Mary Landrieu and the Lousiania Purchase

As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, on Saturday night (yet another example of fantastic legislative transparency) the Senate voted to open debate on Sen. Reid’s health care bill by a margin of 60-39. Several moderate Democrats had expressed reservations about the bill, including Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, and Joe Lieberman (yes, technically an independent, but who caucuses) with the Democrats. They all ended up voting to open debate while remaining wishy-washy on their final vote, but the vote of Sen. Mary Landrieu is one that deserves further consideration.

Sen. Landrieu is one of those red state Democrats who had expressed reservations about the bill’s cost and scope. Yet on Saturday she shrugged off those concerns and voted to bring the bill to the floor. One factor that may have contributed to her decision is a provision of the bill that will send $100 million to her home state of Louisiana in dementedly arcane legalese that doesn’t specifically name Louisiana but offers conditions for which only Louisiana qualifies.

It sure seems like a political buy-off, doesn’t it? The move was sarcastically dubbed the “Louisiana Purchase,” and on the surface, I don’t think a more apt name could have been chosen. Sen. Landrieu was keenly aware of the appearance of impropriety and as she took the Senate floor to announce her vote, said she wouldn’t be defensive. But she didn’t help her cause when she said, “And it’s not a $100 million fix. It’s a $300 million fix.”

Is this the kind of government we can be proud of? Is this the way we want sweeping health care upheaval enacted? Can reform supporters simply shrug this off as “the ends justify the means” and “just politics as usual”? Because I can’t. I don’t care how many times earmarks or political windfalls have been helpfully inserted into legislation by whatever party in the past. On an issue that concerns 1/6 of the American economy, it’s unacceptable to me to have Senators put their votes up for auction with the taxpayers’ money, of which Dana Milbank says we’ll surely see more examples. On a $20 million farm bill it’s egregious; on a $1 trillion perpetual entitlement program it borders on criminality.

Landrieu can excuse herself all she wants, and supporters can equivocate until the end of time. I have no faith now that Landrieu will act on her supposed concerns with the bill and will approve whatever comes through to the final vote simply so she can score some money and political capital at home. With what seems to be an obvious payoff, she’s shown what kind of politician she is – a typical one.

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Controversy deepens over leaked global warming e-mails

The debate over the causes and severity of climate change was thrown into disarray over the weekend as a series of internal e-mails from the East Anglia Climate Research Center were released by hackers to the Internet. The e-mails, confirmed to be genuine by the CRU, show a definite hostility toward global warming skeptics accompanied by a desire to suppress opposing views in peer-reviewed journals and intimidating foes into silence. Consider these quotes:

In one e-mail, the center’s director, Phil Jones, writes Pennsylvania State University’s Michael E. Mann and questions whether the work of academics that question the link between human activities and global warming deserve to make it into the prestigious IPCC report, which represents the global consensus view on climate science.

“I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report,” Jones writes. “Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

In another, Jones and Mann discuss how they can pressure an academic journal not to accept the work of climate skeptics with whom they disagree. “Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal,” Mann writes.

“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor,” Jones replies.

There’s even some evidence that researchers fudged some data to hide a decline in global temperatures, investigated further by Anthony Watts. Does any of this seem like the scientific method to you, where data is used to test hypotheses instead of data being cherry-picked to support pet theories? Where challenges to held orthodoxy isn’t brushed off with annoyance but held as a key component of scientific scrutiny?

East Anglia CRU was one of the research agencies advising the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which three years ago said the evidence was unequivocal that global warming is real and that man is undoubtedly the cause, opening the door for a whole host of governmental power grabs and demonization of industry in the name of environmental concern. You can see why these e-mails are at the very least embarrassing and damaging to the scientific credibility of an important climate research center.

The controversy will not be going away anytime soon, either. Sen. James Inhofe told a morning show that he’ll call for an investigation of the scandal, pointing out that he was warning about the cooking of the books four or five years ago when it came to global warming. Inhofe repeated the comments to Ed Morrissey, and he seems serious about concerns about the nexus between the UN, the IPCC, and East Anglia CRU.

Lost in all of this are the real scientific merits of the climate change debate. With solar activity at a minimum and global temperatures in a true state of flux, it’s undoubtedly important that humans understand the climate and the ways that humanity has an impact – as well as the ways that it doesn’t. Injecting politics into science is an age-old human habit (just ask Galileo), but the practice becomes dangerous when applied to potential government regulation and taxation of vast swathes of human economic activity.

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Giuliani may run for Senate instead of NY gov

The New York Daily News is reporting that after months of speculation, former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani will not run for governor of New York, but instead run in 2010 for the Senate seat currently occupied by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. Further speculation postulates that he’d use that as a stepping-stone to run for the GOP Presidential nomination in 2012, but I think that ship has sailed already.

With Giuliani out of the race, the leading GOP candidate is little known Rep. Rick Lazio, who at this point would likely lose to the Democratic frontrunner Andrew Cuomo, although current NY Gov. David Paterson has sworn to run after railing against White House insinuations that he drop out.

Giuliani is polling better against Gillibrand than Cuomo, but running for Senate just makes more sense to me on a gut level for some reason. The article insinuates that Giuliani feels that he would be able to make an impact as governor, though I’m not sure what kind of immediate impact he’d make as a Senator – beyond galvanizing moderate and centrist support for a Republican message of fiscal responsibility and strong national defense and dispelling any notions that moderates aren’t welcome in the Republican Party.

Social conservatives may have issue with Giuliani’s stands on abortion and gay rights – quite frankly, I don’t, and disagreement on those issues shouldn’t overshadow Giuliani’s strength in other policy areas, his appeal and his effectiveness as an executive. Since I live in Ohio I have absolutely no voting influence whatsoever on the Senate and governor’s races in the Empire State. Still, I think this would be a great move for Giuliani and the New York GOP, but it’s all supposition at this point anyway.

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Jesse Jackson: You can’t be black and vote against health care

Ugly racial politics were on full display yesterday when Rev. Jesse Jackson spoke to a reception held by the Congressional Black Caucus. Long a racial demagogue, Jackson used the occasion to call out a black congressman who voted against Pelosi’s health care bill. Via the Hill:

“We even have blacks voting against the healthcare bill from Alabama,” Jackson said at a reception Wednesday night. “You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.”

Jackson didn’t mention him by name, but it was clear he was talking about Rep. Artur Davis of Alabama. Davis, a Democrat, is one of the more conservative members of the CBC and is running for governor of Alabama. He stayed classy and had this to say:

One of the reasons that I like and admire Rev. Jesse Jackson is that 21 years ago he inspired the idea that a black politician would not be judged simply as a black leader,” Davis’s statement said. “The best way to honor Rev. Jackson’s legacy is to decline to engage in an argument with him that begins and ends with race.”

I don’t know what’s worse – Jackson’s statement or the coy messages of approving appreciation Congressional Black Caucus gave afterwards. Jackson later tried to ridiculously claim that he wasn’t saying black lawmakers should vote a certain way, just that a healthcare bill would help Davis’ home state of Alabama. In other words, don’t listen to what I said, listen to what I said I said.

This is just another despicable episode of racial identity politics rearing its head. I call BS on Jackson’s equivocation of his remark and the shrugs of his supporters. Conservative blacks are routinely roasted for holding right-of-center political views or voting Republican. Just look at how Condoleezza Rice, Michael Steele, Clarence Thomas and numerous others are treated as token blacks, race traitors and sell-outs.

When Jackson says he doesn’t think black lawmakers should vote a certain way, I quite frankly don’t believe him. According to some people, a person’s political outlook and voting patterns should be a direct result of the hue of their pigmentation. It’s bitterly divisive and moves us farther away from a color-blind society where we are judged by the content of our character and the merits of our ideas alone.

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Reid’s Senate health care bill has arrived

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid finally unveiled his health care reform bill today, which weighs in at over 2,000 pages and has been scored by the CBO at a cost of $849 billion. Reid bragged the Senate plan would save $127 billion over 10 years – that’s great, but it also happens to only offset one month of our current deficit spending. Fantastic savings there.

Reid hopes to have a vote to start debate as early as Saturday as the mad dash to ram through another massive piece of legislation commences. Sen. Tom Coburn has pledged to have the bill read aloud, which will no doubt cause delay and inject a needed measure of deliberation in a process that seems designed to produce any signed bill as quickly as possible, no matter what’s in it.

With such a huge mass of text, it’s going to take time to parse out the positive spin and find out exactly what’s entailed in Reid’s plan. It boasts a public option and health insurance exchanges, and promises to subsidize the health insurance of families making up to $88,000 a year. Does it have an individual mandate? Does it have penalties for those who don’t pay in?

It will be paid for by cuts on Medicare spending that either won’t actually materialize or will prove disastrous to seniors if truly enacted. What will definitely materialize are the new taxes on healthcare industries and increased taxes for wealthier Americans. This makes the favorable scoring by the CBO possible, as well as a lack of the $200 billion Medicare “doctor fix” that was hidden in the House bill and failed to pass in the Senate.

Moderate Democratic Senators like Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu are already balking at the cost of the bill, though they may still vote to open debate on the bill this weekend. I remain unimpressed with any method that tackles the much-needed issue of health care reform which requires a massive government top-down all-or-nothing approach. There’s a responsible and judicious way to do this, and pushing through legislation that’s longer than War and Peace in the shortest amount of time possible isn’t it.

One last thought – when even the Chinese (who hold a large amount of our debt) are getting skittish over the cost of a Congressional health care reform bill, you may want to take notice. A parting quote from CNBC’s Andrew Busch:

As you may have read, the Chinese grilled OMB director Peter Orzag [sic] on the impact that the health care bill would have on the US fiscal position. As I have warned, the passing of the current bill by Congress is a negative for the US dollar and may trigger a re-evaluation of Chinese US Treasury purchases.

Fantastic.

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National debt now over $12 trillion

Sobering news from the Treasury Department today as the nation learns it’s in the hole to the tune of over $12 trillion. My share ($38,974.34) is just a bit less than my yearly salary as a microbiology med tech, but doesn’t cover the share of my wife or daughter either. Here’s some more numbers from the CBS article:

This latest milestone in the ever-rising journey of the National Debt comes less than eight months after it hit $11 trillion for the first time. The latest high-point is not unexpected, considering the federal deficit for the just-ended 2009 fiscal year hit an all-time high at $1.42-trillion – more than triple the previous year’s record high.

…The National Debt has increased about $1.6 trillion on Mr. Obama’s watch, though less than $4.9 trillion run up during the presidency of George W. Bush.

But the White House budget review issued in August projects that by the end of the current fiscal year on Sept 30th, the National Debt could top $14 trillion.

It gets worse. The same document projects that by the end of the decade, the National Debt will hit $24.5 trillion — exceeding the Gross Domestic Product projected for 2019 of $22.8 trillion.

The national debt is a product of multiple administrations going back decades. It would be grossly unfair to lay all the blame on the Obama administration, but consider this – in eight months (all on Obama’s watch) we have added $1 trillion to the debt – in other words, we’ve rung up 8.3% of it in less than a year. Obama has added less than Bush did – but he’s already added in less than a year more than a fourth of the amount of Bush’s share over 8 years.

Is it unfair to lay all the blame on Obama? You bet it is. But what’s not unfair is to recognize the absolutely wrong direction the nation is headed down fiscally. Instead of tightening the belt, the government is providing bailouts and stimulus packages, and instead of slashing services, government is one of the few sectors of job growth.

You don’t borrow and spend your way back to prosperity, and you sure as hell don’t borrow and spend your way out of debt. Yet that’s what we’re being told is absolutely necessary to stave off further economic hardships, measures that to my viewing look to be mostly overinflated and ineffectual. Instead of cutting back the budget in lieu of this mammoth debt load, Congress is hell-bent on pushing through another trillion-dollar entitlement program.

On top of this, trial balloons are being floated on the inevitability of tax hikes. A President of either party will no doubt be forced to raise taxes to pay for the kinds of excesses the government is engaged in. Yet the Obama administration wants to have it both ways – massive spending followed by economically damaging tax increases that will necessary to correct for our politicians’ lack of fiscal discipline.

I have little doubt that we’ll all see tax increases, not just those evil rich people making over $250,000 that Candidate Obama promised would be the only ones to pay. The Bush tax cuts will be allowed to expire, raising rates across the board while other “revenue-producing” measures are considered. It’s unrealistic to think of further tax cuts right now, but the least the government could do is cut back and slow the rate of growth.

Instead, we’re seeing massive expansion of federal bureaucracy. Administrations of both parties contributed to this problem, but rather than steering a responsible way out, the current administration is making the problem even worse.

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Stupak sticks to his guns on abortion amendment

Rep. Bart Stupak doubled down today on his strong stance against federal funding of abortion in the health care reform effort. He pledged that if any attempt is made to water down the language of his amendment or to remove it entirely, a tactic that was suggested by Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and White House political advisor David Axelrod, Stupak would vote against the bill along with 10 to 20 other Democrats.

Stupak’s amendment bars federal subsidies from going to any insurance provider on the Pelosi health care bill’s exchanges that pays for abortion coverage. It’s a variation of the decades-old Hyde amendment, which prevents abortion coverage under Medicare and in military hospitals. All the new Stupak amendment does is continue the status quo of keeping taxpayer money from funding abortions.

Yet stringent abortion-rights believers see the Stupak amendment as a direct assault on a woman’s right to choose. They’re missing that a woman will still have the right to choose an abortion, but the taxpayers won’t be forced to pay for it. Even still, harsh invective is being thrown Stupak’s way, and on some level you have to give him credit for standing by his beliefs on an amendment that passed legally in the House of Representatives.

Regardless of your beliefs on abortion, I would hope the wrong would be recognized of telling the millions of Americans who have moral or ethical issues with abortion that their tax dollars (which they can’t “choose” to not pay) will be used to perform medical procedures against which they have strong beliefs. Roe isn’t being overturned by the Stupak amendment, and private insurers will continue to offer abortion coverage as they do currently, just without federal subsidies supporting them. But it’s amazing to me that the entire Democratic health care reform effort is being jeopardized by those who believe that under no circumstance can any restriction be placed on tax money going for abortions.

Does Stupak’s warning carry weight? 10 to 20 Democrats switching votes might not sound like a lot, but consider the tiny 5-vote margin of victory claimed by Pelosi a week ago in the middle of the night. A 10-vote swing against would kill the bill, but pressure would undoubtedly be brought hard against Blue Dog Democrats who were previously assured by their leadership they could vote “no” and did so.

I would still expect some effort to be made to water down Stupak’s language, and after publicly sticking his neck out like this, I believe Stupak would stand by his pledge to vote against the bill. To do otherwise would be to prove him an opportunistic liar, but Rep. Stupak is a politician, so anything is possible. It does throw yet another complication into an already murky health care debate and sets up more internecine fighting on Capitol Hill.

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Gallup shock: Health coverage not gov’t responsibility

An astounding Gallup poll came out today that states that a majority of Americans (50%-47%) now believe the government shouldn’t be responsible for making sure everyone has health insurance. That’s amazing in and of itself, but when you look at the trend it’s simply astonishing. Just three years ago in 2006, the split was 69% in favor and 28% against. That’s a 44-point swing against governmental involvement in a fairly short amount of time.

Secondarily, but just as important, the percentage of Americans who want to maintain the current system based on private insurance has shot to a recent high of 61%. The majority have always wanted to keep it rather than replace it with a government system, but it’s only recently that the gap has widened so dramatically.

More than likely, as Ed Morrissey states, the reason the American populace has reversed its stand on federal mandated coverage is the high cost involved and the massive governmental bureaucracy and intrusion it entails. The bills being pushed now are quite simply awful, and their numerous shortcomings are recognized by conservatives, independents, and free-thinking liberals alike. There’s a responsible way to advance the laudable goal of health care reform, but a gargantuan all-or-nothing government program isn’t the way to do it.

Congressional Democrats, are you listening? The American people don’t want what you’re selling. We supposedly have a democracy, so it’s time to read the writing on the wall and change direction in the debate over health care reform. Tackling costs and helping those who can’t get insurance is worth looking at, but the big-government nanny-state approach we’ve seen so far isn’t the way to go about it.

Will they listen? I sort of doubt it. What’s being pursued on Capitol Hill isn’t a pragmatic and practical approach to figure out a centrist course on what’s best for Americans, but a partisan-driven fulfillment of an ideological goal. Democrats are so close to passing a public option that’s more like a funnel towards a single payer system than a humble alternative to private insurance, so they’re unlikely to care about the shift in attitudes when they have a Holy Grail to grab instead. Americans are growing massively skeptical, but the liberal base wants it, so the stupid voters can go to hell. Congress knows best, and all that.

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Obama now wants to cut deficits next year

In a move that seems now too ridiculous to be believed, President Obama is hinting that his focus in 2010 will be on cutting the federal deficit in a shift toward fiscal responsibility. The move comes after the shocking gubernatorial defeats in New Jersey and Virginia amid rising voter concern about the growing gap between what the government spends and what it takes in.

It’s a great goal, but there’s a glaring problem – Congress is currently ramming through at the President’s behest massively expensive health care reform proposals that have been estimated to cost between $1-2 trillion over ten years after their spending kicks in. The spending is paid for by tax hikes and slashes to programs like Medicare Advantage. In addition, the administration has pushed through a bloated economic stimulus bill that has had little effect on the economy and, indeed, has seen its job numbers inflated by numerous states. This is to say nothing of the second half of the TARP money that Obama wanted released early and the industry-killing cap-and-trade bill that was passed by the House and is under consideration in the Senate (where it may languish eternally with both health care and increased deficit scrutiny hanging over it).

The bottom line is that the President is a little late to the party. Even the Politico reporters are highly skeptical that the Obama administration will be able to successfully follow through on cutting government spending in an election year – and that’s even if they plan on going through with it. It’s beyond disingenuous to posture yourself as a deficit hawk in the midst of pushing through one of the largest government programs of all time. It seems like a weak promise along the lines of a pathetic New Year’s resolution to give up soda, and what we’ll probably end up seeing is a few token cuts that will be held up as the model of fiscal discipline.

Myself, I’ll believe it when I see it, as it seems to me that the President’s new positioning is based strictly on political posturing and, based on his past profligacy, can hardly be believed.

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KSM to be tried in NYC for 9/11 plot

Attorney General Eric Holder announced today that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed would stand trial in New York City along with four other terrorists for the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans on that bloody day eight years ago. Holder has said he would seek the death penalty for the terrorists and expressed confidence that the prosecution would get convictions.

One immediately thinks of the evidence that may be thrown out due to the waterboarding that was done to KSM. In a civilian court, the accused has the benefit of the doubt, which gives the terrorists a much stronger legal position and is a big reason moving the trials to the civilian legal system is a dicey proposition.

The trials will likely be a media circus on the order of OJ, which may provide a target for other terrorists to hone in on. But NYC and federal officials will probably have a pretty good handle on security (you would hope anyway). Still, there’s a valid argument that KSM should have remained under military tribunal jurisdiction instead of a civilian court where reasonable doubt and evidence disqualification may be big stumbling blocks.

Even with all that, you would think that a conviction would be almost guaranteed. And even if by some bizarre turn of events KSM or his cronies is acquitted, there’s no way Obama would release them. To do so would be committing political suicide as well as inviting a fresh wave of terror attacks by terrorists who will have been shown they have little to fear from American justice. So if the Obama administration doesn’t plan on letting them go anyway, then isn’t this all a big charade?

It’s interesting to note that Rudy Giuliani, former AG Michael Mukasey, and Democratic Sen. James Webb have all expressed grave concern over this move. They’re by far not the only ones – even New Yorkers are split about whether this is such a good idea. While it’s laudable that Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his cronies will be facing justice, the American civil justice system isn’t the place for a foreign national plotting acts of war against the United States.

I’ll be interested to see how aggressive the defense teams plan to be. If they offer up a weak token effort, all’s well that ends well, I suppose. But if they go hard after evidence collected by intelligence officers and military officials who never dreamed they’d have to stand up to the exacting standards of proof of the American justice system, things may go south in a hurry. We shall see.

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Obama now wants new options on Afghanistan

Nearly three months after Gen. Stanley McChrystal submitted his analysis of the Afghanistan situation and a request for more troops, President Obama has now reportedly rejected all of the options submitted by his national security team and pushed for revising how and when America would hand over power to the Afghan government.

I fully understand and respect the need to consider decisions of magnitude, particularly those that will put more American soldiers in harm’s way. However, the President’s laborious process that now seems to start over from scratch is beginning to move away from acting responsibly deliberate to incoherently indecisive. McChrystal gave his recommendations to Obama back in August. Now November, the President has yet to reject McChrystal’s request, accept it outright, or modify it in any way that resembles a strategy going forward.

This is not an academic question. Troops are currently on the ground right now, being fired at right now, while the Taliban consolidates its power right now. For a President who chastised the Bush administration for putting Afghanistan on the back burner, I find it striking that the President apparently has no problem once in office of relegating the conflict below his efforts for health care reform, and will now delay a decision further until after returning from his trip to Asia.

I desperately want to give the President the benefit of the doubt on military matters. Politicizing national security is one of the tactics I found most disgusting over the last eight years. But America elected Obama to make hard decisions, and the current lack of any kind of direction undoubtedly has a negative impact on the morale of our troops. If his options are really so terrible that they must all be rejected, then Obama should get rid of his national security team. If, on the other hand, Obama just can’t make up his mind, then it’s a monumental failure of leadership.

We are past the point of prudently and intellectually weighing the options. American soldiers in Afghanistan deserve some sort of decision from their Commander-in-Chief. It’s what he was elected for in the first place.

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Quinnipiac: Ohio rejecting Obama health care, favoring GOP

Quinnipiac University has released two polls over the last 48 hours that have shown severe warning signs for Democrats in Ohio and across the country. Yesterday’s poll had incumbent Dem Gov. Ted Strickland locked in a dead heat with challenger John Kasich in a race that hasn’t really begun in earnest yet. The poll says more about voters’ dislike for Strickland than it does about Kasich, as nearly 70% say they don’t know enough about Kasich yet. That’s good news for Kasich, by the way, as it gives him an opportunity to “introduce” himself to voters, and attempts to negatively define him by the Strickland camp won’t be as effective since the governor’s quite unpopular himself.

But the real shocker is the poll released today that shows Ohioans oppose the current health care plan by a tremendous margin – 55%-36%, with independents breaking strongly against it 57%-33%. Support for a public option remains, but I wonder how much is that is a belief that the option will in fact be one option among many and not a funnel toward a single-payer as has been argued. Regardless, Ohioans aren’t pleased at all with the current state of health care bills in the House and Senate – both of which contain a public option.

Republican Rob Portman holds slight leads over Democrats Jennifer Brunner and Lee Fisher in yet another race that hasn’t really started. The big story is that Democrats are losing independents in big numbers as they push a highly liberal and partisan agenda while the economy languishes. Voters that brought the Democrats to power in 2006 and 2008 wanted pragmatic, responsible and centrist leadership. Democrats have shown nothing of the sort, taking their electoral wins as proof that the nation instead yearned for its leftwing agenda. That miscalculation is what’s driving independents away, and it’s what will fuel a bad 2010 for Democrats.

Ed Morrissey is right when he says the GOP has a good opportunity here to reassert itself as the party of fiscal discipline and limited government. They need to stick to those principles and not overreach on secondary issues, and if they continue to do that, Republicans have a strong chance at making significant dents in the Democratic ruling majority.

Ohio is a key state in Presidential elections, so in a very real sense it’s a weathervane for the direction of the political winds. You would think that the negative-trending polls would give Democrats pause at enacting more of their radical agenda, but in a sign of how anti-centrist and non-pragmatic they’ve become, it appears they’ll keep pushing for as much as they can ram through until voters can punish them a year from now. That’s governing by ideology, plain and simple, the will of the public be damned.

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Veteran’s Day

To all veterans past and present, all this blogger has to offer you is his heartfelt thanks for your service and sacrifice. For some, the debt is to great to ever repay. Many servicemen and women serving currently and in wars past often downplay their role, humble and job-oriented, and always concerned about their squadmates.

The truth is, however, that this nation wouldn’t have the strength it does today without your quiet determination and indomitable spirit. From the survivors of Midway Island to the men at Mole City to those in Kirkuk and Kandahar, we all owe you an appreciation for what you’ve done and what you’ve had to go through both on the battlefield and here at home. Thank you.

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Scozzafava complains about GOP, vows to “work against” them (A final word on NY-23)

Dede Scozzafava, the GOP nominee for the NY-23 Congressional district, has a sympathetic piece in the Washington Times about those mean ol’ Republicans and those rascally conservatives who “forced” her out of the race. Brave Dede even has a warning for those who weren’t jazzed about her nomination:

“There is a lot of us who consider ourselves Republicans, of the Party of Lincoln,” she said, her face now flush. “If they don’t want us with them, we’re going to work against them.”

Never mind, of course, that the GOP didn’t force Scozzafava out – to the contrary, the NRCC gave her $900,000 for her campaign. What forced her out were her sagging poll numbers and the realization the seat was a 2-person race between Bill Owens and Doug Hoffman. Did the Hoffman endorsements by prominent conservatives play a role? Probably a small one, but that would mean that those conservatives had some legitimate sway in the district.

The fact remains that Scozzafava was to the left of the Democrat on several issues during the campaign. Although she’s mad that Sarah Palin insinuated she was anointed by a political machine, the truth is that she was. The local Republican committee nominated her without a primary, so, sorry, you were in fact “anointed.” Her last-minute endorsement of Owens was revealing in showing that she cared more about scoring some petty revenge points than assisting the party for which she claims she wants to run again. Well, you endorsed the Democrat who promptly reneged on his opposition to Pelosi’s health plan and voted for it immediately on arriving to Congress. Now you’re making the Republican defeat in your district all about poor you. Good luck working within the GOP, Dede. Even level-headed Patterico goes ballistic on your hypocrisy.

Liberals and Democrats have been giddy about pointing to the race and the Owens victory as evidence of the crack up of the Republican Party and as some bizarre proof of the righteousness of the Democratic cause (never mind the Virginia and New Jersey results that same night). I rather doubt that any larger lessons about the national picture can be gleaned from NY-23 – if Hoffman had been the guy from the get-go, he probably would have beaten Owens. Likewise, if Scozzafava’s name isn’t on the ballot after she pulls out, Hoffman most likely wins. With the absolute mess that existed, it’s no wonder that Owens was able to win a historically Republican district, albeit with a slim margin owing to the above factors and Scozzafava’s endorsement.

My larger point is that moderates should absolutely have a place in the Republican Party. The only problem is that Scozzfava is no moderate – she was more liberal than the Democratic nominee in certain areas. Indeed, one has to wonder why on principle Scozzafava considers herself a Republican for any other reason besides political expediency. There are some areas where such a candidate might be electorally useful, but NY-23 wasn’t one of those places. In the end, politicians may disagree on issues, but there must a level of agreement that serves as the principled base from which the party moves forward.

The backlash against Scozzafava doesn’t represent a desire to kick out moderates, but a frustration by conservatives that the Republicans would try to put up a candidate so at odds with the goals of a majority of the GOP and try to assert with a straight face that she’d serve their interests in Congress. After a Presidential campaign that saw a moderate McCain get defeated despite “reaching out” and annoying many GOPers with his stands on immigration, campaign finance, climate change, and other issues, conservatives and Republicans are simply tired of being offered policies and candidates that are simply watered-down versions of their Democratic equivalent. It’s not a push to the extreme right that’s desired, it’s a clear enunciation of some message that means something besides “get elected at any cost,” of a vision inspired by principle and driven by common sense pragmatism.

So far, the Republican leadership is failing miserably.

Update: Cross-posted at The Moderate Voice.

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Obama to send 40,000 troops to Afghanistan (?) UPDATE: Not yet

CBS News is reporting that President Obama has decided to send nearly 40,000 additional combat troops to Afghanistan, honoring the majority of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s request for that country. The administration still says that troops aren’t the only answer and Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai bears a lot of responsibility for cleaning up corruption in his country.

Giving his general what he says he needs is the right course of action for President Obama (if only he’d done it a tad more expeditiously, but that’s beside the point). It would be irresponsible to do nothing at all or even to draw down troops, and the distancing from Biden’s counterterrorism strategy is in my opinion (and others) the more prudent way to go. The buildup will be gradual, leaving some to think it will be too slow of  a trickle to make much of a difference:

The first combat troops would not arrive until early next year and it would be the end of 2010 before they were all there. That makes this Afghanistan surge very different from the Iraq surge, in which 30,000 troops descended on Baghdad and the surrounding area in just five months.
Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute says a slow motion surge will produce slow motion results. “If they’re going to be sort of trickled in very slowly over the course of a year than it’s unlikely to have a very decisive impact in the course of 2010,” he said.

I’m willing to give the strategy the benefit of the doubt for the time being. Let’s hope it works.

That’s assuming, of course, that this is what the Obama administration plans on doing. The CBS article now contains this major caveat:

Editor’s note, 9:57 p.m. EDT: The White House has issued the following response to this story, attributed to White House National Security Advisor James Jones:

“Reports that President Obama has made a decision about Afghanistan are absolutely false. He has not received final options for his consideration, he has not reviewed those options with his national security team, and he has not made any decisions about resources. Any reports to the contrary are completely untrue and come from uninformed sources.”

Hmmm… Kinda makes you wonder, doesn’t it? It could be the administration was already getting flak over the report from its liberal supporters and was forced to make a retraction of sorts. We shall see.

Update: Looks like CBS was fed some bad info or was a bit hasty. Wouldn’t be the first time. Obama’s national security advisor Jim Jones is dismissing the reports as premature. That’s what we get for trusting in a “real” news organization, I guess.

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