Month: May 2011

GOP’s Blankley: Bush Deserves Credit for bin Laden Kill under Obama, Just As JFK Got Credit for Moon Landing on Nixon’s Watch

Jon Ponder

Blankley
Blankley
When asked on KCRW’s “Left, Right and Center” last week whether Pres. Obama should get credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden, the show’s resident conservative, Tony Blankley, said this:

My view — I wrote this actually in the Washington Times in a clever, I thought, article — that we give Jack Kennedy credit for going to the moon even though Nixon was president at the moment that it happened, because he was continuing Kennedy’s policies. And we should give George W. [Bush] a lot of credit for instituting a lot of the structures on the war against terror that includes the interrogation processes and all the rest — the black sites. And give Obama the credit that Nixon got on going to the moon — which is, he continued wise policies effectively.

Poor Richard Nixon. He just doesn’t get enough credit. And poor right wingers, they are the biggest victims on the planet, or so they say.

Of course, Blankley’s comparison falls apart when exposed to air. After declaring that the United States would go to the moon “in this generation,” JFK did not then lose the moon — as Bush lost bin Laden at Tora Bora — nor did JFK, after losing the moon, close NASA, as Bush did, analogously, when he closed the CIA’s bin Laden unit in 2005, around the time bin Laden was building the compound in Pakistan where he lived in undisturbed comfort for the rest of Bush’s term in office.

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Is Andrew Cuomo the Champion of Gay Marriage?

Buck Banks

I don’t want to take anything away from the sincerity of his conviction on this and I assume it’s real, but if he’s thinking about a national campaign somehwere down the road, he is in exactly the right place for a Democrat right now. If he actually gets this [gay marriage] done in a big state like New York, it’ll be historic, it’ll be a landmark, and not only strengthen him with the gay constituency — which is important in Democratic politics — but also for younger voters.

— Democratic consultant Bob Shrum, in an interview with Politico’s Ben Smith, saying that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) has positioned himself as a centrist in the early days of his term, but also has “put himself in position to wow liberal Democratic voters in 2016 by being the candidate most fully committed to same-sex marriage, and the one who got it done.”

Dems Pull Ahead in Straw Poll

Buck Banks

50% to 46%

Margin by which registered voters now favor a generic Democrat over a Republican in next year’s congressional election, according to a new CNN/Opinion Research poll. The poll also shows women and non-college voters, who supported Republicans in 2010, now supporting Democrats by 10 points and nine points, respectively. Said pollster Keating Holland: “It’s far too early to use these results to accurately forecast the 2012 congressional elections. But it does indicate that some of the shifts that swept the GOP into power in 2010 may be shifting back.”

Palin’s Is a Story of Temptation

Buck Banks

In some ways, the story of Palin is a story of temptation. Rather than sticking to her guns and deepening her political credentials and her knowledge base, she embraced her celebrity instead. And in doing so, she didn’t defeat her critics and enemies; she capitulated to them. Listen, it’s her life and her fortune and she is free to do what she wishes with it. And there’s no telling what the future holds for anyone in America. But she had and has more raw political talent than anyone I’ve ever seen, and, alas, as phenoms go, it looks like she is headed for a Darryl Strawberry-like playing career.

— John Podhoretz, writing in Commentary Magazine.