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Had to do again for anyone who missed this:Subject: EULOGY BY ARCHIE BUNKER
Have you already seen this? If not it is a classic. If you were a fan of All in the Family, you should remember this. Take time, this is well worth it!
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Lots of food for thought. Can Republicans re-craft their message and regain constituent voters. How do they work themselves out of their political wilderness? (See 1 and 1a below.)
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Is Obama's proposed trip to Israel the equivalent offset of yesterday's visit by Iran's Prime Minister to Morsi?
Our Ambassador to Israel says it will not be for demands but for consultation etc. Has Obama begun to learn you catch more flies with honey than vinegar?
Will announcement of this visit strengthen Netanyahu's political hand at home? One would think so. (See 2 and 2a below.)
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Remember the recent posting regarding Brigette Gabriel's talk and warnings? (See 3 below.)
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With Rep. Jack Kingston coming to our home for breakfast tomorrow and the Senate seat of Chambliss up for grabs it should prove an interesting time.
Everyone I talk with, who asks my view or gives their's , to a person, wish Kingston would not run. Their thinking is that he cannot overcome the impact of Atlanta and North Georgia because he is not well known, does not have any significant legislation he can point to and runs the risk of losing a safe seat.
I also would add, I believe Jack could one day become Speaker if that would be of interest.
Five million Atlantans is a hard number to overcome when you are from South Georgia and have little satate wide name recognition.
Furthermore, Jack's conservatism might strengthen a high profile Democrat's hand, ie the black mayor of Atlanta, should he opt to run. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1) David Horowitz: How Republicans can win
I’ve known David Horowitz for more than 20 years, from the time he came through town with Peter Collier talking about their invaluable book Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the Sixties. As Jay Nordlinger has written, David was a leader of the New Left who became a leader of the fighting Reaganite Right: “He is a thinker and a doer, an intellectual and an activist. His mind ranges widely, and so do his books. He has written about politics and policy, of course. But he has also written about matters literary, cultural, and spiritual.” He remains a prolific writer and voluble observer.
David is the author, most recently, of the pamphlet “Go For the Heart: How Republicans Can Win.” David has granted us permission to publish it on Power Line. It may be a little long to read comfortably online, but David’s essay can easily be printed out and read at your leisure, as it deserves to be. David writes:
After voters re-elected an administration that added five trillion dollars to the nation’s debt, left 23 million Americans unemployed, surrendered Iraq to America’s enemy Iran, and enabled the Muslim Brotherhood to gain control of the largest country in the Middle East, the one lesson Republicans should agree on is that elections are driven by emotions, not reason. Moreover, when it comes to mobilizing emotions, Democrats beat Republicans hands down.
Worse, Republicans appear unable to learn from their losses. Year after year, Democrats accuse Republicans of the same imaginary crimes – waging wars on women, not caring about minorities, and inflicting pain on working Americans to benefit the wealthy. And year after year, Republicans have no effective responses to neutralize these attacks. Or to take the battle to the enemy’s camp.
In the 2012 election, Democrats attacked Republicans as defenders of the wealthy who are not paying their “fair share.” Republicans responded by deploring “class warfare rhetoric,” which does not answer the charge that Republicans are defending the wealthy and are uncaring. There are plenty of answers to these libels but Republicans don’t have them.
“Caring” is not one among many issues in an election. It is the central one. Since most policy issues are complicated, voters want to know above everything else just whom they can trust to sort out the complexities and represent them. Before voters cast their ballots for policies or values they want a candidate or party that cares about them.
How crucial is this concern? In the 2012 election, 70% of Asian Americans cast their ballots for Obama, even though Asians share Republican values, are family oriented, entrepreneurial, and traditional. Asian Americans voted for Obama because they were persuaded that he cared for minorities – for them, and Romney didn’t.
The Republican response to the Democrats’ attack (that’s “class warfare rhetoric”) doesn’t work because it’s an abstraction. “Class warfare rhetoric” has no human face; it’s about a political style. Criticizing the wealthy for “not paying their fair share” is a direct attack on an easily identified target, which is why so many wealthy taxpayers – including entertainment figures who are normally Democrats –were outraged by the slander. More importantly, the Democrats’ attack on the rich is an emotional appeal to those who are not rich. It tells them that someone cares about them.
Using the term “class warfare” is a polite way of discussing a problem, a habit Republicans seem unable to break. It avoids finger pointing – naming an adversary and holding him accountable. Elections are adversarial. They are about defeating opponents.
Elections are necessarily about “us” and “them.” Democrats are as adept at framing “them,” as Republicans are not. Democrats know how to incite envy and resentment, distrust and fear, and to direct these volatile emotions towards their Republican opponents. Meanwhile, Republicans are busy complaining about the style of the Democrats’ argument.
Republicans are defending the rich at your expense. Democrats are employing class warfare rhetoric. Which argument is going to grab voters more effectively? Which is going to make voters believe the candidate cares about them.
An exit poll conducted by CNN asked, “What is the most important candidate quality to your vote?” Among the four choices were, “Strong Leader,” “Shares Your Values,” “Has A Vision for the Future,” and “Cares about People.” Romney won the first three by more than 54%. But he lost “Cares About People” by 81-18%. That says it all.
The margin Romney lost by wasn’t insurmountable. He had the advantage of a good election year for Republicans. Every activist on the right thought the fate of the country hung in the balance. By contrast, Democrats went into the campaign having disappointed a signficant segment of their political base. They continued wars they had promised to terminate; and they presided over an economy with high unemployment among key constituencies — women, Hispanics and African Americans. Yet they were able to marshal enough fear and anger towards the Republican rich who were outsourcing jobs and allegedly not paying their fair share to energize their base and produce a win.
Behind the failures of Republican campaigns lies an attitude that is administrative rather than combative. It focuses on policies rather than politics. It is more comfortable with budgets and pie charts than with the flesh and blood victims of their opponents’ policies. When Republicans do mention victims they are frequently small business owners and other “job creators” – people who in the eyes of most Americans are rich.
To counter the Democrat attacks on them as defenders of the comfortable and afflicters of the weak, Republicans really have only one answer: This is a misunderstanding. Look at the facts. We’re not that bad. On the infrequent occasions when they actually take the battle to their accusers, Republicans will say: That’s divisive. It’s class warfare.
Even if voters were able to “look at the facts,” these are not exactly inspiring responses. They are defensive, and they are whiny, and also complicated. Of course elections are divisive – that is their nature. One side gets to win and the other side loses. But even more troublesome is the fact that responses like this require additional information and lengthy explanations to make sense. Appeals to reason are buried in the raucous noise that is electoral politics. Sorting out the truth would be a daunting task, even if voters were left alone to make up their minds.
But voters are not left alone. They are barraged by thousands of TV and electronic media messages, which confront them with contradicting data and malicious distortions. These deceptions are not inadvertent. They are the work of the professionals who run political campaigns and who are hired because they are experts in disinformation and misrepresenting the facts. In the world outside politics this is called lying; in politics it’s called spin, and to one extent or another everybody does it. But Democrats do it far better and far more aggressively than their Republican targets.
Democrats Are Different
There is a reason for this, and it affects everything that goes on in political campaigns. Republicans and Democrats are not similar people who make opposite judgments about common problems and their solutions—spending is good, tax hikes are bad. Republicans and Democrats approach politics with fundamentally different visions of what politics is about. These visions color not only the way each side thinks about questions of policy, but how they enter the arena to face their opponents.
The Democratic Party is no longer the party of John F. Kennedy, whose politics were identical to Ronald Reagan’s (militant anti-Communist, military hawk, for a capital gains tax cut and a balanced budget). It is not even the party of Hubert Humphrey, who supported the Vietnam War – a war that every contemporary Democratic legislator and operative opposes in retrospect, and many, like John Kerry and Bill and Hillary Clinton, opposed at the time. The Democratic Party has been moving steadily to the left since the McGovern campaign of 1972. It is now a party led by socialists and progressives who are convinced that their policies are paving the way to a “better world.”
This vision of moral and social progress has profound consequences for the way Democrats conduct their political battles. Unlike Republicans, Democrats are not in politics just to fix government and solve problems. They are secular missionaries who want to “change society.” Their goal is a new order of society— “social justice.” They think of themselves as social redeemers, people who are going to change the world. It is the belief in a redemptive future that accounts for their passion, and their furious personal assaults on those who stand in their way. When he was president, Bill Clinton once told Dick Morris he had “to understand that Bob Dole” – a moderate Republican – “is evil.” It is the same missionary zeal that allows Democrats to justify a campaign ad accusing a decent man like Mitt Romney of causing the death of a female cancer victim.
Republicans see Democrats as mistaken. Democrats see Republicans — whatever their individual intentions and behaviors—as enemies of the just and the good. Republicans have no parallel belief that drives them and their agendas, and no similar cause to despise and hate their opponents.
If Democrats’ priority was fixing government problems would they have failed to produce a budget for four straight years? If Democrats were pragmatic politicians, when they came to power in the face of a national crisis like the 2008 financial collapse, their first step would have been to seek bipartisan support to fix the most pressing problems: jobs and reviving the economy. This is exactly what Obama promised during the campaign and is one of the reasons why he was elected. But this was just a campaign promise and is not what he did. He spent his first two years in office pushing a massive new entitlement program. If Obama and the Democrats were interested in addressing the immediate economic crisis they would not have used their monopoly of power to pursue a trillion dollar new social program opposed by half the nation and by every Republican in Congress.
The reason the Democrats made Obamacare their priority is because they are social missionaries whose goal is to “fundamentally transform” the United States of America, as Obama warned five days before the 2008 election. Creating a massive new government program that would absorb one-sixth of the economy and make every American dependent on government for his or her health care was the true order of their business. This was a program they saw as a major stepping-stone on the way to the fundamental transformation of American society.
That’s the way progressives think and Republicans had better start understanding just what that means. Progressives are not in politics to tinker with the existing system, although they understand that tinkering and fixing problems along the way gets votes. They are in politics to achieve “social justice” – to transform the system and the way Americans live.
Why do progressives not see that the future they are promoting – with its socialist “solutions” – has already failed elsewhere, and particularly in Europe? Because in their eyes the future is an idea that hasn’t been tried. If socialism has failed in Europe it’s because they weren’t in charge to implement it and there wasn’t enough money to fund it.
It is the very grandeur of the progressive ambition that makes its believers so zealous in pursuing it. Through government programs they are going to make everyone equal and take care of everyone in need. They are going to establish social equality and create social justice. It is an intoxicating view and it explains why and how they are different from conservatives. It doesn’t matter to them that the massive entitlements they have created — Social Security and Medicare — are already bankrupt. That can be taken care of by making more wealthy people pay more of their fair share. In their hearts, progressives believe that if they can secure enough money and accumulate enough power they can create a future where everyone is taken care of and everyone is equal. Everything Democrats do and every campaign they conduct is about mobilizing their political armies to bring about this glorious future, about advancing its agendas one program and one candidate at a time. No Republican in his right mind thinks like this.
The vision of the glorious future puts urgency into their crusades and encourages them to hate their opponents. A Republican like Mitt Romney may be a decent person, but he stands in the way of their impossible dreams. Therefore, he is hateful. The very grandeur of the dream – guaranteed health care for everyone, guaranteed housing for everyone, guaranteed incomes for everyone – is so inspiring it motivates them to seek the promised land by any means necessary. If this requires lying, voter fraud, or demonizing their opponents as racist, selfish and uncaring, so be it. The beautiful ends justify the not-so-beautiful means.
When Democrats demand free contraceptives and claim that their opponents are conducting a war on women, Republicans shake their heads in disbelief. How could any sane person believe that? The Republicans are missing the point. The issue for progressives is never the issue. The issue is always the transformation of society that they are hoping to achieve. As Sandra Fluke herself put it, the issue of providing free contraceptives is not just about contraceptives, it’s about the whole range of changes that will liberate women (the more government provides for them, the freer they become) and that Republicans oppose.
Progressives’ hatred for conservatives is thus not a reaction to a particular issue, or a particular slip of the tongue. It is a hatred for what conservatives are. Conservatives are people who believe in limited government. By its very nature, limited government means the death of progressive dreams. In progressive eyes, conservatives and Republicans actually are anti-woman, anti-minority, and anti-poor. Republicans oppose the very idea that government should function as a social savior.
Republicans are reactionary and hateful because they stand in the way of a society that can and should care for every man, woman and child from cradle to grave. Republicans take a view of politics that is fundamentally different. Republicans do not aspire to change the world. They want to repair systems that are broken. They are not missionaries, and they are not selling a land of dreams. Such practical agendas do not inspire them to despise their opponents or regard them as evil. Republicans think of their opponents as mistaken about how to fix particular problems.
Because Republicans are mindful of the past, they are uncertain about the future, and therefore wary of impossible dreams. They hope for a future better than the present but they are mindful that things could be even worse. Many problems are intractable and will not go away. Because this is their attitude, conservative emotions can never be as inflamed as their progressive opponents’.
Their instinct is to come up with practical plans and explain how specific problems might be solved. That is why they reach for facts and arguments, and spend a lot of time explaining things to voters. But voters have already been told not to trust their arguments because they are the arguments of enemies of women, children, minorities and the middle class.
The only way to confront the emotional campaign that Democrats wage in every election is through an equally emotional campaign that puts the aggressors on the defensive; that attacks them in the same moral language, identifying them as the bad guys, the oppressors of women, children, minorities and the middle class, that takes away from them the moral high ground which they now occupy. You can’t confront an emotionally based moral argument with an intellectual analysis. Yet this is basically and almost exclusively what Republicans do.
A Winning Strategy for Republicans
1. Put the aggressors on the defensive.
2. Put their victims — women, minorities, the poor and working Americans -- in front of every argument and every policy in the same way they do.
3. Start the campaign now (because the Democrats already have).
The Weapons of Politics Are Hope and Fear
The weapons of political campaigns are images and sound bites designed to inspire the emotions of fear and hope. Obama won the presidency in 2008 on a campaign of hope; he won re-election in 2012 on a campaign of fear.
Hope works, but fear is a much stronger and more compelling emotion. In a political campaign, it is directed at one’s political opponent. Democrats exploit this emotion to the hilt; Republicans often seem too polite to even use it.
The other emotion, hope, is not only weaker, it is at odds with conservatives’ basic pessimism, and their skepticism about political solutions. Unlike progressives, conservatives don’t expect cosmic results from political programs – saving the planet, creating a just world. Consequently, for Republicans, hope is less effective as a political appeal.
Republicans seem to think the way to inspire hope is by offering voters practical solutions, such as Paul Ryan’s plan to balance the budget. Paul Ryan is a smart conservative and the Ryan Plan is probably a good one. But with control only of the House, Republicans had no chance of implementing it when they voted on it. Worse, in the real world of political combat, facing an unscrupulous opposition, a plan offered by a party with no means of implementing it is a self-inflicted wound. You can’t put the plan into effect to show that it works, and no one besides policy wonks is going to even begin to understand it. All the plan does is provide the spinners with multiple targets to shoot at – something they will do by distorting the specifics and ignoring the plan itself. For virtually all voters, the plan will be so complicated and its details so obscure that it will remain invisible. Only those who already trust its designers will be persuaded that this is a reason to vote for them.
Hope in politics is an appeal to the heart, not the head; to emotions, not reason. Since it is an appeal to emotion, it is normally based on large quantities of hot air. In the 2008 election, hope was the first black man running for president with a serious prospect of winning. It was Obama making an empty promise: “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America. There is a United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America, a Latino America, an Asian America, there is a United States of America. No blue states or red states but the United States.” All Obama had to do to inspire hope was to be black, speak standard English and make this gesture – dishonest and empty as it turned out to be – that promised to unite Americans and move the country past its racial divisions.
The Campaign Narrative
The two emotions that drive politics — hope and fear — are tied together by a narrative that underlies all American political contests. This narrative is the story of the underdog and his triumph over odds. Both Democrats and Republicans shape the narratives of their election campaigns using this story, but do it in dramatically different ways.
When Republicans use the underdog narrative it is mainly as a story of opportunity, of Americans rising from humble origins. This was a principal theme of the Republican presidential convention in 2012 and of keynote speeches by Ann Romney, Governor Christie, Marco Rubio, Susanna Martinez and Condoleezza Rice. It was an appeal to voters to protect and/or restore the values and the institutions that provide such opportunities.
This is a good story of hope, and was effective in the hands of speakers like Rice. But it is not very strong on promoting fear, or in directing that fear towards political opponents in a way that maximizes its emotional impact. Insofar as there is any negative side to the Republican narrative, it is policies rather than a human actor that stands in the way of opportunity. Higher taxes and too much regulation—too much government — will stifle opportunity for Americans who are on the way up.
Here is how Obama dismissed the Republican argument in his acceptance speech at the Democrats’ convention: “All [Republicans] have to offer is the same prescription they’ve had for the last thirty years: Have a surplus? Try a tax cut. Deficit too high? Try another. Feel a cold coming on? Take two tax cuts, roll back some regulations, and call us in the morning!”
The Republican narrative is an abstraction. It’s about policies and prescriptions, over which reasonable people can disagree: How much opportunity will a three or four percent higher tax rate — the rate that prevailed in the prosperous Clinton years — stifle opportunity?
The entire argument remains intellectual until Democrats enter it, and then it becomes emotional. Democrats present themselves as champions of the powerless, the American underdogs. Their counterargument is that government is required to provide opportunity for those who lack it – whatever the tax rate. In the Democrats’ narrative the private sector doesn’t provide enough opportunity for those left behind, and government programs are necessary to fill in the gap. Democrats want to help people who need help. That is a powerful emotional appeal to all Americans, even Republicans. The Republican argument looks selfish by contrast: Republicans care for helping themselves (don’t raise taxes on the rich) — or helping people who can help themselves — people who can take advantage of opportunities without government help. Unless you understand how the economic system actually works, that’s a tough position to sympathize with.
When Democrats tell their underdog story it is not an abstraction but a powerful, polarizing, emotionally charged attack on their Republican adversaries. In the Democratic narrative, Republicans are cast as oppressors. They are the enemies of hope, and in particular, the hopes of America’s underdogs for equality, a fair share, and a helping hand when they need it. While Republicans set their narrative in a land of peace, Democrats place it on the frontlines of a nation at war. Here is a dispatch from the Democratic convention, September 2012:
CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (Reuters) – Two dozen Democratic women from the U.S. House of Representatives brought the charge that Republicans are waging a “war on women” to the party’s convention stage on Tuesday with sharp denunciations of Republicans on healthcare, equal pay and domestic violence. Led by Nancy Pelosi of California, the only woman to serve as speaker of the U.S. House, the women pressed the party’s argument that the Democrats will protect women’s interests against what they described as Republican attacks.
This staged declaration of war was led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Its purpose was to jump start the campaign’s central narrative: Republicans are waging “war” on women, minorities and the middle class. The Democrats’ narrative centered on how these victim groups were oppressed — or in the case of minorities suppressed — by evil Republicans seeking to turn back the historical clock, denying the powerless and those in need of their shot at the American dream. This is a powerful emotional message.
But there is nothing new about this Democratic strategy. Here is a call to arms from the 1996 Democratic convention: “We need to work as we have never done before between now and November 5th to take the Congress back from … the Republicans, because ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, the Republicans are the real threat. They are the real threat to our women. They are the real threat to our children. They are the real threat to clean water, clean air and the rich landscape of America.”
Republicans are the enemies of women, children and the environment! The speaker of this anathema was New York governor and presidential prospect Mario Cuomo. This declaration of war was made 16 years ago. Republicans have been the target of this kind of attack through at least four presidential elections. Yet they haven’t begun to answer it, and in particular, respond to it in kind.
To this day, no Republican speaks like that about Democrats, and certainly no Republican who is a national figure and party leader. The 2012 Democratic Convention was all about the victims of Republican policies, and about casting Republicans as their victimizers. Democrats had been in power four years, but at the 2012 Republican convention, there was almost no mention of the victims of Democrat policies.
At an election post-mortem, Romney’s deputy campaign manager analyzed the defeat this way: “The bottom line is that the Obama campaign [had] a candidate that was very hard to lay a glove on because [he] was somebody that the American people, by and large, had decided that they just liked.”
This is classic excuse making. That’s what campaigns are supposed to do: make the other candidate unlikeable. The Obama campaign devoted itself to doing just that to the Republican candidate. They defamed a decent, hard-working American as a dishonest, untrustworthy predator. It was the failure of the Romney campaign to lay a glove on Obama that was the reason he was still liked.
Obama’s campaign manager was at the same conference. His team did not have the view that their candidate was so likeable Romney couldn’t lay a glove on him. Quite the opposite. Their view was that “they would lose the election if it was a referendum on the president.” They chose a strategy of diverting attention from their candidate by attacking Romney as a member of the wealthy uncaring class who fired people mercilessly, shipped jobs overseas and was too rich to care about other people.
Taking A Page From the Democrats’ War Plans
Throughout the Republican campaign, there was a lot of talk about “job creators.” There were a lot of defenses of “job creators,” whom Democrats quickly redefined as rich people who don’t pay their fair share. That’s the problem with playing a “prevent defense.” Most Americans see job creators – employers – as rich people. If you’re defending the top dogs, you’re losing. If you’re fighting for the underdogs, you have to go on the attack.
What about job destroyers? What about Democrats who are killing the jobs of ordinary Americans — not just failing to create them—which is an antiseptic, bloodless way of putting it?
Democrats, who understand the psychology of the underdog, accused the Republicans of just that – destroying jobs. They targeted Mitt Romney with a $300 million ad buy as the nation’s number one job destroyer victimizing working Americans.
Job destroyer was a description ill–suited to a man whose business was reviving bankrupt companies. But it was — or should have been — a perfect fit for his Democratic opponent. How many jobs did America lose under Obama’s antibusiness reign?
How many unemployed did Obama create among African Americans, Latinos, women? The official unemployment rate in Detroit after 50 years of Democratic rule and four years of Obama stimulus was 19% but actually 45% were unemployed.
Thirty-five percent of Detroit’s citizens are on food stamps. Democrats destroy jobs and make people poor. Why wasn’t there a $300 million Republican campaign saying this?
Why are Republicans so reluctant to name the victims of Democrat policies, particularly the victims among America’s minority communities and working classes? Why don’t Republicans identify Democrats as a threat to those communities as Cuomo declared Republicans a threat to women? How can you win a war when the other side is using bazookas and your side is using fly swatters?
Defending the victims of job destroyers is morally and emotionally stronger than defending rich “job creators.” It creates sympathy and arouses anger. It inspires concerns about justice. It’s how the Democrats’ recruit and energize their troops. It’s the way — the only way — Republicans can neutralize the Democrats’ attacks on them as defenders of the rich, and return their fire: by framing them as the enemies of working Americans and the middle class.
During Obama’s four years in office, African Americans – middle-class African Americans – lost half their net worth as a result of the collapse of the housing market. That’s one hundred billion dollars in personal assets that disappeared from the pockets of African Americans because of a 25-year Democratic campaign to remove loan requirements for homebuyers. Yet in 2012, Republicans were too polite to mention this!
The fingerprints of Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barney Frank were all over the subprime mortgage crisis. The campaign to remove loan requirements for African American and other minority borrowers started with Jimmy Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act. It snookered thousands of poor black and Hispanic Americans into buying homes they couldn’t afford, which they then lost. How traumatic is the loss of one’s home?
By securitizing the failed mortgages, Democratic bundlers on Wall Street who had poured $100 million into the 2008 Obama campaign made tens of millions off the misery of those who lost their homes. In other words, with the help of Clinton, Frank and Obama, Wall Street Democrats made massive profits off the backs of poor black and Hispanic Americans. But Republicans were too polite to mention it. Here was a missed opportunity to neutralize Democrat attacks on Republicans as the party of the rich and exploiters of the poor. It was an opportunity to drive a giant wedge through the Democratic base.
The bottom line is this: If Republicans want to persuade minorities they care about them, they have to stand up for them; they have to defend them; and they have to show them that Democrats are playing them for suckers, exploiting them, oppressing them, and profiting from their suffering.
Large populations of the African American and Hispanic poor are concentrated in America’s inner cities – Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Harlem, South Central Los Angeles. In these inner cities the unemployment rates are off the charts, the school systems so corrupt and ineffective that half the children drop out before they graduate and half those who do are functionally illiterate. They will never get a decent job or a shot at the American dream.
In these inner cities, every city council and every school board and every school district are 100% controlled by Democrats and have been for more than 70 years. Everything that is wrong with the inner cities and their schools that policy can affect, Democrats are responsible for. Democrats have their boot heels on the necks of millions of poor African American and Hispanic children and are crushing the life out of them every year. But Republicans are too polite to mention it.
In the middle of the 2012 campaign, a teachers union strike shut down the schools in Chicago, Obama’s home town. The issue was not pay but the union’s refusal to allow teacher rewards to be connected to teacher performance. African American and Hispanic children were the true victims of the determination to protect bad teachers and not to reward good ones. Yet Republicans ignored the strike, and never put a face on its victims.
At the Republican convention, one keynote speaker referred to the teachers unions and the issue of teacher rewards and union obstruction. This was Governor Chris Christie, probably the most aggressive and articulate Republican warrior. But here is how Christie framed the Democrat/union atrocity:
We believe that the majority of teachers in America know our system must be reformed to put students first so that America can compete….We [Republicans] believe that we should honor and reward the good ones while doing what’s best for our nation’s future — demanding accountability, higher standards and the best teacher in every classroom.They believe the educational establishment will always put themselves ahead of children. That self-interest trumps common sense. They believe in pitting unions against teachers, educators against parents, and lobbyists against children. They believe in teacher’s unions.
And that’s all he said. The issues are there – accountability, standards and rewards for teacher performance. The policy is there. But the moral outrage is missing. The victims are missing and the culprits aren’t named. It’s not the “educational establishment” that’s ruining the lives and blocking the opportunities of African American and Hispanic children. It’s the Democrats – they are the educational establishment in every failing public school district. The Democrat teachers unions and the Democrat Party that supports them are destroying the lives of African American and Hispanic students whose parents are too poor to put them in private schools – the same private schools where Democrat legislators and union leaders send their own children.
Democrats will fight to the death to prevent poor parents from getting vouchers to provide their children with the same education that well-heeled Democratic legislators provide for theirs. This is a moral atrocity. This is an issue to get angry about and mobilize constituencies over. This is an issue that could drive a Gibraltar-size wedge through the Democratic base. But Republicans are too polite to do that.
This is merely the most obvious atrocity that Democrats are committing against America’s impoverished minorities. Subverting family structures through a misconceived welfare system, encouraging food stamp dependency, providing incentives to bring into this world massive numbers of children who have no prospect of a decent life just to earn a welfare dollar. These are the corrupt fruits of Democratic welfare policies which are spiraling out of control. Republicans criticize these programs as “wasteful.” They need to start attacking them as destructive, as attacks on the human beings who are ensnared by them.
The way for Republicans to show they care about minorities is to defend them against their oppressors and exploiters, which in every major inner city in America without exception are Democrats. Democrats run the welfare and public education systems; they have created the policies that ruin the lives of the recipients of their handouts. It’s time that Republicans started to hold Democrats to account; to put them on the defensive and take away the moral high ground, which they now occupy illegitimately. Government welfare is not just wasteful; it is destructive. The public school system in America’s inner cities is not merely ineffective; it is racist and criminal.
Democrats regard politics as a war conducted by other means. Their agenda is not to seek compromise over practical solutions to complex problems. It is to achieve power to dictate the fundamental transformation of American society into a socialist-redistributionist state. Democrats regard Republicans as enemies standing in the way of social justice and social progress. Every issue for them is a means to a greater end, which first of all is power, and beyond that the transformation of American society into a socialist-redistributionist state.
Because Democrats regard politics as war conducted by other means, they seek to demonize and destroy their opponents as the enemies of progress, of social justice and minority rights. Republicans can only counter these attacks by turning the Democrats’ guns around — by exposing them as the enforcers of injustice, particularly to minorities and the poor, the exploiters of society’s vulnerable and the reactionary proponents of policies that have proven bankrupt and destructive all over the world.
David invites readers to check out the the site of the organization he has established to disseminate the message of this essay: GoForTheHeart.org. David acknowledges the support of James Cowden in making possible the printing of this essay in pamphlet form.
1a)A Way Out of the Wilderness for the GOP
Republicans hold a weak hand in Washington but a stronger grip in states where voters have entrusted them with power. Performances there can boost not just the Republican image but bring the party back to power in Washington. More importantly, they can show conservative principles work. The "Red State Model" can, in the Wall Street Journal's words, "Drive Republican Revival."
Walter Russell Meade, one of our most brilliant thinkers, has written quite perceptively about the collapse of what he calls "the blue model." These are states that have been firmly in the hands of the Democratic Party and their allies (unions-especially public employee unions; special interest groups -- environmentalists among them). Together they have created a tax, spend and borrow model of governance that is leading to fiscal chaos. Policies have been adopted that have created a hostile business climate that has cramped growth and blighted the future of the middle class.
Prospects for these states are so dim there has been not just an exodus of their "best and brightest" (blue states are heavily dependent on taxing high-income people who have options to migrate to redder pastures) out of them, but a collapse in fertility rates, as well. When the future is bleak and the cost of living in the present is too high, people don't have children.
Liberals may caterwaul about a sustainable environment but seemingly couldn't care less about sustainable families or a sustainable future or a sustainable state.
These are states that are collapsing under the weight of liberal policies. While the fiscal condition of the Democrat-controlled federal government and blue state governments is horrendous, many Republican-controlled states are swimming in surpluses (there is a threat blue states will use their power in Washington to extract, courtesy of red-state workers, a massive bailout).
The archetype of this model would of course be California where "Progressive Failure is on Full Display" writes Californian Steven Greenhut -- but other states (Illinois, New York) are following down this disastrous path.
And therein lies an opportunity for the Republican Party.
While Barack Obama won re-election and the Senate remains in the hands of the Democrats, voters in 30 states put in power Republican governors, and 25 of those states have legislatures controlled by Republicans. The 2012 election sharpened the partisan divide in America between red states and blue states
That could be electoral gold on the national level if -- a big if -- the Republican Party can capitalize on the opportunity before it. They should embrace federalism not just for constitutional reasons but for practical and political reasons, as well.
The success of the policies enacted by these states can be contrasted to the failure of policies followed by blue states.
There was a reason Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis called states "laboratories of democracy". States can test long-debated policy ideas.
Ari Fleischer recently noted the potential of these states:
"Our governors are America's reformers in chief. There is a movement in America being led by our 30 Republican governors. That's a source of inspiration and an example."
The focus is shifting from Washington -- bogged down by grandstanding and rhetorical chaff, scandals and pettiness -- to states where real reform is being undertaken by Republicans.
Jonah Goldberg appreciates the potential for these efforts to revivify the GOP on a national level. He writes about the "Premature Reports of GOP Death"
In states as diverse as Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Nebraska, Michigan, New Jersey, Texas and a half-dozen others, Republicans have been implementing impressive - even miraculous - reforms.In pro-Obama Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker beat back a historic attack from organized labor. And Michigan - Michigan - recently became a right-to-work state, which I'm pretty sure is mentioned in the AFL-CIO's bylaws as a sign of the end times.
There are far more examples of reform afoot. State tax reformers are multiplying almost as fast as Obama's job-killing regulations. Oklahoma and Kansas have lowered their income-tax rates with an eye towards eliminating them. Mike Pence of Indiana, Susana Martinez of New Mexico, Pat McCrory of North Carolina -- all Republicans -- have focused on reducing income tax taxes. Nebraska's GOP Governor Dave Heineman wants to eliminate the state income tax and replace it with a sales tax. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal wants to eliminate his state's income and corporate income tax and replace them with a higher state sales tax.
Why the change?
Governors Jindal, McCrory and Heineman cite the growing evidence that states with low or no income taxes have done better economically in recent decades compared to states with income-tax rates of 10% or more.A new analysis by economist Art Laffer for the American Legislative Exchange Council finds that, from 2002 to 2012, 62% of the three million net new jobs in America were created in the nine states without an income tax, though these states account for only about 20% of the national population. The no-income tax states have had more stable revenue growth, while states like New York, New Jersey and California that depend on the top 1% of earners for nearly half of their income-tax revenue suffer wide and destabilizing swings in their tax collections.
The fringe benefit from the GOP view is these changes will, as a Wall Street Journal editorial notes, "further sharpen the contrast in economic policies between GOP reform Governors and the union-dominated high-tax models of California, Illinois, New York, Massachusetts and now Minnesota, where last week Governor Mark Dayton proposed a huge tax hike. Let the policy competition begin".
This is a battle Republicans should welcome.
Reform won't and should not end with taxes; this will just play into the image of the GOP as merely being tax-slashers who serve the interests of the rich.
In recent history, Republicans have been the party of ideas from Jack Kemp on taxes and John Engler on welfare reform, to Tommy Thompson on crime control. Their successors are emerging now.
The Republicans need to have an agenda that advances the interests of the middle class. They need a Middle-Class Agenda -- not just because it is the right thing to do but offers them the best chance of winning the White House.
Each initiative Republicans take should raise the middle-class standard of living; enhance their security and brighten the prospects of middle-class people. They should, among other things, cut the costs of energy, health care, child-caring and education (while improving the quality of teaching).
Advances are being made in these areas under Republican governors.
Texas, North Dakota, Louisiana are all leading energy-producing states not just because they are geologically-blessed but have adopted policies that encourage the tapping of their carbon bounty. Pennsylvania has led the way in encouraging the fracking revolution that has enriched its citizens, lowering the costs of energy, providing high-paying jobs, and boosting industries that benefit from the low costs of energy. Meanwhile, in stark contrast, the blue state on its border, New York, is throttling the same development within its borders. California environmentalists have caused the cost of energy to skyrocket.
Talk about contrast.
Republicans are pushing for more charter schools and vouchers to encourage more competition among schools and a better education for children. They face stiff opposition from teachers' unions allied to the Democrats but are forging ahead.
State-level education reform is crucial to children's' futures. State lawmakers can look to the example set by Louisiana, a pioneer in education reform for the 21st century. The reform package passed by the state legislature and signed into law by Gov. Bobby Jindal last year creates an aggressive school voucher program, expands charter school opportunities and ties teacher tenure to effectiveness in the classroom. Under this new law, Louisiana parents have more control over how their tax dollars are spent, and can choose whichever type of school best suits their child's individual needs: public, charter, private, parochial or virtual. Texas and Tennessee are trying to do the same.
"Choice" -- a concept embraced by liberals -- should be available to parents seeking the best education for their children.
At the college level, Florida's Republican Governor Rick Scott is seeking a way to reduce tuition for select majors (science among them). Rick Perry of Texas is even more ambitious: he is pushing for a $10,000 degree at a time when high student debt loads imperil the futures of many college students and their families and people begin to question the value of college education given the higher education bubble that has already beginning to burst.
Health care reform has not stopped with the Supreme Court decision on ObamaCare,
Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, for example, has turned over delivery of Medicaid services to private health insurers- a step he says will hold down costs.
Republican governors are trying to avoid the worst aspects of ObamaCare by refusing to open state health-care exchanges. This will be a boon for them and their citizens. Rick Manning notes in The Hill the real-world impact that this refusal to implement Obama's agenda may have:
The practical effect is that businesses in non-state exchange states will operate under a different set of federal healthcare rules than their counterparts in states like California, Massachusetts and New York. The current competitive advantages that many of these states currently enjoy due to low tax, less regulatory environments over high-tax, bad-business-environment hard-blue states will grow almost exponentially (italics mine).
Employers who can will shed the Obama mandates simply by picking up stakes and moving to states where they cannot be enforced.
Tort reform in Texas has led to an influx of doctors while the threat of abusive malpractice suits has dramatically reduced the number of doctors on other states where OB-GYNs, for example, have become an endangered species.
Republicans are also following the lead of Scott Walker in Wisconsin in trying to end collective bargaining with public employees (even Franklin Roosevelt thought this was a bad idea). This breaks the grip that public unions have over the public purse. Collective bargaining has been the tool that unions have used to extract unaffordable salary and benefit packages for their members and has led to the bankruptcy of various cities and massive debts in blue states such as California and Illinois (credit rating equal to Botswana's). Pension reform for public workers is also part of the game plan for Republicans.
Republicans greatly benefit their citizens when they take on public unions (as well as private unions).
Michigan's Governor shocked the nation when he and his GOP-controlled legislature passed "right to work" legislation that barred unions form requiring workers to pay dues or representation fees even if they are covered by union contracts. When various states have passed this type of legislation, members often opt out of paying dues and weakening the power of unions -and boosting the growth and job-producing prospects of those states ("right-to-work" states have lower unemployment and higher income levels
The poster child for collapsing blue states is California; for red states, it is Texas, that can become a model state for dynamic job and economic growth.
A pro-business climate has unquestionably been a substantial advantage. In its annual ranking of business environments, Chief Executive has named Texas the most growth-friendly state for eight years in a row (California has been last for the same eight years). The reasons include low taxes and sensible regulations; a high quality workforce (Texas ranked second only to Utah in that category in 2012).Texas has a low cost of living-far lower than California's. Adjusted for cost of living, Texas's per-capita income is higher than California's and nearly as high as New York's. Factor in state and local taxes, and Texas trumps NY.More than three quarters of the cost of living difference between Texas and California can be explained by housing costs. Texas lacks the draconian land-use restrictions that drive Californian housing prices into the stratosphere.
Viva la difference!
Red states, many in the South, are growing stronger and wealthier because they are adopting pro-growth policies, breaking the power of unions, creating a business-friendly climate, and passing sensible regulations. Indeed they have become magnets for people fleeing blue states in the north.
Widening the competitive advantages healthy red states have over dying blue states is another way of allowing all Americans to compare and contrast the impact of conservative versus liberal policies.
How can this be communicated to the rest of America? That will be a challenge given the huge number of "low information" voters but certainly in the next few years Republicans will have good stories to tell regarding the success of their policies. "Low information" voters may gloss over abstract theories and claims but might be receptive to "show and tell" lessons and "comparing and contrasting" challenges.
Republicans should be able to make the case that conservative policies writ large across America can improve the lives of all Americans.
Will they succeed?
Game on! Don't blow it, GOP.
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2Obama’s visit to Israel for consultation, stronger ties – not demands
)Shapiro said US President Barak Obama and Binyamin Netanyahu had agreed that the presidential visit to Israel in spring would be for the purpose of consultation – not demands or laying down conditions - on major issues such as reviving the peace process, preventing a nuclear Iran and the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria. Working relations between Obama and Netanyahu were “excellent,” he said.
The US ambassador was answering a question by a Kol Israel national radio interviewer early Wednesday, Feb. 6. The US ambassador said the president does not expect to issue a joint statement after his talks with the Israeli prime minister, but sought to affirm the deep and strengthened ties between the US and Israel.
Shapiro: Obama’s visit would take place after the new Israeli government was in place.
Shapiro: Obama’s visit would take place after the new Israeli government was in place.
Obama’s forthcoming visit has abruptly strengthened the prime minister’s hand in the negotiations for a post-election government coalition and refocused its agenda from haggling on domestic issues to establishing a broad security-diplomatic front. Party leaders such as Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) are already muting their demands for joining government.
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The day Israel announced the posting of extra Iron Dome and Patriot anti-missile interceptors in its northern regions, Tuesday, Feb. 5, the White House in Washington disclosed that US President Barack Obama would be visiting Israel in the spring. The visit had been discussed when Obama phoned Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Jan. 28 to congratulate him on his success in Israel’s recent election.
The communique went on to say that the US president was coming to discuss issues of common interest such as furthering the peace process but added, the start of Obama's second term offers an opportunity to reaffirm Israel's close relationship with the US and to discuss major issues like Syria and Iran.”
The communique went on to say that the US president was coming to discuss issues of common interest such as furthering the peace process but added, the start of Obama's second term offers an opportunity to reaffirm Israel's close relationship with the US and to discuss major issues like Syria and Iran.”
tRanslate this as referring to the chemical weapons in the hands of Syria and most likely Hizballah as well as Iran’s nuclear program. The date of his visit was not released.
Sources divide the White House bulletin into two parts: security and political.
The reference to Syria and Iran as the “major issues” to be discussed in the framework of the “close relationship” points to Washington and Jerusalem being on the same wavelength on the military actions taken by Israel in Syria last week and those still to come.
It is also a signal from the White House to Tehran, Damascus and Hizballah that in so far as those three allies are planning reprisals for those actions, they will find the United States standing behind Israel.
The IDF command’s announcement expanding the areas of northern Israeli under the anti-missile interceptor shield was released shortly before the White House communiqué and during Israel’s chief of staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz talks at US military chiefs in Washington.
According to the IDF bulletin, an extra Patriot missile interceptor and a third Iron Dome battery was deployed in Lower Galilee, a region which covers key towns north of Tel Aviv: Afula, Nazareth, Yoqn’am and Hadera. Batteries were posted earlier outside Haifa and areas of Upper Galilee closer to the Syrian and Lebanese borders.
The Israeli military command is therefore taking into account that some two million Israelis are potentially in danger of missile attack.
The Obama administration cannot be sure if the president’s visit, his first since 2008, will take place before or after a possible confrontation between Israel and Iran, Syria and Hizballah.
As for the political message, the White House announced the coming presidential visit on the day that the newly-elected Israeli Knesset held its first sitting in Jerusalem. It belied the propaganda pumped out by Netanyahu’s political foes throughout the election campaign, accusing him of souring ties with the Obama administration.
By announcing the coming visit at this time, President Obama showed the party leaders who are hanging tough in talks for a coalition government that Netanyahu has his confidence and support and the two leaders are in close rapport on major issues.
Last year did Obama and Netanyahu finally reach an understanding to embark on regional initiatives in a spirit of partnership straight after the Israeli election?
Last year did Obama and Netanyahu finally reach an understanding to embark on regional initiatives in a spirit of partnership straight after the Israeli election?
President Obama’s trip will also include the West Bank and Jordan.
2a)Ahmadinejad visits Cairo: How sect tempers Islamist ties between Egypt, Iran
By Kristen Chick
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Egypt, the first by an Iranian leader since 1979, is historic. It may also prove worthless
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Cairo in the first visit of an Iranian leader to Egypt since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Although Mr. Ahmadinejad traveled to Egypt for a summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, not specifically to meet with Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, his trip highlights the thaw in Egyptian-Iranian relations since an uprising unseated former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Egypt literally rolled out the red carpet for Ahmadinejad and President Morsi greeted the Iranian president with a kiss on the cheek as he welcomed him at the airport. Morsi made the first visit to Tehran by an Egyptian leader in three decades in August, also for a summit.
But while Ahmadinejad's visit is historic, analysts say it does not likely herald the start of close ties between the two regional powerhouses because Egypt has too much to lose with its Sunni Gulf backers and international allies.
There are very real constraints on Morsi's ability to concretely improve relations with Iran," says Elijah Zarwan, a Cairo-based senior policy fellow for the European Council on Foreign Relations. With Egyptian state institutions like the intelligence service opposed to strengthening ties with Iran, and Egypt's wealthy allies in the Gulf and the US also frowning at the prospect, "the costs to closer ties with Iran far outweigh the benefits," says Mr. Zarwan. The US, European countries, and Cairo's Sunni Gulf allies are all hostile to Shiite powerhouse Iran.
Egypt and Iran cut ties after a 1979 revolution brought hardline clerics to power in Tehran, while in Egypt then-president Anwar Sadat signed a peace treaty with Israel. Egypt offered asylum to Iran's exiled leader, Shah Reza Pahlavi. Iran named a street in Tehran after the assassin who killed Sadat. Egypt soon became a major US ally in the region, while Iran became an enemy.
A LIMITED OUTREACH
Morsi began improving relations when he visited Tehran in August for a Non-Aligned Movement summit. Yet he used the visit to criticize Iran for being one of the biggest backers of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has lost the support of most of the Arab world for ordering a violent crackdown on his country's uprising, and to call for Assad to step down. He also made a subtle dig about Shiite Islam in his summit speech.
Morsi began improving relations when he visited Tehran in August for a Non-Aligned Movement summit. Yet he used the visit to criticize Iran for being one of the biggest backers of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has lost the support of most of the Arab world for ordering a violent crackdown on his country's uprising, and to call for Assad to step down. He also made a subtle dig about Shiite Islam in his summit speech.
Still, the exchange of visits would have been unthinkable during Mr. Mubarak's reign.
Morsi is under pressure to distinguish himself from Mubarak's foreign policy, and thawing relations with Iran is part of his effort to establish a more independent foreign policy, says Zarwan. Last fall Morsi proposed an initiative to end the Syria crisis that involved Iran in a regional committee, and offered Iran incentives, including restored ties, to end support for the Syrian regime. Iran did not take Egypt's offer, but the Associated Press reports that the two leaders held a 20-minute talk about resolving the Syrian conflict after Ahmadinejad's arrival. The Iranian president also visited the Grand Sheikh of Al Azhar, a respected center of Sunni Muslim scholarship and learning.
And there are other benefits to ending the enmity between the two countries, says Mustapha Kamel Al Sayyid, a political science professor at the American University in Cairo. Egypt is on a very short list of nations that do not have diplomatic relations with Iran. "Even the United Arab Emirates, which has a territorial dispute with Iran, has diplomatic relations with Iran," he says. "Iran is a very important regional power, and it's in the interest of Egypt to have relations" with such a player.
THE GULF BETWEEN
But taking serious steps to improve ties with Iran in a more concrete way would come at a high cost for Egypt.
But taking serious steps to improve ties with Iran in a more concrete way would come at a high cost for Egypt.
It risks jeopardizing ties with wealthy Gulf Arab countries that are hostile to Iran like Qatar, which recently gave Egypt $2.5 billion to shore up its finances amid a floundering economy. And the US, which accuses Iran of developing nuclear weapons and has sought to isolate Tehran diplomatically while also levying sanctions on it, would also be deeply dismayed. The US gives Egypt around $1.5 billion every year, mostly in military aid, and its support is seen as key for the $4.8 billion IMF loan Egypt is seeking.
A State Department spokeswoman told reporters in a press briefing yesterday that Ahmadinejad's Cairo visit is "an opportunity for the Egyptian government to give him the same strong messages that the international community has been giving about their nuclear behavior, about their terrorist behavior, etcetera."
Egypt's foreign minister sought to allay Gulf fears yesterday when he downplayed Ahmadinejad's visit and said "Egypt's relationship with Iran will never come at the expense of Gulf nations."
But the obstacles to closer ties aren't just international. Egypt's intelligence service, which plays an important role in Egyptian foreign policy, would be strongly opposed to serious rapprochement, notes Zarwan.
And many Islamists have concerns about the Shiite theocracy as well. The most organized Salafi group in Egypt released a statement criticizing Ahmadinejad's visit, rejecting "Shiite influence on Egypt." Salafis helped elect Morsi and took nearly a quarter of the seats in Egypt's now-dissolved parliament. Anti-Shiite rhetoric and discrimination against Egypt's tiny Shiite minority are common in Egypt.
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3)CAIR Leader Runs for New York City Council
By David J. Rusin
Zead Ramadan, board president of the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), is eyeing a bigger platform from which to promote his Islamist agenda: a seat on the New York City Council. If he prevails, the city that endured 9/11 will count among its lawmakers a senior official in an organization linked to the financing of terrorists and intent on frustrating law enforcement efforts to foil the next jihad plot.
neighborhoods across New York, Ramadan has formally announced his candidacy to succeed the term-limitedRobert Jackson in northern Manhattan's District 7. He has gotten off to a quick start in fundraising and an even quicker start in playing the victim card, no doubt hoping to preempt criticism of his association with CAIR. "Ready 2 get attacked 4 my faith but I am not first or last," Ramadan tweeted on January 13.
The opening salvo was a January 2 article by Azi Paybarah, published at CapitalNewYork.com. Relaying Ramadan's description of himself as a "lightning rod," the piece explains that he "has been a frequent target of local anti-Muslim commentators, and several times during the interview Ramadan predicted opponents of CAIR would turn their attention to his campaign," because "CAIR has been a frequent target of Republicans and conservatives, who accuse it of being tolerant of terrorism, or worse." Paybarah's follow-up report states that "CAIR, a civil-rights group, says it exists in part as an antidote to radicalism, and condemns terrorism and religious violence." A more thorough journalist would have mentioned that "CAIR conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists," in the words of federal prosecutors; that CAIR was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF), whose leaders wereconvicted of funneling money to Hamas; that a federal judge, citing "ample evidence" of CAIR's ties to HLF and Hamas, upheld the designation; and that the FBI ended outreach activities with CAIR as a result. Of course, these inconvenient facts might have ruined the witch-hunt narrative.
Paybarah emphasizes the Arab-Israeli conflict and the "politics in staunchly pro-Israel New York," assuring readers that Ramadan "said he wanted to avoid using his Council campaign to refocus the dialogue in New York on Middle East foreign affairs" and would not prioritize such issues if elected. "I can't affect the Middle East problem," Ramadan told him. "I'm not condemning anything, OK? You want me to condemn one side or the other in a one thousand, two thousand-year dispute, what are you, insane?"
This is not the only time that Ramadan has passed on an opportunity to denounce Hamas. "Sir, do you consider Hamas a terrorist organization?" asked an Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) reporter at apress conference in 2011. After trying to change the subject to anti-jihad activist Pamela Geller, Ramadan offered nothing but bromides: "Islam, myself, and I think all people of conscience are opposed to all terrorism in all of its forms against all the people of the world. Anyone who is innocent that is killed, it's not the way of the Islamic people or people of conscience or people who stand for liberty and justice. Thank you very much." His evasiveness is consistent with CAIR's long history of refusing to censure Hamas by name. Further illuminating his sympathies, an IPT article reveals that "Ramadan contributed $1,000 to Viva Palestina, an organization led by noted anti-Semite George Galloway, that supports Hamas financially and politically, in 2010."
Though reticent to rebuke Hamas, Ramadan has no shortage of harsh words about life in the U.S. and sometimes disseminates them on Iranian-controlled Press TV, just as other CAIR figures have done. Ramadan employed the following hyperbolic analogy to peddle the Muslims-under-assault meme on the channel last year: "In Nazi Germany, they targeted the minority, the Jewish minority, and unfortunately it went from only philosophy to rhetoric to action. And that's not where we want to go in America. I don't think we'll ever get there, but I don't think we should allow the road to continue to be built towards that direction, because the comments that are being made against Muslims are very eerily echoing the comments that were made against Jews by Nazis." During an earlier Press TV appearance, he painted Congressman Peter King's hearings on Muslim radicalization as "an attempt to demonize the Islamic faith" and downplayed the danger of Islamic terrorism, suggesting that Jews are as great a terrorist threat as Muslims. He sparred with King on NBC in 2010, likening resistance to the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero to the internment of the Japanese, segregation, and slavery.
Ramadan has toed the CAIR party line on the New York Police Department's surveillance program to identify potentially violent radicals, calling it "f—ked up" for "basically equating Muslim with terrorism, which is outrageous." He previously chided the department for its use of The Third Jihad, a documentary that exposes Islamism in America and is narrated by reformist Muslim Zuhdi Jasser. According to a 2011 CAIRnews release, "Ramadan compared The Third Jihad to past propaganda such as the Nazi-era film Triumph of the Will or Birth of a Nation, which vilified African-Americans." As CAIR was protesting Jasser's appointmentto the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom last spring, Ramadan penned a Facebook postsmearing him as an "extremist" and asking, "Are David Duke and Pamela Geller on this panel too?"
Ramadan and CAIR-NY also participate in the Islamist pushback against vital FBI sting operations to nab budding terrorists. The aforementioned press conference at which Ramadan ducked the Hamas query was arranged by the Committee to Stop FBI Repression. Additionally, CAIR-NY co-hosted an event with the author of The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI's Manufactured War on Terrorism at Columbia Law School on January 31. Attorney General Eric Holder criticized such rhetoric before a Muslim audience in 2010: "Those who characterize the FBI's activities in this case as 'entrapment' simply do not have their facts straight — or do not have a full understanding of the law."
Finally, Ramadan has overseen one of CAIR's more radical branches. A CAIR-NY Facebook entry from February 2012 "urges everyone to come out and support Dr. Aafia Siddiqui by attending her appeal for an unjust 86 yr jail sentence"; Siddiqui, a suspected al-Qaeda facilitator, was found guilty of trying to murder U.S. personnel in Afghanistan. Ramadan's CAIR-NY colleague Cyrus McGoldrick infamously tweeted pro-Hamas messages, advocated the destruction of anti-jihad ads, and promised that "we'll blast" police informants, whom he branded as "snitches"; he recently left the group, perhaps due to bad publicity. Furthermore, CAIR-NY board member Lamis Deek has warned Muslims of an "NYPD-CIA-Israeli alliance" out to get them and, upon the election of Islamist Mohamed Morsi as president of Egypt, praised the supposed liberation from America's "proxy-imperialist (colonialist) wrath."
Notable on its own, Ramadan's campaign also highlights the trend of American Muslims with Islamist track records seeking elected office. For instance, Esam Omeish, a former president of the Muslim American Society (MAS), described by federal prosecutors as "the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America," pursued a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates four years ago, but he finished third in the Democratic primary. Minnesota's Keith Ellison has been more successful. A Democratic congressman since 2007, he regularlycollaborates with CAIR and similar groups; saw parallels between 9/11 and Hitler's Reichstag fire; savaged Jasser on Capitol Hill in 2009, effectively calling him an Uncle Tom who "give[s] people license for bigotry"; andenjoyed a pilgrimage to Mecca funded by MAS. Despite this, Ellison defeated his challenger by nearly 50 points in 2012.
Though Islamists who enter the halls of power through the back door have drawn most of the headlines of late — particularly the many unelected Muslims with alarming histories currently populating the Obama administration — one must not forget to keep an eye on the front door as well. Will Zead Ramadan be the next to walk in, securing a New York City Council seat that would provide a vehicle for shaping key issues, from police counterterrorism programs to religious accommodations in public institutions, and bestow unearned legitimacy on CAIR itself?
The decision will rest with the voters of District 7. They deserve to be given the facts about Ramadan and CAIR — to offset the steady diet of puff pieces and sob stories — before making it.
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4)Democrats Eye Unlikely Georgia as Senate Pickup
Even before Saxby Chambliss announced last month that he would not seek a third term, the 2014 Senate race in Georgia was shaping up to be one of the more intriguing midterm contests.
Republican Congressmen Tom Price and Paul Broun had been mulling primary challenges to Chambliss, who recently broke with GOP orthodoxy in seeking bipartisan compromise on fiscal issues. And now that the incumbent has bowed out, the prospect of a particularly messy Republican primary fight has national Democrats taking a second look -- albeit with a healthy dose of realism -- at a race they had considered an unlikely pickup opportunity.
While marquee potential candidates Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and RedState.com’s Erick Erickson have said that they will not seek Chambliss’ seat, there is a long and rapidly evolving list of other state Republicans who are interested, and those on it are jostling for early position in what is almost certain to be a contentious battle on the right.
“It’s obviously one of our top -- if not the top -- offensive opportunities for us,” a senior Democratic official told RCP. “I’ll admit, that doesn’t mean a lot, because we’re largely playing defense this cycle.”
Indeed, national Democrats are gearing up for a difficult midterm election in which they will have to defend 20 of the 33 Senate seats up for grabs in order to maintain their upper-chamber majority. And actually expanding that majority in the sixth year of President Obama’s term will fall somewhere between difficult and nearly impossible. Nonetheless, Georgia Democrats are drawing inspiration from the party’s simple yet effective blueprint for success last year in Missouri, Indiana, North Dakota and Montana: Run strong candidates who are adept at exploiting perceptions of ideological rigidity in their GOP opponents.
Asked about the prospects of his party winning Chambliss’ seat in 2014, Georgia Democratic strategist Stefan Turkheimer characterized the opportunity as “possible but not likely.”
“In order for it to occur, you have to get a decent candidate on the Dem side,” he said. “But you also have to get someone coming out of the Flat Earth Society primary on the Republican side, who’s seen nationally as being ridiculous.”
Former two-term Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue announced last week that he would not run for the seat, a decision that opened up the GOP field even more widely. Of Georgia’s nine Republican congressmen, most are said to be considering Senate runs. Among the best positioned in the early going is Price, who has benefited from significant visibility and a hefty fundraising base in his suburban Atlanta congressional district. Price raised approximately $250,000 in late January alone and has high-dollar fundraising events scheduled in the nation’s capital, according to an email cited in a report by The Hill.
Former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel, who narrowly lost a 2010 gubernatorial primary to Gov. Nathan Deal, could be a strong GOP contender, and Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle also is reportedly considering a bid. Reps. Jack Kingston, Tom Graves, and Phil Gringrey round out the early field of the most-discussed prospective GOP candidates.
Georgia Rep. Lynn Westmoreland ruled out a bid on Monday.
Gringrey last month drew scrutiny when he told a group of constituents that Missouri Rep. Todd Akin was “partly right” in his infamous comments -- made during his failed 2012 Senate run -- about the possibility of pregnancy after what Akin deemed “legitimate rape.”
The Georgia congressman later told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that his own remarks had been misconstrued, but the episode appeared to be just the sort of self-inflicted wound that state Democrats believe could ultimately sink whoever becomes the Republican nominee.
Many Democrats are openly rooting for Broun (who has signaled that he will announce his candidacy later this week) to make it out of the GOP primary in hopes that the 10th District lawmaker will continue his penchant for making the kind of contentious remarks that generate national headlines.
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