Showing posts with label Red States. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Red States. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Jim Leach - Republican Speech at Democratic Convention
I agree with Steve Benen; former Republican Rep. Jim Leach got a surprisingly small amount of coverage yesterday for his speech at the Democratic Convention. He definitely got less coverage than Liebertraitor is expected to get. I thought his speech was great:
As a Republican, I stand before you with deep respect for the history and traditions of my political party. But it is clear to all Americans that something is out of kilter in our great republic.... Seldom has the case for an inspiring new political ethic been more compelling. And seldom has an emerging leader so matched the needs of the moment.... I stand before you proud of my party's contributions to American history but, as a citizen, proud as well of the good judgment of good people in this good party, in nominating a transcending candidate, an individual whom I am convinced will recapture the American dream and be a truly great president: the senator from Abraham Lincoln's state -- Barack Obama.... This is not a time for politics as usual.... Obama will recapture the American dream and be a truly great president.
Update - Here's the video:
Friday, August 15, 2008
Wisdom from President Eisenhower for Today
Andrew Sullivan notes this poignant quote from President Dwight Eisenhower (of course, just a raving hippie peacenik):
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. ... We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together." Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961
Now I can more clearly see why his granddaughter, lifelong Republican Susan Eisenhower, endorsed Obama back in February:
Forty-seven years ago, my grandfather Dwight D. Eisenhower bid farewell to a nation he had served for more than five decades. In his televised address, Ike famously coined the term "military-industrial complex," and he offered advice that is still relevant today. "As we peer into society's future," he said, we "must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow."
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Obama Turning Red States Blue
From the Purple State Blog:
Political Insider has a series of new polls showing Senator Obama pulling close or ahead in 10 Bush states:
- Montana: Bush won by 11 points in 2004, Obama leading McCain by 5 points
- Colorado: Bush +4, Obama +5
- Virginia: Bush +8, Obama +2
- New Mexico: Bush +1, Obama +3
- Florida: Bush +5, Obama +2
- Indiana: Bush +20, Obama +1
- Georgia: Bush +16, McCain +1
- Mississippi: Bush +20, McCain +4
- Alaska: Bush +26, McCain +4
- North Carolina: Bush +13, McCain +4
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Wyoming Governor Freudenthal Endorses Obama
Wyoming Governor, former Clinton administration U.S. attorney for Wyoming and superdelegate Dave Freudenthal, today endorsed Barack Obama:
Freudenthal said he was impressed by the large, enthusiastic crowds that turned out to see Obama when he visited Wyoming ahead of last month's caucuses.
"They paid attention and were riveted and reactivated, and trying to be part of an America that's bigger than just their own self-interest," Freudenthal told The Associated Press. "And you hope that can work. Because something has got to dig us out of this morass that we've gotten into, where it's sort of gotcha politics."When both Obama and Hillary Clinton came to Wyoming, the governor spent time with each. Freudenthal said he had nothing negative to say about Hillary Clinton, but Obama struck him as "incredibly smart" and someone who gives honest answers instead of scripted responses.
The governor also said Obama gave him an honest answer about putting the Wyoming Range in western Wyoming off-limits to oil and gas drilling, something Freudenthal would like to see the U.S. Senate approve.
Read More: Wyoming governor backs Obama
Friday, March 28, 2008
Condi Rice Hails Obama Speech on Race
The support for Obama's speech on race last week, which the latest Gallup and Rasmussen numbers show was a rousing success, is getting broader and broader.
Today, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hailed Obama's speech:
She declined to comment directly on the presidential campaign in the Times interview, saying only that it was "important" that Obama "gave it for a whole host of reasons", but strongly defended the patriotism of African Americans.
"Africans and Europeans came here and founded this country together - Europeans by choice and Africans in chains. That's not a very pretty reality of our founding."
"What I would like understood as a black American is that black Americans loved and had faith in this country even when this country didn't love and have faith in them - and that's our legacy
."
Read More: Rice calls Obama's landmark speech on race in America 'important'
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Editor of New Republic Defends Obama
This is absolutely huge and one of the most honest and forthright articles I've read in a long time. The Editor in Chief of the conservative New Republic just penned the following article, which I copied in full below. Truly amazing.
The power of the preacher is an unmeasured force in American life. Of course, now that it has become an issue in a political campaign, we are focusing on the one minister and the one candidate whose lives at church have been intertwined both in fact and in the public eye. The two men are each charismatic in their own ways, different ways, as anyone who has seen them speak (if even just on television or on syncopated and, thus, distorted YouTube clips) can attest.
Barack Obama speaks in a professorial manner in which the logic of his argument, calmly laid out, is the drama of the oration. I have my own analogy. Of course, I never heard Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. speak. But I read into his addresses and opinions the moral and legal ganglion of more than seven decades of our national history, from the Civil War to the Great Depression. And I hear in Obama's cadence not only what makes him attractive to audiences but also something very much like Holmes's disciplined thinking, and it is this that makes this presidential aspirant truly eloquent. In only a decade in public life, he has become the (oh yes, gangling) ganglion of our hopes for a post-racial country. It is ironic--isn't it?--that we should have come so quickly to the dawn of post-racialism while still lumbering clumsily through the miasma of a misnamed multi-culturalism.
We are all linked to the places from which we came, though some of us have moved very far from them. My relationship to the different rabbis whose sermons I have not just heard, but heard intently over more than 50 years, would make a very difficult narrative--not quite as difficult as a narrative about my father and me, but up there. I now attend a synagogue in New York with my children and my grandson. I love the synagogue; I do not love the rabbis for I do not really know them personally. More to the point, I do not love their sermons. Two years ago, Yom Kippur, the rabbi parsed a banal speech by Bella Abzug, the old and (if truth be told) faithful red mama, as if it were a sacred text. Feh. One of this congregation's ingenuous innovations to the routine confessional of sins ("We lie. We cheat ...") in the prayer book is the following: "We rush towards war and crawl to peace." This is a lie! Why do I still pray with this assembly? Because, aside from the offending "hip" politics of the rabbis, there is an all-embracing warmth that suffuses the fold. There is beautiful music. The service is almost all in Hebrew. Still, my then-not-quite-four year-old grandson said to me on the way out, "I have never felt closer to God." Dayenu, as we say on Passover: "It is sufficient." Or, as one of the songs of the tradition known to almost every Jew puts it, Hinay ma tov ... : "How good it is for brothers to sit together ...".
OK, Barack Obama's predicament is more complicated than mine. Remember he titled one of his books Dreams From My Father. I suspect that most of Obama's operative dreams came from his mother. After all, his father deserted him, the common nightmare of African American youth. (Increasingly also white youth.) That is a thread that connects Obama to his own generation of African Americans and to the next. His father did not inspire him to work hard at school or to become the editor of the Harvard Law Review. The supportive and yearning parent was his mother and, by extension, his maternal grandparents. They are his dreams, and his father is the absent yearning.
Obama's life was at once over-determined and under-determined. There are so many boxes he could have checked, and it is not altogether unsurprising that the one he checked most firmly was his father's box. I more than suspect that Pastor Jeremiah Wright is, in Obama's life, also his father's vagrant presence. No one should arrogate to himself counseling anybody to sever ties, even fragile ones, perhaps fragile ones especially, to one's father. Of course, it makes a difference that Obama's father was not an American but a Kenyan, not of a Christian background but a Muslim one. But the psychology of connection and separation is not an easy puzzle, and it does not fit a predictable pattern. Nonetheless, suffice it to say that it exists.
The fact is that many of us were astonished by the rhythm of the English language as it is practiced in Wright's church. Forget for the moment the content. Take a look at a service in what is now Otis Moss's church. This is a Christianity that seems to outsiders to have as much to do with break dancing as it does with the New Testament, and the culture of this one church is very much like the culture of thousands all over America. You may puzzle as to how Barack Obama, of the quiet demeanor and the Holmesian logic, can relate to this pattern of religiosity. But, if I may jog your oversensitized memory, there was more of Chicago's Trinity United Church in Martin Luther King's perorations than there was Reinhold Niebuhr. The typical black church service is not a Unitarian prayer meeting or Catholic devotions. It is something "other" that many of us have not experienced and do not know. It is not ours but theirs. And what's wrong with that?
You object: You were not caught out by Wright's rhythm or his vestments, by the congregation's hallelujahs or its songs of praise and prayer. What bothered you was his, their words. Mostly his, that is, Pastor Wright's words. You were concerned by the content. And so, at least in part, was I. Wright's content is not intellectually nuanced, and his words are in large measure crude. His content is often foul.
Of course, while one can assume that there is something in the style of Trinity's Christianity that attracts Obama, no one has even suggested that Obama agrees with any of Wright's controversial words. In fact, one knows from the senator's own words past and present that his love of country is unsurpassed--and unsurpassed in a way that will attract younger people who had lapsed into an unthinking and unrealistic internationalism.
Leaving a church is never a simple transaction. Episcopalians in America (and Anglicans elsewhere) have had all kinds of provocations. A gay bishop in New Hampshire has virtually split the communion. Some are secessionists because of Gene Robinson's elevation. Some want to stay and fight it. Others want to put the oppositionists to the fire. Some on the outs want to put themselves under the discipline of a religiously conservative African diocese. Mostly, they stay and grumble, one way or another. A similar process is underway in England, where suddenly the archbishop of Canterbury wants British Muslims to be permitted to live under Sharia law and forgo the liberties of British law. A church with leaders like that is bound to have troubles. But the church, big and small, national and local, will remain.
While pondering Obama's tribulations about his pastor, I also reflected about the far more laden crisis for Roman Catholic politicians who are for a woman's legal right to an abortion. Every so often, church authorities threaten to excommunicate them--a drastic act by a bishop or archbishop in his diocese. But it goes higher than that. On his trip to Latin America last year, for example, Pope Benedict approved a statement pronouncing that "legislative action in favor of abortion is incompatible with participation in the Eucharist," and politicians who vote that way should "exclude themselves from communion." In 2004, Sean O'Malley, the archbishop of Boston, said pro-choice politicians like John Kerry "shouldn't dare come to Communion." In any case, the position of the church is that such politicians have already excommunicated themselves. This is a far more urgent situation than the one in which Obama finds himself.
Frankly, I am relieved that the Wright convulsion has not focused on Israel and the Jews. This is not, then, what some non-Jews might think of as a "narrow" matter. But the truth is that Obama has a much clearer grasp of what the Jewish state faces than the common-place statements of support from other "pro-Israel" politicians, an erroneous view that almost ineluctably, in Obama's words, "sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam." I trust Obama on this. I already know what strategic concessions Hillary's husband was ready to coerce Israel into giving to Yasir Arafat, who was dumb enough not to take them.
But there is a new game in town, and it is finding men and women for Obama to repudiate. I know about political campaigns and how they attract both fossils and novices. A new candidate lures more of both than a veteran. Indeed, if you look at Mrs. Clinton's campaign, you'll find that there are almost no fresh faces--and, thus, no fresh minds--in the coterie; and it is a coterie. It is a closed and nasty circle which learned its bad habits from Bill. That's why they are making one mistake after another. The rule is: Never be gracious if you have the chance to be vicious. The non plus ultra of this style was the still greedy ex-president suggesting that, while his wife loved her country, Obama didn't love his.
The other malignant chores can be safely left by the Clintons for the journalistic right to perform. Both The Weekly Standard and Commentary will readily comply. Of course, the fantasy that Zbigniew Brzezinski would return to power or even influence is just that, a fantasy. Zbig is too nostalgic for the old Cold War with Russia for any president to allow him to come close to big power diplomacy. He once confided to me that Saddam Hussein would be to him "what Sadat was to Henry." Oh my. Obama might have thought him smart on Iraq (I do not) and brought him along to a speech on the subject in Iowa. But, frankly, Zbig disqualified himself from influence on the Middle East with all but poor Jimmy Carter, whom he persuaded that the Ayatollah Khomeini was a useful tool against the Soviets.
And on Monday, there emerged in The American Spectator the silly sayings of the hardly satanic figure of General Merrill A. "Tony" McPeak who has said (a) that Israel wants peace (something he's not sure about the Palestinians) and (b) that voters in Miami and New York determine American policy in the Arab world. With the latter statement, McPeak goes beyond even Walt and Mearshimer. It is odious. And I fervently hope that his advice is limited to matters of defense, if that. But if conservatives believe that the candidates are vulnerable to the invidious influence of their supporters on Israel policy, let them ponder the sway of James Baker over John McCain, the candidate whom the "fuck the Jews" secretary of state endorsed.
My point is not to impugn McCain. I trust him on Israel, admire him hugely and could even envision casting a vote for him. But every candidate has noxious supporters and it is simply illogical and unfair to impute the views of these supporters to their favored candidate, especially when the candidate clearly disagrees.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Conservative Legal Scholar Kmiec Endorses Obama
This is a must read endorsement -- just another example of Obama's cross-party appeal. Conservative lawyer and legal scholar Douglas Kmiec endorsed Barack Obama yesterday.
According to his bio, Mr. Kmiec served as head of the Office of Legal Counsel (U.S. Assistant Attorney General) for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, a position previously held by U.S. Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Antonin Scalia in the Nixon and Ford administrations. He was also Co-Chair of the Romney Campaign Committee for the Courts and the Constitution.
Today I endorse Barack Obama for president of the United States. I believe him to be a person of integrity, intelligence and genuine good will. I take him at his word that he wants to move the nation beyond its religious and racial divides and to return United States to that company of nations committed to human rights...
No doubt some of my friends will see this as a matter of party or intellectual treachery. I regret that and I respect their disagreement. But they will readily agree that as Republicans, we are first Americans. As Americans, we must voice our concerns for the well-being of our nation without partisanship when decisions that have been made endanger the body politic. Our president has involved our nation in a military engagement without sufficient justification or clear objective. In so doing, he has incurred both tragic loss of life and extraordinary debt jeopardizing the economy and the well-being of the average American citizen. In pursuit of these fatally flawed purposes, the office of the presidency, which it was once my privilege to defend in public office formally, has been distorted beyond its constitutional assignment. Today, I do no more than raise the defense of that important office anew, but as private citizen.
Read More: Convictions: Endorsing Obama (hat tip Andrew Sullivan)
Friday, March 21, 2008
NRO's Murray Defends Obama
There has been such an amazing variety of responses to Obama's speech earlier this week. Here is an enlightening missive out of the lion's den over at the conservative National Review Online:
I understand how naïve it is to read a presidential candidate’s speech as if it were anything except political positioning, but that leads me to my final point: It’s about time that people who disagree with Obama’s politics recognize that he is genuinely different. When he talks, he sounds like a real human being, not a politician. I’m not referring to the speechifying, but to the way he comes across all the time. We’ve had lots of charming politicians. I cannot think of another politician in my lifetime who conveys so much sense of talking to individuals, and talking to them in ways that he sees as one side of a dialogue. Conservatives who insist that he’s nothing but an even slicker Bill Clinton are missing a reality about him, and at their peril.
Read More: My Last Word on Obama, I Promise.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Everyday Southern Folks React to Obama Speech
Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan and the DailyKos for this gem of an anecdote:
I've watched the speech again since this morning, and it didn't disappoint, but just at that moment I stopped watching it ... and started watching the people around me. The young black man. The elderly white couple. The two white women, one college-aged, one in her late-20s. One middle-aged white woman. Two white men, one college-aged, one in his late-30s. One Asian couple. All of them were watching the speech. Rapt. Nodding.
Gradually, the twentysomething white woman went back to her laptop, but kept smiling when Obama would say something important. The elderly white couple whispered in their Southern accented way: "He's really good... He's saying good things... He's a good young man..." The young black man chuckled when Obama said that Sunday morning was the most segregated hour in America, but was otherwise simply watching. And at one point, the middle-aged white woman asked one of the dealership folks, in another thick, thick Southern accent if she wouldn't mind turning up the volume, because she really wanted to hear this speech.
She, this white Southern woman from the suburbs, wanted to hear this speech, delivered by a Black man with a funny name running for President. And she was nodding.
But she wasn't the only one.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Quote of the Day: "Second Class Delegates"
This is a gem from a co-chairman of the Clinton campaign in Michigan from a conference call today:
"Superdelegates are not second-class delegates," says Joel Ferguson, who will be a superdelegate if Michigan is seated. "The real second-class delegates are the delegates that are picked in red-state caucuses that are never going to vote Democratic."
Read More: 'Second-class delegates'
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Purple America is ready, and eager, for Obama
Here's a great piece on Obama's broad appeal across the country, including in states that Senator Clinton has dismissed as "not significant" (i.e., any state she hasn't won):
It was hard to know where the good news ended for Barack Obama after the Potomac primaries. There had been no question that Obama would dominate in DC and Maryland. But his overwhelming romp in Virginia--one of a handful of formerly "red" states that are tossups for 2008--made the best case yet that the Illinois senator just might live up to his promise of blasting the red-blue electoral map to smithereens come November.
Read More: Purple Obama; Mark Penn: "Significant States"
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Who Is More Electable? Obama!
Voters in many states have only just begun to be acquainted with Barack Obama, and more familiarity may breed more comfort.
“During extensive interviews in recent weeks in Republican-leaning states, Politico found widespread belief among current and former Democratic statewide officials that Obama is the more electable candidate with their electorates. These politicians also frequently registered a fear that Clinton’s personality and past history make her too polarizing to win independent and Republican-leaning voters.”
“I’ve worked for three presidents and known two or three others,” said Michael Blumenthal, who started his public career under President Kennedy and served as Treasury secretary under President Carter. “And Obama is just about the only politician I’ve ever seen who compares to Jack Kennedy.”
read more | digg story
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Barack Obama Wins Most Delegates, Most States, Most Red States on Super Tuesday
From MSNBC (via Think on These Things):
It looks like Obama, by the narrowest of margins, won last night’s delegate hunt. By our estimates, he picked up 840 to 849 delegates versus 829-838 for Clinton; the Obama camp projects winning by nine delegates (845-836). He also won more states (13 to Clinton’s eight; New Mexico is still outstanding), although she won the most populous ones (California and New York). And Obama’s argument that he might be the most electable Democrat in a general election was bolstered by the fact that he won nine red states versus four for Clinton.
Quote of the Day
"There is no doubt ... we hope and pray every night to run against Hillary Clinton," - Ari Fleischer, former Bush White house Press Secretary, on CNN last night.
Via Andrew Sullivan
Monday, January 21, 2008
Red State Support for Obama
Here's a compelling graphic they put up on yesterday's Meet the Press that shows Obama's support thus far in red states (click the image to see a bigger version):
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
"Electability": Red Staters Flock to Obama
Politico points out that there is a growing realization that Obama is the more "electable" candidate. This due, in large part, to his appeal to Republicans and independents (like me). Money quote:
During extensive interviews in recent weeks in Republican-leaning states, Politico found widespread belief among current and former Democratic statewide officials that Obama is the more electable candidate with their electorates. These politicians also frequently registered a fear that Clinton’s personality and past history make her too polarizing to win independent and Republican-leaning voters.
Read More: Red-state Dems sour on Clinton
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