Politics

2006

2006-07-19-Conservative-anger-grows

Conservative Anger Grows Over Bush's Foreign Policy
By Michael Abramowitz
Washington Post, 2006-07-19

Conservative intellectuals and commentators
who once lauded Bush for what they saw as
a willingness to aggressively confront threats and advance U.S. interests
said in interviews
that they perceive timidity and confusion about
long-standing problems including Iran and North Korea,
as well as urgent new ones such as
the latest crisis between Israel and Hezbollah.
...
Most of the most scathing critiques of the administration from erstwhile supporters
are being expressed within think tanks
and in journals and op-ed pages followed by
a foreign policy elite in Washington and New York.

But the Bush White House has always paid special attention to the conversation in these conservative circles. Many of the administration's signature ideas -- regime change in Iraq, and special emphasis on military "preemption" and democracy building around the globe -- first percolated within this intellectual community. In addition, these voices can be a leading indicator of how other conservatives from talk radio to Congress will react to policies.

As the White House listens to what one official called the "chattering classes," it hears a level of disdain from its own side of the ideological spectrum that would have been unthinkable a year ago. It is an odd irony for a president who has inflamed liberals and many allies around the world for what they see as an overly confrontational, go-it-alone approach. The discontent on the right could also color the 2008 presidential debate.

2006-08-20-Conservatives-criticize-Bush

Pundits Renounce The President
Among Conservative Voices, Discord
By Peter Baker
Washington Post, 2006-08-20

2006-09-08-Raimondo

The GOP, RIP
They're on the way out – and good riddance
by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com 2006-09-08

2006-10-14-Walsh

Election 2006: The Fix is Already In
How Rahm Emanuel Has Rigged a Pro-War Congress
By JOHN WALSH
CounterPunch, 2006-10-14/15

2006-10-24-Walsh

The Book of Rahm
Emanuel’s War Plan for Democrats
By JOHN WALSH
CounterPunch, 2006-10-24

[T]he chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC)
[is] Congressman Rahm Emanuel....
Chuck Schumer ... is his equivalent of the Senate side,
chairing the DSCC (Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee).

[Two Jews.
Controlling both halves of the Democratic party’s congressional campaign.
But don’t say that the Jews control politics.
That’s anti-Semitism, you know.]

2006-11-08-Raimondo

The Antiwar Wave
Voters repudiate interventionism
by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com, 2006-11-08 (the day after the election)

[An excerpt:]

As for the victory of Joe Lieberman in Connecticut,
this is the exception that proves the rule.
Lieberman's Democratic opponent, Ned Lamont, made two major errors:

1. He veered off his emphasis on his antiwar stance and
   sought to "broaden" his constituency
   and didn't get back on message until it was too late.
2. He went on vacation for a couple of weeks
   right after winning the Democratic primary against Lieberman
   and never regained his early momentum.

In addition,
his cool, patrician demeanor was not an asset, and
Lieberman had a lot of help from big GOP donors and the War Party nationally,
without a counterbalancing effort by Lamont's supporters nationally.

[Lamont’s “vacation for a couple of weeks” and “cool, patrician demeanor”
seem like pretty small potatoes to explain his defeat by Lieberman.
Raimondo is either afraid or unwilling to mention the key factor:
Lieberman is one of the leading members of The Jewish Party.]

2006-12-18-Raimondo

O-bomb-a and the War Party
Barack Obama: He's more of the same...
by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com, 2006-12-18

2007

2007-01-05-Walsh

Clash of the Elites
Beltway Insiders Versus Neo-Cons
By JOHN WALSH
CounterPunch.com, 2007-01-05

2007-03-01-Roberts

Americans Have Lost Their Country
by Paul Craig Roberts
Antiwar.com, 2007-03-01

2007-05-18-Raimondo

The Season of Hope
Out of the crisis come new leaders
by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com, 2007-05-18

[An excerpt.
Lots of this deserves to be emphasized, but, alas,
I do not have the time to do that;
also alas, all the links in the original have been lost in this copy.]

The War Party operates like any other lobby in American politics, and that is by working on the “squeaky wheel” principle: the secret of a minority lobby’s success is that they are passionately and single-mindedly committed to their cause. Because of this motivational advantage, they exercise pressure way out of proportion to their real numbers and very often wind up getting what they want – whether it be a government subsidy, a regulation designed to benefit some economic player, or a war launched to benefit certain financial and foreign interests.

These interests have naturally gravitated to the two major parties, ensconced themselves in the leadership, and established networks of influence in state and local organizations, carefully and craftily leveraging their power to keep the antiwar faction down and satisfied with purely symbolic gestures. The Democratic leadership has been performing a delicate balancing act, paying lip service to the demands of their antiwar constituency while fighting to maintain funding, albeit attached to mostly imaginary (i.e. non-binding) benchmarks. As far as doing anything concrete to bring the war to an end – forget it.

Although the invasion was launched by a Republican president, the Democrats bought into it from the beginning – and, in spite of their ostensible position in favor of ending the war as soon as possible, they are increasingly playing a key role in waging it. In any case, the recent Senate vote speaks volumes about the sincerity of their “antiwar” rhetoric.

When it comes to foreign policy, the differences between the two parties have rarely given the voters much of a choice. In the “debate” over this vital issue, our options are limited to the varieties of interventionism – the unilateralist, macho-style preemptive imperialism of the Republicans, or the touchy-feely “humanitarian”-yet-just-as-deadly interventionism of the Democrats, with Iraq and Kosovo being the operative examples, respectively.

...

The Republicans, for their part, are busy trying to close down all debate about the war: it’s significant, in a scary way, that the neo-authoritarian Giuliani’s first response to Ron Paul was to demand a retraction. As for the Democrats, they are mainly concerned with tamping down antiwar sentiment in their own party so they can get on with the real business of Washington: trading favors to build a political machine and entrench themselves in power.

With no political outlet, no means to oppose a policy that the overwhelming majority of the American people oppose – with increasing bitterness – the underground river of dissent that has been running through the country since 9/11, slowly building up steam until it became a torrent, is ready to burst through to the surface.

[This may be just wishful thinking on Raimondo’s part.
My opinion, based on observation of the past,
is that what Raimondo (and many others) call the War Party
(which, again in my opinion, amounts to the bulk of Jewish power in America
coupled with those Gentiles who they control
or who have their own reasons
for supporting Israel’s aggression, repression, territorial expansion,
and violation of the rule of law (e.g.))
will use its control of the media to manipulate the minds of many Americans,
by distracting them with the endlessly manufactured list
of grievances, goodies, and manufactured injustices
(gasp, some people are poorer than others!
medical care is expansive, but you deserve it,
no matter how expensive it is and how old you are)
so that they will vote for
what they have been persuaded are their parochial interests
rather than what is good for the country as a whole.

That’s exactly what happened in 1992, when Jews, feminists, and blacks
voted overwhelmingly against Bush I and for Clinton I.]

2007-11-12-Raimondo

Dynasties and Democracy
by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com, 2007-11-12

America's royal families battle for power

2008

2008-10-15-Raimondo

Goodbye, GOP
by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com, 2008-10-15

The neocons killed the Republican Party.
Will they stay for the funeral?

[This is a very interesting article.
Here is an excerpt; emphasis is added.]

Whatever else the neocons believed in –
and this often seemed to change with the political seasons –
the one constant was and is
a firm belief in
the efficacy of U.S. military intervention around the world.
...

When Ron Paul warned his fellow Republicans that the empire is unsustainable,
he was
vilified by the neocons and the party establishment,
derided as a kook, and
practically drummed out of the party
by the arbiters of political correctness, neocon style.
They didn’t even let him on the convention floor during McCain’s coronation,
and they refused to count his votes.

Now that the disaster Paul predicted has befallen them,
one can only stand and watch their spectacular implosion
with the utmost satisfaction.
What’s particularly entertaining is
the speed with which the neocons are now deserting the sinking ship of the GOP,
like those small mammalian creatures they resemble in mien and spirit.
Charles Krauthammer, David Brooks, David Frum –
having destroyed the GOP and the conservative movement,
they leave it a dried-up husk and move on to their next unwitting host.

[Of course, actually the neocons didn’t destroy the conservative movement—
the conservative movement destroyed itself
by putting too much faith in the preachings of the neocons.]

2008-10-24-WP-happiness-gap

A Happiness Gap: Doomacrats And Republigrins
By David Montgomery
Washington Post, 2008-10-24

Now the good news for Republicans:
You are happier than Democrats.
You always have been, and you probably always will be.
...

2009

2009-05-22-Raimondo

Why Liberals Love Obama
Even as he betrays them on civil liberties and foreign policy
by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com, 2009-05-22

[An excerpt.]

What really excites the liberal-progressive community is the prospect of seizing economic power in this country. They want Obama to slap down Wall Street and create WPA-style “work brigades” to keep the growing army of unemployed off the streets. Most of all, they want to centralize all power in Washington – where the Dear Leader, in his wisdom, will personally direct a militant campaign on behalf of the ultimate progressive ideal, which is the concept of equality.

Peace, individual liberty, and the inalienable right of self-expression used to be the hallmarks of the old, classical liberalism. Such liberal stalwarts as Oswald Garrison Villard, first editor of The Nation, and Randolph Bourne, the namesake of the nonprofit foundation that runs this Web site, carried the banner of an anti-imperialist, pro-freedom “Left” through World War I, fighting Prohibition, government repression, and the Wilsonian policy of global intervention overseas. With the advent of the New Deal, however, and the agitation for U.S. intervention in the European war, the old liberalism was murdered in its sickbed and a new – and decidedly illiberal – “liberalism” took its place.

Previously, liberalism had been a disposition, an attitude, a generalized way of looking at the world, but in the 1930s it was transformed into a “science.” The Marxist influence was evident here: the intellectuals of the presidential “Brain Trust” had certainly absorbed its lessons, and – careful to Americanize their rhetoric – were eager to apply them. Yet even before the rise of the Popular Front and the outsized prominence of the Communist Party and its fellow travelers in American intellectual life, American progressivism had already taken up a similar fascination with science, corroded the integrity of the old liberalism, and consigned its advocates to the margins.

Mesmerized by the idea that society could and should be scientifically organized along egalitarian lines, the liberal-progressives of the New Deal era looked the other way as the president tried to pack the Supreme Court and ceaselessly agitated for U.S. intervention in the European war – a cause that was taken up with alacrity by the Left the moment the USSR came under attack from Hitler’s legions.

Yet it wasn’t just rescuing the “workers’ fatherland” that motivated the Left to abandon its traditional antiwar stance in favor of relentless warmongering. It was also the wartime atmosphere – which allowed the centralization of economic and social power in the hands of the federal government – that unleashed their worst instincts.

The “modernization” of liberalism effected a remarkable transformation: what had been a doctrine that championed the individual against the state was inverted to mean its exact opposite.

2009-12-19-WP

Ethics office closes inquiry into actions of Murtha, 2 others
By Ben Pershing
Washington Post, 2009-12-19

2012

2012-06-15-NYT-McCain-Adelson-mccain-says-adelson-is-putting-foreign-money-into-campaign

McCain Says Adelson is Putting ‘Foreign Money’ Into Campaign
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
New York Times The Caucus, 2012-06-15

2013

2013-10-31-NYT-behind-roar-of-politics-whispers-of-race-persist

Behind the Roar of Political Debates, Whispers of Race Persist
By JOHN HARWOOD
New York Times, 2013-10-31

WASHINGTON —

President Obama last week sought to turn attention from health care to immigration —
in other words, from one racially divisive issue to another.

Whites tend to hold negative views of Obamacare,
while blacks tend to like it.
Specifically,
55 percent of whites, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found this year,
consider Mr. Obama’s health care law a bad idea,
while 59 percent of blacks call it a good idea.
On immigration,
51 percent of whites oppose legal status for illegal residents, but
63 percent of blacks and 76 percent of Hispanics favor it.

The statistics mirror the core philosophical division
in Washington’s fierce battles over taxes, spending and debt.
Whites say government does too much,
while blacks and Hispanics say it should do more to meet people’s needs.

Those attitudes, and the continued growth of the nonwhite population,
have produced this sometimes-overlooked result:
American politics has grown increasingly polarized by race,
as well as by party and ideology.

That reality promises to command more attention as the day draws closer
when whites will no longer make up a majority of the population,
which the Census Bureau projects will be in 2043.

...

2016

2016-02-12-NYT-how-far-left-has-america-moved

How Far Left Has America Moved?
By STUART STEVENS, Mitt Romney’s chief campaign strategist in 2012
New York Times, 2016-02-12

...

Now it’s February 2016 and an obscure socialist — O.K., a Democratic Socialist — from a tiny state just beat one of the most powerful forces in the Democratic Party in the New Hampshire primary.
On the Republican side, a man whom National Review, the conservative movement’s flagship publication, has vigorously denounced, also won New Hampshire in a rout.

How did we get here?

When he entered the presidential race in 2007, Mr. Obama had amassed a voting record that was ranked by National Journal as the most liberal in the United States Senate.

...

By 2008 ... Mr. Obama made the case that he and the Democratic Party were best able to deal with the crushing pain of disappearing jobs and escalating inequality. The urgent need to prevent any more terrorist attacks had morphed to an urgent longing to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Liberals now called themselves progressives and embraced the label.

The Barack Obama legacy debate is just beginning. One point up for discussion: whether the president pushed the country left, or whether he was just in step with how people felt. He passed the Affordable Care Act, announced support for same-sex marriage, and has argued passionately (if unsuccessfully) for more gun control.

[The author could also mention forcing the military to accept open homosexuals in its ranks,
and women in combat units.]

...

[W]ill this be the election cycle when voters in both parties accept that
they want a growing benevolent government,
as long as they don’t have to admit they need it?