Jan
31
Interesting debate. I’m with the libertarian, Nick Gillespie, on this one.
Jan
31
When RINOs Are Good…..
Filed Under American Politics | 1 Comment
Susan Collins gives the Republican response to Obama’s weekly address. She talks’s about the Obama response to terrorism generally and Abdulmutallab specifically. I think she gets the tone spot on:
Jan
30
Weekend Open Post
Filed Under Uncategorized | 15 Comments
Jan
30
This will be my only post today. Yesterday Obama went to Baltimore to meet with House Republicans in a question and answer session filmed by C-Span. I’ve been watching it all morning.
What a pleasant change after the last year. Whilst I could disagree with Obama on much of what he says here, what a refreshing moment for politics this was. From both sides, I thought Republicans handled it very well too, particularly Paul Ryan who is a real high flyer within the party.
This is the Obama who could win easily in 2012, and the Obama who has been missing throughout 2009. Republicans need to learn how to deal with this Obama because we’ll see much more of him. Having said that, if this is the sign of the Republican party to come too, then they are already learning fast. This is what politics is all about. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Think of it as a lengthy and polite PM’s Question Time.
The first video is of Obama’s introductory speech. (And BTW, how much more real is he reading from notes than from a teleprompter?)
that lasts half an hour. Next is the question and answer session which lasts an hour:
I found the whole thing utterly compelling. Polite without being fake, challenging without being antagonistic. This is politics at it’s best. Maybe I’m over-selling it, please find the time to watch it and make up your own mind.
Jan
29
I’m A Pragmatist
Filed Under General Politics | 5 Comments
One advantage to this blogging lark is that it enables me to think about my views on politics and events. I’m ready to come out of the closet and reveal myself as a pragmatist rather than an ideologue. Now don’t worry, I’m not going all David Frum, I still believe in a number of core conservative principles. But I’ve come to realise that wanting what’s best for a country is not always compatible with what I think is the right course. Some examples:
Rinos – I’m a conservative. If I lived in America, I’d be most inclined to support the Republican Party and I would prefer for there to be conservative candidates for me to support. I’d also want a Republican party to be conservative in their approach to issues. But I’m never going to see conservative solutions to problems if the party I support is in permanent opposition. In the up-coming mid-terms, Republicans would need to win ten seats to form a majority in the Senate. I want them to achieve that, especially when circumstances are as propitious as they are right now. So when there are opportunities to take Barack Obama’s and Joe Biden’s senate seats in blue states like Illinois and Delaware, then I think the GOP should do whatever it takes to achieve that. And that means putting up RINO type candidates like Mike Castle (Delaware) and Mark Kirk (Illinois). They wouldn’t be ideal members of a Republican Senatorial caucus and it may mean losing some bills in the future because Kirk and Castle find them too conservative. But without people like them in the Senate, those bills wouldn’t exist in the first place because the GOP wouldn’t have a majority. But having those two RINOs in the caucus gives us a much better chance of getting conservative legislation through than if they’d been primaried out by a safe conservative candidate without a chance of winning a general election.
If there’s a chance to get a conservative in place with a genuine chance of winning a general election, then great, Marco Rubio v Charlie Crist is a case in point. But the most important thing is to win, nothing else can happen without it.
Government – In and of itself, government is not necessarily a bad thing. It is right to question the growth of government, it is definitely right to have serious concerns about the way government works in the way it is currently run. But government can be a force for good, and a force for conservative good. Just saying “no” to government instinctively will never be a winning formula. Such a statement can have resonance at times like now where more and more people are noticing governments failings, but events will undermine that consensus: a natural disaster, an economic catastrophe or a national security incident will all have people crying out for government help. Just standing there saying “sorry, no can do” is not acceptable. This should not be seen by conservatives as a capitulation to the evils of government however, it is an opportunity to mould policy in a compatibly conservative way. I sometimes get the feeling that conservatives are being short-sighted, just resisting rather than selling conservatism as a force for good. William Buckley famously said that conservatives should just yell “stop!”. As iconic as Buckley is to the conservative movement, I can’t help feeling that Buckley got it wrong. Just saying stop has not thwarted the rise of progressivism, it has only (at best) slowed it somewhat. Personally I think conservatives should be saying to people “climb aboard”.
I’ll stop for now, that was pretty much off the top of my head and I need to do some more thinking on it, but hopefully you’ll find it an interesting starting point for discussion.
Let me just clarify. I want to support candidates with strong conservative values and principles. I want to support a party with the same. None of that has changed, I’ve just come to realise that that can’t be all. Conservatives need to be mature enough to recognise that governing means governing everyone and that means from time to time that compromises will need to be reached.
Jan
29
I Never Thought I’d Say This
Filed Under American Politics | 1 Comment
But there is a brilliant post at The Daily Kos about the recent Supreme Court ruling on corporate money in elections. Actually, in truth, I read Kos on a daily basis. Far too much of the tea-bagging commentary from them but they do have some good stuff from time to time. Anyway, back to the article by Adam B.
It’s well worth reading it all, but the most accessible part highlights the difference between what happened before the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling and what happens after. Guess what, there’s not a lot of difference:
Before Citizens United:
* Corporations could make direct financial contributions to candidates in 27 states, but not in federal elections.
* In 26 states, corporations could run direct advertising for or against the election of a state/local candidate.
* In all 50 states and in federal elections, corporations could run “issue advertising” against candidates saying “Sen. [X] is wrong on this issue and is a bad person, so call him on the phone and say so,” and as long as it didn’t say “and you shouldn’t vote for him” and wasn’t too close to an election, it was legal.After Citizens United:
* Corporations can make direct financial contributions to candidates in 27 states, but not in federal elections.
* In all 50 states and in federal elections, corporations can run direct advertising for or against the election of a candidate.
* In all 50 states and in federal elections, corporations can run “issue advertising” against candidates saying “Sen. [X] is wrong on this issue and is a bad person” as well as “so don’t vote for him.”
So the only difference now is that groups including corporates and trade unions can now recommend voting for against a person, something they couldn’t do before hand, and that this messaging can be done in the run up to an election. This is hardly the catastrophic assault on democracy that the left would have us believe.
And then Adam B adds this nugget on the recent vote in Oregon to raise taxes on the wealthy:
It’s worth noting, by the way, that the tax referenda which were passed on Oregon on Tuesday were largely promoted by direct spending from the SEIU, ASCFME and NEA/OEA treasuries, which Oregon already allowed and are now constitutional everywhere. (Unions are corporations too.
So leaving aside the rights of free speech (or whether political money can be defined as such), this just doesn’t seem like the big deal that left are demagoguing it as. But then that’s not news.
Jan
28
Open Post
Filed Under Uncategorized | 16 Comments
Struggling to find anything not State of the Union related. Maybe a more interesting day tomorrow.
Jan
28
SOTU Polling
Filed Under American Politics | 4 Comments
Many will try to determine whether Obama’s speech will improve his fortunes. Don’t expect much. Historically, SOTU’s have very little impact on a Presidents approval ratings:
Gallup’s report includes a table showing the level of presidential approval measured immediately before and after the last 27 State of the Union addresses. “Across all presidents,” they report, “the average change in approval has been less than a one percentage-point decline.
There’s a simple explanation for this. Most of the people who watch a State of the Union are partisan supporters of him anyway. There is a table at the link if you’re really interested.
Anyway, for what it’s worth, CNN polled people watching the SOTU. Mixed results:
Nearly half of Americans who watched President Obama’s State of the Union address said they had a very positive reaction to his speech, according to a poll of people who viewed the address.
A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey indicated that 48 percent of speech watchers had a very positive reaction, with three in 10 saying they had a somewhat positive response and 21 percent with a negative response.
The 48 percent who indicated they had a very positive response is down 20 points from the 68 percent of speech watchers who felt the same way a year ago about the president’s February 24 prime time address to a joint session of Congress.
Jan
28
Obama’s SOTU
Filed Under American Politics | 2 Comments
I haven’t had chance to watch it, but I’ve read the transcript which can be found here:
What are the good? He did a good job on specifics. Whilst I don’t agree with much of what he says, putting myself in the mind of a swing voter, I found how some of his explanations about how they responded to the economy and why America has a large debt might be reasonably compelling. Unfortunately, aside from the usual “look at me” Obama rhetoric which is fine, it was a little boring. I struggled to read it all.
What he did bad.
Now, I am not naïve. I never thought the mere fact of my election would usher in peace, harmony, and some post-partisan era.
Shall I just be polite and say that I’m somewhat sceptical about the fact that he never believed this. My memory of his campaign was that he, and his followers, certainly did believe this.
He’s also the President of whinge. There’s hardly any mea culpa in there about the failed stimulus, about the fact that he spent a whole year on healthcare whilst the economy got worse, or that America is more divided today than it was even under Bush. All I can find in the speech where Obama shoulders any blame for America’s problems comes in this one sentence:
Our administration has had some political setbacks this year, and some of them were deserved.
And yet he finds time to have a dig at Republicans, Congressional Democrats, the media and worst of all, the Supreme Court whilst they are sitting right in front of him. A President, and especially a so-called constitutional lawyer should be able to understand the principle of separation of powers and have the dignity to respect it. Once again, as he so often does, Obama comes across as petty and arrogant. He has an aloofness about him and I wonder whether this is causing his problems.
Anyway, the partisans will either love it or hate it and in today’s political climate, nothing more can be expected.
Jan
27
Open Post 27th January
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Will have a couple of things later