2. The First Debate: Pawlenty & Cain Win
3. Violating the Oath – Voting For Cloture
4. Show Us The Budget, Senator Conrad
5. Did Pakistan Aid the Bin Laden Raid?
6. White House Puts Out Feelers on the Transportation Opportunities Act
7. Some Thoughts on Inheritance
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1. Will Obama 2012 Campaign Run On The “Gutsy Call” Of Doing The Obvious?
If you click on the URL www.gutsycall.com, you will notice that - as of this writing - it redirects you to the Obama 2012 re-election campaign website. The URL was apparently purchased yesterday, although the purchaser seems to have covered its tracks. It would appear that this is being done with the intention of using “Gutsy Call” as a campaign slogan for Obama’s 2012 campaign, in an effort to capitalize on President Obama’s decision -after just 16 hours of deliberation - to order the operation that led to Osama bin Laden’s death.
If that’s the plan, it speaks badly of President Obama as a leader and of the political instincts of his campaign team.
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2. The First Debate: Pawlenty & Cain Win
Two winners came out of the South Carolina Republican Presidential Debate.
Let me start this off by noting that Frank Luntz’s panel went for Herman Cain first and Rick Santorum second. Why? Their effective takedowns of Obama. In fact, Republican candidates need to note this, Santorum scored big tonight in his very effective take down of Obamacare.
Now, to the real winners.
The first winner is Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota.
The other big winner is Herman Cain.
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3. Violating the Oath – Voting For Cloture
In voting for cloture on the nomination of Jack McConnell on Wednesday, 11 Republican Senators violated the oath they took to defend the constitution. It’s that simple.
Senators Alexander, Brown of Massachusetts, Chambliss, Collins, Graham, Isakson, Kirk, McCain, Murkowski, Snowe and Thune provided Democrats with the necessary votes to overcome a filibuster of McConnell to be a district court judge in Rhode Island.
How bad is Jack McConnell? One only needs to look to the scathing Dear Colleague letter circulated by Senator Cornyn prior to the Senate conducting a cloture vote.
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4. Show Us The Budget, Senator Conrad
Senator Kent Conrad is about to release the Senate Democrats’ budget. What we know so far is that Senate Democrats are aghast at what might be in it.
Now, I can’t actually tell you what is in Senator Conrad’s budget because only Senate Democrats have actually seen it. It is not released to the public. Even Senate Republicans have not seen it.
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5. Did Pakistan Aid the Bin Laden Raid?
We will probably never know a lot of what transpired in that shabby villa in Abbottabad but what we do know is that the release of information has been dreadfully mismanaged by the White House and calls into question whether anyone there is interested in much more than making themselves look good or damaging someone else.
The number of stories emerging from the White House and immediately being contradicted by the White House, and in the process leaving the White House spokescritter, Jay Carney, resembling a stunned mullet, include: which of bin Laden’s sons was killed, bin Laden using a woman as a shield, his wife being killed, bin Laden firing at US forces, the raid being monitored in real time, and the cause of the helicopter crash.
We also can say with some degree of certainty that we’ve been misled on the involvement of Pakistan.
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6. White House Puts Out Feelers on the Transportation Opportunities Act
Via The Hill:
“The Obama administration has floated a transportation authorization bill that would require the study and implementation of a plan to tax automobile drivers based on how many miles they drive.”
It’s called the Transportation Opportunities Act, which is very ironic because I’m not sure of one opportunity that this would provide for the middle class Obama seems to keen on assisting. If you think for half a second you’ll quickly realize that we pay gas taxes every time we fill up our cars.
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7. Some Thoughts on Inheritance
“Inheritance” is a neutral word–it can be bad and good depending on the circumstance. You don’t get to pick what you get any more than you can pick your parents. On the one hand, you have things like photo albums and trusts funds. On the other you have the lasting repercussions of bad behavior, the sins of the father if you will, that can reach down across generations. Most of us inherit a combination of the two from our predecessors, hopefully with more of the former than the
This construct applies to presidents as well. You begin the job basically beholden to your predecessor, who has created the circumstances under which you have to try to do your job. Indeed, your first year is in many ways the political equivalent of adolescence, as you try to break away from the existing model and establish your own identity. This process can be particularly dramatic when you have successive presidents of opposing political parties.
So we have seen President Obama rebel against the Bush administration legacy throughout both his campaign and his first twenty-seven months in office. Calling attention to his inherited burdens, particularly at home but also abroad, has been a constant refrain in Obama’s rhetoric, an inevitable codicil to any policy announcement. To date, these references have been exclusively negative and pejorative, and to be honest many Americans suffering from an extended economic downturn and weary of the lengthy foreign wars have tended to accept these statements at face value.
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Sincerely yours,
Erick Erickson
Editor, RedState.com
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