North Coast Online

Rudy Gears Up

Early on I was a Giuliani supporter but have recently been pining for Fred Thompson to enter the race.  Rudy's responding, though, and his Twelve Commitments To The American People are worth considering.  Competition is good.

Time To, Um, Move On (but not dot org)

I usually bristle when the Buffalo News editorial board goes on a rant about the Bush administration -- usually, but not today.

Memo to the next president: Laws don’t enforce themselves. Passports don’t fall from the sky. Requirements that many more people need any kind of government document to do something should also mean that the bureaucracy that provides those documents has to be ramped up to provide them. The Bush administration failed to do that. The next administration will have to clean up the mess.

After this immigration debacle, I'm down to my last nerve with George Bush.  I still support him on the Iraq War and I'll always praise him for the tax cuts which have helped the economy to boom.  But with the exception of those tax cuts, his domestic policies have been horrible and this passport fiasco is a good example.

Wistful For Nixon?

Even the Washington press is beginning to realize how liberal, um, progressive Richard Nixon's domestic policies were.  I wonder if it will take them 30 years to admit that George Bush is cut from much the same cloth coat.

Freducation

Another reason to skip the GOP debate on CNN and turn to Fox.

Former Senator Fred Thompson, who has all but declared his candidacy for president, may not be on the stage at Tuesday night’s Republican debate in New Hampshire, but he will have another platform all to himself – on the Fox News Channel.

Mr. Thompson is to appear live on “Hannity & Colmes” after the debate, which ends at 9 p.m.

This show may be an even better venue for Mr. Thompson, and indeed a friendly one for him, even though he’s already an accomplished television performer. He will have the set to himself and will not have to compete with his 10 soon-to-be rivals for precious air time during the two-hour talk-fest.

Oh, will the debaters be pissed off (and rightfully so) and may CNN's ratings tank to Fox's (and Thompson's) benefit.  This will be fun and unprecedented stuff.

On That Amnesty Bill

Murray Light does a good job of spelling out the Democrats' objections to the proposed immigration bill today.

The controversial guest worker program would be capped at 200,000 a year under the Democratic proposal.

The Bush administration opposed that cutback from the original plan that would have provided for 400,000 visas annually, with an option to increase that number to 600,000 if warranted by market conditions. The Democrats said the temporary work program would create too large a group of second-class citizens and negatively impact the wages of Americans in some industries.

[excerpted]

Another ludicrous restriction that makes no good sense at all would require applicants for permanent residence to return to their home countries. What purpose that would serve has not been adequately explained by the framers of the bill. What would this do to those from distant lands such as China?

Another aspect of the Senate compromise would set up a point system for future immigration that places less emphasis on family ties than has existed in the past. This, too, makes little good sense and is not consistent with American values. The point system would favor high-skill immigrants, but at the same time undermines the traditional family basis of our immigration system.

He ignores Republicans' problems with it, though, and it's those that will kill it.  Under the bill, 12 million illegal aliens will be able to apply for legal status and get it within 24 hours.  If they don't have a criminal record, they're in -- no fines, no fees and very little hassle. They only pay a fine to apply for citizenship.

If making money, however, is more important than becoming Americans, they simply don't need to bother. This ease of winning legal status would only embolden even more to come here illegally.  After giving amnesty to some 3 million illegals in 1986 and doing little since then to stem the entry of even more, this bill only reinforces a precedent -- get into the U.S. -- any way you can.  The odds are pretty good we'll let you stay.

While the bill does provide some vague benchmarks to increase border security, many, if not most Republicans simply don't believe they'll be enforced.  They're too far in the future and given Congress's seeming willingness to avoid this problem, stand too much chance of being changed before they're even implemented.

The problem of the illegals already here can wait until Washington has shown that the southern border has been shut down to illegal crossings. Then, and only then, we can discuss the niceties of how to go about digesting the 12 million already amongst us without worrying that another wave isn't already rolling in.

Under Siege

Fred Thompson mentions Buffalo.

Let me ask you a hypothetical question. What do you think America would do if Canadian soldiers were firing dozens of missiles every day into Buffalo, N.Y.?

Leaving aside for the moment the worrisome possible answers, read the rest here.

[UPDATE:] USAToday insists that he told them he's running.

The Immigration Bill

The Senate voted in favor of cloture on the immigration bill this afternoon.  That doesn't mean the bill has passed, but it is an attempt to keep the momentum for its passage going.  A whole passel of Republicans are in for a rude awakening if it passes.  It could mean the cementing of the Democrats' future majority and possibly the presidency just because Republican voters will stay home out of frustration.

Or, it leaves the way open for a Republican presidential candidate who will vow to fight it.  So far, that looks to be Romney or Thompson.  Giuliani and McCain are close to official toast status on this very important issue for primary voters. The RNC doesn't admit it,  Bush won't admit it and neither does the Wall Street Journal editorial page -- but they're out of touch on this one.

At one point, I'd been of the "well, we can't deport 12 million illegals so we have to give them amnesty" frame of mind.  But over the last couple months, we've seen how some well-targeted raids on businesses known to hire illegals have worked out.  Many are heading home and many others aren't attempting to come in because the atmosphere's suddenly perceived as less friendly.

A strong policy of discouraging illegal immigrants might take care of the problem without the need to deport them.  They'll go home on their own and apply to come back here legally.  No need to "encourage" them to do so.  The current bill sounds just like an encouragement to break the law.

This immigration bill looks to have a life of its own now, but if it isn't squelched, the presidential race just took on a whole new life. 

MSM Decides To Start Covering Fred

Pretty nice write-up on Fred Thompson in the Washington Post.

Should Thompson announce, his general-election advantage is that he's not divisive. He doesn't evoke the kind of vitriolic hate that many other conservatives inspire. He's the kind of guy who could broker peace between Donald Trump and Rosie O'Donnell, someone who would bring red-state and blue-state America together.

OK, very nice -- of course that will end once he declares.

Shortly after I wrote in 2000 that Thompson bears a striking resemblance to the Klingon "Star Trek" character Worf -- high forehead, wide nose and a hairline that exposes a bald top (Google it) -- a package from the then-unmarried senator arrived in the mail. It was a picture of Worf that Thompson had signed with this message: "In the immortal words of Sawyer Brown, some girls don't like boys like me. Ah, but some girls do."

You'd never catch Al Gore or Bill Frist quoting Sawyer Brown.

His folksiness and wit combined with his obvious education and political background will drive the Democrats to distraction.  Their recently found love for Ronald Reagan will likely disappear for a spell.  They'll drag out all their old insults (detached, uninvolved, uninformed and scripted) and try to attach them to Thompson.  They won't stick.

Thompson's no shoo-in, for the nomination or the presidency.  But he's the best I've seen in a long, long time.

The First Internet President?

Wouldn't it be ironic (and sort of hilarious) if the first presidential candidate to really take advantage of the Internet turned out to be a Republican?

When Thompson and his advisers talk about running a "different kind of campaign," this is what they mean. They believe he can use the Internet--in videos, audio files, and written commentary--to communicate directly with voters. His message will be unfiltered and therefore somewhat protected from mischaracterization by a left-leaning press corps in Washington. Campaign events will be filmed and posted so that interested parties--in this case, very interested parties--can see for themselves whether a Thompson performance was actually "lackluster" or lackluster only in the eyes of reporters. It is all part of Thompson's plan.

I'd say it's working out splendidly so far. The left was all aflutter in 2004 with Howard Dean's "Internet campaign", but that was largely limited to raising funds and publicizing campaign events.  Thompson is using it to communicate with primary voters largely bypassing the traditional media. Oh, and Thompson has a response to Michael Moore's criticism of his cigars.

"As to the cigars, they are the result of the generosity of a friend of mine who gives me a few from time to time. We intend to see to it that they are destroyed over the next few months."

Biding His Time

Fred Thompson is winning -- at least on Youtube.

If you’re Fred Thompson, you’ve got to be encouraged about jumping into the race. In the wake of Tuesday’s debate among Republican presidential candidates, it was the former Tennessee senator who topped the field in YouTube views — and he wasn’t even participating.

Online intelligence firm New Media Strategies measured which candidate got the biggest YouTube bump from the May 15 debate in South Carolina. It also counted the number of viewers of Thompson’s video responding to Michael Moore, which was viewed online concurrently with the GOP debate.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Thompson’s video, in which he suggests that Moore might look into a mental institution, drew 598,600 viewers on Vimeo, YouTube and Google Video.

That dwarfs the most views from any moment during the debate. Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani’s exchange over Sept. 11 was tops from the actual event, with 16,904 views from online postings.

Mitt Romney drew 4,394 views from online postings; Paul alone got 3,273 views; John McCain, Giuliani and Romney on terrorism and torture drew 2,621 viewers. Even Mike Huckabee’s well-received joke about John Edwards’ hair only drew 365 viewers.

Michael Moore's challenge was superbly-timed for Thompson's purposes in that it gave him a huge audience on the day of the Republican debates.

[UPDATE:] I expect that one of the first criticisms of Senator Thompson will be that he smokes cigars.   If he's the man I think he is, he'll respond by lighting another one -- winning 10,000 more votes in the process.

Republican Debate

The prize for best line from last night's Republican presidential debate goes to Mike Huckabee, "We've had a Congress that's spent money like John Edwards at a beauty shop."  I'm still waiting for Thompson, though.

Thompson Bites Back

A while back, potential Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson criticized Michael Moore for a junket he'd made to Cuba.  Accompanied by Iraqi war vets, he presumably wanted to make a point about the wonders of socialist life while coincidentally filming his next documentary film.  This morning Moore challenged Thompson to a debate over health care and criticized him for his "hypocrisy"over Cuba because he reportedly smokes Cuban cigars.

I wasn't too sure how Thompson should respond, if at all.  But this afternoon he did and beautifully well, I think. Here he is on Bretibart.tv. 

I fully expect the left to howl in outrage that he's threatening Moore with imprisonment should he be elected; has Media Matters grabbed its smelling salts yet?  This Thompson dude's not only a solid conservative with a solid voting record, excellent speaking skills and pretty good name recognition -- he's got a hell of a sense of humor, too.

I think he'll be tough to beat especially given the stiffness of the Democrats' front-runners.

The Next President Of The United States?

Breitbart.TV gets the first interview with Fred Thompson since the GOP debates.

[UPDATE:] CBS News notices.

Rudy Misfires

Though I'm generally supportive of Rudy Giuliani's run for the Republican nomination, he's showing himself to be particularly tone deaf on a few issues.  Gun control is one.

Rudy Giuliani addressed a potentially troublesome issue with conservative voters, saying his policies as mayor to get handguns off the street helped reduce crime in New York.

"I used gun control as mayor," he said at a news conference Saturday during a swing through California. But "I understand the Second Amendment. I understand the right to bear arms."

He said what he did as mayor would have no effect on hunting.

Both Giuliani and Mitt Romney come across as nothing but big-time city slickers when they address the 2nd Amendment as a hunting protection statute.  Most of us are not at all concerned with hunting.  We just want to be able to defend ourselves and our families.  If an intruder breaks into our homes, we won't settle for cowering in a closet like the Brits and Canadians -- defenseless -- until the police show up.  Until they get that through their pointy, little, urban heads, they're not going to make much headway with conservatives.

Doesn't Even Have A Facebook Account

The rise of Fred Thompson is an unusual phenomenon for the Republican party which usually accepts the candidates presented to it.  But with three nationally-prominent front-runners and a dozen or so back-benchers, we're still not pleased with the menu this year and we're showing it by the low campaign contribution numbers.  The media has spun those as an indication that conservatism is dying and that the money flowing to Obama and Hillary indicates a Democratic resurgence.

But, that's not the case.  Conservatives are simply holding on to their checkbooks until a candidate they like comes along.  And it looks as if he's almost here.  Grassroots politics in the Republican party, who'd have thought?  And without any Internet presence either -- though that part was easier to predict.

When Success Is A Burden To Be Denied

Add former Wisconsin Governor "Tommy" Thompson to the list of Republicans consigning themselves to the apology-trail for saying something that some member of some group, somewhere found insulting.   Having entered the now Boston Marathon-sized field of Republican contenders for the presidential nomination, he spoke to a  group of reform Jews and paid his audience what he thought was a compliment.

Speaking to an audience at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington D.C., Thompson said that, "I'm in the private sector and for the first time in my life I'm earning money. You know that's sort of part of the Jewish tradition and I do not find anything wrong with that."
Thompson later apologized for the comments that had caused a stir in the audience, saying that he had meant it as a compliment, and had only wanted to highlight the "accomplishments" of the Jewish religion. 

I wish I knew Yiddish.  I'm sure there's an appropriate Yiddish epithet for my reaction.  I mean, c'mon people, if there were ever a more business-savvy group than the Jews, I can't think of one.  And trust me, that's said with great admiration.

My personal theory is that anti-Semitism in the West is not so much related to the death of Jesus but to the Jews' legendary financial success.  For centuries, while Christian theology taught that making a profit was sinful, ambitious Christians chafed under its teachings.  Of course, Judaism recognized no such sin and quite rightfully believed that keeping that which one had earned and, in turn, reinvesting it in the community was proper and expected human behavior.

Envy among Christians led, not to the overthrow of their own teachings, however, but to the call to reign in the success of the "non-believing" Jews.  It's why, I think, that in the last half century anti-Semitism had dropped out of sight in America.  The Christian church here relaxed its insistence on sacrifice and non-profitability, and its members were finally free to compete.  There was no more cause for jealousy and animosity.

Recently we're seeing an increase in anti-semitism on the far left, though, which fits my theory quite well.   They claim it's all over Israel's occupation of Palestine but I can't help but think that their hatred of capitalism and profit don't figure in.  The Jews, while in their own minds still the victims of hatred, are still viewed by many as successful and therefore powerful. The same old reason to beat them down held by a new and, this time, irreligious bunch.

Now, Tommy Thompson is a marginal figure at best in the race for the Republican nomination and I doubt this kerfuffle will do much one way or the other to affect his campaign (reform Jews are not famous, after all, for voting Republican.) But if the Jewish community in America has really become so sensitive to their reputation for business acumen and so politically correct that they must feign outrage at someone's recognition of it, then they're relegating themselves to the status of just another victim group. 

It won't help them and it won't help us.  We've got plenty of those already, thank you very much.

 

Just Damn

So, we may have to settle for Rudy after all.

[UPDATE:] Then again, maybe not. 

Fred Thompson, Where Are You?

Rudy Giuliani, who had been proving all the pundits wrong by his popularity in the polls despite his liberal social views, may have made a huge mistake with this statement on abortion.

"Ultimately, it's a constitutional right, and therefore if it's a constitutional right, ultimately, even if you do it on a state by state basis, you have to make sure people are protected," Giuliani said in an interview with CNN's Dana Bash in Florida's capital city.

A video clip of the then-mayoral candidate issuing a similar declaration in 1989 in a speech to the "Women's Coalition" appeared recently on the Internet.

"There must be public funding for abortions for poor women," Giuliani says in the speech that is posted on the video sharing site YouTube. "We cannot deny any woman the right to make her own decisions about abortion."

When asked directly Wednesday if he still supported the use of public funding for abortions, Giuliani said "Yes."

"If it would deprive someone of a constitutional right," he explained, "If that's the status of the law, yes."

Now, a lot of pro-life Republicans (your humble correspondent included) would be quite content to vote for Mr. Giuliani if he were nominated despite his pro-choice beliefs.  The president can't, after all, overturn Roe v. Wade and Rudy has vowed to nominate strict-constructionist judges which is all any of us could hope for.  His leadership qualities are almost legendary and his economic bona fides are strong.

But coming out in favor of taxpayer-funded abortions is another matter.  And while much of the Republican party  can live with legal abortions, we're not prepared to pay for them.  What can he possibly be thinking?

He paints subsidized abortion as the logical result of a constitutional right, but if that's so, then if the Supreme Court asserts that the Second Amendment applies to individuals then, by Rudy's reasoning, the government would be obligated to help people buy guns.  Free speech is a right, too.  Will he advocate government grants to those of us who would like to get our opinions on TV but can't afford it and have to make do with blogs?   

Rudy started out strong but seems to be going off the rails.  Last week he stuck his foot in his mouth with the silly promise on Larry King Live that he'd invite his wife to attend Cabinet meetings as if that mattered.   Most of us excused that as politically-correct but necessary posturing, but though I can admire the guy for sticking to his beliefs, I think he completely blew it with this.  Expect a big down-tick in his polling numbers.

In the same week, McCain's worn-out legend is tanking and Mitt Romney also made an admission that, while probably not fatal, will only contribute to his reputation on the Right for prevaricating.  I really don't know Fred Thompson well enough to go to the proverbial wall for him just yet, but right now -- he's looking damned good. 

Given the above, the timing's just about right.  I think the whole race is about to change.

In His Own Voice

Is Fred Thompson really another Reagan?  Probably not, but there are some obvious parallels: the strongly-expressed conservative viewpoint, the ability to communicate complex policies in understandable terms and, well, the successful acting careers.  But there's another similarity that I haven't seen mentioned.

Though Reagan had always been criticized by his detractors as a shallow thinker who relied on speech-writers to put pretty words in his mouth, George P. Schultz reminded us by his book, In His Own Hand, that Ronald Reagan was not only a superb thinker but a damned good writer himself.

From 1975 to 1979 he made over 1,000 radio broadcasts in which he covered topics from the Soviet Union to the future of the United States.  He punched holes in the conventional economic thinking of the time and speculated on the future of Africa and Asia.  And, as the book illustrated, he wrote and edited the spots on his own -- often in the five or six minutes before he got in front of the microphone.

Little by little, during those five years, Ronald Reagan became a familiar and trusted voice in America.  While he never gained any particular notoriety from the shows (he was already famous,) by the time he ran for President, he was even better-known for his political opinions than for his early-50's acting fame.

Well, for the last few weeks, Fred Thompson has been filling in for radio-icon, Paul Harvey and judging by this, the resemblance is striking.

Tony Blair’s getting angrier every day. But if past Iranian hostage takings are an indication, he may be upset for a while. The American-embassy hostages were held for 444 days, and the Israeli soldiers kidnapped last year by Iran’s Hezbollah puppets still aren’t free.

[At this point Reagan would have added, "I'll be right back."]

Blair is threatening to escalate to a “different phase,” but Iran’s leadership knows something that most Americans don’t. Two months ago, Britain’s government announced plans to mothball almost half its naval fleet due to defense-budget cuts. Much of its existing navy is already so degraded; it would take over a year to get into action. According to the British newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, senior naval officers say that the cuts “will turn Britain’s once-proud Navy into nothing more than a coastal defense force.”

In fact, the British naval forces have been so neglected; the U.K. probably couldn’t pull off the Falkland Islands mission today. The world’s fifth-largest economy now supports an army that ranks 28th in size.

What are they thinking?

The 9/11 attacks should have been a wake-up call to our allies — but they seem to have had a tranquilizing effect instead. Despite a series of both successful and thwarted attacks since then, Britain, France, Italy, Poland, Spain, Germany, and Canada have actually cut their active-duty forces. And the percentage of those countries’ economies spent on defense was reduced over ten percent by 2005. Many are still falling.

Unlike much of Europe, which seems to have lost the will to protect itself and its democratic traditions, many of the new aggressors are increasing military spending dramatically. And many seem willing to sacrifice masses of their own populations if that’s what it takes to force the West into submission.

Let’s be clear. Iran’s kidnappings are part of a plan to see that nothing interferes with its quest for nuclear weapons. If successful, other dictatorships will follow suit. This is not the time for the free world to neglect its own defense.

Were he still alive, Ronaldus Magnus couldnt have said it better himself -- and probably wouldn't have changed a word.

In my opinion, Mr. Thompson is already running for President.   And if he wishes to channel Ronald Reagan, how better to do it than through daily radio essays that summarize so concisely his positions to hundreds of thousands of listeners.  By the time he announces, he'll have become a very familiar voice to Paul Harvey's audience (not a voting bloc to dismiss lightly) and with his Law and Order character in constant re-runs, his lack of presence on MySpace will have been compensated for.

Not only do I agree with Mr. Thompson on the issues, I'm beginning to have a new respect for his media-savvy.  Yes, in at least a couple ways he may be the new embodiment of Ronald Reagan.

Stealth Candidate

The mainstream press doesn't seem to be aware at all that the Republican field for president may be on the verge of being turned upside down.  Former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson, who hasn't even announced yet, is all the talk on conservative websites and is even starting to show up in polling data as these articles today demonstrate.

Thompson Tied with Clinton, Trails Obama
Thompson Overtakes Romney in Iowa
Thompson debuts at 10% in new NH poll

Early polls (which admittedly don't mean a lot) indicate that he's draining support away from Gingrich and Brownback which is probably a result of conservatives believing they've found someone they can support who could win.  If he does get in the race, this conservative who's been favoring Giuliani, will probably move into the Thompson camp, too.  So, I may be overstating the case when I say that I think Thompson can win the nomination -- and I believe he'd be a formidable candidate against Hillary, Barack or what's-his-name.

Thompson For President

Frank J. lists the top reasons why Fred Thompson should be President.

* Fred Thompson has blasted more people in the face with a shotgun than even Dick Cheney.

* The masked executioner of Saddam Hussein: Fred Thompson.

* Fred Thompson took over what was Al Gore's Senate seat, thereby dramatically reducing the Senate's carbon footprint. Fred Thompson then created carbon offset offsets by wastefully burning hippies.

Good enough for me.  Read the rest here.

What D'ya Think About That, Barbra?

It's too early to say, but I think America could end up with another actor as President.  And though the odds are stacked against it, he'd be a Republican, too.  And wouldn't that piss off Hollywood?  Why, it's almost enough reason to vote for Fred Thompson alone.

Fuggedaboutit

Newt Gingrich's heretofore low-key attempts at building interest in a presidential run have struck me as, well, quirky. John at Powerline expounds.

This is just one example of the kind of baggage I was talking about: Gingrich admits affair during Clinton impeachment probe. Liberals all over the web are going crazy over Newt's admission--not that it was a surprise to anyone--and I don't blame them.

Sure, it's easy to say that Clinton's impeachment was about perjury and obstruction of justice, not sex. What's more, it's true. But the last thing Republicans should have any interest in doing for the next year and a half is revisiting the Clinton impeachment saga, Gingrich's downfall as Speaker of the House, and so on. And the less said about sex, the better.

"Politics make odd bedfellows" and "making one's bed and lying in it" are just two aphorisms that come to mind.  Newt probably has a future as the elderly "conscience" of the conservative movement -- just as long as he doesn't actually run for something.  Can't blame a guy for trying, though, I suppose.

Rudy On The Supreme Court

Thanks to Captain's Quarters I read that Rudy Giuliani has, at the least, one very strong qualification for the Republican nomination.

On the Federal judiciary I would want judges who are strict constructionists because I am. I'm a lawyer. I've argued cases in the Supreme Court. I've argued cases in the Court of Appeals in different parts of the country. I have a very, very strong view that for this country to work, for our freedoms to be protected, judges have to interpret not invent the Constitution. Otherwise you end up, when judges invent the constitution, with your liberties being hurt. Because legislatures get to make those decisions and the legislature in South Carolina might make that decision one way and the legislature in California a different one. And that's part of our freedom and when that's taken away from you that's terrible.

President Bush has the great model because I think as the President he did appointed some really good ones and both of them are former colleagues of mine - Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito. Justice Scalia is a former colleague of mine. Somebody that … I think Chief Justice Roberts is a great chief justice and he's young and he can have a long career and that's probably the reason the President and Vice President chose him. I think those are the kinds of justices I would appoint – Scalia, Alito and Roberts. If you can find anybody as good as that, you are very, very fortunate.

I still hold hope that Bush's insistence that we must fight a war against terror will one day have proved itself to have been the right course of action.  His two Supreme Court nominations already have shown their worth.  Rudy's picked a good subject to prove his conservative leanings with this one.

Watch This Space

The 2008 Republican presidential candidate and his running-mate-to-be make their first appearance together in an Opinionjournal.com editorial.

Of course, I can't be sure they'll be running mates but I do think they're flirting -- in a political sort of way.  And it wouldn't be a bad match at all.

But He's A Good Man

Gerald Ford did get one "plum" during his short presidency -- he got to nominate a Supreme Court Justice -- and he blew it.  He picked John Paul Stevens who turned out to be one of the most reliably left-wing members of the court and a vicious promoter of the separation of church and state to boot.

Ed Whelan wonders how he even made it through Ford's funeral without calling the ACLU.

Ford’s state funeral is impossible to reconcile with Stevens’s extremist views of the establishment clause. Most conspicuously, members of the United States military played a prominent role in the pervasively religious ceremony, both as pallbearers and as musical performers. The United States Marine Orchestra and the Armed Forces Chorus not only performed; they sang explicitly Christian hymns. During the prelude, for example, the Marines sang “When Jesus Wept.” During the service itself, the Marine Orchestra provided the musical accompaniment for Denyce Graves’s singing of the Lord’s Prayer, and the Armed Forces Chorus sang “Eternal Father, strong to save” — a prayer to the trinitarian God. The closing hymn, “For All the Saints,” was sung by all and included lyrics like “thy Name, O Jesus, be for ever blessed”. . . .

Moreover, the very existence of the National Cathedral ought to be constitutionally objectionable in Stevens’s eyes. The National Cathedral is part of the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation, which was chartered by an Act of Congress, signed into law by President Benjamin Harrison on the Feast of the Epiphany in 1893, “for the promotion of religion and education and charity

To which, Paul from Powerlineblog adds, "But Ford, like the first President Bush, was an old school establishment conservative who relied on the general "soundness" of the people he appointed without much regard to the content of their ideas." 

I think that sums up the old-school establishment Republicans quite well.

Good man, Biff. Yes, yes, and a shame about that college-cheating and the child molestation thing.

Oh, I know all about that.  But nonetheless, he's of good family and will one day make the right choices.

What choices, old man?

Oh, I don't know, but I can assure you they'll be right.

Little wonder they've died out and left the rest of us with the unenviable task of convincing the resultant Democrat majority that class-envy and collectivism are perhaps not in its best interests. Sigh.

Credit, After All, Where Credit's Due

Ann Coulter points out the diversity of George Bush's administration, a fact which the media has never chosen to highlight.

Rice was not the first black secretary of state because Bush had already made Colin Powell the first black secretary of state. That was back during Bush's first term, when Rice was the first female national security adviser.

Bush also named Alberto Gonzales the first Hispanic attorney general. He made an Arab-American, Spencer Abraham, secretary of energy; a Cuban-American, Carlos Gutierrez, secretary of commerce; an Asian-American, Elaine Chao, secretary of labor; and a retarded-American, Norman Mineta, secretary of transportation. It was as if Mariah Carey and Tiger Woods had children and they all joined the Bush Cabinet.

The whole place has been lousy with women since the first Bush term, including Gale Ann Norton, secretary of the interior, Ann Veneman, secretary of agriculture, and Margaret Spellings, secretary of education. For a while there, it looked as if Bush might become the first president whose entire Cabinet's menstrual cycles were synchronized.

In a rare article taking note of Bush's "Benetton-ad presidency," Time magazine's Joe Klein said of Bush's second-term appointments: "It took Bush a month before he named a standard-issue white male."

By contrast, John Kerry hired only white males for top positions in his presidential campaign, a fact so embarrassing that even the media eventually took notice. In Kerry's defense, almost all of his and Teresa's domestic servants appear to have been people of color, although we still don't have a final head count on the place in Aspen.

But when Nancy Pelosi — another Democrat who married a multimillionaire — achieves the minor distinction of becoming the first female speaker of the House, The New York Times acts like she's invented cold fusion.

Read the whole thing.  Ann admits that Condoleezza was not the first woman to serve as Secretary of State, but she was the first competent woman. 

Karl Who?

Sandy Beach continued his crusade against Tom Reynolds today, this time playing up John McCain's cancellation of a local fund-raising dinner.  He claims that's a sign of the Republicans' bailing-out of the troubled Reynolds campaign, but I think he's wrong.  McCain is still attending a Rochester event earlier in the day and Foleygate is just as big a story over there as it is here.

Rochester's largest suburb, Greece, is part of Reynolds's district and the Rochester media will be all over it.  For lack of better things to do, I suspect that Buffalo's will, too.  And McCain's last-minute replacement in Buffalo, Karl Rove, ain't exactly some unknown.  If the GOP were sending the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, I'd be more inclined to agree that ol' Tom was now on his own.

In the end, Rove will raise more money for Reynolds than McCain and that's what the dinner's about.  I suspect that Rove's presence will also do more to motivate a potentially disenchanted Republican base than would the, um, mercurial, Senator from Arizona.  Look for heavy coverage of McCain's visit to Rochester and scant, passing commentary on Rove's visit. 

When Laura Bush spoke in Amherst a week or so ago, most of the coverage centered around the gaggle of union thugs who gathered to protest her appearance.  Could you ever imagine a campaign appearance by la Hillary having been treated so lightly once "back in the day?"  No, the die is cast, the media template is in place and Reynolds has been determined to be a loser who's abandoned now by even his own party.

Only the election will change the media's mind that the world didn't forsaken Tom Reynolds -- and they won't find that very convincing evidence either.

What's The Fuss About Lieberman?

The reaction of the right to Joe Lieberman's problems continues to amaze me.

As Senator Joseph I. Lieberman begins to mount a vigorous and well-financed re-election campaign as an independent, many Connecticut Democrats say they are worried that his bid could jeopardize their party’s ability to win in three hotly contested House races this fall.

Mr. Lieberman, a centrist Democrat who lost in the Aug. 8 Democratic primary to Ned Lamont, a wealthy businessman, is now running on his own line. With polls showing that many Democrats are eager for a change, Democratic officials say they expect Mr. Lieberman to campaign aggressively to win over Republican and unaffiliated voters.

If he does, Democratic strategists say, he may well attract voters to the polls who are likely to support the state’s three Republicans in Congress: Nancy Johnson, Rob Simmons and Christopher Shays.

Despite the New York Times's assessment of Liberman as a "centrist," he's actually a solid leftist.  Except for his tepid support of the Iraq War, only the blogging-left would consider him a centrist -- and remember that the same left thinks the American media is right-wing.  They've lost all sense of where the middle lies.

The right is usually a bit more sensible on such things, but this time seems to have come unhinged.  The support and the declarations of love for ol' Joe make no tactical sense.  If he is re-elected, Liberman won't do the right any favors, he'll just carry on voting the liberal line as he always have.

In the end this whole right-wing love-fest with Lieberman just seems to be the result of displaced anger at the far-left.  And since we seem unable to run a Republican to challenge Ted Lamont, we'll take the next best thing -- a slightly-less-liberal-than-Lamont candidate from another party.  Who knows, maybe Republican efforts really will help Joe keep his Senate seat.

I'm not at all convinced that result will do the right a single bit of good, though.

Self-Reliance

Republicans don't need no national health care -- they even deliver their own babies.

Just Give It Up

If the liberals have to live with Ronald Reagan National Airport, conservatives can learn to tolerate Clinton's birthplace as a national historic site.  Come on boys, take your medecine, vote 'yes' and get back to work.

Good Tactic, Bad Strategy

House Republicans vote to block the Dubai ports deal .

By 62-2, the House Appropriations Committee voted to bar DP World, run by the government of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, from holding leases or contracts at U.S. ports. The landslide vote was the strongest signal yet that more than three weeks of White House efforts to stunt congressional opposition to the deal have not been successful.

Bush has promised to veto any such measure passed by Congress. But there is widespread public opposition to the deal and the GOP fears losing its advantage on the issue of national security in this fall's elections.

Republicans running scared.  In November they'll be sorry they were so craven -- the other side wins this one.  Better they'd have stuck with the President.

New York Republicans, Listen Up

Remember Ronald Reagans 11th Commandment -- no Republican shall speak ill of another Republican?

Grover Norquist offers the foundation for what should be the 12th.

"Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, said Republicans cannot betray their core belief of keeping taxes low. Referring to the Coca-Cola Corporation, Norquist said the brand name would be destroyed if people found a rat head in their Coca-Cola. 'Republicans who vote for tax increases are rat heads in the Coke bottle,' Norquist warned"

Hat tip to Opinion Journal - Political Diary.

Elephants In The New York Blogosphere

Looking for evidence that Republicans still live in New York State?  Check out Urban Elephants.