MICKEY KAUS: Who killed DREAM? The Tea Party Did. “Not only had they threatened establishment Republicans with primary opposition, but they had actually beaten one … two … three of them. Nothing like fresh heads on pikes to, er, reinforce a persuasive (to my mind) policy argument. Score one for losing Delaware Tea Partier Christine O’Donnell, who knocked off establishment pick Rep. Mike Castle (who voted for DREAM) in the GOP primary. Even score one for Alaskan Joe Miller. He probably alienated Republican Lisa Murkowski by beating her in the primary, and ultimately she won reelection anyway as a write-in. But that’s just one lost Senate vote. By my count, Miller’s primary coup may have helped gain around ten votes by terrifying GOP incumbents who might otherwise have been tempted by the prospect of a feel-good, bipartisan, MSM-approved pro-DREAM stand.”
Archive for 2010
December 19, 2010
BREAKING THROUGH THE GREAT RADIO BLOCKADE: “The Local Community Radio Act, a bill to allow more low-power stations onto the FM band, has just passed the Senate. As regular Reason readers know, the National Association of Broadcasters was working overtime to block the bill.” Like I said, so far this whole lame-duck session is looking a lot better than I expected. . . .
UPDATE: D’oh! Somebody sent this to me and I didn’t notice the date. Old news. But hey, with all the drone attacks and tax-cut extensions, maybe the Dems would poll better now!
NOW THAT DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL HAS BEEN REPEALED, this column is relevant in a new way.
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SO AS FAR AS I’M CONCERNED, this whole lame-duck Congress thing worked out pretty well.
Tax-rate extensions passed. Good.
Omnibus Pork Bill failed. Good.
DREAM Act failed. Good.
Miserable food “safety” bill failed. Good.
DADT repeal passed. Good.
I hope this foreshadows how things will go in the next Congress. . . .
MICHAEL BARONE: Reid And Pelosi Finally Get Mugged By Public Opinion.
It is a source of continuing fascination for me to watch the interaction between public opinion, as measured in polls and election results, and the actions of members of Congress, elected in one political environment and looking in most cases to be re-elected in one that may be quite different.
Eleven months ago, after the Massachusetts Senate election, I was convinced that Democrats could not jam their health care bill through because voters had so clearly demanded they not do so. But Pelosi proved more determined and resourceful than I had imagined, and found enough House Democrats who were willing to risk electoral defeat to achieve what Democrats proclaimed was an historic accomplishment.
Pelosi and Obama predicted that Obamacare would become more popular as voters learned more about it. Those predictions were based on the theory that in times of economic distress Americans would be more supportive of or amenable to big government policies.
That theory has been disproved about as conclusively as any theory can be in the real world, and most of the Democrats who provided the key votes for Obamacare were defeated on Election Day.
Democratic congressional leaders did take note of the unpopularity of their policies when they chose not to pass budget resolutions last spring. Presumably they did so because they would have had a hard time rounding up the votes for the high spending and large deficits that would have ensued.
But had the House and Senate passed a budget resolution, Democrats might have been able to pass their preferred tax policy, raising taxes on high earners, under the budget reconciliation process. So the House vote Thursday night was a delayed consequence of the public’s long-apparent rejection of their policies.
Candidate Obama told Joe the Plumber that he wanted to “spread the wealth around.” November’s vote, presaged by more than a year of polls, was, as political scientist James Ceasar has written, “the Great Repudiation” of that policy.
Read the whole thing.
HOPE AND CHANGE: Jim Bennett emails:
So according to TNR, the new favorite reading among the young Chinese elite are Leo Strauss and the pro-nazi Carl Schmitt.
People have been comparing China to pre-World War 1 Germany for some time now. Looks like they’re going to skip the spiked-helmet stage and cut straight to the chase. Groovy.
But, no worries. We’ve got Barack Obama on the job.
Nobody tell Tom Friedman about this.
GEORGE WILL: The political fantasyland of the ‘No Labels’ movement. Why are they against labels? Because if they were labeled accurately, no one would listen to them . . . .
December 18, 2010
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Also, A sale on LEGOs.
TWISTING THE KNIFE: Assange accuser says he was the “worst sex ever.” “Not only had it been the world’s worst screw, it had also been violent.”
I THINK THIS WILL BECOME A TREND: Toby Buckell’s new feature.
REMEMBERING Blake Edwards.
CHANGE: Burr, Ensign back Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal. It passed 65-31.
Meanwhile, a reader — a retired Navy JAG officer — emails:
For 17 years colleges and universities have used Bill Clinton’s incoherent Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell law (which they disingenuously called a “military policy”) to attempt to keep recruiters off undergraduate and graduate campuses, and stymie any efforts to establish ROTC programs. Now that the law will be undone when the President puts pen to paper, where are all the announcements from these schools that the military is welcome, that they are seeking to have ROTC programs, that they will be encouraging military service of their graduates? Perhaps being a weekend and the holidays it is too soon to expect such announcements, but does anyone seriously think such a change will be forthcoming?
The DADT law was convenient pretense and cover for those who loathe the military and always have. Will they now change their ways? Or will some new “principled” basis for their bigotry (e.g., Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo, lack of natural fibers in uniforms, etc.) now be offered up to maintain their anti-military practices and rhetoric?
I’m going with the natural-fibers thing. But maybe I’ll be wrong. Columbia certainly has the room for a new ROTC center now . . . .
Some related thoughts here.
UPDATE: Wow, that was fast: Harvard, Yale moving on ROTC. “Some top universities moved quickly Saturday to respond to the vote repealing the ban on gays in the military, and those who don’t restore their ROTC programs in the wake of the vote are likely to face immediate pressure on the issue.”
Related: Thoughts from Dale Carpenter. I agree that the best thing about this is that it passed legislatively, with bipartisan support.
And I have to quote Michael Nehring one more time: “Just think, this week Barack Obama adopted Bush’s signature economic policy and ‘refudiated’ Clinton’s signature military policy.” Hope and Change!
MORE: Credit where credit’s due — Nehring writes: “Humbled as I am, I have to give credit where it’s due–that quote originated with DrewMTips.” So noted!
DAN MITCHELL: Jay Leno, Al Qaeda, and the War Against Christmas. Heh.
POLIWOOD: The Most Untruthful Movie of the Year.
MICHAEL S. MALONE: Why Can’t We Do Big Things Any More?
There was a time – was it just a generation ago? – when Americans were legendary for doing vast, seemingly superhuman, projects: the Interstate Highway System, the Apollo Missions, Hoover Dam, the Manhattan Project, the Normandy invasion, the Empire State Building, Social Security.
What happened? Today we look at these achievements, much as Dark Age peasants looked on the mighty works of the Roman Era, feeling like some golden age has passed when giants walked the Earth. Even when we can still see the aged survivors of that era sunning themselves outside the local convalescent home – or sitting down with us for family holiday dinner – it’s hard not believe that there was once something larger-than-life about them that they failed to pass on to us. . . . We no longer build the world’s tallest buildings – other countries do. We no longer reaching towards the moon – other countries are. And when we do attempt something big – universal health care, alternative energy, improved educational standards, mass transportation – the initiative inevitably snarls up in bad planning, corruption, political pay-offs, lack of leadership, impracticality and just sheer incompetence. The comparatively tiny Lincoln Administration managed to win the Civil War, open up the Great Plains through the Homestead Act, and kick off construction of the transcontinental railroad. . .all in four years.
Back then we had a leadership class that wanted America to be successful.
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN WE’D BE LAUNCHING FURIOUS AND RELENTLESS MISSILE ATTACKS INTO PAKISTAN: And they were right! More here.
UPDATE: Reader Ray Van Dune emails:
The real reason we are starting to win in Afghanistan is that Obama has solved that huge problem Bush always had as CIC – every time we struck at the terrorists, we only created more of them!? Man, that was so futile, but dumb ole W just kept doing it, just because he didn’t know any better.
Now, in spite of pushing ahead with both of Bush’s surges, and turning the drones loose in Pakistan, no less, you never hear about that happening anymore! This guy Obama is clearly a military genius.
He’s the lightbringer. It’s just that sometimes it’s the light of an incoming Hellfire missile.
STEPHEN GREEN: Obama’s not a Great Compromiser, he just got beat.
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POLITIFACT’S BIGGEST LIE: “PolitiFact exists largely as an attempt to deligitimize certain political opinions. We now know which political opinion most bothered the establishment in 2010. That is a valuable service to everyone.”