More Support for Huckabee

Attached is an article by Dick Morris discussing Mike Huckabee’s fiscal conservative credentials.  Dick Morris is a long time political consultant who has been employed by such notables as Bill Clinton, Trent Lott and Mike Huckabee.  Dick writes well, speaks as an insider and always has an opinion. 

My source: http://thehill.com/dick-morris/mike-huckabee-is-a-fiscal-conservative-2007-11-28.html
Mike Huckabee is a fiscal conservative
By Dick Morris
November 28, 2007  
As Mike Huckabee rises in the polls, an inevitable process of vetting him for conservative credentials is under way in which people who know nothing of Arkansas or of the circumstances of his governorship weigh in knowingly about his record. As his political consultant in the early ’90s and one who has been following Arkansas politics for 30 years, let me clue you in: Mike Huckabee is a fiscal conservative.

A recent column by Bob Novak excoriated Huckabee for a “47 percent increase in state tax burden.” But during Huckabee’s years in office, total state tax burden — all 50 states combined — rose by twice as much: 98 percent, increasing from $743 billion in 1993 to $1.47 trillion in 2005.

In Arkansas, the income tax when he took office was 1 percent for the poorest taxpayers and 7 percent for the richest, exactly where it stood when he left the statehouse 11 years later. But, in the interim, he doubled the standard deduction and the child care credit, repealed capital gains taxes for home sales, lowered the capital gains rate, expanded the homestead exemption and set up tax-free savings accounts for medical care and college tuition.

Most impressively, when he had to pass an income tax surcharge amid the drop in revenues after Sept. 11, 2001, he repealed it three years later when he didn’t need it any longer.

He raised the sales tax one cent in 11 years and did that only after the courts ordered him to do so. (He also got voter approval for a one-eighth-of-one-cent hike for parks and recreation.)

He wants to repeal the income tax, abolish the IRS and institute a “fair tax” based on consumption, and opposes any tax increase for Social Security.

And he can win in Iowa.

When voters who have decided not to back Rudy Giuliani because of his social positions consider the contest between Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, they will have no difficulty choosing between a real social conservative and an ersatz one.

Romney, who began as a pro-lifer and switched in order to win in Massachusetts, and then flipped back again, cannot compete with a lifelong pro-lifer, Huckabee.

But Huckabee’s strength is not just his orthodoxy on gay marriage, abortion, gun control and the usual litany. It is his opening of the religious right to a host of new issues. He speaks firmly for the right to life, but then notes that our responsibility for children does not end with childbirth. His answer to the rise of medical costs is novel and exciting. “Eighty percent of all medical spending,” he says, “is for chronic diseases.” So he urges an all-out attack on teen smoking and overeating and a push for exercise not as the policies of a big-government liberal but as the requisites of a fiscal conservative anxious to save tax money.

So what happens if Huckabee wins in Iowa? With New Hampshire only five days later, his momentum will be formidable. The key may boil down to how Hillary does in Iowa. Hillary? Yes. If she loses in Iowa, most of the independents in New Hampshire will flock to the Democratic primary to vote for her or against her. That will move the Republican electorate to the right in New Hampshire — bad news for Rudy, good news for Huckabee. But if she wins in Iowa, there will be no point in voting in the Democratic primary and a goodly number will enter the GOP contest, giving Rudy a big boost.

And afterward? If Romney wins Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan and South Carolina, sweeping the early primaries, Giuliani will have a very tough task to bring him down in Florida or on Super Tuesday. It can be done, but it’s tough. But if Romney loses in Iowa (likely to Huckabee) then Rudy can survive the loss of Iowa and even New Hampshire without surrendering irresistible momentum to Romney.

In any event, neither Hillary nor Giuliani will be knocked out by defeats in Iowa and New Hampshire. Their 50-state organizations, their national base and their massive war chests will permit them to fight it out all over the United States. Even if they lose the first two contests, they will remain in the race and could well come back to win.

 

A Party (and a writer) in Search of a Candidate

All I want for Christmas is a true conservative candidate who is likeable enough to attract votes and fundraising, tough enough to do the job and consistently conservative enough to score on the proper issue scales. And it appears that many in the Republican party agree with me. We are still looking.

I admit to a bias for Newt Gingrich, even though he may not have totally met the criteria outlined above because he is an exciting thinker and is the best speaker in the party. So Newt appeals to me intellectually – but he is not a candidate. Back to the drawing board. Senator McCain has not stood the test of campaigning in the past, and I resent the McCain Feingold Campaign Finance Act as a direct attack on the constitution and providing too much cover to incumbents. Rudy Guliani is wrong on too many issues for me and I have a bias against US Attorneys who use the DOJ as a springboard into politics. Fred Thompson has the conservative chops to attract me, but he has failed to excite a constituency yet in the field. Despite his constitutional underpinnings, Dr Paul is still too extreme in his positions on the war and the Federal Reserve for me (despite the lobbying of friends for support for him). Huckabee and Romney are both attractive campaigners but both need to prove to me that they meet the conservative tests.

I will comment more fully on Mitt Romney on another day and will look at comments about Mike Huckabee today. I have written previously that I am concerned about Mike’s stand on immigration. This is an issue where I separate from President Bush. I do not believe that we have properly controlled our borders from a security or an immigration point of view. I cannot favor a quick path to citizenship for illegal aliens who have disregarded our laws and seek benefits from our government as a matter of right. Mike does not agree.

Mike has achieved great position for Iowa with a minimum of fundraising or expenditures. But does the primary schedule permit him to capitalize on a possible win in Iowa in time to establish himself in other first races – let’s see Iowa first.

Robert Novak presents a negative view of Governor Huckabee while Star Parker presents a separate view in an additional article this morning.

My source (for Mr Novak): http://www.townhall.com/columnists/RobertDNovak/2007/11/26/the_false_conservative The False Conservative By Robert D. Novak Monday, November 26, 2007

WASHINGTON -- Who would respond to criticism from the Club for Growth by calling the conservative, free-market campaign organization the "Club for Greed"? That sounds like Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich or John Edwards, all Democrats preaching the class struggle. In fact, the rejoinder comes from Mike Huckabee, who has broken out of the pack of second-tier Republican presidential candidates to become a serious contender -- definitely in Iowa and perhaps nationally.

Huckabee is campaigning as a conservative, but serious Republicans know that he is a high-tax, protectionist, big-government advocate of a strong hand in the Oval Office directing the lives of Americans. Until now, they did not bother to expose the former governor of Arkansas as a false conservative because he seemed an underfunded, unknown nuisance candidate. Now that he has pulled even with Mitt Romney for the Iowa caucuses with the possibility of more progress, the beleaguered Republican Party has a frightening problem on its hands.

The rise of evangelical Christians as the motive force that blasted the GOP out of minority status during the past generation always contained an inherent danger if these new Republican acolytes supported not merely a conventional conservative but one of their own. That has happened now with Huckabee, a former Baptist minister educated at Ouachita Baptist University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. The danger is a serious contender for the nomination who passes the litmus test of social conservatives on abortion, gay marriage and gun control but is far removed from the conservative-libertarian model of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.

There is no doubt about Huckabee's record during a decade in Little Rock as governor. He was regarded by fellow Republican governors as a compulsive tax increaser and spender. He increased the Arkansas tax burden by 47 percent, boosting the levies on gasoline and cigarettes. When he decided to lose 100 pounds and pressed his new lifestyle on the American people, he was far from a Goldwater-Reagan libertarian.

As a presidential candidate, Huckabee has sought to counteract his reputation as a taxer by pressing for replacement of the income tax with a sales tax and has more recently signed the no-tax-increase pledge of Americans for Tax Reform. But Huckabee simply does not fit in normal boundaries of economic conservatism, as when he criticized President Bush's veto of a Democratic expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Calling global warming a "moral issue" mandating "a biblical duty" to prevent climate change, he has endorsed the cap-and-trade system that is anathema to the free market.

Huckabee clearly departs from the mainstream of the conservative movement in his confusion of "growth" with "greed." Such ad hominem attacks are part of his intuitive response to criticism from the Club for Growth and the libertarian Cato Institute for his record as governor. On Fox News Sunday Nov. 18, he called the "tactics" of the Club for Growth "some of the most despicable in politics today. It's why I love to call them the Club for Greed because they won't tell you who gave their money." In fact, all contributors to the organization's political action committee (which produces campaign ads) are publicly revealed, as are most donors financing issue ads.

Quin Hillyer, a former Arkansas journalist writing in the conservative American Spectator, called Huckabee "a guy with a thin skin, a nasty vindictive streak." Huckabee's retort was to attack Hillyer's journalistic procedures, fitting a mean-spirited image when he responds to conservative criticism.

Nevertheless, he is getting remarkably warm reviews in the news media as the most humorous, entertaining and interesting GOP presidential hopeful. Contrary to descriptions by old associates, he is now called "jovial" or "good-natured." Any Republican who does not sound much like a Republican is bound to benefit from friendly media support, as Sen. John McCain did in 2000 but not today with his return to being more like a conventional Republican.

An uncompromising foe of abortion can never enjoy full media backing. But Mike Huckabee is getting enough favorable buzz that, when combined with his evangelical base, it makes real conservatives shudder.

My source (for Ms Star): http://www.townhall.com/columnists/StarParker/2007/11/26/the_unfair_rap_against_mike_huckabee?page=full&comments=true The unfair rap against Mike Huckabee By Star Parker Monday, November 26, 2007

What's going on with Mike Huckabee?

With little resources, and with a GOP presidential candidacy hovering in obscurity through the summer, the former Arkansas governor is now running in a dead heat with Mitt Romney in the lead in Iowa.

The former Massachusetts governor's spending in Iowa has been 10 times greater than Huckabee's and, until this week, Huckabee had not run a single ad (versus Romney, whose ads have already run over 5,000 times).

In various national polls, Huckabee is coming in a solid third behind former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson.

The Washington Post's David Broder provides one hint about the fuel that might be propelling Huckabee. He says that, according to veteran Democratic pollster Peter Hart, the attributes that are pushing voters' buttons this year are "transparency, authenticity and unity."

A just-released The Economist/YouGov poll shows Huckabee doing well in these areas. Republican voters rate him first in both honesty and morality.

The long campaign and the plethora of pre-primary televised debates have been helpful to Huckabee, whose appeal has come through to voters, but who has not had a lot of resources for his own marketing. He has come off as genuine and not like a candidate, in Huckabee's words, "who's sort of the culmination of a room full of consultants."

There is little question that on social issues that Huckabee, a Baptist minister, is the real deal. This is playing well among Iowa Republicans, a third of whom are evangelicals and 70 percent of whom are conservatives.

But what about the rap against him that he is a populist with little regard for traditional Republican proclivities for unfettered markets and limited government?

He's been accused by the Club for Growth of "big-government liberalism" and called by conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg a "statist."

There's some justification, of course, to these labels. Huckabee invites them when he expresses reservations about free trade, which he does, when he talks about energy independence, which he does, and when he endorses ideas such as a nationally mandated ban on smoking in public places.

But there are important strains in what Huckabee is about that defy simple labels, and in this sense these accusations and generalizations are not legitimate.

When Huckabee says that "strong families are the foundation of a strong country," he means this. This is not a Hillary Rodham Clinton-like political throw-away line.

The traditional-values agenda is as much an economic initiative as anything else.

It's family breakdown and values breakdown that drive poverty in our country today. Poor families are overwhelmingly single-parent families.

Crime and unemployment among black males is a values crisis, and transforming these young men to productive beings is an economic as well as a values initiative. This is anything but statism.

It's tough to see how someone who wants to get rid of the IRS, which Huckabee's "fair tax" initiative would do, can be thought of as someone who loves big government.

His plan, which would replace the income tax with a national sales tax, has plenty of detractors, including those who see it as politically impossible to achieve.

But how do you argue with the idea of taxing consumption rather than income and production, and freeing every American family of having to share every intimate detail of their economic life with the government?

On health care, Huckabee has repudiated mandated universal coverage and supports reforms that would allow individuals the same tax preferences for purchasing health coverage as employers and that would allow a national market, rather than our current state-regulated fiefdoms, for buying health care Sounds pretty darned free-market to me.

On Social Security, Huckabee's plan would eliminate the payroll tax and he has expressed support for the idea of personal retirement accounts.

And, of course, Huckabee is a hard-core supporter of understanding the Second Amendment as protection of the rights of individuals to bear arms.

So the simple big-government-loving box into which many want to stick Huckabee is just not an accurate picture of the man. Do I agree with many of the criticisms in areas where he does want to turn to government? Yes.

Mike Huckabee is not a simple guy. But life is not simple. However, he is honest, he is clear and many, including me, appreciate his unequivocal stand for the traditional values that are critical for the future of this country.

The Politics of Change

Part of my thought process during a Thanksgiving holiday is consider the sacrifice of those who serve in harms way with the US military in whatever part of the world they may be struggling to protect our way of life and our safety to enjoy national holidays.

I continue to believe that Afghanistan and Iraq are the right conflicts in the right place to further the safety and interests of the United States and the regions impacted. As events have unfolded, there have been events for which, I believe, we were not properly prepared but I continue to believe that President Bush has acted honorably to pursue the policies that he promised he would pursue and that the ultimate result in these areas of conflict will benefit generations to come of Americans and of the world.

With that picture in mind, it has been difficult for me to understand the news coverage and the political pandering of the left – which has been, in my view, self-defeating and anti-American at its core. It is remarkable to me when the modest gains of the Democrats in the Congressional elections of 2006 are attributed to their fielding a slate of more moderate candidates that they, as the new majority party, have stuffed all leadership positions with the most bizarre caricature of far left ideologues that most closely resemble the Stars Wars Cantina scene.

I feature two articles today which follow from my rambling. The first is Charles Krauthammer’s discussion of the positive progress of the conflict in Iraq – which has finally begun to seep into the New York Times coverage only very recently but which has not yet been acknowledged by the leadership of the left. The second article is provided by Larry Thornberry and presents an uncomfortable view of where the Democrats might take us by describing conditions in England which is a few years ahead of us in terms of social change if we do not take steps to correct our course.

My source: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2007/11/23/turning_tides_in_iraq?page=full&comments=true Turning Tides in Iraq By Charles Krauthammer Friday, November 23, 2007

WASHINGTON -- It does not have the drama of the Inchon landing or the sweep of the Union comeback in the summer of 1864. But the turnabout of American fortunes in Iraq over the last several months is of equal moment -- a war seemingly lost, now winnable. The violence in Iraq has been dramatically reduced. Political allegiances have been radically reversed. The revival of ordinary life in many cities is palpable. Something important is happening.

And what is the reaction of the war critics? Nancy Pelosi stoutly maintains her state of denial, saying this about the war just two weeks ago: "This is not working. ... We must reverse it." A euphemism for "abandon the field," which is what every Democratic presidential candidate is promising, with variations only in how precipitous to make the retreat.

How do they avoid acknowledging the realities on the ground? By asserting that we have not achieved political benchmarks -- mostly legislative actions by the Baghdad government -- that were set months ago. And that these benchmarks are paramount. And that all the current progress is ultimately vitiated by the absence of centrally legislated national reconciliation.

I can understand Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the No. 2 commander in Iraq, saying that the central government needs to seize the window provided by the surge to achieve political reconciliation. We would all love to have the leaders of the various factions -- Kurd, Shiite, and Sunni -- sign nice pieces of paper tying up all the knotty questions of federalism, de-Baathification and oil revenues.

What commander would not want such a silver bullet that would obviate the need for any further ground action? But it is not going to happen for the same reason it has not already happened: The Maliki government is too sectarian and paralyzed to be able to end the war in a stroke of reconciliation.

But does the absence of this deus ex machina invalidate our hard-won gains? Why does this mean that we cannot achieve success by other means?

Sure, there is no oil law. But the central government is nonetheless distributing oil revenues to the provinces, where the funds are being used for reconstruction.

Sure, the de-Baathification law has not been modified. But the whole purpose of modification was to entice Sunni insurgents to give up the insurgency and join the new order. This is already happening on a widening scale all over the country in the absence of a relaxed de-Baathification law.

As for federalism, the Kurds are running their own region, the Sunni sheiks in Anbar and elsewhere are exercising not just autonomy but control of their own security, and the southern Shiites are essentially governing themselves, the British having withdrawn in all but name.

Yes, a provincial powers law would be nice because it would allow for provincial elections. We should push hard for it. But we already have effective provincial and tribal autonomy in pivotal regions of the country.

Why is top-down national reconciliation as yet unattainable? Because decades of Saddam's totalitarianism followed by the brutality of the post-invasion insurgency destroyed much of the political infrastructure of the country, causing the Iraqis to revert to the most basic political attachment -- tribe and locality. Gen. David Petraeus' genius has been to adapt American strategy to capitalize on that development, encouraging the emergence of and allying ourselves with tribal and provincial leaders -- without waiting for cosmic national deliverance from the newly constructed and still dysfunctional constitutional apparatus in Baghdad.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq is in disarray, the Sunni insurgency in decline, the Shiite militias quiescent, the capital city reviving. Are we now to reverse course and abandon all this because parliament cannot ratify the reconciliation already occurring on the ground?

Do the critics forget their own arguments about the irrelevance of formal political benchmarks? The transfer of power in 2004. The two elections in 2005. The ratification of the constitution. Those were all supposed to be turning points to pacify the country and bring stability -- all blown to smithereens by the Samarra bombing in February 2006, which precipitated an orgy of sectarian violence and a descent into civil war.

So, just as we have learned this hard lesson of the disconnect between political benchmarks and real stability, the critics now claim the reverse -- that benchmarks are what really count.

This is to fundamentally mistake ends and means. The benchmarks would be a wonderful shortcut to success in Iraq. But it is folly to abandon the pursuit of that success when a different route, more arduous but still doable, is at hand and demonstrably working.

My source: http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12331 Another Blight on Old Blighty By Larry Thornberry Published 11/20/2007 12:07:52 AM

How melancholy to see the UK racing pell-mell down the various paths of political correctness, with bizarre hate crimes laws that are a frontal attack on free speech and freedom of religion, gun control laws that would make Fidel Castro proud and contribute to crime, a Home Office that requires police to play Mother May I with local imams before enforcing any law in Muslim areas, the leeching of all Englishness from school curricula in the name of multiculturalism, the attempt to banish all religion from the public square. Except Islam of course; they wouldn't dare.

Clearly it's time to change the words of the song. There won't always be an England. There's barely one now.

In addition to the abominations listed above, the Brits have fallen even further down the environmental rabbit hole than America has. The fads and fetishes of the First Church of The End of the World have taken greater hold in the land of the (formerly) stiff upper lip than it has in the land of the still-relatively-free and the home of the Atlanta Braves.

Reflecting Old Blighty's sensitivity to manufactured environmental alarums, New Labour PM Gordon Brown and Tory leader David Cameron spend a good deal of their time trying to out-green each other. This seems to play pretty well with the candle-in-the-wind crowd.

One of the latest leftist social-engineering scams, designed to save the sceptered isle from a real scam, global warming, is a series of "eco-towns" Brown announced last summer. Town councils and developers are invited to submit proposals for five "environmentally-friendly" towns in the south-east of England containing 100,000 new homes to be completed by 2020.

The eco-towns are to be "carbon-neutral," meaning the document-stampers who approve buildings in the town will react to any use of fossil fuel the same way Count Dracula reacted to sunlight and the True Cross. They'll be powered, so the press releases say, by "renewable energy sources" such as solar and wind. Homes will be provided with biomass boilers that don't use fossil fuels.

These approaches are some of the favorite fantasies of enviros, and will doubtless excite their erogenous zones. The only problem is they almost certainly won't work (anyone with even minimal experience of English weather should have enough sense not to bank much on solar), and will leave a lot of disgruntled bird-watchers with only their granola to keep them warm in winter.

Developers have claimed the enviro-pure homes will cost about 40,000 pounds more than traditional homes. There's some resistance among conservative town councils. But in the finest tradition of leftists who know what's good for us, the government has threatened that it will intervene and impose settlements if town councils don't come up with their own proposals.

Another nanny twist on eco-towns is that they will contribute to physical fitness and health. Or at least according to the headline-hungry politicians who are whooping them up. These planned towns, nanny wet-dreams come true, are laid out with homes and shops and schools and parks and other necessities within walking distance of each other. This and biking lanes are to ensure that residents will have little need for the dreaded automobile. This not only saves pollution from autos, but all this walking, the story goes, will lead to a more physically fit citizenry.

Health secretary Alan Johnson rode this hobby horse late last month, plugging the towns as a weapon against obesity, which he says is at crisis levels in England and getting worse. In remarks with a slightly Orwellian odor to them, Johnson crooned that the brave new towns, with their bike paths (Howard Dean take notice) and fitness centers and large parks will "encourage" healthy life styles. Children will be badgered (my word, not his) to play more sports, eat less junk food, and even learn to cook.

Anytime socialists "encourage" certain lifestyles, it's only a matter of time before the laws and apparatchiks are in place to enforce them. The most chilling hint of this certainty came when Johnson said students in eco-towns will be "regularly weighed at school" to make sure they aren't porking up. We can already picture the sorry scene, Comrade Teacher humiliating pudgy little Nigel who is suspected of eating crisps and of not doing the government-approved number of jumping jacks.

These command and control towns give further evidence, as if more were needed, that George Orwell was right. He just got the year wrong. I suggest the first "eco-town" be named Winston Smith Village.

Perhaps another could be named Prince Charles Village. Many of the crack-pot concepts involved in the eco-villages mirror the ideas coming out of the Prince of Wales' think-tank. Hey, when your entire job description is to wear funny clothes and hang around, you have a lot of time on your hands. And on the evidence of his public remarks, Charles is only slightly brighter than his mother's corgis. So why should we be surprised that he comes up with a phantasm like eco-villages?

The land of Magna Carta, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, the Common Law, and some really good local ales deserves better than this. And Americans need to pay attention too. Although politically correct elites here would rather shove hot splinters under their fingernails than admit it, America has inherited most of its political institutions from England, the country that practically invented civil liberties. And we're the better for it. But we can surely add eco-towns to the growing list of English political abominations America is well advised not to import.

Larry Thornberry is a writer living in Tampa. His lot started out in Thornbury, just down the road from Bristol.

Mike strikes back

There is a lot I like in Mike Huckabee (aside from a strange sounding last name).  I am concerned with his positions on immigration.

But this ad is a classic – and I cannot pass up the opportunity to share it with you. 

My source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjYv2YW6azE

 

Supreme Court to review DC Gun Law Case

The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it will review the case that I have written about on several occasions – District of Columbia v Heller – in which a Federal appellate judge ruled that the Washington, D.C. gun control ordinance was unconstitutional.  What makes the case interesting is that the judge’s opinion was based upon the 2^nd amendment to the Constitution (“A well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”). 

Whether the 2^nd amendment confers an individual right or refers to a collective right for organized militia groups has not been determined in more than 200 years of American Jurisprudence.  Clearly the Bill of Rights, including the 2^nd Amendment emphasizes individual rights, but the issue has not been decided – until now. 

The Supreme Court has been strangely silent on this question.  The last case discussing the second amendment was in 1939 in which the Court ruled that sawed off shotguns were not covered by the second amendment and the government could regulate such weapons.  It was not necessary in that case to reach the more interesting question of the intent of the second amendment.  But the DC Judge drafted his opinion so as to place the Constitutional issue directly in the sights stating specifically that the second amendment created an individual right and that the DC gun control ordinance violated that right.  The case was ripe for Supreme Court review – and the Justices have accepted the invitation. 

The case is likely to be heard in March and be decided by June.  The timing of the case will provide an issue for discussion in the Presidential primaries.  It is also worth noting that the right to keep and bear arms is not the same as the inherent right of self-defense which finds its bases in English Common Law and other legal precedents. 

The Court chose to specify the questions to be briefed for the case in the following language… “Whether the following provisions — D.C. Code secs. 7-2502.02(a)(4), 22-4504(a), and 7-2507.02 — violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes?”  This wording seems to indicate a preference for second amendment rights of individuals – which is, after all, the basic question to be decided. 

There are other issues contained in this case. It is argued that because of the unique federal status of the District of Columbia, the second amendment of the Federal Constitution would have direct application to the District.  If the Courts finds an individual right in the second amendment, will that right be incorporated through the 14^th amendment to apply to the states – or will we have to wait for another case arising in a state to reach that conclusion. 

I will watch this case with interest as I am personally opposed to gun control laws.  Tony Mauro, writing for Legal Times, is quoted below.

My source: http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1195553052182
Supreme Court Agrees to Take D.C. Gun Case
Tony Mauro
Legal Times
November 21, 2007 

The Supreme Court announced Tuesday it will take up the case of District of Columbia v. Heller, setting the stage for its first hard look in nearly 70 years at the meaning of the Second Amendment's "right of the people to keep and bear arms."

Washington, D.C., Attorney General Linda Singer petitioned the Court to reverse a March 9 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that the amendment protects an individual, rather than a collective or militia right to keep arms. On that basis, the D.C. Circuit, in a decision written by senior judge Laurence Silberman, struck down D.C.'s strict gun control ordinance.

The Cato Institute's Robert Levy, a key strategist in the legal assault on D.C. 's ordinance, said soon after the Supreme Court's announcement, "It's about time. It's only been about 70 years." The last time the Court ruled squarely on the Second Amendment was in the 1939 case U.S. v. Miller, which found the amendment pertained mainly to the needs of state militias.

Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said in a statement, "The U.S. Supreme Court has the chance to reverse a clearly erroneous decision and make it clear that the Constitution does not prevent communities from having the gun laws they believe are needed to protect public safety." He added, "The Supreme Court's decision in this case will be extremely significant -- the most important decision on guns in nearly 70 years and maybe the most important ever regarding the Second Amendment."

Both sides in the dispute -- the D.C government, and Dick Heller, a D.C. resident who challenged it -- had asked the high court to decide the constitutionality of the statute. But significantly, the justices wrote their own version of the "question presented" that will frame and focus the briefing in the case.

Here is the question the justices want answered: "Whether the following provisions -- D.C. Code secs. 7-2502.02(a)(4), 22-4504(a), and 7-2507.02 -- violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes?"

The provisions listed in the Court's question, respectively, ban the registration of handguns, except for retired D.C. Police officers; prohibit carrying a pistol without a license, even from room to room within a house; and require all lawfully owned firearms to be kept unloaded or disassembled or trigger-locked.

The case will likely be argued next March and decided by June, making it likely that the contentious issue of gun rights, and the importance of the Supreme Court as an issue for voters, will gain more prominence in the 2008 presidential campaign.

 

 

Over the River and Through the Woods

I have always been disconcerted by headline writers who apparently have not read the article when attaching the headline.  But, in this case, I have found how much fun it can be.   To explain (the headline), I have decided that the reason that I am uneasy with the Republican candidates in this election cycle is that if these candidates represent the GOP, then the party seems to have lost it’s way and is going over the river and through the woods instead of following the mainstream highway.  So if the headline seems like a non-sequitur, you may attribute it to election cycle fatigue.  And for those of you for whom the headline evokes images of Grandmother’s house and a kinder, gentler time – Happy Thanksgiving to you, too.

The dynamics of this Presidential election are unusual in that this is the first election since 1928 in which there is no incumbent President nor incumbent Vice-President in the primaries.  And the resulting lack of leadership and continuity is beginning to make me feel like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis (to quote Tom Lehrer).

Jonah Goldberg, in his latest article quoted below, catches the spirit (with some great visual images) of what I am saying.  Jonah talks about Dr Ron Paul and Governor Mike Huckabee by raising an interesting question.  How have we reached the point in the Republican party where the small government Constitutionalist is viewed as bizarre ?  Maybe we need four years of a Democrat President and Congress to remind us all of what we believe in and why.  We seem to have forgotten. 

My source: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JonahGoldberg/2007/11/21/ron_paul_isnt_that_scary?page=full&comments=true
Ron Paul Isn't That Scary
By Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, November 21, 2007

As the hopeless but energetic presidential campaign of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) builds momentum in name recognition, fundraising and cross-ideology appeal, some conservatives are beginning to attack him in earnest. A GOP consultant condemns Paul's "increasingly leftish" positions. Syndicated columnist Mona Charen calls Paul "too cozy with kooks and conspiracy theorists." Film critic and talk-radio host Michael Medved looks over Paul's supporters and finds "an imposing collection of neo-Nazis, white supremacists, Holocaust deniers, 9/11 'truthers' and other paranoid and discredited conspiracists."

For the most part, these allegations strike me as overblown and unfair. But, for argument's sake, let's say they're not. Let's even say that Paul has the passionate support of the Legion of Doom, that his campaign lunchroom looks like the "Star Wars" cantina, and that his top advisors have hooves instead of feet.

Well, I would still find him less scary than Mike Huckabee.

While many are marveling at Paul's success at breaking out of the tinfoil-hat ghetto, Huckabee's story is even more remarkable. The former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister is polling in second place in Iowa and could conceivably win there. He's still a long shot to take the nomination and a pipe dream to take the presidency, but Huckabee matters in a way that Paul still doesn't. One small indicator of Huckabee's relevance: His presidential opponents are attacking Huckabee while ignoring Paul like he's an eccentric sitting too close to you on the bus.

What's so scary about Huckabee? Personally, nothing. He seems a charming, decent, friendly, pious man.

What's troubling about The Man From Hope 2.0 is what he represents. Huckabee represents compassionate conservatism on steroids. A devout social conservative on issues such as abortion, school prayer, homosexuality and evolution, Huckabee's a populist on economics, a fad-follower on the environment and an all-around do-gooder who believes that the biblical obligation to do "good works" extends to using government - and your tax dollars - to bring us closer to the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.

For example, Huckabee would support a nationwide ban on public smoking. Why? Because he's on a health kick, thinks smoking is bad and believes the government should do the right thing.

And therein lies the chief difference between Paul and Huckabee. One is a culturally conservative libertarian. The other is a right-wing progressive.

Whatever shortcomings Paul and his friends might have, Paul's dogma generally renders those shortcomings irrelevant. He is a true ideologue in that his personal preferences are secondary to his philosophical principles. When asked what his position is, he generally responds that his position can be deduced from the text of the Constitution. Of course, that's not as dispositive as he thinks it is. But you get the point.

As for Huckabee - as with most politicians, alas - his personal preferences matter enormously because, ultimately, they're the only things that can be relied on to constrain him.

In this respect, Huckabee's philosophy is conventionally liberal, or progressive. What he wants government to do certainly differs in important respects from what Hillary Clinton wants, but the limits he would place on governmental do-goodery are primarily tactical or practical, not philosophical or constitutional. This isn't to say he - or Hillary - is a would-be tyrant, but simply to note that the progressive notion of the state as a loving, caring parent is becoming a bipartisan affair.

Indeed, Huckabee represents the latest attempt to make conservatism more popular. Contrary to the conventional belief that Republicans need to drop their opposition to abortion, gay marriage and the like in order to be popular, Huckabee understands that the unpopular stuff is the economic libertarianism: free trade and smaller government. That's why we're seeing a rise in economic populism on the right married to a culturally conservative populism. Huckabee is the bastard child of Lou Dobbs and Pat Robertson.

Historically, the conservative movement benefited from the tension between libertarianism and cultural traditionalism. This tension - and the effort to reconcile it under the name "fusionism" - has been mischaracterized as a battle between right-wing factions when it's really a conflict that runs through the heart of every conservative. We all have little Mike Huckabees and Ron Pauls sitting on our shoulders. Neither is always right, but both should be listened to.

I would not vote for Paul mostly because I think his foreign policy would be disastrous (Also, he'd lose in a rout not seen since Bambi versus Godzilla). But there's something weird going on when Paul, the small-government constitutionalist, is considered the extremist in the Republican Party, while Huckabee, the statist, is the lovable underdog. It's even weirder because it's probably true: Huckabee is much closer to the mainstream. And that's what scares me about Huckabee and the mainstream alike.

 

The Darker Side of Hillary

The attached article by Kevin McCullough reminds us that not all remember the Clinton years with a warm fuzzy feeling. 

Tim Russert’s questioning of Hillary in the recent Democrat debate suggest that it is at least possible that some journalists (certainly none from CNN) may be willing finally to ask Hillary a tough question and follow up when she tries to evade the question.  It is a healthy trend.

My Source: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/KevinMcCullough/2007/11/18/ugly_clinton_rising?page=full&comments=true
Ugly Clinton Rising
By Kevin McCullough
Sunday, November 18, 2007

As I sat in bed in the wee hours of Saturday morning, the Lovely Bride long having drifted off to sleep by my side and only the bloodshot inducing glow of my laptop staring back at me in the darkness - my stomach sank. On the screen in front of me was the latest reminder of what most of the nation had put behind us some seven years ago. I say latest because the signs have been many, and this week came fast and furious.

I remember the day George W. Bush was sworn in as President in his first term, I wondered allowed how he could stand to share the same car to and from the swearing in ceremony with the outgoing first "couple." I suppose that when the world came crashing down around us on September 11 one of the real benefits such tragedy left us with was that there was no need to be reminded any longer of the unseemly deceit, acts of marital infidelity, the brutal use of absolute power to bully the press, and worst of all having our leaders point their fingers at us and boldly tell us untrue things - merely to save their own hide.

If Hillary Clinton becomes president - get ready for everything we hated about our government to come springing back to life.

CNN's Wolf Blitzer's less than robustly honest form of debate engineering reminded us of the old idea that when it came to being bought and sold in favor of the Clinton's - CNN's brand was head and shoulders above the crowd.

The now thrice confessed to manipulation of questions by the Clinton camp as it related to campaign rallies, or even supposedly non-partisan debates took us back to the reports of the same type when the "charming Clinton" was the candidate.

Sure by the time Sandy Berger committed a felony offense of stealing national documents by stuffing them in his boxers, so many years had gone by that a number of younger adults were saying, "hey I sorta remember him." But the affable fumbling of "gosh I just don't know what I did with those things" answer seemed to satisfy as an explanation. Yet a more loyal task-taker for the steely-eyed Clintons was never found.

The reunification this week of Sydney Blumenthal to the Clinton camp was another sickening moment. In many ways Blumenthal's performance before the Ken Starr investigators made Bill Clinton look truly amateurish. The ease with which Blumenthal was able to sell falsehoods, ever changing recollections of things as they had happened, and his willingness to just bald-face lie sent shivers down the spines of those who watched it. Yet since less than one-third of the American people even understood what the true nature of the investigations were all about, America yawned and went on its way.

Even fellow liberals are decrying the underhanded, back-stage, off-the-record informal strategizing that James Carville is now bringing back to the primary election cycle.

So what was it on the screen at 3am that made me feel so sick?

A blurb if you will, just a tidbit really, in the newest Robert Novak column that simply detailed the discovery of a "file" that Hillary is keeping on Barack Obama. The "scandalous information" of which she is promising not to use (for now) for the sake of a unified party heading into the general election. Of course if Obama wins in Iowa and New Hampshire look for that same "scandalous information" to make it into the hands of CNN staffers, who just couldn't quite tell you how they came to be in possession of it.

The idea of secret files reminded us that when Hillary was only First Lady that she had already proven herself willing to play by rules that only she had to abide by. Thus she has never been held accountable or even been made to answer questions related to miraculously profitable land deals in Arkansas. Mysterious suicides of "friends" like Vince Foster whose suicide weapon as found in the hand opposite of the one he would've used evidently didn't seem to be important enough for her to need to respond to - nor did any of the other 50 plus "friends of Bill and Hillary." She was neck deep in the mail room, travel office, and security personnel scandals that hit the Clinton White House. These were scandals where long time staffers lost jobs and lives were ruined. Hillary even led the way in making it harder for the Secret Service to immediately be able to tell who had what level security clearance in the White House because the desire to not hurt feelings of people who shouldn't be in rooms they didn't have clearance to be in.

But none of the scandals were bolder and publicly vexing than the fact that whole cases of FBI files of Clinton opponents or antagonists were missing and mysteriously popped up in Hillary's possession.

The fact that many of the names found in such files were also under special audit from the IRS - many for several years in a row - under the Clinton regime troubled the few Americans who followed the news closely enough to understand it.

The willingness that such executive power would be focused to abuse their ideological enemies is revolting and repulsive.

In the years since Hillary has repackaged herself as the "moderate" Senator from New York thus further distancing herself from the trouble of the Arkansas days. But make no mistake - everything ugly associated with the word Clinton is back.

Rigged appearances, intimidation of the press, and the discovery that research hacks are even now sitting in some campaign office basement putting together strategy hits for the assassination of their current opponents - its all back.

On a side note we should be thankful on some level, because of the Clinton's we now have talk radio, The Drudge Report, Fox News Channel, and forums like TownHall.com.

We should not be surprised, but we must walk through this election cycle with our eyes open. And if we are not ready for the Hillary Police State (asbestos pantsuits required) then democratic primary voters best speak up and Iowa would be a great place to start.

 

Lawyers, Justice and the American Way

The terms “RICO” (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act) or “Racketeering Enterprise” make great headlines.  But in George Will’s current article they are referring to criminal activities of law firms.  It is frequently reported that trial lawyers are major supporters of the Democrat party and how tort reform and much needed overhaul of the legal system and processes of civil law never seem to make it through the Congress or state legislatures.  So consumers pay spiraling costs for consumer goods and medical care driven higher, in part, by lawsuits. 

Even while would-be populist and Presidential candidate (and trial lawyer) John Edwards campaigns against Washington corruption – the Department of Justice (curious name for any government organization) is cranking out indictments against powerful and prominent law firms.

Mr. Will’s article cites the work of Peter Elkind – editor-at-large for Fortune Magazine – who has reported on these scandals (which do not seem to make the mainstream press) for several years.  Elkind writes about Bill Lerach, former Milberg Weiss firm partner, who has plead guilty and is facing jail time – and who has raised money for John Edwards - in a September 2004 Fortune article.  Elkind further describes the activities of the Milberg Weiss firm in extorting 45 billion dollars in corporate payments through securities class action lawsuits in a November 2006 Fortune article.  Finally a brief Elkind article in September 2007 describes Mel Weiss, co-founder of the Milberg Weiss firm, damaging even his own firm by his personal actions.  Follow these dated links to a fascinating view into the abuse of the legal system by the firm in attacking the corporate structure for greed and profit.

My source: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/GeorgeWill/2007/11/18/a_trial_lawyers_campaign_to_clean_up_washington
A Trial Lawyer's Campaign to Clean Up Washington
By George Will
Sunday, November 18, 2007

WASHINGTON -- John Edwards launched his slight public career -- one Senate term, two presidential candidacies -- with the money and reputation he made as a trial lawyer. Today he is the candidate of a small fraction of the electorate but a sizable portion of America's trial lawyers. Edwards says Washington is "corrupt." Well.

Within Edwards' lucrative trial bar constituency, there has been a flurry of criminal indictments. Their target has been what Fortune magazine calls the law firm of Hubris Hypocrisy and Greed. (See Peter Elkind's jaw-dropping report in the issue of Nov. 13, 2006.) The real name of the nation's foremost securities class-action firm is Milberg Weiss.

It has been indicted as a "racketeering enterprise" that obstructed justice and committed perjury, bribery and fraud while collecting about $250 million in fees from about 250 cases using paid plaintiffs, which is illegal. Several of the firm's members, past and present, also have been indicted.

Since 1965, the firm has won, often by tactics indistinguishable from extortion, $45 billion from corporations -- more than $1 billion a year for plaintiffs claiming to have been cheated as investors. Plaintiffs firms such as Milberg Weiss are paid contingency fees -- they are paid only if they win, but up to 30 percent of what is won. Mel Weiss, whose case is going to trial, and his former partner, Bill Lerach, who specialized in volatile stocks of Silicon Valley companies in the 1990s and is now going to jail, each pocketed -- it would be strange to say they earned -- more than $100 million in the 1990s. The firm itself has been charged with paying $11.4 million to three serial plaintiffs who testified in 180 cases over 25 years, claiming to have been repeatedly defrauded.

For Milberg Weiss to land the lucrative role as lead counsel, in charge of a case, it had to be first to file suit -- to win the "race to the courthouse." The firm's tactic was to store a few plaintiffs in its pantry. They would buy small amounts of stock in many companies, so they were poised to sue any of the companies whose stock lost substantial value.

Lead plaintiffs must swear that they are not getting special payments. According to prosecutors, some of Milberg Weiss' phony plaintiffs were getting millions of dollars in kickbacks -- generally about 10 percent of net attorneys' fees -- for their charade as injured investors.

David Bershad, who has made $161 million with the firm since 1983, has pleaded guilty to one charge and cooperated with prosecutors. Steven Schulman has pleaded guilty to racketeering. The collateral damage is still spreading. A Los Angeles attorney has pleaded guilty to acting as a conduit for secret payments to one of the pantry plaintiffs for accepting payments from Milberg Weiss for work never done and for passing the payments on to the plaintiff.

How do you convict a company of the crime of having the price of its stock fall? How do you prove that a company is guilty of fraud and liable for losses it presumably did not want? Often you do not prove it, or even plan to. Rather, you threaten to be such a costly nuisance that the company pays you to go away. Milberg Weiss is even suing investment banks on behalf of investors in companies' initial public offerings that soared and then plummeted.

Lerach was a Lincoln Bedroom guest in President Bill Clinton's White House. Shortly after Lerach attended a White House dinner, Clinton vetoed legislation that would have restricted class-action lawsuits. Lerach gave $100,000 to Clinton's presidential library.

Does political money flow toward beliefs or do beliefs move toward money? Much scholarship strongly suggests the former. Democrats are rewarded for their devotion to trial lawyers, but there is another reason why they are disposed to devotion. The problem is not that Democrats are "bought" by trial lawyers. The problem is that Democrats, who see victims everywhere, are actually disposed to believe the narrative of pandemic victimization of investors.

Milberg Weiss turned that narrative into gold, which it shared with Democrats. Since 1980, the firm's partners have given more than $7 million to Democratic candidates, and an additional $500,000 to help build the Democratic National Committee's new headquarters.

Until Lerach pleaded guilty he was a fundraiser for Edwards, for whom he collected $64,000 from lawyers in the firm he founded after he had a falling out with Weiss. Remember this when next you hear Edwards' populist riff about trial lawyers as white knights protecting little people.

 

Still waiting on the Supreme Court

I commented in these pages recently about an opportunity for the Supreme Court to accept review of a Washington DC case squarely addressing the 2^nd Amendment and the issue of gun control.  One of the traditional grounds for the Court granting Certiorari (accepting a case for review) is a conflict in law among the Circuit Courts of Appeal.  The DC Circuit and the Fifth Circuit have held that there is an individual right contained in the 2^nd Amendment – while the other Circuits have held that there is no basis in the amendment for an individual right.  The presence of the 2^nd Amendment and its position in the Bill of Rights would suggest otherwise – so the cases are important.

To date, the Supreme Court has not announced whether it will grant review in this case.  However, the issue continues to gather press coverage.  Janet LaRue provides an excellent article this morning, quoted below.

My source: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JanetMLaRue/2007/11/15/supreme_court_may_target_second_amendment?page=full&comments=true
Supreme Court May Target Second Amendment
By Janet M. LaRue
Thursday, November 15, 2007

The press took umbrage at a court’s “broad” interpretation of the Constitution, which recognized an individual right to keep and bear arms and shot down D.C.’s gun ban as unconstitutional. Will the Supreme Court uphold the right of self-defense?

The U.S. Supreme Court hasn’t decided a Second Amendment case since United States v. Miller in 1939, and even then, it dodged the bullet. The Court didn’t decide whether the Amendment protects an individual or a collective right to keep and bear arms.

The Second Amendment states: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The Court will lock and load on the Amendment if it grants review in two cases on its docket this term involving Washington, D.C.’s draconian gun laws.

In 1976, D.C. banned all handgun registrations, prohibited handguns already registered from being carried from room to room in the home without a license, and required all firearms in the home, including rifles and shotguns, to be unloaded and either disassembled or bound by a trigger lock. In effect, the District disarmed its citizenry.

Before the District banned handguns, the murder rate had been declining. Soon after the ban, the rate climbed to the highest of all large U.S. cities. Robert Levy, co-counsel for the six residents, writes in National Review: “During the 31-year life of the D.C. gun ban — with the exception of a few years during which the city’s murder rate ranked second or third — there have been more killings per capita in D.C. than in any other major city.”

As Levy correctly observes: “Proponents of gun control are not persuaded by such arguments, or even by empirical studies proving that gun control does not work. Nor are they persuaded by the text of the Second Amendment; the history, purpose, and structure of the Constitution; or the intent of the Framers.”

Unarmed law-abiding citizens vs. heavily armed criminals—guess who’s been winning. If D.C. City Council members regulated water the way they “regulate” gun ownership, residents could expect desert-dry water pipes and registration of garden hoses.

In 2006, six residents of the District challenged the laws, and lost. The federal district court granted the city’s motion to dismiss “on the grounds that the Second Amendment, at most, protects an individual’s right to “bear arms for service in the Militia.” The court conveniently ignored the word “keep” in the Second Amendment.) And, by “Militia,” the court concluded that the Second Amendment referred to an organized military body—such as a National Guard unit.

Last March, however, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed the district court, ruling 2-1 that “the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms,” and striking down the gun laws as unconstitutional. Writing for the court, Judge Laurence H. Silberman held: “[T]he activities protected by the Amendment “are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual’s enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued or intermittent enrollment in the militia.” Silberman noted the reasonableness of the appellants’ claims:

Essentially, the appellants claim a right to possess what they describe as “functional firearms,” by which they mean ones that could be “readily accessible to be used effectively when necessary” for self-defense in the home.

The city council, led by Mayor Adrian Fenty, was outraged and immediately announced its intent to appeal to the Supreme Court. In addition to the anti-gun brigade, Fenty enjoyed the support of the editorial boards of two newspaper giants.

A Washington Post editorial called the ruling “radical” for giving “a new and dangerous meaning to the Second Amendment … an unconscionable campaign … to broadly reinterpret the Constitution so as to give individuals Second Amendment rights. The New York Times said the court was “interpreting the Second Amendment broadly.”

One reason the Supreme Court may grant review is because the circuit courts are divided on the meaning of the Amendment. Only the Fifth Circuit agrees with the D.C. Circuit that the Amendment is an “individual” right. The other circuits have held that private citizens in the states have no Second Amendment claim when they challenge state and local gun-control ordinances. The Supreme Court has yet to apply the Amendment uniformly to the states through the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, as it has done with almost all of the Bill of Rights.

If the Supremes don’t grant review, the decision by the D.C. Circuit will stand, but it will be a hollow point victory except in the 10 square miles of the nation’s crime capital.

Let’s hope the Supremes affirm what Judge Silberman rightly recognized: “The wording of the operative clause also indicates that the right to keep and bear arms was not created by government, but rather preserved by it.” The right “pre-existed the Constitution like ‘the freedom of speech.’” It is, after all, “a natural right to keep and bear arms.”

 

The Shifting Sands of Politics

We have finally crept within a year of the 2008 elections as the longest presidential campaign drags on.  But one truth is becoming more clear as time marches on.  Things change and a lot can happen in a year.  The Democrats could see their prime issue, the war in Iraq, disappear if we start to see better news from the Middle East.  There are already encouraging trends – but as they have occurred during the baseball season, the New York Times may not have covered it.

Now another major theme of the Democrats is beginning to sound a little hollow.  Clinton states repeatedly that the Bush foreign policy is in ruins and she needs to send ambassador Bill on the road after she is elected to repair fences around the world.  Repair what fences? Our ties to Europe have never been better.  France and Germany have elected Pro-American leaders.  Other relationships are intact (so long as we are resist the Democrat pressure to declare defeat and run from Iraq).

Charles Krauthammer discussed the state of our friends around the world in the attached article.

My source: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2007/11/16/balance_of_power_returning_to_united_states?page=full&comments=true
Balance of Power Returning to United States
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, November 16, 2007

WASHINGTON -- When the Democratic presidential candidates pause from beating Hillary with a stick, they join in unison to pronounce the Democratic pieties, chief among which is that George Bush has left our alliances in ruins. As Clinton puts it, we have "alienated our friends," must "rebuild our alliances" and "restore our standing in the world." That's mild. The others describe Bush as having a scorched-earth foreign policy that has left us reviled and isolated in the world.

Like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, who insist that nothing of significance has changed in Iraq, the Democrats are living in what Bob Woodward would call a state of denial. Do they not notice anything?

France has a new president who is breaking not just with the anti-Americanism of the Chirac era but with 50 years of Fifth Republic orthodoxy that defined French greatness as operating in counterpoise to America. Nicolas Sarkozy's trip last week to the United States was marked by a highly successful White House visit and a rousing speech to Congress in which he not only called America "the greatest nation in the world" (how many leaders of any country say that about another?) but pledged solidarity with the U.S. on Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, the Middle East and nuclear nonproliferation. This just a few months after he sent his foreign minister to Iraq to signal an openness to cooperation and an end to Chirac's reflexive obstructionism.

That's France. In Germany, Gerhard Schroeder is long gone, voted out of office and into a cozy retirement as Putin's concubine at Gazprom. His successor is the decidedly pro-American Angela Merkel, who concluded an unusually warm visit with Bush this week.

All this, beyond the ken of Democrats, is duly noted by new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who in an interview with Sky News on Sunday noted "the great change that is taking place," namely "that France and Germany and the European Union are also moving more closely with America."

As for our other traditional alliances, relations with Australia are very close, and Canada has shown remarkable steadfastness in taking disproportionate casualties in supporting the NATO mission in Afghanistan. Eastern European nations, traditionally friendly, are taking considerable risks on behalf of their U.S. alliance -- for example, cooperating with us on missile defense in the face of enormous Russian pressure. And ties with Japan have never been stronger, with Tokyo increasingly undertaking military and quasi-military obligations that it had forsworn for the last half-century.

So much for the disarray of our alliances.

The critics will say that all this is simply attributable to the rise of Russia and China causing old allies to turn back to us out of need.

So? I would even add that the looming prospect of a nuclear Iran has caused Arab states -- Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, even Libya -- to rally to us. All true. And it makes the point that the Bush critics have missed for years -- that the strength of alliances is heavily dependent on the objective balance of international forces, and has very little to do with the syntax of the U.S. president or the disdain in which he might be held by a country's cultural elites.

It's classic balance-of-power theory: Weaker nations turn to the great outside power to help them balance a rising regional threat. Allies are not sentimental about their associations. It is not a matter of affection, but of need -- and of the great power's ability to deliver.

What's changed in the last year? Bush's dress and diction remain the same. But he did change generals -- and counterinsurgency strategy -- in Iraq. As a result, Iraq has gone from an apparently lost cause to a winnable one.

The rise of external threats to our allies has concentrated their minds on the need for the American connection. The revival of American fortunes in Iraq -- and the diminished prospect of an American rout -- have significantly increased the value of such a connection. This is particularly true among our moderate Arab allies who see us as their ultimate protection against an Iran-Syria-Hezbollah-Hamas axis that openly threatens them all.

It's always uncomfortable for a small power to rely on a hegemon. But a hegemon on the run is even worse. Alliances are always shifting. But one thing we can say with certainty: The event that will have more effect than any other on the strength of our alliances worldwide is not another Karen Hughes outreach to the Muslim world, not an ostentatious embrace of Kyoto, or even the most abject embrace of internationalism from the podium of the UN. It is success or failure in Iraq.