Thread: Chaos Reigns: Obama's bumbling international trips, Pelosi's

Obama's bumbling international trips, Pelosi's return to power, International Democratic infighting

Chaos Reigns

By Daniel Greenfield
Friday, November 19, 2010

In the wake of the election of 2010, the defining element is chaos. Obama’s bumbling international trips, Pelosi’s return to power, MSNBC purging yet another anchor to try and show that it’s apolitical or centrist or something anyway, and international Democratic infighting have given way to sheer lunacy.

The TSA firestorm should have been seriously addressed by now, and it’s a mark of the chaos that the administration and congressional democrats have refused to take it seriously. Meanwhile the bizarre outbursts continue. LaHood’s cell phone nanny state ban or Rockerfeller’s suggestion that MSNBC and FOX both be banned are a little unnerving, but they’re also symptoms of a Democratic party that is unable to break from its nanny state core. Which still thinks government force is the only solution to any problem. And wonders why the public isn’t more grateful for it.

It’s the definition problem again. MSNBC suddenly wants to be centrist, except it doesn’t really want to be centrist. It just wants to be thought of as centrist. The Democrats want to be centrist too, but they don’t really know how either.

The trials of Olbermann and Rangel—Getting let off the hook

The trials of Olbermann and Rangel have a common purpose, to demonstrate that MSNBC and the Democratic party can clean up their own house. Except they can’t. Olbermann is already back. And Rangel was let off with censure. It’s theater, at a time when the public doesn’t want theater, they want results. But where are the results going to come from when the problem continues to be embedded in the policies and practices of the people who are in charge.

Brute force nanny state solutions will alienate and anger the public outside the sphere of an imminent crisis. And you can only hear the same message so many times, before you tune out, and look for something else. Power leads naturally to corruption and infighting. And that last one is not just a problem on the Democratic side.

Republicans who are scrambling to apportion blame for the disaster in the Senate can look in the mirror, because everyone has a piece of the blame, from the establishment down to the insurgents. Too many people wanted to win, without considering the consequences. But the arguments are still going on.

Some activists want a Republican party that is disengaged from social issues or national defense, and just focused on financial reform and smaller government. While financial reforms are important, that would leave the GOP as a party without any beliefs, except undoing the damage that the other guys did. That’s a fine posture when people hate the other guys, but it’s not long term thinking. And it ignores the ideological causes of big government and nanny statism. Which is that it’s the product of ideology shaping culture, rather than just bad economics. And you can’t fight ideology and culture, with economic reforms.

And the message of smaller government and financial reforms will have a lot less resonance once the economy improves. That has historically been the case. Which means that pursuing the agenda, will require having a bouquet of issues, not just the one.

In more prosperous times, people are more willing to accept government services without counting the cost. Talk of balancing the budget and saving money tends to fall on deaf ears, when there’s lots of money all around. It’s why the deficit could begin climbing so drastically without much pushback when things were good. And now that things are bad, we also have to think about what the political culture will be like in 2016 and 2020, not just what it will be like a year from now.
We’re going to be headed for major Republican infighting in the next two years

But like it or not, we’re going to be headed for major Republican infighting in the next two years. And were already beginning to see some of the cards on the table. The road to the convention will be a bitter one, but so will the fight over the party’s own institutions. Steele’s tenure at the RNC was a predictable disaster. I was never a fan of Steele, and he brought no content or organization to the table. But removing him is only touching off more infighting. And while you can’t reform the party without it, a lot of the spats are not about the party, they’re about personalities. They’re about who will have influence and whose star will rise, and whose will sink.

I suspect that the road to the convention will be highly unconventional. And Palin’s own strategy, resigning her governorship, becoming a kingmaker in the primaries and launching a reality show, is the most unconventional of all. But it may take an unconventional strategy to beat Obama. But there’s still completely justifiable doubts over whether Palin can win. I was one of the few who proposed her as a VP candidate, before McCain actually picked her. But she still has yet to prove that she can win over skeptical Republican and independent voters. Not to mention Reagan Democrats.

Romney is still waiting in the wings. And unfortunately the odds are good that we’ll still have him to kick around in the convention. Romney is Bush without the charm or the national security drive, but with the same liberal politics. And the disdain is much more open. But he’s visually credible and that makes him a safe bet.

New York’s own Governor Pataki is still hanging around. And Newt Gingrich is too. But despite being a solid thinker, Gingrich has a Nixon problem. A 150 years ago, Gingrich could have gotten all the way up. But today we have TV elections and that makes the odds of him winning very slight. Huckabee is always stalking the margins with his phony smirk.

Then there’s Mike Pence, who so far is one of the more sympathetic candidates, who seems to have a good balance of what the party needs. Pence has the best shot of being able to go all the way, who actually seems to have legitimate values and hasn’t been turned into a vicious cartoon, the way Gingrich and Palin have.

While all that is still in the future, the battle begins today. And it won’t be pretty.

DREAM Act

In in the Senate, the DREAM Act is back. And it’s not too surprising. The Democrats have lost among mainstream American voters, but they managed to eke out some wins, particularly in the Senate, thanks to aggressive Get Out the Vote program targeting minorities. Particularly Latinos. Those voters are a major reason why Harry Reid is still in the Senate. And those are the voters that Obama will be even more desperately relying on in 2012. Which means pandering in a big way.

But it’s not just about the pandering. Moving them through the pipeline creates more voters who owe the Democrats everything.

And the Democrats will collect.

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/30181

To bad they don't infight like the Japanese!

It's crucially important that Republicans such as those with names in the pot or waiting in the wings to be stars, remember that in the Republican Party there are no stars. Our party has never been about power, prestige or stardom. Republicans are the grunts of our political nation, the ones who quickly and silently without acknowledgment or gratitude, go about the hard, difficult and often dangerous and deadly task of saving our nation by fighting for our liberty and prosperity risking everything including our lives to advance the cause, if need be.

Michael Steele needs to be retained as RNC Chairman, in my view. He has done an excellent job and the results are clear and they are outstanding.

Everyone in line for whatever position in Congress needs to move on up, so we are united and effective in reversing the policies that have destroyed our county.

We want no battles. We want no controversy. We want no divide and that includes any issues that would divide US. Pro-Life Republicans need to shut their traps as does the Anti-Same Sex Marriage faction, so we can fix our economy and get our citizens back to work.