Republicans Losing Grip on Business Vote

Today's Wall Street Journal reports that the GOP is losing support among business groups, a trend that could prove to be one of the most important developments in partisan identification in generations:

The Republican Party, known since the late 19th century as the party of business, is losing its lock on that title.

New evidence suggests a potentially historic shift in the Republican Party's identity -- what strategists call its "brand." The votes of many disgruntled fiscal conservatives and other lapsed Republicans are now up for grabs, which could alter U.S. politics in the 2008 elections and beyond.

Some business leaders are drifting away from the party because of the war in Iraq, the growing federal debt and a conservative social agenda they don't share. In manufacturing sectors such as the auto industry, some Republicans want direct government help with soaring health-care costs, which Republicans in Washington have been reluctant to provide. And some business people want more government action on global warming, arguing that a bolder plan is not only inevitable, but could spur new industries.

Already, economic conservatives who favor balanced federal budgets have become a much smaller part of the party's base. That's partly because other groups, especially social conservatives, have grown more dominant. But it's also the result of defections by other fiscal conservatives angered by the growth of government spending during the six years that Republicans controlled both the White House and Congress.

The article cites polling data indicating a decline in business professionals identifying as Republican (down about 7 points since 2004). But business interests aren't the only groups defecting from the Republican fold. The GOP is facing major divides across various voter constituencies, not just on Iraq and fiscal policy, but also on immigration and social issues such as abortion and gay rights.

Also key is the appearance of Republican incompetence - for many partisans the GOP can't seem to get things right, like on the Justice Department's firing of U.S. attorneys under Alberto Gonzales, or on veteran's medical care and the Walter Reed disaster (see also Time's cover story from May, How The Right Went Wrong, which argues that conservatives have achieved much of their Reagan-era agenda, and may need a time out of power for recuperation).

Some of the criticisms are unfounded, for example, on fiscal policy, where the Bush tax cuts have resulted in increased federal tax receipts since 2005, and have contributed to the post-9/11 economic expansion.

But I do think overall that the GOP will be spending some time in the political wilderness. The Journal story concludes with some references to Pew Research Center polling data on public support for traditional values. According to Pew, Americans are less attached to "old-fashioned values about family and marriage" and the public's backing for international policies of "peace through strength" have declined as well.

In my view I see the changing partisan tides as reflecting not so much deep cultural or ideological shifts in the American electorate, but rather a yearning for something new, a willingness to give the other side a shot, for example, by electing a Democrat to the White House. In other words, we're simply seeing a natural swing of the political pendulum away from the dominant mode of politics represented by the party in power this last few years.

Recent polling data confirms the point, with Gallup finding last week that Americans are looking for some decisive policy leadership, governmental competence, integrity, and performance, and less partisan animosity. It's still some time until November 2008, and I wouldn't write off the GOP altogether, but the current period augurs better for the Democratic Party than in any time in the last few decades.

State of Denial: Politics and the Black Family Crisis

Orlando Patterson, in his essay today discussing Jena and contemporary black politics, cuts to the crucial racial issue of our time with his discussion of the crisis of the black family (via Memeorandum):

What exactly attracted thousands of demonstrators to the small Louisiana town? While for some it was a simple case of righting a grievous local injustice, and for others an opportunity to relive the civil rights era, for most the real motive was a long overdue cry of outrage at the use of the prison system as a means of controlling young black men.

America has more than two million citizens behind bars, the highest absolute and per capita rate of incarceration in the world. Black Americans, a mere 13 percent of the population, constitute half of this country’s prisoners. A tenth of all black men between ages 20 and 35 are in jail or prison; blacks are incarcerated at over eight times the white rate.

The effect on black communities is catastrophic: one in three male African-Americans in their 30s now has a prison record, as do nearly two-thirds of all black male high school dropouts. These numbers and rates are incomparably greater than anything achieved at the height of the Jim Crow era. What’s odd is how long it has taken the African-American community to address in a forceful and thoughtful way this racially biased and utterly counterproductive situation.

How, after decades of undeniable racial progress, did we end up with this virtual gulag of racial incarceration?

Patterson offers explanatory examples of pathological black culture, including the case of New York Knicks owner Isiah Thomas' practice of calling a former black female Knicks executive a "bitch" and a "ho," the beating of black evangelical minister Juanita Bynum by her estranged husband, and O.J. Simpson's recent run-in with the law:

These events all point to something that has been swept under the rug for too long in black America: the crisis in relations between men and women of all classes and, as a result, the catastrophic state of black family life, especially among the poor. Isiah Thomas’s outrageous double standard shocked many blacks in New York only because he had the nerve to say out loud what is a fact of life for too many black women who must daily confront indignity and abuse in hip-hop misogyny and everyday conversation.

What is done with words is merely the verbal end of a continuum of abuse that too often ends with beatings and spousal homicide. Black relationships and families fail at high rates because women increasingly refuse to put up with this abuse. The resulting absence of fathers — some 70 percent of black babies are born to single mothers — is undoubtedly a major cause of youth delinquency.

The circumstances that far too many African-Americans face — the lack of paternal support and discipline; the requirement that single mothers work regardless of the effect on their children’s care; the hypocritical refusal of conservative politicians to put their money where their mouths are on family values; the recourse by male youths to gangs as parental substitutes; the ghetto-fabulous culture of the streets; the lack of skills among black men for the jobs and pay they want; the hypersegregation of blacks into impoverished inner-city neighborhoods — all interact perversely with the prison system that simply makes hardened criminals of nonviolent drug offenders and spits out angry men who are unemployable, unreformable and unmarriageable, closing the vicious circle.

Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and other leaders of the Jena demonstration who view events there, and the racial horror of our prisons, as solely the result of white racism are living not just in the past but in a state of denial. Even after removing racial bias in our judicial and prison system — as we should and must do — disproportionate numbers of young black men will continue to be incarcerated.

Until we view this social calamity in its entirety — by also acknowledging the central role of unstable relations among the sexes and within poor families, by placing a far higher priority on moral and social reform within troubled black communities, and by greatly expanding social services for infants and children — it will persist.

I have made parallel arguments in my posts on black America. In one recent entry I argued:

Blacks do not need more policies of redistribution amid the endless cries of "institutional racism." We've seen enough of that. It's been 43 years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and the political system, the educational establishment, and the corporate sector have made historic efforts to promote full inclusion for African-Americans in mainstream life. The key agenda for the GOP should be to promote black independence and uplift through policies focusing on greater individual and family responsibility, excellence in educational achievement, the rebuilding of the black family structure, and opportunity-oriented economic policies, focusing on entrepreneurship and ownership.

The current crisis presents a phenomenal opportunity for the GOP to provide crucial leadership on race, and smarts too!

At least one top Democrat has already demonstrated an astounding ignorance of diversity of black America today:

We need reform of the black family in America, and we need frank discussion about the crisis of the black lower third in this presidential campaign. Democratic Party pandering on race to young, left-leaning MTV crowds represents just more of the same old victims' strategy of grievance mobilization. Blacks need high expectations, not condescension. A freedom and opportunity agenda, one the GOP is best situated to champion, offers a powerful direction for the future of black progress.

Going Phishing: Limbaugh and "Phony Soldiers"

The hard-left's attempt to tar Rush Limbaugh for his intemperate remark about "phony soldiers" is a scam. It's not much different from "phishing," which savvy web users know is the act of falsely claiming to be an real business in an attempt to trick the user into revealing personal data that will be used for identity theft.

After the MoveOn debacle, lefties are just itching for political payback, and they've seized on the Limbaugh story like a junky pumping up his last spoon of smack. Yet, while Limbaugh's comments were ill-considered, what was said has been taken out of context: The remarks were off-color statements during a broadcast, in contrast to MoveOn's high-profile smear against the highly decorated four-star commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.

Karen Tumulty at Swampland provides a quote that captures the hard-left's outrage against Limbaugh:

Any American who risks his or her life to defend us has earned the respect and gratitude of every American citizen, irrespective of their views on this war. If Mr. Limbaugh made the remark he is reported to have made, it reflects very poorly on him and not the objects of his offensive comment. I expect most Americans, whatever their political views, will have the same reaction. He would be well advised to retract it and apologize.

I agree, but Limbaugh's comments were more particular than has been portrayed. Be sure to see the whole transcript. Limbaugh's "phony soldiers" remark was predicated on the actions of guys like Jesse MacBeth, an antiwar hero who invented stories of American atrocities in Iraq.

Yet from the left blogosphere's attacks one would think Limbaugh impugned each and every member of the military who's had reservations about the war, which is not true.

Jules Crittenden puts things in perpective, noting that Limbaugh's a blowhard, and his comments were dumb:

Remind me not to vote for him for president. Not because he said something stupid and offensive, but because he’s a professional blowhard....

Anyway, “phony soldiers” was a stupid and offensive thing to say about people who are doing their duty and could be killed or maimed whether they agree with what they’ve been asked to do or not. I’d be more inclined to call them “short-sighted” or “ill-informed” or maybe “disgruntled” soldiers. Beauchamp, now, that guy I’d call a phony soldier, even though he’s serving overseas and could get his head blown off. But that’s because of the sockpuppetry, the lies, the dishonoring of his comrades.

Should Congress condemn Limbaugh? The lefties are congratulating themselves for considering themselves above that, which is actually a way of saying they are PO’d that their Democratic-led Congress voted overwhelmingly to smack the New York Times and MoveOn last week.

A shock jock blurting out something stupid is an order of magnitude or two below one of the nation’s leading newspapers running a full-page ad, a half-price, full of insulting distortions about a wartime commander in the midst of critical hearings. I’d be inclined to think Congress has better things to do than waste its time trying to influence the New York Times or Rush Limbaugh, but seeing what Congress has been wasting it’s time with lately, the NYT vote was an improvement. And got more votes than most of what Congress has been wasting its time with lately. If they do go after Limbaugh for an offhand remark, they’ll have lowered the threshold so far that they won’t be able to not accomplish anything else, they’ll be so busy condemning idiotic and tasteless ads, blurtings, comic sketches, etc.

Crittenden adds a footnote acknowledging the unintentional nature of what Limbaugh said, while still renouncing blanket criticism of U.S. troops who disagree with current policy.

Limbaugh's comments, though poorly conceived, compose the left's current red herring in its efforts to squirm out from under the ignominy of its anything-goes-campaign to end the war. The Democrats, unsurprisingly, are gleefully outraged by the comments.

I don't listen to Limbaugh, and I've never cared for his style of attack broadcasting. I'd be among the first to denounce him if he slandered our troops. Based on the transcipts of his broadcast, that's not the case. The "phony soldiers" incident is a scam - like "phishing" - a trick perpetuated by leftists to get folks to "buy" a new meme, and ultimately to draw attention away from its real smear campaign against the military and supporters of the war.

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Update: From the comments section of a lefty milblog criticizing Limbaugh:

Outstanding response to Rush! That drug-addled fat fuck needs to have his microphone shoved up his ass. You did a pretty good job of doing it, too.

As I noted in the post, Limbaugh's comments were ill-considered. Such nasty ad hominem attacks do nothing to further the discussion.

Update II: Crooks and Liars steps to double-time their Limbaugh smear campaign with a link to the new attack video from Vote Vets:

The more pressure put on Limbaugh the better...Contact your representatives...and let them know you want them to condemn Rush’s disgusting and un-American statements about our troops and veterans.

Contact Crooks and Liars and remind them to read the text of Limbaugh's broadast.

MoveOn Jumps the Shark

With the exception of those among the hardest of the hard left, MoveOn.org has pretty much jumped the shark after its disastrous attack on General Petraeus.

MoveOn has defended its advertising strategy amid reports that the Democratic Party establishment is uneasy with the group's latest initiatives. This Washington Post story explains:

Many Democratic strategists were privately furious at the group for launching an attack on a member of the military rather than Bush, arguing that it gave Republicans a point on which to attack the Democrats and to rally around the administration's war policy. The displeasure underscores the uneasy alliance between MoveOn and the party. MoveOn, after its rather guerrilla start, has increasingly become part of the Democratic establishment in Washington. It has donated money and lent its Washington director, Thomas Mattzie, to a coalition of liberal groups with major funding from wealthy donors that organizes in an office on K Street to promote opposition to the war.

Obviously the Democrats are hesitant to lose support among the liberal elite, like those in the Hollywood movie establishment, as this Los Angeles Times story indicates:

IT looked for a while as if MoveOn.org had become one of Hollywood's favorite liberal advocacy groups, especially for those looking for a place to express their antiwar sentiments without incurring a lot of unfavorable publicity.

Directors and celebrities lined up to help the Internet-based organization formed in 1998 in the wake of President Clinton's impeachment. Oliver Stone directed an antiwar ad for the group, as did Rob Reiner. Moby offered his musical talent, rallying other artists like Michael Stipe and Eddie Vedder to get involved. Director Richard Linklater and writer Aaron Sorkin produced a series of anti-Bush ads in the run-up to the 2004 election. Producer Robert Greenwald and actor Mike Farrell organized celebrities on behalf of the group before the war even started.

But last week when MoveOn ignited controversy by issuing an ad attacking Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the American troops in Iraq, entertainment industry politicos began to wonder if the group had gone too far and in fact become a liability for the largely Democratic Hollywood crowd.

"Most people saw it as a mistake that really hurt progressive candidates," said one Hollywood insider, who asked not to be named because he continues to be involved in fundraising efforts. "We just handed the Republicans a gift. It's like MoveOn has become tone-deaf. I think people will be more cautious and careful about what they do with MoveOn in the future."

Survival instinct is hard-wired in this town. You can push the message, but not at the expense of losing the audience. Plus, few want to be seen as wild-eyed moonbats. It's not a good career move. (Who can forget the footage of Jane Fonda cavorting with the enemy in Vietnam?)

MoveOn's debacle is turning out to be the gift that keeps on giving! Amid the controversy a harsh spotlight is being focused on George Soros, MoveOn's major money backer, and the master proponent of the hard-left agenda (via Memeorandum).

See also William Kristol's analysis of the emerging political stakes in the MoveOn aftermath, and especially his discussion of Hillary Clinton, who, in "Kerry-esque" fashion, "voted for General Petraeus before voting against him."

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Update: For some novel lefty spin on the MoveOn disaster, check out Matthew Yglesias, who argues the whole thing was a "meaningless sideshow" meant to distract attention away from the administration's "perpetual war" (plus more commentary on the issue at Memeorandum).

Obama's Class Warfare

Check out this excellent editorial from the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Barack Obama's new tax proposal, released yesterday:

The tax platforms of the Democratic Party's leading presidential candidates can be summed up in two words: class warfare.

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama released the specifics on his redistributionist policies on Tuesday, proposing more than $80 billion in tax cuts for senior citizens and lower- and middle-class households and at least that much in tax increases on the upper-middle class, the affluent, investors of all means and corporations that employ millions of Americans.

"We need a tax code that's fair -- a tax code that rewards work and advances opportunity," Sen. Obama said in a speech unveiling his plan.

Sen. Obama would seem to be advocating a flat tax rate for all wage earners, or one that allows workers to keep an increasing share of their income as their skills and careers advance. That's not the case.

The focal point of his proposal is what he calls the "Making Work Pay" tax credit, which would cut $500 from the tax bills of lower-class and middle-class filers, but wouldn't be available to households earning at least $150,000 per year. So the home with two college-educated professionals, each grinding out 50-hour weeks at an annual salary of about $75,000 -- middle class by every definition -- wouldn't be entitled to the credit. This, to Sen. Obama, is "rewarding work" and "advancing opportunity."

Sen. Obama suggests allowing senior citizens who earn less than $50,000 per year to be exempt from all income taxes. He would also allow homeowners who don't itemize their tax returns to claim a tax credit -- not a deduction, but a tax credit -- equal to 10 percent of the year's mortgage interest payments. Sen. Obama proposes no similar credit for those who itemize their returns.

Meanwhile, he wants to the raise tax rate on the top income bracket from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, nearly double the tax rate on capital gains and dividends, and eliminate all tax breaks for the gas and oil industries and private equity firm managers.

Talk about a recipe for economic disaster. Taking tens of billions of dollars that would otherwise be invested and dumping them into the black hole of the federal treasury risks stunting job growth -- and the prosperity of the very people Sen. Obama wants to help.

Read the whole thing. The editorial goes on to highlight the perversities of the Democratic Party's tax policy ideology, and notes that currenty 40 percent of U.S. households pay 99 percent of all income taxes:

Sen. Obama and his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination are prodding this dependent 60 percent, telling them how bad they've got it, and promising them more programs -- universal health care, help with their mortgage payments -- at no cost to the beneficiaries.

Of course, that's all "in fairness." Go figure!

Turns Out That Summer Really Didn't Make a Difference

Cross-posted from The Oxford Medievalist:

I find it highly amusing that Senate Democrats, whilst incessantly deriding the surge as the same old failed strategy and urging a "change of course" in Iraq, can't seem to shake their own failed strategy in Congress. Instead of seeking compromise in the wake of General Petraeus', and Ambassador Crocker's, testimonies, the Politico reports that Senate Democrats will continue their failed strategy of pushing for, among other things that won't pass, a hard timetable for withdrawal. The Democrats' ability to compromise was always predicated on their ability to peel wavering Republicans to their side, and now that seems unlikely given that GOP leaders are committed to giving General Petraeus until March to continue the surge. It's no surprise, then, that the Democratic agenda is spearheaded by the ever-courageous Blind Harry, who sounds positively childish:

"We haven't found much movement with the Republicans. They seem to be sticking with the president," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Tuesday. "I think they've decided they definitely want this to be the Republican Senate's war, not just Bush's [war]. They're jealous. They don't want him to have it as only his war."

Similarly shocking is Senator Carl Levin's (D-Mich.) attempt to portray the Democrats' stand as a matter of principle, as opposed to simply a matter of what MoveOn.org wants:

"We want to vote on something we believe in before we move on," said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "There could be people who vote for this who didn't before."

Meanwhile, as the Democrats plan for more symbolic gestures to their anti-war base, that base is getting rather restless. The frustration has some anti-war activists, indeed has some Democrats, wondering aloud if the anti-war base should turn its sights on Democratic members of Congress who are not more aggressively challenging the GOP. Tom Matzzie, head of the anti-war coalition Americans Against Escalation in Iraq (AAEI), thought by now that the offensive his coalition was about to launch against Republicans at the start of the summer was

"going to smash their heads against their base and flush them down the toilet,” Matzzie said in April.

Yet here we are almost six months later and progress continues to be made in Iraq and the Democrats have nothing to offer other than "more of the same."

Sound familiar?

Cross-posted from The Oxford Medievalist.

"I Can Support the President..."

Hillary Clinton states, on Meet the Press, September 15, 2002 (via Liberty Pundit):

"I can support the president on weapons of mass destruction...I can support action against Saddam Hussein because I think it's in the long-term interest of our national security..."

This YouTube is pure gold! The absolute best!

The Democrats don't care about victory in Iraq, they care only about victory in 2008!

Hillary in Power

"How will Hillary govern?" I posed this query in a recent post.

It's no mystery, of course, as we have Senator Clinton's record by which to guide our analysis (YouTube courtesy of Goat's Barnyard):

But see also this week's cover story at Newsweek, "How She Would Govern."

The piece is a trip down the Memory Lane of 1990s presidential politics. It's a good analysis as well: Hillary's portrayed as ambitious and unbending, and she gets her comeuppance with the brutal political repudiation of the Clinton administration's healthcare initiative, which she spearheaded.

The article is also insightful in noting Hillary's signature unwillingness to give in, and her redoubtable skills of political recuperation.

But Hillary's lacking in conviction, and I think that quality tells us a great deal about how she'll lead. She's twisted and turned on Iraq, which this passage illustrates:

To many in her party...Clinton is often too afraid of political risk. Their most compelling piece of evidence: Iraq. It is hard to remember now, but in her early days in the Senate, it was taken for granted that Clinton's greatest political imperative was to boost her hawk credentials. As a woman, and a Clinton, she had to prove that she could be as tough as any man if she ever wanted to run for the presidency. After joining the Senate Armed Services Committee, she immersed herself in details of force structure and military preparedness. She reached out to generals and formed a close bond with Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, an Army ranger and paratrooper. In October 2002, she joined 28 other Democrats in voting to authorize the Iraq War.

Clinton says the Iraq War vote was without "any doubt" the most important one she's made as senator, the product of a "difficult, painful, painstaking" decision-making process. Over and over in the campaign, she and her aides have said that her vote was one of principle, not expediency, that she sincerely believed her "yea" would give Colin Powell the leverage he needed to persuade the administration to wait to invade until it had the support of the United Nations. This is hard for many in either party to believe. "Everyone knew that was in fact a war resolution," says one former Clinton administration official, who now supports Obama and did not want to criticize Clinton on the record. "The overwhelming sense among the Dems then was that this was a politically sensitive vote. They didn't want to be on the wrong side of a winning war, and a popular president. Political calculations were pre-eminent in the decision." Indeed, in her persistent refusal to acknowledge that political realities played any role in her decision, she seems most like the old Hillary—incapable of admitting a flaw.

There's a inevitability to Hillary Clinton's White House bid, well, at least in her quest for the Democratic nomination.

But should she win in November 2008, there should be no surprises regarding her formidable political powers, nor any delusions about her "weather vane" approach to government (thanks to G-Man over at The Pickle for the "weather vane" analogy.)

Hillary Clinton Pulls Out Lead in Key Early States

Today's article on the Los Angeles Times poll focuses its main attention on the Republican presidential field.

The poll finds, for example, that while Rudy Giuliani remains the GOP presidential frontrunner nationally, in the key states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, Giuliani is either running behind or is statistically tied with Mitt Romney or Fred Thomspon.

What I found more interesting is the poll's findings on the Democratic field. Hillary Clinton has consolidated her frontrunner status in this survey:

On the Democratic side, the poll results show that Clinton's top rivals have so far not succeeded in their recent efforts to portray her as too much of an insider to foster change in the country.

To the contrary, voters in the three early states sometimes view her rivals as more likable and more likely to offer new ideas -- yet they seem to place greater emphasis on Clinton's perceived experience and her ability to deal with Iraq and terrorism.

Clinton holds leads in all three states, despite factors in each that have been considered advantages for her opponents:

* In Iowa, where Edwards has been strong in the past, Clinton leads him by 5 percentage points, 28% to 23%, whereas Illinois Sen. Barack Obama wins support from 19% of voters.

* In New Hampshire, which has been considered favorable ground for Obama given his past appeal among upscale and well-educated white voters, Clinton's lead is more stark. More primary voters there support her than Edwards and Obama combined.

* In South Carolina, where Obama's campaign has hoped to rally support from the state's large black population, Clinton continues to beat him among nearly every constituency, including blacks.

Edwards, meanwhile, who touts the fact that he was born in South Carolina and won that state's primary as a candidate in 2004, wins only 7% among South Carolina Democrats -- suggesting that he, like Obama, is failing to gain traction against what is looking more and more like a Clinton juggernaut.

"On foreign affairs, I think Clinton's stronger. On security, I think she's stronger," said Dana Cote, 64, a retired registered nurse who lives in Columbia, S.C.

Cote was among the 34% of South Carolina Democrats who named Obama as the candidate of "new ideas," compared with 27% for Clinton. But like Cote, nearly one-third of the South Carolinians who praised Obama on that front said they would actually vote for Clinton, anyway.

Obama "hasn't got enough experience," he said. "You've got to be dirty to play politics. And he hasn't gotten dirty enough."

Across the board, Clinton is either winning every major voter category or is competitive with Obama among groups that have favored him in the past, even the upscale voters who helped fuel his rise in national polls.

Obama holds slight leads among college graduates in Iowa and South Carolina -- a proven strength for him in the past. But Clinton leads among those voters in New Hampshire. The survey suggests that Clinton has closed that gap by courting college-educated women, among whom she is either tied with Obama or ahead in the three states.

Even among South Carolina's black voters, who are expected to make up about half of the Democratic primary electorate there, the prospect of electing the country's first black president has not yet emerged as an advantage for the Illinois senator. Obama wins only about one-third of the black vote, compared with 43% for Clinton and 18% who don't yet know.

That spells trouble for Obama, who clearly has not closed the deal with this core constituency.

I keep joking with my students about a Hillary Clinton presidency (they get a kick out of the notion of Bill Clinton as "first gentleman"), but there does seem to be some inevitability to her nomination as the Democratic standard-bearer.

How will she govern?

Earlier I had been reassured by some of Clinton's positions on foreign policy. She seemed quite centrist late last year - before she faced tremendous pressure from the antiwar factions - but she's now lost credibility on Iraq as far as I'm concerned. I'm not looking forward to a second Clinton presidency.

For more on these prospects, check this week's Newsweek adds cover story, "What Kind of Decider Would She Be?" How's that for some sense of "Hillary inevitability?"

Antiwar Forces Paint Petraeus as Lying Traitor

The antiwar attack machine is gearing up in full force to discredit this week's testimony of General David Petraeus. Over the weekend congressional Democrats and hardline lefty bloggers sought to dampen the credibility of Petraeus and his highly anticipated report by callling him a liar and a traitor.

Angevin13 over at The Oxford Medievalist reported yesterday that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid questioned General Petraeus' honesty. This quote is from ABC News:

This week General David Petraeus will deliver his long-awaited progress report on the surge in Iraq. Faced with mounting reports of the improving security situation in places such as Anbar province, Democrats -who have a vested political interest in seeing a U.S. defeat in Iraq - are trying to attack General Petraeus' honesty.

Angevin notes that a number of previously skeptical war commentators have now reported success on the ground, and adds:

In light of this evidence, questioning Petraeus' credibility, when their own party members' are returning from Iraq and reporting the surge's success, indicates that the Democrats' strategy is bankrupt.

The "Petraeus-as-liar" meme got some steam over at FireDogLake yesterday as well. In a post by "looseheadprop," FDL attacks alleged Republican deceitfulness (with G.W. Bush as the biggest "lying" villain), and warns General Petraeus that he could face charges if his testimony is untruthful:

Lying in this report to Congress would be a very significant thing.

I really hope that the General is spending some time this weekend seriously considering the consequences that could befall him (Oh, and the American people? Oh, and our kids under his command?) if he lies in his report to Congress.

Does he think he is somehow immune from indictment? Does he think his chest full of ribbons entitles him to attempt to perpetrate a fraud upon the Congress and people of the United States?

Not to be outdone, as Pete Hegseth notes, MoveOn.org is calling Petraeus a traitor for his reporting of substantial military gains in Iraq. The Hegesth piece appeared last night, and notes:

Tomorrow--as General David Petraeus provides his Iraq assessment to Congress--the antiwar group MoveOn.org is running a full-page advertisement in the New York Times under the headline: "General Petraeus or General Betray us? Cooking the books for the White House."

Let's be clear: MoveOn.org is suggesting that General Petraeus has 'betrayed' his country. This is disgusting. To attack as a traitor an American general commanding forces in war because his 'on the ground' experience does not align with MoveOn.org's political objectives is utterly shameful. It shows contempt for America's military leadership, as well as for the troops who have confidence in him, as our fellow soldiers in Iraq certainly do.

As I've noted many times on this page, the hard left has become desperate in its attempts to discredit the administration, the military, and any other pro-victory contingents in American politics determined to see our efforts through. Markos Moulitsas at Daily Kos has even put up a post telling Petraeus to f--- off.

Isn't that great? Leading antiwar forces have nothing remotely substantive to add to this debate, so they resort to name-calling, allegations of treason, and vulgar profanity. Remember though, we're not talking about fringe groups. Moulitsas himself has proclaimed many times that his movement is the future of the Democratic Party, and Move0n.org has become one of the party's biggest sources of unofficial "issue advertising" attacks.

We need to hear what General Petraeus has to say. There should be no doubts about his honesty, integrity, and determination to do what's best for our nation.

Democrats Launch New Assault on Petraeus Report

The Los Angeles Times reports the new tack of congressional Democrats to deligitimize the highly anticipated Petraeus Report:

Launching a new assault on the president's war strategy, congressional Democrats have begun to dismiss the Bush administration claims of military progress as unreliable spin ahead of Monday's testimony from the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

In a shift from recent comments that the military buildup appeared to be making some gains, Democrats are now questioning the statistics being used to back up the reports of progress.

They are also increasingly casting Army Gen. David H. Petraeus' upcoming report as a product of the White House rather than an independent analysis by a top military commander.

"By carefully manipulating the statistics, the Bush-Petraeus report will try to persuade us that violence in Iraq is decreasing and thus the surge is working," said Illinois Sen. Richard J. Durbin, his chamber's No. 2 Democrat, in a speech Friday in Washington. "Even if the figures were right, the conclusion is wrong."

The attacks are not without political risk for Democrats, who are sensitive to accusations of not supporting the troops and who have sought to avoid criticizing the military as they have declared the Iraq war a lost cause. Their new criticisms imply doubt about the credibility of a general who less than eight months ago won Senate confirmation as the top U.S. military commander in Iraq without a single dissenting vote.

Durbin said he did not want to question Petraeus' integrity: "I respect him very much. And I believe he is an extremely competent military leader who has been given an almost impossible military assignment."

The Democratic rhetoric in advance of Petraeus' scheduled testimony Monday before two House committees underscores how polarized the war debate in Washington remains. It also highlights how deeply congressional Democrats distrust the Bush administration.

This is an interesting development. At the same time that moderates of both parties are recognizing progress on the ground, and negotiating future plans on reducing the numbers of troops deployed, the most hardline antiwar foes in Congress are bucking such trends for pure partisan gain.

Rahm Emanuel's remarks at the end of the Times piece are classic:

"Instead of a new strategy for Iraq, the Bush administration is cherry-picking the data to support their political objectives and preparing a report that will offer another defense of the president's strategy," Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the No. 3 Democrat in the House, said in a floor speech Friday.

"We don't need a report that wins the Nobel Prize for creative statistics or the Pulitzer for fiction."

Read the whole article. I would think Emanuel - as one of the top congressional Democrats - might show a little more leadership and little less partisanhip on this issue. His comments are especially interesting, given how the article notes that Petraeus will seek to provide testimony from the perspective of pure military objectivity.

Update: I have removed the Photobucket image from the top of this post. After doing some fact-checking, I've discovered the quote found in that image is not Abraham Lincoln's, but intead is attributed to a conservative scholar named J. Michael Waller, who claims the false attribution to President Lincoln was the result of a copy-editing error.

Darn it too, because I thought the "arrested, exiled, or hanged" line added some nice spice to my entry!

Another Democrat Goes to Damascus

Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who is seeking his party's presidential nomination, blasted President Bush and the Iraq deployment during a visit with Syrian strongman Bashir Assad (via Memeorandum):

US Democratic presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich, on a Mideast visit that included a stop in Syria, said the country lambasted by the Bush administration deserves credit for taking in more than a million Iraqi refugees.

Kucinich, a strong anti-war opponent who trails far in the US presidential polls, also said he won't visit Iraq on his trip to the region because he considers the US military deployment there illegal.

"I feel the United States is engaging in an illegal occupation ... I don't want to bless that occupation with my presence," he said in an interview in Lebanon, after visiting Syria. "I will not do it."

Kucinich, who accused the Bush administration of policies that have destabilized the Mideast, met with Syrian President Bashar Assad during his visit to Damascus. He said Assad was receptive to his ideas of "strength through peace."

He also praised Syria for taking in Iraqi refugees.

And I'm sure Kucinich praised Assad for the arms pipeline he's providing for the transit of materiel from Iran to the Hezbollah thugs in Southern Lebanon.

Calls for diplomacy with Syria may be warranted (at least some have argued), but heaping such praise in a visit to the capital of a state that has allowed the free flow of insurgents in and out of Iraq , while at the same time refusing to make a stop in that country - with perhaps a goodwill gesture to the U.S. service personnel fighting valiantly there - ought to automatically disqualify Kucinich as a serious prospect for president of the United States.

Battling for the Independent Vote in 2008

Peter Wallsten's got a nice piece up this morning at the Los Angeles Times on the shift among independent voters away from the Republican Party. In 2004, independents around the country - ensconsed in their "exurban" enclaves - joined more conservative partisans in sending George W. Bush back to Washington.

This time around, these same voters are likely to do a 180 degree political turn, perhaps boosting Democratic chances for securing the White House in 2008:

Unaffiliated voters, who split evenly between Bush and Democrat John F. Kerry in 2004, are now looking more favorably at the Democratic Party, a reaction to Bush's slide in the polls, the U.S. struggle in Iraq and other disappointments with GOP leadership.

It is a dramatic political development in such a closely divided electorate, and one that is likely to paint a different Electoral College map that for the last two elections was shaded Republican red in the heartland and the South, and Democratic blue in the coastal West, the Upper Midwest and the Northeast.

Strategists in both major parties believe the shift among independents was crucial to last year's Democratic sweep of congressional and state races in a number of traditionally Republican states, such as Colorado, Missouri, Montana and Ohio....

Strategists agree that the shift foreshadows a far more complicated calculus as next year's presidential election unfolds. Already, both major parties are examining ways to lure the increasingly important constituency, which though losing faith in Bush, is not enthusiastic about the Democratic Party. At stake are the White House and control of Congress, with competitive Senate races expected in Colorado as well as in Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Virginia -- all with heavy concentrations of independent voters.

"These independents are not marching into the Democratic Party and declaring themselves Democrats, but the change is in the tilt," said Carroll Doherty, associate director of the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. "They are definitely leaning toward the Democrats."

Polls show that the movement among independents is a broad phenomenon.

It's hard to disagree with most of the analysis, although it might be worth it to take a good look at the Pew survey's sampling techniques and question items.

That said, one basic issue facing the electorate is the question of competence, especially as it relates to the war and national security policy. When it comes to pulling the lever in the voting booth in 2008, most Americans would likely be little influenced by overarching theories of democracy promotion or neoconservative ideology. Had the Rumsfeld Pentagon - and not to mention the military's general staff - been better prepared for post-conflict stablization in Iraq, and had we perhaps sent more troops for the invasion in 2003, our deployment might not have descended into unrelievable destruction and nihilist violence. This long deployment is testing even some arch conservatives. It's unlikely that those sitting on the fence would be unaffected.

Of course, the administration's early mistakes in Iraq have been internalized by those in the national security policymaking community; and now progress in Iraq is developing apace. Yet, the average voter is likely tired of the GOP scandals, and the roiling of the ecomomy and housing market must be putting quite a few voters on edge.

This opening has the Democrats salivating at their prospects. It's an opportunity that's driven the hardcore antiwar establishment into a frenzy, as well.

But there's still time for the GOP. The closeness of past presidential elections has shown that campaigns matters. There's no reason to expect 2008 to be any different. Plus, should Hillary Clinton win the nomination, her negative poll numbers remain high, a situation likely to be especially true of independents who lean toward Republican candidates.

Thus, it's wise for people to hold back a bit, and take all of this early polling and journalistic speculation with a couple of grains of salt. We've got a long way yet until November 2008. A lot could happen in the interim. Improvement in Iraq, or the Democrats' own Larry Craig scandal, might help persuade voters that the GOP might not be such a bad bet after all.

Norman Hsu is Shady Character in Democratic Fundraising Circles

This morning's Los Angeles Times has an excellent background story on Norman Hsu, the mystery Democratic fundraiser who's at the center of Hillary Clinton's fundraising scandal:

Money has brought both trappings and trouble for Norman Hsu. Major contributions to the campaigns of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and other candidates have made the apparel executive an insider in elite political circles. He shows up in cozy pictures with politicians, at lavish fundraising events, and on the boards of prestigious organizations.

But Hsu's history includes more unsavory episodes and associations. In 1990, he allegedly was kidnapped by Chinese gang members in San Francisco as part of an apparent effort to collect a debt. A year and a half later, he pleaded no contest to a charge of fleecing investors in what authorities called a Ponzi scheme of fraud. Along the way, he left a bankruptcy filing and bitter investors who accused him of making off with their savings.

Hsu is now at the center of a political scandal, with Sen. Clinton (D-N.Y.) and others rushing to return his contributions and sever embarrassing ties to a man still wanted on an outstanding warrant for the fraud case in California. Hsu could turn himself in as early as today in San Mateo County, where a hearing on the matter has been scheduled.

Read the whole thing. Hsu's a fugitive from justice who enjoys a reclusive life of luxury. Yet, Democratic Party bigwigs have welcomed Hsu into their fundraising circles, apparently oblivious to his shady side:

Hsu has donated or raised more than $1 million for Democrats and their causes, often delivering large donations from multiple individuals. Some of these "bundled" contributions have raised suspicions. In particular, Hsu has worked closely with a family in Daly City, Calif., headed by William Paw, a mail carrier, and his wife, Alice, who is listed as a homemaker.

The Paws apparently never donated to national candidates until 2004. Since then, they have given $213,000, including $55,000 to Clinton. Barcella denies Hsu provided money for the contributions, which would violate federal law. The Paws, Barcella said, "have the financial wherewithal to make their own donations."As a result of his largesse, Hsu's stock rose rapidly in Democratic circles.

He is a member of Clinton's "HillRaiser" group, made up of individuals who each pledge to raise more than $100,000 for her presidential campaign. Hsu helped host a series of high-profile events, including one in March at the Beverly Hills home of Ron Burkle, an ardent Clinton backer. In May, he co-hosted a fundraiser in Palo Alto with Susie Tompkins Buell, another Clinton bundler.

Captain Ed wonders where Hsu got all his money (and check Memeorandum for additional commentary).

A look at the Times piece suggests Hsu was a shady hustler running Ponzi schemes. The deeper question is why wasn't Hsu vetted more carefully by those who have welcomed him into the top circles of the Democratic Party establishment.

The GOP and the Women's Vote

Kimberly Strassel's essay this morning argues that on women's issues this presidential campaign season, the Democrats are back in the seventies. The party's retro take on "what women want" provides an opening for GOP candidates to snag women voters with market-based approaches to gender equality (or really, equity):

The Democrats'...views of what counts for "women's issues" are stuck back in the disco days, about the time Ms. Clinton came of political age. Under the title "A Champion for Women," the New York senator's Web site promises the usual tired litany of "equal pay" and a "woman's right to choose." Mr. Richardson pitches a new government handout for women on "family leave" and waxes nostalgic for the Equal Rights Amendment. Give these Boomers some bell bottoms and "The Female Eunuch," and they'd feel right at home. Polls show Ms. Clinton today gets her best female support from women her age and up.

The rest of the female population has migrated into 2007. Undoubtedly quite a few do care about abortion rights and the Violence Against Women Act. But for the 60% of women who today both scramble after a child and hold a job, these culture-war touchpoints aren't their top voting priority. Their biggest concerns, not surprisingly, hew closely to those of their male counterparts: the war in Iraq, health care, the economy. But following close behind are issues that are more unique to working women and mothers. Therein rests the GOP opportunity.
Here's an example of how a smart Republican could morph an old-fashioned Democratic talking point into a modern-day vote winner. Ms. Clinton likes to bang on about "inequality" in pay. The smart conservative would explain to a female audience that there indeed is inequality, and that the situation is grave. Only the bad guy isn't the male boss; it's the progressive tax code.

Most married women are second-earners. That means their income is added to that of their husband's, and thus taxed at his highest marginal rate. So the married woman working as a secretary keeps less of her paycheck than the single woman who does the exact same job. This is the ultimate in "inequality," yet Democrats constantly promote the very tax code that punishes married working women. In some cases, the tax burdens and child-care expenses for second-earners are so burdensome they can't afford a career. But when was the last time a Republican pointed out that Ms. Clinton was helping to keep ladies in the kitchen?

For that matter, when was the last time a GOP candidate pointed out that their own free-market policies could help alleviate this problem? Should President Bush's tax cuts expire, tens of thousands of middle-class women will see more of their paychecks disappear into the maw of their husband's higher bracket. A really brave candidate would go so far as to promise eliminating this tax bias altogether. Under a flat tax, second-earner women would pay the same rate as unmarried women and the guy down the hall. Let Democrats bang the worn-out drum of a "living wage." Republicans should customize their low-tax message to explain how they directly put more money into female pockets.

Read the whole thing. Strassel argues that GOP candidates are best positioned to move beyond the "progressive" rhetoric of women's "rights," to instead focus on women's "choice," "opportunity," and "ownership."

SAT Scores and Tattooed Avril Wannabes

The College Board announced a national decline in average SAT scores this week.

I wasn't planing on writing about it, but considering the discussion of satire around here lately, I thought I'd share this hillarious post by Harvey over at IMAO:

Average scores on the reading and math sections of the SAT test declined slightly this year, indicating that America's teenagers are dumber than ever. This news was greeted by jubilation from Democrats across the country.

Harvey notes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's statement:

The fact is, Democrats have nothing to offer the average intelligent, self-sufficient person. All we can do is take advantage of drooling idiots who want to put their lives in the hands of the Nanny State. Our only shot at political power is the votes of people who are too dumb to think for themselves. This time, it's the jackpot. Think for themselves? Hell, these pierced & tatted Avril wanna-be's can barely think at all!

Read the whole thing. Pelosi apparently danced a little jig upon hearing the news. Yet, as Harvey explains:

... some people objected to being called "mega-tard-tastic" just because of piss-poor standardized test scores. Miss Teen USA contestant Lauren Upton (Miss South Carolina) explained her point of view.

Lauren Upton, of course, has become famous around the blogosphere with her response to the fact that just 1 in 5 people can find the U.S. on a world map:

I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because…. some.. people out there… in our nation….. don’t have maps and I believe that our education, like such as in South Africa and the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should.. uh….our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S….. er, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for our children…..

Here's Upton's YouTube:

According to Harvey, upon hearing Upton's answer, Speaker Pelosi danced another jig.

Great stuff!

Trojan Horse Pragmatism: Markos Moulitsas as Vanguard of the Revolution

Peter Beinart has a very interesting analysis of Markos Moulitsas and the netroots up at the New Republic.

Beinart notes that in dismissing the most left-wing candidates in recent presidential elections, Moulitsas is illustrating the netroots movement's political pragmatism, its willingness to coopt the Democratic Party as a mainstream institutional vehicle to advance its progressive cause.

What explains this? Mostly it's the historical marginalization of the radical protest fringe in mainstream electoral politics. Beinart provides an excellent historical review of the failure of new left and militant forces to bring about radical change. With the possibility of utopian revolution more distant, hard left forces today see opportunity in capturing the Democratic Party for their own left-wing fundamentalism.

Beinart summarizes this shift, arguing that the Daily Kos netroots represent the most viable radical movement in decades:

It's the first broad-based liberal movement to emerge since communism's demise. In the Progressive era, it was conventional wisdom on the American left--asserted by everyone from Eugene Debs to John Dewey--that socialism was historically inevitable. Then, during the Depression--until Stalin's alliance with Hitler and the news of his terrible crimes brought most leftists to their senses--the Soviet Union became a real-life model of what revolution, as opposed to mere reform, could achieve. Even in the '60s, the shift towards outright resistance coincided with an enthusiasm for revolutions abroad. In Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Frantz Fanon, Mao Zedong, and Ho Chi Minh, the New Left saw blueprints for the revolution it desired at home. Tom Hayden and Staughton Lynd visited Hanoi, and Stokely Carmichael moved to West Africa, where he took the name Kwame Toure in honor of the leaders who had brought independence to Ghana and Guinea. "For generations," writes Todd Gitlin in his excellent book The Sixties, "the American left has externalized good: we needed to tie our fates to someone, somewhere in the world, who was seizing the chances for a humane society."

Now that's impossible. Sean Penn can embrace Hugo Chávez and Michael Moore may swoon over Cuban health care, but such radical camaraderie pales in comparison even to that of the Reagan years, when every major campus boasted a branch of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, which championed El Salvador's Marxist fmln. The Soviet Union is gone, and, virtually without exception, leftist revolutions in the third world have ended in tears. (Nelson Mandela, perhaps the only recent foreign leader to enjoy demigod status on the American left, underscores the point. Post-apartheid South Africa may be anti-American, but it is more capitalist than it was under white rule.) Even the social democracies of Western Europe don't shine as brightly as they did a few decades ago. With the cold war's end, there is simply no compelling ideological alternative beyond America's shores.

On the right, this has produced a utopian spasm: a belief that communism's demise proves capitalism's perfection, vindicating its purest, most deregulated form. But, on the left, it has made revolutionary rhetoric sound absurd. The netroots feel the American system has gone fundamentally wrong; that, in some profound ways, it has become less just, less decent, less free. And yet, the American system is all they have. It can be reformed, turned into a better version of itself. But it can't be overthrown because there is nothing with which to replace it. Markos Moulitsas is an idealist in a post-utopian age.

Beinart's analysis can be taken a step further, however. Perhaps we might see Kos in the light of Marxism-Leninism. Kos's netroots movement is analogous to Lenin's vanguard of the proletariat.

Moulitsas himself - not unlike Lenin - demonstrates a tremendous level of confidence in his political skills, and the rightness of his cause. This outlook allows him to dismiss centrists, such as Joe Leiberman, as outside the true constituency of the Democratic Party. In his recent writings and appearances, Moulitsas has evinced what I consider elements of megalomania. He's got an essentially irrational faith in the power of his movement, and his trumpeting of fake successes nicely illustrates delusions of grandeur.

Yet, in the event of Democratic Party successes next year, Moulitsas will claim the party's victories resulted from the efforts of the netroots and the appeal of its ideology. Kos will claim he and his acolytes alone possess the true progressive insights and credentials to achieve a long-lasting hard left agenda in the American political system. Rather than staying with the party's mainstream, electable functionaries, Kos will use his netroots hordes to purge party centrists, and they'll threaten to bludgeon the Democratic Party hierchy if it deviates from the netroots' Leninist line. A reign of democratic centralism will follow.

Kos' pragmatic political project is an ideological Trojan Horse. His pragmatism seeks to commandeer the official Democratic Party establishment to bring his movement to power and usher in a socialist revolution from below. As improbable as that might sound, Kos - in his drunken stupor of perceived power - certainly sees promise in the netroots's ideological role of as vanguard of the revolution.

John Edwards and American Foreign Policy

Out of the four articles published so far in Foreign Affairs' Campaign 2008 series, John Edwards' is the least impressive. Edwards wants to make clear that the American war in Iraq was a mistake. He argues that the Bush administration's foreign policy is the worst in generations:

At the dawn of a new century and on the brink of a new presidency, the United States today needs to reclaim the moral high ground that defined our foreign policy for much of the last century.

We must move beyond the wreckage created by one of the greatest strategic failures in U.S. history: the war in Iraq. Rather than alienating the rest of the world through assertions of infallibility and demands of obedience, as the current administration has done, U.S. foreign policy must be driven by a strategy of reengagement. We must reengage with our history of courage, liberty, and generosity. We must reengage with our tradition of moral leadership on issues ranging from the killings in Darfur to global poverty and climate change. We must reengage with our allies on critical security issues, including terrorism, the Middle East, and nuclear proliferation. With confidence and resolve, we must reengage with those who pose a security threat to us, from Iran to North Korea. And our government must reengage with the American people to restore our nation's reputation as a moral beacon to the world, tapping into our fundamental hope and optimism and calling on our citizens' commitment and courage to make this possible. We must lead the world by demonstrating the power of our ideals, not by stoking fear about those who do not share them.

I might be more inclined to take these arguments seriously had they been made by someone who was not in office when the war in Iraq was launched, or by one who had not voted to authorize the U.S. mission to liberate the Iraqi people from decades of authoritarianism.

It's certain that many mistakes were made in Iraq, but to argue that the war constitutes one our of greatest debacles ignores history and the strategic blunders that have been made in every war in which the U.S. has waged.

Edwards also argues for an immediate drawdown in Iraq, which is problematic, because the administration has rightly adjusted course and American forces have achieved great success in defeating the insurgency and establishing security in many regions of the country. Here's Edwards call to cut and run amid some of our greatest victories since March 2003:

We should begin our reengagement with the world by bringing an end to the Iraq war. Iraq's problems are deep and dangerous, but they cannot be solved by the U.S. military. For over a year, I have argued for an immediate withdrawal of 40,000 to 50,000 U.S. combat troops from Iraq, followed by an orderly and complete withdrawal of all combat troops. Once we are out of Iraq, the United States must retain sufficient forces in the region to prevent a genocide, a regional spillover of the civil war, or the establishment of an al Qaeda safe haven. We will most likely need to retain quick-reaction forces in Kuwait and a significant naval presence in the Persian Gulf. We will also need some security capabilities in Baghdad, inside the Green Zone, to protect the U.S. embassy and U.S. personnel. Finally, we will need a diplomatic offensive to engage the rest of the world -- including Middle Eastern nations and our allies in Europe -- in working to secure Iraq's future. All of these measures will finally allow us to close this terrible chapter and move on to the broader challenges of the new century.

Edwards in fact sounds reasonable in his proposals. Yet, he provides no discussion of the strategic stakes his policy would entail. Unlike the recent essays in this series by Mitt Romney and Rudolph Giuliani, Edwards refuses to acknowledge that the United States is not the source of the world's terror. Despite his obligatory reference to September 11, 2001, Edwards offers no compelling case that he clearly understands the true dangers facing the world today in Islamist fundamentalism.

Read the whole thing. It is true that the U.S. must begin a process of restoring our historic reputation as the force for global goodness. Doing so, however, requires a recognition of the rightness of our cause today. It requires clearly identifying the essential nature of our adversary. And it requires us to make no apologies for taking on agressively the nihilist forces bent on our utter destruction. This John Edwards has not done.

See also my previous posts in the series:

"Mitt Romney and American Foreign Policy."

"Barack Obama and American Foriegn Policy."

"Rudoph Giuliani and American Foreign Policy."