February 2006 Archives
The Carnival of Ohio Politics #11 is up at Newshound. Geez, what rock have I been hiding under to have missed the first ten?
Terrorists dressed as police bombed the Askariya shrine (a major Shi'ite mosque) in the Iraqi city of Samarra today. If you're looking for on-the-ground updates from Baghdad on the reaction to the bombing, go to Iraq The Model.
God willing, this won't degenerate into civil war.
More analysis:
Bill Roggio thinks al-Qaeda has miscalculated again.
Yeah. What he said. Wish I'd thought of it first.
Do you remember that earlier this month, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld described our War on Terror as not just a conventional military conflict, but also as a war of wills? With that in mind, consider this list of principles of politically-correct leftism:
- There is no truth, only competing agendas.
- All Western (and especially American) claims to moral superiority over Communism/Fascism/Islam are vitiated by the West's history of racism and colonialism.
- There are no objective standards by which we may judge one culture to be better than another. Anyone who claims that there are such standards is an evil oppressor.
- The prosperity of the West is built on ruthless exploitation of the Third World; therefore Westerners actually deserve to be impoverished and miserable.
- Crime is the fault of society, not the individual criminal. Poor criminals are entitled to what they take. Submitting to criminal predation is more virtuous than resisting it.
- The poor are victims. Criminals are victims. And only victims are virtuous. Therefore only the poor and criminals are virtuous. (Rich people can borrow some virtue by identifying with poor people and criminals.)
- For a virtuous person, violence and war are never justified. It is always better to be a victim than to fight, or even to defend oneself. But 'oppressed' people are allowed to use violence anyway; they are merely reflecting the evil of their oppressors.
- When confronted with terror, the only moral course for a Westerner is to apologize for past sins, understand the terrorist's point of view, and make concessions.
It all sounds familiar to anybody who's had to sit through a typical lefty professor's rambling political rants, or to anybody who reads The New York Times.
A blogger named Eric S. Raymond came up with this particular list, and he gives a name to the ideology it forms: "suicidalism." He argues in a few recent posts that we in the West have swallowed this weak-willed worldview hook, line, and sinker.
In a fascinating post, Raymond cuts through the fog and diagnoses our society's problem:
We all knew it wouldn't be long before Governor Tax Taft spoke up about Secretary of State Ken Blackwell's new advertisements, didn't we? Sure enough, Bob Taft isn't happy:
Gov. Bob Taft said Tuesday he was disappointed by Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell's attack ads in the GOP primary and worried that a negative campaign will weaken whoever wins the Republican primary."If it's a really negative kind of campaign in the primary, whoever would come out of the campaign would be so damaged that it would make it more difficult for them to win in the fall," Taft said.
Taft only calls the ads "negative" because they remind voters that he's been convicted of campaign finance law violations. We voters call the ads "informative", because they state the facts. The ads are an attempt by Blackwell to distance himself from Taft, Jim Petro, Tom Noe, Bob Bennett, and the whole Ohio Republican establishment (a group now renowned for its political ineptitude and ethical laxness).
These ads won't weaken Blackwell; quite the opposite. They're essential to his survival. If Blackwell changes strategies to play nice with Taft and somehow gets past the primary election, Democratic frontrunner Ted Strickland will tar him as Taft's crooked crony and will eat him for lunch. Putting distance between oneself and a crook is smart politics.
Taft to date has declined to endorse a GOP candidate to replace him and says that hasn't changed. But he encouraged both candidates to talk about issues important to Ohioans.
Call me crazy but based on the ad and on his continuing effort to be "The Un-Taft", I'd bet that Ken Blackwell isn't exactly waiting by the phone for the Governor's call.
If Bob Taft really wants to damage Blackwell, he should endorse him.
Update: The Blackwell for Governor blog led me to Michael Meckler's piece on the ads. Meckler has no beef with the content.
George Will is watching the Ohio governor's race, and he likes what he sees in Ken Blackwell:
[Blackwell] annoys the establishment because he, unlike it, believes things. He believes that the establishment is proof of a conservative axiom: Any political group or institution that is not ideologically conservative will become, over time, liberal. That is so because, in the absence of a principled adherence to limited government, careerism -- the political idea of the unthoughtful -- will cause incumbents to use public spending to purchase job security....
He appeals to small-government conservatives by proposing a constitutional cap on state spending, and even leasing the Ohio Turnpike to private investors. His cultural conservatism has won him such intense support from many church leaders, some liberals are contemplating recourse to an American sacrament -- a lawsuit. It would threaten the tax-exempt status of churches deemed too supportive of Blackwell.
He appeals to blacks by being black, and because many blacks are cultural conservatives: George W. Bush won 16 percent of Ohio's black vote in 2004. In Blackwell's three statewide races, he has received between 30 percent and 40 percent of the black vote. If in November he duplicates that, he will win, and Democrats in many blue states will blanch because if their share of the black vote falls to 75 percent, their states could turn red.
...
Control of the U.S Senate in 2007 could turn on whether Mike DeWine, a second-term Republican, is re-elected. He does not thrill conservatives, so he needs Blackwell on the ballot to arouse the party's base.
Blackwell annoys the establishment, alright. More power to him.
I disagree with Will's remark about DeWine's reelection being neccessary to maintain a Republican Senate. With Paul Hackett gone from the Senate race, the Democrats are left with ultra-liberal Sherrod Brown. This leftie's only saving grace among average Ohio voters is his strong support from labor unions. Otherwise, he's far too liberal for Ohio-wide voters, and is almost certainly unelectable.
That could mean that there's a good chance that even a new Republican face could defeat Brown in the general election; DeWine isn't as essential as folks might think. I'm all for party loyalty when it's a close race, but when the Democrat is unelectable and the incumbent Republican is a RINO, it's a great opportunity to elect a more conservative Republican.
The conservative base would be wise to get behind Bill Pierce now in the primary election season, and unseat DeWine while the opportunity lasts.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell just released some hard-hitting ads that slam Governor Taft and Blackwell's primary opponent Jim Petro for their poor ethics.
Naturally, the Ohio Republican establishment isn't very happy. GOP head honcho Bob Bennett released a statement chiding Blackwell for his use of "smear tactics." Petro's campaign labeled the ads "lies and innuendo."
The statements in the ads are true and they're relevant to the campaign, so I don't care if they have creepy music and unflattering photos of Taft and Petro. Petro needs to answer the allegations convincingly instead of complaining about Blackwell's tone. Petro's best response would be to prove he didn't strongarm potential donors.
Grow up, establishment fatcats. This is what primary elections are all about. As they say in the movie Highlander: there can be only one.
Hat tip: NixGuy
Paul Hackett, the newly ex-candidate for Mike Dewine's senate seat, had quite an interesting sackful of opposition research on his fellow Democrat and opponent, Sherrod Brown. How can I be sure? Hackett's campaign dumped the information right in the lap of the Toledo Blade, which promptly published it.
The article illustrates how Brown is fundamentally weak on supporting our national intelligence efforts (which is no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention). It won't hurt him in the Democratic primary, but in the general election race he'll get hammered as being soft on terrorism. Which he is.
Excuse me while I go crack open a celebratory bottle of Carlsberg beer.
More blogging:
NixGuy, who points out that Brown has such an impossible uphill climb in the general election that conservatives now have even better reasons to support Bill Pierce over DeWine in the Republican primary.
Hat tip: Hugh Hewitt
Sometimes people have to learn the hard way not to use up somebody else's bandwidth. At least I'm semi-polite about folks who hotlink to my image files. I could have made it a very embarassing image.
He's had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week.
Hat tip: NixGuy.com
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this photograph ...
... starts off with the word "ick."
