Columnist.
Iowans are strongly pro-life and supportive of traditional marriage. These remain strong "bridge" issues that unite economic conservatives with social conservatives whenever questions like abortion funding or overturning true marriage are put on the ballot. When pollsters find that Iowa's likely caucus-goers -- including large blocks of Evangelicals, Catholics, and Lutherans -- are citing the stricken economy as their greatest concern, this does not mean social issues have been forgotten. First, most of the GOP candidates are already on board for the defense of human life and true marriage. So it makes sense for Iowa voters to tell pollsters and focus group moderators that their primary concern is the economy. This does not mean they don't care about abortion or attempts to undermine marriage. It just means that after numerous candidate debates, those who advocate "civil unions" as a supposed compromise on the marriage issue have difficulty even making the cut to be on the stage. Iowa's Caucus-goers voters aren't buying this obvious ploy.
It was good to see President Obama link his Osawatomie Speech to Kansas history. Some commentators said Mr. Obama was "channeling Roosevelts." Especially, Theodore. It delighted some that Mr. Obama donned the mantle of the Republican Roosevelt. Obama quoted from TR's 1910 speech at Osawatomie. It was Roosevelt's first great public break with the man he put in the White House, William Howard Taft. Mr. Obama used his Osawatomie speech to break with his own past appeals to post-partisanship. He put behind him his campaign rhetoric of Hope and Change to craft a sharp political message, one targeted at his Republican adversaries.
The Obama administration has offered in two high level addresses the crystallization of all that is wrong in its course. Yesterday, President Barack Obama went to Osawatomie, Kansas. He chose that location because of his own Kansas roots and because former President Theodore Roosevelt gave a famous speech there in 1910. Mr. Obama should do more of this.Theodore Roosevelt is rightly a beloved figure for millions of Americans. His 1910 Osawatomie speech, however, was the beginning of a disastrous course for him and for America. TR's sharp left turn in Kansas led him directly to his 1912 "Bull Moose" Third Party challenge of incumbent Republican President Taft and the Democratic nominee, Gov. Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey.
Over the weekend, Metropolitan Police removed Occupy DC protesters from "a barn-like structure" a few blocks from the White House. More than thirty arrests were made, including one young man who was charged with indecent exposure for urinating from the roof. Occupy DC protesters have been squatting in McPherson Park, in the middle of one of Washington's key commercial and government hubs, since October. And what have they achieved? They say they want to draw attention to income inequality. They have. We all now know that they claim to represent the 99% against the income gains of the 1%. They say they want a more open, more democratic government.
Writer and thinker George Gilder has challenged Americans throughout his career. His book Wealth and Poverty ought to be required reading at the White House, but isn't. There's no indication from the disastrous policies pursued by this administration that anyone there has ever read this important work. (We might suggest it, though, for all those Occupiers of Wall Street. It would do wonders for their grim employment prospects.) Similarly, Men and Marriage was a Gilder work that laid out the secular case for social improvement and which -- not incidentally -- showed how the polygamy that is endemic to the Arab Middle East was a root cause of the ceaseless turmoil in Muslim societies there.
In these days of Occupy Wall Street demonstrations across the U.S., it's important to see what motivates Obama administration policies here and abroad. Mr. Obama, as a candidate, had to bat away accusations that he was close, too close, to Rashid Khalidi, a radical Palestinian Arab intellectual. Candidate Obama then soothed worried friends of Israel, by minimizing his intellectual fealty to Khalidi, saying merely that "[Khalidi provides] consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases" on matters related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. How humble. How becomingly modest.
Governor Rick Perry called President Barack Obama a socialist who also loves his country. Those who support Western European-style socialist policies don't understand the power of private markets, or government's inefficiency and incompetence. Answering a question from Bill O'Reilly, Governor Perry created a buzz by responding that President Obama is a socialist, though was quick to add that the president loves his country and simply doesn't understand how America's market-based economy works. If the president understood the private sector, Governor Perry explained, he wouldn't pursue tax and regulatory policies that crush job-creators and prevent wealth creation.
President Reagan's famous dictum, which he often quoted to Mikhail Gorbachev in Russian, was Trust but Verify. (In Russian, it rhymes: Doverai, no proverai.) President Obama has recognized that Reagan was a "transformational" president. He says he gave the old man credit, though he never gave him his vote. Now, Barack Obama is determined also to be a transformational president. And he is succeeding in this. More's the pity. His Russian policy is one of "Trust, Don't Verify."
The whole world was watching, and listening. The leaders of the G20 nations gathered in Cannes, France, for another of those endless schmooze fests we now call summits, Presidents Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy were caught on tape telling us what they really think of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Los Angeles Times reported: "I can't stand to see him anymore, he's a liar,'' Sarkozy told Obama, according to a French translation of the exchange. "You are fed up with him, but me, I have to deal with him every day,'' Obama replied.
Gov. Rick Perry stated at the outset of his presidential campaign that he is running for president based on his principles and leadership accomplishments, not his oratorical skills. Media focus on his debate missteps deliberately ignores Perry's record and charisma. Six months ago discussing Perry's possible candidacy, a top conservative leader privately said, "Rick is a great leader. But he's not a greater debater. And he knows it. The question would be whether he overcomes it."
When Sec. of State Hillary Clinton is not berating Canadians in Ottawa for not pushing abortions in Africa, when she's not celebrating gay pride in Rome with Lady Gaga, when she's not counting Jews in Jerusalem, nagging Israelis about building homes for their people in their own capital, what does she do with herself? One thing she does is try to overturn one of the greatest victories for democracy and the rule of law since World War II. Mrs. Clinton has barged into still-festering dispute over the Falkland Islands. In 1982, the Argentine military junta invaded the Falklands and immediately set about placing the peaceful islanders under their own dictatorship.
The headlines are stark indeed. "Israel Readies a Pre-Emptive Strike." Israeli Prime Minister is said to be working to persuade reluctant members of his coalition Cabinet to go along with such a militaryoption against Islamist Iran. The Huffington Post's British edition reports Netanyahu saying this: "One of those regional powers is Iran, which is continuing its efforts to obtain nuclear weapons. A nuclear Iran would constitute a grave threat to the Middle East and the entire world, and of course it is a direct and grave threat on us." One day later, defense minister Ehud Barak, struck a similar tone. "A situation could be created in the Middle East in which Israel must defend its vital interests in an independent fashion, without necessarily having to reply on other forces, regional or otherwise," he said.
Reuters' Paul Chapman has filed a report from Tunis. There have been elections there, less than one year after an uprising ousted dictator Zine al Abidine Ben Ali. The former Tunisian strongman is said to be enjoying his retirement in Saudi Arabia. There, Ben Ali doubtless has seen news coverage of the bloody end of his neighboring desert despot, Muammar Gaddafi. Ben Ali is probably offering prayers of thanks that he got out of Dodge in time. Election returns from Tunis show that the Ennahda party is the big winner. Ennahda won 90 of 217 seats in the country's new legislative assembly. It's not an outright majority, but it may prove sufficient for the Islamist party to form coalitions and rule the country.
Governor Rick Perry unveiled his plan for fundamental tax reform with an optional flat tax. This bold proposal for economic growth is a fiscal game-changer, and demonstrably superior to the proposals of rivals Herman Cain and Mitt Romney. In the 1990s, the National Commission on Economic Growth and Tax Reform (the Kemp Commission) chaired by the late Jack Kemp created the framework for a flat tax. This research was later refined and advanced by Steve Forbes, and the flat tax became central to his presidential campaign.
Al Ahram is an Egyptian newspaper. It reported last week on the killing of 36 Coptic Christian demonstrators in Cairo. Millions of us have seen the pictures on our television screens of armored personnel carriers plowing into unarmed protestors, mowing them down. Those vehicles, and their drivers, are being funded in part by the United States. We are lavishly paying the Egyptian military regime.
The news last week offered us a wonderfully satirical view of Russia. Headlines tell us that Russian Premier Vladimir Putin will once again "run" for President of the Russian Republic. Now, this is being reported as if he really has to run for the office. And it seems that the current "president," Dmitri Medvedev, is only too willing to step aside to allow for Mr. Putin to make his run. That's like saying the monkey is willing to give way for the organ grinder. Vladimir Putin's Russian nickname would not be Vlad, but Vova. And the Russian word for what he is is vozhd. That's what Russians call the Boss. And Boss he is, to be sure.
The killing of Anwar al-Awlaki last week has sparked spirited discussions in the prestige press and on the Web. Awlaki was an American-born Muslim cleric who once headed a mosque in Falls Church, Virginia. But he traveled to Yemen, where he became a leader of Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula. He urged fellow jihadists to take up arms and to engage in terror attacks on the United States, the country of his birth and citizenship. For most of the nation's history, such acts would be recognized, quite simply, as acts of treason. And in calling not just for war against America, but for terror acts outside all the recognized laws of warfare, Awlaki would have been branded Hostis humani generis -- an enemy of all mankind. Such was the status of pirates and slave traders in the nineteenth century.
Daniel Webster was the most famous lawyer of his day. In 1819, the "Godlike Daniel" stood before the U.S. Supreme Court and argued passionately for the right of Dartmouth College to govern itself, and not to be brought under the rule of the New Hampshire legislature. Webster appealed to the Constitution, arguing that New Hampshire's actions would violate that provision that forbade states to "impair the obligations of contract." But the emotional power of his argument caught the attention of Chief Justice John Marshall, Justice Joseph Story, and in truth, captured the hearts of the country.
It's been a rough season for Nobel Peace Prize winners. Jimmy Carter is campaigning for the UN to seat Palestine as a full voting member. The former president and 2002 Peace Prize winner has yet to explain why seating another Terroristan in the UN is a good idea. Then, there's President Obama. He copped the prize of prizes in 2009. He got his prize for his first 42 days of on-the-job training in healing the planet and causing the seas to cease to rise. Nice work, Mr. President.
The normally sensible Forbes Magazine recently named Hillary Clinton the Second Most Powerful Woman in the World. That's absurd. She's clearly not even the second most powerful woman in the Obama administration. For influence on this president, she clearly walks behind Michele Obama, Valerie Jarrett, and Kathleen Sebelius. Mrs. Clinton has even been derided in liberal blogs as Barack Obama's "Saudi wife." Feminist editor Tina Brown went so far as to say she's been put in a "foreign policy burka." We don't have to follow the Washington Post's annual In/Out listings. Fashions come and go in the "Style Section," even burkas.
