Monthly Archives: July 2008

John Kasich for vice president?

Readers may recall that I’m a bit down on the prospect of John McCain finding a running mate who will do him more good than harm. However, one person who might fit this description is John Kasich. He was a popular nine-term Congressman from Ohio, a state Republicans desperately need to carry. And he’s originally from western Pennsylvania, another key area. Kasich seems to possess a blue collar appeal that »

Swing Vote–Better Than Most

Swing Vote, from Touchstone Pictures, opens tomorrow night. I had an opportunity to preview it a couple weeks ago for purposes of a Power Line review. A smart move, probably, by the producers, who realize that millions of conservatives are skeptical of any Hollywood movie that deals with politics. They got their $8 worth, too: I liked it. Swing Vote stars Kevin Costner as Bud Johnson, a dissolute, barely-employed, and »

Obama removes his mask

It’s not even quite August yet and he’s still ahead in the polls, but Barack Obama has played the race card, claiming that he expects Republicans to inject race into the campaign. In Missouri, he told a crowd: Nobody [ed: nobody?] thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. So what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me. You »

The latest on the “mental recession”

The economy, as measured by gross domestic product, grew by 1.9 percent in the second quarter of this year, the Commerce Department announced today. That’s nothing to write home about, but it’s not to be despised either. A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. We’ve had two consecutive quarters of positive growth, gross domestic product having increased by 0.9 percent in the first quarter. To »

Midnight conservative

Early in his career, Jon Voight must have been stationed somewhere on the far left of the Hollywood crowd. When he came up to Dartmouth in the spring of 1970 for a showing of “The Revolutionary,” he clearly identified with the film’s hero. In the question-and-answer session following the showing of the film, Voight explained in all seriousness that we should know “the revolution” was going to begin in Washington »

Racial Progress, Or Stagnation?

It’s generally assumed that Barack Obama’s nomination for President is a sign of great racial progress in the U.S. Perhaps so. But several stories in the news this week suggest that for many, racial politics are stuck in the same dead end of victimology that has held back African-Americans for decades. Last night, the House of Representatives adopted a resolution apologizing for slavery and Jim Crow. The resolution passed on »

The end of the honeymoon?

The MSM usually gives a new president a honeymoon period of roughly 100 days. For Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, President Obama’s honeymoon may be over. To comment on this post, go here. »

Why was Obama a no-show at Landstuhl, Part Two

The Washington Post’s front-page story today on Obama’s no-show at Landstuhl was an attack on McCain by Michael Shear and Dan Balz called “McCain Charge Against Obama Lacks Evidence.” The charge in question is the accusation “by McCain and his allies” that Obama skipped the visit because he could not take reporters with him.” I don’t know what evidence McCain and “his allies” are relying on. However, it seems to »

Get This Man A Teleprompter!

Barack Obama is a lot like Sean Penn or George Clooney. If you give him a script, he can deliver it pretty well. But if he tries to talk without a script that has been written for him by others, he quickly reveals that he is poorly-informed if not downright ignorant. Today he delivered another classic, by claiming that if only we would all properly inflate our tires, we could »

Why was Obama a no-show at Landstuhl Medical Center?

The controversy over Barack Obama’s decision not to visit U.S. troops at a military hospital in Germany has not died down. It’s easy to see why. Obama’s decision and the subsequent flap raise questions about his judgment, his honesty, and arguably the extent of his commitment to our wounded troops. In this lengthy post, I present my understanding of the campaign’s evolving explanations for Obama’s decision and, at the end, »

A note on Obama and Afghanistan

A highly placed official with responsibility for Afghanistan writes to comment on Paul Mirengoff’s post on Obama and Afghanistan. He writes: [Obama’s] policy prescription there is equally as troubling as the one he proposes for Iraq (retreat!). If I may, I wanted to add one quibbling corollary to your post — Afghanistan occupies an enormous amount of my time…these days: I think Afghanistan IS as bad now as Iraq was »

Lessons of the airlift

When I posted this brief account of the Berlin airlift highlighting the role of Harry Truman and the left-liberal opposition to the airlift by Henry Wallace and his ilk, I had no idea that a new history of the airlift had just been published. Andrei Cherny is an attorney, a former Gore speechwriter, a Navy Reserve officer, and co-editor of the journal Democracy. As of this spring, he is also »

Eric Cantor: Democrats play games with energy

Rep. Eric Cantor is the formidable minority chief deputy whip of the House of Representatives. As Congress approaches its summer recess at the end of the week, he has forwarded his observations on the issue of energy exploration. Rep. Cantor criticizes the Democratic House and Senate leadership for stonewalling the debate while energy prices reach historic highs. Rep. Cantor writes: Congressional Democrats expecting to cruise to a landslide in November »

Obama and Afghanistan — different country, same cynicism

In an Examiner column earlier this month — “War and Peace and the Democrats” — I showed how four successive Democratic presidential candidates have allowed political calculation to enter into, and in some cases even govern, their position[s] on the vital question of putting and/or keeping U.S. troops in harm’s way. In all four cases, my focus was on Iraq. For Clinton and Gore it was their stance on the »

Something to be watching for

The story of the four female suicide bombers in two Iraqi cities drew front page coverage today, and well it might, considering the death toll (51 people according to initial reports). But how much attention will the media devote to a more significant Iraq story — the sharp decline in U.S. losses for the month of July? As this morning, the July death toll for U.S. troops stood at 11 »

Democrats Hanging On for High Oil Prices

The Democrats’ effort to keep gas prices high is reaching a crescendo, as Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid prepare to adjourn for a five-week vacation without allowing a vote on increasing our energy resources. House Republicans are trying to prevent this from happening. The Republicans have combined their “all of the above” energy proposals into the American Energy Act, but Pelosi won’t allow it to come to a vote. If »

If You Want A Recession, Vote For Obama

Michael Boskin, writing in this morning’s Wall Street Journal calls “Obamanomics” a “recipe for recession.” Obama’s tax policies are extreme to a degree we have not seen in this country in a long time: The top 35% marginal income tax rate rises to 39.6%; adding the state income tax, the Medicare tax, the effect of the deduction phase-out and Mr. Obama’s new Social Security tax (of up to 12.4%) increases »