Politics Blog

Pat Buchanan says that middle America is becoming radicalized against leftist elites:

There are other signs that America’s patiencewith what it sees as anti-Americanism, from Hollywood and the Big Media, is running out.

Legendary liberal talk-show host Phil Donahue was booed and hooted at the commencement at North Carolina State. The New York Times’ Chris Hedges was shouted down and had the microphone plug pulled on his antiwar tirade to the graduates and their families at the Rockford College commencement in Illinois.

Two decades ago, singer Anita Bryant lost her contract as the voice of Florida orange juice for leading an anti-gay rights campaign in Miami. Liberals said the former Miss Oklahoma had it coming. But now that actor Danny Glover has been cashiered as the public voice of MCI, after signing an ad supporting Fidel Castro, the Left is no longer laughing. It is wailing and whining about “a new McCarthyism.”

After Gen. Tommy Franks’ Centcom put out its deck of cards of Iraqi war criminals, Newsmax.com decided to created its own deck of cards: “The United Nations of Weasels.” Featured are Jacques Chirac as ace of spades, Martin Sheen as the ace of hearts, and Dan Rather, Barbra Streisand and Peter Arnett. The deck is one of the hottest sellers on the Internet.

There are other signs Americans are no longer willing to hide their loathing of the Left. That egg on the face of editor Howell Raines of the mighty New York Times, after having been bamboozled and snookered by affirmative action poster boy Jayson Blair, has most of America laughing.

When feminist Martha Burk declared she would break the all-male tradition at Augusta National Golf Club by leading a boycott of sponsors of the Master’s tournament, and The New York Times took it up as the civil rights cause du jour, Middle America rallied behind Augusta president “Hootie” Johnson. Hootie dissed Martha, ignored her boycott and protests, and carried off the Masters in style.

When a Republican governor took down the Confederate battle flag from South Carolina’s state capitol and a Democratic governor cut a midnight deal to strip a replica of the battle flag from the Georgia state flag, both pols saw their careers terminated by voters. Children in the South now defy school edicts that forbid them from carrying or wearing replicas of the battle flag. In Pennsylvania, a schoolteacher has risked dismissal rather than take off the Christian cross she was wearing.

In Montgomery, Ala., a 5,600-pound granite stone, with the Ten Commandments chiseled on it, sits still in the rotunda of the state judicial building in defiance of court orders. The chief judge of the Alabama Supreme Court, who put it there, refuses to remove it.

There is a spirit of rebellion in Middle America, sustained by voices on talk radio, talk TV and the Internet, where the cultural hegemony of the American elite simply does not extend.

In the ’60s, student radicals, citing Marcuse’s dictum that the Right has no rights, shouted down conservatives. Now that these former students occupy the seats of cultural power in America, they seem not to like the new rebellion. What goes around comes around.

Following Adam Clymer’s surprisingly unbiased look at the GOP’s anticipation of majority status, he’s got a follow-up piece on the incoherence of the Democrats:

As Peter Hart, a veteran Democratic pollster, put it: “My biggest problem with the Democratic Party is we think tactically and not strategically - one election at a time.” Mr. Hart said, “We take the issue we can exploit, but we don’t take the party and say this is what we are about.”

There’s a reason for that, of course. Democrats think tactically because they have to. When Democrats tell voters “what they’re about,” they get swept out of office in mammoth landslides.

Andrew E. Busch says in NRO that the proper test of a nation is not in its friends, but in its enemies:

As we prepare to pay our respects to those who have fallen in the foreign wars of the United States, it is useful to recall that they fell, uniformly, at the hand of tyrants, thugs, and usurpers.

Who has the United States counted as its enemies? A British monarch who systematically sought to deprive Americans of their natural rights, including consent of the governed. The Barbary Coast pirates. A Mexican dictator, Santa Anna, whose destruction of the free Mexican Constitution of 1824 provoked the Texan revolution, which itself ultimately led through a chain of events to the war of 1846-48. A decrepit Spanish empire that held Cuba and the Philippines through sheer brutality. The forces of German/Austrian militarism in Europe. Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo. The Soviet dictatorship in the Cold War. Kim Il-Sung, and Mao Tse-Tung in Korea. The forces of Leninist terror from Vietnam to Central America to Grenada. The Khmer Rouge. Muammar Qaddafi and the Ayatollah Khomeini. The ethnic cleansers of Greater Serbia. The Taliban. Saddam Hussein, once to free Kuwait and once to free Iraq itself.

A liberal columnist, writing for a liberal newspaper, claims that the liberal media doesn’t exist. Ignoring the paradox of denying his own existence, Jonathan Smaby says:

Imagine what Mr. Bush’s approval ratings would be if the American people got a daily dose of topics such as: Why haven’t we found Osama bin Laden? Or Saddam Hussein? If we are winning the war on terrorism, why is al-Qaeda successfully regrouping? Where are Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction? Did the president mislead us about why we invaded Iraq?

Where on earth, indeed, can the American people go to “get a daily dose of such topics?” Only CNN. And the New York Times. And Peter Jennings. And Dan Rather. And 60 Minutes…

The American people have gotten their daily dose, alright. They just think it’s bad medicine.

Just how deep is the “diversity” rabbit hole at the NY Times?

On CNN’s Inside Politics today, Bill Schneider pointed to a new poll showing how 9/11 has affected women:

WOODRUFF: Bill, first of all, what sort of lasting impact are you finding 9/11 has had on public opinion now that we are almost two years later?

WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, Judy, one word. And that word is security.

In the latest CNN/”TIME” poll, nearly two-thirds of Americans say they’re more worried about national security after 9/11. And that is especially true for women; 59 percent of men and 71 percent of women say they’re more worried about national security. Among moms, women with children under 18, the figure is even higher; 76 percent say they’re more worried about security.

The impact on women became even clearer when we asked, which do you worry about more, another terrorist attack or an economic downturn? Men are more worried about an economic downturn. Women tend to be more worried about another terrorist attack. The issue of physical security has clearly taken hold among women.

WOODRUFF: So, Bill, has that had a political effect, though?

SCHNEIDER: Well, it does seem to have increased the appeal of the Republican Party to women voters.

Republicans, you know, have been called the daddy party. Well, sure enough, men have a more favorable opinion of Republicans than Democrats. But the opposite is no longer true for women. Women now have an equally favorable view of both parties. Republicans are the party that offers to protect them and their kids.

WOODRUFF: And, Bill, are there specific issues that show the effects of 9/11?

SCHNEIDER: Here’s one: gun control. Gun control advocates are now on the defensive. And here’s why. CNN and “TIME” asked Americans whether they favored stricter gun control laws back in January of 2000, long before 9/11. And we asked it again last week. Among men, there’s been no shift at all. They have the same percentage; 48 percent say they support stricter gun control laws. But take a look at the figures among women. Among women, support for stricter gun laws has fallen sharply, from 69 percent in 2000 to 55 percent now; 9/11 has tilted the political advantage toward the gun lobby. Apparently, guns make people feel now more secure, especially women – Judy.

Time magazine now has an article on the CNN/Time poll I mentioned below. Excerpt:

Swing voters have always been elusive creatures, changing shape from election to election. The profile and assumptions about them in one contest seldom apply to the next one. This axiom is proving true again with that most-talked-about slice of American political demography: the Soccer Mom. Since 9/11, polls suggest she has morphed into Security Mom - and that development is frightening to Democrats, who have come to count on women to win elections. She used to say she would never allow a gun in her house, but now she feels better if her airline pilot has one. She wanted a nuclear freeze in the 1980s and was a deficit hawk in the 1990s, but she now believes the Pentagon should have whatever it wants. Her civil liberties seem less important than they used to, especially compared with keeping her children safe. She’s someone, in short, like Debbie Creighton, a 34-year-old Santee, Calif., mother of two who voted for Bill Clinton twice and used to choose the candidates who were most liberal on abortion and welfare. “Since 9/11,” Creighton says, “all I want in a President is a person who is strong.”

Read the rest. The relevant poll numbers are on page 3.

As I’ve noted before, Teresa Heinz (Kerry) is going to be a big story after her husband wins the Democratic presidential nomination. William Powers has the latest on Teresa’s potential impact on the 2004 campaign:

Where would we be without Teresa Heinz? The fantastically rich, wildly candid wife of Sen. John Kerry is the only compelling figure so far in a presidential race that otherwise threatens to be devoid of color, drama, and really chewable stories.

…

It all began about a year ago, when a joint profile of the Kerrys appeared one Sunday on the front of The Washington Post’s Style section. The piece, by Mark Leibovich, opened with an unforgettable scene in which the senator and his wife are having a spat in their Georgetown living room, right in front of the reporter. The spat is about whether Teresa Heinz needs to mend fences with Sen. Rick Santorum, who now occupies the seat of her late husband, John Heinz, and at some point so offended her (the reasons are not given) that she stopped speaking to him. The scene closes with this piquant moment of connubial strife:

“No, I don’t want to get together with him, John,” she snaps. “I don’t have to do certain things.”

“Well.”

“OK? I don’t have to be that politic.”

As the rest of the piece made clear, this could actually be Heinz’s motto. I don’t have to be that politic. Several paragraphs later, Kerry is claiming he’s no longer haunted by bad dreams about his Vietnam War experiences: “I don’t think I’ve had a nightmare in a long time,” he tells the reporter. Your standard-issue political spouse would nod empathetically and let that statement lie.

“But then,” writes Leibovich, “Heinz begins to mimic Kerry having a Vietnam nightmare. ‘Down! Down, down!’ she yells, patting her hands down on her auburn hair. ‘I haven’t gotten slapped yet,’ she says. ‘But there were times when I thought I might get throttled.’ “

When Kerry tries to avoid a question about whether he’s been in therapy, Heinz reveals that he has.

And then there’s Elle magazine’s much-anticipated story on Teresa (the juicy stuff is at the end):

“Every time John Kerry goes to bed with his wife, it’s a fundraiser,” quipped conservative columnist Tony Blankley, quoting an anonymoussource.

Teresa’s ready for the assault. “Oh, that was wonderful what’s-his-name,” she says. “He could have made the point in a less coarse way. But that doesn’t bug me.” If people want to cast aspersions, “that’s their problem.”

Okay, but does she have a prenup?

“Everybody has a prenup. You have to have a prenup. You’ve got three kids with somebody else, you’ve got to have a prenup. You could be as generous or as sensitive as you want. But you have to have a prenup.” She pauses. “Here, have more. Chicken’s not bad for you.”

…

Botox? Of course she’s had a few treatments. “In fact, I need another one. Soon

As I’ve noted before, the attacks in Saudi Arabia and Morocco aren’t signs of Al Qaeda’s strength; they’re signs of its increasing weakness. The US News and World Report has a behind-the-scenes look at how Al Qaeda is unravelling:

With all the headlines about the latest attacks and warnings, however, it is easy to miss the amount of damage America’s terrorist hunters have inflicted on bin Laden’s ragtag army.

…

A windfall of intelligence has led to a newer, more profound understanding of bin Laden’s secret network, intelligence officials say. They have built up dossiers on his followers from a scant few hundred before 9/11 to over 3,000 today. They have identified the core group’s sworn membership, now thought to number only 180 true believers. And bin Laden’s personal fortune, investigators say, is all but gone.

There’s more. The investigators have unearthed a secret history of al Qaeda, discovering documents in bin Laden’s own hand, along with records identifying donors to the terrorist group. They have forced captured operatives to help target their comrades–even listening in as a terrorist made a phone call that led to the assassination of a top al Qaeda leader.

…

Al Qaeda’s wounds run deep. Over half of its key operational leaders are out of action, officials tell U.S. News. Its top leaders are increasingly isolated and on the run. Al Qaeda’s Afghan sanctuary is largely gone. Its military commander is dead. Its chief of operations sits in prison, as do some 3,000 associates around the world. In the field, every attempt at communication now puts operatives at risk. The organization’s once bountiful finances, meanwhile, have become precarious. One recent intercept revealed a terrorist pleading for $80, sources say.

Now we need to crown it all by catching/killing Bin Laden.

Be sure to watch Booknotes on C-SPAN tonight at 11 PM Eastern. Anne Applebaum talks about her book Gulag: A History, which she wrote in part to remind American leftists, who still buy Soviet memorabilia, just how evil the Soviet Union was.