aberman's blog

Headline:

Two senior Supreme Court justices are expected to attend the White House reception Wednesday morning to honor Justice Sotomayor: Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens.

Now, it *could* just be a coincidence (1 in 6 odds that two choosen from 9 are in the leftmost 4).  But given that the other invitees are all leftist politicians (Leahy, Conyers, etc...), perhaps the White House felt that someone like John Roberts or (gasp) Clarence Thomas would feel out of place.

http://www.politico.com/politico44/wbarchive/whiteboard08122009.html

http://www.thenextright.com/aberman/obama-and-bush

There was just no way, give the six months leading up to November 2008, that a smart, likable Harvard educated African-American could not win against a Republican.  But still....

The question is:  Do we need a Republican Congress to counter-balance Obama, or do we need a Republican Congress to get rid of the insane wing of the Democratic party in Congress?

The answer is, of course, both.  Barack Obama comes from the insane wing of the Democratic party, so that is to be expected.  However, we should remember two things:

1) If you're going to run against insanity, you have to present yourself as sane, i.e., no more congressional meddling in Terry Shiavo cases, no 'You got some splaining to do, Judge Sotomayor, etc...'

2) Know who you're running against.  Obama isn't running for anything in 2010.  the 1994 Republicans used Clinton in their advertisements, but ran against their individual opponents.

The Republican Coup in the New York Senate has killed hopes for gay marriage legislation anytime soon.  While one certainly cannot credit pressure by gay marriage opponents for the absolutely unprecedented coup, one cannot discount it either.  Coupled with Proposition 8 being upheld by the liberal California Supreme Court, and no support whatsoever coming from the White House, and it is clear that the gay marriage movement in its current form is basically dead.

The centrist view of gay rights seems to be to maximize gay rights up to the point of interfering with traditional customs such as marriage, which people feel to be important.  Nobody thinks that denying a same-sex partner hospital visitation rights makes any sense.  At the same time, the claims of the same-sex marriage movement-- that there is nothing special, unique, or important about motherhood, fatherhood, or long-term heterosexual commitments-- have not gained any traction whatsoever and have been a huge source of energy for the opposition.

The legal danger to the anti-gay marriage forces has always been that any compromise would be taken by the courts as evidence of (unwarranted) discrimination-- if you're granting civil unions to gays, then marriage can't mean very much, thus not giving them marriage is violation of equal rights.  But as long as the gay marriage proponents do not pursue this legal strategy, then we have a groundwork for compromise.   The compromise will take different forms, but will mostly be in the form of exhanced civil unions.

Obama, the head of the Democratic Party, has signed off on a deal that would give Chrysler's senior creditors far less than Chrysler's junior creditors (the unions).  He then publically blasted the senior creditors who didn't accept the deal and triggered a lawsuit.

Obama has thus shown that he is willing to break deals with creditors. If you were a foreigner who is being asked to purchase debt from Obama, say, to fund a multi-trillion-dollar deficit, what would you be thinking right now? 

Obama has hurt America's reputation with this Chrysler deal he's trying to foist on creditors.  This will have upward pressure on interest rates.  He has made his job a lot harder. 

I recently wrote that a good Republican Strategy would be to try to essentially leave Obama alone as far as his personal popularity while fighting legislative battles unrelentingly. I argued that much of America wants Obama to look good but does not necessarily agree with his political choices. Furthermore, I said that Head of State is "where is heart is."

Here's a question:  What major legislative proposal has Obama won by actively taking his case to the American people?  Anything?  By this time, Reagan had caused congressional Democrats to face ceiling-high piles of letters from constituents arguing for his proposals.  Instead, Obama has simply coasted on the congressional majority. And even that hasn't worked for cap-and-trade or EFCA.

Rahm Emmanual's quote that one should 'never waste a crisis' belies the fact that the White House has indeed wasted the crisis.  Sneaking extra legislation through under the cover of a crisis is far different from using a crisis to change America's fundamental beliefs.  Yet that is precisely what they did with the new deficit spending-- snuck it through under cover of fixing the economy.  That is a sign of weakness, not strength.

Obama is simply not out there on the hustings promoting his agenda effectively.  The only thing Obama is promoting is  Obama.  Republicans need to tthink like a judo master and help Obama along on the path he is already taking, which is to separate his personal popularity from his policies. 

Most people in the great Center of American politics are reasonable and level-headed.  Whether or not they voted for Obama, they are certainly willing to give him a chance as President. And by chance, I mean a year, not just a few months.  The idea that the average American citizen is ready to blame Obama for the economy, Wall Street, or Swine Flu after just 3 months in office is ludicrous and attacks on him for current conditions will just not seem credible.  Furthermore, people are universally proud of the fact that an African-American is now President of the United States and thus people have a vested interest in having him continue to look good. 

But that does *not* translate into approval of any of his policies.  I don't see any mass movement in any polls towards single-payer health care, higher taxes, or anything like that.  People like free markets-- they just don't like abuse of free markets.  

As far as foreign policy goes-- people don't care if Obama shakes Chavez's hand or wishes someone a happy Iranian New Year; they'll write it off as a form of diplomacy.  Bush had a history of unforced errors with regards to ticking off foreign leaders, so maybe a little too much politeness won't be so damaging either.  But again, that doesn't translate into approval for, say, dropping Israel in favor of Iran. 

So how do we help the American People?  What should 'The Next Right' do?

In many countries, there is a separate Head of State and Head of Government.  The Head of State goes to the dinners and 'represents' the country.  The Head of Government does the work.  We should nudge Obama into the Head of State role.  It's where the American people want him, and it's where his heart is, anyway.  Then, we can continue to work on taking the government back from Nancy Pelosi.

Obama just offfered to forego European missile defense in return for Russia's help on Iran.  Russia, naturally, leaked the offer.  Europe is now horrified at being treated like a sacrificial pawn.  The rest of the world sees that the US is working from a position of weakness on Iran.  Obama is shown up as a kindergardten-level negotiator:  I'll give you my juice if you give me that cookie.

Nice Work, Prez.

This is from memory, but I sharply recall that one of Ed Koch's officials (Ed Koch was mayor of New York City from 1977 to 1989) testified before congress in 1981. The official clearly stated that New York City balanced its budget by cutting spending first and only then raising taxes. 

Reagan ran on a platform based on doing the reverse.  The argument was that we could 'starve' Congress by cutting taxes.  This argument was in parallel to yet separate from the supply side economics argument. 

The problem is this:  If potatoes go on sale, I am going to wind up buying more potatoes.  That's econ 101.  Since people discount future costs so heavily, we wound up putting government on sale and people wound up buying more and more of it. 

I'm not blaming Reagan for trying.  But can we move beyond tactics that clearly don't work?  Sure, it's been politically expedient to head for tax cuts.  Sure, tax cuts stimulate growth.  But we must take responsibility for teaching people that they can get a dollar's worth of government for 90 cents.  The growth of the federal government is as much the responsibility of so-called conservatives as of anyone else. 

If you want freedom, you want a small government.  Making people pay up front for government is, in the long term, the best way to get small government.  I wish our conservative political leadership had the courage to tell this to the American People.

Yes, this is in somewhat of a contrarian vein.  But take a look at the facts:

1)  That a Democrat would win an election with a Republican brand in shambles, recession, financial market collapse, and sky-high oil prices, can't be considered a surprise.

2) That a young African-American would increase voter turnout amongst young and African-American voters can't be considered a surprise, either.

3) Yeah, Obama raised a lot of money.  But he had a terrific organization and a perfect environment for Democrats..  How much money was the DailyKos really responsible for?

4) Obama's staffing choices suggest a center-left coalition-- and we're still waiting for the left part of that coalition to show up in cabinet appointments.

So really, aside from forcing Democratic Primary candidates to genuflect towards them, hurting them in the general elections, just what is it that the Kossacks  and the MoveOn Morons achieved?