By Nile Gardiner

gnore the revisionist hype in sections of the liberal media about President Obama staging a (mythical) political comeback – this is a presidency with an approval rating of 45 percent (according to the RealClear Politics poll of polls), that presides over a nation where just 27 percent of voters think the country is moving in the right direction, and which just 29 percent of Americans think will be returned to power in 2012. The White House may be claiming a couple of political wins in the dying embers of the lame duck Congress after expending a great deal of political capital in the Senate over the reckless ratification of the Moscow-friendly START Treaty and the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, but these are issues barely on the radar screens of most American voters in the lead-up to 2012, an election which will be dominated by the economy and health care reform.

The political landscape still looks strikingly bleak for the “transformational president” as he goes into 2011. 2010 was a stunningly bad year for Barack Obama, no matter how much the likes of The New York Times or The Washington Post might try to sugar coat it. Here are four key reasons why it was a year Obama will want to forget:

1. The midterm elections were a defeat of epic proportions for the Obama Presidency

When Barack Obama spoke of a “shellacking” at the midterms, it was a huge understatement. The Republicans scored a significantly bigger win than they did in 1994, with their biggest gain in the House of Representatives in 62 years – since 1948. Fortunately for the Democrats, just 37 Senate seats were up for election, preventing what would have been an almost certain handover of power in the upper house too. Republicans also made huge gains at the gubernatorial level, with the GOP now holding 29 governorships to the Democrats’ 20. Republicans also picked up 680 seats in state legislatures, the highest figure in the modern era.

2. Conservatism grew increasingly dominant in America

The midterms were certainly no flash in the pan, but part of a broader conservative revolution that swept America in 2010. As a recent Gallup survey showed, 48 percent of Americans now describe themselves as “conservative”, compared to 32 percent who call themselves “moderate”, and just 20 percent who call themselves “liberal”. Conservatives now outnumber liberals by nearly 2.5 to 1, a ratio that is likely to increase in 2011. The percentage of Americans who are conservative has risen six points since 2006 and eight points since 1994. Barack Obama, the most liberal US president of the modern era, has a natural liberal constituency comprised of just one in five Americans, which certainly does not bode well for 2012.

Read more @……http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100070107/forget-the-liberal-hype-about-a-comeback-2010-was-a-stunningly-bad-year-for-barack-obama-and-2011-could-be-even-worse/

By MANU RAJU
POLITICO

Sen. John McCain is getting under the skin of Democrats these days — and he seems to be relishing it.

After Democrats scrapped a massive $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill Thursday, McCain gloated about its defeat — and Democrats fumed. When he took a whack at efforts to bring up a bill aimed at helping Sept. 11 first responders, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) reacted fiercely. And as he went down fighting Saturday on the repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was baffled, saying, “I don’t understand it.”

Fresh from a whopping electoral victory Nov. 2, McCain is inserting himself into the biggest issues of the day, acting as a power player in the Senate and angering Democrats. And while Mitch McConnell may be the Senate GOP leader, McCain has embraced a role as the leading Republican agitator against President Barack Obama, who defeated him in the 2008 presidential election.

“It’s kind of expected,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said of McCain’s approach. “It’s sort of the John McCain of 2010.”

At least one senator isn’t very forgiving of the straight-shooting, hot-tempered McCain. In October, McCain ripped Sen. Barbara Boxer on the campaign trail for being the most “anti-defense senator” and accused her of endangering national security — and the California Democrat is still ticked off.

“He makes things up. He loses control. That was an example,” she said in an interview.

When asked whether he still believes what he said about Boxer, McCain said, “Sure.”

“Anybody who has voted against every single one of our efforts going all the way back to Desert Storm — that’s my view,” McCain told POLITICO. “I have to stand up for what I believe is best for this country, particularly on national security issues.”

With a nuclear arms treaty with Russia hanging in the balance, McCain has significant sway over his GOP colleagues on whether the the deal will be ratified this year.

McCain took particular pleasure in battling — and helping defeat — the earmark-laden omnibus spending bill. When the bill was pulled from the floor last week, McCain gleefully hailed the outcome — and some of his colleagues were miffed at what they considered showboating by the Arizona Republican.

The 74-year-old McCain doesn’t seem too worried about that.

“I love it. I love it,” he said. “Because I’ve been fighting for years, they’ve been obviously supportive of what I believe is a corrupt practice [of earmarking]. I was very entertained by the response.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1210/46583.html#ixzz18aFGIjvm

In December, more than a dozen senators will come back to Washington and decide how much more tax money to take from Americans, without being accountable to any of them.

Some companies have a policy that once someone is fired, they aren’t allowed back on the premises out of fear they might do further damage to the company. It’s too bad Congress doesn’t have the same policy. Because before they’re replaced in January, all of the Democrats who are put out of a job in November will be able to come back and rob the nation blind.

More than a dozen senators will come back to Washington and decide how much more tax money to take from Americans, without being accountable to any of them. Higher taxes, cap-and-trade, amnesty, and card check will be top-priority items for the Fired Congress, otherwise known as the lame-duck Congress. They’re also likely to roll unfinished appropriations bills into a massive, pork-stuffed omnibus to snag every last possible earmark on their way out of Washington.

This must not happen. The only acceptable outcome of the lame-duck session is a continuing resolution to keep government operating at current levels of spending and taxation, as I pushed the Senate to do in 2006 after Republicans lost the majority to the Democrats. No last-minute earmarks, no add-ons, no tax increases, and no big deficit spending.

By simply passing a continuing resolution that kept the government funded at current levels until February 2007, Republicans stopped more than 10,000 earmarks from being enacted and prevented big spenders in Congress from wasting billions of dollars on pork-barrel projects. Then, 2007 became the year without earmarks, because when that temporary continuing resolution expired in February, Congress extended it for the rest of the year. We should adopt the same approach during the 2010 lame-duck session.

To stop a wasteful omnibus and instead secure a continuing resolution, Republicans must hold together. Fortunately, the GOP may have a few reinforcements on the way. Three new senators will take office immediately following the midterms — one each from Delaware, Illinois, and West Virginia, where special elections are being held to replace temporarily appointed senators. And the Republicans running in these races are eager to help.

Illinois Republican Senate candidate Mark Kirk has promised that if he wins, “I will become the 42nd Republican senator, with the opportunity to put the brakes on any lame-duck overreach.”

Delaware Republican candidate Christine O’Donnell has made it part of her pitch, too. “Who do you want serving in that lame-duck session?” she has said. “Someone who’s going to promote that very liberal agenda that can’t even get enough Democratic support, or someone who is going to push back against the establishment?”

West Virginia’s Republican Senate candidate, John Raese, who is up in the polls, has stated unequivocally that he would oppose the Democrats’ lame-duck agenda. He has said, “It is completely inappropriate for House and Senate Democrats, who would be in cahoots with President Obama, to take up any legislation that would significantly affect the country after an election that will considerably alter the political landscape of Congress. Any attempt to do so would be a slap in the face to all Americans who voted for a change from the liberal status quo.”

More candidates should go on the record with such statements. There’s a whole month of campaigning left before the midterms, and voters can extract promises from their elected officials not to let the Fired Congress pass major legislation. This is a reasonable request that even the Democrats should be able to support. Colorado Republican Senate candidate Ken Buck has called on Democratic senator Michael Bennet to promise to oppose any tax hikes Harry Reid may try to ram through during the lame-duck session. All Senate Democrats up for election this year should be asked to do the same.

Getting more elected officials to speak out against a spendthrift lame-duck session can help deter the Democratic leadership from cramming it with votes. It’s been reported that Democrats are considering as many as 20 pieces of legislation to bring up for a vote. After failing to get the New START Treaty (an agreement that hurts America’s missile-defense systems) ratified, to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and to pass legislation to give amnesty to illegal aliens, Democrats see opportunity after the elections, when a number of their members won’t have anything to lose.

Democrats are also hoping that the pressure of a Christmas deadline will get some Republicans to break their way. White House senior adviser David Axelrod recently said he thinks Republicans will “blink” and help Democrats raise taxes as the end-of-the year deadline approaches. Republicans must not cave.

Democrats are playing political games and Americans are going to fire them for it in November. When the Democrats come back in December to box up their personal belongings, Republicans must make sure that’s all they take with them.

— Jim DeMint is a U.S. senator from South Carolina.

THE AMERICAN THINKER

A person does not need to be a military expert or have a Ph.D. in foreign affairs in order to understand the disastrous implications of Obama’s foreign policy for America’s national security. And while it was certainly clear that Americans were not electing a neo-con as their Commander-in-Chief, I would venture a guess that those who voted for him believed that he would implement policy that would protect the country.

Or maybe not. Recall Biden’s warning while on the campaign trail:

Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy … We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America …

And he’s gonna need help … Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially … that we’re right …

So I’m asking you now … Remember the faith you had at this point. …

Despite Biden’s warning, Americans elected Obama. And while, luckily, Biden was wrong in his prediction that America would face a crisis in the first six months of the administration, he was correct that it is far from apparent that the administration’s policy is right. Because when Americans stop and think about the changes in America’s stature in the world, the growing threats to the Western world, and the dangers being ignored by this administration, they realize that simply remembering the faith they may have had in a person who has proven immensely incompetent is not going to keep them safe. Faith will not save America in the absence of reason. Or, as Thomas Sowell recently commented, “It doesn’t matter how smart you are unless you stop and think.”

Writing in the Wall Street Journal this week, Robert R. Monroe, a retired vice admiral in the U.S. Navy and former director of the Defense Nuclear Agency, stated that the Senate should block ratification of New Start, the nuclear weapons treaty that Obama signed with Russia’s Medvedev. Monroe reasoned that Obama’s vision of a world without nuclear weapons, as set forth in the administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), fails to recognize that such weapons have been “the ultimate foundation of America’s security in a dangerous world.” He stated that the signing of New Start would gravely weaken American national security. … For 65 years, the very existence of our nation has depended upon a strong nuclear deterrent. The new NPR wipes out this proven policy, substituting one of weakness in its place.

Obama’s nuclear policy flies in the face of reason. Tyrannical despots across the globe are on the march to develop nuclear capability, the administration’s policy of appeasement and diplomacy does nothing to stop the progression, and Obama inks a treaty that, according to Monroe, “amounts to a road map for achieving a position of strategic inferiority.” At a time when we should be flaunting our nuclear strength, Obama’s policy pledges not to develop new nuclear capabilities, weakens our deterrence capabilities, harms our ability to modernize our deteriorating arsenal, and impairs the reliability of existing weapons.

While the White House’s conflicting statements on whether or not a military option to prevent Iran from reaching nuclear capability is on the table, it is questionable if the administration has any plan whatsoever to deal with Iran. Earlier this year, Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned that the U.S. does not have any long-range plans for dealing with Iran’s progress toward its goal of attaining nuclear weapons. The administration denied the accuracy of this statement, however, based on Obama’s reliance on the U.N. to issue weak sanctions (that are being undercut by Russia, China, and Turkey, who continue to sell oil products to Iran), his lack of support for Iran’s Green movement last year, and his wasted efforts to impose a two-state solution on Israel and the Palestinians rather than focus on the real threat to the region, it seems clear that Obama is pursuing a policy of containment (at best) rather than deterrence with regard to a nuclear Iran.

Furthermore, as Obama fulfills his promise to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq, it is difficult not to question the wisdom of his policies in the region. Obama is pulling the troops out at a time when the Iraqis do not even have a government in place, and violent attacks are on the rise (a recent report indicated that al-Qaeda raised a flag in a town north of Baghdad). On the Afghan front, by announcing the withdrawal date at the same moment he announced the surge, Obama basically told the Taliban that if they can just hold out for a year, their victory will be forthcoming. As Gen. James T. Conway stated in a Pentagon briefing this week, “We think right now it’s probably giving our enemy sustenance. … We’ve intercepted communications that say, hey, you know, we only have to hold out for so long.”

In light of growing instability in an area so strategically important to U.S. national security interests, the government should be implementing plans to build up its military presence rather than looking forward to the date it will pull out with its tail between its legs.

Read more at theamericanthinker:http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/

obamas_foreign_policy_flies_in.html

Last time I checked that’s what we already have. Iran’s program to “generate electricity” from it’s nuclear reactors continues unabated. Their development of long range missiles continues as well. If we are naive enough to believe that they only want to “generate electricity” with their nuclear program, then I guess the missiles must be to deliver the electricity to other countries that want to purchase their excess production.

Kim Jong Il has thumed his nose at the Clinton, Bush and now the Obama administrations and continues to rattle the nuclear sword when ever his dreary little criminal organization runs low on cash and the the world beats a path to his doorstep to bail him out.

So that’s why I am puzzled at Mr. Daschle’s agitation over “nuclear anarchy” developing as a result of some alleged change wrought by Mitt Romney’s foreign policy proposals.  Mr. Romney is just advising Obama not to give the store away and then get bupkis in exchange.  You know, like he usually does.

~~John Cronin~~

USATODAY.COM

The normally mild-mannered former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle blistered Republican presidential potential Mitt Romney and some of the GOP’s favorite talk-meisters this morning, reports our Gannett News Service colleague Chuck Raasch.

 Appearing at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, Daschle targeted a Washington Post op-ed in which Romney urged the Senate to reject a proposed new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. America’s military leaders favor the update of the 19-year-old pact and with good reason, Daschle said.

Failing to renew the deal would trigger “nuclear anarchy,” Daschle argued, not only by renewing an arms race with Russia, the world’s only other nuclear superpower, but by encouraging rogue states such as North Korea, to join the fun.

Daschle was just getting started, according to Chuck’s report.

Ratification of the treaty requires 67 votes, which means President Obama will need some Republican support. Republican senators “can choose Mitt Romney or they can choose the entire U.S. military establishment,” Daschle said.

 The former senator went on to accuse some Republicans of caring more about scoring political points against the president than about the future of the country. He suggested that they are ignoring the responsibilities of their office to pander to the conservative chattering class.

“If Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin or Rush Limbaugh choose to make a living peddling partisan hate and anger and mangled conspiracy theories, there will always be people for them to sell a bill of goods,” Daschle said. “It is not healthy for our democracy.”

Daschle has been close to the White House. President Obama tapped him to be Health and Human Services secretary in his Cabinet, but Daschle withdrew his name after embarrassing disclosures about his failure to pay taxes on some of his compensation. Daschle has worked as a consultant for various corporations and causes since losing his Senate seat in 2004 to Sen. John Thune, R-S.D.