I heard Democrat pundit Bob Beckel opine that Secretary of State nominee Condoleezza Rice was “not up to the job” for which she’s set to do (thanks for reminding me, lyle).
However, Ann Coulter takes a walk down memory lane to remind us of the quality of some of the more recent occupiers of the SOS Cabinet position.
With [Madeline] Albright at the helm of the State Department [during the Clinton Administration], Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) ran wild throughout the Middle East, the North Koreans began feverishly building nukes under her nose, and we staged a pre-emptive attack solely for purposes of regime change based on false information presented to the American people by Albright about a world leader who was not an imminent threat to the United States. Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites) wasn't even a latent, long-term, hypothetical threat. [SNIP]
Or how about Clinton's first secretary of state, Warren Christopher, a lawyer whose dazzling foreign policy experience consisted of being President Carter's chief negotiator for the hostages in Iran? That's almost as impressive a resume entry as "Chief Iceberg Lookout, the Titanic," "Senior Design Engineer, the Edsel," "Navigator, Exxon Valdez," or "Writer/Executive Producer, 'Alexander.'" [Ha Ha!]Of course, it wouldn’t be an Ann Coulter column without her dropping a few more Coulterisms (read: withering snark) into the mix.
The entire Bush cabinet is starting to look like an Image Awards telecast minus the fisticuffs and gunplay. [SNIP]
It's extremely valuable for Democrats to be able to campaign in black neighborhoods while talking about the "white boys" running the Republican Party. When she was managing Al Gore (news - web sites)'s 2000 campaign, Donna Brazile said she was not going to "let the white boys win in this election." (If I had a nickel for every time I've confused Al Gore, Joe Lieberman (news - web sites), Terry McAuliffe, Paul Begala and James Carville for the Jackson Five ...)McAuliffe might pass as Michael Jackson's stunt double, but as for the rest...
A few weeks back, I also happened to witness an exchange between Coulter and Beckel, during which she nearly made him cry. The subject was related to this column: President Bush’s minority Cabinet appointees and the general disdain that Democrats seem to have for them. You know Ann; she’ll call a spade a spade, no pun intended. She said flat-out that those who would malign Rice, Powell, et al, for being Republican While Not-White were racists. Well Mr. Beckel took it personally and played the I-Marched-In-The-Civil-Rights-Movement Card. Can you tell my eyes were rolling? Now don’t get me wrong. I appreciate those who did as Mr. Beckel did, but shouldn’t such people be happy to see that the barriers of race—not to mention party-affiliation—have fallen so low in such a short period of time? But it appears that for Beckel--and for all too many other left-of-center media types-- that black progress is only real progress when it has a (D) in front of it.
…Bush nominates a brilliant geopolitical thinker who happens to be black and female and all of a sudden she's Butterfly McQueen, who don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no Middle Eastern democracies.(See background.)
(I almost expected Bob to ask Ann where she was when he was getting his head cracked--his words--by the powers-that-were. Since Ann in her early forties, I suspect that she was in kindergarten, administering a beat-down to some little dodgeball player who had the cojones to pull one of her blond ponytails.)
As Ann says, the Democrats are just scared to lose their stranglehold on the black electorate. You think you’ve seen a mass liberal hissy-fit in the wake of the 2004 election? This is nothing. Should Condoleezza Rice change her mind and run for president in 2008, I predict that 50% of the black vote will go toward the Republican ticket. And that’s a conservative estimate. Pun intended this time.
