Category: Politics

Reframing 2006

Michael Barone argues that the Bush Administration has made this yet another national security election, reframing the issues so that the dominant question on the minds of the American electorate is who will best keep this nation safe from the terrorists who are set to kill as many of us as possible. William Kristol agrees and says that the Democrats are once again walking into a trap.

Kristol writes:

On September 6, 2006, President Bush set the trap. He spoke in the East Room of the White House on the war on terror. He announced that 14 terrorist leaders and operatives, who had been held and questioned by the Central Intelligence Agency outside the United States, were being transferred to Guantánamo. He outlined some of the information acquired from the interrogations of men like Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and explained that this information had contributed to disrupting terrorist plots here and abroad. In light of the Supreme Court’s Hamdan decision, the president asked Congress to pass legislation that would put this interrogation program, and trials before military tribunals for captured terrorists, on a surer legal footing.

Kristol is right here. The American people have a very clear choice in this election — between a party that would give Osama bin Laden more legal protections than Tony Soprano or a party that recognizes that this is war and we must not treat al-Qaeda with kid gloves. The Democrats’ reflexive opposition to everything Bush does has once again put them in a position of looking like the party of weakness. Bush’s decision to end the interrogation of al-Qaeda prisoners (a decision that is legally necessary due to the Hamdan decision) means that the Democrats no longer have the luxury of posturing and preening on national security issues. They have to make a stand, and that stand was one that puts them in a position of arguing on the side of terrorist rights.

Barone explains further:

But it still remains an issue individual Republican candidates can use in their campaigns. They can ask why their Democratic opponents don’t want tough interrogations of the likes of 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammed and why they want secret intelligence turned over to terrorists at their trials. That framing of the issue is not likely to favor Democrats.

The other issue comes from the most persistent partisan opponent of the administration, The New York Times, which revealed last December that the National Security Agency was conducting electronic surveillance of calls from suspected al-Qaida terrorists abroad to persons in the United States. The Times and many Democrats saw this as a terrible violation of Americans’ civil liberties. But polls suggest that most voters see it as simple common sense. When al-Qaida calls the United States, we shouldn’t hang up the phone. Bush has asked Congress to authorize such surveillance. The roll call votes will tell voters whose first priority is keeping America safe.

I think that Bush has sprung a political trap here. Every Democrat running in a red state is going to have to explain why they think it’s bad for the NSA to listen into our enemies when the 9/11 plot was coordinated through phone calls from Florida to Pakistan. The Democrats are going to have to explain why we shouldn’t be putting the screws to the likes of Khalid Sheik Mohammad. The American people instinctively understand we’re in a war against an intractable and deadly enemy. And once again the Democratic Party has put itself in a position where they’re demanding we play by Marquis of Queensbury rules. That puts the Republicans on the offensive and the Democrats in a corner.

Bush’s popularity among his base has increased dramatically over the past few days, and his average approval rating has finally gone above 40%. The Democrats have made the mistake of running against the President rather than running on their own merits — and with the war on terrorism taking the forefront and gas prices falling, that mistake ensures that they’ve little left to run on now.

Bush has had a lot of luck — the failed al-Qaeda airline plot served as a reminder of the threat of terrorism, the Democrats have been feckless, gas prices have fallen as global geopolitical concerns quiet, and the Supreme Court forced Bush’s hand on the enemy combatant issue. At the same time, there’s undoubtedly been a politically shrewd decision to use these opportunities to once again highlight the vital issue of national security. The Bush Administration has made some incredible political blunders — see Harriet Miers and Hurricane Katrina, but the Bush team has one hole card — the Democrats can be reliably certain to walk into the same trap over and over again.

What Comes Up…

Power Line has an interesting bit about the possibility of an oil price crash in the coming months. The price of oil has fallen on the world markets, and the price of refined gasoline has also crashed. I was shocked to see gas at less than $2.20/gal here at the Southern Command — and there are some predicting that the price of gasoline could fall below $2/gallon.

Economically, that isn’t surprising. A year of gas shocks will have some effect on consumption, even given the relatively inelastic nature of gasoline usage. The spike in gasoline prices was do more to transitory world events than any real shortage of oil — new discoveries off the Gulf Coast have boosted US crude oil stock estimates by a significant margin. The hurricane season was a dud, which didn’t create any disruptions in supply.

Politically, this is some good news for the GOP. The latest Rasmussen poll of Presidential approval has Bush back up to 47% — and there’s a clear trend line in the numbers that correlates quite nicely with the fall in gas prices. The cost of gas is the most visible economic indicator there is for the average person, and if gas prices fall, that’s generally seen as being healthy for the economy.

I’ve always speculated that oil was in a bubble and we’d see a price crash before prices returned to an equilibrium level. Indeed, that does appear to be happening. That’s good news for the GOP’s political fortunes, but more important it’s also good news for the American consumer after a year of increasingly high prices at the pump.

Is Klobuchar Responsible For Minneapolis’ Crime Surge?

Martin Andrade takes a dispassionate and logical approach to this question and finds that indeed, the Hennepin County DA’s office bears some responsibility for the massive increase in crime in Minneapolis in the last few years.

The typical DFL response — that cuts to state aid are responsible for the surge in crime doesn’t hold much water. St. Paul, a city right next to Minneapolis with an equally diverse population and many of the same basic problems, has seen crime rise at a rate lower than the national average of 2.5% for violent crimes. Yet St. Paul was also the “victim” of much of the same cuts in local assistance funds. Basic logic says that if one factor is predominantly responsible for an effect, it should have the same effect in all places where that factor is present. Yet that certainly isn’t the case.

Even if one accepts that it’s not totally fair to put all this on Klobuchar’s shoulders, and there are certainly a number of factors which have exacerbated the level of crime coming out of Minneapolis, she is still the DA of Hennepin County. She is still responsible for prosecuting criminals, and if a bunch of recidivists start committing crimes in her jurisdiction that is not a very positive recommendation of her skills. I think Andrade’s argument is quite right: the actions of the DA’s office have indeed lowered the “opportunity costs” of crime to the point where violent offenders just aren’t sufficiently deterred from committing crimes.

Granted, the utter decay of the Minneapolis police force hasn’t helped — political correctness has tied their hands and there is no leadership at the top, betraying the hard work of those officers who want to do their jobs and do them well. Nor does it help that Minneapolis has an utterly dysfunctional political culture “led” by an ineffectual mayor and a City Council that consists of DFL hacks. Minneapolis is an always has been a one-party city — and look at where that’s led them. In contrast, St. Paul has done well under the Democrat-turned-Republican Norm Coleman and the moderate Democrat Randy Kelly. Now that St. Paul’s DFL base has turned against Kelly for the apostasy of supporting President Bush and elected yet another feckless hack, perhaps St. Paul will begin to see some of the same problems that Minneapolis has.

In any event, whether one lays the blame on Klobuchar’s feet or the Minneapolis political machine, the source ends up being the same: the DFL’s inability to do what needs to be done to run the city of Minneapolis. For too long Minneapolis has been a one-party town, and whenever a political party, be it Democrat, Republican, or otherwise is freed from the pressure of having to compete for office the result is a political system that serves itself rather than the public. (I’d argue that Sioux Falls was much the same way, except Sioux Falls is smaller and is more or less immune from the problems of a big city. If the trend in its local governance continues along with the amazing population growth around the city, that could change.)

Minneapolis is not well served by one-party rule, and the DFL’s complacency on key issues has made Minnesota as a state slowly slide more and more towards the GOP. As people take a good hard look at Klobuchar’s real record: what she’s actually accomplished rather than what she claims to have accomplished, her current position at the top of the polls may well begin to slide.

UPDATE: In the last graf, I meant to say Minneapolis rather than Minnesota – my mistake.

Politicizing Intelligence

The Democrats are claiming that that there were no ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda based on a Senate Intelligence Committee report. (The text of which can be read here in searchable form.)

I haven’t full read through all the conclusions, and the various minority reports, but the argumentation here seems weak and the gaps have been filled in with the Democrats politicized conclusions. Saddam Hussein did regard Islamic fundamentalism as a threat to his regime, which is why he was trying to buy them off rather than suppress them. We know that officials from al-Qaeda tried to meet with Iraqi officials, and that Iraqi intelligence agent Faruq Hijazi did meet with bin Laden and other al-Qaeda members. This intelligence is not disputed by the report — only by the Democratic member’s response to it.

It does seem that Saddam Hussein did have some contact with al-Qaeda, and that there are still a few unanswered questions involving just to what extent there were connections — however, there was no operational connection between the former Iraqi regime and al-Qaeda — and there have not been any claims that such a thing actually happened.

What the report indicates is the same thing that every report has indicated — the intelligence community was trying to piece together partial information into a coherent whole. The Democrats who are trying to politicize the intelligence process should ask themselves if policymakers should ignore evidence if it’s fragmentary or incomplete. If so, we should shut down the CIA and stop collecting intelligence, as intelligence is always fragmentary and frequently contradictory. Just because two pieces of evidence say different things, it’s hardly sensible for the intelligence community to adopt the evidence that’s most favorable to our enemies. The price of getting things wrong is simply too great.

The intelligence community took the fragmentary evidence they had on Iraq’s WMD programs and terrorist connections and put together the most accurate picture they could at the time. There is no evidence that analysts were pressured into accepting one conclusion or another. There was nothing that made their conclusions out of line — the Clinton Administration had already used a bin Laden-Hussein connection as a justification for a military act against a sovereign country. The idea that the CIA wouldn’t take a look at what they had and come to the same conclusions that they did requires one to assume that the CIA should have had godlike powers over space and time and seen a picture that was completely obscured by the secrecy of the Hussein regime and the fog of war.

The Democrats wish to politicize the intelligence process, and the Republican response to the report makes it clear exactly how much they tried to manipulate the report’s conclusions to favor their political narrative. However, such a standard of proof is dangerous as it will force the intelligence community to become even more risk-averse than they had been previously, and the result of that will be more failures of intelligence and more American lives lost.

Then again, the Democrats have already decided that they’re more interested in playing politics than in defending this country — which is why if they’re allowed to take power the consequences to this nation will be dire.

It’s Not Always About You…

Glenn Reynolds has a great post on the tempest in a teapot over the ABC 9/11 miniseries. Former members of the Clinton Administration are getting their knickers in a twist as the miniseries dramatizes events surrounding failures to assassinate Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

For one, Democrats lapped out Michael Moore’s cheap propaganda and twisting of facts in Fahrenheit 9/11 — they hardly have moral authority to criticize a miniseries that’s far more balanced: it even plays into their narrative that the Republican Congress was more interested in prosecuting Clinton for the Lewinsky scandal than fighting terrorism. I haven’t yet seen the miniseries, but all the reviews I’ve seen of it indicate it’s hardly fawning over Bush’s actions prior to 9/11 either.

Reynolds is right: Clinton’s harping on this issue is politically stupid, as it only invites more investigation into how the Clinton Administration tried to fight terrorism — and that’s not a record to be proud of. Bush had eight months to deal with terrorism, and much of his foreign policy focus was on the possible threat of Chinese supremacy — remember the spy plane incident? That doesn’t excuse his actions, but it does make the Clintonistas charges that everything lays on Bush’s feet seem as silly as they are.

This whole thing is a continued indication of how petty and narcissistic the Clinton Administration was. Even years after leaving office, they still haven’t left the war room mentality. Sandy Berger went so far as to commit a federal crime and destroy valuable evidence to whitewash the Clinton Administration’s record on terrorism. The reflexive way in which the Clinton spin machine has been putting pressure on ABC doesn’t even serve their own interests — but apparently the insecurities of a man who never quite grew up don’t go away even when one is ostensibly supposed to be an elder statesman.

You Can’t Win In A Defensive Posture

Every Republican political strategist must read this excellent editorial by David Hill in The Hill. Hill gets why the GOP is in such trouble politically at the moment, and gives the GOP a chance to change the dynamics of this race. At this point, the GOP is in serious danger of losing the House, and if the Republicans want to avoid the national nightmare of a Speaker Pelosi (*shudder*), they’d be wise to follow his advice:

It’s the responses of non-partisans that deserve our attention. And that’s what has me worried. I would imagine that most independent voters want change and feel that the Democrats are the way to get us headed in a new direction.

The key to understanding all this is the pollsters’ right direction-wrong track question about the nation today. For months now, more than 60 percent of all likely voters have been saying “wrong track” while less than half that many have been responding “right direction.” In short, most Americans, particularly Democrats and independents, believe that the status quo is not working out. These wrong-track Democrats obviously want change, hating George Bush like they do. And the vast majority of independents, even if they don’t hate Bush, are dissatisfied with the direction of the country. Republicans, not surprisingly, are more likely to see things in a more positive light.

If nothing else changes, this portends a scenario in which Republicans lose control of Congress this November. If two of every three voters go into their polling places and cast their votes for change, the Democrats will win if the Republicans are stand-patters. There are Republican strategists who disagree, of course. They say that by moving security issues up the issue agenda we will scare swing voters away from voting for the squishy Democrats that might not protect us from terror. I’m less certain about that conclusion than I am about the desire for change. I say the mood for something different will trump even national security.

I think Hill couldn’t be more right. The American people are rightfully sick of the status quo in Washington. The level of partisan rancor is extreme and Congress has approval ratings that aren’t just in the toilet, but halfway down the sewer pipe. The American electorate is pissed, and while the Democrats have as of yet failed to totally close the deal, there’s no room for complacency at all.

The Republicans are doing a good job on running on security. However, they’re not being nearly as bold on other crucial issues — Mickey Kaus suggests that the Republicans need to get tough on the immigration issue — and he’s exactly right. The GOP leadership in Congress is backing away from the immigration issue, which means that the GOP is backing away from one of their key issues. Enforcing the border would appeal to a wide swath of the American electorate who look at the problems that unchecked illegal immigration has created and want the government to do something to stop it. A guest worker program is nice, but if the GOP can’t be the party of law and order in defending America’s borders, what good are they?

Secondly, the GOP needs a strong economic playbook. They let the Democrats frame the Social Security issue, an issue they could have won if they’d even bothered to fight for it. At this point that’s probably not a viable campaign issue. However, if the GOP would get serious about fighting pork, they’d have a major economic issue working to their advantage. Senator Frist, to his credit, is getting serious about fighting pork, but it needs to be front-and-center in the GOP’s playbook. If that means giving Ted Stevens a public spanking, so be it. The American people are sick of Congress’ fiscal profligacy, and the Republicans need to show that they’re serious about limiting the size and intrusiveness of government.

The Republicans are basically locked in a defensive posture in trying to support the President’s agenda. Yes, the critiques of Bush are way off base, but it is foolish to try to tack against the political winds. Bush isn’t on the ballot this year, and his unpopularity does have some effect on GOP political fortunes, even if it isn’t a large effect. In order to win, the GOP needs to be able to capture a goodly number of voters who think that the President has been doing a poor job and are looking for alternatives.

The GOP is currently playing to the base, and while the Democrats are making a half-asses effort at capturing the center, some effort will always beat none. The Republicans need to present a coherent agenda on more than just security if they want to have a reasonable chance at victory in November. The American people are looking for a change. This election could hinge on what party can offer a better solution for Americas problems. That’s what the GOP did in 1994, and that’s what they can do in this election cycle. Given the stakes of having the most irresponsible political party in recent American history take the reigns of power, the GOP cannot afford to screw this one up. The GOP needs a new Contract with America, and one that protects our borders, strengthens our national security, gives a clear roadmap for victory in Iraq, and cuts the fat from government. If they achieve that, they can win. The question is whether they have the political will to make that happen.

Everyone Ready For A Trainwreck?

As expected, Katherine Harris has won the GOP primary in Florida and will now be beaten senseless by incumbent Senator Bill Nelson. Harris’ campaign has been one disaster after another — Harris simply has absolutely no chance of winning much beyond the Republican base.

Granted, Harris did correctly apply the laws of the state of Florida in 2000, despite the cruel and infantile attacks made against her. However, none of that provides any justification for a campaign that has been ineptly run from the beginning and will invariably lead to a massive defeat. While Harris is the more conservative candidate and Nelson is wrong on many of the key issues of our day, many Republicans will see this candidacy as a lost cause which could perhaps have an effect on other races in the state.

When parties and principles collide, principles should take precedence. However, there is no principle in this race other than Harris’ own political ambitions — ambitions that go against the interests of other Florida Republicans. The voters of Florida will have the final say on all this, but it seems virtually certain that Harris’ candidacy is doomed to defeat. One should just hope that her actions don’t hurt other more viable candidates in Florida.

Why They Don’t Get It, Again…

From The New York Times on the current fall agenda in Congress comes two quotations:

With Congress reconvening Tuesday after an August break, Republicans in the House and Senate say they will focus on Pentagon and domestic security spending bills, port security legislation and measures that would authorize the administration’s terror surveillance program and create military tribunals to try terror suspects.

The Democratic response?

“Every day, people around the country recognize that this is a failed administration,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader. “If Republicans want to spend the whole month on nothing that is relevant to the American people, we are happy to do that.”

Apparently the Democrats think the security of this country is “nothing that is relevant” less than a month after a plot to kill thousands of people was discovered by US, British, and Pakistani authorities.

And the Democrats have the audacity to wonder why they’re widely perceived as the party of weakness on national security issues…

Not Backing Down

Donald Rumsfeld is not backing down from his recent comments about the war to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Rumsfeld strongly criticized the press for their treatment of the war — there were far many more mentions of the negative actions of our troops than there have been recognitions of what they’re actually doing there. If the press were truly offering a balanced perspective on the war, it would be one thing. However, that is simply not the case; the coverage of this war has been shaped in a large part by an anti-military, anti-American agenda. While some of that effect has been due to laziness, much of it is shaped by a worldview that is automatically suspicious of American military power, contemptuous of our troops, and steeped in the ideology of multiculturalism.

Rumsfeld, for all his many faults, recognizes that our military must adapt to a completely new reality. Prior to the transformation doctrine began after the disastrous retreat from Mogadishu, the American military has transformed from a group of disparate and disconnected branches of service focused on stopping Soviet tanks from rushing down the Fulda Gap to an interconnected, integrated, and light force dedicated to stopping the current threat of terrorist groups who don’t follow the old ways of war. This transformative process has earned Secretary Rumsfeld many enemies among those whose bureaucratic turfs are being upended.

At the same time, our military must adapt itself to the types of warfare that we will be fighting throughout the 21st Century. Iraq is a testing ground — future conflicts are quite likely to resemble Iraq more so than conflicts we’ve fought previously. Some of what we have tried have been failures. Some of it has shown that we can fight and win in the battlefield of the 21st Century. The only way we can know for sure is by trying a wide variety of approaches and seeing what ultimately works.

Rumsfeld also recognizes that we’re fighting a war in an age where media has become absolutely pervasive. Technology empowers both us and our enemies more so than ever before: and right now our enemies are winning the media front.

American journalists do not, nor should they, abrogate their responsibilities of citizenship just because they stand in front of a keyboard or camera. Their ability to speak freely comes because of the bravery of the American soldier. A media which uncritically accepts the propaganda of the enemy while being instantly dismissive of our own military is not one which is acting as good journalists or as good citizens. Trust in the media is at one of the lowest points in history, while the military remains the most trusted institution in our society. There is good reason for that.

It is undisputed that Rumsfeld is damaged goods. His reputation, even among some supporters of the war, is greatly tarnished. At the same time, who else has the same level of vision? How many of the accusations leveled against him are the result of 20/20 hindsight and based on one-sided assessments of how this war should be fought. For all we know, adding more troops early on could have engendered even more resentment and led to an even bigger crisis than the current circumstances. The idea that it is absolutely and unequivocally true that Rumsfeld was “incompetent” for not adding more troops, or not keeping the old Iraqi Army in place, or not doing any number of things is not true. We don’t know how those factors would have helped, and it is quite possible some of them could have made things worse.

Rumsfeld understands this war. He understands the threat we face, and he understands the importance of showing absolute resolve in the face of this enemy. The calls for his head may assuage some of his critics, but the arguments that it will change the course of this war seem spurious at best.

Another Pseudo-Scandal Down

The Washington Post has an editorial that declares the Plame affair official old news. With the revelation that there was no organized campaign to leak Plame’s name as part of some sinister conspiracy, the mainstream media is finally catching on to what many blogger have known since the beginning:

It follows that one of the most sensational charges leveled against the Bush White House — that it orchestrated the leak of Ms. Plame’s identity to ruin her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson — is untrue. The partisan clamor that followed the raising of that allegation by Mr. Wilson in the summer of 2003 led to the appointment of a special prosecutor, a costly and prolonged investigation, and the indictment of Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, on charges of perjury. All of that might have been avoided had Mr. Armitage’s identity been known three years ago.

Of course, even Bob Novak had said as much from the very beginning — remember that Novak had said that his source was “no partisan gunslinger” — and that description is a fairly accurate description of Mr. Armitage. Armitage was a frequent opponent of the President’s policies on Iraq, and certainly wasn’t part of some organized conspiracy to discredit or smear Wilson.

Who is ultimately the biggest loser in all this? Once again, the former Ambassador Wilson comes off looking as shady as ever:

Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame’s CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming — falsely, as it turned out — that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush’s closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It’s unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.

At the risk of saying I told you so, I told you so. And so did nearly everyone else in the blogosphere who actually took the time and effort to analyze Wilson’s ever-shifting claims. The excessively partisan press smelled blood in the water and created a feeding frenzy only to find less and less the more they thrashed. You had The New York Times indignantly implicating the Bush White House in some sort of sinister conspiracy. You had unhinged liberal bloggers accusing Karl Rove of nothing less than treason. This was supposed to be the scandal that would finally take down the President — and like al-Qaaqaa, the Downing Street Memos, Bush supposedly going AWOL, Cheney’s energy task force, and the rest, Wilson’s attempts to take down the Bush Administration will soon be consigned to the memory of only the most feverish detractors of the Administration.

Bush may not be bulletproof, but the silliness of all these blatantly partisan attempts at taking Bush down show how the Washington Democratic establishment and the left wing of the blogosphere seem infinitely more interested in taking down the President than they do in winning the war with Islamic extremism.