Archive for the 'Presidential elections' Category

Because I’m better than the New York Times

The Times may have refused to publish McCain’s Iraq editorial (afraid, no doubt, that publishing it would cast a shadow on Obama’s purported wisdom), but I have no such fear.  Here’s, courtesy of the Drudge Report, is the op-ed McCain wrote — and it’s an op-ed that any reasonable, non-partisan newspaper would have freely printed:
In [...]

Is this any way to run a presidential campaign? *UPDATED*

See important update below.
I have been trying without success for a couple of weeks now to volunteer my writing and editing services to the local “John McCain for President” chapter.  No one is getting back to me — and I’ve been told by someone with ties to the local “McCain for President” chapter that this [...]

More on polls and the American voter

As they do every election year about this time, the polls strongly favor the Democrats, which is very disheartening.  Right around now I find it especially worrisome, because I think that Obama, emboldened by media adulation, is being more and more forthright about his political agenda, and it’s one that ordinarily would should have the [...]

Controlling the debate

One of the first things you learn as litigation defense counsel is that you will lose if you let the plaintiff control the case’s message. It’s easy to let this happen, because the plaintiff comes out of the gate like gangbusters, and the defendant finds himself, logically, in a defensive, purely reactive posture. [...]

Values problems in bed and in politics

Conservatives believe that it is dangerous to tumble into bed with someone instantly. They’re appalled by the raunchy hook-up culture amongst our young people, one that says it’s okay to have sex on the first date, as long as you try to line up reasonable precautions to limit some of the damaging fall-out (such [...]

Self-inflicted wounds

At Slate, John Dickerson has as good an analysis as any I’ve seen about the way in which the Democrats, riven by identity politics and personal animosity, are working hard to throw away their advantage in this election year.

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Comforting news

As you know, I find the thought of an Obama Presidency frightening.  I therefore found heartening a poll that, despite having a methodology that favored Democrats, still showed that McCain would beat both Obama and Clinton if the Presidential election were held today.  Much can change between now and November but this does show that, [...]

Everything old is new again

Whether we forget or remember the past, sometimes we seem doomed to repeat it. Certainly with all the candidates, the analogies to historic times flow freely. The two big analogies, of course, are World War II and the Vietnam War, depending on whether voters view Islamists or fellow Americans as the enemy.
There are [...]

Speaking as a President

I’ve frequently heaped scorn on Obama’s oratorical abilities.  His speeches remind me of the political speeches in old Hollywood movies.  In those days, the movies were careful not to take sides in any obvious way, so they’d have political characters make speeches using orotund phrases that contained high sounding platitudes, but that actually said nothing  [...]

On McCain’s apparent front-runner status *UPDATED*

Compared to Romney, I don’t like McCain. Compared to Obama or Hillary, I adore McCain and would happily vote for him — heck, if I were voting in Chicago (home turf for both Obama and Hillary), I’d vote for him twice, and have my ancestors vote for him too. You dance with them [...]

Elections for the me generation

I am not a touchy-feely person. I managed to grow up in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1960s and 1970s without ever feeling the need to join into the narcissistic self-validation that Cyra McFadden so perfectly captured in her 70s classic The Serial, a novel that followed a number of self-involved, self-actualizers in [...]

Has Iowa instantly become obsolete?

Well, tidings from New Hampshire, at least on the Democratic side, are surprising. (I don’t think anyone is really surprised by the fact that McCain prevailed, as the polls showed he would.) Everyone thought that Dems and Independents were flocking to the polls to crown Obama, but it looks as if many were [...]

A little perspective on inevitability *UPDATED*

Democrats are euphoric and Republicans are panicking: Obama is inevitable. But not so fast, mes amis, says William Katz, looking back in time. In the rough and tumble world of American politics, nothing is inevitable and voters are never predictable. Since Mr. Katz’s hyperlinks are not working, let me quote for [...]

I’m consistent in my beliefs

Phibian sent me over to a fun ABC News/USA Today site where it asks you to answer multiple choice questions about your beliefs on some national and international issues, and then ranks your answers against candidate positions to pick your perfect candidate.  I came out precisely as you’d expect me to if you read my [...]

Are we willing to let little Iowa determine the entire Presidential election?

I don’t like Obama, whom I consider an empty shirt, utterly devoid of experience and elevated to his lofty position only because of his skin color, something that I consider that worst kind of racial identity politics. (I just checked and it turns out that, at this particular minute, Silky Pony, the radical rich [...]

Swift boating the media

It seems like forever, but it was only three and a half years ago that John Kerry was the Democratic front runner, with the MSM lining up for his anticipated coronation. And then something strange happened: the Vietnam vets started speaking up, challenging the mythology Kerry had created — and the press had [...]

Render unto Caesar that which is Caesars….

I went to law school in the Bible Belt, so many of my fellow students were devout Christians. Thomas, however, out-Christianed everyone. His parents were missionaries, and he’d been raised with a level of faith no one else at the school could equal. He was one of the nicest people you could [...]

Trust Mark Steyn to sum up the political playing field perfectly

Three paragraphs of perfect political analysis from Mark Steyn:
If I could just sneak out in the middle of the night and saw off Rudy Giuliani’s strong right arm and John McCain’s ramrod back and Mitt Romney’s fabulous hair and stitch them all together in Baron von Frankenstein’s laboratory with the help of some neck bolts, [...]

It depends what “undecided” means

Here’s a wonderful video from Hot Air exposing the fact that many of the “undecided” voters who got to question the candidates at the most recent Democratic debate were activists or operatives of some kind.  Indeed, one of them may even have been known to a Democratic candidate before the debate began:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivYt6G1m_D4]
It’s a very funny [...]

When it comes to war, everything old is new again

Danny Lemieux alerted me to a Jerusalem Post article that uses the Civil War as a prism through which to examine the upcoming elections. Max Singer, who wrote the article, points out that Lincoln was losing big time in the lead-up to the 1864 elections (with daily death tolls sometimes equal to or exceeding [...]

Mrs. Bill Clinton

John Hawkins has written a really scathing indictment of Hillary Clinton attacking, not her political positions, but the fact that she is doing nothing more than ride on Bill’s coattails, having no independent experience of her own that would justify making her President of the most powerful nation in the world during a time of [...]

Livening up the Presidential elections

I complained yesterday about tightly constrained, programmed Presidential candidates. I can stop complaining now. We’re about to have a candidate who says anything that comes into her head, no matter how stupid. FogCity Journal, citing “reliable sources,” says that Cynthia McKinney is planning on throwing her hat into the ring as Green [...]

Showing you can fight like a normal person

One of the things candidates cannot afford to be seen as is vicious. Nevertheless, especially in unstable, dangerous times, we want our candidates to be strong. Writing at Red State, Erick believes that the Republican candidates would do well to show a little strength in dealing with Chris Matthews, who is currently slated [...]

How to run for President as a Democrat

It’s becoming increasingly obvious that the way to run for President if you’re a Democrat is to make pie in the sky promises, clearly premised on the assumption that, amongst registered voters, there’s a sucker born every minute. And if you can get the sucker vote, you win. Otherwise, how can one account [...]

A cold day in January 2009

William Katz, a man of many careers, including a long stint on The Tonight Show during the Carson years, was also a comedy writer. He’s been feeding bits and pieces of his memoirs to the guys at Power Line, intermixing old memories with new facts, especially political facts. In a post published today, [...]