolled down from the balconies and eventually spread across the whole stadium, Kobe could do nothing but shoot one more meaningless free throw in a game he had failed to take over. Then he had to watch the Celtics celebrate their seventeenth championship. The dream season then slowly came to the perfect ending. The league’s best team triumphed over the league’s best player, and order was restored to the basketball universe.

Speaking on Father’s Day Barack Obama took the opportunity to emphasize the importance of a father’s role in the rearing of children. As he put it “Responsibility doesn’t just end at conception.” True enough. It is worth noting that Obama seemed to take the moment of conception as a critical one. If responsibility doesn’t end there it must continue on through the course of the pregnancy. One would think that “responsibility” would entail, among other things, an effort to preserve the child from harm, and neccessarily, from the life-ending procedure of abortion. Indeed, what would “responsibility” mean, having continued from conception as Obama observes, if it did not involve looking out for the child’s very life?

And yet we are reminded that Obama has voted against even the most modest of measures regarding restrictions on when human life might legally be destroyed. One of his “Present” votes in the Illinois state legislature was on the “Born Alive Infant Protection Act” which merely protected those children who survived the abortion!

So once again, despite Obama’s flowery rhetoric, we are left wondering, on this Father’s Day, has he said anything of substance at all?

John McCain is often praised for his ability to reach across party lines and work with Democrats. Much to the chagrin of his fellow Republicans, his famous temper is usually reserved for members of his own party while he disagrees politely with his Democratic counterparts. That is all well and good, but if McCain thinks he can win this election by playing nice and speaking in empty platitudes about change and bi-partisanship he is going to lose. McCain needs to move past his obsession with getting along with the other side all the time, realize that he is now the standard bearer of the party, and get to work taking Obama to task on the numerous points where his soaring rhetoric does not match his policies or voting record. Here are a few places he could start:

“A New Kind of Politics”:
Sen. Obama often speaks about the new kind of politics which he would bring about. Yet, from the small sample available, his voting record would seem to indicate that he is among the most calculating of politicians on the national scene. Time and again in the Illinois legislature he voted “present,” rather than yes or no, on the most searching, politically difficult votes he was asked to make. He might as well have voted “absent.” Why should Americans trust Sen. Obama to make the hard decisions as president when he has declined to do so so frequently throughout his career thus far? And doesn’t this sort of dubiety about taking a stand on key issues directly refute his claims to represent a break from the Clintonian politics of the past 15 years?

Education:
Sen. Obama has constantly spoken of the need for change without identifying precisely where such change might be needed except with regard to the political process itself. Education, however, is an issue where a sharp break with the past is needed. America has trusted competition, that most American of institutions, to invigorate and drive everything from our economy to our elections. We know that competition results in better products and higher efficiency. Why should our public schools, which Sen. Obama himself describes on his website as “failing,” be immune from the searching tests which come with free and fair competition? Voucher programs would force public schools to compete for funds by hiring better teachers and incentivizing excellence. Shouldn’t we structure the incentives of our shool system to actually promote learning? McCain should make Sen. Obama defend our decrepid education system and the overbearing, overpowerful teachers unions who keep it broken.

Iraq:
Sen. Obama constantly remarks that this election is a time to look forward rather than backward. Yet every time he addresses the issue of Iraq he begins by reminding everyone that he opposed the war 5 years ago and that the invasion never should have been undertaken. True or not, the point is irrelevant. McCain needs to make sure Obama doesn’t skate on the issue by simply re-hashing a debate we had in 2003 with the benefit of hindsight. McCain should force Obama to acknowledge the undeniable success of the surge and put his feet to the fire on whether or not he really thinks the time to withdraw is just when Al Qaeda is on the ropes and the Sunnis have joined us in our campaign against AQI.

It looks like the McCain campaign has succeeded in baiting Sen. Obama into a series of town hall meetings. That is good news. Sen. McCain is terrible in set speeches and great at town halls. Yet the opportunity will be wasted unless he makes Obama abandon the rhetoric which has carried him thus far and force him to address the policies which an Obama adminstration would pursue.

The latest from Iraq: http://www.reuters.com/article/middleeastCrisis/idUSL01687040

The over/under on days until hillary calls it quits is 10. That leaves one week for the effect of June 3rd’s primaries to sink in.

One interesting angle to watch will be whether Obama can manage to get enough supers to commit between now and Tuesday to clinch the nomination that night. He would obviously like to be able to declare victory in his speech that evening. If he can’t get it done he will have to claim the nomination with a press release announcing he hit the magic number later this week.

Does anyone have a sense of what Hillary is going to do? It looked like she was willing to let the race end this week until Harold Ickes through that tantrum at the DNC rules meeting, threatening to take the fight over Michigan all the way to the convention! How should Obama handle this one? Offering her anything less than the VP slot would be insulting but there is no way he would ever want her on the ticket. How do you dems out there feel about the way this race is going to end?

George Will never supported McCain during the primaries and he was reluctant to embrace him as the party’s nominee. He still isn’t doing McCain any favors, check this out:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/136308/page/2

ouch!

John McCain is not an ideological conservative. Indeed, throughout his career he has taken positions which many on the right find indefensible. At some point during his political life, McCain has found a way to anger or annoy every major constituency of the GOP. Here is a beginners guide to McCain’s problems on the right:

Campaign Finance Reform:

For many this was John McCain’s original sin. After having been smeared by Dubya in South Carolina, McCain resolved to pass a law which would help prevent such anonymous attacks in the future. The result was McCain-Feingold, the starkest restriction of political speech ever passed by Congress, which has done nothing to improve the tone of campaigns. Before McCain-Feingold, we could at least expect candidates to control the anonymous ads attacking their opponents for fear of people thinking they were doing the attacking themselves. Now, because of all the 527’s or PAC’s, the candidates can deny having any control over these independent attack dogs who swear allegiance to no one. Think Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. George Will has called the law the worst he has seen in all his time in Washington. McCain-Feingold also marked the first time that McCain worked with a liberal senator to do things conservatives found regrettable.

Gay Marriage, Abortion, Judges:

McCain doesn’t do poorly with social conservatives but he isn’t wildly popular either. While McCain votes the right way on abortion and gay marriage, he is not deeply committed to either position and often excuses himself from making the conservative case on these points by deferring to federalism. While almost all conservatives would agree that overturning Roe v. Wade and returning abortion to the states would be a good place to start, gay marriage is a whole other bag of tricks. McCain does not support a Federal Marriage Amendment, he insists the states should be able to decide the issue for themselves while registering his own sympathies for the traditional marriage position. Unfortunately the “Full Faith and Credit Clause” of the Constitution makes this argument untenable. The states will not be allowed to decide for themselves, rather the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has decided for everyone. While states will try to get around the clause and not recognize gay marriages conducted in other states, this battle will eventually have to be fought in the courts or through the amendment process. Speaking of the courts, many conservatives are still angry at McCain for being a member of the gang of 14 which negotiated a compromise with the democratic minority in the senate which left some very qualified conservative judges off the bench. Judges are a sensitive issue for conservatives due to our prior mistakes with regards to the Supreme Court. Few believe that McCain will nominate or fight for a conservative judge if he has the opportunity to make an appointment. Rather they fear that he will seek an accommodation with the democratic senate majority and appoint a moderate or a liberal. While McCain may eventually come around, he is not a culture warrior, devoted to the social conservative agenda.

Immigration:

This constituency, if it lasts into the general election cycle, may pose McCain’s biggest problem on the right. Throughout the primary campaign McCain was skewered for his McCain-Kennedy immigration reform bill. While the bill did not propose amnesty, it did propose letting illegal immigrants remain in the country under certain circumstances. For the Michael Savages and Tom Tancredos of this world, that was enough to caricature the bill as an open border, full amnesty, fiasco. During the primary season large percentages of voters in each state cited immigration as their top issue, these voters opposed McCain by wide margins. I think it is quite difficult to predict how many of these voters will still have immigration in the front of their minds come November, if the answer is a lot, then McCain could be in big trouble. But only if these voters have a more conservative choice on immigration . . .

Bob Barr:

Former Congressman from Georgia, has all but announced his run for President as the candidate of the Libertarian party. This is exactly the sort of candidate who could hurt McCain the worst on the right. He will come out strongly against McCain-Feingold, against McCain-Kennedy, and he will be stronger than McCain on the second amendment. Bob Barr could just turn out to be John McCain’s Ralph Nader.

So, your thoughts? Which constituency is most likely to abandon McCain? Anyone I left off? Maybe you think some part of the GOP is going cold on Iraq and will split the party on foreign policy?

As is usually the case on the eve of primary elections, the rules go out the window the night before. I remember driving home from Mccain HQ in New Hampshire the night before the primary and hearing a Romney radio spot saying all sorts of things he had declined to say during the campaign when there was still time for rebuttal and cries of foul play. This is exactly what is going on in Indiana and North Carolina. The Obama campaign had a spot ready to go in response to the negative ad they anticipated the Clinton people would put out. Here they are: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video_log/2008/05/clinton_whats_happened.html

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video_log/2008/05/obama_hometown.html

The Democratic Party created super-delegates in the wake of Jimmy Carter’s crushing defeat in 1980. Combined with the Mcgovern debacle of 1972, it seemed to the Democratic elites that the party’s nomination process had been hijacked by radicals who could not settle on a nominee within the mainstream of American politics. Thus, the party bestowed upon each significant elected official a vote in the process to keep the primary voters from nominating someone with no hope of winning. Today the Democratic party again finds itself standing on the edge, staring down into the abyss.

To give you a sense of how acute the crisis is, consider this, I am seriously considering sending a check to Barack Obama’s campaign. No joke. If he is nominated the man will be remembered as a conservative hero. For the last two election cycles Democrats have counted on Pennsylvania and Michigan while competing in Florida and Ohio. Obama will not be competitive in Florida, and he will have to fight hard to hold on to the 25 percent of Clinton voters in PA who said they would vote for Mccain rather than Obama. Bear in mind, that was before Rev. Wright’s latest outburst. Of the most important swing states in November; Ohio, PA, Florida, and Michigan, Obama has lost all 4 to Clinton. People seem to think that the Rev. Wright controversy is behind him now, I disagree, but either way, just wait until the Rezko scandal hits the news cycle. Obama bought his house on the same day that this typical Chicago mobster hack bought an adjacent lot, no problem there, except Obama paid 300,000 dollars less than the market price. The extent of his ties to ’60’s radicals whom he considers his friends are also still unfolding. Its unclear whether they attend the same church.

If super-delegates are to serve any purpose at all, they need to intervene on Clinton’s behalf. Obama’s strange collection of angry black liberation theologists, SDS terrorists, and Chicago Mob Dons is just not going to sell come November. With all the failures of the Bush administration you would think that even the Democratic party wouldn’t be able to screw this one up. They may yet avoid disaster, but only if the super-delegates take the initiative to save the party’s electoral chances. Here’s to hoping that they don’t.

The Dems found themselves in Pennsylvania this past week. Obama missed yet another opportunity to end the race, losing to Clinton by ten points, a margin just wide enough for her to claim a significant win and soldier on. Considering the state was full of bitter, religious, gun owners, however, Obama might count himself lucky to have lost by only ten. He is also winning the critical spin battle in the media as most stories point out that he trailed by 25 points a month ago. It’s hard to imagine that this victory changes much for Clinton. She will probably win Indiana narrowly while getting trounced in North Carolina and then look to West Virginia and Kentucky to sustain her campaign until the last primary in Puerto Rico. Obama will limp to the finish line holding a lead in delegates, total votes, and states won. Barring some unforgivable gaffe or damaging revelation dug up by the Clinton campaign he will be the nominee of his party. Yet he will leave his convention with none of the momentum that usually accompanies the coronation of a party’s nominee. Instead of enjoying his moment in the sun Obama will be hard at work trying to reach out to those Clinton voters in small town Pennsylvania, 25 percent of whom said they would vote for Mccain rather than Obama.

Whoever it is the Democrats end up nominating, they will likely have to change their tune on the war in Iraq. Let’s recall that it was almost exactly one year ago that Senator Reid told the nation that “this war is lost and the surge isn’t accomplishing anything.” Less than six months later, however, it became abundantly clear that the surge was accomplishing an awful lot. Sectarian violence was drastically reduced, Sunni tribal leaders turned on Al-Qaeda and allied with US forces, and the Shiite militias were confronted and restrained. Faced with these achievements but still politically committed to American failure in Iraq, the Democrats amended their latest critique of the war. They conceded that the United States military was indeed winning the war itself, but argued that the war was no longer the central dimension of the conflict. Rather the only measure of success was political reconciliation between the Shiite-led government and Sunni leaders. This line of argument dominated the latest round of Petraeus hearings. Senator Clinton chose to ignore the undeniable military progress before remarking “The purpose of the surge, let’s not forget, as described by the Bush Administration, was ‘to create the space for the Iraqis to engage in reconciliation and make significant political progress.’” Yet the wheels are quickly coming off this latest critique of the war. Even The New York Times couldn’t keep the newest success stories from Iraq off the front page this past week: “Iraq’s largest Sunni bloc has agreed to return to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal Al-Maliki’s cabinet after a boycott of nearly a year.” As if the headline wasn’t bad enough for the dems, the returning Sunnis cited specific reasons for their return, most notably the passage of an amnesty law for Sunnis who left or are seeking to leave the ranks of the insurgents and the recent crackdown on the Shiite militias. If that isn’t reconciliation and significant political progress I don’t know what is.