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Taxes are for the rich and everyone else. (See 2 below.)
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Some plain talk about Obama's vulnerabilities but probably no one cares as long as it is swept under the rug by the media and press princes. Keep the focus on Romney's lack of conservative appeal. (See 3 below.)
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More than meets the eye because of underestimating. (See 4 below.)
How Newt became his own canary in the gold mine. However, the gold still remains there to be discovered. (See 4a below.)
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Discount Israel's ability and assessment you could be on the wrong side of right. (See 5 below.)
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If 'President Naive' only knew. (See 6 below.)
But he seems not to care. (See 6a below.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dan Henninger is a most perceptive op ed writer and the piece I have posted below hits the very chord I have been harping on ever since 'President Bait and Switch' came upon the national scene. He is a master at winning and appealing to hearts because his lack of accomplishments make him vulnerable were he to appeal to the head.
He is successful with his audacity pitch because he has the chutzpah to simply bait and switch. The massive number of dolts out there are taken in by the words and don't know enough to think and pose questions. They simply sop it up as the mass fools they are.
Clinton was a master at it and, in fact, all successful presidents are masters at getting you to focus on what they say even though their doing so ignores reality. It is the equivalent of a magicians slight of hand.
I guess it comes from watching syrupy television, taking easy courses, not be challenged to reason. What we are witnessing is the success of the dumbing down of our society.
He pitches "An Economy That Will Last" and no one seems to ask why did you vote against a job creating pipeline? It is all about connecting and making the listener feel good and making them forget 'their pain' which Clinton felt so deeply while he was in the Oval Office feeling none of his own.
How very sad.
Meanwhile, Republicans, as evidenced by Karl Rove's op ed article, are busy analyzing facts, numbers etc. and totally missing how to frame a response to 'President Snake Oil!.' (See 7 and 7a below.)
Woe is us!
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Dick
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1)The un-Obama
By Victor Davis Hanson
Barack Obama's favorability in the polls falls when he is himself -- overexposed, hard left in his press conferences, and boastful about legislative achievements like Obamacare and a stimulus of more than $1 trillion.
Then a strange thing happened. Obama largely went quiet. Often he was out of sight, vacationing in Hawaii or golfing. It was almost as if he learned that the less he was seen or heard, the more Americans liked the idea of Obama as president rather the reality of his constant "Make no mistake about it" and "Let me be perfectly clear" sermonizing.
Obama has now edged ahead of his potential Republican Party rivals in the polls. He waited for the noisy Republicans to grab national attention in the debates and primaries before moving hard left to firm up his base. So while the nation was amused, repelled and bored by the constant back-and-forth over Mitt Romney's moneymaking and Newt Gingrich's marriages and off-the-cuff philosophizing, President Obama matter-of-factly canceled the vital Keystone pipeline project.
He even more quietly prepared to ask Congress to raise the debt ceiling to over $16 trillion to accommodate his fourth consecutive reckless trillion-dollar-plus annual deficit -- while planning to slash the defense budget in the next decade. Did anyone notice that he made controversial "recess" appointments -- which as a senator he had opposed -- when most thought Congress was not really in recess?
Obama now rarely talks about his supposed signature achievements, whether the huge deficit "priming" or the unpopular Obamacare. Republicans have only controlled the House of Representatives for the past year, yet Obama now blasts them for stopping what he in theory wanted to do as president. In contrast, he hardly praises the Democrats who controlled both houses of Congress for twice that time and enacted all that he wished. How strange to keep silent about successes only to broadcast failed what-ifs.
President Obama now campaigns on events that happened despite, not because of, him. His Cabinet has cut federal oil leases by 40 percent, subsidized money-losing and now bankrupt green companies, and in the past openly wished that gas and electricity prices would skyrocket to make alternative energy cost-competitive. But recently he bragged that we are pumping more oil than ever. Natural gas is suddenly no longer an earth-warming pollutant but welcomed in vast abundance.
Left unmentioned was the cause of this unexpected energy bounty: The economic stagnation between 2009 and 2012 has curbed energy demand, while private entrepreneurs have used new fracking and horizontal drilling technology on largely private lands to revolutionize the production of fossil fuels. Again, Obama seems to take credit for things that occurred over his opposition -- as if to say, "You will like what they didn't let me do." In the fine tradition of American politics, the successes of others are Obama's; Obama's failures are the failures of others.
Both as a candidate and early in his term, Obama blasted all the Bush-Cheney antiterrorism protocols as either unnecessary or illegal. Iraq was a "dumb" war, and he declared the surge a failure.
But as president, Obama expanded these intelligence measures, and used a beefed-up military to kill Osama bin Laden and go after al-Qaeda captains. He followed the Bush-Petraeus timetable of withdrawal in Iraq and praised our successful nation-building there.
One could almost infer that Obama is now happy that he did not fulfill his earlier promises to close Guantanamo, end renditions and tribunals, prune back the Patriot Act, and get out of Iraq by March 2009. George W. Bush is still to be blamed for the present stagnating economy, as he is never to be praised for crafting the security measures vital for our current successes.
This year, Obama will run not so much on what he really did in 2009 and 2010, but more on what he wanted to do, but was stopped from doing, in 2011 and 2012. The president will tell his base that he really wished to go green in a big way while telling Middle America that lots of oilmen went ahead on their own to find new gas and oil. For his liberal supporters, Obama really did want to end the antiterrorism protocols, and for the rest of America he really did find those same protocols necessary to kill Islamic terrorists.
The message is clear: If voters do not see or hear the new un-Obama too often, if his left-wing legislative agenda is sidetracked, and if the private sector can ignore him, then voters may still sort of like the idea of him back as president.
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2)Democrats Love Taxes -- They Just Don't Want to Pay Them
By Larry Elder
Forgive Republican candidate Mitt Romney for his alleged failure to adequately explain why he paid "only" 14 percent of his income in taxes.
The honest answer -- "Well, because my accountants couldn't figure out how to get them any lower" -- does not work in this or very many other election years. Romney seemed flat-footed because, like most business people, he seeks to minimize costs and expenses.
This includes taxes.
A normal wealthy-and-proud-of-it guy would have said: "Let me get this straight, pal. I'm not supposed to take every legal advantage provided me by the tax laws to reduce my taxes?" For what it's worth, about 15 percent of Romney's last two years of income went to charity -- substantially higher than the percentage given by the Obamas or Joe Biden's $380 (not a typo) of his quarter-million dollar income in 2006.
"Tax savings" allows people more money to save, spend, invest, bequeath and donate. On some level, even Democrats understand this.
Democrat Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., is one of them. In 2001, Massachusetts lowered it state income tax rate. But the legislature showed mercy for the Bay State's guilt-ridden, tax-hike-supporting liberals. The tax form allowed the filer to check a special box -- and pay the old, higher rate. Out of more than 3 million tax filers in 2004, a tiny fraction of 1 percent -- 930 taxpayers -- volunteered to pay the higher rate. Among those who declined the opportunity was Mr. Frank. Frank explained, "I don't trust the legislative leadership and Gov. (Mitt) Romney to make the right decisions." Instead, Frank said, "I'll donate the money myself." What?! Charity might better spend money than can government, which, by its nature, operates less efficiently and more expensively than can private welfare?
Democrat Sen. Howard Metzenbaum from Ohio (served 1974, 1976-1995) was another tax-supporting Democrat not too keen on paying more in taxes than he needed to. But after retirement, the wealthy Metzenbaum moved to Florida, which, unlike Ohio, is a state with no estate or personal income taxes. This saved him millions.
Democrat John Edwards' wife Elizabeth, during the 2004 campaign, said rich politicians like her husband reveal "character" when they vote against financial "interest" by supporting higher taxes. This is the same John Edwards who, as a trial lawyer winning big jury awards, established a separate sub-corporation to accept the money, paying him through dividends rather than income. Perfectly legal. But this allowed Edwards to avoid some $600K in Medicare payroll taxes.
Democrats like Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., rail against the Bush tax cuts that rich people -- like himself -- "didn't need" and "didn't ask for." Rhode Island requires no sales tax on yachts registered in that state -- provided the boat is primarily housed in Rhode Island. Massachusetts is not so understanding. That state requires a sales tax and annual excise taxes. Folks say that Kerry and his 75-foot yacht spend way more time in Massachusetts than in Rhode Island. But accountants say that the wealthy yachtsman can avoid nearly $500K in state taxes by registering his boat in Rhode Island -- which he did. All was going well, until a New York paper got hold of the story and Kerry "voluntarily" agreed to pay the Mass. tax -- while continuing to insist that he does not really owe it.
Democrats like the late Ted Kennedy support the estate tax. And why not? The Kennedy family transfers wealth from generation to generation through trusts that avoid the very estate taxes that Kennedy consistently voted to impose on the wealth of others.
Shouldn't tax-hike-supporting rich people like Warren Buffett want to pay more rather than less taxes? Yet one of Buffett's companies is contesting tax claims against it.
Pro-tax-hike Democrats like MSNB-Hee-Haw's the Rev. Al Sharpton deserve a special wing all to themselves in the Chutzpah Hall of Fame. Sharpton assails the Bush-era tax cuts and wants "the rich" to pay more. Sharpton lists income from his nonprofit at just under a quarter million dollars. Add this to his estimated salary at the cable network, and the "civil rights leader" likely pulls in a tidy $500K. Not bad for a guy that not long ago was a gold-medallion-wearing Harlem rabble-rouser in velour sweatpants who got famous by playing the race card in a phony rape case.
Sharpton, according to the New York Post, owes federal taxes and state taxes totaling $3.5 million. How much income would Sharpton have had to earn to amass $3.5 million in state and local taxes? A lot. How much nerve does it take for a guy making a half mil to go on television and pound the podium for higher taxes on the rich -- when his own effective tax rate is 0 percent?
Ask Sharpton.
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3) COUNTDOWN TO VICTORY: 279 DAYS TO THE 2012 ELECTIONS
By Gary L. Bauer
Romney Wins Florida
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney clearly scored an impressive win in Florida last night. He needed to. He had a clear advantage in advertising dollars, outspending Newt Gingrich 5-to-1. But he also had another advantage. The exit polls showed that Florida voters were looking for one thing: They want Obama out; they were looking for a winner.
According to CNN's exit polling, 45% of voters said the most important quality in a candidate was the ability to defeat Barack Obama, and 58% of those voters backed Romney. Fifty-three percent of voters also said Romney was the candidate most likely to be able to defeat Obama.
But I want to offer the same caution I have made in previous messages about electability. The GOP has a history of nominating individuals who were supposedly the most electable but who came up short each time. The conventional wisdom about electability has often been wrong.
In hindsight, everyone loved and supported Ronald Reagan. But there has been a lot of revisionist history in the past 30 years. In 1980 conservatives nominated Ronald Reagan over the full-throated opposition of the GOP establishment. His victory was greeted gleefully by Democrats and the liberal media. Of all the possible nominees, Reagan was the one they were certain they could defeat. The electability argument was dead wrong. It was Jimmy Carter who got trounced on Election Day.
I can appreciate why the Romney camp is celebrating today. But here is what would worry me in the days and weeks ahead: 41% of Republican primary voters felt that Mitt Romney's positions on the issues were "not conservative enough."
While winning the statewide vote, Romney won only 38% of the vote in the Panhandle and in north Florida -- the state's most conservative areas. Combined, Gingrich and Santorum took 54% of the vote there. These voters are more representative of the conservative base of the GOP throughout the South and Midwest.
In the general election, Governor Romney will not be able to outspend Barack Obama 5-to-1. He will need a massive turnout from conservative voters if he is going to have any chance of winning. George W. Bush was reelected in 2004 because of tremendous turnout by conservative, evangelical voters in rural Ohio, who turned out to support the marriage amendment on the ballot that same year.
The Obama strategy will be to discourage conservatives from voting or to peel some of them off with appeals to class warfare. The Romney campaign needs to be thinking now about how it will get the conservative base energized in November.
Lastly, for all those who still cling to the misguided notion that Ron Paul is the only true conservative in the race, once again Paul did nearly twice as well among those who identified as moderate or liberal as those who identified as somewhat or very conservative.
What's Next?
Mitt Romney certainly has a new burst of momentum and is the clear GOP front-runner. But this race is far from over. For all the hype about the early contests in January, only four states voted and there are more delegates at stake this month (187) than last month (115). Seven states will vote in February and there could be some surprises ahead.
For example, as my good friend Bill Kristol writes this morning, perhaps more voters will take a second look at former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum. The Florida contest was portrayed as largely a two-man race, a clash between Newt and Mitt. Coming off his victory in South Carolina, Newt was unable to "make the sale" with enough voters, despite significant spending on his part.
In contrast, Senator Santorum ran no negative ads, spent very little money and still managed to attract 13% of the vote last night. Moreover, while he suffers from perceptions about electability, he continues to enjoy high personal favorability ratings. A surprise showing might provide greater exposure and additional resources that could reshape the contest yet again. Stay tuned!
Warnings About Iran
Yesterday Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified before Congress about the national security threats confronting America. There was some good news about a diminished threat from Al Qaeda in the wake of Osama bin Laden's death, but Clapper had disturbing warnings about Iran.
While the world is focused on Iran's threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, Clapper warned members of the Senate Intelligence Committee that there is growing concern that Iran is prepared to launch terrorist attacks inside the United States. Clapper said last year's Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, D.C., "shows that some Iranian officials -- probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei -- have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime."
This is a very dangerous time for America and the world. As Iran continues its feverish pursuit of nuclear weapons, it may also attempt to strike our homeland. The timing of Obama's planned defense cuts increases the danger that Iran will miscalculate its own strength based on our perceived weakness.
CBO Bashes Obama
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office released a stunning report this week that should have the Obama campaign reaching for the Maalox. It paints a bleak fiscal future of more deficits, higher taxes and more unemployment. Here are excerpts of an analysis of the CBO report from today's Wall Street Journal:
"CBO reports that annual spending over the Obama era has climbed to a projected $3.6 trillion this fiscal year from $2.98 trillion in fiscal 2008, or more than 20%. The government spending burden has averaged 24% of GDP, up from an average of about 20%. This doesn't include the $2 trillion tab for ObamaCare. All of this has increased the federal debt by about $5 trillion in a mere four years. …In other words, the four years of Obama's Presidency will mark the four highest years in spending and deficits as a share of the economy since Harry Truman sat in the Oval Office.
"…On President Obama's watch, CBO says public debt will climb this year to 72.5% of the economy from 40.3% in 2008. This isn't as high as Italy or Greece, but it's rising fast toward the 90% level that begins to debilitate an economy.
"…Even the Keynesians who run CBO concede that the 2013 tax hike -- on capital gains, dividends, estates and small business -- would knock economic growth down to 1% next year and raise unemployment to 9.1% (from 8.5%). That means about 750,000 more jobless Americans. …To sum it all up, CBO's facts plainly show that Mr. Obama has the worst fiscal record of any President in modern times. No one else is even close."
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4)Underestimating Mitt and Newt
By Jack Cashill
For the first time in my life, and I have been following Republican primaries closely since before I was old enough to vote, I have found myself vacillating among candidates.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, this is not from a lack of viable candidates, but from an excess. In November, I will gladly support whoever prevails. That includes Ron Paul, who, to the media's shock, already polls in a statistical dead heat with Barack Obama.
The man responsible for sharpening this year's field is Newt Gingrich. Were he not running, the other candidates would likely have contented themselves with wrapping pre-packaged platitudes around debate questions, much as candidates of both parties have done in every election post-Reagan. To get a sense of the unusual quality of this year's Republican field, watch a debate among the Democratic "dream" candidates of 2008 -- a bonfire of banalities if there ever was one.
Gingrich actually answers the questions. When asked by CNN's Jon King if he would like to address the allegations made by his ex-wife, Gingrich uttered four words that likely won him the South Carolina primary: "No. But I will." His sharpness exposed the relative dullness of early drop-outs like Pawlenty, Bachmann, Huntsman, and Perry. It also forced the survivors to hone their own speaking and debating skills. As Mitt Romney accurately argued in his Florida acceptance speech, "[a] competitive primary does not divide us. It prepares us."
Gingrich's strategic error, one that has caused some voters to distrust him, is his repeated willingness to attack Romney from the left. Gingrich survived his misguided assault on Bain Capital, but in the Jacksonville CNN debate, Romney used Gingrich's own tactics to call him out on the question of illegal immigration.
Gingrich had been running Spanish-language ads in Florida describing Romney as "anti-immigrant." When moderator Wolf Blitzer asked Gingrich whether Romney was, in fact, the most anti-immigrant candidate, Gingrich answered, "I think out of the four of us, yes."
Romney was ready. "The idea that I'm anti-immigrant is repulsive," he said. Romney clarified the difference between being anti-immigration and anti-illegal immigration, a clarification many of us have had to make. He added, "I think you should recognize that having differences in opinion does not justify labeling people with highly charged epithets."
For many voters, in Florida and elsewhere, this was something of a turning point. Yes, Romney did indeed first surface as a "Massachusetts moderate." Yes, the Republican establishment, whatever that is, does support him. But for all of that, he has been running a more consistently conservative campaign than Gingrich, and he finally showed he had the onions to fight back. He will need them if he survives the primaries.
Romney is no RINO -- Republican In Name Only. He was not one even in his wobbly Massachusetts days. Sitting as I do on the border between Missouri and Kansas, I have become a skilled RINO-hunter. Here is the first rule of RINO-watching: they flourish only in Republican-dominated jurisdictions.
In Jackson County, Missouri, where I live, there are no RINOs. Here, as in Massachusetts, there is no reason to declare yourself a Republican unless you actually are one. Were I to run for office, I would have to run statewide to have any chance of winning anything. Democrats have all the local power.
Across the state line in Republican-dominated Johnson County, Kansas, RINOs are as common as cross-dressers on Castro Street. One of them, Mark Parkinson by name, chaired the Kansas Republican Party as late as 2004 before deciding that "I have not left the party, but the party has left me" or some such tripe that only the media could believe. He promptly ran for lieutenant governor as a Democrat in 2006. He won, and when Gov. Kathleen Sebelius headed off to D.C. in 2007, Parkinson ended his political career as the Democratic governor of Kansas.
Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman long ago mastered RINO-speak. I think he ran for president largely so he could give the exit speech he did, one that resulted in headlines like "Huntsman Quits 'Toxic' Race." No great fan of democracy in action, Huntsman claimed that the race had "degenerated into an onslaught of negative and personal attacks not worthy of the American people." That translates to "No one liked me."
It is not just Romney who has been accused of being a RINO. My Facebook wall is filled with accusations of RINO-hood against Gingrich, Santorum, Perry, and everyone to the left of the Facebook accuser, whose conservatism has been kept pure in the glimmer of his computer screen.
Both Gingrich and Romney gave excellent, thoroughly conservative, anti-Obama speeches in the wake of the Florida primary. Skeptics should watch them. To compare either candidate to Dole or to McCain is to prove that one's bias has gotten the best of his good sense and/or historical judgment.
Rush Limbaugh is right in that a strong conservative message will win the election. He is wrong in his implication that Gingrich is necessarily the better man to deliver it. As much as I admire Newt, one exit poll statistic out of Florida will shape the rest of the primaries, and the general election as well. It is this: Romney led Gingrich among female voters nearly two to one, 51 to 28. Minds can still be changed, but human nature is a little tougher.
4a)Newt Struck Gold, Promptly Abandoned Mine
By C. Edmund Wright
In South Carolina, Newt Gingrich correctly attributed his success to the fact that he had simply "articulated the deepest felt values of the American people." Then the former speaker promptly went to Florida and abandoned that in favor of the most deeply felt values of Beltway consultants -- a childish food fight with Mitt Romney.
Bad idea.
Thus, with gravy stains on his tie and mashed potatoes in his hair, Newt Gingrich will limp away from Florida with less chance of becoming the nominee, let alone president. He may not finish even as runner-up (or even Miss Congeniality), a position he had seemingly wrapped up by always being the one insisting that "any of the eight (or seven or six or five or four) of us" is far preferable to Barack Obama, etc.
That notion actually is one of our "most deeply felt values." Voters are craving two things this cycle. First is a vision for defeating Barack Obama, and second is a vision for rolling back the red tide after this is done. Anything and everything else is theatre of the absurd. What Newt was tapping into with his "any of the eight" proclamations was the deeply felt value that priority one is defeating Obama -- because Obama's deeply felt values scare the hell out of us.
Also scary are the deeply felt values of San Francisco radicals and Marxists and Saul Alinsky and, while we're at it, the mainstream media. This is generally what the Tea Party and the midterms were all about. America as founded is being ripped out from under us in broad daylight, and this rip-off is being propelled and celebrated by our education, entertainment, and media elites. Far deeper than the "economic versus social" meme debated by shallow and isolated strategists and pundits, something much more foundational is going wrong, and so few are willing to confront this fact.
Frankly, the amorphous and hard-to-pin-down Tea Party movement -- fluid by its nature -- was able to capture this better than any single person. Ironically, without a single person to lead and therefore benefit from the success of the Tea Party movement in 2010, that same movement elevated to the GOP's highest rank a man totally incapable of understanding the movement: John Boehner.
Enter Newt. At first Gingrich's candidacy seemed a sideshow -- a figment of Sean Hannity's relentless badgering. This was not helped by a disastrous launch that included the unfortunately memorable phrase "right-wing social engineering." To be fair, Newt was taken somewhat out of context -- but politics is perception.
So Newt stumbled around with no money and no staff and only a few percentage points in all the polls. Something was building, however. All through the ups and downs of others, Newt was winning friends in every debate. Message boards and talk shows were full of "you know -- I don't support Newt -- but I really like what he says in these debates"-type comments.
Newt was moving up in hearts and minds, if not yet in the polls.
Consider: in relatively short order, Rick Perry's grand entry fizzled. Michele Bachmann -- so obviously resentful of Perry's dramatic entry -- self-immolated with a campaign that got less successful as time went on. Somewhere in this timetable Sarah Palin finally announced that she was not running. Ditto for Chris Christie. Several times. Through it all, however, Mitt Romney could not break out of his 25% range, and Santorum's "look at me" act wore thin. Many remained undecided.
These events led to the surge of the only other candidate who was focusing on liberal problems and conservative solutions: Herman Cain. A review of the debates will show indeed that only Cain and Newt were aiming at the enemy. Everyone else was in a circular firing squad. The likeable Cain surged rapidly. Largely unnoticed was Newt's slower simultaneous upward trend. Apparently hidden from the dark and shallow minds of the consultant class was the notion that the "deeply felt values" base-voter knew that the problem was Obama, not anybody in our field.
The reality is that while Cain was surging, Newt was moving into kind of a runner-up status in the minds of voters -- including some who had written Newt off over NY-23 or Pelosi on the couch or over the Ryan right-wing social engineering blunder. Newt was being simply brilliant in the debates -- not only at articulating values, but also at giving voice to the righteous anger of the conservative base. He was doing so with history and wit and perspective. He also did so with a healthy dose of in-your-face testicular fortitude unknown to the modern politician.
Thus, when Cain collapsed, Newt was finally able to convert his hell yeah! Finally someone is saying this fans into actual supporters. Many forget that this initially happened prior to Iowa and New Hampshire but was blunted under the weight of a withering attack of paid ads and brutal assaults from the establishment pundits.
What Romney and Ron Paul did in Iowa was simply shameful. Especially Romney, who, after campaigning for six years, still cannot give a single compelling reason to vote for him.
Newt was justifiably furious and unwisely fought back from the left with attacks on Bain Capital. That failed, and so did his campaign in the first two states. Then lighting struck again -- and the key word is again. Many pundits act like S.C. was a four-day fluke. It was not. It was a continuation of what had been slowly building the entire season that initially exploded in November.
In what are still largely misunderstood moments, Newt again tapped into the most deeply felt values and righteous anger of the Republican base. Yes, it felt good to see Juan Williams and John King put in their place, but that was not the main point. No, the main points were the real issues of race and unions and schools and Iran and bureaucrats and so on -- and, moreover, that someone was finally willing and able to look liberals squarely in the eye and tell them they are so damned wrong on all of those issues.
And they are. And we are right. Newt understands this, and he captured these timeless ideas with the magic of the moment. That's how he routed the field in South Carolina. He then followed that up with one great day of campaigning in Florida, thrilling very large crowds with more of the same. He had struck gold. He was on his way to a grip on the nomination process.
But then, for some inexplicable reason, he wiped that campaign gold off his hands and abandoned the gold mine. He quickly returned to the tar pit of the food fight with Mitt. And it has been all downhill from there. Frankly, it was stunning to observe.
Memo to anyone who is interested: the gold is still there, for any candidate -- including Newt -- who cares to mine it. We are still right, and liberals are still wrong. And we are still damned mad about it. If your consultants don't get it, fire them.
C. Edmund Wright is a frequent contributor to American Thinker and is currently a copy-writer and consultant for Winning Our Future, a PAC supporting Newt Gingrich and other conservative causes.
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5)'All Iranian facilities are vulnerable'
Vice Premier Ya'alon states that all of Iran's nuclear facilities are 'within striking distance'; adds November blast at Tehran weapons facility eliminated missile production line
Vice Premier Moshe Ya'alon said Thursday that the blast at the Iranian missile facility near Tehran last November hit a system meant to manufacture missiles that could threaten the United States.
Ya'alon, speaking at the 2012 Herzliya Conference, added that it was possible to carry out military strikes against any of Iran's facilities.
"Any facility defended by a human being can be penetrated. Any facility in Iran can be hit, and I speak from experience as the IDF chief of staff," he remarked.
Just last week US officials confessed they lacked the ability to destroy fortified nuclear facilities in Iran.
However Ya'alon claimed Thursday that "the West has the ability to attack, but as long as Iran isn't convinced about their determination to carry it out – they will continue their manipulations. The Iranians believe this determination is non-existent, as far as a military action and sanctions."
The vice premier noted that are a number of ways to put a stop to Iran's nuclear armament, including economic sanctions which he believes might present the Iranian regime with the dilemma either bomb or survival.
"We must convince China, Russia and Turkey, which are helping the Iranians bypass the sanctions," Ya'alon asserted.
At least 17 Revolutionary Guards were killed in November 2011 in a blast at a nuclear facility near Tehran. Among those killed at the Revolutionary Guards base arsenal in Bidganeh, near the city of Karaj, 25 miles (40 km) outside the capital, was Hassan Tehrani Moqaddam, an officer with a rank equivalent to that of a brigadier general.
"Iran has enough nuclear material for four bombs," Director of Military Intelligence Major General Aviv Kochavi warned Thursday. Kochavi made a rare appearance at the 2012 Herzliya Conference, where he reviewed regional changes, the effects of the Arab Spring and the Iranian threat.
"Iran is vigorously pursing military nuclear capabilities and today the intelligence community agrees with Israel on that. Iran has over four tons of enriched materials and nearly 100kg of 20% enriched uranium – that's enough for four bombs," he said.
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6)Ex-CIA spy in Iran's Revolutionary Guard: What Obama doesn't grasp about striking deals with Tehran
By Reza Kahlili
How to make the mullahs cry 'Uncle' . . . Sam
President Obama, in his State of the Union Address, said he will not allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons and that all options to prevent that are on the table.
More importantly, Obama said the Islamic regime, which fuels terrorism worldwide and oppresses its own people at home, could still rejoin the international community "if it changes course and meets its obligations." That is not going to happen — despite glimmers of hope after a trip of UN nuclear inspectors to Iran this week.
As a former CIA spy in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, I wrote a cautionary, open letter to President Obama when he took office three years ago. I said I was worried that he failed to see the realities of the regime's fanaticism.
In offering to negotiate with Iran over its nuclear program, Mr. Obama must have believed that the aggressive policies of his predecessor, George W. Bush, were to blame for the lack of progress. But I reminded the new president of the long history of attempted rapprochement by every US administration, each attempt ending in failure.
I explained that the very ideology of Iran's Islamic leaders was the sole reason for no progress in a negotiated settlement. They simply would not close an honest deal with infidels.
In the 1980s, the Reagan administration was involved in deep negotiations with Iran over arms sales and normalization of US-Iranian ties. National Security Council staffer Oliver North could barely contain himself over the prospect of peace with Iran.
Hashemi Rafsanjani, then speaker of Parliament, promised American authorities resumption of diplomatic relations once the founder of the Islamic regime, Ayatollah Khomeini, was dead. In exchange, he asked for arms and America's help in diminishing Saddam Hussein's Iraqi military machine.
.
Ever since entering politics, the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been a vengeful politician who rarely trusts anyone. Sources reveal that after the Nov. 12 explosions at the Guard's base west of Tehran, many Guard members, including commanders and even officers at the supreme leader's office, have been arrested and are under investigation.
I was in the Revolutionary Guard then, but as a CIA spy. My Guard commander mocked the Americans for believing Speaker Rafsanjani's promises. The Iran-Contra Affair, in which US arms sales to Iran funded "freedom fighter" Contras in Nicaragua, ended embarrassingly for President Reagan's administration.
President George H.W. Bush continued negotiations to improve US-Iranian relations. I was working for the CIA in Europe then when my American handler told me to consider the more moderate Rafsanjani, by then president, as the new king of Iran. This despite information I had passed on about Iran's involvement in the 1988 Pan Am bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland — and despite the fact that Rafsanjani and other regime leaders were involved in worldwide terrorism and assassination. The elder Bush's efforts at negotiation failed.
Then President Clinton attempted to persuade Iran to stop supporting terrorism and to normalize ties with the US. But he also failed to achieve results with Mohammad Khatami, the next Iranian president. President Khatami promised cooperation while secretly purchasing parts for Iran's nuclear project.
Despite his harsh rhetoric, President George W. Bush, too, approached Iran. In 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice negotiated with Ali Larijani, then Iran's top nuclear envoy. By the autumn, the Bush administration believed an agreement was set, expecting Mr. Larijani to appear at the UN to announce Iran's suspension of uranium enrichment as America announced the removal of sanctions.
Secretary Rice showed up for the big event; Larijani never did.
When Obama took office in 2009, he missed the biggest opportunity to support democracy, bring stability to the region, and secure world peace when he wrote Ayatollah Ali Khamenei requesting negotiations. Then, fraudulent elections transpired in Iran, sparking the uprising of millions of Iranians demanding freedom and democracy.
The leaders of Iran masterfully, as always, provided a sliver of hope to Obama's request, enough for the West to remain largely silent over the protests in Iran.The Iranian nuclear envoy even expressed confidence about an offer put on the table by the West in October 2009 as a step toward solving the nuclear issue. The Obama administration was ready to announce victory, though several months passed.
Then, after the demonstrations in Iran were suppressed, with tens of thousands arrested, many raped, tortured, and executed, Iran announced the deal was unacceptable. Meanwhile, Tehran said it enriched uranium to the 20 percent level, a significant advance. Iran's treachery was obvious: Their negotiating masked further enrichment on the way to nuclearization.
Now we are in a quandary that could have been avoided had the US more demonstratively assisted Iran's protesters.
The Islamists have enough enriched uranium for six nuclear bombs — despite four rounds of UN sanctions. And they continue to enrich at two nuclear facilities while barbarically suppressing freedom-loving Iranians and threatening world peace.
Iranian authorities recently revealed that Obama sent yet another letter to Ayatollah Khamenei, expressing his concerns over Tehran's threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, and his desire for cooperation and negotiation based on mutual interests.
Obama greatly errs in his continued drive toward negotiation. Sanctions are now having a biting effect on Iran, but they cannot alone deter Iran's race to get the bomb.
America must openly support the democratic aspirations of the people of Iran — facilitating a direct channel of communication with them and finding a way to bring Iran's leaders to court for crimes against humanity.
Only then can we can hope for real change in Iran, for peace and stability.
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Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran's Revolutionary Guards and the author of the award winning book, "A Time to Betray". He is a senior Fellow with EMPact America and teaches at the US Department of Defense's Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy (JCITA).
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6a)CIA book review
For the historical record...
As President George W. Bush's top speechwriter, Marc Thiessen was provided unique access to the CIA program used in interrogating top Al Qaeda terrorists, including the mastermind of the 9/11 attack, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM).
Now, his riveting new book, "Courting Disaster", How the CIA Kept America Safe (Regnery), has been published.
Here is an excerpt from "Courting Disaster":
Just before dawn on March 1, 2003, two dozen heavily armed Pakistani tactical assault forces move in and surround a safe house in Rawalpindi . A few hours earlier they had received a text message from an informant inside the house. It read: "I am with KSM."
Bursting in, they find the disheveled mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in his bedroom. He is taken into custody. In the safe house, they find a treasure trove of computers, documents, cell phones and other valuable "pocket litter."
Once in custody, KSM is defiant. He refuses to answer questions, informing his captors that he will tell them everything when he gets to America and sees his lawyer. But KSM is not taken to America to see a lawyer Instead he is taken to a secret CIA "black site" in an undisclosed location.
Upon arrival, KSM finds himself in the complete control of Americans. He does not know where he is, how long he will be there, or what his fate will be.
Despite his circumstances, KSM still refuses to talk. He spews contempt at his interrogators, telling them Americans are weak, lack resilience, and are unable to do what is necessary to prevent the terrorists from succeeding in their goals. He has trained to resist interrogation. When he is asked for information about future attacks, he tells his questioners scornfully: "Soon, you will know."
It becomes clear he will not reveal the information using traditional interrogation techniques. So he undergoes a series of "enhanced interrogation techniques" approved for use only on the most high-value detainees. The techniques include waterboarding.
His resistance is described by one senior American official as "superhuman." Eventually, however, the techniques work, and KSM becomes cooperative-for reasons that will be described later in this book.
He begins telling his CIA de-briefers about active al Qaeda plots to launch attacks against the United States and other Western targets.
He holds classes for CIA officials, using a chalkboard to draw a picture of al Qaeda's operating structure, financing, communications, and logistics. He identifies al Qaeda travel routes and safe havens, and helps intelligence officers make sense of documents and computer records seized in terrorist raids. He identifies voices in
intercepted telephone calls, and helps officials understand the meaning of coded terrorist communications. He provides information that helps our intelligence community capture other high-ranking terrorists, KSM's questioning, and that of other captured terrorists, produces more than 6,000 intelligence reports, which are shared across the intelligence community, as well as with our allies across the world.
In one of these reports, KSM describes in detail the revisions he made to his failed 1994-1995 plan known as the "Bojinka plot" to blow up a dozen airplanes carrying some 4,000 passengers over the Pacific Ocean
Years later, an observant CIA officer notices the activities of a cell being followed by British authorities appear to match KSM's description of his plans for a Bojinka-style attack.
In an operation that involves unprecedented intelligence cooperation between our countries, British officials proceed to unravel the plot.
On the night of Aug.9, 2006 they launch a series of raids in a northeast London suburb that lead to the arrest of two dozen al Qaeda terrorist suspects. They find a USB thumb-drive in the pocket of one of the men with security details for Heathrow airport, and information on seven trans-Atlantic flights that were scheduled to take off within hours of each other:
* United Airlines Flight 931 to San Francisco departing at 2:15 p.m.;
* Air Canada Flight 849 to Toronto departing at 3:00 p.m.;
* Air Canada Flight 865 to Montreal departing at 3:15 p.m.;
* United Airlines Flight 959 to Chicago departing at 3:40 p.m.;
* United Airlines Flight 925 to Washington departing at 4:20 p.m.;
* American Airlines Flight 131 to New York departing at 4:35 p.m;
* American Airlines Flight 91 to Chicago departing at 4:50 p.m.
They seize bomb-making equipment and hydrogen peroxide to make liquid explosives. And they find the chilling martyrdom videos the suicide bombers had prepared.
Today, if you asked an average person on the street what they know about the 2006 airlines plot, most would not be able to tell you much.
Few Americans are aware of the fact al Qaeda had planned to mark the fifth anniversary of 9/11 with an attack of similar scope and magnitude.
And still fewer realize the terrorists' true intentions in this plot were uncovered thanks to critical information obtained through the interrogation of the man who conceived it: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
This is only one of the many attacks stopped with the help of the CIA interrogation program established by the Bush Administration in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Editor's Note: For other foiled terrorist plots, see page 9 of "Courting Disaster."
In addition to helping break up these specific terrorist cells and plots, CIA questioning provided our intelligence community with an unparalleled body of information about al Qaeda Until the program was temporarily suspended in 2006, intelligence officials say, well over half of the information our government had about al Qaeda-how it operates, how it moves money, how it communicates, how it recruits operatives, how it picks targets, how it plans and carries out attacks-came from the interrogation of terrorists in CIA custody.
Former CIA Director George Tenet has declared: "I know this program has saved lives. I know we've disrupted plots. I know this program alone is worth more than what the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us."
Former CIA Director Mike Hayden has said: "The facts of the case are that the use of these techniques against these terrorists made us safer. It really did work."
Even Barack Obama's Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, has acknowledged: "High-value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country."
Leon Panetta, Obama's CIA Director, has said: "Important information was gathered from these detainees. It provided information that was acted upon."
And John Brennan, Obama's Homeland Security Advisor, when asked in an interview if enhanced-interrogation techniques were necessary to keep America safe, replied : "Would the U.S. be handicapped if the CIA was not, in fact, able to carry out these types of detention and debriefing activities? I would say yes."
On Jan. 22, 2009, President Obama issued Executive Order 13491, closing the CIA program and directing that, henceforth, all interrogations by U.S personnel must follow the techniques contained in the Army Field Manual.
The morning of the announcement, Mike Hayden was still in his post as CIA Director, He called White House Counsel Greg Craig and told him bluntly: "You didn't ask, but this is the CIA officially
nonconcurring". The president went ahead anyway, overruling the objections of the agency.
A few months later, on April 16, 2009, President Obama ordered the release of four Justice Department memos that described in detail the techniques used to interrogate KSM and other high-value terrorists.
This time, not just Hayden (who was now retired) but five CIA directors -including Obama's own director, Leon Panetta -- objected.
George Tenet called to urge against the memos' release. So did Porter Goss. So did John Deutch. Hayden says: "You had CIA directors in a continuous unbroken stream to 1995 calling saying, 'Don't do this.'"
In addition to objections from the men who led the agency for a collective 14 years, the President also heard objections from the agency's covert field operatives. A few weeks earlier, Panetta had arranged for the eight top officials of the Clandestine Service to meet with the President. It was highly unusual for these clandestine officers to visit the Oval Office, and they used the opportunity to warn the President that releasing the memos would put agency operatives at risk. The President reportedly listened respectfully-and then ignored their advice.
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7)Obama's Maddening, Winning Speech
He will marginalize his opponents as the bloodless Numbers People.
By DANIEL HENNINGER
Barack Obama's poorly received State of the Union speech deserves a second look. Conventional wisdom pronounced the SOTU a relatively weak Obama effort. It was. Diffuse, filled with the usual enemies, it pulled together various back-filed policy ideas into a proposal he called, with a straight face, "An Economy Built to Last."
Bemused election-year observers remarked that both ObamaCare and the nation's entitlement bomb passed unmentioned. In his reply, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels noted that we are not going to be able to outrun the simple math on entitlement spending. That's true. We can't. But Mr. Obama just may for the next 10 months.
How? By exploiting political vulnerabilities in the Republicans' case against his presidency. Republicans think it's all about the bad economy. It is. But Barack Obama is going to do something his opposition wouldn't think possible. He's going to take ownership of the American economy. Not the real one, but the one he's just made up, "the economy built to last." It won't last long, but long enough.
In the days after his Washington lecture, Mr. Obama took a shorter version of his SOTU speech on the road—to Colorado, Michigan, Iowa, Nevada and Arizona, states he needs in November. On the White House website, you can see him give this campaign tuneup speech at the new, $5 billion Intel chip-fabrication plant in Chandler, Ariz. It's worth watching and pondering. You'd think the best and the brightest would be beyond Mr. Obama's crude populist pitch. You of course would be wrong.
About 6,000 Intel employees—young, well-educated technology sophisticates—applauded and cheered Mr. Obama from start to finish. Even when he ripped into those awful American companies with factories overseas, such as their own employer. "An America where we build stuff and make stuff and sell stuff all over the world." (Applause.)
A speech that flopped among Washington's policy sophisticates is soaring out in the country. Republicans had better figure out why.
Reading through the White House's text of "An Economy Built to Last," any half-awake citizen will notice the words that fail to appear: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, entitlements and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The deficit is in the document's last paragraph, three sentences long.
Gilda Radner's Emily Litella famously said "Never mind," and you would too if you had to run on this economy. Thus, the Obama solution: Run against the economy. This effectively means Mr. Obama is running against himself, but . . . never mind.
He will marginalize his opponents as the bloodless Numbers People.
Mr. Obama may not know much about the private economy, but he knows a lot about the uses of human anxiety. Proposing to replace his own bad economy with a virtual substitute "built to last" allows Mr. Obama to place himself outside the White House and on the street making common cause with the genuine economic anxieties of the American people. It also lets this president put in motion what he thinks he knows best—empathy. In "The Audacity of Hope" he put empathy "at the heart of my moral code." Practice makes perfect.
It is beyond audacious. How can a president simultaneously hammer real job creation with the Keystone XL pipeline decision, then go into the country and claim kinship with the anxieties of the jobless? No problem. Just do it.
It could work. If we know nothing else about Barack Obama it is that he can play "hope" like a Stradivarius. The version of "An Economy Built to Last" that he performed at Intel is his concerto for re-election.
The Obama-Axelrod-Plouffe team knows that the Republicans instinctively will respond by quoting, endlessly, the poor economic data of the Obama years. They plan to turn this reality on its head as well. In a down economy, Barack Obama is going to position his GOP critics as economic determinists. The bloodless Numbers People. The tea party, by its own admission, obsesses over "the deficit"—numbers. Mr. Obama's likely opponent has self-defined as a competent manager, a numbers guy. That false Obama demagoguery about rules-free GOP Darwinians is just one piece of this unflattering portrait.
In Arizona he said, "An economy built to last also means we've got to renew American values: fair play, shared responsibility." Wild applause. For those who think they have facts on their side, it will be maddening and enraging to watch other Obama audiences across the country cheer and applaud "An Economy Built to Last." Get used to it.
The GOP is appealing, as its candidates so often do, to the American brain. Barack Obama is happy to be left by himself, going for their hearts. If he wins, the Republican will wail at the unfairness, irrationality and illogic of what beat them.
Rick Santorum, in his Tuesday night also-ran speech to what looked like a roomful of about 35 people at a Nevada Days Inn, spoke of couples "sitting around a kitchen table" to figure out what comes next. Whatever his campaign's shortcomings, Mr. Santorum is the one man running who understands the Obama strategy to marginalize Republicans. At some point after the inevitable end of the nomination campaign, Mitt Romney should ask Rick Santorum to sit down with him to discuss the inner melodies of life in America these days. Barack Obama is the maestro of this music, and without it, you can't win a presidency.
7a)Romney, Gingrich and the Power of Ideas
The front-runner is tilted too heavily toward biography and not nearly enough toward policy.
By KARL ROVE
Newt Gingrich had a bad night Tuesday: After framing the Florida primary as the "tea party versus the cocktail party," he lost among tea party supporters, according to the exit polls that cable and broadcast networks sponsor as a consortium.
On the other hand, Mitt Romney had a great evening, rising from a nine-point deficit in the Rasmussen poll just nine days ago to a 14-point victory, sweeping virtually every demographic and picking up all 50 Florida delegates.
This was an important inflection point, but the contest won't end until one candidate starts consistently winning. That may be coming for Mr. Romney, but he must step up his game.
Mr. Romney's campaign has an estimated $20 million to spend while that of Mr. Gingrich has roughly $1 million. The Romney super PAC purportedly has more than $12 million while the Gingrich super PAC by my estimate might have around $4 million in its coffers. This disparity could prove decisive, and the Romney campaign will be tempted to simply rely on firepower and organization to bull through the calendar.
It might work: February has only two primaries (Michigan and Arizona, both on the 28th) and one debate (on the 22nd). Mr. Romney can duplicate his Florida strategy, where his campaign and super PAC outspent the Gingrich forces on ads by a ratio of 5 to 1 during the last three weeks.
But dangers lurk. While traditional news organizations have been balanced or slightly favorable in their coverage of Mr. Romney, the GOP blogosphere has been decidedly negative on him all January, pointing to continuing unease among conservatives.
Associated Press
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney after the Florida primary on Tuesday.
Then there are this month's caucuses: Nevada (Feb. 4), Maine (held over seven days, Feb. 4-11), and Minnesota and Colorado (both Feb. 7). Mr. Romney swept all four states in 2008. Expectations are that he'll do so again—but low-turnout caucuses are highly volatile. Ron Paul's concession speech on Tuesday, delivered before turbocharged supporters in Henderson, Nev., did not sound like a man dismayed at getting just 7% of the votes in Florida. He's been spending time in Maine and could upset Mr. Romney there, and Mr. Santorum is focusing on the Colorado caucuses.
Also, Missouri has a "beauty contest" primary Feb. 7. Mr. Gingrich didn't file there, arguing that no delegates were at stake. True, but bragging rights are. Rick Santorum will audition in Missouri for the role of Mr. Romney's principal opponent.
After the February lull comes Super Tuesday, with 10 contests on March 6, all with delegates awarded proportionally. Mr. Romney is likely to win primaries in Virginia, Massachusetts, Ohio, North Dakota and Vermont (with a combined 198 delegates) and perhaps Tennessee and Idaho (with 80 total). Mr. Gingrich failed to make the Virginia ballot or field a full Tennessee slate but is likely to win the primaries in Georgia and Oklahoma (with 114 delegates combined) and perhaps Alaska (with 27).
With his substantial war chest, Mr. Romney can easily saturate airwaves, stuff mailboxes, and jam phone lines to win most contests and more delegates. But Mr. Romney should be looking ahead and realize that what worked against an underfunded Mr. Gingrich won't work against the well-funded Barack Obama.
The Romney campaign is tilted too heavily toward biography and not nearly enough toward ideas. It should make its mantra a line from President Ronald Reagan's final address to the nation: "I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference: It was the content. I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things."
Mr. Romney showed he knows how to take an opponent down; now he needs to show the ability to build himself and the rationale for his candidacy up. He should become bolder in his prescriptions, presenting a confident agenda for economic growth and renewed prosperity through reforms of tax, regulatory and energy policies.
There's no reason he can't, or shouldn't do so. While Mr. Gingrich called Congressman Paul Ryan's entitlement reforms "right-wing social engineering," Mr. Romney complimented them last November. He can refresh that speech and give it again. He can also build on his best moments in recent debates, when he unapologetically and passionately defended free enterprise. Far better to best Mr. Gingrich in the weeks ahead by taking the fight to President Obama, challenging the incumbent's unpleasant attempt to appeal to envy and resentment.
If he does these things, Mr. Romney will improve his chances of consolidating Republicans and winning the nomination battle earlier and in better shape for the fall. If not, the GOP contest will go on, the bitterness will linger, and the road ahead could be treacherous.
Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.
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