Until now, Republicans have been relatively muted in their assessments of President Obama’s arms control treaty with Russia. But former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, the once and likely future presidential candidate, came out Tuesday with a blistering assault on the treaty and called on his fellow Republicans to block its ratification.
The column is significant for two reasons. First, Mr. Romney, not known for his foreign policy prowess, is clearly trying to burnish his credentials as a plausible commander in chief should he run against Mr. Obama in 2012. And second, it could embolden conservatives who have been tentative in deciding how strongly to push against ratification of the treaty.
Mr. Romney predicated his opposition on the notion that the treaty would impede American missile defense plans. He argued that even before signing the treaty, Mr. Obama had already agreed to “the abandonment of our Europe-based missile defense program,” which is not precisely true; Mr. Obama did abandon President George W. Bush’s architecture for missile defense but substituted another version using a different set of interceptors designed to knock down short- and medium-term missiles that Iran has or is developing rather than the long-range missiles it doesn’t have.
Mr. Romney also criticized the treaty because “its preamble links strategic defense with strategic arsenal” and the text of the accord “explicitly forbids the United States from converting intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silos into missile defense sites.” He also noted that Russia “has expressly reserved the right to walk away from the treaty” if the United States expands its missile defense capacity.
He is correct that the preamble notes the relationship between offensive and defensive weapons, but it is a general, nonbinding statement and imposes no limits on either party. The treaty does ban the conversion of ICBM silos, but the Pentagon general overseeing missile defense has said he does not want to convert them, so that is not a problem. And Russia can withdraw, just as the United States can, which is normal for treaties.
The treaty requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate to go into effect, and so the White House needs at least eight Republican votes. Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, the senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, has signaled support, as have Republicans like the former Secretaries of State Henry A. Kissinger and George P. Shultz and former Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger.
Other Republicans, like Senators Jon Kyl of Arizona and Jim DeMint of South Carolina, have expressed more opposition to the treaty, arguing that it could be risky to national security. The administration had hoped the Senate would vote by the end of summer, but it may be postponed.
To become the nation’s first black president, Barack Obama not only won heavy percentages of the black and Hispanic vote but also managed to trim the Democratic Party’s traditional deficit among white voters.
Four years after Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) lost the white vote by 17 percentage points, Obama lost it by 12, according to exit polls. While the 2008 gains were generally attributed to Obama’s strength with young voters — he won by 10 points among whites 18 to 29 years old — he managed to improve on Kerry’s showing with white voters across every age demographic.
Fast-forward to today. With the November midterm elections less than four months away, Obama’s standing among white voters has sunk — leading some party strategists to fret that the president’s erosion — and the party’s — could adversely affect Democrats’ chances of holding on to their House and Senate majorities.
“Since in the past House elections white voters tended to represent the independent vote, [the midterms] will surely be devastating for Democrats running in an election that will be a referendum on the Obama agenda,” predicted one senior Democratic operative who closely tracks House races.
In Washington Post-ABC polling, Obama’s approval rating among white voters has dropped from better than 60 percent to just above 40 percent. In a June poll, 46 percent of white voters under age 40 approved of how Obama was doing, compared with just 39 percent of whites 65 and older.
The latest NBC-Wall Street Journal poll reveals that Obama’s standing among white voters is remarkably similar to that of President George W. Bush at this same time two years ago.
In the June 2008 NBC-WSJ survey, 37 percent of white men and 26 percent of white women approved of the job Bush was doing. In the June 2010 poll, an identical 37 percent of white men approved of Obama’s handling of his job, as did 35 percent of white women.
Those numbers are all the more striking when viewed against overall perceptions of the two presidents. In June 2008, just 28 percent approved of the job Bush was doing while a whopping 66 percent disapproved. Obama, by contrast, is running far stronger with the nation as a whole, with ratings of 45 percent approval and 48 percent disapproval in last month’s NBC-WSJ survey.
Context, as always in politics, matters here. First, as noted above, Republican presidents tend to far outperform Democratic ones among white voters. Second, Obama’s sweeping win — his 365 electoral votes represented victories even in Republican-friendly states such as Indiana — meant that his numbers were bound to fall among whites (and nearly everyone else) once he began the task of governing. Third, Bush’s numbers were bolstered by whites in the South (42 percent approval in the 2008 NBC-WSJ survey) while Obama’s is hurt by them (29 percent approval).
Still, Obama’s numbers among white voters have some Democratic strategists with an eye on the fall elections decidedly nervous.
SACRAMENTO, CA – U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina today joined former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez in holding a town hall with Latino leaders at Griselda’s Catering in Sacramento to discuss the important issues facing the Latino community in California.
“Carly Fiorina understands the tough environment Latino families, businesses and communities are facing right now because of the recent economic slowdown and because of misguided policies championed by our leaders in Washington,” said Gutierrez. “Carly is a practical problem-solver who will be a vocal advocate in the U.S. Senate, and I am pleased to have the opportunity to support her candidacy.”
Gutierrez began his career as a sales representative and management trainee at Kellogg Company in 1975. He rose to become the company’s president and chief executive officer in 1999 and was, at the time, the only Latino CEO of a Fortune 500 company. He was then appointed by President George W. Bush to serve as the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, a position he held from 2005 to 2009.
“California used to be the land of opportunity in the land of opportunity. But under Barbara Boxer’s leadership, taxes have gone up by more than a trillion dollars, our debt and our deficit have skyrocketed and the size and scope of government continues to grow,” said Fiorina. “If we want to get our state and our nation on the track toward job creation and economic growth, then we must support our nation’s small businesses and entrepreneurs. Barbara Boxer has thus far refused to pursue policies that encourage their growth and success, and that’s why we must replace her this November.”
Fiorina today also launched Amigos de Carly, a Web site dedicated to informing Spanish-speaking Californians about her candidacy for U.S. Senate and her views on some of the most important issues facing the state today, including job creation, economic growth and water. Amigos de Carly builds on Fiorina’s continuing efforts to reach out to members of the Spanish-speaking community, including through the Latinos for Carly coalition, which is chaired by former California State Assemblyman Bob Pacheco.
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele on Friday declared his opposition to the Afghanistan war, saying the nine-year-old conflict was of President “Obama’s choosing,” and that the mission is “probably a lost cause” – prompting at least one prominent Republican to call for his resignation.
Steele made the comments at a fundraiser in Connecticut just two days after the Senate unanimously confirmed Gen. David Petraeus as the new U.S. commander in Afghanistan. Petraeus is taking over for Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was ousted over his and his aides’ scornful remarks of Obama’s national security team to Rolling Stone magazine, at a time when America’s casualty rate in the war is at record high and the offensive is falling short of expectations.
“This was a war of Obama’s choosing,” Steele said. “This is not something United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in.”
The war in Afghanistan began shortly after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, in the first year of President George W. Bush’s first term. Obama, at the time, was a state senator in Illinois.
“It was [Obama] who was trying to be cute by half by flipping a script demonizing Iraq, while saying the battle really should be in Afghanistan,” Steele said in his delivery, which was posted on YouTube. “Well, if he’s such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that’s the one thing you don’t do, is engage in land war in Afghanistan? All right, because everyone who has tried, over a thousand years of history, has failed.”
The main ballroom at the St. Louis Ritz-Carlton was filled to capacity with Republican Party activists and St. Louis community leaders last night for the annual “Spirit of Entrepreneurship Award” that was bestowed on Emerson Electric CEO David Farr.
Mr. Farr is an accomplished public speaker and he got several very strong rounds of applause in his speech, but one statement he made provoked the proverbial “pin-drop” silence. Mr. Farr was commenting about the reasons businesses invest in national economies and what causes them to suspend their investments. He was talking about the huge increases in taxes starting in 2011 as the Bush tax cuts expire and also the onerous costs of Obamacare. Here is the statement that caused the silence.
“Right now, there is not a single incentive for a company to invest in America.”
That caused us to look around the table to gauge each other’s reaction. It was grim. Here was the CEO of a $22 billion company with 145,000 employees telling us that he didn’t have a single reason to hire new employees, invest in capital goods or expand his business in any significant way.
What an indictment of the job-killing policies of the current regime. The same dreary litany of higher and higher taxes, more and more regulation, less and less opportunity and the inevitable drift, stagnation and Jimmy Carter-style “malaise.”
Even though that phrase had a sobering effect on the crowd, I don’t want to give the impression that we were anything but fired up. We recognize the seriousness of the situation we find ourselves in, but we also recognize that there is something we can do about it come November. We can, to use an increasingly popular expression….”throw the bums out!”
So what is the matter with Obama? Conservatives have been asking this question for some time. I’ve written a number of articles trying to solve the mystery.
Even some liberals are starting to wonder. James Carville railed about Obama’s blasé attitude after the catastrophic oil spill. The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd revamped Obama’s “Yes We Can” motto into “Will We Ever?”
The liberal women of the TV show “The View” have expressed sympathy for Michelle Obama’s living with a man so out of touch. Peggy Noonan, hardly a vehement Obama foe, recently pronounced him disconnected.
Obama’s odd mannerisms intrigue a psychotherapist like me. He also presents a serious diagnostic challenge.
For one, Obama’s teleprompter and the men behind the Blackberry keep him well-scripted. We know so little about the facts of his life.
But it’s more than just a lack of information. Obama himself is a strange bird. He doesn’t fit easily into any diagnostic category.
Many people attribute Obama’s oddness to his narcissism. True, Obama has a gargantuan ego, and he is notoriously thin-skinned.
Yet a personality disorder like narcissism does not explain Obama’s strangeness: his giggling while being asked about the economy; his continuing a shout-out rather than announcing the Ft. Hood shootings; or his vacations, golfing, partying and fundraising during the calamitous oil spill.
Take also Obama’s declaring on the “Today Show” that he wants to know whose ass to kick. Consummate narcissists would never stoop to this vulgar display of adolescent machismo.
Obama is flat when passion is needed; he’s aggressive when savvy is required. What’s most worrisome is that Obama doesn’t even realize that his behavior is inappropriate.
So if it’s not just simple narcissism, what is wrong with Obama? Since I’ve never evaluated him, I can’t say for sure. But I can hazard some educated guesses.
If I saw a client as disconnected as him, the first thing I would wonder: Is something wrong with his brain? And I’d consider the following theoretical diagnostic possibilities.
–Physical problems: There are a multitude of physiological conditions that can cause people to act strangely. For instance: head injuries, endocrine disturbances, epilepsy, and toxic chemical exposure.
It makes me wonder: Did Obama ever have a head injury? His stepfather in Indonesia was purportedly an alcoholic abuser. Was Obama subject to any physical abuse?
– Drugs and alcohol: Damage to the brain from drugs and alcohol can also cause significant cognitive impairments. Obama once said that there were 57 states — and didn’t correct himself. Memory problems can be caused by both illicit and prescription drug use.
Obama admits to a history of drug use in his youth. Did his usage cause some damage? Does Obama still use?
–Asperger’s Syndrome: Also known as high-functioning autism, Asperger’s causes deficits in social skills. A person with Asperger’s can’t read social cues. Consequently, he can be insensitive and hurtful without even knowing it.
Could Obama have Asperger’s? He might have some mild traits, but certainly not the full-blown disorder. In contrast to Obama, those with Asperger’s get fixated on some behavior, like programming computers. Obama lacks this kind of passion and zeal.
–Mental Illness: Obama’s family tree is replete with the unbalanced. His maternal great-grandmother committed suicide. His grandfather, Stanley Dunham, was particularly unhinged: He was expelled from high school for punching his principal; named his daughter Stanley because he wanted a boy; and exposed young Barry to not just drunken trash talk, but unrestricted visits with alleged pedophile Frank Marshall Davis (who might or might not be Obama’s biological father). Barack Sr. was an abusive, alcoholic bigamist.
Since mental illness runs in the family, does Obama have any signs? Yes and no. No, he is not a schizophrenic babbling about Martians. But there are red flags for some other conditions.
While Obama doesn’t appear to hallucinate, he seems to have delusions. His believing he has a Messiah-like special gift smacks of grandiose delusions. His externalizing all blame to conservatives, George W. Bush, or the “racist” bogeyman hints at persecutory delusions.
I’d like to compare two press conferences which both indicated the precise moment when a Presidency was clearly over.
President Bush – October 4th, 2005: Taking questions in the Rose Garden, the press repeatedly questioned the White House response to Hurricane Katrina. President Bush replied: “You know, as I said the other day, to the extent that the federal government fell down on the job, I take responsibility”.
President Obama – May 27th, 2010: While giving a rare press conference, President Obama refused to responded to a question that suggested not everything was given a proper White House response. Obama added “We can always do better”.
PHOENIX (AP) - The Obama administration plans to announce Tuesday that it will send as many as 1,200 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to improve border security, an Arizona congresswoman said.
Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords also said in a statement released Tuesday that President Barack Obama will request $500 million in funding for border security.
Part of Giffords’ district borders Mexico.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s spokesman said the governor hadn’t been told of the move prior to her office being contacted by The Associated Press and had no immediate comment.
In 2006, President George W. Bush sent thousands of troops to the border to perform support duties that tie up immigration agents. The troops wouldn’t perform significant law enforcement duties.
That program has since ended, and politicians in border states have called for troops to be sent there to curb human and drug smuggling and prevent Mexico’s drug violence from spilling over into the United States.
Associated Press writer Paul Davenport contributed to this report.
CUPERTINO — Today, former Vice President of the United States Richard Cheney wrote an op-ed that was published in the Orange County Register discussing why he believes Meg Whitman is the right choice for California’s next governor given her “conservative values, leadership skills and vision to reform state government and usher in an era of strong economic growth and prosperity.” The former Vice President also examines why Steve Poizner is unfit to receive the Republican gubernatorial nomination. Read the op-ed below:
Orange County Register: Whitman Stronger Republican Candidate
By: Dick Cheney
I am proud to endorse Meg Whitman to be the next governor of California. Meg has the conservative values, leadership skills and vision to reform state government and usher in an era of strong economic growth and prosperity.
There is a lot at stake in this election. What happens in California has a direct bearing on the health of the U.S. economy. America cannot afford to have its largest state teetering on the edge of financial collapse. California needs a proven executive who has the mettle to stand up to the entrenched special interests in Sacramento and cut spending.
Meg is a leader who will not shy away from confronting the public employee unions. She has put pension reform at the center of her agenda. She is a firm believer in the power of tax cuts to strengthen small businesses and create jobs. She knows that welfare must be a temporary hand-up and not a way of life. She is committed to local control of education, and she has a strong and practical approach to securing the border and addressing the problems associated with illegal immigration.
Meg’s conservatism is rooted in the optimism that people can achieve great things if government doesn’t stand in their way. As I have come to know her better, I have been reminded of another great leader from California. As a young congressman from Wyoming in the 1980s, I was an unabashed foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution. I saw an inspirational leader lift the nation out of the malaise left behind by Jimmy Carter’s liberalism. I believe Meg Whitman can do for California what Ronald Reagan did for America.
While I am always mindful of President Reagan’s 11th Commandment, there are issues of judgment that voters should consider before they cast their ballots in the Republican primary. I admire the success that Steve Poizner has had in the private sector and believe his commitment to public service is sincere. But I have concerns about whether he truly adheres to the conservative principles of our party.
In 2000, when I first ran on the national ticket with President George W. Bush, Mr. Poizner endorsed Vice President Al Gore. With the election hanging in the balance, he donated $10,000 to the Gore-Lieberman Recount Committee in Florida. In 2004, during the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign, Mr. Poizner, who was then a candidate for the state Assembly, opposed the tax cuts that were the centerpiece of our economic recovery plan.
He also broke ranks with our party on national security and the “war on terror.” Mr. Poizner opposed the war in Iraq. To amplify his opposition to the national security policies of the Bush administration, he invited Richard Clarke to campaign for him in California.
At the time, Mr. Clarke, a former staff member of the National Security Council, was making the rounds on cable television to market a book that blamed the Bush administration for mismanaging the terrorist threat and enabling the Sept. 11 attacks against our nation. There was a clear purpose behind the Clarke campaign visit. Mr. Poizner was breaking from the Bush-Cheney ticket and our policy goals because he thought it helped his political ambitions.
The intervening years have proven that the resolve of the Bush administration and the courage of our soldiers on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan kept America safe at a perilous time in our nation’s history.
While I have doubts about the authenticity of the conservative voice that Mr. Poizner now speaks in, there is no disputing that Meg Whitman is the Republican the Democrats fear the most in this election. The unions and the Democratic donors invested in Attorney General Jerry Brown’s success have already started to run misleading ads attacking Meg Whitman. This is a clear admission on their part that Meg is the toughest Republican candidate for governor. The Democrats know that Meg can beat them in November, and, more importantly, they know she will put an end to the failed status quo in Sacramento as governor.
I encourage my fellow Republicans to vote for Meg Whitman. She is a woman of courage, a leader with conviction, a true fiscal conservative and champion of the values we hold dearest.
I heard one of the pundits on Fox News comment on Obama’s record vs. George Bush’s on keeping America safe from terror attacks on our home soil.
Under the feckless Obama administration, their have been 3 terror attacks in America. All of them have been bungled by this incompetent collection of community organizers, Saul Alinsky wanna-be’s and former ’70′s radical street thugs.
On George Bush’s watch, the number is….ZERO!
It doesn’t take much thought to imagine what would have happened if that bomb had gone off in New York in the theatre district. In a free society, not every attack can be prevented, but when a foreign national attempts to murder innocent Americans, as was the case with the attack on Christmas day over Detroit, at least don’t Mirandize the attacker, clap him in leg irons and fly his scurvy butt to Gitmo, where the military interogators cans work their magic.
I can only hope we can arrange for some adult supervision of this crowd in Washington before more people have to die.
by STEPHEN YATES AND CHRISTIAN WHITON
Observing anti-Americanism around the globe in 1967, Ronald Reagan lamented in a speech: “We tried to buy love in the world when we should have been earning respect.” It is an admonition President Obama is predisposed not to heed — and the American people have noticed. As a result of his weak and distracted foreign policy, 51 percent of Americans think the standing of the United States has dropped during Mr. Obama’s tenure. Only 41 percent think otherwise. That was reported this week by the liberal group Democracy Corps-Third Way, which also found that only 33 percent of Americans believe the Democrats are better on national security.
How could Obama — touted as best able to “restore America’s standing in the world” after eight years of the uncouth George W. Bush – bring us to such a pass? Was this not the same man who declared upon his nomination that “generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment……when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth”?
Unfortunately for Mr. Obama, the American people ultimately judge presidents on actions, not words. Unfortunately for America, the same is true of our adversaries.
Almost from the beginning, the White House denied what most Americans clearly perceive: that the U.S. is engaged in a global war. In March 2009, the Pentagon’s Office of Security Review advised staff that “this administration prefers to avoid using the term ‘Long War’ or ‘Global War on Terror.’……Please use ‘Overseas Contingency Operation.’” Also that month, Mr. Obama’s homeland-security secretary told the left-wing German publication Spiegel that she preferred the term “man-caused disasters” to “terrorism,” because “it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear.”
Last April, the president embarked on what would become known as the “Apology Tour.” In Strasbourg, France, Mr. Obama said the country he represents “failed to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world” and has “shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive” towards its allies. Two days later in Prague, advocating “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” he came close to apologizing for our use of such weapons to expedite the end of World War II: “As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act.”
A month later, North Korea tested its second nuclear device, showing that adversaries such as Kim Jong Il are not particularly moved by such language. The American people apparently are not impressed, either. When asked which party is better for making America safer from nuclear threats, Republicans now lead Democrats by 11 points.
Biden: “I pray God when the Democrats take back control we don’t make the kind of naked power grab you are doing.” OBAMA & DEMS IN 2005: 51 VOTE ‘NUCLEAR OPTION’ IS ‘ARROGANT’ POWER GRAB AGAINST THE FOUNDER’S INTENT
So what went wrong? According to Barack Obama, the problem is he overestimated you dumb rubes’ ability to appreciate what he’s been doing for you. “That I do think is a mistake of mine,” the president told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “I think the assumption was if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on this provision or that law or if we’re making a good rational decision here, then people will get it.”
But you schlubs aren’t that smart. You didn’t get it. And Barack Obama is determined to see that you do. So the president has decided that he needs to start “speaking directly to the American people.”
Wait, wait! Come back! Don’t all stampede for the hills! He only gave (according to CBS News’s Mark Knoller) 158 interviews and 411 speeches in his first year. That’s more than any previous president — and maybe more than all of them put together. But there may still be some show out there that didn’t get its exclusive Obama interview — I believe the top-rated Grain & Livestock Prices Report — 4 a.m. Update with Herb Torpormeister on WZZZ-AM Dead Buzzard Gulch Junction’s Newstalk Leader is still waiting to hear back from the White House.
But what will the president be saying in all these extra interviews? In that interview about how he hadn’t given enough interviews, he also explained to George Stephanopoulos what that wacky Massachusetts election was all about:
“The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office,” said Obama. “People are angry and they’re frustrated, not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years but what’s happened over the last eight years.”
Got it. People are so angry and frustrated at George W. Bush that they’re voting for Republicans. In Massachusetts. Boy, I can’t wait for that 159th interview.
Presumably, the president isn’t stupid enough actually to believe what he said. But it’s dispiriting to discover he’s stupid enough to think we’re stupid enough to believe it.
WASHINGTON – On Jan. 14, five days before the Massachusetts special election, President Obama was in full bring-it-on mode as he rallied House Democrats behind his health care reform. “If Republicans want to campaign against what we’ve done by standing up for the status quo and for insurance companies over American families and businesses, that is a fight I want to have.”
The bravado lasted three days. When Obama campaigned in Boston on Jan. 17 for Obamacare supporter Martha Coakley, not once did he mention the health care bill. When your candidate is sinking, you don’t throw her a millstone.
After Coakley’s defeat, Obama pretended that the real cause was a generalized anger and frustration “not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.”
Let’s get this straight: The antipathy to George W. Bush is so enduring and powerful that … it just elected a Republican senator in Massachusetts? Why, the man is omnipotent.
And the Democrats are delusional: Scott Brown won by running against Obama not Bush. He won by brilliantly nationalizing the race, running hard against the Obama agenda, most notably Obamacare. Killing it was his No. 1 campaign promise.
Bull’s-eye. An astonishing 56 percent of Massachusetts voters, according to Rasmussen, called health care their top issue. In a Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates poll, 78 percent of Brown voters said their vote was intended to stop Obamacare. Only a quarter of all voters in the Rasmussen poll cited the economy as their top issue, nicely refuting the Democratic view that Massachusetts was just the usual anti-incumbent resentment you expect in bad economic times.
Brown ran on a very specific, very clear agenda. Stop health care. Don’t Mirandize terrorists. Don’t raise taxes; cut them. And no more secret backroom deals with special interests.
These deals — the Louisiana purchase, the Cornhusker kickback — had engendered a national disgust with the corruption and arrogance of one-party rule. The final straw was the union payoff — in which labor bosses smugly walked out of the White House with a five-year exemption from a (“Cadillac”) health insurance tax Democrats were imposing on the 92 percent of private-sector workers who are not unionized.
The reason both wings of American liberalism — congressional and mainstream media — were so surprised at the force of anti-Democratic sentiment is that they’d spent Obama’s first year either ignoring or disdaining the clear early signs of resistance: the tea-party movement of the spring and the town-hall meetings of the summer. With characteristic condescension, they contemptuously dismissed the protests as the mere excrescences of a redneck, retrograde, probably racist rabble.
You would think lefties could discern a proletarian vanguard when they see one. Yet they kept denying the reality of the rising opposition to Obama’s social democratic agenda when summer turned to fall and Virginia and New Jersey turned Republican in the year’s two gubernatorial elections.
The evidence was unmistakable: Independents, who in 2008 had elected Obama, swung massively against the Democrats: dropping 16 points in Virginia, 21 in New Jersey. On Tuesday, it was even worse: Independents, who had gone 2-to-1 Republican in Virginia and New Jersey, now went 3-to-1 Republican in hyper-blue Massachusetts. Nor was this an expression of the more agitated elements who vote in obscure low-turnout elections. The turnout on Tuesday was the highest for any nonpresidential Massachusetts election in 20 years.
Democratic cocooners will tell themselves that Coakley was a terrible candidate who even managed to diss Curt Schilling. True, Brown had Schilling. But Coakley had Obama. When the bloody sock beats the presidential seal — of a man who had them swooning only a year ago — something is going on beyond personality.
That something is substance — political ideas and legislative agendas. Democrats, if they wish, can write off their Massachusetts humiliation to high unemployment, to Coakley or, the current favorite among sophisticates, to generalized anger. That implies an inchoate, unthinking lashing-out at whoever happens to be in power — even at your liberal betters who are forcing on you an agenda that you can’t even see is in your own interest.
Democrats must so rationalize, otherwise they must take democracy seriously, and ask themselves: If the people really don’t want it, could they possibly have a point?
“If you lose Massachusetts and that’s not a wake-up call,” said moderate — and sentient — Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, “there’s no hope of waking up.”
WASHINGTON - Later this winter, Mitt Romney will strike out on a national book tour, but unlike his party’s most successful recent author he does not expect to make headlines with bits of fresh gossip from the 2008 campaign, see his fans camp overnight outside bookstores, or chat with Oprah Winfrey about his family.
“Inevitably there are going to be comparisons with the Sarah Palin book,’’ said Eric Fehrnstrom, a Romney spokesman. “We’re not going to match her crowd size or sales. These are two different people with different ways of expressing themselves.’’
The March 2 release of “No Apology: The Case for American Greatness,’’ will kick off a monthlong tour taking the former Massachusetts governor to at least 18 states, including Iowa, where Romney’s presidential campaign collapsed nearly two years ago after a second-place caucus finish.
But Romney, considered by many in the party to be the default Republican front-runner for the 2012 nomination, is approaching the book tour with the patient, workmanlike mien that has distinguished him from other probable contenders who seem far more eager for attention.
“Romney is playing things very methodically and deliberatively,’’ said Mark McKinnon, a former media adviser to President George W. Bush and 2008 Republican nominee John McCain. “I think he understands the physics of this game very well now and is carefully calibrating his approach to 2012.’’
“No Apology’’ will be Romney’s second book. The first, “Turnaround: Crisis, Leadership, and the Olympic Games,’’ a narrative account of Romney’s stewardship of the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, was published in 2004, while he was governor. At the time, Romney held a book party at the Boston Public Library, signings in Massachusetts and Utah, and conducted a series of radio interviews.
This time Romney has assembled a far more ambitious itinerary, organized by his publisher, St. Martin’s Press, and the Macmillan Speakers Bureau, which represents Romney in speeches before nonpolitical groups.
In Iowa, Romney will visit Des Moines and Ames, where he will speak at Iowa State University. (Romney has yet to confirm appearances in New Hampshire and South Carolina, two other early primary states.)
St. Martin’s will print 200,000 copies of Romney’s book, far less than HarperCollins’s 1.5 million-copy first printing of Palin’s “Going Rogue,’’ which reportedly sold 1 million copies within its first two weeks. Romney has not disclosed the amount of his advance, but a spokesman says he will contribute his earnings to a charity he has yet to name.
St. Martin’s has no plans to purchase print ads promoting Romney’s book, but will rely on promotional e-mail messages to a supporter list maintained by Romney’s political action committee and online advertising targeted at his backers, including more than 118,000 registered fans on Facebook.
It was a year of Hope — at first in the sense of “I feel hopeful!” and later in the sense of “I hope this year ends soon!”
It was also a year of Change, especially in Washington, where the tired old hacks of yesteryear finally yielded the reins of power to a group of fresh, young, idealistic, new-idea outsiders such as Nancy Pelosi. As a result Washington, rejecting “business as usual,” finally stopped trying to solve every problem by throwing billions of taxpayer dollars at it and instead started trying to solve every problem by throwing trillions of taxpayer dollars at it.
To be sure, it was a year that saw plenty of bad news. But in almost every instance, there was offsetting good news:
BAD NEWS: The economy remained critically weak, with rising unemployment, a severely depressed real-estate market, the near-collapse of the domestic automobile industry and the steep decline of the dollar.
GOOD NEWS: Windows 7 sucked less than Vista.
BAD NEWS: The downward spiral of the newspaper industry continued, resulting in the firings of thousands of experienced reporters and an apparently permanent deterioration in the quality of American journalism.
GOOD NEWS: A lot more people were tweeting.
BAD NEWS: Ominous problems loomed abroad as — among other difficulties — the Afghanistan war went sour, and Iran threatened to plunge the Middle East and beyond into nuclear war.
GOOD NEWS: They finally got Roman Polanski.
In short, it was a year that we will be happy to put behind us. But before we do, let’s swallow our anti-nausea medication and take one last look back, starting with. . . .
JANUARY
. . . during which history is made in Washington, D.C., where a crowd estimated by the Congressional Estimating Office at 217 billion people gathers to watch Barack Obama be inaugurated as the first American president ever to come after George W. Bush. There is a minor glitch in the ceremony when Chief Justice John Roberts, attempting to administer the oath of office, becomes confused and instead reads the side-effect warnings for his decongestant pills, causing the new president to swear that he will consult his physician if he experiences a sudden loss of sensation in his feet. President Obama then delivers an upbeat inaugural address, ushering in a new era of cooperation, civility and bipartisanship in a galaxy far, far away. Here on Earth everything stays much the same.
The No. 1 item on the agenda is fixing the economy, so the new administration immediately sets about the daunting task of trying to nominate somebody — anybody — to a high-level government post who actually remembered to pay his or her taxes. Among those who forgot this pesky chore is Obama’s nominee for Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, who sheepishly admits that he failed to pay $35,000 in federal self-employment taxes. He says that the error was a result of his using TurboTax, which he also blames for his involvement in an eight-state spree of bank robberies. He is confirmed after the Obama administration explains that it inherited the U.S. Tax Code from the Bush administration.
Elsewhere in politics, a team of specially trained wildlife agents equipped with nets and tranquilizer darts manages, after a six-hour struggle, to remove Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich from office. He is transported to an undisclosed swamp, where he is released into the wild and quickly bonds with the native ferret population.
Until now, Republicans have been relatively muted in their assessments of President Obama’s arms control treaty with Russia. But former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, the once and likely future presidential candidate, came out Tuesday with a blistering assault on the treaty and called on his fellow Republicans to block its ratification.
