Category: Politics

The GOP Candidates Debate

I only caught bits and pieces of last night’s GOP debate at the Reagan Library, but as always Glenn Reynolds has a host of links from across the blogosphere.

From what I saw, I was quite impressed with Romney’s performance. He’s the only one who seemed to be poised throughout the whole thing. McCain made the mistake of alluding to his age more than once, and went on the attack too soon. Giuliani didn’t quite seem to have the sort of clear answers he needed. Mike Huckabee did a good job, even though he has almost zero chance of actually getting the nomination. Nobody hit it out of the park, but when so few people are paying attention, it ultimately doesn’t matter.

I do agree that there was a winner in last night’s debate — Fred Thompson. Why bother fighting for attention among 10 candidates when you can wait until the field winnows down? The more we get from the candidates in the field, the more it’s clear that none of them have everything they need to win. There’s still more than enough room for Thompson to make an entry into the field and have a strong chance at success.

This debate didn’t do anything to change the race. We know who John McCain is. We know who Rudy Giuliani is. Mitt Romney made some headway, but not enough to change the dynamics of the race. The rest of the field is, well, the rest of the field. This race is in its infancy (even though it seems to have been going on forever) and anything can and will change over the course of the next year or so.

UPDATE: Ryan Sagar says that the Giuliani campaign is starting to melt down. Kathryn Jean Lopez says that someone needs to get Giuliani to church, stat. I’m inclined to agree. Giuliani looked uncomfortable talking about faith, and that’s not a tenable position to be in for a member of either party in America. Giuliani is certainly walking a tightrope on issues that matter to social conservatives, and he was perilously close to falling off the line last night.

UPDATE: The more I think about it, the more I think Giuliani torpedoed himself. I don’t care what your opinion of abortion is, Roe v. Wade is bad law. (And Casey v. Planned Parenthood is even worse.) There’s nothing inconsistent with being pro-choice and saying that Roe should be overturned. Giuliani had that opportunity tonight, and he blew it. He could have said that he’s a federalist, and Roe v. Wade was an unconstitutional redistribution of power from the state governments to the federal government, but he still believes that the states should ultimately make the call to ban abortion or not. He said something like that, but such a scheme is fundamentally incompatible with Roe‘s holding. It was a major tactical mistake for Giuliani to have made, and it will hurt him with the conservative base of the Republican Party.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds argues that Giuliani is the candidate best poised to win in the general election. That may well be true, but if he’s not more polished than he is now, that won’t stay the case. What was so alarming is that Giuliani just looked like another pol, which negates his chief advantages. McCain went for the cojones, Romney went for the brains, and Giuliani didn’t really show all that much of either.

If you’re going to screw up, this is the time to do — there’s plenty of time to get on message and fix the problems in your campaign. Not a lot of people were paying attention last night. However, Giuliani stumbled out of the gate, which means he’s going to have to do a lot of work to play on his strengths as he’d say rather than looking unpresidential when confronted with difficult questions. It’s not fatal to him by any means, but he’s going to have to do better if he wants to keep in the game over the long haul.

Surrendering On Surrender

Unsurprisingly, the Democrats have backed down on their demands that Bush end the war on a timetable. The Democrats do not have the votes to override the President’s veto, and they’re not likely to get them any time soon.

So what was the point of all this? I’m not sure that even the Democrats know. They’ve done a magnificent job of painting themselves into a corner. When you call the war “lost” you’ve got nowhere to go with that. How can Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi continue to commit further resources to a conflict that they think is already lost? It’s not a position that’s going to endear themselves to the netroots radicals, to be sure. Already, the left is demanding that they hold fast on deadlines, which is going to lead to a deadlock.

There’s a case to be made for benchmarking the conflict — that gives the commanders in the field the ability to have discretion, but not demanding an unreasonable and inflexible date for something that’s a process, not an event. However, the Democrats aren’t going to be satiated until they get their surrender, and even if they get a compromise bill, the netroots aren’t going to be very inclined to like it.

The Democrats tried to go all in when they didn’t have the cards. It was a politically idiotic thing to do. The result is that the Democrats are now on record as a party of defeat, the media is beginning to question the wisdom of preemptive surrender, and now the Democrats have to make themselves look impotent because they provoked a veto they knew they couldn’t override. All this ended up being was a a Kabuki dance that benefits no one. Bush doesn’t get any political benefit from this war — quite the opposite. Pelosi doesn’t get any political benefit from annoying her liberal base by having to get a compromised bill passed. The soldiers may not get the supplies they need while Washington plays politics.

Actually, there are some winners in all of this: al-Qaeda and Iran get the benefit of seeing their primary nemesis caught up in political backfighting while they continue to bleed Iraq dry.

UPDATE: Now the Democrats are denying that they’re backing down on Iraq. If true, they’re miscalculating by a wide margin again. Do the Democrats really want to be the party responsible for our troops not having the supplies they need? This political posturing can only go on so long before the Democrats have to bend. If it comes down between the Democrats and Bush, the Democrats win and Bush loses. If it comes down between the Democrats and American soldiers, the odds are not good for the Democratic Party. They’re playing with fire here, and right now they’re posed for the same kind of overstretch that hurt the Republicans when they shut down the government.

When War And Political Ignorance Collide

In The New Republic, Lawrence Kaplan has a piece up on how little the Democrats seem to know about Iraq. Iraq is a complicated country, and we need a political leadership that understands the situation there if they have any expectation of providing realistic solutions. Yet I doubt more than a handful of the Democratic caucus could identify the major cities in Iraq on map, could identify four of Iraq’s major ethnic groups, or have any idea of who the factions are in Iraq. For all the talk about how George W. Bush is an intellectual incurious leader, the Democrats are hardly setting a better example. Kaplan explains:

Obliviousness, after all, has its uses. It comforts the sensibilities of politicians whose varying levels of awareness allow them to favor certain facts and not others. Obliviousness testifies to the virtue and good intentions of members of Congress who, in truth, couldn’t care less what comes next in Iraq. It invites Americans to indulge in the conceit that what happens in Washington obviates the need to think seriously about what happens in Baghdad.

Most of all, illiteracy makes for good politics. There is the conviction, to paraphrase McCain, that winning a war takes precedence over winning an election. But it isn’t so clear that this conviction guides a partisan brawl in which the Senate majority leader can gush, “We’re going to pick up Senate seats as a result of this war.” In such an environment, the subordination of facts to politics inform matters small and large, from the relatively trivial question of whether U.S. troops still operate in Tal Afar to enormous questions regarding the future of the U.S. enterprise in Iraq.

A lack of understanding leads to poor policy choices, as Major Owen West explains in a brilliant op-ed in The New York Times:

t’s hard for a soldier like me to reconcile a political jab like Senator Harry Reid’s “this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything” when it’s made in front of a banner that reads “Support Our Troops.” But the politician’s job is different from the soldier’s. Mr. Reid’s belief — that the best way to support the troops is by acknowledging defeat and pulling them out of Iraq — is likely shared by a large slice of the population, which gives it legitimacy.

It seems oddly detached, however, from what’s happening on the battlefield. The Iraqi battalion I lived with is stationed outside of Habbaniya, a small city in violent Anbar Province. Together with a fledgling police force and a Marine battalion, these Iraqi troops made Habbaniya a relatively secure place: it has a souk where Iraqi soldiers can shop outside their armored Humvees, public generators that don’t mysteriously explode, children who walk to school on their own. The area became so stable, in fact, that it attracted the attention of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. In late February, the Sunni insurgents blew up the mosque, killing 36.

If American politicians pull the marines out of Anbar, the Iraqi soldiers told me, they too will have to pull back, ceding some zones to protect others. The same is true in the Baghdad neighborhoods where the early stages of the surge have made life livable again.

The reality is that the Democrats have a profound ignorance of what’s going on in Iraq. For example, if the Democrats really believe that an American pullout would make Iraq safer, then how do they explain what happened in Fallujah, Ramadi, and Western Baghdad when American troops left and terrorists and thugs immediately took over. There can be little doubt that a precipitous American withdrawal would leave Iraq in chaos. The National Intelligence Estimate says as much, had anyone in Congress paid attention to it.

There’s a tragic irony here. The Democrats accuse the Bush Administration of using cherry-picked intelligence to make a decision for political advantage with horrendous consequences to the US and Iraq. And what are the Democrats doing now? Cherry-picking intelligence to justify a decision made for their political advantage that would harm the interests of both the United States and Iraq. If the Bush Administration had a disastrous headlong rush to war in 2003, the Democrats are pursuing an equally disastrous and headlong rush towards abject surrender in 2007. If the Democrats wanted to prove that they were wiser and more judicious leaders than their GOP counterparts, then they have failed.

The realities on the ground in Iraq are clear to all those paying attention. The surge is working, but the enemy is also surging. A successful counterinsurgency takes time, and can’t be achieved an an arbitrary timetable. Political and diplomatic reconciliation is impossible without a decent level of security for the Iraqi people. It is impossible to call for withdrawing troops but still chasing after terrorists in Iraq. Counter-terrorism requires boots on the ground, and we barely have enough troops in Iraq as it is.

In short, all the Democratic preconceptions about Iraq are faulty. If one accepts that the war in Iraq was bad policy to begin with, it still makes little sense to follow up bad policy with even worse policy. We are engaged with al-Qaeda in Iraq. That is the battlefield, and if we leave all the resources that al-Qaeda has been investing there will be free to be used elsewhere — including here. The Democrats embrace of a policy of preemptive surrender is the wrong policy and will leave America weakened and our enemies emboldened. Our political class is trying to micromanage a war in a country they know nothing about, based on faulty assumptions and blind ignorance. Getting us out of a war in such an irresponsible fashion makes no more sense than irresponsibly getting us into one — and given the stakes at play, may be even worse.

McCain And The League Of Democracies

Presidential contender John McCain has come out in support of a league of democratic nations to act where the UN will not. It’s an idea that I’ve long supported, and it’s an idea whose time has come. The UN has proven itself to be utterly incompetent and thoroughly corrupt — the Oil for Food scandal, child sex rings in Cambodia and Africa, and lax financial controls all being symptoms of the larger disease at work. While places like Darfur and Iraq are embroiled in violence, the UN more often than not sides with autocracies like Iran, Venezuela, or Libya rather than democratic nations.

ABC News has more details on McCain’s plan. If we accept that there is a concept of universal human rights, then complicit in that acceptance is the notion that the only governments which are legitimate are those that are ruled with the consent of the people. To have an international body that upholds human rights, it cannot put autocratic and undemocratic nations on the same level as nations which respect the will of their people. The central flaw of the UN (but certainly not the only flaw) is that it is charged with upholding human rights internationally while still giving legitimacy to nations like Sudan and Iran. There is a tension between inclusiveness and a commitment to human rights, and the UN is failing to find the right balance.

Still, the idea of a “league of democracies” is not without its flaws. For example, what is a “democracy?” Certainly pure democracy is not workable on the national scale — which is why there aren’t any purely democratic states. However, is Iran a democracy? They have elections, albeit elections which are controlled by an unelected Guardian Council. What of Venezuela? Hugo Chavez would say that he was elected by the will of the people, although it’s likely that his election was a scam. What of Russia? Vladimir Putin was elected in a free and fair election, but is clearly a leader with a deeply autocratic bent who has stifled free speech in Russia and is dismantling Russian civil society. What about Pakistan? President Musharraf is not a democratic leader, yet Pakistan is a critical ally in the war on Islamist terrorism.

The devil is in the details of this plan. A League of Democracies is a good idea, and the UN is so hopelessly corrupt that reform would require the UN to be practically rebuild from the ground up. Could a League of Democracies act as a valuable supplement to the UN, perhaps replacing the UN Security Council in holding veto power over the decisions of the General Assembly? McCain’s proposing a bold idea, and one that makes a great deal of sense from a moral perspective. What remains to be seen is how concrete he can make this plan. A League of Democracies makes sense conceptually, but it has to be made to work in practice. If McCain can come up with a compelling structure that makes it all work, it will be a major boost to his foreign policy credentials. If not, it will be a pie-in-the-sky idea that has no chance of implementation.

At the same time, I’m hopeful that McCain will be able to champion the cause of creating more durable and less corrupt international institutions. The international sphere has been taken over by the relativist left, which is ultimately harmful to world peace. Striking the right balance between preserving national sovereignty and respecting the self-determination of nations and enforcing valuable international norms is crucial in a world where terrorists and weapons of mass destruction pose unprecedented challenges to world stability. That balance has not been found yet, but that doesn’t mean that the US and its democratic allies should stop trying. We need international institutions which defend human rights and the democratic values that come with them, and if the UN cannot be that body, then we should be looking at institutions that can.

Because It’s About Power

Omar Fadhil wonders why the Democratic Party is so eager to throw him and his countrymen into the hands of terrorists and thugs:

I am an Iraqi. To me the possible consequences of this vote are terrifying. Just as we began to see signs of progress in my country the Democrats come and say, ‘Well, it’s not worth it.Time to leave’.

To the Democrats my life and the lives of twenty-five other million Iraqis are evidently not worth trying for. They shouldn’t expect us to be grateful for this.

For four years everybody made mistakes. The administration made mistakes and admitted them. My people and leaders made mistakes as well and we regret them.

But now, in the last two months, we have had a fresh start; a new strategy with new ideas and tactics. These were reached after studying previous mistakes and were designed to reverse the setbacks we witnessed in the course of this war.

This strategy, although its tools are not yet even fully deployed, is showing promising signs of progress.

General Petraeus said yesterday that things will get tougher before they get easier in Iraq. This is the sort of of fact-based, realistic assessment of the situation which politicians should listen to when they discuss the war thousands of miles away.

We must give this effort the chance it deserves. We should provide all the support necessary. We should heed constructive critique, not the empty rhetoric that the ‘war is lost.’

It is not lost. Quitting is not an option we can afford—not in America and definitely not in Iraq.

For the Democrats, this has nothing to do with Iraq. The Democrats don’t know much about Iraq, and as we’ve seen from Senator Reid’s disturbing comments, they don’t really want to learn anything. General Petraeus’ comments are irrelevant to them. Whether Iraq is going well, badly, or somewhere in between the only constant in the Democratic universe is the expansion of their political power. The constant vicious attacks on the President, the shadow foreign-policy grandstanding, the cowardice on Iraq, all of it is purely about appealing to a domestic audience. It is all about one thing and one thing only: the naked ambition for political power.

If America loses, the Democrats “win.” That is why the Democrats want American to lose in Iraq. That is why they want to force a withdrawal. It’s not about what’s best for the country — there’s no rational argument that handing al-Qaeda the greatest victory in their existence is in any way a win for America. It’s purely about taking down the Bush Administration and getting Democrats into power. What the consequences would be for the people of Iraq is irrelevant to Democratic policymaking — the Iraqis don’t vote, so their voices are irrelevant.

The truth is, at this point, both Iraqi and American democracy are deeply troubled. Both are rife with blind faction, both involve parties whose nakedly self-serving aims would tear both countries apart. Iraq is building a civil society. The United States is tearing its apart. The Iraqis are struggling to find freedom, while we Americans take it for granted. The trendlines are disturbing for both.

We got the Iraqi people involved in this war — and Senator Reid cannot cowardly walk away from his own choices. To run away and leave the Iraqis to their fates is the act of an arrogant and self-obsessed power. It is a political, tactical, and moral abomination. It is an act of cowardice. How dare we consider leaving 25 million people in the hands of the deranged few for our own political calculus. Should we engage in such a foolish act, the blood of every Iraqi slaughtered in the inevitable bloodbath to follow will be on all of our hands — especially those who voted to authorize this conflict, Republican and Democrat alike.

There was a time when America was the ally of democracy worldwide, when we stood strongly for our friends, and when the thought of abandoning our allies was unthinkable. If that is no longer the case, then we are living our borrowed time. Our democratic values are worth nothing if we are unwilling to stand up for them wherever they may be challenged. If we believe in a code of universal human rights, how can we say that the Iraqis are undeserving of them? If we pull out of Iraq, how can we then argue for intervening in Darfur? After all, if America will never take sides in a civil war, what business is it of ours that black Africans are being raped and murdered by the Arab janjaweed militias?

The Democrats aren’t asking the hard question — all they seem to want is political victory in 2008. Of course, if they win through such reprehensible means, all they will have is power — the moral authority that used to come with being a leader in America will have been sold out.

You Can’t Change The Channel In War

Mitch Berg notes Rudy Giuliani’s latest address on the global war on terrorism. Giuliani pulls no punches in elucidating just what the stakes are in this conflict:

The former New York City mayor, currently leading in all national polls for the Republican nomination for president, said Tuesday night that America would ultimately defeat terrorism no matter which party gains the White House.

“But the question is how long will it take and how many casualties will we have?” Giuliani said. “If we are on defense [with a Democratic president], we will have more losses and it will go on longer.”

“I listen a little to the Democrats and if one of them gets elected, we are going on defense,” Giuliani continued. “We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation and we will be back to our pre-Sept. 11 attitude of defense.”

Giuliani is right. The Democratic position on the war is to try and avoid dealing with anything but the political consequences at all costs. The reality is that their idea of how to “win” the war on terror is ultimately counterproductive. As an example of this, Michael Totten spoke with Kurdish leader Mam Rostam. Rostam gives us a prescient warning of what would happen if the US pulls out of Iraq:

“If America pulls out of Iraq, they will fail in Afghanistan,” Mam Rostam said.

Hardly anyone in Congress seems to consider that the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan might become much more severe if similar tactics are proven effective in Iraq.

“And they will fail with Iran,” he continued. “They will fail everywhere with all Eastern countries. The war between America and the terrorists will move from Iraq and Afghanistan to America itself. Do you think America will do that? The terrorists gather their agents in Afghanistan and Iraq and fight the Americans here. If you pull back, the terrorists will follow you there. They will try, at least. Then Iran will be the power in the Middle East. Iran is the biggest supporter of terrorism. They support Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Ansar Al Islam. You know what Iran will do with those elements if America goes away.”

Rostam is right. What would happen to the thousands of foreign jihadis who are now in Iraq once the US pulls out? Some of them may stay to wreak havoc with the Iraqi government — but many of them would continue to fight the United States. We have roughly 20,000 troops in Afghanistan. If the Taliban got the level of support that al-Qaeda has been putting into Iraq, Afghanistan would be the next domino to fall. It’s much more difficult to fight in the mountainous and rugged terrain of Afghanistan than the largely flat desert of Iraq. The jihadis are not going to give up and go home if we leave Iraq. They will continue to fight us until we leave Afghanistan and then they will continue to fight us wherever we are — including the United States. If the Democrats want to make the argument that Afghanistan is the “real” war on terrorism, they don’t get any benefit there by pulling out of Iraq.

The Democrats don’t want to face reality. We’re facing an enemy that is determined to kill as many of us as possible. Diplomatic negotiations with hostile regimes such as Iran and Syria are pointless. They know we can give them carrots, but they have no reason to fear any sticks — certainly not from a Democratic Congress. Groups like al-Qaeda have bet their future on the idea that Americans can be pushed around and forced to retreat. The Democrats would play right into that hand.

Giuliani is absolutely right. The Democrats would make us less safe. We cannot win this war by playing defensively — all it takes is one lucky hit and the terrible events of September 11 would be nothing more than a prelude. We have to offensively deal with the infrastructure and ideology that feeds terrorism. That requires a sustained, vigorous, and unyielding commitment to fighting terrorism on all fronts, political, economic, and military. The Democrats do not wish to do that, and while the Bush Administration has done a poor job in many areas, the Democrats have already shown that they are not only inept, but dangerously inept. We can’t afford a party that lives in a September 10 world, and every day the Democratic Party proves that they’re not cognizant of the realities of the world we live in today. Whether Mr. Giuliani is the right leader or not is a subject for debate, but one thing is certain: whoever leads this country in 2009 must not shirk their responsibility in fighting this war. If they do, the consequences to this country and the rest of the world will be severe.

Thompson And Federalism

Fred Thompson has an interesting piece on tort reform at Red State. Thompson stands on the principle of federalism in opposing things like federal caps on tort awards, and defends his position well:

This discussion is not an idle exercise. Republicans have struggled in recent years, because they have strayed from basic principles. Federalism is one of those principles. It is something we all give lip service to and then proceed to ignore when it serves our purposes. During my eight years in the Senate, I tried to adhere to this principle. For me it was a lodestar. Not only was it what our founding fathers created – a federal government with limited, enumerated powers with respect for other levels of government, it also provided a basis for a proper analysis of most issues: “Is this something government should be doing? If so, at what level of government?”

As I understood it, states were supposed to be laboratories that would compete with each other, conducting civic experiments according to the wishes of their citizens. The model for federal welfare reform was the result of that process. States also allow for of diverse viewpoints that exist across the country. There is no reason that Tennesseans and New Yorkers should have to agree on everything (and they don’t).

Those who are in charge of applying the conservative litmus test should wonder why some of their brethren continue to try to federalize more things – especially at a time of embarrassing federal mismanagement and a growing federal bureaucracy. I am afraid that such a test is often based more upon who is favored between two self-serving litigants than upon legal and constitutional principles. Isn’t that what we make all the Supreme Court nominees promise not to do?

Thompson shows a strong grasp of policy issues, and he knows how to work a camera. Should he decide to run (and it seems predestined at this point), he could be a major upset for the rest of the Republican field. We need a principled and articulate defender of conservative ideas in this race, and Thompson fits the bill quite well. Many conservatives seem to be looking at Thompson as a strong contender in 2008, and so far he’s given them every reason to believe he would be.

The Democrats’ Quagmire

Michael Barone takes a look at the Democratic divide over funding the troops in Iraq. Politically, they’re in a quagmire of their own making over this issue. The increasingly vociferous anti-war caucus in the Democratic Party wants the funding cut and an immediate unilateral withdrawal — something that even many Democrats know would be incredibly dangerous for the security of the region. However, with the Majority Leader of the Senate waving the white flag and calling the war “lost” it’s going to be that much harder for the Democrats to do anything but cut funding. If the Democrats really believe that Iraq is utterly unwinnable, they cannot responsibly keep our troops there under any timetable. The anti-war radicals have the most consistent position (if consistently wrong) — if Iraq truly is lost, then there is absolutely no point to keeping US forces in Iraq.

Doug Shoen of the Boston Globe they see the subtle signs of progress that the rest of us never see. The “surge” has produced results, and while the enemy is doing what they can to sow death in Baghdad, their stream of bombings are only one element of the story. It’s relatively easy to hit largely undefended civilian targets with car bombs in a nation that’s awash with munitions of every conceivable kind. It’s much harder to reverse the progress of an entire nation. The surge isn’t just over halfway in place. The enemy knows that Congress is deliberating on troop funding, which is why they’re ratcheting up the violence as much as they possibly can.

That is precisely the trap the Democrats are running into. For someone who isn’t a Democratic partisan, it doesn’t look very seemly that the Democrats seem to be doing exactly what the terrorists in Iraq want us to do. The fact that the position of Harry Reid and Ayman al-Zawahiri on Iraq are now identical doesn’t exactly make the Democrats look good. The constant stream of negativity and the open defeatism of the Democrats rub against the American spirit. There have been hundreds of thousands of American soldiers who have been deployed to Iraq. The vast majority of them support the mission and hate the way in which the Democrats and the mainstream media have portrayed this war.

That defeatism will not be free from political price. The Democratic Congress has approval ratings lower than even the President’s, yet they see themselves as having a mandate from the American people to end the war in Iraq by whatever means. However, they’re wrong on that count. The American people have tired of the war, to be sure, but that doesn’t mean that they want to see Congress start waving the white flag either. A unilateral withdrawal from Iraq will leave genocide in its wake on a scale never seen in the region. The Middle East will be destabilized for decades to come, and a regional nuclear arms race is a virtual surety. Yet the Democrats are deliberately blinding themselves to anything but the short-term consequences of their actions. Their sights are firmly focused on 2008 and nothing but.

That kind of short-sighted hubris is contemptible. The Democratic leadership finds themselves in the position of either having to put their money where their mouths are and cutting the funds or continuing a war they’ve already surrendered. Either they incur the wrath of the anti-war left and continue the funding, or they become the party that is saddled with the consequences of an ignominious American defeat. They’ve been trying to walk the line for months now, but their time is running out.

This is a quagmire of their own making. If they’d kept on talking about how they needed to change strategy in Iraq, they would be on top of this issue. If they’d taken credit for Bush getting rid of Rumsfeld, cracking down in al-Maliki’s government, and starting the “surge” they could have completed the GOP crack-up on national security. They could have credibly taken credit for every change that was made in the wake of the 2006 elections. But they chose to side with the anti-war partisans who now control the Democratic political machine. Now, they’re being pushed towards a course of action that will lead to a defeat in the war on terrorism. (A term they now apparently reject.) The consequences of that choice will have disastrous effects on this country for years to come.

A party with political courage and a true sense of patriotism would not have put this country in such a position. Even if one accepts that this war has been incompetently run, the Democrats have been no more competent than the Bush Administration, and are now outright advocating the same thing as the enemy. What is the substantive difference between Harry Reid and Ayman al-Zawahiri on Iraq? Both argue that the war in Iraq is lost. Both argue that the United States can find no military solution to the region’s problems. Both argue that the only way for America to win is to try to “talk” to the people who have sworn its destruction. The fact that the rhetoric from the Democrats might as well be the same thing echoing from al-Jazeera should give the Democrats pause. Their war is between themselves and the Republican Party, not between a united America and the barbarians who threaten to destroy it. Their war has produced collateral damage that threatens to ensure our enemies emerge victorious — and the fact that they seem completely unwilling to engage with those realities suggests that they remain fundamentally unfit to lead.

John McCain’s Straight Talk

While I have many policy disagreements with John McCain, it certainly can’t be said that he isn’t one of America’s most forthright politicians. His response to the tizzy over his “Bomb Iran” song is a welcome breath of fresh air from a political class that constantly tries and bend over backwards to political correctness. Instead of playing the usual game of feigned apologia he tells his critics to “get a life.”

There’s something refreshingly atavistic about Sen. McCain, and his reputation as a straight-talking maverick is a well-deserved one. While his positions of campaign finance reform make it difficult for conservatives to support him (among other issues), it’s not surprising that McCain is picking up some support. His willingness to take political risks and stand on principle is sorely lacking in the rest of America’s political class these days.

Thompson Surging In LA Times Poll

Captain Ed notes that Fred Thompson has vaulted into second place in the latest Los Angeles Times poll. John McCain has slipped to third.

I’m not surprised, and I think that Rudy Giuliani had better watch his back. Thompson is an incredibly strong candidate, and he doesn’t have the baggage that Giuliani brings to the race. Thompson was an attorney and a politician long before becoming an actor, and he has more than just gravitas by his side. It’s becoming quite clear that he will enter the race, and he could change the dynamics of the race in a way that steals momentum from Giuliani and McCain.

It’s interesting that McCain’s Iraq gambit doesn’t seem to be helping him. I don’t fault those who feel that we need a break from the George W. Bush era — I agree wholeheartedly. However, McCain’s making a stand on principle. He believes that not following through in Iraq will hurt the long-term security of this country. He is right on that point. I’ve been very critical of Senator McCain on a lot of issues — especially campaign finance — but he is taking a politically dangerous stand because he believes it’s the right thing to do. That kind of refreshing honesty is so rare in politics that I’d hate for McCain to suffer for it. McCain’s political courage may hurt him, but that’s more of an indictment of the sad state of American politics that it is an indictment of John McCain.

Giuliani’s abortion slip-up could not have come at a more inopportune time for him. Being the front-runner inevitably means facing more and more criticism, and Giuliani needs to forge inroads with the socially conservative base of the GOP. Saying that federal funding for abortion is a right guaranteed by the Constitution (forgetting that Roe and Casey are both horrendous decisions) is the sort of thing guaranteed to alienate Republican voters. The last thing that Giuliani needs to do is remind the base of the Republican Party that he’s taken stances on issues that are polar opposite to conservative values. Yes, Rudy is strong on defense and strong on fiscal matters — but the Republican Party isn’t going to nominate a candidate who is to the left of the Democrats on abortion. Giuliani has a lot of fences to mend now, although he’s not down and out by any means.

Thompson has the gravitas of McCain, the outside status of Giuliani, and none of the baggage of either. If he runs, I would not at all be surprised to see his name at the top of the polls in short order. The other GOP candidates had better be watching their backs, because Fred Thompson has what it takes to win.