Right Wing Nut House

I have waxed both seriously and clownishly on this site about Barack Obama’s “Cotton Candy Candidacy” and the fact that his nebulously formed ideas make him something of an empty suit when it comes to trying to figure out where he stands on many issues.

I have also pointed out that this is deliberate obfuscation on his part, done in order to hide his liberal past. Indeed, there is no candidate in recent memory who has taken such pains to see that his political philosophy remains a cipher - a razor thin record in the Illinois Senate along with almost as invisible US Senate votes are carefully hidden away in the campaign’s attic, gone and mostly forgotten in the rush to proclaim the candidate The Agent of Change.

A slippery fish, this fellow Obama. Controversial votes when he was a state senator were avoided by voting “present” or claiming later that he erred by pressing the wrong button and didn’t really mean to take that position. Seen in the context of the “Great Game” the left plays with the American people in trying to mask their liberalism for fear of rejection by the voter, Obama, it turns out, is a master of “post partisan problem solving” - hiding his liberalism under an avalanche of platitudes and feel-good bromides that have his supporters swooning and the media eating out of his hand.

But the closet Obama may be in the process of being revealed. This is the Obama that voted to make a criminal out of a homeowner who was forced to use a gun in his own defense in his own home. This is the Obama that voted against making it a criminal offense for convicts on probation or on bail to have contact with a street gang. Indeed, Obama’s record on anti-gang legislation is simple; because gang members are more often people of color, they shouldn’t be singled out for increased attention or special penalties by the law.

But beyond his clearly liberal voting record in the state senate and his being named the most liberal senator in the US Senate by National Journal there is an issue just starting to bubble and froth below the media radar that may or may not become a huge issue depending on how protective the national media wants to be of Obama.

I am talking about the extent of the candidate’s ties to domestic terrorists from the 1960’s and how the American people might feel about their future president paling around with someone who set off bombs as a member of the group Weather Underground and to this day refuses to apologize for it. William Ayers told his followers back then:

“Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that’s where it’s really at.” This earns Ayers at least some spiritual kinship to Osama Bin Laden. (In last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, which of course went to press before Sept. 11, Ayers maintains that this was “a joke.” In a more serious vein, Ayers was quoted by another Times interviewer as saying, “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.”

The earliest known contact between Obama and Ayers was a “meet and greet” at Ayers house in Hyde Park - an upper middle class neighborhood on Chicago’s south side. Ben Smith at Politico gives an overview of the time and circumstance of the meeting:

In 1995, State Senator Alice Palmer introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama, to a few of the district’s influential liberals at the home of two well known figures on the local left: William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

While Ayers and Dohrn may be thought of in Hyde Park as local activists, they’re better known nationally as two of the most notorious — and unrepentant — figures from the violent fringe of the 1960s anti-war movement.

Now, as Obama runs for president, what two guests recall as an unremarkable gathering on the road to a minor elected office stands as a symbol of how swiftly he has risen from a man in the Hyde Park left to one closing in fast on the Democratic nomination for president.

In fact, Ayers - unrepentant about bombing his own country as he claims - is an establishment figure in the unreconstructed liberal circles in Hyde Park - a hero to many of the University of Chicago faculty and other leftists who reside there. This is the district Obama ran successfully for state senate.

Ayers and Dohrn are simply the most visible of the far left supporters who propelled Barack Obama’s early political career. The woman who touted Obama at the Ayers meeting, Alice Palmer, was herself a far left activist who was into community organizing like Obama. There was Dr. Quentin Young, a radical physician who was quoted in USA Today in 2005 saying “”national health insurance is no longer the best solution, it’s the only solution: All other alternatives have been proven disastrous failures.” According to Ben Smith, Dr. Young describes Ayers and Obama as “friends:”

Neither Ayers nor the Obama campaign would describe the relationship between the two men. Dr. Young described Obama and Ayers as “friends,” but there’s no evidence their relationship is more than the casual friendship of two men who occupy overlapping Chicago political circles and who served together on the board of a Chicago foundation.

But Obama’s relationship with Ayers is an especially vivid milepost on his rise, in record time, from a local official who unabashedly reflected a very liberal district to the leader of national movement based largely on the claim that he can transcend ideological divides.

There were other “encounters” with Ayers over the years, including the fact that both men served on a far left foundation as board members:

Wondering whether the three may have crossed paths is not speculation. It is a fact that they have. Ayers, Dohrn, and Obama have appeared together at a number of gatherings and academic events.

In November 1997, Ayers and Obama participated in a panel at the University of Chicago entitled Should a child ever be called a “super predator?” to debate “the merits of the juvenile justice system”.

In April 2002, Ayers, Dohrn, and Obama, then an Illinois State Senator, participated together at a conference entitled “Intellectuals: Who Needs Them?” sponsored by The Center for Public Intellectuals and the University of Illinois-Chicago. Ayers and Obama were two of the six members of the “Intellectuals in Times of Crisis” panel.

Ayers, “who in the 1960s was a member of the terrorist group Weatherman and a wanted fugitive for over a decade as a result of the group’s bombing campaign,” is currently the Board Chairman of the Woods Fund of Chicago and Obama is a former Board member.

Just what does the Woods Fund seek to do with its $68 million in assets?

This new Fund focused on welfare reform, affordable housing, the quality of public schools, race and class disparities in the juvenile justice system, and tax policy as a tool in reducing poverty. The Fund supported the concept of an expanding welfare state allocating ever-increasing amounts of money to the public school system, and the redistribution of wealth via taxes.

“Unreconstructed” liberals indeed.

There have been many articles written the last few weeks asking just how liberal Obama truly is? How far to the left are his true politics? Since his record is so unrevealing of where he stands, one must go to his life, his associates, and his supporters to fill in the blanks.

And what comes to the fore is clear evidence that Barack Obama isn’t just an ordinary liberal like a Kennedy or a Clinton. Obama’s associations and associates reveal someone who has courted far left activists, participated in far left forums, and belonged to far left organizations.

On top of that, his stint as a community organizer was marked by his training in radical organizing. My colleague at American Thinker Kyle-Anne Shriver delved into this aspect of Obama’s early adulthood:

Barack Obama had just graduated from Columbia and was looking for a job. Some white leftists were looking for someone who could recruit in a black neighborhood in the south side of Chicago.

Obama answered a help-wanted ad for a position as a community organizer for the Developing Communities Project (DCP) of the Calumet Community Religious Conference (CCRC) in Chicago. Obama was 24 years old, unmarried, very accustomed to a vagabond existence, and according to his memoir, searching for a genuine African-American community.

Both the CCRC and the DCP were built on the Alinsky model of community agitation, wherein paid organizers learned how to “rub raw the sores of discontent,” in Alinsky’s words.

And Alinsky’s writings on radicalism and social change should chill the bones of not only conservatives, but more moderate liberals:

Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system, among not only the middle class but the 40 per cent of American families - more than seventy million people - whose income range from $5,000 to $10,000 a year [in 1971].”

If this doesn’t sound like the way Obama is running his stealth campaign, I don’t know what does.

I should add that I don’t believe Obama is a dangerous man in the sense he would overturn the government and turn the US into some gigantic gulag. But if the voters knew the half of it, Obama would have been marginalized as a far left liberal as surely as Dennis Kucinich. Instead, Obama has successfully used his oratorical skills to say very little about what he plans to do if elected while inspiring people with a message of hope and change.

Will the media expose Obama? Will they criticize Senator McCain if he tries to paint Obama as a radical? Will they dig deep into Obama’s associations and associates to discover the truth?

Taylor Marsh is perplexed:

This is the vein in the Democratic party I will never understand, cannot accept on any level. What is it about some people who just don’t get the problems with our Democratic nominee being friendly, even taking a contribution (however small), as well as having a meeting as recently as 1995 with an unrepentant domestic terrorist like William Ayers? It reveals a lack of seriousness about the issue of terrorism and the dangerously immature judgment of anyone who is going to associate with a man, at the very least, that Republicans will use to beat us over the head with, having the bonus of hitting a spot the public loves to drink up, which is that our party is not serious about the dangers we face in this world.

It’s the same impulse among those Democrats who think Castro is cool and Chavez is a hero. And in Obama’s case, if the American voter ever gets the full story, the party could be facing a defeat in a year where all the stars were aligned in their favor.

This piece originally appeared on The American Thinker Blog

The New York Times launches its long-awaited smear of John McCain today, and the most impressive aspect of the smear is just how baseless it is. They basically emulate Page Six at the Post, but add in a rehash of a well-known scandal from twenty years ago to pad it out and make it look more impressive. In the end, they present absolutely no evidence of wrongdoing — only innuendo denied by all of the principals:

The scandal Ed refers to - the Keating Five dust up - was carefully taken out of the closet by the Times, dusted off, and presented as news - or as Ed says, filler for a story that had no legs and precious little in the way of facts. Nearly 500 words on a scandal that by almost universal agreement on Capitol Hill, John McCain has managed to overcome and re-establish his reputation for honesty and integrity.

One other aspect of this story that will be coming out over the next news cycle is that the Times may have been forced into publishing the story before they wanted to. Word is that The New Republic was doing a piece on the Times holding the story and the fierce office politics involved:

The McCain campaign is apparently blaming TNR for forcing the Times’ hand on this story. We can’t yet confirm that. But we can say this: TNR correspondent Gabe Sherman is working on a piece about the Times’ foot-dragging on the McCain story, and the back-and-forth within the paper about whether to publish it.

Gabe’s story will be online tomorrow.

Update: McCain senior aide Mark Salter tells Time: "They did this because the The New Republic was going to run a story that looked back at the infighting there," Salter said, "the Judy Miller-type power struggles — they decided that they would rather smear McCain than suffer a story that made the New York Times newsroom look bad."

There are reports that one of the reporters on the story, Marilyn Thompson, was so disgusted with the fact that the Times wouldn’t run the story that she quit and went back to the Washington Post (who also features a story on the rumored relationship with the lobbyist).

On Feb. 12, the Washington Post announced that Thompson would be leaving the Times and returning to the Post, her employer for fourteen years. Rumors had circulated internally that Thompson had been working on the McCain piece and was dissatisfied it had not yet run, according to two Times staffers.

Politico asked Baquet if holding the piece had anything to do with her leaving the paper. “I’m not going to go into stories that may or may not run in the paper,” Baquet said last week, declining to confirm or deny that there was such a story. “I had long conversations with Marilyn, and it’s about her regarding the Post as home."

A question might be asked just why the Times was holding the story. Were they waiting for maximum negative impact on McCain? Perhaps the day after clinching the nomination?

One thing is for sure; the next time you hear a Democrat talking about the vaunted "Republican attack machine" throw a copy of the New York Times in their face.

It’s downright Orwellian the way that Michelle Obama’s words are being parsed by her defenders these last 48 hours. It is a version of “Newspeak” the author would have instantly recognized. Substituting emotion for meaning was one of the psychological tricks of the totalitarians. Hence, we have those who explain away Mrs. Obama’s statement about her husband’s candidacy - that for the first time in her adult life, she was “really proud” of America - by referring to some nebulous feeling Mrs. Obama may have had when uttering the words:

I’m not sure what Michelle Obama meant, but being a black person with privilege and access often makes you more aware of American inequality, not less, and it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s what Michelle was referring to. Try living in say, New Orleans or Newark for a few years and see how proud of your country it makes you.

Being “aware of American inequality” - as opposed to British, French or even Chinese inequality? - is what she “meant?” Perhaps if we were all speaking Newspeak.

And speaking of Newspeak, here’s a fine example - with a little ignorance of the facts to go with it:

They are questioning her patriotism and saying that her statement means she has never been proud or very proud of anything about America before. Their accusations are without merit for many reasons. One reasons is because anyone who is even mildly objective knows that she was speaking in the moment to a crowd. Another reason is that any reasonable person would believe that a woman seeing her husband (of any race) have a real chance to be president would be the proudest moment in her life and no reasonable person would believe she meant she’d never been proud of this country before.

They are questioning her patriotism and saying that her statement means she has never been proud or very proud of anything about America before.

Setting up the strawman while denying in no uncertain terms that she ever uttered the words that she had “never been really proud” of America in her adult life takes a special kind of obtuseness; the kind that doesn’t allow reality to intrude too often into one’s thoughts. The question of “patriotism” shouldn’t enter into the criticism. One can criticize what she said solely on the basis of the idea that both Obama and his wife are extraordinarily self-centered - mesmerized by their own greatness. Like the Clinton’s, “it’s all about them!”

One reasons is because anyone who is even mildly objective knows that she was speaking in the moment to a crowd

Um…no. She made the statement twice. Both times she was reading the speech. There was absolutely nothing “in the moment” about it. If you’re going to excuse stupidity, please get your facts straight.

Another reason is that any reasonable person would believe that a woman seeing her husband (of any race) have a real chance to be president would be the proudest moment in her life and no reasonable person would believe she meant she’d never been proud of this country before

Because she was proud of her husband no “reasonable” person could say she wasn’t proud of America? A logical fallacy if there ever was one. There is no connection between pride in husband and pride in country - none, zero, zilch. But it sure sounds good in Newspeak!

What all this boils down to is that people are refusing to acknowledge the clear meaning behind the unambiguous words of the wife of a man running for president. While Orwell would get a kick out of liberal bloggers employing the tactics of his totalitarians, we are stuck with condemning such “liberalspeak” for what it is - an attempt to use language not as a means of communication but as a means of control. If the words spoken by Michelle Obama do not mean what she clearly intended them to mean then those who can redefine what she meant hold enormous power over the rest of us by having the ability to alter reality whenever it suits them.

I’ve written about this many times over the last three years, perhaps most extensively here. Glenn Greenwald chose to redefine the term “chickenhawk” in order to cut down a columnist who dared take the left to task for their idiocy and illogic in formulating the word in the first place. Greenwald or one of his many fans then altered the definition in less than 24 hours in Wikpedia - more evidence of Newspeak:

Even if Waldo or one of his minions did not rush to alter the Wikpedia definition to reflect his revised, made up definition, the point still stands; when losing an argument, the left invariably tries to change the parameters of the narrative rather than attempt to win on the merits or on logic. They view language with a fluidity that lacks the proper respect for and understanding of the importance of commonality of usage – that we all must use the same reference points when talking with each other. Otherwise, we talk past each other rather than with one another.

Instead of trying to parse and twist what Obama said, the left should have been trying to defend her intent and meaning; that there is nothing that has happened in Michelle Obama’s adult life that made her proud of her own country. (Sorry but I don’t buy the super-parsing between the idea that she was not “really proud” of America only “proud.” The adjective “really” is superfluous to the word “proud.” You are either proud or you are not proud. There are no gradations of pride that I know of.)

It is true that the left has been so ashamed of being liberal that they have desperately sought to cloak their proposals as “post partisan problem solving” or even trying to hide them as “moderate” ideas.” Shame is a dominating feature of modern liberalism. If you don’t feel “shame” for the sin of racism, you are not an authentic liberal. If you’re not “ashamed” of America for its imperialist warmongering, you are just not in the club.

This has been the dominant theme of liberal ideology since the rise of the New Left back in the 60’s, culminating in the nomination of a man who spoke the “New Leftspeak” fluently; George McGovern:

So join with me in this campaign. Lend Senator Eagleton and me your strength and your support, and together we will call America home to the ideals that nourished us from the beginning.

From secrecy and deception in high places; come home, America

From military spending so wasteful that it weakens our nation; come home, America.

From the entrenchment of special privileges in tax favoritism; from the waste of idle lands to the joy of useful labor; from the prejudice based on race and sex; from the loneliness of the aging poor and the despair of the neglected sick — come home, America.
Come home to the affirmation that we have a dream. Come home to the conviction that we can move our country forward.

Come home to the belief that we can seek a newer world, and let us be joyful in that homecoming, for this “is your land, this land is my land — from California to New York island, from the redwood forest to the gulf stream waters — this land was made for you and me.”

Do you hear McGovern’s echo in Obama’s impassioned pleas for change? Do you feel his shame and recognize it is the same kind of shame felt by Michelle Obama that her country has done nothing right in her adult lifetime that would allow her to feel pride in her America’s accomplishments?

This isn’t a question as some on the left have hopefully suggested that white conservatives can’t feel her pain and that our frame of reference is so different that we can’t understand from where her shame is coming. There are plenty of instances in the last 35 years I have been ashamed to be an American:

* I was ashamed to be an American when the “smoking gun” tape was released and I realized the President was an obstructer of justice. I was not a supporter of Nixon. But it saddened me immensely to find out the President broke the law to save his political hide.

* I was ashamed to be an American when the weakest, most incompetent president in American history allowed our hostages - taken in a brazen act of war recognized as such by international law - to languish in an Iranian prison while part of the world laughed at our impotency and the other part wrung its hands in fear and frustration at our weakness.

* I was ashamed to be an American when the Soviets marched into Afghanistan and our president responded by cutting off grain shipments. This after telling us we must get over our “inordinate fear” of communism.

* I was ashamed to be an American when I realized my political hero Ronald Reagan traded arms to those same fanatics for hostages in contravention of his own policy not to deal with terrorists.

* I was ashamed to be an American when it became clear that the White House, the Commerce Department, and other agencies of government were for sale under the Clinton Administration.

* I was ashamed to be an American when a gay man was dragged by a pick up truck full of bigots to his death.

* I was ashamed to be an American when some right wing fanatic bombed the olympics in Atlanta. His bombing of abortion clinics didn’t make me feel proud either.

* I was ashamed to be an American when it was proven the President of the United States lied under oath and denied an American citizen her right to a fair hearing in a court of law of her lawsut against him. He lied for the same reason Nixon lied - to save his political hide.

I’m sure there are plenty of other instances where my government or the country has let me down and I’ve felt shame in being an American. Bu to say I have no frame of reference to feel shame for America is silly and stupid and only reveals the ignorance of anyone who would make such an argument.

The point isn’t that Obama didn’t feel proud of America for any one of dozens of selfless, self-sacrificing acts by the American government or the millions such acts by her citizens. Or taking pride in America’s force of arms to free first Kuwait then Afghanistan and finally Iraq from tyrannical regimes and occupation. One can be so self absorbed as the Obamas apparently are and allow the world to pass them by, taking note of only what affects them personally or their own little worlds they have created be they a community organizer or a PR executive.

The real problem with Mr. and Mrs. Obama is that they may know what Americans want to hear but they have no clue as to what makes Americans tick. Not on a psychological level which is where they are targeting their appeals. But at the level of the American soul.

American exceptionalism is more than empty platitudes about America’s greatness that usually drive many liberals and foreigners batty. It is something most Americans I have come across feel deeply about - so deeply that it transcends convention and becomes a part of our character as a people. Being proud of America is not a prerequisite for patriotism. But it should be if you want to be president. To not recognize the uniqueness of America to the point that you are bursting with pride at a million different times in your life shows a disassociation with the American public that should disqualify someone from being president.

There are troubling signs in his speeches that Obama believes this campaign is about him and his “movement” rather than America and its future. His speeches are self-referential - a trait noticed by both left and right critics of the man and his candidacy. Michelle Obama’s revelatory remarks about how she feels about this country are a part of this denial of the exceptional nature of America. And that is why what she actually said and meant should be taken into account when deciding whether to vote for her husband.

Leaving no stone unturned in her quest to win the Democratic nomination for President, a source inside Hillary Clinton’s campaign has confirmed that the New York senator will target pledged Republican delegates and try to convince them to vote for her at the Democratic convention in August.

This comes hot on the heels of news that Clinton will go after pledged Obama delegates in her “Win at all costs and then some” campaign:

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign intends to go after delegates whom Barack Obama has already won in the caucuses and primaries if she needs them to win the nomination.

This strategy was confirmed to me by a high-ranking Clinton official on Monday. And I am not talking about superdelegates, those 795 party big shots who are not pledged to anybody. I am talking about getting pledged delegates to switch sides.

What? Isn’t that impossible? A pledged delegate is pledged to a particular candidate and cannot switch, right?

Wrong.

Pledged delegates are not really pledged at all, not even on the first ballot. This has been an open secret in the party for years, but it has never really mattered because there has almost always been a clear victor by the time the convention convened.

But not this time. This time, one candidate may enter the convention leading by just a few pledged delegates, and those delegates may find themselves being promised the sun, moon and stars to switch sides.

GOP delegate from Wyoming Ida May Quanset says she has already been contacted by the Clinton campaign.

“They offered to pay my way to Denver if I would switch my vote to Hillary,” she said. “I tried to explain I was a Republican but all this man kept saying was ‘You’re a delegate aren’t you? You’re going to a convention, right?’ He was quite an insistent young man.”

Another GOP delegate to the Minneapolis convention, Holbrooke Buttersnipe III was giving the offer from Hillary’s campaign serious consideration.

“I thought the offer a a free hooker every night at the convention was a little over the top and said so,” Buttersnipe said. “But they may have me if they can come through with the trip to Disneyworld.”

Everyone knows that Hillary Clinton will do almost anything to win. Does going after Republican delegates cross an invisible line?

“Not necessarily,” says Clinton advisor Jan Nutz. “It all depends on what the meaning of ‘delegate’ is. Nothing in the rules saying a delegate is specifically a Democrat, right? We’ll define what a delegate is our way and let Barry define a delegate his way and may the best candidate win.”

Another Clinton advisor speaking on condition of anonymity due to the extreme sensitivity of the matter indicated that Hillary would also seek delegates going to the Socialist Workers Party, the Green Party, and the Constitution Party Conventions.

“Hell, do they have a convention for one legged midgets? We’ll go after them too. Maybe we can talk to the Shriners.”

The Obama campaign is a little taken aback by this attack on the integrity of the primary process:

“Obviously we’re concerned,” said one aide who asked not to be identified because he’s such a lowly putz he could get fired if the Obama camp found out he was talking to the press. “I honestly don’t know what to say, I’m so taken aback by the whole idea.”

Never underestimate the grasping, voracious, appetite of the Clintons for power…

UPDATE

Alright, so? It was an interesting idea and could still be an option on the convention floor.

I cross posted my “McCain Proving Himself a Canny Campaigner” article over at RedState and former FEC Commissioner and a great friend of bloggers Brad Smith was kind enough to respond to my argument that Obama would be crazy to forgo privately financing his campaign in the general election.

Smith alerted bloggers back in 2005 to some of the more onerous requirements of McCain-Feingold while sounding the alarm over how the FEC might interpret the law. So I was pleased to receive such expert instruction on the ins and outs of campaign finance from someone intimately familiar with the process.

First, Brad left this comment:

The Tax Subsidy May be worth it by Brad Smith

The tax subsidy for the general election, if the candidates take it, is about $85 million. It is a MUCH better deal for the general election than for the primary. That’s why even Bush took the general election subsidy.

Think about it - $85 million, to spend between the end of the GOP convention on September 4 and the election on November 4. That’s a healthy $1.42 million per day. By comparison, through the end of 2007, Obama had been campaigning for over a year and spent about $85 million.

Additionally, because the subsidy comes with no strings attached, there are no fundraising costs. Typically, fundraising costs can eat up about 20% or more of the funds raised. In other words, to get $85 million to spend, you would have to raise more like $100 million. Obama’s total amount raised in all of 2007 was just over $100 million. At this point, he is raising about $1 million a day, but is probably spending about that much, too. Let’s suppose he wraps up the nomination after March 4 (a dubious proposition), he will still need to spend probably $300K a day through the summer. If the Democratic battle extends all the way to the convention, or even June, Obama will likely have to devote all his fundraising to the primary.

Now, you can start raising the general election money now, true, but Obama is still battling Hillary for the nomination, and he’ll need to raise other money to stay on the airwaves between the time he might wrap up the nomination and the Democratic Convention ending on August 28.

And it gets tougher. Even subsidized candidates can raise money for a “GELAC” account, “General Election Legal and Accounting.” This is privately raised but will typically total about $20 million. McCain can certainly raise that for the general. So McCain would have to match that $20-30 million McCain raises for his GELAC, plus the $100 million for campaign expenditures, just to match a subsidized McCain in the General Election.

In short, it is not at all clear that Obama can raise enough to battle for the Dem nomination AND fund his GELAC account AND raise still more for the general in an amount in excess of $100 million, which would be about what he would need to have parity in the general election with a subsidized McCain.

In the end, I don’t think this will matter a whole lot.

Brad Smith
Professor of Law
Capital University Law School

My response:

Thanks for your input, Brad by Rick Moran

But if Obama can raise $30 million a month - mostly from an online donor base - I would think that he would be stupid to limit himself to the $85 million in federal funds that would be available to him after July 1 when he might have $100 million by that date if he chooses to go the private route.

This is assuming he wraps up the nomination in April.

He would then have an additional two months of fund raising before the convention. Is there any reason he couldn’t raise $150 million?

I see your point about overhead but we’re talking money raised in amounts undreamed before. The temptation may just be too great.

But Brad pointed out one salient point I had not considered; monies for the general election couldn’t be spent until after the conventions:

He’s raising a million a day for the primary by Brad Smith

The federal funds for the general are not available to him until the end of the Democratic Convention on August 28. Until then, he has to raise money privately. Assuming, as I calculated, he really needs about $120 million from the end of August to election day to be competitive with a subsidized McCain, he has to raise about $2 million a day, minus anything he can save up for the general election before then.

Meanwhile, before the end of August he must raise money to fund his primary battles and his expenses of staying visible etc. through the convention? Plus he’ll have the hassle of raising funds, taking up time that could go to other events. You’re talking about him probably raising another $200 million total, maybe more, between now and November. I’m not saying he can’t, but I’m not sure he can, either. That’s nearly double what he raised in his first year of campaigning.

Even Bush and Kerry took the subsidy for the general. There’s a first time for everything, but I’m not sure that Obama’s fundraising capacity is really that great.

Another way to look at it is this: Barack has to keep spending now to fight Hillary. So he’s got to be spending more than McCain. Beyond that, between now and the general election, can he outraise McCain by $100 million? He’s not close to that big an advantage for the last year - why can he do it over the next 8 and a half months?

Brad Smith
Professor of Law
Capital University Law School

Brad Smith makes a very compelling case for Obama taking federal funds rather than trying to raise money for the general election outside of those limits.

By the way, Brad is also the Chairman and Co-Founder of The Center for Competitive Politics, a non profit group:

CCP’s mission, through legal briefs, studies, historical and constitutional analyses, and media communication is to educate the public on the actual effects of money in politics, and the results of a more free and competitive electoral process.

I expect most of us who blog will be bookmarking this site for its potential as a vital reference for information on campaign finance.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is pulling out of Wisconsin a day early according to press reports:

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton has scaled back her Wisconsin campaign schedule by a full day, and is now planning to leave the state after Monday morning instead of Tuesday morning.

The move suggests the campaign does not think it can overtake rival Barack Obama here. Obama has already campaigned in the state Tuesday night, Wednesday, Friday, and today. He also has single events planned for Sunday (Kaukauna) and Monday (Beloit).

While the two have exchanged hard-hitting TV ads here, Obama began airing ads a week earlier and has spent much more on TV.

Today is Clinton’s first day of campaigning in the state, with an event in Kenosha and a state party dinner in Milwaukee, where Obama also will appear. Clinton will campaign Sunday in De Pere, Wausau and Madison, and is expected to do one event in the state Monday morning before leaving.

All the polls that have come out in the last week show Clinton within 4-5 points of Obama. Why then, is she pulling up stakes and abandoning the state when she’s within striking distance?

Obama has won the last 8 primaries by double digits - the last three by margins of 3-1 and 4-1. Perhaps Clinton’s internal polling is showing another double digit disaster looming and rather than waste resources on a lost cause like Wisconsin, better to spend time and money in Ohio and Texas where she has put her campaign out on a limb by saying she needs to win both states to stay viable.

If, as expected, she loses Wisconsin - and loses big - she will have two weeks to watch Obama work his magic in Texas and Ohio. She will be outspent and outgunned everywhere by an Obama organization that suddenly can do no wrong. It is very possible that her own double digit poll leads in both states will vanish and by March 4 Hillary Clinton will be fighting for her political life.

Can she hold off this juggernaut anywhere? It seems that as each succeeding contest moves to the fore in the Democratic race, Obama’s numbers skyrocket and hers plummets. It’s as if once voters start to concentrate on a race, they abandon Hillary like yesterday’s stale donuts and attach themselves to Obama’s crusade.

Frankly, unless she can level the playing field, she’s toast. And by level the field I mean she has to find a way to bring Obama’s campaign back down to earth from that elevated, ethereal plane it currently occupies - somewhere between a religious movement and a revolutionary army.

Otherwise, the same thing will happen in Texas and Ohio that has happened in Wisconsin and elsewhere; Obama will play do his pied piper thing and the Democrats in those states will follow him to the polls.

How do you defeat a political phenomenon? If you find out, you better tell Hillary quickly because she’ s running out of states - and time.

One of the biggest concerns going into the general election for Republicans has to be the massive discrepancy between the amount of money raised by Democratic candidates in the primaries - especially Barack Obama - and the amounts raised by the GOP.

For John McCain who was broke just a few short months ago, this is a matter of life and death. With a massive donor base that Obama will be able to tap anew for the general election campaign, it is quite possible that the Illinois senator would be able to double the amount raised by McCain over the course of the race. Obama corralled more than 135,000 individual donors alone in 2008 so far. This puts him well over 200,000 contributors he can call on.

How then, can McCain neutralize this huge advantage? It seems that back when McCain was a frontrunner in early 2007, he made a pledge to accept federal financing for the general election if the Democratic candidate did the same. Apparently, Barack Obama took him up on that challenge at the time. Here’s the New York Times from 3/2/07:

Senator John McCain joined Senator Barack Obama on Thursday in promising to accept a novel fund-raising truce if each man wins his party’s presidential nomination.

“Should John McCain win the Republican nomination, we will agree to accept public financing in the general election, if the Democratic nominee agrees to do the same,” Mr. Nelson [then McCain’s campaign manager] said.

A spokesman for Mr. Obama, Bill Burton, said, “We hope that each of the Republican candidates pledges to do the same.”

Mr. Burton added that if nominated Mr. Obama would “aggressively pursue an agreement” with whoever was his opponent.

Sounds cut and dried, doesn’t it? If McCain and Obama square off in the general election, both will take public financing, right?

Not so fast, says the Agent of Change in politics:

Obama’s campaign is backing away from suggestions that the Illinois senator would publicly finance his campaign in the general election, if he’s the nominee, and referring to public financing as an “option” — not as the “pledge” McCain’s campaign claims Obama made.

[snip]

I asked Burton again today if this was a “pledge,” and he repeated that it’s an “option.”

“The only reason this is an option is because we pursued the decision from the FEC. As the Clinton campaign continues to remind you, Obama is not the nominee, but this is a question we will address when he is,” he said in response to Davis’ remark.

For McCain, this has left an opening that you can drive a truck through. And he has been savaging Obama about breaking his “pledge” all week:

Hammering Senator Barack Obama for a fourth straight day, Senator John McCain said here on Friday that he expects Senator Obama to abide by his pledge use public financing for his general election if Mr. McCain does so as well.

“It was very clear to me that Senator Obama had agreed to having public financing of the general election campaign if I did the same thing,” he said after a town hall meeting here. “I made the commitment to the American people that if I was the nominee of my party, I would go the route of public financing. I expect Senator Obama to keep his word to the American people as well.”

Asked if he would use public financing even if Mr. Obama did not, he said: “If Senator Obama goes back on his commitment to the American people, then obviously we have to rethink our position. Our whole agreement was we would take public financing if he made that commitment as well. And he signed a piece of paper, I’m told, that made that commitment.”

Predictably, there are some on the left who have hit the ceiling and are beside themselves that Obama would give up an election winning advantage:

For the first time ever, the Democratic party is outraising the Republican party. The party and its candidate will have the resources to compete on a huge playing field, not just shoring up its blue state base and courting voters in swing states, but there will also be the ability to truly compete in those red states the GOP is holding on to by a thread.

This election could be the one that knocks back conservatism for ten years to a generation.

Don’t give up that advantage. This is the equivalent of the opposing coach asking the Bulls to bench Michael Jordan in his prime.

Kos decided to do a little whistling past the graveyard:

Look, no one gives a shit if Obama takes public financing or not. The Edwards campaign thought they’d get brownie points for opting in during the primary, and other than me criticizing them for it, they heard crickets. And that was among Democrats, who supposedly care about this sort of thing.

This is such a process story with zero relevance to the public that there’s no benefit to be gained by taking public financing — unless you can’t raise it as fast as your opponent. Then you do whatever you can to try and goad your opponent to join you by opting in.

A “process story?” He’s kidding himself. This attack hits Obama where it hurts the most - the idea that he’s a different kind of politician, an “Agent of Change.” How can Obama credibly make those claims if he’s playing the old game of spending massive amounts of money to get elected. People won’t care where it comes from. They’ll only see that Obama would be raising an ungodly sum of money - playing politics the old fashioned way.

McCain’s attacks are well aimed and on target. It will be interesting to see how Obama plays this. While he has not made a formal “pledge” to forgo federal financing, McCain still has him over a barrel because Obama was agreeable to the idea of public financing. Obama is trapped by his own supporter’s ideal of the candidate. To this point, he has successfully wrapped himself in a cloak of unquestioned integrity - even if living up to that standard hurts him politically. This is what his supporters expect. To do anything less will assist in their disillusionment.

And that must be McCain’s number one priority; level the race by bringing Obama back down to an earthly plane. McCain cannot win if on election day, Obama is seen as some kind of civic messiah. He must be exposed for the inexperienced, shallow thinking, ultra-liberal politician that he is.

Is there anything short of capitulation for Obama? Allah has his options:

1. Abide by the pledge and give up that moneybomb advantage. Not a chance.

2. Deny that he ever “pledged” to take public funds and weasel out of the deal. Possible.

3. Offer McCain an alternative deal which he’ll never accept because it plays too much to Obama’s advantages. See the “$150 contribution” proposal in LJ’s second post.

4. Accept the deal and shunt the moneybombs off onto 527s:

As the two campaigns dueled, people on both sides said it was possible that they would agree to accept public financing and then simply have each political party spend unlimited amounts on behalf of its candidate, including money for voter mobilization efforts and television commercials, as allowed by law.

5. Admit that he “pledged” but has to break his pledge now because he’s got a movement thing going that people want to be part of and, goshdarnit, it wouldn’t be fair to them to deny them the fun of donating. Weak, but still preferable to number one.

I think option #2 is really his only option. Whatever hit he takes politically pales in comparison to the advantage he will get by having all that Democratic cash to spend. Where McCain will be limited in going after targets of opportunity like Pennsylvania and perhaps even California, Obama, if he is fully funded, will be able to literally run a 50 state campaign. He and the various Soros-funded 527’s will bury McCain under an avalanche of ads as well as organizing a GOTV operation that the GOP will be unable to match.

Still, this line of attack by McCain proves that he’s a canny campaigner, making the most of what’s available to him in order to score political points. It’s never too early and McCain getting a head start on trying out some themes for his campaign shows that he may surprise some people with the aggressiveness of his campaign.

It must have been one helluva speech.

In November of 1095, Pope Urban II stood up to speak at a gathering of church leaders who were meeting at the Council of Clermont to discuss the latest entreaty from the Eastern Holy Roman Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, who was begging for help to drive the Muslims out of his kingdom.

It seems that the Byzantine King had been at war with just about everybody in order to restore some of the luster to the empire lost by incursions by both Europeans like the Normans and especially the Seljuk Turks who had been carving up his diminishing kingdom like a beef roast for two hundred years. City after city, province after province in Asia Minor fell to Muslims. This included the Holy Land - a former jewel in the Byzantine Crown due to the enormously profitable tourist/pilgrimage trade. The Muslims, however, had internal problems of their own and in 1095, the Pope decided the time was ripe to strike.

The Pope’s speech at Clermont was apparently a doozy. There are at least 5 versions of it extant. This excerpt is from a recollection from a charmer by the name of Robert the Monk:

Let the deeds of your ancestors move you and incite your minds to manly achievements; the glory and greatness of king Charles the Great, and of his son Louis, and of your other kings, who have destroyed the kingdoms of the pagans, and have extended in these lands the territory of the holy church. Let the holy sepulchre of the Lord our Saviour, which is possessed by unclean nations, especially incite you, and the holy places which are now treated with ignominy and irreverently polluted with their filthiness. Oh, most valiant soldiers and descendants of invincible ancestors, be not degenerate, but recall the valor of your progenitors.

Aided by the skillful propaganda put out by such colorful luminaries as Peter the Hermit, who fostered the notion that Christian pilgrims were badly mistreated by the Muslims, Europeans, both noble and peasant alike, responded enthusiastically. (Peter the Hermit led 100,000 poorly trained and loosely organized “crusaders” in what became known as “The People’s Crusade. Unfortunately, they seemed more adept at murdering Jews in Eastern Europe and sacking towns that refused to give them food than in fighting Muslims. The Turks massacred them.)

The Pope’s speech was read in every pulpit in Christendom. And along with his bloodcurdling threats against the Muslims, Urban promised anyone who died trying to take the Holy Land back would pass Go and take a shortcut to heaven.

Given the miserable conditions of the European peasantry, heaven sounded like a good deal in comparison - as did the chance to rob, pillage, rape, and generally raise a rumpus as armies of the time were wont to do. So an enormous army was raised comprising several segments and sent off to conquer the Holy Land. This task they accomplished with the taking of Jerusalem in 1099 - an event marked by a horrific slaughter of most of the residents including Jews, Muslims and eastern Christians.

But what possessed so many to drop everything they were doing and run off to fight strangers in a faraway land?

Apparently, Pope Urban’s clarion call to serve touched something deep within his flock. Some historians point to a new European consciousness that spread the notion of western superiority and that Muslim domination of the Holy Land was intolerable in that regard. Other historians note that Muslims had been encroaching on European lands for 300 years, taking parts of Italy, Spain, and Eastern Europe which threatened the kingdoms of northern Europe.

Whatever the reason, Urban’s call for a Crusade to take back the Holy Land was really a charge to revive a glorious past and change the balance of power in favor of Europeans. Those who participated really, really believed in the rightness of their cause, that taking the Holy Land for Christians was “God’s will” (Deus lo volt!). In the name of the Pope and his holy decree, they felt justified in committing all sorts of heinous acts of slaughter and mayhem. Caught up in a religious fervor, those few knights who tried to act in a Christian manner and restrain their followers were ignored in favor of a mentality that gave everyone’s actions a patina of legitimacy regardless of the brutality and hardship that resulted.

This is the essence of a crusade; where emotion trumps reason and belief or faith is substituted for rational thought.

There are many of Senator Barack Obama’s opponents who refer to the “cult-like” atmosphere of his campaign or worse, describe his followers as cultists. Others see a kind of religious fervor at work in the Obama camp.

Neither analysis should be taken seriously as Sara at Orcinus points out:

A lot of people may be surrendering their will temporarily. Quite a few are expressing as much anger as hope — perhaps because expressing this much emotion is new for them, perhaps because they were raised in an era of Rush Limbaugh, perhaps because they’re new to politics and wrongly think this is how it’s done. (Their candidate is in a fine position to deliver some etiquette lessons. I hope he does — and soon — because the backlash is forming.) And, no doubt, there will come a time when Obama’s True Believers are crushed to realize that he appeared to promise one thing, and then did another. But, again, these are normal parts of any large-scale social change movement: FDR, for example, inspired at least this much devotion among the desperate and Depression-scarred citizenry of his early years in office; and it was that implacable trust and support that enabled him to lead the country through a time of radical change.

It’s notable to me that I’m hearing these concerns mainly from aging Boomers who are still nursing the deep wounds inflicted by the savaging of their own dreams, and fear that their children’s naive enthusiasm for Obama will lead them into similar disillusionment. And if that’s you, well, then, you’re right: it probably will. But another word for that is “growing up.” If we love our children, the best thing we can do for them on that inevitable day that they see their hero’s clay feet for the first time is not contaminate them with our own bitter cynicism. Somehow, we need to teach them — which means, even if we don’t feel it, modeling for them — that the only right response to disappointment is to step back, think it through, and find another, better way to re-engage the fight. Quitting is not an option. Given the current state of the country and the planet, neither is failure.

This is an amazing passage when you think about it. Basically, the author is saying that young Obama supporters have suspended their rational thought processes - if they ever had any - in favor of placing unquestioning faith in a politician and that to avoid becoming “disillusioned,” they must develop critical thinking skills in order to deal with their inevitable disappointment.

A more damning statement on this current generation’s capacity to think rationally I have never read. Raised and educated as this generation has been in a liberal bubble of multi-culturalism and political correctness while neglecting the development of independent and critical thinking, it may have been inevitable that they would fall head over heels for the kind of candidacy represented by Obama. He’s different. He’s popular. He makes us feel good for supporting him. And most importantly, he is so vague and nebulous in his politics that, like an empty vessel, you can fill him up with just about anything your heart desires.

Ask one of these rabid Obama supporters why they want him to be president and you’d probably get a similar answer if you asked peasant from Pope Urban’s army why he’s walking from France all the way to Jerusalem to fight a war. Neither will be particularly specific and are likely to mumble something about “believing” in the cause.

The author goes on to show the true nature of these “Obamamaniacs” and the hope placed in Obama to fulfill the “unfinished” hard left agenda from the 60’s:

This misguided “cult” talk not only misunderstands how social change occurs; it’s also giving the GOP a weapon it will use to the hilt if Obama is the candidate in the general election. They’re going to demonize those energetic kids as the re-animated zombie ghosts of the dirty f**king hippies of the 60s. And, in a historic sense, they are. They’re our own children, emerging to finish the work that their parents got too tired and too disillusioned to finish. For us old Boomers, they’re our very last shot at the dream.

We have a choice here. We can either bless them for their energy and commitment, hand them our tattered old ball, and see just how far they’ll be able to move it down the field — even as we stand by with the Bandaids and Bactine, shouting encouragement and coaching tips from the bench, just as many of us have done at a thousand soccer games through the years.

Or we can doom their fresh efforts with our own cynicism, withdraw our approval, make fun of them, and tell them they’re going off the deep end by joining up with some crazy mass movement that will never deliver on its promises of change.

Remarkable. In other words, we should encourage them in their irrational exuberance because if we try and inject a little reality, a little rational thought into their “belief” in Obama, we will make them less willing to unquestioningly follow the candidate toward whatever “change” he eventually settles on.

The Obama Crusade is far from being a Children’s Crusade. It is made up of people of all colors, ages, ethnicities, and religions. But what unites most of them is an inability to disassociate the “promise” of what Obama represents with the reality of what he may actually do as president. A fervent belief in this promise without a concomitant skepticism at what can actually be accomplished will doom this Crusade to eventually suffering the disappointment that simply announcing you are for “change” means little when you don’t get specific about what you are going to change as well as tell people how you are going to accomplish your objectives.

No, not a Cult of Obama but clearly, a movement born of hope, faith, and childlike acceptance of the candidate’s “promise” of greatness.

Is this the stuff of revolution? I don’t see it. More likely, this fervor will drift into the background as the interminably long general election campaign gets underway. At that point, I will guarantee you that if Obama fails to define himself, others will do it for him. And as Obama gets more specific and people realize exactly what his idea of “change” actually is, I suspect that the candidate will appear a little less like a man on a white horse and more like a normal Democratic party politician.

Is it really possible that the world has passed the Clinton’s by?

Yesterday’s total immolation of Hillary Clinton by Barack Obama - along with his 5 previous double digit wins since Super Tuesday - reveal as much about how badly the Democratic party truly wants to move on from the Clinton era as it does the wild popularity of Obama. When the electorate rejects you by 3-1 and 4-1 margins, a little voice in your head must begin asking you “How much more of this kind of humiliation can you take?”

The answer in Hillary’s case is thankfully, not too much more. The exit polls from yesterday in Virginia and Maryland show how much her base of supporters have betrayed her. In Maryland, 62% of Democratic voters were women - and Obama got 55% of their vote. Hillary captured the white women 56-38 and that was it. She lost single women by an astonishing 59-38. In New Hampshire, Clinton won a large plurality of the women’s vote while getting 50% of the single women’s vote in a 5 person race.

The tide has turned.

In Virginia, by a more than 2-1 margin, people preferred “change” to “experience.” Obama also destroyed Hillary in every income group - even the under $50,000 voters who had been her bedrock support in previous primaries. In Maryland, she barely edged Obama in the over 60 age group 48-47 - another leg of her base she needs to remain upright.

Clinton handily won white Democrats and Hispanics. But with Obama winning 2/3 of independents and 80-90% of African Americans, it is very difficult to see where Clinton can cobble together the blocs necessary to win a primary. If she has lost the women’s vote (especially single women), the lunch pail crowd, and the nursing home contingent, where does she go for votes?

She was in Texas yesterday appealing to Hispanics. This is a good idea but she will need to find a way to peel support away from Obama if she expects to win. In South Carolina, Bill Clinton successfully brought a majority of white Democrats to her side. But they lost the primary because blacks and independents turned out in record numbers for Obama. Now Hillary apparently can’t win a majority of women, of Democratic men, independents, or of any large bloc of Democratic voters who she or her husband had been able to count on in elections.

Watch Wisconsin next week. If the same gloomy numbers emerge for Clinton, she may as well pack it in. Ohio is a state much like Wisconsin with a large union presence, a smaller percentage of African Americans, and a large white middle class. Indeed, in some polls, she is down by as much as 11 points already - and that was before the blow out last night along the Potomac river.

She has done all the traditional things to get her campaign righted. She has fired people - only to discover that when she fired her Latina campaign manager she angered her most reliable base group; the Hispanics. She is ignoring Obama’s victories (as if putting her hands over her ears and screaming NEENER! NEENER! NEENER! the bad news will just go away and she won’t have to think about it much). And she is plugging away, not slowing down her pace, still fighting - to the end.

This is how the Clinton era in national American politics will end. They came into the national limelight hand in hand, a true ’90’s “power couple” with a frightening amount of ambition and determination, lighting up the sky like exploding fireworks and laying waste to Washington as well as their personal friendships. The number of broken lives they left in their wake is astonishing - even for a politician. Harassed women, aides thrown to the wolves, friends thrown to the prosecutors - a body count extraordinary in its diversity. White, black, Hispanic, Asian, women, men, - a microcosm of the identity politics they played with such relish - and such ruthlessness.

Another loss like Virginia and Maryland in Wisconsin will almost certainly increase calls for her to drop out in the name of party unity. Some of her Super Delegates may even begin to desert her. It will be at that point that she will look at Ohio and Texas and perhaps realize the futility of continuing on. She probably won’t drop out at that point despite the hopelessness of her situation. But her humiliation will be complete. The once vaunted Clinton political machine would have been destroyed by newcomer - a self styled new Democrat who rejected the politics of personal destruction in favor of a kinder, gentler approach.

They will go out humiliated by an electorate that will end up rejecting their brand of “take no prisoners” politics in favor of the empty platitudes of an interloper. How it will gall both of them, in love with the intricacies of policy, to see a candidate eclipse them who eschews specifics in favor of atmospherics and feel-good populism.

There will be no political obituary for Hillary. She has a career and a future in the Senate if she chooses. But she has never seemed to me to be a “settler.” Her every move in the Senate these last 8 years has been a calculation on how it will affect her run for the president. To simply be a senator for the sake of serving the country? I just don’t know.

The Clinton’s will not fade into the background - Bill will see to that. But their influence will be severely weakened. They will probably remain personally popular - as long as they can raise gobs of money for their friends. But the heady days of being on top and riding the tiger are almost certainly over.

For those of us inclined to grit our teeth, hold our nose, and grab our balls when going into the voting booth and pulling the lever for John McCain on election day next November, all I can say is after reading this interview of him in Der Spiegel, there is a very good chance our teeth will be worn down to nothing, our noses will have permanent pinch marks on them, and our balls will feel like lead weights between our legs by the time we vote:

SPIEGEL: America has lost a lot of friends because President George W. Bush angered, indeed outraged, them. He allowed human rights to be violated at Guantanamo Bay, and he dismissed the joint effort to combat global warming. Under a President McCain, could we expect a change of course?

McCain: Yes. I would announce that we are not ever going to torture anyone held in American custody. I would announce that we were closing Guantanamo Bay and moving those prisoners to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and I would announce a commitment to addressing climate change and my dedication to a global agreement — but it has to include India and China.

I’ll bet anyone within 50 miles of Leavenworth is jumping for joy at that news.

Bryan at Hot Air made a game out of this interview, asking readers to identify the speaker and giving Democratic candidates as choices.

I would have picked Obama saying the exact same thing. And it gets worse:

SPIEGEL: Will America attempt to go it alone less frequently in the future?

McCAIN: Well, we all hope that America will be multilateral again in the future. There were times when the United States acted unilaterally, but I think we would all prefer to work in concert with our friends and allies.

SPIEGEL: What role will the United Nations play? Bush always ignored the UN.

McCain: The United Nations always plays an important role. But right now we are having to deal with a Russia that is clearly intent on blocking action. That’s why the UN must act in a league of democracies that share our values and our common principles.

Okay, so…we hold 6 party talks to get North Korea to disarm but we’re going it alone?

We are allowing the Big Three of France, Germany, and Great Britain to negotiate with the Iranians and we’re going it alone?

We get NATO to take over the Afghan mission. They agree. And we’re going it alone?

Prior to the Iraq invasion, we begged and pleaded with many nations to join us. Thirty one nations did. And we’re going it alone?

The leftist narrative brooks no countervailing argument or evidence. There were many other examples of the US not going it alone in international affairs but it doesn’t matter. To Spiegel and the domestic left, facts don’t mean squat. The narrative is the thing.

The same holds true for Spiegel’s question about America “always” ignoring the UN? When? About what?

McCain should have jumped down that interviewer’s throat for making those two ridiculously false statements. Instead, he answered them like any good liberal would.

What a pandering, sycophantic, arrogant popinjay he is.

Then there was this eye opener:

SPIEGEL: So is America coming back to renegotiate the Kyoto Protocol?

McCain: I believe America is going to enter into negotiations to try to reach a global agreement. But, as I said, that agreement must include India and China, two of the emerging economies of the world. We would be foolish not to do so.

If McCain doesn’t realize by now that any “global agreement” on reducing emissions will ask more of the US than any other nation - so much so that only a Democrat like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama would agree to such a disadvantageous treaty - then it really is time to batten down the hatches and zip up your wallet. Any agreement with China and India will necessarily be token and superficial. Both of those countries don’t want to ruin their economies on the altar of global warming any more than we do.

But I don’t trust McCain on this any more than I trust him on judges or taxes. He could easily sell this country out in a climate agreement that placed the burden of reducing emissions on the US while virtually ignoring China and India thus giving those competitors a huge advantage. But as long as it kept him in good standing with the media, I think he’d do it.

Reading that entire interview, there were places that you really weren’t sure if you were listening to a Democrat or a Republican, liberal or conservative. This is McCain’s identity and I guess we better get used to it. It is maddening, worrisome, even frightening at times. But that’s being a “maverick” I suppose.

One thing for certain; we’re going to need the patience of Job to endure an entire campaign season with this guy. Otherwise, I’m going to have a nervous breakdown by the summer.