Haley Barbour: 2012 GOP Dark Horse?

by Mary Claire Kendall

Politics is an art—the “art of the possible,” in President Ronald Reagan’s formulation.

Emerging from the crop of Republican presidential candidates is Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, who knows the art of politics as well as his good friend, the late Lee Atwater, a politically-gifted South Carolina boy, who like Barbour, rose to the Chairmanship of the Republican National Committee. The Party thrived under both.

Lee Atwater with President Ronald Reagan during the 1984 presidential campaign

Lee died 20 years ago this spring (i.e., March 29). He would have been 60 this year. Barbour is 63.

On a personal note, I first met Haley at the opening reception for Ed Rollins’ lobbying firm. Lee was there, too. Ed had just run Reagan’s landslide re-election, with Lee serving as his deputy. I remember Ed quipping to a reporter that the key to a winning campaign is finding a winning horse.

Haley is a winning horse.

He’s the Republican Party's Bill Clinton, without the fatal flaw: a Southern governor, who's a die-hard policy wonk, who knows and loves the game of politics better than anyone in the room—who also happens to be a schmoozer extraordinaire with dollops of Southern charm who genuinely likes people. 

And, like Clinton, he's a baby boomer, born in the wake of the Allied World War II epic victory, who lost his father at a tender age.

Admittedly, he’s also a “dark horse,” registering little more than an asterisk in recent polls of Republican presidential primary voters.  As the New York Times reported recently vis-à-vis their poll with CBS, "Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi may be well known along K Street — where he was once a lobbyist — and among Washington-based reporters who covered him when he was the Republican Party chairman. But 85 percent of Republican voters said they did not know enough about him to offer an opinion."

But, he is well known and liked in the most important state for a Republican presidential nominee in sealing the deal—South Carolina, where he handily won the recent poll in Charleston County.

At or near the head of the pack—nationally—is former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who makes a persuasive case for why he’s the one to lead America out of the wilderness.  And, he's neck and neck with Obama in the latest McClatchey-Marist poll.  The others cut fine figures, too, including former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty. And, of course, Donald Trump is surging with his winsome, no-nonsense, tough-talk New York style.

But, Barbour is, arguably, the savviest politically—and, critically important, has the best sense of humor—making him odds-on-favorite. 

Now, many sniff at Barbour’s Mississippi roots, other struggling states tut-tutting, “Thank God for Mississippi!” It’s not a compliment. But, another way to look at it is, if you can make it in the Magnolia State, you can make it anywhere. Governor Barbour has certainly made it—outfoxing trial lawyers on tort reform, enticing corporations to relocate to Mississippi, balancing the budget and, most recently, leading the nationwide war on state-budget-busting Medicaid.

Barbour speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)

in Washington on Saturday, Feb. 12, 2011. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

Then there's that cockamamie idea that to be from the South, is to be a racist rube.  Surely, after electing the first African-American president, it’s time we broke through another barrier and elected the first Deep South Republican President. What better time than the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War. Then, let him prove how much he can do to raise the living standard of African-Americans—and every other race and culture that bears the name “American”—thus dispelling the In the Heat of the Night racial stereotype—reverse discrimination—once and for all.

Furthermore, some in the Republican Party were decrying one of Barbour’s opening forays into Iowa Republican presidential politics on the Ides of March, no less, for suggesting Republicans might look for budget cuts in the Defense Department and scale back in Afghanistan.

But, Barbour looked prescient for three reasons—particularly in light of President Barack Obama’s offensive against Libya three days later:

First, he ticked off the neoconservatives. And, for their outsized role in the Republican Party, not always producing outsized success (e.g., Iraq “we will be greeted as liberators” War), that might be a good thing.

Governor Haley Barbour, appearing on CNN, November 2, 2010

But then, it wasn’t unexpected. Bill Kristol, son of the late Irving Kristol, “father of neoconservatism,” and Weekly Standard editor, had been throwing stink bombs at Barbour. (As a matter of fact, neocons have been throwing stink bombs at Southern conservatives since the M.E. Bradford dustup.)

A late December Weekly Standard cover story racially stereotyped Barbour. Then, in a blog entry, “T-Paw v. Hee-Haw,” Kristol praised Pawlenty, i.e., “T-Paw,” for promoting neocon foreign policy, while lambasting Barbour, whom he dubbed “Hee-Haw,” for advocating, at a GOP dinner in Iowa, the aforementioned defense cuts and troop reductions in Afghanistan and deriding him because he “couldn’t identify” specific cuts. After skewering Barbour more, Kristol reasoned he smelled a “shrewd political operative,” who sees “an opening for a defense-cutting, Afghanistan-skeptic candidate in 2012.” Haley Barbour’s son, Sterling, smelled something else and sent Kristol an e-mail in which, according to Houston Chronicle, he “suggest(ed) Kristol, a conservative leader who served as an informal adviser to 2008 vice presidential pick Sarah Palin, is more interested in dividing the party than defeating President Barack Obama in 2012.”

Meanwhile, Kristol showered lavish praise on Obama for his Libya intervention, declaring in his blog after Obama’s speech on the offensive, “You’ve come a long way, baby.”

Et tu, Bill Kristol?

Governor Haley Barbour, 2011, LifeNews.com

Second, on that Ides of March, Barbour simultaneously signaled to another group of Reagan Democrats, especially the Southern variety, whose sons and daughters do most of the fighting and dying in these too-often misguided Mideast ventures, who are mad as hell, they’re not going to take it anymore, that he feels their pain. Dave “Mudcat” Sanders, who watches white Appalachian voters, told The Daily Caller’s Neil Munroe vis-à-vis Obama’s Libyan intervention: “I don’t see any upside, I don’t see him gaining him any voters… (they’re) tired of body-bags coming back to the mountains…”

Third, he telegraphed he’s not afraid to ask a Republican sacred, ahem, elephant—namely the not-so-lean-and-mean portion of defense spending—to step up to the plate and do its part. After all, since gaping debt and deficits, according to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, now constitute a veritable national security threat, it’s only right.

Barbour was similarly prescient in Iowa at the late March Principles Forum, citing economic growth and job creation “for our people” as priority one—spending cuts being “the means to an end”—noting “my old friend Fred Smith, my fellow Mississippian,” FedEx CEO/founder’s “great saying”: “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing,” underscoring Barbour’s other “main thing”—electing a new president in 2012.

Lee Atwater 'jams' with President Bush at the

Celebration for Young Americans Inaugural event.

Inscription on photo is to "Robb Austin."

Welcome to the 2012 Republican presidential race, where the ghost of Lee Atwater won’t be far behind.

As former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, Bush-Quayle ’88 Chairman, said in his moving eulogy at Lee’s funeral twenty years ago on April 4, 1991, when it came to the game of politics, Lee was “Machiavellian… in the very best sense of that term.”

Lee knew how to win.

So does Haley.

The author with Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Defense Secretary during the Iraq War,

at a reception for former First Lady Nancy Reagan, June 2, 2009,

 the day the bust of President Reagan was unveiled in the Capitol Rotunda 

Postscript

So many memories about Lee have flooded my heart as I wrote this piece.

In August 1985, I interviewed with Lee after he had been jogging in the hot summer heat. He slouched back in his chair with his knees leaning against the desk, as I, dressed prim and proper, did my best to answer his questions. What a character!

I got a job instead at Ed Rollins’ firm, Russo, Watts & Rollins, right up the street from Lee’s firm in Old Town Alexandria. (Watts had produced the famous “Morning in America” ads for Reagan-Bush ’84 ).

Lee was always so gracious and encouraging to me when he would call to talk with Ed. Of course, they were great competitors: Lee would schedule these early morning breakfasts at 7:30 a.m., leaving Ed pleading to meet at 8 a.m.; but 7:30 a.m. it was!

Then, I remember that day in February 1990, when I was watching Lee being interviewed on TV with his cousin Steve Page, a fellow political appointee at the Department of Health and Human Services.  In the course of the interview, Lee gave out his jogging route—a security breach, which shocked Steve, given what a target Lee was.

A month later, it became clear why Lee had been so careless. That day Steve and I went to a White House arrival ceremony for some dignitary, I can’t remember which one. All I could remember was how shaken Steve was because Lee had had a seizure the day before while speaking at a fundraising breakfast for Senator Phil Graham (R-TX). He was soon diagnosed with a brain tumor.

I started getting together with Steve to listen to tapes on alternative therapies that he thought might help Lee. In April 1990, after a few of those sessions, when it became clear Lee’s condition was much worse than first contemplated, I told Steve I would pray for him through the intercession of this holy priest, Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, being featured in Roland Joffe’s soon-to-be released film, There Be Dragons. I told him Escriva was on the way to being canonized, explaining that asking him to intervene with God was like asking Lee to intervene with the President. I prayed novena after novena, 27 in all; then in December I got really sick with the flu, and slacked off. On May 6, 1991, totally exhausted, I stayed home and read the papers, cover to cover, and, lo and behold, that day there was the story of Lee’s conversion in December 1990. 

In the waning days of Lee's life, he apologized to Michael Dukakis for saying of him he would “strip the bark off the little bastard.” It was a gracious gesture and, I think, was Lee’s way of saying, ‘The ’88 campaign was an extremely rough fight and I’m sorry.’

Of course, Lee always knew his best campaign tactic was Dukakis himself; Dukakis’ ride in that M1 Abrams tank, where, Lee observed, he looked like Bullwinkle, was a classic.  That day on the campaign, the sense that the tide had turned, as, indeed, it had, was palpable.

God bless Lee Atwater.


Mary Claire Kendall is a Washington-based journalist and screenwriter. She's published frequently in the Washington Times, Washington Examiner, San Francisco Examiner, and Pajamas Media, among other national venues.  A graduate of Wellesley College, she has extensive political experience including a stint as one of Lee Atwater’s “30 nerds” on the George H.W. Bush presidential campaign. She served as a Reagan political appointee at the U.S. Department of Education, 1987-’88; and as a George H.W. Bush political appointee at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1989-’93. For more information, see www.maryclairecinema.com.


First day article published, April 6, 2011... On this day in history: April 6 ... during the American Revolution,  Congress opened all U.S. ports to international trade, 1776... during the Old West era, The Black Hawk War began, 1832... during The Civil War, The Battle of Shiloh, 1862, and The Battle of Sayler's Creek, 1865, began... The U.S. entered World War I, 1917... Germany invaded Yugoslavia and Greece, during World War II, 1941... U.S. ground combat troops began to take offensive measures in Vietnam, 1965... U.S. forces responded to North Vietnamese offensive, 1972... Also, the Mormon Church was established, 1830... Tyler was inaugurated as the 10th president, 1841... Peary's expedition reached The North Pole, 1909... Oscar Wilde was arrested, 1895... .the First modern Olympics were held, 1896... and 2001: A Space Odyssey was released, 1968.... and, the Declaration of Arbroath was signed in  Scotland in 1320, and Tartan Day, a celebration of Scottish heritage, is observed.

June 21, 2011 update:  Former Utah Governor and U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman gave a moving presidential announcement speech today with the Statue of Liberty in the background - 30 years after Ronald Reagan announced for the presidency in the very same spot.  Daily Beast's John Avlon is concluding Huntsman is this year's GOP dark horse... time will tell... 

April 25, 2011 update: Governor Haley Barbour issued a statement today announcing that he has decided not to run for president after all because he did not feel he had the requisite "fire in the belly" to endure the steep climb a presidential run entails.  He made the right decision: It takes a lot of fire in the belly to climb that presidential mountain, especially given the state of the Republican party today, and the corresponding Herculean task of unifying it around a singular purpose.  But, of course, Barbour will still serve as a party elder and power broker, helping the GOP win the White House, plus more seats in House and possibly the Senate in November 2012... that's the spirit, as of today, in which this article is published...

**********

Obama's Faith-Building Exercise: Energy and the Middle East

by Mary Claire Kendall

President Barack Obama in front of the "The Great Sphinx of Giza"

during his visit to Cairo in June 2009   (Mandel Ngan / AFP-Getty Images)

“Let me tell you, these past two years, they have deepened my faith,” President Barack Obama intoned at the National Prayer Breakfast earlier this year.

Let me tell you, President Obama, these past two years, they have deepened everyone’s faith!

The latest faith-building exercise is the President’s management of revolution in the Middle East, where strategically important energy supplies hang in the balance, while he’s simultaneously curbing American oil and gas production.

It’s surreal.

Just before that Tunisian street vendor set himself on fire, thereby inflaming the region with revolutionary fervor, Obama, on December 1, rescinded his March 2010 decision to expand offshore oil exploration in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and along the Atlantic coast—a moratorium expected to last at least seven years. All told, these regions have reserves equivalent to Norway (7.5 billion barrels of oil), and Canada (58.5 trillion cubic feet of gas); and the expansion, partially opening those waters, would have yielded enough oil to fuel more than 2.4 million cars and heat 8 million households for 60 years.

In spite of a Louisiana federal judge holding the Obama administration in contempt over the moratorium ,  Republican Senator David Vitter (R-LA) recently called out Obama appointees Ken Salazar and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) Director Michael Bromwich, for claiming many more pending offshore drilling permits than is actually the case.

Under pressure, Bromwich, the top U.S. offshore-drilling regulator, said Tuesday, more permits would be issued “within the next week,” not months, while publicly excoriating the industry for what he considers its devil-could-care attitude in the wake of last year’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Bromwich told reporters, “I don’t know what the pace will be going forward. I don’t think anyone is in a position to say what that will be.”

But, Obama’s energy sleight-of-hand is a tea party compared to his management of revolution in the Middle East.

He was, of course, a little late to that party that, Sphinx-like, now involves solving a riddle—how to maintain stability in the midst of tectonic change—or be gobbled up.

Obama didn’t even mention the nascent Egyptian uprising in his State of the Union and failed to publicly encourage democracy in Egypt until crisis hit, leaving many scratching their heads given Egypt’s critically important role in Middle East stability.

With revolution spreading like wild fire throughout the region, prevention in Egypt—urging now-deposed President Hosni Mubarak, as President George W. Bush did, to prune dead branches of government repression and end incendiary injustice—should have been job one.

But, it was only when the fire was fully ablaze that Obama engaged—in spite of remaining neutral during the historic Iranian “Green Revolution” in June 2009. Nine days earlier, speaking at Cairo University, on the eve of the Iranian elections then shaping up as a sham, Obama highlighted US intervention in the 1953 Iranian coup, intimating that it catalyzed the 1979 radical theocratic takeover.  When protests erupted over the patently unfair Iranian elections, Obama remained neutral in spite of the fact that our interests and values perfectly aligned in that instance.

As Niall Ferguson wrote in Newsweek, “Wanted: A Grand Strategy,” “The wave Obama just missed—again—is the revolutionary wave of Middle Eastern democracy.”

A faith-building exercise, indeed.

“It’s hard as hell,” wrote Leslie Gelb in The Daily Beast, to transform protests into democracy, and easy for the process to be hijacked by opportunists less interested in freedom for the people than power for themselves.

Far better—as Leslie “Remember that great old democrat, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin?” Gelb wrote—to go it slow.

With all the danger now mixed with uncertainty, the Middle East needs all the prayers it can get.

Smart leadership—“`progressive pragmatism,’ with an emphasis on both words” as David Ignatius counsels—wouldn’t hurt either.

Of course, the Libyan invention doesn’t come close to passing the “dumb war” test Obama used in 2002 to oppose the Iraq intervention against brutal dictator Saddam Hussein, who makes Qaddafi look tame by comparison.  Our strategic national interest is non-existent: Libya has far less oil reserves, supplying 2% of the world’s oil, and does not have the ability to threaten shipping lanes like Iran.

Rather, a smart model is that employed by President Ronald Reagan when bombing Libya 25 years almost to the day that Operation Odyssey Dawn began—consulting Congress and outlining the mission clearly for the American people from the Oval Office—not Rio.

Absent smart policy that follows protocol, prayer will have to do for now, as Gelb urges at the end of this piece analyzing Obama’s misguided Libyan intervention.

Then, again, there’s always the Constitution, as then Senator Joe Biden articulated on “Hardball” in 2007, vis-à-vis Iran’s belligerence, noting President George W. Bush lacked “constitutional authority” to go to war “unless we were attacked or unless there is proof we are about to be attacked.”

Originally published in Pajamas Media in March 2011.

Haley Barbour's golden opportunity

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour speaks at the

Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)

in Washington on Saturday, Feb. 12, 2011. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

Mississippi's Republican Gov. Haley Barbour has hit a bit of a rough patch on the road to the White House. A Weekly Standard cover story made this Yazoo City native look oblivious to civil rights struggles, albeit, who can begrudge him being more interested in girls as a teen?

Nonetheless, one path to recovery lies smack-dab in the midst of the other crucible every governor, including Mr. Barbour, is suffering: red ink as far as the eye can see.

It's not pretty. Wisconsin's Republican Gov. Scott Walker is facing stiff headwinds - lawmakers on the lam, union members demonstrating, teachers staging sickouts, many displaying precious little comity - all because he proposed cutting state workers' pensions and health care benefits and curtailing collective bargaining to rein in long-term costs.

Collectively, states must close a budget deficit of $175 billion through 2013.

Public-employee benefits - the largest expenditure in nearly every state budget - must be realigned with fiscal reality. Medicaid is another source of out-of-control spending - not only for states but for the feds - that demands urgent attention.

In Mississippi, Medicaid swallowed up $4.37 billion in 2009. California, with the biggest Medicaid tab, spent nine times more.

President Obama, who should be sympathetic to the plight of poor, disproportionately black beneficiaries, has done zip, zilch, nada to reform Medicaid in his 2012 budget. In fact, his Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, i.e., Obamacare, expands it.

Now that a federal judge in Florida has declared Obamacare unconstitutional, Republicans have a major opportunity to get health care reform right - in a way that doesn't bust state budgets.

It just so happens Republicans have a plan that would save states on average $20 billion annually, a trillion collectively, on Medicaid - the feds $300 million - because it puts patients and their health needs first.

It's called the Patients' Choice Act (PCA). It was introduced in the 111th Congress and featured in House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan's 2010 "Roadmap," which the 112th Congress' 2012 budget will reflect when it comes out April.

Unfortunately, too many Republicanshave withheld their support, if not outright campaigned against this plan because its patient-centeredness not only curbs the power of government bureaucracy, it also curbs the power of insurance bureaucracy.

This lack of Republican unanimity is why Democratsfalsely cast the party as having no plan.

PCA, co-sponsored by Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, Sen. Richard Burr, North Carolina Republican, Rep. Paul Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, and Rep. Devin Nunes, California Republican - in contrast to Obamacare - would achieve universal coverage and create a true insurance market, thus removing anti-competitive inequities currently plaguing the system.

Most brilliantly, it transforms Medicaid from its current third-rate status into a first-class, stigma-free health care system for low-income people, making it the natural corollary to Republican-crafted welfare reform that President Clinton smartly co-opted in one of the crowning achievements of his presidency.

It does this by tackling health care's structural deficiencies, "realigning how nearly $1 trillion, currently assumed under law, is spent by involving individual [Medicaid] beneficiaries in a way that decelerates the health care spending growth rate, through a carefully calibrated template and formula that emphasizes health outcomes." ("Health Care Reform: The Private Option," Medical Progress Today, Oct. 23, 2009)

In short, PCA brings Medicaid into the 21st century, treating poorer eligible citizens with real dignity for the first time in their lives, and saves immense sums of money while providing a template for reducing health care spending across the board.

The only thing the Patients' Choice Act has lacked is high-wattage leadership.

That's where Haley Barbour comes in and with it a golden opportunity to transform himself into a budget and racial healer, positioning himself to win the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

Mary Claire Kendall, a Washington-based writer, served in the Department of Health and Human Services under President George H.W. Bush.


Originally published in The Washington Times, 6:22 p.m., Friday, February 25, 2011 (online) and in the paper edition, Monday, February 28, 2011.

Coming Soon: Back to the Future — Our ‘Rendezvous with Destiny’

Forty-six years ago today on October 27, 1964, Ronald Reagan gave his now-legendary "Time for Choosing" speech. Next Tuesday, you and I have our own "rendezvous with destiny" as well.

October 27, 2010 - by Mary Claire Kendall

Many say next Tuesday’s election will be a referendum on President Barack Obama and that it will register epic disapproval, its feel and impact not unlike a Hawaiian tsunami, usually unexpected by the victims, triggered by earthquakes and then the eruption of a volcano.

This is true. Mount Voter Anger & Frustration, it seems clear, is about to erupt and give Obama the shock of a lifetime — perhaps the spanking he never got as a child in Hawaii. Enough with the European socialism! Spank! Enough with unaffordable cradle-to-grave health care and other entitlements we can’t afford! Spank! Focus on jobs, glorious jobs, so we can afford to take care of ourselves! Spank! Spank! Spank!

Three numbers point to the coming tsunami: 64% now think the country is on the wrong track; nearly 50% have disapproved of Obama’s performance since the summer of 2010 when he assumed ownership of the bad economy (W’s recession was deemed officially over in June 2009); and less than 40% of independents support Obama as of the summer of 2010, abandoning him in droves starting in the summer of 2009 when he failed to compromise on his excessive health care plan which translated into greater independent support for Republicans in the midterms.

Of course, Democrats are now already figuratively speaking “underwater” (many selling short), a reality they will confront on November 2, when Obama’s reduced value is finally known — likely eyepopppingly less than in 2008, when they bought his “hope and change” rhetoric. All indicators are it won’t be pretty. That’s what makes American democracy so great — and entertaining. Politicians tell voters what they think they’re worth — Obama gave himself a B+ — and voters tell them to go “shove it.”

But next Tuesday’s election — more than signaling what voters don’t want — will signal what voters want.

In this regard, it seems more and more clear that November 2 will be a referendum on the wisdom of Ronald Reagan from which we have veered in recent years.

Reagan’s “Time for Choosing” speech, which he gave 46 years ago today on October 27, 1964, honed in on the essence of what has made America so exceptional and so great, electrifying Americans of all stripes.

Ronald Reagan — then, ironically, a General Electric spokesman poised to embark on a political career that his good friend, Paramount producer A.C. Lyles, rightly predicted then would take him to the White House — asked in this famous speech whether “we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers.” He compellingly highlighted the very challenges we confront today, namely: “Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”

The Republican Study Committee has artfully interspersed this speech with remarks made by the current crop of Democratic leaders, including Obama, in a video (“Those Voices Don’t Speak for Us”) as a closing argument for the midterms. It includes Reagan presciently noting self-government’s perennial threat:

A government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. They also knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector
of the economy.

Fasten your seat belts: it’s time for another “rendezvous with destiny.”

###

Mary Claire Kendall's articles have appeared in the NY Daily News, New York Post, Washington Examiner, National Review Online, Human Events Online, the Daily Caller, Big Hollywood, On Patrol (USO magazine) and VFW Magazine, among many other publications. Visit her Website at www.maryclairecinema.com.

###

This piece first appeared in Pajamas Media at http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/our-rendezvous-with-destiny/?singlepage=true .

The madness of Barack Obama

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/oct/8/the-madness-of-barack-obama/print/

By Mary Claire Kendall

They say history repeats itself.

On July 2, Dave Bossie of Citizens United and writer-director Steve Bannon of Victory Productions began discussing a short "closing argument" video - with a working title called "Bill of Indictment" - for release Oct. 1, about the leftist agenda that, since January 2009, Barack Obama and his Capitol Hill allies have imposed upon unwilling Americans.

Artwork used in print version of commentary, replicated at
http://afrocityblog.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/black-tea-parties/

On July 2, 1776, 234 years earlier, Thomas Jefferson had just crafted his Declaration of Independence - a bill of indictment on the "Madness of King George III." (A 1994 film captured that year's revolution.)

By July 4, "Battle for America" was fully conceptualized, with Dick Morris, Newt Gingrich and Lou Dobbs coming on-board immediately. "We were able to do an 80-minute feature documentary, soup to nuts, in 90 days," Mr. Bannon said.

But they got lots of help from San Francisco liberal Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and company.

The three-act film, far from preaching to the choir, Mr. Bannon said, is directed at independents and Reagan Democrats. It's a "Greek tragedy" complete with a Greek chorus, led by Mr. Morris and including Ann Coulter, Mr. Gingrich, Mr. Dobbs and others who guide the audience through a collection of sound-off videos from Mr. Obama and fellow liberals so that, in line with Mr. Bannon's vision, they are "hoist(ed) with their own petard."

Their powerfully arrayed words and actions drive home the point that they have executed and presided over the systematic transformation of America into a European socialist state that Americans didn't vote for and don't want - including cradle-to-grave health care courtesy of trillions of dollars' worth of Chinese renminbi and government control of private businesses like GM, reducing American competitiveness and jobs. As many as 100 House Democrats stand to lose their seats because they voted for Obama health care, disapproval of which tops 60 percent in the latest Rasmussen poll.

As a prototypical independent constituent told Rep. Dan Lungren, the California Republican related in the film, "I voted for Barack Obama, but I did not vote for this madness,."

Ready or not, here comes a second American Revolution.

"We are carpet-bombing this film," said Mr. Bannon, including this weekend at the 3,000-strong Virginia Tea Party Convention, and "Battle for America" will play at theaters in areas chock-a-block with independents and Reagan Democrats who have had it.

Mr. Morris predicts Nov. 2 will dramatically check Mr. Obama's "madness."

Asked if Mr. Obama may be crazy like a fox, fancying himself like Bill "Clinton the Triangulator," Mr. Morris told me, "He might try to, but our politics [have] moved so far to the left that what used to be the right is now the center." No tax increases, no social engineering on health care, no state bailouts with federal money are all "centrist" positions now. "So, I think he'll try to move from what used to be the left to what used to be the center. But, that will only mean moving from the extreme left to the far left."

All of which means he's got a way to go before he reaches the sane center, promising what Mr. Morris believes will be an earthquake on Nov. 2.

Mary Claire Kendall is a Washington-based writer.

Originally published at: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/oct/8/the-madness-of-barack-obama/print/

Obama’s Political Tin Ear

by Mary Claire Kendall

When it comes to President Barack Obama’s political tin ear and inability to feel voters’ pain, truly it’s an embarrassment of riches.

The federal deficit, well in excess of $1 trillion, speaks volumes; but it lacks the immediacy of, say, last May’s Gulf Coast scenes of Obama, alone on the beach, limply picking up tar balls, as BP’s burst oil well was gushing and ruining lives; or the First Lady’s luxurious vacation in Spain this summer.

And now we have the very relatable Oval Office redecoration, costing tens of thousands of dollars, at a time when the federal budget is drowning in red ink and most Americans would be hard-pressed to replace carpets and sofas still having good wear left in them, let alone buy fancy wallpaper from the Hamptons.

And while the work was paid for by the White House Historical Association, it’s naïve to think the “quid” for the “quo” of an Oval Office makeover will cost taxpayers not a dime. But even positing utmost rectitude, the lack of frugality when America is approaching bankruptcy is incomprehensible.

Bill and Hillary Clinton already spent an estimated $337,000 in the 1990s to refurbish the Oval Office — along with the East Room, Blue Room, State Dining Room, Lincoln Bedroom, and Lincoln Sitting Room, with the assistance of Arkansas decorator Kaki Hockersmith.

This work, also paid for with private money, required counsel’s approval, given obvious conflict of interest concerns, and, in fact, as the New York Times noted back then, generated an angry letter [1] from then Deputy Counsel Vince Foster to the White House Usher’s Office on what he believed was the unfair politicization of the cost, shortly before he was found dead at Fort Marcy.

But then redecorating the White House has generated controversy since the dawn of the republic — now more than ever given our nation’s extreme indebtedness.

And just what should our national priorities be? Since Obama is so inept at properly projecting them, it’s helpful to consider remarks by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), poised to be next speaker of the House, to the American Legion.

After noting our nation, particularly our troops, have paid dearly during nine years of war, Boehner reflected: “We have serious decisions to make regarding our path forward, and these decisions will be made in an environment in which we borrow 41 cents of every dollar we spend. This means we must focus on working together to identify our national security priorities and ensure our continued military and economic superiority.”

Quite simply, the test for spending, knowing it puts America more deeply in debt, making us correspondingly more vulnerable to our enemies, should be: Is this spending essential to national security? Fancy new Oval Office digs clearly don’t qualify.

As Obama himself said in February 2009, upon release of his first budget: “There are times where you can afford to redecorate your house, and there are times where you need to focus on rebuilding the foundation.”

If only they had stuck to Michelle’s organic garden, including beehives installed on the South Lawn, a White House first, to supply organic produce and honey. Instead, they’ve supplied rich material for comedians and bloggers (Arianna Huffington dubbed the first family’s redecorating efforts “The Audacity of Taupe [2]” recently). Not to mention both Republican congressional candidates and Democrats in hyper-distancing mode.

Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obamas-political-tin-ear/
URLs in this post:
[1] generated an angry letter: http://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/15/us/redecorating-private-rooms-in-political-limelight.html
[2] The Audacity of Taupe: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/the-audacity-of-taupe_b_703628.html

Copyright © 2010 Pajamas Media. All rights reserved.

Summer of Discontent

As the oil began gushing out of the BP Deep Horizon well, many questioned the wisdom of drilling a mile below the ocean's surface, apparently to satisfy environmentalists. So the contingency plan if/when the oil well blows one mile below the ocean's surface? Deploy sophisticated technology designed to stop the gusher? No, it doesn't exist.  Fallback plan, if all else fails: relief wells that take a few months to build, while the oil gusher continues to whack away at livelihoods, ways of life, and much of Louisiana's natural beauty.

Governor Haley Barbour (R-MS) provided more context on This Week, a few days later on Sunday, June 6.  He explained that 30,000 deep water oil drills had been approved since Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas gave the OK to deep water oil drilling, and that this Deep Horizon/BP disaster is the only such one. Most of the accidents, he said, have occurred with tankers, and that if we ceased our deep water oil drilling, we would be importing that much more oil, increasing the likelihood of tanker accidents.

Deepwater oil drilling, he stressed, is a big source of jobs and revenue.

The deep water oil rigs, he said, would not go out of commmission but would simply move to other parts of the world -- off the coast of Africa, Indonesia, etc. -- again making us progressively more dependent on the rest of the world for our oil, thereby further undermining our national security and that of our allies since so much of the oil profit would go into the hands of our enemies.

Now, this disaster has certainly put into the sharpest focus possible the need to have tighter safety regulation -- and to impose stiff penalties when greasing politicians hands' undermines saftey. Also, we need to have a better contingency plan should, God forbid, the unthinkable happen again. The irony is, as Gov. Barbour noted, such technology already exists -- the product of American innovation, which the Chinese and others are making use of it. Furthermore the technology exists to avoid such catastrophes in the first place -- technology which the Chinese and others are availing themselves of.

But, as Gov. Barbour suggests, if unwise policies are implemented, it would only compound the disaster the Gulf states are now reeling from.