Redstate

Posted at 5:11pm on May 22, 2008 George W. Bush And The Curious Case Of The Dog In The Night-Time

By Dan McLaughlin

Beldar reminds us of the two great accomplishments of George W. Bush's national security policy. I have nothing to add to the first, which affects me personally, but I would underline the second:

[E]ven if the Iraq War did nothing else (a proposition I reject), ... it emphatically demonstrated to every other country in the world that, in their dealings with the United States, there simply is no "military solution" which can favor them.

This can't be emphasized often enough in discussing the deterrent effect of the war. Yes, the war has been hard at times on the U.S., but it is not lost on other regimes how badly it ended for Saddam, his sons and his senior apparatchiks. Or for Zarqawi or other leaders of the foreign forces opposing us in Iraq. That's a huge distinction from how Vietnam ended for Ho's regime. Only the Iranians have really come out of this well, and only because they have not yet provoked us to the point where we would turn our guns on them directly. And if the U.S. did invade and seek to conquer Iran in the same fashion as Iraq, no matter how difficult that would be for the U.S., it would be much worse for the Iranian regime.

Posted at 6:54pm on May 21, 2008 "Don’t run against McCain by painting him as Bush III, because he’s not"

By Jeff Emanuel

Clearly a seal has been opened, and a rider has leapt astride his apocalyptic steed, because I am about to make a post in slight agreement with former Clinton staffer Sid Blumenthal.

From U.S. News's Washington Whispers blog (via Pejman):

Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and strategist for Hillary Clinton’s Democratic presidential campaign, went “off message” (his words) today with a warning to his party: Don’t run against GOP nominee John McCain by painting him as Bush III, because he’s not.

Bucking the Democratic National Committee’s talking points that characterize a potential McCain administration as tantamount to a third Bush term, Blumenthal told our Liz Halloran that running on that strategy in the fall would be a mistake.

“I understand people’s political reasons for doing that,” he said. “I think it’s more helpful to describe [political opponents] as they are.” Bottom line, Blumenthal calls the strategy “a mistake and adds: “The public doesn’t see [McCain] that way. That’s a hard sell.”

(Paragraph breaks added for readability.) Sid Blumenthal is correct in this one area: John McCain is no second George W. Bush. Will he make some of the same decisions and mistakes? Almost certainly.

Read on.

Posted in 2008 | Democrats | George W. Bush | John McCain — Comments (22) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:41am on Apr. 23, 2008 Responsibility Politics

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Two public officials made strong statements in favor of free trade and free markets today. One will never face an election again, but his support and his stance against trade demagoguery is most welcome:

President Bush chastised lawmakers on Tuesday for letting international trade deals falter in Congress and criticized Democratic presidential contenders for wanting to scrap or amend the vast North American free-trade zone.

At the close of a two-day summit, Bush, along with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, stood solidly behind the North American Free Trade Agreement. Under NAFTA, trade between the U.S., Canada and Mexico has swelled from roughly $290 billion in 1994 to an estimated $1 trillion by the end of this year.

"Now is not the time to renegotiate NAFTA or walk away from NAFTA," Bush said. "Now is the time to make it work better for all our people. And now is the time to reduce trade barriers worldwide."

The summit was overshadowed by Tuesday's Pennsylvania Democratic presidential primary race between Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, who have threatened to pull the U.S. out of NAFTA or renegotiate it to push for more protections for workers and the environment.

With fears about job security already being fanned by downturns in the economy, trade has become a key issue of the presidential election. Bush argued that NAFTA has fostered prosperity in all three countries and that Clinton and Obama are wrongly using anti-trade messages to lure working class voters. Free-trade opponents say expanded international trade helps businesses, but threatens U.S. jobs and keeps wages from growing.

Bush warned that without NAFTA, migratory pressure from Mexico would be worse.

"If you do away with NAFTA, there's going to be a lot of Mexicans, more Mexicans out of work," Bush said. "It will make it harder on the border.

"So people who say, `Let's get rid of NAFTA' because of a throwaway political line, must understand this has been good for America and it's also been good for Mexico and Canada."

Read on . . .

Posted in Economy | Free Trade | George W. Bush | John McCain — Comments (22)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 8:17am on Apr. 22, 2008 It's Earth Day... I'd throw a party but that would waste a lot of electricity

By RightMichigan.com

Cross-posted on Right Michigan at www.RightMichigan.com.

"I think you need to give the Bush administration credit," (Environmentalist Dan) Becker said. "They got one right."

And with that you know the administration got one wrong.  So very, very wrong.

Happy Earth Day everybody.  Make sure you re-use your napkins, get trash in the proper receptacle, recycle everything you can and don't throw away those pop cans today.  You'd better walk through the house and make sure you don't have any lights on in unoccupied rooms and make sure your kids don't use too much water brushing their teeth this morning, too.  Otherwise you're just not cool.  It's as simple as that.

I'm sure Dan Becker would tell you the same thing.  He's pretty proud of the Bush administration today because federal regulators are expected to announce plans today to artificially raise fuel economy standards to 31.6 miles per gallon by 2011.  Says the Ivory Tower:

The standards for vehicles built between 2011 and 2015 are more aggressive than some observers expected, and raise the possibility that the government could require U.S. automakers to meet the 35 m.p.g. target they agreed to last year ahead of the 2020 deadline.

Under the proposal, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will raise fuel economy rules to 35.7 m.p.g. for passenger cars and 28.6 m.p.g. for light trucks.

That requires a substantial shift in applied technology and a bigger sticker price on the car-lot.  Not exactly what Michigan's biggest and chronically struggling industry needs right now.  The sad part, and FREEP acknowledges the point at the conclusion of their article, is that the industry has been moving towards more fuel efficient vehicles already because of market forces.  There's a growing segment of people who would rather drive a tin-can with a one-star crash test rating that gets them 800 miles per gallon than anything heavier or safer the Big 3 can offer.

So why the need for governmental interference?  Why artificially manipulate the marketplace and essentially slap an extra couple thousand dollars on every new vehicle sold by 2011?  Essentially because A) they can and B) Earth Day is cool.  More B than A.  It's just the trendy, hip, "forward-thinking" thing to do.  

Posted in Big 3 | Breaking News | Earth Day | environmentalists | George W. Bush | Michigan | POTUS — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 7:02pm on Apr. 8, 2008 Metaphor Alert

By Dan McLaughlin

Beldar sees a photo of President Bush at the NATO summit rather differently from the NY Times.

Posted at 5:35pm on Mar. 28, 2008 Department of Bad Photo Ops

By Dan McLaughlin

Whoever set up the President of the United States to look like he has been demoted to working from a cubicle in a phone bank should not have a long career in public relations:

That's from an appearance today in Freehold, NJ, and I seriously had to double-check that these were not satirical photos from The Onion or something. We even got the "Bush tries to feed the cube-dwellers" photo:

Posted in George W. Bush | The White House — Comments (2) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 4:29pm on Feb. 4, 2008 As JFK Once Said Of Nixon . . .

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

"No class."

Posted in 2008 | George W. Bush | Hillary Clinton | Playground Insults — Comments (23)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 11:20am on Jan. 30, 2008 Electile Dysfunction

By Erick

I want my party back. I really do. My party, if you will remember, is the one that fights the Democrats on spending, instead of pushing them aside to get a place at the trough.

My party is the one that is conservative without Michael Gerson.

My party is the one where we can disagree politely on matters without calling each other traitor.

Now, personally, I blame George W. Bush for all of this. You can blame Romney or McCain or Giulilani if you want. But George W. Bush left us with a political power vacuum. He knew Cheney wouldn't run. Cheney would be the heir apparent. Instead of pointing us in a direction, we had this wonderful primary season that has split the party into pieces.

The GOP has a pattern of going with the heir apparent. The party is keeping true to form by heading toward McCain. It has nothing to do with rejecting conservatism. It has everything to do with conservatives following history and tradition and traditionally we've always known who the heir was going to be.

George W. Bush, in his utter disregard for the conservatism of the party, decided to break with past precedent on this issue and we find ourselves in the present mess. Along the way, he also gave us big government conservatism, Michael Gerson, Dan Bartlett, an immigration fight, and out of control spending by his own party.

So now we are left with Romney and McCain.

Keep reading . . .

Posted in 2008 | 2008 | George W. Bush | John McCain | Mitt Romney — Comments (70)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 7:40pm on Jan. 12, 2008 Think Of It As Saving A Certain Potential President From Herself

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Understanding that it is entirely possible that a Democrat may be elected President and understanding as well that such an election may throw any gains and advances in Iraq in peril, the Bush Administration is now working to ensure that it solidifies the gains that have been brought about by the surge and the implementation of the counterinsurgency plan:

In remarks to the traveling press, delivered from the Third Army operation command center here, Bush said that negotiations were about to begin on a long-term strategic partnership with the Iraqi government modeled on the accords the United States has with Kuwait and many other countries. Crocker, who flew in from Baghdad with Petraeus to meet with the president, elaborated: "We're putting our team together now, making preparations in Washington," he told reporters. "The Iraqis are doing the same. And in the few weeks ahead, we would expect to get together to start this negotiating process." The target date for concluding the agreement is July, says Gen. Doug Lute, Bush's Iraq coordinator in the White House--in other words, just in time for the Democratic and Republican national conventions.

Read on . . .

Posted in George W. Bush | Iraq | The Future | The Surge | War — Comments (8)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 4:37pm on Dec. 20, 2007 That Bush Guy (Remember Him?) On The Primaries

The Core Principles Thing

By Dan McLaughlin

A rare comment from President Bush on how he would evaluate the 2008 candidates:

"What's important to me will be this: the principles by which people will make decisions, Bush said. What one needs to be the president is a "firm set of principles to guide you... and I would be very hesitant to support somebody who relied upon opinion polls and focus groups to define a way forward for our president," he added.

Bush said he'd ask candidates, "What are the principles that you would stand on, in good times and bad times? What would be the underpinning of your decisions?"

He said a president needs to be consistent, and needs to understand how non-issues can develop into big issues.

President Bush said he'd also ask the candidates about who they'll surround themselves with for advice.

Given the complexity of the world and the number of issues confronting the president, Bush said he'd ask, "How do you intend to set up your Oval Office so that people will come in and give you their advice?"

There's "a great expectation in the world" that the United States should "take the lead" on issues, he said.

Posted in 2008 | 2008 Presidential Campaign | George W. Bush — Comments (33)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 4:58pm on Nov. 13, 2007 Bush on Chavez

By Soren Dayton

At Bluey's lunch today, John Bolton said that President Bush refers to Hugo Chavez as "Castro without brains."

I love that.

Posted at 11:01am on Oct. 23, 2007 The New Narrative

Oh those rascally Neocons...

By Neil Stevens

What do do you when you're a mainstream press reporter, and your narrative of doom and gloom in Iraq is made more laughable every day by General Petraeus and his new strategy? Well, you need a new narrative of course.

Via Greyhawk at The Mudville Gazette we just might be seeing the beginnings of that new narrative. Says Newsweek:

The Bush administration is starving for good news out of Iraq, and it may finally have some: new U.S. government statistics showing that violent attacks of all kinds are down to levels not seen since 2005. But until recently, the administration appears to have resisted acknowledging a key element of the new data, because it flies in the face of President George W. Bush's ongoing rhetorical confrontation with Iran's clerical regime.

Part of me wants to respond to this with a couple pictures of owls, one captioned ORLY? And another replying YARLY! But now, I will soldier on and give this a serious look.

Read On...

Posted in Bias | George W. Bush | Iran | Iraq | Newsweek | Tin Foil Hat | Victory | War — Comments (2)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 4:30pm on Apr. 20, 2007 Lessons in political suicide.

That knife you bring to the gunfight should be aimed away from your chest.

By Thomas

Running into the 1988 Presidential election, Bloom County -- for those of you who were even more children than I at the time, a left-leaning comic strip penned by, what else, an Austinite -- took to calling the two major party nominees the Wimp and the Shrimp. The joke -- with respect to one of only three one-term Presidents of the twentieth century -- took aim at the elder Bush's penchant for genteel, Rockefeller Republicanism; love of bipartisanship; and general image of softness, compared to the giant who came before him.

Little did we know that the truth of that image would come back to haunt us throughout the man's presidency, culminating (but hardly ending) in that great bipartisan moment in which President Bush (1) decided that everyone who'd read his lips scant years before had been suffering from mass dyslexia.

One of the great worries many of us had in 2000 -- aside from the fear that we'd soon have an android in charge of the nuclear codes, and that his alien masters would overrun us all -- was that the Wimp's wimpiness was congenital, and a dominant gene. This did not overly concern me, because, first, any idiot -- and George W. Bush is not an idiot -- could figure out what cost his father the Presidency; and, second, I watched the younger Bush absolutely annihilate that old crone Ann Richards, and not gently, either. Sure, he liked the bipartisan game, but he knew where the long knives were kept.

I maintain that I was right, but to a point; and the beginning of my error is the beginning of the explanation for the absolute fecklessness of the last two and a half years of President Bush's last term.

Read on.

Posted in Clausewitz | George W. Bush | knife fights | politics | Republicans | Republicans | wimp — Comments (39)/ Email this page » / Read More »