Obviously the recent attacks in Paris are a wake up call not only for the French but also for all Europeans. The question is will their collective response be permanent and even if it is will it be effective or will they surrender to a European brand of PC'ism, apathy and/or over confidence terrorism has been contained?
To set Jihidists back, Europeans must take the battle to the enemy and that means going after their training bases in Africa, in The Middle East and deportations etc. That will take resources the Europeans may not have, cannot afford and for which they may lack the stomach and commitment. Time will tell.(See 1 and 1a below.)
Does Jindal get it? (See 1b below.)
This from an honest and courageous Muslim. (See 1c below.)
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The SIRC's President Day Dinner Guest Speaker, John Podhoretz, spells out the meaning of Obama's SOTU, It is all an effort to plant Obama Burrs under Republican saddles in the hope of getting a "Pavlovian" response in order to capture and shape the debate stage and control its direction.. (See 2 below.)
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Dick
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1) Reframing the Enemy after France's 9/11
By Jeffrey Herf
The Paris murders have been called France's 9/11 because they have stunned, shocked and angered the nation in ways comparable to the American reaction to the murder of over 3,000 of our fellow citizens. I remember well that in the few months following 9/11, the American intellectual world, especially that of liberals and left-leaning people, was in a state of welcome confusion.
The familiar denunciations of American "imperialism" and the habits of sympathy for "national liberation movements" that had emerged in the protest against the war in Vietnam in the 1960s did not fit the realities of September 11, 2001. For on that day, Mohammed Atta and his associates attacked our country in the name of profoundly reactionary ideas, ideas more closely linked to Nazism than to Communism or the traditions of the left. Al Qaeda had abandoned the euphemisms of leftist anti-Zionism and spoke openly about hatred of "crusaders," that is, Americans and Jews. There were a few leftists in Europe and the United States who thought the American imperialists got what they deserved, but in those first months after the attack, there was an unaccustomed surge of patriotism among liberals, a sense of national unity and rage against the Islamists who appeared to many as the harbingers of a new totalitarianism.
In the first months after 9/11, there was an unaccustomed surge of patriotism among American liberals, a sense of national unity and rage against the Islamists.
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The events of 9/11 caused a scrambling of political categories and led to the writing of important books. Paul Berman's Terror and Liberalism in 2003 examined the lineages between Sayyid Qutb's writings of the 1950s and the Jew-hatred of Europe's twentieth century. Berman demonstrated that Qutb, the Muslim Brotherhood's leading ideological figure after World War II, had placed totalitarianism and terror into an Islamic context. In 2002 in Germany, Matthias Kuentzel's Jihad und Judenhass(translated into English in 2007 as Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11) traced the Islamist tradition from Hassan Al-Banna and Haj Amin al-Husseini to Qutb, the Muslim Brothers, Al Qaeda and the Hamburg Cell that organized the 9/11 attack. I wrote essays discussing the similarities and differences between Nazism and the Islamists. In Germany, Bassam Tibi courageously distinguished Islamism and Islam, efforts that led to a book by that name in 2011. In Berlin, Richard Herzinger, writing for Die Welt, wrote of the threat Islamism posed to free societies and the need to fight against it.
In spring 2006, Britain, Norman Geras and others wrote The Euston Manifesto, an eloquent effort to mobilize the traditions of British liberalism and the democratic left against the totalitarianism of radical Islam. In fall, 2006 some of us followed with an online statement about American Liberalism and Euston Manifesto. The shock of the attack had shattered old habits, fostered new thinking and led to books and essays that remain worth reading today.
Sadly, the new thinking did not last long.
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Sadly, the new thinking did not last long, or rather, it lasted but was supplanted by experts who told stories about a "moderate" Muslim Brotherhood and about the need to avoid inflaming Muslims with public discussion of Islamism. Many decades of investment in the cultural capital of the conventional habits of left and right were proving too powerful to overcome. Even the administration of George Bush refrained from naming the enemy. It spoke oddly of a "war on terror" rather than one against radical Islam. With the US decision to go to war in Iraq, all of the old and familiar categories of thinking returned with a vengeance and especially so in Europe. Those of us who wrote about Islamist terror were accused of a newly invented sin, "Islamophobia." In place of a necessary discussion of the nature of radical Islam in its various permutations and of how to win the war against it, the controversy over the Iraq war reinforced the return to the conventional categories of left and right.
In retrospect, the emergence of Barack Obama on the national stage was not an expression of new thinking. On the contrary, Obama stood for an academic orthodoxy that had become firmly established in American universities in the previous several decades. It was an orthodoxy that put him at odds with Benjamin Netanyahu, but also with the free spirits in Europe and the United States who had tried to break the left-right mold in the aftermath of 9/11 and foster a sharp confrontation with the anti-Semitic, illiberal and anti-Western elements of Islamist ideology. In the resurgent orthodoxy that took shape in the opposition to the war in Iraq, there was little room for attributing causal importance to Islamist ideology as a source of terror, hatred of the West and of the Jews. Rather, Al Banna, Husseini, Qutb and the successors in Al Qaeda and in the government of Iran were viewed as regrettable and mistaken reactions to the arrogance and blunders of the West. Hence, to call the source of terrorism by its name would only inflame passions and offend Muslims, whom Obama thought he could somehow turn into allies.
The result was an absurd insistence that terrorists who have murdered tens of thousands in the name of their interpretation of Islam "have nothing to do with the religion of Islam," as if multiple interpretations of all religions have not had an impact on political history for centuries.
The same standards of critique and selective reading that have been applied to Christianity and Judaism should be applied to Islam, no more and no less.
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Today, it is a common knowledge among historians of the Nazi regime that Hitler drew on a distorted and selective reading of the Christian tradition to justify his hatreds. Just as historians would not say that Christianity led to the Holocaust, so too we would not say that it had nothing to do with it at all. A very different understanding of Christianity inspired Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt to fight against the Nazis. Yet however distorted the Nazis' selective reading of Christianity was, accusations against the Jews were a part of its religious teachings for centuries. The Koran did not lead to 9/11, Al Qaeda, Hamas or the Paris murders, but neither does a selective reading of some of its passages by young, impressionable minds have "nothing to do" with them either. The same standards of critique and selective reading that have been applied to Christianity and Judaism should be applied to Islam, no more and no less. Until this past week, when French Prime Minister Manuel Valls spoke so frankly in Paris, it has been primarily Israeli leaders who have been willing to publicly state the obvious about the impact of Islamism on the terrorism of recent decades.
Now that Valls has stated clearly that France is, in fact, at war with radical Islam - and with the terrorism and anti-Semitism it inspires - the contrast with the euphemisms and avoidance coming from the United States since 9/11 is apparent. Three million people have just bought the first post-massacre edition of Charlie Hebdo. The French National Assembly sang the Marseillaise for the first time since 1918. Valls has said that if 100,000 Jews leave France, the Republic would be judged to be a failure. The candid talk in France is coming from left-of-center politicians. These days in France remind me of the autumn of 2001, when minds opened in the midst of mourning and anger. Yet within a year or two, a conventional wisdom and a refusal to speak frankly came to dominate American public discourse, continuing to this day. With the American experience after 9/11 in mind, one wonders how long Valls' willingness to speak frankly about radical Islam will persist, or whether the conventional wisdom many decades in the making will lead again to new forms of euphemism and avoidance.
Jeffrey Herf is Distinguished University Professor in the Department of History at the University of Maryland in College Park and a fellow at the Middle East Forum. His recent works include: Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (2009), and The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust (2006).
1a)
'Diversity' in Action
By Thomas SowellIslamic terrorist attacks in Europe, and European governments' counter-attacks are more than just a passing news story.
Europe is currently in the process of paying the price for years of importing millions of people from a culture hostile to the fundamental values of Western culture. And this is by no means the last of the installments of that price, to be paid in blood and lives, for smug elites' Utopian self-indulgences in moral preening and gushing with the magic word "diversity."
Generations yet unborn will still be paying the price, whether in large or small installments, depending on how long it takes for the West to jettison Utopianism and come to grips with reality.
Meanwhile, in the United States, no one seems to be drawing any lessons about the dangers of importing millions of people from fundamentally different cultures across our open border. In America, "diversity" has still not yet lost its magical ability to stop thought in its tracks and banish facts into the outer darkness.
Perhaps here, as in Europe, that verbal magic can only be washed away in the blood of innocent victims, many of them yet unborn.
To cross our open border with Mexico, you don't have to be Mexican or even from Central America. You can be from Iran, Syria or other hotbeds of Middle Eastern terrorism.
It is one of the monumental examples of political irresponsibility that the southern border has not been secured during administrations of either party, despite promises and posturing.
Many fine people have come here from Mexico. But, as with any other group, some are just the opposite. With open borders, however, we don't even know how many people who cross that border are Mexican, much less anything more relevant, like their education, diseases, criminal records or terrorist ties.
There are some politicians -- both Democrats and Republicans -- who just want to get the issue behind them, and are prepared to leave the consequences for others to deal with in the future, just as they are leaving a staggering national debt for others to deal with in the future.
These consequences include irreversible changes in the American population. Ethnic "leaders" and welfare state goodies guarantee the fragmentation of the population, with never-ending strife among the fragments. People who enter the country illegally will get, not only equal benefits with the American people who created those benefits, they will get more than many American citizens, thanks to affirmative action.
We cannot simply let in everyone who wants to come to America, or there will be no America to come to. Cultures matter -- and not all cultures are mutually compatible, as Europeans are belatedly learning, the hard way. And "assimilation" is a dirty word to multiculturalists.
State and local officials who blithely violate their oath to uphold the law, and indulge themselves in the moral posturing of declaring their domains to be "sanctuaries" for people who entered the country illegally, are unlikely to reconsider until disastrous consequences become far too big to ignore -- which is to say, until it is too late.
Meanwhile, harsh punishments are reserved for people in business who fail to carry out the law-enforcement duties that elected officials openly declare they are not going to carry out.
To many in the media, the only question seems to be whether we are going to be "mean-spirited" toward people who want to come here -- especially children who were brought here, or sent here, "through no fault of their own."
It is as if those children had some pre-existing right to be in the United States, which they could lose only if they did something bad themselves. But those children had no more right to be here than children in India, Africa or other places with millions of children living in poverty.
Surely we can think ahead enough to realize that children living in this country illegally are going to grow up and have children of their own, with cultures and values of their own -- and ethnic "leaders" to promote discontent and hostility if they don't get as good results as people who have the prevailing American culture, beginning with the English language.
You can't wish that away by saying the magic word "diversity" -- not after we have seen what "diversity" has led to in Europe.
1b) Jindal's Brilliant Take on Radical Islam
By Larry Kudlow
“Let’s be honest here. Islam has a problem.”
Those are key sentences in an incredibly hard-hitting speech that Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal will give in London on Monday. It is the toughest speech I have read on the whole issue of Islamic radicalism and its destructive, murdering, barbarous ways which are upsetting the entire world.
Early in the speech Jindal says he’s not going to be politically correct. And he uses the term “radical Islamists” without hesitation, placing much of the blame for the Paris murders and all radical Islamist terrorism on a refusal of Muslim leaders to denounce these acts.
Jindal says, “Muslim leaders must make clear that anyone who commits acts of terror in the name of Islam is in fact not practicing Islam at all. If they refuse to say this, then they are condoning these acts of barbarism. There is no middle ground.”
Then he adds, specifically, “Muslim leaders need to condemn anyone who commits these acts of violence and clearly state that these people are evil and are enemies of Islam. It’s not enough to simply condemn violence, they must stand up and loudly proclaim that these people are not martyrs who will receive a reward in the afterlife, and rather they are murderers who are going to hell. If they refuse to do that, then they’re part of the problem. There is no middle ground here.”
I want to know who in the Muslim community in the United States has said this. Which leaders? I don’t normally cover this beat, so I may well have missed it. Hence I ask readers to tell me if so-called American Muslim leaders have said what Governor Jindal is saying.
And by the way, what Bobby Jindal is saying is very similar to what Egyptian president al-Sisi said earlier in the year to a group of Muslim imams.
Said al-Sisi, “It’s inconceivable that the thinking we hold most sacred should cause the entire umma [Islamic world] to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world.”
He then asks, “How is it possible that 1.6 billion Muslims should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants — that is 7 billion — so that they themselves may live?” He concludes, if this is not changed, “it may eventually lead to the religion’s self-destruction.”
That’s President al-Sisi of Egypt, which I believe has the largest Muslim population in the world.
And what Jindal and al-Sisi are saying is not so different from the thinking of French intellectual Bernard-Henri LÈvy. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, he calls the Charlie Hebdo murders “the Churchillian moment of France’s Fifth Republic.” He essentially says France and the world must slam “the useful idiots of a radical Islam immersed in the sociology of poverty and frustration.” He adds, “Those whose faith is Islam must proclaim very loudly, very often, and in great numbers their rejection of this corrupt and abject form of theocratic passion. . . . Islam must be freed from radical Islam.”
So three very different people — a young southern governor who may run for president, the political leader of the largest Muslim population in the world, and a prominent Western European intellectual — are saying that most of the problem and most of the solution rests with the people of the Islamic religion themselves. If they fail to take action, the radicals will swallow up the whole religion and cause the destruction of the entire Middle East and possibly large swaths of the rest of the world.
LÈvy called this a Churchillian moment. And London mayor Boris Johnson argues in his book The Churchill Factor that Winston Churchill was the most important 20th century figure because his bravery in 1940 stopped the triumph of totalitarianism. So today’s battle with the Islamic radicals is akin to the Cold War battle of freedom vs. totalitarianism.
But returning to Governor Jindal, the U.S. is not helpless. Jindal argues that America must restore its proper leadership role in international affairs. (Of course, Obama has taken us in the opposite direction, and won’t even use the phrase “Islamic radicals.”) And Jindal invokes Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher by saying, “The tried and true prescription must be employed again: a strong economy, a strong military, and leaders willing and able to assert moral, economic, and military leadership in the cause of freedom.”
So three very different people — a young southern governor who may run for president, the political leader of the largest Muslim population in the world, and a prominent Western European intellectual — are saying that most of the problem and most of the solution rests with the people of the Islamic religion themselves. If they fail to take action, the radicals will swallow up the whole religion and cause the destruction of the entire Middle East and possibly large swaths of the rest of the world.
LÈvy called this a Churchillian moment. And London mayor Boris Johnson argues in his book The Churchill Factor that Winston Churchill was the most important 20th century figure because his bravery in 1940 stopped the triumph of totalitarianism. So today’s battle with the Islamic radicals is akin to the Cold War battle of freedom vs. totalitarianism.
But returning to Governor Jindal, the U.S. is not helpless. Jindal argues that America must restore its proper leadership role in international affairs. (Of course, Obama has taken us in the opposite direction, and won’t even use the phrase “Islamic radicals.”) And Jindal invokes Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher by saying, “The tried and true prescription must be employed again: a strong economy, a strong military, and leaders willing and able to assert moral, economic, and military leadership in the cause of freedom.”
Reagan always argued that weakness at home leads to weakness abroad. A strong growing economy provides the resources for military and national security. Right now we’re uncomfortably close to having neither.
This is the great challenge of our time. In the early years of the 21st century, it appears the great goal of our age is the defeat of radical Islam.
Jindal gets it.
This is the great challenge of our time. In the early years of the 21st century, it appears the great goal of our age is the defeat of radical Islam.
Jindal gets it.
1c)
From The Heart of an Honest Muslim!
By Dr. Tawfik Hamid
"I am a Muslim by faith, a Christian by spirit, a Jew by heart, and above all I am a human being."
Dr. Hamid is an Egyptian scholar and author of the following article.
The world needs more people like him - ones who have the courage to face-up to reality, and not fear those who oppose honesty.
I was born a Muslim and lived all my life as a follower of Islam.
After the barbaric terrorist attacks done by the hands of my fellow Muslims everywhere on this globe, and after the too many violent acts by Islamists in many parts of the world, I feel responsible as a Muslim and as a human being to speak out and tell the truth to protect the world and Muslims as well from a coming catastrophe and war of civilizations.
I have to admit that our current Islamic teaching creates violence and hatred toward non-Muslims.
I have to admit that our current Islamic teaching creates violence and hatred toward non-Muslims.
We Muslims are the ones who need to change.
Until now we have accepted polygamy, the beating of women by men, and killing those who convert from Islam to other religions.
We have never had a clear and strong stand against the concept of slavery or wars, to spread our religion and to subjugate others to Islam and force them to pay a humiliating tax called jizia.
We have never had a clear and strong stand against the concept of slavery or wars, to spread our religion and to subjugate others to Islam and force them to pay a humiliating tax called jizia.
We ask others to respect our religion while all the time we curse non-Muslims loudly (in Arabic) in our Friday prayers in the mosques.
What message do we convey to our children when we call the Jews "descendants of the pigs and monkeys"? [Yet, both Arabs and Jews are descendants of Ibrahim (Abraham)!]
What message do we convey to our children when we call the Jews "descendants of the pigs and monkeys"? [Yet, both Arabs and Jews are descendants of Ibrahim (Abraham)!]
Is this a message of love and peace, or a message of hate?
I have been into [Christian] churches and [Jewish] synagogues where they were praying for Muslims.
I have been into [Christian] churches and [Jewish] synagogues where they were praying for Muslims.
While all the time, we curse them, and teach our generations to call them "infidels", and to hate them.
We immediately jump in a 'knee jerk reflex' to defend Prophet Mohammad when someone accuses him of being a pedophile while, at the same time, ...we are proud with the story in our Islamic books that he married a young girl seven years old [Aisha] when he was above 50 years old.
I am sad to say that many, if not most of us, rejoiced in happiness after September 11th and after many other terror attacks.
Muslims denounce these attacks to look good in front of the media, but we condone the Islamic terrorists and sympathise with their cause.
I am sad to say that many, if not most of us, rejoiced in happiness after September 11th and after many other terror attacks.
Muslims denounce these attacks to look good in front of the media, but we condone the Islamic terrorists and sympathise with their cause.
Until now our 'reputable' top religious authorities have never issued a fatwa or religious statement to proclaim Bin Laden as an apostate, while an author, like Rushdie, was declared an apostate who should be killed according to Islamic Shari'a law just for writing a book criticizing Islam.
Muslims demonstrated to get more religious rights as we did in France to stop the ban on the hijab (head scarf), while we did not demonstrate with such passion and in such numbers against the terrorist murders. It is our absolute silence against the terrorists that gives the energy to these terrorists to continue doing their evil acts.
We Muslims need to stop blaming our problems on others or on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
Muslims demonstrated to get more religious rights as we did in France to stop the ban on the hijab (head scarf), while we did not demonstrate with such passion and in such numbers against the terrorist murders. It is our absolute silence against the terrorists that gives the energy to these terrorists to continue doing their evil acts.
We Muslims need to stop blaming our problems on others or on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
As a matter of honesty, Israel is the only light of democracy, civilization, and human rights in the whole Middle East .
We kicked out the Jews with no compensation or mercy from most of the Arab countries to make them "Jews-free countries" while Israel accepted more than a million Arabs to live there, have their own nationality, and enjoy their rights as human beings. In Israel, women cannot be beaten legally by men, and any person can change his/her belief system with no fear of being killed by the Islamic law of 'apostasy,' while in our Islamic world people do not enjoy any of these rights.
I agree that the 'Palestinians' suffer, but they suffer because of their corrupt leaders and not because of Israel .
It is not common to see Arabs who live in Israel leaving to live in the Arab world.
We kicked out the Jews with no compensation or mercy from most of the Arab countries to make them "Jews-free countries" while Israel accepted more than a million Arabs to live there, have their own nationality, and enjoy their rights as human beings. In Israel, women cannot be beaten legally by men, and any person can change his/her belief system with no fear of being killed by the Islamic law of 'apostasy,' while in our Islamic world people do not enjoy any of these rights.
I agree that the 'Palestinians' suffer, but they suffer because of their corrupt leaders and not because of Israel .
It is not common to see Arabs who live in Israel leaving to live in the Arab world.
On the other hand, we used to see thousands of Palestinians going to work with happiness in Israel , its 'enemy.' If Israel treats Arabs badly as some people claim, surely we would have seen the opposite happening.
We Muslims need to admit our problems and face them. Only then we can treat them and start a new era to live in harmony with human mankind.
We Muslims need to admit our problems and face them. Only then we can treat them and start a new era to live in harmony with human mankind.
Our religious leaders have to show a clear, and very strong stand against polygamy, paedophilia, slavery, killing those who convert from Islam to other religion, beating of women by men, and declaring wars on non-Muslims to spread Islam.
Then, and only then, do we have the right to ask others to respect our religion.
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2) Obama loves trolling the GOP, even if it hurts the Democrats
You know, you just know, that after the president goes out there and announces he wants to make community college free for all Americans — as though anything government does is “free” — or is unilaterally and unconstitutionally legalizing millions of undocumented immigrants, he comes back to the offices, pulls out the presidential BlackBerry, and gleefully follows along as the Right goes completely ape over these wild policy decisions.
Imagine his delight after it “leaked” that he will propose raising taxes on the wealthy by $320 billion over the next 10 years, including increases to the capital gains and inheritance taxes.
This, of course, has no chance of passing. But then Tuesday night’s State of the Union address could be the first one in history deliberately designed solely to generate a Pavlovian rage response in members of the opposing party.
Back in November, in this paper, Jonah Goldberg asked the question: “Maybe President Obama is just trolling?” Two months later, the question seems to have been answered in the affirmative.
Obama and his team have clearly decided that one of the metrics by which they will measure their success is by just how wild he drives his Republican opposition in Washington and conservatives across the country.
That outrage in turn generates passionate support for the troll from people who agree with him generally. They then join the battle on his side by directing even more ad hominem nastiness at the other guys. And the troll grins and giggles and collects his clicks.
The liberal writer Bill Scher thinks this is good politics. “Fortunately for Obama,” Scher wrote just after the November 2014 midterms, “bringing out the worst in Republicans serves both his political and his policy purposes.”
The problem with that theory is Obama’s own political instincts are pretty bad, except when it comes to his own immediate self-preservation.
The president could have gone one of two ways after the midterms, in which his party lost control of the Senate in a wave that really could not have gone better for Republicans.
First, he could have looked at some alarming data and noted how he is practically the only elected Democrat in the country who has benefited from his presidency. Since 2010, the Democratic Party has lost 69 seats in the House of Representatives and 14 Senate seats — and a staggering 913 seats in the state legislatures.
Among presidents, “It is Barack Obama who holds the modern record for overall losses, at least through 2014,” writes Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia.
In the House and state legislatures, “Obama has doubled (or more) the average two-term presidential loss from Truman through Bush.”
This Democratic political wipeout, says Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post, is “the most undertold story in politics.”
What that story suggests is not that the president should be trolling his opponents, but that he should be doing what he can to find common ground — if only to save his party from further destruction.
TUESDAY NIGHT’S STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS COULD BE THE FIRST ONE IN HISTORY DELIBERATELY DESIGNED SOLELY TO GENERATE A PAVLOVIAN RAGE RESPONSE IN MEMBERS OF THE OPPOSING PARTY.
But that is not where he has gone. Instead, he has doubled down on presidential unilateralism and executive authority.
He has done this because it’s what he likes and wants to do. It has long been a conscious choice of this White House to pursue what David Plouffe, a key Obama adviser, called the “stray voltage theory.”
Major Garrett, then of National Journal and now of CBS, explained it in early 2014: “The theory goes like this: Controversy sparks attention, attention provokes conversation, and conversation embeds previously unknown or marginalized ideas in the public consciousness.
This happens, Plouffe theorizes, even when — and sometimes especially when — the White House appears defensive, besieged or off-guard.”
You can see how convenient such a theory is, since it works even when the White House appears to have blown it!
But this stray voltage has done nothing for any of his allies on Capitol Hill and has hardly advanced the liberal Democratic agenda.
Ah, you might say, but Obama was re-elected and he used “stray voltage” to his advantage, so someone was helped! Not necessarily.
Most serious students of the 2012 election, including supporters and allies of the president, now believe his victory was primarily due to so-called “fundamentals” favoring him — the benefits of incumbency and the condition of the economy in the months leading up to the election.
As Joshua Tucker of New York University pointed out in November 2012, “the [economic] growth rate between January and September of 2012 averaged 1.8%,” and using a “fundamentals” formula, “this yielded a predicted share of 51.2% of the two-party vote for incumbent Obama.” Which was almost exactly what he won on Election Night.
Meanwhile, his years as president have led to Republicans controlling 30 state legislatures, the most for the GOP since 1920. That’s not only bad for the cultivation of future Democratic Party leaders. It makes the furtherance of a liberal agenda at the state level nearly impossible over the next few years.
As Cillizza writes, “Policy is made at the state legislative level. That’s policy pertaining to states and policy that gets bumped up to the federal level. With Republicans in control of so many state governments, the policy incubator for their side will be vastly superior to what Democrats can do at the state and local levels.”
The only real data point in the president’s favor — and it is a significant one — came out in polling from CBS News late last week.
Support for his immigration plan is startlingly high; 62% favor while only 34% oppose. Democrats are overwhelmingly on his side (79% to 18%), while Republicans oppose it but with less force (57% against and 37% for). Most important, independents back it, 63% to 32%.
What this means is that when it comes to immigration the president is not engaging in “stray voltage” behavior. Rather, he is closer to the center of American public opinion than Republicans are.
Might it not have been better both for the body politic and for his party’s own standing with the American people if the president had made his full-court press on immigration matters without going all stray voltage and seeking to get Republicans to blow their stack?
With numbers like these, he could have won an argument — by enlisting the American people in the effort, putting the GOP on the defensive in its opposition to his policies, and possibly splitting the rival party.
But that’s not how Barack Obama rolls — or, rather, trolls.
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