One Republican--likely--down for the count before the fight begins.
“In order to run for president last time, I cashed in my life insurance, my annuities, I pretty much went through everything that I ever had as an asset that I thought I might someday live on. One thing I committed to myself, to my wife and God, was that if I do this I’m hopefully going to be in a position that I’m not so completely destitute at the end of it, that I have no idea what to do if I get sick.”
Can I get two cheers for inflation?
Cubachi thinks this signals Huckabee's lack of seriousness about 2012. I think she's right. But then again, has Huckabee ever been a serious candidate in the next presidential election? The only reason anybody paid him any attention in 2008 was because the GOP field was so weak.
Besides that, what's his campaign narrative supposed to be in 2012? I really don't think America--and the GOP in particular--will be in the market for spend-happy compassionate conservative.
Don't get it twisted. I think Huckabee's heart is in the right place on a lot of issues. So was George W. Bush's. Dubya was right about guns, abortion and--broadly--terrorism. But his lack of discipline about spending (and his poor performance in 2004-2006 Iraq) soiled the GOP brand and helped usher in President Obama. In similar ways, Huckabee's compassionate conservatism very well could be just the thing to help re-elect St. Barry of the Sacred Union Payoff.
This is the test of our democracy. Ms Piven must be delighted.
'Delighted?' That repellent old socialist windbag is panting for more of the same as we speak.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, where all but the most blinkered left-wing ideologues actually live, Herman Cain throws down a marker.
Big ups to RS McCain for posting this vid. Read the rest of his piece as he makes some good points and includes a smidge of Breitbart magic as well.
As for Herman Cain, he declares, "Wisconsin in ground zero for the rest of America"
Listen to this man. He speaks the God's honest truth here.
As I said in an earlier post, Obama has sent his troops into this fight. Organizing For America pretty much sat on its hands during the 2010 election season. Unlike in November, the President has decided to enter this battle with both barrels blazing. He is gambling that with OFA assistance, rent-a-goon union tactics and good old fashioned media bias, he can get Wisconsin Republicans to back down.
Obama must not be allowed to win this fight.
Ponder this scenario: The GOP in Wisconsin is broken. They give in to Democrat demands and business as usual reconvenes. The consequences from that loss would be dramatic and immediate. First, this will embolden the Obama political hack groups to pull this kind of stuff anytime a fiscally conservative statehouse gets too uppity. If the Cloward/Piven/Alinsky tactic works in CheeseHeadLand, the Left will naturally seek to use these same political moves everywhere else. Obama will send out OFA to infiltrate, disrupt and disarm any state's attempts to slow the growth of government.
Governors from states that are in similarly dire budgetary straits--like all 50 of them--will look at this hypothetical conservative failure in Wisconsin with great interest. They will learn that there is no political gain to be had from trying to evade the budgetary dilemmas they face. Runaway entitlements, public-sector union issues, basic fiscal discipline...all those concerns will go by the wayside. Politicians will instead recalibrate their messages to voters; the big fight in the next election cycle will be which party can best deliver the gubmint cheeeeeeeez to state-dependent voters.
Just a reminder: Even after the compassionate conservatism of the Bush years, Republicans will never--EVER--win that argument. If faced with the prospect of Republicans offering an efficient well-organized welfare state or Democrats promising a generous fluffy relaxing social safety hammock, voters will choose the Donkey Punchers every time. When a little kid cries for a Snickers bar, he really doesn't care how much money Mommy saved when she bought the thing. No, the child only cares that the chocolate goody gets to him as soon as possible and that there is more where that came from. Same thing with is true with the electorate if faced with that kind of 'choice.'
What Obama and the Dems are trying to do is nothing less than the repeal of the 2010 midterms.
Wisconsin might not be America's political Ragnarok. Perhaps I'm misreading just how big this thing is. However, the fact that Barack Obama has decided to expend such effort and has unleashed his rabble-rousers tells me that this is a massive deal.
Daniel Pipes ponders the notion of an Islam compatible with democracy.
Just as Christianity became part of the democratic process, so can Islam. This transformation will surely be wrenching and require time. The evolution of the Catholic Church from a reactionary force in the medieval period into a democratic one today, an evolution not entirely over, has been taking place for 700 years. When an institution based in Rome took so long, why should a religion from Mecca, replete with its uniquely problematic scriptures, move faster or with less contention?
Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing. Pipes breaks down some of the massive hurdles Islam has to leap over in order to embrace democratic ideals.
A point Pipes doesn't touch on is how the modern Western world has treated the various Islamist movements it has run into over the last 50 years. Since Sayyid Qutb gave birth to the modern jihadist movement, elements of the West have been bombarded by various facets of Islamic violence. Whether it has come in the form of stateless entities like al-Qaeda, belligerent theocratic governments or a combination of the two is beside the point.
So how have the elites in America reacted to the decades-long aggression of expansionist Islam? Accomodation, moral equivalence and feckless dhimmitude. Among other pathetic reactions. Then we wonder why Islam continues to pick on us.
Non-Muslims can't do much to reform to Islam. As Pipes notes, that kind of wrenching cultural shift takes a long time. Democratization is not something the West will be capable of accelerating very much.
But that doesn't mean the West has to lay down and accept terrorist Islam's deranged premises about the separation of church and state, the role of women, property rights or religious pluralism. Nor does it have to tolerate the violent acts of murder and mayhem the Qutbist keep throwing at us. Instead of that, the West could decide to tell Islam--through words and deeds--that certain things won't be tolerated. Like honor killings, imposition of sharia, the crushing of religious minorities or female circumsicion.
Would that turn Islam into a religion that welcomes democratic reform? Probably not. But it would probably be better than the subtle message of approval some in the West insist on sending to Islam.
Amy Woodruff just sorta gave the entire game away, didn't she?
So much of the pro-choice side's intellectual argument rests on the utterly vacuous legality defense. Roe v. Wade supposedly brought the process of terminating unwanted pregnancies from the filthy unsafe back allies into the respectable clinical sterile environment of the modern operating room. Remember, according to the pro-abortion crowd, terminating a pregnancy has to be legal or women will be put at risk and denied their constitutional rights.
First, a question for the audience: At what point does the giggling moronic Planned Parenthood hack in the video consider the legality of what she is doing? After all, Amy Woodruff doesn't know she's being set up. As best she can tell this is a real pimp with a real ho who is peddling 14 year old minors for sex. In fact, she is doing everything in her power to help a pimp--a degenerate sex trafficker who is selling children--stay out of trouble with the law.
Human imagination would be sorely tested trying to dream up an ideologically blinkered moral idiot such as Ms. Woodruff. It seems impossible that a person would allow herself to get so confused that she turns a blind eye towards this kind of extreme child endangerment and exploitation. Unfortunately, reality is far more inventive than our darkest nightmares.
Make no mistake-Ms. Woodruff is engaging in criminal behavior. Moreover, it's a crime involving the central justification of Planned Parenthood. That organization breaks its arm patting itself on the back for protecting women from abuse. Yet here we see a gatekeeper of Planned Parenthood making sure that underage girls are kept in sexual bondage. If the situation in the clip isn't exploitation of women, what the hell is?
Speaking of rights, what about the right of fourteen year old girls not to be turned into sex slaves? I mean, I know it's not like the right to abort a child that is so obviously spelled out in the US Constitution [sarc/] but still. I'm not a civil rights expert, but I'm pretty sure that if someone is pimping out minors for sex, that is going to adversely affect that whole 'Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness" equation. I guess the right of Planned Parenthood to make money off of terminating pregnancies trumps the rights of teenagers to not get used like a box of Kleenex.
Instead of preventing abuse, the legality of abortion has created the conditions for ever-uglier forms of anti-female assaults. Better still, the group that considers itself the primary guardian of women's rights is right there giving aid and comfort to the most vile abusers out there. Why, if I didn't know better, I'd think Planned Parenthood was just paying lip service to protecting women while they simultaneously set ladies up for a particularly nasty fall or something.
Prediction: There will be about a hundred times more outrage from the pro-abortion feminist sob sisters about how this video was obtained rather than the fact that Planned Parenthood put itself in the position of helping out a pedophile-enabling pimp.
I snagged the original link at Instapundit. Muchas gracias.
Cross-posted at BDKS. Thank you very much, Juliette. You rule.
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